:    9         

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ATLANTIC CITY -- The city is in uncharted territory as it risks defaulting on state loan terms.

No New Jersey municipality has defaulted on a state loan in the 20th or 21st centuries, said Marc Pfeiffer, assistant director at the Bloustein Local Government Research Center at Rutgers University.

But the $73 million loan agreement, which made the citys Municipal Utilities Authority collateral, is unprecedented in its nature and scope, said Pfeiffer, a retired deputy director of the Division of Local Government Services, the states local government oversight agency.

When the state had provided short term cash flow loans in the past, there was never this level collateral or provisions regarding what would happen in the event of a default, Pfeiffer said. Because frankly, the state has some extensive control over municipalities that default is not a problem...Atlantic Citys fiscal problems are more dire than what weve seen in the past.

The loan terms required the city to adopt an ordinance by Sept. 15 that dissolves the authority if the city cant pay back the loan. City Councils Wednesday meeting ended without a vote on initiating the dissolution, putting the city just days away from defaulting on the loan terms.

If that happens, the state could demand immediate repayment of the loan. The city would not be able to pay back the loan at this time, officials have said. The city plans to use redirected casino tax funds to pay back the loan, but that state aid isnt available until November.

Mayor Don Guardian and Council President Marty Small were in Trenton Thursday to speak with state officials about Wednesdays council meeting.

It was important for us to make sure the state knows that we are still completely focused on crafting a viable 150-day plan and submitting it early, Guardian said in a statement, referring to a fiscal plan due in Nov. 3. We believe that in the big picture, the plan we will present will lay out a clear path toward Atlantic Citys solvency.

The fiscal plans rejection would result in a state takeover.

Residents packed council chambers Wednesday night and some urged council to rescind the July 28 resolution that authorized the loan deal. Council voted 5-3-1 to do that, but was one vote shy of the two-thirds majority needed. Most of the money has already been spent.

At the meeting, Small acknowledged the loan is not a good agreement but told residents it was the best possible decision for the city.

All decisions arent popular, Small said. Youre going to disagree, youre going to agree. But understand the decision that was made was for the best for everyone in this room thats from Atlantic City. You may not agree with it, but were giving ourselves a chance.

Council doesnt have another scheduled meeting until Sept. 21. The loan terms gives the city 10 days to cure an event of default, giving the city until Sept. 25 to pass the authority-related measures if the city misses the Sept. 15 deadline.

Meanwhile, a lawsuit from former Councilman Seth Grossman seeks to void the loan deal. The suit claims enough notice wasnt given for the meeting and not enough council members approved the loan.

The authority has been at the center of negotiations between the city and state. Monetizing the authority was mentioned in a 2015 draft Memorandum of Understanding for Transitional Aid. And the state takeover law gave the city a year to monetize it before the state can sell it.

Council has voted down or pulled measures to dissolve the authority five times. Councils inaction on the authority was cited by state officials calling for a state takeover.

I have said going back well over a year, privately, to members of council, to members of the administration: You have to do something with the MUA, said Sen. Jim Whelan, D-Atlantic. Their failure to do so is just emblematic of whats going on.

On Tuesday, Gov. Chris Christie said: It looks like, you know, I might have to be mayor of Atlantic City.

Contact: 609-272-7215

Twitter @_Hetrick
WILDWOOD  Can you hear it? The rumble of tens of thousands of Harley Davidson motorcycles, occasionally cut with the higher whine of a Kawasaki Ninja or the purr of a vintage Triumph, rolling down the parkway and Route 47.

The Roar to the Shore has arrived.

Wildwood Mayor Ernie Troiano said this week he expects about 75,000 bikes for the rally, which continues through Sunday.

With one or two people on each, they dump a ton of money in the community, he said.

Billed as one of the largest motorcycle rallies on the East Coast, plans call for a battle of the bands, a custom bike show and more. Organized by the Cape Classics Motorcycle Club, the Roar and other late-summer weekend events like the New Jersey State Firemens Convention and the Irish Fall Festival help keep merchants, restaurants and motels busy after Labor Day.

This year, merchants didnt see much of a boost from the long Labor Day weekend, with a scary forecast for Tropical Storm Hermine keeping visitors away. Troiano said when he was a kid, Wildwood emptied out after the holiday, going from a packed resort to empty streets overnight. These days, the tourism economy continues into October, with a big boost from special events.

Let me put it this way: If bases were loaded and you were down one run and you needed a hit, you need to come up with a grand slam, Troiano said.

The mayor said the last weekend of September, which includes the Seafarers Celebration in Wildwood Crest, the classic car show and the Irish Fall Festival, is the biggest draw. But he said the Wildwoods try to have something for everyone, and two new events will be announced for this year.

The bike weekend, in particular, has drawn some concerns.

We had a little bit of a situation last year, and it raised a little concern for this year, Troiano said.

A motorcyclist was arrested on weapons charges during last years rally.

But local police say they expect no problems, while at the same time they plan to be ready for anything.

Wildwood police Chief Robert Regalbuto held a meeting at the Wildwood Public Safety Building on Aug. 30 to discuss the event, which is in its 20th year.

On Sept. 2, Regalbuto said staffing is not a problem in September, even though there are fewer Class II officers. He said a number of officers who have returned to college are going to work the Roar to the Shore.

Its not too much of a problem. Well be fairly well-staffed over the weekend, he said.

Regalbuto said there are a few concerns regarding Roar to the Shore. When the event began 20 years ago, it was the Harley Owners Group motorcycle weekend, and it attracted motorcycle enthusiasts including professionals, police officers and firefighters. He said there has been a gradual change in the participants to include more of what he described as outlaw gang members.

Last year we had a potential issue between two rival gangs, Regalbuto said.

The issue involved members of the Pagans motorcycle club and the Wheels of Soul motorcycle club, which Regalbuto said was defused with the help of the Wildwood City Fire Department. Firefighters used a truck to separate the clubs. He said the department has been making plans to stave off future problems.

Regalbuto said in 2015 undercover officers saw a .38 caliber handgun being exchanged between gang members, resulting in the arrest of one Wheels of Soul member. Chad B. Johnson, 27, of Newark, Delaware, was also charged with possession of brass knuckles and a knife.

Weve taken corrective measures, covert and overt, to avoid certain situations, he said.

The event draws motorcycle riders from many walks of life, including the Red Knights, a firefighters club, and the Blue Knights, a club for law enforcement officers. Other clubs represent Masons and Elks lodges.

Regalbuto said the Wildwood Police Department is traditionally supported during Roar to the Shore by the Cape May County Prosecutors Office, the Cape May County Sheriffs Office and the county SWAT team.
Three bus loads of striking Unite Here Local 54 members traveled to Washington D.C. Thursday to lobby for a bill that supporters say would increase oversight of activist hedge funds that promote short-term gains rather than long-term goals.

The Brokaw Act, which was introduced by Democratic Senators Tammy Baldwin, of Wisconsin, and Jeff Merkley, of Oregon, was named after a small town in Wisconsin that went bankrupt after its primary employer succumbed to pressure from an activist hedge fund and closed most of its paper mills.

In early August, Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort management announced that they would close the property, blaming striking Local 54 workers for preventing a path to profitability. The property is owned by Carl Icahn.

Carl Icahn came to Atlantic City ... turned our middle-class jobs into poverty jobs and then when we stood up to him, Icahn decided to close our workplace and kick 3,000 people to the curb, said Charles Baker, a Taj Mahal cook since the day it opened in 1990. Im here because I want Congress to pass the Brokaw Act, to stop this from happening to other families.

On Aug. 5, employees of the casino were given state-mandated layoff notices that the property would close Oct. 10. They include the more than 1,000 Local 54 members  cooks, housekeepers, bellmen, bartenders, cocktail servers and other service workers  who have been on strike since July 1. Taj Mahal would be the city's fifth casino to close since 2014.

Over the last couple of months, union members have made two trips to Icahns New York City office to protest wages and a trip to Trenton to garner support for bill that would allow striking workers to receive unemployment.

Contact: 609-272-7046

Twitter @ACPressHuba
A funny thing happened on the way to the ballot box this year. Though grassroots referendums and initiatives have been on the wane for two decades, 73 have been approved for ballots so far in the 26 states that allow them. That's still well below the 1996 peak of 92 measures, but it's the highest number since 2006 and almost 50 percent more than in 2012.

Why the spike? A big reason, says Josh Altic of the politics website Ballotpedia, is that the number of signatures needed to qualify for the ballot in many states is based on voter turnout in the previous statewide election. And turnout in 2014 was the lowest since World War II.

In California, for example, activists needed the signatures of just under 366,000 registered voters, 27 percent fewer than in 2014, to propose changes to state law. California, the hothouse of citizen action, will have 17 ballot initiatives this year, versus four in 2014 and 13 in 2012.

Here's what I find interesting: When voters get thoroughly fed up with government and stay home on Election Day, they're making it easier for activists to gain access to the ballot in the next election. Since initiatives and referendums generally result in higher voter turnout - boosting it by 3 percent to 4.5 percent in presidential-election years, and as much as 9 percent in midterm contests, according to one study - activists may find it harder to repeat this year's success in the next cycle.

For now, the beneficiaries of 2014's abysmal turnout are left-leaning groups. With Republicans now in control of 33 state legislatures, and complete control of governorships and legislatures in 30 states, liberals' frustration runs high. They've turned to citizen initiatives as an outlet.

The evidence is seen in both the increase and nature of November's crop of initiatives. The bulk of them advocate liberal causes, ranging from minimum-wage increases and marijuana decriminalization to higher taxes and gun control. (Everytown for Gun Safety, a group backed by billionaire Michael Bloomberg, the majority owner of Bloomberg LP, is financing some of the gun-control measures.)

In years past, conservative causes, including tax cuts, term limits and spending restrictions, led the ballot-initiative pack. California's Proposition 13 in 1978 set off a wave of tax-cutting initiatives in other states for many years, and social measures, like Ohio's same-sex-marriage ban in 2004, were a national trend. The Ohio vote turned out social conservatives in such force that it probably handed President George W. Bush the state's electoral votes that year, helping to cement his re-election.

More recently, however, proposals of one sort or another to raise taxes are popular, possibly signaling the end of tax-cut fever. "We're noticing a shift toward progressive issues and away from conservative ideas like tax cuts," says Altic, who runs a ballot-measure project at Ballotpedia. "And we see a correlation with the increase in Republican-controlled state governments."

Tax increases are on the ballots of a few deep-red states, such as Louisiana's measure to disallow federal income-tax deductibility and Oklahoma's higher sales-tax question.

Elsewhere, California is, not surprisingly, among the 11 other states asking if voters want higher taxes. A measure there would increase personal taxes on incomes above $250,000 a year. Colorado asks if voters want to raise cigarette taxes. Oregon asks about raising corporate income taxes, while a Washington state measure proposes a tax on carbon emissions.

Nine states have measures that would legalize or decriminalize marijuana use. Five states would raise the minimum wage. Four would tighten gun controls. One, Colorado, would create an additional 10 percent income tax to finance a universal health-care system.

Pushback by business groups, sometimes pre-emptively with litigation or television ads to keep measures off state ballots, has made it more costly for citizen initiatives.

Such tactics force activists to choose their fights more carefully.

That isn't necessarily bad if a ballot initiative would impose new costs on the private sector, interfere with market forces or require companies to change the way they conduct their business. As states have learned the hard way, popular referendums can have deleterious unintended consequences.

Ballot measures will always be used as an outlet and a way of self-correcting for ideological pendulum swings. No one designed the process this way, but the cycle of voter frustration, followed by low turnout, increased one-party control and more citizen activism is like an automatic refresher in democracy.

Paula Dwyer writes editorials on economics, finance and politics for Bloomberg View.
ohio overdose police photo

A Facebook page belonging to the city of East Liverpool, Ohio, shared two grim photos it said it hoped would "show the other side" of the opioid crisis.

The photos feature an unconscious man and woman who appear to have suffered overdoses, while the woman's 4-year-old son sits in the backseat of their car.

"We feel it necessary to show the other side of this horrible drug. We feel we need to be a voice for the children caught up in this horrible mess," the city wrote on Facebook.

The uncommon decision to publish uncensored photos on social media was made in conjunction with the mayor's office, police chief, and the city's law director, public service and safety director Brian Allen confirmed with Business Insider.

"We are well aware that some may be offended by these images and for that we are truly sorry, but it is time that the non drug using public sees what we are now dealing with on a daily basis," the city's Facebook post read.

East Liverpool, a city of approximately 11,000, sees almost daily overdose incidents and staffs only 11 police officers to respond, Allen said. Sometimes just one officer is on duty.

Opioid-related drug overdoses have skyrocketed in recent years, particularly in Ohio, as Business Insider's Harrison Jacobs has previously reported. Over a two-day period in August, Cincinnati police reported more than 60 overdose cases throughout the city. One officer called it "complete madness."

According to the incident report the city shared on Facebook, East Liverpool officers first spotted the couple when their vehicle began "weaving back and forth" in the lane they were driving in.

The vehicle braked and skidded to a stop near a schoolbus children were disembarking from, then began drifting back into the street after the bus pulled away, the incident report continued.

Story continues

When the vehicle eventually stopped again and police approached, the driver said he had been taking his passenger to the hospital, according to the report. Police described the woman as "completely unconscious."

After the man, too, went unconscious, paramedics arrived and administered several rounds of the drug Narcan, which reverses opioid overdoses, according to the report. Police said they found "a small amount of a pink powdery substance" in the car, which the city's post suggests was heroin.

ohio overdose police photo

The two, identified as James Acord and Rhonda Pasek, were arrested Wednesday on various charges, including child endangerment, public intoxication, and slowing in a roadway, according to the incident report.

The goal in publishing the photos, Allen explained, was to educate residents about the now-regular overdoses occurring within the city. Because of the involvement of the bus, the incident had already garnered local media attention, and news outlets were filing public records requests for the photos, which officially became public record after Acord pleaded guilty in court on Thursday, Allen said.

Allen said police couldn't legally alter photos that are public record but added city officials did consider censoring the images before they were published on social media. Everyone, however, agreed it "wouldn't have told the same story," he said.

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For the New World Order, a world government is just the beginning. Once in place they can engage their plan to exterminate 80% of the world's population, while enabling the "elites" to live forever with the aid of advanced technology. For the first time, crusading filmmaker ALEX JONES reveals their secret plan for humanity's extermination: Operation ENDGAME.

Jones chronicles the history of the global elite's bloody rise to power and reveals how they have funded dictators and financed the bloodiest warscreating order out of chaos to pave the way for the first true world empire.

Watch as Jones and his team track the elusive Bilderberg Group to Ottawa and Istanbul to document their secret summits, allowing you to witness global kingpins setting the world's agenda and instigating World War III.





to Ottawa and Istanbul to document their secret summits, allowing you to witness global kingpins setting the world's agenda and instigating World War III. Learn about the formation of the North America transportation control grid, which will end U.S. sovereignty forever.





Discover how the practitioners of the pseudo-science eugenics have taken control of governments worldwide as a means to carry out depopulation.





View the progress of the coming collapse of the United States and the formation of the North American Union.

Never before has a documentary assembled all the pieces of the globalists' dark agenda. Endgame's compelling look at past atrocities committed by those attempting to steer the future delivers information that the controlling media has meticulously censored for over 60 years. It fully reveals the elite's program to dominate the earth and carry out the wicked plan in all of human history.

Endgame is not conspiracy theory, it is documented fact in the elite's own words.




Donald Trump

Questions over the Trump Foundation's illegal contribution to a political group tied to Florida's attorney general do not appear to be going away.

The Tampa Bay Times is urging the US government to investigate potential connections between Donald Trump's charity and Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi.

"Since Florida prosecutors will not touch this mess, the Justice Department is the only option," the newspaper's editorial board wrote on Thursday.

"The appearance of something more than a coincidence is too serious and the unresolved questions are too numerous to accept blanket denials by Bondi and Trump without more digging and an independent review," the board wrote.

The question at hand is whether the Trump Foundation made the $25,000 contribution to stave off a Florida state inquiry led by Bondi in 2013 that was related to allegations against Trump University  the New York billionaire's embattled entrepreneurship business.

The Tampa Bay Times called into question the timing of Bondi's decision not to pursue any further investigation into the matter, saying it "simply does not look right and deserves an independent look to reassure Floridians that the state's top legal officer did nothing wrong."

The Washington Post reported last week that the IRS slapped the Trump Foundation with a fine over that $25,000 gift. A Trump Organization senior vice president told The Post that the donation was "an honest mistake" and that the contribution wasn't properly listed.

Bondi has maintained that suggestions of collusion are politically motivated, and she declared she "will not be collateral damage in a presidential campaign" or "be a woman bullied by Hillary Clinton.''

During a Republican primary debate in August 2015, Trump boasted about calling in favors from his political allies in exchange for campaign contributions.

"When they call, I give. And you know what? When I need something from them, two years later, three years later, I call them, and they are there for me," Trump said.

Story continues

Trump told reporters earlier this week that he "never" discussed the matter with Bondi when she called him in 2013 seeking a donation.

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arrival amy adams

From the trailer for "Arrival," which just showed at the Toronto International Film Festival, you'd assume it's a CGI-heavy sci-fi movie about aliens coming to earth to make contact. If they come in peace or to destroy us is the question that's left open.

But that's just the hook to get you in the theater. The truth is "Arrival," directed by Denis Villeneuve ("Sicario," "Prisoners") and starring Amy Adams, is a moving story that is more about humanity than whether beings from the sky come in peace.

Based on a short story by sci-fi author Ted Chiang titled "Story of Your Life," "Arrival" follows linguist Dr. Louise Banks (Adams), whom the military calls on to help start a dialogue once the aliens have landed.

The world goes crazy when 12 large pod-shaped ships suddenly show up in different areas of the world. There's one placed in the US, in an open field in Montana. Dr. Banks and scientist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) are the brains behind the US operation to figure out what the aliens want.

They communicate with all other countries investigating pods. But the head of the military arm of the operation, Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker), is getting pressure from the White House to get answers. And the stakes grow higher when China decides to disband from the process and attack the pod that's within its borders.

It's all thrilling, and the science is not heavy-handed and very easy to understand, but it's all a MacGuffin, a device Alfred Hitchcock loved to use. It's a detail in a story that is important for the characters but turns out to be less important for the audience's needs.

The real story (and warning: spoilers here) is the relationship that Dr. Banks builds with the aliens inside the pod, playfully named Abbot and Costello, the legendary comedy duo. Through her continued conversations with the duo in trying to understand their language, she begins to uncover what they want, but by delving into her own memories.

Story continues

There are certainly thrills, helped by a dramatic score and use of pauses for tension, but the movie really runs off of the captivating emotions of Dr. Banks, delivered perfectly (as usual) by Amy Adams  who will definitely receive an Oscar nomination for this performance.

Another way of capturing that emotion is the beautiful cinematography by Bradford Young, who gives the movie a very Terrence Malick-like quality with sweeping views of nature and closeups of intimate interaction.

All elements come together under the direction of director Villeneuve, who has taken one step closer to becoming a top auteur working in Hollywood.

"Arrival" will certainly be an Oscar contender in numerous categories, but outside of awards, it's a film that should be celebrated for its masterful storytelling.

"Arrival" is currently screening at the Toronto International Film Festival and will hit theaters on November 11.

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LONDON, September 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Dechra is pleased to announce that it has received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for a generic antibiotic.

The product is expected to be a first generic market entrant in a substantial antibiotic market; it is the first registration Dechra has achieved through Putney's development pipeline since it acquired the US-based business and clearly demonstrates the capabilities of our specialist pharma team, a key resource to the Group.

Commenting on the approval Dechra's Chief Executive Officer, Ian Page said:

"We are delighted to receive this approval which provides excellent growth opportunity for our US team and underpins our confidence in the strength of the recently acquired Putney business whilst further enhancing Dechra's position in the US market."

The Group's Preliminary results for the year ended 30 June 2016 were released on 5 September 2016. The Annual Report is now available on the Group website.

For more information, please visit: http://www.dechra.com or e-mail: corporate.enquiries@dechra.com .

SOURCE Dechra Pharmaceuticals PLC
AMSTERDAM, September 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Professor Ben L. Feringa, University of Groningen, the Netherlands, Receives the 2016 Tetrahedron Prize for his Outstanding Contributions to Organic Chemistry

Elsevier, a world-leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, and the Board of Executive Editors of Elsevier's Tetrahedron journal series today announced that the 2016 Tetrahedron Prize for Creativity in Organic Chemistry has been awarded to Professor Ben L. Feringa of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. He receives the award for his outstanding contributions to organic chemistry.

Professor Stephen Martin, Chairman of the Editorial Board of the Tetrahedron journals, said on announcing this year's winner: "Professor Feringa has performed truly ground-breaking research in the diverse fields of dynamic molecular systems, catalysis, and stereochemistry. His contributions to molecular nanotechnology, including molecular switches and rotors, have played a major role in shaping the field of nanomachines. Similarly, his discoveries in catalysis, particularly of enantioselective transformations, have had a profound influence in synthetic organic chemistry and its applications to natural product chemistry."

"Winning the Tetrahedron Prize is not only a great honor for me personally, but also for my team of excellent young students and coworkers whom I have worked alongside over the years and are responsible for many discoveries in our labs," Professor Feringa commented. "This is a very prestigious prize and I am extremely grateful to the giants in our field who have acted as a source of inspiration throughout my career and whose shoulders I stand on to continue the tradition of excellence in organic chemistry."

In a recent interview, Professor Feringa speaks about winning the award and provides some personal and scientific insights about some of his contributions to organic chemistry.

The Tetrahedron Prize was established in 1980 and is intended to honor the memory of the founding co-Chairmen of the Tetrahedron publications, Professor Sir Robert Robinson and Professor Robert Burns Woodward. It is awarded annually and consists of a gold medal, a certificate, and a monetary amount of $10,000, which will be presented during the 2017 Fall National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Washington, DC, USA (August 20-24, 2017).

Notes for editors

Reporters wanting to attend the award ceremony at the 2017 Fall National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Washington, DC, USA, on August 20-24, 2017 can contact Annis Moreira at a.moreira@elsevier.com or +31 20 4852770.

About Elsevier

Elsevier is a world-leading provider of information solutions that enhance the performance of science, health, and technology professionals, empowering them to make better decisions, deliver better care, and sometimes make groundbreaking discoveries that advance the boundaries of knowledge and human progress. Elsevier provides web-based, digital solutions - among them ScienceDirect, Scopus, Elsevier Research Intelligence and ClinicalKey - and publishes over 2,500 journals, including The Lancet and Cell, and more than 35,000 book titles, including a number of iconic reference works. Elsevier is part of RELX Group, a world-leading provider of information and analytics for professional and business customers across industries. http://www.elsevier.com

Media contact

Annis Moreira

Elsevier

+31 20 4852770

a.moreira@elsevier.com



SOURCE Elsevier
MUNICH, September 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

- Liquidity for small businesses through selling their accounts receivables

- Wirecard Bank is the license partner of Fundflow

Today, Wirecard and the Fintech startup Fundflow launch an invoice discounting platform in Germany. Small and medium size businesses as well as Freelancers can sell their outstanding invoices on http://www.fundflow.de. Fundflow then enables the refinancing with institutional investors. Wirecard Bank provide their German banking license and handle the payment process.

"For a small company, long payment terms and high accounts receivables can bring them in difficulty. In addition, chasing payments is a pain for many entrepreneurs. Instead, payments should be prompt, at the click of a button. We feel honoured to collaborate on this mission with Wirecard Bank which has many years of experience and make life easier for small businesses," said Joachim Kaune, Managing Director at Fundflow.

Businesses can bridge liquidity gaps with Fundflow. Unpaid customer invoices with payment terms under sixty days can be sold on the platform. The seller gets the cash on the next day releasing otherwise locked up capital. Optionally, Fundflow also offers full service invoice management for the customer. The service costs a small discount on the payout without minimum turnover or long term contracts.

"Transaction costs are often too high for established businesses to offer invoice discounting for very small businesses. Only recently, some US players have proven that both transaction and risk cost can be reduced dramatically employing technology. This creates an interesting market and we are positive it may be equally deep in Europe," said Alexander von Knoop, Executive Board Member of Wirecard Bank. "We are delighted to help innovative business like Fundflow with our experience and our banking license in order to facilitate their go-to-market."

About Wirecard:

Wirecard AG is a global technology group that supports companies in accepting electronic payments from all sales channels. As a leading independent supplier, the Wirecard Group offers outsourcing and white label solutions for electronic payments. A global platform bundles international payment acceptances and methods with supplementary fraud prevention solutions. With regard to issuing own payment instruments in the form of cards or mobile payment solutions, the Wirecard Group provides companies with an end-to-end infrastructure, including the requisite licences for card and account products. Wirecard AG is listed on the Frankfurt Securities Exchange (TecDAX, ISIN DE0007472060, WDI). For further information about Wirecard, please visit http://www.wirecard.com or follow us on twitter @wirecard.

About Fundflow:

Fundflow GmbH is a technology venture developing innovative financial products for the European market. Founded by business owners, its mission is to fundamentally redesign products and services for entrepreneurs. Fundflow aims to offer usability, transparency and efficiency employing automation and modern risk management. Fundflow was founded in January 2016 by Antonio Faralli, Jan Ramsperger and Joachim Kaune. They are supported by Dr. Philip Mendrzyk as a Senior Advisor.

Wirecard media contact:

Wirecard AG

Jana Tilz

Tel.: +49(0)-89-4424-1363

E-Mail: jana.tilz@wirecard.com



Fundflow media contact:

Fundflow GmbH

Joachim Kaune

E-Mail: media@fundflow.de



SOURCE Wirecard AG
DUBLIN, September 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Global and China UBI Industry Report, 2016-2020" report to their offering.

Staring from 2012, UBI in China lags behind that in foreign countries. Hence, domestic UBI products are operated with reference to some foreign mature models. Various Chinese parties are actively promoting the development of UBI for now.



OEMs + Insurers



OEMs usually cooperate with third parties and insurers in UBI field, represented by SAIC Motor + Cihon + CPIC. SAIC Motor and CPIC give a personalized quota for car insurance on auto models carrying OnStar according to consumers' driving habits, mileage, and other factors. Cihon is responsible for data analysis and insurance model development.



Telematics Platforms or Parts Manufacturers + Insurers



Telematics platforms are dominated by AM TSP in UBI field. For example, the insurer (PICC), via Shenzhen Autonet's Telematics platform, provides car owners with one-key insurance claim, quick settlement of claim, and inquiry of insurance status, and develops floating car insurance business.



Parts manufacturers launch their own AM hardware or set up UBI-related companies. For instance, Deren Electronic, on the one hand, teams up with ATzuche to release its own OBD, and on the other hand, acquires Telematics-related companies and set up Dedao TSP with CPIC.



Independent Service Providers + Insurers



Independent service providers usually acquire customer data via APP + OBD to work with insurers to develop UBI and at the same time provide customers with preferential services with regard to maintenance and other aspects.



Big Data + Insurers



In UBI field, some insurers, on the one hand, have self-operated platforms, such as Zhong An Online P&C Insurance's O2O car insurance, and on the other hand, co-develop platforms with Internet businesses or other Telematics firms. For example, CPIC organized Internet companies with Baidu and invested in Atzuche. Big data enterprises employs various methods in UBI field, like Jingyou, a provider of database and risk models.



Chinese UBI market will grow rapidly propelled by the aforementioned parties, reflected in not only iterative acceleration in market size but also more diversified service mechanisms.



For example, insurers will provide not only price discounts but also other services like emergency rescue, remote diagnosis, maintenance reservation, and weather & traffic conditions; with development of mobile phone hardware and the popularity of 4G network, mobile APP-based UBI will burgeon; driving habits and mileage will not be the only criteria for privileges, and age, gender, and devices installed on the vehicle will be taken into account when the discount is calculated.



UBI Industry Report, 2016-2020 focuses on the followings:



- UBI overview (definition, value, methods of acquisition, difficulties for UBI development in China);

- Foreign UBI markets (global; UBI in United States, Canada, UK, and Germany; 10 UBI companies and products in United States, Canada, UK, Germany, and Italy);

- UBI in China (future scale, drivers, players, trends);

- Local Chinese UBI companies (business, operation, and UBI products of China Life, PICC, Ping An Insurance, Zhong An Online P&C Insurance, Cihon, DiNA Technology, Shenzhen Dingran Information Technology, Shenzhen Autonet, Launch Tech, Renrenbao, Carsmart, MSD, and Deren Electronic)



Key Topics Covered:



1 Overview of UBI



2 Global Telematics Insurance Market



3 Car Insurance and UBI Localization in China



4 UBI Cases in Europe



5 UBI Cases and Companies in North America



6 UBI-related Companies in China



Allstate

Carsmart

China Life Property & Casualty Insurance Co., Ltd.

Cihon

Deren Electronic

Desjardins

DiNA Technology

Hartford

Launch Tech

MSD

Nanjing Renrenbao Network Technology Co., Ltd.

PICC P&C

Ping An Property & Casualty Insurance Co. of China

Progressive

Risk Network

Shenzhen Autonet

Shenzhen Dingran Information Technology

State Farm

Zhong An Online P&C Insurance Co., Ltd.



For more information about this report visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/mjjn3b/global_and_china



Related Topics: Automotive Insurance

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SOURCE Research and Markets
SAINT JOHN, New Brunswick, September 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Canadian Company Announces Successful Acquisition of Refinery in Ireland

Irving Oil announced today the successful close of its purchase and sale agreement with Houston-based energy, manufacturing and logistics company, Phillips 66 (NYSE: PSX), to acquire the Whitegate refinery located near Cork, Ireland. The agreement was announced by Irving Oil on August 3 with an expectation that the transaction would close by the end of the third quarter once all conditions of the sale were met.

With the transaction finalized, Irving Oil has assumed full ownership of the refinery and will continue full operation of the facility, including maintaining its existing workforce.

"Whitegate is a great facility, and is a good fit for our company," says Arthur Irving, Chairman of Irving Oil. "We are happy to welcome the Whitegate team to Irving Oil and we are looking forward to working together."

As the country's sole refinery the Irving Oil Whitegate Refinery will continue to provide a secure and reliable supply to its existing customer base.

"This is a historic day for our company. We're thrilled to welcome new members to the Irving Oil team, serve new customers and grow our business across the Atlantic," says Ian Whitcomb, President of Irving Oil. "The Irving Oil Whitegate Refinery has a long-established positive work environment and strong safety culture, and we will continue to uphold these values while offering our customers in Ireland an exceptional service experience.

"We will work hard to ensure that existing relationships with customers and the community remain strong, and we look forward to establishing new relationships," says Sarah Irving, Executive Vice President of Irving Oil. "It is an exciting time for our company and we welcome the team at Whitegate to Irving Oil."

"We are excited to add another refinery to our company. As with our Saint John refinery, safety is always our number one priority," says Mark Sherman, Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Irving Oil. "With this at the forefront, this refinery will continue as a reliable supplier, a sound operator and a secure employer."

About Irving Oil

Irving Oil was founded in 1924 and is a privately-owned regional refining and marketing company with a history of long-term partnerships and relationships. In addition to its refinery in Whitegate, Ireland, Irving Oil operates Canada's largest refinery in Saint John, NB, which is located 65 miles north of the US border and has reached production rates in excess of 320,000 barrels per day. With over 900 fueling locations, operations from a network of distribution terminals, and a delivery fleet of tractor trailers, Irving Oil serves wholesale, commercial and retail customers in Atlantic Canada, Quebec, and New England.

Media Contact:

Sam Robinson

Public Affairs, Irving Oil

samantha.robinson@irvingoil.com

+1-(506)650-4947

SOURCE Irving Oil Operations Ltd
This is Vietnam's leading renewable energy and energy efficiency trade show and it is organised by UBM Asia and supported by the Vietnam Energy Conservation and Energy Efficiency Association, Vietnam Automation Association, Energy Conservation Center Ho Chi Minh City and the EU-Vietnam Business Network.

RE & EE Vietnam 2016 is a unique showcase welcoming leading exhibitors and international pavilions (the EU, Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan and many others) in different segments of the renewable energy and energy efficiency sectors. It covers a wide range of innovations and solutions using industrial boilers, waste heat recovery, drying process, heat exchange process in power plants and the private consumer as well as breakthrough technologies, including solar panels, electric machines, bioethanol technology and control systems, among others.

Mr. Yoshimasa Kitada, Sales Manager, Mitsubishi Electric Vietnam, one of the leading exhibitors at RE & EE Vietnam 2016, said, "As a leading corporation in the manufacture & provision of electronic equipment for home, commercial and industrial use, we at Mitsubishi Electric believe that VietWater and RE & EE Vietnam 2016 will be a good business platform for energy & water industry players to showcase the best solutions and we are expecting to meet up with the right partners and find more potential customers here."

Running alongside RE & EE Vietnam 2016 is the Conference. The Conference theme this year is "Vietnam Energy Forum: Towards Sustainable Energy Development in Vietnam". Presented by leading industry experts such as Dr. Do Huu Hao, Chairman, Vietnam Energy Conservation and Energy Efficiency Association, and Mr. Huynh Kim Tuoc, Director, Energy Conservation Center Ho Chi Minh, this forum is about sharing information on the Vietnam energy market and trends as well as some recent renewable projects in Vietnam. (To view the agenda and register for the conference, please visit http://www.renergyvietnam.com/en-us/highlights/seminars.)

In addition, there will be B2B Networking Meetups inside the hall of the RE & EE Vietnam 2016 Exhibition. With the support of the Energy Conservation Center Ho Chi Minh City and the EU-Vietnam Business Network, RE & EE Vietnam 2016 is a business bridge for professionals to meet and connect with their target partners who are interested in their own business.

In only two months, the doors of the RE & EE Vietnam 2016 Exhibition will open to welcome thousands of industry exhibitors and visitors. Admission to this must-attend exhibition is free. Online preregistration is now open, please visit: https://www.ubmonlinereg.com/Registration/Default.aspx?fid=641&lang=en

Notes to Editors:





About UBM Asia (www.ubmasia.com)

Owned by UBM plc listed on the London Stock Exchange, UBM Asia is the largest trade show organiser in Asia and the largest commercial organiser in China, India and Malaysia. Established with its headquarters in Hong Kong and subsidiary companies across Asia and in the US, UBM Asia has strong global network of 30 offices and 1,400 staff in 25 major cities. We operate in 21 market sectors with 235 exhibitions and conferences, 28 targeted trade publications, 18 vertical portals for over 1,000,000 quality exhibitors, visitors, conference delegates, advertisers and subscribers from all over the world.

The Representative Office of UBM ASIA in Ho Chi Minh City

6th Floor, KN Building, 74 Nguyen Khoai, Ward 2

District 4, Ho Chi Minh City

Vietnam

T: +84 8 5401 2718

F: +84 8 5401 2717

SOURCE UBM Asia (Malaysia)
AMSTERDAM, Sept. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Mobile Viewpoint, market leader in wireless 3G/4G communications, announces the introduction of the new WMT EXPERT 4K and EXPERT 4CAM. The WMT EXPERT 4K transmits up to 60 frames HEVC encoded video using 8 modems. Next to 4K the unit supports the standard features like store and forward, data bonding and recording. The EXPERT 4K is available right now and as an upgrade of an existing unit.

The WMT EXPERT 4CAM is the first bonded transmitter that encodes 4 individual streams at the same time and unleashes the long time promised full remote production. With the Expert 4CAM it is possible to do multi camera shoots without the need of an OB van on-site. The EXPERT 4CAM supports both H.265 and H.264 encoding to ensure an end-to-end compliancy using standard based decoders or IRD's. The 4CAM supports support 2 IFB channels for the presenter and cameraman. Next to IFB the Expert also provides a return data signal to do remotely camera control for white balance and color correction. Next to live the WMT can also record all streams and send them over at a later stage in store and forward mode providing the highest quality possible. The unit supports transmission via Ka-sat and has a default storage capacity of 120 GB which can be upgraded to one TB. To meet everybody's requirements, the EXPERT 4CAM is available as a 1U 19-inch rack mount or as a backpack solution. Other available accessories are a high gain dome antenna, hot swap battery plates and antenna extenders for car roof top mounting.

Quote Michel Bais, Managing Director Of Mobile Viewpoint

Mobile Viewpoint Managing Director Michel Bais said, "many of our customers requested the possibility to do 4K and connect multiple camera's without the need of a switching panel and technician on-site. With the capabilities of our new HEVC encoding hardware and the availability of 4G we are able to provide an excellent quality 4K and the encoding and transmission of multiple video feeds without the need of separate transmitters. We think that especially with the introduction of the EXPERT 4CAM the advent of remote production really comes true and will bring the long awaited cost savings in outside production."

Meet us at IBC2016 in hall 14 at booth F.21 from 9th until the 13th of September in the RAI in Amsterdam.

SOURCE Mobile Viewpoint
LONDON, September 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Network of professionals who treat liver cancer to extend across the United Kingdom, Belgium, Spain and Italy

The success of the SIRT Users' Network, called SUN, in its first 2 years has created a strong desire for other countries to join. It has been announced today that SUN will expand to include health professionals from the United Kingdom, Belgium, Spain and Italy.

SUN was established by academics and clinical experts in the UK in 2014 in response to Selective Internal Radiation Therapy (SIRT) with radioactive yttrium-90 microspheres becoming available to patients with cancer via national health service commissioning.



The cooperation amongst cancer specialists, radiologists, medical physicists and other professionals involved in delivering this highly specialist service has been valuable in improving the treatment of patients with cancer. It is hoped that the expansion of The Network to include professionals from Belgium, Spain and Italy will further enhance that cooperation and mutual sharing of best practice.



Members of the network work in a variety of clinical disciplines, such as oncology, interventional radiology, imaging, nuclear medicine, medical physics, pathology and surgery. SUN is unique in bringing together these diverse specialists in a meaningful way to share best practice, clinical experiences, patient information and to organise training masterclasses and workshops.

The Network is open to all clinicians and scientists involved with delivering SIRT treatment to patients.



Speaking at the Launch Event for the expansion of the Network today, Professor Ricky Sharma, Professor of Radiation Oncology at University College London, said:



"This is a very exciting time for SUN. As a web-based network, we have been delighted at how much interest SUN has generated amongst professionals from a variety of disciplines in Europe, who are now motivated to come together to share best practice for their patients. Our common purpose is to improve treatment for patients with cancer, with SIRT and other interventional oncology therapies.

I am very excited about being able to share working knowledge, best practice and clinical outcomes with my colleagues from the UK, Belgium, Spain and Italy. We will all learn from each other.



If this expansion is successful in our ability to improve treatment for patients with cancer, SUN is likely to expand to other countries in which interest has been expressed to join this international network."



About SIRT

SIRT, also called "Radioembolisation", is a method of treating malignant liver tumours, whether those tumours originate from the liver itself, or have spread to the liver from elsewhere in the body (e.g. bowel cancer).



Millions of little resin or glass "beads" are injected into the arteries inside the liver. The microspheres are tiny and too small to see with the naked eye. Each microsphere is much smaller than the width of a human hair.



These microspheres contain a radioactive isotope which emits radiation that travels only a very short distance within the liver. Once injected, the microspheres lodge in the vessels that supply the tumour and emit radiation, which kills the tumour cells.



The microspheres also help to cut off the blood supply to the tumours, thus starving them of oxygen and essential nutrients. Although the radiation lasts for a period of days, the treatment effect on the tumour can last much longer.



About the SIRT Users' Network (SUN)

SUN has an academic focus, and is independent of commissioning and service considerations. The SUN website has a secure "members' only" discussion forum to allow clinicians to hold private and secure exchanges of views on all aspects of the SIRT procedure and clinical issues. The site also provides freely available resources for clinicians and patients.



All the members of The SUN Users' Network are involved in the treatment of cancer patients with SIRT.

The remit of the Network is to:

Share and establish best treatment practice for SIRT across and within all clinical disciplines

Better inform and optimise referral practices and outcomes

Share research and treatment protocols to improve patient outcomes

Discuss and share knowledge on academic issues, research and treatment delivery

Share information about upcoming events, conferences and data milestones

SIRFLOX is the first study assessing the results of adding SIR-Spheres Y-90 resin microspheres to first-line chemotherapy in the treatment of mCRC. The other studies are FOXFIRE, a UK clinical trial that completed enrolment in November 2014, and FOXFIRE Global, an international study that completed enrolment in January 2015. The results of the three studies, which together enrolled more than 1,100 patients with mCRC, will be combined in a pre-planned assessment of the OS benefit of adding SIR-Spheres Y-90 resin microspheres to first-line chemotherapy for mCRC. The combined results are expected in 2017.

Newly published European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) clinical guidelines for the treatment of metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) endorse radioembolisation, specifically with Yttrium-90 resin microspheres, as a clinically proven technology to "prolong time to liver tumour progression" in mCRC patients who have failed to respond to available chemotherapy options.

The SIRT Users' Network can be accessed at: http://www.sirt.org.uk

Further Information

For further information please contact:



Hugh McKinney,

Denovo Strategy,

Email: hmckinney@denovostrategy.co.uk

Tel: +44(0)7961323810



SOURCE The SIRT Users Network
TURKU, Finland, September 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

The Wroclaw University of Science and Technology in Poland has deployed Teleste's headend solution to construct its Multimedia Laboratory for research and development in future multimedia services

Teleste Corporation, a leading provider of video and broadband technologies and related services, announced today that the company has provided a complete, integrated headend infrastructure for the use of research and development at the Wroclaw University of Science and Technology in Poland. The deployment has taken place in 2016 and the devices were delivered by Satlan Sp. z o.o., Teleste's subsidiary in Poland.

Including the Luminato headend platform and the Ubique software framework, Teleste's deployment is an elemental part for the Wroclaw University of Science and Technology's new Multimedia Laboratory, opened just this year. The Laboratory's aim is to research versatile phenomena related to advanced streaming services such as OTT and VOD in broadband networks, and the way these services are used by consumers. One of the key focus areas of the laboratory is finding out new approaches on to how to measure quality of service and how to transfer service quality to higher levels of customer satisfaction.

"Today, delivery of video streaming services is strongly driven by the growing consumer demand for high-quality video across multiple devices. To successfully engage and win over customers in the tightening competition, businesses must deliver a consistent, high quality experience on all devices. However, defining and measuring the level of quality is not a straightforward task", says Julius Tikkanen, Vice President of Video Service Platforms for Teleste. "We are pleased that the Wroclaw University of Science and Technology is putting emphasis on research and development of headend technologies and on how to measure quality of experience. We are looking forward to learn about the findings and innovations of their Multimedia Laboratory in the future."

Teleste's video headend portfolio is designed to offer operators and service providers innovative and flexible ways to build their services and deliver interactive content from all types of available sources to all consumer screens. Our solutions include such innovations as the Ubique software framework for building complete, interactive video platforms and an application module to our Luminato headend, enabling operators to invent their own tailored headend applications. For Teleste, the Wroclaw University of Science and Technology project continues our active cooperation in transforming future headend services and technologies with several European research projects and institutes, such as the Virtuose and H2B2VS projects under Celtic-Plus of EUREKA.

We will showcase our portfolio at IBC2016, stand 5.C72, 9 - 13 September at the Amsterdam RAI. Please visit http://www.teleste.com/ibc2016 for more information about our event offering.



About Teleste

Teleste is an international technology company that develops and offers video and broadband technologies and related services. Our supply of technology contributes to the convenience and safety of daily living. Our core business is video - video and data processing, transfer and management. Our customer base consists of cable and telecom operators, as well as public sector organizations. Our business is divided into two divisions, which are Video and Broadband Solutions and Network Services. In both areas, we rank among the world's leading companies and technological forerunners. Video and Broadband Solutions focuses on access networks and video security and information solutions. Network Services offers comprehensive services for network design, construction and maintenance. In 2015, Teleste's net sales totaled EUR 247 million, and the company employed about 1,500 people. Teleste runs a worldwide network of offices and more than 95% of its sales are generated outside Finland. The company is listed on Nasdaq Helsinki. For more information see http://www.teleste.com and follow @telestecorp on Twitter.

SOURCE Teleste Corporation
MONTEVIDEO, URUGUAY--(Marketwired - September 08, 2016) - One of the smallest countries in Latin America, Uruguay, with a population of 3.4 million, produces quality food for an amazing 30 million people worldwide according to Uruguay XXI, an organization that works to promote exports. Pablo Soria de Lachica, internationally recognized foreign investment and trade expert, suggests a successful agro-intelligent approach is a major factor in the current positioning of the country to seek a free-trade agreement (FTA) with China, as part of the Mercosur or bilaterally. The Asian trade expansion vision comes ahead of the Uruguay's attendance at China-LAC 2016, October 13-15, hosted in the city of Tangshan, China.

Uruguay's agricultural sector contributes 7% to the GDP, satisfying national need while generating significant surplus -- exports of agricultural products, mainly soybean, beef, cellulose and dairy products, are 71% of total goods, as reported by the World Bank. Pablo Soria de Lachica attributes the achievement to major changes in sustainable production systems through adopting policies and practices that align with Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA). In an interdependent world economy, Uruguay's effort to effectively manage long-term food production, political, social, and macroeconomic stability, and strategic geographical position between Brazil and Argentina, makes it a dependable trade partner with solid investment opportunities, including potential access to other Mercosur markets, according to Pablo Soria de Lachica.

A free trade agreement (FTA) between Mercosur, or the Southern Common Market, and China would include Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela; and associate countries Bolivia, Chile, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador and Suriname. China, which is now the number one trade partner and the world's most populous nation, is reportedly pleased with the high quality of products, CSA, and Uruguay's livestock traceability system, according to Uruguayan Foreign Minister Rodolfo Nin Novoa. This bodes well for reaching a arrangement with China and others in the region. Australia and New Zealand already have an FTA with China and their products will enter the Chinese market in 2016 with zero tariff. Soria de Lachica considers expanding Asian trade to be essential for the continued growth and economic progress in Latin America.

Story continues

Pablo Soria de Lachica notes the current administration is maintaining an open trade policy. With favorable exchange rates, good wages, low unemployment, and high consumer confidence in the economy, Uruguay serves as a reliable test market for the region and pursuit of additional free trade agreements will further enhance the investment environment between Asia and Latin America.

Pablo Soria de Lachica is a worldwide leader in the financial services industry and foreign exchange market. He has developed online trading tools for investors and is a published author regarding the basic principles of investment as well as advanced techniques and strategies. Soria de Lachica continues to provide his observations on current trends in the marketplace, while collaborating with Kartoshka, a global company at the forefront of the latest technologies in sales, telemarketing, and customer support. Pablo has a Master of Business Administration from Universidad Tecnologico de Mexico (UNITEC).

Pablo Soria de Lachica -- Foreign Exchange Specialist: http://pablosoriadelachicanews.com

Pablo Soria de Lachica -- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pablo-soria-de-lachica-82460411b

Pablo Soria de Lachica -- Outlines Consequences of Mexican Loan to Pemex: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/pablo-soria-lachica-outlines-consequences-034249342.html

Image Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2016/9/9/11G113486/Images/mw1as6f35t44erqrjuaar811hld2-17a625ba3db392c493d4479cca93ac3f.jpg


SALT LAKE CITY, Sept. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The David Eccles School of Business Daniels Fund Ethics Initiative, the Daniels Fund and the Community Foundation of Utah honored nine companies, nonprofits and government agencies at the third annual Utah Ethical Leadership Awards on Sept. 9, 2016.

More than 30 organizations applied for the awards, and winners and finalists were announced at a breakfast award ceremony in the Bill & Pat Child Family Community Hall in the University of Utah Spencer Fox Eccles Business Building.

The winners and finalists are:

Private Companies

Winner: Mark Miller Subaru

Finalists: Tink's Superior Auto Parts; WCF Insurance

Nonprofits

Winner: Utah Developmental Disability Council

Finalists: Comunidades Unidas; Kostopulos Dream Foundation/Camp K

Governmental Agencies

Winner: National Ability Center

Finalists: Coalville City; Commission on Service and Volunteerism

Gov. Gary Herbert spoke at the ceremony, emphasizing the importance of ethical practices in all facets of Utah professional life.

"I appreciate that we're awarding good behavior. That's good parenting, to reward good behavior and eschew the bad. I appreciate we're here honoring those who are doing it right and that we're making a big deal out of ethical behavior, which I believe most of us do every day," Herbert said. "We all have an opportunity to be an example, and we have the opportunity, and the responsibility, to make society better by being a good example."

Jeff Miller, general manager of Mark Miller Subaru, was honored that the company his father built was recognized for its ethics, joking that it probably seemed funny to have a car dealership accepting an ethics award, but that perception is why he works hard to ensure every employee follows strong ethical practices.

"We talk about ethics at Mark Miller Subaru because it's so important to our company to do the right thing," Miller said. "It has to be in the DNA of the company."

Two winning organizations that work with people with disabilities focused on the importance of the trust they create with their clients and the community.

"It's the families, the veterans and the kids we serve who are an example of ethical leadership to us every day, and they are an inspiration," said Gail Loveland, executive director of the National Ability Center.

Deborah Bowman, chair of the Utah Developmental Disabilities Council, hopes Friday's recognition helps Utahns realize the importance of providing services to help keep people with developmental disabilities with their families and be welcomed into the community.

"We want communities to value all people of all abilities and to realize that all people can contribute to society, which they can't do if they are segregated from society in an institution," Bowman said. "It's an honor to serve the people we serve and to be recognized for how far we've come. While we have a long way to go, we have come a long way, too."

The awards recognize organizations that embody the spirit of ethical leadership exhibited by businessman Bill Daniels, who believed deeply in ethics and integrity, and in the importance of absolute ethical principles.

Nominees for the awards were judged based on eight criteria:

Integrity  Act with honesty in all situations Trust  Build trust in all stakeholder relationships Accountability  Accept responsibility for all decisions Transparency  Maintain open and truthful communications Fairness  Engage in fair competition and create equitable and just relationships Respect  Honor the rights, freedoms, views and property of others Rule of Law  Comply with the spirit and intent of laws and regulations Viability  Create long-term value for all relevant stakeholders

Photos of the event are available in the Eccles Newsroom: http://eccles.utah.edu/news/

About the Community Foundation of Utah

The Community Foundation of Utah is a private, not for profit organization established in March of 2008 to harness Utah's entrepreneurial spirit in service to the common good through smart philanthropy. In this role, the Foundation assist individuals, families, corporations and governments in establishing an array of charitable funds. These funds are invested, managed, and accounted for by the Foundation, and are deployed through scholarships, grants, competitions, program related investments and other awards to support the people, places and causes of Utah and beyond. Learn more at utahcf.org.

About the Daniels Fund

Bill Daniels, a pioneer in cable television known for his generosity, established the Daniels Fund to extend his legacy of giving far beyond his lifetime. The Daniels Fund operates the Daniels Fund Scholarship Program, the Daniels Fund Grants Program, and the Daniels Fund Ethics Initiative in Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. Learn more at DanielsFund.org.

About the David Eccles School of Business

The Eccles School is synonymous with 'doing.' The Eccles experience provides a world-class business education with a unique, entrepreneurial focus on real-world scenarios where students put what they learn into practice long before graduation. Founded in 1917 and educating more than 6,000 students annually, the University of Utah David Eccles School of Business offers eight undergraduate majors, four MBAs, six other specialized graduate programs, a Ph.D. in seven areas and executive education curricula. The School is also home to eight institutes, initiatives and centers that deliver academic research and support an ecosystem of entrepreneurship and innovation. For more information, visit Eccles.Utah.edu or call 801-581-7676.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160909/406176LOGO

SOURCE David Eccles School of Business

Related Links

http://Eccles.Utah.edu


NEW LONDON, N.H., Sept. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Coldwell Banker Real Estate LLC today announced the affiliation of the newly created Coldwell Banker Lifestyles covering the Dartmouth and Lake Sunapee regions of New Hampshire, welcoming more than 65 agents in five offices.

The new ownership group, led by Stefan Timbrell and Joe Burns, has acquired Coldwell Banker Redpath of Hanover, NH. Ned Redpath, the founder of Coldwell Banker Redpath, remains with the company as a broker in the Hanover office. The acquisition by Country Houses Real Estate, founded in 1939, now positions Coldwell Banker Lifestyles as the largest Coldwell Banker affiliate in New Hampshire.

QUOTES

"Joe and Stefan are a great fit for Coldwell Banker. They have the desire to grow their business by utilizing the power of the Coldwell Banker brand, and they clearly recognized the value of affiliation. Ned is a recognized leader with Coldwell Banker and will be a great asset as Coldwell Banker Lifestyles grows in size and scope. We look forward to increasing the presence of the Coldwell Banker brand in central New Hampshire and eastern Vermont."

- Charlie Young, president and chief executive officer of Coldwell Banker Real Estate LLC

"We have always run our company based on the belief that we have an obligation to our agents, sellers and buyers to provide them with the best resources available. In the current market atmosphere, we decided it was time to research the options available which would allow us to enable our agents and clients to reach a broader audience and engage in a national marketing campaign. Franchising seemed a logical choice and after extensive research, we found Coldwell Banker was the unmatched leader. We consider Coldwell Banker to be the premier national and international real estate brand. We are confident that our association with Coldwell Banker will allow us to better equip our agents and serve our clients through the unparalleled marketing power offered by Coldwell Banker."

- Joe Burns, partner of Coldwell Banker Lifestyles

"We are very excited about this new phase in our company's development. In particular, we are thrilled at this time to be placing an even greater emphasis on what we consider to be one of the most important aspects of the real estate transaction - the emotional and lifestyle investment people make in their homes. Our focus on this core value was a huge driving force in determining both which brand to affiliate ourselves with and the new name of the company, Coldwell Banker Lifestyles. We believe, as evidenced by their national ad campaign, that Coldwell Banker understands better than any other brand, that to be completely satisfied with your investment - your home must match your lifestyle. We understand this on a very personal level; this is what living in New Hampshire is all about.

- Stefan Timbrell, partner of Coldwell Banker Lifestyles

"I've been in real estate a long time and when I met Joe and Stefan I knew they brought a whole new level of passion and excitement to our industry. I know under their leadership Coldwell Banker Lifestyles will take the state by storm and it is the perfect time to do so. I am bullish on our housing market as New Hampshire and Vermont are being discovered by so many different buyers - some who are realizing that this is a great second-home market and others who are discovering the myriad of job opportunities in the area. All of this makes me very excited about the future for Coldwell Banker Lifestyles."

- Ned Redpath, broker of Coldwell Banker Lifestyles

About Coldwell Banker Lifestyles

Coldwell Banker Lifestyles has five locations: 370 Main Street, New London, NH; 8 West Wheelock, Hanover, NH; 8 Soonipi Circle, Suite F, Sunapee, NH, 18 Pioneer Point, Grantham, NH (Eastman) and 15 Main Street, Warner, NH. They can be reached at the main office: 603-526-4020. Each office is independently owned and operated. Since 1906, the Coldwell Banker organization has been a premier provider of full-service residential and commercial real estate brokerage services. Coldwell Banker Real Estate is the oldest national real estate brand and franchisor in the United States, and today has a global network of approximately 3,000 independently owned and operated franchised broker offices in 47 countries and territories with almost 85,000 affiliated sales professionals.

CONTACT INFORMATION:

Stefan Timbrell and Joe Burns

603-526-4020

[email protected]

[email protected]

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140311/MM81278LOGO

SOURCE Coldwell Banker Real Estate LLC

Related Links

http://www.coldwellbanker.com


Starting in December, Aeromexico will expand its seat capacity to Canada by 47%, to more than 9,900 seats per week

Aeromexico currently serves the Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver markets

MEXICO CITY, Sept. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Aeromexico, Mexico's global airline, announced plans to increase the number of flights it offers to its three Canadian destinations, starting in December 2016.

The expanded service will start on December 1 on the Vancouver and Toronto routes, followed by the Montreal route on December 2.

Service will continue to be operated with the carrier's 160 seat Boeing 737-800 aircraft, with 16 seats in Clase PremierAeromexico's business class cabin, 144 in economy. Schedules on the three routes to and from Canada are as follows:

Mexico City  Montreal

Montreal  Mexico City AM 636 16:00 hrs. 22:20 hrs. Mon, Wed, Fri, Sun

AM 637 23:35 hrs. 05:02 hrs. Mon, Wed, Fri, Sun

















Mexico City  Toronto

Toronto  Mexico City AM 616 16:50 hrs. 22:20 hrs. Tue, Thu, Sat

AM 617 23:45 hrs. 04:00 hrs. Tue, Thu, Sat

















Mexico City  Vancouver

Vancouver  Mexico City AM 694 01:23 hrs. 05:33 hrs. Tue, Thu, Sat

AM 695 07:00 hrs. 14:40 hrs. Tue, Thu, Sat

*Schedules are published in local time and are subject to changes without notice.

The expansion will allow the carrier to offer the Canadian market more than 9,900 seats per week with this 47% increase.

On announcing the expanded service, Aeromexico's Corporate Sales Director Jorge Goytortua stated, "The great response received from our customers flying to these three Canadian cities, has led us to expand our service as we aim to meet their travel needs and consolidate Aeromexico's position in North America".

"We know that Mexicans enjoy traveling to Canada, and Canadians are also enticed by the warm weather of Mexico's beach destinations and its charming colonial cities, which is why we decided to offer our Canadian passengers greater connectivity options to our extensive route network spanning 45 cities across Mexico."

Jorge Morfin Stoopen, Destination Canada General Director for Mexico, commented: "Today, its estimated 200,000 national tourists travel to Canada every year and each month we register a 20% increase in tourism numbers. We are talking about important figures; in fact, no other country where Destination Canada has presence has seen this type of growth that compares to Mexico. With this frequency increase to Canada, Aeromexico authenticates its commitment in the development of this destination of the Mexican market".

With this expansion, Aeromexico continues to boost its network connectivity and development throughout North America and the world by providing passengers with more and better travel options.

About Grupo Aeromexico

Grupo Aeromexico, S.A.B. de C.V. is a holding company whose subsidiaries provide commercial aviation services and promote passenger loyalty programs in Mexico. Aeromexico, Mexico's global airline, operates more than 600 daily flights from its main hub in Terminal 2 at the Mexico City International Airport. Its route network spans more than 80 cities on three continents including 45 in Mexico, 17 in the United States, 16 in Latin America, four in Europe, three in Canada, and two in Asia.

Aeromexico's fleet of more than 130 aircraft is comprised of Boeing 787, 777, and 737 jet airliners and state-of-the-art Embraer 190, 175, 170, and 145 models. In 2012, the airline announced the most significant investment strategy in aviation history in Mexico, to 100 Boeing aircraft including 90 MAX 737 jet airliners and ten 787-9 Dreamliners.

As a founding member of the SkyTeam airline alliance, Aeromexico offers customers more than 1,000 destinations in 177 countries served by the 20 SkyTeam airline partners rewarding passengers with benefits including access to 672 premium airport lounges around the world. Aeromexico also offers travel options through its code share partners Delta Air Lines, Alaska Airlines, Avianca, Copa Airlines, and WestJet with extensive connectivity in countries like the United States, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, and Peru. www.aeromexico.com and www.skyteam.com

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SOURCE Aeromexico

Related Links

http://www.aeromexico.com


DALLAS, Sept. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Alerian announced the results of the September quarterly review for the Alerian Index Series. All changes will be implemented as of the close of business on Friday, September 16, 2016.

Alerian MLP Index (AMZ) and Alerian MLP Equal Weight Index (AMZE). Rice Midstream Partners (NYSE: RMP) and Teekay Offshore Partners (NYSE: TOO) will be added to the AMZ and AMZE. Archrock Partners (NASDAQ: APLP) and Global Partners (NYSE: GLP) will be removed from the AMZ and AMZE.

Rice Midstream Partners (NYSE: RMP) and Teekay Offshore Partners (NYSE: TOO) will be added to the AMZ and AMZE. Archrock Partners (NASDAQ: APLP) and Global Partners (NYSE: GLP) will be removed from the AMZ and AMZE. Alerian MLP Infrastructure Index (AMZI). Cheniere Energy Partners (NYSE: CQP) will be removed from the AMZI.

Cheniere Energy Partners (NYSE: CQP) will be removed from the AMZI. Alerian Energy Infrastructure Index (AMEI). No changes.

No changes. Alerian Natural Gas MLP Index (ANGI). Rice Midstream Partners will be added to the ANGI. Columbia Pipeline Partners (NYSE: CPPL) will be removed from the ANGI.

Rice Midstream Partners will be added to the ANGI. Columbia Pipeline Partners (NYSE: CPPL) will be removed from the ANGI. Alerian MLP Closed End Fund Index (AMCI). No changes.

No changes. Alerian Large Cap MLP Index (AMLI) . No changes.

. No changes. Alerian Mid Cap MLP Index (AMMI) . Rice Midstream Partners and Summit Midstream Partners (NYSE: SMLP) will be added to the AMMI. CVR Refining (NYSE: CVRR) will be removed from the AMMI.

. Rice Midstream Partners and Summit Midstream Partners (NYSE: SMLP) will be added to the AMMI. CVR Refining (NYSE: CVRR) will be removed from the AMMI. Alerian Small Cap MLP Index (AMSI) . CVR Refining will be added to the AMSI. Rice Midstream Partners and Summit Midstream Partners will be removed from the AMSI.

In addition, each index will be rebalanced in accordance with their existing methodology. Constituent additions to and deletions from an index do not reflect an opinion by Alerian on the investment merits of the respective securities.

About Alerian

Alerian equips investors to make informed decisions about Master Limited Partnerships (MLPs) and energy infrastructure. Its benchmarks, including the flagship Alerian MLP Index (AMZ), are widely used by industry executives, investment professionals, research analysts, and national media to analyze relative performance. As of August 31, 2016, over $15 billion is directly tied to the Alerian Index Series through exchange-traded funds and notes, separately managed accounts, and structured products. For more information, including index values and constituents, research content, and announcements regarding rebalancings, please visit alerian.com.

SOURCE Alerian

Related Links

http://www.alerian.com


ST. LOUIS, Sept. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Arch Coal kicked off its signature Teacher Achievement Awards Program today in West Virginia and Wyoming. It is the longest-running, privately sponsored teacher recognition program in both states.

"Arch Coal relies on superior classroom teachers to engage and instruct their students so they will become leaders in the workforce, pillars of our communities and well-rounded citizens of our nation," said Deck Slone, senior vice president of Arch Coal, Inc. "A solid education is essential for our youth  for their future, their families and their communities. The role of a classroom teacher who can develop the talents of their students continues to be paramount."

Ten outstanding teachers in each state will receive a $3,500 personal cash award as well as widespread recognition. Teacher nominations may be made online at archteacherawards.com or obtained at schools and libraries in each state, as well as Taco John's locations throughout Wyoming. Nominations will close Jan. 9, 2017, and recipients will be named in the spring.

"The Arch Coal teacher recognition program is unique because the public nominates these exceptional teachers and an independent, blue-ribbon panel of past recipients in each state makes the selections," said Slone. "Nominated teachers complete a comprehensive application that highlights their personal teaching philosophy and style as well as their academic accomplishments."

The Arch Coal Teacher Achievement Awards is being supported again this year in program promotion in West Virginia by the West Virginia Department of Education, the West Virginia Education Association, and the West Virginia Library Commission. In Wyoming, the program is supported by the Office of the Governor, Wyoming Department of Education, the Wyoming Library Community, the Wyoming Education Association, and Taco John's.

U.S.-based Arch Coal, Inc. is a top coal producer for the global steel and power generation industries, reliably serving customers worldwide. Its network of large-scale, low-cost mining complexes and high-quality metallurgical and thermal reserves are located in the most strategic coal supply basins in the United States. The company employs approximately 2,900 hardworking men and women in West Virginia and Wyoming. For more information, visit archcoal.com.

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SOURCE Arch Coal, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.archcoal.com


WASHINGTON, Sept. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Despite recent headlines, U.S. spending on prescription medicines continues to decline. In fact, new data from Altarum Institute found that spending on prescription medicines grew by just 3.9 percent between July 2015 and July 2016  the lowest level in three years. It's a dramatic decline from the 8.5 percent increase that Altarum reported last year and the 12.5 percent annual increase the year before that.

2017 Proposed Rate Justification

But this hasn't stopped health insurers from continuing to argue that prescription drug costs are fueling rising health insurance premiums. Now, some consumer groups are starting to question these claims. According to a new story published on California Healthline, the advocacy group Consumers Union says two insurance companies in California "may be exploiting the outrage over high drug prices to artificially inflate their premiums for individual coverage." Dena Mendelsohn, a staff attorney at Consumers Union in San Francisco, was more direct, saying "pharmaceutical expenses may be the factor most open to exploitation by health plans searching for a Trojan horse with which to usher in excessively priced insurance rates."

Consumers have reason to be skeptical. Avalere Health recently looked at 2017 proposed health insurance premium increases. Their analysis found that, as in 2016, insurers' own data point to outpatient spending as the largest expected driver of premium increases in 2017. The key takeaway: Hospital spending  inpatient and outpatient  accounts for nearly half (45.3 percent) of projected rate increases.

"Preliminary data indicate that drugs are not likely to have a disproportionate impact on premiums in 2017," Avalere said, highlighting that outpatient spending continues to drive premiums (representing 29.9 percent of increases).

Read more about how the competitive marketplace for medicines helps control costs and fosters the development of tomorrow's cures at phrma.org/cost.

This post originally appeared here: http://catalyst.phrma.org/are-insurers-exaggerating-medicine-costs-to-justify-premium-increases-consumers-think-so

Contact: Robert Zirkelbach; 202-835-3460; [email protected]

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160909/406016-INFO

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20091027/PHRMALOGO

SOURCE Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America
Reporting on the results, Shopping Centers Today coined Aventura Mall the "King of Social Media" in an online story published September 1, 2016.

"Today's digital and social world provides us with an unprecedented opportunity to engage directly with consumers, not just locally, but around the world," said Jackie Soffer, co-chairman and CEO of Turnberry Associates, owner and manager of Aventura Mall. "We are constantly maximizing our digital platforms to amplify Aventura Mall's brand and support our retailers."

About Aventura Mall

Miami's premier fashion destination and one of America's most visited shopping centers according to Travel + Leisure magazine, Aventura Mall features a collection of upscale boutiques and more than 300 of the world's most iconic retailers. Anchored by Bloomingdale's, Nordstrom and Macy's, the shopping center includes luxury retailers Givenchy, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Cartier, Tiffany & Co., Fendi, Burberry, Bally, Emilio Pucci, Omega and Brooks Brothers, as well as Apple, Michael Kors, H&M, Tory Burch, Sam Edelman, Microsoft Store, Urban Outfitters and other shopper favorites. Visitors also enjoy nearly a dozen restaurants, an artist-designed interactive playground, a 24-screen AMC Movie Theatre with IMAX, and a taste of South Florida's thriving arts scene with Turnberry for the Arts, featuring contemporary installations by renowned international and local artists. Aventura Mall is open Monday through Saturday, 10:00 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., and Sunday, 12:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. Call (305) 935-1110 or visit online at www.aventuramall.com.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140227/CL72754

SOURCE Aventura Mall

Related Links

http://www.aventuramall.com


CALGARY, Sept. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - Bankers Petroleum Ltd. ("Bankers" or the "Company") (TSX: BNK, AIM: BNK) is pleased to announce that the proposed plan of arrangement (the "Arrangement") with affiliates of Geo-Jade Petroleum Corporation ("Geo-Jade") has received Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) approval. At this time the required regulatory approvals for the completion of the Arrangement have been received. Bankers anticipates completion of the Arrangement to occur in the coming weeks, and prior to September 30, 2016. A further announcement will be made once exact timing of the completion has been established.

Pursuant to the Arrangement, Geo-Jade will acquire all the issued and outstanding common shares of Bankers ("Bankers Shares") through its affiliates at a cash price of C$2.20 per Bankers Share. Following a successful completion of the Arrangement the Bankers Shares will be delisted from the Toronto Stock Exchange ("TSX") and the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange.

------------

About Bankers Petroleum Ltd.

Bankers Petroleum Ltd. is a Canadian-based oil and gas exploration and production company focused on developing large oil and gas reserves in Albania and Eastern Europe. In Albania, Bankers operates and has the full rights to develop the Patos-Marinza heavy oilfield, has a 100% interest in the Kucova oilfield, and a 100% interest in Exploration Block "F". In 2015 Bankers acquired an 85% interest in the rights to explore the Puspokladany Block concession within the Pannonian Basin located in north eastern Hungary. The Bankers Shares are traded on the TSX and the AIM Market in London, England under the stock symbol BNK.

The information communicated in this announcement is inside information for the purposes of Article 7 of Market Abuse Regulation 596/2014 ("MAR").

Caution Regarding Forward-looking Information

Certain information set forth in this press release, including information and statements which may contain words such as "could", "plans", "intends" "should", "anticipate", "expects", "will", "propose", "opportunity", "future", "continue", and similar expressions and statements relating to matters that are not historical facts, contain forward-looking statements, including but not limited to statements regarding: the proposed Arrangement, the anticipated timing of closing and the delisting of the Bankers Shares following completion of the Arrangement. By their nature, forward-looking statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, some of which are beyond Bankers' control. Completion of the Arrangement is subject to a number of conditions which are typical for transactions of this nature. Failure to satisfy any of these conditions or the emergence of a superior proposal may result in the termination of the arrangement agreement dated March 19, 2016 providing for the Arrangement. The foregoing list is not exhaustive. Additional information on these and other risks that could affect completion of the Arrangement is set forth in the management information circular of Bankers dated April 19, 2016 in respect of a special meeting of the shareholders of Bankers held on May 31, 2016 to approve the Arrangement, which is available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Readers are cautioned that the assumptions used in the preparation of such information, although considered reasonable at the time of preparation, may prove to be imprecise and, as such, undue reliance should not be placed on forward-looking statements. The actual results, performance or achievement of Bankers could differ materially from those expressed in, or implied by, these forward-looking statements and, accordingly, no assurance can be given that any of the events anticipated by the forward-looking statements will transpire or occur, or if any of them do so, what benefits that Bankers will derive therefrom. Bankers disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable securities laws.

SOURCE Bankers Petroleum Ltd.

Related Links

http://www.bankerspetroleum.com/


On Wednesday, Sept. 7, Comcast employees and local Philadelphians gathered in front of Comcast Center to kick off the effort. Volunteers filled a new Back2School branded van with school supplies for local Philadelphia Boys & Girls Clubs.

"We know that today's youth are the key to our nation's success, and these formative grade school years are the launch pad for kids and teens to thrive. We're proud to partner with Boys & Girls Clubs of America on national technology and digital literacy initiatives, and we're equally thrilled to make an impact here in our company's hometown of Philadelphia as our local Boys & Girls Club members prepare for the academic year," said Fred Maahs, Senior Director of National Partnerships for Comcast Corporation and Vice President, Comcast Foundation.

The van parked in front of Comcast Center was filled to the brim with donated items from Comcast, its employees and other area contributors. Volunteers at the Stuff the Bus event also collected financial donations for Boys & Girls Clubs of America.

Boys & Girls Clubs of America will donate the 12-passenger van to one winning Club participating in its national Stuff the Bus contest. The winning Club will additionally receive prizes for up to 200 members from other Back2School corporate partners, including:

Burlington : New backpacks

: New backpacks Crayola: Art with Edge Coloring Books, colored pencils and fine line markers

Family Dollar: Gift cards

Fiskars: Scissors, rulers and pencil/crayon sharpeners

Gold Toe: Socks for boys and girls

Jo-Ann Fabric and Craft Stores  : $3,000 in gift cards

: in gift cards Lenovo: Tech Center upgrade for winning Club

Pilot: Black pens

ViSalus: Healthy snacks

"The back-to-school season is essential to lay the foundation for a successful year ahead," said Jim Clark, president and CEO of Boys & Girls Clubs of America. "Thanks to the support of our partners and 4,200 Clubs, we can help the kids who need us most by outfitting them with important school supplies and offering a safe place to study and play when the school day ends."

Throughout the Back2School campaign these partners are supporting Club kids by donating school supplies, galvanizing their employees to volunteer with local Clubs and engaging the public to participate in the cause campaign.

The Back2School campaign aligns with Boys & Girls Clubs of America's Great Futures Campaign, which calls attention to the crisis facing kids and elevates the role of out-of-school time in reversing negative trends in the areas of poor academic performance, obesity, drug use, and youth-related violence. The Great Futures Campaign for America's kids is mobilizing the nation in support of after-school and summer programs that tackle these issues to inspire and empower more youth toward success.

For more information about ways to support Boys & Girls Clubs of America and the Back2School campaign, visit greatfutures.org.

About Boys & Girls Clubs of America

For more than 150 years, Boys & Girls Clubs of America (greatfutures.org) has enabled young people most in need to achieve great futures as productive, caring, responsible citizens. Today, more than 4,200 Clubs serve nearly 4 million young people through Club membership and community outreach. Clubs are located in cities, towns, public housing and on Native lands throughout the country, and serve military families in BGCA-affiliated Youth Centers on U.S. military installations worldwide. They provide a safe place, caring adult mentors, fun and friendship, and high-impact youth development programs on a daily basis during critical non-school hours. Club programs promote academic success, good character and citizenship, and healthy lifestyles. In a Harris Survey of alumni, 54 percent said the Club saved their lives. National headquarters are located in Atlanta. Learn more at BGCA's Facebook and Twitter.

About the Comcast Foundation

The Comcast Foundation was founded by Comcast Corporation in June 1999 to provide charitable support to qualified non-profit organizations. The Foundation primarily invests in programs intended to have a positive, sustainable impact on their communities. The Foundation has three community investment prioritiespromoting service, expanding digital literacy, and building tomorrow's leaders. Since its inception, the Comcast Foundation has donated more than $170 million to organizations in the communities nationwide that Comcast serves. More information about the Foundation and its programs is available at www.comcast.com/community.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160909/406022

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160909/406020

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160909/406021

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160719/391143LOGO

SOURCE Boys & Girls Clubs of America

Related Links

http://www.bgca.org


FT. LAUDERDALE, Fla., Sept. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Once again Victory Living Programs will roll out the red carpet for all who attend the much anticipated "Queen for a Day" luncheon. Sponsored by Akerman, LLP, for the fourth consecutive year, the "Queen for a Day" luncheon will be held on Wednesday, October 26, 2016 from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Fort Lauderdale Country Club (415 Country Club Circle, Plantation FL 33317).

The afternoon festivities will include a three-course lunch, champagne, courtesy of Breakthru Beverage, a table-decorating contest, white elephant raffle and the highly anticipated "Queen for a Day" pageant hosted by the fabulous MC Amanda Austin from LIPS Fort Lauderdale. All guests are encouraged to dress to impress in their most "queenly" attire, command attention and seize the crown as they compete in a runway showcase to "wow" celebrity judges and win the "Queen for a Day" title.

"Our annual 'Queen for a Day' luncheon has really become a popular event that many look forward to each and every year," said Bobbi Wigand, Executive Director of Victory Living Programs. "The Angels for Victory auxiliary fundraising group, our sponsors and the staff at the Fort Lauderdale Country Club, all work together to help us produce this fun event to benefit Victory Living Programs and we are just so thankful for their efforts."

Proceeds from the event will help support Victory Living's year-round programs such as the Supported Living Program, Adult Day Training/Community Inclusion Program, Employment Programs and the Social and Recreational Program.

"Everything we do at Victory Living Programs is aimed at helping individuals with disabilities live more independently," said Wigand. "Hosting events such as the 'Queen for a Day" luncheon helps ensure our vital programs serve as many individuals as possible, each and every year."

Tickets to the "Queen for a Day" luncheon are $65 per person or $480 for a table of eight. Visit http://bit.ly/VLPQueen2016 to purchase tickets.

For more information about Victory Living Programs, please visit www.victoryliving.org or call (954) 616-1074.

About Victory Living Programs

For the past four decades, Victory Living Programs has created supportive environments for thousands of people with disabilities. Based in warm, beautiful Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, Victory Living Programs offers a premier supported living program that places clients in their own individual, luxurious apartments. In addition, Victory Living Programs also offers an extensive array of programming to assist clients with securing and maintaining employment, learning new skills, volunteering in the community and socializing with their peers - all of which make it possible to infuse independence and transform the lives of people with disabilities. To learn more, visit www.victoryliving.org.

Contact: Laurie Menekou, (954) 732-0754 (or)

[email protected]

SOURCE Victory Living Programs

Related Links

http://victoryliving.org


Chantel Waterbury, Founder and CEO of Chloe + Isabel, featured alongside the Merchandisers in the images said, "In a world where everyone is so focused on celebrity, I felt it was important to highlight these real, extraordinary and passionate women that represent our incredible Merchandisers. These ladies have made a positive impact on their families and communities, and in my eyes, that is the true definition of what it means to be a modern muse in today's society. I've always been mesmerized by Mark's work and his ability to capture the true essence of people. He did an amazing job shooting the women as if they were celebrities and really brought our vision to life."

Seliger who is best known for his portraits and fashion work with Vanity Fair, Elle, and Rolling Stone said, "It was such an honor working with Chantel and this inspiring group of women. From the very beginning, the process and collaboration was unique and creatively a delight."

The campaign, which unveils the brand's fall collection, was inspired by four historic female figures and their corresponding traits, including Lee Miller (The Hero), Anais Nin (The Rebel), Tamara de Lempicka (The Maven) and Leonor Fini (The Artisan). The featured Merchandisers demonstrate similar qualities but are showcased in a way that allows them to shine and tell their individual stories.

Chloe + Isabel's fall collection launches this week and will be available exclusively on chloeandisabel.com and through its nearly 10,000 Merchandisers nationwide. The merchandisers photographed are located nationwide from Seattle, Washington to Largo, Florida and information on their stories is available upon request.

About Chloe + Isabel:

Chloe + Isabel is a jewelry company that works to empower women through its Merchandiser program which offers women training, mentoring and sales and marketing skills that build confidence and drive financial independence. Founder Chantel Waterbury started Chloe + Isabel in 2011 with the mission of creating a social retailing platform devoted to empowering the next generation of female entrepreneurs. Chloe + Isabel offers high quality jewelry, beauty, lifestyle products, and hair accessories with accessible prices. To date Chloe + Isabel has nearly 10,000 merchandisers throughout the country. For more information, visit www.chloeandisabel.com or join them on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160909/405981

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160909/405980LOGO

SOURCE Chloe + Isabel

Related Links

http://www.chloeandisabel.com


LONDON, Sept. 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Commercial refrigerators are developed to meet the demands of commercial applications. Unlike to domestic applications, commercial refrigerators are high-performing and rugged in design. These refrigerators and freezers are designed such as that they can store large quantity of goods for long period of time as compared to domestic refrigerators. These refrigerators and freezers are available in wide range of storage temperature and capacity, to meet multiple end-use need.



This research report on the commercial refrigerators market provides detailed analysis of the commercial refrigerators and helps understanding the driving forces behind the popularity of commercial refrigerators. It also provides analysis of major sub-segments of the Asia Pacific commercial refrigerators market for the next eight years. This report includes extensive analysis of industry drivers, restraints and market trends. The market study provides comprehensive assessment of stakeholder strategies and imperatives for succeeding in the business. The report includes the segmentation of the market based on glass door refrigerator (by capacity), beverage refrigerators (by type), refrigerated display cases (by type), freezers market (by type), fridge freezers (by type), retail channel and country.



Other important points covered in the research study include:



Definitions, estimates, volume units and forecast of the commercial refrigerators market for the period from 2016 to 2024

Analysis of the Asia Pacific market and respective sub-segments

Recent developments of major players and strategies adopted by them

Profiles of major market participants to help better understand their contribution in the market

The research report includes competitive analysis of various market segments (as mentioned above) for commercial refrigerators, and their in-depth cross-sectional analysis. Additionally, this report include cross segment analysis for Philippines commercial refrigerators market. In order to aid in strategic decision-making, the report also includes the winning strategies adopted by key players.



For detailed understanding of the commercial refrigerators market, all these segments have also been estimated in terms of revenue (US$ Mn) and volume (# units) for the geographies mentioned above. The market research study analyzes the commercial refrigerators market in Asia Pacific, and provides historical revenue in terms of US$ Mn for the years 2015 and 2014, along with the market forecast for the period 2016 to 2024. Market forecasts have been analyzed considering the impact of various economic, political, social, legal, operational and technological factors influencing market growth.



The commercial refrigerators market is segmented as follows.



Glass Door Refrigerators, by Capacity



0.5 Cu. Ft. to 3.0 Cu. Ft.

3.1 Cu. Ft. to 6.0 Cu. Ft.

6.1 Cu. Ft. to 9.0 Cu. Ft.

Others



Beverage Refrigerators, by Type



Beverage Refrigerators

Wine Refrigerators



Refrigerated Display Cases, by Type



Plug-in

Remote



Freezers, by Type



Chest Freezers

Vertical Freezers

Ice-cream Freezers



Fridge Freezers, by Type



Single-door Freezers

Multi-door Freezers



Commercial Refrigerators, by Retail Channel



Hypermarkets

Supermarkets

Convenience Stores

Restaurants

Others (Pharmaceutical Shops and Retail Stores)



Commercial Refrigerators Market, by Country



China

Japan

India

Australia and New Zealand

South Korea

Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/4130334/



About Reportbuyer

Reportbuyer is a leading industry intelligence solution that provides all market research reports from top publishers

http://www.reportbuyer.com



For more information:

Sarah Smith

Research Advisor at Reportbuyer.com

Email: [email protected]

Tel: +44 208 816 85 48

Website: www.reportbuyer.com

SOURCE ReportBuyer

Related Links

http://www.reportbuyer.com


PHILADELPHIA, Sept. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- King of Prussia Dental Associates and its affiliate Pediatric Dentistry of Collegeville (KOP Dental) are committed to maintaining the privacy and security of the protected health care information of the organizations' patients. Recently, KOP Dental detected irregular activity on a computer server and immediately took action.

On or about June 1, 2016, KOP Dental experienced problems with its computer system. KOP Dental immediately launched an investigation, retained a leading forensics computer firm, and contacted law enforcement. On June 23, the forensics firm concluded that a third party may have gained unauthorized access to the KOP Dental and Pediatric Dentistry of Collegeville computer network.

The impacted server was immediately taken out of operation, and the investigation has revealed no evidence that any information was acquired or used inappropriately. However, the server contained patient information, including name, social security number, date of birth, home address, phone number, account number and treatment records. KOP Dental recommends that patients remain vigilant, and is offering credit monitoring and identity theft protection services.

KOP Dental began mailing notification letters today to those who may have been affected. Patients with questions can call and enroll in free ID Experts MyIDCare identify and credit monitoring services at 844-575-745, from 9 a.m.  9 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, Monday  Friday using the Access Code provided in the notification letter. Please note the deadline to enroll is Dec. 9, 2016.

KOP Dental is working to enhance the security of its systems to prevent a similar incident from occurring again, and looks forward to continuing to serve Philadelphia families as it has for more than three decades. More information can be found at www.myidcare.com/kingofprussia.

About King of Prussia Dental Associates

Headquartered in King of Prussia, Pa., King of Prussia Dental has been serving the King of Prussia and surrounding community for more than 30 years. KOP Dental and its dedicated team of general dentists, periodontists, pediatric dentists, endodontists, cosmetic dentistry consultants, dental hygienists and office administrators provide the highest level of professional dentistry, including emergency procedures, cosmetic dentistry, routing checkups and pediatric dentistry, and help raise money to provide for dental scholarships at local community colleges. For more information, visit http://www.kingofprussiadental.com/.

About Pediatric Dentistry of Collegeville

Pediatric Dentistry of Collegeville, based in Collegeville, Pa. is a subsidiary of King of Prussia Dental Associates that delivers quality dental care and oral hygiene to help maintain pediatric patients' oral health. For more information, visit http://pediatricdentistryofcollegeville.com/.

SOURCE King of Prussia Dental Associates

Related Links

http://www.myidcare.com/kingofprussia


WASHINGTON, Sept. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In an open letter to Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, The Concord Coalition today urged the presidential candidates to detail their proposals to put the federal government's borrowing, spending and tax policies on a more sustainable course.

"Non-partisan experts agree that our current path is not sustainable," Concord said. "Projections by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) make it very clear that an aging population and rising health care costs are putting increasing pressure on the federal budget, threatening to squeeze out other national priorities."

The letter is part of Concord's Lookout Campaign to raise public awareness of the nation's fiscal challenges and to urge candidates for federal office this year to address those challenges.

The letter highlights three key issues: the federal debt, Social Security and Medicare.

"Debt held by the public now stands at 77 percent of the economy (GDP), roughly twice the average over the past 50 years," Concord tells the presidential candidates. "It is projected to rise to 86 percent by 2026 and 141 percent by 2046. Do you see this as a problem? If so, what do you intend to do about it?"

The letter asks similar questions about Social Security and Medicare, which according to their trustees are projected to eventually run out of money -- and are already putting substantial pressure on the rest of the federal budget.

"We hope that by addressing these questions, you will help provide voters with a more complete picture of how you plan to deal with our nation's fundamental fiscal challenges if you become the next president," Concord says. "We believe that is essential information for American voters to have by the time they cast their ballots in November."

The full text of the letter can be found at An Open Letter to Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump .

The Concord Coalition is a nonpartisan, grassroots organization dedicated to fiscal responsibility. Since 1992, Concord has worked to educate the public about the causes and consequences of the federal deficit and debt, and to develop realistic solutions for sustainable budgets. For more fiscal news and analysis, visit concordcoalition.org and follow us on Twitter: @ConcordC

SOURCE The Concord Coalition

Related Links

http://www.concordcoalition.org


RENO, Nev., Sept. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Continental Who's Who recognizes Cindy Baines as a Pinnacle Lifetime Member in recognition of her contributions to the field of Direct Sales.



Baines brings direct sales experience to her role that dates back to 1975, upon her first role with Tupperware. She joined the team at Jordan Essentials in 2001, when the company was trading under the name Country Bunny Bath and Body. Today, she manages a team as well as her own sales, and specializes in the distribution and sales of health products including various oils, lotions, anti-aging care and shea butter.



In addition to her work on the sales side, Baines offers wellness clinics designed to educate individuals about the ingredients in various skin care products.



"I offer wellness clinics to teach about safe ingredients in your skin care products," Baines said. "I'm also a professional recruiter and train a large team to be successful in business. I offer a fabulous fundraiser program with no monetary investment, and I'm also a professional speaker." Baines utilized her speaking talents as a presenter at the Jordan Essentials convention this past July.

To further her professional development, Baines has maintained membership with Business Networking International for the past two years and is the Secretary/Treasurer of the organization's Reno chapter. She is also a member of the National Association of Professional Women.



When not working, Baines volunteers with her local church, Living Stones of Reno, where she enjoys participating in food drives and other collections to help community needs. She is also a mentor with 360 Blueprint, a local non-profit that connects mentors with children in need of assistance with reading. She also enjoys scrapbooking, playing the piano and spending quality time with her grandchildren.



Baines cites Jordan Essentials CEO Nancy Bogart as her mentor. She dedicates this recognition to her husband, Mark Baines.



For more information, visit www.cindybaines.com.



Contact: Katherine Green, 516-825-5634, [email protected]

SOURCE Continental Who's Who

Related Links

http://www.continentalwhoswho.com


ATLANTA, Sept. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- DataPath, Inc., a leading provider of remote field communications and information technology solutions to the aerospace, government, broadcast, and infrastructure markets, announced today that users of its MaxView Enterprise network monitor and control software can now interact with the platform through their preferred language. By leveraging an integrated version of the Google Translate service, MaxView Enterprise will display information through all web screens in each individual user's choice of more than 100 languages.

At a time when networks are becoming increasingly complex and geographically dispersed, they are also becoming increasingly difficult to manage, especially in multi-lingual environments. MaxView Enterprise provides a single consolidated management tool for all network equipment, elements and service applications, enabling customers to manage their systems more efficiently and improve service availability with fewer resources. One of MaxView Enterprise's key features is easy customization; each user can configure dashboards to display data in the manner most effective for their operations. The new translation capability is an extension of DataPath's commitment to continually develop user-friendly and easily-configurable solutions for customers who monitor and control a wide range of network types.

Trusted by broadcast, media and government organizations alike, MaxView is installed on more than 4,000 systems in 40 countries across all seven continents, with over 1 million end-points under management. The integration of the Google Translate service with MaxView Enterprise enhances DataPath's ability to support customers worldwide.

"Our customers play an integral role in the development of DataPath's product roadmap," said David Myers, President & CEO of DataPath. "As workplaces become more diverse, organizations seek applications that facilitate and encourage skilled workers around the globe. Customers from Portugal to Japan have voiced a need for this translation capability, so we are excited to bring it to market."

DataPath is exhibiting at IBC 2016, held Sept. 9-13 at the RAI Amsterdam. Please visit DataPath in Hall 1, Booth F56, for a personal MaxView Enterprise demonstration.

About DataPath Inc.

In remote and high-risk operating environments, dependable real-time communications are critical to situational awareness and mission success. DataPath specializes in advanced communications solutions tailored to the unique requirements of aerospace, broadcast, government, and infrastructure clients. Our solutions include a range of both custom and commercial off-the-shelf field communications and information technology products, including satellite communication systems, network management software, and cyber security services. All of our offerings are backed by 24x7 customer care and global field support. At DataPath we are passionate about helping our clients achieve mission success. For more information, visit www.datapath.com.

Contact:

DataPath, Inc.

Anna Fry

[email protected]

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SOURCE DataPath, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.datapath.com


DETROIT, Sept. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Airport Authority that operates Detroit Metropolitan (DTW) and Willow Run (YIP) Airports has the unique distinction of being the only independent Airport Authority in the country to be accredited by the Commission on Fire Accreditation International (CFAI). The prestigious honor recognizes achievements in safety, efficiency, proactive planning, continuous process improvement and outstanding service delivery by fire and emergency service agencies throughout the world.

For the second time, since the Airport Authority was originally accredited in 2011, CFAI, and the Center for Public Safety Excellence (CPSE) recently reaffirmed the important, often life-saving, service provided by the Detroit Metropolitan and Willow Run Airport Rescue and Fire Fighting (ARFF) team.

"The men and women that serve with our Airport Rescue and Fire Fighting team make a real difference in the lives of our customers, and we are extremely proud of their commitment and achievement," said Airport Authority CEO Thomas Naughton. "They, along with other members of our public safety team, are on the frontline in delivering quality service and ensuring a safe operating environment for our travelers, business partners and community."

In addition to providing a unique and professional fire safety presence for one of the busiest hub airports in the country, Detroit Metro and Willow Run fire fighters are also all cross-certified as highly-trained paramedics, and are able to administer advance life support and medical treatment.

"Our team will respond to more than 3,000 calls for assistance over the course of the year, not just at our airports, but also supporting our surrounding communities, as an instrumental mutual aid partner," said Airport Authority Fire Chief Mike Evans. "Our response and call-to-dispatch times are some of the best in the industry, and our team understands that attention to detail, and a strategic commitment to safety and continuous process improvement saves lives. Accreditation through CFAI is testament to the professionalism of every one of our team members, and we are extremely honored to be recognized as leaders in our field."

The Airport Rescue and Fire Fighting team shares the rare distinction of international accreditation, with the Airport Authority's Police team. The Airport Authority Police Department has maintained international law enforcement accreditation from the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA) since 2008. Together, recognition from CFAI and CALEA signify that Detroit Metro and Willow Run Airports' Public Safety team is among the best in the world.

Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport (DTW) welcomed more than 33 million passengers in 2015 and is one of the world's leading air transportation hubs. With service from 13 scheduled passenger airlines, Michigan's largest airport offers more than 1,100 flights per day to and from more than 140 non-stop destinations on four continents. With two award-winning passenger terminals, six jet runways, and an onsite AAA Four-Diamond Westin Hotel, DTW is among the world's most efficient, customer friendly and operationally capable airports in North America. DTW is operated by Wayne County Airport Authority, which also operates nearby Willow Run Airport  an important corporate, cargo and general aviation facility. The Airport Authority is entirely self-sustaining and does not receive tax dollars to support airport operations. Visit www.metroairport.com for more information.

The Commission on Fire Accreditation International (CFAI) is dedicated to assisting the fire and emergency service agencies throughout the world in achieving excellence through self-assessment and accreditation in order to provide continuous quality improvement and the enhancement of service delivery to communities. The CFAI accreditation process promotes excellence within the organization, encourages improvements through a continuous self-assessment process and requires agencies to define a mission and related objectives that will result in improved organization performance. For more information, visit www.publicsafetyexcellence.org

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SOURCE Wayne County Airport Authority

Related Links

http://www.metroairport.com


BEIJING, Sept. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, in Guangzhou, China, B2B cross-border e-commerce marketplace DHgate.com and the Guangdong e-commerce association hosted the 2016 APEC Global SME Forum, which has become the most influential event in the cross-border e-commerce industry. Over 1,500 people attended the forum to listen to speakers from Facebook, DHgate, Tencent, and the China Post focusing on the theme of the event: "empowering brands to enter the global market and build up their brands with high quality products," seeking to enable as many traditional businesses as possible to move their operations online.

This is the 4th time DHgate.com has hosted the summit. This year the discussion focused on analyzing the transitional process that traditional foreign trade enterprises undergo to adopt a digital business model in three dimensions: the transformation and upgrade of an enterprise, social commerce, and global branding opportunities and challenges of cross-border e-commerce in 2017.

"DHgate.com's all-in-one solution offers a premium development opportunity for brands to upgrade their businesses by transitioning to an e-commerce business model and build reputable global brands." - Diane Wang, CEO of DHgate.com and co-Chair of the APEC SME Forum.

ABOUT DHgate.com

DHgate.com is the first to market and the biggest transactional cross-border B2B e-commerce marketplace in China, aiming to provide global buyers with quality products at competitive prices. Founded in 2004, DHgate.com has approximately 12 million global buyers from 230 countries and regions, with 1.4 million global sellers offering 40 million products. DHgate.com's business enables buyers to directly access global manufacturers of the world's top brands with rich product selections. DHgate.com is an all-in-one platform with integrated services for international logistics, cross-border payments, internet financing, etc. DHgate.com's US, UK, Spain, and UAE product distribution warehouses allow for 24 hour delivery and convenient product returns & refunds, bringing great convenience to buyers at http://www.dhgate.com.

SOURCE DHgate.com

Related Links

http://www.dhgate.com


WASHINGTON, Sept. 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Evolent Health, Inc. (NYSE: EVH), a company providing an integrated value-based care platform to the nation's leading health systems and physician organizations ("Evolent Health"), today announced the pricing of a secondary public offering of 7,500,000 shares of its Class A common stock to be sold by UPMC, certain affiliates of TPG Global, LLC, The Advisory Board Company and Ptolemy Capital, LLC (together, the "Investor Stockholders") and certain management selling stockholders (the "Management Stockholders" and together with the Investor Stockholders, the "Selling Stockholders"). The shares of Class A common stock are being sold to the public at a price of $22.50 per share. The offering was upsized from the previously announced offering size of 7,000,000 shares of Class A common stock. The underwriters have a 30-day option period to purchase up to 1,125,000 additional shares of Class A common stock from the Investor Stockholders. The offering is expected to close on September 14, 2016, subject to customary closing conditions.

J.P. Morgan Securities LLC and Goldman, Sachs & Co. are acting as joint book-running managers for the offering. Wells Fargo Securities, LLC, William Blair & Company, L.L.C., SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc., Allen & Company LLC, Cowen and Company, LLC and Leerink Partners LLC are acting as co-managers.

Evolent Health is not offering any shares of Class A common stock in the offering and will not receive any proceeds from the sale of shares of Class A common stock by the Selling Stockholders, including from any exercise by the underwriters of their option to purchase additional shares from the Investor Stockholders.

A registration statement (including a prospectus) relating to these securities has been filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") and has become effective. Before you invest, you should read the prospectus in that registration statement and other documents filed with the SEC for more complete information about Evolent Health and this offering. You may obtain these documents free of charge by visiting EDGAR on the SEC's website at www.sec.gov.

The offering will be made only by means of a prospectus supplement and the accompanying prospectus. Copies of the prospectus supplement and accompanying prospectus related to the offering may be obtained from J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, c/o Broadridge Financial Solutions, 1155 Long Island Avenue, Edgewood, NY 11717 or by telephone at 866.803.9204; or Goldman, Sachs & Co., Attention: Prospectus Department, 200 West Street, New York, NY 10282, or by telephone at (866) 471-2526, facsimile at (212) 902-9316, or email at [email protected].

This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy, nor shall there be any sale of, these shares of Class A common stock in any state or jurisdiction in which such an offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of such state or jurisdiction.

About Evolent Health

Evolent Health partners with leading health systems to drive value-based care transformation. By providing clinical, analytical and financial capabilities, Evolent Health helps physicians and health systems achieve superior quality and cost results. Evolent Health's approach breaks down barriers, aligns incentives and powers a new model of care delivery resulting in meaningful alignment between providers, payers, physicians and patients.

Forward-Looking Statements  Cautionary Language

Certain statements made in this release and in other written or oral statements made by us or on our behalf are "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 ("PSLRA"). A forward-looking statement is a statement that is not a historical fact and, without limitation, includes any statement that may predict, forecast, indicate or imply future results, performance or achievements, and may contain words like: "believe," "anticipate," "expect," "estimate," "aim," "predict," "potential," "continue," "plan," "project," "will," "should," "shall," "may," "might" and other words or phrases with similar meaning in connection with a discussion of future operating or financial performance. In particular, these include statements relating to future actions, trends in our businesses, prospective services, future performance or financial results and the outcome of contingencies, such as legal proceedings. We claim the protection afforded by the safe harbor for forward-looking statements provided by the PSLRA.

These statements are only predictions based on our current expectations and projections about future events. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements to differ materially from the results contained in the forward-looking statements. Risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to vary materially, some of which are described within the forward-looking statements, include, among others:

certain risks and uncertainties associated with the proposed acquisition of Valence Health, including: revenues of Valence Health before and after the merger may be less than expected, and expected results of Evolent may not be impacted as anticipated; uncertainties related to the timing of the receipt of required regulatory approvals for the merger; the ability of Evolent and Valence Health to satisfy the closing conditions of the merger; the occurrence of any change that could give rise to the termination of the merger agreement; our ability to implement integration plans for the merger and to recognize the anticipated growth, benefits, cost savings and synergies of the merger; the risks that the merger and the other transactions contemplated by the merger agreement disrupt current plans and operations and the potential difficulties in retention of any members of senior management of Valence Health and any other key employees that Evolent is interested in retaining after the closing of the merger; the limitations placed on the ability of Evolent and Valence Health to operate their respective businesses by the merger agreement; the effect of the announcement of the merger on Evolent's and Valence Health's business relationships, customers, suppliers, other partners, standing with regulators, operating results and businesses generally; the amount of any costs, fees, expenses, impairments and charges related to the merger; and the market price for our Class A common stock potentially being affected, following the merger, by factors that historically have not affected the market price for our Class A common stock;



the structural change in the market for health care in the United States ;

; our ability to effectively manage our growth;

the significant portion of revenue we derive from our largest partners;

our ability to offer new and innovative products and services;

the growth and success of our partners, which is difficult to predict and is subject to factors outside of our control, including premium pricing reductions and the ability to control and, if necessary, reduce health care costs;

our ability to attract new partners;

our ability to recover the significant upfront costs in our partner relationships;

our ability to estimate the size of our target market;

our ability to maintain and enhance our reputation and brand recognition;

consolidation in the health care industry;

competition which could limit our ability to maintain or expand market share within our industry;

our ability to partner with providers due to exclusivity provisions in our contracts;

uncertainty in the health care regulatory framework;

restrictions and penalties as a result of privacy and data protection laws;

adequate protection of our intellectual property;

any alleged infringement, misappropriation or violation of third-party proprietary rights;

our use of "open source" software;

our ability to protect the confidentiality of our trade secrets, know-how and other proprietary information;

our reliance on third parties;

our ability to use, disclose, de-identify or license data and to integrate third-party technologies;

data loss or corruption due to failures or errors in our systems and service disruptions at our data centers;

breaches or failures of our security measures;

our reliance on Internet infrastructure, bandwidth providers, data center providers, other third parties and our own systems for providing services to our users;

our dependency on our key personnel, and our ability to attract, hire, integrate and retain key personnel;

risks related to future acquisition opportunities;

the risk of potential future goodwill impairment on our results of operations;

our future indebtedness and our ability to obtain additional financing;

our ability to achieve profitability in the future;

the requirements of being a public company;

our adjusted results may not be representative of our future performance;

the risk of potential future litigation;

our ability to remediate the material weakness in our internal control over financial reporting;

our holding company structure and dependence on distributions from Evolent Health LLC;

our obligations to make payments to certain of our pre-IPO investors for certain tax benefits we may claim in the future;

our ability to utilize benefits under the tax receivables agreement;

our ability to realize all or a portion of the tax benefits that we currently expect to result from future exchanges of Class B common units of Evolent Health LLC for our Class A common stock, and to utilize certain tax attributes of Evolent Health Holdings and an affiliate of TPG;

distributions that Evolent Health LLC will be required to make to us and to the other members of Evolent Health LLC;

our obligations to make payments under the tax receivables agreement that may be accelerated or may exceed the tax benefits we realize;

different interests among our pre-IPO investors, or between us and our pre-IPO investors;

the terms of agreements between us and certain of our pre-IPO investors;

our exemption from certain corporate governance requirements due to our status as a "controlled company" within the meaning of the New York Stock Exchange rules;

the potential volatility of our Class A common stock price;

the potential decline of our Class A common stock price if a substantial number of shares become available for sale or if a large number of Class B common units is exchanged for shares of Class A common stock;

provisions in our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and amended and restated by-laws and provisions of Delaware law that discourage or prevent strategic transactions, including a takeover of us;

law that discourage or prevent strategic transactions, including a takeover of us; the ability of certain of our investors to compete with us without restrictions;

provisions in our certificate of incorporation which could limit our stockholders' ability to obtain a favorable judicial forum for disputes with us or our directors, officers or employees;

our intention not to pay cash dividends on our Class A common stock; and

our status as an "emerging growth company."

The risks included here are not exhaustive. Although we believe the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, we cannot guarantee future results, level of activity, performance or achievements. Our 2015 Form 10-K and other documents filed with the SEC include additional factors that could affect our businesses and financial performance. Moreover, we operate in a rapidly changing and competitive environment. New risk factors emerge from time to time, and it is not possible for management to predict all such risk factors.

Further, it is not possible to assess the effect of all risk factors on our businesses or the extent to which any factor, or combination of factors, may cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statements. Given these risks and uncertainties, investors should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements as a prediction of actual results. In addition, we disclaim any obligation to update any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances that occur after the date of this report.

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SOURCE Evolent Health, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.evolenthealth.com


WASHINGTON, Sept. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Dr. Stephen L. Ondra, one of the nation's recognized leaders in technology-driven health care improvement, has joined Amida Technology Solutions, a Maryland-based open source software company, as Chief Strategy Officer.

Ondra brings to Amida an extensive history of health system leadership in both the public and private sectors. Most recently, he held the position of Enterprise Chief Medical Officer for the Health Care Service Corporation, the fourth largest insurer in the United States and the largest customer-owned health plan. Prior to that, he served as Chief Medical Officer of Northwestern Memorial Hospital and the interim Chair of Neurological Surgery for Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine.

Ondra's service to the public is multi-faceted. He was Health Information Technology Co-Chair for the White House's National Science and Technology Council and was one of the Affordable Care Act implementation team deputies. He also served as the Senior Health Policy Advisor to the U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs. He is a decorated Army Veteran who served in Operation Desert Storm and Desert Shield, receiving the Bronze Star and the Army Commendation Medal.

"Steve is a perfect match for an organization that believes in the power of information to help people make the best-informed decisions, especially about their medical care," said Peter L. Levin, Amida's CEO and founder. Levin is the former Chief Technology Officer of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the leader of their health record modernization initiative, and the architect of the Blue Button personal health record. "Whether in the operating room, the decision-making halls of Washington, or in the leadership of a health insurance organization serving 15 million Americans, Steve has been transforming our health care system for the better by putting patients at the center of their health data."

Former Undersecretary of Defense and CEO of the Center for a New American Security, Michele Flournoy, a member of the Amida advisory board, added, "Steve Ondra, at every stage of his career, has served his country and his fellow citizens with expertise, excellence, and a commitment to positive change. He will continue to do so in the leadership of an organization that helps their customers find optimal value in their data."

Amida's products include the Data Reconciliation Engine, an open source platform that extracts and ingests health data from a variety of sources and transforms it into an easy-to-use model; Indaba, a data collaboration platform that assembles distributed knowledge and dispersed expertise into data sets for analysis, dissemination, and resource allocation decisions; and Orange Rx, an integrated mobile application that helps patients to manage their medications for themselves or their dependents, and seamlessly integrates with electronic health record platforms.

Said Ondra, "Amida delivers products and services that put people  securely, reliably, and in the open source  at the center of their data. It's rare to see a private sector company execute a mission with equal parts technical precision and fierce determination to improve our collective quality of life. I couldn't be more excited to join the team."

Amida Technology Solutions, LLC is an open-source software company that focuses on data management, data interoperability, and data security. Amida's customers are in the health care, NGO, international development, and open government and government service sectors. Our customers rely on Amida to design, develop, and deploy and manage enterprise platforms that enable the secure exchange of sensitive information. Find us at www.amida-tech.com.

Ready to tackle your biggest data challenges? So are we.

Send us an email at [email protected]

or reach us by phone at (202) 735-1790.

Amida Technology Solutions, 1640 Rhode Island Ave, NW Suite 650, Washington, DC 20036

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SOURCE Amida Technology Solutions

Related Links

http://www.amida-tech.com


BOSTON, Sept. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Fashion is at the forefront this fall as Her Campus Media, the #1 new-media brand for the empowered college woman, once again electrifies Boston with its high impact, fully integrated fashion show featuring local college women of all shapes and sizes as the models. The multi-city College Fashion Week tour is hitting Space57 at the Revere Hotel on September 24th.

"College Fashion Week is about celebrating real women's bodies and highlighting fashion as a form of self-expression," said Windsor Hanger Western, cofounder and President of Her Campus and the mastermind behind the event. "Boston is incredibly special to us. This amazing city is where Her Campus was founded and continues to have its home base, so we are making sure this event absolutely dazzles."

The diversity of the College Fashion Week tour is seamlessly aligned with its official media partner, StyleWatch, the go-to millennial style resource dedicated to making fashion and beauty trends accessible, affordable and fun to women of all types, regardless of shape, style, size or budget. A StyleWatch editor will be co-emceeing the events alongside Hanger Western.

College Fashion Week 2016 will be showcasing top talent from the next generation of young female fashion designers and entrepreneurs. Selected College Fashion Week honorees are: My Social Canvas, Foray Collective, Ali & Ariel, Frill Clothing, and Bow & Drape. Rebecca Minkoff and Vince Camuto serve as the tour's fashion patrons, offering their designs to complement these new designers' collections and complete the runway looks. Enhancing the stylish runway collections, models will be accessorizing with Fitbit Flex 2, the newest activity tracker from wearables leader Fitbit.

The evenings' events will also include photo booths, a Browfection Bar courtesy of European Wax Center, light bites and beverages, fabulous giveaways and goody bags full of luxurious swag worth almost a thousand dollars  all thanks to College Fashion Week's amazing sponsors.

Official College Fashion Week 2016 sponsors include StyleWatch Magazine, Rebecca Minkoff, Vince Camuto, Drybar, European Wax Center, Perfumania, Hanes Hosiery, Maidenform Hosiery, Maidenform Shapewear, Bertha Watches, Fitbit, KIND Healthy Snacks and SkinnyPop Popcorn.

For tickets visit collegefashionweek.com

CONTACT: Elaina Featherstone, [email protected], 339-203-5065

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SOURCE Her Campus Media

Related Links

http://www.hercampusmedia.com/


To meet the needs of the digital economy Huawei's solution helps to accelerate digital transformation across a global footprint. The system can be deployed and go live in 3 months whilst reducing TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) by up to 45%. In addition to driving operational efficiencies, BES Cloud supports IT and business agility with seamless upgrade paths and an integrated feature set of best practices that shorten the time to market for launching new products and services whilst enabling innovative new business and engagement models.

Huawei BES Cloud includes the BSS Lite Cloud and Commerce Cloud. BSS Lite Cloud addresses traditional BSS systems' long release periods and high costs by providing an end-to-end solution that offers a full suite of BSS applications from CRM to billing for emerging brands as well as small and medium-sized mobile operators. Core benefits include shortening system deployment time by 60% in average and significantly reducing operating costs.

Commerce Cloud, which can be integrated to existing on premise systems, is an agile and light solution that addresses the challenges faced by operators as they transition to a digital operating model. With a customizable UI and web-front end, Commerce Cloud features a cloud based multi-tenant architecture that employs flexible meta-data driven modeling and auto-scaling. Building on an extensive set of embedded best practices, Huawei's absolute focus on customer centric design principles is a critical factor in its mission to deliver solutions that enable an optimized customer experience over digital channels. By supporting personalized customer interactions, Commerce Cloud helps to improve NPS at the same time as helping to increase order conversion rates in a fully orchestrated omni-channel environment.

About Huawei

Huawei is a leading global information and communications technology (ICT) solutions provider. Driven by customer-centric innovation and open partnerships, Huawei has established an end-to-end ICT solutions portfolio that gives customers competitive advantages in telecom and enterprise networks, devices and cloud computing. Our innovative ICT solutions, products and services are used in more than 170 countries and regions, serving over one-third of the world's population.

For more information, please visit Huawei online at www.huawei.com.

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SOURCE Huawei

Related Links

http://www.huawei.com


MADISON HEIGHTS, Mich., Sept. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- InfuSystem Holdings, Inc. (NYSE MKT: INFU), a leading national provider of infusion pumps and related services for the healthcare industry in the United States, today announced the election of Mr. Scott A. Shuda to serve as a new member of InfuSystem Holdings Board of Directors, effective September 7, 2016.

Mr. Shuda is a managing director and co-founder of Meridian OHC Partners LP and BlueLine Partners, LLC, investment firms that focus on publicly listed technology and healthcare companies. Mr. Shuda has served as a director of Iridex Corporation, a global leader in ophthalmic laser systems, since 2012 and is currently chairman of the Iridex Compensation Committee and a member of the Nominating and Governance Committee. From 2010 to 2011 Mr. Shuda served as a director and audit committee member of MGC Diagnostics Corporation (formerly Angeion Corporation), a global respiratory diagnostics company. Prior to co-founding BlueLine Partners in April 2004, Mr. Shuda was general counsel to Vicinity Corporation, an internet search company that went public in 2000 and was acquired by Microsoft in 2002. Prior to his employment with Vicinity, Mr. Shuda practiced law in California and New York, most recently in the Silicon Valley office of Latham & Watkins LLP. Mr. Shuda holds both J.D. and M.B.A. degrees from Georgetown University.

Eric K. Steen, chief executive officer of InfuSystem, said, "We are pleased that Scott will join InfuSystem's Board of Directors. Scott has built a distinguished career as an investment manager along with 20 years of professional services experience in law and technology. His experience working with healthcare companies and understanding of the capital markets will add an additional layer of financial analytics and his perspective as our largest stockholder will be an asset to the Board."

About InfuSystem Holdings, Inc.

InfuSystem Holdings, Inc. is a leading provider of infusion pumps and related services to hospitals, oncology practices and other alternate site healthcare providers. Headquartered in Madison Heights, Michigan, the Company delivers local, field-based customer support and also operates Centers of Excellence in Michigan, Kansas, California, Texas, Georgia and Ontario, Canada. The Company's stock is traded on the NYSE MKT under the symbol INFU.

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements contained in this press release are forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "Securities Act") and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the "Exchange Act"). The words "believe," "may," "will," "estimate," "continue," "anticipate," "intend," "should," "plan," "expect," "strategy," "future," "likely," variations of such words, and other similar expressions, as they relate to the Company, are intended to identify forward-looking statements. However, the absence of these words or similar expressions does not mean that a statement is not forward-looking. In connection with the "safe harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, the Company is identifying certain factors that could cause actual results to differ, perhaps materially, from those indicated by these forward-looking statements. Those factors, risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, potential changes in overall healthcare reimbursement, including CMS competitive bidding, sequestration, concentration of customers, increased focus on early detection of cancer, competitive treatments, dependency on Medicare Supplier Number, availability of chemotherapy drugs, global financial conditions, changes and enforcement of state and federal laws, natural forces, competition, dependency on suppliers, risks in acquisitions & joint ventures, U.S. Healthcare Reform, relationships with healthcare professionals and organizations, technological changes related to infusion therapy, dependency on websites and intellectual property, the ability of the Company to successfully integrate acquired businesses, dependency on key personnel, dependency on banking relations and covenants, and other risks associated with our common stock, as well as any litigation to which the Company may be involved in from time to time; and other risk factors as discussed in the Company's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2015 and in other filings made by the Company from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our Form 10-Q for the second quarter of 2016. Our annual report on Form 10-K is available on the SEC's EDGAR website at www.sec.gov, and a copy may also be obtained by contacting the Company. All forward-looking statements made in this press release speak only as of the date hereof. We do not intend, and do not undertake any obligation, to update any forward-looking statements to reflect future events or circumstances after the date of such statements.

Additional information about InfuSystem Holdings, Inc. is available at www.infusystem.com.

CONTACT: Joe Dorame, Joe Diaz & Robert Blum

Lytham Partners, LLC

602-889-9700

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SOURCE InfuSystem Holdings, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.infusystem.com


Clapper made the remarks at the opening at the Intelligence & National Security Summit held in Washington, D.C. this week. AFCEA International and the Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA) sponsored the two-day conference.

Senior intelligence officials, including FBI Director James Comey and CIA Director John Brennan, touched on a variety of issues other than cybersecurity and the presidential election during the event. On the terrorism topic, Comey believes it is the threat that will dominate intelligence efforts during at least the next five years and will be the result of "crushing" of the Islamic caliphate in Syria and Iraq and the surviving "hardened killer" militants who will flow into Europe to carry out attacks.

Brennan echoed the concern, saying that despite the group's loss of territory in Syria and Iraq, militants threaten security in the United States and Europe. Though al-Qaida in Iraqthe predecessor of ISILonce had been "reduced to the hundreds," the group reemerged, he said. And while security in Europe improved following attacks in France and Belgium, a fragmented alliance of 28 countries and different legal systems slows progress.

Intelligence experts participating in the event's panel discussions agreed that combating terrorism is a multi-faceted challenge. Nick Rasmussen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, pointed out that the new face of global terrorism has morphed to an unrecognizable and nearly unmanageable element. Its face, he said, is the core of al-Qaida, the rise of the Islamic State, insurgent groups growing in Africa, radicalization in Europe and the increased risk of threats in the United States. In fact, the terrorist threat today is "broader, wider and deeper than any point in our past," with homegrown terrorism a mounting problem for national security, he added.

In Clapper's opinion, climate change will be an underlying meta-driver of unpredictable instability in the coming decades. "Major population centers will compete for ever-diminishing food and water resources, and governments will have an increasingly difficult time controlling their territories. And so, because of all of these factors, after ISIL's gone, we can expect some other terrorist entity to arise and a cycle of extremism that will continue to control us for the foreseeable future. And by the way, our more traditional adversaries like Russia and China and Iran and North Korea will continue to challenge us," he stated.



"And of course, technology will continue to be disruptive. Just think about the fact that Uber is the biggest taxi company in the world, and they don't own any cars. Airbnb is the biggest hotel company, and they don't own any properties. It is difficult to predict how technology will affect national security," Clapper said. "Tech areas like artificial intelligence, health care and agricultural, self-driving cars and 3-D printing have the potential to revolutionize our lives for the better or they could present vulnerabilities that are very hard to predict."

Read more summit coverage online, including more about what DNI James Clapper had to say about the coming changes in the U.S. government after the November elections.

AFCEA International, established in 1946, is a non-profit membership association serving the military, government, industry and academia. Join online.

INSA is the premier intelligence and national security organization that provides a unique venue for collaboration, networking and examination of policy issues and solutions. Join online.

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SOURCE AFCEA International

Related Links

www.afcea.org


This is Vietnam's leading renewable energy and energy efficiency trade show and it is organised by UBM Asia and supported by the Vietnam Energy Conservation and Energy Efficiency Association, Vietnam Automation Association, Energy Conservation Center Ho Chi Minh City and the EU-Vietnam Business Network.

RE & EE Vietnam 2016 is a unique showcase welcoming leading exhibitors and international pavilions (the EU, Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan and many others) in different segments of the renewable energy and energy efficiency sectors. It covers a wide range of innovations and solutions using industrial boilers, waste heat recovery, drying process, heat exchange process in power plants and the private consumer as well as breakthrough technologies, including solar panels, electric machines, bioethanol technology and control systems, among others.

Mr. Yoshimasa Kitada, Sales Manager, Mitsubishi Electric Vietnam, one of the leading exhibitors at RE & EE Vietnam 2016, said, "As a leading corporation in the manufacture & provision of electronic equipment for home, commercial and industrial use, we at Mitsubishi Electric believe that VietWater and RE & EE Vietnam 2016 will be a good business platform for energy & water industry players to showcase the best solutions and we are expecting to meet up with the right partners and find more potential customers here."

Running alongside RE & EE Vietnam 2016 is the Conference. The Conference theme this year is "Vietnam Energy Forum: Towards Sustainable Energy Development in Vietnam". Presented by leading industry experts such as Dr. Do Huu Hao, Chairman, Vietnam Energy Conservation and Energy Efficiency Association, and Mr. Huynh Kim Tuoc, Director, Energy Conservation Center Ho Chi Minh, this forum is about sharing information on the Vietnam energy market and trends as well as some recent renewable projects in Vietnam. (To view the agenda and register for the conference, please visit http://www.renergyvietnam.com/en-us/highlights/seminars.)

In addition, there will be B2B Networking Meetups inside the hall of the RE & EE Vietnam 2016 Exhibition. With the support of the Energy Conservation Center Ho Chi Minh City and the EU-Vietnam Business Network, RE & EE Vietnam 2016 is a business bridge for professionals to meet and connect with their target partners who are interested in their own business.

In only two months, the doors of the RE & EE Vietnam 2016 Exhibition will open to welcome thousands of industry exhibitors and visitors. Admission to this must-attend exhibition is free. Online preregistration is now open, please visit: https://www.ubmonlinereg.com/Registration/Default.aspx?fid=641&lang=en

Notes to Editors:





About UBM Asia (www.ubmasia.com)

Owned by UBM plc listed on the London Stock Exchange, UBM Asia is the largest trade show organiser in Asia and the largest commercial organiser in China, India and Malaysia. Established with its headquarters in Hong Kong and subsidiary companies across Asia and in the US, UBM Asia has strong global network of 30 offices and 1,400 staff in 25 major cities. We operate in 21 market sectors with 235 exhibitions and conferences, 28 targeted trade publications, 18 vertical portals for over 1,000,000 quality exhibitors, visitors, conference delegates, advertisers and subscribers from all over the world.

The Representative Office of UBM ASIA in Ho Chi Minh City

6th Floor, KN Building, 74 Nguyen Khoai, Ward 2

District 4, Ho Chi Minh City

Vietnam

T: +84 8 5401 2718

F: +84 8 5401 2717

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SOURCE UBM Asia (Malaysia)
CAMBRIDGE, England, September 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Kymab, The Scripps Research Institute and International AIDS Vaccine Initiative Collaboration Improves Discovery and Testing of Promising HIV Vaccine Strategies

Kymab, the Cambridge-based antibodies-to-medicines company, announces today a publication of a new approach to developing a human vaccine against HIV in the internationally renowned scientific journal Science. The publication presents new findings from a collaboration between researchers at Kymab, The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) of San Diego, California, and the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI). HIV is one of the most intransigent targets for vaccine development, and no effective vaccine has been developed in thirty years of global research. The paper is entitled "Priming HIV-1 broadly neutralizing antibody precursors in human Ig loci transgenic mice".

The research, which tested the first step in an approach to develop effective vaccines against the range of HIV variants existing worldwide, was published in Science on Thursday 8 September, 2016, and was supported by funding from the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative and the US National Institutes of Health.

The results show that Kymouse, which is a mouse that has been modified to mimic human antibody responses, is an effective platform for discovering and testing possible vaccines and suggest ways in which testing of vaccine candidates can be improved.

"We increasingly recognise that traditional vaccine strategies will not be successful against all viruses, especially not HIV. Together with the Kymab team, we have taken a novel approach in which we have induced human antibodies in Kymouse that are at the beginning of the pathway to protective antibodies and which is a huge boost to our mission to develop a HIV vaccine." says Dennis Burton, chair of the TSRI Department of Immunology and Microbial Science and scientific director of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) Neutralizing Antibody Center (NAC) at TSRI and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Center for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Immunology and Immunogen Discovery (CHAVI-ID).

The work is based on the observation that a fraction of people who become infected by HIV develop broadly neutralising antibodies against diverse HIV strains. Such antibodies would be ideal to protect against or possibly treat HIV infection - if a vaccine could be made to elicit them.

However, these antibodies originate from a limited number of precursor antibody-producing cells in the body and acquire their unusual and protective properties only during a long course of infection. Moreover, although these cells have been activated when immunising certain biased animal models, this is the first time it has been achieved through immunisation of an immune system, as in the Kymouse, that resembles the human.

The researchers injected Kymouse strains with a nanoparticle formed of 60 copies of a small protein that mimics HIV and was designed to bind and stimulate the specific precursor cells for one class of broadly neutralising antibody. They expected to find just one such precursor cell (among tens of millions of such cells) in each immunised mouse.

The research team then looked to see whether or not the mice had mounted an antibody response to this injection. Given the combined challenges of a complex immunogen structure and the rarity of the right antibodies, an effective response against the HIV immunogen was elicited remarkably efficiently.

"Our phenomenal results with the teams at TSRI and IAVI came from work at the boundaries of protein engineering, immunology and vaccine technology," explains Professor Allan Bradley, Chief Technical Officer at Kymab and Director Emeritus of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, who developed the Kymouse platform. "Using Kymouse, we show how an advanced vaccine candidate can search out the one cell among tens of million antibody-producing cells and make it proliferate.

"Kymouse can deliver antibody responses that we need to build effective HIV vaccines."

The team validated their antibody response by sequencing genes from more than 10,000 cell samples, and showed that genes from responding mice had the expected sequence for precursors to broadly neutralising antibodies against the HIV target.

"It is a big step forward in this branch of HIV vaccine development," says William Schief, TSRI Professor and Director of Vaccine Design for the IAVI Neutralizing Antibody Center at TSRI, in whose lab the vaccine nanoparticle was developed. "We have the first proof of principle that this HIV vaccine strategy and our vaccine candidate can work in a human immune system and trigger the first step in the pathway to developing broadly neutralising and protective antibodies against the virus.

"It is the very sort of response we'd want to see as we test components of a future vaccine."

HIV has proved an extremely difficult challenge in vaccine development. The new research shows that Kymouse can produce antibodies of the type that could evolve to confer protection, suggests ways in which the immunisation regime can be improved and indicates that Kymab's technologies will support and accelerate the search for other, rarer and perhaps even more effective antibodies.

"About 35 million people have died of HIV/AIDS and 36 million are currently infected. Although a vaccine is the most likely way to stem this loss, no successful vaccine has been found in more than thirty years of HIV research," says Professor Paul Kellam, Vice President of Infectious Diseases and Vaccines at Kymab. "This is a pressing need and these results show that our Kymouse technologies can serve a vital part in the search for effective vaccines that help to protect against this most challenging disease."

"This dramatic proof of concept gives us hope we can find better broadly effective vaccines for HIV and, indeed, for other infections, using the human immune system to help guide us along the best path."

Kymab has raised more than $120m in equity funding from partners including Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, Malin Corporation plc and the Woodford Patient Capital Trust plc to fund its unique antibody development platform in therapeutic development and vaccine discovery. Kymab is building a rich pipeline of assets in four main therapeutic spaces: infectious disease, such as HIV and malaria, as well as immuno-oncology, inflammation and haematology.

- ENDS-

Contact details

Kymab:

David Chiswell, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Anne Hyland, Chief Financial Officer

Tel: +44 1223 833301

[email protected]



Hume Brophy

Mary Clark, Supriya Mathur and Hollie Vile

+44 (0)207 862 6390

[email protected]



For TSRI

Madeline McCurry-Schmidt

Science Writer

The Scripps Research Institute

Tel: 858-784-9254

[email protected]



The Scripps Research Institute

Tel: +1 858-784-2666

Fax: +1 858-784-8118

[email protected]



For IAVI

Arne Naveke

Executive Director Advocacy, Policy, Communications

International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI)

+1-212-847-1055 (office)

+1-646-623-47-85 (mobile)





Notes to Editors

About Kymab

Kymab is a leading biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery and development of fully human monoclonal antibody drugs using its proprietary Kymouse antibody platform.

Kymouse has been designed to maximise the diversity of human antibodies produced in response to immunisation with antigens. Selecting from a broad diversity of fully human antibodies assures the highest probability of finding that rare drug candidate with best-in-class characteristics. The Kymouse naturally matures these molecules to highly potent drugs obviating the need for further time-consuming modifications. Kymab is using the platform for its internal drug discovery programmes and in partnership with pharmaceutical companies. Kymab commenced operations in 2010 and has raised over US$120m of equity financing which includes $90m Series B financing. It has an experienced management team with a successful track record in drug discovery and development and has numerous therapeutic antibody programmes in immune-oncology, auto-immunity; hematology, infectious disease and other areas.

http://www.kymab.com



Publication

Sok D, Briney B, Jardine JJ, Kulp DW et al. (2016) Priming HIV-1 broadly neutralizing antibody precursors in human Ig loci transgenic mice. This paper will be published online by the journal Science on THURSDAY, 8 September, 2016.



Participating Centres

- Kymab Ltd, Babraham Research Campus, Cambridge, UK

- Department of Immunology and Microbial Science, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA, USA

- IAVI Neutralizing Antibody Center, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA, USA

- Center for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Immunology and Immunogen Discovery, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA, USA

- Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard, Cambridge, MA, USA



About The Scripps Research Institute

The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) is one of the world's largest independent, not-for-profit organizations focusing on research in the biomedical sciences. TSRI is internationally recognized for its contributions to science and health, including its role in laying the foundation for new treatments for cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, hemophilia, and other diseases. An institution that evolved from the Scripps Metabolic Clinic founded by philanthropist Ellen Browning Scripps in 1924, the institute now employs more than 2,500 people on its campuses in La Jolla, CA, and Jupiter, FL, where its renowned scientists-including two Nobel laureates and 20 members of the National Academy of Science, Engineering or Medicine-work toward their next discoveries. The institute's graduate program, which awards PhD degrees in biology and chemistry, ranks among the top ten of its kind in the nation. For more information, see www.scripps.edu.



About International Aids Vaccine Initiative (IAVI)

The International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) is a global not-for-profit organization whose mission is to ensure the development of safe, effective, accessible, preventive HIV vaccines for use throughout the world. Founded in 1996 and operational in 25 countries, IAVI and its network of collaborators research and develop vaccine candidates. IAVI was founded with the generous support of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, The Starr Foundation, and Until There's A Cure Foundation. Other major supporters include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health, The John D. Evans Foundation, The New York Community Trust, the James B. Pendleton Charitable Trust; the Governments of Canada, Denmark, India, Ireland, Japan, The Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States, the Basque Autonomous Government (Spain), the European Union as well as the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and The City of New York, Economic Development Corporation; multilateral organizations such as The World Bank and The OPEC Fund for International Development; corporate donors including BD (Becton, Dickinson & Co.), Bristol-Myers Squibb, Continental Airlines, Google Inc., Pfizer Inc, and Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc.; leading AIDS charities such as Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS; and many generous individuals from around the world. For more information, see www.iavi.org.

SOURCE Kymab
Lou & Grey's laid-back approach to dressing complements the dynamic lives of women: it's her go-to traveling attire, her yoga class uniform, her all-weekend ensemble. Fall's Signaturesoft collection is made up of touchable pieces perfect for the New York woman's active lifestyle whether it's a cocoon cardigan, a painterly pastel print or an easy swing dress, the modern, do-it-all styles feel both luxurious and comfortable.

The store will feature collaborations with third parties such as natural soft-skin experts CAP Beauty and a roving soft-serve ice cream truck. Lou & Grey plans to engage more "soft" activities throughout the year. The store's design joins the feelings of soft and clean, with marble tables and fitting rooms that evoke a lounge space  floating curtains in linen with pink velvet stools.

"Lou & Grey is more than a brand, it's a lifestyle," said Gary Muto, President & CEO, ANN INC. "Each of our freestanding stores have a local feel and Flatiron is no different. Our team curated a mix of apparel and third party partnerships that reflect the brand's sensibility while capturing the energy and spirit of New York. We are excited to introduce the Lou & Grey brand experience in our hometown and believe our product assortment is in sync with the way women are dressing today."

The store will also emphasize the idea of neighborhood and community, through New York-based makers like designer and artist Caroline Z. Hurley, who created an original hand-painted mural for the welcoming space, and plants and succulents from New York-favorite The Sill. The Flatiron location will also house Lou & Grey's first-ever design studio, a creative space for the design team to draw inspiration and receive direct feedback from shoppers and associates in real-time while creating future collections.

"Think of this as a place to stop by and hang out. It's a place to relax and slow down within this frenetic, amazing city. The environment and the clothes are equally as inviting and welcoming," said Austyn Zung, Executive Creative Director. "And with our design studio right in the store, we are happy to be settling in."

Lou & Grey

Lou & Grey is an exciting evolution of the LOFT lounge collection, and a new movement in women's retail, based around a thoughtfully designed and edited collection of easygoing, texture-rich styles for every day. The store space is where beautifully made clothing seamlessly fits with a selection of apothecary, accessories & more, handcrafted by independent US makers. This curated experience invites customers to linger, discover, settle in  and keep coming back. Lou & Grey clothing is for the woman on the go who never wants to choose between style and comfort. They're the easy pieces that work for any situation she's in. Lou & Grey is more than a brand, it's a lifestyle.

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SOURCE Lou & Grey

Related Links

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DES MOINES, Iowa, Sept. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The joint statement issued by the Department of Justice, the Department of the Army, and the Department of the Interior immediately after Judge Boasberg's ruling is deeply troubling and could have a long-lasting chilling effect on private infrastructure development in the United States. Judge Boasberg had already issued a thoughtful, thorough decision agreeing that the Army Corps had done its job and had adequately consulted with and considered Tribal concerns; which in turn led to more than $1.4 billion in investments by Energy Transfer Partners  the pipeline construction company.

It is also concerning that the federal government would threaten the livelihoods of thousands of workers who rely on good governance to support a stable workplace. Based on the Administration's actions today, these workers' jobs are in peril.

Should the Administration ultimately stop this construction, it would set a horrific precedent. No sane American company would dare expend years of effort and billions of dollars weaving through an onerous regulatory process receiving all necessary permits and agreements, only to be faced with additional regulatory impediments and be shutdown halfway through completion of its project.

We hope and trust that the government will base its final decision on sound science and engineering, not political winds or pressure.

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SOURCE MAIN Coalition
"For so many families, it is truly a struggle to purchase backpacks and supplies for their children," said attorney Mike Morse. "We learned that some students were bringing supplies to school in garbage bags and some had no supplies at all. Many teachers were paying out of their own pockets to provide paper, pencils and other items. That upset me and I wanted to do something to even the playing field, to give all DPS students a winning start."

In 2015, the law firm donated 23,000 backpacks. This year's expanded program enabled 10,000 more backpacks to be distributed. Members of the Mike Morse Law Firm helped handout backpacks at Pulaski Elementary and Middle School on the first day of school.

"What Mr. Morse teaches us is that it takes an entire community to teach our children," said the school district transition manager Judge Stephen Rhodes. "He has contributed in a major way."

Having the proper supplies increases a student's ability to perform. It can mean better grades and improved self-esteem, confidence, attitude, behavior and willingness to participate and learn. Judging from the bright smiles on the faces of children who received backpacks, the new school year is off to a strong start.

"I want you to work really hard and stay in school and know that you can do anything you want to do," Morse told the children. "Don't let anybody tell you differently."

The Mike Morse Law Firm is Michigan's largest personal injury firm, specializing in auto and Social Security disability claims. The firm handles cases statewide, with its main office in Southfield, Michigan.

Morse's goal is to continue to expand the backpack project in the future. If you or your company would like to help, visit 855MikeWins.com to learn more.

Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiG1QJdV86M

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160909/406002

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SOURCE Mike Morse Law Firm
RACINE, Wis., Sept. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Modine Manufacturing Company (NYSE: MOD) recently announced changes to its executive organization in response to the upcoming acquisition of Luvata Heat Transfer Solutions (HTS).

On Tuesday, September 6, 2016, Modine announced that it entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Luvata HTS, a leading global manufacturer of coils, coolers and coatings for HVAC&R and industrial markets. The acquisition leverages Modine's heat-transfer expertise and global presence, broadens its customer base and reduces cyclical exposure, expands margin and growth profile, and delivers immediate accretive value to EPS before the expected benefit of cost synergies.

To ensure a seamless integration of Luvata HTS into Modine's business framework and ensure continuity within Modine's existing businesses, Modine has made the following changes to its executive management:

Matt McBurney will assume the newly created position of Vice President  Luvata HTS Integration Lead. McBurney will manage the Integration Management Office (IMO) with overall accountability for establishing the integration office, developing detailed plans specific to all functional areas of the integration, managing the end-to-end synergy identification and capture process, and acting as the primary Modine point of contact for the Luvata HTS global organization. Additionally, he will provide communication within Modine and any needed linkage back into Modine's vehicular and Building HVAC businesses. Lastly, he will provide steering and guidance to the IMO and functional teams, assure proper resources are in place, and provide daily executive-level oversight and direction for the integration of HTS.

McBurney joined Modine in 1992 and has progressed through a series of positions with increasing responsibility from engineering, operations and business management through his most recent position, Vice President, Building HVAC. McBurney earned a bachelor's degree (BS) in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin - Madison and an MBA from Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Scott Miller has been promoted to the position of Vice President, Building HVAC, replacing McBurney. Miller will assume responsibility for leading Modine's global Building HVAC business segment. Miller has been at Modine for 17 years in a variety of positions with increasing responsibility, including Operations Director for Building HVAC and North America business units, and most recently, Managing Director of Global Operations. Miller earned a bachelor's degree (BBA) in Production / Operations Management from the University of Wisconsin  Whitewater and an MBA from the University of Wisconsin  Parkside.

About Modine

Modine, with fiscal 2016 revenues of $1.4 billion, specializes in thermal management systems and components, bringing highly engineered heating and cooling technology and solutions to diversified global markets. Modine products are used in light, medium and heavy-duty vehicles, heating, ventilation and air conditioning equipment, off-highway and industrial equipment and refrigeration systems. Modine is a global company headquartered in Racine, Wisconsin (USA), with operations in North America, South America, Europe, Asia and Africa. For more information about Modine, visit www.modine.com.

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SOURCE Modine

Related Links

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WASHINGTON, Sept. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The board that oversees the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)  also known as The Nation's Report Card  is seeking nominations for four new members: an elementary school principal, two general public representatives, and a testing and measurement expert. The four-year terms begin October 2017.

The 26-member Governing Board was established by Congress to oversee and set policy for NAEP, the nation's only representative assessment of what students know and can do in various subjects. Governing Board members help define how student achievement is measured in the United States by identifying subjects that NAEP will assess, determining the content of the assessments, and improving how the results are reported.

This fall, the Governing Board will release results for science, the last of the STEM subjects NAEP assesses. Results of the mathematics assessment were released in fall 2015, and results for the first-ever NAEP technology and engineering literacy assessment were released in May of this year.

"We invite dedicated and passionate individuals to help us continue to advance NAEP as the gold standard in assessments," Governing Board Chair Terry Mazany said. "New Governing Board members will enjoy the opportunity to join us on the forefront of innovation to better measure student achievement, including through computer-based NAEP assessments, and pioneer efforts to assess college and career preparedness. Their insights and experience are critical to our success."

Nominations are being accepted through Oct. 28 at www.nagb.org/nominations for the following Governing Board positions:

Elementary school principal

General public representative (2 positions)

Testing and measurement expert

By law, the membership of the Governing Board must reflect balance and diversity in region, race, gender and culture.

In addition to the four open positions, the Governing Board includes governors, state legislators, superintendents, classroom teachers, a representative of business/industry, curriculum specialists, a nonpublic school administrator/policymaker, and a secondary school principal. Board members serve four-year terms.

The U.S. secretary of education will appoint the new members from a list of finalists submitted by the Governing Board. The term for each position is Oct. 1, 2017, to Sept. 30, 2021.

If you have questions about nominations, contact Dr. Mary Crovo at 202-357-6941 or [email protected]. The deadline for submitting nominations is Oct. 28, 2016.

If you have media inquiries, contact Stephaan Harris at 202-357-7504 or [email protected].

The National Assessment of Educational Progress is the only nationally representative, continuing evaluation of the condition of education in the United States. It has served as a national yardstick of student achievement since 1969. Through The Nation's Report Card, NAEP informs the public about what American students know and can do in various subject areas and compares achievement between states, large urban districts and various student demographic groups.

The National Assessment Governing Board is an independent, bipartisan board whose members include governors, state legislators, local and state school officials, educators, business representatives and members of the general public. Congress created the 26-member Governing Board in 1988 to oversee and set policy for NAEP.

NAEP is a congressionally authorized project sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education. The National Center for Education Statistics, within the Institute of Education Sciences, administers NAEP. The commissioner of education statistics is responsible by law for carrying out the NAEP project.

CONTACT: Stephaan Harris, 202-357-7504, [email protected]

SOURCE National Assessment Governing Board

Related Links

https://www.nagb.org


DALLAS, Sept. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- In all five boroughs of New York City, owners of income-producing property with an actual assessed value of more than $40,000 are required to file an annual Real Property Income and Expense (RPIE) statement each year by June 1. Even if your property is legally excluded from having to file the RPIE, a Claim of Exclusion is still required to be filed by the deadline. For example, if your property is entirely owner-occupied, if it is fully exempt from real estate taxes, if it is vacant or uninhabitable, and has no existing leases, a Claim of Exclusion must still be filed.

The New York City Department of Finance recently released a list of buildings that did not file the required forms by the June 1 deadline. In Manhattan, there were 35 non-filers, with an actual assessed value greater than $10,000,000, with another 2,229 non-filers. Collectively, the four other boroughs had nearly 12,000 non-filers, with a dozen properties assessed at more than $10,000.000.

Penalties for failing to file can be significant.

The penalties are graduated based on the actual assessed value of the property and run from $100 to $100,000. Owners who are required to file a Claim of Exclusion and who do not submit a claim are fined $100. Properties valued between $1,000,000 and $4,999,999 are assessed a penalty of $5,000. For values between $5,000,000 and $9,999,999, the fine is $20,000. Properties valued between $10,000,000 and $14,999,999 receive a fine of $40,000, and properties valued at greater than $25,000,000 are fined $100,000.

Building owners, as well as not-for-profits, are advised to be compliant as it relates to either the RPIE or Claim of Exclusion filing obligation.

About Ryan

Ryan is an award-winning global tax services firm, with the largest indirect and property tax practices in North America and the seventh largest corporate tax practice in the United States. With global headquarters in Dallas, Texas, the Firm provides a comprehensive range of state, local, federal, and international tax advisory and consulting services on a multi-jurisdictional basis, including audit defense, tax recovery, credits and incentives, tax process improvement and automation, tax appeals, tax compliance, and strategic planning. Ryan is a five-time recipient of the International Service Excellence Award from the Customer Service Institute of America (CSIA) for its commitment to world-class client service. Empowered by the dynamic myRyan work environment, which is widely recognized as the most innovative in the tax services industry, Ryan's multi-disciplinary team of more than 2,100 professionals and associates serves over 12,000 clients in more than 40 countries, including many of the world's most prominent Global 5000 companies. More information about Ryan can be found at ryan.com.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160125/325377LOGO

TECHNICAL INFORMATION CONTACTS:

Michael Allen

Principal

Ryan

703.746.0022

[email protected]

Ted Kuch

Director

Ryan

212.871.3901

[email protected]

SOURCE Ryan

Related Links

http://www.ryan.com


HALIFAX, Nova Scotia and SHENZHEN, China, Sept. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, the Canadian Province of Nova Scotia launched a new international seafood brand to market their premium seafood in global markets.

"Nova Scotia leads the world for high quality fish and seafood, such as lobster and sea cucumbers, all harvested from the cold and pristine waters of the Atlantic Ocean," said Nova Scotia Premier Stephen McNeil. "Nova Scotia is Canada's number one exporter of seafood."

China is a priority market for Nova Scotia, as seafood exports have grown from $14 million in 2009 to $208 million in 2015.

"Nova Scotia seafood is highly sought-after for its wild, premium quality products, exceptional food safety standards, and unmatched taste," said Nova Scotia Fisheries and Aquaculture Minister, Keith Colwell. "Our seafood is handled with the utmost care every step of the way  from the boats to the dock and our processing plants, we ensure it tastes as fresh as the day it was caught."

Nova Scotia is home to a diverse range of superior quality seafood and value added products. The superior flavor of Nova Scotia seafood is prized around the world. Their flavor and premium quality result from the icy temperatures of the surrounding Atlantic Ocean.

Premier Stephen McNeil joins Fisheries and Aquaculture Minister Keith Colwell to launch the new brand in China. The Province of Nova Scotia is hosting a media launch event, today, at the Four Seasons Hotel in Shenzhen to mark the official announcement.

The brand is designed to raise the value and awareness of Nova Scotia seafood through retail, foodservice, and online promotions; marketing collateral; inbound missions for members of the overseas trade and press; trade shows; outbound trade missions and advertising.

Nova Scotia seafood's new mark is inspired by nautical design with clean lines and clear type. The coordinates, 45 north 63 west, are the center point in the Province. These aren't mere numbers. Not any spot on the map. This is Nova Scotia's code. A little removed from the rest, but connected to the world by the waters of the Atlantic. Nova Scotia Seafood is as pure as the place it comes from.

"With the Nova Scotia Seafood International Brand, it has never been easier for retailers, chefs, and consumers to source premium quality seafood from Nova Scotia," said Minister Colwell.

To learn more visit: www.NSseafood.com

Contact:

Amanda Langley

[email protected]

902-266-8240

This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com

SOURCE Nova Scotia Seafood
ARLINGTON, Va., Sept. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The National Tank Truck Carriers, Inc. (NTTC) is pleased to announce a significant three-year sponsorship extension with Baldwin & Lyons, Inc. in support of NTTC's first-class Professional Tank Truck Driver of the Year Program (PTTDOY). This premier award recognizes those professional tank truck drivers, and independent contractors, who serve the industry with the safest, most reliable transportation of liquid and dry bulk commodities. NTTC, with the continuous commitment of Baldwin & Lyons, parent company of Protective Insurance Company, has recognized twenty-four Professional Tank Truck Driver Champions, and three Professional Tank Truck Driver Grand Champions since the 2013-2014 contest year.

"We are very excited about the continued relationship with our partners at Baldwin & Lyons," said NTTC President Daniel R. Furth. "NTTC's mission in championing safety and education through advocacy in the tank truck community particularly resonates within the Professional Tank Truck Driver of the Year Program. Recognizing these drivers, who are the backbone of our industry, would not be possible without the tremendous support of Baldwin & Lyons."

Baldwin & Lyons' Vice President of Sales Jeffrey Silvey commented: "We are thrilled to continue our partnership with NTTC as there is a strong alignment between Baldwin & Lyons' and NTTC's commitment to recognize the best-in-class professional drivers which serve the tank truck industry. Baldwin & Lyons and Protective are proud to help establish and continue such a prestigious award."

At the NTTC's recent Board meeting in August, former Board chairman Dean Kaplan of Toledo-based K-Limited Carrier, Ltd. was selected by NTTC's Executive Committee to serve as the association's first contest committee chair to oversee the association's recognition programs, including the PTTDOY award and the Outstanding Safety Performance Awards, to ensure high quality programming, continuous improvement and ongoing carrier engagement. Dean Kaplan noted, "Without the strong support of loyal sponsors like B&L, we simply could not achieve our goal of highlighting our drivers' commitment to safety throughout our industry and I thank B&L's entire management team for sharing our mission."

Contest application materials for the 2016  2017 Professional Tank Truck Driver of the Year Contest can be found on the NTTC website here.

About NTTC

The National Tank Truck Carriers, Inc. has represented the tank truck industry before Congress and various federal agencies since its founding in 1945. NTTC's membership is comprised of over 600 companies that specialize in bulk transportation services by cargo tank throughout North America. The tank truck industry generates roughly 5.1% of all truck freight revenue, but that represents 25.6% of all truck freight in terms of tonnage due to the heavy nature of the liquid bulk products we handle.

About Baldwin & Lyons

Baldwin & Lyons, parent company of Protective, was founded in 1930 and specializes in marketing and underwriting insurance for the transportation industry. Today, Baldwin, based in Carmel, Ind., is a diversified holding company with seven different operating entities within its structure. Protective is licensed in 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and all Canadian provinces and provides leading coverage for trucking fleets of all sizes as well as coverages for independent contractors within the trucking industry. Protective also offers a public transportation insurance program that provides comprehensive coverage for charter and tour bus companies, school bus contractors and limousine services.

SOURCE National Tank Truck Carriers, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.tanktruck.org/


PORTLAND, Ore., Sept. 8, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today, First Liberty Institute and Boyden Gray, former White House Counsel for President George H. W. Bush, filed a reply brief with the Oregon Court of Appeals on behalf of Aaron and Melissa Klein. The Oregon couple was fined $135,000 and lost their bakery for running their business according to their religious beliefs. Read the reply brief

In the brief, the attorneys challenge the Bureau of Labor and Industries argument that the government can compel citizens to create art and engage in speech that goes against their beliefs. They contend that if the court allows the final order against the Kleins to stand, the court will be putting a stamp of approval on the idea that the government can force artists to celebrate causes that violate their conscience.

"Should the government force Catholics to sculpt totems for Wiccan rituals, or feminists to photograph fraternity initiations, or pro-life videographers to film an abortion? Of course not," Kelly Shackelford, President and CEO of First Liberty Institute, says. "No one should be forced to contribute to the celebration of an idea that goes against his or her beliefs."

In 2013, a woman asked the Kleins for a custom-made cake for her same-sex wedding. Aaron and Melissa had served the women before, but as devout Christians, they believed that participating in the wedding celebration would violate their faith, so they declined to design and create the custom cake. The Oregon government responded by punishing them with a $135,000 penalty, forcing the Kleins to shut down their bakery.

The Kleins' attorneys contend that the government has violated the Kleins' constitutional freedoms.

"The First Amendment prohibits government compulsion of art and of speech," Boyden Gray, former ambassador to the European Union and founding partner of Boyden Gray and Associates, says. "We must ensure that freedom of speech and religious expression is preserved for all Americans."

Read more about the Kleins' case at FirstLiberty.org/Kleins

About First Liberty Institute

First Liberty Institute is the largest legal organization in the nation dedicated exclusively to defending religious freedom for all Americans.

SOURCE First Liberty Institute

Related Links

http://FirstLiberty.org


BRISBANE, Australia, Sept. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- OtherLevels Holdings Limited (ASX: OLV, "OtherLevels" or the "Company"), a leader in cross-channel marketing and engagement, today announced the release of OtherLevels 2  the next generation of the OtherLevels marketing automation platform. OtherLevels 2 completely redefines how marketers create messages and campaigns, enabling them to leverage 8 different messaging formats, and reach their audience across mobile, tablet and PC devices.

OtherLevels is already used by brands and publishers to deliver rich, relevant and personalised message experiences. OtherLevels 2 enables marketers to spend more time on their campaigns and content, and reduces the time spent on maximising audience reach. It leverages big data to greatly enhance its intelligent messaging capability, and optimise the delivery of content to end users' preferred channel, thus increasing the likelihood of engagement. With OtherLevels 2, marketers have the ability to automatically and precisely target their audience with the optimum message format including app push, web push and local push notifications, interstitials, in-app rich messaging, SMS and email.

"OtherLevels furthers its position as a leader in digital omni-channel marketing technology with the launch of OtherLevels 2," said Brendan O'Kane, CEO of OtherLevels. "Intelligent data driven marketing automation is the critical element in enabling marketers to focus on campaign content and maximise outcomes, rather than how to reach their audience. OtherLevels 2 delivers on this promise."

"OtherLevels 2 allows us to reach our customers wherever they are  across mobile or the web  and increase engagement through very targeted messaging, driving new levels of retention, engagement, and loyalty across our existing customer base," said James Shaw, Chief Marketing Officer.

About OtherLevels

OtherLevels is a leading second-generation digital marketing platform with offices in San Francisco, London, Brisbane and Melbourne. OtherLevels is at the forefront of the enterprise marketing transformation being driven by the massive shift to mobile.

The OtherLevels digital marketing platform enables marketers to engage and retain their audience across desktop, mobile web and apps. OtherLevels' capabilities in these areas were recognised via inclusion in the prominent industry report Vendor Landscape: Mobile Engagement Automation Solutions developed by Forrester, one of the most influential research and advisory firms in the world. OtherLevels is used by leading global and Australian brands including InterContinental Hotels, Ladbrokes, Camelot (the UK National Lottery), Tatts and Yarra Trams. For further information, visit: www.otherlevels.com

Media Contact:

Brendan O'Kane

Managing Director and CEO

OtherLevels

[email protected]

Peter Harding-Smith

CFO and Company Secretary

OtherLevels

[email protected]

ThinkInk PR

Nikkia Griffin

1-305-749-5342 ext. 239

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160908/405912LOGO

SOURCE OtherLevels

Related Links

http://www.otherlevels.com


MEMPHIS, Tennessee, September 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Platinum Pari-Mutuel (OTC: PPMH) is proud to announce that its search for a strong, professional, and proven CFO has come to completion. PPMH has been able to secure Mr. John Miller, a former CFO at FedEx (Federal Express), to hold the positions of Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

Paul Baioni, CEO of PPMH stated, "From the first time we met, I have wanted John Miller to join our management team. During recent discussions with a company for potential acquisition, I had the opportunity to work directly with John. I believe his professionalism, knowledge, and expertise will be of great benefit to PPMH as we expand our public presence."

Mr. Miller has extensive senior management experience helping corporations realize business opportunities, successfully confront market challenges, and create shareholder and corporate value. He has provided executive leadership to help position companies at the forefront of their industry by ensuring production efficiency, quality service and cost-effective management of resources.

In addition to holding senior executive positions in several industries, Mr. Miller was also former Senior Vice President of Federal Express. He started at FedEx during their start-up phase and spent over 14 years there including holding the position of Chief Financial Officer. Mr. Miller was instrumental in various funding initiatives for Federal Express and was part of the management team that took the company public and listed it on the New York Stock Exchange. His experience also includes assignments with other exceptional international and domestic companies, private and public, in diverse industries. Earlier in his career, he was one of the youngest division controllers in the history of Ford Motor Company. Mr. Miller is a graduate of The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Paul Baioni added, "As we continue to position ourselves over the next several months, John will be instrumental through his assistance with the growth of our company and its products. He indicated to me that he looks forward to the opportunity to work with a start-up that has the potential he sees at PPMH. Once again, I am extremely excited that a man of his caliber, who has held senior management positions with industry leaders like FedEx and Ford, among others, will be joining our team."

Platinum Pari-Mutuel will continue to provide information to its shareholders and the public, as appropriate or necessary, through its soon to be redesigned internet presence http://www.PPMHinc.com

Disclaimer

This release contains forward-looking statements that are based on beliefs of Platinum Pari-Mutuel Holdings management and reflect Platinum Pari-Mutuel Holdings current expectations as contemplated under section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and section 21E of the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. When we use in this release the words "estimate," "project," "believe," "anticipate," "intend," "expect," "plan," "predict," "may," "should," "will," "can," the negative of these words, or such other variations thereon, or comparable terminology, are all intended to identify forward looking statements. Such statements reflect the current views of Platinum Pari-Mutuel Holdings with respect to future events based on currently available information and are subject to numerous assumptions, risks and uncertainties, including but not limited to, risks and uncertainties pertaining to development of a salable market, changes in economic conditions and other risks, uncertainties and factors, which may cause the actual results, performance, or achievement expressed or implied by such forward looking statements to differ materially from the forward looking statements. The information contained in this press release is historical in nature, has not been updated, and is current only to the date shown in this press release. This information may no longer be accurate and therefore you should not rely on the information contained in this press release. To the extent permitted by law, Platinum Pari-Mutuel Holdings and its employees, agents and consultants exclude all liability for any loss or damage arising from the use of, or reliance on, any such information, whether or not caused by any negligent act or omission. This press release might incorporate by reference the Company's filings and other reports. Investors are encouraged to review all filings. There is no assurance Platinum Pari-Mutuel Holdings will identify projects of merit or if it will have sufficient financing to implement its business plan. There is no assurance that the Company's due diligence on the acquisitions assets, companies, and projects will be favorable nor that definitive terms can be negotiated. Information in this release includes representations from the private companies referred to which has not been independently verified by the company. A downturn in the market would affect the potential profitability of the proposed acquisition negatively.

Contact:

Platinum Pari-Mutuel Holdings

Paul Baioni

+1-901-761-2159

www.ppmhinc.com

SOURCE Platinum Pari-Mutuel
ST. HELENA, Calif., Sept. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Wilson Daniels welcomes the renowned Valdobbiadene Prosecco-producing family Bisol into its growing import portfolio. The rich history of Bisol dates back to 1542, when the Bisol family first began cultivating grapes. Today, Gianluca Bisol has assumed the role of president and CEO while his brother, Desiderio, holds the position of chief enologist and technical director. With 500 years of winemaking tradition, Bisol produces a range of organically farmed and internationally recognized Valdobbiadene Superiore DOCG crus.

Gianluca Bisol and Desiderio Bisol in the Bisol barrel room - photo by Mattia Mionetto

Wilson Daniels represents the following wines from Bisol: Crede Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore DOCG, Valdobbiadene Superiore di Cartizze DOCG, Bisol Private Noso Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore DOCG, Bisol Eliseo Cuvee del Fondatore Millesimato Talento Classico, Molera Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore DOCG and Private Cartizze Valdobbiadene Superiore di Cartizze DOCG.

Bisol's second selection of wines, Jeio, is sourced from specific plots located on the steep slopes in the appellation and is dedicated to the patriarch of the family, Desiderio Bisol, who was known to his wife by that name. From Jeio Wilson Daniels represents: Brut Prosecco DOC and Cuvee Rose Brut.

"The power of Prosecco lies in its capacity to become, not a status symbol, but a lifestyle symbol: in fact, our Prosecco is fine, modern, versatile and sustainable," says Gianluca. "Our partnership with Wilson Daniels will ensure that this Italian style of living is conveyed to the US market."

The Bisol family cultivates more than 20 vineyards located in the best-suited areas for wine production, including the renowned Cartizze hill. A superior focus on promoting vine health through environmentally sustainable techniques is at the forefront of Bisol's viticulture methodology. In the cellar, vinification is completed so as to maintain the different expressions of the unique sites and soils.

"Chartice"  today's prestigious Cartizze hill  is considered to be of the highest quality, or even the grand cru of Prosecco. The Cartizze zone is a single commune and the Bisol family has taken advantage of the rich soils, slopes and vineyard exposure  known as "terra"  to capture the soul and spirit of Prosecco. The terra is directly responsible for the quality in Bisol's superior DOCG cru wines.

"The Bisol name and family are deeply connected to the rich history of the region and the sparkling wine produced there," says Wilson Daniels president Rocco Lombardo. "As engaged as we are in France, Wilson Daniels is making further advancement in Italy. Bisol's impressive wines make this new partnership a natural fit for our import portfolio."

About Wilson Daniels

Founded in 1978, Wilson Daniels is a family-owned importer and marketer representing a portfolio of luxury wines and spirits. Based in Napa Valley, Wilson Daniels upholds the high standards set by founders Win Wilson and Jack Daniels  with a keen focus on long-term strategic partnerships with family-owned and operated properties that possess a profound respect for terroir.

To learn more  www.wilsondaniels.com.

Contact: Jennifer Brown

Phone: 707.967.1827 | 707.478.5152

Email: [email protected]

Photo- http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160908/405756

SOURCE Wilson Daniels

Related Links

http://www.wilsondaniels.com


DALLAS, Sept. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Securus Technologies, a leading provider of civil and criminal justice technology solutions for public safety, investigation, corrections and monitoring, announced today that it engaged three (3) independent consulting firms to analyze its patent portfolio against the patent portfolio of Global Tel*Link (GTL), and is presenting the results of those studies today.

"We issued a formal 'Patent Portfolio Bake Off' Challenge to GTL that went unanswered so we did something that was even better, I believe," said Richard A. ("Rick") Smith, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Securus Technologies.

"We used our outside counsel to engage three (3) independent, well-known, intellectual property consulting firms to compare and contrast our patent portfolio with GTL's patent portfolio. Outside counsel did not disclose who their client was, so the comparison was independent, intellectually honest, and non-biased," said Smith. "Counsel didn't even tell the consulting firms what the list of patents was for each company. Securus didn't provide any help or assistance to aid their analysis at all."

The key findings of the studies are provided below:

Study Key Findings Study 1  Securus' worldwide active patent portfolio is 1.8X the size of GTL's

 Securus has over 2X more US based grants than GTL

 Securus has more filings than GTL in every jurisdiction common to both parties

 Securus' portfolio is cited 5X more than GTL by other parties

 Securus' portfolio was developed over a longer period of time

 GTL cites Securus' portfolio 10X more than Securus cites GTL patents

 Securus has 3X the number of US grants ranked "excellent" and "good"

 Securus has more US grants ranked "excellent" and "good" than GTL in every technology category

 Securus' US portfolio covers a broader range of technologies than GTL's



Study 2 (Innography Analysis) Innography is widely used in the patent industry as a way to measure patent strength in an environment of litigation. Think of Innography as a measurement of a patent portfolio's "value" in a litigation environment. Innography measures these components:







 Age of patent  Number of citations



 Remaining life  Number of claims



 Published year  Patent strength score



 Year filed  Number of inventors



 Relevance  Jurisdiction (country)



 Number of patents  And more





 Based on the above Innography Analysis, Securus had over 4 times as many patents in the 70100th percentile as GTL did which represents patents of the greatest strength. So, Securus is the clear winner in Study 2.



Study 3 This patent portfolio analysis reviews these components:







 Number of patents  Patent overall scores



 Assignee analysis  Litigation analysis



 Priority, filing and publication trend  Patent classification



 Geographical presence











 Based on the above components, the cumulative Securus score was 6820 versus the GTL score of 3225. So again, Securus was the clear winner in Study 3.

"The three (3) independent patent portfolio analyses clearly show that by virtually any qualitative or quantitative measurement, Securus' patent portfolio is much stronger, broader, and valuable than the other company's portfolio," Smith said.

"We did this work, spent this time, and paid a significant amount of money to make clear to everyone that you can use the legal system to cloud facts for a while, but the truth on the superior numbers and value of our patent portfolio will eventually prevail," concluded Smith.

ABOUT SECURUS TECHNOLOGIES

Headquartered in Dallas, Texas, and serving more than 3,450 public safety, law enforcement and corrections agencies and over 1,200,000 inmates across North America, Securus Technologies is committed to serve and connect by providing emergency response, incident management, public information, investigation, biometric analysis, communication, information management, inmate self-service, and monitoring products and services in order to make our world a safer place to live. Securus Technologies focuses on connecting what matters. To learn more about our full suite of civil and criminal justice technology solutions, please visit SecurusTechnologies.com.

Logo- http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20100831/DA57799LOGO

SOURCE Securus Technologies, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.securustechnologies.com


NEW YORK, Sept. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Pomerantz LLP is investigating claims on behalf of investors of Pure Storage, Inc. ("Pure Storage" or the Company) (NYSE: PSTG). Such investors are advised to contact Robert S. Willoughby at [email protected] or 888-476-6529, ext. 9980.

[Click here to join a class action]

The investigation concerns whether Pure Storage and certain of its officers and/or directors have violated Sections 10(b) and 20(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.

On or about October 7, 2015, Pure Storage priced the Company's initial public offering ("IPO") at $17 per share, filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission the final prospectus for the IPO, and sold 28.75 million shares of the Company's common stock to the investing public. On September 7, 2016, just 11 months after the IPO, Pure Storage stock closed at $12.54, a decline of more than 26% from the offering price.

The Pomerantz Firm, with offices in New York, Chicago, Florida, and Los Angeles, is acknowledged as one of the premier firms in the areas of corporate, securities, and antitrust class litigation. Founded by the late Abraham L. Pomerantz, known as the dean of the class action bar, the Pomerantz Firm pioneered the field of securities class actions. Today, more than 80 years later, the Pomerantz Firm continues in the tradition he established, fighting for the rights of the victims of securities fraud, breaches of fiduciary duty, and corporate misconduct. The Firm has recovered numerous multimillion-dollar damages awards on behalf of class members. See www.pomerantzlaw.com

CONTACT:

Robert S. Willoughby

Pomerantz LLP

[email protected]

SOURCE Pomerantz LLP

Related Links

http://www.pomerantzlaw.com


Source Intelligence was named a Company of the Year for information technology software. In addition, Chief Business Officer Lina Ramos was named Best Woman Entrepreneur of the year and Matt Thorn, Chief Operating Officer and co-founder, was honored as one of the Most Innovative Executives of the year.

The latest awards continue a string of honors recognizing Source Intelligence's superior platform and strong management. SI recently earned "2016 Product of the Year" from the prestigious Environmental Leader news organization.

"We are proud to be recognized by our peers as an innovator, a leader and for developing and expanding a very robust technology," said Jess Kraus, CEO of Source Intelligence. "I salute our honorees and the entire SI team for our enterprise spirit, a strong commitment to excellence and continuing to build upon our excellent customer service."

About Source Intelligence

Source Intelligence (SI) is a global network of businesses linked together to expedite the exchange and validation of compliance information. SI's cloud-based SaaS platform helps customers make informed decisions about business partners to offer products that meet legal, ethical, and environmental standards. The company's information and analytics platform provides customers with visibility into supply chains in order to comply with the law, minimize operational and brand risk, and improve efficiency. Founded in 2009 by career experts in environmental solutions and analytics, Source Intelligence has headquarters in Carlsbad, California and operations worldwide. SI has received multiple awards, including "2016 Product of the Year" by Environmental Leader, the "2015 GRC Innovation Award" by analyst firm GRC 20/20, "Most Promising Supply Chain Tech Solution Provider for 2014 and 2015" by CIO Review, and CEO Jess Kraus was recently named "CEO of the Year" by CIO Review.

Source Intelligence Contact:

Lina Ramos, Chief Business Officer

760-232-4087

[email protected]

Video - https://youtu.be/N-Ab2trk6Ak

SOURCE Source Intelligence

Related Links

http://www.sourceintelligence.com


"I am pleased that we have reached this tentative agreement which, if ratified, will allow us to continue rewarding the many contributions that our Flight Attendants make to the success of Southwest Airlines," said Sonya Lacore, Vice President Cabin Services. "I am grateful for the collaboration of the negotiating teams who worked together to reach an agreement that supports our Flight Attendants and our airline."

Dates for the ratification vote by Flight Attendants and other details have not been released.

ABOUT SOUTHWEST AIRLINES CO.

In its 46th year of service, Dallas-based Southwest Airlines (NYSE: LUV) continues to differentiate itself from other air carriers with exemplary Customer Service delivered by more than 52,000 Employees to more than 100 million Customers annually. Southwest operates more than 3,900 departures a day during peak travel season across a network of 98 destinations in the United States and seven additional countries with service to three airports in Cuba expected to begin later this year, subject to governmental approvals.

Based on the U.S. Department of Transportation's most recent data, Southwest Airlines is the nation's largest carrier in terms of originating domestic passengers boarded. The Company operates the largest fleet of Boeing aircraft in the world, the majority of which are equipped with satellite-based WiFi providing gate-to-gate connectivity. That connectivity enables Customers to use their personal devices to view video on-demand movies and television shows, as well as more than 20 channels of free, live TV compliments of our valued Partners. Southwest created Transfarency, a philosophy which treats Customers honestly and fairly, and in which low fares actually stay low. Southwest is the only major U.S. airline to offer bags fly free to everyone (first and second checked pieces of luggage, size and weight limits apply, some airlines may allow free checked bags on select routes or for qualified circumstances), and there are no change fees, though fare differences might apply. The airline proudly unveiled a bold new look: Heart. A new logo, aircraft livery, interior design featuring a new seat and Flight Attendant galley, Employee-designed uniforms, and an updated airport experience all showcase the dedication of Southwest Employees who connect Customers with what's important in their lives.

From its first flights on June 18, 1971, Southwest Airlines launched an era of unprecedented affordability in air travel described by the U.S. Department of Transportation as "The Southwest Effect," a lowering of fares and increase in passenger traffic whenever the carrier enters new markets. With 43 consecutive years of profitability, Southwest is one of the most honored airlines in the world, known for a triple bottom line approach that contributes to the carrier's performance and productivity, the importance of its People and the communities they serve, and an overall commitment to efficiency and the planet. The 2015 Southwest Airlines One Report can be found at SouthwestOneReport.com.

Book Southwest Airlines' low fares online at Southwest.com or by phone at 800-I-FLY-SWA.

SOURCE Southwest Airlines Co.

Related Links

http://www.southwest.com


NEW YORK, Sept. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- WeissLaw LLP is investigating possible breaches of fiduciary duty and other violations of law by the Board of Directors of Spectra Energy Corp. ("SE" or the "Company") in connection with the proposed acquisition of the Company by Enbridge Inc. ("Enbridge"). On September 6, 2016, the Company announced that it had reached a definitive agreement for Enbridge to acquire all outstanding shares of SE in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately $28 billion. Under the terms of the agreement, SE shareholders will receive 0.984 of a share of the newly combined company for each SE share they own, representing consideration of $40.33 per share.

WeissLaw is investigating whether SE's Board acted to maximize shareholder value prior to entering into the agreement. Notably, at least one analyst set a target price of $55.00 per share, or nearly $15.00 above the offer price. Additionally, upon completion of the transaction, Enbridge can expect annual growth in dividends payments of 10%-12% through at least 2024.

Given these facts, WeissLaw is investigating the Board of Directors' decision to sell SE and whether SE shareholders will obtain their fair and proportionate share of the Company's continued success and future growth prospects. If you own SE shares and would like more information about your rights or our investigation, or if you have information to share with us, please contact Joshua Rubin by telephone at (888) 593-4771 or by email at [email protected].

WeissLaw LLP has litigated hundreds of stockholder class and derivative actions for violations of corporate and fiduciary duties. We have recovered over a billion dollars for defrauded clients and obtained important corporate governance relief in many of these cases. If you have information or would like legal advice concerning possible corporate wrongdoing (including insider trading, waste of corporate assets, accounting fraud, or materially misleading information), consumer fraud (including false advertising, defective products, or other deceptive business practices), or anti-trust violations, please email us at [email protected] or fill out the form on our website, http://www.weisslawllp.com/contact/report_fraud/.

SOURCE WeissLaw LLP

Related Links

http://www.weisslurie.com


TAMPA, Fla., Sept. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The Florida Law Group is excited to announce that Attorney Andrew Wellman is the newest member of our growing team.

Mr. Wellman is a graduate of the University of New Hampshire School of Law. During his time in school, he participated in the Intellectual Property Summer Institute. He also holds an undergraduate degree in Criminology with a minor in Technical writing from the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee.

Mr. Wellman has formerly worked as a Pro Bono Researcher for the National Clearinghouse for Science, Technology & the Law, as well as an Independent Contractor at Global Edge Media and a Research Assistant for Stetson University School of Law.

Experienced and committed, Mr. Wellman is passionate about protecting the rights of victims of serious accidents caused by negligent individuals. Wellman diligently examines every aspect of his cases in order to obtain the highest settlement possible on behalf of his clients.

In addition to his flourishing legal career, Mr. Wellman is a well-known novelist. His book Alice has recently been adapted to film.

To get in touch with Attorney Andrew Wellman or another attorney at The Florida Law Group, please call (813) 513-9537.

The Florida Law Group has obtained millions of dollars in recoveries and settlements on behalf of personal injury and medical malpractice victims in Florida. Based in Tampa, the firm handles the full range of personal injury cases, including auto accidents, premises liability, dangerous drugs and medical devices, bicycle accidents, wrongful death, and more. Learn more about the firm and schedule your free consultation when you visit www.thefloridalawgroup.com.

SOURCE The Florida Law Group

Related Links

http://www.thefloridalawgroup.com


WASHINGTON, Sept. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today, September 9, 2016, marks the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson's signing of the National Highway Traffic Safety Act, a result of Ralph Nader's landmark book Unsafe at Any Speed, which was published the previous year. The book opened with the faulty rear suspension system of the General Motors Corvair, This defect could cause the Corvair to skid violently and roll over. The corporate negligence that had produced the various Corvair defects, Nader said, was "one of the greatest acts of industrial irresponsibility." More broadly, Unsafe at Any Speed documented how Detroit habitually subordinated safety to style and marketing concerns. The main cause of automobile occupant injuries, Nader demonstrated, was not the "nut behind the wheel" so often blamed by the auto industry, but the inherent engineering and design deficiencies of motor vehicles that were woefully unsafe, especially in terms of "crashworthiness"no seat belts, etc.

At the signing, President Johnson said, "I am proud of the 89th Congress, which took my proposals and brought forth these laws. And I'm proud at this moment to sign these billswhich promise, in the years to come, to cure the highway disease, to end the years of horror and give us hope."

The publication of Unsafe at Any Speed led to GM's contemptible investigation by private detectives and attempts to smear Nader, GM's subsequent public apology at a Senate hearing, and ultimately the 1966 auto and highway safety laws that have saved countless lives and profoundly accelerated the pace of auto safety innovation.

On March 22, 1966 at a Senate hearing chaired by Senator Ribicoff, James M. Roche, the President of GM, apologized to Nader saying:

As president of General Motors, I hold myself fully responsible for any action authorized or initiated by any officer of the corporation which may have had any bearing on the incidents related to our investigation of Mr. NaderWhile there can be no disagreement over General Motors' legal right to ascertain necessary facts preparatory to litigationI am not here to excuse, condone, or justify in any way our investigating Mr. Nader. To the extent that General Motors bears responsibility, I want to apologize here and now to the members of this subcommittee and Mr. Nader. I sincerely hope that these apologies will be accepted. Certainly I bear Nader no ill will.

This episode catapulted auto safety into the public spotlight, leading to a series of landmark laws that have prevented millions of motor vehicle-related deaths and injuries. In particular, the publication of Unsafe at Any Speed put forces in motion that brought about the passage of the law that created the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in order to assert federal leadership in auto and highway safety. The agency was empowered to set minimum, uniform safety performance and eventually fuel efficiency standards for all motor vehicles, and to require automakers to notify owners and recall cars containing safety-related defects. The episode also cemented Nader in the public mind as a fierce, incorruptible advocate and watchdog, a reputation that launched one of the most singular and enduring roles in American politics. Nader has used his considerable talents as an organizer, activist, legal analyst, and author to rally public opinion, start many citizen initiatives, and push through hundreds of reforms in business, government, and various professions.

In November of 1966, Ralph Nader's lawyer, Stuart Speiser, filed suit against GM for its harassment, invasion of privacy, attempted intimidation, and other nefarious actions. In 1970, GM settled with Nader, agreeing to pay him $425,000, which he used to found several public interest organizations. Newsweek remarked that this settlement will in effect serve as "General Motors' contribution to the consumer movement. They are going to be financing their own ombudsman."

This prediction proved to be true; Nader went on to found a wide variety of organizations, all aimed at advancing corporate and government accountability. Nader-inspired groups include Public Citizen, the Center for Auto Safety, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, the Clean Water Action Project, the Pension Rights Center, the Princeton Alumni Corps, and the Appleseed Foundationa nonprofit network of 17 public interest justice centers.

In addition, Nader conceived and helped establish the state-based PIRGsPublic Interest Research Groupswhich are consumer organizations that function on college campuses and in communities in 23 states. The PIRGs have published hundreds of ground-breaking reports and guides, lobbied for laws in their state legislatures, and called the media's attention to consumer, environmental, and energy problems. Many other non-profit advocacy groups followed in the wake of these Nader-inspired organizations.

Nader also played a pivotal role in advancing and improving several major federal consumer protection laws such as the motor vehicle safety laws, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Pure Food and Drug Act, the Clean Air Act, and the landmark Freedom of Information Act, and he worked tirelessly to launch federal regulatory agencies such as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).

An author, lecturer, attorney, and political activist, Nader's life-long work and advocacy has led to safer cars, healthier food, safer drugs, cleaner air and drinking water, and safer work environments. In 2006 he was cited by The Atlantic as one of the one hundred most influential figures in American history, TIME Magazine has called him the "U.S.'s toughest customer," the New York Times has said of him that "[w]hat sets Nader apart is that he has moved beyond social criticism to effective political action," and in 1974, a survey conducted by U.S. News and World Report rated him as the fourth most influential person in the United States.

In September of 2015, Nader received extensive media coverage for his newest project: the American Museum of Tort Law in Winsted, Connecticutthe first law museum in America.

Nader continues to work relentlessly to advance meaningful civic institutions and citizen participation as an antidote to corporate and government unaccountability. In light of recent revelations about Volkswagen's deceptive skirting of emissions tests, Nader's work is again proving its centrality in consumer advocacy. Not only did the publication of Unsafe at Any Speed spur the creation of many necessary organizations, it also provided a fundamental framework for protecting citizens from corporate malfeasance.

As we continue to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary year of the publication of Unsafe at Any Speed, we should reflect, on this day, on the victories of past struggles by a small number of pioneers reflecting public opinion, which remind us again and again how it is easier than you think to break through power.

As part of these celebrations, later this month, from September 26th to the 29th, the Center for Study of Responsive Law will be hosting an unprecedented civic mobilization in Washington, DC, in which leading activists, scholars, union leaders and civil justice lawyers will present the challenges, and strategize towards attaining future successes in creating a more just society. For more information on this four-day event, please visit breakingthroughpower.org, where you can find a detailed agenda, a list of speakers, and information on obtaining tickets and scholarships.

SOURCE Ralph Nader/Center for Study of Responsive Law
NEW YORK, Sept. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- LRN, a leader in Ethics & Compliance knowledge solutions and advisory services, announced today that recently retired three-star Lieutenant General (R) Mick Bednarek will join its Advisory Practice.

In an advisory role, Lieutenant General Bednarek will bring valuable perspectives and leadership experience gained over his nearly 40 years of military service to the LRN partner community, where he will contribute to LRN's work in values-based leadership development.

Lieutenant General (R) Mick Bednarek

"Mick's admirable journey of service and commitment to values-based leadership fit authentically with LRN's core mission of fostering ethical cultures and inspiring principled performance in organizations," said Dov Seidman, CEO and Founder of LRN.

Lieutenant General Bednarek retired from the U.S. Army in 2015. He has served in a wide variety of senior command and staff positions in the United States, Middle East, Europe, and the Pacific. He has commanded at every echelon, from company to Army level, culminating in command of First United States Army, responsible for the training and readiness of our Nations Guard and Reserve Forces for worldwide deployment.

Most recently, he served 26 months as the Senior Defense Official in Iraq and Chief of the Office of Security Cooperation in Baghdad. In this capacity he coordinated Security Cooperation and Security Assistance activities to strengthen the strategic partnership and promote a unified, democratic, stable, self-reliant, and regionally integrated Iraq.

During his 26 months there, Iraq witnessed the fragile stability of institutional security, a democratic national election, the invasion of ISIL and collapse of the Iraqi Security Forces, the transition of government, and the initiation of the Combined Joint Task Force in support of the global coalition for the ongoing war fight.

"In my four decades of service, whether leading teams of 50 or tens of thousands, I've learned that inspiring people to do the right thing is the key to success. At LRN, I look forward to collaborating on this values-based approach to help make great organizations even better," said Bednarek.

Lieutenant General Bednarek's awards and decorations include two Defense Superior Service Medals, six awards of the Legion of Merit, the Department of State Meritorious Honor Award, and multiple other individual and unit level awards.

He and his wife Holly currently reside in Arlington Virginia.

About LRN

Since 1994, LRN has helped over 20 million people at more than 700 companies worldwide simultaneously navigate complex legal and regulatory environments and foster ethical cultures. LRN's combination of practical tools, education, and strategic advice helps companies translate their values into concrete corporate practices and leadership behaviors that create sustainable competitive advantage. In partnership with LRN, companies need not choose between living principles and maximizing profits, or between enhancing reputation and growing revenue: all are a product of principled performance. As a global company, LRN works with organizations in more than 100 countries. www.lrn.com

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SOURCE LRN

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LONDON, Sept. 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The toiletries industry includes companies involved in preparing, blending, compounding, and packaging toiletries. The products that are classified as toiletries include perfumes, shaving preparations, hair preparations, face creams, lotions, sunscreens and other cosmetics. These products are used for cleansing, beautifying, and improving attractiveness and appearance of the human body. For instance, face creams and lotions are used for protection from dust and sunlight, cosmetics are used for beautification, and perfumes and deodorants are used to prevent bad odours.



The toiletries or toilet preparation market was the ninth largest in the chemicals market in 2015 at $XX billionn or $XX billion.



Europe was the largest geographic market in the toiletries market in 2015, accounting for $XX billion or XX% of the global market. Europe is the largest market because of increasing income levels, high advertising spend and high awareness about toiletries and new products development carried out by the major brand manufacturers. Asia was the second largest geographic market, accounting for $XX billion or XX% of the global market. The Americas was the third largest geographic market, accounting for $XX billion or XX% of the global market.



Global per capita toiletries consumption grew from $XX in 2011 to $XX in 2015 at a CAGR of XX% and is expected to grow to $XX in 2019 at a CAGR of XX%. Per capita consumption is increasing because of an increasing consumer base, rising frequency of purchase, new product development and emerging market growth.



The demand for products with halal certified ingredients is growing. Various chemical companies are manufacturing products which comply with international halal standard HAS 23000. For example chemical company BASF announced that 145 of its products for personal care comply with international halal standard HAS 23000.

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About Reportbuyer

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For more information:

Sarah Smith

Research Advisor at Reportbuyer.com

Email: [email protected]

Tel: +44 208 816 85 48

Website: www.reportbuyer.com

SOURCE ReportBuyer

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WAYNE, N.J., Sept. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Toys"R"Us today announced the start of its Great Trade-In Car Seat Event, issuing its latest call to action for customers to rid their homes of potentially unsafe, out grown, old and second-hand car seats in exchange for a 25% savings on a new car seat in honor of September being Baby Safety Month. The event begins Friday, September 9 and continues through Sunday, October 2 at Babies"R"Us and Toys"R"Us stores across the country, with "early access" for Rewards"R"Us members beginning Tuesday, September 6. Through the Great Trade-In Car Seat Event, Toys"R"Us continues to raise awareness among parents and caregivers about ways to be proactive where children's safety is concerned.

CLICK TO TWEET: @Babiesrus #GreatTradeIn has returned! Exchange used car seats for 25% off a new one babiesrus.com/carseatradein

For the duration of the Great Trade-In Event Car Seat Event, Toys"R"Us and Babies"R"Us stores will accept any car seat in exchange for 25% savings on the purchase of a new car seat*. There is no limit to the number of items a customer can trade in. Customers who use their "R"Us Credit Card receive 30% savings. No trade-in? No problem, customers who do not have a car seat to trade in will receive 15% off a new car seat with an in-store coupon or online with promo code SEP15OFF available on Babiesrus.com/CarSeatTradeIn.

For more information about the Great Trade-In Car Seat Event, as well as safety tips from experts, stay tuned to @ToysRUsNews, the official Twitter account of the Toys"R"Us, Inc. Corporate Communications department, and the company's newsroom blog.

* Trade-in offer and 15% off coupon offer available in store. 15% off online offer SEP15OFF available only for these participating manufacturers: Graco, Chicco, Safety 1st, Britax, Baby Trend and Evenflo. Must be a regular-priced item. Trade-in and 15% discount offers do not apply to: Maxi-Cosi, Baby Jogger, Peg Perego, Cybex, clearance and Red Hot Deal Items. Cannot be combined with any other "R"Us offer for same item or on prior purchases. Credit Card offer: Subject to credit approval. Cannot be combined with account opening discount or 10% off Thursday offer. An "R"Us Credit Card must be used as pay type. Valid 9/9-10/2/16. Coupon provided in store on day of trade-in. One coupon per trade-in item. Must be surrendered at time of purchase. Value is forfeited if item is returned. Only original coupons accepted. Void where prohibited. Valid USA only. Cash value 1/100 of .01.

About Toys"R"Us, Inc.

Toys"R"Us, Inc. is the world's leading dedicated toy and baby products retailer, offering a differentiated shopping experience through its family of brands. Merchandise is sold in 893 Toys"R"Us and Babies"R"Us stores in the United States, Puerto Rico and Guam, and in more than 735 international stores and over 210 licensed stores in 36 countries and jurisdictions. In addition, it exclusively operates the legendary FAO Schwarz brand and sells extraordinary toys in the brand's flagship store on Fifth Avenue in New York City. With its strong portfolio of e-commerce sites including Toysrus.com, Babiesrus.com, eToys.com and FAO.com, it provides shoppers with a broad online selection of distinctive toy and baby products. Headquartered in Wayne, NJ, Toys"R"Us, Inc. employs approximately 70,000 associates annually worldwide. The company is committed to serving its communities as a caring and reputable neighbor through programs dedicated to keeping kids safe and helping them in times of need. Additional information about Toys"R"Us, Inc. can be found on Toysrusinc.com. Follow Toys"R"Us, Babies"R"Us and FAO Schwarz on Facebook at Facebook.com/Toysrus, Facebook.com/Babiesrus and Facebook.com/FAO and on Twitter at Twitter.com/Toysrus and Twitter.com/Babiesrus.

SOURCE Toys"R"Us, Inc.

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SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Shippo, which powers shipping for business, today announced a $7M Series A funding round led by Union Square Ventures (USV) with participation from SoftTech VC and Version One Ventures, and other Seed investors. The company also announced that 10,000 merchants are now actively using the company's popular API to ship millions of packages every month and that Albert Wenger, a partner at USV and an early investor in Twilio, has joined their board of directors.

Shipping is now being cited as one of the biggest challenges merchants must solve to thrive in today's world. The industry is fragmented with many different carrier and service options. Information about shipping is hard to come by and pricing is based on multiple criterias which are not always clear. Shippo powers shipping for business. Through a single, scalable API that is easy to integrate, businesses now have instant access to domestic and international carriers to compare shipping rates, create shipping labels, and track parcels. Along with a powerful dashboard, anyone can bring shipping to their businesses within minutes to increase productivity, cut costs, and solve any fulfillment challenge. Shippo also aggregates the shipping volume across their platform to access volume pricing for their customers.

Shippo powers shipping for a variety of customers including merchants, platforms, and marketplaces, supply chain management systems, and ERPs, so that they can focus on their core business. For instance, Shippo powers shipping for Weebly, the simple website, blog, or online store builder. Any e-commerce owner using Weebly is able to access shipping directly from their storefront.

"It's a great benefit to be able to offer Shippo as a tightly integrated part of the Weebly platform, saving our users time, money, and frustration," said Will Ranish of Weebly. "The integration has saved our merchants hours a day running their small business - to us, that's a success."

Shippo is changing the dynamics of the $300B global parcel shipping marketplace to meet the needs of the e-commerce marketplace, which is the fastest-growing trillion dollar market globally. The company was one of the first to build a modern shipping API that is easy to integrate, reduces the cost and complexity of shipping, and provides data insights that help customers ship smarter. With both the API and web-based dashboard, Shippo can work with a variety of different businesses including merchants just getting started, exponentially growing venture-backed companies, all the way to powering supply chain management systems and ERPs. Today, nearly 10,000 companies, like Mercari, GOAT, Memebox, GoDaddy, and Nurx are actively using the Shippo API to ship to 230 countries around the world.

"The world of e-commerce has made it easy for us to purchase goods from around the world--but shipping hasn't caught up," said Albert Wenger, partner, USV. "Shippo has built a critical missing piece in the e-commerce stack with a modern-day shipping solution that reduces the cost and complexity of shipping. Like Stripe for online payments and Twilio for communications, Shippo is changing the dynamics of the decades-old shipping market to raise the standards of shipping technology for modern businesses."

Shippo also announced today the hiring of several new executives including; Sin-Mei Tsai as VP of Engineering and Mikhail Ledvich as Head of Marketing. The company has also partnered with supply chain management systems such as Selro, Sellbrite, and SKULabs, as well as carrier partners like DHL eCommerce to further help customers grow and scale.

"Businesses cite shipping as one of their biggest pain points to growing their businesses. It's very difficult to integrate shipping technologies, the pricing models are opaque, and setting up a real-world operation is highly complex," said CEO and co-Founder Laura Behrens Wu. "Our shipping-as-a-service platform allows any business to access a comprehensive network of shipping providers through one API to find the best shipping service for their needs."

About Shippo

Shippo powers shipping for businesses at the center of the trillion dollar e-commerce revolution. Founded by two former e-commerce entrepreneurs, Shippo's API and dashboard provides businesses of any size the ability to build simple and cost-effective shipping operations. Businesses are able to connect with an entire network of shipping providers such as UPS, FedEx, USPS, Canada Post, DHL, and many more to compare rates and services, print shipping labels, and track packages.

Businesses powered by Shippo today include Mercari, Memebox, Weebly, GoDaddy, GOAT and Nurx. The company is based in San Francisco, and backed by investors including Union Square Ventures, SoftTech VC, Version One Ventures, FundersClub, 500 Startups, and others. For more information visit: https://goshippo.com/

Media Contact: Jaclyn Hartnett, Spark: 415.321.1897, [email protected]

SOURCE Shippo

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CAPE CANAVERAL AIR FORCE STATION, Fla., Sept. 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- A United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket carrying the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft for NASA lifted off from Space Launch Complex-41 Sept. 8 at 7:05 p.m. EDT. The Atlas V launched the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft into a hyperbolic trajectory away from Earth where it will begin a seven-year mission to return an asteroid sample. This is ULA's eighth launch in 2016 and the 111th successful launch since the company was formed in December 2006.

"We are honored to be chosen by NASA to launch this historic mission," said Laura Maginnis, ULA vice president of Custom Services. "Thank you to our NASA customer and mission partners for the outstanding teamwork and attention to detail as we successfully started OSIRIS-REx on its seven-year journey to Bennu and back."

This mission was launched aboard an Atlas V Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) 411 configuration vehicle, which includes a 4-meter large Payload Fairing (PLF). The Atlas booster for this mission was powered by the RD AMROSS RD-180 engine, and the Centaur upper stage was powered by the Aerojet Rocketdyne RL10A engine.

"ULA and our heritage vehicles have successfully launched NASA missions to every planet in our solar system," said Maginnis. "ULA's commitment to mission launch is unparalleled, and we're proud of our team for continuing our unprecedented track record of 100 percent mission success."

This mission was launched aboard an Atlas V Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) 411 configuration vehicle, which includes a 4-meter-diameter large payload fairing. The Atlas booster for this mission was powered by the RD AMROSS RD-180 engine, and the Centaur upper stage was powered by the Aerojet Rocketdyne RL10A engine.

ULA's next launch is the Atlas V WorldView-4 satellite for Lockheed Martin and DigitalGlobe. The launch is scheduled for Sept. 16 from Space Launch Complex-3 at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.

With more than a century of combined heritage, United Launch Alliance is the nation's most experienced and reliable launch service provider. ULA has successfully delivered more than 100 satellites to orbit that provide critical capabilities for troops in the field, aid meteorologists in tracking severe weather, enable personal device-based GPS navigation and unlock the mysteries of our solar system.

For more information on ULA, visit the ULA website at www.ulalaunch.com, or call the ULA Launch Hotline at 1-877-ULA-4321 (852-4321). Join the conversation at www.facebook.com/ulalaunch, twitter.com/ulalaunch and instagram.com/ulalaunch.

SOURCE United Launch Alliance

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MADISON, Wis. and MILWAUKEE and MINNEAPOLIS, Sept. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit Court affirmed a judgment in favor of NewGen for $1.48 million in damages against Safe Cig. On September 7, 2016 Circuit Court Judges M. Margaret McKeown and Sandra S. Ikuta and District Court Judge Robert W. Pratt upheld the award granted by the United States District Court for the Central District of California but dismissed NewGen's cross-appeal for additional damages. NewGen's attorneys at DeWitt Ross & Stevens were very pleased with the award. "After four long years of contentious litigation, we are very pleased that the trial court's decision was upheld," said Harry Van Camp of DeWitt.

Safe Cig hired NewGen to help market its electronic cigarettes online. As outlined in two contracts, an Affiliate Agreement and a Consulting Agreement, Safe Cig was to pay NewGen a 20% commission on all sales resulting from the referrals NewGen's online promotions generated. In addition, Safe Cig was to grant NewGen access to Safe Cig's sales records to verify commissions paid, pay NewGen for not working with any Safe Cig competitor, and pay New Gen for the actual marketing and business consulting services. NewGen filed a suit claiming Safe Cig did not uphold their contractual obligations. The district court awarded NewGen $1,483,075.84 in damages.

Safe Cig then filed two appeals claiming the damages were excessive and NewGen failed to plead diversity jurisdiction in its original complaint and prove jurisdiction prior to entry of the default judgment. NewGen, in turn, filed an amended complaint alleging that the parties were of diverse citizenship. Safe Cig then filed an answer challenging the allegations based on Safe Cig's purported lack of knowledge and information about the citizenship of its members.

The district court struck down most of Safe Cig's answers as "immaterial or impertinent" and accepted NewGen's amended allegations of diversity citizenship under 28 U.S.C. 1653 to cure the defective allegations of diversity jurisdiction, upholding the original district court's award.

Harry Van Camp, with the assistance of Deborah C. Meiners, J. Wesley Webendorfer and Susan George, represented NewGen throughout the litigation. The case was argued by Harry Van Camp in the Court of Appeals on behalf of NewGen.

About DeWitt

DeWitt is one of the ten largest law firms based in Wisconsin. It has more than 120 attorneys practicing in Madison and Metropolitan Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Minneapolis, Minnesota, in a variety of legal areas and has the experience to service clients of all scopes and sizes. The firm is known for its work in several areas, including corporate law, employment, environmental, employee benefits, government relations, health care, immigration, international, litigation, real estate, tax, estate planning, family law, personal injury, intellectual property, patents, trademarks and copyright law.

More information is available at www.dewittross.com.

SOURCE DeWitt

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SEATTLE, Sept. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Dr. Brian P. Goldstein has been named chief health system officer for UW Medicine and vice president for medical affairs at the University of Washington. He is currently the executive vice president and chief operating officer for the University of North Carolina Hospitals.

Goldstein will be responsible for overseeing the operations of the clinical entities of UW Medicine and will begin his new position in November 2016. He will report to Dr. Paul Ramsey, chief executive officer, UW Medicine, and executive vice president for medical affairs and dean of the School of Medicine at the University of Washington.

"Dr. Goldstein is a proven leader who has dedicated his career to improving the practice of medicine and the delivery of healthcare services," said Ramsey. "He is known for his collaborative approach to improving clinical operations through partnerships with physicians, nurses and other members of the care team. In addition, his expertise in both medicine and business makes him uniquely qualified to lead UW Medicine's hospitals and clinics at a time when we are transforming care to deliver the highest quality and highest value throughout our system."

At the UNC Hospitals, a 901-bed public academic medical center, Goldstein led strategic planning initiatives, facility expansion projects, and process improvements in care quality and patient safety. During his tenure, UNC was named to the Forbes list of America's Best Employers, increased employee and patient satisfaction scores, and twice received recognition from the University HealthSystem Consortium as the top academic medical center for patient-centered care.

"I am very pleased to be joining UW Medicine and to help lead an organization that is known around the world for advancing research, teaching and patient care," Goldstein said. "Building on this history of achievement, I see a great opportunity to work collaboratively with UW Medicine's leaders, faculty and staff to impact the future of healthcare and contribute to the mission of improving the health of the public."

Goldstein received an M.D. from the New York University School of Medicine and an M.B.A. from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. From 2000 to 2010, he held progressively responsible positions at UNC including associate chair for clinical operations in the Department of Medicine; medical director for ambulatory care; and chief of staff, UNC Hospitals, executive associate dean for clinical affairs, UNC School of Medicine. He has led the UNC Health Care System in his current positions since 2010.

UW Medicine's clinical enterprise includes Harborview Medical Center, Northwest Hospital & Medical Center, UW Medical Center, Valley Medical Center, 12 UW Neighborhood Clinics and UW Physicians, the physician practice plan. Goldstein will also oversee the operations of Airlift Northwest and other key senior management positions at UW Medicine.

About UW Medicine

UW Medicine is one of the top-rated academic medical systems in the world. With a mission to improve the health of the public, UW Medicine educates the next generation of physicians and scientists, leads one of the world's largest and most comprehensive medical research programs, and provides outstanding care to patients from across the globe. UW Medicine's four hospitals  Harborview Medical Center, Northwest Hospital & Medical Center, University of Washington Medical Center and Valley Medical Center  admit more than 64,000 patients each year. A network of hospital-based and outpatient clinics, including 12 UW Neighborhood Clinics, provides care for more than 1.3 million patients each year.

The UW School of Medicine, part of the UW Medicine system, leads the internationally recognized, community-based WWAMI Program, serving the states of Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho. The UW School of Medicine has been ranked No. 1 in the nation in primary-care training for more than 20 years by U.S. News & World Report, and it is ranked by the magazine as the top public institution recipient of biomedical research funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and second among all public and private institutions for NIH funding. School of Medicine faculty receive more than $1 billion per year in research funding.

UW Medicine has 26,000 employees and an annual budget of nearly $5 billion. Also part of the UW Medicine system are Airlift Northwest and the UW Physicians practice group, the largest physician practice plan in the region. UW Medicine shares in the ownership and governance of the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance with Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and Seattle Children's, and also shares in the ownership of Children's University Medical Group with Seattle Children's.

For more information, visit uwmedicine.org.

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Media contact

Name: Tina Mankowski

UW Medicine / Media Relations

206.685.3841 or 206.949.1983 / [email protected]

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SOURCE UW Medicine
SAN DIEGO, Sept. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- ViaCyte, Inc., a privately-held regenerative medicine company with the first pluripotent stem cell-derived islet replacement therapy for the treatment of diabetes in clinical-stage development, today announced participation on a panel at the 2016 BioPharm America  9th Annual International Partnering Conference. BioPharm America is supported by MassBio and is taking place September 13th to 15th at the Boston Marriot Copley Place, Boston, Massachusetts.

Details of the panel are as follows:

Panel: Patient Engagement  Diabetes Community: Strength in Numbers Presenting moderator: Dr. Paul Laikind, President and CEO Date/Time: September 13, 4:45 pm EDT

For more information about ViaCyte's participation in industry events, please visit: http://viacyte.com/news-events-2/viactye-events/

About ViaCyte

ViaCyte is a privately-held regenerative medicine company developing novel cell replacement therapies as potential long-term diabetes treatments to reduce the risk of hypoglycemia and diabetes-related complications. ViaCyte's product candidates are based on the derivation of pancreatic progenitor cells, which are then implanted in a durable and retrievable encapsulation device. Once implanted and matured, these cells are designed to secrete insulin and other regulatory factors in response to blood glucose levels. ViaCyte has two products in development. PEC-Direct product candidate delivers the pancreatic progenitor cells in a non-immunoprotective device and is being developed for type 1 diabetes patients that have severe hypoglycemic episodes, extreme glycemic lability, and/or impaired awareness of hypoglycemia. The PEC-Encap (formerly VC-01) product candidate delivers pancreatic progenitor cells in an immunoprotective device and is currently being evaluated in a Phase 1/2 trial in patients with type 1 diabetes who have minimal to no insulin-producing beta cell function. ViaCyte is headquartered in San Diego, California with additional operations in Athens, Georgia. The Company is funded in part by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) and JDRF.

For more information on the clinical trial, called STEP ONE, please visit https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02239354.

For more information on ViaCyte, please visit www.viacyte.com and connect with ViaCyte here: www.twitter.com/viacyte and www.facebook.com/viacyte.

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SOURCE ViaCyte, Inc.

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SALIDA, Colo., Sept. 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Wood's High Mountain Distillery in Salida, CO has announced that its Tenderfoot Whiskey is now available in a resealable 750-ml aluminum bottle. Dubbed the "Backcountry Bottle", the new packaging offers a packaging alternative to glass for use where a glass bottle is not practical or allowed such as camping, river rafting trips, festivals, and backcountry hut trips.

PT Wood, co-owner and head distiller at Wood's High Mountain Distillery said "After years of taking glass bottles on numerous rafting and backcountry ski trips we've been looking for a lighter, non-glass alternative for spirits. When the opportunity to package our spirits in aluminum bottles became available we had to jump on it and we're thrilled to have it available to our customers." The "Backcountry Bottle" is lighter and more compact than traditional glass and won't break when impacted. The packaging is designed for consumers with active lifestyles who want to enjoy a premium small-batch whiskey as a part of their favorite outdoor and adventure activities.

Aluminum packaging also offers environmental benefits over glass due to its much lighter weight for transportation and lower impact from manufacturing as a result of the high recycled content used in the "Backcountry Bottle" manufacturing process.

Tenderfoot Whiskey is a malt whiskey produced from five malted grains, aged in new American Oak and bottled at 45%ABV. Products are currently distributed in Colorado, New Jersey and Italy.

About Wood's High Mountain Distillery

Wood's High Mountain Distillery was founded in 2012 by brothers PT and Lee Wood, with the goal of expressing their passion for outdoor adventures in spirits that shine with the essence of the mountains of Colorado. The distillery is located in Salida, Colorado and offers hand-crafted distilled spirits made in its antique copper pot still using select ingredients and pure mountain water. Product information, tour schedule and a complete list of where to buy can be found at http://www.woodsdistillery.com or on Facebook at http://facebook.com/woodsdistillery.

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SOURCE Woods High Mountain Distillery

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Luckily, one of Jim's soldiers grabbed him and threw him inside the cab of a nearby Humvee. The selfless, quick thinking by his comrade saved Jim's life, but Jim fully absorbed the impact of the truck's collision, which crushed him helplessly inside the vehicle. The gunner of that vehicle was thrown from the turret of the vehicle, breaking his bones and ripping his face open up to his ear when his lip snagged an antenna.

The soldier who saved Jim's life was crushed between the vehicle and the dump truck. "He died, but not instantly, unfortunately. I listened to him dying and thought I was next."

Jim would later learn he was pulled from a 14-inch-wide pocket toward the front grille of the vehicle. The Hesco barrier's collapsible wire mesh now penetrated Jim's torso. He sustained many other severe physical injuries, but it was the invisible injuries that would haunt him.

"I woke up in the hospital with most of my memory gone, but I could not forget the face of one of my own dying. In my mind, his was the last face I saw before falling asleep and the first one I saw when waking up. It tormented me."

Jim spent the next two years in the hospital defying the doctor's diagnosis that he would never get out of his wheelchair. He not only did that, but he is also walking fully unsupported. Despite his physical therapy triumphs, Jim continued to lose the battle within.

"It's hard to admit you're having thoughts about suicide. I was dealing with severe survivor's guilt. It came to a night where I had my pistol in front of me and wasn't planning on seeing the next sunrise."

Sometimes, signs that inspire a big change can be small enough to missbut not this one. At 2 o'clock in the morning something caught the corner of his eye.

"I saw a documentary  I stayed up all night and watched the whole thing," Jim said, adding that it was about Wounded Warrior Project (WWP). "I saw the sunrise and made the first call into the WWP office that morning to get involved in their mental health programs."

To date, it is estimated that as many as 400,000 service members live with invisible wounds of war, including combat stress, depression, and finally  the signature wounds of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) and Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF)  post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and traumatic brain injury (TBI).

To address the growing mental health needs of injured warriors returning from battle, Wounded Warrior Project (WWP) created its Combat Stress Recovery Program (CSRP). Through the generous support of donors, CSRP is able to offer veterans a number of specialized programs and services  each tailored to the veteran's specific needs  all free of charge. WWP and its supporters believe warriors already paid their dues on the battlefield, so warriors don't pay for any service they receive.

"No one talked about veteran suicide back in 2004. It took me a while to get in a good place. It was hard to tell people that I attempted suicide, but the programs at Wounded Warrior Project helped me break through the stigmas associated with mental health."

Beyond CSRP, Jim progressed his healing through the WWP Peer Support program. Peer support plays an important role in the recovery process as injured veterans rely upon each other's learned experiences when managing day-to-day challenges. All WWP programs and services have an aspect of this support structure, while the Peer Support program is solely dedicated to ensuring every injured veteran, family member, and caregiver encourage one another in recovery, thus embodying the WWP logo of one warrior carrying another off the battlefield.

Jim now helps other warriors suffering in silence. As a peer mentor, Jim recognizes that healing is a process and he knows the tools and skills necessary to continue progress. Warriors can become mentors when they demonstrate leadership strengths and the ability to help fellow wounded veterans who are in need.

"I always tell the guys I've been in their shoes," Jim said. "I've stood on that edge and dangled my toes off it. But if you look hard enough, you can always find something good with the bad. You have to find the positive because it's what gives you the hope to move forward. I don't consider the day of my injuries as the worst day of my life because if it never happened, I wouldn't have my wife who I met while I was in the hospital. I wouldn't have my daughter."

As Suicide Prevention Week draws to a close, it becomes imperative to keep veteran suicide and other mental health issues at the forefront of meaningful national dialogue. Jim represents many injured warriors who continue to struggle daily with the aftermath of sacrifices made on the battlefield.

The strength of survival comes from the depths of the soul.

"Deep down inside  even if it's so deep you haven't seen it in years  everyone has that ember," Jim said. "It's survival. It's the instinct to exist. I am a testament to it. I am living proof."

About Wounded Warrior Project

The mission of Wounded Warrior Project (WWP) is to honor and empower Wounded Warriors. The WWP purpose is to raise awareness and to enlist the public's aid for the needs of injured service members, to help injured servicemen and women aid and assist each other, and to provide unique, direct programs and services to meet their needs. WWP is a national, nonpartisan organization headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida. To get involved and learn more, visit woundedwarriorproject.org.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160909/406088

SOURCE Wounded Warrior Project

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BRATISLAVA, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Spain and Portugal must take effective action to reduce their excessive budget deficits by October 15 after they escaped being fined in July despite breaking European Union budget rules, Slovak Finance Minister Peter Kazimir said on Friday.

Euro zone finance ministers will briefly discuss Spain's and Portugal's deficits at an informal meeting in Bratislava.

"I expect a very brief discussion and especially effective action from our Portuguese and Spanish colleagues," Kazimir told reporters on entering the meeting.

(Reporting By Tatiana Jancarikova and Jason Hovet, writing by Jan Strupczewski)
A Spanish firefighter inspects the wreckage of a train that derailed in O Porrino, northwestern Spain, on September 9, 2016 (AFP Photo/Miguel Riopa)

O Porrino (Spain) (AFP) - A train carrying tourists to Portugal from northwestern Spain veered off the tracks and smashed into a pillar Friday, killing its Portuguese driver as well as a US passenger and two Spaniards.

The train, which was travelling to Porto in Portugal from Spain's Vigo, appeared to have hit the wall of a bridge as it was going underneath, prompting it to crash just before entering a station, according to the mayor of the nearby town of O Porrino.

Authorities in the Galicia region where the accident took place said that the train conductor was one of the two Spaniards who died in the Friday morning accident, which also saw some 47 people injured.

Among those hurt were other Spaniards, Americans and Portuguese as well as people from Argentina, Germany, Britain, Brazil, Uruguay and Chile -- none of whom suffered serious injury.

- Maintenance work -

Locals gathered late Friday at the scene of the accident -- where a carriage of the train still lay on its side, the front completely caved in and mangled -- questioning why the crash happened on a good-visibility, straight line.

Adif, the company in charge of railway tracks in Spain, said that routine maintenance work was being conducted in the area.

This was confirmed by Rafael Catala, acting Public Works Minister, who said it meant "that trains are provisionally diverted to another track, forcing them to reduce their speed according to regulations".

But many locals on site told AFP that trains on this stretch of the tracks passed by at high speed.

Maria del Carmen Perez, who lives in front of accident site, said trains that make the Vigo to Porto connection "go by so fast that the windows of my house almost tremble".

Like several others, Ramon Gonzalez, a man interviewed by Spanish television who works in the station cafeteria near the accident, pointed out that the tracks were in a straight line.

"The train was due to stop in 50 metres (160 feet), so this isn't normal," he said.

Story continues

Witnesses of the accident, meanwhile, spoke of a loud noise.

Alex Ramilo, a 15-year-old local resident who was biking over the bridge when the crash happened, told AFP he heard a "deafening noise."

"I looked and saw the train derailing. I was speechless, in shock, I didn't really realise what had happened," he said.

Ramilo went straight to the station, where he tried to help.

"There were loads of people... residents who wanted to help.

"And as there were not enough emergency personnel, some people even helped them extract people from carriages."

Spain's acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, who is from Galicia, travelled to the site of the accident.

Spain's rali company Renfe had rented the train to Portugal's railway Comboios de Portugal (CP), which manages the line with its Spanish counterpart.

The train itself had undergone a complete overhaul in May, Spanish officials said, with Portugal's rail chief Manuel Queiro adding that it was "in perfect condition".

- PM on site -

Galicia was also the scene of one of Spain's worst rail disasters in 2013, when around 80 people were killed and another 144 injured after a high-speed train slammed into a concrete wall on the outskirts of Santiago de Compostela.

That train was approaching a curve at more than twice the speed limit on that piece of the track.

The driver in that accident has been charged with negligent homicide, and an investigation is due to be reopened to determine if Adif was also partly responsible.

Ahead of regional elections in Galicia this month several political parties, including the ruling conservative Popular Party and the Socialists announced they were suspending their campaigns, which had only just got underway.
If you were looking for the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee website and ended up here, try this





Got news tips, gossip, suggestions, complaints?E-mail us: progressivecharlestown@gmail.com We strive to avoid errors in our articles. Our correction policy can be found here
London, Sep 6 : Mining major Vedanta Resources said on Tuesday that its shareholders have approved the merger of group companies Vedanta Ltd. and Cairn India.

"Vedanta Resources announces that at its general meeting held today (Tuesday), September 6, the resolution put to shareholders in relation to the proposed merger of Vedanta Ltd and Cairn India was duly passed on a poll," the London-listed Vedanta Resources said in a stock exchange filing here.

Vedanta Ltd. will also hold a meeting of its shareholders, secured and unsecured creditors on Thursday to seek approval for the merger with Cairn India.

Cairn India has called a shareholders' meeting on September 12, to seek approval for the company's takeover by its parent under a revised all-share deal.

In the revised offer, the Anil Agarwal-led Vedanta group will give Cairn India minority shareholders one equity share and four redeemable-preference shares with a face value of Rs 10 each. The preference shares will carry a coupon of 7.5 per cent and a tenure of 18 months.

In July, Vedanta offered three additional preference shares towards winning over minority shareholders like state-run Life Insurance Corp (LIC).

Energy firm Cairn India announced in July it was working to merge with its parent, Vedanta Resources at a time when key shareholder LIC is yet to give its assent to the merger.

"Your company continues to work towards completion of merger with Vedanta," Cairn India chairman Navin Agarwal told shareholders at the company's 10th annual general meeting in Mumbai.

"Your company will get access to Vedanta's tier-one metal and mining assets, which are well-invested, low cost and have a long life," he said.

Under the proposed merger, a Cairn India shareholder will get one Vedanta equity share and 7.5 preference shares for every Cairn India share.

LIC, as the single largest domestic minority shareholder, owns 9.06 per cent in Cairn India and 3.9 per cent stake in Vedanta.

Vedanta Ltd. received approvals last September from both the Bombay Stock Exchange and the NSE on the company's proposal to merge with its hydrocarbons subsidiary Cairn India.

Merging Cairn India with itself would provide Vedanta access to the oil explorer's cash and help reduce its debt burden. Vedanta took majority control of Cairn India for $8.67 billion in 2011 and holds 59.9 percent in the latter through its various units.
New York, Sep 7 : Imagine being greeted by a humanoid robot which answers your queries and tells you directions. Chihira Junco, a robot, does that when it welcomes and meets tourists at a shopping mall in Tokyo.

Chihira, developed by electronics company Toshiba in collaboration with several Japanese universities, stands tall behind a counter in Aqua City Odaiba on Tokyo Bay.

Wearing a blue shirt, white blazer and pinstripe skirt, 'she' gives directions to local sites and shops in Japanese, Chinese and English launguages, the New York Times reported on Tuesday.

Chihira can talk and answer question like "Where are you from", her robotic arm movements show people way and her eyes blink only halfway.

The robot is one of the androids springing up in Japan. There are also Yumeko, a receptionist at the Hen-na Hotel, a robot-operated boutique in Nagasaki and Matsukoloid, who appears in a popular television show in the country.

Chihira and four other androids cost about $93,000 to produce.

The company said it planned to develop 1,000 more androids in 2017.

By 2020, it hopes to make 10,000 such robots a year.
New Delhi, Sep 7 : Ministers in the Delhi government have done far fewer trips than ministers in other states, Delhi Home Minister Satyendar Jain said on Wednesday.

"Our ministers have done less foreign trips compared to other governments. Foreign tours are done only when required, that too with consent," Jain told reporters.

He added if any Delhi minister went abroad for personal work, he paid for it.

Jain's comments came two days after Lt. Governor Najeeb Jung on Monday asked the Delhi government to provide details of foreign tours by ministers, their staff and officials.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Jain returned to New Delhi on Tuesday from Vatican City after attending Mother Teresa's canonisation ceremony.

This was Kejriwal's first visit to any foreign country after becoming Chief Minister in February 2015. His deputy Manish Sisodia and Jain have travelled abroad four times each.
Bhopal, Sep 7 : Two youths from Madhya Pradesh's Bhind district who are on a 'cycle yatra' to spread awareness about ecological conservation on Wednesday met with Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan here.

The two, Akash Sharma and Vikas Yadav, covered various cities before reaching Bhopal. They are to cover many districts of Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh during their journey.

Chouhan praised their zeal and appreciated them for the initiative.

On August 28, the two launched the yatra and aim to cover 1,200 km distance.

Their green yatra will pass through Vidisha, Bina, Lalitpur, Jhansi and Gwalior, and return to Bhind.

They interact with people along the way and spread the message of environmental conservation.
Washington, Sep 8 : Bolted to the top of a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket, NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will lift off on Thursday to study an asteroid and return to Earth seven years later with a sample for first-hand analysis.

The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is scheduled to orbit, map and collect samples from near-Earth asteroid Bennu.

The spacecraft will be boosted into orbit from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 7.05 p.m. ET (4.35 a.m. Friday India time).

After arriving at Bennu in 2018, the 2,110-kg fully-fuelled spacecraft will spend over a year exploring the asteroid before approaching its surface to grab a sample.

This pristine material, formed at the dawn of the solar system, will be brought to the Earth in 2023, providing clues to Bennu's origins and our own.

NASA, the US space agency is set to launch its first mission to return a sample of an asteroid to Earth on September 8 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

The mission will help scientists investigate how planets formed and how life began, as well as improve our understanding of asteroids that could impact Earth, "The launch of OSIRIS-REx is the beginning of a seven-year journey to return pristine samples from asteroid Bennu," said OSIRIS-REx Principal Investigator Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona, Tucson.

"The team has built an amazing spacecraft, and we are well-equipped to investigate Bennu and return with our scientific treasure," Lauretta said in an earlier statement.

After a careful survey of Bennu, OSIRIS-REx will collect between 60 to 2,000 grams of surface material with its robotic arm and return the sample to Earth.

OSIRIS-REx stands for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer.
Pyongyang, Sep 8 : North Korea on Thursday strongly criticised the UN Security Council's condemnation of its latest ballistic missiles test.

Kim Jong-un's regime said it "categorically rejects" the declaration and considers it "an intolerable act of encroaching upon its dignity, right to existence, sovereignty and right to self defence", EFE news cited KCNA as saying.

The UN executive body on Tuesday released a unanimous declaration by all member countries, strongly condemning the latest ballistic missile tests by North Korea.

It also urged Pyongyang to stop violating UN resolutions that prohibit the country from developing or testing ballistic missile technology.

North Korea on Monday test-fired three ballistic missiles from Hwangju in North Hwanghae province at around 12.14 p.m. The launch was the first since the successful firing of a submarine-launched missile on August 24.

It said the recent launch was conducted successfully without harming the security of neighbouring countries or the international waters.

In its declaration, the UN also urged all countries to "redouble their efforts" to ensure that the existing sanctions against North Korea are fully implemented and warned of the possibility of fresh sanctions against Pyongyang.

The UN Security Council imposed strong sanctions against North Korea in March, following nuclear and long-range missile tests by the country in January and February, respectively.
Donald Trump tossed more praise to Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday night, saying he has been a better leader than U.S. President Barack Obama.



"(Putin) has very strong control over a country. Now, it's a very different system and I don't happen to like that system. But certainly in that system he's been a leader far more than our president has been a leader," the Republican presidential nominee said at NBC's commander-in-chief forum in New York.

Some, including Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton , have criticized Trump for past statements praising Putin even as he appears to exercise more power. Previously in this campaign cycle, Trump has stumbled over questions about Russia's annexation of Ukrainian territory Crimea and called for Russians to find missing emails from Clinton's time as secretary of state.



When asked about Putin previously calling Trump "brilliant," the billionaire developer said he would "take the compliment." Trump said Putin's compliments of him will have "zero impact."



"The fact is, look, it's not going to get him anywhere. I'm a negotiator," Trump said.

The gathering was the first time both Trump and Clinton have shared the same stage in this election, albeit at separate times. The two square off directly during the first presidential debate on Sept. 26 at Hofstra University.







More From CNBC


New Delhi, Sep 8 : The BJP Mahila Morcha on Thursday staged a demonstration here at the New Delhi railway station against Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal when he was about to leave for Punjab.

The members of the Mahila Morcha of the Bharatiya Janata Party and other party activists presented Kejriwal 'bangles and roses' for, as the demonstrators said, his failure to act against AAP member Ashutosh.

The demonstration was led by Mahila Morcha President Kamaljeet Sehrawat and BJP Media Incharge Praveen Shankar Kapoor at platform No.1 of New Delhi railway station.

"When we went to meet Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia we had said that if Kejriwal does not immediately announce Ashutosh's expulsion from the Aam Aadmi Party and MLAs, involved in misconduct towards women, from the Vidhan Sabha, we will ghereo him and present bangles. Today, we gheraoed Kejriwal as he was trying to run away to Punjab," Sehrawat told media persons.

Ashutosh had written a blog for a news website defending suspended AAP Minister Sandeep Kumar, whose sex-tape had surfaced late last month.

Ashutosh, in the blog, had termed Kumar's suspension from party wrong, and had argued that the participants in the video were having consensual sex. He had also compared Kumar with Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru.

The woman in the video later filed an FIR against Kumar.

During the chaos on Thursday at the railway station, Kapoor managed to reach upto Kejriwal despite heavy police cordon and handed bangles and flowers to the Chief Minister and asked him to concentrate on fulfilling promises that he had made to the people of Delhi before indulging in countrywide politics.

Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia denounced the incident at the railway station as the doing of BJP and Delhi Police.

"Police remained a mute spectator throughout the chaos. Media people were already present there. It's clear that everything was pre-planned," Sisodia said.

"Are Delhi Police and BJP conspiring to attack Kejriwal at Modi's behest? Was the morning mishap a rehearsal of that," Sisodia added.
Ludhiana, Sep 8 : A combative Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said on Thursday he won't be cowed down by protests and that he and the AAP will remain in Punjab till the ruling Badal family is jailed.

"We are here to stay. We are not going anywhere. Will send the Badals to jail," Kejriwal told the media on his arrival here on Thursday afternoon.

"I will be here (in Punjab) only and we have dug the 'khunta' (pole). We will not leave till we uproot the pole of the Badals," Kejriwal said.

"This is not an election, this is going to be a revolution," the Aam Aadmi Party leader said regarding the Punjab assembly elections to be held early next year.

When Kejriwal reached the Ludhiana railway station from New Delhi, he faced noisy protests by a group of people.

Launching a frontal attack on ruling Shiromani Akali Dal and its president Sukhbir Badal, Kejriwal said that he and the AAP were not afraid of the tactics adopted by the Badals and the Akali Dal.

"I was told by people in Punjab that Sukhbir Badal will do a lot of things against us, including making allegations. They (Akalis) have started doing that.

"Sukhbir Badal has hired a video company to make fake CDs on AAP. I have been informed that they have made 63 fake CDs on us. They are releasing these CDs now.

"We are not afraid of the attacks by the Badals," the AAP leader said.

"The people of Punjab are very intelligent. They will see the conspiracy by the Badals against us," he added.

Kejriwal, whose AAP is facing an internal crisis in Punjab, did not take any questions from the media.

He said that farmers in Punjab were in a bad shape and committing suicide.

"The farmers of Punjab used to be the most prosperous in the country. They are facing the worst crisis now. We have planned to make all farmers in Punjab debt-free by the end of 2018," Kejriwal said.

Kejriwal is on a four-day tour of Punjab which started on Thursday.

Kejriwal is visiting Punjab after the AAP sacked its state unit chief Sucha Singh Chhotepur, resignations by some AAP leaders and allegations of corruption in allotment of tickets for the coming assembly elections.
Paris, Sep 8 : Continuing investigations into the recovery of an abandoned car in Paris loaded with gas cylinders and diesel cans, the French police have arrested a couple and placed them in custody, local media reported.

The couple, aged 27 and 26, were placed in custody late on Wednesday, Xinhua news agency reported citing BFMTV.

The arrests follow the detention of the 34-year-old owner of the abandoned car and a 29-year-old woman, who were both later released.

The car owner is on the intelligence services watch list for radicalisation.

The car, a Peugeot 607, had no registration plate and its hazard lights were flashing when it was found near the Notre-Dame Cathedral. The vehicle contained seven gas cylinders, including an empty one, on the front passenger seat, in addition to three diesel cans. However, no detonators were found.

Anti-terrorism units found that the documents of the car were in Arabic language.

France has been on high alert since November 13, last year, when at least 130 people were killed in Paris in terror attacks. In July, this year, the country saw two more terror attacks -- one in Nice in southern France which claimed 86 lives and the other in a church in northern France.
New Delhi, Sep 8 : Union Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan will lead a roadshow in Singapore on Friday on the upcoming auction of India's 67 discovered small hydrocarbon fields, an official statement said.

India's Petroleum Ministry along with the Directorate General of Hydrocarbon (DGH) is organising an interactive meet-cum-roadshow on September 9-10 in Singapore, a DGH statement said.

"During the meetings, Pradhan is expected to highlight the paradigm shift in the policy regime for the exploration and production sector in India and the improved investment environment for E&P (exploration and production) companies under the new Hydrocarbon Exploration Licensing Policy (HELP) which emphasises on improving the ease of doing business and operational autonomy to attract investment," it added.

The hydrocarbons regulator said that with significant reforms introduced to reduce regulatory risk, the industry will find the revised guidelines and processes attractive for the current bid round.

Pradhan will also meet Asian oil and gas industry leaders to attract Foreign Direct Investment in the Indian exploration and production sector.

"The response received so far has been encouraging and India is hoping to receive significant investments from Asian-based companies," the DGH said.

Road shows were earlier held in July in the US and Canada, for the auction of India's 67 hydrocarbon discovered small fields (DSF).

These DSF of the Oil and Natural Gas Corp and Oil India could not be monetised during the previous years and are being offered for international bidding now.

Bidding is open between July 15 and October 31.

The previous exploration licensing round ended in March 2012.

The auction will be under the new Hydrocarbon Exploration and Licensing Policy (HELP) approved in March, based on a revenue-sharing model as opposed to cost-and-output-based norms earlier.

The new model will replace the controversial production sharing contracts -- by which oil and gas blocks are awarded to firms which show they will do maximum work on a block -- that has governed the bidding under the earlier nine NELP rounds.

Under the Discovered Small Field Policy, the government is offering for bids 67 discovered small fields in 46 contract areas spread over nine sedimentary basins on land and in shallow and deep water areas.

The offered fields hold 625 million barrels of oil and gas reserves.

Of the 46 small fields, 26 are on land, 18 offshore in shallow water and two in deep water.

While 28 discoveries are in Mumbai offshore, 14 others are in the east coast's Krishna-Godavari basin.

Eventual operators will be issued a single licence for exploration of conventional and non-conventional hydrocarbons and will have the freedom to sell oil and gas at "arms length" market prices. There would be no cess on crude oil.

The production sharing contracts regime, which allows operators to recover all investments made from sale of oil and gas before profits are shared with the government, was criticised by India's official auditor, who said it encouraged companies to keep inflating costs -- "gold plating" -- so as to postpone giving a higher share of profits.

The change in model is designed to help keep the government share in cases of windfall from both a steep rise in prices as well as a quantum jump in production.
Bengaluru, Sep 9 : Karnataka is protesting the state government's release of Cauvery river water to Tamil Nadu, based on a Supreme Court directive, with a shut down on Friday.

The day-long protest is being spearheaded by as many as 500 pro-Kannada organisations, which represent sections including farmers, traders and businesses. Security has been stepped up and more forces have been deployed across the state.

Government offices will remain open, but public transport, including metro services, will not ply. Banks, shops, markets, malls, hotels, bars, pubs, eateries, restaurant, theatres and petrol bunks will also remain closed during the day, officials said.

Essential supplies, including milk and medicines, thought, have been exempted from the shutdown. Ambulances will be allowed to ferry patients to hospitals.

Bowing to the apex court's Monday order, the state began releasing 15,000 cusecs of water daily from early Wednesday from its reservoirs across the river basin for 10 days amid protests and demonstrations by farmers, traders and the youth in the Mysuru region.
Washington, Sep 9 : Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has reiterated that she will not put US ground troops into Iraq and Syria in the military campaign against the Islamic State (IS) militant group.

"I've said it on numerous occasions. I believe it. I think putting a big contingent of American ground troops in Iraq and Syria would not be in the best interest of the fight against the IS and other terrorist groups," Xinhua news agency quoted Clinton as saying on Thursday.

While she insisted that the dispatch of US ground troops "would fulfil one of their (IS) dearest wishes" of dragging the US back into a ground war in the Middle East, Clinton showcased her willingness to continue US President Barack Obama's current anti-IS strategy despite Republicans' severe criticism that the Obama administration was acting insufficiently in the campaign.

"I support the air campaign. I support special forces. I support enablers. I support surveillance, intelligence and reconnaissance. I will absolutely be prepared to do whatever is necessary to support the Arab and Kurdish fighters on the ground to take out as much of the infrastructure of the IS from the air," said Clinton.

Clinton also said she will be committed to target-killing of IS leadership.

Currently, there are about 5,000 US troops in Iraq and several hundreds more are dispatched to northern Syria.

The White House does not count them as "ground troops", arguing that those are not combat troops and are only engaged in assisting and training local forces in the fight against the IS.
Seoul, Sep 9 : North Korea on Friday said it "successfully" conducted a nuclear test, its fifth and the "most powerful" test so far, Yonhap news agency reported.

The North Korean Central TV Broadcasting Station said the country carried out a nuclear explosion test to check the capacity of a nuclear warhead and it will "continue to strengthen our capacity to bolster our nuclear force".

A South Korean Defence Ministry official was quoted by Yonhap as saying that the military was analysing details on what type of nuclear material was used.

An artificial quake of magnitude 5.3 was detected around 9.30 a.m. at North Korea's main Punggye-ri nuclear test site.

The official said the tremor felt after the test put the yield of this test at about 10 kilotons, which is believed to be Pyongyang's most powerful nuclear detonation to date.

A five-magnitude artificial tremor was also recorded after Pyongyang's fourth nuclear test on January 6 at Punggye-ri where all of the four North Korea underground nuclear tests had been carried out since 2006.

According to Yonhap, North Korea conducted the nuclear test to mark the country's 68th National Day on September 9.

It marked the fifth nuclear detonation by North Korea following the first in October 2006, the second in May 2009, the third in February 2013 and the fourth in January this year.

South Korean Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn called an emergency meeting of the National Security Council (NSC) following the test, the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae said.

President Park Geun-hye, who is cutting short her overseas trip to Laos, condemned the test, saying that its provocation would only invite stronger international sanctions, deeper isolation and hasten its self-destruction.

According to Yonhap, Park also held a telephone conversation with US President Barack Obama over the nuclear test.

Obama warned that the latest test will have serious consequences. He called the nuclear test a "provocation" and reiterated that the US was committed to the security of its allies in Asia and throughout the world.

China slammed it saying the country was "firmly opposed" to the test. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) also denounced the test, terming it a "clear violation" of UN Security Council resolutions and a "troubling and regrettable" action.

Indian Security analyst C. Uday Bhaskar said the choice of the day for the test was not accidental as the North Korean regime was founded on September 9, 1948.

"Authoritarian regimes tend to use such temporal symbolism and combine it with emotive nationalism," said Bhaskar, who is Director, Society for Policy Studies.

"The regional relevance of the timing is also pertinent. East Asia has just met at Summit level in Laos -- and the strategic implications of North Korea's weapon's of mass destruction profile will only add to the complexity of the regional security challenge," he said.

Meanwhile, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said North Korea's nuclear test was "unacceptable" and would be protested.

"It is simply unacceptable. We must strongly protest against it," Abe said, adding that Japan would liaise closely on the matter with the US and South Korea.

North Korea is banned by the UN from any tests of nuclear or missile technology and has been hit by five sets of UN sanctions since its first test in 2006.

Pyongyang has conducted a series of ballistic missile launches since top North Korean leader Kim Jong-un gave an order on March 15 to test a nuclear warhead and ballistic rockets capable of carrying the warhead "in a short time".
Havana, Sep 9 : About 758 million adults around the world have never learned to read or write, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) has said.

Speaking at a ceremony here marking the 50th anniversary of International Literacy Day on Thursday, Unesco's regional representative Katherine Muller-Marin said most illiterate adults -- as much as two-thirds -- are women, making them more vulnerable to unemployment and low wages.

Unesco Director-General Irina Bokova has described literacy as a tool that can promote "the independence of a society", Xinhua news agency quoted Muller-Marin as saying.

The regional representative also praised Cuba for having launched one of the world's most successful literacy campaigns in the 1960s.

"Cuba is a privileged country, whose education surpasses international levels," said Muller-Marin.

In 1961, the island's fledgling socialist government began a massive and innovative literacy drive that was able to eradicate illiteracy in a matter of months, making it the first Latin American nation to do so.

Cuban educators in 2001 developed a method, called "Yes, I Can", to promote literacy with minimum resources. The programme has helped more than 10 million people in 30 countries learn the crucial skills of reading and writing.

Cuban Education Minister Ena Elsa Velazquez said literacy was a "source of cultural development" and "banner of the irrevocable struggle to defend the poor on the Earth".

The day has been celebrated each year since 1967 to raise awareness and promote the importance of education worldwide.
New York, Sep 9 : The role of genes in congenital heart defects is more complex than previously thought with new research finding that the overall risk is determined by a combination of gene effects on both inside and outside of the heart itself.

Congenital heart defect (CHD) is a problem in the structure of the heart that is present at birth and are a leading cause of birth defect-related deaths.

Normal heart formation depends on interactions of multiple types of cells that collaborate in precise times and places throughout development to build the heart's intricate structures.

To figure out how these interactions can go awry, researchers at the University of California, at Irvine, in the US, studied atrial septal defects (ASDs, a common type of heart defect) in a mouse model.

They studied the developmental disorder Cornelia de Lange Syndrome (CdLS) -- a very rare genetic disorder present from birth, but not always diagnosed at birth.

Most cases of Cornelia de Lange Syndrome are caused by mutations that inactivate a single copy of Nipbl -- a gene that directs the expression of many hundreds of other genes in tissues throughout the body.

Just as people with Cornelia de Lange Syndrome have a high incidence of heart defects, 30 per cent of mice that harbour similar Nipbl mutations exhibit atrial septal defects, the researchers said.

Using genetically modified mouse models, they then selectively introduced or removed Nipbl mutations in different tissues during embryonic development.

The findings showed that no Nipbl deficiency in any single tissue -- including the tissue that forms the heart itself -- could single-handedly account for the development of atrial septal defects.

Rather, the development of heart defects was determined by interactions between heart-forming tissues and the rest of the body.

In fact, Nipbl deficiency in some tissues even seemed to protect against the development of atrial septal defects, in certain situations, the researchers explained.

"The study results show that heart defects such as ASDs occur when the heart does not grow quickly enough to meet the demands of the developing body -- in other words, that heart size and body size must be coordinated for the heart to develop without defects," said Anne Calof, Professor at University of California, at Irvine.

"This is the first genetic demonstration that major risk factors for heart defects are likely to lie outside of the heart itself," Calof added, in the paper published in the journal PLOS Biology.
New York, Sep 9 : Researchers have identified a set of 30 inherited recessive genes that play a role in intellectual disability, a neurodevelopmental disorder.

The new findings, published in the online journal Molecular Psychiatry, could be applied to DNA screenings in determining the possibility of a couple producing a child with intellectual disability.

"The implications are enormous," said principal investigator Saima Riazuddin, Professor at University of Maryland School of Medicine in the US.

"The next phase of our study is to come up with therapeutic options and personalised protocols that could help patients improve their intellectual function," Riazuddin said.

Intellectual disability, or ID (previously known as mental retardation), becomes apparent in children before the age of 18 and affects, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as many as 213 million people around the world.

The disorder, which is measured by an intelligence quotient below 70, significantly limits an individual's intellectual ability and practical skills.

The new study presents the outcomes of a five-year investigation that was conducted over three continents.

In order to identify potential genetic causes for intellectual disability, investigators assembled a test group of 121 families in rural Pakistan, in which there was a higher incidence of the disorder and consanguineous marriages (marriages between blood relations).

More than 15,000 DNA samples were collected, which were analysed both in the Netherlands and at University of Maryland School of Medicine's Institute of Genomic Sciences (IGS), using next-generation genetic sequencing.

From an initial pool of 2,000 possible genes, the study, categorised 30 novel candidate genes possessing a strong potential for causing ID -- and possibly other brain disorders as well.
Panaji, Sep 9 : The increase in deployment of troops in the troubled state of Jammu and Kashmir is only for sealing the India-Pakistan border so as to prevent infiltration and not to tackle ongoing protests, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar asserted on Friday.

"That is for border sealing. We are tightening the border position so that infiltration does not become a reality," Parrikar said, when asked why more soldiers had been deployed in the northern state, which has been facing violence ever since the July 8 killing of Hizbul Mujahideen militant Burhan Wani.

Parrikar was speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a function for the commissioning of the Indian Coast Guard offshore patrol vessel 'Sarathi'.

"Protests are the Home Ministry's concern. The ministry is taking necessary action. As you have seen, Rajnath (Singh) ji said the situation is much better than earlier. The army does not act in internal matters unless asked by the local authority. This is the basic norm of operation," Parrikar said.

"The local civil administration will have to ask (for) the army there, like it happened in Haryana, where the (Jat) agitation took place. When the local administration called the army in, we went there only then and followed the orders of the local administration. We don't operate anywhere internally on our own," he said.
Bengaluru, Sep 9 : India's technology capital shut down on Friday, as hundreds of IT firms, back offices and multinationals logged out to protest Karnataka releasing Cauvery river water to Tamil Nadu on the Supreme Court's order.

Global software firms and many start-ups declared holiday for thousands of techies in support of the shutdown, which crippled normal life across the state, as buses, cabs and autos stayed off roads and hotels, pubs, shops and banks remained closed.

"We have declared holiday for our employees due to the shutdown and will work on the next weekend to make up for the loss," an Infosys spokesperson told IANS.

A Wipro spokesperson also said the company was closed on Friday but would work on Saturday, which is normally an off day.

"About 500 Indian and overseas IT firms have closed for the day in support of the shutdown and due to the absence of public/private transport," said an official of the Electronics City Industrial Township Authority.

Though the shutdown has not affected train and flight operations, hundreds of passengers who alighted at the city railway station and the international airport in the early hours were stranded in the absence of buses and cabs.

"It is unfortunate Bengaluru is facing many shutdowns over some or other issue. This is the second time in a week after a strike by trade unions on September 2 and fifth this year since January," lamented S.N. Murthy, a techie with a leading IT firm.

Many passengers who had to board trains or flights during the day rushed to railway stations and airport in wee hours before the 12-hour shutdown began at 6 a.m.

State-run Bengaluru metro rail corporation, which operates on the east-west corridor, also suspended its service till late evening.

"We have been caught unaware by the shutdown and are stranded at the city railway station since morning in the absence of buses, taxis and autos to reach home," said a passenger who alighted from an express train from Pune with his family.

The state government declared holiday for all schools and colleges across the state to avoid inconvenience to students and teachers in the absence of transport.

Similarly, factories, offices, banks, markets, shops, malls, hotels, eateries, pubs, bars, theatres and petrol bunks have closed in support of the shutdown.

"The state-wide shutdown is in protest against the Supreme Court's order and to express resentment over the state government releasing the Cauvery water when we don't have it for drinking and irrigation," said Okkuta president Vatal Nagaraj here.

Bowing to the Supreme Court Monday order, the state began releasing daily 15,000 cusecs from early Wednesday from Krishna Raja Sagar (KRS) and Kabini reservoirs across the river basin for 10 days amid protests and demonstrations by farmers, traders and youth in the Mysuru region.

Deploying additional police personnel, the state government has tightened security, stepped up vigil and intensified patrolling to maintain peace and law and order.

Hundreds of people, including farmers, traders, students and women staged massive demonstrations and took out rallies in Bengaluru, Mandya, Mysuru and other cities and towns across the state in protest against the state government, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa and the Supreme Court.

About 5,000 people, including Kannada film stars, producers and directors marched in a procession from Town Hall to Freedom Park in Bengaluru and addressed a huge gathering, urging the state government to stop releasing water to Tamil Nadu and instead supply for irrigation farms in the Mysuru region.

Though the shutdown has been peaceful so far, angry protesters burnt tyres in the centre of roads and highways to prevent movement of even private vehicles.

Mock funerals of state Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and Jayalalithaa were conducted in Bengaluru, Mandya, Davangere and Tumakuru.

Posters and placards carrying pictures of Siddaramaiah and Jayalalithaa were garlanded and slapped with footwear and carried on donkeys to express anger.

Effigies of Siddaramaiah, Jayalalithaa and Karnataka's Water Resources Minister M.B. Patil were also burnt at several places by activists of the pro-Kannada Rakshana Vedike (Protection Forum of local people).

"We will give our blood but not Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu. How can the state government release our water to grow crops in the neighbouring state when we don't have enough of it for drinking this year," said Vedike activist Pravin Shetty.
Washington, Sep 9 : The US encourages "stronger relations" between India and Pakistan and desires that both countries work to de-escalate tensions, deputy spokesperson of the State Department Mark Toner has said.

Responding to a question about US's role as mediator between Pakistan and India, Toner in a press briefing on Thursday said: "We strongly encourage in all of our dealings with either India and/or Pakistan, stronger relations between the two countries."

He also said that it was in the "security interests of the region that they work to de-escalate tensions and have dialogue".

Islamabad and New Delhi began a "comprehensive dialogue" to improve ties between the two nations which saw Prime Minister Narendra Modi's brief stop-over in Lahore on December 25 last year to greet his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif on his birthday.

However, ties between the two nations derailed after the January 2 Pathankot attack in Punjab. Seven security personnel were killed when at least five militants, suspectedly from Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed militant group, attacked the Indian air-base.

According to Toner, the US constantly encourages dialogue between the two neighbouring nations because "we don't want to see tensions escalate, spiral out of control, and lead to some kind of incident", adding that it was important for the two governments to maintain strong, cordial, and productive ties.
New Delhi, Sep 9 : A court on Friday sent sacked AAP minister Sandeep Kumar, arrested on charges of rape on a complaint by a woman who figured in a video with him, to 14 days judicial custody.

Special Judge Poonam Chaudhary remanded Kumar in judicial custody till September 23 after he was presented before her on expiry of his police custody.

The police told court that the accused was not required for further custodial interrogation.

Meanwhile Kumar's defence counsel Pradeep Rana moved an application seeking special armed guards and separate cell during judicial custody stating that Kumar was previously a practicing advocate and subsequently elected as a member of Delhi Legislative Assembly.

The court directed jail authorities to consider Kumar's application as per Delhi Jail manual.

The former Social Welfare and Women and Child Development Minister in Delhi government was arrested on September 3 after a woman approached Sultanpuri police station in north Delhi with a complaint of sexual harassment against him.

He was booked under sections 376 (punishment for rape) and 328 (causing hurt by means of poison, with intent to commit an offence) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

He was also charged under the Information Technology Act's section 67A (punishment for publishing or transmitting of material containing sexually explicit act in electronic form).

The woman had alleged in her complaint that she was sexually harassed by Kumar at his office-cum-residence in the Sultanpuri area of the capital where she had gone to get her ration card made.

She had also alleged that Kumar had offered her a spiked cold drink following which she could not recall what exactly happened with her and how she had acted.

A Delhi Police team on Sunday visited the same house where the woman had alleged she was raped.

Kumar was sacked after an alleged "sex video" involving him became viral.

He later defended himself, saying he had resigned on his own and alleged that he had been targeted because he was a Dalit.
Patna, Sep 9 : Vice President Mohammad Hamid Ansari on Friday said Bihar is on the path to becoming a developed state and it has registered skill development on a large scale.

"Bihar is on the path to becoming a developed state," Ansari said after inaugurating the 90th anniversary celebrations of the Bihar Chamber of Commerce and Industries (BCCI).

He also said that Bihar has been moving in a positive direction to achieve overall development.

On Thursday, Ansari visited St. Michael High School here and interacted with the students. He also visited the ruins of the ancient Nalanda University in Rajgir and interacted with students of the revived university which began classes in 2014.
New Delhi, Sep 9 : The Supreme Court on Friday refused to stay a Delhi High Court verdict giving primacy to Lt Governor Najeeb Jung in Delhi's administrative affairs but sought the Centre's response on a batch of petitions by the Delhi government challenging the August 4 ruling.

Issuing notice to the Centre and the Lt Governor, the bench of Justice A.K. Sikri and Justice N.V. Ramana gave the Centre six weeks to file its response and gave the Delhi government two weeks to file a rejoinder to the Centre's reply.

Delhi government has filed seven petitions assailing different issues that have surfaced in the tussle between the elected Kejriwal government and Lt. Governor.

On a suggestion by senior counsel K.K. Venugopal, who led the arguments for the Delhi government, that the matter may be referred to a constitution bench, the bench said it will consider the plea in the course of hearing.

The court fixed November 15 for the final hearing of the petitions.

At the outset of the hearing, Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi said the petition by Delhi government was not maintainable as it was flawed because it has been sworn by the Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia.

He said that petitions are filed by the Chief Secretary or secretary of the concerned department.

Raising further objection to the maintainability of the Delhi government's petition, the AG said that it was a settled issue that Delhi was a Union Territory and not a State. He said that nine judges bench in 1996 had ruled that Delhi was a Union Territory and not State.

Meeting the objections raised by the Attorney General, senior counsel Venugopal said that the LG has said that no petition can be filed without his permission and has even instructed the bureaucrats not to report to the political executive.

Venugopal said that the issue before the court was not whether Delhi was a Union Territory or a State but was - "can the Lt. Governor who is a public servant under the Central government take over the entire governance of the NCT Delhi by taking final decision in every matter".

"If that (Delhi being a State or a UT) is not the issue, then nothing is left (to be adjudicated)," AG told the bench interjecting in the arguments of Venugopal.

Venugopal said it is not the State which is the issue but whether the Lt. Gov could take over the entire administration leaving no role for the popularly elected government, defending Kejriwal government's stance that the LG should act on the aid and advice of the council of ministers.

Describing the Lt. Governor as an "employee of the Centre" having "master-servant relationship", Venugopal said that the LG was "vulnerable" as he could be "transferred or terminated". He (LG) "has tied the hands of the secretaries and was thwarting the hands of the elected government."

Venugopal said the issue being raised affects not only the popularly elected present Delhi government but future governments as well.

"Entirety of the elected government has been reduced to a recommendatory government, which will recommend all the decisions" but decision will be taken by the LG, Venugopal said describing the situation as "extraordinary".

Assailing the appointment of three-member committee by the Lt. Governor that is inquiring into 400 files, senior counsel Gopal Subramanium said that "all the 400 files have been taken away by the Committee. Government can't function like this. The Committee will fix criminal liability, find faults because previous approval was not taken."

"You can't have a fault finding inquiry," Subramanium told the bench.

Venugopal described the committee as a Commission of Inquiry.

As Attorney General objected to the plea that inquiry into 400 files by the committee should be put on hold, Subramanium said, "It is not the voice that should be vociferous, but the point being made should be vociferous."
Singapore, Sep 9 : With a view to supply energy at affordable prices to Indian consumers, the government has introduced transparent policies to encourage investment in refineries and petrochemical plants, Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said on Friday.

"Consumers are the kings in India. We want to provide affordable energy to our consumers," Pradhan said here launching a road show for the auction 67 discovered small fields in India.

He said participation by big global energy players like Saudi Aramco, Shell, BP and Rosneft is important for developing the energy sector and creating competition in the domestic market.

"Rosneft is eyeing Indian market," Pradhan said, adding that the Russian energy major is currently in negotiations with India's Essar Group for participating in the refining sector.

"When we are talking about free and transparent policies, we have to open our market. Consciously, we have deregulated our market and we are giving gradually price and marketing freedom to the investors," he told reporters here.

"Our focus is on simplifying policies and improving the environment for ease of doing business in the country," the minister said.

"Singapore and India can jointly partner for the mutual growth," he added.

Later, addressing institutional investors here at an event organised by Indian firm ICICI Securities, Pradhan highlighted the potential of the huge Indian market and said he was happy with the interest shown by foreign investors.

"Addressed Institutional Equity Investors, organised by ICICI Securities, in Singapore," Pradhan tweeted.

"Had an interactive meeting with potential investors from Singapore; many of them have experience of working in India," he said in a separate tweet.

"Addressed Media about 'Destination India';happy to see their interest in Indian energy sphere and big market," he added in another tweet.

Pradhan arrived here on Friday on the first leg of his six-day, two-nation visit to lead the country's road shows to attract foreign investors in exploiting its discovered small oil and gas fields.

"Addressed road show on small discovered blocks in Singapore. About 200 delegates and potential investors participated in it," Pradhan tweeted, on what was his first engagement. He will go to Britain later.

"Singapore is a global hub for trading of petroleum, petrochemical products and oil service equipment. There can be good synergy between the two countries. It is also a major financial centre in Asia from where FDI and foreign equity investors can invest in Indian oil and gas sector."

India's Petroleum Ministry along with the Directorate General of Hydrocarbon (DGH) is organising the interactive meet-cum-roadshow here on September 9-10.

"During the meetings, Pradhan is expected to highlight the paradigm shift in the policy regime for the exploration and production sector in India and the improved investment environment for exploration and production companies under the new Hydrocarbon Exploration Licensing Policy (HELP) which emphasises on improving the ease of doing business and operational autonomy to attract investment," DGH said in a statement earlier.

DGH said that with significant reforms introduced to reduce regulatory risk, the industry will find the revised guidelines and processes attractive for the current bid round.

Road shows were earlier held in July in the US and Canada, for the auction of India's 67 hydrocarbon discovered small fields (DSF).

Bidding opened on July 15 and will be open till October 31.

The previous exploration licensing round ended in 2012.

The auction will be under the HELP round approved in March, based on a revenue-sharing model, as opposed to cost-and-output-based norms earlier.

The new model will replace the controversial production sharing contracts -- by which oil and gas blocks are awarded to firms which show they will do maximum work on a block -- that has governed the bidding under the earlier nine NELP rounds.

Under the Discovered Small Field Policy, the government is offering for bids 67 discovered small fields in 46 contract areas spread over nine sedimentary basins on land and in shallow and deep water areas.

The offered fields hold 625 million barrels of oil and gas reserves.

Of the 46 small fields, 26 are on land, 18 offshore in shallow water and two in deep water.

Eventual operators will be issued a single licence for exploration of conventional and non-conventional hydrocarbons and will have the freedom to sell oil and gas at "arms length" market prices. There would be no cess on crude oil.

The production sharing contracts regime, which allows operators to recover all investments made from sale of oil and gas before profits are shared with the government, was criticised by India's official auditor, who said it encouraged companies to keep inflating costs -- "gold plating" -- so as to postpone giving a higher share of profits.

The change in model is designed to help keep the government share in cases of windfall from both a steep rise in prices as well as a quantum jump in production.
Athens, Sep 9 : Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Friday told leaders at the summit for Mediterranean European Union members here that ties between the region's nations took precedence over the economic or refugee crises they faced.

In a regional meeting at Athens' Zappeion Hall attended by six southern European representatives of the 28 EU member states, Tsipras emphasised the binding sense of cultural commonality, Efe news reported.

"The Mediterranean isn't just a place of crisis," Tsipras said, "it's a space of cultural ties."

The Greek PM said, however, that Schengen countries in the region take the brunt of the crises that currently afflict Europe.

Tsipras added that the aim of the summit was to prepare collective proposals for the upcoming EU summit in Bratislava, Slovakia, scheduled for September 16.

In attendance were the heads of government from Greece, France, Italy, Portugal, Malta, Cyprus and Spain.
Mumbai, Sep 9 : The BJP, the Shiv Sena and the MNS on Friday took on comedian-actor Kapil Sharma complained to Prime Minister Narendra Modi that he was asked to pay a bribe by a municipal officer.

"I am paying Rs 15 crore income tax from last five years and still I have to pay Rs 5 lakh bribe to BMC office (every year) for making my office. Is this your 'Achhe Din'?" Sharma tweeted to Modi.

Stung by the 35-year-old popular comedian's allegation, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis immediately called for "strictest action" and asked him to provide all information regarding the bribery allegation.

"We will not spare the culprits," Fadnavis said.

But within hours, accusing fingers were pointed at Kapil. And by late evening, he had virtually retracted his morning allegations with a tweet: "I just voiced my concern on the corruption I faced with certain individuals. It is no blame on any political party be in BJP, MNS or Shiv Sena."

The Shiv Sena and the Bharatiya Janata Party control the BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC).

BMC's Chief of Vigilance Department Manohar Pawar said it had taken a serious view of the allegation and told Kapil to lodge a formal complaint and identify the officer who allegedly demanded bribe for speeding up the work on his under-construction office.

Later, the BMC revealed it had slapped a notice on July 16 this year, accusing Kapil of usurping 16 feet of government land by indulging in an illegal construction of his office in Andheri West.

Some of his neighbours and local activists also joined the chorus alleging that the comedian used his star status to bulldoze opponents and indulging in questionable activities.

Kapil came out with a fresh allegation that local Shiv Sena and MNS activists also demanded money from him and that he had earlier complained to the civic body but no action was taken.

Though Shiv Sena youth leader Aaditya Thackeray earlier lauded Kapil, hours later the party alleged that an "outsider" was trying to defame the BMC, India's biggest and richest municipal body.

Maharashtra Navnirman Sena's (MNS) Chitrapat Sena President Amey Khopkar dared Kapil to prove his allegation or they would bar him from conducting his shootings in the city.

Khopkar charged that a studio set used by the comedian for shooting his shows was illegal. Kapil must apologize or face the music, he warned.

Obviously eyeing dividends from the upcoming civic election in February 2017, Mumbai Congress President Sanjay Nirupam and NCP city President Sachin Ahir lauded Kapil for his boldness in raising the issue.

While BJP MP Kirit Somaiya said he was pained to hear the comedian's experience, party MLA Ram Kadam chided Kapil for taking to social media instead of complaining when the incident happened.

Perhaps taken aback by the rebounding effect of his allegations, Kapil thanked Fadnavis for his intervention and sought a meeting to discuss the issue with him.

Lionised on the social media till afternoon, the actor was later trolled and jeered. Some demanded his arrest.

BJP MP Manoj Tiwari demanded an apology from Kapil to Modi.

Congress spokesman Randeep S. Surjewala had a sarcastic tweet: "Everyone believed Modiji will deposit Rs 15 lakh in every account. Instead, it seems they will recover Rs 5 lakh from us."
New Delhi, Sep 9 : Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain told the assembly on Friday that he will seek a probe from Delhi Police into the alleged leak of security detail of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.

Jain was responding to the issue raised by Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) legislator from Laxmi Nagar Nitin Tyagi during the special assembly session. Tyagi asked why action was not taken against those protesting against Kejriwal at the New Delhi railway station on Thursday and demanded a proper probe into the issue.

The BJP Mahila Morcha had staged a demonstration here at the New Delhi railway station against Kejriwal when he was about to leave for Punjab.

Jain said that "manhandling" and "attack" on Kejriwal at railway station was "pre-planned" and came a day after security details of the chief minister came in the media ahead of his visit to Punjab.

He said that giving out security details of chief minister and of his tour programme to Punjab was "a serious issue" and he will ask Delhi Police Commissioner to probe the matter. Security details of chief minister should not be shared, he stressed.

Tourism Minister Kapil Mishra said: "Whatever happened yesterday (Thursday) has diminished the image of Indian Railway as well as of the country".

"How is it possible that such huge gathering of protesters were allowed to reach the platform and managed to manhandle the CM?" he asked.
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New Delhi, Sep 9 : Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) students cast their ballots on Friday to elect their representatives amid a backdrop heavily tinted with the February 9 incident and an atmosphere charged with strong allegiances.

The students cast their votes at 14 booths assigned to several schools of the university. Polling began at 9 a.m. and went on till 7 p.m.

The footfall was relatively low in the first half, but as the day wore on students came in heavy numbers to cast their vote.

The scene at the School of Social Sciences (SSS) booth was not without typical JNU flavour where as students queued up to cast vote, supporters and members of different parties were seen raising slogans and cheering their candidates.

Two major Left parties -- Students Federation of India (SFI) and All India Students Association (AISA) -- formed an alliance to fight the main opposition, BJP-affiliated Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP).

The interest in the elections this time is more, said a student, clearly referring to the changed nature of dynamics of JNU politics with the outside world, in the wake of the February 9 incident during which anti-India slogans were allegedly raised in the campus.

Omar Khalid, a JNU student and one of the key protesters arrested during the February 9 fracas, emphasised the same point.

"This election should be a mandate against whatever happened in the last six months... the rise of Hindutva politics, the erosion of democratic spaces. It is a referendum against all that and students should cast their votes keeping that backdrop in mind," Khalid told IANS.

Asked which party he was supporting, Khalid said, "I want ABVP to lose. I have differencs with the Left parties, but ABVP is a different animal altogether. We are fighting for our right to debate, our right to differ, which they are completely against."

"Even if ABVP comes to power - hypothetically speaking - it won't be able to change anything that fast.. There's an infrastructural framework within which JNU operates which has been created over three decades; that can't be changed overnight.. It won't become BHU (Benaras Hindu University) that soon," he added.

Sharjeel Imam, an M. Phil.(History) student and AISA member, also said that the fight is between ABVP and the AISA-SFI alliance only.

"Majority of the students of the Sciences department vote for ABVP while School of Languages (SL) and SSS are a stronghold of AISA, and Students' Federation of India (SFI). ABVP has gained a lot of supporter base of late due to the anti-incumbency sentiment against the previous government at Centre, while AISA's appeal is largely among the students from the Hindi heartland," he said.

Birsa Ambedkar Phule Students' Association (BAPSA), a first time contender this year, has gained popularity among students from minority background disaffected with Leftist parties, but not enough to win the elections.

Narendra Kumar, General secretary, BAPSA, explained, "Our aim is not to win the election but to spread the ideals of Jyotiba Phule and Babarao Ambedkar, and to diminish the overbearing influence of Leftist parties in the university, which indulge in vote-bank politics and never recognised Ambedkar, but is now trying to appropriate him."

The votes were cast through ballot papers unlike Delhi University Students Union (DUSU) elections, which happened on the same day, where Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) were used. The result of the JNU election will be declared on September 11.
Mumbai, Sep 9 : Minister of State for Road, Transport, Highways and Shipping M.L. Mandaviya on Friday said the government will consider giving the shipping industry the status of an infrastructure sector to improve its productivity.

Mandaviya also said there was need for the Shipping Corporation of India (SCI) to make special efforts to attract more cargo business from the government sector, which includes various ministries, departments, and PSUs under the central and the state governments.

Mandaviya added that the SCI has to play an important role in ensuring energy security of the country.

"SCI has to play an important role in the energy security of the country and all efforts would be made to further boost the capacity of SCI and the sector in this regard to ensure that national interests are fully safeguarded," said Mandaviya while reviewing the SCI here.
Kolkata, Sep 9 : A woman was arrested on Friday in West Bengal's South 24 Parganas district on charge of extorting money by posing as a CBI officer, police said.

"Ichcha Sinha alias Rituparna Das was arrested from Sonarpur by the Criminal Investigation Department. Besides her photo in police uniform, a fake identity card showing her as a Central Bureau of Investigation officer was seized from her," the police said.

The accused had allegedly extorted money from several people.
Vijayawada, Sep 9 : Terming the special package announced by the Central government for Andhra Pradesh as a "rotten laddu", Jana Sena party chief and popular Telugu film actor Pawan Kalyan asked the state's MPs to either fight and achieve special status or resign.

Addressing a massive public meeting at Kakinada on Friday evening, he slammed the Bharatiya Janata Party for going back on its word to accord special status to Andhra and asked TDP if it will accept a "rotten laddu".

The actor, in his emotional speech, targeted BJP leader and central minister M. Venkaiah Naidu, saying he has made a graveyard for BJP in Andhra Pradesh and remarked that the party leaders in the state should look for another party.

At the meeting titled "Seemandhra Atma Gourava Sabha", Pawan repeatedly spoke about the self-respect of Seemandhra (Rayalaseema and Andhra).

"Anybody with some self-respect will not become a slave to the central government," he said amid loud cheers by thousands of his fans.

While targeting Congress for dividing the state in an unscientific manner, he lashed out at BJP for not honouring the commitments made in the Parliament. He said injustice was done to Andhra Pradesh by denying the special status while a high court is yet to be created for Telangana.

This was Pawan's first reaction to the special package announced by the BJP-led NDA government, which declined to give special category status citing the report of 14th Finance Commission.

The meeting had assumed significance in view of the state-wide protests by the opposition parties and people's organisations.

On the shutdown called by the opposition parties on Saturday, Pawan said he was not against the shutdown, and it was for people to decide whether to participate in it or not.

"But why should you toil. Let those who are sitting in Parliament and enjoying subsidised food in Parliament canteen fight and achieve it. You have elected and sent them there to fight," he said.

Pawan had backed BJP-TDP alliance in 2014 elections. At the first public meeting last month in Tirupati, he launched a scathing attack on BJP for failing to fulfill its commitment.
New Delhi, Sep 9 : Delhi's Leader of Opposition Vijender Gupta, of the BJP, on Friday complained to Delhi Police that AAP lawmaker Sharad Chauhan had made remarks inside the house threatening to kill him.

However, Speaker Ram Niwas Goel told police not to take any action in the matter as it pertained to proceedings in the house.

Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia raised the issue in the assembly, saying he had got information that Gupta had made a complaint against Chauhan with police after walking out of the house.

Sisodia said the way the Bharatiya Janata Party legislator had made the complaint should be treated as contempt and that the issue should have been raised in the house.

Agreeing, the Speaker said: "Yes it is matter of contempt."

There was heated exchange of words between Gupta and Chauhan when the house was discussing the issue of a sex video allegedly involving sacked Delhi minister Sandeep Kumar.

Gupta later filed a complaint with Civil Lines Police. Police said they have received a complaint.

Gupta also wrote to Goel asking him to file an FIR against Chauhan.

"As you (the Speaker) and all the ministers and MLAs present in the assembly are the witness that today (Friday) at around 7.40 p.m. I was threatened by MLA Sharad Chauhan that he will kill me by cutting me into pieces. Therefore it is apprehended that there is serious danger to my life," Gupta said in his letter.

"It is, therefore, requested that as Speaker of the Delhi Vidhan Sabha, you must file an FIR against Sharad Chauhan so that police could take necessary action to safe guard my life and take appropriate action against Chauhan," he added.

An Aam Aadmi Party legislator from Narela, Chauhan was released on bail last month after being arrested in connection with the suicide of woman party worker Soni. Soni committed suicide on July 19 after being allegedly harassed by a person named Ramesh Bhardwaj who was said to be Chauhan's supporter.
Paris, Sep 10 : Three "radicalised and fanatical" women, who were arrested here for allegedly planning an "imminent and violent" attack in France, were guided by Islamic State (IS) terrorists in Syria, Francois Molins, Paris prosecutor said on Friday.

"In the last few days and hours a terrorist cell was dismantled, composed of young women totally receptive to the deadly IS ideology," Xinhua quoted Molins as saying.

"They were guided by individuals in Syria in the ranks of Islamic State ... that intends to use women as combatants," he added, noting that the IS has used even young women who develop their plot from distance.

"This commando's objective was clearly to carry out an attack," Molins said.

On Sunday, a Peugeot 607 containing seven gas cylinders, including an empty one on the front passenger seat and three cans of diesel fuel was found near the famous tourist place Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris.

Earlier in the day, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said that an anti-terrorism operation led to the arrest of three women linked to an abandoned car containing gas cylinders on Thursday.

The suspects aged 19, 23 and 39 were "likely preparing a violent and imminent action", he said.

A police officer was injured on the shoulder when one of the women attacked him with a knife in the southeast of Paris, the minister said.

The 19-year-old woman is known to the police for attempting to leave for Syria.

Molins said the youngest of the three women and also the daughter of the car owner, had written a letter pledging allegiance to the IS group.

The 23-year-old suspect was also on the intelligence services watch list for radicalisation.

Previously she has been engaged to Larossi Abballa, who killed two policemen in June and after to Adel Kermiche, one of the men who slaughtered the murder of a priest in July, according to Paris prosecutor.

Her fiance and a 15-year-old teenage, a daughter of one of the suspects were also arrested in connection of the foiled attack near the cathedral.
SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Workers at Anglo American's (AAL.L) Los Bronces copper mine in Chile began a strike on Friday after rejecting the company's final offer in collective wage talks, Anglo said on Friday.

The stoppage began early Friday, the company told Reuters, adding that it was too early to determine the impact the strike would have on operations.

"The company regrets the rejection of an offer that it considers fair and responsible in the context of the current conditions of the mining industry in general and Los Bronces in particular," Anglo said in a statement.

A steep fall in the copper price has left mining companies pushing to cut costs. Workers at state-run Codelco's small Salvador mine are also on strike after failing to reach an agreement, heralding potentially tricky contract talks at Chile's larger deposits later this year and in 2017.

Anglo had offered more than 1,700 unionized workers at Los Bronces, its flagship copper mine in Chile, a bonus equal to around $13,000, plus other benefits.

The union could not immediately be reached for comment.

Los Bronces is the major operating mine in the Anglo American Sur complex, which produced 437,800 tonnes of copper last year, out of top copper exporter Chile's total 5.76 million tonnes.

Anglo holds just over 50 percent of the venture, with state-run Codelco [COBRE.UL], and Japan's Mitsui and Mitsubishi also holding stakes.

(Reporting by Fabian Cambero; Writing by Rosalba O'Brien; Editing by W Simon and Frances Kerry)
This partnership with SpinifexIT provides market-leading solutions to round out Emeritis SAP HCM offerings helping our customers to gain efficiencies in their most important operational HR/Payroll day-to-day work.

Emeritis, an international HR and technology services company, today announced that it has entered into a reselling agreement with global software provider SpinifexIT. This agreement enables Emeritis to extend its portfolio by offering SpinifexITs innovative Cloud and Hybrid software solutions for SAP/SuccessFactors to its customers.

SpinifexIT, an SAP Certified partner and a 2013 Gartner Cool Vendor in the SAP Ecosystem, is a market leader in the creation of business process improvement solutions for Organisations looking to leverage their move to the Cloud/SuccessFactors. The SpinifexIT solutions enable users to be able to report from SAP Payroll and Employee Central and ensure that the Customers investment in both their on-premise and new SuccessFactors technologies are being leveraged. The result is better decisions, greater business continuity, more productive users and measurable ROI.

With Emeritis as a highly respected international HR & Technology services company, the partnership between our companies is a very good opportunity to extend our market shares in Europe and Asia. Emeritis extensive SAP HCM experience and regional expertise will allow SpinifexIT to quickly penetrate the Benelux and South East Asian marketplace, said Mike Bramwell, SpinifexIT CEO for UK/EMEA. We also plan to work closely with Emeritis to further localise our solutions for South East Asia addressing countries like Thailand and Indonesia, Bramwell noted.

As companies are requesting faster and less complicated solutions in every area these days, the software solutions of SpinifexIT are a very good completion of our services around SAP HR & Payroll and a benefit for our customers in Europe and Asia. We are excited to introduce the SpinifexIT solutions to the SAP/SuccessFactors and Payroll markets. This partnership with SpinifexIT provides market-leading solutions to round out Emeritis SAP HCM offerings helping our customers to gain efficiencies in their most important operational HR/Payroll day-to-day work.  Emeritis Group COO Patrick Clenjans said.

About Emeritis

Emeritis is an international HR & Technology services company, operating through its offices in Europe and Asia-Pacific. Our offering ranges from HR Business Consulting, through HRIS and Technology Implementation, to professional Application Maintenance Support.

Combining the benefits of an HR & HRIS niche player with the advantages of being a mature, international company, Emeritis provides its customers with both HR process & technology expertise. Our people represent the high quality the Emeritis label stands for.

To know more about Emeritis, visit http://www.emeritis.com/apac

About SpinifexIT

SpinifexIT is an SAP partner and global leader in the production of SAP-certified business process improvement software. SpinifexIT produces innovative software solutions that improve user productivity, produce more meaningful reports and documents and increase the effectiveness of shared service centers. Learn more about SpinifexITs solutions at http://www.SpinifexIT.com.

SAP IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF SAP AG IN GERMANY AND SEVERAL OTHER COUNTRIES.
The five editions of BeThere book Imagine reading Harry Potter and there are VR glasses along with the book to explore Hogwarts. Imagine reading a textbook about planets along with VR glasses to explore the galaxy.

Visual Experience will be the first company in the Middle East to release virtual reality glasses called BeThere Book. It is a book that can bring people into a virtual world for traveling, sporting, learning, and gaming.

Collaborating with Visual Computing Center at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, BeThere Book had been in development for eight months. It is made of cardboard and designed like a book. When people open BeThere Book, the VR glasses will pop-up. People can also find QR codes inside BeThere Book to experience virtual reality technology directly.

At the same time, Visual Experience will release five editions of BeThere Book: Traveling Edition, Learning Edition, Sporting Edition, Gaming Edition, and Core Edition. Each edition has ready-to-use VR content through a special QR code. For example, through the QR code, BeThere Book: Traveling Edition can bring people to a place they want to visit virtually, meanwhile, BeThere Book: Learning Edition can help all learners to become immersed in what theyre currently learning. Furthermore, BeThere Book is patent pending internationally.

The Visual Experience team thinks that there is a gap between virtual reality and mainstream users. Without any assembly required and the ready-to-use content, BeThere Book will fill the gap. It helps people to understand virtual reality technology in a way that does not involve research. Moreover, BeThere Book shows the concept of a future book. Imagine reading Harry Potter and there are VR glasses along with the book to explore Hogwarts. Imagine reading a textbook about planets along with VR glasses to explore the galaxy.

In order to help more people experience virtual reality technology, Visual Experience supports all brands and businesses by offering custom VR glasses for brands, virtual reality or augmented reality apps for brands, and any other custom request by brands.

BeThere Book is expected to launch in November 2016. Pre-orders are available now at http://be-there.in: $24 for the Core Edition and $26 for other editions.

About Visual Experience

Visual Experience was established at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in 2013. Listed as one of the startups shaping Saudi Arabias future by Forbes Middle East, Visual Experience has been producing the latest edge of virtual reality, such as Makkah Window, VR Okaz, Viewseum, BeThere Makkah, and now BeThere Book. In 2015, UNESCO awarded Visual Experience a prize for innovative ideas in tourism and culture.

The company is now focusing on developing a new virtual reality brand, BeThere.
The Beautiful Home of Chase S. Squirrel: a beautifully illustrated tale of friends walking with God. The Beautiful Home of Chase S. Squirrel is the creation of published author, Pam Watson, born and raised in North Carolina in a wonderful home by a loving mother and father that everyone adored. Her parents tried to instill Godly values and the golden rule into Pam and her brother and sister. Pam has had many wonderful family, friends, and pastors to help guide her on her journey to having a closer walk with the Lord. Several years ago, some friends flew her to Florida for vacation. They lived on the Gulf of Mexico where every day, Pam could walk on the beach, watch the dolphins play, see the birds, and enjoy Gods beauty. Then Pam was hooked. The idea formed over time for her to move to Florida herself. After much prayer, she took the leap of faith and moved to Largo, Florida, to be close to her friends. Pam is excited to have written her first book.

Pam believes that It is never too late for God to use you. Look up and remember GOD loves you very, very much.

Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Pam Watsons new book is beautifully illustrated to help instill a love of the world around and an appreciation for the never-ending love of God for every living creature.

This wonderful story is based on true events about a sweet pet family and the humans they live with. Chase S. Squirrel and his best friendsCammy, Kilgore Kitty, Max, and Mr. Bill Froghave adventures every day in the beautiful environment they live in. The inside pets go outside into a world so wonderful, only God could have imagined and created it. They are so very grateful to live here. It is a small piece of heaven on earth that God gives them the opportunity to explore and play in his glorious design. The pets want you to see through their eyes how much God loves every child, every adult, and all the animals of the world.

View a synopsis of "The Beautiful Home of Chase S. Squirrel" on YouTube.

Consumers can purchase The Beautiful Home of Chase S. Squirrel at traditional brick & mortar bookstores, or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, Kobo or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or inquiries about The Beautiful Home of Chase S. Squirrel, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919.
Almanac Beer Company barrel-aged Farmers Reserve and Dogpatch Grand Cru "We hope our new relationship with the California Craft Beer Association will help us educate the market regarding the possibilities for producing unique screen printed beer labels"

Monvera Glass Decor, an innovator in wine bottle printing is now entering the beer label market. Building off its industry-leading screen printing services, Monvera will now apply the same expertise to screen printed beer labels and will offer both UV printing and ceramic printing capabilities. Examples of these new labels will be on display, as Monvera exhibits for the first time at the California Craft Beer Association Annual Beer Summit, September 8th-9th at the Sacramento Convention Center.

Screen printing beer labels is new opportunity for us, says Caitriona Anderson, VP Sales & Marketing, at Monvera Glass Decor. The craft beer market has been on the rise for a number of years and is currently underserved by the choice of available decorators. Our goal is to provide a broad range of printing options from a one color white label often favored by cider producers to a more complex art arrangement including neck and shoulder printing. We hope our new relationship with the California Craft Beer Association will help us educate the market regarding the possibilities for producing unique screen printed beer labels. Although we are relatively new to the beer and cider market we are already decorating a wide range of bottles and growlers for our existing clients.

One such customer is Almanac Beer Company. We first worked with Monvera Glass Decor when we commissioned them to work on the labels for our barrel-aged Farmers Reserve and Dogpatch Grand Cru releases, says Damian Fagan, co-founder of the Almanac Beer Company. We wanted something very special for the package and they collaborated with our designer to produce a unique 360 degree full wrap label that extends up the shoulder and neck of the bottle. We were thrilled with the results.

About Monvera Glass Decor:

Monvera Glass Decor is a full-service bottle and glassware decoration company specializing in screen printing on glass, etching and applying decals for wine, spirit, beer and specialty-food bottles and other packages. Clients include Almanac Beer Company, Boisset Family Estates, Frank-Lin Distillers, Garrett Markenson Coiffure and Veronica Foods. To learn more about Monvera visit http://www.monvera.com
From Left: Michael Ford (RSIR); Brad Henderson, President & CEO, Sotheby's International Realty Canada; Dean Jones, (RSIR); Andrea Savage, (RSIR).

Realogics Sothebys International Realty (RSIR) released analysis today on the recently imposed 15-percent foreign buyer transfer tax of real estate in the Vancouver metro area and increased interest, most notably from Mainland Chinese, in the Seattle metro area. In the report entitled SEATTLE: Is it Vancouver Deja Vu?, RSIR Research Editor William Hillis tracked home sales volumes of detached houses in Vancouver that plunged by 44.6 percent year-over-year in August [1] and while still higher year-over-year, average detached home prices fell 16.7 percent from July, the sharpest monthly decline in 39 years. [2] New listings were also down 18.1 percent from July. [3] In Richmond, Vancouver, and Burnaby, the number of sales fell a bit more steeply against the long-term trend: by 50 percent, according to real estate insiders.

Matthew Moore, President of the Americas for Juwai.com, a popular residential real estate search portal in China noted significant changes: Juwai.com buying enquiries to Seattle increased by 143 percent in August 2016, compared to one year earlier. Meanwhile buying enquiries to Vancouver dropped by 81 percent during the same period, with all of that drop concentrated in the premium end of the market.

Its too early to tell if this is going to be a sustained market correction or just cause for pause, said Brad Henderson, President and CEO of Sothebys International Realty Canada. The new tax is less likely to change the demand long term, but rather get priced into the market over time. Alternative cities, like Victoria, Toronto and even Seattle will benefit in the interim.

Dean Jones, President and CEO of RSIR noted a spike in web-based traffic, property inquiries and online conversations regarding the tax. His WeChat article entitled Seattle Need Not Fear Vancouvers Phantom Towers, posted on August 16th was shared more than 1,000 times on the social media platform that boasts 600 million subscribers, mostly in China. His property views on Juwai.com increased 156 percent from July to August.

History may be repeating itself south of the Canadian border, said Jones of Vancouvers global arrival over the past two decades. Savvy investors recognize the opportunity as do other stakeholders from Chinese developers to Chinese airlineseveryone agrees the Seattle area is fundamentally well-positioned. Fortunately, overseas demand is on top of our domestic housing drivers like job growth, increased population and wealth generation. The Pacific Northwest already leads the nation with median home price increases and rent growth.

In August 2016, the median home price of a detached home in the Seattle/Bellevue metro area was $670,000, an increase of 9.8 percent year-over-year. By comparison, median prices in San Francisco at $1,106,400 [4] and in Vancouver at $1,214,250 [5] (US) were higher than Seattle by 65.1 percent and 81.2 percent, respectively.

Luxury in the Pacific Northwest is still a relative bargain, observes Jones. In a global market, a record price can be quickly rendered a great value, especially when compared with West Coast peer cities

RSIR reports their top pending sales in August 2016 were a $5.49 million waterfront estate in Juanita and a $4.85 million equestrian estate in Bridle Trails  both will set neighborhood price records and each were sold to a Chinese buyer. While foreign demand is significant, accounting for up to half of the luxury home sales in some popular Eastside neighborhoods, Jones says the regions housing market is responding more so to domestic transfers and a lack of supply. According to the Department of Licensing, 18,420 out-of-state drivers obtained a Washington drivers license in August 2016, an increase of 8 percent for the trailing 12 months from the prior year led by inbound residents from California, Oregon and Texas, which accounted for a third of the relocations. For the month of August 2016 there were 416 newly registered persons from Asia (102 from China), of which 37.5 percent recorded a resident address in King County. Census data suggests Asians are the fastest-growing demographic in the region, most notably on the Eastside.

In response to increasing demand, RSIR and Tiger Oak Publications will reprint an encore edition of the all-Mandarin Seattle Luxury Living magazine this month in time for the inaugural flight of Xiamen Airlines, which will soon offer routine, non-stop flights from Shenzhen and Xiamen to Seattle  the third airline to service growing demand between SeaTac International Airport and numerous ports in Mainland China. The first printing of the popular magazine distributed 25,000 copies and generated more than 50,000 downloads on WeChat.

Jones and Ben Briggs, Executive Vice President of Briggs Freeman Sothebys International Realty based in Xiamen, China are also collaborating on a new Mandarin book that features Seattle entitled Chinese Institutions Definitive Guide to USA Commercial Real Estate, which is scheduled for distribution by November 2016.

For more information, visit a newly launched website at http://www.RSIR.com/Asia-Desk.

[1] Brent Jang and Tamsin McMahon, Vancouver Home Sales Hit Four Year Low in Wake of Foreign Buyers Tax, The Globe and Mail, September 2, 2016.

[2] Jesse Ferreras, Vancouver Average Detached Home Prices See Worst Slide in 39 Years, Huffington Post Canada, September 2, 2016.

[3] Laura Kane, Vancouver Real Estate Board Notes 26 Percent Drop in August, Macleans/Canadian Press, September 2, 2016.

[4] July 2016 data from Zillow (http://www.zillow.com/san-francisco-ca/home-values)

[5] In Canadian dollars, $1,577,300.

About Realogics Sothebys International Realty (http://www.RSIR.com) - Artfully uniting extraordinary homes with extraordinary lives, Realogics Sothebys International Realty is a leading global sales and marketing brokerage firm in the Pacific Northwest. Recognized by the Puget Sound Business Journal amongst the fastest-growing private companies in Washington State for 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 the boutique real estate firm of 170+ brokers consistently rank among the top producing firms within the markets that it serves with branches in downtown Seattle, Bainbridge Island, Kirkland, Issaquah and now Madison Park.

EDITORS NOTES: For high-resolution photography contact Andrea Savage at 206.448.5752 or email Andrea(dot)Savage(at)RSIR(dot)com.
Empress Media Asset Management, LLC (Empress) will present version 3.7 of its flagship eMAM platform, offering improved integration with Adobe Premiere Pro Creative Cloud at IBC booth 7.B33. eMAM is a media asset management software system providing a feature-rich online digital library with best-of-breed integrations for complete workflow process solutions. eMAM unites different on-premise and cloud storage and archive systems, different locations, and different workflow systems into one unified, accessible web or tablet-based interface.

Adobe Premiere Pro CC is a market-leading video editing system. The eMAM integration panel inside the editing desktop provides users with direct access to managed projects, categories, and individual assets regardless of location. Editors can search and browse the content, pulling only required native resolution media to local storage for editing. They also now have the option of using mezzanine (proxy edit) media for editing in shared environments when network and storage access may be an issue, including access to the full resolution media for final conform. Project versions, check-in, check-out, and project locking make it easy to monitor and control changes. Editors have access to all of the metadata, history, comments, and file version information from within Adobe Premiere Pro CC. Editors can also directly send review and approval links from the eMAM panel.

eMAM users can use any web interface or native applications for Android and iOS devices to collaborate on current projects. Users can select media, add markers and subclips, and create sequences to share with their editors. Users can also view projects during editing. Once projects are completed, eMAM customers can use the system for email, social media sharing, digital delivery, and web publishing.

Finished projects can be archived safely and affordably. eMAM will ensure media used in other projects will not be removed from editing storage. eMAM offers direct integration with most of the archive systems, so the process is a one-touch process from the eMAM interfaces or the eMAM panel inside Adobe Premiere Pro CC. Archives can permanently store project media much more cost-effectively than expensive shared production storage, while maintaining the ability to browse, preview, and restore media within eMAM.

David Miller, COO of Empress commented, The open architecture of Adobe Premiere Pro CC allows us to continue to innovate, building complete workflows for customers that unite editors and stakeholders worldwide in the production process.

The Empress eMAM extends the Adobe Premiere Pro CC toolset for editors and post production teams, said Sue Skidmore, head of partner relations for professional video at Adobe. Integrating workflows this way means creative professionals can focus on more on storytelling and less on technology.

Version 3.7 of eMAM is available from Empress Media Asset Management at http://www.empressmam.com. Visitors to IBC 2015 can see eMAM at booth 7.B33 at the RAI Convention Centre in Amsterdam.

About Adobe at IBC 2016

Adobe offers video tools to meet todays high velocity content demands across both new and traditional platforms. At IBC 2016, Adobe is showcasing new features coming soon to its industry leading Adobe Creative Cloud with innovations in audio, editing, motion graphics and collaboration for a new kind of connected creativity. With a powerful integrated workflow, whatever the media, from 8K camera formats to new VR content, Adobe video tools allow post-production teams to move freely from application to application without interrupting the creative flow. Learn more about new features coming to Adobe Creative Cloud and Primetime at http://www.adobe.com/go/video, or visit Adobe at IBC Hall 7, Stand 7.G27.

About Empress

Empress Media Asset Management, LLC is a privately held company providing media asset management and workflow management solutions for broadcast, media, and corporate clients including its eMAM Online, eMAM Vault, eMAM Workgroup, and eMAM Enterprise product lines. It is part of the Empress family of companies, which includes Empress Cybernetic Systems Private Limited, specializing in customized software development, Empress Digital, one of the largest distributors of blank recording media and supplies, and Real Big Hits, which helps to promote, distribute, and fund innovative and creative projects. For more information visit http://www.empressmam.com.
Overstock Peace Coliseum

Enabled Energy, Inc. announced today its completion of Overstock.coms Peace Coliseum data center in Salt Lake City, Utah. Enabled Energy provided conceptual design, owners representation during construction, and final commissioning in collaboration with Overstock.coms technologies team to create a data center that reflects the innovative, efficient architecture that characterizes the new 18-acre corporate headquarters.

From the start, Overstock envisioned a headquarters where a theme of sustainability would influence every part of the campus. Enabled Energy really listened to our goals and invested in our vision, said Carter Lee, Overstock.coms SVP, Technology.

Lee went on to explain that to meet Overstock.coms rigorous energy efficiency and sustainability standards, Enabled Energy engineers took advantage of the ideal Utah climate, selected proven technologies, and chose specific operating points to create a high-efficiency data center in the circular, coliseum-style building. Lee said, Overstocks goals of creativity and collaboration are fully realized with this design that resulted in a measured instantaneous power usage effectiveness (PUE) of 1.07 on one of the hottest days of the summer. In addition, the data center cooling loop boasts heat recovery to assist in heating the rest of the building during colder weather. To date, this data center is among the most efficient in the world. In addition to energy efficiency, space efficiency was a major factor as well. To maximize usable floor space, cooling units were mounted directly over the cold aisles providing the shortest and most efficient air path.

When Overstock asked us to design a cutting-edge, ultra-efficient data center as a part of its new corporate campus, we were really excited, said Jon deRidder, Principal of Enabled Energy. We loved working with the professional teams at Overstock. In our years of working with data centers, I have never seen a team this small do things this big. Overstocks data center will deliver services at a lower total operating cost than any I have ever seen before.

More than 1,500 Overstock.com employees will work at the new headquarters. The campus will include a nutrition-focused cafe, an on-site greenhouse, a fitness center, daycare, a health clinic, and even has a light rail station next door. The Peace Coliseum was completed Aug. 26, 2016.

About Overstock.com

Overstock.com, Inc. is an online retailer based in Salt Lake City, Utah that sells a broad range of products at low prices, including furniture, rugs, bedding, electronics, clothing, and jewelry. Additional stores within Overstock include Worldstock.com, dedicated to selling artisan-crafted products to help developing nations around the world and Main Street Revolution, supporting small-scale entrepreneurs in the U.S. by providing them with a national customer base. Other community-focused initiatives include Farmers Market and pet adoptions. Forbes ranked Overstock in its list of the Top 100 Most Trustworthy Companies in 2014. Overstock sells internationally under the name O.co and regularly posts information about the company and other related matters under Investor Relations on its website (http://www.overstock.com and http://www.o.co).

About Enabled Energy, Inc.

Founded in 2009, Enabled Energy is a data center engineering services company headquartered in Colorado that provides turnkey solutions for complex problems. With a team of top professionals from the data center industry, Enabled Energy offers a full suite of data center engineering and construction services.

Contact:

Jon deRidder, Principal

Joe Staib, Principal

Enabled Energy, Inc.

Phone: 303.761.9890

http://www.enabledenergy.net
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Intrinsic Imaging, an FDA audited, ISO 9001, 13485 and 22301 certified imaging core lab, announced today that it has appointed Bryan Wayne, BSc., as Vice President of Imaging Operations.

Mr. Wayne specializes in providing imaging core lab services in support of Phase I-IV Clinical Trials and Class I, II and III Medical Device Trials. Mr. Wayne has over 11 years of experience in providing medical imaging core lab services and he has a proven record of managing international clinical trials across all therapeutic areas and indications.

Prior to joining Intrinsic Imaging, Mr. Wayne was a senior manager within PAREXEL, one of the worlds largest contract research organizations. At PAREXEL, Mr. Wayne managed large, complex clinical trials within their medical imaging division.

Intrinsic Imaging is recognized worldwide for providing exceptional quality, said Todd A. Joron, BSc., MBA, President and COO of Intrinsic Imaging. As we continue our international growth, Bryans depth of experience and expertise will ensure operational excellence always remains synonymous with Intrinsic Imaging.

Mr. Wayne holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of New Hampshire.

About Intrinsic Imaging

Located in Bolton, Massachusetts and San Antonio, Texas, Intrinsic Imaging is an FDA audited, ISO 9001, 13485 and 22301 certified, medical imaging core lab specializing in providing imaging core lab services for clinical trials. With its team of more than seventy board-certified, fellowship trained radiologists, robust and scalable clinical imaging technologies and our ISO certified quality management systems, Intrinsic Imaging is ideally positioned to provide unprecedented imaging core lab services around the world.

For more information on this release or Intrinsic Imaging, please contact Amy Zastawney at amy.zastawney(at)intrinsicimaging(dot)com or visit our website at http://www.intrinsicimaging.com.
Keisuke Takemoto of MKT Homes has earned the Certified International Property Specialist (CIPS) designation, placing him among 2,500 elite real estate professionals worldwide. The designation was awarded to him by the National Association of REALTORS for completing rigorous coursework devoted to learning international real estate practices and demonstrating proficiency in international business.

International business is happening in every U.S. state. Last year international buyers spent $103 billion on U.S. residential properties. The price of homes purchased by international buyers was over $240k more than the median price of all transactions last year. The majority of global transactions are cash purchases. A Certified International Property Specialist (CIPS) is a global real estate professional who has undergone specialized training focused on conducting business in the international real estate arena.

The CIPS designation is synonymous with advanced expertise, a global perspective, and distinct understanding of a global buyer. As a designee, Takemoto can efficiently work with all international buyers, including U.S. residents looking to invest overseas, foreign buyers purchasing in the United States, as well as recent immigrants who might be unfamiliar with real estate transaction practices in the United States.

"I am very excited to have expanded my knowledge of the international marketplace, said Takemoto, this is a value-added proposition that I bring to each and every client." Takemoto will be formally recognized at the organizations REALTORS Conference & Expo in November.

For more information on the CIPS designation, email CIPS(at)realtors(dot)org or visit http://www.realtor.org/whycips.
Today, at a press conference that kicked off its three-day convention, In Defense of Christians gathered with fellow partners and panelists, and U.S. Representative Dave Trott (R-IL), to announce an ambitious policy agenda. The conference addressed human rights and foreign policy concerns in the Middle East, with an emphasis on the religious persecution of Christians and other ethno-religious minorities in the region.

Recalling the success IDC and its partners in getting the U.S. government to declare that the Islamic State of Syria and Iraq (ISIS) is perpertating genocide against Christians and other ethno-religious minorities in territories under its control, the conference's panelists asked what's next, laying out a number of bold initiatives, frameworks and resolutions to address the concerns of some of the region's most vulnerable communities.

The conference was held at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Katrina Lantos-Swett, President of the Lantos Foundation for Human Rights and Justice, commended IDC for the name of its convention: "Beyond Genocide: Preserving and Protecting the Future of Christianity in the Middle East".

"Naming the evil alone is not enough," said Lantos-Swett, who keynoted the conference. "With the focus of this convention, a call to action is implied."

Lantos decried the destruction of Christian communities in the Middle East, stating,"I am baffled and broken, as the daughter of Holocaust survivors, to see the West so willfully blind or perhaps unwilling to act in the face of such destruction." A personal call to action is needed, she continued. "The question should be: Am I my brother's keeper? We dare not answer in any way other than the affirmative."

Within that context, the press conference's participants and panelists made some bold requests during the press conference, asking the U.S. government to officially recognize the Armenian Genocide, to support the establishment of a province for persecuted minorities in Iraq's Nineveh Plain and to encourage the reform of Egypt's legal regulations regarding the rebuilding of destroyed churches.

Rep. Trott announced his historic resolution, "The Coptic Churches Accountabilty Act" at the conference, stating, "Coptic Christians in Egypt are second class citizens, even though they are indigenous to the region."

Trott recounted that after the Muslim Brotherhood came to power in Egypt in 2014, Coptic Christians experienced the worst violence the community had seen seen since the 14th century. Dozens of churches were destroyed. And although President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi should be commended for his pledge to restore the rights of the Copts, said Trott, the U.S. government should encourage this progress and hold the leadership of Egypt to account.

Andrew Doran, Senior Policy Advisor for IDC, applauded Trott. "We are very proud to have Rep. Trott today and we will support his resolution," he said. "This is a concrete example of what Washington can do in the face of such persecution and destruction."

"Not only are the initiatives we announce today in the interest of the Middle East's persecuted populations, they're also in the interest of the American people," continued Doran. "Violence and terrorism is not contained to the Middle East. And it's not coming to America and the West; it's already here -- it's ravaged our nightclubs, our public spaces, our churches."

Toufic Baaklani, president of IDC, also commended Trott's resolution. "We are the strongest country in the world. When Congress or our lawmakers act, the whole world listens," he said. "With the question of justice in mind, I believe our next act should be to sanction the individuals and countries that have supported and funded ISIS."

The discussion moved to the creation, within the framework of Iraq's constitutional governance, of the Nineveh Plain Province in northeastern Iraq, which would be preserved as an autonomous zone for persecuted Christians, Yezidis and others who have faced persecution and genocide at the hands of ISIS.

"The Iraqi government, the Kurdish Regional Government have recognized the need for the Nineveh Plain Province. It's time for United States to do the same," said panelist Robert Nicholson, Executive Director of the Philos Project, noting that the plain is the ancient homeland of northeastern Iraq's Christians and Yezidis, who were displaced when ISIS invaded the area.

"The problems of the Middle East never stay there," Nicholson continued. "When ISIS is rolled back, we will need a vision, a long-term plan and Christians should be part of this plan. New provinces, based on a decentralized, federated Iraq, will allow Christian and minority communities to feel empowered in the post-ISIS future."

The region's indigenous peoples include Christian Assyrians, Chaldeans and Syriacs, Kurds, Yezidis as well as Shabaks. There are also significant numbers of Turkmen, Armeniams, Kawliya and Mandeans.

The need for a safe zone for these persecuted minorities, rent from their Ninevah homeland during the ISIS onslaught in 2014, is more pressing than ever. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has stated that the Mosul invasion could result in a severe humanitarian crisis in a region already besieged by horrific human tragedy. UNCHR predicts that as many as 1.2 million refugees will flee the city and surroundings as the offense commences.

"And the Assyrian, Chaldean and Syriac Christians, all victims of genocide, should be given first priority in support for the creation of the Nineveh Plain Province," he said. "The United States and the international community should help this community in securing safe passage, aid and administrative autonomy, in fielding their police and local security forces, and in saving their culture and languages".

"The last act of genocide is cultural and historical erasure," said panelist and Prof Alexis Mourkazel, Former Dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of the Holy Spirit, noting the death and persecution of Christians and Yezidis in northern Iraq and Syria.

He shared his vision for a revitalized Nineveh Plain through the creation and support of intellectual, cultural and academic centers of learning that will be a focal point for the region and a link between East and West. "Let us create an interactive climate in the Nineveh Plain, where its scholars, artists and educated people can return and be a link to the world," said Mourkazel. "If you leave the region dry, it will not survive; rather let it survive and grow through culture."

The panelists also discussed how failing to recognize past genocides is not only a moral failure but also emboldens current and future perpetrators of genocide.

Aram Hamparian, Executive Director of the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA), decried a century of American inaction regarding the Armenian genocide, stating that IDC's success in getting the U.S. government to recognize the genocide being perpetrated by ISIS set a powerful example.

"Sadly, the United States has been complicit in Turkey's refusal to recognize the Armenian genocide, which is not in alignment with American values," said Hamparian. "ANCA joins with all of you, bound together in support of IDCs policy agenda, which asks for a truthful and just recognition of the Turkish genocide against Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks, and other minorities. Justice for one equals justice for all; progress for one equals progress for all."

Doran set the tone for the rest of the conference, stating that the progress and initiatives IDC and its partners are advocating for are not sectarian in nature. "IDC does not advocate for the rights of Christians over and above Muslims or any other group," said Doran. "More sectarianism will only lead to more violence. To the Muslims in the West and East, we say, we are not adversaries, but brothers and sisters, struggling against violence and extremism. They are welcome here as they have welcomed so many of us in their homes in the region. We are acutely award of the suffering of millions of Muslims in the face of ISIS and the sectarian violence in the Middle East. The policies that IDC and its partners advocate for will support all peoples in the Middle East, of all faiths."

The press conference participants and panelists included Dr. Katrina Lantos Swett, President of the Lantos Foundation for Human Rights and Justice, U.S. Rep. Dave Trott, (R-IL), Rob Nicholson, Executive Director, the Philos Project, Prof. Alexis Mourkarzel, Former Dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of the Holy Spirit, Aram Hamparian, Executive Director of the Armenian National Committee of America, Andrew Doran, IDC Senior Advisor, Kirsten Evans, IDC Executive Director and Ninar Keyrouz, IDC Director of Media and Communications.

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ABOUT THE CONVENTION

IDC's third annual convention, entitled "Beyond Genocide: Preserving the Future of Christianity in the Middle East", is being held in partnership with the Philos Project, the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) and the Institute for Global Engagement (IGE).

BACKGROUND ON IDC

This pro-activity with regards to protecting ancient Christian communities is par for the course for IDC. In March, both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. State Department declared the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) guilty of perpetrating genocide against Christians, Yazidis and other ethnic and religious minorities in the territories under ISIS control. This historic moment was the result of months of close, bi-partisan collaboration between In Defense of Christians (IDC), U.S. Representative Fortenberry (R-NE), U.S. Representative Anna Eshoo (D-CA), the Knights of Columbus and other activists, religious scholars and human rights experts.

IDC believes that the future of the region depends on multi-ethnic, multi-religious, pluralistic societies, where Christians and other minorities can live in freedom and peace and contribute to the dialogues and debates of future governance structures.

For more detailed event information, please visit http://www.nac2016.org. For press inquiries and questions, please contact melissa(at)indefenseofchristians.org / 540-226-7215
The smooth, curved walls of the Kulm Artisan Fire Bowl reflect the aesthetic balance of modern sculpture design. This sweeping, monochromatic piece elevates its surroundings and allows designers to develop a space with the fire feature at the center, naturally creating a relaxing, yet dramatic environment.

Fluidity fuses with prominence in the new Kulm Artisan Fire Bowl from Eldorado Stone, the leading manufacturer of the worlds most believable architectural stone products. The latest statement piece of the Eldorado Artisan Fire Bowls collection was developed to be bold enough to define an outdoor space, yet harmonious in its ability to complement courtyard design. Evocative of a spa-like retreat and inspired by modern sculpture, this handcrafted fire feature serves to inspire creativity, conversation and community in any outdoor setting.

We worked with landscape designers and architects to create designs that would enrich homeowners experiences in outdoor living areas, said Ramsay Hawfield, Vice President of Marketing and Product Development at Eldorado Stone. We derived inspiration from contemporary sculptures: free-flowing lines with smooth depth and shadows, reflective of modern art. Our intention was realized with the Kulm Artisan Fire Bowlthis sweeping, monochromatic piece elevates its surroundings and allows designers to develop a space with the fire feature at the center, naturally creating a relaxing, yet dramatic environment.

TWEET THIS: The Kulm Artisan Fire Bowl by @EldoradoStone reminiscent of modern sculptures w/ uninterrupted lines. #OutdoorDesign http://bit.ly/29E9Zoi

Each Eldorado Artisan Fire Bowl is hand-packed into molds and finished by hand-sanding four times, resulting in a completely unique fire bowl for each homeowner. The subtle variations in color and texture provide additional depth to the piece and give it a natural limestone feel.

Additional features of the Kulm Artisan Fire Bowl include:

 Color Selections: The Kulm Artisan Fire Bowl is available in four unique colors: Black Sand, Oak Barrel, Aged Teak and Oyster Shell. All are available in either honed or travertine finishes.

 Size Options: The Kulm Artisan Fire Bowl is available in 40- or 60-inch sizes to accommodate both smaller, conversational spaces and large outdoor courtyards.

 Brass Burners: The Kulm Artisan Fire Bowl features high-performance brass burners that provide an elevated appearance and extended burning time, compared to the stainless steel burners offered in most fire pits on the market.

 10-year warranty: Despite the one-year industry standard, each Eldorado Artisan Fire Bowl is equipped with a 10-year warranty.

More information about Eldorado Artisan Fire Bowls can be found on the newly redesigned Eldorado Stone website at eldoradostone.com. To set up an interview with Ramsay Hawfield to discuss modern trends in outdoor spaces, please contact Danielle Gates at 916-285-9835.

About Eldorado Stone

Eldorado Stone, LLC is the manufacturer of the worlds most believable architectural stone veneer and is headquartered in San Marcos, California. It is a subsidiary of Headwaters Incorporated (NYSE:HW), a world leader in creating value through innovative advancements in building products. For more than 45 years, Eldorado Stone has demonstrated an undeniable passion for creating authentic products that elevate quality and design, including architectural stone and brick veneer, natural stone veneer, fireplace surrounds, fire bowls and outdoor living products. The company currently operates manufacturing facilities in several states with regional distribution centers across the U.S. For more information and to view a gallery of beautiful installations, visit http://www.eldoradostone.com.
Granbury Gives As neighbors of Louisiana, a community that is all too familiar with these circumstances, we were moved to provide whatever support we could, - Tom Bronson, CEO

Granbury Solutions, a leader in hospitality and specialty retail technology based in North Texas, showed their tangible support for victims of the recent flooding in Louisiana by raising funds for organizations including Team Rubicon and the Louisiana Veterinary Medical Association, both directly involved with helping those affected by the flooding.

Recent downpours left an estimated tens of thousands of homes damaged and residents being rescued. The American Red Cross has cited the conditions as the worst natural disaster since Hurricane Sandy struck New Jersey in 2012 as 11% of the states population was affected.

Granbury partnered with a committee of employees as the companys giving arm, Granbury Gives, to raffle off paid vacation days and items donated by employees, with the company matching funds raised by employees. Donations poured in from around the country as employees at the companys headquarters in Grapevine, Texas, as well as team members working remotely from east to west coast, got involved. The team announced a donation of $2,000 to Team Rubicon and the Louisiana Veterinary Medical Association.

As neighbors of Louisiana, a community that is all too familiar with these circumstances, we were moved to provide whatever support we could, said Tom Bronson, President and CEO of Granbury. We are glad to be able to support these two great organizations in their efforts to help residents affected by the floods.

About Granbury Solutions

A leading provider of technology to the wine, pizza, delivery, specialty coffee, quick serve and casual dining markets, Granbury Solutions provides the Thr!ve Point-of-Sale, Coffee Shop Manager, and vinSuite technology solutions. Granbury also serves the specialty retail market with its Nova point-of-sale division. Learn more about Granbury Solutions at http://www.granburyrs.com.
Mikes rapid career progression reflects his superior RV knowledge and sales talent, and we are proud to bring that expertise to Lazydays.

Lazydays, The RV Authority and worlds largest RV dealership, continues to strengthen its sales leadership team with the addition of Mike Moccaldi as Sales Manager. He will join nine other industry veterans in managing a team of more than 100 sales consultants at Lazydays flagship Tampa RV dealership.

Moccaldi began his RV career as a sales consultant at La Mesa RV. He was subsequently employed by Camping World, where he served as internet sales associate and desk sales manager before being appointed as general sales manager. Lazydays is renowned throughout the industry as the RV Authority, and I am excited to finally be part of the team here after years of competing against them, said Moccaldi.

Ron Fleming, Lazydays Vice President and General Manager, noted that the Tampa dealership is expanding its sales operations to support recent growth and new opportunities.

Mikes rapid career progression reflects his superior RV knowledge and sales talent, and we are proud to bring that expertise to Lazydays, said Fleming. We have built a sales organization of the highest caliber, and I am confident that our sales management team will help us achieve even greater levels of success in the years to come.

About Lazydays

Lazydays, founded in 1976, is the worlds largest RV dealership. Based on 126 acres outside Tampa, FL since 1996, Lazydays also has dealerships located in Tucson, AZ as well as three dealerships located in Loveland, Aurora and Longmont, CO.

Lazydays has the largest selection of RV brands in the nation featuring more than 2,500 new and pre-owned RVs, over 300 service bays and two on-site campgrounds with over 700 RV campsites. Lazydays RV Accessories & More offers more than 40,000 accessories online for your shopping convenience. Shop us online or visit one of our store locations in Florida, Arizona and Colorado.

Lazydays has built its reputation on providing an outstanding customer experience with exceptional service and product expertise, and as a place to rest and recharge with other RVers. More than a quarter million RVers and their families visit Lazydays every year, making it their home away from home. Lazydays has been recognized as a Top 50 RV Dealer by RV Business and as one of Tampa Bays Top Work Places. The Lazydays Employee Foundation, supported by payroll contributions from more than 65% of Lazydays employees, has contributed more than $1.5 million dollars to make many historic changes for at-risk children in the Tampa Bay and Tucson communities.

For most people, Lazydays isn't just the beginning of their journey; it's very much a part of their ride. To learn more, visit http://www.lazydays.com.

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Best Ranch Auction The property is known locally as the Best Ranch  and it is nothing short of its name. said J.W. Ross, broker with United Country - AltaTerra Realty and Auction.

Qualified buyers will have the opportunity to purchase one of the last true classic Texas cattle operations in the heart of big ranch county, located near Electra, Tx. United Country  AltaTerra Realty & Auction in conjuction with United Country  Kansas City Auction and Realty and Mason & Morse Ranch Company  Strategic Partner of United Country Real Estate will offer 3,920.65 acres at a live auction event on September 27 at 10 AM CDT with online pre-bidding available.

The auction will take place at the Holiday Inn Express/Wellington Conference Center located at 5300 Kell Blvd, Wichita Falls, Tx. We are excited to present this quality Texas ranch to the public, said J.W. Ross, broker with United Country  AltaTerra Realty and Auction. The property is known locally as the Best Ranch  and it is nothing short of its name.

Located in the Central Great Plains Eco-Region, the Best Ranch features exceptional views of Lake Diversion and shares fence lines and borders the legendary 514,000 acre Waggoner Ranch. The property includes 5 ponds, 2 corrals, good pastures, fantastic hunting opportunities, as well as potential for an executive retreat or corporate lodge.

Detailed information about the property for sale, as well as details about the auctions, can be found online at BestRanchAuction.com or by calling 903-905-2999 or 903-491-1719.

About United Country

United Country Real Estate  a division of the United Real Estate Group  is the leading, fully integrated network of conventional and auction real estate professionals. The company has been an innovator in lifestyle and country real estate marketing since 1925. United Country supports nearly 500 offices and 5,000 real estate professionals across four continents, with a unique, comprehensive marketing program that includes the highest ranked and largest portfolios of specialty property marketing websites, the largest real estate marketing services company, an extensive buyer database of more than 550,000 opt-in buyers and exclusive global advertising of properties.

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Each has rich professional expertise and insight that will greatly enhance our work in the months ahead, said University President Robert Schult and Board Chair Michael Rossi in an announcement to the universitys community.

Claremont Graduate University announced today the election of four new members of the universitys Board of Trustees, which is pursuing a strategy of expansion to enhance stewardship of the university.

The new trustees, who were welcomed to the university during their first Trustee meeting of the new academic season, are: Mark Chapin Johnson, Ernie Maldonado, Laila Pence, and John Pritzlaff III.

Each has rich professional expertise and insight that will greatly enhance our work in the months ahead, said University President Robert Schult and Board Chair Michael Rossi in an announcement to the universitys community.

While Maldonado and Johnson bring business acumen and an alumni perspective to the Board (both hold doctorates from the university), Pence is a nationally-recognized wealth manager and financial planner, and Pritzlaff, a racing industry executive from a family well-known in Arizona and national politics, studied management with the universitys Peter Drucker during his years as a Claremont McKenna undergraduate.

Studying with Drucker and seeing that we have such an amazing graduate school are among the best experiences of my Claremont years, Pritzlaff said about his election.

For more about each of the universitys new trustees, see the following biographies, which were also included as part of the university-wide announcement.

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Founded in 1925, Claremont Graduate University is one of a select few American universities devoted solely to graduate-level education with more than 2,000 students pursuing graduate degrees in more than 20 distinct areas of study. The university belongs to a consortium of schools in Southern California that includes Pomona College, Pitzer College, Claremont McKenna College, Scripps College, Harvey Mudd College, and Keck Graduate Institute.

Biographies: New members of CGUs Board of Trustees:

Mark Chapin Johnson

A prominent figure in entrepreneurial and philanthropic circles, Johnson studied Political Science at CGU (PhD in 2012; MA in 2010); he also completed a BA in social sciences from Chapman University in 2005. Currently Johnson serves as a member of Chapmans faculty and Board of Trustees and as a Board Member and Overseer of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. His other service has included several affiliations with UC Irvine and serving as former chair of Chapmans Institute for the Study of Media and Public Interest at the Dodge College of Media Arts.

In addition to his academic distinctions, he has been the entrepreneurial force behind the creation of several major businesses, including Eastland Securities Corporation and Chapin Specialty Healthcare. He is a developer, builder, and owner of commercial/residential properties across the western U.S. and the founder of the Mark Chapin Johnson Trust and the Mark Chapin Johnson Foundation. His civic and philanthropic service includes Boys Hope/Girls Hope, Pacific Symphony Orchestra, World Affairs Council of Orange County, Orange County Performing Arts Center, Southern California Entrepreneurship Academy, and YMCA of Orange County.

It is an honor to join CGUs Board, Johnson says. Im thankful for the education I received at the university and for its impact on my life. I look forward to working with my fellow Trustees to ensure that future students enjoy the same kind of exceptional education that I received.

Ernie Maldonado

An active supporter and alumnus of Claremont Graduate University (PhD in criminal justice, 1983), Ernie Maldonado has devoted his career to public service, including ten years as an Air Force intelligence specialist, thirty years as a member of the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department and, overlapping, three decades as an adjunct professor at local universities. Maldonado completed his undergraduate studies in Public Management and Public Administration at Pepperdine University.

As a member of the military, Maldonado served in Europe, Asia and the United States. While working in law enforcement, and ultimately rising to the rank of Captain, he attended and graduated from the Federal Bureau of Investigations National Academy and the FBI Southwest Command College. As an adjunct professor, Maldonado has taught graduate and undergraduate coursework in both the UC and Cal state systems and until recently he taught in the College of Business and Public Management at the University of La Verne, focusing on Leadership and Organizational Behavior studies. At CGU, Maldonado has been a member of the Advisory Board of the Division of Politics and Economics, and, with his wife Mary, he recently established the Ernest M. and Mary J. Maldonado Endowed Leadership Fund at CGU.

CGU has been part of my life for more than three decades, he says. I cant tell you how thrilled I am to join the Board at this very important moment in our history. We have much work to do, and we have a great community thats ready to accomplish it.

Laila Pence

A nationally-recognized financial planner, Laila Pence has been honored with top rankings in several leading financial publications. She is President and co-founder (with her husband Dryden Pence) of Pence Wealth Management, a registered investment advisory firm. Pence studied economics at UCLA and received her certified financial planner designation from the College for Financial Planning. She is an Accredited Investment Fiduciary, insurance and variable annuity licensee, as well as a licensed real estate broker specializing in 1031 exchange transactions and triple net leases.

Pence brings to the Board a deep understanding of service and a background of relationship-building and client trust that will make her a discerning steward of the university. Clients, she told the Orange County Business Journal in an interview, dont care what you know until they know you care. Her journey to professional achievement is inspiring: her family left Egypt in the wake of the Six-Day War, and, as a teen, she supported her family by selling hot dogs and knishes on the Staten Island Ferry. Today, the Pence family actively supports a number of organizations including: Harvard University, the Egyptian American Organization, Orange County United Way, Saddleback Church, and U.S. Army ROTC. Her election as a CGU Trustee marks her first trustee post at the graduate education level.

The university offers so many wonderful things to students, she says. I think of the opportunities that opened for me when my family came to this country, and I want to help provide the same opportunities for todays CGU students.

John Pritzlaff III

An alumnus of Claremont McKenna College and a leading executive in the racing industry, John Pritzlaff III is a member of a family well-known in Arizona and national politics. His late father, John, held seats in the Arizona House of Representatives and Senate as well as a diplomatic role as Ambassador to Malta during the Nixon presidency. His mother Mary Dell, who passed away last year, was also widely active in Arizona politics and philanthropy.

A recipient of a bachelors degree in 1976 from CMC in International Economics, Pritzlaff also holds an M.I.M. International Finance from the American Graduate School of International Management (Thunderbird). Today, based in Denver, he divides his time and energies as CEO of Libra Sport and Radical Texas, two companies focused on prototype development and sales in the racing car industry. He is also a former member of CMCs Board of Trustees.

Drawing on his core belief in the principles of leadership and responsibility, Pritzlaff says CGU has a competitive edge against its peers because of its rich academic traditionsomething he experienced during his undergraduate years. As a CMC student, Pritzlaff studied management with Peter Drucker, who arrived at the university in the early 1970s. Pritzlaff said he appreciates how CGU has always given undergraduates of The Claremont Colleges a chance to study and engage with faculty members like Drucker.

I can still remember sitting in the classroom with him, and I am thrilled to see it come full circle now, said Pritzlaff. Its an honor to join this board, which is one of the finest in the Claremont Colleges.
The New York Physical Therapy Association, along with the National Council on Aging (NCOA) and its Falls Free Coalition, is observing the 9th annual Falls Prevention Awareness Celebration during the month of September by helping support ready, steady, and balanced lifestyles.

Older adults want to stay active, independent, and safe in their homes, but many worry about their risk of falling, said Kelly Garceau, Executive Director of the NYPTA. In fact, one in three Americans over the age of 65 falls every year. However, falling is not a normal part of aging. Every older adult has the power to prevent a fall.

Across the country, partners are hosting classes and seminars, performing thousands of falls risk screenings, and educating older adults about this years theme: Ready, Steady, Balance: Prevent Falls in 2016. The theme highlights three goals that all older adults have the power to achieve:]

1. Be ready: Education is the most important step to being ready to prevent a fall. Online and at thousands of community organizations, there are resources to help older adults understand their risk of falling. They also can enroll in evidence-based falls prevention programs to learn how to address their fear of falling and what they can do to sustain their strength.

2. Be steady: Older adults can be steady if they take simple steps to prevent falls. These include talking with a doctor about medications, getting hearing and vision checkups, and assessing living spaces for hazards. NCOA offers an award-winning video that provides 6 Steps to Prevent a Fall.

3. Be balanced: Falls prevention is a team effort that takes a balance of education, preparation, and community support, said Kathleen Cameron, Senior Director of NCOAs National Falls Prevention Resource Center. Falls Prevention Awareness Day is an opportunity to take a look at the world around us, be aware of falls hazards, and think about how we can make changes that will help our parents, grandparents, aging neighbors, and even ourselves safe from falls.

For the first time this year, NCOA and its Falls Free Coalition are encouraging supporters to wear a yellow ribbon to increase awareness of falls prevention. To find a state coalition, go to ncoa.org/Map and search for Falls Prevention Coalitions.

To find more falls prevention resources, go to http://www.nypta.org/page/FallsPrevention16

About the NYPTA

The NYPTA (http://www.nypta.org) has the proud heritage as the genesis of the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) in New York City in 1921. The NYPTA is currently the second largest chapter of the APTA, with over 6,000 members who are physical therapists, physical therapist assistants and students. The mission of the NYPTA is to empower and support its members in advancing the practice and profession of physical therapy through advocacy, education and research.

About NCOA

The National Council on Aging (NCOA) is a respected national leader and trusted partner to help people aged 60+ meet the challenges of aging. Our mission is to improve the lives of millions of older adults, especially those who are struggling. Through innovative community programs and services, online help, and advocacy, NCOA is partnering with nonprofit organizations, government, and business to improve the health and economic security of 10 million older adults by 2020. Learn more at ncoa.org and @NCOAging.
Available from one convenient source, the Michelman primers and OPVs work in tandem to enhance and protect the appearance of printed materials.

Michelman will introduce a new line of energy curable DigiGuard overprint varnishes at Labelexpo Americas 2016. The OPVs have been tested and certified by RITs HP Indigo Over Print Varnish Performance Program and are designed for narrow web label and folding carton printing applications. DigiGuard OPVs perfectly complement Michelmans DigiPrime primers, the industrys preferred brand of primer for use with HP Indigo presses. Available from one convenient source, the Michelman primers and OPVs work in tandem to enhance and protect the appearance of printed materials.

Michelman will also introduce a selection of water-based DigiGuard solutions that meet a wide range of market needs, from general purpose to high-performance applications, on both paper and filmic substrates.

Michelman will feature DigiGuard, DigiPrime and other industry leading solutions in booth #5737 at Labelexpo Americas 2016, which is being held September 13-15, 2016 at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, Illinois.

About Michelman

Michelman is a global developer and manufacturer of environmentally friendly advanced materials for industry, offering solutions for the coatings, printing & packaging and industrial manufacturing markets. The companys surface additives and polymeric binders are used by leading manufacturers around the world to enhance performance attributes and add value in applications including wood and floor care products, metal and industrial coatings, paints, varnishes, inks, fibers and composites. Michelman is also well-known as an innovator in the development of barrier and functional coatings, as well as digital printing-press primers that are used in the production of consumer and industrial packaging, paper products, labels, and commercially printed materials. Michelman serves its customers with production facilities in North America, Europe and Asia, product development and technical service centers in several major global markets, and a worldwide team of highly trained business development personnel.
The Phaitus Family at The Site of Their New Home To us, there is no greater benefit than providing the dream of home ownership to a deserving family in our community. We are proud to come together with our realtor partners and clients to make this dream a reality

A fathers infectious pride and joy punctuates Gethro Phaitus words as he describes his 5-year-old daughter Geicas excitement about their brand new home.

Geica tells everyone she sees about her new home and that she will behave for her new bedroom set Phaitus said. Phaitus is a Haitian immigrant who first came to the United States with his wife in 2001 and will be living out the American dream of owning his own home this September, a feeling he describes as the greatest feeling in the world. The apartment we have now has mold that's giving me a lot of trouble. It's been six months with mold. Im just so grateful that me and my family will now have a place that we can finally call our own.

Phaitus, whos wife Yvescar just had their third child on September 7, will be given the keys to their newly constructed 3 bedroom home in Del Ray Beach, four blocks off of Atlantic Avenue, following a ribbon cutting ceremony the morning of September 10th.

This dream is becoming a reality thanks to Matt Weaver (NMLS ID175651) and Avi Mizrahi (NMLS ID# 1147906), Vice Presidents and Managers of the Boca Raton, FL branch of F inance of America Mortgage.

Through their Just1Brick Initiative, Weaver and Mizrahi have raised $80,000 to fund the construction of the Phaitus new home by Habitat for Humanity of South Beach County.

Established in 2015, the Just1Brick Initiative is driven by Weaver and Mizrahi along with the teams Realtor partners and clients. To date, Just1Brick has raised $80,000, efforts it hopes to continue with other families in the South Florida area in the years to come.

To us, there is no greater benefit than providing the dream of home ownership to a deserving family in our community. We are proud to come together with our realtor partners and clients to make this dream a reality says Matt Weaver.

Heres how it worked: Prior to the launch of the Just1Brick campaign, Weaver and Mizrahi committed themselves to complete 535 transactions by year end of 2015, which would fund a complete home. The Just1Brick Initiative donated $150 for every transaction completed throughout the campaign year to Habitat for Humanity on behalf of both the homebuyer and their real estate agent. By year end, Weaver and Mizrahi closed 538 transactions, which was amazingly three sales beyond their goal, and equaled the total cost of a Habitat for Humanity home.

Everyone involved with the Just1Brick Initiative was invited to participate further, from lot selection to build out and they will also receive full recognition for their contribution.

Weaver and Mizrahi are looking forward to handing over the keys to the Phaitus family on September 10th.

About Finance of America Mortgage LLC

Finance of America Mortgage is a national, full service mortgage banker, offering a diverse portfolio of home loan products. Our knowledgeable and seasoned mortgage specialists are committed to delivering an innovative, high-touch, high-tech lending experience for consumers, brokers, and our industry partners across the country. FAM employs 1,500 loan officers in branch offices throughout the country as well as representatives authorized to sell FAM products. Company NMLS# 1071.
Democracy in Action is the theme of the 2016-2017 Honors Forum Lecture Series presented by the Maricopa Center for Learning and Instruction (MCLI), a service of the Maricopa Community Colleges.

This year, the Honors Forum Lecture Series brings four distinguished national and local speakers to the stage to engage students and community members in thought-provoking discussions about current topics that impact Maricopa Community College students and the local and global community.

The evening lectures, free and open to the public, are held on Wednesdays from 7 to 8 p.m. at Phoenix College Bulpitt Auditorium, 1202 W. Thomas Rd., Phoenix, AZ 85013.

Kevin Powell, Wed., Sept. 21, 2016

Writer, Humanitarian & President of BK Nation

Kevin Powell is one of the most acclaimed political, cultural, literary and hip-hop voices in America today. A native of Jersey City raised by a single mother in extreme poverty, Powell studied at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, thanks to New Jerseys Educational Opportunity Fund. Powell is the author of 12 books. His latest The Education of Kevin Powell: A Boys Journey into Manhood is a brutally honest memoir about his youth and life. In 2018, he will publish a biography of Tupac Shakur, the late rapper and controversial American icon. As an activist, he is the president and co-founder of BK Nation, a new national, progressive, multicultural organization focused on such issues as education, civic engagement, leadership training, health and wellness, social media, arts and culture, and job and small business creation.

Patricia Ferguson-Bohnee, Wed., Nov. 16, 2016

Director of the Indian Legal Clinic, Faculty Director of the Indian Legal Program, and Clinical Professor of Law, at the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at Arizona State University

Professor Ferguson-Bohnee brings vast experience in Indian law, election law, voting rights, and status clarification for tribes to her Honors Forum Lecture Series presentation. Ferguson-Bohnee has assisted in complex voting rights litigation on behalf of tribes, has drafted amicus briefs to the United States Supreme Court for tribal clients with respect to voting rights issues and serves as the Native Vote Election Protection Coordinator for the State of Arizona.

Erika Andiola, Wed., Feb. 15, 2017

Community organizer and activist

Erika Andiola's personal struggle as an undocumented woman with an undocumented family has given her the drive and passion to keep fighting for immigrant and human rights. She is a former honors student who enrolled at Arizona State University (ASU) with dreams of becoming a school counselor. Despite losing her scholarships due to her undocumented status, Andiola graduated from ASU with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology. Andiola still aspires to work as a school counselor one day  after helping to pass the DREAM Act. Andiola became involved with Promise Arizona, a grassroots civic engagement organization with a mission to recruit, train and support a new generation of leaders from across the state and register Latinos to vote. She is the co-founder of the Dream Action Coalition and the Arizona DREAM Act Coalition, and a former congressional staffer for Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema.

Neil Giuliano, Wed., April 19, 2017

President/CEO of Greater Phoenix Leadership

Neil Giuliano serves as the President/CEO of Greater Phoenix Leadership (GPL), a forum for corporate leadership to collaborate with government, education, and philanthropy sectors. Prior to joining GPL, Giuliano was the CEO of San Francisco AIDS Foundation (SFAF), one of the largest AIDS service organizations in the world. He was president of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), and executive producer of GLAAD Media Awards. Giuliano also served as mayor of Tempe, Ariz. where was the youngest person ever elected to that position, and was the first directly-elected openly gay mayor in the United States.

For more information and photos of the speakers, visit the Honors Forum Lecture Series website or contact Don Jensen-Bobadilla, (480) 731-8296.

About Maricopa Community Colleges

The Maricopa Community College District includes 10 regionally-accredited collegesChandler-Gilbert, Estrella Mountain, GateWay, Glendale, Mesa, Paradise Valley, Phoenix, Rio Salado, Scottsdale and South Mountainand the Maricopa Corporate College, serving more than 100,000 students with two-year degree, certificate, and university transfer programs.
This report summarizes how the needle has shifted in California in the past five years for venture capital, private equity, real estate, and hedge funds.

The 22nd Annual Alpha Hedge West conference, taking place September 8-9, 2016, at the Ritz-Carlton San Francisco, is focused on innovative approaches taken by both established and emerging fund managers in the industry. Along with influential asset allocators and regulatory bodies, the event is a meeting place for members of the alternative investment community to explore new allocation strategies and look towards the future of investing.

The conference is being co-hosted by the California Hedge Fund Association (CHFA), a 1,200-member regional non-profit association focused on fostering growth and development of the alternative investment community. The conference opened with an announcement by CHFAs president, Jason Gerlach, CEO, who is CEO and Managing Partner of Sunrise Capital Partners, a San Diego-based asset management firm.

In response to the changing investment landscape in California, Gerlach announced plans to change the name and scope of the CHFA. He said that on January 1, 2017, the CHFA will be broadening its mandate to include all alterative strategies and accordingly, will be changing the organizations name to one that is more descriptive to include private equity, real estate, fintech, venture capital, and other alternative investment sectors.

He also released a new industry research report that summarizes the evolving landscape of alternative asset management in California. The report was developed in conjunction with Preqin, a leading source of data and intelligence, covering private equity, hedge funds, real estate, infrastructure and private debt. Gerlach said, This report summarizes how the needle has shifted in California in the past five years for venture capital, private equity, real estate, and hedge funds. The report shows there are over a 1,000 active alternative asset managers in California, collectively they are managing nearly 1 trillion dollars in capital, and there are 500 California-based institutional investors with 63% of them allocating in alternatives. This clearly shows that there is more upside for the alternative investment industry here in California, he said.

Video: https://youtu.be/KV3pS283NH8

For more information about the California Hedge Fund Association (CHFA) visit: http://www.calhedgefund.org or email: info(at)calhedgefund(dot)org
We are excited to join this nationwide movement of educational institutions committed to carrying out the vision of Mr. T. Denny Sanford through these exceptional and impactful approaches

National Universitys Sanford Institute of Philanthropy is pleased to announce the launch of an affiliate Institute at Bellevue University that will help nonprofits increase their fundraising capabilities and positive impact in the Nebraska and Western Iowa region. Bellevue University is the latest affiliate to join the nationwide network of Institutes that each offer proven curricula developed by the founding Institute and presented by recognized nonprofit leaders, members of academia, and renowned philanthropists to reflect the vision of philanthropist and entrepreneur T. Denny Sanford.

Through the arrangement, Bellevue University will have access to educational resources developed through the private, nonprofit National University, which launched the founding Sanford Institute of Philanthropy at National University in 2014. A foundational element of each Institute is the Cause Selling approach, which blends the passion of philanthropy with an emphasis on business principles. Other affiliated Institutes have opened at John F. Kennedy University, which is part of the National University System and serves the San Francisco Bay Area, and at Augustana University that serves the South Dakota region.

We are very pleased to celebrate the launch of Bellevue Universitys Sanford Institute of Philanthropy, which will strengthen the philanthropic culture in the region they serve and build the capacity of nonprofit leaders, said Dr. Lena Rodriguez, Endowed Director of the Sanford Institute of Philanthropy at National University. The vision of Mr. Sanford is to make the world a better place, and through the Institutes work we create stronger communities through more sustainable and impactful nonprofits.

Bellevue University has supported and assisted non-profit agencies and organizations for many years. The campus community and students contribute countless hours to improve communities and give a helping hand to those in need. The University offers education and training to build capacity and sustainability for leaders and managers of nonprofit organizations. The formal connection with the Sanford Institute of Philanthropy will provide an even stronger framework for developing capacity and improving peoples lives.

We are pleased to establish our own Sanford Institute of Philanthropy to support the work of our regions nonprofit community by helping them make even more positive impacts in the lives and communities they touch, said Dr. Mary B. Hawkins, Bellevue University President. We are excited to join this nationwide movement of educational institutions committed to carrying out the vision of Mr. T. Denny Sanford through these exceptional and impactful approaches.

Mr. Sanford, considered to be one of the worlds most generous donors, believes in making the world a better place by helping nonprofits and cause organizations maximize their fundraising potential. The core approaches of the Sanford Institute of Philanthropy are based on Mr. Sanfords own interactions with hundreds of nonprofit and foundations, and his desire to provide training for fundraisers to more effectively convey their causes. He teamed up with National University, a private nonprofit university in California, to develop educational programs that emphasize a Cause Selling approach to strengthening donor relationships.

The Cause Selling approach, as envisioned by Mr. Sanford, applies proven business and sales principles that strengthen donor relationships. It does this through a multi-faceted approach of communication skills and basic psychology, as well as research, strategy and data analysis. This approach has been detailed in a one-of-its kind textbook, Cause Selling: The Sanford Way. The book production process was overseen by National University and the textbook was written by Dr. David J. Lill, an educator, professional salesperson and author of the widely acclaimed textbook Selling: The Profession, and his daughter Jennifer.

Each Institute, including Bellevue University, offers educational programs based on the Cause Selling fundraising approach in conjunction with their unique activities and programs to best serve their local communities.

To date, more than 6,500 nonprofit leaders have benefitted from the founding Institutes programs, which include seminars and lectures. As the project lead, National University has also developed fundraising certificate programs in coordination with external organizations that incorporate approaches developed by the Sanford Institute of Philanthropy at National University, such as one that is offered to members of the National School Association Foundation.

About the Sanford Institute of Philanthropy at National University

The Sanford Institute of Philanthropy offers educational and training programs to help nonprofits significantly increase their fundraising capabilities and their positive impacts on society. Based on the vision of philanthropist and entrepreneur T. Denny Sanford, the first Sanford Institute of Philanthropy launched at National University in 2014 with the development of proven contemporary curricula presented by recognized nonprofit leaders, faculty and renowned philanthropists. San Diego-based National University  which is among the largest private, nonprofit universities in California - is leading the expansion of a network of affiliated Institutes of Philanthropy in coordination with other educational institutions. A common cornerstone among each Institute is the Cause Selling approach toward fundraising and donor relationships that blends the passion of philanthropy with an emphasis on proven business principles.

To learn more about the Sanford Institute of Philanthropy at Bellevue University, contact Nancy McCabe at nlmccabe@my.bellevue.edu

To learn more about joining the Sanford Institute of Philanthropy national initiative, please contact the Endowed Director, Dr. Lena Rodriguez at 858-624-8714, or visit National Universitys web page: http://sanfordeducationcenter.org/instituteofphilanthropy.cfm
Southern Rentals and Real Estate  a locally owned and operated provider of Northwest Florida and Coastal Alabama vacation rentals, residential leasing, real estate sales and association management services -- has partnered with RMI Vacations to become the leading provider of vacation rentals in Pensacola Beach. RMI has over fifty years of experience in vacation rental management and an impressive reputation for always delivering outstanding customer service, something Southern values and plans to continue.

RMI is such a wonderful company with a strong presence in Pensacola Beach, and we are excited to represent them, said Southern Vacation Rentals General Manager, Richard Lamar. We look forward to providing many more years of excellent customer service to owners and guests alike.

Through this partnership, RMI by Southern Vacation Rentals will offer a wider selection of Pensacola Beach vacation rentals to guests, as well as access to valuable travel tools such as the Southern Guest App and local deals through the Southern Perks program. Partnering with Southern has also expanded resources for vacation rental owners. This includes a robust marketing and advertising plan, trained sales team and experienced operations staff with two dedicated managers per property.

In addition to the spectacular selection of vacation homes and condos in Pensacola Beach, RMI by Southern will also represent an expanded collection of long-term rentals and real estate opportunities in the area. Since it was founded, Southern has experienced continued success in vacation rentals, long-term rentals and real estate sales along the beaches of Northwest Florida and Coastal Alabama. With the addition of RMI by Southern, the company looks forward to a future of ongoing growth and development.

Southern Rentals and Real Estate is a leading provider of residential leasing, real estate, property management services, and vacation rentals in Coastal Alabama and Northwest Florida. Established in 1995, the company is owned and operated by two sets of brothers, Brad and Mike Shoults and Kevin and Kerry Veach, and Susan Carleton. Southern represents nearly 1,100 vacation rentals, approximately 1,000 long term rentals, countless real estate opportunities and more than 40 associations along the Gulf Coast. The Southern family of companies includes Southern Vacation Rentals, Southern Residential Leasing, Southern Real Estate Sales, RE/MAX Southern and Southern Association Management. For more information, visit GoSouthern.com.
Estrella TV We pride ourselves in creating original Spanish language content in the U.S. that is relevant, entertaining and that caters to Hispanics living in this country, not a foreign territory, stated Lenard Liberman, CEO, LBI Media, Inc.

Estrella TV, the only minority-owned Spanish television network in the U.S., experienced a 20% growth in ratings in prime time among millennials (adults 18-34) during the Summer of 2016, as compared to the same period in 2015.

According to Nielsen ratings*, Estrella TV saw a ratings increase not only among adults 18-34, but also experienced a 31% improvement among men18-34 as well. During this same prime time period, Telemundo dropped -12% and -18%, Univision -16% and -16% and UniMas -8% and -25% respectively, in both 18-34 demographic groups from 2015 to 2016. In the all-important demographic of 18-49, Estrella TV is the only major network that experienced ratings increases.

Since its inception in 2009, Estrella TV has been the only Spanish language broadcaster that has catered to the rapidly growing young Hispanic audience, featuring relevant and original programming, which is clearly distinguished from the traditional telenovela format. Estrella TV has differentiated itself from the two other leading Spanish language television networks by producing fast-paced and alternative programming that U.S. Hispanics have increasingly embraced. Shows such as Tengo Talento Mucho Talento, Rica Famosa Latina, Noches Con Platanito, iTestigo and Alarma TV, have proven to be ratings successes for the network, and continue to attract young viewers nationwide.

The Networks new slate of Fall programming continues this innovative programming strategy with the exciting launch of the family game show, TumbaBurros on September 26th and a new variety show by stand-up and internet comedy sensation, Franco Escamilla. These new programs exemplify the original approach to programming pioneered by Estrella TV as it caters to the tastes of U.S. based Hispanics and is not tethered to foreign originated telenovela programming that is aired by its peers.

According to recent data from the Pew Research Center, nearly 60% of Hispanics in the U.S. are millennials or younger, and one-quarter of this group is between the ages of 18 and 33. For the past seven years, Estrella TV has consistently succeeded in competing with its Spanish language network peers by providing programming that is relevant to the changing Hispanic market; capturing this audience with a unique lineup of relevant and entertaining programming.

The fact that the traditional telenovela format has been in steady decline for the past several years is no surprise to us. At Estrella TV, we have always produced programming that speaks to U.S. Hispanic audiences. We pride ourselves in creating original Spanish language content in the U.S. that is relevant, entertaining and that caters to Hispanics living in this country, not a foreign territory, stated Lenard Liberman, CEO, LBI Media, Inc., the parent company of Estrella TV.



Source: Nielsen National TV View; C3 (000); 3Q16 to date (06/27/2016 - 08/21/2016) vs 3Q15 to date (06/29/2015 - 08/23/2015); excludes sports; networks and demos as stated.

About LBI Media, Inc.

LBI Media, Inc., is the largest privately held, minority-owned Spanish-language broadcaster in the United States, with ten television stations and seventeen radio stations operating in top U.S. Hispanic markets. LBI Media, Inc. is the parent company to the Estrella TV Network, Don Cheto Radio Network, Fenomeno Studios MCN, Que Buena Radio and La Raza Radio. The company produces over 50 hours of original television programming at its Burbank Television Studios each week. The Estrella TV programming catalog consists of over 7,500 hours of original, Spanish-language television programming in genres including talk, drama, comedy, variety, reality, music and more.
Oktoberfest with Viator

By far the largest beer festival in the world, Oktoberfest attracts more than 7 million visitors to Munich every year. The team at Viator, a TripAdvisor company and the leading resource for tours and activities worldwide, has announced a selection of local experiences available during the 16-day festival (Sept. 17  Oct. 3) to bring travelers into the tents at the forefront of the Oktoberfest action.

Given the popularity of the festival and the limited-time-only nature of the event, some dates and tours have already sold out, so guaranteeing access in advance by booking ahead with Viator will help travelers avoid missing out on the Gemutlichkeit  a unique state of warmth and good cheer (coupled with some yummy brews). All activities are available for travelers 16-years and up unless otherwise noted.

Glide to the Beer Garten

The Munich Segway Tour During Oktoberfest (through Oct. 3, with some dates already sold out) is a guided, educational and entertaining, 2.5-hour small-group Segway tour that takes in all main attractions like the Hofgarten, the Munich Residenz, the Viktualienmarkt, Englischer Garten, Marienplatz and Hofbrauhaus and more  stopping frequently to hear fascinating stories, take pictures and discuss Munichs history.

Inside the Theresienwiese

Travelers can get an insider look at the world-famous festival with Munich Oktoberfest Tickets and Tour (Sept. 18  Oct. 3). The tour starts with a narrated walk through the festival grounds and takes a spin on the Ferris wheel before settling in at the lively Hofbrau-Festzelt tent to soak up the raucous culture with a roast chicken dinner with 2 liters of beer included.

The Munich Oktoberfest Overnight Camping Package Including Breakfast and Dinner (Sept. 17  Oct. 3) begins with hearty breakfast at the campsite in the morning before heading over to the festival with a guide. Revelers will sing centuries-old drinking songs, wander the beer tents, and try Bavarian dishes then head back to the campsite in the evening for Stoketoberfest, the after-party. Guests enjoy barbecue, live bands, more beer (of course), and carnivalesque celebrations with 2,500 or more international guests every night. Packages include 2, 3 and 4-night options and are appropriate for travelers 18 and over.

For those not already in Munich, the Private Tour: Munich and Oktoberfest Grounds Tour from Salzburg (select dates Sept. 17  Oct. 3) features a private guide, and the flexibility to spend more time seeing the sights of Munich of most interest to the traveler including Marienplatz, Munichs historical square, to see the Gothic New Town Hall (Neus Rathaus), home of the animated Glockenspiel show, Allianz Arena, or the legendary Hofbrauhaus am Platzl all before heading to the beloved Oktoberfest site where travelers will spend an hour or so getting a brief glimpse into the world renowned festivities. (Entrance fees are payable on the day; all ages welcome.)

The Munich Oktoberfest Reserved Table at Kafer or Pschorr Tent Including Oktoberfest History Tour (Sept. 19 and 20; must be 21 and over to participate), explores the best of Bavarias beer culture highlighted by a reserved table at Kafer's Wiesn-Schanke or the Pschorr-Braurosl. Travelers take a seat and enjoy the traditional brotzeit platter, which includes traditional Bavarian bread, cheese, mixed meat, onions and pickles. As the beer-fuelled celebrations ramp up, guests can listen to live music from the brass band while enjoying all the Bavarian beer they can drink.

Available on one-day only (Sept. 26) the Small-Group Munich City and Oktoberfest Tour Including Reserved Oktoberfest Tent Table is a 7-hour experience that includes a Munich city tour and a guaranteed spot inside a tent at the 200-year-old festival at Theresienwiese. This small group tour with a maximum of 20 guests (10 travelers per table) includes two liters of beer and a half-chicken dinner. With the evening free to experience the sights, smells and sounds of the Oktoberfest, travelers can enjoy a mix of traditional activities (like the shooting galleries) and rides, such as the free-fall tower.

The All Inclusive Oktoberfest Tour and Table Reservation at a Major Tent (Sept. 26  30; 21 years and older) features jumping the queues and skipping-the-lines as travelers enter the festival. Travelers will explore the historic Theresienwiese and gain insight into Bavarias rich brewing heritage, then take a seat inside one of the Oktoberfest tents. They'll savor a traditional Bavarian lunch and swill as many steins of beer as desired! Afterward  when the party ramps up  guests drink and dance into the evening as Bavarian music fills the tent.

To cap off the 16-day event, travelers can try An Evening at Oktoberfest at the Hofbrau Tent Including Dinner and a Historical Walking Tour (Oct. 3 only; 21 years and older). Visitors tour the Oktoberfest grounds and learn about the history of each tent, Lederhosen and the festival spirit, then head to the world famous Hofbrau tent for a stress-free evening including a reserved table where beer and food will be waiting. An expert Oktoberfest guide will be on hand to answer questions, help with ordering, and explain local customs during the four-hour reservation.

For information on these Oktoberfest experiences and thousands of insider experiences all over the world as well as the latest deals, promotions, contests and news, travelers can visit http://www.viator.com or follow Viator on Facebook (ViatorTours) and Twitter (ViatorTravel).

About Viator

Viator, a TripAdvisor company, is the leading global tours and activities provider for travelers, delivering online and mobile access to thousands of trip activities including tours, attractions, shore excursions and private guides, in more than 2,000 destinations worldwide. In-house travel experts work with trusted local operators to ensure the quality and value of every experience, all backed by Viators 24/7 customer service and global low-price guarantee. With more than 1 million verified reviews plus exclusive videos and insider travel tips, Viator has everything a traveler needs to find and book the best things to do. In addition to the flagship site  Viator.com  travelers can book in advance or in-destination via the Viator Tours and Activities App, as well as local-language sites for European, Latin American and Asian travelers. Viator also provides tours and activities to more than 3,000 affiliate partners including some of the worlds top airlines, hotels and online travel agencies. Viator is headquartered in San Francisco with regional offices in Sydney, London and Las Vegas. Viator  travel with an insider.
The Iron Yard, the largest immersive code school in the U.S., today launched the Tech Opportunity Fund in collaboration with with Code Fellows and Operation HOPE. By unifying the efforts of code schools, government, civic organizations and employers, the goal of the Tech Opportunity Fund is to increase diversity in the tech industry by removing financial barriers and increasing access to tech education for all. In addition to technical skills training, the initiative will include core financial literacy education and entrepreneurship training through programming partner Operation HOPE. The Tech Opportunity Fund was mentioned this morning in a speech by Vice President Joe Biden in St. Louis.

To maximize the potential of the tech industry, we must maximize the potential of a diverse tech workforce, said Peter Barth, CEO of The Iron Yard. The Tech Opportunity Fund builds off of the momentum generated by innovative initiatives like TechHire to ensure Americans of all backgrounds have access to tech training programs that can open the door to a career in tech. There is a true need in the industry for an organization to unite the many groups that are working toward this goal and by coordinating our efforts, we can truly change the industry for the better.

Over the next five years, the Tech Opportunity Fund aims to award $100 million in diversity scholarships to in-need students from groups that are currently underrepresented in the tech workforce including women and minorities. The Iron Yard has committed $40 million in full-tuition scholarships to the schools immersive programs over the next five years, Code Fellows has committed $5 million in full-tuition scholarships, and Operation HOPE will serve as the Funds financial literacy and entrepreneur training partner. To reach the goal of awarding $100 million in scholarships, the Tech Opportunity Fund is calling on employers, code schools and civic organizations across the country to join the Fund by providing funding for scholarships and contributing resources that will support scholarship recipients.

"The creation of the Tech Opportunity Fund is unprecedented, said Rodney Sampson, a partner of the Tech Opportunity Fund and partner at TechSquare Labs. By far, it is the largest tangible strategic financial commitment to diversify the technical talent and workforce that will drive our nation toward an inclusive innovation economy for all."

In addition to providing full-tuition scholarships to code school programs, the Tech Opportunity Fund will work to remove other barriers that can prevent people from pursuing a code school education. Partnerships with city-level government bodies and civic organizations will assist scholarship recipients by addressing needs such as affordable housing, financial literacy, counseling and transportation as needed.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution that will increase access to tech education and improve diversity in the workforce, said Barth. The Tech Opportunity Fund approaches these issues holistically and coordinates local and national resources to provide students with both academic opportunity and the support system they need to be successful.

Access to opportunity is the hallmark of an inclusive global economy, and access to digital opportunity and jobs in the digital space is the door to the future, said John Hope Bryant, Operation HOPE Founder, Chairman and CEO. This extraordinary collaborative will help develop life skills in deserving students, many, in underserved communities throughout the nationcreating a generation of tech leaders and job creators to power us forward.

Applications for Tech Opportunity Fund scholarships will open by January 2017. To receive a scholarship, applicants will need to first be accepted into a participating code school through that programs standard admissions process. After their acceptance, students will apply for a Tech Opportunity Fund scholarship through the website, http://www.techopportunityfund.org. Scholarships will be awarded to qualified students on a first come, first served basis.

Over the last 12 months, weve provided over $600,000 in scholarships, from direct funds and from great partners like Expedia and Zillow Group. These funds have given over a hundred students the chance to learn relevant, highly desirable skills, and continue on to join great companies in the local tech markets, said Dave Parker, Code Fellows CEO. The Tech Opportunity Fund program helps us expand that impact.

Scholarships will be available on all of The Iron Yard and Code Fellows campuses:

Atlanta, GA

Durham, NC

Orlando, FL

Austin, TX

Greenville, SC

Portland, OR

Charleston, SC

Houston, TX

Raleigh, NC

Charlotte, NC

Indianapolis, IN

Salt Lake City, UT

Cincinnati, OH

Las Vegas, NV

San Antonio, TX

Columbia, SC

Minneapolis, MN

Seattle, WA

Dallas, TX

Nashville, TN

Tampa, FL

Detroit, MI

New York, NY

Washington, DC

For more information and to learn more about how your organization or code school can be involved in the Tech Opportunity Fund, visit: http://www.techopportunityfund.org.

For more information about The Iron Yard, visit: http://www.theironyard.com

For more information about Code Fellows, visit: http://www.codefellows.org.

For more information about Operation HOPE, visit: http://www.OperationHOPE.org
The Gifu Prefecture, a region in central Japan, has announced the debut of Hida Beef, a premium Wagyu beef, in the United States. Hida Beef is one of the finest varieties of beef and was previously only available to purchase in Asia and Europe.

Hida Beef debuted during Feel Gifu at EN Japanese Brasserie in New York City at a media reception with specialty dishes including Hida Beef Sushi prepared by acclaimed Chef Abe Hiroki. Mr. Hajime Furuta, Governor of Gifu, introduced Hida Beef, its history, and the exquisite region of Gifu before a special Sake barrel opening ceremony. Feel Gifu is a month-long celebration taking place in New York City and honoring Gifus food, Sake and crafts.

Hida Beef is a household name in Japan and we are thrilled to launch in the U.S. during Feel Gifu, said Mr. Hajime Furuta, Governor of Gifu. Gifu is recognized for its scenic beauty which provides Japanese Wagyu cattle with a wealth of natural benefits and gives Hida Beef its melt in the mouth taste and rich aroma.

Hida Beef is the specific name given to beef from a black-haired Japanese cattle breed. The beef must have been raised in Gifu Prefecture for at least 14 months. Hida Beef is known for its intense marbling, luster, color and texture. The beef is required to be confirmed and certified as Yield Score of Grade A or B by the Hida Beef Brand Promotion Conference, and have a Firmness and Texture Grade of 5, 4 or 3 as graded by the Japan Meat Grading Association.

Hida Beef has achieved victories at the Beef Cattle Expo sponsored by the Kinki-Tokai-Hokuriku Regional Association. Every prefecture in Japan participates in the exhibition of Matsuzaka beef, Kobe beef, Omi beef and other famous brands. Hida Beef has won the Best Carcass Award (Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Prize) in fiscal years 2012, 2013 and 2015.

During Feel Gifu, Hida Beef will be available at select restaurants including brushstroke, Hasaki, Shabu-Tatsu, Sakagura, Hakubai, and EN Japanese Brasserie.
Realogics Sothebys International Realty (RSIR) has announced an alliance with Juwai.com that enables the luxury real estate brand to generate Chinese buyer interest on one of the worlds most prominent real estate websites with over two million monthly visitors. As a truly international brand, Sotheby's International Realty now has the most global representation on Juwai.com, displaying luxury listings from 65 countries and territories.

Chinese Real Estate Buyers

China is already the second-largest source of visits to sothebysrealty.com, only after the United States, and accounts for one out of every 10 visitors. Additionally, in a recent report released by RSIR, the imposition of a 15% foreign investment tax in Vancouver, B.C. is increasing search traffic by Chinese buyers for real estate in the Puget Sound. Matthew Moore, President of the Americas for Juwai.com, noted significant changes: Juwai.com buying enquiries to Seattle increased by 143 percent in August 2016, compared to one year earlier. Meanwhile buying enquiries to Vancouver dropped by 81 percent during the same period, with all of that drop concentrated in the premium end of the market.

The partnership with Juwai.com is timely, and offers another platform to optimize global exposure for brokers and clients. Theres no doubt that Asian homebuyers, particularly from China, continue to be a material component of our local real estate market, said Dean Jones, President and CEO of RSIR. Our Asia Services Group is uniquely qualified to assist foreign buyers as they are specialized in the language, culture and logistics necessary. We view Juwai.com as a strategic portal to showcase our Asia Services Group and all the properties that RSIR represents.

Details of the Alliance

The Sothebys International Realty brand alliance with Juwai.com includes the following components:



Listing display: Sothebys International Realty property listings will appear on Juwai.com and in its real estate search results.

First responders: Juwai.coms Chinese-language team is located in mainland China so they can respond to consumer inquiries in real time, translate the inquiries into English and forward them to the Sotheby's International Realty sales associate who has the listing.

Brand page: A Sothebys International Realty brand overview page carries information about the brand, a contact form and the networks listings  all in one place.

Banner advertising: Sothebys International Realty banner ads will run on the Juwai.com homepage, promoting the companys new brand page and listings to Juwai.coms audience.

We are constantly looking for opportunities to expand globally by adding new distribution opportunities that showcase properties to affluent consumers in key growth markets, said Wendy Purvey, Chief Marketing Officer, Sothebys International Realty Affiliates LLC. The alliance with Juwai.com achieves that by giving us better access to a market that is already one of our most important, and which promises great future growth.

Realogics Sothebys International Realty, which has offices in Seattle, Bainbridge Island, Kirkland, Issaquah and Madison Park, offers exclusive Sothebys International Realty marketing, advertising and referral services that are designed to attract well-qualified buyers to the firms property listings. Property listings from Realogics Sothebys International Realty also are marketed on the sothebysrealty.com global website, as well as on the firms local website, rsir.com.

As a Sothebys International Realty affiliate, the firm and its clients also benefit from an association with the Sotheby's Auction House, allowing the firms sales associates the opportunity for real estate referrals with auction house clientele as well as the unique ability to refer real estate clientele for appraisal services for jewelry, art, antique furniture and collectibles.

The Sothebys International Realty network currently has more than 19,000 affiliated independent sales associates located in approximately 850 offices in 65 countries and territories worldwide. Each office is independently owned and operated.

Realogics Sothebys International Realty flagship office is located at 2715 1st Avenue in Seattle, WA. For additional information, please contact 206.448.5752.
Scholarship winner Jared Brown received $2,500 from Standard Process Inc. I would like to thank Standard Process for selecting me to receive their scholarship, said Brown.

Standard Process Inc. based in Palmyra, Wisconsin has been an advocate of nutritional education for over 80 years. The whole food nutrient solutions manufacturer empowers future health care professionals through scholarship and learning opportunities. Jared Brown, a student at Palmer College of Chiropractic (Palmer) in Davenport, Iowa received a $2,500 scholarship from Standard Process Inc.

I would like to thank Standard Process for selecting me to receive their scholarship, said Brown. "The financial support it has provided my family and I has allowed me to focus on and achieve my academic goals.

Brown expects to graduate 2019 with a doctor of chiropractic degree. He currently holds a 4.0 grade point average and is in his second trimester.

Standard Process is devoted to improving the educational experience for future health care providers. This is done by providing scholarships to help support chiropractic students who embrace the whole food philosophy, and who have the desire and courage to shape the future of healthcare. Standard Process has been providing scholarships to Palmer students since 2006.

In order for a Palmer student to qualify for a Standard Process scholarship, they must meet the following criteria:



Should have at least one semester remaining before graduation

Have a cumulative GPA of 2.9 or higher

Provide a list of their contributions to the chiropractic profession, to the college, and the community

Provide a letter of recommendation from a faculty member

Provide a written response to the given question

If you would like to learn more about Standard Process scholarship opportunities, contact Lisa Hackett, professional development coordinator, at 800-848-5061, or by email at lhackett(at)standardprocess.com.

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About Standard Process Inc.

Standard Process is the visionary leader in whole food nutrient solutions. Based in Palmyra, Wisconsin, Standard Process offers more than 300 high-quality supplements made with whole food and other ingredients through three product lines:



Standard Process

Standard Process Veterinary Formulas

MediHerb herbal supplements

The products are available exclusively through health care professionals, including chiropractors, acupuncturists, medical doctors and veterinarians.

Dedicated to the whole food philosophy of founder Dr. Royal Lee, Standard Process goal is to ensure its nutritional supplements deliver complex nutrients as nature intended. To accomplish this, Standard Process grows the majority of its raw plant ingredients on company-owned certified organic farmland. Using state-of-the-art manufacturing processes to retain vital nutrients within each ingredient, Standard Process manufactures its supplements in its certified organic manufacturing facility. Standard Process employs high quality control standards and follows the Food and Drug Administrations current good manufacturing practices.

Standard Process also owns two subsidiaries, Cultivate by Standard Process TM and Lee Engineering. Both offer unique wellness solutions. Cultivate delivers scalable wellness programs to businesses, using on-site chiropractic as a central component of the program, to impact individual employee and overall company health. Lee Engineerings Royal Lee OrganicsTM offers Intelligent Healthful Living solutions for home flour milling.

Standard Process employs over 370 people and has been in business since 1929. The company is recognized as a distinguished leader and innovator in workplace wellness and an exemplary environmental steward. It is a recipient of the Platinum Well Workplace Award from the Wellness Councils of America and a Tier 1 participant in the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources Green Tier program, which recognizes companies with strong environmental-compliance records. For additional information about Standard Process, visit standardprocess.com.
Following successful careers leading some of the industrys most recognized brands such as Subway, Dominos Pizza, Service Master, Dunkin Brands, Service Brands International, Valpak, UPS Stores and FranConnect, five of franchisings most innovative thought leaders decided to come together and do something more  leverage their knowledge of the industry to help private equity firms uncover great investment opportunities in franchising while providing franchisors with the strategy and confidence needed to effectively make the best decisions for their organizations.

With that vision in mind, Joe Bourdow, Tom Coba, Stuart Mathis, David McKinnon, and Amit Pamecha launched Premier Franchise Advisors; an advisory firm dedicated to working with senior executives to help them solve their most complex business and acquisition problems.

The idea for Premier Franchise Advisors was born out of the notion that collectively we could make more of an impact on a franchise brands trajectory rather than working individually, said Pamecha. Franchisors and private equity firms need to understand that they dont have to go at it alone. Our unmatched leadership experience can provide them with valuable insight into marketplace dynamics, future trends, and funding options, all while deepening relationships and developing new ones to facilitate growth.

Premier Franchise Advisors works primarily with private equity firms that are looking to invest or have invested over $10 million into a franchise brand. Support for private equity groups includes strategic counsel based on long-term projections for development, due diligence to uncover gaps and opportunities regarding operations and franchisee relationships, and the restructuring of systems facing growth challenges including interim leadership assignments.

On behalf of mature and emerging franchise brands, Premier Franchise Advisors supports their growth as board members and strategic advisors to the management team. By leveraging the resources, experience and deep relationships Premier Franchise Advisors has forged over the years, the firm is partnering with new and existing franchisors to provide guidance related to development, IT strategy, training, operations, and building long-term franchisee relationships. Additionally, Premier Franchise Advisors partners with franchisors that are seeking to raise less than $10 million by providing tactical expertise on how to best pursue a capital injection from private equity. Furthermore, the partners at Premier Franchise Advisors will analyze the potential for their own financial investment in certain brands where appropriate.

"Our team is very excited to be working together," said Bourdow. Our leadership experience and deep relationships across franchising are unparalleled in the industry. We look to leverage these assets to assist franchise brands and private equity investors with acquisitions, strategy, management and growth."

Prior to his work with Premier Franchise Advisors, Joe Bourdow served as president of Valpak Direct Marketing Systems for 13 years until his retirement after a 32-year association with the company. Bourdow also served as executive vice president of Valpaks parent company, Cox Target Media. He is actively involved in the International Franchise Association and continues to hold positions on advisory boards across the franchise industry.

Tom Coba has previously served as chief operating officer of Subway, vice president of franchising and business development for Dunkin Brands, and most recently as president of the Franchise Services Group in the ServiceMaster family of brands, leading five of its brands. Coba is active across franchising and works closely with a number of brands in an advisory role while remaining involved with the International Franchise Association.

Stuart Mathis is a recognized leader in franchise management having served most recently as president and CEO of Quiznos and president of the UPS Stores. In addition, he has held various leadership positions with Dominos Pizza and currently serves on the board of directors for the International Franchise Association.

David McKinnon is the past chairman and co-founder of Service Brands International and the past CEO and co-chairman of PuroClean International. He currently serves as a senior advisor to the Board of The Dwyer Group, the company he and his partners sold Service Brands International to in 2015. Additionally, McKinnon is also chairman of TriniD Enterprises. In November of 2013, he was inducted into the Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame along with Oprah Winfrey, Steve Jobs and Ben & Jerry. McKinnon has also provided a significant endowment to the International Franchise Associations Educational Foundation for the funding of its NextGen Franchising  a worldwide program that supports young entrepreneurs.

Amit Pamecha is the past CEO and founder of FranConnect, the worlds largest software technology firm serving over 600 franchise brands. As part of FranConnect, Pamecha had the unique opportunity to personally work with over 400 franchise brands and observe closely what makes them successful. He is also a serial entrepreneur, investor, founder and managing partner at AMVA Partners  an investment firm focused on healthcare and franchise ventures. Pamecha serves on the Supplier Board of the International Franchise Association and is an advisory board member of several franchise brands.

About Premier Franchise Advisors

Premier Franchise Advisors is a leading franchise advisory firm comprised of five of franchisings most innovative thought leaders (Joe Bourdow, Tom Coba, Stuart Mathis, David McKinnon, and Amit Pamecha) designed to leverage their extensive leadership experience to assist senior executives at private equity groups and franchise brands with growth, management and acquisition. For more information about Premier Franchise Advisors, visit premierfranchiseadvisors.com.

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Global Stem Cells Group, Buenos Aires The symposium will be a gathering of many of the worlds most respected authorities on stem cell and regenerative medicine, who will share the latest findings and showcase advancements in research and therapies on a global level.

Global Stem Cells Group has announced its speaker lineup for the 3rd Annual International Symposium on Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine, to be held Sept. 28, 2016 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In keeping with tradition, the symposium will be hosted by GSCG in collaboration with Julio Ferreira, M.D., President of the South American Academy Cosmetic Surgery.

The symposium will be a gathering of many of the worlds most respected authorities on stem cell and regenerative medicine, who will share the latest findings and showcase advancements in research and therapies on a global level. The interdisciplinary team of leading international stem cell experts will provide a full day of high-level scientific lectures geared to medical professionals. Pioneers and luminaries in stem cell medicine who will serve as featured speakers at the event include:

Joseph Purita, M.D., USA

Musculoskeletal and antiaging applications of stem cells.

Joseph Purita, M.D., is an internationally recognized orthopedic surgeon and pioneer in the application of stem cells and PRP therapies for orthopedic injuries and diseases. Dr. Purita pioneered laser techniques in orthopedic surgery, and specializes in the treatment of high-performance athletes. Dr. Purita is a member of the Global Stem Cells Group Advisory Board.

Enrique Testart,, M.D., Chile

Osteogenesis and the future of heterologous implants.

Enrique Testart, M.D., is a pediatric surgeon specializing in child trauma microsurgery. Dr. Testart has developed distinctive techniques and protocols in cellular therapies and management protocols for musculoskeletal disorders. He has dedicated years to researching and practicing techniques that employ stem cell therapies to enhance conventional surgical techniques to ease patient suffering. Dr. Testart is Global Stem Cells Groups Chile Representative

Rafael Perez Franco, M.D., Colombia

Use of cell therapy in the treatment of alopecia.

Rafael Perez Franco, M.D. is director of the Rafael Perez Center for Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery in Bogota, Colombia. An expert in his field for more than 10 years, Dr. Perez Franco is a surgeon at the Universidad del Bosque and a plastic surgeon at the Clinica San Rafael in Colombia. Dr. Perez Franco also holds special rotations at Hospital Saint Paul in San Pablo, Brazil and the Clinica Fluminense de Cirugia Plastica and Clinica del Profesor Ivo Pitanguy in Rio de Janeiro. He is a member of the Global Stem Cells Group Advisory Board.

Carlos Chiriboga Assini, M.D., Ecuador

Application of Neural therapy and stem cell therapy in the treatment of injuries for high performance athletes.

Carlos Chirigoba Assini, M.D. serves as Chairman of the Board ar Omnihospital Medical Association in Guayaquil, Ecuador. Dt. Chirigoba Assini specializes in traumatology, orthopedic surgery, and platelet rich plasma (PRP) therapies. He is a member of Omnihospital Medical Association and the American Academy of Antiaging.

Aldo Parodi, M.D. Peru

Aesthetic applications of cellular therapies.

Aldo Parodi, M.D. is a plastic surgeon and laser liposuction specialist with clinical experience in assisted lipotransference. Dr. Parodi offers aesthetic treatments using adipose-derived stem cells at his aesthetic medicine clinic Clinic La Femme in Tacna, Peru. He is a member of the Global Stem Cells Group Advisory Board.

Silvina Pastrana, M.D. Argentina.

Implementation of cellular therapies. Presentation of clinical cases.

Silvina Pastrana, M.D. is a surgeon and medical director of the Stem Cell Center Buenos Aires and Regentherapy Puerto Madero. Dr. Pastrana heads a staff of medical specialists in orthopedics, rheumatology, medical clinic and cosmetic surgery, performing procedures incorporating stem cell therapies. She also serves as a staff surgeon for the Hospital Dr. Prof. Luis Guemes, and is a member of the Global Stem Cells Group Advisory Board.

Benito Novas, CEO, Global Stem Cell Group, United States

Developments and Challenges of Regenerative medicine globally.

Benito Novas, founder, CEO and creative director of Global Stem Cells Group, Mr. Novas also spearheaded and launched Stem Cell Training Inc. to provide professional training courses in stem cell therapies for physicians. Mr. Novas oversees Stem Cell Training marketing programs, finance strategies, field operations administration, policies, procedures and accreditation. Prior to founding The Global Stem Cells Group, Mr. Novas was President and CEO of Adimarket, Inc.

Leonardo Tacus, M.D. Argentina

Muscle and tendon injuries in regenerative medicine.

Leonardo Tacus, M.D. is an arthroscopic surgeon specializing in orthopedics, traumatology, and regenerative medicine. Dr. Tacus is the medical director at iar sa Argentina Hospital and Health Care, and co-director of Education Center Graduate Medical Surgery, orthopedics and Trauma (CECOA) in Buenos Aires. He is a founding member of the Argentina Association of Arthroscopy and past secretary of the Argentina Association of Arthroscopy

Daniel Dominguez, Aregntina

Systematics in the preparation of blood components for Regenerative Medicine.

Daniel Dominguez is the operations manager of High Technology Systems S.A. in Buenos Aires. Mr. Dominguezs background includes hemotherapy and laboratory tech.

Susana Miriam Gjurkan, D.M.D. Argentina

Application of stem cells and PRP in temporomandibular joint ATM (modified technique)

Susana Miriam Gjurkan, D.M.D., is a surgical specialist in orthodontics, cosmetic dentistry, dental implants, preventive dentistry, pediatric dentistry, periodontics, prosthetic dentistry, neurofacial and aesthetic dentistry. She uses stem cells and PRP to treat temporomandibular joint (TMJ) disorders in patients (modified technique). Dr. Gjurkan operates from her clinic, ONE Surgery, in San Miguel de Tucuman, Argentina. She has attended and taught courses in neural therapy, and earned her stem cell certification through Stem Cell Training.

Since 2014, Global Stem Cells Group has joined forces with some of the most prestigious regenerative medicine practitioners in South America as it focuses on growing its services throughout the global community. Stem cell therapies continue to revolutionize the anti-aging aesthetics industry while offering new hope for sufferers of serious chronic debilitating diseases.

To learn more about the 3rd Annual International Symposium on Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine, visit the Global Stem Cells Group website, email bnovas(at)stemcellsgroup(dot)com, or call 305-560-5337.

About Global Stem Cells Group:

Global Stem Cells Group, Inc. is the parent company of six wholly owned operating companies dedicated entirely to stem cell research, training, products and solutions. Founded in 2012, the company combines dedicated researchers, physician and patient educators and solution providers with the shared goal of meeting the growing worldwide need for leading edge stem cell treatments and solutions. With a singular focus on this exciting new area of medical research, Global Stem Cells Group and its subsidiaries are uniquely positioned to become global leaders in cellular medicine.

About Julio Ferreira, M.D.

Julio Ferreira, M.D., President of the South American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery, is a professor at the Institute of Biomedical Sciences, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. In addition, he is the former President of the International Academy of Cosmetic Surgery 2005/2007; a member and examiner, International Board of Cosmetic Surgery; Corresponding Fellow of the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery; Honorary Member of the Spanish Society of Cosmetic Medicine and Surgery; Honorary Member of the Eurorusa Confederation of Societies of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery; Honorary Member of the Bulgarian Society of Cosmetic Surgery; Honorary Member of the Chilean Society of Cosmetic Surgery and Lipoplasty; Honorary Member of the Italian Society of Aesthetic Surgery; Honorary Member of the French Society of Aesthetic Surgery; Honorary Member of the Japan Society of Aesthetic Surgery; Honorary Member of the Ecuadorian Society of Medical Aesthetics; Honorary Member of the Peruvian Society of Cosmetic Surgery, and a member of the International Editorial Advisory Board of the American Journal of Cosmetic Surgery.

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Philip Wilson P.A. I use my knowledge, resources, and collaborative approach to guide clients to the medical treatment they need and the benefits they deserve. Past News Releases RSS

Philip Wilson, a workers compensation and personal injury attorney, was recently named one of the Best Lawyers in America for 2017. Best Lawyers is the oldest and most highly respected peer review guide to the legal profession worldwide, and recognizes the top legal talent in the country.

It is a privilege to be included as one of the Best Lawyers in America for 2017, said Wilson. I would like to congratulate my fellow attorneys who also received this prestigious honor.

Wilson focuses his practice on obtaining compensation for injured workers and personal injury. I have been committed to protecting the rights of injured workers and people with disabilities for many years, said Wilson. I use my knowledge, resources, and collaborative approach to guide clients to the medical treatment they need and the benefits they deserve.

About Philip Wilson P.A. Attorney at Law

Philip Wilson specializes in workers compensation, personal injury and Social Security law. He is a member of the American Bar Association and the Arkansas Bar Association. For more information, call (501) 374-4000, or visit http://www.wilsonlawar.com. The law office is located at 1501 N. University Ave., Suite 255, Little Rock, AR 72207.

About the NALA

The NALA offers small and medium-sized businesses effective ways to reach customers through new media. As a single-agency source, the NALA helps businesses flourish in their local community. The NALAs mission is to promote a business relevant and newsworthy events and achievements, both online and through traditional media. For media inquiries, please call 805.650.6121, ext. 361.
10th Anniversary Ceremony on September 8 Taking this opportunity, we would like to express our sincere appreciation for our client companies, and we aim to continue pioneering new ways through growing and advancing together with them. by Eijiro Yamashita, CEO of transcosmos China Past News Releases RSS transcosmos Opens its New Contact...

transcosmos and SOCIAL GEAR Assist...

transcosmos China won Integrated...

Shanghai transcosmos Marketing Services Co., Ltd. (Headquarters: Shanghai, China; CEO: Eijiro Yamashita; hereafter, transcosmos China), a wholly-owned subsidiary of transcosmos inc., held a ceremony to commemorate the 10th anniversary of its foundation on September 8, 2016, in Shanghai.

After opening its first service base in Shanghai in 2006, focusing on contact center business, transcosmos China continued its journey and expanded its business scale. Now, the company operates a total of 7 bases located in 4 cities3 bases in Shanghai, 2 in Beijing, and 1 in Tianjin and Hefei respectivelyproviding wide-ranging services with its 3,000 employees for roughly 63 client companies, both Chinese local and foreign capital companies, including Japanese-affiliated.

Eijiro Yamashita, CEO of transcosmos China said:

It is our great honor to mark this special anniversary. In the past 10 years, we have been providing e-commerce, digital marketing and system development services in addition to the contact center services, developing new services to accomodate the needs of our client companies. We will continue to support our client companies to maximize their sales capability as well as minimize their cost by providing our high-value-added services, commiting to our original belief that only the ones who constantly change to accomodate the client companies needs can survive in this Chinese market. Taking this opportunity, we would like to express our sincere appreciation for our client companies. We aim to continue pioneering new ways through growing and advancing together with them.



The Photo of 10th Anniversary Ceremony on September 8

From left:

Junxiong Fang, General Manager of Account Service Department, CreditEase

Toshifumi Ninomiya, President Director, Elleair International China (Nantong)

Koji Funatsu, Chairman & CEO, transcosmos

Koichi Iwami, Executive Vice President, transcosmos

Eijiro Yamashita, CEO, transcosmos China

About transcosmos China

transcosmos China launched its business in March 2006, as a call center company, providing services for Chinese market. Since then, the compay has been expanding its service offerings by accomodating the changes in the client companies needs. Now, the company provides comprehensive outsourcing services that support client companies to achieve both sales expansion and cost reduction. From 2014, the company is doing business as transcosmos China.

Company Name: Shanghai transcosmos Marketing Service Co., Ltd. (transcosmos China)

Location: 8F Wenxin Plaza, 755 Weihai Road, Jingan District, Shanghai

President: CEO Eijiro Yamashita

Number of Employees: 3,000 (as of July 2016)

Business: Contact center, e-commerce, digital marketing and system development

Official website: http://www.transcosmos-cn.com

transcosmos is a trademark or registered trademark of transcosmos inc. in Japan and other countries.

Other company names and product or service names used here are trademarks or registered trademarks of respective companies.

About transcosmos inc.

transcosmos launched its operations in 1966. Since then we have combined superior people with up-to-date technology to enhance the competitive strength of our client companies by providing them with superior and valuable services. transcosmos currently offers Cost Reduction Services (contact center, back-office service for HR/Financial/Sales depts., order management and SCM, system development & operation etc.) and Sales Expansion Services (big data analysis, internet advertising, developing & operating website, smartphone/SNS utilization, telemarketing etc.). transcosmos continues to pursue Operational Excellence by providing these services through our 162 locations in 28 countries with a focus in Asia. Furthermore, following the expansion of e-commerce market on the global scale, transcosmos provides a comprehensive One-Stop Global E-Commerce Services to deliver our clients companies' excellent products and services to consumers in 45 countries around the globe. transcosmos aims to be the Global BPO Partner of our client companies, providing them with high quality BPO services on a global scale.
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Alice Kaplan's Looking for 'The Stranger': Albert Camus and the Life of a Literary Classic is a fascinating exploration of Camus and his classic first novel, ranging from the author's influences and inspirations to the book's impossibly rocky path to publication to its enduring legacy. Here, Kaplan outlines the numerous hurdles the novel faced.

Masterpieces are made, not born, and The Strangers path from manuscript to classic was an unusually rocky one. The political disasters of a country cut in two by an enemy occupation, a publishing world straining to find paper and appease the enemy, Camuss own personal dramasillness, a disparaging mentor, geographic isolationall threatened the publication of the novel. A small change here or there, a different set of decisions . . . how close we came to living in a world where Meursault never even existed!

Camus finished a first draft of The Stranger in the dreary Hotel Poirier in Montmartre, a few weeks before the German invasion. He had left his home in Algeria and was working as a lowly layout editor for page four of Paris-Soir, a big circulation daily. Every day he would return to his hotel room and take up the story where he had left off. The work on the novel went so well, Camus had the strange sensation that the words he was writing were already traced within him. Soon after he finished that first draft, with his savings from the newspaper, he moved from Montmartre to a fancier hotel in Saint-Germain-des-Pres, the Madison. There, he could see out his window the thick ribbons of cars, carts, and bicycles heading down the boulevard Saint-Germain towards the Place de lOdeon before making their way due south to the Porte dItalie, endless lines of refugees with all they could carry. For Camus and for France, everything was about to change. The country would fall to the Germans later in June, after a disastrous six-week battle.

For the time being Paris-Soir continued to function. Here the madness continues, Camus wrote a friend in the army, Ive been living for three days between two closed suitcases because Paris-Soir notified me that I had to leave for Nantes where part of the staff has already transferred to produce a newspaper for the provinces. Everyday, Im supposed to leave the next day. Today, its been decidedbarring any change of plan!that I will remain in Paris. But he didnt stay in Paris for long. On June 10, after less than a week at the Madison, he was ordered with the reduced staff of Paris-Soir to depart for Clermont-Ferrand and put in charge of driving one of the Paris-Soir cars. Daniel Lenief, another editor at the paper, remembers: Each of us was supposed to get to Clermont-Ferrand in the car given to him, since the regular drivers had almost all been drafted. We were the first to arrive and I can still picture Camus on the place de Jaude, exiting a car that had run out of gas, oil and water, its engine smoking. He turned pale, ran back to the trunk and took out his treasure, a manuscript he shoved in his pocket. If that sputtering, smoking car had exploded, Camus would have lost his only copy of The Stranger.

A year later, Camus was back in Oran, Algeria, laid off by Paris-Soir after the draftees of the 1940s returned to work. The manuscript of The Stranger accompanied him everywhere. Now he sent a copy to his academic mentor Jean Grenier, but the response was discouraging. Grenier thought The Stranger was too much like Kafka, that Camuss simple style was too predictable. He even thought the book had too many Freudian breasts! Camus had put a previous manuscript in a drawer after Grenier criticized it. This time, fortunately, something told him to ignore his teacher. The newspaper man Pascal Pia became The Strangers greatest champion. He got the manuscript to Andre Malraux on the Cote dAzur, and Malraux showed Camus how he could put more heat and sun into the murder scene.

After Gallimard accepted the book, Malraux wrote to Camus to see if he could find a source of paper for the publisher from the Alfa plants that grew on the high plains of Algeria. Its asking a lot of a writer to supply his own paper. Camus was ready to oblige, with facts and figures about sending the tons of raw material, but the shipment was never pursued. Nonetheless, The Stranger began its long journey from Algeria across the Mediterranean and on to occupied Paris. It crossed the demarcation line, from Cannes, in the free zone, to Nazi-occupied Paris, in one of Gaston Gallimards massive traction avant automobiles.

Then, at the very last minute, there was a mix-up about which of the circulating manuscripts was the final versiontwo had turned up in Pariswas the one to send to the printer. Camus wrote to Gallimard in a panic that only the manuscript that Pascal Pia had transmitted to Paulhan was the definitive versionthe last chapter of part I consisted of typed pages with different margins than the rest of the manuscript, and the very last chapter of the novel was eighteen pages long rather than sixteen.

The Stranger was ready to go into production, but one more major obstacle remained. Gallimard needed German approvalindeed the cultural branch of the occupying forces determined the fate of every new book by veto, by censor, or by an allocation of paper for a few, or many copies. Books in favor of the Nazi regime or supportive of German culture and works of propaganda got first priority.

Gerhard Heller, head of the German Propaganda-Staffel, wrote many years later that when he received the manuscript of The Stranger from Gaston Gallimards secretary, he stayed up all night reading it and endorsed it immediately. There was no need for censorship, he said, since the book was asocial and apolitical. Who would make that argument today? In Hellers office, a book had to have a straightforward anti-Nazi, pro-Ally message to be censored, or it had to be by a Jewish author. Reading for subtleties was not on the censors agenda, and this was a good thing for The Stranger.

A manuscript threatened with destruction, a dismissive mentor, a mixup over manuscripts, an enemy propaganda bureau: these were not The Strangers only problems. In the winter of 1942, Camus was dealing with something worse than anxiety over his manuscript: his tuberculosis returned. It was his worst relapse ever, shattering his hope that the bout in 1941 had been his last. He informed Gallimard on February 12, 1942, that he was in very bad shape and needed to leave the details of the brief biographical sketch to Pascal Pia or Jean Grenier.

Camus was not even strong enough to proofread his pages, and besides, it would have been impossible for the publisher to get them to Oran and back to Paris without delaying publication for months. He had only two requests: could the publishers please get rid of the word but, second-to-last line of chapter 6; and could they eliminate the word the at the start of the third line of page 54. That was all.

Jean Paulhan, the legendary Gallimard editor, oversaw the correction of the last set of proofs, and Camus was spared the process that so many writers dreadthe last-ditch search for mistakes, the very last chance to eliminate an excess word or change a sentence. Or in one case, add a single letter. Was it Paulhan who added the fateful u to Meursaults name? The only surviving manuscript spells the narrators name Mersault which is the name of the main character in Camuss previous, failed novel. Mersault sounds Spanish, while Meursault, the name of a fine burgundy wine, couldnt be more French. Meursault also contains the verb for deathmeurso central to the novel. Would we be as attached to a story told by a man named Mersault?

The Stranger went to the printer on April 1, 1942, but it would be several months before Camus saw either a copy of the book or his contract, because mail service was so bad. Its easy to imagine the frustration, anticipation, and worry the young writer experienced as he waited. He had to remind himself that what had happened was practically a miracle. At the worst possible moment in the history of French publishing, The Stranger was finally going to meet its readers.
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NEW YORK (AP)  Sandwich chain Jimmy John's Sandwiches says it sold a majority stake in the company to private equity firm Roark Capital Group.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Roark Capital of Atlanta has invested in several fast food companies before, including Arby's, Hardee's, Wingstop, Cinnabon and pretzel seller Auntie Anne's. It also has invested in Anytime Fitness, Batteries Plus Bulbs, Maaco, Meineke and Massage Envy.

Founded in 1983 in Charleston, Jimmy John's second restaurant was in Macomb. It now has 2,500 restaurants across the country, including locations in Moline, Rock Island, Silvis, Davenport and Bettendorf.

Ranked No. 1 on Entrepreneur Magazine's 2016 annual Franchise 500 list, the company plans to open 1,100 more restaurants in the next few years. As a comparison, rival sandwich chain Subway has more than 44,000 shops.

Jimmy John's says founder Jimmy John Liautaud will remain as chairman of the company's board. James North will remain as president and CEO of the privately-held company, which is based in Champaign.

"I've spent two years getting to know the Roark team," said Mr. Liautaud. "They are best-in-class people that have the knowledge and expertise that will help us take this brand to the next level."

As part of the transaction, previous partners Weston Presidio will exit after holding a minority stake for 10 years.

"We partnered with Michael Lazarus and Jeff Mills at Weston Presidio 10 years ago and it's been an amazing journey," said Mr. Liautaud. "My team and I are excited to bring to our new partners at Roark the same energy and commitment to excellence that helped make our partnership with Weston Presidio so successful."
The first thing Illinois voters will see on their Nov. 8 ballots is a constitutional amendment designed to ensure the tax dollars designated for such things as Illinois road and bridges are spent on roads and bridges.

At first blush, however, it might not appear as though a Safe Roads Amendment is lurking within a yes or no question which begins, The proposed amendment adds a new section to the Revenue Article of the Illinois Constitution. But rest assured there is plenty of power packed in the rest of the legally required text of this effort to add a transportation lockbox to the 1970 Illinois Constitution. You can read the rest of the text at tinyurl.com/jtyz2xu. Briefly, it bars officials from using transportation funds generated by such things as tolls, license fees and the gas tax for anything other than transportation purposes. Among those purposes are operation and maintenance of public roads, bridges, intercity railways, mass transit and airports.

Not surprisingly, we didnt find anyone publicly arguing against the premise behind the amendment, which doesnt raise taxes; it merely ensures our tax dollars are spent where they are supposed to be spent. The opposition weve seen is from those who argue strenuously and persuasively that we shouldnt be muddying up the Illinois Constitution with stop-us-before we-misspend-again provisions.

No we shouldnt. But the question voters must ask themselves is: Left to their own devices, will our elected officials do the right thing or wont they? There literally are billions of reasons to suggest they will not.

Consider that, in the last 12 years, about $6.8 billion of the $30 billion meant for transportation in Illinois was diverted to other uses, according to the Citizens to Protect Transportation Funding. Those fund sweeps have done damage to both the public trust AND to an already crumbling Illinois infrastructure.

While a transportation lockbox wont provide a huge influx of new dollars to shore it up, it would immediately end the bleeding of funds, which has helped to lead to 4,200 Illinois bridges and half of Illinois roads being rated in poor condition, according to highway safety experts.

Thats why we reluctantly support the change even as we lament the need for it since Illinois lawmakers and the governor do not need a constitutional edict to do what the amendment calls for. The fact that it was lawmakers themselves who voted overwhelmingly to put the amendment on the ballot suggests they do not trust themselves to do the right thing now or in the future.

Thats also something for voters to carefully consider as the election nears.

This is a change that can help our grandchildren, Illinois Chamber of Commerce president Todd Maisch, told our editorial board during a conference call with members of the amendment coalition last week.

So please get informed about this important amendment. Watch your mailbox for the pamphlet the state of Illinois is required to send to voters. You also can learn more from the pro-amendment leaders at saferoadsamendment.com.

Whether you support the amendment or not, be sure not to skip over it; your non-vote could count. To pass, the amendment must receive approval from the majority of the people voting in the whole election or a yes vote by 60 percent of the people who specifically vote on the amendment -- whichever number is less.

Though, as we noted, organized opposition doesnt appear to be an issue, lack of interest or information could decide its fate. Dont let that happen.
This year marks the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare, and a free concert tonight at St. Ambrose University celebrates music from his time.

A Casual Classics concert is at 5 p.m. in Madsen Hall at Galvin Fine Arts Center, 518 W. Locust St., Davenport. It will feature Anna Marsh on dulcian (Renaissance bassoon), Oleg Timofeyev on theorbo and Renaissance lute, and Jeffrey Cohan on Renaissance flute.

The program will "offer a unique excursion through exquisite other-worldly musical textures and forgotten instrumental blends, rediscovered for modern ears on the Elizabethan-era instruments of Shakespeare's day," says a promotional release from St. Ambrose.

The Casual Classics concerts "are like a musical happy hour, with guided tours of great music by top performers in a more intimate setting," it says. "Be our guest, have a complimentary drink and snack, join in some informal question and answer periods, and meet the musicians."

During Shakespeare's life (1564-1616), music was "transitioning mightily towards a new style which we refer to as 'baroque' today," the SAU release says.

The composers on the program all lived or were popular during Shakespeare's day, including music incorporated by Shakespeare into his plays, Franco-Flemish songs popular in Europe in the 16th century, art music from the court of Queen Elizabeth I (who reigned 1558-1603) and the then-newest Italian "baroque" chamber music.

The program even includes a melody said to have been written by Anne Boleyn, Queen of England, just prior to her execution in 1536 by her husband Henry VIII, according to SAU.

Today's concert is the first in this year's Black Hawk Chamber Music Festival. Founded in 2000, it "provides new perspective to chamber music by familiar and little-known composers, illuminating many unusual aspects of musical performance from the Renaissance through the present," according to artistic director Jeffrey Cohan.

Its programs sometimes premiere new works and often include early-music works, on exact replicas of the instruments with which the composers were familiar, he said.

Other festival concerts this month are:

-- 2 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 11, Trinity Cathedral, 121 W. 12th St., Davenport. This program includes virtuoso 18th-century chamber music for flute, bassoon and theorbo from the courts of Louis XIV, Louis XV and Frederick the Great and by J.S. Bach. Suggested donation $15 or $20 (free-will offering).

-- 7 p.m. Friday, Sept. 16, at Trinity Cathedral. The golden age of the flute-guitar duo will be explored in this program to include works from Beethoven's lifetime by flutist Gaspard Kummer (1795-1870), the pre-eminent guitarist of the period Mauro Giuliani (1781-1829) and others. Suggested donation $15 or $20 (free-will offering).

Mr. Cohan, a Rock Island High alum, was Artist-in-Residence at Augustana College from 1983 to 1988, during which time he also taught flute at Indiana University in Bloomington. He also has taught at the University of Northern Iowa and at Grinnell College.

He performs each year in Europe, most recently in Germany, Ukraine and Slovenia, and last March throughout Mongolia and China. Mr. Cohan lives with his wife and three children in Washington States Skagit Valley, where he also directs the Salish Sea Early Music Festival and the Capitol Hill Chamber Music Festival in Washington, D.C.

For more information on the Black Hawk festival, call 563-323-9989 or visit bhcmf.org/quadcities.
A man convicted of a 2010 shooting that severely wounded the victim failed to get his sentence reversed on appeal, but he will pay less in court fees.

In 2013, a Rock Island County jury found Cornelius D. Carter, now 24, guilty of luring Kameron Angel into an abandoned garage and shooting him several times. Rock Island County Circuit Court Judge Walter Braud in early 2014 sentenced Mr. Carter to 30 years on the aggravated battery with a firearm charge. He is serving that sentence consecutively to a 10-year federal sentence for being a felon in possession of a firearm and a four-year sentence for an attempted escape in 2013 from the Rock island County Jail.

Mr. Carter, of Rock Island, appealed the shooting conviction, arguing it should be vacated because evidence of the attempted jail escape in July 2013 was introduced into the shooting trial by prosecutors, according to court documents from the Illinois Third District Appellate Court. He also argued that he was wrongly fined about $400 as part of his court costs.

The appellate court ruled that the trial court did not overstep by introducing the escape evidence, and the appellate judges declined to vacate the conviction.

They agreed, however, that the fines Mr. Carter listed were improperly levied. Of the approximately $400 in fees, $197 were deemed proper and were retained, the opinion states.

Mr. Carter pleaded guilty in April 2014 to a single count of attempted escape related to the 2013 incident. He was sentenced by Judge Braud, according to county court records. The plea was part of a deal with prosecutors in which another attempted escape charge and a charge of bringing contraband into the jail were dropped.
CUSTER, S.D.  A Davenport motorcyclist was killed, and his son seriously injured, in a Wednesday crash at a South Dakota state park.

According to a South Dakota Highway Patrol news release, Douglas Boemecke, 72, of Davenport, died from his injuries. His son, Timothy Boemecke, 52, of O'Fallon, also suffered serious, yet non-life threatening injuries.

The two-motorcycle crash occurred at 2:39 p.m. Wednesday in Custer State Park southwest of Rapid City, S.D.

The father-son duo were driving separate motorcycles south on South Dakota Highway 87, according to the highway patrol release. The two motorcycles failed to negotiate a left curve in the roadway,with both leaving the roadway and entering the west ditch.

Douglas Boemecke, who was on a 2006 Honda GL1800A, was pronounced dead at the scene. Timothy Boemecke, who was on a 2012 Harley Davidson FLHTCU, was transported to the Custer hospital.

Both men were wearing helmets.

Doug Boemecke also was Iowa Senior District Educator for the Gold Wing Road Riders Association. Arrangements are pending at Runge Mortuary in Davenport.

South Dakotas Highway Patrol is investigating the crash. Other agencies on scene were the Custer County Sheriffs Office, the Custer Ambulance Service and Custer State Park law enforcement.
A man accused of collecting his mother's federal benefits after she died has been sentenced to a year in federal prison and must pay nearly $200,000 in restitution.

Peter W. Cooper was accused of fraudulently receiving more than $178,000 in federal benefits meant for his mother, who died in 2003, according to federal authorities. Prosecutors say Mr. Cooper, who was living in Rock Island County at the time, collected the benefits from 2003 to 2015 before the Department of Veterans Affairs learned of his mother's death.

On Thursday, Judge Sara Darrow sentenced Mr. Cooper to 12 months in prison and three years of supervised release once his prison time is served. He also must pay the money back to the federal government.

Mr. Cooper signed a plea agreement in March. It stated he "voluntarily, intentionally and knowingly" used money belonging to another person without authority and stole more than $1,000 from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The document also said attorneys in the case agreed Mr. Cooper demonstrated "a recognition and affirmative acceptance of personal responsibility for (his) criminal conduct."
An Iowa man accused of arranging to ship and deliver methamphetamine into the Quad-Cities has been sentenced to 10 years in federal prison.

Troy Allen Tamez, of Grandview, Iowa, allegedly distributed at least 50 grams of methamphetamine in Rock Island County, according to records filed in U.S. District Court, Rock Island. The offense allegedly occurred on or about March 5, 2015.

On Thursday, Mr. Tamez was sentenced to 120 months in prison and another five years of supervised release once his prison term is done. He pleaded guilty in February as part of a deal with prosecutors.
The Chicago Tribune reports that a Cook County judge ordered Kenilworth officials to hand over some of the paperwork Wednesday so she can determine whether the large case file should be allowed to remain confidential.

The question about the files arose days before the 50th anniversary of the crime, which occurred Sept. 18, 1966, because New York lawyer John Kelly sued Kenilworth after it denied his Freedom of Information Act request to view the documents.

Kelly says he doesn't represent any potential party in the case but is pursuing his own inquiry as a former prosecutor and current civil litigator.
James Degorski was convicted in 2009 for killing seven workers at a Brown's Chicken restaurant in Palatine 16 years prior, the Chicago Tribune reported. The 44-year-old is serving a life sentence at Menard Correctional Center in southern Illinois.

A petition filed on behalf of Degorski says the witness, Anne Lockett, is "a troubled woman, prone to dishonesty." It also alleges she had implicated another former boyfriend as well as Degorski during the incident.

Degorski's lawyer, Jennifer Bonjean, said the jury wasn't told Lockett would split a nearly $100,000 reward with a friend if Degorski was convicted.

A spokeswoman for the Cook County State's Attorney's office said it's reviewing the filing and doesn't have further comment.

In the petition, Bonjean also accuses the Palatine Police Department of coercing Degorski's confession and alleges the department forced false statements from several suspects during the yearslong investigation. She alleged the Palatine police had obtained confessions to the slayings from at least five others who were never charged.

"The tactics used by this Police Department were producing false confessions left and right," Bonjean told the newspaper.

The newspaper's attempts to reach a Palatine police spokesman for comment haven't

The petition emphasizes there wasn't any physical evidence connecting Degorski to the slayings of restaurant owners Richard Ehlenfeldt and his wife, Lynn, as well as employees Thomas Mennes, Marcus Nellsen, Guadalupe Maldonado, Rico Solis and Michael Castro.

Two years before Degorski's conviction, his co-defendant, Juan Luna, was convicted after being linked to the murders through DNA, a palm print and a lengthy video confession. Luna is also serving a life sentence.
CAMBRIDGE  Henry County is beginning work on road agreements for Phase 3 of Invenergy's wind farm in Henry County.

We are in the very, very preliminary stages of looking at a wind farm agreement, county highway engineer Steve Brandau told transportation committee members Thursday. They want to get going, basically.

Invenergy's first and second phases in Henry County comprise 183 turbines. The county received more than $1.2 million in revenue from building permits for the first phase alone, 133 turbines. In annual property taxes, the turbines each generate an estimated $7,000 to $8,000, which is distributed among taxing districts.

In the spring of 2015, Invenergy renewed 70 special-use permits that were set to expire. The permits give them three years to build. The road agreement is good for a two-year construction period; additional road permits are required for oversized loads after construction. Mr. Brandau said after the meeting he didn't know how many of those permits have been issued for the first and second phases. He said the county began talking six months ago about charging for those additional road permits.

Last December, the federal government extended wind energy tax credits to December 31, 2019, with a phase-down for projects starting construction after Dec. 31, 2016.

County administrator Colleen Gillaspie told committee members that revenue from original building permits for the first 183 turbines was much larger. This number would be smaller, but not insignificant, she said.

Mr. Brandau said his department asked to see what roads would be affected so they could get going on work. He said the map offered by the company does not show turbine locations, simply affected roads, primarily in Clover and Andover townships.

Current would be fed to the existing transmission site at Bishop Hill.

Mr. Brandau said he would like to take plans to the county board in October for possible adoption in November.

Recent rainstorms have damaged roads.

A section of the Galva-Atkinson blacktop on the second set of curves south of Atkinson could be closed soon for repair. An east side guardrail needs to be taken down, and 100 to 150 feet of embankment rebuilt. The work should cost the county less than $10,000, according to Mr. Brandau.

The committee approved 50 percent county share for a $9,000 repair in rural Lynn Township where dirt has pushed underneath a bridge.

In Geneseo Township, a temporary repair is needed on a culvert that washed out; additional design work will be done for a more permanent repair next year. Geneseo will bear the cost of that work.

Rains don't help. It saturates the soil and makes it easier for things to move, said Mr. Brandau.
ROCK ISLAND -- Even as city officials recover from Wal-Mart's abrupt exit from a proposed supercenter, work is underway to find another developer for the 11th Street site the city spent approximately $15 million to clear for the retail giant.

A day after Wal-Mart officials announced the retailer would not build a proposed supercenter at the former Watch Tower Plaza site, Rickey Hayes of Retail Attractions LLC -- the consulting firm Rock Island has hired to attract large retailers -- said his firm had a conference call scheduled Thursday with a developer interested in the 20-acre site.

He said he could not comment further without permission from city officials.

There is irony, perhaps, that the same day the city council approved Wal-Mart's request for a 30-day extension to its due diligence for the project, it also approved rehiring Retail Attractions for a second year. The contract approved in July pays the Oklahoma-based consultants $3,000 a month, the same rate as when they were hired in 2015, plus $7,500 for a market study.

Efforts to bring Wal-Mart to Rock Island began in November 2012, before its contract with Retail Attractions, when the city began buying properties at the Watch Tower Plaza shopping center to raze for a supercenter. City officials projected the store would bring 250 to 300 jobs and millions of dollars in sales tax revenue.

On April 13, the city's board of zoning appeals approved a series of variance requests from Wal-Mart related to a proposed 189,000-square-foot supercenter and a separate convenience store with gas pumps at 3750 11th St. site.

Drawings of the proposed project were presented. Michelle Caraballo, Wal-Mart director of public affairs, expressed approval with how the city was helping the company work through the due-diligence process.

Ald. Steve Tollenaer, 4th Ward, said city officials are confused about Wal-Mart's decision, especially after the retailer requested the 30-day extension for due diligence in July.

"It doesn't make sense, and it doesn't make this square," he said. "Our staff has reached out to Wal-Mart to get more information. Staff has gotten no response from Wal-Mart."

Tuesday's announcement by Wal-Mart was not unique to Rock Island. In recent months, news reports from across the country have told of other communities where the retail giant abruptly ended plans for proposed stores.

Company officials on Tuesday cited no specific reason for Wal-Mart's decision about Rock Island. They did state, however, that Wal-Mart never asked the city to spend $15 million to relocate properties in anticipation of a supercenter.

"The fact is, the (October 2015) purchase agreement provides for either party to cancel the agreement for any reason prior to the end of the feasibility period," Wal-Mart spokesperson Delia Garcia said.

Stephanie Masson, the city's finance director since April, said the $15 million Rock Island spent on property purchases for the project came from short-term loans that will be paid off using a bond issuance. She said repayment of those bonds would be split between two funds: general fund sales tax and a Watch Tower Plaza Tax-Increment-Financing Fund.

Late Thursday, Rock Island City Manager Thomas Thomas said city officials hope to have more financial details about the failed project as early as today.

For years, sales tax dollars have been a challenge for Rock Island. According to the Illinois Department of Revenue, the city received $5,092,372 in sales tax receipts for fiscal year 2015. That compares to $18,217,372 in Moline and $2,431,031 in East Moline.

In 1993, when the city faced the same relatively flat sales tax growth, former Mayor Mark Schwiebert said revitalizing the Watch Tower Plaza site was high on the list of priorities. Ten years earlier, Zayre and Eagle stores left the plaza. Zayre's management said the store, which employed 60 people, was being closed because its sales performance did not meet company expectations.

How communities can attract retail development is a question everyone wants answered, said Liz Tallman, the new chief economic development officer of the Quad Cities Chamber of Commerce.

While Ms. Tallman said the chamber's focus is primarily on industry, she said it also tries to create an environment that appeals to retailers. Attracting retail, she said, requires a different approach than industry. Retailers look at population characteristics and income levels and, overall, "have different criteria."

"There's an actual science to (retail) location decisions," she said. "Whatever they (Rock Island) want us to do, we'll work with them.

"I will say, in general, that site (Watch Tower Plaza) is ready to go," Ms. Tallman said. "It's shovel ready, meaning a company can go in there and build right away."
ROCK ISLAND -- A $391,000 federal grant will cover 80 percent of the cost for one new bus to be added to the fleet of the Rock Island County Metropolitan Mass Transit District (MetroLINK).

A new Compressed Natural Gas -- CNG -- bus costs about $460,000, according to MetroLINK manager of administration Jennifer Garrity.

MetroLINK was among 41 entities to get a Bus and Bus Facilities Grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Transit Administration.

Total grant money was about $211 million, according to a transportation department news release issued Thursday. The transit administration received 284 applications totaling $1.64 billion from 236 applicants in 47 states, meaning requests far exceeded available funds, according to the news release.

The grants are intended to replace, rehabilitate and buy transit buses and related equipment, and build bus-related facilities.

"We were pleased to be one of the agencies to receive a portion of these funds," Ms. Garrity said. "It was a competitive process, with over $1 billion of funds being sought. We are thankful and appreciate what we got, although it wasn't all that we hoped for."

MetroLINK is phasing out its remaining fleet of diesel buses as part of its "continuing movement to become a sustainable community partner," Ms. Garrity said.

Grant requests were evaluated and prioritized based on projects addressing significant repair and maintenance needs, improving the safety of transit systems, connecting bus systems with other networks and supporting the creation of ladders of opportunity, according to the news release.

The Fixing Americas Surface Transportation Act, passed by Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama in December 2015, authorized the grant program through 2020.

"The Obama Administration is committed to improving transportation options that connect people in rural and urban areas across the country to opportunities," U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said. "These grants will improve mobility for thousands of transit riders who depend on bus service every day, expanding access to employment, education, health care and other important services in their communities.

A full list of grant amounts can be found at transit.dot.gov/funding/grants/fiscal-year-2016-bus-and-bus-facilities-projects

Grants ranged from $26,000 to the Wisconsin Department of Transportation to replace a side-loading accessible mini-van in Tomah to $12.8 million each to transit authorities in Fairbanks, Alaska, and Flint, Mich. The Alaska grant will pay to upgrade its facility to accommodate its full bus fleet indoors. The Michigan grant will pay for new CNG buses and to develop a training program for mechanics and drivers.
The Henry and Stark County Health Department, the Stark County Citizens Mental Health Task Force and the Henry County Mental Health Alliance will host the September Support Group for friends and family of people with mental illness at 6 p.m. Sept. 13 at the Henry and Stark County Health Departments, Illinois 78 South, Kewanee.
But investigators poring through what remains of his cellphone and computer records said Thursday they have found evidence of hundreds and hundreds of sexually explicit conversations he had with underage girls, police officers who posed as minors, and adult women.

On Thursday, Moore, 38, pleaded not guilty to charges he lured a Broward County, Fla., girl into engaging in sexual activity in 2014. Moore also pleaded not guilty to related charges of attempting to produce and receive child pornography.

Prosecutors revealed new details about the allegations against Moore during the hearing in federal court in West Palm Beach.

Moore began sending inappropriate texts and messages in 2014 to a Broward County girl who had just turned 16 at the time, prosecutor Corey Steinberg said in court.

Moore sent numerous photographs of his genitals to the girl, as well as other non-explicit photographs of himself, prosecutors said. The girl also was persuaded to send him naked photographs of herself, they said.

Federal agents also have identified at least one other underage girl with whom Moore had a virtually identical relationship, Steinberg told the judge. That girl lives in Texas and had just turned 14 when she was communicating online with Moore, the prosecutor said.

Moore, who has already pleaded not guilty to a federal child pornography charge in Delaware, also may face criminal charges in Texas, Steinberg said. Agents still are trying to identify other underage girls who communicated with Moore, she said.

Prosecutors said Moore, who lived in Maryland, told agents he estimated he was communicating with approximately 10 minors. Many of those online and text chats occurred while he was at work and some of the photographs he sent were taken in a White House security booth where he was sometimes stationed, according to court records.

The top-security location apparently did little to distract him from his explicit communications with an unknown number of minors and adults, prosecutors said. They said he sexually exploited several girls online and tried to arrange real-life meetings with some of them.

Moore deleted much of the evidence against him from his phone, computer and cloud-based backup services in November, investigators said.

Moore learned he was under investigation by other law enforcement agencies when Secret Service officials notified him in a move that violated a prior agreement to keep him ignorant of the allegations until after he was arrested and his electronic devices could be secured and searched, according to court records.

Moore said little in court on Thursday, but briefly and politely answered U.S. Magistrate Judge Dave Lee Brannons questions.

His lawyer, Assistant Federal Public Defender Robin Rosen-Evans, told the judge Moore would not contest the prosecutions request to keep him jailed in South Florida while the criminal cases are pending.

Moore was locked up in the Delaware area from the time of his arrest in November until recently when he chose to be transferred to South Florida to face the most serious charges against him.

If convicted of the Broward allegations, he could face a maximum punishment of life in federal prison.

He was fired from his job as a sworn federal law enforcement officer and member of the Secret Services uniformed security detail at the White House complex in December, shortly after the allegations were made public.

Brannon agreed that Moore is a potential flight risk and a danger to the community and ordered he will remain jailed.
The San Francisco District Attorney's office said it filed seven charges against Miller Thursday, including assault with a deadly weapon.

Police say Miller tried to enter a hotel room occupied by an elderly couple on Monday. The couple's son was staying in the next room, and police say Miller attacked him and his 70-year-old father after the son told Miller he was at the wrong room. Miller allegedly punched the father.

Prosecutors say the deadly weapon was a cane.

A call to Miller's attorney, Joshua Bentley, was not immediately returned.

Miller's agent, Jack Reale, said there was more to the case than meets the eye, but declined additional comment.

The 49ers released Miller on Monday.
WASHINGTON (TNS)  A few hours before Donald Trump addressed conservative Christians at the annual Values Voter Summit in Washington on Friday, Sen. Tim Scott told them that a vote for the Republican nominee is a vote for hope.

This year our election, it matters, and its a binary choice for me, the South Carolina Republican said. Either youre voting for the policies to continue that have been in place for the last eight years  more division, disaster and challenges  or you can vote for hope. You can vote for an alternative. You can vote  to make America great again, he said, adding emphasis to Trumps well-known election slogan.

While Scott did not mention Trump by name, this was a somewhat more direct endorsement than he has given in past months. Scott, who initially endorsed Florida Sen. Marco Rubio for president ahead of South Carolinas Republican primary in February, has consistently said he would support the eventual Republican nominee. After meeting with Trump in July with a group of Republican senators, Scott said he was seeing movement in the right direction.

But this summer Scott also criticized Trump for his comments about a Mexican-American judge overseeing the Trump University lawsuit, calling the comments racially toxic, and said he was mainly focusing on his job in Congress and his own re-election campaign.

Scott was the first speaker of the summit Friday morning. His 20-minute address set an upbeat tone, with his booming voice and preachers enthusiasm seeming to wake up the sleepy audience.

As often happens when Scott speaks at such events, his address also was set apart by its optimistic message. While many speakers focused on a list of challenges faced by socially conservative Christians, from anti-abortion business owners who dont want to sell the Plan B emergency contraceptive to attacks on public prayer, Scotts main message was the best is yet to come.

With all the divisions, with all the challenges, with all of the naysayers about who we are as Americans all over the globe and even at home  our best days are ahead of us, he said.

However, Scott did not mention Trump by name during his address, and did not tie his message of hope to the candidates policies, instead focusing on the promise of young Americans.

I believe that the next generation is going to draw and bring us into a place where the greatness of America is sensed, it is felt and it is seen all across the world, he said.

I would like to tell you that one day were going to have the perfect candidate to lead this country, he said, stalling for comedic effect. I dont know what to tell you! I dont think its going to happen anytime soon.

This is the 11th annual Values Voter Summit, which is sponsored by the legislative arm of the Family Research Council, an organization that advocates for socially conservative and Christian causes. The Republican vice presidential nominee, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, will address the summit Saturday.
KHARABRUD, Iraq (AP) a An Iranian Kurdish rebel group received military training in weapons and explosives from U.S. and European advisers as part of the international program backing Kurds in the war against the Islamic State group in Iraq, the group's commander told The Associated Press.

The group, called the Kurdistan Freedom Party, is one of several Iranian Kurdish factions that have carried out attacks this year inside Iran, sparking a crackdown by security forces. At the same time, the group has been fighting alongside Iraqi Kurds against Islamic State group militants in northern Iraq.

The training is a further twist in the complex web of alliances and enmities swirling around the wars in Iraq and Syria. Iran is a powerful backer of the Iraqi government and Iraqi Shiite militias against the Islamic State group.

It appeared that the Iranian faction made its way into the training because it is officially under the umbrella of the Iraqi Kurdish forces. But any training of Iranian insurgents, even indirectly through the anti-IS campaign, could alarm Tehran, which remains a top rival of Washington and U.S. allies in the region despite their common cause in fighting the militants in Iraq and despite last year's nuclear deal.

Speaking to The Associated Press this week, the Kurdistan Freedom Party's commander Hussein Yazdanpana said he recognized that the training was for the fight against IS.

"They helped and trained us within the framework of the fight against Daesh," or the Islamic State group, he said.

But he said his group, known by the Kurdish acronym PAK, would continue attacks in Iran, adding that the fight against IS "was never an alternative to their struggle" against the Iranian government. Yazdanpana said his group has launched six attacks inside of Iran this year alone.

Iranian Kurdish fighters have waged an on-again, off-again insurgency in mainly Kurdish areas of northwestern Iran near the Iraqi border, complaining of discrimination by Tehran and demanding independence for Kurds.

This year has seen a new surge in attacks and clashes between the fighters and Iranian security forces, including the elite Revolutionary Guard, leading to casualties on both sides. Iranian forces also shelled Kurdish positions just across the Iraqi border in response. The government of the Iraqi Kurdish autonomous zone has called for a halt to any attacks into Iran by Kurds in Iraqi territory.

The main faction carrying out the bulk of the violence is the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan, known as the PDKI, which is also based in Iraq but is not involved in the fight against IS and so did not receive any international training.

The U.S.-led coalition has been training Iraqi Kurdish fighters, known as peshmerga, to fight the Islamic State group ever since the militants swept across much northern, western and central Iraq in the summer of 2014.

The peshmerga are a mix of multiple Iraqi factions. The Iranian PAK a believed to number several hundred a is closely allied to the main ruling party in Iraq's Kurdish autonomous region, so its fighters have been helping in the fight against IS. The PAK's fighters are under the umbrella of the regional government's Peshmerga Ministry, which governs which groups receive training.

Italian Army Capt. Giulio Macari, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition in the Iraqi Kurdish city of Irbil, told the AP that the party "probably" received training, since Western advisers offered help all to Kurdish militias under the ministry's control. Macari said the coalition did not choose the groups that it was training.

Yazdanpana said the trainers "no doubt" knew who his group was. The PAK fighters wear uniforms similar to the Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga, but with their group's orange and white logo.

He said PAK fighters had three rounds of training by American advisers between March and September 2015 at the front line where they are deployed in central Kirkuk province. The group's fighters went through further rounds of training later alongside other Iraqi Kurdish fighters, he said. PAK fighters control some 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) of front-line territory west of the Iraqi city of Kirkuk as well as some positions east of the city of Mosul.

A senior Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga official, Maj. Gen. Karaman Kemal Omar confirmed that American advisers carried out training at the Kirkuk front line. Asked if the PAK was among those trained, he said the training was given to all units at the location "without distinction." The training included infantry tactics, weapons handling and bomb disposal.

Omar is the deputy chief of staff for operations and training in the Peshmerga ministry.

Maj. Josh T. Jacques, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, which oversees the fight against IS, said early Wednesday that it was "not aware of any training provided by CENTCOM to the Kurdistan Freedom Party militia."

Senior U.S. defense officials said the training and equipment is meant for forces who are fighting Islamic State militants and not to be used for other conflicts or battles with other nations. They said that groups only get the amount of equipment and ammunition they need for the immediate battle they are in, so it would be unlikely that any of that would be used in other fights.

Officials said they had no specific information about the PAK fighters and it wasn't clear if the coalition would continue training the group if it became known that fighters were using it for conflicts in Iran rather than against Islamic State insurgents. The officials spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because they wasn't authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
On a visit to Indonesia, Duterte told the Filipino community there that he told Obama: "President Obama, I'm President Duterte. I never made that statement, check it out."

He said that Obama responded: "'My men will talk to you,' and he replied 'OK.'"

Duterte blamed the media for distorting his words, saying he did utter "son of a bitch" but it was not directed at Obama.

Before traveling to Laos for regional summits, Duterte said Monday that Obama should not question him about the rising death toll in his war on drugs, which has been criticized abroad and by Duterte's opponents in the Philippines. More than 2,800 suspected drug dealers and users have been killed since Duterte took office.

Asked how he would explain the killings to Obama, he said in a long answer that the Philippines has long ceased to be a colony of the United States and he ddid not have a master except the Filipino people.

"I do not care about him. Who is he?" Duterte said. "You must be respectful. Do not just throw questions and statements. Putang Ina, I will swear at you at that forum," he added, using the Tagalog phrase for "son of a bitch."

Obama then canceled a meeting with Duterte in Laos but the two met informally on Wednesday in a holding room before attending a gala dinner.

Duterte, who assumed the presidency in June, has had an uneasy relationship with the U.S., his country's longtime treaty ally. He has said he is charting a foreign policy not dependent on the U.S., and has moved to reduce tensions with China over rival territorial claims.

He also said he showed a picture of an atrocity during the U.S. pacification campaign in the southern Philippines at the beginning of the last century at the East Asia Summit in Laos that included Obama, in order to stop criticism over human rights violations in the war on illegal drugs. The photograph showed about 200 dead Filipino Moros stacked in a common pit, with an American soldier holding a rifle while stepping on the breasts of a naked Moro woman.

He said he told the leaders, "This is human rights, what do you intend to do?" and "Human rights violations whether committed by Moses or Abraham, is still violation of human rights."

The whole room was silent and he waited for Obama to respond but he remained quiet, Duterte said.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP)  North Korea said it conducted a "higher level" nuclear test explosion on Friday that will allow it to finally build an array of stronger, smaller and lighter nuclear weapons. It was the North's fifth atomic test and the second in eight months.

South Korea's president said the detonation, which Seoul estimated was the North's biggest-ever in explosive yield, was an act of "fanatic recklessness" and a sign that leader Kim Jong Un "is spiraling out of control." President Barack Obama condemned the test and said the U.S. would never accept the country as a nuclear power.

North Korea's boast of a technologically game-changing nuclear test defied both tough international sanctions and long-standing diplomatic pressure to curb its nuclear ambitions. It will raise serious worries in many world capitals that North Korea has moved another step closer to its goal of a nuclear-armed missile that could one day strike the U.S. mainland.

The U.N. Security Council scheduled an emergency meeting later Friday to discuss the test.

Seoul vowed to boost psychological warfare efforts by increasing the number of propaganda loudspeakers along the rivals' border, the world's most heavily armed, and the number of hours of anti-North Korean broadcasts.

Hours after South Korea noted unusual seismic activity near North Korea's northeastern nuclear test site, the North said in its state-run media that a test had "finally examined and confirmed the structure and specific features of movement of (a) nuclear warhead that has been standardized to be able to be mounted on strategic ballistic rockets."

"The standardization of the nuclear warhead will enable (North Korea) to produce at will and as many as it wants a variety of smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear warheads of higher strike power," North Korea said. "This has definitely put on a higher level (the North's) technology of mounting nuclear warheads on ballistic rockets."

North Korea, led by a third-generation dictatorship and wary of outsiders, protects its nuclear program as a closely guarded state secret, and the claims about advancements made in its testing could not be independently verified. But they center on a technological mystery that has long bedeviled outside experts: How far has North Korea gotten in efforts to consistently shrink down nuclear warheads so they can fit on long-range missiles?

South Korea's main spy agency told lawmakers in a closed-door briefing after the test that it does not think North Korea currently has the ability to develop nuclear weapons that can be mounted on ballistic missiles, but intelligence officials expressed worries that the North's efforts to do so are progressing more quickly than previously thought, said Kim Byungkee, a lawmaker from the opposition Minjoo Party.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye strongly condemned the test, saying in a statement that it showed the "fanatic recklessness of the Kim Jong Un government as it clings to nuclear development."

She told a meeting of top security officials Friday night that, "We have to believe that Kim Jong Un's mental state is spiraling out of control because he is not listening to any words from the international community or neighboring countries in his attempt to cling to power."

Obama condemned the nuclear test "in the strongest possible terms as a grave threat to regional security."

"The United States does not, and never will, accept North Korea as a nuclear state," he said in a statement. "Today's nuclear test, a flagrant violation of multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions, makes clear North Korea's disregard for international norms and standards for behavior and demonstrates it has no interest in being a responsible member of the international community."

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said he and South Korean President Park talked by telephone and agreed that North Korea's nuclear test and its recent missile launches show that it now poses a "different level of threat" requiring a new response.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has condemned the test and urged the Security Council, "to unite and take urgent actions."

"This unacceptable act endangers peace and security in the region and is another vivid reminder of the urgent need to strengthen the global nuclear test ban regime," said Ban, a former South Korean foreign minister.

South Korea's weather agency said the explosive yield of the North Korean blast would have been 10 to 12 kilotons, or 70 to 80 percent of the force of the 15-kiloton atomic bomb the United States dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945. The North's fourth test was an estimated six kilotons.

North Korea said no radioactive material leaked, but the explosion put the region on edge.

Chinese state media said the nation's environmental protection agency started nuclear radiation monitoring. Japanese planes began to collect air samples from national air space to analyze possible radioactive materials. Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike said Japan's capital city is also testing water samples and monitoring radiation levels in the air.

In the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, residents were delighted.

"It's really great news," said Rim Jong Su, 42. "Now, I am full of confidence that if the enemies make any little provocations we will make a counter attack and we will surely win."

The 5.0 magnitude seismic event Friday is the largest of the four past quakes associated with North Korean nuclear tests, according to South Korea's weather agency. Artificial seismic waves measuring 3.9 were reported after North Korea's first nuclear test in 2006; 4.8 was reported from its fourth test this January.

North Korean leader Kim has overseen a robust increase in the number and kinds of missiles tested this year. Not only has the range of the weapons jumped significantly, but the country is working to perfect new platforms for launching them  submarines and mobile launchers  giving the North greater ability to threaten the tens of thousands of U.S. troops stationed throughout Asia.

North Korea has fired a total of 33 ballistic missiles since Kim took power in 2011, Seoul's Defense Ministry said. In comparison, North Korea fired 16 ballistic missiles during the 17-year rule of Kim's father, Kim Jong Il.

The seismic activity comes on the 68th anniversary of the founding of North Korea's government and just days after world leaders gathered in China for the Group of Twenty economic summit.

The test will lead to a strong push for new, tougher sanctions at the United Nations and further worsen already abysmal relations between North Korea and its neighbors. The North is already one of the most heavily sanctioned places on Earth, and many question whether the penalties work.

China opposed North Korea's nuclear test, a key denunciation by the North's economic lifeline and only major ally.

North Korea likely wanted to show the world that strong international sanctions following its fourth nuclear test and long-range rocket launch earlier this year haven't discouraged its efforts to advance its nuclear weapon and missile programs, according to Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea expert at Seoul's Dongguk University.

North Korea's persistent pursuit of missiles and nuclear weapons has long been one of the most intractable foreign policy problems for U.S. administrations.

Diplomacy has so far failed. Six-nation negotiations on dismantling North Korea's nuclear program in exchange for aid were last held in late 2008 and fell apart in early 2009.

The Korean Peninsula remains technically at war, as the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.
Many of us recall that when we were children, our parents taught us a couple of valuable lessons for life. One was that you dont get rewarded for bad behavior. Another was that you dont get something for nothing.

Both of these lessons have come to mind in recent weeks as the two major political parties have chosen their respective candidates for the most powerful office in the world.

In watching this election unfold through the primaries, conventions, and beyond, particularly one candidate, Donald Trump, has put our parents teachings to the test.

For despite what we were taught, Donald Trump has been repeatedly rewarded for bad behavior. He engages in name calling -- labeling women as pigs; Mexicans as rapists; and his opponents everything from Little Mario and Lyin Ted to Crooked Hillary. He openly admires Saddam Hussein and Vladimir Putin, two terrible dictators.

Still, Trump has been rewarded for this behavior by a considerable number of folks giving him their votes. As our parents warned, this has simply encouraged more bad behavior.

He has also promised something for nothing. He talks about yuge growth; Deals like you wouldnt believe, AND lower taxes. Curiously these promises seldom come with specifics other than the assurance that Believe me: Im a great dealmaker. Again, hes been rewarded by folks trusting promises that he alone can fix things.

Trumps past record of broken promises and harm to working men and women is impressively long. Like the building trade workers and small business owners left holding the bag by his six bankruptcies. Or the American workers deprived of jobs as he took production of his clothing and furniture to factories overseas. Or the older and younger folks who gave him their hard earned dollars only to see them evaporate in collapsed real estate schemes or his yugely fraudulent Trump University.

Give the devil his due: Trump is a very effective con artist. As Michael Bloomberg -- his fellow New York billionaire who knows him well -- put it: The richest thing about Donald Trump is his hypocrisy.

And, friends, lets not forget: Trumps favorite line from his old TV program was: Youre fired.

But this is not even the end of it. In recent weeks, Trump has invited the Russians -- our Cold War adversaries -- to hack into our computers and secure confidential information to influence an American election. Some might reasonably argue this represents treason. Whether it goes that far, it clearly confirms what an unstable and erratic person Donald Trump really is.

Perhaps that is why a retired Marine Four Star General, John Allen -- backed by 30 other high ranking officers and other military personnel -- stood up at the Democratic Convention and called Trump a dangerous man.

It also explains why both living former Republican presidents and the last two GOP candidates for president stayed away from their partys convention this year. And why 95 Republican national security advisers have signed a letter declaring why Trump is utterly unfitted to be commander in chief.

Simply put, the election this year is not between a Democrat and a Republican -- Trump has changed parties at least five times in the last 20 years. It is not between a liberal or a conservative -- no one really knows what Trump stands for, except for himself.

Truth be told, the election this year is a choice between democracy and an unstable, would-be tyrant. For all its messiness and uncertainty, as Winston Churchill admonished, Democracy is the worst form of government, except all of the others that have been tried.

May American voters this year be wise enough not to make themselves the latest victims of a Donald Trump scam -- one that not only deprives folks of hard earned savings, but could jeopardize our democracy. May we remember the lessons our parents taught us by not rewarding bad behavior, or by falling for promises of getting something for nothing.

Perhaps most important, let us remember that deep anger, misdirected, frequently ends up just destroying the ones who are angry and everything they cherish.
G'day! It's Murray here. I've put together a little quiz to test your musical knowledge. Think you can score top marks in Murray's Magic Music Quiz? Give it a go now!
FS is examining two avenues for mergers and acquisitions. One concerns the acquisition of local public transport operators such as ATAC in Rome in order to be able to offer passengers an integrated service. Referring to a possible merger between Milans public transport operator ATM and Lombardy regional operator Trenord, FS CEO Mr Renato Mazzoncini says this could form the basis for future integration.

The Italian government has asked FS to study a possible merger with Italys state-owned road construction and management company Anas. During the last two months a working team has been trying to solve the problem of the remuneration mechanism by which Anas could enter in the FS Group, which is not public administration, because 50% of its revenue comes from the market, Mazzoncini explained. This team has had two parallel jobs: one is to realise synergies, and the other is to make sure that the merger with Anas does not drag the new FS back into becoming a public administration because the goal is the opposite.

Mazzoncini says the outcome of the study has been positive and the conditions have been achieved to go-ahead with the merger as part of the plan to create an integrated national infrastructure covering road and rail.

Regarding the planned IPO for the sale of a 40% stake in FS, Mazzoncini says that 2017 will be the year in which it will take place, but there will be no separation of assets outside FS.

Mazzoncini says FS is keen to capitalise on the creation of the single European railway market following the recent approval of the Fourth Railway Package. We are identifying relationships in other countries, Mazzoncini says. We have an interest in the Paris  Brussels route. FS has already reached a trilateral agreement with Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) and German Rail (DB) to introduce a new Milan - Zurich - Frankfurt service through the Gotthard Base Tunnel at the end of 2017.

Mazzoncini says the deal to acquire Greeces national train operator Trainose will be signed at the end of September and the ownership of Trainose will transfer to FS on January 1.

Our goal is to create European connections and to be a European operator, Mazzoncini says.

FS wants to be able to offer passengers seamless travel from door-to-door. It has signed an agreement with Google Maps to provide passengers with travel information and journey planners and FS is working on a digital platform called Travelling Companion which will combine ticket purchase with travel planning.

Mazzoncini says he wants FS to be able to use its infrastructure and assets in an innovative way in its relationship with its customers. He says FS is working on two fronts: the extended customer experience and the development of door-to-door services using technology to integrate the different modes of transport.
Spains largest telco plans to reach 25 million households with fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) by 2020.





Seen as the leading technology to offer convergent packages, including IPTV and advanced video services such as over-the-top (OTT), streaming and video-on-demand (VOD), fibre has become key in Telefonicas future in Spain.According to Luis Miguel Gilperez, Telefonica Spains president, the provider will reach 20 million homes with FTTH by the end of next year, three years after which, it will reach 25 million access points.In fact, Telefonicas forecast exceeds the official figures, which cite there being 18.35 million homes in Spain.Currently, the telco claims to have connected 16 million homes to its fibre network, thus reaching the largest number of potential subscribers. Telefonica will also have to offer network access to its competitors, Vodafone-ONO and Orange-Jazztel, which are also deploying their own fibre infrastructures.Spain has a very good starting point thanks to the telecom industrys investment effort, particularly from Telefonicas side. Between 2010 and 2015, we have invested around 12 billion, Gilperez told news agency Europa Press.
The SAT>IP alliance is to hold a general meeting at IBC 2016 to discuss the next steps for this content distribution technology.





Major European satellite players including Eutelsat, SES and Hispasat and other alliance members such as Nagra, MaxLinear and Panasonic will look at the future of their partnership, which was created last year to market and develop compatible hardware and software for the SAT>IP technology.During recent months, the SAT>IP alliance has been working on topics such as the extensions of the SAT>IP protocol for CAS>DRM conversion and transcoding, and it also established a partnership with the independent testing house Labwise for certifying SAT>IP products.According to the organisation, 45 industry partners have supported the SAT>IP standard over last years, developing more than 80 different products that are compatible with its requirements.Seen by satellite operators as the future of content distribution, the SAT>IP technology converts broadcast signals into IP at the reception point using a small server, which may be located in the satellite dish or in the user's home, and distributes the selected programmes to different IP devices such as tablets, smartphones and laptops.
Viacom18 is releasing its first 3D stereoscopic animation Motu Patlu King of Kings to cinemas across India this October before streaming it on its digital platform, VOOT.





Produced by Maya Digital Studios, the film is based on the Lotpot characters Motu Patlu, which have already appeared in ten made for TV films on Viacom18s television and digital services. This marks the cinema debut for the characters, thanks to a tie-up between two Viacom18 divisions: Viacom18 Motion Pictures and Nickelodeon.An interesting confluence of two major developments has led to Motu Patlus silver screen debut. Firstly, the animation industry in India is rapidly evolving with a growth rate of ~13.8%, with over 15,000 professionals working to create content for industries across the globe. Secondly, with an estimated 400 million kids in the country today, the kids category is the third largest in the Indian broadcast sector, after the GECs and movies categories, with a sizeable headroom for growth in terms of both viewership and revenues, said Sudhanshu Vats, group CEO, Viacom18.The ten Motu Patlu made for television movies have contributed ~10% of Nicks ratings, being amongst the top five every time we released one such movie ... Motu Patlu has had an interesting journey  starting with television, then moving into digital, capitalizing on their growing brand value through Viacom18 Consumer Products and now starring in their own movie, he added.The film is directed by Suhas Kadav and with lyrics for the title track from Gulzar. Vishal Bharadwaj has composed the music and Sukhwinder sings the soundtrack. The story is about a runaway circus lion, a lion king trying to protect his kingdom, a greedy poacher and Motu Patlu fighting to save the jungle.Ketan Mehta, chairman & managing director, Maya Digital Studios, said: The launch of Motu Patlu King of Kings is a big step for the animation industry at large. Given that Motu Patlu is the most popular kids brand in the country today, we were inspired to create this magnum opus suitable for the big screen. This is a film that will be driven by children, but one that will be equally enjoyed by adults.Motu Patlu King of Kings will be available in Hindi and Tamil in over 700 screens across India from 14 October 2016, then subsequently streamed on-demand via Viacom18s VOOT platform.
Prosecutor seeks 5.5 years in jail for construction firm's ex-CEO charged with tax evasion

MOSCOW, September 9 (RAPSI)  The prosecution demanded to sentence former head of the Mostovik construction firm Oleg Shishov, charged with 500 million rubles tax evasion ($7.8 million), to 5.5 years in prison, the Omsk City Prosecutors Office reported on Friday.

Besides, the prosecutor asked the court to make Shishov pay 500 million rubles ($7.8 million) as compensation for damages, citing the seriousness of his crime. At the same time, the prosecution noted Shishovs admittance of guilt, his repentance, health condition, and partial repair of the damages as mitigating circustances. The defense insisted on a shorter term and dismissal of the civil suit against Shishov.

The next hearing of the case is set on September 16.

According to investigators, in 2009-2011 Shishov forged financial documents and tax declarations of Mostovik, falsely reporting completion of construction works in Vladivostok and other cities by side contractors. Investigators claim that these contractors did not do any works and the projects were completed by employees of Mostovik itself. As a result, investigators believe that Shishov evaded paying over 478 million rubles ($7.4 mln) in taxes.

Additionally investigators allege that Shishov embezzled 526 million rubles ($8.2 mln) received as advance payment for construction of the Omsk ring road.

Shishov fully admitted his guilt and requested his case is reviewed under a special procedure.

Yet on March 21 Shishov was sentenced to three years in a penal company for complicity in embezzlement of entrusted property. Investigators alleged that he helped executive of the government company Direction on construction management in the Far Eastern Federal District, Andrei Poplavsky, to embezzle more than one billion rubles ($14.2 million) allocated for the construction of the Primorye Oceanarium.

Shishov made a pre-trial agreement on cooperation and testified against Poplavsky.
DW Dari (Translated by RAWA), September 9, 2016

By Reza Sher Mohammadi

The police of Sheraz city, Iran, put a number of Afghan refugees on public display inside steel cages as part of the polices achievements. This action drew strong reactions from everywhere. Afghan parliamentarians protested the action calling it against human rights, human dignity, and international law.

The police of Sheraz put an exhibition of the findings and achievements of its stations on Tuesday. Among alcoholic drinks, drugs, and other criminal cases, Afghan refugees were also displayed inside cages.

The photos quickly spread through social networking websites and drew strong reactions from people around the world, especially Afghans and Iranians.

The Iranian police told its media that 277 illegal immigrants had been arrested by the police which they saw as an achievement.

But even Iranian users on social networking websites called this action wrong. Sina, an Iranian user wrote, They are stampeding humanity, just like African-Americans were placed inside cages 200 years ago.

Shohab, another Iranian wrote, It is a catastrophe when you see this news on websites and read the views of commentators and discover that half of the nation supports this action, this filthy racism is completely normal for them.

Many Iranian users condemned this action and apologized to their Afghan friends. Afghan users took the view that people and governments are separate. Behnush wrote, The dignity of every nation is in the hands of its rulers. When the fate of our countrymen inside and outside have no importance for the leaders of our country, then we cannot complain about other countries. He continued, People will behave with us how we allow them to.

Reza another Afghan who was an Iranian refugee once and is currently in Germany wrote, Iran shares our language and religion. But non-Islamic countries treat aliens with respect. Here, humanity is what matters, nothing else.



This is not the first time such actions have been taken against Afghan refugees by the Iranian government. Some time back, an Afghan girl lost her life due to the transplant laws of the country.
The meeting between President Barack Obama and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on September 4 at the G20 provided the two leaders with their first face-to-face opportunity to discuss the aggravated tensions in the U.S.-Turkish relationship since the July 15 coup attempt.

Obamas comments at their joint appearance after the meeting made it clear that he wanted to build on the fence-mending efforts of Vice President Joe Biden during his visit to Ankara on August 24. According to the White House transcript, Obama strongly condemned the coup and promised to cooperate with Turkish authorities to determine how we can make sure that those who carried out these activities are brought to justice, an obvious reference to the ongoing Turkish extradition request for Fethullah Gulen as the alleged mastermind of the coup attempt.

At the same time, Obama sought to emphasize the positive aspects of the U.S.-Turkish relationship by focusing on the joint fight against ISIS, welcoming cooperation which has helped push it back, especially along the Syrian-Turkish border. He was clearly referring to the recent assumption of control over the 96 kilometer strip between the Euphrates and the town of Azaz by opposition groups backed by the Turkish military. Adding that the United States and Turkey now need to finish the job, Obama said that the two leaders had discussed ways in which we can further cooperate in that regard.

For his part, Erdogan, in contrast to the mostly negative rhetoric directed at the United States from Turkey since July 15, praised Obamas support against the coup attempt. He also made a point of referring to the two countries as strategic partners and very close allies, which, under Obamas leadership, had developed into a model partnership. Erdogan also said that relations were getting stronger after the terrorist attacks and the failed coup.

However, while pledging that Turkey would forge a very close cooperation and a solidarity with the coalition forces against ISIS, Erdogan specifically identified the Syrian Kurdish PYD and YPG as terrorist organizations Turkey would also fight in its effort to prevent the establishment of a belt of terrorism beyond its southern border. Erdogan also confirmed that post-coup attempt related documentation and evidence about Gulen would be submitted to the United States and that the Turkish Justice and Foreign Ministers would then travel to Washington to concentrate their efforts on the elaboration of this evidence.

In view of the strong likelihood that the extradition process will take much longer than Ankara would like, the two countries will have to try to find a way to maximize their cooperation in spite of this cloud hanging over their important relationship. However, this is likely to be difficult if the two countries continue to differ fundamentally on the issue of U.S. involvement with the PYD/YPG in the effort against ISIS, as Turkish Presidential Spokesperson Ibrahim Kalin pointedly noted on September 6.
Last month, the French city of Nice won notoriety when gendarmes captured a woman on its beach garbed in a full-length black robe. Even after she pulled off her covering to show the officers the bathing suit she was wearing underneath, the burkini-clad offender was escorted off the sands.

The Republic, it appeared, had been saved -- at least for those swearing allegiance to it by wearing bikinis.

Or even less than a bikini, it turns out. At a gathering of the Socialist faithful last week in Colomiers, a suburb of Toulouse, Prime Minister Manuel Valls offered a history primer on the French Republic. The conquest of liberty, he declared, was at the heart of the Lefts historic struggle on behalf of republican values and womens rights. We will not compromise on the place of women in France, he warned. Then, in a moment of inspiration, he looked up from his prepared text and riffed on Marianne, who has served since the Revolution as the female personification of liberty. Marianne is shown with a naked breast because she is nourishing the people; she is not wearing a veil because she is free! Right there, that is the Republic!

Suddenly, it became nigh impossible to keep, well, abreast of the debate over the place of Islam and women in French society. Valls remark sparked a firestorm of criticism on social media and in the press. (And as videos of the gathering reveal, clearly discomfited ministers like Marisol Touraine and Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, who were in attendance.) Leaving aside the Monty Python-esque logic underlying the claim that Marianne is not wearing a veil because she is free, it is worthwhile to focus on the history behind the idea of Marianne. In two sentences, Valls managed to misrepresent and misconstrue her meaning in multiple ways. These mistakes take on tragic significance when placed in the increasingly divisive debate over Islam now raging in France.

Marianne first strode onto the stage of history in 1792 -- the same year, not coincidentally, that Louis XVI was shown out of power and the Republic shown in. In this early illustration, she is, in fact, exposing one of her breasts. But nourishing the people with it couldnt be further from her mind -- or, more accurately, the mind of the artist. Instead, as the historian Mathilde Larrere notes, it is because the artist did what artists often do in search of a model: he rummaged around in the past. At the end of the 18th century, this particular past happened to be ancient Greece and, especially, ancient Rome. Neo-classicism was all the rage; think of Jacques-Louis Davids vast canvases capturing the deaths of Marat or Socrates. The iconographic association of a woman in Roman dress -- or partial undress -- with the Revolution was not at all revolutionary, but instead a conservative reflex.

No less important, Valls comment reflects his cluelessness about the impact of 1789 on the role of women in French society. In a brave new world dedicated to equality, liberty, and fraternity -- not sorority -- and defined by the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen -- not Woman and Citizeness -- women arguably found themselves worse off than they had been under the Old Regime. Though they played pivotal roles in key events of the Revolution, women were denied the same political and civil rights given to the men they often prodded into action. When Napoleon rose to power and institutionalized many of the Revolutions gains, he also institutionalized the subordinate status of women -- a grim legacy whose remnants endured through the first half of the 20th century.

However, Valls may not have been thinking of the Revolution of 1789, but instead the Revolution of 1830. This is the event, after all, that spurred the creation of Liberty Leading the People. The work of the Romantic painter Eugene Delacroix, the immense canvas portrays Marianne as a fierce and bare-breasted woman, carrying a French tricolor flag and musket, guiding a group of revolutionaries over a barricade of fallen bodies. Delacroixs cover of Marianne went platinum: it adorned the 100 franc bill, Mariannes head was affixed to its coins and stamps, and Frederic Bartholdi shaped the Statue of Liberty under the inspiration of Delacroixs model.

A glance at Delacroixs Marianne reveals a figure both mythic and real. While there were no bare-breasted women in 1830 -- or 1789, for that matter -- clambering over barricades with rifles in hand, there were many instances of (fully clothed) women helping the wounded and hauling paving stones to the barricades. It turns out that Delacroix based the figure not just on ancient iconography, but the real-life account of a woman who took her fallen brothers place on a Parisian barricade. (In fact, one woman, Marie Deschamps, was subsequently honored for her role in the Bourbon monarchys overthrow.)

But heres the rub: Valls account ignores that the place of women in post-1830 France was no better than it was in pre-1830 France. In fact, while womens political and civil status failed to change significantly for the rest of the century, the depiction of Marianne did change. As the historian Maurice Agulhon traces in his book Marianne into Battle, the savage and statuesque Marianne who dominates republican iconography during the revolutions of 1789 and 1830 gives way to a demure and domestic version. Her breast is no longer uncovered, her hair is no longer unfurled, and her gaze is no longer unforgiving. Instead, in statues and paintings Marianne is most often seated, her hair is pleated, and her body is veiled. From Amazonian warrior, she became a bourgeois helpmate, the mistress of the home whose duty is to breed children and buttress husbands.

Only after the Second World War, and the role played by women in the French Resistance, did the political status of women begin to change. With the enfranchisement of women in 1945 -- signed by the deeply conservative and Catholic Charles de Gaulle -- the iconography of Marianne was also liberated. Over time, public figures ranging from Brigitte Bardot to Catherine Deneuve have served as the official models. The resistance that the few efforts to introduce a black Marianne has met -- as in the town of Fremainville last year -- reveals that the evolution still has a good distance to go. Still, one can imagine that, whether through evolution or revolution, one day a black or head-scarfed woman will be shown clambering over the barricades of reaction thrown up by the Left no less than the Right.
Somaliland President Ahmed Mohamed Silanyo recently claimed that more than one million citizens, out of the countrys population of 3.4 million, had signed a petition calling for the international community to recognise Somaliland.

Since 1991, and the collapse of the Siad Barre regime in Somalia, the region has declared itself independent. But should it? The examples of the secession of South Sudan and Eritrea raise serious questions and doubts about the outcomes of breakaway states.

The general approach to calls for secession in Africa, as set out by the African Union (AU) and its predecessor the Organisation of African Unity, is that they should be opposed. The most frequently heard argument against secession is that granting the right to one country invites others to take the same step.

This, the argument goes, would put at risk the internationally recognised system of post-colonial states in Africa.

The issue of secession first arose in the 1960s with the wave of decolonisation and questions over the viability of the newly independent states across the continent. Two cases stood out: the Congo, where Katangas self-proclaimed breakaway was defeated by United Nations forces; and Nigeria, where the Biafran secession was ended by the Nigerian federal forces.

Africas new states

The issue has come up again in recent times. In northeast Africa two states have experienced separation. In 1993 Eritrea was recognised as a separate state from Ethiopia, and the worlds newest state, South Sudan, was recognised in 2011.

The circumstances in each of these cases was different. But the purpose here is not to revisit how and why these took place, but to consider what happened next.

In both cases separation was intended to deal with historical problems and provide an acceptable alternative in the form of a new internationally recognised state. But have they achieved these objectives?

Both the Ethiopian and Sudanese examples suggest that separation isnt always the straightforward option. The division has led to violent border disputes, economic complications, and poor relations with the wider international community.

There is also a case to be made that granting secession has merely served to fuel the claims of other separatist movements. Somalilands calls to be recognised as independent, rather than being included in the efforts to rebuild Somalia, is an example. When South Sudan became independent in 2011 a Somaliland delegation arrived in Juba, the capital, wearing t-shirts saying Somaliland Next.

Border disputes, military costs

Any separation involves the recognition of an accepted border between the two states involved. In the case of both Eritrea and South Sudan this has proved contentious.

In 1988 there was an issue over Badme, a small town near the Ethiopian border which Eritrea claimed was theirs. This ignited one of the two largest interstate conflicts in Africa since the second world war. The other interstate conflict was Somalias attack in 1977 to back up its claim to Ethiopias Ogaden region, an area mainly populated by clans of Somali origin.

South Sudans border with Sudan also proved contentious, and there were clashes over the disputed area of Abyei.

Neither the Badme or Abyei issues have been resolved to the satisfaction of the two states involved. Instead they continue to fester.

The continuing border disputes have resulted in both sides continuing to invest heavily in their armies and in equipment. Eritrea and Ethiopia both maintain large and costly forces facing each other across their disputed border.

And while South Sudan and Sudan agreed to an integrated joint force on their common border, it never came into existence. Mutual suspicion and accusations of incursions by both armies persist.

Economic complications

Separation always involves questions about economic relations.

Eritreas independence made Ethiopia a landlocked country. Prior to Eritreas independence Ethiopia had access to the sea ports of Massawa and Assab. After separation, Ethiopia expected access to continue, but major differences soon emerged to scupper this. This included the relative value of the two countries currencies and tariffs charged by Eritrea on the movement of goods.

Worsening economic relations are thought to have played a significant part in the border war that broke out between the two countries.

Similarly, South Sudan and Sudan had to share an outlet to the sea. This became problematic. Sudan began extracting oil in the late 1990s with the bulk of the oil originating in the south. It exported oil via pipelines to the Red Sea that ran through the north.

The peace agreement, which saw the establishment of the South Sudan government in 2005, involved arrangements to share the oil revenues. But South Sudans decision to separate completely in 2011 soon gave rise to complaints that Sudan was not honouring the agreement. It even led at one point to the pipeline to the north being closed.

Separation legacy

With differences over borders and economic relations, and even overt war, it is unsurprising that diplomatic relations between the governments have proved difficult. It is therefore also unsurprising that they have affected relations with the wider international community.

Separation often implies that the former state wasnt viable. International recognition of a new state therefore assumes that separation is better for both old and new. This has proved questionable in both cases.

Eritrea has acquired a reputation as a coercive state and become something of an international pariah. South Sudan has imploded into impoverishment and widespread conflict, leading some to call for it to become a UN mandate, with the presence of a long-term UN force.

These cases have left a legacy which suggests that separation, in Africa at least, is not an easy option. It could lead to outcomes that do little to solve the problems of any of the states involved.

Many in Africa will have these outcomes in mind as they face Somalilands continued call for international recognition as an independent state. Meanwhile, rebuilding in the rest of Somalia continues with the express wish that Somaliland is part of the process.

Peter Robert Woodward, Emeritus Professor of Politics and International Relations, University of Reading

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
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Dia-nauts are able to sit in the Powered-Suit and it can also be attached to the Dis-Battles V2 Glider mode. $69.99Enesco's Disney Showcase brings some of Disney's most popular characters as beautifully sculpted figures! Each figure is hand crafted out of resin and painted with care and depicts each character in steampunk, couture fashion, or their classic rendering.This impressive statue by Hollywood Collectibles Group stands 23.5" tall on the highly detailed food cart display. Slimer himself is 10" tall and is expertly crafted in translucent resin for a more ghostly appearance! $399.99From USAopoly comes an alternate universe where food is king and pop culture icons are tasty treats. Collect and display your favorite Ghostbusters characters mashed up with fun foods, freshly made and ready to collect! It's the vinyl figure collector's guilty pleasure with zero calories. $14.99 EachPerfect Effect presents the Robot V2, a battling robot armed with a double barreled blaster rifle. 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Each transformable figure comes with character-related accessories and weapons, and are fully articulated when in robot mode.Uncanny X-Men Rogue and Cyclops from Marvel Now, Lucky Chloe from Tekken, New 52 Joker from DC Comics, and much more are available as Kotobukiya statues. Each Kotobukiya figure features your favorite characters posing and ready to be displayed in your figure collection!The MP-31 Masterpiece Delta Magnus is a redeco of the MP-22 Ultra Magnus painted in his Diaclone colors. He comes with alternate faces, his super blaster gun, missiles, and an articulated Marissa Faireborn figure that is scaled to fit inside his cab in vehicle mode!Funko presents new Pop! and Pocket Pop! figures! Make way for the super-sized 6" Atomic Breath Godzilla, or join the Suicide Squad with Pocket Pop! Harley Quinn and Joker keychains. 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The University of Georgia Press has found its missing van which was reported stolen Sept. 3 at the 2016 Decatur Book Festival. However the van was not stolen as was originally thought.
Ana Duron is one of 227 UGA students from the state of Maryland, and part of only 13 percent of UGA undergraduates who are from out of state. When she was applying to colleges, Duron knew she wanted to get out of Maryland.
One of the biggest hurdles of starting a business or becoming an entrepreneur is knowing where to begin. Events like Startup Stories V, a speaker series held by Four Athens on Sept. 29, give insight into startup entrepreneurship, and provide viewers with some perspective of what it is like to work in the startup industry.
Passengers prepare to board JetBlue flight 387 to Santa Clara, Cuba, Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2016, at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. The first commercial flight between the United States and Cuba in more than a half century flew out of Fort Lauderdale for the central city of Santa Clara on Wednesday morning, re-establishing regular air service severed at the height of the Cold War. (AP Photo/Alan Diaz)

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By MICHAEL WEISSENSTEIN, Associated Press

SANTA CLARA, Cuba (AP)  The first commercial flight between the United States and Cuba in more than a half century landed in the central city of Santa Clara last week, re-establishing regular air service severed at the height of the Cold War.

Cheers broke out in the cabin of JetBlue flight 387 as the plane touched down. Passengers  mostly airline executives, U.S. government officials and journalists, with a sprinkling of Cuban-American families and U.S. travelers  were given gift bags with Cuban cookbooks, commemorative luggage tags and Cuban flags, which they were encouraged to wave.

The arrival of the flight out of Fort Lauderdale opens a new era of U.S.-Cuba travel with about 300 flights a week connecting the U.S. with an island cut off from most Americans by the 55-year-old trade embargo on Cuba and formal ban on U.S. citizens engaging in tourism on the island.

"Seeing the American airlines landing routinely around the island will drive a sense of openness, integration and normality. That has a huge psychological impact," said Richard Feinberg, author of the new book "Open for Business: Building the New Cuban Economy."

Also Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Transportation announced the carriers selected to operate routes to Havana: Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Frontier Airlines, JetBlue Airways, Southwest Airlines, Spirit Airlines and United Airlines.

The department said in a statement that carriers will serve the Cuban capital from Atlanta, Charlotte, Fort Lauderdale, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Newark, New York City, Orlando and Tampa.

Airlines are obligated to begin flights within 90 days  right after Thanksgiving  but may begin earlier. Delta said it would launch daily service Dec. 1 from Atlanta, Miami and New York's John F. Kennedy Airport, "subject to Cuban regulatory approval," with flights going on sale Sept. 10.

Spirit also said it aims to run twice-a-day flights to Havana beginning Dec. 1, from Fort Lauderdale.

The restart of commercial travel between the two countries is one of the most important steps in President Barack Obama's two-year-old policy of normalizing relations with the island. Historians disagree on the exact date of the last commercial flight but it appears to have been after Cuba banned incoming flights during the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

Secretary of State John Kerry said on Twitter that the last commercial flight was in 1961.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx and JetBlue CEO Robin Hayes both addressed passengers on board the 150-seat Airbus A320, which was staffed by a specially selected five-member crew of Cuban-Americans. Airline executives changed from American business attire into loose-fitting Cuban-style guayabera shirts before landing.

"This is one of the most visible examples of the president's activities to restore diplomatic relations with Cuba," Foxx said.

"It's a positive step and a concrete contribution to the process of improving relations between the two countries," Cuba's vice minister of transportation Eduardo Rodriguez told journalists Monday.

Neta Rodriguez, a 62-year-old Havana-born South Florida homemaker, checked in Wednesday morning with her daughter, son-in-law and three grandsons for a visit to family in Santa Clara and Havana.

More than the historic nature of the flight, she said she appreciated the $200 price and the ability to book online instead of visiting a charter office

U.S. travel to Cuba is on track to triple this year to more than 300,000 visitors in the wake of the 2014 declaration of detente. Cuba's cash-starved centrally planned economy has been bolstered by the boom in U.S. visitors, along with hundreds of thousands of travelers from other nations hoping to see Cuba before more Americans arrive.

Commercial flights are expected to significantly increase the number of American visitors, although it's not clear by how much. Many of the air routes are currently used by expensive charter flights that are largely expected to go out of business with the advent of regularly scheduled service from the U.S.

Hundreds of thousands of Cuban-born Americans fly to the island each year with the chaotic, understaffed charter companies, which require four-hour check-in waits and charge high rates for any luggage in excess of restrictive baggage allowances. Americans without ties to Cuba have found it hard to negotiate the charters, most of which don't accept online bookings or help travelers navigate the federal affidavit still required for U.S. travelers to Cuba.

Cuban officials insist the continuing U.S. ban on tourism will limit the impact of commercial flights to Cuba, but some experts believe the drastic reduction in the difficulty of flying to Cuba could turn the surge in U.S. visitors into a tidal wave. Americans are allowed to visit the island on "people-to-people" cultural and educational visits, among other reasons.

Americans who fit one of 12 categories will now be able to fill out a federal affidavit by clicking a box on an online form and, in many cases, buy their Cuban tourist visa near the check-in counters of U.S. airports. Within weeks, Americans will be able to fly direct from cities including Chicago, Philadelphia and Minneapolis, Miami and Fort Lauderdale to eight Cuban cities and two beach resorts.
SHARE Suren Patel

By Jim Schultz of the Redding Record Searchlight

Red Bluff City Councilman Suren Patel failed to enter a plea during his arraignment Thursday on felony theft, perjury, conspiracy and other charges.

Patel was arrested in July and is charged with 13 felonies, including grand theft, two counts of conspiracy to commit a crime and crime of a public officer.

He finally arrived Wednesday in Tehama County after being extradited from Florida and was booked into Tehama County Jail, where he remains in lieu of $1 million bail.

He is facing about nine years, eight months in prison if convicted.

Defense attorney Elizabeth Latimer of Chico was granted a two-week continuance in Patel's arraignment so she could review all the documents in the case. She unsuccessfully sought his release from jail.

Although prosecutors have said Patel was arrested in Florida while trying to flee the country, Latimer said he was going on a pre-paid Disney cruise with his family booked in January.

"He was in no way fleeing," she said, adding that Patel, who has no felony criminal history, is not a flight-risk. If he was, she said, he would have left last year after learning he was the focus of a criminal investigation.

"I think that speaks volumes about his consciousness of guilt," she said.

And, she said, the crimes he is alleged to have committed did not warrant such a hefty bail amount. "This is not a case where he's facing a life sentence," she said.

Still, District Attorney Gregg Cohen noted that Patel is accused of bilking four victims, including a 70-year-old woman out of about $7,000, as well as about $20,000 in transient occupancy monies from the city of Red Bluff.

Cohen said Patel had been using an address in Red Bluff even though he may have been living in Sacramento. He also said the councilman may have secretly stashed money he could use to leave the country.

Superior Court Judge Jonathan Skillman let stand Patel's $1 million bail. But he said he could reconsider Latimer's request to release him from jail without being required to pay bail later this month. If he is released, he will have to surrender his passport.

Patel is due back in court on Sept. 20 for further arraignment and to possibly enter a plea.

Patel owned America's Best Value Inn in Red Bluff but is no longer affiliated with the company.

Patel, 44, was the focus of a yearlong investigation by the Tehama County District Attorney's Office that started in March 2015. In May of that year, authorities took computers, cellphones and business records from his hotel. Cohen has said Patel did not pay taxes owed to the city as owner of the hotel.

The investigation into Patel's business practices began with a tip on his payment of workers' compensation, but soon grew to include other charges, including theft from the city of Red Bluff, Cohen has said.

If convicted of misappropriating public funds, Patel, who was appointed to the Red Bluff City Council in December 2014 to fill a vacancy, would never be able to hold public office again.

Red Bluff City Manager Rick Crabtree, who attended Patel's arraignment, said Patel's term is set to expire in December. Patel did not file for the seat in November's election.

Although Crabtree said Patel could be removed from the City Council due to absences from meetings, that process could be longer than simply waiting for the outcome of November's election.
SHARE Gabor Szabo

By Jim Schultz of the Redding Record Searchlight

First, he shot and killed his mother's live-in boyfriend in 2008.

Then, this year, he battered and threatened his mother.

In both cases, Gabor Albert Szabo faces no prison time. A jury deadlocked in the 2008 case, in which Szabo said he shot the boyfriend in self defense. And for the attack on his mom, Szabo on Thursday got 90 days of alternative jail custody that could include a work program, as well as three years' probation. He's also to stay away from his mother, Aniko Szabo.

If he violates his probation, he will be sent to prison for four years.

Szabo, 36, pleaded no-contest June 15 to charges connected to attacking his mother in a plea deal. He faced charges of making felony threats against his mother, misdemeanor battery and vandalism and intimidating a witness-victim, a felony, according to electronic courts records.

Szabo was let off the hook on a voluntary manslaughter charge when a jury deadlocked in March 2008. A Shasta County Superior Court judge dismissed the case after jurors voted 10-2 in favor of Szabo's acquittal.

Szabo was charged with voluntary manslaughter and a related firearm enhancement in the July 13, 2007 shooting death of 54-year-old Jose Angel Quinones at the family's Dorvel Lane home in Happy Valley.

Szabo said he acted in self-defense when he shot Quinones, an ex-felon with a history of violent behavior, after the older man entered his bedroom after a heated argument.

Although Szabo reportedly told deputies he "probably should" have shot Quinones in the leg or knees instead of the chest with a deer rifle, he said he was not sorry Quinones is dead.

"I hate the (expletive) and I'm glad he's (expletive) dead," Szabo was quoted by deputies in an 2007 investigative narrative filed in Superior Court.
Falon Renea Gigax

Date of birth: May 14, 1987

Vitals: 5 feet, 4 inches; 135 pounds; blond hair, blue eyes

Charge: Burglary

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A 29-year-old woman featured on Shasta's Most Wanted in March 2015 surrendered to deputies Thursday at the Shasta County Jail.

Falon R. Gigax was wanted on three warrants for failing to appear in court on a burglary charge, according to authorities.

Gigax was featured in the March 27, 2015 installment of Shasta's Most Wanted, a Record Searchlight program presented in cooperation with the Redding and Anderson police departments and the Shasta County Sheriffs Office that targets people who have failed to show up in court for sentencing after being convicted of a crime.

Deputies at the jail said Gigax is being held without bail pending her arraignment in court.

Shasta County Secret Witness is offering a reward of up to $250 for information leading to the arrest of Shastas Most Wanted. Anyone with information is asked to call 245-6540 or 243-2319.

The feature appears Sundays in the Record Searchlights Northern California section and online at Redding.com.
Andreas Fuhrmann/Record Searchlight

Vehicles on Interstate 5 travel across the new Antlers Bridge in Lakehead after one northbound lane opened Thursday.

SHARE Andreas Fuhrmann/Record Searchlight Vehicles go across a newly-opened northbound lane of the new Antlers Bridge in Lakehead on Thursday.

By Damon Arthur of the Redding Record Searchlight

Seven years after work started on the Antlers Bridge on Interstate 5 in Lakehead, traffic began crossing the structure Thursday.

As a small clutch of employees congratulated one another, one northbound lane of the bridge opened and vehicles began streaming over the span above Lake Shasta.

"It's a wonderful day," said Shari Re, California Department of Transportation senior resident engineer on the project. "Everybody's pretty happy out here. I think you'll see a lot of people smiling. It definitely marks a major milestone out here for us on the project."

The 1,942-foot long bridge replaces a 75-year old bridge that will be torn down over the next six months, said Chuck Gehlert, senior project manager for the Tutor-Saliba, the construction company that built the bridge. It was formerly known as Tutor-Perini.

A southbound lane is expected to be open Friday, Gehlert said, and the company expects to have all five lanes  three southbound lanes and two northbound  open in October.

While workers celebrated completing reaching a milestone, the $125 million project about 20 miles north of Redding has not been without its hitches.

The project came in under budget, but was more than two years behind schedule, said Trisha Coder, a Caltrans spokeswoman.

She said low lake levels during four years of drought slowed work on the project, making it more difficult to install the bridge pilings.

Caltrans and Tutor-Perini were both fined $80,000 each by the U.S. EPA for allowing sediment and pollution from the project to get into Lake Shasta.

The contractor also drew criticism from Lakehead residents who complained about the company doing work around town without obtaining proper permits from the county building department.

Some four years after starting work on the bridge, county officials said Tutor-Perini illegally converted a former restaurant into offices, stored equipment outdoors without getting authorization at the former Canyon School in Lakehead and failed to get a permit to grade a lot where equipment was stored.

The company eventually did get permits for the work.

Ken Connor, manager of the Lakeshore Villa Market in Lakehead, said most residents are eager for the work to be completed so life in town can return to normal.

He also said he was looking forward to improved traffic conditions on I-5 and relief from traffic jams that backed up for miles up the freeway.

"On holiday weekends the backups were clear up to Pollard Flat,"about 8 miles north of Lakehead, Connor said.

"So that will be nice not having that anymore," Connor said. "I'm glad to see the progress. For a while there I didn't think they would get that thing open."
SHARE This photo, provided by authorities, shows a woman at a Redding business where she may have conducted fraudulent transactions. She is believed to have also stolen $5,000 from campers at Whiskeytown National Recreation Area over the Labor Day weekend.

Suspect sought in campground thefts

Law enforcement authorities are searching for a woman who allegedly stole more than $5,000 worth of valuables from at least 10 campers at Oak Bottom campground over Labor Day Weekend.

The woman, who hasn't been identified, allegedly swiped the property Sunday, said Chris Mengel, chief ranger at Whiskeytown National Recreation Area.

She also appears to have defrauded some Redding businesses, he said. At least one business caught her on camera, he said.

He doesn't know whether she had any help.

Anyone with information is asked to call 242-3468.

Deputies: Teenager arrested for threat

Deputies arrested a teenager after he allegedly threatened a security guard at Central Valley High School on Thursday.

The 16-year-old, whose identity isn't being released, had been expelled from the high school for violent behavior last year, said Sgt. Steve Grashoff of the Shasta County sheriff's Shasta Lake patrol office.

He said the guard saw the teen about 10 a.m. on campus. The guard recognized the youth as a former student and ordered him to leave. The teen obeyed, but as he left he told the guard he'd be back to shoot him.

Deputies arrived at the school and found the teen, who lived nearby, Grashoff said. He said the teen was arrested on suspicion of making threats and taken to the Shasta County Juvenile Hall. No weapon was found.

It isn't clear why the teen originally was at the school, Grashoff said.

Mercy will offer prostate screening

In an effort to raise awareness about prostate cancer, health officials with Dignity Health and Mercy Medical Center Redding are urging men to stop by for a prostate screening event Sept. 29.

The event will be at Mercy Family Health Center at 2480 Sonoma St. in Redding from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. For a $20 fee, the screening includes a digital rectal exam and pathogen specific antigen blood test. Snacks and refreshments will be provided the event, and participants will receive a free duffel bag.

Dr. Patrick Fowler of Dignity Health said early detection is key in order to successfully treat prostate cancer.

"Patients who come to the prostate screening event are examined by experienced specialists in the field and given expert advice." Fowler said. "It is particularly beneficial to individuals who might not otherwise have access to the medical system."

A limited number of men will be accommodated. For more information, call 888-628-1948.

Driver gets away following pursuit

Red Bluff police said they're looking for a 35-year-old man after he sped away from an officer trying to stop him for speeding and later ran from his car after a chase.

An officer at about 1:10 a.m. Thursday tried to stop a white Ford Taurus driven by Thomas James Pittman, of Red Bluff, in the area of Diamond Park, just west of Interstate 5 in south Red Bluff.

Pittman, however, sped off onto I-5, reaching speeds of 100 mph before exiting at Antelope Boulevard about 1.5 miles to the north, police said.

Guardian Angels plan next meeting

The newly formed local chapter of the safety-patrol group the Guardian Angels is holding a town hall meeting Saturday in Redding.

The meeting, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., will provide opportunities to ask questions of the group, which in the past month has been establishing a presence in Shasta County to help combat what many have said is increased unease with drug use and crime, especially downtown.

The group is also taking applications for its safety patrol team. Members of the Stockton chapter of the nonprofit first established in New York City some 30 years ago have visited Redding at least twice to meet with prospective members.

The meeting will be held at the Redding Veterans Memorial Hall, 1605 Yuba St.

Visit the event on Facebook, the Shasta County Guardian Angels Facebook page or guardianangels.org for more information.

Illegal pot gardens raided in Siskiyou

The Siskiyou County Sheriff's Office found about 900 marijuana plants at an illegal grow site, along with guns, during a raid Wednesday about 20 miles northeast of Yreka.

The Siskiyou Interagency Marijuana Investigation Team served nine search warrants in the Klamath River Country Estates and Copco area.

Drug agents are still counting the plants but said about $4,500 in money was found in the raid.

Meanwhile, Siskiyou County Sheriff Jon Lopey said on Sept. 1 another raid found over 500 marijuana plants and about 170 pounds of processed marijuana in the Mt. Shasta Forest area.

Agents also found other grow operations in the Mount Shasta area at the end of August, and criminal charges are pending for the suspects, according to the Sheriff's Office.

Siskiyou County drug agents have found 3,372 marijuana plants in raids since the beginning of July, including 1,029 pounds of processed marijuana. The same raids have also shut down three honey oil labs.

Crews continue to work Gap Fire

The Gap Fire burning in the Klamath National Forest some 20 miles west of Yreka grew to 31,069 acres as of Thursday evening though firefighters said they're getting more of a handle on the blaze.

The fire remained at 65 percent containment Thursday evening, according to U.S. Forest Service officials.

Total personnel on the fire was 1,324 on Thursday evening, down from more than 2,000 a day earlier.

Mop-up operations were planned through the day and night as firefighters continue to patrol for hot spots, most of which have been quashed.

Work on containment lines also will continue.

All evacuation advisories were lifted Wednesday, according to the Forest Service. The cause of the fire, which began Aug. 27, remains under investigation. Anyone with information can call 841-4474.
Greg Barnette/Record Searchlight Redding City Council member Gary Cadd (right) talks with Vint Stevens, president of the Shasta County Veterans Affiliated Council, on Thursday prior to a forum on the city of Redding's pension costs at the Redding Memorial Veterans Hall in Redding.

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By Joe Szydlowski of the Redding Record Searchlight

Redding's pension costs are trending higher  and the CalPERS pension system's 2014 estimate of $218 million in associated long-term debt may be far too rosy, according to the Reason Foundation's analysis of the plans' fiscal positions.

Pete Constant, a senior fellow with the foundation, a libertarian think-tank, presented his organization's Pension Integrity Project analysis of Redding's CalPERS situation based on CalPERS' 2014 financial reports.

Constant presented his analysis and offered his ideas on reforms Thursday evening to a crowd of around 50 people at the Redding Memorial Veterans Hall on Yuba Street. It was a forum organized by City Councilman Gary Cadd, who is running for re-election.

"I've been saying the same thing presented here," Cadd said. "The only problem is 'It's Gary Cadd. He's not an actuarial. How would he know what's going on?"

He and Constant said a Reason employee originally from Redding met Cadd at an event and pensions arose in the discussion. Constant said that concern made Redding an obvious choice.

That system is the largest pension fund in the United States. Unlike 401ks, it promises retirees payments based on a state-set formula and an employee's salary.

The agencies and their employees then pre-fund that retirement income, he said. But when it doesn't or can't pay enough, which can happen for several reasons, that becomes a debt the agency owes  and Redding owes quite a bit, said Leonard Gilroy, senior managing director of Reason's Pension Integrity Project.

The city has pre-funded about 68 percent of its CalPERS costs. But that leaves about $218 million in promised benefits, Constant said.

That's about three times the city's general fund, he said.

Those debts then eat away at payments for services, such as the Redding Police Department, Constant said. He said the police budget is about the same in 2014-15 as it was before the Great Recession, but those pension costs are eating up a much larger piece of that budget.

Shannon Hicks asked about Measures D and F, the public safety tax measures, and whether rising pension costs would cut into the revenue for more officers.

"If we bring in additional inflow, will those be eroded," said Hicks, who said he hasn't decided how he'll vote on the tax.

Constant declined to take a position on the tax. But he said that because it's a general tax, if the city finds itself robbing Peter to pay Paul, courts have ruled that pension payments are always Paul and thus get first dibs.

Much of the problem, Constant said, lies with CalPERS' overly rosy expectations and underperforming investments. In addition, it also may be using too rosy a "discount rate," which when adjusted a few percentage points to reflect the private market's version, increases the debt by tens or hundreds of millions of dollars.

However, he told the audience to not blame the employees or the unions.

"They didn't create the problem... It's hard to criticize a union that was too successful." he said, adding that unions in other places have been part of the solution.

He and Cadd plan other events to highlight pensions.
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It's been a long seven years of traffic delays, permit problems and pollution, but the Antlers Bridge opened on Thursday.

California Department of Transportation crews rerouted northbound traffic into the $125 million structure late in the morning. The southbound side will open next week.

North State travelers and others heading through Lakehead have had to deal with the construction as the new bridge was built to replace one built in 1941.

As work crews reduced the number of lanes in the construction zone in 2013, traffic backed up for miles and miles on holiday weekends, adding up to a half hour or more to trips taken in the heat of summer. One tiny consolation for those inching along past the new bridge the past two summers was viewing the fish artwork gracing its sides. Starting next week, the only way to see those will be to rent a boat or catch a glimpse from the shore of Lake Shasta.

The project started in November 2009  the first year of President Obama's first term, for a bit of perspective. It started before the span of drought years, and before talks about raising Shasta Dam started to get more serious.

Now, seven years later, travelers will reap the rsewards.

But this project did not run as smoothly as some hoped when Los Angeles-area builder Tutor Perini said it could complete it in five years. Instead, the new bridge hit numerous delays, including Tutor Perini apparently not taking into account lake fluctuations based on the weather, setbacks in drilling holes for the foundation and difficulty meeting Caltrans regulations.

Residents in Lakehead will likely talk for years to come about what the project did to their tiny community. Tutor Perini placed equipment throughout the town, on vacant lots and even in the middle of the town's busiest street. Moreover, the company did not obtain the necessary county permits when it graded land to store large equipment. A county investigation found the contractor also illegally converted an empty restaurant into an office.

And then there was the matter of pollution. From 2011 to 2013, Tutor Perini reported to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that it spilled 33,000 pounds of sediment, fuel and other materials into Lake Shasta. It spilled 8 1/2 gallons of diesel fuel, 50 gallons of hydraulic fluid and hundreds of gallons of dewatering slurry into the lake.

The EPA slapped the contractor and Caltrans each with $80,000 fines.

But, as they say, it's all water under the bridge now that the first vehicles are driving quickly across the 1,942-foot span. Caltrans officials say it should last for 100 years. Now, driving north and returning again will be smooth sailing once more, and boaters on the lake will be able to enjoy those beautiful fish sculptures gracing the sides of Antlers Bridge.
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In 2014 voters passed Proposition 47, also known as "The Safe Neighborhood and Schools Act", which reclassified non-serious, nonviolent crimes as misdemeanors instead of felonies unless the defendant has prior convictions for murder, rape, certain sex offenses or certain gun crimes.

Some highlights of the aftereffects of Prop. 47, according to Ballotpedia: State savings would range from $100 million to $200 million beginning in the 2016-17 fiscal year. The governor reduced his proposed annual budget by $73 million and cut the use of private prison beds in half because of earlier-than-expected reductions from Proposition 47. Sheriffs have closed parts of jails in Alameda and Orange counties after reductions. Orange County was able to rent out empty jail beds for immigration detainees. The president of the California Public Defenders Association views Proposition 47 as working because, "It reduced the punishment for many crimes from an excessive punishment to a punishment that's more in line with what the crime is."

But not everyone's a fan. Los Angeles City Councilman and former LAPD chief Bernard Parks said: "While drug-related arrests fell, thefts and residential burglaries rose. But what they failed to consider is that people who are using drugs are also committing other crimes. How do they stay heroin users? How do they support their habit?  People don't want to understand that I can't be a crack addict and have a profession. Nobody's giving me drugs. I rob and burglarize and steal."

This year voters have another opportunity to reduce the state's financial responsibility for keeping law-abiding citizens safe. It's called Proposition 57, aka, "California Parole and Juvenile Trial Opportunity Modification Initiative." It promises to increase the number of convicted felons who qualify for reclassification to misdemeanors, giving more inmates a higher chance for parole consideration.

As of the beginning of 2016, there were about 25,000 nonviolent state felons who could seek early release and parole under the proposed initiative. No word from Prop. 47 and Prop. 57 supporters on cost sharing.

Kent Snider Jr. lives in Redding.
"In India, the sector will grow to $10 billion by 2018," predicts Vishal Bali, co-founder, Medwell Ventures, in an interview with Apurva Venkat.

IMAGE: Radiologists examine a cancer patient before operating a computerised linear accelerator machine for radiation treatment at the North Bengal Oncology Centre, a cancer hospital, on the outskirts Siliguri; Photograph: Rupak De Chaudhuri/Reuters

Nightingale Home Healthcare, a home care service provider based in Bengaluru, grew from a few 100 patients to 25,000 subscribers and 600 services each in 18 months.

Medwell Ventures, founded by former Fortis Healthcare limited CEO Vishal Bali, acquired Nightingale in April 2014, and is trying to organise the unorganised sector of home health care with a focus on chronic diseases.

In an interview with Apurva Venkat, Bali talks about taking the services to 10 cities by 2020.

How has the journey of growth in the last 18 months been?

We started Medwell Ventures two years ago. We had two choices, either to start something new or take something existing and start building the whole system. Nightingale's had existed in Bengaluru for years, but it was only in the area of bedside care for elderly patients. They had just about 15-20 employees who were bedside caregivers.

But our idea was to focus on chronic disease management because it is the big opportunity from an Indian perspective. There is a bunch of chronic diseases where you need not necessarily go through hospitalisation if you are managing the diseases well.

The model in Medwell Ventures was home healthcare around chronic diseases along with multi-disciplinary clinical team. We felt the need to have a strong orientation of medical and paramedical care.

The key areas where we provide services are patients with neurological stroke, cardiac stroke, respiratory issues, diabetic patients especially those who have gone through surgery. We now have patient between ages 30 and 95.

How much has Nightingale grown in terms of patients and staff in the last 18 month?

We have grown from 15 to 20 staff members to 900 people which include bedside caregivers, medical staff, paramedical staff and physiotherapists. They are all full-time employees with Nightingale and go through a training of at least two months before they attend to patients.

We have 25,000 regular subscribers. We have 600 services each day. We also have 11 branches in Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Mumbai. In the clinics or branches, 60 per cent of the services are at home and 40 per cent are in clinic physiotherapy.

We went for a branch-like model so that we have a greater control over logistics and control of the periphery of the city.

What is the next level you aim to achieve?

We want our caregivers to be specialised with various chronic diseases. So we want to have separate segments for cardiac stroke and for neurological stroke. We want the nurses and the caregivers to be segmented by specialty. We plan to be in 10 cities by 2020.

We want to be in metros first and then tier-II cities. This is the way the industry works, new technology is first adopted in metros and then moves to tier-II cities.

What is your path to profitability?

We have raised $10 million from Fidelity Group and $8 million as seed round. We will raising some more money for expansion very soon. However, our branches and business are run keeping in mind the unit economics. We look at profitability at a branch-wise basis.

How much is the home healthcare industry worth in India?

In India, the current market is $ 5-6 billion and more than $100 billion in the US. In India, it will grow to $10 billion by 2018. The sector has become an organised sector in Japan and US.

In the US, it was because of the insurance companies, in Japan is was due to the huge aged population and in the UK it was the NHSS (National Health Service Scheme) is what acted as a driver for the home healthcare.

In India, the way I saw the opportunity was, our whole system today is very hospital-driven. Hospital beds are for acute care patients, if you start filling up hospital beds with chronic care conditions, there is no bed for acute care conditions.

That is why when an epidemic happens there are no ICUs available, no hospital beds available. There is an opportunity in India, and the rise of the home healthcare sector can free up hospital beds and that can be used more effectively for home care.
Financials and auto stocks were the top losers while energy and IT shares recovered

Markets ended lower, amid weak global cues, as investors booked profits after sharp gains in the previous session which lifted the benchmarks to 18-month highs. Further, testing of a nuclear weapon by North Korea also dampened sentiment for riskier assets.

The S&P BSE Sensex ended down by 248 points at 28,797 and the Nifty50 slipped 86 points to settle at 8,867. In the broader markets, BSE Midcap and the Smallcap indices eased between 0.5%-1% each. Market breadth ended weak with 1604 losers and 1146 gainers on the BSE.

"The Market corrected and settled below the important level of 8900 as investors expect that the recent rally was overdone and which prompt them to start booking profit. The global selloff due to the disappointment from the ECB policy as they decided not to extend the current bond buying program also influenced the domestic sentiment." says Vinod Nair, Head of Research, Geojit BNP Paribas Financial Services.

Asian markets came off their intra-day highs after reports that North Korea has conducted a nuclear test. Further, the European Central Bank at its policy meet on Thursday maintained a status quo on key rates and also surprised the market by not extending the dealine of its bond-purchases programme. Except for Hang Seng which ended higher led by financials most markets in the region ended lower.

European stock markets eased on Friday with pharmaceutical shares leading the decline while nuclear tests conducted by North Korea earlier today also dented sentiment. The CAC, DAX and FTSE were down 0.1%-0.2% each.

Financials which had surged in the previous sessions ended lower with HDFC down 2% followed by ICICI Bank, Axis Bank, HDFC Bank and SBI ended down 0.1%-2.6% each.

In the auto pack, Tata Motors, Hero MotoCorp, Bajaj Auto and Maruti Suzuki eased 2%-2.4% each.

Defensives which had gained in the previous also witnessed bouts of profit taking. In the FMCG space, ITC slipped 2.2% while Hindustan Unilever closed over 2% lower.

However, energy stocks ended higher in the latter half of the trading session on renewed buying interest after global crude oil prices jumped on Thursday after sharp decline in US crude oil inventories.

ONGC ended up 3% after the state-owned energy major notified seven new discoveries during the quarter and eight so far in FY17 - with new prospect of discoveries and five new pool discoveries. However, the company posted a 21% decline in net profit for the June quarter to Rs 4,233 crore against Rs 5,368 crore in the year-ago period, owing to a drop in production.

Reliance Industries gained nearly 1% while GAIL rose over 1% after net profit jumped 244% to Rs 1335 crore in the quarter ended June 2016 despite 10% decline in total income to Rs 11457 crore.

YES Bank ended down nearly 4% after the private banker in a release said it has deferred its plans to raise equity via QIP because of misinterpretation of new QIP guidelines.

SAIL dropped nearly 6% after it reported a net loss for the June 2016 quarter increased to Rs 535 crore compared to Rs 248 crore in the quarter ended June 2015. The loss in June 2016 quarter was mainly on account of an exceptional item after the company paid Rs 54.2 crore towards voluntary retirement compensation during the period.

Among other shares, Zensar Technologies ended 3.5% higher after the company said it has won a multi-million dollar development deal for digital transformation project from Avis Fleet in South Africa.

Financial Technologies ended over 13% higher after the company reported a turnaround in June 2016 quarter with a net profit of Rs 12 crore as against Rs 45 crore loss posted in the corresponding quarter last year.

Photograph: Danish Siddiqui/Reuters
Other private banks also planning to employ bots soon

ICICI Bank - the countrys largest private sector lender - is employing robots to perform tasks like generating customer IDs, updating addresses and mobile numbers, resolving ATM-related queries, etc.

Claiming to be the first Indian bank to use software robotics, ICICI Bank on Thursday said the technology has helped them in reducing response time by up to 60 per cent. Chanda Kochhar, managing director & chief executive officer, ICICI Bank, said by the end of FY17, the bank would more than double the number of transactions cleared by the bots.

Currently, about 10 per cent of our internal transactions are being carried out via the software robots and by the end of this year, we believe, this will go up to 20 per cent of our transactions. This has helped us in improving productivity and efficiency and will help us in handling larger volumes as we continue to grow.

Hello robot! Some of the banking work that software robotics will do Validation of PAN and Aadhaar details

Inter-bank foreign currency settlement

NEFT file preparation

Mobile number update for internet banking alerts

Customer ID creation

Debit card re-issuance

Duplicate statement generation

The lender started experimenting with software bots at the beginning of this financial year. Now, over a million banking transactions across 200 business processes are carried out by the technology on a daily basis.

Software robotics is essentially a step up over automation, where bots ensure applications can interact seamlessly.

Kochhar also explained that software robotics is being used for transactions that have high volumes, are time taking and repetitive in nature. Currently, the bank is using this technology across various functions such as retail banking, treasury, rural banking, human resources, etc.

The announcement comes a month after HDFC Bank said that it plans to introduce a robot - through its project AI (artificial intelligence) - at one of its front offices. This is likely to be introduced in about a months time, to enhance customer experience in banking.

ICICI Bank said the automation will also help the bank in saving costs. The bank has already seen a drop in its cost-to-income ratio from 40.5 per cent in FY13 to 34.7 per cent in FY16. Going ahead, the management believes the bank will be able to maintain the cost-to-income ratio at the current level with the help of technology, despite an increase in costs due to expansion of branches, ATMs, etc.

When asked, the management clarified that this will not lead to any layoffs as the bank will continue to expand. Instead, the management said, the technology will help the employees in focusing on more value-added services.

Other banks are also gradually exploring the use of robotics and artificial intelligence. For instance, HDFC Bank is set to deploy a robot for front-end transactions at their branches.

The lender is set to launch it soon in one of its branches in Mumbai. This robot is likely to help customers in carrying out all basic transactions. However, sources said, going forward, the bank will also look at carrying facial recognition, biometric authentication, etc via bots.

Image used for representation purpose only.

Photograph: Fabrizio Bensch/Reuters
Stock crashes 6.5%; top 5 firms lose Rs 33,883 crore in market cap

Concerns of slowdown in the Indian information technology sector came to the fore on Thursday when Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) said it was expecting a sequential loss of momentum as clients, especially in the banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) segment, are putting discretionary spends on hold.

TCS, in a filing to the BSE, said: Based on the data at the end of August 2016, the company has characterised customer outlook as one marked by abundant caution, with some holding back of discretionary spending - particularly BFSI vertical in the US - resulting in sequential loss of momentum.

Slowdown fears T CS says customers in BFSI holding back discretionary spending I n July, Infosys cut its annual revenue forecast by 100-150 basis points L ast week, Infosys said it would be able to give a clearer picture on its guidance only after second quarter results C ognizant cut guidance, saying it sees softness in discretionary spends in banking, financial services and health care sectors

The immediate impact of this was evident on the stock price of TCS, which was down as much as 6.5 per cent during intra-day trading.

The announcement by the company also pulled down the IT stock, with BSE IT index down 2.5 per cent. Stocks of Infosys, Wipro and Tech Mahindra were down 1.62 per cent, 1.77 per cent and 2.6 per cent, respectively, at the close of trading hours. The top five IT firms - TCS, Infosys, Wipro, HCL Technologies and Tech Mahindra - lost Rs 33,883 crore in market capitalisation.

For TCS, BFSI is its largest revenue contributor with 40.6 per cent share and the US is its major market. The US contributed 53.3 per cent of the tech giants revenue in FY16. Notably, TCS insurance subsidiary Diligenta has witnessed slowing growth in recent times and the current caution will add pressure to the BFSI space as well.

TCS is not the only one sounding a cautious outlook. Cognizant, at the start of the calendar year, had warned that it was seeing holding back of discretionary spending by large banks. A few weeks ago, Infosys said it will be able to give a clearer picture on its guidance only post second quarter results.

Both Cognizant and Infosys have cut their dollar revenue guidance twice this year. Cognizant has cut its revenue guidance for the second straight quarter, emphasising the challenges impacting the IT industry.

The company cut its full year (CY16) revenue growth target to $13.47-13.6 billion, representing a growth rate of 8.45-9.5 per cent, one of its lowest ever. The management said the guidance was cut due to softness in discretionary spends in the banking, financial services and health care, and a negative revenue impact of $40 million due to weakening of the pound sterling due to Brexit.

Similarly, Infosys cut its annual revenue forecast at the top end by 150 basis points (bps, meaning 1.5 percentage points) and at the lower end by 100 bps.

The company said it is now expecting its revenue to grow between 10.5 per cent and 12 per cent in constant currency, as compared to 11.5-13.5 per cent it had given at the beginning of the financial year.

Our checks and recent company commentaries suggest that Brexit is indeed creating near-term headwinds for IT services. As expected, the financial services sector is seeing bulk of the impact with smaller drag in the retail and travel verticals. Amongst the key financial services customers in Europe, UBS, Deutsche and RBS are expected to lower spend plans while Credit Suisse, Barclays, and Lloyds have not meaningfully altered spending, said analyst at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in their note. All these banks are major clients for the Indian IT players.

Infosys had also announced the cancellation of contract with RBS, stating that this was an instance of cautiousness among key financial clients due to Brexit.

According to analysts, FY17 growth rate will be subdued, considering that the first half of the financial year is generally strong for growth.

The US caution clearly reiterates our thesis that TCS, with huge dependence on H1, has very little margin of safety. Even if the company posts 3 per cent revenue growth in Q2FY17, it will require 1 per cent CQGR to clock even 8.5 per cet revenue growth in FY17. We continue to believe that even though TCS may post Q2 revenue growth in line with Infosys, its EPS growth will be lower due to extremely limited margin levers, said Sandip Agarwal and Pranav Kshatriya of Edelweiss Securities in their note.

This will also mean added pressure on margins. We see downside risk to margin guidance of 26-28 per cent after estimated H1FY17 average of 25 per cent. We estimate flattish margins in Q2 at 25 per cent as cross currency headwind and INR appreciation would be offset by normalisation of visa costs and partial absorption of wage hike, said a note from IDFC Securities.



Many analysts also believe that the valuation premium that TCS stock has over Infosys may also change. We expect the stock to be under pressure in the near-term on account of cautious commentary on demand environment particularly with regards to discretionary spending in a key vertical like BFSI. However, TCS with industry leadership and diversified presence is best placed to weather the near term macro challenges, said the IDFC report.

TCS trades at a high premium to Infosys, despite its higher exposure to financial services. Also, at 14.5 times FY18 P/E, we see a favourable risk-reward for Infosys over a 12-month horizon, given the companys increasing investments in digital services and market share gain in traditional services, said BoAML report.

We reckon that now Q2 revenue growth will be only 1-2 per cent. Lower revenue growth and adverse exchange rate movements will likely also hurt profitability. As a result, there could be 3-4 per cent cut to consensus EPS estimates for FY17/FY18, says Sagar Rastogi, technology analyst, Ambit Capital.

In Q1, the company posted 3.1 per cent sequential growth in its constant currency revenues. While he is positive on stock, TCS currently trades at 17 times FY17 estimated earnings. This is at a sharp premium to its peers though it is below its historical peak valuations of 20-21 times.

Photograph: Reuters
After weighing all the costs and benefits, the next administration is likely to reduce and restructure assistance to Pakistan but not to end it altogether, says Daniel S Markey.

It has never been clear precisely what US financing of eight new F-16s for Pakistan would do to advance US interests, says Daniel S Markey.

One lesson Washington should have learned from its long experience with Pakistan is never to overestimate the leverage generated by US assistance.

Despite tens of billions of dollars in aid since 9/11, Islamabad does not see the world through the United Statess preferred strategic prism, whether in Afghanistan, India, or with respect to nuclear proliferation.

Pakistans inadequate effort in the fight against terrorism represents a fundamental sticking point in its relationship with the United States. Then again, history also shows that US sanctions on Pakistan throughout the 1990s failed to curtail Pakistans nuclear ambitions, the political dominance of its military, or the States support to terrorist groups like the Taliban and LeT that have engulfed the region in violence.

In short, aid is no panacea. But neither are sanctions.

To appreciate the limitations of US aid to Pakistan, we should begin by noting that assistance has never been the only -- and is rarely the most significant -- policy tool used by Washington at any given time.

Therefore, the consequences of aid must not be judged as if they were delivered in a vacuum. For instance, US lawmakers should not be surprised that billions of dollars in development assistance over the past decade failed to win Pakistani hearts and minds when the arrival of that money coincided with a massive surge in violence at least partly caused by the US war in neighboring Afghanistan.

Worse than being ineffective, US aid to Pakistan can even be counterproductive. Too often throughout the history of the US-Pakistan relationship, American money has propped up some of the most repressive, anti-reformist leaders and institutions in Pakistani society, including the military and feudal civilian elites.

Unfortunately, many of Americas natural allies in Pakistan have been alienated as a consequence.

In principle, whether provided for military or civilian purposes, aid can serve one of several basic aims: building capacity, improving leverage, and buying access. But too often the arguments for US aid to Pakistan have been unconvincing because the purposes were muddled.

The recent debate over whether to pay for F-16s is a case in point. It has never been clear precisely what US financing of eight new F-16s would do to advance US interests. Were they intended to improve Pakistans counterinsurgency capacity along the Afghan border? Buy US officials more time in Army Chief Gen Raheel Sharifs office? Convince Pakistans army to attack the Haqqanis?

The lack of clarity on this point -- in a climate of pervasive scepticism about Pakistan -- helped to kill that deal.

This leaves us with two questions: First, why bother to continue aid to Pakistan at all? And second, if there are good reasons to keep the aid flowing, can we do it more effectively?

At present, the simplest reason to avoid a dramatic cut in aid is that it would represent a significant shift from the status quo. Pakistan is a high-stakes game for the United States. Washington would be wise to steer clear of risky policy moves, including threats to curtail assistance and reimbursements, unless they hold the realistic promise of significant gains.

This is not an unqualified argument against cutting Pakistans aid, but only for thinking carefully and acting with purpose. Pakistan is a frustrating partner, but that does not reduce the value of its partnership to zero. Pakistan permits -- and at times has enabled -- the United States to wage a counter-terror drone campaign over parts of its territory and, even at times of deep bilateral discord, to continue flying personnel and arms across Pakistani airspace into Afghanistan.

Neither side has been eager to publicise these areas of cooperation, but even American sceptics must admit their utility. Air corridors are readily closed and drones are easy to shoot down, so if Pakistan had really wanted to end what in 2009 then-CIA Director Leon Panetta called the only game in town in terms of confronting and trying to disrupt the al-Qaida leadership, or to further complicate the US war effort in Afghanistan, it could have done so without breaking much of a sweat. It still could.

Top US policymakers appreciate that the inadequate cooperation we have from Pakistan today is probably better than none at all. They also know that Pakistan and the United States do face some common enemies, including al Qaeda, the Pakistani Taliban, and ISIS, even if we dont see eye-to-eye on other fronts.

In order to justify major policy shifts like eliminating aid, labelling Pakistan a State sponsor of terrorism, or enacting sanctions, US policymakers should be able to explain how such actions would make Americas strategic predicament easier. In the process, they would need to consider the possibility that US attempts at coercion could backfire, raising tensions and weakening Pakistan in ways that only make Islamabad less willing or able to advance any constructive agenda.

With US presidential elections around the corner, now would be an especially poor time for Washington to undertake a tougher coercive approach with Pakistan. The Obama administration cannot credibly threaten Pakistan because it will not be in office long enough to make its threats real.

Islamabad would exercise the option of waiting out any new policy from the Obama administration, hoping that the next president takes a friendlier approach.

Some might argue that the Obama administration should take a parting shot at Pakistan, demonstrating its displeasure with Islamabad and then enabling the next administration to re-establish ties at whatever level it deems warranted.

But such a move would force the incoming president to grapple with Pakistan immediately, a tall and unwelcome order given the many other global challenges that await. It is difficult to imagine that any new White House team would willingly choose to make Pakistan a top issue for the presidents first few months in office.

That said, President Obamas successor is almost certain to order a thorough review of Pakistan policy upon taking office. Then, working on its own timeline, the new administration could decide to implement a restructuring and/or reduction of aid, threats of sanctions, and other coercive steps.

It is at least conceivable that a potent new combination of US policies could compel or induce Pakistans military and civilian establishment into enacting policies that better serve US interests. Indeed, the United States has successfully coerced Pakistan in the past, at least temporarily.

The George W Bush administrations post- 9/11 with us or against us threat to then-President Pervez Musharraf forced Pakistan into an early, if fleeting and inadequate, alliance against al-Qaeda, one that netted several high-profile terrorists living in Pakistan like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Of course, the new administration would also need to recognise that the United States is rarely as capable of delivering a credible threat as it was in the days after 9/11. Unless the United States is willing to pick a fight with Pakistan, it should avoid moves that irritate or weaken Islamabad when they hold little hope of advancing a serious strategic purpose.

I anticipate that after weighing all the costs and benefits, the next administration is likely to reduce and restructure assistance to Pakistan but not to end it altogether. With this in mind, the Obama administration would do its successor a favour by completing a final review of all existing and planned aid to Pakistan.

On the civilian side, this should be done with a critical eye to how each project can realistically contribute to Pakistans economic and political development and/or reform. That review will enable the next administration to cut or reallocate resources in ways that better advance Pakistans long term political stability, economic growth, and security, bearing in mind that US aid alone cannot solve most of Pakistans challenges and that the goal is to find areas where targeted investments of US money or technical know-how can pay outsized or unique dividends.

The review should also assess whether the overall scale of US aid is appropriate to the task at hand in Pakistan, or whether a fundamentally different approach -- such as the Chinese are pursuing with concessional loans aimed at promoting infrastructure or other investments -- would be smarter.

With respect to security assistance, the next administration should think in terms of three basic categories of aid. Each would come with different purposes and conditions.

Aid in the first category would support Pakistans activities in which there is a nearly complete convergence of American and Pakistani goals, but where the United States can offer financial, technical, or other support to lighten the burden on a relatively weaker, less-developed, and poorer nation.

Military assistance in Pakistans fight against domestic insurgent groups like the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan would fall into this category, because Washington also views these groups as dangerous terrorists.

In overseeing this aid, Congress would mainly seek confidence that US resources are being put to effective use and would not need to impose significant conditions because Pakistani and US ends and means are aligned.

Aid in the second category would be used to alter Pakistans security tactics in areas where Washington and Islamabad agree broadly about ends, but not means.

For instance, funds for counterinsurgency could be linked to four specialised training intended to reduce civilian casualties. This category of aid should be conditioned by Congress to make it more likely that it will be put to use in the ways defined by US officials, but with enough flexibility to show that Washingtons main goal is cooperation, not coercive leverage.

In the third category would be funds offered as inducements for strategic shifts by Pakistan. Aid in this category would be intended as leverage, for instance to encourage Pakistan to take action against terrorists like the Haqqani Network and LeT.

These funds would need to be offered with strictly legislated conditions, structured in ways that ensure aid delivery takes place only after Pakistan satisfies Washingtons requirements. Here, the goal is to demonstrate the value that the United States would place on policy shifts by Islamabad while simultaneously being honest with ourselves and the Pakistanis about the deep differences that threaten to derail the bilateral relationship.

Across the board, the clearer and more realistic our aims, the easier it will be to judge whether US assistance is likely to deliver our desired outcome at a reasonable cost, the more likely it will garner sustained political support among Americans and their elected representatives, and the simpler it will be to explain to Pakistanis.

Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif with US President Barack Obama. It is difficult to predict precisely who will be running Pakistan when Americas next president takes office, says Daniel S Markey.

Military Dominance, Civilian Turbulence

Despite two rounds of democratic elections and eight years of civilian government, the military remains Pakistans most dominant national political institution, the primary decision-maker on core matters of defence and foreign policy, and the chief steward of Pakistans growing nuclear arsenal.

Decisions about how to manage the States relationships with violent extremist organisations depend on Pakistans military, and within it, the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence directorate. In addition, the military has jealously guarded its perks and resources that insulate uniformed personnel from many of the economic hardships suffered by their countrymen.

If Pakistan is ever to enjoy a more effective, consolidated democratic rule, the generals will need to loosen their hold and submit to civilian authority.

In 2008, the end of the Musharraf regime marked the return of elected civilian government and a euphoric surge of hope that Pakistan would set itself on a path of sustainable democracy. By the time the PPP-led government under president Asif Ali Zardari left office in 2013, however, it was widely perceived to have surrendered core governing authorities under pressure from the army.

That years resounding election victory by the PML-N and the return to power of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif again raised expectations that a strong civilian team would use its popular legitimacy to check political encroachment by the military. Yet during the past several years, Pakistans army has on multiple occasions reasserted its dominance over civilian politicians.

At least some of Pakistans top brass are reportedly unsatisfied with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, blaming his government for ineffective rule or labelling him unfit for a variety of other reasons. Over the past six months, there has been media speculation that the prime minister might step down because of his failing health or because his family was implicated in the Panama Papers scandal, or that the current army chief, General Raheel Sharif, might be granted an extension rather than handing over his baton in November as scheduled.

Simultaneously, political opposition parties are once again campaigning for Nawaz Sharifs ouster. In short, it is difficult to predict precisely who will be running Pakistan when Americas next president takes office.

Under similar conditions in decades past, Pakistan might be ripe for a coup. Now the military is playing a savvier game, pulling the nations strings from behind a curtain so as to avoid the taint of dictatorship and, perhaps more importantly, to shirk its responsibility for improving the quality of governance.

But this puppet show may not be so easily sustained. Political turmoil has considerable disruptive potential in the short run. More worrisome, a sham democracy will have dangerous vulnerabilities over the long run, depriving the State of popular legitimacy in the midst of an existential confrontation with Islamist insurgency.

That said, barring a serious crisis, we should anticipate more policy continuity than change from Pakistan over the next six months. In particular, a new army chief is unlikely to alter Pakistans strategic trajectory in significant ways -- either positive or negative.

This is partly a consequence of the fact that General Sharif (who nominates a short list of his successors) and Prime Minister Sharif (who selects his new chief from that list) both have strong reasons to avoid wild card candidates.

At other periods in US-Pakistan history, US officials have implicated themselves in Islamabads political dramas. This was most notable in the final years of the Musharraf era. Today the cooling of the bilateral relationship in general and specific US frustrations with all of Pakistans leading political figures make that less likely.

US interests are now less personal and more institutional. American confidence in the benefits associated with civilian democratic rule will lead US policymakers to support democratic reform and consolidation in Pakistan, while pressing security requirements will lead them to pursue certain types of cooperation with Pakistans most powerful leaders, no matter who they happen to be.

Prospects for a Strategic Shift

Pakistani officials claim they are committed to countering all terrorists and militants on their soil, including groups that have historically enjoyed the support of the state like Lashkar-e-Tayiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed, and the Haqqani Network. Americans are justifiably sceptical of such promises, having heard them repeatedly over the past 15 years without adequate follow-through.

One glaring example of the chasm between rhetoric and reality: President Musharraf banned LeT in 2002 but the groups leader Hafiz Mohammad Saeed still addresses large rallies in Pakistans cities, including the capital.

Many critics of Pakistan -- whether Indian, Afghan, or American -- see in all of this a nefarious double game. At best, Pakistans leaders have failed to demonstrate to the world that they possess the will and capacity to implement a truly non-discriminatory approach toward terrorists.

This raises at least two questions. First, how would we know if Pakistan were actually in the process of a positive strategic shift on countering terrorism? And second, until Pakistans position is clear, how should Washington deal with Islamabad?

The first question is a serious one because, as some Pakistani security officials argue in private, if Pakistan did pick a fight with all of the terrorists and militants on its soil at once, victory could not be assured.

Beyond that, a frontal assault might not be the smartest approach to rooting out terrorists and unravelling decades of State support to militants. It could even make a bad situation worse.

By this logic, if Pakistani leaders were aiming to demolish home-grown terrorist groups, they would have good reasons to hide their intentions and to play a more subtle game of divide and conquer. As a consequence, outside observers would find it difficult to discern the difference between a continuation of Pakistans old double game and a carefully calibrated counter-terror strategy.

Washingtons patience with Pakistan on this score has waxed and waned. Shortly after 9/11, US policymakers were often willing to accept such arguments at face value, or at least to give President Musharraf the benefit of the doubt when he professed his intention to eliminate all terrorists on his soil, but not all at the same time.

By 2011, however, when Admiral Michael Mullen testified before Congress that the Haqqani network was a veritable arm of Pakistans Inter-Services Intelligence agency, it was clear that the burden of proof had shifted to Pakistan.

Today administration officials maintain greater equanimity. They have neither swooned over Pakistani army operations against the Pakistani Taliban in North Waziristan (by, for instance, reprising some version of the Bush administrations rhetoric about Pakistan being a frontline ally in the war on terror), nor have they regularly gone out of their way to belittle Pakistani efforts because they do too little to tackle Americas terrorist enemies.

More often than not, they have praised Pakistani steps in the right direction without attempting to judge their broader consequences. With some exceptions, including recent statements by Secretary Kerry in New Delhi, US criticism tends to be delivered behind closed doors rather than through public reprimands.

This is the best near-term answer to how the United States should work with Pakistan, at least until the next administration is ready to formulate a different approach.

In effect, it means accepting a gradual downward drift in relations with Pakistan while working within the confines of reduced expectations. Where US and Pakistani security interests overlap, such as the fight against the TTP, there should be opportunities for cooperation and even significant US assistance.

For example, the FMF denied for use in purchasing F-16s could be well spent on weapons more clearly intended for use against the TTP. On other fronts, such as certifying that Pakistan is making progress against the Haqqani Network, US officials should hold back until Pakistan delivers.

Yet US and Pakistani officials must understand that they have found only a temporary salve for the relationship, not a sustainable equilibrium. Fundamental differences simmer on the back burner, unresolved.

A relationship built on reduced expectations, diminished attention, and little trust will likely fizzle out over time, even if it is not again confronted by any spectacular crisis.

And at least as long as sophisticated international terrorists call Pakistan home, another crisis is reasonably easy to envision.

Daniel S Markey is Senior Research Professor and Academic Director, Global Policy Program Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Excerpted from his prepared statement before the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations hearing on Pakistan: Challenges for US Interests.
Popular stand-up comedian Kapil Sharma on Friday alleged that he was asked to pay Rs 5 lakh bribe to Mumbai's civic body, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, for his office, and tagged Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his tweets while asking if this was the 'achche din' he promised.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis was, however, quick to respond to Sharmas angst and assured him that strict action would be taken against the culprit.

'I am paying 15 cr income tax from last five years and still I have to pay 5 lakh bribe to BMC office for making my office @narendramodi (sic),' Kapil tweeted on Friday morning while expressing his anguish and raising the issue of corruption.

'Yeh hain aapke achhe din? @narendramodi,' the comedian-actor sought to know in another tweet, referring to Modi's 2014 poll slogan of 'good days are ahead'.

The post of Sharma, who has over 6.22 million followers on Twitter, was re-tweeted by many.

The BMC released documents showing that Sharma's under-construction office building was considered 'illegal' and that a notice to this affect was issued to him in July, wherein he was asked to stop construction or face action.

Taking cognisance of the complaint, Fadnavis requested the TV host to provide them with necessary information to punish the culprit.

'Kapilbhai pls provide all info. Have directed MC (municipal commissioner), BMC to take strictest action. We will not spare the culprit,' the CM said in a tweet.

The BMC also asked Sharma to reveal the name of the officer who allegedly demanded the bribe.

I have requested Kapil Sharmaji to reveal the name of the officer who demanded bribe so that we can initiate inquiry and appropriate action against him or her. We hope that he will cooperate with us, Manohar Pawar, chief engineer of vigilance department in the BMC said.

We are very sorry, if any of the officers caused inconvenience to Sharma, but we are hopeful that he will reveal the name of the offender, Pawar said.

However, the BMC later released some documents showing that Sharma's under-construction office building was considered 'illegal' and that a notice to this affect was issued to him in July.

Through the notice, Sharma was asked to stop the construction and report to police. He was asked to produce proof within 24 hours that he had permission for the construction. The civic body warned that the 'illegal structure' would be removed if he didn't respond.

The Bharatiya Janata Party lashed out at the TV host. BJP leader Manoj Tewari said, If someone is paying 15 crores tax in five years, their achche din have already arrived. The fact that he is trying to save the bribe mongers by not naming them proves that he doesnt want the society to be a part of achche din as well.

Tiwari also asserted that this was the era of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Maharashtra Chief Minister Fadnavis and anyone accused of asking for a bribe would have been caught and punished within 24 hours.

I also see a guilty conscience in his tweets because it could be possible that he paid a bribe and got his office made illegally, added Tiwari.



In another dig at Sharma, Tiwari said that the prime minister of this country paid his kitchen expenses himself and is working day and night to end the corruption while the people who provoked Sharma to tweet were the ones eating snacks worth one crore.



We have asked everyone to declare their entire income by September 30. It is quite possible that he was scared and that's why he started his social media rant, added Tiwari.

A senior Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation official claimed that the actor had made some illegal construction at his office in Versova area of suburban Mumbai and had been served a notice regarding the same, but he did not pay heed to it.

Kapil was then sent a notice by BMC on July 16 to stop or remove the construction, but he didnt reply to it, he said.

The BMC also asked Kapil to reveal the name of the officer who allegedly demanded the bribe.

Stung by corruption allegations, Shiv Sena, which rules the BMC along with the BJP, dared Kapil to name the bribe seeker.

This is not a comedy show where he can tweet what is going on in his life. He needs to immediately name the person publicly who asked for a bribe or people would watch the whole episode like a comedy drama, laugh over it and forget about it, Sena spokesperson Manisha Kayande said.

Kapil Sharma is a very famous person and thus the moot question he needs to answer is that why would he give the bribe when somebody asked for it. Giving bribe makes him as much of a culprit as the one who asked for it, Kayande added.

Manohar Pawar, chief engineer of vigilance department in the BMC, said, I have requested Kapil Sharma to reveal the name of the officer who demanded bribe so that we can initiate inquiry and appropriate action against him or her.

Let me assure you that if you desire to keep any disclosure made by you in this matter confidential, the same shall also be ensured, he said in a statement.

Meanwhile, BJP MLA Ram Kadam filed a complaint with the cyber cell of Mumbai police alleging that Kapil, by keeping mum on the bribe demand, did not discharge his duty as a citizen, and demanded a free and fair inquiry into the entire issue.

Confirming the complaint, Mumbai police spokesperson Ashok Dudhe said, Yes, we have received an application and since the allegations are related to the anti-corruption department, the application is going to be forwarded to anti-corruption department for further inquiry.

Talking about the issue, Congress chief spokesman Randeep Singh Surjewala termed BMC led by BJP-Shiv Sena as Bhrastachar Municipal Corporation and said, The Acche Din show is houseful!.

Kapil Sharma is a popular host of a comedy show. The BJP-Shiv Sena show in BMC has been a tragedy, he said in Delhi.

Everyone believed Modiji will deposit Rs 15 lakh in every account. Instead, it seems they will recover Rs 5 lakh from us, he said.

Sharma hosts the popular comedy chat programme The Kapil Sharma Show on television.

He was the winner of The Great Indian Laughter Challenge in 2007 and later hosted the popular Comedy Nights with Kapil.

-- With inputs from ANI
Global analysts say a successful launch of operational GSLV MkII rocket will reduce dependency for ISRO on foreign launchers, reports Raghu Krishnan

Indias geosynchronous satellite launch vehicle, GSLV-MkII, completed its first operational flight on Thursday, hurling a two-tonne weather communication satellite into space.

The textbook launch will put Indian Space research Organisation among a small group of nations with proven capability to put communication satellites into orbit and also help the space agency to hurl heavier satellites for local needs and global customers.

So far, ISRO had only launched experimental GSLV launchers to prove the technology to carry two-tonne satellites into geostationary transit orbit, where communication satellites are parked.

ISROs success in operationalising the GSLV-Mk-II is being watched globally by communication satellite makers, as there is a shortage of reliable launchers globally. It would emerge a competitor to private launch companies such as SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk, and Blue Origin, a firm owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, to hurl two-tonne communication satellites.

We have limited capability for GSLV. But, we have begun exploring opportunities to launch communication satellites in the international market, said Rakesh Sasibhushan, chairman and managing director of Antrix Corp, last month.

Global analysts have said earlier that a successful launch of the operational GSLV Mk-II rocket will first reduce dependency of ISRO on foreign launchers and could be a potential disruptor in pricing for launching foreign satellites on Indian soil. Both (GSLV) Mk-II and III launches, if successful, could partially reduce ISROs dependency on foreign launchers, recently said Maxime Puteaux, a space industry policy consultant at Euroconsult, the Paris-based space research agency.

Although for commercial launches, GSLV Mark III is too small for most of the satellites, that are more than four tonnes. For satellites less than four tonnes, it could be competitive on price, provided it is available (i.e. not booked by the satellites of the Indian government).

The first launch of GSLV-MkIII, ISROs heaviest rocket, will be in December.

Since its first launch in 2001 using a Russian cryogenic upper stage, ISRO has so far done nine launches, including two with a cryogenic stage that it built on its own. The space agency has also successfully launched a smaller version of GSLV-MkIII, a rocket with a newer design that can eventually carry four-tonne communication satellites or for Indias manned space mission in the lower orbit.

Currently, ISRO uses the Ariane space rocket of the European Space Agency to hurl its commercial communication satellites into space.

So far, ISRO has leveraged its workhorse, Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, to serve global customers to hurl smaller satellites on the lower earth orbit. Since two decades of its first launch, it has done 35 flights, hurling 86 satellites, including 45 foreign small and medium satellites. Now, ISRO plans to outsource the entire rocket integration to an industry consortium, which includes Hindustan Aeronautics, Larsen and Toubro, Godrej Aerospace, Avasarala Technologies and Walchandnagar Industries. It is looking to triple launch capacity in a year to 18 with this approach.

If you are able to build on top of what weve built PSLV commercialisation and make it more attractive, there is a possibility that the Indian industry can also gain in this global opportunity, said Isro chairman A S Kiran Kumar, in a recent interview.

Image: The GSLV-MkII takes off from the launch pad in Sriharikota on Thursday. Photograph: PTI
Ahead of the 15th anniversary of 9/11, former secretary of state and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton said going after Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden into Pakistan was "not an easy choice".

IMAGE: US Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at a campaign voter registration event at Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, North Carolina, United States. Photograph: Brian Snyder/Reuters

"I was part of the small group advising President (Barack) Obama whether or not the intelligence we had was good enough to take a chance, to go deep into Pakistan, to try to finally bring Osama bin Laden to justice. It was not an easy choice by any means," Clinton said at an election rally in North Carolina. "These never are."

"That's why who sits at the head of that table in the situation room has to be able to sort out fact from opinion, has to be able to ask the hard questions, pursue even the most difficult leads," she said on Thursday giving an insight into the May 2, 2011 slaying of Osama, the 9/11 mastermind, in a US military operation at his hideout in Abbottabad in Pakistan.

Her comments came three days before the 15th anniversary of the Al Qaeda attack on the twin towers in New York that killed more than 3,000 people, resulting in the US invading Afghanistan.

"We went through that hour after hour after hour. And then the president went around the table asking each of us what we advised. And we were split because it was not some kind of easy layup. I believed it was strong enough that we needed to take action and I supported taking action that would determine whether or not we were successful. That meant sending in special forces," said the 68-year-old former secretary of state.

"Now, you know what happened. I was in that Situation Room watching that day. The most stressful 30 minutes of my life probably. Because you remember one of the helicopters nicked - clicked on - hit its tail on the wall going into the courtyard and became disabled.

"That meant -- thank goodness there were good contingency plans, but you had to get another helicopter in to take out the SEALs who would no longer be able to fly out on that one," she said, describing the event of the day.

"But here's what I want to tell you because it is a story that, to me, illustrate our values in such a clear, unambiguous way. You've heard Donald Trump say he would order our troops to torture. You've heard him say he would order our troops to kill family members of terrorists. You would know that he was advocating illegal actions against our own laws, as well as the laws of war.

"Thank goodness there's a code of honour in our military stronger than the bluster and the bullying of Donald Trump because here is what happened on that night," she said amid applause.

Meanwhile, Trump, the 70-year-old real estate tycoon, claimed Osama would have been caught long ago had he been in power.
United States President Barack Obama on Friday warned North Korea of new international sanctions after it conducted its fifth nuclear test, believed to be its most powerful ever, describing Pyongyang's move as a grave threat to global peace and stability.

Obama consulted South Korean counterpart Geun-Hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe following North Koreas latest move.

We agreed to work with the UN (United Nations) Security Council, our other Six-Party partners, and the international community to vigorously implement existing measures imposed in previous resolutions, and to take additional significant steps, including new sanctions, Obama said in a statement.

He said that the US 'does not, and never will, accept North Korea as a nuclear state'.

'Far from achieving its stated national security and economic development goals, North Koreas provocative and destabilising actions have instead served to isolate and impoverish its people through its relentless pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile capabilities,' Obama said.

The president indicated he would continue to consult our allies and partners in the days ahead to ensure provocative actions from North Korea are met with serious consequences, White House press secretary Josh Earnest earlier said.

He said President Obama was briefed on the situation as he flew home from a visit to Asia aboard Air Force One.

The president reiterated the unbreakable US commitment to the security of our allies in Asia and around the world, Earnest said.

Earlier, National Security Council spokesman Ned Price said the US was monitoring and continuing to assess the situation in view of the seismic activity on the Korean Peninsula in the vicinity of a known nuclear site.

We are monitoring and continuing to assess the situation in close coordination with our regional partners, Price said.

His statement came after South Korean and international monitoring agencies reported an earthquake near North Koreas north-eastern nuclear test site, indicating that Pyongyang may have detonated a new atomic test to mark the 68th anniversary of the countrys founding.

Our monitoring stations picked up an unusual seismic event in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) today at 00.30 (UTC). So far, 25 of our stations are contributing to the analysis, Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organisations executive secretary Lassina Zerbo said in a statement.

The event seems to have been slightly larger than the one our system recorded on 6 January this year and the location is very similar to that event. Our initial location estimate shows that the event took place in the area of the DPRKs nuclear test site.

If confirmed as a nuclear test, this act constitutes yet another breach of the universally accepted norm against nuclear testing; a norm that has been respected by 183 countries since 1996, she said.

IMAGE: US President Barack Obama. Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
Justifying the security extended to separatist leaders of Kashmir Valley, Union minister Jitendra Singh has said that they faced threat from Pakistan which might attack them to blame it on India.

Singh said the Kashmir unrest was first such turmoil in the world in which number of the civilians injured are more or less equal to those in security forces and policemen. It clearly shows how much restraint the security personnel exercised.

He said as soon as the situation improves, there is a need to engage with the youth of the state.

"We keep blaming Mehbooba (Mufti, Chief Minister), but miss the sight of those forces engaged in it. Pakistan and separatists are a threat," he said at a function organised by Sanjeevni Sharda Kendra in Jammu.

"Pakistan is not only threat to us but also to separatists as well. Separatists have no threat from us (India) but from Pakistan," he said.

Justifying their security given by the government, Union Minister said "why security has been given to them, because Pakistan backed people will kill them blame us (India)".

"What has happened to Moulvi Farooq... what has happened to Abdul Gani Lone... They have fear and threat from their own people," Singh said.

The Union minister further said that Pakistan has a threat from Pakistan itself. "See what is happening in Peshswar... What is happening in Balochistan."

"Pakistani is trying to engineer terrorism selectively. These forces who have upped its ante fear from their own people. We have to prepare ourselves," he said.

On the situation in Kashmir, he said, "We will have to move forward on three basic ideologies (sidhant). First, there will be no compromise with violence whatever may be the aim of violence, violence is a violence and we have to put an end to circle of violence and it has no place in the society and all political parties agree to it."

"Second, as the situation will improve there is a need to engage with the youth of the state and the beginning of chain of several schemes by the government headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi for last two years. The youth of the country are taking benefit of these and we do not want that the youth of Jammu and Kashmir are deprived of it. The youth of Kashmir valley also wants to become stakeholder of the journey of development but due to some reasons they are not fully coming forward," he said.

"And third, there should be no premium on anti-India activism. It should not look that if someone raises anti-India and pro-Pakistan slogans, I will get glorification", he said. Asked about Prime Minister Narendra Modi's statement that Pakistan manufactured terrorism, Singh said, "Certainly, PM is reiterated this more than once and now the entire world is coming round to this view point that Pakistan indeed is the epicenter of the terrorism."

"Pakistan from where the terrorism is exported not only to India but to the rest of the region. Pakistan continues to remain in denial mode and does not realise this sooner or later Pakistan is itself going to be at the receiving end of this terrorism because this misplaced approach of differentiating between good terrorism and bad terrorism and selectively using terrorism to settle scores with adversaries does not work," he said.

On the Kashmir violence, he said, "For the first time, the number of injured on one side has been more or less equal to the numbers of security forces and police. This has happened for the first time history. Why don't they (political parties and civil society) tell it. Why is the media is not writing?"

He said, "It (more injuries to security forces) is you (government) who have put a ban on your security forces and

now the situation has reached such a stage wherein one solider tells other that don't fire, you will be booked for murder and your career is spoiled."

"Nearly 6000 civilians have been injured as per official figures, few hundreds below than that the number of security forces and police personnel. It is because they (security force and police personnel) are exercising full restraint", he said.

"I know question are being raised on Burhan's killing. I known how much preparation and hardworking has gone into that operation. Our forces have capability to take right decisions. We should refrain from doing politics on security issues," he said.

Image: Kashmiri separatist leaders Mirwaiz Umar Farooq (right) and Mohammad Yasin Malik, Photograph: Reuters
A 12-hour Karnataka bandh called by pro-Kannada and farmers outfits to protest the Supreme Courts direction to release water to Tamil Nadu on Friday brought the countrys IT capital and Cauvery basin districts to a standstill and evoked a mixed response elsewhere in the state.

IMAGE: The protest is a day-long one with opposition parties extending their support to it. Photograph: PTI

Normal life in southern Karnataka belt, known as the Old Mysuru region, was hit by the dawn-to-dusk bandh supported by some 800 organisations and the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party and the Janata Dal-Secular, but it passed off peacefully across the state amid tight security.

Complying with the Supreme Court order on Monday last, the Karnataka government has been releasing 15,000 cusecs of water to Tamil Nadu since September 6. This has triggered a wave of protests in the state, specifically in Cauvery river belt.

The brunt of the bandh was borne by Bengaluru, Mandya, the epicentre of Cauvery agitation, Mysuru and neighboring districts where massive protest marches and demonstrations were held, but the response was tepid in coastal districts.

IMAGE: The protests also took place in Mysuru where buses were forced to halt. Photograph: PTI

Concerned over the extreme unrest over the release of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi to call forthwith on a few hours notice a meeting of chief ministers of the two states to end the impasse.

As the Cauvery row hotted up with the state observing the bandh, Siddaramaiah dashed off a missive to Modi, saying the unrest, if continued, would have a serious impact on the states economy as also the IT sector which fetches enormous revenue and foreign exchange to the country.

IMAGE: Pro- Kannada organisation activists shout slogans during a protest. Photograph: PTI Photo



By this communication, I earnestly request you not only as Prime Minister, but as Head of the entire federal system, to call a meeting of the Chief Ministers of the States (forthwith on a few hours notice) to resolve the impasse, Siddaramaiah said in the letter.

Fridays bandh was the fourth lockdown in six weeks -- two relating to water sharing disputes with Tamil Nadu and Goa and the other two over wages including nationwide stir called by labour unions on September 2.

Roads were almost deserted in Bengaluru with shops, hotels and other commercial establishments, malls and cinema theaters shut and banking services hit.

IMAGE: Rapid Action Force was deployed during the Karnataka bandh. Photograph: Shailendra Bhojak/PTI Photo

Metro services were also stopped. Educational institutions declared a holiday, and government offices were empty as attendance was not compulsory.

While some private companies had declared holiday, others had provided work from home option to employees.

Karnataka Cable Operators Association did not air Tamil channels.

Some 14,000 security personnel were deployed in Bengaluru, bolstered by Karnataka State Reserve Police, City Armed Reserve and Rapid Action Force.

IMAGE: The city of Bengaluru resembled a ghost town with no public transport on the streets. Photograph: PTI Photo

In Mandya, police lathicharged and lobbed tear-gas shells to disperse protesters who tried to storm Krishnaraja Sagar dam site, during which a few farmers were injured.

Police officials said the injured have been moved to a local hospital for treatment.

A few farmers jumped into the river water near the dam as a mark of protest, but they were rescued by a rescue team present at the spot.

One protester allegedly tried to commit suicide by consuming poison but was stopped by the police.

IMAGE: Commuters wait for transport during bandh. Public buses, autorickshaws and airport cabs all remained off road since morning in Bengaluru. Photograph: PTI Photo

In Bengaluru, during a massive protest march from Town hall to Freedom Park organised by Kannada Okkoota (federation), led by Kannada Chaluvali Vatal Paksha leader Vatal Nagaraj, a man allegedly stabbed himself with a sharp weapon.

He has been admitted to a hospital, police said.

Activists of pro-Kannada organisations tried to enter the departure terminal of the Kempegowda International Airport and the railway station here but were stopped by the police.

The Kannada film industry also rallied behind with actors, directors, producers and technicians holding a protest rally in the city.

The bandh, supported by a wide spectrum of organisations, unions and political parties, was total in several parts of southern Karnataka.

IMAGE: The protests started in Karnataka's Mandya district on Monday after the Supreme Court ordered the state to release 15,000 cusecs of water. Photograph: Shailendra Bhojak/PTI Photo

Protests and demonstrations were held across state in places like Ballari, Koppala, Chikkaballapura, Dharwad, Kolar, Chitradurga, Hassan among others.

In Ballari, where transgender community joined protests, three lorries bearing Tamil Nadu registration were damaged.

The Karnataka government has decided to approach the Supreme Court with a modification petition explaining its difficulties in implementing its order. It will also move the Cauvery Supervisory Committee.

Water Resources Miniser M B Patil ruled out any move by the government to go against the court order by bringing in an ordinance, as was done by the then Chief Minister Bangarappa in 1991.

We will do things that are in accordance with law, if we bring ordinance against the Supreme Court order, will it stand? ...We cannot take such decisions. We will take decisions that are legally tenable, he said.
A recap of events that occurred in India in the past 24 hours.

ISROs GSLV-F05 carrying INSAT-3DR takes off from Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota on Thursday. More than two decades after the Indian cryogenic engine programme was formalised, an indigenous cryogenic engine developed by Indian Space Research Organisation successfully propelled for the first time an operational flight of GSLV (Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle) lifting into space the country's third exclusive meteorological satellite. Photograph: PTI Photo/ISRO

Protesters set ablaze a truck in which bovine animals were carried at in Chingus village of Rajouri district on Thursday. Sources said that the truck, which was on its way to Kashmir, met with a minor accident at Narain as it hit a roadside drain. When locals reached the spot to help the driver, they found that nearly two dozen bovines, including cows, were being transported. Photograph: PTI Photo

Buses ply at the flooded bridge over Kunye river at Laghata in Birbhum district of West-Bengal on Thursday. Photograph: PTI Photo

Ankur Panwar, an accused in Preeti Rathi Acid attack case, flashes the victory sign outside the Aurthur Road jail before being produced in a court in Mumbai on Thursday. However, observing that acid attack is worse than rape, a special women's court in Mumbai awarded him capital punishment for throwing acid on nurse Preeti Rathi in 2013 which caused her death, for spurning his advances and out of envy over her career growth. Photograph: PTI Photo

Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi opens a water bottle to quench his thirst during his Kisan Yatra in Basti on Thursday. Addressing a road show, Rahul assured farmers that all closed sugar mills of the region would be restarted and all pending dues would be cleared if his party formed the next government in UP. He also attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for waiving off loans worth Rs 1.1 lakh crore given to industrialists. Photograph: PTI Photo

A police person tries to stop a BJP woman activist protesting against JNUSU President Kanhaiya Kumar outside the venue of a joint AISF and AIYF Convention in Kolkata on Thursday. Photograph: Ashok Bhaumik/PTI Photo

Pro-Kannada organisation activists perform the final rites of the Tamilnadu CM J Jayalalitha and Karnataka Water Resources Minister M B Patil in protest against the Supreme Court verdict on Cauvery water, in Bengaluru on Thursday. Photograph: Shailendra Bhojak /PTI Photo

A man sits in the back of a taxi with a goat after purchasing it from a livestock market ahead of the Eid al-Adha festival in Kolkata. Photograph: Rupak De Chowdhuri/Reuters

Devotees carry clay water pots as they take part in a procession marking the end of Jhulelal Chaliha, a 40-day-long fasting festival of the Sindhi community, in Ahmedabad. Photograph: Amit Dave/Reuters
From the tallest dog to the high-jumping Llama, a bearded female to the most tattooed senior citizen... the 2017 edition of the Guinness World Records reveals a selection of the most jaw-dropping records and record holders.

After months of research and scouring the globe looking for the best of the best, the 2017 Edition teems with fun and educational content that will fascinate, entertain and educate knowledge-seekers of all ages and interests, the Guinness World Records said in a statement.

Rediff.com gives you a glimpse of some the records featured in the latest edition of the Guinness World Records.

Scroll down to see:

Youngest female with a full beard

Anti-bullying activist, body image activist and catwalk model Harnaam Kaur of Slough, United Kingdom, has a fascinating story to tell.

Now with a beard measuring as long as six inches in places, she overcame years of bullying to take ownership of her appearance and achieve this record title at the age of 24 years 282 days.

She describes her place in the Guinness World Records book as "absolutely humbling" and hopes it will help her to impart her empowering message. 2016 has been a huge year for Harnaam, having become the first female with a beard to walk the runway at London Fashion Week in March.

Longest duration full-body burn

With 49 movie credits to his name, most recently in the 2015 remake of Point Break, stunt man Josef Toedtling from Austria has built a successful career by putting himself harm's way...

His exploits have seen him enter the Guinness World Records book for the first time this year -- he holds the Longest duration full-body burn (no oxygen) with an awesome 5 mins 41 seconds, beating the previous record by 16 seconds.

He also holds the record for Farthest distance pulled by a vehicle (full body burn) reaching a huge 582 metres  another skill learned on various film sets over his career.

Highest jump by a Llama

Nine-year-old Caspa has been with his owner, Sue, from Porthmadog, Wales, since he was two years old. Sue describes him as "a total diva".

Like most Llamas, Caspa was more adept at spitting and kicking when he first arrived on the farm but after spotting his extraordinary talent, he and Sue have been able to bond through his positive reinforcement training.

Caspa can now clear a bar standing at a huge 1.13 m (3 ft 8.5 in), making him the envy of all the other Llamas on the farm.

Tallest dog living (female)

Meet Lizzy, the Great Dane from Florida, who measures a huge 96.41 cm (37.96 in) tall!

Lizzy is so tall, has to eat her food from a bowl that sits on a chair as she cannot reach the floor, and her water bowl has to stay in the garage because she makes such a mess!

Her owner, Greg, says Lizzy is a gentle giant and very sociable -- he puts this down to her spending much of her life surrounded by cats and two tiny pet terriers.

Most tattooed senior citizens (male & female)

Charlotte Guttenberg, 67, of Florida, US has covered 91.5% of her body with tattoos since first being inked just 10 years ago while grieving following the death of her husband.

Nervously, she sat in the chair at her chosen tattoo parlour when a regular stopped in to say hello to favourite tattoo artists. Chuck was asked to sit with Charlotte to ease her nerves, love blossomed and they have been together ever since.

Chuck, also from Florida, has 93.5% of his body tattooed and aside from one army tattoo, has had the rest of his work done in the last 16 years. Chuck is a martial arts expert and says he served on the security detail for JFK.

Longest domestic cat (living)

Ludo the Maine Coon from Wakefield in South Yorkshire measures a whopping 118.33 cm (3 ft 10.59 in) long and brings this record title back to the UK following a six-year run between two record holders based in the US.

Ludo is one of three Maine Coons in the Gill household and owner Kelsey describes him as a just like any other cat, "relaxed and laid back cat" as well as loving a good sleep -- he just happens to be a giant!

Longest Monster Truck

Jennifer and Brad Campbell of White Hills, Arizona, wanted to build a Monster Truck to take Las Vegas by storm, and have ended up conquering the world with theirs.

Measuring 9.8 m (32 ft) and weighing in at a monster 6.804 tons, the truck can be found entertaining revellers in Las Vegas, dwarfing any of Sin City's achievements.

Jen said: "I would get the book every year when I was a kid and was always blown away with the records. I knew I was never going to outdo the longest nails, or lowest limbo... it is awesome!"

Fastest monowheel motorcycle

Most people will have heard about land speed records being set in cars and aircrafts, but there is now a new vehicle on the scene and it has earned a coveted space in the Guinness World Records 2017 book for being the worlds Fastest monowheel motorcycle.

A monowheel motorcycle is one large wheel that revolves around a track, inside which the engine and rider are housed. The driver has to control the vehicle using careful control of throttle and perfect balance. UK Monowheel Team and Kevin Scott recorded a staggering speed of 98.464 km/h on their incredible monowheel WarHorse, at Elvington Airfield in North Yorkshire, UK.

Previously the fastest monowheel motorcycle reached a speed of 91.7 km/h and was achieved by Kerry McLean (US) -- who is considered a pioneer in this vehicle category -- at the Irwindale Speedway, California in 2001.

Most tricks performed by a dog in a minute

Parson Russell Terrier Smurf is arguably one of the most talented pooches that has ever earned a place in the Guinness World Records archives, having set a brand new record for the Most tricks performed by a dog in one minute.

At the age of six, the lovable canine executed a record-breaking 32 tricks on command. His extensive repertoire includes reversing through legs, twisting in a circle, rolling over, speaking (barking), crawling backwards, walking on hind legs and even making a cup of tea.

Most functional gadgets on a cos-play suit

An incredible Batman outfit adorned with 23 functioning gadgets has earned its owner the world record for the Most functional gadgets on a cos-play suit.

Created by special creature effects expert Julian Checkley, the ingenious gadgets are concealed and attached to the Batman suit. Devices include smoke bombs, a grapnel gun and 'bat tracker', UV lamp, NBC (nuclear, bacterial, chemical) bat respirator and even a bat sign projector for the night sky.

The suit, which is based on Bruce Wayne's outfit from the Batman: Arkham Origins videogame, was 3D printed and then moulded and cast in a flexible urethane rubber. When fully kitted out, Julian strikes an imposing figure, towering over 610 (208cm), the bat ears make a difference! The 23 gadgets increased in complexity as his project progressed and Julian enlisted the help of an electrical engineer to create the most challenging gadget -- the 2000watt EMP Stun Gun.

Most expensive sandwich ever

New York-based restaurant Serendipity 3 has earned a Guinness World Records title after crafting the Most expensive sandwich ever. The confidently named "Quintessential Grilled Cheese" is sold for an eye-watering $214 (Rs 14,216).

The exclusive and extravagant ingredients used include two pieces of French Pullman champagne bread which is made with Dom Perignon champagne and 24 carat edible gold flakes, white truffle butter and the very rare Caciocavallo Podolico cheese. The sandwich is then served on a Baccarat Crystal plate with South African Lobster Tomato Bisque as a dipping sauce.

Previously, the most expensive sandwich commercially available was the von Essen Platinum Club Sandwich, created by Chef Daniel Galmiche (UK) and is available on the menu of Cliveden, Buckinghamshire, UK for $200 (Rs 13,290). The sandwich was added to the menu in March 2007.
The United Liberation Front of Assam-Independent has freed Bharatiya Janata Party Tinsukia Zilla Parishad vice-president Ratneswar Morans son Kuldeep, who was abducted by the group on August 1.

The Paresh Barua-led militant group had released an Islamic State-style video that purportedly showed 27-year-old Kuldeep surrounded by armed and masked militants and appealing to Chief Minister Sarbanda Sonowal to secure his early release. The militants had asked for Rs 1-crore ransom from Moran.

However, it is not yet clear whether Kuldeeps release has been secured by paying ransom to the militants.

After the video went viral, Baruah had issued a statement saying the motive of kidnapping was not to get money, but to put Kuldeep on trial for being an informer of the Army.

He had rejected reports that the group demanded ransom.

IMAGE: A screengrab from a video showing Kuldeep Moran in the custody of ULFA militants. Photograph: PTI Photo
Controversial preacher Zakir Naiks non-governmental organisation Islamic Research Foundation has been banned from receiving foreign funds directly and the Union Home Ministry has asked the Reserve Bank of India to seek prior permission from it before releasing any money to the NGO.

The decision has been taken after a preliminary inquiry conducted by the home ministry found that the NGO was carrying out activities contrary to the Foreign Contribution Regulations Act under which it has to function.

Sources said with IRF being put into prior permission category, the RBI, henceforth, has to inform the home ministry about all funds coming to the NGO and permission has to be taken from the ministry before releasing them to the IRF.

They said that last month the home ministry had renewed the FCRA licence of the IRF despite several ongoing probes against the NGO and its founder Naik including one by the home ministry itself.

Taking strong exception to the goof-up, the home ministry suspended Joint Secretary G K Dwivedi, who was heading the foreigners division of the ministry looking after the FCRA-related issues, and three other officials.

Naik was accused of radicalising and attracting youths for terror acts.

Naik has come under the scanner of the security agencies after Bangladeshi newspaper Daily Star had reported that one of the attackers of the July 1 terror strike in Dhaka, Rohan Imtiaz, ran a propaganda on Facebook last year quoting Naik.

He, in a lecture aired on Peace TV, an international Islamic channel, had reportedly urged all Muslims to be terrorists.

Naik, a popular but controversial Islamic orator and founder of Mumbai-based IRF, is banned in the United Kingdom and Canada for his hate speeches aimed against other religions. He is among 16 banned Islamic scholars in Malaysia.

He is popular in Bangladesh through his Peace TV, although his preachings often demean other religions and even other Muslim sects.
Hundreds of Nigerians return to devastated homes in north-east

Publisher UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Publication Date 9 September 2016 Cite as UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Hundreds of Nigerians return to devastated homes in north-east, 9 September 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57d29d484.html [accessed 30 October 2022]

Hundreds of internally displaced people are returning to devastated villages and towns that have recently been liberated by the Nigerian armed forces in the north-eastern state of Borno. UNHCR expects the number to grow in the coming weeks, but we remain concerned about conditions, basic services and security in territory formerly controlled by Boko Haram insurgents.

Comprehensive figures are not available but our field staff and partners are reporting both government-facilitated and spontaneous return in recent days of hundreds of people to places such as Mafa, Konduga, Benisheikh and Dikwa.

Assistance from the government and aid agencies has been stepped up to the region to help people in 16 newly accessible districts of Borno. UNHCR and its partners have restricted access to 10 of these districts, where some 800,000 people need urgent help.

Some of those now returning to their homes in the liberated areas from places like the Borno capital, Maiduguri, appear to be happy to go back, citing dire conditions in the places where they have been living, including camps for the internally displaced.

But UNHCR is concerned about the welfare of the people, who are returning to areas that have been devastated under Boko Haram rule. Many of the internally displaced will be going back to destroyed homes and infrastructure, and areas lacking health care and other services.

The returns should be voluntary, dignified and safe - people should be informed about conditions in their home areas. UNHCR is in regular touch with state officials and we have raised our concerns and offered to closely work with them to help ensure that returns are conducted in accordance with international standards and in dignity and safety. We will continue to monitor the situation of returnees, especially the most vulnerable.

Meanwhile, as we and partners scale up our operations in the north-east, security and access to the needy, especially those in the newly accessible areas, remain major challenges. A greater humanitarian response and presence on the ground is urgently needed, aid efforts must be better coordinated, and data collection improved. In the past week, we have started the deployment of a 14-strong emergency response team, including experienced senior emergency coordinators and several protection officers.

Most of the displaced are women, children and the elderly. Priority issues that we and our partners are working on include shelter, food, provision of potable water as well as health concerns, including acute malnutrition and cholera prevention. Protection issues include sexual and gender-based violence, where we have had successes through community-based protection action groups that encourage dialogue and awareness.

In concrete terms, UNHCR continues to work through local partners to carry out vital protection monitoring in Bama, Monguno, Damboa, Konduga, Mafa, Dikwa and including Biu, Bayo, Hawul, Shani and Kwaya Kusar districts in southern Borno.

We have also provided 200 shelters for 1,000 people in Bama and have distributed non-food items to 16,000 people in the past two weeks. We have handed out aid items to 10,000 people in the Cameroon-Nigeria border town of Banki. In Maiduguri, we have constructed almost 2,000 semi-permanent shelters for around 10,000 people, and are building emergency shelters for 5,000 people in Dikwa.

The insurgency in north-east Nigeria has forcibly displaced more than 2.25 million people since 2014, including 2.066 million internally displaced people and almost 190,000 refugees in neighbouring Cameroon, Niger and Chad. Although the government has rolled back Boko Haram gains since last year, the insurgency has switched to terror attacks and remains a potent threat.
Submission to the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances in Advance of its Review on Colombia

Publisher Human Rights Watch Publication Date 9 September 2016 Cite as Human Rights Watch, Submission to the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances in Advance of its Review on Colombia, 9 September 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57d2be354.html [accessed 30 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

We write in advance of the United Nations Committee on Enforced Disappearances' ("the Committee") review of Colombia to highlight Human Rights Watch's concerns regarding the Agreement on the Victims of the Conflict ("the Agreement"), reached by the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas in December 2015.

Human Rights Watch is concerned that the victims' agreement  which will influence the prosecution of state agents involved in abuses  violates Colombia's obligations under the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance ("the Convention") and will further compound impunity for enforced disappearances committed in the country.

The agreement creates a new Special Jurisdiction for Peace, which will handle crimes that are "directly and indirectly related to the armed conflict," likely including many enforced disappearances. The new jurisdiction will apply the provisions of the Agreement detailed below.

Command responsibility (article 6, paragraphs 9 and 14 in the list of issues)

Under the Convention, military commanders are criminally liable for enforced disappearances carried out by their subordinates if they had effective control of the subordinates, had knowledge about the commission of the crime or consciously disregarded information that clearly indicated that subordinates were committing the crime, and had the means to prevent the crime or ensure it was properly investigated.[1]

The definition of command responsibility included in the Agreement contains two phrases that could be interpreted in a manner inconsistent with the Convention.[2]

First, the agreement provides that liability on the basis of command responsibility requires "knowledge based on the information at their disposal before, during and after the realization the respective conduct." This definition could require judicial authorities to prove that commanders had actual knowledge of human rights crimes by their subordinates. Proving that they consciously disregarded information which indicated that their subordinates had committed, or were about to commit, an enforced disappearance would not be sufficient

Second, the wording of the agreement is that liability also requires "the effective control of the respective conduct." In context, the term "respective conduct" refers to the underlying crimes. While "effective control" is an essential element of command responsibility, under the Convention, control refers to the activities which were concerned with the crime, not to the crime itself.

Punishment (article 7, paragraphs 14 in the list of issues)

The Agreement on the Victims of the Conflict includes a range of sanctions, depending on whether (and when) those responsible confess their crimes, their participation, and the gravity of the crimes.[3]

The government has yet to fully define how state agents will be sanctioned, but it has stated that the sanctions will have the same duration and "nature" to those established for FARC members.[4]

Under the agreement, FARC perpetrators who confess promptly and fully to offenses will be exempt not only from prison or jail, but also from any "equivalent" form of detention.[5] Instead, they will be required to carry out "restorative and reparative" projects while being subject to modest "restraints to rights and liberties." Such restraints of liberty are limited to those "necessary for [the] execution" of these restorative and reparative sanctions, and allow those sanctioned to carry out movements that are "compatible" with the fulfillment of the sanctions.[6] The government has explicitly provided that state agents could also be subject to "restraints to rights and liberties."[7]

The Colombian government has repeatedly stated that these sanctions would last five to eight years.[8] However, Human Rights Watch has shown that provisions in the agreement would appear to allow those responsible for serious offenses to be released from any restrictions on their liberty in an even shorter time.[9]

Moreover, a provision in the Agreement allows the Special Jurisdiction for Peace to impose two-to-five year sentences for those who did not have a "decisive participation in worst and representative acts."[10] While an August 2016 agreement apparently provides that enforced disappearances will be considered a "worst and representative act," many of those responsible for enforced disappearances could benefit from this provision if they argue that they did not have a "decisive participation" in such crimes.[11] The agreement does not define the term "decisive participation."

Human Rights Watch submits that the sanctions regime included in the agreement for confessed perpetrators violates Colombia's obligations under the Convention to make the offense of enforced disappearances punishable by appropriate penalties which take into account "its extreme seriousness."[12]

While the Convention provides that states may establish mitigating circumstances, including for those who make it possible to identify cases of enforced disappearances,[13] the Committee has repeatedly recommended that mitigating circumstances should in no way lead to a lack of appropriate punishment.[14] In addition, the Committee has noted that short prison sentences or punishment that does not involve deprivation of liberty are inconsistent with the Convention.[15]

[1] International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, adopted September 23, 2005, ratified by Colombia on July 11, 2002, U.N. Doc. E/CN.4/2005/WG.22/WP.1/Rev.4 (2005), art. 6.

[2] Acuerdo sobre las Victimas del Conflicto [Agreement on the Victims of the Conflict], December 15, 2015, https://www.mesadeconversaciones.com.co/sites/default/files/24_08_2016ac... (accessed August 26, 2016), p. 137, para. 44. See also "Mindefensa y Minjusticia firmaron compromiso sobre justicia para agentes del Estado" [Guidelines on justice for state agents], Ministerio de Defensa, December 19, 2015, http://cgfm.mil.co/-/mindefensa-y-minjusticia-firmaron-compromiso-sobre-justicia-para-agentes-del-estado (accessed August 26, 2016), p. 7.

[3] See Agreement on the Victims of the Conflict, page 40, para. 60; Guidelines on justice for state agents, para . 6.

[4] Agreement on the Victims of the Conflict, p. 40, para. 60; Guidelines on justice for state agents, paras . 3, 5.

[5] Agreement on the Victims of the Conflict, p. 40, para. 60.

[6] Agreement on the Victims of the Conflict, p. 40, para. 60; Agreement on the Victims of the Conflict, p. 152.

[7] Guidelines on justice for state agents, para 6.

[8] E.g. Comunicado conjunto # 60 sobre el Acuerdo de creacion de una Jurisdiccion Especial para la Paz [Joint Communique # 60 regarding the Agreement for the creation of a Special Jurisdiction for Peace], September 23, 2015, https://www.mesadeconversaciones.com.co/sites/default/files/comunicado-conjunto-60-ingles-1443452175.pdf (accessed August 26, 2016) . ,

[9] Human Rights Watch, Human Rights Watch Analysis of Colombia-FARC Agreement, December 22, 2015, https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/12/21/human-rights-watch-analysis-colombia-farc-agreement#_edn8

[10] Agreement on the Victims of the Conflict, p. 40, para. 60.

[11] Acuerdo Especial [Special Agreement], https://www.mesadeconversaciones.com.co/sites/default/files/24_08_2016acuerdofinalfinalfinal-1472094587.pdf, August 19, 2016, Anexo 1: Ley de amnistia, indulto y tratamientos penales especiales [Annex 1: Law of Amnesty, pardon, and Special Criminal Rules], p. 271.

[12] International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, art. 7(1).

[13] International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances, art. 7(2)(a).

[14] UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances, "Concluding observations on the report submitted by Armenia under article 29, paragraph 1, of the Convention, Armenia," UN Doc. CED/C/ARM/CO/1, March 13, 2015, https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G15/050/21/PDF/G1505021.pdf?OpenElement, para. 12; UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances, "Concluding observations on the report submitted by Germany under article 29, paragraph 1, of the Convention, Germany", UN Doc. CED/C/DEU/CO/1, April 10, 2014, http://docstore.ohchr.org/SelfServices/FilesHandler.ashx?enc=6QkG1d%2fPPRiCAqhKb7yhsthL2pclw9FXHSvE0vLXkyDu12%2fCJklaTXjc5pJIXnIyEFJ53HPaSDc8PPTqwPqNy4NME%2b7Ni89fKfPEZIxjp1ZBI9s2KYKBdKapW%2btbEacv, para. 9.

[15] UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances, "Concluding observations on the report submitted by Uruguay under article 29, paragraph 1, of the Convention, adopted by the Committee at its fourth session (819 April 2013)" UN Doc. CED/C/URY/CO/1, May 8, 2013, http://docstore.ohchr.org/SelfServices/FilesHandler.ashx?enc=6QkG1d%2fPPRiCAqhKb7yhsuFnc2A8f8GATXIp53u%2fxz%2bMAI%2bG6TlajBrq0e1tpPuj%2fj%2fSJycLjuwOl9aT55T%2byu3p9i%2fAvE0PK%2fGSaNYLbSNzuEA31FQOTBaxREopbNYv, para. 12; UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances, "Concluding observations on the report submitted by the Netherlands under article 29, paragraph 1, of the Convention," UN Doc. CED/C/NLD/CO/1, April 10, 2014, http://docstore.ohchr.org/SelfServices/FilesHandler.ashx?enc=6QkG1d%2fPPRiCAqhKb7yhsotyt1z4QeTyULnU0rP1uXWq8mRy5NpdnrdqGOKMi%2fkByLBDhPkiC85kpMbGBeXYazLrL6202Ts0RuIo0rZI5cb1R%2fgqeV3IgTt9FFd5%2bAeM , para. 17.

Copyright notice:  Copyright, Human Rights Watch
Turkey: Journalists must be immediately released from detention under emergency provisions

Publisher Article 19 Publication Date 7 September 2016 Cite as Article 19, Turkey: Journalists must be immediately released from detention under emergency provisions, 7 September 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57d2ca8f4.html [accessed 30 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Update: On the evening of Wednesday 7 September, Journalists Ugur and Polat were charged with "membership of a terrorist organisation" and then released by a court on probation, after having been held in detention for 16 days.

Journalists Cemil Ugur and Halil Ibrahim Polat have been detained for over two weeks, under 'State of Emergency' provisions in Turkey. The journalists, who work for the daily newspaper Evrensel, were detained on 23 August in the province of Mersin, Turkey. ARTICLE 19 calls for their immediate release.

According to Turkish Human Rights Association (IHD), the journalists have not been allowed family visits and, despite repeated efforts to obtain information, they still have no clear understanding about the journalists' situation. Official charges have not yet been issued. The Mersin Police Chief reportedly refused to provide information on their situation. Furthermore, the journalists' lawyer stated that they have been "exposed to insults and threats in prison."

"Turkey must immediately release Ugur and Polat and all other journalists arbitrarily detained in Turkey," said Katie Morris, Head of Europe and Central Asia Programme at ARTICLE 19, "State of emergency provisions are being used to stifle dissent, with scores of journalists being detained with no individual evidence of involvement in a crime and with no recourse to challenge this," she added.

Last week, ARTICLE 19 led an international delegation on press freedom to Turkey, and visited Evrensel newspaper. During the meeting, the pressures facing the media under the declared state of emergency were discussed, including the situation of the two journalists.

ARTICLE 19 is concerned that the state of emergency is being used to silence critical reporting. Under the state of emergency decree, individuals can be held for up to 30 days without charge. According to Turkish media rights advocate, Punto24, the number of journalists arrested during the state of emergency declared after the 15 July coup attempt, has reached 115.

Copyright notice: Copyright ARTICLE 19
Russia: Journalist imprisoned in Chechnya must be released

Publisher Article 19 Publication Date 9 September 2016 Cite as Article 19, Russia: Journalist imprisoned in Chechnya must be released, 9 September 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57d2cad64.html [accessed 30 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

ARTICLE 19 condemns the sentencing of Caucasian Knot journalist, Zhalaudi Geriev, to three years in jail on dubious narcotics charges, which we believe to be politically motivated.

On 5 September 2016, a Chechen court sentenced Zhalaudi Geriev, a journalist working for Caucasian Knot, an independent Russian media portal, to three years in prison on charges of drug possession in large quantities.

Caucasian Knot is well known for its reporting on human rights abuses across the Caucasus and southern Russia, including investigations into corruption and other abuses committed by the Chechen authorities. The charges have been condemned by media freedom and human rights groups and are widely considered to be trumped up.

Geriev was detained by police on 16 April 2016, and held in pre-trial detention until his conviction. During his trial, he told the court that he had been abducted by three armed men, subjected to torture and other ill-treatment, and had drugs planted on him, before being transferred to police custody. He stated that he was then forced to sign a confession admitting that drugs found in his backpack belonged to him.

Geriev retracted his confession during the trial, on the grounds that it was made under duress. His defense lawyer has raised concerns about serious procedural flaws during the investigation and trial, arguing that no credible evidence was presented. Geriev will appeal his sentence.

On 18 September 2016, Chechnya will hold elections for Governor of the Chechen Republic, in which Ramzan Kadurov will almost certainly be re-elected. In advance of the elections, the Chechen authorities have launched a renewed crackdown on critical and dissenting voices in Chechnya.

Copyright notice: Copyright ARTICLE 19
Killing the Messenger: The Demise of a Reliable Belarusian Pollster

Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Grigory Ioffe Publication Date 7 September 2016 Citation / Document Symbol Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 143 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Killing the Messenger: The Demise of a Reliable Belarusian Pollster, 7 September 2016, Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 143, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57d2cd664.html [accessed 30 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Link to original story on Jamestown website

Dedicated Belarus watchers are almost certainly bemoaning the recent termination of a reputable non-state polling firm, the Independent Institute for Socio-Economic and Political Studies (IISEPS) (Belapan, August 9). Founded in 1992 by Oleg Manaev, a sociology professor at the Belarusian State University (BSU), IISEPS conducted quarterly surveys on the basis of representative national samples of 1,500 respondents and dutifully published the survey results. Because certain questions-for example, regarding the approval rating of President Alyaksandr Lukashenka, Belarusians' geopolitical orientation, their perception of the economic situation, and attitudes toward foreign countries-were included in IISEPS' questionnaires repeatedly and over a long period of time, the survey results allowed scholars to track long-term trends. And since the country's state-run sociological centers never published regular (or at times any) polling results that would be both informative and comparable across time, IISEPS's niche was unique in Belarus.

Since this pollster was not accountable to the government, IISEPS was harassed by the authorities on multiple occasions. Notably, the Supreme Court of Belarus ruled, on April 15, 2005, to close down the organization. Subsequently, IISEPS registered in neighboring Lithuania but continued its polling in Belarus. Even after a clause banning illegal surveys of public opinion was added to the Code of Administrative Violations in 2013 (Belapan, August 9), IISEPS' polling did not stop. However, it had no choice but to come to a halt after a documentary titled "Primat NISEPI" ("Primate IISEPS") was aired by Belarusian TV on July 31. According to the documentary, several stacks of documents were delivered by an anonymous associate of IISEPS "to journalists," suggesting that instead of actually surveying Belarusians, IISEPS has been fabricating the results. Some members of the surveyors' network denied on camera that they ever worked for IISEPS. With a haunted expression on his face, Yevgenii Kovalev, in charge of the entire network of IISEPS pollsters, revealed that the survey results had been "tailored to the desires of IISEPS' donors" (Belteleradio, July 31).

Manaev, the polling organization's founder, alleges that Kovalev's pivotal televised confession was made under threat of criminal persecution (for illegal polling and for tax evasion) (Belapan, August 9). If true, this would hardly be surprising. But even if not, taking Kovalev's confession entirely at face value is next to impossible. After all, IISEPS' donors are Western organizations, so what, if anything, could be so much to their liking in IISEPS' published polling results? For example, according to years of IISEPS' surveys of the Belarusian population, Russia has steadily been Belarus's best friend and Russians the culturally closest community. Moreover, IISEPS' polling data indicates that Belarusians with a preference for state paternalism vastly outnumber those favoring the free market. Additionally, it would be difficult to understand why Western donors might be gratified to see that IISEPS has consistently reported that Belarusians lean more favorably toward the Russia-centered Eurasian Union versus the European Union; that the pro-Western Belarusian opposition has an abysmally low rating, while Lukashenka has enjoyed decent popular support most of the time; that most Belarusians are against Western sanctions; that they share the popular Russian attitude to the conflict in Ukraine; and finally, that Lukashenka did in fact win all his elections (that is, not just the 1994 election, but also in 2001, 2006 and 2010), albeit less overwhelmingly than reflected in the official results.

The authorities have routinely ascribed ominous designs to IISEPS' foreign donors-i.e., a purported goal to wrest Belarus out of Russia's sphere of influence and to undermine the ruling "regime" in Minsk. But the aforementioned survey results routinely presented by the independent polling group would hardly please such donors. Perhaps a discrepancy between Lukashenka's official and actual electoral outcomes (for example, 83 percent of the popular vote in 2015 according to the state electoral commission, versus 58 percent as calculated by IISEPS) might alone suffice for IISEPS' liquidation. But in fact, this polling data has not been used as a pretext for a legal crackdown in many years. On several occasions, this author asked IISEPS' associates why they think they are still allowed to survey Belarusians. Invariably the answer was: If not us, who would speak the truth to "them?" Indeed, there were multiple indications that the authorities took guidance from IISEPS surveys, and the organization's bulletins have been available in the National Library in Minsk.

Then, what prompted this most "lethal" attack, which forced IISEPS to terminate its polling activity so as not to subject the members of its interviewing network to criminal charges? Two distinct theories exist. According to one, Minsk desires a rapprochement with the West for economic reasons, but it does not want to change its political ways. Because the European Union considers the upcoming parliamentary elections the touchstone for its future Belarus policy, the authorities are worried that the next IISEPS survey may compromise Minsk in the eyes of the West (Naviny.by, August 7). According to the second theory, the termination of IISEPS was spearheaded by domestic forces ever hostile to Belarus's rapprochement with the West. Often they emerge victorious. Who exactly personifies this specific "victory" remains unknown (Drakakhrust, August 4). While both theories make sense, the former is less believable because the format of a national poll is not conducive to uncovering voting irregularities under a proportional electoral system, which exists in Belarus.

Be that as it may, the termination of IISEPS is no sad event for two groups of people: those in the corridors of power who engineered the crackdown, and those with a hawkish point of view on official Minsk. "I told you so," say some of the latter. Others, like the splinter group of the Popular Front still headed by Zianon Pazniak, who left Belarus in 1996, are openly gloating and publishing Manaev's caricature in a KGB uniform (Narodnaya Peramoha, August 3). To them, discovering that the general public in Belarus does not actually hold the opposition in high regard is anathema. "Killing the messenger" is what they long wanted.

The closure of a reputable and unique polling agency is a sad event for impartial Belarus-watchers and for those of dovish orientation who have long appealed to Western decision-makers to jettison cliches and recognize the specific circumstances and interests of Belarus that its government reflects and articulates. Hence, a well-worn saying best encapsulates the essence of what happened: It is more than a crime, it is a mistake.

Copyright notice:  2010 The Jamestown Foundation
Massive Russian Troop Deployments and Exercises Held Close to Ukraine

Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Pavel Felgenhauer Publication Date 8 September 2016 Citation / Document Symbol Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 144 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Massive Russian Troop Deployments and Exercises Held Close to Ukraine, 8 September 2016, Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 144, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57d2cddf4.html [accessed 30 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

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The Russian Armed Forces have begun their pre-announced strategic military exercise "Kavkaz 2016" in Crimea, the North Caucasus, and the Black and Caspian Seas. Reportedly, the exercise, held on September 5-10, "will test the battle-readiness of troops, new weapons, as well as command-and control equipment." The officially announced number of troops taking part is 12,500, but much more men and combat equipment could actually have been mobilized for action (TASS, August 5). Kavkaz 2016 was preceded by 12 "special logistical supply exercises" to test the ability of naval and other forces to be swiftly resupplied in high-intensity combat. Live torpedoes, rockets and shells were loaded on ships; marines with armor were placed on landing craft and moved into positions off Crimea "awaiting orders to go" (Mil.ru, August 18).

On August 25, massive snap exercises were launched as a preparation for Kavkaz 2016. All Russian strategic military commands with the exception of the Far East were fully or partially mobilized. In addition, the elite Airborne troops (VDV), the North and Black Sea fleets, the Caspian flotilla, as well as the air force (Voyenno Kosmichedskie Sily-VKS) were mobilized for action. The mobilized forces of the Southern Military District (including the Russian troops based on occupied Georgian territory in Abkhazia and South Ossetia) were reinforced with combat units from the Western and Central commands moved by air and land from as far as Siberia and the Urals. At the same time, airborne VDV units and VKS warplanes were deployed "to form multi-force combat groupings in the southwest of Russia." Paratroopers and marines were moved into Crimea. Reservists were called up in different parts of Russia and moved to the borders of Ukraine and to the Caucasus. Industrial and transport infrastructure, local and metropolitan civilian administrations, as well as elements of the national banking system were mobilized to serve the joint military effort (Mil.ru, August 25).

The snap exercise and the follow-up strategic Kavkaz 2016 maneuvers seem intended to test the overall swift transformation of Russia into a mobilized national military machine prepared for offensive action (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, August 26). The main center of gravity of Kavkaz 2016 seems to be Crimea, where tensions between Moscow and Kyiv have been escalating recently. On August 10, the Federal Security Service (FSB) accused Ukrainian special forces of preparing "terrorist attacks" on the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia illegally annexed from Ukraine in March 2014. Arrests of alleged Ukrainian agents were announced, while an FSB official and a VDV solder were reported killed in clashes with alleged armed Ukrainian infiltrators. Moscow accused Ukraine of "resorting to terrorism instead of seeking a peaceful resolution of the conflict in Donbas." Russian officials threatened to sever diplomatic relations (Izvestia, Interfax, August 12).

Ukrainian officials denied any involvement and accused Russia of staging a provocation. In mid-August, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko announced, "There is a serious possibility of a massive Russian invasion, and we are preparing our military to resist" (Interfax, August 18). Poroshenko accused Moscow of attempting to destabilize Ukraine and "make all of Ukraine part of the Russian empire" (Interfax, August 25). Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, dismissed Poroshenko's allegations as an attempt to create an external threat to distract the Ukrainian population and cover up Ukraine's terrible social and economic crisis. The Moscow press claims that although Russia is not planning any invasion of Ukraine, if Russian tanks roll in, crowds of Ukrainians will line the streets to greet them with flowers (Mk.ru, August 18).

On September 6, during his annual address to the Supreme Rada (national parliament), President Poroshenko praised the profound transformation of the Ukrainian military in the last two years under his leadership: Though armed with not the most modern weapons, it is currently much better organized and more capable to defend the nation. Poroshenko accused Russia of expansionism, of destroying the foundations of European security and international law, of being an "aggressor," and of harming Ukrainians. Poroshenko reiterated his unflinching ("like the Polar Star in the night sky") commitment to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Poroshenko promised to expand security cooperation with NATO member states, though acknowledging that not all in the West are ready to fully embrace Ukraine (Interfax, September 6). The Kremlin reaction was swift: "Putin does not plan to speak to Poroshenko, and the contacts between the two countries are minimal." According to Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, "for Putin to speak to Poroshenko, conditions must mature and homework be done" (Interfax, September 7).

Poroshenko and the Kremlin may be repeating previously stated rhetoric, and Poroshenko in particular may be appealing to the internal patriotic audience. But it is clear that the present Russian regime will not accept and is ready to do what it takes to prevent Ukraine or any other former Soviet country from integrating with NATO or any European or North Atlantic institutions. As part of Kavkaz 2016, on September 8, some 70 warplanes were simultaneously in the air over Crimea, simulating a massive air battle, supported by numerous S-300, S-400 and Pantsir-S anti-aircraft missile systems (Mil.ru, September 8).

The massive snap exercises last August were held in the absence of foreign military observers, but military diplomatic staff accredited in Moscow have been invited to take a special tour on September 9 to visit the Kavkaz 2016 exercise, see some simulated combat action, and receive a briefing (TASS, September 29). A Western military attache in Moscow, who asked not to disclose his identity, told this author on September 7: "We will not go, since we are invited to fly a Russian military transport jet from a Moscow military base to occupied Crimea to see the action and get a briefing, which is a blatant violation of Ukrainian sovereignty." A Western diplomat may possibly enter Crimea only with the consent of Kyiv and through a Ukrainian checkpoint. Apparently to supplement the possible mass boycott by Moscow-accredited military attaches of the trip to Kavkaz 2016, the Russian defense ministry has also invited over 100 foreign correspondents to join. As of this writing, it was not clear which Moscow-based military attaches, excluding the obvious ones from North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, will take the propaganda trip to Crimea this week, or what international news organizations will decide to defy Ukrainian sovereignty. Regardless, the principle of transparency and predictability of military activities in Europe, established as the Cold War ended, is now effectively defunct, and the threat of large-scale war is back.

Copyright notice:  2010 The Jamestown Foundation
Uzbekistan's Succession: Regime Seeks to Retain Legitimacy, Legacy and Stability

Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Alexander Kim Publication Date 8 September 2016 Citation / Document Symbol Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 144 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Uzbekistan's Succession: Regime Seeks to Retain Legitimacy, Legacy and Stability, 8 September 2016, Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 144, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57d2ce524.html [accessed 30 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

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The death of President Islam Karimov will be a serious test of Uzbekistan's political stability. But contrary to most gloomy predictions, the country's leadership was evidently much more prepared for a smooth transition upon Karimov's departure than had been expected.

Central Asia's most populous republic was initially following its constitutional procedures for the succession of the leader, where Nigmatilla Yuldashev-the heretofore chairman of the Senate-should have been named interim president (Uzmetronom, September 7), in accordance with Article 96 of the Constitution. Yuldashev was appointed to head the Senate only a year ago. His candidacy was then endorsed by the late Karimov, who reportedly suffered his first stroke in January 2015. A professional attorney, Yuldashev's selection to chair the Senate, as argued by Uzbek analyst Alisher Ilhamov, was meant to strengthen the informal system of checks and balances in Uzbekistan's politics, where the security bodies have tended to play a stronger role (CA-News, February 5, 2015).

But as reported by independent sources, Yuldashev withdrew his candidacy during a joint session of both chambers of the parliament in favor of Shavkat Mirziyaev, the current prime minister (Ferghana.ru., September 8). Legally, the country should now conduct presidential elections within three months, approximately at the beginning of December.

Prime Minister Mirziyaev, long discussed as the most likely heir to Karimov, presided over the late president's funeral ceremony and accepted condolences from other world leaders, thus further raising his own profile. Since Karimov's death, Mirziyaev has already held important strategic discussions with his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev (Lenta.ru, September 3). Separately, Mirziyaev also met with President Vladimir Putin, who came to Uzbekistan to honor Karimov's memory (Gazeta.ru, September 6).

It is not clear if Mirziyaev will be a truly independent figure; he is likely subject to informal influence from the late president's closest circle, which also includes Rustam Azimov (deputy prime minister) and Rustam Inoyatov (head of the Security Service) (Zakon.kz, September 8). These three men are believed to be sharing power at the top, forming a kind of collective rule (Carnegie.ru, August 31). Footage from Karimov's official funeral ceremony pointedly demonstrated that the trio is currently acting in full concordance: all three men were present and frequently seen standing side by side (A-news.org, September 4, 5). Inoyatov, a long-time serving head of the security service, is believed to retain informal control. Meanwhile, Azimov, Mirziyaev's more pro-Western colleague, could succeed to the position of prime minister.

The leadership in Uzbekistan has been planning for a gradual reduction of presidential powers and an increase of parliamentarian rule since 2011. In April of that year, new amendments were introduced to the Constitution, including reformed rules for nominating and approving a prime minister. The candidate for this position is now nominated by the political party with the most seats in the Legislative Chamber (lower house) of the Oliy Majlis (national parliament), which strengthens the role of the parliament and the political parties (Norma.uz, April 25, 2011). Mirziyaev was nominated prime minister by the Liberal Democratic Party on January 15, 2015, following these constitutional changes.

These reforms were introduced not so much to attain democratic rule (i.e. a system of checks and balances), but rather collective rule (whereby the prime minister is nominated and controlled by the political party, not the head of state). This guarantees that Uzbekistan's political system is protected from a future leader's potential usurpation of powers, and it is also hereditary-i.e., the collective will of a political party strictly follows the legacies (or families) of its first leaders.

Unlike in Kazakhstan, where the presidential family has been palpably strengthening its position over time, it is unclear whether the late Uzbekistani president seriously factored his own family members into the transition scenario. According to rumors, circulated in 2015, he had hoped that one of his daughters-Lola-would succeed him as president, and so he asked his closest circle to duly support and train her (Tengrinews, September 5, 2015). It seems that Karimov's successor will ultimately be decided by Mirziyaev, Asimov and Inoyatov.

The long-term stability of this ruling troika is difficult to predict. Clearly, its participants want to retain domestic political stability. But they are simultaneously seeking legitimacy and therefore largely following Uzbekistan's established legal procedures dictating the leadership transition. They are undoubtedly experiencing outside pressure, but they will want to maintain a status quo on international issues.

A more difficult task for the troika will be to maintain Karimov's legacy and particularly to preserve his family's high status. In photos of the late president's funeral, his family was remarkably represented solely by Karimov's widow and younger daughter, Lola. But Islam Karimov's surviving family is much larger than that and includes in-laws, nephews, cousins, etc. Nonetheless, it is doubtful that any of them will have any say in the make-up of the subsequent ruling regime. Still, the president's family owns many valuable assets in the country, and Lola's husband, Timur Tillyaev, is believed to control a large share of informal trade through the customs clearance companies. With Islam Karimov gone, there could arise new economic interests and motives to restructure the domestic financial sector, to privatize some state assets in a different way than ongoing privatization schemes envisage, or to adjust some of the current levers of economic control. And amidst such changing realities in the economic sphere, the new leadership will need to secure sufficient economic resources to be able to undertake populist policies.

Therefore, some changes may be expected in Uzbekistan's economic policies-particularly vis-a-vis Russia. Given his country's ongoing economic difficulties, the late President Karimov was already making more advances toward Russia. His spring 2016 visit to Moscow was unusually warm and full of promises to increase bilateral trade (RBC, April 26). As Mirziyaev mentioned in his recent meeting with Medvedev, Tashkent will "go through all the projects and documents [and] follow President Karimov's plans to work with [our] Russian friends" (Lenta.ru, September 3). Tighter relations with Russia could bring more economic benefits to the Central Asian republic-particularly, the legalization of its labor migrants, greater access to the Russian internal market, more investment in Uzbekistan by Russian energy giants Gazprom and Lukoil, as well as Moscow's support in controversial regional water usage questions (see EDM, May 17, 26). Russia's support will also legitimate and provide support domestically to the new regime. But would such a policy course truly be in line with President Karimov's legacy, which for the last quarter century aimed to "to secure independence and sovereignty by all means?" The answer to this question will continue to develop for months to come.

Copyright notice:  2010 The Jamestown Foundation
Random Deaths Increasingly Frequent, as Innocent Civilians Mistaken for Rebels in Dagestan

Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Mairbek Vatchagaev Publication Date 8 September 2016 Citation / Document Symbol Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 144 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Random Deaths Increasingly Frequent, as Innocent Civilians Mistaken for Rebels in Dagestan , 8 September 2016, Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 144, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57d2cea44.html [accessed 30 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

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At 10:30 PM, on August 5, in the Dagestani village of Karamakhi, police on patrol came under attack by unidentified individuals armed with grenade launchers. Three police officers and a local resident received injuries in the incident. "Unknown individuals fired shots at the police officers, who were checking motor vehicles. The attackers used automatic weapons and grenade launchers," officials said. Besides the injuries to the three police officers and a civilian, several trucks were damaged in the incident (Kavkazsky Uzel, August 6).

On the evening of August 10, unidentified individuals shot and killed Uibadulla Magomedov at his home in the village of Assab (Dagestan's Shamilsky district). The assailants used automatic weapons. The victim had not informed the authorities of any threats on his life prior to his death. Investigators are primarily considering victim's professional activities as the killers' motive. Magomedov, 60, was employed as the judge of Shamilsky district court since 2004 (Meduza.io, August 11).

The following day, government forces killed a rebel in the Dagestani village of Andi. At 5:30 AM, the authorities had introduced a counter-terrorist operation regime (Echo.msk.ru, August 11). Several homes where suspected insurgents may have been hiding were sealed off, but only one suspect was eventually killed. Notably, government forces had tried to arrest people in this village previously. Only in 2016, a counter-terrorist operation regime was introduced in the village several times, but during previous occasions, no one was caught.

In the city of Izberbash, on August 12, unidentified individuals fired shots at a police patrol, killing two law enforcement officers (Gazeta.ru, August 12).

In Dagestan's Magaramkent district, government forces caught in a shootout killed a rebel who was on the Russian federal wanted list. On the night of August 13, the federal security forces asked a man in the village of Tagirkent-Kazmalyar to show his documents. In response, the man fired shots and was killed by the police. The authorities informed later that the killed man was Alikber Aliskerov, who was wanted for several terrorism-related crimes (Gazeta.ru, August 14).

In Shamil district of Dagestan, two rebels were killed after firing shots at the police. The deadly exchange took place on August 23, around 9:45 PM, in one of the republic's mountain gorges. According to the police, the armed men fired their weapons after being asked by the police to show their IDs. Both suspects were killed in the shootout that followed. The police later claimed that the killed individuals were members of the so-called "Shamil" group of the armed Islamist underground movement (Kavkavsky Uzel, August 24). According to the police, they confiscated Kalashnikovs from both killed suspects (Interfax, August 23).

However, it later transpired that the killed individuals apparently had nothing to do with the rebels. According to locals, the police had actually killed two shepherds, but for some reason left weapons in their hands, as if to emphasize that they were insurgents. The two dead men, identified as brothers Gasangusein (20) and Nabi Gasanguseinov (17), had left home that day wearing light clothing typical for this time of year in Dagestan, but they were ultimately found dressed in warm khaki-colored jackets. The body of one of the shepherds was riddled with 11 bullets, while the other had 6. Moreover, the holes on their bodies and their vests did not coincide. No one in the three villages nearby heard sounds of shooting, which means that the security forces must have killed the two brothers using silencers. It appears that when the security services realized they killed the wrong men, they dressed the dead bodies in military jackets and left Kalashnikovs in their hands. The incident became widely known, due to the intervention of the well-known Russian journalist Maksim Shevchenko (Kavkazsky Uzel, August 24; Echo.msk.ru, September 1).

The official announcement that designated the shepherds as rebels angered the villagers in the three villages of Shamilsky district. They demanded an apology from the government and for the authorities to investigate the killing of the two innocent men. On August 26, residents of the village Goor-Khindakh issued an open letter in connection with the killing of the Gasanguseinov brothers. The villagers could retrieve the bodies of the brothers only after staging a protest in front of the police station. Dagestani investigators quickly realized that the two men were not rebels and thus handed over the two brothers' bodies to their relatives for burial. The bodies of rebels are usually not returned to their relatives, according to Russian laws (Kavkazsky Uzel, August 24; Echo.msk.ru, September 1).

The story of the killing of the Gasanguseinov brothers illustrates how the Russian security services manipulate facts and stage random victims to look like rebels after their deaths. News reports of police killing individuals after trying to check their documents are often hidden examples of such manipulation. Indeed, in nearly all such instances, the suspects somehow never seem able to kill law enforcement officials while shooting at them in close quarters at a police checkpoint. As such, the situation in Dagestan remains tense and disconcerting. And the evident absence of coordination between the civilian authorities and the government's Armed Forces regularly results in tragedies.

Copyright notice:  2010 The Jamestown Foundation
Liberia: Call for investigation after threat from presidential spokesman

Publisher Reporters Without Borders Publication Date 8 September 2016 Cite as Reporters Without Borders, Liberia: Call for investigation after threat from presidential spokesman, 8 September 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57d2d2974.html [accessed 30 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns the Liberian government's harassment of the media and journalists after a presidential spokesman threatened the representative of a journalists' association for calling for the reopening of two radio stations ahead of next year's presidential election.

Press Union of Liberia vice-president Jallah E. Grayfield has asked the police to investigate the threats he received from presidential press secretary Jerolinmek Piah after taking part in debate with information minister Isaac Jackson on Radio Prime 105.5 FM on 6 September.

During the programme, Grayfield criticized the government's recent closure of the two privately-owned radio stations as "undemocratic" and called for them to be reopened.

As he was leaving Radio Prime, Grayfield received several SMS messages from Piah accusing him of being a "disgrace" to his organization and warning that "you will feel what you have started."

Grayfield said he asked the police to investigate because he was concerned by what he regarded as a new government attack on the media.

"It is unacceptable that those who represent and defend the media are unable to freely express their opinion and are the target of threats," RSF said. "We call on the Liberian president's office to put a stop to this kind of behaviour, which discredits the entire administration."

RSF added: "At a time when Liberia's voters are preparing to make political choices next year, they have a right to hear all opinions, even those that are critical and irritate the current government."

The radio stations that upset the president's office are Voice FM and LIB 24. Voice FM is owned by well-known commentator Henry Costa, who produces his show from the United States, where he lives. LIB 24 is owned by a politician, would-be presidential candidate Benoni Urey, who also owns a TV channel, LIB 24 TV.

The Liberia Telecommunications Authority (LTA), which is responsible for assigning broadcast frequencies, closed Voice FM and seized its equipment on 4 July after obtaining the justice ministry's authorization to move against it on the grounds that it was using its frequency illegally.

Voice FM's management say that all their attempts to sort out the station's legal situation were rejected by the authorities, who were looking for a pretext to close it down. It remains closed.

LIB 24 was shut down on 13 August after a week of broadcasting the Henry Costa Show, which is very critical of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. Police and intelligence officials confiscated its broadcast equipment and sealed its premises on the official grounds of non-payment of tax arrears.

The head of the LTA, Henry Benson, said at a press conference: "The LTA was established by law to regulate and will continue to do so. We have effectively shut down a radio station, beginning with Voice FM 102.7 and more to come, because we have to show that there is law and order in Liberia."

Liberia is ranked 93rd out of 180 countries in RSF's 2016 World Press Freedom Index.
Young independent journalist jailed arbitrarily in Chechnya

Publisher Reporters Without Borders Publication Date 9 September 2016 Cite as Reporters Without Borders, Young independent journalist jailed arbitrarily in Chechnya, 9 September 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57d2d2f34.html [accessed 30 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

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The three-year jail sentence that Chechen journalist Zhalaudi Geriyev received on a charge of drug possession on 5 September was clearly a politically-motivated punishment for his reporting and, as such, was

the latest offensive in Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov's war against independent journalism.

A young contributor to the independent news website Kavkazsky Uzel, Geriyev was convicted by Chechnya's Shali district court almost solely on the basis of a forced confession that he retracted during the trial.

Sham trial

The prosecution claimed that Geriyev was arrested in possession of more than 150 grams of cannabis that he was about to smoke. But the case was riddled with contradictions and procedural violations.

The court systematically ignored defence testimony confirming that three plainclothesmen kidnapped Geriyev from a minibus that was taking him from a town in the interior of Chechnya to the capital, Grozny, from where he had planned to travel to Moscow for work-related reasons.

Geriyev told the court that his abductors took him to a wood where they beat him, tortured him and interrogated him. They then confiscated his backpack and took him to a cemetery on the outskirts of the village of Kurchaloi, where they finally extracted his "confession" and placed him under arrest.

"This trumped-up case against Zhalaudi Geriyev must be overturned," said Johann Bihr, the head of the Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk at Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

"His conviction is the latest example of the mounting harassment of the few remaining independent journalists in Chechnya. With Moscow's blessing, Ramzan Kadyrov's regime is plunging ever deeper into a spiral of repression. Russia, which itself shows little respect for media freedom, encourages the continuing existence of this black spot where it has become nearly impossible for journalists to operate."

Escalating harassment of critics

Independent journalism has been almost completely eradicated in Chechnya, an autonomous Russian republic that was traumatized by two bloody wars and has been ruled with an iron hand by Kadyrov since 2007.

The complete impunity with which well-known journalist and human rights defender Natalya Estemirova was murdered in 2009 reinforced the climate of fear that reigns in the region, one that RSF described in two successive reports in 2009 and 2011.

Any journalist nowadays daring to defy the official consensus and obligatory pro-government enthusiasm is warned or threatened, and pressure is put on relatives. Harassment of critics has intensified in the past year. The least comment on social networks is now liable to have dire consequences.

Public figures of all kinds are liable to be abducted. Ruslan Martagov, a political analyst critical of the human rights situation in Chechnya, "disappeared" from 1 to 3 September. Two academics were kidnapped in late March and early April only to reappear and make public "apologies." A third, tortured and then released, now leads the

life of a recluse.

The resident of a remote mountain village who, in a video posted online in May, complained about conditions in the village and the lack of interest by the authorities ended up apologizing to Kadyrov after a a target="_blank" href="https://lenta.ru/news/2016/05/20/sorry/">campaign of harassment in which his home was set on fire and neighbours branded him as an "enemy." A woman who had criticized Kadyrov on Whatsapp was forced by the president to deliver a humiliating "explanation" of her behaviour on state television in December 2015.

A new threshold was crossed when a minibus carrying Russian and foreign journalists and members of the Committee for the Prevention of Torture was attacked in neighbouring Ingushetia, just a few hundred metres from the Chechen border, on 9 March of this year. A score of masked men beat the passengers, forced them get out of the bus, and then set fire to it.

Kadyrov often describes independent journalists and members of Russia's liberal opposition as "traitors" and "enemies of the people."

Russia is ranked 148th out of 180 countries in RSF's 2016 World Press Freedom Index.
Martinsville handles Bedford North Lawrence to reach sectional final

Martinsville defeated Bedford North Lawrence on the back of strong defensive play and a huge game from the Artesians' offense.
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A 20-foot-tall sculpture has been installed at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in Abilene, just in time for the dedication of the third building on campus.

The sculpture, 'The Convergence of Healing Forces' is a 20-foot tension-compression structure that combines aspects of the Caduceus symbol  the ball, pole and spirals  with an orb-like geometric energy field imbued with additional symbols representing Abilene, health and healing.

The sculpture sits atop a smooth concrete base and will be illuminated at night.

The embedded symbols in the sculpture will represent aspects of Abilene as a community and will identify the campus as a health care institution, according to a news release from the university.

The Texas Tech Board of Regents established the Tech public art program in 1998 to enhance the overall experience and aesthetic culture at each campus by bringing in original public artworks created by leading artists. The program allows a campus to set aside 1 percent of the estimated total cost for its major construction projects to fund the artwork it displays. The Texas Tech University System public art collection currently includes more than 100 pieces and is ranked by 'Public Art Review' as one of the top 10 university public art collections in the nation, according to the release.

The newest building on campus, the Public Health building, will be dedicated Tuesday. A ribbon-cutting will be held at 4 p.m., followed by a reception and public tours at 4:30. The building is at 1650 Pine St.
Working as a team, Abilene weathered challenges better than most cities

Texas fared well but Abilene actually worked toward its future rather than just trying to stay afloat
While the West Texas town of Alpine became the latest associated with the phrase 'school shooting' Thursday, officials at Abilene schools took the opportunity to review security procedures and how they might handle a similar situation.

Both Wylie and Abilene school districts have coordinated efforts through the Abilene Police Department to train faculty and staff how to handle threats to student safety.

Reacting is the most important part, said Dan Cottner, the Abilene ISD coordinator for safety and security. He said a school setting, with children involved, puts a premium on where the incident occurs in relation to where students are located.

'Proximity is extremely important,' he said. 'If I look down the hall and there's something going on, I'm going to get out the door. If it's real close to me, I'm going to barricade, really, myself in the room.'

According to news reports, a 14-year-old female student at Alpine High shot and wounded another girl before shooting and killing herself.

The shooting took place in a bathroom of the high school, where the deceased student was found, according to reports.

In situations like that, Cottner said, there's really nothing that can be done to prevent a shooting incident from occurring. He said instead it's up to the individuals trained to handle the situation, through the CRASE protocol, who are most important.

CRASE, which stands for Civilian Response to Active Shooter Events, is built around the 'Avoid, Deny, Defend' strategy. The Abilene ISD website provides parents with details on the district's plans, including charts and videos, in the section 'Safety & Security Information' found under the 'For Parents' tab.

For students scared or sad about the Alpine shooting, local schools are providing counseling.

Tommy Vaughn, Wylie High School principal, said he doesn't expect many to be affected but the opportunity for students to talk about anything they want is available at any time.

'I was an assistant principal at Wylie High, my first go-round with the district, when Columbine happened,' Vaughn said. 'Unfortunately, today, when kids hear about this, they won't have as nearly the strong reaction we had back then, or even at the first anniversary, because there's been multiple occurrences.'

Twitter: @TimothyChippARN
As the presidential campaign moves into its final stretch, about 7 percent of voters (depending on which poll you read) say they're still undecided between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump  more than enough to swing the election either way.

After all the noise and drama of the last few months, what are these people waiting for?

They don't much like either candidate. They're struggling to decide which is the lesser of two evils. And they're not finding it an easy choice.

That's the lesson that bubbled up from a recent discussion with swing voters in Wisconsin conducted by pollster Peter D. Hart.

Hart convened a dozen swing voters, people who have voted for both Democrats and Republicans, in a Milwaukee suburb a few weeks ago.

The pollster conducts these 'focus groups' regularly as part of a project for the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

Four of the 12 said they leaned toward Trump. Four said they leaned toward Clinton. Four said they were completely undecided. Almost all said they were still open to persuasion by both candidates.

All said they'd been disappointed by the campaign; they said they wanted to hear about issues, not 'mudslinging.' But when asked what more they wanted to learn about each candidate, their questions were mostly about character: What are they like behind closed doors? Can we trust them with life-or-death decisions?

Both candidates have serious flaws, said Sheri LaValley, a 51-year-old compliance analyst who voted for President Barack Obama.

'Hillary with her emails, I just don't trust her. Trump, the way he acts. Every day you turn on the TV, and I just shake my head,' she said.

She said she was leaning toward Trump  with a condition: 'I think he would be an awesome candidate if he could get his personality under control.'

Several said they found the prospect of Trump as commander in chief worrisome. 'He's just such a wild cannon,' said Barbara Kass, 62, a retired airline employee who is completely undecided.

'I'd like to see Trump 2.0,' said David Locher, 34, a supervisor for the Milwaukee rapid transit system, also undecided. 'If Trump doesn't show something more coherent  I probably could go for Hillary, just for fear of things becoming a mess worldwide.'

Asked to describe the Republican nominee as a member of their family, the most popular title was 'crazy uncle,' and, in one case, 'drunk uncle.'

Clinton has a different problem  but one that appears just as serious.

Although most of the swing voters gave the Democratic nominee high marks for experience and competence, they described her as chilly, distant, untrustworthy and dishonest.

'She's a smart woman with a lot of experience but  you can't trust her,' said Beth Gramling, 50, a payroll analyst.

Nevertheless, Gramling said, she was leaning toward Clinton.

It was clear that the controversy over Clinton's private email system isn't solely a media fixation; it has resonated among ordinary voters, too. Eight of the 12 voters said they were unhappy about Clinton's insistence that her emails did not contain classified material.

'It's a lie,' said Dara Schneider, 47, a personnel recruiter.

Asked to describe the Democratic nominee as a member of their family, the most frequent choice was 'stepmother'  a loveless relationship.

When Hart asked how the voters would finally make up their minds, he was met with mostly blank looks. 'It's going to have to be the debates,' Locher said.

What can Trump do to win their votes? 'Tone it down,' Schneider said.

What can Clinton do? 'Take down the mask and show she's human,' Gramling said.

It's obviously not easy to rebuild trust amid the noise of a campaign, but these voters said they were willing to give the candidate another chance if she makes an effort to be 'more transparent' (their words) and to connect with ordinary people.

'A lot of voters know they do not want Donald Trump as president, but they need to know that they can live with Hillary Clinton for the next four years,' Hart wrote in a summary of the session for reporters. 'The hurdle they face is to find reassurance that they can trust her and that she will identify with them and their day-to-day challenges.'

As the polls narrow, there's still room for Trump to win  and room, as well, for Clinton to lose.

Email Doyle McManus, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, at doyle.mcmanus@latimes.com.
LIKES

1. Abilene High vs. Cooper. It just doesn't get any better, regardless of who wins.

2. Bring on the NFL. Thursday night's game between the two teams that played in February's Super Bowl, Denver and Carolina, was pretty darn good. Strange to see Peyton Manning in a suit (orange tie, no less) but life goes on. Right, Tom Brady? Cowboys fans have one more day to wait to see if rookies Dak Prescott and Ezekiel Elliott can handle the New York Giants in Arlington.

3. Productive meeting. Though a national issue, good relationships between police and community start at the local level. A meeting Thursday evening allowed the public and police to meet face to face, ask questions and be pro-active rather than reactive in establishing common ground. We've got it good here but we have to keep working to keep it that way.

4. Fair but hardly square. The Expo Center grounds are alive with the sights, sounds and smells of the annual fair. Whether you're trying to win a blue ribbon or a midway prize, catch a thrill on a ride or a chill with fresh-squeezed lemonade, or take a break from 24/7 TV campaign coverage, check out the fair. And while you are there, take a look around the facilities. A $55 million bond election is coming up, asking Taylor County residents to finance Expo Center upgrades. See for yourself if that would be money well spent.

5. Speaking of the fair ... a shout-out to Pioneer Drive Baptist Church, which fed carnival workers and Expo Center employees Tuesday. Not just PB&J sandwiches and chips but plates loaded with barbecue, and pie for dessert. A great idea to acknowledge the hard work that goes on at the fair and to welcome visitors to our town. Wonder if there were any leftovers ...

6. No need to ask, Doctor who? Wow. One of the most read stories in the newspaper this week was about Dr. Paul Maslanka, who retired as an Abilene pediatrician after 37 years of practice here. He was part of the Abilene Children's Medical Association, and came to Abilene to work with the late Dr. Herman Schaffer, another longtime and respected physician, when the city was short on pediatricians. It's apparent that he was as respected by his peers and those who sought his service over many years. Thank you for being a cornerstone of our medical community, doc.

7. Day off. Hope you enjoyed Labor Day and didn't have to labor. Or go into labor. Unless you wanted to. The pace already has picked up toward year's end. Hang on tight and if you're a voter  and we hope you are  hang in there. President Trumpton will be elected soon enough.

8. Showing us the money. The Texas Commission on the Arts awarded more than $160,000 to a half-dozen local arts organizations, more than doubling what was allocated in 2015. Money that will be well spent, we say.

9. Chili folks. Once again, people took time and, admittedly, have fun cooking to benefit Ben Richey Boys Ranch. Few fund-raising events have last so long. Probably because these folks have a heart for it. And enjoy firing up grill.

DISLIKES

1. Hot and humid. It reminds us of two presidential candidates ...

MOURNING

1. Deputy's death. Sad news out of Eastland County, where 73-year-old deputy Kenneth Maltby was killed in a head-on collision while on duty. He had been a member of that county's sheriff's office since May 2014, and previously worked in Comanche and Stephenville. A tight community, law enforcement departments across the area joined to mourn the loss of one of their own. And one of our own.
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This just in...
Acting president of the Cambodia National Rescue Party Kem Sokha (c) speaks at CNRP headquarters in Phnom Penh, Sept. 9, 2016.

On the day a Cambodian court sentenced him to five months in prison, embattled opposition leader Kem Sokha accused Prime Minister Hun Sens government of perpetrating a dangerous double standard that amounts to an attack on democracy.

The ruling party applies a double standard with the opposition party members, the Cambodia National Rescue Party acting president said in an exclusive live interview with RFA-TV Khmer Service that aired on Friday.

The case is not just an attack on an opposition politician, he said, but is an attempt to undermine democracy in a country that has been struggling to implement it for the 30 years Hun Sen and the Cambodian Peoples Party (CPP) have ruled the country.

Not only does this affect the legitimacy of the election, but it is an attack on democracy, Kem Sokha told RFA in his first interview since he sought refuge in the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) headquarters in May when heavily armed police attempted to arrest him.

Today, I am in trouble, he said. But I will stand up and face it bravely as I am fighting for justice and democracy in the country so the people of Cambodia can have an opportunity to experience peace and safety.

He criticized the government for prosecuting him on charges that he failed to appear as a witness in a pair of cases related to his alleged affair with a young hairdresser.

I have never heard of even a single case where a witness was prosecuted for not showing up in court after he has submitted the reasons for his no-show, he told RFA.

After a one-hour trial Friday morning Phnom Penh Municipal Court Judge Keo Mony sentenced Kem Sokha to five months in prison and an 800,000- riel (U.S. $2,000) fine for failing to appear.

Kem Sokhas legal team said it would appeal the verdict.

He was tried in absentia as he and his legal team boycotted the trial to protest the courts refusal to recognize his legislative immunity.

Under normal circumstances it takes the approval of two-thirds of the national assembly to lift a lawmakers immunity, but Kem Sokhas was revoked under a clause in the Cambodian constitution that allows immunity to be lifted if a lawmaker is caught committing a crime red-handed.

Parliamentary immunity is always fully enjoyed by the lawmakers of the ruling party, he told RFA. That is not the case when it comes to opposition party lawmakers. Our immunity is always taken for granted and arbitrarily abused by the ruling party.

Deputy prosecutor Sieng Sok told Judge Mony that what matters is Kem Sokhas failure to show up after the court issued summonses on May 4 and May 17.

Punish according to the law

Kem Sokha refused to appear in court. This is a crime according to Article 538 of the Criminal Code, he said. The prosecutor maintains the charge against Kem Sokha. Please punish Kem Sokha according to the law.

Kem Sokha faces a soliciting prostitution charge in relation to his alleged affair with Khom Chandaraty, a young hairdresser also known as Srey Mom. He also faces a defamation suit filed by Khom Chandaraty.

The government ramped up its legal pursuit of Kem Sokha after a series of tapped telephone conversations was leaked online in which he appears to talk to a mistress who was later identified as Khom Chandaraty.

While Khom Chandaraty initially denied that it was her voice on the recordings and sought legal counsel from the rights group ADHOC, but she later recanted.

Under questioning by the court over the prostitution charges recommended by the anti-terrorism police, she admitted to having had an affair with Kem Sokha.

Its unclear just where the initial cases stand, but the court has pressed ahead with Kem Sokhas prosecution for his failure to appear as a witness. Also unclear is the involvement of the anti-terror police.

While the court is pushing ahead, Kem Sokhas legal team and the CNRP contend that the party leader is not shirking his legal responsibility, as numerous petitions to the court have been filed explaining why he is immune from prosecution in these cases.

The CNRP argues that the ruling partys interpretation of the red handed clause is illegal, and that the ruling party is trying to get around its inability to muster the votes to suspend Kem Sokhas immunity.

The ruling Cambodian Peoples Party holds 68 seats in the country's 123-seat National Assembly, making it impossible to get the necessary two-thirds majority needed to suspend immunity if all the lawmakers vote the party line.

Kem Sokhas attorneys also contend that the court violated legal procedures by speeding up the legal process. The Cambodian Supreme Court has yet to rule on an appeal filed earlier this week calling for the case to be tossed out.

A tool of the CPP

The court fight highlights a complaint by the CNRP and many critics inside and outside Cambodia who say that Prime Minister Hun Sen and the CPP are using the courts to bludgeon his opponents.

"This conviction of Kem Sokha on trumped-up charges is a political farce. It's all part of Hun Sen's scorched earth plan to destroy the political opposition and run roughshod over the rights of those who dare criticize his government, said Phil Robertson, a deputy director of Human Rights Watch.

The human rights of all Cambodians are at risk from this dangerous nexus between an increasingly dictatorial government, politically controlled security forces, and a judicial system that has abandoned all pretense of fair trial procedures, he added.

At CNRP headquarters on Friday morning, Kem Sokha, flanked by fellow lawmakers, delivered a scripted 10-minute speech to a few hundred supporters, according to local media reports.

I believe that the national and international opinion is that the use of the judicial system to attack methe acting leader of the CNRP, the biggest political competitor of the ruling party todayis in order to stop me from participating in upcoming elections, Kem Sokha said, according to the reports.

The CNRP will decide at its party congress next year whether it will boycott the upcoming elections, he told RFA. Local elections in Cambodia are scheduled for 2017 and national elections for the following year.

The CNRP issued a statement after the verdict accusing the government of misconduct, saying among other things that the court action was based on an unlawfully obtained audio tape, that the court has yet to summon anyone in the case other than Kem Sokha, that he legally responded to the courts orders, and that the court was pressured by the CPP to reach its conclusion.

Ministry of Justice spokesperson Kim Santepheap dismissed those complaints in a Facebook post.

The court procedure this morning is the legitimate role and duty of the court as an institution. No one can interfere with its authority, he posted. We all know that this case is a personal issue and a legal issue, not a political one.

An arresting question

While Kem Sokha has been able to avoid arrest for months, that might become more difficult following his conviction.

Chief attorney for the AMRIN Law and Consultants Group and executive director of the legal NGO Cambodian Defenders Project Sam Oeun Sok told RFA that once the court judgment comes into effect, Kem Sokha cannot avoid arrest.

They can arrest him immediately with the court order, he said. But in general, for such a minor offense, they never issue such an order. They wait until the appeal is over.

Reported and translated by RFAs Khmer Service. Written in English by Brooks Boliek.
Massive flooding in North Korea has left potato fields in the countrys northern provinces under water, with crops left to rot as farmers wait under government orders to begin harvesting this weekend, North Korean sources say.



Heavy rains beginning in late July have washed out large areas of Yanggang and North Hamgyong provinces along the Tumen River bordering China, submerging farms and destroying bridges and roads, sources in the region told RFAs Korean Service this week.



The area has still not recovered, one source said in Yanggang province told RFA, speaking on condition of anonymity.



In addition, the land is too muddy for water to drain, making it impossible to pick potatoes, the source said.



Model potato farms in Taehongdan and Samjiyon counties suffered the heaviest damage, he said.



Central government authorities have told farmers in Yanggang to begin autumn harvesting on Sept. 10, and farmers are in a rush to start, but with heavy rains ending only on Sept. 5, the fields are in no condition to allow the work to be done, he said.



Farmers cultivating individual paddies outside the system of collective farms have already begun picking vegetables from their fields, though, the source said.



Not enough help



In North Hamgyong province, also bordering China, Yeonsan and Musan countiesboth known for producing potatoeshave also been ordered to begin their harvest on Sept. 10, a source in the province told RFA.



However, farmers are concerned that the land will not dry up in time for the work to begin, he said.



Potatoes will rot if they are picked while still wet, the source said.



Individual farmers can briefly keep harvested potatoes in yards to allow moisture to evaporate before they are stored, but collective farms dont have the facilities to dry potatoes like this on the scale they would require, he said.



Storm-damaged roads and bridges are also unavailable now to transport harvested crops, the source said, adding that students and other residents who would normally help with the harvest have now been assigned other work.



They are all busy repairing damage from the floods," he said.



This will make it difficult to anticipate how many people will be available to help with the harvest."



Reported by Sunghui Moon. Translated by Jackie Yoo. Written in English by Richard Finney.




A South Korean official points to a map showing the epicenter seismic waves in North Korea, at the Korea Meteorological Administration in Seoul, Sept. 9, 2016.

UPDATED at 10:30 A.M. EST on 2016-09-09

North Korea announced on Friday it has conducted its fifth nuclear test, its largest to date, the official KCNA news agency said.

Washington quickly condemned the blast "in the strongest possible terms as a grave threat to regional security and to international peace and stability," the White House said in a statement released Friday morning.

"To be clear, the United States does not, and never will, accept North Korea as a nuclear state," U.S. President Barack Obama said in the Friday statement, calling the test a "flagrant violation of multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions."

"Today's test, North Korea's second this year, follows an unprecedented campaign of ballistic missile launches, which North Korea claims are intended to serve as delivery vehicles for nuclear weapons targeting the United States and our allies, the Republic of Korea and Japan," Obama said.

North Korea's actions have instead "served to isolate and impoverish its people through its relentless pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile capabilities," Obama said.

South Korea also condemned the test, calling it a "dangerous provocation" that would draw tighter sanctions on leader Kim Jong Un's isolated regime.

"North Korea conducted the fifth nuclear test in Punggye-ri, North Hamgyong Province," South Korea's semi-official Yonhap News agency quoted National Security Adviser Cho Tae-yong as saying in Seoul.

"Pyongyang has been making dangerous provocations, and has only focused on developing nuclear weapons and missiles. They must realize they will get nothing from such efforts," the agency quoted Cho as saying.

The test was indicated by a magnitude 5 earthquake detected near North Korea's Punggye-ri nuclear site in the country's northeastern region.

The nuclear test was the country's fifth in the past decade and the third under Kim Jong Un, who has drawn an ever tightening web of United Nations sanctions on his tiny economy, as well as unilateral punitive trade and financial measures by the United States, Japan and South Korea.

The North's previous nuclear tests were held in 2006, 2009, 2013, and January of this year.

Some analysts are estimating that the force of Friday's blast was "more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima," the Reuters news agency said on Friday.

'Fanatical recklessness'

The New York Times reported from Seoul that President Park Geun-hye cut short a visit to Laos for a regional summit and condemned the test as showing the fanatical recklessness of the Kim Jong Un regime.

The only thing the Kim Jong Un regime will get from this nuclear test will be more intensified sanctions from the international community and deeper isolation, the newspaper quoted Park as saying. This kind of provocation will only quicken its eventual self-destruction."

The Times quoted a statement from Ned Price, a U.S. National Security Council spokesman, as saying: We are aware of seismic activity on the Korean Peninsula in the vicinity of a known North Korean nuclear test site.

We are monitoring and continuing to assess the situation in close coordination with our regional partners.

Friday's nuclear test came hours after President Barack Obama wrapped up the final Asian tour of his presidency, a pair of summits in China and Laos that included talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping that underscored stark differences on how to deal with regional issues between Washington and Beijing, North Korea's only ally.



North Korea has unnerved its neighbors repeatedly this year with missile tests. The latest a launch of three ballistic missiles into waters between the Korean Peninsula and Japan has drawn a warning from the U.N. Security Council that the regime would face more sanctions if it persisted with the missile firings.
North Koreans watch a big screen TV in front of the railway station in Pyongyang, showing television presenter Ri Chun Hee announcing that the country successfully tested a nuclear warhead, Sept. 9, 2016.

As a growing number of countries and organizations condemned North Koreas launch of its fifth and largest nuclear test to date on Friday, some foreign affairs experts who follow the nation suggested that the regime of Kim Jong Un will continue pursuing its nuclear weapons program.

North Korea conducted the test on the 68th anniversary of its founding near its Punggye-ri nuclear site in North Hamgyong province in the countrys northeastern region, where the detonation triggered a 5.3-magnitude earthquake. Later, it reported that it had successfully tested a nuclear warhead that could be mounted on a missile.

The nuclear test was the countrys fifth in the past decade and the third under Kim Jong Un, who came to power in 2012 and has sought to build up the countrys nuclear capabilities. The North's previous nuclear tests were conducted in 2006, 2009, 2013, and January of this year.

The test brought immediate condemnation by the United States, South Korea, and the United Nations, which have sought to contain North Korea but have largely failed to rein in the rogue regime and its continual violations of its obligations under U.N. Security Council resolutions.

Pakistan, France, and Yukiya Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, also publicly condemned the test on Friday.

U.S. President Barack Obama, who just returned from meetings of the Group of 20 major economies and an East Asia Summit in Asia, issued a statement calling the test a flagrant violation of multiple UN Security Council Resolutions, saying that his counterparts were united in a call for North Korea to return to a path of denuclearization.

During the G-20 meeting in Hangzhou, China, on Monday, North Korea fired three ballistic missiles into the sea off its east coast.

Obama also said that he, South Korean President Park Geun-hye, and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will work together to take additional significant steps, including new sanctions, to show Pyongyang that there are consequences to its actions.

Later, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry issued a statement saying that the U.S. and nations around the world condemned the nuclear test as a grave threat to regional security and to international peace and security.

This action is as destabilizing as it is unlawful, flagrantly violating multiple U.N. Security Council Resolutions and the DPRKs own commitments, Kerrys statement said, referring to North Korea by its full name the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea.

It went on to say the U.S. is prepared to take whatever measures are necessary to ensure our alliances continue to defend against this growing threat to international peace and security.

Unwillingness to negotiate

At the behest of the U.S., South Korea, and Japan, the 15-member U.N. Security Council discussed the test at a closed-door meeting on Friday to determine whether it should impose additional sanctions, the Associated Press reported.

In March, the Security Council handed tougher sanctions to North Korea than it has in the past after Pyongyang conducted a nuclear test and rocket launch earlier this year, defying a ban on nuclear-related activity.

At this point, Kim Jong Un seems to have no willingness to negotiate with the U.S. or South Korea, said Andrei Lankov, an expert on North Korea who writes commentaries for Radio Free Asia.

North Koreas goal is to develop several dozens of nuclear warheads to be tipped onto ICBMs [intercontinental ballistic missiles], SLBMS [submarine-launched ballistic missiles], and other long-range ballistic missiles to attack the U.S. continent, Lankov said.

Only after North Korea achieves its goal can it open up some possibility to resume negotiations with the U.S., he told RFAs Korean Service. But even then, North Koreas purpose of negotiation is not to achieve denuclearization, but nuclear arms control.

Lankov raised doubts that further sanctions would deter the regime from its nuclear buildup or actually harm it financially. The sanctions imposed by the U.N. early this year have had no tangible effect yet, and little evidence exists that they have lowered residents living standards, he said.

Whatever sanctions North Korea might be put under, the Kim Jong Un regime will never give up its nuclear programs, he said. Those most directly hit by the sanctions are ordinary North Korean residents, not the elites.

Of course, the North Korean leadership doesnt like the sufferings of its people caused by the sanctions, but they dont think their suffering is as important as the survival of North Koreas socialist system as well as their continued grip on power, he said.

South Korean soldiers watch a television broadcast reporting on North Korea's latest nuclear test, at a railway station in Seoul, Sept. 9, 2016. AFP A brutal regimes fantasy

David Straub, former chief of the Korea and Japan desks at the U.S. State Department during the 2000s, said the latest test is an indication that North Korea intends for its nuclear program to strengthen the regime at home and intimidate its foreign adversaries abroad.

Pyongyang believes that if it can credibly threaten the United States with nuclear attack, sooner or later Washington will engage it in a diplomatic process that will eventually result in the end of the U.S.-South Korea alliance and pave the way for Pyongyang to unify the Korean Peninsula on its terms, he said.

This is the fantasy of an isolated, brutal regime desperate to get out of the domestic political and strategic box that it is in, but it is precisely the reason that Pyongyang is pressing as fast as it can with nuclear and missile development and even lying to exaggerate its capabilities, he said.

He called on the U.S. and South Korea to support even tougher measures to make North Korean leaders realize that nuclear weapons will not help them, including additional economic and financial sanctions, human rights sanctions, counter-proliferation measures, diplomatic condemnation, and defensive military efforts.

Ultimately, the pressures must become so great that either the North Korean leaders change their strategy, or their compatriots among the elite change the leaders themselves, he said. This may well take considerable time, but there is no viable alternative.

U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter on Friday called for further pressure on North Korea, but said that China also bears responsibility for tackling the problem, Agence France-Presse reported.

Condemnation by China

China also condemned North Korea for conducting the nuclear test and criticized its ally for carrying it out with "disregard" for international objections, according to a government statement.

Chinas Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters Friday that the country will formally and strongly protest North Korea's nuclear test with Pyongyang's ambassador in Beijing, AP reported.

China hesitated before throwing its support behind U.N. sanctions against the country earlier this year and currently opposes the planned deployment by the U.S. and South Korea of an advanced anti-ballistic missile system known as Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD).

Lankov pointed out that although China applied very strict U.N. sanctions against North Korea from March to August this year, its outlook toward Pyongyang changed once the decision to deploy THAAD was announced. But he said the latest nuclear test will force it to do another about-face.

There appeared to be a sign of China easing its attitude toward North Korea following Seouls decision, he said. Given North Koreas fifth nuclear test, however, Beijing, though dissatisfied with Seouls THAAD decision, will most likely harden its attitude toward Pyongyang again.

Citizens are outraged

Meanwhile, ordinary citizens who live in China close to North Korea have expressed outrage about the countrys latest nuclear test, the blast from which is said to have been more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, according to analysts cited by Reuters news agency.

We feel disgusted about the nuclear test because it is so close to us, said a resident of Yanji in northeast Chinas Jilin province.

Yanji is the seat of Chinas Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, where a large number of ethnic Koreans reside, and serves as a transport and trade hub between China and North Korea.

I hope the Chinese government stands up and at least allows us to protest if it cant stop them from conducting the test, the Jilin resident told RFA. We feel that the Chinese government always gives in to North Korea on many other issues.

A woman surnamed Wang, who lives in Jilins Changbai county, said residents there are worried that nuclear fallout from the blast has polluted water sources.

Authorities in the area are supposedly doing radiation tests, but the local government hasnt publicly said anything yet, she said.

Anyway, they said it [the blast] was an earthquake caused by a nuclear test in North Korea, she told RFA. It didnt impact us, but we dont know if our water got polluted.

A public relations official from Yanji confirmed that authorities have sent a team to monitor radiation, but that the earthquake caused by the blast hasnt appeared to have caused any damage such as road cracks.

Japans NHK news agency said the countrys Nuclear Regulation Authority is also examining radiation levels at monitoring stations across the country.



Reported by Changsop Pyon for RFAs Korean Service, and by RFAs Mandarin and Cantonese services. Translated by RFAs Korean, Mandarin, and Cantonese services. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
A Tibetan monk sentenced to five years in prison after being linked to a fatal self-immolation protest in southwestern Chinas Sichuan province has been freed by authorities a year before his term was due to end, according to a local source.



Ludrub, a monk of Gyalrong Tsodun Kirti monastery in Ngaba (in Chinese, Aba) prefectures Barkham (Maerkang) county, was released on Sept. 2 and returned home the following day, a Tibetan living in the area told RFAs Tibetan Service.



Many of his friends from the monastery lined the road to welcome him on his return home, RFAs source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.



Ludrub is believed to have been freed early because of his good conduct while in detention, the source said.



Ludrub had been linked by authorities to the July 2012 self-immolation of another monk, 18-year-old Lobsang Lodzin, who had set himself ablaze to protest Chinese rule in Tibetan areas, with several other monks also later detained and charged.



While burning, Lodzinwho sources described as one of the top students in his classwalked a short distance toward local government offices, shouting slogans before he collapsed, sources said in earlier reports.



Senior monks later placed his body in a nearby river to be carried downstream, sources said.



Among those later charged with supporting Lodzin in his protest, oneSangye Gyaltsen-was sentenced to two years and was released in 2014, RFAs source said.



Another, Thargyal, was held in custody for three years and then released in 2015, he said.



Two othersGendun Yarphel and Kelsang Gyatsowere sentenced to six years and 10 years respectively, and are still serving their terms.



Sporadic demonstrations challenging Beijings rule have continued in Tibetan-populated areas of China since widespread protests swept the region in 2008.



A total of 145 Tibetans living in China have now set themselves ablaze in self-immolations since the wave of fiery protests began in 2009, with most protests featuring calls for Tibetan freedom and the Dalai Lamas return from India, where he has lived since escaping Tibet during a failed national uprising in 1959.



Reported by Lhuboom for RFAs Tibetan Service. Translated by Karma Dorjee. Written in English by Richard Finney.


Police in southwestern Chinas Sichuan province have detained a second monk living at Thangkor Sockstang monastery, taking him into custody after threatening his roommates at gunpoint and forcing one of them to the ground, according to a local source.



Lobsang Sherab, aged about 35 and a worker in the store of the monastery in Dzoege (in Chinese, Ruoergai) county, was seized at night on Aug. 24, the same day on which monastery treasurer Gendun Drakpa was also detained, a Tibetan living in the area told RFAs Tibetan Service.



Sherab and his roommates thought at first that the Chinese police officers entering their quarters had come to rob them, and shouted for help, RFAs source said.



But the security personnel pointed guns at them and told them to keep still, the source said, adding, One monk who resisted was forced down by five officers and was injured in the struggle.



Lobsang Sherab was then shoved into a vehicle and driven away without even being allowed to put on his clothes, he said.

Both Sherab and Drakpa have now been missing for 17 days, with no word on their whereabouts given to family or friends, the source said. There was some information that they were taken away towards [provincial capital] Chengdu, but no details are available."



"Their family members and other relatives are worried about their condition, but are helpless."



Reported by Kunsang Tenzin for RFAs Tibetan Service. Translated by Karma Dorjee. Written by Richard Finney.




KABUL -- Ahmad Masud was 12 years old when his father, the legendary anti-Taliban military commander known as the "Lion of Panjshir," was killed by two Al-Qaeda suicide bombers in northern Afghanistan on September 9, 2001.

The assassination of Ahmad Shah Masud, who also fought for a decade against Soviet invaders, removed a natural U.S. ally from Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. Two days later, Al-Qaeda carried out the September 11 terrorist attacks against the United States.

The tumultuous events thrust the young Masud into the public eye -- making his first public appearance at his father's funeral in the Panjshir Valley north of Kabul, a historic event attended by hundreds of thousands of the slain ethnic-Tajik commander's supporters.

Standing beside his father's coffin with poise and dignity in one of the few parts of Afghanistan that was not under Taliban control at the time, the 12-year-old Masud provoked an outburst of hysterical grieving by announcing: "I want to follow in my father's footsteps. I want to secure our country's independence. I want to be my father's successor."

Since then, alongside his father's status as an iconic national hero, the young Masud has been revered by many Afghans who see him as a symbol of hope for Afghanistan's future.

Today, 15 years later, he says he remains committed to his vow of making his father's dreams become reality -- to make Afghanistan a "united and free country" with leaders chosen by the Afghan people through democratic elections.

Now 27, Masud has nearly completed a degree in international relations at King's College London.

But he returns to Afghanistan each year to be with his family as the country commemorates Masud Day, a national holiday, on September 9 that launches Martyrs Week, honoring Afghan victims of more than three decades of war.

Criticism

Ahmad Masud refers to his father as "the Martyr," telling RFE/RL that at least one of the assassinated commander's dreams for Afghanistan is starting to come true.

"The elections that were held in the past several years -- regardless of their results, just the fact that there were elections -- that's one of the key factors of a democracy, and it demonstrates that one of the wishes of the Martyr is slowly coming true," he told RFE/RL.

But Ahmad is critical of the failure of Afghanistan's government to safeguard people from militant attacks, ethnic strife, and sectarian violence or to create the economic opportunities needed to prevent young Afghans from fleeing the country.

"Without any doubt, these circumstances and the emigration are frustrating," he told RFE/RL.

"Our young generation considers the situation so dire that they do all they can to leave," he said. "It's really frustrating and disturbing."

Masud said he thinks refugees who flee Afghanistan "still love their country."

But he says the government must do more to "fight insecurity and work to bring security and stability" if it is going to end an exodus that already has been joined by millions of Afghan refugees.

"I hope the government comes up with a plan to create jobs," he told RFE/RL. "One of the important reasons for the emigration is that people are looking for a better life, a more stable future. It all goes back to the issue of employment and security."

As for himself, Masud says he will return to Afghanistan permanently after he completes his education in London.

He says the reason for his university studies is to "come back" and fulfill the vow he made at his father's funeral.

He insists that he is "completely devoted" to Afghanistan and has no property outside of the country.

Asked about his political ambitions, Masud said he would take on the duties of public office "if it is the will of the Afghan people."

If he failed to be elected, Masud said, he would still stay in Afghanistan and work as a teacher.

Written by Ron Synovitz with reporting by RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan correspondent Hamid Mohmand in Kabul
Russia has deployed cruise missiles, multiple rocket launchers, and its air-defense missile system in the Crimean Peninsula during the final stage of large-scale military exercises.

Journalists were invited on September 9 to a firing range at the Black Sea coast to display drills that involved paratroopers, tanks, cruise missiles launched from a submarine, and the S-400 air-defense missile system, which Moscow has touted as state-of-the art weapons.

The Kavkaz-2016 drills began this week across southern Russia and Crimea, involving more than 120,000 troops.

Meanwhile, the Defense Ministry was quoted as saying that Russia has formed a "self-sufficient military group" in Crimea capable of repelling attempts to seize the peninsula.

Russia illegally annexed the peninsula from Ukraine in March 2014 and since then has sent troops and heavy weaponry there.

Based on reporting by AP, Reuters, TASS, and Interfax
Mohammad Nayeb-Zehi was among the hundreds of worshippers who gathered on September 30 at the Great Mosalla, a religious site in Iran's southeastern city of Zahedan, for Friday Prayers.

Just hours later, the 16-year-old's family learned he was dead.

Nayeb-Zehi was among the scores of people gunned down by security forces in a brutal crackdown following anti-government protests in Zahedan, the provincial capital of Sistan-Baluchistan Province, which is home to the country's Baluch minority.

"He was a simple laborer and not political," Nayeb-Zehi's brother, Ahmad, told RFE/RL's Radio Farda in a telephone interview from Zahedan, adding that his sibling had been shot in the heart. "We're in pain, and we cannot accept it."

The crackdown in Zahedan came amid weeks-long nationwide protests triggered by the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old who died on September 16, days after she was detained by Iran's morality police.

In Sistan-Baluchistan, public anger at the authorities escalated amid reports that a 15-year-old Baluch girl had been raped by a police official in the province's southern port city of Chabahar.

The violence erupted soon after protesters gathered outside a police station near the central mosque in Zahedan. Members of the crowd chanted anti-government slogans, and some threw rocks. Security forces responded with deadly force by firing on the crowd from the station, according to witnesses.

Security forces also raided the central mosque and the nearby Great Mosalla and opened fire on worshippers using live ammunition, rights groups said, adding that many were shot in the head, heart, neck, or torso, revealing a clear intent to kill or seriously wound.

At least 94 people were killed and 350 wounded on that day, referred to as "Bloody Friday," according to the U.S.-based Iran Human Rights Documentation Center. At least 13 minors were among those killed, including Nayeb-Zehi.

The victims were overwhelmingly Baluch -- a mostly Sunni ethnic group that has long faced disproportionate discrimination at the hands of the Iranian authorities.

"He was martyred inside the Mosalla while holding his prayer mat," said Ahmad Nayeb-Zehi.

Nayeb-Zehi's family first visited Zahedan's Khatam al-Anbia hospital, hoping he was among the wounded. They later found his body in a seminary at the Great Mosalla.

"We entered a room there and saw about 10 bodies," said Ahmad Nayeb-Zehi. "[Mohammad] was among them."

He said the authorities prevented the family from filming the scene. "I told them this has to be documented, it has to be published by international media," he said, adding that footage later emerged on social media showing the gruesome scene at the seminary.

The family refused to send Nayeb-Zehi's body to the morgue. Instead, his body lay in the living room for around 24 hours before he was buried.

"We said he was martyred and there was no need for an autopsy," said Ahmad Nayeb-Zehi.

The authorities accused Jaish al-Adl, a Sunni militant group, of attacking the police station. The group is recognized as a terrorist organization by both Iran and the United States and has previously claimed deadly attacks in Sistan-Baluchistan targeting Iranian security forces.

But local and independent sources have rejected the authorities' claims.

The authorities have also reported a much lower number of fatalities, announcing that only 19 people, including several members of the security forces, were killed.

Ahmad Nayeb-Zehi said the authorities were "rubbing salt into the wounds of the people" by claiming "terrorists" were involved.

He said he witnessed a military helicopter shooting at civilians near the Great Mosalla. "I haven't even seen such scenes in Hollywood movies," he said. "A helicopter was shooting at people. A lady was shot in front of my eyes."

RFE/RL could not verify his account. But activists have accused security forces of shooting at protestors from helicopters.

"I don't know what the intention of this crime was," he said. "Our only demand from the establishment is for the murderers of our [family members] to be punished."

The killings have led to widespread anger in Sistan-Baluchistan, one of Iran's poorest provinces.

Anti-establishment protests have been reported in Zahedan since the crackdown, including on October 14 and October 21, when protesters took to the streets after Friday Prayers and chanted "Death to the dictator."

During his Friday Prayers sermon on October 21, influential Sunni cleric Molavi Abdolhamid Ismaeelzahi said senior officials, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, were "responsible" for the September 30 killings.

"We are surprised by the silence of the high-ranking officials," he said in his sermon, which was posted on his website.

"Scores were killed here without any reason. I don't have the exact number. Some have reported 90, some say less, some say more," Ismaeelzahi added.

He also said people will not be satisfied until "those who killed the people" are brought to justice.

The Iran Human Rights Documentation Center said the events of September 30 amounted to "a massacre of protesters by security forces."

"The government's total denial of responsibility for the massacring of citizens by its security apparatus is consistent with similar past denials and is evidence that internal calls for investigation of such crimes are insufficient," said the rights group, which documents human rights violations in Iran.
Russian President Vladimir Putin says the world faces the most dangerous decade since World War II and predicted that the historical period of the West's "undivided dominance over world affairs" is coming to an end.

Speaking on October 27 at a conference of international policy experts in Moscow, Putin said the decade ahead is "probably the most dangerous, unpredictable and, at the same time, important...since the end of World War II."

Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine RFE/RL's Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia's ongoing invasion, Kyiv's counteroffensive, Western military aid, global reaction, Russian protests, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war, click here.

Putin laid the blame for the situation at the feet of Western countries, which he said have cast aside the norms of international affairs in order to maintain dominance and hold down countries they see as "second-class civilizations."

The Russian leader also said he had no regrets about sending troops into Ukraine and sought to explain the conflict as part of the efforts by Western countries to secure their global domination.

Putin claimed in his speech to the Valdai Discussion Club, a think tank, that the West had helped incite the conflict and also seeks to stoke a crisis over Taiwan in an attempt to enforce global dominance.

Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine on February 24, triggering the biggest military conflict in Europe since World War II and driving relations with Western countries that back Ukraine and its drive to be part of the European Union and NATO to their lowest depths since the Cold War.

Putin cast the conflict in Ukraine as a battle between the West and Russia for the fate of the second-largest Eastern Slav country. It is partly a "civil war," he said, as Russians and Ukrainians are one people. Kyiv has flatly rejected both of those ideas.

The goal of what Russia refers to as a "special military operation" is to take the eastern Donbas region, Putin said, adding that in his view the region would "not have survived" on its own had Russia not intervened militarily in Ukraine.

WATCH: A local official told Russian conscripts "You are not cannon fodder" in a video published online recently. The men responded by angrily shouting that, actually, that's exactly what they are.

But the war has gone far beyond the Donbas region, with Russian attacks on civilian infrastructure, residential buildings, and other nonmilitary structures, killing tens of thousands of Ukrainians across the country.

Putin used the speech largely to rail against the West, saying it has nothing to offer to the world "except its own domination," and the goal of globalization "is neocolonialism to dominate the world." He said Russia is only trying to defend its right to exist in the face these Western efforts.

Putin also asserted that more and more nations refuse to follow Washington's demands and Russia will never accept the West's attempts to dominate the world.

Citing gay pride parades and the acceptance of transgender people in Western countries, Putin also defended "traditional values" and said "nobody can dictate to our people how to develop and what society we should build."

He also said Russia has never considered the West an enemy and has many things in common with it but will continue to oppose the diktat of Western neoliberal elites.

U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Putin's speech presented no new ideas.

"We don't believe that Mr. Putin's strategic goals have changed here. He doesn't want Ukraine to exist as a sovereign, independent nation state," Kirby said.

Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said Putin's speech can be described as "for Freud," referring to psychoanalysis founder Sigmund Freud.



"The person who invaded a foreign country, annexed its land, and committed genocide accuses others of violating international law and the sovereignty of other countries? One truth: The person who started a wind will get a storm. The storm is coming," he said on Twitter.

Answering questions from journalists after his speech, Putin reiterated the Kremlin's assertion that Ukraine plans to use a so-called dirty bomb on its own territory. The claim has been dismissed as false by Ukraine and its allies, who say Russia may have raised the matter because it plans to use such a bomb in Ukraine as a pretext for escalation.

"It was me who ordered [Defense Minister Sergei] Shoigu to inform by phone all his colleagues about it," Putin said, adding that Russia does not need to use dirty bombs in Ukraine.

Putin also said he supported plans by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to visit Ukraine's nuclear power plants for inspections.

"It must be done as soon and as openly as possible because we know that Kyiv authorities are now working to cover up such [dirty-bomb attack] preparations," Putin said, without giving any exact information proving the claim.

Ukraine invited IAEA inspectors to visit its nuclear facilities after the Kremlin made its unsubstantiated claim about the preparation of a dirty bomb -- which would use the explosion of a conventional warhead to spread radioactive material or chemicals over a wide area.

Ukraine said it would welcome inspections because it had "nothing to hide."

According to Putin, Russia has never talked about the use of nuclear weapons in the war with Ukraine despite his own promise to defend Russian territory with any means at our disposal" and saying his words were "not a bluff."

"We see no need for [using nuclear weapons in Ukraine]," Putin told reporters. "There is no sense for that, neither political, nor military."
Russian President Vladimir Putin on September 9 discharged his childrens rights ombudsman, Pavel Astakhov, two months after the high-flying former lawyer submitted his resignation amid outrage over a verbal blunder. The now-50-year-old Astakhov shocked Russians and others alike in June when he quipped to child survivors of a deadly boating tragedy, "So how was the swim?"

But that seemingly callous remark was just the latest bizarre statement to emerge from Astakhov's seven-year tenure as the Kremlin's top advocate for young people. Here are details of his "swim" remark and some of his other more notable utterances.

'How Was The Swim?'

Meeting with survivors of a camp tragedy that killed 14 teens when two boats capsized on a lake in Karelia, Astakhov asked them casually, "So how was the swim?" Social and other media lit up with condemnation, and Astakhov's Instagram claim that he was quoted out of context -- in the face of video evidence to the contrary -- did little to deflect the criticism. He suggested that he was merely using "psychological tricks that help to open up scared children and let them speak out." A petition was nevertheless launched to demand Astakhov's dismissal.

Women And Age

After a viral video and related news stories showed a 17-year-old student being married off to a 47-year-old police official in the southern Russian republic of Chechnya, children's rights ombudsman Astakhov defended the marriage as a reflection of allowable local practices, telling a radio station: "Let's not be hypocrites.... There are places where women, at age 27, you look at her and by our standards they look like they're 50. And, in general, the [Russian] constitution forbids interference in citizens' personal lives." To compound things, a published transcript embellished Astakhov's remark, quoting him as saying: "There are places where women are already shriveled at age 27, and by our standards they look like they're 50." Astakhov was widely ridiculed.

Darwin Award

In April, Astakhov suggested a 13-year-old girl who was mauled by a tiger deserved her fate -- or worse -- after allegedly turning up at a western Siberian zoo after hours under the influence of alcohol. The girl reportedly tried to take a selfie after climbing over a protective barrier when the tiger reached through the bars of its cage and caught her by the leg. An unsympathetic Astakhov cited the Darwin Awards, which are handed out posthumously to mock recklessness that costs people their lives. He tweeted: "Too great a price is paid for 'un-childlike pranks.' To tease a tiger is to risk your life. Stupidity and hooliganism. The Darwin award is calling [your] name!

Scapegoating Turks

When the relationship between Moscow and Ankara went south late in 2015 after Turkish forces shot down a Russian warplane, Astakhov said of Russian-Turkish families: "We live in a world without borders, the president said this today. We can't help falling in love. Love is blind, you may fall in love with a Turk." It was a play on a bit of Russian folk wisdom that declares: "Love is blind; you might even fall in love with a goat."

National 'Humiliation'

As the chill deepened between Russia and the United States -- over missile shields, human rights, espionage, the Arab Spring, and other topics -- Astakhov was a vocal backer of a ban on Americans adopting Russian children. The prohibition was widely regarded as retribution for the so-called Magnitsky Act in the United States (punishing perceived rights abusers and named after a Russian lawyer who uncovered official wrongdoing but died in pretrial custody) and Astakhov elevated it to a question of national pride. During debate over Russia's so-called Dima Yakovlev law -- named after a Russian-born toddler who died when his American adoptive father left him sitting in a hot car -- Astakhov said that adoption by foreigners "humiliates our country and equates it with Third World countries."

Fun With Castration

Astakhov has employed stark language in reference to pedophiles.

He once tweeted: "Lets create an Anti-Pedophile Fund and finance operations to 'neutralize' maniacs and child molesters. The Fund's emblem -- "Faberge Scissors."

He also said that pedophiles "must be persecuted FOREVER."

'Opaque Fences'

Commenting on the kidnapping of a child from an orphanage in July 2015, Astakhov proposed a curious solution to strengthen security measures: "As for security measures, there can never be too much [security] in childcare institutions. We think that they have to be strengthened today, we should build opaque fences."

Sex Ed

Astakhov has spoken out against providing sex education in schools. Children, he suggested, should learn about reproduction from "Russian literature." Moreover, he said schools should educate children to be "chaste" and grow up in "a spirit of understanding family values."

'Anarchy'

In a 2013 interview, Astakhov called "anarchy...the mother of the Internet and bloggers" in answer to a question about web users criticizing officials.

'Pensioner Patrols'

Astakhov earlier this year proposed the creation of "pensioner patrols" -- brigades of elderly men and women -- to keep watch over troubled families and report potentially dangerous health or safety circumstances. He was speaking after a fire blazed through a residential building in Tatarstan, killing a woman and five children. Russia's pool of retirees is "a huge resource," Astakhov said, adding, "if we mobilized them correctly, and used pensioners, who sit at home and simply do nothing, to make volunteer brigades that would go around, look out for security, for fire safety."

He then added cryptically, "They have this in America, by the way."
There are less than two weeks remaining before Russia holds its so-called legislative elections. But we can already draw conclusions about what is going on. We can see that it is not only pointless, but even harmful, for the opposition to participate in the "voting" if its goal is to oppose the regime of President Vladimir Putin.

It has long been commonplace to say the process that is called "elections" in Russia does not play any role in determining matters of political power. Rather it is an imitative mechanism intended to give the appearance of legitimacy to the regime.

Nonetheless, again and again, politicians claiming to be in opposition try to participate, either not understanding or pretending not to understand that by doing so they are playing into the Kremlin's hands, willingly or not. They are helping it draw Russian citizens into a political process with predetermined results. And by doing so, they become parasites on the understandable human desire of society to believe in the possibility of nonviolent change.

The problem, however, is that Russia long ago passed the point of no return after which change without upheaval (that is, through the ballot) is impossible. In addition, the longer the regime's agony continues, the more profound the upheavals will be for Russia.

By arguing that it is important to participate in the elections, these "oppositionists" are cultivating false hopes in society, which then become an obstacle to any change in principle.

The arguments used to justify participating in these electoral games entirely ignore current political reality and, in particular, the changes that have occurred in the last few years.

It must be recognized that the Putin regime has nearly completed the transformation from a so-called hybrid regime to full-fledged totalitarianism. I know this statement might be received skeptically, since the term "totalitarianism" is normally associated with mass repressions. However, in practice, the distinguishing characteristic of a totalitarian regime is the intention of the authorities to control both the actions and the thoughts of their citizens.

In order to see that totalitarianism is already a harsh reality in Russia, all you have to do is look at the statistics on the criminal prosecutions for "thought crimes," such as posting or "liking" things on social media. Or consider the intensity of the brainwashing being done by the propaganda machine.

Using elections as a means of political struggle in a totalitarian regime is -- by definition -- impossible.

Even in those cases when the system does not create a reason to filter out a genuine oppositionist from the beginning, more radical methods can be applied later. Just remember the examples of legislators Gennady Gudkov, Ilya Ponomaryov, and Lyov Shlosberg, who were deprived of their mandates, or the tragic fate of Yaroslavl Mayor Yevgeny Urlashov, who was sentenced to 12 1/2 years in prison on bribery charges supporters say were politically motivated. These cases show clearly the utter senselessness of talking about "changing the system from within."

The Legalization Of Theft

We must understand the international significance of these elections. For the first time in modern Russian history, federal elections will be carried out on annexed territory: Crimea and the Crimean city of Sevastopol, which were annexed by Russia from Ukraine in 2014. The Kremlin is trying to use these elections as a tool to legitimize this annexation.

There is a simple logic at work here: Recognizing the elections as legitimate means recognizing their legitimacy across all territories where they are held. And recognizing their legitimacy in Crimea and Sevastopol means recognizing these territories as part of the Russian Federation.

That is why it is extremely important for the international community to refuse to recognize the results of these elections. Participating in the election procedures is the same as participating in the legalization of this theft. Getting a few opposition deputies into the Duma (which can only happen with the blessing of the authorities) would only make this situation worse, since it would enable the Kremlin to use these powerless "opposition" deputies internationally as a pseudo-democratic facade behind which hides the totalitarian essence of the regime.

The Russian authorities -- using repression and manipulation -- have liquidated virtually all internal threats, so practically the only remaining means of changing the situation is pressure from the outside. International sanctions introduced against Russia as a whole as well as against many individuals and organizations playing key roles in the Putinist system are now extremely important. We must remember that the anti-Putin sanctions were not introduced or extended by themselves, but are the result of serious, systematic work with officials and public opinion in the West. And this work must be done over the colossal opposition of numerous pro-Putin lobbyists.

Politics Abroad

The Kremlin understands that the decisive struggle upon which the survival of the regime depends is being conducted in the West. Putin and his inner circle have studied the lessons of history. One of the main ones is that when dictatorial regimes suffer a major international defeat (not necessarily military), it almost always leads to the collapse of the regime itself.

That is why the Kremlin has thrown all its material and political resources into the struggle to lift the existing sanctions and to block any new, harsher ones. Putin appointed Ella Pamfilova (formerly a cabinet minister under President Boris Yeltsin and a liberal member of the Duma) to head the Central Election Commission not in order to affect the results of the elections but to augment the political arsenal of Putin's agents in the West.

The imitation of democratic processes in Russia aims to increase the respectability of the regime abroad. Those Russians who have no idea about this international confrontation and who go into the elections with the argument that "we have to at least do something" are giving a priceless gift to the Kremlin and its agents in the West.

At this moment, it is difficult to give a precise formula for bringing about the liquidation of the Putinist regime in the foreseeable future. But for a start it is essential, at the very least, to refrain from any actions that strengthen that regime.

Garry Kasparov is a Russian politician, a former world chess champion, and head of the Human Rights Foundation international NGO. The views expressed in this commentary, which he wrote for RFE/RL's Russian Service, do not necessarily reflect the views of RFE/RL. Translated from the Russian by Robert Coalson
U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has told a Russian-funded television network on September 8 that "it's probably unlikely" that Russia is trying to influence the U.S. election.

Trump, who has faced a backlash from both parties in recent days for praising Russian President Vladimir Putin, was interviewed by Larry King, a veteran American journalist whose show airs on RT America, the U.S. partner of a network originally called Russia Today.

Trump's interview with King was promoted by RT America as an exclusive, although a Trump spokeswoman suggested to AP that Trump was not aware that King's program was linked to the Russian-backed network.

When King asked about reports that U.S. intelligence agencies are investigating whether Russia is trying to disrupt the election through cyberattacks, Trump said that he's skeptical.

"I think it's probably unlikely. I think maybe the Democrats are putting that out," Trump said. "I hope that if they are doing something, I hope that somebody's going to be able to find out, so they can end it, because that would not be appropriate at all."

Cybersecurity experts have blamed Russian intelligence agencies for electronic break-ins into Democratic Party computers this year.

With reporting by AP
BISHKEK -- Kyrgyzstan is to start the retrial of ethnic Uzbek activist Azimjon Askarov next month.

Supreme Court officials told RFE/RL on September 9 that the date for the retrial had been set for October 4.

Askarov has been serving a life sentence after being convicted in 2011 of stirring up ethnic hatred during 2010 deadly clashes between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks and of complicity in the death of a policeman during the violence.

In July, the Supreme Court revoked Askarov's life sentence and sent the case back to a lower court for review in light of "new circumstances that appeared in the case."

The United Nations has urged Kyrgyzstan to release Askarov, who says the case against him was politically motivated.

More than 450 people were killed -- most of them ethnic Uzbeks -- and tens of thousands of people fled their homes in the 2010 ethnic violence in southern Kyrgyzstan.
Moldova has rejected a decree by Transdniester's leadership that says the breakaway region should join Russia, in line with the results of a referendum 10 years ago.

In a decree posted on September 7 on the website of Transdniester's separatist leader, Yevgeny Shevchuk, he said it was time to enact the results of the 2006 referendum, in which some 97 percent of the region's residents voted to join Russia.

The Moldovan government's Bureau on Reintegration said in a September 9 statement that the referendum was held illegally by the "unconstitutional" separatist leadership.

The Kremlin denied to comment on the decree.

Transdniester, which shares a border with Ukraine but not Russia, split from Moldova in 1990. The move has not been recognized internationally.

The region holds elections in December and Shevchuk is expected to run.

The region is currently in an economic downturn and the separatist government is unpopular.

Based on reporting by AP, TASS, and Interfax
Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has extended the stay for Afghan refugees in the country until March 2017, pushing back the previous deadline by three months.

Sharif approved this decision at a September 9 cabinet meeting.

A government statement quoted Sharif as saying that Afghan refugees were "guests" of Pakistan and that measures will be taken to ensure their safety.

The announcement comes as Afghan refugees accuse Pakistani authorities of harassment before the expiration of the previous December 31 deadline.

Pakistan is hosting at least 1.5 million refugees. An additional 1 million unregistered Afghans have been staying in the country since the 1980s, when they fled the violence at home.

In a June statement, the Pakistani government said Sharif had ordered the authorities to work with the UN refugee agency and the Afghan government to gradually relocate the refugee camps from Pakistan to Afghanistan.

Islamabad says a number of militants are hiding in the camps.

Based on reporting by RFE/RL's Radio Mashaal and AP
U.S Special Operations Forces launched a rescue mission to retrieve two men kidnapped by insurgents in Afghanistan last month, but the hostages were not there when the rescue team arrived, U.S. defense officials say.

Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said the rescue mission was approved by Defense Secretary Ash Carter and authorized by President Barack Obama.

Cook said no U.S. personnel or civilians were injured. He declined to provide more details, citing the need "to protect the safety of hostages and operational security."

According to defense officials, the mission was delayed one day because of questions about whether the hostages, an American and an Australian who worked at the American University of Afghanistan, were there.

When U.S. commandos arrived at the house where they believed the hostages were held, they killed seven enemy fighters, the officials said.

The two men were kidnapped from their vehicle as they traveled from the university to their residence in Kabul on August 7. The rescue was attempted not long after their kidnapping.

The rescue attempt occurred before militants stormed American University on August 24 in an attack that left 16 people dead.

Based on reporting by AP, AFP, and Reuters
Russian President Vladimir Putin accepted the resignation of longtime children's rights commissioner Pavel Astakhov, after weeks of uncertainty following Astakhovs announcement he was stepping down.

The announcement, posted by the Kremlin September 9, was a formality for Astakhov, who had elicited wide derision after making a remark to a teenage survivor of a boating accident that many perceived to be callous.

The decree said that Astakhov, who had served in the post since December 2009, had asked to be dismissed. Astakhov faced intense criticism in June over a remark he made while visiting survivors of a boating accident.

10 Bizarre Quotes By Russia's Ousted Children's Ombudsman

The incident, in which two boats capsized in a storm and 14 people, most of them teenagers, were killed, attracted wide outrage in Russia.

Astakhov insisted his comment -- where he asked a survivor "how was the swim?"-- was taken out of context, but tens of thousands of people signed a petition calling for his resignation.

On July 1, Astakhov said he had submitted his resignation after a "very frank conversation" with Putin.

Astakhov, who was a key supporter of a law barring Americans from adopting children in Russia, made headlines last year after he defended the right of middle-aged men to marry teenage girls, saying that women are "already shrivelled by the age of 27 and look about 50 to us."

His replacement is Anna Kuznetsova, a mother of six who founded a charity in 2010 and had headed an association of groups supporting families since 2015.

Some Russian websites have unearthed past interviews in which Kuznetsova has explained a belief in outlandish theories about genetics and traits inherited by children from their parents.

With reporting by TASS and Interfax
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has started a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Geneva to discuss a political agreement that could help bring an end to the conflict in Syria.

Ahead of the September 9 talks, the State Department said the discussions would focus on "reducing violence, expanding humanitarian assistance for the Syrian people, and moving toward a political solution needed to end the civil war."

Washington and Moscow are backing different sides in Syria's five-year-old civil war that has killed up to 400,000 people. The Kremlin supports Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, while the United States is backing rebel groups seeking his ouster.

Kerry and Lavrov in recent weeks have been in talks over a deal to boost U.S. and Russian military cooperation to fight the Islamic State group and other extremists in Syria.

Based on reporting by Reuters, AFP, and AP
Resistance fighter and anti-Taliban leader Ahmad Shah Masud was killed by Al-Qaeda assassins on September 9, 2001, ushering in a chain of events that would place Afghanistan at the center of the global war on terrorism.

Two days after his death, Al-Qaeda operatives would carry out the 9/11 terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. Within a month, the United States military was leading a bombing campaign and invasion of Afghanistan with the intention of overthrowing the Taliban and capturing Al-Qaeda leader and 9/11 orchestrator Osama Bin Laden.

In life and as in death, the military strategist who had made his name as a commander of anti-Taliban forces would have a significant impact on life in Afghanistan. Here are some stories behind the man whose battlefield exploits earned him the moniker "The Lion of Panjshir."

Northern Alliance Founder

He was a key leader of the Northern Alliance, a combination of Afghanistan-based forces that aligned in 1996 to counter the Taliban's takeover of Kabul. After the U.S-led invasion in October, 2001, those forces would play a key role as a coalition partner until a new government could be formed.

Larger-Than-Life Figure

Numerous books, films, and articles have been written about Masud, and to this day he is revered as a national hero in Afghanistan. Posters of the 48-year-old -- wearing his trademark woolen hat, the pakol -- still dot the capital, Kabul, where monuments have been erected and streets named in his honor.

Camera Bomb

Masud was killed in Khwaja Bahauddin, a far-flung area in northeast Afghanistan near the Tajikistan border that served as his base of operations.

His assassins were identified as Abdessater Dahmane and Bouraoui el-Ouaer -- two men of Tunisian descent who posed as journalists and traveled on Belgian passports. They killed Masud by setting off a camera bomb as they interviewed Masud in his office.

One of the attackers died immediately, while the second was shot dead after he attempted to escape. Masud was mortally wounded and died while he was being flown by helicopter to Tajikistan for treatment.

Assassins Spent Time In Molenbeek

The Al-Qaeda militants who killed him were believed to have transited through the Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek, which has since become notorious for being home to several suspects linked to recent terrorist attacks in Brussels and Paris.

In 2005, a court in Paris found four men guilty of offering logistical support to Masud's killers. The four Islamic militants were sentenced to between two and seven years. Those convicted were captured by French authorities, who traced passports found on Masud's killers to a Brussels-based militant cell run by Tarek Maaroufi, who was sentenced to six years in prison in 2003.

Revered In Neighboring Tajikistan

Masud, an ethnic Tajik, is widely revered in neighboring Tajikistan. In a sign of his enduring popularity, Masud has become a popular name for boys.

Masud received arms and financial backing from the Tajik government during the Taliban's rule from 1996-2001. Some of his wounded fighters were taken to hospitals in Tajikistan. Masud's own stronghold in northeast Afghanistan bordered Tajik territory and he often visited Tajikistan.

After his death, Masud's family briefly moved to Dushanbe, where the family still owns a home. His family eventually moved to Iran.

Warned Of Attack On U.S.

"If President Bush doesn't help us, these terrorists will damage the U.S. and Europe very soon."

Masud gave this warning in an address at the European Parliament in Brussels in April, 2001. He also told EU leaders that he had gathered evidence about an imminent terrorist attack by Al-Qaeda on the U.S. homeland.

His words proved prophetic. Months later, Al-Qaeda operatives hijacked four passenger planes with the intention of flying them into U.S. targets. Two brought down the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York. A third hit the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. The fourth went down in a field in Pennsylvania. Altogether, the attacks claimed the lives of nearly 3,000 people, and injured more than 6,000.

Cold Warrior

A 1992 editorial in the Wall Street Journal described Masud as the "Afghan who won the Cold War."

Panjshir was a bastion of resistance to the 1979-89 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the last stronghold of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance.

Masud's Jamiat-e-Islami political party and military wing was the most successful Mujahedin group fighting against the invading Red Army. From his base in the Panjshir Valley, Masud's men led a successful guerrilla fight against the Soviet forces, which launched several failed operations to claim control of the valley.

Panjshir still bears the scars of Masud's fight against the Soviet Union and the Taliban. Hundreds of destroyed Soviet tanks are littered throughout the valley, as are weapons left by the Taliban in their failed attempts to conquer the area. Vast tunnel networks are carved into the mountains that the Mujahedin used to escape Soviet and Taliban bombardments, and dozens of mine-clearing operations continue on the rocky hilltops surrounding the picturesque valley.

French Connection

Masud spoke some French, having studied at the French-language Lycee Esteqlal school in Kabul, and was admired in France. In 2001, European Parliament President Nicole Fontaine invited Masud to address the parliament.

Masud was also friends with French intellectual Bernard-Henri Levy, who visited Masud in the Panjshir Valley in the 1990s. Masud was known to have said that French President Charles De Gaulle was one of his political heroes.

French audiences got to know Masud after the release of a documentary -- The Valley Against An Empire -- by French journalist Christophe de Ponfilly in 1981, just two years after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Reza Deghati, an Iranian-French photojournalist, traveled to Afghanistan and followed Masud from the 1980s until his death. His iconic photographs helped build the legend of Masud.
Even the defeat of the Islamic State (IS) militants in Iraq and Syria will not extinguish the extremist group's threat to the civilized world, top U.S. intelligence officials say.

"The threat that I think will dominate the next five years for the FBI will be the impact of the crushing of the caliphate, which will happen," FBI Director James Comey told a conference in Washington on September 8.

"Through the fingers of that crush are going to come hundreds of hardened killers, who are not going to die on the battlefield. They are going to flow out."

Comey predicted that many will head into Western Europe and try to duplicate recent attacks in Paris and Brussels, while others will bring the fight to the United States.

CIA Director John Brennan agreed that many fighters who don't die on the battlefield will try to return to their native countries and launch attacks.

He noted that Al-Qaeda in Iraq was reduced to several hundred fighters at one point, yet was able to reemerge as IS.

"I think a number of them are going to remain a challenge for the United States and other governments for a number of years to come," he said.

Based on reporting by AP and Reuters


Uzbekistan's interim president, Shavkat Mirziyaev, has ruled out military alliances, following the same course as late strongman Islam Karimov.

A Foreign Ministry statement quoted Mirziyaev as making the comments on September 9 at a joint session of the upper and lower parliament houses.

"The firm position of our country, as before, is nonmembership in all military-political alliances and not allowing other states' military bases and facilities on the territory of Uzbekistan," Mirziyaev said.

"No one should doubt that any attempt by internal and external forces to encroach on the sovereignty and independence of our country will be severely suppressed," he added.

The comments come a day after Uzbek lawmakers appointed Mirziyaev as interim president, setting the long-serving government chief up as the clear favorite to win a five-year term in an early presidential election scheduled for December 4.

Central Election Commission head Mirza-Ulugbek Abdusalomov made the announcement on September 9.

According to Uzbekistan's constitution, the chairman of the upper chamber, the Senate, assumes presidential authority for a period of three months if the president dies or is unable to perform duties.

But Senate Chairman Nigmatulla Yuldashev asked lawmakers to appoint Mirziyaev instead, citing "his many years of experience," and lawmakers supported the proposal, the government said.

The government announced on August 28 that Karimov, 78, had been hospitalized with an undisclosed ailment, which it later said had been a stroke. It announced his death on September 2.

Based on reporting by AFP, Interfax, and Reuters
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Both major party candidates for vice president are campaigning in Virginia in the first weekend after Labor Day.

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., the Democratic nominee for vice president, and his wife, Anne Holton, will speak this afternoon at Old Dominion University in Norfolk.

Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, the Republican nominee for vice president, will speak on Saturday afternoon in Fauquier County at the Liberty Farm Festival.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Pence continue to fight for Virginias 13 electoral votes, although Clinton leads the state in recent polls.

The stop by Pence will be the eighth appearance in Virginia by Trump, Pence or both since Clinton introduced Kaine as her running mate during a July 23 rally in Miami.

The Liberty Farm Festival also will feature remarks by announced Republican candidates for governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general, and several former and perhaps future GOP candidates for statewide office, such as former Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli and entrepreneur Pete Snyder.
After nearly two years of research, two Richmond-area economic development groups said Thursday they are implementing a plan this fall to help small and medium-sized businesses in the region export their products and services to international markets.

The plan, to be managed by the Greater Richmond Partnership and Virginias Gateway Region, includes starting a new website that will provide information to local businesses about exporting.

With $150,000 in funding from the banking and financial services company JPMorgan Chase, and an additional $150,000 in state funding from the Virginia International Trade Alliance, the program plans to provide grants to Richmond businesses that need support getting established in export markets.

The exports initiative grew from a realization that international markets represent an untapped opportunity for many Richmond-area companies, said Greg Wingfield, one of the organizers of the initiative and a fellow at the Center for Public Policy at Virginia Commonwealth Universitys L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs.

About 81 percent of global economic growth in the next four years is expected to occur outside the United States. The exports initiative has an aggressive goal to increase exports by small and medium-size enterprises in the Richmond region by 40 percent by 2020, Wingfield said.

We wanted to look for additional ways for existing business to grow, said Wingfield, the former president and chief executive of the Greater Richmond Partnership. He spoke during an event Thursday at Sunday Park at The Boathouse in Chesterfield County to announce the specifics of the initiative to local and state economic development officials.

Research for the strategic plan was conducted by the Center for Urban and Regional Analysis at Virginia Commonwealth University and the two local economic development groups.

More than 200 local businesses were surveyed. Others participated in interviews and focus groups to help determine what kind of resources are needed for businesses in the region to export their products and services.

The survey found that 83 percent of businesses are not exporting their products and services, but about half said they would consider exporting if they could identify the right markets and obtain financing.

A date for when the website will go live has not been set.
A second University of Richmond student has come forward alleging that administrators mishandled her complaint against another student she described as my violent stalker.

They told me that he was going to stay and if I couldnt deal with it, I could look into transferring, Whitney Ralston, a junior from San Diego, said of the universitys Title IX administrators in an essay Friday on The Huffington Post.

In an interview Friday, Ralston said that she has filed a grievance with the U.S. Department of Educations Office for Civil Rights, but has not heard whether her complaint will be formally investigated.

Another student, Cecilia Carreras, also is asking OCR to investigate URs handling of her reported rape by a Spider athlete.

Ralston identified herself as the other girl who had not received justice who was referenced in the earlier Huffington Post essay by Carreras, who goes by CC.

Their cases arent isolated, Ralston wrote. If something doesnt change, girls like CC and I will keep coming forward: more survivors will stand up to the institution that has silenced us for too long.

She wrote that she has learned that a rapists privacy is more important than my life.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch normally does not identify victims of sexual assault, but both Ralston and Carreras agreed to have their names published.

UR did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Ralstons essay, but previously said Carreras account contained inaccuracies. Carreras published more details online in response to the universitys suggestion that her account isnt completely factual, which she wrote feels like school officials are calling her a liar.

UR President Ronald Crutcher responded to the outrage on campus late in the day, issuing a statement that it is clear that members of our community are concerned and frustrated, and some are hurting.

He said the university has strong programs in place to prevent sexual violence and responds actively to any report of misconduct.

But he said he will seek input from students, faculty and alumni and report back to the community by fall break on additional steps that can be taken.

OCR already is investigating potential Title IX violations at UR from a 2014 case.

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 protects people from discrimination based on sex in education programs that receive federal financial aid.

Title IX initially was associated with equity in sports programs, but it also protects against sexual violence and harassment.

In an interview, Ralston said she reported the assaults, which included a head injury when he slammed her against a wall, to campus police.

She said she was initially encouraged by the police response.

But she said her assailant admitted guilt to one count of violence and was put on probation, and that halted further administrative sanctions.

Ralston, a former cheerleader, said she left the squad because of the stress she was under.

The university held a previously scheduled campus session Thursday on sexual violence, an annual event called It ends now.

Ralston, who watched a live-stream of the event, said students were angry that administrators would not take questions about Carreras essay.

The university barred off-campus media from attending the session, but The Collegian student newspaper reported that more than half of the audience walked out in protest.

The Collegian posted a three-hour live-stream of the event in which students and alumni challenged administrators on the universitys response to Carreras allegations.

One male student said it appeared the administration is putting the image of the university before students.
Members of the Richmond City Democratic Committee voted overwhelmingly Thursday to endorse former Secretary of the Commonwealth Levar Stoney for mayor, opening the door to a possible boost by association with the partys presidential and congressional candidates in a heavily Democratic city.

Party leaders said Stoney won 66 percent of the vote from the 111 registered members who cast paper ballots during a roughly 90-minute meeting. They declined to say how many votes were cast for the other seven mayoral candidates.

When you (have) eight candidates and hes gotten 66 percent of the vote, you can do the math on the rest, said Mieko Timmons, the partys vice president of finance.

Stoney is a longtime Democratic operative who has previously worked on a number of statewide political campaigns and served as the director of the state party. He thanked his supporters in a brief speech after the endorsement was announced.

When we win this in November, I want you all to know Im not going to just be mayor of the city, but a party leader, he said.

And as a party leader, Im going to be one who always makes sure those who lack a voice  those who have been forgotten  have a voice at the table. Because I firmly believe either you are at the table or youre on the menu, and for far too long, Richmond has been on the menu.

Local elections are officially nonpartisan, and party identification does not appear on the ballot.

In the past, city Democrats have promoted their endorsement through mailings and sample ballots distributed at polling places on Election Day.

The local committees candidate could also potentially benefit from joint campaigning with the Democrats presidential and vice presidential nominees, providing a needed boost in name recognition and visibility for Stoney, who has fared poorly in early polling.

Other than to lay out the logistics of the voting, there was little discussion at the meeting. The committee held a forum Tuesday to give the candidates time to make their case to members.

The timing of the event, however, drew complaints from two of the candidates who currently serve on City Council, Michelle Mosby and Jon Baliles  both of whom sit on a council committee that was meeting at the same time that night.

Mosby and Baliles pointed to the scheduling as evidence that the committees leadership was attempting to sway the vote in favor of Stoney, who had already been endorsed by the committees chairman, James J.J. Minor.

At the forum, a candidate who did attend, former Del. Joseph D. Morrissey, accused the Democrats of rigging the process.

Minor briefly touched on the disagreement Thursday, announcing that he would recuse himself from the voting process in an effort to prevent the appearance of a conflict.

For anyone to say this system is rigged, I have a serious problem with that, he told committee members, before explaining that his endorsement of Stoney was not made in his capacity as party chairman.

Asked at Thursdays meeting whether Minors comments allayed any of her concerns, Mosby responded with a flat no.
Henrico County police officer Joel Greenway shot into a car seven times Dec. 15, injuring a female passenger who was struck by multiple bullets, according to top county prosecutor Shannon Taylor.

Greenway, a Sandston resident, has been charged with malicious wounding, shooting into an occupied vehicle and use of a firearm in the commission of a felony. He appeared in Henrico Circuit Court on Thursday for a motions hearing ahead of a five-day jury trial set for the week of Oct. 24.

Greenway was alone, on duty, in uniform and wearing a body camera that was not recording when he shined a flashlight into a car stopped at an Exxon station on Nine Mile Road around 10:30 p.m. that December night, according to court records. The driver, Robert Davis, attempted to drive off, and Greenway fired his weapon several times.

In court Thursday, Taylor and Henrico forensic detective Kenneth Hill revealed that Greenways gunfire struck the car seven times  twice in the front windshield; once in the front passenger-side window; twice into the rear passenger window, once through the passengers headrest; once in the rear of the car; and once in the rear drivers-side window.

Kimberly McNeil, the woman in the car who was struck, is recuperating after she was shot multiple times, including in her right arm and back of her head.

Hill said in court that he couldnt say the order in which the shots were fired, but since the car fled from the scene, he and his partner ordered them from front to back.

Greenways defense attorney Peter Baruch had filed a motion seeking to prevent the introduction of a report that Hill and his partner prepared, including a trajectory analysis of the bullets, as evidence. Baruch argued that the detectives drew conclusions that should be up the jury to consider.

Taylor countered that having the detectives testify to their observations and their expert opinions about what happened is important to give jurors a demonstrative illustration of what happened.

A judge denied the defenses motion, after which Taylor withdrew the report from evidence, which prevents it from becoming part of the public record ahead of the trial.

Judge Michael Allen, a stand-in retired judge, also denied a motion from the defense that would have prevented the prosecution from referencing Greenways prior training or county police policies.

In the motion, Baruch said: Mr. Greenway is not held to a different standard on the offenses charged, as any other person would be. ... Evidence of prior training or Henrico police policies will lead the jurors to believe that a violation of policy or training is tantamount to a violation of the law, which is absolutely untrue.

Henrico police have confirmed that Greenway was wearing a body camera and that it did not record the shooting that night. The countys policy cites traffic stops and calls involving suspicious vehicles or person as examples of when a camera should be activated.

After a previous hearing in July, the countys human resources director, Paula Reid, said Greenway was still a Henrico employee but was not actively doing police work. He began working for the department in January 2013.
Two NAACP officials, charged with trespassing last month after a civil demonstration at the downtown Roanoke office of U.S. Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-6th, appeared on the misdemeanor offense Thursday in Roanoke General District Court.

National NAACP President Cornell William Brooks pleaded guilty to the Class 1 misdemeanor and was fined $100.

NAACP youth division director Stephen Green also entered a guilty plea but asked the judge to consider his age  hes 24  and take his case under advisement.

Roanoke Assistant Commonwealths Attorney Andrew Stephens acknowledged the spirit of their protest but said, Our position is  the idea of civil disobedience is that the person who commits it is going to accept the punishment.

The laws are here for the protection of everyone, he later added.

As a result, Judge Tom Roe said he was prevented from taking the case under advisement and fined Green $100 as well but suspended that penalty.

Both men will also have to pay about $96 in court costs.

Brooks and Green were charged Aug. 8 after a six-hour sit-in at the office of Goodlatte, head of the House Judiciary Committee. The demonstration was a push to update or fully restore preclearance provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Although several others took part, the two announced from the beginning that they would not leave the office until they were arrested or until Goodlatte met their request. When the office building closed at 5 p.m., the two men were cited for trespassing but declined to sign the summons and were taken into custody.

One of the arresting officers testified that there were no issues whatsoever.

Its also been established that the police were summoned not by Goodlattes office but by Roanoke NAACP President Brenda Hale, who also took part in the protest.

After Thursdays hearing, Brooks, Green and Hale spoke outside the courthouse of their desire to see updates to the Voting Rights Act after a 2013 Supreme Court ruling softened requirements that states with a history of discrimination must submit their voting laws for federal approval or preclearance.

There has been legislation laying on his (Goodlattes) desk for three years, Hale said. All we are asking for is a hearing.

Brooks also suggested further efforts by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People might be in the works.

We cannot promise you that this is the end, that we wont be back, that there wont be an escalation of civil disobedience, he said.
Former Gov. Bob McDonnell was sitting in his office in Virginia Beach on Thursday afternoon when he got the call from his lawyer.

Its over, attorney Hank Asbill told him at 1:45 p.m.

With those two words, Robert F. McDonnell, the 71st governor of Virginia, knew that the legal trials and tribulations of the last 3 years were finally behind him.

Shedding tears of relief, the 62-year-old got out from behind his desk at The ESG Cos., a Virginia Beach-based developer, stepped out into the hallway, let out a holler, and was immediately embraced by co-workers. Then he called his wife, former first lady Maureen McDonnell.

Ive been waiting to hear those words for 43 months now, McDonnell told the Richmond Times-Dispatch in an exclusive interview.

Its been such an ordeal  its almost hard to remember the last time I wasnt under the gun with the federal government, he added. Just a tremendous sense of relief.

McDonnells odyssey began with notice in February 2013 of a federal corruption investigation into his acceptance of gifts while in office.

McDonnell, once touted as a potential running mate to 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, was toppled from the pinnacle of political power and into the pit of felony indictment, conviction and prison sentence, before the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously overturned the convictions in June, leading to Thursdays move by federal authorities for dismissal.

U.S. moves to drop corruption case against Bob and Maureen McDonnell Federal prosecutors on Thursday moved to drop their corruption case against former Gov. Bob 

In the interview, the humbled and faith-driven former governor, a Catholic, recounted his experience, reflected on what he has learned and how it has transformed his life, and discussed his plans for the future.

When you go from governor to indicted in 11 days, its an exceptionally humbling and very, very tough experience, he said.

But I felt that we had extremely good lawyers. They absolutely believed that under the law that I was innocent. I knew in my own heart and my own soul that while I wish I had made some other decisions, that I never violated any state or federal laws, and at some point the justice system would get it right.

Indelible dates

McDonnell is blessed, or cursed, with a sharp memory for dates and times. The significant moments of the past four years are burned into the former governors memory. He remembers the date  Feb. 15, 2013  the day after Valentines Day, when he first learned he was the subject of a federal corruption investigation with roughly 11 months left in his four-year term.

It was probably the biggest blow to my sense of self-worth, and sense of honor that my parents had taught me, McDonnell recalled. And I was shaken to my core.

McDonnell said he called his team together, close-knit Cabinet officials, a number of whom had served with him dating to his time as attorney general from 2006 to 2009.

No matter what else is going on, how many subpoenas are flying around, weve got to finish strong and govern well, he told them.

It was an incredible, collected effort from the team, he recalled Thursday. Everybody hung in there. Nobody abandoned ship.

He said that the 11 months in office under the shadow of an investigation were emotionally difficult and disruptive. If it werent for Gods amazing grace and remarkable friends during that time, I dont know how I would have endured.

The former governor was indicted in January 2014, 10 days after he completed his term as governor. He said things got easier to manage once he was out of office. The low point came Sept. 4, 2014  two years and four days ago, when the jury verdict came down guilty, was obviously far and away the most devastating day of my life.

I just could not believe that a jury believed that I had corrupted my office. That my good name that my parents had given me was now in tatters, he said. And that it was going to be a long haul to be able to demonstrate my innocence.

A deeper walk in faith

McDonnell said that day began a deeper walk in faith, with so many people around the state and country who supported him and said they were praying for him.

That began the most amazing two years of my life, the former governor said. I have never felt as much love and affection and appreciation and kindness and unmerited favor and grace in my entire life, during these two years of some very deep suffering but some remarkable kindness from people.

McDonnell said the experience allowed him to enjoy the simple things in life  my children, simplifying my life in a lot of ways, downsizing, and adding four grandchildren to his family over the past 18 months. That was a remarkable blessing.

He said he focused on one day at a time, whether it was working at his business, babysitting a grandchild or volunteering for a charity and trusting in Gods providence for the future.

It was a very new and radical way of living, McDonnell said. When youre governor you think you can do everything. Youve got a hundred thousand people working for you, youve got capable people, youve got immense power, he explained. And then you go into a circumstance where you are completely powerless against the decisions of the federal government. It was a vast shock to the system.

Grief to joy

McDonnell said the U.S. Supreme Courts decisions to let him remain free on bond instead of beginning to serve his two-year prison sentence, then agreeing to hear his appeal, gave him immense hope that the court might look at his case differently than the lower court in which he was convicted and the appeals court that had affirmed his convictions.

Grief and disbelief to tears and extraordinary joy, McDonnell said, describing the range of emotions leading up to the resolution Thursday.

The former governor said the entire experience has given him the opportunity to take a very hard look at my own conduct over 60 years.

I had been blessed to accomplish some things ... but where have you failed, what can you do better? he asked rhetorically. What was your own role, governor, in allowing the situation even to happen, even if you believe in your heart youre not guilty and you didnt violate any laws? ... What could you have done differently? And what can you do for the rest of your life?

McDonnell said he is more focused on the present than the future, less on material possessions and more on what he called the basics  which are your family, your friends, your service to others, your faith life. Things that I rushed through too much during my time in politics.

The former governor said he thought the Supreme Court did a good job defining the standards by which routine political behavior can be differentiated from corruption and what should be subject to prosecution.

Sometimes when the laws are very broad ... they can be used as a meat ax instead of a scalpel, and legal conduct gets caught up in prosecutions just because something may not look good, McDonnell said.

He said the lesson for elected officials is to keep your eye on the ball, to in all measures go beyond the requirements of the law, to govern your own behavior, and for prosecutors not to stretch the theories of the law beyond what it is pretty clear the law ought to cover.

McDonnell also said he supported recent law changes tightening gift rules in the Virginia legislature.

I wish in retrospect that there were different decisions that I made, he said, referring to his acceptance of gifts and loans from Jonnie R. Williams Sr., then-CEO of Star Scientific, who testified against McDonnell during his trial.

It created an appearance of something that just wasnt the case. It created an appearance maybe of something that was in violation of the law, which was not the case. There will be an opportunity for people on all sides of this to reflect on their own conduct, and ultimately do better going forward.

A changed man

Going forward, McDonnell said he expects to have his law license restored within the next 30 days. But that is just part of his plan for the future.

This has changed me, I believe for the better, said McDonnell. Ive had such a blessed life ... but now that Ive learned suffering, and a deeper sense of humility, and a greater sense of compassion for other people that are hurting or may have felt injustice. ... I feel a calling to maybe ... be able to help on a much more retail level.

McDonnell has been volunteering at a food bank and a faith-based charity known as Operation Blessing. I still like public service, but its going to be in a very different way outside of elected office, he said. McDonnell said he would pursue more charitable works and some ideas he has been kicking around at some universities, while continuing to build a business he owns with his sister Maureen.

I get a huge chunk of my life back, McDonnell said, thanking his legal team, including Asbill, John Brownlee and Noel J. Francisco, who argued his case before the Supreme Court. They never stopped believing  they always believed in my case. They never stopped fighting, McDonnell said.

Now I have the luxury of being able to do some of those things, and the fourth quarter of my life, I think will be very satisfying.

Without bitterness

McDonnell said he also moves forward without anger or bitterness toward anyone.

You cant live daily with those kind of emotions, he said, describing a supernatural peace that came over him that things were ultimately going to be OK after the sadness and disbelief of the scandals initial months.

I havent for years, nor do I today, have any bitterness against the government, he said. They were doing their job. I think they certainly stretched the theories of the law well beyond what they should have been.

Nor is McDonnell bitter about Williams  the dietary supplement impresario and former friend who was the prosecutions star witness. Williams testified that he showered McDonnell, his wife and their children with more than $177,000 in gifts, loans and luxury trips in exchange for the governors influence to promote his product.

Thats between Mr. Williams and God  I cant judge him, nor can I be angry or bitter, McDonnell said. All I can control is what could I have done differently.

McDonnell acknowledged that revelations about the details of his marriage and the McDonnells personal lives that surfaced during the scandal created some challenges that now may be able to begin to heal.

The former governor and his wife have been living apart since the trial, but lawyers for Maureen McDonnell said that she is likely to relocate to Hampton Roads, where Bob McDonnell lives.

I talked with my wife today, McDonnell said. We cried together  we laughed a little bit. These two words  Its over, are what weve been waiting to hear for so long, he added.

But it hasnt been easy. Being governor was a cakewalk compared to going through a trial like this. I wouldnt wish this on anybody.

McDonnell credited his weekly prayer group in Richmond with helping him handle the ups and downs of the past 43 months. People have surrounded me with prayer in such a way that its allowed me to completely release any anger, any bitterness, including anger with myself, he said.

He spoke of the Bible stories of Joseph and Job, as guides and inspiration for his journey.

They persevered; they endured, he said. At the end of the day, Joseph becomes the number two leader in Egypt, and Job has everything that was taken away from him restored double.

McDonnell said his faith life has increased dramatically. He said that at the end of his ordeal, I know that I am innocent. I know my lawyers believe Im innocent. I know weve got the best system of justice in the world, and I know God is faithful.
January 2014: Bob McDonnell completes his term as governor Jan. 11. He and former first lady Maureen McDonnell are indicted Jan. 21.

July 28, 2014: The McDonnells corruption trial begins in U.S. District Court in Richmond before Judge James R. Spencer.

Sept. 4, 2014: The jury convicts Bob McDonnell of 11 charges and Maureen McDonnell of nine charges after a six-week trial. (U.S. District Judge James R. Spencer later overturns one of Maureen McDonnells convictions.)

Jan. 6, 2015: Spencer sentences Bob McDonnell to two years in prison.

Jan. 13, 2015: Spencer denies Bob McDonnells request to remain free while appealing his convictions.

Jan. 26, 2015: The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals allows the McDonnells to remain free on bond pending their appeals to the Richmond-based court.

Feb. 20, 2015: Spencer sentences Maureen McDonnell to one year and one day.

July 12, 2015: Unanimous, three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejects Bob McDonnells appeal.

Aug. 11, 2015: The appeals court turns down Bob McDonnells request for a rehearing by the full court.

Aug. 21, 2015: The appeals court rejects Bob McDonnells bid to remain free while asking the U.S. Supreme Court to take up his appeal.

Aug. 24, 2015: The U.S. Supreme Court steps in and allows Bob McDonnell to remain free.

Oct. 14, 2015: The appeals court puts Maureen McDonnells case on hold, pending the outcome of her husbands case in the Supreme Court.

Jan. 15, 2016: The U.S. Supreme Court agrees to hear Bob McDonnells appeal focusing on what constitutes an official act under federal bribery law.

April 27, 2016: Bob McDonnell argues his appeal before the justices, who ask tough questions of the government, indicating the convictions are on shaky ground.

June 27, 2016: A unanimous U.S. Supreme Court vacates Bob McDonnells convictions.
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Adidas has ended its partnership with the rapper formerly known as Kanye West over his offensive and antisemitic remarks. The German sportswear company said Tuesday in a statement that it does not tolerate antisemitism and any other sort of hate speech" and called Yes recent comments and actions unacceptable, hateful and dangerous." It comes after Adidas faced pressure to cut ties with Ye, with celebrities and others on social media urging the company to act. It said at the beginning of the month that it was placing its lucrative sneaker deal with the rapper under review. Adidas is just the latest company to end connections with Ye, who also has been suspended from Twitter and Instagram.
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. - A Winston-Salem man was arrested Friday on charges he filed a false report of yet another clown sighting.

David Armstrong, 24, called police just before 3 a.m. Friday and reported that someone dressed as a clown had knocked on his window in the 1800 block of Salem Crest Lane.

According to police, Armstrong said he chased the clown until it ran into some nearby woods. After police investigated, they said Armstrong admitted he made the whole thing up. Armstrong has been charged with filing a false police report and was placed in the Forsyth County Detention Center under a $500 bond.

At least one other recent clown sightings reported in Winston-Salem over the last week is also false, according to police.

In a statement released Friday morning, police said that a report of a person dressed as a clown attempting to lure children into the woods also appears to be made up.

According to police reports, two children reported seeing the clown, and one adult hearing, but not seeing, the clown. That clown was alleged to have fled the scene by the time officers arrived, police said.

Police said that during the course of the investigation, they found video surveillance footage of the area where the clown was allegedly seen. Officers reviewed the footage covering the time of the reported sighting and for a period before and after. The video did not show anyone dressed as a clown or attempting to lure children into the woods, police said.

A second sighting was reported about four hours later and two miles away in the 1600 block of Hope Lane.

Other sightings were reported near Walkertown  where a woman said the clown had a machete  as well as in High Point, Rural Hall and Greensboro.

Winston-Salem police said they have thoroughly investigated each of the sightings reported to their department, but they have not been able to substantiate any sightings. Police said they have stepped up patrols in neighborhoods where sightings have been reported and nearby areas where children are likely to be present, like school bus stops.

The department will continue to follow up on any investigative leads that surface.

Theories have emerged that the clown sightings, reported as early as Aug. 21 in Greenville, S.C., could be part of a marketing campaign for the recently released Rob Zombie horror film "31."

Saban Films, which is distributing the movie had this statement: "The company and the film 31 are not associated in any way with the creepy clowns and costumed characters found roaming the South.
RICHMOND  Former Gov. Bob McDonnell was sitting in his office in Virginia Beach on Thursday afternoon when he got the call from his lawyer.

Its over, attorney Hank Asbill told him. With those two words, Bob McDonnell, the 71st governor of Virginia, knew that the legal trials and tribulations of the last three and a half years were finally behind him.

Shedding tears of relief, the 62-year-old got out from behind his desk at The ESG Companies, a Virginia Beach-based developer, stepped into the hallway, let out a holler, and was immediately embraced by co-workers. Then he called his wife, former first lady Maureen McDonnell.

Ive been waiting to hear those words for 43 months now, McDonnell told the Richmond Times-Dispatch in an exclusive interview.Its been such an ordeal  its almost hard to remember the last time I wasnt under the gun with the federal government.  Just a tremendous sense of relief.

McDonnells odyssey began with notice in February 2013 of a federal corruption investigation into his acceptance of gifts while in office.

He was toppled from the pinnacle of political power and consideration for national office into the pit of felony indictment, conviction and prison sentence, before the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously overturned the convictions in June, leading to Thursdays request by federal authorities for dismissal.

In the interview, the humbled and faith-driven former governor recounted his experience, reflected on what hes learned and how it has transformed his life, and discussed his plans for the future.

When you go from governor to indicted in 11 days, its an exceptionally humbling and very, very tough experience, he said.

But I felt that we had extremely good lawyers. They absolutely believed that under the law that I was innocent. I knew in my own heart and my own soul that while I wish I had made some other decisions, that I never violated any state or federal laws, and at some point it would get it right in the justice system.

Indelible dates

McDonnell is blessed, or cursed, with a sharp memory for dates and times. The significant moments of the last four years are burned into the former governors memory. He remembers the date  Feb. 15, 2013  the day after Valentines Day, when he first learned he was the subject of a federal corruption investigation with roughly 10 months left in his four-year term.

It was probably the biggest blow to my sense of self-worth, and sense of honor that my parents had taught me, McDonnell recalled. And I was shaken to my core.

McDonnell said he called his team together, close-knit Cabinet officials, a number of whom had served with him dating back to his time as attorney general from 2006 to 2009.

No matter what else is going on, how many subpoenas are flying around weve got to finish strong and govern well, he told them.

It was an incredible collected effort from the team, he recalled Thursday. Everybody hung in there. Nobody abandoned ship.

He said that the 10 months while in office under the shadow of an investigation were emotionally difficult and disruptive. If it werent for Gods amazing grace and remarkable friends during that time, I dont know how I would have endured.

The former governor was indicted in January 2014, days after he completed his term as governor. He said things got easier to manage once he was out of office. The low point came Sept. 4, 2014  two years and four days ago when the jury verdict came down guilty, was obviously far and away the most devastating day of my life.

I just could not believe that a jury believed that I had corrupted my office. That my good name that my parents had given me was now in tatters, he said. And that it was going to be a long haul to be able to demonstrate my innocence.

A deeper walk in faith

McDonnell said that day began a period that he described as a deeper walk in faith, with so many people around the state and country who supported him and said they were praying for him.

That began the most amazing two years of my life, the former governor said. I have never felt as much love and affection and appreciation and kindness and unmerited favor and grace in my entire life, during these two years of some very deep suffering but some remarkable kindness from people.

McDonnell said the experience allowed him to enjoy the simple things in life  my children, simplifying my life in a lot of ways, downsizing, and adding four grandchildren to his family over the last 18 months. That was a remarkable blessing.

He said he focused on one day at a time, whether it was working at his business, babysitting a grandchild or volunteering for a charity and trusting in Gods providence for the future.

It was a very new and radical way of living, McDonnell said. When youre governor you think you can do everything. Youve got a hundred thousand people working for you, youve got capable people, youve got immense power, he explained. And then you go into a circumstance where you are completely powerless against the decisions of the federal government. It was a vast shock to the system.

McDonnell said the U.S. Supreme Courts decisions to let him remain free on bond instead of beginning to serve his two-year prison sentence, then agreeing to hear his appeal, gave him immense hope that the court might look at his case differently than the lower court in which he was convicted and the appeals court that affirmed his convictions.

Grief and disbelief to tears and extraordinary joy, McDonnell said, describing the range of emotions leading up to the resolution Thursday. The former governor said the experience has given him the opportunity to take a very hard look at my own conduct over 60 years.

McDonnell said he is more focused on the present than the future, less on material possessions and more on what he called the basics  which are your family, your friends, your service to others, your faith life. Things that I rushed through too much during my time in politics.

The former governor said he thought the Supreme Court did a good job defining the standards by which routine political behavior can be differentiated from corruption and what should be subject to prosecution.

He said the lesson for elected officials is to keep your eye on the ball to, in all measures, go beyond the requirements of the law, to govern your own behavior, and for prosecutors not to stretch the theories of the law beyond what it is pretty clear the law ought to cover.

McDonnell also said he supported recent law changes tightening gift rules in the Virginia legislature.

I wish in retrospect that there were different decision that I made, he said, referring to his acceptance of gifts and loans from Jonnie Williams Sr., then-CEO of Star Scientific, who testified against McDonnell during his trial.

It created an appearance of something that just wasnt the case. It created an appearance maybe of something that was in violation of the law, which was not the case. There will be an opportunity for people on all sides of this to reflect on their own conduct, and ultimately do better going forward.

Going forward

McDonnell said he expects to have his law license restored within the next 30 days. But that is just part of plan for the future.This has changed me, I believe for the better, said McDonnell. Ive had such a blessed life ... but now that Ive learned suffering, and a deeper sense of humility, and a greater sense of compassion for other people that are hurting or may have felt injustice ... I feel a calling to maybe to be able to help on a much more retail level.

McDonnell has been volunteering at the food bank and a faith-based charity known as Operation Blessing. I still like public service, but its going to be in a very different way outside of elected office, he said. McDonnell said he would pursue more charitable works and some ideas hes been kicking around at some universities, while continuing to build the business he owns with his sister, Maureen.

I get a huge chunk of my life back, McDonnell said, thanking his legal team, which included Asbill, John Brownlee and Noel J. Francisco, who argued McDonnells case before the Supreme Court. They never stopped believing  they always believed in my case. They never stopped fighting, McDonnell said.

Now I have the luxury of being able to do some of those things, and the fourth quarter of my life, I think will be very satisfying.

Without bitterness

McDonnell said he also moves forward without anger or bitterness toward anyone.

You cant live daily with those kind of emotions, he said.

I havent for years, nor do I today, have any bitterness against the government, he said. They were doing their job. I think they certainly stretched the theories of the law well beyond what they should have been.

Nor is McDonnell bitter about Williams  the dietary supplement impresario and former friend who was the prosecutions star witness. Williams testified that he showered McDonnell, his wife, and their children with more than $177,000 in gifts, loans and luxury trips in exchange for the governors influence to promote his product.

Thats between Mr. Williams and God  I cant judge him, nor can I be angry or bitter, McDonnell said. All I can control is what could I have done differently.

He acknowledged that revelations about the details of his marriage and the McDonnells personal lives that surfaced during the scandal created some challenges that now may be able to begin to heal.

The former governor and his wife have been living apart since the trial, but lawyers for Maureen McDonnell said that she is likely to relocate to Hampton Roads, where Bob McDonnellhe lives.

I talked with my wife today, McDonnell said. We cried together  we laughed a little bit. These two words  Its over, are what weve been waiting to hear for so long, he added.

But it hasnt been easy. Being governor was a cakewalk compared to going through a trial like this. I wouldnt wish this on anybody.

McDonnell credited his weekly prayer group in Richmond with helping him handle the ups and downs of the last 43 months. People have surrounded me with prayer in such a way that its allowed me to completely release any anger, any bitterness, including anger with myself, he said.

McDonnell said his faith life has increased dramatically. He said he just focused that at the end of his ordeal, I know that I am innocent. I know my lawyers believe Im innocent. I know weve got the best system of justice in the world and I know God is faithful.

Those beliefs have all been vindicated today. And Im just amazingly grateful for this.
LYNCHBURG  About a month after the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission released a timeline for an environmental review, Dominion Energy Chairman and CEO Tom Farrell said the company has pushed back its targeted in-service date for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline.

Farrell acknowledged the change in comments made during the Barclays CEO Energy-Power Conference in New York City on Thursday. He said the original targeted in-service date was late 2018, but the company now expects the pipeline will begin serving customers in early 2019, if its approved by FERC.

Farrell also acknowledged the importance of the Notice of Schedule, which was issued by FERC on Aug. 12

With a project of this size  600-mile pipeline, going through a couple of national forests, going underneath a mountain which has a national park on the top and going through three different states  getting the Notice of Schedule is an extremely important milestone, he said. What that means is that the FERC believes that the route is essentially complete.

Dominion spokesman Aaron Ruby explained while there still may be some minor modifications ahead, we dont foresee any major adjustments that would impact FERCs schedule.

The Notice of Schedule issued in August by FERC is based on the issuance of a draft environmental impact statement (EIS) in December; a final EIS should be issued June 30, 2017.

According to the Environmental Protection Agencys website, an environmental impact statement will examine consideration of a reasonable range of alternatives that accomplish the purpose, satisfy the need of the proposed project and looks at direct and indirect environmental effects and their significance.

A deadline for federal authorization is set for 90 days after the final EIS is issued, or Sept. 28, 2017.

Farrell said surveying and engineering will be complete by the end of this year, paving the way for Dominion to begin construction late next summer or early fall.

Were working now with our partners and with our construction contractors on the final schedule now that we have this Notice of Schedule and we know what were going to have to be doing, Farrell said during the conference.

The specific timing of a construction schedule should be provided with third-quarter financial reports.
Over 200 sixth-graders at Read Mountain Middle School had the opportunity to Skype with Samantha Larson, a young woman who has scaled the seven highest summits on the earthly continents. She did so from the age of 12 to 18, finishing up on Mount Everest. After her climbing expeditions, Larson went on to attend school at Stanford University.

On Aug. 24, Larson Skyped with the students from her home in Seattle, where she works as a freelance adventure journalist and science writer.

Angela Myers, an English teacher at Read Mountain Middle, had contacted Larson after reading an excerpt about her in a sixth-grade English textbook. Larson was happy to comply.

Technology gurus for Botetourt County Public Schools Sammy Foster and Mike Moser set the call up via the auditoriums projection screen. After giving instructions on politeness, Myers dialed a number and soon a smiling Larson was on the big screen.

The students clapped for her and the Skyping began. Larson spoke of her climbing adventures. She went to Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania first and finished with Mount Everest the tallest summit in the world. She spoke of the importance of setting goals, those small and lofty.

She then took questions from selected sixth-graders like Olivia, who asked, Would you go back and do it again, and what would you change?"

Larson responded by saying that she would do it again, and if she could change anything, it would be to be more confident.

Forty-five minutes later, Larson signed off. The students clapped for her again and the session ended.
Taipei, Sept. 9 (CNA) Members of a firefighters' rights group protested in front of the Executive Yuan on Friday over being required to capture snakes and wasps as part of their jobs, saying that they have been risking their lives performing these non-firefighting tasks for which they have received little training.
Burkina Faso President Roch Marc Christian Kabore said his country will start research into rough diamond trading and consider applying for membership of the Kimberly Process (KP).

He said this after his meeting with the KP chairperson Ahmed Bin Sulayem.

Although the landlocked West African country was a non-diamond producer, the two also discussed compliance protocols, border controls and legitimate rough diamond trade.

Kabore said that Burkina Faso was prepared to take necessary measures to ensure compliance with KP procedures.

Sulayem, who has also visited Angola, Central African Republic and South Africa, said Burkina Faso had developed a reputation for its willingness to address the illicit trade across a number of commodities, including rough diamonds.

Its important to show tangible support for developing nations, especially when they have expressed a strong desire to embrace growth, while at the same time researching how they might implement better compliance protocols to international standards; Burkina Faso is one of those nations, he said in a statement.



Mathew Nyaungwa, Editor in Chief of the African Bureau, Rough&Polished




Lucapa Diamond has recovered a 38.6-carat pink diamond from alluvial mining operations at the Lulo diamond project in Angola.

The ASX-listed mining and exploration company, which operates Lulo in partnership with Angola's national diamond company, Endiama and private group Rosas & Petalas, said in a statement that the stone was the largest fancy colored diamond recovered to date at Lulo, suppassing a 28.5 carat light pink diamond included in the most recent Lulo sale parcel.

An exceptional 404 ct Type IIa D-colour diamond was also recovered last February, which later sold for $16-million.

Meanwhile, company chief executive Stephen Wetherall told the Africa Downunder conference in Perth that Lucapa was considering listing on the London Aim exchange and acquire more projects in Africa.

He also said that Lucapa was mulling increasing its current 40 percent stake in Lulo.



Mathew Nyaungwa, Editor in Chief of the African Bureau, Rough&Polished




(vedomosti.ru)  LLD Diamonds (part of Leviev Group of Companies owned by Israeli businessman Lev Leviev) became the largest buyer of rough diamonds at ALROSA's first auction in Vladivostok, according to two sources close to the companies and CEO of GK Ruiz (part of the Leviev Group of Companies) Valery Morozov. ALROSA representative declined to comment. In early September, ALROSA sold 19 large stones weighing 1098 carats for $14.6 million on diamond tender in Vladivostok. LLD diamonds bought diamonds worth $6.4 million, Morozov said. Meanwhile, ALROSA sold 28 polished diamonds during the tender, 18 of which were fancy, for $3.6 million. LLD bought several diamonds for $796 000.

"ALROSA invited us to take part in the auction, and we were able to buy a big and rather attractive lot," - Morozov said. It was important for ALROSA from the political perspective to demonstrate that there is an infrastructure in Vladivostok for diamond trading and it is no worse than in Antwerp, Tel Aviv or Moscow, he explains. "Rough diamonds will be cut and polished, and some of them will be sold in one of the stores of Moscow Jewelry Plant, which is owned by Leviev,"  according to a source close to the businessman's structures.

ALROSA plans to organize diamond auctions in Vladivostok regularly on the Eurasian Diamond Centre's trading floor. The Centre allows to accelerate the timing of transactions by facilitating customs and visa requirements, the company said.




Canadian Pacific

Canadian Pacific Railway (CP) has announced that its executive vice president and CFO, Mark Erceg, has resigned from his position effective Sept. 9.

Erceg was appointed to the CFO role in May 2015, and it is said that following his resignation Erceg plans to take on a U.S.-based CFO position at an unnamed New York Stock Exchange-listed company. Representatives say he will oversee matters relating to finance as well as information systems.

While this was a difficult decision for me to make, I am truly proud of the work we have done in my tenure at CP, Erceg said of his departure from the company. Leaving at this time to pursue this exciting new opportunity is the right decision and I know CP, under the leadership of Hunter Harrison and Keith Creel, is well-positioned for continued success.

The Class 1 has selected Nadeem Velani as it interim vice president and CFO. Officials say Velani joined the company in March 2013, having served most recently as vice president of Investor Relations.

Before he joined the CP staff, Velani worked for Canadian National Railway Co. for 15 years, holding roles in Financial Planning, Investor Relations, Marketing and Sales.

E. Hunter Harrison, CPs CEO, called Erceg a big part of CPs senior leadership team, adding that the company will miss Ercegs presence.

We wish him and his family well in their future endeavors and look forward to working closely with Nadeem as he assumes the role of CFO on an interim basis, Harrison said.
French shares fell slightly on Friday, with disappointment over the lack of action by the European Central Bank, weak German and French data as well as concerns over geopolitical risks linked to North Korean actions weighing on .

While the European Central Bank left markets in the dark on what future easing steps it may take, North Korea's confirmation of its most powerful nuclear test to date provoked strong reactions from several countries, including the US, China, Russia and Japan.

German exports posted their steepest drop in nearly a year in July, falling 2.6 per cent from June when it rose 0.2 percent, official data showed today.

Imports fell 0.7 percent, reversing a 1.1 percent increase a month ago in another sign of weakness from Europe's largest . On a yearly basis, exports fell 10 percent and imports slid 6.5 percent in July.

Closer home, official data showed that French industrial output unexpectedly fell 0.6 percent in July from the previous month, confounding expectations for an increase of 0.3 percent. This was the third consecutive decrease in production.

The benchmark CAC 40 was down 6 points or 0.14 percent at 4,535 in late opening deals after hitting as low as 4,520 earlier in the session.

Total SA shares fell almost 1 percent. The oil major said it is exercising its preemption right to acquire Chesapeake's 75 percent share in the jointly held Barnett Shale in Texas.

Financials traded mostly higher, with BNP Paribas, Credit Agricole and Societe Generale Group climbing 1-2 percent.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Market Analysis
Appearing on a television network funded by the Russian government, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump lashed out at what he described as the dishonest American press.

Trump was speaking with veteran broadcaster Larry King and was asked what has surprised him most about running for president.

"Well, I think the dishonesty of the media. The media has been unbelievably dishonest," Trump responded. "I mean they'll take a statement that you make which is perfect and they'll cut it up and chop it up and shorten it or lengthen it or do something with it."

"And all of a sudden it doesn't look as good as it did when you actually said it," he added. "But there's tremendous dishonesty with the media. Not all of it, obviously, but tremendous dishonesty."

Trump recently lifted a ban on several news organizations he believed treated him unfairly, including the Washington Post, the Huffington Post and Politico.

During the wide-ranging interview, the real estate tycoon also said it was unlikely that Russian hackers targeted Democratic Party databases as part of an effort to influence the election.

"I think it's probably unlikely. I think maybe the Democrats are putting that out. Who knows? But I think that it's pretty unlikely," Trump said.

He added, "I hope that if they are doing something I hope that somebody's going to be able to find out so they can end it, because that would not be appropriate."

Trump's appearance on the Russian government-backed RT America comes on the heels of his recent comments describing Russian President Vladimir Putin as a better leader than U.S. President Barack Obama.

However, the Trump campaign has subsequently claimed that they believed the interview was for King's podcast and were unaware it would appear on RT.

(Photo: Michael Vadon)

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business News
Republican incumbent Senators are leading among likely voters in races in the critical swing states of Florida, North Carolina and Ohio, according to the results of a Quinnipiac University Swing State Poll released on Friday.

The poll showed Senator Marco Rubio, R-Fla., leading Congressman Patrick Murphy, D-Fla., by 50 percent to 43 percent in Florida, while Senator Richard Burr, R-N.C., leads Democratic challenger Deborah Ross by 49 percent to 43 percent in North Carolina.

Ohio Senator Rob Portman, R-Ohio, has an even more substantial advantage over former Governor Ted Strickland, leading by 51 percent to 40 percent.

Meanwhile, Quinnipiac found that Pennsylvania's see-saw race between Senator Pat Toomey, R-Penn., and Democratic challenger Katie McGinty remains too close to call.

The poll showed that 46 percent of likely Pennsylvania voters support Toomey, while 45 percent favor McGinty. The one-point gap is well within the margin of error.

"The U.S. Senate races in Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and perhaps Pennsylvania show Democrats face an uphill climb," said Peter A. Brown, assistant Director of the Quinnipiac Poll.

He added, "All four GOP candidates are running ahead of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, some by just a bit, but some substantially."

The outcomes of the races in these closely watched swing states could play a big role in Democrats' efforts to retake control of the Senate.

The survey of 601 likely Florida voters was conducted August 31st through September 7th and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Quinnipiac also surveyed 751 likely North Carolina voters, 775 likely Ohio voters and 778 likely Pennsylvania voters between August 29th and September 7th.

The North Carolina results have a margin of error of plus or minus 3.6 percentage points, while the Ohio and Pennsylvania results have a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Political News
The Foreign Press Centers (FPC) issue its own press credential that is recognized by various organizations in the area and allows access to FPC facilities and services in Washington, DC and New York, NY. The FPC credential is typically valid for three years and renewable at the end of that period for members of the media on continuing assignment in the United States.

Credentialing
A drive down the Lincoln Highway through Columbus, Nebraska, took me past Glurs Tavern, the oldest continuously operated tavern west of the Missouri River.

Glurs has been around since 1876, according to Todd Trofholz, who bought the place in 1992.

It was impressive to be in a tavern where legends and locals have sat since 1876; it felt like pulling up a chair to sit at the table of history.

Various tables were positioned on the hardwood floor, and stuffed animal heads adorned the walls.

According to local legend, Buffalo Bill Cody paid his bill here with a $1,000 tender. I asked Trofholz about it.

Thats what the locals say. It would be hard to prove, but for sure it makes a good story, Trofholz replied.

It certainly would have been possible in 1883 when Cody supposedly stopped at Glurs; the United States was printing large denomination bills.

I paid for my lunch with a much smaller denomination bill and continued west.

The next Lincoln Highway treasure to be found was a short stretch of the original route that was never paved. As roads were developed, the Lincoln Highway route changed to take advantage of the improvements, leaving sections like these to be forgotten.

As I drove down the gravel country road, the only indication that this was once the Lincoln Highway was a sign on a farmers mailbox.

From the country road, I made my way to Duncan where I found two rows of hackberry trees. They were surrounded by grass in the center of town. The trees once lined the Lincoln Highway. I was astonished by how narrow the road was back in the 1920s. A couple of trees were wrapped with a red, white and blue sign with the blue letter L. This left no doubt this was once the route of the Lincoln Highway.

I got out and walked around the trees and wished they could tell the stories of the countless travelers who once passed this way. I wondered what dreams pulled them to travel the Lincoln Highway. What did they encounter? Who did they meet along the way? What happened to them? These are the endless questions  never to be answered  of someone with an insatiable curiosity.

West out of Duncan, I drove on a gravel road and found a pony truss bridge that dated to the Lincoln Highway. The bridge spanned Prairie Creek. The old bridge is listed on the National Historic Landmarks. It was used as the Lincoln Highway route until 1928. Afterward the route was moved to the south side of the railroad tracks and it became Highway 30.

The large wooden planks rumbled as I drove across the bridge, just as it has since being built in 1913.

On the west side of the bridge, I parked my truck and walked back across the bridge. South of the bridge, a Union Pacific train rolled past and the engineer blew the horn in response to me pumping my arm and fist up and down. A replay of a childhood gesture, it symbolized a request for the engineer.
Millennial Moms Review: 2022 Acura MDX is pretty close to the perfect family car

I dont know if perfect is attainable, especially considering weve got the world of options when it comes to modern vehicles. Were spoiled and, as such, we have very specific needs and wants. Driving-wise, the 2022 Acura MDX is one of my favourite ...
Young roster has high hopes for future. Only four seniors suited up.
In the village of Fasitoo-uta, Titi Olive, 46, lives a struggling life with her family.

Approached by the Village Voice, she explained the situation her family is in.

You have come and have seen that I am a poor mother, Titi confesses.

But I will still try; the father of the family is in New Zealand. You have noticed that my place isnt very pleasant. I just need help with building a proper house because I want my family to have a proper place to live. I have many children.

No one in the family works. I was employed before but the pay wasnt enough. There was just enough for the food for the family and that was it.

Speaking about her former employment, Titi says that it was just enough especially with her childrens schooling expenses.

We dont have family to rely on and when I would get my pay on Friday and it will finish early on that day, she said.

A lot of my children are in school with some of them living with my sibling in Apia. We have a plantation where my children are tending to right now to help out the family.

But she does have one of her children currently working to help out.

I only have one child working for the old lady down the road, Titi said.

When she gets her pay then theres just not enough to cover church commitments, village obligations and especially money to look after the family and the childrens school.

I have four children in school; two are in school in Apia, one attending Nuuausala and one at Paul VI.

When asked how her weekly pay of $100 was used she replied.

The $100 we got weekly is not enough, Titi said.

It covers about three days and thats it. The cost of living is just too expensive right now. When we run out of money then one of my children will take crops to sell to get some money for the childrens school.

But the money we get from the crops depends on whats available. It depends on the fully grown bananas or taro. Its not an everyday source of money for us.

Whatever we get to sell then that will help us. I am just waiting for more of my children to get jobs to help out the family.

With the ongoing debate about poverty in Samoa, Titi strongly agrees that there is poverty and that her family is currently living under its shadow.

What about church commitments and village obligations?

A lot of money goes to Church commitments because there are many church activities, says Titi.

We tithe every Sunday and give money to help with funerals within the church as well as money to help out with the church building.

Titi concluded by requesting some help from the government.

We have water and electricity, she began.

Every family in Samoa is living on cash power. But if we have no money then we have no power. Our family is standing alone at the moment helping one another.

The government hasnt done anything; we need help with our roads and water pipes. The water pipes dont reach the families further in land.

Our roads here arent complete too, the ones to the plantation lands for different families. We have already requested help for these matters.
A pre-School from Mulifanua visited the headquarters of the Samoa Observer Newspaper yesterday morning.

Principal Samu Feilo said the class field trip is part of their curriculum this term.

My students are learning about ways of communication this term hence why we are here this morning, he said.

The students are learning about four different topics and ways of communications is one of those topics.

So throughout the week, we have been learning about different ways of communication and we showed the students that this is another way of communication which is through the newspaper.

Mr. Feilo went on to say that the students and parents have been looking forward to this trip.

They (students) got to meet the Editor Mataafa Keni Lesa, the person they see on the editorial pages and that was just fantastic, he said.

During the meeting, Mataafa touched on some points that I have taught my students so that was good and also the parents, this is their first time in the newspaper office and so they were as excited as the students.

Asked how the visit benefits the students, Mr. Feilo said the students got to see where the newspaper is produced.

They have been learning about ways of communication but coming here and seeing for themselves where the newspaper is produced is just fantastic, he said.

They will always remember this trip and Im sure they have learned because at this age their minds are sharp and they will never forget about this trip.

He added that this will not be the last time his school will visit Samoa Observer.

They also visited Radio Polynesian and TV1.
It is easier to build strong children, then to repair broken men.

Inspired by this famous quote by Frederick Douglas, the Samoa Returnees Trust under their Reality Check project hosted a programme which aims to help young people on probation.

The programme which was launched in 2014 is kindly sponsored the New Zealand High Commission.

On Wednesday, 14 probationers ranging from the age group of 16-24 years old participated in the programme and had the opportunity to listen to some of the returnees about their experiences.

The overall goal of the programme is designed as a deterrence and wake up call for these juvenile delinquents, if you will, the Director of Samoa Returnees Trust, Magele Vernon Mackenzie told Samoa Observer.

This morning all the Probationers and their parents signed consent forms and were keen to participate in the program to further discourage these young men (16 yrs - 24 yrs) from making the wrong choices and end up being convicted and sentenced to prison.

A Probation Officer was assigned to the group and we started with a mock processing of a new prisoner from the courthouse, and then transport them to Police Holding cells where they were inducted by the Officer in Charge.

The Police officer in charge showed them the cells and showed them what it actually feels to lose your freedom.

Magele went on to say that the programme has been successful.

The reason why we are successful is because the probationers get to see the difference between the movies and the things they see on social media and how it feels like to be in the real situation and realize that it is not a nice place to be. A place where some people say its the worst place on earth.

There are so many different factors as well. Theres your shame to your family, shame to your village and shame to your congregation.

The probationers also had the opportunity to listen to a mentoring session by one of the members, Papaliitele Siva Afi, who is the Returnee Advisor.

This exercise and tour serves as a vehicle for the Trust to liaise with the relevant ministries and mentor these 'at risk youth' who need to experience firsthand this environment and the consequences of their actions and prevent them from heading down the wrong path in life.

This is an opportunity for our members to share their experiences with these youths and help them get back on track. Our members have been there, done that. They walked in their shoes; they were them more than 10-20 years ago.

Samoa has changed dramatically. These youths are dealing with issues that werent there 10-20 years ago. What we are trying to do is to figure out a way to help them and lift them up. Give them some kind of shock to the system so that at least they avoid leading the wrong path and avoid going to prison.

Finally, Magele wants to acknowledge their ongoing partnership they have with the Community Probation at the Ministry of Justice and Court Administration as well as the Samoa Police and Samoa Corrections.
HONOLULU (AP)  Pier 17 doesn't even show up on most Honolulu maps. Cars whiz past it on their way to Waikiki's famous white sand beaches. Yet few locals, let alone passing tourists, are aware that just behind a guarded gate, another world exists: foreign fishermen confined to American boats for years at a time.

Hundreds of undocumented men are employed in this unique U.S. fishing fleet, due to a federal loophole that allows them to work but exempts them from most basic labor protections. Many come from impoverished Southeast Asian and Pacific nations to take the dangerous jobs, which can pay as little as 70 cents an hour.

With no legal standing on U.S. soil, the men are at the mercy of their American captains on American-flagged, American-owned vessels, catching prized swordfish and ahi tuna. Since they don't have visas, they are not allowed to set foot on shore. The entire system, which contradicts other state and federal laws, operates with the blessing of high-ranking U.S. lawmakers and officials, an Associated Press investigation found.

The fleet of around 140 boats docks about once every three weeks, occasionally at ports along the West Coast, including Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco, but mainly at Piers 17 and 38 in Honolulu. Their catch ends up at restaurants and premium seafood counters across the country, from Whole Foods to Costco, and is touted by celebrity chefs such as Roy Yamaguchi and Masaharu Morimoto.

Americans buying Hawaiian seafood are almost certainly eating fish caught by one of these workers, who account for nearly all the fleet's crew.

A single yellowfin tuna can fetch more than $1,000, and vendors market the catch as "sustainable seafood produced by Hawaii's hard-working fishermen."

But workers such as Indonesian Syamsul Maarif aren't protected or compensated like locals. He was sent home to Indonesia after nearly dying when his boat sank 160 miles off Hawaii. He lost everything, and said it took four months to get his pay.

"We want the same standards as the other workers in America, but we are just small people working there based on the contract that we signed," he said. "We don't have any visa. We are illegal, so we cannot demand more."

Over six months, the AP obtained confidential contracts, reviewed dozens of business records and interviewed boat owners, brokers and more than 50 fishermen in Hawaii, Indonesia and San Francisco. The investigation found men living in squalor on some boats, forced to use buckets instead of toilets, suffering running sores from bed bugs and sometimes lacking sufficient food. It also revealed instances of human trafficking.

This report is part of the AP's ongoing global look at labor abuses in the fishing industry, stretching from Southeast Asia to America's own waters. Last year, the AP reported on fishermen locked in a cage and others buried under fake names on the remote Indonesian island village of Benjina . Their catch was traced to the United States, leading to more than 2,000 slaves being freed. But thousands more remain trapped worldwide in a murky industry where work takes place far from shore and often without oversight.

In Hawaii, federal contractors paid to monitor catches said they are troubled by what they've seen while living weeks at a time at sea with the men.

"You get that sort of feeling that it's like gaming the system," said Forest O'Neill, who coordinates the boat observers in Honolulu. "It's a shock. It becomes normal, but it's like, 'How is this even legal? How is this possible?' ... They are like floating prisons."

____

"THEY'RE TECHNICALLY NOT HERE"

Under the law, U.S. citizens must make up 75 percent of the crew on most commercial fishing vessels in America. But influential lawmakers, including the late Hawaii Sen. Daniel Inouye, pushed for a loophole to support one of the state's biggest industries. It exempted commercial fishing boat owners from federal rules enforced almost everywhere else.

Thus about 700 foreign workers in Hawaii, who catch $110 million worth of seafood annually, lack certain labor rights most Americans take for granted. They have little legal recourse in these areas, and are detained on boats where U.S. Customs and Border Protection requires captains to hold the men's passports. That potentially goes against federal human trafficking laws saying bosses who possess workers' identification documents can face up to five years in prison.

U.S. Attorney Florence Nakakuni, the chief federal law enforcement official in Hawaii, said it's all above board.

"People say ... they're like captives," she said. "But they don't have visas, so they can't leave their boat, really."

Federal laws and rules don't mention the Hawaiian fleet by name. However, when specific details are combined, it's clear the language in the loophole applies to these boats.

"It has the fig leaf of legality," said Cornell University law professor Stephen Yale-Loehr, who, like other leading immigration experts contacted by AP, was unfamiliar with Hawaii's arrangement. "This is inconsistent with the general notion in American values, if not law, that workers should be paid a fair wage and not be mistreated."

Hawaii's fishing industry is otherwise one of the most tightly regulated for catch limits and sustainability, attracting companies that pride themselves on being ocean-friendly. Supermarkets, restaurants and chefs selling the seafood condemned labor abuse.

President Barack Obama's recently expanded protections in Hawaii created the world's largest marine preserve but didn't address working conditions. Honolulu's fleet gets only about 10 percent of its catch from the entire restricted area.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Coast Guard routinely inspect the Hawaiian boats. At times, fishermen complain they're not getting paid and officers say they tell owners to honor the contracts. But neither agency has any authority over actual wages.

"This is a unique situation," said Coast Guard vessel examiner Charles Medlicott. "But it is legal."

Here's how it works: When boat owners need crew, they pay brokers abroad or in Honolulu to bring the men from overseas  mostly from Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and the tiny Pacific island nation of Kiribati. It can take weeks to coordinate, sign contracts, buy airline tickets and arrange travel documents for each fisherman.

Workers typically sign two- or three-year renewable contracts, and some extend repeatedly, staying up to a decade on boats with five to six men each.

"For one crew, one person, it's about $10,000," said Honolulu-based agent Hernan Santiago, who works on commission. He also wires money home to the fishermen's families, gets them phone cards and assists in times of crisis. "I'm playing the middle man."

Regional Customs director Brian Humphrey said his agency could issue the workers temporary permits allowing them to enter the U.S., similar to those sometimes used by cruise ships employees. But he added that option would be "administratively cumbersome." And so these crew members aren't even allowed to land at the airport in Honolulu.

"There really is no purpose for them to come to the U.S. or for them to have a visa because they really don't have any intention of setting foot on shore," Humphrey said.

As a result, the men are first put on planes at home, and then hopscotched from country to country across thousands of miles. A typical route could go from Indonesia to Australia to Fiji to Western Samoa to American Samoa. Some pass through Amsterdam. Others end up in Mexico or Panama. They're then picked up by American captains for the 10- to 20-day sail to Honolulu.

Some fishermen have even been made to leap into the sea. In one video shown to AP, men swam from one boat to another through tossing waves, clutching their belongings in plastic bags.

It used to be easier. Before Sept. 11, the men came on planes. But the terror attacks spurred a national crackdown on foreigners entering the country. As an unintended consequence, the workers now reach U.S. docks with minimal government vetting, creating greater security risks.

"We've been stuck in this hellhole," said Jim Cook, a longtime leader in the commercial fishery who co-owns several vessels, a supply store and a seafood restaurant at Pier 38. "It's a very complicated system that doesn't work well for anybody, not the boat owner, not Customs and Border Protection. And the potential for mischief is far greater."

The fishermen are paid as little as $350 a month, far below U.S. minimum wage, but still more than they can make back home in countries where people live on less than a dollar a day. Many workers also get small bonuses, lifting their monthly pay to $500 or $600. A lucky few get a percentage of the catch, making it possible to triple their wages. They're willing to give up their freedom of movement for these jobs because of the salary.

For many boat owners, the fishermen are a bargain: Bait and ice can cost more than crew salaries. Some of the foreign workers in Hawaii earn less than $5,000 for a full year. By contrast, the average pay for an American deckhand nationwide last year was $28,000, sometimes for jobs that last just a few months, according to government statistics. Experienced American crew members working in Alaska can make up to $80,000 a year.

Owner Quan Do, who brings his workers from Vietnam, said profits depend on the catch. It costs $35,000 just to head out to sea. If the fish are biting, he can double his money.

"Fishing, it's a gamble," he said, loading groceries onto the Lady Jackie docked at Pier 17. "If you're lucky, you win. If you're not, you lose."

The former refugee is one of many Vietnamese-Americans who sailed from the Gulf of Mexico to Hawaii's rich Pacific waters in the 1980s, tripling the state's commercial fleet. A decade later, owners found themselves short on local crew and turned to overseas workers as a solution.

In the Gulf, foreign laborers also are fishing on oyster, shrimp and menhaden vessels. But unlike in Hawaii, they're allowed on shore, and some get paid $14 an hour for eight-hour shifts. In addition, boat owners must file for costly permits certifying no U.S. citizens are available to work.

Over the years, environmental and labor advocates in Honolulu have complained that in a state with high unemployment, the foreign workers take away U.S. jobs. However, few in Hawaii are lining up for the grueling work, weeks at sea and low pay.

Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, acknowledges the fishermen's liberties are limited and has unsuccessfully proposed an amendment that would allow them to fly into the country. It's a move that would fix a widely accepted paradox. Currently, even though the men never legally enter the United States, the government provides a transit visa that lets them exit through Honolulu's airport.

AP reporters watched as two fishermen from Kiribati prepared to fly out. They weren't allowed to touch their passports, which were handed to a contracted driver in a black SUV. They would not be paid until arriving home.

Bill Paupe said he's alerted at the Kiribati Consulate in Honolulu every time a worker leaves, but he's otherwise not involved: "They're technically not here."

____

"WHERE DID THIS FISH COME FROM?"

The fishermen are not just cheap, they're skilled. Many from traditional Indonesian fishing villages, like Pemalang on the central coast of Java, start going to sea as young boys with their fathers. It's a place where the glittering ocean serves as a backdrop, and laughing children set off firecrackers on a path too narrow for cars. Money sent here from fishermen around the world pays for the brightly painted cement houses and new motorbikes parked outside.

But for some, the jobs are a disappointment.

Speaking from a boat docked in Honolulu just before heading back to sea, a 23-year-old Indonesian deckhand said his $450 monthly salary wasn't worth it. The AP is not identifying any of the men still working because of concerns about potential retribution from their captains or agents.

"I was jealous of my neighbors who returned from Hawaii ... they were able to have a nice house and a prosperous family. So I decided to get a fishing job here," he said. "It turns out that the salary I got is not much better than my job in my homeland. How can I have a house when I'm back home? It's just my silly dream."

If the men are unhappy, some are allowed to skip out on their contracts, but the ticket home can cost up to two months' salary. They also may have to pay back recruiters' fees, ending up trapped by debt.

In one particularly bad situation, a Kiribati fisherman's ledger obtained by AP shows deductions from his pay including $1,300 for airfare, $1,800 to pay for his replacement and $2,100 for breaking a captain's computer. After more than three years of work, at $350 a month, he should have accumulated close to $13,000, but he ended up with about half of that.

The U.S. government defines forced labor and debt bondage, often involving migrant workers, as modern-day slavery. Every year, the U.S. blacklists countries that have the worst human trafficking records.

"Most of the fish caught and sold in Hawaii is done by the use of exploiting migrant workers in what looks to be a human trafficking scheme legitimized by our own laws," said Kathryn Xian, who runs the nonprofit Pacific Alliance to Stop Slavery.

Authorities are aware Hawaii's fishermen are vulnerable to exploitation. Signs posted at Pier 17 in six languages offer a hotline to help those who have been trafficked.

That's what happened to Abdul Fatah and Sorihin, who arrived from Indonesia seven years ago and were put on the Sea Queen II.

First, a fishing line nearly ripped Sorihin's finger off, and his captain set it straight with a chopstick. Then a winch cable snapped, badly bruising the fisherman's shoulder. That time, he said, he was allowed a two-hour rest.

"I knew if I stayed on that boat I was going to die," said Sorihin, who uses one name.

His friend Fatah, who was kicked awake before dawn for work, was just as scared. He was thrown against a rail and nearly tossed overboard by a wave.

So early one morning when their captain was gone, the two men broke into the skipper's quarters, grabbed their passports and made a run for it while docked in San Francisco.

Eventually, federal officials issued each of them a special visa designated for victims of human trafficking. They remain too terrified to go near the dock at Fisherman's Wharf, where the Sea Queen II still unloads just steps away from clanging cable cars and thousands of tourists. The captain did not respond to messages left by the AP.

Sorihin has advice for American seafood lovers: "Ask, where did this fish come from? Is it the kind of fish that you got from someone in slavery?"

Not all fishing boats have harsh conditions, and some crew members said they enjoy the camaraderie. All said the experience ultimately comes down to each captain.

However, on some vessels, cultural and language barriers, coupled with exhaustion, can exacerbate tensions. Entire crews, at times, have quit. And the days can be grueling. One boat's schedule looked like this: Work from 8 a.m. until 3 p.m., break two hours for lunch and rest. Work from 5 p.m. until 6 a.m., eat and sleep again. Start a new shift at 8 a.m.

"It's very hard work," said a Filipino fisherman who's supporting a teenage daughter and a son studying engineering in college. "When the children finish school, I'm done with this."

Crews typically spend three weeks at sea before coming into the harbor for a few days to sell their catch, restock food, repair damaged gear and fuel up. Most of the Hawaii-based fleet stays at Piers 17 and 38 in Honolulu, but some boats chase swordfish all the way to the West Coast, landing in ports including San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego.

American fishermen can also work exhausting 20-hour days, cramming into small bunks for respite. But when they reach shore, they go home to a bed, a hot shower and a meal. In contrast, Hawaii's fishermen are sometimes even short on food. And unlike their American counterparts, they are dependent on their captain to bring them everything from socks and underwear to rice and meat.

"Mistreatment of workers and failure to provide for basic safety and hygiene is unacceptable. And, regardless of workplace exemptions, is illegal," said Gavin Gibbons, spokesman for the National Fisheries Institute, which represents about 75 percent of the U.S. seafood industry.

In rare cases, boat owners can request passes from federal authorities to take the fishermen ashore for things such as medical care. Though the men are not technically allowed to leave their vessels, security guards turn a blind eye when they go onto the docks, but no farther, to see friends. One afternoon at Pier 17 in Hawaii, the foreign crews visited from boat to boat  Vietnamese cooked a shared meal, Filipinos passed around a phone, Indonesians smoked cigarettes.

One fisherman, sheltering on a boat with his buddies during a rainstorm, said the short down time they get while docked is a welcome break from the nonstop hustle at sea.

"Sometimes you don't even have time to drink water," he said.

At the piers, some vessels are tidy, neatly packed with coiled ropes, scrubbed rails and clean decks. Others have piles of garbage, rusting tanks and rotting carpets. On some boats, crews defecate in buckets or plastic bags, or even hang over the side of the ship to do their business.

"It's unhealthy, quite frankly, for people to have to be kept on the boat," said Kitty Simonds, executive director of the Honolulu-based Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council. "Maybe there needs to be legislation. I mean, who's going to take that on?"

Even in the best conditions, lives are at risk.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health lists commercial fishing as among the most dangerous jobs in the country. In the past 10 years, five fishermen in the Hawaii fleet have died when boats sank or burned, the agency said, and at least four other workers were never found after falling overboard. Two men's quests for better lives ended with their deaths after they were stabbed at the dock in knife fights.

Some fishermen spoke to the AP of injuries or bore scars.

After one worker began coughing up blood at sea, the Hawaii Department of Health said it was contacted by his captain, who brought him in. Doctors diagnosed the man with a rare case of active tuberculosis, isolating him for months and calling everyone on the boat in for chest X-rays and testing.

It is up to boat owners to provide care to their crews. Some fishermen said their bosses were responsive, quickly arranging medical treatment. Others complained they received inadequate care or none at all.

Dr. Craig Nakatsuka visits Pier 38 with a church outreach project that holds services twice a week, a rare opportunity for fellowship. He spoke at dusk on the dock, wearing a white coat and stethoscope.

He said he sees problems in the men ranging from high blood pressure to skin infections caused by the lack of gloves or improper gear. He's concerned about the possibility of scurvy from a shortage of fruits and vegetables.

It's like a "third-world overseas medical mission support in your backyard," he said.

____

NOT SO LOCAL

At Honolulu's Pier 38, the tired fishermen dock at the end of another trip. Some venture as far as 50 feet to a nearby public restroom, but they are careful not to stray much farther. They know they can be sent home if caught off their ships.

Just steps away at Uncle's Fish Market & Grill, crowds dine on $20-plus plates of sashimi and ahi poke bowls, a Hawaiian staple.

The fish is unloaded early every morning at the pier and sold at the only public auction of its kind in the U.S. The sought-after seafood, famous for its taste and quality, commands prices that make the fishery the country's fifth largest.

About 80 percent stays in Hawaii, ending up at hotels, restaurants and supermarkets, said John Kaneko, program manager for the Hawaii Seafood Council. The rest is exported, often flown fresh in airtight cool boxes to the country's finest eateries, from Los Angeles and San Francisco to New York.

For instance, some of Roy's 25 restaurants in eight states source seafood here. AP interviewed buyers getting fish for Whole Foods in Los Angeles, Stavis Seafood and John Nagle seafood in Boston, LaRocca Seafood in San Francisco and other popular fish markets. Delivery drivers in Honolulu were headed for a local Sam's Club, military bases and hotels, including the Hyatt, along with supermarkets.

When asked about the workers in Honolulu, Costco said it was investigating. Wal-Mart, which owns Sam's Club, declined to comment.

Charlie Nagle, whose family has been in the seafood industry for 130 years, said his buyers "do not and will never knowingly source from vessels that mistreat their crew." Richard Stavis of Stavis Seafood said Thursday that his company is not currently selling fish from Hawaii.

Whole Foods spokeswoman McKinzey Crossland said only 1 percent of their seafood comes from Hawaii, and they had been assured boat crews are well paid with bonuses and health insurance. She added that the company is also looking into the issue.

During the auction at 5 a.m., John Hernandez of John's Fresh Fish picked over rows of seafood, paying about $840 for a 100-pound bigeye tuna. It was due at New York's New Fulton Fish Market by 11 a.m. the next day. An industry veteran, Hernandez said he knows exactly who's working on the boats.

"The owners are a bunch of leeches making money off these crew," he said.

Trucks loaded down with seafood from the sale fan out all over the island. At that point, the connection between the workers and their catch is lost.

"The fishermen aren't Hawaiian?" asked Michael Pollan, a bestselling author on food and agriculture who advocates for workers' rights. He likened the foreign fishermen's "second-class" status in the U.S. to that of farmworkers in years past working without labor protections.

"Food produced for us in conditions approaching slavery is certainly not morally sustainable," he said.

Across the island in an upscale neighborhood where Obama regularly vacations, an array of fish is displayed in a refrigerated case at Whole Foods, with yellowfin tuna selling for $23.99 a pound. Labels in front of each cut say: "Local matters. Fresh. Product of USA (Hawaii)/Processed in USA."

A store worker, eager to answer questions, smiles and says it's all caught in Hawaiian waters by local fishermen and brought to the store every morning from the auction at Pier 38.

He proudly adds: It's the best you can buy.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP)  North Korea on Friday conducted its fifth atomic test, producing its biggest-ever explosive yield, South Korean officials said after monitors detected unusual seismic activity near the North's northeastern nuclear test site.

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement that "artificial seismic waves" from a quake measuring 5.0 were detected near the Punggye-ri test site.

The South's Defense Ministry said it believed the North conducted a nuclear test, while European and U.S. monitoring services also detected similar seismic activity, with the U.S. Geological Survey calling it an "explosion" on its website.

A second North Korean nuclear test this year would raise serious worries in Washington because the North's nuclear tests are part of a push for a nuclear-armed missile that could one day reach the U.S. mainland. A second nuclear test this year would be a defiant response to Western pressure on Pyongyang to halt its nuclear ambitions. The country has previously conducted tests every three to four years.

A South Korean Defense Ministry official, who refused to be named because of office rules, said that Seoul detected an estimated explosive yield of 10 kilotons and assessed that it was from a nuclear test.

After the fourth test, in January, South Korean lawmaker Lee Cheol Woo said Seoul's National Intelligence Service told him that an estimated explosive yield of six kilotons was detected.

The 5.0 magnitude earthquake Friday is the largest of the four past quakes associated with North Korean nuclear tests, according to South Korea's weather agency. Artificial seismic waves measuring 3.9 were reported after North Korea's first nuclear test in 2006; 4.8 was reported from its fourth test this January.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has overseen a robust increase in the number and kinds of missiles tested this year. Not only has the range of the weapons successfully tested jumped significantly, but the country is working to perfect new platforms for launching them  submarines and mobile launchers.

The longer ranges and mobile launchers give the North greater ability to threaten the tens of thousands of U.S. troops stationed throughout Asia.

The seismic activity comes on the 68th anniversary of the founding of North Korea's government and just days after world leaders gathered in China for the G-20 economic summit.

Any test will lead to a strong push for new, tougher sanctions at the United Nations and further worsen already abysmal relations between Pyongyang and its neighbors. North Korea is already one of the most heavily sanctioned places on earth, and many question whether the penalties work.

China, the North's economic lifeline and only major ally, has previously offered cover to Pyongyang, though Beijing has expressed growing frustration with what outsiders call provocations.

North Korea is thought to have a handful of rudimentary nuclear bombs and has spent decades trying to perfect a multistage, long-range missile to eventually carry smaller versions of those bombs. After several failures, it put its first satellite into space with a long-range rocket launched in December 2012, and has since launched another such successful launch.

Experts say that ballistic missiles and rockets in satellite launches share similar bodies, engines and other technology. The U.N. calls the North's long-range rocket launches banned tests of ballistic missile technology.

It's unclear whether North has achieved the technology needed to manufacture a miniaturized nuclear warhead that could fit on a long-range missile capable of hitting the United States. Some analysts believe that the country has the ability to arm shorter range missile with warheads.

In January, North Korea claimed to have conducted a hydrogen bomb test, but many foreign governments and experts were highly skeptical about its claim. But whatever device the North detonated has likely put it a step closer toward its goal of developing a miniaturized warhead to be mounted on a long-range missile. Some analysts said the country needed only a couple of more test explosions before acquiring such a warhead.

North Korea's persistent pursuit of missiles and nuclear weapons has long been one of the most intractable foreign policy problems for U.S. administrations. Another nuclear test would be the latest in a long series of events that test the current international approach to trying to contain the North's nuclear ambitions.

On Tuesday, North Korea fired three medium-range Rodong missiles that traveled about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) and landed near Japan. And last month, a missile from a North Korean submarine flew about 500 kilometers (310 miles), the longest distance achieved by the North for such a weapon. This worried many South Koreans because submarine-based missiles are harder to detect before launch than land-based weapons.

Diplomacy has so far failed to stop North Korea's progress. Six-nation negotiations on dismantling North Korea's nuclear program in exchange for aid were last held in late 2008 and fell apart in early 2009, when North Korea was led by Kim Jong Un's father, Kim Jong Il, who died in late 2011.

North Korea blames the United States and South Korea for its nuclear program, saying long-running "hostility" from Seoul and Washington to its government makes the development crucial for the small country's survival.

Among Pyongyang's regular demands are for Washington to withdraw its troops from the region and to sign a peace treaty formally ending the Korean War.

The Korean Peninsula remains technically at war, as the 1950-53 conflict ended in an armistice. Washington stations more than 28,000 troops in South Korea as a buttress against any North Korean aggression. Tens of thousands more are in nearby Japan.
So there you have it folks.

Now that the 2016 Teuila Festival is out of the way and a new Miss Samoa has been crowned, it is the time to confront those longstanding problems we know are still there waiting to be attended to.

And since the Teuila Festival and everything else that accompanied the celebration were designed to attract tourists; doing a better job to actually achieve the goal of Teuila might be a good place to start.

We say this because after all that dancing, singing and whatever else that tickled your fancy during the past few days, the question remains about the relevancy and usefulness of such a festival in the bigger picture. The real question is this: do they actually attract tourists? And was it worth all the effort and money? Should we not be using the money to promote Samoa elsewhere more effectively? Are there other things we could be doing as a destination to improve our tourism prospects?

Dont get us wrong. The Teuila Festival as a concept is a fantastic idea to showcase our culture to the masses. It is also a wonderful celebration for Samoans here and from abroad. That said, credit must be given to the hardworking organisers  including the government and the Samoa Tourism Authority - for being able to maintain it over the years.

In that vein, wed also like to congratulate the new Miss Samoa who was crowned at Tuanaimato last night. This is no doubt a proud moment for her as well as all her supporters here and abroad.

With the blessing of the nation, she will go on to play a critical role as the face of Samoa over the next 12 months, and in doing so promoting Samoa as the ultimate travel and tourism destination.

Let me say this though, as a country, if we are serious about moving forward as a tourism destination, we need to ask ourselves some tough questions.

These questions require us to be absolutely honest in our response and what we do after. Only then will we be able to find some real solutions to some of those nagging problems in the tourism industry  like the lack of real tourists to occupy the many wonderful tourism accommodations up and down the country.

Gone are the days when the issue of the lack of tourist numbers in Samoa could be attributed to the absence of quality accommodations. That is no longer the case. This country today boasts some of the most impressive tourism accommodation properties in the region so there is no reason why that should be an issue anymore.

Take for example, after years of trying, we finally have a world-recognised hotel chain in Samoa in the form of the Sheraton Samoa Aggie Greys Hotel in Apia and the Resort at Mulifanua. Then there is the recently opened impressive Taumeasina Island Resort at Moataa. At Sogi stands the Tanoa Tusitala Hotel and other equally impressive properties. On the south coast, we have some wonderful boutique properties in the form of Sinalei Reef Resort, Coconuts, Aga Resort, Seabreeze and more. This is not to mention the Return to Paradise, Samoana Resort in Salamumu and Lefaga and many wonderful properties in Savaii.

But all these properties mean nothing if the tourists dont come. It is equally useless if they are only occupied for a few months during the high season. Which means there is clearly a need to find new markets to fill the gap during the low season so that these properties are sustainable  allowing the flow on benefits of tourism to reach the wider community.

This is why we need a better plan. Speaking of which, flights to and from Samoa is one issue that has been identified as one of the main challenges. With only a couple of flights to Samoa from some of our key destinations, there is clearly a need for more. To get the number of flights to increase though, it will come down to the question of bum on seats. Whats the point of having empty flights to and from Samoa?

It comes down to better and a more effective way to market our country as a destination. This requires innovation and plenty of money. Which brings us back to the question we asked about the Teuila Festival earlier. What if that money was used to run a massive global campaign to promote Samoa? What if it were turned into spreads of ads featuring the best of Samoa in some of the most read and accessible mediums around the world  such as newspapers, television and on the internet?

Speaking of markets and promotion, we also need to find new markets. While Australia and New Zealand are our traditional markets, that is only a drop of what is available out there.

As a country, we need to do a better job to attract visitors from Asia, Europe, Middle East and America and other continents.

We have a beautiful country with beautiful people that tourists would pay money to see.

But they need to find out about it first. They need to know that Samoa is not Somalia. They need to know that it can be accessible and when they take the trouble to travel this far, they will be given an experience of a lifetime they cannot find anywhere else.

Weve said this before and we will say it again.

Promoting Samoa and getting more tourists to come is all about marketing, accessibility, innovation and a willingness to work hard for what is best for Samoa. Sometimes it calls for a brutal assessment of what weve been doing  and that includes the Teuila  and the willingness to change to achieve the results we want. A very smart man once said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.

What do you think?

Have a wonderful weekend Samoa, God bless!
Re: Draft Water plan released

I was thinking the same way. You put everything in words that only a well-educated person and well-researched person can do. Well done!

Its the same corrupt formula to raise money because Samoa government is broke.

The P.M. needs to pay all his government workers to keep the engine going. How long government fund raising schemes is going to last I dont know but there will be an end date.

So I am warning all government workers to be prepared. We cannot keep going like this - that is depending on corrupt schemes, aid money etc

Only a free market system and an honest and trust system will get Samoa out of debt. Well done, Mebahel Raguel.

Keith Alderson
Samoa is today joining the rest of the world to commemorate World Suicide Prevention Day, in an effort to stop suicide.

Papalii Carol Ah Chong, Executive Director of Fataua Le Ola, said suicide is something everyone has a role to play in eliminating and today is a very important day for the organisation.

Suicide is no more a taboo word which is not mentioned within our society, she said.

Years ago it was new and very foreign to Samoas society to actually speak about the issue of suicide, it just happened but nobody was talking about it since it was a shame for the family, thus they suffered in silence.

But thanks to the publicity of the organization, the awareness definitely has changed.

The day begins at 6am with a Faataua Le Ola (F.L.O) / Samoa Lifelines World Suicide Prevention Day (W.S.P.D) Parade starting from the Fire and Emergency Service Authority (F.E.S.A) compound on Beach Rd.

The Parade will proceed down Beach Road led by the Saleilua Poutasi Primary School Band and Marching Girls, all the way down to the Town Clock and around to the government building grounds.

It will end with a word of thanks from F.L.O. Chairman, Hans Joachim Keil and a closing prayer by F.L.O. Vice Chairman, Bishop Denny Faalogo.

At 9am, TV3 will host a special program of personal testimonies, addresses by prominent church and government leaders, individuals, video clips on suicide issues, awareness and fundraising events.

The public is also invited to the studio from 9am and 12 noon if they would like to deliver a message on suicide prevention live on television.

Tonight at 6pm, F.L.O.) will hold a candle light prayer service on the beach in front of Sheraton Aggie Grey's Hotel.

The essence of this vigil is twofold:

F.L.O. hopes to convey to Samoa and to the World, a message of life, a message of faith, a message of hope, a message of love to anyone who is suffering alone in the darkness of despair, hopelessness and desperation.

You may feel that you are alone and that no one cares, but we want to tell you that you are never alone, that there is always someone who is willing to listen and to help you, because God loves you and values your life, for you are the temple of His Holy Spirit. He will never forsake you.

F.L.O. would like to commemorate part of this service to the memory of those whose lives were tragically taken by suicide. Orange and yellow balloons will be released into the sky, signifying the spirit of these loved ones being released and set free.

At 8pm, F.L.O. is asking everyone in Samoa to say a prayer and light a candle to show support for suicide prevention, to remember a loved one lost to suicide and for the survivors of suicide.

We will be lighting our candles on the beach and they will be placed on the water to float as beacons of light, signifying the light of Christ within each of us, a light that we are asked to illumine the whole world with and not to hide under a bushel or snuff out by suicide. Everyone is welcome!

Founded in 2000, F.L.O. advocates for a suicide free Samoa by raising awareness about suicide prevention.
Confidence is Beauty is the theme for this years Miss Samoa College Pageant.

Organisers say the Pageant will be an opportunity for the young girls to build their self confidence.

During a press conference yesterday, their main sponsor, Samoa Stationery and Books (S.S.A.B) offered its full support.

Sales Manager of S.S.A.B, Dora Tuiletufuga-Malele, presented a cheque of $6,000 to the Class of 1991-1994 on behalf of their Managing Director, Fiti Leung Wai.

On top of that, all eight contestants will each receive smart phones, and school stationeries worth $5,000.

Secretary of the Committee of Class 91-94, Seul Gee Samuelu acknowledged the support from S.S.A.B.

This year; SSAB & TV1 are the Major Sponsors for the Pageant whereby eight young ladies from Year 13 will be vying for the Title through a showcase of Creative Wear, enactment of Poems and speeches in the Talent Category, Puletasi and Interview.

Ms. Samuelu said the creative wear is a new initiative in partnership with the Water Sector Coordination Unit under the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (M.N.R.E).

They (MNRE) will be sponsoring the prize money for the Best Design for this attire as the design should promote the theme of Water Conservation using the concept of Myths and Legends of Samoa, she said.

This partnership is an successful podium to connect with the youth and promoting water as a career path as they become young professionals, especially given there is a limited number of students interested in the water sciences.

This new project also allows the opportunity for the Contestant Sponsors to also be awarded for their hard work given that they are sometimes the unsung heroes in such fundraisers.

The Secretary went on to say that a Facebook voting for the contestants will be conducted by the WT Media.

The Pageant through the SCOPA FB Page and this Special Prize will be awarded to Miss Popularity on the Evening.

Since last years pageant the class of 91-94 the money that they receive went straight to furnishing the schools computer lab with 30 laptops and network printer however with this year there has been a project set to fundraise on.

But according to Ms. Samuelu the money receive from this years pageant will go into the development of the school.

This Event is scheduled for Thursday, 15th September, 2016 at 7.00pm at the Samoa College Hall at Vaivase Tai on the theme of Confidence is Beauty.

Door Sales only on the Night - $20 for adults and $10 for the kids. Corporate Tables are also available.
WASHINGTON  Republicans chafed at Donald Trumps growing praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday, warning that the Russian leader is no ally of the United States and underscoring an internal GOP debate a generation after Ronald Reagan made strong skepticism of Russia a bedrock principle of the party.

Trump, who has for months complimented Putin as a decisive leader, said at a town hall forum Wednesday that Putin has been a leader, far more than our president has been a leader and that he welcomes Putins praise.

Pressed on Putins invasion of Ukraine and 2014 annexation of Crimea, Trump did not demur. Do you want me to start naming some of the things that President Obama does at the same time? Trump asked moderator Matt Lauer. He also marveled at Putins 82 percent approval rating among Russians.

Trumps running mate reinforced the praise for Putin on Thursday, also contrasting him favorably with President Barack Obama. Indiana Gov. Mike Pence called it inarguable that Vladimir Putin has been stronger in his country than Barack Obama has been in his country.

The praise, coming a day after Trump also ridiculed American generals as rubble, sparked an immediate debate among Republicans, who stressed that they have their differences with Obama but criticized Trump for siding with an autocratic leader.

If you are running to be leader of the free world and you find admiration for Putin, well, then, youre losing me, said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. I think Vladimir Putin is a thug, a dictator, an autocratic ruler who has his opposition killed in the streets of Russia. He has dismembered his neighbor.

Graham said he thought Putin had walked all over Obama but that he couldnt agree that Putins a better leader than a democratically elected president of the United States, even though I have differences with him.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., told reporters he did not want to do a daily tit for tat on Trumps remarks, but nevertheless called Putin an aggressor (who) does not share our interests.

Ryan, who accused Putin of violating the sovereignty of his neighbors, also said it certainly appears that Putin is waging state-sponsored cyberattacks on the U.S. political system. Russia is a prime suspect in the hacking of the Democratic National Committees email system.

That is not acting in our interests and that is an adversarial stance and he is acting like an adversary, Ryan said.

Trump had said Wednesday that it was not known for a fact that Russia was behind the hacking. And he questioned why the United States shouldnt work closer with Russia to knock the hell out of ISIS.

He called in Thursday night to RT America, the Russian television station, and told host Larry King that he was unfamiliar with Putins claim that the DNC hacking was a public service.

I dont have any opinion on it, Trump told King. I dont know anything about it. I dont know who hacked; Im not sure who. I mean, you tell me who hacked. Who did the hacking? I have absolutely no opinion on that.

The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee said he would urge caution about pursuing a closer alliance with Putin, noting that Russian forces in Syria are not directing strikes against the Islamic State but are more apt to be propping up Syrias embattled leader.

The idea that Putin is somehow a friend of ours, or that Russia is a friend, is a false narrative, Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said at an event hosted by The Atlantic.

Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, declined to criticize Trump but suggested that one has to be a little careful to let flattery affect ones judgment.

The U.S. should work with Russia, he told CNN, but he added, President Putin has operated in ways that very much have been against our interests  and has done so, in many ways, in a very ruthless manner.

Daniel P. Vajdich, a former national security adviser to Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruzs and Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walkers presidential campaigns, said he found the fact that Trump was impressed by Putins popularity to be frightening.

He points to Putins popularity as some sort of legitimization of Putin for everything he does, Vajdich said. The numbers are real  he is indeed popular  but there is an anti-democratic, authoritarian context that he totally ignores.

Vajdich said he didnt think Trump saw a political advantage to embracing Putin but that he genuinely admires the man.

He pointed to some similarities between the two, including Trumps antipathy to the press, which the government largely controls in Russia: Trump has had a ban on media outlets. Hes not terribly interested in media freedom. His attacks on Judge Curiel. Hes not terribly interested in judicial independence.

Trumps warm words may be helping Putin.

Matthew Rojansky, a Russia expert and director of the Kennan Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center, a Washington research and policy center, noted that Putin appears to be riding this apparent endorsement by Trump in order to be restored somewhat to mainstream credibility in Western politics.

He said it could be argued that Trump is serving Putins interests, or it could be that Trump is setting himself up to be able to do the hard stuff that every other American president wants to do, which is try to secure cooperation with Russia.

To give the guy a little credit, its possible hes doing this intentionally, that hes not being manipulated by Putin, Rojanksy said. That he means, Hey, if I get elected I have an opening to do something here.
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As written by Charlie Wilson  City Boy,

Office Worker, Allergy Sufferer

*Garnered from first-hand experience during his ill-fated wilderness expedition.

Angry Napping

If lost in the wilderness, never wander. Id been on the trail an hour, alone, here in the wilderness, having been dropped off by Drake Tomahawk after a long quad ride into the depths of foreboding Slieve Gullion Forest Park. Im an office intern and sent a quick text to Kimberly, the woman I had gone into the wild for, to prove my love. Looking up from the phone, I was lost. Embarrassed, angered, and fearful, I ran around searching for the trail. I got more lost. Unable to think straight, I found some nice moss and bedded down to take an angry nap.

Be Prepared

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This is a trip of self-discovery into the endless Slieve Gullion mountainous forest. I have come here from the city to prove I am a man. Kimberly Clarke, relations manager at Synonym Call Centre (where Im interning straight out of high school) will be well impressed when I return from conquering the wild.

Drake Tomahawk, grizzled proprietor of the Wilderness Preparedness Store, made me read  yawn  the 10 Basic Rules for Wilderness Survival. Scanning through the list, number 10 sort of made sense. Something about being prepared. Well, duh  obviously. Thats why I stocked up at the store. Ive also seen Into the Wild on television. Most of it, anyway. Almost all of the first half, before I got distracted on my mobile phone. Anyway, that movie dude really knew how to live the life, hunting, eating berries, etcetera, etcetera. Preparation is key.

[Editors note: Charlies last words to Drake Tomahawk were that his story be told so as to inspire others to the betterment of their poxy lives. He thought his story might be something that could be made into a film  because nobody reads anymore  something like Into the Wild but a true story, with a meaningful ending. No Hollywood bollocks.]

Bear

Your mind is a liar and should never be trusted. I should have kept moving. Instead, I awoke to discover my backpack and supplies torn to pieces  bears! Ive been robbed by bears. Now I keep hearing that nursery rhyme in my head: If you go down to the woods today, youre sure for a big surprise. All my food is gone. Eaten. Im starving, and Im cranky. Im lost. And I cant get a signal on my mobile phone. Out of boredom, I resorted to playing Angry Birds. Bad idea because the batterys dead now. Top of my practical survival list is Always bring spare mobile phone batteries.

[Editors note: There are no bears in Ireland.]

Berries

People used to be hunter-gatherers. They foraged their environment. But always remember, dont eat something unless you know what it is, or youre starving. I discovered blackbirds eating clumps of red berries. Im bigger, so I shooed them away from my lunch. The berries tasted bitter. Needed some ketchup.

Check Your Kit

I had a tent, sleeping bag, pots, stove, and various sundries. I also had a Swiss army knife, the only survival item I brought with me from terrace house in Belfast. Also some iodine tablets to use  if I get cut, I suppose. And some wire wool  not sure what thats for. Maybe insulation. I stuffed it in my trouser pockets. Found a battery too, not much use unless I find something out here in the forest that takes a 9-volt battery. Tomahawk ripped me off selling me useless stuff. I kept the battery anyway  thats survival instinct for you  putting it in my pocket. The key to survival is you never know.

Getting back to nature, living off the land is going just bloody swimmingly so far. But maybe losing my food rations is the best start because now Im having to survive on my wits alone. And in case of an emergency, Ive seen pretty much every Chuck Norris film.

Diarrhea

Not sure what caused it. Could be Im not used to the purity of this forest air. Have eaten some more of the red berries, which seem to have settled my stomach.

Direction

Always keep moving, stopping only to find shelter. Im lost and theres no way anybody will happen upon me accidentally. I will keep moving until it gets too dark to see. I have a map and compass (more on this later). High school taught me that learning is accomplished through fear, intimidation, and corporal punishment. I am periodically chastising and dead-arming myself. It is not working.

Ascertaining direction from the sun, moon, stars, wind, and plants is possible. But I dont exactly know how to do this. So I will employ pure logic. The sun is always in my bedroom in the morning, on the left-hand side; this means that the sun rises on the left and sets to the right. Also, I know that moss only grows on the north side of trees.

Fire

How to make fire without matches. I saw an episode about a survival guy who was so hungry he ate earthworms. He also made fire by rubbing two sticks together. I found two sticks on the forest floor and rubbed them together vigorously. Friction starts fires. But it blistered my hands, making them impossible to close. At least Im warm now.

I burned everything connected to my old life: my credit card, ATM card, National Insurance card, and drivers license. I have become wild now. I kept my wallet (for my eventual return to civilization) and inside is a piece of paper with Kimberly Clarkes phone number. Shell come and collect me when I call, when I prove I am all man.

Gear and Garb

Drake Tomahawk made me waste an entire morning in his store trying on clothing and equipment. Total waste of time. Wheres my rifle? To go out into these woods, I should be protected from wild animals and wolves, as well as vampires. Wheres my crucifix, garlic, and holy water? With those items in my kitbag when I killed a bear/wolf/vampire, I could have seasoned, cooked, and eaten it, with plenty of holy water to drink.

Instead, all I got was a lousy tent, backpack, sleeping bag, and stove.

[Note to self, if a bear didnt rob me, it was probably some feral ungulate, possibly now deranged on the high sodium content of my pre-packed rations. Be prepared for a repeat attack when it picks up my scent after dark.]

Godsend

Blackbirds circle above me, always cawing. Its a godsend. Like an albatross. Anybody searching for me will see the birds from a distance. Funny how they keep staring at me with their beady black eyes. Probably still a little pissed at me for eating their berries earlier.

Grow-Out

Appearances are important. Develop a thick grow-out of beard. I havent shaved since my arrival in the wilderness. Although, I dont need to shave much anyway. But my moustache is filling out nicely. In a few weeks, it might even connect to the hairs on my chin. Kimberly will be unable to resist this man-bear Ive become.

Hot Pocket

Somehow the 9-volt battery in my pocket set fire to the wire wool in my pocket, and my trousers went entirely up in flames. Burned them right off me. Im now naked from the waist down.

Part of all survival kits should be proper clothing appropriate to your wilderness environment, such as a waterproof jacket and fire-retardant trousers. And a warning on wire wool! In fact, all survival kits should contain wire wool and a 9-volt battery because theyre highly combustible. Wish I had known this before blistering my hands rubbing two sticks together.

Hunger

Do whatever is necessary to survive. Im so hungry I could amputate my arm and eat it. Would I really miss my left bicep?

[Note to self, if I escape this hellish predicament, fabricate my A-Z guide to make me appear much more competent and manly.]

Knife

A Swiss army knife has all the blades and utensils required to survive. I have a saw, a fork, and a thing to remove stones from horses hooves.

Map

Knowing how to read a map and use a compass is essential. I really should learn how to read a map and use a compass.

Pizza

Everybody loves pizza. Even squirrels. I just fought a squirrel for a half-eaten slice of pepperoni pizza. The squirrel won.

Positivity

I remain positive that the crippling depression of my impending and inevitable demise will soon disappear.

Rain, Dew, and Condensation

I licked dew off a stone. Im not proud of myself but I will do whatever is required to survive.

Safety

Survival depends on your ability to calmly withstand stress in emergency situations  what was that noise? A bear? Are there really bears in Ireland? Have decided to dig a series of punji pits to protect myself while sleeping. I placed sharpened sticks at the bottom of the pits. If any bears should fall in, then Ill eat lordly well tonight. I am master of my environment.

Shelter

Shelter is important. I had never put up a tent before and after a couple of hours toil I succeeded, having just some useless metal spikes left over. Not too shabby for my first attempt. Then a gust of wind blew the tent over the edge into a steep ravine. It was dark, and there was no safe way to climb down and retrieve the tent.

Fortuitously, I have shelter already in the form of a punji pit. I climbed into the pit, slipped, and gashed my leg. I used my shirt to tie around the wound. Im completely naked now, and it is getting ever colder and darker. A wolf howled.

Must remain vigilant and awake all night. Wish I could set tripwires and flares like Arnie in Predator.

Sky

Remember the old saying, A red sun rises. Blood has been spilled this night. Legolas, Woodland Realm elf.

Thirst

Dehydration is a killer. And Im so very thirsty. The survival guy in that TV program, he drank his own urine. The worst part was having to pee upward  I almost drowned twice.

Thoughts

Lack of stimuli can bring about dark thoughts and hallucinations. I believe I can smell barbecued meats and can hear people talking, chatting, drinking. But it is not real. Just a mirage.

To survive in the wilderness, its important to ignore your instincts and repress all hallucinations. In fact, I can hear someone calling my name. To block it out, I jam my fingers in my ears and say La, la, la, la, Im not listening until Im hoarse.

Trails

Trails are excellent places to set snares or traps. I know this because, this morning after limping out of my punji pit shelter and taking the nearest trail, I got ensnared in one. Luckily the wire was only rated for a rabbit or rodent. I gnawed my way out.

Unexpected Surprises

I read somewhere that nobody dies from hypothermia  they die from not being properly prepared for extremely cold situations. Bollocks to that. Its impossible to expect the unexpected, otherwise it would be an expectation. Duh. Have decided to run around to keep warm. First I need some energy, so I will eat more wild berries for sustenance.

Walking

Keep walking, eventually you will come to somewhere habitable with people who will help you escape the nightmarish wilderness. In fact, thats why most people, like me, dont live in the wilderness. Civilization has electricity and internet and paddy pizzas. So always keep walking, you will naturally keep a straight line.

Water

Never pass up water. Without water you die. I stumbled onto a pool of greenish water. Drank straight from it because I knew I might not be back this way again. I drank as much and as quickly as possible.

Zebra

I didnt think Zebras were native to Ireland, but Ive just seen one. Im so very tired, so tired and cranky, Im going to take an angry nap. Go sleepy sleep now. Zzzzzz & zzzzzzzzzzzzz & zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.



Editors note: Charlie Wilsons A-Z Guide is published verbatim, as he had requested. He has earned his title of City Boy, Office Worker, Allergy Sufferer.

In response to the accusations of misconduct leveled at Drake Tomahawk, he explained how he had warned Charlie from entering the forest park, and offered to enrol him as part of a scheduled camping trip leaving that evening, but the boy just flat-out refused. He wanted to go into the wild. Kept saying that over and over again. Every time I spoke, he was on his mobile 

Charlie was discovered wandering naked 10 yards away from the Wilderness Store.

Exactly, Drake replied. Because thats where I dropped him off. I left him in the backyard of the store, for his safety.

Drake decided to give Charlie the full experience. He took him out into the forest, then returned to the rear of the store, leaving him to camp for the night. He had even called out to Charlie that evening, inviting him to join the campsite barbecue, but the buck eejit had his fingers in his ears, going la, la, la.

Drake, proprietor of the Wilderness Survival Store, had arranged to collect Charlie two days later, and was the person who discovered him, delirious and totally starkers, bollock-naked. He went on to state: The boy had been outside for less than 24 hours. I dont know how you lose all your clothes, set yourself on fire, and get pneumonia in such a short time 

Drake took Charlie to the hospital, saving his life.

When 18-year-old Charlie awoke in the hospital, he was greeted by the love of his life 55-year-old Kimberly Clarke. Kimberly was the first person to attend Charlies hospital bedside because the only item of identification he had on his person was a scrap of paper inside his wallet with her telephone number. She absolutely adores the rugged outdoors type and seeing that Charlie had almost died wrestling a bear, a wolf, and a vampire (according to his account of events), she couldnt help but fall in love with him. Up until this point she had thought him pale and weedy, like something dragged though a ditch backwards. They were immediately married by the hospital chaplain.

That evening, she took her new husband back to their mid-terrace house in Belfast to introduce to her children (28 and 30, both still living at home).


Singapore -- (SBWIRE) -- 09/08/2016 -- 'Conversational Commerce' is set to explode with messaging platforms such as WeChat, Facebook Messenger, and Telegram, all looking into the use of chatbots to further boost e-commerce. Chatbots are already being used by a number of companies such as Sephora, Pizza Hut, and 1-800 Flowers as well as the Singapore Government, who use a chatbot called Jamie to assist with government websites.



The appeal of chatbots is their ability to mimic human interaction and resolve customer needs faster than humans. There is no need to put a caller on hold, for example. The chatbot gets straight to work without delay. For e-commerce, chatbots provide the ability to guide shoppers through a shopping experience and assist with product selection and product purchase - all within a single platform, Facebook Messenger. Gone are the days of app clusters crowding out mobile phone screens.



Beyond these, the power of a shopaholic bot like AskVoila truly manifests itself in the ability to curate and personalize - making conversations progressive and not mere transactions. The chatbot is able to retrieve the latest discount codes and host custom features through the "Steal Of The Week" and "Pick Your Style" segments for retail therapy filtered down to personal taste and preference.



Singaporean and co-founder of AiChat Pte Ltd, Kester Poh started working on AskVoila in November 2015. AskVoila began testing on Facebook Messenger in April 2016 after Mark Zuckerberg announced the Messenger Chatbot Platform.



Poh believes the Facebook Messenger platform is ideal for the expansion of conversational commerce because of its established user base of over 1 Billion people and positive feedback from early testing of AskVoila.



AskVoila experienced significant organic growth in its user base and achieved sales conversions of 28% during its concept validation phase, when the service was being carried out manually by human operators through WhatsApp. This is phenomenal traction given the industry standard for online retail is around 1%-3%.



These positive results led to a successful seed funding round for AiChat Pte Ltd where Poh and his team can now expand the AskVoila shopping experience. Poh states:



"it's early days for conversational commerce, but the technology is advancing at super speed"



"AskVoila is improving everyday and will be increasingly automated as we progress. At present, AskVoila can't completely replace a customer service team but it has cut manpower needs by 50% already since implementation two months agothat's pretty staggering progress, imagine where we'll be with this technology in 6 months!"



Spurred on by these positive results, Poh is now building a broader AiChat platform to enable anyone to build a chatbot. Poh states:



"the AiChat platform will allow people with little computer programming knowledge to build chatbotsit will also allow them to easily manage the bot, train it, and monitor analytic data related to user engagement with it. However, we understand that many people are still new to chatbots, hence we are offering our expertise to help business owners ensure that the bot created is useful and able to bring a good user experience to their customers..'



Poh also notes that chatbots cannot replace humans completely.



"the human touch is still required in the conversation. A bots main function is to answer basic enquiries, perform menial tasks and then filter more complex functions to relevant personnel for follow up." he added.



Looking towards the immediate future, AskVoila will be expanding their product range and services with personalised shopping features in the next phase.



Currently, AskVoila is an affiliate partner of Lazada - selling apparel, watches, bags, electronics, skincare products and furniture via the personal shopper technology developed by AiChat Pte Ltd on Facebook Messenger.



About AskVoila and AiChat Pte Ltd

AskVoila is a digital personal shopping assistant powered by Artificial Intelligence and trained human experts to help you shop via Facebook Messenger. AskVoila is currently seeking additional retail partners. (https://m.me/askvoila) AiChat is a chatbot-as-a-service platform for businesses to build, manage and train a chatbot. It is now available in beta where AiChat engineers will assist with the development and integration process. (http://www.aichat.co)



AskVoila (A product of AiChat Pte Ltd)

Contact: media@askvoila.com

http://www.askvoila.com

https://m.me/askvoila
Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 09/09/2016 -- As there are numerous established companies operating in the Kuwait diesel gensets market, the competition among the players is relatively high, reports Transparency Market Research in a new study. The competitive rivalry in the Kuwait diesel gensets market is further expected to intensify owing to the diverse range of products offered by the players and the strong brand placement. The three leading players in the market, Caterpillar, Cummins, Inc., and FG Wilson, held a combined share of 48% in the Kuwait diesel gensets market in 2013.



Browse Report with Full TOC at: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/kuwait-diesel-gensets-market.html



The Kuwait diesel gensets market was valued at US$53.6 mn in 2016 and is projected to rise to a market worth US$79.7 mn in 2023. The market is anticipated to expand at a 5.0% CAGR between 2014 and 2023. Rental gensets is likely to emerge as the key application segment in terms of consumption with an overall share of 64.12% in 2023. Owing to the numerous infrastructure projects being implemented in the country, the demand for rental gensets is likely to rise in the forecast period of 2014-2023. Rental gensets are extensively preferred by foreign companies undertaking infrastructure projects in Kuwait due to the maximum capacity of 1250 kVA offered by them.



On the basis of capacity, 500-2000 kVA gensets are likely to witness strong growth due to the mass adoption of high power diesel gensets in the country. The 500-2000 kVA gensets segment is expected to account for 60.08% of the overall share in 2023 in the Kuwait diesel gensets market. Large commercial complexes, refineries, other infrastructure facilities prefer the purchase of 500-2000 kVA gensets over renting them due to their high power needs.



Interpret a Competitive outlook Analysis Report with free PDF Brochure: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=3777



Shortage of Efficient Power Resources Indicate Lucrative Future Market for Diesel Gensets in Kuwait



To meet its power generation necessities, Kuwait extensively depends on fossil fuels. Presently, Kuwait is suffering from an extreme shortage of natural gas reserves; as a result, numerous power plants operating on natural gas fuel are looking for alternate solutions. Furthermore, the per capita consumption in the country is significantly high due to the subsidy provided by the government to lower the price of electricity. According to a TMR analyst, "The mounting consumption of electricity and lack of proper power generation have impelled consumers to shift towards power backup options." Henceforth, the imbalance between demand and supply of electricity is likely to drive the demand for diesel gensets in the country.



Moreover, the easy availability of diesel at lower rates is further expected to augment the adoption of diesel gensets in Kuwait owing to the heavy subsidized rates of refined products such as diesel and kerosene.



Deployment of Renewable Energy Resources to Hinder Adoption of Diesel Fuelled Gensets



To meet the high power requirements of Kuwait, the government announced the addition of installed power generating capacity plants in the country. As a result of this, a large number of oil and gas power plants are likely to be set up over the next couple of years. With the construction of these high power plants, the gap between demand and supply of energy is likely to decrease in Kuwait. The first phase of the country's energy development project of a 70 MW solar energy park is scheduled for completion by the end of 2016. Hence, the requirement for backup solutions will decrease leading to a shortage of demand for diesel gensets in the region.



Advent of New Technologically Advanced Gensets to Provide Lucrative Opportunities to Manufacturers



To increase their consumer base, many manufacturers of diesel gensets are investing in research and development projects for the development of technologically advanced gensets. Due to the extensive ongoing research, the introduction of hybrid gensets is likely to be an attractive potential energy solution for meeting high power demands. As hybrid gensets as designed to run on solar as well as diesel power, they are efficient in reducing the actual runtime of the conventional diesel gensets. Such advances are likely to present manufacturers with potential opportunities to capitalize on in future. The leading players are also entering into strategic acquisitions in order to lower the initial cost and produce advanced gensets.



Kuwait Diesel Gensets Market: Type Analysis



Rental Gensets

New Gensets



Kuwait Diesel Gensets Market: Capacity Analysis



075 kVA

75500 kVA

5002000 kVA

Over 2000 kVA



About Transparency Market Research

Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMR's experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.



Our data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts, so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With a broad research and analysis capability, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques in developing distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.
Pune, India -- (SBWIRE) -- 09/09/2016 -- The report "Pharmaceutical Packaging Market by Packaging Type, by Raw Material, by Drug Delivery Type by Region(North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, RoW) - Forecasts to 2020" defines and segments the pharmaceutical packaging market with an analysis and forecast of value by type. Along with this, the value and volume of pharmaceutical packaging by raw material, drug delivery type, and region are also discussed in the report.



Browse 101 market data tables and 80 figures spread through 259 pages and in-depth TOC on "Pharmaceutical Packaging Market - Forecasts to 2020"



http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/pharmaceutical-packaging-market-890.html



Early buyers will receive 10% customization on this report.



The report also identifies the driving and restraining factors for the pharmaceutical packaging market with an analysis of drivers, restraints, opportunities, and strengths. The market is segmented and the value has been projected on the basis of important regions, such as Asia-Pacific, North America, Europe, and Rest of the World (RoW). Further, the market is segmented and the volume and value are estimated based on various key raw materials and drug delivery types, such as oral, pulmonary, transdermal, injectable, topical, nasal, ocular, IV drugs, and other.



Advancements in drug delivery technology along with the growth of the pharmaceutical market driving the pharmaceutical packaging market



In developed countries, the growth of the injectable drug delivery technologies and solutions market is fast and contributes significantly to the pharmaceutical packaging market. This market is driven by factors such as innovations in injectable drug delivery devices, rising prevalence of diabetes in the U.S., the U.K., Germany, Italy, France, and Canada, improving patient safety & compliance and rise in partnerships, and collaborations and acquisitions among prominent players in this market.



Download PDF Brochure @ http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/pdfdownload.asp?id=890



Besides, the growth of the pharmaceutical industry, especially in the emerging countries, is driving the demand for the pharmaceutical packaging market. Factors such as aging of the world population, rising health awareness among consumers, trend toward 'on-the-go' lifestyles, and many more are also driving the pharmaceutical packaging market indirectly.



Increase in global demand for primary pharmaceutical containers and fast increasing third party logistics and other services in emerging markets provide ample opportunity for the growth of the pharmaceutical packaging market.



Pharmaceutical packaging market to reach more than $80 billion by 2020



The market for pharmaceutical packaging, in terms of value, is projected to reach more than $80 Billion by 2020, witnessing a CAGR around 6.50% between 2015 and 2020. In terms of value, North America followed by Europe dominated the pharmaceutical packaging market in 2014 and are projected to register a steady CAGR till 2020. High technological innovation and high environmental awareness along with moderate growth in the pharmaceutical market in the North American and European regions is leading to high consumption of pharmaceutical packaging in these regions. Due to rising spending capacity of consumers in the region, the pharmaceutical market is projected to witness a steady growth rate in Asia-Pacific and RoW. The pharmaceutical packaging market in Asia-Pacific is expected to witness highest growth rate between 2015 and 2020.



Enquire Before Buying of this Report @ http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Enquiry_Before_Buying.asp?id=890



North America and Europe together accounted for around 70% of the pharmaceutical packaging market, in terms of value, in 2014



North America is the largest market for pharmaceutical packaging currently; however, by 2020, Asia-Pacific is expected to be the largest market. This growth is expected to be highest in the emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, and China, especially due to higher generics and contract manufacturing activities in these countries. Huge population and favorable demographics of these countries are key drivers behind this growth.



In North America, the U.S. is one of the leading producer and consumer of pharmaceutical packaging. Also, the U.S. is a highly regulated market, with strict guidelines regarding pharmaceutical packaging production, use, and disposal. Regulations in the U.S. are controlled by EPA (Environmental Protection Agency). Canada is the next significant country in the North American region. In the European region, Germany, the U.K., France, Spain, Italy, and Russia are the major countries.



Browse Related Reports:



Glass Packaging Market by Applications (Alcoholic Beverage Packaging, Non-Alcoholic Beverage Packaging, Food Packaging, Pharmaceutical and Personal Care Packaging) and by Geography (North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Rest of the World) - Global Trends & Forecast to 2019



http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/glass-packaging-market-149119613.html



Tube Packaging Market by Type (Squeeze Tube, Twist Tube), Application (Cosmetics & Oral Care, Food & beverages, Pharmaceuticals, Consumer Goods), Material Type (Laminated Tubes, Aluminum Tubes, and Plastic Tubes), & by Region - Trends & Forecasts to 2020



http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/tube-packaging-market-128857249.html



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Giraffes actually are not one species, but four, according to a new study published in the journal Current Biology.

We were extremely surprised, because the morphological and coat pattern differences between giraffe are limited, said senior author Prof. Axel Janke, a geneticist at the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre and Goethe University in Germany.

Giraffes are also assumed to have similar ecological requirements across their range, but no one really knows, because this megafauna has been largely overlooked by science.

In the study, Prof. Janke and co-authors examined the DNA evidence taken from skin biopsies of 190 giraffes collected by the team all across Africa, including regions of civil unrest.

The extensive sampling includes populations from all nine previously recognized giraffe subspecies.

We sampled natural giraffe populations from across their range in Africa, and for the first time individuals from the nominate subspecies, the Nubian giraffe were included in a genetic analysis, the scientists said.

The genetic analysis shows that there are four highly distinct groups of giraffe, which apparently do not mate with each other in the wild. As a result, giraffes should be recognized as four distinct species.

We have studied the genetic relationships of all giraffe subspecies from across the continent, Prof. Janke said.

We found, that there are not only one, but at least four genetically highly distinct groups of giraffe, which apparently do not mate with each other in the wild. We found this looking at multiple nuclear genes considered to be representative of the entire genome.

Consequently, giraffe should be recognized as four distinct species despite their similar appearance.

Those four species include:

(i) southern giraffe (Giraffa giraffa), comprising two distinct subspecies, Angolan (G. g. angolensis) and South African giraffe (G. g. giraffa);

(ii) Masai giraffe (G. tippelskirchi);

(iii) reticulated giraffe (G. reticulata);

(iv) northern giraffe (G. camelopardalis), which includes Nubian giraffe (G. c. camelopardalis), West African giraffe (G. c. peralta) and Kordofan giraffe (G. c. antiquorum) as distinct subspecies.

The giraffe was first described in 1758 in Linnaeus Systema Naturae. As later revealed, Linnaeus based his description on the Nubian giraffe, corresponding to the nominotypical subspecies, G. c. camelopardalis. Linnaeus had never seen a living giraffe and referred to 200-year-old descriptions, the researchers said.

The elusive Nubian giraffe from Ethiopia and the South Sudan region is now shown to be part of the northern giraffe, noted first author Dr. Julian Fennessy, of Giraffe Conservation Foundation.

Additionally, research into the history of the distinct species showed that their last common ancestor lived about 400,000 years  2 million years ago, which yields a rate of speciation that is typical for mammals.

With now four distinct species, the conservation status of each of these can be better defined and in turn added to the IUCN Red List, Dr. Fennessy said.

Working collaboratively with African governments, the continued support of the Giraffe Conservation Foundation and partners can highlight the importance of each of these dwindling species, and hopefully kick start targeted conservation efforts and internal donor support for their increased protection.

As an example, northern giraffe number less than 4,750 individuals in the wild, and reticulated giraffe number less than 8,700 individuals  as distinct species, it makes them some of the most endangered large mammals in the world.

We are now analyzing the amount of gene flow between the giraffe species in greater detail, the scientists said.

In addition to expanding the ecological and species distribution data, we want to better understand the factors that limit gene flow and the giraffes differentiation into four species and several subspecies.

_____

Julian Fennessy et al. 2016. Multi-locus Analyses Reveal Four Giraffe Species Instead of One. Current Biology 26: 1-7; doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2016.07.036
Africa needs to boost STEM education to empower future leaders, writes Sarah Hambly



There are over a billion people in Africa, yet there are only 2,000 colleges and universities. [1] In Sub-Saharan Africa 70 per cent of the population is under the age of 30, but only seven per cent of Africans enrol in tertiary education. [2, 3]

Tertiary education is essential. However, the continent faces a number of challenges that must be addressed if it is to truly educate  and empower  the next generation of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) leaders.

Here are seven ideas on what can be done to improve STEM education across Africa.

Create centres of excellence

Resources in many of Africas universities are already stretched, and covering a wide range of subjects does little to help the situation. Centres of excellence can provide leadership, best practices and research, among others, in a specific field. This allows institutions to focus their resources on a handful of key areas, and the pooled funding results in better resources and improved facilities. By addressing regional challenges these centres can establish a sustainable business model, and their graduates can have a direct impact on improving their local community.

Governments need to invest in education and create a legislative framework, which allows tertiary education, particularly in STEM subjects, to prosper. Sarah Hambly, Planet Earth Institute

The Institute of Mathematics and Physics at the University of Abomey-Calavi in Benin has done just this. The institutions mission is to equip Africa with young scientists who can become future teachers in the field, to promote cooperation and partnerships in research and training within the continent, to prevent scientists from leaving the continent and contributing to so-called brain drain.



Keep improving digital technology

Technological advances have had a huge impact on learning across Africa. Online learning platforms, including mass open online courses, or MOOCs, have the potential to revolutionise education, with students able to access high quality learning materials regardless of their geographic location, if they can connect to the internet.

Rethink, an e-learning start up created in South Africa in 2012, illustrates how effective these platforms can be. It can be accessed on any device and uses multimedia elements such as videos and interactive questions. Rethink also aims to provide quality education while removing the usual barriers, such as cost and location.



Improve links with tech hubs

Tech hubs in Africa have been popping up at a considerable rate, and in all corners of the continent. According to Disrupt Africa, there could be as many as 300 tech hubs by the end of 2016.

Habaka, in Madagascar, offers training, working spaces and events  and runs the Coderdojo programme, an international coding club to teach those aged between 7 and 17 years old.

Meanwhile, Malawis mHub focuses on developing young technology entrepreneurs and has set itself the target of enlisting and training 5,000 youngsters by 2019.

The Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) in Ghana runs a programme which takes top graduates from local universities and provides them with a fully sponsored, intensive two-year programme, including how to run a technology business.



Measure performance and labour markets

For education to be effective, institutions should regularly monitor and evaluate their programmes. Information about the local labour market should be used to determine the needs of local regions and the relevance of the institutions curriculum in being able to meet these demands.

Meanwhile, regular inspection of other standards can ensure universities are maintaining a high level of quality and efficiency. There are a number of organisations in Africa that gather data which can be used by universities, enabling them to effectively evaluate their programmes without putting a huge burden on their already limited resources.

The African Capacity Building Foundation is one such organisation, which works with a number of multilateral partners, African and non-regional partners to provide capacity building data. This knowledge hub publishes and disseminates regular reports on the state of play across the continent. Resources such as this can help universities and other educational institutions to tailor their programmes to the needs of specific regions and sectors, without having to do the groundwork themselves.



Increase links to private sector

The Planet Earth Institutes chairman, Alvaro Sobrinho, has stressed the need for universities to work with the private sector. Given that the private sector is the continents main source of job creation, it could help universities to establish how best to equip Africas youth with the skills needed to enter the work place.

Resources in many of Africas universities are already stretched, and covering a wide range of subjects does little to help the situation. Sarah Hambly, Planet Earth Institute

An example of a partnership in action is that of Hecate Energy Africa and two universities in Tanzania. The company has joined with the University of Dodoma and the Nelson Mandela African Institute of Science and Technology to implement undergraduate and graduate programmes in the field of renewable energy. The aim of this collaboration is to increase access to clean and reliable power in Tanzania, and the wider region, and it will harness the talents of their students to do so.



Link education and job creation

It is also necessary to ensure that millions of young people who do complete tertiary education are incentivised to remain on the continent to ensure science-led development, rather than contributing to the brain drain.

Burkina Fasos 2iE International Institute for Water and Environmental Engineering understands the importance of a students return on investment, and says more than 95 per cent of its students find a job within six months of graduating. The institution attributes this to the quality of their programmes, strong partnerships with companies, human resources and the aim to offer solutions to the continents challenges. By getting this right, they are creating a successful and sustainable model.



Take risks

The stakes for Africa are high. For the continent to prosper, it is essential that Generation Science  the generation empowered by an understanding and appreciation of science and technology  succeeds so young people can harness STEM skills to overcome the many challenges facing the region.

Speaking in 2013, Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, chairperson of the African Union Commission, said: We must go beyond universal education and focus on higher education, science and technology, and innovation, for both young women and men. If we invest enough in the young population we have, this population will be one of the drivers for the future of the continent. But if we do not invest in the youth, they will be our greatest liability. [4]

For Africa to succeed, the brightest young students need to be given opportunities. Governments need to invest in education and create a legislative framework, which allows tertiary education, particularly in STEM subjects, to prosper.

If equipped with the right skills, especially in the STEM fields, Africas increasing youth can continue to innovate their way into a sustainable, science-led and bright tomorrow.



Sarah Hambly is communication manager at Planet Earth Institute, an international non-profit organisation and charity working for scientific independence of Africa. She can be reached through [email protected]



This piece was produced by SciDev.Nets Sub-Saharan Africa English desk.
Brazilian researchers confirmed that Zika virus can be transmitted by another species of mosquito known as Culex quinquefasciatus. The said development in the Zika virus research alarms public health officials in Brazil since the Culex mosquito's population is 20 times more than the previous known main vector species, the Aedes aegypti mosquito.

The said study further supports the same theory concluded by researchers from Northeasters City of Recife about Culex mosquito transmission. The confirmation of Culex mosquito as a vector was delayed due to an initial research conducted by CDC that concluded that a Culex mosquito species (Culex piens) cannot produce a successful transmission of the virus. However, it turned out that a relative Culex mosquito species (Culex quinquefasciatus) was actually an active vector of the viral disease.

This is bad news particularly in Western Latin countries where the disease and outbreaks are wide spread. According to the fact sheet presented by CDC, the disease already reached more than 39 countries and territories including the US. The Zika epidemic already infected thousands of people across the globe.

US Center for Disease Control and Prevention's senior press officer said, "The study would need to be replicated to have a better understanding of possible implications. Body of scientific evidence to date clearly points to Aedes being the primary vector implicated in Zika outbreaks." as reported by CNN.

In a Washington Post report, Brazil is one of the countries heavily infected by the disease with a stagerring 1700 cases of infant microcephaly and other congenital defects. Constancia Ayres, a lead Zika researcher from Recife, Brazil who first suspected the potential of Culex mosquito as a vector, suggested to other Zika virus researchers, to confirm their findings. She said in the report: "It means that we have a second species of vector involved in transmission. And with this vector having totally different habits from Aedes aegypti, we will have to create new strategies to combat Culex as well."
Tech enthusiasts were expecting Xiaomi Redmi 4 to get unveiled alongside the Redmi Note 4 in China last month, but, the same did not happen. Although Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi hasn't revealed anything about Xiaomi Redmi 4 release date, specs and pricing details, rumors are that the much anticipated flagship smartphone might get rolled out soon as the same has been certified by TENAA.

According to Phone Arena, the Xiaomi Redmi 4 was spotted listed on TENAA with some of the possible specs and features along with the model number 201606. As per the listing, the upcoming entry level handset will feature a 5-inch display with full-HD (1920x1080 pixels) resolution, a 1.8GHz MediaTek Helio P10 octa-core processor coupled with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of onboard storage.

Among other specs, the Redmi 4 is expected to pack a 13MP main camera, an 8MP selfie shooter, and 4,100 mAh battery. The smartphone in question is rumored to run on Android 6.0 Marshmallow out-of-the-box. It is to be noted that the image in the listing also shows a fingerprint scanner at the back. As far as Xiaomi Redmi 4 price is concerned, the handset is expected to come with a price tag of 699 Yuan, or around $105. Previously, the Redmi 4 was also spotted on GeekBench listing.

Talking about the Xiaomi Redmi 4 release date, rumors are that the handset might get unveiled alongside the Mi Note 2 which is tipped to get launched on either September 14 or September 24, according to NDTV Gadgets 360. It remains to be seen whether or not the much rumored Redmi 4 handset get a September release.

Readers are advised to take the information with a grain of salt as nothing yet about Xiaomi Redmi 4 release date, specs and pricing details have been officially announced by the makers.

Stay tuned to SWR for more updates and latest news on Xiaomi Redmi 4 release date, specs and price.
A recent study shows that elderly people should not sit in front of the fan, especially if the weather heat is rising. Though fans could be beneficial to be cooled from the scorching heat, experts conducted an experimental survey which proves that it's much safer for the elderly to abstain from the use of a fan.

Experts gathered nine people over 60 years old and conducted the study on how they would react if they sit in front of the fan while experiencing a 108 degree Fahrenheit of temperature. Results show that older people tend to feel hotter when sitting in front of the fan.

Volunteers include 6 women and 3 men with the average age of 68. The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, internal medicine Professor Craig Cardinal and his team were able to study the unusual circumstances. They were asked to sit in a room for 100 minutes with a temperature of 108 degrees Fahrenheit. Though, this temperature is very high professor Cardinal said that it occurs in real life such as the heat wave that happened in Chicago in 1995.

Volunteers were designated randomly, either they sit in the room with no fan or some days they were observed with a 16-inch fan, three feet away from them. For the first 30 minutes, the humidity is at 30 percent with the increase of two percent every 30 minutes up to the maximum humidity of 70 percent.

Results show that the internal body temperatures were three to four-tenths of a degree higher during the fan session. Thus, heart rate rises of up 10 beats per minute, according to Washington Post.

Professor Cardinal said, "The concern that we have is that if someone were to sit in front of the fan for eight hours a day, we don't know how high their core temperature [or heart rate] will become,If that could cause a temperature to be a degree or a degree and a half higher, that could have detrimental effects."

In line with the research, Professor Cardinal suggested that air conditioning is the optimal way to cool-off the elderly. Meanwhile, Dr. Sarah Samaan cardiologist at the Heart Hospital at Baylor in Plano Texas agrees on the studies conducted by Prof. Cardinal. She added that air conditioning is the best option, but wet compress could help as well and so does hydration with beverage preferably water, According to Health Daily.
The Chinese space-inspired theme park promises to provide a short space tour in their amusement rides to see as high as the lower stratosphere. But before that the theme park opens, only Russia can get people to space in exchange for $20 million travel rate per person since the Virgin Galactic is just about to have a test flight.

Space enthusiasts may now get a chance to see space much closer in a cheaper option in the next couple of years since China confirmed that their space theme park, Virgin Galactic is now under development. So far, they only disclosed a high-altitude 'deep space' balloon tour that can go as high as the lower stratosphere.

Virgin Galactic is owned and under the development of KaungChi. They plan to lift a pressurized passenger capsule which they called "Traveller" to an altitude of 15 miles above the Earth's surface. People might say that is not space-high just yet, but experts say it is high enough to see the curvature of the Earth like what Engadget reported. To clarify, it is definitely not a space experience but it definitely once in a lifetime that people will get to go that high.

The huge $1.5 billion theme park project is now in the research phase and KaungChi dubbed it as the "Future Valley". They cannot promise any opening date just yet, but those space travellers-wannabes may need to travel to Hangzhou to experience their ride.

Currently, the company prepares to run a manned test flight of Asia's first near-space tourism project as reported by Aerospace & Defence. The plan is to make the test happen in the next two years. KuangChi is among the few agencies who wants to develop private projects that aim to put leisure travel at double the altitude of commercial aircraft.
The world's largest apes are now facing near extinction after 20 years of continuous decline in number, as stated by the leading conservation organization. Over the past two decades, the world's largest ape has become fewer than 4,000 by the number. Grauer's gorillas remain free in the wild, so conservationists warn people to refrain from hunting or petting the creature since it is at great risk of extinction.

Officials from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) said that they are now raising the status of the Grauer's gorilla from "endangered" to "critically endangered" as of Sunday, September 4. This is the highest category given before the creature becomes extinct, as reported by Seeker.

According to Andre Plumptre, the lead author of the new listing, "Critically endangered status will raise the profile of this gorilla subspecies and bring attention to its plight." He added, "It has tended to be the neglected ape in Africa, despite being the largest ape in the world."

Gorilla beringei graueri, or the Grauer's gorillas are subspecies of the Eastern gorilla commonly found in fragmented forest habitats in the eastern part of the Domestic Republic of Congo. The creature feeds on fruit and plants and can grow as big as 5.5 feet tall weighing as heavy as 440 lbs.

The Wildlife Conservation Society and Fauna and Flora International created a report indicating a 77 percent drop in the population of Grauer's gorillas within one generation. The estimated number at the beginning of the study was 17,000 in 1995 to 3,800 today. The study blamed bushmeat hunting and civil war in the rapid decrease in a number of the apes.

With this suggestion, the eastern and western gorillas are now announced as critically endangered. Other subspecies of the mountain gorilla (Gorilla beringei beringei) are also listed as critically endangered. But good news for mountain gorillas is that their number has been increasing. There are now 880 of them from about 300 back in 2008.

The IUCN's announcement on the new Red List of Threatened Species happened in the World Conservation Congress in Hawaii.
While Apple has just recently unveiled its highly anticipated iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus smartphones, rumors about the next gen iPhone 8 possible release date, specs and price have already flooded the internet. In fact, tech enthusiasts have already begun assuming what Apple might have in store for 2017 iPhone 8 which will mark iPhone's 10th anniversary.

According to Reuters, some Apple fans are even ready to wait until next year to get their hands on iPhone 8 as they are confident that the next iPhone iteration will come with a lot of impressive specs and features. So, here the question arises is that should we buy iPhone 7 this year or wait for iPhone 8 release next year.

As per a report coming from HighsNObiety, the Cupertino is working on a full glass version iPhone 8 with glass on both the front and back sides, and a metal frame surrounding the edges. Japanese website Nikkei has also backed the all glass casing rumor as a source told the publication that one of Apple's biggest manufacturing partners, Foxconn, has been trying glass designs since last one year.

Among other iPhone 8 specs and features, the next gen smartphone is expected to come with an OLED edgeless display screen, a 10nanometer A11 chip, an Intel 7360 LTE modem and biometric additions such as facial and iris scanning. In fact, while unveiling iPhone 7, Apple CEO Tim Cook teased that iPhone 8 will have Siri physically coming out of the smartphone and responding to user commands. So, iPhone fans are hoping that waiting for iPhone 8 would turn out to a good decision for them.

As far as iPhone 8 release date is concerned, the handset is expected to be unveiled either in late August or early September of 2017. Readers are advised to take the information with a pinch of salt as nothing yet has been confirmed by the makers.

Stay tuned to SWR for more updates and rumors on iPhone 8 release, specs and features.
New research shows that the wilderness is no longer wild. More protection should be conducted because we are running out of time. Can studies today help restore what was lost?

Experts conducted a survey and reiterated that the wilderness could not take care of itself. Since researchers thought that wilderness is much better to be left alone, for it is somehow difficult to live in, their new study shows that they are wrong. Parts of Siberia and Sahara desert already lost 1.2 million square miles of wild land over the past 20 years. Experts now are saying that these places should be actively protected.

A professor at the University of Northern British Columbia and an author of the study said, "We started with the fairly naive assumption that we wouldn't see very big declines in wilderness areas because of the fact that they were so remote. So we were quite surprised and shocked to the levels at which these areas had been eroded since the early 1990s."

Meanwhile, a team of researchers at the Wildlife Conservation Society headed by Venter and James Watson surveys the human footprints in our planet. With the help of the data gathered by the satellite they were able to identify where people built cities, pave roads, installed power lines, put down railroad tracks and lands being transformed to pastures.

Results show that only 23 percent left of the land across the globe can be considered as "wilderness" or areas with no human activities. It has a ten percent drop down over the past two decades and it concentrates mainly in North America, North Asia, North Africa, and Australia.

In line with this, in the journal "Current Biology" researchers learned that the loss of wilderness areas is a globally significant problem; it is an irreversible outcome for both humans and nature. If this continues there will be no more left in the next century, as reported by Independent UK.

President and chief scientist of the Yellowstone, Jodi Hilty added that "Society needs to come to grips with this challenge: what do we want to protect and when are we going to get at it? The clock is ticking. For many of the most critical ecosystems, another couple of decades of deliberation is going to run out the clock. There just won't be any wilderness left," according to The Verge.
From Staff Reports

COLUMBIA, S.C. - The South Carolina Governor's School for Science & Mathematics (GSSM) has added new teaching faculty for the 2016-17 school year. GSSM is a two-year, public, residential high school in Hartsville, for juniors and seniors from across the state. The Schools three-year, virtual engineering program, Accelerate, serves sophomores, juniors and seniors in partner school districts statewide.

New GSSM faculty include:

Dr. Tyler Brannan, Accelerate Math Instructor, PhD, Louisiana State University

Dr. Kathryn de Ridder-Vignone, Economics & Finance Institute Instructor and Executive Director of Startsville: GSSM Foundations Center for Innovation, PhD, Cornell University

Dr. Anders Gardestig, Accelerate Physics and Engineering Instructor, PhD, Uppsala University

Dr. Michael Newsome, Director of the BlueCross BlueShield Economics & Finance Institute, PhD, University of Kentucky

Dr. Maria Garcia Otero, Spanish Instructor, PhD, University of Kansas

Dr. Beth Steedley, Accelerate English Instructor, PhD, Johns Hopkins University

Mr. Carl Yackey, Government and Economics Instructor, BA, Wayne State University

We are excited to welcome seven new instructors to the GSSM faculty, said Dr. Hector Flores, GSSM president.

GSSMs residential program offers more than 50 STEM courses annually, 45 percent of which are above the AP level. GSSM has partnerships with Clemson University, College of Charleston and the University of South Carolina-Columbia to grant college credit for GSSM classes closely aligned with university courses.

The Accelerate engineering program, now in its fourth year, recently welcomed its newest cohort of students to the program, in addition to new teaching faculty. Through a partnership with Clemson University, Accelerate students can earn up to 41 credits towards an engineering degree. Partner school districts and sites for the 2016-17 school year include: Aiken, Berkeley County School, Darlington County School District, Dorchester Two, Greenville County, Greenwood School District 50, Horry County, Lexington One, Orangeburg Five, Palmetto Scholars Academy, Pickens County, Richland One, Spartanburg School District Five and Spartanburg School District Seven.

To learn more about GSSMs residential and virtual programs, visit www.scgssm.org.
FLORENCE, S.C. -- Wells Fargo Bank donated $15,000 Friday to the current Habitat for Humanity house being built on Rosemount Drive in south Florence.

Volunteers from the bank delivered the donation Friday morning to the house currently under construction at 444 Rosemount Drive and then set to work on finishing touches to the interior of the home, landscaping and constructing a sidewalk to tie into the subdivision's sidewalk system.

Ella Williams, a native of Dillon who works as an assembler at Otis Elevator, learned in late April that her family had been selected as the newest partner family by the Greater Florence Habitat for Humanity. Ground was broken on the home in late May.

Debbie Edwards, executive director of Greater Florence Habitat for Humanity, said the communitys generosity has enabled more than 40 families to find strength, stability and independence through safe, decent and affordable housing .

Our community partners do more than help build  they are providing hope and a brighter future for families, she said. It is a unique opportunity to impact the life of a family and is a tangible way for the company and employees to participate in improving our community. We couldnt do this without financial resources and volunteer support and as the director of this great organization I thank each and every one from the bottom of my heart.
FLORENCE, S.C.  State Democrat and Republican party leaders, along with local college professors, took part in a voter education symposium Thursday evening aimed at getting past election tensions to help voters better understand the political process.

The event began with Dr. David White, the department chairman of political science at Francis Marion University, and Dr. Jacob Butler Jr., chairman of the division of social sciences at Morris College touching on how government should work.

Voters are questioning this year more than ever if the two-party system even works as intended. The professors weighed in at the forum.

Citizens often get frustrated with different elements of the process but when it comes to stability we can talk about more than two centuries without a coup or instability, with the Civil War being the only threat to our system, Butler said. We have a system that has managed to endure all kinds of stresses over the centuries where others have not.

White said the system isnt a failure but the current climate makes political compromise much harder than ever before in America.

There used to be liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats and more room for overlap. Today the parties are much more cohesive so its harder to compromise, he said. Part of that may be because of the way we draw congressional districts, where we have 435 congressman but only about 50 of those seats are competitive each election.

Another problem among voters in South Carolina is the question of whether more government spending is the answer to fixing the states shoddy roads and education systems, or too much government has already done its damage.

South Carolina Democratic Party Chairman Jaime Harrison said this state needs more help.

Here in South Carolina we need more government, he said. Apparently the government we have now isnt fixing the potholes we have. Thats something we used to be able to do in a bipartisan fashion. If there were crumbling roads and bad bridges you could work together to get those thing done.

South Carolina Republican Party Chairman Matt Moore said the American political system isnt set up to be easy on all fronts; its about compromise.

This year our South Carolina government has found a way to address roads without raising the gas tax, done things like the concealed carry reciprocity law and shortened the legislation session, so Im satisfied with how things are going on a state level, he said. Its a fairly inarguable fact that the federal government is too large. The federal deficit is too high and it creates a big problem because theres less money to spend on programs we need to spend it on.

All speakers agreed that real political change comes in local elections.

Regional Editor of the Morning News Don Kausler Jr. moderated the event.
I can learn a lot about waiting from Laura and Andrew Ruwe.

Thinking theyd wait 12 to 16 months for a child, the Hooper couple wouldnt see their dream fulfilled for 3  years. They would be married seven years by the time they brought little Tabalo into their home.

It was a long wait, but recently I talked to Laura about their experiences.

When they had a difficult time getting pregnant, they decided adoption was Gods best option for them. Doors on a domestic adoption closed so they found an agency with a program that involved the Democratic Republic of Congo. The capital in that country alone has 2 million orphans.

They started the process in January 2013 and were matched with Tabalo that June. While it usually doesnt take 3  years for most adoptions, things happening in the African country would delay the process.

What did they learn?

God is faithful in the waiting, she said. His timing is perfect.

And there is an upside to waiting.

The waiting is so good, because when youre on the other side of it, you can see what God was teaching you through it, Laura said. When wed just been waiting a year  which at that time seemed like a long time  my husband and I helped with an adoption conference.

We committed to praying a simple prayer together, God we want to know you more.

The next week, she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer.

God chose to have us wait another two years for our son to come home and He answered our prayer for us to know him more, she said. We began to know Him as healer and patient father and caring King and Savior  even more so.

The Ruwes didnt put their lives on hold.

During that time, we chose to live, still do things, still be involved in peoples lives, still serve the Lord and work  and enjoy the time we had, even though we were longing to be a family of three, she said.

They had help. Gods word helped them wait as did friends and family who continued to pour His truth into them.

The Ruwes would learn to wait well. They took time to educate themselves, reading books and taking classes, to learn what it would look like to be an adoptive family. They took time to educate friends and family on what it would be like when their son came home.

Their hope and trust in God is evident as she tells her story.

We continued to plan for the future even though we didnt know if we would get a call today or tomorrow or a week or years from now, she said. We continued to plan our lives and that helped a lot in the waiting.

As I think about Andrew and Lauras story, Im reminded of a Biblical account of people who were waiting. This particular story is found in 1 Kings, chapter 17.

At this point, the prophet Elijah has told wicked King Ahab of Israel, which has fallen into idol worship, that there wont be any dew or rain in the next few years.

Notice Elijah doesnt say how many years will pass.

God then tells Elijah to go to the Kerith Ravine, where hell drink from a brook. God has ordered ravens to feed him there. So he drinks from the brook, and every evening and morning, the ravens bring him meat.

When the brook dries up, God tells Elijah to go to a pagan place called Zarephath, where the Lord has commanded a widow to supply him with food.

Was it an ancient-day soup kitchen? Maybe not.

Anyway, when he reaches Zarephath, Elijah sees a widow. He asks her to bring him some water in a jar and a piece of bread.

But the woman says she only has a little flour in a jar and oil in a jug. Shes going to make a meal for herself and her son before they die.

Why does she think theyll die? Well, Im not a farmer, but I know crops dont grow too well when theres no rain.

The widow sounds hopeless and probably fearful. But Elijah tells her not to be afraid and to go home and make a small cake of bread from what she has and bring it to him, then to make something for herself and her son.

And he tells her God has said the flour and oil wont be used up until the Lord gives rain.

So she does what he says.

Guess what?

Theres food for Elijah and the woman and her family throughout the famine.

The book of James, chapter 5, in the New Testament says it didnt rain for 3  years.

And when it did, the earth produced crops.

Centuries later, Im sipping coffee in Scooters and listening to Laura tell me about the 3  years she and Andrew waited, hoped and prayed for Tabalo.

Figuratively speaking, they finally got their rain.

So after waiting what seems to me like a long time, Im wondering about a rain of my own.

Wheres my rain? I began asking God after hearing the Ruwes story.

Then something interesting happened.

I kept coming across a Bible verse, Deuteronomy 8:2, which tells how God led the Israelites in the desert for 40 years to humble and test them to know what was in their hearts  whether or not theyd keep his commands.

This verse refers to the story of God leading the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt.

The book of Exodus says God didnt lead them on the shorter road through Philistine country (where enemies lived), because if the Israelites faced war, they might go back to Egypt where theyd been slaves.

Instead, he led them by the longer way of the wilderness  a place theyd eventually wander in for 40 years because of their unbelief.

Finally, they were able to go into the wonderful land God promised to their forefathers.

But even after they went into that Promised Land, the Israelites still had many battles to fight before settling into their new homes.

So I wonder: Does God sometimes take us the longer way to prepare, teach and strengthen us, because he knows that  for as marvelous as our own Promised Land is  there will be battles?

And we must be ready for them?

I remember the hard years I spent as a single mom before I married my wonderful husband Chuck. Looking back, I think those years prepared me for the battles Chuck and I would face in our own Promised Land.

Wilderness journeys can be long, dry and painful.

But can they also be times when we learn to trust God more?

To become more determined to serve him?

To become resolved to avoid evil and do good?

Can we learn how to persevere in tough times and wait for his perfect timing?

Psalm 37:7 says: Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him.

And Psalm 37:4 says: Take delight in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.

So can one of our prayers be: Dear Lord, Please show me how to take delight in you. Show me what it means when the Bible says, Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you?

One day, the Ruwes did get the phone call that Tabalo was coming to the United States. And although its not easy to raise a child who has known the pain of being an orphan, the Ruwes and their son are progressing well.

Hes wonderful, Laura said. Andrew and I have said several times that God could not have given us a more perfect child for us.

Laura has some encouragement for those who are waiting.

If you know the Lord, the waiting doesnt need to be wasted, she said. It can be used to know God more.

And when that rain comes, dont we know it will be awesome?
Does the Department of Transportation really think they can prevent people from committing suicide (by jumping off the Ravenel Bridge)? I guess we taxpayers will foot the big bill to try unsuccessfully. If a person is bent on taking their life there are lots of ways to a do it. The same applies to people killing other people. Look at Chicago.

When the S.C. Port Authority releases statistics on cargo containers passing through, why don't they break it down by incoming and outgoing with goods? I think I know why. Why do we do a huge amount of business with China, a country that is our enemy in many respects? We are funding our enemy as well as taking American jobs away.

It is said the national debt increases by $2.4 billion a day, adding very significantly to our obscene $2 trillion debt. Is America in self-destruct mode? Evidently we are. One day we may find out that a $20 bill isn't worth the material it is printed on.

The Communist Control Act was signed into law in 1954 by President Eisenhower. But that was before political correctness and major stupidity in government set in.

I just heard bulletproof vests are being issued to firefighters in some places. I guess America has reached another new low.

Would you really feel safer if the only people with guns are the police, military and bad people? Isn't a gun-free-zone telling a nut this is where I need to go for maximum results? If the Clintons are elected they will try do that to you.

Remember taxpayers, if they build it we will have to pay for it and maintain it, whatever it is.

Do you know who the four Americans are that $400 million ransom was paid and then lied about it being ransom? Trust government? Sure I do.

Can you really consider voting for a person like Hillary (Bill) Clinton for president knowing how low class and deceitful they are? Can you not vote at all or vote for a third-party candidate knowing it is a vote for Hillary?

Gay/trans-gender or whatever, must you make it a public issue? If you choose not to stand for the national anthem, OK. But shame on you. Have you considered moving to another country to demonstrate your displeasure?

It is said by some it will cost to much to send 11-million illegal aliens/lawbreakers out of the country. How about the cost of allowing them to remain here until they die or clog up prisons and jails? If you think open borders as we have now is good you must be a Democrat or think like one. Sanctuary city? How dumb can government be? I must stop saying how dumb can a person be. Some people take that as a challenge.

I see Hillary now has a larger airplane so the mainstream media can travel with her so she can ignore them there also.

DAVE HICKLIN

Florence
Geekologie has shut down.

Thank you to everybody.

Now go be happy.
MASON CITY  A man suspected of fleeing a traffic stop last month and abandoning his motorcycle in downtown Mason City has been arrested.

Troy Wiebke, 41, of Mason City, was arrested about 10 p.m. Thursday for misdemeanor eluding and a number of traffic and license-related violations from an alleged chase on Aug. 22.

The pursuit allegedly began when Wiebke pulled over for a state trooper in Mason City.

Iowa State Patrolman Ted Benda said Wiebke wasnt initially his intended target  he was trying to pull over a vehicle in front of Wiebke  but that changed when Wiebke quickly sped off on his motorcycle.

He took off at a high rate of speed, said Benda, who conducted the traffic stop. We initiated our lights and started to pursue him, and from there speeds kept climbing.(tncms-asset)03b926a6-6943-11e6-b8da-00163ec2aa77(/tncms-asset)

Wiebke drove on the city streets, county roads and a walking trail in the Mason City park system in order to elude officers, Benda said.

The State Patrol quit the pursuit in a park.

Wiebkes motorcycle was later found at Fifth Street Northwest and North Washington Avenue.

Local police and sheriffs deputies assisted with the investigation.

Wiebke was arrested without incident at his home Thursday night and booked into the Cerro Gordo County Jail for misdemeanor eluding, unsafe passing, failure to stop at a railroad crossing, failure to respond to a steady red light and driving on the wrong side of the road.

He also was arrested on misdemeanor driving-related warrants unrelated to the alleged chase.
Using DNA testing, scientists have confirmed the identity of the bacteria that caused London's Great Plague in the 17th century, reports the BBC.

From 1665 - 1666 the bubonic plague killed 100,000 people in London, almost a quarter of the city's entire population. The disease spread rapidly and burial pits were sometimes created to accommodate the overwhelming number of bodies.

RELATED: Plague Bacteria May Have Lived 300 Years

Last year, archaeologists in London believe they came upon one of these pits as excavations were underway at a former burial ground at Liverpool Street for a new rail link across the city, reported CNN. The bodies looked to be buried on the same day as others in the nearby Bedlam cemetery with headstones reading 1665, further leading scientists to believe those in the burial pit were killed by the plague.

During the course of this year-long excavation, 3,500 skeletons have been uncovered.

The osteology department at the Museum of London Archaeology, where all the finds from the Liverpool Street excavation were examined, searched for Yersinia pestis in the skeletons, a bacterium known to cause plague. Teeth were removed from the other remains and sent to the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany for further testing.

WATCH: How Many Times Have Viruses Almost Destroyed Humanity?
Wearing a hijab, niqab or burqa is common for women in many Middle Eastern countries. Some countries in the region, like Saudi Arabia, require women to wear full burqas when in public. Other countries, like Lebanon, are largely okay with women wearing nothing at all to cover their heads outside the home.

Afghanistan is often depicted as a Middle Eastern country that requires women to wear burqas in public, but the real story here is actually much more complicated than that.

RELATED: Top Court Suspends 'Burkini' Ban in France

Afghanistan was once seen as a fairly progressive country for women's rights. According to Amnesty International, in the 1970's, Afghan women not only went out in public without covering their heads, they also wore short skirts and high heels. They dressed quite similarly to women in western countries.

Women in Afghanistan were actually given the right to vote in 1919, a year before women in the U.S. achieved the same right. Many Afghan women were educated, even attending college after high school. Amnesty International researcher Horia Mosadiq remembers this as the norm when she was growing up in Afghanistan. "As a girl, I remember my mother wearing miniskirts and taking us to the cinema. My aunt went to university in Kabul," she told Amnesty.

All of this changed when the Taliban took over the country in the 1990's. The Taliban came to power after Afghanistan's civil war in the 80's and early 90's and ruled from 1996 - 2001. Their goal was to make Afghanistan an Islamic state, which meant severely suppressing women's rights.

RELATED: Why Burqas Are Illegal in Some Countries

Under the Taliban, women could not leave the house without wearing a full body burqa and having a male family member with them at all times. They were banned from receiving any type of education and were not allowed to work, among many other restrictions. Punishment for violating these laws was often brutal and included things like flogging, rape and stoning.

With the U.S.-led intervention in Afghanistan, the Taliban was driven from power by the end of 2001. Since then, re-establishing women's rights has become a focus for many people in the country, including men.

Yet more than a decade after the Taliban left, many Afghan women still wear a full burqa outside the home. An on-going debate has been ignited around whether women should wear burqas, should not wear burqas, or should be able to decide for themselves.

Some women still wear burqas because they feel pressure to do so from their husbands or other male family members. Javed Haidari, 24, a traffic officer in Kabul feels that women should always wear them outside the home. In reference to protests in the city against wearing burqas, he told The Telegraph, "What's the point of this? All of the women in my family wear burqas. I wouldn't let them go out without one."

RELATED: Are Burqas a Security Threat?

On the other hand, some women still wear burqas in Afghanistan because they prefer it. One woman named Bibi Gul told the Telegraph, "My husband and son tell me I should take my burqa off. But I'm used to it. I've been wearing this for 35 years."

No matter if you're pro or anti-burqa, it's clear that women's rights are not yet part of mainstream culture in Afghanistan. Women are still far from being treated as equals to men, but that won't stop many of them from continuing to fight for their human rights, with no signs of stopping.

-- Molly Fosco
WATCH VIDEO: What If North Korea And The U.S. Went To War?

It has always insisted it will continue testing, ignoring global condemnation and toughened UN sanctions.

Although it has regularly threatened neighboring South Korea, its main priority is developing a effective strike threat against the U.S. mainland.

The North Korean leadership says a credible nuclear deterrent is critical to the nation's survival, claiming it is under constant threat from an aggressive United States.

Why have they carried out another test?

South Korea says it believes the quake was caused by the testing of a nuclear device, with a yield of 10 kilotons. That would make it the most powerful of Pyongyang's five nuclear tests to date.

Seismologists detected a powerful artificial earthquake at 0030 GMT Friday, which they said was centered around Punggye-ri, North Korea's nuclear test site.

What do we know so far?

Here are some key questions around the blast and the isolated state's nuclear program.

North Korea conducted a fifth nuclear test on Friday, an underground blast that Seoul quickly labelled its "most powerful to date."

Its first nuclear test was in 2006. That was followed by one in 2009 and another in 2013. The most recent test was in January this year.

Experts say the tests are likely aimed at refining designs and reliability as well as increasing yield.

Outside monitors will analyze the yield from Friday's test to try to determine whether it signals any fresh breakthrough.

How advanced is North Korea's weapons program?

The four confirmed tests so far have resulted in artificial quakes of increasing size. Friday's quake followed that pattern, registering 5.3 magnitude.

Seoul said the 10-kiloton yield was the "most powerful to date."

The bomb that destroyed Hiroshima had a yield of 15 kilotons, and the most powerful nuclear test ever was a Russian blast in 1961 with an estimated yield of 50,000 kilotons.

Pyongyang claims its January test was of a miniaturized hydrogen bomb, which has the potential to be far more powerful than other nuclear devices.

RELATED: Does N. Korea Have 'H' or 'A' Bomb?

However, scientists say the six-kiloton yield was far too low for a thermonuclear device.

But experts caution Pyongyang is clearly making progress -- regardless of whether or not it has mastered hydrogen bomb technology.

"With each test they can learn a lot," atomic scientist Siegfried Hecker said in January.

The claim of miniaturization is a significant worry for the international community, especially in the light of an apparently stepped-up missile testing program over recent months and years.

If Pyongyang can make a nuclear device small enough to fit on a warhead, and can bolster the range and accuracy of its missiles, it might one day achieve its oft-stated aim of hitting U.S. targets.

How will the international community react?

Condemnation from the United States and its allies will likely be swift and sharp, and will almost certainly include calls for action from the United Nations Security Council.

However, the world will be watching most keenly for what China does.

RELATED: American Student Sentenced to 15 Years Hard Labor in North Korea

Beijing has been North Korea's main diplomatic supporter and protector for decades, shielding its errant ally from harsh international action.

But its patience is running thin. It strongly opposes Pyongyang's nuclear program, which it sees as a source of instability.

And China's seeming inability to rein in Kim Jong-Un is increasingly embarrassing for Beijing: the North's latest missile tests this week came as China was hosting a G20 summit.

However, Beijing's problem is that while it wants Pyongyang to stop causing trouble, it is desperate to avoid anything that might imperil the stability of the regime.

Its nightmare scenario is that if the regime collapses, millions of hungry North Koreans might flood over its border -- and the U.S.-allied South would take over, meaning American troops could be stationed right on the Chinese border.

SEE PHOTOS: A VILLAGE MADE OF BOMBS
MASON CITY  Twenty years after building their own home, Bonnie and Dennis Fryar decided to build another one at 415 Hemlock in Mason City.

They moved into the new home in May 2016. Larry Elwood Construction built the ranch-style home.

The couple designed their new home with perks including hardwood floors, quartz counter tops and stainless steel appliances. It also has a three-car garage, high roof line, stone front and center dormer.

The house has a screened porch for entertaining in summer months.

It also features an open layout on the first floor encompassing the kitchen, dining room, living room and fireplace.

The basement was designed with a theme where cousins become friends  with a video game space, exercise area, pool table and pinball machine.

The home is one of three the Globe Gazette will feature as part of the Mason City Womans Club annual Tour of Homes set for 1 to 3 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 13.

Club membership is required and is open to all women. Memberships are $20 and may be purchased at the homes the day of the tour.

Tea will follow the tour from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Knights of Columbus, 551 S. Taft Ave.
Russia and the U.S. own about 90% of the world's supply of nuclear weapons. The use of these weapons by both countries has resulted in tragedy on more than one occasion in history. Sadly, some of the impacts from these nuclear detonations continue to affect people today.

In addition to dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during WWII, the U.S. also tested a hydrogen bomb on the island of Bikini Atoll in 1954. Nearby residents were exposed to harsh levels of radiation, and marine life around the island was destroyed. People who visit the area still risk radiation exposure presently.

RELATED: The Soviet Union's Secret Nuclear Disaster

Russia's testing of nuclear weapons was even more extreme, and the effects continue to have tragic results. In 1949, Russia (then the Soviet Union) dropped atomic bombs in an area that is now Kazakhstan, called Semipalatinsk, or the Polygon. One of the nuclear program's architects claimed this area was uninhabited before testing began.

Unfortunately, he was very wrong. There were actually about 1.5 million people living here when the nuclear tests were carried out.

RELATED: What Does Nuclear Fallout Do To Your Body?

Some reports say that choosing this site was actually intentional, and the residents themselves were used as guinea pigs for Russian scientists to study the effects of nuclear weapons. For 40 years, the Soviets detonated bombs here, with tests occurring almost every single day.

The effects of daily nuclear testing in the Polygon became visible almost immediately. Cancer rates dramatically increased, as did infertility, birth defects, mental disabilities and, subsequently, suicide rates. Around 200,000 people were directly affected.

But it didn't end with those exposed to direct radiation. When Russia left the area, they walked away without finishing the clean-up, leaving radioactive material behind. 1 in 20 children born in the Polygon still suffer birth defects to this day and the suicide rate is 4 times higher than the rest of Kazakhstan as a whole.

RELATED: Where Are The World's Nuclear Weapons Stored?

In 2001, in an unprecedented occurrence, Russia, the U.S. and Kazakhstan joined forces to clean up the rest of the radioactive material from the Polygon. The project wasn't completed until 2012.

Due to the decades of suffering endured by Polygon residents, Kazakhstan is spearheading efforts to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. The goal is to put an end to all nuclear detonations around the world. For this to go into effect, all 44 countries who created the treaty must agree. Currently, China, Egypt, Iran, Israel, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and the United States are still holding out.

-- Molly Fosco
MASON CITY | The Mason City Family YMCA will host the Big Blue 5K and Color Party Oct. 9.

The day will include healthy, fun, colorful events for all ages.

The Big Blue 5K begins at 12:30 p.m. for participants 13 and up, who can choose a 5K run or 1.6-mile walk through the YMCA neighborhood and around Big Blue. The 5K is $20 before Oct. 1 and $30 after that.

The Color Party follows the 5K from 2 to 4 p.m. and will feature an all-ages obstacle course and color stations for kids to express their creativity. The Color Party is $10/youth or $30/family maximum. Participants registered before Sept. 30 get a free T-shirt.

Proceeds from the event will benefit fitness equipment upgrades and all-ages youth programming at the YMCA.

Registration for both events is open now. Call the YMCA at 641-422-5999 or visit www.masoncityymca.org for more information.
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An out-of-control sport utility vehicle crashed into a portable classroom at Solano Community College in Fairfield on Friday morning, leaving the driver and nine students injured  including one who was pinned between the vehicle and a wall, officials said.

The crash occurred just after 9:20 a.m. when the driver of the black Acura SUV suffered a medical emergency, swerved off a road on the campus and plowed into portable building 1101, where a math class was taking an exam, according to Celia Esposito-Noy, superintendent-president of the college.

The vehicle went through the classroom and pinned a student to a wall, Esposito-Noy said. Luckily the building was full of nursing faculty who rushed to help.

Seven of the people injured, including the driver, were taken to hospitals with minor to moderate injuries, according to the Solano County Sheriffs Office. Esposito-Noy said the driver, whose name was not released, is a staff member of the college.

We are unsure what caused the driver to crash through the classroom, but he is currently at the hospital, said Esposito-Noy.

The driver did not appear to be fully conscious right after the wreck, she said, adding that his vehicles air bags failed to deploy.

She said that moments before the crash, about 30 students were in the classroom taking a math test. But more than half of them had completed the exam and left the classroom before the wreck happened.

She said the SUV careered off the main campus road and traveled about 30 feet across a lawn and a sidewalk before crashing through a set of double doors in front of the building.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Updated to include drought zones while tracking water shortage status of your area, plus reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

She commended the math instructor, nursing faculty at the school, campus police and grounds staff for how quickly they moved into action and began helping students out of the building and attending to those with minor injuries.

Bill Hutchinson is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: bhutchinson@sfchronicle.com Twitter: bill_hutchinson
You dont often see a letter of explanation  or was it an apology?  when youre being hit up for a big-money political fundraiser. But thats what longtime Republican donor Jillian Manus offered when she asked pals to open their wallets for a Sept. 21 luncheon fundraiser at her Atherton home featuring Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine.

I realize for many of you, my support of (Kaine) might be rather shocking and confusing, as I am still a moderate Republican, wrote Manus. Although at this point, I am not quite sure what either party truly represents anymore.

If I had my way, I would launch a party called WE THE PEOPLE. It would toss out the words conservatism and liberalism, as they are dangerously divisive potentially beyond repair. We would be a socially inclusive and fiscally responsible party. This is actually one of the prime reasons I respect Tim Kaine. He does represent the we. His whole political career supports these very principles.

Manus said that this is the first time in 20 years of holding fundraisers that shes hosted one for Democrats, and it took a great deal of thought, as I know there will be repercussions. With all that processed, I still feel compelled to bring as many like minds and hearts together to listen, learn and hopefully unite.

I truly dont believe Donald Trump really wants to make America great. He just wants to make America HIS.

Tickets for the event range from $1,000 to $33,500-a-person.

Her co-host will be former California GOP gubernatorial candidate and current Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman, a Donald Trump loather who has been on the campaign trail for Democrat Hillary Clinton in recent weeks.

 Joe Garofoli

Feinstein to the barricades: California Sen. Dianne Feinstein issued another defense of Hillary Clinton in the 18-month email saga Thursday, using her position as the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee to try to undermine GOP claims of wrongdoing by the former secretary of state.

Feinstein said newly released emails from Clinton predecessor Colin Powell, a Republican, show Powell offered advice to Clinton on skirting an unwieldy State Department system.

Powell told Clinton he had asked why he could not use a mobile phone in secure spaces, and officials gave me all kinds of nonsense about how they gave out signals and could be read by spies, etc.

Feinstein said Powells emails show that Clinton believed her email system was no different than that of her predecessors and did not deviate from standard practice. She reiterated that FBI Director James Comey said the case did not come close to warranting criminal charges, adding, Its time to put this matter to rest.

 Carolyn Lochhead

Road trip: Up more than 20 points in the polls, Hillary Clintons California campaign is so confident of a victory here that, as have past Democratic nominees, theyre recruiting volunteers to go to Reno on Saturday to canvass in swing-state Nevada. The bus leaves San Francisco at 6 a.m. Saturday.

But Donald Trumps campaign is keeping its California supporters to the west of the Silver Legacy. Yes, winning California will be an uphill climb, but stranger things have happened, Trumps California communication director, Jon Cordova, told us. So for now were not sending anybody to Nevada yet.

 Joe Garofoli

Way behind: Rep. Loretta Sanchez got more bad news Thursday when a survey commissioned by public radio stations across the state found her barely in sight of front-running Attorney General Kamala Harris in their race to replace retiring Sen. Barbara Boxer.

The poll, conducted by the CalSpeaks public-opinion project at Sacramento State University, found Harris with a 51 to 19 percent overall lead in the matchup of the two Democrats. The former San Francisco district attorney also is crushing the Orange County congresswoman, 63 to 19 percent, among Democrats.

The bit of good news for Sanchez is that Republicans back her by a 33 to 17 margin, with 36 percent undecided and 14 percent saying theyll support someone else. That gives the congresswoman a path, albeit a narrow one in Democrat-friendly California, to challenge Harris.

A couple of caveats about the poll. First, its based on an Internet survey of a panel of some 2,000 people recruited for various CalSpeaks surveys. About 915 completed the recent survey, conducted Aug. 15 to 24.

Second, the survey asked whether those polled leaned more toward Harris or Sanchez, which typically trims the number of undecided voters. Third, the survey was conducted only in English, which could hurt a Latina politician like Sanchez.

But while the new surveys numbers were stronger for Harris than other polls on the Senate race, they reinforce a continuing theme: Sanchez remains down big with little indication the numbers are turning.

 John Wildermuth

Tainted love: Do Michael Eggman and Bryan Caforio, two Democrats seeking GOP-held congressional seats, believe Hillary Clinton is honest and trustworthy, despite her willingness to say or do anything to advance her own career?

And why are Republicans Scott Jones and Justin Fareed, along with GOP Reps. Jeff Denham, David Valadao and Darrell Issa still silent on (Donald) Trumps attacks against a Gold Star family?

If youre waiting for an answer, it could be awhile. The questions, fired out by the National Republican Congressional Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, are less about getting answers than about painting candidates in tight races with the unpopular positions of those higher up the political food chain.

For GOP officials, their hope is that while few of the voters in the Modesto area (Eggman) or the high desert around Palmdale (Caforio) may know much about the political rookies, theyre likely to have strong opinions about Clinton.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Updated to include drought zones while tracking water shortage status of your area, plus reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

As for the Democrats, they figure the GOP presidential candidate is so unpopular in California that any connection to the New York developer is likely to be a toxic anchor pulling down any Republican congressional candidate.

Will the tactics work? Who knows? But expect to see them repeated in close contests across the country in the hope that they just might make a difference.

 John Wildermuth

Low-conflict face-off: Fourteen supervisorial and two state Senate candidates packed into the Unitarian Universalist Church on Franklin Street on Thursday for a Seniors Vote! town hall to talk about issues facing San Francisco. Thats a lot of personalities in one place.

The first panel featured Supervisors Jane Kim and Scott Wiener, who are in an increasingly negative state Senate race for termed-out . Mark Lenos seat. The surprisingly cordial dialogue centered on Medicaid, Ellis Act evictions, transportation and the public pension system, with neither candidate taking digs at the others record.

Candidates running for supervisorial Districts One, Five, Seven, Nine and 11 also had the chance to give a three-minute spiel, including incumbent Supervisors London Breed and Norman Yee. The talk was about affordable housing, police-involved shootings and transportation, with many of the candidates staking a claim to the neighborhoods where they grew up or drawing on anecdotes of being raised in a middle-class family to appeal to voters.

District Seven candidate John Farrell also noted his opposition to Supervisor David Campos proposed Office of Public Advocate.

In my district, Im going to be my own public advocate, Farrell said. We shouldnt be wasting our money on that.

 Lizzie Johnson

Days until voting begins: 30

Days to election: 60

Complete campaign coverage: www.sfchronicle.com/election/2016

Email: jwildermuth@sfchronicle.com, jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com, clochhead@sfchronicle.com, ljohnson@sfchronicle.com
Everyone was implicated, writes one of the characters in Mauro Javier Cardenas wildly ambitious debut novel, The Revolutionaries Try Again. The character in question, Antonio, scrawls those words in the margin of his memoir in progress, which he is attempting to edit while flying from San Francisco to his hometown of Guayaquil, Ecuador.

In the memoir, Antonio is trying to unravel the threads of a pivotal night in his family history. And yet these words  everyone was implicated  reverberate through the book as a wide range of characters strive to address, surmount or at times simply survive the corruption and social disintegration of their nation.

The book revolves around a group of young men, former classmates at the most prestigious boys high school in their city. It opens when Leopoldo, a functionary at Guayaquils City Hall, learns that a pay phone has purportedly been struck by lightning and is allowing calls to go through for free. The people of Guayaquil have proclaimed this a miracle and have lined up to hear the voices of their loved ones who have fled economic turmoil in hopes of a better life in the United States.

Leopoldo breaks up the crowd of desperate would-be callers, and then, when no one is looking, uses the phone himself. He calls Antonio, his former classmate in San Francisco, the would-be memoirist, who left some years ago to study at Stanford and never returned. They banter. They discuss protests in Ecuador, the horrific plight of the poor, and their countrys uncertain political future. Their lines are crossed with a bickering, eavesdropping couple.

And then, the restless and disillusioned Leopoldo asks Antonio to come back and help him mount a presidential campaign. I think we have a chance, he says.

Along the way, as the two young men approach their reunion and develop their haphazard attempt at changing the course of history, the book roams through a kaleidoscope of voices: Antonios mother seeks inner peace through Reiki body work on the privileged side of Guayaquil, attempting to turn a blind eye to the inequality that surrounds her.

Both of the young mens grandmothers chime in with their memories in passages rendered exclusively in Spanish; Rolando, another former classmate, strives to reignite revolutionary feelings among the impoverished through a pirate radio show and street play that take unexpected turns.

Eva, Rolandos girlfriend, grapples with the wrenching disappearance of her older brother at the hands of a repressive government years ago, and Alma, Rolandos sister, is exploited as a maid and then takes a harrowing journey through Guatemala and Mexico as an undocumented immigrant to the United States.

This is a book at once haunting and haunted, rippling with the ghosts of Latin Americas atrocities, disappointments, colonial strangleholds, insurgencies and fierce hopes, a book at once specific to Ecuadors historical realities and bursting with significance to our whole hemisphere.

How, after all, is a nation still wounded from centuries of exploitation to separate its destiny from that of the northern nation that backs coups and enforces austerity measures, the very nation to which some of its people now flee? How can a single person become an agent for change when living in a sticky web of systemic privilege and oppression in which each person has played a complicated role? In a world like ours, how do we evade colluding with injustice?

The style of this book is as ambitious as its territory, moving fluidly from voice to voice, from luminous long sentences to syntactical fragmentation. Cardenas, an Ecuadoran now living in San Francisco, has made the Nabokovian move of claiming adoptive English as his own, and he gives us many beautifully eloquent moments.

Tellingly, we learn that Antonio has taken an introductory fiction class at UC Berkeley Extension, where he was shown the flat world of Best American Realism. Readers take note: This author does not stay inside the tidy cookie-cutter rules of certain contemporary U.S. workshops. Rather, this is a book shaped from the raw elements of a far wider tradition, with echoes of Mario Vargas Llosa, Roberto Bolano and William Faulkner, to name a few.

There are times when the structure of the book strains under the weight of its own ambition, where the language seems to fray. But this flaw is ultimately overshadowed by the novels explosive power, its unrelenting boldness, its commitment to urgent questions.

In a memorable passage, a character speaks to the ghost of Father Villalba, a dead liberation theologian who once awakened privileged schoolboys to social injustice. The priest is a symbol of the revolutionary past, and a voice of conscience in this book.

The character asks, At last youre dead Father Villalba are you relieved?

The dead priest replies: How can I be dead if you still hear me?

Carolina De Robertis third novel, The Gods of Tango, is now in paperback. Email: books@sfchronicle.com

The Revolutionaries Try Again

By Mauro Javier Cardenas

(Coffee House Press; 269 pages; $16.95 paperback)
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Three years after it opened, the eastern span of the Bay Bridge has been beset with so many problems that a multimillion-dollar rainy-day fund set aside for unanticipated expenses has been nearly devoured, leaving toll-payers responsible for any additional costs.

In a report sent to the Legislature on Thursday, the three-person committee that oversees the $6.8 billion bridge project said just $67.7 million remains in the contingency fund, far short of the estimated $184 million bridge authorities say they need. The fund was $900 million when it was created in 2005.

The committee said the estimated cost to complete the span  including any remaining repair work  could run as high as $270 million or as low as $100 million. But in any case, the Bay Area Toll Authority will have to pay the bill  with money collected from drivers crossing the Bay Areas seven state-owned toll bridges.

Toll hikes will not be needed, according to officials with the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, which operates the authority.

Were not going to raise the tolls to pay for this, said Randy Rentschler, a commission spokesman. Theres no question about that.

Instead, cash that the authority has already banked for improvements on the regions toll bridges and their approaches will cover the costs.

When you go over budget, you lose opportunities, said Andrew Fremier, deputy executive director of the toll authority.

Repairs to the new Bay Bridges well-known construction defects  including leaky tower foundations, cracked and corroded rods, and poorly welded deck boxes  are among the reasons the project has burned through its contingency fund.

But there are other factors as well. In the final years of construction, Caltrans incurred extra costs by altering plans and schedules to speed things up and ensure that the bridge would open on time  over Labor Day weekend 2013.

The bridge did open on schedule, but there was more work to be completed, including landscaping and other finishing touches, along with the bike path to Yerba Buena Island and the demolition of the old eastern span.

Then came the discoveries of broken rods, leaky foundations and other construction problems. Those problems are still being resolved, requiring the contractor, as well as Caltrans engineers and inspectors, to stay on the job longer than expected and in bigger numbers, running up the bills and eating into the contingency.

Caltrans has made efforts to cut costs on the Bay Bridge, but with little success. At Thursdays meeting of the Toll Bridge Program Oversight Committee, which was responsible for the report to the Legislature, Caltrans asked for an additional $16 million budget to cover the expenses of overseeing work for the final nine months of the current fiscal year, which ends in June.

Two committee members balked.

My concern is that were drawing that out of the contingency, said Susan Bransen, executive director of the California Transportation Commission.

Steve Heminger, the Metropolitan Transportation Commissions executive director, also questioned the request, arguing that Caltrans needed to work harder to rein in its oversight costs at the bridge.

We should be in a wind-down phase, he said. The bridge opened three years ago. ... It doesnt make sense.

Eventually, the committee settled on $13 million, which would reduce the contingency fund further, to about $54.7 million. Bransen said shed go along with it if Caltrans provided more detailed quarterly spending reports. Heminger also agreed, with the provision that Caltrans take action against bridge designer T.Y. Lin for the firms role in the failed bridge rods. Caltrans is already talking with bridge contractor American Bridge/Fluor about its role in the failures.

Its important to toll-payers and taxpayers that we pursue the people who make errors on public-works projects, Heminger said after the meeting.

Aside from seeking damages for botched bridge construction, Caltrans is looking to save money on demolition of the old span. The agencys plan is to leave five pieces of the original eastern span in the bay. Those concrete piers, which are on the eastern end of the old bridge, are in shallow water and away from navigation channels, officials said.

Caltrans would need the approval of the state Coastal Commission and other regulatory agencies, said Brian Maroney, chief bridge engineer, but could use the foundations to create a bridge-viewing platform or other public access area.

If we can find a nice solution with the community, I think we can end up with something that has huge benefits, he said.

And, transportation officials hope, that saves some money.

Michael Cabanatuan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mcabanatuan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ctuan
FLOYD  Rain or shine, the music keeps going at the Floyd Gospel Sing.

The annual event where Southern gospel acts from all over the Midwest and the South perform normally is held in the Floyd Community Center Park.

Rain on Friday morning forced the performers and the audience to go inside the community center.

The music included traditional gospel songs such as The Old Rugged Cross as well as original tunes. Audience members were invited to sing along.

Larry DeLawder of Branson, Missouri, a regular performer at the Floyd Gospel Sing, came on stage in a deputy uniform to do his impression of Barney Fife from The Andy Griffith Show. He pretended to trip on the stairs on his way up.

Its raining cats and dogs. Theres poodles all over the place, he said.

He kept the audience laughing as he went through his routine.

His two daughters, Hannah and Faith DeLawder, sang a duet before he returned to the stage to play the harmonica.

Pastor Paul Phillips of the the Gospel Lighthouse Church in Floyd introduced the acts.

The Gospel Lighthouse Church has hosted the Floyd Gospel Sing since 1995.

Phillips wife, Dixie, who performed with the Floyd gospel group Three Redeemed on Friday, said the event usually draws 1,500 to 1,800 people to their small town.

She said it was always kind of a dream to have a Southern gospel music event there.

Southern gospel has its own unique sound and the uplifting message of the music provides help to people going through hard times, she said.

Only 100 people attended the first Floyd Gospel Sing, but the event has grown tremendously over the years.

This year around 30 acts from Iowa, Missouri, Texas, Minnesota, Tennessee, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Illinois, Virginia and Oklahoma performed at the Floyd Gospel Sing.

Dixie Phillips said some of the fans also come from far away to attend and eternal friendships are formed during the event.

The Floyd Gospel Sing continues from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Saturday. On Sunday some of the acts will be performing at North Iowa churches.
When exactly did the Tenderloin become the city's notoriously seedy neighborhood? It turns out the answer is harder to find than you might think.

In 1913, the city shut down the infamous Barbary Coast. This caused the action to shift to the Tenderloin. But in truth, the neighborhood has always carried a scruffy exterior that hides a fair amount of historical significance.

I met with Bill Fricker, the Executive Director of the Tenderloin Museum. His greeting was warm and his passion for the neighborhood was immediately evident. I decided to forgo a short bus ride, and opted to walk to the museum, located at Eddy and Leavenworth Streets. It had been a while since I had been to the Tenderloin, or as locals call it, the TL. I took in the sites along the way. The architecture is fantastic, all dating back to post 1906, with the exception of the Hibernia Bank.

While there are dotted signs of gentrification, the area still retains much of its gritty atmosphere. I passed several murals along the way, and a park filled with the sound of children playing. There was a police presence in the park.

According to the museum, the area has more SRO's than any other district. I learned that the thing that distinguishes a residence as an SRO, is its lack of a kitchen. Much of the housing back in the day also didn't have private baths. The residential limitations gave way to bathhouses and restaurants, which flourished in the area in the past.

In the early days, much of the working class population was single, and one third were women. This gave women the chance to assert their independence. Some of the women in the area were perceived to be immoral. In 1917 the city closed dance halls and parlors, including the popular Arcadia Dance Pavilion and Blanco's Cafe. Some of the cafes had booths with beds nearby. These were wild times.

After the Barbary Coast was tamed, prostitution settled in to the Tenderloin. Some of the noted houses of ill repute, were "Diamond Jessie" Hayman's on Mason and Eddy Streets and Tessie Walls on O'Farrell. According to a San Francisco Chronicle article dated September 16, 1908, Jessie was arrested and tried for employing an alien immigrant who had been in the country for less than three years. She tried, in her plea, to say that the immigrant had told her that she had been in the country for 3 years. The judge didn't buy it. The Maximum sentence at that time was a $5,000 fine and five years in jail. "Diamond Jessie" was found guilty, and the immigrant was deported.

When going through the Chronicle's digital archives, the earliest mention of San Francisco's Tenderloin District was August 9, 1893. It was a story of a young man from the Tenderloin district, who wandered in to the Cosmopolitan District, located at Market, Ellis and Stockton Streets, complaining of feeling ill. Months later the moniker resurfaced when several saloon keepers in the Tenderloin were fined five dollars for selling liquor in back rooms.

Further research in the Chronicle's annals revealed other quirks of the neighborhood. In 1923, Jessie, whose real name was Annie May Mellon, left one thousand dollars each to her beloved cats Beppo and Teddy. Jessie was living in London at this time. Beppo died a few days after Jessie. The article stated that he died not knowing that he was rich. The surviving cat, Teddy, stopped eating, possibly due to the loss of his companion and mistress. Per Jessie's will, a woman named Belle Harte received a thousand dollars for caring for the cats.

Gambling was rampant in the Tenderloin. But in the 1930's, slot machines and other gambling devices were outlawed. To get around this law, establishments used "payout pinball" machines. If a ball landed in a certain hole, you would win money.

Years later the Tenderloin boomed during World War II. It's estimated that 1.7 million military members passed through the city in the 1940's. That helped fill the coffers of the restaurant, bars and nightclubs.On VJ Day, the streets were flooded with thousands of celebrants. Bar girls aka B-girls would hustle men into buying overpriced drinks. It wasn't against the law to be a B-girl. So, many of them were arrested for vagrancy.

Gay men and lesbians found a safe haven in the district's nightlife, even though the area was supposed to be off limits.

The area saw more changes in the 1950's. The cable cars were gone, cars raced up and down one way streets, and gambling was shut down. In 1959, Mayor George Christopher was accused by Russell Wolden, who was running against him, of turning the area into a "headquarter for homosexuals." Christopher won the election by a landslide that year. The LGBT community continued to grow into the 1960's.

Many of the SRO's were home to some of the city's transgender population. In 1966, they stood up against police abuse, in what was known as the Gene Compton's Cafeteria revolt. One of the first gay liberation groups in the country, the Vangard, was created by gay youth, to protect themselves from abuse.

In the 1970's, Dianne Feinstein tried to clean up the area. She was unsuccessful in closing the Mitchell Brother's theater, which had its own infamous past. The artist R. Crumb created a poster that mocked her attempts.

The history cataloged in the current museum begins around 1907, with the rebirth of the neighborhood. Here are some excerpts from San Francisco Chronicle archives dating from 1895 to 1906, to give you a snapshot of the Tenderloin before the great earthquake and fire in 1906:

On April 16, 1895 - Gilbert Schock, "with and oath on his lips, and pistol in hand" set out to murder his lover, Miss Maud Lima, a "well known figure in the Tenderloin district." The pistol misfired, allowing Miss Lima time to escape. Another article, dated April 24, 1895, told of Lord Sholto Douglas, son of the Marquis of Queensbury, being arrested for lunacy because he wanted to marry a Tenderloin dive waitress. Lord Douglas was described as an ungainly looking chap, tall and gawky, stoop-shouldered, with a small head covered with light, weather-beaten looking hair, a large mouth, with broad, projecting upper teeth, like that of a backwoods country boy.

On July 14, 1895 - Joseph Cook, "the former gay and popular Police Court Clerk of this city, who made the mistake of having a rousing time in the Tenderloin District for several years with moneys belonging to the people, is now a wreck of his former self at San Quentin." He was seeking parole due to poor health.

On that same date it was reported that another noted person, the petite Winnie Stanton, known to all habitues in the Tenderloin, was seeking parole from San Quentin. She was serving time for throwing vitroil [possibly a caustic agent] on her lover, Billy Stenzel, a few years prior.

September 7, 1895 - Mrs. Marion M. Allen, who resided at the Tenderloin end of Ellis Street, refused to pay her grocery bill. It was stated that a bottle of whisky is almost a daily item on the list, along with other liquors. $65 was due for flasks and quart bottles.

January 24, 1896 - Reel B. Terry, an attorney, stabbed Edward Phillips, ex-secretary of the Pilot Commission, inflicting three ugly wounds with a pocket knife. The fight, which took place in front of the James P. Dunne saloon, drew a crowd in the Tenderloin. Mr. Edwards was treated at the Receiving hospital and released. No charges were filed.

April 2, 1896 - Fred Healy, son of Captain Healy of Bear investigation fame, a law student and popular young man about town, met Miss Viola, well known among some circles, during one of his nightly rambles in to the Tenderloin. When "his brain was whirling through alcoholic reveries for about a week," he asked Miss Viola to marry him. It was said that she "held her own" regarding drinking during that week. They married and realized, when they sobered up, that they had made a mistake. Fred decided to get the marriage annulled and sailed for Tahiti on the Tropic Bird.

December 28, 1896 Bertie Aldridge, a well known character in the Tenderloin, was arrested taking part in swindling Albert William Sisson, who had fallen heir to a small fortune, out of $3,500. Her alleged accomplice, Frank Hart, was no where to be found.

October 2, 1897 - a doctor "goes slumming" in the Tenderloin and claims that he was drugged and robbed of $400. It was later found out that he had pawned his watch for $2.

September 4, 1898 - Michael Crowley, of Tennessee, recently discharged from the military, received payment in the amount of $180. He went to San Francisco and proceeded "to do" the Tenderloin. He alleged that he was robbed of his money in a dance hall on Grant Avenue, after having been given knock out drops. When he came to, he was forcibly ejected from the establishment, and discovered that all of his money was gone.

October 9, 1900 - Peter "Pete the Penman" McGlade, self professed forger, was out on $3,000 bail, and free once more to roam the Tenderloin and clink glasses with his friends of the City Hall gang.

November 17, 1900 - Headline reports rampant gambling in the Tenderloin. Comes out of trance, Sullivan admits that he was bunkoed by the pool men. Wide open condition of the Tenderloin makes him talk. "Shoot Low" Sullivan awakened from his hypnotic condition, and spoke of the widespread gambling in the district.

April 21, 1901 - Ruined by a life in the Tenderloin. H. Anheiser, a young German came to San Francisco to study American commercial methods. While he came from a wealthy family in Cologne, he fell in with a fast crowd and turned to burglary to keep up with his associates. He was sentenced to three and one half years in San Quentin.

December 7, 1902 - Tenderloin squad under investigation for winking at vice. The tenderloin was a hotbed of vice where women roamed freely from saloons to other resorts bearing evil reputations. Allowed to rove unhindered, at their pleasure. The saloon keepers were their ready allies. And, the police looked the other way, until now. One of the six resigned. Some claimed that the reputation was more persistent and less qualified, with a motive to remove Chief of Police Wittman.

August 1, 1903 - Woman causes the arrest of her faithless fiance. "Kid" Horn, well known in the Tenderloin, courted the young and attractive Mrs. Cowdery, swindling her out of four thousand dollars in cash and diamonds.

February 9, 1905 - Ida Smith, of Fair Oaks Street, was arrested for "rending the air with howls." The charges were dropped when it was learned that she was an heiress, receiving large sums of money from England, and was howling due to the loss of a diamond sunburst brooch.

April 28, 1905 -tax collector Edward J. Smith, was accused of stealing large sums of money, at least a quarter of a million dollars, from the city. He was lavishing Lillian Leslie, a well known, ostentatious figure in the Tenderloin, with gifts and money, including a car and house.

September 3, 1905 - Belden Place raided for gambling operations, as part of the effort to close down gambling in the Tenderloin.

November 5, 1905 - Schmitz vs. Partridge for Mayor. All through out the Tenderloin, Schmitz for Mayor buttons could be seen. The owners of open poolrooms, gambling dens and unspeakable dance halls, "the vices of the Tenderloin the municipal crib," were for Schmitz.

April 30, 1906 - the first mention of the Tenderloin after the earthquake. Among ashes of the Tenderloin/Glimpses in the deserted places where the red lights shone. The writer, Waldemar Young, strolled through the ashes, looking for people he knew, particularly professional fighters. He encountered Mickey Smith, who used to stand guard at the Belvedere, where fights took place, was now standing at the doorway of a blacksmith shop. The club, like all of the district, was now a pile of rubble. They reminisced about Oriental cafes, the Poodle Dog, Pratt & Tierney's, Alturas on the Haymarket...all places where liquor was sold. It was said by some that the decimation of the area was a good thing, But, this group sadly speculated that it would never be the same.

There is speculation about the origin of the name. One theory is that it was named after New York's Tenderloin, which was a rough part of town. One theory of the name is that it's the Soft Underbelly/ The tenderloin is the most tender, and most often most expensive, cut of beef, known as the "king of steaks." Fancy filet mignon comes from the tenderloin. Some believe the TL is so named because it was the "soft underbelly" of vice in San Francisco. Another popular theory is that cops received hazard pay for patrolling the often dangerous streets, thus affording them the budget for tenderloin cuts of beef. The National Park Service has added the "Uptown Tenderloin Historic District" to the National Register of Historic Places.

The district consists of all or part of 33 blocks starting with Mason Street to the east and ending just before Polk Street on the west. It is roughly bounded by McAllister and Market Streets on the south and Geary Boulevard to the north.

The designation celebrates the area's beautiful architecture, which includes the Hibernia Bank, the Alcazar Theater, the McAllister Tower and the art deco Hamilton building. A "downtown" Tenderloin has been identified in previous maps as an area east of Mason Street, and around Powell Street, but it is not considered an historic district.

The legendary venue Blackhawk Jazz Club where greats like Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, Dave Brubeck, Thelonious Monk and others played and recorded. Recording studio Wally Heider Studios where the Grateful Dead, Santana, and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young crafted albums that changed music forever. There are stories on how the Tenderloin served as the geographic center for San Francisco's emerging LGBT rights movement, and stories from a neighborhood that immigrants, office workers, retailers, bartenders, musicians, actors, dancers and prostitutes have all chosen to call home.

Most of the area was decimated by the 1906 earthquake and fire, along with the rest of San Francisco's downtown. Reconstruction began almost immediately, and continued in the area for another quarter century.

The Tenderloin Museum, located on the corners of Eddy and Leavenworth, in a former Sizzler steak house, tells the ribald history with pictures, postcards, show programs, restaurant menus, bar matchbooks, interactive media and assorted ephemera.

Per Randy Shaw, the executive director of the non-profit that runs the museum, "The museum is not a sociological analysis of the current Tenderloin. It's the story of the Tenderloin from 1907 to the present in the bars and restaurants, the gay and lesbian movement, the jazz and music." Check the museum's website for hours, tours and special events.

Bob Bragman is a producer for SFGATE. His writing reflects his love of the Bay Area, in addition to his passion for vintage pop culture, ephemera and vernacular photographs. To see more of his content, please click here.
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Protesters chained themselves together and blocked the main gates of the Alameda County Fairgrounds in Pleasanton Friday morning to demonstrate their opposition to the Urban Shield police training and expo scheduled there this weekend.

About 10 demonstrators chained themselves together and formed a line in front of the gates on Pleasanton Avenue, but police attending the expo and training exercises were able to get into the fairgrounds through other entrances.

Twenty demonstrators were arrested and later booked at the Santa Rita Jail in Dublin on suspicion of blocking traffic and failing to disperse, said Sgt. Ray Kelly, a spokesman for the Alameda County Sheriffs Office. He said all were expected to be released Friday evening.

Those arrested were locked down at one of the entrances to the expo, chained against the railings, said Mohamed Shehk, spokesman for the group Critical Resistance. But we expected to be met with police violence with arrests and it's what we have to do, put ourselves on the line to fight Urban Shield and the system of policing.

For the most part, the protest, which drew several hundred demonstrators, remained peaceful as participants marched up and down Pleasanton Avenue chanting, Urban Shield is filthy! Filthy! The whole damn system is Guilty! Guilty! They also chanted, Turn up and shut it down, we do this for Mike Brown, referring to the 18-year-old African American man shot dead by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014, a killing that ignited days of protests.

The protesters have been very cooperative and weve been working with them. Our goal is peace, said Lt. Kurt Schlehuber of the Pleasanton Police Department.

Among those chained together outside the main gate of the fairgrounds was April Martin, 37, a West Oakland filmmaker and photographer.

Im out here because I have a 4-year-old black nephew and I want a better world for him, said Martin. I dont want to fear him walking down the street and be harassed and killed.

Believed to be the largest tactical exercise in the nation, the multiday Urban Shield event provides first responders from throughout the Bay Area and country with training techniques and equipment to use in an array of emergency scenarios, including hostage situations, terrorist attacks and active-shooter incidents.

The event, which started with registration on Wednesday and will run through Monday, also draws hundreds of vendors displaying state-of-the-art gizmos for crime fighters and other first responders.

But protesters see Urban Shield as a forceful display of the growing militarization of police forces across the country. Organizers of Fridays demonstration condemned the event as promoting further violence and an increased war mentality by police in marginalized communities.

The same repressive international forces backed by the US to oppress people across the world are coming together to train with police forces in our local neighborhoods, said Nora Abedelal, of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center. We are here today to stand with all communities against militarization of police, and to demand an end to Urban Shield.

Sarah Ravani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: sravani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SarRavani
Airbnbs public debut wont happen anytime soon as the company is still focused on growth and overcoming regulatory challenges, said Jeff Jordan, the Andreessen Horowitz partner on the board of the San Francisco home-rental company.

Airbnb is still in a hyper-growth stage, Jordan said in an interview with Bloomberg on Thursday. Next year is probably too optimistic because management hasnt prepared for a market debut and more time is needed to resolve regulatory hurdles, he said.

The growth rate says its still early, Jordan said on the sidelines of the Tech in Asia Tokyo conference, without giving a specific timeline for a debut. You dont just magically go public. Theres work to be done behind the scenes.

Fears are growing that the technology IPO pipeline is backing up. As a result, theres speculation that large, privately held startups such as Airbnb and Snapchat will head to the public markets as soon as next year. The current tech boom has been unique because of the lack of IPOs, and has fueled skepticism that some valuations wont stand up to public scrutiny.

Ride hailing

Passengers

pick the tunes

Uber riders can now choose the tunes whenever they hitch a ride.

Uber Technologies said Thursday that riders can now choose the music in the car by streaming Pandora or Spotify Premium through their Uber app.

Riders who want the service must be matched with a driver who has a connected music icon. Once they tap a bar in their Uber app, they can log into Pandora or Spotify and their selected music will start playing when their trip begins.

The San Francisco ride-hailing service says the program, called Rider Music, will be rolling out over the next few weeks.

Small business

New service

by Facebook

Facebook is expanding its services to small businesses that want to sell to customers in other countries.

The Menlo Park company said Thursday its adding features to its small-business sites that allow companies to search for and advertise to customers overseas. Businesses will be able to choose which countries they want to target, and can aim at customers in specific regions or the entire world.

The features will be available to small businesses around the world.

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When Shanna Tellerman and West Owens first saw their Victorian flat on Potrero Hill, it looked fabulous: A decorator had staged it to impress prospective renters. After they moved in with their own, not-so-fabulous furniture, it looked humdrum, motivating Tellerman to spend endless hours on Houzz, Pinterest and other design sites trying to find a look. But finding items and ideas she liked didnt readily translate into a plan for her own long, narrow space.

She tried some floor-planning tools but found them clunky. I wanted something that combined the beautiful inspirations from Pinterest with visualizing how they would look in my space, she said. Id flip through the West Elm catalog and think, This seems like what I want, but I wanted it staged in my own house so I could see what worked best.

That was the impetus behind her company Modsy, which is launching on Friday as a mashup of interior design and e-commerce. It creates photorealistic 3-D renderings of consumers homes based on photos they submit, and then shows rooms furnished and decorated according to their personal style  modern, traditional, shabby chic, for example  as well as preferred colors, budget, storage needs, and kid and pet situations.

People can specify existing pieces of furniture that they want to incorporate. Once designs are generated, an interactive tool lets them swap out items  asking to see a sleeker couch or a larger dining table, for instance.

Consumers can turn the renderings into reality, buying any item shown from more than 100 retailers such as West Elm, RH, CB2, Pottery Barn, Target, Minted and Anthropologie.

We essentially let people shop from a digital catalog of their own homes, Tellerman said. Being able to visualize things in your home is a leapfrog in how to buy furniture.

Its a really smart idea, said Sucharita Mulpuru, chief retail strategist at Shoptalk, an e-commerce event series. Its something I dont think ever existed before: a remote intelligent interior design service. To see images of your actual space decorated is the closest you can get to trying on in the furniture world.

Furniture is heavy and expensive, so being able to try before buying could be transformative, Mulpuru said, adding that she could see using Modsy in her own life. I have my eye on a $5,000 Design Within Reach couch, but Im not ready to make that investment until I can know better how it will work in my room.

Tellerman previously worked at Autodesk after it bought a 3-D game platform she developed at Carnegie Mellon University. She drew on her background in 3-D modeling as well as insights she later gleaned as a partner at Google Ventures. I learned that you have to have a crazy passion for your idea to get through the tough times, she said. Modsy also meets her other two criteria: You have to have a unique perspective on the problem and the market has to be large enough.

Home furnishings represent an $83 billion market in the U.S., according to IBISWorld. Some 40 million Americans move annually, according to the Census.

The 30-person San Francisco company relies on software to design the rooms, although staff stylists may contribute to the designs.

While Modsys approach is distinctive, lots of other entrants are trying to combine digital technology with interior design. Several companies including Decorist, Laurel and Wolf, Homepolish and Havenly connect consumers with interior designers who remotely suggest room makeovers, including lists of what to buy. Several other companies offer ways to make 3-D renderings of consumers homes, but lack Modsys photorealism.

With $10.75 million in venture funding, Modsy sees multiple ways to make money. First, it charges for the service. Its base package is $199 for two designs of a room. The next tier is $299 per room for the designs plus phone or email consultations with its style team, and a 10 percent discount on any furniture items purchased through Modsy. (The company is offering $100 off both of those fees for an unspecified introductory period.) At the highest end, it charges $1,800 per room for its designs plus hands-on interior design help. Second, it gets commissions from retailers when consumers purchase furniture.

Rob Royer, founder and CEO of Interior Define, one of Modsys retail partners, said Modsy is immensely helpful for his company, which makes custom sofas that consumers order online.

We get inquiries every day from people who want to get really comfortable with what the couch will look like in their home, he said. The power of showing it to them in a photorealistic rendering is game changing for us.. It gets them so much more comfortable with the size and how it aesthetically fits into the space.

Down the road, one could imagine retailers licensing Modsy to help sell furniture and home builders using it to help buyers pick options like flooring and countertops.

We feel more consumers will take the leap from inspiration to transaction with Modsy in the middle as a confidence builder, Tellerman said.

Carolyn Said is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: csaid@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @csaid
Credit cards issued secretly without a customers consent. Bank employees creating fake email accounts to sign up customers for online banking services. Customers accumulating late fees on accounts they never even knew they had.

Those illegal banking practices were widespread and pervasive at Wells Fargo, which on Thursday was fined $185 million, including a $100 million penalty from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the largest such penalty the agency has ever issued.

Federal banking regulators said the practices reflected serious flaws in the internal culture and oversight at the San Francisco bank, one of the nations largest.

In all, Wells Fargo employees opened roughly 1.5 million bank accounts and applied for 565,000 credit cards that may not have been authorized by their customers, the regulators said in a news conference.

The bank has 40 million retail customers.

Regulators said the banks employees had been motivated to open the unauthorized accounts by compensation policies that rewarded them for drumming up new business. The Associated Press quoted the Los Angeles city attorneys office as saying that about 5,300 employees at Wells Fargo were fired in recent years over this behavior.

Many current and former Wells Fargo employees told regulators they had felt extreme pressure to expand the number of new accounts.

Unchecked incentives can lead to serious consumer harm, and that is what happened here, said Richard Cordray, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

This is an ugly moment for Wells Fargo, one of the few large American banks that have managed to produce consistent profit increases since the financial crisis.

In addition to the fine from the consumer protection bureau, Wells Fargo paid $35 million to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and $50 million to the city and county of Los Angeles.

Wells Fargo has also refunded $2.5 million to customers and agreed to hire an independent consultant to review its procedures.

Regulators said such illegal sales practices had been going on since at least 2011.

We regret and take responsibility for any instances where customers may have received a product that they did not request, the bank said.
A group of 23 inmates suspected of injuring two members of a rival gang after a fight broke out at a Redwood City jail last year have been indicted in connection with the attack, police said Thursday.

A grand jury indicted the men with intent to inflict great bodily injury among other gang-related enhancements following a months-long investigation, officials said.

Eight of the suspects were already out of custody by the time the ruling came out, prompting officials to track them down to serve arrest warrants from August 31 until Tuesday, said Det. Sal Zuno, a San Mateo County Sheriffs office spokesman.

Seven were located in Redwood City and San Jose. One of the suspects was not found, officials said.

The majority of suspects ranged in age from 19 to 52 and came from Redwood City, East Palo Alto, San Jose, Burlingame, Menlo Park, South San Francisco, San Mateo and Pacifica.

They were suspected of attacking a rival gang in the common area of the housing pod at Maguire Correctional Facility on Oct. 21, 2015.

Two staff members routinely assigned to the area were on duty when the fight broke out, Zuno said. The fight ended after about a minute as additional staff rushed to the area.

Two victims were taken to the hospital to treat face injuries after the assault. Four staff members suffered minor injuries to their arms and legs while breaking up the fight, Zuno said.

The suspects were booked into Maguire Correctional Facility on bail ranging from $225,000 to $775,000.

Jenna Lyons is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jlyons@sfchronicle.com
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Seven current and former Bay Area police officers will be tried for crimes related to contact they had with a sexually exploited teenager, Alameda County prosecutors said Friday as they detailed an investigation that engulfed several police departments and cast the Oakland force into disarray.

Calling the cops conduct morally reprehensible, District Attorney Nancy OMalley said charges ranging from oral sex with a minor to misusing computer databases would be filed against five current or former Oakland officers, one former Livermore officer, and one former Contra Costa County sheriffs deputy.

Its not clear when the cases  which represent one of the broadest prosecutions of police officers in Bay Area history  will be formally lodged with the courts. Prosecutors now need to make sure the teenager at the center of the scandal, who goes by the name Celeste Guap, is available to testify.

Guap was recently arrested and jailed after law enforcement officials in Contra Costa County helped send her to a rehabilitation center in Florida, where she allegedly attacked a guard. OMalley said Friday she wasnt consulted on the cross-country trip and had protested it.

The young woman, who lives in Richmond and has worked as a prostitute, told The Chronicle she had sex with 29 officers in the Bay Area in the past two years, and that her relations with at least four officers occurred before she turned 18. A few officers paid her, she said, while others warned her about antiprostitution stings or ran the names of people she knew through confidential databases.

Some of the most serious charges will be leveled against Ricardo Perez, the Contra Costa County deputy. He resigned in June shortly after Guap told The Chronicle he had sex with her several times last summer in his car off a rural road in Alameda County, when she was 17. Guap turned 19 in August.

Perez, who worked in the countys jails, will be charged with felony oral copulation with a minor and two misdemeanor counts of engaging in lewd acts in public, prosecutors said.

A Livermore officer who recently resigned, Dan Black, will be charged with four misdemeanors: two counts of engaging in prostitution and two counts of engaging in lewd acts in public, OMalley said.

Oakland Officer Giovanni LoVerde will be charged with felony oral copulation with a minor, while Oakland Officer Brian Bunton will face a felony count of obstruction of justice and a misdemeanor count of engaging in prostitution.

Oakand Officer Warit Uttapa is to be charged with one count of misusing computer databases, while Terryl Smith, who has resigned, is to face four counts of the same allegation. A retired Oakland officer, Leroy Johnson, will be charged with failing to report sexual misconduct despite being a mandatory reporter, prosecutors said.

Efforts to reach the accused men and their attorneys were not successful.

OMalley said many other police officers had contact with Guap, but that criminal charges could not be pressed, in some cases because the men engaged in sexual contact with Guap online, which the law does not address.

Additional potential offenses occurred in Contra Costa, San Francisco and San Joaquin counties, OMalley said, with prosecutors in those counties needing to make their own charging decisions.

Uttapa and Smith, she said, both had sex with Guap in Contra Costa County. On Friday, that countys chief assistant district attorney, Doug MacMaster, said, We havent been brought any cases that merit the filing of criminal charges.

Sarai Smith-Mazariegos, who co-founded an Oakland nonprofit that assists child victims of sex trafficking, applauded the charges.

This is sending a clear message that no matter who you are, what office you represent, if you are exploiting a child, you will be charged and prosecuted, she said.

While the announcement of the charging decision in Alameda County was a milestone in the case, it was not a culmination.

Several police agencies  including the Alameda County Sheriffs Office, the San Francisco and Richmond police departments, and the U.S. militarys Defense Logistics Agency  are still weighing whether to fire or discipline numerous officers who had sex with Guap or had other contact with her.

Oakland city officials said Wednesday that four unidentified officers would be fired, seven would be suspended without pay and another referred to counseling after an internal review.

Meanwhile, the Oakland Police Departments handling of the case in the past year is under heavy scrutiny, and could affect its ability to emerge from federal court oversight more than 15 years after a brutality scandal involving a group of officers known as the Riders.

Part of the far-reaching settlement in that case was an agreement that requires Oakland police to inform the district attorneys office of any incident in which there is probable cause to believe an officer engaged in criminal conduct.

But OMalley said she only learned of the case in May, about eight months after police supervisors first caught wind of the allegations. As the case unfolded, U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson shifted oversight of the internal probe to a federal compliance director. And Oakland Police Chief Sean Whent resigned in June.

Were not happy and were frustrated that the system we put in place to check the police did not work, said John Burris, one of the civil rights attorneys who secured the settlement. Police have a history in internal affairs of not policing themselves.

The charging decision came amid uncertainty over the availability of Guap to testify, after her jailing two weeks ago in Martin County, Fla., on suspicion of battery.

The assistant state attorney in Martin County, David Lustgarten, said he would decide Monday whether to charge Guap after speaking with his supervisor and viewing additional video evidence of the alleged battery. If she is charged with a felony, she could be stuck in Florida for months.

Pamela Price, an attorney representing Guap, blamed Richmond officials for sending her to Florida, likening the action to witness tampering or obstruction of justice.

OMalley said her office had no part in Guaps trip to Florida. To the contrary, she said, we protested her removal from California where she could receive the services she wanted and requested. An agency outside of Alameda County made arrangements to send her out of state, against our wishes and advice.

A Richmond police spokesman denied his agency was responsible.

Its not our decision, said Lt. Felix Tan. Were glad she got help, but you cant ever force a victim or anyone into rehab. It just doesnt work.

Guap, whose mother is an Oakland police dispatcher, has told The Chronicle that sexual relations with Perez as well as three Oakland police officers occurred before she turned 18. Guap said she had met the Bay Area officers through law enforcement circles, on the streets or through social media.

One of the three Oakland officers Guap said she had contact with as a minor, Brendan OBrien, committed suicide in September 2015 after leaving a note that referred to Guap. Thats what set off the investigation.

OMalley, however, said her offices investigators couldnt find any direct evidence to confirm Guap had in-person sexual contact with OBrien.

Guap said she met Perez by sending him a Facebook message after he added her as a friend on the social network. The deputy, she said, would pick her up while off-duty and drive up Fish Ranch Road, off Highway 24 near the Caldecott Tunnel, where they would have sex. She said no money was exchanged.

Id say about 10 times, Guap told The Chronicle. Asked if the deputy knew she was under 18, Guap said, I dont think he asked.

The district attorneys investigation was based heavily on online communication between Guap and police officers. OMalley said her office reviewed nearly 150,000 pages of data going back to January 2015  including nearly 60,000 texts and more than 75,000 Facebook pages and messages.

Kimberly Veklerov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kveklerov@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kveklerov
Jason Henry/Special To The Chronicle

The San Francisco Police Department is offering $250,000 for assistance finding suspects from last years quadruple homicide in Hayes Valley, the department announced Thursday.

The shooting at Laguna and Page streets killed 19-year-old San Francisco resident Yalani Chinyamurindi, David Saucier, 20, of Antioch, and San Francisco residents Harith Atchan, 21, and Manuel ONeal, 22, the night of Jan. 9, 2015.
OSAGE  You might have noticed a band of boys  three teenagers led by one adult  carrying around bags of dry concrete, pallets, 2-by-4s, paint cans and lawn mowers through the back streets of Osage.

Dont be alarmed. Theyre professionals.

This group of handymen provide the blood, sweat and manual labor around Mitchell County, on a mission to keep their community beautiful.

W&E Enterprises, owned by soon-to-be husband and wife William Witt and Ellen Brandau, is a North Iowa startup company that fulfills home or landscape needs, from demolition, home improvements, concrete laying and repair, clean up, to various forms of landscaping.

Except no plumbing or electric, said Witt, who does not have a license in either field. They are not my forte.

Witt has been a part of construction businesses since he was 13, when he began laying concrete, then later building homes and roofs.

Though financial struggles brought him into the business, Witt said he wouldnt want to do anything else.

I loved (construction), Witt said. I tried selling, an office, in a factory, but I just wasnt happy.

I prefer to work until Im dead, beat and tired, and look at a project and say I helped build that, he said.

W&E likes to use recycled materials on its projects, both at home and for customers.

Most wood used in Witts various raised beds, trellises and arbors is made from disassembled wood pallets and recycled 2-by-4s.

Our back patio is filled with stuff that (Witt has) gathered from curbs, Brandau said. I tell him to clean it and he does, but its filled by next morning again.

Witt said when it comes to projects, he likes fixing and repairing things just as much as he likes building.

I like creating and using the imagination, but with replacing and fixing, I just as much enjoy that, Witt said. I just enjoy the work.

A more notable client of W&E was CB Brandt Bar and Grill in St. Ansgar.

With the labor of his teenage work force, Witt demolished the restaurants old red facade, replaced it with plywood and unified the building in a brown hues, from its old appearance in purple and red. Without scaffolding and just a ladder, Witt painted the second story by hand.

The project took approximately two weeks.

Brandau said they just want to help the community stay beautiful.

We know people may not have a lot of money, Brandau said. If people have the materials for their DIY projects that they havent gotten around to, we can help. Or we can buy materials and do the whole project.
Homicide detectives released video and photos of person of interest in the unsolved July slaying of a 37-year-old college professor, who was gunned down on a street near downtown San Jose.

The images released Thursday show a burly-built man with dark hair and light skin, dressed all in black and casually strolling down a sidewalk with a jacket draped over his left arm.
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Most casual Star Trek fans likely have no clue who Jeffrey Hunter is, but he could have been the captain of the Starship Enterprise had the first pilot of the iconic series been successful in 1966.

This week sci-fi fans and Trekkers alike are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the NBC series that has captivated the brains of millions of viewers and led to numerous spin-off series and films.

In the mid-60s, creator Gene Roddenberry partnered with Desilu Studios  and its owner, Lucille Ball  to sell the concept to NBC.

HoustonChronicle.com: 'Star Trek' at 50 (PREMIUM)

Soon filming would begin on what was then the most expensive TV pilot ever made. Some $630,000 was plunked down for an episode titled The Cage starring Jeffrey Hunter as Capt. Christopher Pike and Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock.

Yes, the first Star Trek episode filmed didnt star William Shatners Capt. James Tiberius "Jim" Kirk, the handsome adventurer fond of falling for sexy space women.

RELATED: Happy 50th, 'Star Trek'! 9 unexplored facts about the original series

Hunter was later replaced by Shatner after the pilot was rejected, and the Pike character would later be played by actor Sean Kenney but he was never a major player on TV.

The Pike character, played by Bruce Greenwood, was a key part of the 2009 and 2013 "Star Trek" films directed by J.J. Abrams.

It appears that the studio wanted Hunter but he backed out of the project, turning down substantial pay raises.

The scenes from the pilot were later used for two episodes in the series as flashback fodder, so they didnt totally go to waste.

RELATED: A guide to the history of 'Star Trek'

Shatner would make Capt. Kirk one of the most popular characters in sci-fi history, beating out Jack Lord and Lloyd Bridges for the role.

Hunter later went up for the role of Mike Brady in the mega-hit The Brady Bunch but didnt wow producers as much as Robert Reed did.

The actor died in 1969 during surgery to repair a skull fracture from a fall he suffered in his home after he had a massive cerebral hemorrhage.

There is a substantial active fan site for the late Hunter, who played Jesus Christ in 1961s epic King of Kings film. The site even features his radio drama credits.

Fun fact: Majel Barrett -- who starred as the ship's first officer on the pilot and later played a nurse on the show  would become Mrs. Gene Roddenberry by the end of the 60s.
NEAR THE STANDING ROCK SIOUX RESERVATION, N.D.  An American Indian tribes attempt to halt construction of an oil pipeline near its North Dakota reservation failed in federal court Friday, but the government ordered work to stop on one segment and asked the company to voluntarily pause work on a wider area that tribal officials say holds sacred artifacts.

The Standing Rock Sioux, whose cause has drawn thousands to join their protest, had challenged the Army Corps of Engineers decision to grant permits at more than 200 water crossings for the $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline. Tribal leaders say the project violates several federal laws and will harm water supplies. The tribe also alleges that ancient sites have been disturbed during construction.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in Washington, D.C., denied the tribes request for a temporary injunction in a 58-page opinion.

A statement from the Army and the Departments of Justice and the Interior said construction bordering or under Lake Oahe will not go forward at this time and asked the pipeline builder, Energy Transfer Partners, to voluntarily pause work 20 miles to the east and west of the lake while the government reconsiders previous decisions.

The statement also said the case highlighted the need for a serious discussion about reforms with respect to considering tribes views on these types of infrastructure projects.

Attorney Jan Hasselman with the environmental group Earthjustice, who filed the lawsuit in July on behalf of the tribe, said before the ruling that any such decision would be challenged.

We will have to pursue our options with an appeal and hope that construction isnt completed while that (appeal) process is going forward, he said.

The judges ruling said the court does not lightly countenance any depredation of lands that hold significance to the tribe and that, given the federal governments history with the tribe, the court scrutinized the permitting process with particular care.

Nonetheless, the judge wrote, the tribe has not demonstrated that an injunction is warranted here.

The 1,172-mile project will carry nearly a half-million barrels of crude oil daily from North Dakotas oil fields through South Dakota and Iowa to an existing pipeline in Patoka, Ill.

Almost 40 people have been arrested since the protest began in April.
1 Deputy wounded: A Merced County sheriffs deputy was recovering Friday from wounds after a gunbattle the day before that left an assailant dead in the city of Delhi. Deputies were met with gunfire from an assault weapon when they responded Thursday to a domestic dispute. Sheriff Vern Warnke said Deputy Adam Leuchner returned fire, killing Jose Torres, 38. Deputy Alejandro Barba was wounded in the lower abdomen and thigh, but the sheriff said hes expected to make a full recovery.

2 Louisiana flooding: Gov. John Bel Edwards appealed to Congress on Friday to approve $2 billion in aid for his state after catastrophic flooding. Edwards said the money is needed for housing, economic development and public works after August flooding caused more than $8.7 billion in damage. Edwards met with members of Congress and administration officials, and he and Louisiana lawmakers hope flood aid can be part of spending legislation that Congress must pass to keep the government operating past months end. The flooding has been described as the worst disaster in the U.S. since Superstorm Sandy struck in 2012.
FOREST CITY  Theyre bringing The Lodge back.

When I saw the place, its still a really great building. There is a good history here. I want to make it a success again, new owner Peter Yang said.

Yang and his wife, Shari, took over The Lodge Hotel and Restaurant in July.

Peter Yangs family is involved with real estate in China. He met his wife while attending Iowa State University. The pair wanted to invest in Iowa and the Forest City property came up in a search.

We love the town, too. The people are positive, they want to make their town better. We wanted to work with those people, that is why we wanted to invest here, Peter Yang said.

Vincent Applegate will be the general manager. Applegate previously managed Riverview Restaurant at The Lodge in 2014.

He came back to Forest City after hearing the Yangs vision for The Lodge.

They wanted to bring it back, Applegate said.

Because in the past, it was popular. People loved coming here. Some stopped coming here and we want people to come back, Yang said.

That will start with a renovation of the hotels front lobby and dining area.

Yang said phase one of the renovations include changing the front guest room into a gift shop. A bar and lounge will be added to the restaurants dining room.

The restaurant had previously been rented out as Riverview Restaurant. The restaurant will now be part of the main hotel.

Work had already started with the opening of the sun room last week.

More people will have the view, Applegate said of the back of the property, which looks out over the Winnebago River and woods.

The restaurant is currently closed during the renovations. It will reopen on Sept. 15. Food will be served downstairs while work continues upstairs on the restaurant, lobby and gift shop. A private dining area will also be added.

Yang anticipates work on phase one will be completed within six to eight weeks.

Phase two wont start until early next year.

We want to run the restaurant first and make sure it runs well, Yang said.

The next phase, he said, will then focus on the renovation of the guest rooms. That will include adding sound proofing and updating the wallpaper, paint and furniture.

The hotels family room, located where the pool used to be, will also be updated. The room can then be used for private meetings.

Yang said landscaping around The Lodge property will complete phase two.

He hopes to use as many local businesses to complete the renovation work. Kingland Construction is currently working on the dining room renovations.

We want to be a part of (the community), Yang said. The Lodge joined the Forest City Chamber of Commerce this summer.

Forest City, Applegate said, has been very supportive.

People are excited now that construction has started, he said.

He hopes that excitement continues throughout the renovation process.

Im really looking forward to it growing. Theres no other place in town like it. Its definitely a place to bring people together, Applegate said.
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Gary Johnson, the former New Mexico governor and Libertarian Party presidential nominee, revealed a surprising lack of foreign policy knowledge Thursday that might rock his insurgent candidacy when he could not answer a basic question about the crisis in Aleppo, Syria.

What is Aleppo? Johnson said when asked on MSNBC how, as president, he would address the refugee crisis in the war-torn Syrian city.

When pressed as to whether he was serious, Johnson indicated that he really was not aware of the city, which has been widely covered during the years that Syria has been engulfed in civil war. After Mike Barnicle, an MSNBC commentator who is often part of the Morning Joe program panel, explained that Aleppo was the center of Syrias refugee crisis, Johnson struggled to recover.

OK, got it, he said, explaining that he thinks that the United States must partner with Russia to diplomatically improve the situation there. With regard to Syria, I do think that its a mess.

The stumble could be a serious blow to Johnsons campaign, just as he is making a final push to improve his standing in the polls. His support needs to reach 15 percent in a series of major national polls to be included in the presidential debates.

Johnsons support has been hovering around 10 percent. He and his running mate, former Gov. Bill Weld of Massachusetts, have been aggressively making the case that they represent a viable alternative for voters who are not happy with the major party nominees Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

Johnson and Weld are both former two-term Republican governors who are socially liberal and fiscally conservative. While Libertarians are very free-trade oriented, they are often criticized for being isolationist and lacking interest in foreign policy.

Some leading Republicans who oppose Trump have said openly that they are giving the Libertarian ticket a serious look. On Wednesday night, Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee, publicly called for Johnson and Weld to be included in the presidential debates.

The stumble could derail such hopes, and it was widely mocked on social media.

On Twitter the question What is Aleppo? was trending, with many critics arguing that Johnson had disqualified himself from the presidency.

Some even attributed the flub to Johnsons acknowledged use of marijuana. He is a proponent of legalizing the drug and he was previously the chief executive of a business that marketed and sold recreational marijuana products.

Even Clinton had a laugh at his expense Thursday. Asked about the Libertarian candidates lack of knowledge about Aleppo during a news conference, she said, You can look on the map and find Aleppo.

Thursday was not the first time that Johnson has faced such a situation. After speaking at a Politico convention in June, he was being directed to a room that was named after Harriet Tubman, the former slave and abolitionist. According to a report in the New Yorker, Johnson asked, Whos Harriet Tubman?

Johnson expressed disappointment about the Aleppo lapse in a brief follow-up interview that was broadcast on MSNBC and canceled some of his other scheduled interviews that had been planned for later in the day.

Im incredibly frustrated with myself, Johnson said. I have to get smarter and thats just part of the process.

He also released a statement, explaining that he is human and that as president he would surround himself with experts and receive daily security briefings to fill any gaps in his knowledge.

As for the impact the matter would have on his presidential prospects, Johnson said that would be up to the voters to decide. In a separate interview on ABCs The View program, Johnson said that he was just trying to be as forthright about the situation as possible and made no excuses.

For those who believe this is a disqualifier, so be it, he said.
CENTENNIAL, Colo., Sept. 09, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- NioCorp Developments Ltd. (NioCorp or the Company) (TSX:NB) (OTCQX:NIOBF) (FSE:BR3) today announced that the former Lt. Governor of Nebraska, Lavon Heidemann, has joined the NioCorp team as a Business Development Consultant.



Heidemann, who farms near the site of NioCorps Elk Creek, Nebraska Superalloy Materials Project, will assist NioCorp on a consulting basis in various aspects of moving the Elk Creek Superalloy Materials Project to commercial operation. Mr. Heidemanns primary focus will be on developing business opportunities and the support infrastructure in the Southeast Nebraska area for NioCorps proposed project.

In addition to serving as Nebraska's Lieutenant Governor in 2013-2014, Heidemann is a former Nebraska State Senator who served as the Chairman of the Nebraska Legislature's Appropriations Committee.

"We could not be more pleased to have someone of Lavon's deep experience and unshakeable commitment to a brighter future for all Nebraskans join the NioCorp team," said Scott Honan, President of Elk Creek Resources Corporation, which is developing the NioCorp Elk Creek Superalloy Materials Project. "Lavon will help us continue to accelerate the effort to bring the Elk Creek Superalloy Materials project to commercial reality, to the benefit of southeast Nebraska, the State, and the region."

On behalf of the Board of Directors

"Mark Smith

Mark Smith

Executive Chairman, CEO and Director

Source: NioCorp Developments Ltd.

@NioCorp $NB $NIOBF $BR3 #Niobium #Scandium #ElkCreek

For More Information: Contact Jim Sims, VP of External Affairs, NioCorp Developments Ltd., 720-639-4650, jim.sims@niocorp.com

About NioCorp

NioCorp is developing a superalloy materials project in Southeast Nebraska that will produce Niobium, Scandium, and Titanium. Niobium is used to produce superalloys as well as High Strength, Low Alloy ("HSLA") steel, which is a lighter, stronger steel used in automotive, structural, and pipeline applications. Scandium is a superalloy material that can be combined with Aluminum to make alloys with increased strength and improved corrosion resistance. Scandium also is a critical component of advanced solid oxide fuel cells. Titanium is used in various superalloys and is a key component of pigments used in paper, paint and plastics and is also used for aerospace applications, armor and medical implants.

Cautionary Statements

Neither TSX nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
DGAP-News: NANOGATE AG / Key word(s): Miscellaneous NANOGATE AG: Production facilities for N-Metals Chrome technology platform opened 09.09.2016 / 13:22 The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Nanogate AG: Production facilities for N-Metals Chrome technology platform opened New design worlds for plastic surfaces with chrome look - Launch of production facilities in Neunkirchen - One of the largest technology investments in the company's history - Significant sales and earnings stimulus expected over the medium term - First projects to begin in 2017 Gottelborn, Germany, 9 September 2016. Nanogate AG, a leading international integrated systems provider for high-performance surfaces, today officially commenced operation of its production facility for the new N-Metals Chrome technology platform in Neunkirchen. With applications for multifunctional surfaces with a chrome look, the Group is targeting an attractive market with a volume in the three-figure million range. N-Metals Chrome is a globally leading technology and one that is in urgent demand from numerous customers as an alternative to traditional processes. The first projects are expected to begin 2017. Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, Premier of the State of Saarland: "The opening of Nanogate AG's new centre of excellence for metal surfaces in Neunkirchen is a clear example of a Saarland success story, which began in 1999 with a small spin-off of the Leibniz Institute for New Materials in Saarbrucken. Nanogate AG's impressive development, with its promising, innovative products, underlines the future viability of this industry. With this investment, the company is making a clear commitment to the Saarland." Nanogate AG's CEO, Ralf Zastrau, commented: "The launch of the centre of excellence for our N-Metals Chrome technology platform in Neunkirchen is a milestone for the Group: Nanogate is providing its customers with new design worlds for plastic surfaces with a chrome look, thereby offering a globally leading technology. We therefore expect significant sales potential for our new applications. Establishment of the site and of the new platform as part of our Phase5 growth strategy represents one of the largest technology investments in our company's history. We anticipate a significant boost in sales and earnings over the medium term. The new technology puts Nanogate in an outstanding position when it comes to multifunctional surfaces of the highest optical quality both in plastics and metals." Diverse areas of application for N-Metals Chrome High-quality and multifunctional metal coatings with a chrome look are in demand for numerous products, in particular those relating to car manufacturing, white goods, sanitary products as well as design elements of all kinds. N-Metals Chrome is more cost effective, more environmentally friendly and offers new application possibilities over existing electroplating applications. Enhancement by Nanogate allows for numerous additional functions, including radar transparency, touch sensitivity (capacitive) and translucency, for example. The technology also makes no use of environmentally damaging materials such as chromium trioxide, and therefore meets the latest environmental guidelines in line with the European REACH regulation. Nanogate is therefore providing the alternative, which is in strong demand from the market, to conventional chrome coating processes. Coatings with N-Metals Chrome are also corrosion-resistant and shatterproof, which offers significant safety advantages, particularly in car manufacturing. The new technology allows Nanogate to equip various substrates - above all plastics - with high-quality, multifunctional surfaces with a chrome-like look and in perfect optical quality. The new coating method is based on the combination of environmentally friendly PVD thin-film technology and UV- based wet-chemical coatings. Nanogate has invested more than EUR 10 million in the site and the new technology. Official inauguration of the centre of excellence The production line for N-Metals Chrome was opened in Neunkirchen today in the presence of numerous guests, customers and business partners of the Group. Guests of honour included Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, Premier of the State of Saarland, and Jurgen Fried, Mayor of the town of Neunkirchen. Nanogate has located its new centre of excellence at the Neunkirchen site, not far from the Group's headquarters in Gottelborn. A total of 3,100 square metres of hall and production area, as well as 1,000 square metres for offices and a development centre have been created over the past eighteen months on the site previously occupied by a haulage company. In the process, an existing hall was modernised and a new hall constructed. The premises of up to 66,000 square metres offer space for further expansion. Press photos to download: N-Metals Chrome production line: http://www.nanogate.de/mediapool/2394/ anlage.jpg Production facility (exterior ciew): http://www.nanogate.de/mediapool/2395/ neunkirchen.jpg Nanogate on Twitter: http://twitter.com/nanogate_ag If you have any queries, please contact: Christian Dose (financial press and investors) Nanogate AG Cortent Kommunikation AG Zum Schacht 3 Tel. +49 (0)69 5770 300 0 66287 Gottelborn nanogate@cortent.de Germany www.nanogate.com Liane Stieler-Joachim Nanogate AG Tel. +49 (0)6825 9591 220 liane.stieler-joachim@nanogate.com Nanogate AG: Nanogate (ISIN DE000A0JKHC9) is a leading international integrated systems provider for high-performance surfaces. The Group, which is based in Gottelborn (Saarland), enables the programming and integration of additional properties - such as non-stick, scratchproof and anti-corrosive - into materials and surfaces as well as enhanced plastic components. True to its slogan 'A world of new surfaces', Nanogate opens up the diverse possibilities of multifunctional surfaces based on new materials for companies in a wide range of industries. Nanogate provides its customers with technologically and optically high- quality systems. To do so, the company uses its extensive expertise in innovative materials. The aim is to improve customers' products and processes by means of high-performance surfaces while achieving environmental benefits. The Group concentrates on attractive sectors such as automotive/transport, mechanical/plant engineering, buildings/interiors and sport/leisure as well as on the strategic growth areas of advanced polymers and advanced metals. Nanogate has a unique combination of extensive materials expertise paired with comprehensive, first-class process and production know-how. As a systems provider, Nanogate offers services throughout the entire value chain, from the purchase of raw materials, to the synthesis and formulation of the material systems, right through to the enhancement and production of the finished surfaces. The Group focuses primarily on optically high-quality plastic and metal coatings for all surface types. Its value drivers are the opening up of new, international markets, the development of new applications for the strategic growth areas of advanced polymers (innovative plastics, e.g. glazing) and advanced metals (innovative metal enhancements) as well as external growth. The Nanogate Group has first-class references (e.g. Airbus, Audi, August Brotje, BMW, BSH Bosch und Siemens Hausgerate, Daimler, FILA, Jaguar, Junkers, Porsche, Volkswagen). Several hundred projects have already gone into mass production. The company also has strategic partnerships with many international corporations. Nanogate comprises Eurogard B.V., GfO Gesellschaft fur Oberflachentechnik AG, Nanogate Industrial Solutions GmbH, Nanogate Textile & Care Systems GmbH, Nanogate Glazing Systems B.V. and Vogler GmbH, as well as majority stakes in Plastic-Design GmbH and Walter Goletz GmbH. There are also subsidiaries in the US and in Turkey. Disclaimer: This publication constitutes neither an offer to sell nor an invitation to buy securities. The shares in Nanogate AG (the "Shares") may not be offered or sold in the United States or to or for the account or benefit of "U.S. persons" (as such term is defined in Regulation S under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "Securities Act")). No offer or sale of transferable securities is being made to the public outside Germany. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 09.09.2016 Dissemination of a Corporate News, transmitted by DGAP - a service of EQS Group AG. The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement. The DGAP Distribution Services include Regulatory Announcements, Financial/Corporate News and Press Releases. Archive at www.dgap.de --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Language: English Company: NANOGATE AG Zum Schacht 3 66287 Gottelborn Germany Phone: +49 (0)6825/95 91 0 Fax: +49 (0)6825/95 91 852 E-mail: nanogate@cortent.de Internet: www.nanogate.de ISIN: DE000A0JKHC9 WKN: A0JKHC Listed: Regulated Unofficial Market in Berlin, Dusseldorf, Munich, Stuttgart, Tradegate Exchange; Open Market (Entry Standard) in Frankfurt End of News DGAP News Service --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 500521 09.09.2016
Blitz15 wrote:

Which one should I apply to?



Profile details:

Indian, male, engineer (23 yrs), GMAT: 730.

Work ex: 2 years and 3 months in IT (functional testing). Will have 3 by next yr.

Post MBA goal: Want to move into product management (within the technology sector)



I am already applying to Oxford, but I also want to apply to one safe school in UK. I see that Imperial > Manchester > Warwick as per the FT mba rankings. But which school is better considering my profile and post-MBA goals? Also, which one has better placements for international students (% employed) and better international reputation overall?



Besides, would you recommend I look at any other schools (like Cranfield, Cass, Lancaster, Strathclyde etc.)



Please suggest.

I would be happy to help out but more information would help. What school did you go to for undergraduate and what was your GPA?From what I see here, I recommend Cranfield or Cass, though having more experience and also more of a varied role besides testing will help your prospects.Best,Scott_________________
East Flatbush rapper Bobby Shmurda, who has been held in jail since his arrest 20 months ago, pleaded guilty to gun possession charges today to avoid going to trial on a litany of gun, drug, and conspiracy charges in connection with his alleged role in the GS9 Crips street crew.

Shmurda, legal name Ackquille Pollard, was being held on $2 million bailnearly twice the amount that's normalon charges of conspiracy, reckless endangerment, gun possession, and use of drug paraphernalia. Earlier this year, he sued the city over what he claimed was a false arrest.

A TMZ producer overheard Bobby Shmurda's attorney telling him and the other defendants in the case to take the deal because they were unlikely to get a sympathetic jury and were facing 25 years to life in prison. Prosecutors argued that the entertainer was the "driving force" behind the G-Stone Crips, and that the crew was responsible for several shootings in Brooklyn.

Last year, the rapper was accused of asking his girlfriend to smuggle a shiv into Rikers for him.

As part of his deal, Shmurda pled guilty to fourth-degree conspiracy to possess weapons and second-degree criminal possession of a weapon, while the other charges were dismissed. Two co-defendants, Chad Marshall, better known as rapper Rowdy Rebel, and Nicholas McCoy also pleaded guilty to the same chargesunder the terms of the deal, they all had to accept the bargain, or none would be able to, Pitchfork reports.

Shmurda and Rebel were arrested with six other alleged crew members at the Quad Recording Studios near Rockefeller Center in December 2014. Police say they found 21 weapons on them, including two guns and a small amount of crack in Shmurda's car. Among the litany of allegations against the young men, police accused Rebel of being the driver in a shooting in Boerum Hill with associate Santino Broderick as triggerman, then performing at the Barclays Center hours later wearing the same outfit as he had during the crime.

According to the terms of his deal, Shmurda will have to serve seven years in prison and five years of probation, but the 20 months he's spent behind bars will count towards his time.
A 21-year-old man was wounded in a drive-by shooting outside a building at CUNY's New York City College of Technology last night.

Shots were fired around 8 p.m. at the downtown Brooklyn campus, at the intersection of Jay Street and Chapel Street, Pix11 reports. Police say the victim was shot in the torso by a gunman in a two-door white Acura sedan with tinted taillights.

The driver sped away from the shooting, just outside the university's Howard Building, the Post reports. The NYPD is currently searching for the shooter, but no one has been apprehended yet.

The unnamed victim was rushed to Methodist Hospital in serious condition and is now stable. A CUNY representative tells us the man is not a student there.
Local Democratic Party apparatchiks are trying to oust a tenant-friendly Manhattan Supreme Court judge, and tenant advocates smell a plot to replace her with someone cozier with the real estate industry. The party controls who gets on the ballot in Supreme Court judicial elections, and since the elections are rarely contested and no independent candidate has ever prevailed, who sits on the bench.

Supreme Court judges serve 14-year terms, and it's rare for the party not to renominate sitting judges who want to continue to serve. But that's just what the Manhattan Dems' screening panel did recently to Judge Doris Ling-Cohan, sparking outrage among some Democrats, as well as many tenant, LGBT, and Asian-American advocates.

The decision not to renominate Ling-Cohan was publicized in the New York Post, with accompanying anonymous sources labeling Ling-Cohan as "lazy" and "slow" in handling cases.

"We must not support a nominating system that allows highly-qualified and independent judicial candidates to be kept off the ballot, simply because they fall out of favor with party leaders or unfairly become the target of anonymous attacks," leaders of the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund wrote in a statement. "We urge the New York County Democratic Committee to convene another panel that will conduct a fair and impartial review of Justice Ling-Cohan's qualifications, and we support her efforts to remain on the New York Supreme Court."

More than 100 supporters, including Councilmembers and legal activists, rallied in support of Ling-Cohan in front of City Hall on Wednesday. Retired Supreme Court judge Emily Jane Goodman called the attempted ouster an "outrage" and said the accusations against Ling-Cohan are unfounded. "None of the things that are being written about her have I ever heard inside 60 Centre Street," she said.

Elected in 2002, Ling-Cohan was the first woman of Asian descent to take the bench in the state Supreme Court system. She authored the landmark 2005 decision that ordered the city to start issuing marriage licenses to gay couples, which then-mayor Michael Bloomberg and then-attorney general Eliot Spitzer successfully appealed, delaying marriage equality in New York until legislators passed the Marriage Equality Act in 2011. Ling-Cohan was appointed to the court's Appellate Term in 2014, and in 2015, the National Law Journal named her to its list of "75 Outstanding Women Attorneys" in the country.

"Her record speaks for itself," Councilwoman Rosie Mendez said at the rally.

Allen Roskoff, president of the Jim Owles Democratic Club, said, "Doris Ling-Cohan cares about the people. Thats why the landlords dont like her and the one percent dont like her."

Activists, including dozens of tenants' lawyers, demanded that Harlem Assemblyman Keith Wright, chairman of the Assembly's housing committee and leader of the county Democratic Party, reverse the decision.



Assemblyman Keith Wright (Assembly)

Wright told the Post that he doesn't have the authority to do that.

"If I were a true party boss, as in the days of William Tweed, I would circumvent the independent screening panels decision in order to advance the interests of my candidate," he said. "However, the New York County Democratic Committee conducts its business with transparency and integrity. For more than 30 years, the Committee has facilitated independent judicial screening panels to determine the best candidates for judgeships and I will defend this process even when I dont personally agree with the outcome. The independent panel has spoken and the integrity of the process must be defended and upheld."

In response to the controversy, the party's executive committee met on Wednesday for an emergency session to discuss how to proceed. Gay City News reported that the meeting lasted nearly two hours and party operatives reached no resolution.

Manhattan Democratic district leaders told the paper they thought the panel's decision was "bizarre" and surprising, and said that some plan to nominate Ling-Cohan at the September 22nd county convention. The convention comes after Tuesday's primary but is where final judicial slate decisions are made. Delegates for the party convention will be voted for in the primary, but as WNYC noted in its series this week on why New York's judicial election system is bonkers, delegates only appear on the ballot when there are more contenders than seats, so many will be "elected" simply by having been nominated (and of course, registered Democrats are the only ones who can vote in the Democratic primary).



The New York County Supreme Court building at 60 Centre Street. (Rich Mitchell/Flickr)

Gay City broke down the dynamics of the secret panel this way:

"These white shoe lawyers are getting a chance to knock off judges to benefit themselves," charged Pete Gleason of the Downtown Independent Democrats. Reliable sources say that Ling-Cohan was rejected by a 12-10 vote spearheaded by Deborah Riegel, a real estate lawyer whose firm would benefit if Ling-Cohan, who is widely supported by tenant groups, were not allowed to run again. In response to a request for comment, Riegel, in an email message, wrote, Notwithstanding what you may believe, the deliberations are confidential and I have no comment. A tenant lawyer who said he spoke to Riegel said that she told him, The only one who is politicizing this process is Doris Ling-Cohan. The administrator responsible for guiding the panels process, Cyril K. Bedford, is also a real estate lawyer. While the 39 groups invited to send panelists reflected racial, gender, and sexual orientation diversitythough legal groups outnumbered community groups two to onejust 22 sent panelists and the vast majority were attorneys, mostly from the real estate and corporate bars, with some civil rights and immigration attorneys and one lay person from the Fortune Society, an ex-offender group. There does not even appear to be a requirement that the panelists live in Manhattan on a body intended to represent the boroughs voters. The objections to Ling-Cohan inside the panel were said to be related to an old small claims case from 14 years ago and her insistence that attorneys put their emergency motions in writing even if only handwritten so that a court record would exist  rather than just discussing such motions in chambers. There is no way of knowing exactly what was discussed until panelists speak out publicly.

The paper obtained an email from Ling-Cohan to party Judiciary Committee co-chairman Curtis Arluck, in which the judge condemned the panelists for not allowing her to speak on her behalf, and accused some of having "clear conflicts of interest." "If New York County wants to maintain its reputation as a bastion of judicial reform, your committee should, at a minimum, call him to do a due diligence review on me," she reportedly wrote.

With the party having punted on making any decisions regarding the nomination, it seems a that Ling-Cohan's fate won't be known until after the convention on the 22nd.

"This is not over," Mike McKee of the Tenants Political Action Committee told the Post. "I read Judge Ling-Cohans decisions. This is not a lazy judge."
A man was caught on security camera video brazenly robbing an elderly Manhattan womanwho was in a wheelchairof cash she uses for her monthly living expenses. The victim, Maria Vasquez, is now worried about keeping her head above water, telling ABC 7, "I need that money, because my husband passed away seven years ago. Until the money comes next month, I'm not sure how I'm going to pay the bills."

Police are searching for the suspect, who is wanted for grand larceny, and released a surveillance video of the incident. [UPDATE: As of 9 a.m. Friday, the NYPD says a "person of interest" is in custody but has not been charged.]

According to the NYPD, the theft occurred at noon on Wednesday, September 7th, when Vasquez and her caretaker went to the Regine clothing store at 176 East 116th Street in East Harlem. The video shows the man walking behind Vasquez and then taking a white envelope, which had $600 in it, from her dress.

"I was scared. I wasnt expecting it," Vasquez told the Post. "He reached over and startled me, yanking the envelope from my bra. He scratched me and took off running. I just screamed, Run, run, he stole my money! I jumped in my chair because I was strapped in. There was nothing I could do."

She believes the suspect saw her go to the bank and take the money out (her caretaker, who isn't allowed to hold the money, put it in Vasquez's bra because Vasquez didn't have pockets). The senior citizen told ABC 7, "I want him to turn himself in, I don't want them to kill him, but punish him so we can all see what punishment is for the rest of the people that think about robbing others."

The suspect, who fled west on East 116th Street, is described as about 35 years old, 5' 10" and 160 pounds with brown hair, last seen wearing a gray shirt, black sneakers, tan jeans and a tan bag.

Anyone with information in regards to this incident is asked to call the NYPD's Crime Stoppers Hotline at 800-577-TIPS or for Spanish 1-888-57-PISTA (74782)

The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the Crime Stoppers Website at WWW.NYPDCRIMESTOPPERS.COM or texting their tips to 274637(CRIMES) then enter TIP577.
This month, as California celebrates Admission Day  we officially joined the United States on Sept. 9, 1850  we should give ourselves an overdue present:

A founding story of our statehood starring someone we can be proud of, both as Californians and Americans.

Even after 166 uneasy years in the American empire, the state of California doesnt have a pithy origin story it can share with other states in an elevator. Like too much else in California, the narrative of our statehood is sprawling and complicated, involving the Mexican-American War, the Gold Rush and a lot of migration. That narrative leaves us on the periphery of the country  and without a hero who can tie the story of our statehood together; the closest thing we have is U.S. Sen. John C. Fremont, whose main talents were for insubordination and bankruptcy.

Fortunately, more recent scholarship suggests that California could cut through its obscure history in a Shermanesque way. William Tecumseh Sherman  the Civil War general best known for his decisive march through the South  offers Californians a compelling but overlooked protagonist in the tale of becoming a state, one who puts us closer to the center of American history.

Shermans military exploits have long overshadowed his earlier time in California  which was formative both for the state and for the man himself. A new biography from historian James Lee McDonough shows just how entwined Sherman was with California and how our statehood should be seen as part of the bloody rebirthing of the United States in the mid-19th century.

As a Californian, Sherman would serve as a stabilizing figure during great volatility  war, the Gold Rush, and financial and political crises.

Originally from Ohio, Sherman arrived in California as a soldier in 1847. Stationed in Monterey, he never saw action in the Mexican-American War, but met almost everyone of note, visiting missions, hunting grizzly bears, patronizing the arts, and opening a store in Coloma in El Dorado County (to supplement his Army wages). He was an early surveyor of the Sierra Nevada, traveled to Los Angeles by boat and horseback, and was a fixture of Gold Country during the Gold Rush, even getting to know John Sutter.

In 1849, Sherman was the U.S. militarys representative at the California convention, which produced the states first Constitution. In 1850, California entered the Union as a free state, part of a famous compromise in the long run-up to the Civil War. That same year, Sherman went east to marry. But by 1853, he had resigned the Army and was back in San Francisco to establish a bank, becoming a significant figure in the growth and travails of Californias first great city.

Shermans conservative management of his growing bank made him an outlier in the wildly unregulated and corrupt financial sector of 1850s San Francisco. McDonough recounts  with new details  how Shermans care forestalled banking panic; in 1855, even as Wells Fargo and other banks closed during a bank run, Shermans bank stayed open and calmed the city.

He did this all at personal cost. San Francisco was so expensive (some things dont change) that even a banker couldnt afford to live there; he went deeply into debt. His wife, not without reason, considered the city thoroughly wicked and begged him to leave. He suffered from terrible asthma that was aggravated by San Franciscos wet weather. And he was bitterly criticized by the press in 1856 when he opposed the Committee of Vigilance that had lawlessly seized control of the city, banished some enemies, and hanged others.

After another financial panic, Sherman would have to shut down his bank in 1858  though he was scrupulous about it  selling his own property so that depositors could be made whole. Having invested eight years and most of his money in California, he left the state that summer, but often would confess a desire to return (even in letters written at the height of the Civil War).

If I had no family I would stay in California all my life, he wrote in one letter. Alas, he would come back only as a visitor.

Shermans view of California, formed in that founding period from 1847 to 1858, still resonates. He loved the natural beauty of the place and the adventurous culture of its people. But he was distressed by its volatility, its boom-and-bust economy, and he learned to distrust its democratic spirit, because that could curdle so quickly into mob rule.

Shermans lack of patience with democratic republican government ... emerged full blown during the Californian years, writes McDonough, adding: He beheld a society dramatically transformed, in an amazingly short period of time. It was not a pretty sight.

California convinced Sherman that humans needed a strong hand  and that authorities should deal forcefully with those who might step out of line. It would of course be the South that would feel the full force of Shermans conclusion. And after the war, Sherman would often argue for order and calm in the face of chaos (as after President James Garfields 1881 assassination) by pointing to the panic, vigilantism and greed he witnessed in the Golden State.

Sherman became Sherman in California. And California became the state of California in his years here. After 166 years, isnt it time we adopted a founding narrative that is more Shermanesque?

Joe Mathews writes the Connecting California column for Zocalo Public Square. To comment, submit your letter to the editor at http://bit.ly/SFChronicleletters.
Dear Master, which opened Thursday, Sept. 8, at the Aurora, imposes heavy constraints on the actors playing its two characters.

George Sand (Kimberly King) and Gustave Flaubert (Michael Ray Wisely), the 19th century French novelists, communicate only through letters. (The two authors were avid pen pals in real life, and playwright Dorothy Bryant uses both translations of their actual correspondence and her own words that imagine what might lie between and beyond the lines of her source material.)

In Joy Carlins direction, the actors look at each other, but they never touch nor cross to the others side of the stage. Set designer Annie Smart demarcates whose half of the small stage is whose with a zigzag dividing line in the floor tile. The performers also spend a lot of time seated at their letter-writing desks or sprawled on chaise longues. Even when they move, theyre still restricted by the beautiful but billowing overcoats of Anna R. Olivers costume design. At times, Bryants script bogs down the proceedings, like when the authors spend pages complaining about their physical ailments, troublesome relatives or writers block. (Flaubert often spent five or more years on a novel.)

As a result, the show often feels desultory and static, even as the pair have lively, inspired debates about whether to portray the world optimistically or cynically in their literature, how to deal with critics and whether and how to have faith in humanity in the face of war.

Dear Master celebrates intellectual, artistic friendship, with a vision of Flaubert and Sand as incisive yet tender in their debates. Generosity and affection underlie every exchange, but so passionate are these intellectuals about their beliefs that each rebuke stings afresh. In a world where political discussions often devolve into nasty name-calling, Dear Master offers a refreshing template for argument, for how to vehemently disagree with an idea while still cherishing its promoter.

Dear Master also puts forward gender politics that still feel radical, even though the Auroras founders first produced the show in 1991. (To open its 25th anniversary season, the company is returning to the play that motivated its launch.) In 2016, its still rare to find stories that allow a man and a woman to maintain a strictly platonic friendship. That Bryant bucks that trend is partly due to the characters advanced years and their age difference  Sand (whose real name was Amantine-Lucile-Aurore Dupin) was 20 years Flauberts senior.

But its also due in some part to Sands proto-feminism: What men call love, she writes to Flaubert, is the buying of young girls. As that visionary thinker, King is stirring, just as strong when she cuts through the air with a righteous tirade as when she silently reacts to Wiselys delivery of Flauberts letters.

She often maintains a determined but wistful smile, her joy in Flauberts successes and her sorrow at his struggles both ever threatening to brim her eyelids with tears. As she treads about her room, she knots her hands primly in back, but look closely, and youll see that that ladylike gesture is also a fist ready to pack a mean punch.

As Flaubert, Wisely is less sharp, his performance less theater than recitation. Although Dear Master is an epistolary drama, the lines need to feel like conversation that two friends are having in person, motivated by the fervent need to speak in the moment.

Otherwise, were just as well delving into Flaubert and Sand on the page as onstage.

Lily Janiak is The San Francisco Chronicles theater critic. Email: ljaniak@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @LilyJaniak

Dear Master: By Dorothy Bryant. Directed by Joy Carlin. Through Oct. 2. 90 minutes. $32-$56. Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison St., Berkeley. (510) 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org

To see a video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=XK8lZO39T-0
The 2016 presidential election could determine how well Democrats and Republicans do with the Asian American electorate for years to come. Asian Americans are the fastest-growing racial group in the United States and have the potential to be a deciding voting bloc, particularly in swing districts and states. Yet candidates and political consultants have yet to acknowledge Asian American voters as the sleeping political giant they are.

There are approximately 6 million Asian Americans registered to vote. Vigorous efforts are under way within the community to bolster those numbers for the 2016 elections. Nationally, Asian Americans represent 5.6 percent of the U.S. population, but that number will grow.

What the Asian American electorate is not is a monolith. Most politicians fail to recognize Asian Americans ethnic and class diversity  Asian Americans are not of one mind, nor do they share the same experiences. On the Democratic side, Asian Americans voted decisively for Hillary Clinton in the primaries, despite an energetic faction of Bernie Sanders supporters. Asian American Republicans however seem as divided as their white GOP counterparts.

Donald Trumps controversial campaign has even stalwart Asian American Republicans unsure of their November vote. Joaquin Lim, a Chinese Republican, believes Trumps divisiveness and doom and gloom rhetoric turns off most Asian Americans. Ive been a Republican for 37 years, he said. I want to be very loyal to the party, and I wont skip my right as an American to vote, but I cannot find one reason to vote for Trump.

Nevertheless, Trump has received some support from Asian American voters, including immigrants who say they came to the United States fairly, and from recently arrived Chinese enamored of Trumps celebrity status as a purportedly successful entrepreneur.

Until the mid-1990s, Asian Americans generally leaned right or stood in the ideological middle. Studies show they now typically favor the Democratic Party. Why did this shift occur? In 1965, Congress passed the Immigration and Nationality Act, known as the Hart-Celler Act, forever changing the face of America. The act favored family reunification, abolished gatekeeping national immigration quotas and established a preference system that gave professionals priority. Throughout the 1970s and 80s, this educated class of immigrants occupied higher-salaried positions in U.S. business, medicine, engineering and information technology. Additionally, many Asian immigrants of this generation  namely those from Taiwan and Vietnam  were staunchly anticommunist and gladly put down roots in the United States. Class backgrounds and ideological views informed their support of the mainstream Republican agenda.

Today Asian American voters are increasingly moving left, thanks to the Obama coalition and a new generation of native-born Asian Americans whose positions on immigration, science and religion align more with the Democratic Partys. Democrat Jay Chen, a Taiwanese American politician, said, Asians became disillusioned with George W. Bush and the Republican Party. For Chen, It was amazing to have a person of color  Obama  running for the presidency. Hes from Hawaii, was raised in Indonesia, has Asian relatives, got into Harvard on his merit  not because of who his parents are. This resonated with Asians.

Another factor influencing this liberal tilt is the significant portion of Asian Americans living near the poverty line, particularly Southeast Asians and Pacific Islanders (e.g., Cambodians, Hmong, Laotians, Samoans), who are often ignored by politicians.

Whats also important to note is that regardless of party affiliation, Asian American voters frequently support their brethren. Racial or ethnic solidarity will trump ideology if the voters believe the Asian American candidates chances of winning are good enough for them to have governmental representation. There are 12 Asian Americans in Congress, and in state legislatures from California to Connecticut, there is multiethnic and bipartisan representation by Asian Americans.

Yet Asian American voters are still up for grabs, especially when it comes to national security and economic issues. If Americans are striving for a truly representative government, then our political leaders need to reach out to voters of all ethnic and class backgrounds. Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump and their respective campaigns could benefit from the Asian American vote if they work for it.

James Zarsadiaz is assistant professor of history and director of the Yuchengco Philippine Studies Program at the University of San Francisco. To comment, submit your letter to the editor at http://bit.ly/SFChronicleletters.
Boston Globe / Contributor

As we have seen in the last year with Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, mansplaining happens, and being an astronaut doesn't hide you from it.

On Thursday night, a male Twitter user felt the need to explain thermodynamics to Jessica Meir, a NASA astronaut.
Just as I was an expert picnicker as a young backpacker, Im now an older backpacker  who is packing a little extra taste and money  so I find myself seeking out foodie meals these days. For those of us who are no longer a fill-your-tank type of traveler, Lisbon is a great foodie destination. Perched on the sunny Atlantic coast of Portugal, its a ramshackle but charming city proud of its tasty delicacies and heavenly wines.

One of Lisbons recent claims to foodie fame is the transformation of its traditional farmers market into a gourmet food circus. The Mercado da Ribeira is the place to join the young, trendy and hungry crowd grazing among a wide variety of options, convening at communal tables in the center.

This venerable market survives in half of the Industrial Age iron-and-glass market hall, while the other half has been taken over by Time Out magazine, which invited a couple of dozen quality restaurants to open stalls here (I resist calling this historic market by its new commercialized name, Time Out Market).

Five big-name Lisbon chefs run a row of stalls, serving fine fish and steak sandwiches, fresh seafood, pastries and Portuguese-Italian ice cream. Wine and beer take over separate stalls in the center. I even found affordable percebes(barnacles), a local delicacy, at several seafood stalls. The food here is unique, and the energy is palpable.

At a trendy food circus like this, eating on disposable plates and at long, noisy picnic tables is far from romantic, but the quality and prices are unbeatable. The nearby Pink Street (Rua Nova do Carvalho), lined with clubs and bars, is lively late and just two blocks inland, making Mercado da Ribeira a perfect stop before an evening stroll through Lisbons nightlife.

In addition to this trendy market scene, Lisbon offers foodies wine-bar picnics. Its an easy and affordable way to pick up some delightful plates of fine cheeses, meats and seafood to match the local wine and Port. Wine bars are popular all over Mediterranean Europe. For about $20 per head, you can eat well in style, and learn about local cuisine.

On my recent visit to this salty seaside capital, I discovered the classy Lisbon Winery wine bar. This casual little spot has a passion for the best Portuguese wines, cheeses and meats. My charming waitress, Adriana, thoughtfully explained an artful arrangement of finger food served on a sleek wooden slab  the perfect presentation for a modern foodie experience.

It was sightseeing for my taste buds, as she walked me through rich olive oils, smooth wine, creamy sheeps milk cheese and spiced sausage. Along with its quality local cuisine, this wine bar has cork walls, a 500-year-old cistern under glass flooring, and traditional fado music playing in the background; its a perfect storm of Portuguese culture.

After savoring the specialties at Lisbon Winerys wine bar, I headed two blocks away to a friendly new bakery that serves the favorite local custard pie. Manteigaria Fabrica de Pasteis de Nata is simply the best place in town for pastels de nata  tasty pies that make a cheap capper to a foodies picnic. The key here: They only serve one treat and constantly churn out the lovable little pies  and they must be eaten hot out of the oven. Watching their bustling little kitchen is a treat in itself.

Foodie culture can be intimidating to navigate alone. Several Lisbon companies offer three- to four-hour tours that introduce aspiring foodies to Portuguese culture while filling your stomach at the same time. These groups are small, the teaching is great, and  when you figure in the cost of the meal  the tours are a solid value.

Inside Lisbon leads travelers through five to six short, tasty and memorable stand-up stops and offers another walking-and-eating tour that ends with a ferry ride across the bay to sample seafood. My recent foodie tour treated me to bacalhau, dried and salted cod thats served a reputed 365 different ways, and carne de porco a Alentejana  an interesting combination of pork and clams  one of Portugals unique contributions to world cuisine.

I love how Europeans embrace their food culture with such expertise, passion and abandon. After a busy day showing me Lisbons delights, my Portuguese guide, Alex, shared what she calls heaven in a glass  a 55-year-old white Port wine. As she swirled the amber aperitif in her glass, a proud smile swept across her face. This is the kind of pure cultural joy we experience as we get to know different lands and different people. Finally taking a sip, Alex sighed, A vida e boa. Life is good.

Rick Steves writes European travel guidebooks and hosts travel shows on public television and public radio. Email: travel@sfchronicle.com
Q: I recently booked a trip to Italy through OneTravel.com. My flight was one hour late arriving in Rome. I wasnt concerned because I knew that Id planned plenty of time before my next flight to Palermo. I retrieved my luggage and went through customs, then grabbed a bite to eat before heading to the check-in at Vueling Airlines.

When I got there, an airline representative told me Id missed my flight. I gave her my confirmed booking, and she said that my flight was canceled and Id been placed on an earlier flight that departed at 9:10 a.m.

I had not been notified and couldnt have accepted the change, since my flight didnt land until 9:15 a.m. Vueling would not honor my ticket because I booked through OneTravel and not the airline directly. The representative could not offer me another flight for that day and told me to go to Ryanair.

I booked a flight with Ryanair. The only flight I could get was for the next morning, and the cost of the ticket was more than double the original price. I immediately called my hotel in Palermo to cancel my one-night stay, but was told that I was not within the 24-hour cancellation period and I would have to pay for the hotel.

I then needed to find a hotel. I was exhausted from the all-night travel and decided that the Hilton at the Rome airport was my best option. The only room available was one on the concierge level.

When I returned from my trip, I called OneTravel.com. It denied ever receiving a call from Vueling and would not claim responsibility for the error.

Ive tried to get in touch with Vueling directly, but have not heard back yet. I would like someone to take responsibility for this mistake and to be reimbursed.

Ive exhausted every avenue and am hoping that you can help me.

Judy Weidel, Towson, Maryland

A: Vueling should have told your travel agency about the rescheduled flight, and it should have fixed your itinerary so that your flight to Palermo didnt leave 15 minutes before you arrived in Rome. Thats an impossible connection, of course.

Your online travel agent, OneTravel.com, is responsible for monitoring the flight schedules and ensuring that you can reasonably make all of your connections. So, while its regrettable that Vueling didnt inform the agent of the schedule change, that doesnt absolve OneTravel of its responsibility. I mean, thats the reason you work with a travel agent (online or offline). You want to have someone to help you when something goes wrong, as it did for you.

You might have avoided this by contacting all of your airlines directly to confirm your flights before leaving. Thats always a good idea, even when youre using a travel agent. Sometimes, airlines fail to inform their travel agents about a schedule change, and you really dont want to miss your flight.

You might have appealed OneTravel.coms decision to one of its executives. I list the names and numbers of its executives on my consumer-advocacy site: http://elliott.org/company-contacts/fareportal/.

I contacted OneTravel.com on your behalf. It apologized for the mix-up and refunded $692.

Christopher Elliott is the ombudsman for National Geographic Traveler magazine. Find travel tips at www.elliott.org. Email: chris@elliott.org Twitter: @elliottdotorg
ATHENS  Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras hosted leaders of Europes Mediterranean countries Friday as his government rejected a return to European Union immigration rules that existed before last years crisis.

Tsipras met French President Francois Hollande, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, and leaders from Portugal, Cyprus and Malta in Athens to discuss the bloc migration and debt crises. Spains Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy did not attend.
PARIS  Three women behind a thwarted attack near Notre Dame Cathedral were radicalized by Islamic State commanders in Syria, and one had been engaged to an extremist who killed a priest in July, the Paris prosecutor said Friday.

Francois Molins spoke a day after three women were dramatically arrested over the failed attack that centered on a car discovered Sunday morning in central Paris abandoned and loaded with gas canisters. No detonators were found in the car.

In the last few days and hours a terrorist cell was dismantled, composed of young women totally receptive to the deadly Daesh ideology, Molins said, using another term for the Islamic State group.

The women who spearheaded the failed plot included a 19-year-old whose father owned the abandoned Peugeot car. Her written pledge of allegiance to the Islamic State was found by police, a security official said Friday.

A teen, Ines Madani, stabbed a police officer with a knife and was shot in the leg Thursday evening in a raid south of Paris, police said. She was being treated in a hospital.

Five women and two men have been arrested in the case.

One of the women detained in a police raid, referred to as Sarah H. and who was wearing a veil, was betrothed separately to two French extremists who carried out deadly attacks this year, the Paris prosecutor said.

Sarah H. was engaged to Larossi Abballa, who killed two police officials in Magnanville in June and filmed the aftermath on Facebook Live before dying in a police raid.

She was also betrothed to Adel Kermiche, who slit the throat of an elderly French priest during morning Mass in July before being killed by police, Molins added. He didnt say when she was engaged to either man.

Frances interior minister described the pursuit as a race against time to find Madani and the two women with her before they could strike.

A man arrested Thursday also had ties to Abballa, one of the officials said.

Theres a group that has been annihilated, but there are others, French President Francois Hollande said Friday. Information we were able to get from our intelligence services allowed us to act before it was too late.

Security around Paris was visibly higher Friday as the investigation widened.

Explosive gas canisters filled with nails were the weapon used in bomb attacks by Algerian extremists on Paris in the 1990s.
SEOUL  North Korea said Friday it conducted a higher level nuclear warhead test explosion, which it trumpeted as finally allowing it to build at will an array of stronger, smaller and lighter nuclear weapons. It is Pyongyangs fifth atomic test and the second in eight months.

South Koreas president called the detonation, which Seoul estimated had produced the Norths biggest-ever explosive yield, an act of fanatic recklessness.

The Norths boast of a technologically game-changing nuclear test defies both tough international sanctions and long-standing diplomatic pressure to curb its nuclear ambitions. It will raise serious worries in many world capitals that Pyongyang has moved another step closer to its goal of a nuclear-armed missile that could one day strike the U.S. mainland.

Hours after Seoul noted unusual seismic activity near the Norths northeastern nuclear test site, Pyongyang said in its state-run media that a test had finally examined and confirmed the structure and specific features of movement of (a) nuclear warhead that has been standardized to be able to be mounted on strategic ballistic rockets.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye strongly condemned the test, saying in a statement that it showed the fanatic recklessness of the Kim Jong Un government as it clings to nuclear development. Kim is the North Korean leader.

Parks office said she spoke with U.S. President Barack Obama about the test Friday morning, during a regional summit in Laos.

Park said South Korea will employ all available measures to put more pressure on North Korea, which has previously conducted nuclear tests every three to four years.

North Korea said there was no radioactive material leaked, but the explosion put the region on edge.

Chinese state media reported that the nations environmental protection agency started nuclear radiation monitoring.
When Robert Sandler saw the flames shooting from the south tower of the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001, he ran to work. Then a 23-year-old teacher at Stuyvesant High School in Tribeca, Sandler said he had only one thought in that moment: "I don't want my kids to get hurt."

Panic set in shortly after he arrived. As teachers turned on their classroom TVs and learned of the attack, students linked hands in frantic prayer circles. Administrators stood on tables, shouting through megaphones as they directed students to evacuate. Sandler watched as smoke barreled toward the building and the FBI rushed in.

Fifteen years later, the kids Sandler was so afraid for are well into adulthood. And his classes at Stuyvesantthree blocks from where the Twin Towers once stoodare made up of children who have little or no memory of the worst terrorist attack in United States history.

For Sandler, a history teacher, that's baffling.

"That's what shaped our whole world. There's no Iraq War without 9/11, no Bush second term, no Guantanamo, no mass surveillance state, no ISIS. It all stems from that," he said. "And it's right here."

When Sandler, or any educator in New York City, teaches his students about 9/11, he faces a unique challenge: How do you teach such an intensely emotional, local event to a generation of kids who don't have any first-hand frame of reference for it? Teachers across grade levels described the difficulty of making 9/11 relevant to their students, most of whom were born after the attacks took place.

"It takes a lot to punch through to a teenager and make them emotional," said Sandler, who was honored by the 9/11 Tribute Center for the unit he teaches about 9/11. "When they have my class they really walk away with something, I think, significant."

The New York State Education Department's social studies framework, which the state disseminates to districts to support curriculum development, includes 9/11 in the coursework for eighth, 10th, and 11th grades.

Eighth graders are required to examine the attack's impact on national security, looking at events like the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. In 10th grade, students analyze 9/11 alongside international trade in weapons and cyber war. In 11th grade, one history lesson focuses on how the attacks affected the United States politically, examining issues like the declaration of a "War on Terror," the decision to invade Iraq and the passage of the PATRIOT Act.

Each September, the NYC Department of Education provides educators with a list of resources to help them teach 9/11. At the top of the list are the 9/11 Memorial's suggested lessons, grouped around the themes of community and conflict, heroes and service, historical impact, and memory and memorialization.

"This day holds a very meaningful place in our collective memory, especially here in New York, and it's imperative that students and teachers have the opportunity to discuss these events in a respectful setting where they feel safe and supported," Eric Contreras, Stuyvesant principal and former executive director of social studies for the DOE, wrote in a statement to Gothamist.

"And because most public school students today were either not yet born during 9/11 or are too young to remember that day, it's also crucial that the educational resources we provide approach this topic not just from a historical perspective, but as an occurrence that still shapes current events, and brought New York together."

Despite having these formal options, many New York City teachers have developed their own approaches to the topic, tailoring what they teach to students' ages and the increasingly slim knowledge of 9/11 knowledge kids have coming in.



Amy Berman teaches sixth grade at Achievement First Crown Heights Middle School. (Scott Heins/Gothamist)

Sandler, for example, briefs his class on the architecture of the World Trade Center and then leads a walking tour of downtown Manhattan that he calls "The 9/11 Memorial and Its Neighbors." The group stops by sites like the Castle Clinton National Monument and the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House before coming to the 9/11 Memorial Museum. Sandler said his goal is to orient his students geographically, to give them a deeper sense of the place where the attacks occurred.

In Anna Bennett's fifth grade class at P.S. 59 Beekman Hill International School, her 10- and 11-year-olds come in knowing only the very basics: There was an attack on September 11, 2001, planes hit the Twin Towers and many people died. But they're often shaky on the broader significance of the events.

Bennett believes that while her students are young, they have the capacity to understand the political context of 9/11. "You do not want to instill fear by talking about what happened, but you do want to help kids wrap their heads around this event in history," she said.

In order to do this, Bennett tunes into what her kids are talking about leading up to the anniversary of 9/11. The message she's settled on in recent years is one of community bonding. With terrorist attacks a reality of life around the world, the topic, she feels, is perpetually relevant.

"It is my job to teach them about these events and how they fit into the bigger picture of our country's climate and decision-making," Bennett said. "On the other hand, I also desperately want them to know, feel and believe that their voices matter and that they, too, can make the world a better place, even when things seem grim and scary."

Bennett has found topical children's literature to be a helpful aid. She reads aloud books like Fireboat by Maira Kalman, which tells the story of a former FDNY boat that came out of retirement to help out on 9/11, and 14 Cows for America by Carmen Agra Deedy, about the Masai people's post-9/11 gift to the United States.

Sari Rosenberg, who teaches history to 11th graders at the High School for Environmental Studies, draws on multimedia materials for her lessons. She said in the past she's shown her class Vox.com explainers and TV interviews with families of 9/11 victims.

But her students provide the main resource for her lessons. Her first assignment each year is an oral history project where she instructs students to interview someone who remembers 9/11 and write an essay about their findings. The next time she sees them, the children share their stories with their classmates.

It sets a standard for the rest of the school year.

"The idea behind it is take this very important event, don't sensationalize it, but then make sure to let them understand the gravity of it, the importance of it, not just use it as some kind of gimmicky, trivialized 'Let's just talk about 9/11 because everyone's talking about 9/11,'" Rosenberg said. "It's not just boring history in textbooksit's affected lives."

Educators strive to impress this upon their studentsthat 9/11 shaped the city and the world they live in, and that it profoundly affected the adults around them. Teachers like Sandler and Amy Berman, who teaches sixth grade at Achievement First Crown Heights Middle School, have found that personal stories of that day really resonate with students.

"When I say, 'I'm going to tell my 9/11 story,' it kind of makes kids go ahead and sit up themselves and tune in," Berman said.

Berman shares her recollections each year during a unit on world religions. After teaching about the Prophet Muhammad and the five pillars of Islam, she tells her class about 9/11: how she learned about the attack as a freshman getting breakfast in the University of Wisconsin - Madison cafeteria and immediately walked back to her dorm room to watch the news.

She uses it as a jumping-off point to talk about the concept of jihad. While the term is often translated as "holy war," it literally means "struggle," and is generally interpreted in Islam as referring to internal spiritual struggle.

Berman explains to her class that most Americans' knowledge of jihad comes from what they learned on and after 9/11. Her goal is to get her kids to come away seeing the nuances in the definition.



1 World Trade Center. (Scott Heins/Gothamist)

"It's about getting kids to think about when a person says 'jihadist terrorist,' what are they talking about? Do we fully understand what this term means?" Berman said. "The interpretations of jihad are actually different and depend on the source itself."

Mike Fox, who teaches seventh and eighth grade social studies at the Anderson School, P.S. 334, also seeks to push his students to think critically about the aftermath of 9/11, and the U.S. political response to the attacks.

As he talks his class through a lesson on 9/11, he displays a PowerPoint of images. When he lands on the slide that shows the faces and nationalities of the hijackers, he always asks his students what they notice. Then he waits until someone pipes up asking why, if the attackers were from mostly Saudi Arabia, the U.S. later invaded Iraq.

Fox said this is his educational idealstudents synthesizing the material and building their own understanding of the world around them.

Still, 9/11 can be a surreal topic to teach.

"It's very strange to be standing there talking about a bit of history that you lived," he said. "Being able to say 'I was there,' you feel different about it."

Julia Glum is a reporter specializing in youth culture. She lives in Crown Heights.


Veritas, the listed hospitality company which owns the Mad Butcher franchise and Nosh Food Markets, has agreed a deal with its bank to reduce debt repayments and reschedule its debt.

In a statement published to the NZX, Chairman Tim Cook said the company had "received a committed term sheet from the ANZ Bank which it has accepted." He added the information was consistent with the unaudited financial statements published on Aug. 29.

Those statements showed the board had to weigh up if the business was still a going concern, given the uncertainties around the rescheduling of its debt repayments. The documents revealed that ANZ Bank had agreed to accept a reduction in monthly loan payments from July to September 2016 to $200,000 from $415,000 but advised Veritas that it would provide a term sheet reflecting a rescheduling of the group's repayment terms.

Veritas is carrying debt of $33 million and a sharp fall in its share price since Aug. 29 means its market value is now just $12.5 million. The shares last traded at 29 cents from 47 cents on Aug. 29, a fall of 38 percent.

The group's audited financial statements are due to be published on or before Sept. 20.

BusinessDesk.co.nz

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Ryman Healthcare has bought a site in Melbourne's Mornington Peninsula as part of its planned expansion into Australia.

New Zealand's biggest retirement village operator bought the 8.9 hectare Moondah Estate site in Mt Eliza from Melbourne Business School, it told the NZX yesterday afternoon. It intends to develop a beachside retirement village with independent living apartments and aged care, and more than 100 staff. No price was disclosed.

The company opened its first Melbourne village, Weary Dunlop Retirement Village in Melbourne's south-east, in 2014 and Moondah Estate will be its fourth site in Australia.

Ryman houses 10,000 residents at 30 villages and wants to accommodate a further 17,500 over the next five years. It has 13 more villages in the pipeline, of which four are expected to open this year. It's also looking to have five villages up and running in Australia's second-biggest city by 2020.

Ryman's operating model, where apartments, assisted living and aged care are offered on the same site, sets it apart from most Australian retirement operators, it said.

"We think our first village was a great success because Melburnians like the way our integrated model works," managing director Simon Challies said. "We dont think it is good enough to sell someone a home and then ask them to move on when their health changes. It is early days but we believe this market acceptance, and the ageing population, provides us with a great opportunity to provide homes and care as well as sustainable jobs."

The shares last traded at $9.77 and have gained 15 percent this year.

BusinessDesk.co.nz

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Airways New Zealand has signed a contract with commercial rocket launch provider, Rocket Lab, to provide air traffic services for test and commercial flights through the country's airspace.

In a statement, Airways said they'd been in talks with Rocket Lab for the past 18 months.

Rocket Lab operates a private satellite launch site on the Mahia Peninsula between Napier and Gisborne. The company plans around 100 launches a year through its Electron rocket.

Airways chief operating officer Pauline Lamb said "a special use airspace will be created around the Electron rocket as it launches through New Zealand airspace. Our air traffic controllers will protect this airspace from other aircraft using separation procedures and will do all they can to minimise the impact the launch operations may have on other airspace users."

Rocket Lab is backed by Silicon Valley investor Khosla Ventures, Stephen Tindall's K1W1 fund, Silicon Valley venture capitalist Bessemer Venture Partners, and global defence group Lockheed Martin. In July last year, it signed a contract with the US's National Aeronautics and Space Administration letting it use NASA's resources.

BusinessDesk.co.nz

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Entrepreneur Stedman Graham to Speak at Fall Convocation

President Tashni-Ann Dubroy, Ph.D. announced acclaimed entrepreneur, author and humanitarian Stedman Graham will serve as the keynote speaker for the university's annual fall convocation, to be held on September 22 in the Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts beginning at 11:00 a.m.

The appearance marks Graham's second visit to Shaw in recent years. He is expected to share with students and faculty, keys to professional and personal success during the university's official opening event of the academic year.

"Shaw is honored to host such a multi-talented trailblazer to our campus," said Dr. Dubroy. "We eagerly anticipate Mr. Grahams insights and look forward to formally introducing him to our EPIC community of students, faculty and neighbors," said Dubroy.

Graham is chairman and CEO of S. Graham & Associates (SGA), a management and marketing consulting company that specializes in the corporate and educational markets, with a client listing that includes federal agencies, corporations and private holdings firms throughout the United States.

He is the author of eleven books, including New York Times bestsellers, You Can Make It Happen: A Nine-Step Plan for Success, and his most recent release, Identity: Your Passport to Success.
News, analysis, and archives on the grassroots in Haiti. Nouvel, analiz, ak achiv sou baz yo an AYITI. Noticias, analisis y archivos sobre el pueblo de Haiti.
Many who want to preserve the way of life in a small southwestern Montana town after a coal-fired power plant there is partially shuttered lined up to support a slew of proposed bills aimed to help offset social and economic losses, while some questioned if several measures exacted too harsh a toll on utilities and ratepayers.

One after another in a packed hearing room Friday, people told a legislative interim committee Colstrip and its 2,300 residents need assistance from the state after Units 1 and 2 of the electric plant close by 2022, or else the community could turn into a ghost town.

Plant operator Talen Energy has agreed to shut the two older units at the plant as part of a settlement brought by the Montana Environmental Information Center and the Sierra Club over Clean Air Act violations.

The social costs of sudden layoffs of a sizable group of workers with no future in sight are very steep, said Chuck Dalby, a geologist in Helena who is from Forsyth and helped build housing in Colstrip before the plants were constructed in the 1970s.

The Energy and Telecommunications Interim Committee moved forward six of seven proposed bills, most unanimously, that in some way or another divert money to those that will be affected by the partial shutdown of the power plant.

The bills were all requested by Sen. Duane Ankney, R-Colstrip, who has become one of the most public faces in the fight to keep Colstrip operating and mitigate any losses resulting from layoffs.

Lawmakers and commentators clashed over if knee-jerk regulations and taxes would unfairly punish utilities in Oregon and Washington, who have been directed by their state lawmakers to move away from buying electricity generated by coal-fired plants, and scare off business or if the-out-of-state owners who are pulling out of the plant should be held responsible and Montana should have as much control over the process as possible.

A bill that would take $50 million from the states coal severance tax trust fund and split the money between grant programs for local governments, economic development organizations and work retraining touched off a battle over who should pay for the social and economic costs of of shutting down part of the plant.

Dalby said no one deserves access to the coal tax trust fund, built with taxes on coal mining in the state, more than soon-to-be former coal workers. In 2014 the coal trust fund had $952 million.

Anne Hedges, with the Montana Environmental Information Center, opposed the draft, saying costs would be passed along to ratepayers. Busting the trust should not be one of the things we are depending on to help the works in Colstrip, she said.

Neal Ullman, with Montana Conservation Voters, said he supported the idea of supporting laid-off workers but not the bill pays for it.

Sen. Duane Ankney, R-Colstirp, instead proposed to pay for the programs by doubling a tax on transmitting power from the plant. The amended bill passed, though it started debate about if punishing the utilities who buy power from Colstrip is the best approach, since these companies can pass the costs onto customers,including Montanans, in the form of higher electricity prices.

Montana AFL-CIO political director Chris Cavasoz said corporations should be held responsible for the decisions they make. There should be a cost for shutting down these plants and that money should go to supporting workers in the community, he said.

Draft bills passed Friday propose to:

 Set aside money so Montana can participate in rate hearings in Washington state participate in out-of-state proceedings involving companies that own parts of Colstrip;

 Establish remediation requirements for companies that decommission power plants. This bill was heavily amended with suggestions proposed by the Montana Department of Environmental Quality, who will continue to refine the bill before the 2017 Legislature convenes in January. Some criticized the bill, saying it wasnt clear how it fit in with existing agency rules governing decommission and remediation and the unclear regulations would deter other businesses from locating in Montana.

 Double a transmission tax paid utilities that transmit power out of Colstrip to 30 cents a megawatt and use the money to pay for programs that support local governments, economic development organizations and displaced workers. A bill tied to this was dropped after this one was amended.

 Establish an impact fee that must be paid by utilities that intend to retire coal-fired plants or parts of one and split the fee, which would be millions of dollars, between school districts, counties, worker retraining programs and the state's general fund;

 Create a task force to look at benefits and retirement security for employees affected by the bankruptcy of any natural-resource based company in Montana;

The only draft bill not to move forward was one that would have allowed large-scale users who currently get power from Colstrip to divert funds that go into energy efficiency program to offsetting the cost of entering into new power contracts.

Draft bills are assigned a sponsor who will then carry the bill when the 2017 Legislature meets starting in January.
BILLINGS -- A bill to overturn a temporary ban on federal coal leases  while also giving state and local governments a bigger say in leasing  was approved Thursday by the House Natural Resources Committee.

Western lawmakers have been demanding for months that federal officials end the coal-leasing ban, which Department of Interior officials imposed last spring while they tried to determine whether the public is getting a fair royalty payment on federal coal.

U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-Mont., authored the bill, which added a twist to the leasing ban debate by creating a royalty policy committee from which state, tribal and energy interests consult the Department of Interior. A state would need to have $10 million in leasing royalties annually to be considered for the committee. The bill seeks to end the leasing ban in 2019.

States and tribes possess critical local knowledge that should help mitigate the impact of federal regulation and I think their voices need to be heard, Zinke told Natural Resource Committee members Thursday.

There were opponents. Rep. Alan Lowenthal, D-Calif., cited the conclusions of the White House Council of Economic Advisors, which indicate the public is not getting a fair price for federal coal.

A review of the coal leasing program indicates that programs have been structured in a way that misaligns incentives going back decades, resulting in a distorted coal market with an artificially low price for most federal coal and unnecessarily low government revenue from the leasing program, Lowenthal said.

Coal state lawmakers bristled at the suggestion that royalties were set too low, given that mining companies have gone bankrupt and the amount of coal mined has dropped sharply. The Department of Interior has recommended a royalty increase to 18 percent from the current 12 percent.

If the royalties were so low from federal lands, we wouldnt have this massive reduction in employment, massive reduction in the amount of coal produced, massive layoffs in the railroad industry that hauls the coal out of my state, said Rep. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo.

Thursday afternoon, Zinke and Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., said the ban on new federal coal leases has added uncertainty to the Powder River Basin coal economy and thats stifled investment. In the Senate, Daines and Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., have both attempted to put stop dates on the Department of Interiors coal leasing ban. Tester has proposed Interior take no longer than 5 years to study the royalty issue. Daines is pushing for 3 years.

My concern is that if we wait five years, were not going to have any coal jobs left, Daines said.

Getting the coal advisory committee formed should also bring some pressure on Interior to the respond to the consequences of federal coal policy on local economies, Daines said.

There was previously a coal advisory board that was allowed to expire, Zinke said. The new board will function the same way, advising Interior, but giving orders with which the department must comply.

Interior officials disagree with concerns by lawmakers that the leasing ban is driving the mining industry into the ground. The department estimates theres a 20-year coal supply available now without new leases. Its expected to take several years to establish a more equitable royalty rate, Interior estimates.

Even with coal to mine, coal communities are struggling as power plants switch to cheaper natural gas and global prices for coal slump because of oversupply.

Montana's Musselshell County faces a $300,000 shortfall because of slumping coal taxes and the local school district is paying a $9.8 million construction bond as Signal Peak Mine, its largest taxpayer, falters.

The Crow Tribe has cited lost coal revenue at its southeast Montana mine for a multimillion deficit in the tribal budget. Quarterly payments from the Absaloka Mine, operated by Westmoreland Coal Co., were off $1.2 million in 2015. The tribal government furloughed a quarter of its workers in January.

Coal production in Montana is down a third from last year.

In Wyoming, the state government is bracing for a $250 million to $500 million cut in state spending because of declining coal production, expected to be off 100 million tons from 2015.
Stewart Edward White (1873-1946) was a famous sportsman and writer who hunted, camped and traveled in the North American wilderness, sometimes for months at a time. He was a good friend of President Theodore Roosevelt, who said White was the best man with both rifle and pistol who ever shot at Roosevelts rifle range. Major Townsend Whelan, in his book, "The American Rifle," said White was one of the best game shots in the world.

But like many avid hunters, Stewart Edward White had no use for steel traps. In his book, "Wild Geese Calling," he writes, But where Lenand Johnthought only in terms of fur, and stopped at that, Sally saw too vividly a picture of a living creature, struggling, panting, broken-legged, wild with terror, held fast hour after hour, even day after day.  Sudden clean death she could accept, for she was no sentimentalist. But to wake up, winter nights, and think of small, frantic, broken-legged, gnawing creatures, dying by inches in the snow!

Some people today wish to favorably compare hunting and trapping. They would have us believe that if you hunt you should support trapping. But for many decades hunters have rejected this association. Experienced and ethical hunters know the profound difference between carefully positioning ourselves for a clean, humane shot that preserves the amount and quality of the meat and trappings random gamble of setting a trap that wont be checked for hours or days only to then reveal an unwanted bird or pet or an animals foot. Instead of associating hunting with trapping, a much closer similarity exists with trappings resemblance to putting out poisoned bait.

I ran a trapline for a few years and have hunted for 60 years. I will vote yes for I-177.

Bob Stone

Polson
I am saddened to write this opinion piece, but after much thought, I must. In my long life I have never voted for a Democrat for president. That will change this year.

The country can survive Hillarys chronic deceptiveness. It might not survive Trumps erratic, ego-driven recklessness.

Trump is an egomaniac conman who poses the greatest threat to our country of any presidential candidate in history. His instability is demonstrated by the fact that he has changed his party registration at least five times. He was a registered Democrat as recently as 2009. By his rhetoric Trump is not a conservative. By the gullibility of the modern Republican Party, he is their candidate for president. His only true loyalty is to himself.

He boasts that he would strengthen the U.S. military, and then signaled that he might not keep our commitments to NATO, which is practically an invitation to Putin to pounce. Trump says he looks forward to an improved relationship with the Russian dictator. Small wonder.

He brags that he knows more about ISIS than our generals, but is ignorant of fundamental facts about the Middle East. He ridicules the military service of U.S. Sen. John McCain, but obtained five military deferments while McCain was being tortured as a prisoner of war.

Trump brags his success in business qualifies him to be a successful president. Since he wont release his tax returns we dont know how successful he has been either in making money or avoiding paying taxes. We do know that his companies have declared bankruptcy at least four times.

Trump brags that he doesnt need to read, that he follows his own intuition, and makes decisions according to his consistently good judgment. Is government by Trumps gut something were willing to risk?

Trump loyalists argue that conservatives must support Trump to keep Clinton from making liberal appointments to the Supreme Court. The truth is that presidential nominations to the Supreme Court are subject to confirmation by the U.S. Senate, and must receive the support of a super-majority of 60 senators before even reaching a final vote. Unless Republicans suffer a huge loss of Senate seats, they can, as they are doing now, prevent confirmation of a nominee they consider too liberal.

No similar checks exist on the president in terms of foreign policy and the critical questions of war and peace. China has expansionistic designs in the South China Sea and Russia in Europe. Who knows about North Korea? When recently asked for his reaction to a possible Trump presidency, President Reagans Secretary of State George Schultz responded, God help us.

He (or She) might have to. In his 1935 novel "It Cant Happen Here" Sinclair Lewis shows how a dictatorial demagogue running as a Democrat could seize control of the country. Radical takeover of the staid and grounded old Republican Party seemed unbelievable, even for a novel, back in 1935. Eighty years later, in a very different Republican Party, we saw it happen.

The Donald, a real life equivalent of Lewis fictional character Buzz Windrip, has hijacked the Republican Party. In elections during unsettled times, people generally favor change. Foul-mouthed and big-talking Trump certainly is a change from all previous presidential candidates, and he has a real chance to win. For me the choice is painful, but not difficult. Out of respect for my partys heritage, and concern for my countrys future, Ill be voting for the only candidate with a realistic chance of stopping Trump. Ill be voting for Hillary.

Bob Brown, of Whitefish, is a former Montana secretary of state and state senate president.
BENGALURU: Information sharing between agencies has been identified by the Special Investigation Team (SIT) as a major gap and subsequently the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has been asked to develop an online platform. This platform will be developed by leveraging sharable data stacked in the authority of Enforcement Directorate, Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) and the income tax department as reported by The Times of India.

The Supreme Court-appointed panel had earlier recommended a series of steps, which included a cap on the cash transactions and the amount of cash that can be held by an entity. This is the next step in the series of processes.

RBI has been asked in a letter written by SIT chairman Justice M B Shah in developing the platform in consultation with the revenue department, in order to make the data sharing feasible and easy. "SIT feels that for controlling and tracking illicit financial flows out of the country, use of RBI data by various law enforcement agencies like ED, DRI and CBDT is of critical importance," said Shah.

The data on export outstanding for over a year had been previously sought by the standing committee from the RBI. This was pointed out in the latest report. It was also pointed out that the committee had raised concerns and received data from RBI on advance remittances in the past. "The data, clearly showed that there are gaps in monitoring the above trade flows which are used by unscrupulous elements to take out precious capital outside the country, thus damaging the fabric of Indian economy," said an official statement.

It was also stated by the panel that the PAN number of the importer or exporter must also be captured by the RBI's Foreign Exchange Transactions Electronic Reporting System. Cross-checked with other information with enforcement authorities and illicit financial flows could be curbed," said a letter to RBI governor on August 11.

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NEW DELHI: With an aim to expand Indo-U.S. cooperation, a U.S. agency today announced five new partnerships in the fields of clean energy, environment and climate change to help India make the transition to a low emission and energy-secure economy.



The US Agency for International Development (USAID) announced five new partnerships, four of which are with the government. The announcement was made by USAID Assistant Administrator for Asia Jonathan Stivers who was in Delhi to represent the agency at the second US-India Strategic and Commercial Dialogue.



"As part of the expansion of US-India bilateral cooperation, USAID will continue to support Ministries of power, new and renewable energy, and environment to help India transition to a high-performing, low-emission, energy-secure economy," Stivers said.



He announced the partnerships highlighting that "USAID welcomes and appreciates this historic opportunity to play a useful role in India's path forward."



First among these new partnerships is USAID's commitment to work with the Bangalore power utility BESCOM and US-based company Innovari to launch the first grid integration pilot under the "Greening the Grid" (GTG) initiative.



GTG is a joint initiative of USAID and the Power Ministry to strengthen India's power grid to manage large-scale integration of renewable energy.



India aims to provide 24/7 power to all Indian households by 2020 by adding and integrating 175 gigawatts of renewable energy into the national grid.



Under another partnership, the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) and USAID agreed to expand their solar rooftop programme to an additional eight states and 15 utilities.



"During the first phase of this programme, USAID and MNRE supported the states of Rajasthan, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh to introduce appropriate net-metering policies and regulations and provided technical assistance to the state distribution utilities implementing solar rooftop programs.



"In the expanded programme, USAID will also partner with MNRE to train 5,000 utility engineers and 1,000 bankers and entrepreneurs on installation and operation best practices for solar rooftop systems," a statement said.

USAID also announced a partnership with the power Ministry's public sector energy efficiency company, Energy Efficiency Services Limited, to transform India's markets for super-efficient air-conditioners.



At present, less than five per cent of households have air-conditioners in India, but with rising demand for cooling and better comfort, the growth rate of air-conditioner sales is expected to accelerate to 30 per cent per annum over the next five years.



"To improve urban air quality through energy efficiency, USAID is partnering with the University of Chicago to support the efforts of the Indian government and Gujarat State Pollution Control Board.



The partnership is aimed at piloting a market instrument designed to reduce costs for industrial plants to comply with regulatory limits on emissions and to provide incentives encouraging emission reductions.



The first pilot under this partnership will be tested in Gujarat, the statement said.



It added that during the US-India Joint Working Group on Combating Climate Change, USAID announced its collaboration with the Forest Survey of India (FSI) under the Environment Ministry to strengthen the latter's capacity to better predict forest fires, use high-resolution satellite imagery for forest resource assessment and develop protocols for strengthening forest inventory.



This initiative will mobilise the scientific expertise of the US Forest Service, the statement added.

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ZF's Indian Technology Centre Coming Up In Hyderabad
HYDERABAD: ZF Friedrichshafen AG, a global leader in driveline and chassis technology, on Thursday announced that it will set up its first India Technology Centre (ITC) in Hyderabad.

The technology centre, coming up with an investment of 20-30 million euros, will be dedicated to embedded and electronic systems software development and mechanical engineering.

It will support ZF's global development teams while enabling the company to accelerate local product development, the company officials said.

The German major on Thursday signed a Letter of Intent (LoI) with the Telangana government for setting up ITC, which is expected to be operational by January 1, next year.

It will have a workforce of 2,500 including 1,000 engineers currently working for TCS, Tech Mahindra and other partners.

Minister for Information TechnologyK. Tarakarama Rao described the development as a big breakthrough for Hyderabad. He noted that the city had so far been attracting pure tech players and hoped that with automotive engineering services company like ZF setting up its centre, this will create an eco-system for this space.

He hoped that ZF will come up with a large campus in the city with inbuilt race track for driverless cars.

Jayesh Ranjan, secretary, information technology, said Hyderabad had become go-to destination for any marquee name looking to have presence here.

Mamatha Chamarthi, senior vice president and executive lead for Itc told reporters that the centre will start operations from 1,000 square feet leased premises in Gachibowli.

The company also has plans to develop its own campus in Hyderabad in future.

ZF currently has 12,000 employees at 26 plants in India catering automotive and non-automotive sectors.

She said efficiency, safety and automated driving were the three key areas of focus of ZF's corporate strategy 2025.

ZF company acquired TRW Automotive last year, which was then integrated within the organization as the Active & Passive Safety Technology Division.

The combined company reported sales of 29.2 billion euros in 2015 and now has a global workforce of around 135,000 with approximately 230 locations in 40 countries.

It has 100 technology centres globally.

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NEW DELHI: India and Canada have discussed a wide range of issues of mutual interest, including the civil-nuclear cooperation between the two countries.

The discussion was held during a meeting between Union minister Jitendra Singh and visiting Canada Minister for Natural Resources, James Gordon Carr, in New Delhi on Wednesday.

The two leaders discussed a wide range of issues of mutual interest, including civil-nuclear cooperation between the two countries, an official release issued said on Thursday.

As a country with large energy requirements, India looks forward to promoting nuclear energy production at a significant scale and the two nations can jointly work to achieve this, said Singh, Minister of State in Prime Minister's Office.

He referred to a common technological base of Pressurized Heavy Water Reactor in which India and Canada are global leaders and it is an area offering opportunity of potential bilateral cooperation between the two countries.

While recalling the traditional friendly relations between the two countries, Singh said the most distinctive feature of Indo-Canadian relations was that these had been consistently compatible, without even a single intervening phase of bitterness or unpleasantness.

"This has helped the two countries to achieve positive collaboration in various sectors, including in the area of nuclear energy which is a success story," he said.

Singh referred to the visit of the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Canada in April 2015 during which a long term uranium procurement contract was signed by the Department of Atomic Energy, Government of India, with the Canadian Uranium producer CAMECO.

Thereafter, the first consignment of Canadian uranium reached India in December 2015 and the second consignment is expected by November this year, he said.

Singh expressed satisfaction over the Canadian delegation planning a visit to Mumbai where it will get an opportunity to interact with the scientists at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre and the Department of Atomic Energy, the release said.

Carr said that he looks forward to greater growth in Indo-Canadian cooperation during the years ahead. He also extended invitation to Singh to visit Canada at a time of his convenience.

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LAOS: India and South Korea reviewed the progress made in the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) between the two sides here on Thursday.

"The two leaders reviewed progress in the negotiations to improve the India-South Korea Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement as also the $10 billion financial package announced by South Korea for India's infrastructure development," External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup said here following a meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi South Korean President Park Geun-hye on the sidelines of the 14th India-Asean Summit and the 11th East Asia Summit.

"The EXIM banks of the two countries are discussing modalities for the utilisation of the package," Swarup said.

While Modi described his visit to South Korea in May last year as memorable, President Park said the profile of India was rising due to the Prime Minister's proactive leadership.

"She complimented him on the success of India's economic development strategy, which had led to 7 per cent plus growth rate despite the global slowdown," Swarup said.

"The two leaders reviewed the Strategic Partnership which had been upgraded to a Special Strategic Partnership during the Prime Minister's visit to South Korea."

Both leaders agreed that their shared commitment to democracy and free market economy and complementary strengths made both countries ideal partners.

"President Park appreciated the Korea Plus programme initiated by the Prime Minister and said it would lead to further investments in India by Korean firms," the spokesperson said.

The two leaders discussed further cooperation in areas such as counter-terrorism and maritime security as also developments in the region.

Modi also invited Park to visit, according to Swarup.

Earlier in the day, Modi met host and Laos Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith.

He is also scheduled to meet US President Barack Obama later in the day.

The India-Asean Summit on Thursday is being attended by leaders of 10 southeast Asian nations -- Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam and Thailand.

The East Asia Summit later in the day will be attended by leaders of the 10 Asean nations and those of India, China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, the US and Russia.

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WASHINGTON: NASA on Thursday launched its first mission to bring back samples from a potentially dangerous asteroid that could collide with Earth.

The Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft lifted off atop an Atlas V rocket at 7:05 p.m. EDT (4.35 a.m. Friday, India time) as planned from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, beginning a journey that could revolutionize our understanding of the early solar system, NASA said.

"We're very excited about what this mission can tell us about the origin of our solar system, and we celebrate the bigger picture of science that is helping us make discoveries and accomplish milestones that might have been science fiction yesterday, but are science facts today," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden.

The $800 million mission's main goal is to collect a small sample of rocks and surface soil from Bennu that finds a place in NASA's list of Potentially Hazardous Asteroids.

Asteroids like Bennu are remnants from the formation of our solar system more than 4.5 billion years ago. Scientists suspect that asteroids may have been a source of the water and organic molecules for the early Earth and other planetary bodies.

An uncontaminated asteroid sample from a known source would enable precise analyses, providing results far beyond what can be achieved by spacecraft-based instruments or by studying meteorites.

Although the odds are very low, scientist have calculated that Bennu -- which is the size of a small mountain -- may impact Earth sometime between 2175 and 2199.

If all goes according to plan, OSIRIS-REx will arrive in August 2018 and spend the next two years photographing and mapping the asteroid's surface to better understand its chemical and mineralogical composition, including selecting the sample site.

Then, in July 2020, the spacecraft will touch the asteroid for only three seconds to collect at least 60 grams of loose rocks and dust using a device called the Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism and store the material in a sample return capsule.

OSIRIS-REx will return the sample to Earth in September 2023, when it will then be transported to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston for examination.

The OSIRIS-REx mission will be the first US mission to carry samples from an asteroid back to Earth and the largest sample returned from space since the Apollo era.

"It's satisfying to see the culmination of years of effort from this outstanding team," Mike Donnelly, OSIRIS-REx project manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said.

"We were able to deliver OSIRIS-REx on time and under budget to the launch site, and will soon do something that no other NASA Spacecraft has done - bring back a sample from an asteroid," Donnelly said.

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SV Womans Club to meet Detectives Kelly King and Jessica Getchius of the Simi Valley Police Department will discuss the problems faced by victims and perpetrators of domestic violence at the monthly luncheon meeting of...

Womans flight aboard B-25 bomber honors grandfathers WWII bravery As Kerri Braemer-Castro looked down at the mountains and valleys of Camarillo from the cockpit of a World War II B-25 bomber earlier this month, she finally felt connected to...

Shred your documents The Simi Valley Chamber of Commerce will hold a drive-thru document shredding event from 1 to 4 p.m. Fri., Nov. 11 in the parking lot behind the Chamber office, 40...
About 100 guardsmen from the 191st Military Police Company will also be on standby alert, said Maj. Gen. Al Dohrmann. This unit, which is based in Bismarck, Mayville and Fargo, has some law enforcement experience.

Dohrmann said he is in discussions with tribal leaders to find a peaceful resolution to the protests. He said he believes there is a group of "agitators" at the site, some of whom have been asked to leave.
PHILIPSBURG- The Ministry of Education, Culture, Youth & Sports, Education on the Move (EOM), the St. Maarten National Commission for UNESCO, and the SXM Reads Committee in commemoration of International Literacy Day, invited prominent figures in our society to volunteer their time to read at the different afterschool and community school programs on Thursday.





Fifty years ago, UNESCO officially proclaimed September 8th International Literacy Day to promote literacy as an instrument to empower individuals, communities and societies. The theme for the 50th anniversary is Reading the Past, Writing the Future.





International Literacy Day 2016 celebrates and honors the past five decades of national and international engagement, efforts and progress made to increase literacy rates around the world. It also addresses current challenges and looks to innovative solutions to further boost literacy in the future.





The various volunteers included Ministers, Parliamentarians, Government officials, Education on the Move (EOM) members, SXM reads committee members, St. Maarten National Commission for UNESCO and other prominent persons in the community.





These individuals read one of their favorite stories to children between the ages of 7 to 11 years, and engaged them in conversations after the reading. The reading sessions took place between 2pm and 5pm at the various afterschool and community school programs on the island.





This reading activity is one of the many activities that will be organized to promote literacy in our community in the month of September and throughout the rest of the year.









Photo 1  Minister of Education Silveria Jacobs reads to Students of the Sister Marie Laurence after-school program.

Photo 2  Prime Minister William Marlin being embraced by Students and Teachers of the Christian Hillside School after-school program after reading to them.
MISSOULA -- Richard Raugust is officially a free man.

The Sanders County Attorneys Office has dismissed its 1997 deliberate homicide case against him after a judge overturned Raugusts life sentence conviction last year.

"I'm finally back as a free member of society," Raugust, 50, said Thursday at a news conference at the Montana Innocence Project, which took up his case in 2009.

Raugust was convicted in 1998 of the Trout Creek death of his friend Joe Tash. In November 2015, after the Montana Innocence Project filed an appeal citing new evidence, District Court Judge James Wheelis overturned the conviction, freeing Raugust from prison and granting him a new trial.

In late August the state, which had initially appealed Wheelis' decision, dropped the motion, an early indication of Wednesday's move by the county attorney's office to dismiss the case entirely.

Missoula attorney Brett Schandelson, who worked pro bono with the Montana Innocence Project and who represented Raugust in his request for a new trial, said Raugust is the first, but will be not the last, client of the organization to be exonerated.

The Montana Innocence Project found new evidence related to Raugusts case, including testimony that wasnt presented to the jury, and made that one of the claims they used to successfully petition for his conviction to be overturned.

That evidence is why Richard is standing here today, Schandelson said.

In July 1997 Tash's body was found inside a camp trailer near Trout Creek. He'd been shot in the head with a shotgun. Raugust, Tash and a man named Rory Ross had been drinking at the Naughty Pine Saloon the previous evening until bar time. Since being charged, Raugust has remained committed to his status as an innocent man, saying he'd stayed in town at another house so he could get to work in the morning while his best friend Tash and Ross returned to the camper to continue to party.

During the trial in 1998, Ross said he never dropped Raugust off at the house, and that he saw the shooting happen. Spencer Veysey, an investigator who worked at the Montana Innocence Project until his death in 2015, found a conflicting viewpoint from Sanders County deputy Wayne Abbey, who said he saw the brake lights of Ross car go on at the intersection where Raugust said he was let out, and saw the interior dome light turn on.

This information was suppressed by the prosecution and never presented to the defense team or told to the jury at the trial.

During an evidentiary hearing on Raugusts petition for a new trial in December 2014, Ross refused to testify, agreeing with a question from the judge that he was worried he would say something incriminating. According to Judge Wheelis ruling from last year, Ross had made statements to other people that he was the one who killed Tash.

Sanders County Attorney Robert Zimmerman did not return a request for comment on whether his office would pursue a homicide charge against Ross.

In addition, two jurors from the trial later told the Montana Innocence Project they felt pressured to change their not-guilty votes after the trial judge asked for them to reach a unanimous conclusion, saying the state could not afford the cost of re-trying Raugusts case.

Raugust said Thursday that now the case is fully behind him, he is ready to move forward with his life.

Ill try to get my writing career off the ground, he said.

In the spring, Raugust published a book of poetry he wrote during his more than 18 years in prison, entitled Fishers of Trout and Men: Protectors of the Realm. He said he also intends to continue working with the Montana Innocence Project, helping to screen potential cases and helping them generate more awareness for their work.
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Cybersafety advisor Susan McLean has some clear advice for parents worried about their children's exposure to the internet - supervise them and the content and enforce some rules.

"The internet is not a kid's playground. You need to stop being your kids' best friend and be the parent," she said.

Child expert Dr Sue Packer, Protective Behaviours ACT president Marg Hourigan and cybersafety advisor Susan McLean at a child protection conference at the Hotel Realm in Canberra on Friday. Credit:Megan Doherty

"Be involved, be aware and be there with your kids."

Widely regarded as Australia's foremost "cyber cop" and a former member of the Victoria Police for 27 years, Ms McLean was a keynote speaker at the 15th National Protective Behaviours Conference in Canberra on Friday.
The collection started with a simple request: find me something tacky for less than $2 at a Brisbane op shop.

It was 2011 and I was so very, very sheltered when it came to the world of avian ornamentals.

Bruce Armstrong's owl, which keeps watch over Belconnen, would be a fine addition to the quirky bird collection. Credit:Graham Tidy

So when my friend returned back to college with what has since been dubbed "The Evil Water Fowl", I had no idea of the impact the wooden sculpture would have on my life, or at least on my bedroom surfaces.

Presumably crafted in the finest woodwork shed Satan has yet commissioned, the bird, with beak open in a frozen shriek, twisted head and large, hate-filled eyes, was not tasteful, nor was it tasteless.
A Chisholm woman who kept chickens and rabbits as part of a self-sufficient system of eating has been fined after the animals were discovered in filthy cages with limited food and water.

Cynthia Lawrence, 37, kept the animals to feed her family of nine children, the ACT Magistrates Court heard. They also kept guinea pigs and rats at the family home of 20 years.

Chickens in the cage at the family home. Credit:RSPCA ACT

RSPCA inspectors found the animals in cages that had a build up of excrement, and access to water or food non-existent or in bowls containing debris and faeces.

She has been fined $1100 and banned from owning rabbits, chickens and guinea pigs for three years and given a good behaviour order.
It seems the ACT government's "age friendly city" slogan for Canberra number plates did not get a very friendly welcome.

While Canberrans offer a wealth of ideas in the hope the ACT government's new plate hits the mark, a marketing expert explores some tourism promotions that have shone or failed in the capital.

This "Feel the Power" jet was used in a campaign to promote Canberra under former ACT chief minister Kate Carnell's government in 1998.

Just fewer than 1964 ACT number plates have touted the catchphrase "Canberra  Age Friendly City" since they became available in July last year after winning the ACT government's number plate competition.

It's not known whether much love was ever felt for the controversial "Feel the Power of Canberra" number plates that were maligned by the public after it was included in a Carnell government advertising campaign in 1998. But at least 343 vehicles are still holding on to the turbo-charged message.
Missing man Mitchell Crosskey has been located safe and well in Deakin, police say.

ACT police were seeking the public's help to find the 33-year-old man who went missing after leaving the Canberra Hospital at midnight on Thursday.
At last some agreement among the three major parties. All agree that it is not acceptable for a frontbencher to take money from a corporation with strong ties to the Chinese government. And that it is a resigning offence.

But something does not quite add up in the case of Senator Sam Dastyari having some expenses paid by the corporation. Why isn't it equally unacceptable for any Australian MP to take any foreign money?

The Dastyari case should lead to a legislated ban on political donations from foreigners, and while we are at it general reform of donations law. The Coalition cannot have it both ways. It cannot call for, and eventually get, Dastyari's resignation without acknowledging that foreign donations are wrong and do something about them.

Our democracy would be much healthier if we restricted donations to candidates and parties to only those on the electoral roll with a cap on both to, say, $500 or $1000 a year and real-time internet reporting of donations over, say, $200.
Court documents obtained by Business Day show ASIC is in the midst of a major investigation into the activities of Belize-based TitanTrade and its operators, Seychelles-registered One Tech Media and England's Ultra Solutions MG (UK). Binary options, including those sold by TitanTrade, allow traders to 'bet' on the price of an 'asset' (such as a share in a listed company) or a particular currency or commodity (such as gold) within a certain time frame. The options mean the traders never have to actually buy or sell the underlying asset, currency or commodity. For example, the customer bets that in three minutes the price of a particular company's shares will be above 50 cents. If after three minutes the price is 52 cents, they are paid out a return. If the price is 49 cents, the customer loses their 'bet' and the money is kept by the provider. "Customers have made complaints to ASIC in relation to difficulties withdrawing funds from their online TitanTrade accounts and in relation to losses sustained by trading in binary options on the TitanTrade website," ASIC lawyer Naomi Miller said in her affidavit seeking an urgent injunction to shut down the site. Apart from the difficulties some customers have had withdrawing their money, TitanTrade uses boiler room-style tactics, such as high pressure sales including frequent Skype conversations, to convince customers to bet large and bet often.

According to Miller, Titantrade's account managers would "regularly contact the customer by telephone and Skype voice call" and "encourage Australian customers to make deposits of funds to One Tech Media, Ultra Solutions and/or Allianz Metro". TitanTrade has the hallmarks of a boiler room scam such as the one represented in Wolf of Wall Street. TitanTrade has been operating around the globe for years. From Spain, France, Russia, England and America customers have been venting their anger against the company and telling a similar story  either the funds they deposited in TitanTrade and winnings from bets can't be withdrawn or their money has disappeared in a flurry of uninformed, risky bets. ASIC first became aware of the TitanTrade website in April, according to Miller's affidavit when a Perth-based retiree in his mid 70s, or Customer A as he is referred to in court documents, made a complaint to the watchdog. More unnamed customers have since emerged and all have a similar story to Customer A, though Miller says in her affidavit it is unclear how many Australian are affected by the trader.

According to ASIC's affidavits, approximately $4.16 million ploughed into TitanTrade by its customers - including Australians - has been deposited into the business bank account held in the name of Tony Senese's business Allianz Metro. From there, around $2.6 million has flowed to One Tech Media while nearly $1.5 million, the remainder, has been "dispersed" by Allianz Metro into several different accounts, including into the personal and business accounts of Tony Senese, his wife Sandy, the business account of Cameron Senese and the business and personal accounts of former Toorak resident Yoav Ida. ASIC alleges Tony, Sandy and Cameron Senese, a clutch of their family businesses including Allianz Metro and former Toorak resident Yoav Ida are all "associates or agents" of One Tech Media and Ultra Solutions and have "received, and are holding or in control of moneys and other property derived from, and related to, the carrying on of the unlicensed financial services business". ASIC's affidavits confirm it is also investigating whether One Tech, Ultra Solutions, the Seneses, their companies, Ida and his companies have made false or misleading statements and representations, misled and deceived traders, acted unconscionably and deceptively raised funds. According to ASIC the Seneses splashed their earnings from their alleged involvement in Titantrade's Australian arm on holidays at luxury spas in Bali, dinners at famed Melbourne fine eatery Grossi Florentino, mortgage repayments for their pile in Sandringham as well as a shopping trip for Sandy to the Duomo piazza in Milan as well as a stay at the Hotel Augustus in Forte dei Marmi.

In August, ASIC sounded the alarm about the site in the form of a brief notice on its website. Lured by the promise of work and travel, Australian teachers are flocking to London. Credit:Paul Harris The sting for TitanTrade is simple and it's effective. While browsing the web one day, Customer A stumbled across a TitanTrade ad which led him to the company's website and despite not having any experience in binary option trading paid the $250 registration fee. "He thought the website looked professional, and it promised high returns", Miller says in her affidavit. Shortly after, Customer A was contacted by an account manager who said his name was 'David Garcia'. He said he was based in London and was head broker of TitanTrade and he convinced Customer A to invest more.

Customer A's dabble in binary options would be costly and brief. After 34 days he had burned $100,000 on TitanTade's binary options and his balance was 90 cents. Customer B, a more experienced binary trader from Victoria, won some of his bets and has an account balance of nearly $90,000 but it's unclear whether he can withdraw the funds. Who owns and controls One Tech Media and Ultra Solutions is currently a mystery to ASIC. The Seychelles, a renowned secrecy jurisdiction, is "unable to provide information regarding shareholders and directors of companies", while Ultra Solutions currently has no director appointed to it, Miller says in court documents. While the Seneses and Ida are yet to file any defences or, more importantly, be formally accused of any wrongdoing, it is believed they will argue they were supplying a credit card payment platform to TitanTrade and have nothing to do with Titantrade's unlicensed, allegedly illegal activities. This theory is somewhat supported by ASIC's own affidavit which notes that "Allianz Associates are the pay agents of One Tech Media". Lawyer for the Senese family and Ida, Jonathan Kenny, told Business Day that "no allegation of wrongdoing has been made against any of my clients."
Australians will pay significantly more for Apple's new iPhones than American customers, even without the effects of the GST and the weakened Aussie dollar.

But the so-called "Australia Tax" on the new gadgets is only half what Apple applies to music downloads.

The six new phones, announced on Thursday and available to order from today, range in price from $1079 to $1569 depending on storage capacity and size.

Comparing those prices, minus the 10 per cent GST, with pre-sales tax US prices converted to Australian dollars reveals Apple is charging Australian customers between 12 and 15 per cent more than Americans.
Ahead of the start up of its second unit at its Queensland gas export project, Origin Energy has moved to replace its longstanding chief executive, Grant King, with an internal appointment, Frank Calabria.

HIs appointment is likely to rekindle speculation of a potential restructuring of the group, splitting into its energy markets and its gas export businesses, with the company pointing to the prospect for "further strategic and structural changes" with Mr Calabria's appointment.

Origin Energy's incoming chief executive Frank Calabria, who replaces Grant King Credit:Rob Homer

The new chief executive was chosen following a global search. He will replace Mr King, Origin's founding chief executive, at the company's annual meeting in mid-October.

Calabria has been with the company for 15 years, joining not long after Origin was spun out of Boral Ltd, initially working as the chief financial officer before moving across in 2009 to run its energy markets businesses.
Clive Palmer had full authority to direct Queensland Nickel via a joint venture agreement between two parent companies he wholly owned, eventually giving him the power to prop up his political party, the Federal Court has been told.

A change to the agreement in April 2012 gave Queensland Nickel the power to donate money to his political party and support his other businesses, the court heard.

Mr Palmer said that change, detailed in an old notebook he claimed recorded resolutions and minutes of joint venture meetings, was made about the time a clause from the company's previous owner imposing certain restrictions was due to end.

The businessman is facing Federal Court in Brisbane as part of the federal government's attempts to recover tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds paid out in worker entitlements when his nickel refinery collapsed.
Retail investment is moving into record territory with investors seeing the potential growth starting to outweigh rival office and industrial property markets.

This year alone, more than $650 million worth of retail property is being transacted in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth.

Myer Melbourne in the Bourke Street mall. Credit:UA Creative

One of the latest listings is GPT Wholesale Shopping Centre Fund's half share in the Westfield Woden centre in Canberra. It bought the 50 per cent stake for $321.5 million in June 2012 and Scentre Group is the other 50 per cent owner.

Colliers International's head of retail investment services Lachlan MacGillivray is advising the GPT fund and said transactional activity for regional shopping centres had been extremely limited since the GFC, with the last transaction taking place more than two years ago.
"I was supporting local business purchasing a book as a birthday present for my wife (The Last Anniversary, by Liane Moriarty, seeing as you asked), when I realised we were being serenaded by that delightful Christmas carol Silent Night ... delightful, but not in August." Nick Walker, of Springwood.

The Churches of Christ in NSW are seeking a secretary/manger for their property trust, according to Shane Coombe, Turramurra. "Presumably making sure there's fallback options available if it turns out there's no room at the inn come Christmas."

From Neil Silver, Wahroonga. "I fished the first funnel web of the 'season' from our pool this morning. A sure sign that summer IS here."

On the subject of lane changing and road rules (C8). "It might be of interest to learn that last week, from my eyrie on a shuttle transfer from Melbourne to Tullamarine airport, I counted just seven drivers with both hands on the steering wheel. Many of the 'free' hands were occupied with coffee, food and mobile phones. Scary." Deidre Vaill, Thornleigh.

"In reference to Glenda Taylor and her thirst being left unquenched before midday. It is quite probable that the licence the premises has is restricted to serving after 12pm. They can easily fix this and get an extended licence. But like everything it costs a little more. Well, actually, four times more. So Glenda is right, it is a matter of Law. One which I believe can be prosecuted under the Daylight Robbery Act." John Rand, of Belrose
Its scientific name, thylacine, means "dog-headed pouched one". It wasn't a dog but it was a marsupial. Other names invented to describe this mysterious creature were the Tasmanian Wolf and the Zebra Opossum. In the 1920s, two examples of the species were sent to a zoo in England where they were met with the following headline in an English newspaper: "Too Stupid To Tame". I did briefly consider having that tattooed on my chest.

Before the Tasmanian tiger was known as the Tasmanian tiger, it was called a hyena. It wasn't a hyena either but that was hardly the point. The hyena is an unlovely animal and therefore easier to kill. Until 1909 in Tasmania, the creature had a bounty on its head. Four months before the last one died, it was declared a protected species.

The first thing to be noted about the Tasmanian tiger is that it's not a tiger. Nor was it confined to Tasmania until the land bridge between Tasmania and Victoria sank beneath what is now Bass Strait. The dingo, a more efficient predator, displaced it in mainland Australia.

The Tasmanian tiger is a fabled creature. This week, 80 years ago, the last one in Hobart Zoo died. As if to mark that anniversary, a group this week claimed to have sighted one in the Adelaide hills.

It had a number of Tasmanian Aboriginal names, one of them being lorinna. There is a place called Lorinna up the back of Devonport which tells me the creature had some connection there. The importance of the name lorinna for me is that it's a name which doesn't rely on a comparison with anything else. It is a name by which this creature and no other was known  in that part of Tasmania, at least.

There are rock drawings of the creature in the Northern Territory and the Kimberleys. It would have had different names in both places. On a website called Tasmanian-tiger.com, I read that the Adnyamathanha people of the Flinders Ranges, in South Australia, called them marrukurli. There's a rock drawing of the animal here in Victoria, north-west of Shepparton. I've been taken there. It's connected to an initiation site, a place of tribal power.

There are still regular sightings all over Australia and, in the 1990s, in New Guinea. I've got a big art work in my home of the last one in Hobart Zoo. There's a story (disputed) that he was called Benjamin. The piece, by Melbourne artist Martin Tighe, is a relief sculpture, boldly painted, that gets the animal's skeleton right. Its spine was like a kangaroo's. It stood on its tail, like a kangaroo, to fight dogs.

The picture, framed with wire netting, looks like a prison cell. I show my grandkids the painting, let them finger the wire netting and say, "One day you're going to come in here, that wire'll be cut and he'll be gone."

Personally, I very much doubt one of these creatures is currently roaming the Adelaide hills. The last one reliably sighted in the wild was in Tasmania in 1930. I've stood where it was shot while attempting to steal chickens from a henhouse in far north-west Tasmania. Sightings continue but no scientific investigation over the past half century has returned with so much as droppings. Nor have they appeared as roadkill. People think in terms of a single one surviving to our own time but, for that to occur, there must have been a family or families of them around 20 years ago. Now it's gone, we see it everywhere.
In the meantime their refugee passport would guarantee them economic support and a range of rights in their host country, including the rights to access services, to study and (potentially) work.

It can, and it should. Refugees should become dual citizens of a virtual state  we'll call it Refugistan. Citizenship in Refugistan would be determined by the inability of its members to return to their countries of origin for fear of persecution. Citizens of Refugistan would remain citizens of their homeland, allowing them to return if and when conditions allow, after which time citizenship in Refugistan would lapse.

Although the refugees could not compete for their homeland or for their country of resettlement, the International Olympic Committee treated the refugees as though they were part of the same sporting nation. They created a form of virtual citizenship, guaranteeing rights to funding, status, and recognition based on membership in a community constituted solely by refugee status. Couldn't this idea of temporary virtual citizenship for refugees be expanded in ways that would offer them more thorough protection than they currently enjoy?

A striking and moving feature of the Rio Olympic Games was the presence of a team composed entirely of refugees. The team included swimmers from Syria now based in Germany, judokas from the Democratic Republic of Congo living in Brazil, and Sudanese track athletes based in Kenya.

The cost of supporting this program would be broadly shared by all signatories to the convention, according to their ability to pay, rather than by the host countries themselves. Refugees might become an economic asset rather than a perceived burden if the investment they currently attract was provided in a way that allowed them to spend it on housing, medicine, education and other services in the host country. This proposal does not diminish the rights of countries to determine access to permanent residency or citizenship, and it protects the vital existing rights of refugees under the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees.

At present the global burden created by the displacement of people is shared inefficiently and inequitably. Most refugees are in poor countries close to the conflicts from which they fled. Often the countries where refugees arrive are also riven by political conflict and cannot secure the lives of their own citizens. Ethiopia has 736,000 refugees, Kenya and Uganda over 500,000, Lebanon over 1 million, and Turkey now has 2.5 million refugees as a result of conflict in the Middle East.

Consequently, while all refugees have the same basic rights guaranteed by the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (provided they arrive in a country which is a signatory to that convention) their prospects are vastly different. Many refugees are victims not only of persecution at home, but often of harsh political and economic circumstances in the countries in which they arrive. Some will be processed quickly and treated humanely. Others will raise children and grandchildren in sprawling tent cities and vast slums of scavenged brick and plastic.

Funding such a program would no doubt be costly. But current arrangements for managing the refugee crisis are also very costly. Furthermore much of the money spent on refugees is at present devoted to blocking access to citizenship by host countries. Australia spends $400,000 each year to detain a single refugee offshore. The EU has allocated 1 billion to build processing centres in Turkey.

The costs to countries of hosting refugees can be substantially reduced if they are neither required to resettle them, nor required to bear the full costs of providing economic support and other basic rights.
The butterfly wings that created this mighty storm were those of Labor's Sam Dastyari, who listed a donation of $1600 from a Chinese corporate donor to cover some travel expenses. And while that scandal was alleviated somewhat by Dastyari's subsequent decision to resign from the shadow front bench , the furore over this matter has led many Australians to wonder about the issue more broadly.

And it's a very difficult question to answer - well, aside from saying "yes, obviously, that's literally the entire point of political donations" - and that's why everyone is currently making noises about reforming the current system under which free money can be given to politicians.

Australian politics is currently experiencing an existential crisis regarding the vexed and thorny question of political donations. Specifically, whether accepting donations carries with it an expectation of the donor exerting political influence over the donee.

Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott has been especially strident about the issue of late, declaring that "We need to look long and hard at restricting donations to real people on the electoral roll. To that end, there should be no union donations, company donations or foreign donations."

And it's not a surprise that he'd advocate for such a position - not least because it wouldn't necessarily preclude accepting publicly non-existent $60,000 secret scholarships to send your daughter to design school, as happened with our former Prime Minister turned outspoken political donation reform advocate.

And it's not just a matter of good public policy either. One of the most under-reported problems with political donations is the terrible effect they seemingly wreak on the hippocampus - the bit of the brain that creates and stores memories.

After all, Attorney-General George Brandis recently appointed Theo Tavoularis to the plum $370,000 a year gig of heading the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, but told the ABC that he was unaware that Tavoularis had donated to the Queensland LNP in 2013, the year before he got Brandis' son Simon off an embarrassing property damage charge.

And Brandis' failing memory is nowhere near as worrying as the tragic state of recall that current Treasury Secretary Arthur Sinodinos is bravely enduring, even as fresh questions are being asked as to whether or not he misled parliament with regards the use of the Liberal Party-affiliated Free Enterprise Fund.
"Australia as a nation has always relied on women to do a greater part of its unpaid work  caring for children, looking after sick or elderly parents, doing the million and one jobs around a family home that keep it running. Unfortunately, this has meant that women are under-represented in our great national Parliament. Like many of you blokes here in this audience today, I have had the great luxury  unimaginable to many women considering political office  of a devoted spouse whose preparedness to forgo a career and devote the bulk of her attention to our family has permitted me to have both a demanding, inspiring, rewarding job and three children.

"When I look back at the Cabinet ministers I appointed over my years in office, I see that I appointed 27 men, every single one of whom had children, many of whom were of school age when their fathers served as ministers. I also appointed five women, two of whom had grown-up children and three of whom had no children at all, a fact for which I know they endured personal criticism from time to time.

"When I look back at those men and women, I see that the men enjoyed a substantial advantage and greater opportunity in politics. This produced a rather unfortunate result, being that Australia's premier decision-making group on Commonwealth policies and programs for health, education, welfare and so on was for years devoid of any representative from the one social group  mothers of children  statistically most likely to come in direct contact with those services.

"Now, as you know, I dislike quotas. I am a great supporter of merit-based appointments. And my dream in the future is that success in politics will be entirely merit-based, and not skewed unnecessarily by accidents of birth and social circumstance. I don't want any man in Cabinet to feel that he got there because of an unfair structural advantage over a female competitor.

"When I look at today's Cabinet, I see six women. Two with grown-up children, three without children, but one  Revenue and Financial Services Minister Kelly O'Dwyer  with a baby and a talented husband, Jon, who took time out of his career to look after that child while his wife is in Canberra because that's the decision to which they came as a family.
I asked my grandchildren what the word "Cotter" meant to them. They mentioned camping, and a picnic spot and bushwalking. This is the story of the man who gave his name to that river and the great dam that now controls it.

When Garrett Cotter was born in 1802 in County Cork, Ireland, the only settled part of the Australian continent was the small town huddled around Sydney Cove. This illiterate ploughman was transported to Australia in 1822. When he died in 1886 the Commonwealth of Australia was only 15 years away and eventually a National Capital would grow up near where he had lived, with a river named after him.

COTTER: A Novel. By Richard Begbie. Longhand Press. 365pp. $28.00

Years ago author and local farmer Richard Begbie was inspired to research the life of Garrett Cotter. He recorded the known facts in an article which appeared in the Canberra Times (October 12, 2013) Cotter was typical of the Irish peasant farmers of the 19 th century, oppressed by English penal laws, and consigned to poverty. In desperation such men turned to rebel gangs known as "Whiteboys". The dramatic story of Cotter and two mates who tried to force the issue by confronting their oppressor, is vividly told in the first chapters. They were arrested and condemned under the blanket charge of "whiteboyism", part of a group of men sentenced to the gallows.

The Irish newspapers record a full and dramatic account of the court case. But the sentence for Cotter and others was commutated to transportation for life to NSW.

The author has followed the trail of Garrett Cotter from Ireland to the Monaro but has to resort to a fictional approach when factual details have faded out. I found his imagined description of what the convict experience was like to be very convincing. Cotter was a hard worker and was given an excellent reference for his work with John Warby at Campbelltown and then Francis Kenny who settled on the shore of Lake George.

The other remarkable aspect of Cotter's life was his friendship with an aboriginal leader named Onyong, spelt in various ways. This is an absorbing tale of mateship and mutual respect across the racial barrier. In a prolonged drought Onyong led Cotter to fresh pasture across the Murrumbidgee. Later, after an altercation with one Donald McKay, Cotter was banished "beyond the limits of location" for 4 years. But, as sometimes happened in the stories of the convicts, what seemed like a drastic punishment turned out to be a new opportunity. His later years were spent at Michelago where he lived with his wife and children. He died in 1886.
Australia is to start making its own military drones, officials have revealed, and former defence chief Sir Angus Houston said he expects that the "vast majority" of war fighting will be done by unmanned machines within half a century.

Colonel Andrew Jones, the Army's aviation program director, told a major military and defence industry gathering in Adelaide this week that Defence wanted Australian firms to help build a small, tough drone that soldiers can fit in backpacks and send out to spy on enemies on the battlefield.

Colonel Jones indicated it would be just a first step in what he called "sovereign" drone technology - or unmanned aerial vehicles as Defence prefers to call them. He said it could be the "start of something big" that included "more than just intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance".

Beyond being eyes in the sky for soldiers, drones are most typically used to fire missiles on enemies such as terrorist organisations, and Australia has signalled plans to start using such weaponised unmanned vehicles.
The flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long. It's a phrase attributed - somewhat ironically, given the events of this week - to the ancient Chinese philosopher Laozi, father of Taoism.

It certainly describes Labor's backroom wunderkinds over the past decade. Karl Bitar, Mark Arbib, Paul Howes  once leading luminaries of the NSW Right, their political stars rose quickly and fell even faster.

Now Sam Dastyari, a successor to Bitar and Arbib as NSW Labor general secretary, has crashed and burned just months into his frontbench stint. And the question has to be asked: why are these bright flames burning out?

"The culture they come from is intensely corrosive," says one Left MP intimately familiar with Sussex Street. "If you're not grounded in values, you're doomed from the start. You don't have anything to fall back on when you hit adversity."
Jimmy John's sells

Sandwich chain Jimmy John's Sandwiches says it sold a majority stake in the company to private equity firm Roark Capital Group.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Roark Capital of Atlanta has invested in several fast food companies before, including pretzel seller Auntie Anne's and sandwich restaurant chain Arby's.

Founded in 1983, Jimmy John's has more than 2,500 locations across the country and plans to open 1,100 more in the next few years. As a comparison, rival sandwich chain Subway has more than 44,000 shops.

Jimmy John's says founder Jimmy John Liautaud will remain as chairman of the company's board. James North will remain as president and CEO of the privately-held company, which is based in Champaign, Illinois.

Walgreens prepares to unload

Walgreens believes that it will probably have to unload more stores than expected to ease antitrust concerns over its pending, $9.41 billion acquisition of Rite Aid, a deal that would make the nation's largest drugstore chain even larger.

While it still expects to complete the acquisition this year, the Deerfield, company said Thursday that it will probably have to divest more than 500 stores. The company previously said that it expected to divest 500 or fewer.

Federal regulators appear increasingly hesitant to approve major acquisitions after a record-setting pace last year in megadeals. They've already sued to block two multi-billion dollar health insurance tie-ups this year, the proposed combinations of Anthem Inc. and Cigna Corp. and Aetna Inc. and Humana Inc.

Wells Fargo fined $185 million

California and federal regulators fined Wells Fargo a combined $185 million, alleging the bank's employees illegally opened millions of unauthorized accounts for their customers in order to meet aggressive sales goals.

The San Francisco-based bank will pay $100 million to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a federal agency created five years ago; $35 million to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and $50 million to the City and County of Los Angeles. It will also pay restitution to affected customers.

It is the largest fine the CFPB has levied against a financial institution and the largest fine in the history of the Los Angeles City Attorney's office.

The CFPB said Wells Fargo sales staff opened more than 2 million bank and credit card accounts that may have not been authorized by customers. Money in customers' accounts were transferred to these new accounts without authorization. Debit cards were issued and activated, as well as PINs created, without telling customers.

In some cases, Wells Fargo employees even created fake email addresses to sign up customers for online banking services.

U.S. mortgage rate declines

Long-term U.S. mortgage rates edged lower this week. As rates remain at historically low levels, homeowners taking advantage of the chance to refinance their mortgages have pushed up refinancing activity.

Mortgage giant Freddie Mac said the average for the benchmark 30-year fixed-rate mortgage declined to 3.44 percent from 3.46 percent last week. The average rate is down from 3.90 percent a year ago, and is close to its all-time low of 3.31 percent in November 2012.

The 15-year fixed mortgage rate eased to 2.76 percent from 2.77 percent.

Ford recalls more vehicles

Ford on Thursday dropped its 2016 profit forecast by $600 million after expanding an existing door latch recall to 1.5 million additional vehicles.

The initial recall, issued in early August, covered 2013 through 2015 model C-Max and Escape vehicles; 2012 through 2015 Focuses; 2014 through 2016 Transit Connects, and 2015 models of the Lincoln MKC and the Mustang.

Now the recall covers nearly 2.4 million vehicles in North America. More specifically, it covers 2 million in the U.S., 233,034 in Canada and 61,363 in Mexico.

Owners who want to know if their vehicle is included in the recall can go to www.ford.com
The rush to find a politically expedient solution to the current donations furore could potentially kill off any meaningful reform before it even begins, constitutional experts have warned.

With Sam Dastyari's fall from the Opposition frontbench came a spotlight on the broader donations system and from there, the political consensus has divided, with Coalition figures expressing support for restricting donations to those on the electoral roll  ruling out entities such as trade unions and big businesses  while Labor is pushing for an end to foreign donations.

But constitutional law experts argue that both options, while potentially constitutionally loaded, miss the most "rational approach"  capping donations and political party expenditure to remove any concerns about the funding source.

The High Court struck down a NSW attempt to limit donations to people on the electoral roll in 2013, raising immediate concerns that the solution Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has been touting is potentially invalid.
Christians should vote "according to their conscience" in a same-sex marriage plebiscite and the Church "must accept" the result, Australia's most senior Anglican has told followers.

In what gay marriage advocates have welcomed as a significant blessing, Melbourne Archbishop Philip Freier told the nation's Anglicans they could support same-sex marriage "in good faith".

"If the plebiscite does happen it will be important that Christians  and others  vote according to their conscience and their view of what is best for society," he wrote in a letter to Anglican bishops.

"Should the vote be in favour of same-sex marriage as suggested by the opinion polls, the Church must accept that this is now part of the landscape."
I've been a big fan of the New Zealand natural skincare company Trilogy ever since they launched back in 2002, and have watched them blossom. I have always loved their cult Certified Organic Rose Hip Oil and their philanthropic stance.

So I'm eager for the release of their latest natural skin care baby, Rosapene Radiance Serum, due out in early October.

Trilogy's Rosapene Radiance Serum.

The Radiance Serum $42.95, is a soothing antioxidant oil blend that contains Rosapene (certified organic rosehip cranberry and tomato seed oils which help repair skin and protect against free radical damage), sea algae (for hydration and radiance) and aloe vera (cooling and calming) that is lightweight in consistency and, oh joy, doesn't leave any greasy residue. It's also perfect as a primer under foundation. Add to cart!

Also on my wish list: the Exfoliating Body Balm, $35.95, a buttery-textured balm with rosehip seed oil that is perfect for sloughing off those winter-y scales.
Iman made her first public appearance since the death of her husband David Bowie at Tom Ford's New York Fashion Week show on Wednesday night.

While on the red carpet the model, 61, took the time to speak for the first time about the performer's death in January at the age of 69 from cancer, telling Good Morning America: "It's just been a tough year, but I'm holding up".

She wore a gold chain that read "David". Credit:Getty

Iman, who also lost her mother two months after Bowie died, was told by the reporter that she was a "survivor", to which she replied: "Not as much as you think."

Wearing a gold chain bearing his name, "David", she said as she held on to it: "I'm wearing this until my death."
Nearly three decades after the marriage came to an end, Elle Macpherson is jumping back into bed with her first husband, French fashion photographer Gilles Bensimon. Well figuratively speaking at least.

And they are doing it in Sydney.

Elle Macpherson at a special screening of Trumbo at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2015. Credit:Greg Allen/Invision/AP

Macpherson and Bensimon are in Sydney this weekend for a big budget photo shoot on behalf of Elle Australia for an upcoming cover of the high-end fashion magazine.

Bensimon has been a key part of the Elle brand  both the magazine and the model  internationally for many years, having shot some of the world's most beautiful women for the masthead, including his now ex-wife with whom he remains close friends.
ALast moth a Perth mothyer painted her son's skin black for a Book Week parade because he had wanted to look like footballer Nic Naitanui "This was an innocent mistake by a teacher who is a respected, honourable and lovely person who got it wrong on the day," the statement on the school's website said. "The school apologises unreservedly to everyone for any offence that has been caused. We have been in touch with the principal of the visiting students who were present on the day and they have accepted our apology." The college said it was reviewing its policies so something like this wouldn't happen again. "The school is providing support and assistance to the teacher, the student, and their family," the statement said.

"It has been a very distressing lesson for all concerned." Bialik College principal Jeremy Stowe-Lindner told the ABC it was an "unfortunate incident. "I understand that no malice was intended and I guess the coincidence of Jewish children visiting from Melbourne is a learning opportunity for the community, and that the principal assures me this is number one priority," he said. The chairman of the Anti-Defamation Commission Dvir Abramovich said he was "shocked" by the level of ignorance shown. He is calling for mandatory Holocaust education in schools across Australia after the incident.

"Clearly, this offensive and ill-judged incident is a wake up call that we all have much work to do in ensuring that all students understand the evils of the Holocaust, and what Hitler represents, not only to the Jewish community, but to all the victims, the survivors and to those Australian soldiers who fought to defeat the Third Reich," he said in a statement. "This student, who displayed such disturbing insensitivity by choosing to dress up as Hitler, a brutal tyrant who symbolises unbridled hate and genocide, and the teacher who awarded him the prize, must be taught about the results of Hitler's demonic plan to symmetrically exterminate the Jewish people and the enormous suffering he caused." The Perth mother who dressed her son as Naitanui said last month she expected to get some backlash from the political correct brigade, but she dressed him up anyway. She boasted that he "looked fanf---ingtastic" and described the moment as a "parenting win". The photo of the boy sparked widespread condemnation on social media and a call for education from injured Eagles superstar Naitanui, who later volunteered to meet with the young boy.

The mother posted the photo on popular Perth blogger Constance Hall's Facebook page, who deleted the picture because she didn't agree with the use of "blackface". Ms Hall, who has over 880,00 followers, received deaths threats then overwhelming support on social media after she posted a picture of herself crying because of the venomous attacks. "I got dressed. I didn't think I could. But I checked out of the hotel and I was hugged in the lobby by a beautiful woman, I cried again but it was such a relief. "So I want you to know that all of these messages and supportive comments have reached me. "So far in the last hour I have been hugged by three strangers in Freo. I feel like those hugs are coming from all of you, you have reached me. You'll never know how much you mean to me.

"Thank you so much." Perth dad Daniel Johnstone who painted his son "whiteface" to look like Cousins said the fact he received no backlash on social media highlighted why society might laugh at drug problems but react differently to racial issues like Naitanui "blackface" controversy. "I think it's quite damning to Australians that 20,000 people thought it [the Cousins photo] was funny and everyone was jumping on the Nic Nat kid," he said. Loading " I think there is a bit of double-standard in society with political correctness.
NSW Minister for Education Adrian Piccoli has vowed to fight if money is cut from the state's schools. Credit:Louie Douvis "We had the chance to do away with this interminable money squabble between the sectors especially. Gonski had a solution, but now that chance is gone," says Chris Bonnor, education expert from the Centre for Policy Development. "The next conversation will be about redistributing the funding that's available. That's an unhappy conversation because no one will agree to what comes out of that." Federal Education Minister Simon Birmingham wants one funding model for all states. Credit:Louise Kennerley That conversation starts officially on September 23, when federal Education Minister Simon Birmingham is due to sit down with his state counterparts to hash out a new agreement for school funding that goes beyond 2017 where the current arrangements end.

The political forecast for the meeting is inclement. Ken Boston was an architect of the Gonski reforms but says 'Gonski is now history'. If that means they're going to take money off NSW, then that's war. Adrian Piccoli, NSW Education Minister Or, as Labor's education spokeswoman Tanya Plibersek puts it: "The federal government will be turning up to this ministerial meeting, having cut $29 billion from schools, asking the states and territories to do more, and expecting them to be happy with that." Skirmishes have already begun among the stakeholders, with a shot across the bow from the Australian Education Union this week. It released analysis by education academic Dr Jim McMorrow that found on the current model, of the promised extra $1.2 billion only $450 million (38 per cent) would go to public schools and $750 million (62 per cent) to private schools.

The union's federal president Correna Haythorpe said the analysis showed it was clear the Coalition had no commitment to needs-based funding and its plan would deny students the help they needed at school. The federal government, Catholic and independent school sectors, all rejected this as a politically motivated report. The complexities and politics of school funding make it almost impenetrable to the casual observer. Most people just want to know that their child's school is at least getting what is fair, what it needs to do the best for its students. But right now, depending on your school, that is just not happening. Similar schools in different states get different levels of support. And now the clock is ticking, with states and individual schools uncertain about their funding allocation from the end of next year.

"Something needs to happen, some new deal needs to be done," says Peter Goss, schools education director from the Grattan Institute. "The government can try to take the high road, and take some tough decisions that ensure funding goes to where it will make the most difference. Otherwise, the government schools will continue in aggregate to be funded below their entitlement. The state governments will keep yelling about it, and we will continue an unconstructive, poisonous debate." The apparent moment of consensus, the famous unity ticket on school funding that Tony Abbott took into the 2013 election, fell apart months later when then education minister Christopher Pyne reneged on the six-year Gonski deal made by the previous Labor government. He indicated the Coalition would only fund the first four years and funding after that would grow in line with CPI. That meant school funding would stay at the increased level but the funding gap between relatively privileged and disadvantaged schools would no longer narrow. The final two years  that's 2018-2019  are where the bulk of the Gonski funds were supposed to flow. Ahead of this year's election, and under pressure from Labor which was making gains with its popular schools funding policy, Education Minister Simon Birmingham announced the Coalition would commit $1.2 billion in additional funds for those final two years, or about one-third of what the original agreement had set out.

In a significant move away from the Gonski model, the federal government made that money contingent on the states and territories implementing the federal government's education reforms designed to boost student literacy and numeracy, teaching and school leadership. Some states have indicated an in-principle objection to tied grants. But in NSW, which has implemented many of the reforms already, it's the distribution model  how they will carve up that $1.2 billion  that is at stake at this month's COAG meeting. If past form is a guide, it's going to be fiery. "What I'm concerned about is that the federal government has made noises about redistributing money between states within the existing Commonwealth budget envelope," says NSW Education Minister Adrian Piccoli. "And if that means they're going to take money off NSW, then that's war." Piccoli, who runs the largest school system in the country, has implemented the Gonski model in NSW, where funding for state schools is being distributed on a measured needs basis. He rejects the argument, made frequently by the federal minister, that Australia has increased funding for years with no improvement in results.

"As the Productivity Commission report [this week] said, for that 10-year period before 2013, additional money was spent but spent in the wrong places. Gonski acknowledged that the funds had gone to the wrong places and recommended how you direct funding to the right places. Which was funding individual student need." He is furious about the federal government reneging on its agreement to fund schools on this basis in 2018 and beyond. "We signed an agreement in good faith," he says. "We made difficult decisions in NSW so that we could get money into these schools that desperately need it for their children. And if the Commonwealth think they're going to take it away they will have to fight me for it." It may yet be fisticuffs, as Birmingham would not rule out NSW losing out. He says he wants to replace the 27 different funding models with a simpler and fairer one for all states, and that future funding would be distributed according to need. "Public school students receive significantly more total government funding per student than what goes to private school students," he says. "On average, total government funding for a student going to a public school is over $16,000 per year, while the government support for a student attending a non-government school is $9300  more than 40 per cent less."

Labor's line that there are $29 billion in cuts to education is not true, he says. "There are no cuts to school funding and total school funding across Australia will grow from $16 billion in 2016 to $20.1 billion in 2020 and we will be working to ensure that funding is increased each year so that schools currently delivering valuable programs can continue to do so." Birmingham would not comment on Boston's concern about the fairness of millions in public money going to the wealthiest schools in the country. "I agree with Dr Boston where he says that Bill Shorten running around the country in 2013, signing premiers, bishops and the various education lobbies up to 27 different funding deals was a 'corruption of the Gonski report'," he says. "The Turnbull government is determined to right this corruption of the Gonski report and replace the patchwork quilt that Labor cobbled together with a new, simpler distribution model where special deals don't distort real need." But if a state such as South Australia is to get "more" of the $1.2 billion under the new system, as Birmingham told an audience at the University of South Australia in June, even if you had a lousy STEM teacher in primary school, it is not difficult to conclude that other states will get less.

Boston's solution to this infernal mess is, in fact, not to spend any more money. But it's still unlikely as it involves what has so far been political kryptonite: taking public money from wealthy schools. "The solution to Australia's education problem is not pouring more public money into education, but redistributing the existing funding strategically, to address the things that matter in the schools that need it," he said in his speech. "Far too much is spent in wealthy, independent schools where recurrent funding can be used to service loans on capital works, not necessarily to provide a better education, but to provide facilities to make the school more attractive than its other high fee-paying competitors." Loading Gonski's plan may well be dead, or at least on life support as long as federal Labor is behind it.
A gunman is on the run in Sydney's south-west after shooting a man in the leg and threatening two other people with a gun at a nearby home.

The shooting on a quiet suburban street in Greenacre on Friday morning happened metres from the gates of St John Vianney Catholic Primary School, which was put into lockdown for over an hour.

Witnesses say at least three shots rang out on Pandora St about 9.30am before they found Robert Chorbadjian sprawled on the driveway of a church.

Police believe the gunman shot Mr Chorbadjian before threatening two other people in a nearby home and then speeding from the area in a car.
The mother of a primary school teacher accused of grooming and indecently assaulting students has leapt to her son's defence saying she pities every male teacher.

Shane Andrew Matthews, 29, allegedly groomed and indecently assaulted three male students at a primary school in Sydney's south-west between 2012 and 2015.

Charged: School teacher Shane Matthews has been accused of grooming and indecently assaulting students.

He has taught at Wattle Grove Public School, and started a new role as an assistant principal at Woodland Road Public School at the beginning of this year.

A school newsletter announcing Mr Matthew's departure to start in the new position described him as a "wonderful asset at our school for seven years", and a teacher with "amazing expertise" in creative and practical arts.
The last time Ray Plibersek was involved in the Sutherland Shire Council, he spent seven years handling complaints from ratepayers, including allegations of improper behaviour by councillors and staff.

But on Saturday, more than three years after his office of internal ombudsman was shut down, Mr Plibersek is set to join the citywide ranks of new councillors after securing Labor's leading spot in one of Sutherland's five wards.

Forced mergers of councils across the state - and legal challenges to those amalgamations by a clutch of local governments - has dislocated the usual operation of Sydney's local democracy.

Residents of 11 councils in the greater Sydney region are set to vote on Saturday for local government representatives, but the majority of the city's councils will not go to the polls for another year.
DECATUR  Cooper Broderick, 7, was full of questions for the South Korean college student with whom he and his family had just been matched for the fall semester.

Does she like video games? Does she have two sisters and one brother?

Yujin Jeong, a junior at Millikin University, replied not really and no, the only sibling she has is one brother.

But she also had some questions for the Brodericks, including Cooper's parents Jared and Bailey and siblings Oliver, 5, and Charlotte, 3. Have you ever tried kimchi? she asked.

This is a sample of the conversations that took place Thursday evening during the kickoff of an International Host Family Program pairing 12 international students at Millikin with 12 Dennis School families.

The idea is for the families to invite their international students for occasional meals and outings to give themselves and their student a deeper understanding of another culture.

Learning doesn't just happen within the four walls of your school, Raphaella Prange, Millikin's dean of student development, told the gathering. This program is another addition to what has become a robust partnership between Dennis and Millikin.

Indeed, the four-year-old partnership got a big boost nearly a year ago when Trevor May, then a senior at Millikin, was hired as partnership liaison. Last year he helped host middle-schoolers on campus for a series of Big Blue Days and helped give some of them college buddies in the form of Millikin fraternity and sorority members.

Now an MBA student, May continues as liaison and was emcee for Thursday's kickoff at Dennis School. This is a very big step for the partnership, he said.

Prange told the group that children in grades K-12 who participate in global learning are four times more likely to earn a bachelor's degree than children who do not. She added that Millikin currently has 55 international students representing 28 countries.

Nicole Bateman, community marketing manager for the Economic Development Corporation of Decatur and Macon County, was also among Thursday evening's speakers and praised the program and its participants.

Many of the families in the room are already (Decatur City) Limitless Ambassadors, Bateman said. The international students are our first international ambassadors.

Jared and Bailey Broderick said they wanted to introduce their children to other cultures in much the same way Jared was when his family participated in Decatur's Sister Cities program with Seevetal, Germany, while he was a student at MacArthur High School.

Jeong said she wants to learn about a new culture, too, and that she is already charmed by the three Broderick children. They're super cute, she said.
A teenager accused of making threats to attack the Sydney Opera House allegedly told security guards that he travelled to the forecourt of the iconic attraction with a backpack containing canisters of brake fluid on the "instructions of Islamic State".

The 18-year-old man, from Narwee, has an intellectual disability and police don't believe he had any capability to carry out an attack.

The man allegedly said he was at the Opera House on the instructions of Islamic State. Credit:Brendon Thorne

However, terrorism investigators felt like they had no other option but to charge the man on Thursday night after his behaviour had escalated in recent weeks.

The teen appeared via video-link in Central Local Court on Friday charged with threatening to destroy or damage property.
As far as administrative errors go, it's a doozy.

So determined were the directors of the Fire Brigade Employees' Union to vote in the City of Sydney election, they started completing their enrolment forms nine months before voting day.

And while their organisation is in fact enrolled to vote, succeeding where many other businesses failed, two unwilling directors of a different organisation were enrolled to cast the FBEU's vote on Saturday.

This is because council staff mistakenly assigned the union's two votes to an entirely separate, albeit similarly titled, organisation: the Fire Brigades Employees' Credit Union.
Work will begin before Christmas on a $1.13 billion, four-year project to widen the Bruce Highway on the Sunshine Coast between Caloundra Road and the Sunshine Motorway to six lanes.

Queensland's Main Roads Minister Mark Bailey said on Friday morning tenders for the project would be called soon.

Main Roads Minister Mark Bailey, pictured with Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, this week led a delegation to Sydney to argue the Turnbull government provide 80 per cent of the funds for the two Pacific Motorway projects. Credit:Renee Melides

"Tenders are expected to be announced for this in the coming weeks," Mr Bailey said, as he continued his call for the federal government to provide 80 per cent of funding towards some national highways in Queensland.

Main Roads' project details for the Caloundra Road to Sunshine Motorway section of the Bruce Highway show preliminary work would begin before Christmas.
Best to take a jumper and a poncho if you're heading to Friday night's MCG blockbuster between Geelong and Hawthorn.

The temperature is expected to drop 5 degrees about 8pm and intermittent rain if forecast throughout the game.

Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Rod Dickson said the temperature would drop to 13 degrees when the siren sounds for the first bounce.

His advice: "I would take a coat and poncho, yes. It will be cold, and damp, and windy."
The final straw was the mice. They scuttled over Loretta's sleeping children, crawled into the bedding and under pillows. They scampered across the kitchen table as the children ate breakfast.

And nothing worked; not bait or traps. They even gnawed holes in the new portable cot while Loretta's one-year-old, Sienna Rose, slept.

Loretta in the motel room with her four children; Lynkon, 10, (rear) Sienna Rose, 1, Tamyin, 4, (left) and Makeysha, 5. Credit:Jason South

When Loretta Medcraft moved to Melbourne in May from Tasmania to be closer to family and friends, one bedroom in this rodent-infested share house in Sunshine was all she could afford.

One room cost $450 per month plus bills - about 40 per cent of her income - and she and her four children shared with five men.
Nina Nicholson's killer has never been caught. Credit:Justin McManus Every time Robert was away, she swore she could hear someone creeping outside their house. She hadn't told her parents what was going on until one night when she got really scared. She rung them in the middle of the night, wild with fear, saying there was someone outside. But this time, she was on night shift. After having dinner with her Mum and Dad she went home at 8pm to get changed for work at 9.30pm.

By 9.40pm, a friend from the hospital had rung the Jones'; the normally conscientious Nina hadn't turned up. Andrew woke his father up and the two of them drove to Nina's house to find her white Nissan still parked outside. They went around the side and found Nina, in her blue nurse's uniform, lying face down on the back porch. Spike got Andrew, then 17, to call police, while he rushed back home to collect Ann who, when she arrived, cradled her battered daughter in her arms. The local policeman arrived and tried CPR, so too a neighbour, Paul Keay. It was too late. Nina had been bludgeoned to death.

All this happened 25 years ago today. "It is so hard to believe, I sort of think 'How have we gotten through the last 25 years?' I honestly thought we never would," Ann said. Spike and Ann still live in Clunes and in the same house they did back then. It's the sort of town where everybody knows everybody. So who knows who killed Nina? Examinations of the crime scene later revealed she had struggled violently with her killer, who wielded what police described a "blunt instrument". Her killer, who she may well have known, has never been brought to justice.

Police believe this person wasn't, as is more often than not in homicides, someone close to Nina. Not her family, or her husband, or relatives or friends or workmates. But what if the killer lived close by? In the days after the murder, detectives interviewed all of her neighbours. They were looking for witnesses, and in some cases, suspects. They were able to account for everyone's movements, except for one, who they interviewed several times and released without a charge. "Our life has been a rollercoaster life. We had our hopes built up and boom down they go," Ann said

"But I do [still] hope. We both hope that somebody, maybe, will have a bit of a conscience and say something because if the police have another little bit, it might be enough." A million-dollar reward for information that leads to her killer was put in place last year. For Spike and Ann and Andrew, an answer to the "who" would give them justice and  if not peace  at least some degree of satisfaction, Ann said. Maybe then the thoughts that barge into her head at night would shift. "I'd like to remember her in the happy times," Ann said.
A Perth man accused of being a member of the 'Evil 8' paedophile ring is in custody after he failed to show up to court on Friday morning to enter his plea.

Police confirmed that following his no show in court, detectives acted swiftly to apprehend Alfred John Impicciatore on Friday afternoon.

Alfred John Impicciatore, 46, has pleaded not guilty to child abuse charges. Credit:LinkedIn

Mr Impicciatore was expected to enter a plea in the Perth Magistrates court to four counts of sexually penetrating a child over 13 and under 16, one count of breach of bail and one count of possessing child exploitation material.

The charges relate to the sexual abuse of a 12-year-old girl who was raped and pimped out to multiple men by her father for two years until she was 14-years-old.
London: The Taliban's push into Tarin Kot, the Afghan city where Australian soldiers fought and died, has not weakened Australia's resolve to stay in the country working for peace, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop says.

The situation in Afghanistan was to be a "subject of considerable discussion" between British and Australian foreign and defence ministers at a meeting in London on Friday, she said.

Boris Johnson and Julie Bishop catch up at 10 Downing Street on Thursday. Credit:Australian High Commission

"Both the UK and Australia have been committed to the security and safety and prosperity and nation building in Afghanistan for many years now.

"A number of Australians paid the ultimate price, a number of Australians have been in Afghanistan defending the local people and working with the government to try and establish order in a very troubled part of the world.
Australian DJ Jake Mastroianni at a bar. Credit:Soundcloud At Pattaya's police station officers combined the 200 pills they found in Whitmore's possession with the 61 pills found in the apartment of Mastroianni's girlfriend. When forensically examined they were found to contain 27.8 grams of pure MDMA, the ecstasy substance. Australian DJ Jake Mastroianni. Credit:Soundcloud Mr Feeney told Fairfax Media that no drugs were found on Mastroianni or in any of his belongings.

He pointed out that the 61 ecstasy pills were discovered in an apartment rented in the name of his Thai girlfriend who was never charged with any offence. Australian DJ Jake Mastroianni in a promotional poster for a Pattaya nightclub in 2014. Credit:Facebook "Jake didn't live in the apartment. He stayed there on and off. It was her apartment in her name," Mr Feeney told Fairfax Media. "That is a key point. Did Jake have possession of the pills?" Mr Feeney said he was "mystified" why police charged Mastroianni with both possession of the drug and possession with intention to sell it when in fact it was Whitmore who was caught in the act.

Mastroianni refused to plead guilty at his trial, which led to the double life sentence, unlike Whitmore, who pleaded guilty and copped the lesser sentence of 50 years jail. Whitmore, who was working at the time for a Thai petroleum company, told his family he was carrying the pills for a dealer and that he was tortured and kept in a police "safe house" for three days after his arrest. Whitmore too is in Klong Prem prison, facing the prospect of being an old man when he is released. "It's worse than a POW campthere are cockroaches everywhere and they feed the prisoners rotten rice and fish heads," said his father Russell Whitmore, who had opened a bar in Pattaya, adding that his son sleeps on a concrete floor in a cell with 74 prisoners. The cell block is designed for 20. Mastroianni and Whitmore were shackled together when they appeared in a Bangkok court last Tuesday. The judge turned down appeals against their sentences.

They now have 30 days to decide whether to lodge a further appeal or to apply for more time to consider it. Mr Feeney said Mastroianni was looking at a prisoner transfer scheme that could see him serve some of his sentence in an Australian jail. Prisoners who receive a life sentence in Thailand must serve eight years before being eligible for a transfer. Mastroianni has already served two, meaning he would have to wait another six years before becoming eligible to return to Australia. Deciding to lodge a further appeal carries further risk in a country where judges often impose harsher sentences on those who contest verdicts.

Under Thai law the amount of ecstasy Mastroianni was charged with possessing and intending to sell is in the highest bracket and carries a possible death sentence. Mr Feeney said Mastroianni has spent time in the prison hospital for heat exhaustion or a flu-like illness but has made some friends. He said his client has been able to cope "fairly well" so far in the prison also known as the "Bangkok Hilton". Loading "Other people in his position may have gone mad  some people do," he said.
Washington: This is empire in decay stuff. It's as though one of the crazies in Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest has nipped away from the asylum and is standing in as the Republican presidential candidate  and Americans are so besotted by his cockamamie performance that the gap in opinion polls has closed - to the point of most being within the margin of error.

So what are Donald Trump's latest offences?

Well, on national TV on Wednesday evening, he bagged the entire US military top brass and hinted that, as president, he'd purge the Pentagon.

He twice denigrated US President Barack Obama, claiming that his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin "was far more" a leader. And when it was suggested that Putin was very much an angry autocrat, Trump dug in: "Do you want me to start naming some of the things that President Obama does at the same time?"
MOUNT ZION -- Jeremy McLean has gone through an adjustment period with his new partner, Saudo.

An officer at the Mount Zion Police Department, McLean has undergone two months of training with his partner to forge a bond, learning Saudos quirks and how to manage his temperament.

While Saudo is skilled in sniffing out drugs and finding hidden evidence, he is still working on the part about listening and being house broken.

The department has joined its colleagues in the Macon County Sheriffs Office and other nearby municipalities by receiving its own K-9 in Saudo, a 2-year-old Belgian Malinois, in spring.

After spending most of the summer training at the countys K-9 training facility, Saudo is ready to officially patrol the village.

(Saudo) is pretty hard-headed, but hes come along way, McLean said.

Having a K-9 for the department was something that had been discussed for years, with Police Chief Adam Skundberg citing benefits such as locating missing people, detecting illegal narcotics, tracking wanted offenders and even being part of community outreach efforts.

When situations have occurred in the past that required a K-9, which happen on a weekly basis, Skundberg said they were at the mercy of what was available.

In the past, when weve needed a dog, it depended on whether the county had one available, he said. If they did, great. If they didnt, then wed just have to work without one.

The main deterrent for getting a K-9 was the the "significant" startup costs that had officials push aside the idea of having a dog to the future or whenever a better opportunity presented itself.

When a grant from the Howard G. Buffett Foundation for about $80,000 became available earlier this year, Skundberg said the department realized this could be that opportunity.

We decided to pull the trigger on it, Skundberg said.

The grant covers the cost of not only the K-9, but also the dogs training and to outfit the department with its own K-9 vehicle, equipped with a kennel in the back.

Once awarded with the grant in spring, the department worked with the Macon County Sheriffs Office to find the right dog. That search eventually led to Belgium, home of the Belgian Malinois breed known for their work with other police forces around the world and the preferred breed for the U.S. Secret Service.

The search ended in April, when Saudo arrived in Mount Zion and ready for service. The only question next was who would become the handler and partner with the newest member of the police department.

When the requests for the role came into Skundbergs office, the chief knew that McLean was the right fit.

An eight-year veteran of the department, McLean has spent time training his German shorthaired pointer for bird and game hunting. The idea of doing some of that work with Saudo appealed to McLean.

I enjoy it, and Ive been around training dogs for awhile, McLean said.

The training did not end with the county K-9 program or when McLean is off the clock, as Saudo lives in a kennel built in McLeans backyard. and the two will spend the evenings doing more training to strengthen their relationship.

The community has already come to embrace Saudo, and the department recently received a donation from Nestle Purina PetCare Co. of enough dog food to last for at least a year.

As Saudo gets more established with the department and with his handler, the hope is he can be used not only in cases in the village but to also assist departments in neighboring communities in need of a K-9.

Saudo can be a real asset not only for Mount Zion, but for the entire area, Skundberg said.
Gaza: Christian aid group World Vision has laid off contractors in the Gaza Strip following allegations by Israel that an agency staff member had diverted funds to Hamas, which Israel says is a terrorist organisation.

In an August 29 letter handed to around 120 contractors at a meeting in Gaza, the NGO said its bank accounts in Jerusalem had been frozen by Israeli authorities and it was no longer able to transfer money to Gaza, making it impossible to pay them.

Amal el-Halabi holds her grandson Fares, 18 months old, while her grandson Amro, 7, holds a picture of his father Mohammed el-Halabi, World Vision's Gaza operations manager, who Israel accuses of diverting funds to Hamas. The alleged figures exceed the total World Vision budget for Gaza. Credit:Adel Hana/AP

The letter said World Vision was living through a crisis and its sources of funding had been affected. The letter was written in Arabic and a copy sent to Reuters.

"Because of the crisis, we have frozen all our activities in Gaza. Our bank accounts in Jerusalem were frozen by the (Israeli) authorities, which also prevented us from making any transfers to Gaza," the letter said.
Bangkok: The leaders of Thailand and Malaysia agreed on Friday to increase intelligence sharing on security and to move forward the possibly of building a border wall to combat transnational terrorism and smuggling.

People-trafficking and the smuggling of contraband, including drugs and petrol, have flourished along the Thai-Malay border for years until a crackdown by Thai officials on human traffickers caused some of the routes to shut down last year.

Analysts say that separatist insurgents operating in Thailand's deep south use Malaysia as a base to launch and plan their attacks.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak told reporters that security remained "a very important matter" for both countries and that there was an agreement to increase intelligence gathering and sharing to apprehend cross-border terrorism.
Paris: French police have arrested three women who were plotting imminent terrorist attacks, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said.

A police officer and a suspect were injured in the raid on an apartment in Boussy-Saint-Antoine, south-east of Paris on Thursday evening .

The arrests resulted from an investigation of a car containing gas cylinders found near Paris's Notre Dame cathedral earlier this week. The owner of the car was the father of one of the suspects, France Info radio reported.

The Peugeot was found in the early hours of Sunday morning on a Seine riverside road. Documents with writing in Arabic were also found in the car, which had no registration plates and was left with its hazard lights flashing.
WASHINGTON: US Navy SEALs led an unsuccessful raid last month to free an American university professor and his Australian colleague who are being held by the Taliban, engaging in fierce gunbattle with dozens of insurgents at a remote compound in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, officials said on Thursday.

The rescue mission was launched in the days after the professors, Kevin King, the American, and Timothy Weeks, the Australian, were taken at gunpoint August 7 from their vehicle in Kabul near the campus of the American University of Afghanistan, where they teach. The officials said the group of SEAL members, backed by Army Rangers, are believed to have missed the men by hours.

Security forces rush to respond to a Taliban attack on the campus of the American University in the Afghan capital Kabul on August 24 nearly three weeks after Timothy Weeks was kidnapped. Credit:Rahmat Gul

The Pentagon confirmed in a statement that a raid had taken place to rescue two civilians, but it said "the hostages were not at the location we suspected." No Americans were killed, though "a number" of insurgents were, it said.

The raid, which was first reported by Fox News, was authorised by President Barack Obama, the Pentagon said. "In order to protect the safety of hostages and operational security," its statement did not specify whom exactly the SEAL members were seeking to rescue or provide any more details about the raid.
GREAT BAY (DCOMM):--- Ministry of Public Housing, Environment, Spatial Development and Infrastructure (Ministry VROMI), announces that maintenance of the sewage pit will take place at the intersection of Middle Region road and Hulda B. Richardson.

The aforementioned will be carried out on Saturday, September 10 from 7.00AM to 12.00PM. The works will be carried out by Windward Roads Infrastructure.

There will be through traffic via Bimini road and Ellis drive.

Motorists are advised to drive with caution as workmen will be busy in the aforementioned area and to pay attention to traffic signs and persons directing traffic.

Ministry VROMI apologizes for any inconveniences this may cause.
Construction Halted on Federal Lands; Oil Company asked to Suspend Work Nearby

Protests across the country brought in a small victory for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and their many supporters when the U.S. government promised to temporarily halt all construction on government owned land.

Hundreds gathered in cities as far away as Denver and Tulsa to protest the fast-track approval given to Energy Transfer Partners and their subsidiary Dakota Access, LLC. Evidence indicates that approval sidestepped appropriate consultation with affected Tribes, as well as historical preservation requirements and environmental assessments.

The pipeline is planned to go under the Missouri River, the only water source for the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in Washington rejected a request for a court order to stop the project, but the government blocked construction in a response to growing opposition.

Dakota Access made the bizarre decision last Saturday to leap ahead of their obvious construction route and sneak in on a holiday weekend to destroy a sacred site and burial ground that were due to be assessed by the North Dakota Preservation Office. When Native American "Water Protectors" from the nearby protest camp marched in to stop the destruction, they were attacked by a private mercenary security team armed with mace and dogs.

After five months of peaceful protest, the Sacred Stone Camp finally got attention from the national media.

Thousands of protesters have gathered at the camp, representing as many as 200 tribes from across North America.

"This case has highlighted the need for a serious discussion on whether there should be nationwide reform with respect to considering tribes' views on these types of infrastructure projects," the U.S. Departments of Justice, Army and Interior said in a joint statement released minutes after Boasberg's ruling.

After Judge Boasberg said in his ruling that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers decision to fast-track the pipeline project was not illegal, tribal leaders quickly filed a notice of appeal.

In their joint statement, the three U.S. departments said they would schedule meetings with Native American leaders to discuss how the federal government can better consider the tribes' views and respect their land. They also said they respect protesters' rights to assemble and speak freely.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said it would halt construction on its property until after officials can re-examined Native American concerns about the pipeline as well as some previous projects.

The Corps called on Dakota Access to halt work on other land, as well, but as of Friday afternoon Dakota Access has not said whether it would comply with the request.

Amnesty International has sent a human rights observer delegation to monitor the gathering of Indigenous rights defenders and police response.

The Dakota Access pipeline is meant to carry crude oil from the Bakken shale, a vast oil formation in North Dakota, Montana and parts of Canada, directly to the U.S. Gulf.

It would span from just north of land owned by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe to Illinois, where it would connect with an existing pipeline.

Across the several states affected, Dakota Access has also faced protests from landowners who object to the use of eminent domain to force the sale of privately owned lands. Some of the farmlands at issue have been owned and operated by the same families for generations.

Arrests were made in Iowa at a landowners' protest last week.

ETP stock shares fell 3.6 percent to close at $39.14 on Friday.

See also: http://www.smobserved.com/story/2016/09/09/news/oil-company-destroys-burial-sites-in-holiday-sneak-attack/1895.html
Sen. Elizabeth Warren sends out a fundraising e mail crowing about the story.

The New York Times analysis of national and regional polls believes the Democrats are now "slight favorites" to take the US Senate back from the Republicans on November 8th. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/upshot/senate-election-forecast.html?_r=0

This is the first time in 2016, that the Democrats have been favored to take control of the Senate. One third of Senators are up for election each 2 year election cycle, and this year the Republicans have 22 seats potentially up for grabs. This makes them vulnerable to the Democrats.

The current Congress includes 54 Democrats, 44 Republicans, and 2 independents. Sen. Bernie Sanders is an independent who caucuses with the Democrats. Angus King of Maine is an independent who caucuses with the Democrats.

The Republicans won the Senate majority in the 2014 midterm elections when they gained nine seats and lost none. There are 24Republican seats and 10 Democratic seats up for re-election.

Senator Elizabeth Warren has sent out a fundraising e mail asking Movon.org Supporters to chip in $2.70 a month. She cites an article entitled "2016 Senate Election Forecast," The New York Times, accessed September 4, 2016 http://act.moveon.org/go/5411?t=57&akid=169102.19659920.Tm_3BC
No fan of Donald Trump, Assange really hates Hillary Clinton. Release may come on eve of 3d debate

Julian Assange Claims to have the goods on Hillary, and is planning an election surprise.

He lives in exile in an embassy in London and considers himself a journalist, while the Obama administration and many Americans consider him to be a traitor.

Appearing on Megyn Kelly's Fox News program, WikiLeaks founder and editor-in-chief Julian Assange said on Wednesday that he planned to release "significant" information linked to the campaign of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

Asked if the data could be a game-changer in the election, he said "I think it's significant. You know, it depends on how it catches fire in the public and in the media."

WikiLeaks released files in July of audio recordings taken from the emails of the Democratic National Committee. These were obtained by hacking its servers. That release, during the Democratic National Convention where Clinton was officially named the party's presidential nominee, was the second batch in a series that deeply rattled the Democratic party, and ultimately forced DNC chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, to step down--which Assange seemed to brag about tonight.

Kelly speculated that the timing of the dump would be just before Clinton's third debate with Donald Trump. Everyone would be tuned in then and it would do the most damage to Clinton, she said, referring to the Obama administration's hunt for Assange. It was led by then Secretary of State Clinton.

On 4 July 2016, WikiLeaks tweeted a link to a trove of emails sent or received by then-US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton published on their website. The leak contained 1258 emails sent from Clinton's personal mail server which were selected in terms of their relevance to the Iraq War and were apparently timed to precede the release of the UK government's Iraq Inquiry report.

On 22 July 2016, WikiLeaks released approximately 20,000 emails and 8,000 files sent from or received by Democratic National Committee (DNC) personnel. Some of the emails contained personal information of donors, including home addresses and Social Security numbers. Other emails appeared to present ways to undercut Bernie Sanders and showed apparent favoritism towards Clinton.

WikiLeaks is an international non-profit group of journalists that publishes secret information, news leaks, and steals or appropriates classified media from anonymous sources.

Julian Assange Claims to have the goods on Hillary, and is planning an election surprise.

Its website, initiated in 2006 in Iceland by the organization Sunshine Press, claimed a database of more than 1.2 million documents within a year of its launch.

Julian Assange, an Australian Internet activist, is generally described as its founder, editor-in-chief, and director. Kristinn Hrafnsson, Joseph Farrell, and Sarah Harrison are the only other publicly known and acknowledged associates of Julian Assange. Hrafnsson is also a member of Sunshine Press Productions along with Assange, Ingi Ragnar Ingason, and Gavin MacFadyen.

The group has released a number of significant documents that have become front-page news items. Early releases included documentation of equipment expenditures and holdings in the Afghanistan war and a report informing a corruption investigation
His film, "The Settlers," is reportedly negative view of Israelis living in the West Bank

Indirect pressure on a faculty member at Syracuse University forced her to disinvite an Israeli filmmaker from a planned 2017 conference on religion in film, as reported by Legal Insurrection.

The Israeli filmmaker, Shimon Dotan, is a professor at New York University. His film, "The Settlers," is reportedly negative view of Israelis living in the West Bank. The Boycott-Divest-Sanction movement against Israel claims that it is Israeli occupation of the West Bank that is their concern and the reason for the actions they demand against Israel.

It is therefore the mere fact that Dotan is from Israel that apparently prompted one of the conference's organizers to rescind his invitation to the film festival. The subject of the film, critical of Israeli settlement in this territory, should have been welcome by anti-Israel faculty.

However, Syracuse professor Gail Hamner wrote in her email to Dotan declining his invitation,

"I now am embarrassed to share that my SU colleagues, on hearing about my attempt to secure your presentation, have warned me that the BDS faction on campus will make matters very unpleasant for you and for me if you come. In particular my film colleague in English who granted me affiliated faculty in the film and screen studies program and who supported my proposal to the Humanities Council for this conference told me point blank that if I have not myself seen your film and cannot myself vouch for it to the Council, I will lose credibility with a number of film and Women/Gender studies colleagues. Sadly, I have not had the chance to see your film and can only vouch for it through my friend and through published reviews."

The colleagues referenced by Hamner in the email who are BDS and who intended to make matters very unpleasant have not been identified. Nor is it clear why Women/Gender studies faculty should oppose Israel or Israelis, particularly when Israel is only country in the Middle East with equality and full legal rights for women.

BDS Mistakenly Disinvites Anti-Israel Filmmaker

Once Dotan went public with the reason for his film getting pulled from SU's conference, the university responded that this was an error in judgment and promised to show his film on campus through some mechanism other than the "Place of Religion in Film" conference. Perhaps they got the memo that his film is actually anti-Israel.

As Legal Insurrection notes in their article (at http://legalinsurrection.com/2016/09/demand-a-full-and-transparent-investigation-of-syracuse-u-disinvite-of-israeli-filmmaker/), while few formal academic groups have voted for an academic boycott of Israel, the informal, underlying pressure to discriminate against Israelis - meaning Israeli Jews- can be intimidating and distort the academic atmosphere. The relationship between anti-Zionist BDS and simple anti-Semitism is so close as to be indistinguishable.
For once, a piece of anonymous Internet flotsam that isn't quite so anonymous. Although the tale below now appears on numerous web sites credited to one "Peter Leppik," its real author was the USENET netizen known as Captain Sarcastic, who posted it to a few newsgroups in December 1993.

The following is a true story. It amused the hell out of me while it was happening. I hope it isn't one of those "had to be there" things.

On my way home from the second job I've taken for the extra holiday ca$h I need, I stopped at Taco Bell for a quick bite to eat. In my billfold is a $50 bill and a $2 bill. That is all of the cash I have on my person. I figure that with a $2 bill, I can get something to eat and not have to worry about people getting mad at me.

Me: "Hi, I'd like one seven layer burrito please, to go."

Server: "Is that it?"

Me: "Yep."

Server: "That'll be $1.04, eat here?"

Me: "No, it's "TO-GO" [I hate effort duplication]

At this point I open my billfold and hand him the $2 bill. He looks at it kind of funny and ...

Server: "Uh, hang on a sec, I'll be right back."

He goes to talk to his manager, who is still within earshot. The following conversation occurs between the two of them:

Server: "Hey, you ever see a $2 bill?"

Manager: "No. A what?"

Server: "A $2 bill. This guy just gave it to me."

Manager: "Ask for something else, THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS A $2 BILL."

Server: "Yeah, thought so."

He comes back to me and says:

Server: "We don't take these. Do you have anything else?"

Me: "Just this fifty. You don't take $2 bills? Why?"

Server: "I don't know."

Me: "See here where it says legal tender?"

Server: "Yeah."

Me: "So, shouldn't you take it?"

Server: "Well, hang on a sec."

He goes back to his manager who is watching me like I'm going to shoplift.

Server: "He says I have to take it."

Manager: "Doesn't he have anything else?"

Server: "Yeah, a fifty. I'll get it and you can open the safe and get change."

Manager: "I'M NOT OPENING THE SAFE WITH HIM IN HERE." [My emphasis]

Server: "What should I do?"

Manager: "Tell him to come back later when he has REAL money."

Server: "I can't tell him that, you tell him."

Manager: "Just tell him."

Server: "No way, this is weird, I'm going in back."

The manager approaches me and says:

Manager: "Sorry, we don't take big bills this time of night." [It was 8pm and this particular Taco Bell is in a well lighted indoor mall with 100 other stores.]

Me: "Well, here's a two."

Manager: "We don't take those either."

Me: "Why the hell not?"

Manager: "I think you know why."

Me: "No really, tell me, why?"

Manager: "Please leave before I call mall security."

Me: "Excuse me?"

Manager: "Please leave before I call mall security."

Me: "What the hell for?"

Manager: "Please, sir."

Me: "Uh, go ahead, call them."

Manager: "Would you please just leave?"

Me: "No."

Manager: "Fine, have it your way then."

Me: "No, that's Burger King, isn't it?"

At this point he BACKS away from me and calls mall security on the phone around the corner. I have two people STARING at me from the dining area, and I begin laughing out loud, just for effect. A few minutes later this 45 year old-ish guy comes in and says [at the other end of counter, in a whisper]:

Security: "Yeah, Mike, what's up?"

Manager: "This guy is trying to give me some [pause] funny money."

Security: "Really? What?"

Manager: "Get this, a two dollar bill."

Security: "Why would a guy fake a $2 bill?" [Incredulous]

Manager: "I don't know? He's kinda weird. Says the only other thing he has is a fifty."

Security: "So, the fifty's fake?"

Manager: "NO, the $2 is."

Security: "Why would he fake a $2 bill?"

Manager: "I don't know. Can you talk to him, and get him out of here?"

Security: "Yeah ..."

Security guard walks over to me and says:

Security: "Mike here tells me you have some fake bills you're trying to use."

Me: "Uh, no."

Security: "Lemme see 'em."

Me: "Why?"

Security: "Do you want me to get the cops in here?"

At this point I was ready to say, "SURE, PLEASE," but I wanted to eat, so I said:

Me: "I'm just trying to buy a burrito and pay for it with this $2 bill."

I put the bill up near his face, and he flinches like I was taking a swing at him. He takes the bill, turns it over a few times in his hands, and says

Security: "Mike, what's wrong with this bill?"

Manager: "It's fake."

Security: "It doesn't look fake to me."

Manager: "But it's a $2 bill."

Security: "Yeah?"

Manager: "Well, there's no such thing, is there?"

The security guard and I both looked at him like he was an idiot, and it dawned on the guy that he had no clue. My burrito was free and he threw in a small drink and those cinnamon things, too. Makes me want to get a whole stack of $2 bills just to see what happens when I try to buy stuff. If I got the right group of people, I could probably end up in jail. At least you get free food.
Enghouse Releases Third Quarter Results

MARKHAM, ONTARIO  (Marketwired)  09/08/16  Enghouse Systems Limited (TSX: ESL) today announced its third quarter (unaudited) financial results for the period ended July 31, 2016.

Third quarter revenue was $76.4 million, an increase of 7.1% over revenue of $71.3 million in the third quarter last year. On a year to date basis, revenue was $229.3 million compared to $203.0 million last year, an increase of 12.9%. The revenue increase primarily reflects incremental revenue contributions from acquisitions and the favorable impact of foreign exchange compared to last year. Hosted and maintenance services revenue was $37.9 million in the quarter, an increase of 12.2% over the same period last year.

Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $21.6 million ($0.79 per diluted share) compared to $18.5 million ($0.68 per diluted share) in last years third quarter. Adjusted EBITDA for the year to date was $60.0 million ($2.20 per diluted share) compared to $50.9 million ($1.88 per diluted share) last year, an increase of 17.8%.

Net income for the quarter was $10.4 million ($0.38 per diluted share) compared to the prior years third quarter net income of $8.1 million ($0.30 per diluted share). Results from operating activities for the quarter were $20.6 million compared to $16.2 million in the prior years third quarter, an increase of 26.9% over the prior year.

Operating expenses before special charges related to restructuring of acquired operations were $31.4 million compared to $29.8 million in the prior years third quarter and reflect incremental operating costs related to acquisitions and the impact of favourable foreign exchange gains. Non-cash amortization charges in the quarter were $7.0 million compared to $5.7 million in the prior years third quarter and include amortization charges for acquired software and customer relationships from acquired operations.

Enghouse generated cash flows from operations of $16.4 million in the quarter and closed the quarter with $90.7 million in cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments, compared to $98.4 million at October 31, 2015. The cash balance was achieved after year-to-date payments related to acquisitions comprised of $36.2 million (net of cash acquired and holdbacks) for CTI Group (Holdings) Inc. acquired on December 7, 2015, CellVision AS acquired on March 4, 2016 and NetBoss Technologies acquired May 27, 2016. The Company paid $4.1 million for prior period acquisition holdbacks and $10.2 million in dividends. The Company continues to have no debt.

The Board of Directors has approved an eligible quarterly dividend of $0.14 per common share, payable on November 30, 2016 to shareholders of record at the close of business on November 16, 2016. Enghouse remains committed to its acquisition strategy and continues to seek accretive acquisitions.

A conference call to discuss the results will be held on Friday September 9, 2016 at 8:45 a.m. EST. To participate, please call 416-640-5946 or North American Toll-Free 1-866-233-4585. No PIN required.

About Enghouse

Enghouse Systems Limited is a leading global provider of enterprise software solutions serving a variety of distinct vertical markets. Its strategy is to build a diverse software company through strategic acquisitions targeting the Contact Center, Networks (OSS/BSS) and Transportation/Public Safety sectors. Enghouse shares are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol ESL. Further information about Enghouse may be obtained from the Companys website at .

Non-GAAP Measures

The Company uses non-GAAP measures to assess its operating performance. Securities regulations require that companies caution readers that earnings and other measures adjusted to a basis other than GAAP do not have standardized meanings and are unlikely to be comparable to similar measures used by other companies. Accordingly, they should not be considered in isolation. The Company uses Adjusted EBITDA as a measure of operating performance. Therefore, Adjusted EBITDA may not be comparable to similar measures presented by other issuers. Adjusted EBITDA is calculated as results from operating activities adjusted for depreciation of property, plant and equipment, and special charges for acquisition related restructuring costs. Management uses Adjusted EBITDA to evaluate operating performance as it excludes amortization of software and intangibles (which is an accounting allocation of the cost of software and intangible assets arising on acquisition), any impact of finance and tax related activities, asset depreciation, other income and restructuring costs primarily related to acquisitions.

Adjusted EBITDA:

The table below reconciles Adjusted EBITDA to the most directly comparable IFRS measure, Results from operating activities:

Contacts:

Enghouse Systems Limited

Sam Anidjar

Vice President, Corporate Development

(905) 946-3200
iovation and Equifax Limited to Unveil Ways Financial Institutions Ensure Security and Positive Customer Experience

PORTLAND, OR and LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM  (Marketwired)  09/09/16  , the provider of device intelligence for authentication and fraud prevention, today announced it and Equifax Limited will detail latest financial fraud trends and how to authenticate trusted customers without impeding the online experience in an upcoming webinar. The webinar entitled  will be held on Sept. 13 at 3pm BST/7am PDT.

In 2015, online UK banking fraud rose 64 percent to  133 million (about $176 million USD), highlighting that financial institutions are a primary target for fraudsters, said iovations Eddie Glenn. Given this rise, businesses need a layered approach to security that exposes insights that would otherwise be invisible.

During the webinar, UK financial firms will be given the tools to create a seamless consumer experience while mitigating fraud risks. iovation and Equifax will address:

Fraud and security trends impacting todays financial institutions and banks

Leveraging iovations database to reveal fraud risk associated with individual devices

The latest in risk management innovation with dynamic and automated risk-based authentication

Creating frictionless security across the consumer journey

Demonstrate how Equifax and iovation reduce fraud through collaborative solutions

Consumers turning online and to mobile devices for online account access and transactions are creating greater fraud risks, said Peter Harrison, identity and fraud product leader at Equifax Limited. However, high-friction authentication methods like texting one-time passcodes could have a negative impact on the online experience for some users. While increasing security, they can lead to frustration and potentially abandoned transactions.

The webinar will delve into how the iovation-powered Equifax Device Verifier enables risk mitigation while streamlining the customer journey. Using iovations device intelligence, Equifax Device Verifier assesses the risk of fraud associated with any device  minimizing delays in ensuring a customer is who they say they are. The service checks to see if there is any history of fraudulent activity linked to the device using , which looks at the reputations of more than 2.5 billion devices and 30 million fraud reports. It also analyzes real-time risk indicators such as device anomalies, excessive repeated use of the same device, and evasion techniques attempting to conceal the nature of the device or its location. This deep intelligence uncovers otherwise hidden associations between accounts and devices.

For more details and to register for the webinar, go to .

iovation protects online businesses and their end users against fraud and abuse, and identifies trustworthy customers through a combination of advanced device identification, shared device reputation, device-based authentication and real-time risk evaluation. More than 3,000 fraud managers representing global retail, financial services, insurance, social network, gaming and other companies leverage iovations database of more than 2.5 billion Internet devices and the relationships between them to determine the level of risk associated with online transactions. The companys device reputation database is the worlds largest, used to protect 16 million transactions and stop an average of 250,000 fraudulent activities every day. The worlds foremost fraud experts share intelligence, cybercrime tips and online fraud prevention techniques in iovations , an exclusive virtual crime-fighting network. For more information, visit .

Equifax, Inc. (Equifax) powers the financial future of individuals and organizations around the world. Using the combined strength of unique trusted data, technology and innovative analytics, Equifax has grown from a consumer credit company into a leading provider of insights and knowledge that helps its customers make informed decisions. The company organizes, assimilates and analyzes data on more than 800 million consumers and more than 88 million businesses worldwide, and its databases include employee data contributed from more than 5,000 employers.

Headquartered in Atlanta, Ga., Equifax operates or has investments in 24 countries in North America, Central and South America, Europe and the Asia Pacific region. It is a member of Standard & Poors (S&P) 500 Index, and its common stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the symbol EFX. Equifax employs approximately 9,200 employees worldwide.

Some noteworthy achievements for the company include: Ranked 13 on the American Banker FinTech Forward list (2015); named a Top Technology Provider on the FinTech 100 list (2004-2015); named an InformationWeek Elite 100 Winner (2014-2015); named a Top Workplace by Atlanta Journal Constitution (2013-2015); named one of Fortunes Worlds Most Admired Companies (2011-2015); named one of Forbes Worlds 100 Most Innovative Companies (2015). For more information, visit

Equifax Limited is one of the Equifax group companies based in the UK

Equifax Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority

iovation Inc.

Connie Gougler

503-943-6748
Schaeffler AG reduces indebtedness by EUR 1.7 billion

Posted by Publisher Internet

Following the successful refinancing at the level of IHO Holding, Schaeffler AG will receive approximately EUR 1.7 billion from the full prepayment of the Schaeffler AG Loan Note from IHO Holding, reducing Net Debt at Schaeffler AG to EUR 3.2 billion. On this basis, the Net Debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio falls on a pro forma basis to 1.3x as of June 30, 2016 (compared to 2.0x as reported).

The funds for the prepayment of the Loan Note result from today?s refinancing of IHO Holding, a group of holding companies indirectly owned by the Schaeffler Family. Following the significant oversubscription in both Europe and the USA, the originally contemplated bond issuance of EUR 2.5 billion equivalent was upsized by EUR 1.1 billion to EUR 3.6 billion equivalent.

Klaus Rosenfeld, CEO of the Schaeffler AG, said: ?The full prepayment of the Loan Note by IHO Holding is a strong sign of trust from our family shareholders. Through this transaction, we achieved our leverage target of 1.5x much earlier than expected and regain significant financial flexibility.?

Important Notice

This announcement does not contain or constitute an offer of, or the solicitation of an offer to buy or subscribe for, securities to any person in Australia, Canada, Japan, or the United States of America or in any jurisdiction to whom or in which such offer or solicitation is unlawful. Subject to certain exceptions, the securities referred to herein may not be offered or sold in Australia, Canada, Japan or the United States of America or to, or for the account or benefit of, any national, resident or citizen of Australia, Canada, Japan or the United States of America. The offer and sale of the securities referred to herein has not been and will not be registered under the applicable securities laws of Australia, Canada, Japan or the United States of America. There will be no public offer of the securities in any jurisdiction.

The securities referred to herein will not be registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the ?U.S. Securities Act?), or any U.S. State security laws and may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or an applicable exemption from the registration requirements of the U.S. Securities Act.

This document has been prepared on the basis that there was no public offering in connection with this transaction nor will there be a public offering of the securities. No approved prospectus was or will be prepared in connection with this transaction. Any offer of securities in any Member State of the European Economic Area (?EEA?) which has implemented the Prospectus Directive (2003/71/EC), as amended, including any relevant implementing measures to implement the Directive 2010/73/EU, (each, a ?Relevant Member State?) will only be made if no prospectus for offers of securities has to be published. Accordingly any person making or intending to make any offer in that Relevant Member State of securities which are the subject of the placement contemplated in this announcement may only do so in circumstances in which no obligation arises for Schaeffler to publish a prospectus pursuant to Article 3 of the Prospectus Directive (as amended by the Directive 2010/73/EU, to the extent such amendments have already been implemented in the Relevant Member State) or supplement a prospectus pursuant to Article 16 of the Prospectus Directive (as amended by the Directive 2010/73/EU, to the extent such amendments have already been implemented in the Relevant Member State), in each case, in relation to such offer. Schaeffler has not authorized, nor does it authorize, the making of any offer of securities in circumstances in which an obligation arises for Schaeffler to publish or supplement a prospectus for such offer.

Forward-looking statements and projections

Certain statements in this press release are forward-looking statements. By their nature, forward-looking statements involve a number of risks, uncertainties and assumptions that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. These risks, uncertainties and assumptions could adversely affect the outcome and financial consequences of the plans and events described herein. No one undertakes any obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. You should not place any undue reliance on forward-looking statements which speak only as of the date of this press release. Statements contained in this press release regarding past trends or events should not be taken as representation that such trends or events will continue in the future. The cautionary statements set out above should be considered in connection with any subsequent written or oral forward-looking statements that Schaeffler, or persons acting on its behalf, may issue.
There are three ambassadors of Armenia who do not file financial disclosures with the countrys Commission on Ethics of High-Ranking Officials.

In fact, neither the Commission nor the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have the power to obligate ambassadors to file such disclosures.

But this is where the matter gets more than a bit absurd. Theres a law stating that all top government officials, including ambassadors, must file financial disclosures. So, on the one hand, theres the law, and on the other, the Commission and the Ministry have no power to enforce it.

Armenias Ambassador to Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Armen Sarkissian (top photo), has never filed a financial disclosure since assuming the diplomatic post on September 27, 2013.

Neither has Victoria Baghdasaryan, Armenias Ambassador to Italy. She assumed the post on May 17, 2016.

Victoria Baghdasaryan and Charles Aznavour

Charles Aznavour, who has served as Armenias Ambassador to Switzerland since 2009, has also never filed any financial disclosures.

PHOTO Victoria Baghdasaryan, Charles Aznavour (photos mfa.am)

The Ethics Commission merely told Hetq that it has sent notices to the offending ambassadors, reminding them that they must file financial disclosures. A list of those ambassadors not complying with the law has also been sent by the Ethics Committee to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The Ethics Commission also informed Hetq that it is taking steps to improve legislation on the books in order that those violating the disclosure law can be held accountable.

This, it would seem, is an attempt to fill in the gaps after the fact. Why the Ethics Commission never possessed the powers necessary to implement the disclosure law in the first place remains yet another mystery of Armenian governance.

The EthicsCommission was formed on January 9, 2012. Since then, not one top official has been held accountable for not filing the required financial disclosures or for filing them incorrectly. Thats a track record worthy of some Scandinavian country, not Armenia.

Readers should note that nowhere in his resignation speech yesterday did Prime Minister Abrahamyan mention anything about this sorry state of affairs.

Hetq also contacted Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister Shavarsh Kocharyan. He said anything related to financial disclosures of ambassadors is not in the purview of the ministry. Kocharyan added that the ministry, on an annual basis, monitors the situation and sends out reminders, when necessary, to ambassadors.

It appears that the three ambassadors noted above could care less about these official reminders.
Noie: Of course Notre Dame was going to go away from home and do this

Notre Dame has played its best football far from South Bend this season. The Irish did it again Saturday in Central New York.
Karen Karapetyan, the man nominated to be the next prime minister of Armenia, addressed the council of the ruling Republican Party of Armenia yesterday and said that he would do his utmost to justify the partys faith in him.

Sitting next to Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan and outgoing Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamyan, Karapetyan, a former Yerevan mayor, thanked Abrahamyan for the work he and his team has down over the past two years.

Karapetyan announced that he would present a two-stage long-term development plan for Armenia in the near future and that he was open to suggestions from his colleagues and representatives of the business community.

Karapetyan was appointed Yerevan mayor on December 28, 2010 and resigned in October 201.

After resigning, he returned to Russia and continued working for Gazprom.

Abrahamyan wished his replacement as prime minister much success.

Photo: Serzh Sargsyan, Hovik Abrahamyan, Karen Karapetyan
"Ruling Republican Party has the potential to solve any problem", Sargsyan declares

Arguing that the 2015 changes to Armenias Constitution were a necessary step to usher in long-term and substantive reforms to the countrys political environment and economic development, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan, during his speech yesterday to the ruling Republican Party Council meeting, also announced that his party needs new leadership on all levels.

It was in this context that Sargsyan welcomed the resignation of Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamyan as an act of individual selflessness and justified the partys endorsement of Karen Karapetyan as the countrys new prime minister.

Sargsyan lauded Karapetyan as an individual really capable of spearheading the wave of reforms in Armenia, to lead the society towards new economic and political freedoms, to break the stereotypes, to provide new flexibility to the economy, etc.

Sargsyan attempted to brush aside aspersions that the changes to the constitution, whereby Armenia would transform to a parliamentary rather than presidential system of government, was more than window dressing and a maneuver by which he could remain in power after he leaves office in 2018.

The 2015 constitutional changes were perceived by some as just another political event, conditioned first of all by the political situation and need to solve some personal issues but not by the imperative to solve fundamental problems facing the country, Sargsyan told party members at the meeting.

Sargsyan, in his address, presented the ruling Republican Party as multi-layered and representing every stratum of society, and possessing the potential to solve any historically created problem.

Many in Armenia would argue that many problems facing the country are man-made rather than a product of history.

The Armenian president noted that considerable changes would soon be evident, mentioning changes to existing priorities, policies, style and objectives, including personnel changes.

Perhaps, hes implying that other top officials will resign as well.

Getting back to the former prime minister, Sargsyan had this to say:

Prime Minister Abrahamian tried to talk to the citizens of our country in a plain, simple language, listened to the people and was heard by them. The Government did its best to prepare the country for the entry into a new stage of reforms: it was a huge work, and he accomplished it successfully.

Again, many in Armenia would disagree with this assessment.

Nevertheless, Abrahamyan will find new work in the Republican Party, as he will be heading the partys campaign in the upcoming May 2017 parliamentary elections.

More self-sacrifice from a longtime party stalwart.
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Friday, September 09, 2016

Arab foreign ministers commended Thursday Kuwait's plans to host international conferences on suffering of rights of Palestinian children, due next October, and education in Somalia .



The foreign ministers praised OIC's decision to open an office in Ramallah, urged the UNSC to condemn anew Israel's settlement policy in the occupied Palestinian lands and called for forcing the occupying authority to end the illegal and systematic settlement expansion.

They welcomed all international efforts to end Israeli occupation to ultimately establish independent Palestinian state on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital .





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The foreign ministers supported all PLO's resolutions, and the struggle of the Palestinian people against the Israeli occupation, urged the international community to hold Israel responsible for the crimes committed against the Palestinians, and said they were committed to the right of return of the Palestinians .

Meanwhile, the foreign ministers urged Arab countries and organizations to actively participate in Kuwait-hosted conference on education in Somalia .

They welcomed the Somali national reconciliation process and efforts of rebuilding the state institutions, condemned all criminal and terrorist acts against the Somali people and AU mission .
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.  NASA's bold mission to bring pieces of an asteroid down to Earth has taken flight.

The agency's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station here today (Sept. 8) at 7:05 p.m. EDT (2305 GMT), riding a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket into an evening sky suffused with golden light.

"Liftoff for OSIRIS-Rex, its seven-year mission to boldly go to the asteroid Bennu and back," NASA spokesman Mike Curie said during a live launch broadcast in an apparent nod to "Star Trek," which celebrated its 50th anniversary on Thursday.

If everything goes according to plan, OSIRIS-REx will rendezvous with a 1,640-foot-wide (500 meters) asteroid named Bennu in August 2018, snag some dirt and pebbles off the space rock two years later, and deliver this cosmic sample to Earth in September 2023. [OSIRIS-REx: NASA's Asteroid Sample-Return Mission in Pictures]

A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket carrying NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission launches into space from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida on Sept. 8, 2016. (Image credit: United Launch Alliance)

"Sample return is really at the forefront of planetary exploration," OSIRIS-REx principal investigator Dante Lauretta said during a prelaunch news conference Tuesday (Sept. 6). "Not only are we going to get this material into our laboratories for precise chemical analyses that can't be duplicated by spacecraft instruments, but this is [also] going to be a treasure trove of information and material for scientists yet to come."

The launch drew some special guests  former TV "Science Guy" Bill Nye, who currently serves as CEO of the nonprofit Planetary Society, showed up at NASA's nearby Kennedy Space Center (KSC) with 12-year-old Mike Puzio. Three years ago, Puzio won the Planetary Society-run contest to rename OSIRIS-REx's asteroid target, which had been known as 1999 RQ36.

"We're really excited about this mission," Nye told reporters at KSC. "This will advance our knowledge of the solar system's beginning."

An artist's concept of NASA's OSIRIS-REx asteroid sampling spacecraft at the asteroid Bennu. The probe is due to arrive at Bennu in 2018 and return samples to Earth in 2023. (Image credit: NASA)

A cosmic "time capsule"

As Nye mentioned, the $800 million OSIRIS-REx mission is chiefly concerned with improving scientists' understanding of how the solar system's planets formed and how life arose on Earth. (The primacy of this goal is hinted at in the mission's full name: Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer.)

"We're going to asteroid Bennu because it's a time capsule from the earliest stages of solar system formation, back when our planetary system was spread across as dust grains in a swirling cloud around our growing protostar," Lauretta said.

Furthermore, scientists suspect that Bennu and asteroids like it harbor a variety of organic compounds, the carbon-containing building blocks of life as we know it. Indeed, researchers think such space rocks may have played a key role in the rise of life on Earth, by delivering organics and large amounts of water to the planet long ago.

This idea will get a test when OSIRIS-REx's sample comes down to Earth, allowing researchers to determine exactly what lies on, and just beneath, Bennu's surface.

"The information we're going to gain from OSIRIS-REx, it's really going to help pull back the curtains on the origin of this planet, on the origin of life itself," NASA Chief Scientist Ellen Stofan said during a panel discussion here Wednesday (Sept. 7).

The size of asteroid Bennu, which is 1,614 feet (492 meters) wide, is compared with the Empire State Building and Eiffel Tower in this NASA image. (Image credit: NASA)

How to sample an asteroid

In August 2018, OSIRIS-REx will meet up with Bennu, which currently lies about 140 million miles (225 million kilometers) from Earth. The solar-powered spacecraft will then study Bennu from orbit for nearly two years using five different science instruments. This work will allow mission team members to choose the best possible spot from which to grab samples.

Then, in July 2020, OSIRIS-REx will slowly descend toward Bennu's surface. But the minivan-size spacecraft won't land; at close range, OSIRIS-REx will deploy its Touch-And-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM), a disk-shaped sampling head at the end of an 11-foot-long (3.4 m) robotic arm.

TAGSAM will contact Bennu for 3 seconds. During this time, the probe will use nitrogen gas to blast the asteroid's surface, stirring up dust and pebbles that will then be trapped within TAGSAM's sampling head. The goal is to obtain at least 2 ounces (60 grams) of material, mission team members have said.

OSIRIS-REx will then place the sample inside a small return capsule similar to the one used by NASA's robotic Stardust mission, which delivered samples of Comet Wild 2 to Earth in 2006. The bits of Bennu will land in Utah (as Stardust's capsule did) in September 2023. (The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, meanwhile, will be placed into a holding orbit around the sun, allowing it to possibly perform an extended mission if NASA decides to grant and fund one, mission team members have said.) [OSIRIS-REx's Mission: A Quick Video Primer]

The OSIRIS-REx team will give 4 percent of the Bennu sample to the Canadian Space Agency, while the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) will get 0.5 percent. The vast majority  75 percent  will be set aside for future researchers, mission team members have said.

OSIRIS-REx is NASA's first asteroid-sampling effort, but not the first such mission in history. JAXA's Hayabusa mission succeeded in bringing tiny grains of the asteroid Itokawa to Earth in 2010. And JAXA's Hayabusa 2 probe launched in December 2014 to sample another space rock, named Ryugu.

NASA has returned material from other types of bodies, however. Stardust sampled a comet, for example, and the Genesis probe brought home pieces of the solar wind in 2004. Most famously, astronauts lugged more than 800 lbs. (360 kilograms) of lunar rocks and dirt home during the Apollo missions in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

A potentially dangerous asteroid

OSIRIS-REx also has some secondary science objectives, as the mission's lengthy name suggests.

For example, the spacecraft will make detailed measurements of the Yarkovsky effect, which describes how the solar energy that asteroids radiate away as heat can change the objects' trajectories. Since Bennu's discovery in 1999, this "heat thruster" action has shifted the space rock's position in space by more than 100 miles (160 km), Lauretta said.

And it's important to know exactly where Bennu is headed, he added, because there's a slight chance the asteroid could hit Earth late in the 22nd century.

"We really want to understand this phenomenon so that we can better understand asteroid Bennu and apply that understanding to all asteroids, not only in near-Earth space but throughout our solar system," Lauretta said in Tuesday's news conference.

OSIRIS-REx's mapping work could also shed light on the resources Bennu and similar space rocks harbor, information that would presumably be of interest to asteroid-mining companies, mission team members have said.

"We've got great science ahead of us," said Lauretta, who's been working on the mission since 2004. "I'm really excited to get to this milestone, to get OSIRIS-REx launched on its journey to Bennu and back."

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.
This artists concept of NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) spacecraft in orbit above the moon. LADEE scientists announced the discovery of a ring of tiny dust particles around the moon in 2015; now, scientists have discovered even smaller dust particles around Earth's largest satellite.

The moon is shrouded by an unstable cloud of "nanodust" kicked up by cosmic impacts, and lit up by sunlight, a new study finds.

Similar clouds of teeny dust particles may envelop other airless bodies, researchers say.

Airless space objects such as the moon are surrounded by tenuous layers known as exospheres, which are made of particles gravitationally bound to those bodies. Unlike the particles of thicker atmospheres, like that of Earth, which regularly collide with each other, those in exospheres rarely collide. [The Moon: 10 Surprising Facts]

The particles in exospheres may originate in part from the way airless bodies are worn down by their environment  for example, by meteoroid impacts or storms of high-energy particles from the sun. As such, analyzing exospheres can shed light on these "space- weathering" events.

Hunting moon nanodust

From 2013 to 2014, an instrument aboard NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) spacecraft collected data for just such a study of the moon's exosphere.

Last year, researchers reported that the probe had detected a permanent asymmetric exosphere made of dust particles as small as 300 nanometers, or billionths of a meter in diameter, about the same width as a wavelength of orange light. The particles in this exosphere are not permanently aloft  rather, forces acting on the moon's surface sporadically kick up a certain amount of dust, said study co-author Amanda Cook, a lunar scientist at NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, California.

Now, scientists analyzing LADEE data have found evidence in the exosphere of much smaller nanodust that is nonetheless dense enough to detect via the sunlight it scatters. And this smaller-grain dust appears to come and go with meteoroid streams.

"We weren't actually looking for a fluctuating exosphere," Cook told Space.com. "It's just something that came out of the data."

The researchers examined two sets of data from the shadowed side of the moon, which yielded the best conditions for low-light observations. One set of data was taken near the peak of Quadrantid meteoroid stream impacts to the moon in January 2014, whereas the other set was captured three months later during a time of relatively weak meteoroid activity.

During the meteoroid stream, the spacecraft saw scattered sunlight, which is consistent with dust grains less than 60 nanometers wide. Less such light was detected during the quieter period.

This artist's concept shows the lunar dust exosphere surrounding the moon, discovered by the LADEE spacecraft. That discovery was announced in 2015. The craft's trajectory around the moon is also shown. (Image credit: University of Colorado Boulder/Daniel Morgan/Jamey Szalay)

A changing nanodust cloud

The nanodust cloud may envelop the moon and vary over space and time, depending on meteoroid impact rates, the researchers suggest.

"This result is exciting because if the detected signal is indeed originating from nanodust, then there seems to be much more of it than we expected to see, by several orders of magnitude," study lead author Diane Wooden, a lunar scientist at NASA Ames Research Center, told Space.com.

Increasingly, observations of other airless bodies in the solar system, such as the asteroids and Mercury, "indicate that very small particles are present in their exospheres as well," Wooden said.

Future study of these small dust grains could reveal details about the meteor showers, solar flares or the solar wind that propelled them, Wooden said, as well as details about magnetic anomalies on planetary surfaces.

The scientists detailed their findings online Aug. 15 (opens in new tab) in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Follow Charles Q. Choi on Twitter @cqchoi. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
TITUSVILLE, Fla.  Blue Origin plans to conduct the next flight of its New Shepard suborbital vehicle in October, a launch that the company's founder says will test the vehicle's abort system.

In an email update Sept. 8, company founder Jeff Bezos said the upcoming New Shepard flight, planned for the first half of October from the company's West Texas test site, will be an in-flight abort test, where the crew capsule will fire its abort motor to fly away from the propulsion module during the launch.

"We'll intentionally trigger an escape in flight and at the most stressing condition: maximum dynamic pressure through transonic velocities," Bezos wrote. That will be about 16 seconds after liftoff, at an altitude of nearly 4,900 meters. [Photos of Blue Origin's latest launch and landing]

The motor, mounted at the base of capsule, will fire for two seconds to push it away from the booster module. The capsule will then make a parachute landing as it does on normal flights, when it separates from the booster module after engine shutdown.

The test, Bezos acknowledged, will likely destroy the booster module, which has flown four previous New Shepard launches dating back to November 2015. "The booster was never designed to survive an in-flight escape," he wrote. "The capsule escape motor will slam the booster with 70,000 pounds of off-axis force delivered by searing hot exhaust. The aerodynamic shape of the vehicle quickly changes from leading with the capsule to leading with the ring fin, and this all happens at maximum dynamic pressure."

Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos leads Blue Origin, a commercial aerospace firm that hopes to send people on suborbital and orbital space trips. See how Blue Origin's New Shepard spacecraft works here (Image credit: by Karl Tate, Infographics Artist)

However, simulations suggest it may be possible for the booster to survive the test and make a powered landing. "If the booster does manage to survive this flight  its fifth  we will in fact reward it for its service with a retirement party and put it in a museum," he said.

Blue Origin lost the first New Shepard propulsion module during a test flight in April 2015, when a hydraulics problem prevented the vehicle from making a powered landing. Several propulsion modules, which contain the BE-3 engine that powers the vehicles, were under construction during a visit to the company's headquarters and factory in Kent, Washington, in March.

The test flight will be the first for Blue Origin since June 19, when the vehicle made its fourth consecutive successful launch and landing. Company officials had said at the time that they planned to increase the pace of test flights in the coming months, but had not disclosed the schedule for this test prior to Bezos' email.

Blue Origin has stated that New Shepard could be ready for commercial flights carrying people as soon as 2018, with test flights with crews beginning in 2017. Those flights could be preceded by commercial flights with research payloads. Recent test flights have carried some experiments provided by universities at no charge.

In addition to New Shepard, Blue Origin has been working on an orbital launch vehicle system, few details of which the company has released. Bezos said Sept. 8 that a future update would provide more information about that vehicle.

That vehicle will be built at a factory at Cape Canaveral, construction of which recently started. On Sept. 6, the U.S. Air Force filed a permit application with the St. Johns River Water Management District, which provides environmental oversight of projects in the region, for work on SLC-36, the site Blue Origin announced last year it would redevelop for launches of the orbital vehicle.

The application also referenced SLC-11, an older launch pad not previously connected with Blue Origin. That pad was last used for launches in the mid-1960s. The application provided no additional information about the use of SLC-11, but said that it and SLC-36 would be redeveloped to include "infrastructure to test engines, integrate launch vehicles, and launch orbital vehicles, as well as support systems to recover and refurbish launch vehicles."

This story was provided by SpaceNews, dedicated to covering all aspects of the space industry.
Dr. Sheyna E. Gifford, chief medical safety officer for the HI-SEAS one-year mission adjusts a camera inside the habitat. The still image comes from the trailer of a documentary called "Red Heaven," which will feature exclusive footage from the mission.

A documentary film that would feature exclusive footage from a yearlong mock Mars mission is seeking funding on Kickstarter.

Who would want to live in a barren, isolated environment for a year, far from friends, family and the rest of the outside world? The answer is many astronauts, as well as one plucky crew simulating a Mars mission in Hawaii.

RED HEAVEN -- Official Trailer (opens in new tab) from Katherine Gorringe (opens in new tab) on Vimeo (opens in new tab).

The HI-SEAS program (Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation) is examining how humans would live, work and play on Mars or another space-based location. The most recent HI-SEAS crew spent a year in an isolated habitat on Mauna Loa in Hawaii, to simulate ;what living conditions might be like for a crew of real Mars astronauts. [Life on Mars: Inside The HI-SEAS Isolation Habitat (Gallery)]

During the yearlong mission, the crew filmed its experiences inside the habitat. Some of that footage will soon be released as part of a new documentary called "Red Heaven," if an online fundraiser goes to plan. The creators of the documentary have raised nearly $32,000 of their $40,000 goal on Kickstarter, with 10 days to go. (If the goal is not met, the pledged funds are refunded to the donors, and the filmmakers walk away with nothing.) The money will be used to film the subjects acclimating to lives in their hometowns, and also for postproduction, including editing and creating a soundtrack.

"When we embarked on telling this story about the HI-SEAS project, we were told there was no way for us to capture life inside the dome, since it is, above all, research for NASA," the filmmakers, Katherine Gorringe and Lauren DeFilippo, wrote on the project's Kickstarter page. The pair were film students at Stanford University when they began the project two years ago.

"We took a risk and flew to Hawaii to film with the crew before they entered the simulation, and we were able to build trust with the project and the crew themselves," the project's description said. "They opened their lives to us, and gave us exclusive access to make this feature film."

The HI-SEAS isolation habitat on Mauna Loa in Hawaii, where six people lived in relative isolation for a full year, to simulate a human mission to Mars. (Image credit: Calla Cofield/Space.com)

The film is co-produced by Structure Film's David Alvarado and Jason Sussberg, who are working on a documentary about Bill Nye (TV's "Science Guy"). This connection has allowed Gorringe and DeFilippo to offer some cool rewards for people who donate to the Kickstarter campaign.

Donors who pledge $15 or more will receive a "Bill Nye Rare Digital Bundle" that includes "an eclectic assortment of articles, historic photographs, interviews, GIFs, text-message tones featuring Bill's catchphrases" and a set of "Bill Nye-themed emojis." Other reward possibilities include a "Red Heaven coozie," a HI-SEAS one-year crew patch, a drawing by the crew space architect, and various options to stream or receive copies of the film. The most generous backers can receive tickets to the movie's premiere, or exclusive meetings with the people in the habitat.

This iteration of HI-SEAS was the fourth isolation mission for the program, which is run by the University of Hawaii at Manoa and funded by NASA. There are strict conditions for living on simulated Mars, including having no fresh food (other than the sporadic vegetable crops that the crewmembers manage to grow themselves), a 20-minute delay in all communications with the outside world (which means no phone calls) and text-only access to the internet.

Crewmembers didn't leave the dome except for simulated extravehicular activities, during which they had to wear spacesuits or hazmat suits. And all exercise was done inside the habitat (which, at 1,200 square feet or about 110 square meters, is roughly the size of a one- or two-bedroom house).

Despite a breakdown in plumbing and some occasional crew conflicts, all six crewmembers told Space.com that they would sign up for the experience again, or even take a voyage to Mars itself if the opportunity became available.

You can learn more about "Red Heaven" on social media on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, @redheavenfilm, as well as via its Kickstarter page here.

Follow Elizabeth Howell @howellspace, or Space.com @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.  A few special guests showed up to see the launch of NASA's asteroid-sampling spacecraft yesterday (Sept. 8).

Former TV "Science Guy" Bill Nye, who currently serves as CEO of The Planetary Society nonprofit organization, cheered on the OSIRIS-REx mission yesterday afternoon here at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC), just hours before the probe's 7:05 p.m. EDT (2305 GMT) launch from nearby Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

OSIRIS-REx is now chasing down a 1,640-foot-wide (500 meters) asteroid named Bennu, on a seven-year mission to snag samples of the space rock and send the material back to Earth. Bennu was known as 1999 RQ36 until 2013, when 9-year-old Mike Puzio won a Planetary Society contest to give the asteroid a more fitting and memorable name. [OSIRIS-REx: NASA's Asteroid Sample-Return Mission in Pictures]

Puzio, who is now 12, joined Nye at KSC yesterday in the lead-up to the launch.

"He's a rock star," Nye said of Puzio. "He won fair and square. We did not know that it was a kid. It's just, he had the best idea; he did the best research."

Bennu was an ancient Egyptian god often depicted as a heron. Puzio has said he chose the name because of OSIRIS-REx's link to Egyptian mythology  Osiris was the ancient Egyptian god of the dead  and because the spacecraft design reminded him of a heron in flight. The "wings" are OSIRIS-REx's solar panels, and the "neck" is the probe's 11-foot-long (3.4 m) sampling arm.

If all goes according to plan, OSIRIS-REx will arrive at Bennu in August 2018 and study the asteroid from orbit for two years. Then, in July 2020, the probe will grab at least 2 ounces (60 grams) of dirt and pebbles using a sampling "head" at the end of the robotic arm. OSIRIS-REx won't land on Bennu; rather, the sampling gear will give the space rock a 3-second "high five," mission officials have said.

This material will come back to Earth in a small return capsule in September 2023. Scientists around the world will then analyze the material, hunting for organic molecules, the carbon-containing building blocks of life. (The mission's main goal involves clarifying the role that Bennu-like asteroids may have played in delivering life's key ingredients to Earth.)

"We're really excited about this mission," Nye said. "This will advance our knowledge of the solar system's beginning."

"If you want to answer, 'Where did you all come from, where did we all come from?' it's really important to get samples of the primordial solar system," Nye added.

At KSC yesterday, Nye and Puzio showed off a high five they devised to celebrate OSIRIS-REx's launch and coming activities at Bennu. Nye touched his fist to Puzio's palm for about 3 seconds, and then the two slowly withdrew their hands. They took care not to "blow it up."

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.
As they orbit the sun, the larger asteroids in the main belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter can be viewed in backyard telescopes, if you know where to look. The SkySafari 5 app allows you to search for asteroids by name and display their location on any date. In September 2016, asteroid Pallas  indicated by the white crosshairs  is traversing the small constellation of Equuleus, located in the eastern evening sky. Its looping trajectory is shown here for an 18-month period.

Yesterday, NASA launched its OSIRIS-REx mission to visit asteroid Bennu. Once there, its spacecraft will take a sample of the asteroid and return the material to Earth. In this edition of Mobile Astronomy, we'll focus on asteroids, and how you can see one in a backyard telescope with the help of an astronomy app.

Our solar system is littered with bits and pieces of rocky and metallic material that either was never used up during the initial planets' formation 4.6 billion years ago, or that has broken off of larger bodies during subsequent collisions. The sizes range from small particles up to individual objects that are 1,000 kilometers in diameter.

The larger bodies are of most interest for several reasons: We might wish to visit them to harvest the minerals they are made of, and we would want our spacecraft to avoid accidentally colliding with one. And we definitely want to keep an eye on any that might collide with the Earth, like Bennu! [OSIRIS-REx: A Video Primer on NASA's Mission to Study Asteroid Bennu]

What's an Asteroid?

During the early formation of the solar system, as the primordial gas cloud collapsed and the density of material increased, atoms and molecules of heavy elements (i.e., heavier than helium) clumped together into small fragments. These in turn attracted more material through mutual gravitation. Most of the growing lumps of matter coalesced into planets or moons, while the rest became inert fragments orbiting the sun in interplanetary space. It turns out that the maximum size for the objects is about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles), and there are relatively few of those. As the size decreases, the population rapidly rises, to such an extent that the smallest ones are too numerous to count.

A large percentage of the bodies ended up orbiting in a large belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Those are the ones we refer to as asteroids. Other pieces were eventually shepherded into the stable gravity wells, called Lagrange points, around planets. Jupiter, with its huge mass, has collected a great many of them, known as Trojans. The rest orbit the sun in roughly circular orbits of various sizes and tilts, occasionally being redirected into a new orbit by a close encounter with a larger object or violently crashing into the surface of a planet or moon. The Earth and moon bear the scars of these past collisions. The meteorites that streak through our atmosphere as shooting stars and land on the ground come from the same material, and are composed mainly of objects that are less than a meter in diameter.

The number of known asteroids increases as their size decreases. The term asteroid covers objects down to 1 meter in diameter. (Image credit: Marco Colombo, DensityDesign Research Lab)

Researchers refer to all of these bodies as minor planets, regardless of where they are located. Because some objects, called Near Earth Objects or NEOs, pose a small risk of striking the earth, amateur and professional astronomers have been detecting, tracking and tabulating them for many years. The Minor Planet Center is the worldwide central repository for all of that data, and it is operated by the International Astronomical Union and NASA. At present, more than 721,700 objects have been discovered, of which nearly 14,700 are NEOs. Asteroid Bennu, the destination of OSIRIS-REx, is a NEO that might impact the Earth in the next century. NASA and other agencies are working on ways to deflect NEOs. Comets, which are primarily icy and have highly elongated orbits, are not counted as minor planets.

The MPC website has a lot of information about asteroids, geared both toward professionals and the public. The site's new Asteroid Data Explorer, featuring informative videos and more, is geared toward teachers.

The Minor Planet Center, operated by the International Astronomical Union and NASA, is the worldwide repository for information about the known asteroids, also referred to as minor planets. Thousands more are discovered every year, mostly by automated cameras that detect the objects moving against the fixed stars. This animation from 2002 shows the population of the inner solar system in motion. Near Earth Objects are shown in red and the orbits of the inner planets are the blue circles. (Image credit: Minor Planet Center)

Spotting an Asteroid

You don't need to be a professional astronomer or have special telescopes to see an asteroid for yourself! The objects in the asteroid belt, like planets, shine with reflected sunlight, so they can be spotted visually if they are not too remote or too small. As they orbit the sun, they move across the sky, tracing a path through the distant, fixed stars.

Take a photograph, or make a sketch, of a patch of sky, and then do it again a few days later. Any object that has moved is either a comet or asteroid. Astronomers use the brightness of the object and the speed and direction of its motion, to determine its orbit and size. The first asteroids discovered were the largest ones, since they were easiest to detect in early telescopes.

The first  and largest  asteroid discovered was Ceres, named after the goddess of agriculture (think "Cereal"). Between Jan. 1 and Feb. 11, 1801, Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi watched it move through the stars of Taurus. You can use your astronomy app to see what Piazzi saw. Set your sky-charting app to 8 p.m. on Jan. 1, 1801, and search for Ceres. (Your app might bring up the name (1) Ceres, as asteroids are given numbers in order of discovery.) By advancing the date through February 11, 1801, you will see Ceres move in a looping arc to the right of Taurus the Bull's triangular face, below the Pleiades cluster. I find that it helps to center your app on any nearby star, and then let Ceres move across the display as you change the date. Notice that toward the end of the observing period, Piazzi would have seen Mars enter the field on a converging path with Ceres. [Take a Cinematic Flyover Tour of Dwarf Planet Ceres (Video)]

Between Jan. 1 and Feb. 11, 1801, Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi discovered the first asteroid, which was named Ceres after the goddess of agriculture. He tracked the motion of the object as it moved through the stars of Taurus the Bull. You can simulate his discovery by selecting those dates in your astronomy app. (Image credit: SkySafari for Android and iOS)

On March 28, 1802, while trying to confirm Ceres' orbit, German astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Matthias Olbers discovered the second asteroid, (2) Pallas, which is 512 kilometers (318 miles) in diameter. It's also a nice target for you to try and observe in September, although a bit dim for the smallest telescopes. Use your app to find the little constellation of Equuleus the Little Horse. (It is just to the upper right of Pegasus.) The bottom star in Equuleus is a naked-eye star named Kitalpha. On Sept. 9, 2016, (2) Pallas is located 50 arc-minutes (just less than a full moon's diameter) to the upper right of Kitalpha. As the days pass, the asteroid will move down and to the right, slowly pulling away from the star.

Try to spot and track the asteroid in your telescope. In the SkySafari app, you can simulate your telescope and eyepiece, and display a circle indicating the field of view. At low power, your telescope should fit both the star and the asteroid in the field of view, but remember that your telescope will probably flip the image left to right. If so, you can enable the image flipping in your app to match it. (Using the moon is a good way to figure this out. Then write it down, as it will always be the same for that telescope.)

Put the star near one edge of your field of view and then look for the asteroid. The two objects are the brightest ones in that patch of sky. Make a sketch of all the major "stars" in the circle. The next evening, or a few days later, repeat the exercise and compare the sketches. The object that moves, or disappears out of the field, is the asteroid.

A close-up view of the path of asteroid Pallas as it passes near the naked-eye star on the dates around Sept. 9, 2016. The blue circle represents the field of view of a typical backyard telescope at low power. (Image credit: href="http://skysafariastronomy.com/">SkySafari for Android and iOS)

As it happens, you can also observe Ceres for yourself this autumn. As September opens, Ceres is situated in the constellation of Cetus the Whale, and it rises about 10:30 p.m. EDT. At a visual brightness of magnitude 8.2, Ceres is within reach of a modest backyard telescope. Even better, a month from now, Ceres will rise at about 8 p.m. local time and will have brightened to magnitude 7.6. SkySafari and other astronomy apps can display the path of the object, so you can see where it will be on a given date.

The SkySafari 5 app provides users with observing and technical information about the major asteroids and information about their discovery. (Image credit: SkySafari for Android and iOS)

The Asteroid Sample-Return OSIRIS-REx Mission

NASA chose asteroid (101955) Bennu for its OSIRIS-REx asteroid mission for several reasons. The asteroid is relatively easy to travel to in a reasonable amount of time, it is massive enough to have sufficient gravity for the spacecraft to be pulled close to it, its slow rotation allows the spacecraft's sample arm to touch it briefly, and it is one of few targets with a primordial composition that will yield important information about the early solar system.

After launch, the spacecraft will spend two years matching speed and orbit with Bennu, then spend more than a year mapping the asteroid from a distance of approximately 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) to plan the sample-collection rendezvous. In July 2020, the spacecraft will position itself a few meters above the surface and extend a sample collecting arm to collect anywhere from 60 grams to 2 kilograms of surface material. In September of 2023, a capsule containing the sample will crash-land on earth, where it will be retrieved by excited scientists. [Infographic: How NASA's OSIRIS-REx Asteroid Mission Works]

When an asteroid is large enough, we can bounce radar off it to measure its distance and estimate its size and shape. This has been done in great detail for Bennu, with the use of the giant radio telescope in Arecibo, Puerto Rico. Unfortunately, Bennu can't be observed with amateur telescopes, but you can see where it is if you are an early riser. Use your astronomy app to find the dim constellation of Cancer, which sits low in the eastern predawn sky. The asteroid is presently sitting in the lower part of the constellation, and is heading lower into Leo.

On Sept. 8, 2016, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft departs for a rendezvous with asteroid Bennu. Once there, it will study the asteroid for a year, and then collect a sample and return it to earth in 2023. (Image credit: NASA)

Going Beyond

When NEOs occasionally fly past us, usually well beyond the moon's orbit, they move across the sky very rapidly, showing movement against the stars over the course of just a few minutes. Most of these are far too small to see visually, or with small telescopes, but a rare few are large enough. Asteroid Tracker for Android and iOS (opens in new tab) is an app that lists the upcoming passes, including the object's name, closest distance and mass. It also lists the predicted impact hazard level. The website Slooh.com frequently streams live broadcasts of the passes as well as many other interesting astronomical events, complete with video feeds through telescopes and commentary by experts.

In future editions of mobile astronomy, we'll look at photographing objects with your smartphone, some cool astronomy virtual-reality apps and hardware, how to use astronomy apps in the classroom and more. Until then, keep looking up!

Editor's note: Chris Vaughan is an astronomy public outreach and education specialist, and operator of the historic 1.88 meter David Dunlap Observatory telescope. You can reach Chris via email, and follow him on Twitter @astrogeoguy, as well as Facebook and Tumblr.

This article was provided by Simulation Curriculum, the leader in space science curriculum solutions and the makers of the SkySafari app for Android and iOS. Follow SkySafari on Twitter @SkySafariAstro. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
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The country seems paralyzed. In Merkel's eyes, her refugee policy has become core to her term in the Chancellery. It marks a moment when she didn't allow herself to be guided by tactical, political considerations. That, though, implies limits to her current room for maneuver -- because if she were to admit that she made mistakes, it would be akin to self-betrayal. That, at least, is how she sees it. And that's what makes the current impasse so hopeless.

Once the results from Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania were in, Merkel felt it necessary to make a statement, even though she was still at the G-20 summit in China. She prefers not to comment on domestic party politics from abroad since she makes such comments in her capacity as head of the CDU and not as head of the country. So, following her official G-20 press conference in the Hyatt, her staff prepared for her remarks by removing all symbols reminiscent of her role as chancellor: The backdrop with the G-20 logo and the flags of China, Germany and Europe. Even spokesman Seibert had to help.

'Very Displeased'

Of course she isn't pleased with the result of the state vote, Merkel said, even allowing that she was "very displeased." But when a reporter asked if she would now change course, she couldn't resist a brief, derisive smirk. "I am happy to repeat once again that I consider the fundamental decisions we made in past months to have been correct," she intoned.

The late phases of a chancellor's term tend to be tortuous. Konrad Adenauer didn't want to go because he thought he was the only one capable of leading the country, only stepping aside for Ludwig Erhard after 14 long years in office. Helmut Kohl resisted retirement because he thought only he could push through the common currency in Europe. He was, in fact, so convinced that history needed him that he ignored all warnings of his impending defeat. In the end, the CDU fell in behind Kohl and sank with him in the 1998 elections.

Will history now repeat itself? Merkel has always been formidably agile. In her first campaign for the Chancellery, she promised to fundamentally reform Germany, but when she lost by a hair in the September 2005 vote, her ambitious plan disappeared into the party archives. Her promise to extend the lifetimes of Germany's nuclear reactors was likewise thrown overboard following the tsunami in Japan and ensuing meltdown in Fukushima.

Such about-faces, of course, left her open to accusations of opportunism, but no chancellor can remain in office long without a certain amount of malleability. And de facto, Merkel's refugee policies have long since been revised: Eastern Europe closed the Balkan route and Merkel herself ensured that Turkish border guards now stop refugees intent on making their way to Europe.

Although her actions tell a different story, she continues to insist that she did everything right. Her party allies watched with growing despair as Merkel decided to use the week before the state elections in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania to defend her decision to welcome the refugees -- in the form of an op-ed in the influential daily Suddeutsche Zeitung, television appearances on major broadcasters and, finally, in a two-page spread in the mass-circulation tabloid Bild. It was clear that helping her party in the upcoming vote was the last thing on her mind. More pressing was her need to be right -- just like Kohl in the latter phases of his tenure.

And just like then, it is only the backbenchers who have had the courage to voice vehement dissent. After all, they have the least to lose.

Internal Criticism

Last Monday at 9 a.m., Merkel joined a conference call with other CDU leaders. Because of the poor connection from China, she was difficult to understand, but the core of her message got through just fine: The results of the election in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania may be regrettable, but she did not intend to make adjustments to her refugee policies as a result. After all, she said, the SPD had lost more votes than the CDU.

It was not an analysis that everyone agreed with. "We all lost to the AfD because when it comes to refugee policy, we are perceived as a block, to which AfD voters want to say: No thanks," says CDU member Jens Spahn, parliamentary state secretary in the Finance Ministry. Instead of just saying "we can do it," the CDU should think about "how we can get to a point where the people really believe that we can do it. And to a point where we know what is going on out there."

Once he gets going, Spahn can hardly be stopped. People were right, he says, to apprehensively ask why integration will work better this time around than it has in the past. You have to connect with voters on an emotional level, and not just with the facts, he adds. "If our answer is then a half-hearted burqa ban, our message just won't get through."

No one else criticizes the chancellor's policies as radically as Spahn, but even within the Merkel camp, there are those willing to admit that mistakes were made. Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere finds fault with the fact that conservatives talk too much about refugees and not enough about other issues. Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the CDU governor of the state of Saarland, says that voters have lost "a bit of fundamental trust" in the party.

It's not that Merkel isn't trying to find a way out of the crisis. Indeed, she remains open to all ideas. On the flight back from the G-20 summit, Merkel was asked if she was concerned that politics have reached a post-fact era -- that parties like the AfD or politicians like Donald Trump have found success with slogans that are completely disconnected from reality. With an inquiring gaze, Merkel said that she first had to integrate "post-fact" into her vocabulary. But it was clear that the expression sparked her imagination.

In a speech to parliament two days later, she said: "When we begin participating in a situation where facts can be shoved aside, responsible and constructive answers on the issue are no longer possible. When we begin aligning ourselves, both linguistically and literally, with those who are not interested in a solution, we will ultimately lose our orientation."

The Question Dividing Germany

It wasn't entirely clear who the target of her critique was: The AfD, Seehofer or Sigmar Gabriel, the head of the SPD who has recently begun distancing himself from the chancellor. Perhaps she meant all of them together. But Merkel was visibly pleased that she had found a new argument to defend herself.

Still, though, it is an argument that fits well with the strategy Merkel has long used to justify her policies. The chancellor sees herself as being synonymous with rationality, and those who don't follow her are considered to be insufficiently committed to democracy. She has often pushed through policies by claiming there is no alternative, but it is an argument that has done great damage to Germany's political culture. One reason the debate over refugee policy is so poisonous is that it has been framed so simplistically. Are you for or against Merkel? The question has divided the country, German conservatives and the media.

It would have been helpful to many in the CDU if Merkel had allowed at least a bit of differentiation. But it is now too late to change course, says CDU parliamentarian Veronika Bellmann from Saxony. "Now, people wouldn't even accept a 180-degree reversal anymore," she says. Like other members of parliament, Bellmann speaks of a 50-50 division in the party base. One half is behind Merkel, the other is not. "Respect for the chancellor is the only thing preventing a revolt."

Merkel's inflexibility is exasperating conservative politicians in many state chapters. Wolfgang Reinhart, CDU floor leader in the Baden-Wurttemberg state parliament, demands that Merkel take the concerns of Horst Seehofer and the CSU more seriously. "It's not as if the warnings were all completely unjustified. When a partner demands more restrictive policies, you can't just ignore it. You have to engage in dialogue," Reinhart says. "The success of the right-wing populists is partially the result of Berlin policies." Such sentiments sound like they could have come straight from Seehofer.

But how much criticism finds its way to Merkel? She has always been distrustful and over the course of her tenure, her inner circle has only grown tighter. That is another parallel with Kohl. Critics among conservative parliamentarians have taken to calling the Chancellery "the bunker." It is run by Chief of Staff Peter Altmaier, who is responsible for managing government business and for negotiating both within the governing coalition and with Germany's states. Many within the CSU, though, believe he is the real author of Merkel's decision to open the country up to the refugees.

When Altmaier was first elected to parliament in 1994, he took positions that only found much support at the time within the Green Party. He supported ending Germany's ban on dual citizenship, for example, and wanted to introduce penalties for marital rape. The CSU saw him as a leftist nutcase and Helmut Kohl penalized him by completely ignoring him. Making matters even more difficult, he only had the support of the tiny, Saarland chapter, which meant that he didn't have high hopes for much of a career.

By the early 2000s, Altmaier had come to terms with the fact that his path to the top would remain blocked and he even thought about returning to EU politics, where he had worked for a time after he completed his legal studies. But then Merkel arrived, a godsend for his career. She appointed him parliamentary state secretary, then handed him a senior post in the CDU fraction and then made him a government minister.

Powerful Opponents

His office in the Chancellery has an enormous window providing a view of the Reichstag, the seat of Germany's parliament. With Merkel, he has come further than he ever dared dream. And with her, he can now implement policies that were widely considered to be leftist blather just a few years ago.

Altmaier, though, has powerful opponents. One of them is Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble, who thinks the congenial man from Saarland isn't sufficiently ruthless. Another is Interior Minister de Maiziere, who believes that a chief of staff should spend more time studying policy details and less time on the talk shows.

But as long as Merkel remains loyal, nothing can happen to Altmaier -- and the chancellor values that loyalty. His ability to reframe even the largest of disasters as being nothing more than minor setbacks makes life easier for her. When he spoke on the Monday following the Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania election at a festival in the Bavarian town of Gillamoos, he couldn't praise the chancellor highly enough: "Germany is a great country because in Germany, we don't have just one Angela Merkel, we have tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of Angela Merkels. In every village, in every city."

Merkel has enough detractors, so she values having Altmaier's sunny disposition in the Chancellery. When he celebrated his 58th birthday in mid-June, he found a handwritten letter on his desk. It began with the words: "Dear Peter." The letterhead read: "The Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany."

Like every successful politician, Altmaier keeps close tabs on power shifts that could become detrimental to his position. If Merkel remains in the Chancellery, he will likely become conservative floor leader in the next legislative period. If she falls, there is a risk that he will have to take a seat on the back bench in the Bundestag.

The chief of staff of the Chancellery is the last of a line of liberal, young CDU politicians that Merkel brought into her circle when she became chair of the party in 2000 to help her prevail over her conservative adversaries. Two others who have survived politically from this era are Merkel's secretary, Beate Baumann, and her former spokeswoman, Eva Christiansen, who is responsible for political communication at the Chancellery. Like Altmaier, they've been shaped by the long battle that Merkel has waged against the establishment.

Modernizing the Party

That's one of the most significant parallels between Merkel and Kohl: Both modernized their party against resistance from the old guard. Back in the 1960s, Kohl sparked outrage at a state party conference in Rhineland-Palatinate because he spoke out in favor of public condom vending machines. "You don't seriously believe that my grandmother would have had 13 children if she had taken the pill, do you?" he once said in an interview with his ghostwriter Heribert Schwan.

In 1969, Kohl was elected governor of Rhineland-Palatinate and immediately set out to modernize the state. He eliminated state-run parochial schools that his predecessors had insisted on keeping and he demanded that his young social minister create the country's first kindergarten law stipulating government-subsidized day care for young children. As governor, Kohl pulled the backward state into modern times, building not only highways but also establishing social-welfare centers. He quickly gained a reputation as the leader of the more liberal wing of the party.

Like Merkel, Kohl also fostered a group of young, independent thinking party colleagues, who he then elevated into high office. The group included future German President Richard von Weizsacker, who helped draft an influential 1965 Protestant Church memorandum calling for the recognition of the Oder-Neiss border between East Germany and Poland set after World War II, a step that helped to improve tense relations between West Germany and its eastern neighbors. It was a breaking of taboos with conservative CDU circles.

During the first phase of his tenure as chancellor, Kohl introduced both child-raising allowances and parental leave. It was a modernization push in the party that would first be seen again when Merkel became chancellor.

When she took over as party chair from Wolfgang Schauble in 2000, Merkel was at first more cautious than Kohl had been. In contrast to Kohl, she wasn't as deeply rooted in the party. In fact, the reason that the eastern German politician even had the fortune of rising to the top was that the CDU's leadership had been embroiled in a donations and slush fund scandal. Once in the position, she found herself surrounded by enemies. The party's parliamentary group was headed by Friedrich Merz and Roland Koch, who had run successfully to become governor of Hesse on a campaign against dual citizenship for Turks, was on the party's national board. Both were very powerful Merkel adversaries.

Merkel didn't really start modernizing the party until 2005, when she became chancellor. She appointed Ursula von der Leyen as her family minister and, through the expansion of government-subsidized daycare facilities, ensured that women would have an easier time balancing work and family life. Like Kohl, Merkel had to go up against heavy resistance, but over time, she sidelined those who stood in her way. Over the years, they all fell from power -- Merz, Koch and others.

'I Don't Want To Be a Half-Dead Wreck'

Merkel's plan was never to step down the way Kohl did. During the final phase of his leadership, Kohl had been grumpy in his cabinet meetings, which Merkel experienced firsthand as his environment minister. At the end of the 1990s, in a conversation she had with German photographer Herlinde Koelbl, Merkel said, "I want at some point to find the right time to leave politics. That is much harder than I imagined it would be earlier. But I do not want to be a half-dead wreck when I leave politics."

Kohl also wanted to leave politics at a time of his own choosing. He would later state that he had wanted to step down in 1996. "I thought 14 years were enough," he said. "I had also achieved enough." But then, a feeling of irreplaceability crept over the chancellor. Internally, he harbored doubts that his handpicked successor, Schauble, would have the support of the FDP, the CDU's junior coalition partner. He also feared the introduction of the European common currency would fall through without his leadership. "I have to push it through," he said. For Merkel, refugee policy has become what the euro was for Kohl.

For a long time, Merkel had little more than a derisive smile for Kohl's tendency to always see himself in historical terms. But at a national CDU party conference last December, she did the same in justifying her refugee policies. Referencing Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, Merkel said he hadn't said, "We're choosing a little bit of freedom," but rather, "We're choosing freedom." And Chancellor Ludwig Erhard hadn't said, "Prosperity for almost everyone." He said "Prosperity for everyone." And Kohl didn't say that he wanted to create flourishing economies in some regions in eastern Germany, he wanted it for all of them.

As a consequence, she continued, she wouldn't be stepping back from her statement: "We can do it." The party conference proved a major success for Merkel, with delegates praising her with standing ovations. But the subsequent consequences have been disastrous. Merkel had placed her refugee policies in the holy shrine of Christian Democracy. And that which is sacred is untouchable.

Searching for a Legacy

Unlike the presidential democracies in France and the United States, Germany does not have term limits. Along with that comes the inherent danger that chancellors who achieve great things early in office can squander their legacy at the end of their tenure. Adenauer, postwar West Germany's first chancellor, was at the height of his power in the mid-1950s. He had firmly anchored the Federal Republic of Germany as a part of the West, advanced efforts toward reconciliation with Israel and promoted the European Community. The country experienced fast-paced growth.

Voters thanked him for it in the 1957 election, bestowing his party with an absolute majority in parliament. But afterward, Adenauer appeared to lose his touch and began fighting with his own handpicked successor Ludwig Erhard. After initially announcing he wanted to become president and pave the way for an appropriate successor in the Chancellery, Adenauer backpedaled. He considered himself to be irreplaceable, particularly in foreign policy. He had also recognized that the role of president, as glamorous as it may be, was largely a symbolic office with little power.

Adenauer began badmouthing Erhard, saying he was unfit and lacked the dignity to represent Germany. Increasingly, voters saw him as aloof. When the Berlin Wall was built in 1961, he waited a long time before visiting the city and he only retained the Chancellery that year by a narrow margin and only with the support of an FDP party that had actually done what it could to distance itself from the chancellor. Adenauer had to promise that he would step down before the end of his term in exchange for FDP backing.

Is Merkel now suffering the same fate as Kohl and Adenauer? Her problem is that she hasn't achieved anything lasting. That's also one reason she will likely seek another term. Adenauer's legacy included the alignment with the West, Kohl's was German reunification, Schroder's was the structural reforms that provided the basis of today's economic growth. But what will be the lasting legacy of Merkel's refugee policies?

Merkel has offered a home to people in a desperate situation. Germany took in over 300,000 Syrians last year, a humanitarian act that would not have happened without Merkel. But with the opening of the borders, tens of thousands of people entered the country who weren't fleeing wars, but instead the precarious economic situation in their home countries. It is estimated that 70,000 Albanians, 30,000 Kosovars and 10,000 Moroccans also came. There is currently no mechanism in place to allow people who are truly in need of protection to travel legally to Europe.

The Anti-Merkel Party

One of the major factors that drove voters to the AfD was a feeling the country has lost control. The latest survey conducted by German pollster TNS Forschung shows that 21 percent of Germans could imagine voting for the AfD in the next general election.

At the AfD's election night party last Sunday in Schwerin, the head of the party's Thuringia state chapter disparagingly thanked Merkel. "Every one of us knows, of course, that the people here in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania voted on the disastrous policies of the dictator chancellor in Berlin." It was followed by chants of "Merkel must go, Merkel must go."

For AfD head Frauke Petry, Merkel is a hated figure against whom the entire party has closed ranks. No other person evokes so much anger in the party. Even the party's name, Alternative for Germany, is a reaction to Merkel, who once said there was "no alternative" to her European policies. At this point, AfD could rename itself the AMP, for Anti-Merkel Party. Right now, Merkel is doing more to mobilize voters for other parties than for her own.

Shrinking Influence -- In Germany and Europe

Merkel's influence has also shrunk in Europe -- and this despite the fact that the German economy is doing well and the British will soon be leaving the EU . The chancellor's refugee policies have diminished Germany's role in Europe to that of an outsider.

Next Friday, this new state of affairs will be palpable when she travels to Bratislava, Slovakia for a special EU summit. Europe urgently needs a functioning system for taking in refugees, but Merkel affronted most of her partners with her uncontrolled opening of the border and it is now highly unlikely that any reasonable compromise can be found.

The German chancellor overestimated the willingness of neighboring countries to show solidarity by sharing the burdens that came with her open border policy. At the same time, that policy also put her counterparts in other European capitals under considerable domestic pressure. The images of long lines of refugees and camps blew fresh wind into the sails of populist currents and parties all across the Continent.

French President Hollande is terrified of the national election in his country coming up next spring, which could see the rise of Marine Le Pen and her Front National party. In Britain, many view the refugee crisis as a self-inflicted problem that the German chancellor brought to the Continent. In a study for the University of Sheffield, Cologne-based sociologist Wolfgang Streeck attributed the Brexit vote in large part to the refugee crisis.

Merkel was long the most powerful woman in Europe. Now, though, Germany's EU allies are looking for her weaknesses and exploiting them. In finance and economic policy, they are now seeking compensation from Merkel for the burdens her refugee policy has allegedly placed on their shoulders. The stability pact, once pushed through by Germany so that the euro crisis wouldn't end in a debt disaster, stands in ruins.

At a meeting three weeks ago on the Italian aircraft carrier Garibaldi with Matteo Renzi and Francois Hollande, the Italian prime minister and the French president were apparently successful in softening her rejection of the southern countries' desire to take on more debt.

It is no coincidence that Merkel is now searching for common ground with Renzi. Along with Greece, Italy bears the greatest burden of the refugee crisis. Whereas the number of refugees coming to Greece has sunk as a result of Merkel's deal with Ankara, thousands of Libyans are still attempting to cross the Mediterranean to Europe. If Italy were to begin sending them northwards as it did last year, the debate over the closure of the Brenner Pass would immediately be rekindled and borders would be closed across Europe. The survival of the border-free Schengen zone would again be under at risk.

That is the same threat that emanates from Turkish President Erdogan: He can open and close his borders at will. The Turks insist that they are strictly monitoring the route across the Aegean to the Greek islands, but the attentiveness of the Turkish coast guard would appear to waver significantly.

'Stimulus for the AfD'

Merkel's most dangerous opponent, however, is not the Turkish president. It is Seehofer, who staff members in the Chancellery refer to as "our Erdogan." The conflict between Merkel and Seehofer's CSU is becoming more intense by the day and this weekend, he has invited party leaders to a meeting at which he intends to gain approval for a paper full of demands that Merkel rejects: burqa ban, migration limits and the elimination of dual citizenship.

Almost daily, Seehofer receives party allies in his office who push him to distance the CSU from the CDU. "The CSU has to enter the parliamentary election campaign with the most independence possible -- from both a personnel and content perspective," says former Transport Minister Peter Ramsauer, who is a senior member of the CSU. "That means: No joint campaign platform and Horst Seehofer, with his importance and authority as head of the party, must head up the CSU state parliamentary list as its lead candidate." Ramsauer wants to see Seehofer join the cabinet to ensure that the CSU is able to have sufficient influence.

Seehofer, for his part, would like to prevent an open break with the CSU's sister party. By the end of October, the CSU head hopes to find agreement with the CDU. But without a sign that Merkel is willing to revise her approach to refugee policy, it seems unlikely that agreement will be reached. "It doesn't help when we just keep telling people: We did everything right, you just don't understand it. Doing so is a stimulus program for the AfD," says Seehofer.

Will CSU Run against Merkel?

Merkel, though, doesn't want to give in to Seehofer -- not this time. And now, the enmity between the two threatens to destroy the partnership between the CDU and CSU. Of course Seehofer is aware that a conclusive break with Merkel would only help the political competition. It would be a unique spectacle were Seehofer, as lead candidate for the CSU, to run against Merkel for the Chancellery.

Yet exactly that scenario is being seriously considered in the Bavarian state capital building in Munich. If the sister parties aren't able to reach an agreement prior to the CDU party convention in Essen in December, Seehofer plans to skip it. "Without consensus, my appearance would be nothing more than a media spectacle," he says. Staying away, though, would be a significant affront: For over 60 years, it has been tradition that the CSU speaks at the CDU party convention. Still, it would be just one more step in the ongoing escalation of hostilities.

Another idea currently circulating among CSU leaders is for the party to pull out of the government shortly before next year's parliamentary elections as a way of distancing itself from the CDU and its waning support.

Can Merkel still prevent the break? She hopes that the refugee issue will finally cede into the background by next year at the latest if the number of newcomers remains low. Merkel hopes to be able to defuse the political problem by playing down its importance. That, though, can only work if the CSU plays along, which is far from a sure thing.

There, though, she can agree with Helmut Kohl. In the late stages of his time in office, as his popularity continued to wane, he would often ask his visitors: "Who else could do this job?"

Reported by Jan Friedmann, Gunther Latsch, Ann-Katrin Muller, Peter Muller, Alexander Neubacher, Ralf Neukirch, Rene Pfister, Jan Puhl, Christoph Scheuermann, Christoph Schult, Wolf Wiedmann-Schmid and Steffen Winter
The Male Gaze

The burqa debate confronts us with our own insecurities. Just how self-determined is female fashion in the West? To what extent is it shaped by social constraints, group pressure, conventions, shows like "Germany's Next Top Model" and the dictates of the fashion industry? The feminist movement is still divided over whether the visible female body, bare skin and the miniskirt are actually signs of freedom or if they degrade women into sex objects.

It comes down to the male gaze, certainly in Islam. Traditionally, the veil (hijab) was a curtain that protected Mohammed's wives from the gaze of his visitors. Islamic culture differs fundamentally from Western culture in that it covers up things that are precious. There are no images in mosques, and certainly no icons. Visibility and transparency do not have positive connotations; the preference is for the hidden, the invisible and the indirect. The veil signifies esteem. Poorer women had to work, and how can a woman work in the fields wearing the chador? It was the clothing of wealthy, privileged women.

But the enlightened West is also willing to make allowances for the covetous male glance. The ability to control one's yearning, oft touted as a civilizational advantage of the Western man, likewise has its limits. A year ago, Germany was embroiled in a brief but heated debate over hot pants in schools. A principal in the southwestern state of Baden-Wurttemberg wrote a letter to parents arguing that the ultra-short shorts should be banned in her school. She argued that male students and teachers should not be distracted in class by overt displays of the charms of female students.

And not long ago, my 15-year-old daughter brought home a letter from her physical education teacher. The letter, which required a parent's signature, stated that parents should pledge to ensure that their daughters wore sufficiently decent clothing in PE. Bare bellies are verboten, and so are spaghetti straps. According to the letter, girls should have at least three finger widths of material on each shoulder. It sounded as if the school would prefer to see girls wear burkinis in relay races. The school argued that the measure was necessary because it would prevent boys from injuring themselves. "Otherwise, they might run into something!" the physical education teacher explained to the girls. And yet, there are no rules for the boys, who are allowed to show up shirtless on the playing field. The girls were furious: How unfair is that?

Whatever a Woman Chooses

Still, men's clothing too has periodically been regulated by the state throughout history. The most famous example is Kemal Ataturk's hat revolution. Like the veil and the headscarf, the traditional male head covering also became a symbol of backwardness in 1920s Turkey. In his famous hat speech, Ataturk touted Western-style hats, and it was followed by a legal decree that stated: "The general head covering of the Turkish population is the hat, and the government forbids the continuation of a contradictory habit." For women, the headscarf and veil were banished from public life, and they were banned in schools, universities and government service. The return the headscarf under current President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is thus not just a sign of Islamization, but also of protest against an authoritarian, secular state.

In the last century, the battle over clothing was a conflict between tradition and modernity, but now it is overlaid with the contrast between Islam and the West. Outside the West, clothing was often associated with the search for a unique, non-Western identity. The goal was to preserve traditions or to develop a separate modern age. This is embodied by the Mao jacket and the Nehru shirt, as well as modern Muslim women's fashion. Globalization led to the triumphal march of Western fashion brands around the world. From suits and ties to jeans, T-shirts and sneakers, the Western style of clothing seems to have become universal. However, globalization also incorporates the reverse movement, as foreign clothing appears on our streets and in schools. We see it as demarcation and provocation, and as signs of the failure of integration efforts. We fight over the headscarf.

Nowhere has the headscarf debate been waged as bitterly as in France. As long ago as 1989, in the so-called headscarf affair, three girls were expelled from school for refusing to remove their headscarves. In 2004, the government enacted a general headscarf ban in public primary and secondary schools, and the burqa was banned in 2011. There are also now laws in Germany regulating where women are permitted to wear the headscarf and where not. The battle over the headscarf shows us the limits of our own, enlightened liberalism. Suddenly we no longer know just how liberal we want to be. We disguise our own illiberality with the claim of wanting to liberate the women of other cultures.

Perhaps capitalism will prevail in the end, and in this instance, it might not be such a bad thing. Western fashion labels are now designing Muslim fashion. DKNY was one of the first, with its 2014 Ramadan Collection. Conversely, oriental fashion is also influencing Western fashion designers. Perhaps we will see the rise of a global non-dress code, in which essentially everything goes - including whatever a woman chooses to wear.
A man finds a gold nugget the size of a t-bone steak and plans to sell it for five figures. This week, a company called Gold Prospecting Adventure, based in California, shared on its official Facebook page dozens of pictures of Oscar Espinoza holding a large gold nugget.

According to the company, Mr. Espinoza, who used go gold panning in his spare time, turned it into a profession after he lost his job. Recently, while searching Tuolumne County, he struck gold!

The Central Valley man found a nugget that weighs 559 grams and according to experts, it is valued between $60,000 and $70,000. The amateur gold prospector spoke to local media saying that when he sells it, he will be able to pay some overdue bills. Espinoza, who found the nugget last week, said:

When I grabbed it, my hand kind of slipped off of it, thats when I realized it was a lot bigger than a little nugget.

Espinoza said he was surprised by the size. He explained:

It took awhile to sink in that it was reality because usually not every day you see something like that.

He went on to explain that he started searching for gold with the help of his beloved dog Groucho as a hobby, but after becoming jobless, he began investing more time into his passion. He shared:

Thanks to unemployment, nothing to do and the search for something greater.

Espinoza told local media he makes enough money from the gold he finds to get by. He hopes this latest discovery will make it possible for him to sleep a little better at night. He turned to Gold Prospecting Adventures and asked them to handle the sale. Bryant Shock, co-owner of Gold Prospecting Adventure, stated:

Based on the weight of the nugget, which is 559 grams, it could sell for thousands of dollars. Because it was found in nature, and not altered, buyers could shell up to $70,000 for the nugget.

Many reporters have asked to see the impressive chunk of gold and Espinoza has refused, saying that he has to protect his treasure. He is also very tight-lipped about where he is storing it. Espinoza said while laughing:

Its a hot potato. I want to make sure its safe, so thats the reason why I didnt present it.If you want to take a look at it yourself, you have to be interested in buying it.

Rumor has it that the nugget was given to Charlie Morgan, a friend and hotelier in Jamestown, for safe keeping. He is hoping to find more. He added:

Im not guaranteed to ever find anything like that ever again. Who knows?

Some commenters are wondering if this will be the start of a new California Gold Rush.
The Association of Drainage Authoritities (ADA) agrees that a national approach to long-term water level and flood risk management post-2021 is needed, and says the Governments budget commitment to invest an additional 700m in flooding and resilience projects by 2021, made earlier this year, was much needed. The idea that Britain starts to look at the nations investment requirements beyond the current spending cycle also makes sense.

However, without the right people in place and properly trained to deliver work on the ground, extra investment alone will not help. ADA wants to ensure that the Government gets the best value for money from its investment in essential and routine maintenance activities by accelerating the cascading of works to local delivery bodies including Internal Drainage Boards and Local Authorities as well as to the Environment Areas area teams.

Commenting on the publication of the Report, Innes Thomson, ADAs Chief Executive said:

This report is very welcome, and recognises the need for all of us to consider our flood resilience much more seriously. People do expect action to be taken, and while the provision of additional equipment can be quickly achieved, we must not forget that, in parallel with volunteer groups, increased levels of skilled, professional, people are required to manage that equipment during emergencies. These same people could then be used very effectively at other times to maintain our water level and flood risk management systems to much better standards.

Below is the summary of ADAs thoughts on the key themes within the report:



Temporary defences

The National Flood Resilience Review positively highlights that part of the Governments new investment will be used to strengthen supplies of equipment used to help protect people and infrastructure at times of flooding, such as pumps and temporary barriers. The report talks about deployment logistics but does not clearly mention the most important need of investing in the right people and skills to deploy all this extra equipment at times of need.

Infrastructure

ADA supports the reports move to encourage infrastructure companies to invest in improving the protection to services which are essential to peoples health and wellbeing, and the economic viability of our regions. We would encourage this approach to work in tandem with the strategic and local delivery provided by Englands risk management authorities. Often by looking at a catchment or sub-catchment scale, rather than at an individual infrastructure providers asset alone, more cost efficient solutions to flood risk can be found.

Science and innovation

Much of the report focuses on gaining a better scientific understanding of the risk through mathematical models and analysis of data. The conclusions in this area appear sound, drawing on excellent expert advice, presenting the findings in a logical manner that helps to paint a better picture for wider public understanding than has been previously been available. However, further scientific improvements will take time, and understandably the many people affected by the recent flood events want to see action now. So ADA would welcome a commitment by Government to include funding of innovative solutions that can boost both our short and long term resilience to flooding. Cumbria and the elsewhere in the North of England affected by the recent floods do offer some immediate opportunities.
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A new survey of state business executives indicates that while most companies reported profitable years in 2015, fewer than half plan to hire more employees.

But the Democratic speaker of the state House of Representatives said the mostly positive news in the poll is being wielded as a political tool by a Republican-leaning organization.

The annual poll conducted for the Connecticut Business & Industry Association and released Friday morning shows that two-thirds of reporting executives said their businesses were profitable.

The survey of 339 executives, with a margin of error of plus or minus 5.5 percent, shows that despite lagging economic indicators, profitability is at a 10-year high. About 68 percent of the returned surveys reported profits, but only 47 percent said they planned to continue hiring new employees.

Joseph Brennan, president and CEO of the CBIA, called the dichotomy discouraging, especially as the states economic landscape improves.

This survey shows that fiscal stability and predictability are keys to restoring business confidence in the state, which will lead to much-needed job-creating investments, Brennan said in a statement accompanying the report, which was prepared by the accounting firm of BlumShapiro.

The fact that business profitability is now at a 10-year high speaks directly to the strength and resilience of Connecticut companies, which were able to endure the recession of 2008-09, said BlumShapiro CEO Joseph A. Kask. Now is the time for us to work with state leaders to ensure they are focused on creating a business climate that encourages more growth and expansion, and retains young talent entering the workforce from college.

Nearly 80 percent of the executives said that costs of conforming to state regulations is their biggest challenge, followed by taxes (74 percent), the unpredictability of the General Assembly (71 percent), and the lack of skilled workers (47 percent).

In reaction, Speaker of the House Brendan Sharkey, D-Hamden, charged that the business organizations agenda is critical of state government, and tainted by its recent announcement to support about 15 mostly Republican challengers against incumbent Democrats as part of a $400,000 fall election campaign.

As I have pointed out, CBIAs credibility as a true representative of business interests has been compromised when they decided to engage in political campaigning for the first time in memory, Sharkey said in a statement. This is now further evidenced by their own survey, which shows profitability at a 10-year high, and almost 90 percent of companies reporting they are growing or holding steady, yet CBIA leads with some of the few negative concerns that were shared.

However, Senate Minority Leader Len Fasano, R-North Haven, said the survey underscores his criticism of the years-long Democratic majorities in the House and Senate. It clearly shows that without the confidence in our state, businesses are not growing and dont want to until the Legislature takes more responsibility, he said in a phone interview. Without confidence that the Democratic majority will do it the right way, it translates to a stagnant economy.
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Michael Cummo / Hearst Connecticut Media

STAMFORD  A city man has been accused of breaking into two cars in the Luckys Classic Burger & Malt Shop parking lot Thursday night.

Sgt. Kris Engstrand said a diner employee discovered his debit card was missing from his car about 10 p.m. Thursday. The worker said he saw a suspicious man in the lot behind Bedford Street.
STAMFORD  A city man was tracked down in Miami after his step-mother accused him of stealing nearly $30,000 from her, police said.

A 79-year-old Stamford woman reported to police in July that money she had been saving for years from her rental property had gone missing.

The woman suspected her step-son, Demetrious Jimmy Roumeliotes, 37, stole the money to fuel his longtime drug habit, police said. The woman told her step-son she moved the money to the trunk of her car shortly before she discovered it missing, police said.

The woman told police Roumeliotes called her from Miami and admitted taking the money and vowed to fly to Greece and spend all of it if she called the police, the arrest affidavit said.

She said Roumeliotes showed up at her home a few days later and gave her the money he hadnt spent, police said. There was $11,000 remaining and the woman agreed to keep just $2,000 if Roumeliotes left her alone and never came back, police said.

Police investigated the theft and obtained probable cause to arrest Roumeliotes and Miami authorities apprehended him.

Roumeliotes was also charged with fourth-degree larceny for stealing a pair of earphones and a flying drone worth about $1,700 from the Apple store at the Stamford Town Center on July 25, a second arrest affidavit said.

Roumeliotes did not enter a plea to any of the charges at his arraignment and was held in lieu of a $28,000 cash court appearance bond.

jnickerson@scni.com;
T he boss of insurance giant Aviva has called on the government to provide a clear timetable for Britains exit from the European Union.

Britain is yet to trigger so-called Article 50, which would begin the process of untangling the nation from the trading bloc. This is despite calls from European council president Donald Tusk to do so as soon as possible.

Mark Wilson said the investment market wanted certainty of timeframe.

We need to take some time, take a deep breath, we need to sort out what the plan is, he told Bloomberg TV.

Wilson also cast doubt on claims that the City will be hurt by Britains departure from the EU.

Brexit: Theresa May on Article 50

It is still a financial hub. Trying to unwind all of that is a pretty tall order and I dont think that will happen.

The reality is that London is home for insurance, so for us it doesnt make much difference.

In the EU there is not one single insurance market. Its no easier for me to do business in France than Singapore or China.

Aviva has forecast profit growth in the mid-single digits for the next few years.
T he UK marked its first month after the Brexit vote with a huge surge in exports to the European Union, official figures revealed today.

Sales to the Continent jumped by 1 billion, or 9.1%, the biggest rise over a single month since October 2010.

The UKs exporters enjoyed an early boost from the 10% slide in the pound since the referendum on June 23.

Oil exports were behind the rise as well as a record 200 million surge in jewellery sales, according to the figures, as France swooped in to buy up vast quantities of precious goods.

The jump in exports outstripped a much smaller rise in exports from the Continent while trade with companies outside the EU dwindled, the Office for National Statistics said.

The UKs overall trade gap in goods and services fell by more than 1 billion as total sales abroad jumped 3.4%, or 800 million, while imports from overseas fell by 300 million.

That improved the trade gap with the rest of the world from 5.6 billion to 4.5 billion in July, the ONS said.

IHS Global Insights Howard Archer said the improvement meant trade was likely to boost the economys performance in the latest quarter added to evidence of the economys current resilience after recent upbeat surveys.

But Pantheons Samuel Tombs said exports were still down over the past three months and warned not to mistake volatility for a Brexit boost.

The lesson from the past is that it takes at least a year for sterling depreciations to boost net trade, as it takes time for firms to renegotiate contracts and exporters to invest in new capacity, he said.

The UKs builders stagnated in July, although that was a better performance than the 0.8% slide pencilled in by economists.

The construction industry is still struggling to make headway, however, and compared with a year earlier output was 1.5% lower in July, the biggest drop since April 2013.

Despite the better news, expectations of a rate rise from the Bank of England over the next year are at a record low, according to the Banks latest quarterly survey. Just 21% of people expect a rise.
T he Serious Fraud Office has charged three former senior directors of supermarket giant Tesco with fraud and false accounting over the FTSE 100 companys 326 million accounting scandal.

A trio of former Tesco UK directors  managing director Christopher Bush, finance director Carl Rogberg and commercial director John Scouler  have been charged with one count of fraud by abuse of position and one count of false accounting.

The trio, who worked under former chief executive Philip Clarke, have been ordered to appear at Westminster Magistrates Court on September 22.

Tesco shocked the City in September 2014 by admitting that it had overstated profits in accounts dating back to 2012. A black hole was discovered in the accounts, originally estimated at 250 million but the figure has since spiralled to 326 million.

The SFO launched a criminal investigation into the company soon after the accounting black hole came to light. It has questioned a number of former Tesco staff, including ex-boss Clarke and former finance chief Laurie McIlwee.

The Financial Reporting Council is also examining the scandal and cleared McIlwee last month. The FRC said it concluded that there was no realistic prospect that a tribunal would make an adverse finding.

Today Tesco, now led by Dave Lewis, said it had implement mjor changes in the last two years. Nine senior staff members had been put on leave and at least six have been dismissed.

Tesco said: We note the decision of the SFO to bring a prosecution against former colleagues in relation to historic issues and acknowledge the investigation into the company is ongoing. Tesco continues to co-operate with the SFOs investigation.

The last two years have seen an extensive programme of change at Tesco but, given this is an ongoing legal matter, we are unable to provide any further comment at this time.

Tesco boss Dave Lewis overhauled Tesco's top management following the scandal / Neil Hall/Reuters

Bush had been with Tesco since 1982 and had worked in the international business before running the domestic division. Through his lawyer Ross Dixon at Hickman & Rose Solicitors, Bush said today he was "extremely disappointed" with the SFO's decision to press charges.

"He is not guilty and from the outset has fully cooperated with both Tesco and the SFO. He will vigorously contest these allegations and is confident he will be cleared of any wrong doing," Dixon said.

Rogberg co-founded mobile payments company Mint before joining Tesco in 2006. Scouler rose up Tescos ranks in Hungary and returned to the UK in 2010.

Rogberg is now working at consulting firm Church Farm Industries while Scouler is commercial director at TalkTalk, according to LinkedIn.

Tesco shares were little moved on the news, dropping just 0.35p to 170.7p, but have fallen more than 15% since the scandal emerged.
H ousing association Family Mosaic has snapped up a site in Ealing to help meet its target of building 1,000 homes a year.

The firm has paid 6.2 million to Mizen (Acton) for the site where it wants to develop 37-homes scheme Rosebank Works. Construction will finish in 2018.

It will include 16 properties for shared ownership, 12 for social rent and nine for private sale.

Phil Church, regional development manager at Family Mosaic said: This is an exciting development in the heart of Acton that will greatly benefit from Crossrail.

Family Mosaic built 600 homes last year and wants to build 1,000 annually.

Other sites it has purchased this year include in Lewisham where it is planning 49 properties.

Meanwhile it emerged earlier this month that Family Mosaic is planning its first move into the private rented sector, following other London landlords including L&Q and Genesis.

It will use an external agent to manage the properties it develops, unlike many associations which manage PRS properties alongside social housing stock.


L ebanese restaurant chain Comptoir said it plans to open eight more branches as it revealed a solid set of maiden results.

Its new restaurants, including on Gloucester Road and Sohos Poland Street, are set to open before the end of 2016.

Marketed as a purveyor of healthy Arab cuisine, the chain  backed by Jonathan Kaye, the man behind Prezzo  was founded by Algeria-born Tony Kitous who arrived in the UK in 1988 at the age of 18. He opened his first restaurant in London, Baboon, when he was 22 and now has 15 sites in London and Manchester.

The latest expansion plans follow a 24.6% surge in sales to 9.7 million in the six months to June 30.

Chief executive Chaker Hanna said the firm saw solid trading in July and August.

He said: There is a degree of confidence of achieving the boards expectation for the full 2016 financial year.

Shares in the firm, which listed on AIM in June, edged up 0.7p to 80.2p. They listed at 50p.

Elsewhere in the food sector, restaurant operator Richoux saw shares drop 1.9p to 20.6p after admitting trading conditions had been difficult in the 28 weeks to July 10 due to stiffer competition and higher staff costs owing to the new living wage.
L ast week my black friend and his black wife and their two black children flew to the Costa del Sol for a family holiday. I too jetted off overseas for a well-deserved break.

I share this unremarkable information with you just in case you dont know any black or brown people. We too catch planes, cause pollution and contribute to climate change. Some of us might even be among the fat-cat passengers who use London City Airport.

Its easy to mock the nine self-appointed white saviours who chained themselves to the runway as part of a Black Lives Matters protest, yet the overwhelming feeling was of confusion. The groups claim that the climate crisis is a racist crisis had me wondering if rain can be racist? Or if hot, sunny days are racist? Thankfully not. What they actually mean is that the countries most at risk from rising sea levels tend to be ones where most people are black or brown. Not racism, then, more a protest against geography.

Another claim that black British Africans are 28 per cent more likely than their white counterparts to be exposed to air pollution had me wondering if white people had secretly invented some sort of anti-pollution cloak? The rather more boring answer is that black British Africans are more likely to live in cities than the countryside, where pollution levels are lower.

What started out as a protest movement against the disproportionate killing of black people by police in the US has morphed into something so nebulous in the UK as to have become meaningless. Even a claim that ethnic minorities are more likely to die in police custody in Britain doesnt hold up to scrutiny. According to the charity Inquest, of the 1,571 people who died in police custody since 1990, 157 were from ethnic minorities  so 10 per cent. The ethnic minority proportion of the UK population? Around 14 per cent.

Racism still exists but not in the easily identifiable way our highly academised, yet under-educated, student protesters want it to. Sure, wed all like to be the next Martin Luther King Jr but the biggest battles against racial injustice have been won. The real challenge is in tackling structural inequalities, which normally boil down to poverty not race, gender or any other narrow identity categories.

Yet I sympathise with our misguided millennials. Record numbers of them are graduating with record levels of debt and with degrees that probably wont land them the jobs they want. Why bother tackling the problems of 2016 when you can hijack a more exciting US movement steeped in the nostalgia of the civil rights movement youve read about? Its certainly more glamorous than joining a neighbourhood watch committee or the police force.

Victimhood creates a sense of shared purpose and offers a rallying cry to overthrow your oppressor. But it can also be a trap, at its worst robbing you of responsibility for your own life. Our bright young minds should be challenging the status quo and coming up with new ways of thinking but all weve learned from them this week is that climate change is bad and racism is bad, but racist climate change is really bad.

Blockbusters are leaving us cold

Hollywood is not happy with us. Apparently, falling box-office revenues are due to cinema-goers getting out of the cinema-going habit and nothing to do with the endless, unimaginative fare of sequels and remakes they keep serving up.

A new version of Ben-Hur (why?) has only made back half its $100 million budget. And that wasnt the only dud of the summer blockbuster season. Is it any wonder that people would rather stay at home and stream from a near endless library of classic films or intelligent TV dramas when all were being offered at the movieplex is something weve already seen, just with more special effects?

It must have been sometime in the early Noughties when blockbusters stopped being anything more than a showcase for computers and the images they can generate.

US comic can be as on the edge as he likes

Never far from controversy  and almost always hilarious  the US comedian Dave Chappelle is in London for a series of stand-up shows that he warns audiences will be racist, before going on to say Black Lives Matter is a terrible slogan akin to calling chewing gum chewy.

As an outspoken critic of police brutality and racism, Chappelle probably has enough credit with the movements supporters to get a pass. But maybe its also because comedians occupy a special place in society  they are allowed to say unpalatable things other people cant in our politically constrained, easily offended times.

I thought I was onto something  then I remembered Donald Trump.
Never mind flares and those peplum-trim tops that were considered popular with capital-dwellers for all of half a nanosecond - the style worlds most outmoded concept is the fashion show.

At least it is in its most traditional form: a costly and exclusive affair that parades luxury fashion before an audience of industry insiders six months before consumers (the lifeline of most fashion businesses) are invited to get their hands on it.

Tonight, when the clock in New Yorks Grand Central Station strikes 7pm and Londoners are simultaneously contemplating a midnight gin and tonic, this will change forever. Following a lengthy and complicated rewiring process, US superbrand Tommy Hilfiger is to kick-start a see now, buy now revolution with a showcase that is set to redefine the way we consume fashion.

The bold move, to be emulated by some other 25 brands and which will make their collections immediately available following the upcoming shows, is the first nail in the coffin of the catwalk show as we know it.

Hilfigers production will be followed at New York Fashion Week by Michael Kors, which is expected to make a less dramatic shift towards the new model, and then in London by Burberry, which will make its entire collection available immediately after it is unveiled on the catwalk. High street retailer Topshop has also recently announced plans to follow suit.

No half-hearted affair, the #TommyNow production (the show is so modern it comes with its own hashtag and title) will be about as far from the ordinary catwalk concept as you can imagine. Not least because it will ensure that each item unveiled on its runway will be immediately available to customers after it is paraded on the catwalk but because for the first time in fashions recent history it is consumers, not fashion editors, who will be the VIP guests.

Taking place on Manhattans Pier 16 - rebranded Tommy Pier for the occasion - the two-day event, to which 1,000 Tommy customers are invited, has been entirely designed with the shopper in mind. To this end, it is not all about front-row seats and the photographers pit but a fairground featuring a Ferris wheel, a tattoo artist as well as a catwalk show in which attendees will be invited to watch as the brand unveils TommyxGigi, its debut collaboration with mega-model Gigi Hadid, alongside a selection of outfits from the autumn/winter collection.

Tommy Hilfiger x Gigi Hadid - in pictures 1 /20 Tommy Hilfiger x Gigi Hadid - in pictures Tommy x Gigi Gigi models the collection that lands online on September 1st and in store on the 10th Tommy x Gigi Gigi models the collection that lands online on September 1st and in store on the 10th Tommy x Gigi Gigi models the collection that lands online on September 1st and in store on the 10th Tommy x Gigi Gigi models the collection that lands online on September 1st and in store on the 10th Tommy x Gigi Gigi models the collection that lands online on September 1st and in store on the 10th Tommy x Gigi Gigi models the collection that lands online on September 1st and in store on the 10th Tommy x Gigi Gigi models the collection that lands online on September 1st and in store on the 10th Tommy x Gigi Gigi models the collection that lands online on September 1st and in store on the 10th Tommy x Gigi Gigi models the collection that lands online on September 1st and in store on the 10th Tommy x Gigi Gigi models the collection that lands online on September 1st and in store on the 10th Tommy x Gigi Gigi models the collection that lands online on September 1st and in store on the 10th Tommy x Gigi Gigi models the collection that lands online on September 1st and in store on the 10th Tommy x Gigi Gigi models the collection that lands online on September 1st and in store on the 10th Tommy x Gigi Gigi models the collection that lands online on September 1st and in store on the 10th Tommy x Gigi Gigi models the collection that lands online on September 1st and in store on the 10th

For Hilfiger himself, whose multi-million-dollar brand is owned by Amsterdam-based conglomerate Phillips-Van Heusen, the showcase is all about giving the customer what she wants. We listened to the consumer and they told us they want immediate gratification. They dont want to wait six months. This is about pleasing them, he said. It is about engaging them in a new way and about creating a memorable experience that resonates for a long time.

Describing Hadid as all-American with an exotic twist, Hilfiger is hopeful that the show - to be opened by the model this evening - will incite retail hysteria from her fans. And not just those in attendance -. who will be invited to shop the collection using touchscreen technology - but from shoppers across the globe, who will be able to bag their products through the live streamed video on the Tommy website as well as on its social media platforms.

Each item on the catwalk will be instantly available to buy online as well as in Tommy stores around the globe, including Regent Street and Brompton Road.

The collection will also be available at a host of UK retailers including ASOS, Selfridges and Harrods. The TommyxGigi collection will be available in more than 70 countries.

Hadid describes the collaboration, a homage to Tommys trademark American style and her first foray into fashion design, as true to my style. I wanted it to be something that when people look at they know I was the one who designed it, she said, describing Hilfiger as a trailblazer.

Behind the scenes, the process has been far from plain sailing. The most challenging part has been moving away from the traditional cycle, says Avery Baker, chief marketing officer for Tommy Hilfiger. Ultimately we want to give a seamless experience, closing the gap between the visibility of a fashion show and the moment of purchase. Digital innovations have been crucial to this way of doing business.

Avery is not the only one who feels this way. In a recent conversation with Vogue journalist Hamish Bowles, Burberrys Christopher Bailey stressed the significance of technological developments to the heritage brands new approach. We will look back on this time as like the great industrial revolution  because it is, he said. Our lives are changing so dramatically.

Accordingly, when Michael Kors stages his show next Wednesday, his collection will be supported by the launch of Michael Kors Access, a smart watch created through a partnership with Android and Google. Topshop is also expected to rely on strong digital partnerships to ensure its latest collections reach huge numbers of people at lightning speed.

Critics of the buy-now model are concerned that this need for speed will make it difficult for smaller designers, who take a lot longer to produce collections because of the time and cost constraints. Some also believe that the pressure to work to a buy-now business model will have a damaging effect on the creative process.

Lizzy Bowring, director of catwalks at the fashion forecasting and fashion analyst WGSN, predicts we will see brands looking to ensure that elements of their collections are available immediately after their showcase instead of going the whole hog.

Perhaps the idea of see-now-buy-now will only affect a certain portion of a collection but the expense of producing enough quantity to satisfy the demand can only be available to the larger more financially stable brands, she says.

Away from the luxury market the clothes we see on the high street could also be affected. Notably because Zara et al will no longer be the only ones able to produce of the moment fashion at pace.

If the see-now-buy-now experience becomes a reality, the future of shopping will change drastically, says Bowring. The entire supply system will have to change, from the planning of seasonal buying to selecting materials, the manufacturing and delivery process. In an ailing retail industry the excitement that is generated can only be a huge positive for the future of retail.

Hang on to your handbags, the revolution is nigh.

@karendacre
Review at a glance









Jeff Bridges is perfect in this heist thriller as a Texas ranger all set to retire. Ironically, its hard to imagine anyone putting Bridges out to pasture  hes as energetic as he was in The Last Picture Show (1971) and as adept at making us chortle as in The Big Lebowski (1998).

As the excited Marcus Hamilton, in hot pursuit of two bank-robbing brothers, he points at the radio and commands his partner to find some giddy-up music, only to be confronted by a hard-rock din. His yodel of despair (Not THAT!) made me roar.

Taylor Sicario Sheridans script was the subject of a bidding war in 2012. To be honest, the plot is pretty conventional. Canny, grizzled cops are hardly a novelty at the cinema, nor are outlaw siblings with violent tempers but a decent goal. The brothers, you see, need to raise enough money to beat a foreclosure deadline so they can keep the rights to their tiny, oil-rich farm.

Like I say, the plottings a tad snoozy. Luckily the language is lovely (Marcus calls fingers fackers) and the characterisation is sly, which probably explains the presence of Scottish director David Mackenzie. He doesnt make straight-arrow films. As with Starred Up, Mackenzies family-centric prison drama, Hell or High Water is full of grim nooks and crannies.

Hell Or High Water Exclusive Interview With David Mackenzie

Take the furniture. Violence-prone brothers Toby and Tanner (Chris Pine and Ben Foster) have an itchy chemistry. Their mother has just died and as they look at the flimsy, adjustable hospital bed still parked in the family home, they are disunited by pain (Toby is mourning a mother he couldnt save, Tanner is mourning a woman he couldnt love). Both actors are intense but its the bed  that precisely ugly prop  which nails the mood.

The mum, by the way, was clearly a handful. Shes one of many amusingly ferocious females (old-timer Margaret Bowman plays a steakhouse waitress so savage you half expect her to take a stun gun to her customers heads). Another waitress (Katy Mixon, magnificent) lashes out at Marcus when he tries to confiscate her tip money. Tobys ex-wife is quite the tartar, too. This could feel misogynistic but doesnt. Its clear that the women in these parts have taken a lot of crap from the universe. Quite simply, theyre often in the mood to fling it back.

The banter between Marcus and his half-Indian, half-Mexican partner, Alberto (Gil Birmingham), is similarly bracing. Marcus continually makes jokes about Alberto being a half-breed. Like a debonair version of Alf Garnett he crows about white mans intuition. Basically, the odd-couple dynamic feels TV-friendly but, every now and again, the teasing (Marcuss word) has a suitably nasty edge.

Old-school cops: Marcus (Jeff Bridges) and Alberto (Gil Birmingham)

Throughout the film tribes such as the Comanche are either demonised or romanticised. As Alberto wryly points out, the banks are taking land from white farmers just as the white farmers took it from the Indians.

Theres no suggestion that the dispossessed will band together and stick it to The Man. These white West Texans are more Donald Trump than Bernie Sanders. To put it another way, this is A Country For Cold Men.

The soundtrack whips that melancholy message into something magical.

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Nick Cave and Warren Ellis (who worked on The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford to equally penetrating effect) repeatedly use a violin ditty to make us feel pleasantly low. There are also tracks by Gillian Welch and Waylon Jennings that all but leave pearls of grit on your tongue.

The odd-couple dynamic feels TV-friendly but, every now and again, the teasing has a suitably nasty edge

The most bloody scenes take place in the hard-scrabble desert. As the credits roll, look out for one for the snake wrangler and a company called Bad-ass Critters. Its amusing to think of the cosseted snakes whose lives, presumably, consist of showing up and hissing on cue.

The reptiles probably cost a pretty penny. To tweak a famous Dolly Parton quote, it takes money to create landscapes that look this cheap.

Mackenzie and cinematographer Giles Nuttgens first started working together in 2003 and know each other back-to-front. The film is full of long takes that make time stand still; a blue twilight gives off an immoderate glow  the blue eyes of Pine and Bridges have never seemed brighter.

Westerns, even modern-day ones, tend to be viewed as more mythic than narratives set in, say, Birmingham or Bognor Regis. This film makes Pine and Bridges look good  they are both expected to get Oscar nominations for their work. Real cowboys may be going through a tough time but playing cowboys, or inventing stories about them, remains a safe bet.

With the right script, its the equivalent of striking oil.

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H ave you ever watched something that excited you so much but you couldnt find the words to explain why? Thats how I felt the first time I watched RashDash.

The theatre-making duo took their show We Want You To Watch to the National Theatres Temporary Theatre last year where they battled against violent pornography with glorious movement, words and sound. It was funny, it was confusing, it was exhilarating, and it was like nothing else.

This September they are bringing Two Man Show, their dissection of the patriarchy to Soho Theatre. It comes fresh from Edinburgh Fringe, where it won a Fringe First and a host of praise from people as loved up as I was.

But who are these brilliant people that left me so excited I couldnt speak (which is an achievement in itself)?

Helen Goalen and Abbi Greenland formed RashDash  Rash as in reckless, Dash as in fast, says their Twitter bio  when they met on their drama course at the University of Hull. From very early on, they realised they had similar tastes, performance skills and approaches to working, and they had a couple of oh s*** moments where they knew they were supposed to work together. They have now been working together for ten years, and can finish each others sentences.

Helen Goalen and Abbi Greenwood / Richard Davenport

Greenland recalls watching Goalen perform in their first year practical module and thinking how much she wanted to work with her. It was definitely about the way she moves, and I thought I really want to move with Helen. Then they took their first show up to Edinburgh  which we dont talk about  and watched Russian physical theatre company DO-Theatres Hangman together. That was a moment where we sat next to each other watching other people do the things we wanted to be doing, and thought, we could do this together.

They took a show called Strict Machine to the National Student Drama Festival, which Goalen says was the first show of having a really strong feeling of this is just ours. It was really cool and really different, not like anything Id ever experienced, to be able to have ownership of something.

Its hard for RashDash to say who or what exactly they are because its something that is always changing. Greenland says they can list the things that are always there: Its always got movement in it, its always robustly physical. Its always investigating something thats interesting about women from a feminist perspective. And theres always some kind of story, theres always text. Quite often theres live music.

Its the combination of movement, text and music, with a feminist sensibility, that they say feels the most important  that feels like what we do, Greenland says.

The making of their shows happens in different ways, but creating Two Man Show has been the closest theyve got to a process they like and would want to replicate. It began with an intensive research period with lots of reading, thinking, watching stuff, and bringing ourselves personally to that research.

Greenland remembers reading a book about the origins of patriarchy, whilst Goalen was reading a psychology book about the ways in which men and women think differently. And the personal thing feels really important, Greenland says, because wed come back from reading and say, this is what its revealed to me about who I am.

Next came a period of writing, as they attempted to put what theyd discovered into some kind of form. After a break, they had space to come back and ask what still felt the most important, before going into a rehearsal room.

RashDash's Abbi Greenland performs in Two Man Show / The Other Richard

For a week it was just the two of us, Goalen says, doing lots of physical, visual experimentation, with a lot of really exciting costumes and lights, finding out what the language was of the show. Because wed got so heady and academic, it was really important to bring that side in. And then the two really started to feed each other in quite a satisfying way.

The sometimes work with writers  previously with rising star Alice Birch  but this time decided to write the show themselves. Greenland said that they chose to write first before moving to making. But actually, writing first isnt right for us. Because the things we love and the things that are part of this show came through image and devising and choreographing  and then we found how to fit the words into that. Which is interesting, because the show is about how language isnt good enough.

The periods of time making their shows are intense and exhausting, and they admit they are not always okay. Some moments are ecstatically amazing says Greenland, but a moment in the second week was agony. She talks about a tweet from Bryony Kimmings on the making of A Pacifists Guide to the War on Cancer, which comes to the National Theatre in October: We took 4 weeks to make act 1. And one afternoon to create act 2. Art is funny.

Its so often that way, Greenland says. It took ages for us to get anywhere, then it suddenly it all happened quickly. I really like that.

The lifestyle of creating a show is hectic too  Greenland and Goalen were staying in digs together all the time, with musician Becky Wilkie joining them, so you dont really do a 9-5 thing. You get home from rehearsals and youre writing while someone is cooking dinner.

The pair were even sleeping in the same bed at one point, unable to get two rooms in the same digs, so you were reading me a Grayson Perry article as I fell asleep, says Greenland to Goalen.

The intensity of thought around the shows subject reached such a height that Greenland had a dream that very night that helped them solve the end of the show, so in that way it really is an incredibly intense experience when you make a show together, she says.

They decided to make a show about masculinity because it felt like it was really around at the time, Goalen says. We always make shows that are about women, but masculinity isnt just about men.

Were interested in women, Greenland adds, were interested in patriarchy, and questioning  and dismantling, eventually  the patriarchy. And I always feel myself feeling silly saying that but thats one of the biggest successes of the patriarchy: it makes you feel silly for questioning it. And it feels like that involves everyone.

The pair wanted to make something that was full of empathy and really inclusive. They poke fun, but they poke fun at themselves too. And its seen them get one of the best responses to a show that theyve ever had, with more audience members than ever coming up to them after the show to talk about what theyve just seen.

Thats always what we ideally want: people having conversations with each other, and with us. It felt like it definitely did that, Goalen tells me, as well as people being really excited by the theatricality of the show.

Men told them that they identified with parts of RashDashs investigation into masculinity, or said, those men arent anything like me but the way that I communicate with people is often like that, and theres a lot for me to think about there, Greenland says. And there were women too, who thanked them for making a space for showing different types of women, both the feminine and the more masculine.

RashDash's Helen Goalen performs in Two Man Show / The Other Richard

Something else they allowed space for was the chance to see female bodies in a deliciously unsexual way. The pair appear naked in the show at points, and its very animal, and feels very special I think, Greenland says.

It feels really liberating, and really important, because theres no shame attached to it. Its just bodies. Glorious bodies. We tried to really make space for people in the show to see that were okay being naked, and this isnt a weird decision that weve been manipulated into making, she says. Its very much us in control of our own bodies.

A group of their friends came to see the show and asked how they felt about being naked on stage. Goalen told them shed never been more naked in her life, and that shed never felt better about her body. But its weird how that is kind of a radical thing to do, she says.

RashDash havent read reviews for their show this year, but theyve veered from the ecstatic to the baffled. But it was never about deliberately trying to disorientate people, they say. It was about deliberately trying to make something that doesnt conform to what weve named as our Aristotelian patriarchal narrative structure, Greenland tells me.

But thats in there too, Goalen adds. We wanted to do that journey as well, so we could point to it from the other one and go, thats just an option. Its just the option that weve got really used to.

They are trying to make a less masculine way of storytelling, and thats more alien to us  which is a reason why audience members can be left feeling that its the first time theyve actually owned functioning eyes.

Its often harder to talk about the shows that have got under your skin, that have confused you, but you might feel about them differently. I feel that we dont necessarily have the language to talk about them, but that doesnt mean that were not responding, Greenland says.

London's local theatres 1 /15 London's local theatres Bush Theatre The Bush Theatre in Shepherds Bush began life in 1972; it first lived above a pub that held only 80 people, but in 2010 moved to an old public library building. Under the artistic directorship of Madani Younis, the theatre was transformed into one of the city's most influential artistic spaces. Now that Lynette Linton has taken over the reins, the stages continue to host groundbreaking works by new talent and the legends of years gone by. Philip Vile Camden People's Theatre Camden Peoples Theatre is a small theatre a few minutes away from Warren Street that has shown huge dedication to developing and supporting new artists. Since 2013, their Calm Down Dear Festival has presented a packed programme of feminist performance. It's just one of the many festivals CPT holds, including Handle With Care, which sees the so-called "generation snowflake" strike out beyond their safe spaces. Finborough Theatre The Finborough, a 50-seater above a pub in Earls Court, is a great champion for new writing, but it also puts on a number of rarely seen plays, like RC Sherriffs The White Carnation and JB Priestleys Cornelius. A number of playwrights associated with the building have won the Pearson Award including Laura Wade, Anders Lustgarten and James Graham, so its a great place for spotting upcoming new talent.

The Finborough, a 50-seater above a pub in Earls Court, is a great champion for new writing, but it also puts on a number of rarely seen plays, winning numerous fringe awards. A number of playwrights associated with the building have won the Pearson Award including Laura Wade, Anders Lustgarten and James Graham, so its a great place for spotting upcoming new talent. Matt Freestone Orange Tree Theatre Under Artistic Director Paul Miller, who was appointed in 2014, Richmonds Orange Tree has had something of a shake-up. They had a huge hit with Alistair MacDowells Pomona, which brought in new audiences and transferred to the National Theatre and the Royal Exchange. Alongside new writing they have presented revivals from writers as DH Lawrence, Doris Lessing, and Terence Rattigan.

Under Artistic Director Paul Miller, who was appointed in 2014, Richmonds Orange Tree has had something of a shake-up. They had a huge hit with Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' An Octoroon, which ran at the National Theatre, and stage evenings with some of the most influential voices in theatre from Dame Judi Dench to Sharon D Clarke. Alongside new writing they have presented revivals from writers as DH Lawrence, Doris Lessing, and Terence Rattigan.  The Yard Artistic Director Jay Miller converted a disused warehouse in Queens Yard, Hackney Wick, into a 110-seater fully raked amphitheatre, and filled it with vibrant new writing. The small venue, created with recycled materials, has punched above its weight ever since; Alexander Zeldins extraordinary play on zero-hour workers, Beyond Caring, began life there before going to the National Theatre. It also regularly holds readings of drafts in developments and scratch nights for artists to test out new work. Arcola Theatre The Arcola in Dalston has two theatre spaces and plays host to a number of emerging theatre companies. On top of this, it is heavily invested in the local community and contains a number of theatre groups within it, including the Queer Collection, Women's Company and Ala-Turka for the Turkish and Kurdish groups of east London. As well as hosting new writing, they hold an opera festival every year; Grimeborn runs for several weeks over the summer. Lyric Hammersmith Theatre The Lyric Hammersmith Theatre is over 125 years old but it definitely isnt showing its age. Theyve had a number of hits transfer to the West End, including Ghost Stories, which returned to the UK this year after a successful trip around the word. There is now a new boss behind the wheel, as Rachel O'Riordan has taken over and kicked things off with artistic associate Tinuke Craig's urgent adaptation of A Doll's House. Gate Theatre The Gate Theatre lives above the Prince Albert pub in Notting Hill, where it has been presenting theatre in its 75-seat venue since 1979. It counts Stephen Daldry, Erica Whyman and Carrie Cracknell amongst its previous artistic directors, with Ellen McDougall in charge now, and pretty much anyone who is anyone has worked there at some stage of their career. Southwark Playhouse Southwark Playhouse began life in 1993, with a disused workshop being turned into a flexible theatre space. With two performance spaces, they put on a vast spread of work, from musicals to new plays, always focusing on breathing new life into the classics. Ambitious as ever, the Playhouse is moving into two new venues, a flagship site at Elephant and Castle and another in the arches of London Bridge Station. Ovalhouse Ovalhouse provides a space for new artists to develop work and offers an eclectic programme of experimental performance, as well as having a commitment to participation work and getting young people involved with the theatre. Its roots go back to the 1930s and numerous important cultural figures have started their careers there, from David Hare to Stella Duffy. They are about to move from their home in Kennington to a new site in Brixton, a mile and a half down the road, and asked performers in the final season to help them demolish the building. Shoreditch Town Hall This Grade II building became an independent arts venue in 2004, and has a number of different spaces including the huge Assembly Hall and basement space The Ditch. As well as hosting productions they curate their own artistic programme and present ground-breaking works from the likes of Jamie Lloyd and Alice Birch. Fun fact: it was involved in the filming of Florence Foster Jenkins and The Lady in the Van. Kiln Theatre Kiln Theatre in Kilburn (formerly known as the Tricycle) is the starting place for a number of plays that have gone on to have a massive life in recent years: Red Velvet starring Adrian Lester, Moira Buffinis Handbagged and Florian Zeller's The Son. Indhu Rubasingham joined as artistic director in 2012 and spearheaded a renovation before the rebrand. Theres a cinema too if your prefer your entertainment beneath a veil of celluloid. Philip Vile Theatre503 The Theatre503 is above The Latchmere pub in Battersea, and offers more new writing opportunities than anywhere else in the country. They have a year-round open submission policy and believe its a crucial way to keep the industry open to new writers. Their writing prize offers an unproduced writer a chance to be a part of their main season, and ensure they programme productions from writers from previous decades who have been overlooked. Their track record is excellent, with a lot of their shows transferring to bigger venues. Rose Theatre Kingston Its worth making the journey to the Rose. It opened in 2008 and was modelled on the original Elizabethan theatre that lived on Londons bankside. It hosts work from theatre companies such as the RSC as well as producing its own, and can attract the best. The world premiere of Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend took place here in 2017, and runs this year at the National Theatre, reuniting the original cast. Park Theatre The Park Theatre in Finsbury Park only opened in 2013, converted from a vacant office block next to the station. Artistic director Jez Bond wanted to create a neighbourhood theatre that presented world class theatre, and its first season featured Maureen Lipman and Charity Wakefield. It continues to present new writing and revivals, featuring Ian McKellen and Celia Imrie among its cheerleaders. parktheatre.co.uk

Theres something that feels overtly masculine about the need to find a message, or draw out a thesis, from a piece of theatre. RashDashs work doesnt overintellectualise; the magic thing about it is it will make your head burst with wonder but you cant hold it in the palm of your hand.

They recognise this way of responding to theatre: Its that need to know straight away what you think, in a kind of digestable and compartmentalised way, Goalen says. And this drive towards assessing everything, Greenland adds. You come out of a show and you assess it, and Im not interested in making theatre to be assessed in that way.

Because why cant feeling be a form? Greenland says she hopes were slowly getting there. This show is exactly about putting feeling and thought next to each other and letting them thrash into each other, she says.

This show is so much about the fact there arent actually words to explain everything, she continues. Feelings and emotions are massively underarticulated; we just dont have the words. We need to invent more words if we want there to be a language that allows the feminine in just as much as the masculine.

Two Man Show is at Soho Theatre until October 1; sohotheatre.com

Follow Jessie Thompson on Twitter @jessiecath

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A stockbroker who raped a woman after a drug and champagne-fuelled party in his City office has been jailed for six years.

Daniel Green, 26, snorted lines of cocaine during a boozy Friday night out after work, before pouncing on the woman as she slept under a desk.

She told the Old Bailey how Green pulled off her trousers and knickers and dragged her towards him during the terrifying attack, only stopping when she burst into tears.

Green, who had only been at brokerage firm StratX for a week, claimed they had stripped each other naked for consensual sex, and he thought she was crying because of the sized of his manhood.

But a jury deliberated for just under six hours before finding him guilty of rape by a majority of 11 to 1.

Rapist Daniel Green has been jailed for six years / PA

Green displayed no emotion as he was found guilty.

The attack happened in the early hours of May 16 last year, after Green and his stockbroker pals had been bar-hopping around the City with the victim and her friend.

The court heard her friend had "a s*** load of cocaine" which they had shared between them, taking it in turned to snort the drugs in the toilets.

When the bars closed, the group headed back to StratX's fourth floor office in Abchurch Lane, near to Monument Station, to carry on the party with champagne, white wine, and more cocaine.

Green's colleague Alex Costello-Bromwich said they were dancing in the office and chatting amicably, but the atmosphere soured after a row over missing drugs.

He said Green told him during the row "I am not a rapist" and was "aggressive" afterwards, pacing the corridors and dipping in and out of rooms randomly.

Green eventually said he would leave the party, but went into the office next door where the victim had gone to sleep in order to charge his phone.

She tearfully told the court how she had gone to sleep to wait for the first train home because she did not have enough money for a taxi, but awoke to find Green pulling her clothes off.

"I was in a state of shock about what was happening, I knew what was going to happen", she said.

"This was absolutely something I didn't want to happen."

She said she "wriggled" free a couple of times but Green dragged her back, stopping when she started to cry and then fled from the office.

However, he claimed they had kissed before taking each other's clothes off and starting to have sex.

Green. of Prospect Hill, Walthamstow, told jurors he had a ten-inch penis which makes sex difficult, and believed that she was crying because he was accidentally hurting her.

"I always have difficulty when it comes to having sex with girls, I find my penis is hard to penetrate females", he said.

Sentencing him today, the judge said Green would not be punished for "what seems to be a City cultural of excessive drinking and casual use of drugs when you go out socialising".

But he told him: "Having been out drinking and all of you taking cocaine, in the early hours of the morning you were wandering around the office, you had been told to go home and did not, and were behaving in a strange fashion.

"It may you were coming down from the cocaine you were taking. But I don't accept you were waiting for the first train home, as the first Central line train leaves at 5.35am and you were still in the office well after 6am."

He said the attack was "persistent" and his comment - oh f*** she's crying" - when he saw tears rolling down her face, was "totally impersonal".

The judge added: "You displayed a certain degree of arrogance when you gave your evidence."
A n Italian social worker accused of strangling a Met Police officer he met through gay dating website Grindr today denied murder.

Stefano Brizzi, 49, allegedly killed 59-year-old PC Gordon Semple before chopping up the body at his flat on the Peabody estate in Southwark.

PC Semple, originally from Inverness in Scotland, was reported missing by his partner on April 1 after he failed to return home from work.

The officer, of Greenhithe, Dartford, had last been seen at the luxury Shangri La hotel at the Shard in central London.

Police at the scene in Southwark / Jeremy Selwyn

Brizzi is accused of killing him between April 1 and April 7, when the dead officer's remains were found near communal bins at his block of flats.

He appear at the Old Bailey via videolink from HMP Belmarsh this morning to deny one charge of murder.

Bespectacled Brizzi, wearing a purple open-collar shirt, sat with his fingers pressed together throughout the hearing.

He spoke only to confirm his name and enter a not guilty plea.

Judge Nicholas Hilliard QC, the Recorder of London, adjourned the case until trial on October 18, remanding Brizzi in custody.
A 100-year-old grandmother was knocked to the ground and robbed as she walked home from a prayer meeting in a despicable attack near her home in north London.

The elderly lady was on her way back from a religious service when a man approached her outside her front door, pretending to be an electrician.

When she said she didn't need any work done, the man forced her to the ground and wrenched her handbag, containing 300 in cash and personal items, out of her hands.

The victim called out for help to her grandson who was in the house and he chased the suspect down the road but was not able to catch him.

She has been left distressed and shaken by the robbery and is now too scared to leave her home in Sherboro Road, Tottenham, police say.

The pensioner was taken to a north London hospital as a precaution but had no injuries.

The suspect is described as a white man, aged 35, who was last seen running away from the High Road towards Seven Sisters Road.

Police are appealing for anyone who saw him or the robbery, which took place at 5pm on August 23, to come forward.

Detective Chief Inspector Luke Marks, from Wood Green CID, said: "This was a despicable attack on a very elderly lady who lived independently and is now fearful to return home.

"At 100 years old she had the sense and foresight to dismiss the suspect when he tried to con her into unnecessary electrical work but he then decided to mug her instead.

"She is naturally extremely distressed and shaken by what happened and we are appealing for help to catch his man before he targets someone else."

Anyone who can help is asked to contact police on 020 3276 3083 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.
T wo dry cleaners who sold their brothers BMW, his wifes wedding dress and watch to raise cash for him as he battled for Islamic State have been jailed.

Mohammed Hussain, 26, and Mohamed Rohaman, 33, collected 10,000 for Musadikur Rohaman, a terrorist fighter in the IS stronghold of Raqqa.

Musadikur and his wife Zohura Siddeka, a teacher, left Britain for Syria in December 2014.

His brothers sold his car, 1,200 worth of family gold and the wedding dress to raise cash as their distraught mother was forced to lock up valuables to try and stop them.

They also arranged for Siddeka's maternity pay to be sent to Syria. She gave birth in September 2014 but the baby died days later. She has since had a second child.

The two brothers, from Walsall, West Midlands, were convicted after a trial at the Old Bailey of terrorism funding offences between November 2014 and last June.

Hussain was jailed for four years, Rohaman for two years and nine months and family friend Mohammed Khan, 27, received 18 months in custody for his role.

Judge Mark Lucraft QC told them: "Each of you knew where Musadikur was, what he was doing and the reasons why he needed finance.

"It would be obvious to each of you Musadikur and Zohura Siddeka were in Syria and they were there in support of the so-called Islamic State.

"Their actions cause death and suffering to a large number of people.

While the trial was ongoing there were a number of incidents around the world said to be carried out by Islamic State or where Islamic State claimed responsibility."

He told the defendants that funding serves to fuel terrorists' fight and "encourages those who carry out atrocities".

Assistant Chief Constable Marcus Beale, who leads on counter-terrorism for the West Midlands, said: "Investigations found that Musadikur was fighting in Syria and that both Mohammed Iqbal Hussain and Mohamed Suyaubur Rohaman were aware of what their brother was doing.

"It is believed Musadikur directed his brothers in what he needed doing and sent them names of who to transfer money to.

"Disruption of terrorist funding is an important part of our investigations.

Sending money to those actively engaged in terrorism helps fund their activities and we will continue to act on any intelligence and disrupt the flow of money to conflict zones."
T he Met Police has said they will assess whether criminal offences were commited by Labour MP Keith Vaz in the wake of Sunday newspaper allegations.

The force today confirmed they had received a letter on Wednesday asking the police to consider the matter.

Mr Vaz, 59, a married father-of-two, quit as chairman of the influential House of Commons Home Affairs committee on Tuesday after the Sunday Mirror claimed he had paid male prostitutes.

The Leicester East MP allegedly had a conversation regarding cocaine with one of the male escorts in which the MP said he did not want to use the drug, but indicated that he would pay for it for the other man at a later date,the paper reported.

In the wake of the revelations, Tory MP Andrew Bridgen, who has been highly critical of Mr Vaz, indicated that he would be writing to Scotland Yard calling for Mr Vaz to be investigated for misconduct in a public office and conspiracy to supply controlled substances.

Today, the Met released a statement which said they "can confirm a letter was received on Wednesday, 7 September requesting police consider the matter.

"The letter has been forwarded to the Met's Special Inquiry Team, part of Specialist Crime and Operations, to assess and identify what criminal offences - if any - may have been committed.

Keith Vaz quits Home Affairs Select Committee

"At this stage a police investigation has not been launched."
A 100-year-old woman was violently assaulted during a robbery on her own doorstep in a despicable attack.

Pensioner Alexteen Roberts, believed to be Londons oldest mugging victim, was extremely distressed and shaken after being pushed to the ground by her attacker.

Mrs Roberts, who turned 101 this week, was returning home from a prayer meeting when she was targeted just outside her front door in Tottenham, north London.

Her family today described the attack as disgusting and mindless.

Mrs Roberts was mugged as she made her way home from prayers

Her granddaughter Natasha Angol told the Standard: I dont know how somebody could do this to an elderly woman. Its a disgusting, mindless and insensitive.

Shes the sweetest, kindest, nicest old lady and so fiercely independent. For somebody to take advantage of that is horrendous.

Maisie McIntosh (left) with her mother Alexteen Roberts / David Mirzoeff /PA

She was approached by a man who said he was there to do the electrics.

She said she did not need any electrical work at which point the man pushed her to the floor and grabbed her handbag. He fled with her belongings including up to 300 cash.

Mrs Roberts screamed out to her grandson who was inside her address during the attack at 5pm on August 23.

The suspect then fled the scene, pursued by her grandson. The man was last seen in Sherboro Road before he escaped north onto the High Road towards Seven Sisters Road.

Police today appealed to the public for help in tracking down the attacker, who is described as white and aged around 35 years.

They are hoping witnesses may have seen the mugger following the victim as she travelled home from the prayer meeting in Wood Green.

Detective Chief Inspector Luke Marks, from Wood Green CID, said: This was a despicable attack on a very elderly lady who lived independently and is now fearful to return home.

At 100 years old she had the sense and foresight to dismiss the suspect when he tried to con her into unnecessary electrical work but he then decided to mug her instead.

She is naturally extremely distressed and shaken by what happened and we are appealing for help to catch his man before he targets someone else.

The victim was taken to hospital as a precaution but escaped without injuries during the incident.

Anyone with any information is urged to contact police on 020 3276 3083 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.
A second teenager has been charged with attempted murder after a 17-year-old was stabbed on a train platform in Islington.

The victim was rushed to hospital with serious injuries after the incident inside Caledonian Road and Barnsbury station last month.

One 15-year-old was arrested shortly afterwards and charged with attempted murder.

A second boy, 15, has now also been also charged with attempted murder and is due to appear in court today.

Police and paramedics were called to the scene by onlookers after reports of an attack inside the Overground station at about 2.45pm on August 25.

Scores of emergency services rushed to the station and Londons Air Ambulance was also scrambled to the scene.

A British Transport Police spokesman said: A 15-year-old boy from Islington was charged with attempted murder and will appear at Hammersmith Magistrates' Court on September 9.

A second 15-year-old from boy Hackney has also been charged with attempted murder and will appear at the Old Bailey on September 12 .
A teenager was stabbed in a playground in southwest London by two youths on bikes, police say.

The 16-year-old was assaulted by the pair of older youths, thought to be aged between 17 and 20, just before 9.30pm on Wednesday.

Police were called to Woodgate Avenue Playground, in Chessington, and the boy was rushed to hospital.

He remains in a south London hospital today although his injuries are not thought to be life-threatening.

Police investigators are unsure what was used to inflict the wounds.

They are now hunting for the two suspects, who fled the scene before emergency services arrived.

The first is described as a white male, around 6ft tall, of slim build and with shaved dark hair. He was wearing a bandana or something similar over his face, a white vest or T-shirt and long, dark shorts.

Police say the second suspect was a white male, also around 6ft and of average build, with short dark hair.

He was wearing a dark tracksuit top with a hood and dark tracksuit trousers.

Anyone who witnessed the incident or has any information should contact Kingston CID on 07881 352381 or via 101. Or contact Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.
A British Airways flight from Gatwick to Florida was forced to divert to Boston after an unruly UK passenger "interfered" with staff.

Police say a 24-year-old Glaswegian is being held after being accused of interfering with flight crew on the Boeing 777 once it took off from London yesterday afternoon.

It came after the flight made an unscheduled landing at Logan International Airport and a man was removed from the flight.

He will be summoned to appear in court in Massachusetts.

A police spokesman said: "Customs and Border Protection took custody of the 24-year-old man from Glasgow, Scotland.

"Massachusetts State Police will be summonsing the man for interfering with a flight crew."

A British Airways spokeswoman said: "Our customers and crews deserve to enjoy their flights, and not to suffer any form of abuse.

"Disruptive behaviour will not be tolerated, and the appropriate action will always be taken.

"We'd like to apologise for the delay to the other customers on the flight."
A n increase in the purity of heroin was today blamed for a record number of drug deaths recorded last year.

Deaths involving cocaine rose 30 per cent to an all-time high of 320, up from 247 in 2014, the Office for National Statistics said.

A total of 3,674 deaths in England and Wales in 2015 were attributed to drug poisoning, the highest since records began in 1993.

Of these, 1,201 involved heroin or morphine, double the figure three years earlier.

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The mortality rate from drug misuse was the highest recorded, at 43.8 deaths per million population.

Drug poisoning accounted for one in six deaths among people in their twenties and thirties.

Vanessa Fearn, researcher at ONS, said: Deaths involving heroin and morphine have more than doubled since 2012, partly driven by a rise in heroin purity and availability over the last three years.

Of the 6,232 drug deaths in the past three years, 727 were in London, with the most in Haringey (43), Westminster (42), Lambeth (42) and Camden (39).

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Niamh Eastwood, of drugs charity Release, said: The shocking rise in drug misuse deaths for the third year running raises serious concerns about the Governments drug policy.

There has been a worrying cut in funding to community and treatment services. The Home Offices pursuit of a tough on drugs strategy... is quite literally killing people.
P arents have to pay an average of more than 45,000 extra to buy a home close to the best-performing secondary schools in London, according to new analysis.

The good school premium can run to hundreds of thousands of pounds in some parts of the capital with homes near the London Oratory School in West Brompton  where Tony Blair sent three of his children  commanding 330,000 more than the surrounding area, a study from London estate agents Stirling Ackroyd has found.

Across London as a whole it found that prices are on average eight per cent, or 45,294, higher in good school catchment areas compared with the broader local property market.

The findings come after Theresa May admitted that Britains education system suffers from selection by house price as she defended her plans to lift the ban on new grammar schools.

Critics have said children from less well-off families will not benefit from the return of selective schools but supporters of the Prime Minister believe that even under the current system it is often only wealthier families who are able to afford homes near good state schools.

The concern is backed up by the figures from Stirling Ackroyd, which compared house prices in the postcodes of Londons top 25 state schools, as measured by GCSE results, with the broader surrounding area.

The biggest mark-up in percentage terms is for the eighth-ranked Queen Elizabeths School in Barnet, where local prices are 34 per cent above the average for the broader area.

The gap is bigger for selective schools  an average premium of 58,612, or 11 per cent  than for the top 10 comprehensives, where the premium is an average of 27,557, or four per cent more than the local area average.

However, there are some exceptions to the trend, such as Twyford Church of England High School in Acton, which had the 20th best GCSE results with 87 per cent of pupils getting at least five GCSEs graded A* to C.

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Average prices locally of 744,202 are 43 per cent below the west London average, suggesting it is the best value good school catchment area in the city.

Andrew Bridges, managing director at Stirling Ackroyd, said: The fact that a top state school can push up local prices by a third of a million  almost double the 180,000 cost of sending a child to private school  demonstrates their pulling power and ripple effect on the local market.

The findings were backed by separate figures from agents Savills, which found that the average house price around the best performing non-selective state schools is 955,837 in inner London, equivalent to a 15 per cent premium of 124,674 above the average.

It found the premium is 45,323  very close to the Stirling Ackroyd figure  in outer London.
T he Met Police will today celebrate a milestone for London policing as it employs 4,000 black and minority ethnic (BME) officers for the first time.

As 300 new recruits prepare to qualify as officers, the influx means London now has more than half of all BME police in the whole of the UK.

But there are still calls for a legislative change in recruitment to ensure Londons police mirror the ethnic make-up of the city.

Due to a targeted recruitment campaign, including second language and London residency requirements, the force has seen a 25 per cent rise in BME officers since 2013.

In June, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan warned it was taking too long to stamp out prejudice and discrimination while Victor Olisa, the Mets new head of diversity, agreed it was damaging the force.

Legislative change: Sadiq Khan, left, warned Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, right, that it was taking too long to stamp out discimination / Lucy Young

The mayor has vowed to seek legal advice to see what can be done to speed up the recruitment process, something the Met commissioner, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, has said he supports.

Mr Khan said: We have made some great progress, but we still have more to do.

I want to find how, by seeking legal advice on our next steps, we can achieve my manifesto aim of having a Met that is as diverse as the make-up of Londoners.

"This is not about tokenism, but about building trust and respect between our vital police force and all Londoners.

One of the best things about London is its astounding diversity.

"But to continue to be one of the safest big cities in the world, and I want us to become even safer, we need our capital's police force to reflect this, and to look like the communities it is charged with keeping safe."

New recruits: Metropolitan Police officers take part in their passing-out parade / Rob Stothard/Getty Images

Today 311 new recruits, including 79 BME officers, will take part in a passing-out parade at Hendon training school to mark the transition from trainee police officer to probationer.

Met Commissioner, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, said: "I am proud of the significant achievements celebrated today.

"Having over 4,000 BME officers policing the streets of London every day represents a significant milestone.

More progress has been made in the last three years than at any point in recent decades. Although, we recognise there is more to do, we are very pleased with this progress.

These 311 officers are at the beginning of rewarding careers and many more will follow in their footsteps. Serving London will be a privilege for them and I know they will make this city proud."
T he man who Sadiq Khan has chosen to improve integration between the capitals many communities today said he wants to help Londoners work and live side by side.

The Mayor today appointed Matthew Ryder, a leading human rights QC and part-time criminal judge, as the first-ever deputy mayor for social integration, social mobility and community engagement.

Mr Ryder, who represented the families of murder victim Stephen Lawrence and newspaper vendor Ian Tomlinson, who died in 2009 after a confrontation with police, said: Were really keen to make sure everybody is actively working and living side by side, leading interconnected lives, rather than diverse communities in little silos.

He admitted it is a daunting task and the role is still a bit fuzzy as he will have to make sure it touches everything City Hall does.

Throughout his career he has taken on the police  and security services  over issues ranging from undercover surveillance to unlawful detention. Can they trust him now? Yes, I think so, he said. I spent a lot of time bringing legal challenges but there are lots of people within the police who are enthusiastic about making sure they get it right. Outside of the courtroom, it neednt be antagonistic.

During his career at Matrix Chambers, with the likes of Cherie Blair and QC Ken MacDonald, he has inevitably represented some tricky clients. When you want to do difficult or complicated cases or take on big issues, you end up with controversial clients, he said. Barristers have a cab rank rule so the cases choose you as much as you choose them. In those circumstances youre trying to make sure peoples voices get heard.

The proudest moment of his legal career was working with Stephen Lawrences parents. Does he think the Met is still institutionally racist? Yes. Theres institutional racism in all organisations.

What is different is that the Met are working hard to combat it. It requires constant vigilance. Has a lot been done? Yes. Has enough been done? No. Theres still more to do.

Sadiq Khan: The first 100 days

The Mayor has raised the possibility of Northern Ireland-style positive discrimination to make the Met more diverse. I dont think you can rule it out. What you have to do is look very carefully when you are going to deploy a strategy like that, Mr Ryder said.

There will be occasions when a problem remains embedded in a public service and you need to take serious action. But it should be quite rare.

He has had a professional interest in police powers and stop and search seems highly likely to be in his in-tray. I dont think anybody has any complaint if stop and search is used in the right way. What we have to guard against is it being used in the wrong way. You have to make sure you have the confidence of the community.

If you have a policy that is so disproportionate it is creating a culture of distrust, youve got to find a way to resolve that.

Mr Ryder, 48, who is of mixed Jamaican and English heritage, said he has been stopped by police himself on multiple occasions. I dont know any black guy my age who isnt able to talk to you about being stopped and searched. Im not immensely resentful, that isnt what made me do the work that I do, but its an aspect of life.

He was born to middle-class parents in north London and went to Cambridge University, which he said was weird for a black man in the late Eighties.

Although much of his work will focus on Londoners of different faiths and races, he will also fight to improve opportunities for LGBT Londoners, the elderly and women. Like Mr Khan, a friend since they worked together as young lawyers, he said he is a feminist.

Mr Ryder agreed having a Muslim mayor is a positive symbol for London but added: Just as having a black US president didnt solve racism, a Muslim mayor of itself isnt going to solve Islamophobia.

A big part of it is about identity and alienation, making sure everybody feels they share an identity together, of being a Londoner.
A London fitness club has issued a warning to male gym members after women complained about lecherous behaviour.

Female members at Golds Gym in Hanwell, west London, alleged they had been subjected to inappropriate touching in its pool, wolf whistling and sexual comments from men.

The health club - part of an international chain that styles itself as the Mecca of bodybuilding  has now put up signs warning it will suspend wrongdoers in a bid to crackdown on the behaviour.

A 27-year-old female gym member said: Ive heard about various incidents of lecherous behaviour, including a girl being touched under the water.

A warning notice posted to gym members

Its awful. I mean, come on. Its a gym, you dont do something like that. You go to exercise.

The signs, written by gym manager Sarbjeet Johal, read: It has come to our attention that some male members are making female members uncomfortable whilst they are using the swimming pool or pool area.

The following behaviour towards females will not be accepted. Inappropriate touching or stroking in the water, making sexual comments, wolf whistling, taking pictures or deliberate diving under water to look at females.

Ms Johal said: Theres been one particular gentleman whose behaviour was not right and not what our standards are. We have spoken to that gentleman about it and are monitoring him.

There were one or two incidents and we are investigating it fully. They said when they were in the pool the man touched them.

She added: [The sign] is to give reassurance to our female members that we are listening to them and making sure we are respectful. If anybody is saying they dont feel comfortable and thats reported to us, we take action.

She said police had not been called in to investigate the claims.

A photo of one of the gyms warning signs was shared on social media, sparking a row over whether the notice was sexist.

Connie Gurney said on Facebook: Ridiculous, making men feel uncomfortable now, afraid to dive into the water or swim under it.

But Petronella Perret said: Management putting up notice responding to complaints made by members is responsible, not sexist.

Golds Gym styles itself as the largest chain of health and fitness clubs in the world and claims stars Keanu Reaves, Tiger Woods, Hilary Swank, Jodie Foster and Morgan Freeman among its members.

It now has branches in 22 countries across the world with its four UK sites based in Dagenham, Harrow, Hanwell and Hounslow.
The University of Wisconsin Law School hosted Justice Sonia Sotomayor for a question-and-answer conversation with two of her former law clerks as part of the annual Kastenmeier Lecture at the Wisconsin Union Theater Thursday night.

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A new wave of grammar schools will not discriminate against poorer children and will give them the chance to go to a good school, the Prime Minister will announce.

Theresa Mays controversial education proposals will call to end a current ban on opening grammar schools and allow schools to introduce selection "in some circumstances".

Mrs May will today vow to end "selection by house price" and give grammar schools targets requiring them to have a certain number of poorer pupils.

The reforms will also require universities, that charge the higher fees, to set up a new school or sponsor an existing underperforming school.

Labour have criticised the reforms and warned the expansion of grammar schools would "entrench inequality and disadvantage".

In her first domestic speech since entering No 10, Mrs May will claim that back-door selection by postcode and wealth is "unfair".

She will say: "For too long we have tolerated a system that contains an arbitrary rule preventing selective schools from being established - sacrificing children's potential because of dogma and ideology.

"The truth is that we already have selection in our school system - and it's selection by house price, selection by wealth.

That is why I am announcing an ambitious package of education reforms. This is about being unapologetic for our belief in social mobility and making this country a true meritocracy - a country that works for everyone."

But Shadow Education Minister, Angla Rayner, has accused the Prime Minister of going against her premise of making a country "work for everyone".

Ms Rayner said: "Theresa May talks about standing up for the majority but her actions reveal the opposite: working for the few at the expense of the many.

"However you package this up, the Tory Government are bringing back selection to the UK education system.

"By enshrining selection into our system the Prime Minister is wilfully ignoring the overwhelming evidence that it leads to a more unequal country.

"Instead of adopting this fundamentally flawed approach, the Prime Minister should be investing in schools for everyone, not the chosen few."

There are also plans to relax rules that stop faith schools from selecting more than half of pupils according to religion and to allow more faith schools to open.

A Downing Street source said that the cap on faith schools had "prevented new Catholic schools from opening, which are more successful, popular and ethnically diverse than other types of state school".

"We're going to change the rule, so we can allow new Catholic schools to open, while making faith schools of all kinds do more to make sure their pupils integrate with children of other backgrounds," they added.
O wners of the new Samsung Galaxy Note 7 have been advised not to use the phone on planes in case it explodes.

US authorities have warned airline passengers against switching on or charging the phones on flights  and even against packing the phones away into checked-in luggage.

Three airlines in Australia have already banned passengers from using the smartphone after Samsung recalled the product last week.

There had been reports of the devices exploding during or after charging, although no incidents have been reported on a plane.

The tech company said battery problems were to blame for the phones catching fire but it was difficult to work out which of the 2.5 million phones shipped around the world were faulty.

The Federal Aviation Administration has now discouraged flyers from using the phone, joining Qantas, Jetstar and Virgin Australia who have put in bans.

It said in a statement: "In light of recent incidents and concerns raised by Samsung about its Galaxy Note 7 devices, the Federal Aviation Administration strongly advises passengers not to turn on or charge these devices on board aircraft and not to stow them in any checked baggage."

After Samsung's recall of its Galaxy Note 7, Qantas said on Thursday it was "requesting that passengers who own [the devices] do not switch on or charge them in-flight."

The phone model was only launched last month and has overall been welcomed by buyers and critics.

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Any customers who have already bought the phone will be able to swap it for a new one, Samsung said.

The US trade group Airlines for America said it was "closely monitoring" the Note 7 problem and US airlines could make their own ruling about use of the phone on board.
T his is the moment four people jumped on top of a lorry after it overturned near the Dartford Crossing following a crash.

The image, taken by a witness at the scene, shows men grabbing the door in an apparent attempt to rescue those inside the vehicle.

He told the Standard: As they appeared to be opening the door I guess they must have been trying to help the driver get out.

The lorry flipped onto its side on the approach road to the Dartford Crossing between junctions 2 and 1A on the M25 shortly before 7pm on Friday.

It is unknown how many vehicles were involved in the crash and if anyone has been injured.

Emergency vehicles were seen on video approaching the scene.

A Kent Police spokesman said: "Police are currently attending a report of a collision on the northbound A282, received at 6.46pm on Friday, September 9.

"A lorry has overturned near J1A, and officers are at the scene with Kent Fire and Rescue Service and Secamb, and all four lanes heading towards the Dartford tunnel are currently closed while work is ongoing to clear it.

"Drivers are advised to avoid the area."



Highways England said motorists face up to half-an-hour delays because of congestion at the scene, according to its website.

It added normal traffic conditions are set to resume from 8.15pm.
E mbattled former BHS boss Sir Philip Green was today accused of making another inadequate apology following the collapse of the High Street chain with the loss of 11,000 jobs.

The tycoon issued a lengthy statement to rebut a series of damaging allegations against him over the BHS scandal.

He hit out at Labour MP Frank Field, chairman of the Commons work and pensions committee, who has been one of his strongest critics.

Mr Field suggested in the House of Commons on Wednesday there was a lack of willingness on my part to reach a settlement with regard to the pension fund, he said.

This is untrue, totally inaccurate and unhelpful in solving this issue. With many of the fallen retail giants staff worried about their pensions, Sir Philip added: I would like to apologise sincerely to all the BHS people involved in this sorry affair.

He also insisted: Contrary to all the coverage, I have been working on this issue on a daily basis, and will continue to do so with my best efforts to achieve a satisfactory outcome for all involved as soon as possible.

Mr Field welcomed the statement but said the apology should be more specific. There is a quite big area for which an apology is required. It covers huge ground, of a failed stewardship which has resulted in the loss of 11,000 jobs and so far cuts in 20,000 pension entitlements.

The outcome, the minimum outcome, that those pensioners will be looking for is that they will not be made a penny worse off by Sir Philips stewardship of BHS, he said.

Sir Philip stated that he and his executives had been co-operating with the Pensions Regulator for 17-18 months to find a solution.

There have also been suggestions in the Press that I have tried to pressurise the regulator, or, as was stated on the front page of one newspaper, blackmail it, he added.

This is wholly untrue. I am not in control of the process. I am following the process which has been set down by the regulator. Pensions are extremely complex issues, especially when there are more than 20,000 members involved.

The tycoon has come under fire for taking more than 400 million in dividends from the chain, which was left with a 571 million pension deficit, and for selling it to a man with a lack of retail experience.

Sir Philip owned BHS for 15 years before selling it to serial bankrupt Dominic Chappell for 1 in 2015.

The chains collapse in April has sparked a lengthy parliamentary inquiry. Mr Field has asked the Serious Fraud Office to launch a formal investigation into Sir Philip and Mr Chappell.
A ten-year-old child was among dozens of tourists rescued today after spending the night stranded in cable cars dangling above the Mont Blanc mountain range.

The rescue mission in the French Alps restarted at dawn and returned the 33 people to safety after they became trapped at an altitude of about 3,800m (12,468ft) yesterday afternoon, apparently when cables became tangled in high winds.

Sixty-five people, including US, French and Italian tourists, were rescued yesterday by helicopter before night fell over Europes highest mountains.

A dozen were brought down from the four-person gondolas by rescuers using ropes.

Rescued: A 10-year-old boy was among those trapped / Luca Bruno/AP

Clouds hampered visibility last night in conditions which rescuers said made for a very complex operation.

Tourists stranded overnight in French Alps cable car terror

The remainder were provided with blankets and food as they awaited the resumption of rescue attempts at 5.30am.

The stationary cable cars dangle hundreds of metres above the Alps / Luca Bruno/AP

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They were taken to Chamonix in France and the Italian town of Courmayeur.

Passengers rescued from a cable car arrive at the station in Courmayeur, Italy / AP

It is believed rescuers were this morning able to complete the process of untangling the cables and the tourists were brought down in the cable cars, without the need for a helicopter evacuation.

Antoine Burnet, from cable car operator Compagnie Du Mont Blanc, praised the professionalism of the rescuers and the exemplary conduct and calmness of those trapped.

He described the rescue operation as serene.

Trapped: 110 tourists were trapped in cable cars overlooking the French Alps (file image) / PHILIPPE DESMAZES/AFP/Getty Images

Stephane Bozon, the rescue commander from the Chamonix Gendarmerie, said: We were in touch with them all night. The people were cold but there was no vital distress.

The cables had crossed at three points on the three mile route between Aiguille du Midi in France and Pointe Helbronner in Italy. The panoramic ride over glaciers usually takes 30 minutes to complete.

Rescue workers clamber into one of the cable cars, suspended hundreds of metres above the Alps

Kathy Cook, a tourist from Michigan, who was rescued last night, said: We were there almost 10 hours in the cable car. The cable car left about 2:30 in the afternoon and it was just before midnight when they finally brought us out of the gondolas, which was really quite an experience.

The helicopter rescue failed because the fog moved in, so we had to just wait and then they decided they could bring us safely to the ground, and we walked up the glacier to the hut.

Rescue: Dozens have been rescued by helicopters after cable cars broke down over the French Alps / EPA

Frederic Labrunye, commander of the provincial gendarmerie group of Haute-Savoie, said: The extent of this rescue operation is simply unbelievable.

By the volume of people to rescue -we rarely rescue 110 people at the same time in high mountain - and by the environment in which it happens ... in the heart of one of the largest glaciers in Europe, over a distance of 5km of cable with 36 cabins.
T his is the shocking moment a man swipes a wheelchair-bound pensioners monthly allowance.

The suspected thief can be seen walking up behind the helpless 93-year-old in a New York store before snatching at her bra and dashing off with an envelope of money.

Maria Vasquez, who had been shopping for slippers with her carer, said the envelope contained her entire monthly pension worth 450 which she had just picked up from the bank.

She later said she was stunned and scared when she noticed him pawing out her chest, before screaming that he had stolen her money.

He reached over and startled me, yanking the envelope from my bra, she told the New York Post.

He scratched me and took off running. I jumped in my chair because I was strapped in. There was nothing I could do.

Heartless: the 93-year-old had her entire monthly allowance stolen / NYPD

The suspect, with his hair in a bun, and a grey t-shirt and shoulder bag, is thought to have spotted Ms Vasquez withdrawing the money at the bank and placing in her bra.

It had been deemed a safe place as her carer is not legally able to carry her money.

This CCTV has been released by New York police who are still looking for him.

Ms Vasquez, who has been wheelchair-bound since sufffering a stroke, said she will be forced to find another source of income just to cover food and electricity bills.

Hell have to take more precaution. Its scary. I hope this never happens again, she said.

I hope... he gets punished but I dont want the death penalty for him, she said. I pray he changes his ways."
A London charity worker who has been detained in Iran for more than 150 days has been jailed for five years, her husband said.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, from Hampstead, was sentenced on secret charges, according to her husband Richard.

The 37-year-old was arrested in April at Imam Khomeini airport and separated from her two-year-old daughter Gabriella while she was held by Irans Revolutionary Guard.

The five-year sentence, expected to be served in Evin prison, was handed down by Judge Salavati of the Revolutionary Court on Tuesday - the day after the UK and Iran upgraded Embassy relations.

Held in Iran: Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was seized with her baby daughter Gabriella

Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe confirmed the sentence via a phone call to her husband on Friday morning, which he branded "crazy".

Mr Ratcliffe said: A sentence with secret charges still seems crazy. Literally it is a punishment without a crime.

Nazanin's detention and charges have always felt like she and Gabriella are being held as a political bargaining chip for internal and international politics.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Richard Ratcliffe on their wedding day in 2009 / Azadeh Fatehrad

The fact that she was sentenced with unrecognisable charges the day after the UK Embassy was upgraded, makes this all the clearer.

The family have asked Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffes lawyer to appeal the sentence. No date has been set for the appeal.

On the phone, she said: "Five years is ridiculous. For what? We will appeal. But I don't know how long it will take, how long it will last.

Months? They said that sometimes you can settle cases on appeal through payment - but not often cases like mine. So I don't know how long it will go on taking."

Mr Ratcliffe added: Why the Revolutionary Guard wishes to manoeuvre the judiciary to announce through me the sentence but not the charges I do not know.

"I told her she has nothing to apologise for. Her head will always be high. She is much loved, over 800,000 people have signed her petition, and I have thousands of messages for her to read one day.

They keep me going now. They will be so important for her journey back once this cruelty is over. I told her we so look forward to having her home."

Amnesty International, which has campaigned for Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe to be freed, said the case was a "complete travesty of justice".

Its Individuals at Risk campaign manager Kathy Voss said: "This is extremely depressing but probably not unexpected news.

"Iran's Revolutionary Courts are notorious for handing down prison sentences after grossly unfair trials.

"From all the reports we've seen, Nazanin's case has been a complete travesty of justice throughout - beginning with her protracted secret detention, then the unsupported accusations from officials, and culminating in this week's out-of-the-blue sentence."
A n earthquake has been triggered in North Korea after the country claimed to have carried out its biggest ever nuclear test.

It is the fifth time the country has tested nuclear weapons but is suspected by South Korea to be the Norths most powerful ever test - believed to be two thirds as strong as the 1945 Hiroshima bomb.

South Korea said the test showed the maniacal recklessness of leader Kim Jong-un.

The secretive nation's state media announced they had tested a newly-developed nuclear warhead, saying they could now mount a nuclear device on ballistic rockets.

It sparked a 5.3 magnitude earthquake this morning in north-east North Korea, close to its underground test site.

Seismic: A north Korean official points at the epicentre of the earthquake. / AP

The types of waves coming from the quake suggested it had not been caused naturally.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye called it an act of self-destruction and suggested this blast could be almost twice as strong as its last nuclear test  believed to be a hydrogen bomb - in January.

This tests blast had a yield of about 10 kilotonnes. To compare, the bomb dropped by the US on Hiroshima in 1945 had a yield of around 15 kilotonnes.

The test has sparked fears the country could be a step closer to having a useable nuclear weapon.

China said they were opposed to the test and urged North Korea to avoid further action while the US warned of serious consequences.

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The White House said President Barack Obama had spoken to both the South Korean and Japanese leaders about the country's actions.

A statement from press secretary Josh Earnest said Mr Obama had "reiterated the unbreakable US commitment to the security of our allies in Asia and around the world".

He said: "The president indicated he would continue to consult our allies and partners in the days ahead to ensure provocative actions from North Korea are met with serious consequences."

South Korean president Ms Park said the test was a "grave challenge" to the international community that would "only earn more sanctions and isolation" for the North.

"Such provocation will further accelerate its path to self-destruction," she said.
A t least three people are believed to have died after a train derailed in northern Spain this morning.

There is also an increasing number of injured people, thought to be more than 50, after a train came off the tracks near Pontevedra, Galicia.

It had been travelling form the port city of Vigo to Valenca do Mino, in Portugal, when it derailed in the Spanish town of O Porrino at 9.30am.

The reasons why the train derailed are as yet unclear, but Spanish rail operator Adif has already announced it is launching an investigation.

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Footage from the scene shows the train on its side and off the track, with the front crushed against an electricity pylon.

One of those dead is believed to be the driver, while a fourth person is reported to be in a critical condition.

Firefighters and paramedics are at the scene as passengers are being rescued from the wreckage and rushed to hospital.

There were about 60 passengers on the train, which belongs to Portuguese operator Comboios Portugal.

Political parties in north western Spain have temporarily suspended campaigning.

In July 2013, a high-speed train traveling from Madrid to Spains north derailed outside Santiago de Compostela, killing 79 people and injuring 140.

This page is being updated.
A n Australian school has apologised after a pupil wearing an Adolf Hitler costume for book week won a best-dressed prize in front of Jewish exchange students.

Local media reported a respected staff member at the school, in Alice Springs, had given the pupil permission for the outfit.

He went on to be featured in a parade held during an assembly, where students on an exchange trip from Bialik College, a Jewish school in Melbourne, were present.

The principal of St Philips College, Roger Herbert, said the staff member who had granted permission had made an innocent mistake and was absolutely shattered.

Im really concerned about her wellbeing, he told ABC.

A school statement said: This was an innocent mistake by a teacher who is a respected, honourable and lovely person who got it wrong on the day. The student involved has an interest in history and politics and did the right thing by getting permission for his book week costume.

The principal of Bialik College has claimed the student exchange will continue despite the incident.

He said: It was an unfortunate incident. Their reaction has been swift with students, parents, staff, our students, us. Were schools. Were learning institutions and this is something for everybody to learn from.

It is distressing. It was a poor judgment call. But the follow-up and the resolution has been outstanding.
State Debate: GOP Rep. Jesse Kremer says in a column he wants legislators who will pick judges who will "serve God"
A rescue operation has resumed to free tourists who spent the night trapped in cable cars suspended above the French Alps.

Efforts to save the group were halted last night when conditions became too dangerous for rescue helicopters.

110 tourists became stuck on the 35-minute 5km cable car trip over the Vallee Blanche at 5.25pm yesterday.

Rescue efforts saw 65 people freed before night fell. The remainder, including a child aged 10, had to stay in the cabins overnight.

The journey links the Aiguille du Midi, a 3842 metre peak above Chamonix, France, to the Point Helbronner, a 3462 metre peak in Italy.

The cable cars stopped working high above the Mont Blanc massif in the Alps

At 11.30pm a helicopter could still be seen above the site making efforts to distribute emergency supplies and rescue remaining victims.

Speaking to a French television station during the rescue, Eric Fournier, the Mayor of Chamonix, said: People who are stuck in the cabins are being evacuated by helicopter.

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There are no fundamental concerns. The rescuers, supported by their Italian counterparts, are implementing with speed and efficiency all the necessary operations to bring these people back into the valley.

"It has happened in the heart of Mont Blanc so, by character, it was quite spectacular.

Passengers rescued from a cable car arrive at the station in Courmayeur, Italy / AP

There was speculation that a problem with the cables had caused the breakdown.

The nationalities of those who remained trapped was not known.

One of the tourists is winched to safety

There were French, American and Italian tourists among those rescued on Thursday.

Frances Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve praised the courage of the French and Italian rescuers.

He said: They are engaged in a delicate operation to rescue 110 people trapped following a technical incident.

The tourists had accessed the Panoramic Mont Blanc cabins, open from June to the end of September, from either the Helbronner in Italy or the Aiguille du Midi in France.

The two peaks have their own cable car system connecting them to their nearby villages.

The French Telepherique de l'Aiguille du Midi connects the peak of Aiguille du Midi to the village of Chamonix, while the Italian Skyway Monte Bianco connects the peak of Pointe Helbronner to the village of La Palud, just north of Courmayeur near the Mont Blanc Tunnel.

The Panoramic Mont Blanc cable car tourist attraction linking the two countries was opened in 1958.

There are 12 groups of three cabins which seat four people each.

They are pulled by a haulage rope of 10,200 metres in a single loop.

The cabins run from the Aiguille du Midi station over the Vallee Blanche glacier and the Glacier du Geant glacier to the Helbronner station.

Although the cables sag by some 255 m, the cabins still have a clearance of some 300 m to the glacier underneath.
A US police force has released graphic images of a man and a woman unconscious in a car with a small child on the backseat after they suffered a suspected heroin overdose.

The shocking pictures were uploaded to the City of East Liverpool Facebook page following the incident in Ohio on Wednesday afternoon.

Authorities said the decision to make the images public were to highlight a heroin epidemic sweeping across the state.

The Facebook post read: The city administration works hand in hand with our men in blue to combat this epidemic and together with the law director we have made the decision to release the attached.

We feel it necessary to show the other side of this horrible drug. We feel we need to be a voice for the children caught up in this horrible mess.

Epidemic: Authorities said the pictures were shown to shine a light on the suffering caused by heroin / City of East Liverpool, Ohio

This child can't speak for himself but we are hopeful his story can convince another user to think twice about injecting this poison while having a child in their custody.

We are well aware that some may be offended by these images and for that we are truly sorry, but it is time that the non drug using public sees what we are now dealing with on a daily basis.

The poison known as heroin has taken a strong grip on many communities not just ours, the difference is we are willing to fight this problem until it's gone and if that means we offend a few people along the way we are prepared to deal with that.

A police officer said he noticed a dark Ford Explorer being driven erratically near a school bus before it came to a stop.

He said he made contact with the driver, identified as James Acord, whose head bobbed back and forth while his speech was intelligible.

When the officer asked him a question, he replied he was taking his female passenger, named Rhonda Pasek, to the hospital.

The womans four-year-old son was sat on the backseat as the officer questioned the driver.

Police reports showed Acord attempted to drive away but was thwarted when the officer removed the keys from the ignition.

Both Acord and Pasek fell into unconsciousness and were given emergency treatment to reverse a heroin overdose before they were taken to hospital.

A small amount of pink powdery substance was found in a folded up piece of paper on the front seat between Paseks legs, the report added.

According to local reports, Acord was charged with operating a vehicle while intoxicated, endangering children, and slowing or stopping in a road.

He pleaded no contest and was sentenced to 180 days in prison for each of the first two charges, The Weirton Daily Times reported.

Meanwhile Pasek was charged with endangering children, public intoxication and not wearing a seatbelt.

Her son was placed into childrens services.
K atie Hopkins has been tear gassed during a visit to Calais's Jungle migrant camp.

Hopkins said she watched as police used tear gas to stop hundreds of migrants as they attempted to storm a perimeter fence to gain access to vehicles heading across the Channel to Britain.

And she said a photographer with her had his camera, phone and wallet stolen.

The LBC presenter, 41, was caught up in the incident as police tried to prevent migrants from jumping on trucks waiting for ferries to cross the Channel into the UK.

Katie Hopkins takes cover from the gas / LBC

Video footage shows Hopkins running towards the perimeter fence as sirens blare in the background.

Speaking to the camera she says: Theres a pile up of trucks and the guys are running to get on the trucks and were following them.

Katie Hopkins stands among clouds of gas at the Calais migrant camp / Roland Hoskins/Daily Mail

They have a really short window to get on the trucks before the police come and stop them.

Smoke soon fills the air as the controversial columnist becomes aware that the authorities are using tear gas.

I think thats tear gas, she shouts. Theres now tear gas being fired all around us.

Hopkins said she visited the camp to get a first-hand experience of life in the jungle.

Photographer Roland Hoskins had his camera, phone and wallet stolen after he was attacked by a group of migrants, LBC reported.

Hoskins was helped by members of the charity Care4Calais and other migrants managed to retrieve most of his belongings.

Hopkins wrote in the MailOnline: "We were tear-gassed amongst the excitable mob and our cameraman was left shaking in the back of a shipping container stripped of his kit."

Katie Hopkins says she regrets migrant comments

Hopkins has publicly criticised the influx of migrants making the illegal journey from Calais to the UK, and last year faced a backlash for referring to African migrants as cockroaches.

Writing in her The Sun column she said: Make no mistake, these migrants are like cockroaches.

"They might look a bit Bob Geldofs Ethiopia circa 1984, but they are built to survive a nuclear bomb.

Follow @StandardEnts or like us on Facebook for more news.
A bsolutely Fabulous star Joanna Lumley makes for a breathily British guide in ITVs travelogue about Japan.

The Brit icon oohs and aahs her way around the stunningly beautiful Asian country, taking in the natural world, cultural traditions, and thriving cities.

She a welcoming and engaging presence thoughout, and shes on a fantastic voyage here as she ventures from the northern island of Hokkaido down to the remote Okinawa.

To many of us, this is a mysterious and somewhat alien country, she explains.

Travelling north to south, Im going to discover a Japan thats as surprising as it is magical  a land of great natural wonder, a rich culture formed over thousands of years, with a troubled past and a strong belief in the future.

The first episode finds her in the national parks of Hokkaido, where she sees the red-crowned cranes  an important animal in Japanese culture which exists nowhere else on the planet  and heads to the city of Sapporo to see towering snow sculptures.

ITV - Joanna Lumley's Japan trailer

She also learns about the plight of Hokkaidos indigenous Ainu people, whose culture was banned when the Japanese colonised the island, before making her way to the mainland of Honshu to continue her travels.

Absolutely Fabulous: Evening Standard photo shoot with Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley 1 /26 Absolutely Fabulous: Evening Standard photo shoot with Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley Joanna Lumley and Jennifer Saunders rummage through the rails in true Patsy and Eddy style Daniel Hambury The comedy duo were overjoyed to see their takeover of the Liberty windows Daniel Hambury In our chat in Liberty's Heritage Suite the pair revealed what it was like to work with Kate Moss Daniel Hambury These women know how to strike a pose, citing Liberty as their favourite London store Daniel Hambury "I hope they know what they have let themselves in for though. Edina would pocket most of the accessories department if she could," said Saunders Daniel Hambury The iconic flower shop entrance had some special guests Daniel Hambury The flower power seems to have made an impact on Saunders Daniel Hambury Making a royal entrance on the Liberty balcony, with crowds of adoring fans cheering them on Daniel Hambury The takeover has life-size Patsy and Eddy dolls in the windows Daniel Hambury Eddy and Patsy find themselves in a media storm in the movie and are relentlessly pursued by the paparazzi...we may have found their hiding place Daniel Hambury Lumley and Saunders are keen to dabble in journalism and take the reins at the Evening Standard Daniel Hambury Look out for the Donald Trump in Patsy Stone scandal story... Daniel Hambury Champagne was flowing for the photo shoot, in true Ab Fab style Daniel Hambury The Evening Standard's Amira Hashish meets her idols for our behind the scenes interview Daniel Hambury A Kate Moss shrine in the Liberty window pays homage to the British supermodel A replica of the moment Moss falls into the Thames Inflatable speech bubbles capture our favourite quotes Learn the new wave of Ab Fab lingo Patsy and Eddy's motto is proudly presented Cheers sweetie darlings! Daniel Hambury

Elsewhere there's a sobering look at the geographical troubles of earthquakes and tsunamis  and the tradegy at Fukushima where the nuclear power plant was destroyed in 2011.

While Lumley is an entertaining guide, Japan is the star of the show here  a country which offers a diversity of tranquil natural sights, futuristic cities, and an incomparable popular culture.

As you watch Lumleys journey, youll be wanting to book a trip of your own.

ITV, 9pm
A s the star of the hit Netflix series Narcos, Brazilian actor Wagner Moura isnt just the man with the moustache. In the recently launched second series he perfects a chiaroscuro portrayal of Pablo Escobar, the drug lord and great anti-hero of Colombian history, which has helped defined the entire tone of the series.

Its a responsibility he takes seriously. We wanted to show not the bad guy, and not the Robin Hood, but the grey zone in between. That was something that I myself was personally very involved with, he says.

A few episodes into series two and it becomes clear to the viewer how Mouras performance has filtered through to the rest of the show. In order to catch Escobar, the DEA agents (played by Boyd Holbrook and Game of Throness Pedro Pascal) must start to become something like him.

Everything is very relative, very grey, says Moura. We never wanted Narcos to be a regular American cop show, where American super-cool cops go to a poor country and save poor people from the bad guys, yknow? I mean, that would be a flop for us.

This weeks announcement of a third and fourth series in the works proves that Narcos is no flop, but nor did the first series pass entirely without criticism, which Moura has heard, responded to and in some cases even made a virtue of. Remember those non-specific Spanish-language accents, which initially irritated viewers hoping for a more authentic taste of Seventies Medellin Paisas? Those now play more like an intentional celebration of pan-Latin unity.

Latin America is very complex. To understand what that is you have to be there for a while, so the American writers wanted the Latin people involved in Narcos to give as much input as we could concerning that period. Even though Im not Colombian, Im Brazilian  I think that was something that I could be helpful with.

Narcos Netflix Trailer - Season 2

As for the view, expressed in some parts of the Colombian press, that television should not dredge up this dark episode from the countrys past, Moura is sympathetic but unrepentant.

When a rich kid dies from overdoses, its a tragedy. In Brazil, when a favela kid dies, it doesnt even make it onto the newspapers

You can understand that they are kind of sick of drug dealer stories. Colombia became a very modern, interesting, cultural country and all people would talk about is the drug trade. But on the other hand, its part of their history. You cant deny that It was very important for me as a Latin American person to discover how the drug trade began. So it can be healthy, in a way, and I think this is one of the functions of art.

Moura was already a well-established stage and screen actor in Brazil before Narcos. He had also had some international exposure, appearing alongside Matt Damon and Jodie Foster in the 2013 sci-fi Elysium and starring in Elite Squad, one of Brazils biggest ever box-office hits and the winner of the Golden Bear at the 2008 Berlin Film Festival.

10 must-see Netflix Original series 1 /13 10 must-see Netflix Original series Narcos Wagner Moura stars as Pablo Escobar in this drama about the rise of the Colombian drug trade Juan Pablo Gutierrez/Netflix Stranger Things The Duffer Brothers' Eighties-set mystery series channels classic Spielberg and Stephen King, with plenty of loveable characters Netflix Jessica Jones Krysten Ritter is perfectly cast as Netflix's super-strong private detective, with David Tennant in superb form as her terrifying mind-controlling ex Myles Aronowitz/Netflix Bojack Horseman Netflix's hit animation is no Family Guy rip-off - it's a remarkably sharp and astute sitcom about a horse actor struggling with depression after spending his early years in a hit sitcom Netflix Orange is the New Black The inmates of Litchfield Penitentiary make for one of the best and most diverse casts on TV in this witty and gripping comedy-drama Netflix Master of None Aziz Ansari writes and stars in this brilliantly observant comedy series about 'millennials', identity, and the pace of modern life K.C. Bailey/Netflix House of Cards Kevin Spacey brings added gravitas to the Machiavellian plotting of lethal politician Frank Underwood NETFLIX The Get Down Baz Luhrmann brings his inimitable visual style to this tale of the origins of hip-hop in the Bronx in the Seventies Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt Ellie Kemper is irrepressibly upbeat in Tina Fey's comedy about a woman who emerges after a decade in a doomsday bunker - and sets out to seize life Daredevil Casting off the memories of the Ben Affleck film, Marvel's Daredevil offers a dark and brooding origin story of blind lawyer-turned-vigilante Matt Murdock Netflix

Its his performance as Escobar in Narcos, however, that has elevated him into the level of unofficial cultural ambassador for Latin America in the West, and theres one pertinent issue hes particularly exercised about.

I think drugs should be legalised. The war on drugs, which is an American policy, takes place here and not in the US, you know what I mean? Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru; these are the countries where young people from poor neighbourhoods are being killed When a rich kid dies from overdoses, its a tragedy. In Brazil, when a favela kid dies, it doesnt even make it onto the newspapers.

A former student of journalism at Brazils Federal University of Bahia, Moura stays informed about whats going on in the world  and not just what audiences are saying about Narcos but everything else besides. On his home countrys recent hosting of the Olympics, he says: The worst thing that happened was the Ryan Lochte thing which was not Brazils fault, actually, so great!

Daniel Daza/Netflix

On the recent impeachment of Brazils first female president, Dilma Rousseff: Very similar to the coup detat that we had back in 64, without the use of the military force. On Sixties Brazilian cinema: Films like City of God or even Elite Squad couldnt exist if Glauber Rocha and the other guys of the Cinema Novo hadnt made their films, so check them out.

Now that Mouras Narcos role is winding up (no spoiler alert necessary; Escobars death in 1993 is a matter of historical record) he is free to further explore these varied interests. Next up is his directorial debut, a feature-length biopic about the Brazilian Marxist revolutionary Carlos Marighella who, like Moura, hails from the city of Salvador in the Bahia region. Hes a controversial figure because he took guns in order to resist, he was robbing banks and going after military targets But there was no dialogue [possible] with the dictatorship so thats what they decided to do and I respect that. I respect every kind of resistance against a bigger economic and military power.

Narcos' Wagner Moura on Pablo Escobar's death in season two

Any time off between making his film and debating revolutionary ethics is spent with his young family (Moura has three sons with his wife, journalist and photographer Sandra Delgado) or singing lead vocals with his band, Sua Mae. Thats Portuguese for the universal playground insult Your Mum but since this band was formed 24 years ago, with some old friends from his university days, such childishness can be excused.

Six years ago, to mark the bands 18th birthday, Sua Mae recorded their only album, The Very Best of The Greatest Hits. Its a mix of the British rock of the Eighties, like The Cure, explains Moura. Thats mixed with  which I think is very interesting  a very kitsch kind of Brazilian music. So, yeah, you can check it out on YouTube if you want.

Best TV dramas 2016 1 /38 Best TV dramas 2016 The Missing The addictive and twisty second series of the BBC's crime anthology series BBC/New Pictures/Robert Viglasky Dark Angel Joanne Froggatt stared as Victorian mass murderer Mary Ann Cotton in this ITV drama ITV Close to the Enemy Stephen Poliakoff's post-war drama thriller BBC/Little Island Pictures Ordinary Lies The BBC anthology drama returns with more twisted tales BBC/Red Productions/Adrian Rogers The Night Of Riz Ahmed stars in HBO's critically acclaimed crime mini-series HBO Cold Feet The classic ITV comedy-drama returns - and it's just as good as it ever was ITV Victoria ITV have given Poldark some stiff competition with this period drama about a young Queen Victoria ITV Poldark The BBC's hit drama returns with more brooding, and less naked scything BBC/Robert Viglasky One of Us The BBC kept everyone guessing with this claustrophobic four-part whodunit Ripper Street The fan-favourite Victorian police drama returned for Series 4 BBC/Tiger Aspect 2016/Bernard Walsh The Secret Agent Toby Jones led the cast in the BBC's Joseph Conrad adaptation BBC/World Productions/Mark Mainz/Matt Burlem The Living and the Dead The BBC's gothic romance debuted in full on iPlayer BBC Preacher AMC's adaptation of Garth Ennis' cult comic book is available week-by-week on Amazon Prime Amazon / AMC Versailles A raunchy royal romp around the court of King Louis XIV, spicing up Wednesdays on BBC Two Canal +/ BBC Locked Up The Spanish prison drama came to the UK thanks to Channel 4's Walter Presents series Channel 4 / Global Series Peaky Blinders The Birmingham-set gangster thriller was more popular than ever in its third series BBC/Caryn Mandabach Productions Ltd/Tiger Aspect/Robert Viglasky The A Word The BBC gave us a nuanced and emotional take on autism BBC/Fifty Fathoms Marcella Anna Friel stars in ITV's British take on the Scandi-noir thriller ITV Grantchester James Norton is back as the crime-solving vicar ITV / Lovely Day Stag The comedy-thriller from the team behind The Wrong Mans is both hilarious and chilling BBC/Des Willie/Hal Shinnie/Matt Burlem Vinyl Martin Scorsese and Mick Jagger present a glossy drama about the Seventies music industry HBO American Crime Story: The People vs OJ Simpson Cuba Gooding Jr leads an all-star cast in a dramatic re-telling of the 'trial of century' BBC/Fox Happy Valley Sarah Lancashire returned as Sgt Catherine Cawood for a second series of the gritty crime thriller BBC/Red Productions/Ben Blackall The X Files Mulder and Scully return for a brand new set of mysteries War and Peace The BBC's epic adaptation of the Russian literary classic BBC/Mitch Jenkins Call the Midwife The BBC period drama moved into the Sixties for Series 5 BBC/Neal Street Productions/Sophie Mutevelian Dickensian Charles Dickens' most famous characters collide in this historical soap BBC Jericho ITV's British western set in the wilds of Yorkshire Silent Witness The hugely popular detective drama returns for a 19th series

An ever-curious man such as Moura should have no trouble moving on from an old project, however successful, yet even post-Escobar Moura hopes to remain involved in the show in some capacity: I would love to direct an episode in season three or four and I have expressed that desire.

Narcos is a very important thing in my life. Its something that I dedicated a lot to and I learned so much about Latin America and about myself, because yknow, Brazil is so isolated in South America. I felt for the first time I was part of something bigger.

Follow Ellen E Jones on Twitter: @MsEllenEJones
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The Sacred Stones Overflow Camp is growing in size and number as more people arrive at the site along North Dakota Highway 1806 and across the Cannonball River from the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation, Monday, Sept. 5, 2016, in Morton County, N.D. (Tom Stromme/The Bismarck Tribune via AP)
Tremors?? a Facebook friend who lives in Lincoln, posted on Saturday, Sept. 3. Others on the eastern side of the state took to social media to figure out what was going on, why it seemed like the Earth was shaking. We dont normally have seismic activity in this part of the country.

That same morning, Nebraska Public Power District sent out a press release declaring an Unusual Event at NPPDs Cooper Nuclear Station in Brownville, Nebraska. Minor tremors were felt at the plant which required plant operators to declare the event, the release read.

All nuclear power plants are designed to withstand the historically worst-case scenarios for the regions where they are built, said CNS Emergency Preparedness Manager Jim Stough. Cooper Nuclear Station was designed and built to withstand earthquakes of this magnitude, and our team members are highly trained to respond to an array of events, including earthquakes. Our personnel and the plants monitoring and safety systems all responded exactly as intended.

The unusual event was Oklahomas largest earthquake in the history of the state, at a magnitude of 5.8. The quake damaged more than a dozen buildings in Pawnee, Oklahoma, injured two people and was felt in 17 states.

And it was caused by humans.

After the earthquake, the governor of Oklahoma declared a state of emergency in Pawnee County, and 37 wastewater injection wells were ordered to shut down.

According to the United States Geological Survey, any earthquake of 5.0 magnitude or higher is considered damaging. In 2014, the USGS and the Oklahoma Geological Survey issued an earthquake warning, the first time for a state east of the Rocky Mountains to receive such a warning. That same year the rate of earthquakes was up 5,000 percent in the state.

Prior to fracking and wastewater injection, Oklahoma wasnt known for earthquakes. Once oil companies started pumping their wastewater into the rock formations underground scientists had to create a new term for all the quakes that the state started experiencing. They now call them induced earthquakes, induced by man, rather than occurring naturally.

The state has 3,200 active disposal wells. The wells inject brine  a mixture of highly salty water and fracking compounds  deep into rock formations underground.

Last year I interviewed William Ellsworth, a USGS geophysicist, about the potential for earthquakes in Nebraska from wastewater injection wells. He had just published a study definitively linking wastewater injection to increased seismicity, or small tremors and quakes, in Oklahoma.

His study stated: USGS scientists have found that at some locations the increase in seismicity coincides with the injection of wastewater in deep disposal wells. Much of this wastewater is a byproduct of oil and gas production and is routinely disposed of by injection into wells specifically designed for this purpose.

Ellsworth told me at the time that Oklahoma was working on a stoplight system. For example, green might mean it was safe to inject water, yellow means the water is starting to lubricate and pressurize the plates and cause seismicity and red means stop, the seismicity has reached a dangerous level.

Apparently either the Pawnee site doesnt have stoplights or the injectors blew right through them.

Earlier this year, the USGS released a report with a map of dangers from induced earthquakes, the first time it has included man-made earthquakes along with natural occurring quakes.

The report shows that approximately 7 million people live and work in areas of the central and eastern U.S. (CEUS) with potential for damaging shaking from induced seismicity. Within a few portions of the CEUS, the chance of damage from all types of earthquakes is similar to that of natural earthquakes in high-hazard areas of California, the USGS states.

...Our assessment of earthquake hazards has significantly increased in parts of the U.S., said Mark Petersen, Chief of the USGS National Seismic Hazard Mapping Project, in the report. This research also shows that much more of the nation faces a significant chance of having damaging earthquakes over the next year, whether natural or human-induced.

As of right now, Nebraska doesnt make the list of the states with the highest potential hazard. But Kansas is on there, and so is Colorado. We could easily find ourselves with quakes if we allowed large-scale commercial injection.

The USGS recommends that people in potentially hazardous areas learn how to be prepared for earthquakes and consult FEMA for advice.

Thats reassuring.
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RACINE  A community activist said she has filed 11 federal complaints against local law enforcement officials because they appeared in photos on the website and social media accounts of Deputy District Attorney Tricia Hanson's campaign for Racine County district attorney.

Kelly Gallaher-Dimler, an active member of the Democratic Party in Racine, said she filed the complaints Wednesday with the Office of Special Counsel's Hatch Act Unit in Washington. The Hatch Act, passed in 1939, limits the political actions of federal employees and employees of local agencies that accept federal money, such as police departments.

Hanson and Kenosha County Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger will oppose each other in the Nov. 8 district attorney election.

Ongoing issue

On July 21, Racine City Attorney Scott Letteney sent Hanson an email asking her to remove all photos with uniformed law enforcement officers and names of such officers from her campaign website and social media, following the recommendation of Ana Galindo-Marrone, the chief of the Hatch Act Unit.

Gallaher-Dimler also forwarded a similar email to The Journal Times that Mount Pleasant Police Capt. Brian Smith sent to Hanson on behalf of his department on the same day.

That email states: "As you may or may not be aware, the Village of Mount Pleasant Police Department is the recipient of a large Federal COPS Grant, as well as numerous Federally funded Traffic Grants/Programs. Neither Chief Zarzecki or myself were aware of any violations that may have occurred when our picture was taken and used in your printed campaign literature, campaign website or on line sites such as Facebook or Twitter.

It appears with the recent opinion that Mr. Letteney recently received from Attorney Ana Galindo-Marrone, the Chief of the Hatch Act Unit of the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, that at this point we may have been in violation."

The emailed continued: "Chief Zarzecki and myself would be remiss in our duties/responsibilities not to ask, as RAPD officers have through City Attorney Scott Letteney, to immediately remove both Chief Tim Zarzecki and my names, as well as names of any and all Mount Pleasant police officers in connection with their title, and the photograph in uniform from your campaign website or any other on-line site, such as Facebook, Twitter, and the like.

"You are further directed to please refrain from including the name of any Mount Pleasant police officer in connection with her or his title and/or the photograph in uniform of any Mount Pleasant police officer in any campaign materials at any time."

Hanson said Thursday that she thought she had removed all of the relevant posts, but had overlooked a few on her Instagram page.

"It was an inadvertent error," Hanson said. "I took everything else down, I just didnt know they were still there."

Hanson removed the remaining images Thursday morning after law enforcement officials contacted by Gallaher-Dimler reached out to her. Gallaher-Dimler filed complaints against Racine Police Chief Art Howell, Mount Pleasant Police Chief Tim Zarzecki, Burlington Police Chief Mark Anderson, Waterford Police Chief Tom Ditscheit, Mount Pleasant Deputy Chief Brian Smith, Racine deputy chiefs Mark Schulz, Todd Schulz and John Polzin, as well as Racine County Sheriff's Office captains James Weidner, Tom Lamke and Steven Sikora.

"It was never my intention to file formal complaints but to have them comply when I realized that she had not complied," Gallaher-Dimler said Thursday. "They had well over a month to check to make sure that the photos and the improper activity had been removed."

The photo that particularly irked Gallaher-Dimler was one posted in April announcing Hanson's intentions to run, which featured most of the above officers as well as Racine County Sheriff Christopher Schmaling, County Executive Jonathan Delagrave and District Attorney Rich Chiapete, who are exempt from the Hatch Act as elected officials. She said that photo remained on Hanson's campaign Instagram until Thursday.

Ditscheit said he wasn't aware of the situation until Wednesday night when Gallaher-Dimler contacted him.

Penalties for violating the Hatch Act can include loss of federal funding and employment.

City willing to cooperate

In a statement sent Thursday, following a Journal Times inquiry to Howell, Letteney said the city was aware of the complaints.

"City officials have made all reasonable efforts to assure compliance with the law in this regard, but City officials cannot control the actions of a person outside of City government," he wrote. "If there is an investigation because of the complaint, the City of Racine will fully cooperate."

Hanson said she did not intend to cause any problems for local law enforcement.

"I certainly dont want anyone to lose federal funding. Thats crucial to law enforcement," she said.

Hanson added that she was initially unclear about the reach of the Hatch Act.

"I was not aware that it applied to local agencies," she said. "I thought it only applied to federal agencies. I didnt realize it applied to agencies that take federal money."

That explanation didn't sit well with her opponent Binger, who said he was aware Hanson had been using photos of law enforcement on her campaign website but was not aware of the complaints filed this week.

"A district attorney should know the law in the first place," he said. "Ignorance of the law is no excuse."

The Journal Times couldn't reach the Hatch Act Unit Thursday, but Gallaher-Dimler provided an email from Galindo-Marrone confirming receipt of her complaints.
In August this year, China s total foreign trade value amounted to $329.135 billion, indicating a month-on-month increase of 4.6 percent and a year-on-year decrease of 1.1 percent, as announced by the Chinese customs authorities on September 8. In the given month, the total value of China s exports amounted to $190.592 billion, up 4.5 percent month on month and decreasing by 2.8 percent year on year, while Chinese imports totaled $138.543 billion in value, up 4.8 percent month on month and rising by 1.5 percent year on year, resulting in a trade surplus of $52.049 billion.
Friday, 09 September 2016 20:27:34 (GMT+3) |

Mexican industrial output in July slightly rose 0.3 percent, year-on-year, according to data released on Friday by the countrys statistics agency, Inegi.

As for the month-on-month analysis, local industrial production also rose 0.3 percent in July, month-on-month, Inegi said.

Industrial production at the mining segment declined 6.3 percent in July, year-on-year, and 0.4 percent month-on-month.

As for the civil construction and the manufacturing industries, industrial output in July rose 0.2 and 2.1 percent, year-on-year, respectively.

In the month-on-month comparison, industrial production fell 0.3 percent in July, month-on-month, at the civil construction segment, but rose 0.8 percent in the same period at the manufacturing industry.


The Turkish Statistical Institute (TUIK) has announced that Turkey 's gross domestic product (GDP) in the second quarter of this year grew by nine percent to TRY 525.9 billion ($181.4 billion) in current prices and by 3.1 percent in constant prices to TRY 33.6 billion ($11.13 billion), both compared to the same period of the previous year.
Hebei Province-based Chinese steelmaker Xuanhua Iron and Steel Co. (Xuanhua Steel), a subsidiary of major Chinese steel producer Hebei Iron and Steel Group Co. (Hebei Steel Group), has announced that it has successfully produced 615 mt of high quality of HRB 400E rebar and supplied it to the Taizicheng International Ice and Snow Town project in Zhangjiakou City, Hebei Province, one of the 2022 Olympics Winter Games projects.
President Klaus Iohannis emphasized on Friday at a meeting in Berlin with Chancellor Angela Merkel that the UK should remain an important partner, informs a release by the Romanian Presidential Administration. "As for the Brexit, I stressed that it is very important for negotiations not to start before triggering Article 50 and that these negotiations must be handled by the Union 27 with the UK. Obviously, the UK should remain an important partner to us, too. To me, as Romania's President, there are some specific matters there, that are important and will find themselves at the core of our negotiations - for instance, the fate of the Romanians in the UK," said Klaus Iohannis, according to the source.

The head of the Romanian state had in Berlin a working meeting with Angela Merkel, also attended by Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel and Luxembourg's Premier Xavier Bettel. "This meeting is part of a broader consultation process among European leaders, a consultation that at least in a first stage moves to preparing the next week's informal meeting in Bratislava. In reality, it is a series of very good meetings which, we hope, will allow us to reach even a strategy for the future of the European Union. Obviously, for the Bratislava meeting we have focused our talks around the Brexit, migration, the internal and external security, all matters that are not only in the attention of the leaders, but which do preoccupy everybody in the EU," President Iohannis concluded, according to the said release.

Agerpres
Police say a Turkish exchange student threatened to kill a Lake Delton security guard in an attempt to extort money from him.

Prosecutors have charged 25-year-old Arcan Anil of Wisconsin Dells with a felony count of threatening to injure or accuse of a crime. The threat was allegedly made as part of a retaliation against the guard, who had turned Anil in for smoking marijuana.

According to the criminal complaint, the guard smelled marijuana coming from one of the rooms at the Hiawatha Residence Hall while he was making the rounds Sept. 2. He notified law enforcement, and officers later issued citations to two exchange students from Turkey.

The next day, the security guard called police to report that Anil  one of the two who was cited  threatened to kill him. The guard said the Anil threatened to kill him if he didnt pay him $500, the cost of the fine.

The security guard allegedly told police that several Turkish students discussed harming him before they leave for Turkey. Anil is slated to return to Turkey on Sept. 20, and his employer is in the process of revoking his J1 Visa, according to the complaint.

The officer reported that when he came to the dorm to arrest Anil, there were numerous Turkish students watching, and at least one was staring at the security guard, who also was present.

In court Thursday, prosecutors amended the charge to misdemeanor disorderly conduct in exchange for a no contest plea. A judge found him guilty and sentenced him to five days in jail with four days credit for time already served.

He must return to Turkey on Sept. 20, provide a DNA sample, and pay $443 in court costs, which was taken from the $750 cash bond he posted.
Updated at 3:30 p.m.

Vice President Joe Biden lauded LaunchCodes efforts to train computer programmers as a stepping stone to employment in a visit to the St. Louis nonprofits headquarters on Delmar Boulevard on Friday.

Flanked by executives from local companies who have hired dozens of paid apprentices through LaunchCode and those who emerged from the free training to land jobs, Biden said, I came for a simple reason, to try to amplify what youre doing here.

Founded in St. Louis in 2013, LaunchCode has placed 485 people in apprenticeships with a 90 percent hiring rate into full-time positions. Sixty percent of these folks were previously unemployed, and 25 percent lack a college degree. LaunchCode, which employs 30 locally, has expanded to Kansas City, Miami and Rhode Island and plans to add offices in Seattle and Portland next year.

Biden on Friday credited LaunchCode founder Jim McKelvey, who also is co-founder of Square, with helping inspire TechHire, a federal initiative launched last year by the administration of President Barack Obama. Like LaunchCode, TechHire is designed to get people with non-traditional work and educational backgrounds trained and employed in tech jobs, including software coding.

Biden said theres a demand for 1.2 million IT workers in U.S. by 2022  and 40 percent of the jobs wont require a college degree.

There are an awful lot of people out there who have capacities they didnt think of before, Biden told the crowd of about 150 people.

In St. Louis, companies such as MasterCard, Boeing, and Express Scripts have been expanding the talent pool they draw on, working with initiatives like LaunchCode to develop talent.

We think LaunchCode is going to be in every city that has a talent shortage, which is pretty much every city, McKelvey told the Post-Dispatch.

At the Friday event, several St. Louis area employers offered testimonials about LaunchCodes value, including Robert Reeg, president of Global Technology and Operations at MasterCard, who said the credit-card company has brought in 21 LaunchCode apprentices in St. Louis and Miami, and wants to expand the program to its New York office.

Neal Sample, chief information officer for Express Scripts, credited LaunchCode with helping the pharmacy benefit manager shift to hiring employees with a desire to learn tech, not just those with degrees.

Later Friday, Biden stopped by the Goody Goody Diner in north St. Louis to campaign for U.S. Senate candidate Jason Kander, Missouris Secretary of State. Biden and Kander, a Democrat, stopped at more than a dozen tables to shake hands with customers at the diner at 5900 Natural Bridge Avenue. Kander is running against incumbent Republican Roy Blunt for the Senate seat.
For six years, the General Motors factory that used to make Chevy Trailblazers in Moraine, Ohio, sat abandoned, a rusting monument to the decline of the American auto industry.

These days, the plant is humming again, fueled by a resurgent U.S. consumer  but now under Chinese management. On the shop floor, Chinese supervisors in sky-blue uniforms that carry the logo of the new owners, Fuyao Glass, teach American employees how to assemble windshields.

Drive along Interstate 75, through America's industrial heartland, and you'll find no shortage of Chinese-owned firms like Fuyao. They're setting up shop in states such as Ohio and Michigan, key voter battlegrounds in November, where traditional manufacturing has been hollowed out  in many cases, by trade. With China.

It's those losses that shape election headlines. Republican candidate Donald Trump excoriates China as an unfair trading partner, and blames a whole class of American politicians  including his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton  for selling out U.S. workers to Beijing. It's an aggressively America-first brand of capitalism. Clinton's whole career suggests she's more comfortable with globalization, though lately she's been drawn into the China-bashing and trade-skepticism too.

But away from the sound and fury of the national campaign, state and municipal governments of both stripes have welcomed Chinese firms with open arms. When it took over the GM plant, Fuyao got a $9.7 million tax credit from the Republican-run state of Ohio, which also kicked in a $1-million grant for road work.

"This is an example of international capital choosing to locate here in Dayton, Ohio," said Republican congressman Michael Turner, who represents Moraine, about a 10-minute drive southwest of Dayton. "And that international capital happens to be Chinese."

And there happens to be a lot of it about. This year has seen $75 billion of Chinese acquisitions across the U.S., more than double the previous record  ranging from luxury hotels to aluminum-foil makers. Since 2008, Chinese companies have invested $4.1 billion in Ohio and Michigan alone, according to the Rhodium Group, a research firm.

Fuyao acquired roughly half the old GM plant in 2014, spending $450 million to buy and remodel it. For a company that started out as a small producer of covers for water-meters and is now the world's second-biggest auto-glass supplier, the acquisition capped a decade-long push into U.S. markets.

For the Dayton area, it meant employment: the city, hometown of the Wright brothers, was hit hard by the shutdown of the GM plant two days before Christmas in 2008. The following year another big local name, NCR Corp., announced it was moving to Atlanta after pioneering the cash-register during more than a century based in Dayton.

So what do locals make of the changes? Clinton-friendly confirmation that the wheels of global capitalism are turning more or less as they should? Or vindication for Trump's dark vision of a declining America betrayed by its economic leaders?

A bit of both, it turns out.

"Hey, 1,700 jobs is 1,700 jobs," said Shawn Kane, a 28-year-old chef shopping at the Kroger grocery store in Moraine last month. "At least it's not sitting empty anymore."

They're jobs that tend not to pay as well as factory work once did, though  and there probably aren't as many of them. To keep its production in the U.S. viable, Fuyao uses more automation than it does in China, said John Gauthier, president of Fuyao Glass America Inc. "Our customers, all they care about is that their cost doesn't increase," he said.

A line worker at Fuyao starts at $12 per hour, equivalent to an annual salary of about $25,000. GM workers at the old Moraine plant could make at least twice that, topped off by perks like defined-benefit pensions, according to union officials and former employees.

"When you don't have enough protections for American workers, and when you've got a globalized economy, this is what happens," said Chris Baker, a 40-year-old sales rep based near Moraine. "This is the new normal. It's very sad."

Anyone wanting to defuse the tensions around economic competition from China could point to the 1980s version, featuring Japan as the feared rival. Those one-time bugbear companies seem like features of the landscape now: Toyota is the third biggest seller of vehicles in the U.S., ahead of Chrysler.

China's carmakers are on the way too, said Paul Haelterman, managing director of automotive advisory services at IHS Markit in Southfield, Mich. They'll be "selling product in the United States before the end of this decade," he said. (Chinese-owned Volvo already is, of course.)

For now, it's the Chinese parts-makers that are taking the lead, and location is key to their investments. Fuyao's factory in Moraine is close to Big Three plants in the Detroit area, as well as a Honda factory in Marysville, Ohio.

Saginaw, Mich., where Nexteer Automotive makes power-steering systems, is plugged into the same geographic nexus. Seven years ago, Nexteer was part of Delphi, which was in bankruptcy protection. Its suitors included a private-equity firm that was considering "chopping the business up and marketing it off in pieces," said Mike Richardson, interim president of Nexteer. "Within three years, we wouldn't have existed as we did before."

Instead, the company was sold for $465 million to Chinese investors. It's now majority-owned by state aircraft maker Aviation Industry Corp. of China. One of AVIC's first moves was to ratchet up spending on research and development by 50 percent, Richardson said. Nexteer turned a profit of $205 million last year and is now worth $3.9 billion.

"When AVIC came along, we didn't really think about them being Chinese," Richardson said. "We did see them as an industrial purchaser that understood what we were going through and understood the value of a long-term view."

That's one China: a source of plentiful, patient capital for American companies. Then there's the vast pool of cheap labor back home  and that's what has made Chinese industrial expansion a bigger shock to American workers than the Japanese version ever was.

For free-trade advocates like Jagdish Bhagwati, author of "In Defense of Globalization," the rise of a new economic power is a fact that has to be dealt with  "China's not going to disappear down the ocean"  and autarky isn't one of the options.

"If we cut off China from coming in, as many people would like to do, you also deny yourself the gains from trade," said Bhagwati, an economics professor at Columbia University. Instead, policymakers should be "helping those guys move from where jobs are being lost to where they're being created."

Some of the new ones will be in Moraine, if Fuyao's plans work out. The company aims to be the world's biggest auto-glass plant, with capacity to equip 4 million cars a year, double the current level. That will require a workforce of 2,500 people, up from 1,700 now.

That current staff includes as many as 200 Chinese nationals sent over to train their U.S. co-workers. At lunch, a local restaurant delivers deep-fried prawns and chicken's feet for the Chinese employees, many of whom speak halting English. Near the plant's entrance, construction is underway on a Chinese restaurant. It'll mostly cater to employees  but will also open its doors to the people of Moraine.

It's a cosmopolitan scene. But not everyone in America's factory belt has come to terms with that kind of change.

Up the I-75 in Saginaw, Cheryl Badger is a 62-year-old nurse who used to work at GM. "I take issue any time an American business is sold to foreigners," she said. "It bugs me. But ain't nothing I can do about it."

Mark Niquette of Bloomberg contributed.
Updated at 7:06 p.m.

A U.S. judge on Friday signed an order granting Hanjin Shipping Co. Ltd. provisional protection from creditors in the United States, enabling some vessels to dock and unload at U.S. ports.

South Korea's Hanjin had asked U.S. Bankruptcy Judge John Sherwood to issue an order to prevent creditors from seizing Hanjin ships or property, and to allow cargo owners to make arrangements to retrieve goods stranded in warehouses.

Earlier, the company received authority to spend money needed to dock at U.S. ports and begin unloading four vessels that have been stranded at sea by the company's failure last week, a company lawyer told a U.S. court on Friday.

"We have the money," said Ilana Volkov, an attorney for Hanjin, told a U.S. Bankruptcy Court hearing in Newark, N.J., on Friday. "We want to call these ports and say, please accept our ships and we want to pay for the services to work the ships."

Volkov said at least $10 million was authorized by a Korean court to begin servicing the four ships. Hanjin identified 14 U.S.-bound ships in court papers, but Volkov said she did not have information about the other vessels.

The company said that some ships may not dock at their original destinations, which could become an issue for companies like HP Inc, Samsung Electronics and Home Shopping Network, who said in court records or in court they had cargo on those ships.

The four U.S.-bound ships are the Hanjin Boston, Hanjin Greece, Hanjin Jungil and Hanjin Gdynia.

Around $14 billion of cargo has been tied up globally as ports, tugboat operators and cargo handling firms refuse to work for Hanjin, the world's seventh-largest container carrier, which filed for receivership in a Seoul court last week.

Havoc for global trade

Hanjin has been struggling to arrange financing to resume normal operations. Korean Air Lines, the biggest shareholder in Hanjin, delayed on Friday a decision on a funding plan.

Hanjin's collapse has caused havoc in global trade networks and a surge in freight rates, as more than half of the company's 141 ships have been blocked from docking at ports. Four vessels have also been seized as of Thursday, according to Hanjin Shipping.

As ships await at sea, anchored off various ports from Long Beach, California, Mexico to Panama City, problems for the financially-strapped company mount as fuel suppliers also demand payment and provisions run low on the ships.

An arrest warrant was entered against the Hanjin Montevideo, currently anchored off Long Beach, and the ship was seized. The parties pressing for arrest were World Fuel Services Inc and OceanConnet Marine PTE Ltd., and Hanjin's attorney said the company expected to work out an arrangement to release the ship next week.

The judge asked companies along the supply chain to hammer out a protocol agreement over the weekend that would get goods moving again. Hanjin has suggested cargo owners were free to pay cargo handling fees owed by Hanjin, which Samsung Electronics called ransom payments.

Hanjin's woes were having wider knock-on effects. Sherwood was told that port terminals were not accepting the routine return of empty Hanjin shipping containers from retailers, forcing stores to spend to store them.

Uncertainty about freight fees was leading to vast numbers of containers clogging warehouses at port terminals. As containers piled up with retailers and on docks, the available pool of chassis used to transport containers was dwindling.

Sherwood repeatedly urged the parties to "self-help" and work out the problems as best they could.

Hanjin's collapse could also hit the bottom line at several companies as it came during the peak shipping period ahead of the year-end holiday season.

But import cargo volume at the nation's major retail container ports should be at near-peak levels for September, according to the monthly Global Port Tracker report by the National Retail Federation and Hackett Associates.

"Hanjin should not significantly affect volume for the month since alternative arrangements to unload those containers or shift cargo elsewhere should be dealt with by the time the numbers are tallied," NRF Vice President for Supply Chain and Customs Policy Jonathan Gold said.

"Merchandise is in limbo at the moment and retailers are working hard to make sure it ends up on store shelves in time for the holidays."

The shipping line has filed for so-called U.S. Chapter 15 bankruptcy, which allows a company to seek recognition by U.S. courts of orders issued overseas.
Three financial associations covering rural and agricultural interests in some of the most prime farming counties in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Illinois are recommending a merger to their respective members and stockholders with a proposed headquarters in Sun Prairie.

Directors from Badgerland Financial, of Prairie du Sac, as well as AgStar Financial Services, of Mankato, Minnesota, and 1st Farm Credit Services, of Normal, Illinois, unanimously voted to recommend the merger Thursday, according to a statement released by Badgerland Financial.

The proposed merged association would cover 144 counties in the three-state region. Badgerland Financial provides credit, crop insurance, and tax and accounting services to farmers, agribusinesses and rural residents in 33 southern Wisconsin counties. AgStar serves 69 counties in southern and eastern Minnesota as well as northwest Wisconsin, while 1st Farm Credit serves 42 counties in the northern half of Illinois, the statement said.

Thats a big merger, said Bruce Jones, an ag economics professor at UW-Madison. Look at the area it includes: A super agricultural area of Illinois and most of the prime farm income areas of Wisconsin and Minnesota. This is really good in terms of putting together regions that are very successful in agriculture, and it should make the merged association very strong.

The three organizations combine to employ about 1,200 people, and layoffs are expected to be low if the merger goes forward, said Rod Hebrink, the president and chief executive officer for AgStar, who is expected to head the proposed merged association. We foresee very similar resource needs to support the merged organization, he said.

Jones said he believes most of the layoffs will be at the senior management level.

Sun Prairies Badgerland office was picked as the headquarters site because its geographically fairly central for the new organization, according to Hebrink.

The merged organization is committed to a decentralized operating structure, he said. There will be no office closures with the proposed merger, nor will all of our corporate functions reside in this office.

After a review and approval by AgriBank, the funding bank for the three associations, and the Farm Credit Administration, the merger will be put to a vote of the stockholders of the three associations, most likely in the first quarter of next year, the statement said.

The board of directors for the proposed merged association will be comprised of 14 member-elected directors and three outside appointed directors. If stockholders vote in favor of the merger, the new board will have equitable representation of board members in proportion to the number of stockholders from each of the three areas, the statement said.

This past spring we agreed our associations have very similar commitments to serving agriculture and rural communities, Hebrink said. As we discussed possibilities, we found were more alike than we are different.

Our similarities, including our positive working relationships and financial strength, offer a strong foundation of synergies that allowed us to move forward with a due diligence process to carefully evaluate if a merger would be in the best interest of our members, clients and stockholders, Hebrink said.

Badgerland president and CEO Diane Cole said the three associations understand that we werent looking for one organization to carry their current strategy into the proposed merger, but rather, evaluate how we take the strengths of the three associations and build on them to offer value to our members and stockholders.
The 31,000-square-foot venue will be the largest of the seven Hofbrauhaus restaurants in North America with the capacity to serve 1,000 diners at one seating. A private dining room will accommodate up to 250 people and an outdoor biergarten another 250 guests. Construction is expected to be completed later this year.
LONDON  MasterCard is being sued for $18.6 billion on behalf of British consumers for allegedly charging excessive fees on millions of transactions over a 16-year period.

The suit, which is the latest in a string of legal cases around the world over card companies fees, could bring a payout to 46 million British MasterCard users, the law firm filing it says. The firm, Quinn Emanuel, says the claim is the largest in British legal history.

The suit alleges that MasterCard charged stores unlawfully high fees on credit and debit card transactions between 1992 and 2008, which were passed on to consumers in the form of inflated prices for goods and services.

The filing of this claim is the first step towards consumers obtaining compensation for what MasterCard did, said Walter Merricks, a former U.K. financial services ombudsman who filed the suit through Quinn Emanuel on Thursday at the Competition Appeal Tribunal.

Merricks callied it a watershed moment for consumer redress in this country.

MasterCard and its larger competitor Visa have been embroiled in legal battles with merchants over their fees for decades. A $6 billion class-action lawsuit in the U.S., which involves merchants suing Visa and MasterCard, is currently being appealed in U.S. courts. Theres also a legal battle between Visa and retail giant Wal-Mart, which involves what are known as chip and sign transactions.

Merchants have long argued that the fees that Visa, MasterCard and to a lesser degree American Express and Discover, charge to process transactions are too high. Because Visa and MasterCard have a near duopoly on credit card transaction processing in most of the world, merchants say the fees represent anticompetitive behavior.

The British lawsuit follows a 2014 ruling by the European Unions highest court backing the EUs move to scrap some fees that MasterCard allows banks to charge to merchants.

Under Britains new Consumer Rights Act, all U.K. consumers who paid the charges and currently live in Britain will automatically become part of the group of claimants  and eligible for compensation  unless they explicitly opt out.

MasterCard Inc., based in Purchase, N.Y., said in a statement that we continue to firmly disagree with the basis of this claim and we intend to oppose it vigorously.

The tribunal will rule late this year whether the case can proceed, the law firm said. If so, it is expected to go to court in 2018.
Updated at 4:56 p.m.

NEAR THE STANDING ROCK SIOUX RESERVATION, N.D.  An American Indian tribe's attempt to halt construction of an oil pipeline near its North Dakota reservation failed in federal court Friday, but the government ordered work to stop on one segment and asked the company to "voluntarily pause" work on a wider swath that tribal officials say holds sacred artifacts.

The Standing Rock Sioux, whose cause has drawn thousands to join their protest, had challenged the Army Corps of Engineers' decision to grant permits at more than 200 water crossings for the $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline. Tribal leaders say the project violates several federal laws and will harm water supplies. The tribe also alleges that ancient sites have been disturbed during construction.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in Washington denied the tribe's request for a temporary injunction in a 58-page opinion.

A joint statement from the Army and the Departments of Justice and the Interior said construction "bordering or under Lake Oahe will not go forward at this time" and asked the pipeline builder, Energy Transfer Partners, to "voluntarily pause" work 20 miles to the east and west of the lake while the government reconsiders "any of its previous decisions."

The statement also said the case "highlighted the need for a serious discussion" about nationwide reforms "with respect to considering tribes' views on these types of infrastructure projects."

Attorney Jan Hasselman with the environmental group Earthjustice, who filed the lawsuit in July on behalf of the tribe, said before the ruling that any such decision would be challenged.

"We will have to pursue our options with an appeal and hope that construction isn't completed while that (appeal) process is going forward," he said. "We will continue to pursue vindication of the tribe's lawful rights even if the pipeline is complete."

Tribal historian LaDonna Brave Bull Allard said the ruling gave her "a great amount of grief. My heart is hurting, but we will continue to stand, and we will look for other legal recourses." She said the protests would continue.

Energy Transfer Partners officials did not return phone calls or emails from The Associated Press seeking comment.

The judge's ruling said the court "does not lightly countenance any depredation of lands that hold significance" to the tribe and that, given the federal government's history with the tribe, the court scrutinized the permitting process "with particular care."

Nonetheless, the judge wrote, the tribe "has not demonstrated that an injunction is warranted here."

The 1,172-mile project will carry nearly a half-million barrels of crude oil daily from North Dakota's oil fields through South Dakota and Iowa to an existing pipeline in Patoka, Ill.

Judith LeBlanc, a member of the Caddo Nation in Oklahoma and director of the New York-based Native Organizers Alliance, said before the decision was issued that she expected the protests to remain peaceful.

"There's never been a coming together of tribes like this," she said of Friday's gathering of Native Americans. People came from as far as New York and Alaska, some bringing their families and children, and hundreds of tribal flags dotted the camp, along with American flags flown upside-down in protest.

At the state Capitol, pipeline protesters were happy to learn about federal authorities recommending that construction be halted. Several hundred people gathered on the lawn, braving a torrential downpour to sing, play drums and burn sage grass.

They pumped their firsts in the air and chanted, "I believe that we will win" and carried signs that read "Respect Our Water" and "Water Is Sacred."

The judge's order was announced over a loudspeaker at the protest camp near the reservation on North Dakota's southern border. Protesters who did not make the trek to Bismarck said it was what they expected.

John Nelson of Portland, Oregon, came to the camp to support his grandson, Standing Rock Chairman Dave Archambault. The 82-year-old says he was not surprised by the ruling, "but it still hurts."

Archambault was scheduled to speak later Friday.

State authorities announced this week that law enforcement officers from across the state were being mobilized at the protest site, some National Guard members would work security at traffic checkpoints and another 100 would be on standby. The Great Plains Tribal Chairman's Association asked the Justice Department to send monitors to the site because it said racial profiling is occurring.

Nearly 40 people have been arrested since the protest began in April, including tribal chairman Dave Archambault II.

A week ago, protesters and construction workers clashed when, according to tribal officials, workers bulldozed sites on private land that the tribe says in court documents are "of great historic and cultural significance." Energy Transfer Partners denied the allegations.

Four private security guards and two guard dogs were injured, officials said, while a tribal spokesman said six people  including a child  were bitten by the dogs and at least 30 people were pepper-sprayed.

The state's Private Investigation and Security Board received complaints about the use of dogs and will look into whether the private security teams at the site are properly registered and licensed, board attorney Monte Rogneby said Friday, adding that he would not name the firms.

On Thursday, North Dakota's archaeologist said that piece of private land was not previously surveyed by the state would be surveyed next week and that if artifacts are found, pipeline work still could cease.

The company plans to complete the pipeline this year. In court papers, it said stopping the project would cost $1.4 billion the first year, mostly due to lost revenue in hauling crude.

"Investor appetite for the project could shift and financing may no longer be available," the company said. "Construction of the entire project would cease and the project itself would be jeopardized."

A status conference in the Standing Rock Sioux's lawsuit is scheduled for Sept. 16.

Associated Press writers Blake Nicholson in Bismarck, North Dakota, Dave Kolpack in Fargo, North Dakota, and Doug Glass in Minneapolis contributed to this report.
Stifel Financial Corp.'s brokerage unit has reached a deal with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to resolve claims it misled five Wisconsin school districts about the risks of sinking $200 million in investment products that were involved in the financial crisis of 2008.

The tentative settlement with St. Louis-based Stifel, Nicolaus & Co. and David Noack, a former senior vice president, came on the eve of a trial set for Monday, and was disclosed in a filing made public Thursday in federal court in Milwaukee.

The financial terms were not disclosed, but the deal would include the defendants paying a penalty, forfeiting their ill-gotten gains and admitting to certain facts, according to the filing.

The settlement requires the formal approval of SEC commissioners, a process that attorneys anticipate could take two months, the filing said.

Stifel, the SEC and Noack's lawyer did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The SEC sued Stifel and Noack in 2011, saying they misled five Wisconsin school districts about the risks of investing in synthetic collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), which are tied to mortgage-backed securities or credit default swaps and were at the heart of the financial crisis eight years ago.

The districts did not invest directly in the CDOs, instead providing funds to trusts that invested in notes issued by special purpose vehicles affiliated with RBC Capital Markets, the SEC said.

In trying to persuade the districts to make the investments, Noack at the time told them it would take "15 Enrons" for them to lose money, and told two districts that it would take 20 to 30 defaults for them to suffer a loss, the SEC said.

But according to the SEC, the investments were a compete failure, causing the districts to suffer over $200 million in losses as the investments declined in value in 2007 and 2008, amid the housing market downturn and financial crisis.

Stifel denied wrongdoing, and contended in court papers that there was no evidence that the defendants had any intent or motive to defraud the districts.

RBC, a unit of Royal Bank of Canada, in 2011 reached a $30.4 million settlement with the SEC over its role in misconduct relating to the sale of the investments.

Stifel in 2012 reached a settlement in private litigation by the school districts, agreeing to pay $13 million and providing a letter of credit for an additional $9.5 million to be paid once the SEC's case was resolved.

The case is Securities and Exchange Commission v. Stifel, Nicolaus & Co. Inc. et. al., U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Wisconsin, No. 11-00755.
DETROIT  A Volkswagen engineer has pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy in the companys emissions cheating scandal, advancing a criminal investigation by agreeing to testify against others.

James Robert Liang, 62, of Newbury Park, Calif., entered the plea Friday in U.S. District Court in Detroit to one count of conspiracy to defraud the government through wire fraud.

Liang is the first person to enter a plea in the case, and his cooperation is a major breakthrough in the Justice Departments probe into the scandal. Government documents say others were involved and point to multiple emails in German that likely came from VW employees in Wolfsburg, Germany.

Volkswagen has admitted to installing software on about 500,000 2-liter diesel engines in VW and Audi models in the U.S. that turned pollution controls on during government tests and turned them off while on the road. The Environmental Protection Agency found that the cars emitted up to 40 times the legal limit for nitrogen oxide, which can cause human respiratory problems.

Liang, who began work for VW in 1983 in Germany, and also worked in the U.S., was indicted in June on one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and another count of violating the Clean Air Act. According to a plea agreement unsealed Friday, Liang admitted that he and others planned software known as a defeat device, that could cheat U.S. emissions tests after recognizing that a diesel engine they were designing could not meet customer expectations and stricter emissions standards. Using the defeat device enabled VW to obtain a certificate from the Environmental Protection Agency needed to sell the cars in the U.S.

Liang pleaded guilty to the conspiracy charge before Judge Sean Cox. He will be sentenced on Jan. 11. The judge said that guidelines call for Liang to serve five years in prison. He also could be fined up to $250,000.

Volkswagen wouldnt comment on the plea but said Friday that it continues to cooperate in the investigation.

Laing, who wore a dark suit and tie, mostly responded yes or no to the judges questions at the Friday hearing, but also read a brief statement in which he admitted to the fraud. He had a German-speaking interpreter with him in court but did not use her and gave all responses in English. The judge noted that he is not a U.S. citizen and could be subject to immigration action.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Chutkow told the judge that two or more of Laings colleagues also had knowledge of the conspiracy.

According to the indictment, Liang and his co-conspirators were tasked with designing new diesel engines for the U.S. market that complied with stricter emissions standards for nitrogen oxide emissions that went into effect in 2007. Within VW, it was referred to as the US 07 project.

Prosecutors say Liang and the other engineers realized that could not design a diesel vehicle that both met the stricter U.S. emission standards and performed well enough to satisfy customers. So they began work on defeat device software that would cheat on the tests, the indictment says.

Within VW, the cheating software was referred to as cycle beating, or emissions tight mode, among other terms, according to the indictment.

In one 2007 meeting with government officials in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Liang participated as his co-conspirators misrepresented that VWs diesel vehicles complied with U.S. emissions standards, according to the plea agreement.

Liang knew that VW was cheating by implementing the defeat device and that he and his co-conspirators were considering deceiving EPA in this meeting, the plea agreement states.

The indictment says that in May 2008 Liang transferred from Volkswagen headquarters in Germany to the U.S. to help oversee the launch of the new clean diesel models. Investigators uncovered internal company emails that show Liang and other VW engineers exchanged ideas about how to effectively calibrate the defeat device so that the cars would recognize when they were undergoing U.S. emissions testing. The software was designed to recognize when the cars were being tested on a treadmill-like device called a dynamometer.

In 2013, Liang and others exchanged messages in German about software that recognized when the engine was revving but the steering wheel was not moving, an indication that the car was undergoing a dynamometer test. The software then calibrated the engine to run cleaner than it would in real world driving, according to the indictment.

If this goes through without problems, the function is probably truly watertight! ;-) one of the VW employees messaged Liang in German.

The scheme began to unravel in 2014 when a nonprofit group discovered that the cars polluted too much in real-world driving conditions. But prosecutors say that Liang and his VW colleagues still conspired to hide the existence of the defeat devices.

As a first step, VW offered a new optimized software update that was supposed to address the high emissions.

We only just need a plausible explanation as to why the emissions are still high!!! a VW employee wrote to Liang and others in German after the software patch provided by VW failed to fix the problem.

We must be sure to prevent the authority from testing the Gen 1! a VW employee emailed in June 2015, referring to the first generation of VW models using the clean diesel engines. The emails said that if Gen 1 is tested by the California Air Resources Board then well have nothing more to laugh about!!!!!

As the VW engineers struggled to explain to U.S. regulators why their cars kept failing the tests, a VW employee wrote Liang and others in July 2015: the key word creativity would be helpful here.
The complaint charged Kevin D. Meister, 35, of Brooklyn, with hit and run resulting in death and second-degree reckless homicide for the death of Shelton Berel, 33, of Madison, who was killed on Aug. 5 when he was struck by a truck that authorities say was driven by Meister.
In the first verse of Voices in My Head, the song that opens Bob Moulds latest album, Patch the Sky, Mould sings about trying to make sense of the loss and loneliness hes experienced in recent times and about his attempt to silence the ghosts and demons raging in his brain.

Can I find some truth within the noise? he wonders.

That is a question fans of Moulds music, dating all the way back to his days in 80s post-punk outfit Husker Du, can answer in the affirmative.

Layered alongside those buzzsaw guitars are Moulds incisive, insightful lyrics, often limning similarly dark topics while the accompanying tsunami of sound offers a cathartic release.

Moulds career has moved through phases and stages. After Husker Du, there was the acoustic about-face of Workbook and later his more pop-oriented (and more popular) band, Sugar. Mould even dove into electronica for a while with the album Modulate and performed DJ sets under the moniker Blowoff.

But the loud guitar rock has returned, over the course of a rough trilogy: 2012s Silver Age, 2014s Beauty & Ruin and now, Patch the Sky.

Asked what it is about that raging guitar noise that has drawn him back in, Mould, on the phone from his home in San Francisco, simply says, I dig it.

Its how I started in the public view, with Husker, he continues, adding with a laugh, Its actually the easiest thing to do.

Part of what makes that sound easy for Mould to produce is his band of the last few years: drummer Jon Wurster and bassist Jason Narducy, both known for their work with Superchunk and various other bands.

Having some good songs and playing with Jason and Jon, thats really the key, Mould says. To have a really supportive rhythm section, where we all speak a common musical language. And we get along great.

Still, there are peaks and valleys, and Mould, 55, was going through one particularly low moment that served as the genesis of Patch the Sky. His mother passed away, as did several close friends. Some relationships ended. That led to a period of self-imposed exile and introspection, though Mould was eventually brought back out of it by the music.

I took the first six months of 2015 just to be at home, he says. Just writing every day, not socializing, not doing business. I just really wanted to sit with all these things and go to the place where I get my consolation, which is in the work.

My thing is, write what you know. This was what was happening, and I couldnt get out of writing about it. The end result is this really beautiful high contrast  dark words, bright melodies.

Even though the album is not explicitly a concept album or song cycle, it feels to Mould like it could be.

I always look at them as concept albums, he says, whether I attach a wild story to it or not. Theres definitely a progression in this one. It could be adapted into some other medium to tell a story. To me, it has a beginning, a middle and an end.

Mould has seldom been one to look back, though he did make an exception for his terrific 2011 memoir, See a Little Light. But that trait has kept him from giving in to constant calls to reunite Husker Du, even in an age when other bands are getting back together for love or (more likely) money.

Im not big on re-creations, Mould says. So much of what all of us do is of a certain place and time, whether its the Reagan era, the Bush era, or whatever these things are that drive us or push our work in a certain direction.

The motive to try and bring it back or do it again  thats an individual thing. I dont have any rules for anybody else. I just like to move forward.
Marie Kenyon was stunned to see about 400 priests, deacons and Roman Catholic churchgoers come to a lecture about African-Americans, race and the church last month. And shes the head of the Archdiocese of St. Louis Peace and Justice Commission who organized the event.

Catholics are taught to love and care for the marginalized, to call people who are different from them brother and sister. But when most Catholics go to Mass on Sundays, even high-ranking leaders say parishioners dont hear much about arguably the biggest social justice challenge for not just St. Louis, but the nation: racial inequality.

You know how people are, Kenyon said. This is not a comfortable subject. This is not going to church and hearing, Baby Jesus loves you. This is talking about uncomfortable stuff that we havent been talking about in church.

We want to talk about it, but we just didnt know if other people wanted to listen.

To pray and ponder this issue, the Peace and Justice Commission  a decades-old initiative that the archdiocese resurrected after Michael Browns death in 2014  is holding a first-of-its-kind Crossing the Delmar Divide pilgrimage at 9:30 a.m. Saturday, along with the North City Deanery Interracial Committee.

Some parishes have held prayer services and a few forum discussions since the events of Ferguson, but generally the church has shied from talking about race. Leaders of some of the regions largest parishes say thats true even as the archdiocese seeks to serve minority communities through its schools and social service programs.

They dont hear this from the pulpit, said the Rev. Tim Cook, pastor at the predominantly African-American Sts. Teresa and Bridget parish in north St. Louis. Im not sure why. I think some of them are afraid that it might put their parishioners ill at ease, they might not like it. Too often thats the case.

But this disappoints and distances those who are African-American and makes some think that parishes should be doing more if they care about social justice.

If anybody should be bringing it to the table, its the churches, says Carolyn McKenzie, 68, an African-American parishioner at Cooks church. The church is the moral authority in the community, and they do need to discuss all these problems.

Closing our eyes

The question of how, and how often, the Catholic Church addresses issues of race came into a rare spotlight last month with a lecture by Bishop Edward Braxton of the Diocese of Belleville, who is one of only six African-American U.S. bishops who head a diocese.

Sadly, I know many African-American Catholics who do not believe that their black lives matter in the Catholic Church as much as white lives matter, he said during the talk, which was also hosted by the Peace and Justice Commission.

Part of the issue is that only 10,500, or 2 percent, of St. Louis Catholics are black, a percentage that roughly matches the nations ratio of black Catholics. There are about 10 predominantly African-American parishes out of the archdioceses 187.

Braxton suggested there are so few black Catholics because historically, the church has not been actively engaged with black communities.

He has said the only time the U.S. church as a whole took an explicit stance on racism was 37 years ago, in a lengthy pastoral letter penned by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The letter criticized low minority representation in church leadership and wasnt afraid to call racism an evil which endures in our society and in our Church.

We have preached the Gospel while closing our eyes to the racism it condemns, it read. We have allowed conformity to social pressures to replace compliance with social justice.

Not a popular topic

At many parishes, issues of race rarely come up during Mass, which is the central point of participation around which Catholics base their religious life.

Some Catholic leaders who spoke to the Post-Dispatch said race isnt a popular go-to topic for homilies, which is the Catholic equivalent of a sermon and the only time during Mass when the priest can speak freely and at length. Typically, homilies are more about Scripture than current events, in a church that some say tends to emphasize service and good works over political activism.

A 2004 U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops report found that 36 percent of American Catholics hadnt heard a homily about racism in the past three years.

The Rev. Mitch Doyen of the primarily white Assumption parish in OFallon, Mo.  the archdioceses third-largest church, with about 9,800 Catholics  said he spends two or three homilies a year talking about social justice. He frames such homilies the way many Catholic priests do: by sidestepping specific terms like racial divide and talking generally about the importance of being kind to all of our brothers and sisters.

Why?

Well, part of it might be that Im just afraid, Doyen said.

If he says Delmar Divide, people in the pews will already have their own opinion and wont really listen to what hes saying, he said. Its no longer preaching but politicking at that point, he said.

Rather than me preach about how to heal the racial divide in St. Louis, the only way is for white people to be friends with black people, which means we have to reach out and form relationships with people who are different from us, he said. I dont think thats the time to break open the social issues, in a 10-minute homily.

The Rev. Art Cavitt, an African-American pastor of the predominantly African-American St. Nicholas parish in downtown St. Louis  which has about 130 member families  says thats part of a larger problem the Catholic Church struggles with: connecting Scripture and tradition to real-life, up-to-date, 21st-century experiences.

Joseph Brown, an African-American Jesuit who teaches at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, said when it comes to social issues, right to life is the top priority for most bishops.

But if were saying that black lives matter, how does the church incorporate that into a right to life and dignity and safety and security and welcome? he said.

The archdiocese prides itself on its Catholic schools, several of which are in predominantly African-American neighborhoods and enroll a significant number of non-Catholics. The archdioceses St. Charles Lwanga Center, directed by Cavitt, caters specifically to African-Americans and provides marriage preparation sessions, retreats, young adult ministry and other services to about 7,500 people out of its center in north St. Louis.

Many parishes also hold their own events that may not explicitly be about racial disparities, but subtly encourage interaction across racial and city-county lines.

For example, St. Joseph in Cottleville, the archdioceses largest parish, with 17,620 Catholics, holds a toy drive for Mother of St. John the Baptist in north St. Louis every Christmas, and makes a point to have its parishioners wrap the gifts with members of its sister parish. It also donates collection money to the parish school, a common practice among larger and wealthier churches.

I think the archbishop would like parishes to interact with parishes that are very different from theirs, and thats what were trying to do, said the Rev. James Callahan, the pastor of St. Joseph. Thats where our primary emphasis is.

Cook hosted a Sacred Conversation about Race at Sts. Teresa and Bridget last year and a choir concert in July that invited people from different parishes, as well as a Seventh-day Adventist church, to sing together.

And priests always ask their people to pray. But Braxton and Brown stress that prayer alone is not sufficient.

I think its not enough to say we believe in this, lets have a prayer service, we have to pray about this, we have to pray about this, Brown said. No, what you have to do is pray for the strength to do something courageous.
JEFFERSON CITY  A state commission has ruled that authorities can discipline a former St. Ann police officer who pointed a semi-automatic rifle at protesters in Ferguson and swore at them during protests that followed the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in 2014.

Raymond D. Albers was an active duty lieutenant when he was caught on video Aug. 19, 2014, pointing the weapon at protesters in Ferguson, swearing at them and apparently threatening to kill them. (You can watch the video here, but warning, it contains profanity.) Albers was one of dozens of officers from area police departments assisting Ferguson police during the protests.

The video shows Albers pointing a gun at protesters and scanning the crowd with his gun raised.

Members of that crowd verbally confront the officer, who appears to say, I will (expletive) kill you. Get back.

Asked his name, he responded, Go (expletive) yourself.

As reporters gather, another St. Louis County officer arrives and uses his hand to lower the first officers rifle, pointing it to the ground.

The ACLU wrote a letter the next day asking the head of the Missouri Highway Patrol to remove the officer involved. At that point, the highway patrol was in charge of security in the Ferguson protests.

St. Ann police suspended Albers without pay. He resigned later that month. Albers had worked with the department since 1994.

The Missouri Administrative Hearing Commission ruled Aug. 4 that Albers committed third-degree assault and harassment and acted with moral turpitude and reckless disregard for the safety of the public or any person while on duty. The commission ruled Albers is subject to discipline for the offenses.

Given his prior experience as a police officer, we conclude that a reasonable person in Albers shoes would recognize an unreasonable risk and a high degree of probability that the safety of the public would or could be jeopardized if a weapon were pointed at persons in a crowd while threatening them, the commission ruled.

The commission decides whether a peace officer has committed a criminal offense  regardless of whether a charge has been filed  or acted with moral turpitude or reckless disregard and is subject to discipline.

The ruling hands the case back to the Missouri Department of Public Safety, which filed the original complaint seeking to discipline Albers. The director has the authority to suspend or permanently revoke his peace officers license. The director is supposed to set a hearing within 30 days of the commissions ruling to determine how Albers should be disciplined.

A firearms instructor with St. Ann police had testified that an officer should only point a gun at a person when that person represents a direct threat and that officers should not scan crowds with their weapons raised.

Albers had said he feared for his personal safety during the incident. He said he was hit with a bottle of urine and saw two men with Molotov cocktail firebombs and a third man with a handgun raised before the video showed him with his gun raised. He said he lost the men in the crowd and then started to scan the crowd, trying to find them again.

He argued that a police officer is authorized to use any amount of force necessary to protect himself or others and that using a weapon to scan a crowd was a normal police operation used during unrest in Ferguson. He argued that other police officers were shown in photographs pointing guns at protesters.

The commission ruled that whether other officers pointed their guns at protesters was irrelevant, according to case documents. Albers should have called out to any of the other officers in his vicinity after he saw the men he believed had a gun and Molotov cocktails.

Albers can appeal the commissions decision. His lawyer, Brandy Barth, declined comment Friday.
DECATUR, Ill.  The father of a 4-year-old Decatur girl who died after being brought to an emergency room unresponsive and with scabs and bruises covering much of her body is facing a first-degree murder charge.

The Herald & Review in Decatur reports Darrell A. Reynolds, 29, appeared Thursday in Macon County Circuit Court, where he was arraigned. If convicted, he faces 20 years to life in prison. He's scheduled to return to court Sept. 28.

The Associated Press left a message seeking comment Friday from Reynolds' lawyer William Vig.

Charging documents filed by the Macon County State's Attorney's Office says the Aug. 31 death of Amarrah C. Reynolds "resulted from exceptionally brutal or heinous behavior indicative of wanton cruelty."

The girl's mother is due in court Friday in the case.
CLAYTON  The St. Louis County Police Department and its governing civilian police board may not separate themselves in their legal battle against a former lieutenant accused of racial profiling and fighting for his old job back, a judge ruled Friday.

Associate Circuit Judge Joseph L. Green also ordered the county counselors office to unseal thousands of pages of transcripts from the former officers police board trial last year that the county sought to close from the public.

Greens decision comes after lawyers for former Lt. Patrick Rick Hayes appealed the police boards decision to reinstate and demote Hayes to patrol officer.

I find the police department, board and county are one entity, Green said Friday.

Former Chief Tim Fitch fired Hayes in March 2013 after he said an internal affairs investigation found Hayes had ordered officers to racially profile blacks by pulling them over in and around shopping centers in south St. Louis County.

Hayes appealed his firing to the civilian police board, which presides over the police chief. In March, the board recommended Hayes be reinstated as patrolman after a disciplinary hearing.

Hayes attorney, Neil Bruntrager, then appealed the police boards decision in civil court, saying his client should be returned to his former rank as lieutenant.

County counselors fought the police boards decision, saying Hayes should remain fired. St. Louis Countys lawyers then created an ethical wall within the office so separate attorneys would represent the police board.

Bruntrager in turn sought to dismiss the county and police departments appeal, saying no wall could separate the police department from its own board.

Green agreed. His ruling Friday ordered transcripts from Hayes police board trial be unsealed. Keeping them sealed when other pleadings by Hayes have remained open would give the public an incomplete account of how his case has been handled, he said.

This could potentially be misleading to the public, Green read Friday from his order. Such incomplete information runs the risk of having part of the record taken out of context and would undermine the impartiality and fairness of the judicial system (that) public policy seeks to protect.

The judges order gives the county counselors office two weeks to file unsealed transcripts  about 3,000 pages  from Hayes 11-day police board trial last year that the county counselors office wanted closed over objections from Hayes lawyer.

Bruntrager said Greens ruling is a victory for Hayes because the public will get to see what the police board saw  that claims by some of the officers were incredible.

This is a big deal, Bruntrager said. It will demonstrate that he didnt do those things.

Bob Grant, deputy St. Louis County counselor, disagreed with the judges decision and said the county counselors office will review the ruling and consider its legal options.

Green gave lawyers for both sides 30 days to agree on a hearing date for oral arguments that will help the judge decide whether to reinstate Hayes as a lieutenant or patrol officer.

The St. Louis County Board of Police Commissioners has five civilians appointed by the county executive and approved by the County Council to govern the police department. There are currently four members, as County Executive Steve Stenger has not appointed a replacement for John Saracino.
ST. LOUIS  A little more than $100 could have derailed the campaign by Bruce Franks Jr. to unseat state Rep. Penny Hubbard in last months Democratic primary.

When Franks entered the race this spring, he signed a sworn statement claiming he didnt knowingly owe any back taxes.

But city records show that, until Tuesday, Franks has been delinquent on a personal property tax bill dating back to 2012.

State law says owing back taxes can disqualify a candidate from getting on the ballot.

But in order for him to be removed from the ballot, Hubbard would have had to file a challenge to his candidacy within 30 days of his officially entering the race. She didnt.

Franks on Thursday said he was unaware of the delinquency until this week, when an acquaintance called him and asked if all of his taxes were paid up.

Franks said he sold a Pontiac Grand Prix in March 2012  his first time selling a car.

Because he owned the car on Jan. 1 of that year, Franks was liable to pay personal property tax on the car.

Honestly, I just didnt know, he said.

On Tuesday, after the Post-Dispatch raised questions about the tax bill, Franks came to City Hall to settle it. His bill, which included penalties after the four-year delay, came to $114.62  nearly double the initial tab of $65.73.

Also on Tuesday, the Missouri Ethics Commission contacted Franks to let him know he missed a deadline for filing a campaign finance report. He has since filed it.

This is my first time around, and there are some things that we didnt understand, Franks said this week.

He said his campaign treasurer, Dana Kelly, who also is his wife, was on the phone with the commission Wednesday going through the process to make sure that his forms were filed correctly.

A third issue that popped up this week involves more than $8,000 Franks has raised from a crowdfunding website, purportedly to pay legal fees associated with his court fight with Hubbard over absentee ballots.

But the web page also has an image with a campaign slogan, and that seemingly blurs the line between fundraising for legal fees and campaigning for office. Franks could not be reached to comment on the gofundme page late Thursday.

A spokesman with the Missouri Ethics Commission said the page raises some questions. But as of Thursday, the commission had not a received a complaint about the page.

Hubbard won the Aug. 2 primary race, but Franks sued to overturn the election. A judge agreed and ordered a new election in the race scheduled for Sept. 16. A Post-Dispatch investigation revealed a number of apparent problems with absentee ballots in the Aug. 2 election.

Doug Moore of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.
JEFFERSON CITY  Missouri lawmakers return to the capital city next week, but theyll be doing more than just acting on legislation vetoed by Gov. Jay Nixon.

While in town, some members will spend Tuesday and Wednesday raising campaign cash as part of a September ritual that includes at least 31 events this year in which lobbyists and supporters will dole out checks to their favored members of the House and Senate.

This year, however, could be the final time those checks can come in any dollar amount.

In an unusual confluence of politics, government and the legal system, Monday marks the day when attorneys argue before a state appeals court about whether a voter initiative calling for caps on campaign contributions should be on the Nov. 8 ballot.

If the measure survives the court fight, and if voters approve the referendum, contributions to individual candidates would be capped at $2,600. Contributions to a political party would be limited to $25,000.

During last years veto session dash for cash, more than 40 contributions would have been illegal under the proposed caps, according to a review of records at the Missouri Ethics Commission.

Oral arguments before the Missouri Court of Appeals for the Western District are set to begin at 10 a.m. The afternoon and evening schedule of fundraisers at various venues in Jefferson City begins some 24 hours later and continues until the veto session begins at noon Wednesday.

The fundraising comes against the backdrop of a year in which Republican leaders in the Legislature made a push to clean up Jefferson Citys image by focusing on several ethics-related laws.

Fundraising on the eve or day of a session was not one of them.

More than 30 states  including Illinois  bar lawmakers from raising money when they are in session or accepting money from lobbyists during the session as a way to limit the appearance that lawmakers votes are being influenced. In Missouri, which places no limits on either campaign contributions or gifts from lobbyists, there is no such restriction.

Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Springfield, is among those hosting receptions on Wednesday. His is at a coffee shop near the Capitol. Last year, records show he collected more than $12,700 at his veto session fundraiser, including a $2,500 check from Grow Missouri, a political action committee funded by retired St. Louis investor Rex Sinquefield.

Later in the day, Burlison will lead the charge in the House to override Nixons veto of a controversial firearms proposal that would make it legal to carry a concealed weapon without a permit.

Across town, Republicans who control the Senate are hosting a pool party at Senate Majority Floor Leader Mike Kehoes house in Jefferson City.

Although Democratic Rep. Gina Mitten, D-Richmond Heights, also is hosting a reception Tuesday, she says lawmakers should take action to shut down fundraising when the Legislature is in session.

But, she said, Given what happened last spring with ethics reform, there is little hope for that. The majority party was unable to get a year-long cooling off period for lawmakers wanting to be lobbyists. The majority party was unable to address lobbyist gift-giving.

Among lobbyists, Brent Hemphill & Associates, a Jefferson City-based firm that represents interests ranging from the St. Louis Blues to Ameren, wrote 19 checks worth $2,800 to lawmakers in both parties during last years veto session, according to MEC records.

The Missouri Insurance Coalition PAC wrote 28 checks totalling $4,700 last year.

The political action committee representing electric cooperatives in Missouri wrote 20 checks totaling at least $7,600 during last years veto session. It is the same group behind the campaign contributions lawsuit.

If the electric cooperatives fail in their quest to kill the referendum, and, if voters approve the ballot measure in November, caps on contributions would go into effect in Missouri for the first time since lawmakers voted to lift them in 2008.
An unresponsive Dane County Jail inmate was saved early Friday morning after an apparent overdose.

Deputies working in the jail at the Public Safety Building found Toni Hawkins, 30, in her bed at about 5:20 a.m., the Sheriff's Office said.

Jail medical staff and paramedics from the Madison Fire Department responded to the scene.

"She was administered two doses of Narcan and was alert and talking prior to being transported to a local hospital," said spokeswoman Elise Schaffer.

Narcan is a drug used to reverse the effect of an opioid such as heroin.

Hawkins has Huber Law privileges in her jail sentence, allowing her to leave the facility. She left jail on Thursday to attend treatment.

"Deputies are conducting searches and followup interviews in the jail to determine if any charges will be issued," Schaffer said.
EDWARDSVILLE  A judge on Friday ordered a competency evaluation for a man accused of making a terrorist threat because of her own bona fide doubt of (his) fitness for trial.

Associate Judge Jennifer Hightower appointed Daniel Cuneo, a forensic psychologist in Belleville, to examine Keaun Cook, 18, of Godfrey. Cook is held in the Madison County Jail on charges of making a terrorist threat and providing material support for terrorism.

Hightower was to hold a hearing Friday on a motion by States Attorney Tom Gibbons to deny bail for Cook. But she chose to order an evaluation after observing Cook in court on Wednesday.

During that hearing, Cook rambled about a situation and said the wrong picture has been painted. Hightower stopped the proceeding once Cook agreed to representation by Madison County Public Defender John Rekowski, already in the courtroom at her request.

Relatives say Cook suffers from mental illness. My grandson is not a terrorist, said Debra Thomas of Godfrey, his grandmother. He just has mental issues.

Rekowski said, I think the sheriff and states attorney were absolutely justified in moving forward when they did. With these allegations, you have to err on the side of caution,

He added, Now, lets do the next right thing about whether this man is a terrorist or sick. Knowing what I know of him so far, about his background and extensive mental health issues, I think hes sick. And in this country, we dont lock up sick people.

Gibbons has said the sheriffs office developed the case after getting a tip that Cook was linked to threats of a terrorist attack in the area. He was charged Sept. 1.

Hightower said she will set a new hearing after receiving Cuneos report.

When Cook was charged, Gibbons alleged that the teen had been in contact through social media with individuals (Cook) believed would be capable of committing a mass casualty terrorist attack somewhere in the local area. Gibbons said investigators went to the Thomas residence in the 1300 block of Sir Galahad Lane on a welfare check and developed evidence linking Cook to terrorist threats.

Gibbons said deputies obtained a recording that supports the charges; he declined to cite its source.

PTSD is cited

In an interview this week, Thomas said Cook has suffered from mental illnesses since he saw his mother die from complications of lupus in 2011, when he was 13. She said he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, started getting in frequent trouble for minor violations and was in and out of mental health centers over the next few years. Eventually, she said, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Cook became aggressive and paranoid and was unable to drive or hold a job, Thomas said. He would talk to himself and refused to use phones or other electronic devices because he thought he was being watched, she said.

Thomas said she tried to get help for Cook, but no one responded. She said she called officials to her home on Aug. 24, hoping they would take him to a mental health institution.

When sheriffs deputies decided to leave Cook at the home, Thomas said, she played a recording she made that day of Cook talking to himself and showed them messages she found on his phone, also that day.

He was talking out of his head, she said.

Officials then took Cook to a mental facility where he spent five days, Thomas said. Two days after he returned home, officers arrested him.

He has mental issues  thats the only reason I called that night, she said. I wanted to get him help. Not get him in trouble.

Cook does not present a danger, Thomas said. While he was paranoid and acted out, his behavior was made worse by the treatment he experienced in the juvenile justice system, she said.

I did my part, she said. The system failed him.
The ramp from Grand Boulevard to eastbound Interstate 44 is slated to close at 9 a.m. on Monday for two weeks as crews construct new asphalt to connect the ramp to the new Grand bridge over the interstate, the Missouri Department of Transportation said.

When the ramp closes, drivers will not be able to get on eastbound Interstate 44 from Grand from either direction. They should use Chouteau and Jefferson avenues, or Gravois and Jefferson Avenue, as a detour.

Also Monday morning, the stretch of Parker Road between Burning Tree and Arlington drives in Florissant is set to close for 90 days so a new bridge can be built, according to the St. Louis County Department of Transportation.

The pedestrian bridge on the south side of Parker will remain open. The cost of the project is about $730,000.

About 8,000 drivers use that section of Parker Road on an average week day, the county said. It's near the James J. Eagan Community Center, as well as McCluer North High School and Parker Road Elementary.

Suggested detours are Paddock Drive, North Waterford Drive, Lindbergh Boulevard and West Florissant Road.

And one more to keep track of for your commute: MoDOT said drivers on eastbound Interstate 70 near Interstate 170 should continue to watch out for changes in traffic patterns, such as shifts to either side or traffic splits, for the next couple of weeks.
WASHINGTON  Is the death penalty in America gradually dying?

There have been just two executions since May 1, and the total for 2016 probably will hit a 25-year low.

Execution drug shortages, sometimes grotesque errors in death chambers and legal challenges to sentences imposed by judges have contributed to a dramatic decline in the number of states that are carrying out executions.

Just three states, Missouri, Texas and Georgia, are using the death penalty with any regularity, though Texas has not executed anyone since April. Four executions are scheduled there before the end of the year.

The reduction in executions and in the number of states that are enforcing death sentences led Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to conclude recently, I think the death penalty is fading away. There is not enough support on the court to abolish capital punishment, Ginsburg said, but she added that may not be necessary.

Most states dont have any executions. The executions that we have are very heavily concentrated in a few states and even a few counties within those states, she said in an interview with The Associated Press in July. Ginsburg joined a lengthy dissenting opinion by Justice Stephen Breyer last year that highlighted problems with the death penalty that led the two justices to conclude that it probably is unconstitutional.

States that have had to halt executions, though, are trying to figure out how to resume. Ohio and Oklahoma are among states that intend to restart executions once they have corrected well-publicized problems in their death chambers.

Ohio, which last executed an inmate in January 2014, has set a January 12 execution date for a man convicted of raping and killing a 3-year-old girl in Akron. But its unclear whether his execution, or more than two dozen others that are scheduled into 2020, will take place because the state lacks lethal execution drugs and has struggled to find a supplier, as have other states.

In Ohios last execution, in January 2014, Dennis McGuire gasped and snorted repeatedly during a 26-minute execution that used a never-before-tried combination of two drugs. That protocol has since been eliminated and those drugs arent available for executions.

Oklahoma last execution was in January 2015, amid the use of the wrong drug and other problems. The states prison system is expected to adopt new execution procedures soon. Even then, Attorney General Scott Pruitt says he will wait at least another five months before asking a court to schedule an execution.

Oklahoma imposed a moratorium on the death penalty after two problem-filled executions and a third that was called off when prison officials noticed they received the wrong drug. The top lawyer for Gov. Mary Fallin urged officials to go forward anyway, telling another lawyer to Google it to confirm the drug could be used, according to a grand jury investigation.

Alabama and Florida havent put anyone to death since January because of questions about the way death sentences are imposed in those states.

Even Texas has seen a reduction in executions. The states highest criminal appeals court has stopped four executions in the past month, though each case raised different issues. Separately, the Supreme Court will take up two Texas death row cases in the coming months.

California has the largest death-row population, 746 inmates as of early August, but hasnt executed anyone in 10 years. Voters in the nations most populous state will consider separate ballot questions in November that would abolish the death penalty on the one hand and speed up the appeals process on the other.

The longer states go without executions, the harder it may be for them to resume, said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. The law of inertia is that a body in motion tends to stay in motion. A body at rest tends to stay at rest. There are policy parallels for that with the death penalty. Right now most states are comfortable not executing anybody. And for the most part, the public is comfortable, even in death penalty states, with their states not executing anybody, Dunham said.

So far there have been 15 executions this year. At the current pace, there would be 19 executions by the end of 2016, the fewest since 1991, when 14 people were put to death. The high-water mark was in 1999, when there were 98 executions.

The number of new death sentences also is approaching historic lows as most jurisdictions are forgoing costly capital trials in favor of seeking life sentences with no chance of parole. Texas, which has executed more people since 1976 than the next six states combined, had only two new death sentences last year.

Many of the executions that are being carried out are for crimes committed up to 30 years ago, before some states enhanced the legal representation in capital cases, said Stephen Bright, an experienced death penalty lawyer who is president of the Southern Center for Human Rights.

There are a lot of people who are getting executed who would never be sentenced to death today, Bright said.
Along with a growing number of my constituents, I am concerned about the developments surrounding the recent primary election in Missouris 78th House District, which pitted incumbent Rep. Penny Hubbard against challenger Bruce Franks.

From my very first election in 2000, I have fought hard to make sure that every citizen who wants to vote gets the opportunity to vote and to assure that their vote is counted. In 2000, we successfully proved that the St. Louis Election Board wrongfully denied thousands of voters their rights through the illegal use of an inactive voter list.

However in this election, we are confronted with a new dilemma. There is great controversy about a group of absentee ballots cast in this state representative race and what to do with these votes.

This is an important issue and we need to insure justice, for the integrity of our election process is at stake. There should be zero tolerance for voter fraud.

In this case, the court did not receive credible evidence of fraud by any party. There were some problems at the St. Louis Election Board cited by the court, and Gov. Jay Nixon has stepped up to start the process to correct them.

The law in Missouri is clear: If there are problems at the Election Board, the voters should not be penalized. A complicated question with a simple answer; count the votes and declare the winner.

I know that many are very passionate about this election, and that is a good thing. However, passion should be tempered with reason in the public domain.

I sincerely hope that Franks and his supporters are not so anxious to win the election that they are willing to deprive the constituents he wants to serve of their right to vote. That is carrying passion a bit too far.

There are some disturbing aspects of this case that I want to bring to light. First of all, lets be fair when discussing the matter of the large number of absentee ballots that stirred this controversy.

For some reason, in this election, many advocates for Franks have portrayed the absentee votes as tainted and unseemly. We can do better. Like Franks supporters, Hubbards are passionate about their candidate and voted for their candidate of choice.

In St. Louis city and county, voters have appeared at the respective election boards, before Election Day, to cast their absentee ballots for years, without any question, and we have all allowed this form of early voting without disagreement.

We must be sure that we apply the law fairly and equitably in this instance. We cant decide after the election that we are going to change the rules because we dont like the outcome.

The court has ordered a new election next week. This is without doubt a situation where the cure is worse than the disease.

As I did in Ferguson, I am going to ask the Justice Department to look at this election and the resulting lawsuits and rulings to ensure that the passion of Franks supporters (and others who have political reasons to undo this election) do not disenfranchise the elderly and disabled voters who will not have an opportunity to cast their absentee ballots in a timely matter.

There is another more disturbing reason I will ask the Justice Department to intervene. In Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U.S. 30 (1986), the Supreme Court clarified that the essence of a Section 2 voting rights claim is that a certain electoral law, practice or structure interacts with social and historical conditions to cause an inequity in the opportunities enjoyed by black and white voters to elect their preferred representatives.

I want an unbiased party to evaluate this election and give my constituents the confidence that their votes (absentee or not) are given equal weight.

U.S. Rep. William Lacy Clay is a Democrat from St. Louis.
Note: This article is part of a Post-Dispatch special report honoring heroes in the St. Louis area. You can read more profiles at stltoday.com/heroes

Air Force nurses Michelle Trujillo and Linda Clarkson, co-workers and best friends, rested from a bean-bag game at a country lake resort. A crowd gathered around a boy lying motionless on the beach.

Clarkson noticed the commotion near the waters edge. Lets go, she said, and grabbed Trujillos arm.

Moving through the crowd, they shouted for someone to call 911 and knelt before the boy, Issiah Wiest, whose body was blue. He was not breathing and had no pulse.

Trujillo began chest compressions for cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Clarkson kept the 9-year-old boys airway open and gave him breaths.

We thought there was no way this kid was going to make it, Trujillo said. All we could do was what we were trained to do.

An off-duty emergency medical technician ran to his car and retrieved his bag. Other nurses visiting the resort offered assistance.

After what seemed a long time  a bystanders best guess was about 10 minutes  Issiah began breathing and coughing up water. Trujillo and Clarkson had cleared his lungs and restored breathing before an ambulance arrived a short time later.

Issiah, now 10, goes to school in Potosi.

They are courageous and awesome, Darrell Branch, a friend of the boys family, said of the two nurses. They saved a boys life. He went from dead to one night in a hospital.

Trujillo, 37, and Clarkson, 45, are nurses with the rank of captain with the 375th Medical Group at Scott Air Force Base. Friends since they met while attending Chamberlain College of Nursing in Maryland Heights, they are assigned to the base family clinic.

For reviving Issiah, they received commendations from the Air Force and were honored in April by the Greater St. Louis Region of the American Red Cross for the military category of its 2016 heroes ceremony.

It happened on Labor Day weekend in 2015. Trujillo and Clarkson and their husbands and children had gone to Lost Valley Lake Resort, near Owensville, Mo., with their trailer campers for the holiday. Branch, who then was dating Issiahs mother, took the boy and two of his own children to his fathers campsite at Lost Valley.

Branch and the children went to the swimming beach. The nurses and their families went there to play a bean-bag game similar to washers or horseshoes. Branch said he was watching the kids and saw Issiah splashing in water just above his waist.

Some moments later, a teenager swimming near the buoy line felt something bump against him. The teen and two friends grabbed Issiah and pulled him to the beach, alerting people nearby.

Thats when the nurses ran to him and began CPR. The ambulance arrived about 20 minutes later.

With Issiahs heart not pumping, his odds for survival werent good  fewer than 10 percent of people who suffer cardiac arrest outside of a medical setting survive. CPR serves more to get blood to the brain than to restore heart function, but it roughly doubles the chance of recovery, according to the Red Cross.

Trujillo and Clarkson knew that. Our instincts and training kicked in, said Clarkson.

As they continued working on Issiah, Clarkson noticed a pulse in the boys carotid, or neck, artery. Trujillo stopped compressions and saw the boy breathe. They turned him onto his side and he vomited water.

Paramedics with the Gerald Area Ambulance District rushed him to Mercy Hospital in Washington, Mo. He was transferred to Mercy Hospital St. Louis, in Creve Coeur, and discharged the following day. At that time, Issiah and his mother, Sarah Wiest, lived in Festus.

The boys family treated the nurses to a thank-you party in October back at Lost Valley Lake. Branch, 33, now lives in Kansas City, where he is a commercial window-washer, and keeps in touch with the Wiests.

Clarkson grew up in Crestwood and graduated from Lindbergh High School in 1989. Trujillo is from Knoxville, Tenn. They joined the Air Force upon graduation from nursing school in 2010 and, after assignments elsewhere, were reunited at Scott. Clarkson and her husband, Gerald Clarkson, of Kirkwood, now live in OFallon, Ill. Trujillo and her husband, Jeff Blankenship, live in Shiloh.
The latest Medal of Valor Awards for St. Louis-area police officers, sponsored by the Crusade Against Crime, were distributed in November. More than 400 officers have been recognized with the awards since 1969.

BURGLARY

St. Louis County Police Department: Officer Adam Baumhardt

Velda City Police Department: Sgt. Michael McCarthy

Incident: The suspect of a burglary fled the scene in a vehicle, after shooting at the officers. Baumhardt was shot and sustained injuries. McCarthy returned fire. The suspect was later arrested and convicted of assault and armed criminal action against an officer.

FOOT CHASE

St. Louis County Police Department: Officer Mudassar Malik

Incident: Malik chased one of two people reported for suspicious behavior. The officer shot the suspect after the man reportedly pointed a gun at Maliks chest. The officer later arrested the man.

STING OPERATION

St. Charles County Police Department: Detective William Parks

Incident: Detectives attempted to gather intelligence on a suspected weapons dealer. Another detective was attacked and detained by assailants. Parks defended him.

ROBBERY

St. Louis County Police Department: Officers Jeffery Parsons and Darko Omeragic

Incident: Two armed suspects fled the scene of a robbery at a check-cashing store after police arrived. Parsons and Omeragic chased one of the suspects. Parsons shot the suspect after he reportedly pointed a gun at the officers.

FIRE

Florissant Police Department: Officers Steven Beckman, Amel Topcagic, Eric Schlueter

Incident: An armed man had barricaded himself in a room of a home that was on fire. The officers helped rescue him after hearing a gunshot come from the room.

GUNFIRE

St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department: Officers Lawrence Kreisman, William Stevenson and Miranda McElrath

Incident: The officers exchanged gunfire with a person reported for suspicious behavior. Police chased the suspect and engaged in a second gunfight. The suspect was struck and taken into custody.

STOPPED WITH TASER

St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department: Officers Steven Korte and James Bain

Incident: Korte chased and successfully knocked a gun from the hand of a suspect police believed had committed a crime. The suspect fled after punching Korte but was later stopped by Bain, using a Taser, and taken into custody.

FATHER, SON RESCUED

St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department: Officers Joseph Hill, James Frost and Jason Collins
Note: This article is part of a Post-Dispatch special report honoring heroes in the St. Louis area. You can read more profiles at stltoday.com/heroes

Michael Newtson bought a pair of running shoes for his mothers birthday.

Leaving the J.C. Penney store at South County Center, he heard a womans scream: Somebody stop him! The woman, a Penneys security officer, stumbled down the stairs as she called for help.

Newtson, 19, has better training than the average concerned citizen. The Affton resident belongs to the 1157th Military Police Company of the Missouri National Guard. Only a few months before, he had completed basic training and MP school at Fort Leonard Wood in south-central Missouri.

Newtson dropped the shoebox and pursued the man. He tackled him on the parking lot and held him on the ground until St. Louis County police arrived.

For his actions in stopping a shoplifter on April 24, Newtson was honored in August by the county Board of Police Commissioners with a Citizen Service Citation. It says his action represents a remarkable amount of character and compassion as you were willing to knowingly place yourself in harms way.

Court records showed it would be the third offense for the suspect, 54, who was charged with stealing. Police accused the man of taking two bottles of tester cologne, which were recovered from his jacket pocket.

Newtson graduated from Bayless High School in 2015 and entered the Missouri Guard a short time later. He is assigned to the 1157th, in St. Clair, and has a daytime job as a union carpenters apprentice.

He said there was nothing special about his tackling technique. But once he had the suspect on the ground, his MP training gave him an advantage even though the suspect was bigger: 6-foot-3 inches and 270 pounds.

How to keep him down is where my training kicked in, Newtson said. I just kept my body weight on him, kept putting pressure on him. Thats what they teach us down at Leonard.

He said the suspect continued fighting even when county police showed up. Newtson said one of the officers pulled out a Taser but did not use it.

As for the citation, Newtson said, I had no clue about it. All I did was something everybody should do.
BLOOD SERVICES AWARD

The University of Missouri Alumni Association sponsored its 30th blood drive over four days, which ended up becoming the largest one in the nation.

DISASTER RELIEF AWARD

Anheuser-Busch InBev donated 85,000 cans of fresh drinking water to the American Red Cross to distribute across Missouri after flooding in December 2015. The St. Louis beer giant packages about 700,000 cans of water annually for emergency use.

FIREFIGHTER AWARD

Off-duty St. Louis firefighters Licole McKinney, Frank Carter and Vincent Smith pulled three unconscious people from a fiery car crash. All the victims recovered.

GOOD SAMARITAN ADULT AWARD

Cameron Pettus helped stabilize a man who collapsed and suffered cardiac arrest on a moving walkway at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport.

GOOD SAMARITAN YOUTH AWARD

Motivated after buddy Ryan Branson lost everything in a fire that destroyed his Norwood Court apartment, Kollin Cox, 7, used an online video and a crowdfunding page online to raise more than $9,000 to help his friends family.

HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONAL AWARD

Christi Reed helped a man who lost consciousness after hitting his head in a fall on ice. He survived a traumatic brain injury.

LAW ENFORCEMENT AWARD

St. Louis County police Officers John Spicer, Samantha Sirles and Kelly Eller assisted a woman having a heart attack after the victim daughters drove her to a police station.

EMERGENCY MEDICAL ASSISTANCE AWARD

Des Peres Lt. Robert Willoughby, Lt. Vicki Severs and Public Safety Officer Blake Simmons used CPR to revive an 8-year-old special needs boy found facedown in a pool in a near-drowning at the Des Peres Lodge.

MILITARY AWARD

Capt. Michelle Trujillo and Capt. Linda Clarkson, both of the Army, revived a boy with CPR at the Lost Valley Lake Resort in Owensville, Mo.

COMMUNITY IMPACT
A pro-gun group that challenged a city of Madison rule that bans weapons, including firearms, on Metro Transit buses told the state Supreme Court on Friday that the rule should be overturned because it is prohibited by a state law that bars municipalities from creating more stringent gun laws than those enacted by the state.

But a city lawyer argued that a ban on guns aboard Metro buses does not conflict with the state law, and said that the city Transit and Parking Commission was allowed under state law to create the rule designed to keep guns off city buses.

Wisconsin Carry sued the city in 2014 over the rule. Dane County Circuit Judge Ellen Berz dismissed the lawsuit because the rule was not an ordinance or a resolution enacted by the City Council, and would only result in banning a person from using the bus system. It does not create a municipal ordinance violation for the offense, Berz wrote.

The state 4th District Court of Appeals agreed in August 2015, finding that the plain language of the state statute only preempts cities from creating ordinances and resolutions concerning firearms, but not administrative rules. Wisconsin Carry appealed to the state Supreme Court, which held oral arguments Friday.

Assistant City Attorney John Strange echoed that ruling in his argument, and said the state law is silent about the rule-making authority of city commissions.

Had the Legislature intended to bar that authority, it could have done so, Strange said, and can amend the law if it chooses.

To rule against the city, he said, the court would essentially have to rewrite state law.

The point the city is making is that it is not up to the court to rewrite the law, Strange said.

But John Monroe, lawyer for Wisconsin Carry, along with Ryan Walsh, chief deputy solicitor general for the state Department of Justice, argued that the city Transit and Parking Commission derives its rule-making authority from the Madison City Council, which is itself barred from creating the rule that bans weapons on Metro buses.

The state Justice Department entered the case as a friend of the court and participated in arguments on Wisconsin Carrys side.

Some of the justices, in particular Rebecca Bradley, pressed Strange on whether the city could simply create commissions to write rules that the City Council would otherwise be banned by state law from creating, a scenario Strange said could not happen.

Strange also argued that the city, as owner of Metro buses, can decide under the authority of a separate state law regulating the transportation of firearms in vehicles whether to allow firearms on its buses.

Walsh countered that the constitutional right to bear arms belongs to everyone, regardless of whether they drive their own vehicles or ride city buses.

The court will issue a written decision in the case at a future date.
The crew of a lumbering Air Force tanker jet flew extra miles over hostile territory to shepherd the pilot of a crippled fighter-bomber to safety.

Three Air Force personnel assigned to the Illinois National Guards 126th Refueling Wing earned an Air Force award for helping the A-10 Warthog to an emergency landing in northern Iraq in April 2015.

The three-person crew of a KC-135 tanker, from Scott Air Force Base, had just completed an in-air refueling when the ground-attack jets left engine disintegrated.

The tanker crew stayed within view of the A-10 at an unusually low altitude for more than an hour, arranged for escort from other fighters and supervised its safe landing at Al Asad in northern Iraq.

That American-occupied forward base is north of Ramadi and, at the time, was within territory claimed by the Islamic State and subject to occasional attack. Air Force and Marines personnel repaired the Warthog, which was flown to a secure base five days later.

The tanker crew, Capts. Benjamin Oatley and James Quon, and master Sgt. Jarrett Crawford, were honored with the Air Forces Hoyt Award, bestowed once each year for outstanding service by an aerial-refueling crew. The Air Force and Air National Guard units have more than 400 tankers in the fleet, so the award carries weight in the refueling service.

Oatley and Quon are pilots, and Crawford operates the refueling boom.

The award is named after Brig. Gen. Ross G. Hoyt, who took part in experimental refueling flights in 1929. The crews unit commander submitted a nomination letter that applauded the incredible accomplishments of Oatley, Quon and Crawford while on deployment in the Middle East. First on his list was the day they helped the A-10 pilot to safety.

For many Americans, flying what effectively is a giant fuel can is bravery enough, maybe even a bit crazy. The KC-135 can haul 31,000 gallons of jet fuel. American air services carefully protect their flying service stations, but tankers are fat targets over a war zone.

The KC-135 is a military version of the Boeing 707, a four-engine, swept-wing jet airliner that was a breakthrough design when it was introduced in 1954. The newest of the 126ths fleet of eight tankers is 53 years old.

In a recent interview, Oatley, Quon and Crawford shrugged off talk of heroics. Said Oatley, the senior crew member: We just happened to be there, trying to do our job and keeping people safe. Quon called it an opportunity to handle unfortunate circumstances.

But Oatley also said, It was closer (to hazard) than we usually go.

Quon said a big factor on everyones mind was that, only two months before, Islamic State militants had executed a captured Jordanian military pilot by burning him alive. They didnt want the A-10 pilot to have to bail out.

Crawford said they stayed within one-half mile of the A-10, but keeping visual contact was hard because, even at 18,000 feet, desert dust creates thick haze. He said another challenge was working through the myriad of radio and internet channels to contact several command centers an ironic result of the allied effort to keep Islamic State listeners as confused as possible.

Oatley and Quon are active-duty Air Force pilots assigned to the 126th. Crawford was an active-duty airman before his discharge in December 2015. He lives in Fairview Heights, as does Oatley. Quon lives in downtown St. Louis.

Their commander, Lt. Col. Don Landgrebe, said about one-fifth of the 96 air-crew members of the 126th are active-duty personnel. The rest serve in the Illinois National Guard.

Quon, 27, grew up in Bethesda, Md., and Crawford, 25, is from San Diego. Oatley, 30, son of an Air Force family, attended Wolf Branch Junior High School in Swansea while his father was stationed at Scott in the late 1990s.

They were deployed for two months last spring to a base in Qatar, a small country on the Persian Gulf. They flew 36 refueling missions, some as far north as Syria, and most of the flights lasted eight hours or more and involved multiple refuelings of warplanes on duty in the Middle East, from A-10s to B-1 bombers.

A tanker can pump as much as 1,000 gallons per minute through its aerial boom, depending upon the size of the airplane being serviced aloft. A KC-135 draws its fuel from the same tank system within its fuselage and wings.

Oatley, Quon and Crawford had their own challenge with a jet engine. On another of their missions  also mentioned in the award citation  they lost an engine shortly after refueling two F-16 fighters. They successfully shut down the failed engine and aborted the rest of the mission.

They said the trickiest part was negotiating storms near the Iraq-Kuwait border, which they called an area notorious for bad weather.
A man who police say is connected to four daytime burglaries was arrested on Wednesday following a short foot chase on Madison's East Side.

Michael Voltz, 30, no permanent address, was taken into custody by a Capitol Police officer who chased after Voltz after he abandoned a stolen car he was driving, Madison police said.

Voltz, who police say is a heroin user, was tentatively charged with operating a motor vehicle without the owner's consent and possession of drug paraphernalia, along with the outstanding warrants for burglary.

According to police:

The Madison Police Department's burglary crimes unit was working surveillance in the Milwaukee Street area on Wednesday, when Voltz was spotted in a car he allegedly stole during a daytime home burglary last week.

Officers followed the car on Stoughton Road and Lexington Avenue, before Voltz stopped on Ellenwood Drive and abandoned the car.

"A police perimeter was established and a Capitol Police officer was able to take the suspect into custody following a foot chase," said police spokesman Joel DeSpain.

The burglaries Voltz allegedly is connected to include a July 22 break-in at a home on Piccadilly Drive; an Aug. 8 break-in at a home on Lake Mendota Drive; and an Aug. 24 break-in at a home on Bagley Parkway.

Thousands of dollars worth of jewelry and electronics, as well as cash and a gun, were taken in the break-ins.

Voltz was identified as a suspect when he was seen on surveillance video pawning jewelry, silverware, electronics and other items allegedly taken in the July 22 burglary.
Vandals who smashed a town centre floral display featuring the Herald name have been branded moronic by Stratford In Bloom.

The display, on behalf of Stratford in Bloom, recognised the support the Herald has given to the organisation and the towns re-entry into the Britain in Bloom competition.

Located next to the Visitor Information Centre in Bridgefoot, the bespoke display featured the Herald name and helped to welcome visitors into the town.

Sadly however, the Herald lettering, which took hours of work to create, has now been smashed up.

Stratford-upon-Avon in Bloom are absolutely disgusted by the mindless vandalism which took place recently in destroying the grass & wooden lettering on The Tourist Information Centre flowerbed.

The feature was installed as a tribute to the great support that we receive from the Stratford Herald. All of the letters were painstakingly cut out by hand and then fixed in place using wooden pegs - the whole process taking hours, and the result, underplanted with white flowers, looked wonderful.

We were sickened to see that every letter had been ripped out and damaged - some broken into numerous pieces. Why? What possible gain or pleasure could anyone get from doing this? Whether it was meant as a personal swipe at either Stratford-upon-Avon in Bloom or The Herald, who knows, but it certainly will not deter us from reinstalling a new version of the tribute soon.

All members of Stratford-upon-Avon in Bloom are volunteers and devote a huge amount of time to helping make the town look wonderful. It is extremely gutting when someone carries out a moronic act like this.

Stratford did not enter the national Britain in Bloom competition in 2014 or 2015 amid concerns over its funding and after it was decided the floral displays were not up to the required standard.

The town returns to the contest this year, led by a revamped Stratford in Bloom.
Shares of Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) are relatively stable (-1%) Friday, one day after being fined $185 million by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and other government agencies for the widespread illegal practice of secretly opening more than 2 million unauthorized deposit and credit card accounts. The company fired 5,300 employees related to the scheme and has launched a marketing blitz to avoid widespread damage to its reputation.

Most on Wall Street shrugged at the news - another day another financial firm fine, they thought - but one controversial banking analyst has sounded the alarm amid the news and is recommending clients sell the stock.

The analyst making the call is Dick Bove of Rafferty Capital and he claims this is a "very big" problem for Wells. The analyst cut his rating from Hold to Sell and his price target from $51 to $44.

"This is very unsettling because even though the fines are not meaningful the damage to the Wells business model is significant," he claims. "Plus, this case re-opens the issue as to whether consumers can trust their banks and, therefore, whether more regulation is needed."

Bove provided some personal anecdotal evidence to describe what may have happened at the bank. He notes he was a client of legacy Wachovia Bank for years when Wells acquired the troubled institution. He noted a number of significant negative changes after Wells took over. Specifically, he commented:

"They rostrum was eliminated. Every Wachovia employee but one was removed. No one greeted customers coming in the door. The open space in the lobby was populated with desks and sales people who were constantly on the telephone calling for new business. Ultimately the branch manager was changed and not replaced. An assistant manager was running the branch. If I had problems to solve I was told no one in the branch could help, I would have to call the banks online services. These calls were handled in a very professional and pleasant manner."

In short, he said, Wells had converted an 'old-time' bank branch into a efficient sales and marketing organization. An "intense sales culture" was put in place, he notes. The pressure was so intense and so pervasive that when a new customer came into the bank the account executive would open three accounts for that customer not just one and that the customer never knew what was happening, Bove said it was relayed to him.

He sees two continuing issues now at Wells, which is why is is telling clients to avoid the stock.

First, internally significant changes are necessary. The sales model must be adjusted to reduce pressure on associates who might be tempted to cheat to save their jobs and obtain big bonuses, he said.

Second, is externally. Bove notes while there has been tremendous pressure put on the banking industry in the past 8 years by the politicians and the press, the public has voted with its money to increase its commitment to the banks. The public did this because it trusted these institutions. Wells just raised issues as to whether this trust was valid, he commented.

"Wells may have hurt every bank in the United States by what it has done," he commented. "It may have put more fire in the bellies of those who want to more strictly regulate the industry. One can only wait and see but breaking faith with customers is simply unacceptable for any company in any business and this is the biggest issue facing Wells Fargo today."
Lumber Liquidators (NYSE: LL), the largest specialty retailer of hardwood flooring in North America, today announced two appointments to its senior management team. Martin "Marty" Agard will join the Company as Chief Financial Officer, and Christopher Thomsen has joined as a Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer. Interim CFO Greg Whirley will remain with the Company in his role as Senior Vice President, Finance.

John Presley, Chief Executive Officer, commented, "We are pleased to welcome Marty Agard to Lumber Liquidators as Chief Financial Officer. Marty brings over three decades of experience in leveraging financial acumen to enhance company performance. His track record of organizational revitalization and turnaround expertise is an asset for Lumber Liquidators as we continue to progress on our strategic priorities and position the Company for growth. We are also excited to have Chris Thomsen join us in the position of Chief Information Officer. His expertise in facilitating business transformation through effective IT management represents a step forward for our team as we seek to modernize internal systems within our corporate function and across our store network.

Presley continued, "We also thank Greg Whirley for his contributions and commitment to Lumber Liquidators as interim CFO over the last 15 months. His diligence in execution has aided us at a challenging point in Lumber Liquidators' history. I look forward to continuing to work with Greg and have great confidence that his future contributions will be integral to our success."

Mr. Agard joins Lumber Liquidators from Kohler Company, where he most recently served as Chief Financial Officer. During his tenure at Kohler, he successfully executed on a number of restructurings and was able to streamline the financial function to optimize performance. Prior to his role at Kohler, Mr. Agard held finance, treasury and controller roles at Georgia Pacific Corporation, as well as financial roles at Procter & Gamble and Eastman Kodak. Mr. Agard holds an M.B.A. from the University of Michigan and a B.S. in Chemistry and Economics from William & Mary.

Mr. Thomsen joins the Company from Hibbett Sports, Inc., where he most recently served as Vice President and Chief Information Officer. He brings extensive experience in corporate IT solutions and planning, business intelligence and human capital management systems. Prior to Hibbett, Mr. Thomsen held IT roles of increasing responsibility at ConAgra Foods, Lowe's and APAC Customer Services. He earned a B.S. in Business Administration from Bellevue University.
NextEra Energy Partners, LP (NYSE: NEP) announced the pricing of a registered underwritten offering of 10,402,000 common units representing limited partner interests in NextEra Energy Partners, LP at a public offering price of $29.48 per common unit. The underwriters have a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 1,560,300 common units from NextEra Energy Partners.

The offering is expected to close on Sept. 14, 2016, subject to customary conditions. NextEra Energy Partners intends to use the net proceeds of the offering to fund its recently announced acquisition of an indirect 24 percent interest in Desert Sunlight Investment Holdings, LLC and for general partnership purposes.

BofA Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC, UBS Investment Bank and Wells Fargo Securities are acting as joint book-running managers for the offering, and Deutsche Bank Securities and J.P. Morgan Securities LLC are acting as co-managers.

This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy the securities described herein, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state or jurisdiction in which such an offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities law of any such jurisdiction. The offering may be made only by means of a prospectus and the related prospectus supplement, copies of which may be obtained from BofA Merrill Lynch at 200 North College Street, 3rd Floor, Charlotte, NC 28255-0001, Attn: Prospectus Department or by emailing [email protected]; Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC, Attn: Prospectus Department, 180 Varick Street, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10014; UBS Investment Bank, Attn: Prospectus Dept., 1285 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10019, Phone: (888) 827-7275; and Wells Fargo Securities, Attn: Equity Syndicate Dept., 375 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10152, by telephone at (800) 326-5897, or by email at [email protected].
ALEXANDRIA, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- CALIBRE Systems, Inc. (CALIBRE) is pleased to announce the appointment of Kimberly K. Horn to the CALIBRE Board of Directors, effective October 1, 2016.

Kim Horn, president of Kaiser Foundation Health Plan of the Mid-Atlantic States, Inc., oversees all aspects for the Mid-Atlantic region that serves more than 500,000 members and operates 30 medical centers throughout the District of Columbia, Northern Virginia, and Maryland.

Kim Horn exemplifies the focus on clients and spirit of community that is the foundation of CALIBREs culture, while bringing talent and expertise to the Board, said Lieutenant General Tom Carney (USA-Ret), Chairman of the Board of CALIBRE. Kims experience and proven leadership in business management, health, and public-private partnerships will strengthen CALIBREs ability to implement our strategic plan and grow our business base. On behalf of the Board of Directors, I welcome her as a member.

Ms. Horns community work includes serving on the Board of the Washington Economic Club, and on the Executive Committees for both the Greater Washington Board of Trade and the D.C. Chamber of Commerce. She also serves on the Board of the Living Classrooms Foundation working to strengthen Baltimore communities and inspiring young people to achieve their potential through hands-on education and job training. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan.

About CALIBRE

Alexandria, Virginia-based CALIBRE Systems, Inc. is an employee-owned management consulting and information technology solutions company supporting government and industry. CALIBRE is committed to the success of our clients, and delivers enduring solutions that solve management, technology, and program challenges.

For more information about CALIBRE, please visit www.calibresys.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160909005872/en/

CALIBRE Systems, Inc.

Craig College, Senior Vice President, Strategy Development

703-797-8733

[email protected]

Source: CALIBRE Systems, Inc.
SINGAPORE -- (Marketwired) -- 09/08/16 -- Loughborough University, which was recently ranked UK's top four university in the Guardian League Tables 2017, behind Oxford University, Cambridge University and the University of St. Andrews, today announced its 2015 - 2016 class of graduates from PSB Academy, Singapore.

This year's graduating batch from PSB Academy boasts two students, who have topped their classes in both Singapore and UK cohorts of about 500 students -- both of them earned first-class honour degrees from Loughborough University. About 80 students attended the ceremony at CHIJMES this afternoon.

Aung Kyi Kyi, 29 (pictured), holds a full-time position as an Executive Assistant at the National University Hospital, and hopes to someday pursue a Master's degree that will further enable her to climb the corporate ladder in the Operations and Administrations industry. "I have come this far, partly due to lecturers who have been so committed to guiding students like me. I hope that this degree will open doors for me to enter a managerial role in my company, I look forward to what the future brings," says Kyi Kyi.

As a finance officer at the National University of Singapore, it was important to Priyanka John that she was able to toggle between a working professional and a conscientious student seamlessly. For this very reason, the part-time degree programme presented itself as an almost divine opportunity because it allowed her to do retain her job while still working towards a better version of herself. "With this degree, I feel that so many career options in the Finance industry are now open to me, and now I have proven to myself that I have to aptitude to explore new opportunities in this professional field," says the 26-year-old.

Loughborough University established its first and only offshore programme with PSB Academy in year 2000 with a Bachelor of Science in Business Studies degree. The university subsequently expanded its range of offerings at PSB Academy with concentrations in Human Resource Management and Banking and Finance. More than 750 students, enrolled through PSB Academy, have graduated with an honours degree from Loughborough University since.

Graduates from this year's ceremony will be receiving their degrees from Guest-of-Honour, Christopher Pook, Regional Director for Department for International Trade (DIT) at the British High Commission, Singapore, along with the university's associate dean, professors, PSB Academy staff and family members in attendance.

"Our students, graduates, staff and partners are at the heart of all we do. They're the key to our continuous success at preparing industry-ready graduates, some of whom we are proud to celebrate with today. Within this close-knit community, shared across our UK shores with PSB Academy, there is an atmosphere of determination and a will to succeed, which creates an environment that motivates everyone to be the best they can be," said Professor Jim Saker, Associate Dean (Enterprise), Professor of Retail Management at Loughborough University.

"We are proud to be partnered with one of UK's leading universities -- they have been consistently rated as one of the best, with an international reputation for research that matters and excellence in teaching. We are certain that our graduates today, most of whom so bravely juggled with both work and rigorous study commitments as part-time students, are well-equipped to overcome industry challenges in this age of disruption, and continue to soar to new heights in their careers," said Joao Ponciano, Dean and Senior Vice President, PSB Academy.

For more information, please visit Loughborough University at PSB Academy.

Image Photo (credit: PSB Academy): Aung Kyi Kyi, 29, one of two students from PSB Academy who topped the cohort in Singapore and UK, graduated with 1st class honours for her Bachelor in Business Studies course offered by Loughborough University http://release.media-outreach.com/i/Download/5546

Logo http://release.media-outreach.com/i/Download/4694

About PSB Academy

Productivity is at the heart of PSB Academy. Once known as the Productivity and Standards Board, PSB Academy today ranks as one of Singapore's leading private education institutions. Our full-time and part-time diploma, degree and post-graduate programs focus on what really matters: performance in the real-world. We aim to appeal to millennials looking for an industry-ready education as well as early to mid-career professionals looking to upgrade themselves.

We have over 300 part-time and full-time lecturers delivering lessons to over 11,000 local and international students. PSB Academy is currently situated at two campuses in Singapore: [email protected] and [email protected] Learn more at: www.psb-academy.edu.sg.

About Loughborough University

Loughborough is one of the country's leading universities, with an international reputation for research that matters, excellence in teaching, strong links with industry, and unrivalled achievement in sport and its underpinning academic disciplines.

It has been awarded five stars in the independent QS Stars university rating scheme, putting it among the best universities in the world, and was named the best in the country for its student experience in the 2016 THE Student Experience Survey. Loughborough was ranked 4th in the Guardian University League Table 2017 and 7th in The UK Complete University Guide 2017 and was also named University of the Year in the In the What Uni Student Choice Awards 2015.

Loughborough is consistently ranked in the top twenty of UK universities in the Times Higher Education's 'table of tables' and is in the top 10 in England for research intensity. In recognition of its contribution to the sector, Loughborough has been awarded seven Queen's Anniversary Prizes.

Media contact: Melody Uy Email Contact +65 6213 6997

Source: PSB Academy
By Hasmik Mkrtchyan

YEREVAN (Reuters) - Armenian Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamyan tendered his resignation on Thursday saying the country needed fresh policies, after his government struggled with an economic slowdown and protests in the capital earlier this year.

His announcement paved the way for the cabinet to resign and the president to appoint a new prime minister following consultations with parliament.

"We need a new approach, new start. That's why I've decided to resign and let the president form a new government," Abrahamyan said.

Artak Zakaryan, a deputy from the ruling Republican Party, told reporters Armenian President Serzh Sarksyan has accepted Abrahamyan's resignation.

The party said 53-year-old technocrat Karen Karapetyan, the former head of national gas distributing company ArmRosGazprom and later Yerevan mayor, has been nominated as his replacement.

After leaving the post of mayor, he moved to Moscow, to be appointed as the first vice-president of Gazprombank. He is currently deputy CEO of Russian gas producer Gazprom's GAZP.MM Mezhregiongaz unit.

Experts say the new government is likely to be temporary and the final configuration will emerge only after 2017 parliamentary election and the end of Sarksyan's second term in 2018, when the full transition from the semi-presidential form of government to a parliamentary republic will be completed.

A former parliamentary speaker and an economist by training, Abrahamyan was appointed prime minister two years ago. In 2015 Armenia's economy started to deteriorate - economic growth slowed to 3 percent in 2015 from 3.5 percent in 2014 and below the government's growth forecast of 4.1 percent. The government expects 2.2 percent economic growth in 2016.

Armenia, a country of 3.2 million people, depends heavily on aid and investment from former Soviet overlord Russia, whose economic downturn has hit Armenian exports and much-needed remittances from Armenians working there.

The government has also faced political challenges, including a flare-up of violence in Azerbaijan's breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region in April between Armenian-backed separatists and Azeri forces.

Two months later a group of 30 armed men seized the police station and took hostages in the Armenian capital Yerevan. Two police officers were killed during a two-week stand-off, before gunmen surrendered to the authorities.

The incident led to mass protests in the capital, when people took to the streets to secure the release of a jailed opposition politician and demand the resignation of the government and the president.

Shortly after that Sarksyan said radical reforms in political and social life were needed. He said it was necessary to form "a government of national accord" to provide a broader distribution and division of political responsibility.

(Writing by Margarita Antidze; Editing by Dominic Evans)
By Arno Schuetze and Andreas Kroner

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Deutsche Bank is nearing a settlement with U.S. authorities on past misspelling of mortgage-backed securities, two people close to the matter said.

The case is of many over the past decade which have tarnished the reputation of the banking sector and cost banks billions in fines.

While the price for the Deutsche settlement has not yet been decided, the payment "will not overburden" the bank, one of the people said.

German monthly manager magazine earlier reported that Deutsche Bank is expected to receive a demand for more than $2.4 billion from U.S. authorities in settlement of an investigation into past misspelling of mortgage-backed securities.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) is expected to send Deutsche Bank a statement of facts stretching to about 100 pages early next week, specifying how much Deutsche will be asked to pay to settle the case, the magazine said.

Deutsche Bank declined to comment.

Its shares had risen 5.2 percent by 1121 GMT in a flat German market, with traders citing relief that Deutsche Bank could be close to concluding the long-running investigation.

"A $2.4 billion U.S. mortgages settlement would be clearly below the 3 billion euros ($3.4 billion) that I expected, so this is clearly positive news," said Enrico Racioppi from brokerage Hammer Partners.

Deutsche Bank's shares are still down 37 percent since the start of year, reflecting investor doubts about its ability to turn itself around.

Deutsche was once one of Europe's most successful players on Wall Street. Like many of its peers, it has since has faced a slew of lawsuits that often trace back to the boom years before the crash. Its litigation bill since 2012 has already hit more than 12 billion euros.

Claims filed by individuals, companies and regulators against Deutsche, outlined in the bank's 2015 annual report, relate to misspelling of subprime loans and manipulation of foreign exchange rates or gold and silver prices. Other law suits are for the rigging of borrowing benchmarks Libor and Euribor, used to set the price of mortgages and derivatives.

In July Chief Executive John Cryan said he hoped to close the four largest remaining litigation cases this year.

These are the mortgages and FX cases, an investigation into suspicious equities trades in Russia and allegations of money laundering.

Rival Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) agreed in April to pay $5.06 billion to settle claims that it misled mortgage bond investors during the financial crisis.

That settlement included a $2.39 billion civil penalty, $1.8 billion in other relief, including funds for homeowners whose mortgages exceed the value of their property, and an $875 million payment to resolve claims by cooperative and home loan banks among others.

Deutsche Bank's settlement will comprise a different list of recipients, a source close to the matter said, adding that the lender had already settled some claims three years ago.

In late 2013 Deutsche Bank agreed to pay $1.9 billion to settle claims that it defrauded U.S. government-controlled Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, America's biggest providers of housing finance, into buying $14.2 billion in mortgage-backed securities before the 2008 financial crisis.

Manager magazine said the DoJ's demands are for Deutsche to pay more than the $2.39 billion that Goldman paid for violations of the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act, but the final sum is still subject to negotiations.

(Additional reporting by Hakan Ersen; Editing by David Goodman/Ruth Pitchford)
By Gerauds Wilfried Obangome

LIBREVILLE (Reuters) - Gabon's opposition leader lodged a constitutional court challenge on Thursday against a presidential election he narrowly lost, hoping to overturn a result whose validity has been questioned at home and abroad.

Former foreign minister Jean Ping lost the Aug. 27 election to President Ali Bongo by fewer than 6,000 votes, an outcome that sparked days of riots in which at least six people were killed.

Ping's spokesman said in a statement he would seek a recount in the province of Haut-Ogooue, a stronghold of the Bongo family, who have ruled the central African oil-producing nation of 1.8 million for nearly half a century.

The poll and its aftermath have shone a rare and unwelcome international spotlight on Gabon, a former French colony where petrodollars, invested by foreign firms including Total and Royal Dutch Shell , have mostly benefited the elite.

France, which still has a military base the country, reiterated calls for a recount, a foreign ministry spokesman saying a "transparent, impartial examination of the results" was needed to resolve the political crisis.

Bongo has said only the court can consider that request, while Foreign Minister Emmanuel Issoze Ngondet said an African Union (AU) mediation mission, due to arrive in the now becalmed capital Libreville on Friday, had been postponed until further notice.

The mission's head, Chad's President Idriss Deby - who took power in 1990 and is one of Africa's longest serving rulers - was "tired" after attending a summit in China, the minister said.

Opposition parties in Africa frequently dispute elections citing fraud and, while it is unusual for foreign governments to press for further scrutiny after an election has been declared, results are rarely overturned.

Ping has also said he says he has little faith in the court, his only legal avenue for redress and which he says is tied to the government.

ANOMALIES

Criticism of the poll has focused on Haut-Ogooue, where results showed 95.46 percent of voters backed Bongo on a turnout of 99.9 percent, more than double the participation rate of other regions.

The president, who has in turn accused the opposition of cheating, was re-elected after coming to power in 2009 on the death of his father, Omar Bongo, who had ruled for 42 years.

Ping says the Haut-Ogooue numbers were inflated to give Bongo victory, and the European Union has also reported anomalies.

Sarah Crozier, EU election monitor spokesman, said on Thursday the official turnout for Haut-Ogooue indicated just 47 abstentions out of more than 71,000 registered voters.

Election uncertainty may complicate Gabon's adjustment to lower oil prices and that could have implications for the country's credit profile, Fitch Ratings agency said on Thursday.

Gabon produces 200,000 barrels of oil per day.

Critics of Bongo say he has not done enough to redistribute the wealth of that production beyond a small elite.

Bongo has accused the opposition of cheating in its turn and said on Wednesday he would ask the constitutional court to investigate irregularities in Ping's stronghold and elsewhere.

Ping, a former African Union Commission chairman, was an ally of Omar Bongo but fell out with his son and resigned from the ruling party in 2014.

(Writing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg; editing by John Stonestreet)
Republicans are clamoring for the release of documents they say would boost their claim that U.S. Senate candidate Russ Feingold broke the law by consulting fellow Democrats about a U.S. Senate bid last year while working for the U.S. State Department.

This week they assailed the State Department, as first reported by Politico, for saying it likely wont respond before Election Day to records requests for Feingolds correspondences while he worked for the department. The records requests were made in February 2015.

The Republican Party of Wisconsin issued a statement calling on Feingold to release the documents before the election.

If Senator Feingold has nothing to hide, then it should not be an issue, said Mike Duffey, the partys executive director.

Feingolds campaign is scoffing at the timing and circumstances surrounding the GOP claims. Its two months until Election Day, and Feingold consistently has led his opponent, Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, in polls.

Feingold spokesman Michael Tyler said Feingold followed the rules in his decision-making process before launching a campaign.

Sen. Johnson and his allies are so desperate to keep him in Washington that theyve resorted to a classic Washington insider stunt thats completely without merit, Tyler said.

After Feingold left the U.S. Senate, he served under Secretary of State John Kerry from June 2013 to March 2015 as special envoy to the Great Lakes Region of Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo. In that diplomatic role, Feingold worked to halt bloodshed and improve the reliability of elections in Congo, Rwanda and other nations in the troubled region.

Less than three months after stepping down at State, Feingold announced his U.S. Senate candidacy.

Republicans say he was actively planning his Senate run while still working for the State Department. They say his actions violated the federal Hatch Act, which restricts the ability of federal workers in the executive branch to engage in political activity  including being a candidate for partisan office.

The Wisconsin GOP last week filed a complaint with the federal Office of Special Counsel, which enforces Hatch Act violations. It alleges Feingold violated the act by speaking to Democratic politicians about a potential 2016 Senate campaign before leaving his State Department post.

The complaint cites media reports of conversations about a Senate run that Feingold reportedly had with Sen. John Tester, D-Mont., the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee chairman, U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Madison, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Black Earth, and others.

A 2009 advisory opinion from the Office of Special Counsel includes meeting with individuals to plan the logistics and strategy of a campaign on a list of actions it says would violate the Hatch Act.

But a statement provided by the Feingold campaign by its attorney, Marc Elias, said the Hatch Act does not restrict private conversations between employees and their family, friends, and colleagues.

It appears unlikely there will be an official verdict on the merits of the complaint.

The Office of Special Counsel does not investigate allegations relating to former federal executive branch employees  which Feingold now is  because it no longer has jurisdiction, said its spokesman, Nick Schwellenbach.
(Reuters) - Budget airline Southwest Airlines Co (NYSE: LUV) said it reached a tentative agreement with a union that represents the company's flight attendants.

The airline has not released any date for the ratification vote by the attendants, who rejected in July 2015 a tentative contract that would have raised wages but involved changes in work rules that many thought were burdensome.

The airline reached a tentative agreement with its pilot union last month.

(Reporting by Rachit Vats in Bengaluru; Editing by Don Sebastian)
By Bate Felix

PARIS (Reuters) - French oil and gas company Total will increase its exposure to U.S. shale gas by buying 75 percent of Barnett Shale assets from Chesapeake (NYSE: CHK), taking advantage of a far lower price than it paid for its original 25 percent holding.

Total joins other European oil majors including Royal Dutch Shell , BP (NYSE: BP) and Statoil (NYSE: STL) which have increased their presence in U.S. shale oil and gas production in recent years, hoping to mimic smaller, independent companies.

Shale's low costs compared to complex offshore fields and its rapid production cycles has attracted the oil majors, which have all had to slash spending budgets and shelve many large projects during the current downturn.

Total bought a 25 percent stake in Barnett Shale gas fields in north Texas in 2009 for $800 million in cash, plus $1.45 billion toward the fields' development over six years.

Although the French group has cut spending on U.S. shale production following the fall in oil prices over the past two years, it said the Barnett Shale deal was opportunity-driven and made possible by its preemption rights.

Located in north Texas with a net production of approximately 65,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, Barnett shale includes 215,000 developed and undeveloped acres of land, wells, leases, minerals, buildings and other properties.

"With the new conditions created by the exit of Chesapeake and the associated restructuring of the midstream contracts, we believe that we can extract significant value from the substantial, well-located resource base," Jose Ignacio Sanz, head of Total E&P in United States, said in a statement.

Under the terms of the deal, Chesapeake will pay $334 million to Williams, a company that gathers and processes 80 percent of the gas from the Barnett assets, to terminate its gathering agreement, it said.

"Total E&P USA will supplement Chesapeakes payment with $420 million to Williams for a fully restructured, competitive gas gathering agreement," the statement said, adding that Total will also pay $138 million to be released from three other midstream capacity reservation contracts.

(Corrects spelling of Chesapeake in headline)

(Additional reporting by Ron Bousso; Editing by Geert De Clercq and Alexander Smith)
Gold Fields Limited

Reg. No. 1968/004880/06)

Incorporated in the Republic of South Africa)

Share Code: GFI

ISIN Code: ZAE000018123

DEALING IN SECURITIES BY A DIRECTOR OF MAJOR SUBSIDIARIES



In compliance with paragraphs 3.63 - 3.74 of the Listings

Requirements of JSE Limited, shareholders are advised that Gold

Fields Limited has awarded on 25 August 2016 (the Award Date),

Award effective 1 March 2016, Conditional Performance Shares to

directors of major subsidiaries of Gold Fields in terms of the

Gold Fields Limited 2012 Share Plan as set out below. The award

was accepted on 6 September 2016.



Performance Shares (PS) are conditionally awarded, based on a share

price of R62.958 being the 3 day VWAP of 18, 19, 20 May 2016. The

number of PS which may settle to a participant on vesting date i.e.

three years from effective date of the award, will be determined by

the company achieving pre-determined performance conditions as

follows:

Relative TSR - measured against the performance of ten other major

gold mining companies based on the Gold Fields share price compared

to the basket of respective US dollar share prices of the peer

group,

Absolute TSR - Gold Fields share price measured at the start and the

end of the performance period.

Free Cash Flow Margin  achievement of pre-determined FCFM target.

The number of shares to be settled will range from 0% to 200% of the

initial conditional award.

Name

Cornelius Willem Du Toit

Position

Director of Major Subsidiaries

Gold Fields Australia (Pty)Ltd,

GSM Holding Company Ltd, Darlot

Holding Company (Pty) Ltd

No of PS awarded and accepted

47,484

Class of underlying security to

which rights attach

Ordinary shares

Nature of transaction

Off market acceptance of

Performance Shares awarded

Vesting Period

Performance Shares vest on

third anniversary of effective

Award date

Nature of interest

Direct and Beneficial

In accordance with section 3.66 of the Listings Requirements, the

necessary clearance was obtained to Award the abovementioned

Performance Shares.
UNITED STATES SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION Washington, D.C. 20549 FORM 8-K CURRENT REPORT Pursuant to Section 13 or 15(d) of The Securities Exchange Act of 1934 Date of Report (Date of earliest event reported): September 6, 2016 Consolidated-Tomoka Land Co. (Exact name of registrant as specified in its charter) Florida (State or other jurisdiction of incorporation) 001-11350 (Commission File Number) 59-0483700 (IRS Employer Identification No.) 1530 Cornerstone Boulevard, Suite 100 Daytona Beach, Florida (Address of principal executive offices) 32117 (Zip Code) Registrants telephone number, including area code: (386) 274-2202 Not Applicable (Former name or former address, if changed since last report.) Check the appropriate box below if the Form 8-K filing is intended to simultaneously satisfy the filing obligation of the registrant under any of the following provisions: [ ] Written communications pursuant to Rule 425 under the Securities Act (17 CFR 230.425) [ ] Soliciting material pursuant to Rule 14a-12 under the Exchange Act (17 CFR 240.14a-12) [ ] Pre-commencement communications pursuant to Rule 14d-2(b) under the Exchange Act (17 CFR 240.14d-2(b)) [ ] Pre-commencement communications pursuant to Rule 13e-4(c) under the Exchange Act (17 CFR 240.13e-4(c))

Item 5.02. Departure of Directors or Certain Officers; Election of Directors; Appointment of Certain Officers; Compensatory Arrangements of Certain Officers. On September 6, 2016 Ms. Laura M. Franklin was appointed to the Board of Directors (the Board) of Consolidated-Tomoka Land Co. (the Company). Subsequent to her appointment the Board named Ms. Franklin to the Audit and the Compensation Committees of the Board. There are and have been no transactions, either since the beginning of the Companys last fiscal year or that are currently proposed, regarding Ms. Franklin that are required to be disclosed pursuant to Item 404(a) of Regulation S-K. Ms. Franklin was with Washington Real Estate Investment Trust (Washington REIT) for twenty-two years until her retirement in 2015. Since 2007, Ms. Franklin had held the position of Executive Vice President, Accounting and Administration and Corporate Secretary at Washington REIT. Prior to joining Washington REIT, Ms. Franklin was with the accounting firm CohnReznick (formerly The Reznick Group). Ms. Franklin is a Certified Public Accountant, is a member of The National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD), and the American Institute of Certified Professional Accountants (AICPA). A copy of the press release announcing this appointment is furnished as an exhibit to this Form 8-K as Exhibit 99.1. Item 9.01. Financial Statements and Exhibits. (d) Exhibits 99.1 Press Release dated September 8, 2016

SIGNATURES Pursuant to the requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the registrant has duly caused this report to be signed on its behalf by the undersigned hereunto duly authorized. Date: September 9, 2016 By: /s/ Mark E. Patten Mark E. Patten Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Consolidated-Tomoka Land Co.

Press Release Contact: Mark E. Patten, Sr. Vice President & Chief Financial Officer [email protected] Phone: (386) 944-5643 Facsimile: (386) 274-1223 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONSOLIDATED TOMOKA APPOINTS LAURA M. FRANKLIN TO BOARD OF DIRECTORS September 8, 2016 - DAYTONA BEACH, FLORIDA - Consolidated-Tomoka Land Co. (NYSE MKT: CTO) (the Company) today announced the appointment of Laura M. Franklin to the Companys Board of Directors (the Board). Ms. Franklin was with Washington Real Estate Investment Trust (Washington REIT) for twenty-two years until her retirement in 2015. Since 2007, Ms. Franklin held the position of Executive Vice President, Accounting and Administration and Corporate Secretary at Washington REIT. Prior to joining Washington REIT, Ms. Franklin was with the accounting firm CohnReznick (formerly The Reznick Group). Ms. Franklin is a Certified Public Accountant, is a member of The National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD), and the American Institute of Certified Professional Accountants (AICPA). Ms. Franklin also served as a director of KEEN USA and KEEN Greater DC, a non-profit organization that provides recreational opportunities for children and young adults with mental and physical disabilities . As stated in the Companys July 2016 earnings release, the Board intends to appoint two additional directors in 2016 placing a priority on candidates who qualify as Audit Committee financial experts under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, and on candidates whose background and experience will complement that of the existing directors and bring additional diversity to the Board. The Board intends to appoint one additional director, in addition to Ms. Franklin, who also satisfies the aforementioned criteria. Jeffry B. Fuqua, Chairman of the Board of the Company stated, We are very pleased to welcome Laura to the Companys Board. Mr. Fuqua continued, Lauras knowledge and experience from over two decades as an executive officer of a public REIT align exceptionally well with the criteria established by the Board for directors. Mr. Fuqua also noted, With Lauras appointment, and the intended appointment of one additional director, the size of our Board will increase temporarily to nine, however the Board intends to only nominate seven directors for election at our 2017 annual meeting of shareholders. About Consolidated-Tomoka Land Co. Consolidated-Tomoka Land Co. is a Florida-based publicly traded real estate company, which owns a portfolio of income investments in diversified markets in the United States including over 1.5 million square feet of income properties, as well as approximately 10,500 acres of land in the Daytona Beach area. Visit our website at www.ctlc.com. We encourage you to review our most recent investor presentation, which has been updated for the results for quarter and six months ended June 30, 2016, available on our website at www.ctlc.com .
UNITED STATES SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION Washington, D.C. 20549 SCHEDULE 13G Under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934

(Amendment No. )* Bitauto Holdings Limited (Name of Issuer) Ordinary Shares, par value US$0.00004 per share (Title of Class of Securities) 091727107 (1) (CUSIP Number) September 2, 2016 (Date of Event Which Requires Filing of this Statement) Check the appropriate box to designate the rule pursuant to which this Schedule is filed: o Rule 13d-1(b) x Rule 13d-1(c) o Rule 13d-1(d) *The remainder of this cover page shall be filled out for a reporting persons initial filing on this form with respect to the subject class of securities, and for any subsequent amendment containing information which would alter the disclosures provided in a prior cover page. The information required in the remainder of this cover page shall not be deemed to be filed for the purpose of Section 18 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (Act) or otherwise subject to the liabilities of that section of the Act but shall be subject to all other provisions of the Act (however, see the Notes). (1) This CUSIP number applies to the Issuers American Depositary Shares, each representing one Ordinary Share.

SCHEDULE 13G CUSIP No. 091727107 1 Names of Reporting Persons

PAG HOLDINGS LIMITED 2 Check the Appropriate Box if a Member of a Group (See Instructions) (a) o (b) o 3 SEC Use Only 4 Citizenship or Place of Organization

Cayman Islands Number of

Shares

Beneficially

Owned by

Each

Reporting

Person With: 5 Sole Voting Power

6,337,133 6 Shared Voting Power

0 7 Sole Dispositive Power

6,337,133 8 Shared Dispositive Power

0 9 Aggregate Amount Beneficially Owned by Each Reporting Person

6,337,133 10 Check if the Aggregate Amount in Row (9) Excludes Certain Shares (See Instructions) o [ ] 11 Percent of Class Represented by Amount in Row (9)

8.2%* 12 Type of Reporting Person (See Instructions)

CO * The percentages used in this Schedule 13G are calculated based on a total of 70,726,025 Ordinary Shares of the Issuer issued and outstanding as of June 30, 2016, as reported in Exhibit-99.1 to the Issuers Form 6-K filed on August 10, 2016. Beneficial ownership information is presented as of September 2, 2016. 2

1 Names of Reporting Persons

PACIFIC ALLIANCE GROUP LIMITED 2 Check the Appropriate Box if a Member of a Group (See Instructions) (a) o (b) o 3 SEC Use Only 4 Citizenship or Place of Organization

Cayman Islands Number of

Shares

Beneficially

Owned by

Each

Reporting

Person With: 5 Sole Voting Power

6,337,133 6 Shared Voting Power

0 7 Sole Dispositive Power

6,337,133 8 Shared Dispositive Power

0 9 Aggregate Amount Beneficially Owned by Each Reporting Person

6,337,133 10 Check if the Aggregate Amount in Row (9) Excludes Certain Shares (See Instructions) o [ ] 11 Percent of Class Represented by Amount in Row (9)

8.2%* 12 Type of Reporting Person (See Instructions)

CO * The percentages used in this Schedule 13G are calculated based on a total of 70,726,025 Ordinary Shares of the Issuer issued and outstanding as of June 30, 2016, as reported in Exhibit-99.1 to the Issuers Form 6-K filed on August 10, 2016. Beneficial ownership information is presented as of September 2, 2016. 3

1 Names of Reporting Persons

PACIFIC ALLIANCE INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT LIMITED 2 Check the Appropriate Box if a Member of a Group (See Instructions) (a) o (b) o 3 SEC Use Only 4 Citizenship or Place of Organization

Cayman Islands Number of

Shares

Beneficially

Owned by

Each

Reporting

Person With: 5 Sole Voting Power

5,280,945 6 Shared Voting Power

0 7 Sole Dispositive Power

5,280,945 8 Shared Dispositive Power

0 9 Aggregate Amount Beneficially Owned by Each Reporting Person

5,280,945 10 Check if the Aggregate Amount in Row (9) Excludes Certain Shares (See Instructions) o [ ] 11 Percent of Class Represented by Amount in Row (9)

6.9%* 12 Type of Reporting Person (See Instructions)

CO * The percentages used in this Schedule 13G are calculated based on a total of 70,726,025 Ordinary Shares of the Issuer issued and outstanding as of June 30, 2016, as reported in Exhibit-99.1 to the Issuers Form 6-K filed on August 10, 2016. Beneficial ownership information is presented as of September 2, 2016. 4

1 Names of Reporting Persons

PACIFIC ALLIANCE GROUP ASSET MANAGEMENT LIMITED 2 Check the Appropriate Box if a Member of a Group (See Instructions) (a) o (b) o 3 SEC Use Only 4 Citizenship or Place of Organization

Cayman Islands Number of

Shares

Beneficially

Owned by

Each

Reporting

Person With: 5 Sole Voting Power

5,280,945 6 Shared Voting Power

0 7 Sole Dispositive Power

5,280,945 8 Shared Dispositive Power

0 9 Aggregate Amount Beneficially Owned by Each Reporting Person

5,280,945 10 Check if the Aggregate Amount in Row (9) Excludes Certain Shares (See Instructions) o [ ] 11 Percent of Class Represented by Amount in Row (9)

6.9%* 12 Type of Reporting Person (See Instructions)

CO * The percentages used in this Schedule 13G are calculated based on a total of 70,726,025 Ordinary Shares of the Issuer issued and outstanding as of June 30, 2016, as reported in Exhibit-99.1 to the Issuers Form 6-K filed on August 10, 2016. Beneficial ownership information is presented as of September 2, 2016. 5

1 Names of Reporting Persons

PACIFIC ALLIANCE ASIA OPPORTUNITY FUND L.P. 2 Check the Appropriate Box if a Member of a Group (See Instructions) (a) o (b) o 3 SEC Use Only 4 Citizenship or Place of Organization

Cayman Islands Number of

Shares

Beneficially

Owned by

Each

Reporting

Person With: 5 Sole Voting Power

5,280,945 6 Shared Voting Power

0 7 Sole Dispositive Power

5,280,945 8 Shared Dispositive Power

0 9 Aggregate Amount Beneficially Owned by Each Reporting Person

5,280,945 10 Check if the Aggregate Amount in Row (9) Excludes Certain Shares (See Instructions) o [ ] 11 Percent of Class Represented by Amount in Row (9)

6.9%* 12 Type of Reporting Person (See Instructions)

PN * The percentages used in this Schedule 13G are calculated based on a total of 70,726,025 Ordinary Shares of the Issuer issued and outstanding as of June 30, 2016, as reported in Exhibit-99.1 to the Issuers Form 6-K filed on August 10, 2016. Beneficial ownership information is presented as of September 2, 2016. 6

Item 1. (a) Name of Issuer:

Bitauto Holdings Limited (b) Address of Issuers Principal Executive Offices:

New Century Hotel Office Tower, 6/F No. 6 South Capital Stadium Road Beijing, 100044 The Peoples Republic of China Item 2. (a) Name of Person Filing:

This statement is filed by the entities listed below, all of whom together are referred to herein as the Reporting Persons: (i) PAG Holdings Limited (PAG Holdings), a Cayman Islands company; (ii) Pacific Alliance Group Limited (PAG Limited), a Cayman Islands company, beneficially held as to 99.2% by PAG Holdings; (iii) Pacific Alliance Investment Management Limited (Pacific Alliance Investment Management), a Cayman Islands company, beneficially held as to 90.0% by PAG Limited; (iv) Pacific Alliance Group Asset Management Limited (PAG Asset Management), a Cayman Islands company, beneficially held as to 100.0% by Pacific Alliance Investment Management; and (v) Pacific Alliance Asia Opportunity Fund L.P. (Pacific Alliance Asia Opportunity), a Cayman Islands limited partnership, of which PAG Asset Management is the general partner. (b) Address of Principal Business Office or, if none, Residence:



(i) PAG Holdings The address of the principal business office of PAG Holdings is located at: PO Box 472, 2 nd Floor, Harbour Place, 103 South Church Street, George Town, Grand Cayman KY1-1106, Cayman Islands (ii) PAG Limited The address of the principal business office of PAG Limited is located at: PO Box 472, 2 nd Floor, Harbour Place, 103 South Church Street, George Town, Grand Cayman KY1-1106, Cayman Islands, c/o 15/F., AIA Central, 1 Connaught Road Central, Hong Kong (iii) Pacific Alliance Investment Management The address of the principal business office of Pacific Alliance Investment Management is located at: PO Box 472, 2 nd Floor, Harbour Place, 103 South Church Street, George Town, Grand Cayman KY1-1106, Cayman Islands 7

(iv) PAG Asset Management The address of the principal business office of PAG Asset Management is located at: PO Box 472, 2 nd Floor, Harbour Place, 103 South Church Street, George Town, Grand Cayman KY1-1106, Cayman Islands (v) Pacific Alliance Asia Opportunity The address of the principal business office of Pacific Alliance Asia Opportunity is located at: PO Box 472, 2 nd Floor, Harbour Place, 103 South Church Street, George Town, Grand Cayman KY1-1106, Cayman Islands (c) Citizenship:

The citizenship of each of PAG Holdings, PAG Limited, Pacific Alliance Investment Management, PAG Asset Management and Pacific Alliance Asia Opportunity is the Cayman Islands. (d) Title and Class of Securities:

Ordinary shares, par value US$0.00004 per share (Ordinary Shares) (e) CUSIP No.:

091727107 Item 3. If this statement is filed pursuant to 240.13d-1(b), or 240.13d-2(b) or (c), check whether the person filing is a: (a) o Broker or dealer registered under section 15 of the Act (15 U.S.C. 78o); (b) o Bank as defined in section 3(a)(6) of the Act (15 U.S.C. 78c); (c) o Insurance company as defined in section 3(a)(19) of the Act (15 U.S.C. 78c); (d) o Investment company registered under section 8 of the Investment Company Act of 1940 (15 U.S.C. 80a-8); (e) o An investment adviser in accordance with Rule 13d-1(b)(1)(ii)(E); (f) o An employee benefit plan or endowment fund in accordance with Rule 13d-1(b)(1)(ii)(F); (g) o A parent holding company or control person in accordance with Rule 13d-1(b)(1)(ii)(G); (h) o A savings association as defined in Section 3(b) of the Federal Deposit Insurance Act (12 U.S.C. 1813); (i) o A church plan that is excluded from the definition of an investment company under section 3(c)(14) of the Investment Company Act (15 U.S.C. 80a-3); (j) o A non-U.S. institution in accordance with Rule 240.13d-1(b)(1)(ii)(J); (k) o Group, in accordance with Rule 240.13d-1(b)(1)(ii)(K). If filing as a non-U.S. institution in accordance with Rule 240.13d-1(b)(1)(ii)(J), please specify the type of institution:____________________________ 8

Item 4. Ownership Four entities, namely, (i) PAG Asia Alpha LP, (ii) PAG-P Asia Fund L.P., (iii) PA Grand Opportunity Limited, and (iv) Pacific Alliance Asia Opportunity (the holders) purchased and hold convertible notes issued by Bitauto Holdings Limited (the Issuer) in an aggregate principal amount of US$150 million (the Convertible Notes). At any time after November 1, 2016, the holders may elect to convert the Convertible Notes into Ordinary Shares or ADSs of the Issuer at an initial conversion price of $23.67 per ADS, representing an initial conversion rate of 4,224.7671 ADSs per US$100,000 principal amount of the Convertible Notes. PAG Asia Alpha LP PAG Asia Alpha LP holds US$10 million principal amount of the Convertible Notes and therefore may be deemed to beneficially own 422,475, or 0.6%, of the Issuers Ordinary Shares. PAG Asia Alpha LP is a Cayman Islands limited partnership of which PAG Asia Alpha GP Limited is the general partner. As such, PAG Asia Alpha GP Limited has the power to make all decisions with respect to PAG Asia Alpha LP. PAG Asia Alpha GP Limited is beneficially owned as to 100.0% by PAG Asia Alpha Limited, which is beneficially owned as to 100.0% by PAG Limited. PAG-P Asia Fund L.P. PAG-P Asia Fund L.P. holds US$15 million principal amount of the Convertible Notes and therefore may be deemed to beneficially own 633,713, or 0.9%, of the Issuers Ordinary Shares. PAG-P Asia Fund L.P. is a Cayman Islands limited partnership of which PAG-P Management Limited is the general partner. As such, PAG-P Management Limited has the power to make all decisions with respect to PAG-P Asia Fund L.P. PAG-P Management Limited is beneficially owned as to 100.0% by PAG AR Opportunistic Strategies Limited, which is beneficially owned as to 100.0% by PAG Limited. PA Grand Opportunity Limited; Pacific Alliance Asia Opportunity; PAG Asset Management; Pacific Alliance Investment Management PA Grand Opportunity Limited holds US$40 million principal amount of the Convertible Notes and therefore may be deemed to beneficially own 1,689,902, or 2.3%, of the Issuers Ordinary Shares. Pacific Alliance Asia Opportunity holds US$85 million principal amount of the Convertible Notes, and beneficially owns 100.0% of PA Grand Opportunity Limited. Pacific Alliance Asia Opportunity therefore may be deemed to beneficially own in aggregate 5,280,945, or 6.9%, of the Issuers Ordinary Shares. (2) PA Grand Opportunity Limited is a Cayman Islands company which is beneficially owned as to 100.0% by Pacific Alliance Asia Opportunity. Pacific Alliance Asia Opportunity is a Cayman Islands limited partnership of which PAG Asset Management is the general partner. As such, PAG Asset Management has the power to make all decisions with respect to Pacific Alliance Asia Opportunity. PAG Asset Management is beneficially owned as to 100.0% by Pacific Alliance Investment Management. Each of PAG Asset Management and Pacific Alliance Investment Management may thereby be deemed to beneficially own in aggregate 5,280,945, or 6.9%, of the Issuers Ordinary Shares. PAG Limited; PAG Holdings Pacific Alliance Investment Management is beneficially owned as to 90.0% by PAG Limited, which is beneficially owned as to 99.2% by PAG Holdings. (2) Includes the 1,689,902 Ordinary Shares of the Issuer beneficially owned by PA Grand Opportunity Limited. 9

Each of PAG Limited and PAG Holdings may thereby be deemed to beneficially own in aggregate 6,337,133, or 8.2%, of the Issuers Ordinary Shares. Voting and Dispositive Power Each of Pacific Alliance Asia Opportunity, PAG Asset Management, Pacific Alliance Investment Management, PAG Limited and PAG Holdings may thereby be deemed to have sole voting and dispositive power over more than five percent of the Issuers Ordinary Shares. Calculations The percentages used in this Schedule 13G are calculated based on a total of 70,726,025 Ordinary Shares of the Issuer issued and outstanding as of June 30, 2016, as reported in Exhibit-99.1 to the Issuers Form 6-K filed on August 10, 2016. Beneficial ownership information is presented as of September 2, 2016. A. PAG Holdings (a) Amount beneficially owned: 6,337,133 (b) Percent of class: 8.2% (c) Number of shares as to which the person has: (i) Sole power to vote or to direct the vote: 6,337,133 (ii) Shared power to vote or to direct the vote: 0 (iii) Sole power to dispose or to direct the disposition of: 6,337,133 (iv) Shared power to dispose or to direct the disposition of: 0 B. PAG Limited (a) Amount beneficially owned: 6,337,133 (b) Percent of class: 8.2% (c) Number of shares as to which the person has: (i) Sole power to vote or to direct the vote: 6,337,133 (ii) Shared power to vote or to direct the vote: 0 (iii) Sole power to dispose or to direct the disposition of: 6,337,133 (iv) Shared power to dispose or to direct the disposition of: 0 C. Pacific Alliance Investment Management (a) Amount beneficially owned: 5,280,945 (b) Percent of class: 6.9% (c) Number of shares as to which the person has: 10

(i) Sole power to vote or to direct the vote: 5,280,945 (ii) Shared power to vote or to direct the vote: 0 (iii) Sole power to dispose or to direct the disposition of: 5,280,945 (iv) Shared power to dispose or to direct the disposition of: 0 D. PAG Asset Management (a) Amount beneficially owned: 5,280,945 (b) Percent of class: 6.9% (c) Number of shares as to which the person has: (i) Sole power to vote or to direct the vote: 5,280,945 (ii) Shared power to vote or to direct the vote: 0 (iii) Sole power to dispose or to direct the disposition of: 5,280,945 (iv) Shared power to dispose or to direct the disposition of: 0 E. Pacific Alliance Asia Opportunity (a) Amount beneficially owned: 5,280,945 (b) Percent of class: 6.9% (c) Number of shares as to which the person has: (i) Sole power to vote or to direct the vote: 5,280,945 (ii) Shared power to vote or to direct the vote: 0 (iii) Sole power to dispose or to direct the disposition of: 5,280,945 (iv) Shared power to dispose or to direct the disposition of: 0 Item 5. Ownership of Five Percent or Less of a Class. If this statement is being filed to report the fact that as of the date hereof the reporting person has ceased to be the beneficial owner of more than 5 percent of the class of securities, check the following o . Item 6. Ownership of More than Five Percent on Behalf of Another Person Not applicable. 11

Item 7. Identification and Classification of the Subsidiary Which Acquired the Security Being Reported on By the Parent Holding Company or Control Person. See Exhibit 99.2 filed together with this Schedule 13G. Item 8. Identification and Classification of Members of the Group. Not applicable. Item 9. Notice of Dissolution of Group. Not applicable. 12

Item 10. Certifications. Each of the Reporting Persons hereby make the following certification: By signing below each Reporting Person certifies that, to the best of its knowledge and belief, the securities referred to above were not acquired and are not held for the purpose of or with the effect of changing or influencing the control of the issuer of the securities and were not acquired and are not held in connection with or as a participant in any transaction having that purpose or effect, other than activities solely in connection with a nomination under  240.14a-11. 13

SIGNATURES After reasonable inquiry and to the best of our knowledge and belief, the undersigned certify that the information set forth in this statement is true, complete and correct. Dated: September 9, 2016 PAG HOLDINGS LIMITED By: /s/ Jon Lewis Name: Jon Lewis Title: Director PACIFIC ALLIANCE GROUP LIMITED By: /s/ Jon Lewis Name: Jon Lewis Title: Director PACIFIC ALLIANCE INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT LIMITED By: /s/ Jon Lewis Name: Jon Lewis Title: Director PACIFIC ALLIANCE GROUP ASSET MANAGEMENT LIMITED By: /s/ Jon Lewis Name: Jon Lewis Title: Director PACIFIC ALLIANCE ASIA OPPORTUNITY FUND L.P. By: /s/ Jon Lewis Name: Jon Lewis Title: Director of Pacific Alliance Group Asset Management Limited, acting as general partner of Pacific Alliance Asia Opportunity Fund L.P. 14

EXHIBIT INDEX Exhibit No. Description 99.1 Joint Filing Agreement 99.2 Identification of Relevant Subsidiaries 15

EXHIBIT 99.1 Joint Filing Agreement In accordance with Rule 13d-1(k) promulgated under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, the undersigned hereby agree to the joint filing with all other Reporting Persons (as such term is defined in the Schedule 13G referred to below) on behalf of each of them of a statement on Schedule 13G (including amendments thereto) with respect to the Ordinary Shares, par value US$0.00004 per share, of Bitauto Holdings Limited, a Cayman Islands company, and that this Agreement may be included as an Exhibit to such joint filing. This Agreement may be executed in any number of counterparts, all of which taken together shall constitute one and the same instrument. [Remainder of this page has been left intentionally blank.]

Signature Page IN WITNESS WHEREOF, the undersigned hereby execute this Agreement as of September 9, 2016. PAG HOLDINGS LIMITED By: /s/ Jon Lewis Name: Jon Lewis Title: Director PACIFIC ALLIANCE GROUP LIMITED By: /s/ Jon Lewis Name: Jon Lewis Title: Director PACIFIC ALLIANCE INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT LIMITED By: /s/ Jon Lewis Name: Jon Lewis Title: Director PACIFIC ALLIANCE GROUP ASSET MANAGEMENT LIMITED By: /s/ Jon Lewis Name: Jon Lewis Title: Director PACIFIC ALLIANCE ASIA OPPORTUNITY FUND L.P. By: /s/ Jon Lewis Name: Jon Lewis Title: Director of Pacific Alliance Group Asset Management Limited, acting as general partner of Pacific Alliance Asia Opportunity Fund L.P.
UNITED STATES SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION Washington, D.C. 20549 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SCHEDULE 13G (Rule 13d-102) INFORMATION TO BE INCLUDED IN STATEMENTS FILED PURSUANT TO Section 240.13d-1(b), (c), AND (d) AND AMENDMENTS THERETO FILED PURSUANT TO Section 240.13d-2 Under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (Amendment No. 2) LENDINGCLUB CORPORATION ---------------------------------------------- (Name of Issuer) COMMON STOCK ----------------------------------------------- (Title of Class of Securities) 52603A109 --------------------- (CUSIP Number) August 31, 2016 --------------------- (Date of Event which Requires Filing of this Statement) Check the appropriate box to designate the rule pursuant to which this Schedule is filed: [x] Rule 13d-1(b) [ ] Rule 13d-1(c) [ ] Rule 13d-1(d) Page 1 of 5 Pages ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CUSIP No.: 52603A109 13G Page 2 of 5 Pages ................................................................................. 1. Names of Reporting Persons Sands Capital Management, LLC ................................................................................. 2. Check the Appropriate Box if a Member of a Group (a) [ ] (b) [ ] NOT APPLICABLE ................................................................................. 3. SEC Use Only ................................................................................. 4. Citizenship or Place of Organization Delaware, United States ................................................................................. Number of 5. Sole Voting Power: 17,585,377 Shares Beneficially ................................................................ Owned by Each Reporting 6. Shared Voting Power: -0- Person With ................................................................ 7. Sole Dispositive Power: 25,498,903 ................................................................ 8. Shared Dispositive Power: -0- ................................................................................. 9. Aggregate Amount Beneficially Owned by Each Reporting Person 25,498,903 ................................................................................. 10. Check if the Aggregate Amount in Row (9) Excludes Certain Shares [ ] NOT APPLICABLE ................................................................................. 11. Percent of Class Represented by Amount in Row (9) 6.5% (1) ................................................................................. 12. Type of Reporting Person: IA ______________________________ (1) Based on 391,149,727 shares of common stock outstanding as reported in the Issuer's Form 10-Q as of July 29, 2016. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CUSIP No.: 52603A109 13G Page 3 of 5 Pages Item 1(a) Name of Issuer: LENDINGCLUB CORPORATION Item 1(b) Address of Issuer's Principal Executive Offices: 71 Stevenson Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, CA 94105 Item 2(a) Name of Person Filing: SANDS CAPITAL MANAGEMENT, LLC Item 2(b) Address of Principal Business Office, or if None, Residence: 1000 WILSON BLVD., SUITE 3000, ARLINGTON, VA 22209 Item 2(c) Citizenship: DELAWARE, UNITED STATES Item 2(d) Title of Class of Securities: COMMON STOCK Item 2(e) CUSIP Number: 52603A109 Item 3 If this statement is filed pursuant to Sections 240.13d-1(b) or 240.13d-2(b) or (c), check whether the person filing is a: (a) [ ] Broker or dealer registered under section 15 of the Act (15 U.S.C. 78o); (b) [ ] Bank as defined in section 3(a)(6) of the Act (15 U.S.C. 78c); (c) [ ] Insurance company as defined in section 3(a)(19) of the Act (15 U.S.C. 78c); (d) [ ] Investment company registered under section 8 of the Investment Company Act of 1940 (15 U.S.C 80a-8); (e) [X] An investment adviser in accordance with Section 240.13d-1(b)(1)(ii)(E); (f) [ ] An employee benefit plan or endowment fund in accordance with Section 240.13d-1(b)(1)(ii)(F); (g) [ ] A parent holding company or control person in accordance with Section 240.13d-1(b)(1)(ii)(G); (h) [ ] A savings association as defined in Section 3(b) of the Federal Deposit Insurance Act (12 U.S.C. 1813); (i) [ ] A church plan that is excluded from the definition of an investment company under section 3(c)(14) of the Investment Company Act (15 U.S.C. 80a-3); (j) [ ] A non-U.S. institution in accordance with Section 240.13d-1(b)(1)(ii)(J); (k) [ ] Group, in accordance with Section 240.13d-1(b)(1)(ii)(K). If filing as a non-U.S. institution in accordance with Section 240.13d-1(b)(1)(ii)(J), please specify the type of institution: ____ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CUSIP No.: 52603A109 13G Page 4 of 5 Pages Item 4. Ownership Provide the following information regarding the aggregate number and percentage of the class of securities of the issuer identified in Item 1. (a) Amount beneficially owned: 25,498,903 (b) Percent of class: 6.5% (c) Number of shares as to which the person has: (i) Sole power to vote or to direct the vote: 17,585,377 (ii) Shared power to vote or to direct the vote: None (iii) Sole power to dispose or to direct the disposition of: 25,498,903 (iv) Shared power to dispose or to direct the disposition of: None Item 5. Ownership of Five Percent or Less of a Class. If this statement is being filed to report the fact that as of the date hereof the reporting person has ceased to be the beneficial owner of more than 5 percent of the class of securities, check the following [ ]. Item 6. Ownership of More than Five Percent on Behalf of Another Person Securities reported on this Schedule 13G are beneficially owned by clients of Sands Capital Management, LLC. Sands Capital Management, LLC's clients include pension plans, endowments, foundations, corporations, mutual funds, charities, state and municipal government entities, Taft-Hartley plans, private investment funds, families, and individuals, among other types. The advisory clients of Sands Capital Management, LLC do not individually own more than 5% of the outstanding shares. Item 7. Identification and Classification of the Subsidiary Which Acquired the Security Being Reported on By the Parent Holding Company or Control Person. Not Applicable. Item 8. Identification and Classification of Members of the Group. Not Applicable. Item 9. Notice of Dissolution of Group. Not Applicable. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CUSIP No.: 52603A109 13G Page 5 of 5 Pages Item 10 Certification. By signing below I certify that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, the securities referred to above were acquired and are held in the ordinary course of business and were not acquired and are not held for the purpose of or with the effect of changing or influencing the control of the issuer of the securities and were not acquired and are not held in connection with or as a participant in any transaction having that purpose or effect, other than activities solely in connection with a nomination under Section 240.14a-11. SIGNATURE After reasonable inquiry and to the best of my knowledge and belief, I certify that the information set forth in this statement is true, complete and correct. Sands Capital Management, LLC Date: September 9, 2016 By: /s/ Lisa M. Grozio ---------------------- Name: Lisa M. Grozio Title: Chief Compliance Officer
SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION Washington, D.C. 20549 SCHEDULE 13G Under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (Amendment No: 6) VEEVA SYSTEMS INC -------------------------------------------------------- (Name of Issuer) Class A Common Stock -------------------------------------------------------- (Title of Class of Securities) 922475108 -------------------------------------------------------- (CUSIP Number) August 31, 2016 -------------------------------------------------------- (Date of Event Which Requires Filing of this Statement) Check the appropriate box to designate the rule pursuant to which this Schedule is filed: [X] Rule 13d-1(b) [ ] Rule 13d-1(c) [ ] Rule 13d-1(d) *The remainder of this cover page shall be filled out for a reporting person's initial filing on this form with respect to the subject class of securities, and for any subsequent amendment containing information which would alter the disclosures provided in a prior cover page. The information required in the remainder of this cover page shall not be deemed to be "filed" for the purpose of Section 18 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 ("Act") or otherwise subject to the liabilities of that section of the Act but shall be subject to all other provisions of the Act (however, see the Notes). CUSIP No. 922475108 (1)Names of reporting persons. BlackRock, Inc. (2) Check the appropriate box if a member of a group (a) [ ] (b) [X] (3) SEC use only (4) Citizenship or place of organization Delaware Number of shares beneficially owned by each reporting person with: (5) Sole voting power 4121453 (6) Shared voting power NONE (7) Sole dispositive power 4434115 (8) Shared dispositive power NONE (9) Aggregate amount beneficially owned by each reporting person 4434115 (10) Check if the aggregate amount in Row (9) excludes certain shares (11) Percent of class represented by amount in Row 9 4.6% (12) Type of reporting person HC Item 1. Item 1(a) Name of issuer: ----------------------------------------------------------------------- VEEVA SYSTEMS INC Item 1(b) Address of issuer's principal executive offices: ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 4280 HACIENDA DRIVE Pleasanton CA 94588 Item 2. 2(a) Name of person filing: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- BlackRock, Inc. 2(b) Address or principal business office or, if none, residence: ----------------------------------------------------------------------- BlackRock Inc. 55 East 52nd Street New York, NY 10055 2(c) Citizenship: -------------------------------------------------------------------- See Item 4 of Cover Page 2(d) Title of class of securities: ------------------------------------------------------------------- Class A Common Stock 2(e) CUSIP No.: See Cover Page Item 3. If this statement is filed pursuant to Rules 13d-1(b), or 13d-2(b) or (c), check whether the person filing is a: [ ] Broker or dealer registered under Section 15 of the Act; [ ] Bank as defined in Section 3(a)(6) of the Act; [ ] Insurance company as defined in Section 3(a)(19) of the Act; [ ] Investment company registered under Section 8 of the Investment Company Act of 1940; [ ] An investment adviser in accordance with Rule 13d-1(b)(1)(ii)(E); [ ] An employee benefit plan or endowment fund in accordance with Rule 13d-1(b)(1)(ii)(F); [X] A parent holding company or control person in accordance with Rule 13d-1(b)(1)(ii)(G); [ ] A savings associations as defined in Section 3(b) of the Federal Deposit Insurance Act (12 U.S.C. 1813); [ ] A church plan that is excluded from the definition of an investment company under section 3(c)(14) of the Investment Company Act of 1940; [ ] A non-U.S. institution in accordance with Rule 240.13d-1(b)(1)(ii)(J); [ ] Group, in accordance with Rule 240.13d-1(b)(1)(ii)(K). If filing as a non-U.S. institution in accordance with Rule 240.13d-1(b)(1)(ii)(J), please specify the type of institution: Item 4. Ownership Provide the following information regarding the aggregate number and percentage of the class of securities of the issuer identified in Item 1. Amount beneficially owned: 4434115 Percent of class 4.6% Number of shares as to which such person has: Sole power to vote or to direct the vote 4121453 Shared power to vote or to direct the vote NONE Sole power to dispose or to direct the disposition of 4434115 Shared power to dispose or to direct the disposition of NONE Item 5. Ownership of 5 Percent or Less of a Class. If this statement is being filed to report the fact that as of the date hereof the reporting person has ceased to be the beneficial owner of more than 5 percent of the class of securities, check the following [ X ]. Item 6. Ownership of More than 5 Percent on Behalf of Another Person N/A Item 7. Identification and Classification of the Subsidiary Which Acquired the Security Being Reported on by the Parent Holding Company or Control Person. See Exhibit A Item 8. Identification and Classification of Members of the Group If a group has filed this schedule pursuant to Rule 13d-1(b)(ii)(J), so indicate under Item 3(j) and attach an exhibit stating the identity and Item 3 classification of each member of the group. If a group has filed this schedule pursuant to Rule 13d-1(c) or Rule 13d-1(d), attach an exhibit stating the identity of each member of the group. Item 9. Notice of Dissolution of Group Notice of dissolution of a group may be furnished as an exhibit stating the date of the dissolution and that all further filings with respect to transactions in the security reported on will be filed, if required, by members of the group, in their individual capacity. See Item 5. Item 10. Certifications By signing below I certify that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, the securities referred to above were acquired and are held in the ordinary course of business and were not acquired and are not held for the purpose of or with the effect of changing or influencing the control of the issuer of the securities and were not acquired and are not held in connection with or as a participant in any transaction having that purpose or effect. Signature. After reasonable inquiry and to the best of my knowledge and belief, I certify that the information set forth in this statement is true, complete and correct. Dated: September 9, 2016 BlackRock, Inc. Signature: Spencer Fleming ------------------------------------------- Name/Title Attorney-In-Fact The original statement shall be signed by each person on whose behalf the statement is filed or his authorized representative. If the statement is signed on behalf of a person by his authorized representative other than an executive officer or general partner of the filing person, evidence of the representative's authority to sign on behalf of such person shall be filed with the statement, provided, however, that a power of attorney for this purpose which is already on file with the Commission may be incorporated by reference. The name and any title of each person who signs the statement shall be typed or printed beneath his signature. Attention: Intentional misstatements or omissions of fact constitute Federal criminal violations (see 18 U.S.C. 1001). Exhibit A Subsidiary BlackRock (Luxembourg) S.A. BlackRock (Netherlands) B.V. BlackRock Advisors (UK) Limited BlackRock Advisors, LLC BlackRock Asset Management Canada Limited BlackRock Asset Management Ireland Limited BlackRock Asset Management Schweiz AG BlackRock Financial Management, Inc. BlackRock Fund Advisors BlackRock Institutional Trust Company, N.A. BlackRock International Limited BlackRock Investment Management (Australia) Limited BlackRock Investment Management (UK) Ltd BlackRock Investment Management, LLC *Entity beneficially owns 5% or greater of the outstanding shares of the security class being reported on this Schedule 13G. Exhibit B POWER OF ATTORNEY The undersigned, BLACKROCK, INC., a corporation duly organized under the laws of the State of Delaware, United States (the "Company"), does hereby make, constitute and appoint each of Matthew Mallow, Chris Meade, Howard Surloff, Dan Waltcher, Georgina Fogo, Charles Park, Enda McMahon, Carsten Otto, Con Tzatzakis, Karen Clark, Andrew Crain, Herm Howerton, David Maryles, Daniel Ronnen, John Stelley, John Ardley, Maureen Gleeson and Spencer Fleming acting severally, as its true and lawful attorneys-in-fact, for the purpose of, from time to time, executing in its name and on its behalf, whether the Company is acting individually or as representative of others, any and all documents, certificates, instruments, statements, other filings and amendments to the foregoing (collectively, "documents") determined by such person to be necessary or appropriate to comply with ownership or control-person reporting requirements imposed by any United States or non-United States governmental or regulatory authority, Including without limitation Forms 3, 4, 5, 13D, 13F, 13G and 13H and any amendments to any of the Foregoing as may be required to be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and delivering, furnishing or filing any such documents with the appropriate governmental, regulatory authority or other person, and giving and granting to each such attorney-in-fact power and authority to act in the premises as fully and to all intents and purposes as the Company might or could do if personally present by one of its authorized signatories, hereby ratifying and confirming all that said attorney-in-fact shall lawfully do or cause to be done by virtue hereof. Any such determination by an attorney-in-fact named herein shall be conclusively evidenced by such person's execution, delivery, furnishing or filing of the applicable document. This power of attorney shall expressly revoke the power of attorney dated 1st day of October, 2015 in respect of the subject matter hereof, shall be valid from the date hereof and shall remain in full force and effect until either revoked in writing by the Company, or, in respect of any attorney-in-fact named herein, until such person ceases to be an employee of the Company or one of its affiliates. IN WITNESS WHEREOF, the undersigned has caused this power of attorney to be executed as of this 8th day of December, 2015. BLACKROCK, INC. By:_ /s/ Chris Jones Name: Chris Jones Title: Chief Investment Officer
Turkey has reportedly suspended more than 11,000 teachers over suspected links to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group following a similar crackdown on education staff in the wake of an abortive coup.

A Turkish official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Thursday that the teachers were temporarily suspended  placed on paid leave  pending formal investigation.

The state-run Anadolu news agency said the Education Ministry suspected that an estimated 11,500 teachers were involved in activities in support of the separatist terrorist organization and its affiliates.

Also read: Nine killed and 64 wounded in Turkey car bomb attack

The report said the number could rise to 14,000 as a result of a joint investigation by the ministry and the offices of local governors was still continuing.

Turkey has about 850,000 teachers and its new school year begins next week.

This is while the government has already dismissed nearly 70,000 people from their positions in public institutions and the military over suspected links to Fethullah Gulen, a US-based opposition cleric accused by Ankara of orchestrating the failed coup on July 15.

Turkey has launched a military campaign against the PKK in the Kurdish-dominated provinces over the past year.

Read more: Turkish interior minister resigns after attacks, coup attempt

The military says it has killed thousands of PKK militants during the clashes in the southeast, but pro-Kurdish political parties and rights groups say most of those killed have been civilians.

In another development on Thursday, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the removal of civil servants with links to Kurdish militants is a key element of Turkeys massive fight against the PKK.

He told provincial governors in Ankara that steps were being taken to purge public institutions of PKK supporters, adding that Turkey is conducting the largest operation in its history against the militant group.

The Turkish leader also defended an ongoing military intervention into the Syrian territory, which Ankara says is aimed at countering both Syrian Kurdish militants and the Daesh terror group.
WASHINGTON  The president of the United States lands with all the majesty of Air Force One, waiting to exit the front door and stride down the rolling staircase to the red-carpeted tarmac. Except there is no rolling staircase. He is forced to exit  as one China expert put it rather undiplomatically  through the ass of the plane.

This happened Saturday at Hangzhou airport. Yes, in China. If the Chinese didnt invent diplomatic protocol, they surely are its most venerable and experienced practitioners. Theyve been at it for 4,000 years. They are the masters of every tributary gesture, every nuance of hierarchical ritual. In a land so exquisitely sensitive to protocol, rolling staircases dont just disappear at arrival ceremonies. Indeed, not one of the other G-20 world leaders was left stranded on his plane upon arrival.

Did President Xi Jinping directly order airport personnel and diplomatic functionaries to deny Barack Obama a proper welcome? Who knows? But the message, whether intentional or not, wasnt very subtle. The authorities expressed no regret, no remorse and certainly no apology. On the contrary, they scolded the press for even reporting the snub.

No surprise. Chinas ostentatious rudeness was perfectly reflective of the worlds general disdain for President Obama. His high-minded lectures about global norms and demands that others live up to their international obligations are no longer amusing. Theyre irritating.

Foreign leaders have reciprocated by taking this administration down a notch knowing they pay no price. In May 2013, Vladimir Putin reportedly kept the U.S. secretary of state cooling his heels for three hours outside his office before deigning to receive him. Even as Obama was hailing the nuclear deal with Iran as a great breakthrough, the ayatollah vowed no change in his policy, which remained diametrically opposed to U.S. arrogant system.

The mullahs followed by openly conducting illegal ballistic missile tests  calculating, correctly, that Obama would do nothing. And when Iran took prisoner 10 American sailors in the Persian Gulf, made them kneel and broadcast the video, what was the U.S. response? Upon their release, John Kerry publicly thanked Iran for its good conduct.

Why should Xi treat Obama with any greater deference? Beijing illegally expands into the South China Sea, meeting only the most perfunctory pushback from the U.S. Obama told CNN he warned Xi to desist or there will be consequences. Is there a threat less credible?

Putin annexes Crimea, and Obama crows about the isolation he has imposed on Russia. Look around. Moscow has become Grand Central Station for Middle East leaders seeking outside help in their various conflicts. As for Ukraine, both the French president and the German chancellor have hastened to Moscow to plead with Putin to make peace. Some isolation.

Iran regularly harasses our vessels in the Persian Gulf. Russian fighters buzzed a U.S. destroyer in the Baltic Sea. And just Wednesday, a Russian fighter flew within 10 feet of an American military jet. The price they paid? Being admonished that such provocations are unsafe and unprofessional. An OSHA citation is more ominous.

Add to that American acquiescence not just to ransoming hostages held by Iran, but to delivering the loot by unmarked plane filled with stacks of cold (untraceable) cash, like a desert drug deal. Why the stealth? Obviously to conceal the manner of the transaction from Congress and the American public. Some humiliations are so grotesque that even the Obama team cant miss it.

Now the latest. At the G-20, Obama said he spoke to Putin about cyberwarfare, amid revelations that Russian hackers have been interfering in our political campaigns. We are more technologically advanced, both offensively and defensively, in this arena than any of our adversaries, said Obama, but we really dont want another Cold War-style arms race.

Instead, we must all adhere to norms of international behavior.

It makes you want to weep. This KGB thug adhering to norms? He invades Ukraine, annexes Crimea, bombs hospitals in Aleppo  and we expect him to observe cyber-code etiquette? Rather than exploit our technological lead  with countermeasures and deterrent threats  to ensure our own cyber safety?

Were back to 1929 when Secretary of State Henry Stimson shut down a U.S. code-breaking operation after it gave him decoded Japanese telegrams. He famously explained that gentlemen do not read each others mail. Well, comrade, Putin is no gentleman. And hes reading our mail.
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As the presidential campaign moves into its final stretch, about 7 percent of voters (depending on which poll you read) say theyre still undecided between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump  more than enough to swing the election either way.

After all the noise and drama of the last few months, what are these people waiting for?

They dont much like either of the candidates. Theyre struggling to decide which is the lesser of two evils. And theyre not finding it an easy choice.

Thats the lesson that bubbled up from a recent discussion with swing voters in Wisconsin conducted by pollster Peter D. Hart. Hart convened a dozen swing voters, people who have voted for both Democrats and Republicans, in a Milwaukee suburb a few weeks ago. The pollster conducts these focus groups regularly as part of a project for the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

Four of the 12 said they leaned toward Trump. Four said they leaned toward Clinton. Four said they were completely undecided. Almost all said they were still open to persuasion by both candidates.

All said theyd been disappointed by the campaign. They said they wanted to hear about issues, not mudslinging. Asked to describe the contest with a smell, their answers included garbage, manure, skunk  and skunk fart. But when asked what more they wanted to learn about each candidate, their questions were mostly about character: What are they like behind closed doors? Can we trust them with life-or-death decisions?

Both candidates have serious flaws, said Sheri LaValley, a 51-year-old compliance analyst who voted for President Obama.

Hillary with her emails, I just dont trust her. Trump, the way he acts. Every day you turn on the TV, and I just shake my head, she said.

She said she was leaning toward Trump  with a condition: I think he would be an awesome candidate if he could get his personality under control.

Several said they found the prospect of Trump as commander in chief worrisome. Hes just such a wild cannon, said Barbara Kass, 62, a retired airline employee who is completely undecided.

Id like to see Trump 2.0, said David Locher, 34, a supervisor for the Milwaukee rapid transit system, also undecided. If Trump doesnt show something more coherent  I probably could go for Hillary, just for fear of things becoming a mess worldwide.

Asked to describe the Republican nominee as a member of their family, the most popular title was crazy uncle, and, in one case, drunk uncle.

Clinton has a different problem  but one that appears just as serious. Though most of the swing voters gave her high marks for experience and competence, they also described her as chilly, distant, untrustworthy and dishonest.

Shes a smart woman with a lot of experience but  you cant trust her, said Beth Gramling, 50, a payroll analyst.

What did she mean by trust? Integrity, she said. I dont think she has that. And its a shame.

Nevertheless, Gramling said, she was leaning toward Clinton.

It was clear the controversy over Clintons private email system isnt solely a media fixation. Its resonated among ordinary voters, too. Eight of the 12 voters said they were unhappy about Clintons insistence her emails did not contain classified material.

Its a lie, said Dara Schneider, 47, a personnel recruiter.

Asked to describe the Democratic nominee as a member of their family, the most frequent choice was stepmother  a loveless relationship.

When Hart asked how the voters would finally make up their minds, he was met with mostly blank looks. Its going to have to be the debates, said Locher.

What can Trump do to win their votes? Tone it down, said Schneider. Trumps been getting that advice from his aides, but its not clear hes taking it.

What can Clinton do? Take down the mask and show shes human, said Gramling.

Its obviously not easy to rebuild trust amid the noise of a campaign, but these voters said they were willing to give the candidate another chance if she makes an effort to be more transparent (their words) and to connect with ordinary people.

A lot of voters know they do not want Donald Trump as president, but they need to know that they can live with Hillary Clinton for the next four years, Hart wrote in a summary of the session for reporters. The hurdle they face is to find reassurance that they can trust her and that she will identify with them and their day-to-day challenges.

As the polls narrow, theres still room for Trump to win  and room, as well, for Clinton to lose.
Heres an easy assignment for state lawmakers who oppose wasteful spending and who favor personal responsibility: Stop paying tens of thousands of dollars a year to irresponsible bear hunters whose hounds are killed by wolves.

Wisconsin is the only state in the nation that compensates hunters when wolves kill their animals. A hunter gets up to $2,500 per dog  even when a hunter violates state rules or releases hounds in areas the state Department of Natural Resources has mapped as dangerous because of wolf activity.

So far this year, a record 28 hunting dogs have been killed by wolves, the State Journal just reported. That could cost the public some $70,000 in unjustified payments. And bear season is just beginning.

Most of the dogs that have been killed were being trained for hunting on public land. Owners release their dogs to track and chase bears up trees, where the bears can be easily shot.

Thats not much of a challenge, which is why most hunters dont use dogs to tree bears. Bear hunting with dogs is expensive and cruel to the animals that are hurt.

Wisconsin has more than doubled the number of bear hunting licenses it issues over the last decade. But only 10 percent to 15 percent of bear permit applicants actually participate in hound hunting, the DNR estimates.

That begs the question: Why does Wisconsin even allow bear hounding. Many states dont.

State wildlife experts arent sure why more dogs are being killed this year. Wisconsins wolf population has grown, but not significantly in the areas where the dogs are being attacked.

Wisconsin has relaxed its hunting regulations. A license is no longer needed to train dogs in the summer, which is when wolves are raising their pups. That may cause wolf packs to be more aggressive about protecting their territory and young when they spot a hunting dog nearby.

Another factor is Wisconsins liberal law on baiting bears. While some states limit baiting to 30 days a year, Wisconsin permits the practice for about 145 days.

Besides killing hunting dogs, some wolves have attacked livestock. In total, about 58 domesticated animals (including the dogs) have been killed or injured by wolves this year, mostly in northern Wisconsin.

The state compensates farmers for lost livestock at market value. That seems fair, since farmers arent creating the conflict, and the cost is less than for dogs. The DNR, for example, reimbursed a farmer $800 for a calf last year.

Despite some difficulties, the return of the wolf to Wisconsin after near-extinction is welcome. The DNR counted nearly 900 wolves last winter. The wolves help control deer and other animals that damage crops, and they restore ecological balance to our forests.

The state shouldnt pay hunters who lose hounds to wolves after disregarding rules and the DNRs advice. The Legislature should stop the offensive payouts to a minority of bear hunters who dont deserve compensation for risky behavior.

Editor's note: The original version of this editorial gave an incorrect figure for the percent of bears harvested by bear hunters using hounds. The correct figure is about 33 percent.
I have learned the hard way not to put my personal life on the Internet. But suffice it to say that, God willing, things should be pretty much back to norm...

2 weeks ago
The winter closure of hotels and parking problems were among issues raised at a meeting attended by the mayor of Torremolinos and councillors

The mayor answered questions put by business owners. :: T. Bryant

Business owners from the La Carihuela and Montemar areas of Torremolinos held a meeting with the town hall on Tuesday at the Sol House Hotel to air their views on the areas apparent neglect.

The CET, an organisation that helps local business owners in the Torremolinos area, organised the meeting where restaurant and shop owners raised their concerns regarding the current drive to regenerate Torremolinos.

Some of the around 100 business owners present said they were annoyed that the regeneration of Torremolinos seems to be limited to the town centre, while La Carihuela and Montemar are left by the wayside.

Their concerns highlighted the cleanliness of the streets and pavements, the lack of adequate street lighting during the winter months, and the fact that many of the hotels in those areas close down for the winter.

One bar owner, who owns four businesses in the area, said that he has to close all of his businesses during the low season because of the hotels refusal to stay open, but he claimed it would give a much-needed boost to the area if the hotels remained open all year round.

In order to open, however, hotels are forced to reduce their prices, but the costs are far too high. Those brave enough to open in the low season do so knowing they will make a loss.

Many of the big hotels in La Carihuela and Montemar think that their social security contribution for their employees is too high and are calling for a reduction over the winter. They also claim that heating is very expensive for the large hotels and they say they need specific help in this area.

Jose Ortiz, mayor of Torremolinos, said that this was a problem that needed addressing, but he stressed that everyone must work together in order to find a solution.

Another important issue raised by numerous local business owners was parking during the high season.

One angry Spanish restaurateur said that many of the vehicle owners do not use the bars and restaurants in the area; they simply park there, so their presence does no good for the local economy.

A foreign-resident bar owner suggested that unused land in the area, like the waste ground behind the former Supersol supermarket in Calle Saltillo, should be used as a car park.

As she pointed out, this large area has been vacant and overgrown for more than ten years and it could quite easily be used to accommodate the massive influx of cars that arrive in the area during July and August.

The mayor said that car parking was a big concern and various initiatives are being considered with regards to better parking facilities.

Our overall objective will include the renovation of the whole of Torremolinos, although this will take time, but if we all work together, a bright future awaits our town, he added.
Mayan Monkey has been making chocolate in Mijas since 2012, using products from around the region

Godwin explains the manufacturing process at a workshop. :: M. Gamez

Mayan Monkey Mijas, founded in 2012, is the brainchild of Briton Jason Godwin and his wife Eli McCarthy of Ireland. It is well-known throughout Andalucia for its artisan chocolates and its workshops, which are unique in Spain.

Despite starting in a small establishment, their new headquarters encompasses around 180 square metres. Situated in the Plaza Virgen de la Pena, at the heart of Mijas Pueblo, the premises includes a small museum, a cafe and a shop in addition to the factory.

The firms trademark is Happiness Laboratory. The head of marketing, Ana Martin, explains, The idea is to be happy while working in order to make others happy too.

The firm imports cacao beans from 16 different countries and purchases local products from the province of Malaga in order to create other flavours; these include fruit from Coin and Alhaurin, sweet wine from Malaga, honey from Mijas and essential oils from Pizarra.

Catering for celiacs, diabetics, vegans and those who are lactose intolerant, the firm prioritises the raw materials, proven by the selection of cacao beans picked solely from organic, sustainable and traceable sources. One of their most popular recipes is the chocolate Cadiz 1544, a recreation of the first chocolate manufactured in Europe and the subject of a BBC news report. The business has also been filmed by MTV and Norwegian television.

At their store, Godwin explains the reason behind the companys name. The Mayans were the first lovers of chocolate, he says pointing out that even before them it was the monkey that ate chocolate.

Godwin describes the manufacturing process, starting with the removal from the pod of the 50 or so cacao beans necessary to produce a single bar of dark chocolate or seven bars of milk chocolate.

The beans are bitter. Inside each one is cacao butter and powder. We buy the beans already toasted and crushed in a factory in Amsterdam. To make the chocolate you need 70 per cent beans and 30 per cent brown sugar, he says with a smile.

Half of the firms activity consists of chocolate-making workshops. In winter, they are run primarily for schools, whereas in summer, the majority of participants are tourists. At Mayan Monkey, aside from the three types of workshop (express, which lasts ten minutes, chocolatiers, which lasts an hour and specialised, which caters to the tastes of the consumers), it is possible to host birthdays, stag and hen parties, surprise parties or corporate events.

Both Godwin and McCarthy are conscious of child exploitation and, as such, have stopped importing chocolate from Ivory Coast, where, as Godwin explains, children are exploited and farmers are only paid 55 cents per day (the average salary is usually eight of nine dollars per day). Mayan Monkey has 25 workers in total from May to October and 13 during the rest of the year across both shops.

Almudena Calzada, from Madrid, has been working at Mayan Monkey Mijas for just two and a half months. Its a special job, because it always smells amazing, the people who come are fans of chocolate and you make them happy. Its an entertaining job, she says.

In this laboratory of happiness it is satisfying to see the smiling faces of the children, who have more than 20 ingredients at their disposal to decorate their chocolate bars, including sunflower and pumpkin seeds, strawberries, peanuts, dried fruit, caramel, white or dark chocolate and many more.

Godwin and McCarthy have plans to expand the business and open a franchise in Nerja in 2017 but, above all, the firm hopes to continue to please the lovers of chocolate who visit the factory in Mijas.
The Technology Crime unit receives at least one complaint a day from tourists who have been cheated when renting a holiday apartment or villa via property websites

Officers from the technology crime unit regularly check the websites used by fraudsters. :: SUR

An apartment in Los Monteros, Bahia de Marbella. Just 150 metres from the sea, with direct access to the beach. Three bedrooms, two bathrooms and two parking spaces, for 1,000 euros a week. I said to my wife, look, this is a real bargain, lets book it, admits Jaime, an economist from Madrid who contacted a woman called Manuela, who said she owned the apartment. In reality the whole thing turned out to be a fraud and Jaime lost the 950 euros he had paid as a deposit for a two-week summer holiday.

His case is one of the latest to arrive at the offices of the technology crime unit (Grupo de Delitos Tecnologicos) of the National Police force, and it is one of dozens. This seems to have been the summer of holiday apartment frauds.

Were seeing one a day, on average, say officers from this department, who warn of a worrying increase in this type of offence, which is made so easy by the anonymity of the internet. The perpetrator is usually thousands of kilometres away and out of reach, in Eastern Europe or Africa.

The method is simple. The fraudsters place advertisements on property portals such as Fotocasa, Idealista, Enalquiler or Milanuncios, with pictures of apartments or villas with fantastic views, ideal for an unforgettable holiday at an attractive price, but not so cheap that it may arouse suspicion. They avoid pages that use intermediaries or payment gateway services. At most, they use fake Airnbn links to give themselves more credibility.

The potential client contacts the (supposed) owner directly and pays the money by transfer to a bank account number he or she is given. This part of the fraud has also become more sophisticated now. Previously, they used to ask for payment through companies like Western Union or MoneyGram, but now they give a bank account (which has been opened using fake documentation) in a Spanish bank because it makes them seem more trustworthy, says the head of the technology crime unit.

They use third parties to withdraw the money; these mules carry cash, rather than the usual drugs, and they are responsible for transferring the money via companies such as those mentioned above to the perpetrators.

They are an important part of this; without them, the crime couldnt be committed, say the police. They are normally Spanish citizens who have nothing to do with the organisation but who comply with it in order to earn a ten per cent commission.

Some of them think what they are doing is legal, and others have come to us to report that they feel defrauded because they thought they had found a job on the internet; they are only used to make one or two transfers, and thats that, they explain.

The photos used may be genuine properties, but they have been stolen from an advertisement placed by the real owner or from the sea of images on the internet.

In some cases there have been two official complaints: one from the victim, who was trying to rent the property, and another from the real owner, whose email had been hacked and whose advertisement published on different websites, says the police officer.

The properties may be in Malaga, Marbella, Estepona, Torremolinos, Benalmadena, Fuengirola... the police say there is no specific area, and people all over the world have been affected. Not only tourists who come here, but also people from Malaga who want to rent a place in a different part of Spain, he says.

The supposed property owner or agent gives an email address and phone number. Somebody who is interested in renting one of the properties rings or sends an email asking for more information. Normally, a mobile phone number is never answered, but they do respond to a WhatsApp message. If the client happens to live nearby or has family or friends in the area who could go to view the property, they use an excuse: it is currently occupied by another client. They try to close the deal online as quickly as possible, saying that the property is likely to be booked up very quickly.

When the victims receive the rental contract, which looks professional, they transfer a deposit or the whole payment (some people have paid as much as 3,150 euros). It is only when they turn up at the property with their suitcases that they discover that they have been conned.

From that moment onwards, nobody answers their emails and the phone gives no signal.

The internet portals cooperate with us when we contact them about a fraudulent email address or phone number, says the head of the technology crime unit. The last email the police enquired about was on Milanuncios and it was used to advertise 54 different properties.

There is little chance of the victims getting the money back. The IP address of the computer with which the account was opened will no longer be operative and the funds will be safely stashed in bank accounts held in other names in distant parts of the world.
The online petition has been signed by over 1,300 people so far and the organisers are making contact with various airlines

Gibraltar and Malta are both important iGaming centres. :: SUR

There are many similarities between Gibraltar and Malta, including the fact that they both play host to a large number of iGaming giants and have made gaming their primary industry but, surprisingly, travelling between the two is time-consuming and expensive because there are no direct flights to and from Malta, not even from Malaga, which is now one of the busiest airports in Europe.

iGaming companies employ large numbers of people and thousands have to travel regularly between Malta, Gibraltar and Marbella, some on a weekly basis. Because there are no direct flights, they find themselves having to fly via Barcelona, Brussels, Zurich, Rome, London, various airports in Germany, France and other countries, with the risk of missing connections or finding that only late-night flights are available. The added cost is another frustrating factor for iGaming companies: a single trip from Malta to Gibraltar ifor an employee means paying for four flights instead of just two. However, it is the wasted time which is the main concern.

Oisin McGillicuddy, Technical Account Manager at iGaming Cloud, decided to set up a petition on Change.org to call for direct flights to be introduced between Malta and Gibraltar or Malaga. The petition, which already has over 1300 signatures, is addressed to Norwegian Air, but there are plans to contact other airlines as well in the hope that they will see the benefit of a direct link with Malta.

If a direct flight were available people would travel even more, and not just for business. This involves everyone; there is no tourism link between Gibraltar, Spain and Malta, despite the fact that both are highly valued tourist destinations with cultivated tourist industries, he explains.

The petition can be found at www.change.org
The EU's annual VAT Gap report, using 2014 data, shows a slight improvement on the previous year across Europe

Paying bills without IVA is still a problem in Spain and the EU. :: SUR

Spain missed out on collecting 6.2 billion euros in VAT revenue in 2014, 8.88% of what it should have collected, a report has shown.

The missing money was down to fraud, tax evasion, bankruptcies and statistical errors, according to the annual VAT Gap study out this week from the European Commission.

Despite the high amounts, it was a reduction of just over 3% on last years data.

The EU report on the VAT Gap, (the difference between what was expected to be collected versus what actually came in across the EU), showed that almost 160 billion euros never came in across the EU in 2014. This was 14% of the total amount of VATthat should have been collected.

Real VAT income across the EU grew 3.3% in 2014, and the VAT Gap went down by 2.5 billion euros.

The member states that got top marks for losing the least VAT in 2014 were Sweden (1.24%), Luxembourg (3.80%) and Finland (6.92%).

On the other hand, the countries with the biggest percentage VAT gaps were Romania (37.89%), Lithuania (36.84%) and Malta (35.32%).

Greece was the country that most improved its gap, with a fall of 5.52%, while Bulgaria grew theirs by 3.6%.

Among the bigger member states, the VATgap is 10.37% (23.5 billion) in Germany, 14.18% in France (24.5 billion), 27.55% in Italy (37 billion) and 10.14% in the UK (17.6 billion).

Praise for Spain

The EU finance commissioner, Pierre Moscovici said that the situation was unacceptable on releasing the report this Tuesday.

The EUpraised Spain for doing more to avoid tax evasion. Spanish commentators, however, pointed out that the 6.2 billion gap was equivalent to the countrys annual infrastructure budget.
I am Kerry Burgess. This is what I think.
Emilie Keeney_2.JPG

Emilie Keeney

(Cayuga County Sheriff's Office)

AUBURN, N.Y. - Cayuga County Sheriff's deputies have accused an Auburn woman of two felonies in connection with an investigation into robberies at two farms.

Two men have already been charged in the robberies and deputies say they continue looking for a fourth suspect.

Deputies Thursday accused Emilie Keeney, 22, of 109 Washington St., with one count each of second-degree burglary and second-degree robbery. Both are felonies.

She was arraigned in the Town of Fleming court and sent to the Cayuga County Jail in lieu of $10,000 cash bail or $20,000 bond.

Keeney's arrest stems from an investigation into robberies at farms in Scipio and Fleming on Aug. 27 and Sept. 1. Workers on the farms told deputies armed men came into their homes and demanded money before fleeing.

Deputies last week accused Devin Meacham-Wheeler, 20, of 9576 Route 38, Conquest and Christopher Johnson, 20, of 65 Owasco St., Auburn, of one count each of second-degree burglary and second-degree robbery, both are felonies. The two men were arraigned in the Town of Fleming Court and sent to the Cayuga County Jail in lieu of $10,000 cash bail or $20,000 bond.

Deputies said they're still looking for another man in connection with the robberies.

Police ask anyone with information about the robberies to call Detective Sergeant Fred Cornelius at 315-253-1610 or 315-253-6262, or leave tips at the www.cayugacrime.com website.
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The Northwest Family YMCA in Lysander had several break-ins to cars recently.

(Ellen M. Blalock | eblalock@syracuse.com)

LYSANDER, N.Y. -- Authorities are investigating a number of break-ins to vehicles in the parking lot of the Northwest Family YMCA.

Members were notified of the break-ins via a letter from the YMCA.

Last week, vehicles were broken into during the day at the Northwest Family YMCA, Stefanie Noble, a spokeswoman for the YMCA of Greater Syracuse, said. There was another break-in this week at night. That prompted the letter to members.

"We are working with the police on it to figure out who it is," Noble said. "Unfortunately these things do happen, and we want people to know to make sure their valuables are accounted for."

The Northwest Family YMCA, which opened in June 2015 at 8040 River Roard in the town of Lysander, is surrounded by open fields.

YMCA members were reminded to lock their vehicles and not to leave valuables in their cars. Lockers are also available. Noble said the YMCA had also hired a security guard to monitor the parking lot at various times of the day.

"Hopefully this is putting an end to it," she said.

YMCAs in Central New York have had problems with break ins before. Earlier this year a pair was charged with a series of break ins to vehicles in YMCA parking lots in Skaneateles and Auburn.
TULLY, N.Y. - A Cortland County man died and another was injured Thursday when their vehicle went off Interstate 81 and hit a tree in Tully, the New York State Police announced Friday.

Scott F. White was driving a 2004 Monte Carlo south on I-81 in the town of Tully at about 11 p.m. Thursday when he lost control of his car, state police said. The car went off the highway at the Tully Exit 14 off-ramp, kept going down an embankment and hit a tree.

White, 49, of 160 Main St., Cortland, and his passenger Ricky G. Roberts, 55, of Cortland, were rushed by ambulance to Upstate University Hospital in Syracuse, state police said.

Roberts went into traumatic arrest and suffered severe internal bleeding, state police said. He was pronounced dead at the hospital.

White suffered internal injuries including multiple fractures. He is listed in stable condition at Upstate University Hospital.

State police did not say what might have caused the crash. Troopers are continuing to investigate the accident.
Prison Lifers

Motorists drive by Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora in this file photo. Terry L. Cooper, 25, of Syracuse, at the prison in May. His death remains under investigation.

(AP Photo/Mike Groll)

DANNEMORA, N.Y. -- The death of a 25-year-old Syracuse man in one of the state's maximum-security prisons earlier this year remains under investigation.

More than 16 weeks after he died, it is still not clear what caused Terry L. Cooper Jr.'s death at Clinton Correctional Facility in northern New York.

Terry Cooper

Cooper was pronounced dead shortly before 9 p.m. on May 19 at the prison, according to the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, which oversees state prisons. The agency has not said under what circumstances Cooper died.

In response to an inquiry by Syracuse.com, Corrections and Community Supervision issued a statement saying the investigation into Cooper's death is continuing.

"Official cause of death will be determined and released by the Clinton County Coroner's Office," the statement said.

Clinton County Coroner David Donah, reached by phone, said Cooper's autopsy report was not finished yet because he was still waiting for toxicology and other tests to be completed. Donah said it is not unusual for five or six months to pass before he gets a completed autopsy report from a doctor.

In addition to Corrections and Community Supervision, the New York State Police and the state Commission of Correction are also investigating Cooper's death.

Janine Kava, a spokeswoman for the commission, said its investigation was continuing; she declined to comment further.

"It's standard protocol for the commission not to discuss any details of an ongoing investigation," she said. "The investigations take as long as necessary for the commission to complete its review."

In May 2011 Cooper was arrested by Syracuse police on robbery and assault charges. He and another man were accused of trying to rob a man they called to buy marijuana from. Cooper was accused of stabbing the man repeatedly.

Cooper was convicted in 2012 of first-degree attempted robbery and second-degree assault and sentenced to 12 years in prison. He appealed his conviction, but in 2015 the Appellate Division, Fourth Judicial Department, affirmed his conviction.
SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- A home health aide is accused of swiping more than $20,000 from a patient using stolen checks and a credit card, the New York State Police said.

Mollie C. Pierce

Mollie C. Pierce, 39, of Syracuse, was charged with third-degree grand larceny and 30 counts of second-degree possession of a forged instrument in Syracuse, both felonies.

She was also charged with third-degree grand larceny and first-degree identity theft in Geddes, both felonies, and petit larceny in Solvay. She was arrested Wednesday.

Investigator Darren Forgea said the thefts were discovered by a family member of the victim, a woman from Geddes in her 90s.

"Things weren't adding up," he said.

So the family member contacted troopers. Forgea said they began investigating in early August and determined the thefts had started in June.

Pierce cashed the stolen checks at Munchies convenience store, 1219 Milton Ave., just inside the city of Syracuse, Forgea said. She is also accused of stealing money from the victim's bank account in Solvay.

She is being held at the Onondaga County Correctional Facility at Jamesville in lieu of $5,000 bail or $10,000 bond.



State police asked anyone with information about Pierce to contact 315-638-8328.

Contact Ken Sturtz: 315-766-7833 | Email | Twitter | Facebook | Google+
SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- Authorities are seeking help finding three people wanted on arrest warrants for passing counterfeit checks.

The New York State Police said they are looking for Allyssa M. Hamilton, 23, Delarae M. Sheffield, 23, and Gilbert M. Coles Jr., 47. All three are wanted on arrest warrants for first-degree criminal possession of a forged instrument.

They are accused of passing counterfeit checks in the Syracuse area, state police said.

Hamilton and Sheffield are known to frequent the Syracuse and Auburn areas. Coles is known to frequent the Syracuse area.

State police asked anyone with information to contact 315-677-9964.
SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- A woman is in critical condition after being hit by a pickup truck Thursday while she and her husband were crossing a street in downtown Syracuse.

Syracuse police responded just after 2 p.m. Thursday to South Salina and East Washington streets for a report of a pedestrian who had been hit by a vehicle.

The pedestrian, a 55-year-old woman, was walking east across South Salina Street with her husband at East Washington Street. A pickup going west on East Washington Street was making a left turn onto South Salina Street when it hit the woman, police said.

The woman was thrown several feet by the pickup-truck.

She was rushed to Upstate University Hospital by ambulance. She is listed in critical condition. Her husband suffered minor injuries when he was grazed by the truck. Police said they were not immediately identifying either of pedestrians.

The driver was identified by police as 29-year-old Steven Jones, of Brewerton. He was at the scene when officers arrived, police said. He has not been charged.

Officers blocked off the intersection with crime tape. Cars were turned away trying to go north on South Salina Street, and traffic on East Washington Street was cut to one lane. Officers are continuing to investigate the crash.

Police asked anyone with information to contact the Traffic Section at 315-442-5130.
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Frank Penna

(Provided photo)

CANASTOTA, NY - Four months ago, the family of Canastota Marine Pvt. Frank Penna, who was killed during World War II, learned his remains had been identified and he would be coming home.

Penna, who was killed during a battle in the Gilbert Islands in the Pacific Ocean in 1943, was awarded the Purple Heart after his death. He was killed during a battle in which nearly 1,000 Marines perished and almost 2,300 were injured.

Penna's remains will be flown to Syracuse Thursday and he will be buried with full military honors on Saturday at St. Agatha's Cemetery in Canastota.

Frank Penna was 24 when he killed, said his brother, Fred, who lives in Canastota. At 92, Fred is the only surviving sibling - there were four girls and three boys.

Frank Penna's DNA was matched with DNA from his brother. Once he was identified plans were made to fly his body home, his family said.

In 1949, a military review board declared Penna's remains non-recoverable. Then in June 2015 History Flight Inc. discovered a burial site on Betio Island and found what they believed were 35 U.S. Marines killed in battle.

"It''s unbelievable,' Fred Penna said today. "We are very happy to have him home. I had a choice between Arlington Cemetery or here, and I want him buried here between his mother and father."

A Mass will be held at 9:30 a.m. Saturday at Fiore Funeral Home in Canastota. It is open to the public, as is the burial after the service. Members of the public also are welcome to pay their respects from noon to 7 p.m. Friday at the funeral home.
SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- Vigils and other ceremonies will be held across Central New York on Sunday to mark the terrorist attacks on Sept 11, 2001.

A total of 2,977 people died in New York City, Washington D.C. and Shanksville Pa., when 19 al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four airliners in a series of coordinated attacks.

The terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center buildings and the Pentagon. Passengers overpowered the hijackers of the fourth plane, which crashed in field in Pennsylvania. More than 6,000 others were injured in the attacks.

Onondaga Community College, Friday.

OCC held a wreath laying ceremony at the Whitney Applied Technology Center Friday morning. It was followed by a recitation of all the names of the victims at the Whitney building and inside the Gordon Student Center near the Alumni Faces plaque for Wendy Faulker, an alum who died that day.

Cicero, 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., Sunday

The Cicero Fire Station No. 1 at Routes 11 and 31 in Cicero will host an event to remember the emergency responders and civilians killed. Tours of the fire station and rescue demonstrations will be held. Onondaga County Air-1 helicopter will land at noon.

Syracuse, 8:30 a.m. Sunday

The city will host its annual Sept. 11 ceremony at Forman Park on East Genesee Street. The gathered will observe 17 minutes of silence, representing the time between the first and second planes hit the World Trade Center.

At 8:30 a.m., a police and fire honor guard will post colors. At 8:46 a.m., a firetruck will sound a tone signaling the beginning of the period of silence and the candles will be lit. A second tone will sound at 9:03 signaling the ending of the period of silence.

Liverpool, 9:45 a.m. Sunday

The Liverpool First Presbyterian Church at 603 Tulip St. will hold a remembrance service at 9:45 a.m. Sunday. The names of the victims will be read and bells will ring signaling the times when the planes crashed. A service follows at 10:15 a.m., followed at 11:30 a.m. with ringing of bells in a call for peace. Lunch follows.

DeWitt, 2 p.m to 3 pm. Sunday

The town will host a memorial ceremony from at the 9-11 Memorial at town hall on Butternut Drive. Jose Colon, a chaplain at the St. Joseph's Hospital Health Center and retired New York City detective, will speak.

Chittenango,6:30 p.m. Sunday

A Patriot Day program will be held at Stickles Park, Genesee Street, Chittenango. There will be a short program followed by music, fire trucks and a candle lighting. The rain location is the Chittenango Fire Department on Genesee Street.

Phoenix, 7 p.m. Sunday

A community vigil will be held at Henley Park on State Street. Organizers suggested people bring a candle and a chair.
SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- A group of protesters interrupted an open house about flood maps Thursday to express anger over new flood insurance requirements.

About a dozen members of Syracuse United Neighbors marched into the Southwest Community Center and stood holding signs while a pair of speakers voiced concerns about the cost of flood insurance.

The meeting was a one-on-one informational session for homeowners affected by a recent change to city flood maps. Nearly 900 properties in Syracuse were added to a flood zone.

Joanne Stevens passionately criticized the map process and chided "politicians" for not taking part in the event (though she acknowledged at least one elected official was present).

Staffers for each of Central New York's federal representatives attended, as well as several city hall officials. Mayor Stephanie Miner attended -- arriving after the brief protest -- as did Common Councilors Helen Hudson and Khalid Bey.

Rich Puchalski, executive director of SUN, said he was angry that officials didn't involve residents in discussions about flood maps until now. He said the city should have explored options for curbing flood risk along Onondaga Creek, such as dredging or clearing away brush.

Miner said dredging would cost millions of dollars and that brush had already been cleared. She cited efforts by city engineers to reduce the reach of the floodplain. Several FEMA officials echoed her comments, saying the city provided heaps of data to ensure the maps were accurate.

Miner's administration has been in talks with state and federal representatives and FEMA since preliminary maps were introduced in 2009. The city expended time and resources to correct the maps, where possible, and minimize the number of houses affected, Miner said.

"It doesn't make the end result any easier," Miner said. "I understand the frustration and the anger, but ultimately FEMA has all the control here, not us."

That frustration and anger was on display outside the meeting where protesters remained for several hours, holding signs that said "This will destroy our hood" and "Say no to flood insurance."

Andrew Martin, FEMA Region 2 Risk Analysis Branch Chief, said he's done at least 100 meetings like the one Thursday night, including one Wednesday in DeWitt. He's never seen one interrupted by a protest, he said.

After the interruption, officials spent time meeting with residents to answer questions about how flood maps are drawn and how to obtain flood insurance. By 6 p.m., several dozen residents had come for help.
Campaign 2016 Johnson

Former New Mexico governor, Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson arrives to a cheering crowd of several hundred during a campaign rally Thursday, Aug. 25, 2016, in Concord, N.H.

(Jim Cole / AP)

Gary Johnson is the Libertarian Party's nominee for president.

By Gary Johnson | Special to The Washington Post

Shortly after drafting the Massachusetts Constitution, John Adams expressed his greatest fear for the nation: "There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader. . . . This . . . is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil."

He wasn't alone. James Madison warned against the dangers of factionalism. And in his farewell address, George Washington called "party dissension" a kind of "frightful despotism," warning that a party leader would be prone to pursue his own agenda "to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty."

Almost in spite of themselves, the founders allied themselves into political parties: First the Federalists against the Democratic-Republicans, then the Whigs against the Democrats.

That second party alignment collapsed under the weight of slavery -- when a third party, the Republican Party, rose up with a fresh message unencumbered by the past.

Has the two-party division that the founders railed against become today's political status quo?

It doesn't have to be. With the Republicans and the Democrats having nominated their most polarizing presidential candidates in more than a generation, now is the moment for a third way.

My running mate, Bill Weld, and I were both two-term Republican governors in heavily Democratic states. Both of us won re-election overwhelmingly. We did this by governing as fiscal conservatives and social liberals. That's where most Americans want their government to be.

Political parties aren't necessarily evil -- unless they lead to the level of dysfunction that we have today. Elected officials in Washington cannot even agree on a real budget -- and haven't for years. That's their most straightforward responsibility.

These partisans place loyalty to their team over loyalty to the nation's needs. It's eerie to see Republicans under Donald Trump denounce free trade and limited government. It's unsettling to see how comfortable Democrats have gotten with Hillary Clinton's approach to Middle East regime change as secretary of state.

Fortunately, most Americans aren't buying it. More people consider themselves "independents" than are aligned with either of the two largest political parties. They want an alternative: a common-sense approach that combines fiscal discipline with social inclusion.

As presidential and vice-presidential candidates, that's our message. A nonpartisan approach in the Oval Office would do wonders to defuse the harsh partisanship that we've seen develop in recent years. Think of it as a new form of checks and balances, with different parties controlling the executive and legislative branches.

In the Federalist Papers, James Madison warned about the dangers of factionalism. His proposed solution was to divide power within the government. That can be frustrating to some because it makes the federal government inefficient by design. It keeps one person, or one party, from accumulating absolute power.

Yet the two larger political parties have worked hard to try to create their own tyrannical majorities. The majorities alternate, but the basic premise doesn't change.

So consider a system in which a president from a bona fide third party enters the mix.

With a chief executive free of any obligation to either party, the focus will be on the business of the nation, not on propping up a crumbling party apparatus.

The first priority of the Johnson-Weld administration will be submitting to Congress a balanced budget. As governors, we held true to promising that taxes would go down, not up. We'll end up cutting spending by roughly 20 percent in order to match it to current tax receipts.

My default is to question federal spending and to require every year that each agency justify its budget anew. As governor, I vetoed more than 750 bills, often special-interest payoffs, and I won't hesitate to veto such bills from Congress.

That said, Bill and I are reasonable and realistic executives. We will accomplish the free-market, fiscally conservative agenda of limiting government and increasing trade, while pursuing long-overdue immigration and criminal-justice reform.

We'll do this through having both Republicans and Democrats in the Cabinet and working simultaneously with the leaders of those parties. Seeing that, by working together, the best ideas of each party will receive a fair hearing, both will see real movement toward addressing challenges they care about, not just winner-take-all partisan gridlock. A great deal could be accomplished by having third-party leadership dedicated to finding the common ground that has so often eluded the parties in recent years: on balancing the budget, curbing taxes, protecting our privacy and reforming our criminal-justice system.

The fact that the founders anticipated our two-party morass and warned against it ought to be enough incentive to look beyond it. The two major parties have failed to meet the needs of the nation. It's time to try something different.
There are a handful of gun shows across Upstate New York this fall -- the biggest being the Syracuse Gun Show, set for Sept. 17-18 at the NYS Fairgrounds in Geddes.

"We will have 800 to 1,000 exhibits and displays from our collectors and dealers from all over the United States," said Sandy Ackerman Klinger, show manager for the New York State Arms Collectors Association, which is hosting the event.

She said the show will include "displays and sale tables of U.S. Military Arms, Colt revolvers, high-grade double-barreled shotguns, Remington muskets, Smith and Wesson, Kentucky rifles, gun parts and accessories, Native American items, Frontier and Western paraphrenalia, swords, Springfields, Winchesters and vintage firearms."

Also, "Bowie knives, bayonets, hand-crafted knives, powder horns, targets, optics, hunting and fishing items, books, western art, civilian and military weapons from numerous nations and military relics and equipment from before the Revolutionary War to the present.

Cost is $7 per day; seniors, $5 and children under 12 free (with parent) free. The show will be held in the Center of Progress Building. Hours: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sept. 17 and 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sept. 18.

OTHER SHOWS INCLUDE:

Saturday, Sunday (Sept 10-11): Niagara Frontier Gun Show, Hamburg Fairgrounds, 5820 S. Park., Hamburg; 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday. For more, call 716-542-9929 or email nfgshows@aol.com.

Sept. 24-25: West Potsdam Fire Department, Gun Show; 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday. For more, call 315-268-1000.

Oct. 2: Niagara Frontier Gun Show, Alexander Fireman's Hall, 10708 Alexander Road, Alexander; 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. 100 tables. Cost $5. For more, call 716-542-9929 or email nfgshows@aol.com.

Oct. 9: Midstate Arms Collectors Lisle Gun Show, Lisle Fire Department, Route 79, North Lisle; 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. 75 tables. Cost $3. For more, call 607-748-1010.

Oct. 15-16: Niagara Frontier Gun Show, Newstead Fire Hall, 5691 Cummings Road, Akron; 9 a.m. top 4 p.m. Saturday; 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday. 85 tables. Cost $5. For more, call 716-542-9929 or email nfgshows@aol.com.

Oct 22-23: Niagara Frontier Gun Show, JW Jones Hall, 354 Leicester Road, Caledonia; 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, 9 to 3 p.m. Sunday. 85 tables. Cost $5. For more, call 716-542-9929 or email nfgshows@aol.com.

Nov. 6: Midstate Arms Collectors Oneonta Gun Show, Holiday Inn, Route 23 Southside, Oneonta, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. 60 table. Cost $2. For more, call 607-748-1010.

Nov, 12-13: Niagara Fronter Gun Show, Springville Fire Hall, Main St., Springville; 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday; 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday. The Cattaraugus County Pistol Clerk will be on site both days. 60 tables. Cost $5. For more, call 716-542-9929 or email nfgshows@aol.com.

Dec-3-4: Niagara Frontier Gun Show, Clarence Events Building, 11177 Main St., Clarence; 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday. 100 tables. Cost $5. For more, call 716-542-9929 or email nfgshows@aol.com.

Dec. 10-11: Niagara Frontier Gun Show, Knights of Columbus Hall, 2735 Union Road, Cheektowaga; 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and 9 to 3 p.m. Sunday. 90 tables. Cost $5. For more, call 716-542-9929 or email nfgshows@aol.com.


Elia

New York State Education Commissioner MaryEllen Elia visits the editorial board of the Syracuse Media Group on Wednesday February 3, 2016.

(Michael Greenlar | mgreenlar@syracuse.com)

ALBANY, N.Y. -- New York State Education Commissioner MaryEllen Elia has asked the federal government for more flexibility in testing students with disabilities or language barriers.

The federal Department of Education is drafting regulations for the Every Student Succeeds Act, Congress' update to the No Child Left Behind law passed under President George Bush. Each state education department was asked to provide comments on federal regulations relating to standardized tests.

The education administration under President Barack Obama has encouraged states to participate in the Common Core, a set of national standards for educating students. Tests based on the Common Core have been controversial, especially in New York.

Elia said that she considers New York state Common Core tests to be "entirely appropriate for most students," but not for all.

She urged the federal education department to consider needs of disabled students and English language learners in its regulations.

The federal education department does not create tests or establish learning standards. States have that authority exclusively. Federal officials can, however, sanction states that don't comply with regulations of the exams. It threatened to do so after thousands of students across the country opted out of exams in the last couple years.

Elia said she hopes federal regulations will take into account the challenges faced by some students and consider alternative test formats.

"Whether we're talking about students with severe cognitive disabilities or English language learners new to the country, it just makes sense to look at other ways to gauge their academic growth," Elia said.

Here's the full letter from Elia to the federal education department.

Reporter Julie McMahon covers Syracuse University and Syracuse city schools. She can be reached anytime: Email | Twitter | 315-412-1992
Bill Nojay

Assemblyman Bill Nojay, R-Lakeville, during a gun-rights rally on Tuesday, June 11, 2013, in Albany, N.Y. (AP Photo/Mike Groll)

(AP)

Assemblyman Bill Nojay killed himself this morning in a Rochester cemetery, city police confirmed this afternoon.

Nojay, a Republican state lawmaker, had been facing questions about a fraud case in Asia, the Democrat & Chronicle and the New York Daily News reported. His lawyer called police this morning with concerns about Nojay, the Daily News reported. A Rochester officer arrived at a local cemetery and saw the lawmaker fire the gun, police said.

The lawmaker was to turn himself into the FBI this morning, a source told the Daily News.

Instead, Nojay killed himself near a family grave.

Nojay's death stunned and saddened government officials, Republican Party leaders, friends and colleagues across the state. Many took to Twitter to express their shock and offer prayers and thoughts to his family. Nojay, a vocal supporter of Upstate issues, a Donald Trump supporter and a frequent critic of Gov. Andrew Cuomo's policies, was giving interviews as recently as Thursday.

Nojay's opponent in next week's GOP primary has suspended his campaign and was trying to get his radio advertisements off the air.

RPD confirms Assemblyman Nojay took his own life this morning at the Riverside Cemetery. Condolences to his family. pic.twitter.com/AQEw8cdKVS  Nina Porciuncula (@NinaReports) September 9, 2016

"I cannot express how saddened we are to learn about the passing of Assemblymember Bill Nojay," Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie said in a statement. "Our thoughts and prayers are with Bill's wife and children."

Tweets about nojay
1ship.jpg

The Carnival Ecstasy, a 2,052-passenger cruise ship, is seen in an undated publicity photo.

(Carnival Cruise Line)

MIAMI -- The U.S. Coast Guard has suspended its search in the Bahamas for a New York woman who went overboard from a cruise ship.

Capt. Todd Coggeshall with the Coast Guard's 7th District said in a statement Thursday night that the "difficult decision" had been made to halt the search pending any further developments, according to the Miami Herald,

Rina Patel, 32, of Interlaken, New York, in Seneca County was reported missing Wednesday. The Coast Guard said she had been on the 11th deck of the Carnival Ecstasy as the ship passed near the island of Grand Bahama. Carnival Cruise Line reported she apparently jumped overboard.

Coast Guard aircraft and two ships assisted in the search conducted in an area of more than 2,800 square miles.

The cruise ship had left Nassau, Bahamas, and was en route to Charleston, South Carolina.

The 43-hour search was officially ended at about 7:30 p.m., the Coast Guard said.

"We would like to extend our deepest condolences to the loved ones and all that have been affected by this tragedy," Coggeshall said in a news release. "Suspending search efforts is always a painful decision, but despite our best efforts we have been unable to locate Rina and have made the difficult decision to suspend the search pending any further developments."

The National Desk contributed to this report.
Bill Nojay

File photo: Assemblyman Bill Nojay during a gun-rights rally in Albany in 2013. Nojay was found dead today. (AP Photo/Mike Groll)

(Mike Groll)

Update: Rochester police confirm Bill Nojay killed himself Friday morning.

Assemblyman Bill Nojay, an outspoken Republican state lawmaker and AM radio mainstay, took his own life Friday at a local cemetery, the Democrat & Chronicle reported.

Nojay was found near his family burial plot at the Riverside Cemetery on Lake Avenue, according to the New York Daily News and WHEC.

A Rochester police officer saw a person shoot himself at the cemetery this morning, according to law enforcement.

Nojay, from Pittsford, was elected to the New York State Assembly in 2012.

He faced a Sept. 13 Republican primary race against Richard Milne.

"I cannot express how saddened we are to learn about the passing of Assemblymember Bill Nojay," Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie said in a statement. "Our thoughts and prayers are with Bill's wife and children."

Had the pleasure of working with Bill Nojay on his show for 3 years. Prayers for him, his family, colleagues, and... https://t.co/IR75fBQqoX  Joe Lasky (@jlasky920) September 9, 2016

Police were called to the cemetery at 9:22 a.m. to check the welfare of a person, according to Rochester police.

An officer saw a person shoot himself. "It happened very quickly," said Frank Camp, a Rochester investigator.

Police, as of noon, were not releasing the name of the person who shot himself. They were waiting to notify family members.

The Democrat & Chronicle reported earlier this week that Nojay was wanted for questioning in southern Asia as part of an investigation into a $1 million fraud complaint.

Nojay had told the Democrat and Chronicle repeatedly no fraud was committed.

The New York Daily News reported Nojay was to turn himself in today to the FBI. From Ken Lovett's report:

"But the source said the lawmaker called his lawyer to say he planned to end his life. The lawyer, the source said, told the police. One might have actually seen him shoot himself inside the cemetery at around 9:30 a.m., the source said."

Nojay's friends, radio fans, colleagues and state leaders were shocked and saddened by the news.

On behalf of all NY'ers, I extend our deepest condolences to Assemblyman Nojay's family, friends & constituents during this trying time.  Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) September 9, 2016

You can see what people are saying about Bill Nojay in this Twitter feed:

Tweets about nojay
Who will be the next Miss America?

The list of beauty queens competing for the 2017 crown come from all 50 U.S. states, plus Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. Standouts this year include Miss Missouri Erin O' Flaherty, the first openly lesbian contestant in the long-running pageant, and Miss New York Camille Sims, a Cornell University grad from Ithaca running on a platform of "Encouraging Wellness and Fostering Food Dignity."

In the preliminaries, Miss District of Columbia Cierra Jackson won the swimsuit competition Miss Tennessee Grace Burgess won the talent portion by singing the Eagles' "Desperado" on the first night. On the second night, Miss Arkansas Savvy Shield impressed the judges with her jazz dance routine and Miss Maryland Hannah Brewer won the $1,000 award for the Lifestyle and Fitness in Swimsuit category.

Miss Alabama Hayley Barber also scored a scholarship in two categories, taking home $5,000 and $6,000 for the S.T.E.M. and Quality of Life community service awards, The aspiring optometrist's pageant platform is Sight for Small Eyes, which works to help children get access to vision care.

Preliminary competitions continue through Saturday at the Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, N.J. The Miss America 2017 winner will be crowned Sunday night in a live broadcast starting at 9 p.m. ET on ABC.

Chris Harrison ("The Bachelor") will co-host the Dick Clark Productions competition with sportscaster Sage Steele. Judges include Ciara, Mark Cuban, Gabby Douglas, Laura Marano, Sara Foster, Cole Swindell and former Miss America Sharlene Wells Hawkes.

Click through the photo gallery above to see pictures of all 52 contestants and their platforms and talents.
2016-09-09-kt-heroinusers.JPG

A photo posted on Facebook by a city in Ohio shows two drug users who overdosed. A 4-year-old boy is in the car with them.

(Facebook)

East Liverpool, Ohio  A city in Ohio posted photos on Facebook yesterday of two people who overdosed sitting in a car with a 4-year-old boy in the back seat.

The city of East Liverpool said it was sharing the photos to show the horrors of heroin. The photos show two clearly incapacitated adults in the front seat of the car with the boy strapped into a car seat in the back.

The post has been shared more than 17,000 times and attracted more than 2,300 comments.

"We feel we need to be a voice for the children caught up in this horrible mess," the city's post read. "This child can't speak for himself but we are hopeful his story can convince another user to think twice about injecting this poison while having a child in their custody."

A Facebook photo posted by a city in Ohio shows heroin users who overdosed. A 4-year-old boy is in the back seat of the car.

Some online criticized the city for not blurring the child's face, according to the Washington Times.

The city said it was aware some would be offended and apologized for it. But it also said the public needs to see what police officers face on a daily basis.

"The poison known as heroin has taken a strong grip on many communities not just ours," East Liverpool's Facebook post read. "The difference is we are willing to fight this problem until it's gone and if that means we offend a few people along the way we are prepared to deal with that."

Numerous areas of the country, including Syracuse and Central New York, are facing serious challenges involving opioids.

The Ohio incident began when 47-year-old James Acord was driving in a Ford Explorer behind a school bus and drifted into an angle in the street, according to the New York Daily News. East Liverpool Police responded and an officer spoke with Acord, whose speech was unintelligible.

Acord told the officer he was taking his passenger, 50-year-old Rhonda Pasek, to the hospital. Acord then tried to shift the car back into drive and the East Liverpool officer took the keys, the News said.

The officer then noticed the boy, Pasek's son, according to the News.

Pasek was already unconscious and turning blue and Acord passed out during the traffic stop, the News said. Emergency responders revived both using Narcan, which can block the effects of opioids in the event of an overdose.

Both adults were taken to the hospital and face multiple charges including endangering a child. Police took the boy to the station where children's services responded, according to the News.

Contact Kevin Tampone anytime: Email | Twitter | Google + | 315-454-2112
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Final scores: Week 10's high school football games on the Treasure Coast

Football teams hit field Thursday and Friday for Week 10 with SSAC playoffs beginning and District 12-4S title game between Treasure Coast and Vero.
FORT PIERCE  In recent years, many people have been looking online to find their soul mates.

However, the Internet is not only a place to look for human companionship, but it is also a means of finding the dog or cat of your dreams, by searching the websites of local animal shelters.

Although almost any color, hair length, and age pet can be found on the Internet, not every pet is at the shelter around the corner.

But if someone is willing to travel, chances are they will find the perfect four-footed friend. In fact, a few weeks ago, Buster the cat did some traveling of his own to arrive at Dogs & Cats Forever.

Found as a stray in Miami, Buster was driven almost 100 miles to Fort Pierce by a 'Good Samaritan' who wanted to make sure that he was taken in by a no-kill shelter.

Anticipating that the lovable seven-month-old would be popular, Buster was soon placed at the PetSmart Adoption Center in Tradition to meet the public.

Buster had only been at PetSmart for one day when a call came from William and Virginia Pitzner, of Vero Beach.

The couple's 16-year-old cat had recently passed away, and they were ready to adopt again.

They had been looking at Dogs & Cats' website and had a list of cats they wanted to meet-with Buster at the top of the list.

'He reminded us of a cat we had many years ago,' said Virginia. After speaking to a volunteer, the couple immediately drove from Vero Beach to Tradition to meet Buster in person.

'He was lovable and spunky,' said Virginia who adopted him on the spot. At home, Virginia said that Buster is a typical kitten, full of energy as he chases his toys through the house.

'I forgot what it was like to have a kitten around the house,' admitted Virginia, who said that she is constantly surprised and entertained by his antics  especially when she is showering. 'He asks to come into the shower with me and sit on the stool. He doesn't mind the water at all.'
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Apple has purchased medical records startup Gliimpse, Fast Company reported Monday, in order to broaden its presence in the personal healthcare information management market.

Apple confirmed that the purchase took place earlier this year, according to the magazine.

Apple in recent years has delved into healthcare with offerings such as HealthKit, CareKit and ResearchKit. The Gliimpse acquisition is seen as an extension of those efforts.

Apple is highly committed to creating products and services around health, said Tim Bajarin, president of Creative Strategies.

Gliimpse gives Apple another powerful data-tracking tool to tie to their health ecosystem of products and services, he told TechNewsWorld.

Magical Machine

Gliimpse has been working for three years on its technology, which it refers to as a magical machine.

The aim is to eliminate the tower of babble plaguing medical data today by converting medical records that can appear incomprehensible into information that both humans and machines can digest and use.

Apple so far has focused on healthcare information gathered outside the clinical spectrum, said Roeen Roashan, senior analyst for healthcare technology at IHS Markit.

With Gliimpse, youre opening up the system with hospital records, lab records, and data from pharmacies, he told TechNewsWorld. That not only expands Apples reach and strengthens its product, but it also enhances its analytics capabilities in terms of providing better patient care.

Guessing Game

What Apple will do with Gliimpses technology is anyones guess, as the company is known for keeping its plans under tight wraps.

Apple might consider Gliimpse a critical technology to an overarching healthcare service, or it may simply see it as complementary to other Apple health and fitness solutions, said Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT. At this point, its impossible to say.

Purchasing Gliimpse could signal a new direction for Apple, noted Bob ODonnell, chief analyst at Technalysis Research.

I think were seeing arguably the beginning of a new type of Apple thats looking outside its core into a number of different areas and seeing how they can be a disrupter, he told TechNewsWorld. Healthcare is one of those areas.

Formidable Challenge

Healthcare can be challenging for vendors who are already in the business, let alone for newcomers like Apple.

The main challenge in this space is interoperability across systems  not only within Apples platforms, but also across provider networks and the rest of the healthcare sector, IHS Roashan explained.

Numerous challenges face any company doing business in healthcare, Pund-ITs King told TechNewsWorld. They include a lack of consensus among healthcare providers and services, a reliance on proprietary technologies, and fierce competition among stakeholders.

Even initiatives like electronic medical records can result in confusion  at least when it comes to sharing records with nonaffiliated doctors and facilities, he added.

The problems only get worse when you go outside the United States, noted Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy.

Each country has its own compliance schema and laws, making things complex, he told TechNewsWorld, which plays against the consumers need for ease of use.

Baby Steps

With Gliimpse, Apple may be able to reduce some of the healthcare system friction that so frustrates its users.

This is a baby step toward democratizing healthcare information and creating a more empowered consumer of healthcare, said Jeff Dachis, CEO of One Drop.

The first step in doing that is giving consumers their own healthcare information, he told TechNewsWorld. Gliimpse potentially offers that to them.

Giving consumers control of their own health data could be beneficial to both patients and the vendor that cracks the data-sharing problem.

The idea of patients owning and managing their health information could make medical visits simpler, and diagnosis and treatment safer and more relevant, suggested Pund-Its King.

The company that gets it right could become massively successful and prosperous, he added.At the same time, meeting healthcare regulations and security requirements is not for the faint of heart, and numerous healthcare stakeholders are likely see such efforts as endangering the well being of their businesses.

Neither Apple nor Gliimpse reponded to our requests to comment for this story.
Microsoft will apparently host a special hardware event in late October to showcase its latest gadgets and a Surface All-in-One (AIO) PC will reportedly headline the event.

Rumors of an upcoming Microsoft Surface AIO PC running Windows 10 have been making rounds for some time now, but details have been rather scarce. There's still not a lot of information available, but it now looks like the official unveiling is just around the corner.

ZDnet has learned that a Surface device codenamed "Cardinal" will break cover late next month and suspects it is none other than the rumored Surface AIO PC. Previous reports have indicated that Microsoft was working on three Surface AIO models with different screen sizes  21-, 24- and 27-inch models  but it remains unclear at this point whether the company will launch all three versions.

The new report from ZDnet also speculates that this purported "Cardinal" Surface AIO may be the consumer-focused variant of Microsoft's high-end Surface Hub, borrowing the impressive Perceptive Pixel display technology.

Since the Surface Pro 5 and Surface Book 2 are not expected until the Spring of 2017, this purported Surface AIO might as well be the star of Microsoft's upcoming Fall hardware event this October.

This seems to bolster earlier rumbles regarding a Surface AIO. Microsoft filed for a patent for an AIO PC back in July 2015 and obtained it in February of this year, detailing a "modular computing device."

Microsoft is keeping mum for now, offering no details as to what it plans to announce at the October event. This leaves things shrouded in mystery for the most part, at least at this point, with nothing but speculation to go on.

With gradually intensifying leaks and tidbits of information continuing to surface (no pun intended) regarding this purported Surface AIO, the probability of such a device launching this year seems to be getting stronger.

If Microsoft does unleash a Surface AIO PC running Windows 10, it will likely aim to challenge Apple's high-end iMacs AIOs. Microsoft has already been gunning for Apple and comparing its Surface devices with Apple's hardware. Most recently, Microsoft released a Surface Pro 4 ad mocking the MacBook Air, noting that Apple's device is less useful, like "a hat for a cat."

Should this "Cardinal" turn out to be a powerful Surface AIO, it will be interesting to see how the competition will heat up.

With no formal confirmation from Microsoft, however, it's best to take such reports with a grain of salt.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
For quite some time, giraffes were all thought to belong to a single species that was divided into several sub-species. However, as it turns out, we've not been entirely accurate about the world's tallest land animal from the very beginning.

In a recent study published in the journal Current Biology, it has been revealed that, rather than one species of giraffe, which is split up into several sub-species, there are actually four species of the animal, mirroring the genetic differences observed in polar bears and brown bears.

"We were extremely surprised," said conservationist Julian Fennessy, co-founder of the Giraffe Conservation Foundation and lead author of the study. He also noted that the conservation implications are immense, and that their findings will hopefully help put giraffe conservation on the map.

To be fair, there were already indications that all of these giraffes could be different species, but there was nothing distinct enough about them that would definitively prove it.

For example, the reticulated giraffe of Somalia, with its polygonal, liver-colored spots, can be easily distinguished from the Rothschild's giraffe of Uganda and Kenya, with patches that are not as sharply defined. Similarly, while the Rothschild's giraffe and Masai giraffe of Kenya and Tanzania are similarly marked, a close look at their skulls reveals that the former has five ossicones rather than the usual three  in fact, this feature is unique to the Rothschild's giraffe.

However, it wasn't until the Giraffe Conservation Foundation was looking into the potential results of different giraffe subspecies mixing together when they're moved into protected areas, that they realized there was more to giraffes than just their looks.

Following a process that took almost seven years, during which time 190 tissue samples were collected, an analysis of nuclear genetic markers and mitochondrial DNA revealed that giraffes can effectively be divided into four species: the southern giraffe (Giraffa giraffa), which has a population of about 52,000; the Masai giraffe (Giraffa tippelskirchi), with an approximate population of 32,500; the reticulated giraffe (Giraffa reticulata), which numbers to about 8,700; and the northern giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis), with about a 4,750 population.

While monumental, the discovery also revealed something rather disconcerting: the reticulated giraffe and northern giraffe are in a rather precarious position. Though not considered endangered, they are dangerously close to that point, and these results should encourage the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which classifies giraffes as a single species, to take a stronger stance in their protection.

"Northern giraffe number less than 4,750 individuals in the wild, and reticulated giraffe number less than 8,700 individuals  as distinct species, it makes them some of the most endangered large mammals in the world," Fennessy said in a press release.

Fennessy said the biggest threats to the giraffe population include destruction of their habitat due to human population growth as well as poaching for bush meat, tail hair and "medicinal" parts.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Google Maps is receiving more ride-hailing options based in the United States other than Uber, adding in Lyft and Gett into the mix.

In light of this development, it appears that Google Maps is now arguably the ultimate booking mobile app in town, as users can now get estimated waiting times and fares across the services all in one place at a tap of a button.

Coming straight from the horse's mouth, Google is spreading the word via a blog post, explaining how the new features will add convenience to users' everyday commute.

"Say you're looking to get from the High Line to Times Square in Manhattan. When typing these locations into the Google Maps app, you'll see a ride services tab appear alongside driving, transit and walking directions. Just tap the icon and you'll find fare estimates and pick up times from multiple ride service partners, depending on driver availability," Sara Torti, senior product manager of Google Maps, says.

She also notes that the app will also display specific services of each partner, pointing out that Lyft Line is accessible through it.

As mentioned earlier, these features aren't exactly new, as Google already launched them for Uber back in 2014. Yes, it has been that long already.

However, it's worth mentioning that Uber was reportedly investing $500 million to develop its own map system, and that means it will soon stop completely relying on Google Maps  that is, if all pans out for the ridesharing company.

For the record, the update is now live on both Android and iOS versions of Google Maps. While Lyft is gradually becoming available across the United States in locations where the service is supported, Gett is still limited to within New York City only  for now, at least.

To boil things down, with all these additions that makes everybody's lives a little bit easier, Google Maps is shaping up into one heck of a must-have app nowadays, as it saves time and shaves off some of the hassle.

On a related note, don't forget to check out our comparison between Uber and Lyft to find out how each one fares against the other.

With all said and done, what do you think of the app supporting more ridesharing services beyond Uber? Feel free to hit us up in the comments section below and let us know.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Airbnb is launching new policies in a bid to answer the discrimination problem that is currently rampant in the home-sharing service.

A Harvard Business School study released late last year revealed that there is racial prejudice among Airbnb hosts, as they have a higher tendency of turning down requests made by potential guests with names that sound African American compared with those whose names sound White American.

In June, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said that the company was revisiting its business model to figure out how to fight against discrimination, adding that Airbnb has zero tolerance for racism in its platform.

In an official blog post, Airbnb revealed that it was following through with its promise, with a review that acquired advice from leaders of different organizations including former United States Attorney General Eric Holder.

Laura Murphy, the former head of the Washington D.C. Legislative Office of the American Civil Liberties Union who was tapped by Airbnb to lead the review, has now issued a 32-page comprehensive report [PDF]. The report outlines the review process and discusses some of the initiatives that Airbnb will launch to make the home-sharing community fair for everyone.

Beginning Nov. 1, Airbnb hosts will have to agree to a stronger and more detailed non-discrimination policy. Airbnb is asking its hosts to commit to treating all members of the home-sharing community with respect and without bias or judgment.

Airbnb will also be enforcing a new Open Doors policy starting Oct. 1 that will allow guests to receive assistance from Airbnb to look for alternative accommodations after any case of discrimination in the platform, such as in their bookings being canceled or in their interactions with hosts. The policy will be enforced by a customer support team which will be available 24/7.

Experiments will also be done to reduce the prominence of the profile pictures of guests during the booking process, with the other parts of profiles to be enhanced with objective information. How this would look upon implementation, however, is unclear.

The home-sharing service will also be increasing the availability of the Instant Book feature, which will allow guests to make bookings immediately without getting the prior approval of hosts. The goal of the company is to have 1 million Instant Book-compatible lists by the first day of next year.

Airbnb will also be working with bias experts to offer anti-bias training to the home-sharing community. The hosts who complete the training will be publicly acknowledged in the platform.

Diversity advocates applaud Airbnb's new policies as notable first steps, but the question is whether the moves are enough to prevent discrimination, and if they would be enforced properly.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
On Sept. 1, the Jurupa Unified School District (JUSD) informed parents of students at the Indian Hills Elementary School students in Riverside, California that two children attending the school may have leprosy.

In a letter, JUSD Superintendent Elliott Duchon informed parents of an unconfirmed report that two students have been diagnosed with the flesh-rotting disease also known as Hansen's disease.

Riverside County disease control director Barbara Cole said that a school nurse informed the health department of the possible cases but it would take weeks before tests would confirm whether or not the children indeed have leprosy.

Cole added that they have not identified any risk at the school yet and the disease can be very difficult to transmit to others. Duchon also said that classrooms have already been decontaminated and the two students suspected of having the disease are not in school.

The news, however, appears to have already caused concern, if not panic, among families of students. Families now demand more information and some parents already decided not to send their children to school on Tuesday, Sept. 6.

"For parents, they need to make a decision for their children but we're not recommending any precautions," said Duchon. "There is not a risk at this time."

County health officials are set to interview the parents of the affected children to know if they have traveled to other countries where leprosy is more prevalent.

In 2014, the U.S. had 175 cases of leprosy, 20 of which were in California. Although it rarely occurs in the country, leprosy is widespread in India, Nepal, Brazil, and African and Pacific Ocean island countries.

The disease is spread through respiratory droplets but health experts said that the bacterial infection does not easily spread in group settings. Close contact with infected individuals who do not take antibiotics to treat infection, however, pose increased possibility for infection.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that symptoms of the disease may not appear years after infection. It is characterized by skin lesions and growths, numbness or severe pain, paralysis, muscle weakness and eye problems. The condition though is already curable and early treatment can avert disability.

"The bacteria that cause Hansen's disease grow very slowly. It may take 2-10 years before signs and symptoms appear," reads the CDC website. "Symptoms mainly affect the skin, nerves, and mucous membranes (the soft, moist areas just inside the body's openings)."

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) just issued a warning for airline passengers not to use the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 on planes.

Samsung's latest flagship phablet has been in the spotlight recently, but not for all the right reasons. While it does boast advanced specs and features, it also poses safety concerns related to exploding batteries.

After a massive Galaxy Note 7 recall that may cost the company as much as $1 billion, Samsung continues to support the consequences of its troublesome device. A few days ago, the FAA was considering whether or not to ban the Galaxy Note 7 from flights over concerns of exploding batteries. While it didn't ban the device outright, the FAA has now issued a warning against using the device during flights.

The FAA's decision follows a similar move in Australia, as three major Australian airlines  Qantas, Virgin Australia and Jetstar  banned the use of the Galaxy Note 7 on planes. The airlines did not ban the device altogether, but Galaxy Note 7 owners are not allowed to power it on or charge it while on a plane.

The FAA's warning goes down the same path, banning the use of the device and not the device itself. In addition to warning airline passengers not to power on or charge the Galaxy Note 7 during flights, the FAA also warned passengers not to carry the device in their checked bags. The warning stems from concerns of exploding batteries, following the recent incidents and reports, as well as Samsung's wide recall.

It's highly unusual for the FAA to issue a warning to passengers regarding a specific product, but the tremendous attention the Galaxy Note 7 drew might have something to do with it. The device has been in the spotlight and reports of explosions continue to pile up, with the rechargeable lithium batteries to blame.

Compared to other types of batteries, rechargeable lithium batteries are more prone to overheating if they're damaged, have manufacturing defects or are exposed to high temperatures. Once a rechargeable lithium battery starts to overheat, it reaches a state called "thermal runaway" and the temperature continues to rise to extremely high levels, often leading to a fire.

Samsung recalled the Galaxy Note 7 to fix the issues causing the device's battery to explode and will put the phablet back in the market once it no longer poses fire hazards. Until then, it's best to avoid using the device during flights and replace it as soon as possible.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Emilia Grabarczyk, who is regarded as the "world's smallest baby" is dubbed by doctors as "the little fighter."

Baby Grabarczyk was born at 25 weeks weighing 8 ounces and 8.6 inches long at Maria hospital in the German city of Witten, near Dortmund about nine months ago. In comparison, the baby weighed slightly less than an average grapefruit and her foot was 1.2 inches, roughly the size of an almond.

Sabine Grabarczyk, 30, delivered her premature baby by Caesarean section following a warning by obstetrician Dr. Sven Schiermeier. Sabine and Lukas Grabarczyk decided to go on with the surgery after it was revealed that the placenta was unable to provide sufficient nutrition to the growing baby. It was certain that the Little Fighter wouldn't survive if it wasn't delivered.

Thanks to the doctors, the miracle baby survived the odd though born as little as an orange. Despite complications of premature birth that includes an abdominal surgery, Grabarczyk has no signs of disability. The little one was initially fed with the help of a tiny tube and was at times soothed with cotton buds dipped in sugar water.

"Even children with a birth weight of 14 ounces rarely survive. We have to thank Emilia as well for her own survival. She is a little fighter," said Dr. Bahman Gharavi, Head of Children and Youth Clinic at St Mary's hospital.

Gharavi, who noted that Grabarczyk is showing great progress in the recent weeks, also said that they had little hope on her for the first six months. The doctor thanked the gynaecologists, paediatricians, and paediatric surgeons for their team effort in helping the baby survive.

Grabarczyk snatched the world's smallest surviving premature baby title from Rumaisa Rahman born at 25 weeks in the Loyola University Medical Centre in the U.S. city of Chicago in 2004. Rahman was less than 10 inches long and weighed 8.6 ounces when she was born.

Grabarczyk's mother said that in spite of difficulties the baby was determined to live.

Generally, most premature babies suffer a lot of short and long-term health risks. The short term complications include breathing difficulty; heart and brain problems; temperature control issues; metabolism and gastrointestinal problems; underdeveloped immune system; and blood problems like anemia and jaundice.

Long term complications include cerebral palsy; dental, vision and hearing problems; impaired cognitive skills; behavioral and psychological problems; chronic health issues like asthma; and feeding problems. Premature babies have an elevated risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).

Photo: Erin Stevenson O'Connor | Flickr

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Researchers from the Harvard Medical School and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have come up with a way to observe bacteria as it evolves and develops antibiotic resistance.

Called the Microbial Evolution and Growth Arena (MEGA) plate, the experiment involved the construction of a 2-by-4-foot petri dish, which the researchers filled with 14 liters of agar, a jelly-like substance derived from seaweed commonly utilized in labs to provide nourishment for organisms to grow.

The petri dish was then split into nine sections, with the outermost portion free from drugs and the center with the highest concentration of antibiotics: 1,000 times more compared with the section with the lowest dose. From the outside going in, antibiotic levels featured a tenfold increase in dose.

With a camera mounted over the MEGA petri dish, the researchers observed as the bacterium Escherichia coli (E. coli) adapted to higher doses of antibiotics. The experiment was carried out over a course of two weeks and is believed to be the first large-scale look at how bacteria move and adapt to survive, and even thrive, in the presence of antibiotics.

"It's also a powerful illustration of how easy it is for bacteria to become resistant to antibiotics," said Roy Kishony, senior investigator for the study published in the journal Science.

The researchers know quite a bit about bacterial internal defense mechanisms used in evading antibiotics, but there is little known about how bacteria physically move while adapting to different environments. And while the experiment gave a clear look at how bacterial evolution occurs, they warn against assuming that the movement they recorded perfectly matches bacterial activity in hospital and real-world settings.

Aside from offering a cinematic way of viewing evolution, the MEGA plate experiment offered a few key insights about bacterial behavior, like initial growth rates slow down to give way to mutations, that the most resistant bacteria are not always the fastest movers and those that survive the highest concentration of antibiotic are not always the most resistant.

According to Michael Baym, first author of the study, what they observed with the MEGA experiment suggests that the most resistant mutants don't always lead the evolution. Sometimes, it's a matter of who gets there first, and sometimes that's dictated by proximity and not mutation strength.

Antibiotic resistance remains a big problem so understanding how bacteria physically move in the presence of drugs can be an important contribution to the fight. According to a report, if antimicrobial resistance is not mitigated now, it can lead to deaths every three seconds due to drug-resistant bacteria by 2050. That's 10 million people dead and global losses amounting to $100 trillion each year.

Watch the bacteria in action below!

Photo: NIAID | Flickr

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
On the debate, two pollsters who conducted studies, agreed on Saturday that former president Lula defeated Bolsonaro. | Read More
The worlds largest brewers from Europe to Asia are lining up for a chance to buy a stake in Vietnams top beer-maker, in a deal worth at least $1.8 billion as consumption in the Southeast Asian country surges.

Dutch brewer Heineken NV, Anheuser-Busch InBev NV and its merger partner SABMiller Plc, as well as Japans Asahi Group Holdings Ltd. and Kirin Holdings Co. are among seven foreign companies that have registered to bid for stakes in Saigon Beer Alcohol Beverage Corp., also known as Sabeco, its chief executive officer Le Hong Xanh said.

Sabeco doesnt care if the buyer is an international or domestic company, Xanh said in an interview at the companys Ho Chi Minh City headquarters. All we care about is who will pay the most. The government wants to sell its stakes as soon as possible.

The deal is garnering interest from foreign beer brands attracted by Vietnams young population and rising middle class in one of the worlds fastest-growing economies. Its government is divesting stakes in its two market-leading brewers as a growing budget deficit forces the leadership to accelerate a plan to reduce holdings in state-owned firms.

Thailands Singha Asia Holding Pte. and Thai Beverage Pcl have also signed up to take part in the Sabeco auction, while Vietnamese brokerage Saigon Securities Inc. has joined the latest list of local potential buyers, said Xanh.

Bidders will need to register again as the process begins, as interested buyers had signed up prior to April, before Vietnams new prime minister took over running the government, Xanh said. Companies could drop out or more could join the list, he said.

Asahi is interested in acquiring Sabeco, its Tokyo-based spokesman Takuo Soga said by telephone. AB InBev, Kirin, Saigon Securities and Heineken declined to comment. Spokespersons for Thai Beverage and Singha-owner Boon Rawd Brewery Co. werent immediately available for comment.

Asahi shares fell 0.4 percent by the close of trading in Tokyo on Thursday, while Kirin declined 1.2 percent. Thai Beverage closed 3.6 percent lower in Singapore.

Share Listing

The Ministry of Industry and Trade announced Aug. 31 the governments plan to sell its entire 89.59 percent stake in Sabeco, which it has valued at $1.8 billion, and its 82 percent holding in Hanoi Beer Alcohol Beverage Corp. for $404 million. Sabeco will be sold in two tranches in 2016 and 2017, while Hanoi Beer, or Habeco, will be divested this year, it said.

There arent that many markets where foreign brewers would have a chance to secure an interest in a market-leading brewer, said John Ditty, managing partner of KPMG Vietnams deals advisory unit. The governments valuation of its stake isnt too much, he said in an interview in Ho Chi Minh City.

Sabeco has strong brands and an existing distribution network, so what investors have to decide is how much of a premium that is worth, Ditty said.

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The brewer expects net income to rise 10 percent to about 3.76 trillion dong ($169 million) in 2016, from 3.42 trillion dong it reported in 2015, double its target growth rate for the year, Sabecos Xanh said. That would put the Vietnam governments valuation of its stake at about 11 times net income, compared with the median of about 62 times for brewery acquisitions announced worldwide in the past three years.

Pooled Bids

Some of the governments stake in Sabeco will be listed on the Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange in as soon as 45 to 60 days, Xanh said. After that, the government will auction 53.59 percent in the company within the year, and the remainder in 2017, he said. The proportion to be offered publicly will be decided by the ministry, Xanh added.

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc, who said Aug. 29 Sabeco and Habeco must be publicly listed before the state divests them, will need to approve the entire process, Xanh said. The government wants the market to determine the price of stakes in Sabeco, and its listing will be overseen by Maybank Kim Eng Securities Thailand Pcl, he said.

Sabeco, brewer of Saigon Beer and 333 Beer, prefers to have several major shareholders, and its auction could attract more domestic companies, some of which could form joint ventures to pool resources for their bids, Xanh said. He declined to name other interested local parties.

In the case of Habeco, Danish brewer Carlsberg A/S has been awaiting the governments permission to raise its 17 percent stake to 30 percent in the smaller state brewer, based in the capital Hanoi in Vietnams north.

Foreign brewers are raising their stakes in Vietnam as beer consumption in the country rose 6 percent in 2015 and is expected to keep growing until 2020, according to Euromonitor International. By contrast, key Asian markets such as China, Japan, Thailand, and the Philippines declined last year.

Vietnamese like to get together and whenever they do, beer is a must to drink, Xanh said.
From the outside it does not look much different from most of the parks elsewhere in Ho Chi Minh City. Large trees, green lawns and young people in casual wears give out a sense of relaxation.

But inside the Quang Trung Software City, commonly known as the Software Park, it is a completely different world.

Pick any of the 121 companies for a visit and it will become clear that everybody here is all about business.

IT engineers, mostly in their 20s, hardly pay attention to intruders. They glue their eyes, and their thick glasses, on computer screens while their fingers move fast on worn-out keyboards. The female engineers -- surprisingly there are many of them -- test the programs developed by their male colleagues. No talking. And no phones.

Germany-invested DIGI-TEXX Vietnam, which occupies a futuristic building, is particularly serious about work.

Visitors are required to leave their phones, cameras and bags at the reception room. The next room has a large screen showing all activities in different rooms and corridors captured by CCTV cameras.

All of our employees must also leave their phones here, says Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao, CEO of the company. This is because we develop products for clients who require confidentiality, including those in the banking and healthcare sectors.

The company's professionalism and discipline are just impressive considering the large number of employees on its payroll. It is now managing a big team of more than 700 that works 24/7, all year round.

"We have three eight-hour shifts. We let employees work on a fixed shift so that IT students from colleges right here in the park can join the third shift from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. after school," Thao says.

Hiring students before they even graduate has become a popular practice in Vietnam's relatively young IT industry. The quick growth has put pressure on the local talent pool and recruiters.

Fifteen years ago, the country barely had any IT companies. Now it is home to around 14,000 businesses focusing on hardware, software and digital content.

But with only 40,000 IT graduates every year, many companies find it stressful to recruit enough employees, especially high-skilled ones.

Insiders say, more than other sectors, the IT industry makes or breaks with the skills of its workforce. And right now, it is having a recruitment crisis.

Cheap labor, but...

Nguyen Cong Ai, vice president of financial advisor KPMG, said that even though Vietnam has become an alternative destination for IT outsourcing, in lieu of China or India, thanks to its competitive labor cost, many companies complain about a lack of highly-skilled IT engineers.

Eighty percent of respondents said that its difficult to find good talents, Ai told the Vietnam IT Outsourcing Conference in Ho Chi Minh City in mid-October, quoting a survey by his firm on 80 IT companies operating in Quang Trung.

Language skills remain a barrier with 87 percent of respondents rating IT engineers at either average or below average, he said.

Nguyen Phuong Mai, regional director of recruiting firm Navigos Group, agreed.

For new investors who are preparing to come to Vietnam and invest in Vietnam in this area, and also for the current companies, we all need to be aware of some challenges in finding good talents here, Mai told the conference.

She said many foreign-invested companies are coming to Vietnam, leading to a ballooning demand for high-quality engineers.

Navigoss database showed that the demand for high-skilled software developers so far this year has jumped by 34 percent, compared to the same period of last year.

Mai said job orders come from foreign companies which want to set up data center or invest in game and mobile software development. She added that many local companies are also receiving more contracts from clients all over the world and thus looking for employees too.

Talents supply is increasing, but it doesnt catch up with the pace, said Mai.

But Mai also said she has seen a big trend that Vietnamese people who study abroad and work abroad for some time are returning home.

This can help fill the gap, she said.

Mai pointed out that local companies are also bringing foreign specialists to Vietnam to train their local team.

Russian-invested Luxoft, located in the same building as DIGI-TEXX, is one of them.

Inside the company, a group of European engineers in knee length shorts can often be seen working alongside Vietnamese peers.

We regularly send Vietnamese engineers abroad to join training courses or bring foreign engineers to Vietnam to train local ones, a representative said. Its costly but necessary.

Middle ground

Graphic from KMPG Limited based on data provided by Adecco

Pham Binh Nguyen, chief technology officer at Japan-based cloud services provider Gianty, said while Vietnamese engineers are not as skillful as their peers in China and India, they are better than engineers in other countries.

We select Vietnam as China and India have high labor costs while other countries do not have a labor force as skilful as Vietnams, said Nguyen.

This year the average gross monthly salary in Vietnam is US$569 and $2,049 for programmer and IT manager positions respectively, or only around 25-35 percent of the figures in China, according Switzerland-based human resources services provider Adecco.

Industry insiders agree that at some point in its development, the industry will have to get rid of the "just good enough" mentality and stop using its low cost as the main competitive edge.

Nguyen Huu Le, considered one of the pioneers of the local IT industry, said without a high-skilled workforce, the whole sector will not be able to fulfill its promises.

Le , chairman of TMA Solutions, one of the top 10 software outsourcing companies by revenue, said Vietnamese IT graduates have weaknesses in communications in foreign languages, including English and Japanese, and lack assertiveness.

This is because the education system in Vietnam has not encouraged that, said the 66-year-old Vietnamese Australian. He returned to Vietnam in 2000 to "leverage the human capital of Vietnam to provide quality software services for foreign markets."

Le said he noticed that Vietnamese students " normally just attend the class, study the book, write the exam and get a piece of paper.

As the result, the gap between the skills of new graduates, even from top universities, and what companies need to participate in the software outsourcing industry to serve foreign customers is still very large.

Le said everybody can see this problem, but there has been a lack of effective action.

There were a lot of talks in the last several years about the lack of quality resources to support the software industry in Vietnam. And we cannot wait.

To narrow the gap, Le said his company has spent 10 percent of its expenditure on training.

But even as his firm trains 500-600 students every year in its own training centers and through partnership programs with universities, it can only recruit 40 percent of these students and has to find other employees elsewhere.

"More ore than gold," Le said.
Leading Internet service companies in the region are buying shares in Vietnamese counterparts to enter what they consider a major, fast-growing market in the region, local reports say.

The Thoi Bao Kinh Te Saigon Online on Tuesday said money has been flowing into the local IT industry through mergers and acquisition (M&A) activities since the beginning of this year.

Hanoi-based PeaceSoft Solution Corporation on April 23 sold half its shares in NganLuong.com, one of Vietnam's first electronic pocket and online payment portals, to MOL Access Portal Sdn Berhad, the Malaysian branch of MOL Global, one of Southeast Asia's biggest Internet companies that handles more than 60 million transactions every year with an annual payment volume of over US$300 million.

Ganesh Kumar Bangah, general director of MOL Global, said chances for developing e-commerce and online payment in Vietnam were aplenty, even larger than those for development of mobile devices.

Bangah said Vietnam is not only one of the fastest growing markets, but also one of the biggest Internet markets in Southeast Asia with more than 31 million users.

Hunter Arnold, Asia-Pacific chairman of US online employment giant CareerBuilder, which in February bought out DFJ VinaCapital, the main shareholder of Vietnam Online Network that owns job sites HRVietnam and KiemViec, said that having 33 percent of the population as Internet users gives Vietnam a big advantage in the online recruitment market.

Online jobs company En-japan last month bought 89.8 percent or around 9.98 million shares worth $22.11 million from Navigos Group, Vietnam's leading recruitment company based in Ho Chi Minh City.

Reuters earlier quoted the Japanese company, which has operations in China, Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, and Korea, as saying that it would acquire the remaining 10.2 percent by March 2016.

In the data processing segment, FPT Software Company in March announced the formation of a joint venture with AGREX, a leading Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) service company in Japan.

The new company, AGREX's first joint venture in Southeast Asia, is expected to start providing BPO services in Vietnam starting this July.

Leading national IT retailer Thegioididong is expecting investments from an Asian investment fund this May, after the Ho Chi Minh City-based Mekong Capital diverted its money from the chain in March.

Chu Tien Dung, chairman of Ho Chi Minh City Computer Association and the city's Quang Trung software park, said investment in Vietnam's IT industry was increasing, especially in Internet content services.

According to the Ministry of Investment and Planning, Vietnam has attracted nearly $4 billion into IT development so far this year via 853 different projects.

Dung said many investors from Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Europe have visited the park, seeking entry into the domestic market.

"Vietnam has many factors that interest the investors, including a complete Internet infrastructure, widespread 3G network, a strong users base, and Internet services at the start of their development," he told Thoi Bao Kinh Te Saigon Online.

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Vietnam Dairy Products JSC, Southeast Asias biggest milk producer by market value, is in talks to buy another U.S. company as it accelerates acquisitions to expand globally and drive revenue.

The company, known as Vinamilk, expects the deal to close as early as next year, Chief Executive Officer Mai Kieu Lien said in an interview, declining to give the name of the target or the deal value. The dairy firm, which already has a stake in California-based Driftwood Dairy, may increase its mergers and acquisitions war chest as it strives to achieve annual revenue of $3 billion by the end of 2017, she said.

U.S. is the most difficult market, Lien said at her office in Ho Chi Minh City. If we are accepted in the U.S. market, it will be a big advantage for us, helping us to penetrate into other markets and boost our growth.

Vinamilk is casting for acquisitions overseas as Vietnams dairy market remains underdeveloped compared with neighboring countries. Dairy consumption per capita was 19 liters per year in 2015, compared with 51 liters in Malaysia and 34 liters in Thailand, according to Saigon Securities JSC. The market hasnt expanded as rapidly as Vinamilk anticipated when it set the revenue goal a few years ago, Lien said.

Boosting M&A

The company is also looking for opportunities outside the U.S to achieve its sales target, Lien said. It set aside 4 trillion dong ($179.3 million) for M&A activities last year, but hasnt used any of it, Lien said, adding that they can increase the amount if needed in the future.

The goal of annual revenue of $3 billion will be very difficult to meet if we dont boost M&A activities, she said.

Lien forecasts average annual growth for Vietnams dairy industry to remain at about 7 percent to 9 percent in the next five years. Vinamilk is aiming for the growth of at least 10 percent a year, she said.

Outside of Vietnam and the U.S., Vinamilk has operations in New Zealand and Cambodia. It will build a new milk-powder factory in Vietnam next year and plans to expand production at its New Zealand factory, which is operating at full capacity, Lien said. Vinamilk, which was established in 1976 from the combination of three state-owned dairy factories, currently exports its products to 43 markets including Japan, Canada, the U.S. and Australia.

In the next five years, Vinamilk aims to increase its share of the powder-milk market at home to about 50 percent from 40 percent, and of the fresh-milk segment to about 60 percent from 53 percent, Lien said. It expects to keep its market share in condensed milk at about 80 percent.

To meet growing demand in an economy expected to expand at more than 6 percent this year, the company is also studying products in other markets that may be suitable for local customers, Lien said.

The shares of Vinamilk, the biggest company on the VN Index, have climbed 37 percent this year, compared with 14 percent for the benchmark. The stock was added to MSCI Inc.s frontier-markets index last month and is expected to be included in the two Vietnam exchange-traded funds this month.

The dairy company in July received approval from the State Securities Commission to remove the 49 percent foreign ownership limit on its stocks. The State Capital Investment Corp., a government investment arm, currently still holds a 45.1 percent stake and hasnt yet given specific timing for divestment.

The company, which had revenue of 40.223 trillion dong in 2015, expects to reach and exceed its earnings target this year, Lien said. After-tax profit rose 33 percent in the first six months of the year.
Ho Chi Minh City has been losing 33.5 percent of its tap water every day due to leaky and broken pipes, while many families in the outskirts have to resort to polluted water sources.

A new report from the citys water supply company Sawaco said the loss rate measured at the end of 2014 was 500,000 cubic meters ( 17,657,333 cubic feet ) per day. That is equal to the daily capacity of a medium-sized water plant in the city.

Experts familiar with the matter said the loss rate is too high compared to 5-7 percent in most countries, and 8 percent in nearby Binh Duong and Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province.

The daily loss is worth $123,000, based on Sawacos lowest water rate of VND5,300 a cubic meter.

Dang Van Khoa, a former member of the citys legislative office, estimated that the amount of water lost is enough for 750,000 people.

Pham Van Dong, in charge of economic and budget issues at the office, said Sawaco may raise prices to fund water loss control and consumers will be the ultimate victims.

The state-owned company in January said the city government has approved its plan to hike water prices by 10.5 percent every year for the next five years. But critics opposed the plan, urging it to reduce water leakage to cut costs instead.

Dr. Ngo Hoang Van from Ho Chi Minhs Water and Environment Association said the city needs to restructure the system that manages water supply, which is supervised by the Transport Department.

Van said the $44 million-plus World Bank-backed project for reducing water loss in the city the past years was ineffective.

The city needs to explain why the project failed, he said.

'Weaknesses'

An unidentified representative of Sawaco admitted that there are weaknesses in the management.

But he said there are also other causes, such as infrastructure works which damage the pipe network, and the large number of connecting points in the network which make leaks more likely than in other cities.

An engineer working for Sawaco, who did not want to be named, said the main reason of the leaks is that many parts of the water infrastructure are too old.

Families that do not have access to tap water have to buy these cans every day. Photo: Diep Duc Minh

Some were built more than 30 years ago, and some dated back to the colonial ear, he said, adding that new parts were not even of high quality because the contractors may have tried to pocket some money.

The huge water loss is even more questionable considering many residents still lack access to clean water.

Thousands of families in outlying districts have lived with ground water for years, a source that has been running short and becoming polluted recently.
Water comes out of a broken pipe in Ho Chi Minh City. Photo: Diep Duc Minh

Ho Chi Minh City is losing more than a quarter of its tap water through pipe leaks and ruptures, which translates to a loss of more than US$130,000 every day.

Figures from Saigon Water Corporation (Sawaco) showed that the ratio of leaked water has been reduced from 41 percent seven years ago to 28 percent now. That is still 556,000 cubic meters of clean water going to waste.

The company plans to improve leakage control and bring the rate down to 25 percent by 2020, its representatives said at a meeting Wednesday.

In comparison, the ratio in the neighboring Binh Duong Province is 8 percent.

Deputy CEO of Sawaco Bui Thanh Giang said it is short of fund to replace the pipeline system, which has become old and broken at many parts.

Around 150 kilometers of water pipes, or half of the system in the city downtown, have been in use as long as 80 years.
Lam Dong authorities have seized a large gemstone that a farmer found in his coffee farm in the Central Highlands province.

Bui Tanh Binh, a local official, said the 20-ton gemstone will be examined before any further action is taken. Some experts believe it is chalcedony.

Local media reported that Pham Van Chinh found the raw gemstone when digging in his coffee farm in Bao Lam District. He then pulled it up without reporting to local authorities as required.

Finders of high-value objects are eligible for an amount equal to 10 months of basic salary (currently VND1.21 million) and half of the exceeding value, while the rest belongs to the state. Last year, a farmer and his neighbor found a 30-ton chalcedony stone in his farm in Dak Nong Province. The farmer, Nguyen Chi Thanh, then sold the gemstone to Truong Quoc Hao who later attempted to sell it to a collector in Dak Lak. Hao was caught and the stone was seized by the police.

Dak Nong police have proposed fines of VND550 million (US$25,540), but the punitive measure has not been taken so far, amid debates over entitlement to valuable discoveries.
Photographer Nick Ut stands beside his iconic Vietnam War picture of the Napalm Girl at an event in Hanoi in June 2015

Norways Prime Minister Erna Solberg joined escalating protests over censorship by Facebook Inc., posting the iconic Vietnam War picture of the Napalm Girl to her profile on the social media network.

Solbergs post was the latest in a row over photographer Nick Uts Pulitzer-prize winning picture of a naked Vietnamese girl, Phan Thi Kim Phuc, running down a road after being injured in a napalm attack on her village in 1972.

The controversy started as Facebook removed the picture from thriller writer Tom Egelands profile because of its rules on nudity. Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten then joined in and published the picture on its Facebook page, which was also censored. The newspaper on Friday also published an open letter to the social medias founder, Mark Zuckerberg, to protest the action.

A little more than three hours after Solberg posted the picture on Friday morning, it was also removed.

I appreciate the work of Facebook and other media to stop pictures and content showing abuse and violence, Solberg said in a comment that was posted with the picture. But Facebook gets it wrong when it censors pictures like these. It contributes to restricting the freedom of speech.

Content regulation

Facebook is facing criticism over its regulation of content as it aims to find a universal standard to apply to its 1.7 billion monthly users, and bans on pornography prevent posting art or historic photographs like the one at the heart of the controversy in Norway.

Facebook is seeking to strike a balance between enabling free speech and maintaining a safe and respectful experience for our global community, it said.

While we recognize that this photo is iconic, its difficult to create a distinction between allowing a photograph of a nude child in one instance and not others, an unidentified Facebook spokesperson said in an e-mailed comment. Our solutions wont always be perfect, but we will continue to try to improve our policies and the ways in which we apply them.
The top military commander of the militant group Jabhat Fateh al Sham, the former al Qaeda offshoot in Syria, was killed in an aerial raid that targeted a meeting of the group's leaders, both the group and rebel sources said on Thursday.

The commander Abu Hajer al Homsi, whose alias is Abu Omar Saraqeb, was killed in a rural area of Aleppo province, they said, where the group has played an instrumental role in ongoing battles against the Syrian army troops and Iranian-backed Shi'ite militias in the gateway city of Aleppo.

An announcement by the group said he was "martyred" in an air strike in the countryside of Aleppo. The nationality of the jets that hit the location was not immediately known, but a rebel source said initial information suggested it was most likely a U.S. jet that struck the hideout.

Since the U.S.-led coalition was launched, air strikes have targeted Nusra Front figures in Syria, killing scores. But this marked the first time a key figure has been targeted since the group's name change.

Abu Omar Saraqeb was a founding member of Nusra Front, Al Qaeda's powerful Syrian branch, and had been among the jihadists who fought U.S. forces in Iraq after the U.S. invasion in 2003 before returning to Syria.

Along with other leaders, the jihadist figure set up Jaish al Fateh or the army of conquest - a military alliance of Islamist rebel groups that last year drove the Syrian army from the northwestern city of Idlib at the height of insurgents' advances.

The major Russian military campaign at the end of last year turned the tide in Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's favor and thwarted the Sunni insurgents' rapid gains that brought them close to Assad's minority Alawite stronghold on the coast.

Another Islamist insurgent source told Reuters the militants were present in a secret hideout in the village of Kafr Naha when the raid took place. The leader of the group Abu Mohammad al-Jolani was apparently not at the meeting.

Few other details emerged of the strike, but a photo of another top leader known as Abu Muslim al Shami circulated on social media showing him alive in an effort to refute reports he had also been killed.

The Nusra Front announced last July it was ending its relationship with al Qaeda, the global jihadist network founded by Osama bin Laden, to remove a pretext used by world powers to inflict civilian casualties.

The move appeared to be an attempt to appeal to Syrians who have long had deep misgivings about Nusra's links with al Qaeda and the presence of foreign jihadists in its ranks.

The move was dismissed by Washington, which said it did not change its stance on the organization that is listed as a terrorist group and remained a fair target. Washington said altering the name of the group did not signal a shedding of its hardline al Qaeda-style ideology.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov have been trying to reach a deal on deeper cooperation between the U.S. and Russian militaries against radical groups operating in Syria, particularly Islamic State and the former Nusra Front.

One of the complications is that former Nusra operates side by side with Western-backed moderate Free Syrian Army (FSA) rebel groups in major frontlines against the Syrian army that is aided by heavy Russian air power and fighters from Iran-backed militias.
(L to R) Myanmar's State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, Thailand's Prime Minister Prayuth Chano-cha, Vietnam's Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc, U.S President Barack Obama, Laos Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith, Philippines Foreign Minister Perfecto Yasay, Brunei's Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen, Indonesia's President Joko Widodo and Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak pose for photo during ASEAN-U.S. Summit in Vientia

Barack Obama defended his efforts to 'rebalance' U.S. foreign policy toward Asia on Thursday even as he wound up the final visit of his presidency to the region with the South China Sea dispute still smoldering.

Obama's trip to Asia began and ended on awkward notes.

Arriving for a G20 summit in China last week, his staff argued with airport security officials over media access, and a meeting in Laos with the Philippines' new president was called off after he alluded to Obama as "a son of a bitch".

Obama, who lived in Indonesia as a boy with his mother, a development worker, told a group of young leaders that the emphasis he had placed on Asia over his two terms was personal.

But addressing leaders of Southeast Asian nations in Laos on Thursday, he said it was also "key to a peaceful and prosperous future for the world", and voiced his hope that whoever succeeds him in the White House next year would take it forward.

Obama, whose foreign policy focus has been widely seen as a response to China's economic and military muscle-flexing across the region, said critics at home were wrong to say it had failed when Asian leaders only wanted more.

"The concern that I've heard is - will it continue? And, almost uniformly, the questions I get from other leaders is: we hope that America's interest, and presence, and engagement is sustained," he told a news conference in Vientiane, the capital of Laos.

Nevertheless, there was barely concealed tension at the summit of East Asian and Southeast Asian nations in Laos.

China denounces "interference"

The leaders played down differences over the South China Sea in a carefully worded statement, mentioning only that several of them were "seriously concerned over recent developments" in the waterway that is the most volatile hotspot in the region.

China, Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei have competing claims on the sea, through which more than $5 trillion of trade moves annually. The last four are part of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

The statement made no reference to a July ruling by a court in The Hague that declared illegal some of China's artificial islands and invalidated its claims to almost the entire sea.

But Obama pointedly told the meeting that the arbitration ruling, which China refuses to recognize, was "binding".

"We discussed the importance of claimants adhering to steps they've already agreed including respecting international law, not militarizing disputed areas and not occupying uninhabited islands, reefs and shoals," he told reporters later.

For its part, Beijing voiced objections several times to what it referred to as countries outside the region "interfering" in tussles over the South China Sea - wording that is usually understood to mean the United States and Japan.

Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin told reporters in Laos it had been "inappropriate" for two countries, which he did not name, to bring up the arbitration issue during the summit.

Besides the ASEAN members, China, Japan, South Korea, Russia, India, Australia, New Zealand and the United States attended.

China has over the past year alarmed other claimants, and outside powers such as the United States and Japan, by re-claiming land on several disputed reefs through dredging, and building air fields and port facilities.

The Philippines, a longtime ally of the United States, pumped up tension over the South China Sea on Wednesday ahead of a meeting between Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and ASEAN leaders.

It released photographs and a map showing what it said was an increased number of Chinese vessels near the disputed Scarborough Shoal, which China seized after a standoff in 2012.

Its defense ministry expressed "grave concern" that China was preparing to build structures at the shoal.

China's embassy in Manila said there has been no dredging or building at the shoal and China has maintained a coastguard presence there for law enforcement patrols.

Spat with Manila over slur

The Philippines' move came after a dispute with the United States, its former colonial power. Ties turned frosty when new President Rodrigo Duterte insulted Obama on Monday, prompting the cancellation of a meeting between them.

Duterte has bristled at criticism from abroad of his war on drugs, in which more than 2,400 people have been killed since he became president two months ago.

Obama and Duterte made some steps toward clearing the air late on Wednesday, chatting briefly, and exchanging pleasantries as they prepared to take their seats at a leaders' dinner.

Obama has made 11 trips to the region as U.S. president.

But they have often been overshadowed by events at home or other parts of the world, and his ambition to put a Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact at the heart of the "pivot" to Asia has been frustrated.

The prospects for U.S. congressional approval for the TPP have looked increasingly dim, with both major presidential candidates - Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump - standing opposed.

"I have said before and I will say again failure to move ahead with TPP ... will call into question America's leadership," Obama said in Laos. "I think it is important for the entire region and it is important for the United States."
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte told Barack Obama he never called him a "son of a bitch", he said on Friday, but he maintained a defiant stance on his war on drugs, saying U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon was a fool for bringing up human rights.

U.S. President Obama canceled a planned meeting with Duterte at this week's ASEAN summit in Laos after the Philippine leader's alleged insult in his native Tagalog, but the two met briefly later as they waited to take their seats at a banquet.

While on a visit to the Indonesian capital on Friday, Duterte told a group of Filipinos that the slur was not directed at the U.S. president and that he had told him so.

"I was ready (for Obama). I was waiting for Obama to respond. Lawyer to lawyer, we are both lawyers anyway... I said I never made the statement. Check it out.

"...I said that, but not in relation to Obama," he said. "I'm not fighting with America."

Obama and Duterte shook hands and had a brief chat on Wednesday, officials said, easing the standoff. Duterte had his outburst on Monday when he was defending his war on drugs that has killed at least 2,400 Filipinos.

Duterte on Friday said he thought U.N. Secretary-General Ban a fool for bringing up the issue of human rights violations weeks before the summit in Laos.

"Even Ban Ki-moon weighed in," Duterte said. "Also gave a statement before, several weeks ago, about the human rights violation. Sabi ko, isa ka pang tarantado (you are another fool)."
The U.S.-led war on Islamic State has depleted the group's funds, leadership and foreign fighters, but the biggest battle yet is expected later this year in Iraq's northern city of Mosul, where Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared his "caliphate" two years ago.

The jihadist insurgents have lost more than half the territory they seized in Iraq and nearly as much in neighboring Syria, but still manage to control their twin capitals of Mosul and Raqqa, symbols of the state they sought to build at the heart of the Middle East.

Military and humanitarian preparations are now in full swing to retake Mosul, the largest city under the ultra-hardline group's control. American troops are establishing a logistics hub to the south, while the United Nations warns of the world's most complex humanitarian operation this year.

Iraq's recapture over the summer of Qayyara airbase and surrounding areas along the Tigris river 60 km (nearly 40 miles) south of Mosul have set the stage for a big push on the city, which commanders say could start by late October.

Whether Islamic State makes a final stand in Mosul or slips away to fight another day remains in question, but Baghdad expects a fierce battle and the international coalition backing it is preparing for one.

The densely populated river valley may hold obstacles for the military, though Islamic State appears to be putting up relatively little resistance, possibly to conserve fighters for a showdown in Mosul where their forces are estimated at between 3,000 and 9,000.

Hardcore fighters have likely slipped out already through the desert and into Syria, while many top leaders and foreign fighters have been killed in targeted air strikes, according to Major General Najm al-Jabouri, the Mosul operation's commander.

He told Reuters that victory by year's end would be easy, in keeping with pledges by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.

"We will go to Mosul, they will go to Tel Afar. We will go to Tel Afar, they will go to Baaj," said Jabouri, referring to IS-controlled districts 70 km (44 miles) and 140 km (87 miles) west of Mosul, respectively, which can be used to reach Syria.

"We will go to Baaj, maybe. It depends on the situation in Syria. They can get to Syria but the situation there is not like before. It is not a safe haven for them now."

Turning tide

Lieutenant General Vincent Stewart, Director of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, said on Thursday he expected the Mosul operation could unfold in the next two or three months but that it would be long and difficult.

"Urban warfighting is not easy and this is a large city that has had at least two years to prepare to defend its position ... It's going to be a multi-dimensional fight," Stewart said at a national security summit in Washington.

Displaced children, who fled from the Islamic State violence, are seen at Debaga Camp in the Makhmour area near Mosul, Iraq, August 30, 2016.

The war against jihadist insurgents in the Middle East has ebbed and flowed but there is a palpable sense in the region that the tide has turned against Islamic State.

In the past year and a half, the group has lost swathes of territory and strategic outposts. In Iraq it was driven out of Tikrit and Sinjar in the north, the oil refinery town of Baiji, and finally Ramadi and Falluja in western Anbar province, the heart of the insurgency following the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 that toppled Saddam Hussein.

In northern Syria, U.S.-allied Kurdish militia of the People's Protection Units (YPG) have taken vital territory and border crossings below the frontier with Turkey after capturing Kobani and later taking Tel Abyad, a key supply line for the jihadist capital Raqqa further south. The YPG has expanded its territory west of the Euphrates, seizing Manbij last month.

Meanwhile Turkey, backing Syrian rebels, this month cleared Islamic State from its southern border by seizing some 20 villages while Libyan government forces are close to flushing IS insurgents from holdouts in Sirte.

Amid those territorial losses, Islamic State has claimed credit for a surge in global attacks this year beyond its main Middle East theater. European countries remain on alert for additional strikes based on undisclosed information.

Nonetheless, the U.S. military has said Iraq is on track to retake Mosul later this year. Over the past two weeks, convoys of sophisticated engineering vehicles have been seen approaching Qayyara airbase, which Islamic State wrecked before withdrawing in July.

Repairing it to help supply the 20,000 to 30,000 Iraqi troops expected to be used in the campaign could take another two months. Until then, forces trained by the U.S.-led coalition are amassing further afield.

Mosul fell to Islamic State in June 2014 when Iraqi security forces, riddled with corruption and sectarianism despite billions of dollars in U.S. aid, dropped their weapons and fled from the insurgents.

Kurdish and Shi'ite forces

Kurdish peshmerga forces, entrenched east, north and northwest of Mosul since 2014, will help tighten the noose around the city but might not enter central districts to avoid aggravating political sensitivities.

After retaking 11 villages southeast of Mosul last month, they are now eyeing eastern Christian and Shabak villages long abandoned by minority communities the group seeks to eliminate.

The peshmerga's role is complicated by tensions with the central government, which claims territory the Kurds have taken from IS and effectively annexed to their autonomous region. The Kurds say Baghdad is not forthcoming about its military strategy for Mosul or its plans to manage it after the battle.

U.S soldiers walk on a bridge within the town of Gwer northern Iraq August 31, 2016.

"If we do not prepare the politics of it, we may not succeed in the military plan or we may succeed in the military plan but lose the political plan and that would be disastrous," Falah Mustafa Bakir, the head of Kurdistan's Foreign Relations Department, told Reuters last week.

The participation of the Hashid Shaabi, a government umbrella for mostly Shi'ite militias, is also unresolved. Powerful commanders have pledged to take part, despite fears among Mosul's Sunni leaders and residents of rights abuses.

Prime Minister Abadi said this week the demands of the battle would dictate the disposition of forces but that no decision had been made to bar the Hashid.

Confrontation that inflames sectarian tensions between Shi'ite-led government forces and the Sunni jihadists of Islamic State risks turning Mosul into a "bloodbath", according to a Western diplomat in Baghdad.

Humanitarian crisis

The Mosul operation has also triggered large-scale humanitarian planning, with the U.N. predicting up to one million people could flee the city in all directions.

The Kurds expect half of those leaving will head towards their territory, which already struggles to accommodate more than one million displaced people.

Displaced children, who fled from the Islamic State violence, are seen at Debaga Camp in the Makhmour area near Mosul, Iraq, August 30, 2016.

Regional authorities, fearing a new wave will exacerbate demographic and security concerns, aim to settle new arrivals in camps outside of main cities.

In the best-case scenario, though, there is only enough land and funding for about 450,000 people, according to a senior U.N. official, raising the prospect of housing others in unused buildings or abandoned villages.

"If there is mass displacement, there could be shantytowns in the disputed border areas because the plan for camps doesn't accommodate them all," said Tom Robinson, director of Rise Foundation, which analyses Iraq's humanitarian crisis.

Aid workers say the authorities are limiting the construction of new camps to discourage displacement. In fact, the military is urging residents to shelter in place as it advances, but that will only be feasible if fighting doesn't lay waste to homes and infrastructure as it has before.

Jabouri, the top Iraqi commander, dismissed concerns that such a scheme jeopardises civilians' safety, saying: "What does it mean if some areas receive mortars? That's not the end of the world. We are in Iraq, not in Switzerland."
Ari Fleischer speaks during an interview with Reuters in his office in Bedford, New York, U.S. September 7, 2016. Picture taken September 7, 2016.

The notes are handwritten on a legal pad and provide a verbatim account of the shock, pain and grim determination aboard Air Force One on Sept. 11, 2001.

They were scribbled by Ari Fleischer, press secretary for President George W. Bush, and he is releasing them to mark the 15th anniversary on Sunday of the worst attack on American soil since Japanese forces bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941.

There are six pages in all, the only original verbatim text of what Bush said on Air Force One as he and his senior aides absorbed the news.

"Were at war," Bush told Vice President Dick Cheney. Hanging up and turning to his aides, he added: "When we find out who did this, they're not going to like me as president. Somebody's going to pay."

Fleischer adopted the role of presidential note taker as Air Force One lifted off from Florida after the twin towers in New York and the Pentagon were attacked by hijacked passenger jets.

"I always took notes. It's how you do your job," Fleischer told Reuters. "But on Sept. 11 it was instantly clear how much more important it was to have a record of what the president did and said. I basically glued myself to his side almost the entire day and remained in his cabin on Air Force One to listen and take notes."

Ari Fleischer looks over 9/11 notes during an interview with Reuters in his office in Bedford, New York, U.S. September 7, 2016. Picture taken September 7, 2016.

Much of the material has been part of the public record. Fleischer has used them for annual tweets about Sept. 11 and in speeches and made them available to the commission that investigated the 9/11 attacks. But he has not previously released them in full to the public.

The story that unfolds in Fleischer's penmanship begins with the raw emotions Bush and his aides experienced, the president already itching to retaliate.

"I can't wait to find out who did it," Bush said. "It's going to take a while and we're not going to have a little slap on the wrist crap."

There is a dramatic period in which Bush tries to overcome opposition from the Secret Service to letting him return to Washington. The plane first took him to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, then Offutt air base in Nebraska. He got back to Washington that night.

"I want to get home as soon as possible," Bush said. "I don't want whoever this is holding me outside Washington."

An aide responded: "Our people are saying it's too unsteady still."

Bush said that was the message he was hearing from Cheney as well.

Bush chief of staff Andy Card said, "The right thing is to let the dust settle."

Fleischer's notes include an eerie reference to a communication heard on the plane from the ground that "Angel is next." Because Air Force One's codename at the time was "angel," there was worry onboard that the plane was a target.

He said an armed guard was stationed outside the door leading to the Air Force One cockpit, just in case someone was a threat on the plane itself.

A month later, Bush and his team were told the reference to "angel" was a miscommunication from the ground. One offshoot of the 9/11 attacks was a major renovation of Air Force One's communications abilities.

The president, only in office for eight months, had another priority in mind as well: making sure his family was safe. Bush's wife, Laura, and their two daughters were whisked to secure locations.

"Barney?" Bush said, inquiring about his beloved Scottish terrier.

"He's nipping at the heels of Osama bin Laden now," said Card.
People drive in the Ramousah area of southern Aleppo, after the Syrian army and allied militia advanced in the area, Syria, in this handout picture provided by SANA on September 9, 2016.

The Syrian army secured a road into the government-held side of Aleppo that was captured by rebels last month and was expected to soon open it for civilians, state-owned al-Ikhbariya TV reported on Friday.

The advance by the Syrian army and allied militia in the Ramousah area of southern Aleppo has reopened the main route into the government-held west while resulting in the complete re-encirclement of the city's rebel-held east.

Insurgent forces including jihadist groups had captured the Ramousah area in August, breaking the siege on eastern Aleppo imposed by government forces in July. The government's loss of the Ramousah road left the people in western Aleppo dependent on a much more dangerous route.

People talk with forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad in the Ramousah area of southern Aleppo, after the Syrian army and allied militia advanced in the area, Syria, in this handout picture provided by SANA on September 9, 2016.

A reporter for Al-Ikhbariya, in a broadcast from the road, said it would be secure for civilian use in the coming few hours. "The whole road is secure," a soldier told the reporter.

The army backed by allied militia from Iran, Iraq and Lebanon, and the Russian air force are now seeking to press their offensive against the insurgents to the south of Aleppo.
Syrians from territory held by opposing sides in the civil war prayed together for peace as they flew to Mecca for the haj, even as President Bashar al-Assad's government accused Saudi Arabia of politicizing the annual Muslim pilgrimage.

Riyadh has no diplomatic ties with Damascus and requires Syrians seeking to make the haj to obtain visas in third countries through a committee controlled by the Syrian National Coalition (SNC), an anti-Assad opposition body.

"Saudi Arabia now does not deal with the legitimate government (in Syria) but rather with individuals who are not recognized, and thus the responsibility for protecting these people falls on the Saudi government," Sheikh Ahmed al-Jazaily, an advisor at Syria's Islamic Affairs ministry, told Reuters by telephone.

Tamam al-Khatib, an SNC official, said Saudi Arabia gave the group 9,000 visas for Syrian pilgrims residing in Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Turkey.

For Syria, which had 23 million people before the war, that is far less than its usual quota of 1,000 visas per million Muslims, Jazaily said. All able-bodied Muslims who have the means are expected to make the pilgrimage once in their lifetimes.

Whichever side they came from, Syrians on board a flight from Beirut to Mecca made no mention of their differences and said the pilgrimage transcended politics.

Safaa, 40, said she had traveled from government-controlled Damascus with her parents, her sister, her brother and his wife, despite the difficulty of arranging the trip.

"All our friends and relatives in Damascus asked us to make special prayers for them while in the Grand Mosque," said Safaa, wearing the seamless white cloth all pilgrims must use during haj. "God willing, we will pray for them and all of Syria."

Mariam, 60, made the journey from Talfita, an opposition-held village north of the Syrian capital.

"We left the war and suffering and came to haj. By God ... I long to see the Prophet," she said, as her cousin Khadra gazed at white clouds and the yellow desert below. "May God give Syria a remission."

None of the Syrian pilgrims who spoke to Reuters on the flight would give their surnames, to protect relatives back home. Nor would any say which side they support in the five year conflict, which has killed hundreds of thousands of people and made 11 million Syrians homeless.

Open discussion of politics is traditionally barred during the haj. However, Reuters met only members of Syria's Sunni Muslim majority on the flight; there appeared to be no members of Assad's minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam, many of whose adherents see Saudi Arabia as a sectarian enemy.

Jazaily, the Syrian government advisor, said Damascus would not block Syrians from taking part in the haj, but would not be able to offer them protection.

"From our side, we are not stopping anybody from going to haj," he said. "But if a pilgrim goes on his own, are his rights protected? If they faced a problem, where will they turn?"
French policemen take part in a police raid in Boussy-Saint-Antoine near Paris, France, September 8, 2016

Three women arrested on Thursday in connection with a car laden with gas cylinders found abandoned near Paris's Notre Dame cathedral were likely planning an imminent attack, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said.

The minister said one of the women had stabbed a police officer during the arrest before being shot and wounded. A source close to the investigation said the attacker was the missing 19-year-old daughter of the car's owner.

The discovery on Saturday night of the Peugeot 607 loaded with seven gas cylinders, six of them full, prompted a counter-terrorism investigation in a country where militants have killed more than 230 people in attacks since January, 2015.

Police sources said no detonator had been found, though the vehicle also contained three jerry cans of diesel fuel, adding to concerns that there had been a plan to explode the car.

French policemen take part in a police raid in Boussy-Saint-Antoine near Paris, France, September 8, 2016.

"These three women aged 39, 23 and 19 had been radicalised, were fanatics and were in all likelihood preparing an imminent, violent act," Cazeneuve said in a televised statement.

Seven people have now been detained since Tuesday in connection with the investigation.

Missing daughter

The arrests took place in Boussy-Saint-Antoine, some 30 km (20 miles) south-east of Paris.

A Reuters photographer later saw a hand-cuffed person being carried into a building in that town, in the area cordoned off by police, where house searches were being carried out. Police investigators and bomb-disposal experts were on the ground.

The town's mayor told BFM TV there had been no specific threat of an attack in the local area.

The Peugeot was found in the early hours of Sunday morning on a Seine riverside road metres from Notre Dame cathedral.

Documents with writing in Arabic were also found in the car, which had no registration plates and was left with its hazard lights flashing.

French policemen take part in a police raid in Boussy-Saint-Antoine near Paris, France, September 8, 2016.

The car owner was taken into custody earlier this week but later released. He had gone to police on Sunday to report that his daughter had disappeared with his car, officials said.

His daughter, officials say, is known to police for wanting to leave for Syria, where scores of religiously radicalised people of French and other nationalities have joined the ranks of the Islamic State militant group.

France, which is taking part in bombing the militant group's bases in Iraq and Syria, remains on maximum alert after calls for attacks on the country.

Thousands of extra police and soldiers have been deployed to patrol sensitive sites since 130 people were killed by Islamist gunmen and suicide bombers in attacks on Paris last November.

A state of emergency declared at that time is still in place and gives police extra search and arrest powers but debate still rages over security after another attack in July in which a man drove a truck into crowds in the city of Nice, killing 86.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump reads off a teleprompter as he speaks at the Cleveland Arts and Social Sciences Academy in Cleveland, Ohio, U.S., September 8, 2016.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trumps U.S. military buildup plan would cost hundreds of billions of dollars - but with no apparent strategy, defense experts from across the political spectrum said on Thursday.

I havent seen any kind of strategy, said William Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy. He (Trump) says nobody is going to challenge us because we will be so strong. But thats not a strategy. Its just a kind of wish-fulfillment.

Asked to comment on the criticism, a Trump campaign adviser merely repeated Trump's plan.

Trump's proposal, unveiled in a speech on Wednesday, did not spell out how he would accommodate the additional manpower and hardware as the United States shutters military bases, or where and for what purposes the larger forces would be employed. There were no cost estimates and Trump proposed revenue-raising steps that budget experts called insufficient.

He just called for higher defense spending without giving us a number and without telling us how he is going to pay for it, said Lawrence Korb, a former Reagan administration Pentagon official and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a think tank aligned with the Obama administration.

Trumps Democratic opponent in the Nov. 8 election, Hillary Clinton, advocates tough defense and foreign policies, but has yet to take a stand on the size of the Pentagon budget.

Trump pledged to expand the Army to 540,000 active-duty troops from its current 480,000, increase the Marine Corps from 23 to 36 battalions  or as many as 10,000 more Marines  boost the Navy from 276 to 350 ships and submarines, and raise Air Force tactical aircraft from 1,100 to 1,200.

He said he would bolster the development of missile defenses and cyber capabilities. He made no mention of U.S. nuclear forces already in the midst of a modernization effort that will cost an estimated $1 trillion over 30 years.

To pay for the buildup, Trump said he would ask Congress to lift a Pentagon budget cap and fully offset the increased costs by collecting unpaid taxes, cutting appropriations for federal programs operating without congressional reauthorization, cracking down on social welfare fraud and other fraud, and collecting additional taxes and fees from increased energy production.

The Trump campaign adviser, who requested anonymity, said the campaign estimated the cost of the expansion at $600 billion over 10 years.

'Soft-pedaling' the cost

Writing in The Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine, Tom Donnelly, a defense scholar at the American Enterprise Institute think tank who opposes Trumps election, praised Trump for embracing a buildup that many mainstream Republicans advocate.

However, Trump undercut the power of his proposals by soft-pedaling the cost of such a buildup, he wrote.

Independent cost estimates for Trump's plan range from $150 billion in additional spending over 10 years, according to the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, to as much as $900 billion over the same period, as assessed by Todd Harrison, a defense budget analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank.

Harrison said that increase could be achieved only by raising the federal budget deficit, raising taxes, or cutting other spending, such as benefits programs for seniors and the poor. None of those things are politically popular, he said.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated that lifting the cap would cost $450 billion over 10 years. The revenue-generating steps proposed by Trump would leave $150 billion of that amount uncovered, it said.

Another flaw in Trump's plan is the assumption that Republican members of the House of Representatives who belong to the deficit-fighting tea party movement would agree to end the budget cap.

In April, Army Chief of Staff General Mark Milley told a Senate committee that adding more soldiers without a sufficient budget would be disastrous for the country and the Army. Bases would close and programs that support troops and their families would have to be curtailed to make up the shortfall, he said.

The Navy already has launched a shipbuilding program to raise the number of vessels to more than 300 by 2021. Trump's plan fails to account for the country's limited shipbuilding capacity and the cost of manning, maintaining and basing the additional warships he proposes to build.

The whole thing is unrealistic, said Dov Zakheim, the Pentagons top financial official under former President George W. Bush. Zakheim, who opposes a Trump presidency, estimates that Trumps plan would boost defense spending by roughly $300 billion over five years. Its a soundbite, he said.
State and local officials said Thursday a lack of rental options for flood victims means more mobile homes are needed while federal officials insist the homes remain only a last option.

Even people who lived in upstairs apartments that stayed dry are learning they have to move because of mold and construction work on their downstairs neighbors units, said Metro Council members Donna Collins-Lewis and Buddy Amoroso, both real estate professionals.

"We're already almost out of rental properties," Collins-Lewis said.

She believes FEMA mobile home parks are likely inevitable, but unsure where they would go.

Amoroso said those who need FEMA homes who cannot fit one in their yard may wind up in an area near the airport.

FEMA has approached the airport about potentially serving as a trailer park site, but no agreement has been reached, airport spokesman Jim Caldwell said.

FEMA officials agree, to a point.

"It is a very tight market," FEMA spokesman Darrell Habisch said. "Obviously hotel rooms as well as rental properties are at a premium."

But FEMA officials also said injecting more mobile homes  manufactured housing units in FEMA parlance  remains the last option.

"It is because we want to place people in their communities, closer to their work, their schools," Habisch said.

"You can't just place a manufactured housing unit anywhere," he added.

The issue points up a growing dilemma: how to balance efforts to keep flood victims in their communities versus a need for them to land a spot somewhere.

In Livingston Parish, officials are frustrated by a lack of progress getting FEMA mobile homes.

Only four have arrived so far.

"Let's quit talking about it and get them in," Livingston Parish President Layton Ricks said.

Denham Springs Mayor Gerard Landry said the equipment is "desperately needed."

"Right now we have to have these things ... Without the trailers we cannot make this happen."

Parish leaders are also pleading for the mobile homes to be in place before school resumes  Sept. 12  to lessen the impact on school children.

Ternell Lagarde, who is staying at the River Center with her husband and four children, is afraid she will be forced into a rent place far away, and disrupt her children's education.

Lagarde has been told they have to move in six days.

"The Red Cross hasn't told us where we are going," and calls to FEMA have gone nowhere.

"All the hotels are full, houses are not available," she said. "Just don't kick us out on the street."

Cotherin Williams, 68, and his wife Carrsandra, 59, have applied for a slew of federal programs and are also waiting for an adjuster from the flood insurance company to size up the damages to their north Baton Rouge home.

The couple is living with their son in Mid City.

"What we're trying to do now, we're trying to get FEMA to put a trailer on the premises," said Cotherin, a retired truck driver.

"If they put a trailer out there, we can get everything out of there (home) and do what we have to do."

But so far no word from FEMA.

Quida McLaughlin lost her trailer home on a leafy corner in Denham Springs when floodwater poured in, and she too is in waiting mode on her request for a mobile home.

"I'm still having to get stuff from my lender to my insurance company before I'm able to get anything from FEMA," said McLaughlin, 58.

Experts back up complaints about a lack of rental options.

"Everything is 100 percent occupied," Craig Davenport, an appraiser with Cook Moore & Associates. "There is not a lot of available rental housing."

Sen. Regina Barrow, D-Baton Rouge, is hearing the same from constituents.

"The housing stock in this city was already an issue," Barrow said.

"There are many people who do not have anywhere to stay," she said. "We have to have alternatives."

About 58,000 households are getting rental assistance, with amounts dependent on the size of the household, according to FEMA.

That can mean renting a home, apartment, hotel, motel, manufactured home or recreational vehicle.

Audits are done to try to ensure that the money is used properly.

Broderick Bagert, lead organizer for Together Baton Rouge, said problems for renters finding a place to live needs to be a bigger part of the public discussion.

"We are hearing from hundreds of people in the same boat," Bagert said.

Kurt Pickering, another FEMA spokesman, noted that apartment owners are being offered a rarely-used option aimed at helping those flooded out of homes and apartments.

Arrangements with FEMA can pave the way for repairs for those with five or more units willing to lease to FEMA applicants.

"We are looking at all possible options," Pickering said.

"We are working with HUD, the Red Cross, other voluntary agencies looking for place survivors can stay," he said.

Pickering said federal officials were generally aware of the housing market before the flood since they had a presence in the state after flooding in north Louisiana earlier this year.

"What you have is what you have, and then you start looking for options when you don't have enough," he said. "That is pretty much what we have been doing."

In a report, the Baton Rouge Area Chamber said 40 percent of residents in East Baton Rouge Parish who suffered flood damage were renters and 17 percent in Livingston Parish.

However, only five people were living in FEMA mobile homes Wednesday and 556 families qualify for the units, which carry a $60,000 pricetag.

"We have dozens and dozens of trailers, or manufactured housing units, that are arriving all the time," Habisch said.

Those who suffered home damages of less than $15,000 can qualify for a shelter-in-home, which allows residents to stay put while repairs are made.

Sen. Eddie Lambert, R-Prairieville, said a lack of housing options are prevalent in Ascension Parish.

"People can't find a place to rent," Lambert said. "And the problem is (rental) places are so far away it is not feasible."

Metro Councilman John Delgado, who is running for mayor, represents an area around LSU.

Delgado pointed to thousands of rental units off of Burbank Drive near Ben Hur Road as possible homes for displaced people.

"LSU's student population did not grow by 3,000 over the past year," he said. "They built at least 3,000 units out there by Ben Hur that just opened."

Andrea Gallo and Bryn Stole of The Advocate contributed to this report.
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NEW ROADS  Residents of a Pointe Coupee Parish community prone to flooding were encouraged Thursday night to apply for the state's new Shelter at Home program as they try to restore their lives following last month's devastating floods.

That encouragement from federal, state and local leaders occurred during a town hall meeting during which many residents of Pecan Acres, located in a flood zone, vented their frustrations over being repeatedly denied aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency after previous flooding in their community.

"When you keep getting denied and denied, who else can you go to?" Betty JeanPierre said.

Pecan Acres has been dubbed "Flood City" by residents who claim their neighborhood has flooded some 17 times over the past decade or two.

JeanPierre has lived in the Pecan Acres area, just outside New Roads city limits, for 38 years and said she maintained flood and homeowner's insurance but rarely received payouts on claims from previous floods because insurance companies used loopholes to avert their responsibilities.

"And then FEMA denied me because I didn't have flood insurance anymore after I dropped it," she said. "I'm in a frustrated state!"

JeanPierre was one of nearly 80 people who filled the gymnasium at Rosenwald Elementary School on Thursday seeking help.

Flooding in the community has been an ongoing issue since 1971. The most recent flood, which impacted the entire Baton Rouge region as well, was the last straw for residents in the fixed-income, mostly elderly black community.

The last major flood in Pecan Acres occurred during Hurricane Gustav in 2008. Back then, residents blamed the flood on a drainage pump that failed, causing a canal to overflow and overtop a nearby levee and flooding more than 100 homes in the Pecan Acres and Pleasant View neighborhoods.

Parish officials had said the pump was equipped to handle only 10 inches of rain  not the nearly 14 inches that inundated the system during Gustav.

Residents banded together following the Gustav flood in a class action lawsuit accusing the parish of negligence because of the drainage pump malfunction. They were awarded part of a $2 million insurance settlement in 2012.

They banded together again following last month's historic floods, leaning on help from retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, who galvanized their efforts during a recent community meeting.

Honore, who grew up in Pointe Coupee Parish, leads the Green ARMY, a coalition of environmental groups in Louisiana. His involvement in the Pecan Acres saga has already got the attention of Gov. John Bel Edwards, who toured the area following Honore's Aug. 29 meeting with residents.

Meanwhile, many of the residents aren't qualifying for FEMA aid because they didn't maintain flood insurance the federal government required of them after the were awarded federal aid following previous floods.

"Like healthcare, we need affordable flood insurance," Honore told the crowd Thursday. "If you're spending $3,000 a year on insurance and making only $12,000 a year, it's impossible to afford it for seniors on fixed incomes. But we don't have a solution."

Honore said it's going to take action from national leaders and the White House to address that issue.

In the meantime, local elected officials offered the state's Shelter at Home program as one option.

"This is a different pot of funds," said Cornell Dukes, president of the parish Police Jury. "It doesn't matter if you've already received FEMA funds before. They're not trying to make us whole again, but it's there for you to get as much help as you can."

Through Shelter at Home, certain homeowners can get up to $15,000 worth of basic repairs to get them back into their houses while the remainder of the repairs are completed. The initial repairs come at no cost to the homeowners.

Organizers of the town hall had representatives from FEMA, the Governor's Office and American Red Cross at the meeting to help with registration and application concerns.

Local leaders also said they are working now on infrastructure measures to provide some immediate protection should another heavy rainfall pound the area. Honore said the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers is also working on more long-term solutions that could better protect the community from future flooding.
WASHINGTON  Frustrations over the federal response to Louisiana's catastrophic August floods were aired during a hearing on Capitol Hill on Friday.

For more nearly three hours, a U.S. House subcommittee raised questions over the pace with which assistance is making its way to flood victims, the bureaucratic back-and-forth that officials and individuals have faced when seeking aid and the lack of manufactured housing units on the ground  nearly a month into the recovery effort.

There was no final action, and more congressional hearings are expected in response to the flooding that has been characterized as the worst natural disaster since Superstorm Sandy struck the east coast in 2012.

But one of the key points that several leaders sought to emphasize is that FEMA is under regulations set out by Congress and tends to operate in a bubble of fear of the Inspector General's Office crying foul over how money is spent.

"Fear is holding up this process," said U.S. Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-New Orleans.

Richmond has in recent years repeatedly pushed for what he calls the "FEMA Reform Act" to no success. It's meant to supplant the Stanford Act, last updated in 2013, that officials during Friday's hearing argued is not sufficient in dealing with varying circumstances for diverse disasters.

Rep. Garret Graves, R-Baton Rouge, shared the opinion that the current version of the Stafford Act has hindered the recovery process.

"If you let this slide, it's going to be the same thing in your state," he warned his colleagues.

Denham Springs Mayor Gerard Landry, Central Mayor Jr. Shelton and Walker Mayor Rick Ramsey each shared how their hard-hit communities have struggled through the recovery process and the challenges they continue to face. All three leveled harsh criticism at FEMA, which they said they have found to be too bureaucratic and idiosyncratic in their dealings.

Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat who has generally spoken positively of the federal response, also raised questions on Friday.

"While I am grateful for the quick response we have received from this flooding, I am under no illusion that the response has been perfect," he said.

Edwards said in particular he has been disappointed about the rate of getting manufactured housing units, or mobile homes, to people whose homes were severely damaged and are not livable.

He said 62 families have been approved for manufactured housing, but only 48 mobile homes are currently in the process of being installed. It was unclear how many are actually being lived in at the moment.

FEMA regional administrator Tony Robinson, who was there to represent the agency, said he was not sure.

Robinson flatly read a prepared statement defending the agency's response, and fielded several direct questions about the response, though some he was unable to answer.

"While a lot of progress has been made, the recovery from this significant disaster will take time," he said.

Rep. John Mica, the Florida Republican who chairs the subcommittee and recently traveled to the Baton Rouge area to view the damage first hand, peppered Robinson with questions about what he views as failings in the federal response.

"Something's dramatically wrong," Mica said. "This is a pitiful federal response by any measure."

For weeks, FEMA leaders have stressed that the federal assistance that the agency supplies is intended to meet people's basic needs  not make them whole by replacing everything they lost in the flood.

When people have been denied assistance, FEMA has instructed them to appeal. When people have asked about the hold-up on getting manufactured housing into place, FEMA has often cited local regulations as the culprit. When flood victims go days without hearing back from FEMA about requests for housing assistance or other aid, they've been told that it's on them to keep badgering the federal agency.

"The whole process is designed to exclude people, rather than help them," Shelton said.

Leaders also identified issues with communication between local and state leaders during the immediate aftermath.

Shelton said his city didn't receive supplies of water and emergency meals for several days. He reached out to Graves.

But Edwards testified he was never made aware of the issue and that Shelton was supposed to obtain those supplies from the parish.

Shelton, who noted he has only been on the job two years, said he was never made aware of the process and had expected to hear from FEMA directly.

Miscommunication and confusion over the proper procedures to follow was a common theme, as was frustration with rules that have largely been put in place to prevent fraud or inefficiency.

Ramsey recounted how he went to a recovery center to gather water and emergency meals to distribute, but was told he could only take one of each, under FEMA rules largely meant to prevent hoarding or distribution of aid based on cronyism.

Several leaders raised concerns about the federal aid requirement that allows people only to use assistance for basic needs  a measure largely put in place to prevent exorbitant spending on the federal dime.

"We assume that people are trying to scam the system," Richmond said. "They're not asking for an extra nugget at McDonald's, they are looking to be made whole."
The campaign of U.S. Senate candidate Charles Boustany flatly denied Thursday claims raised in a book that the Acadiana congressman was a client of a prostitute murdered in Jennings.

These allegations are completely false and dont even deserve a response, said campaign spokesman Jack Pandol in a prepared statement. Dr. Boustany has a professional and personal reputation of integrity and honor. We are confident the people of Louisiana will see these lies for the political tabloid fodder they are.

The online BuzzFeed News raised the issue Thursday in a report about the book, Murder in the Bayou, written by Ethan Brown.

Published by Simon and Schuster and scheduled for release Tuesday, Murder in the Bayou is about the unsolved murders of eight prostitutes in the Jefferson Davis Parish town of Jennings from 2005 to 2009.

Brown wrote in the book that an unnamed source in October 2012 told a taskforce officer investigating the murders that Boustany was involved with at least one of the women. Brown provided no direct corroborating evidence for that claim.

He also wrote that a law enforcement officer in 2015 refused to confirm or deny the interview or say whether the FBI had received information that Boustany patronized any of the Jeff Davis 8, as the author called the murder victims.

In a statement given to Brown, Pandol said Boustany had no contact with any of the victims and was unaware of an aide's alleged involvement with a motel where the victims were said to have worked.

Boustany, a 60-year-old Lafayette Republican, is one of 24 candidates running in the Nov. 8 election to replace retiring Sen. David Vitter.

+5 US Senate candidates start reporting campaign fundraising Most of the campaign finance reports are not public yet, but several of candidates staffs a
Jails exist for a reason, and we want as many dangerous criminals there as law enforcement and catch and convict. But the high costs of jailing inmates, often guilty of nonviolent crimes and drug offenses, is a legitimate place to look for savings for taxpayers.

Louisiana's legislative auditor's office, headed by Daryl Purpera, recently suggested that millions can be saved with a more progressive approach to sentencing, probation and parole.

Small wonder, given that Louisiana is the nation's leader in prisons: 816 of every 100,000 residents are locked up. And, the auditor reported, 58 percent of those locked up had no convictions for violent crimes in their past.

The remedies for this situation require a long-term approach, because there is a complicated interaction of police, courts and corrections requiring changes in both laws and institutions.

The auditor's report rightly pointed to reducing the use of mandatory minimum sentences and providing more rehabilitation services to inmates. Pre-trial diversion programs and more drug courts might well steer nonviolent criminals away from jail.

The report estimates that using drug courts as an alternative to prison could save nearly $70 million over two years. As the auditor also noted, more data is needed on other types of specialty courts, such as those for people with drunken driving records, people with mental illness or veterans with various needs.

Can we make changes and still make Louisiana neighborhoods safer? Making the case for alternatives to prison, the audit report cited corrections data for a class of nonviolent drug offenders convicted from 2009 to 2015. Sentencing them to two years of probation instead of incarceration for the median sentence would save the state between $101 million and $232 million, depending on whether they were locked up at state or local facilities, the report said.

We believe there are savings to be achieved, but we caution that none of us should be expecting a quick tax refund: These are long-term savings, because in the near term Louisiana's state prisons and local jails should be emphasizing education, job training and abuse treatment.

All those cost money, but the idea is that if somebody gets out of jail and can hold a steady job, the parolee is far less likely to once again become an offender and thus an inmate.

In today's prisons, all too often, a young offender graduates as a more polished criminal.

"For low-level nonviolent crimes, it can do more harm than good and leave taxpayers footing the bill," comments Kevin Kane of the Pelican Institute for Public Policy, a conservative voice on criminal justice reform.

The auditor's report is another in the arguments for a comprehensive and bipartisan approach to changes in justice and jails.
A reinvigorated political committee first active in the days when former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke exploded on the scene goes by the name "Louisiana Coalition Against Racism and Nazism," but in modern-day parlance, it might just as well be called the "Never Duke" movement.

Comprised of movers and shakers from both parties who want to make sure Duke's latest comeback attempt goes absolutely nowhere, the group is hoping to raise enough money for an ad campaign opposing his U.S. Senate candidacy, just as it did when he ran for governor in 1991. The new effort, announced late last month, started off with some big names behind it, including both of the other major candidates from that 1991 governor race, former Govs. Buddy Roemer and Edwin Edwards. And it's been adding more ever since.

Among the newly announced supporters are New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu and his sister, former U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, both Democrats. But the most eye-catching name on the expanded list is one of Duke's fellow Republicans: U.S. Rep. and House Majority Whip Steve Scalise.

That's not because the Metairie lawmaker was ever a Duke supporter. He wasn't.

And it's not because it's unusual for mainstream Republicans to denounce Duke's ugly politics. Just about all of them have, including GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, whose nativist message Duke claims to share and whose coattails he hopes to ride this fall  even if Trump conspicuously wavered before doing the right thing.

Stephanie Grace: Scalises pitch to Duke supporters seems plausible This is what I remember about the first time I met Steve Scalise nearly 20 years ago: He tol

Scalise's decision to sign on is notable more because he's got a Duke-related black mark on his record. Back when he was a state legislator, Scalise once addressed a Duke-founded group. Blogger Lamar White's piece about the event, issued as Scalise was quickly rising through the ranks in Congress, became an embarrassing national story, both for him and for his home state.

So as far as Scalise is concerned, backing the group's cause is not just ethical, but politically smart. It's hard to think of anyone who has more of an incentive to tell the world where he stands.
East Baton Rouge Mayor-President Kip Holden was not invited to testify about flood relief Friday at a subcommittee hearing for the U.S. Congress, the subcommittee's chairman and Holden's office have confirmed.

Several local and federal political leaders testified Friday at the hearing for the House Oversight subcommittee that oversees FEMA, with the politicians trying to paint a picture of the destruction back home and offering different evaluations of FEMA's performance.

Among those testifying were Gov. John Bel Edwards; Central Mayor Jr. Shelton; Denham Springs Mayor Gerard Landry and Walker Mayor Rick Ramsey. U.S. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R); U.S. Rep. Garret Graves (R) and U.S. Rep. Cedric Richmond (D) also spoke.

Mayor-President Kip Holden's absence from Baton Rouge started being questioned earlier this week. Holden's calendar shows he is visiting Taiwan right now on what his chief administrative officer has called an economic development trip.

The House Oversight subcommittee chairman John Mica, R-Florida, said Holden was not invited to testify in front of the subcommittee but said he met with Holden during his recent trip to Baton Rouge. Holden's spokesman said the same.

"He's participated fully," Mica said.

Mica added that the Republicans in Congress picked the Republicans leaders to testify -- including the three mayors of nearby cities -- and the Democrats picked the Democratic leaders to testify, including Gov. John Bel Edwards. Holden is challenging Richmond, the Louisiana democrat, for his congressional seat this November.

Holden's office also announced Friday that he and several of his staff members will hold a news conference on Monday to "detail the city-parish response" to the floods that affected an estimated 59,000 homes in the parish.

Some Metro Council members have criticized Holden's recent absence from the city, with Councilman John Delgado saying Holden left at "the most critical time in our city's history." Holden's calendar shows that he should return from Taiwan this weekend.
Gun owners in New Orleans will have to report if their firearm is lost or stolen, and those without concealed-carry permits will be barred fro
St. John the Baptist Parish firefighter Nick Saale, who was badly injured in the deadly Interstate 10 bus crash in LaPlace on Aug. 28, is out of the hospital, officials said Thursday.

He spent nine days at University Medical Center in New Orleans before his release Tuesday, parish spokeswoman Baileigh Rebowe said.

Saale, 32, had joined two other firefighters at the scene of a minor crash in the westbound lanes of Interstate 10 near the Belle Terre Boulevard exit on the morning of the fatal wreck.

While they were at the scene, a speeding bus filled with laborers seeking work in flood-ravaged Baton Rouge first slammed into a fire truck stopped on the highway and then barreled into other vehicles. The collision threw Saale, Fire District Chief Spencer Chauvin and firefighter Mack Beal over a guardrail and into swampy waters some 40 feet below.

Chauvin, a 36-year-old father of two, died after being pulled out of the water. Beal, 35, was treated at River Parishes Hospital for injuries to his shoulder and leg and was released later that day.

Saale had a broken leg, broken ribs and fluid in his lungs, Rebowe said. He spent at least one day on a breathing machine, the chief of operations for St. John's Fire Services said.

Saale will need between four and six weeks more of recovery before he returns to duty, Rebowe said.

The pileup also killed Jermaine Starr, 21, and Vontarous Kelly, 33, who were passengers in one of the other cars hit by the bus.

Starr and Kelly were from Moss Point, Mississippi, and also reportedly were going to Baton Rouge to work for a contractor. Starr died at the scene. Kelly died four days later.

The crash left more than two dozen other people injured.

The bus driver, who was living in the United States illegally and did not have a driver's license, was jailed on counts of negligent homicide and negligent injuring, among other violations.
State Police arrest two people living in country illegally, accuse them of running New Orleans brothel
For all the measures of a school doing well, students returning to teach is probably more meaningful than most.

So it is with Wanniassa School, a preschool to year 10 school, which this year is celebrating its 40th birthday. A fun day will be held on Sunday at the preschool to mark the event.

Wanniassa School is celebrating its 40th birthday and a big fun day is planned for Sunday. Year 6 students Sam Crowther and Taylah Perrett with preschool students Deng Kuol and Shayla Lloyd. Credit:Rohan Thomson

The school has had several teachers over the years who were former students and principal Shane Gorman said others also went on to teach at other schools.

"I think it's really interesting the number of people who have gone through Wanniassa and gone on to be teachers. I think that probably says something about the school. Teaching is a very giving profession," he said.
Former Victorian health commissioner Beth Wilson. Credit:Samantha Robin In the case of Ren, a single mother with a heart condition, she was told earlier this year her contract would not be renewed and she would receive $10,000 in compensation if she handed back the keys on August 30. But the handover went awry when at least 10 people appeared from head office at 6am, including construction workers who started erecting a thick wire fence around the store. 7-Eleven franchisee Helen Ren outside her South Yarra store. Ren, who uses English as a second language, says she was presented with a legal document that she was told to sign. If she didn't, she wouldn't get her compensation. She didn't have a lawyer present.

It then becomes a case of he said, she said. Illustration: Cathy Wilcox. According to a 7-Eleven spokesman, Ren and 7-Eleven mutually agreed to a store handover. When the day came, she changed her mind, he said. "Having withdrawn her support for an early handover, Ms Ren is continuing to operate the store until the franchise agreement ends. The erection of the fence was to facilitate the immediate work to enable environmental remediation of the site. This was specifically in regard to rendering the site safe for works." "7-Eleven works with franchisees to try to ensure a store handover is as smooth and as effective as possible, while recognising it can sometimes be emotional for a franchisee," he said. Former Victorian health commissioner Beth Wilson saw the emotional toll first hand. Ren called Wilson for some help. "She told me she was being bullied to sign a termination contract," Wilson says.

Wilson described the situation as intimidating. "I'm horrified to think that someone could be treated so appallingly." On video, Wilson captured Ren peering through the freshly erected fence. "It looked like she was in a prison," she says. "I decided to video what was going on. When I started to interview Helen, men from inside the shop started to make phone calls. A manager came over to try to get her to sign the contract. Then, after a few more calls. they told her they would be leaving after putting the stock back on the shelf." Ren will continue to operate the store until the contract expires in November. When she leaves, she will have an outstanding debt on a store that she paid $345,000 for back in 2006. There will be no compensation and no goodwill. Since the wage scandal broke a year ago, 7-Eleven has tried to address some issues. It has overhauled its business model, redistributing its profit-share model, it has almost tripled its threshold on its hardship program to $340,000 and it has set up a compensation scheme, which has so far paid out $26 million to affected workers. There have also been changes at board and senior executive levels. It is a good start but, behind the spin, problems continue to fester away.
Frankfurt: BMW's management board is skipping the Paris Motor Show to hold talks aimed at breaking a deadlock over whether to produce new electric cars, including a battery-powered Mini.

Spurred on by the success of US rival Tesla, which has received almost 400,000 pre-orders for its Model 3 car, German carmakers Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen have accelerated their own electric car programmes.

VW, for example, has said it plans to launch more than 30 electric vehicles over the next decade, forecasting they would account for about a quarter of group deliveries by 2025.

Executives across the industry predict electric cars will increasingly gain mainstream acceptance among customers thanks to advances that make batteries get cheaper and more powerful and the VW emissions scandal, which has sparked a regulatory backlash against diesel-engine vehicles.
Qantas, Jetstar, Virgin Australia and Tiger Airways have banned passengers from using or charging Samsung Galaxy Note 7 smartphones on planes over concerns their batteries could explode or catch fire.

The airlines have introduced the ban following Samsung's recall of its Galaxy Note 7 smartphones, which was launched in August.

Qantas on Thursday banned passengers charging Galaxy Note7s on all flights.

A spokesperson on Friday said the airline was also asking owners of the phone not to switch it on in-flight.
The settlement 21st Century Fox announced this week regarding former anchor Gretchen Carlson, who filed a lawsuit claiming sexual harassment by the powerful - and now ousted - Fox News chairman Roger Ailes, was extraordinary in many ways.

There was the speed with which the suit went from being filed, on July 6, to being settled, just two months later. There was the reported size of the settlement, $US20 million ($26 million), which employment lawyers say is the largest single plaintiff pre-trial settlement for sexual harassment charges they know of (many are settled privately).

But perhaps the most striking aspect of the settlement was the company's public apology to Carlson in its statement, a move employment lawyers said was extremely rare, if not unprecedented, when it comes to sexual harassment claims.

"Typically the last thing a plaintiff ever receives in a pre-trial settlement is an apology," said Debra Katz, a Washington lawyer who often represents plaintiffs in sexual harassment lawsuits.
Clive Palmer has denied being heavily involved in Queensland Nickel throughout 2015.

He told a Federal Court hearing he stepped down as director in January 2013 because he "didn't like Campbell Newman and I wanted to be involved in political activity to get rid of him".

He was being questioned by Tom Sullivan QC, for special purpose liquidators PPB Advisory over the company's collapse, which left hundreds of employees out of work.

He became director again for a period before stepping down again in 2014 after being elected to federal parliament along with Palmer United Party senators, the court was told.
It is 15 years since the September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda attacks on the US shook the world and changed most of our assumptions about world stability and security. Yet, despite all the anti-terror measures adopted by the US and its allies at the cost of billions of dollars and civil liberty restrictions, the scourge of violence, conflict and insecurity continues to haunt us all. There are now more violent extremist groups operating in the Middle East and beyond than ever before.

In response to the September 11 attacks, then US President George W. Bush launched the so-called "war on terror", with the aim of uprooting "Islamic terrorism" not only in Afghanistan, from where the attacks were orchestrated, but from everywhere. The US-led "Operation Enduring Freedom" in late 2001, which toppled the medievalist Islamic rule of the Taliban in Afghanistan and dispersed the al-Qaeda leadership and operators from the country, was followed by the invasion of Iraq to destroy Saddam Hussein's dictatorship.

Members of anti-regimist Faylaq al-Rahman attack Assad regime forces in East Ghouta, Syria. Credit:Anadolu Agency

These operations were premised on a promise to transform both countries into stable, secure, prosperous democracies. This was to mark the beginning of an American neo-conservative project to spread the gospel of democracy to the rest of the Middle East to change the region into the image of the US as a prerequisite for safeguarding American democracy and making the 21st century the "century of America", with the US as the dominant global power.

However, despite its initial military successes in Afghanistan and Iraq, the US lacked a viable strategy for post-invasion management of the two countries. In the case of Afghanistan, the US, supported by many NATO and non-NATO allies, toppled but did not defeat the Taliban. It could not make Pakistan cut its Taliban clients loose as part of its rivalry with India either.
Sevdet Besim has a vision for Australia and it goes like this. It's the middle of April, 2015, and Besim's insides rumble with loathing and hate. Revenge will be loud, brutal and sweet. In a week's time, the nation will commemorate another Anzac Day. What better date to send a message they will never forget?

Besim has spent months laying down his plans. He has pondered with a friend whether a kangaroo's pouch could be filled with plastic explosives before being set loose to explode inside a crowd of policemen. But no, he settles on a far simpler scheme.

Sevdet Besim pleaded guilty to planning a terrorist act.

He will run down a policeman with his car, emerge with a machete or knife, and proceed to publicly behead the uniformed officer "to make sure the dogs remember this as well as their fallen heroes".

Well, we know how this ends. Besim, 18, is arrested after writing a note to his parents leaving instructions on how he is to be buried. This week  507 days after his arrest  the Victorian Supreme Court jailed him for 10 years with a minimum of 7 years.
The Labor party took more than $330,000 in donations from the big banks in the 2014-15 financial year, despite Opposition leader Bill Shorten running on a 2016 election platform calling for a royal commission into the banks, dubbed "bank bashing" by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

Australian Electoral Commission data from the most recent disclosure period show the biggest bank donor to the ALP was ANZ, which gave $80,000, followed by the Macquarie Group which gave $72,400. The Commonwealth Bank gave $46,925, NAB donated $35,600 and Westpac gave $34,700. Other, smaller donations were given to the state divisions of the Labor party.

The Leader of the Opposition, Bill Shorten. Credit:Louie Douvis

The monies went into the ALP's coffers to fight the 2016 election, during which Shorten campaigned heavily on the central promise of cleaning up dodgy banking industry practices with a royal commission.

Recently he has pressured Coalition backbenchers to declare whether they support his royal commission, so voters can know "which side they are on".
Australia will push for more business, student and work visas for its citizens in the UK, as part of a new trade deal after Brexit.

On Friday, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said this was "obviously" something that could be part of the free trade agreement that the countries have agreed to negotiate after the UK leaves the European Union.

"Being able to live, work or spend time, study in each other's countries is something to which we would aspire," she said.

"Should we be in the position to conclude a free trade agreement after Brexit then obviously this can be the subject of a free trade agreement. It's something that we were able to achieve with the United States.
Albert Einstein is generally credited with asserting "the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results".

Here's a definition of inhumanity: doing the same thing over and over when you know the damage you are doing to people's lives.

We know from the experience of the Pacific Solution that leaving people in limbo on Nauru without hope of being able to rebuild their lives makes them feel worthless, depressed and suicidal.

We know this because the last substantial group from that caseload, many of whom were refugees, was only resettled in Australia when the resident psychiatrist warned she would not be held responsible if they took their lives.
Former Home & Away star Melissa George has reportedly presented at a police station with bruises on her face and "complaining of pain".

French media are reporting the actor was transferred from a police station in Paris' 8th district to the Cochin hospital earlier this week.

Australian actress Melissa George, left, and Jean David Blanc earlier this year. Credit:Michel Euler

The 40-year-old "had swelling of the face and complained of pain, nausea and dizziness," M6Info reported.

A source at the Paris Public Prosecutor's office told Fairfax Media that police had responded to "an incident involving the actress and her partner that took place on Tuesday evening".
Australian researchers have reaped hundreds of dollars in freebies from a company in exchange for mentioning its product in academic papers.

Researchers from the Lowy Cancer Research Centre at the University of New South Wales and the University of Queensland have referenced products by US-based cell culture manufacturer Cyagen.

Credit:Louie Douvis

The company, which produces transgenic mice embryos and stem cells, offers vouchers worth hundreds of dollars, redeeable of future purchases, if researchers mention their products.

University of New South Wales researchers were awarded a $650 credit voucher after mentioning the company's name in a 2011 article published in Molecular and Cellular Biology.
Another Australia Post truck carrying parcels in transit has caught fire on the Hume Highway, destroying its contents.

The truck was near Woomargama, about 50 kilometres north-east of Albury when the driver of the truck noticed smoke on Friday morning.

The postal truck on fire at Woomargama on Friday morning Credit:Live Traffic NSW

Flames were seen spreading through the trailer on the side of the northbound lanes after it caught fire about 5am.

Rural Fire Service Superintendent Patrick Westwood said it took six fire trucks and about 25 firefighters to put out the blaze.
The education company at the centre of the donations furore that halted the front bench career of Labor senator Sam Dastyari is one of the greatest beneficiaries of the government's new streamlined visa program, new data from the federal Department of Education reveals.

Data released this week shows that 98.5 per cent of Top Education students are international, more than double the Australian private higher education institution average of 42 per cent. It has one of the highest proportions of international students of any private higher education institution in NSW.

Of the 13 local students the institution has enrolled, only 46 per cent successfully completed their first year.

Last year, the 1000 student institution was one of only 22 private education providers to be granted access to the government's simplified student visa framework, previously only available to universities. The move fast tracked the process for international students to obtain visas and enrol at the Eveleigh campus, opening it up to millions of lucrative student dollars.
Aziz learnt Spanish on Manus by rising every day at 5 am and listening to a recorded lesson for an hour. Aziz now speaks seven languages and taught English to a class of 35 asylum seekers. He has endured plenty, including hunger strikes and the drowning of five friends after a failed attempt to reach Australia by boat. He understands the desire to prevent deaths at sea, but says leaving men in limbo on Manus can't be considered a humane solution. He regards himself as pawn in a political game of chess with no end in sight. Shahzad Ahmad, 26, Pakistan Shahzad Ahmad. Credit:Matthew Abbott The TV series Breaking Bad fascinates Ahmad. The computer science graduate, who once managed a thriving family business, is intrigued by the show's tale of how good men can slip into darkness. He was forced to flee Pakistan after he was threatened by the Taliban. But he remembers those who have helped him, too. As in his favourite show, where there is darkness, there is often also light. Mehdi, 31, Iran

Medhi. Supplied. To go with Michael BAchelard story Men of Manus Men of Manus story by Michael Bachelard Credit:Matthew Abbott Mehdi once made his living by making people laugh. The Iranian, who is a dwarf, worked as stand-up comedian and actor before he fled. He says he is now haunted by memories of his dead father, who used to pick him up and cuddle him back in Iran, a loving gesture that continued even when Mehdi entered his twenties. Aadil*, 25, Iran (not real name) Aadil's refrain is the same as many of those on Manus: "I don't care where they send me. As long as it is safe." His girlfriend lives 10,000 kilometres away, in the country he fled. He says his love for this woman sustains him on Manus, but he tells her few details about what his life is truly like. It's better this way, he says. As a child, Aadil knew he wanted to become a businessman and sold women's clothing in Iran before he says he joined anti-government protests. Business remains his passion. Amir, 23, Iran

Amir Taghinia. Credit:Matthew Abbott Amir fled Iran at the age of 15. He says his choice of religion left him no choice. He made it to Malaysia where he lived for five years with a dream to study law and work in human rights. He had to settle with learning how to cook and become self sufficient, skills that would nevertheless become valuable when his journey to Australia saw him diverted to Manus. He talks of a life that has been paused indefinitely and of missing his mother's cooking. He still dreams of becoming a lawyer. Imran Mohammad, 22, Rohingyan Imran Mohammad Fazal Hoque. Credit:Matthew Abbott Mohammad, who fled Myanamar aged 16, lives by a mantra: the day you stop learning is the day you die. He taught himself English by writing a page of his autobiography ever day. It is now a tome, some 1100 pages long. There is no shortage of despair and suffering on Manus, but he refuses to be overcome. "I am only 22 ... I have seen many terrible things in my life. But I have experienced many good things as well. I have been tortured. And I have been loved."
At the hearings in Newcastle over the past month, senior Anglican and Catholic clergymen have struggled with their memories, stumbled over words, made concessions after documents have been produced and, on occasion, been forced to say they've not told the truth about their responses to child sexual abuse allegations. Vince Ryan was convicted in 1995 for offences against more than 30 young boys. Credit:Ron Bell They have "not recalled" a lot. On the second day of the Catholic hearing former Maitland-Newcastle bishop Michael Malone admitted he had covered up that the church had known for 20 years that Ryan committed crimes against young boys, after he was questioned about his statements and interviews following Ryan's conviction in 1996. Bishop Roger Herft did not recall receiving serious child sex allegations about the now defrocked former dean of Newcastle, Graeme Lawrence. Credit:Max Mason Hubers

Royal commission chairman Justice Peter McClellan: "The church knew an awful lot more than you revealed in this document, didn't it?" Malone: "Yes." John Pirona was one of Vince Ryan's victims. Credit:Jonathan Carroll McClellan: "And you didn't tell the public that you knew that?" Malone: "I didn't tell them, no."

Andrew Nash took his own life at the age of 13. Credit:Jonathan Carroll In later evidence he said the "covering up" was because the church did not want people so shocked by knowledge it had protected a paedophile priest for several decades that they would turn away from their faith. The retired Hunter bishop, who did not attend a World Youth Day service with Australia's bishops in Sydney in 2008, but walked across the Harbour Bridge with abuse survivors, said he reached a point where "You either had to try to defend the church or you had to try to serve the needs of survivors, and I chose the latter." Justice McClellan responded with the question at the heart of the child sexual abuse crisis within the Catholic Church  "Why was it ever a choice?" Bishop Malone ventured an explanation how church law enshrined secrecy around child sexual abuse.

"Membership of the church is a bit of a strange beast insofar as the church has its own culture, its own law, its own way of obeying structures within the church, its own sacramental system, and as such, it's divorced from society, and that has meant the church has gone along parallel lines with society, so that civil law somehow was not seen as impinging on the life of the church, in the past," he said. Catholic nun Evelyn Woodward told the royal commission she did not follow up once she reported allegations about Vince Ryan to a senior priest, in part because of "the position of women in the church at that time". "We were pretty low in the pecking order, and there was a hierarchical system which I think led me to say 'I've got to hand it over to whoever's in charge of the diocese.' If that makes any sense," Sister Woodward said. 'No recollection' One of the Australian Anglican Church's most senior clerics, Perth Archbishop Roger Herft, did not recall receiving serious child sex allegations about the now defrocked former dean of Newcastle, Graeme Lawrence, in 1995, 1997 and 1999 from three separate sources, including another bishop and a priest, or of speaking to Lawrence on those three occasions and accepting his denials.

"Are you seriously suggesting to the commission that you have no recollection of raising an extraordinarily serious allegation with one of the most senior priests in the diocese?" said counsel assisting the commission, Naomi Sharp, on August 12, before the archbishop was shown a letter, written by him in 1995 to one of the complainants, confirming the allegation and his subsequent acceptance of Lawrence's denial. At an earlier hearing into the Anglican Church in the Hunter, during his time as bishop of Newcastle from 1993 to 2005, Herft stated: "No one ever raised with me directly or indirectly any matter that would have brought concern to me regarding the behaviour or otherwise of the dean of Newcastle." By the end of his evidence on August 29, after documents showing he received serious allegations in 1995, 1997 and 1999, Herft accepted he had been advised of the allegations, but insisted he had no recollection of those events, or of speaking to Lawrence and accepting his denials. Two former Newcastle Anglican bishops, Richard Appleby and Alfred Holland, insisted they had never known of any child sex abuse in the diocese, and if they had they would have fought it "decisively". Bishop Appleby repeatedly said he had "no recollection" of being told about notorious Hunter Anglican child sex offenders Father Peter Rushton and youth worker James Brown, and denied evidence by others who said they had told him of allegations between 1983 and 1992.

Bishop Holland was repeatedly asked if he was telling the truth during his evidence about Rushton, his denial of knowledge of rumours that trainee priests at St John's Theological College at Morpeth "might fancy little boys", or his denial of knowledge that a Wyong priest he wrote a character letter for had been charged with raping a teenage boy. He also denied a conversation with a lawyer who had "the ear of three bishops", about obtaining a medical certificate stating the retired bishop was in no fit state to give evidence. Holland also denied being advised to respond to questions by saying he could not recall past events, after the royal commission produced a diocese file note indicating Holland would receive that advice. The royal commission heard evidence a "gang of three" senior Anglican diocese members  Graeme Lawrence, defrocked priest Bruce Hoare and former diocesan registrar Peter Mitchell  protected Peter Rushton for decades, and Lawrence himself was protected by "a cohort of Newcastle Cathedral practitioners who appear, unquestionably" to have supported him. Peter Mitchell  jailed in 2002 for defrauding the diocese of nearly $200,000  repeatedly denied any knowledge of brown or yellow envelopes containing details of child sexual abuse by priests, despite a range of documents showing he was closely involved with the management of the files. Justice McClellan accused former diocesan lawyer Robert Caddies of leading "co-ordinated opposition" to current Newcastle Anglican Bishop Greg Thompson after a group of senior Anglicans, including Mr Caddies and former Newcastle lord mayor John McNaughton, complained to the commission in April after the bishop spoke publicly in October about being sexually abused by a bishop.

The group questioned the length of time between the abuse in the 1970s and Bishop Thompson's disclosure. "Were you seeking to say to the royal commission that because it's taken so long, the bishop's credibility should be looked at?" Justice McClellan said. Caddies denied it. In the witness box on Tuesday, Audrey Nash, 90, of Hamilton, the mother of Andrew, 13, who hanged himself in his bedroom in 1974, said she believed her son died because he was abused by his Catholic Marist Brother teachers, the now jailed Brothers Romuald (Francis Cable) and Dominic (Darcy O'Sullivan). Mrs Nash, who said she had committed her whole life to the Catholic Church until recently, was in tears about the impact of Andrew's death on her family, the sexual abuse of her surviving son by two Marist Brothers, and her uncritical acceptance of the power of Catholic churchmen.
A tradesman let out a "horrific scream for help" as he was mauled by three dogs during a prolonged attack on a rural property in Sydney's north-west on Friday morning, a witness says.

The 36-year-old man was taken to hospital with deep wounds over his body after the dogs, which Hills Shire Council said were American Staffordshire terriers, tore into him at the property on Pitt Town Road in Kenthurst just before 8am.

All three dogs were later impounded and destroyed, a council spokeswoman said.

A neighbour, Robert Brooks, told 2GB how he heard "horrific screaming and yelling ... and [the victim's] just horrific scream for help", prompting him to run and look over the fence.
Doug Constable claims to be an "insolvency expert", who helps ailing businesses stave off creditors and avoid bankruptcy.

The 66-year-old businessman, who wrote a book called How to Not Pay Your Debts, says he is "passionate about helping people draw a line in the sand in times of financial distress".

When insolvency expert Doug Constable needs to chase his own creditors he knows who to turn to. Credit:YouTube: Dollars With Sense

So how did Mr Constable respond when owed money by a former staff member?

In the case of a recent $9000 debt, Mr Constable employed Stephen Gillingham, a former cruiserweight boxer and Bandidos outlaw motorcycle gang enforcer.
A man allegedly snatched a young girl from a shopping centre food court and ran with her until a member of the public stopped him.

Police said they were investigating the incident at Northland Shopping Centre in Preston on Thursday night.

Northland Shopping Centre. Credit:Suppled

It is believed the man, who has an intellectual disability, grabbed the girl, 4, about 8.15pm.



A Victoria Police spokeswoman said he ran about 50 metres with the child before being stopped.

The 26-year-old Reservoir man was taken back to a police station and interviewed. He was later released without charge.
Masked intruders have opened fire during a Brunswick West home invasion, shooting a man in the leg.

Two intruders forced their way into the Wales Street home about 3.45am on Friday.

They assaulted a 23-year-old man before shooting him.

The victim was taken to the Royal Melbourne Hospital in a stable condition.
The temperature in Melbourne is forecast to drop five degrees and commuters are being warned about a dump of rain expected to hit the city on Friday night.

When the siren sounds for the first bounce at the MCG blockbuster between Geelong and Hawthorn the temperature is expected to be 13 degrees, the Bureau of Meteorology said.

Rain is expected throughout the game.
"Choppergate" cost one politician her job, now it has cost a group of year 12 students their muck-up day.

Christian College in Geelong grabbed news headlines last year when students from the graduating class flew into school on a helicopter on their muck-up day.

Last year a group of students chartered a helicopter to land at a Geelong school.

The chopper prank was a homage to Bronwyn Bishop, who had hired a $5000 private helicopter to fly from Melbourne to a Liberal fund-raiser in Geelong  and had to relinquish the Speaker's chair as a result of the ensuing furore.

At the time, Christian College principal, Glen McKeeman confirmed that a "helicopter chartered by some students landed on the oval at the senior campus during celebration activities".
Motorists should be slugged to drive on our roads on a user-pays basis, Australia's largest tolling company Transurban says.

The company has renewed its push for a revamp of road infrastructure funding, insisting the current funding model for road infrastructure will soon become unsustainable.

Transurban boss Scott Charlton says current road infrastructure funding models are unsustainable. Credit:Jesse Marlow

Transurban is already set to generate tens of billions of dollars under a deal to extend the CityLink tolling period in return for building the Western Distributor, which will link central Melbourne with the west.

On Friday the company released the initial results of an 18 month trial of road charging options to assess whether drivers were open to to a "different way of paying for the nation's road".
Mr Jones said his cancelled surgery wasn't the first time he'd been let down by the $2 billion hospital.

"Over Easter I was rushed there with bleeding and because it was a holiday they gave me a look over and said I just had piles. When I saw my GP he hit the roof and got me a referral to Fremantle hospital for a colonoscopy and when I woke they said straight away, bad news, it's bowel cancer."

"And when it came to getting the date for the surgery I was run from pillar to post getting anything out of them. I called up and they'd lost my paperwork, found it, got me in for the pre-admission, then I got called up again saying I needed to do the pre-admission. Does the left hand talk to the right?"

After being told his surgery was cancelled, Mr Jones spoke to a customer liaison officer at Fiona Stanley who helped him navigate the bureaucracy to take down what had happened and request another appointment.

"I said do you people even talk to each other? And they said no, and that's the problem."
It was in the pursuit for answers from Ye Cheng, the Chinese billionaire behind the contentious Landbridge Group acquisition of the Port of Darwin, that I found myself being bailed up instead by his two brothers, several wines deep into a carousing official banquet on a brisk December night.

I had convinced then Northern Territory chief minister Adam Giles' minders to allow me to join their delegation touring Landbridge's bustling port in the north-eastern city of Rizhao. But our Chinese hosts knew I was a journalist from Australia, where inconvenient questions were being asked of Landbridge's links to the People's Liberation Army.

One of the Ye brothers draped his arm firmly around my shoulder and beckoned for the waiters to refill our glasses. Only after we quaffed four wines in quick succession was he satisfied that he could relax his grip.

The other brother, a stockier man with an altogether calmer disposition, looked squarely at me and said, matter-of-factly: "In time, this world will be China's."
Washington: Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said on Thursday that Islamic State leaders were praying for Republican Donald Trump to win the US election.

Islamic State would view a victory for Mr Trump as a "gift" from Allah, and believed it would provide "more motivation to every jihadi", the Democratic nominee said.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in New York before boarding her campaign plane on Thursday. Credit:AP

Mrs Clinton made the comments during a rare press conference, in response to a question about a Time magazine article which included quotes from IS supporters openly rooting for Mr Trump.

"They have said that they hope that he is the president because it would give even more motivation to every jihadi," she said.
Beijing. North Korea says it is now capable of mounting nuclear warheads onto its arsenal of ballistic missiles after it conducted its fifth and most powerful atomic test to date.

Friday morning's nuclear test triggered a magnitude 5.3 earthquake and sent world leaders scrambling to condemn the North's latest act of aggression, as Kim Jong-un's isolated regime continues to defy international sanctions.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye said the North Korean leader was showing "maniacal recklessness" in ignoring the world's call to abandon his pursuit of nuclear weapons. US President Barack Obama said the test would be met with "serious consequences".

The test was a "grave threat to regional security and to international peace and stability," Mr Obama said in a statement, adding North Korea should face consequences for its "unlawful and dangerous actions."
The world turned upside down when Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton burst onto the scene. Miranda's Tony-winning juggernaut, which changed the game in terms of storytelling and musical presentation, suddenly became an era-defining sensation, with its writer and leading man becoming the poster child for the new generation of Broadway.

By the end of Miranda's run in the show this past July, a certain amount of fatigue had set in. Spectators grew tired of hearing the show's name recited in the news media ad nauseam, especially if they, like many other people, couldn't secure tickets. Perhaps the most exhausted observer of all was Gerard Alessandrini, the theater industry's premiere parodist and the impresario behind the classic Forbidden Broadway franchise.

In his latest show, Alessandrini has taken aim at the success of Miranda and Hamilton. Spamilton, at the Triad, is just as funny and bitter as the Forbidden Broadway series, but it focuses solely on that one show at the Richard Rodgers Theatre, as opposed to a whole smattering of productions. Aficionados of the form (and the message-board chatterati) will definitely want to be in the room where this show happens.

That's not to say it's perfect. As in the Forbidden Broadway series, there's a bunch of material in Spamilton that works, and just as much that doesn't. Alessandrini's writing is always best  and funniest  when the knives are sharp. "In New York you can be a real ham," sings the cast in the hilarious opening number, "Lin Manuel as Hamilton." In "His Shot," Dan Rosales as Miranda recites, "I imagine death so much it feels more like a memory," rearranged as, "I imagine the death of theater when they're singing 'Memory.'"

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Miranda's Tony-winning costars Leslie Odom Jr. (Chris Anthony Giles), Daveed Diggs (Nicholas Edwards), and Renee Elise Goldsberry (Nora Schell) also join in the fun. There's a battle to see who can rap faster: Diggs ("The Fresh Prince of Big Hair") or Goldsberry ("Un-Satisfied"). Odom laments the fact that he probably won't be in "The Film When It Happens." A critique of the cast's diction ("What Did You Miss?") is followed by a section of Sondheim tunes ("Another Hundred Syllables"). It stings, especially for fans of Hamilton itself, but these moments are so sassy and intelligent that the giggles bubble up like champagne.

The easier laughs are less impressive. "Twerk, twerk," replacing "Work, work" during "The Schuyler Sisters," is a bit groan-inducing, as is "Straight Is Back," a riff on Hamilton's rampant testosterone content, sung with commitment by special guest star (and production stage manager) Glenn Bassett in Jonathan Groff mode as the fey King George III.

Other aspects feel more like score-settling. As in his past productions, Alessandrini takes a tiresome number of potshots at the British theatrical invasion of the 1980s, particularly Andrew Lloyd Webber. He seems gleeful in trying to predict the downfall of The Book of Mormon now that Hamilton is the new kid on the block, taking shape as "Book of No More Mormon." And an appearance from veteran performer Christine Pedi (also the show's creative consultant and producer), singing "Down With Rap" (a reworking of "Down With Love") while impersonating Liza Minnelli, kills the show's otherwise fast-paced momentum.

Rosales delivers a brilliant comic send-up of Miranda's Alexander Hamilton persona, with an "aw, shucks" vibe and long, stringy-haired wig. Giles and Edwards are completely convincing down to the tics and mannerisms of their real-life character inspirations. Juwan Crawley nearly steals the show at a segment near the end (you'll know it when you see it).

But Schell is the most important find, oozing with charisma and a voice that could actually score her a coveted role in one of Hamilton's many companies. Gerry McIntyre's energetic choreography and Dustin Cross' deliberately low-rent costumes delightfully imitate the Tony-winning creations of Andy Blankenbuehler and Paul Tazewell.

Eighty minutes devoted to the mockery of a single piece of theater does get a little tiresome by the end; the beauty of Forbidden Broadway is that it is a pu pu platter of satire, where everyone and everything on Broadway is a target. Still, the theater scene isn't the same without Alessandrini's brand of humor, at once loving and mean, always hoping for the industry to be better than it is. While Spamilton might not blow us all away consistently, it's impossible to say no to this production.
if the people of Biafra want Republic of Biafra, it will be a reality during my administration. ----Donald Trump Donald Trump I wi...
Hospital offers safe option to dispose of meds, narcotics Los Robles Health System is working to crush the opioid drug crisis by raising awareness about the dangers of opioid misuse and the importance of safe and proper disposal of unused or expired medications. Crush the Crisis will take place...

Alzheimers Foundation to host free conference The Alzheimers Foundation of America will host a free virtual educational conference from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Tues., Nov. 15. The event is part of the foundations 2022 national Educating America Tour. The conference, which is free and open...

Authorities warn about rainbow fentanyl Victims often arent aware theyre taking it

The Ventura County Office of Education and state health officials have issued a warning to schools and families about rainbow fentanyl, a form of the potentially fatal synthetic opioid that comes in bright colors. Rainbow fentanyl can be found in...

Cancer support community to host remembrance event Cancer Support Community Valley/Ventura/Santa Barbara invites family members and friends of those who have died from cancer to attend the second annual Evening of Remembrance from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Thurs., Nov. 3 at Cancer Support Communitys Garden of Hope,...
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CRH plc, through its subsidiaries, manufactures and distributes building materials. It operates in three segments: Americas Materials, Europe Materials, and Building Products. The company manufactures and supplies cement, lime, aggregates, precast, ready mixed concrete, and asphalt products; concrete masonry and hardscape products comprising pavers, blocks and kerbs, retaining walls, and related patio products; and glass and glazing products, including architectural glass, custom-engineered curtain and window walls, architectural windows, storefront systems, doors, skylights, and architectural hardware. It also offers precast concrete and polymer-based products, such as underground vaults, drainage pipes and structures, utility enclosures, and modular precast structures to the water, energy, communication, transportation, and building structures markets; and construction accessories, such as anchoring, fixing, and connection solutions, as well as lifting systems, formwork accessories, and other accessories used in construction applications. In addition, the company offers network access products, which include composite access chambers, covers, passive safety systems, retention sockets, sealants, and meter boxes; and paving and construction services. Further, it provides building and civil engineering contracting, contract surfacing, operates logistics and owned railway infrastructure; sells and distributes cement; and supplies access chambers and ducting products. It serves governments, contractors, homebuilders, homeowners, and sub-contractors. The company operates primarily in the Republic of Ireland, the United Kingdom, the rest of Europe, the United States, and internationally. CRH plc was founded in 1936 and is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland.
August 26-September 8, 2016

With summer easing its way into autumn, the royals are getting back into the swing of things. Here are ten of the best bejeweled appearances from the last two weeks  be sure to vote for your favorites in the poll below!

Photo: Eddie Mulholland  WPA Pool/Getty Images

10. The Duchess of Cornwall wore her favorite diamond and pearl earrings with a glittering diamond heart pendant for a visit to the Battersea Dogs and Cats Home on Wednesday.





Photo: MARKKU ULANDER/AFP/Getty Images

9. During the Norwegian state visit to Finland this week, Queen Sonja wore pearls and gold bangles for a concert on Wednesday.

Photo: NORBERTO DUARTE/AFP/Getty Images

8. Princess Mako of Akishino embarked on a visit to Paraguay this week; she wore pearls with a lovely abstract ribbon-shaped diamond brooch for her arrival on Wednesday.

Photo: Jeff Schear/Getty Images for Yelena Katchan

7. Heres a new exiled royal for us: Princess Alia al-Senussi, a member of the royal family that ruled Libya in the middle of the twentieth century. She wore diamond earrings, a large ring, and a statement cuff bracelet at a dinner in Chicago on Tuesday.

Photo: Massimo Valicchia/Getty Images News

6. At the canonization mass for Mother Teresa at the Vatican on Sunday, Queen Sofia of Spain exercised the privilege du blanc. She accessorized with her usual array of jewelry, including pearls, a necklace with a religious medallion pendant, a diamond floral brooch, various rings, bracelets, and a wristwatch.

Photo: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

5. Queen Elizabeth II attended the annual Braemar Highland Games on Saturday wearing the same brooch she always wears for the event: the Braemar Feather Brooch. ( Much more in our post from the event over here!

Photo: Christian Alminana/Getty Images

4. Farah Pahlavi, the former empress of Iran, attended a dinner in Monaco on Tuesday. She wore mabe pearl earrings with a single-stranded pearl necklace, plus a delicate chain and pendant, a watch, and a stack of rings on her left hand.

Photo: ADEK BERRY/AFP/Getty Images

3. In Indonesia last week, Queen Maxima wore her beaded gemstone tassel earrings for a meeting with the countrys president in Jakarta. ( Heres our post on the event for more!

Photo: NICOLAS LAMBERT/AFP/Getty Images

2. An informal summit of German-speaking nations is currently being held in Belgium. At a dinner at Laeken Palace in Brussels, Queen Mathilde of the Belgians wore sculptural modern earrings with a lacy golden cuff bracelet.

Photo: HEIKKI SAUKKOMAA/AFP/Getty Images

1. No one else came close this week to the magnificent splendor of Queen Sonja of Norway at the Finnish state banquet, where she wore Queen Mauds Pearl Tiara. ( More on that piece, plus her other jewels, in our post over here!
Barragan by Tim Teeman

Every boundary was blurred, creatively and mischievously, at the Barragan show in the High Line room of the Standard Hotel: both received notions of male and female, and flowing from that what male and female dress constituted. All that mattered was Victor Barragans clothes, which not just looked stunning, but also pleasurable and fun to wear.

They were designed to not only innovate fashion, they keyed perfectly into our times, and how gender and sexuality seem finally more full of options around self-definition and self-presentation. The audience at the showone handsome person, who to the all-too-presuming eye looked like a young manwore a pretty summer dress.

The staging featured the gender-blurring models standing in clumps facing the massed ranks of us attendees. They were involved in an extended take on the Sisyphean task, interchangeably taking charge of a grey boulder made of foam, which they rolled up and down a little stage, and then up a small slope, before either giving up or rolling it optimistically towards a hole at the front of the stage.

The descriptions of the looks we were handedruffle turtle neck body with leather pleated skirt, sleeveless leather trench coat with back pocketsdid not do justice to the good-crazy on display. The beautiful man in the sheer, sheathed black dress showing a lot of skin and with great ear-rings worked the boulder the cheekiest. Another man had a plasticy-looking vest and a pair of black briefs. He was more serious with the boulder.

On other models there was a body-hugging top with black leather skirt, another top made of what looked like small wallets, and a slash of material across a chest, with luxe chainmail hanging from the neck.

The models outfits came in colors of all kinds, from utilitarian to bright orange, with some see-through material, and sometimes with a trouser leg missing.

After the show, Barragan said his influence was Military, with lacy, see-through clothes, and showing more skin with pockets.

Ruben Gutierrez, his collaborator, and the shows scenic designer, said: We dont think of clothes from a gendered standpoint, and that makes it easy to cast genderless models. We think of it from a neutral standpoint, mixing masculine materials and feminine materials. As a generation we have come a long way to accepting non-binary genders. For us, it seems pretty natural.

He and Barragan did not choose the models according to their gender, but their personality and look: mixing laciness and cargo-utility looks added to the genderfuck.

Gutierrez said the design influences came from the suburbs of his and Barragans native Mexico, as well as punk and 90s nostalgia. One sweater was inscribed with the lettering of the famous Friends logo, made over to read Lesbian: Gutierrez said he thought queer characters on 90s TV had been made fun of, and this was his and Barragans way to reinterpret that.

Of freeing up men and women from traditional modes of gendered dress, he said, We know its not an overnight process, but by showing these pieces we hope we have made a step forward to entering the mainstream.

PH5 by Lizzie Crocker

For three months leading up to PH5s New York Fashion Week debut, designer Mijia Zhang slept inside a factory in China owned by the family of her business partner, Wei Lin.

Innovative knitwear, PH5s specialty, is particularly difficult to make because its computerizedmeaning every stitch, pattern, and color requires a different code.

I had to figure out the coding of my design and then convey that to the technician, said Zhang, speaking to The Daily Beast at a small venue in Tribeca where PH5, which launched in 2014, staged its first show on Wednesday: a collection of sporty, playful, mixed-media knits, from striped jumpsuits to cropped tanks and maxi dresses.

The more colors you use, the more complicated the coding and sewing process, said Zhang, who oversaw every step of making the clothes, ensuring the tension is right so that each piecemany of them transparentis durable. She paused on tension to stretch Lins multicolored, delicate-looking cardigan.

Knitwear is indeed high maintenance: One snagged thread might cause an entire garment to fall apart, especially when a single piece incorporates five or 10 different stitches.

The stitch alone is hard, and then we have to print it and layer it and position the pattern, said Lin, 28, showing me an asymmetrical sheer knit skirt screen printed with various shades of blue, red, and black stripes.

She added: Some of the pieces drove my mom crazy! She said, Youre going to kill the workers!

Having learned the trade from her family, who own a knitwear manufacturing company in China, Lin wanted to give back to her parents by launching her own clothing label.

Her ambition began taking shape in 2012 when she met Zhang (the two were roommates in Manhattan), who went to Parsons and has since worked for the likes of Christopher Kane, Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, and Nike. (Every look in the collection was paired with monochromatic white or black Nike sneakers.)

With Lins business and manufacturing background and Zhangs gift for design, PH5 was an auspicious collaboration. The young label already has a celebrity following (Rita Ora and Emma Roberts are both fans) and, with their relatively affordable price points ($175$475) is poised to become a successful contemporary brand.

We want people to be able to wear this stuff every day, to get a lot of use out of it, said Zhang, with Lin picking up where she left off: Thats why most of our pieces are reversible and have pockets.

The clothes look geared towards women Lin and Zhangs age, but the two insist their only demographic is women who dress somewhere on the sporty-feminine spectrum.

On the PH scale, seven is neutral. We called ourselves PH5 because we lean towards the feminine, Lin explained.

The collection was inspired by several of Zhangs favorite artists, including the Quistrebert Brothers projected fluorescent light paintings and Carlos Cruz Diezs layered lines of colors, both of which are reflected in the garments.

Im more of a nerdy art fan, said Zhang. I dont like gallery openings, but I like reading about an artists story and learning about their inspiration.

As for their plans for the brand, the two would like PH5 to have a singular, distinguished voice in the knitwear market.

As a factory owner, nothing makes me prouder than knowing that we create the best knitwear, said Lin. And when youre young, you have nothing to lose.

Marissa Webb by Allison McNearney

The fashion tribe was out in force on Thursdaywell-coiffed fashionistas trading front-row row kisses while photographers primed their shutter-fingersto celebrate Marissa Webbs Spring/Summer 17 collection.

The second season since she stepped down as Banana Republics Creative Director, Webb continued her eponymous lines trend of giving her customers femininity with an edgeindustrial chic meets delicate romance. So the idea of counterbalance, her inspiration for this collection, seems a natural choice.

Frilly light pink shirts were tucked into tight black leather pants, army green jackets were tied shut over black satin mini dresses, and blue and white gingham skirts were paired with black leather motorcycle jackets.

There were lots and lots of rufflesside ruffles, back ruffles, arm ruffles, a decorative wave here, and one there. But these dainty details were counterbalanced by structured pieces in army green khaki and shiny black leather. Gingham dresses with flirtatious cutouts and eyelet-lace accented blouses revealed just the right amount of skin.

At times, it seemed the collection would have benefitted from a bit more focus, and some of the cutesy country-style designs in gingham toed the Little House on the Prairie line (although thats not necessarily a bad thing).

But, overall, Webb presented a collection that leaves us dreaming of spring. A series of pieces using blush French lace, in particular, were pure romance, while she gave a fresh spin to impeccably tailored, high-waisted pants and skirts (her high-waisted leather pant is a must). And theres nothing sexier for a night out on the town than Webbs black satin crepe jumpsuit with an open back or you could always keep it simple in nothin but a pink satin crepe trench coat, which looked soft, slinky, and divine.

Noon By Noor by Lizze Crocker

If Noon by Noors latest collection is any indication, the must-have shoe of 2016the slipper-like, pretty-ugly babouche, seen all over last springs runways and beloved by the likes of Sienna Miller and Mary-Kate Olsenwill continue its reign through next year.

The traditional babouche is rooted in the Middle East and has been worn for centuries by bedouins and Morroccan kings. It makes sense, then, that Bahraini designers and cousins Shaikha Noor Al Khalifa and Shaikha Haya Al Khalifa featured variations on the round-toed babouche in Noon by Noors Spring 2017 collection.

The shoes came in rich fabrics and textures (golden tulle, luminous white lace, and one pair embellished with shiny blush-pink pailettes) and were fitting with a collection of mostly feminine loungewear and fluid shapes and textures.

Dressed-up sportswear and feminine silhouettes are Noon by Noors strong suit, but this seasons nostalgic chiffon maxi gownsreminiscent of Betty Drapers favorite nightiesstood out in the shows lineup.

One came in a soft pink ranunculus print while another was white lace with micro floral embellishments. Sportswear pieces included a flowy, golden-flax linen coat and a roomy oxford jumpsuit in the same fabric, as well a white mesh bomber worn over an iridescent white romper. Still other highlights were the exotic floral jacquard dresses in salmon pink for eveningwear.

Along with the babouche, models wore new-and-improved versions of yet another trend, Ugly Shoe: the slip-on, orthopedic sandal with chunky flat soles and a single swath of fabric that stretches across the top of the foot. Its a throwback to the 90s thats tough to pull off these days, but Noon by Noor made it look easy, modern, and romantic all at once.
Drake has spent his entire career putting women who dance on pedestals on pedestals. Asking if the erstwhile Aubrey Graham likes strippers is like asking if Lil Wayne likes lean, or if Kanye likes outfitting women in neutral-toned, skintight athleisure sets. If Youre Reading This Its Too Late, Drakes 17-track paean to women, Canada, and more women, shouts out at least 12 different, fully-fleshed ladiesall of whom exist for the express purpose of sleeping with, taking care of, and/or texting Drake.

On Legend, he raps, Got a girl, she from the South / Used to work, used to dance in Texas, now she clean the house. It only takes a passing knowledge of Drakes musicthe kind you get from going to the club once, going to your local bodega once a week, or just leaving your houseto realize that this lyric encapsulates Drakes ideal woman. Much like a Bachelor franchise contestant, Drake doesnt see unemployment as a deal breaker. In fact, he prefers a former stripper to a working girl. Drake wants all of the sex appeal with none of that actually supporting yourself and making a living nonsense. Drake wants to literally separate you from your entire family and transplant you to his mansion so you can entertain him and clean his house, like a refugee sex Roomba.

On Energy, Drake cites a different exotic dancerhis ex-girl, whos the stripper version of me. On Company, Aubrey asks a new stripper to come visit him after her shift is over; by the middle of the song, hes contemplating a proposal to yet another woman. Theres Courtney from Hooters on Peachtree, Porsche from Treasures, Maliah and Chyna. Drakes love of women is rivaled only by his penchant for citing proper nouns.

Drake is also obsessed with saving women, buying them things, and footing their tuition bills. Given his fetish for raising up fallen women, it was only a matter of time before he opened the worlds most chivalrous strip club.

Over Labor Day weekend, the rapper announced his latest business venture, a Houston club called The Ballet. On Monday, Drake teased his definitely-not-a-strip club strip club in an Instagram post, captioned, Treat yourself don't cheat yourself. Where the women are on a pedestal and the surroundings are unforgettable...Grand opening early 2017. During a pop-up event surrounding the mysterious announcement, he told the crowd, Theres a culture out there of dancing. And its not about no strip club shit. Its really about these amazing women that we got in one spot. This music that we got. This Houston culture that we got. As Drake denigrated strip club shit, half-naked women performed on stage and dollars bills rained down from above.

Clearly, Drake is trying to create an R-rated home base for men like Drakedudes who claim to put women on pedestals, but low-key dont want them working on one. Drake, who has supported and dated strippers for years, seems to think that calling a woman a stripper is an insultwhich, in and of itself, is pretty insulting.

Of course, the greatest irony of Drakes ill-informed savior complex is that hes not really the baller he thinks he is. Basically, Drake has relationship dysmorphiahe sees himself as an alpha male, but consistently plays the role of stay-at-home hubby. In common parlance, Drake has become shorthand for a sensitive dude who will build a home for himself in your friend zone. Drake likes to act like hes out touring the world with an ex-stripper in his compound and Nicki Minaj in his passenger seat. In actuality, hes cheering for Serena Williams from the sidelines and scrolling through his camera roll looking for old pictures of him and Rihanna. When his girl goes to the club to have some fun with her friends, he stays up all night in the studio rapping about how she did him dirty. He essentially spent seven years waiting for Rihanna to take him seriously. So when you think about it, Drake is actually Drakes ideal girlfriend.

But if you only have four minutes and 27 seconds to really understand Drakes approach to the fairer sex, look no further than Hotline Bling. In addition to being the Drake-iest music video that Drake has ever Drakedthat turtleneck! those over-confident Bar Mitzvah boy dance moves!Hotline Bling fully outlines Drakes problem with women. The track deep dives into Drakes specific definition of a good girl: a woman who spends her entire day waiting to talk to Drake on the phone. Unfortunately, Drakes good girl has gone bad, exhibiting such untoward behavior as going out with her friends, dressing up for the club, and running out of pages in her passport.

For a rapper whos made a career out of being your sensitive, emotive, imaginary boyfriend, Drake sounds like he would be a horrible partner. His Phyllis Schlafly-style gender rolesseriously, Drake, your girl cant go on a plane without you?as well as his need to monitor and control his girlfriends behavior are serious red flags. He even has the audacity to accuse his bad girlfriend of not being true to herself, because Drake cant fathom why someone would actually want a hobby or two outside of being his sex buddy.

While Drake is out living the life, Drakes girls arent allowed to have one. But its important to note that the rappers particularly egregious everyday sexism isnt all that uncommon. We all know an IRL Drake; hes the self-proclaimed feminist who doesnt understand why you cant be his girlfriend, his mom, and his cleaning lady. He expects you to like all of his Instagram photos, and wants you to make your account private. He loves going through your text messages, but gets all defensive when you ask who RiRi is and why shes always blowing up his phone.

Drakes particular brand of misogyny might be less alienating than his peers but its far more insidious. Unfortunately, weve become all but inured to blatant, gendered slurs in popular music. Most women can bump a track about bitches giving blowjobs and more or less block out the message to appreciate the music. Its not a good feeling, but its also not a new one. Drake, on the other hand, is a fresh disappointment. Drake swears that he loves women. Most importantly, he loves women who dont get enough mainstream adoration, specifically black women. But for all of Drakes efforts to act as a woman-worshipping hip-hop corrective, his double-edged praise consistently falls short. Drake doesnt put women on a pedestal so much as he pushes them back into a box.

Drake will praise you for being a working woman every chance he gets, but on the third date, hell ask you to quit your job and move into his Toronto compound. This hypocrisy is most overt when it comes to stripping, a field thats apparently full of women whom Drake both loves exactly as they are and wants to change in every way. He simultaneously wants to fund entire strip clubs with never-ending singles, and take all of their best dancers out of commission.

On Energy, he raps, I got strippers in my life, but they virgins to me. This is the crux of Drakes problem: He thinks that hes saving women by believing that all of themeven the ones who gyrate for a livinghave the potential to be born-again virgins. He doesnt seem to realize that in 2016, virginity isnt synonymous with virtue, and some women might actually prefer working over being Drakes stay-at-home wifey. Like countless men before him, Aubrey Graham is dead-set on rescuing women who dont need saving.

And Drake doesnt just sing about strippershe puts his money where his mouth is. Dancers have regaled the internet with stories of Drake spending $15,000 to keep a club open after-hours, or bringing $50,000 to a Charlotte strip joint. And according to one Atlanta strip club DJ, the affection is mutual: The girls in love club loooove Drake.

But Drakes history with strippers, much like his history with Degrassi, Rihanna, and facial hair, is complicated. In 2014, the rapper made a casual hookup faux pas when he allegedly ditched one stripper, Jhonni Blaze, for another alum of the same club, V Live. Blaze later claimed that after she called Drake out, he sent members of his entourage over to V Live to threaten her about going to the press. She proceeded to file a police report against Drake citing threats and harassment; and publicly outed their affair through a series of text screenshots.

After years of haunting strip clubs with a stack of singles and a misogynistic savior complex, Drake has finally ended up with the kind of woman who terrifies him. Rihanna parties harder than Drake, unabashedly owns her sexuality, and doesnt even seem to like him that much. RiRi even puts Drakes stripper obsession to shame. Hopefully, the love (ambivalence?) of a lady who has consistently championed women and refused to be characterized as a victim will convince Drake to hang up his White Knights cape once and for all. Because aside from Drakes sexist scruples, his strip club sounds pretty lit.
A little-known New York real estate broker parlayed his relationship with Donald Trump into a role shilling for him in the Russian mediaand trading off the business moguls name.

Trump has been seeking opportunities to develop buildings in Russia since the 1980s, during the Soviet eranone of which have been fruitful. However, they have led to a number of business connections, including one that that brought Trumps beauty pageant to Moscow in 2013. Russian President Vladimir Putin could not attend the pageant, but sent a decorative lacquered box.

The Republican nominee gave Putin a present of his own Wednesday night, referring to Putin as a leader with an 82 percent approval rating.

I think when he calls me brilliant, Ill take the compliment, OK? Trump said, when reminded Putin was a former KGB officer by the stunned moderator at a candidates forum.

Trumps connections to Russia dont begin and end with Putin, however. They also include self-styled advocates like Sergei Millian, who once served as a broker for Russian buyers seeking out Trump properties.

Millian is a player in a larger web of controversial business ties between Trump, the Trump Organization, and RussiaRussians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets, Donald Trump Jr. told a real estate conference in 2008, the same year that Millian met Trump.

But Millian stands out from the pack because of his use of Trump-esque hyperbole to bolster his own career. Since first meeting Trump, Millian has built a reputation on a series of exaggerations, to become a cross between a translator, a property merchant, and a pro-Trump spin doctor for the Russian press.

In fact, Millians online biography prominently bragged that he had worked as a broker for projects with Donald Trump.

We have signed formal agreements with The Trump Organization to jointly service the Russian clients commercial, residential and industrial real estate needs, read the April 2009 newsletter for the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce, where Millian is the president.

After inquiries from The Daily Beast, the reference to Trump in his biography was scrubbed.

Its one of many ways that Millian has recently played down his relationship with Trump, now that Trumps ties with Russia have come under scrutiny.

There had been quite negative press related to Russia so I dont want to be involved, he told The Daily Beast when first reached by phone. I didnt represent him personally ever, he continued, saying that he had merely worked with him on some projects.

Earlier this year, he bragged about being an exclusive broker with the Trump Organization to promote their properties in Russia.

[After meeting Michael Cohen] Trump Organization & Related Group [] signed an exclusive contract with me for promoting their companies in Russia and CIS countries, Millian said in an interview.

In a lengthy interview with RIA News, a Russian language outlet, in April, Millian boasted about instantly winning Trumps affection at the Moscow Millionaires Fair in 2007, when his friends organized Trumps trip. A decade out from his presidential bid, Trump then allegedly invited Millian to horse races at Gulfstream, Florida.

That encounter led to a meeting with Trump attorney Michael Cohen and, allegedly, an exclusive contract for dealing Trump properties in Russia and nearby nations.

Then, in the 2007-2008 years, Russians were buying tens of apartments in Trump buildings in the U.S.A., Millian bragged to RIA. But I wouldnt want to disclose concrete sums or names.

Now, with escalating media interest in Trumps ties with Russia, Millian dismisses it as almost a side gig: There are several brokers who work on such real estate projects I do remember there was a written agreement that authorized me to market one of the projects bearing his name signed somewhere around 2008.

It was a Trump-like move: brag about ties to a project when it could be advantageous; but then brand it as tangential any link to the project if it starts to show sign of controversy.

Millian appears to have been born Sergei Kukut in Belarus. Social media accounts on Facebook and Russian social network Vkontakte link him to family by that name in Belarus, and his page on the website for the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce gives the name as an alias.

I am US citizen and do not have and never had Russian citizenship. When immigrants arrive to USA, it is a common practice to change their name, he told The Daily Beast in an email.

In the April interview with RIA, Millian said hed been in contact with Trump or an adviser a few days prior (Millian told The Daily Beast last week he had not spoken to Trump since 2008). He praised Trumps knowledge of other cultures by noting he offered him a glass of champagne upon closing a business deala nod to the notion that Russians like to drink.

Internet posts from Millians early years in the U.S. use his former name, and hint as his early role as a Russian-speaking fixer who brokered deals for Russian businesses. I can recommend a savvy canadian lawyer (speaks Russian), who only for $2500 consulate fees can arrange your immigration to Canada, Millian boasted in one.

But in recent years he has evolved into a regular pundit on behalf of Trump, in Russian media, and even to The Daily Beast as recently as a month ago.

Donald Trump is presidential, powerful, charismatic, and highly intelligent leader with realistic approach towards Russia. Im am glad to see Donald taking control of GOP, Millian said last month during the Republican National Convention, after The Daily Beast reached out to the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce. I, personally, wholeheartedly support his presidential aspirations. Its been a great pleasure representing Mr Trumps projects in Russia.

When RIA News asked him this year about fears that America might go up in flames in the case of a Trump presidency, Millian remained a true believer.

I think he will be able to improve some processes in the government, because its currently very bureaucratic, he said. For instance, this concerns medicine. In the USA people smile at you well, but the level of accessibility and wait time here is behind many countries.

But the April interview was unusual in that it focused on Millians supposed personal relationship with Trump. Typically, hes billed as a political scientist or economics expert when he spins for Trump.

In one article billing him as an expert, Millian waxed about how Trumps economic reform will be based on Americanism, not globalism, and parrotted the Republican nominees talk about keeping jobs in the U.S.

In another article in June, Millian speaks authoritatively about how Trumps friendships will dictate his choice of a vice presidential candidate.

Trump mostly interacts with business or military people, he said. Thats why his vice-president will be a representative of one of these two camps: either someone who came from the corporate world, or the military.

Trump, of course, picked Mike Pencewho is from neither. But Millians work for Trump is so curious because his own instincts mirror those of his political idol. Like Trump, he insisted that things worked out just as he had hoped.

In July, when many in Russia worried Trumps vice presidential choice in Mike Pence might threaten Trumps warm embrace of the country, Millian praised the Indiana governor an excellent candidate.

He works well in his post and gets by without scandals, Millian said then. Opponents will find it hard to find fault in his reputation and work.
Trevor Noahs Daily Show has never been as focused on media criticism as Jon Stewarts was. But certain moments call for an exception, and Matt Lauers disastrous performance at Wednesday nights NBC News Commander-in-Chief Forum was one of those moments.

During World War II, on multiple occasions, kamikaze planes crashed into the Intrepid, Noah said of the events dramatic venue. And last night Matt Lauer continued that tradition, because I don't know what the fuck he was doing, and neither did he. While the Today show host had just 30 minutes to question Hillary Clinton about foreign policy , he spent a third of his time digging through her inbox.

And though Noah did think the emails were a worthy topic of discussion, he said the problem became evident when one of the veterans in the audience finally asked how she plans to combat ISIS. Before Clinton could answer, Lauer told her to do so as briefly as you can.

Are you shitting me?! Noah exclaimed. This event was called the Commander-in-Chief Forum. Its the reason were watching, and because Matt Lauer spent so much time on his questions about emails, the actual questions from the actual veterans about the actual commander-in-chiefing gets reduced to a speed date.

But if Noah thought Lauer was bad during Clintons portion of the forum, The Daily Show host said he was terrible when handling Trump, letting him get away with blatant lies about the GOPs candidates alleged opposition to the Iraq War. How did he just move on? the host asked of Lauers refusal to correct Trump. I would love to date Matt Lauer because getting busted would be impossible, he added.

Noah went on to point out that Trump saying that he opposed the Iraq War in 2004 is like people voting against Trump in 2017. And I know some people are saying, well, what did you expect, man? It was Matt Lauer. Hes just the host of a morning show, he doesnt know how to push back, he said. But thats why this is so disappointing, because thats not true. Matt Lauer can take tough questions to very powerful people.

As an example, Noah highlighted Lauers grilling of a Zayn Malik-less One Direction. He called out One Direction in front of their fans, an army way stronger than Hillary and Trump will ever possess! he said. Come on, Matt Lauer, you didnt flinch in front of a bunch of rich, powerful children. I cant believe you couldnt face down just one.
Somewhere, Ann Curry must be smiling.

Not since NBC News star Matt Lauer was accused of orchestrating his Today show cohosts firing four years agoa widely reported charge that he was at pains to deny, even though Currys body language during her on-air farewell seemingly confirmed ithas Lauer absorbed so much abuse from the chattering class.

Unlike last time, however, he cannot distance himself from his much-criticized performance moderating the NBC/MSNBC Commander-in-Chief national security forumin which he appeared to throw fastballs at Hillary Clinton, drilling down on her lingering email problems, while going easy on Donald Trump, allowing the Republican presidential nominee to utter one unchallenged falsehood after anothernotably his easily contradicted claim that he never supported President George W. Bushs military adventure in Iraq.

Indeed, a real-time analysis of the candidates assertions by PolitiFact indicated that Trump was a veritable conflagration of Pants on Fire, with 44 of his claims earning that worst designation, while Clinton garnered only six. (Despite her reputation for political evasion, the great majority of the Democrats statements were deemed true, mostly true, or half true, while Trumps truth-to-lie ratio was the polar opposite.)

Interviewing the candidates back to back in 26-minute segments, with occasional questions posed by military veterans in the studio audience, Lauer let Trumps answers speak for themselvesthe moral equivalent, some would argue, of a campaign video.

Its not a good day for Matt Lauer, former CNN Washington bureau chief Frank Sesno told The Daily Beast on Thursday. He was just more forward-deployed with Hillary Clinton than he was with Donald Trump. Going after her for the umpteenth time on her emails, and not going after him when he says he never favored the Iraq War, is just this side of egregious.

Sesno, the director of the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University, agreed that Lauers difficulties might serve as a piquant object lesson for the recently chosen moderators of the three televised presidential debates and one vice presidential debate scheduled to air from late September through mid-October.

They have to be fiercely prepared, he said about the moderators, who include NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt, ABCs Martha Raddatz and CNNs Anderson Cooper, and Fox Newss Chris Wallace. They have to be prepared on the issues. They have to be prepared on the atmospherics. They have to be prepared on the personalities. And they have to be prepared to strike their own very disciplined, important voice for completeness and accuracy in the responses that they get.

University of Virginia political science professor Larry Sabato, meanwhile, said being subjected to occasionally unfair criticism is part of a moderators portfolio.

They know theyre going to get loads of criticism no matter what they do, and they have to accept that, he said. Are they going to let the candidate roam freely and ignore the questions, and misstate the facts, or are they going to intervene, and to what degree? They have to think about this.

Despite Lauers ample talents as a broadcaster, and his long experience as a generalist, anchoring live from crime scenes and natural disasters, and interviewing everyone from Kardashians to world leaders in six-minute slices, the 58-year-old Today host is not a political journalist, and theres scant evidence that he spends time on the campaign trail or regularly subjects himself to detailed issue briefings by campaign policy staffers.

While he and co-host Savannah Guthrie, a former NBC White House correspondent, have interviewed Trump several times during the 2016 campaign, most often when the candidate has called in to the program, Lauer, like most of Trumps interrogators, seems not to have figured out how to prevent the reality TV billionaire from filibustering and making boasts, untethered to facts.

In an event aboard the decommissioned aircraft carrier Intrepid, the Today host was lost at sea, New York Times television critic James Poniewozik wrote in a savage review that encapsulated the media-political complexs harsh verdict on Lauers handiwork. Seemingly unprepared on military and foreign policy specifics, he performed like a soldier sent on a mission without ammunition, beginning with a disorganized offensive, ending in a humiliating retreat.

Even NBC News, confronted by a fusillade of condemnation aimed at its most important and highest-paid commoditysaid to be earning upward of $20 million a yeardeclined to publicly defend Lauers performance.

In a brutal postmortem, CNN media correspondent Brian Stelter quoted an anonymous NBC News exec as calling it a disaster.

Stelter reported that NBC News and MSNBC Chairman Andy Lackwho helped stage-manage the forum and bypassed in-house political junkies such as Hardball host Chris Matthews (who conducted a widely praised and illuminating interview with Trump in March), prime-time anchor Rachel Maddow, and Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd to pick his longtime pal Lauer for the jobis also shouldering his share of the blame internally at NBC.

This should be black eye for Lack, a network source told Stelter.

My own soundings at NBC News are very much in sync with Stelters, although nobody used the d-word with me.

What seems clear, however, is that Lauer and his producers blundered by not making sure that if the first questions to Clinton were going to be adversarial, Trumps should have been as well, and that the dual interviews should have demonstrated a certain structural balance, if not equality, in tone and content.

Although many of Trumps answers to Lauer were revealingsuch as lavishing praise on Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin as a better leader than President ObamaLauer didnt seem to want to satisfy televisions need for conflict and drama. While he pointed out to Trump that Putin is a former KGB agent who invaded Ukraine and supports Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, Lauers tone was non-confrontational, as though trading polite opinions over cocktails in the Hamptons.

I shared some of the frustration being vented on social media, said a person who asked to be identified only as a Lauer defender. But addressing the severest judgments on the Today show stars performance, the defender said, This is all bullshit and ridiculous and hyperbolic and overblown.

The defender pointed out that Lauers softly delivered grilling did challenge Trumpand made newswith questions about Putin, a tweet suggesting that the men and women together in the military inevitably led to rape, and Trumps assertion that American generals have been reduced to rubble.

I share the frustrations of the media being largely unable to hold Trumps feet to the fire, the defender said, but the truth is that Matt is sort of the somewhat unwitting victim of a lot of those frustrations. Im not saying hes an innocent bystander, but the criticism is overblown because of that dynamic.
Editors Note: On the 18th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, President Donald Trump repeated his lie he visited the ruins of the World Trade Center with employees to help in any way that we could. When he ran for president in 2016, Michael Daly held him accountable for lying about Americas darkest day.

Six months after Donald Trump claimed to have lost hundreds of friends in the 9/11 attacks, his campaign continues to ignore a request from The Daily Beast that he name even one.

His silence becomes all the more shameful as we come to the 15th anniversary of the day 2,983 innocents were murdered in downtown Manhattan.

If he has hundreds of friends, he should be able to tell us about them, remarked a Port Authority police officer who has felt a duty to learn as much as he can about as many of the victims as possible. If he can tell us about the hundreds of friends he lost, who they were, what kind of [people] they were, I might have some respect for him.

The only time anybody can remember Trump being down at the September 11 Memorial and Museum was this April, when he made what seemed more like a campaign stop. Those who escorted him noted that he did not seem to pay particular attention to any of the names around the memorial pools or pictures of the victims displayed in the museum. His own math would say that at least a tenth of these people were his friends.

Trumps then-campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, reacted as might be expected of anybody who had lost even one friend. A museum staffer later reported that Lewandowski had seemed greatly moved as he paused before a picture of Brian Kinney, who had been a passenger aboard the ill-fated United Airlines Flight 175. Kinney had been one of Lewandowskis best friends and had married a young woman named Alison Hardy whom Lewandowski had dated in high school. Lewandowski and Hardy had subsequently become one of the many post-9/11 romances in which shared loss became love. They are now married.

Trump proceeded past the faces with no manifest interest. He breezed by a haunting photo of a woman standing at the edge of the monstrous charred hole that an airliner had punched in the uptown side of the North Tower. That is the same facade that faced Trumps penthouse apartment four miles uptown.

Along with saying he lost hundreds of friends and that he saw news footage of thousands and thousands of Muslims in New Jersey cheering the attack (he was the only one to see that footage if so) Trump had spoken of standing at his apartment window and possessing such remarkable eyesight that he could see the jumpers four miles south. The woman in the photoidentified as Edna Cintron, an administrative assistant who had been working there to augment the income of her family flower shop in Harlemis believed to have become one of those forced by the flames to leap.

To look at that photo of her in her final moments at the abyss is to know that telling lies about her or about those who perished with her are far more heinous lies than such a standard politicians fib as saying you were always against the Iraq war when you started out saying on The Howard Stern Show that you supported it.

Trump did present the museum on his first and only visit there with his very first recorded charitable donation in connection with 9/11. The check was for $100,000, but it was drawn on his foundation, to which he has not contributed a penny in more than six years. He therefore continued a perfect record of not giving a penny of his own money to the memorial, not even the admission price, which the museum said was waived for him and his entourage, a saving of $24 for the adults, $18 in the case of a senior citizen such as Trump.

Trump then returned to his tower just up Fifth Avenue from Saint Patricks Cathedral, where so many 9/11 funerals were held. Trump is not known to have gone to any 9/11 funerals, even though the FDNY lost so many343 membersthat it worried it might not be able to fill services and so asked the public to attend.

The 9/11 funerals at the cathedral a few moments amble from Trumps home included the one for FDNY Captain Terence Hatton, who was married to then-Mayor Rudolph Giulianis executive assistant. Giuliani gave a tender eulogy, terming the loss a death in the family and calling Hatton the kind of man he would want his son to become.

He was what real courage was all about, Giuliani rightly said.

Anybody who listened to Giuliani that day could not have imagined that he would ever countenance, much less support, someone who sought to elevate himself by telling lies about 9/11.

Let us hope that Giuliani believes that Trump really did lose hundreds of friends on 9/11 and really was able to see jumpers from four miles away and really did see footage of cheering Muslims.

And let us hope that Giuliani is being completely truthful when he seeks to explain why there are no documented donations by Trump in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, when Americans gave more than $1.2 billion.

On record, the self-proclaimed billionaire Trump gave less than the impoverished septuagenarian widow who arrived at a Ground Zero checkpoint on West Street with a small bag of ice, saying it was all she had to give the first responders.

Giuliani told the Republican National Convention that this man who works harder than anybody not to be anonymous and likes to put TRUMP on everything from buildings to steaks to doggie sweaters prefers to go unnamed when he gives to the families of fallen first responders and the victims of terrorism.

Every time New York City suffered a tragedy, Donald Trump was there to help, Giuliani said. Hes not going to like my telling you this, but he did it anonymously.

Giuliani called Trump a man with a big heart and went on, When police officers were shot, when firefighters were hurt, when people were in trouble, he came forward and he helped, and he asked not to be mentioned. Well, Im going to break my promise to him. I am going to mention it.

Giuliani continued, I am telling you this because I am sick and tired of the defamation of Donald Trump by the media and by the [Hillary] Clinton campaign. This is a good man and America should be sick and tired of their vicious, nasty campaign. You deserve to know this about your next president.

In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, Donald Trump reportedly called The Howard Stern Show and pledged to donate $10,000 to the Twin Towers Fund. That is the charity Giuliani set up to benefit the families of first responders who perished on 9/11.

In his contribution this year to the memorialhis only documented 9/11-related donationTrump used funds from the foundation that bears his name, but none of his own money of late. The same is true of all his other significant charitable donations that are not a failed real estate venture made via a donation into a tax deduction.

Despite his pledge, the Trump Foundation shows no donations at all to the Twin Tower Fund.

Giuliani would have us believe that Trump would make a very public $10,000 pledge on The Howard Stern Show, but ask that any donations he actually made to first responders remain anonymous.

On Sunday, Giuliani is expected to be at Ground Zero for the observance of the 15th anniversary of 9/11, just as he has been present for all the previous anniversaries.

Also expected is another Trump booster, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who has attended every anniversary observance while in office. Christie prompted frowns at the 13th anniversary, when he stood laughing at Ground Zero with his then-aide, David Wildstein, two days into the five-day lane shutdown at the George Washington Bridge that led to the present trial in New Jersey federal court.

The frowns turned to grumbles at the 14th anniversary, when Christie sat chatting on his cellphone in his SUV while it blocked two busloads of families of fallen NYPD officers, keeping them from reaching their prearranged arrival point at Ground Zero.

As of Thursday night, Trump was not on the list of those expected to attend. The Port Authority cop who has tried to learn all he can about as many victims as possible and who really does prefer to remain anonymous says that he hopes Trump will stay away as the names of the dead are read once more.

It would only serve as a distraction from the people and the families that day is about, the cop said.
The Dodgers great manager Tommy Lasorda believed that leadership was like holding a dove: You hold it too tightly, you kill it; you hold it too lightly, you lose it.

Donald Trump also has a theory of leadership: Be more like Vladimir Putin.

At NBCs Commander-in-Chief Forum, The Donald offered up his latest love letter to Vlad, declaring that hes been a leader far more than our president [Obama] has been, praising his great control over his country and his totally organic 82 percent approval rating.

This, of course, is odd behavior from the nominee of the historically hawkish, anti-communist Cold Warrior party. But weve become accustomed to inanity and insanity this campaign. So it wasnt a total surprise when Trumps hostage/VP nominee Mike Pence doubled down on The Donalds defense of Putin, telling CNN I think its inarguable that Vladimir Putin has been a stronger leader in his country than Barack Obama has been in this country.

Given that this duo hopes to lead our country, its worth digging a bit deeper into just what they mean by leadership. The unfavorable contrast between President Obama and Vladimir Putin has been a recurring riff on the far right in recent years. In 2014, Sarah Palin offered up one of her classic nut-burgers in praise of Putin: People are looking at Putin as one who wrestles bears and drills for oil. They look at our president as one who wears mom jeans and equivocates and bloviates. Paleo-con Pat Buchanan was barely more coherent when he declared: [Putin] is seeking to redefine the Us vs. Them world conflict of the future as one in which conservatives, traditionalists, and nationalists of all continents and countries stand up against the cultural and ideological imperialism of what he sees as a decadent West.

It seems safe to assume that Donald Trumps attraction to Putin isnt ideological. Nothing he does is ideological as much as instinctive and opportunistic. Its about something much more basic: Some people confuse strong leadership with tough-guy thuggery. There have always been people in this world who get weak-kneed at the first whiff of authoritarianism. They think that the bullying bluster of self-styled strongmen makes them great leaders. They mistake heat for light.

The Founding Fathers warned about the danger of this strongman school of leadership since the earliest days of our democracy. Alexander Hamilton cautioned, There are seasons in every country when noise and impudence pass current for worth; and in popular commotions especially, the clamors of interested and factious men are often mistaken for patriotism.

Noise and impudence is certainly one way to describe The Donalds campaign style. Its nationalist, know-nothing appeal is emotional. Especially in times when people feel out of controlfor example, when the forces of globalization are shaking every old tribal certaintysome folks gravitate to the guy who is strong and wrong. They are soothed by tough-guy theatrics that divide the world into us against them. They take comfort in the bully because they believe hes got their back. Of course, bullies are scared and self-interested creatures themselves and they have no friendships, only interests.

John Adams argued, without the great political virtues of humility, patience, and moderation every man in power becomes a ravenous beast of prey. But humility, patience, and moderation are emotionally unsatisfying for people who need to feel the overwhelming force of power to believe its real.

Governing often requires dealing in gray areas, principled compromises that achieve a greater good. Particularly in geopolitics, it requires a balance between hard power and soft power. From Ike to George H.W. Bush to Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, this wisdom is sometimes mistaken for weakness.

Extremists prefer the ravenous beast of prey approach. In a frightening world, thugs believe that raw power is the only way to get respect and terror is a tactic to that end. Putin learned it from the KGB. Trump learned it, at least in part, from his McCarthyite mob lawyer Roy Cohn: Always attack, never apologize.

In this world of dark animal spirits, its no surprise that Trump is so charmed by Putin, expressing schoolboy delight in being called brilliant by the Crimea-annexing, journalist-killing, democracy-manipulating, would-be dictator. He is a fellow traveler, an egotist who respects strength more than ethics and believes that the end justifies the means.

Because the thug theory of leadership is built on fear masked by playing offense, its foundation is unstable and inevitably breaks down. Sometimes this comes in the form of buffoonish corruption or the kind of hysterical self-regard that leads to bare-chested, bear-wrestling photo ops.

In Candidate Trumps case, the cracks are already showing. His argument for the presidency boils down to the idea that because he seems like a successful businessman, hell be a great president. But in the extended audition that is a campaign, Trumps executive mantra about hiring great people has been fatally undercut by the perpetually chaotic state of his operation, impulsively replacing campaign managers in late-night palace coups and replacing them with hyperpartisan Svengalis and conspiracy entrepreneurs with no campaign experience. So much for hiring great people. So much for achieving great results.

Of course, every strongman has their sycophants. Some are true believers and others are just opportunists. But a thousand surrogates doing their best Baghdad Bob impersonations, desperately spinning a disaster and defending the indefensible, cant erase the stain of this campaign.

Comparing an American president unfavorably to a Russian autocrat is only a symptom. The real sickness lies at the heart of the thug theory of leadership: If you believe that most people are motivated by fear, rather than hope, it causes you to have contempt for democracyand that can be contagious.
Three things I believed on March 18, 2011: Time is rigid. Bodies are strong. All hurts heal.

Then in a thunderclap of noise, a spasm of dust, and a shockwave that tickled my insides and swiped away my breaththe effects of a 200-pound improvised explosive device exploding beneath the armored vehicle I was riding in with members of the U.S. Armys 10th Mountain Division in eastern Afghanistan on March 19, 2011I began to learn that none of these things are true.

Its been five years that Ive had the physical scar of the explosion, and Im still learning. Every day I get farther from the blast but once a day, at least, I loop all the way back to March 19, 2011, to two seconds that felt like eternity.

Its been five years and I can still close my eyes, and feel the sensation of flying through the air inside 15 tons of steel. The feeling I had thenmy crystalline brush with oblivionI still feel now. I have not healed.

And Im not alone. Not by a large margin. I am one of tens of thousands of Americans whove survived an IED blast. Who are still surviving. Please dont pity us. Please, just try to understand.

America changed on 9/11 and not for the better. But never mind all that. What Im interested in is how Americans changed after 9/11. In our bodies. In our minds. Im interested because I am a product of 9/11. And not just because I got blown the fuck up in Afghanistan.

Im a semi-successful (and, at present, semi-retired) war correspondent and I have the 9/11 attacks to thank for that. In January 2005, I ditched a shitty job at a small newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, and traveled to Iraq for the first of dozens of embeds with U.S. and allied forces not only in Iraq, but also Afghanistan and other war zones.

I was good at it, I guess. Young at the time, white, straight, and a man, I feltand actedlike I was invincible. Not all that different from many soldiers, I suppose. I worked hard, took risks, kicked down the doors of an exclusive profession. I felt lucky to have a war or three to advance my career.

And when people asked, I told them Id do this forever. Id been shot at and survived. Id gotten dysentery twiceand healed. Id waded through a sea of body parts in the aftermath of a suicide bombing and never had a single nightmare about it. Id been scared for my life more than onceand had gotten over it.

I was smart. I was tough. I was lucky.

Until I wasnt.

On March 19, 2011, in Pakhab-e-Shana, in Logar province just south of Kabul, my mine-resistant, ambushed-protected armored truck, or MRAP, rolled over a buried IED with a pressure-plate trigger. The weight of the truck compressed two metal platesone connected to a power source, the other to the detonator.

Boom.

There were seven of us in the truck. Five soldiers from the New York-based 10th Mountain Division. One Pashto-speaking interpreter. Me. We were in Pakhab-e-Shana as part of President Obamas troop surgean escalation of the war that he apparently believed would result in lasting security in Afghanistan.

It didnt. And in the course of trying, many more Americans were added to the tally of American dead that, for our post-9/11 wars, today numbers 6,888 service members killedmost recently Army Staff Sgt. Matthew Thompson, killed in an explosion in southern Afghanistan on Aug. 23and no fewer than 35,000 wounded. And thats not counting contractors and other civilians. IEDs have accounted for thousands of deaths and tens of thousands of injuries. Improvised bombs are hardly new, but our wars of occupation, combined with the relative poverty of the extremists fighting against us in those wars, have afforded the devices their historical moment.

You want to know what it feels like to get blown up? (Im shouting these words in my head as I write them.) Fine, motherfuckers, fine. Heres what it feels like. Heres what it was like as my perfect 9/11 life shattered into a million pieces. Here, I imagine, is something like what tens of thousands of other American IED survivors experience when they close their eyes, let down their guards, and remember.

The sound was so loud that, when I recall the explosion, its always silent. No reasonably healthy mind would subject itself to that kind of trauma a second time. But there was a sound. A cosmic thunderclap. A force so powerful it dislodged me from normal time. One second I was strapped into the MRAP, eating nacho chips from a tiny bag I had saved from the previous days lunch.

The next second, the vehiclewith me and the six others in itwas flying through the air. It flew so slowly, dust jetting from every nook and cranny, light angling weirdly through the thickly armored windows, that I had time to realize what was happening and ponder what it all meant. I mean, I had time for a good long think. I realized I might die. I wasnt upset about it. I admitted to myself that it was my own damn fault for voluntarily hanging around all these war zones all these years.

I was, however, disappointed. Thirty-two years of life. All that work. All that growth. All that potential. And it was all about to end in a huge gnarly mess. Were just bodies, after all. Even the strongest of us breaks easily amid steel and fire and force. Why had I ever imagined I was the sole exception?

I didnt die, of course. And aside from a nasty gash on my right bicep, still visible five years later as a 2-inch whitish scar, I wasnt even obviously physically injured. I cant say the same for the six other men in the truck. Among them, there were broken bones, deep lacerations, concussions, and at least one seriousand apparently career-endingbrain injury.

American, Afghan, and Jordanian soldiers pulled us out of the twisted wreckage of our truck. Helicopters lifted out the five most badly injured, leaving just me and one other soldier with the convoy. A medic assessed me for a brain injury. Later, at a nearby base, an Army doctor repeated the assessment. No one seemed particularly worried for me. Im just a civilian, after all. And Id only been blown up the one time.

So I bought new pants at the base store to replace my bomb-shredded jeans, super-glued my smashed glasses back together, and, well, got back to work. I was sore as hell, but everything seemed to function just fine.

But bombs injure us in subtle ways. A year after the explosion, I got into my first bar fight. I started yelling at my girlfriend way too much. I developed a bad habit of flipping out anytime anyone around me expressed an opinion about war that I didnt agree with.

Maybe Im just an asshole and always have been. Or maybe, just maybe, my brain is different from how it was on March 18, 2011. Dr. Timothy Bentley, a researcher at the Office of Naval Research in Arlington, Virginia, believes explosions could cause bubbles to form inside peoples brains. The subsequent popping of the bubbles, a process called cavitation, could damage brain cells and, over time, contribute to a host of conditions.

Long-term post-traumatic stress. Loss of hearing and eyesight. Even Alzheimers. Its such a powerful force, Bentley told The Daily Beast of cavitation. I continue to suffer from PTSD stemming from the 2011 explosion. It doesnt help that time, I now know, is rubberand it keeps snapping me back to the moment of the blast, those two seconds that lasted forever. My hearing and eyesight seem to be fine, thank God. As for Alzheimers well, well see, wont we?

Indeed, Americas going to spend the next 60 or 70 years discovering just what happens over the long term when you scramble the brains of tens of thousands of young men and women. In the year 2076, an epidemic of brain injuries might be one of the most lasting legacies of 9/11.

I believe that will be the case for me. The 9/11 attacks made me who I am. And now theyre unmaking me, one bad memory and angry outburst at a time. Five years after Iand my wartime fantasyfirst exploded, Im still exploding.
The wealthy son of an Iranian prince is under investigation for food-stamp fraud in Ohio, authorities say.

But Ali Pascal Mahvi, a 65-year-old businessman who lives between St. Lucia and Geauga County, claims hes innocent.

On Friday morning, police raided Mahvis six-acre residence, hauling away computers and boxes of documents from his $800,000 mansion in Russell Township. Local TV footage zoomed in on his in-ground swimming pool, horse stable, and garage with luxury cars, including a BMW and Lexus convertible.

Its outrageous to see a situation where somebody is living in a house almost worth a million dollars, a horse barn, driving luxury cars, have millions of dollars in overseas bank accounts and here they are accepting this type of assistance, Geauga County prosecutor James R. Flaiz told WKYC , which first revealed the raid.

Certainly, they were very good at manipulating the system, Flaiz added.

Prosecutors claim Mahvi is a millionaire who gamed the system for two years to snag $300 a month in food stampsor $8,358 to date, authorities sayas well as Medicaid for his wife and three adult children.

They say the American descendent to royalty has a Swiss bank account worth $4 millionan allegation Mahvi steadfastly denies. (Mahvi told The Daily Beast the account belongs to his late father, Abolfath Mirza Mahvi , and that the money was stolen by his dads business executives long ago.)

Cops are probing Mahvis bank accounts in an attempt to prove his cries of poverty were all a ploy. Investigators say the family has at least 14 bank accounts with a combined value of more than $4.2 million, WKYC reported.

As the family got food stamps from March 2014 to February 2016, they were also spending on $200 meals at local restaurants and $350 for cable TV, along with transactions at Starbucks and tanning salons, investigators say.

The food stamps were cut off in February due to discrepancies in the familys actual monthly income, according to an affidavit for a search warrant.

But the Persian prince, who goes by Pascal and has not been charged with a crime, vehemently denies the allegations against him.

When reached by phone Thursday, Mahvi said, Were not guilty. This is total fabrication.

Mahvi says he qualifies for food stamps because hes fallen on hard timesstemming from a lawsuit from a former business partnerand that his only income is loans from friends helping him get back on his feet. (The Daily Beast could not confirm the existence of the lawsuit by press time.)

The bank, Mahvi says, owns his house.

Theyre saying I have $4 million in a Swiss bank account, that Im defrauding the government with food stamps. Its totally ridiculous, he said.

They werent armed with all the facts, and they made a lot of assumptions and theyre false, Mahvi added.

Mahvi, a developer behind the St. Lucia resort that is now the celebrity-studded Sugar Beach , said he cant buy or rent another house because of bad credit. He also said that banks wont lend him money because his home and his land is mortgaged.

The cheapest thing for me to do and save my family, where Im working to get myself back on my feet, is to borrow from friends. To pay Wells Fargo so were not in the street, he told The Daily Beast. Thats the only option Ive got.

According to Mahviwho says hes land-rich but cash-poor (he estimates his worth at $111 million for land he partially owns in St. Lucia)hes only guilty of failing to provide documentation of his loans to the countys Jobs and Family Services department. He had no idea such paperwork was required, he said.

Ill bet you my bottom dollarthat I dont havethat this is the only case like it in the whole country, Mahvi said. People who get food stamps usually cant borrow [from wealthy friends]. We must be the only family in the U.S. that has the ability to borrow and yet qualify for food stamps.

Mahvis use of food stamps contradicts the images of wealth littering his Facebook page: yachts and sunsets in St. Lucia and sailboats in Spain.

Investigators say the familys bank records showed a monthly net income ranging from $3,200 to more than $8,500, according to WKYC. (Mahvi said that cash came as loans or church donations to his family and cannot be counted as income, per federal regulations.)

When Mahvi first filed for food stamps in April 2014, he listed his total net income after taxes and housing costs as zero, WKYC reported. Meanwhile, his cash, savings and checking accounts were less than $100, investigators said in the search warrant affidavit.

The application provided 2012 tax returns showing a negative income of $2.9 million, a search warrant affidavit states. Tax returns for 2013 and 2014 also showed negative income of about $3 million per year, the affidavit says.

In a second application for Medicaid, filed in June 2014, Mahvi indicated he expected to earn more than $300,000 in the next year from his company Idria Energy, and his interest in a Caribbean resort, the affidavit states. (The court document does not confirm whether Mahvi made the $300,000.)

Mahvis wife claimed an income of $1,200 in rental fees and $1,700 in other income, but it wasnt disclosed when the family filed for food assistance, investigators say.

In April 2015, the family claimed zero income when they reapplied for Medicaid. That application was approved for one year, WKYC revealed.

But a county investigator allegedly found a pattern of lavish spending in bank statements and an unreported monthly income that allowed it.

According to an affidavit, the Mahvi family net income, based on bank records, was well over the maximum amounts approved for food stamps and Medicaid during six months they received assistance.

Authorities also pored through debits made to seven of the Mahvis accounts and tallied their spending on restaurants, Redbox, iTunes, alcohol, and other non-essential transactions.

The affidavit states all monthly spending, excluding three months, went over welfare limits. For example, in April 2014, the Mahvis dropped $9,867 on non-essential and non-business related items, and in November 2014, the family burned through $14,289, the affidavit says.

The most they spent was $16,727 in January 2016, the document states.

Detectives also claim to have unearthed structuring bank transactions, or transactions made in specific amounts to avoid federal reporting requirements. Investigators say six deposits totaling $30,000 were made in increments under $10,000 into the Mahviss money market account at Huntington National Bank from February 2014 to May 2014.

According to the affidavit, the Mahvis deposited $4,000 at 2:55 p.m. on Feb. 4, then $6,000 at 2:57 p.m., and they twice made similar dual transactions over the next few months, authorities say. (Banks are required by law to report transactions over $10,000 to the federal government.)

The county began investigating Mahvi this year after he asked a welfare official a question that raised suspicions, WKYC reported.

For his part, Mahvi says his loans from friends go to his $4,600 mortgage, car insurance, pet food for seven dogs, two cats, and two horses (What are we going to do with the animals, put them down?), and $500 cellphone bills, which are high because he makes international calls for work. Some of his dining expenses are business-related, he says.

Sometimes I have to meet people, so I go to restaurants and I pay the bill because Im self-employed, Mahvi said, adding that hes now trying to pay his debts by getting into the fuel business.

Mavhi said the stress over his financial ruin led to him having a heart attack in June.

Three months later, he said, cops bombarded his home at 10 a.m. with guns drawn on him and his son, and TV cameras were along for the ride.

At the end of the day, theres nothing left, Mahvi said. We live hand to mouth every day. Im so fed up and so tired of fighting. This thing happened and knocked the wind out of me.

Mahvi thinks people should focus their outrage on the regulations that allow him to receive welfare benefits. Federal laws say loans are not income and not reportable, he said. In other words, in this country, I could borrow a million from you today and still be on food stamps.

Requests for comment from the Geauga County prosecutors office, and the countys Jobs and Family Services investigator, were not returned Thursday.

The allegations are just the latest road bump for Mahvi, who wrote The Deadly Secrets of Iranian Princes, a memoir about his upbringing within the Shah of Irans inner circle after his father became a chief adviser.

Born in New York, Mahvi moved to Iran to work and spend time with his father after he graduated from college, but they fled after the Iranian Revolution in 1979.

Mahvi says he was on a death list from 1980 to 1990 for Crimes Against God, because he previously, and unwittingly, was engaged to a Playboy bunny. The clergy there put a fatwa on me to have me killed, he said.

In 1981, the prince met his wife, the daughter of a local police chief, in Cleveland. They stayed in Ohio, and he traveled for work, accumulating an airplane and yacht before his wealth allegedly fell apart.

His new energy venture is his last shot to save his family home, he says.

I am a real prince. I do not use the title, Mahvi said. But Im not a millionaire.
This demolition is devastating. These grounds are the resting places of our ancestors. The ancient cairns and stone prayer rings cannot be replaced. In one day, our sacred land has been turned into hollow ground.

Dave Archambault II, Standing Rock Sioux tribal chairman, Sept. 4, 2016

1. What land-protection means

On April 1, some 70 men and women from the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, which straddles North and South Dakota, erected an encampment on private land owned by LaDonna Brave Bull Allard off the reservation. They were there, on what they hold to be sacred land, to protest the poisoning of their water, water that they hold to be equally sacred. Without consulting the Sioux tribes, a conglomerate oil company in TexasEnergy Transfer Partnershad gotten permission from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to construct the $3.8 billion Dakota Access Pipeline (DAP), an oil pipeline that would run near the reservation and beneath the Missouri River, the reservations sole source of water.

The Dakota and Lakota tribes have long lived in this territory. Here, led by Sitting Bull and Red Cloud, they fought off the U.S. Army and were defeated after long battles. Here, on Sept. 3, 1863, the army committed the Whitestone Massacre of 300 men, women, and children. The tribes still hold treaty rights to this land. Their ancestors are buried here.

But the Lakota were consulted by the Army Corps of Engineers neither about grave sites nor the waters.

The oil pipeline was originally supposed to go above Bismarck, in territory mainly inhabited by whites. But the company shifted it to go south through Standing Rock, crossing under Lake Oahu (part of the Missouri River) and the Missouri twice.

The Sacred Land encampment is a vibrant, spiritual place. It had grown into a second camp of some 2,000 people on nearby public land by the time I arrived on Aug. 30 with photographer Paula Bard. Over the weekend, the numbers swelled, and now, according to news reports, some 3,000-4,000 protesters have encamped.

Since April, word about protecting the waters has spread, and many indigenous peoples have sent support. As you enter Red Warrior camp, the flags of 154 tribes flutter along both sides of the road. People come locally and from Manitoba, Sasketchwan, California, Oklahoma, and Minnesota.

Paula and I entered the Standing Rock reservation where it divides the bright waters of Lake Oahe and the Missouri River. Water does not just give life here. Water is an extension of the people. Mni Wiconi is the Lakota phrase: Water is life.

We spent five days with the land protectors (they do not call themselves protesters, but protectors or defenders). We listened to drumming and prayer songs, sometimes late into the night. We met three Cheyenne and Arapaho women who had just driven 15 hours from Oklahoma, and a man from Minnesota who had been at Standing Rock for a week, gone away, and had just returned.

We heard a Minnesota woman who lived near Lake Superior speak about how when she was growing up, you could catch and eat a fish every day. One day, her grandfather warned that there would be a fight over the purity of the water. This had seemed unimaginable to her, the water blue or gray, shifting with sun or clouds.

Now, the waters are murkier, and a pregnant woman may eat only one fish caught in the lake in nine months.

The Lakota is also a womens culture, so there were two large circle prayer meetings of women while we were there. One went down to the river. The other lifted its voice to the pure waters in the sky. Women sought the maintenance of the Missouri and Lake Oahe for children, grandchildren, and seven generations to come.

In April, young Lakotas said they would not acquiesce to oil pipes under the water. Some 15 organized the Oceti Sakownin (7 Council Fires, the original name of the Sioux) run to Washington. At one evening gathering, a Pawnee counselor who had worked for 12 years to prevent teenage suicides told of the vibrancy and initiative of the runners who spoke to Congress about the DAP.

When the Lakota people pray and sing, they speak naturally of the earth, the mother. The water and the land are given by grandfather spirittunkashila in Lakotato make the life of all tribes, animals, and humans good. Tim Mentz, an elder, spoke of the understandings and instructions, passed through the grandmothers, of 19 generations. And Dave Archambault, Standing Rock Sioux tribal chairman, said that the prayers which began in April had yielded guidance, as the elders conjured a vision of a nonviolent resistance movement to protect the water.

Despite dispossession from the lands, the ethnic cleansing, the treaties broken by the U.S. government, and the associated transgenerational trauma, the people at the encampment display an immediate, rich sense of the continuity of their ancestors and the sacredness of the earth.

As 13-year-old Anna Lee Rain Yellowhammer put it in a petition: Oil companies keep telling us that this is perfectly safe, but weve learned that thats a lie: from 2012-2013 alone, there were 300 oil pipeline breaks in the state of North Dakota. With such a high chance that this pipeline will leak, I can only guess that the oil industry keeps pushing for it because they dont care about our health and safety. Its like they think our lives are more expendable than others.

A substantial leak would poison the waters all the way down to where the Missouri flows into the Mississippi, all the way down to Mexico.

We camped next to a Navajo family from Arizona. They told us how last year, tailing ponds from Colorado mines leaked radioactive waste into the Las Animas River near Durango and Pagosa Springs. Las Animas flows into the Colorado River and Lake Powell. Downstream in Arizona, they could no longer give their horses water.

Many of us drink the Missouris water, and most of the country eats the crops grown in the region. This pipeline threatens every American.

2. Wounded Knee

Standing Rock was the reservation of Sitting Bull, who led the defense of the Black Hills against Custers invading army. In 1876, at the battle of the Little Big Horn, which Native Americans call the Battle of Greasy Grass, a coalition of indigenous people led by Sitting Bull defeated the invaders. Sitting Bull then led his people to Canada, but eventually returned and settled at Standing Rock, where he was murdered by the U.S. Army during the suppression of the ghost dance at Wounded Knee in 1890. The ghost dance was an indigenous/Christian dance for the resurrection of the indigenous community and the repulsing of the invaders.

Starting on Feb. 27, 1973, the American Indian Movement led a great movement to revive the spirit of Wounded Knee, when 200 Oglala Sioux occupied the town of Wounded Knee for 71 days. They demanded the U.S. government honor or renegotiate treaties and opposed the violent and corrupt official leadership of the tribe. People were electrified. Indigenous activists and other supporters joined from all over the country. An armed standoff ensued. Dennis Banks and Russell Means, two leaders of AIM, were indicted. Because of prosecutorial misconduct, however, the charges were dropped.

A man holds a sign: I was not at Wounded Knee but I am at Standing Rock.

This is a battle for water, for the generations, for the country.

3. A Company Attack with Dogs and Mace

Last Saturday, Sept. 3, Energy Transfer Associates organized a hasty new plowing of grave sites. A large nonviolent demonstration took place. Demonstrators were attacked by company dogs and maced.

Before any investigation, Kyle Kirchmeier, the sheriff of Morton County, echoed the Energy Transfer Companys report about the alleged violence of protesters. So did the lead column (front page, top right) of the Bismarck Tribune for Sunday. April 5, written by Leann Eckroth.

Protestors Get Into Worksite, the headline read. Security Officers, Dogs Injured.

In civil disobedience actions over the last week, protesters have chained themselves to machines. They were eventually cut loose and arrested. No dogs were present. But while the company siccing 10 dogs on demonstrators was unusual, it does conjure the ghost of Bull Connor, the police chief of Birmingham who infamously unleashed dogs and high-pressure fire hoses on high school students in 1963. Winona LaDuke, an Anishinaabe from Minnesota, responded: I feel like telling the governor is that, you know, you are not George Wallace, and this is not Alabama. You know? This is 2016, and you dont get to treat Indians like you have for those last hundred years. Were done. You know? Itll be interesting times.

The Bismarck Tribune alleges injuries to securityone security official was bitten by his own dogand to the dogs themselves: Three private security officers at the site were injured by protestors, said Donnell Preskey, spokeswoman for the Morton County Sheriffs Office. One of them required hospitalization. Two security K-9s were also taken to a veterinarian to be treated for injuries  The security officers were hit and jabbed with fence posts and flag poles.

The dogs were not trained. Dog expert Jonni Joyce exclaimed that they looked like alligators on leashes. They bit some 30 people, including a pregnant woman and a child.

Marcus Frejo, who is of Pawnee and Seminole ancestry and came from Oklahoma City, said, We made it to the top of the hill and saw several bulldozers and trucks, and we walked up to the fence. Theres sacred sites up there, so one woman stepped through the fence, just feet in, telling them with her son at her side that this is sacred land. She yelled at them to stop.

Bulldozers were less than 10 feet from her, and I was thinking, Why cant this bulldozer that is so close to her stop? So I ran in front of the bulldozer to stop, and security came up from behind and just grabbed me and flipped me over. All of a sudden Im on the ground, and then more people started coming through the fence and got him off me.

Ursula Young Bear, an Oglala Lakota, reported, The women joined arms, and we started saying, Water is life! A dog came up and bit my leg, and right after that a man came up to us and maced the whole front line.

The Bismarck Tribune reports protesters with fence posts, but no protesters had fence posts. The Tribune says, According to several reports from security officers, knives were pulled on them or they witnessed protestors with large knives. No defender had a knife. The camp forbids them, and the people are protesting nonviolently. Only the guards used dogs and mace.

Leann Eckroth did not speak to any of the hundreds of protesters. She did not go to the campsite, a mile down the road from the construction site.

Reporting on Native American protest in the North Dakota press does not include both sides. It does not pretend to the objectivity of ordinary journalism.

Neither the sheriff nor the Bismarck Tribune were on the scene. They did not speak with the tribes. The governor has now called out the National Guard.

Due to the numbers of protesters, the tractors retreated over the hill. Construction stopped.

4. The Desecration of Graves

Demonstrators only learned later of the companys premeditated grave desecration.

Tim Mentz, a Lakota elder, had recently explored this land with three of his cousins. He spoke last Saturday night to an assembly at the camp, where he reported discovering 27 graves of ancestors and 82 rare sites on the land bulldozed that day. He found the coup stickWagamuhaof the Strong Heart Society. He found the half rings or handles of the dipper which the Nachas of the Straight Lance People had made. These would have been the only ones in the North Dakota State Data Base.

Company archaeologists show no familiarity with Sioux practices. They walked right over this.

Mentz said that archaeologists call graves burial mounds to justify stealing the skeletons, and stressed the importance of the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. One result of that legislation is that 20,000 indigenous skulls in the possession of the Smithsonian Institute are slowly being returned for burial.

On the destroyed site, Mentzs team also found a sacred buffalo effigy.

David Meyers, who owns the land where the pipeline is to run, encouraged Mentz to look for the sites. Meyers is learning Lakota and wants to know why the land is important to the people. But he could not interfere, he said, where the land had been taken by the company through eminent domain. He says Energy Transfer Associates had threatened to sue him.

In district court in Washington, archaeological consultants for the company testified there were no grave sites on the land. On Friday, Jan Hasselman, attorney for the Sioux, introduced Mentzs discoveries in hope that these sites would be protected. But on Saturday morning of Labor Day weekend, bulldozers destroyed the very sites Mentz identified.

***

Earlier today a U.S. District Court judge denied a temporary restraining order to halt construction of the DAP. But later in the day, the Obama administration blocked the pipeline at Lake Oahe pending review and consultation with the Lakota.

Prepared for the long haul, the tribe will appeal. Protectors will engage in resistance and civil disobedience into the winter.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has warned women to wait eight weeks after visiting Zika-impacted Miami neighborhoods before trying to get pregnant in order to avoid potential birth defects like microcephaly. But now, the World Health Organization (WHO) is suggesting that women should wait over three times that long.

Men and women returning from areas where transmission of Zika virus is known to occur should adopt safer sex practices or consider abstinence for at least six months upon return to prevent Zika virus infection through sexual transmission, WHO announced in interim guidelines published Tuesday.

The WHO also specifically advises couples or women planning a pregnancy to wait at least six months before trying to conceive to ensure that possible Zika virus infection has cleared.

International media outlets quickly circulated the new WHO guidelines but many did not report a footnote which clarified that the recommendation on adoption of safer sex practices or considering abstinence for six months is a conservative measure. Many U.S.-based outlets, too, either omitted or did not notice that detail, either.

So far, the footnote states, sexual transmission of the Zika virus has not been reported after 41 days of symptom onset.

That doesnt mean that the six-month recommendation is unfounded, especially given emerging research on the months-long persistence of the Zika virus in semen. As researchers uncover more knowledge about the effects of Zika seemingly by the day, many men and women may wish to follow the conservative estimate.

But for women especially, the current disconnect between the WHO interim guidelines and the CDC guidance is a potential point of confusion.

On May 30, as CNN reported, the WHO issued recommendations that were more closely aligned with the CDCs current guidance: men and women should wait eight weeks to conceive after traveling to an area where there is local transmission of the Zika virus while men displaying symptoms should wait a full six months.

But now, the WHOs new six-month guideline for safer sex or abstinence applies unilaterally to both men and women regardless of symptoms.

What changed? For one, a July report in The Lancetcited by WHO in the new interim guidelinesfound the Zika virus lingering in a 27-year-old womans cervical mucus even after her blood and urine tests came up negative. It should be noted, however, that the Lancet article only reported the womans test results for 11 days after symptom onset and the researchers could not state how long the virus could remain in cervical mucus.

The duration of Zika virus persistence in the female genital tract and its clearance after the disappearance of the symptoms are unknown, the report noted.

WHO spokesman Daniel Epstein did not immediately respond to a request for comment as to why women were now specifically included in the six-month guidelines.

WHO reviewed published evidence including 17 studies or reports on sexual transmission of Zika virus and eight studies on the presence of Zika virus in semen, and consulted with different experts, Epstein explained to The Daily Beast.

These studies and reports document transmission of the Zika virus from asymptomatic Zika-infected men to women and from a symptomatic woman to a male partner. They also include recent research that sheds new light on the persistence of the virus in semen.

To date, the Zika virus has not been successfully cultured from a mans semen longer than 24 days after developing symptoms, but Zika ribonucleic acid (RNA) has been found in semen up to 188 daysor just over six monthsafter symptom onset. According to the WHO, a total eight studies have now examined the presence of Zika in semen.

Whether or not the CDC revises its travel guidance to match the new WHO guidelines remains to be seen.

At present, the CDC still advises women to wait at least eight weeks [after traveling to an area with active transmission] before trying for a pregnancy. But CDC spokesperson Tom Skinner told CNN on Tuesday that the agency is in the process of updating its interim guidance related to pregnancy planning and the timing of pregnancy after possible exposure to Zika virus and prevention of sexual transmission of Zika virus.

The CDC did not immediately respond to The Daily Beasts request for comment on the disparity between their current guidance and the WHOs new interim guidelines. When asked why about this disparity, Epstein told The Daily Beast that WHO and the CDC have different roles.

WHO, as the global guardian of public health, issues evidence-based recommendations for countries all over the world so authorities and groups can make informed decisions on health and safety based on their context, which can vary from region to region, among countries, and even within countries, Epstein said. CDC advises people in the U.S. on public health measures they should take.
North Korea is hailing a successful fifth nuclear test, which it carried out Friday morning local time.

The device tested, which created a 5.3-magnitude tremor at its Punggye-ri test site, was reportedly in the 20- to 30-kiloton range, much more powerful than the Norths previous detonations. The last test, in January, yielded only about seven to nine kilotons.

The North Koreans had been ready to test this device since May. So why did they wait until now? Some are suggesting the detonation celebrated North Koreas Foundation Day, marking the 68th anniversary of the establishment of the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea. But from all indications, the Kim regime tested at this time because it realized China would not impose costs for the detonation.

The test took place three days after Pyongyangs nuclear envoy traveled to Beijing. Choe Son Hui, deputy director general of the Foreign Ministrys U.S. affairs bureau, arrived in the Chinese capital on Tuesday.

We dont know what Choewho was deputy chief envoy to the six-party denuclearization talks, which have been dormant since 2008and her interlocutors said this week. Nonetheless, it was evident that the North Koreans were confident of the Chinese reaction.

At the moment, Beijing is far more upset with Seoul than Pyongyang.

In July, South Korea and the United States announced they would deploy the American-made Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system on South Korean soil. Beijing is worried that THAADs high-powered radars will reach into China and could help the U.S. shoot down Chinese missiles. Washington denies that is the case and has been willing to share technical information, but Beijing has not been mollified.

Since the announcement, Beijing has taken a number of steps to snub the South diplomatically and undermine its economy.

With Beijing upset at Seoul, the North Koreans evidently think they can do what they want. On Monday, the North launched three medium-range, nuclear-capable Nodong missiles. The tests, on the second day of the China-hosted G20 summit, were conducted right after Chinese ruler Xi Jinping met on the sidelines of the event with South Koreas president, Park Geun-hye. Clearly, Kim Jong Un was not worried that China would react unfavorably to the launches.

Its clear the North Koreans know that as a general matter they have Chinese support. Trade across the Sino-Korea border is booming at the moment, an indication that Beijing is not enforcing Security Council Resolution 2270, the fifth set of UN sanctions on the Norths weapons programs.

Moreover, some of the traded items are clearly destined for Kims military. China, according to David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security, did not interrupt the flow of materials and components for Pyongyangs nuclear weapons program, such as cylinders of uranium hexafluoride. Also allowed in, worryingly, were vacuum pumps, valves, and computers.

The North Koreans know that Xi sees the U.S. as Chinas main adversary, blocking Beijings ambitions in almost every direction. Thats probably why President Obama and National Security Adviser Susan Rice got a rough reception on Saturday in Hanghzou as they arrived for the G20. Kim, seeing how Xi treated Obama, thought he could get away with delivering his own radioactive-laced snub.

Kim knows that Xi is not about to further goals, like the denuclearization of North Korea, that Washington promotes, and so Pyongyang thinks it has a big green light in its quest to possess the worlds most destructive weapons.

Pyongyang will make fast progress in developing nukesuntil the U.S. and the rest of the international community realize they have a China problem as much as a North Korean one.
Julia Roberts Says MLK Jr. Paid Hospital Bill For Her Birth

YES, YOU READ THAT RIGHT

The actress said her parents were friends with King and his wife, and the couple helped out when they couldn't afford the bill.
Marie Brizard launches contemporary redesign

Marie Brizard Wines & Spirits (MBWS) enters a new generation this year at the TFWA World Exhibition in Cannes, with a revived new look for its liqueurs range that is creative, modern and guaranteed to impress buyers.

Since its creation in 1763, the Marie Brizard Anisette travelled through the centuries, never going out of fashion. Today, this iconic mix is back with a new look that is synonymous with freedom of mind, non-conformism and refinement. This new look asserts Marie Brizards strong personality through a new visual identity that cleverly brings some set traditions into play while breaking others.

The historical slender feminine lines of the bottle, which is a huge part of its success throughout the world, remain unchanged and are even enhanced with multiple facets, for a defined contemporary look.

The aromatic heart of each liqueur is a skilful blend of different spirits or infusions, or even both. This requires a great know-how and the amazing talent of a woman. Marie Gentil, master liqueur maker and an expert of flavours and aromas was both the keeper of Marie Brizards secrets and the one person responsible for carrying on her work, she personifies the soul of the brand and its standards of excellence.

Kevin Baker, Marie Brizards global travel retail director, says: Cocktails have been growing dramatically around the world and Marie Brizard is perfectly positioned to reflect that trend in travel retail. We have great tasting signature cocktails, while being the perfect partners as ingredients in any drink creation. The Marie Brizard brand is widely recognised amongst the worlds best mixologists for its quality and versatility and they enter the Marie Brizard Masters global cocktail competition in great numbers, culminating in the final in Bordeaux in November.

This years relaunch sees the unveiling of an exciting new design and activation plans to engage with travellers. The Cannes exhibition provides the opportunity to share those plans with global travel retail customers.

MBWS will also be showing the new look for its multiple award-winning Gautier range. Recognised as the best cognac in the world for the second year in a row, Gautier has undergone a major strategic makeover, with a new brand personality and package design based on craftsmanship, heritage, unique know-how, and generosity. An accessible craft cognac is Gautiers new brand territory, reflecting a unique and authentic relationship to the natural elements (wood, water, cognac eaux-de-vie) in the cognac making process while the new packaging boasts vivid imagery such as vineyards and rivers, giving a strong and contemporary visual identity.

The controversial and daring Shotka, a premium high strength flavoured vodka targeted at rebellious night-clubbing fans, will also be on display. Without the narcotic effects of this most hotly debated drug, cannabis-flavoured Shotka stands out with its unique and unexpected taste. First launched in Spain during Summer 2015 in a strategic partnership with Matinee Group, one of the most prestigious nightlife companies in the world, Shotka is the focus of a targeted activation program that will run throughout this year. While the ABV of Shotka has been lowered in domestic markets to qualify it as a Hemp Liqueur, the travel retail version retains its high strength of 50% ABV, making it a duty free exclusive.

Also on display will be Sobieski, 100% pure rye Polish vodka with an authentic, rich taste and a silky finish thanks to the high quality of the rye grain used in its production. Sobieski vodka has seen continuous growth since its international launch in 2001 and has received many prestigious awards.

9 September 2016 - Felicity Murray The Drinks Report, editor
Disclaimer: The Flavor Bender is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program. There are links on this site that can be defined as affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases (at no cost to you) that will help support this website.

Spicy, smoky, a little sweet, a lot succulent  Spiced Pork Stuffed Hatch Chile is great as a party entree, main meal or regular weeknight dinner. Super easy to make too! Great way to use up hatch chiles, and if you dont have access to those, simply substitute with anaheim, poblano or even green bell peppers. This is comfort food with amazing Mexican flavors that your whole family will love!

If youre a fan of stuffed green chile or stuffed pepper recipes like Chiles Rellenos, then youre going to adore this Spiced Pork Stuffed Hatch Chile recipe!

Stuffed pepper recipes work well as party appetizers or even as an entree with a side salad, or a quick weeknight dinner to satisfy the hangry family. They act as a vehicle for some show-stopping flavors, and they are ridiculously easy to make as well!

Before Mr K and I went off on vacation last week (I finally got to see Yellowstone, yay!), we bought a bunch of hatch chiles that were on sale at our local grocery store. I talked about how to roast hatch chiles in the oven the other day, so that you can store away and enjoy this very fleeting produce for many months to come. Im so glad I vacuum packed some of those hatch chiles because Ive got this wickedly delicious pork stuffed hatch chile recipe to use them up for! If you dont have access to hatch chiles however, you can use anaheim peppers or poblano peppers or even regular green bell peppers instead. Whichever green chile you have on hand will work.

I chose the plumpest hatch chiles that I had (which really were meant to be stuffed) and used them for this pork stuffed chile recipe. I simply bestowed upon them their birthright, one could say.

The pork filling in this recipe is spiced with cumin (and a little lime) and actually cooked with more roasted hatch chile as well, in order to give it another layer of spicy, smoky flavor. And the result is a spicy, succulent, a little sweet, pork filling thats dripping with flavor!

To make the pork stuffed hatch chile, I cut a long, rectangular opening in the raw chile. Its important that this opening is just wide enough for you to work your fingers in so that you can remove the seeds and the white pith and then stuff it with the flavorful pork filling. Roast these until they become nice and soft and have soaked up all those insane flavors and THEN top it up with cheese or breadcrumbs or both (!) and continue to roast long enough to make it all melty and bubbly. And then finally, I served them with a super easy to make, herby, creamy, tangy cilantro yogurt sauce! YUM!

You can mix in some cheese with the pork filling as well if you like it extra cheesy. This recipe is a fantastic way to use up those hatch chiles that come into season this time every year. Alternatively, you can use any green pepper you have to make this stuffed chile recipe. We just cannot get enough of those amazing Mexican flavors in this dish, and I hope you guys enjoy these spiced pork stuffed hatch chile peppers as much as we did! 
A Henry woman died Thursday evening when the vehicle she was driving crashed into an SUV on Route 619.

Leslie Hudson Neice, 49, was traveling east on Route 619 in a 1992 Buick Roadmaster when it crossed the center line of the roadway and struck a 2015 Ford Edge head-on, according to Sgt. Rick Garletts with the Virginia State Police.

Neice was not wearing a seatbelt and died at the scene, Garletts said.

The driver of the Ford and a juvenile were transported to Carilion Franklin Memorial Hospital for treatment of the injuries they sustained in the crash.

The fatal crash occurred Sept. 8 at 7:46 p.m. on Route 619 (Pleasant Hill Road), three-tenths of a mile west of Clark Road.

The VSP Reconstruction Team is assisting Trooper J.D. Eames with the investigation.
Virginia launched a newly designed program last week for thousands of people with disabilities as part of a years-long negotiation with the federal government.

The new program takes Virginia one step closer to completing the requirements laid out in a 2012 settlement agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice over the way the state doles out money for services for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

An advocate for disabled Virginians said the new program is a positive development for a system she believes is in crisis, but she worries more will be needed from the state to adequately meet the needs of the 12,255 families on a waiting list for services.

Under the new program, the states roughly 40 community services boards will serve as the single entry point for all families seeking waivers, or slots, for services, said Connie Cochran, assistant commissioner of developmental services for the Virginia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services.

The waivers have also been recategorized so that theyre no longer specific to certain disabilities, and the state has increased the payments for some services in the hopes of attracting new providers.

The three new categories are called community living, family and independent support, and building independence waivers. They replace the intellectual disabilities, developmental disabilities and day support waivers.

The term waiver means the federal and state governments are paying for community-based services that before the 1980s could have been purchased only if the disabled person lived in an institution, said Dawn Traver, director of waiver operations for the department.

The switch was designed to be seamless for people already receiving services, Traver said. Families did not have to reapply for one of the new waivers.

The state has worked with the people on the waiting lists to make sure theyre prioritized based on the urgency of their needs, Traver said.

As of last week, there were 12,255 people on waiting lists for the three old waivers, said Maria Reppas, spokeswoman for the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services. The number of people waiting after the change took effect on Thursday was not immediately available.

Some people on the list need intensive help, such as in-home specialists, but many need less expensive services, like a wheelchair ramp or a backyard fence to keep autistic children from running away, said Jamie Liban, executive director of the Arc of Virginia, a nonprofit that advocates for people with disabilities.

What Virginia has done for decades is wait until a family is in total crisis before it offers even an ounce of help, Liban said. Either the caregiver is very old, aging, or passed away until help has been provided, which results in a very expensive array of services.

Providing less expensive services early on would prevent caretakers from burning out, which in turn prevents costlier services for families that wind up in crisis, Liban said.

There arent enough service providers for families now, Liban said, and she worries the new system doesnt go far enough in attracting new ones.

You can have services in a waiver program, but if you dont have providers, that service doesnt mean anything to families, Liban said.

Cochran said the new system is supposed to better match the people on the list with their specific needs, which should allow more people to be served  but that remains to be seen.

Redesigning the waivers was not designed to address the backlog of individuals waiting for services, Cochran said.

Also, the department has given grants to eight day providers to promote community engagement and reduce the use of group day programs, Cochran said. The grants also require the providers mentor others looking to shift their models.

After a landmark Supreme Court ruling in 1999, Olmstead vs. L.C., the federal government has been pushing states to offer more community-based services so fewer people with disabilities are forced to live in institutions. In 2012, Virginia settled with the Department of Justice over its handling of disabled residents and agreed to make changes.

The shift this week is another step in that process, which is supposed to be completed by the end of fiscal year 2021.
Iowa football mailbag: How close was starting quarterback decision?

Time for another Iowa football postgame mailbag! This week's edition quantifies how much progress the Hawkeye offense made in win over Northwestern.
Jim Himes feels your pain, Lindsey Graham and Nancy Pelosi.

The Democratic congressman from Connecticuts 4th District recently joined the ranks of politicians forced to change their personal cellphone numbers after they were leaked to the public  in Grahams case by Donald Trump.

I got hacked, Himes told Hearst Connecticut Media.

Himes number was part of an online document dump targeting Democrats last month by Guccifer 2.0, a hacker who posted lawmakers contact information on a blog. The rogue denied to the Wall Street Journal this week that he was put up to the caper by Russia or China.

Himes, a top fundraiser for Hillary Clinton and member of the House Intelligence Committee, said the hack has led to some prank messages, as well as something unexpected  a recipe.

Hey Jim, how are you doing? I just wanted to ask you if you tried the Red Lobster Cheddar Bay Biscuit Mix, said the male prank caller in a southern accent. Theyre really easy to make. All you have to do is preheat your oven to 425. Other than that, man, just feel free to give me a call if you just want to tell me how bad Hillary Clinton is at everything she does ever and how everything she touches just like turns to (expletive).Other than that, man, Red Lobster Cheddar Bay Biscuits. You are welcome. Make America great again, sir.

Himes is a foodie in his own right, from tapping maples for syrup to canning pickles.

Bridgeport, of course, has a Red Lobster if Himes really gets a hankering for Cheddar Bay Biscuits.

neil.vigdor@scni.com; 203-625-4436; http://twitter.com/gettinviggy
NORWALK  Police searched businesses and properties along Connecticut Avenue after a robbery at the Gold Rush store across from Kohls.

The robbery occurred shortly after 11 a.m. The robbery occurred at Gold Rush, 495 Connecticut Ave., a precious metals store that buys and sells gold and silver. The store is on the ground floor of a two-story brick building, between a dentists office and a nail salon.
WILTON  On a list with thousands of names on it, five names in particular should stand out to Wilton residents  John Henwood, Peter C. Fry, Edward P. York, Edward T. Fergus, Jr. and John F. Iskyan.

These five men were among the nearly 3,000 people who were lost on that fateful day 15 years ago when the two towers of the World Trade Center (WTC) were attacked on Sept. 11.

Though 15 years have passed, Wilton still gathers each year on the anniversary of 9/11 to commemorate not only the lost lives of fellow residents, but also the brave members of the fire and police forces who piled into those smoldering towers in the hopes of saving trapped men and women.

I think its really important for us as a community to remember these men, and to let their families know that theyre still remembered, Fire Captain Brian Elliott said.

Members of other town departments, including EMTs, police officers, town hall employees, and Board of Education workers will join Elliott and the rest of the Wilton Fire Department as they hold the 15th annual September 11 Memorial Service on Sunday.

The service, which begins at 10 a.m. at Wilton fire headquarters, will feature speeches from 9/11 survivor and former Wilton resident John Sindel, First Selectman Lynne Vanderslice, Police Capt. John Lynch and others.

While Elliott pointed out that it is a somber day because of the massive losses of life that day, he also said that this services is a celebration of sorts to honor the bravery displayed that day.

You show pride for the heroic acts of the firefighters, the police officers as well as the regular citizens that stepped up. Its acts like those that keep America the country that it is, and youre very proud to see them, Elliott said.

Later on Sunday, the victims memories will be honored again as the CT United Ride  a massive motorcycle rally of nearly 5,000 people draped in American flags and decked out in other patriotic gear  parades its way through town on Routes 7 and 33.

This year also marks the 15th anniversary of the CT United Ride, the states largest Sept. 11 tribute, which began just two weeks after the events of 9/11.

The purpose of this ride is to show that America is better and stronger moving forward, and that we still support our first responders and our armed services that are there to serve and protect us each day, said Frederick Garrity, executive director of the CT United Ride.

Like the firefighter memorial service, Garrity said that the motorcycle rally has two overwhelming sentiments.

Theres a dichotomy of emotion every year  were paying tribute to those who lost their lives and were honoring those who were there to defend us and protect us, said

The rally departs from beneath a 50-foot American flag at Norwalks Norden Industrial Park around 11 a.m., rides through Westport, Wilton, Georgetown, Redding, Bethel, Newtown, Monroe, Trumbull and Fairfield before coming to an end at Seaside Park in Bridgeport.

Thousands of riders from all over the state spend $25 per rider and $25 per passenger, all the proceeds of which are distributed amongst a number of charities including the CT Firefighter and the CT Police Officer relief funds, as well as the United Way.

To register or find more information on the rally, log on to ctunitedride.com.

ptomlinson@hearstmediact.com; 203-354-1046; @Tomlinson_PE
The Hall County Sheriffs Department and Nebraska State Patrol took part in a national You Drink, You Drive, You Lose special enforcement campaign between Aug. 19 and Labor Day.

Four deputies participated in the crackdown, working a total of 138 overtime hours. They issued a total of 141 citations, 159 written warnings and 23 violation/vehicle defect cards.

Of the 141 citations, 87 were issued for speeding, 13 for vehicle registration/license plate violations, 12 for no proof of insurance, 10 for seat belt violations, eight for no operators license and four for driving during suspension.

In addition, two each were handed out for stop sign/light violations and failure to yield the right of way. One each was issued for possession of drugs, open container of an alcoholic beverage and a child restraint violation.

The overtime hours were made possible through a grant from the Nebraska Department of Roads Highway Safety Office.

During the drunk driving enforcement crackdown, the State Patrol arrested 84 drivers for driving under the influence. Troopers issued 6,384 speeding citations and warnings and 481 seat belt citations and warnings. A total of 125 people were cited for driving under suspension and 54 were given child restraint citations and warnings. Ninety-two drivers had no proof of insurance, 76 were cited for misdemeanor drug possession, 62 had open containers and 37 minors were found in possession of alcohol. The tally also included 901 motorist assists.

Troopers and communication specialists put in overtime hours during the effort. That special enforcement campaign was paid for in part by a $23,000 grant from the Department of Roads Highway Safety Office.

Because of the Nebraska State Fair, troopers with Grand Island-based Troop C conducted high-visibility patrols in and around Hall County during the evening and early-morning hours of Friday, Aug. 26, and Saturday, Sept. 3. Those efforts were paid for in part by a $1,550 grant from the Highway Safety Office.

The members of Troop C issued 21 speeding citations and warnings during the special enforcement. They also found seven drivers without seat belts, issued one open container citation and one child restraint violation.
Astros strike back to win Game 2 vs. Phillies, evening up World Series

Houston won Game 2 on Saturday night to send the World Series back to Philadelphia at 1-1.
Southern Illinois University President Randy Dunn hosted a scaled down event today for the Edwardsville campus new chancellor Dr. Randy Pembrook in the Morris University Centers Meridian Ballroom.

A crowd of more than 300 SIUE faculty, staff and students, along with community members, higher education leaders from around the region and representatives of various political offices gathered to officially install Pembrook.

We need to celebrate and mark this occasion, because it is a transformative time, said Dunn, who acknowledged that a less grand ceremony than traditionally held was performed because of budget implications. Randy Pembrook is invested in SIUE with his heart and soul, and nothing can substitute for that heart and soul involvement. On behalf of the board of trustees, I want to congratulate SIUE on this new era.

It does truly feel like coming home, said Pembrook, who is both a Metro East native and SIUE alum. I want to thank the faculty, staff and students for making me feel as if this is the right place from day one. I know that we will do great things together.

Pembrook pointed to SIUEs steady growth in enrollment, increasing academic reputation, expanded campus facilities and on-campus housing, and vibrant campus life as impressive highlights since his days as a student.

Pembrook asked all the attendees to consider their legacy. Remember who gave to you along your path, and consider what you will leave for others, he said. Within SIUEs mission is shaping a changing world, and we will change the world together.
The Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police is putting on its third statewide Illinois Rail Safety Week, beginning Sept. 11 - Sept. 17. The Edwardsville Police Department is also getting involved and aims to spread awareness to better the safety of motorists and citizens around railroad tracks.

According to Operation Lifesaver, 244 people in the U.S. were killed or injured in 2015 at highway rail crossings and 511 people in the U.S. were killed or injured in 2015 after trespassing on railroad property. Many citizens are unaware of the potential dangers surrounding railroad crossings, and Lt. Charlie Kohlberg of the EPD said although this isnt a pressing issue in Edwardsville, its important to spread the word.
From January through July of this year, 99 local volunteers cumulatively donated 1,300 hours of their time, drove over 15,000 miles to areas including the metro-east and St. Louis to provide 700 different services which helped senior residents in our community. These special people are the volunteers for Faith In Action of Edwardsville/Glen Carbon, and they were honored Aug. 25 during a Faith In Action Volunteer Appreciation event which took place at Bella Milano.

Faith In Action has been in the Edwardsville/Glen Carbon area since 1998. The organization began with five founding ladies, Frances Gregg, Joan Long, Betty Emert, Donna Marrone and Joyce Gusewelle.

Today, Faith in Action Edwardsville/Glen Carbon provides assistance and support to over 250 individuals aged 60 years and older who live within the boundaries of the Edwardsville Community Unit School District 7.

Services that Faith In Action provide include running errands, shopping for those who cannot get out, giving rides to medical appointments or beauty appointments, light housekeeping or light yard work, companionship through visiting and providing respite care/relief for family caregivers.

The majority of these services are provided Monday through Friday during the work week which is where the volunteers step in. Our program would not run without our volunteers. They are the program, Faith In Action Executive Director Marcia Golden said.

Faith In Action thanked its volunteers on Aug. 25 with a volunteer appreciation event that took place at Bella Milano. At the event, Edwardsville Mayor Hal Patton and Glen Carbon Police Department Lt. Wayne White both spoke and personally thanked the volunteers for their service to Faith In Action. In addition, the five women who began the local organization were also honored that night.

A very gracious Bella Milano provided appetizers and drinks to our volunteers, Golden added.

Golden emphasized that they are always looking for additional volunteers. The more volunteers that we have, the more services we are able to provide to our local seniors. We have volunteers that are teachers who help us through the summer months. We have our snowbirds that leave us in the winter to go to Florida, Golden noted. Its not like you have to commit to every week. We work with your schedule.

Volunteers need only have a couple of hours available either once a week, once a month or even once a year. Volunteers are needed to drive around locally as well as into St. Louis or outside the local area like Greenville. Faith in Action provides background and reference checks on its volunteers and also visits the home of the care receivers, its seniors, for a personal in-home assessment. We go out and visit with them to make sure that we know exactly what their needs are, that its a safe environment, and if we are transporting them, that they are physically able to do it pretty much on their own, Golden noted.

Faith In Action is a completely free service to local seniors (over 60) and donations are always welcome.

To learn more about becoming a Faith in Action volunteer or become a care receiver, contact them at 618-692-0480 or by email at fiaegc@yahoo.com.
A resolution approving the TownePlace Suites & Starbucks Cafe PUD was approved at Tuesdays City Council meeting.

Following extensive discussions, the PUD will move forward, compliant with IDOTs terms while also requesting a right-in/right-out entrance off of Center Grove Road.

Director of Public Works Eric Williams said the proposed PUD (Planned Unit Development), even with the approval, will still have a lot of work to do going forward.

Currently the developer proposed a right-in/right-out on Center Grove Road; also a full-access off of Plummer Drive, Williams said. As part of that process, we have to do a full intersection design study to analyze the capacity of the intersection. This would obviously be a change to that capacity. So the developer, the developers engineer and the city staff has met with IDOT trying to work through this process but the timelines are not going to coincide perfectly for any of the three parties involved.

The developer agrees to comply with whatever IDOT recommends, with a respectable right-in off of Center Grove Road into the development, he added.

Alderman Janet Stack said she still had concerns in regards to traffic congestion and its location if the project moves forward.

I still have concerns with the traffic, especially with the timing of the light there and letting students out of the high school. All in all, I just feel that we are allowing ourselves to get very congested. Im not against this, but I have concerns that we are starting to concrete over every green space available. I do want to compliment the developers, however, and they have not asked for any incentives, Stack said.

Following discussion, all aldermen were in favor of its approval. The project will move forward and continue with the full-access entrance off of Plummer Drive. The right-in/right-out entrance is still waiting IDOT approval.

In other business, two licenses to conduct raffles were approved for both the Ebbets Field Home Owners Association for Neighbors in Need on Oct. 22, and Southern Illinois Softball Associations Black Widows Fastpitch Softball on Sept. 15 to Nov. 1.

Mayor Hal Patton said the Ebbets Field HOA is very active in the Edwardsville community and applauds them for that.

I will applaud the Ebbets Field Home Owners Association in addition to helping out Neighbors in Need. They are a very active association; about a month ago, they sent in a check of $2,000 for the Better Place to Play program. So they are having another fundraising event. Congratulations to them for being so active and thank them from us for having made that $2,000 contribution, Patton said.

Both licenses passed with approval by all council members.

Also approved was one Class E Event Liquor License for St. Boniface Catholic Church for the St. Boniface Annual Charity Auction/Dinner on Saturday, Oct. 15.

A Class F Liquor License was also passed for Cleveland-Heath for the Edwardsville Watershed Anniversary event on Saturday, Sept. 17.

Both licenses were granted and approved by all.

The council also approved the resignation of Emily Gates from the Edwardsville Public Library Board of Directors. Patton said Gates has been on the board for quite some time and will be missed.

She was a valued member of the Public Library Board and its a very active group, working behind-the-scenes to make sure we have one of the best libraries in the state of Illinois, if not the Midwest, so Emily is going to be greatly missed, Patton said.

The Finance Committee recommended the approval of a tourism fund request for the 2016 Edwardsville Art Fair in the amount of $8,500  an increase from the previously approved amount of $6,000. With the new upgrades and advertising costs for the event, the aldermen were all in favor and the request was approved.

The Public Services Committee recommended the approval to award the 2016 Water Service Materials Contract to Schulte Supply, Inc. in the amount of $61,866.

All council members were in approval and the motion passed.

The committee also recommended the approval of Change Order 1 and Final for the Linden Street improvements to Korte & Luitjohan Contractors, Inc. in the increased amount of $16,058.82.

The motion passed and all council members were in favor.

The next City Council meeting will take place at 7 p.m., Tuesday, Sept. 20, at City Hall. All meetings are free and open to the public.
Mr. and Mrs. Donald Cook of Edwardsville are pleased to announce the engagement of their daughter, Marissa Cook, to Daniel Myers, son of Larry and Barb Myers of Wentzville, Mo.

Marissa is a 2008 graduate of Edwardsville High School and attended the University of Missouri-Columbia where she earned a bachelor of science in business administration. She is currently a marketing and sales representative for The Boeing Company.
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Linkedin Yovia Rizky Arvianissa and Anton Aliabbas Jakarta/Leiden  Fri, September 9, 2016

The House of Representatives unanimously approved Thursday President Joko Jokowi Widodos nomination of National Police deputy chief Comr. Gen. Budi Gunawan as the National Intelligence Agency (BIN) chief, replacing Sutiyoso.

Budis nomination for the spy agencys top post surfaced after Jokowi appointed Tito Karnavian National Police chief in June. Indeed, the nomination of Budi, a 1987 graduate of the Police Academy, may give a boost to the regeneration process within the police force.

On the other hand, this decision might pose a risk of politicization to the BIN, as Budi is known for his close ties to the ruling Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P). In fact, there is nothing new with the politicization issue because Sutiyoso was chairman of the minority Indonesian Unity and Nationhood Party (PKPI).

In general, there are three causes for concern related to politicization of the intelligence agency. First, when a president misuses the spy agency to support his or her political interests.

Surveillance of political opposition and spreading propaganda to win support for policy-making are two common forms of politicization.

Understandably, political reasons behind any intelligence operation might not always suit national security objectives. Any misuse of the intelligence agency can result in poor policy outcome.

Second, when intelligence officers misuse their work for personal gain. This activity also may result in distortion of intelligence products. Third, when the House fails to oversee intelligence institutions properly or is involved in the politicization of intelligence for political purposes.

The BIN should maintain a close relationship with policymakers. Such good relations will help the agency enrich its intelligence products. As intelligence expert Jack Davis (2003) says, the closer relations between intelligence and policy-making actors, the greater likelihood of clear communication and better support  as this relationship gets closer there are forces that promote intelligence policy product harmonization.

Whoever leads the BIN, however, there are challenges left in the countrys effort to build a more professional intelligence agency.

First, improving internal consolidation. Although it is recognized as a civilian intelligence institution, the BIN employs officers with various backgrounds, including military and police.

Different backgrounds may raise the risk of internal rivalry or conflict, which if occurs will affect the BINs products and solidity.

As he is the first active police general to lead the BIN since reformasi, Budi should be aware that enhancing internal consolidation will be much different and more complex compared to consolidating the National Police.

Therefore, Budi will need more initiatives to reduce resistance and promote institutional unity.

Second, bolstering the BINs intelligence coordinating role. The 2011 State Intelligence Law mandates the BIN as coordinator of Indonesias intelligence community.

To enhance this role, the BIN should meet with other intelligence agencies more frequently. During the meetings, they can share reports and information regarding foreign and security matters.

Such information is useful to provide adequate, reliable and utilizable intelligence products to decisionmakers. Subsequently, the intelligence products will help the President and policymakers create a better strategy to deal with national security issues.

As coordinator of intelligence agencies, the BIN chief bears the responsibility of managing and integrating all institutions with different capabilities and knowledge. In this regard, Budi should improve standards and common protocol to resolve interoperability issues.

The common protocol may include operational procedures and guidelines in conducting intelligence operations.

A clear and measurable mechanism will reduce unnecessary intelligence overlap in the field and inefficiency in data collection.

Last, the growing and more complex security threats. Undoubtedly, the rapid changing nature of security threats requires a wider vision, agility and flexibility of intelligence institution.

This challenge forces the BIN to be more adaptive and responsive in dealing with todays threats, which are more multifaceted and less predictable.

In a more complex security environment, Budi should boost the BINs capacity to anticipate the destructive effects of security threats. Building the capacity and performance of the provincial intelligence bureaus is among available options.

Another way is strengthening the BINs anticipative and preventive capacity to help decisionmakers prepare future strategy and capability to overcome any threats.

Despite the pivotal role the BIN plays in policymaking, intelligence activities are prone to violating human rights and democracy principles. In this sense, strengthening the intelligence oversight is inevitable.

Of course, the establishment of the intelligence supervisory team at the House should be appreciated. Since intelligence activities must remain secret, the team has to work harder in overseeing the BINs works.

To assure intelligence activities do not infringe on human rights and democratic principles, the involvement of other agencies such as the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) and the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) in the oversight of the BIN is necessary. The initiative will increase the quality of legislative oversight over the intelligence sector.

Nevertheless, the public expects the new chief to turn the BIN into a more effective and accountable intelligence agency. Time will tell whether Budi will respond to the public concern with good or poor performance.

__________________________________

Yovia Rizky Arvianissa is a graduate student at the School of International Relations, University of Indonesia, Jakarta. Anton Aliabbas is a PhD research student at the Center for International Security and Resilience, Cranfield University, the UK, and currently is a visiting fellow at KITLV/Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies, Leiden, the Netherlands.
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Linkedin Jusuf Wanandi (Vice Chair, Board of Trustees CSIS Foundation)  Fri, September 9, 2016

I was late knowing about former Singapore president SR Nathans passing because I was in Australia attending the Australian Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacifics (CSCAP) annual general meeting.

President Nathan dealt with Indonesian affairs from the end of Indonesias Konfrontasi against Malaysia in 1965, the year when Singapore separated from its union with Malaysia. He was then a member of the security team that prepared the opening of Singapore-Indonesia diplomatic relations. On the Indonesian side, it was Benny Moerdani and Abdul Rachman Ramly of Ali Moertopos team who were his counterparts. That began his enduring interest in Indonesia, even when he was not in positions that directly related to the country, such as when he was ambassador to the US and high commissioner to Malaysia.

I fondly recall that when president Nathan was the head of Singapore Press Holdings, he and I occasionally took a morning walk along the beach near Mountbatten Road, and afterwards had some coffee or a little breakfast at a hotel nearby.

During those walks, Indonesia-Singapore relations were always the main topic of our discussions. During his tenure as president of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) he headed the Singapore CSCAP Committee and we cooperated very closely in expanding CSCAPs program to become a wider forum on security issues in East Asia and the Pacific, an extension of the biannual General Conference. He was convinced that the Track Two activities on regional security were a very important endeavor since the Track One (governments) cooperation only started after the end of the Cold War and they needed more input and ideas from think tanks and other stakeholders like the media and political parties/parliaments. He was

very attentive to the young generations in Singapore and Indonesia and was always keen to prepare them for their future leadership role.

In that respect president Nathan particularly found in me a soul mate and he invited me to give a talk to his students at the Singapore Management University (SMU) on Indonesian experiences during the last years of the Sukarno era, the change of leadership and the beginning of the Soeharto administration. He always believed that every young generation had to know more about its own and its neighbors history. In addition, he graciously chaired the launching of my book Shades of Grey in 2012, also at SMU. I am eternally grateful to him for that honor and kindness.

As his health began to falter, our plan to continue the series of lectures was discontinued. But in memory of president Nathan I will make myself available to keep the plan alive, especially as an effort to strengthen Indonesia-Singapore relations. Our bilateral cooperation inside and outside of ASEAN is important to contribute to an East Asia that is stable, peaceful and developing well. Indonesia and Singapore complement each other in many aspects, which really contributes to that purpose. My experiences in building regional institutions within the context of the ASEAN Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS) and other regional institutions convinced me of the critical importance of Indonesia-Singapore cooperation. So, talking about strengthening ASEAN and how to keep ASEANs centrality in the wider Asia-Pacific region, I think Indonesia-Singapore cooperation is a prerequisite. And I believe that somewhere there president Nathan would agree with me.

From president Nathan I found out that many Singaporean leaders were sympathetic to Indonesia, obviously because of Indonesias size and influence as a neighbor, but also as Singapore can learn from Indonesias diversity, self-confidence despite the challenges it has to face, and its foreign policy character, which Singapore can emulate as a young and small country proud of its independence among other big countries. Together Indonesia and Singapore can do more to create better neighborliness despite existing negative stereotypes about each other. That can be remedied by better understanding between the two countries. May president Nathan rest in peace and may Mrs. Urmila Nandi and the whole family be strengthened in their loss.
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Linkedin Inforial (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta, Indonesia  Fri, September 9, 2016

International Daughters Day will be commemorated on October 11, and in connection with this day Indonesias Manpower Minister, M. Hanif Dhakiri is giving a chance for one Indonesian teen to play the role of Manpower Minister for a day. The event is a joint effort between the Manpower Ministry and Plan International Indonesia.

The chosen teen is welcome to play the role of Manpower Minister on that day. I believe that this kind of role playing is good political education, Hanif Dhakiri said in his office when he received representatives from Plan International Indonesia, on August 18.

He added that with the program, his office could receive much-wanted input, as well as suggestions from the youths on the issues related to the ministry, such as issues on child labor, women labor, leadership, and peoples empowerment.

The minister further said the Manpower Ministrys affairs were open to suggestions, input, ideas and critiques, especially those coming from the younger generation. The role play is seen as a good way to narrow the gap between people who criticize and those who are criticized. So, the critiques and ideas delivered will conform with the dynamics found in bureaucracy and government. What often happens is that those who criticize see the government as deaf to inputs and critiques. But actually they should take into account the dynamics in bureaucracy.

In the meeting, Communication Manager of Plan International Indonesia, Isni Ahmad said to commemorate International Daughters Day, Plant International launched a global campaign with the big theme of Because I am A Girl. And one of the activities is the Minister for a Day program for chosen teenage girls. We want to thank the minister for his enthusiastic welcome to this plan and for allowing the chosen teen to play the role of a minister, she said.

Minister Hanif is to be the first minister in over 70 countries where Plan International has its office, to participate in the program. In Indonesia the program is also set to be held at the Womens Empowerment and Child Protection Ministry, and at the Social Affairs Ministry. There is a big chance that other countries will be interested in replicating the program and including it in the commemoration of International Daughters Day.

Plan International Indonesia will select girls aged between 15 and 27 years of age from across the country to play the role of the minister. To be considered applicants they are asked to upload their video blog (vlog), which the committee will then study. In their 30-second video clips, the applicants should present their view on issues concerning female labor, child labor, female Indonesian overseas workers, as well as early age marriages, the empowerment of a populist economy, female leadership and other topics.

Aside from the role of Manpower Minister, there will also be other functions chosen girls will get to play; they are the positions of the directorate general that the ministry has. With this program, we want to help the chosen participants to learn about leadership, and decision making on issues related to manpower, Isni said.

Plan International Indonesia country director Myrna Remata Evora said the message that International Daughters Day wanted to send was that female children also had the right to participate in the decision-making process which affects their future and the lives of female citizens. In Indonesia, female labor and child labor remain a problem that requires a comprehensive solution so that there will be no more discrimination against women and children.
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Linkedin Ni Nyoman Wira (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, September 9, 2016

A collaborative performance of the traditional martial art silat from two contemporary dancers and choreographers, Eko Supriyanto and Ali Sukri, is to be held at the NuArt Sculpture Park in Bandung, West Java, on Saturday.

Dubbed Pesona Silat Jawa-Minang (The Charms of Java-Minang Silat), Ali, who hails from Padang Panjang, will give a silat Minang-inspired performance called Tonggak Raso, while Eko, who learned silat Bima in Magelang, Central Java, will perform tra.jec.to.ry. Despite the different approaches, both are set to showcase similar elements of stamina, endurance and visual sensitivity.

(Read also: Poet Nirwan Dewanto exhibits archived works in S. Jakarta)

The performance will be interesting as Ali and Eko come from different generations. Eko, who starred in Garin Nugrohos Opera Jawa (Requiem from Java), has been at the top of his field since the 2000s, 10 years before the peak of Alis career.

Supported by the Tourism Ministry and Bakti Budaya Djarum Foundation, the performers will tour Sumatra and Java as part of a mission to expand contemporary performing arts in the country. (kes)
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Linkedin (Associated Press) Los Angeles, United States  Fri, September 9, 2016

"Eat Pray Love" author Elizabeth Gilbert, who split from her husband of nine years in July, says she's in love with her best friend, a woman named Rayya Elias, who was recently diagnosed with incurable pancreatic and liver cancer.

Gilbert says in a lengthy Facebook post Wednesday the terminal diagnosis uncovered her true feelings for her longtime friend, and those feelings led to Gilbert's divorce from Jose Nunes, whom she described falling for at the end of her best-selling memoir. The posting was confirmed by Gilbert's publicist at Riverhead Books, Jynne Martin.

(Read also: Author Elizabeth Gilbert announces her separation from 'Felipe')

Gilbert says she is making her relationship with Elias public because such "truth and transparency" make her life easier and more ethical.

She asked her readers for their love.
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Linkedin Khristian Ibarrola (Inquirer.net/Asia News Network)  Fri, September 9, 2016

HBOs critically acclaimed series Game of Thrones is currently under production and initial filming stage for the much-awaited seventh season, set to be released next year.

Most of the shows cast and crew have already been spotted in Belfast, Ireland, where majority of the scenes featuring the snowy terrain of Winterfell and Castle Black were shot in previous seasons.

Once they wrap up filming in Northern Ireland by late November, the GOT cast will reportedly be returning to Seville, Spain, according to GOT fansite Winter Is Coming.

Local crew for filming has already been hired, with notices sent out in locations like Bermeo, Zumaia, Trujillo and Malpartidaall found in the Western Caceres province and which are all confirmed film locations.

Around 500 crew members are already on board to work until December, majority of whom will be deployed on the islet of San Juan de Gaztelugatxe, the report said.

GOT returns to Spain where the majority of season 5 was shot, after show frontrunners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss admitted that choosing the location seemed like bit of an experiment at first.

The production was trying out new landscapes for the southern and eastern parts of the shows world, particularly Dorne, which was heavily inspired by real-life medieval Spain in the novels.

Filming was mostly concentrated around Seville to represent Dorne and its capital Sunspear, while the city of Cordoba was used to represent the Long Bridge of Volantis.

(Read also: 'Game of Thrones' producer to create historical drama on China's Empress)

The choice of landscape has also fueled speculation that the Dornish City arc featuring Oberyn Martells paramour, Ellaria Sand, would play a much bigger role in the upcoming season.

As reported by multiple fans on Twitter, the crew are still settled in the small village of Moneyglass in Ireland, which is home to the the great lords of Winterfell, House Stark.
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Linkedin Hello Sehat (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, September 9, 2016

With the advances of science and technology, many things can be handled more easily, comfortably and safely, including childbirth.

C-sections are now a common childbirth option in many developed countries. The procedure provides mothers with an exact time and date to welcome their baby into the world. Knowing the time of delivery can give an expectant mama plenty of time to prepare for her baby's arrival.

What is a C-section?

A C-section or cesarean section involves delivering a baby through a surgical cut in a woman's abdomen and uterus. C-sections are specially designed for those who cannot perform natural childbirth because of a condition such as pregnancy complications (e.g. the baby is in an abnormal position), mental instability or an infection that could spread to the baby during vaginal delivery.

(Read also: What no one mentions about vaginal birth)

How to prepare

If you are going to have a C-section, your doctor will inform you about everything you need to do. However, there are several things you should know ahead of the delivery.

Several weeks before the scheduled delivery date, you should visit the hospital to submit your preregistration forms. On the night before the delivery, the doctor may perform a presurgical procedure, in which you will be given an epidural anesthesia that involves an injection in your back to numb you for the operation.

Next, you will be catheterized in order to avoid getting up for the restroom during the first 24 hours of recovery. As this is not a comfortable procedure, make sure to ask your doctor for the epidural prior to inserting the catheter. Following that, you may be given a medicine used to clear stomach acids. You can also request antinausea medication to prevent uncomfortable feelings.

Additionally, blood tests may be performed before the C-section, according to your doctors recommendations. Checking your blood will help your doctor prepare for the unlikely event that you need a blood transfusion during the procedure. You should clean the surgical site (shaving the pubic hair) or the nurse will do it for you by shaving just enough of your pubic hair to make way for the incision.

The last thing to remember is that you need to prepare a hospital bag of clothes and toiletries for a few days in the hospital.

Because a C-section requires additional recovery time to compared to a normal birth, arranging to have an extra set of hands around the house will be helpful. Don't hesitate to ask questions and share your concerns with your doctor so that your C-section can be successful. (kes)

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official stance of The Jakarta Post.
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Linkedin Tatin Yang (Inquirer.net/Asia News Network)  Fri, September 9, 2016

Given its worldwide ubiquity, it was quite a surprise to learn that Japanese clothing brand Uniqlo (pronounced unique-low, a clever contraction of the phrase unique clothing, as opposed to the more popular YOU-knee-clow) just opened its first flagship store in Southeast Asia. Just because a Uniqlo boutique houses the complete product lineup and is located in a prime spot does not make it instantly a flagship. For the meticulous brand, theres more to a flagship store than inventory and locationthere must be a meaningful story, too.

The Southeast Asian flagship store is located in Singapores Orchard Central, right in the midpoint of the countrys popular shopping district. Orchard Central is Singapores first and tallest vertical mall.

Tadashi Yanai, Fast Retailings (Uniqlos parent company) chair, president and CEO, said he hoped the flagship would serve as another bridge for both their Southeast Asian patrons as well as those traveling from all over the globe.

The 2,700-sqm space features three floors of apparel heaven for men, women and kids. Unlike flagship stores in Japan where their inventory is mandated by the current season, the Singapore boutique will carry clothes that span different seasons for a more global audience.

Cashmere line

Even though it was a sweltering 34C at the time of the boutiques opening, one of the prime highlights of Uniqlo was the introduction of its buttery-soft cashmere line. Floor-to-ceiling shelves were stacked with cashmere sweaters arranged beautifully according to color. Despite the heat in Singapore, the sweaters are predicted to be best sellers, not just for those traveling to cooler climes, but for those who work in offices with air conditioning set to Arctic temperatures.

Another reason why Uniqlos cashmere lineup is set to fly off the racks is the price. According to Yanai, Uniqlo has always been committed to delivering high-quality garments at reasonable prices. Indeed, the smart, luxurious cashmere coats were priced at a little over SG$200 or approximately P6,600not bad at all for honest-to-goodness cashmere.

(Read also: Japan's Uniqlo targets global stature with fashion identity)

Uniqlos proprietary innovative fabrics are also given prime space in the store. Heattech, its ultra-lightweight, ultra-thin line of magical winter warmers; Airism, the breathable fabric that cools your body as it wicks moisture and resists bad odor; and the brands signature light down vests and jacketsdesigned for cold weather outerwear that can be stored as compactly as a regular toilet paper roll.

No Uniqlo flagship is complete without UT, the brands graphic tees with prints and illustrations done by various artists and brands around the globe.

As with all boutiques, the brands wide array of garments are styled on rotating mannequins to give shoppers an idea on how to create outfits from the selection. Even the way the clothes are stocked reflect a little shopping psychology. The womens clothes are arranged according to complementary pieces, allowing a woman to browse leisurely. The mens section meanwhile shows everything available at a glance to suit the typical manly grab and go approach to shopping.

Local flavor

On the topmost floor, globalization meets local flavor through a neighborhood art installation featuring beautifully designed Singapore spots interspersed with Uniqlo ensembles. This is where the brands LifeWear philosophy comes alive, where the clothes play an integral yet unobtrusive part of ones lifestyle. Indeed, one of the most appealing things about wearing Uniqlo (apart from the comfort) is how the clothes assume your personality: distinct and tailored enough to make you look sharp and polished, but never homogeneous that you end up looking like emoji twinsies when you bump into someone wearing the same thing.

If you happen to have a trip planned to Singapore, make sure to drop by Orchard Central to check out the first SEA flagship. With the exception of the cashmere line, a lot of the new apparel available at the flagship store is also available here, like our new favorite travel essential: the two-way stole, an ingenious huge scarf with a groove in the center that sits flush against your nape so you can wear it as a cape (the rhyming part is optional). You can also wear it as a regular scarf and it comes in three different kinds of textures: a multicolored fringe, a semi-chunky knit with button, and a basic rectangle. All are warm and roomy and youll enjoy having this with you on the plane, in the cinema, or in your frigid office cubicle.
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Linkedin Michael W. Setjoadi (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, September 8 2016

For Indonesias tobacco sector, we are beginning to see some light for next year. In the 2017 Draft State Budget (RAPBN), the government is budgeting only a 6 percent increase in tobacco excise revenue to Rp 149.9 trillion (US$11.5 billion) (figure 1) from this years forecast of a 15 percent excise hike for a target of Rp 142 trillion.



In our view, huge adjustments on average selling price this year following the 15 percent excise tax jump will result in slower-than-expected industry volume growth at minus 1 to minus 2 percent year-on-year (yoy) in 2016. Furthermore, revenue excise realization in the January-July period only accounted for 37 percent of 2016s full year target.



Even if we include the two-month early excise revenue collection this year  a policy implemented at the end of 2015  only 49 percent of the full year target will be reached, or about 6 percent lower than the January-July average of 2014 and 2015. Therefore, we believe the 2017 excise hike will amount to around 10 to 12 percent higher yoy instead of just 6 percent.



In terms of stick sales, the post-Lebaran festivities 2.4 percent month-on-month (mom) volume growth may still result in the governments inability to meet the 2016 excise revenue target, unless the Directorate General of Customs and Excise decides to implement a similar move to book excise receipts two months in advance as was performed at end-2015.



Going into 2017, although the excise tax hike should be lower than in 2016, we believe the competition is still tough this year with British American Tobaccos (BAT) aggressive moves to take up market share in Indonesia. Thus, we believe that HM Sampoerna (HMSP) and Gudang Garam (GGRM) should experience greater difficulties in passing on the higher excise tax ahead.



At this stage, we are still awaiting the final cigarette excise tax figure per stick to be announced in October 2016.



Despite increases in A Mild average selling price by 12 percent year-to-date (ytd), HMSP has maintained its market share of around 33 percent (figure 2), testimony to the companys high brand equity.



This is despite BATs 5 percent discount on its Lucky Strike Mild products at the retail level in the form of extra packs (i.e. 100 packs to obtain five extra packs).



On a brighter note, HMSPs focus on the premium full flavor machine-rolled cigarette (SKM FF) segment should help support margins through the launch of the one-of-a-kind Marlboro kretek (clove cigarette) called Marlboro Filter Black.



HMSP will produce the product and pay a brand royalty to Phillip Morris Indonesia (PMI), unlike the other Marlboro brands, where HMSP only generates 3 to 5 percent distribution margins.



At the stock level, we continue to like HMSP, and maintain our positive view with a higher target price of Rp 4,800 as we roll over our valuation to 2017, or 20 percent to Unilever Indonesias (UNVR) target price.



On GGRM, it has increased the price of its Surya ProMild by 3.7 percent to Rp 706 per stick, closing the gap with A Mild at Rp 1,108 per stick. This should help maintain margins. Other positive catalysts for GGRM are its mass-market exposure and undemanding valuation on 2017-forecast price-to-earnings (PE) ratio of 18.6 times, a 50 percent discount to HMSP, with a lower target price of Rp 72,300, based on a 2017-forecast PE of 21 times.

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Linkedin Liza Yosephine (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, September 9, 2016

A 12-year-old Indonesian boy is set to begin an undergraduate degree in physics on a scholarship at a Canadian university this semester, a top diplomat has said.

"Cendikiawan Diki Suryaatmadja has been admitted to Waterloo University to study physics with honors and has also been awarded a scholarship," Indonesian Ambassador to Canada Teuku Faizasyah told journalists in Jakarta on Thursday.

Waterloo is one of the best universities in Canada for exact sciences and requires an average mathematics score of nine out of 10 to apply, Faizasyah said, noting that Dikis achievement was exceptional, especially considering his age.

"This is of course a source of inspiration for many Indonesian children and students," he said.

Diki grew up and completed his schooling in West Java and taught himself English, Faizasyah said.

Because of his age, Diki requires special attention to ensure a smooth transition into life in Canada. The embassy had contacted Diki's parents to establish communications regarding the boy, Faizasyah said.

Diki's parents expressed happiness for their son, who is said to be adapting well to his new life.

As an international student, Diki will most likely establish contact with the closest Indonesian Consulate General, located in Toronto, which provides a consultative forum for Indonesian students studying nearby.

Diki will live with his father in an apartment close to the university while he completes his studies, local media has reported.

With most students entering undergraduate study being around 18 years of age, Diki has become one of the university's youngest ever enrolments. (rin)
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Linkedin Marguerite Afra Sapiie (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, September 9, 2016

The Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Center (PPATK) has urged lawmakers to allow the institution, with the help of law enforcers, to freeze without delay suspicious funds or other assets of terrorists and people who finance terrorism.

The proposed inclusion of articles in the draft revision of the 2003 terrorism bill would articulate a UN Security Council resolution relating to the prevention and suppression of the financing of terrorist acts, which is binding for all member states. The resolution requires countries to freeze the assets of anyone listed as a terrorist by the UN, immediately and without a court process, PPATK chairman Muhammad Yusuf said.

"Our law upholds the principle of the presumption of innocence. Law enforcers cannot immediately freeze assets without a legal basis and therefore we are now facing difficulties in implementing the resolution. We want it to be included in the law to simplify and strengthen the mechanism," Yusuf told journalists.

Although Indonesia has inserted the resolution into Law No. 9/2013 on the prevention and eradication of terrorism financing, the Terrorism Law has yet to include and simplify the mechanism. The PPATK should reach a joint decision with the Attorney General, the National Police chief and the National Counterterrorism Agency (BNPT) before attempting to block suspicious funds, Yusuf said.

The terror bill also needed to include articles that strengthened investigators' authority to order financial institutions to delay transactions of people suspected of supporting and financing terrorism, Yusuf said. (bbn)
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Linkedin Ayomi Amindoni (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, September 9, 2016

US-based technology giant Apple intends to establish two research and development (R&D) centers in Indonesia within three years. It has not specified the locations, but one is expected to be in Java and another outside Java.

Communications and Information Minister Rudiantara said the company and the Indonesian government had been intensively discussing the plan following a visit to the country by the firm's management last year.

"It has been a year since our first meeting. They will establish the R&D centers within the next three years," Rudiantara said at the State Palace on Friday.

Rudiantara added that the centers would focus on software development.

Meanwhile, Industry Minister Airlangga Hartarto said that aside from Apple, the government had also invited Chinese-based telecommunication heavyweight Huawei to increase its investment and expand its innovation center in the country. The invitation was conveyed during President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo's working visit to China for the G20 Summit on Sept 4-5.

"Huawei has been investing in Indonesia. We encourage it to increase its investment and expand its innovation center," Airlangga said. (dmr)
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Linkedin Margareth S. Aritonang and Ina Parlina (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, September 9 2016

As aides to President Joko Jokowi Widodo work out the kinks in the process of reinstating Arcandra Tahars citizenship, the President faces one more challenge before he is able to reappoint Arcandra as energy and mineral resources minister: getting political factions at the House of Representatives to support his decision.

A number of politicians have expressed their reservations about Jokowis purported plan to reappoint Arcandra as energy and mineral resources minister.

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Linkedin Margareth S. Aritonang and Ina Parlina (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, September 9, 2016

As aides to President Joko Jokowi Widodo work out the kinks in the process of reinstating Arcandra Tahars citizenship, the President faces one more challenge before he is able to reappoint Arcandra as energy and mineral resources minister: getting political factions at the House of Representatives to support his decision.

A number of politicians have expressed their reservations about Jokowis purported plan to reappoint Arcandra as energy and mineral resources minister.

Arcandra was removed from his position in early August after only 20 days in office following the revelation that he held US citizenship.

Spokesman for the Democratic Party faction at the House Didi Irawadi Syamsudin slammed any efforts to reinstate Arcandra as minister. There are a lot of competent people in the country. The President could just pick one of them instead of reappointing him.

A number of politicians from the ruling Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) have also expressed their opposition toward Jokowis move to reappoint Arcandra.

PDI-P lawmaker Dwi Ria Latifa said that even if Arcandras Indonesian citizenship was reinstated, his reappointment as a minister should face more scrutiny.

Its inappropriate for Pak Jokowi to do so. Do we lack qualified individuals who deserve the [ministerial] position? Dwi said. As a citizen, I am ashamed. This country, which has a huge population, was caught by surprise when a minister was dismissed only due to a paperwork mishap.

In spite of the opposition, Jokowi is likely to succeed if he decides to reinstall Arcandra as energy and mineral resources minister.

The two largest political factions in the House, the PDI-P and Golkar Party factions, have pledged to support Jokowi if he decides to reinstate Arcandra.

Senior PDI-P politician Trimedya Panjaitan, who is also the deputy chairman of House Commission III overseeing legal affairs said his political faction would approve the decision.

Appointing a minister is the Presidents prerogative. If President Jokowi wants to appoint him as energy minister or some other position, it is his prerogative. He now has legal status [as an Indonesian citizen], Trimedya said as quoted by Antara.

Meanwhile, Golkar chairman Setya Novanto said the President would get the support he needed if he decided to reinstate Arcandra.

Setya has assigned senior Golkar politician Bambang Soesatyo to work on securing House approval for the purported plan.

He [Arcandra] clearly has skills that the country needs in order to successfully carry out the governments programs in the future, he said.

Meanwhile, speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit in Vientiane, Laos, President Jokowi said he was yet to be briefed on the process of restoring Arcandras citizenship.

I have not yet been briefed regarding the way in which he will get his citizenship back. I will summon him once I get back to Jakarta, Jokowi told reporters.

Separately, Vice President Jusuf Kalla congratulated Arcandra on getting his Indonesian citizenship back.

Congratulations to him. He is without doubt an Indonesian through and through, Kalla said as quoted by Antara.

When asked about the prospect of Arcandra getting his ministerial position back, Kalla said: Its the Presidents prerogative so let the President answer your question, not me.

Jokowi is reportedly adamant about putting Arcandra back in his position as energy minister due to his knowledge and expertise in the oil and gas sector. (win)
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Linkedin Aya Batrawy (Associated Press) Dubai, United Arab Emirates  Fri, September 9, 2016

Marching with thousands of other pilgrims at last year's hajj in Saudi Arabia, 23-year-old Sobia Noor of Pakistan felt the crowd get tighter and the air grow thicker in the scorching heat. Suddenly, there was shouting and crying along the narrow street bordered by tall metal barriers.

She was holding hands tightly with her mother and aunt, but her grip was broken as a push of people struck her like a giant wave. She lost sight of her father. Thrown to the ground with others on top of her, she couldn't breathe.

The next thing she remembers was being sprinkled with water and pulled from the pile. Then she saw a scene that still haunts her: "There were heaps of bodies all around, and some injured were crying for help," she said.

The stampede and crush on Sept. 24, 2015, along Road 204 in Mina, a pilgrimage route on the outskirts of Mecca, killed at least 2,400 people  a disaster that the kingdom has yet to fully acknowledge or explain.

More than 2 million Muslims are expected at this year's hajj that begins Saturday, and Saudi authorities say they have done all they can to prepare for the five-day pilgrimage. They are reducing the density of crowds where the crush took place, widening narrow streets in Mina, and introducing some high-tech measures.

But survivors and relatives of the dead, still angered by the tragedy and bewildered by what they perceive as a lack of an adequate response by the Saudi authorities, fear the plans won't be enough to prevent another catastrophe.

Saudi Arabia's official death toll from the crush is 769, a figure that has not been updated since Sept. 26.

But an Associated Press count, based on media reports and officials' comments from 36 of the more than 180 countries that sent citizens to the hajj, found that at least 2,426 people had been killed.

Saudi authorities have yet to offer families of victims any financial compensation. No officials have been held accountable and no findings from their investigation have been issued.

Asked about the status of the Saudi inquiry, Saudi Interior Ministry spokesman Mansour al-Turki told the AP that a committee including engineers and security and health officials "is still working and didn't release any statement yet."

Initial statements by Saudi police said it appeared that two large crowds heading in opposite directions intersected on Road 204. Crowds in the back, unaware of the congestion ahead, kept pressing forward.

An Egyptian survivor told the AP that poorly trained Saudi troops refused to open one of the gates along Road 204 to help those who were suffocating. The man, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he lives in Saudi Arabia and feared repercussions, said the troops did not know what to do and appeared to be waiting for orders as the bodies piled up.

Saudi Arabia's regional foe, Iran, has said that almost 500 of those killed were Iranian pilgrims  the most of any country  and blamed the disaster on Saudi negligence.

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, this week accused Saudi authorities of killing pilgrims who were injured in the crush by putting them in containers with the dead.

Iran is not sending its citizens to hajj this year and has called on Saudi Arabia to share its prestigious custodianship and management of the hajj with other Muslim nations. That notion is rejected by the kingdom's Sunni rulers who accuse Shiite-led Iran of playing politics with the pilgrimage.

In this Friday, Sept. 18, 2015 file photo, Muslim Pilgrims attend Friday afternoon prayers outside the Grand Mosque in the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia. With this year's hajj set to start on Saturday, Saudi authorities say have done all they can to prepare. They are decreasing the density of crowds where the crush of pilgrims took place, widening narrow streets in Mina and introducing higher-tech methods to manage the hajj, but survivors, angry and bewildered, warn it won't be enough to prevent another catastrophe.(AP/Mosa'ab Elshamy)

In recent decades, Saudi Arabia has spent billions of dollars to improve hajj safety and accommodate more people. It built the massive, multistory Jamarat Complex with large pedestrian paths in Mina, where pilgrims throw pebbles at columns in a ritual stoning of the devil. Many of the pedestrian roads leading to the complex are narrow, however.

The government also is working to create a National Center for Joint Security Operations to centralize oversight of the video feed from more than 5,000 cameras along hajj routes.

Despite media reports that pilgrims would be given electronic ID bracelets this year, al-Turki said the project is still being developed and won't be used.

One significant change is the expansion of Road 204 to ensure it's at least 12 meters wide (39 feet) in all areas.

Hisham Al-Falih, head of the Hajj Preparatory Committee, told AP that 12 projects costing about $53.3 million were implemented to improve the hajj this year. Some tents in Mina on streets that were previously blocked have been relocated to open roads, and some paths were widened, he said.

But al-Falih added that there is only so much his committee and others can do to prepare for dealing with crowds of up to 3 million people.

"We are humans at the end of the day. We are doing all that we can do, and the rest is with God," he said.

The hajj has always been risky, requiring long travel, physical stamina and patience. A 1990 stampede killed more than 1,400 people. Days before last year's disaster, a crane collapse killed 111 people inside Mecca's Grand Mosque housing the Kaaba, Islam's holiest site.

For Noor, the pilgrimage from her home in Multan, Pakistan, was a wedding present from her uncle. Accompanied by her father, mother and aunt, she made the trip that Muslims are to perform once in their lives as a spiritual rebirth.

On the third day of the hajj, she and her family had completed most of the rites. The stampede occurred as they were heading toward an area in the valley of Mina for the ritual stoning.

Noor spent six days in a hospital before finding her aunt, who had injured a leg and shoulder. She searched hospitals for her parents until being told they had died.

"I can't understand how my aunt and I survived that horrible incident," Noor said. "No doubt, that was a miracle."

She said the Saudis were unable to manage the crowds and the only solution is to reduce the number of visitors. The kingdom instead plans to allow more pilgrims in the coming years.

Nasser Fayad, an Egyptian newspaper editor, lost three relatives, including his 57-year-old brother who had three sons in high school and college.

"For all those who died in Mina, we are asking Saudi Arabia to financially compensate the victims, and that this compensation is for their kids," Fayad said. "The Saudi government hasn't even asked about us or even given condolences."

The Saudi Embassy should have sent an emissary to meet with the relatives of the at least 190 Egyptians killed, he said, but "there has not been a single response to what happened. As if nothing happened."

Some families tried to organize to seek reparations, but many are poor and cannot afford a lawyer, Fayad said.

At least 320 pilgrims died from Mali, and relatives there formed a group to press Saudi Arabia for answers, saying that some have not been given death certificates, while others are seeking compensation. They meet with a lawyer every Saturday.

Iranian teacher Masoud Taghiyani cited Saudi "incompetency" for the death of his 76-year-old father, saying his parents had saved for 30 years to perform the hajj.

"Saudi Arabia should accept that they were responsible for the safety of pilgrims," he said. "Then, they should pay blood money to the families of victims."

Associated Press writers Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran; Baba Ahmed in Bamako, Mali; Asim Tanveer in Multan, Pakistan; and Zarar Khan in Islamabad contributed to this report.
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Linkedin (The Jakarta Post)  Fri, September 9, 2016

Following the regional summits in which Vientiane hosted the worlds major leaders until Thursday, ASEAN might become more colorful under the new chairmanship of the Philippines, led by tough-talking President Rodrigo Duterte  who arrives for his first state visit to Indonesia today.

The slogging work continues, nevertheless, for ASEAN members to live up to their own latest pledges. Put simply, the most basic requirement for achieving any of the renewed commitments  whether on regional security, cooperation against drugs and human trafficking, combating terrorism, boosting economic ties or curbing the latest Zika epidemic  is unity, which is sorely lacking among the 10 member nations ahead of ASEANs 50th anniversary next year.

As President Joko Jokowi Widodo told the plenary of the 28th ASEAN Summit, We cannot turn a blind eye to the instability that is emerging in our region. We cannot let powerful countries dictate to us and determine the fate of regional security and stability.

Indonesia is among the countries currently feeling the heat of China, which according to the study released by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, was involved in 30 out of the 45 clashes and stand-offs reported in the South China Sea since 2010. However, like many of its neighbors, Indonesia also seeks to garner the most benefits from Asias economic giant.

Perhaps reflecting such ambiguity toward China, the Declaration on the conduct of parties in the South China Sea issued by the foreign ministers of ASEAN and China in 2002, remains merely a declaration 14 years on.

In Vientiane, therefore, Jokowi called for its effective implementation. The partnership between ASEAN and China must be able to contribute to peace, stability and security in the South China Sea, Jokowi said at Wednesdays celebration of 25 years of ASEAN-China partnership.

Unity remains ASEANs utmost challenge, which indeed has frustrated members themselves. As there was no way to rely on the ASEAN way of building consensus in decision-making, particularly in sensitive issues, the then president of the Philippines Benigno Aquino sought a legal settlement against Chinas claim over almost the entire South China Sea. In July China lost at the ad-hoc international arbitration tribunal in The Hague, but has refused to recognize the ruling.

Now as the association of 600 million people struggles to forge an ASEAN community in the economic, security and other sectors, Indonesia under President Jokowi will have to lead the way to improved regional unity.

Among ASEAN founding nations Indonesia can credibly claim, among other things, that a democratic system and respect for human rights  as stated in the 2007 ASEAN Charter  remain the necessary path for people in the region compared to authoritarian and military rulers  because we have been there.

Jokowi is certainly not as prone to grandstanding as his predecessor. However, along with his enthusiasm for reducing poverty in the region and improving business ties, he also needs to pay much more attention to the details of regional cooperation. For the nuts and bolts of preserving unity cannot simply be left to underlings.
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Linkedin Fadli (The Jakarta Post) Batam  Fri, September 9 2016

The immigration office in Batam, Riau Islands, is alleging that a number of men who arrived in Indonesia as undocumented migrants and have been taking shelter in the city have been involved in a prostitution ring it believes was controlled by an Indonesian pimp, who was eventually released because of a lack of evidence.

The office received a tip-off from the public about the alleged illegal activity of the migrants, some of whom are asylum seekers, in July.

A number of people claimed that many male migrants from South Asia who were taking shelter at the Kolekta Hotel in Batam had often been suspiciously picked up by strangers in luxury cars.

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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, September 9, 2016

Jakarta Governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama has said the Jakarta administration will go ahead with a plan to evict Buikit Duri residents in South Jakarta as they only possessed bills of sale for their properties and not land deeds.

Yes, they have documentation, but what sort? In fact, they only have bills of sale for their homes, which were built on state land, said Ahok as reported by city-owned news portal beritajakarta.com in Jakarta on Friday.

Ahok said based on a map made during the colonial era, the width of Ciliwung River was about 60 meters. So the [original] width of the river was 60 meters, but now it is only between 5 to 10 meters. That means they reclaimed land without a permit, he added.

He stressed that his administration intended to return the Ciliwung River to its original width to ease flooding in a number of places.

Meanwhile, the South Jakarta municipality will soon issue the third and last warning to the residents, said Ahok, before evictions were conducted.

Ahok said he would ignore objections by NGO activists. They can protest, but give me a solution, the governor said.

The residents filed a class-action suit against the plan to evict them on May 10. The case was handled by the Central Jakarta District Court. After examining the documents, the judge said their legal action was valid. (bbn)
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Linkedin Liza Yosephine (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, September 9, 2016

Canadian business players are highly optimistic about the ASEAN market, with 95 percent of respondents to a recent survey expecting to see positive investment opportunities in the future.

The survey, a collaborative initiative undertaken by the Canada-ASEAN Business Council (CABC) and its affiliates, saw an increase in optimism levels, which stood at 81 percent when the previous survey was undertaken in 2013.

Indonesia is the anchor country of the relationship between Canada and ASEAN, CABC honorary chairman Jean Charest said during a press conference after a two-day forum hosted by the council in Jakarta on Thursday.

He pointed out that Indonesia's large population and economic strength within the region were important factors for development in ASEAN.

CABC president Wayne Farmer said significant interest in investing in Indonesia had been expressed by Canadian businesses during the forum. Among the top industrial sectors deemed attractive for investors were infrastructure, energy, agriculture and environmental management and services, he added.

Farmer highlighted that the forum was a high-level networking and dialogue opportunity; therefore, he could not convey potential investment values.

When asked about challenges faced by Canadian business players when investing in Indonesia, Farmer stressed there was a need for the government and private sector to raise awareness and inform businesses in Canada about the opportunities available in the country.

"More work needs to be done in Canada to identify investment opportunities available for Canadian businesses in Indonesia," Farmer told The Jakarta Post on the sidelines of the forum.

The survey revealed that other challenges frequently cited by respondents in terms of conducting business in ASEAN included inconsistent enforcement of laws and regulations, difficulty in obtaining reliable and cost-efficient skilled labor, corruption and preferential treatment of local firms.

Indonesian Ambassador to Canada Teuku Faizasyah said the government was committed to tackling the issues, especially those related to corruption. The establishment of the Corruption Eradication Commission was evidence of Indonesias efforts to combat corruption, he said.

Sharing feedback he received during the forum, Faizasyah said fears of corruption sometimes turned out to be unfounded as many business players claimed they had never experienced it first-hand, although widespread rumors of deep-rooted corruption in Indonesia had made them wary. (ebf)
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Linkedin Yovia Rizky Arvianissa and Anton Aliabbas (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta/Leiden  Fri, September 9 2016

The House of Representatives unanimously approved Thursday President Joko Jokowi Widodos nomination of National Police deputy chief Comr. Gen. Budi Gunawan as the National Intelligence Agency (BIN) chief, replacing Sutiyoso.

Budis nomination for the spy agencys top post surfaced after Jokowi appointed Tito Karnavian National Police chief in June. Indeed, the nomination of Budi, a 1987 graduate of the Police Academy, may give a boost to the regeneration process within the police force.

On the other hand, this decision might pose a risk of politicization to the BIN, as Budi is known for his close ties to the ruling Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P). In fact, there is nothing new with the politicization issue because Sutiyoso was chairman of the minority Indonesian Unity and Nationhood Party (PKPI).

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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Bengkulu  Fri, September 9, 2016

Prosecutors have asked the Curup District Courts judicial panel to impose the death penalty on Zainal, one of several people on trial in connection with the rape and murder of a 14-year-old student of state junior high school SMP Padang Ulak Tanding, Rejang Lebong regency, Bengkulu.

The prosecution team argued in a hearing on Thursday that Zainal acted both as the mastermind and the main actor in the incident, which led to the death of the girl. The trial, presided over by lead judge Heny Faridha and two other panel members, Hendry Sumardi and Fakhrudin, was closed to the public.

During the trial, prosecutors also sought a 20-year imprisonment for four other accused, namely Bobi, Faizal Eldo Syasiah, Suket and Tomi Wijaya. The prosecution team was initially scheduled to read out its charge against another defendant, who is still 13 years old, in in a recent session, but it was postponed until next Thursday.

The defendants lawyer Christian Lesmana said his clients were charged with violating Article 340 of the Criminal Code (KUHP) and Law No. 35/2014 on child protection. They faced different charges and particularly for Zainal the prosecutors had sought the death penalty, he said as quoted by tempo.co.

The rape was allegedly perpetrated by 14 people, eight of whom were children. Seven perpetrators considered underage have been convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison each. One perpetrator is still at large. (ebf)
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Linkedin News Desk (Associated Press) Jakarta  Fri, September 9, 2016

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte gave Indonesian forces the right to pursue pirates into Philippine waters, saying piracy is one of the main problems between the two countries.

Duterte, who is visiting Jakarta, discussed piracy and other security issues on Friday with Indonesian President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo.

He said he was sorry that even shipments of coal from Indonesia destined for Philippine power plants are being affected by piracy.

If Indonesian forces are chasing pirates and they enter Philippine waters, "they can go ahead and blast them off," Duterte said. "That's my word actually with Widodo. I said, 'blow them up.'"

He added, "But maybe if there are sharks around, then we can just feed them to the sharks."

Nine Indonesians are among 16 foreign hostages currently being held by the Muslim extremist group Abu Sayyaf in the southern Philippines, where Muslim separatist rebellions have raged for decades.

In May, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines agreed to carry out coordinated patrols following a series of kidnappings and piracy attacks that undermined commerce in the Celebes Sea, where their sea borders overlap.
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Linkedin Fedina S. Sundaryani (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, September 9, 2016

The governments proposed relaxation of an impending export ban of unprocessed mineral ore will raise risks and discourage miners from constructing smelters as per requirements, experts have warned.

Interim Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Luhut Pandjaitan recently proposed that several commodities be allowed an export extension for three to five years, depending on each companys smelter development progress and commodity prices.

Luhut, who is also the coordinating maritime affairs minister, suggested that the ban relaxation be inserted into the upcoming revision of the 2009 Mining Law, which has been included in this years National Legislation Program (Prolegnas).

However, ReforMiner Institute researcher Komaidi Notonegoro said that only mining companies would reap the benefits of such an extension as they would most likely focus on exporting, instead of meeting domestic demand.

Small mining companies would enjoy the benefit of the relaxed ban as well, but only in the short term, because large companies would still have the final say on commodity prices, thanks to latters vast supplies of mineral ore that dominate the market.

Its not a matter of whether or not the smaller companies can remain competitive, but they will not be able to dictate the market, he said on Thursday.

In terms of smelter construction, Komaidi said smelter companies would be at a disadvantage as well, while the Processing and Smelting Companies Association (AP3I) has slammed the proposal, saying the extension will create uncertainty for investors about the governments seriousness in developing the downstream sector.

AP3I deputy chairman Jonatan Handojo said that the relaxation would allow larger companies who had been unenthusiastic about constructing smelters to further postpone any development in favor of exporting mineral ore.

The Mining Law revision has been highly anticipated as the ban on raw mineral exports will be implemented on Jan. 12, 2017. The purpose of the ban is to encourage smelter development to strengthen the industrys downstream sector.

The ban was originally scheduled for implementation in 2015, but was pushed back and mining companies have been granted permits to export raw minerals for six months at a time, as long as the mining firms that work on smelter projects deposit 5 percent of their total investments at local banks as collateral.

Data from AP3I show that as many as 27 smelters have been constructed between 2012 and 2016 with a total investment of US$12 billion.

This does not include gold and copper mining giant Freeport Indonesia, whose progress on its planned smelter in Gresik, East Java, remains ambiguous. The government recently granted the company a permit to continue exporting 1.42 million tons until next January.

Meanwhile, Marwan Batubara of Indonesian Resources Studies (IRESS) said the export ban should still apply to commodities that already had many smelter facilities.

Smelters should still be constructed, but the government can choose what kind of mineral extracts can still be exported and which ones should not. For example, we should not allow exports of nickel because we already have many nickel smelter facilities in the country.

There are 20 smelters dedicated to ferronickel, nickel pig iron and nickel hydroxide with a national demand of 41.6 million wet metric tons (WMT) of nickel ore per annum.

State-owned diversified miner Aneka Tambang (Antam) has already shown enthusiasm for the relaxation of the ban and is ready to start exporting if such an allowance was implemented, as stated by president director Tedy Badrujaman.

Company data reveals that it has 988.2 million WMT in nickel ore reserves, consisting of 580.2 million WMT in high-grade nickel and 408.1 million WMT in low-grade nickel as of last year.
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Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, September 9 2016

The Duren Sawit Police in East Jakarta arrested on Thursday two housemaids on charges of stealing their employers jewelry and items worth Rp 300 million (US$23,100).

The polices chief, Comr. Yudho Huntoro, claimed that the suspects, identified only as KBK, 30, and NT, 19, stole the items kept by TS, their employer, in the victims bedroom at his house in the Klender subdistrict.

The housemaids [allegedly] gradually stole [items] such as jewelry, gadgets and wristwatches. Realizing that his assets disappeared one by one, the victim reported the case to us, Yudho was quoted as saying by kompas.com.

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Linkedin Rizal Harahap (The Jakarta Post) Pekanbaru, Riau  Fri, September 9, 2016

Wildlife trade will not come to an end until Indonesias legal system imposes heavy sentences with a deterrent effect on people who illegally hunt or trade animals, an activist has said.

Osmantri, coordinator of the World Wildlife Funds (WWF) Wildlife Crime Team in Riau, said tough penalties for wildlife poaching in Indonesia were few and far between, which had led to a rapid loss of species in the country.

Meanwhile, he praised the Rengat District Court, which sentenced two Sumatran tiger skin traders to four years in prison and ordered them to pay Rp 60 million (US$4,572) in fines, in a trial on Friday.

This is the first illegal tiger skin trading case brought to justice in Riau this year. The courts verdict meets the expectations of many people. Its a great achievement. Hopefully, this will have a deterrent effect on other wildlife crime perpetrators, said Osmantri.

He said few judges imposed heavy sentences for wildlife crimes in Sumatra, especially in Riau. I hope this can serve as reference for court judges across Indonesia.

In the past, Osmantri said, perpetrators of crimes against protected species in Riau had been sentenced to just one or two years in prison.

Based on WWF Riau data, only eight Sumatran tiger skin trading cases were brought to court so far. Four cases had been handled at the Rengat District Court, three at the Pekanbaru District Court and one at the Tembilahan District Court.

At the Pekanbaru court, for instance, a wildlife crime suspect, who had sold two sheets of tiger skin was sentenced to less than one year in prison, Osmantri lamented. (ebf).
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Linkedin Jusuf Wanandi (The Jakarta Post)  Fri, September 9 2016

I was late knowing about former Singapore president SR Nathans passing because I was in Australia attending the Australian Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacifics (CSCAP) annual general meeting.

President Nathan dealt with Indonesian affairs from the end of Indonesias Konfrontasi against Malaysia in 1965, the year when Singapore separated from its union with Malaysia. He was then a member of the security team that prepared the opening of Singapore-Indonesia diplomatic relations. On the Indonesian side, it was Benny Moerdani and Abdul Rachman Ramly of Ali Moertopos team who were his counterparts. That began his enduring interest in Indonesia, even when he was not in positions that directly related to the country, such as when he was ambassador to the US and high commissioner to Malaysia.

I fondly recall that when president Nathan was the head of Singapore Press Holdings, he and

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Linkedin Ayomi Amindoni (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, September 9, 2016

President Joko Jokowi Widodo congratulated the Philippines for its upcoming ASEAN chairmanship in 2017, expecting that Philippine President Rodrigo Dutertes leadership would set the regional blocs future path.

Jokowi also said he hoped Indonesia and the Philippines would enhance their economic cooperation.

"Amid the global economic slowdown, our trade values have continued to increase. This situation shows that your visit has taken place at the right moment. This visit will give us a new spirit to improve efforts to strengthen cooperation between our two countries," Jokowi said after a meeting with President Duterte at the State Palace during the latters inaugural visit to Jakarta on Friday.

In the meeting, Duterte highlighted a joint maritime security operation initiated to deal with rampant vessel hijacking, which had hampered coal shipments to power plants in the Philippines.

Nine Indonesian sailors are still being held captive by Abu Sayyaf militants in the southern Philippines.

"I am very sorry that the shipment of coal needed by power plants in my country has been hampered by piracy in the region. Piracy is an international crime," Duterte said.

President Jokowi welcomed Duterte in an official ceremony at the State Palace at 4 p.m.This was the first state visit Duterte has undertaken since his inauguration in June. After the ceremony, both leaders had discussions that ended with a joint press statement.

Prior to the meeting, Jokowi took Duterte to Pasar Tanah Abang, Southeast Asias largest textile market in Central Jakarta, for a blusukan (impromptu visit). During the visit, Jokowi showed his Philippine counterpart examples of how Indonesia managed social issues. (ebf)
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Linkedin Ayomi Amindoni (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, September 9, 2016

President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo has urged his Cabinet to focus on Indonesia's core economy and business, in order to secure a strong position amid global competition.

"With that [defining the core business and economy] we can set out our position and differentiation. We can set the brand of the country and resolve problems and stances among the competition," Jokowi said.

The statement was conveyed during the opening of a Cabinet plenary meeting held at the State Palace on Friday. It was Jokowis first meeting with the Cabinet after attending recent international forums, namely the G20 Summit in China and ASEAN Summit in Laos.

From the meetings with heads of state at both the G20 and at the ASEAN summit, Jokowi concluded that tight competition between countries was very visible. Every country was participating in the race for global investment and capital flows, he said.

To that end, Jokowi stressed that Indonesia must define its core business and economy to ensure a strong position in the global economy.

During the plenary meeting, Vice President Jusuf Kalla gave remarks on the progress of the last 71 years of Indonesia's economy. (ags)
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Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Medan  Fri, September 9 2016

The Tanjungbalai Police on Thursday announced they had received statements from language experts with North Sumatra University in regards to alleged insults uttered by a Chinese-Indonesian resident named Meliana against a religion.

Tanjungbalai Police chief Adj. Sr. Comr. Ayep Wahyu Gunawan said the witnesses had been questioned, but they could not confirm that Meliana had committed blasphemy.

Using their expertise, they explained the words used by Meliana, but police will still conduct further inquiries with the witnesses, Ayep told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.

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Linkedin Ayomi Amindoni (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, September 9, 2016

President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo has urged ASEAN and India to enhance cooperation in the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) sector, given that more than 80 percent of economic drivers in both regions are SMEs.

"We need to push SMEs to enhance innovation and their digital economy," Jokowi said during the 14th ASEAN-India Summit in Vientiane on Thursday.

We also need to support the ASEAN-India Business Council as a forum and networking facility for economic actors in private sectors, he added.

During the summit, President Jokowi stressed the importance of capacity building and technical assistance for SMEs in ASEAN as part of efforts to strengthen the regional blocks cooperation with its counterparts, such as the relationship with India, which has been maintained for 24 years so far.

During the 20th anniversary of ASEAN and India Relations in December 2012, the two regions agreed to strengthen connectivity in a bid to improve regional integration.

"I'm sure optimal connectivity will boost cooperation in trade, investment and tourism including people-to-people contact," Jokowi said.

ASEAN-India trade value amounted to US$59.7 billion in 2015, with Indian investment to ASEAN countries recorded at $605.9 billion in 2014, before doubling to $1.25 trillion in 2015. (ebf)
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Linkedin Liza Yosephine (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, September 9, 2016

President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo said he had discussed recent bilateral issues related to the illegal haj pilgrims case and Sulu Sea security with his Philippine counterpart Rodrigo Duterte upon welcoming the recently inaugurated President to Indonesia at the State Palace on Friday.

During a press conference at the State Palace following the meeting with Duterte, Jokowi conveyed appreciation to the Philippine president for the handling of the case involving 177 Indonesians who landed in legal trouble in the Philippines when attempting to go on the haj using illegally obtained Philippine passports. The case against 168 of them has been concluded and they were allowed to return to Indonesia, but Jokowi called on the Philippine government to swiftly resolve the case of the remaining nine people who are still in Manila for further legal processing.

Jokowi also welcomed the Philippine governments assistance in the case of the possibly 700 Indonesians who apparently got away with the scam and are currently on haj in Saudi Arabia using Philippine passports.

"President Duterte had conveyed his wish that the issue be solved altogether. We would like to express our appreciation," Jokowi added.

President Jokowi also expressed thanks for the Philippine cooperation in maintaining security in the Sulu Sea, where a string of abductions of Indonesian sailors by Philippine militants have taken place.

"It is hoped that in the future there will not be any more problems pertaining to security in the Sulu Sea and we will conduct joint patrols to ensure security in that sea area," Jokowi said. (dmr)
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Linkedin Farida Susanty (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, September 9 2016

The maritime highway program  a flagship of President Joko Jokowi Widodos administration  will undergo a revision as the government seeks to increase efficiency and reduce competition with the private sector.

Transportation Minister Budi Karya Sumadi said on Wednesday that it was mulling over scrapping several routes that were already being sailed by commercial shipping companies.

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Linkedin Ayomi Amindoni (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, September 9, 2016

President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo will take Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on one of his famous blusukan (impromptu visits) to Southeast Asia's largest textile market before officially welcoming him to the State Palace in Jakarta on Friday afternoon.

Jokowi and newly inaugurated president Duterte are scheduled to visit the famous Tanah Abang textile market in Central Jakarta at 2 p.m., State Secretary Pramono Anung said on Friday. It was a special diplomatic move by Jokowi, he said, noting that not all visiting state or government leaders had the opportunity to join the President on blusukan.

"One of the strengths and main focuses of President Jokowi is to see public issues directly from the field. That way he wants to give an example to world leaders of how to manage social issues directly from the source because we can't only manage issues from behind a desk," he said.

Duterte will be the second leader that Jokowi has taken on a diplomatic blusukan, after Australian Prime Minister Malcom Turnbull also accompanied the President to Tanah Abang in November last year.

After visiting Tanah Abang, Jokowi will welcome Duterte at 4 p.m. to the State Palace, where the two leaders will hold a bilateral meeting. One issue that could be discussed by the two counterparts is the number of Indonesians posing as Filipino pilgrims in the hope of going on the haj via Manila.

Prior to meeting Jokowi, Duterte is scheduled to meet with Philippine communities in Jakarta and will make an honorary visit to the Heroes Cemetery in Kalibata, South Jakarta, Pramono added. (rin)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, September 9, 2016

President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo will welcome the newly elected Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte at the State Palace on Friday for his first state visit to Jakarta.

The State Palace will hold a welcome ceremony for Duterte at 4 p.m. followed by a bilateral meeting between the two presidents and the issuing of a joint press statement, according to a schedule released by the Presidential Press Bureau on Friday.

Duterte's visit to Indonesia has been highly anticipated by both parties. Jakarta has been aggressively lobbying Manila for the release of nine remaining Indonesian sailors held captive by the notorious Filipino group Abu Sayyaf, as well as talks on a joint maritime security operation in the region in the wake of the hijacking of several vessels.

Furthermore, Philippine citizens have high hopes that Duterte will directly appeal to Jokowi to the spare the life of Filipino death row inmate Mary Jane Veloso, who is detained in Indonesia for drug trafficking.

Prior to the meeting, Jokowi will lead a plenary Cabinet meeting at his office at 9:30 a.m. to discuss the results of his recent visits to the G20 Summit in China and ASEAN Summit in Laos. Jokowi and his subordinates will also discuss the evaluation of economic policies during the Cabinet meeting.

Afterwards, Jokowi is scheduled to visit Southeast Asia's largest textile market, Tanah Abang in Central Jakarta. No details have been released so far on what Jokowi will do at the prominent market, though he took Australian Prime Minister Malcom Turnbull to Tanah Abang during the latter's state visit to Jakarta in November last year. (rin)
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Linkedin Liza Yosephine (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, September 9, 2016

President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo put a hold on traditional formalities in welcoming a visiting head of state during the inaugural visit of his Philippine counterpart, Rodrigo Duterte, to Indonesia on Friday.

Instead of welcoming Duterte with a grandiose ceremony, Jokowi took the Philippine president to Pasar Tanah Abang, Southeast Asias largest textile market in Central Jakarta, in a blusukan (impromptu visit).

Wearing white shirts, Jokowi and Duterte walked among kiosks at the Tanah Abang Market after they arrived separately at about 2 p.m. Accompanied by several Cabinet ministers, including Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi and Trade Minister Enggartiasto Lukita, the two leaders visited several stalls at the market for about half an hour.

Upon their arrival, Enggartiasto told reporters that it was important to introduce the market to Duterte, since the pasar is popularly known as a textile hub among the countries in the region.

"Thats why we invited him: Because he [Duterte] is a type of person who wants to see something closely related to the people," Enggartiasto said. He added that Jokowi also invited Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to participate in one of his trademark blusukan when the latter visited Jakarta in November last year.

Hundreds of local people and market visitors packed areas visited by Jokowi and Duterte. Jokowi shook hands with several visitors who attempted to reach and take photos with him. Duterte smiled when he witnessed the people's enthusiasm over their visit.

Presidential Press Bureau chief Bey Machmudin said Jokowis blusukan was part of the Presidents efforts to expand his diplomacy, ensuring that it takes place beyond discussion tables.

Indonesia is the first country Duterte has visited since he was inaugurated as the Philippine president on June 30. Earlier, Jokowi and Duterte met during the ASEAN Summit in Vientiane, Laos, from Sept.6 to 8. (ebf)
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Linkedin Farida Susanty (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, September 9, 2016

The maritime highway program  a flagship of President Joko Jokowi Widodos administration  will undergo a revision as the government seeks to increase efficiency and reduce competition with the private sector.

Transportation Minister Budi Karya Sumadi said on Wednesday that it was mulling over scrapping several routes that were already being sailed by commercial shipping companies.

The governments and the private sectors roles should be more balanced. Therefore, the maritime highway routes should be focused on non-commercial routes, while the commercial ones should be given to private operators or state enterprises, he said.

At present, the government assigns state shipping firm Pelayaran Nasional Indonesia (Pelni) to operate freighters in six routes to carry staple goods, such as rice, sugar, flour, cooking oil, eggs, steel and cement. The delivery of those goods is expected to push down prices that soar in remote areas, especially in the eastern part of the country.

The six routes connect major ports, such as Tanjung Perak in East Java and Tanjung Priok in North Jakarta, with remote areas, such as Tual in Maluku.

In one route, for instance, a freighter will sail from Tanjung Priok to Biak in Papua, with stops in Makassar, South Sulawesi; Manokwari and Wasior in West Papua; and Nabire and Serui in Papua. The return trip takes around 4,644 nautical miles in total.

Budi said the Jakarta-South Sulawesi-Papua route would potentially be changed to South Sulawesi-Papua as a commercial freighter was already traveling from Jakarta to South Sulawesi.

There is a large port there [in Makassar, South Sulawesi] and the price of rice is also similar to the price in Java  why do we have to travel there? he said. The revision might also include the Jakarta-Riau Islands route that may be altered to Riau Islands-West Kalimantan.

(-/-)

Budi said he had notified Pelni of the revision plan and added that the ministry was preparing to put on tender as many as three additional routes for private shipping companies in the next two weeks. Operations for the three new routes are scheduled for next year.

The ministry expects the overall revision to help reduce costs as it will no longer subsidize several routes. It has allocated Rp 257.9 billion (US$19.7 million) in public service obligations (PSO) this year to subsidize trips in the six routes, an increase from Rp 30 billion in 2015, as the program only commenced late last year.

At the same time, the ministry hopes to see higher trip frequencies and shorter duration in several routes following the change. A freighter could travel from Riau Islands to West Kalimantan once every 10 days, instead of once every 21 days as it does now.

The government previously claimed that the program has helped slash prices in remote areas by 20 to 30 percent. The end goal is also to cut down on the overall logistics costs plaguing the business climate.

Indonesian logistics costs account for 24.6 percent of the countrys gross domestic product (GDP), among the highest in the Southeast Asian region, according to data from the World Bank.

However, despite the claim of lower prices, the government still has to solve the occasional problem of the low load factor or empty freighters returning to major ports when they should ideally transport goods from the eastern region as well.

Separately, Indonesian National Shipowners Association (INSA) chairperson Carmelita Hartoto said the planned route revision would create healthier competition between the private sector and the government.

The association also proposes several routes for the revision, including ones that connect East Java-Maluku-Papua and East Java-East Nusa Tenggara, as private firms already sail those routes.
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Linkedin Marguerite Afra Sapiie (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, September 9, 2016

House of Representatives members have differing opinions about whether Arcandra Tahar should be reinstalled as energy and mineral resources minister, a position he served in for only 20 days following a dual citizenship controversy.

Rumors about his possible return have circulated since Law and Human Rights Minister Yasonna Laoly confirmed on Wednesday that Arcandra was still an Indonesian citizen.

United Development Party (PPP) lawmaker Arsul Sani said although Arcandras return to the Cabinet was the prerogative right of President Joko Jokowi Widodo, the President should be concerned that reinstalling Arcandra could draw public criticism, especially from parties that opposed his political decisions.

Although some people support the reinstatement of Arcandras Indonesian citizenship, many of them think Arcandra should not be returned to his previous ministerial position, Arsul told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.

Even if President Jokowi wanted Arcandras assistance in energy and mineral resources affairs, he should place him in another position that suited his expertise, such as an expert staff member within the ministry, Arsul added.

Echoing Arsul, House deputy speaker Fahri Hamzah said Jokowi should be careful with his decisions and must take into account the consequences of reinstalling a controversial person in a strategic position in his administration.

Arcandra was at the center of a dual citizenship controversy in August, following his inauguration as energy and mineral resources minister. He was honorably dismissed by President Jokowi for holding two passports, one from the US and one from Indonesia. (ebf)
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Linkedin Apriadi Gunawan (The Jakarta Post) Medan  Fri, September 9 2016

The lawyer of the terror suspect involved in the attack on St. Joseph Catholic Church in Medan, North Sumatra, last week, said his client told him the intellectual actor behind the attack was a Malaysian citizen from the Islamic State (IS) militant group.

Rizal Sihombing, who represents suspect Ivan Armadi Hasugian, 17, said the Malaysian involved in the attack was named Fud Hoil Omar, who taught Ivan to make explosives.

The Malaysian citizen taught Ivan how to build a bomb through the internet. He sent a tutorial video to Ivan, Rizal told The Jakarta Post.

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Linkedin Marcia Dunn (Associated Press) Cape Canaveral, Florida  Fri, September 9, 2016

A NASA spacecraft is on its way to the space rock Bennu (BEHN'oo).

The Osiris-Rex explorer rocketed away from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Thursday evening, just before sunset. It was the start of a seven-year quest to the big, black, unexplored asteroid. Once there, the spacecraft will gather a few handfuls of gravel for return to Earth.

These bite-size bits of ancient space rock  due here in 2023 if all goes well  could hold clues to the origin of life.

Thousands gathered to witness the evening launch of Osiris-Rex, a robotic hunter resembling a bird. It took flight atop an Atlas V (five) rocket. Among the well-wishers: Mike Puzio, the 12-year-old North Carolina boy who won a contest to name the asteroid.
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Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, September 9 2016

The House of Representatives officially approved Comr. Gen. Budi Gunawan as the new National Intelligence Agency (BIN) chief during a plenary meeting on Thursday.

Lawmakers attending the meeting, chaired by House deputy speaker Taufik Kurniawan, unanimously agreed with the decision of House Commission I, which oversees defense and foreign affairs, to endorse Budi as the successor to outgoing BIN chief Sutiyoso. We hope he [Budi] can soon be inaugurated and this afternoon we will try our best to send an endorsement letter to the President [Joko Jokowi Widodo]. Tomorrow is a good time for the inauguration, House deputy speaker Fahri Hamzah said after the plenary meeting.

The decision came following a confirmation hearing conducted by House Commission I, which finished on Wednesday.

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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, September 9, 2016

The government must oblige traders to build infrastructure to help reduce gas prices for industry amid the rise in the price of the commodity to US$13.9 per million metric British thermal units (MMbtu), analysts have said.

High gas prices have become a major concern of businesses competing in the international market, as industries in neighboring countries such as Singapore and Malaysia can purchase gas at almost half the Indonesian price.

An energy observer at Gadjah Mada University, Fahmy Radhi, said the high gas price in the country was caused by the lengthy distribution chains as traders won their gas distribution contracts in several areas without the requirement to build the supporting infrastructure.

An obligation for gas traders to develop infrastructure would slash gas prices, he told The Jakarta Post on Friday in Jakarta.

Institute for Essential Services Reform (IESR) executive director Fabby Tumiwa cited the long chains of gas supply from Tangguh liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant in West Papua as a cause of the higher prices.

The government must simplify the distribution system as one way to cut prices, he told the Post.

Meanwhile, interim energy and mineral resources minister Luhut Pandjaitan vowed to revise taxation policies on oil and gas to stimulate the industry. We want to improve business competitiveness by reducing state incomes from oil and gas, he said in a discussion in Jakarta on Thursday. (rez/ags)
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Linkedin Liza Yosephine (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, September 9, 2016

Pedophilia, a sexual deviant behavior that can be perpetrated by either the homosexual or heterosexual orientations, is a criminal act that disregards a child's future and must be addressed firmly in the public eye, a member of the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) Indonesia has said.

"We cannot close our eyes to criminal acts and in cases such as this - whether perpetrated by homosexuals or heterosexuals - the need for critique still must be realized," the head of Women and Marginalized Groups of AJI Indonesia, Yekthi Hesthi Murthi, told The Jakarta Post on Friday. Criminal acts must be firmly addressed, she added.

Hesthi voiced concerns that pedophilia cases related to minority groups such as the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community (LGBT) would easily make headlines and gain notoriety.

However, she continued, with the legal age for girls to marry set at 16-years-old, it would mean that pedophilia is legalized by the government in the context of a heterosexual marriage, as the law only recognizes marriages as that between a man and a woman.

Hesthi said she condemns pedophilia, regardless of whether it is carried out by homosexuals or heterosexuals. She stressed the importance for the public to have a clear understanding that pedophilia is a deviant sexual behavior that could be carried out by either sexual orientation that targets young children as victims.

Hesthi's remarks came in response to the case of the recent uncovering of a prostitution ring involving nearly 150 boys in Bogor, West Java, allegedly catering to male clients, raising public concern that such cases are exclusive to being gay. (dmr)
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Linkedin Niken Prathivi (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, September 9, 2016

In a sweet surprise coming from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, powerlifter Ni Nengah Widiasih snatched Indonesias first medal on Thursday, early Friday in Jakarta, in the 2016 Paralympic Games.

Ni Nengah lifted 96 kilograms in the womens -41 kg category to come out as the bronze medalist. The gold medal went to Nazmiye Muratli of Turkey with 104-kg lifted  both a Paralympics and world record, while Chinas Cui Zhe won silver.

It was an amazing performance [by Ni Nengah], Bayu Rahadian, the teams chief physician, told The Jakarta Post on Friday.

Ni Nengah pulled out a perfect strategy, which was quite a realistic approach to nail the target, he added.

Competing in an unlikely 21 degrees Celsius at Riocentro Pavilion 2, Ni Nengah shook off any challenges to record her new personal best.

In her first go, the confident and well-prepared Ni Nengah managed to lift 95 kg, which was two kilograms heavier than her 93 kg mark from the 2015 Southeast Asian Paragames, explained Bayu. Later on, she wrapped up the day with a 96 kg lift, earning her a bronze.

Upon returning home, Ni Nengah will be rewarded a tax-free Rp 1 billion (US$76,205) as well as a Rp 10 million monthly allowance from the government.
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Linkedin Ni Komang Erviani (The Jakarta Post) Denpasar  Fri, September 9 2016

The Bali Police have named two activists of the Balinese Forum Against Reclamation (ForBali) suspects for allegedly lowering the Indonesian flag at the Bali Legislative Council office on Aug. 25 during a rally against a planned reclamation project in Benoa Bay. Police accused the two activists of insulting the Red-and-White.

I Gusti Putu Dharmawijaya and I Made Joni were named suspects after they were allegedly involved in a rally that was attended by more than 10,000 people from the Balinese customary community and ForBali activists.

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Linkedin Ayomi Amindoni (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, September 9, 2016

Saudi Arabia has expressed an interest in investing in affordable housing for low-income people in Indonesia, Investment Coordination Board (BKPM) head Thomas Lembong has said.

The interest was mentioned by Saudi Arabian Prince Mohammad bin Salman bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud during a meeting with President Joko :Jokowi" Widodo on the sidelines of the G20 Summit at the Dahua Boutique Hotel in Hangzhou, China, earlier this week.

"They conveyed that they wanted to invest in low-cost housing [...] I think maybe in the next 12 to 18 months there will be a concrete follow-up," Thomas said at the State Palace in Jakarta on Friday, adding that aside from low-cost housing development, the country also intended to invest in tourism in Indonesia.

Earlier, Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi said Saudi Arabia intended to invest on a big scale, or what Prince Mohammad  the second deputy prime minister and Saudi Arabian defense minister  called mega investments.

It would encompass a number of sectors that involve cooperation between the two countries, namely oil refinery, low-cost housing and tourism, Retno further said. The two countries will follow up on the economic cooperation during the Saudi Arabian king's official visit to Indonesia next month.

The government recently issued the 13th economic policy package to further accelerate the low-cost housing program, aiming to reduce licensing costs for particular projects by 70 percent. (ags)
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Linkedin Prima Wirayani (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, September 9, 2016

As the end of the first phase of the tax amnesty approaches, with little so far to show from the much-vaunted policy, the noose has begun to tighten around the state budget.

On Sept. 30, the first and most critical phase of the amnesty will conclude and the results will determine the programs course until it officially winds up in March 2017.

The figures are not encouraging. As of Thursday evening, the program had only managed to persuade taxpayers to declare Rp 325 trillion (US$25 billion) in assets and repatriate Rp 15.7 trillion of this from overseas.

This is a far cry from what the government had envisioned with a whopping declaration target of Rp 4 quadrillion and Rp 1 quadrillion being repatriated.

At the same time, the size of penalty or redemption payments is pitifully small with a mere 4.5 percent of the Rp 165 trillion target achieved so far. The government had pinned high hopes on the penalties to help plug this years state budget deficit, which will stem from a taxation revenue shortfall estimated to be Rp 219 trillion.

As if to rub salt into the governments wounds, Bank Indonesia (BI) has slashed its penalty forecast to only Rp 18 trillion this year with an additional Rp 3 trillion in the first three months of 2017, bringing the total sum to Rp 21 trillion. The central banks original penalty forecast was Rp 53.4 trillion.

(-/-)

And that is not all that BI has revised. In a working meeting on the 2017 state budget at the House of Representatives on Wednesday, BI Governor Agus Martowardojo told members of Commission XIwhich oversees financethat the program was expected to garner less than a fifth of the expected repatriated funds.

Agus, however, tried to be upbeat after the meeting. That [the repatriated funds figure] is a base-line model and is a conservative figure based on what has been achieved so far, he told reporters after the meeting, which was also attended by Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati.

The minister herself once told lawmakers that this years fiscal journey resembled a turbulent flight, through which the government was trying to land safely.

She said the countrys economy, which the government predicts will expand by between 5 and 5.1 percent this year from 4.8 percent last year, was comparable to the plane itself, while the people, whose purchasing power has been deteriorating for some time, were the passengers.

The former World Bank managing director had convinced President Joko Jokowi Widodo that a second round of budget cuts of Rp 147.6 trillion was necessary to cope with this years taxation shortfall.

Meanwhile, now that the government seems to have used up its austerity measure options and the tax amnesty has not yielded the desired silver bullet, economists say that increased borrowing to finance the budget may be the only way out.

Center for Reform in Economics (Core) Indonesia research director Mohammad Faisal predicts that the state budget deficit will inch closer to the legal limit of 3 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) rather than the target of 2.5 percent.

The list of options open to the government is getting shorter. There is no alternative to increased borrowing, a third round of budget cuts would be too painful for the economy and local administrations to bear, he said.

Institute for Development and Finance (Indef) executive director Enny Sri Hartati and Bank Mandiri senior economist Andry Asmoro concurred with Faisal. Theres still room to widen the deficit, lets say, to 2.7 percent, Andry said in a telephone interview.

As of Aug. 5, the budget deficit stood at 2.08 percent of GDP.

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Linkedin Rizal Harahap (The Jakarta Post) Pekanbaru, Riau  Fri, September 9, 2016

Rengat District Courts panel of judges sentenced two Sumatran tiger skin-trading syndicate members Herman, alias Man bin Mausin, and Adrizal Rakasiwi, alias Adri, in conclusion of their trial to four years in prison on Friday.

The court also ordered them to pay Rp 60 million (US$4,572) in fines or face an additional three-months imprisonment.

The sentence imposed by the panel led by Wiwin Sulistya is heavier than the previous sentence sought by prosecutors.

We, the three members of the judges' panel, are one voice in deciding this verdict. There has been no dissenting opinion, Wiwin said on Friday.

The presiding judge further said the two convicts were proven guilty of possessing a sheet of Sumatran tiger skin and were aiming to sell it to a buyer who lived in Jambi and was now declared a fugitive of justice.

They had agreed the Sumatran tiger skin would be sold for Rp 150 million. A team of personnel from the Riau Police, the Riau Natural Resources Conservation Agency [BKSDA] and the Jambi BKSDA managed to apprehend both of them at Hermans house on April 29 before their transaction with the buyer occurred, said Wiwin.

The judge said their crime posed a serious threat to Sumatran tigers, in which according to several witnesses who presented at their trial, only around 300 tigers still could be found in their natural habitat.

Any sentence imposed must have a deterrent effect so that other people will think twice before they commit similar crimes in the future. Only sanctions with a deterrent effect to wildlife poachers and their syndicates could save Sumatran tigers from extinction. (ebf)
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Linkedin Arif Gunawan Sulistiyono (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, September 9, 2016

American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) Indonesia is holding the fourth annual Investment Summit, which will gather executives from the US and Indonesia, ranging from ministers and top officials to global American companies and businesspeople.

The investment summitco-sponsored by AmCham Indonesia and the US Chamber of Commerce in Washingtonwill be held on Thursday this week at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Jakarta.

Among those expected to attend are Coordinating Maritime Minister Luhut Panjaitan, Investment Coordinating Board chairman Thomas Lembong, Trade Minister Enggartiasto Lukita and Industry Minister Airlangga Hartarto.

During the event we will also be releasing our annual US-Indonesia Investment Report, which this year is entitled Vital & Growing: Adding up the US-Indonesia Economic Relationship, said AmCham spokesperson Gilang Ardana in a press statement on Friday in Jakarta.

The report, he continued, would reveal AmCham findings on the total dollar value of the economic engagement between the US and Indonesia. We believe this is the first time research has been done to quantify the relationship, Gilang said.

AmCham is partnering with the BKPM, the Indonesian Employers Association (Apindo), and the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Kadin) in holding the event. (ags)
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Linkedin Ruben Sario (The Star/ANN) KOTA KINABALU  Fri, September 9, 2016

Five Malaysian hostages are on the run with their Abu Sayyaf captors in the mountainous jungles of Jolo amid an intense sustained Philippines military offensive against the gunmen.

Jolo anti-kidnapping activist Prof Octavio Dinampo said the five Malaysians who were among 13 Abu Sayyaf captives were constantly on the move in the jungles of the southern Philippines island.

The Abu Sayyaf are facing problem of keeping their captives. They move around at night and by first daylight the military is already tracking them down, he told The Star.

It is a tough situation for the captives because they are always on the move and food for them will be scarce. It is hard to say if all these hostages can survive their ordeal, Octavio added.

He said the Abu Sayyaf were known to be constantly moving around the jungles of Patikul, Indanan and Parang and were facing a problem of holding on to their captives.

Octavio said the five Malaysians - Abd Rahim Summas, Tayuddin Anjut, 45, Mohd Ridzuan Ismail, 32, Fandy Bakran, 26 and Mohd Zumadil Rahim, 23 - were being by held by gunmen sub commander Majan Sahidjuan, or more commonly known as Apo Mike,

The five were kidnapped from a tugboat near Dent Haven in Lahad Datu on July 18.

Three of the seven Indonesian captives were being held by gunmen under the command of Indang Susukan who was reportedly injured in a gunfight with Philippine soldiers in late August.

Also in the hands of the Abu Sayyaf gunmen known as the Sawadjan brothers were four Indonesians and a Norwegian captive.

Three of the Indonesians - Lorence Kotten, 34, Teo Dorus Kopong, 42, and Emanuel were abducted from a Malaysian fishing boat off Sinakut in Lahad Datu on July 9.

Another Indonesian fishing boat skipper Harman Mangga, 30, who was reportedly abducted on Aug 3 off Kinabatangan waters, has not been seen among the Abu Sayyaf kidnap victims.

It is believed that he had been freed after a private deal between the abductors and the Sandakan-based owners of the fishing vessel.

Octavio said the Philippines military had dispatched 9,000 soldiers to Jolo for the offensive against the Abu Sayyaf that was expected to last until at least December.

Jolo is flooded with soldiers at the moment, he said, adding that military operations were focused on five municipalities - Indanan, Parang, Patikul, Maimbung and Talipao.

The military offensive against the gunmen came amid Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte warning to the Abu Sayyaf that he would eat them alive as they were beyond redemption.

Dutertes threat against the Abu Sayyaf, linked to the al-Qaeda terror group, was in response to the bomb blast that killed 14 people and injuring 67 others in the his hometown of Davao last week.
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Linkedin Tama Salim (The Jakarta Post) Vientiane  Fri, September 9, 2016

Three days of back-to-back meetings as part of the 28th and 29th ASEAN summits in Vientiane have come to a close, with much of the spotlight directed at Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who will lead his country to become the next ASEAN chair in 2017.

Aside from comments made about his fashion sense, the firebrand Philippine leader seemed to make good on his pre-summit comments aimed at US President Barack Obama.

During the East Asia Summit (EAS) that capped off a series of ASEAN meetings, Duterte reportedly used his time to make off-the-cuff remarks about his war on drugs and allegations of human rights abuses, deviating from a speech prepared by his foreign ministry.

Sources privy to the closed-door conversations have said that Duterte launched into a tirade over human rights issues when he could have

used the opportunity to address the South China Sea (SCS) dispute and mention a long-awaited arbitration ruling instead.

Philippine Foreign Minister Perfecto Yasay Jr. did not deny that the incident had occurred, but said he was unable to disclose what Duterte had said.

The president made his intervention statement, what he did was an impromptu speech that was part of his prepared speech and this is now all part of the records of the ASEAN Summit, Yasay told reporters after the summit.

Earlier, Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi said in a briefing that the Philippines had only raised the issue of human rights and did not respond to a question of whether Duterte had touched on the SCS dispute.

The brazen Duterte previously vowed not to be lectured to by the US leader over alleged extrajudicial killings in the Philippines in a statement made before his departure for Laos.

I will curse you in that forum, he said of Obama on Monday in Davao, as quoted by AFP.

According to a copy of Dutertes speech obtained by The Jakarta Post, the Philippine president was expected to make a statement on his relentless campaign to address the drug menace in the region.

The EAS intervention statement, as Yasay calls it, also refers to the recent arbitration ruling as a part of international jurisprudence relative to the maritime domain.

The Philippines, traditionally a US ally, recently agreed to start bilateral negotiations with China on the resolution of competing claims in the SCS. Manila initiated the arbitration process in 2013, the results of which Beijing does not recognize.

The significant buzz surrounding the Philippine president has perhaps overshadowed the more constructive aspects and results of the summits themselves, including the EAS.

Retno said the EAS managed to produce three outcome documents: the Vientiane Declaration on Promoting Infrastructure Development in East Asia; the EAS Non-Proliferation Statement; and the EAS Declaration on Strengthening Responses to Migrants in Crisis and Trafficking in Persons.

President Joko Jokowi Widodo viewed the EAS as an important and strategic forum, but warned against the looming distrust among states participating in the EAS, Retno said during the briefing.

The President urges [all participating countries] to strengthen the partnership so that the EAS will be able to contribute to efforts reinforcing the regional security architecture, the minister said.

Jokowi also mentioned the importance of maritime cooperation in the EAS context, she added.

Meanwhile, Retno revealed that the ASEAN-led Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) had experienced another setback and was now postponed until 2017.
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Linkedin Beth J. Harpaz (Associated Press) New York, United States  Fri, September 9, 2016

Airbnb on Thursday apologized for its slow response to accusations of racism and outlined new policies to combat the problem, including reducing the prominence of photos in the booking process.

The company also plans to automatically block future reservations for dates where a host has told someone that a property was unavailable.

Numerous anecdotes on social media with the hashtag #AirbnbWhileBlack recounted incidents in which African-American guests were told listings were unavailable for the dates they wanted, only to see those same listings re-advertised later for the same dates.

"We have been slow to address these problems, and for this I am sorry," said Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky in a message published on the vacation rental website's blog.

The new calendar-blocking policy, being implemented in the first half of 2017, is designed to stop hosts from discriminating against guests by falsely claiming that a property is booked, then re-renting to others.

Airbnb did not bow to critics' requests that they remove profile photos entirely so that hosts can't reject guests based on appearance. The company has said that photos are an important security features so hosts can recognize guests when they check in.

But the report published on the company's website Thursday, titled "Airbnb's Work To Fight Discrimination and Build Inclusion," said new policies will "experiment with reducing the prominence of guest photos in the booking process."

Among other things, new policies will expand Airbnb's "Instant Book" program, which allows hosts to offer homes without approval of specific guests, as long as they meet basic qualifications, with a goal of 1 million listings by Jan. 1.

Users had also said their complaints of discrimination were ignored when they reported them to Airbnb. The report says the company has developed "new tools" to "reliably route concerns" to specialists.

(Read also: Racism on Airbnb inspires new sites Innclusive and Noirbnb)

In addition to expanding Instant Book and blocking calendars from accepting reservations for a given time period once hosts state their property is unavailable, Airbnb will:

Require all users to agree, beginning Nov. 1, to a "stronger, more detailed nondiscrimination policy." Chesky said the new "Airbnb Community Commitment" wouldn't just be checking a box on a long legal document, but would involve agreeing to treat others without bias.

Find comparable accommodations, starting Oct. 1, for any guest who reports discrimination in booking a listing, having a booking canceled or in interacting with a host. The policy will apply retroactively to guests who reported discrimination in the past, and all of those guests will be given help booking their next trip.

Provide anti-bias training by Jan. 31 to all Airbnb employees.

Improve technology to "root out bias" with a team of dedicated engineers.

The company brought in former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Laura Murphy, former head of the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington, D.C., to review complaints and develop new policies.

Accusations that Airbnb has been ignoring complaints of racism have led several black entrepreneurs to create two new vacation rental websites where they say racism will not be tolerated. The new sites include Innclusive.com and Noirbnb.com.
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, September 9, 2016

Following a ban by US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on using or charging Galaxy Note 7 on flights on Thursday, several airlines also banned the phone on their flights, including Qantas, Jetstar, Virgin Australia and Singapore Airlines.

The powering up and charging of Samsung Galaxy Note 7 mobile phones is prohibited on all our flights, stated Singapore Airlines on Friday as quoted by Reuters.

(Read also: Samsung to fully refund Indonesian customers following Galaxy Note 7 recall)

According to the FAA, the Galaxy Note 7 phone should also not be allowed in checked baggage due to "recent incidents and concerns raised by Samsung". It is reportedly rare for the FAA to issue safety warnings on a specific product.

After launching the latest version of the Note series in August, Samsung ordered a global recall last week following reports of faulty batteries exploding. (kes)
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Linkedin Masajeng Rahmiasri (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, September 9, 2016

One concern for Muslims visiting South Korea is where to find halal food. The good news is that the chances of finding halal eateries in the country have increased in recent years.

In 2015, the Korea Tourism Organization released a guide to halal food dubbed Muslim Friendly Restaurants in Korea in the hope of enhancing Muslim tourists culinary experiences in South Korea, as reported by the government-run Korean Culture and Information Service on its official website.

Of the available options, here are several restaurants that serve great-tasting halal food in Seoul.

Read also: 5 Korean restaurants in Jakarta to try this weekend)

Murree Muslim Food

A photo posted by Zaim Dzikri (@zaimdzkr) on Aug 25, 2016 at 1:31am PDT

This restaurant located in Itaewon, near the Seoul Grand Mosque, serves a wide range of halal dishes. Local cuisines, such as samgyetang (ginseng chicken soup), dakdoritang (spicy braised chicken stew) and bulgogi (marinated grilled beef) are available, as well as Indian and Pakistani-style foods, such as chicken biryani and curry.

Starting price : 8,000 KRW (US$ 7.34) for Korean cuisine

Eid Halal Korean Food

A photo posted by EID Halal  Food & Guesthouse (@eid.halal.korea) on Jan 29, 2016 at 9:23pm PST

Eid Halal Korean Food, another halal restaurant located near the Seoul Grand Mosque, is run by a Korean Muslim family. Although the restaurant is small, the Korean cuisine is popular among Muslim travelers, resulting in many visitors even during non-busy times. Foods served include samgyetang, bulgogi and bibimbap (Korean-style mixed rice).

Starting price : 8,000 KRW

(Read also: Guide to visiting North Korea for Indonesians)

Makan Halal

A photo posted by Makan Halal Restaurant (@makan.restaurant) on Mar 25, 2016 at 12:22am PDT

Another option for halal Korean food in Itaewon is Makan Halal. The restaurant located in front of the Seoul Grand Mosque serves various local dishes, including samgyetang, dakdoritang and mulnaengmyeon (cold noodle soup). Makan Halal operates every day apart from Tuesday.

Starting price: 8,000 KRW

Persian Palace

Brought to Korea in 2002 by an Iranian who has resided in the country since his college years at Hanyang University in the early 1990s, Persian Palace serves Iranian foods. The highlight of this restaurant is its curry, for which the level of spiciness can be adjusted on a scale of one to 10. The restaurant also serves nan (Iranian bread), kebab and various kinds of Arabian dishes that have been adjusted to Korean taste buds, which lean toward spiciness. Persian Palace is located in Jongno-gu, Seoul.

Starting price : 8,500 KRW for a main meal

(Read also: Indonesia targets South Korea with coffee, bread)

Kervan

Kervan is one of the Turkish restaurants in South Korea that is recommended by the Korea Tourism Organization and offers an alternative for those looking for halal dishes. On its menu are shish kebab, pide (Turkish flatbread), baklava (Mediterranean pastry) and grilled foods. The restaurant, run by native Turkish chefs, is available in several areas, including Itaewon, COEX and the Gangnam Financial Center (GFC) in Seoul.
Most fashion shows are about clothes, supermodels and celebrities.

Not many have an important social message behind them, and fewer still have a powerful spokesperson taking the stage.

(Mary Altaffer/AP)

So when Reshma Quereshi walked the runway in New York for Indian designer Archana Kochhar, she sent a message of courage and empowerment to other victims of acid attacks around the world.

The 19-year-old from Allahabad, India, opened the FTL Moda show at New York Fashion Week to applause from her audience as she strutted the catwalk in a stunning fishtail white gown with embroidered appliques.

(Mary Altaffer/AP)

The look was finished with a sparkly tiara and bright red lipstick, and Reshma smiled at her audience as she made her debut on the runway.

However, the glitzy event frequented by Hollywood stars and supermodels is a world away from her hometown where she suffered severe burns to her face after being attacked with sulfuric acid by her estranged brother-in-law and two men.

(Mary Altaffer/AP)

She lost her left eye in the attack two years ago  at the age of 17  as she was walking with her sister. Reshma hopes that her runway debut will give other survivors hope and courage.

This walk was important to me because there are so many girls like me who are survivors of acid attacks, and this will give them courage, Reshma said in an interview, speaking through a translator.

(Mary Altaffer/AP)

And it will also go to show people who judge people based on their appearance that you shouldnt judge a book by its cover  you should look at everyone though the same eyes.

She added that participating in the runway show was beyond her wildest dreams.

I never thought in my wildest dreams that something like this would happen to me, Reshma said. That I would be coming to such a big place to walk on such a big stage.

The collection, called A Tale Of Two Cities, was inspired by the breathtaking Taj Mahal and the rich, buoyant colours of magnificent India, according to Kochhar.

(Mary Altaffer/AP)

BBC In an interview with the, Reshma said that when she first saw herself after the attack, she began to contemplate suicide.

After enduring painful skin graft surgeries, she met the founder of Make Love Not Scars, a group that helps survivors of the gender-based crimes.

(Mary Altaffer/AP)

Through her work with the charity, Reshma has since found the courage to live on and to do something.

She is now the face of the groups online video campaign.

Reshma wearing @AtelierMon1 for her first pre NYFW press session in New York. Thanks for the lovely stuff you guys pic.twitter.com/RJkAjPREFJ  Makelove Notscars (@MakeLuvNotScars) September 7, 2016

She said she hopes her turn on the catwalk will encourage countries to regulate the sales of acids.

No one else understands what an acid attack is except the survivors themselves, she said. I do not want this to happen to anyone else.
Its one of those moments that may have left Avon and Somerset police a bit red-faced after officers unwittingly issued a penis-shaped map in an online request for information.

The map was issued as a request to members of the public for information  after a 26-year-old man was stabbed in the Shirehampton area of Bristol.

However, despite the serious nature of the incident, things took a rather humorous turn when investigators published a map that people thought looked suspiciously like male genitalia.

As hilarity ensued on social media with screenshots of the map appearing on Twitter and Reddit, Avon and Somerset police appeared to see the funny side of things:

@LBomb001 Really? Would suggest that giant needs to pay a visit to their GP!  Avon&Somerset Police (@ASPolice) September 5, 2016





:





Did you witness an incident in Shirehampton on Friday (02/09)? A man is in hospital after being seriously assaulted https://t.co/YAApWNsW2B  Avon&Somerset Police (@ASPolice) September 5, 2016




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AirAsia boss to apologise to attendant for prostration on Phuket flight

PHUKET: Tony Fernandes, chief executive of AirAsia Group, and Tassapon Bijleveld, chief executive officer of Thai AirAsia, are to fly to Hat Yai today (Sept 9) to apologise to a flight attendant who was forced to prostrate herself before the daughter of a complaining passenger on a flight from Phuket to Bangkok last month.

transportculture

By The Phuket News

Friday 9 September 2016, 11:26AM

Tony Fernandes, chief executive of AirAsia Group, and Tassapon Bijleveld, chief executive officer of Thai AirAsia, are to fly to Hat Yai today (Sept 9) to apologise to the flight attendant. Photo: Alec Wilson

I, as Chief Executive Officer of Thai AirAsia, and Mr Tony Fernandes, Chief Executive Officer of AirAsia Group, express our deepest regrets and acknowledge our responsibility towards these past incidents, which were the result of poor communication between us and the passenger who filed a complaint, Mr Tassapon said in a statement issued yesterday.

The situation on the day of the incident could only be described as highly sensitive and emotional for all involved but we maintain that our executives never obligated our staff to perform an act of prostration and only wanted the issue to be resolved in the best way possible.

The incident in which the flight attendant had to prostrate herself to calm down a mother who reportedly was upset with the attendant asking what she could do to help her daughter who reportedly had a disability.

The incident occurred on Thai AirAsia Flight FD3006, from Phuket to Bangkok, on Aug 26, reported Post Today. (See story here.)

According to the report, a mother and two children boarded a flight. One of the children is reportedly autistic. One board, a flight attendant asked  without being informed that any special needs passengers were on board  if the mother required any assistance with her daughter, which apparently enraged the mother.

The flight attendant then was required to prostrate herself as a form of apology to calm the mothers rage.

The mother then sent a complaint to the airline as she felt the flight attendant was dishonouring her by asking what she could do to help, reported the Bangkok Post. (See story here.)

The airline management later had a meeting with the mother and the flight attendant who prostrated before the passenger, Mr Tassapon said.

Mr Tassapon attributed the incident to poor communication between the airline and the passenger.

We affirm that we highly value the feelings of our employees and are disheartened by what has happened to the staff member in question. We assure we will learn from these events and amend our policies accordingly and have our Customer Relations Department handle all passenger complaints in the future without the need for confrontation between passengers and cabin crew, Mr Tassapon said in his statement yesterday.

Mr Tassaporn did not reveal the identify of the enraged mother. However, in addition to many Thai publications, Khaosod English reported the mother's name as Jumpoon Chavasiri. (See story here.)

Ms Jumpoon lists herself as an ABAC University graduate hwo is now a hospitality management consultant and currently Director of JP Management Solutions Co., Ltd. based in Bangkok.

JP Management Solutions Co Ltd, however, lists its headquarters as based in Lancashire, England.
AMLO seized Phuket tour boat sells for B12.9mn at auction

PHUKET: A luxury cruise boat sold for over B12 million during an auction of goods seized from the Tranlee Tour company held from Sept 7-9, this being the most expensive purchase of the auction held by the Anti-Money Laundering Office (AMLO).

transportmarine

By Tanyaluk Sakoot

Friday 9 September 2016, 03:00PM

The Sumpaothong had a starting bid of B4 million, but it sold for B12.9 million. Photo: AMLO

The Sumpaothong had a starting bid of B4 million, but it sold for B12.9 million. Photo: AMLO

The Sumpaothong had a starting bid of B4 million, but it sold for B12.9 million. Photo: AMLO

The Sumpaothong had a starting bid of B4 million, but it sold for B12.9 million. Photo: AMLO

The luxury cruise boat Sumpaothong had a starting bid of B4 million, but it sold for B12.9 million. It was the top priced purchase of the auction, said Theppasu BavornChotidara, Director of Amlos Financial Intelligence Division

The second highest purchase was for the vessel Sumpaothong 1 which had a starting bid of B12 million and sold for B12.1 million, he added.

Reporting on the overall amount taken at the auction, Mr Theppasu said, Over all three days the action took a total of B166,944,000. B71,104,000 was taken on the first day, B37,300,000 on the second, and B58,540,000 on the third and final day.

Overall, all 34 boats were sold along with 83 buses, however, there are 33 buses that remain unsold. Those buses will be auctioned at a later date which will be set by our office, he added.
B500,000 reward for B10m in stolen gems

BANGKOK: The owner of a jewellery trading company yesterday (Sept 8) offered a B500,000 reward for information leading to the recovery of gems worth more than B10 million stolen on Wednesday morning (Sept 7).

crimepolice

By Bangkok Post

Friday 9 September 2016, 09:24AM

Visitors queue up at a security checkpoint at the entrance to the Bangkok Gems & Jewelry Fair in Nonthaburi province yesterday (Sept 8). Photo: Tawatchai Kemgumnerd

Wanich Wongsuabchart, 27, of Piyamitr Co, said the missing gems were stolen on Wednesday at 5am while in the safekeeping of Malca-Amit Secured Transport (Thailand) Ltd on the day they were to be displayed at the 58th Bangkok Gems & Jewelry Fair 2016 at Impact Muang Thong Thani.

Mr Wanich said Malca-Amit Secured Transport was hired by the company to look after four boxes of gems as it attended the gems and jewellery fair for the first time.

The Malca-Amit employees collected the four 30x30x20cm boxes from Piyamitr Co at 5pm on Tuesday (Sept 6).

Mr Wanich said two of the four boxes had been opened and 32 gem items weighing 440 grammes inside were missing. The theft took place at 5am but the company did not inform him until 11am. He did not give details about how the gems were stolen.

The missing gems were covered under a B10 million insurance contract with Malca-Amit. But Mr Wanich said some of them had been in his companys possession for a long time and he wanted them back.

He offered B500,000 to anyone who can give information leading to the recovery of the missing precious stones.

Malca-Amit has filed a complaint at Yannawa Police Station, Mr Wanich said, adding he has used the services of the company several times.

Late Wednesday night police arrested five Filipinos on charges of stealing a diamond necklace worth about B300,000 from the same fair.

Canoy Carpio, 58, Ebueza Carpio, 27, Bien Mulobuko, 27, Mallari Candelaria, 56, and Champoco Velarde, 65, were arrested at Don Mueang airport at 11:30pm on Wednesday with the necklace in their baggage as they were arranging for a departure flight.

The group arrived in Thailand on Monday (Sept 4) and the theft took place at the fair on Wednesday, tourist police commander Maj Gen Surachet Hakpan said.

They had return fares for next Monday (Sept 12), a day after the fair ended on Sunday (Sept 11), he said.

Police have stepped up security measures at the venue.

Read original story here.
Explore: Awesome adventure on Little Amazon river in Takua Pa

Need some adventure in your life? Why not explore Phang Gnas jungle and check out Little Amazon in Takua Pa.



By Jamie Monk

Friday 9 September 2016, 12:00PM

While driving over the bridge heading for Khao Lak, our original plan was to check in to a hotel and relax, but plans changed.

First, we detoured for lunch and took a look at Thai Mueang Beach, which is between Phuket and Khao Lak. No hotels there, just a few restaurants and a small turtle sanctuary and several kilometers of beach.

Id like to stop there again and write something on the blog. Then, rather than check in to a hotel, we decided to drive past Khao Lak another 30 kilometres to Takua Pa.

We have explored this area before, notably the old town which has a Sunday market. From our house its about two hours to Takua Pa. We had checked out the Little Amazon location last year, but did not do the tour as the weather was not great.

This time, the sky was partly blue and we decided to try something new. On arrival at the car park, we were the only people there and we wondered if it was closed, but a guy appeared to help and my dear wife negotiated a price of B1,000 for two boats (four of us, two per boat).

I imagine if you book in advance, theyll be ready for you. We had to wait a while as the guy called a friend who turned up with small longtail engines for the little boats and after about 15 minutes waiting, we were ready to go.

The sign at the entrance reads Welcome to Thailand river jungle version of the Amazon. Here you will experience ancient Banyan trees, exotic animals, and other beauties Thai nature has to offer.

We were not sure what to expect. I was hoping for some big snakes!

The first section of the river took about 45 minutes, sometimes using the engine, sometimes just a wooden paddle. It was a narrow, jungly tributary of a larger river that leads to the sea at Ban Nam Khem. We moved slowly and after the first few minutes where we followed a road, we were really in the jungle.

While being on the lookout for giant pythons, we checked out the jungle scenery. My daughter and I shared a boat and we loved the aerial roots hanging down from the trees. We were at low tide and you can see that the roots would dip into the water at high tide. These are banyan trees? Im not sure!

We enjoyed our little boat ride. Oh, yes and we did see some snakes, and a fleeting glimpse of a few monkeys and some crabs. I should have brought a decent camera with me, because the snakes we saw were all in trees and not easy to photograph with an iPhone! If you want photos, bring something with a good zoom lens.

On checking a map, I can see that this 45 minutes only took us a short distance  less than 1.5 km from the starting point, so we were indeed going slowly! We then hit a much wider river, about 30 or 40 metres wide, and turned left downstream towards the sea. As the boatman said: Go this way to Phuket! We turned on our engines and got some nice breeze blowing. It had been a bit hot and sweaty there on that little jungle river!

We had company on this bigger river. There is a network of rivers in the area. If we had turned right we could have joined a bigger river, headed further north and ended up at the sea 15 km further north.

Takua Pa actually used to be a well known port for traders hundreds of years ago. The wide rivers provided a safe, sheltered place to anchor, just as the sheltered east coast of Phuket did, and Phuket was also an important trading port. We didnt see any big boats here, only little longtails like the one in the picture.

We passed under a road bridge, somewhat destroying the illusion of remote jungle. Next to the bridge was a small fishing village, which is actually only a few kilometres from Takua Pa town. Indeed if we carried on the same road from Takua Pa, passing the entrance to Little Amazon, wed have arrived at this village.

Then we had a little photo stop on a sandbar in the middle of the river. Just around the corner from the bridge and village and probably about 4km from our starting point. Hey this is not actually the Amazon, just a Little Amazon! The boat guys took some nice family photos for us.

I found out later that this Little Amazon trip can be booked via my friends at Easy Day Thailand, so I do recommend contacting them. This can be combined with other places and attractions in the area like Khao Sok National Park, white water rafting or some waterfalls. Its easy enough as a

day trip from Phuket, though better as an overnight trip and a day trip is even easier from Khao Lak.

After the trip, we actually decided to drive home and save money rather than staying in a hotel Theres actually rooms right there (sorry, dont know the price!) and a restaurant. We had an early dinner there (decent enough Thai food at a decent price) before driving home to Phuket. I think if we get visitors who want a little jungle experience, well come again.

Jamie Monk works at liveaboard dive specialists Sunrise Divers. For more information call: 084 626 4646 or visit: sunrise-divers.com

You can read more about Phuket on Jamies Phuket Blog or follow Jamie on , Twitter, Instagram or Flickr.
Explore Saman Rattanaram Temple to see hinduism's influence in Thailand

Even those who have never been to Thailand are well aware that local temples are spectacular and definitely worth visiting. TripAdvisor and similar sites put them high on the list of the Kingdoms most popular attractions, along with nature and cuisine.



By Anton Makhrov

Friday 9 September 2016, 03:00PM

Sad to say, a first-time tourist to Thailand hardly ever goes beyond the standard temple programme, and thus, doesnt learn the most interesting thing about this part of Thai culture. Having visited Wat Chalong in Phuket or Wat Pho in Bangkok, a tourist mistakenly presumes that now he or she has seen them all, while nothing can be further from the truth. All Thai temples are different and each has its own unique features.

First, wat architecture in Thailand has seen many changes in the course of history. Second, over the centuries Thai culture has incorporated significant influence from India, China, Cambodia, and the rest of Southeast Asia.

Some temples like Wat Sothon Wararam Worawihan have subtle traces of European influence in their architecture. Others, like Wat Pranang San in Phuket surprise with statues of guardian Yaks  mythical Thai giants, armed with assault rifles. Still others have images of Buddha neighbouring deities which are normally associated with other religions.

Located in Chachoengsao province, Wat Saman Rattanaram is exactly the place where you can see Hindu deities highly respected by Thais. This temple sits on an island surrounded by waters of Bang Pakong River from every side, but you will hardly notice it unless you have a flying drone with a camera.

Wat Saman Rattanaram is known as home to Thailands largest image of Ganesha, the elephant headed deity of the Hindu pantheon. He reclines on a pedestal on the river bank, impressing visitors with his size (16 metres tall, 22 metres long) and colour. Ganesha at Wat Saman Rattanaram is bright pink, creating a miraculous visual against a backdrop of a clear blue sky.

In Ganeshas many hands, he holds a broken tusk in one hand, a lotus flower in another. Another hand rests on his leg and a fourth is poised with his arm draped over a reclining pillow. His pedestal is decorated all around with other images of himself.

There are images of other Hindu deities at Wat Saman Rattanaram and all of them are impressive. Next to Ganesha one can find the four-faced Phra Phrom, which is the Thai representation of the deva Brahma. Not far away is a giant sculpture of Indra sitting on the back of his elephant Erawan and Phra Rahu, the master of eclipses. You can also find two Naga serpents by the rivers bank and among other sculptures.

Wish I had some expertise in Hinduism and Buddhism accompanying me on my visit to Wat Saman Rattanaram for deeper insight. Unfortunately, I can only hope to name a few of the deities correctly and escape divine anger.

As for the sculptures I loved most, these were the rats surrounding Ganeshas pedestal. Each of them is as tall as a full-grown man and holds a spear and a bag. The rats may be more than just guards; well, I saw Thai worshippers approaching them and whispering something in the rats ears after praying. Im not sure if the rats fulfil wishes but you can give it a try.

Regarding wishes, I cannot help mentioning that the temple is big enough to spend an hour or two exploring and in hot weather this can be challenging. If so, fill free to refresh in the air-conditioned Amazon cafe or replenish lost calories with some food from the local floating market. Souvenirs and gifts are also available for those wishing to get something for better memories.

Wat Saman Rattanaram is located in Tambon Bang Kaeo, Chachoengsao province, approximately 50km east of Bangkok. The location on Google Maps is accurate, so feel free to Google for directions. The temple is open from 9am-5pm. More information is at www.watsaman56.com.
Help make a difference by Eating a MacBurger

Start From: Sunday 18 September 2016, 11:00AM to Sunday 18 September 2016, 06:00PM Mon. Tue. Wed. Thu. Fri. Sat. Sun.

Donate THB 300 to enjoy our delicious homemade hamburger served with french fries and any soft drink. Proceed goes towards supporting Mac Rosen for his rehabilitation and physiotherapy needs. Bring your friends & families to our burger party!
International program at Satree Phuket offers skills, morality, attitude and more

Its 8pm on a Friday night and Mattayom 1 and Year 8 students from Satree Phuket Schools International Program (IP) and International Program Cambridge (IPC) are scurrying to make final adjustments to their extravagant costumes and hairstyles for the ASEAN SMART Camp fashion show. M1 and Year 8 students, along with parent volunteers and teachers are moments away from strutting down the runway at Deevana Plaza in Patong adorned with the traditional costumes of Asean member countries.

Friday 9 September 2016, 08:48AM

Satree School Phuket

editor1@classactmedia.co.th

In the next room, M2 and Year 9 students are preparing just as diligently for IPs Got Talent, a display that will allow them the opportunity to dance, sing, and perform in front of their peers to build confidence and express a creative side that often is not revealed as readily in the classroom.

Just a few floors above, M3 and Year 10 students are hard at work researching technological advancements and honing their public speaking skills, which will be put to the test during their final group presentations.

The faculty of the International Program at Satree Phuket School aims to challenge students both in and out of the classroom in order to support and develop their potential not only as young learners, but also as young citizens of their community and the world as a whole. With this goal in mind the staff created SMART Camp.

The camp is a three-day student support and development project where M1, M2 and M3 students collaborated to create projects on various topics while focusing on developing their teamwork and English-speaking skills.

Throughout the camp activities groups of students were expected to research an Asean country and then use this knowledge to educate others. The SMART Camp name derives from the values IP teachers aim to instill in their students: Study skills, Morality, Attitude, Responsibility and Technology.

Asean is all about bringing together the cultures and histories of the community for a better future, said Cassie Carle, teacher and co-coordinator of Asean Camp. Our Asean camp was extremely successful in educating our youngest students on what it means to work as a team and to learn from others.

It was amazing to see different students step up to promote their team. I believe that they gained valuable knowledge and confidence that will help them be successful during their time in the International Program, as well as in their future plans, said Sarah Breidenich, IP math teacher.

The International Program at Satree Phuket School would like to thank the students, parents and teachers for their dedication, support and involvement in this years SMART Camp. The International Program looks forward to many years of future success as SMART Camp continues to evolve into a flagship activity of our school.
North Korea nuclear test suspected after artificial quake

NORTH KOREA: North Korea appears to have conducted a fifth nuclear test today (Sept 9), authorities in Japan and South Korea said, after monitors detected a 5.3-magnitude artificial earthquake near its main nuclear site.

military

By AFP

Friday 9 September 2016, 09:49AM

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un watches the test firing of ballistic rockets by Hwasong artillery units at an undisclosed location. Photo: AFP

A confirmed test by the isolated North would send tensions soaring over its nuclear and ballistic missile ambitions, which have already earned international condemnation and United Nations sanctions.

The quake was detected near North Koreas Punggye-ri nuclear test site as the country celebrates Foundation Day, which marks the anniversary of the founding of the nation in 1948.

Authorities in Japan and South Korea said the tremor, measured at 5.3 by the US Geological Survey, had the hallmarks a nuclear test carried out on January 6 at Punggye-ri.

The artificial... earthquake in the North... is likely a nuclear test, a South Korean meteorological agency official said, according to the Yonhap news agency.

There is a high possibility that it was a nuclear test, given the location and the magnitude of the quake, another unidentified government official told Yonhap.

Japans Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told an emergency press conference that the government was acting swiftly to gather information.

We think that there is a possibility that this quake occurred because North Korea carried out a nuclear test, he said.

Public broadcaster NHK reported Japans defence ministry was preparing to dispatch aircraft to analyse air samples to see if any radiation could be detected.

Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida vowed that if a nuclear test is confirmed, Japan will lodge a strong protest against North Korea... and immediately respond at the UN Security Council.

North Korea has been hit by five sets of United Nations sanctions since it first tested a nuclear device in 2006. Since the January test concern has also grown over a series of provocative ballistic missile launches.

Pyongyang test-fired three missiles Monday (Sept 5) as world powers gathered for a G20 meeting in China, with leader Kim Jong-Un hailing the tests as perfect, and US President Barack Obama warning it would only up the pressure.

North Korean nuclear tests are usually heralded by chatter among analysts about preparations at Punggye-ri but there had been little discussion in recent weeks over any signs of a test.

The test caught many off guard, although Seoul officials have for months maintained that the North was maintaining a condition in which it was ready to stage a nuclear test any time, said Kim Jin-Moo, an analyst at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses.

The US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University said last month on its closely watched website, 38 North, that there had been continued activity at the site, particularly at the location where the January test took place.

A test would be another slap in the face to the Norths chief ally China and diminishes any chance of a resumption of six-country talks on North Koreas nuclear programme.

North Korea claimed its January test was of a miniaturised hydrogen bomb, which is far more powerful than other nuclear devices, although experts said seismic activity suggested it was not strong enough.

Scientists say the estimated yield of around six kilotons was similar to the Norths last nuclear test in 2013, and far too low for a powerful thermonuclear device.

But at a rare party congress in Pyongyang in May, Kim Jong-Un hailed what he called a historic landmark, and insisted it had been a hydrogen blast.

He praised the countrys scientists for creating milestone miracles with the magnificent and exhilarating sound of the first H-bomb of our republic.

The test clearly demonstrated to the whole world our undefeatable spirit and endless power ... in defiance of malicious pressure and sanctions by enemy forces, he said.
Patong moves one step closer to seeing cables put underground

PHUKET: The project to see cables put underground along Patong beach road moved one step closer yesterday (Sept 8) when Patong Municipality signed an memorandum of understanding (MoU) with a construction company to start the first phrase of the B200-million project.

constructiontourismenvironmentpollutionpatong

By The Phuket News

Friday 9 September 2016, 01:08PM

An MoU has now been signed for the cables along the Patong beach to be placed underground. Photo: Tanyaluk Sakoot

Patong Mayor Chamlermluk Kebsap signed the MoU with Managing Director of Communication Network System Co Ltd Mr Somchai Khajornwiphak at the Phuket Graceland Resort & Spa.

Ms Chamlermluk explained, The MoU has been signed so that the overhead cables on Patong beach road can be placed underground thus improving the scenery of the area.

Patong Municipality sees the importance of improving the scenery in the area, especially along the beach area where residents and tourists want to enjoy the natural scenery. We need to rid the area of pollution and unpleasant sights so that we can be ready for when Phuket becomes a Smart City under the concept of Beautiful and Smart, she said.

We have yet to set a date for the contractor to begin the first phrase of the project which will be along Taweeewong Rd. We have to go through details of project with them again later this month, she added.

Mr Somchai thanked Patong Municipality for selecting his company for the project and said, We are ready to invest and work on this project which will benefit Patong Municipality and the public. We will help improve this beach town and help make it one of the most beautiful beaches in the world, and of course make it into a Smart City. Once complete Patong will be a tourist's paradise.
Police seize 2,155 buses, B4.7bn in zero-dollar Chinese tour network raid

BANGKOK: Authorities today (Sept 9) impounded 2,155 buses and froze bank accounts containing B4.7 billion held by the countrys biggest zero-dollar tour network, including OA Transport Co and 381 firms.

Chinesetourismcrimeeconomicspolice

By Bangkok Post

Friday 9 September 2016, 08:48PM

Tourist Police Commander Maj Gen Surachet Hakpan (centre) leads authorities to seize the tour buses of OA Transport Co in Lat Krabang district of Bangkok on Friday. Photo: Tourist Police (via Bangkok Post)

Tourist police and officials from the Anti-Money Laundering Office and the Revenue and Business Development departments swooped on the premises of OA Transport Co in Lat Krabang district of Bangkok after its executives had been charged with carrying on business illegally and damaging Thai tourism.

The action followed Tourist Police searches of OA Transport and four affiliated companies in the Lat Krabang and Jorakhae Noi areas of Bangkok last month.

Two OA executives, Nisa Rojrungrangsi and Wasurat Rojrungrangsi, turned themselves in at the Phaya Thai Police Station for questioning late last month.

Tourist Police moved the buses to the nearby Airport Rail Link station of the State Railway of Thailand. Land Transport Department officials will check if any of them were used illegally. An initial examination found that some of the buses were unregistered, police said.

OA Transport operated the bus that came crashing down Kata Hill in Phuket in March last year, killing three Chinese tourists and injuring 15 more.

The bus crashed through a guardrail while descending the hill to Chalong and came to rest only after slamming into trees halfway down the steep slope, preventing the vehicle from tumbling into a house just metres below. (See story here.)

Gen Surachet said the Land Transport Department was deploying buses to serve tourists who were clients of OA Transport and the 381 related companies as their operations must stop.

The raid was part of attempts to tackle zero-dollar tour operations to protect Thai tourism, Gen Surachet said.

Raided last month were OA Transport Co, a vehicle-rental firm, Bangkok Handicraft Centre Co, which sells leather goods; Royal Gems International Co, a jewellery firm; Royal Thai Herb Co, which sells herbal products; and Royal Paradise Co, which runs restaurants. (See story here.)

The five companies operate stores in tourist destinations nationwide, including Phuket.

Zero-dollar tours are so named because they offer very cheap package deals in which tourists, mostly Chinese, are pressured to buy overpriced goods and services on which the operators make big profits.

Authorities have long alleged that the money Chinese tourists spend in Thailand on zero-dollar tours mostly goes to Chinese-operated tour firms owned by Thai nominees.

Read original story here.
Recent weather erodes section of Phuket beach

PHUKET: A large section of Nai Yang Beach has suffered beach erosion following the recent spate of bad weather along the Andaman coast. However, Mai Khao Municipality say were not aware of the situation.

environmentlandweather

By Yutthawat Lekmak

Friday 9 September 2016, 04:06PM

The beach erosion has caused tress to fall along some sections of the beach. Photos: Phuket Lifeguard Service

The beach erosion has caused tress to fall along some sections of the beach. Photos: Phuket Lifeguard Service

The beach erosion has caused tress to fall along some sections of the beach. Photos: Phuket Lifeguard Service

The beach erosion has caused tress to fall along some sections of the beach. Photos: Phuket Lifeguard Service

Photos of the erosion, along the stretch of Nai Yang Beach directly behind Phuket International Airport, were posted on the Facebook page of the Phuket Lifeguare Service yesterday (Sept 8).

Prathaiyut Chuayuan, President of Phuket Lifeguard Service (PLGS) told The Phuket News today (Sept 9), The recent weather has seriously affected Nai Yang Beach. Over the last week there have been big, strong waves. The tide has been very high and people have not been able to get onto the beach.

The waves have caused erosion along the beach, and in some places it is so bad that trees have fallen. No official from the area has been to inspect it yet, Mr Prathaiyut said.

When contacted by The Phuket News today, Panu Kittikiet, an official from the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation, Mai Khao Municipality said, We dont have any report about erosion along Nai Yang Beach. We will go to check it today.

Meanwhile, Director of Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation (DDPM), Chatchai Pormlert announced in the national press that heavy rain in the Andaman region over the past few days has resulted in wet soil and that some areas may experience flash floods and landslides. This is especially the case in Ranong, Phang Nga, Krabi and Phuket. he said.
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11AAA semis will be awesome and more from HS football quarterfinals

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By Regina Logan

loganreg@grinnell.edu

The Poweshiek County Board of Supervisors will hold a public hearing on Monday, Sept. 19 to discuss selling three to five acres of land to MidAmerican Energy.

MidAmerican Energy serves around two-thirds of Iowa and nearly 1.5 million people across Iowa, Illinois, South Dakota and Nebraska. The company has committed itself to being a leader in renewable-energy and developing sustainable, climate-friendly solutions to meet customers energy needs, while keeping costs reasonable and affordable, according to the MidAmerican Energy website.

Its parent company, Berkshire Hathaway Energy, has signed on to the American Business Act on Climate Pledge. By the end of 2016, MidAmerican intends for wind energy to account for approximately 48 percent of their energy production, and by 2017, own more than 4,000 megawatts of renewable generation capacity, enough to cover over 50 percent of its retail load.

The land, owned by Poweshiek County, would be used to establish a building for storage, operations and maintenance, and it would employ 25 staff.

The county still has roughly 100 acres of farm ground on the south edge of Montezuma, said Poweshiek County Board Supervisor Larry Wilson. The board intends to sell the land to MidAmerican. The public hearing will be held to hear any objections, concerns or commentary regarding the sale.

Wilson anticipates significant community benefits from the potential sale.

The property tax produced from this wont come along for a few years, Wilson said, [but the tax] will probably bring in the neighborhood of an additional two million. Itll bring significant tax revenue to the schools and the county as well.

Money that the county receives would be used mostly for infrastructure, Wilson said. It will be a pretty significant addition to the tax base.

Professor Jim Swartz, Chemistry, and a former member of the Iowa Energy Center Advisory Council, also foresees a positive reception from the community, both of this sale and general wind energy efforts in the community.

The conversation around wind energy is quite different in Iowa than in many coastal cities, Swartz said. At the general population level, there has been a lot of support for wind energy as a renewable source. The agricultural community has been very positive about it.  It takes very little land, farmers can farm around it and they get income from leasing to companies that own and operate the wind turbines. That income doesnt go up and down like farm income.  Its a kind of constant.

Swartz is confident there will be little objection to the construction of a windfarm and the impact it will have on the landscape.

In some places, people worry about [wind farms] polluting the landscape, Swartz said. There is very little land in Iowa that is really natural, its highly cultivated.  I think people are more used to a man-made environment. I think there has been more resistance to it on the East and West Coasts.

Iowa is currently a national leader in wind and renewable energy production. According to the United States Energy Information Administration, Iowa leads the country in wind energy production. The state produced more than 30 percent of its electricity from wind energy in 2015. And last week, the Iowa Utilities Board approved project Wind XI, a MidAmerican wind energy project that the American Wind Energy Association says will be the nations largest.

The Poweshiek County board hearing, open to the public, will be held on Sept. 19 at 9 a.m. in the boardroom of the county courthouse in Montezuma, Iowa.
By Keli Vitaioli

vitaioli@grinnell.edu

Bats settled in Grinnells dorms and College-owned houses before the semester even started. The nocturnal creatures snuck into the residences through holes in vents, ceilings and closets. This led students to attempt to capture and release the animals, and, for the unfortunate few, a round of rabies vaccinations.

Cherie Li, Mariam Nadiradze and Jinlin He, all 19, were spending the night together in Hes room in Art House on Aug. 13 when they were awakened by an unexpected guest.

I was awake when the bat was crawling under the door, Nadiradze said. That was scary. I was feeling like I was about to fall asleep, and at first, I thought I was dreaming this. But the moment I saw that figure come under the door and go up into the air.  I just screamed.

After waking her roommates for the evening, Nadiradze opened the door and released the bat into the hallway. There, they ran into Anna Warm 19, who was attempting to clear another bat from her room next door. Warm called Campus Safety the next day.

I trapped one in my Tupperware and then threw the Tupperware out the window, Warm said. And then the one in [Hes] room we chased out with a broom.

Across campus in Younker Hall, Nathaniel Zhu 19 dealt with his own bat.

It was about three in the morning, Zhu wrote in an email to The S&B. I heard faint flitting and screeching in the hallways. Having nothing better to do, I went out to check what it was. Turns out it was a bat who had gotten in and could not get out.

Luckily, Zhu is no stranger to bats. He had become certified as a bat catcher while teaching Chinese at a summer camp.

The place we stayed at had a bat problem, so they certified all the counselors, Zhu wrote.

Since I am a certified bat catcher by Concordia College under the jurisdiction of the ACA (American Canine Association), I decided to catch the bat. I caught it without much difficulty with my waste bin.

Zhu, Warm and He were comfortable trying to rid their bats, but it came with a cost. They were required to get nine rabies shots each. SHACS recommends that if a bat is in the same room as a person while they are asleep, the person should get rabies shots because bites from a bats small teeth may not be apparent on site, and the possibility of rabies left unattended is deadly. The College is paying for rabies shots for all students who are at risk of contracting the disease due to bats.

Ive never had butt shots before, but here we are! Warm said.

This wasnt the last appearance of bats in Art House this semester. There were a total of four found in the house in the past three weeks.

We dont have access to the basement, but we suspect there might be a nest, He said.

According to [Campus Safety], they are going to make [the dorm] bat free, but we havent heard from them yet.

Nadiradze and Li were involved in two more bat incidents in their own triple on the third floor of Smith. Both times, the bats were found first in the room of their roommate Anjali Jha 19. The first incident in Smith was the night Jha arrived, right before classes began. She called Campus Safety and alerted them to the bats hiding place in her closet. After performing a quick sweep, they determined it wasnt present and left. However, Jha found the same bat roosting in her closet the next day.

The second time a bat appeared in the triple, the bat flew from Jhas room, into the common room and into the hallway of Smith, where Campus Safety later caught it.

Jha believes there is a hole in her closet the bats are using to enter her dorm. She has since attempted to check the dorm thoroughly for potential bat-openings and cover holes in her vents and pipes. No one from Facilities Management or Campus Safety has since checked in on the security of the room from bats.

I emailed my RLC the first time, and he said, Maybe you should try to keep your windows closed and your door shut, Jha said. But we were already doing that.

This is not the first time bats have appeared in campus housing. Rebekah Rennick 18 witnessed bats both in Dibble fall of 2013 and in Eco House in fall of 2014.

Within the first week of moving in [to Eco House], we had three bats and another three the following week, Rennick said.

While it may be surprising to have a flying mammal in a living space, Rennick advises they are not to be feared, and students should refrain from harming them.

Dont kill them. They are actually super important to our ecosystem, and they are more scared of you than you are of them, Rennick said. Hopefully you dont have to get rabies shots.

Campus Safety declined to comment about the presence of bats in school housing.
By Philip Kiely

kielyphi@grinnell.edu

The Office of Development and Alumni Relations and the Office of Communications announced in August that monetary commitments have increased 15.5 percent over last fiscal year (FY16). These gifts total 26,973,773 dollars, a 3.6 million dollar increase from last year.

The College continues to find new ways to share its story, said Shane Jacobson, Vice President of Development and Alumni Relations.

This message is resonating with alumni. In FY16, Grinnell received gifts from 245 alumni who had never given previously.

The College is also connecting to the rest of the Grinnell community. Of the 11,375 gifts the College received, only 7,098 were from alumni. Parents, friends of the College, faculty and staff made up the other group of givers.

One large factor in the recent increase in giving has been Scarlet and Give Back day. On April 7, 2016, a challenge grant from an anonymous donor paid one million dollars to the College after 3,376 individual donors gave on the same day.

Regardless of monetary amount, gifts of all sizes play a role in supporting the College.

There is no such thing as a small gift, said Milliana Zonarich 17, a student manager for Phonathon, an organization of 30 students who call alumni and parents throughout the year asking for donations to the College.

Every gift  directly helps students, Zonarich said. Theres this feeling that you cant give unless youre going to get a building named after you.

In reality, the median gift last year was 150 dollars. Zonarich also emphasized that the College does not just ask for money. Alumni donate the four Ts: time, talent, treasure and ties.

Phonathon is responsible for reaching out to the majority of those associated with Grinnell. They solicit gifts from alumni, while also offering alumni a chance to talk with current students. When giving, a donor has the option to specify how they want their money to be spent.

You can give to whatever you want to, Zonarich said. Any team, any student organization, anything. You [have the] ability to be creative with where you want to send your money. It is like saying this is something that I really appreciate, Grinnell and saying it directly.

In fact, the amount of control donors have over their gifts is part of the reason why gifts are needed in the first place.

The endowment isnt a piggy bank or a checking account, Zonarich said. The money in the endowment is a collection of small funds, each with its own purpose. She gave folk dancing in Indiana as an example of the esoteric activities that there are dedicated bequests to.

The endowment does a lot to fund the day-to-day operations of the school, but is only a part of the three-legged stool that supports the college. These three legs are endowment, net student revenue and charitable gifts.

They all have to be in balance, otherwise the stool tips over, Zonarich said. Gifts right now is a lot smaller than we want it to be, so were relying too heavily on the endowment.

However, if the current trend continues then balance should be achieved.

We currently sit at the middle of our peer group in terms of alumni participation rates, and so I think it tells me we have more room to grow, Jacobson said. The best practice in higher education is to have a six  or seven  or eight-year fundraising campaign where you attempt to raise significantly more resources for students  and faculty, said Jacobson.

The senior administration, president and board of trustees have recently decided that Grinnell is ready to have its first such comprehensive campaign in over 20 years. A group of high impact donors have also advocated for the campaign, which will officially begin in a couple of years. Once it begins, the campaign is expected to last 10 years.
This week, the Rosenfield Program and the Institute for Global Engagement hosted a symposium called the Global Politics of Migration and Refuge. The symposium featured a large number of expert, alumni and refugee speakers who offered differing perspectives on this contemporary issue. One of the speakers, Rawan Arar, a doctoral student in sociology at the University of California, San Diego, gave a talk called Shouldering the Refugee Burden: Jordan and the Global Refugee Crisis. The S&Bs Graham Dodd met with Arar to talk about her experience with immigration and the refugee situation in Jordan.

The Scarlet and Black: Whats your academic specialty?

Rawan Arar: My dissertation work as a sociologist is on refugee reception and international immigration.

S&B: What is the nature of your work with Jordanian immigrants?

RA: So I am a scholar, so my primary goal is to understand whats happening on the ground and compare it to the literature so that I can help create theories of immigration, and more specifically theories that relate to refugees. So specifically, I look at Jordan as a major refugee host country. I dont really look at Jordanians that are migrating, mostly what I do is look at refugees that are coming to Jordan. In that case, Im interested primarily in the Syrian refugee crisis, and that has to do with people fleeing Syria and looking for a safe place to stay, and they cross the border and come into Jordan.

S&B: Can you give a short summary of the situation in Jordan? What are the concerns and major events?

RA: The Syrian war started in March 2011, and since then, refugees have crossed over into Jordan as well as other neighboring states. Over 90 percent of the Syrian refugees actually currently live in Jordan, Lebanon or Turkey. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which is the major UN agency which deals with refugee hosting, there are about 655 thousand Syrian refugees.

However, according to the Jordanian government, they say that there are about 1.3 million Syrians there that they dont identify as refugees. So they might be including Syrians that migrated before the war, people who came and did not seek refugee status within the UNHCR for whatever reason.

S&B: Why doesnt the Jordanian government identify these Syrians as refugees?

RA: Really I would say that if you want to be very specific, you want to look at the UNHCR numbers which say that there are 655,000 Syrian refugees, but if you want to look at what the Jordanians say, the 1.3 million Syrians includes refugees and non-refugees. The point there is there is a distinction between citizens and noncitizens. So people who may not be considered refugees, under whatever mantle, may still have an effect on a society that is taking on a large number of refugees. Here the numbers game is really important because numbers affect how much aid the country receives, and how they allocate those resources that they have. One of the important things to take into consideration is, as a major refugee host country, Jordan is dealing with strains on their health sector, with strains in their schools. Their streets are more crowded, they have a problem with water allocations, they are worried that there isnt enough water to go around because of the large number of people theyve agreed to take in.

S&B: Could you give us more information on your background?

RA: Im Palestinian-American. I have dual citizenship in Jordan and the US, so I also identify as a Jordanian. I guess I have a multitude of identities based on where I grew up and where my family is from. I grew up in San Antonio, Texas, where I went to high school and did my undergrad at UT San Antonio.  I then went and did my Masters at UT Austin in Womens Studies, and I spent a year there taking classes. My second year I was a rotary scholar. As a rotary scholar, I moved to Jordan and worked with Iraqi refugees in 2009 and 2010. After that, I moved to Northern Ireland, and I worked at the Irish School of Ecumenics, which is peace and conflict resolution through religion. I was a visiting scholar there. I ended up working on a project that looked at how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is incorporated in politics in Northern Ireland. Then I started a Ph.D. program at UC San Diego, which is where I currently am. Ive been researching refugees since 2009, so its a topic that, intellectually, I find very exciting because it brings together, first and foremost, issues of human rights, and we are dealing with a real problem that we need people to think about and try to find solutions for, and, at the same time, it also engages some very important concepts that relate to the sociology of international immigration and political sociology.

S&B: What do you think is going to happen in Jordan in the future? What is the worst case scenario, and what would you like to see happen?

RA: One of the things I was most impressed with in Jordan was the way that Jordanians who are working with refugees are doing so, especially people who were graduating college and looking for jobs around the time that the refugee crisis happened. These people are the ones who ended up getting jobs working in the camps or working with NGOs, and I didnt really think about that role very much before being there and being on the ground, but I met some absolutely incredible people who have dedicated their lives to helping the Syrian refugees through work and, also, they do it on their personal time.  The dream is always that things will calm down and that people will be able to come home. If I can look into the future and hope for something for the people that I talk to, I think thats what they want. And I think that the people in Jordan are working really hard to take care of their own citizens as well as the people that are displaced.

S&B: Can you compare the way the EU and Jordan have handled the refugee crisis? Are there lessons either side could draw from the other?

RA: I think the EU is a big place, and weve seen a lot of different ways in which the refugee crisis has been handled. I think one of the things that really struck me was during one of my interviews with a Jordanian citizen, because I conducted interviews with citizens, refugees and government UN officials, they said we always thought the West was supposed to be this beacon of human rights, but where are the human rights when we are the ones hosting a large number of refugees? But by the same token, Ive seen people in the EU who are working so hard and actually innovating the way that we deal with refugees on a global context.

S&B: Do you have any final thoughts youd like people to keep in mind?

RA: I think language is really important, and I think its really important that we dont make victim synonymous with refugee. Nobody wants to always be characterized as a victim, because sure these people have gone through a difficult time in their lives, but they want to contribute, they want to be respected for their thoughts and ideas, just like anybody else. So I think that, when we are thinking about the refugee crisis, its really important to also question what it means that we are constantly framing it as a crisis and victims that just need constant aid.
Organization: Compassion

International

Duty Station: Buteleja,

Uganda

About Compassion Project:

Busabi Pentecostal Assemblies of God is working in partnership with

Compassion International in the Ministry of Nurturing Poor Children, and

releasing them from poverty in Jesus name for projects in Buteleja district.



Responsibilities: Key Duties andResponsibilities:



Be a Christian role model for the children,

their families and communities;



The incumbent will be working within ones

influence to serve as an advocate for the voiceless; Be in charge of offering

leadership to the other Child Development Center Staff;



In charge of the management of all program key

result areas;



Prepare in collaboration with the other

stakeholders project work plans and budgets;



Work as the accounting officer of the Child

Development Centre;



Submit monthly reports to the Project leadership

and other Partners;



Manage the process of Child Development as per

management guidelines



Perform any other duties as assigned by the

project leadership and Partners.



Experience: Qualifications, Skills andExperience:



The Project Director must hold a degree in

Social Work, Social Sciences, Development studies, Education or any other

related disciplines.



Previous experience and current knowledge of

vulnerable children ministry is desirable;



Skills in Project Planning and Management will

be an added advantage;



Previous supervisory experience is desirable,



Impeccable integrity in personal and public life

Christian values;



The applicant must be a Mature Born Again

Christian professional with a proven relationship with Jesus Christ;



Excellent interpersonal skills



Good team player



Willingness to learn;



Computer literacy skills



Should be ready to work in a rural setting.



Age: Between 23-35 years

How to Apply:

All suitably qualified and interested candidates should send their

handwritten applications with complete Curriculum Vitae, photocopies of all

academic qualifications, a recommendation from your Local Church

Pastor/Reverend and names of two referees with their day time telephone

contacts and postal addresses addressed to:

The Cluster Coordinator,

Tororo/Butaleja,

P.O Box 238 Tororo. Uganda.

th

September 2016 Deadline: 11September 2016



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Job Title: Driver

Organization: John Snow, Inc

(JSI)

Project Name: USAIDs

Maternal and Child Survival Program (MCSP)

Duty Station: Kampala, Uganda

Reports to: Finance and

Administration Manager

About JSI:

John Snow, Inc. (JSI) is a leader in improving the health of

individuals and communities by providing high-quality technical and managerial

assistance to public health programs worldwide. JSI has implemented projects in

100 countries, and currently operates from eight U.S. and 81 international

offices for the past 30 years. The JSI Research & Training Institute, Inc.

ID a leading public health research and consulting organization.

About USAID MCSP Program:

USAIDs Maternal and Child Survival program aims to accelerate the

reduction of Maternal, new born and child Mortality in USAID Priority countries

with high disease burden such as Uganda though scaling up evidence based high

impact interventions. Building on Experience, MCSP addresses major causes of

mortality by influencing and implementing high impact and innovative

interventions at scale based on the country context and data; building global

consensus and sustained government commitment to support MNCH interventions;

maximizing the use and integration of local programs

Job Summary: The Driver is

responsible for providing reliable and safe driving services to JSI staff and

visitors while ensuring the highest standards of discretion and integrity,

sense of responsibility, excellent knowledge of protocol and security issues.

The Driver also demonstrates a client  oriented approach, courtesy,

confidentiality, tact and ability to work with people of different national and

cultural backgrounds. Additionally, s/he drives the office vehicle for

transporting authorized personnel and delivery/collection of mails, documents

and other items for the JSI projects. Overall, the driver should abide by JSI

Uganda policies and guidelines pertaining to project vehicle use and management.





Responsibilities: Key Duties andResponsibilities:



The Driver will ensure provision of reliable and

safe driving for JSI staff, officials and visitors



Responsible for the safe delivery and collection

of mail, documents and any other cargo.



Ensure that the vehicle is kept clean and tidy.



Fill out a vehicle daily log sheet and carry out

daily and weekly maintenance checks on the vehicle.



The incumbent will request for fuel and submit

all receipts for any expense incurred during any trip.



Comply fully with JSI Uganda policies and

procedures on the reporting of accidents involving JSI Uganda vehicle.



The incumbent will report any damage, mechanical

faults or mishaps that may occur to the vehicle.



Ensure that the vehicle is parked safely at all

times.



Ensure availability of all required documents

including, Proof of ownership, Valid driving license, vehicle insurance,

vehicle logs, emergency phone contacts, first aid kit and necessary spare parts

in the assigned vehicle.



Prepare and submit a monthly report for the

assigned vehicle



Support administration in office messenger work

including photocopying, delivery of correspondence, and collection of

correspondence including quotations.



Perform any other tasks as assigned by the

supervisor.



Experience: Qualifications, Skills andExperience:



The applicant should preferably hold an Advanced

level certificate



Possess a Valid clean computerized driving

license



A minimum of six years driving experience



Should have at least class B and CM driving

classes



Working knowledge of vehicle mechanics.



Fluency of both spoken and written English



Previous experience in working with Donor funded

programs

How to Apply:

All suitably qualified and interested candidates should send an

application letter, CV, copies of their testimonials and at least two professional referees,

addressed to:

The Finance and Administration Manager,

JSI/MCSP Project,

P.O. Box 4978, Kampala, Uganda

OR hand deliver to Maternal and Child Survival Project,

Plot 95-97 Martyrs Way, Ntinda, Kampala. Uganda

th

September, 2016 by 5:00 pm Deadline: 16September, 2016 by 5:00 pm



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Day-long protest in Karnataka to protest Cauveri water release

Karnataka is facing massive shut down as the state protests the release of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu following a Supreme Court order.

Organisations representing farmers, traders and businesses are leading the day-long protest. Around 500 pro-Kannada organisations are taking part in the protest.

Forces have been deployed across the state in order to step up security. Public transport will be part of the shut down but government offices will remain open. Other services like banks, shops, markets, malls, hotels, eateries and restaurants will remain closed. Milk and medicine which fall under essential supplies have been exempted from shutdown. Government schools and college will remain shut. Bengaluru Metro serivce will not ply.

Karnataka has been ordered to release 15,000 cusecs of water daily from Wednesday for 10 days across the river basin by the apex court. Massive protests and widespread agitation has been going on in the Mysuru region by farmers and traders.
An otherwise peaceful Karnataka bandh, observed across the state on Friday to protest the Supreme Court order to release of 15,000cusecs of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu, was marred by violence after the police opened teargas shells and resorted to lathicharge when farmers attempted to picket the Krishnaraja Sagara dam in Mandya.

Some distraught farmers attempted suicide in three separate incidents (by jumping into the river, consuming poison and cutting the abdomen with a blade) but were saved in time. The pro-Kannada groups streamed in to the streets in the wee hours to ensure total bandh while Sandalwood stars took out a padayatra to express their solidarity.

While the roads, bus and railway stations wore a deserted look, the international airport was overcrowded with fliers as even those who had booked evening flights chose to reach the airport at the break of dawn.

Even as the entire state capital shut down to express solidarity with the farmers, a few IT-BT companies who hoped to work quietly got a taste of the public ire. Protesters barged into Manyata Tech Park and created ruckus. Many leisure clubs and lodges were forcibly closed as well.

Meanwhile, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, in a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi drew his attention to the extreme unrest in the Cauvery basin, especially in Bengaluru city following the apex court order. The unrest will have a serious impact on the states economy, especially the IT sector which brings enormous revenue and foreign exchange to the country, besides affecting the life of the common people across the state, he said.

Urging the PM to call a meeting of chief ministers to resolve the impasse, Siddaramaiah cited precedence of a similar circumstance of deficit water flows in December 1995 when the SC had sought then prime minister P.V. Narasimha Raos intervention in the matter. The water release was scaled down to 6tmc against a demand of 30tmc made by Tamil Nadu.

If we continue releasing water, we would be completely depriving our farmers of water...The current storage at Mettur dam in TN and the north-east rainfall will be more than sufficient for the Samba rice crop, which is just being or yet to be sown by TN farmers, the CM noted.

Pointing out that the BJP had opposed implementation of the SC order during the all-party meeting held on September 6, Siddaramaiah said he, as the executive head of the state could not have defied the apex court orders.

Unhappy with the CM seeking PMs intervention, former water resources minister Basavaraj Bommai said, Siddaramaiah seeks PMs help whenever he finds himself in trouble. But let me assure him that the PM is not the authority to decide on Cauvery issue as the matter is sub judice. So, Siddaramaiah should stop playing politics. The legal team should do a good job.

Tired of the legal setbacks, the people and the opposition parties in the state are demanding that the legal team representing Karnataka in the Cauvery issue be replaced. However, former prime minister H.D. Deve Gowda, who met state counsel F.S. Nariman in Delhi on Friday, batted for the 82-year-old counsel, stating that his long experience, good reputation and knowledge of water disputes would benefit the state.

I have fought for Cauvery issue for the last 50 years and have resigned twice on the same issue. Our people are also feeling betrayed. However, I have urged Nariman to fight for Karnataka and not bother about critics, who have little knowledge about water disputes, said Gowda.

The water row has resonated in the social media too after some channels posted videos of a brimming Mettur dam and exposed Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaas claims of distress in the Cauvery delta.

Tweet-happy celebrities found themselves in the line of fire too. Biocon chief Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw who tweeted saying I am in Delhi no off today and Another bandh. It is now Bandhaluru had to delete her tweets after huge backlash. Further, she sought to clarify her stand and expressed solidarity with the farmers.

Former MP Ramya courted another controversy after she tweeted asking the people why they were protesting even after the government had released water into the canals and farmers were busy in their fields.
Enterprise Resource Planning is industry jargon for a broad set of activities that helps an organization manage its businesstypically a suite of integrated applications used to collect, store, manage and interpret data from all its activities, including planning, purchase, manufacturing or service delivery. This is so wide in its ambit that every business, no matter how small needs to practice ERP in some measure.

Problem is the best known ERP tools from global names like SAP and Oracle are unaffordable by many small and medium sized Indian businesses.

Which is why a small coterie of Indian companies has gained popularity for less pricey, more focused-on-India ERP products. In recent weeks two startups have announced new versions or improvements to their offerings for the SME Sector:

EPPS: Providing a mobile edge

The Pune-based EPPS Infotech has since 2011 acquired a loyal following both in India and abroad. EPPS ERP touts the mantra Business Anytime Anywhere.

As the slogan indicates, this is a tool with useful mobile extensions, allowing small businesses to transact and monitor many processes from a mobile phone. The solution works seamlessly across all prevalent OS (operating systems), browsers and smartphones as well as tablets.

Its clients include the Alta Moda chain of textile stores in Indonesia. The company was co-founded by entrepreneur Asheer Kapoor and technologist Atul Pimple.

Eazy ERP: Tightly knit to Tally

Since 2007, Gurgaon-based Eazy Business Solution has rolled out a suite of business product, but the flagship is Eazy ERP whose USP is its integration with the popular Indian accounting solution, Tally.

This allows small and medium enterprises to enjoy the benefits of a complete inventory and production management solution without having to shift their financial systems from Tally.

Kunal Singhal, Founder of EazyERP was honoured recently as Startup Entrepreneur of the Year.
A 14-year-old girl shot and wounded a fellow student at Alpine High School in rural West Texas on Thursday and then died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, the Brewster County sheriff told reporters.

The wounded girl, thought to be 16, was taken to a local hospital and is expected to survive. No names have been released and no motive has been given for the incident in the town of about 6,000 people, Sheriff Ronny Dodson said.

The shooter is thought to have moved to Alpine, about 200 miles southeast of El Paso, with her family about six months ago, Dodson said. The girl was found dead in a bathroom and a pistol was recovered nearby.

"It's not supposed to happen here. It has got us all in shock. This is Alpine. It is a peaceful place to live and come," Dodson said, adding, "it could have been a lot worse."

The shootings prompted an evacuation of the high school and other schools were put on lockdown. Video on local media showed students consoling each other.

After the shooting, the sheriff's office received threats from a man to bomb nearby Sul Ross State University and attack a hospital. Dodson said the threats were not related to the shooting and saw them as sick pranks that diverted resources at a time of crisis.

"Right now, we think we have some nut who in the midst of one of our most emotional times at our school started calling in these threats," Dodson said.

One federal officer responding to the shooting was shot by accident by a colleague, Dodson said, adding that person is in stable condition with injuries that are not life-threatening.

"I'm not (used) to all this craziness that is going on in Alpine," wrote Facebook user Anna Maria, whose profile lists Alpine as her residence.

The United States has long been plagued by shootings at schools and colleges, some of which have claimed dozens of lives. The deadliest mass school shooting was in 2007, when a gunman slaughtered 32 people at Virginia Tech university. In 2012, a gunman shot dead 20 children and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

The deadliest attack on a US high school occurred in Littleton, Colorado, in 1999, when a pair of heavily armed teenagers shot dead 12 students and a teacher at Columbine High School, wounding 20 others.
By PTI: Bhubaneswar, Sep 9 (PTI) At least 19 people were killed and 43 injured, many of them critically, when the bus they were travelling in fell 40 feet off a bridge in Odishas Angul district today.

The mishap took place near Deulijhari when the bus from Boudh to Athamallik fell off the bridge at Puruna Manitri, DGP KB Singh said.

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"So far, 19 persons have lost their lives in the incident. While 16 persons died at Athamallik, including 14 on the spot, three others succumbed during treatment at the district headquarters hospital at Angul," Dr Bidyadhar Sahu, Chief District Medical Officer, Angul, told PTI.

He said of the 43 injured admitted at the district headquarters hospital at Angul, three died while 23 others were shifted to SCB Medical College Hospital and four of the critically injured persons were airlifted to Cuttack.

State Health Minister Atanu S Nayak was camping at SCB Medical College to monitor the situation there.

"We have formed special teams of doctors and a special ward for the treatment of those injured. They have been provided medical assistance for free as per the decision of the state government," Nayak said.

Expressing grief and shock over the mishap, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik announced free medical treatment for the injured and ex-gratia of Rs two lakh each for the next of the kin of those killed in the accident.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Narendra Modi also condoled the deaths on microblogging website Twitter.

In a tweet, he said, "Bus accident in Odishas Angul district is heart-rending. My thoughts and prayers are with the bereaved families and injured."

Union Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and many other leaders also expressed grief over the incident.

Some of the surviving passengers of the bus claimed that the driver was talking on his mobile phone when the mishap took place even as state Transport Minister Ramesh Majhi has ordered the RTO to probe the matter.

The death toll is likely to go up as the condition of some of the injured is stated to be critical, officials said.

DGP Singh said police, fire brigade and Odisha Disaster Rapid Action Force personnel have been engaged in the rescue operations and shifting of the injured persons. PTI AAM SKN MD RC

--- ENDS ---
A Florida man who piloted a one-person gyrocopter through some of the most restricted U.S. airspace and landed on the lawn of the Capitol in Washington has been released from jail after serving three months of a four-month sentence.

The Tampa Bay Times reports that Douglas Hughes returned to his Ruskin home Wednesday, his 62nd birthday, following a stay at Federal Detention Center Miami.

Hughes has said his April 15, 2015, flight in the bare-bones aircraft  which began in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania  was a way to call attention to the influence of big money in politics. He told the Times he spent his time in jail writing letters, listening to NPR and practicing speeches about campaign finance reform.

Hughes pleaded guilty last fall to operating a gyrocopter without a license.

(AP)
The only surviving suspect in last Novembers attack on Paris refused to speak to a judge Thursday for a third time, in frustration at 24-hour video surveillance of his prison cell.

Salah Abdeslams lawyer, Frank Berton, said the judge repeatedly asked questions to no avail on Thursday.

Berton said Abdeslam was not obligated to explain his silence but obviously its linked to the constant surveillance.

Authorities hope Abdeslam can provide information about the Islamic State groups strategies and networks, and identify others who might have had a connection to the Nov. 13 attacks, which killed 130 people. The same network that attacked Paris struck again in Abdeslams hometown of Brussels in March, days after he was tracked down in his hideout and arrested.

His Brussels lawyer was present at Thursdays hearing in Paris.

Abdeslam kept silent at a hearing in May, and refused to attend a hearing in July. Berton argued that two round-the-clock video cameras in Abdeslams cell in Fleury-Merogis prison could cause psychological damage, but Frances top administrative authority struck down the lawyers request to remove them. Judicial authorities argue the surveillance is needed to ensure he doesnt commit suicide.

Abdeslam, 26, initially said he wanted to explain his path to radicalization and his role in the Nov. 13 attacks on the Bataclan concert hall, cafes and the national stadium. The other attackers died in suicide bombings or under police fire.

Abdeslams precise role in the attacks has never been clear. The Paris prosecutor has said he was equipped as a suicide bomber that night, but abandoned his plans and fled.

Abdeslam evaded police for four months, but was arrested in March in the Brussels neighborhood where he grew up. He was later extradited to France and handed several preliminary terrorism charges.

(AP)
In a twist on tradition, a 13-year-old boy has decided to donate all of the presents from his bar mitzvah in an effort to share in the dream of his namesake. Srulie Beer, the son of United Hatzalah Founder and President Eli Beer, is endeavoring to purchase both a much-needed ambulance for United Hatzalah and a Sefer Torah in honor of his namesake Dr. David Yaakov Appelbaum HYD who was murdered in a terror attack on September 9th, 2003.

The attack that claimed his life also killed his daughter Nava HYD on the night before her wedding while the two were out celebrating and spending time together ahead of the upcoming nuptials. Eli was one of the emergency medical personnel who responded to the attack, and he went directly from the attack to the hospital where his wife had just gone into labor with Srulie, which is short for Yisrael David.

My son and I have always talked about how he was named after a truly righteous man, and now here he is giving away all of his Bar Mitzvah presents in order to share in the same dream that Dr. Appelbaum had, to save lives.

The ambulance is part of a new drive on behalf of United Hatzalah to purchase five more ambulances to better serve the people of Israel. It is my dream to purchase an ambulance for United Hatzalah in order to help save lives, said Srulie, whose Bar Mitzvah celebration is just under one month away. He has asked his friends, family, and the public, to donate money to help purchase the ambulance instead of purchasing presents for him. That way, we can all help save lives together, Srulie added.

The campaign, which is being run as part of United Hatzalahs My Mitzvah campaigns, is the latest Bar Mitzvah donation from like-minded teens who are interested in giving back to the community and have donated part of their gift money to purchase medical equipment such as EMT and paramedic bags, ambucycles and adopting volunteer medics. If successful, this campaign will be the first of its kind to donate a fully equipped ambulance from a Bar Mitzvah celebration.

In a heartfelt letter that Srulie published, he wrote the following:

Dear family and friends,

As an only son with four of the most amazing sisters, Avigail, Penina, Libi and Adina, our family is especially excited about my upcoming Bar Mitzvah.

I was born three days after a terrible tragedy that happened to a close friend of my father, Dr. David Yaakov Appelbaum obm. Dr. Appelbaum was murdered in a Jerusalem cafe with his righteous daughter, Nava, the night before her wedding. My parents decided to name me after Dr. Appelbaum and I am the first of many who bear his name. I learned a lot about the work of this remarkable man who devoted his entire life to the People of Israel and the Torah of Israel; therefore, when I see my fathers tireless efforts to saving lives, and his organization  United Hatzalah  which saved hundreds of thousands of people, I want to help him.

I decided to give up all my Bar Mitzvah gifts (except for a PlayStation 4), and devote them to fulfill my dream: to dedicate an emergency ambulance and a Sefer Torah in memory of Dr. David Appelbaum, and my two grandfathers who I miss so much, Zaidy Beer and Zaidy Heftler obm.

Please help me fulfill my dream by contributing towards these two most special causes.

Thank you,

Srulie Beer

Anyone who would like to help Srulie fulfill his dream and be a part of this mitzvah please click here

Seven people were killed and over 50 wounded when a suicide bomber at Cafe Hillel on Emek Refaim St., the main thoroughfare of the German Colony neighborhood in Jerusalem. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack. The victims: Dr. David Appelbaum, 51, and his daughter Nava Appelbaum, 20, of Jerusalem; David Shimon Avizadris, 51, of Mevasseret Tzion; Shafik Kerem, 27, of Beit Haninah; Alon Mizrahi, 22, of Jerusalem; Gila Moshe, 40, of Jerusalem; and Yechiel (Emil) Tubol, 52, of Jerusalem HYD.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
An Ashkelon court on Thursday, 5 Elul, complied with an Israel Police request during the arraignment for three suspects who allegedly took part in the break-in assault against Kiryat Gat Chief Rabbi Moshe Havlin Shlita and his rebitzen, in their home.

The court ordered the suspects held over for an additional four days as the police investigation into the incident continues. Some 20 people entered the ravs home on Wednesday evening and created a ruckus in protest over Chabad signing an agreement with the IDF by which talmidim will serve.

The rebitzen was taken to an area hospital following the incident and the couple had police protection throughout the night. Rabbi Havlin praised the police response, lamenting the chilul Hashem caused by the attackers, explaining most of his community is not frum and residents were shocked and outraged upon realizing what occurred. Rabbi Havlin told the media that allegations by the intruders that he received money for each talmid inducted into the military are absurd and unfounded, stating everything the rabbonim involved are doing is LShem Shomayim and no one is working for their own personal profit.

The suspects in custody are refusing to identify themselves as they remain uncooperative with police investigators.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Residents of the Hebron area were traveling in northern Israel along with their 9-month-old son, near Tzfat. According to the Srugim report, they were detained for four hours by authorities, held in the Tzfat police station all because police found a set of flatware among their goods, a set that contained a knife as well. The couple has filed a NIS 30,000 lawsuit against police.

The incident occurred about a half year ago. It was towards evening when the couple parked their car filled with camping equipment and tents in the HaAri parking lot in Tzfat, a place used by visitors to settle down for the night.

Police decided to conduct a search without cause, an illegal search, and they discovered the flatware. It is presumed the search was conducted because the young man appears like one of the so-called hilltop youths. While the young dad explained the knife, fork and spoon were used to eat while traveling, police felt the need to detain the family with the baby for four hours before releasing them with instructions to remain out of Tzfat for 14 days, bringing their vacation to an abrupt end.

The lawsuit was filed against police by Honenu attorney Menashe Yado, accusing police of conducting an illegal search and detention. The lawsuit mentions that during their four-hour stay in the Tzfat police station, the couple was prohibited from removing the baby stroller from their vehicle or to bring clean diapers from the vehicle. Hence, the child was held for four hours and the child missed his meals because they were unable to feed him.

Attorney Yado explains The picture is witness that police had no reasonable grounds to interrupt the family trip. The plaintiffs were in a vehicle with a baby and luggage. Their entire house was in the car so finding a knife alongside a fork and spoon that were wrapped up is insignificant. Then to take them to the police station where the nightmare began. This is unreasonable and unwarranted abuse and I hope the court will compel police to compensate the family.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
The IDF on Wednesday night the eve of 5 Elul targeted a mortar-firing position on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights after another rocket landed on the Israeli side hours earlier, apparently a stray rocket from the ongoing civil war in that country.

Bchasdei Hashem there was no loss of life, injuries or damages resulting from the rocket fire into the northern Golan Heights.

In an official IDF statement Israel holds Syria responsible for any and all rocket fire coming over its border and such incidents will not be tolerated.

The rocket incident was the second this week and the third this month.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman has spoken out following the attack against Kiryat Gat Chief Rabbi Moshe Havlin Shlita and his rebitzen, in their home. As reported over 20 Jews dressed as affiliated with sikrikim entered their home and created a ruckus over Chabads recent signing of an agreement whereby Chabad talmidim will serve in the IDF. A number of attackers were apprehended and arrested. Rabbi Havlin explained at least one or two of the attackers work litvish clothing.

In a related matter, a few days ago, Lieberman turned to Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked and Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan regarding the problem of chareidim attacking chareidi soldiers, who the chareidim refer to as chardakim. Lieberman told his cabinet colleagues we must send a clear message them, that Israel will not tolerate incitement or violence against soldiers and/or rabbonim.

For the Defense Minister, the attack against Rabbi Havlin represents crossing a red line and he calls on authorities to come down hard on those responsible to send a clear message of deterrence to others. The senior minister explains that the rav who was attacked is working to integrate bnei yeshivos into the IDF and these types of attacks will not be tolerated. He calls for definitive uncompromising action and harsh punishment against those responsible to bring an end to these unacceptable actions once and for all.

Police report that three people in custody have refused to identify themselves and remain uncooperative. They were arraigned and their detention has been extended.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Earlier this week YWN-ISRAEL reported a 65-year-old man was seriously injured as a result of being attacked in a shul in Har Shmuel.

On Thursday afternoon 5 Elul Hadassah Hospitals spokesperson Hadar Elboim reported the mans condition has improved, now listed in moderate/stable condition.

The assault is still under investigation as is the motive for the attack against the man.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Russias Foreign Ministry is confirming reports that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and PA (Palestinian Authority) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) will be meeting in Moscow. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has confirmed this in the media.

According to a Yisrael Hayom report quoting Zakharova, while the two have agreed in principle to meet, the time of such a meeting is yet to be announced.

Earlier in the week Abu Mazen announced a willingness to return to the negotiating table providing Israel agrees to;

1) Halt all settlements construction

2) Halt all new/illegal outposts

3) Release prisoners whose release was agreed to in past talks

PM Netanyahu this week echoed the PA leaders statement, announcing he too is willing to return to the negotiating table with the PA, however without any preconditions.

It now appears Russian President Vladimir Putin has decided to act as a third-party mediator to advance the resumption of a diplomatic process between Israel and the PA.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Fifteen of the 19 September 11 hijackers who crashed airliners in New York, outside Washington and in Pennsylvania were Saudi nationals.

A firefighter walks amid rubble near the base of thedestroyed World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001. (Photo: Reuters)

By Reuters: The US House of Representatives passed legislation on Friday that would allow the families of victims of the September 11 attacks to sue Saudi Arabia's government for damages, despite the White House's threat to veto the measure.

JASTA ACT

The US Senate in May unanimously passed the "Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act," known as JASTA. The bill's passage in the House by voice vote, two days before the 15th anniversary of the attacks that killed about 3,000 people, was greeted with cheers and applause in the chamber.

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"We can no longer allow those who injure and kill Americans to hide behind legal loopholes, denying justice to the victims of terrorism," said Republican Representative Bob Goodlatte, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

Fifteen of the 19 September 11 hijackers who crashed airliners in New York, outside Washington and in Pennsylvania were Saudi nationals. The Saudi government, which strongly denies responsibility, has lobbied against the bill.

Opponents of the measure said it could strain relations with Saudi Arabia and lead to retaliatory laws that would allow foreign nationals to sue Americans for alleged involvement in terrorist attacks.



VETO?



The White House on Friday reiterated that President Barack Obama would veto the bill.

If Obama carries out that threat and the required two-thirds of both the Republican-majority House and Senate still support the bill, it would be the first time since Obama's presidency began in 2009 that Congress had overridden a veto.

The House passed the measure by voice vote, without objections or recorded individual votes. That could make it easier for Obama's fellow Democrats to uphold his veto later without officially changing their positions.

JASTA would remove sovereign immunity, preventing lawsuits against governments, for countries found to be involved in terrorist attacks on US soil. It also would allow survivors, and relatives of those killed in them to seek damages from other countries.

In this case, it would allow suits to proceed in federal court in New York as lawyers try to prove that the Saudis were involved in the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Backers say passage is long overdue. They argue that if Saudi Arabia, or any other government, is innocent of involvement in attacks, they have nothing to fear from the legislation.

A member of the French parliament, Pierre Lellouche, said he would consider such legislation in France, and would anticipate it elsewhere, if the final version of JASTA does not include waivers for countries that are US allies and actively involved in fighting terrorism.

"It may trigger similar acts all over the place, and then you enter into a 'state of jungle' where everybody sues everybody," Lellouche, who runs a parliamentary committee on international law, told reporters on a conference call on Friday.



ALSO READ:

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Secret files from 9/11 investigation: Here's what they contain

Senate passes bill allowing 9/11 victims to sue Saudi Arabia





--- ENDS ---
[PHOTOS IN EXTENDED ARTICLE]

Israel Police Commissioner Roni Alsheich on Wednesday 4 Elul visited the S. Hebron Hills community of Sussia where he davened and then met with local leaders. The commissioner was accompanied by senior department commanders as he toured the area.

Community leaders met with the commissioner, with the latter being briefed on an array of issues including security concerns for are residents whom have been hit hard by Arab terror attacks in recent months.

The commissioner praised the area residents, citing they are not second class citizens, listening attentively to what leaders had to say, exhibiting genuine concern and indicating many of the most troubling matters would be addressed.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
A memorial to two IDF soldiers killed in Lebanon was established in the Gush Etzion community of Elazar. The memorial includes a vineyard lookout post and plaques of the fallen soldiers, Lt. Ezra Asher and Lt.-Colonel Emanuel Moreno.

The memorial is situation on the path called Derech HaAvot, including trees which were planted as part of the project. The project was initiated by and is maintained by Ezrat HaAvot area resident Meni Gertler.

In yet another ruling by Israels High Court in response to land ownership challenges, the memorial site has to be removed no later than the end of 2016.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
It is now clear to all that Israel Railways Chilul Shabbos will continue this Shabbos as per Labor Minister Chaim Katz. Katzs ministry is responsible for issuing the permits that allow the railway to carry out the work on Shabbos legally. Katz told the media the railways work is safety related and he plans to permit it on scheduled despite objections from Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, whose decision was overturned in a High Court of Justice ruling.

The court explained that when PM Netanyahu ordered a halt to the Shabbos work by the railway, he exceeded the authority and only Katz, in his capacity as Labor Minister, has the authority to cancel the Shabbos work permits.

The interview accompanied by the timing of the High Court ruling has Yahadut Hatorah weighing its options as talk of breaking from the coalition is once again audible, being cited as a viable option. Health Minister Yaakov Litzman announced that the Moetzas Gedolei Yisrael will be convening in the coming days to discuss the ongoing Chilul Shabbos and the Torah Council will decide if leaving the coalition is necessary. Litzman stated that while the party prefers to remain in the coalition, he and his colleagues are not afraid of leaving if compelled to do so.

Degel Hatorah faction leader MK Moshe Gafne announced that the litvish and chassidish factions of Yahadut Hatorah are working together and directing efforts at halting the chilul Shabbos.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
[PHOTOS IN EXTENDED ARTICLE]

President Reuven Rivlin on Thursday 5 Elul visited the base of the elite Israel Border Police Yomam anti-terror commando unit. President Rivlin was escorted by Police Commissioner Roni Alsheich and Border Police Chief Deputy Commissioner Yaakov Shabtai, and Yomam Commander N., whose identity remains classified.

The president met with the team members and their officers, seeing some of the equipment used and their base as well as visiting the memorial room, where he heard some of the stories of members of the classified unit who fell in action.

Members of the unit also put on an exhibition for the President to give him an idea of their capabilities.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Speaking to Galei Tzahal (Army Radio), Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid was questioned over his silence vis-a-vis the storm surrounding Israel Railways maintenance work on Shabbos. Lapid explained that he is willing to challenge the chareidim when he feels the need but has no interest in fighting with them for the sake of fighting and this is the case here. He feels this is not a matter of religious and secular, but a story of a Prime Minister and a minister who take 200,000 people and turn them into pawns in their political battle. I am not willing to build from hate.

Lapid is referring to in-fighting and power plays between PM Netanyahu and some of his ministers.

In fact, Lapid would not make a definitive statement on the railway and the chilul Shabbos, adding I am not opposed to closing but AM:PM (convenience stores that operate on Shabbos) is not a matter of ideology. Regarding the religious status quo Lapid stated Is there someone in the world who knows what the religious status quo is? Is there one person in Israel who knows and understands what the status quo is?

A Channel 2 News poll released in Israel this week shows that Yesh Atid would emerge the largest party in Israel if elections are held today.

Many an expert and political analyst have discussed the poll since it was released, and more than a few of them explain Lapid and his team are out and moving about without a break, working tirelessly to meet with Israelis around the country. The add that Lapid still believes in IDF service for chareidim and still believes all Israeli children must be taught math and English, but when he meets thousands of people monthly, as he does, he does not utter a negative word against anyone, but opts to focus on his policies, plans, vision and the positive, which seems to be a welcome breath of fresh air for voters.

In addition, when speaking in the Diaspora, he absolutely will not utter a word against the coalition despite the fact that he is a member of the opposition  explaining I am a representative of the Knesset when traveling abroad. I will air my dirty laundry in the Knesset, not while abroad.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Hillary Clinton sought to assure Israelis that she would a stronger ally than her rival Donald Trump, saying that the Islamic State militant group is praying to let Trump win the presidency.

Clintons interview, set to air Thursday night on Israeli Channel 2 TV, comes as both candidates worked to tout their national security credentials just two months ahead of the election. Clinton also defended President Barack Obamas nuclear deal with Iran as one that is good for the Jewish state.

The Democratic nominee took aim at Trumps critical comments about Muslims, saying he has played into the hands of IS supporters. She referred to an essay written by Matt Olsen, the former National Counterterrorism Center director, who has argued that by making the Muslim religion a campaign issue, he has given jihadists a great gift.

They are saying, Please Allah. Make Trump president of America,' she said in excerpts released ahead of the full interview.

So, I am not interested in giving aid and comfort to their evil ambitions, she added, vowing to defeat the extremist group. I dont want them to feel as if though they can be getting more recruits because of our politics.

Clinton has said in the past that the IS group has used footage of Trump in its recruitment efforts. Trump has previously said Clinton and President Barack Obama were founders of ISIS.

House Speaker Paul Ryan accused Clinton of fear mongering.

Thats demagogic scare tactics. I dont even know how you can credibly make the claim to begin with, the Wisconsin Republican said during an interview on The Hugh Hewitt Show, a conservative talk radio program.

After seven years of rocky relations between Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Clinton used the opportunity to reach out to the Israeli public. She sought to assure that a U.S.-led international nuclear deal with Iran will serve to ensure Israels safety.

Netanyahu bitterly opposed the deal, even traveling to Washington to lobby Congress to oppose it. He says it leaves too much of Irans nuclear program intact and will pave the way for the Islamic Republic to develop the capability to make a nuclear bomb in the coming years. Trump has vowed to dismantle the deal.

I believe with all my heart that putting a lid on Irans nuclear weapons program has made Israel safer; has made the region safer; prevented a nuclear arms race, Clinton said.

She said the deal does not in any way excuse Iranian behavior, such as its support for militant groups like Hezbollah and Hamas and development of long-range ballistic missiles.

But we are in a stronger position than we would have been to deal with this other malicious behavior because of the nuclear agreement, she said.

Clinton also took a jab at Trump, who has said she doesnt look presidential.

He looks at a judge and doesnt see a distinguished federal judge, but the son of Mexican immigrants, she said. He looks at an anchor woman and thinks bimbo. He looks at a reporter with a disability and mocks him. So, the only person he thinks looks presidential is the person he sees in the mirror every day.

She expressed concerns that his rhetoric could encourage violence.

But, Im also not going to be bullied or intimidated by the kind of rhetoric and demagoguery coming from the Trump campaign, she said.

(AP)
North Korea said Friday it conducted a higher level nuclear warhead test explosion, which it trumpeted as finally allowing it to build at will an array of stronger, smaller and lighter nuclear weapons. It is Pyongyangs fifth atomic test and the second in eight months.

South Koreas president called the detonation, which Seoul estimated had produced the Norths biggest-ever explosive yield, an act of fanatic recklessness.

The Norths boast of a technologically game-changing nuclear test defies both tough international sanctions and long-standing diplomatic pressure to curb its nuclear ambitions. It will raise serious worries in many world capitals that Pyongyang has moved another step closer to its goal of a nuclear-armed missile that could one day strike the U.S. mainland.

Hours after Seoul noted unusual seismic activity near the Norths northeastern nuclear test site, Pyongyang said in its state-run media that a test had finally examined and confirmed the structure and specific features of movement of (a) nuclear warhead that has been standardized to be able to be mounted on strategic ballistic rockets.

The standardization of the nuclear warhead will enable (North Korea) to produce at will and as many as it wants a variety of smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear warheads of higher strike power with a firm hold on the production of various fissile materials and technology for their use. This has definitely put on a higher level (the Norths) technology of mounting nuclear warheads on ballistic rockets, the country said.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye strongly condemned the test, saying in a statement that it showed the fanatic recklessness of the Kim Jong Un government as it clings to nuclear development. Kim is the North Korean leader.

Parks office said she spoke with U.S. President Barack Obama about the test Friday morning, during a regional summit in Laos. Park said South Korea will employ all available measures to put more pressure on North Korea, which has previously conducted nuclear tests every three to four years.

North Korea said there was no radioactive material leaked, but the explosion put the region on edge.

Chinese state media reported that the nations environmental protection agency started nuclear radiation monitoring. Japanese planes began to collect air samples from national air space to analyze possible radioactive materials. Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike said Japans capital city is also testing water samples and monitoring radiation levels in the air.

South Koreas Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement that artificial seismic waves from a quake measuring 5.0 were detected near the Punggye-ri test site. European and U.S. monitoring services also detected similar seismic activity, with the U.S. Geological Survey calling it an explosion on its website.

A South Korean Defense Ministry official, who refused to be named because of office rules, said that Seoul detected an estimated explosive yield of 10 kilotons. After the Norths fourth test, in January, South Korean lawmaker Lee Cheol Woo said Seouls National Intelligence Service told him that an estimated explosive yield of six kilotons was detected.

The 5.0 magnitude earthquake Friday is the largest of the four past quakes associated with North Korean nuclear tests, according to South Koreas weather agency. Artificial seismic waves measuring 3.9 were reported after North Koreas first nuclear test in 2006; 4.8 was reported from its fourth test this January.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has overseen a robust increase in the number and kinds of missiles tested this year. Not only has the range of the weapons successfully tested jumped significantly, but the country is working to perfect new platforms for launching them  submarines and mobile launchers.

The longer ranges and mobile launchers give the North greater ability to threaten the tens of thousands of U.S. troops stationed throughout Asia.

The seismic activity comes on the 68th anniversary of the founding of North Koreas government and just days after world leaders gathered in China for the G-20 economic summit.

Any test will lead to a strong push for new, tougher sanctions at the United Nations and further worsen already abysmal relations between Pyongyang and its neighbors. North Korea is already one of the most heavily sanctioned places on earth, and many question whether the penalties work.

China, the Norths economic lifeline and only major ally, has previously offered cover to Pyongyang, though Beijing has expressed growing frustration with what outsiders call provocations.

Pyongyang likely wanted to show the world that strong international sanctions following its fourth nuclear test and long-range rocket launch earlier this year havent discouraged its efforts to advance its nuclear weapons and missiles programs, according to Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea expert at Seouls Dongguk University.

It seems that the North has decided to play an end game where they push things to see how far they can go. Its already being heavily sanctioned and there will be little room for any new sanctions that will meaningfully hurt them more,' Koh said.

North Korea is thought to have a handful of rudimentary nuclear bombs and has spent decades trying to perfect a multistage, long-range missile to eventually carry smaller versions of those bombs.

After several failures, it put its first satellite into space with a long-range rocket launched in December 2012, and has since launched another satellite on a similar rocket. Experts say that ballistic missiles and rockets in satellite launches share similar bodies, engines and other technology.

Despite the Norths boasts Friday, its unclear whether the country has achieved the technology needed to manufacture a miniaturized nuclear warhead that could fit on a long-range missile capable of hitting the United States. Some analysts believe that it has the ability to arm shorter range missile with warheads.

In January, North Korea claimed to have conducted a hydrogen bomb test, but many foreign governments and experts were skeptical about the claim. After that test, some analysts said the country likely needed only a couple more test explosions before acquiring a miniaturized warhead that could be mounted on a long-range missile.

North Koreas persistent pursuit of missiles and nuclear weapons has long been one of the most intractable foreign policy problems for U.S. administrations. The most recent test comes ahead of U.S. presidential elections in November.

On Tuesday, North Korea fired three medium-range Rodong missiles that traveled about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) and landed near Japan. And last month, a missile from a North Korean submarine flew about 500 kilometers (310 miles), the longest distance achieved by the North for such a weapon. This worried many South Koreans because submarine-based missiles are harder to detect before launch than land-based weapons.

Diplomacy has so far failed to stop North Koreas progress. Six-nation negotiations on dismantling North Koreas nuclear program in exchange for aid were last held in late 2008 and fell apart in early 2009, when North Korea was led by Kim Jong Uns father, Kim Jong Il, who died in late 2011.

North Korea blames the United States and South Korea for its nuclear program, saying long-running hostility from Seoul and Washington to its government makes the development crucial for the small countrys survival.

Among Pyongyangs regular demands are for Washington to withdraw its troops from the region and to sign a peace treaty formally ending the Korean War. It also wants recognition as a nuclear weapons state.

The Korean Peninsula remains technically at war, as the 1950-53 conflict ended in an armistice. Washington stations more than 28,000 troops in South Korea as a buttress against any North Korean aggression. Tens of thousands more are in nearby Japan.

(AP)
By Mayuresh Ganapatye: Bollywood actor Mamta Kulkarni today denied allegations of links with the Rs 2,000 crore narcotics case registered by Thane police. According to the complaint, she was one of the co-accused. However, she had denied any connection with drugs as she has become a yogini.

"When I was on the top of my career as a Bollywood actor, I left the industry and concentrated towards spirituality. Since last 20 years I am on this path. I have no connection with the allegations leveled against me," said Mamta Kulkarni via video message that was played during the press conference called by her panel of lawyers.

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Mamta has written it to MEA and Home ministry to probe against Maharashtra police according to her who have implicated her in this case falsely.

On Kulkarni's behalf, her legal advisors including Parzez Memon of MZM Legal, Daniel Arshack from New York, Cliff Ombeta from Kenya, Sudeep Pasbola and Majeed Memon, who is also a NCP Rajya Sabha member, were present at the media briefing.

VICKY GOSWAMI WANTED IN DRUG CASE

"US DEA wants Vicky Goswami in drug case and that is why they are working with Thane police to pressurised Mamta who is her friend. But just being friend of any one you can't implicate the her in any case. I know her she is my friend also and very good human being. In Mombasa (Kenya) there is not a single case against her," said Cliff Ombeta her lawyer in Kenya.

One of the accused in the case Jai Mukhi has already retracted his confession while Memon said the evidence is so flimsy that the case would not even reach the trial stage as it fails to meet or concur with Indian standards of evidence. The case first came into the limelight when Kulkarni's name cropped up on June 18 in the Rs 2,000 crore ephedrine drugs haul case cracked by Thane police in which her husband and business partner Vicky Goswami is a co-accused.



EIGHT ARRESTED



In this case police have arrested eight people and are looking for several others related to this case who are absconding from Maharashtra and Gujarat. The lawyers' team accused police of resorting to all foul means in the investigations with a view to sensationalise the highly exaggerated figure (Rs 2,000 crore), and are using her celebrity status to her disadvantage.

On being asked if she is not guilty then why she is not returning to Mumbai and face police , Senior Lawyer Majeed Memon told media that "Considering my little experience of criminal law I will suggest her not to come here as I can't guarantee her that investigating agency won't trouble her."

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Also read:

EXCLUSIVE: Mamta Kulkarni breaks silence in drug racket row, says leave my husband alone



--- ENDS ---
A day after finding itself being criticised by the world over an article which was deemed racist against "Indians, Pakistanis and black people", Air China tendered an apology.

By India Today Web Desk:

The article was published in Air China's 'Wings of China' magazine. The article had sparked a race row after it warned Chinese travellers heading to British capital London that "precautions are needed when entering areas mainly populated by Indians, Pakistanis and black people".

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Incensed by the travel warning, two London MPs said they would seek answers from the Chinese ambassador to the UK.



In a letter written to Chinese Ambassador Liu Xiaoming, Labour MP Dr Rosena Allin-Khan said, "These comments are not reflective of the Chinese community in London or further afield and I hope you will take this matter up with representatives from Air China as soon as possible.

"For Air China to suggest that people should avoid Tooting because it has a large Pakistani, Indian or Black population is incredibly offensive..."



My letter to the Chinese Ambassador regarding Air China:

Tooting's cultural diversity is what makes it so great! pic.twitter.com/R7Cb0q6rvU Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (@DrRosena) September 8, 2016



She also invited the ambassador to come visit her constituency.

In a statement issued by Air China, it said, "In order to meet the reading demands of passengers, Air China distributed nearly a hundred different magazines in different languages on planes, and Wings of China is only one of them. These publications are only supplementary reading materials and none of them represents the view of Air China".





The safety tips seen in the article "London, City of Hat Tricks" on the September issue of Wings of China are inappropriate. Upon our notice, Air China has ordered the removal of all the magazines from all Air China planes immediately. Air China has also demanded Wings of China editorial team to learn the lesson, enhance content scrutiny so as to avoid similar issues from happening again.

"As an international airline with routes covering six continents across the globe, Air China always highly respects the cultures and traditions of the people from different ethnicities in the world. Meanwhile, Air China has hired a large amount of local employees in many places and everyone gets along with each other, jointly dedicated to building the bridges for cross-ethnicity friendship and equal communication. Air China will continue to provide high-quality aviation service for passengers across the world."

In response, a letter of apology from Wings of China's publisher, Air China Media Group, stated that the article had "caused misunderstanding".





The apology letter read:

"Our magazine Wings of China has been circulated on your airlines. In September issue this year, due to the editorial mistakes, some inappropriate expressions have been seen in the cover article "London, City of Hat Tricks" that Visit Britain and our magazine jointly promoted. This is at odds with our original purpose of promoting the beautiful sceneries of London, but instead triggering misinterpretations among media and readers and has created significantly negative impact on your company's operation and brand image. We are deeply sorry about it.

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Also Read: Be careful about Indians, Pakistanis in London, warns Air China magazine



"As a civil aviation tourist magazine, Wings of China has always been trying to present the local cultures and customs to our vast readers, and eager to exploit the beauty of the world along with our readers. The inappropriate expressions in the article are merely the mistakes made by the editors, but by no means represent the views of the magazines. We will immediately withdraw all the publications, carefully learn this lesson, improve our management to make sure there will be no more similar mistakes. We also would love to send sincere apologies via Air China to all the readers and passengers who feel uncomfortable because of this."

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Vermilion Energy Inc., together with its subsidiaries, engages in the acquisition, exploration, development, and production of petroleum and natural gas in North America, Europe, and Australia. The company owns 81% working interest in 636,714 net acres of developed land and 85% working interest in 301,026 net acres of undeveloped land in Canada; 130,715 net acres of land in the Powder River basin in the United States; 96% working interest in 248,873 net acres of developed land and 86% working interest in 134,160 net acres of undeveloped land in the Aquitaine and Paris Basins in France; 53% working interest in 901,791 net acres of land in the Netherlands; 54,625 net developed acres and 920,723 net undeveloped acres in Germany; 975,375 net acres land in Croatia; 946,666 net acres land in Hungary; and 48,954 net acres land in Slovakia. It also owns 20% interests in the offshore Corrib natural gas field located to the northwest coast of Ireland; and 100% working interest in the Wandoo offshore oil field and related production facilities that covers 59,553 acres located on Western Australia's northwest shelf. As of December 31, 2021, the company had 401 net producing conventional natural gas wells and 2,132 net producing light and medium crude oil wells in Canada; 167.6 net producing light and medium crude oil wells in the United States; 297.0 net producing light and medium crude oil wells and 3 net producing conventional natural gas wells in France; and 47 net producing natural gas wells in the Netherlands. Vermilion Energy Inc. was founded in 1994 and is headquartered in Calgary, Canada.
The following companies are subsidiares of Molina Healthcare: Aetna & Humana - Medicare Advantage, Affinity Health Plan, AmericanWork Inc., Better Health Network, Camelot Care Centers Inc, Children's Behavioral Health Inc., Choices Group Inc., College Community Services, Dockside Services Inc, Family Preservation Services Inc., Family Preservation Services of Florida Inc., Family Preservation Services of North Carolina Inc., Family Preservation Services of Washington D.C. Inc., Family Preservation Services of West Virginia Inc., Florida NetPASS LLC, Hclb Inc., Magellan Complete Care, Maple Star Nevada Inc., Maple Star Oregon Inc., Mercy CarePlus, Molina Clinical Services LLC, Molina Healthcare Data Center Inc., Molina Healthcare of Arizona Inc., Molina Healthcare of California, Molina Healthcare of Florida Inc., Molina Healthcare of Georgia Inc., Molina Healthcare of Illinois Inc., Molina Healthcare of Iowa Inc., Molina Healthcare of Louisiana Inc., Molina Healthcare of Maryland Inc., Molina Healthcare of Michigan Inc., Molina Healthcare of Mississippi Inc., Molina Healthcare of Nevada Inc., Molina Healthcare of New Mexico Inc., Molina Healthcare of New York Inc., Molina Healthcare of North Carolina Inc., Molina Healthcare of Ohio Inc., Molina Healthcare of Oklahoma Inc., Molina Healthcare of Pennsylvania Inc., Molina Healthcare of Puerto Rico Inc., Molina Healthcare of South Carolina LLC, Molina Healthcare of Texas Inc., Molina Healthcare of Texas Insurance Company, Molina Healthcare of Utah Inc., Molina Healthcare of Virginia Inc., Molina Healthcare of Washington Inc., Molina Healthcare of Wisconsin Inc., Molina Holdings Corporation, Molina Hospital Management LLC, Molina Information Systems LLC dba Molina Medicaid Solutions, Molina Medical Management Inc., Molina Pathways LLC, Molina Pathways of Texas Inc., Molina Youth Academy, NextLevel Health Illinois, Pathways Community Corrections Inc., Pathways Community Services LLC, Pathways Community Support of Texas Inc., Pathways Health and Community Support LLC, Pathways Human Services LLC., Pathways of Arizona Inc., Pathways of Delaware Inc., Pathways of Idaho LLC, Pathways of Maine Inc., Pathways of Massachusetts LLC, Pathways of Oklahoma Inc., Pathways of Washington Inc., Providence Community Services, Providence Human Services, Raystown Developmental Services Inc., The Game of Work LLC, The RedCo Group Inc., Total Care Medicaid plan, Transitional Family Services Inc., Unisys -Health Information Management, and YourCare Health Plan.

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China Mobile Limited provides mobile telecommunications and related services in Mainland China and Hong Kong. The company offers local calls; domestic and international long distance calls and roaming services; and value-added services, such as caller identity display, call waiting, conference calls, and others. It also provides wireless Internet service, as well as digital applications comprising music, video, reading, gaming, and animation; wireline broadband services; and wireline voice services. In addition, it offers dedicated line and IDC services to corporate customers in a range of industry sectors; and basic corporate communication products comprising corporate VPMN and SMS, and tailor made solutions. Further, the company provides international telecommunications services, which includes IDD, roaming, Internet, MNC, and value added business services. Additionally, it offers telecommunications network planning, design, and consulting services; roaming clearance, IT system operation, and technology support services; value-added platform development and maintenance services; mobile data, and system integration and development services; network construction and maintenance, network planning and optimizing, and training services; electronic communication products design and sale of related products; and non-banking financial services. It also provides mobile cloud research and development services; call center services; e-payment, e-commerce, and Internet finance services; and mobile Internet digital content services, as well as operates a network and business coordination center. The company serves 950 million mobile customers and 187 million wireline broadband customers. The company was formerly known as China Mobile (Hong Kong) Limited and changed its name to China Mobile Limited in May 2006. The company was incorporated in 1997 and is based in Central, Hong Kong. China Mobile Limited is a subsidiary of China Mobile Hong Kong (BVI) Limited.
By Tatsam Mukherjee: There's a scene in Neeraj Pandey's A Wednesday, where Gaurav Kapur's character meets the police commissioner since he thinks, he's been getting calls from the underworld (a common occurrence in the 90s amongst Bollywood stars). The actor has an explanation of his own for being 'targetted', and the reason is he belongs to minority group. Explaining further to a befuddled Anupam Kher, the actor states Bollywood is ruled by the Khans, which makes an Arjun Khanna a minority. This was Neeraj Pandey's subtle dig at Akshay Kumar. Some call it homage too, and even Akshay Kumar had a sense of humour about it. Maybe, he was even impressed, which is why he went on to star in the director's two future projects.

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Akshay Kumar is the epitome of the outsider's superstar. A lot of people might reserve that title for Shah Rukh Khan, however, Shah Rukh Khan still found his frequent association with the Industry bigwigs in Yash Raj, Dharma, and pan-India love. Akshay Kumar has always had his fair share of fans, but he's never seen the mania that a Shah Rukh or a Salman has seen. And Akshay Kumar, even as an A-lister, has hardly been given the recognition that the Khans have been given.



ALSO READ: Akshay Kumar brings in birthday with wife Twinkle Khanna in Seychelles



ALSO READ: Here's why Akshay Kumar, and NOT Hrithik Roshan deserves a take-down piece



Early years

Akshay Kumar made his debut in Abbas-Mastan's Khiladi. His USP among his competition then, was he knew martial arts and was willing to wear a thong and dance in the shower to "It's my life." Oh yes, the kind of things you have to do make a niche for yourself. Just goes on to show how he didn't take himself, his image as seriously as a Shah Rukh, Salman or even an Aamir. Competing with the Khans, Akshay found major success after teaming up in two-hero films. So while he did Waqt Hamaara Hai, Mohra, Hera Pheri with Suniel Shetty, he also did Yeh Dillagi, Main Khiladi Tu Anari, Tu Chor Main Sipahi and Keemat with Saif Ali Khan. Akshay Kumar earned thought he made the big league by doing Yash Chopra's Dil Toh Pagal Hai, but a sour post-release experience meant that he vowed to never work with Yash Raj for a long time.





Breaking out of the 'action star image'

Since the turn of the millennium, the audience started to become a little tired of the Khiladi's action star image. That's when he began doing a spate of negative characters in Khiladi 420, Ajnabee, Awara Pagal Deewana, Khakee and even Aan: Men at work. The films might have been only moderate successes, but in the masses he began getting recognised as an actor, more than an 'action star'. He repeated the trend with showing off his comic timing in a series of films between 2004-05 like Mujhse Shaadi Karogi, Garam Masala, Deewane Huye Pagal, Phir Hera Pheri.





Arrival of the A-lister

The years 2007-08 finally saw sections of Bollywood, media acknowledge the sheer star power that Akshay Kumar brought with him to a film. After a record 8 consecutive hits in those two years, Akshay Kumar famously gave the statement, "you don't have to be a Khan to be a superstar in Bollywood." And nothing spelled it more than getting an offer from Yash Raj after close to a decade for Tashan. The film might have been a failure, but Akshay Kumar's stock was higher than ever.

Responsible superstar



Super-stardom meant Akshay Kumar had franchises to his name like the Housefull series, which have all gone on to gross more than a 100 crores. This also means he can back films like a Special 26, Baby with director Neeraj Pandey. He can produce a movie like The Shaukeens, where he doesn't a pull a punch from playing an exaggerated version of himself. Doing all this while, he has three films which have grossed more than a hundred crore in the same calendar year.

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All this while, he remains the outsider's superstar. He might still not be the Khan in terms of popularity, but he doesn't have to be. He is THE Akshay Kumar.



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The following companies are subsidiares of TE Connectivity: 999 Arques Corp., ABB ENTRELEC terminal block business, ACC Telecommunications, ADC Chile Limitada, ADC Communications (SEA) Pte. Ltd., ADC Communications (UK) Holding Ltd., ADC Communications (UK) Ltd., ADC Communications Hong Kong Limited, ADC Telecommunications Equipment (Shanghai) Co., AMP Amermex, AMP Products Pacific Limited, AMP Taiwan B.V., AMP Trading B.V., AMP de Venezuela, Acalon Holdings Limited, Advanced Fiber Products LLC, Advanced Fiber Products Limited, Advanced Tube Technologies, AdvancedCath, AdvancedCath Technologies, Alpha Technics, American Sensor Technologies, Betatherm (R&D) Limited, Brantner Holding Company, Brantner and Associates, Butterfly Management SAS, C.S. Tyco Decisive Inc., C.S. Tyco Dependable Inc., C.S. Tyco Durable Inc., C.S. Tyco Reliance Inc., C.S. Tyco Resolute Inc., C.S. Tyco Responder Inc., CII Guardian International Limited, Cablotec GmbH, Carrier Kheops Bac SAS, Catheter and Disposable Technology, Celis Eletrocomponentes Ltda., Cima de Acuna S.A. de C.V., Clarebury Pty. Ltd., Codenoll Technology Corporation, Communication Expert International Investments Limited, Compagnie Deutsch Distribution SAS, Compagnie Deutsch SAS, Comtec Systeme GmbH, Connecteurs Electriques Deutsch SAS, Corcom, Corcom West Indies Limited, Cotsworks LLC, Creganna, Creganna Captial Holding Ireland Unlimited Company, Creganna Finance (US) LLC, Creganna Finance Ireland Limited, Creganna Luxembourg SARL, Creganna Medical Devices, Creganna Medical Pte. Limited, Creganna Medical Technology Unlimited, Creganna Medical s.r.l., Creganna Regulatory, Creganna Solutions Limited, Creganna Solutions Unlimited Company, Creganna Tactx Singapore Limited, Creganna Unlimited Company, Cregstar Bidco Limited, Critchley Group Limited, Crompton Instruments (South-East Asia) Pte. Ltd., Deutsch, Deutsch Connectors Hong Kong Limited, Deutsch Connectors Manufacturing (Shanghai) Co., Deutsch Connectors Trading (Shanghai) Co., Deutsch Finance SAS, Deutsch GB Limited, Deutsch Group SAS, Deutsch India Power Connectors (Pvt) Ltd, Deutsch Israel Ltd., Deutsch SAS, Deutsch Servicios S. de R.L. De C.V., Deutsch Subco Limited, Deutsch UK, F.A.I. Technology (Hong Kong) Limited, First Sensor, Grangehurst Enterprises Pty. Ltd., Hirschmann Car Communication, Hong Kong Sensors Technologies Limited, Howard A. Schaevitz Technologies, Intercontec Connector System (Shanghai) Co., Intercontec Produkt GmbH, Intercontect Pfeiffer Industrie-Steckverbindungen GmbH, Jaquet North America, Jaquet Technology Group AG, Kemex Holding Company, Kenabell Holding Limited, LADD Distribution LLC, LADD Distribution Limited, LSA, MEAS Asia Limited, MEAS Europe SAS, MEAS France SAS, MEAS Ireland (Betatherm) Limited, MEAS Norway AS, MEAS Shenzhen Limited, MEAS Switzerland S.a r.l., MEAS US Holding, MP&E, Measurement Specialties, Measurement Specialties (Chengdu) Ltd., Measurement Specialties (China) Ltd., Measurement Specialties (China) Ltd. Production Branch, Measurement Specialties Foreign Holdings LLC, Measurement Technology (Chengdu) Ltd., Medical Engineering & Design, MicroGroup, Morlynn Ceramics Pty. Ltd., Nikkiso-Therm Co., PT KRONE Indonesia, PT. Tyco Electronics Indonesia, Pfeiffer GmbH & Co KG, Pfeiffer Verwaltungs GmbH, Polamco, Polamco Limited, Potter & Brumfield de Mexico, Precision Interconnect LLC, Precision Subsea AS, Precision Wire Components, Precision Wire Holding Company, Produxx, RAYCHEM-RPG Private Limited, Raychem (HK) Limited, Raychem (Shanghai) Trading Ltd, Raychem China Limited, Raychem Dominicana S.A., Raychem Industries BVBA, Raychem International LLC, Raychem International Manufacturing LLC, Raychem Juarez, Raychem Limited, Raychem Ltd., Raychem Pacific Corporation, Raychem Saudi Arabia Limited, Raychem Shanghai Cable Accessories Ltd, Raychem Technologies Limited, Rochester Wire and Cable LLC, SEACON Advanced Products LLC, Seacon (Europe) Limited, Seacon Global Production, Seacon Produtos e Servicos Opticos e Eletricos Ltda., Sensitive Object, Servo Interconnect Limited, Shanghai CII Electronics Co., Shenzhen Century Man Communication Equipment Co., Sibas Electronics (Xiamen) Co., TCN Holding (Luxembourg) S.a.r.l., TE Connectivity (Barbados) SRL, TE Connectivity (Denmark) ApS, TE Connectivity (HKZ) Holding Limited, TE Connectivity (Kunshan) Company Limited, TE Connectivity (Netherlands) Holding S.a r.l. - Irish Branch, TE Connectivity (Schweiz) Management AG, TE Connectivity (Suzhou) Co., TE Connectivity Argentina S.R.L., TE Connectivity Australia Pty Ltd, TE Connectivity Colombia S.A.S., TE Connectivity Connectors (Suzhou) Co., TE Connectivity Distribution (Thailand) Limited, TE Connectivity EMEA Holding GmbH, TE Connectivity Germany GmbH, TE Connectivity HK Limited, TE Connectivity Holding International II S.a r.l., TE Connectivity Holding International II S.a r.l. Luxembourg (LU) Schaffhausen E-Finance branch, TE Connectivity Holding International II S.a r.l. Luxembourg (LU) Schaffhausen branch, TE Connectivity Holding International II S.a r.l. (Ireland Branch), TE Connectivity Holding International S.A., TE Connectivity Inc., TE Connectivity India Private Limited, TE Connectivity Investments Holding S.A., TE Connectivity Investments Holding S.A. Luxembourg (LU) Schaffhausen branch, TE Connectivity Ireland Limited, TE Connectivity LATAM Holding S.a r.l., TE Connectivity LATAM I S.a r.l., TE Connectivity LATAM II S.a r.l., TE Connectivity Limited, TE Connectivity MOG Europe S.a r.l., TE Connectivity MOG Holding S.a r.l., TE Connectivity MOG Inc., TE Connectivity MOG Sales GmbH, TE Connectivity Manufacturing (Thailand) Company Limited, TE Connectivity Manufacturing Sdn. Bhd., TE Connectivity Morocco SARL, TE Connectivity Nederland B.V., TE Connectivity Netherlands (Poland II) Cooperatief U.A., TE Connectivity Netherlands (Turkey) B.V., TE Connectivity Netherlands Cooperatief U.A., TE Connectivity Phoenix Optix Inc., TE Connectivity Seacon Phoenix Inc., TE Connectivity Sensors Germany GmbH, TE Connectivity Services India Private Limited, TE Connectivity Solutions GmbH, TE Connectivity South Africa Proprietary Limited, TE Connectivity Spain, TE Connectivity SubCom S.L.U., TE Connectivity SubCom Spain Holding S.L.U., TE Connectivity Technology Solutions Limited, TE Connectivity Tunisia Sarl, TE Connectivity ULC, TE Connectivity US Group Holding Inc., TE Connectivity Vietnam Holding Company Limited, TYCO Electronics Polska Sp.z.o.o., TYCO SUBMARINE SYSTEMS INC., TacPro, Tactx Medical, Taicang Speed & Spin Sensors Co., Taliq Taiwan Limited, Tappat Engineering Pty Ltd, TechDevice Costa Rica Limitada, TechDevice Holdings, TechDevice LLC, The Whitaker LLC, Transoceanic Cable Ship Company LLC, TyCom Holdings II SA, TyCom Networks (Peru) S.A., Tyco Electronics (AMP Korea) Malta Limited, Tyco Electronics (Dongguan) Ltd, Tyco Electronics (Gibraltar) Holding Limited, Tyco Electronics (Gibraltar) Limited, Tyco Electronics (Korea) Malta Limited, Tyco Electronics (Kunshan) Ltd, Tyco Electronics (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., Tyco Electronics (Qingdao) Ltd., Tyco Electronics (Schweiz) Holding II GmbH, Tyco Electronics (Shanghai) Co., Tyco Electronics (Shenzhen) Co. Ltd., Tyco Electronics (Suzhou) Ltd., Tyco Electronics (Zhuhai) Ltd, Tyco Electronics AMP Guangdong Ltd, Tyco Electronics AMP Italia Products S.R.L., Tyco Electronics AMP Italia S.R.L., Tyco Electronics AMP Korea Co., Tyco Electronics AMP Manufacturing (S) Pte Ltd, Tyco Electronics AMP Qingdao Ltd., Tyco Electronics AMP Shanghai Ltd., Tyco Electronics Austria GmbH, Tyco Electronics Belgium EC BVBA, Tyco Electronics Brasil Ltda., Tyco Electronics Canada ULC, Tyco Electronics China (Gibraltar) Limited, Tyco Electronics Componentes Electromecanicos Lda., Tyco Electronics Corby Limited, Tyco Electronics Corporation, Tyco Electronics Czech s.r.o., Tyco Electronics Del Peru S.A.C., Tyco Electronics EC Trutnov s.r.o., Tyco Electronics EC Verwaltungsgesellschaft mbH, Tyco Electronics Eta Limited, Tyco Electronics Finance Alpha GmbH, Tyco Electronics Finance S.a r.l., Tyco Electronics Finland Oy, Tyco Electronics France SAS, Tyco Electronics Germany Holdings GmbH, Tyco Electronics Group S.A., Tyco Electronics Group S.A. (French Branch), Tyco Electronics Group S.A. (Ireland Branch), Tyco Electronics H.K. Limited, Tyco Electronics Hellas MEPE, Tyco Electronics Holding Corp., Tyco Electronics Holding France, Tyco Electronics Holding S.a r.l., Tyco Electronics Holdings (Bermuda) No. 7 Limited, Tyco Electronics Holdings (Bermuda) No. 7 Limited Taiwan Branch, Tyco Electronics Hong Kong Holdings No. 1 Limited, Tyco Electronics Hong Kong Holdings No. 2 Limited, Tyco Electronics Hong Kong Holdings No. 3 Limited, Tyco Electronics Hungary Termelo Kft, Tyco Electronics Idento, Tyco Electronics India (Gibraltar) Limited, Tyco Electronics Industrial Y Comercial Chile Limitada, Tyco Electronics Integrated Cable Systems LLC, Tyco Electronics Ireland Limited, Tyco Electronics Israel Ltd., Tyco Electronics Italia Holding S.r.l., Tyco Electronics Japan G.K., Tyco Electronics Lambda, Tyco Electronics Latin America Holding LLC, Tyco Electronics Manufacturing Singapore Pte Ltd, Tyco Electronics Mexico, Tyco Electronics Middle East FZE, Tyco Electronics Motors Ltd, Tyco Electronics NZ Limited, Tyco Electronics Netherlands (Germany Holding) S.a r.l., Tyco Electronics Netherlands (Gibraltar China) Cooperatief U.A., Tyco Electronics Netherlands (Gibraltar India) Cooperatief U.A., Tyco Electronics Netherlands (India) Cooperatief U.A., Tyco Electronics Netherlands Holding B.V., Tyco Electronics Norge AS, Tyco Electronics Philippines, Tyco Electronics Precision Engineering Ltd., Tyco Electronics Printed Circuit Group LP, Tyco Electronics RIMC Holding LLC, Tyco Electronics RUS OOO, Tyco Electronics Raychem GmbH, Tyco Electronics Raychem Korea Limited, Tyco Electronics SIMEL SAS, Tyco Electronics Saudi Arabia Limited, Tyco Electronics Services GmbH, Tyco Electronics Singapore Pte Ltd, Tyco Electronics Subsea Communications LLC, Tyco Electronics Svenska AB, Tyco Electronics Svenska Holdings AB, Tyco Electronics Technology (SIP) Co., Tyco Electronics Technology (SIP) Ltd., Tyco Electronics Tecnologias S. de R.L. de C.V., Tyco Electronics UK Holdings Ltd, Tyco Electronics UK Ltd., Tyco Electronics UK Ltd. (Kenya Branch), Tyco Electronics Ukraine Limited, Tyco Electronics Uruguay S.A., Tyco Electronics Verwaltungs GmbH, Tyco Electronics Wireless Systems B.V., Tyco Electronics de Venezuela, Tyco Elektronik AMP Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Tyco Global Networks Ltd., Tyco Iberia, Tyco International Services GmbH, Tyco Networks (Argentina) S.R.L., Tyco Networks (Italy) Srl, Tyco Networks (Netherlands) B.V., Tyco Networks Iberica, Tyco Submarine Systems, Tyco Submarine Systems C.A., Tyco Submarine Systems de Argentina S.A., Tyco Telecommunications Ltd., Wema Americas LLC, Wema Automotive System Private Limited, Wema Environmental Technologies (Shanghai) Co., Wema Environmental Technologies (Shenzhen) Co., Wema Environmental Technologies Ltd., Wema System AG, Wema System AS, Wema System Hong Kong Limited, Wema System Production and Distribution HK Limited, Xiamen Delixing Electric Equipment Businesss, and motec Montage GmbH.

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Royal Bank of Canada operates as a diversified financial service company worldwide. The company's Personal & Commercial Banking segment offers checking and savings accounts, home equity financing, personal lending, private banking, indirect lending, including auto financing, mutual funds and self-directed brokerage accounts, guaranteed investment certificates, credit cards, and payment products and solutions; and lending, leasing, deposit, investment, foreign exchange, cash management, auto dealer financing, trade products, and services to small and medium-sized commercial businesses. This segment offers financial products and services through branches, automated teller machines, and mobile sales network. Its Wealth Management segment provides a suite of advice-based solutions and strategies to high net worth and ultra-high net worth individuals, and institutional clients. The company's Insurance segment offers life, health, home, auto, travel, wealth, annuities, and reinsurance advice and solutions; and business insurance services to individual, business, and group clients through its advice centers, RBC insurance stores, and mobile advisors; digital, mobile, and social platforms; independent brokers; and travel partners. Its Investor & Treasury Services segment provides asset servicing, custody, payments, and treasury services to financial and other investors; and fund and investment administration, shareholder, private capital, performance measurement and compliance monitoring, distribution, transaction banking, cash and liquidity management, foreign exchange, and global securities finance services. The company's Capital Markets segment offers corporate and investment banking, as well as equity and debt origination, distribution, advisory services, sale, and trading services for corporations, institutional investors, asset managers, private equity firms, and governments. The company was founded in 1864 and is headquartered in Toronto, Canada.
The following companies are subsidiares of Prudential Financial: 210-220 E. 22nd Street SSGA Owner LLC, AIG Edison, AIG Star, AREF Cayman Co Ltd., AREF GP II Pte. Ltd., AREF GP Ltd., ASPF II - Feeder Fund GmbH, ASPF II - Verwaltungs - GmbH & Co. KG, ASPF II Management GmbH, ASPF III Scots L.P., ASSURANCE, AST Investment Services Inc., Adlerwerke CB Investment LLC, Administradora de Fondos de Pensiones Habitat S.A., Administradora de Inversiones Previsionales SpA, Aoba Life Insurance Company, Aoba Life Insurance Company Ltd., Asia Property Fund III GP S.a.r.l., Assurance IQ LLC, Assurance Intelligence LLC, BSC CP LP, Braeloch Holdings Inc., Braeloch Successor Corporation, Brazilian Capital Fund GP Limited, Broad Street Global Advisors LLC, Broome Street Holdings LLC, CB German Retail LLC, CLIS Co. Ltd., COLICO INC., Capital Agricultural Property Services Inc., Chadwick Boulevard Investment Holdings Co. LLC, Cibecue LLC, Coconino LLC, Colico II Inc., Columbus Drive Partners L.P., Commerce Street Holdings LLC, Commerce Street Investments LLC, Coolidge LLC, Coral Reef GP, Coral Reef L.P., Coral Reef Unit Trust, Cottage Street Investments LLC, Cottage Street Orbit Acquisition LLC, DICKENS AVENUE HOLDINGS VI LLC, DICKENS AVENUE PARTNERS VI Ireland L.P., DICKENS AVENUE PARTNERS VI US L.P., Dale/P Minerals Limited Partnership, Don Cesar Investor LLC, Dryden Arizona Reinsurance Term Company, Dryden Finance II LLC, EVP II GP S.a r.l., EVP II Horizon GP S.a r.l., EVP II Sprint GP S.a r.l., Edison Place Senior Note LLC, Essex LLC, EuroCore GP S.a r.l., European Value Partners GP S.a.r.l., Everbright PGIM Fund Management Co. Ltd., Flagstaff LLC, GA 1600 Commons LLC, GA 333 Hennepin Investor LLC, GA BV LLC, GA Bay Area GP LLC, GA Bay Area Investor LLC, GA Belden LLC, GA CLARENDON LLC, GA Cal Crossings LLC, GA Collins LLC, GA E. 22nd Street Apartments Holdings LLC, GA East 86 Street LLC, GA JHCII LLC, GA MENLO PARK INVESTOR LLC, GA Manor at Harbour Island LLC, GA Metro LLC, GA TRITON INVESTOR LLC, GA W Paces LLC, GA/MDI 333 Hennepin Associates LLC, GIBRALTAR BSN HOLDINGS SDN BHD, GIBRALTAR INDIA SOLUTIONS LLP, Gateway Holdings II LLC, Gateway Holdings LLC, German Retail Income CP LP, Gibraltar BSN Life Berhad, Gibraltar International Insurance Services Company Inc., Gibraltar International Service LLC, Gibraltar Reinsurance Company Ltd., Gibraltar Universal Life Reinsurance Company, Glenealy International Limited, Global Portfolio Strategies Inc., Gold GP Limited, Gold II L.P., Gold L.P., Graham Resources Inc., Graham Royalty Ltd., Green Harvest Asset Management LLC, Green Tree GP, Green Tree L.P., Greenlee LLC, Halsey Street Investments LLC, Hirakata LLC, IVP Fund GP LLC, Impact Investments Bridges UK S.a.r.l, Inter-Atlantic G Fund L.P., Inversiones Previsionales Chile SpA, Inversiones Previsionales Dos SpA, Ironbound Fund LLC, Jennison Associates LLC, Kyarra S.a r.l., Kyoei Annuity Home Co. Ltd. Kabushiki Kaisha Kyouei Nenkin Home, LINEUP LLC, Lake Street Partners IV L.P., Lotus Reinsurance Company Ltd., MC GA COLLINS HOLDINGS LLC, MC GA COLLINS REALTY LLC, MC Insurance Agency Services LLC, Manor at Harbour Island LLC, Marble Canyon LLC, Maricopa LLC, Market Street Holdings IV LLC, Montana Capital Partners, Morenci LLC, Mulberry Street Holdings LLC, Mulberry Street Investment L.P., Mulberry Street Partners LLC, Mullin TBG Insurance Agency Services LLC, MullinTBG Insurance Agency Services, National Family Assurance Group LLC, New Savanna, Northbound Emerging Manager Fund A LP, Northbound Emerging Manager Fund II - A LP, Orchard Street Acres Inc., PAI Bay Farm LLC, PAI Bayrock Groves LLC, PAI Belvidere Farms LLC, PAI Big Cypress Farm LLC, PAI Corcoran 640 Ranch LLC, PAI DeKalb Farm LLC, PAI Delano 1500 Ranches LLC, PAI Desert Falcon Farms Manager LLC, PAI Flicker Orchard LLC, PAI Good Hope Farm LLC, PAI Hawk Creek Ranch LLC, PAI Hills Valley Ranches LLC, PAI Holly Hill Groves LLC, PAI Hunt Farm LLC, PAI Jackson Bayou Farm LLC, PAI Lake Placid Groves LLC, PAI River Bend Ranches LLC, PAI Wallula Gap Vineyard LLC, PCP V Cayman AIV GP L.P., PEREF II Co-Invest 1 GP S.a r.l., PEREF II GP S.a r.l., PFI EM-Tech Fund I LLC, PG Business Service Co. Ltd, PG Collection Service Co. Ltd., PG Friendly Partners Co. Ltd., PGA Asian Retail Limited, PGA European Limited, PGI Co. Ltd, PGIM AC Co-Invest GP Pte. Ltd., PGIM AVP IV GP S.a r.l., PGIM Advisory Shanghai Co. Ltd., PGIM Agricultural Investments GP LLC, PGIM Australia Pty Ltd, PGIM Broad Market High Yield Bond Fund L.P., PGIM Broad Market High Yield Bond Partners LLC, PGIM Capital Partners Management Feeder VI LLC, PGIM Capital Partners Management Fund VI L.P., PGIM Custom Harvest LLC, PGIM DC Co-Invest GP Pte. Ltd., PGIM DC JV GP Pte. Ltd., PGIM DC Solutions LLC, PGIM European Financing Limited, PGIM European Services Limited, PGIM Financial Limited, PGIM Fixed Income Alternatives Fund II L.P., PGIM Fixed Income Alternatives Fund L.P., PGIM Fixed Income Alternatives GP LLC, PGIM Fixed Income Alternatives II GP LLC, PGIM Foreign Investments Inc., PGIM Holding Company LLC, PGIM Holdings Limited, PGIM Hong Kong Ltd., PGIM INDIA ASSET MANAGEMENT PRIVATE LIMITED, PGIM INDIA TRUSTEES PRIVATE LIMITED, PGIM IRELAND LIMITED, PGIM Inc., PGIM International Financing Inc., PGIM Investments Ireland Limited, PGIM Investments LLC, PGIM Japan Co. 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The North West Company Inc., through its subsidiaries, engages in the retail of food and everyday products and services to rural communities and urban neighborhood markets in northern Canada, rural Alaska, the South Pacific, and the Caribbean. The company's Canadian operations comprise 118 Northern stores, which offers food, financial services, and general merchandise; 5 NorthMart stores that provides fresh foods, apparel, and health products and services; 26 Quickstop convenience stores that provides ready-to-eat foods, and fuel and related services; 5 Giant Tiger junior discount stores, which offers family fashion, household products, and food; 2 Valu Lots discount center and direct-to-customer food distribution outlet; 1 solo market, a store in remote market; 3 Pharmacy and Convenience stores; and 1 North West Company motorsports dealership offering sales, service, parts and accessories for Ski-doo, Honda, Can-am and other premier brands. The Canadian operations also provides contract tele-pharmacist services to rural hospitals and health centers; water and air-based transportation services; and produce and fresh meats to independent grocery stores. Its international operations include 30 Alaska Commercial Company stores that provides food and general merchandise to remote and rural regions; 12 Cost-U-Less mid-size warehouse stores, which offers discount food and general merchandise; 4 Quickstop convenience stores; 9 Riteway food markets; and Pacific Alaska wholesale, a distributor to independent grocery stores, commercial accounts, and individual households in rural Alaska. The North West Company Inc. was founded in 1668 and is headquartered in Winnipeg, Canada.
By PTI: New Delhi, Sep 9 (PTI) CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury today said the all-party delegation failed to "achieve more" during its Kashmir visit due to governments "inadequate homework" and delayed response in sending the contingent to the Valley.

"Due to inadequate homework and the delay in taking the delegation to the state, we did not achieve more. The homework required to be done by the government was to identify proposals from several working group recommendations and the Interlocutors report of 2010, and to have crystallised the issues," he said.

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Yechury, who was part of the delegation, said the homework would have enabled a "focussed discussion" with stakeholders around specific proposals and alternatives.

"The government did not do this. Had this been done, the delegations visit would have been much more meaningful," he wrote in an article in party mouthpiece Peoples Democracy.

Referring to his outreach to Hurriyat leaders along with CPI national secretary D Raja, Sharad Yadav of JD(U) and RJDs JP Yadav during the visit, Yechury said the same should be followed up properly.

He also recalled former Deputy Prime Minister L K Advanis holding of talks with Hurriyat leaders during NDA-1 regime (in January 2004).

Four of the five Hurriyat leaders met the delegation, while Syed Ali Shah Geelani did not. The separatist leaders had collectively decided not to engage in any political dialogue with the delegation in view of the situation in the Valley, he wrote.

Reiterating his partys demands, Yechury also said the government should engage in dialogue with all stakeholders including Pakistan, besides taking confidence building measures to bridge trust deficit among people of the state.

Pointing towards the post-visit statement issued by the delegation, which had appealed people of the state to shun violence and resolve issues through discussion, he said it was now incumbent upon the government to implement the understanding in "right earnest".

In this context Prime Minister Narendra Modis slogan of Vikas aur Vishwas (development and trust) would sound "hollow and meaningless" if not backed by "concrete" actions, he said.

Yechury suggested it could be done on the lines of how the NDA-I government had announced unilateral ceasefire after then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee gave the slogans of jamhooriyat (democracy), insaniyat (humanity) and Kashmiriyat. PTI ENM MRJ ZMN MRJ

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"If AAP comes to power, there will be prohibition on alcohol, meat around the holy area of the Golden Temple," tweeted Kejriwal.

By India Today Web Desk: Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief Arvind Kejriwal today said that if AAP comes to power in Punjab, it will give 'holy city' status to Amritsar.

"If AAP comes to power, there will be prohibition on alcohol, meat around the holy area of the Golden Temple," tweeted Kejriwal.

"Amritsar ward city and Anandpur Sahib will be declared holy places if AAP comes to power in Punjab," said Kejriwal.



If AAP comes to power, there will be prohibition on alcohol, meat around the holy area of Golden Temple: AKejriwal pic.twitter.com/QQ1KYY8zKO

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Kejriwal is on a four-day tour of poll-bound Punjab.



Kejriwal will also address a public rally in Moga on the last day of his visit before returning to Delhi. This is Kejriwal's first visit to Punjab after the AAP removed its Punjab convenor Sucha Singh Chhotepur over issues of corruption.

The AAP has emerged as a major player in Punjab where elections are due early next year.

Also read:

Kejriwal escapes unhurt as car meets minor accident in Punjab

Sukhbir Badal has got 63 fake CDs on AAP leaders, alleges Kejriwal

Protests mark Arvind Kejriwal's train ride from Delhi to LudhianaBJP protests against Kejriwal as he begins his Punjab tour

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The fear of sting operation appeared haunting Kejriwal when his security staff asked the party workers and office bears meeting him on Friday in Ludhiana to leave mobile phones with their friends.

By Manjeet Sehgal: 'Once bitten, twice shy' appears to be holding true for Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his men who now fear stings so much that they are not even trusting their own party cadre.

The fear of sting operation appeared haunting Kejriwal when his security staff asked the party workers and office bears meeting him on Friday in Ludhiana to leave mobile phones with their friends. Not only this, they also asked them to leave pens and note pads outside.



Party members asked to deposit phones outside meeting place.

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Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday had expressed the apprehension that Badals may target him and his party by releasing 63 CDs.

Sources close to the party have said that not only Kejriwal but other leaders are also scared about the stings after a series of sting video and audio clips were released by party's former leaders recently.

AAP is facing criticism after the sex CD featuring party member Sandeep Kumar surfaced in the capital recently.

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By Bob Friedrich

A new school year will begin this week. This should mean that our public school classrooms are prepared to optimize student learning. Unfortunately, the citys education and political establishment continues to introduce policies that erode school disciplinary codes and social promotion protocols that undermine teachers efforts in the classroom and students ability to learn.

The deleterious policy of social promotion guaranteeing children will be pushed into the next grade even when not achieving at grade level had fortunately been abandoned during the Bloomberg administration. Moving a child into a grade for which he is unprepared does a great disservice to both the child and the classroom. City Schools Chancellor Carmen Farina has said social promotion will be reinstated in kindergarten through second grade. And contrary to claims made by some officials in the Department of Education social promotion now appears to be on the rise once again in the upper grades. A report by the student advocacy group StudentsFirst NY revealed that at 200 New York City schools, where fewer than 10 percent of students passed their state exams in math or English, 90 percent still received passing grades and moved up to the next grade.

Adding insult to injury in the classroom experience is the de Blasio administrations policy on student suspensions. The administration views the suspension numbers as being discriminatory and racially imbalanced. This has led to the administrations mandate calling for a reduced number of suspensions, regardless of student behavior. By tinkering with the Discipline Code in early 2015, it has made it virtually impossible for teachers and principals to suspend students for behavior that in the past would have led to a suspension.

By making it harder to suspend, the convoluted logic means fewer students are suspended, allowing the DOE to tout its success at lowering suspension rates and making schools less disruptive. Since most suspensions are minority students, the lower suspension rates fit neatly into an administration narrative fixated on racially driven data. The administration now claims success by showing suspensions were down 31.7 percent in 2015 as compared with 2014.

After creating an illusion of improved suspension numbers, as proof of improving school conditions, the mayor recently announced the complete elimination of all suspensions for schoolchildren in lower grades. The mayors suspension policies have even drawn the ire of UFT President Michael Mulgrew, who rarely finds fault with anything this administration does on education policy.

The mayors new policy directives require principals to receive approval from DOE bureaucrats in order to implement a suspension for classroom insubordination which historically has been the primary violation leading to a suspension. Virtually any behavior short of physical confrontation no longer constitutes grounds for suspension. Instead, principals are asked to utilize a new approach which comes with a new buzzword: Restorative Justice. This means asking students to think really hard about what they have done, or to write a note of apology or an essay explaining why their behavior was wrong. These feel-good measures that coddle disruptive students will do little to correct chronic bad behavior and will certainly exacerbate insubordination, and create more obstacles for teachers and students concerned about creating an environment conducive to learning.

This administration has long been muddled by an agenda that focuses on false issues instead of objective reality. Since de Blasio promised a turnaround in our city classrooms, results have not been encouraging and marginal at best. While New York City public school expenditures amount to a staggering $21,000 per pupil annually, we taxpayers have very little to show for it.

Bob Friedrich is president of Glen Oaks Village, a civic leader and former candidate for the City Council.
By India Today Web Desk: Aditya Chopra is making an interesting statement in the first song Labon ka Karobaar of his upcoming film Befikre, which shows couples all over Paris kissing. Yes, just kissing one after the other. In an industry, where physical intimacy is still taboo and makes quite a few quiver uncomfortably in their seat, Aditya Chopra is embracing the changing times.

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SEE PIC: Befikre's Ranveer Singh, Vaani Kapoor bring in a French Holi



What were all those kissing posters about? The answer is #LabonKaKarobaar. Watch Carefree -https://t.co/9Dv8NBqhRB pic.twitter.com/esaxqbXgF7 Ranveer Singh (@RanveerOfficial) September 9, 2016

It is 2016, and Befikre celebrates fearless love, and only gives the director more ammunition to go around the city of Paris and film couples kissing. The video celebrates all that kissing stands for - how every relationship starts with a kiss, how it doesn't know boundaries, how it is an escape and also how it also denotes freedom, by showing a homosexual couple celebrate their moment of love.

The song is sung by the reliable Papon, and the music is scored by Vishal-Shekhar, and the song has gypsy influences with accordions and harmonicas playing. Labon Ka Karobaar interesting does not feature the two lead actors of the movie Ranveer Singh and Vaani Kapoor, who have been shows kissing in all the posters of the movie till date.

Befikre sees Aditya Chopra return to direction after Shah Rukh Khan, Anushka Sharma's Rab Ne Banaa Di Jodi which came out in 2008. The film is scheduled for release on December 9.

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By Mark Hallum

City Councilman Daniel Dromm (D-Jackson Heights) stepped out of his district last week to openly oppose anti-LGBT statements made by Democrat S.J. Jung, a candidate for state Senate.

At a Tuesday news conference in front of the former MinKwon Center presidents campaign headquarters in Flushing at 32-26 Union St., Dromm expressed concern for the civil rights of the LGBT community and a feeling of betrayal from Jung, who once worked with the councilman in local activist groups. Dromm was joined by Michael Mallon, president of the Lesbian and Gay Democratic Club; Michael Serao of the LGBT Network; and activist Larry Menzie

At a church event in March, Jung told a Korean youth group he believed gay marriage should not be depicted in textbooks.

As state senator, I will protect them from hate crimes and uphold their human and legal rights. I, however, believe the Bibles teaching that marriage is between a man and a woman and do not support same sex marriage. I believe this is a matter of distinction, not a matter of discrimination. At the event on March 28, I talked about the challenges faced by groups who are not in agreement with the Supreme Courts ruling on the same sex marriage. I was referring to a general trend in the nation, not a specific legislation pending in the NewYork State Senate, Jung said Aug. 30.

But this statement confused and failed to resonate with Dromm and the LGBTQ leaders who stood with him at the conference. According to Dromm, Jung seems to fail to understand the nature of discrimination.

I dont think a young person understands the difference [between distinction and discrimination] either. They get a message that they are less than, they are not valued, and thats a very dangerous message, Menzie, a Generation Q founder, said. Its unimaginable that we are fighting this fight right now.

Dromm said Jung stating his opinion on gay marriage in front of a group of youths was a reckless move, considering the statistic that between 3 percent and 10 percent of the population is LGBT.

You have to wonder the impact it has on kids like that, Dromm said. You know, we hear about suicides, we hear about youth being bullied in schools. This is a different form of bullying.

Mallon joined the discussion.

He said he wants to keep LGBT couples out of school textbooks, he wants to keep us invisible and in the closet, Mallon said, adding how erasing gay people from curriculum validates a dangerous self-loathing in youth who need role models.

Dromm said he and Jung had worked together in the past to achieve a equality for both LGBT and immigrant groups, but his latest statements came as a stab in back.

Dromms Council district has some overlap with the Senate district where Jung is running, which makes Dromm skeptical that the candidate can represent the LGBT community of Jackson Heights and the surrounding area, which has served as a safe haven.

Just three blocks away, Jungs opponent, state Sen. Toby Stavisky (D-Bayside), held a news conference to discuss the damage her challengers views would have on marriage equality and womens rights. State Assemblyman Ron Kim (D-Flushing) used the opportunity to give Stavisky his endorsement.
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By Patrick Donachie

A Jamaica resident has been charged with murder in the shooting death of an 18-year-old man from New Jersey Saturday night in Jamaica, according to police.

Elvin Hernandez, 28, of 90-03 143rd St. faces a second-degree murder count and two counts of criminal possession of a weapon in the incident in which another man was wounded, the NYPD said

Police said that at about 7:29 p.m. Saturday, police from the 103rd Precinct responded to a 911 call about a man who had been shot near the intersection of Jamaica Avenue and Van Wyck Expressway. Upon arriving at the scene, they found two men with gunshot wounds. Albert Schaper, 18, from North Bergen, N.J., was shot in the chest and was taken to Jamaica Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The other man who was shot was not identified by police, but the NYPD said he was 31 years old and was shot in each arm. He was also taken to Jamaica Hospital, where he was listed in stable condition.

A GoFundMe page has been established in Schapers honor to help raise money for his family. As of Wednesday night, the campaign has reached nearly half of its $8,000 goal.
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By Mark Hallum

Seven-time incumbent, state Sen, Toby Stavisky (D-Flushing) is running again and says the issues which bring her back this time around are affordable housing, campaign ethics, making higher education more accessible and alleviating congestion along the No. 7 train.

Stavisky entered politics when her husband Leonard, a longtime state senator in the same district, died in 1999. Since then she has been a fierce advocate for womens rights and creating opportunities for the immigrant community in Queens.

She is facing S.J. Jung in the Sept. 13 Democratic primary for the second time. He challenged her in 2014, when she won 60 percent of the vote.

Limiting outside income for candidates and elected officials is a key point for Stavisky, who sees campaign finance as a major issue for keeping democratic process fair for all. Closing the LLC loophole for candidates to receive contributions beyond the legal limit is a priority she has set and has the support of State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. This gray area of the law treats LLCs as individuals, allowing contributors to set up multiple business entities to funnel funds from the same source to a candidate.

Affordable housing is an issue Stavisky believes will see action within the next year. Gov. Andrew Cuomo put $2 billion in the state budget for affordable housing and the Senate approved the motion, Stavisky said. However, legislators are still undecided as to where the housing funds will be utilized.

I think theres enough pressure now with the homeless to decide what theyre going to do with the money, she said, a reference to New York Citys record number of homeless.

Making the Senior Citizen Rent Increase program available for renters with higher level of income will see improvement to affordable house, according to Stavisky. SCRI credits landlords for one-third of an applicants rent from city funds and allows seniors access to good housing. Stavisky said fewer seniors are eligible for SCRI because their income is too high, but not enough to match what they pay for rent.

Stavisky has seen progress for improving the living conditions at Pan Am homeless shelter in Elmhurst by enduring each room has a kitchen, as well as having a playground on the property and having added security for residents.

According to Stavisky, she has worked to break up the congestion at the Flushing-Main Street station on the 7 by finding the capital funds to add another entrance on Prince Street. During rush hour, this thoroughfare is overburdened with foot traffic to the point where pedestrians flow is at a stand-still. A five-year capital plan is what will be needed to make this goal a reality, Stavisky said.

Up to 20 bus lines converge near the Main Street station as well as the LIRR, which is expected to see improvements.

One aspect of accommodating overcrowding in downtown Flushing which concerns the Stavisky is the widening of sidewalks, which she believes could hurt businesses and shop owners economically.

The DREAM Act, which is designed to make the New York State Tuition Assistance Program available to undocumented immigrants, is one way Stavisky is planning to improve the lives of people living in Queens, even if they are not citizens. First introduced in 2011, the act is still waiting to be passed through the Republican-held Senate, although it has already passed the Assembly.

Stavisky has received a high number of endorsements, including state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli during their joint announcement to work together for campaign finance reform. Assemblyman Ron Kim (D-Flushing) gave Stavisky his endorsement during a news conference which addressed the need to maintain LGBT and womens rights after statements by her opponent against abortion and the depiction of marriage equality in textbooks.

Most recently, Stavisky won endorsements from Public Advocate Letitia James and city Comptroller Scott Stringer.
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By Bill Parry

The Maspeth community fought City Hall and apparently won after the owner of the Holiday Inn Express claims he pulled out of a deal with the city and service provider Acacia Network to convert the facility into a homeless shelter Thursday evening.

Harshad Patel called civic leader Bob Holden saying he no longer wanted to go against the wishes of the community and asked that they stop their nightly protests at the 55th Road location.

Thats when he told me he was pulling out and that he didnt want the neighborhood to hate him anymore, but until we have confirmation from the city or Acacia we wont believe it, Juniper Park Civic Association President Bob Holden said Friday morning. If you look at his past Im not sure we can trust anything he says.

The city had no official statement on the matter Friday, but a source said negotiations were still happening. Patel did not return repeated phone calls for comment.

Holden will be back protesting at the Holiday Inn Express Friday evening, something he and more than 200 Maspeth residents have done each weeknight for the last three weeks. On Aug. 27, nearly 2,000 protesters marched 5 miles in and around the neighborhood in 95-degree heat.

We were planning on taking the protest to his house Saturday, but before we rented the buses we wanted to make sure we had the right location, so we sent flowers to the address on Wednesday, Holden recalled with a laugh. I guess you can call it flower power because Thursday he called and thanked me for the flowers. I told him if he didnt want to meet with us in Maspeth, wed meet him in Floral Park and thats when he told me he was pulling the plug. Im not sure if it was us or Avellas letter, but something spooked him.

State Sen. Tony Avella (D-Bayside) was the only elected official to join the Aug. 27 march. This week Avella called for a federal probe into Patel in a letter to Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara.

I recently learned that five years ago, Mr. Patel openly admitted to paying a former state elected official more than $20,000 to get that official to effect a zoning change in his favor, Avella wrote. I ask that you investigate this situation to ensure there is no illegal activity taking place with respect to the Holiday Inn Express, or any other hotels owned by Mr. Patel.

The Avella letter galvanized Holden.

All I know is were going to be out there tonight and every night until we know for sure, Holden said.

Manuel Caruana, a member of the Juniper Park Civic Association board of directors, agreed.

Ill never say its a done deal, but it looks like Maspeth has once again countered government officials who tried to destroy this community, he said. Weve had more than 200 protesters out there every for the last three weeks proving this is a neighborhood that sticks together. I think it was disgraceful that the community was put in this position to begin with.
By TimesLedger Staff

It may still feel like summer, but fall is just around the corner, and thats the perfect time to experience the city on a bicycle. Bike New York is helping Queens residents get ready this weekend with its Learn to Ride Adults Package. The class is designed to show beginners how to ride with confidence. Learn to Ride students learn how to balance, pedal, start, stop and steer a bike, as well as adjust a helmet for proper fit. Most people learn to ride in one session, but even if they dont, theyll leave equipped with an easy, low-stress way to teach themselvesor they can come back for another free class. Lets hope they teach students how to give pedestrians the right of way. The class, which is free of charge, is being held at the Flushing Meadows Corona Park Aquatics Center from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Sunday. For more information, call (212) 870-2080 or go to www.bike.nyc/education/classes/learn-to-ride-adults/

If the high-stakes play on the courts of the US Open is a little too fast for you, theres a slightly more leisurely game taking place in Juniper Valley Park Saturday.The Queens Borough Bocce Tournament will get underway at 76th Street and Juniper Boulevard South at 9 a.m. The competition is open to teams of four adults, age 18 or over. The top two teams will advance to play in the Citywide Finals Sept. 17 in South Beach, Staten Island. For details, call (718) 393-7370 or contact Shawn.James @park s.nyc.gov
An air strike near Syria\s battleground second city Aleppo killed the military leader of the largest rebel alliance and at least one other commander, jihadist sources and a monitsaid.

or The strike on a meeting of commanders of the Army of Conquest alliance came hot on the heels of a major defeat for the rebels, which saw them under renewed siege inside Aleppo after an army advance this week.

Former Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front, renamed Fateh al-Sham Front when it broke ties in July, announced on Twitter "the martyrdom" of commander Abu Omar Saraqeb in an air strike.

The jihadist Fateh al-Sham is a leading member of the Army of Conquest which groups its fighters with Islamist factions like Ahrar al-Sham in the most prominent anti-regime alliance.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said unidentified aircraft hit the Army of Conquest meeting on Thursday night, killing Saraqeb and another rebel commander named as Abu Muslim al-Shami.

Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said it was not immediately clear whether the strike was carried out by the US-led coalition, the Syrian regime or its Russian ally  all of whom are conducting bombing raids in northern Syria.

According to the Observatory, Abu Omar Saraqeb was a leading member of Al-Qaeda in Iraq in its fight against the US-led occupation after 2003 before becoming a key commander of Al-Nusra Front and then Fateh al-Sham in Syria.

He reportedly also founded Al-Nusra Front\s Lebanon branch which has claimed responsibility for several bombings in Syria\s western neighbour.

He operates under different noms de guerre, making it difficult to know his nationality.

He led a successful offensive by the Army of Conquest in spring last year which saw it seize control of nearly all of the northwestern province of Idlib.

But the alliance has been less successful in and around Aleppo, where it was dealt a major blow by regime forces this week.

In early August, Saraqeb led an offensive against pro-government fighters besieging the rebel-held east of the divided city and opened up a new supply route from the south that broke the siege.

But this week regime loyalists recaptured nearly all of the territory taken last month and reimposed the blockade.

Jihadism expert Charles Lister said Saraqeb had helped found the the Army of Conquest last year and once served as the "emir" of Idlib province.

Amid Syria\s fractious rebel movement, "he\s seen widely as an Islamist unifier," Lister wrote.

SOURCE: AFP
Following the threat call, staffers at the office were evacuated and security was further steeped up at the already high security zone.

By Indrajit Kundu: Days after the Kolkata's Netaji Subhash International airport received two threat calls to blow up the airport, the control room at the West Bengal state secretariat "Nabanna" today received a similar call threatening to "blow off" the building this afternoon.

Also read:

Security stepped up at Kolkata airport after two threat calls

SECURITY TIGHTENED

Following the threat call, staffers at the office were evacuated and security was further steeped up at the already high security zone. Police is conducting searches across all the 14-storey building located in Howrah. Bomb disposal squads have been rushed to the secretariat and police is using sniffer dogs to carry out search operations.

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POLICE IDENTIFYING CALLER

The call was received at 9:20 am this morning at the police control room of the secretariat. According to police sources, it was a male voice who made the phone call. Police is tracing the number in order to identify the caller.

On Wednesday, a similar call was received by the Kolkata police headquarter Lalbazar and another by the Bidhannagar police commissionerate threatening to "blow off" the Kolkata airport. Later, police had arrested one person from Dankuni area in the northern suburbs of Kolkata for allegedly making the "hoax" call. According to the police, the arrested person was "mentally unstable".

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is not present at the secretariat as she is on a tour to Germany after attending Mother Teresa's canonisation ceremony at Vatican in Rome last week.

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The Greek government is adamantly opposing the revival of a European Union rule that would allow the forcible return to its territory of asylum-seekers who entered the bloc via Greece  a path followed by more than a million people in the past two years.

Immigration is high on the agenda of a meeting Friday in Athens of southern European leaders. The group includes Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, whose country, with Greece, is Europe\s main immigration gateway.

Ahead of the talks, a government spokesman on immigration said Athens rejects reactivation of the so-called Dublin Regulation, which would allow other EU members to send asylum-seekers back to Greece.

"A country such as Greece which receives a large number of refugees from Turkey, and also hosts a large number of refugees  practically without any outside help  cannot be asked to receive refugees from other European countries," Giorgos Kyritsis told The Associated Press. "That would be outrageous."

The Dublin Regulation that governs the Schengen passport-free area stipulates that people wishing to apply for asylum must do so in the first member country they arrive in. In most cases that was Greece, whose eastern islands were overwhelmed last year by migrants packed into smugglers boats from Turkey. But even before last year\s migration crisis, many of its EU partners had stopped enforcing the rule because Greece\s asylum and migrant reception systems were below standard.

Now, however, both Germany and the EU executive are pressing for the rule to be restored, with EU officials saying that Greece must meet the Dublin standards by the end of this year.

Brad Blitz, migration expert and professor of international politics at Middlesex University in Britain, said sending large numbers of asylum-seekers back to Greece would apply an ever greater strain on the country\s asylum system and reception capacity.

"Unless there is an effective means of redistribution across the EU, a revised Dublin system will force refugees upon receiving states closest to the external border, above all Greece, Italy and to a lesser extent Spain," he said.

"It will do so by insisting they apply for asylum in Greece, and potentially by returning them from other EU states to Greece. In sum, this will enable returns and discourage EU states from accepting more refugees, including Greece," Blitz said.

Kyritsis, the government official, said Greece considers the Dublin rule to be "practically dead" because it does not address current migratory pressures and should be drastically overhauled. He added that calls for its reintroduction are to a degree linked with domestic political concerns in Germany, and he argued that EU members are lagging in implementing commitments to take in refugees from Greece  part of an EU-Turkey deal this year to stem the migratory flow.

Kyritsis said the migrant relocation deal ought to have seen 33,000 people transferred to other EU countries from Greece so far. Instead, only 3,000 have made the journey.

"There are 7,000 people ready and waiting to be relocated, so in this field other European countries and the European Union do not appear to  have done what they ought to have done," he said.

About 60,000 refugees and other migrants remain trapped in Greece since a series of Balkan border closures in March, which were closely followed by a March EU-Turkey deal that provides for the return to Turkey of all migrants who get across to Greece.

Human rights groups have criticized the agreement, saying it condemns refugees to an uncertain future in Turkey, and implementation has proved problematic as Greek authorities struggle to process asylum bids by people arguing that they shouldn\t be sent back.

The agreement is also looking increasingly shaky following disagreements over visa-free entry to the EU for Turks and simmering tensions between individual bloc members and Turkey.

Kyritsis, however, said Athens has no indication that the deal will not hold.

"There are problems, a negotiation is under way  we hope for the best," he said.

Friday\s talks are in preparation for next week\s informal EU summit in Bratislava, although Greek organizers insist it\s not an attempt to heighten division between Europe\s prosperous north and financially beleaguered south.

Greece\s left-wing Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, together with Italy\s Renzi, French President Francois Hollande and the leaders of Portugal, Cyprus and Malta, will also be discussing investment and job creation, as well as security. Spain\s prime minister was unable to attend.

SOURCE: AFP
Hopewell Community Park remains a 'labor of love' for local community

The lush green park is a product of the combined efforts of the Hopewell Township community and a symbol of decades of conservation efforts in Beaver County.
By PTI: New Delhi, Sept 9 (PTI) Accusing GEAC of "serious non- governance" and undertaking an "underground process to hide its misdeed", lawyer-activist Prashant Bhushan today shot off a notice to the biotech regulator, asking it to make public the full biosafety dossier of GM mustard.

Noting that the risk assessment report put up by the Environment Ministry is of "limited value", the notice sent by Bhushan to Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) chairman Amita Prasad also asked the regulator to provide a minimum time of 120 days for feedback on the report to allow independent scientists nationally and internationally to respond.

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"GEAC is required to immediately upload the full dossier with its raw data on the ministry website with a minimum time- scale for feedback of 120 days to allow independent scientists nationally and internationally to respond.

"Please also ensure that it is in printable format. It would be good if GEAC would show more respect for science and independent scientists that engage in this process," the notice sidd.

GEAC had constituted a sub-committee of scientific experts to examine the biosafety data on GM mustard.

After the committee examined it, the report was placed on the Environment Ministrys website yesterday inviting comments from stakeholders within a period of 30 days before the biotech regulator took a decision.

The report claimed that the hybrid variety did not pose any risk to biodiversity or agro-ecosystem.

"You have now much belatedly put out some data of limited value while not making public the essential biosafety dossier.

"Apparently our regulatory bodies continue to repeat their historical mistakes of serious non-governance of GMOs (genetically modified organisms) and then take recourse to an underground process of regulation to hide their misdeed that is in violation of constitutional rights of the people of this country," the notice said.

Talking to PTI, Bhushan said that CIC has ordered that the risk assessment report be put on the website.

"They are giving approvals without putting out the data. Putting out the data brings out the fudging, fabrication. The notice is about all that," he said. (More) PTI SBR TDS SC

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Sheppard Air Force Base

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By John Ingle of the Times Record News

International Association of Machinists union workers conducting aircraft maintenance at the 80th Flying Training Wing will meet Saturday at the theater on Sheppard Air Force Base to be briefed on a collective bargaining proposal from M1 Support Services.

In an announcement for membership sent the to Times Record News, the union said members will meet at 10 a.m. to hear the new contractor's collective bargaining agreement proposal. Should the union members dismiss M1's offer, members will have the option of voting to go on a strike.

"All proposed changes will be briefed and questions answered prior to voting to accept or reject M1's offer," the announcement read. It later continued, "Please remember the importance of this vote and the fact that if rejected, a strike vote will immediately follow."

Bud Dulworth, a business representative for the IAM's district that includes Sheppard, said the union just last year negotiated a new three-year contract with DynCorp International, which isn't set to expire until May 2017. He said typically when a new contractor is selected in the midst of an existing contract, the new company does what is called a bridge agreement in which very few items change other than insurance carriers and the name of the contractor, for instance.

"They're usually a pretty easy transition because there's really no negotiations. It's just bridging the current contract," he said. "Initially when we met  we met a week ago with the company in my office in Fort Worth with the negotiating committee  and they were having problems matching the insurance."

Dulworth explained that when contractors bid on the contract, they see the CBA because they have to pay the same wages and fringe benefits  retirement plans, paid holidays, health insurance and overtime pay, for example  as outlined in the CBA. He said those competing contractors are only able to see what the premium payments are, not the health plans and what they pay.

"That's what M1 ran into," he said. "They're supposed to be getting back with me today (Thursday) and it looks like they're going to get real close."

Kathy Hildreth, managing director for M1, said the transition period for the Denton-based M1 began Sept. 1 and that process is moving forward normally in preparation for the company to officially take over the contract on Oct. 1.

"(The transition) is a time when the new contractor comes in to do all of the hiring and inventory and get all the equipment in place to prepare to start the contract so, there's no delay in the contract start," she said. "This is a 30-day period for us to prepare to take over full performance on the first of October.

"There's nothing that's delayed."

Hildreth said another part of the process is "bridging the collective bargaining agreement" from the previous arrangement between DynCorp and the employees to the CBA proposed by M1. She said a representative from M1 will not be at Saturday's meeting and that union leadership would present the CBA to its members. She said there are some changes with the M1 CBA, but called them "minor."

Dulworth said he is optimistic about Saturday's meeting and M1's ability to offer a bridge agreement acceptable to the union members. But, he said, if there is a vote to strike, a walkout won't happen until Oct. 1 because they are still obligated to DynCorp to provide maintenance work for the 80th FTW through September.

George Woodward, public affairs director at Sheppard, said the base's role in the process is to remain "neutral observers." He added that the contract workers are important pieces to the mission at Sheppard.

The Air Force awarded M1 the $414.8 million contract in early August, replacing DynCorp International as the aircraft maintenance contractor for the 80th Flying Training Wing and Euro-NATO Joint Jet Pilot Training program.
TORIN HALSEY/TIMES RECORD NEWS Antonio Feagins, a supervisor for Amfuel, runs a pressure test on a fuel cell bladder at the plant on I-44. The building formerly housed the Delphi plant. Amfuel manufactures fuel cells for commercial and military planes and helicopters.

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By John Ingle of the Times Record News

Wichita Falls area manufacturers reached an all-time high in exports in 2015, the International Trade Administration announced as part of its 2015 Metropolitan Area Export Overview released Thursday.

According to the report, exports jumped from $244.3 million in 2014 to $247.5 million in 2015.

Henry Florsheim, president and CEO of the Wichita Falls Chamber of Commerce & Industry, said Friday the announcement is certainly good news for the area and its manufacturers.

"Economic development is all about bringing in new dollars to your community, and that is exactly what exporting does," he said. "What we're doing is we're paying people  our employers are paying people here to manufacture things that are then sold to others and the money is brought back here, especially for those companies that are exporting that are locally owned.

"That's a really, really big deal for us because its generating the jobs here, but also the revenue for the business owner."

According to the ITA's report, almost 51 percent, or $125.6 million, of goods exported came from transportation equipment manufacturing. That was categorically followed by plastic and rubber products at $36 million, machinery at $33.3 million, and fabricated metal products at $8.3 million.

All other manufactured goods accounted for $44.3 million, or 17.9 percent of all exported goods.

"Exports continue to be a source of growth for the Wichita Falls economy," said U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker in the release. "Wichita Falls is one of 63 metropolitan areas across our nation that set a record for goods exports last year."

She said the federal agency will continue to help Wichita Falls manufacturers get their "Made in America" goods to the global market, which will also result in job growth and good-paying jobs.

Florsheim said it's fair to say that 100 percent of the area's manufacturers send their goods outside of the Wichita Falls metro area, but it's a little harder to say how many are participating in the global market. He said they are hoping to change that in the near future and get more businesses involved in the world of exporting.

" ... We're working with Small Business Administration district office out of Dallas to put together some kind of export workshop some time in the next six months or so," he said. "What we hope is people see these things and reach out and say, 'I think I can export, but I don't know how to do it, and then we can find them help.

"It's something really interesting that most people don't think about. You can export to just about any country out there from anywhere. It's obvious that a lot of people are doing it from Wichita Falls.

Exports since 2005 have been up and down, seemingly mirroring national economic woes of the late 2000s and its recovery. Exports in the Wichita Falls area hit $184.9 million in 2005 and climbed to $212.2 million by the end of 2007. A downward trend ended in 2010 when exports bottomed out at $148 million, according to the ITA report, and has been climbing since. Area manufacturers saw a 36 percent increase in 2011 to $200.5 million, followed by a 12 percent jump in 2012. Exports continued to rise incrementally since, but have a slowed some.
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McNiel Middle School and Barwise Middle School will host community open houses this Sunday. McNiel's open house will be at 2 p.m. and Barwise's open house will be at 4 p.m. Both open houses are open to the public and are come-and-go events with refreshments served. The purpose is to allow the community to see the additions at both campuses made possible through the 2015 bond election.

Retired teachers to meet Monday

The Wichita-Archer Retired Teachers Association will open the school year with a meeting at 5:30 p.m. Monday at First Baptist Church in Holliday.

A hamburger supper will be served.

One-woman show at Backdoor

"Beyond the Tomb: May's Story" will be performed at 7:30 p.m. Friday on the dinner stage at Backdoor Theatre.

Many tales rest beyond the tombs in the oldest cemetery in New Orleans. Wichita Falls native Ann Hargrave-Knight brings her paternal grandmother to life in the one-woman show.

Laden with lust, lore, romance, grief and redemption, this highly acclaimed dramatic presentation unearths the forbidden secrets of the historic Hargrave family and reveals the sorrow that followed May Constance Adams Hargrave to her tomb.

Tickets: $12.

Information: 322-5000 or backdoortheatre.org.

Phased IN leader to talk to AAUW

Lolita Baker, program administrator for Phased IN, will present a program at the American Association of University Women meeting at 6:30 p.m. Monday in Room 324 of the Dillard Building at Midwestern State University. Phased IN is a nonprofit organization that works with youth who have aged out of foster care. For more Information, call 692-6066.
Malta

IBM won a major legal victory Wednesday when a federal judge tossed two lawsuits that claimed the company botched its 2015 sale of its computer chip business to GlobalFoundries.

The sale, in which IBM paid GlobalFoundries $1.5 billion to take over its failing microelectronics manufacturing unit, helped to bolster the size and manufacturing prowess of GlobalFoundries, which employs 3,000 people at its Fab 8 computer chip factory in Saratoga County.

But the lawsuits, filed last year in U.S. District Court in Manhattan by IBM employees and retirees as well as institutional investors, claimed that for many years leading up to the sale to GlobalFoundries, IBM executives covered up the deteriorating value of its chip business  leading to IBM's stock price being artificially inflated.

IBM first unveiled plans for the sale of its chip unit to GlobalFoundries in October 2014. The deal, which included IBM's chip factories in East Fishkill and Essex Junction, Vt., closed in July of 2015. GlobalFoundries now runs the two former IBM facilities, along with its Fab 8 factory, giving it the largest semiconductor manufacturing operation in the northeastern United States.

IBM ended up writing off $4.7 billion from the sale  its largest write off in 20 years. And on the morning of Oct. 20, 2014 when the deal was announced, IBM's shares plummeted nearly 20 percent, wiping out billions of dollars in retirement assets.

The plaintiffs in the two suits had alleged that IBM executives should have better detailed to investors just how much its chip business was worth. IBM had valued it at $2.4 billion, but the plaintiffs said it was really "worthless"  noting that IBM had to pay GlobalFoundries just to take the business, which was losing $700 million a year by 2013, off its hands.

However, the federal judge overseeing the case, U.S. District Judge William Pauley III, ruled on Wednesday in dismissing the two cases that IBM executives were more likely "not deceitful but mistaken" in their estimates of the chip business.

IBM did not return a call seeking comment on the ruling.

However, the now dismissed cases did shed an unfavorable light on the condition of the former IBM fabs in Vermont and Dutchess County, painting them as outdated and under utilized.

"The (IBM) microchip factories had aged and were not keeping pace with rapid advances in semiconductor technology, and would require billions of dollars in capital investment to make them profitable," one of the suits stated. "Defendants had no incentive to invest in business units that were slated for divestment."

GlobalFoundries, which declined to comment on the allegations in the case when asked about them on Thursday, has embraced the IBM fabs and has a 10-year, exclusive contract to provide IBM with chips made at the acquired facilities. The company has also ended up hiring hundreds of former IBM workers as part of the deal, especially top engineers with knowledge of IBM's manufacturing process.

The suits also said that GlobalFoundries was the only chip company that was interested in the IBM fabs, and that IBM had had discussions with the three other leading chip manufacturers, Intel, Samsung and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., without success.

However, of those candidates, GlobalFoundries emerged the logical choice, especially because of its research partnership with IBM in the past at its East Fishkill plant and in Albany at SUNY Polytechnic Institute.

lrulison@timesunion.com  518-454-5504  @larryrulison
SAN ANTONIO Miracle Mattress will close indefinitely after the San Antonio stores advertisement for a 9/11-themed Twin Tower Sale received heavy social media backlash and media attention, the company announced Friday.

The now-deleted video, posted on the store's Facebook page earlier this week, shows manager Cherise Bonanno and two employees boasting the promotion in front of two stacks of mattresses.

RELATED: After national backlash, mattress store continues to apologize for 9/11 'Twin Tower' sale ad

Effective immediately, our Miracle Mattress store will be closed indefinitely, owner Mike Bonanno said in a letter posted to the stores doors on Friday. We will be silent through the 9/11 anniversary to avoid any further distractions from a day of recognition and remembrance for the victims and their families. We take full responsibility for our actions and sincerely regret the hurt and pain caused by this disrespectful advertising campaign.

MORE: Iconic images: The terror attacks of 9/11

The company, which has apologized for its actions, said it will lay out plans to offer support for the 9/11 Memorial and victim funds in a statement next week.

There is very little we can do to take away the hurt we have caused but we can begin with silence through the anniversary and then do our best to follow up with actions that reflect the seriousness of our mistake, Mike Bonanno said in the letter.

Mike Bonanno also pushed back against a series of fake social media accounts he said were created in an attempt to attack commenters and those expressing outrage. Miracle Mattress, its ownership and its employees will not be engaging in any personal attacks or responses on any social media platform.

The ad proposed to commemorate the deadliest attack on American soil by offering mattresses of all sizes at twin bed prices. The video featured Cherise Bonanno and two employees standing in front of two towers of stacked mattresses, ending with the mattress towers toppling over while the three screamed. The video closes with Cherise Bonanno saying in a somber tone, we will never forget.

RELATED: Ground Zero, 15 years later

The ad has since gone viral, written about by news outlets across the nation, including Washington Post, CNN, Huffington Post, Time magazine

jfechter@express-news.net

Twitter: @JFreports
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Tracey Stahl lost part of a leg to bone cancer last fall, and she has to wince through bouts of crippling pain from an ill-fitting artificial limb because of a strange health insurance limit: Her plan covers just one limb per lifetime.

She now has to weigh whether to dump the nearly $9,000 cost of a new leg on her credit card as she fights her insurance company over the restriction. "I feel  it's embarrassing to say  paralyzed about what to do," said Stahl, from her home in Penfield, Monroe County.

Caiti Riley's left leg was amputated below the knee at age 4 due to a rare birth defect.

The San Antonio resident is 31 now and covered by the best insurance she's ever had. Her plan is paying most of the roughly $5,000 bill for a new running leg to complement the one she uses every day.

"I work out every day, there's nothing really that I can't do now," she said.

Glaring differences in insurance coverage persist for amputees, children with autism and others in need of certain expensive treatments even after the Affordable Care Act set new standards as part of its push to expand and improve coverage, and despite efforts by states to mandate coverage for some treatments.

These differences don't develop simply because some people pay more for better coverage. Instead, they stem from random factors like what state someone lives in or who happens to provide their coverage  and often people can do nothing about it. The federal health care law largely leaves decisions on what actually gets covered up to states or employers who provide insurance for their workers.

These gaps can bury patients in debt or force them to skip care. And they may become more common as health care costs continue to rise and insurers and employers look for ways to control that expense.

Researcher Sabrina Corlette thinks nothing short of federal action can close these coverage gaps, and she doesn't see that happening anytime soon.

"I think you would need to see Congress say, 'OK, we need more uniformity here,'" said Corlette, a Georgetown Health Policy Institute professor. "And I just don't see this Congress or any near-term Congress stepping in and wanting to do that."

States have passed about 1,800 mandates requiring the coverage of various treatments or conditions, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

But those mandates don't extend beyond state borders, and they don't apply to the self-funded coverage offered by nearly all large employers.
Reacting to Kapil Sharma's tweet in which he alleged that he was asked by the BMC to pay a bribe, BJP MP Manoj Tiwari has criticised the comedian; says there was no need to drag the Prime Minister into it.

By India Today Web Desk: Reacting to Kapil Sharma's allegations of being asked by the BMC (Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation) to cough up a Rs 5 lakh bribe for construction of his office in Mumbai, BJP MP Manoj Tiwari has criticised the comedian for dragging Prime Minister Narendra Modi into the controversy. Tiwari said that the comedian should have filed a written complaint before taking to social media.

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"Kapil shouldn't have dragged PM Modi into this. He should have filed a written complaint. He pays Rs 15 crore income tax, that means he earns Rs 50-60 crore. Kapil ke achche din hain. He should trust PM Modi. India is going through a lot of problems and he is seeing only his problem," Tiwari told India Today Television.

Tiwari also added, "He should tell us the name of the culprit and we will investigate the case within 24 hrs. It's another thing if he is targetting BJP with a bad intention."

Tiwari also dragged Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal into the mess saying that because of Kejriwal it has nowadays become a fashion to drag PM Modi into every single issue. He said Kapil shouldn't have launched such a "ghatiya" attack.

Also read: Kapil Sharma asked to cough up Rs 5 lakh bribe by BMC; tweets to PM Modi asking if this is 'achhe din'



BJP MLA Ram Kadam also reacted on the controversy reiterating that Kapil should have approached the Police or anti-corruption wing to tackle the bribery mess instead of ranting on social media.

"I am personally going to the BKC police station for filing a complaint against BMC and the culprit/s. We will make sure that firm action is taken against those responsible. Whether Kapil has done this just to create a hungama or not is a different question. He should have first made a formal complaint before taking the issue up on social media," said Kadam.

Kadam also added, "Maharashtra government will not spare the guilty."

In the wee hours of the morning, Kapil had tweeted that despite paying Rs 15 crore as tax for the last five years, he was being asked for a Rs 5 lakh bribe by the BMC. Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis responded to Kapil on Twitter saying he should give the details, and strict action would be taken.



Watch: BMC asked for Rs 5 crore bribe, alleges comedian Kapil Sharma

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Watch: Maharashtra CM responds to Kapil's bribe tweet, assures action against BMC official



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ALBANY  Two women who targeted people for robbery at area hotels and apartments are heading to prison for four years, Albany County prosecutors said.

Jessica Nowiak, 26, of Rotterdam, and Brittany DeCarlo, 25, of Colonie, were each sentenced to prison Friday, which will be followed three years of post release supervision, according to District Attorney David Soares' office.
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Waterford

Union workers at Momentive Performance Materials in Waterford were mulling a strike Friday after rejecting their company's latest  and purportedly final  contract offer.

IUE CWA Local 81359, which represents 700 workers at the Waterford-based Momentive, voted down a three-year contract that would give employees about $9,000 in wage increases over the next three years.

The problem, the union contends, is with benefits  they say the contract would hurt retirees while also diminishing health care and retirement benefits for current members. The previous contract, which expired June 26, froze pensions for members 50 and younger. That, coupled with what the union has said is a diminished 401(k) matching program for some workers, was enough to lead an overwhelming 86 percent of members to reject the deal.

Local 81359 is the largest of the three unions that voted on the pro posal.

Other union voters included 41 members represented at the company's Willoughby, Ohio, plant and 81 technicians in Waterford.

All told, 73 percent of members from the three unions voted to oppose the deal.

Momentive, which has previously said it has plans in place to continue operations amid a possible strike, decried the vote. "We're disappointed in this result as all of the changes reflected in the proposal were intended to provide a fair, market-based package for our employees and their families, while also allowing Momentive to remain competitive," Momentive spokeswoman Tina Reiber said Friday.

"If there is a strike, we plan to keep our sites open. We have comprehensive contingency plans in place, which include utilizing staffing resources and leveraging our global assets in order to meet our customers' needs," she said. "The company stands ready to continue discussions with the IUE-CWA to reach a fair and balanced contract that meets the needs of the Company and our employees."

The question of whether to strike now goes to the union's top leadership. In August, union members voted to give leadership authority to determine if a strike is necessary. The final decision, then, will be made by Chris Shelton, president of the Communications Workers of America in Washington, D.C.

Momentive, a sealant and silicone materials producer, is one of the larger employers in the Capital Region. It has about 1,000 workers in a variety of industries, including electronics and automotive.

Local and federal union representatives were not immediately available for comment Friday.

lrulison@timesunion.com  518-454-5504  @larryrulison

RDownen@timesunion.com  518-4545018  @Robert_Downen
AMSTERDAM  Police on Friday detained several people for questioning after a raid on a reputed marijuana growing operation in an Elk Street factory.

State, county and city police searched the location at 26 Elk St., which was described as a multilevel factory.
The following appeared in an editorial in The New York Times:

Laos provided fitting closure to President Barack Obama's 11th official trip to Asia. The stop, the first by an American president, acknowledged the devastation caused by U.S. bombing during the Vietnam War and the millions of unexploded bombs that remained in Laos after the war. That visit and the Asian tour was the last of Obama's broad efforts to strengthen engagements with countries in the region.

There is significant unfinished business in Obama's Asia policy, including the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal that appears gridlocked in Washington, and an expanding North Korean nuclear weapons program that he and other world leaders have failed to halt.

Obama has made headway in reassuring Asian nations that the United States intends to remain a stabilizing presence in the region and to serve as a counterweight to China's growing power and increasing assertiveness, especially in the South China Sea.

In addition to opening a new chapter with Laos, Obama established relations with Myanmar when the former military dictatorship of that country agreed to move toward a democratic system. Ties were expanded and an arms embargo against Vietnam was dropped. New agreements on military bases for U.S. forces were negotiated with the Philippines and Australia.

Building on work done by the Clinton and Bush administrations, Obama has brought India-U.S. relations to a new level of cooperation, culminating in last month's defense agreement, which had been under negotiation for a decade. The United States has vastly expanded military exercises with most of these countries and its sale of weapons, including a missile defense system to South Korea.

All of this took hard diplomatic work, but the driving force pushing these countries into closer ties with America has been China's growing military capabilities and its brazen efforts to claim most of the South China Sea as its own.

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When Obama took office, he hoped to cooperate with China on solving global problems. By 2011, China's more aggressive posture and a belief that America's economic future lay in Asia led the Obama administration to announce plans to intensify engagement with other Asian nations. As the South China Sea tensions have heated up, the administration has played a restraining role in defending America's commitment to freedom of navigation by sending warships into that strategic waterway. It has also urged China and other claimant countries to work out a peaceful solution, but serious provocations by China continue.

In some instances, China and the United States have made important contributions, including working together on the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and committing to ratifying the Paris accord on climate change.

China's aggressive moves in the South China Sea will increasingly dominate the future of the region and will present a complicated challenge for Obama's successor to manage.
Terrace Park, Ohio

Sen. Rob Portman probably will win a second term, despite the fact that he deserves to.

The swarm of young people who gathered on a Saturday morning in this Cincinnati suburb to feast on doughnuts and his gratitude are among the 5,000 volunteer interns, including students from 35 campuses, who have made 3.5 million voter contacts. Portman's supporters are a forgiving sort, undeterred by his many accomplishments and qualifications that could be disqualifying in this season of populist antagonism toward people who have actually governed.

A graduate of Dartmouth and the University of Michigan Law School, Portman was one of President George H.W. Bush's counselors. After six terms in Congress, Portman became President George W. Bush's trade representative and, a year later, director of the Office of Management and Budget.

It gets worse: This year's Republican presidential nominating electorate decided that the lungs are the locus of wisdom, but Portman is as quiet as his 19th-century Quaker abolitionist ancestors probably were when assisting the Underground Railroad.

Given today's apotheosis of the outsider, Portman is fortunate to be running against a former congressman and governor, Ted Strickland, a political lifer who first ran for Congress (unsuccessfully) 40 years ago. He is an ordained Methodist minister from the gun-toting coal country of southeastern Ohio. Fortunately for Portman, Strickland, after losing the governorship to John Kasich in 2010, became head of the Washington-based, impeccably liberal Center for American Progress Action Fund. What was he thinking? Probably not about running again in Ohio.

Strickland has revised the Clintonian mantra about making abortions "safe, legal and rare." He seems to prefer "safe, legal and as frequent as subsidies can make them": He favors repeal of the Hyde Amendment, which for 40 years has banned taxpayer funding of abortions. The center supports many gun control measures unacceptable to the NRA, which supported Strickland in 2010 but has endorsed Portman. The Center for American Progress shares the Obama administration's animus against coal, so the United Mine Workers (like the Teamsters and the Fraternal Order of Police) have abandoned Strickland.

This year, however, it is in Portman's interest to stress local issues. Sixty-thousand eligible voters say that the biggest issue for them is algae threatening Lake Erie.

And the biggest issue might be the epidemic of deaths from heroin and other opioids. Opioids are especially devastating in post-industrial communities, of which Ohio has its share. In 2012, Ohio was one of 12 states where the number of opioid prescriptions written was larger than the number of people. Ohioans who are pleased that Portman authored the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act must forgive him for having done so in Washington.

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Six presidents were elected from this state (William Henry Harrison, Rutherford Hayes, James Garfield, William McKinley, William Taft, Warren Harding), a seventh (U.S. Grant) was born here, and there could have been an eighth  Robert Taft (1889-1953). A president's son, he was "Mr. Republican" during his 14 years representing Ohio in the Senate seat that Portman now occupies. Then, as now, Ohio had many blue-collar industrial workers, and Taft's critics said he could not represent them. So, in 1947 a reporter asked Taft's wife, "Do you think of your husband as a common man?" Aghast, she replied:

"Oh, no, no! The senator is very uncommon. He was first in his class at Yale and first in his class at the Harvard Law School. We wouldn't permit Ohio to be represented in the Senate by just a common man."

In 1950, Taft was easily re-elected. Portman probably will be, too, even though he should be.

georgewill@washpost.com
Retaliating against Kapil Sharma's allegation that the BMC had allegedly asked him to pay a bribe, the civic body officials have said that the demolition work was carried out in accordance with all the rules and regulations.

By Sahil Joshi:

Retaliating against Kapil Sharma's allegation that the BMC had allegedly asked him to pay a bribe, the civic body officials have said that the demolition work was carried out in accordance with all the rules and regulations. In fact, BMC officials have now gone on the offensive and are planning to charge Kapil Sharma under the stringent MRTP (Maharashtra Regional Town Planning) Act, which is a non-bailable offence.

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According to BMC officials, there were several complaints received regarding the illegal construction being carried out in the row house owned by Kapil Sharma located in the four-bungalow area in Andheri West.

ROW HOUSE NOT FOR COMMERCIAL USE: BMC



A BMC officer said, "We called him several times but he said he was very busy and could not meet. Then in May, two BMC officers -- Khan and Pawar -- whom Kapil has accused of demanding bribe, met him at the Film City. They explained to him that his row house was illegally constructed and said he had to take proper permission." An officer on duty said, "We took time to meet. When we entered his vanity van, it was full of smoke. Kapil was changing the interiors of the house so that it could be used for commercial purposes. He wanted his staff to stay at the row house. The row house is only for residential purpose."

Also read: Kapil Sharma alleges he was asked to cough up Rs 5 lakh bribe by BMC; tweets to PM Modi asking if this is 'achhe din'



The officer added, "Later, K West ward officials received many complaints that Kapil had illegally constructed the structure both horizontally and vertically. BMC officials sent him a notice on July 16. An officer said, "We sent a stop-work notice under section 354 A. However, Kapil did not respond to that and continued with the illegal construction. Finally on August 4, we demolished a part of the illegal structure and the case was over there. We don't know what prompted Kapil Sharma to bring up this matter after two months and tweet on the whole issue."



KAPIL MAY BE BOOKED UNDER MRTP ACT



BMC officials now say they are planning to take action against Kapil under the MRTP act. An officer said, "Despite demolishing the illegal structure, work on vertical structure is going on. The construction of only a ground-plus-one structure is allowed, but he is making the second floor. We were in the process of issuing a second notice and demolishing this another illegal construction, but due to Ganpati festival and lack of manpower, we had to put on hold the demolition exercise.



According to MRTP Act, if an illegal construction is taking place and despite repeated notices it is not stopped, a case is registered by BMC officials with the local police. If two MRTP Act cases are registered against the same person, he may even be externed by law.

Also read: BJP sees red over Kapil Sharma's tweet

(With inputs from Saurabh Bakhtania)







--- ENDS ---
Thirty-four Airmen and two Sailors graduated from Tinkers Airman Leadership School last week.

Graduates are:

110th Attack Wing

Senior Airman Tera Eckert

137th Logistics Readiness Squadron

Senior Airman Steven Stewart

138th Maintenance Operations Flight

Senior Airman Mark Starks

193rd Special Operations Support Squadron

Senior Airman Stephen Kamau

507th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron

Senior Airman Adrian Condit

Senior Airman Bridgette Young

507th Civil Engineer Squadron

Senior Airman Denzel Hull

Staff Sgt. Rory Witt, Distinguished Graduate

507th Maintenance Squadron

Senior Airman Phillip Crouch

513th Maintenance Squadron

Senior Airman Jasmine Fuller

Senior Airman Jake Stewart

545th Propulsion Maintenance Squadron

Senior Airman Andres Valdivia

552nd Air Control/Networks Squadron

Senior Airman Ryan Nieraeth

552nd Aircraft Maintenance Squadron

Senior Airman Joshua Beekman, Distinguished Graduate and Academic Achievement Award winner

Senior Airman Wesley Coleman

Senior Airman Robert Wagner

552nd Maintenance Operations Flight

Senior Airman Jace Heaslet

552nd Maintenance Squadron

Senior Airman Roberto Alvarado

552nd Operations Support Squadron

Senior Airman Brianna Dean

Senior Airman Joshua Meeks

72nd Aerial Port Squadron

Senior Airman Daisy Smith

72nd Aerospace Medicine Squadron

Senior Airman Christopher Miracle

72nd Dental Squadron

Senior Airman Jacob Barth

72nd Force Support Squadron

Senior Airman Brittani Mitchell

72nd Medical Operations Squadron

Senior Airman Jacklyn Cordaro, Freedom Citation Award winner

72nd Medical Support Squadron

Senior Airman Sophia Snapp

72nd Security Forces Squadron

Senior Airman Collin Gendron

Senior Airman Matthew Mckenna

960th Airborne Air Control Squadron

Senior Airman Adam Giradot

Senior Airman Brandon Hansen, John L. Levitow Award winner

963rd Airborne Air Control Squadron

Senior Airman Tavy Davenport

965th Airborne Air Control Squadron

Senior Airman Evan Dasher

Senior Airman Teirsa Kopczinsky

966th Airborne Air Control Squadron

Senior Airman Ernest Leggs

Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadron THREE

Petty Officer 3rd Class Nikki Garcia, Sharp Image Award winner

Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadron FOUR

Petty Officer 2nd Class Charles Fletcher, Distinguished Graduate and Leadership Award winner

Freedom Citation

I am a Cordaro.

I have answered my nations call, raised my right hand just like the two generations of Cordaros before me. A name that has fought for this country over a span of 80 years.

My family emigrated from Sicily in the 1920s and embraced the American dream.

When World War II broke out, my Great Uncle Jerry enlisted in the Marines and fought in the Pacific. He lost his life on Iwo Jima.

My Grandfather Henson fought with U.S. forces in the Philippines. When the Philippine Islands were invaded by the Japanese, instead of surrendering, he picked up arms to defend his country and assist the American survivors mount a delaying actions through guerrilla warfare tactics. When the war ended, he was granted U.S. citizenship; however, before he was able to come to America, he was mugged and killed picking up his paycheck.

Later, the Korean conflict broke out. My Grandfather Joseph enlisted in the new Air Force as an aircraft mechanic serving in Japan, Guam and Korea. Alongside him, my Grandmother Jean served in the Navy as a WAVE in the administrative section at a base at Lake Michigan. Together they had 11 children and the call to serve was deeply embedded in each of them. My aunts and uncles served in the 1970s-80s as photo journalists, administrative, aircraft mechanics and dental technicians. Lastly, my father served in Desert Storm, going into Operation Southern Watch and finishing with his career with Operation Iraqi Freedom.

My family has taught me that freedom isnt a privilege, its a duty. Its honor, commitment and pride. The right to have freedom is something that has been fought over throughout history and paid for with the lives and sacrifices of those before me. Because of their bravery, I was blessed to be born with the freedom to choose whatever religion I want, say what I want, wear what I want, and come and go as I please. A right easily taken for granted because its something we live and breathe as Americans today. I wish to pay it forward, I bear the Cordaro name across my chest continuing the legacy alongside my cousins as the third generation to serve this country in hopes for America to remain the land of the free for generations to come.
Air Force Sustainment Center Commander Lt. Gen. Lee K. Levy II described a sizeable list of Air Force challenges that need small and large business innovations and insights to solve them.

Chief among those challenges noted by General Levy are: Keeping old planes flying and modernized; Ensuring industrial aerospace work continues uninterrupted in more than half-century old buildings; Fighting wars with ones and zeroes, as well as missiles; and a closing technology gap with peer and near-peer nations such as China and Russia.

The commander said thats why he needs the best advice, talents and partnerships he can get involving companies within the defense industry.

There has to be the ability for us to collectively improve our performance, allow for enough profit margin to make it interesting for you as a company, and give the intellectual capabilities and warfighting throw weight I need to project power and sustain power over a long duration, high-end fight, the general said.

The AFSC commander addressed hundreds of defense industry contractors, civilian and military managers, scientists and engineers attending the 11th annual Tinker and the Primes Requirements Symposium in Midwest City. The Midwest City Chamber of Commerce in partnership with Rose State College hosted the three-day business and technology networking event.

The Air Force is the oldest, smallest and busiest it has ever been. AFSC performs depot level maintenance and supply chain operations both here in Oklahoma and across the globe. Aging infrastructure adds to the challenge, including facilities such as Bldg. 3001 at Tinker AFB, which was built in 1942, the commander said.

All of those issues are interconnected in the AFSCs job of providing global combat power for the nation, the general said.

You have to have it all, the commander said. How do I operate all those platforms? How do I sustain all those platforms? How do I think about what are we going to do to collect all of those requirements, some provided by commercial firms, some provided by organic Air Force sources, and present them to combatant commanders very quickly so that we can fight and win our nations wars? Thats what the nation expects from us.

According to General Levy, growing areas of needs for the Air Force include software sustainment, additive manufacturing, rapid prototyping, advanced engine sustainment concepts, and rapid engineering and technical resolutions.

Tinker has met its small-business contracting goals in the last three years, but the base needs to do more because of the innovation and entrepreneurship smaller firms bring, the commander said.

I think small business really is an important engine for our defense industry, the general said. Its certainly an important engine for the economy.

The boost that military installations give to local economies, such as the $10 billion impact of Oklahomas four military installations, are important for jobs, but also for the tax revenues they generate, the commander said.

Ill tell you why its really important to me because that tax revenue turns into an educational system, the general said. That educational system is what Im counting on for tomorrow. And, it is that education system that will produce young men and women who grow up to be scientists, technology experts, engineers and mathematicians.
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They are well used to welcoming home the Liam McCarthy Cup in Borris-Ileigh with Brendan Maher becoming the fourth man from the parish to do so since the late and great Sean Kenny, a former Mayor of the parish, paved the way in 1950, writes Noel Dundon

That was a golden era for the famed club with county titles emerging to secure their reputation as one of the great hurling strongholds in Tipperary. And, when Jimmy Finn had the honour of leading Tipp up the steps of the Hogan Stand to claim the famous prize a year later in 1951, thereby becoming the youngest ever All-Ireland winning captain, the sense of achievement was cemented in local lore.

It took until 1989 for the Liam McCarthy Cup to visit again, this time in the hands of the great Bobby Ryan. That was special as it had bridged the yawning gap going back to 1971 when Tipperary had last caught sight of the trophy. Bobby had been handed the honour by the Loughmore Castleiney club as they were the county champions, but what a captain he proved to be having taken over from Pat McGrath - father of Noel, John and Brian McGrath.

Richard Stakelum bringing the Munster silverware in '87 was also very memorable.

And so, twenty seven years later, the great Brendan Maher arrived in the village to make his way through a massive crowd of emotional well wishers, supporters and fans, to bring home the cup. Brendan himself was determined to savour the moment but it was an emotion journey for him too. It was here in Borris' alongside his brothers that he had first learned to puck a ball, here that he had grown into an outstanding juvenile and now, here that he reached the summit of the hurling world and shared the experience with his people. Of course it was also a very special night for colleagues Dan McCormack and Paddy Stapleton and for selector Conor Stakelum - all proud Borris' men who had helped to bring Tipperary to the Holy Grail.

There will be many nights of celebration with the Liam McCarthy Cup all around the county, but for the four lads, you just get the sense that no other will hold a candle to what they experienced on Monday evening.
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By Rohini Swamy, Aravind Gowda: With Karnataka on the boil since the last three days in view of the Cauvery River water sharing dispute, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah today urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to intervene in the matter by organizing a meeting of the CMs of all the southern states.



In his letter to the PM, Siddaramaiah pointed to the unrest in Karnataka in the wake of the state releasing 15,000 cusecs of water to Tamil Nadu every day in accordance with the order of the Supreme Court. "The unrest if continued will not only have a serious impact on the economy of the state, particularly the IT economy, which brings enormous revenue and foreign exchange to the state," he contended.

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Also read: Cauvery dispute: Karnataka comes to a standstill, 53 Tamil channels blocked

TAMIL NADU HAS ENOUGH WATER STORED



Siddaramaiah was of the view that Tamil Nadu had adequate water storage to meet the requirements of farmers in the Cauvery delta. "If we continue to release water from the dam, it will completely deprive Bengaluru of drinking water and farmers in Cauvery basin. The present storage in Mettur dam in Tamil Nadu and the north-east rainfall received in that state would be more than sufficient to meet the requirement of the Samba rice crop," he said.

The CM has urged the PM to convene the meeting of all the CMs of south states on a priority basis to resolve the issue amicably.

Read full text of the letter here:

"Permit me to invite your immediate attention to the stark facts already in the public arena about extreme unrest in the Cauvery basin especially in Bangalore city protesting against the interim order for the release of 15,000 cusecs of Cauvery water at the inter State border, Biligundulu, which, if continue, would completely deprive the drinking water not only to the residents of Bangalore City but also to the farmers of the Cauvery basin and water for the only crop they grow. However, the present storage in Mettur reservoir in Tamil Nadu and the North-east rainfall received in Tamil Nadu would be more than sufficient to meet the requirement of water for the Samba rice crop just being or still to be sown by the farmers in Tamil Nadu.

"At an all-party meeting held on 6th September, 2016, to elicit the views of political parties the view of the leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the State was that the order of the Supreme Court of India ought not to be implemented. However, as constitutional Chief Executive of the State I have taken it upon myself to obey the orders of the Hon'ble Supreme Court and the waters are being released as per the order which has created more unrest and disquiet in the State. The unrest if continued will not only have a serious impact on the economy of the State particularly the IT economy which brings enormous revenue and foreign exchange to the country but will also impact the livelihood of the common man adversely in the large parts of the state.

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"By this communication I earnestly request you not only as Prime Minister, but as Head of the entire Federal system, to call a meeting of the chief ministers of the States (forthwith on a few hours Notice) to resolve the impasse I invited attention to a precedent of December 1995 where under similar circumstances of deficit flows the Hon'ble Supreme Court by order dated 28th September, 1995, requested the Prime Minister to resolve the issue of implementation of the order of the Supreme Court; which was then duly done to the satisfaction of all parties.

"Awaiting your favourable response urgently, by telephone, fax or email."

Also read: Cauvery dispute: Kannada film stars to participate in Karnataka bundh on September 9





--- ENDS ---
[September 08, 2016] CEUS Liver and Kidney Tests Produce Big Savings in Testing Time and Cost

Contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) can speed up the diagnosis of patients with liver and kidney diseases, reduce the need for more expensive downstream MR and CT imaging, and reduce overall imaging costs, according to a new study described today at the 31st annual Advances in Ultrasound conference in Chicago. According to Dr. Edward Grant, a professor of medicine at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine, patients with liver and kidney masses identified on routine ultrasound scans were examined with CEUS at Los Angeles County General Hospital. He and his colleagues determined that the hospital could anticipate a reduction of 339 CT and 53 MRIs annually by using contrast ultrasound tests first - a potential $132,000 cost reduction each year. CEUS "is comparable to CT and MRI exams in its capacity to characterize liver and kidney lesions, such as hepatocellular carcinoma and hemangiomas," Dr. Grant said. "But what is remarkable is that CEUS results were usually added to the patient chart the same day, with over 72% done within 24 hours." By comparison, the mean time to diagnosis and study completion was up to 52 days for CT exams and up to 123 days for an MRI, Dr. Grant added. The study also found that CEUS reduced the need for CT and MRI follow up exams in the liver and kidney. Dr. Grant noted that "66.7 percent of the CEUS exams were deemed of sufficient quality to not equire further evaluation with CT or MRI."



"Ultrasound contrast agents are safe, low cost, and completely radiation-free imaging tools that can improve the clarity and reliability of front-line ultrasound scans of the heart and enhance the ability of routine CEUS scans to characterize tumors in the liver and kidneys. They avoid unnecessary downstream testing, save lives and lower overall health care costs," according to Dr. Steven Feinstein, Co-President of the International Contrast Ultrasound Society (ICUS), who is an expert in cardiac CEUS and professor of medicine at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. He noted that previous studies in cardiac patients showed that CEUS could also cut costs and help avoid downstream testing in those populations.

"This is an outstanding example of patient-centered care, since CEUS provided same day diagnoses and avoided lengthy diagnostic delays associated with CT or MRI," according to Dr. Stephanie Wilson, Co-President of ICUS. Dr. Wilson is an expert in abdominal CEUS and a professor of medicine at the University of Calgary in Canada. "Coupled with the significant cost savings, CEUS offers an enormous improvement in patient management and care," she added. Three ultrasound contrast agents, Definity (Lantheus Medical Imaging), Optison (GE Healthcare), and Lumason (Bracco Diagnostics) are available in the United States. Definity and Optison are approved by the Food and Drug Administration for cardiac imaging only, while Lumason is approved for both cardiac and liver imaging. ABOUT ICUS: ICUS is an international, multi-disciplinary, not-for-profit medical society that is exclusively dedicated to advancing the use of contrast enhanced ultrasound diagnostic imaging to improve patient care worldwide. Founded in September 2008, ICUS brings together physicians, scientists, and other ultrasound imaging professionals from over 55 countries. ICUS members represent diverse specialties such as cardiology, radiology, vascular imaging, gastro-intestinal imaging, oncology, OB-GYN, and hepatology. For more information about ICUS, please visit www.icus-society.org. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160908006771/en/

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[September 09, 2016] UBS Asset Management's Real Estate Equity and Debt Funds Continue to Impress in 2016 GRESB Assessments

UBS Asset Management's Global Real Estate ("GRE") business is pleased to announce its results in the 2016 GRESB Real Estate and Real Estate Debt assessments, which measure the sustainability performance of real estate portfolios worldwide, including property funds and companies. GRE has continued its strong showing from previous years, with a record number of GRE funds across the US, Europe and Asia represented in 2016 and top results achieved in every region. Building further on its 2014 and 2015 successes when GRE secured eight and nine Green Stars, respectively, 14 of GRE's real estate equity funds from the US, UK, Germany, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Japan - including three new entrants this year - have been awarded Green Star status in the 2016 GRESB Real Estate assessment, reflecting the first year GRE has achieved such a feat for all of its participating funds. In addition, seven of these funds, spanning every region and sector GRE operates in, achieved the highest GRESB rating of 5-stars, reflecting upper quintile performance compared with the entire universe of participants, and overall, 13 of GRE's 14 real estate equity funds achieved a GRESB rating of at least 4-stars. Most notably, one GRE fund investing in core residential real estate in Switzerland posted the strongest performance in its sector group (Listed European Residential), achieving Sector Leader status in its first year participating in the assessment, and a UK value-add fund investing in Central London offices again achieved strong performance globally to become the eighth best performer amongst 733 participants worldwide. At the same time, GRE's two real estate debt funds in the UK and US again posted excellent results, with both achieving a GRESB rating of 5-stars, with the UK fund retaining its position at the top of the GRESB Real Estate Debt assessment and the US fund coming in third. Thomas Wels, Head of Global Real Estate at UBS AM commented: "Sustainability is something that we take very seriously at GRE, and it firmly remains a key consideration for us at the highest levels of our business worldwide. Our continued success in the GRESB assessments is testament to our long-standing efforts in this regard and, crucially, to the efforts of our teams on the ground globally that oversee the consistent implementation of our Responsible Property Investing policies. I'm particularly proud of the global nature of GRE's participation, demonstrating how important sustainability is in each of the sectors and markets we operate in, as we aim to coordinate our market-leading best practices at a truly global level." Underpinning GRE's sustainability efforts is GRE's Sustainability Workgroup, which comprises GRE professionals from several countries and disciplines, including engineering and construction, operations, research, asset management, fund as well as business management, and which has regional representation from the UK, US, Singapore, Switzerland, Continental Europe, Japan and Australia. Established in 2010, this Workgroup focuses on setting high-level objectives and targets and maximizing best practice sharing, as some technologies or policies start in one country and are adapted by other regions, and to provide implementation guidance. This team approach to sustainability has played a fundamental role in integrating sustainability into all of GRE's investment practises worldwide and has enabled the business to consistently achieve excellent scores across a range of funds ever since it first participated in the GRESB assessment in 2011. A summary of GRE's results for 2016 is shown in the table below.







Fund description Award GRESB Rating

(1-star = Lower quintile;

5-stars = Upper quintile) Real estate equity funds Japan Core Japanese industrial and infrastructure Green Star 5-stars Core Japanese retail Green Star 4-stars Core Japanese office Green Star 4-stars US Core US commercial property Green Star 5-stars Value add US diversified Green Star 5-stars Switzerland Core Swiss residential Sector Leader, Green Star 5-stars Core Swiss diversified (unlisted) Green Star 4-stars Core Swiss diversified (listed) Green Star 3-stars Germany Core European office and retail Green Star 5-stars Core European office Green Star 5-stars Core German logistics Green Star 4-stars UK Value add UK office Green Star 5-stars Core UK commercial property Green Star 4-stars Luxembourg Core Eurozone diversified Green Star 4-stars Real estate debt funds UK debt fund n/a 5-stars US debt fund n/a 5-stars Source (News - Alert): GRESB Real Estate and Real Estate Debt benchmark reports 2016

GRESB GRESB (formerly known as the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark) is an investor-driven organization that is transforming the way it assesses the environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance of real assets globally, including real estate portfolios and infrastructure assets. More than 250 members, of which about 60 are pension funds and their fiduciaries, use the GRESB data in their investment management and engagement process, with a clear goal to optimize the risk/return profile of their investments. GRESB has assessed nearly 1,100 property companies and funds, on behalf of close to 60 institutional investors. GRESB is an independent organization not connected to UBS Asset Management's GRE business area. This year's GRESB Real Estate assessment was completed by 759 real estate companies and funds/portfolios (733 excluding developers) across 63 countries worldwide, representing a total property value of USD 2.8 trillion and 66,000 individual property assets under management. GRESB Real Estate collects information regarding the sustainability performance of property companies and funds, including information on performance data, such as energy, GHG emissions, water and waste. The assessment also covers broader sustainability issues, such as sustainability risk assessments, performance improvement programs, and engagement with employees, tenants, suppliers and the community. GRESB's global benchmark uses a consistent methodology across different global regions, investment vehicles and property types. Participants' scores are based on seven detailed aspects - Management, Policy & Disclosure, Risks & Opportunities, Monitoring & EMS, Performance Indicators, Building Certifications & Energy Ratings, and Stakeholder Engagement. Starting in 2015, GRESB began gathering information regarding the sustainability performance of companies and funds specialising in real estate debt. The GRESB Real Estate Debt assessment is specifically tailored to the functions and processes of real estate lenders and debt portfolio owners, and is designed to capture sustainability engagement and performance metrics on a worldwide basis. The scores of the 18 participants are based on five key sustainability factors: Management, Policy & Disclosure, Due Diligence, Monitoring and Opportunities. UBS Asset Management UBS Asset Management is a large-scale asset manager, with around 3,5001 employees located in 22 countries. We offer investment capabilities and investment styles across all major traditional and alternative asset classes. We take a connected approach to find the answers to our clients' investment challenges. Our global capabilities include equity, fixed income, currency, hedge funds, real estate, infrastructure and private equity investment capabilities that can also be combined into customized solutions and multi asset strategies. Complementing our investment offering, our fund services business provides professional white-labeling services including fund set-up, accounting and reporting for traditional and alternative funds. Invested assets totaled CHF 633 billion (EUR 584 billion, GBP 487 billion, USD 647 billion) as at 30 June 2016. We are a leading fund house in Europe, the third largest international asset manager in Asia, the largest mutual fund manager in Switzerland2 and one of the largest fund of hedge funds and real estate investment managers in the world. UBS Asset Management's Global Real Estate business actively manages real estate investments of approximately USD 78.4 billion3 globally and regionally within Asia Pacific, Europe and the US, across the major real estate sectors, making it one of the largest real estate managers worldwide. Its capabilities are focused on core and value-added strategies, but also include other strategies across the risk / return spectrum. These are offered on a global, regional and country basis and through open- and closed-end private funds, REIT's, customized investment structures, multi-manager funds, individually managed accounts and real estate securities. This material is provided for information only and is not marketing. Issued by UBS Asset Management (UK) Ltd. Authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.  UBS 2016. UBS are among the registered and unregistered trademarks of UBS. All rights reserved. www.ubs.com/realestate __________________________ 1 Thereof around 1,100 from Corporate Center (as at 31 December 2015) 2 Source: Morningstar/Swiss Fund Data Swiss Promoters Report (as of 30 June 2016) 3 Asset under management stated on gross asset values basis, reflecting property values as at 30 June 2016. Includes assets managed by our joint venture with Mitsubishi (News - Alert) Corporation, Japan. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160909005942/en/

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[September 08, 2016] MVNOs in Europe: Data and M2M Segments Will Present the Highest Growth Opportunities to MVNOs in Europe

LONDON, Sept. 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --



Summary

The overcrowded European MVNO market has been showing strong momentum and is set to grow at a CAGR of 5% during 2015-2020 to reach 110.7m MVNO subscribers at the end of the year 2020. Germany, with more than 140 MVNOs will remain the largest MVNO subscriber market during 2015-2020 followed by the UK. Moreover, increasing usage of mobile data mainly driven by the increasing smartphone penetration, deployment of 4G/4G+ spectrum, favorable regulatory framework and rising VAS offerings are some the factors which will boost the MVNO market in Europe. Increasing opportunities are to be witnessed in non-traditional MVNO business models such as data only and M2M during the forecast period.



Key Findings

- The most preferred business model in the Europe is discount based model which is being adopted by 21% of the total MVNOs present in the region, closely followed by niche segment occupying 20% market share, catering to segments including youth, elderly (50+ aged), students and NGO supporters. Business and ethnic models follow, accounting for 19% and 11% respectively, while the roaming model is adopted by 10% of MVNOs.



- Pyramid Research projects Germany will remain the largest MVNO country, in terms of subscriptions serving 23m users at the end of 2015, followed by the UK with 14.1m subscriptions and penetration of 14.8%. Other markets such as Belgium, Spain, Denmark and the Netherlands are considered hotbeds for MVNO growth.



- Regulators are formulating MVNO specific framework to boost competition and reduce tariffs along with setting up laws relating to rolling MNPs, reducing MTRs, harmonizing the tariff differentials between off-net and on-net voice traffic, etc. in order to ease up the entry barriers for MVNOs



Synopsis

MVNOs in Europe: Data and M2M Segments Will Present the Highest Growth Opportunities to MVNOs in Europe', an Insider report by Pyramid Research offers a thorough study of the MVNO market in Europe. It examines the various MVNO business models adopted in Europe based on their marketing approach, and provides an in-depth look at the changing landscape of trends in MVNO adoption and investment.







The report analyzes the MVNO market and the role of other market participants such as MNOs and regulators in this expanding opportunity and consists of the following sections:



- Introduction: This Insider first presents taxonomy of MVNOs to provide a conceptual structure for the analysis, taking the perspective of mobile operators.





- Market context (Global and Europe): This section examines the global MVNO market analysis, MVNO trends in the European region and most prevalent MVNO business models operating in the region.



- Case studies: The report examines four leading MVNOs in the region in more detail: Drillisch, Virgin Mobile, Freenet and Lebara Mobile. These studies focus on the MVNO offerings, their sales and promotional strategies and recent moves by the telcos in the MVNO space.



- Key findings and recommendations: The Insider concludes with a number of key findings and a set of recommendations for MNVOs, MNOs and regulators



Reasons To Buy

- The report examines the product and service portfolio being offered by MNVOs in Europe to enable new entrants' telcos to align their product offerings. The report also provides analysis of different MVNO business model adopted in various countries in WE and CEE region and identify the opportunities offered by each of them.



- Helps executives build proactive, profitable growth strategies by offering comprehensive, relevant analysis of the Europe region's MVNO opportunity, regulatory framework, competitive environment and best practices of the existing virtual operators.



- The case studies focus on product offerings of leading three MVNOs in the region including the strategies being pursued by them to drive their MVNO business, which can be beneficial to local players or prospective market entrants.



- By understanding the interests and positions of the main stakeholders in the MVNO market - MNOs, end users, regulators, content providers and ISPs - telecom professionals/operators can develop strategies and increase their participation in the growing MVNO market

Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/3704533/



About Reportbuyer

Reportbuyer is a leading industry intelligence solution that provides all market research reports from top publishers

http://www.reportbuyer.com



For more information:

Sarah Smith

Research Advisor at Reportbuyer.com

Email: [email protected]

Tel: +44 208 816 85 48

Website: www.reportbuyer.com To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/mvnos-in-europe-data-and-m2m-segments-will-present-the-highest-growth-opportunities-to-mvnos-in-europe-300325324.html SOURCE ReportBuyer

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[September 09, 2016] Geoswift Awarded Global TRUSTe Enterprise Privacy Seal

HONG KONG, Sept. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Geoswift, a leading provider of cross-border payment solutions between China and the rest of the world, announced today that it has obtained TRUSTe Enterprise Privacy Seals in both English and Simplified Chinese for the Geoswift website and PayTuitionNow portal. The TRUSTe certification provides Geoswift's online platforms with a gold-class accreditation for data privacy standards and processes. The onset of technology in recent times has propelled key advancements, paving the way for accessible payment transactions globally. However, this has raised concerns in instances of personal data intrusion. The TRUSTe certification demonstrates Geoswift's continued commitment to ensure customers' privacy and data are protected and benchmarked against industry's standards. As part of its existing compliance framework, Geoswift conducts stringent know-your-customer (KYC) on-boarding practices and anti-money laundering (AML) checks to ensure high standards in regulatory compliance. "As a leading provider of cross-border payment solutions, we are committed in ensuring we raise the bar by providing our clients and partners with a gold standard when it comes to online data security and privacy. With expected higher levels of trade and growth of China's B2B commerce, we want to be known as a market leader in ensuring high compiance standards to facilitate this growth. Data protection is an issue we take seriously and our TRUSTe certification proves just that," said Raymond Qu, Geoswift's CEO and founder.



TRUSTe, the leading data privacy management company with close to 20 years of industry's expertise, rigorously audits a company's user privacy standards and regulations before it can qualify for the TRUSTe Enterprise Privacy Seal. TRUSTe's Privacy Certification Standards are based on a compilation of requirements and best practices defined by key regulatory bodies, industry groups and recognised frameworks such as the APEC Cross-Border Privacy Rules (CBPR) framework. Please click here to view TRUSTe's Certification Standards. "TRUSTe Privacy Certification provides cutting-edge consumer protections and establish leading privacy standards. Our Certification Standards are the requirements against which we evaluate and certify a company's privacy practices and these requirements embody our mission to promote transparency, accountability and choice in the collection and use of personal information. By displaying our privacy seal, Geoswift is demonstrating compliance with our Certification Standards and their commitment to privacy protection, instilling confidence and trust in users of their products and services," said Chris Babel, TRUSTe CEO.

The need to safe-guard consumers' data becomes critical with the increasing complexity of the technological web and as evident in the frequency of security breaches around the world. Together with TRUSTe, Geoswift a leading provider of cross-border payment solutions between China and the rest of the world, aims to select processes that deliver both efficient and ethical solutions for customers globally. About Geoswift Geoswift is an innovative payment technology company connecting China and the rest of the world. The company comprises the world's leading payment technology experts that have a deep understanding of the industry, technology, and global and China monetary policy. Geoswift provides clients with customised one-stop cross-border payment solutions to and from China. Geoswift is relied upon by the world's leading e-commerce companies, most prestigious universities and the largest brands in the travel industry to grow their businesses. Geoswift is an acquirer of UnionPay International in North America, a co-issuer of MasterCard prepaid cards, and a long-term partner of many other leading financial institutions. It also maintains 21 currency exchange outlets throughout China. Geoswift is headquartered in Hong Kong with operating offices in Shanghai, London, Vancouver, Seattle and San Francisco for strategic and regulatory functions. For more information, visit: www.geoswift.com



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[September 09, 2016] Value Creation - CEPRES Proves Private Equity Gets It Right

NEW YORK, Sept. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- CEPRES today released a unique analysis that demonstrates Private Equity is enhancing value in operating companies. By analyzing thousands of PE-backed Operating Companies, CEPRES found that since the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) there has been a steady and significant increase in Average Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of EBITDA for PE-backed Companies. Further, CEPRES found that increase in valuation of companies post GFC is driven more by EBITDA Growth than prior years. This evidence supports the view that Activist PE Fund Managers are effective and able to deliver on the promise of delivering returns through Value Creation. CEPRES also found that valuations are currently being driven by increased market pricing  commonly called Multiple Expansion. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160908/405724 CAGR of EBITDA for PE-backed companies has significantly and steadily increased since the GFC

EBITDA Growth is now a larger contributing facto to Exit values than pre-GFC

Exit values are also currently driven by market pricing (Multiple Expansion)

This is the first empirical evidence of value creation at work in private equity



Comment: "There has been significant speculation about the role of private equity managers as activist investors and whether they actually create value. Now, for the first time ever, we have hard evidence for investors (LPs) and fund managers (GPs) to benchmark their investee companies. It is positive to see such a clear trend and to have the ability to measure and compare these results when investing in private equity. There can be variations for different strategies, sectors, etc. and we encourage participants to get in touch for specific samples."

Dr. Daniel Schmidt  CEO, CEPRES GmbH

About PE.Analyzer PE.Analyzer is an online investment decision platform. It encompasses deep analysis of 38,000 private equity funds, deals and portfolio companies with a total Enterprise Value of $2.6 trillion USD. It is the only platform providing Technical & Fundamental analysis of track records to institutional investors and fund managers to underwrite their decisions and prove their investment strategy. About CEPRES CEPRES is an innovative FinTech company helping institutional investors invest in Private Equity with the proficiency of Financial Markets. Investors (LPs) and fund managers (GPs) can interact on a single, confidential platform in complete privacy. LPs gain deep market insights, forecast investment outcomes and enhance due diligence to drive better investment returns. GPs can verify their track record, precisely benchmark their deals and find new sources of capital from around the world. 100's of institutional investors have conducted due diligence on $1.7 trillion of Buyout, Growth, Venture, Private Debt, Infrastructure and Real Estate funds via the CEPRES platform. For further information, visit www.cepres.com.



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[September 09, 2016] Qualcomm Invests in an Eye-tracking Technology Company -- 7invensun

BEIJING, Sept. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Qualcomm, the world magnate in mobile chips has invested in 7invensun, a Chinese company which is committed to eye-tracking and eye-control techniques with independent intellectual property rights. Qualcomm, as a technology-oriented investor, tends to explore entrepreneurial teams that can solve technical problems in a certain field, and brings about orderly development of the entire industry. In recent years, Qualcomm has shifted investment from mobile Internet to frontier science and technology. Perhaps that's why 7invensun has obtained Qualcomm's investment for three consecutive years, starting in 2014. 7invensun which is China's first technology company that is committed to eye-tracking and movement control technology and has unremittingly focused on upgrading and optimizing the human-computer interaction experience of all terminal equipment. 7invensun, founded in 2009 and located in Zhongguancun, the silicon valley of China, owns core independent intellectual property rights of its eye-tracking tecnology. 7invensun's founder & CEO Huang Tongbing has an aerospace background, which has led him to develop the eye-tracking technology and found 7invensun. Aircraft pilots need to perform multiple maneuvers during flight, but as there are more maneuvers to preform this increases the risks, traditionally looking over at an instrument panel is not as accurate and fast, so eye-tracking is expected to become an important human-computer interaction technology for the next generation of aircraft. This is where Qualcomm developed an interest, 7invensun brought together a group of excellent and innovative computer and vision experts, including doctors from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Tsinghua University, who are committed to creating a unique and original technology company in China.



Over the past a few years from 2014 when 7invensun obtained Qualcomm's risk investment, 7invensun's Almighty Eye series of eye-control and head-control devices for augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) have been highly praised by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patients and high paraplegia patients, and have helped over 10,000 patients recover communication ability through an eye-tracking typing method. In the future, 7invensun and Qualcomm together will use eye-tracking technology to help more people with assisted eye-tracking methods. Facing opportunities and the future, 7invensun is seeking partners worldwide interested in eye-tracking technology to co-develop an eye-tracking technology ecosystem and enable more ordinary consumers to experience of convenience brought by the eye-tracking technology. 7invensun's vision is the same as its slogan: Connect the world with your eyes!

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/qualcomm-invests-in-an-eye-tracking-technology-company----7invensun-300325443.html SOURCE 7invensun

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[September 09, 2016] Impartner Named Among 50 Most Admired Companies of the Year by The Silicon Review Magazine

SILICON SLOPES, Utah, Sept. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Global pure-play Partner Relationship Management (PRM) leader Impartner today announced that The Silicon Review Magazine has named it among its 50 Most Admired Companies of the Year. The publication selected Impartner based on its revenue growth, creativity in innovation, customer reviews and domain influence. "The Silicon Review 50 Most Admired Companies of the Year program identifies the most dynamic companies, like Impartner, that have made significant contributions in the field of business and technology and is designed to showcase companies that provide the most leading and groundbreaking effective technologies," said Manish Pandey, Editor-in-Chief of The Silicon Review Magazine. "Impartner provides companies with everything they need to accelerate partner revenue by helping at each critical step of the partner life-cycle, from recruiting all the way through performance management," said Impartner CMO Dave R Taylor. "We're honored to be recognized for the value our set of powerful solutions provides in helping bring partners into companies' programs, ramping them quickly to revenue, enabling them to be a powerful amplification of their marketing reach, and facilitating a real-time interaction with partners to see who is producin top results and where performance improvements are needed."



This recognition from Silicon Review continues an ongoing streak of awards Impartner has received throughout 2016. To learn more about Impartner PRM and how it can help companies be up and running with a new PRM and a world-class partner portal in as few as 30 days, click here. About Impartner

With nearly two decades of experience in accelerating indirect sales, Impartner delivers the industry's most advanced SaaS-based Partner Relationship Management solution, helping companies worldwide manage their partner relationships and accelerate revenue and profitability through indirect sales channels. The largest pure-play PRM vendor in the world, Impartner provides the industry's only out-of-the-box solution that can deploy an enterprise-class Partner Portal in as few as 30 days, using the company's highly engineered, multi-award winning, three-step Velocity onboarding process. For more information on Impartner, which is based in Utah's tech hotbed, the Silicon Slopes, visit www.impartner.com, or in the United States call +1 801 501 7000, for EMEA general call +33 1 40 90 31 20, for London call +44 0 20 3283 4465, and for LATAM call +1 954 364 7883.

Follow Impartner on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Contact:

Kerry Desberg

Impartner

425-231-9529

[email protected] Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160908/405659

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150821/260238LOGO To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/impartner-named-among-50-most-admired-companies-of-the-year-by-the-silicon-review-magazine-300325054.html SOURCE Impartner

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[September 09, 2016] New Transport Mode to Redefine Freight Movement

BRYAN-COLLEGE STATION, Texas, Sept. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Texas Governor Greg Abbott on Friday helped unveil a new mode of transportation and applauded the partnership of university research and industry investment that made it possible. Abbott was joined by Texas A&M University System Chancellor John Sharp in rolling out the autonomous Freight Shuttle System (FSS), which operates on its own guideway using single, remotely controlled transporters carrying truck trailers or shipping containers, powered by linear-induction electric motors. It's the product of "exemplary collaboration," the Governor noted. "For more than a decade, Texas has been the number-one exporting state in America, and freight movement is vitally important to our state's economy," Abbott said. "As the product of innovative research at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, the Freight Shuttle System will help ensure that we are able to meet our growing demand for efficient freight movement in Texas and ensure our long-term prosperity." Sharp emphasized the A&M System's commitment to public-private ventures. "Our System universities are places where brilliant ideas emerge as visions, and our private investment markets are places where those visions can be transformed into commercial reality," Sharp said. "Freight Shuttle Interntional and the Texas A&M Transportation Institute are showing us today how such partnerships can transform our state's future."



The first commercial example of that transformation, officials said on Friday, could be underway soon at the Port of Houston Authority (PHA), where increased container traffic has grown even greater since the expansion of the Panama Canal. PHA Executive Director Roger Guenther said that PHA officials and officials of Freight Shuttle International, LLC (FSI) have agreed in a recently signed Memorandum of Understanding to work together to evaluate options over the next few months for deployment of the FSS at the port. PHA and FSI will announce more details of the agreement on Monday. "The FSS is the result of more than a decade of research at TTI," said TTI Agency Director Dennis Christiansen. "The technology has produced 17 patents held jointly by the A&M System and FSI."

Researchers say the FSS borrows the best characteristics from both truck and rail transport, and uses only about one-third the energy required by diesel trucks. Additional benefits of the FSS include: Zero point-of-service emissions  dramatically less pollution than from trucks.

Reduced roadway congestion.

Reduced potential for truck-related highway crashes.

Improved delivery time reliability.

Reduced infrastructure damage. The FSS is being introduced at a time when the freight industry faces mounting challenges  strained rail and roadway system capacity, environmental concerns, and a chronic shortage of truck drivers, to name only a few. "The industry cannot thrive without augmenting our existing transportation system and fundamentally changing how we approach freight movement," FSS Inventor and FSI Founder/Chairman Steve Roop says. "The Freight Shuttle System is designed to blend into today's intermodal network, integrating proven technologies with novel patented designs into a new mode of transportation." Photos, b-roll and background on the FSS will be available September 9th at 3:00 p.m. http://tti.tamu.edu/freight-shuttle-event For More Information:

Rick Davenport, Office (979) 862-3763 | Cell (979) 820-4844

[email protected] Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160210/331832LOGO Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160908/405738

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160210/331832LOGO To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-transport-mode-to-redefine-freight-movement-300325544.html SOURCE Texas A&M Transportation Institute

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[September 09, 2016] Intelligence Community Faces a Future of Increasing Complexity

WASHINGTON, Sept. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Cybersecurity will remain as much of a challenge for the next administration as it has been for the current White House, especially in light of the constant barrage of cyber attacks from nation states, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said. "The Russians hack our systems all the time, not just government but corporate and personal systems," he added. But for all the mounting global threatsincluding those from China and North Koreano matter who becomes the next president, "it will be OK," he stated. Clapper made the remarks at the opening at the Intelligence & National Security Summit held in Washington, D.C. this week. AFCEA International and the Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA) sponsored the two-day conference. Senior intelligence officials, including FBI Director James Comey and CIA Director John Brennan, touched on a variety of issues other than cybersecurity and the presidential election during the event. On the terrorism topic, Comey believes it is the threat that will dominate intelligence efforts during at least thenext five years and will be the result of "crushing" of the Islamic caliphate in Syria and Iraq and the surviving "hardened killer" militants who will flow into Europe to carry out attacks.



Brennan echoed the concern, saying that despite the group's loss of territory in Syria and Iraq, militants threaten security in the United States and Europe. Though al-Qaida in Iraqthe predecessor of ISILonce had been "reduced to the hundreds," the group reemerged, he said. And while security in Europe improved following attacks in France and Belgium, a fragmented alliance of 28 countries and different legal systems slows progress. Intelligence experts participating in the event's panel discussions agreed that combating terrorism is a multi-faceted challenge. Nick Rasmussen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, pointed out that the new face of global terrorism has morphed to an unrecognizable and nearly unmanageable element. Its face, he said, is the core of al-Qaida, the rise of the Islamic State, insurgent groups growing in Africa, radicalization in Europe and the increased risk of threats in the United States. In fact, the terrorist threat today is "broader, wider and deeper than any point in our past," with homegrown terrorism a mounting problem for national security, he added.

In Clapper's opinion, climate change will be an underlying meta-driver of unpredictable instability in the coming decades. "Major population centers will compete for ever-diminishing food and water resources, and governments will have an increasingly difficult time controlling their territories. And so, because of all of these factors, after ISIL's gone, we can expect some other terrorist entity to arise and a cycle of extremism that will continue to control us for the foreseeable future. And by the way, our more traditional adversaries like Russia and China and Iran and North Korea will continue to challenge us," he stated.

"And of course, technology will continue to be disruptive. Just think about the fact that Uber is the biggest taxi company in the world, and they don't own any cars. Airbnb is the biggest hotel company, and they don't own any properties. It is difficult to predict how technology will affect national security," Clapper said. "Tech areas like artificial intelligence, health care and agricultural, self-driving cars and 3-D printing have the potential to revolutionize our lives for the better or they could present vulnerabilities that are very hard to predict." Read more summit coverage online, including more about what DNI James Clapper had to say about the coming changes in the U.S. government after the November elections. AFCEA International, established in 1946, is a non-profit membership association serving the military, government, industry and academia. Join online. INSA is the premier intelligence and national security organization that provides a unique venue for collaboration, networking and examination of policy issues and solutions. Join online. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160909/406196

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130410/DC92618LOGO To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/intelligence-community-faces-a-future-of-increasing-complexity-300325777.html SOURCE AFCEA International

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By PTI: Bengaluru, Sep 9 (PTI) A 12-hour Karnataka bandh called by pro-Kannada and farmers outfits to protest the Supreme Courts direction to release water to Tamil Nadu today brought the countrys IT capital and Cauvery basin districts to a standstill and evoked a mixed response elswhere in the state.

Normal life in southern Karnataka belt, known as the old Mysuru region, was hit by the dawn-to-dusk bandh supported by some 800 organisations and the Opposition BJP and JDS, but it passed off peacefully across the state amid tight security.

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Complying with the Supreme Court order on Monday last, the Karnataka government has been releasing 15,000 cusecs of waterto Tamil Nadu since September 6. This has triggered a wave of protests inthe state, specifically in Cauvery river belt.

The brunt of the bandh was borne by Bengaluru, Mandya, the epicentre of Cauvery agitation, Mysuru and neighboring districts where massive protest marches and demonstrations were held, but the response was tepid in coastal districts.

Concerned over the "extreme unrest" over the release of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi to call forthwith "on a few hours notice" a meeting of chief ministers of the two states to end the impasse.

As the Cauvery row hotted up with the state observing the bandh, Siddaramaiah dashed off a missive to Modi, saying the "unrest", if continued, would have a serious impact on the states economy as also the IT sector which fetches enormous revenue and foreign exchange to the country.

"By this communication, I earnestly request you not only as Prime Minister, but as Head of the entire Federal system, to call a meeting of the Chief Ministers of the States (forthwith on a few hours notice) to resolve the impasse," Siddaramaiah said in the letter.

Todays bandh was the fourth lockdown in six weeks -- two relating to water sharing disputes with Tamil Nadu and Goa and the other two over wages including nationwide stir called by labour unions on September 2.

Roads were almost deserted in Bengaluru with shops, hotels and other commercial establishments, malls and cinema theaters shut and banking services hit.

Metro services were also stopped. Educational institutions declared a holiday today,and government offices were empty as attendance was not compulsory.

While some private companies had declared holiday,others had provided work from home option to employees.

Karnataka Cable Operators Association did not air Tamil channels.

Some 14,000 security personnel were deployed here, bolstered by Karnataka State Reserve Police, City Armed Reserve and Rapid Action Force. (MORE) PTI KSU RA VS GVS

--- ENDS ---
By Mail Today: Top Kannada film stars and technicians today staged demonstrations in Bengaluru to express solidarity with the farmers as part of the Karnataka Bandh to protest the release of Cauvery river water to Tamil Nadu.

Puneeth Rajkumar, Shivarajkumar, Darshan, Rachita Ram, Amulya, Ganesh, Upendra, Tara Anuradha, Sanjjanaa Archana and Manvitha Harish were among the actors, who staged demonstration in front of the Town Hall in Bengaluru.

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They raised slogans against Tamil Nadu and implored the Karnataka government to contest the Supreme's Court order.

"The government cannot take shelter under the Supreme Court's order. The government has to apprise the Supreme Court about the gravity of the situation in Karnataka. The farmers have always supported Kannada films and we stand by them," said actor Shivarajkumar.

RELEASE OF NEW MOVIES POSTPONED



The Kannada film industry has suspended all shooting activities today and release of new movies has been postponed. The police had a tough time managing the crowd, as thousands turned up near the Town Hall to see their favourite stars.

The Karnataka Bandh has been largely peaceful with stray incidents of pelting of stones in Mysuru and Mandya districts. Buses and trucks remained off the roads in most parts of he state.

ALSO READ | Cauvery dispute: Karnataka comes to a standstill, 53 Tamil channels blocked



--- ENDS ---
With the Cauvery water issue coming to a boil, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah is now pinning his hopes on reworking the distress formula with the Cauvery Supervisory Committee when they visit the state.

By Rohini Swamy: Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah is finding himself in the hot seat. With the Cauvery water issue coming to a boil, the chief minister is now pinning his hopes on reworking the distress formula with the Cauvery Supervisory Committee when they visit the state. With the Supreme Court ruling, the state has little choice but to release the ordered quantity of water, putting Siddaramaiah in a spot considering that he will have the huge and uncomfortable task of reassuring the state's farmers who have already begun feeling the heat.

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In an exclusive interview to India Today's Rohini Swamy, the Chief Minister spoke about his government's future plans and how the state plans to find a solution to this century-old standoff.

Q: The Opposition is now saying that you should not have released water. But Opposition leader Jagdish Shettar, when he was the chief minister, had to release Cauvery water when the state was in distress, the same was the situation under the governments of SM Krishna and Deve Gowda. So how do you see the Opposition's stand now?



Ans: In 1995, the court order was obeyed when Deve Gowda was chief minister. It was obeyed again in 2002, when SM Krishna was the chief minister. Water was released in 2012 also when Jagdish Shettar was chief minister and after Fali Nariman had suggested that the state release 10,000 cusecs of water every day as a goodwill gesture. The court, on the basis of Nariman's suggestion, had passed an order for the release of water for nine days from September 12 to 20, 2012. This time also, there is a court order. Ours is a constitutionally elected government and we cannot defy the court order. If we defy it then it attracts contempt of court proceedings.

Q: How will you handle the needs of the state, especially of drinking water?

Ans: We need 28 TMC of water till June next year, we will manage. We have planned for it.

Q: How will we manage, what will be the course of action ?

Ans: You see, the reservoirs have around 47 TMC of water right now. The court has ordered the release of 30 TMC of water for the days. For this order, we are going to file a modification plea in front of the Supreme Court. We will also approach the Cauvery Supervisory Committee. We will see what decision they will take. In September and October we are expecting some rains and some inflow to the reservoirs and so with this water and with the water available in the reservoirs we will manage and we have planned it.

Q: Depending on the rains, means literally waiting for the rain gods to shower upon us.

Ans: See, we have taken an average of 41 years and on that basis we are expecting a certain quantity of water in terms of rains. Taking that water into consideration, we are planning for irrigation and drinking water.

Also Read:

Cauvery dispute: Siddaramaiah writes to Modi, urges him to convene meeting of all southern chief ministers

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Cauvery water dispute: Tamil Nadu farmers facing maximum brunt

Cauvery dispute: Karnataka comes to a standstill, 53 Tamil channels blocked

Cauvery row: Kannada film stars join farmers' protest



--- ENDS ---
Grouplove have such a strong hold on Australian crowds that its easy to forget theyre not from our sunny shores. So it comes as a slight surprise when the very strong New York drawl of Christian Zucconi greets me over the phone on a rainy Thursday morning.

Hes calling from Chicago where the band are currently touring their new album Big Mess, the follow up to 2013s gigantic Spreading Rumours recorded in part with producer , marking the first time theyve worked with an outside producer.

I think it was a cool thing that we did, we went outside the box and tried someone new. Phil was someone we all love, the records hes done sound impeccable. We did a song with him for a soundtrack before we did the album kind to get a feel of him. He was amazing, hes a smart, funny dude from Seattle and were all kind of infatuated with that city so it all made sense to try him out.

We went to do the second half with Ryan producing, I think as someone whos always done our records it was fun for him to gain exposure and knowledge from someone whos been doing it for so long and I think it bled into each other and they both helped each other else. Ryan whilst we were in Seattle brought things to the table that Phil wasnt used to, and they meshed well together and it made a cool record.

Big Mess comes after a chaotic past few years for the band, between wrapping up their last tour and the arrival of a new baby, the record takes its title from all this and presents it in a superb, loud package.

I guess it came from a lyric from the first song on the album. It just kind of makes perfect sense for the last few years of our lives. Getting off tour, weve been so busy on tour and we finish and weve lost all our friendships. We dont see our friends or any of our family because were always away. We get home to a house that hasnt been lived in, Hannah and I were having a baby.

Everything just kind of felt completely out of control and I guess in that chaos is where we thrive, where we can write our best songs, so Big Mess is our place to shine. The crazier things get the better the songs get for us. It just kind of bleeds into our subconscious and it comes out in the form of music and it just validates everything in our lives.

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In the past Grouplove have created wild, colourful music videos and the latest video for the first single Welcome To Your Life is no different, only in that the way it was created. Teaming up with Genero  an Australian company connecting the creative community with video content  the band started a project to get film makers to create music videos for the album.

In the past few years weve done our own music videos but theres been some random artists out there that have put out their own videos that have been really really spectacular. So its always nice to think of new ways to engage your fans and do things differently than most bands. Especially us with Hannah being the super artist that she is with writing songs for the bands and also creating all the art.

Over the years weve met so many people shes inspired and they just want to make more art and delve into that brain space for themselves and we just thought it was a great idea to continue that and have fans create their own videos if theyre so inclined and we just chose the winner for Welcome To Your Life which was really cool because all these fans are all over the world making these amazing videos. Its cool that people care to do it and its always wonderful to inspire people to make art, thats why we do it. Its a cool new thing to try out for sure.

Following a stellar tradition of producing killer covers, the band are looking to build on their already large repertoire and follow on from their 2015 EP Under The Covers.

Its interesting because weve done all these covers even since then as well, we just did a Dune Rats song for Like A Version and weve become this band that kind of reinterprets songs and we change them up but we just did this Beatles song thats going to come out soon and the record comes out next week and were going to be in New York and were going to do these sessions for certain radio stations and Spotify and theyre all asking for covers. So were constantly being challenged to come up with covers number one and then hopefully to manipulate them a little bit.

So right now were thinking of reinterpreting a Rihanna song, which one were not sure. Thats the thing with these, when you hear all these fucking awesome songs youre like yo lets definitely do that but then the next day youre like wait which one were we going to do? Its fun to do, and Im glad were being challenged to keep doing it.

The next cover on the tour, Im not sure what were going to do because we always do one with every album cycle. Last album cycle we did Drunk In Love and fans seemed to appreciate it.

Grouplove and Australia have a special relationship. Ever since their debut Aussie crowds have embraced them with open arms, and with a new album and a slot on the Falls Festival lineup, its sure to make the relationship even stronger.

We love playing Australia, we were there like two weeks ago and once again they were probably the best shows weve ever played. Our favourite show weve played to this day as a band is two years ago at Splendour in the Grass. I dont know what it is, Australia is just so fucking great to us and were so thankful for the enthusiasm the crowd gives us.

Our last show at the Corner Hotel was personally one of my favourite shows Ive ever played. Its just always that way, its like this magic subliminal connection so were so happy were coming back. We always want to be there for you guys and you guys to always be there for us, its like a beautiful miracle that it even exists. Its amazing.
CHECK THE FIRST PHOTOS FROM TODAY'S PETA BBQ PROTEST ON THE PLAZA!!!

"Our model is legally as naked as she is allowed to be...This is about being provocative and reminding people that meat is murder before Memorial Day cookouts...Because Kansas City is such a BBQ town."

PETA TO 'BARBECUE' A HUMAN IN KANSAS CITY TO SHOW THAT MEAT IS MURDER

TKC down on the Kansas City Country Club Plaza right now because I heard they were going to be cooking up a white woman.To wit...We talked to campaignerand he wasn't shy about this shock tactic.The PETA spokesmam said:Here is a closer look at the hottie cookout...Sadly, TKC did not get a serving of white broad but there were plenty of corporate white dudes hanging around trying to get a sniff.Check the presser:Hoping to inspire residents to realize that a corpse is a corpsewhether fish, fowl, or even FrankPETA protesters will "cook" a nearly naked PETA member on a grill outside Jack Stack Barbecue in Kansas City, Mo., on Wednesday to mark National Barbecue Month. PETA's point? That all animals are made of flesh, bone, and blood, just as humans are, and that eating meat entails eating the corpse of an animal who was an individual with feelings and a distinct personality."We are challenging Kansas City residents to think about what meat really is," says PETA Senior Vice President of Communications Lisa Lange. "Flesh is flesh, and animals feel pain and suffer, just as humans do, so if you'd never consider eating another human, you might want to think twice about eating other animals."Chickens, pigs, cows, and fish feel pain and fear just as intensely as do the animals who share our homes with us, yet they are abused in ways that would be illegal if dogs and cats were the victims. On today's factory farms, chickens and turkeys have their throats cut while they're still conscious, piglets are castrated and have their tails cut off without being given any painkillers, and cows are hung upside down and are often skinned while they're still able to feel pain. On the decks of fishing boats, fish suffocate or are cut open while they're still alive.#######Interesting side note, the PETA crew got a bit of flack from bystanders but they also recruited some support.This young lady offered to hold a sign for a bit to help the cause.TV newsies, feel free to use these pix.And all of this meat talk is making me uncomfortable. TKC is gonna go grab a bagel and a coffee.Hopefully, more in a bit...
NATIONAL PRISON STRIKE THREATENS TO EXACERBATE JACKSON COUNTY JAIL CRISIS!!!

Is Organizing Striking Prisoners The Next Occupy Wall Street?

Boing Boing: Largest prison strike in US history









Truth Out: How Prisoners Are Organizing a Nationwide Strike From Behind Bars

Let's not forget that Kansas City is embroiled in awhich continues to blow back in the face of the current administration . . .Moreover and much more seriously than. . .Here's an important bit of edification from denizens of our blog community . . .We've caught word ofThere's been a few bleeps here and there but now appears to be a real grass roots organizing campaign across the US, Mexico, Brazil, Scotland, Wales, UK and Greece plan work stoppages inside many prisons.The question posted online was, "how will we know if a prison strike will have any effect"?What we do know is 7 cell blocks in 5 prisons in Texas went on strike in April of this year letting the world know the "Free Texas Movement was down". A member of the Free Alabama Movement was interviewed by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now while in Solitary Confinement this summer.So the question is, "is prison organizing the next?"#########Links:Developing . . .
Here is a timeline of events during the bandh over Cauvery water dispute in Bengaluru.

Pro-Kannada organisation activists shout slogans during Karnataka Bandh against the Supreme court verdict on Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu, in Bengaluru. (PTI Photo)

By Rohini Swamy: The bandh call in Karnataka was a success as schools, commercial establishments, private companies, pharmacies kept their shutters down. Pro-Kannada activists took to the streets with the red and yellow flag of Karnataka shouting slogans like 'Cauvery nammudu' (Cauvery is ours), Beke Beku Nyaya Beku (We want justice) and anti-Jayalalithaa and anti-Siddaramaiah slogans.

READ| Cauvery dispute: State will manage with available water resources, Siddaramaiah tells India Today



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Here is a timeline of events during the bandh in the IT capital of India:



4.00 pm: A Kannada activist Prabhu cut himself demanding water at Freedom Park. Rushed to hospital.

Pro-Kannada activists burn the tyres during Karnataka Bandh called in against the Supreme Court verdict on Cauvery water in Bengaluru. (PTI Photo)

3.45 pm: Kiran Shaw issues clarification saying her tweet was grossly misunderstood and her heart and support will always be with Karnataka as a Kannadiga.

3.30 pm: More posters of Jayalalithaa and CM Siddaramaiah set on fire in protest.

2:15 pm: Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah writes a letter to PM Narendra Modi seeking an urgent intervention on the Cauvery water dispute.

1:00 pm: Police open lathicharge on farmers at the KRS dam in Mandya as they were trying to lay siege. Heavy deployment of police personnel.

12:07 pm: Bus attacked in Koppal for plying during bandh

11:00 am: Pro Kannada federation president Vattal Nagaraj says Kiran Shaw's tweet 'uncalled' for.



10:45 am: Sandalwood film stars protest in front of the Film Chamber. Cable operators black out 53 Tamil channels for a day.

10:30 am: A delegation from Karnataka Film Chamber of Commerce met the Governor of Karnataka Governor Vajubhai Vala seeking intervention.

10.12 am: Biocon CMD tweets saying Bengaluru should be renamed Bandhaluru, deletes tweet later.

10:00 am: Protestors, in order to register their protest, perform funeral rites in front of the photographs of Jayalalithaa.

9.55 am: Theatre groups assemble at Town hall in Bengaluru and perform street plays as a form of unique protest.

Pro-Kannada organisation activists perform the final rites of the Tamilnadu CM J Jayalalitha and Karnataka Water Resources Minister M B Patil in protest against the Supreme Court verdict on Cauvery water, in Bengaluru. (PTI Photo)

9:50 am: Pro-Kannada organisations take out bike rallies in Bengaluru city with Karnataka flags.

9.40 am: Farmers in Ramanagaram sit in protest and burn posters of the Tamil Nadu CM Jayalalithaa and the Karnataka water resources minister MB Patil.

9:30 am: Transgenders in Bengaluru come out in protest.

Kannada Film Industry actors and actresses sitting on dharna during Karnataka Bandh called in protest against the Supreme Court verdict on Cauvery water, in Bengaluru. (PTI Photo) Kannada Film Industry actors and actresses sitting on dharna during Karnataka Bandh called in protest against the Supreme Court verdict on Cauvery water, in Bengaluru. (PTI Photo)

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9:00 am: Tamil Nadu buses that were to ply were stopped by the Bangalore police.

8:30 am: Pro-Kannada groups walk towards the KRS dam protesting against the Supreme Court order.

8:00 am: Farmers in Mandya begin their protests on the streets.

Also Read:

Cauvery dispute: Siddaramaiah writes to Modi, urges him to convene meeting of all southern chief ministers

Cauvery water dispute: Tamil Nadu farmers facing maximum brunt

Cauvery dispute: Karnataka comes to a standstill, 53 Tamil channels blockedCauvery row: Kannada film stars join farmers' protest

--- ENDS ---
"Hillary Clinton spoke to the National Baptist Convention in Kansas City, Missouri, on Thursday evening. Clinton's speech focused on how faith led her to her life of public service, and how faith would guide her in the White House if she were elected . See her full remarks."








ONCE AGAIN KANSAS CITY IGNORED A HILLARY CLINTON FOR PREZ RALLY!!!

And once again social media trumps the "real" news and even MSM reporters are far more candid when it comes to tweets and the reality of life and politics in Kansas City.First word belongs to KSHB newsie Brian Abel and this EPIC tweet he shared from yesterday reporting live from the scene of the National Baptist Convention barely filling up a 1/5th of Bartle Hall right before the Democratic Party candidate speaks:Thousands of retweets later but no headline or mention in the paper or local newscasts . . .This story sums things up. . .A few more links . . .In fairness, there's a telephoto shot that shows a more flattering photo but the reality is that traffic in Downtown wasn't that bad and Kansas City mostly skipped the private affair.Explanation from Mr. Abel: "Front of press constituted 10 rows. 14 seats per section, 6 sections. Less than 1,000 of the >5k setup" For the cheap seats . . .Remember that former Prez Bill Clinton barely garnered a handful of people and his plane mysteriously turned around the last time he turned up in Kansas City. Like it or not, the reality is that there isn't much evidence that Kansas City has a lot of love for Hillary Clinton and MSM silence on this topic in their "official" reports speaks volumes.You decide . . .
"Mike Shanin interviews Wyandotte County District Attorney Elect Mark Dupree about his priorities when he takes office. Then Gwen Grant, Lisa Johnston, Ron Freeman and Steve Mirakian discuss the upcoming retention vote for Kansas Supreme Court justices, next year's infrastructure and streetcar expansion elections in Kansas City, Missouri and media bias in this year's presidential race."

Theof Kansas City political chat makes a return to local television tonight in order to offer just a bit of discussion on local current events.Here's what started the conversation . . .You decide . . .
A meeting of European Union Mediterranean country leaders ended in Athens on Friday with the signature of the Athens Declaration

A meeting of European Union Mediterranean country leaders ended in Athens on Friday with the signature of the Athens Declaration and joint statements by all attending heads of state and government to the press, led by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.

Both the Summit and the adoption of the Athens Declaration mark "our joint will for the unity of Europe," Tsipras commented, while also announcing a decision to hold the next EU Med meeting in Portugal.

"We have an obligation to submit our own approach to handling and overcoming the challenges we face, replying to the forces of nationalism and xenophobia. We are not and do not aspire to be yet another initiative that divides Europe. We are and will continue to be an initiative for dialogue," Tsipras said.

The Greek prime minister's statement was followed by those of the other participants in the summit, starting with French President Francois Hollande, who also stressed the need for unity and cohesion and said that Mediterranean countries could contribute to the launch of a dialogue that was useful for Europe, contributing to its security and prosperity.

"We need a programme for growth and it is important to send a message of cohesion at a time of Brexit and the rise of populism in Europe," Hollande said.

Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades said the meeting was not an effort to create a group within the EU and noted that Mediterranean countries had much to contribute to dialogue in Europe.

"It is time to take specific and substantive decisions to deal with the causes of the alienation our citizens feel," he said, noting the need to adapt policies to tackle the challenges in security, migration and growth.

The real challenge

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said the real challenge presented by the meeting was to outline Europe's future at the upcoming Bratislava summit of '27' member-states - excluding Britain. He stressed that the future Europe must be a social Europe, a Europe of ideals, and that the Athens Declaration was an added value toward a "different Europe".

Portugal's Prime Minister Antonio Costa called for greater support of the EU's relations with Africa and also greater sharing of responsibility for refugees arriving in European territory. He said terrorism must be fought through the cooperation of the coast guards and border police and social integration, while calling for investments to boost growth and employment.

Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said the summit had arrived at solutions on how to move forward, while expressing support for the European Commission and the Juncker Plan.

"The idea of 'social Europe' was forgotten for a long period of time and we say that we will support the development of the Union toward the return of this idea," he added.

Spain's acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy was represented by the country's State Secretary for the European Union Fernando Eguidazu, who said Rajoy had wanted but been unable to attend. He described the summit as an important initiative and said that Spain is "an inseparable part of the Mediterranean Sea and will always support such meetings that address common problems."

Read more here.

RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report
A new study has revealed that Taiwan is the best country in the world for expats, while Kuwait is the worst

A new study has revealed that Taiwan is the best country in the world for expats, while Kuwait is the worst.

The results come from a report by the online expat community InterNations, which looks at everything from quality of life and personal finance, to job satisfaction and ease of settling indices.

More than 14,000 respondents representing 174 nationalities and 191 countries or territories took part and had their say on moving, living and working abroad.

Expat Insider put together a massive survey of people who chose to move abroad and what they make of the countries they live in. The results were fascinating.

Taiwan was ranked number one out of 67 countries on the list, with Malta scored second place and Ecuador came in third, followed by Mexico and New Zealand.

Greece ranked 26, right below the US and Cyprus.

Here is a list of the other countries that ranked in the top 10.

1.Taiwan

2.Malta

3.Ecuador

4.Mexico

5.New Zealand

6.Costa Rica

7.Australia

8.Austria

9.Luxemburg

10.Czech Republic

Read more here.

RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report
TUI every year carries out the biggest survey in the tourism industry to assess the quality and service of some 8,000 holiday hotels

TUI, Germanys leading tour operator, every year carries out the biggest survey in the tourism industry to assess the quality and service of some 8,000 holiday hotels around the world on the basis of the opinions of around 500,000 customers. The 100 best hotels win the coveted hotel award, the TUI Holly 2016.

This year, 8 Greek hotels were awarded, 4 of which are located in Kos (Iotel Horizon Beach Resort, Hotel Palladium, Neptune Hotels Resort Convention Centre Spa and Palazzo del Mare), 3 in Rhodes (Atlantica Imperial Resort Spa, Kalithea Horizon Royal and Lidos Mare) and 1 in Heraklion (Iotel Anissa Village).

Greece ranked third among countries with the highest number of winning hotels while Turkey ranked first with 31 hotels.

The owner of the Grand Hotel Residencia, Theo Gerlach, 87 was honored for lifetime achievement. He bought the first pieces of land on Gran Canaria in 1970, opened his first hotel four years later and dedicated all his life to the preservation of a clean environment and proper use of natural resources

Winners in separate award categories were as follows:

Better TUI hotel | Grand Hotel Residencia, Gran Canaria

Best hotel in the West Mediterranean / Atlantic | Hotel Albergaria Dias, Madeira

Best hotel in East Mediterranean | Hotel Yetkin, Turkey

Best hotel in distant destination | Chong Fah Beach Resort, Thailand

Best club | Robinson Club Soma Bay, Egypt

See the complete list of 100 winning hotels here

RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report




Cypriot Parliament ruled to approve an amendment to strike out a provision in the Cypriot constitution which enables the imposition of the death penalty

Cypriot Parliament ruled to approve an amendment to strike out a provision in the Cypriot constitution which enables the imposition of the death penalty on Friday.

The majority of MPs who gathered this morning for the first plenary session of the 2016/17 period voted in favour of writing off the second paragraph of article 7. This was the 10th amendment in the Constitution of the Republic of Cyprus.

Of those present, 49 voted in favour while both ELAM MPs abstained. The Cyprus House consists of 56 MPs from eight political parties.

The amendment was deemed necessary because the Republic of Cyprus as a state governed by the rule of law that defends human rights and in particular the right to life and to physical integrity, opposes as a matter of principle the imposition of the death penalty.

The reasoning behind the amendment also notes that the Republic of Cyprus is an EU member state and abides by the Charter of Fundamental Rights, the European Convention on Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

The article that was removed provided for the possibility of imposing the death penalty by law in cases of premeditated murder, high treason, piracy or any offence resulting in the capital punishment under military law.

Addressing the plenary CNA reported, Parliament President Demetris Syllouris said that there are a few fundamental articles in the Constitution that also refer to the capital punishment, which are being examined by the Attorney General.

Serious work needs to be done and the House will do its bid, in consultation with the Attorney General and the President of the House Committee on Legal Affairs, Syllouris concluded.

History of death penalty in Cyprus

The last time the death penalty was imposed in Cyprus was in 1962.

Specifically, information from the UK said that the last execution in the Republic of Cyprus was on June 13, 1962.

On that day, British executioners Harry Allen and John Underhill arrived in Cyprus and executed three prisoners, Hambis Zacharia, Michael Hiletikos, Lazaris Demetriou, who had all be imprisoned on murder charges.

Zacharia had killed a man four years prior in a vineyard in Limassol, and Hiletikos and Demetriou had been convicted of shooting a man in Limassol in 1961.

In the occupied areas the so called constitution contains a provision for the death penalty.

Article 15 states: A law may provide for such penalty only in cases of high treason in times of war, piracy and terrorism jure gentium or repeated conviction of an offence punishable with life imprisonment.

Three conditions

The so called constitution added that there are three conditions for which the death penalty will not be applied.

Specifically the conditions are as follows:

- Defending ones self or property against the infliction of a proportionate and otherwise unavoidable and irreparable evil

- Effecting an arrest or in preventing the escape of a person lawfully detained

- Taking action for the purpose of quelling a riot or insurrection, when and as provided by law

The so called TRNC has never carried out an execution, despite its inclusion in the so called constitution'.

Read more here.

RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report
The US-led war on Islamic State has depleted the group's funds, leadership and foreign fighters, but the biggest battle yet is expected later this year in Iraq's northern city of Mosul, where Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi declared his "caliphate" two years ago.



The jihadist insurgents have lost more than half the territory they seized in Iraq and nearly as much

in neighbouring Syria, but still manage to control their twin capitals of Mosul and Raqqa, symbols

of the state they sought to build at the heart of the Middle East.



Military and humanitarian preparations are now in full swing to retake Mosul, the largest city

under the ultra-hardline group's control. American troops are establishing a logistics hub to the

south, while the UN warns of the world's most complex humanitarian operation this

year.

Iraq's recapture over the summer of Qayyara airbase and surrounding areas along the Tigris river



60 km (nearly 40 miles) south of Mosul have set the stage for a big push on the city, which



commanders say could start by late October.



Whether Islamic State makes a final stand in Mosul or slips away to fight another day remains in



question, but Baghdad expects a fierce battle and the international coalition backing it is preparing



for one.



The densely populated river valley may hold obstacles for the military, though Islamic State



appears to be putting up relatively little resistance, possibly to conserve fighters for a showdown



in Mosul where their forces are estimated at between 3,000 and 9,000.



Hardcore fighters have likely slipped out already through the desert and into Syria, while many top



leaders and foreign fighters have been killed in targeted air strikes, according to Major General



Najm al-Jabouri, the Mosul operation's commander.



He told Reuters that victory by year's end would be easy, in keeping with pledges by Prime



Minister Haider Al-Abadi.



"We will go to Mosul, they will go to Tel Afar. We will go to Tel Afar, they will go to Baaj," said



Jabouri, referring to IS-controlled districts 70 km (44 miles) and 140 km (87 miles)west of



Mosul, respectively, which can be used to reach Syria.



"We will go to Baaj, maybe. It depends on the situation in Syria. They can get to Syria but the



situation there is not like before. It is not a safe haven for them now."



TURNING TIDE



Lieutenant General Vincent Stewart, Director of the US Defense Intelligence Agency, said on



Thursday he expected the Mosul operation could unfold in the next two or three months but that it



would be long and difficult.



"Urban warfighting is not easy and this is a large city that has had at least two years to prepare to



defend its position ... It's going to be a multi-dimensional fight," Stewart said at a national security



summit in Washington.



The war against jihadist insurgents in the Middle East has ebbed and flowed but there is a palpable



sense in the region that the tide has turned against Islamic State.



In the past year and a half, the group has lost swathes of territory and strategic outposts. In Iraq it



was driven out of Tikrit and Sinjar in the north, the oil refinery town of Baiji, and finally Ramadi



and Falluja in western Anbar province, the heart of the insurgency following the U.S.-led invasion



in 2003 that toppled Saddam Hussein.



In northern Syria, US-allied Kurdish militia of the People's Protection Units (YPG) have taken



vital territory and border crossings below the frontier with Turkey after capturing Kobani and later



taking Tel Abyad, a key supply line for the jihadist capital Raqqa further south. The YPG has



expanded its territory west of the Euphrates, seizing Manbij last month.



Meanwhile Turkey, backing Syrian rebels, this month cleared Islamic State from its southern



border by seizing some 20 villages while Libyan government forces are close to flushing IS



insurgents from holdouts in Sirte.



Amid those territorial losses, Islamic State has claimed credit for a surge in global attacks this year



beyond its main Middle East theatre. European countries remain on alert for additional strikes



based on undisclosed information.



Nonetheless, the US military has said Iraq is on track to retake Mosul later this year. Over the



past two weeks, convoys of sophisticated engineering vehicles have been seen approaching



Qayyara airbase, which Islamic State wrecked before withdrawing in July.



Repairing it to help supply the 20,000 to 30,000 Iraqi troops expected to be used in the campaign



could take another two months. Until then, forces trained by the U.S.-led coalition are amassing



further afield.



Mosul fell to Islamic State in June 2014 when Iraqi security forces, riddled with corruption and



sectarianism despite billions of dollars in US aid, dropped their weapons and fled from the



insurgents.



KURDISH AND SHI'ITE FORCES



Kurdish peshmerga forces, entrenched east, north and northwest of Mosul since 2014, will help



tighten the noose around the city but might not enter central districts to avoid aggravating political



sensitivities.



After retaking 11 villages southeast of Mosul last month, they are now eyeing eastern Christian



and Shabak villages long abandoned by minority communities the group seeks to eliminate.



The peshmerga's role is complicated by tensions with the central government, which claims



territory the Kurds have taken from IS and effectively annexed to their autonomous region. The



Kurds say Baghdad is not forthcoming about its military strategy for Mosul or its plans to manage



it after the battle.



"If we do not prepare the politics of it, we may not succeed in the military plan or we may succeed



in the military plan but lose the political plan and that would be disastrous," Falah Mustafa Bakir,



the head of Kurdistan's Foreign Relations Department, told Reuters last week.



The participation of the Hashid Shaabi, a government umbrella for mostly Shi'ite militias, is also



unresolved. Powerful commanders have pledged to take part, despite fears among Mosul's Sunni



leaders and residents of rights abuses.



Prime Minister Abadi said this week the demands of the battle would dictate the disposition of



forces but that no decision had been made to bar the Hashid.



Confrontation that inflames sectarian tensions between Shi'ite-led government forces and the



Sunni jihadists of Islamic State risks turning Mosul into a "bloodbath", according to a Western



diplomat in Baghdad.



HUMANITARIAN CRISIS



The Mosul operation has also triggered large-scale humanitarian planning, with the U.N.



predicting up to one million people could flee the city in all directions.



The Kurds expect half of those leaving will head towards their territory, which already struggles to



accommodate more than one million displaced people.



Regional authorities, fearing a new wave will exacerbate demographic and security concerns, aim



to settle new arrivals in camps outside of main cities.



In the best-case scenario, though, there is only enough land and funding for about 450,000 people,



according to a senior U.N. official, raising the prospect of housing others in unused buildings or



abandoned villages.



"If there is mass displacement, there could be shantytowns in the disputed border areas because the



plan for camps doesn't accommodate them all," said Tom Robinson, director of Rise Foundation,



which analyses Iraq's humanitarian crisis.



Aid workers say the authorities are limiting the construction of new camps to discourage



displacement. In fact, the military is urging residents to shelter in place as it advances, but that will



only be feasible if fighting doesn't lay waste to homes and infrastructure as it has before.



Jabouri, the top Iraqi commander, dismissed concerns that such a scheme jeopardises civilians'



safety, saying: "What does it mean if some areas receive mortars? That's not the end of the world.



We are in Iraq, not in Switzerland." -Reuters
Australia-based Elemental Minerals has signed an investment agreement with Omans State General Reserve Fund (SGRF), a sovereign wealth fund, to finance the development of a major potash project in the Republic of Congo, said a report.



Elemental Minerals revealed in a statement that the SGRF is one of three globally significant strategic investors that have made a cumulative $50 million equity injection against the allocation of shares in the company, added the Oman Daily Observer report.



SGRF has agreed to subscribe for shares with a total subscription value of $20 million at an issue price of $0.20, or approximately 133 million shares, representing approximately 17.4 per cent of the total issued share capital of Elemental Minerals, it said



The other strategic investors are: Sociedad Quimica y Minera de Chile SA (SQM), a prominent Chilean producer of fertilisers and industrial chemicals, with a $20 million contribution; and Summit, a private equity fund group operating in Africa, with an investment of $10 million.



Elemental said the funding would enable the appointment of a world class engineering and construction consortium to complete a definitive feasibility study (DFS) for its flagship potash project, the Kola Sylvinite Project in the Republic of Congo.



Billed as one of the most attractive potash opportunities globally, Kola is estimated to hold proven and probable reserves of 152 million tonnes of Sylvinite ore (potash ore). With an operating cost of less than $100 per tonne of muriate of potash (MOP), it would be one of the lowest cost potash mines in the world, according to Elemental.



Additionally, the strategic investment allows Elemental to carry out additional drilling at the Dougou Extension Sylvinite Prospect, deemed as a candidate for the worlds highest grading potash seam. Located 15km southwest of Kola, the Dougou Extension lies immediately west of the Dougou Deposit, a very large deposit with an indicated potash mineral resource of 1.1 billion tonnes, added the report.


"The people can register their protest but the state government will not be a mute spectator if anybody indulges in violence or arson and those who indulge in violence will be dealt with severely," said Karnataka chief minister.

By Rohini Swamy: Mandya, Mysuru, Bengaluru came to a standstill as the call for Karnataka bandh by pro-Kannada organisations to protest against the release of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu was successful.

"The people can register their protest but the state government will not be a mute spectator if anybody indulges in violence or arson and those who indulge in violence will be dealt with severely," said Karnataka chief minister, Siddaramaiah.

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Also read:

Cauvery dispute: Statewide bandh in Karnataka, heavy security deployed

Cauvery water dispute: Karnataka to appeal against SC verdict, seek relief Cauvery row: Tamilians in Bengaluru seek protection



HEAVY POLICE DEPLOYMENT

The cities turned into fortresses due to heavy police deployment across the state and in the IT capital. Police personnel from Andhra Pradesh, Kerala have been called in to provide added security.

53 TAMIL CHANNELS BLOCKED



3,800 petrol and diesel bunks including 460 in Bengaluru are observing the bandh from 6 am - 6 pm. Cable operators have also supported the bandh and 53 Tamil channels have been blocked.

SCHOOLS, COLLEGES SHUT

All pharmacies except hospital pharmacies have been kept open. Schools and colleges have been shut down. Shops, commercial establishments, hotels and restaurants have been shut.

Public transport may be affected as state transport buses will stay off the roads, and autorickshaw and cab unions are extending their support to bandh. Metro services have also been affected.

People protest against Supreme Court's verdict on Cauvery water. Photo: Rohini Swamy

Protestors burnt tyres and blocked roads in Mandya and Mysuru. Security has been tightened around the KRS dam in Mandya.

Lawyers are taking out a protest in front of the town hall in Mysuru.

A theatre group consisting of 20 artists will perform street plays and a cultural 'Jatha' starting from Ravindra Kalakshetra in Bengaluru and will walk all the way to Mandya and Mysuru.

Passengers are facing difficulties in reaching the airport due to lack of public transport.



--- ENDS ---
A traveller with a bulge in their body from a cyst or hernia might get flagged for an invasive airport security screening to look for explosives, a case report suggests.



In many larger airports, X-rays have been replaced in recent years by machines that use radio

frequencies to detect suspicious items on travellers, researchers note in Jama Dermatology.



One female traveller with a common type of skin cyst was flagged for a hidden explosive search at

a US airport, her physician, Dr Warren Heymann, notes in the report.



Until my patient told me her story, I had never encountered this situation, Heymann, a researcher

at Cooper Medical School of Rowan University in Camden, New Jersey, said by email.



To the best of my knowledge, there has only been one similar case in the medical literature, as

noted in my article - a man with a hernia, Heymann added.



On future trips, this woman travelled with a doctors note explaining her condition that she could

show airport security agents, Heymann said in the case report.



The man with the hernia had a protrusion in his groin area that alarmed airport screeners. This

traveller was interrogated and subjected to a genital exam, Heymann reported.



I would suggest that people be aware that this could happen to them if they have prominent

lesions on their skin, Heymann said by email.



Having a letter from a physician noting the presence of a cyst, hernia, or other lesion might help,

but understandably, the TSA agent may still wish to perform a pat down and a swipe for

contraband, Heymann added. Mutual understanding and respect should allow the screening

process to go smoothly.



Airport scanners generally show solid masses on the surface area of a persons body and/or in their

clothing.



If a large cyst or mass appears to stick up above the skin or body outline around it, or looks like a

solid mass compared to the area around it, the scanner may reflect that, said Dr Mahadevappa

Mahesh, a radiology and public health researcher at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore who

wasnt involved in the case report.



Theres no data on how many travellers may experience incidents like the woman with the cyst or

the man with the hernia, Mahesh, a member of the American College of Radiologys medical

physics commission, said by email.



We suspect that it is a rare situation, Mahesh said.

Its more common for patients that have been injected with or ingested a radioactive material for

nuclear medicine exams to be flagged for airport screening because radiation may be detected if

they travel shortly after their procedures, Mahesh added.



While smaller cysts shouldnt confuse airport scanners, its more likely that travellers would be

flagged when they have larger ones, said Dr David Brenner, a radiology researcher at Columbia

University Medical Center in New York who wasnt involved in the case report.



If you do have a large (greater than 2 inch) external skin lesion which is located under your

clothes, you would be prudent to get a doctors note before travelling  but you still might expect a patdown, Brenner said by email. - Reuters Health
This is the second bandh in the state in less than a week's time and the fourth this year.

People block a road with burning tyres during a protest against Supreme Court's verdict on Cauvery water. Photo: PTI

By India Today Web Desk: The pro-Kannada organisations have called for a statewide bandh in Karnataka today to protest against the Supreme Court direction to release Cauvery river water to Tamil Nadu. The bandh is likely to throw normal life out of gear.

This is the second bandh in the state in less than a week's time and the fourth this year.

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Also read:

Cauvery dispute: Kannada film stars to participate in Karnataka bundh on September 9

Cauvery water dispute: Karnataka to appeal against SC verdict, seek relief

Cauvery row: Tamilians in Bengaluru seek protection



COMMUTERS TO FACE BRUNT



Public transport may be affected as state transport buses will stay off the roads, and autorickshaw and cab unions are extending their support to bandh. Metro services is also likely to be hit.

The Mysore-Mandya-Bangalore road will continue to remain blocked affecting road traffic. However, essential services will be functioning.

Markets, malls and cinema halls have also been asked to remain shut today.

SCHOOLS, COLLEGES SHUT

Schools and colleges have declared a holiday today and attendance at government offices will not be compulsory.

ELABORATE SECURITY ARRANGEMENTS MADE

"We have deployed adequate forces to maintain law and order in the state," said Karnataka home minister G Parameshwara. 16,000 police personnel have been deployed in Bengaluru over security concerns. 36 Karnataka State Reserve Police, 30 City Armed Reserve platoons and one company Rapid Action Force have also been deployed.

Chief Minister Siddaramiah made an appeal for peace and said there should be no damage to public property during the bandh.

--- ENDS ---
CapitaLands wholly owned serviced residence business unit, The Ascott Limited (Ascott), has swept six accolades including Europes Leading Serviced Apartment Brand at the World Travel Awards Europe 2016. Established since 1993, the World Travel Awards is considered to be the Oscars of the travel industry, acknowledging and celebrating excellence across all tourism sectors. Winners are voted by travellers and travel professionals worldwide.



(TRAVPR.COM) EUROPE - September 9th, 2016 - CapitaLands wholly owned serviced residence business unit, The Ascott Limited (Ascott), has swept six accolades including Europes Leading Serviced Apartment Brand at the World Travel Awards Europe 2016. Established since 1993, the World Travel Awards is considered to be the Oscars of the travel industry, acknowledging and celebrating excellence across all tourism sectors. Winners are voted by travellers and travel professionals worldwide.

Ascott was honoured in the following categories at the World Travel Awards Europe gala ceremony that brought together the key players of Europes tourism industry:

Europe's Leading Serviced Apartment Brand: Citadines Apart'hotel

Belgium's Leading Serviced Apartments: Citadines Sainte-Catherine Brussels

France's Leading Serviced Apartment Brand: Citadines Apart'hotel

France's Leading Serviced Apartments: La Clef Tour Eiffel Paris

Germany's Leading Serviced Apartment Brand: Citadines Apart'hotel

Germany's Leading Serviced Apartments: Citadines Michel Hamburg

Mr Alfred Ong, Ascotts Managing Director for Europe, said: We are very proud to receive the awards and be recognised as the leader in the serviced residence industry. Credit goes to our staff who worked hard to ensure the well-being of our guests and provide unique home-away-from-home experiences. These awards inspire us to go even further in delivering award-winning hospitality and the best stay experiences for all our valued customers.

In Europe, Ascotts portfolio comprises 44 properties across 18 key cities in six countries  Belgium, France, Georgia, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom.

About The Ascott Limited

The Ascott Limited is a Singapore company that has grown to be the world's largest international serviced residence owner-operator. It has over 29,000 operating serviced residence units in key cities of the Americas, Asia Pacific, Europe and the Middle East, as well as over 17,000 units which are under development, making a total of more than 46,000 units in over 290 properties. The company operates three award-winning brands  Ascott, Citadines and Somerset. Its portfolio spans more than 100 cities across 27 countries.

Ascott, a wholly owned subsidiary of CapitaLand Limited, pioneered Asia Pacific's first international-class serviced residence with the opening of The Ascott Singapore in 1984. Today, the company boasts over 30 years of industry track record and award-winning serviced residence brands that enjoy recognition worldwide.

Ascotts achievements have been recognised internationally. Recent awards include World Travel Awards 2016 for Leading Serviced Apartment Brand in Europe; Business Traveller Middle East Awards 2016 for 'Best Serviced Apartment Company'; TTG China Travel Awards 2016 for Best Serviced Residence Operator in China; DestinAsian Readers Choice Awards 2016 for Best Serviced Residence Brand; Business Traveller Asia-Pacific Awards 2015 for Best Serviced Residence Brand; Business Traveller UK Awards 2015 for Best Serviced Apartment Company; and Business Traveller China Awards 2015 for Best Serviced Residence Brand and 'Best Serviced Residence'. For a full list of awards, please visit http://www.theascottlimited.com/en/aboutus/awards.

Visit www.the-ascott.com for more information and connect with us on social media at www.the-ascott.com/connect.

About CapitaLand Limited

CapitaLand is one of Asias largest real estate companies headquartered and listed in Singapore. The company leverages its significant asset base, design and development capabilities, active capital management strategies, extensive market network and operational capabilities to develop high-quality real estate products and services. Its diversified global real estate portfolio includes integrated developments, shopping malls, serviced residences, offices and homes. Its two core markets are Singapore and China, while Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam have been identified as new growth markets. The company also has one of the largest real estate fund management businesses with assets located in Asia.

CapitaLands listed real estate investment trusts are CapitaLand Mall Trust, CapitaLand Commercial Trust, Ascott Residence Trust, CapitaLand Retail China Trust and CapitaLand Malaysia Mall Trust.

Visit www.capitaland.com for more information.
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Combining common hardware store parts with readily available micro-controllers yields an automated vertical hydroponic garden system for indoors or outdoor growing.

Got garden fever but the cold and snowy weather is keeping you inside? Here's one antidote, at least for the DIY crowd: build a robotic vertical garden for automated indoor gardening!

The Robotic Urban Farm System (RUFS), from Paul Langdon of BLT Robotics, calls for parts readily available from most hardware stores for building the growing system itself, and then integrates several Arduino micro-controllers and a Raspberry Pi for automation and monitoring of the system.

The vertical hydroponic garden, which has space for "up to 160 plants" in an area of about 25 square feet, uses PVC pipe and gutter parts for the frame, which are easily sourced and can be worked with mostly basic tools (though an electric heat gun is required for one step).

The automation side of the RUFS is a bit more complex, yet because it uses the readily available Arduino components and a Raspberry Pi to do the heavy lifting, electronically speaking, it's well within the reach of a hobbyist or DIY builder.

The Arduino and Raspberry Pi components allow for not only environmental monitoring (temperature, humidity, lighting) of the conditions near the growing unit, but are also used to automate watering cycles, to monitor and manage nutrients in the water, as well as monitor and correct pH in the system. The RUFS plans also feature the use of a smartphone app using the Raspberry Pi as a webserver for monitoring and control of the system, but the management interface is said to still be in a development stage, and the API and SDK have not yet been released.

The RUFS was presented at the 2014 Maker Faire New York, where it was awarded Best in Class - Sustainability, and the plans are published in full on Instructables, where it was chosen as the Grand Prize winner for the 2014 Tech Contest.
Popular Telugu actor and Jana Sena Party chief Pawan Kalyan who was once a friend of the BJP today declared that he will fight to get special category status for Andhra Pradesh.

By Ashish Pandey: Popular Telugu actor and Jana Sena Party chief Pawan Kalyan who was once a friend of the BJP today declared that he will fight to get special category status for Andhra Pradesh.

Addressing a public meeting in this temple town, Pawan fired on all cylinders at the BJP for not fulfilling its word to grant special status.

Pawan, who had campaigned for Bharatiya Janata Party-Telugu Desam Party alliance in 2014 elections, did not spare Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying his respect for Modi is not at the cost of self-respect of people of the state.

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He even advised Modi and his party not to use the slogan of cow protection to diver the nation's attention from important issues.

"If you want cow protection, let each of your party worker adopt a cow but don't use cow and cow meat to divert the nation's attention from crucial issues," he told a huge gathering.

This was the first public meeting by Pawan in more than two years. He choose Tirupati for the event as it was here that Modi had addressed first election rally along with him and TDP chief N. Chandrababu Naidu and promised special status.

Pawan said he was speaking out after waiting for more than two years and denied that he was soft towards the BJP or TDP.

The actor said if the Congress divided the state in an unscientific manner, BJP was equally responsible. He recalled that it was BJP which gave slogan of one vote, two states in 1997 by passing a resolution at Kakinada in Andhra Pradesh.

The Jana Sena founder said he would launch the campaign for special status with a public meeting in the same town on September 9 and his party will explain to people how injustice was done to the state.

In the second phase, Jana Sena will pressurise the state government and MPs of all parties to raise their voice and get special status.

He said if nothing was done to meet their demand, the party will launch protest on streets.

Targeting TDP for failing to get special status, he asked why the MPs failed to bring Parliament to standstill on the issue.

In a speech laced with film style dialogues, he said he took many risks to enter politics. He told people that he supported BJP in the last elections as there was no other alternative.

He also revealed that BJP President Amit Shah invited him to join the BJP saying regional party will have no future. The actor said Jana Sena may be a regional party but it has national outlook and it stands for national integrity.

He took a dig at central minister Venkaiah Naidu, remarking: "You are committing a blunder by standing by your party at the cost of the state's interests."

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"Hum Ladayenge. Hum ladayenge. Jeene tak hum ledayange (We will fight. We will fight. We will fight till we are alive)," he thundered emotionally, thumping on his chest. He also repeated the same in English, pointing out that the Modi government was not caring for Andhra people as they were talking in Telugu that he cannot understand.

He faulted the state MPs for being obedient instead of being assertive. "Congress MPs used to say madam, madam, now these MPs are saying sir, sir," he said, referring to the former addressing Congress President Sonia Gandhi and those now addressing Modi.

With IANS inputs



--- ENDS ---
New Delhi, September 9

The civil aviation regulator on Friday prohibited the use of Samsung Galaxy Note 7 smartphone on board aircraft.

According to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), the guidelines on the carriage and usage of the phone on board aircraft were issued after the recent safety related incidents involving the smartphone globally.

In a public notice, the regulator advised the travelling public and the airlines to ensure that the communication device is not turned on or its battery charged on board the aircraft.

The notice further detailed that the smartphone should not be stowed away in any checked-in baggage. However, the smartphone can be carried in a switched off mode in hand baggage.

"The Ministry of Civil Aviation has issued a public notice prohibiting the use of Samsung's Galaxy Note 7 smartphone on board an aircraft," the Ministry of Civil Aviation was quoted in an official statement.

"The Ministry has advised airlines and travelling public not to turn on or charge the said mobile during flights." Earlier, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued a warning not to charge or switch on Galaxy Note 7 on board aircraft.

Globally, three Australian airlines have already barred passengers from using or charging the smartphone during flights. More than 35 cases of exploding batteries have been reported since the phone was launched on August 19. ians
The YSR Congress has called a statewide Andhra Pradesh bandh on Saturday even as Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu appealed for cooperation from opposition parties.

By Ashish Pandey: Even as Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu welcomed Centre's special package to Andhra Pradesh, the opposition YSR Congress has called a statewide bandh on Saturday over demand for special status. The opposition party mounted fresh attack on the ruling TDP for not doing enough to secure special status for Andhra Pradesh after bifurcation of the state.

CM Naidu termed the opposition's call for bandh as irresponsible and their behavior inside the assembly unruly. Speaking to India Today, Naidu said, "People are already facing difficulties and you (opposition) want to create law and order problem, and cause inconvenience to people. This is very bad. I condemn it. This is not at all acceptable."

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On the question of special status for Andhra Pradesh, Naidu said, "Government of India has to fulfill its commitment. But, at the same time, opposition parties can't create problems in Andhra Pradesh."

READ: Chandrababu Naidu welcomes Centre's special package for Andhra Pradesh



'WE NEED TO HAVE PATIENCE'

"We can't take a decision in haste. Pulling out of NDA can't solve the problems. If it will bring the special status, then I am ready to quit," said the Andhra Pradesh CM when asked about opposition's demand for his resignation and pulling out TDP ministers from the union cabinet.

Responding to the special package announced by the centre, Naidu said, "We have to prepare an action plan and secure legal sanctity for it by way of government orders. People are totally disappointed the way the bifurcation of state happened. I request the Government of India to execute plan in a time bound program within a legal framework."

READ: Andhra Pradesh: Opposition calls for bandh to protest denial of special status, demands CM's resignation



'WE NEED MORE SUPPORT'

Naidu evaded a question about whether he was satisfied with the special package announced by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. Instead, he underscored financial burden on the state, saying, "For the past two-and-half-year we are suffering. Our income is less than our expenditure. In south India we are very low in per capita income and even revenue generation."

The Andhra Pradesh CM urged the Centre to "implement the provisions made in the bifurcation Act as well as the promises made by the then prime minister on the floor of the Rajya Sabha."

"We need a hand holding from the centre till we achieve some growth. The Centre has to help Andhra Pradesh in a big way for its development," Naidu said.



ALSO READ:



CM Chandrababu Naidu should step down: YSR Congress

Andhra Pradesh special status: PM Modi fears Chandrababu Naidu, says TDP MP

Chandrababu Naidu pledges to make Andhra 'best state' by 2029, asks people for support







--- ENDS ---
Tribune News Service & PTI

New Delhi, September 9

As the war of words and inter-connection between the existing telecom service providers and the newly launched Reliance Jio got murkier, telecom regulator TRAI today stepped in and tried to resolve the matter which has threatened to majorly affect the services of the new entrant from Reliance Industries stable.

TRAI officials met representatives from Airtel, Reliance Jio, Vodafone and Idea  to discuss the issue of mobile network interconnection among various players, but did not allow the industry body, Cellular Operators' Association of India's (COAI) officials from participating in the meeting.

On Thursday, the COAI had written to TRAI, requesting it to not limit the meeting only to the top three operators as it was an industry issue. A statement released by the industry body later said, "The COAI has been kept out of the TRAI meeting at the insistence of Reliance Jio, and TRAI acquiesced to their demand in an unprecedented manner".

So far, Jio has been saying that the big three telecom operators are abusing their dominant position.

But the COAI has brought on board the rest of the industry as far as granting interconnection to Jio is concerned.

After the meeting with TRAI, Reliance Jio Infocomm Board Member Mahendra Nahata said: "This is a fight of justice for the Indian customer. This is not about Jio customer, Idea customer, Voda customer or Airtel customer."

According to sources, TRAI Secretary Sudhir Gupta asked operators to resolve issue among themselves without compromising on quality of service norms laid down by the regulator.

The COAI claimed that players have agreed to discuss and negotiate "reasonable" points of connectivity that can be provided to Jio.

It said the operators will meet one-on-one to negotiate the "reasonable" incremental capacity to be provided to Reliance Jio, and following agreement will have 90 days to comply to the latter's request for interconnection ports.

Despite the "constructive dialogue" on the matter, the largest mobile operator Bharti Airtel hit out at Mukesh Ambani's telecom venture and asked TRAI to find a way to curb the "massive asymmetric traffic" and ensure that receiving networks are not "abused by tsunami of free traffic".

"In this regard, Interconnection Usage Charges is an effective tool in the hands of Trai, which we hope they will use judiciously," Bharti Airtel said.

The issue of interconnectivity among telecom networks has become the flashpoint for one of the fiercest corporate battles in the sector. Interconnection is required to enable mobile users to make calls to customers of other telecom networks, and is all-important for Reliance Jio which is scripting a disruptive entry into 4G market by offering free voice calls.
New Delhi, September 9

Sector regulator Trai today met telecom operators Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea to discuss ongoing tussle over network interconnection, but barred officials of industry body COAI from the meeting.

"This is fight for justice, fight for customers. Not just Reliance Jio customers or Airtel or Vodafone, but for all Indian customers," Reliance Jio Infocomm Board Member Mahendra Nahata told reporters after an hour-long meeting.

Jio has accused incumbent telecom operators for not providing required number of equipments to connect its mobile network with theirs.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

"We have asked for right number of connect, right quantum of interconnection. We have put forth our point of view to Trai. It is for Trai to look into the matter. There is no time frame indicated by the Trai," Nahata said.

As per the rule, interconnection among networks has to be done based on mutual agreement by telecom companies and any dispute in this regard should be brought in notice of Trai, which can take decision on the matter.

Interconnection is required to enable mobile customers to make call on number or to customer of any telecom company.

Industry body Cellular Operators Association of India, which has been confronting Reliance Jio on behalf of incumbents, alleged it was kept out of the meeting on insistence of Reliance Jio.

"COAI has been kept out of the TRAI meeting at the insistence of RIL Jio, and TRAI acquiesced to their demand in an unprecedented manner," COAI Director General Rajan S Mathews said.

The Cellular Operators Association of India yesterday, wrote to Trai that the meeting scheduled for Friday, where in Airtel, Vodafone and Idea, have been called for discussing the issue, pertains to all members and not just the three telcos.

"Therefore we request Trai to invite all members of COAI for the said meeting," COAI letter to Trai said. Nahata, however, denied the allegation.

"We have not said any such thing. Whosoever was invited should attend the meeting," Nahata said.

COAI last month had accused Trai of baseness, but later apologised for levelling such allegations.

Reliance Jio, which commercially launched its services on September 5, had earlier accused incumbent players for not releasing sufficient interconnection ports and had sought legal action against them.

Reliance Jio is also member of COAI, but has been sidelined by leading telecom operators in the association.

Incumbent operators have sought clarity on whether the services of the new entrant are now "commercial" and if it is so, the company cannot offer free service for more than 90 days.

Reliance Jio has said its services are free till December 31, following which consumers will charged as per tariff plans that include free voice calls. PTI
Saurabh Malik

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, September 9

The brick-by-brick demolition of the glorious past of the city, with the rising of apartments from the debris of palatial houses on residential plots, has come under the judicial scanner.

A residents welfare association has moved the Punjab and Haryana High Court by filing a petition in public interest for restraining the UT Administration and its respondent functionaries from permitting residential plots to be converted into apartments.

Taking up the petition, the Division Bench of Justice SS Saron and Justice Lisa Gill has directed that a copy of the petition be handed over to the standing counsel for the UT Administration, Suvir Sehgal. The Bench has fixed September 15 as the next date of hearing in the matter.

Appearing for the Residents Welfare Association, Sector 10, senior advocate DS Patwalia asserted that the residential plots in the UT were meant for single dwelling units.

However, the association members and other residents had noticed that in the past couple of years, a large number of residential plots in Sector 10 and other northern sectors were being illegally constructed and sold as apartments.

Not only was this against the master plan of Chandigarh, the original planning, the bylaws and the decision of the Administration, it was also threatening to completely destroy the ethos of the city, which had so far retained its original character.

Patwalia said permitting such an activity would also put an unbearable burden on the infrastructure of the

city. The further development of the city was planned keeping in view the density envisaged by the original planners and now prescribed in the Chandigarh Master Plan-2031.

Besides, the action was also illegally bringing in through the backdoor provisions of the Apartment Act, 2001. It stood repelled way back in 2007 following vociferous protests by city residents not wanting the residential/bungalow character to vanish with the coming up of ugly apartments.

Patwalia averred that the petitioner association was compelled to file the public interest litigation following complete inaction on the part of the respondent Administration to curb the illegal activity.

He also quoted The Tribune to say the issue had been highlighted in these columns. Under these circumstances, the petitioner association could reasonably conclude that the Administration was turning a blind eye to the activities undertaken by a lobby of builders earning crores at the cost of ruining the s character of the city and the city itself.

Denser than planned

Patwalia contended that the original plan divided the city into two phases. The third phase was added subsequently. The first phase comprised 30 sectors, with the Capitol Complex and civic centre as its focal points. Sector 17 was designed as the central business district. In the second phase, Sector 31 to 47 were developed, while the third phase comprised Sectors 48 to 56, 61 and 63.

The master plan clearly states that the planned density per acre was 16 persons for the first phase and 59 for the second phase sectors. As per the 2001 census, the density had already increased to 26 persons per acre and 60 persons per acre in phase one and two.

The master plan specified the maximum holding capacity of phase one and two as 34 and 83. It would have been surpassed by now, he added. Moreover, the northern sectors planned for low-density population had narrow internal sector roads. If the density and the resultant number of vehicles increased, green spaces and parks for rejuvenating the citizens would be converted into parking spaces. In any case, the building bylaws did not permit three apartments in a single unit.

Modus operandi

After a builder purchases a building, he finds three individuals/families willing to buy the apartments. No less than 50 per cent of the land comprising the ground floor and the basement is registered in the name of first apartment owner.

As part of the strategy, 30 per cent comprising first floor is registered in the name of the second apartment buyer. The remaining 20 per cent comprising the second floor and the roof is registered in the name of the third apartment buyer. They then sign an internal memorandum of understanding on utilising the internal areas of the building.
Charu Chhibber

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, September 9

Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh today said the Centre would make all efforts for improving Indias medical infrastructure and making medical facilities more integrated and affordable. Our government is working towards providing health care and health cover to the people, he said while speaking at the silver jubilee celebrations of the Government Medical College and Hospital (GMCH), Sector 32.

Stressing the need for an integrated health care system, he said there was an urgent need for replacing the existing fragmented health care system. He noted that by doing so, the pressure on super-specialty institutes such as the All India Institute of Medical Sciences would reduce.

He pointed out that public spending in Indias health care industry had remained low and had resulted in a dilapidated network of government hospitals and clinics, especially in rural areas.

Rajnath said 95 per cent patients going to tertiary care hospitals could be treated at the primary health care level. If the national average is taken into consideration, medical facilities in India are not adequate, especially primary health care. If primary health centres are strengthened, the burden of major institutes will reduce significantly, he said.

The minister also emphasised on the promotion of traditional medicine systems. He said his government was committed to promoting traditional medicinal systems like Ayurveda which remained untapped in India due to inadequate scientific research.

Rajnath also pointed out that the Centre was committed to promoting alternative medicine and had set up a separate AYUSH Ministry. Talking about Prime Minister Narendra Modis initiative towards the promotion of yoga, he said the UN General Assembly observed June 21 as International Day of Yoga and a large chunk of the population in the West now practised yoga.

Referring to the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan started by Modi, the Union Home Minister said this cause would pay rich dividends in the times to come and help in improving the health care system in the county by eliminating the main cause of illnesses.

Rajnath called on the medical fraternity to be sensitive and compassionate towards the patients. He pointed out that honesty, straightforwardness and empathy were the core values a doctor must possess. A person is known by his mission and motivation. A doctors motivation starts not in a medical school, but at the primary school and in his family, he remarked.

Quoting a mathematical equation, Rajnath exhorted the health care providers, If heart is a circle, keep increasing its circumference. The bigger the circumference, more happiness you will get.

Lauding the role of the GMCH in providing excellent medical education, the Union Home Minister said the institute was one of the best medical colleges in the country. It is a ray of hope towards taking India on the global map in the field of medicine, Rajnath said.

Earlier, Rajnath inaugurated the new academic block, known as the E Block of the GMCH.
Aarti Kapur

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, September 8

The students verdict in the Panjab University Campus Student Council (PUCSC) elections held yesterday, in which the PUSU alliance registered a clean sweep, is clear. Politics on the campus is of the students, by the students and for the students, in which there is no place for student wings of political parties.

For the student wings of political parties, which were expecting a victory in these elections, the results have come as a shock as one of the oldest student parties, PUSU, won all seats along with its alliance partners  the NSUI (Student Front), the NSO and the HPSA.

For senior leaders of SOI, the ABVP, the NSUI and INSO, student wings of the SAD, BJP, Congress and the INLD, respectively, the results have come as an eye-opener. They are at a loss to know how student parties bagged a large number of votes in departments where they had organised outings, movies shows and parties.

In the past three years, three prominent departments  the University Institute of Engineering and Technology, the University Institute of Legal Studies and the Department of Laws  were the deciding factor in the elections, in which money and muscle power also played a vital role. However, this year, 45 departments registered 100 per cent voting, altering the poll outcome.

Political experts say the 10 per cent increase in the voting percentage this year was the key factor in the verdict. Students of all 62 departments played a key role in the elections.

As many as 1,652 votes were cast in the UIET, the highest in the past three years, of which SOI presidential candidate Piyush Anand got 660 votes while PUSU candidate Nishant Kaushal got 460 votes.

However, Kaushal won the seat by getting support in other departments.

Similarly, in the UILS, its student and NSUI presidential candidate Siya Minocha bagged 360 votes of the 990 while Piyush got 285 votes.

Chairperson of the PU Political Science Department Pampa Muhkerjee said the right to franchise was used by students against leaders who were spoiling the campus environment by politicising issues of the university.
Sanjam Preet Singh

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, September 8

For neutral students, the Panjab University (PU) elections are a time of holidays. Those staying in hostels, especially girls, head home. Why get embroiled in dirty politics is their refrain.

The committed ones stay back and they are assigned duties to ensure their friends, too, stay back. After all, every vote counts. And thats why every tactic in the rule book and beyond is employed to garner votes.

So much so that the PU elections have become synonymous with booze and money.

When Amritpal Singh (26), the Students for Society (SFS) presidential candidate who gave a tough fight this time, took admission to the PU, he thought it was a place for critical thinking. Soon, his perception changed. Students here are concerned about clothes and cars. Initially, I could not find a student with whom I could discuss a book, he says.

Ash him about the scenario during the elections and he says, Elections are a time to lure students. Increase in fee, harassment of girls on the campus and concerns of Dalits are never on the agenda of any party. When we started raising the issues, students took note.

The change happened in the past six years. Formed as a discussion group in September 2010, the SFS made inroads into the politics of money.

Before the SFS, there were the All-India Students Federation (AISF) and the Revolutionary Youth Association (RYA) that tried to present an alternative in student politics. But the SFS has raised the aspirations of students and the bar of politics. It has created a space where students can debate. Now, nationalism, communalism and caste are talked about on the campus, says Lallan Baghel, a professor of philosophy at the PU.

If one is to analyse the factors of change, there will be many, but hard-to-miss instrument of change has been the dafli. It has found a rhythm in the noise of speeches.

A day before the elections, the SFS took out a rally on foot led by dafliwala Amritpal, while other parties took out rallies in cars.The difference was for everyone to see, says Paramjeet Singh, a PU professor of economics.

Nukkad nataks, unheard of at the PU before the formation of the SFS, has been the tactic of the party to put its point across. Amritpal plays the dafli to draw students and then the show starts.

Nukkad nataks as a form of protest is new for the PU, says law student Vikramjeet Singh. With 349 votes separating Amritpal and Nishant Kaushal, who has been elected president, the SFS is celebrating.

So, will anything change? It is difficult to predict the long-term change. In the short term, a space for dialogue will be created, says Prof Baghel.

Now, what next? Armed with daflis, the SFS will keep on highlighting injustice on the campus and beyond, Amritpal says.
Tribune News Service

Amritsar, September 9

A city-based interventional cardiologist, Dr Varun Mohan, has received the fellowship from American College of Cardiologists, Washington (US). Dr Mohan said he had received a written communication in this regard from the college authorities.

He said being a fellow of the American College of Cardiologists was a great honour and he would continue to work with sincerity and hardwork.

He attributed his success to his father, Dr Adarsh Kumar, also a cardiologist and fellow of American College of Cardiologists. Dr Adarsh is the president of International College of Cardiologists, Canada.
S Nihal Singh

WE live in changing times, as is evident from the two years and more of the Modi government at the Centre. But the tragedy is that hallowed institutions of how a free press operates in a democracy are being attenuated in favour of sending out a sanitised message making full use of social web sites which offer a one-way communication.

Perhaps Prime Minister Narendra Modi has not forgotten the embarrassment he was subjected to by Karan Thapar in a live television interview as Gujarats chief minister. He left the interview with cameras rolling because he was unwilling or unable to answer sharp questions from the presenter.

That was, in a sense, a long time ago. In the general election of 2014, Mr Modi enthusiastically embraced new technology and revelled in using Twitter and Facebook because they were answers to his prayers  there was no scope for facing probing questions.

As a politician, Mr Modi is by no means alone in controlling the message that goes out from him and his establishment. All politicians in power seek to do the same and employ a battery of minions for the purpose. Rather, Mr Modis singularity is that he has shunned the standard test of democracy by refusing to hold periodic press conferences open to accredited journalists and televised for all who care to watch.

The alternative method of communication Mr Modi has chosen is the staged television interview as an image-building exercise. In the two extensive interviews he has given, a new pattern has emerged. These are essentially monologues with interviewers asking soft questions as if to aid the Prime Ministers thought processes.

It was something of a revelation that the traditionally belligerent Arnab Goswami was transformed into a most accommodating soul apologetically posing questions for Mr Modi. Whether there was a prior agreement on the kind of questions to be asked remains to be confirmed.

This pattern was repeated on CNN News 18, with interviewer Rahul Joshi displaying reverence, if not hero worship, in lobbing questions of the softest variety. The long monologues were hardly interrupted by the timorous questions posed by the interviewer whose provenance is unknown to the wider TV audience. The PM had nothing new to say but the interview was repeated many times with trumpets blaring.

Those of us who have been long in the profession will recall Jawaharlal Nehrus free-for-all press conferences or those of his successors, with no questions, however embarrassing, barred. Sometimes, the joke was on the PM himself, as for instance in Rajiv Gandhis case, when he ended up sacking his foreign secretary during the press conference.

In a democracy, unfettered periodic press conferences communicate an openness of the authorities to the public and society they rule. There is no substitute for them because no amount of modern technology can stand in for the cut and thrust of frank questions posed to the highest political authority of the land.

Over time we have become accustomed to the Tweets and Facebook posts of Mr Modi commenting on the minutest event in the country. What strikes the public is the absence of comment on horrific events for weeks or months together because they are politically inconvenient or invite attention to the obverse side of the philosophy and policies of the BJPs mentor, the RSS.

In recent times, when forced to comment on the mayhem and murder indulged in by alleged cow protection vigilantes, Mr Modi faced considerable opposition from members of the Sangh Parivar and was forced to change his original charge under RSS prompting that the fake vigilantes were a few, instead of the 75 to 80 per cent he had stated a day earlier.

The RSS is clear about its goals in moving the country to a Hindu India, but Mr Modi has to contend with administering a diverse country with a major Muslim population and a host of other minorities. Even if the PM agrees with his mentors goal of creating a Hindutva India, selling the concept to the people is a tough call, being accomplished for the moment piecemeal through the appointment of Hindutva devotees in key positions in research organisations and the administrative machinery.

There is some confusion between the government and the RSS on the speed at which the concept of a Hindutva India should be achieved. Judging by the record of the Modi government thus far, it is proving difficult to synchronise the steps needed to bring about the RSS variety of nirvana.

Thus the question of a democratically elected leader shunning a free public exchange of views with the countrys media sticks out like a sore thumb. Mr Modis solution thus far in granting staged interviews from time to time has proved inadequate highlighting as it does his reluctance to engage in a free flowing exchange of ideas with the eyes and ears of the nation.

Admittedly, Mr Modi is more open to answering questions from journalists during his extensive travels abroad. For one thing, the foreign journalist, however well-read, does not have the knowledge of a native and the PMs interactions with international media are breezy affairs that can be terminated with a smile.

Journalists in the field will tell you that there is a marked difference between the spokesmen of the Modi government in the dissemination of news, compared with the previous Congress dispensation or even the six years of Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led BJP government. There is greater control exercised over dissemination of news and sources of possible leaks are constantly plugged.

Are journalists then reduced to reading from a common script? Those who stray too far are sought to be made examples of. This is not the kind of infirmities the media suffered during Indira Gandhis Emergency. Rather, it is an effort by the authorities by a slow process of attrition to discourage probing reporting and questioning of the governments objectives and actions.
Sarbjit Dhaliwal

The SAD-BJP government is gearing up to celebrate golden jubilee of the formation of modern-day Punjab from October 1 to November 1. Haryana, which, too, was born on the same day after being carved out of Punjab in 1966, has invited the Prime Minister to preside over the celebrations. However, the question here is: What is there to celebrate for the Punjab Government? There are historical, demographic and cultural reasons for questioning the Cabinets decision to hold month-long festivities in the state.

The Punjab Reorganisation Bill was passed on September 7, 1966. After the Presidential assent on September 18, a notification was issued for the implementation of the Act with effect from November 1, 1966, thus creating Punjab and Haryana.

The Shiromani Akali Dal, brain behind these celebrations, had never accepted the modern-day Punjab in its existing form. Opposing the implementation of the Punjab Reorganisation Act on November 1, 1966, Akali leaders protested against it.

History books and other sources have revealed that about a week after the implementation of the Act, Akali leader Sant Fateh Singh, who was spearheading the Punjabi Suba Morcha in 1966, gave a call to all to prepare for another long-drawn agitation to have the Punjabi-speaking areas left in Haryana and Chandigarh transferred to Punjab, besides seeking the control of Bhakra Dam and other hydro power projects and headworks. On November 16, 1966, the morcha was re-launched. Sant Fateh Singh started sending Jathas of Akali leaders to the countryside to mobilise support. That year, December 12 was observed as Black Day. Sant Fateh Singh announced that he would immolate himself on December 27, 1966, at the Akal Takht where he had started fast-unto-death in the third week of December. His announcement rocked the Union government.

The Centre pressed all its senior ministers, especially Sikh leaders, to deal with the emerging crisis. The then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi invited the Sant for a meeting, but he declined.

She and the President of India appealed Sant Fateh Singh to end his fast. When the Sant refused to yield, Indira Gandhi sent Hukam Singh, a respected Sikh leader, to convince the Sant that there was no reason that Chandigarh should not go to Punjab. Hukam Singh also said the Centre would also appoint a committee to decide the transfer of Punjabi-speaking areas to Punjab from Haryana. Sant Fateh Singh called off his immolation bid an hour before the scheduled time of 4 pm on December 27. Hukam Singh offered him a glass of juice and convinced him to break the fast.

Notwithstanding the commitment made by Hukam Singh on behalf of the Prime Minister to give Chandigarh to Punjab 50 years ago, the stark reality is that neither Chandigarh nor Punjabi-speaking areas have been transferred to the state till date. For the past five decades, Punjab is without its own capital. The control of Bhakra and other dams, besides the crucial headworks, remains with the Bhakra Beas Management Board (BBMB).

Immediately after the issuance of the notification, the Akalis declared it as betrayal of the Sikhs by the Congress because what they actually got in the form of Punjabi Suba was a truncated state.

Promise not kept

The Congress had promised to create the state on a linguistic basis at its annual open session in 1920. The promise was made part of the Motilal Nehru Report in 1928.

Reminding the Congress of its promises immediately after independence, the Akalis started an agitation for the creation of the Punjabi Suba, mainly on linguistic grounds. Leaders like Master Tara Singh were expecting Sikh homeland from the Congress, but when it resisted, the Akali leaders started demanding a state based on Punjabi language.

The Akalis re-launched a Dharmyudh Morcha in the early 1980s under the banner of implementing the Anandpur Sahib resolution, which included transfer of Chandigarh and Punjabi-speaking areas and much more. Thousands courted arrest and remained in jail for months, and some for years. Hundreds were killed as the peaceful agitation later turned violent. What happened in the state in the 1980s and 1990s is one of the saddest and goriest chapters in the history of modern Punjab.

Chandigarh was to be the capital of Punjab to compensate it for Lahore, which was lost to Pakistan. However, it was retained as a Union Territory. A number of Punjabi-speaking areas in districts such as Ambala, Kurukshetra, Karnal, Hisar, Fatehabad and Sirsa region were given to Haryana. In the hill region, areas like Nalagarh, Una and Kangra, Lahul-Spiti and Shimla, which were earlier part of Punjab, were given away to Himachal Pradesh. The control of Bhakra Dam, Nangal Dam, Nangal Hydel Channel and hydro-power stations and headworks associated with the main river was given to the Bhakra Beas Management Board.

The management and control over the river waters was taken away from new Punjab. The Punjab High Court became the Punjab and Haryana High Court. Recently, Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal mentioned that in the agitation for the Punjabi Suba , as many as 43 persons lost their lives and more than 57,000 courted arrest.

Need to ponder

For the past 50 years, Punjab has failed to take back the control over Chandigarh. On river waters issue, the Akalis have been saying that the Centre has played a fraud. There has been no transfer of Punjabi-speaking areas to the state. There was an understanding that employees would be posted in Chandigarh on a 60:40 basis from Punjab and Haryana. However, the ratio has been violated recklessly. The number of Punjabi employees has declined significantly. The UT has created its own cadre of employees.

Punjabi, as a language, has no official status in Chandigarh. It is not used in official communication. The language has been denied its rightful place in almost every area of activity in Chandigarh though Punjabis have a dominating presence in the city. The entire decision-making process of Chandigarh is in the hands of the Union government. Until recently, even all signboards in Chandigarh used to be either in English or Hindi.

Punjab has no say in Chandigarhs administration. Earlier, the Chief Commissioner of Chandigarh was from the Punjab cadre. The late Dr M.S. Randhawa was the first Chief Commissioner to be posted in Chandigarh. But that arrangement was done away with later. Now, the Centre posts its senior IAS officer as adviser in Chandigarh to manage administration.

The demographic region, where earlier Punjabi language, culture and way of life used to hold its sway, has shrunk to a tiny area. One can travel from one end of Punjab to the other within five hours. The hill region of Una and Kangra, Kandaghat, Kasauli, Dharmpur, Kullu, Lahaul-Spiti, Nalagarh and Shimla, which used to be part of Punjabs diverse landscape, is now part of Himachal Pradesh.

Punjabs officers used to be posted even in Delhi. The Punjab High Court, which was later rechristened as Punjab and Haryana High Court, had its jurisdiction over the Union Territory of Delhi till October, 31, 1966.

Thus the question once again: What is there for Akalis and the BJP (which in its earlier avtar of Jan Sangh in the 1950s and 1960s), who vehemently opposed the creation of Punjabi Suba, to celebrate as a golden jubilee.

Late Sant Harchand Singh, who remained President of the Akali Dal in the 1980s, had once commented that the then central government had first demarcated the boundaries of Haryana and then of Himachal Pradesh. What was left after creating the two states was given to Punjab.

The political leadership should, in fact, deliberate to find out what has Punjab gained and what it lost in agitations involving the demand of the Punjabi Suba.

Master Tara Singh

Master Tara Singh is one of the stalwarts of Sikh history and pre- and post-Partition Sikh politics. While still a student, he adopted Sikhism, a common practice among Hindu Khatri families then. After graduating from Khalsa College, Amritsar, in 1907, he became a school teacher, which gave him the prefix Master. As Congress backed out from the promises made to Sikhs before Partition, Master Tara Singh revived the Punjabi Suba agitation in the mid-1950s. The government banned the slogans in support of Punjabi Suba in April 1955. To defy the ban, Master Tara Singh organised a protest march on May 10. He was arrested and that marked the beginning of a long-drawn agitation in support of the Punjabi Suba. Master Tara Singh passed away on November 22, 1967.

Sant Fateh Singh

Sant Fateh Singh started as a preacher in Ganganagar, Rajasthan, but joined Akali politics in the mid-1950s when the movement for Punjabi Suba was building up under the command of Master Tara Singh. His rise was quick in the SAD, but fell out with Master Tara Singh later. In Gandhian style protest, he started a fast-unto-death on December 18, 1960 seeking Punjabi Suba, but ended it on January 9, 1961 following an assurance by the then Prime Minister. He held three meetings with Nehru in February, March and May 1961. However, the exercise remained unfruitful and so did the subsequent fasts, which would end after assurances from the Centre, but failed to elicit desired results. He passed away on October 30, 1972.

Darshan Singh Pheruman

Darshan Singh Pheruman fought and laid down his life for the Akali cause, but was never given his due by the Akali leadership. Pheruman resigned from the Army before World War I started. He joined the gurdwara reform movement and was jailed for a year in 1921. Three years later, he was jailed again, this time in connection with the Jaito Morcha. He went to the jail thrice for being a part of the Civil Disobedience Movement. Believing that Sant Fateh Singh had betrayed Punjabis on the issue of transfer of Chandigarh and Punjabi-speaking areas by not fulfilling his promise of self-immolation, Pheruman announced he would observe fast-unto-death on August 15, 1969. He was arrested and sent to jail where he started his fast again. He passed away on October 27, 1969, on the 74th day of his hunger strike.
As expected, the appointment of 21 Parliamentary Secretaries in Delhi has been set aside. According to media reports, the Delhi High Courts order is based on the ground that the appointments were made without the Lieut-Governors approval. The same court had earlier ruled that the L-G  and not the CM  was the administrative head of Delhi. Next, the Election Commission will decide whether the post of Parliamentary Secretary is an office of profit. The Constitution bars a legislator from holding such office.

The embarrassment caused to the Kejriwal government is self-inflicted. On March 13, 2015, it had appointed 21 Parliamentary Secretaries, disregarding the verdicts of several high courts that the post was unconstitutional. After the appointments were challenged in a petition to the President, the Delhi Assembly cleverly tried to exclude Parliamentary Secretaries from the office of profit bar. However, the President rightly turned down the proposed amendment since it was to apply retrospectively. Had the AAP leaders first amended the law and then made the appointments, they stood a chance of getting away with the controversial move. Inexperience and over-confidence did them in. The court has not accepted the AAP governments claim that the post is not an office of profit as the MLAs are not receiving any pecuniary benefit. If the EC reaches the same conclusion, the 21 AAP MLAs would face disqualification, leading to byelections, unless they challenge the order in a higher court and obtain a stay.

Regardless of the final outcome, it is a blow to AAP and its promise of doing things differently. Arvind Kejriwal has done in Delhi what Parkash Singh Badal has been doing in Punjab and Capt Amarinder Singh promises to do if voted to power: buying political loyalty with posts. Only Delhi has been spared the financial burden that Badal has imposed on Punjab. It is time the Supreme Court intervened to stop politicians from violating the constitutional cap on the number of ministers a state can have. The tendency to create posts for loyalists carrying the status of Cabinet minister or minister of state needs to be curbed.
By Pramod Madhav: A-22-year old boy from Chennai getting a chance to study advanced automobile engineering at Cambridge University might not be a big deal but it becomes an achievement indeed if the boy's family is into begging.

Jayavel's family migrated from Nellore in the 80s after a failed crop season and to find a living started begging in the streets of Chennai.

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Staring at a pavement Jayavel said, "We used to sleep on one such pavement. If it would rain, we would try to find other shelter in any nearby shop until the cops came and chased us out of there." He was one among the many children who were forced to beg on the streets by his parents. Explaining that though his survival depended on the kindness of strangers, his day's earnings mostly used to into mother's drinking.



NO FAMILY SUPPORT



Jayavel's father died when he was very young and his mother became an alchohol addict. He had just one shirt to wear and he never looked clean. All this was done to tap on the alms. In his wildest dreams had he not thought that he would come out of the 'dead end zone' until Uma Muthuraman met him.

Also read: Meet the 50-year-old Chennai professor who holds 145 academic degrees. No kidding

Uma Muthuraman along with her husband Muthuraman were working on a project to depict the lives of children on the streets of Chennai. The couple planned to make a video story on them and named the movie 'pavement flower'. As a part of their project Uma traveled to Kilpauk water tank area where they met Jayavel. "My people actually didn't like them. We even tried to hurt them as we had so many people approaching us under the pretext of helping. But they only used our name to get government funds," recollects Jayavel. These feelings changed as Jayavel's family understood Uma's genuine desire to help them.

They took Jayavel under their own care in 1999. "Jayavel somehow inspired us. After seeing him, we believed that we could help bring a change in his life with him." Uma and Muthuraman through their NGO, Suyam Charitable Trust, helped Jayavel get proper education.

"Everyone in the school knew about me and my family. As we used to live right on the corner of the school on the pavement but that didn't make any difference to me. Though I hated to study in the beginning and only wished to play, my attitude changed as I began to see the difference in life of other people and mine and how Uma and Muthuraman were struggling to educate me," added Jayavel.



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EXCELLED IN STUDIES



Jayavel got good marks in his 12th standard which prompted some donors to give interest free loan amount for his higher education. After that he cleared Cambridge University's entrance examination and got a seat in Glendwr University, Wales, United Kingdom to study 'Performance Car Enhancement Technology Engineering', a course that deals with enhancing performance of race cars. He is now going to Italy for further studies.

Also read: Rajendran elevated as TN DGP, George back as CoP Chennai



"He knew the struggles and efforts we put in for his entire community. We want to project him as a role model in front of his entire community," explained Muthuraman who through their NGO have rehabilitated 95 per cent of the families to give up begging. Many of the children now sell small products near traffic signals instead of begging. Suyam Trust helped some families to get a loan for 'autorikshaw' also to sustain their life.

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"Everything started with Jayavel. He started studying well and that inspired other kids. Now, they are pursuing their dreams; some of them are in aviation; some in engineering; some pursuing nursing and one has left to Phillipines to study aircraft maintenance. The inspiration was Jayavel", informed proud Muthuraman.



DREAMS TO FLY



Suyam Trust had already borrowed 17 lakh rupees for Jayavel's studies in London. He is now going to Italy which would cost another 8 lakh rupees for which Muthuraman and Uma are running around to see that Jayavel's education doesn't get interrupted. We struggle a lot. More than appreciation for our work, we only get harassed by the government. I am sorry to say but we have to admit it. Some honest officers are helping us but it is not sufficient", shared Muthuraman. But the couple said that they will ensure that Jayavel leaves for Italy to complete his studies at the University of Turin, Italy.

Jayavel's mother still lives in the streets of T Nagar with a torn mat and bundle of rags which she uses as a head rest. "If he becomes successful, he would definitely take care of his sisters and brothers. But I wish he never turns up like me. If I'm alive by the time he settles in his life, I would definitely like to go and stay with him," smiled Saroja.

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Jayavel meets her once in a month as he doesn't like her drinking habit.

After finishing his studies, he wants to come back and help Uma and Muthuraman in running the trust and try to pay back for changing his life.

--- ENDS ---
Ravinder Saini

Tribune News Service

Jhajjar, September 8

Rainwater submerged hundreds of acres of agricultural land in several villages of the district.

Entire paddy, bajra and cotton crops spread over 400 acres in our village have been damaged due to accumulation of water for the past one month. Farmers are under acute stress as proper arrangements have not been made to drain out water from the fields. Even, special girdawari has not been ordered to assess the losses, said Manjeet, sarpanch of Godhri village.

Ravi Kumar, husband of Pharipur village sarpanch Nisha, said: Besides the agricultural land, rainwater has also flooded residential areas in the village. Pump sets have been installed to remove the water, but they are proving insufficient.

Meanwhile, farmers in a meeting held under the aegis of the All-India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) here today threatened to launch a campaign if stagnant water was not drained out from the fields and residential areas.

Inderjit Singh, state vice-president, AIKS, flayed the authorities for their failure to check stray cattle menace. Later, the farmers submitted a memorandum to Deputy Commissioner RC Bidhan seeking necessary steps to remove water from the villages and special girdawari of the damaged crops.

The problem of waterlogging has deprived large numbers of farmers of their livelihood in several villages. Adequate compensation should be given under the crop insurance scheme to the affected farmers, said Inderjit.

He said Godhari, Mangawas, Dighal, Lakriya, Dhandhlan, Gangtan, Bhambhewa, Dhaud, Behrana, Aachhej and Phadipur villages were facing the problem of waterlogging.

Inderjit said that they had also apprised the DC of the problem of stray cattle causing road mishaps and damage to standing crops. The DC asked them to submit damage claims with the Deputy Director (Agriculture), he added.
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, September 9

Former Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, facing a series of cases, including a CBI case in the release of Manesar land, today dared the BJP to order a probe by a High Court Judge into cases against him, asserting that the BJPs vendetta politics could neither scare nor deter the Congress from exposing the BJP failure on all fronts.

Accompanied by AICC media in charge Randeep Surjewala and MLAs Kuldeep Sharma and Geeta Bhukkal Hooda alleged at a press conference here that the BJP government was registering false cases against him only to divert public attention from its failures.Let the CBI probe cases against Hooda, Surjewala asserted, adding that the CBI was being used by the Modi and the Khattar Governments to target Congress leaders.

Referring to the release of Manesar land after initiating acquisition proceedings, he said it was the then INLD government which issued a notification for acquiring 912 acres in Manesar, Lakhnaula and Naurangpur villages in Gurgaon. Claiming that since landowners had filed objections and the recommendation of the land acquisition collector, declaration under Section 6 of the Land Acquisition Act was issued only for 688 acres, leaving 223 acres, on August 25, 2005.

Hooda and Surjewala further held that even though the farmers continued their agitation, some of the landowners also challenged the acquisition proceedings and moved the court which stayed most of the cases. ``Yet, about 71 acres was released by thev government after Section 6 on the recommendations of a ministers committee on various grounds, Surjewala claimed.
Parveen Arora

Tribune News Service

Karnal, September 9

The Health Department has transferred 14 doctors of Kalpana Chawla Government Medical College Hospital (KCGMCH) to other districts. And no doctor has been replaced them.

Of 475 doctors shifted on Thursday, 23 22 Medical Officers and one Senior Medical Officer  were shifted from the district. And of the 23 doctors, 14 are from KCGMCH.

Sources said there was shortage of doctors and faculty members in the KCGMCH. It has been facing the crunch of specialists including anesthetists, gynecologists, neuro-surgeons. With Thursdays transfer, the working of the Out Patient Deparment would be affected.

A doctor said there were irregularities in the transfers. Two doctors pursuing a course were shifted in spite of obtaining no-objection certificate from the government. Another doctor said the department transferred a doctor, who had retired six months ago.

Health Minister Anil Vij could not be contacted in spite of repeated attempts.
Parvesh Sharma

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, September 8

The BJP government has been patting its back for transparency in the HCS (Haryana Civil Service) exam result. But ask its MP from Kurukshetra Raj Kumar Saini and he hints at a scam.

Parents of several candidates, who did not make the cut, met me, complaining about irregularities in the result. They are planning action, he told The Tribune here today. He did not divulge the nature of action.

Health Minister Anil Vij countered Saini, stating that selection of candidates from middle-class and poor families is enough proof of transparency in results.

Of 29 selected candidates, 13 are from a same community. This raises doubts, Saini said. I am not against any community. But one thing should be understood. I will not tolerate injustice against OBCs of Haryana. I am raising voice of the poor and will keep on raising it, said Saini.

This years HCS list does not relatives of influential persons of the state.

In May, the government had introduced negative marking and aptitude test in the HCS (executive) exam. It amended the HCS Rules, 2008, and adopted the pattern of the UPSC for the preliminary examination. It, however, did not change the pattern of the main and personality test.

Not a single candidate was favoured. I fail to understand the basis of Sainis allegation, said Vij. When asked whether or not the BJP would take action against Saini for indiscipline and raising questions in the media, Vij refused to comment.
Tribune News Service

Shimla, September 9

Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh today said the state government had repeatedly requested the Centre to amend the recommendations of the 14th Finance Commission and make provisions for devolution of funds to Zila Parishads and Panchayat Samitis.

Addressing a public meeting at Bhaloh Gram Panchayat in Shimla Rural Assembly constituency today, the Chief Minister said the state government had time and again requested the Centre to amend the recommendations of the 14th Finance Commission and make provisions for devolution of funds to Zila Parishads and Panchayat Samitis. The Commission had clearly directed that the funds would be provided to the gram panchayats only through requests by the state government to provide funds for Panchayat Samitis and Zila Parishads, he said.

Virbhadra today inaugurated several development projects and laid foundation stone of many new projects in the Shimla (Rural) Assembly represented by him. He said the state government had opened or upgraded over 1,010 schools, opened 24 ITIs, two engineering colleges and 41 colleges since the Congress assumed power in the state. Mukhya Mantri Adarsh Vidyalaya Yojna has been launched to provide state-of-the-art infrastructural and teaching facilities in two senior secondary schools in each constituency, he said.

He said providing safe drinking water and irrigation facilities to the people was the top priority of the state government. Listing other developments, the Chief Minister said that a law university and a judicial academy were being constructed at Ghandal, mini secretariat building was coming up at Dhami and two sub tehsils at Dhami and Jalog had been announced.

The Chief Minister accompanied by Irrigation and Public Health Minister Vidya Stokes also inaugurated the drinking water supply scheme Parech-Dafawag-Dharat at Parech. The scheme will benefit three surrounding villages. He also laid the foundation stone of a primary health centre (PHC) building at Totu.
Tribune News Service

Shimla, September 8

Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh today said the government takeover of the Raghunath Temple in Kullu was in public interest and the temple had never been a private property of any individual as the entire festivities of the Kullu Dusshera revolved around it.

Virbhadra today addressed a delegation of the Dev Sanskriti Charitable Trust, including former Minister Satya Prakash Thakur and state Congress general secretary Sunder Singh Thakur, here today. He categorically said that the temple cannot be a private property of the regal scion of Kullu. The decision of the Himachal Government to take over the temple has been challenged in the High Court by Maheshwar Singh, Kullu MLA and descendant of the erstwhile rulers.

Citing examples of the formation of numerous temple trusts in the state for better management of the temples, the Chief Minister said that formation of Raghunath Temple Trust was for the overall benefit of Dev Samaj and better financial management.

He said during the Dussehra festival it is the main deity who leads the Rath Yatra. We have never equated ourselves with Gods. Being a true devotee myself, I have pulled the reins of the chariot carrying the deity and at numerous occasions, he said.

Virbhadra said the formation of the trust will not only lead to beautification of the temple but also ensure proper security and better fiscal management. Regular audit would be done, proper receipts of donations would be given and trustees would be appointed to run the temple affairs, he said.

The Chief Minister said theft had taken place twice in the Raghunath temple. Now with the formation of a trust, it would be provided proper security. Rather, I feel that there should be magnificent temple of Lord Raghunath in Kullu rather than keeping the idol in a small dingy room, he said.

The Chief Minister also exhorted the Dev Samaj to come forward to stop the practice as adopted by a few people who carry the palanquins of the deities on roads and in bazaar. Strict action will be taken as these people were the ones who defame the entire Dev Sanskriti and bring bad name to the state as well, he warned.

The Chief Minister also announced a sum of Rs 5 crore for the Dev Sanskriti Charitable Trust for research and study of Dev Sanskriti of Kullu. He said that research was necessary to carry over the culture and traditions to the next generations.
Bhanu P Lohumi

Tribune News Service

Shimla, September 8

Maharishi Markandeshwar Medical College (MMMC) in Kumarhatti, which has been defying the directions of the government to get affiliation from Himachal Pradesh University for the past three years, has been told to admit MBBS students under the government quota with no fee hike.

Parents of the students, who had sought admission against the government quota, had been complaining of high fee which is Rs 5 lakh per year against Rs 60,000 in government medical colleges, but the college has not yet admitted students nominated by the government after counselling.

Some parents today met Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh and Health Secretary Prabodh Saxena.

Saxena said representatives of the college had requested for hike in fee for seats under the government quota, but their request had been turned down. We have told the MMMC management that no change can be made in the fee structure after the prospectus has been published and as such they will have to admit the students without any condition, he said. The college has time till tomorrow after which necessary action will be taken under the Act, he added.

The government had taken up the issue of affiliation of the college with the Union Health Ministry and Medical Council many a time, but there has been no response and on the contrary, the MMMC has been permitted to admit the fourth batch of 150 MBBS students for 2016-17.

The university has been set up under the Act passed by the government and section 7 of the Act bars the university from affiliating any college. There is no management quota in private universities and only 25 per cent seats are reserved for Himachalis.

The government had been dithering of taking action against the MMMC and neither the Higher Education Department nor the HP Private Educational Institutions Regulatory Commission has taken any notice of violation of the Act by the university, showing the MMMC as a consequent college of the university.
Pratibha Chauhan

Tribune News Service

Shimla, September 9

With private investors not evincing interest in the four aerial ropeways advertised on several occasions, the Himachal Government has decided to set up a committee headed by Tourism Commissioner to suggest ways and means to make them more attractive through restructuring or granting more relaxations.

With there being no takers for the four aerial ropeway projects, the fate of the other ropeways in the pipeline also seems to be gloomy. The committee with some other expert members will be holding its first meeting on September 12 to examine these pending projects and see how they can be made more lucrative for the private investors as the projects are to be executed under private-public partnership (PPP) mode.

The four projects for which there are no takers are Toba-Naina Devi, Shah Talai- Deodsidh, Sarahan-Bashal Kanda and Neugal-Palampur. We have now decided to assign the task of suggesting relaxations to make these ropeway projects viable to technical and financial experts, so that on their recommendation the necessary restructuring can be done, revealed an official.

The committee headed by Commissioner (Tourism) will have Special Secretary (Finance), Director (Institutional Finance), head of HP Infrastructure Development Board and an Executive Engineer of the Public Works department in his capacity as ropeway expert as its members. The recommendations made the committee will be submitted to the government.

The main reason being cited for the Toba- Naina Devi and Shah Talai  Deodsidh projects being unviable is the availability of good road connectivity. The investor is not willing to risk his money as majority of the pilgrims making a beeline to these shrines are from the lower income group, for whom ropeway travel would be unaffordable, said an official.

As such it is being felt that if the state government does not grant some more concessions to make them commercially viable, no investor will risk his money when the returns do not appear to be very attractive.

Other potential areas being identified

At a stage when there are no takers for the already advertised ropeway projects, the process for identifying other potential areas is continuing and that too on political considerations. The sites are not being identified on the basis of potential but considering pressure from political quarters.

One such example is that of a proposed ropeway between Bharmour and Bharmani in Chamba for which a consultant has been appointed. This comes close on the heels of the consultant appointed for assessing the viability for the Paonta Sahib-Dak Pathar aerial ropeway, terming it as most unviable.
Tribune News Service

Solan, September 9

Deputy Commissioner BC Badalia today ordered a magisterial probe into the food poisoning case of Government Middle School Barwa in Shillai area of Sirmaur where 123 students and 12 teachers were taken ill yesterday.

The Deputy Commissioner said SDM Shillai Vikas Shukla will conduct the probe and inquire into various aspects of the incident. A report would be submitted within a week.

He said the incident was uncalled for and laxity adopted in preparing food by the school management committee and the local panchayat would be probed.

The police had, in the meantime, drawn samples of food and water. They had been sent for lab analysis to ascertain the cause of food poisoning. A case under sections 269 and 336 of the IPC was also registered for negligence against the school management committee, informed the Additional SP Vinod Kumar.

The condition of all students and teachers was stable today and they had been sent home, confirmed the Deputy Commissioner.

Deputy Director Elementary Education was also directed to file a fact-finding report, informed Director Elementary Education Manmohan Sharma.
Tribune News Service

Srinagar, September 9

The incarcerated moderate Hurriyat leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq has been invited to attend the meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation's (OIC) Contact Group on Jammu and Kashmir, which is being held in New York on the sidelines of the 71st session of the United Nations General Assembly.

Mirwaiz, who is currently under arrest at Cheshma Shahi sub-jail, has also been invited by the OIC to attend the annual coordination meeting of the OIC foreign ministers, which is being held at UN headquarters from September 19-22.

Though the invitations from the OIC to Mirwaiz and other Kashmiri separatists are not new, the invite assumes significance as Pakistan is mulling taking up the unrest in the state and civilian killings during the UN General Assembly session which commences next week.

In his invitation to Mirwaiz, Dr Yusuf Al-Othaimeen, Director General of the OIC, said, the annual coordination meeting of the OIC foreign ministers as well as the meeting of OIC Contact Group on Jammu and Kashmir will be held during the 71st session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) at UN headquarters in New York from September 19-22, 2016.

He further said Mirwaiz was invited to the meetings in New York as an invitee.

However, a Hurriyat spokesman said Mirwaiz could not participate in these meetings. Mirwaiz is under continuous arrest since June 8 and for the past four years, his passport has been confiscated by the Government of India. Due to these reasons, the participation of Mirwaiz in the OIC session is not possible, the Hurriyat spokesman said in a statement.
From colourful Fryams to Swad and Poppins, here are a few oldies, but goodies that changed as we grew up.

Did you grow up with these candies as well? Picture courtesy: Instagram/pallav_bhati

By Shreya Goswami: You remember those days quite well. You'd get a little pocket money, and spend it all on things you weren't supposed to eat. Or how those guests who'd come over for dinner would shower you, and your siblings, with things your parents wouldn't let you eat.

In some of our houses, these goodies were rationed by parents, because our parents didn't want our tummies upset, or our teeth full of cavities. And yet, these are all we craved.

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If you went through all this you'll also know that most of those oldies, but goodies, don't taste the same any more. Some of them are also quite hard to find these days, or have gone off the market completely. Here's our little list of goodies from our childhood, and with each one, we wish we could go back in time and have some more.

Fryams

Fryams came in many colours and shapes. Picture courtesy: Instagram/asinghz



They were salty and spicy. They came in so many shapes. And you loved sticking them on your fingers and swallowing them whole. Yes, Fryams were the first love most of us had. They were basically made of the same stuff papad was, and we do still get versions of Fryams. But don't they taste a little more, you know, plastic?

Uncle Chipps

Uncle Chipps hasn't changed that much over the years. Picture courtesy: Instagram/hothigurleen



Here's a shout out to all those who just had to have a packet of Uncle Chipps a day! We chips-lovers were as committed to this salty snack as we were to cartoons. This is one brand that has maintained the taste over the years. But we do miss the older packets that had a larger image of the moustachioed uncle.

Also read: Did you know chocolate mousse can be created with JUST 2 ingredients?



Fun Flips





Fun Flips are still available, but they don't taste the same. Picture courtesy: Instagram/kirinmcawesome



These puffed up rice sticks are so chatpata and crunchy, you could have a few of these and do without boring old dinner. These are apparently still available, but not sold in all the supermarkets where the shopping crowds seem to be any more.

Fatafat

Fatafat is a digestive pill, but we ate it like popcorn. Picture courtesy: Instagram/poojavir_



All you need after gorging on salty chips was a few packets of this digestive pill. Yes, we all knew it's supposed to be ayurvedic, medicinal, and should only be taken in a limited amount after a meal. But we loved having them like popcorns, didn't we? Really, if you haven't put too many of them in your mouth, and accidentally winked at people because of the khatta taste, your childhood just wasn't fun enough.

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Milky Bar

Milky Bar has grown thinner and grainy over the years. Picture courtesy: Instagram/slimsation_92

This was the only milk chocolate available in the markets, and we loved them. Not because they had the power of milk in them, but because they were sweet, a creamy milky colour, and had a lot of bite to them. They're still in the market, but the bars have grown thinner, and the taste is predominantly of milk powder rather than whole milk.

Maggi





Maggi has made a great comeback, but it just doesn't taste the same any more. Picture courtesy: Instagram/tasteit.likeit.loveit

Yes, yes, we know Maggi went away, and has recently returned in a better avatar. But have you noticed how Maggi used to be spicier when we were kids. Could have been our still-developing taste buds, or just our own imagination, but it's just not the same old Maggi any longer.

Swad

Swad was sometimes appreciated more than Fatafat, because it lasted longer. Picture courtesy: Twitter/emmacatonvz

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Another digestive toffee, Swad was less sour than Fatafat, and dissolved slowly. We savoured the taste of the tamarind in our mouths for a long time. We roamed around with pockets full of them, and were caught red-handed while eating them after dinner. Ever wondered where this toffee went?

Orange Lollies

Orange lollies were cheap and a relief during summers. Picture courtesy: Instagram/lallipetro

These were really cheap in a day and age when all your pocket money could afford was the orange lolli, or nothing. Hot summer days were made more bearable with these amazing, frozen treats. Of course they don't taste the same any more, and that's because we've so many other ice cream options. Who cares about the orange lollies any more, eh?



Also read: How did the world's most famous chocolates get their names?



Poppins

Poppins was the reason behind many a friendship when we were kids. Picture courtesy: Instagram/nani8761

Our childhood would have been incomplete and friendless without Poppins. It's really as simple as that. One person in a friend circle would get a roll of Poppins, and share it with the rest. Remember how everybody would huddle up and choose the colour or flavour they wanted to have? We founght, we shared, and we had fun savouring Poppins.

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Kisme

Kisme was a source of a lot of fun and binge eating. Picture courtesy: Instagram/gdhamisa

As little kids, we just loved Kisme. By the time we reached our teenage years, we either shied away or sniggered while even using the word Kisme. It's a bit difficult finding a whole Kisme bar these days, and when you do get those little Kisme toffees instead, it's disappointing.

There are, of course, a lot many candy or snack brands that have gone missing over the years. Most have changed their packaging or flavour profile. As we've grown up, and face a world that's getting wilder and wilder, we wish we could go back to our childhood and the goodies we enjoyed then.

But nostalgia can actually help out. So here's to the times when candy was simpler, and salty snacks forever flowing in as gifts!



--- ENDS ---
Tribune News Service

Srinagar, September 9

Governor NN Vohra and Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti reviewed the internal security situation at a meeting held at Raj Bhawan here on Thursday.

The Governor also met Director General of the Police K Rajendra on Thursday to discuss issues relating to the restoration of normalcy in the Valley.

This was the first meeting between the Governor and Chief Minister after the visit of the all-party delegation of parliamentarians to Kashmir, which later passed a resolution to restore peace by talking to all stakeholders, who forsake path of violence. The talks are to be held without any compromise on the national sovereignty.

According to sources close to the Chief Minister, the review meeting recalled the whole turn of events in the past two months, and also discussed the way forward to defuse the situation. And the meeting also discussed the measures needed to instill confidence among the peace-loving people in the Valley as the trouble-makers were bent upon escalating the situation by inciting the youngsters.

Both Vohra and Mehbooba were convinced that restoration of normalcy first would create an atmosphere of trust and dialogue. This would require a close watch on the situation and adequate measures to maintain peace and order.

There have been increased infiltration attempts from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, which was evident from the number of encounters close to the Line of Control. The militants have upped their activities by attacking police stations, Army convoys and paramilitary forces.

Vohra, from time to time, has been making the political leadership aware of the threats to the internal security. He also had been consistently reviewing the security situation with the Army, police and paramilitary officials besides urging civil society to play its role in starting a coherent narrative for peace, stability and welfare of the masses.
Arteev Sharma

Tribune News Service

Jammu, September 8

The University of Jammu is bracing up for holding the much-awaited student union elections on the basis of the Lyngdoh Committee recommendations soon.

The agenda regarding the conduct of student union, being held for the first time, has already been cleared by the Academic Council and Syndicate Council. Now, the university has decided to take up the matter with the University Council  the supreme executive body of the university vested with all administrative and academic powers which is likely to meet in the first week of October to get a final approval.

However, the university has opted to hold indirect elections for the posts of office-bearer of the student union. Under the indirect mechanism of elections, two representatives  a postgraduate student and another MPhil or PhD scholar  will be elected from each department, who will, in turn, further cast vote and elect the office-bearers of the student union.

We have completed the groundwork and the matter will now be taken up with the University Council for final approval. We are committed to holding free, fair and transparent student union elections on the campus, said Prof Satnam Kour, Dean Students Welfare (DSW), University of Jammu.

She said there were two options  direct and indirect elections  available with the university and it decided to hold indirect poll on the campus. We have completed the exercise to conduct student union elections which will be a reality after the university council gives its clearance to the proposal, the DSW said.

Former Chief Election Commissioner JM Lyngdoh had, in his report of 2006, suggested sweeping reforms to keep off the influence of political parties, money and muscle power from university campuses during student union elections. The Supreme Court had adopted all proposals of Lyngdoh in toto.

The Lyngdoh panel, in its efforts to restrain undesirable elements from spoiling the campus peace during elections, had recommended the minimum and maximum age of 17 to 22 years, respectively, for undergraduate students and a minimum age of 24 years for postgraduate students to be eligible to vote.

The panel had further said the relaxation in the age limit would be given appropriately in professional colleges where the courses often range between four and five years and for research students in universities, it had been specified at 28 years.

Pertinently, the university administration had been facing criticism for allegedly muffling the voice of students by not allowing the activities of student wings of various political parties on the campus. On June 15, Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti had said it was the legitimate right of students to have political activity or interaction on university campuses.
Tribune News Service

Jammu, September 9

Maintaining that the Kashmir issue has multiple dimensions, Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti today said a serious and sustained effort was required at various levels to resolve the problem and ensure peace and stability in the state and the region.

It is a complex problem and a chief minister or Prime Minister cant overnight come up with a solution to this multi-dimensional challenge. What is required is a serious, concerted and inclusive effort at diplomatic and political levels through an institutionalised mechanism to resolve the issue, the Chief Minister said while addressing a function after laying the foundation of the new building for Government Degree College, Bhalwal, here.

The Chief Minister appreciated the efforts of the all-party delegation to reach out to various shades of political opinion in Jammu and Kashmir, saying that it depicted the true essence of Indias vibrant democracy.

She said shutting doors on the all-party delegation was not going to help anyway. Instead of being caught in darkness, the separatists should have met the members of the panel and put across an implementable roadmap for the resolution of the issue, she said, adding that by shying away from talks, a message had gone around that the separatists were not interested in ending peoples miseries by coming forward for a peaceful resolution of the issue.

Mehbooba said as the resolution adopted by the all-party delegation in New Delhi on Wednesday had reiterated the urgency of engagement and dialogue in Jammu and Kashmir, we hope a fresh and productive effort would be made by the countrys political leadership to reach out to all stakeholders in the state to address the issue through inclusive and comprehensive engagement. She expressed the hope that the separatists would also respond positively to the fresh initiative to end the decades-old political uncertainty in J&K which had left behind a trail of tragedies in almost every home in Kashmir.

Mehbooba said violence was no solution to any problem, rather reposing faith in the dialogue process was the only way out to address the issues. Governance and political process should go hand in hand to overcome the tough times that the state was currently passing through. The people of Jammu and Kashmir, irrespective of their age, gender, status or the political affiliation, have been suffering disastrous consequences of the turmoil and unrest and they have to be retrieved from this blood-spattered quagmire, sooner the better, she said, adding that the onus lies on all stakeholders.

Maintaining that the relations with Pakistan strongly impact the situation in J&K, Mehbooba said this was aptly understood by former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and former CM Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, who worked tirelessly to resolve the issue through confidence-building measures, both on internal and external fronts. If anything was achieved in Jammu and Kashmir since the Partition, it was between 2002 and 2005 when cross-LoC roads were opened for movement of people and goods and there was peace along the borders, she said.

Mehbooba said with a robust mandate and the countrys political leadership, cutting across the divide, fully supportive of reviving the peace and reconciliation process in and around Jammu and Kashmir, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had the opportunity to resolve the Kashmir issue in the interest of the peace and stability of the state and the region.

The Chief Minister said that it must not have ever happened that in a period of two months the Home Minister visited a state thrice to reach out to the people and work out a way to address the issue. She also appreciated the initiative of the Union Government to appoint a Nodal Officer to look into the grievances and concerns of Kashmiri students studying in various parts of the country.

Two months on, CMs smile is back

Finally, Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti got the chance to smile on Friday. During her visit to the Government College for Women at Parade in Jammu, she rode pillion on a Scooty with a girl student. An alumnus of the college, she shared her memories with students during the launch of the Chief Ministers Scooty Scheme. She surprised everybody present by asking a student to drive the Scooty out of the college. The security staff had a tough time while people around the college and students were pleasantly surprised. She distributed 300 Scooty keys at womens colleges at Parade and Gandhi Nagar. The two-wheelers were given on 50 per cent discount to girls belonging to families with an annual income of less than Rs 4 lakh who had secured more than 65 per cent marks.
Tribune News Service

Jammu, September 9

Union Minister of State in the Prime Ministers Office (PMO) Jitendra Singh today said those pursuing anti-national agenda have no place in society and the government will take a strong action against them. The minister said this during a function organised by the Sanjeevni Sharda Kendra (SSK), a socio-religious organistaion of displaced Kashmiri Hindus, on Sharda Ashtami.

Talking to reporters after the function, the minister said the Central government believed in a peaceful solution of issues confronting Jammu and Kashmir but there would be no compromise on sovereignty.

We have a clear message that anti-national elements have no place in our society. The nation is united in its fight against terrorism and those elements who are working to break the nation, said Jitendra Singh.

He said India had security concerns about Pakistans oppressive policies in Balochistan. We cannot remain indifferent to the happenings in the neighbourhood because it has impact on our security. This is the reason for the government expressing its concern about Balochistan while Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) and Gilgit-Baltistan are our part, said Jitendra Singh.

Meanwhile, celebrating its foundation day, the SSK also organised a hawan on the occasion of Sharda Ashtami. It is a unique ritual dedicated to the dead ancestors. Before the migration of 3.50 lakh Hindus from the Valley, Pandits used to visit Gangabal lake in Himalayas, said Pradeep Koul, one of the trustees of the SSK.

Renowned religious scholars spoke about the significance of the day in Hindu society of the Kashmir valley. Notably, the Sanjeevni Sharda Kendra was founded in 1995 to preserve and promote Hindu rituals and culture among the younger generation of displaced Pandits who are living away from their homeland.
Tribune News Service

Srinagar, September 9



Police on Friday did not allow separatist leader Syed Ali Geelani to hold a press conference at his residence on the city outskirts here.



Geelani, who along with other separatist leaders is steering the ongoing unrest by issuing weekly protest calendars, had called for an important press conference at his residence.



The police, however, blocked the road leading to Geelanis residence and didnt allow reporters and photojournalists to reach the venue. We have the orders not to allow anyone, a police official, outside Geelanis residence, said.



Geelani later issued a statement saying the ongoing unrest had unnerved India and thanked Pakistan, China, Norway, Saudi Arabia, New Zealand, Iran, Turkey and the Organisation of Islamic Countries for expressing concern at the situation in Kashmir.
Tribune News Service

Jammu, September 8

The circular, issued by the University of Jammu to all HoDs/rectors/directors of various offsite campuses/controlling offices in August, to ensure registration of all employees on the varsity portal for the implementation of the biometric attendance system has failed to serve the purpose.

Sources said the first such circular was issued by the varsity on June 22 for registration of all its employees on the web portal, http://jkuniversityjammu.attendance.gov.in, but in vain.

They said that after waiting for almost a month, another circular was issued by the university registrar wherein all concerned were asked to ensure enrolment on the web portal at the earliest to implement the biometric attendance system.

Sources claimed that a new circular was issued by the Department of Students Welfare (DSW) a few days ago wherein it was informed that the department would organise a camp for Aadhar enrolment.

All HoDs/Rectors/Directors of various offsite campuses/controlling offices have been asked to furnish the name of the employees for enrolment. Wednesday was the last day for all departments to furnish the information to the DSW office.

Prof Satnam Kour, Dean, Students Welfare, University of Jammu, said: Yes, Wednesday was the last day for furnishing the information of employees of all departments for their enrolment on the web portal to implement the biometric attendance system. The DSW is trying to implement the new attendance system as soon as possible, she added.

As part of the Digital India Programme of the Central government, it was decided to implement the common Aadhaar Enabled Biometric Attendance System. The proposed system will enable an employee to register attendance by presenting his/her biometric (fingerprint/IRIS) which will be authenticated online by doing one-to-one match with the biometric stored in the Unique Identification Authority of India database against the employees Aadhaar number.
Tribune News Service

Srinagar, September 9

Jammu and Kashmir Governor NN Vohra and Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti reviewed the internal security situation of the state, particularly of the Valley, here in view of the current unrest that has left more than 70 people dead and thousands wounded.

This was their first meeting after the conclusion of a visit by an all-party delegation of parliamentarians and its unanimous resolution to restore peace by talking to all stakeholders without any compromise on the national sovereignty.

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According to sources close to the Chief Minister, the review recalled the whole turn of events in the past two months, and also discussed the way forward to defuse the situation. The meeting also discussed the measures needed to instill confidence among the peace-loving people in the Valley.

Both Vohra and Mehbooba were convinced that normalcy would go hand-in-hand in seeking a fruitful dialogue to seek a way out of the current trouble that had entered its third month after the killing of militant commander Burhan Wani on July 8, it was learnt, though officially not many details were made available by the official spokesman.

The killing turned out to be a trigger for the inflammable narrative that had been built over months, in which, as mentioned by Chief Minister, ammunition had been uploaded in the impressionable minds for months to derail peace, normalcy and the prospects of resurrection of the state economy. The normalcy and economy were gaining traction because of the involvement of the youth in tourism and hospitality sector with a tourist boom this season. She had been making these observations since she found out that the real reason of the unrest centered on destablising the state.

Besides the increased infiltration from Pakistan occupied Kashmir as evident from the number of encounters close to the LoC, the militants have upped their activities by attacking police stations, army convoys and paramilitary forces, using mosques as bush telegraph.

Vohra, from time to time, had been making the political leadership aware of the threats to the internal security. He also had been consistently reviewing the security situation with the army, police and paramilitary officials besides urging civil society to play its role in starting a coherent narrative for peace, stability and welfare of the masses.

The Governor also reviewed the internal security situation with Director General of Police K Rajendra and GOC 15 Corps.
Kanika Raheja, Mrs West Asia 2016, who participated in the Mrs Universe 2016 pageant in Guangzhou, China, is the first Indian to come up to the top 20 finalists. There were 72 contestants.

A resident of Sector 21 Chandigarh, she gives credit to her husband and in-laws who have been very supportive in this journey of hers. She has won the title of Mrs Universe Intelligence 2016 and was selected for the endorsement of the famous Chinese bag brandPowerland and is one of the girls to be featured in the Chinese wine commercial. TNS
New Delhi, September 8

Officers of 20 civil services, including IPS and IRS, today accused Indian Administrative Service (IAS) of having vested interest in denying them proper promotion and deputation opportunities.

In a memorandum to Minister of State for Personnel Jitendra Singh, a confederation representing the officers, said the situation will be chaotic if fair and equitable treatment is not given to all services.

Confederation of Civil Services Association (COCSA), led by senior Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer Jayant Misra, also expressed serious concerns over a Centre-appointed sham task force, dominated by IAS officers, to decide on restructuring of their service and sought changes in it.

The Centre had late last month constituted a task force to study cadre structures of various central services to check stagnation level and other issues. However, three all India services  IAS, Indian Police Service (IPS) and Indian Forest Service (IFoS)  have been kept out of its purview.

The task force is headed by a senior IAS officer of Additional Secretary rank.

Citing the Seventh Central Pay Commissions report, the confederation said the mandate to decide about other services has been arrogated by IAS, including the right to decide about the cadre structure, stagnation level and Higher Administrative Grade (HAG) posts as the task force is chaired by an IAS officer.

There is a very strong perception among members of all other services that IAS, which has been enjoying a privileged position, has an inherent and vested interest in keeping the other services down by denying them proper opportunities for promotions, deputations so that the members of these services are unable to compete with that service for higher level posts, COCSA said.  PTI
R Sedhuraman

Legal Correspondent

New Delhi, September 9

The Supreme Court today sought the Centres response in six weeks to Arvind Kejriwal governments appeal against being reduced to a recommendatory body of Lieutenant-Governor (L-G) Najeeb Jung by the Delhi High Court on August 4.

A Bench comprising Justices AK Sikri and NV Ramana, however, refused to stay the HC verdict holding that Delhi continued to be a Union Territory (UT) and its administrative head was the L-G who was not bound by the aid and advice of the Council of Ministers of the city government.

The Bench refused to restrain the L-G from going ahead with an inquiry into various decisions taken by the Kejriwal government even as senior advocate Gopal Subramanium found fault with the probe. The apex court said there was no need for a stay on the HC ruling or the L-Gs move as it would hear the AAP governments petitions on a priority basis.

Posting the cases for a final hearing on November 15, it granted two weeks to the city government to file its reply to the Centres response.

Senior advocate KK Venugopal began the arguments, contending that the High Court had reduced a popularly elected government as an adjunct of the L-G and this was against the spirit of democracy. The High Court ruling would not only make the AAP government non-functional, but its successors as well.

Appearing for the Centre, Attorney General Mukul Rohtagi pleaded with the Bench against entertaining the appeals. As a nine-Judge Bench of the Supreme Court in the New Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) versus State of Punjab case (1996), has already ruled that Delhi is a UT, not a state, the Bench said it would consider referring the cases to a larger Bench.

The AG argued that Delhis status as a UT was clear under Articles 239 (dealing with administration of UTs) and 366 (collection of taxes) besides the First Schedule that explained the character of every state and UT.

Rohatgi also found fault with Deputy CM Manish Sisodia filing the appeals while the law mandated that this could be done only by bureaucrats. Venugopal, however, pleaded that Sisodia had to move the apex court as no Secretary was ready to sign the plea in the absence of L-Gs nod. Access to justice could not be stopped and doing so was against legal jurisprudence, he argued.

The AAP Government, having approached the Delhi High Court time and again on disputes with the L-G on important issues such as postings of bureaucrats, had filed seven appeals. The High Court heard all the petitions together and delivered its judgment.
Travelling from Rabi, Thailand to Penang, Malaysia on September 2, this UK-based couple enjoyed a private jet experience with a regular air ticket. Here's why.

Carrie Fisher and Kyle McNicol were the only ones to fly in this aircraft. Picture courtesy: Instagram/88_kmc_88

By India Today Web Desk: Being able to fly in a private jet is a dream most travellers would love to see coming true.

But what if you got a chance to experience this with your regular flight ticket?

Surprised? Well, so were Carrie Fisher and Kyle McNicol, a UK-based couple, who discovered that they were flying solo only when they reached the airport.

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According to a recent post by Mashable, this couple was actually pretty shocked when they came to know that they were the only passengers in a flight from Krabi, Thailand to Penang, Malaysia on September 2.

Carrie Fisher wrote about this experience on her blog saying, "On arrival at Krabi airport we made our way to the check-in desk and handed over our passports, we were shocked to hear, 'Oh very special flight for you today'".

"But didn't think anything of it until we reached customs and the two guys checking our passports started laughing and saying, 'Oh, just you two'. Turns out that we were about to board the flight and fly solo! We were escorted by a lovely lady to our own bus, which in turn took us to our private plane."

Although the flight lasted for an hour and 10 minutes, the couple made the most of their privileged experience hopping between different seats and enjoying the time they got.

Kyle McNicol posted a selfie of the couple on his Instagram account with the caption, When you have the full plane to yourself! #midflight #krabi to #Penang #Thailand #malaysia #travel #travelphotography #backpacking #wanderlust #travelgram #instatravel #flight #flyingsolo"



Fisher, on the other hand, posted a very interesting video compilation of their time in the flight on Twitter.



--- ENDS ---
Ajay Banerjee

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, Sept 9

The restive south Kashmir will see an additional deployment of the Army. This comes in view of the government's worry as street protests in south KashmirKulgam, Pulwama, Anantnag and Shopianhave been vociferous.

A decision to this affect has been taken and the Army has been told to tie-up its last minute deployment patterns. The Army will not be tasked with mob control, but with tracking down armed terrorists who have been fanning trouble.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

The government is seeing this as a major challenge to restore law and order that has broken down completely in the absence of any presence of the Jammu and Kashmir Police or the paramilitary forces, in the rural hinterland.

Indian Army Chief General Dalbir Singh Suhag is in Kashmir today to review the security situation, especially in the backdrop of rather long-winded street protests in the Valley.

The protests had gone out of hand since terror-outfit Hizbul Mujahideens self-styled commander Burhan Wani was killed by security forces. More than 70 people lost their lives in various protests.

General Suhag was briefed this morning at Srinagar and he was told about the new military methods planned to curb Pak-sponsored infiltration into Jammu and Kashmir.

Gen Suhag will also visit the Line of Control (LoC) with Pakistan during his visit to the Kashmir Valley. General Suhag will visit the Army establishment at Kupwara located along the 749-km long LoC.

General Suhag shall also visit Awantipora during his day-long visit to review the security situation in the Valley.
Ruchika M Khanna and Sanjeev S Bariana

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, September 9

Independent MLAs from Ludhiana Balwinder Singh Bains and Simarjit Singh Bains, who on Thursday launched Awaz-e-Punjab along with Navjot Singh Sidhu and Jalandhar Cantt MLA Pargat Singh, were thrown out of the Punjab Vidhan Sabha complex today.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

They were lifted by the watch and ward staff for disrupting House proceedings and thrown out of the Vidhan Sabha. It is perhaps for the first time in the history of Punjab Vidhan Sabha that sitting MLAs have been physically thrown out.

The trouble began after zero hour when Simarjit pushed for a private member's resolution on Punjab not claiming royalty from Rajasthan for its river waters. Speaker Charanjit Singh Atwal disallowed the resolution. He wanted the House to discuss Dr BR Ambedkar's contribution to the Constitution as part of his 125th birth anniversary celebrations instead. Simarjit continued to speak on the issue and was warned he would have to leave the House.The MLA paid no heed.

The Speaker then asked the ward and watch staff to take him away. Balwinder too rose from his seat in solidarity with his brother. Papers in hand, the Bains brothers rushed into the well of the House even as Congress MLAs seemed unsure whether or not to join their protest.

Thrown out, the Bains brothers approached mediapersons at the press gallery. Just then 60-odd policemen in mufti and the watch and ward staff gathered there, listening carefully to what the MLAs had to say. The brothers talked about the repressive Badal government and its "high-handedness."

Later, Simarjit tried to re-enter the House but was prevented from doing so. In protest, he sat outside the main entrance and raised slogans against the government.

The Bains brothers clearly stole the limelight while the 40-odd Congress MLAs failed to make their presence felt with one of them deflecting an attack on the treasury benches with a pro-government speech.

The brothers said since 1965, Rajasthan was being supplied 11.2 MAF of Punjabs river waters. However, no rate had been fixed for the same. Accusing the Badals of deliberately not raising the issue with the Rajasthan Government "as the family owns land in Rajasthan," they claimed the accumulated dues came to a staggering Rs 15,34,400 crore.

Congress MLA Sunil Jakhar maintained the issue raised by the brothers was legally untenable. He too was attacked by them.
Bengaluru, September 9

Normal life in the city and most parts of the state was affected on Friday by the dawn-to-dusk Karnataka bandh called by pro-Kannada outfits to protest against the Supreme Courts direction to release Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu.

A few activists of pro-Kannada organisations who tried to enter the departure terminal of the Kempegowda International Airport and the railway station here were stopped and detained by the police.

Transport services have been hit with government buses staying off the roads while auto-rickshaw and cab unions have extended their support to the bandh.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

Metro services in the countrys IT hub have also been halted.

People who reached the city from distant places and those travelling towards the airport are facing difficulties in reaching their destination with no mode of connectivity.

Educational institutes have declared a holiday.

Attendance at government offices was comparatively less as officials had said it would not be compulsory to work on Friday.

While some private companies have declared a holiday, others are making alternative arrangements for employees to work from home.

Petrol pumps, hotels, malls and other commercial establishments remained shut; bank services were also hit.

Karnataka Cable Operators Association which is supporting the strike has said Tamil TV channels will not be aired.

The bandh has evoked a positive response from various parts of the state, including Mandya, Mysuru, Ballari, Koppala, Chikkaballapura, Dharwad and Kolar.

In Mandya, the epicenter of the Cauvery protests, agitators have blocked the Bengaluru-Mysuru highway at several places.

A section of farmers in the district staged a protest by venturing into the river carrying stones on their head.

In Ballari, three lorries bearing Tamil Nadu registrations were stoned by protesters.

The transgender community in the district also took part in the bandh-related demonstrations.

Chief Minister Siddaramiah had appealed for peace and said no damage should be caused to public property during the bandh.

Elaborate security arrangements have been made to maintain law and order in the state. Extra forces had been deployed with two companies each from Kerala and Andhra Pradesh, one from Maharashtra and 10 companies of central forces, police said.

This is the second bandh that the state is bracing for in a weeks time and the fourth this year.

Officials said that with the bandh on the emotive Cauvery issue being supported by several organisations, unions and political parties, it was likely to be total.

Opposition parties of BJP and JD(S) have also lent support to the bandh.

The Cauvery row erupted after the Supreme Court on Monday directed Karnataka to release 15,000 cusecs of water to Tamil Nadu for the next 10 days to address the plight of farmers there.

Subsequently, on September 6, Karnataka released the Cauvery water amid snowballing protests by farmers.

The Karnataka government had also said it would approach the apex court seeking modification of its order because of the difficulties in implementing it, given that the live storage in four reservoirs in the Cauvery basin now was 46.7 TMC ft against their capacity of 104 TMC ft. PTI
Bengaluru, September 9

With the extreme unrest in Karnataka over release of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah today requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi to call forthwith on a few hours notice a meeting of chief ministers of the two states to end the impasse.

As the Cauvery row heated up with the state observing a 12-hour bandh today, Siddaramaiah sent a missive to Modi saying the unrest, if continued, would have a serious impact on the states economy as also the IT economy which brings enormous revenue and foreign exchange to the country.

By this communication, I earnestly request you not only as Prime Minister, but as head of the entire federal system, to call a meeting of the Chief Ministers of the states (forthwith on a few hours notice) to resolve the impasse, Siddaramaiah said in the letter released to the media here.

He pointed to a precedent of December 1995, where under similar circumstances of deficit flows, the Supreme Court had requested the Prime Minister to resolve the issue.

The Supreme Court on December 28, 1995 requested the Prime Minister to resolve the issue of implementation of its order, which was then duly done to the satisfaction of all parties, he said.

Complying with the apex courts order, the Karnataka Government has been releasing 15,000 cusecs of water to Tamil Nadu since Tuesday, triggering a wave of protests particularly in the Cauvery basin districts with Mandya being the epicentre of the stir.

Meanwhile, hundreds of IT firms and multinational companies suspended work in the technology hub today in support of the shutdown, which crippled life across the state. Buses, cabs and autos stayed off roads, while hotels, pubs, shops and banks remained closed.

The Karnataka government declared a holiday for all schools and colleges.  Agencies
Bengaluru, September 9

Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday asking for his intervention to end an impasse over sharing of Cauvery waters with Tamil Nadu as protests intensified in state on Friday.



As the state observed a 12-hour bandh against a recent Supreme Court judgement, Siddaramaiah asked Modi to call a meeting with chief ministers of both states, warning him that the unrest was likely to damage the states economy, particularly its thriving IT industry, unless a solution was found soon.

Also read: Cauvery issue: Bandh brings Karnataka to a grinding halt

"By this communication, I earnestly request you not only as Prime Minister, but as Head of the entire Federal system, to call a meeting of the Chief Ministers of the States (forthwith on a few hours notice) to resolve the impasse," Siddaramaiah said in the letter released to the press.

He pointed to a precedent of December 1995, where under similar circumstances, the Supreme Court had requested then Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao to resolve a deadlock.

"The Supreme Court by order dated 28 December, 1995, requested the Prime Minister to resolve the issue of implementation of its order, which was then duly done to the satisfaction of all parties," he said.

The Karnataka Government has promised to release water, but has said it would ask for the Supreme Courts order of 15,000 cusecs of water every day to be modified because of water crunch in the state. The chief minister claimed that four reservoirs on the Cauvery basin had only 45 per cent of their actual capacity and that releasing 15,000 cusecs of Cauvery water every day "would completely deprive the drinking water not only to the residents of Bangalore City but also to farmers of Cauvery basin and water for the only crop they grow".

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

"The present storage in the Mettur reservoir and the northeast rainfall received in Tamil Nadu would be more than sufficient to meet the requirement of water for the Samba rice crop just being or still to be sown by the farmers in the state," his letter claimed.

The chief minister also wrote that political parties in the state  including the BJP  were against implementing the Supreme Courts order, although the government felt that the direction had to be complied with.

The Supreme Court recently ordered the state to release 15,000 cusecs of water every day to Tamil Nadu for 40,000 acres of Samba crops.

The order sparked massive protests across Karnataka. The two states are currently involved in a dispute over sharing waters of the Cauvery.  PTI




New Delhi, September 9

The Central Bureau of Investigation questioned Congress leader Jagdish Tytler on Friday on his suspected role in the anti-Sikh riots of 1984, two months after the court gave the agency some more time to re-investigate the case.

Tytler appeared before CBI investigators on Friday, sources said.

A trial court allowed the CBI two more months to investigate in July after the agency asked for it.

The case pertains to riots at Gurudwara Pulbangash in North Delhi in which three people had been killed on November 1, 1984, a day after the assassination of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

On December 4, 2015, the court asked the agency to investigate Tytlers role in the killings after arms dealer Abhishekh Verma claimed he had "paid off" a witness.

The CBI had to re-investigate the case after a court refused to accept the agencys closure third closure report in December.  PTI
Legal Correspondent

New Delhi, September 8

The Delhi High Court today quashed the appointment of 21 Aam Aadmi Party MLAs as Parliamentary Secretaries in March 2015 as the Arvind Kejriwal government accepted that their position had become untenable in the light of the ruling that Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jungs nod was necessary in service matters.

A Bench comprising Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice Sangita D Sehgal passed the order after the city governments senior advocate Sudhir Nandrajog conceded that the HCs August 4, 2016 judgment holding that Delhi continued to be a UT and the LG was its administrative head had rendered the appointments untenable.

Edit: Another blow to AAP

The HC ruling came on a PIL by NGO Rashtriya Mukti Morcha challenging the appointments, prompted by the fact that the ruling party had won 67 of 70 seats in the February 2015 election, but could accommodate only seven in the ministry due to the cap  10 per cent of the Assemblys strength.

The 21 MLAs would, however, continue to face separate proceedings before the Election Commission on pleas for their disqualification as legislators, mainly by the BJP and the Congress, under the office of profit law that debarred legislators from holding public offices other than those exempted positions such as ministers.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

During the hearing in the HC, the Centre had pleaded that the 21 MLAs were covered under the disqualification clause as only the Chief Minister was entitled to have a parliamentary secretary.

The AAP government got a Bill passed in the Assembly seeking to exempt the 21 MLAs from the purview of the office-of-profit clause, but the President refused to give his nod to the proposed law, the Centre had argued.

Going by the governments logic, the 21 MLAs stood stripped of their post as parliamentary secretaries on August 4 when the HC delivered the verdict on the citys status  UT, not a state.

Earlier, the Kejriwal government defended the appointments, pleading that the secretaries were neither getting any salary, nor handling files.
Delhi Police have launched five PCR vans to be operated by an all-women staff.

By Tanseem Haider: Women police play very important part in day to day policing in Delhi Police. They form the back bone of the enforcement functioning in various units including police stations, communications, special juvenile police units, Police Control Room (PCR) vans etc.

PCR Vans, which are the first responders, have been playing a very important role for policing in the city. It is called the lifeline of Delhi. On an average they respond to more than 10,000 calls each day.

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The presence of various PCR vans in the city at different locations act as a psychological deterrence for criminals and anti-social elements. Simultaneously they also instil a sense of confidence in citizens who can approach them when in distress.

FIVE PCRS OPERATED BY WOMEN LAUNCHED

Delhi Police PCR Unit has launched a pilot project in which five PCR vans that will be operated by an all women staff. The police have identified five places to deploy these women-operated PCR vans. The areas identified are Vigyan Bhawan, Jesus and Mary College, Khan Market Metro Station, American Centre - Kasturba Gandhi Marg and Moti Lal Nehru Marg.

Twenty women police personnel have been trained for the job. Women personnel, including four assistant sub-inspectors, six head constables and 10 constables have undergone training in musketry and firing. They have also been trained in unarmed combat skills.

Armed policewoman with a PCR van. (Photo: Tanseem Haider) Armed policewoman with a PCR van. (Photo: Tanseem Haider)

In order to equip them with the new nature of responsibilities special refresher course was arranged in the Subsidiary Training Unit PCR, Rajender Nagar of Delhi about behaviour soft skills, communication skills and law.

This initiative has been taken up with a view that women callers find it easier to communicate with women police personnel and narrate their grievances without any hesitation.

The impact assessment of this initiative would be conducted after a quarter, and if results are encouraging, the project scheme would be extended to other areas of the national capital especially crime prone areas for women.

Also read:

Delhi Police arrest accused in daylight robbery of 80 lakhs





--- ENDS ---
Shivani Bhakoo & Manav Mander

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, September 8

Battling rebellion and allegations of sleaze and corruption against his MLAs in Delhi, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) national convener and Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal arrived in Punjab today to give a push to the partys campaign. Heckled by rivals at the Ludhiana railway station, he said more filth may be hurled at his party in the run-up to the 2017 Assembly elections.

Addressing the media briefly, Kejriwal said: Punjab will be rid of the Badals only when they are sent to jail. He alleged Deputy CM Sukhbir Badal had made 63 fake CDs to malign him and had hired a company which would release these from time to time. He (Sukhbir) will play these CDs on the channel he owns. But the people of Punjab are too smart to be misled thus, said Kejriwal, claiming he would not be cowed by such propaganda.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

Last time when I visited Ludhiana, my car was attacked with iron rods. This time too I expect something similar to happen. I am ready for anything. A truthful person is always attacked.

Mein jaan hatheli pe lekar aaya hoon (I am risking my life). On a four-day Punjab tour, Kejriwal promised the farmers that the interest on their loans would be waived and they would be debt-free by 2018, if AAP was voted to power. He said it was sad that farmers of the once progressive state were being driven to suicide.

Earlier, as Kejriwal arrived at the Ludhiana station, disgruntled AAP volunteers, SAD activists and Mahila Congress members breached security and confronted him. District president of the Youth Akali Dal (Urban-II) Gurdeep Singh Gosha and vice-president of the SAD (Malwa Zone-III) Manpreet Singh Bunty and their supporters threw bangles at the AAP leader. Those who are exploiting women are steeped in corruption and have no Punjabi connection, they should not be allowed to come to Punjab and disturb peace, said Gosha.

Led by district president Leena Taparia, Mahila Congress activists, carrying black flags and placards, kept waiting for Kejriwal at the main entrance while he was escorted out by the police through another exit point. The activists then came to the platform and raised Go back Kejriwal slogans. They called AAP Anti-Aurat Party.

Accusing Kejriwal of having sold the party ticket, AAP protesters said they had lost faith in his leadership. Local leaders led by Varun Mehta too held a protest.
Tribune News Service

Guwahati, September 9

The banned United Liberation Front of Assam (Independent) today released Kuldeep Moran, the abducted son of senior BJP leader Ratneswar Moran, from Tinsukia district of eastern Assam. He was abducted on August 1 from the neighbouring Arunachal Pradesh.

Police said the abducted person was released at Lumbi Basti at Nampong near the Arunachal-Myanmar border.

Earlier, ULFA (I)s self-styled c-in-c Paresh Barua, in a statement issued to the media, claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of Kuldeep but denied demanding any ransom for his release.

The ULFA leader alleged that the kidnapped youth was working as a spy of the Indian security forces by providing information on ULFA cadres movement and hence the outfit had taken him hostage.

Kuldeeps parents and the local legislator from Sadiya LAC, Bolin Cheita, had alleged to have received an extortion demand of Rs 1 crore.

The ULFA (I) is opposed to unconditional talks with the Government of India and is suspected to have pitched camp in neighbouring Myanmar.
Chandigarh, September 9

The Aam Aadmi Party in Punjab has filed criminal defamation cases against its Delhi MLA Devender Sehrawat, who had accused the party's state leaders of exploiting women in return for tickets, and former party leaders HS Kingra and Paviter Singh.

AAP's Punjab affairs in-charge Sanjay Singh and National Organisation Building Secretary Durgesh Pathak filed the cases in the court of Chief Judicial Magistrate, Chandigarh.

An AAP release said Singh and Pathak filed a joint case of criminal defamation against Sehrawat whose allegations, they said, "defame the women of Punjab".

In Delhi, AAP city Convener Dilip Pandey said he would also file a separate defamation suit against Sehrawat soon. Responding to it, Sehrawat said he stands by "every word I've written in that letter and when the case comes in the court, we will take appropriate action". He said filing a defamation case at this time is all "politics and posturing".

"The people will decide who should rule Punjab. Should the Punjabis rule Punjab? Should those rule Punjab who are not even able to start a minor inquiry and find out if an observation has been given and push the thing into the court," he said.  PTI/TNS
Gurdeep Singh Mann

Tribune News Service

Bathinda, September 9

Notorious gangster Devinder Shooter, alias Devinder Bambiha, involved in over 20 cases of murder, extortion and robbery was killed in a police encounter near Phul village, Rampura, this morning. His accomplice Tara Dosanjh was arrested with a bullet injury in leg.

SSP Swapan Sharma supervised the police encounter. Wanted by the police of Punjab and Haryana, Devinder openly admitted to killing of young Congress sarpanch Ravi Khwajke of Khwajke village near Ludhiana seven months ago. Ravi was murdered in the presence of hundreds of guests at a marriage function in Ludhiana. The video of killing had gone viral on the internet. An avid Facebook user, Devinder, a resident of Bambiha village, Moga, also admitted his hand in the killing of Ravi and another murder last month near Bath village in Tarn Taran.

In Amritsar last month, he along with accomplices fired around 150 rounds and today he tried to save himself by firing around 40 rounds, said a senior policeman at the encounter spot this morning.

Later in the evening, Bathinda Range IG Satish Kumar Asthana, DIG Yurinder Hayer and SSP Swapan Sharma said a massive operation was launched in the 200 acres of agricultural fields in the Rampura villages to ascertain whether a third accomplice was also with them.

They used to upload all sorts of criminal activities on the social networking sites, said the SSP.

Apart from the infamous Tarn Taran and Ludhiana killings, Devinder and Tara were also involved in killing four people in Faridkot and Moga. Both of them were class XII students and active in criminal activities for the last four to five years. They graduated from petty crime to heinous ones in various jails, he said, adding that they were trailing behind them for over a month.

We got early morning intimation that the duo was in the house of Devinders aunt in Phul village. The moment they tried to escape in a car, heavy gunfire ensued which lead to the killing of one the gangsters and arrest of the another, said the SSP.

Devinders aunt, her husband Kuldeep Singh, a driver, son, nephew and two others are also arrested and booked for sheltering the criminals.

Two .30 bore pistols, one 9 mm pistol, one .32 bore revolver, 85 live rounds of 9 mm, 100 live rounds of 30 bore, one laptop, two mobile phones, one fake ID card, fake driving licenses, Rs 17, 500 were recovered from their possession.

Bambiha had escaped twice

Gangster Devinder Singh Bambiha managed to escape from the police custody twice. Once on September 14, 2013, during a hearing in a double murder case in Faridkot and then on January 20, 2015, while he was being taken from Ludhiana to Muktsar for a hearing. He was cremated at his native Bambiha Bhai village in Moga on Friday. A team of the Bathinda police led by Inspector Karamjit Singh brought the body to the village at around 6 pm. The family members then cremated him at around 8.15pm.
Gurvinder Singh

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, September 8

Aam Aadmi Partys Punjab affairs in-charge Sanjay Singh today rejected the allegation by Navjot Singh Sidhu that he was offered to be a decorative piece in AAP and not promised any seat.

Sidhu had himself said that since it is the policy of AAP that no two persons from a family can contest elections, his wife should be given the ticket. I vividly remember his words I am not so selfish to contest from my wifes seat, he said.

Singh said he was shocked that all his political career Sidhu spoke against Akalis, but during his conference, he took on AAP. It is unfortunate that AAP is fighting against the Badals and Sidhu turned against AAP, he said.

We dont know why there is a change of mind as he had himself said that it was the order of Mahadev (Lord Shiva) that he would fight along with AAP against corruption to save Punjab. In this fight of dharma and adharma, he would be with AAP, he said.

Forming new fronts will only benefit the Badals. We will still welcome him if he wants to join us, he said.

On accusations that Punjab was being ruled by people from Delhi, he said they were just here as workers. He said all 32 candidates declared so far were Punjabis. During the Delhi elections, AAP leaders from Punjab had gone to campaign for AAP and the results are in front of you. Similarly, I and Durgesh Pathak just workers of the party here to help the party in the elections, he said.
Rachna Khaira

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, September 9

Finally, bowing down to the state governments stance of allocating only 40 acres for the construction of a domestic airport at Adampur, the Airport Authority of India (AAI) has agreed to start construction on this land.

This was conveyed by AAI officials in a meeting held with Vishwajeet Khanna, Secretary, Civil Aviation, Punjab, on Friday in Chandigarh.

While confirming this, BJP state chief Vijay

Sampla said, The AAI will finally begin the construction of an airport on the land chunk to be allocated soon by the state government.

Presently, there is no need to expand the existing runway at the site. The AAI will initially construct an airport terminal and a parking bay, for which the land will be sufficient enough.

Sampla, however, said the state government has assured the AAI that it would allocate more land whenever the need arises in the future. He also confirmed that a team of AAI officials would visit Adampur next week to identify the exact site. The land acquisitioning would begin by next week.

The Tribune, in a report published on Thursday, had highlighted that the airport project at Adampur, which was initiated by Sampla, was on the verge of abandonment by the BJP due to a deadlock over land between the AAI and the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD).
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, September 9

The Punjab Government on Friday told the Punjab and Haryana High Court that the file dealing with the appointment of chairperson and two members of the Punjab Human Rights Commission had reached the Chief Minister and sought additional two weeks time for making the appointments.

Taking a note of the assertion, the Bench fixed September 26 as the next date of hearing in the matter.

The Punjab Government, in June, had set a six-week deadline to make the appointments.

The undertaking came during the hearing of a petition filed in public interest by advocate HC Arora.

In his PIL, Arora had sought directions to initiate steps for the appointment of chairperson and two members. The Court was told that Chairperson Justice Jagdish Bhalla had completed his tenure on March 22. Two members Pushpinder Singh Grewal and Baljinder Singh too had completed their tenure on March 3.

He added the Commission was receiving around 60-70 complaints daily but was virtually non-functional since March.
Tribune News Service

Amritsar, September 9

Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) convener Arvind Kejriwal on Friday announced to make Amritsar and Anandpur Sahib 'holy cities' if voted to power in the state.

The Delhi Chief Minister, who is on a five-day visit to Punjab, said the fight for making the state free of drugs and corruption had reached a decisive point.

After paying obeisance at the Golden Temple, Kejriwal said he intended to make the walled city area of Amritsar liquor free. Also, no non-vegetarian items would be sold there.

The walled city area accommodates around 60 per cent of the citys population and has narrow lanes surrounding the Sikhs holiest shrine. Mostly developed in the 17th and 18th century, it houses the historic Jallianwala Bagh also.

Amritsar is an important city of Punjab where the Golden Temple, Durgiana Mandir and Ram Tirath temple are situated. The Golden Temple is a place where not only Sikhs, but people from all other religions come to pay obeisance.

It is visited by devotees from all over the globe. AAP, after coming to power, will accord it holy city status in its true letter and spirit. Alcohol, meat items or tobacco products will be prohibited in the walled city area. Similarly, Anandpur Sahib will also be developed accordingly, he said.

However at the last moment, he skipped going to the Durgiana Mandir. Party sources said there were some inputs that some BJP supporters might lodge a protest by showing black badges.

Later, he went to the residence of a former Akali leader, now Independent councillor Amarjit Singh Bhatia. Bhatia, who had attested as surety of AAPs state affairs incharge Sanjay Singh in court in the defamation case filed by Cabinet minister Bikram Majithia in July, joined AAP in the presence of Kejriwal.
Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, September 9

On day two of his Punjab tour, the car of AAP chief and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal in which he was travelling from Ludhiana to Amritsar met with a minor accident near Chugitti ahead of PAP Chowk this morning.

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The Innova car bearing the number CH-01-AB-9595, in which he was seated along with party leaders HS Phoolka and Bhagwant Mann, got slightly damaged from frontal side.

There were about 20 cars in the convoy that was moving to the holy city to pay obeisance at the Golden Temple. No one was injured in the pile up.

Jalandhar Zonal Observer Rajiv Chaudhary said Kejriwal and other leaders changed the car and moved ahead shortly after the accident.

Kejriwal is on a four-day tour of Punjab to give a push to the Aam Aadmi Party's poll campaign.
By India Today Web Desk: A few months back Dino Morea and girlfriend Nandita Mahtani organised Bipasha Basu and Karan Singh Grover's wedding. But things aren't that rosy between Dino and Nandita anymore. Buzz has it that the two have parted ways.

ALSO READ: B-Town exes who left ugly break-ups behind and became friends

ALSO READ: Is Katrina Kaif's break-up with Ranbir Kapoor the best thing for her career?



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According to a report in Mumbai Mirror, Nandita is on a vacation, and that too alone. The fashion designer is said to be introspection mode after her split with boyfriend Dino. A source known to both confirmed the news to the tabloid, "Nandi is quite upset."

It's been a long time since Dino has been dating Nandita. In fact, the report suggests that the Raaz actor was keen to tie the knot with Nandita, and some point had even popped the question. But for some reason Nandita kept on delaying it.

A source told the tabloid that it's been two weeks since the two decided to go their separate ways due to incompatibility. Reportedly, a lot of differences had cropped up between the lovebirds lately.

Nandita was earlier married to Karisma Kapoor's ex-husband Sanjay Kapur. While Dino has been in a relationship with Bipasha Basu and Lara Dutta in the past.



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Saurabh Malik

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, September 8

In Chandigarh to visit the Punjab and Haryana High Court museum, three Judges of the Lahore High Court Justice Muhammad Anwaarul Haq, Justice Muhammad Farrukh Irfan Khan and Justice Syed Shahbaz Ali Rizvi  said they were not only studying the judgments rendered by the courts in India, but were also referring to these in their orders.

We, in fact, look forward to the latest issue of All India Reporter. The judgments not just by the Supreme Court, but even the high courts, have great persuasive value, said Justice Muhammad Anwaarul Haq.

Agreeing, Justice Muhammad Farrukh Irfan Khan said, The reason is not really hard to comprehend. The background and the source is the same. The code of civil procedure, the code of criminal procedure and the police order... all are the same. We have more commonality than distinction.

Referring to the recent Supreme Court directions to the states to upload FIRs online within 24 hours of filing cases, Justice Haq said the order was commendable. It is being done in some parts in Pakistan, but is not mandatory as made by the Supreme Court of India. We are thinking of something on these lines.

The Judges were appreciative of the alternative disputes redressal system put in place by the courts in India. It is commendable how even criminal cases are being resolved through ADR. As of now the Judges are doing it in Pakistan at the individual level, Justice Syed Shahbaz Ali Rizvi said.

The Judges reached Chandigarh this evening via Amritsar. They were greeted at the Chandigarh Judicial Academy by its Director-Administration Harpreet Kaur Jeewan and Registrar-Protocol Ashok Arora. The Judges will be calling on Punjab and Haryana High Court Chief Justice Shiavax Jal Vazifdar on Friday.

In an exclusive interview with The Tribune, the Judges said the nature of litigation in both the countries was not very different with cases of runaway couples and honour killing being listed before the Benches.

But they felt the judiciary in India was overburdened, in Pakistan the pendency of cases being far less. The Punjab High Court at Lahore caters to a population of 11 crore, but the pendency of cases is about 1.30 lakhs. We have in place a case management plan, where special Benches hear special category of cases, Justice Khan said.
Rachna Khaira

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, September 8

The BJP and Akali Dal have locked horns over the allotment of land for the proposed domestic airport at Adampur.

State BJP chief Vijay Sampla had initiated the project and got necessary approvals from the Ministry of Defence (MoD), Ministry of Civil Aviation and the Airport Authority of India (AAI) for the airport to be constructed on 80 acres. But the state government is not ready to allocate more than 40 acres for it.

Vishwajeet Khanna, Principal Secretary, Civil Aviation, Punjab, said that though AAI is seeking 80 acres, the state government would initially allocate only 40 acres.

Presently, we will not be able to allocate more than 40 acres. However, we may allocate more land as the need for expansion arises in the future, said Khanna.

The AAI had told the state government to make arrangements for 80 acres of land parcel towards the expansion of the existing runway of the airport.

While the state government has already identified the exact land parcel in coordination with the IAF and has even got a no-objection certificate from the MoD, it is yet to transfer the land to AAI.

Due to the ongoing controversy, the project has been gathering dust for the past year. With a few months left for the Assembly elections, speculation is rife that the project may be scrapped.
Akash Ghai

Tribune News Service

Mohali, September 8

Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal today termed Navjot Singh Sidhus fourth front as the party of defectors and AAP as the party of scandals.

The leaders who leave their mother party are rejected by people. They (Sidhu and others) are defectors and join hands with each other for vested interests. But people are intelligent and know what to do with them, said Badal, who was in the city to head a state-level function wherein appointment letters were distributed to 4,500 ETT teachers.

On Kejriwals statement that he would send the Badals to jail if voted to power, the CM said he (Kejriwal) didnt know that I had spent half of my life in jails. Now he wants to scare us with jails, he said.

He termed Kejriwal and his party as khidoo (a Punjabi term for a cloth-ball made of various torn pieces of clothes). They (AAP leaders) are hopping around like a khidoo and people are enjoying their play. They are not a threat to us at all, he added.

He called the new front a pack of disgruntled and rejected politicians who were vying to grab power in Punjab by hook or crook. He claimed that the front would have hardly any impact on the SAD-BJP alliance.
CAPE CANAVERAL (Florida), September 8

An Atlas 5 rocket blasted off from Florida on Thursday carrying a robot space probe on NASA's first quest to collect samples from an asteroid and return them to Earth in hopes of learning more about the origins of life.

The 19-story rocket, built and flown for NASA by United Launch Alliance, lifted off at 7:05 pm (2305 GMT) from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, hurling the satellite explorer Osiris-Rex on its voyage to the near-Earth asteroid Bennu.

The 3,300-pound (1,500-kg) solar-powered probe separated from the rocket's upper stage an hour after blastoff, soaring into space at 22,000 mph (35,400 kph)  more than 28 times the speed of sound - to begin its $1 billion, seven-year mission.

It will take Osiris-Rex two years to reach its destination, a dark, rocky mass roughly a third of a mile wide and shaped like a giant acorn orbiting the sun at roughly the same distance as Earth.

Bennu is thought to be covered with organic compounds dating back to the earliest days of the solar system.

"You can think of these asteroids as literally prebiotic chemical factories that were producing building blocks of life 4.5 billion years ago, before Earth formed, before life started here," NASA astrobiologist Daniel Glavin said before launch.

Scientists believe asteroids and comets crashing into early Earth delivered water and organic compounds that seeded the planet for life. Atomic-level analysis of samples from Bennu could help them prove that theory.

Once it settles into orbit around Bennu in 2018, Osiris-Rex will spend up to two more years mapping the asteroid's surface and taking inventory of its chemical and mineral composition.

Scientists will ultimately choose a promising site on Bennu to sample and command Osiris-Rex to fly close enough to extend its robot arm to the asteroid's surface. A sampling container will then release a swirl of nitrogen gas, which will stir up gravel and soil for collection.

"The more big pieces we can get the better ... they could contain the carbon molecules that we want to see," Jim Garvin, chief scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, said on NASA TV.

After gathering at least 2 ounces (60 grams) of material, Osiris-Rex will fly back to Earth, jettisoning a capsule bearing the asteroid-sample container for a parachute descent and landing in the Utah desert in September 2023.

Only one other spacecraft, Japan's Hayabusa, has previously returned samples from an asteroid to Earth, but it collected less than a milligram of material because of a series of problems. A follow-on mission, Hayabusa 2, is under way, with a return to Earth planned for December 2020.

The US space agency also hopes Osiris-Rex will demonstrate the advanced imaging and mapping techniques needed for future science missions and for upcoming commercial asteroid-mining expeditions.

Although Bennu occupies the same approximate orbital distance from the sun, it poses little threat to Earth. NASA estimates that there is a one-in-2,700 chance that Bennu might hit Earth sometime between 2175 and 2199.

United Launch Alliance is a partnership of Lockheed Martin and Boeing.  Reuters
SIAGON, Sept. 9 (AP & AFP):Two battalions of Vietnamese troops heavily engaged an enemy force yesterday about 260 miles north-east of Saigon and reportedly killed 150 Viet Cong, a Government military spokesman said. The battle which the spokesman described as fiercely contended, was near Phu My. In this fighting in Binh Dinh province U.S. planes supported the Vietnamese troops, and 11 of the enemy dead were reported to have been killed by air fire. The air support included attacks by propeller-driven Skyraiders, F-100 Supersabres and F-4C Phantoms. Meanwhile, a spokesman for the U.S. Military Command said Air Force planes struck yesterday at a flotilla of about 16 boats four miles north of Dong Hoi in North Viet Nam. Pilots said they destroyed or damaged all the boats.
Commenting on his Excellency Lord Chelmsfords speech we said in our issue of the 7th instant that the absence of all reference in it to the Compulsory Primary Education, the foundation of all progress, was disappointing. This question cannot any longer be regarded as controversial. Our allies, the Russians, have solved it even in the midst of this terrible war. France is on the high road to solve the question of Compulsory Secondary Education. We cannot hide from ourselves the keen disappointment that His Excellency has not spoken on this question with anything like the enthusiasm we are bound to associate with his active connection with the London County Council. Even the most pressing problem of female education has been dismissed with a brief reference.
NEW DELHI, September 9 (PTI): The Rajya Sabha today held an inconclusive debate on the Punjab Reogranisation Bill necessitating one more sitting for tomorrow. A spate of privilege and other issues took away much of the time before the House got down to general discussion on the 97-Clause Bill to carve out of existing Punjab two new States of Punjab and Haryana and a new UT (Chandigarh). The Bill also provided for the transfer of certain areas of existing Punjab to the UT of the Himachal Pradesh. The debate ran on the same lines as in the Lok Sabha which passed the Bill. One section held that the new Punjab State would be a truncated one and opposed the common links the Haryana provided in the Bill. The Home Minister, Mr. Nanda, piloting the Bill said the two new States would be free to decide the future of the common High Court in the light of experience of its working.
Tribune News Service

Dehradun, September 9

A delegation of Chinese Textile Company  Zhejiang Daoqin Textile Co Ltd  met Chief Minister Harish Rawat regarding setting up of a textile industry worth Rs 600 crore in the state.

They expressed interest in investing in the Sitarganj Pase-II industrial estate in Uttarakhand.

As per Central government standards, Uttarakhand recently got the 4th rank for ease of doing business. Rawat assured them of full cooperation. Dr R Rajesh Kumar, MD, SIIDCUL, assure the delegation of providing necessary help through the single window system started by the state government for the industry.

Zang Chain, Charlee Yang and Lee Guambri from M/S Zhejiang Daoqin, Textile Co Ltd along with Uttarakhand Chief Secretary Shatrughan Singh, SIDCUL managing director R Rajesh Kumar and other senior officials attended the meeting.
Tribune News Service

Dehradun, September 9

Chief Minister Harish Rawat administered oath to senior officials for the conservation of the Himalayas at the Secretariat here today.

The Chief Minister asked officials to adopt at least one to two villages in the hill region to promote conservation activities.

He emphasised on promoting eco-friendly agriculture practices and referred to the importance of organic farming.

Uttarakhand, despite its limited resources, is keen to fulfill its responsibility towards nation and environment. The state government has started plantation on mass scale connecting the Harela festival with it.

At another programme at Doon University, the Chief Minister referred to the efforts of environmentalist Sundarlal Bahuguna towards the conservation of the Himalayas. He said a direct action plan was needed to save the Himalayas.

Himalayan Day was celebrated at various government and private institutions across the state. The Wildlife Institute of India (WII) organised a workshop on Ecological Services of the Himalayan Rivers on the banks of the Nayar river at Bilkhet in Pauri district. A total of 50 participants comprising schoolchildren, forest officials and staff from the Uttarakhand Forest Department and representatives of the fishermen community participated in the workshop.

The Sardar Bhagwan Singh Postgraduate Institute of Biomedical Sciences and Research organised a debate to underline the importance of Himalayan Day. Saumya Bhardwaj spoke about the beauty of the Himalayas while Lalit Joshi spoke about the preservation of the natural habitat of the Himalayas.

Prof Sanjay Gupta, Head of Department, Biotechnology, said the restoration of ecological balance of the Himalayas could only be done by focusing on the issue of loss of bio-diversity, increasing soil erosion and increasing river water pollution.

The Uttarakhand Science Education and Research Centre, Dehradun, organised an awareness workshop at Government Inter College, Raipur. Doiwala Congress MLA Hira Singh Bisht spoke on the importance of the Himalayas for feeding water in the rivers. He said society needed to be properly sensitised on the conservation of the Himalayas.

Prof Sarita Negi, Faculty of Education spoke on Himalayas at ICFAI University, Dehradun. She spoke on the relevance of Himalayan Day and the major challenges facing the Himalayas. She said the deterioration of Himalayan system due to inadequate attention had come as a threat to the regions resources.
Tribune News Service

Dehradun, September 8

Dysfunctional automated teller machines (ATM) of the State Bank of India (SBI) are causing inconvenience to its customers living in different areas of the city. The inability to dispense cash from ATMs becomes acute in the first week of every month when salaried employees withdraw money to meet their household expenses.

The ATMs installed by the SBI have become a source of inconvenience rather than a facility for customers. Most of the time the ATMs remain out of order or the link is down. There is no availability of cash in the SBI ATMs. And if an ATM is in working order, long queues are witnessed there.

GS Rawat, a resident of Dalanwala, said ATMs were a convenient way of withdrawing money at any time but the SBI ATMs were a source of annoyance, particularly on weekends. Banks should fill cash in ATMs frequently to avoid inconvenience to customers, he added.

He said he visited five SBI ATMs located in Dalanwala, Nehru Colony and the Haridwar road, but none of these was dispensing cash. The bank authorities seldom pay heed to the complaints of customers. Messages like out of cash, sorry for inconvenience, ATM is closed for maintenance work, link is down, service is not available, and your transaction could not be completed are often seen flashing on the screens of the ATMs, said another annoyed resident Kuldeep Farswan. He lamented that the salaried class was among the worst affected due to dysfunctional ATMs.

SBI public relations officer William said most of the senior bank officials were busy preparing for the quarterly bank meeting scheduled to be chaired by Chief Minister Harish Rawat. Only the officials concerned could reveal the reason behind the dysfunctional ATMs.
By Mail Today Bureau: A minor girl was forced to drink acid by unidentified persons in southeast Delhi's Kalkaji, her mother has alleged. A case has been registered following this, but the police say that the girl might have been under depression and consumed the substance at her own will.

ALLEGATION

The girl, a Class X student of a school in Kalkaji, complained of stomach pain after she reached school on Wednesday morning, a senior police official said. The school authorities then informed her mother and took her to a hospital. However, two hours after her discharge from the hospital, her mother took her to Safdarjung Hospital and alleged that she was forced to drink acid by unidentified men near her school on Wednesday, who have been harassing and stalking her for the past one month, the police official said.

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Safdarung Hospital authorities, when contacted, said the girl has been kept in the critical care unit. "Prima facie, it's does not apear as if she was forced to drink acid. There were no external injuries on the girl's body and she is fully conscious and is talking to her mother," the official said. The Delhi Commission for Women (DCW), however, have taken up the matter seriously. They have served a notice to the school for suspected dereliction of duty.



SUICIDE BID?

A police official said, "We haven't ruled out the possibility of a suicide bid by the girl. The girl's parents are going through a divorce and she was allegedly depressed about her parents' separation. She could have consumed something under depression. However, it can't be said with certainty if it was at all a suicide attempt." A case has been registered at Kalkaji Police Station under Section 326-A (voluntary causing grievous hurt by use of acid)) of India Penal Code (IPC) against unknown persons.

The police are investigating the matter. "We haven't been able to corroborate the details. The auto driver who dropped her off at school didn't mention about the girl being followed or being forced to drink anything. The CCTV footage from the area also didn't show the girl being stalked or forced to consume something. We are investigating the matter," a police officer said.

Police, however, says a sample of the liquid that the girl allegedly consumed has been sent for forensic examination and the report is awaited.



ALSO READ:

Delhi police arrests juvenile for murdering minor girl

59-year-old Rajasthan engineer arrested for raping minor help





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Dehradun, September 8

The BJP today demanded the resignation of Health Minister SS Negi, accusing the government of failing to control the outbreak of dengue in the state.

The state government has totally failed in controlling the spread of dengue, BJP state president Ajay Bhatt said.

He criticised Health Minister Negi for saying that it was not solely the state governments responsibility to control the spread of the disease. Negi should tender an apology for making such an insensitive statement and resign, Bhatt said.

How can he get away by making a statement like that? He is the Health Minister and even if health officials of the Municipal Corporation are not working properly, the onus rests on the state government, he said. Of the 756 dengue cases reported so far, 709 have in Dehradun alone, Bhatt added. PTI
Tribune News Service

Haridwar, September 8

With the Assembly elections nearing in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, the issue of the construction of Shri Ram temple at Ayodhya is cropping up again.

Saints, during the Virat Saint convention that concluded here yesterday, urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led NDA government to bring a resolution in the Lok Sabha regarding the construction of the Shri Ram temple as the issue is related with the sentiments of people of the country.

National spokesperson of the Bharat Sadhu Samaj said saints was united on the issue and would ensure that the revered temple is constructed at the holy site of Shri Ram Janmbhoomi at Ayodhya.

Besides, 12 other resolutions were passed during the convention, including the demand for declaring cow as national animal, total prohibition on cow slaughter, moral and religious education with teaching of Ramayana, Mahabharata and Geeta as mandatory texts, maintenance of sanctity and purity of the Ganga, stopping construction of big hydropower projects on the Ganga and its tributaries, roll back of tax provision on ashrams, dharamshalas and properties of saints, abolish Section 370 for solution to the Kashmir dispute and lord Sudarshan and Hanuman idols be installed at all temples.
Tribune News Service

Dehradun, September 9

A team of highly trained and experienced State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) personnel equipped with latest mountaineering gear was deployed for the first time along the Kailash Mansarovar yatra. The 18th and last batch of pilgrims paid obeisance and safely returned to their homes.

IGP (Garhwal) Sanjay Gunjyal, while sharing challenges that SDRF personnel faced, said the last batch comprised of 38 pilgrims, including eight women and those from France, Denmark and other nations. It was very difficult for pilgrims to complete the yatra due to extreme weather conditions.

Besides the language barrier (as pilgrims spoke different languages), they faced physical and mental challenges due to steep and continuous climbing, Gunjyal said. Most of the pilgrims faced the brunt of high altitude sickness but the SDRF team along with medicos catered to their medical needs during the yatra.

He said it was a matter of proud for the SDRF and residents of Uttarakhand that no pilgrim died and no one was injured during the yatra. The team used its experience of the Kedarnath tragedy to flawlessly culminating the yatra without any casualty.

It may be recalled that Union Ministry of External Affairs had appointed Gunjyal as liaising officer for the Kailash Mansarovar yatra from August 16 to October 9.

A total of 712 pilgrims visited Kailash Mansarovar this year. The estimated cost per person for the yatra is around Rs 2.5 lakh and Rs 18 crore is circulated during the yatra period.

Gunjyal said the SDRF team performed special prayers along the banks of the Kailash Yaman Sarovar for those pilgrims who had breathed their last during the Kedarnath tragedy in 2013. Pt Ashutosh Maharaj performed the prayers and pilgrims prayed for peace to the departed souls.
Beirut, September 9

An air strike near Syria's battleground second city Aleppo killed the military leader of the largest rebel alliance and at least one other commander, jihadist sources and a monitor said.

The strike on a meeting of commanders of the Army of Conquest alliance came hot on the heels of a major defeat for the rebels, which saw them under renewed siege inside Aleppo after an army advance this week.

Former Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front, renamed Fateh al-Sham Front when it broke ties in July, announced on Twitter "the martyrdom" of commander Abu Omar Saraqeb in an air strike.

The jihadist Fateh al-Sham is a leading member of the Army of Conquest that groups its fighters with Islamist factions like Ahrar al-Sham in the most prominent anti-regime alliance.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said unidentified aircraft hit the Army of Conquest meeting last night, killing Saraqeb and another rebel commander named as Abu Muslim al-Shami.

Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said it was not immediately clear whether the strike was carried out by the US-led coalition, the Syrian regime or its Russian ally  all of who are conducting bombing raids in northern Syria.

According to the Observatory, Abu Omar Saraqeb was a leading member of Al-Qaeda in Iraq in its fight against the US-led occupation after 2003 before becoming a key commander of Al-Nusra Front and then Fateh al-Sham in Syria.

He reportedly also founded Al-Nusra Front's Lebanon branch that has claimed responsibility for several bombings in Syria's western neighbour.

He operates under different noms de guerre, making it difficult to know his nationality.

He led a successful offensive by the Army of Conquest in spring last year, which saw it seize control of nearly all of the northwestern province of Idlib.

But the alliance has been less successful in and around Aleppo, where it was dealt a major blow by regime forces this week.

In early August, Saraqeb led an offensive against pro-government fighters besieging the rebel-held east of the divided city and opened up a new supply route from the south that broke the siege.

But this week regime loyalists recaptured nearly all of the territory taken last month and reimposed the blockade.

Jihadism expert Charles Lister said Saraqeb had helped found the the Army of Conquest last year and once served as the "emir" of Idlib province.

Amid Syria's fractious rebel movement, "he's seen widely as an Islamist unifier," Lister wrote.  AFP
Beijing, September 9

After launching the world's first hack-free satellite, China has tested its first quantum radar, which could detect objects  including stealth aircraft  within the range of 100 km.

The first Chinese quantum radar was developed by the Intelligent Perception Technology Laboratory of the 14th Institute of China Electronics Technology Group Corporation (CETC), Russian media quoted Chinese media reports.

The radar was tested in mid-August, Russia Today quoted Chinese state-run Xinhua news agency as saying.

The system was able to detect a target at a range of 100 kms in a real-world environment, the report said.

The device employs single photon detection technology.

Quantum radar is a device that uses quantum entanglement photons to provide better detection capabilities than conventional radar systems.

The method would be useful for tracking targets with a low radar cross section, such as modern aircraft using stealth technology or targets employing active countermeasures to jam or baffle enemy radar, it said.

The technology may also find use in biomedicine, since quantum radar requires lower energy and can be used to non-invasively probe for objects with low reflectivity, such as cancer cells.

Earlier, China launched the world's first quantum communications satellite, which uses quantum entanglement for cryptography.  PTI
Jakarta, September 9

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte told Barack Obama he never called him a son of a bitch, he said on Friday, but he maintained a defiant stance on his war on drugs, saying UN chief Ban Ki-moon was a fool for bringing up human rights.

Obama cancelled a planned meeting with Duterte at this weeks ASEAN summit in Laos after the Philippine leaders alleged insult in his native Tagalog, but the two met briefly later as they waited to take their seats at a banquet.

While on a visit to the Indonesian capital on Friday, Duterte said the slur was not directed at the US President and that he had told him so.

Duterte had his outburst on Monday when he was defending his war on drugs that has killed at least 2,400 Filipinos. On Friday, he said he thought UN Secretary-General Ban a fool for bringing up the issue of human rights violations weeks before the summit in Laos. Even Ban Ki-moon weighed in, Duterte said. Also gave a statement before, several weeks ago, about the human rights violation. You are another fool. The tough-talking president also

blasted UN-appointed human rights experts and rights watchdogs.  Reuters
Washington, September 9

Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz is committing $20 million to help Hillary Clinton and her Democratic Party in the upcoming US election.

Moskovitz, a Harvard roommate of Mark Zuckerberg who was part of the founding group of the social networking giant, said he and his wife Cari made the decision to pour in millions because polarisation in America today has yielded a race that is about much more than policies and ideas. The election has become a referendum on who we want to be  as individuals, as a nation and as a society, he wrote in a blog post on Medium.

Moskovitz said this was the first time he and his wife are endorsing a candidate and donating.

The Republican Party, and Donald Trump in particular, is running on a zero-sum vision, stressing a false contest between their constituency and the rest of the world, he wrote.

We believe their positions, especially on immigration, which purport to improve the lives of Americans, would in practice hurt citizens and noncitizens alike. He added that he hopes his efforts make it a little more likely that Secretary Clinton is able to pursue the agenda shes outlined, and serve as a signal to the Republican Party that by running this kind of campaign  one built on fear and hostility - and supporting this kind of candidate, they compel people to act in response.

The donations will go to various political action committees including the Hillary Victory Fund, Democratic congressional groups, the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) Victory Fund, For Our Future PAC, MoveOn.org, Color Of Change and several nonpartisan voter registration efforts.  AFP
Washington, September 8

The US military has closed a maximum-security detention centre at Guantanamo Bay, an official said today, as the controversial military prison's population continues to shrink.

Guantanamo's Camp 5 lockup, which was opened in 2004, will be converted into a medical facility for detainees, facility spokesman Navy Captain John Filostrat said in a statement.

The detainees formerly housed there have been moved to another prison camp in the Cuba-based facility.

"Camp 5 at Guantanamo Bay has been closed as a detention facility and repurposed into another function and the detainees consolidated," Filostrat said.  AFP
Tehran, September 9

With Iranians barred from the annual Hajj pilgrimage, thousands protested in Tehran on Friday and officials criticised Saudi Arabias refusal to discuss last years deadly stampede.

Around 64,000 Iranians allocated places for the Haj under a quota system will be absent when it starts tomorrow, after talks between the increasingly bitter rivals fell apart earlier this year.

As a war of words grows between the two regional rivals, several thousand people took to the streets of the Iranian capital after the Friday weekly prayers.

The Saudis have blocked the path to Allah. Its a crime and they must be tried, said Javad Zolfaghari, a cleric who joined the protests.

In an interview with AFP, the head of Irans Haj Organisation blamed the Saudis for refusing to discuss security measures despite the stampede that killed thousands during last years hajj.

How are you going to invite 1.5 million pilgrims and not even allow yourself to think about the security measures? asked Said Ohadi.

He said that during negotiations in April and May, the Saudis simply fell back on verses of the Quran holy book stating that anyone who enters Saudi Arabia has full security.

Last year we had those verses in the Quran too, said Ohadi.

An AFP tally found that a total of at least 2,300 people died in last years stampede, including 464 Iranians, the highest confirmed death toll among foreigners who died in the tragedy.

But Tehran says the overall toll was much higher.

Seven thousand people were martyred, were killed, from 39 countries, Ohadi said.

Saudi Arabia says the figure was only 769, but has refused to release the details of its investigation.

Ohadi said the last straw in the hajj talks was a demand from the Saudis that Iranian pilgrims cannot have any contact with any Muslim from any other country.

That was despite the Quranic verses emphasis on the importance of mingling with Muslims from around the world during the pilgrimage to Islams holiest sites in Mecca and Medina, in western Saudi Arabia, he said.

Saudi Arabia has countered that Tehran had made unacceptable demands during the talks, including the right to organise demonstrations that would cause chaos.

But right from the start, Ohadi said there was very bad hospitality and weird attitudes from the Saudisincluding a refusal to give delegates diplomatic entry, or even cars to their hotel.

Ohadi said depriving the Iranian faithful of the chance to perform the Haj was unacceptable, especially given the 15-20 year waiting list.

The Saudis believe they are the ownersthat Mecca and Medina are their properties, he said.

Nothey are the properties of Islam.  AFP
SEOUL, September 9

North Korea tested its most powerful nuclear device on Friday, but the more worrying aspect for its rivals was Pyongyang's claim that it had advanced its ability to make a nuclear weapon, by miniaturising and mounting a warhead on a missile.

Its KCNA news agency said the test had used a nuclear warhead that had been "standardised to be able to be mounted on strategic ballistic rockets".

"The standardisation of the nuclear warhead will enable the DPRK to produce at will and as many as it wants a variety of smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear warheads of higher strike power," KCNA said, referring to the North's formal name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

There is little scientific evidence to verify that North Korea has perfected the science of creating a nuclear bomb small enough to fit on a ballistic missile and withstand the physics of atmospheric re-entry.

But it may be getting closer.

In April, a South Korean official said the North had accomplished miniaturisation of a warhead, although the Pentagon said it did not necessarily share that assessment.

In March, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met nuclear scientists working on miniaturisation. He was photographed at the visit looking at a small, ball-like device KCNA said was a miniaturised nuclear warhead. He was also photographed inspecting a missile nosecone.

"They called the A-bomb they displayed 'small-type' or 'miniaturised', but it might be better to say 'compact'," said Joshua Pollack, editor of the Nonproliferation Review. "It looked bigger than what we would call miniaturised, but they wanted to show us that it would fit into an ICBM (inter-continental ballistic missile) nosecone." "If it fits that nosecone, it ought to fit on a Scud or Rodong as well," said Pollack. The Rodong is a North Korean medium-range missile tested earlier this week that can fire a 1 tonne (1,100 lb) warhead up to 2,000 km (1,250 miles).

That would bring all of South Korea and Japan within range.

After Friday's test, however, experts were more focused on the intensity of the blast.

Earthquakes triggered by North Korean nuclear tests have gradually increased in magnitude since Pyongyang's first test in 2006, indicating the isolated country is steadily improving the destructive power of its nuclear technology.

After Friday's test, South Korean monitors said the blast caused a 5.0 magnitude earthquake. The US Geological Survey (USGS) measured a magnitude of 5.3.

In terms of energy, the USGS estimation translates to a nuclear blast potentially 2.8 times stronger than the estimation given by the South, according to a USGS tool used to calculate earthquake strength.

Little Boy & Fat Man

After its fourth test, in January, North Korea boasted it had tested a hydrogen bomb, although the yield of that explosion indicated it was more likely to have been a boosted atomic bomb.

A boosted bomb is not as powerful as a standard H-bomb, but can efficiently increase the explosive power of an A-bomb by using small amounts of radioactive hydrogen isotopes.

Boosting means North Korean scientists can get more explosive yield out of a smaller amount of fissile material, stretching their small stockpile of plutonium further, getting more bang for their buck.

"This means they might have more bombs than a simple plutonium count would leave you to believe," said Jeffrey Lewis of the California-based Middlebury Institute of International Studies.

In terms of explosive yield, the USGS measurement points to a North Korean bomb more powerful than the Little Boy bomb dropped on Hiroshima, and almost as powerful as the Fat Man bomb dropped on Nagasaki.

The South Korean measurement would indicate a yield slightly smaller than the Little Boy at 10 kilotonnes, although calculating yield is difficult and subject to the unknown variables in terrain and geology of the test site.

North Korea's first nuclear test in 2006 created a magnitude 4.3 earthquake, according to USGS data. Friday's bomb-induced 5.3 earthquake was a magnitude and therefore ten times bigger, indicating a significantly more powerful nuclear blast.  Reuters
On Thursday, the FAA in the US stopped short of the outright ban but issued a warning to all Note 7 users, telling them not to charge the phone when they are in an airplane.

By Javed Anwer: A car exploding and then a warning from FAA, the regulator in the US that keeps an eye on airlines, doesn't seem to have any thing in common. But they do and that common element is Galaxy Note 7, which has seen its batteries explode and the then causing damage. A few weeks after Samsung issued a recall for its latest and greatest smartphone, less than a month after its launch, the issues incidents related to the Galaxy Note 7 batteries continue to haunt the Korean company.

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In the latest incident, as reported by Fox News, a Galaxy Note 7 allegedly exploded in the Jeep car in the US, and the ensuing fire destroyed the car. This came a few days after a Note 7 users in Australia claimed that his phone caught fire when he was in a hotel and the destroyed the hotel room, resulting in damages worth nearly $1400 (around Rs 93,000).

Although, as alarming as these incidents seem for Samsung a more worrying prospect is the reaction after the a few airlines in Australia banned the Note 7 from flights, believing its battery posed a risk to airplanes.

On Thursday, the FAA in the US stopped short of the outright ban but issued a warning to all Note 7 users, telling them not to charge the phone when they are in an airplane.

"In light of recent incidents and concerns raised by Samsung about its Galaxy Note 7 devices, the Federal Aviation Administration strongly advises passengers not to turn on or charge these devices on board aircraft and not to stow them in any checked baggage," the agency said in a statement.

Samsung, to its credit, has been quick to acknowledge the issue. Although it has also downplayed the incidents saying that only some Note 7 units have been affected. The company puts the number of Note 7 units catching fire due to battery issues at 35 although that was around a week ago and since then a number of other incidents have come to light. The company has also said by issuing a total recall -- and taking a substantial financial hit estimated at over $1 billion -- it is putting the consumers first and trying to fix the issue.

Also Read: Samsung Galaxy Note 7 battery explosion fiasco gives Apple some room to breathe

"To date (as of September 1) there have been 35 cases that have been reported globally and we are currently conducting a thorough inspection with our suppliers to identify possible affected batteries in the market. However, because our customers' safety is an absolute priority at Samsung, we have stopped sales of the Galaxy Note7," said a company spokesperson in a statement issued several days ago.

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But at the same time, it is also clear that the Note 7 issues hint at some sort of breakdown or failure in Samsung's quality control process. Despite the fact that this was a high-end product with millions of units expected to be sold, the company somehow missed the problems with the Note 7 battery. Although it has now acknowledged the issues.

Also Read: Australian airlines ban use of Samsung Galaxy Note 7 phones after battery explosions

In a FAQ posted by Samsung UK, the company has explained that the problem is with battery configuration. "Based on our investigation, we learned that there was an issue with the battery cell. An overheating of the battery cell occurred when the anode-to-cathode came into contact which is a very rare manufacturing process error," says the company.

No risk in India?

In India, there is seemingly no risk from the exploding Note 7 devices because Samsung is yet to sell them here. The company had opened the pre-orders when it had launched the phone earlier on August 11. But by the time issue of exploding batteries came to light and the recall was ordered the company had not shipped any units. For now, those who pre-ordered the phone in India have been told that the deliveries will be delayed.

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To compensate buyers, the company has announced that it will give free Gear VR to everyone in India who pre-ordered the Note 7. Here is what Samsung India has said about its "gesture of gratitude".

"We will honor our pre-booking promise made to you. As a gesture of gratitude for your patience, we would like to offer you the following benefits as a Pre-booking Customer: One, we will ship the new Gear VR to you absolutely free of cost. And two, Rs 3300 worth Oculus content voucher to deliver the best experience on your Gear VR."

Although, Samsung probably did not ship any Galaxy Note 7 units to consumers in India, it did send some working demo units to its phone dealers, who were using these devices. Currently, it is not clear if Samsung has also recalled these units or not.

Also Read: Samsung halts Note 7 sales after battery explosions, to replace sold units with new ones

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SEOUL, September 9

North Korea conducted its fifth and biggest nuclear test on Friday and said it had mastered the ability to mount a warhead on a ballistic missile, ratcheting up a threat that its rivals and the United Nations have been powerless to contain.

The blast, on the 68th anniversary of North Korea's founding, was more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, according to some estimates, and drew condemnation from the United States as well as China, Pyongyang's main ally.

Diplomats said the United Nations Security Council would discuss the test at a closed-door meeting on Friday, at the request of the United States, Japan and South Korea.

Under 32-year-old dictator Kim Jong Un, North Korea has accelerated the development of its nuclear and missile programmes, despite UN sanctions that were tightened in March and have further isolated the impoverished country.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye, in Laos after a summit of Asian leaders, said Kim was showing "maniacal recklessness" in completely ignoring the world's call to abandon his pursuit of nuclear weapons.

US.President Barack Obama, aboard Air Force One on his way home from Laos, said the test would be met with "serious consequences", and held talks with Park and with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the White House said.

China said it was resolutely opposed to the test and urged Pyongyang to stop taking any actions that would worsen the situation. It said it would lodge a protest with the North Korean embassy in Beijing.

There were further robust condemnations from Russia, the European Union, NATO, Germany and Britain.

North Korea, which labels the South and the United States as its main enemies, said its "scientists and technicians carried out a nuclear explosion test for the judgment of the power of a nuclear warhead," according to its official KCNA news agency.

It said the test proved North Korea was capable of mounting a nuclear warhead on a medium-range ballistic missile, which it last tested on Monday when Obama and other world leaders were gathered in China for a G20 summit.

Pyongyang's claims of being able to miniaturise a nuclear warhead have never been independently verified.

Its continued testing in defiance of sanctions presents a challenge to Obama in the final months of his presidency and could become a factor in the US presidential election in November, and a headache to be inherited by whoever wins.

"Sanctions have already been imposed on almost everything possible, so the policy is at an impasse," said Tadashi Kimiya, a University of Tokyo professor specialising in Korean issues.

"In reality, the means by which the United States, South Korea and Japan can put pressure on North Korea have reached their limits," he said.

Unprecedented rate

North Korea has been testing different types of missiles at an unprecedented rate this year, and the capability to mount a nuclear warhead on a missile is especially worrisome for its neighbours South Korea and Japan.

"The standardisation of the nuclear warhead will enable the DPRK to produce at will and as many as it wants a variety of smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear warheads of higher strike power," KCNA said, referring to the country's formal name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

It was not clear whether Pyongyang had notified Beijing or Moscow of its planned nuclear test. Senior officials from Pyongyang were in both capitals this week.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said she had no information to provide when asked if China had advance warning of the test, and would not be drawn on whether China would support tougher sanctions against its neighbour.

Although Beijing has criticised North Korea's nuclear and missile tests, it has repeatedly expressed anger since the United States and South Korea decided in July to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system in the South.

China calls THAAD a threat to its own security and will do nothing to bring North Korea back to the negotiating table on its nuclear programme.

Preliminary data collected by the Vienna-based Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), which monitors nuclear tests around the world, indicates the magnitude  around 5  of the seismic event detected in North Korea on Friday was greater than a previous one in January.

Jeffrey Lewis of the California-based Middlebury Institute of International Studies said the highest estimates of seismic magnitude suggested this was North Korea's most powerful nuclear test so far.

He said the seismic magnitude and surface level indicated a blast with a 20- to 30-kilotonne yield. Such a yield would make this test larger than the nuclear bomb dropped by the United States on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in World War II.

"That's the largest DPRK test to date, 20-30kt, at least.

Not a happy day," Lewis said.

South Korea's military put the force of the blast at 10 kilotonnes, which would still be the North's most powerful nuclear blast to date.

"The important thing is, that five tests in, they now have a lot of nuclear test experience. They aren't a backwards state any more," Lewis said.  Reuters
Washington, September 9

Pakistan, which possesses close to 120 nuclear weapons, has the capability to expand its arsenal by 20 atomic weapons which pose a thorny challenge to the US interests, an American think-tank expert has said.

The growth in Pakistans nuclear capabilities and the broadening of its deterrence objectives raise thorny challenges for US interests to prevent a nuclear explosion and to maintain effective security on nuclear weapons and materials, Toby Dalton, co-director Nuclear Policy Programme, at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said.

In his testimony to members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during a Congressional hearing on Thursday on Pakistan, Dalton said Pakistan has the capability to expand its arsenal by 20 nuclear weapons every year.

Over the past decade, the nation  which possesses close to 120 nuclear weapons  had significantly expanded the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons, he said.

Dalton said Pakistan places increasing emphasis on nuclear weapons to counter Indian military threats.

From Pakistans few official pronouncements on nuclear doctrine and statements by government officials, it is clear that deterrence is understood to be elastic: whenever the Indian threat grows, more or new nuclear capabilities are needed, he said.

In his testimony, Dalton praised the safeguards put in place by the nation when it comes to protecting its nuclear arsenal.

To be fair, Pakistan is not given sufficient credit for the nuclear security practices it has put in place. By most indicators, its security is probably quite good, but not foolproof. It has learned lessons from the AQ Khan affair and it has responded to international fears about terrorists acquiring weapons by putting in place a comprehensive security strategy run by a professional branch within the military, he said.

The prominence given to nuclear weapons in Pakistans national security strategy means that the government has a very strong interest to protect them. To date, there is no public information that indicates any close calls of material going missing, and no hints of further technology leakage after the Khan proliferation network was dismantled, he added.  PTI
Washington, September 9

Pakistan was nearly placed on a formal US list of state sponsors of terrorism during 1993 to 1994, a former CIA official has said.

At the start of the (Bill) Clinton administration, in 1993 and 1994, I was a special assistant to the Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, on loan from CIA, deeply involved in an annual terrorism review which nearly resulted in Pakistan being placed on the formal list of state sponsors of terrorism, Robert L Grenier, a former CIA official, said yesterday.

He was addressing members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during a Congressional hearing on Pakistan. Grenier said over the past five decades, the US has been willing episodically to overlook its concerns with aspects of Pakistani behaviour and to subordinate those concerns in the face of what have appeared, at the time, to be overriding national security priorities  only to revert to a more contentious relationship when those interests no longer pertained.

Thus, in the 1980s, the US was willing not only to overlook growing evidence of Pakistans nuclear weapons programme in deference to joint US-Pak support to the anti-Soviet Afghan Mujahiddin, but also to provide Pakistan with generous economic and military rewards in the bargain, he said.  PTI
Washington, September 9

The House of Representatives passed legislation today that would allow victims of the 9/11 attacks and their relatives to sue foreign governments suspected of backing acts of terrorism against the US.

The Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act  approved in the House by unanimous voice vote some four months after its Senate passage - is strongly opposed by the government of Saudi Arabia, the home nation of 15 of the 19 hijackers in the September 11, 2001 attacks.

It now heads to President Barack Obama's desk, just days before the 15th anniversary of 9/11. The White House has signaled its opposition to the Bill.

The measure would allow 9/11 families to pursue cases in federal court against foreign governments, notably Saudi Arabia, and demand compensation if such governments are proven to bear some responsibility for the attacks.

Under current law, victims of terrorism can only sue countries officially designated by the State Department as sponsors of terrorism, such as Iran and Syria.  AFP
Geneva, September 9

The United States and Russia grappled over a possible deal on ending the bloodshed in Syria today, as Moscow-backed forces tightened the noose on the beleaguered city of Aleppo.

In Geneva, Secretary of State John Kerry was once more locked in talks with Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov but US officials warned talks could not go on forever without a breakthrough. The two powers back opposite sides in the five-year conflict, with Moscow supporting the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and the US behind a coalition of rebel groups it regards as moderate.

Senior officials travelling with Kerry said he would not have flown out once again to new face-to-face talks with Lavrov unless he thought there was a chance of progress. But they warned there was no guarantee of a final agreement within the narrow window before both men return home later today, coming just four days after the pair met in China and failed to narrow their differences.

The ministers met in the familiar confines of a hotel on the shore of Lake Geneva and made brief remarks to reporters about North Koreas latest nuclear test before beginning closed-door talks on Syria.

UN envoy on Syria, Staffan de Mistura, said a successful outcome from the talks could provide a major boost towards resolving the conflict that has killed 290,000 people. (It) would have a major impact on humanitarian access, and in turn would have a positive impact on the way the political process would be relaunched, de Mistura said in Geneva.  AFP
Mecca, September 9

Saudi Arabia has begun issuing Haj pilgrims with identification bracelets one year after a stampede killed around 2,300 people.

The bracelets are a reassurance to some pilgrims, though their distribution has been far from systematic ahead of the formal start of the Haj tomorrow.

Saudi Arabia announced an investigation into last years stampede which happened during the hajj stoning ritual, but no findings have ever been published.

Public statements and Saudi press reports show that changes have been made to prevent overcrowding even though no one was ever blamed for the tragedy.

After the disaster  the worst ever in Haj history  some foreign officials expressed concern about difficulties in identifying the dead.

Saudi officials have stuck with a death toll of 769 issued shortly after the stampede but data from authorities in more than 30 countries gave a figure almost three times higher.

Each plasticised paper bracelet carries a bar code readable by smartphone. It indicates the pilgrims identity, nationality and place of lodging in Mecca.

Additional data includes a contact in the pilgrims delegation and details provided when his or her visa was issued, the vice secretary of the ministry of Haj and umrah, Issa Rawas, told AFP.

The aim is to equip all pilgrims from abroad, who are expected to number more than 1.4 million, he said.

Rawas did not specify the number of bracelets issued so far. In the crowds which fill the Grand Mosque and its surroundings day and night, AFP saw numerous pilgrims wearing bracelets.

But some were issued by travel agents and dont include the information stored in the governments bracelet.

Nabil Melhem, 61, a Palestinian bricklayer, wears one of the official bracelets, which he said cost about two riyals (53 cents). It is like a passport, said Melhem, from the Israeli- occupied West Bank.

The bracelet is two centimetres (almost an inch) wide and coloured green for pilgrims from Arab countries. AFP
Hyderabad police busts fake currency racket and arrested three including a woman. The police also recovered currency notes worth Rs 11.95 lakh.

Hyderabad police with the fake notes recovered from the trio.

By Ashish Pandey: The Hyderabad police on Friday busted an interstate fake currency racket and recovered huge quantity of high quality counterfeit currency.

Acting on a tip off the police team nabbed three persons and seized fake currency worth Rs 11. 95 lakh in Rs 1000 and Rs 500 denominations.

The three accused have been identified as Hyderbad resident Mohammed Ghoused , Shareeful Shaik and one woman Jahannara Bibi both residents of Malda in West Bengal.

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Police have launched a manhunt for one more accused identified as Babloo Shaikh also native of Malda. Police said that Bablooo is the main suspect and is absconding and that an effort is on to nab him.

ACCUSED INVOLVED IN SIMILAR OFFENCES IN THE PAST

According to the police, the Ghouse was previously involved in several counterfeit currency cases reported in various police stations of Hyderabad city and about one and half month back he was released from the jail.

After the release he revived his old contacts in Malda district of West Bengal who were previously supplying him counterfeit currency. Police said that 10 days ago, Babloo who is the main supplier of counterfeit notes sent Ghouse notes worth Rs 12 lakhs with his mother Jahannara Bibi and his brother-in-law Shareeful Shaikh.



ACCUSED NAB WHILE RECEIVING CASH

Today, while Ghouse was receiving the consignment of fake currency from Shreeful and Jahannara Bibi at Charminar, the police them caught red-handedly. The

team of police recovered fake Indian currency notes amounting to Rs 11.95 lakh.

Police said that the seized fake currency was of high quality and that it could not be identified easily. Sources said that the arrest of main accused will expose the fake currency racket operating in various states including Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.



Also read:

RBI admits printing defective Rs 1000 currency notes: How to identify a fake currency note



--- ENDS ---
By PTI: Srinagar, Sep 9 (PTI) Opposition National Conference (NC) president Farooq Abdullah today called for a dialogue between India and Pakistan to resolve the Kashmir issue and asked the central and the state governments not to repeat the mistake of using force to deal with the current unrest in the Valley.

The Centre and the state government are repeatedly making the mistake of trying to address the situation through force. The Centre should initiate dialogue with the concerned parties without wasting any time further, Abdullah said while interacting with party leaders at his residence here.

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Abdullah said the key to everlasting peace in Jammu and Kashmir was in the resolution of Kashmir issue in accordance with the wishes, aspirations and sentiments of the people.

The need of the hour is that India and Pakistan should sit together along with the people of Kashmir and work out an acceptable solution to the issue. Kashmir is a political issue and only its political resolution can lead to peace in the region, he said.

Expressing concern over the tense situation in the Valley, Abdullah said the basic reason for the present unrest was the non-resolution of Kashmir issue.

He said the people were going thorough very difficult times and facing worst kind of problems and oppression.

The killings and injuries to the people in the past two months are the worst kind of human rights violations which have no place in the present scenario, he said.

Abdullah accused the Centre of widening the trust-deficit between the people of Kashmir and New Delhi by repeatedly hurting the sentiments of Kashmiris.

Whether in Opposition or in power, NC has always advocated for the political solution to the issue and in this regard, passed an autonomy resolution with two-third majority in the assembly and simultaneously took a stand that if there is any better solution than autonomy acceptable to all the three regions, the party will accept it, he said.

Unfortunately, the Centre has time and again hurt the sentiments and the aspirations of the people through different means which resulted in trust deficit (between the people and the Centre) and the prevailing situation points to it, he added. PTI SSB MIJ MRJ MRJ

--- ENDS ---
While one cover features a rather stylish Michelle Obama, the other shows us snippets of the first couple getting cosy with each other.

By India Today Web Desk: As the Obamas brace themselves to bid adieu to the White House, America's first African-American family is leaving no stones unturned to make themselves even more visible in the public eye.

As a result, First Lady Michelle Obama will soon be seen on the October cover of two international magazines--InStyle and Essence.

She will also joined by husband Barack Obama, who will be talking about their legacy and life after the White House.

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For the cover of InStyle, Michelle can be seen wearing a teal one-shoulder dress by Lady Gaga's close friend and designer Brandon Maxwell.\

This is very first time a fashion magazine has featured a first lady on its cover.



The August cover of the same magazine, InStyle, featured desi girl, Priyanka Chopra.

Also read: Michelle Obama's humour in this 'History of Exercise' video will win you over



In the magazine, the First Lady talks about her Let Girls Learn initiative: "Sixty-two million girls around the world aren't in school, and the first thing that comes to my mind is, 'That could've been me.' I think about how I would have felt at the age of 10 or 11 or 12 if somebody walked up and said, 'That's it. Your dreams are over! You're going to have to leave school and get married to somebody twice your age and start having kids."

Also read: This is what Michelle Obama plans to do after leaving the White House

On the cover of Essence, however, we'd get to see the First Lady as well as President Barack Obama cosying up on for the magazine's special collector's issue.

"It's the end of an era, and Essence is sending the First Family off with a hug and a salute. @BarackObama and @MichelleObama exude their signature poise, grace and charm on the cover of our historic October issue, in which they open up about watching their girls grow up in the White House as well as the legacy they hope to leave behind. 'Some of my fondest memories of the White House are just being with the girls on a summer night and walking the dogs around the South Lawn, talking and listening to them.(sic),'" reads the magazine's Instagram caption for the cover picture.

Inside, the couple discusses the past eight years spent in the White House, the state of America today, and the legacy they hope to leave behind.

"I can unequivocally say that America is better off now than we were when we came into office. By almost every economic measure, we're better off. But having said that, we still have a lot of work to do," President Obama shared with the magazine.



--- ENDS ---

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NOWATA  A former Owasso police officer who was terminated twice after being accused of using excessive force while on duty has received a trial date for an assault charge related to his actions during a 2015 arrest.

Jury trial proceedings for former Lt. Michael Dwain Denton, 50, will begin at 9 a.m. Nov. 28, District Judge Curtis DeLapp said during a brief hearing Friday. Dentons attorney, Patrick Hunt, has told the Tulsa World in the past that he does not think the case will be resolved before trial.

Denton was charged Oct. 2 with assault and battery with a deadly weapon and reckless conduct with a firearm in the June 14, 2015, arrest of Cody Mathews of Glenpool, which was captured on video. Mathews was taken into custody following a 45-minute pursuit that ended in Nowata County, and video from the incident obtained by the World last year shows Mathews driving on the wrong side of U.S. 169 multiple times.

He reportedly fled officers who attempted to stop a stolen 2014 Ford F-150 pickup he was driving in the 1000 block of North New Haven Avenue in Tulsa.

Mathews has a pending case in Rogers County, where most of the pursuit occurred, in connection with the incident and has a trial court arraignment set for Sept. 29. Court records also indicate he pleaded guilty June 16 to related Tulsa County charges of possessing a stolen vehicle and eluding an officer, and was sentenced to eight years in prison with seven additional years suspended.

Nowata County District Attorney Kevin Buchanan said during Dentons court appearance in June that he does not intend to summon Mathews to court to testify against Denton.

The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation completed an inquiry into Mathews arrest and concluded Dentons use of force during the arrest was contrary to the teachings of the Council on Law Enforcement Education and Training, or CLEET. Denton is accused of demonstrating a conscious disregard for other officers safety and creating a situation of unreasonable risk during Mathews arrest.

The video from June 14, 2015, shows an officer breaking the drivers-side window of the truck and a different officer, alleged by a Nowata police officer to be Denton, pushing the barrel of a shotgun through the opening about nine times. A probable cause affidavit claims the Nowata officer reported seeing Denton hitting Mathews in the head after Mathews was pinned to the ground. Nowata police used a Taser to subdue Mathews, which Chief Mike McElhaney said at the time was effective.

Denton was suspended with pay after Mathews arrest pending an Owasso Police Department internal investigation. Owasso City Attorney Julie Lombardi told the World earlier this year that Denton was terminated March 17 as a result of that investigation, and that his termination had proceeded to arbitration. A city spokeswoman said Friday that the arbitration process has not concluded.

The city also fired Denton in 2011 for a violation of Owassos use-of-force policy in another incident that was recorded on video, but he was reinstated by an arbitrator. In that case, he was accused of using excessive force against a Collinsville man while arresting him on a public intoxication complaint in June 2011.

Owasso Police challenged Dentons reinstatement, which the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals upheld in April 2014. The City Council in February 2015 approved a budget supplement to give Denton more than $283,000 in back pay between his firing and reinstatement. He also received more than $47,000 in overtime pay and nearly $36,000 in interest.

The Collinsville man filed a federal lawsuit against the city after his arrest and received $75,000 in a settlement in June 2015, court records show.

Mathews has a pending lawsuit in federal court against Denton, the city of Owasso and six Owasso officers and jailers for alleged mistreatment while he was held at the Owasso Jail following his arrest.

The petition, which was transferred to federal court from Tulsa County, claims Denton said light that m-----f---  up while hitting Mathews after he had been subdued by Nowata police. It states that the city allowed Denton to return to the agency despite previously being found to have used unreasonable force while on duty.

Mathews seeks in excess of $200,000 in damages.
The CEO of Ramps Logistics says he is "really really disappointed" with the Guyana Revenue A
You cant make a father watch his daughter die.

This Sunday on 60 Minutes is the contentious topic of cannabis as a medicine with time running out for one four year old with Dravet Syndrome.

The Gift

Barry and Joy Lambert are Australias most generous grandparents. From humble beginnings, and after a lifetime of hard work, theyve done very well for themselves and are now multi-millionaires. But theyve also endured some tough times, most recently with their four-year-old granddaughter, Katelyn. She suffers from a life-threatening form of epilepsy called Dravet Syndrome and the only treatment that seems to help control her devastating seizures is medicinal cannabis. But obtaining the drug, and giving it to Katelyn, is mired in legal and logistical bureaucracy. As well, there are ethical issues about using cannabis as a medicine, and an urgent need for more research into how it works and its efficacy. But with time running out for Katelyn, Barry and Joy decided they had to do something to help, and in one of the largest private donations in Australian history, wrote a cheque to the University of Sydney for $34 million. Scientists now hope to use their gift to develop treatments for paediatric epilepsy, dementia and pain.

Reporter: Allison Langdon

Producer: Ali Smith, Nick Greenaway

Taking the Plunge

Some people call cliff-diving a sport. Others say its sheer madness. Either way, jumping more than 20 metres off a rock ledge, trying to be graceful as you somersault into the water at 80 kilometres an hour, is spectacular. And incredibly dangerous. Just two months ago Australian Rhiannan Iffland took up cliff-diving and literally, from her first jump, stunned her more experienced competition by beating them. Tara Brown joined the 24-year-old daredevil with nerves of steel and her understandably nervous parents in Italy for her latest vertigo-inducing contest.

Reporter: Tara Brown

Producer: Garry McNab

No Surrender

Despite all the years of telling you hes Charles Wooley, he hasnt been entirely truthful. Thats because hes really a MacGregor, a proud member of the infamous warrior clan from the Scottish Highlands. For centuries the MacGregors have been bravely  and it must be said mostly unsuccessfully  fighting to save Scotland from the hands of the English. So when Charles was invited to attend a clan gathering he thought it would be a chance to immerse himself in the romance of his ancestral family tree. What he found though was a much darker and unexpected history.

Reporter: Charles Wooley

Producer: Laura Sparkes

8:30pm Sunday on Nine.
Just before one former Prime Minister turns ABC TV presenter, another one has accused the broadcaster of bias again.

Tony Abbott has accused Four Corners of bias over its recent report on the Don Dale youth detention centre telling 2GB radio, Yes, it was a shocking report but it was only telling one side of the story and, when the rest of the story started to come out, it appeared that things were not not nearly as black and white as the ABC presented them.

He told host Alan Jones that PM Malcolm Turnbull had responded in panic when he announced a Royal Commission into the Northern Territory juvenile detention.

Im confident this royal commission, given its terms of reference, will come up with a reasonable report. But youre right, Alan, normally governments should not respond in panic at TV programs.

Former Northern Territory Chief Minister Adam Giles also accused the ABC of political motivation, whilst former Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett also criticised it.

But Four Corners producer Sally Neighbour previously rejected the claims.

During his term as PM Tony Abbott questioned whose side the ABC was on and placed a ban preventing ministers from appearing on Q&A.

Later this month former Prime Minister John Howard will present a 2 part documentary on former Liberal PM Sir Robert Menzies.

Source: Fairfax
Post-production facility DDP Studios and StageOne Sound are shutting down in Sydney and Melbourne, citing a downturn in local feature and television post production work.

27 people will lose their jobs as a result of the closures.

Regrettably it is now at a point where it is no longer possible for Deluxe to provide the talent and infrastructure in Australia needed to deliver locally, the world-class quality of post-production services on which the Company has built its global reputation, the company said in a note to clients.

As a result, we have made the very difficult decision to close our local post production brands DDP Studios and StageOne Sound. Our Melbourne DDP Studio will close at the end of September and our Sydney DDP & StageOne studios will close several months later, currently expected to be early in 2017 as we deliver in full all of the projects currently underway in those studios. 

DDP clients include some of Australias biggest names including Nine, SBS, Screentime, Princess Pictures, Essential Media, Matchbox Pictures, Endemol, December Media, Every Cloud Productions, Working Dog, Media World, Gristmill, Werner Films and more.

Other creative services are not impacted by the move. Deluxe will open a digital studio in Macquarie Park, next month with broadcast services. It also owns local animation and VFX facility Iloura. Method Studios, Flagstaff Studios and Sound Lounge.
By PTI: New Delhi, Sep 9 (PTI) French companies are looking for partnerships in India to contribute to the countrys renewable energy targets through innovative solutions and technology cooperation.

A French delegation, specialising in the renewable energy sector, wrapped up their week-long visit to India and pledged to contribute the countrys energy targets with cutting-edge technologies.

The delegation, comprising of leading technology companies and representatives of associations and federations of the French renewable energy sector visited India between September 5 and 9.

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"The companies are actively looking for partnerships to contribute to the renewable energy targets in India through innovative solutions and technology cooperation.

"They presented their expertise and cutting-edge technologies ranging from solar trackers, water turbines to software for energy information systems," a French Embassy statement said.

The delegation also visited the Renewable Energy India Expo in neighbouring Noida.

The delegation travelled to Delhi, Bengaluru, Mumbai and Roorkee and also met key Research and Development players in the renewable energy sector in India, including IISc Bangalore, IIT Bombay, L&T, Tata Power and others apart from meeting with officials of New and Renewable Energy Ministry, it said.

India has ambitions in renewable energy as attested by the creation of the International Solar Alliance.

The country aims to generate 40 per cent of its energy from non-fossil fuel sources in its energy mix by 2030 and for deploying 175GW of renewable energy by 2022.

"French companies intend to contribute to achieving this target. Business France is supporting them in finding synergies with Indian counterparts and institutions, with the aim of developing technical cooperation," the statement said.

France is the third largest foreign investor in India, with an estimated investment of around 20 billion euros, which has contributed to creating around 3 lakh skilled jobs in the country, it added. PTI TDS SMJ

--- ENDS ---
Recent media speculation that the wonderful Angela Lansbury may be stepping into Game of Thrones have been doused with fire and ice.

This is not accurate, her team told EW this week.

The original source was a German website for tabloid newspaper Bild, which is described on Wikipedia as notorious for its mix of gossip, inflammatory language, and sensationalism. Perish the thought.

It wasnt long before Angela Lansbury was trending on social media. Searching her name and Game of Thrones produced dozens of results on Google News.

With veterans such as Diana Rigg, Charles Dance, Iain Glen, Jonathan Pryce and soon Jim Broadbent, it wasnt really such a leap of faith.

Plenty of the Westeros folk are already being killed off without Jessica Fletcher stepping in as an ominous warning.
One Ukrainian serviceman was killed, two soldiers were wounded in ATO area in eastern Ukraine over the past day.

Spokesman for the Presidential Administration on the ATO, Colonel Andriy Lysenko said this at a briefing in Kyiv, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

One Ukrainian serviceman was killed, two soldiers were wounded as a result of military operations over the past day, Lysenko said.

He added that Ukrainian soldier had been killed in shelling of Marinka, Donetsk region.

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Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Geelani was not allowed to hold a press conference as large contingent of police and paramilitary forces were deployed outside his residence who shooed away the media persons also.

By Naseer Ganai: As the state government disallowed Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Geelani to address a press conference here today, Geelani issued a statement thanking Pakistan and China for their support to the "struggle of Kashmiris."



Hurriyat had called for a press conference at 11 am at Geelani's house where he remains under house arrest.

This is the second time that Geelani has mentioned China since the protests erupted in Kashmir after the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander, Burhan Muzaffer Wani, on July 8 in a gunfight in South Kashmir.



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SUPPORT FROM OTHER COUNTRIES



On July 17, Geelani had written to China and other countries seeking support for the resolution of the Kashmir issue. He had said that if the world community including China and Iran persuade India to take confidence building measures (CBMs), it would create an atmosphere conducive for peace and resolution.

Also read: Supreme Court agrees to hear PIL to stop funding of Kashmiri separatists

"We are also thankful to several other countries like China, Norway, Saudi Arabia, New Zealand, Iran and to the Organization of Islamic countries (OIC) for expressing concern over the brutal repression by India in Kashmir. We are also thankful to Turkey for its unambiguous support to our just struggle for freedom from Indian occupation," the statement issued by Geelani shortly after his press conference was not allowed, says.



PAKISTAN A WELL-WISHER



Praising Pakistan, the separatist leader said, "During this uprising, Pakistan has once again proved that they are our friends and well-wishers. Pakistan and its people shared our pain and raised their voice in our support. We are happy that at a time when the people of Jammu and Kashmir have once again risen for their freedom, Pakistan and its people have taken an ethical stand to support our struggle morally, politically and diplomatically," he said.

ALL-PARTY DELEGATION A FARCE



Without mentioning all party delegation's visit, he described the recent efforts of the outreach as farce of engagement.

Also read: Not against dialogue but meaningless exercise, says Geelani

"Shaken by our resolve and our united struggle for freedom, India has once again started the farce of engagement that it time and again has used to divert attention from the reality on the ground here. They will come again to ask - what do we want. They know the answer to that question. We want freedom," he said.

He alleged that even after 70 years of rule, India continues to hold Kashmir forcibly. "The greatest sign of our victory is that the mighty army of our occupier has to shoot dead middle-aged women, a 21-year-old girl and beat to death a teacher. If after 70 years of military control, a soldier has to kill an unarmed woman and a schoolboy with a stone in his hand to forcibly keep Kashmir under Indian control, what bigger proof do we need of who has been defeated and who is victorious? The bullets of Indian soldiers are merely the symbols of their cowardice," Geelani said.

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Criticising the national media, he alleged, "With few exceptions, the dominant discourse created by the Indian media and writers continues to be based on falsehoods aimed at dehumanising us and labeling our just struggle as terrorism. The Indian media, by and large, is an extension of the Indian state and performs well the role that has been assigned to it to help keep in place the Indian occupation in Kashmir."

The valley has been under the grip of unrest for last 63 days. 75 people have been killed while close to 10,000 have been injured during the unrest.



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The Ukrainian side is ready to buy gas from Russias Gazprom if it offers a reasonable price.

CEO of Naftogaz of Ukraine Andriy Kobolev said this at BBC Hard Talk, Naftogaz press service reports.

"Our offer extends to all companies, including Gazprom, if it offers a reasonable price and complies with the rules," Kobolev said.

He added that now Naftogaz bought fuel from 14 European suppliers.

"The very fact that they are cooperating with us indicates that Naftogaz is a reliable partner," Andriy Kobolev said.

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Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman has held a meeting with President of the National Council of Switzerland Christa Markwalder. The sides discussed ways to enhance bilateral trade and economic relations, governments website reports.

In particular, Christa Markwalder noted that the Swiss business is interested in investing into Ukraine.

In this context, Groysman said that creation of favorable conditions for business development in Ukraine is one the priorities of the Ukrainian government. He informed about steps being taken in this direction, in particular, the start of reforms of justice, customs, the completion of establishing the Investment Support Office under auspice of the prime minister. Groysman also noted that the government continues to cooperate with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Markvalder, in turn, welcomed the ambitious program of reforms which the government is implementing, in particular, on the decentralization of government and the fight against corruption.

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Ukraine has already received 82% of medicines purchased through international organizations, according to acting Ukrainian Health Minister Uliana Suprun.

"Today 82% of all medicines, ordered in 2015, have already been delivered in Ukraine. The most amount has already been delivered in the regions, Suprun said during Government Question Hour held in Parliament today, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

She also informed that the Health Ministry together with MPs, the Finance Ministry and Economic Development Ministry managed to resolve the problem with shipment of drugs needed for children with cancer.

Drugs had been stored at a customs station for almost 90 days, we were not able to settle this problem. I believe that by the end of this week the procedure of customs clearance will be completed and we will receive these drugs for children with cancer, the official said.

The acting health ministry also informed that all needed vaccines will be delivered in Ukraine by November.

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New Border Guard Service department, Pavlovichi checkpoint, has been opened at the Ukrainian-Polish border today.

This is reported by the press service of the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine.

As noted, the reconstruction of Pavlovichi checkpoint was held within the framework of international technical assistance project of the development of modern infrastructure of the Border Guard Service departments under the "Poland-Belarus-Ukraine" program for cross-border cooperation of the European Neighborhood and Partnership Instrument.

The checkpoint was first opened in 1939. The area length is over 22km.

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The 2017-2018 academic years will be the Years of Ukrainian language in Germany and German language in Ukraine.

This was announced at a joint press conference following the bilateral talks of Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin with his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier, own Ukrinform correspondent in Germany reports.

I support the idea of declaring the next year the Year of German language in Ukraine and the Year of Ukrainian language in Germany, Klimkin said.

He clarified that this concerns not the calendar, but the academic year, and so the start of the mutual Years is planned to be launched in the middle of 2017.

"I hope that next year we will have the successful Years of languages," said Steinmeier.

Also, Klimkin expressed his gratitude for the continuous support the German Foreign Ministry provides to the Department of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Greifswald.

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UN calls on Ukraine to facilitate payment of social assistance and pensions to the internally displaced persons from Donbas and Crimea.

UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons Chaloka Beyani said this at a briefing in Kyiv on Friday, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"The biggest problem is that the IDPs must be registered to be paid pensions and social benefits. These payments should be separated from registration. 500,000-600,000 IDPs in Ukraine cannot receive their payments because of this now. Winter will soon come, so these problems must be solved immediately" Beyani said.

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| By Karen Robinson

Residents of Baltimore City shared their thoughts about and experiences with the Baltimore Police Department at a Community Town Hall co-sponsored by the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law on Sept. 7. About 300 residents, activists, students, elected officials, and more attended the town hall co-sponsored by Maryland Carey Laws Black Law Students Association, its Student Bar Association, and the Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class, as well as the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings. Michael Pinard, JD, professor and co-director of the Clinical Law Program at Maryland Carey Law, was instrumental in organizing the event.

The U.S. Department of Justice recently released the findings of its investigation into policing practices of the Baltimore Police Department. As a result, the city of Baltimore and the Department of Justice (DOJ) are negotiating a consent decree that will outline strategies to address the civil rights violations identified in the report. The community input, including the town hall at Westminster Hall, is part of the consent decree process.

The event, open to the public, gave community members the opportunity to share with each other and with officials, including DOJ representatives, their own experiences with and thoughts on policing practices within the Baltimore Police Department.

Tawanda Jones (right) tells the story of her brother, Tyrone West, who died in 2013 after being arrested during a traffic stop.

Like many of you, I have read the DOJ report, Maryland Carey Law Dean Donald B. Tobin, JD, told the standing-room-only crowd as he opened the forum. It describes a situation in our city that is both horrific and unacceptable. But today is not a day for me to talk. Today is a day for me and for all of us to listen. It is a chance for you to tell your story, for you to have a chance to express your frustration, your ideas, your hopes, your dreams, and your suggestions for a better Baltimore.

Cummings urged the crowd to participate in the Justice Departments process. On the way in here, one of the reporters said, 'How do you know that this is going to work?' he said. I dont know that this is going to work. But I know one thing. We dont have a choice. We have to go in this direction and make the best of this situation. There was much protest after Freddie Grays tragic death, and it is my hope we will take that protest and change the policy, systems, culture, and practices of our police department. Im begging you to work with this process - this is the only one we got. We must take this critical moment  and turn it into a movement.

Sonja Sohn, an actress and activist known for her work on The Wire, also addressed the audience. Sohn has founded a nonprofit called ReWired for Change, devoted to empowering at-risk youth, families, and communities.

I have been on the streets of Baltimore. I know the pain and the despair and the lack of trust felt by the people of this city, said Sohn. We would do ourselves a great disservice if we do not recognize that all of these [police misconduct] issues are deeply rooted in a culture and mindset of unconscious implicit racism which must be extricated from the minds of the individuals who have sworn to protect and serve the people of Baltimore.

Speaking for the Justice Department, Timothy Mygatt, deputy chief of the Special Litigations Section of the Civil Rights Division, summarized the report. His statistics included that out of 300,000 reported stops by the Baltimore Police Department between 2010 and 2015, just 3.7 percent resulted in a kind of citation or arrest, Mygatt said. That makes us very concerned that those stops were not on the basis of reasonable suspicion as is required by the Constitution, but instead were based on other grounds, on illegal grounds.

When the program opened up to comments from the audience, community members lined up to deliver their testimony at microphones at the front of the hall. A stenographer transcribed all the comments so that the DOJ can use the information in negotiating the consent decree with the city of Baltimore. The comments ranged from personal stories to suggestions for how to reform policing in the city.

The DOJ report told us something that most Baltimoreans already knew, which is that the polices interaction with Baltimore and her citizens is incredibly broken, said Dena Robinson, a third-year student at Maryland Carey Law and a former Baltimore City schoolteacher. The consent decree should contain a provision requiring police officers in the districts in which they police and serve to have weekly conversations that are facilitated by Baltimore community mediators. We need this in our city to rebuild the trust that has been broken for years now.

One young man identified himself as Shadow, and said he was a peer advocate from the Penn-North neighborhood whose own father was a police officer. First, the police in general are not granted special rights by any means  in any part of the Constitution or in any legal books, therefore when they commit murder or any other crime they should be charged and treated as such, he said.

Shadow suggested that police should be limited to just a year of service. Until someone recognizes the type of post-traumatic stress that comes with a job that pits you against a certain kind of people over a long period of time, and the hatred and the biases that it creates, it will remain a problem, he said.

As the crowd lined up to speak inside, outside on the sidewalk the family of Tyrone West gathered with supporters and set up a loudspeaker. West, 44, died in July 2013 after being arrested at a traffic stop. The West family protests in Tyrone Wests memory each Wednesday, arguing for police reform. The family and their supporters talked on the sidewalk for a bit, holding protest signs, before entering Westminster Hall to give their own testimony.

Tawanda Jones, Wests sister, criticized the consent decree process. My brother, Tyrone West, was brutally murdered, she said. I dont consent to anything, nothing short of killer cops in cell blocks. Its too deep-rooted. To me, to consent to anything is like signing up another brother to get brutally murdered or executed.
By PTI: Berlin, Sep 9 (PTI) The giraffe is not one species, but four separate ones - according to the most inclusive genetic analysis that could have significant conservation implications for the worlds tallest mammal.

Up until now, scientists had only recognised a single species of giraffe made up of several subspecies.

The unexpected findings highlight the urgent need for further study of the four genetically isolated species and for greater conservation efforts for the animal, researchers said.

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"We were extremely surprised, because the morphological and coat pattern differences between giraffe are limited," said Axel Janke, a geneticist at Goethe University in Germany.

Giraffes are also assumed to have similar ecological requirements across their range but no one really knows, because this megafauna has been largely overlooked by science," he said.

Giraffes are in dramatic decline across their range in Africa. Their numbers have dropped substantially over the last three decades, from more than 150,000 individuals to fewer than 100,000, researchers said.

Despite that there has been relatively little research done on giraffes in comparison to other large animals, such as elephants, rhinoceroses, gorillas and lions, they said.

About five years ago, Julian Fennessy of Giraffe Conservation Foundation in Namibia approached Janke to ask for help with genetic testing of the giraffe.

Fennessy wanted to know how similar (or not) giraffes living in different parts of Africa were to each other, whether past translocations of giraffe individuals had inadvertently "mixed" different species or subspecies, and, if so, what should be done in future translocations of giraffes into parks or other protected areas.

In the new study, Janke and his research group examined the DNA evidence taken from skin biopsies of 190 giraffes collected by Fennessy and team all across Africa.

The extensive sampling includes populations from all nine previously recognised giraffe subspecies.

The genetic analysis shows that there are four highly distinct groups of giraffe, which apparently do not mate with each other in the wild. As a result, they say, giraffes should be recognised as four distinct species.

These four species include: southern giraffe, Masai giraffe, reticulated giraffe and northern giraffe, which includes the Nubian giraffe as a distinct subspecies.

The discovery has significant conservation implications, the researchers said.

"With now four distinct species, the conservation status of each of these can be better defined and in turn added to the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) Red List," Fennessy said.

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The research was published in the journal Current Biology. PTI SAR SAR

--- ENDS ---
Nigerian returnees sit in front of a house destroyed by Boko Haram in Garaha, Adamawa state, Nigeria in this May 2016 file photo.  UNHCR/George Osodi

GENEVA  Hundreds of internally displaced people are returning to devastated villages and towns recently liberated from Boko Haram in north-east Nigerias Borno state, raising concerns about living conditions, basic services and security in the area, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, said today.

The ongoing campaign by Nigerian Government forces in cooperation with the Multi-National Joint Task Force has rolled back gains by the militants, whose insurgency has displaced more than two million people within Nigeria since 2014.

Hundreds of thousands of people in Borno are already in urgent need of help, UNHCR spokesperson Leo Dobbs told a news briefing in Geneva on Friday (September 9), noting that the number of people returning to liberated areas is expected to increase in the coming weeks.

Comprehensive figures are not available but our field staff and partners are reporting both government-facilitated and spontaneous return in recent days of hundreds of people to places such as Mafa, Konduga, Benisheikh and Dikwa, Dobbs told reporters at the Palais des Nations in Geneva.

UNHCR is working to ensure returns are conducted in accordance with international standards and in dignity and safety."

Assistance from the government and aid agencies has been stepped up to the region to help people in 16 newly accessible districts of Borno. UNHCR and its partners have only restricted access to 10 of these districts, where some 800,000 people need urgent help.

Dobbs said some of those now returning to their homes in the liberated areas from places like the Borno capital, Maiduguri, appear to be happy to go back, citing dire conditions in the places where they have been living, including camps for the internally displaced.

He stressed that UNHCR is concerned about the welfare of the people, who are returning to areas that have been devastated under Boko Haram rule. Many of the internally displaced will be going back to destroyed homes and infrastructure, and areas lacking health care and other services.

The returns should be voluntary, dignified and safe - people should be informed about conditions in their home areas, Dobbs said.

UNHCR is in regular touch with state officials and we have raised our concerns and offered to work closely with them to help ensure that returns are conducted in accordance with international standards and in dignity and safety. We will continue to monitor the situation of returnees, especially the most vulnerable, he added.

Meanwhile, as UNHCR and partners scale up their operations in the north-east, security and access to the needy, especially those in the newly accessible areas, remain major challenges. A greater humanitarian response and presence on the ground is urgently needed, aid efforts must be better coordinated, and data collection improved.

The insurgency in north-east Nigeria has forcibly displaced more than 2.25 million people since 2014.

Most of the displaced are women, children and the elderly. Priority issues that UNHCR and our partners are working on include shelter, food, provision of potable water as well as health concerns, including acute malnutrition and cholera prevention, Dobbs said.

Protection issues include sexual and gender-based violence, where we have had successes through community-based protection action groups that encourage dialogue and awareness.

On the ground, UNHCR continues to work through local partners to carry out vital protection monitoring in Bama, Monguno, Damboa, Konduga, Mafa, Dikwa and including Biu, Bayo, Hawul, Shani and Kwaya Kusar districts in southern Borno.

The UN Refugee Agency has also provided 200 shelters for 1,000 people in Bama and has distributed non-food items to 16,000 people in the past two weeks. Aid includes 10,000 items distributed to people in the Cameroon-Nigeria border town of Banki. In Maiduguri, UNHCR has constructed almost 2,000 semi-permanent shelters for around 10,000 people, and is building emergency shelters for 5,000 people in Dikwa.

The insurgency in north-east Nigeria has forcibly displaced more than 2.25 million people since 2014, including 2.066 million people displaced within the countrys borders and almost 190,000 refugees in neighbouring Cameroon, Niger and Chad. Although the government has rolled back Boko Haram gains since last year, the insurgency has switched to terror attacks and remains a potent threat.
Jordan, Azraq Refugee Camp  Friday 09 September 2016

This is my fourth visit to Jordan since the conflict in Syria began.

It is almost impossible to fathom what the last five years have meant, in the lives of refugees in Jordan and elsewhere in the region.

Not a single family in this camp of 60,000 people has not suffered loss and trauma.

I met a family this morning, who fled Daesh in Raqqaa, and then moved twenty times, trying to find safety inside Syria. In that time, the mother suffered repeated miscarriages, and her two brothers and one sister were killed in an airstrike.

There are children here who remember no life other than this harsh desert environment and these barbed wire fences.

There are teens who bear the terrible physical and mental wounds of conflict - such as a 13 year-old boy I met, scarred by shrapnel from a barrel bomb.

Over half of all refugees in Jordan are under 18. My own children are of that age. Like any other parent, it is impossible for me not to imagine what it would be like for my own children in this situation.

But as difficult as conditions are, refugees here count themselves among the lucky ones.

Besides the millions trapped inside Syria whose lives are at risk daily, 75,000 Syrians are stranded in the Berm - a no-mans land on the Jordanian border  including children, pregnant women, and gravely ill patients.

They have had no food delivery since early August. There is next to no humanitarian access whatsoever. There is no mechanism for evacuating the war wounded. None of the basic protections under international humanitarian law are being applied.

This is not a problem of Jordans making, or that Jordan should be left to bear alone. They have been warning for years that they would reach a point where they on their own could do no more.

The world has known about the situation in the Berm for months, but no solution has yet been put forward.

This is symptomatic of the wider problem. For all the good intentions, extraordinary efforts in the field, and the generosity of host communities, it is impossible to say that we, as an international community, are using all the tools at our disposal, or that we have even come close to doing enough to help the Syrian people.

The Security Council  five years on and counting - remains divided on how to reach a political settlement.

The deliberate use of siege and starvation, barrel bombs, attacks on hospitals and, reportedly, chemical weapons, continues every day.

And for all the countless international summits and aid pledging conferences in these five years, UNHCR and other agencies still only have half of what is needed to meet the needs on the ground today.

That shortfall has consequences.

The gulf between our responsibilities and our actions has never been so wide.

So my message to world leaders, as they prepare to gather at the UN General Assembly in 10 days time, is to ask that the fundamental root causes of the Syria conflict, and what it will take to end it, are put at the center of the discussion.

Any increase in humanitarian funding saves lives and is deeply appreciated as well as absolutely necessary. But lets be clear: aid workers here are still waiting for what was promised at the last conference.

After five years refugees do not want to know by what percentage their lives might be made fractionally more bearable, but when they will be able to go home.

They do not want to be the passive recipients of aid, they want a political solution.

Finally I would like, if I may, to speak to the people of Jordan - whose decency, tolerance and humanity I so deeply admire.

You have given your all to helping your Syrian neighbors, from the earliest days of the conflict. You did so knowing that it would be extremely difficult, and that the war could last for years, and with huge demands on your resources and services in your communities already.

Having given so much, you are still dedicated to doing more, and I welcome and thank His Majesty The King for the courageous and forward-looking decisions to help a number of Syrians access work and education in Jordan. Thank you for your moral leadership.

I wish families in Jordan, and across this region, Eid Mubarak.

And to those for whom it is not a time of joy and celebration, but of exile, grief and hardship  my thoughts are with you.

Thank you very much.

END

For more information please contact:

Aoife McDonnell; UNHCR Jordan; email: [email protected]  (+962) 795450379

Mohammad Hawari; UNHCR Jordan; email: [email protected]  (+962) 798956781

Olga Sarrado Mur; UNHCR Jordan, email: [email protected]  (+962) 797617799
Hundreds of internally displaced people are returning to devastated villages and towns that have recently been liberated by the Nigerian armed forces in the north-eastern state of Borno. UNHCR expects the number to grow in the coming weeks, but we remain concerned about conditions, basic services and security in territory formerly controlled by Boko Haram insurgents.

Comprehensive figures are not available but our field staff and partners are reporting both government-facilitated and spontaneous return in recent days of hundreds of people to places such as Mafa, Konduga, Benisheikh and Dikwa.

Assistance from the government and aid agencies has been stepped up to the region to help people in 16 newly accessible districts of Borno. UNHCR and its partners have restricted access to 10 of these districts, where some 800,000 people need urgent help.

Some of those now returning to their homes in the liberated areas from places like the Borno capital, Maiduguri, appear to be happy to go back, citing dire conditions in the places where they have been living, including camps for the internally displaced.

But UNHCR is concerned about the welfare of the people, who are returning to areas that have been devastated under Boko Haram rule. Many of the internally displaced will be going back to destroyed homes and infrastructure, and areas lacking health care and other services.

The returns should be voluntary, dignified and safe - people should be informed about conditions in their home areas. UNHCR is in regular touch with state officials and we have raised our concerns and offered to closely work with them to help ensure that returns are conducted in accordance with international standards and in dignity and safety. We will continue to monitor the situation of returnees, especially the most vulnerable.

Meanwhile, as we and partners scale up our operations in the north-east, security and access to the needy, especially those in the newly accessible areas, remain major challenges. A greater humanitarian response and presence on the ground is urgently needed, aid efforts must be better coordinated, and data collection improved. In the past week, we have started the deployment of a 14-strong emergency response team, including experienced senior emergency coordinators and several protection officers.

Most of the displaced are women, children and the elderly. Priority issues that we and our partners are working on include shelter, food, provision of potable water as well as health concerns, including acute malnutrition and cholera prevention. Protection issues include sexual and gender-based violence, where we have had successes through community-based protection action groups that encourage dialogue and awareness.

In concrete terms, UNHCR continues to work through local partners to carry out vital protection monitoring in Bama, Monguno, Damboa, Konduga, Mafa, Dikwa and including Biu, Bayo, Hawul, Shani and Kwaya Kusar districts in southern Borno.

We have also provided 200 shelters for 1,000 people in Bama and have distributed non-food items to 16,000 people in the past two weeks. We have handed out aid items to 10,000 people in the Cameroon-Nigeria border town of Banki. In Maiduguri, we have constructed almost 2,000 semi-permanent shelters for around 10,000 people, and are building emergency shelters for 5,000 people in Dikwa.

The insurgency in north-east Nigeria has forcibly displaced more than 2.25 million people since 2014, including 2.066 million internally displaced people and almost 190,000 refugees in neighbouring Cameroon, Niger and Chad. Although the government has rolled back Boko Haram gains since last year, the insurgency has switched to terror attacks and remains a potent threat.



For more information on this topic, please contact:
Beef has been found in the biryani samples that were seized from Mundaka village of Mewat district.

By India Today Web Desk: Beef found in samples of biryani collected from the Muslim-dominated Mewat district of Haryana. A state-run veterinary that tested the samples stated that beef was used in the biryani being sold in the district.

Acting on a complaint that beef was being added to biryanis sold in Mewat, the authorities had collected samples from one of the villages.

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The samples, collected from Mundaka village, were sent for testing to a laboratory in Hisar's Haryana Agricultural University keeping with the directions given

by the state government.

State Minister Anil Vij reportedly backed the biryani policing. He said that the police were in charge of implementing the law and it was a part of their duty to ensure that beef is not consumed.

COW PROTECTION FORCE GEARS UP

The Cow Protection Task Force, set up by the state government under the police force, has also strengthened its network of informers in the areas where beef consumption is said to be high.

Under the Haryana government's recently enforced Haryana Gauvansh Sanrakshan and Gau Samvardhan Act 2015, cow slaughter is punishable with rigorous imprisonment of up to 10 years and a fine of Rs one lakh.

Also read:

Another beef row: Now, biryani samples collected in Mewat to test meat





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Former chief minister of Haryana Bhupinder Singh Hooda is currently facing three separate investigations led by CBI and ED over allegations of corruption.

By Asit Jolly: These are decidedly troubling times for Bhupinder Singh Hooda. The former Congress chief minister who literally ruled the roost in Haryana for ten straight years. Hooda now faces three separate CBI and Enforcement Directorate-led inquests into highly serious allegations of corruption, which if proved in a court of law, would not just bring him to an ignoble place besides some of his predecessors and peers in other states, but could also spell jail time.

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Besides two earlier investigations into allegations of - nepotism in the allotment of industrial sites in Panchkula (outside Chandigarh) and illegalities in the re-allotment of a plot to Associated Journals Limited (owner of the National Herald newspaper) - the former chief minister is now also accused of a key role in what has now gained huge notoriety as the 'Manesar Land-grab Case'.

The CBI, which registered an FIR on September 15, 2015, contends that farmer-owners of some 400 acres in Manesar, Lakhnaula and Naurangpur were cheated out of nearly Rs. 1500 crores. This, the bureau says, was part of 912 acres notified for acquisition in August 2004 for setting up a new integrated residential and recreational complex.

Also read: Manesar land scam : CBI raids 20 places including Bhupinder Singh Hooda's properties



FARM OWNERS PAID A FRACTION

It is alleged that between August 2004 and August 2007, "public servants of the Haryana Government including important functionaries and others" paid the farm owners a fraction of the cost of the holding which was later rather conveniently released from the acquisition process.

But there's apparently a flipside to the whole affair. There is a whole lot Hooda says, that neither the CBI, which conducted simultaneous raids on 24 premises linked to the former CM and his associates on September 3, or the ED which registered a case under provisions of the Prevention of Money-laundering Act on September 8, is telling people.

On September 9, flanked by Randip Singh Surjewala and Kuldip Sharma, two deputies of his erstwhile government, the former chief minister told reporters in Chandigarh that both, the notification for acquisition of the 912 acres in the Manesar area on August 27, 2004, but the subsequent February 26, 2016 recommendation to release 350 acres from the acquisition process was done during the tenure of the Om Prakash Chautala-led Indian National Lok Dal-Bharatiya Janata Party Government. Notably, Hooda did assume office only on March 5, 2005.

HIGH COURT TOO UPHELD HOODA GOVT'S DECISION



According to Surjewala subsequent agitation by villagers; numerous requests by political leaders and others including Union Minister Rao Inderjit Singh; a report from the then deputy commissioner; and a flood of court petitions in the Punjab and Haryana High Courts by the land owners, led the state government to withdraw from the acquisition process on August 24, 2007.

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Eventually, following a report from officials on ground that it would be extremely difficult to secure a contiguous and large enough area for any planned development, the acquisition process was closed in January 2010. Surjewala, a qualified lawyer himself, also points out that in disposing petitions file by some 80 villagers, in December 2014 the High Court too upheld the Hooda government's decision.

Also read: Manesar land case: ED registers PMLA case agnst Hooda, others



Hooda insists that Haryana's Manohar Lal Khattar-led BJP government is "vengefully targeting Congress leaders at the behest of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah like elsewhere in the country." He says the CBI and ED are "following a script." But for the moment and right until CBI and ED come back with their findings, he is exactly where they want him - with his back to the wall.

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XIAMEN, China, 8 September 2016  The promotion of investment cooperation in Africa was the topic of a high-level forum on investment in Africa held today in Xiamen on the sidelines of the 2016 China International Fair for Investment and Trade.

Participants recognized the Programmes for Country Partnership, which the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) is currently implementing in Ethiopia and Senegal, as a successful assistance model. Each programme is a multi-stakeholder partnership which aims to increase large-scale public and private investment in order to accelerate national industrial development agendas.

Co-organized by UNIDO, the Ministry of Commerce and the Fujian Provincial Government of China, the forum brought together senior decision-makers from China, Ethiopia, Nigeria and Senegal, as well as representatives from the private sector, academia and other international agencies.

Participants highlighted the significant contribution of industry to job creation and poverty eradication, calling it a motor for overall growth and prosperity, and for the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals in Africa and globally.

They stressed that governments need to create an enabling environment for investors, and that localization strategies and environmental protection need to be highlighted. The need to increase investment in high-value added activities and sectors in order to provide opportunities for social inclusion was also emphasized. Such investments support gender equality, empower women and girls, and create decent employment for young people. This in turn will contribute to long-term growth and structural change in Africa.

The forum was organized in support of the recently adopted United Nations General Assembly resolution on the Third Industrial Development Decade for Africa, and the recently endorsed G20 Initiative on Supporting Industrialization in Africa and Least Developed Countries.

Speaking at the event, LI Yong, the Director General of UNIDO, stressed that the Organization, which is mandated to promote and accelerate inclusive and sustainable industrial development, has for many years been implementing technical cooperation projects and promoting investment across Africa. UNIDOs flagship Programmes for Country Partnership have already achieved impressive results since their launch in 2014, said Li.

At the event, UNIDO also presented a new report on growth identification and facilitation for industrial upgrading and diversification, prepared in collaboration with the National School of Development at Peking University.

The report, written by a team led by former World Bank Chief Economist, Professor Justin Lin, examines Senegals key sectors and provides recommendations for achieving quick wins based on international market opportunities. It is a key component of UNIDOs Programme for Country Partnership for Senegal.

As a follow-up to the event in Xiamen, two upcoming events will also provide platforms to present specific investment opportunities in Africa. From 5 to 7 October, the International Agro-Industry Investment Forum will be held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and from 14 to 15 November, Dakar, Senegal, will host UNIDOs fifth Inclusive and Sustainable Industrial Development Forum.

During the Xiamen Fair an exhibition on UNIDO-China cooperation was also held to mark the Organizations 50th anniversary.

For more information, please contact:

ZOU Ciyong

Director, UNIDO Department of Partnerships and Results Monitoring

email
Hillary Clinton, in a remarkably candid interview with the popular blog Humans of New York, opens up about sexism and why she comes across as cold and aloof.

Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton greets a member of the audience as she arrives to speak at a rally on Thursday. Photo: AP

By India Today Web Desk: Hillary Clinton, the Presidential candidate of the Democrats, has had her share of difficulties as a woman, and as a politician. While she lost a slugfest to Barack Obama in 2008, she fought hard this year to secure her nomination for the US Presidential elections.

In a candid interview with the popular blog Humans of New York, Hillary shared why she comes across as too prepared, cold and probably even plastic. She explained why she controls her emotions during a public appearance.

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Also Read: Donald Trump is totally unfit and unqualified to be US President: Hillary Clinton

MARRIED ONE PRESIDENT, WORKED FOR ANOTHER

"I'm not Barack Obama. I'm not Bill Clinton. Both of them carry themselves with a naturalness that is very appealing to audiences. But I'm married to one and I've worked for the other, so I know how hard they work at being natural," she told Humans of New York in an interview that went viral on social media.

Hillary continued, "You have to communicate in a way that people say: 'OK, I get her.' And that can be more difficult for a woman."



She went on to address the gender issues, in a very direct and moving way, still prevalent in the society, more so in careers like politics, and law.

The Democrat candidate said, "If you want to run for the Senate, or for the Presidency, most of your role models are going to be men. And what works for them won't work for you. Women are seen through a different lens. It's not bad. It's just a fact. It's really quite funny."

In a hard-hitting blow to gender stereotypes, she said, "I'll go to these events and there will be men speaking before me, and they'll be pounding the message... And I want to do the same thing. Because I care about this stuff. But I've learned that I can't be quite so passionate in my presentation. I love to wave my arms, but apparently that's a little bit scary to people. And I can't yell too much. It comes across as 'too loud' or 'too shrill' or 'too this' or 'too that.' "

Also Read: Donald Trump in TV event with Hillary Clinton, says Vladimir Putin better leader than Barack Obama

'LEARNED TO CONTROL MY EMOTIONS AS A YOUNG WOMAN '

In a second part of the Humans of New York interview, Hillary shared how she learned, as a young woman, the hard but everlasting lesson in gender dynamics.

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Her "walled off" and "cold" image, she said, was a result of many experiences she had as a young woman, one of which she shared with Humans of New York.

"I was taking a law school admissions test in a big classroom at Harvard. My friend and I were some of the only women in the room. I was nervous. I was a senior in college. I wasn't sure how well I'd do. And while we're waiting for the exam to start, a group of men began to yell things like: 'You don't need to be here.' And 'There's plenty else you can do.' It turned into a real 'pile on.' One of them even said: 'If you take my spot, I'll get drafted, and I'll go to Vietnam, and I'll die.' And they weren't kidding around," she recalled.

But Hillary "couldn't afford to get distracted".

"It got very personal. But I couldn't respond. I couldn't afford to get distracted because I didn't want to mess up the test. So I just kept looking down, hoping that the proctor would walk in the room. I know that I can be perceived as aloof or cold or unemotional," Hillary said.

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" But I had to learn as a young woman to control my emotions. And that's a hard path to walk. Because you need to protect yourself, you need to keep steady, but at the same time you don't want to seem 'walled off.' And sometimes I think I come across more in the 'walled off' arena. And if I create that perception, then I take responsibility."

These Humans of New York posts have been massively shared on social media, particularly Facebook.

Also Read:

Donald Trump leaves everyone 'open-mouthed', hints at Hillary Clinton's assassination by gun-rights supporters

'Jayalalithaa behind Hillary Clinton's presidential bid': AIADMK MLA brings the House down



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By PTI: New Delhi, Sep 7 (PTI) ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company has received markets regulator Sebis approval to raise an estimated Rs 5,000 crore through an initial public offering, the first by an insurer in India and the biggest in nearly six years.

The company, which filed the draft red herring prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) on July 18, got the regulator approval on September 2, as per the latest update.

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The insurer is a venture between banking major ICICI Bank and UKs Prudential Corporation Holdings. Singapores Temasek and PremjiInvest also are shareholders.

ICICI Bank has around 68 per cent stake in the insurer, while that of Prudential is 26 per cent.

The public offer comprises up to 18,13,41,058 equity shares of ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company, representing about 12.65 per cent of its equity share capital for cash, through an offer for sale by ICICI Bank, as per the draft papers.

The offer includes a proposed reservation of up to 1,81,34,105 equity shares (10 per cent of the offer) for shareholders of ICICI Bank.

Prudential will not dilute its stake in the IPO of ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company while ICICI Bank will be selling its 12.65 per cent stake in the insurer.

The size of the IPO is estimated to be worth around Rs 5,000 crore, sources said.

This would be the biggest initial public offering after Coal India. The state-run firm had hit the capital markets in 2010 to raise over Rs 15,000 crore.

Last November, ICICI Bank sold nearly 6 per cent stake in ICICI Prudential to Temasek and PremjiInvest. The shares were offloaded for around Rs 1,950 crore valuing the insurer at Rs 32,500 crore.

PremjiInvest holds 4 per cent in the insurance company while Temasek owns 2 per cent in the firm.

At the end of March this year, the assets under management of ICICI Prudential -- which started operations in fiscal year 2001 -- stood at Rs 1,039.39 billion, as per its website.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch and ICICI Securities are global book running lead merchant bankers (BRLM) to the issue. Others are CLSA, Deutsche, Edelweiss, HSBC, IIFL, JM Financial and SBI Capital Markets.

A maximum 50 per cent of the issue size will be reserved for qualified institutional buyers (QIBs), out of which up to 60 per cent for anchor investors and 5 per cent for mutual fund players.

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Besides, 35 per cent of total offer size will be set aside for retail investors, with the remaining 15 per cent for non-institutional investors. PTI SP ABK

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ITT Technical Institute announced the permanent closing of all its campuses nationwide beginning this school opening. The management blames the closure to the recent ban issued from the U.S. Department of Education. The said ban prevents ITT campuses from accepting enrollees who are receiving financial aids from the federal government.

ITT closure affects their 35,000 incoming students expecting to continue if not to finish their degree and manage to get a diploma. A total of 8,000 employees is also expected to lose their jobs as the institute closes. Some of these employees will have to serve a bit longer than the others as they will be assisting the affected students.

The U.S. Department of Education already sent emails offering forms of recovery strategies to the 35,000 ITT closure affected students. They gave them two options to choose from. Student loan debtors may avail student loan forgiveness which the government is obligated to do to student victims of school closure.

The student may also consider transferring their credits to another institution for them to be able to complete the same degree. This option, however, disqualifies them from the student loan forgiveness as this step does not invalidate their years of study in ITT.

The ITT Technical Institute Management believes that this is an unconstitutional and inappropriate act. They said that they will now have to rely on other parties to understand and to prevent this action that they consider reprehensible from happening again, The LA Times reported.

Meanwhile, John B. King Jr., U.S. Department of Education secretary said that this step was a very difficult decision to make but he believes that they have done the right thing. He said that this action was to protect many from the possibility of worse financial and educational damage in the future should ITT continues to operate.

ITT Technical Institute failed to comply with some basic operation standards. Some of the institute's officials are also facing a lawsuit filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission set for October 2017. The case was due to their misleading statements about their in-house-student-loan program, The Washington Post reported.

Watch this video for more of the story.


A party invite has sparked outrage from University of Pennsylvania students. The email, which was addressed to "ladies," was sent out to several students and contained a disturbing example of predatory sexism.

Philly Voice reported that the creepy email, with the subject line "Wild Wednesday," was distributed to an undisclosed list of recipients on Aug. 31. The invitation included a poem that encourages female students to "please wear something tight."

One freshman received the email and passed it to junior Amanda Silberling. Silberling then organized a group of students to print and distribute it around the University of Pennsylvania campus.

The fliers were taped to the school's iconic "LOVE" statue. The group also placed it on bulletin boards to warn freshman girls.

"It's the second week of classes, so a lot of the frats on campus try to throw as many parties as they can," Silberling told the publication. "Sometimes their tactics for getting people to go to these parties can be really aggressive. In this case, a frat sent an email to incoming freshman girls. We don't know how they got the list."

Initially, the group wanted to send feminist literature to the account that sent the email. However, they decided that this issue should be made public. "We've since learned that similar emails have been sent to freshman girls in the past," she added.

BuzzFeed noted that about 600 fliers of the email with the phrase "this is what rape culture looks like" were posted around the campus. Some, especially those placed in public places, were taken down but those posted in dorm buildings and on poles around the campus were still there.

"The text of the email was offensive and has no place at Penn," the school said in a statement. "As the University has made clear in its policies and protocols, sexual harassment and sexual assault are unacceptable and will not be tolerated on campus. Challenging offensive speech, as these students did, is important and wholly consistent with the University's ongoing efforts and the national conversation about preventing and responding to sexual misconduct."
PS4 Pro is being compared to Project Scorpio and Xbox One S consoles. According to Microsoft, the Xbox consoles are the superior devices.

Given the strong competition between Microsoft and Sony over which company can create a leading console, both have already announced their plans for a thinner model of their current consoles, along with the more powerful variants. Following PS4 Pro announcement, Microsoft immediately turned to Sony's weaknesses.

Based on a tweet from Microsoft's Xbox One Marketing Head, Aaron Greenberg, through the official Twitter account of the company, one major defect of PS4 Pro was pointed out. Greenberg tweeted that the Sony console has no 4K Blu-Ray functionality, which confused the PS4 users.

The confusion was due to the fact that while the advanced consoles will provide 4K functionality for gaming, it will not support playing 4K Blu-Rays, which the Project Scorpio and Xbox One S are reportedly offering. Moreover, Greenberg also stated that Project Scorpio is going to be more powerful compared to PS4 Pro, supporting Microsoft's previous confirmation that Project Scorpio's six teraflops of processing power, while PS4 Pro has only 4.2, Polygon reported.

Other reports also indicate some capabilities of Xbox One S that the PS4 Pro lacks, although both are being offered for $299, which is the same price as the PS4 Slim, Business Insider reported. However, gamers who are willing to spend much on new fresh console are expected to switch from Sony to Microsoft or vice versa, considering the players' existing libraries of games will be playable on the future iteration of their preferred console.

Microsoft is believed to be having a hard time since the Project Scorpio is more than a year away from its launch, while the PS4 Pro will be released in time for the holiday season. PS4 Pro is set to release on Nov. 10.

Xbox Project Scorpio is expected to unveil in the holiday season of 2017, GameRant reported. Meanwhile, atch Sony's revelation of the PS4 Pro (PlayStation 4K) here:
Just when everyone thought that Pokemon GO craze is dying out, they have probably never seen the real figure of players around the globe. The craze deemed as undying most especially when Nintendo introduced their latest Pokemon GO Plus and Pokemon GO apple watch support for Apple. Will the Android Watch be left out?

Revealing the Pokemon GO apple watch support and Super Mario Run game app are like icings on the cake during the launching of iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus in the Apple event. According to Fortune, the latest moves by Nintendo are evidence that the Japanese company is serious about smartphones after those tough times they encountered with their own hardware.

Pokemon GO in Apple Watch

Looking from a bird's eye view, Pokemon GO app in apple watch and Pokemon GO plus work basically the same. However, when dissected, it can be revealed that Pokemon GO in apple watch has a different intention. Time reported about the reason why Apple watches were invented on the first place, it's about health. And the addition of Pokemon GO app where players required a lot of walking linked to burning calories.

Aside from focusing on healthcare, Apple Watch another purpose it to keep the Pokemon GO players alert when Pokemons are spotted nearby. Aside from that, players can also acquire items from PokeStops even without opening their phones. Apple watch should also be able to make a player avoid traffic and crashing into poles.

Pokemon GO in Android Watch

Android Authority pointed out the solid relationship between Apple and Nintendo along with the two biggest announcements from both sides during the Apple event. Android Authority speculated that in Pokemon GO in Android Watch is possible due to the large number of Android users globally. But the question is - how long will it takes for Pokemon GO to be exclusive for Apple Watch? Apple Watch comes as a bit pricey and the addition of Pokemon GO should be able to attract buyers to go for it.
The University of Nebraska Lincoln has recently rolled out its new respect policy as part of its efforts to embrace diversity and value acceptance. Newly-installed Chancellor Ronnie Green welcomed students by sharing a list of "non-negotiable" things that they should or should not say.

In the school's official website, the institution asks that "all members of the University community be especially mindful of our responsibility to create an environment that is welcoming to all, where each person feels accepted, valued and safe." UNL's commitment to diversity and inclusion requires everyone in the community to be respectful, protect free speech and inspire academic freedom.

The College Fix reported that Chancellor Green announced the new policy during his speech at the new student convocation on Aug. 19. "We do not tolerate actions of hate and disrespect," he said.

It was noted, though, that Green did not define what a specific action of disrespect might be, whether during his speech or in the written policy. The new policy comes at a time when accusations of microaggressions or unintentional slights are commonly misinterpreted as racist acts.

"At new student convocation this past Friday, we emphasized our beliefs and were met with enthusiastic response from the newest members of our family (and, we are very proud to say, LARGEST CLASS IN HISTORY)," Green wrote in a post. "That's what I expected, because our beliefs on diversity and inclusion represent the way we operate. They are not-negotiable."

Intellectual freedom activist David Moshman criticized the new policy in an article for The Huffington Post. He deemed UNL as not only controlling speech, but the students' underlying beliefs, censorship to indoctrination.

"In other words, here in the UNL community, we encourage you to speak up but if you say the wrong thing we will not tolerate it," he wrote. "Feel free to politely criticize the ideas of ISIS or the Ku Klux Klan, for example, but make sure not to show any disrespect, much less hatred, for any group, individual, or ideology. If you can't express yourself respectfully, shut up."

This does not bode well for students especially when the school itself urges them to just accept the set of beliefs provided instead of allowing them to determine what is right and wrong. It also affects learning, seeing as how they are no longer allowed to dissent from progressive ideas.
By Saurabh Singh: The Director General of Civil Aviation, or DGCA on Friday issued an advisory prohibiting the use of the infamous Samsung Galaxy Note 7 on-board an aircraft. The Note 7, which has been in the news for all the wrong reasons lately, after having received a string of positive critic reviews, has been termed a flight risk by the FAA in the US as well.

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Update: Here is what Samsung India had to say about the DGCA notice:

"We are aware of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) notice. Consumer safety and peace of mind are our top priority. Galaxy Note 7 sales have not started in India, and we have delayed sales to alleviate any safety concerns. We plan to expedite new shipments of Galaxy Note 7 soon to reduce any inconvenience for our customers."



Also Read: Exploding Galaxy Note 7 destroys Jeep car, FAA issues warning to airline passengers

Here is what the DGCA had to say about the Note 7:

"In the light of recent incidents involving battery issue with Samsung about its Galaxy Note 7 devices globally, travelling public and airlines are advised to ensure the following for the safety of aircraft operations and its occupants:

Not to turn on or charge Samsung Galaxy Note 7 mobile phone on-board the aircraft.

Not to stow them in any checked-in package."

The ban comes after the FAA in the US issued a warning to all Note 7 users - on Thursday -- telling them not to charge the phone when they are in an airplane.

"In light of recent incidents and concerns raised by Samsung about its Galaxy Note 7 devices, the Federal Aviation Administration strongly advises passengers not to turn on or charge these devices on board aircraft and not to stow them in any checked baggage," the agency said in a statement.

Samsung was caught foot in mouth when multiple reports of the Note 7 exploding started emerging. In its own internal investigation, the company found as many as 35 cases of exploding Note 7 phones, something that has been attributed to faulty batteries. The company, thereafter, issued a global recall of the Note 7 and announced that it will give buyers who had already purchased the device (in the US, for instance) a replacement over the coming weeks.

The Note 7 was supposed to go on sale starting from September 2 in India, before which it was available for pre-booking. After the global recall, Samsung India postponed the availability of the Note 7 for an undisclosed period.

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On Friday, the company explained - albeit briefly - why the Note 7 has been exploding, on its UK website. Calling it a very rare manufacturing process error, it said that "overheating of the battery cell occurs when the anode-to-cathode came into a very rare manufacturing process error" resulting in explosion.

At the same time, Samsung's Australia subsidiary announced that the fixed Note 7 units will be available for buying in early October . Also "replacement stock of the Galaxy Note 7 will be available to customers from September 21," the company added.



Also Read: Samsung Galaxy Note 7 battery explosion fiasco gives Apple some room to breathe

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Remarks:

Registration information for June 2016 and data on space objects that ceased to exist in Earth orbit during that period.
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By PTI: From Jaishree Balasubramanian

Vientiane, Sep 9 (PTI) India and other leaders of the 18- member East Asia Summit reaffirmed their support to promote nuclear disarmament and nuclear non-proliferation as they underlined the importance of nuclear security to combat nuclear terrorism at national, regional and global levels.

The countries emphasisedthe importance of advancing nuclear disarmament, non-proliferation and peaceful uses of nuclear energy as mutually reinforcing pillars.

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Recognising the serious challenges posed by nuclear terrorism, the countries reaffirmed their support to promote nuclear disarmament, nuclear non-proliferation and peaceful uses of nuclear energy and the importance of nuclear security to combat nuclear terrorism at national, regional and international levels.

The East Asia Summit (EAS) adopted this in their final declaration at the end of their one-day summit here yesterday evening.

They also noted that much of the projected world growth in civil nuclear energy will occur in the Indo-Pacific region.

The EAS urged North Korea to abandon its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes in complete, verifiable and irreversible manner, and uphold its international legal obligations.

The grouping also expressed grave concern over the DPRKs nuclear testsand ballistic missile launches and called for the full implementation of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions, including the UNSC sanctions regime and the 2005 Joint Statement.

The EAS also called for the continuation of joint efforts to resume meaningful Six Party Talks at an early date to make substantial progress in the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula in a peaceful manner.

Besides founding member India, EAS includes the ten members from ASEAN and Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand, Russia, South Korea and the US.

The members also called for the early commencement of negotiations on a Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty in the Conference on Disarmament within the context of an agreed, comprehensive and balanced Programme of Work. PTI JB SAI AKJ SAI

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Published: September 09, 2016

Black Lives Matter-Tampa Panel Discussion at UT Sept. 13

On Tuesday, Sept. 13, The University of Tampa will welcome representatives from Black Lives Matter-Tampa for a panel discussion. The event, which is part of the Universitys Honors Program symposia series, will begin at 6 p.m. in Reeves Theater on the second floor of the Vaughn Center and is free and open to the public.



The event will begin with a video presentation to introduce the Black Lives Matter movement, followed by a panel discussion and a Q-and-A session.



Panelists include Black Lives Matters-Tampa co-founder Donna Davis and members Cory Weckerle, Jae Passmore, Kelly Benjamin and John Alvarez.



For more information, contact the Honors Program at honors@ut.edu.
Wyoming Business Tips for Sept. 18-24

A weekly look at Wyoming business questions from the Wyoming Small Business Development Center (WSBDC), part of WyomingEntrepreneur.Biz, a collection of business assistance programs at the University of Wyoming.

By Robert Condie, WSBDC southwest regional director

How can I, as a small-business owner, compete with big-box stores moving into my area? Sally, Pinedale

We see it time and time again when big name stores enter a community, and it seems that the little guys can get lost in the shuffle.

How do you, as a small-business owner, keep up with those stores and maybe even thrive when they enter your area? Here are a few tips to help get started:

-- Dont panic at the thought of the big store moving in. It can be a daunting feeling knowing a big store is moving in, but this can be a great time to look at the inner workings of your store to see where you can get better.

-- Dont be afraid to be different. Many big stores have a little bit of everything but seem to be very light in all areas. Find a niche, and build a deep selection in that niche. Try to become known as the place to go for that certain item or idea. Focus on what makes your business unique. Emphasize the originality of your inventory as compared to the items offered by the chain store.

-- Make sure to pay personal attention to each and every customer. Treat each person as your best customer. In a smaller store, you have the luxury to concentrate on the smallest of details -- superb customer service is the biggest intangible asset to the independent business owner.

-- Staff your store with people who can help with the other steps, and take care of those employees. Treat them fairly, and pay attention to their needs. Help your staff become proficient in their respective departments, and make sure they are readily available to meet customers' needs. If your employees can provide this, your customers will have an extra incentive to continue doing business with you.

These tips for competing with big-box stores can help level the playing field. As a customers shopping choice changes, so should your thinking. To succeed, you must lead or be ready to keep pace with the change.

A blog version of this article and an opportunity to post comments are available at www.wyen.biz/blog1/.

The WSBDC is a partnership of the U.S. Small Business Administration, the Wyoming Business Council and the University of Wyoming. To ask a question, call 1-800-348-5194, email wsbdc@uwyo.edu, or write 1000 E. University Ave., Dept. 3922, Laramie, WY, 82071-3922.
Intelligence inputs suggested the current round of trouble was inspired by ISIS ideology, highly-placed official sources told India Today.

Demonstrators shout slogans during a protest in Srinagar, against the recent killings in Kashmir, September 7, 2016. Reuters | Danish Ismail

By Rahul Kanwal: The central government has drawn up a tough strategy to deal with the unrest in the Kashmir valley after intelligence inputs suggested the current round of trouble was inspired by ISIS ideology, highly-placed official sources told India Today.

The new strategy was finalised after the recent visit of an all-party delegation and talks with various stakeholders in the restive state, the sources disclosed.

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According to the latest plan, accessed by India Today, strengthening security apparatus in Jammu and Kashmir is a top-priority matter for the government.

ARMY'S UPPER HAND



The new strategy focuses on ensuring security forces get an upper hand in the state.

The government, senior officials said, believes that the situation is worse in rural Kashmir than in the valley.

Taking a tough position is important at this time, revealed a top government official. The idea is to send a clear message to Kashmir protestors that "Azadi" is out of the question, the official said.

Also, the government, at the highest levels, has learned that the ongoing demonstrations were being fuelled by 3,000-odd Jamiat-backed mosques that have come up in the Kashmir valley recently. This phase of protests, according to highly-placed sources, is inspired by the ideology of the ISIS with an object to topple the current government violently and create a theocratic state founded on Talibani principles.



HURRIYAT'S ROLE



Unlike protests of the last decade, the Hurriyat is playing only a marginal role in the demonstrations this time, government sources say. The grouping has been largely rendered leaderless, they add.

Holding talks with the Hurriyat, therefore, serves little purpose, according to government sources.

They also told India Today that the time is not yet ripe for discussion on the question of greater autonomy because the proponents of autonomy have been totally sidelined.

Revocation of AFSPA from Jammu and Kashmir has also been ruled out for now as the government believes any such measure would deeply curtail the ability of Indian state to enforce law and order.

The government, said a top official, wants that the security apparatus in the state is not weakened in any way.

At the same time, the government wants to reach out to the aam aadmi of Kashmir and help heal the wounds of those impacted by the two-month-long upheaval.

The government, the sources say, will go out of its way in providing succour to those who have been injured and to the kin of those who have lost their lives.

It also trying to minimise the use of pellet guns in the valley. Around 1,000 pava chilli grenades are being sent to Kashmir every day as a possible substitute

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By PTI: New Delhi, Sep 9 (PTI) Jain Irrigation Systems today said its Israeli subsidiary has bagged a Rs 140 crore contract from the Eastern African nation of Eritrea for supply and installation of solar powered drip irrigation systems.

The contract will be executed in next 18 months, the company said in a BSE filing.

"NaanDanJain Irrigation today signed a contract with Ministry of Agriculture and National Development, Eritrea for supply and installation of solar powered drip irrigation systems of value 18.7 million euros (Rs 140 crore)," Jain Irrigation said.

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The project is fully funded by the European Union and will bring much needed relief for about 2,000 farmers in 14 locations spread over Eritrea, it said.

In each of the 14 project locations, water from reservoirs will be supplied to groups of farmers through the drip irrigation systems, it added.

NaanDanJain Irrigation is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Jain Irrigation. PTI LUX ABM

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International recording artist Noelia Lorenzo is returning to Las Vegas for a special performance at The Railhead inside Boulder Station on Friday, November 4 at 8 p.m.

Noelia Lorenzo is a sophisticated beauty, a true artist with her own recipe for glamour. Not afraid to show the world she is open about her sensuality and also not afraid to dare or take any risk that could change life forever. Born in Puerto Rico, she rose to fame in 1999.

Noelias self-titled debut album was certified gold in the United States. During her career shes released 10 Latin Billboard Top-40 hits, as well as five Top-40 hits on the Billboard Club Dance Music chart. She has 18 worldwide gold and nine worldwide multi-platinum-certified albums, along with one RIAA-certified Gold record in the United States. A superstar around the globe, she has sold more than six million albums worldwide and won multiple awards, including Latin Billboards Award Album of the Year.


Grand Canyon Helicopters recently announced the launch of its brand-new Hoover Dam-area tours, as well as the opening of the companys seventh heliport located next to the Hoover Dam Lodge Hotel & Casino.

To mark this momentous occasion and celebrate the expansion of the company and its offerings, on Sept. 8, the company welcome an international delegation of more than 100 tourism-industry VIPs and media. With nearly 80 percent of its customer base being international visitors, Papillon invited the delegation to be the first to celebrate this milestone. Furthermore, due to the size of the expected number of attendees, the celebration took place at their Aerocenter.

Photo credit: Isaac Brekken.

The celebration included a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the terminal that marked the launch of the new Hoover Dam tours. Representatives from the Boulder City Chamber of Commerce were also in attendance, along with Councilwoman Peggy Leavitt.

Following the ribbon-cutting, the international delegation departed on helicopter tours to experience the new Hoover Dam tours. With these tours, Grand Canyon Helicopters makes it easier than ever for guests to have an unforgettable flightseeing experience of the world-famous Hoover Dam at an exceptional value. With the new heliport, Grand Canyon Helicopters now flies guests closer to the dam than any other tour operator and offers breathtaking views of not only the dam, but also Lake Mead and the rugged, volcanic terrain of Black Canyon.
According to a senior police official, they received intimation regarding France model attack on the conference in the afternoon and took all precautions to scan vehicles in the area.

By Jeemon Jacob: Police shifted the venue of Jamaat-e-Islami conference against Islamic State terrorism after intelligence agencies alerted about France model threat against the meeting that was to be held in Kochi on September 8.

"We shifted the venue after the intelligence agencies alerted and combed the area," said a senior police official.

MEET AGAINST IS

Jamaat-e Islami organised a meeting against Islamic State fans using religious platforms and people from Kerala and invited Rahul Easwar to speak on the topic.

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Also read:

ISIS releases video showing young boys shooting hostages



"I went for the meeting to Kochi. At 3.30 pm, police detained me and told me that I should not go for the meeting, I had to spent around 2 hours in the police station. Inspector of General of Police S Sreejith told me that they were acting under the direction of intelligence reports. I cooperated with them ," Rahul Easwar told India Today.

SECURITY HIKED

According to a senior police official, they received intimation regarding France model attack on the conference in the afternoon and took all precautions to scan vehicles in the area.

"We can't take chances and we put red alert in the area. We will continue our surveillance in Kochi," the official told India Today.

Kochi has been listed as the most vulnerable spots in internal security map in India after David Coleman Headley visited Kochi in 2009. Intelligence agencies issued several warnings to state police to beef up coastal security of the state.

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Four people have now been detained in connection with a suspect car which was found near Notre Dame cathedral in Paris containing six gas cannisters AFP/Alain Jocard

Two new suspects, aged around 20, were arrested late Wednesday in connection with the grey Peugeot 607 found abandoned at the weekend near Notre Dame cathedral, a major tourist draw.

Anti-terror investigators are probing the incident, which comes with France on high alert following a string of jihadist attacks, including last November's coordinated bloodshed in which Islamic State extremists killed 130 people.

Speaking on Thursday, President Francois Hollande referred to attack plots that been foiled "in recent days", without elaborating.

A first couple, held since Tuesday, are known to the security services for links to radical Islamists.

The two women being sought are the daughters of the car's owner -- who was also known to authorities for spreading Islamist ideas. He was arrested on Tuesday but released later that day.

The daughters have both been described as "radicalised".

NO NUMBER PLATES

A bar employee working near Notre Dame raised the alert on Sunday after noticing a gas cylinder on the back seat of the car, police said.

The car had no number plates and its hazard lights were flashing

Although the cylinder on the back seat was empty, five full cylinders were discovered in the boot of the car.

Three bottles of diesel fuel were also found in the vehicle, but police found no detonators.

"If it was an attack plot, the method was very strange," a police source said Thursday.

Photographs of the car after it was discovered showed its boot open and the gas canisters placed on the ground in a quiet side street opposite the cathedral.

Notre Dame is one of Paris's most popular landmarks, attracting 13 million visitors each year.

Speaking on Wednesday, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said the intentions of those arrested were as yet unknown.

Hollande's speech followed a deadly summer in France in which 86 people were killed when a truck ploughed into a Bastille Day crowd in the southern resort of Nice.

IS said the truck was driven by one of its followers.

Less than two weeks later, two young jihadists murdered a priest near the northern city of Rouen.

In May, the head of France's DGSI domestic intelligence service, Patrick Calvar, warned of a "new form of attack" in which explosive devices would be left near sites that attract large crowds.

French security services are particularly worried about the danger posed by extremists returning from Syria after fighting with IS forces.

Around 700 French nationals are still in Syria, France's top prosecutor said last week.
The Aiguille du Midi cable car in the French Alps is the highest in Europe. (AFP/Philippe Desmazes)

The cable cars got stuck at an altitude of 3,800 metres, initially with 110 people on board.

"We succeeded in evacuating, in very difficult conditions, 60 people in an hour and a half," the prefect of the Haute-Savoie region, Georges-Francois Leclerc told AFP. "We had to suspend the air transport rescue at nightfall," he added.

Leclerc did not say whether the tourists remaining in the cable cars would have to spend the entire night suspended up there. A press conference was scheduled for 2030 GMT at city hall in Chamonix.

The problem was caused by cables that got crossed for "unknown reasons" around 1400 GMT and the employees of the Mont-Blanc Company weren't able to repair them, Mathieu Dechavanne, CEO of the company that manages the cable cars, told AFP.

The cable cars connect Aiguille du Midi on the French side of the mountains with Pointe Helbronner on the Italian border, where the rescued passengers were taken.

Weather conditions were at first good but later deteriorated turning cloudy at the high altitudes.

The rescue operation involved three helicopters from Switzerland, France and Italy, Dechavanne said earlier.

"We are in contact with the clients (in the cable cars). They have water and some means of communication but are beginning to find it's taking a long time," he added.

The cable cars, which carry four passengers each, offer panoramic views of Mont Blanc, which straddles the French-Italian border.
A view of Tan Son Nhat International Airport in HCM City. - Photo vietnamplus.vn

ACV, as a large borrower of Japanese official development assistance (ODA), has released its financial report for the second quarter of the year, showing revenues of VN3.26 trillion. However, its financial costs have increased to VND1.4 trillion, affecting its businesses.

Further, it posted a net loss of VND124 billion because it suffered heavily from appreciation of the yen.

By the end of June, ACV borrowed more than VND15.6 trillion in Japanese yen through the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) to build a terminal at Tan Son Nhat International Airport.

The corporation also received a preferential loan to build the international terminal at Noi Bai International Airport. Its total loans in Japanese yen were as high as VND15.77 trillion.

However, the Japanese yen has been in an upward trend this year.Vietcombank on Tuesday quoted the ong/yen exchange rate at VND212 per yen, posting a surge of 15 per cent, in comparison with VND184 per yen at the beginning of this year.

Last year, ACV reported a loss of VND666 billion due to appreciation of the yen.

This has been the first year in which the corporation has operated under the joint stock company model since July 1st.

In 2015, it reported revenues of VND13.3 trillion and post-tax profits of VND1.75 trillion.

The Ministry of Transport has been the largest shareholder at ACV. It also has the largest scale in transport and aviation infrastructure management in the country. It operates 22 airports, including seven international airports and 15 local airports. By the middle of 2106, its total assets were over VND46 trillion.

ACV has targeted to serve 73.4 million passengers, with revenues of VND12 trillion and pre-tax profits of VND2 trillion in 2016.

It is also carrying out 19 investment projects, with total capital of VN5.8 trillion. Some of its large projects include the Tan Son Nhat International Airport expansion, with total investment of VND1.06 trillion, Phu Quoc Airport expansion, with VND696 billion, and Cat Bi International Airport car park, costing VND723 billion.

Its VND336.6 trillion Long Thanh International Airport is expected to be completed by 2025 and serve 25 million passenger per year.

ACV has been selecting consultancy firms to write a feasibility report to submit to the Prime Minister in the third quarter of 2017.
Vietnams real estate projects have attracted a high number of foreign buyers and there is hope for a change in policies to increase the 30 per cent cap

The new revised Law on Real Estate Business and Law on Residential Housing, effective from July 1, 2015, limit the total number of apartments in a certain condominium that can be owned by foreigners to 30 per cent, or 250 separate houses in a certain ward.

A representative from The Nassim confirmed that the project has reached the 30 per cent cap.

The Nassim is a luxury apartment project developed by Hongkong Land and Son Kim Land in Ho Chi Minh City. The four towers will add 238 units to the market in 2017.

The high rate of foreigners buying house in Vietnam has also been seen in other projects, such as Nam Phuc-Le Jardin, funded by Phu My Hung, and projects by CapitaLand and Keppel Land.

David Blackhall, managing director of VinaCapital, said that this cap specifically relates to condominium projects, and is considered fair, given that these laws are new.

In time, they may increase this cap, like Thailand did, especially if local demand weakens over the medium term. However, my concern with this is that it may prove difficult to control and enforce when secondary sales (and then third and fourth-hand sales) occur. This is even a bigger issue with land sales, he said.

Nguyen Duc Quynh, executive assistant manager of Furama Danang, believes that with the change in policies, the 30 per cent cap is suitable.

I hope that the rate will be allowed to increase in the future. Meanwhile, we need to work more on policies to attract investors. For example, we are using a 50-year leasehold, and it would be more attractive if we could extend it to a 99-year leasehold, as in Singapore, he said.

Dung Duong, director of research and a consultant from CBRE Vietnam, said that the foreign sales cut-off has been reached in many projects, especially those which are developed by prestigious companies and progressing well.
Vietnam Expressway Corporation, the country's largest expressway developer, has inked an historical deal with the French firm the world's biggest construction group in terms of revenue and operator of 6,000 kilometres of expressway in 12 countries worldwide. The deal was part of the documents signed during French President Francois Hollande's visit to Vietnam during September 5-7.

The VEC-Vinci cooperation agreement will focus on construction, financing, and operation of new expressway projects involving Vinci Group's concessions and contracting businesses.

Also under the deal, the two sides will jointly develop concession schemes for expressways currently operated by VEC. In addition, they will exchange experience in the management and operation of expressways, while considering technology transfer opportunities.

The firms will develop VEC and Vinci Concessions cooperation schemes on new expressways in Vietnam, and submit them to the authorised agencies for approval.

Specifically, VEC and Vinci will consider the possibility of transferring the right to operate the Cau Gie-Ninh Binh and the Ho Chi Minh City-Long Thanh-Dau Giay expressways to the French partner, while studying cooperation schemes for new expressway projects prioritised by 2020 by the Ministry of Transport (MoT).

In fact, concessions over expressways, especially those developed by VEC, have attracted avid interest from many domestic, including Bitexco and Sovico, as well as international investors from the US and Japan. However, none have made further steps just yet.

Earlier in October 2014, an international consortium led by Indian infrastructure company IL&FS became the first foreign investor to ink such a deal, after it successfully signed an agreement with Vietnam Infrastructure Development and Finance Investment Company (Vidifi) to acquire the rights to collect tolls on the Hanoi-Haiphong expressway.

The operational Cau Gie-Ninh Binh and Ho Chi Minh City-Long Thanh-Dau Giay are two of the five expressways developed by VEC. Of the remaining three, the 245-km Noi Bai-Lao Cai is open to traffic, while the two others, namely the Danang-Quang Ngai and Ben Luc-Long Thanh routes will be completed in 2018 and 2019, respectively.

VEC is also preparing for some new projects, including the Bien Hoa-Vung Tau expressway to be implemented under a build-operate-transfer format, and the Hanoi-Lang Son expressway.
Created in partnership with the US Space & Rocket Centre in 2004, HESA is designed to address the trends in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education by providing teachers with new technical skills and teaching techniques that help motivate students around the world.

Since the programmes inception, more than 3 million students have been reached and inspired by over 2,576 HESA alumni from 56 countries.

Last June, six Vietnamese teachers out of the more than 200 teachers from 25 countries were selected to attend the 2016 HESA programme. This fourth consecutive year marks the record number of participants from Vietnam since the first participation in 2013.

Honeywell Educators at Space Academy opened a new door for me to broaden my understanding of space science, experience amazing activities and obtain new perspectives on STEM teaching, said Mai Thi Kim Tuyen, biology teacher at Thanh Cong Secondary School, Hanoi, who has just returned from HESA 2016. I would like to thank Honeywell for this invigorating opportunity, and now I am on the way to amplify the STEM spirit from HESA to my beloved students.

Mai Trang Thanh, president of Honeywell Indochina, said the remarkable number of Vietnamese finalists this year demonstrates the outstanding merit and better access of Vietnamese teachers to the programme.

I am very pleased and expect them to acquire as much knowledge and teaching methods as possible, she said. Ultimately, the beneficiaries of the programme are thousands of high school students  the future of our country. To continue the impact of HESA beyond the classroom for the sustainable development of Vietnam is what Honeywell always heads to.

Each successful applicant will receive a full scholarship following a rigorous and lengthy application and selection process involving competing teachers from around the world. Scholarships include tuition for the five-day programme, round-trip airfare, meals, accommodations, programme materials, and flight suits, all sponsored by Honeywell and contributions from Honeywell employees.

During the week-long programme, educators participate in 45 hours of intensive classroom, laboratory, and rigorous training, focusing on space science and exploration including astronaut-style exercises, and attended seminars, listened to teachers of previous years talk about their experience in applying the programmes knowledge. Educators learn through simulated astronaut training and activities designed to promote life-long learning in a classroom setting.

Eligible teachers can submit the online application to HESA 2017 from September 1 until November 11, 2016. Acceptance notifications will be made during the week of January 9, 2017. The week-long programme will run twice from June 14 until the 27, 2017, at the US Space & Rocket Centre in Huntsville, Alabama.

Specially, from January 9 to February 10, 2017, all 2004  2014 alumni can grasp the opportunity to return to the programme by applying for 2017 HESA ambassadors. During each of the two weeks, two ambassadors will be selected to lead the programme at the US Space & Rocket Centre.
A corner of Hia Cam Industrial Zone in a Nang city. The central city has offered favourable conditions to attract Japanese investors in Information Technology. - VNS Photo Cong Thanh

The agreement, which was signed at a conference on IT and Communication Investment and Co-operation between Japan and Da Nang on September 8, is the first instance of Japanese IT investment in Da Nang and the beginning of an effort to lure investment flow from Japan to the central city and central Viet Nam.

Over 160 representatives from Japan Trade Promotion agency, Tokyo Business Association and Japanese Business Associationas well as 37 Japanese investorspaid a field trip to explore cooperation and investment opportunity at the city's Industrial Parks and its Information Technology Park.

According to latest report from city's administration, Da Nang has drawn 423 Foreign Direct Investment Projects worth US$3.7 billion. Of that number, 55 IT projects have raised over $12 million in capital.

Tokyo Keiki Inc. and Niwa Foundry were the first two investors in the 1,010-ha Hi-Tech Park, with a total investment of $62 million.

Vice chairman of the central city's people's committee, Ho Ky Minh, said the city awards top priorities to Japanese investors and creates favourable policies for Japanese businesses operating in Da Nang.

Right now, Japanese investors bring the city a total of $500 million, creating 40,000 jobs for the city and neighbouring provinces.

The city's investment promotion centre also debuted its Japanese Desk Da Nang team, which will be available every Wednesday to support Japanese investors by explaining administrative procedure, investment licenses and priority policies, or helping with any other adjustments.

Da Nang and Japan will start construction of the first Viet Nam-Japan Culture Exchange Park this October, and it will reserve a 134ha industrial park for medium and small-size businesses from Japan.

A direct flight between Narita and Da Nang was opened in 2014, and a new Da Nang-Osaka flight is expected to open this October.

A recent survey of Shoko Chukin Bank from Japan showed that 40.7 per cent of 3,750 respondents from various Japanese businesses in Japan said they would invest in Viet Nam.

The city planned to build an industrial park spread over 134ha for medium and small-size businesses from Japan.

Last year, FPT Software, a company of FPT Group, began the 10,000-Bridge Software Engineer (BrSE) programme in Japan as part of its human resource strategy in the 2014-18 period, and a key project for boosting the Japanese IT market by 2020.

Last year, the city also organised an investment promotion week in Japan for the Japanese Business Association, or Keidanren, and 120 Japanese businesses.

According to the Japan External Trade Organisation (JETRO), 66 per cent of the 458 Japanese firms based in Viet Nam planned to expand their business during the next one or two years.
By Kamlesh Damodar Sutar: Comedian Kapil Sharma has been summoned by Mumbai police after receiving complaint from BJP MLA Ram Kadam. Kapil will be questioned about the entire issue for further investigation.



Kadam had filed a complaint against BMC with the cyber cell of Mumbai Police at BKC (Bandra-Kurla Complex) Police station, after Kapil accused the civic body on social media of making him pay a bribe of Rs 5 lakh, despite paying a whopping tax of Rs 15 crore.

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Sources in the Police department told India Today that the complaint has been accepted and the police may soon summon the actor to seek more details about the allegation he made. "The complaint will also be forwarded to the ACB (Anti Corruption Bureau) since matter deals with corruption charges. As the first step, we will verify the authenticity of the account from Twitter and tweet. Secondly, more details would be sought from Kapil on the demand of bribe. Who asked, when, amount etc. Was any amount paid? What was the nature of work for which bribe was demanded. For this, Kapil is likely to be called by Mumbai Police and we will seek Kapil's co-operation." added the source.



Also read: BJP sees red over Kapil Sharma's tweet; MP Manoj Tiwari says he should not have dragged PM into this

Speaking to India Today, Kadam said, "we only expect Kapil Sharma to disclose the names of the officials who demanded bribe, along with his tweet. Maybe he has forgotten earlier, but now at least he should come forward and disclose the names or police should call him and ask. The matter should be probed. This is a matter of corruption and will not be tolerated."



"My complaint is against the officials who demanded bribe and my request to Kapil Sharma is to just disclose the names and co-operate. If you don't disclose names, sit at home and tweet how will we see a corruption free India? Everyone is free to tweet but at the same time, they should report such incidents to police." Kadam said.



Meanwhile, Aaditya Thackeray, president of the youth wing of the Shiv Sena, thanked the comedian for being an alert Mumbaikar.

Also read: Kapil Sharma alleges he was asked to cough up Rs 5 lakh bribe by BMC; tweets to PM Modi asking if this is 'achhe din'

In the wee hours of the morning, Kapil had tweeted that despite paying Rs 15 crore as tax for the last five years, he was being asked for a Rs 5 lakh bribe by the BMC. Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis responded to Kapil on twitter saying he should give the details, and strict action would be taken.

Watch: Maharashtra CM responds to Kapil's bribe tweet, assures action against BMC official



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Factory chimneys in southern ong Nai Provinces Bien Hoa Industrial Zone 1. Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has ordered society at all levels to help protect the environment.- VNA/VNS Photo Trang Duong

It is part of the Government leaders requirement in his newly-issued directive on environmental protection, which was produced after last months national teleconference on the work.

He said at the teleconference that many cases of environmental pollution and violations of environment protection regulations in the past had led to great public concern. The situation had worsened over many years of socio-economic development, affecting the living conditions of local people and causing social disorder.

A report at the conference revealed that the whole country recorded over 50 cases of environmental pollution that caused great public concern since early this year, particularly the recent marine environment pollution incident caused by the Taiwanese Hung Nghiep Formosa Ha Tinh Steel Corporation. The corporation had released toxic wastewater into the sea along some central provinces, causing serious pollution that killed a massive amount of fish in these localities.

In the directive, PM Phuc laid out some key measures to improve the quality of the environment, including not attracting investment by all means with a focus on environmental protection criteria while choosing investment projects, preventing the import of outdated technology and implementation of projects with high risks of environmental pollution. He said it is not acceptable to exchange the environment in return for economic growth.

He said it is necessary to define that environmental protection should be a compulsory requirement throughout the countrys development process.

The directive also urges strict following of the Party resolution and State policies and laws on environmental protection, clarifying the responsibilities of relevant agencies, particularly the management role of the natural resources and environment ministry, and of natural resources and environment departments in localities.

Chairmen of the peoples committees of localities will have to take responsibility before local people and the Government if serious environmental incidents happen in their localities, it said.

Promoting the participation of all sources in the society in investing in environmental protection is another solution. Accordingly, capital funds from the State budget will be used to deal with urgent environmental issues, build environmental monitoring stations and warning systems at key economic regions, at areas with a high density of waste discharging sources and at environmentally sensitive areas.

The PM also requires relevant ministries and agencies to review, adjust and increase quality and efficiency of environmental protection tools and measures. On that basis, the country will focus on completing the plan to tackle all establishments causing environmental protection by 2020.

Increasing State management over environmental protection, meeting demands of the new development situation, is needed, said the directive. Specifically, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment is entrusted to study and propose amendments to regulations on inspecting and examining environmental protection and co-ordinate with peoples committees of localities to increase inspection and give warnings over areas with high risks of environmental pollution.

The Ministry of Home Affairs is asked to work with the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and the Ministry of National Defence to soon establish a plan to set up a National Committee coping with emergency incidents.

The PM also asks for the speeding up of information dissemination to raise public awareness of environmental protection.

Former Deputy Director of the Pollution Control Department under the General Department of Environment, Tran The Loan, told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper that all these measures laid out by the PM were urgent.

In the current context of economic development, it was a must to not allow the importation of outdated technology in production and investment projects with high risk of environmental pollution, he said, adding that appraisement agencies needed a strong point of view and determination when choosing investment projects.

Director of the Environment General Department under the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, Nguyen Van Tai, told the newspaper that these measures were directed in detail by the Prime Minister and the ministry will soon implement these solutions to improve environment protection.

Environmental pollution risks

The Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment reported that the country is currently home to 283 industrial zones which discharge over 550,000cu.m of wastewater per day, not to mention 615 industrial clusters along with over 500,000 production facilities.

Furthermore, 787 urban areas discharge into the environment 3 million cu.m of wastewater per day, but only 40 out of the urban areas have standard waste treatment systems with a total capacity of 800,000cu.m per day.

The use of nearly 43 million motorbikes and over 2 million cars nationwide generate huge gas emissions that are polluting the air.

Over 23 million tonnes of domestic waste, 7 million tonnes of industrial waste, and 630,000 tonnes of harmful waste, together with 337 insanitary landfills and over 100 low-capacity incinerators are also the reasons for environmental pollution.

Besides, discarded packaging from around 100,000 tonnes of plant protection chemicals each year is another source of dangerous pollutants.

It also reported that although FDI businesses are contributing 70 per cent of the countrys GDP, they are tending to shift their investment into environmentally-unfriendly sectors such as metallurgy, ship repair, footwear and garments.
This is the first time Samsung has participated in an exhibit except for the Supporting Industry Exhibition which it co-hosted with the Ministry of Industry and Trade in June 2016 in Hanoi for the third consecutive years since 2014.

Taking up an area of more than 200 square metres, the largest of the 250 booths at the exhibition, Samsungs showcase is divided into three main stages: one to display parts suppliers, with an appearance from eight first-grade suppliers, an area introducing three of Samsungs best suppliers, and an area displaying SEHCs notable products, like TVs, vacuum cleaners, washing machines and refrigerators.

Samsung invited 200 Vietnamese businesses to the Expo and held talks with roughly 70 wishing to join Samsungs supply chain. These participaants primarily produce electronics which meet Samsungs demands for its SEHC factory. This was a chance for businesses to share their needs and seek consultation.

Samsung Vietnam also partnered with Ho Chi Minh Citys Department of Industry and Trade as well as the Centre of Supporting Industry Development to organise Supporting Industry Development Forum, which gave businesses information on how to join Samsungs supply chain, while finding ways to enhance competitiveness in the field of parts production and Vietnams hi-tech industry.

The main topic of discussion was the formulation of a strategic supporting industry development policy for Vietnam which could provide a solution for domestic businesses to expand technical workforce and quality control. In the forum, Vietnamese businesses listened to and discussed Samsungs policies in selecting suppliers.

Samsungs representatives shared their experiences in assisting other businesses to join the companys supply chain. In addition, they worked out concrete plans implementable in the foreseeable future to improving other Vietnamese industries competitiveness in producing parts to service Vietnams high-tech industry.

The last but most significant activity was Samsungs invitation of 11 suppliers to visit its consumer electronics complex in Ho Chi Minh City (SEHC). The main activity of this visit was the exchange of experience in production management and product quality between Samsung and its suppliers. This was a chance for Vietnamese enterprises to improve themselves in the process of meeting the standards of the global supply chain.

With these activities, Samsung Vietnam hopes to contribute to the development of the countrys supporting industries, especially in the south, where the electronics industry is showing signs of strong growth.

Recently, with the Raising Competitiveness for Supporting Industries project, which Samsung has been carrying out since September 2015, nine Vietnamese companies have received Samsungs assistance for three months to improving their production processes as well as bring their standards level with the demands of Samsungs factories in Vietnam.

With hopes of long-term sustainable growth in Vietnam, Samsung always cooperates with the Vietnamese government in developing local supporting industries to ensure global competitiveness through practical activities, said Lee Sangsu, president of SEHC. We hope to continue creating more opportunities for businesses joining Samsungs supply chain, ultimately helping us raise our global competitiveness as well as contributing to our long-term development in Vietnam.

The number of Vietnamese businesses joining Samsungs supply chain has tripled since 2015. Similarly, Samsung went from having four Tier 1 Vietnamese vendors to 12 by now. There are also 178 Vietnamese enterprises acting as Tier 2 vendors.

Accordingly, there are currently 190 Vietnamese enterprises participating in Samsungs supply chain. Their distribution is not entirely even, with the majority, six Tier 1 and 155 Tier 2 suppliers, supplying Samsung Electronics Vietnam-Thai Nguyen in northern Vietnam. For SEHC, the corresponding numbers are six Tier 1 and 23 Tier 2 suppliers.
Sabecos chief executive officer Le Hong Xanh told Bloomberg that Heineken, Anheuser-Busch InBev and its merger partner SABMiller Plc., as well as Asahi Group Holdings Ltd., and Kirin Holdings Co. are among the seven foreign companies that have registered to bid for Sabeco. In addition, Singha Asia Holding Pte Ltd. and Thai Beverage Pcl are racing to tender offers at Sabecos auction. Saigon Securities Inc. (SSI) is currently the only domestic investor registered to participate in the bid.

However, the list is yet to be finalised due to a possible withdrawal of these enterprises as well as the addition of other enterprises.

Through a phone interview with Bloomberg, Asahi stated that it is interested in acquiring Sabeco, while Anheuser-Busch InBev, Kirin, and Heineken all refused to comment. Thai Beverage and Singha-owner Boon Rawd Brewery Co. were not immediately available for comment.

Whether the partner is a foreign or domestic investor is of no concern to Sabeco. The winner will be the investor who put forward the largest offer for the stake, Xanh added.

The state plans to complete the divestment from Sabeco and Hanoi Beer, Alcohol and Beverage JSC (Habeco) within 16 months.

The divestment from Sabeco will be divided into two phases. The first phase will be implemented in 2016 offering a 53.59 per cent stake worth VND24.5 trillion ($1.09 billion) for investors, while the remaining 36 per cent, worth VND16 trillion ($717.47 million), will be issued in 2017 after Sabeco completes its listing on the stock exchange.
Photo by ASSOCIATED PRESS

Indias Prime Minister Narendra Modi, right, talks with President Barack Obama before the East Asia Summit at the National Convention Center on Thursday in Vientiane, Laos.


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After comedian Kapil Sharma alleged on his Twitter account that he had been asked by BMC to pay a bribe, Maharashtra politicians have taken to the social networking site either to attack the Maharashtra govt or to assure the comedian of prompt action.

By Kamlesh Damodar Sutar: After comedian Kapil Sharma alleged on his Twitter account that he had been asked by BMC to pay a bribe, Maharashtra politicians have taken to the social networking site either to attack the Maharashtra govt or to assure the comedian of prompt action against the culprits.



Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis was the first to assure sternest action on his Twitter account. Kapilbhai pls provide all info. Have directed MC,BMC to take strictest action. We will not spare the culprit.?? tweeted Fadnavis.

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FADNAVIS TROLLED BY OPPOSITION LEADERS



But Fadnavis was trolled by Opposition leaders for his prompt reply and assurance. Most of them questioned whether the Chief Minister would have been prompt in attending to similar problems faced by a common Mumbaikar. Leader of Opposition in Maharashtra Legislative Council Dhananjay Munde alleged that he had been raising similar complaints of corruption in BMC but no action was taken on the same.

Also read: Kapil Sharma bribery tweet: Comedian summoned by Mumbai Police for questioning

I have pointed out cases of corruption in BMC several times in the Council, but no action taken then by CM??, read Mundes re-tweet on CMs tweet assuring action.

BMC CORRUPTION EXPOSED: CONG



Congress leader and former MP Milind Deora also took to Twitter to target the Sena-BJP led BMC over the issue. Kudos @kapilsharmaK9 for exposing BMC's institutionalised extortion racket & thnx for lending millions of Mumbaikars your voice?? tweeted Deora.



But the Shiv Sena chose to play safe. Thanking Kapil for being an alert citizen??, Thackeray scion and Yuva Sena Chief Aditya Thackeray assured the stand-up comedian of action. @KapilSharmaK9 thank you for being an alert Mumbaikar. Wld req you to assist Mayor and the MC to help in the drive against corruption?? Aditya tweeted.



Also read: Kapil Sharma's office is an illegal construction: BMC reacts to comedian's tweet



The NCP also raised questions over Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis prompt action. Calling it an attention to celebrity NCPs spokesperson Nawab Malik tweeted Mr @Dev_Fadnavis you responded to celebrity @KapilSharmaK9 immediately. Will you do the same for common man?"

--- ENDS ---
Territorial disputes in the South China Sea present an array of potential flashpoints between countries with overlapping claims. In recent years, many of these countries have mobilized government vessels traditionally used for maritime law enforcement to reinforce their territorial claims. Key among these states is China, which has actively employed its coast guard and other maritime law enforcement agencies to project power and assert sovereignty throughout the South China Sea. ChinaPower has developed an interactive timeline that traces major maritime law enforcement incidents in the South China Sea from 2010 to the present day.





January 6, 2016: The Taiwanese coast guard rammed and fired water cannons at Vietnamese fishing vessels near Sand Cay in the disputed Spratly Islands.

February 5, 2016: The Chinese coast guard and navy harassed a Philippine naval supply ship near Half Moon Shoal.

February 28, 2016: The Chinese coast guard prevented Philippine fishing boats from entering Jackson Atoll.

March 5, 2016: The Chinese coast guard rammed the Philippines fishing boats in order to deny access to Scarborough Shoal.

March 6, 2016: A Vietnamese fishing boat was boarded by the Chinese coast guard near the disputed Paracel Islands.

March 14, 2016: Filipino fishermen were denied access to Scarborough Shoal by the Chinese coast guard.

March 19, 2016: The Chinese coast guard prevented Indonesia from arresting a Chinese fishing boat operating near the Natuna Islands.

March 20, 2016: Filipino fishermen and the Chinese coast guard had a physical confrontation near Scarborough Shoal.

May 9, 2016: Filipino fishermen operating near Commodore Reef in the disputed Spratly Islands were beaten by Malaysian naval forces, prompting an official apology by the Malaysian government.

May 25, 2016: Chinese fishermen operating near the Philippines island province of Camiguin rammed a Philippine coast guard ship in an attempt to avoid arrest.

June 17, 2016: A Chinese coast guard vessel prevented the arrest of a Chinese fishing vessel by an Indonesian naval vessel near the Natuna Islands.

July 8, 2016: A Thai naval vessel fired upon Vietnamese fishing vessels operating in the Gulf of Thailand, prompting a Vietnamese government complaint.

July 9, 2016: Chinese coast guard ships rammed Vietnamese fishing vessels near Discovery Reef in the disputed Paracel Islands, prompting a complaint from the Vietnamese government.

Via chinapower.csis.org
As President Barack Obama wrapped up his final trip to Asia while in office, he reflected Thursday on his long ties to a region that he has made a central focus of U.S. foreign policy.

In a final news conference before departing Laos, he said that he was proud to be the first U.S. president to meet with the leaders of all 10 Association of Southeast Asian Nations countries, and that he hoped his successor would continue to make the region a priority.

My hope and expectation ... is that my successor will, in fact, sustain this kind of engagement, because there is a lot happening here," he said. "Youve got countries here that are taking off. Youve got one of the most dynamic and youngest populations in the world. This is where the action is going to be when it comes to commerce and trade, and ultimately creating U.S. jobs by being able to sell to this market.

Bumpy begininng

Obamas final Asia trip ended on a positive note after getting off to a rough start.

There was his botched arrival in China, where the president had to disembark from Air Force One on a shorter staircase from the belly of the plane when the Chinese failed to provide the customary metal staircase. North Korea tested a nuclear missile during the visit, as if to highlight one of the big failures of U.S. and international nonproliferation efforts.

Also, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte uttered an insult about Obama, prompting him to cancel their sit-down meeting. The two did speak briefly on the sidelines of the summit, after Duterte and his foreign minister expressed regret.

These awkward and tense moments prompted critics, including Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, to say that foreign leaders were showing disrespect to the lame duck U.S. president, who only has five months left in office.

'Flap' dismissed

Asia expert and Brookings Institution senior fellow Jonathan Pollack told VOA he fundamentally disagreed: The whole flap over the airplane stairs, this is one of the classic snafus, a glitch that could and should be avoided by the staffs of both leaders. There is a long record of similar glitches in the U.S.-China relationship.

Pollack told VOA the long, substantive, face-to-face meeting between Chinese President Xi Jingping and Obama was much more important than any staircase drama, which he said the media had exaggerated.

Pollack said Philippine foreign ministry officials sincerely apologized for their presidents vulgar remark, because the last thing they want to do is to undermine that countrys relationship with the United States. He praised Obama for the way he handled the insult.

Obama struck a wistful tone at the news conference, saying he realized this was his last trip to Asia as president and remembering the years he spent in Indonesia as a child.

When I think back to the time that I spent here as a boy, I cant help but be struck by the extraordinary progress thats been made across so much of the region in the decades since  even as theres still a lot of work to be done," he said. "And so it means a great deal to me, not only as president, but also personally, that over the past eight years weve increased cooperation between ASEAN countries and the United States.

Paris climate accord

Pollack said Obamas commitment to the Asia-Pacific region was political, economic and highly personal, and pointed to the ratification of the Paris accord on climate change as the most significant accomplishment.

Pollack said the fate of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement the president passionately supports, rests in the hands of Congress, which has vowed not to even take it up until after the next president has been inaugurated. He said the presidents Asia-Pacific rebalance ambitions were incomplete, but added that true success is often measured in the tough work of keeping at it instead of flashy breakthroughs.

But Matthew Goodman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, told VOA he thought Obamas legacy in Asia hinged on whether Congress ratified the TPP agreement: The economic part of the pivot is essential to the overall strategy and so if we cant get TPP ratified by Congress, that is going to undermine the view of his overall legacy in the region in the political, military and social sides as well."
Edward Royce, chairman of the US House Foreign Affairs Committee, has called on Prime Minister Hun Sen to end the harassment and mistreatment of members of the countrys main opposition party.

In a letter sent on Wednesday, Royce said the upcoming elections would not be seen as valid unless the Cambodia National Rescue Party was allowed to operate with freedom ahead of the vote.

On Friday, opposition deputy leader Kem Sokha was found guilty of refusing to appear for questioning on charges he solicited the services of a prostitute. He was sentenced to five months in prison and a fine of about $200.

The original case against Sokha saw him accused of having an affair with a hairdresser, Khom Chandaraty, also known as Srey Mom. Despite being subpoenaed twice in May, he refused to appear in court.

Sokha now likely faces arrest having not left the oppositions headquarters since an attempt to arrest him was made earlier in the year.

Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watchs Asia division, said the conviction was based on trumped up charges and a political farce that was all part of Hun Sen's scorched earth plan to destroy the political opposition and run roughshod over the rights of those who dare criticize his government.

Royce said in his letter that the upcoming election, scheduled for 2018, cannot progress well without the participation of the opposition parties, therefore, the US House of Representatives would consider the election as invalid.

I urge you, Prime Minister Hun Sen, to reconsider about the adverse repercussion of the upcoming election, which possibly caused by the wrongful targeting of opposition leader and to put an end to harassment and mistreatment of Mr. Kem Sokha and other opposition parties, he added.

The letter comes after a long period following the 2013 election in which Hun Sens government and the courts have targeted opposition members and lawmakers. It also followed the public killing of a popular government critic, Kem Ley, in July.

Phay Siphan, a government spokesman, defended Cambodian democracy as pluralist, saying there were many opposition parties in the country that were allowed to operate freely.

There are 23 political parties, including [the ruling Cambodian Peoples Party] in Cambodia competing in the national election, therefore, he should not worry about the political situation in Cambodia.

Am Sam Ath, a senior technical advisor at local rights group Licadho, said if the tit-for-tat between the major political parties continued, no matter the results of the next election if the results come out and the opposition is not satisfied, demonstrations and violence could ensue.
U.S. officials are urging the American public to start a dialogue to determine the right balance between privacy and security. Speaking at an annual summit this week in Washington, intelligence and security officials said that absolute privacy is not in the public interest as authorities try to fight cybercrime and terrorism. Zlatica Hoke reports.
Air China has apologized for safety tips to London-bound travelers that have been called racist and that sparked outrage among some British politicians, one of whom invited airline officials to see for themselves how safe his multi-ethnic district is.

On Thursday, China's flagship state-run airline issued a statement regarding the incident, calling some of the commentary featured in cabin magazines, Wings of China, inappropriate and not representative of the company's views.

"London is generally a safe place to travel," safety tips in the seat-pocket magazine say in both Chinese and English. "However, precautions are needed when entering areas mainly populated by Indians, Pakistanis and black people."

Another tip: "We advise tourists not to go out alone at night, and females always to be accompanied by another person when traveling."

Haze Fan, a Beijing-based journalist working for CNBC who was aboard the flight, was among the first passengers to photograph and Tweet portions of the text Wednesday.

"The advice is at odds with the London promoted by its Mayor Sadiq Khan, a Brit with Pakistani parents, who in July launched a #LondonisOpen campaign and frequently blogs about his favorite places to eat and drink in his South London Indian-Pakistani neighborhood of Tooting," Fan reported about her personal experience.

Racist storm

An Evening Standard article described the magazine passages as triggering "racist storm" in London, citing Rosena Allin-Khan, a parliament member for the constituency of Tooting that has a large Indian and Pakistan population, as saying the safety tips are "outrageous" and "offensive to all Londoners."

Florence Eshalomi, London assembly member for Lambeth and Southwark, told the newspaper: "You couldn't make up these outdated and near-on racist views," she said. "I keep thinking, is this 2016?"

After issuing its Thursday statement, Air China announced that all copies of the publications had been discarded and that airline officials demanded that its magazine producer acknowledge and learn from the incident.

In their own letter of apology, magazine editors said the incident was due to an editorial mistake, which is at odds with the article's initial intent to promote London's beauty and has "caused misinterpretation by some media and readers."

"We would also like to send sincere apology via Air China to passengers and readers who feel uncomfortable because of this," the letter said.

This is not the first time that Chinese companies made "racist" expressions via promotional materials. In May, an online detergent ad, which shows an African man coming out of the washing machine as a "whiter" Asian guy, triggered criticism.
A high-ranking member of the Fatah al-Sham rebel group in Syria is dead, rebel sources say, after fighter jets bombed a meeting of the groups leaders near Aleppo.

Abu Omar Saraqeb, who also goes by the name Abu Hajer al-Homsi, was killed during the air raid in a rural part of Aleppo, which rebels say was likely carried out by a U.S. fighter jet, though the nationality of the jets has not been officially acknowledged.

The rebel group, a former al-Qaida affiliate, announced the commanders martyrdom in a post on Twitter.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said an aircraft bombed a meeting of commanders of the Army of Conquest alliance, killing Saraqeb and another rebel alliance commander named Abu Muslim al-Shami, though it said it was unclear whether the air strike was carried out by U.S. forces, the Syrian government or Russian forces, all of which have been conducting bombing raids in the area.

Saraqeb was said to be one of the leading members of al-Qaida in Iraq. He fought against U.S. troops during the occupation in 2003 before travelling to Syria, where he became a key commander in the former al-Nusra Front, which later became Fatah al-Sham after breaking ties with al-Qaida.
By Mayuresh Ganapatye, Kamlesh Damodar Sutar: The controversy around stand up comedian Kapil Sharma's allegations of bribery it seems is refusing to settle down. After BJP filed a complaint with Mumbai police demanding a probe into the allegations, now Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut wants the actor to be booked for illegal construction.



Speaking Exclusively to India Today, Raut attacked Kapil calling his construction activity as illegal. "Kapil Sharma undertook illegal construction. BMC Officials went and stopped the illegal work and that is why he was angered," alleged Raut.

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BOOK KAPIL UNDER GOONDA ACT

"Not just a probe in the incident, Kapil Sharma should be booked under the "Goonda act" for illegal construction. When a poor man staying in a slum makes an illegal construction, he is booked under the Goonda act. Same action should be taken against Kapil," said Raut.

Also read: Kapil Sharma bribery tweet: Comedian summoned by Mumbai Police for questioning

The Rajya Sabha MP also called the allegations by Kapil against the BMC as a conspiracy. "He is defaming Mumbai and the BMC. People like Kapil Sharma do not speak their mind. They always read out a script that is already written by someone else. We will need to find who is behind Kapil," Raut said.



RAUT LASHES OUT AT SOMAIYYA

Sanjay Raut also hit back at BJP MP Kirit Somaiyya. Earlier in the day, Somaiyya had attacked the Shiv Sena over Kapil Sharma's allegations calling the Shiv Sena ruled BMC as a den of corruption.

"We do not take Somaiyya seriously at all. Somaiyya perhaps had a slip of tongue, what he meant to say was "Mantralay" has became a den of corruption. He should know well that the BMC is controlled by the CM as the Municipal Commissioner reports to the CM," Raut said.



"Somaiyya should think before he speaks up.He should remember that we too have a mouth," warned Raut.

Also read: Kapil Sharma's office is an illegal construction: BMC reacts to comedian's tweet





--- ENDS ---
Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday called on the Republican-led U.S. Congress to allow an up-or-down vote on funding to combat the Zika virus without other provisions attached, calling the health threat posed by the pathogen a national emergency.

Congress has failed to approve any funding to fight the mosquito-borne virus since President Barack Obama asked for $1.9 billion in February.

Lawmakers have been deadlocked for months over a $1.1 billion funding bill. Democrats have accused Republicans of attaching controversial provisions related to abortion and Obama's healthcare law that they cannot accept and have called for new legislation.

Republicans in turn have accused Democrats of blocking the bill to gain political advantage by portraying Republicans as obstructionists on Zika funding.

"Give us an up-or-down vote, straight, on Zika," Biden, a former Democratic senator from Delaware, said at an event on Capitol Hill with fellow Democrats from the Senate and House of Representatives.

"I understand attaching controversial issues to important legislation ... but this is a national emergency," Biden added. "People's health, the well-being of unborn children, the health of the country at large, is at stake. Act."

Republicans and Democrats have huddled separately in closed meetings this week to see if they could reach a compromise during September's 19-day legislative work session.

A main issue is Democrats' opposition to language, backed by Republicans, that they say would prevent Zika funds for abortion providers like Planned Parenthood, mainly in Puerto Rico.

U.S. health officials have concluded that Zika infections in pregnant women can cause microcephaly, a birth defect marked by small head size that can lead to severe developmental problems in babies.

There is no vaccine or treatment for Zika.

The virus, first detected in Brazil last year, has spread rapidly through the Americas. Florida is the only U.S. state so far where local mosquitoes are known to be transmitting Zika.
The opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) has planned a mass gathering of its supporters in the capital Friday, the same day that its deputy leader, Kem Sokha, is due to appear in court.

A CNRP official said the gathering had been approved by the municipality, but officials also said they plan to erect barriers to prevent opposition supporters marching on the city center.

Morn Phalla, director of the opposition CNRP's executive committee, said authorities had stressed that the meeting could go ahead if traffic was not disrupted and security forces policing the gathering were not abused.

Mean Chanyada, a City Hall spokesman, said the number of people due to attend was "not a concern," but cautioned CNRP supporters against "gathering on the sidewalk."

Am Sam Ath, technical supervisor at local rights group Licadho, said traffic jams were more likely to be caused by the "complete road blockades by the authorities."

Sokha is due in court Friday for questioning after missing a previous court date, where he was due to be questioned in a sex scandal case.
Cambodia Interior Minister Sar Kheng has penned an open letter to parliament in which he accuses opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) lawmakers of acting unconstitutionally following an attempted march on several foreign embassies, which was blocked by the city officials.

The protesters had planned on Monday to deliver a petition claiming the ruling Cambodian Peoples Party had violated tenets of the 1991 Paris Peace Accords, which formally ended the Cambodian-Vietnamese war.

Kheng denied the charge, saying the opposition had in fact been the party in the wrong.

What is the worst thing is that the opposition leaders thought that they are above the law," he wrote. "For instance, Kem Sokha, vice president of the Cambodia National Rescue Party, was summoned by the court several times, but he didnt appear at the court."

Similarly, [CNRP president] Sam Rainsy obtained amnesty from the King many times in the past. In the present day, he is requesting the charges be dropped," he added. "The attitude of the opposition party leaders shows they dont take responsibility and this cannot be tolerated at all.

Son Chhay, the oppositions chief whip, said the heavy security presence at Mondays march was a violation of the law and against the national interest.

Meas Ny, a political analyst, said the back-and-forth between the two parties was a symptom of the deteriorating political climate.

I think that if you look at the character of the politicians from both sides so far, it seems that they are  taking revenge, he said.

This report was produced in collaboration with VOA's Khmer Service.
Frustration and anger are running high in Chinas southern coastal fishing village of Wukan, one day after a court in Guangdong province handed down a guilty verdict for well-respected and influential village chief Lin Zulian.



Residents continued street protests Friday despite rain and pledged to continue their strike until Sunday to show their support for Lin. During the planned strike, most businesses, including stores and restaurants, were shut down.



Protesters carried banners with such slogans as, Wukan villagers land has been embezzled. We have been protesting for 82 days (since Lins arrest). Others said, Set Lin Zulian free.



Found guilty

On Thursday, the court found Lin guilty on two counts of corruption charges after evidence showed that he had taken $66,384 in bribes and another $22,478 in kickbacks from local infrastructure projects.



After a half-day trial, the 72-year-old was given a combined jail sentence of three years and one month, in addition to a fine of $29,970  a ruling that Lin has accepted and vowed not to appeal.



Id like to relay my remorse to residents of the village and apologize to my friends and family, Lin told the panel of judges, reading from a prepared script. Ive learned my lessons. And I will now behave and abide by the laws. With trust in the court, I shall not appeal, he added.



This was not the first time Lin has confessed. His first videotaped confession was made public by local authorities three days after his arrest in mid-June, amid speculation that it was forced. That confession also came weeks before his official indictment.



Ruling seen as unjustified



Beijing-based lawyer Wei Rujiu, who was hired by Lins family to represent him, but dismissed by judicial officials, said the ruling was hard to justify.



Both counts [of graft] fall into the administration of the villages self-governance. Should they prove to be true, he would have been found guilty of only one count of bribe-taking as a non-civil servant since Lin Zulian is a village chief, not a public official, Wei told VOA. Therefore, I find the verdict unfair after [the court] had indicted him on both charges and ruled him guilty of both charges, he said, adding that the decision has justified nothing but the prosecutors move to go after Lin.



In other words, the courts strict ruling on Lins first count of graft should have only applied to government officials, according to Wei.





Lins son, Lin Zhuang, insisted on his fathers innocence, calling the trial nothing but a backroom black-box deal to incriminate his father, according to an Oriental TV report.



He also said many of the villages supporters were barred from going to the court to show their support for the popular chief.



During the trial, which was supposed to be open and fair, security near the courthouse was tight, he added.



Meanwhile, authorities in Foshan City only allowed three of Lins family members to attend court and two government-appointed attorneys to defend him on Thursday after lawyers hired by his family were dismissed.



Local hero

The 72-year-old is seen as a hero by many of the villages 20,000 residents ever since he led the 2011 local rebellion that threw out the previous government for allegedly stealing land from local residents and re-selling it to big developers. Weeks before his arrest, Lin had threatened to restart protests to press for compensation for villagers. And a day before the planned protest, he was detained on suspicion of corruption.



Voicing their disapproval of the court ruling, some residents vowed to continue their street protests as long as the village chief remains behind bars, according to the Oriental TV report.



Local authorities have requested that the village stop rallying after Saturday, local media reported.



On Chinas Twitter-like social media site, Sina Weibo, many expressed displeasure with the ruling.



One user said, An honest official is now wronged and said to be corrupt. We can only blame on the fact that we live in a country that is not ruled by law.



Another user wrote, A corrupt official? Everyone in the village still supports him. Lin is someone who had stood up to fight for their land rights, adding that he has been framed for offending higher-ranking officials.
After four days of talks there seems to be some meeting of minds at the Democratic Republic of Congo's political dialogue. Politicians from the ruling coalition and from an opposition grouping agree that holding elections this year is not realistic and are looking at a date from next May onward.



Only a few of the DRC's opposition parties are at a dialogue and their presence is viewed with suspicion by the others.



But they say there are real issues that need to be discussed and agreed to if the DRC is to hold peaceful elections.

The presidential elections were supposed to have been held before the end of this year, since president Joseph Kabila's second term ends in December and under the constitution he is limited to two terms.

But the ruling coalition has argued for some time that holding elections this year is unrealistic, because the list of voters needs updating. According to the electoral commission, this will take 16 months.

Voting options



Experts agree there are three options for dealing with the voters' list. One option is not to add new voters who have come of age since 2011. That would make elections before December still conceivable.

But ruling coalition spokesman Leonard She Okitundu argued Thursday this option would also be unconstitutional.

It would mean violating the constitutional principle of inclusivity, he says. The constitutional time limit could be respected, but keeping to the time limit while excluding half the electors is not acceptable.



It's been widely said here that there should be about 45 million voters on the voters' list, whereas currently there are only 23 million.

A second option is to partially revise the list and a third is to totally revise it. The ruling coalition favors the third option, and according to She Okitundu, that is the dominant view at the dialogue.

Opposition spokesman Jean Lucien Mbusa told media the debate on these options continues. He did not say which option the opposition favors, but suggested the government has effectively made it impossible to hold elections this year.



He says his group thinks the government has created all the mechanisms for avoiding holding the presidential elections on time, and responsibility for this must be made clear.

Experts from the United Nations and from the international organization of French speaking countries - la francophonie - believe the voters' list could be fully revised and elections held within about ten and a half months.

Another opposition spokesman Basil Olongo, from the same party as Jean-Lucien Mbusa, suggested this would be acceptable.

He says there may be an overrun (from the constitutional time limit) of four or five months, but the sky won't fall in. The essential thing, he says, is to organize the elections well, to avoid giving President Kabila a third mandate and to consolidate the country's democracy.

The ruling coalition and opposition spokesmen collectively said a dialogue committee will decide how the voters' list should be updated.
By satellite, drone or balloon, tech companies are seeking to connect more of the world's under-served regions to the internet.

But these unconventional strategies come with risks, as demonstrated by a spectacular launch pad explosion earlier this month.

The rocket that blew up Sept. 1 at Cape Canaveral, Florida, was meant to carry a satellite that would help improve internet connectivity in sub-Saharan Africa. The social-media company Facebook planned to use the satellite to expand its free and low-cost services.

Some of those services themselves have been under fire this year.

Free Basics

Facebook's Free Basics service was banned in India in February, following criticism from net-neutrality advocates.

Free Basics offers access to a limited suite of websites  including approved health, education, weather and communications sites and, of course, Facebook  free of data charges to anyone with a smartphone.

When Indian regulators shut it down, they barred service providers from charging different prices for different levels of service. Critics said Facebook should not be a gatekeeper for what part of the internet users can access.

But the service is available in 48 countries in Africa, the Middle East, Asia Pacific and Latin America.

It rolled out in Nigeria in May, where "if you want very good internet, it's very expensive. Usually only big companies and rich people can afford that," said Faiz Bashir, CEO of Abuja-based education technology company FlexiSAF.

FlexiSAF is launching a test-prep service for students on Free Basics. Bashir says his relatives in isolated parts of Nigeria use the service constantly to keep in touch.

"You can actually communicate via WhatsApp, have access to Facebook," he said. "So, there's definitely a large number of people now who have access to free internet from remote locations across the country."

New netizens?

Along with its Express Wi-Fi service, which connects users to a local hotspot for a small fee, Facebook says it has "brought more than 25 million people online [worldwide] who otherwise would not be."

But other research questions how many new users Facebook's Free Basics and other "zero-rated" services are creating.

The advocacy group the Alliance for an Affordable Internet surveyed users of zero-rated services in eight countries. It found that 88 percent of users had been online before.

"People that were using the zero-rated services were not using the internet for the first time," said research manager Dhanaraj Thakur. "What was happening, in fact, was they were using it as a way to manage their costs."

People were using Free Basics to check Facebook, for example, and using their data plans to watch videos.

Any means necessary

While Facebook's satellite explosion was a setback, the company has other plans to bring the internet to underserved areas.

Last month it announced a successful test of a solar-powered drone designed to stay aloft for weeks and bounce internet access to remote areas.

Tech giants are competing to connect the unconnected. Google's Project Loon aims to connect isolated users through a network of huge balloons floating in the stratosphere.

Both projects are years from reality. There is no word yet on whether Facebook plans to try another satellite launch in the meantime.

Facebook had partnered with Paris-based telecommunications company Eutelsat on the satellite that blew up. Eutelsat had planned to deliver broadband internet access to business customers via satellite dish.

The company says it plans to launch its own satellite in 2019.
French police have arrested three female suspects in connection with a car containing six gas cylinders that was discovered this week in Paris.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said the three women, between the ages of 19 and 39, were "radicalized fanatics" who were preparing "new violent  and imminent actions."

The arrests resulted from an investigation of a car containing gas canisters found near Paris' Notre Dame cathedral earlier this week. The owner of the car is the father of one of the suspects.

One of the women was shot during the arrest, and a police officer suffered a knife wound.

Since early 2015, more than 200 people have been killed in France in terrorist attacks. This year alone, 260 arrests have been made in France in relation to terrorist activities, Cazeneuve said.

A bar employee working near Notre Dame first raised the alert Sunday after noticing a gas cylinder on the back seat of the parked car. The car had no license plates and its hazard lights were flashing.

Although the cylinder on the back seat was empty, five full cylinders were discovered in the trunk of the car, as were three bottles of diesel fuel.
Gabonese opposition leader Jean Ping filed his challenge to the results of the August 27 presidential poll at the urging of the international community, according to his representative on Gabons electoral commission.



The leaders who urged Ping to file a challenge with the Gabonese courts included the U.N. secretary-general, said Paul Marie Gondjout.



Mr. Ban Ki-moon asked Mr. Ping to go to the Constitutional Court. Mr. Jean-Marc Ayrault, the French minister of foreign affairs asked Mr. Ping to go to the Constitutional Court. Some African head of states did the same thing with Mr. Ping, Gondjout told VOA.



We want the international community to intervene in Gabon because the situation can get worse if nothing is done, he added.



Nonsense results

The challenge, filed Thursday afternoon just before the deadline to contest the election results, centers on the province that provided President Ali Bongo his margin of victory in the official results.



We are challenging the results of Haut-Ogooue, the native province of Mr. Bongo, in which he has won the province with 95.6 percent of the voting on 99.93 level of participation of the voters, which is nonsense, said Gondjout.



National voter turnout was 59 percent, according to the electoral commission.



Deadly violence erupted in the capital, Libreville, last week after official results showed President Bongo beating Ping by about 6,000 votes nationwide.



Judicial bias feared

Ping accused officials of fraud and declared himself the winner.

Ping has said the judges are biased in favor of the ruling party and the Bongo family, which has ruled Gabon for nearly 50 years.



President Bongo has resisted calls for a recount and shrugged off reports of irregularities from European Union election observers.



The president said he would file his own challenge to the oppositions results.
Police in Ghana say they have identified over 5,000 "hot spots" where violence is possible ahead of the December 7 elections, and they have begun special measures to avert clashes.

Ghana Police Service spokesman Cephas Arthur said the agency has a constitutional mandate to ensure public security is maintained through the presidential, parliamentary and local elections.

Arthur gave his estimate of 5,000 potential trouble spots following the national electoral commission's warning that violence was possible in nearly 30 percent of the country's 275 constituencies.

Arthur outlined some of the measures police have been implementing to ensure peace when voters go to the polls.

"We have identified all potential flashpoints or all hot spots as far as elections are concerned, and put measures in place to arrest the situation, he said.

The 30,000-strong police service has sent "intelligence officers" to gather information so headquarters staff can evaluate situations around the country and decide on "necessary action."

Extra police

At the "hot spots" across Ghana, the spokesman said, extra police will be deployed "on the day of the elections, a few days before and a few days after."

A heavy police presence and division of some constituencies into smaller patrol zones will improve efficiency and coordination, the spokesman said, and also "deter identified troublemakers."

Security experts have cautioned that the proliferation of illicit small arms in Ghana, chieftaincy disputes, and West African terrorist activity in general are indicators of possible violence tied to the elections.

Arthur noted that Ghana's interior ministry has a program to register all guns and confiscate illegally held weapons.

"I can assure you every effort is being made to ensure that these small arms are mopped up and taken away from those who are holding them, he said.

On the question of chieftaincy disputes, the Police Service spokesman said such situations "present a fertile ground for electoral offenses," and that officers "also look at places where we have ethnic conflicts."

On December 7, Ghanaians will choose a new president, new members of the 275-seat Parliament and local officials. Incumbent President John Dramani Mahama of the ruling National Democratic Congress is expected to face a stiff challenge from main opposition leader Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo of the New Patriotic Party.
Kopila Wosti was just 14 when her father married her off to a stranger who was five years older. A year later, she gave birth to a baby girl. By the time she was 20, she had three children.

"The first time I became pregnant, I was not even aware I was going to be a mother and did not know how to raise the child," said Wosti, now 34, as she sat cross-legged on the floor of a shelter home in the Nepali capital, Kathmandu.

Separated from her husband for over a decade, Wosti blames the marriage for ruining her life  denying her the chance of going to school and of choosing a more suitable partner.

"There are women of my age who are yet to have children," said the petite woman, dressed in a green shirt and trousers, with her long black hair tied up in bun.

"I could have gone to school and had a better future, too. But all that is a dream now," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Law not enforced

Child marriage is illegal in Nepal, yet the impoverished Himalayan nation has failed to put in place policies to curb the practice, with almost 40 percent of girls married before age 18, a report by Human Rights Watch said Thursday.

It found that poverty, compounded by illiteracy and society's disapproval of unmarried women, compelled many parents to seek out husbands for their daughters.

Yet child marriage often results in a vicious cycle of malnutrition, poor health and ignorance, since a child bride is more likely to drop out of school and experience problems during pregnancy and childbirth.

Her children are more likely to be underweight or die before age 5, said the report, which was based on over 100 interviews with children, former child brides, parents and activists.

"Many children in Nepal, both girls and boys, are seeing their futures stolen from them by child marriage," said Heather Barr, women's rights researcher at HRW.

"Nepal's government promises reform, but in towns and villages across the country, nothing has changed."

Deep roots in society

The study showed child marriage was prevalent throughout Nepal, and practiced in Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim and Christian communities.

Government officials said the deeply entrenched nature of child marriage, which the nation has vowed to end by 2030, made it hard to tackle.

"The government considers child marriage as an act of violence and is making efforts to end the scourge, which is deep rooted in the society," Sushila Paudel, an official from Nepal's women's ministry, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

One-third of girls in the developing world are married before age 18, according to the International Centre for Research on Women (ICRW).

Child marriage is most prevalent in sub-Saharan African countries such as Niger and Chad, but because of population size, the largest number of child brides live in South Asia.

Marriage for food

Nepal, home to 28 million people, has the third-highest rate of child marriage in Asia after Bangladesh and India, with 37 percent of girls marrying before 18.

The country outlawed the practice five decades ago with a punishment of up to three years' imprisonment and a fine of 10,000 rupees ($95). The age of marriage is set at 20 years old for both men and women.

But HRW said the law was seldom enforced, with complaints rarely investigated by police or prosecuted.

Police were not immediately available for comment. HRW said gender discrimination and poverty were key factors driving child marriage. Almost 25 percent of Nepalis live on a less than $1.25 a day.

"Some girls said they welcomed a child marriage because they hoped it might mean they had more to eat, a hope that was not always fulfilled," the report said.

In many communities it is normal for girls to marry soon after puberty, as parents will avoid paying a higher dowry to the groom's family if the bride is younger, it said.
The Ae Dil Hai Mushkil director has asked his fans to relax, and "wait for the formal announcements."

Karan Johar's Koffee With Karan will soon make a comeback to TV. Picture courtesy: YouTube

By India Today Web Desk: Filmmaker Karan Johar will be back on the small screen as a host with the fifth season of Koffee With Karan, but he has asked his fans to wait before playing the guessing game on the line-up.

It was speculated that Pakistani actor Fawad Khan would be the first guest on the chat show. But Karan has asked all the eager fans to "wait for a formal announcement".

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Also read:Koffee With Karan Season 5: Not SRK, but Fawad Khan to be KJo's first guest?



He tweeted, "Watch out for our formal announcements on the opening episode and our line-up."

The show will air on Star World and Star World HD.

Meanwhile, Karan is currently judging the ninth season of Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa.

While KJo had earlier tweeted that the first episode will be graced by his friend and superstar Shah Rukh Khan, it looks like, his plans have changed. "Yes!!! Opening episode has to be him and no one else," (sic) Karan had earlier tweeted.

Fawad, who's all set to star with Aishwarya Rai and Ranbir Kapoor in Karan's Ae Dil Hai Mushkil, is also featuring opposite Katrina Kaif in Dharma Productions' next Sufi.

????????????What is my Birthday???... @kajol to @iamsrk #KoffeewithKaran #SRK #Shahrukh #Shahrukhkhan #kajoldevgn #kajol A video posted by Jija Nambiar (@jigs.nambiar) on Aug 26, 2016 at 11:07pm PDT

(With inputs from IANS)



--- ENDS ---
More than 1.5 million Muslims from across the globe have converged on Saudi Arabia for the annual five-day Hajj. The pilgrimage is one of the five pillars of Islam, and all able-bodied Muslims who can afford to do so are expected to take part in the Hajj at least once in their lifetimes.

Iran is boycotting this year's Hajj, in part over security concerns; during last years pilgrimage, several hundred Iranians were among at least 2,000 who were crushed to death in a stampede in the city of Mina. Iran cited Saudi incompetence and a poor response by health and safety officials.

This isnt the first time Iran has boycotted the Hajj, but it comes at a time when tensions with rival Saudi Arabia are at a record high over conflicts in Syria and Yemen, where Tehran and Riyadh support opposite sides.

Saudi Arabia cut ties with Iran last January after demonstrators set fire to the Saudi Embassy in Tehran following Riyadhs execution of a prominent Shi'ite cleric, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr.

In recent weeks, rhetoric between the capitals has escalated. Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has challenged Saudi Arabias right to manage Islams holy sites, accusing the Saudi royal family of murder in last years stampede. A prominent Saudi cleric responded by saying Irans leaders are not Muslim.

Safety concerns

Saudi Arabia has doubled down on safety and security in a bid to avoid a repeat of last year's disaster. The publication Arab News reports that authorities have conducted 1,000 health and safety training courses in recent weeks and deployed 26,000 medical, technical and other official personnel to pilgrimage areas in Mecca, Medina, Arafat and Mina, along with a fleet of more than 175 ambulances. Security officials have placed 1,000 cameras at strategic locations to allow constant monitoring of events.

All pilgrims are being outfitted with wearable water-resistant e-bracelets, equipped with barcodes that link to personal information such as medical records, in an effort to facilitate treatment in case of illness or injury.

Health, however, is only one concern. In early July, three suicide bombers struck separate targets across Saudi Arabia, including the site in Medina where the Prophet Muhammad is believed to be buried. No group claimed responsibility for the attacks, which Saudi Arabia believes were inspired by the Islamic State group. The bombings have raised questions about the kingdoms ability to protect Saudi citizens and visitors during the Hajj.

Authorities have limited the number of visas for each country in an effort to control crowds. All guests of Allah are required to carry permits and police have set up security checkpoints to prevent illegal pilgrims from entering the holy sites. It has also vowed strict punishment for all offenders.

'Journey for God'

During Hajj, devoted Muslims perform a series of religious rituals, including walking counterclockwise around the Kaaba, the cube-shaped structure at the center of the Grand Mosque of Mecca, which Muslims believe is the spot where the Prophet Abraham built his first temple to God. They will also drink the alkaline water from the Well of Zamzam, believed to have healing qualities, and perform a symbolic stoning of the devil.

"Part of the rituals also includes feeding the poor," said Tawfik Hamid, a senior fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies. "Many Muslims believe that once they do the Hajj, all their previous sins will be forgiven by Allah, and they will become sinless as the day they were born."

The Hajj is followed by Eid al-Adha, which is on Monday. It is Islams most important holy day and marks Abrahams willingness to sacrifice his son, Isaac. Muslims across the world celebrate Eid al-Adha by killing and sacrificing cows, sheep or goats in a display of religious devotion.
First aid, if administered in a timely fashion, can save the lives of thousands of people, who otherwise would perish. According to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), everyone should know how to administer first aid in an emergency.

To mark World First Aid Day, the Swiss humanitarian agency is putting special emphasis on children by calling on schools worldwide to make first aid training a mandatory part of their curriculum.

The Red Cross Federation has strong support for its call from Princess Charlene of Monaco, who is the organizations 2016 goodwill ambassador for first aid. This work fits in well with her personal passion.

The princess, who is a former Olympic swimmer from South Africa, created the Princess Charlene of Monaco Foundation in 2012 to save lives by putting an end to drowning, one of the leading causes of unintentional injury worldwide.

She told VOA her particular focus on drowning resulted from a tragic experience.

I lost my cousin to drowning when he was five years old and I have some friends that have lost their children to drowning too," she said.

So, I thought, look, it is something I would really like to be actively involved with," she added. "I feel that there is nothing more devastating to a family than losing their child to drowning.

The Red Cross estimates 1 million children die every year from treatable injuries and millions more are hospitalized as a result of accidents like drowning, automobile crashes, falls and burns.

The World Health Organization reports drowning accounts for more than 370,000 deaths a year. It is the third leading cause of unintentional injury worldwide every year and is among the 10 leading causes of death among children and young people in every region of the world.

The highest drowning rates globally are among children between the ages of 1 and 4 years, followed by children ages 5 to 9, according to the WHO.

Empowering young people as first aid providers will not just save lives," said Princess Charlene. It will prepare them for a future in which they can be an active and responsible citizen in their local communities.

Her foundation operates sport and education programs in 27 countries where children learn to swim and follow water safety programs.

Princess Charlene said children are at particular risk during emergencies such as natural disasters, conflicts and epidemics.

Today, we would like to remind the world that children are capable of saving lives  of themselves and others around them if they are equipped with first aid training," she said.

She added, children learn more quickly during their early years than later in life.

Red Cross Federation Secretary General Elhadj As Sy said there is not just one World First Aid Day. He said every day is a first aid day because every day in households, in families, in communities, or in an accident scene, people may be struggling to lose or to win their lives.

He said bystanders often are the first on the scene when emergencies occur and are the first critical help in the chain of saving lives and alleviating suffering.

"That very minute where a bystander is there or a skilled person that has been trained can make a difference  that minute counts in many people's lives, he said.

Secretary General Sy said there was no need to have an event such as an earthquake, a flood or a war to showcase the value of first aid.

We just have to remember the fact that each year, 15 million people are trained and those people are in the communities where we live, he said. They are also in the schools where children are not only agents on their own, but they are agents of change. They can bring the appropriate behaviors and attitudes in their communities.

He noted that this year, the First Aid Responder of the Year was a child from Iceland, named Karen, who performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation, known as CPR, on her mother, who was having an epileptic seizure on a bus.

She saved her mothers life, said Sy. Like her, there are so many heroes today because they were just bystanders and were able to do the right thing ... And hose heroes now we celebrate today. We are supposed to be celebrating them every day.

More than 46 million people receive Red Cross and Red Crescent first aid assistance each year. In 2014, 180,000 volunteers and staff trained 15 million people, many of them children, in first aid in 116 countries.
Bengali Muslim Mainal Mollah considers himself lucky. Although a foreigners tribunal in India's northeastern Assam state declared him an illegal immigrant, he managed to walk out of a detention camp last month, after languishing there for three years.

A foreigners tribunal declared that I was a foreigner and sent me to a detention camp from where I was to be pushed back to Bangladesh. This happened very strangely in my case after another tribunal had declared that my parents were Indian citizens, Mollah said.

Some rights activists took my case to the big court [Supreme Court in Delhi] and finally I came out of the camp. I am lucky that I did not die in the camp, where in horrible condition many perished before me, and that I didnt have to go through a traumatizing situation of being pushed back to Bangladesh.

Despite several documents showing his family had lived in Assam for generations, Mollah landed in the detention camp to be sent to Bangladesh, said Aman Wadud, with the civil rights group MY-FACTS.

There are documents showing that Moinal Mollahs grandfather had held land in Assam in 1938. The names of Moinals father, grandfather and great-grandfather figured in the National Register for Citizens of 1951. After a tribunal had declared him a foreigner, Moinal produced all the related documents before the Honorable Gauhati High Court, while filing writ petitions, Wadud, a human rights lawyer, told VOA.



But, the Honorable High Court upheld the tribunals verdict and ordered his deportation to Bangladesh.



Indian citizens victimized

After the Supreme Court in July ordered a retrial for Mollah's case, MY-FACTS managed to get him out of the detention camp on bail. Wadud said he was hopeful that Mollah will be declared an Indian citizen soon.

For more than a century, Hindus and Muslims have moved from the region that is now Bangladesh to Assam to earn their living. But India regards any Bengali-speaking people who settled in Assam after March 1971 to be illegal immigrants.

The Assam Border Police identify suspected Bangladeshis and send their cases to the foreigners tribunal if they fail to produce citizenship documents. Last month, the police reported that in 25 years the tribunals had declared about 53,000 people to be foreigners.

Rights activists say, however, many of those people often are Indian citizens who get caught in miserable situations.

The Border Police are supposed to conduct investigations before forwarding the Reference Cases to the tribunals. But, rarely do they investigate the cases at this point. They often file the cases against people despite [the fact] they have all valid Indian citizenship documents, because of a communal bias and also when they fail to extort the demanded bribes from the poorer victims, Wadud said.

So, its easy to figure out why over 95 percent of the people, who were identified as suspected citizens by border police in the past few years, have been declared Indian citizens by the tribunals. ... That the Muslims are becoming victims of a bias is clear from the fact that over 80 percent of the Reference Cases involved Muslims, Wadud added.



Residency for non-Muslims

Assam Muslim community leader Hafiz Ahmed told VOA that since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) formed the Assam government in May, an increasing number of Indian Muslims are being targeted.

Previously they identified only the Bengali-speaking people as suspected Bangladeshis. But since BJP took charge of Assam, even the indigenous Assamese Muslims, who do not speak Bengali and had their forefathers living here for over several centuries, are being suspected as illegal Bangladeshis, Ahmed, who leads the All India Secular Forum in Assam, said.

A BJP spokesperson in Assam, Jayanta Malla Baruah, said the state government has never taken any action that shows that it is biased against Muslims.

The previous Congress [Party]-led government was lax in action against the illegal immigrants. But our new government in Assam is acting properly, following the orders from the foreigners tribunals. Its incorrect if someone finds anything anti-Muslim in these actions, Baruah said.

Nationwide, the BJP-led Indian government announced in June that it was working toward granting citizenship to non-Muslims who, after facing religious persecution in Pakistan and Bangladesh, came to India and settled here by 2014.

Prasenjit Biswas, a professor at North Eastern Hill University in Shillong, India, noted that government promises of residency rights for non-Muslims has widened the contrast in how a suspected Bangladeshi Hindu compared to a suspected Bangladeshi Muslim is treated in Assam.

Although rule of law in India does not allow any such discrimination in the name of religious identities, yet in the name of religious persecution, Hindus are being given a right to residence, while denying the same to Muslims on the basis of their religion. This has created a lot of fear and has cast a shadow of insecurity in the social psyche of the Muslims, Biswas said.
The Leuser Ecosystem in Indonesias westernmost Aceh province is one of the few places on Earth where tigers, orangutans, elephants and rhinos coexist in the wild.

Soon, however, these creatures may have to make way for a new addition to their habitat - geothermal energy - a prospect that has conservationists wringing their hands.

Why do they want to build it inside Acehs best remaining forest? asked Rudi Putra, adviser with the Leuser Conservation Forum.

In late August, Aceh Governor Zaini Abdullah penned a letter to the central government asking to re-zone 8,000-hectares of the ecosystem for geothermal  heat the comes from the earth  exploration.

The plan, undertaken in partnership with PT Hitay Panas Holdings - a Turkish company run by one of Turkeys richest men - targets a core zone of the 800,000-hectare Leuser National Park - a UNESCO World Heritage site at the heart of the 2.8 million-hectare ecosystem.

The government is already embroiled in a class-action lawsuit against a pending 2013 provincial spatial plan that seeks to leave Leuser open for development  a clear violation of national-level protections.

The re-zoning request was framed as an assist to President Joko Widodo, who has pledged to add 35,000 MW of electricity to Indonesias skimpy energy grid by 2020, and increase the percentage of renewables in the mix.

Environmentalists, however, worry such development will start a chain reaction leading to Leusers collapse  one authorities will be powerless to stop.

Anywhere you put roads, destruction follows, Farwiza Farhan, chairperson of the Forest, Nature and Environment of Aceh NGO (HaKA) said, adding that timber interests and small-time farmers used them to exploit forests previously inaccessible, leading to habitat loss.

Right now it is geothermal, but whats next? Even now they [the authorities] cant protect Leuser, she said.

Despite federal conservation laws, recent decades have seen a proliferation of illegal encroachment and logging whittle Leuser down by about 5,500 hectares a year.

In Sumatra as a whole, logging and conversion for agriculture has toppled nearly a quarter of the forests since 2000.

Crown jewel

The Aceh governments geothermal plans focus on 8,000 hectares in the Kappi Plateau, a 150,000-hectare expanse considered Leusers most indispensable landscape.

Kappi contains some of the best forests remaining in the world, said Rudi Putra, founder of the Leuser Conservation Forum.

The areas many salt lakes and fruit-bearing trees, he added, made it an ideal habitat for creatures large and small. Some 200 Sumatran elephants occupy the plateau  about 10 percent of the worlds remaining population  that would be imperiled should the geothermal plans go through.

If the geothermal is contracted in the area, we will lose many, many animals, he said. We will lose not only 8,000 hectares, but I think well end up losing the whole plateau.

By allowing farmers and loggers to strip the forest with relative impunity, it was the road-building, he stressed, that would deliver the death blow.

Wrong way forward?

Indonesia sits astride 40 percent of the worlds geothermal potential, with half found on the island of Sumatra alone.

According to Rudi, it is unclear why, on an island with such abundant geothermal potential, a protected zone as precious as Kappi would be targeted.

Maybe the government allocated the area to one company, and another area to another company, so thats why the target for this company [Hitay] is the Kappi Plateau, Rudi said.

The government could say, No, you cannot explore this area because its in the core of the national park," he said. I dont know why the government hasnt talked like this.

Attempts to reach Hitay for clarification on the matter were unsuccessful.

According to Farhan, Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurabaya, who will have final say over the rezoning request, has a good track record in her nearly three years in office.

So far, the [environment and forestry] minister [Siti Nurabaya] has been making good moves in trying to clean up the permit system and reduce deforestation and forest fires, in tackling the big problems, she said. But I cant really tell where she stands on this issue.

The ministry has not yet indicated when it might respond.

According to Rudi, micro-hydro energy offers a better solution to the provinces energy needs. Unlike geothermal  which would require locals to pay for use  micro-hydro plants would be free, and the environmental impact would be less, he said.

We are not against geothermal, Rudi said, but there are so many other options, and the priority should be in areas outside the Kappi plateau.

There is no plateau like it left in Sumatra, so if we lose Kappi, it means we have lost the last of Sumatras richest forests, he added.
Despite the shrinking of Islamic State-held territory in Iraq and Syria, the head of the Central Intelligence Agency is stressing that the groups influence is not going away anytime soon.

I think ISIL [Islamic State] will remain a presence inside Iraq and Syria for quite a while, CIA Director John Brennan said Thursday during a national security summit in Washington.

Brennan also highlighted the lasting impact of foreign fighters attempting to return to their home countries. "While some of them may be rehabilitated and see they were on the wrong path, I do think a number of them will remain a challenge for the United States as well as for other governments for years to come, he said.

Intelligence officials acknowledge that dismantling IS now will most likely have wider repercussions and present broader challenges for law enforcement as a whole.

Through the fingers of that crush are going to come hundreds of hardened killers who are not going to die on the battlefield, and theyre going to flow out," said FBI Director James Comey.

Being able to anticipate the possible flow of foreign fighters into Western Europe will require combined resources across agencies and countries, intelligence officials said. But that long-term strategy can be hard to execute.

Watch related video report from Zlatica Hoke:

Weve done fairly well in winning the battles, but have not always done well in winning the wars, said Lieutenant General Vincent Stewart, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

The progression of intelligence sharing on a global level is also key to a successful counterterrorism strategy, a lesson learned through experience, summit participants said.

There has been even a broader effort to bring in a number of other countries' intelligence services, because the [IS] phenomenon does affect a much broader swath of the globe than I think al-Qaida ever did, Brennan said.

When asked about the challenges facing Syria in particular, Brennan said the country represented one of the most complicated issues he had faced during his tenure as CIA chief.

Even though were able to reverse some of the battlefield successes of ISIL in Syria, I think the challenges will increase in terms of political reforms, economic reforms, social and religious tensions, and sectarian conflict that is taking place he said.
Driven from northern Syria, Islamic State fighters are setting their sights elsewhere in the country  including the embattled suburbs of the capital, Damascus.

IS fighters attempted this week to infiltrate an area near Mount Qalamoun, a strategic rebel-held region in northeastern Damascus. Iran's proxy  Hezbollah  has been fighting on the side of the Syrian regime against rebels there for several years. The rebels have held their ground.

In recent days, IS fighters attacked from Homs and took some Syrian rebels hostage before they retreated. To close observers of the Syrian conflict, the IS raid signaled the militant group's future strategy.

"IS knows its departure from all northern Syria is inevitable," said Rami Abdulrahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a group that monitors the country's civil war. He added that IS seeks vulnerable areas "to cover for its losses in other parts."

Rebel groups such as Jaish al-Islam and al-Rahman Legion have maintained a strong presence in the Damascus suburbs. Now IS wants to gain control of Qalamoun, some 50 kilometers northeast of Damascus, to use as a command center, according to local military leaders.

IS "wants to control Mount Qalamoun because this area is considered a gate to Damascus," Abdulrahman Abu Mansur, a commander with the al-Rahman Legion, told Shaam Network, a pro-opposition news site.

During the height of its expansion in early 2014, IS was able to build a network of local affiliates across Syria, particularly in Damascus, Homs and Daraa.

Pressuring Assad forces

Analysts say the primary mission of IS affiliates is to put pressure on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime and opposition forces at the same time.

"When the Assad regime makes gains [in eastern Syria], IS has the capability to strike targets in western Syria that would otherwise be safely located in core regime-controlled areas," said Nicholas A. Heras, a Middle East researcher at the Center for a New American Security in Washington.

IS fighters last week successfully executed suicide attacks in government-held areas of Homs, Tartous and a checkpoint near Damascus. Dozens of Syrian troops were killed, according to the Islamic State website.

Clashes between IS and Assad forces in the eastern oil-rich province of Deir Ezzor have recently increased, with IS fighters trying to gain control of a strategic airbase held by government troops.

Government forces have reportedly made advances against IS in the countryside of Deir Ezzor, where IS has maintained control for more than two years.

Heras told VOA that with its operations in western Syria, IS strives to demonstrate to its adversaries "that it is still a deadly force to be reckoned with."

IS has recently gained influence in eastern Homs province in central Syria. Experts believe that the IS presence in Homs gives the group an advantage to gain footing in western and southern Syria.

Since its inception in 2014, IS hasn't been successful in holding territory near Damascus.

IS fighters briefly took control of parts of eastern Damascus  also known as Eastern Ghouta  in 2014. But local armed groups and other Islamist forces in the area swiftly pushed them out.
In celebration of the National Park Services 100th anniversary this year, adventurer Mikah Meyer is traveling across America with the goal of visiting every one of the more than 400 parks, monuments and other sites within its jurisdiction.

But not all of Meyers destinations are about enjoyment and recreation. He recently visited the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

It was here, on a beautiful sunny morning, where 40 passengers and crew members lost their lives when terrorists took control of their plane and tried to fly it  as was determined later -- on a suicide mission to Washington.

The passengers, aware of the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon near Washington D.C. that had taken place a short time earlier, realized their inevitable fate and decided to fight back.

The huge 757 crashed into a grassy field, killing everyone on board.

The tragic incident in Pennsylvania was one of four attacks orchestrated and carried out by Islamic terrorists against the U.S. on September 11, 2001.

Field of honor

When Mikah and his friend Andy arrived at the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, they immediately felt the difference compared to other parks theyd been visiting, which had mainly been centers for recreation or outdoor enjoyment.

It was very quiet, people werent talking a lot; very somber, Meyer said. It felt odd to smile for a picture."

Meyer described how interpretive panels on the Plaza provide an overview of the Flight 93 story and a cell phone tour provides more in-depth exploration. On a ridge above the Memorial Plaza, the Visitor Center Complex includes an exhibit area and Learning Center.

Overall, I was impressed with the way that they told the story, Meyer said. The Visitors Center did a really top-notch job of showing you the news coverage from the day, but also focusing on this plane which probably gets less attention than the ones that actually hit the towers.

One exhibit in particular made a memorable impression on him.

They played the voicemails of people who called their loved ones from the plane and basically didn't get through and told them they loved them, told them where their will was; told them the combination to their safe, he said.

A voicemail flight attendant CeeCee Lyles left for her husband moments before the plane crashed is one of those heart-wrenching messages.

Tell my children I love them very much

In her message, Lyles tells her husband in a steady voice that the plane has been hijacked, tells him she loves him, and says shes trying to stay calm.

Tell my children I love them very much, she says and lets him know shes aware that a plane has been crashed into the World Trade Center. Her voice finally breaks as she ends the call, tearfully telling him, I hope to be able to see your face again, baby I love you. Goodbye.

WATCH: Related video report

Wall of names

The name of CeeCee Lyles and the 39 other passengers and crew members are engraved on a wall of marble panels situated along the route the plane traveled in its final moments. Each name has its own, separate panel.



It was really powerful just to learn more about one of the planes from September 11th that gets less coverage than those that hit the Twin Towers, Mikah said. I thought it was a real testament to the job the National Park Service did.

Remembrance ceremonies

On Saturday, Sept. 10, 40 candle lanterns will be carried to the Wall of Names and placed below the panel of each of the Flight 93 passengers and crew members.

On Sunday, Sept. 11, the Fifteenth Anniversary Observance will be held adjacent to the Visitor Center. The outdoor service will include brief remarks, special music, a reading of the names of the 40 passengers and crew members of Flight 93, and ringing of the Bells of Remembrance.
Hundreds of internally displaced people in northern Nigeria are returning home to the villages and towns they fled to escape the brutal onslaught of Boko Haram militants, the U.N. refugee agency reports.

And this, says UNHCR spokesman Leo Dobbs, is a matter of concern. The Nigerian armed forces have retaken many of those areas in northeastern Borno state, but the devastation inflicted on the villages under Boko Haram rule is widespread. Many of the internally displaced will face destroyed homes and infrastructure and areas that lack essential services.

Despite these dire conditions, Dobbs tells VOA that many of the people appear happy to be returning.

"They are citing  the conditions that they have been living under. They have been living in terrible conditions  many of them, Dobbs said. They are voting with their feet, as it were. But we want to stress that they need to have the right information. They should not be going back to areas which lack basic services, health care and where they can get food [and] potable water."

Security remains a major concern for the UNHCR. Although Boko Haram has been chased out of Borno state, Dobbs says aid agencies cannot move around without a military escort.

The UNHCR reports that most of the displaced are women, children and the elderly, who are particularly vulnerable to becoming sick and malnourished without shelter, health care, food and safe water. In addition, women and girls need additional protection, because they face increased risk of sexual abuse.

The UNHCR estimates that the Boko Haram insurgency has displaced more than 2.5 million people in northeastern Nigeria since 2014. This figure includes nearly 190,000 refugees in neighboring Cameroon, Niger and Chad.
North Korea's missile test Friday was its fifth and most powerful to date - causing a 5.3-magnitude earthquake and concern that Kim Jong Un continues to display what one regional leader calls "maniacal recklessness."

The explosion, although troubling and on par with the bombs which destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, is not comparable to the much larger explosive devices that were tested by the Soviet Union and the United States and in the 1950's, according to Joshua Pollack, editor of the Nonproliferation Review.

"This is the largest, but of course it's the largest North Korean test," Pollack told VOA. "It's not in the same class as the things superpowers were testing in the 1950s."

Estimates of the explosion range from 10 kilotons to 20 kilotons. Because the test was conducted deeper in a mountain, the same site used for previous tests, the likelihood of radioactive leakage is smaller, making it more difficult for analysts to pinpoint just how powerful it was and what kind of radioactive material was detonated.

The seismic activity recorded in this test, however, is not significantly more powerful than previous ones. A test conducted in February 2013 triggered an earthquake of 5.0 magnitude, according to NORSAR, a Norwegian non-profit which monitors nuclear explosions and seismic activity worldwide.



A lingering question for many North Korea analysts is whether the country sees its nuclear program and missile tests as leverage in international negotiations. Or if it's planning to actually use the weapons against its perceived enemies. According to Pollack, this test gives no indication that North Korea is looking to launch an offensive.

"This is a country whose leadership is obsessed with national defense - and not just national defense but independent national defense, not relying on allies as they were forced to during the Cold War," Pollack said.

Pollack added that Kim Jong Un wants to prove himself and his country in the arena of world powers and to not be "overshadowed by their national capabilities."

Kim Jong Un has not yet met with any other heads of state in his four years leading North Korea, in large part because of the international community's marginalization of Pyongyang because of its nuclear and missile programs.
President Barack Obama condemned North Korea's nuclear test Friday, calling it "a grave threat to regional security and to international peace and stability."

In a White House statement, the president said North Korea's "provocative and destabilizing actions" had served "to isolate and impoverish its people through its relentless pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile capabilities."

The U.N. Security Council met in a closed session Friday afternoon in New York. The council president, New Zealand Ambassador Gerard van Bohemen, told reporters that the 15 members strongly condemned the underground nuclear test and agreed to work immediately on appropriate measures contained in Article 41 of the U.N. Charter. That clause covers sanctions.

The council must use every tool at its disposal to change North Koreas calculus, U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power told reporters. She said Washington would work with its international partners to vigorously implement existing measures in four previous U.N. resolutions. And we will take additional significant steps, including new sanctions, to demonstrate to North Korea that there are consequences to its unlawful and dangerous actions.

Japans envoy, Koro Bessho, said his government would seek a fresh resolution, with fresh measures.

In March, the council passed its toughest and most extensive set of sanctions to date on North Korea. It remains to be seen what new and strengthened measures the council will be able to agree on.

Chinas U.N. ambassador, Liu Jieyi, walked away without answering a reporters question about Beijings support for additional sanctions. But he did say Beijing was opposed to the testing and we believe that it is more urgent than ever to work together to achieve denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. He called on all sides to refrain from mutual provocation.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, himself a former South Korean foreign minister, strongly condemned the underground nuclear test as a brazen breach of council resolutions.

For the fifth time in recent years, the DPRK alone has broken the international norm against nuclear tests, Ban said. This unacceptable act endangers peace and security in the region and is another vivid reminder of the urgent need to strengthen the global nuclear test ban regime.

Ban said he was counting on the Security Council to remain united and take appropriate action.

'Consequences' for North Korea

The latest and possibly largest North Korean nuclear test ever occurred as Obama was returning to Washington from his trip to Asia. While aboard Air Force One, he spoke by telephone with both South Korean President Park Geun-hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Obama said they all agreed to implement new sanctions. The president also reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to defend its allies in Northeast Asia through deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system in South Korea.

U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter, who was in Norway, also condemned the test at a news conference with his Norwegian counterpart.

Carter said he spoke with the South Korean defense minister, and they agreed the world needed to hold North Korea accountable. Carter said this test might strengthen resolve to get the THAAD system in place sooner. He added that it now was up to China to reverse the trend of North Korean nuclear escalation.

China responded to news of the test by saying it firmly opposed such actions by Pyongyang. A statement urged North Korea to adhere to its promises about nuclear non-proliferation, and it criticized the country for disregarding international objections.

Chinas foreign ministry spokeswoman, Hua Chunying, urged North Korea to stop taking any actions that worsen the situation. Any actions solely in one sides interest will only escalate the situation.

China monitoring radiation

Meanwhile, Beijing said China had started emergency measures to monitor radiation rates and environmental pollution along its border with North Korea.

In announcing the nuclear test, North Korea called it "part of responsive measures to threats and sanctions from the U.S. and enemies denying our strategic position as a nuclear state." The White House statement reaffirmed the U.S. position on the issue: "The United States does not, and never will, accept North Korea as a nuclear state."

The Obama administration has followed a policy of strategic patience, knowing that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has shown no interest in negotiations over its nuclear program. At a news conference Thursday in Laos, Obama acknowledged that persuading Pyongyang to change its behavior had been difficult.

He pointed to unsuccessful diplomatic approaches during Republican and Democratic administrations over the past decade, and he said North Korea had not only failed to meet its international obligations but also had given no indication it was inclined to do so anytime soon.

Protection for U.S. allies

We are going to make sure that we put our defensive measures in place so that America is protected [and] our allies are protected," the president said. "We will continue to put some of the toughest pressure that North Korea has ever been under as a consequence of this behavior. Can I guarantee that it works? No. But it is the best option that we have available to us right now.

On Capitol Hill, the Republican House speaker, Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, condemned North Korea for threatening U.S. allies, but also criticized Obama: This destabilizing activity is also a consequence of the administrations failed policy of strategic patience and its hollow pivot to Asia. The president should immediately make full use of the sanctions authorities Congress gave him earlier this year, and he should join me in urging China, as Pyongyangs chief sponsor, to fully enforce the international sanctions on the Kim regime.

The Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Representative Ed Royce of California, said the North Korean test showed that Obamas efforts to enforce sanctions were falling short: Most notably, the administration has yet to impose sanctions on any of the many Chinese companies and banks that, according to a recent U.N. report, continue to support the North Korean regime. This must change. Weve seen before that China will only comply with sanctions if Chinese banks face real consequences for doing business in North Korea.

The United States and our foreign partners should also act quickly to sanction North Koreas state-owned airline," Royce added. "Air Koryo continues to flagrantly violate the ban on luxury goods and has been implicated in the proliferation of SCUD missile parts. At the same time, the administration must also work with European governments to better block luxury items  including cars, watches and liquor  from reaching North Koreas repressive ruling elite."

Action 'threatens stability'

The senior Democratic member of Royce's committee, Representative Eliot Engel of New York, said: "North Korea's apparent fifth nuclear test is another reckless action that threatens stability in the Asia-Pacific and further isolates the rogue regime. As the president reiterated, our commitment to our alliance partners in Northeast Asia is unbreakable. If the Kim regime believes that the United States and our partners will ever accept its nuclear weapons program as legitimate, they have made a grave miscalculation.

Yesterdays test is even more dangerous," Engel added, "because on Monday, Kims regime tested three ballistic missiles, all landing within 250 kilometers of Japan. Escalation like this only adds to the reasons why deployment of the THAAD missile defense system in South Korea and close cooperation with our allies is so important."

Friday's explosion was the fifth nuclear test and thought to be the largest to date, estimated at 10 kilotons and causing a magnitude 5.3 earthquake.

The last serious talks with North Korea on denuclearization, the six-party talks, ended in 2009.
The accused had taken nude pictures of the victim and threatened her against approaching the police.

By Mail Today: The owner of a firm that supplies building construction materials allegedly raped his female employee repeatedly and sought sexual favours from her after taking her nude pictures. He is on the run after the victim lodged a complaint with the police recently.

Also read:

Bengaluru: Facebook friend rapes minor girl, records it on his smartphone

Karnataka: Trio responsible for 14 rapes in police net Minor Dalit girl gangraped in coastal Karnataka

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ACCUSED TOOK VICTIM'S NUDE PICTURES

According to the police, T Vivekananda, a city-based businessman, raped his employee while on a business trip to the hill-station of Kodagu in April. He had taken nude pictures of the victim and threatened her against approaching the police. Later, he took advantage of the lady's vulnerability and sought sexual favours in Bengaluru.

COMPLAINT FILED

Over a period of time, he allegedly raped her several times at his flat on the Ballari Road. The lady, who could not cope up with the pressure, eventually narrated her ordeal to her husband. The two later lodged a complaint against Vivekananda.

The police registered a case against Vivekananda, but the alert businessman fled to the neighbouring Andhra Pradesh. He is trying to obtain an anticipatory bail in the case, the police said.

--- ENDS ---
French authorities say they have dismantled a female terrorist cell directed by the Islamic State group from Syria that was planning an attack in France.

Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said the terror cell was made up of three women, ages 39, 23 and 19. Police arrested them Thursday night in Boussy-Saint-Antoine, about 30 kilometers from Paris; several other people were detained, some of whom were men.

One of the women arrested had been the driver of a car loaded with tanks of gas, which was discovered last weekend parked outside Notre Dame Cathedral.

Molins told reporters that investigators found traces of diesel fuel on a blanket and a cigarette in the trunk. Had even one of the gas tanks caught fire, he said, the car would have been consumed by an explosion.

A top French intelligence official earlier predicted future terrorist attacks would be carried out through car bombings and other explosives, in contrast to the attacks last November in the French capital, carried out by gunmen wearing suicide belts.

Train station

French officials have been quoted in media reports as saying the three women now under arrest planned to attack the Gare de Lyon train station in Paris and another suburban station.

Molins said one of the women, identified only as Sara H., had been separately engaged to two French extremists involved in recent attacks on police and a priest.

The prosecutor said Sara H. and another woman, Ines M., attacked police before they were arrested, stabbing one in the shoulder with a kitchen knife.

Police shot and wounded Ines M., who was the driver of the abandoned car. They found a document in her purse pledging allegiance to IS and its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and proclaiming an attack on French soil.

No surprise

Anthropologist Dounia Bouzar, who has worked with hundreds of radicalized French youngsters and their parents, said she was not surprised that women had been among those arrested in a terrorism investigation.

Bouzar said the Islamic State group lures men and women to radicalism for different reasons, but the recruitment and radicalization process is the same. Female fighters also want to die and kill, just as much as the male fighters, she said.

Men figured almost exclusively in the recent terrorist attacks in France, but, criminologist Alain Bauer said the use of female fighters and suicide bombers was not new.

Its 30 years old from Palestinians, its been extremely frequent with the [Tamil] Tigers.  Boko Haram has been doing that almost every day, and not just women but with little girls, from 13, 14, 15 years old, that blow themselves [up] in the market, he said.

In France, two women figured in the January and November 2015 terrorist attacks, although it's unclear whether they played any direct role.

Anthropologist Bouzar said one direct fallout of the most recent case would be felt by Muslim women in France. There will be more searches and more suspicion, at a time when the Muslim headscarf and burkini have already generated sharp controversy. That may increase a sense of victimization among a tiny minority -- which, she said, can be a first step to radicalization.
His dark eyes glare at the camera as if it caught him doing something forbidden. He holds a pen. The nine-year-old boy doesn't attend school because of the crisis in his country. The caption says he misses school but, "I carry a pen with me wherever I go and write on anything I can."

The photograph of Moaz from Eastern Ghouta, Syria, is part of an exhibition in the rotunda of a U.S. Senate office building. It captures the human spirit persevering against all odds, despite living in the midst of a five-year-long conflict that has killed about 400,000 people.

"The Syrian people, if you talk to them, they feel like they've been left alone," says Dr. Lina Murad of the Syrian American Medical Society. Murad left Syria years ago to escape the Assad government. She says the lack of international monetary assistance has meant a complete collapse of humanitarian support.

'Nation of heroes'

A team of Syrian volunteers took the photos in different regions of the country to show what they call "a nation of heroes who are doing everything they can to live, to love and to dream."

The Humans of Syria project aims to reach behind the statistics, combat pictures, and global maneuvering to show the real Syria. The photographers spoke at the opening of the exhibit via video message.

Their photographs are arranged in two circles below the high dome of the U.S. Capitol building, in a barren, yet stately space that echoes with footsteps from offices above. The faces look outward from the center of the area, as if begging to speak and tell their stories. The captions do it for them.

Four toddlers stand outside ruins in Idlib province. The arched stone cave door leads to their home after their father was killed in the war and their mother left to remarry.

A 12-year-old from Aleppo attaches lug nuts onto a tire. He started working two years ago after his school was bombed.

"What we don't understand here is that half the population of Syria is displaced, internally or externally," said Murad, who is quick to add that government policies, not other humans, are failing her people.

'Scar on our country'

Senator Bob Corker, a Republican who is the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee spoke at the opening of the exhibit.

"This will go down as one of the greatest humanitarian disasters of modern time and we stood by and let this happen," he said.

Corker has long criticized the Obama administration for not putting the U.S. military on the ground in Syria early in the conflict. "This is a scar on our country," he said.

The groups represented support House Resolution 5732  The Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act  which promises accountability for Syrian human rights abusers and an analysis of possible no-fly and safe zones. Critics call it a "pro-war bill" that will lead to further U.S. intervention in Syria. The resolution was introduced in the House of Representatives in July.

In the meantime, a photo stands out. It shows an artist who is wearing a surgical mask to avoid breathing the dust of a bombed building. He has drawn a picture of a little girl in a dress, standing on a pile of skulls.

The little girl is stretching above her head to write the word "Hope."
North Korea Friday carried out its fifth nuclear test near its Punggye-ri test site, triggering a blast that seismic monitors indicated was its largest such detonation yet.



An announcer with North Korean state television KCNA read a statement from the Nuclear Weapon Research Institute of the DPRK that said it was a successful test of the country's capacity to create a nuclear warhead that can be miniaturized to fit on various types of missiles.



This nuclear warhead explosion test is part of responsive measures to threats and sanctions from the U.S. and enemies denying our strategic position as a nuclear state, The KCNA announcer said during the broadcast.



Pyongyang did not advise the international community in advance of its plans to conduct a nuclear test. On Monday, North Korea fired three ballistic missiles which flew about 1,000 kilometers before falling into the Sea of Japan, inside Tokyo's Air Defense Zone. Those launches were condemned by U.S., Chinese and other leaders who were gathered at the G-20 summit in Hangzhou, China.



September 9 marks the 68th anniversary of the founding of North Korea and Pyongyang has in the past marked important holidays by conducting nuclear and missile tests.

Biggest bomb yet

Friday's detonation was the country's fifth test since 2006, however it is the second one so far this year. North Korea has claimed the past two tests involved hydrogen bombs, which are much more powerful than atomic bombs. Analysts, however, said the January blast was not big enough to be a full thermonuclear explosion or "H-bomb."



South Koreas meteorological agency said Fridays test produced a 10-kiloton blast, nearly twice the power of the country's nuclear test in January but slightly less than the Hiroshima bombing, which was measured about 15 kilotons.



Jeffrey Lewis with the California-based Middlebury Institute of International Studies told Reuters that an earthquake of this magnitude would indicate a device with a 20- to 30-kiloton yield, which would be the largest yield estimate yet of a North Korean nuclear device.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye condemned North Korea for conducting its fifth nuclear test in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions.



President Park, who is in Laos for the ASEAN security summit said this nuclear provocation, proves Kim Jong Un's rabid recklessness to cling to nuclear development."



The South Korean president will leave the ASEAN summit early and return to Seoul to monitor the situation.



South Korean Prime Minister Hwang Gyo-ahn says Seoul will call for additional and stronger U.N. sanctions against North Korea.



We are facing a grave situation which is totally different from the past when North Korea conducted nuclear tests once in three years. North Korea's nuclear and missile threats are clear and existential, said Hwang.



Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said if a nuclear test is confirmed, it would be something absolutely inadmissible and that Tokyo would call for action from the U.N. Security Council.



"Japan is currently a member of the U.N. Security Council, so we will also work closely with New York, if this nuclear test was indeed carried out, to figure out how best to react to this situation," Abe said.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said "at the appropriate moment today I am confident President (Barack) Obama will address this and we will certainly be discussing this in the context of the United Nations, I am sure."

WATCH: Kerry, Lavrov react to nuclear test



The top U.S. diplomat made the comment while in Geneva to discuss Syria with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, who said, "We are very much concerned and the resolutions of the Security Council must be implemented and we will send this message very strongly."



The White House released a statement reiterating President Obamas unbreakable commitment to allies in Asia and the world, and said the president will consult with other leaders to make sure North Koreas provocations are met with serious consequences.



The Pentagon said the North Korean test was "yet another flagrant violation" of U.N. Security Council resolutions, as well as a "serious provocation."



The International Atomic Energy Agency said North Korea's nuclear test is a "deeply troubling and regrettable act."

Hua Chunying, a spokeswoman for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said China "strongly" urges North Korea "to honor its commitment to denuclearization, comply with the relevant Security Council resolutions, and to stop taking any action that worsens the situation."

China's official Xinhua news agency urged all parties in the international community to exercise restraint following North Korea's latest nuclear test, saying that it is in nobody's interest for there to be chaos or war on the Korean peninsula.

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg also expressed condemnation on Twitter.





Defiance



The United Nations in March imposed harsh new sanctions on North Korea for its continued and defiant violations of Security Council resolutions banning the countrys development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.



Since the latest round of sanctions were imposed, Pyongyang has conducted 20 tests of short- and medium-range missiles, including submarine based launches, advancing its capability to reach the U.S. mainland with a nuclear strike.



The last missile test occurred during the G-20 summit of the worlds largest economies that took place in China and included the U.S., South Korea, Japan and Russia.



While the U.N. Security Council recently denounced North Koreas repeated missile tests, it has not imposed any further sanctions.



Chinese officials have said they dont want to impose crippling sanctions that could cause the collapse of the Kim Jong Un government, spark instability at the Sino, North Korea border and increase U.S. power and influence on the Korean peninsula.



At the same time, Chinese President Xi Jinping has voiced opposition to the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile system to be deployed in South Korea.



Capabilities



Last year, the U.S.-Korea Institute at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) estimated that North Korea has enough plutonium and highly enriched uranium to build 10 to 16 nuclear devices and the nuclear fuel cycle capability to replenish and increase its nuclear stockpile.



North Korea has claimed it has successfully miniaturized a nuclear warhead to fit on the head of missile. While this claim has not yet been demonstrated, U.S. and South Korean military officials say they are developing defensive strategies based on the assumption that the North does possess this offensive nuclear capability.

Sanctions



The U.N. sanctions along with new unilateral measures from the United States, South Korea and other countries imposed in response to Pyongyangs previous nuclear test and rocket launch this year have the potential to impose real economic pain over time.



WATCH: UN Chief Ban Ki Moon on nuclear test

International sanctions include suspending currency transfers and restricting the Norths lucrative mineral trade that had accounted for over half of the countrys $2.5 billion in exports to China alone.



South Korea cut all remaining ties with the North that includes closing the jointly run Kaesong Industrial Complex that employed over 54,000 North Koreans.



Beijings cooperation to enforce these international sanctions is considered crucial because 90 percent of North Korean trade flows either to or through China.



There have been reports that China has been lenient in enforcing the U.N. restrictions.



The U.N. ban on North Korean mineral exports includes a difficult to verify humanitarian exemption for coal and iron exports, as long as the profits are not used to fund the development of nuclear weapons or other illicit arms.



Washington also imposed unilateral sanctions that could also target Chinese and other international companies involved using North Korean labor abroad, which has become a lucrative source of income for the Kim government. The U.S. treasury is also authorized to seize the financial assets of any individuals or organizations involved in illicit activities with North Korea.

THAAD



After North Koreas nuclear test in January, the U.S. brought in a B-52 long range bomber, capable of delivering nuclear weapons, and other fighter aircraft to conduct low level flights near the inter-Korean border.



South Korea and the United States are also moving forward to deploy the THAAD missile defense system on the Korean peninsula.



Chinese officials have objected to placing THAAD in the region, saying the systems radar has the capability to spy into its territory.
Another suspect involved in the killing of environmentalist and indigenous leader Berta Caceres was arrested Thursday, Honduran authorities said.

Elvin Heriberto Rapalo Orellana, also known as El Comanche, was the last person of interest wanted for allegedly carrying out the killing.

Ricardo Castro, head of the Central American country's criminal investigation unit, said Orellana could also be behind the shooting of Mexican activist Gustavo Castro who was with Caceres when the attack took place in March. Castro survived the attack.

Investigators are still working to find out who ordered the killing. Caceres, a Lenca Indian activist who won the 2015 Goldman Environmental Prize, was shot to death by three gunmen who broke in her home.

Caceres fought against construction of the Agua Zarca Dam on the Gualcarque River, a waterway the Lenca considered to be sacred. Dam opponents argued it would destroy the lives of hundreds of Lenca by cutting off the access to the river.

Among the other arrested suspects are an active duty army officer and a man who may have worked for Desarrollos Energeticos SA, also known as DESA.

Hidroeletrica Agua Zarca Co. officials - the management company behind DESA - denied any involvement, but confirmed one of the men involved in the case has worked for the company.

The Honduran government had assigned Caceres special protection because she expressed concerns about death threats by security people working for DESA.

The U.S. State Department condemned the shooting, calling on Honduras to carry out a transparent investigation. Washington offered to help bring the killers to justice.
Second-time finance minister Jose Antonio Meade is Mexico's consummate insider, serving under both main political parties and widely seen as a potential presidential candidate, but he now faces the unpopular task of slashing spending.

President Enrique Pena Nieto named Meade as finance minister on Wednesday, replacing Luis Videgaray, the president's closest aide, after he reportedly oversaw a visit to Mexico by Donald Trump that angered Mexicans stung by the U.S. Republican presidential hopeful's namecalling and his stance on immigration.

The son of prominent members of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), Meade has held top jobs both under Pena Nieto and his predecessor Felipe Calderon of the center-right National Action Party (PAN), who named the Yale-educated economist first as energy minister, then in 2011 as finance minister.

Soft spoken and diplomatic, Meade is widely liked in Mexican political circles. He survived the 2012 change of government to become foreign minister under Pena Nieto, and most recently has run the Social Development Ministry, a high-profile role that is often seen as a launch pad for a presidential run.

Several members of Pena Nieto's cabinet are quietly positioning themselves for a run at the presidency in 2018, and Meade's new role contains pitfalls for anybody with ambitions for higher office.

However, his chances could be bolstered by a revival on his watch of Mexico's economy, which contracted in the second quarter for the first time in three years.

Meade's first task will be to present the 2017 budget, expected to lay out deep spending cuts aimed at restoring investor confidence after ratings agency Standard & Poor's last month said it could downgrade the country's credit rating following a marked increase in debt.

"The government will have to tighten its belt, not the families or companies of Mexico," said Pena Nieto with Meade standing beside him as he announced the changes, emphasizing that fiscal consolidation was the government's top economic priority.

Pena Nieto vowed there would be no new taxes or tax hikes in Meade's drive to contain debt growth, and said he should give priority to social projects and investments.

As one of the Finance Ministry's technocratic old guard who is seen as close to central bank Governor Agustin Carstens and free of the corruption that has tainted the image of the PRI, the appointment of Meade was welcomed by economists.

Adam Collins of Capital Economics said Meade was well known to investors and likely to be seen as a "safe pair of hands."

Videgaray was highly respected for his record of pushing major economic reform through Mexico's divided Congress. Meade's friendships with legislators on both sides of the aisle will also likely help him navigate the fractious politics of the country's economics.

"He has the academic background and the experience politically and technically, to be as good as Videgaray as minister of finance but on top of that we do think that he is more investor friendly," said Gabriel Casillas, an economist at Banorte.
Both major candidates for U.S. president are critical of free trade agreements, but a new survey shows a majority of voters still support the Trans-Pacific Partnership and similar agreements.

That is the somewhat surprising conclusion of a survey by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, published Thursday.

Around 2,000 people participated in the survey. Of those, approximately two-thirds said international trade is good for the U.S. economy, consumers, the standard of living and American companies.

Only a third, however, say international trade is good for American jobs.

In the survey, segments of the population with difficult job and economic prospects are most critical of trade deals. People over age 45, particularly white males without a college degree, are particularly critical of trade policies.

This segment of the population has struggled with unemployment, under-employment, stagnant wages and limited opportunity as the economy relies less on manufacturing and more on computers.

Analysts say this is a key part of the support for Republican Donald Trump, who has reversed his party's traditional backing of free trade. Trump defeated many more experienced politicians in the Republican primary contests in part by appealing to this group.

Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton has also criticized trade deals, including the TPP that she praised in her previous job as secretary of state. Her rival for the nomination, Senator Bernie Sanders, got considerable support in part because of his strong stance against free trade agreements that he said cost U.S. jobs.

In a separate analysis of globalization, New York University professor Ian Bremmer writes that things, processes and technology are moving ever more freely across borders. He says while key parts of the economy are globalizing, "It's the people that aren't."

This is one reason that the middle class in many developed nations is "hollowing out," says Bremmer, founder of the Eurasia Group, a firm that researches global political risk. The economic frustrations of this important group are sparking increasing political pressure for protectionist measures and other efforts to limit globalization.

Those anti-globalization sentiments are visible in the U.S. Congress, where there is opposition in both parties to ratifying the TPP, the 12-nation free trade deal that supporters say will boost economies around the Pacific. As President Barack Obama nears the end of his last term in office, he is making its approval a top priority.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and Democratic rival Hillary Clinton unleashed some of their harshest criticisms about each other to date on Thursday, a day after a televised forum on national security put each under a strong spotlight.

Appearing at a school in Cleveland, Ohio, Trump said Clinton's performance Wednesday night provided more evidence that she was unfit to be commander in chief. Trump said Clinton continued to refuse to take responsibility for her "failed" Middle East policies as secretary of state.

He called Clinton "trigger-happy" in a race to invade countries and topple regimes, resulting in "ruin and death" in Libya, Iraq and Syria.

When she was secretary, Clinton ran a criminal enterprise, Trump asserted, by granting favors to donors to the Clinton Foundation charity, and he accused her of smashing telephones with hammers to hide evidence from investigators.

Trump intimated that those who backed Clinton for president were "suckers."

Clinton told a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, that Trump's comment that Russian President Vladimir Putin was "far more" of a leader than President Barack Obama "shocked her."

"That is not just unpatriotic, it's not just insulting to the office and to the man who holds the office. It is scary, it is dangerous," she said.

'Secret' IS plan

Clinton also derided Trump's "secret plan" to defeat Islamic State. She said it was a secret because he had no plan. She also took Trump to task for commenting in public Wednesday night on a confidential national security briefing given to presidential candidates.

Obama reacted to Trump on Thursday from Laos.

"The most important thing for the public and the press is to just listen to what he says and follow up and ask questions to what appear to be either contradictory or uninformed or outright wacky ideas," he said.

Trump and Clinton will square off directly in their first presidential debate on September 26, with two more scheduled before the November 8 election.

Another presidential candidate ran into trouble Thursday because of his apparent lack of knowledge about Syria.

Libertarian Gary Johnson was asked about the city of Aleppo on MSNBC television.

"What is Aleppo?" he replied.

Johnson later said he "blanked" and that he knew all about the fighting and tragic humanitarian crisis in Syria's largest city.

Johnson is struggling to reach 15 percent approval in voter polls, which would allow him to take part in the debates between Trump and Clinton.
Republican candidate Donald Trump says he is not convinced by allegations that Russia is trying to manipulate the U.S. presidential election through cyberattacks.

Trump says it is "pretty unlikely" that the Kremlin is involved in hacking attempts targeting the U.S. election system. He delivered his assurance in an interview broadcast by the Russian-funded television network RT America.

The interview, broadcast Thursday by RT America, followed Trump's public praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin, rating the Kremlin chief as a stronger leader than U.S. President Barack Obama.

Trump's comments have been widely criticized by American political figures and by his election opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton, who has previously denounced the Trump campaign organization for its close relations with Russian business interests.

Trump's political opponent, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, has criticized Trump for weeks for alleged relations between Trump's associates and Russian business people.

Putin has denied any involvement in recent cyberattacks against the Democratic National Committee and a separate Democratic group involved in campaigning for congressional candidates.

However, William Courtney, a senior fellow at the non-profit Rand Corporation and former U.S. ambassador to Kazakhstan and Georgia, told VOA Friday it is "pretty clear" that Russia is "heavily involved" in the cyberattacks.

Courtney said the hackers' "signatures" - fragments of their software recovered from computer systems they penetrated, and the techniques they used - indicate the intrusion was carried out by Russian groups.

Trump's RT America interview was conducted by veteran American broadcaster Larry King, who now works for the Russian-funded network. King said he and Trump have been friends for decades, and a Trump spokeswoman said the interview was recorded as a favor to King.

Aasked about news reports asserting that Russia carried out the recent hacks against Democratic Party targets, Trump said he was unconvinced.

"I think it's probably unlikely," he said. "I think maybe the Democrats are putting that out. Who knows? I think it's pretty unlikely."

Role in Cyberattacks?

In addition to Courtney's comments about Russian involvement in the political hacking attacks, several U.S. lawmakers also told VOA they believe Russia is involved in the controversial intrusions.

I dont think its a stretch because Russias been engaged in cyberattacks against the United States, said Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas. These are well known to our national security experts. So no, it does not surprise me.

We know Russia has been very active in cyberattacks in the United States, and we know that they mine for information all the time, said Senator Ben Cardin, a Maryland Democrat. Nothing surprises me about Russia.

However, Republican Dan Coats of Indiana, who serves on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he wants to see definitive proof of Russian involvement before he points any fingers.

We are going to need to find the factual basis to come to a conclusion, but given the ability today to basically intercept anybodys communications, we are all vulnerable to that," Coats said.

Trump has expressed the desire to strengthen U.S. ties with Russia, which is subject to U.S. economic sanctions for its annexation of Crimea and aggression toward Ukraine.

RT America, operating since 2005, is an increasingly influential propaganda network for the Russia government. It is based in Washington and controlled by its parent company in Moscow.
A prominent ethnic Uighur rights group says it fears China will exploit a Uighur militants suicide attack on its embassy in Kyrgyzstan last week to repress minority Uighurs in the neighboring Chinese region of Xinjiang.

In its first detailed public response to the August 30 suicide car bombing that killed only the attacker and wounded several Kyrgyz security guards at the Chinese embassy in Bishkek, a World Uyghur Congress representative told VOA that his group condemns the Bishkek blast and all kinds of terrorism, including what he referred to as Chinese state terrorism against its own people. WUCs Washington-based vice president, Omer Kanat, was referring to the Chinese governments crackdown on Uighur militants whom Beijing blames for several deadly attacks on civilians around the country and for sectarian violence between minority Uighurs and majority Han Chinese in Xinjiang in recent years.

Kanat said he expects Beijing to use the Bishkek attack as a pretext to intensify what he called its ongoing crackdown against the Uighur people  mostly Muslim Turkic-speakers living primarily in Xinjiang  and to further restrict their religious and cultural rights. Many Uighurs accuse Chinese authorities of persecution and turning them into a minority in their homeland by flooding it with Han Chinese settlers. China has said it grants Uighurs wide-ranging freedoms.

Identifying culprits

Kyrgyzstan named the embassy bomber as Zoir Khalimov, a 33-year-old Uighur with a Tajik passport and a member of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, or ETIM  a separatist group seeking to split Xinjiang from China. Bishkek also said it believes the attack was masterminded by Uighur militants fighting alongside other Islamists in Syria. Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said Wednesday Beijing will be firm in fighting what she called ETIMs bloody crimes and in cooperating with Kyrgyzstan and other nations to combat terrorism.

Kanat said his rights group believes Beijing will use its economic influence in neighboring Central Asian states such as Kyrgyzstan to pressure them into suppressing dissent within their Uighur communities as well. A 2012 Canadian government report said at least 50,000 Uighurs were living in Kyrgyzstan, accounting for almost one per cent of its population.

Uighur militants rarely have targeted Chinese people or diplomatic missions abroad. But the risk of further attacks is substantial, according to Raffaello Pantucci, director of International Security Studies at London's Royal United Services Institute.

Syria connection

In an interview with VOAs China 360 podcast, Pantucci said videos, photos and messages from recent battles in Syria and Iraq show that several hundred Uighurs have traveled to those countries to fight on behalf of Islamist groups Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham. We also have seen through various leaks of documents of the Islamic State militant group that it has at least 100 or 200 fighters from the Uighur community," he said.

Pantucci said Uighur militancy is becoming an international problem. "We are seeing an interesting situation in which a terrorism problem that China used to face within the country is starting to export itself in a very violent way."

Sean Roberts, a professor of international affairs at George Washington University in the U.S. capital, told VOA China 360 that jihadists have been recruiting Uighurs from among refugees fleeing the Chinese governments security crackdown in Xinjiang.

The Uighurs are not necessarily militants when they leave China, but as they move through Southeast Asia with the help of human trafficking networks, more and more of them are being recruited by various radical groups, Roberts said. Many Uighur refugees have been transiting Southeast Asia en route to Turkey, which has strong cultural links to Uighur communities.

Roberts said people who spoke to radicalized Uighurs in Syria told him the militants hoped to get combat experience to someday liberate what they perceive as their homeland inside China. But he said many of them likely will die fighting before they can try to carry out attacks like the one in Bishkek.

"The greater threat to China from terrorism is that militants besides the Uighurs also begin identifying China as an enemy of Islam, said Roberts.

Exploiting refugees

World Uighur Congress Kanat said he is aware of the problem of Uighur radicalization. He said some Uighur refugees have told him that Islamist radicals approached them in Thailand and Turkey, promising housing and money if they went to Islamist-controlled parts of Syria and Iraq, countries that he said the refugees know little about.

Some of those refugees had no house and no food in Turkey - they were helpless, so they said, we chose to go to Syria, Kanat told VOA. But they found war and killing  not what they wanted, so they escaped back to Turkey.

Kanat said his group has been working with Ankara to resettle Uighur refugees in the central Turkish province of Kayseri. We have been approaching the refugees to explain the situation in Syria and Iraq and how Islamist extremism is harmful for the Uighur cause, he said. Some Uighurs are brainwashed [by jihadists], but we are trying to rescue those who are not brainwashed, and have convinced many of them not to go to Syria.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation Friday that would allow families of the victims of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to sue the Saudi Arabian government for allegedly supporting terrorism, despite White House threats to veto the bill.

The Senate passed the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA) in May despite opposition from Saudi Arabia, a key ally to the United States. Fifteen of the 19 airline hijackers involved in the attacks were Saudi nationals, but Riyadh has denied allegations it had any role in the attacks or supported organizations with ties to terrorist groups.

The White House's opposition to the legislation stems from concern it could weaken U.S. ties with Saudi Arabia, expose U.S. citizens overseas to legal risks and open the door to lawsuits against the U.S. from foreign countries. A White House veto can be overridden with votes from at least two-thirds of House and Senate members.

The bill, sponsored by Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, has strong support from the victims families. Nadler has said he wants the legislation brought to a vote before the 15th anniversary of the attacks, which claimed the lives of nearly 3,000 people when terrorists hijacked and crashed commercial airliners into New York City's World Trade Center, the Pentagon just outside Washington, D.C., and a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.



Texas Congressman Ted Poe said the bill provides recourse which families of those who perished on 9/11 otherwise would not have.



"The legislation gives the victims' families access to the courts, to the rule of law. An we as a people should be more concerned about these victims of terror than about diplomatic niceties," Poe said.



The House vote comes two months after Congress released 28 declassified pages from a congressional report about suspected Saudi connections to the attacks. The papers did not significantly add to information that was publicly disclosed in other reports and documents.
Chief of Army Staff General DS Suhag will be on day long visit of the Valley. He will be visiting forward areas of LoC to assess the ground situation.

By Ashraf Wani: Curfew has once again been re-imposed in nine police stations of Srinagar city and in main towns of Valley ahead of proposed protest call given by separatists in Kashmir.

Curfew restrictions will be in place in Nowhata, Khanyar, Mehraj Gunj, Shaheed Gunj, Soura, Kralkhud ,Batmaloo ,Shaigudi and Kothibagh police stations of Srinagar. Restrictions will also be in place in Baramulla , Bandipora, Pulwama, Kulgam, Anathnag, Ganderbal ,Shopian, and Kulgam Districts of Kashmir.

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Restrictions imposed after proposed protests by separatists after Friday prayers in Kashmir.

ARMY CHIEF TO ASSESS SITUATION

Meanwhile, Chief of Army Staff General DS Suhag will be on day long visit of the Valley. He will be visiting forward areas of LoC to assess the ground situation.

Army Chief will also meet J-K Governor NN Vohra and Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti during his visit to the Valley.

Also read:

Supreme Court agrees to hear PIL to stop funding of Kashmiri separatists

Kashmir unrest: PDP whispers turn into clamours for CM Mehbooba Mufti to resign



--- ENDS ---
The United States and Russia announced a complex, ambitious plan early Saturday in Geneva to halt five years of war in Syria, and for the two countries to cooperate on the fight against terror groups within Syria.

The deal calls on all sides to recommit to a nationwide cease-fire. Hostilities are to end by sunset September 12  the beginning of the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday.

"We could think of nothing more appropriate than for all the parties to come together and make Eid more meaningful to the people of Syria and the region," said U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, standing alongside Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

"Working together, Russia and the United States and our teams have devised what we think is a more prescriptive and far-reaching approach," Kerry said. "If the plan is implemented in good faith ... this can be a moment where the multilateral efforts at the diplomatic table, the negotiations, can take hold, and you could really provide the people of Syria with a transition."

Halt to Syrian air campaign

The two countries agreed on steps that would prevent Syrian government forces from flying combat missions where the opposition is present and over other agreed-upon areas.

"By all accounts, the Assad air attacks have been the main driver of civilian casualties and migration flows and the most frequent violations of the hostilities," Kerry said. "Halting all of the regime's military air activities in key areas  key areas that are defined  should put an end to barrel bombs and indiscriminate bombing of civilian neighborhoods."

Kerry said this would "change the nature of the conflict."

Lavrov said he informed the Syrian government about the arrangements, and the regime of Bashar al-Assad is ready to abide by them.

U.S., Russia to fight together

The United States and Russia will also establish a "joint implementation center" to coordinate attacks on the so-called Islamic State group and Nusra.

The two countries, which have strained ties in numerous diplomatic arenas, will work for efficient cooperation to fight terrorism, expand humanitarian access and enhance cessation of hostilities in Syria, Lavrov said, while standing beside Kerry.

There were intensive intra-agency discussions in Washington between the White House and the U.S. Defense and State Departments about terms put forward by Moscow, and that delayed the conclusion of the U.S.-Russian agreement, according to diplomats from both the United States and Russia.

Viability of plan, Assad's role unclear

There is considerable skepticism that a nationwide, sustainable cease-fire  the immediate goal as it has been repeatedly characterized by State Department officials  can hold for any period of time.

Lavrov noted there are those who would like to undermine the agreement.

Syria is fractured after five years of war. There are numerous client forces of questionable allegiance and discipline pitted against each other, in addition to the so-called Islamic State group.

Russia wants to see Syria's Assad stay in power, while moderate opposition forces and Turkey insist there can be no transition deal that retains him for any period of time.

The United States has long held that the Syrian leader cannot lead any future government, due to his brutal repression of his opponents. If the just-announced plans hold, Kerry said, it could lead to political transition.

The U.N. special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, briefly joined Kerry and Lavrov at the podium. He endorsed their agreement and said he would consult with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon before announcing a next round of Syrian peace talks.

De Mistura said he expected all parties would facilitate U.N. efforts to deliver humanitarian assistance to the populations in need, including in besieged and hard-to-reach areas.

The U.N. Security Council also would need to make a decision on any no-fly zones in Syria.

The Obama administration has repeatedly stated there can be no military solution to the prolonged Syrian crisis, which has killed hundreds of thousands of Syrians and displaced 12 million people from their home, according to U.N. estimates.

Opposition to the Assad family's four decades of rule over Syria broke into the open in early 2011, and the situation soon deteriorated into a complex civil war.

"Out of all this complexity is emerging now a simple choice between war and peace, between human agony and humanitarian relief, between the continued disintegration of an ancient society and the rebirth of a united and modern nation," Kerry told reporters.

The U.S. leads a coalition conducting airstrikes in Syria against Islamic State militants. Russia, a long-time backer of the Assad family, has also conducted airstrikes, which often target forces deemed an immediate threat to the Syrian government, some of them supported by the U.S. and its allies.

Turkey could prove an obstacle to the sustainability of a long-term cease-fire and transition deal, and it also opposes any arrangement that would allow Assad to stay in power. Turkey said its current military incursion into Syria was launched against IS, but Turkish forces also have clashed with Syrian Kurdish forces backed by the United States.

Moscow has said it is seriously concerned about the Turks' drive across the border, and its implications for Syria's sovereignty in the area.
The United States on Thursday committed more money and a new plan to combat human trafficking in Southeast Asia, following the East Asia Summit.

"To support this stronger focus on human trafficking and irregular migration challenges, President [Barack] Obama announced USAID's comprehensive, five-year plan of action," White House officials said in a statement.

The U.S. Agency for International Development plan will commit $12 million in the first year to protect and compensate victims of human trafficking  an issue that experts and workers say is often overlooked when authorities focus on prosecution.

Matthew Smith, co-founder of the human rights organization Fortify Rights, says Thailand in particular lacks policies that ensure protection for victims.

"Thailand continues to detain survivors, refugees, men, women and children. This is a problem. When refugees aren't protected, then the risk of human trafficking is increased," Smith told VOA. "Civil society does need to be supported. It's a huge problem here."

Smith said he is confident that increased resources and funding in the region will support organizations that can influence their governments' policies.

"Inasmuch as resources will contribute to that, we do believe that it will have a positive impact on policies in Thailand," he said. "It's a positive step for the Obama administration to be committing more resources to combat human trafficking."
Asked on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program on Thursday what he would do about the conflict in Aleppo, U.S. Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson replied, "what is Aleppo?''



In the U.S., his comments sparked debate over the lack of foreign policy discussions in these presidential elections. But for many Syrians it was an opportunity to vent their frustration and bring the world's attention to one of Syria's oldest cities, and the scene of some of the fiercest fighting in the five-year civil war.



Using the hashtag, #WhatIsAleppo, Facebook and Twitter users shared stories of its ancient history and its modern woes. Some posted pictures of Aleppo's beautiful narrow streets and the 13th century citadel that towers over the city.



Others shared images of the destruction that has beset Aleppo, particularly its rebel-held neighborhoods, which were recently described by one rebel fighter as "like walking into Hiroshima.''



Many posted pictures of Aleppo's residents, such as the iconic image of five-year-old Omran Daqneesh, photographed sitting on an orange chair, covered in dust, his pale face smeared with blood following an airstrike.



The population of Syria's largest city has fallen from 3.1 million in 2011 to an estimated 2 million today, as families have fled four years of violence and hardship. Once Syria's commercial center, large parts of Aleppo are under siege and food and basic necessities are often scarce, dependent on humanitarian aid convoys that arrive only after complex international negotiations. Aleppo's renowned textile factories have been destroyed.



The city's rich cultural and religious mix of Christians, Muslims, Armenians and Kurds has been torn apart by the conflict.



"If you are wondering #WhatISAleppo: More than 100 cases of suffocation in al-Sukkari neighborhood, #Aleppo, in a chlorine gas #BarrelBombs attack,'' the Syrian Coalition, an exiled opposition group, tweeted. It referred to a suspected toxic gas attack by government helicopters on Tuesday that killed two people and left at least 80 with breathing problems. The government on Thursday denied using the toxic gas.



For Wissam Zarqa, a 34-year-old resident of rebel-held Aleppo, the city is the embodiment of the "will to live.'' He returned to his hometown from Saudi Arabia last year and gives English classes to children whose schools have long closed.



"There is something magical about the return of life to an area after a barrel bomb has just been dropped,'' he told The Associated Press via WhatsApp messages. "When I first returned to Aleppo 16 months ago, a missile hit the last floor of the building I live in. Half an hour later, the kids had finished cleaning the street outside the building.''



Unsurprisingly when its neighborhoods are physically separated by gunmen and sandbags, the people of Aleppo are divided over what their city is.



"#WhatIsAleppo. It was an industrial hub of Syria until rebels invaded, looted her factories & smuggled them to Turkey,'' tweeted Bassem, a self-proclaimed secular Syrian with a large following on Twitter.



Aida, a 78-year-old native of Aleppo who left her hometown four decades ago and has not returned since the conflict began, pointed to her city's heritage as one of the oldest continuously inhabited towns. Unlike many other ancient cities, its location has never changed.

"Aleppo has always circled and hovered around the citadel. It never changed axis. It grows with the same citadel at the center,'' she said. She did not want to give her last name to protect her privacy.



The citadel, at least, is damaged but still standing.





But not for the first time in its long history, Aleppo finds itself torn between international powers. Turkey is a main supporter of the city's rebel groups, and has sent its military to Aleppo province to fight Islamic State group extremists and rival Kurdish rebels. Russia and Iran are supporting the Syrian government's bid to gain control over the city.



The U.S. and Russia are locked in protracted negotiations over a cease-fire in the city, after a previous truce deal collapsed in Aleppo in April.



In the meantime, the International Committee for the Red Cross describes Aleppo simply as "one of the most devastating urban conflicts in modern times.''
The World Health Organization (WHO) has stepped up its warning for Southeast Asia to guard against the threat posed by the mosquito-borne Zika virus, amid mounting concerns in the region of the impact to local populations.

Roderico Ofrin, WHO regional emergencies director for Southeast Asia, said countries need to adopt effective surveillance and reporting systems to closely monitor the spread of the disease.

WHO is working with countries across the South East Asia region to continue to prevent, detect ,and respond to Zika virus transmission, Ofrin said in emailed comments to VOA.

Illness surveillance

The strategy emphasizes the ongoing importance of enhancing vector control; strengthening Zika virus and birth-defect surveillance, scaling up laboratory capacity and amplifying risk communication and community engagement, he said.

A report in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal identified India, China, the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia as high-risk countries, while in Sub-Saharan Africa, Angola has faced increased risks due to its historical ties with Brazil.

The Lancet warned that at least 2.6 billion people  over a third of the global population, living in Africa, Asia and the Pacific were vulnerable to the Zika virus.

Pregnant women at risk



At most risk are pregnant women. Becoming infected with a virus strain now impacting populations in South America can result in child birth defects, especially microcephaly, affecting normal development of an infants head.

The virus is also transmitted through sexual contact, blood transfusions and from mother to child, and has been linked to muscle weakening and paralysis due to damaged nerve cells known as Guillain-Barre syndrome.

South America has borne the brunt of the virus severe impact, especially Brazil, where hundreds of cases of microcephaly have been confirmed since the outbreak in 2015.

Southeast Asian governments have stepped up surveillance and detection of the virus in communities, with chemical sprays over areas known as breeding grounds for the Aedes mosquito.

Singapore has reported more than 240 Zika cases, while Malaysia and Thailand have also reported infections. Travel warnings have also been posted by the United States, Britain, Australia and Taiwan, warning pregnant women against nonessential travel.

But Asian-based scientists say the latest outbreak has left many questions unanswered.

A strain of the Zika virus has been embedded in Asia for many years and associated with a mild fever, rash and joint pains, which doctors say pass after a week of treatment. The Zika virus, as a result, has received less attention than more virulent diseases such as dengue fever and malaria.

Monitoring breeding grounds



In 2016 Thailand alone has reported more than 35,800 cases of dengue with more than two dozen casualties.

Singapores Ministry of Health and National Environment Agency reported the Zika virus strain affecting the community in recent weeks came from within Asia, and not imported from Brazil.

Prasert Auewarakul, a professor and director of the Institute of Molecular Biosciences at Mahidol University, says identifying the strains of virus is key, and whether the outbreak is a virulent as the episodes in South America.

Basically, [the strains] are very similar in terms of evolution. People believe the South American strain came from the Southeast Asian strain, Prasert said.

The big puzzle is that even though we have had the Southeast Asian strain in the region for many years, nothing big has happened so far, he said.

Prasert says Thai authorities are focusing surveillance on case detection," so with the increasing risk people at the [Thai] Ministry of Public Health, are trying hard to identify cases to control so it doesnt spread."

But others, such as Voravit Suwanvanichkij from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and those working with refugee charities along the Thai Myanmar border, are more cautious. Voravit says if Zika infections were to increase, theres a very real risk that we actually establish a new endemic disease here."

Thats the biggest fear, especially since the most feared complication is this microcephaly  causing their children to be born with abnormally small heads, he said.

Local Thai news agencies reported a senior official from the Ministry of Public Healths Department of Disease Control saying so far Zika is not considered serious with as yet no critical outbreak.

Thai Public Health Ministry officials say in Chiang Mais San Sai district, two women, six months and eight months pregnant, are being closely monitored by medical staff.

Voravit says officials and the general public should not be complacent.

The reality is that this shouldnt be something that makes us let down our guard. The potential is there and were still in many ways still learning about this disease and now wouldnt be the time to let the guard down, he told VOA.

He says the risk of infections in urban areas is high, especially as the Aedes mosquito that carries the virus is well adapted to living around people and its human settlements."

He says the concern is if you just get the critical level in the amount of people infected you can usually touch off an epidemic.
Vietnam's government has drawn criticism for its choice of imported wine at this week's welcome banquet for French President Francois Hollande.

Photos published by local media show bottles of Australian-made alcoholic beverages alongside Vietnamese specialty dishes. Diplomats from the Australian Embassy in Hanoi took to Facebook to congratulate "Vietnam's excellent taste" in serving the French president wines produced in New South Wales.

Vietnamese netizens, however, lambasted government officials for neglecting to showcase Vietnam's famous local brands, including Dalat Red Wine of the country's Central Highlands.

Reader Nhan Thanh wrote on VOA Vietnamese's social media fanpage that "it is not worth debating," as "without a doubt, Vietnamese wine is not of good quality."

Others cited France's famed wines as one reason that Hollande was likely oblivious to what he drank.

Meanwhile, Hai Duong, quality control officer of Dalat Wine Company, said he supports the idea of serving Vietnamese wine to foreign dignitaries.

"It should have been done. Dalat wine is local top-quality product and Vietnam's pride," he told VOA. "It was served at official functions during APEC 14 [Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation] forum held in Vietnam [in 2006]."

Nguyen Van Tuan, a wine dealer in southern Ho Chi Minh City, echoed Duong's opinion, calling Dalat the most popular locally made wine.

The banquet's organizing committee could not be reached for comment, but Vietnamese media quoted the chef as saying dishes were chosen to reflect Vietnamese cuisine to make an impression on the French leader.

Hollande, who concluded his two-day visit to Vietnam on Wednesday, is the first French president to travel to the Southeast Asian country in over a decade. During his visit, he oversaw the signing of lucrative trade deals, including a $6.5 billion agreement to have French aircraft manufacturer Airbus manufacture 40 planes.

In 2009, Vietnam launched a huge campaign urging Vietnamese people to use Made-in-Vietnam products to show "patriotism and national pride."

In a separate move, Vietnamese businesses have recently called on consumers to use local goods to display their loyalty in the face of China's assertive behavior in the South China Sea.
From Laos, U.S. President Barack Obama denounced Donald Trump as unfit to be the American commander-in-chief, after the Republican presidential candidate said Russian President Vladimir Putin has been more of a leader than Obama.

"I do not think the guy's qualified to be president of the United States and every time he speaks, that opinion is confirmed," Obama said in what was an unusually caustic comment about the U.S. presidential contest while he was traveling overseas.

WATCH: Obama responds to reporter's question about Trump



Late Wednesday, Trump said at a nationally televised candidate forum that Putin was "far more than our president has been a leader" and that U.S. military generals have been "reduced to rubble" under Obama.

Obama, at the end of his last presidential trip to Asia, said as president, "You actually have to know what you are talking about and you actually have to have done your homework. When you speak, it should actually reflect thought out policy you can implement."

Obama, who staunchly supports Trump's Democratic candidate, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, said, "The most important thing for the public and the press is to just listen to what he says and follow up and ask questions to what appear to be either contradictory or uninformed or outright wacky ideas."

'Very good relationship' with Putin

During an NBC News forum Wednesday in which Trump was interviewed separately from Clinton, Trump said he thinks if he is elected and succeeds Obama as president, he would have a "very good relationship with Putin." He said Russia and the United States have a joint interest in defeating Islamic State jihadists.



"Russia wants to defeat ISIS as badly as we do," he said. "If we had a relationship with Russia, wouldn't it be wonderful if we could work on it together and knock the hell out of ISIS?"

He further criticized U.S. military action in Iraq under Obama, saying generals "have not been successful." Trump repeated his assertion the United States should have seized oil from Iraq.

"If we would have taken the oil, you wouldn't have ISIS, because ISIS formed with the power and wealth of that oil," Trump contended.

Intelligence briefing

As a major party candidate, Trump has received confidential intelligence briefings meant to ensure that the next leader is knowledgeable about U.S. foreign policies when their term begins. When asked if he was shocked by anything he heard, Trump said Obama, Clinton and Secretary of State John Kerry did the opposite of what intelligence experts told them.

"I am very good with body language. I could tell they were not happy our leaders did not follow what they were recommending," he said.

Trump said he was qualified to be commander-in-chief because I built a great company; Ive been all over the world; Ive dealt with foreign countries... I have great judgment; I know whats going on.

WATCH: Trump, Clinton on intelligence briefing



Iraq war

Trump also said he was "totally against the war in Iraq," a claim that is contradicted by his initial support for the 2003 U.S. invasion.

Clinton said that her vote for the Iraq war when she was a U.S. senator was a mistake, but that it was important to learn from mistakes. She also pushed back against Trump's repeated assertions during the campaign that he opposed the U.S. attack on Iraq.

"He supported it before it happened, he supported it as it was happening, and he is on the record as supporting it after it happened," Clinton said. "I have taken responsibility for my decision. He refuses to take responsibility for his support. That is a judgment issue."

Trump has called Clinton totally trigger-happy, adding, In Iraq, my judgment was right, hers was wrong.

Clinton said the most important quality in a president is steadiness and the strength to make hard decisions.

"What you want in a president, a commander-in-chief, is someone who listens, who evaluates what is being told to him or her, who is able to sort out the very difficult options being presented, and then makes the decision," she said.

Emails, counterterrorism

She has faced criticism and investigations for her use of an unsecured private email server while serving as the country's top diplomat during Obama's first term, from 2009 to 2013. Investigators said she was "extremely careless," but criminal charges were not warranted.

"It was something that should not have been done," she said, adding that there was no evidence her system was hacked.

Clinton called the fight against Islamic State the top counterterrorism goal, advocating using air power and getting more support from Arabs and Kurds fighting IS militants, while also supporting the Iraqi military. She said no U.S. ground combat troops would go to Iraq or Syria.

"I view force as a last resort, not a first choice," she said.

Trump and Clinton will square off directly in their first presidential debate on September 26, with two more scheduled in October in the weeks before the November 8 election.
Zimbabwe's economy is flatlining while the budget deficit is ballooning, the finance minister said Thursday, pointing to a worsening of financial difficulties that are already stoking rare protests against 92-year-old President Robert Mugabe.

Frustrated at widespread cash shortages, unemployment above 80 percent and delays in payment of public sector salaries, Zimbabweans have turned to social media to organize anti-government demonstrations that have sometimes turned violent.

In his mid-year budget speech, Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa cut his growth forecast for this year to 1.2 percent from 1.4 percent.

He also admitted the budget deficit was on track to top $1 billion this year  more than six times the initial projection  as tax and mineral revenues dropped and public sector spending snowballed.

In the grip of its worst drought in a generation and with 4 million people facing food shortages, the southern African nation is also running out of cash, forcing the central bank to impose limits on imports and withdrawals from banks.

"The fiscal position remained under pressure during the first half of the year due to underperforming revenues and high expenditures," Chinamasa said, pledging to get tough on state spending. "It is imperative Mr. Speaker, sir, that we urgently address the wage bill, a major contributor to the growing fiscal deficit that is threatening financial sector and economic stability."

Between January and June, Zimbabwe spent 96.8 percent of its revenue on government employee salaries, Chinamasa said, although he added that Mugabe's cabinet had agreed to slash the wage bill by $118 million by the end of this year.

Such cuts  alongside other economic reforms  are part of demands by international lenders before resuming any financial support to Harare.

Western powers have imposed sanctions on Mugabe's government over allegations of vote rigging and human rights abuses, which he rejects, while lenders such as the International Monetary Fund have frozen financial aid since Zimbabwe defaulted in 1999.

Chinamasa said a government plan to repay $1.8 billion in foreign arrears was still a "work in progress."

"Chinamasa has just shown how terrible the economic situation is, but does not do anything about it. There is nothing in the budget that can stop people from going onto the streets," said University of Zimbabwe professor Tony Hawkins.

Mugabe routinely blames Zimbabwe's economic problems on sabotage by Western opponents. Last month, he warned protesters there would be no "Arab Spring" in Zimbabwe, referring to the uprisings that toppled several Arab leaders.
The response from the US State Department comes as ties between the two South Asian neighbours has soured markedly.

By Indo-Asian News Service: The US has urged India and Pakistan to hold dialogue to de-escalate tensions, saying they don't want the relations to worsen and "lead to some kind of incident".

The response from the US State Department comes as ties between the two South Asian neighbours has soured markedly.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has pointedly referred to Pakistan as the "one country" responsible for spreading terrorism in South Asia in his successive multilateral meetings, including the G20. Pakistan has hit back, accusing India of being that "one country".

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READ| Kashmir unrest: Curfew re-imposed, army troops to be deployed in Valley



US State Department spokesperson, Mark Toner, on being asked if the US should mediate between India Pakistan, said on Thursday: "We strongly encourage in all of our dealings with either India and/or Pakistan stronger relations between the two countries."

In a clear reference to the rising bilateral tensions, Toner said: "It's clearly in the security interests of the region that they work to de-escalate tensions and that they have dialogue.

"And that's something we constantly encourage for just that - or out of just that concern, which is that we don't want to see tensions escalate, spiral out of control, and lead to some kind of incident. Again, it's important for the two countries, the two governments to maintain strong, cordial, and productive relations."

Tension between India and Pakistan have soared over the Kashmir unrest after Islamabad termed Hizbul militant commander Burhan Wani as a "martyr". Wani was killed on July 8 in an encounter with security forces in Jammu and Kashmir, sparking clashes that have led to at least 76 civilian deaths so far.

India has also protested against Pakistan's attempts to internationalise the Kashmir issue.

The January 2 terror attack on the Pathankot air base in India, which New Delhi has blamed on Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed militants, also led to souring of relations.

Also Read:

Kashmir unrest: Centre wants to ramp up security to counter ISIS ideology Kashmir unrest: PDP whispers turn into clamours for CM Mehbooba Mufti to resign

--- ENDS ---
Multilateral Diplomacy for a Modern World

Thank you all very, very much. It is a great pleasure to be here at the CFR mothership. Walter, thank you so much for presiding over our event today, but, more importantly, for your extraordinary thoughtful critiques that have enriched our foreign policy debates and that we take very, very seriously.

I am especially and deeply grateful to my good friend, Richard Haass, who has been a wonderful friend, a wonderful counselor, and has done extraordinary things leading this community. I have to say it is particularly nice to have an excuse for a brief family reunion because my parents are here, Donald and Vera Blinken, and many friends from New York.

We are in the midst of one of the most significant national debates that we have had in decades over U.S. foreign policy, although you might not recognize it from the tenor of the campaign. But it is there. And it is real. It does not pit left against right, Democrat against Republican, liberal against conservative. Rather, its an argument between those who would erect walls and those who would build bridges.

In the shadow of shared vulnerabilities exposed by the dizzying pace of global change, some of our fellow citizens quest the merits of facing outward, of being open to the world. They worry terrorists are sneaking into our country as refugees. Immigrants are slipping across our borders to radically alter our identity. They have seen their real wages stagnate, factories jobs disappear. They wonder whether U.S. global leadership has benefited others at their expense. What value is there in a system that they feel has left them behind?

The result is a renewed blend of isolationism and unilateralism that argues that our engagement in the world costs us too much, achieves too little, encourages free riders, embroils us in other peoples problems, and distracts us from investing in our own communities.

In other words, they suggest, its time for America to come homeor go at it alone.

This debate has its roots in legitimate concerns that we have to better acknowledge and more effectively address together. You cant really call it progress if too many of our fellow citizens do not believe they are sharing in it.

But this argumentthat were better off pulling up the drawbridgeis fundamentally flawed. It underestimates the risks of turning inward while overstating the costs and downplaying the benefits of facing outward. It is harmful to the health, strength, security, and prosperity of our nation, and those of us in the foreign policy community have to do a better job explaining why.

Here at CFR, I am preaching to the choir, but heres the truth: todays debate is evidence enough that our voices are not as clear, as compelling, as compassionate as they should be to convince our fellow citizens. I think it is a responsibility we share if we believe in an open world and an open facing America to actually try to meet that challenge together.

We dont work with other nations as a luxury, or as charity. The problems we face today are notoriously resistant to unilateral solutions. We cannot build a wall tall enough to stop the oceans from rising or our planet from warming. We cant bolt a gate tight enough to stop the spread of disease or break the allure of violent extremism.

If we stepped back from the global stage, Americans of all stripes would be worse off.

Our companies would make less moneyafter all, 90 percent of the global market, even more, is beyond our shoresand Americans would have fewer jobs, absent our leadership to promote a global business environment favorable to our brands, our products, and our high standards.

Our soldiers would be dragged into more costly and unintended wars absent our leadership to build alliances that share the burdens, however imperfectly, of security and increase the capacity of others to prevent small crises from growing into big ones.

And our citizens would be left unacceptably vulnerable absent international cooperation to spot and stop threats before they reach our shores.

Our national interest demands our global engagement.

This is not a lesson we learned suddenly.

Seventy-one years ago, the United States faced a fundamental choice after World War II. As the worlds rising global power, how we would use that power and our new place of preeminence?

We could choose to come home and turn our backs on a broken world. We could take advantage of the moment to impose our will on othersas victors of war had done for centuries.

Or we could channel our power through a system of rules, principles, norms, and international institutions that gave everyone a stake in the running of world affairs.

On one level, embedding our country in a broader system that bound us to the same rules and restraints as others seemed counter-intuitivea check on our own power.

But it proved remarkably wise.

It took away the incentive for other countries to band together to block our riseas happened throughout history when one nation sought to rise above others. And rather than constraining us, the rules-based international order has legitimated, preserved, and amplified our power over time.

Of course, this system didnt eliminate all turmoil, all conflict, all inequity. It did notcould neverinsulate societies fully from the pain of social and economic change.

But with American leadership that married wisdom to strength, it got the big picture rightaverting new global cataclysms, ending the Cold War peacefully, and creating the space and stability for countries to prosper. This is a narrative that most of us in this room in one way or another have lived and grown up with, but it is not a narrative that is as familiar to a young generation looking at Americas place in the world with fresh ideas. I think it bears repeating.

President Obama pledged to carry this legacy forward with a new era of engagement.

Entering the Oval Office at a time when the United States was a bit more isolated on the world stage, President Obama knew the risks of ignoring our allies and stiff-arming potential partners. He recognized that the international system is not a threat to our interests, but rather a logical, indispensable extension of them. He saw that American leadership in a diverse array of multilateral forums was essential to shaping this wider system to our advantage.

So, we renewed our leadership at the United Nations and worked in the UN Security Council to advance nuclear negotiations with Iran and remove and destroy Syrias declared strategic chemical weapons capacity. We re-joined the Human Rights Council, brought attention to some of the worlds worse human rights violators, and passed the first resolution on LGBTI rights in a multilateral body. We not only embraced the Millennium Development goals that we had once shunned, but we helped reach agreement on the Sustainable Development Goals to end extreme poverty. And we bolstered the capacity of UN peacekeeping operations by mobilizing pledges for an additional 50,000 troops from countries around the world.

We reinvigorated our transatlantic partnerships by deepening our engagement with the EU, enhancing NATOs military capabilities to address regional and global challenges, and reinforcing OSCEs expanded role in working for a Europe whole, free, and at peace.

We strengthened our relationships with Asias key institutionsjoining the East Asia Summit, sending our first dedicated Ambassador to ASEAN, hosting the first U.S.-ASEAN Summit here in the United States, and hosting APEC in 2011.

We revitalized the Summit of the Americas by updating a Cuba policy that had isolated us in the hemisphere, and we worked with new leadership at the Organization of American States to preserve that institutions role in defending democracy where it is threated.

There are those who believe that our nations overwhelming military and economic superiority means we should and could operate alonethat corralling others at a summit or working through a system is much more trouble than its worth.

In the absence of U.S. leadership, multilateral institutions dont simply disappear. They just take on a profoundly unhelpful shape, as the League of Nations did in 1930s. By turning inward, we lose our ability to advance positive developments, and we forfeit one of our most powerful tools to check negative ones.

We know that there is very clear tactical, as well as strategic and political value, in not having to act alone. We build a foundation of trust, an alignment of interests, habits of cooperation, and greater legitimacy that better enables us to mobilize others against common threats and seize opportunities. By taking a seat at the table, we can drive the conversation and help shape the results.

When a spiraling economic crisis threatened the world, we worked with the G20 to forge an international response that brought the global economy back from the brink and set the stage for the longest streak of job growth ever in the United States.

American leadership and our willingness to work with our partners produced the massive, coordinated fiscal package needed to restore confidence and save families, companies, and countries hit hardest by the crisis. That is exactly the kind of collective action that we continue to need if were going to generate sustained income gains for middle-class households.

When we saw Irans nuclear program speeding ahead while the window for preventative action was closing, we worked in lock-step with a diverse group of nations over several years to peacefully negotiate the toughest non-proliferation arrangement and most rigorous verification system ever devised.

Without our partners, we could never have built or maintained a sanctions regime powerful enough to help bring Iran to the negotiating tableor knitted together an understanding strong enough to verifiably and comprehensively ensure that Irans nuclear program is and will remain exclusively for peaceful purposes.

When Daeshs campaign of terror emerged in ungoverned spaces in Syria and Iraq, we built a coalition of more than 65 countries to bring every political, diplomatic, economic, and military tool to bear against this threatundermining the very foundations of Daeshs self-declared Caliphate and revealing its cause for the savage lunacy that it is.

When Russia violated the sovereignty and territorial integrity of an independent, democratic Ukraine, we turned to the European Union and the G7, core groups of the worlds great democracies, to design and implement our response. We could have simply imposed sanctions and bailed our Ukraine by ourselvesto much less effect and far greater cost. Instead we rallied others, which also helped ensure sanctions didnt wind up hurting American or European companies instead of their intended Russian targets.

In each of these instances and so many more, acting multilaterally, acting with others, has made American leadership more effective.

In a little over a week, just 25 blocks from here, the United Nations will gather in its annual General Assembly. Every day, the bulk of our global engagement happens at the UN, the poster child for multilateralism.

From its earliest moments, the UN has been a source of discomfort for some in the United States. Lately, its high-profile failures and endemic shortcomings have contributed to a perception that we may be better off without it than we are with it.

Anyone who is engaged with the UN knows it can be an increasingly slow and frustrating place. And of course, we dont get our way every time.

But there remains no substitute for the work the UN does, the legitimacy it brings, the reach it allows. We rely on its network of institutions under the UN umbrella to protect us from disease, prevent conflict, deliver life-saving aid, facilitate trade, defend human rights, bring war criminals to justice, and maintain little-known standards that ensure mail is delivered across borders, cell phones work, patents are respected, and airplanes fly safely.

Tarnish and all, it remains the gold standard of global action, and when it is mobilized effectively, the results can be historic.

Just four days ago, the U.S. and China formally entered into the Paris Agreement. There was a time not so long ago when this seemed impossible, when no one believed that the two largest economies and the two largest carbon emitters would join forces after decades at loggerheads. But years of painstaking and painful UN negotiations and leadership, above all, by President Obama, Secretary Clinton, and Secretary Kerry helped produce an agreement among nearly 200 nations and our best shot yet at saving the planet.

Part of our challenge is that it is hard to help some of our fellow citizens imagine what the world would look like without the advantages, for all of the deficits, of this multilateral rules and norms-based system.

It would mean building ad hoc arrangement every single time we wanted to actan extraordinary diplomatic lift that would distract us from the real challenges at hand.

It would mean a world where goods are fewer and more expensive; businesses move slower and the appetite for risk is lower; where travel is harder, educational exchanges tougher, and international research collaboration near impossible.

It would mean anarchy on the high seas, with pirates, drug traffickers, smugglers, and sanctions violators sailing freelyand a global power vacuum filled by those whose values dont look anything like ours.

So now is not the time to abandon that system, the liberal international order that we have spent so much blood and treasure to build over these last seven decades. Now is the time to strengthen it. To adapt it to new realities.

Even as the United Nations has taken on more and more responsibility, it has struggled to keep pace as major new economies have emerged looking for a platform commensurate to their growing importance on the world stage.

Today, the UN faces challenges its founders could scarcely have imaginedfrom cyber-terrorists to violent extremists. And its humanitarian system is under historic strain, buffeted by protracted emergencies and extreme natural disasters. To take just one example, and the President will be focusing on this in a couple of weeks at the Refugee Summit on the margins of the General Assembly, we now have around the world the largest single wave of human displacement since World War II. If every person on the planet displaced by conflict was put in one country, it would be the 24th largest country on this earth. Bigger than Spain. Bigger than South Korea. And that is just one problem that the UN is at the heart of grappling with.

Our challenge today is to adapt the international system to suit a young century while also ensuring that its foundationits rules, the norms, the principlesremain intact and strong.

This work starts at the United Nations, where we will soon have the opportunity to select the next Secretary General. That person must have strong diplomatic and negotiations experience, prove management and leadership skills, a demonstrated commitment to transparency and accountability, and an unflinching adherence to UN principles.

The UN needs a strong leader with a vision for and commitment to fundamental reforms and a culture of accountability so that failures are addressed immediately, effectively, transparently.

And it needs a moral leader with the resolve to speak for the downtrodden, call out bad actors, defend the protection of civilians, and restructure the global humanitarian architectureputting the needs of the worlds most vulnerable people front and center.

In an age more fluid and fraught with complexity than ever before, it is not enough to make little tweaks around the edges of the existing system. We have to think hard about how we redefine multilateral engagement for the times we are living. We have to boldly defend its value and address its failuresmaking it real and relevant in the lives of our fellow citizens and responsive to their legitimate concerns.

This work of reform doesnt come with banners or parades. But it helps real people living real lives here and around the world see the UN is worth fighting for. It ensures our collective action better upholds our promises. And it will help us shape and adapt an international system that actually lives up to the vision of those who first built ita global project that remains now, as it did then, indispensable to the health, strength, security, and prosperity of every nation and especially the United States.

Thank you very much.
Only rubble, as if there had been a bombing, exclaimed Boldrini the President of the House of Representatives, visiting the places hit by the earthquake. Words which require reflecting beyond the images.

Before the agonizing scenes of children who had died under the rubble brought about by the earthquake, how can we not think about those children (that TV has never shown us) dead under the devastation resulting from bombings spanning Yugoslavia through to Libya  bombings in which Italy also participated? It seems that we are at war, recounts one of the throngs volunteers.

But in actual fact, Italy is already embroiled in a war, a live war, where it is burning vital resources that should be allocated to protect our countrys people from landslides and floods that always cause more victims and devastation. In an outburst of generosity, politicians from different regions have proposed to allocate the Superenalotto jackpot (130 million euro) to the areas hit by the earthquake. However not a soul has proposed allocating the jackpot of Italian military expenditure for this objective. According to official Nato figures, this amounts to around 20 billion euro in 2016 (a 2.3 billion increase compared to 2015), an average of 55 million euro per day. In actual fact, this figure is far higher when the out-of-budget expenditure for defence, charged to the High Ministers is taken into account. However going by Nato data, Italys military expenditure in one day alone is greater than what the government has allocated for the earthquake emergency (50 million euro), five times more than what has been collected to date with supportive SMSs.

While there are no funds for reconstruction and for making buildings safe with real anti-seismic systems, nor a long-term plan to respond to earthquakes and hydrological instability.

While the fire-fighters, whose merits on these occasions are formally recognized, they have staff, salary and resources wholly inadequate for the work they are undertaking, often, putting their lives at risk, not only in everyday emergencies, but those increasingly frequent natural disasters (the catastrophic consequences of which are, for the most part, attributable to humans).

On the other hand, there is no shortage of funds and resources for Italian Special Forces that operate in the new war in Libya. At Pisa, where two years ago, a Command for Special Forces of the Army (Comfose) was established, the number of C-130J flights leaving for unknown destinations loaded with arms and resupplies has been increasing for some months now. Such operations are secretly authorized by President Renzi, bypassing Parliament. Art 7 bis of Law n. 198/2015 on extending military missions abroad confers on the President of the Council the power to adopt smart measures to contain, in crisis situations, with the cooperation of the Special Forces of Defence with subsequent arrangements to support the Defense itself, with the sole obligation to refer them formally to the Parliamentary Committee for the Security of the Republic. In other words, the President of the Council is free to use the Special Forces and Intelligence Services in secret operations, with the support of the entire military. A personal power, that is not constitutional and that is also potentially dangerous at the domestic level.

So while the President of the Council, Renzi displays deep emotion at the funeral of the victims of the earthquake and gives lavish promises on reconstruction, he is taking Italy into more wars in the context of the US/NATO strategy and increasing military expenditure at the cost of the countrys essential needs. A cost on top of which is the secret cost of secret military operations that he ordered. While on the promised reconstruction of the areas affected by the earthquake, Renzi guarantees maximum transparency.
The Virginia Tech Mid-Atlantic Aviation Partnership and X's Project Wing will conduct research flights this fall at Virginia Tech, delivering food using unmanned aerial vehicles.

Project Wing is part of X, an innovation lab formerly known as Google[x] that incubates new breakthroughs in science or technology. The flights will be Project Wing's first tests involving external users in the U.S., and is its first collaboration with a Federal Aviation Administration-approved unmanned aircraft test site.

The commercial use of drones for package and food delivery in U.S. airspace is rapidly becoming a reality, said U.S. Sen. Mark R. Warner. We are pleased to work with Project Wing and other great partners to leverage Virginia Techs tremendous research capacity to capitalize on the tremendous business potential promised by unmanned aircraft systems technology.

The current phase of research is taking place at a closed site with a small group of students and employees, and is not open to the public.

The Commonwealth of Virginia and its institutions of higher education are leading the way in the development of unmanned aerial vehicles for commercial use, said Gov. Terry McAuliffe. Virginia Techs work with Project Wing will open new markets for Virginia entrepreneurs and make this emerging industry safer and more affordable. As we work to build a new Virginia economy, cutting edge technologies like unmanned systems will help create jobs and diversify our Commonwealths private-sector portfolio. I look forward to continuing to work with our partners in business, higher education and government to advance this exciting sector and leverage it to make peoples lives better.

The research, a step toward integrating deliveries by unmanned aircraft into everyday life, is a part of Virginia Techs commitment to create intelligent infrastructure for human centered communities, a $75 million initiative to provide experiential learning opportunities for students and build infrastructure that supports sustainable communities and co-evolves with users.

Extended flight tests at Virginia Tech will yield technical, safety, and user-experience data on food delivery via unmanned aircraft. Virginia Tech and Project Wing will share findings from the research with the Federal Aviation Administration.

Virginia Tech has long been a champion of aviation safety, innovation, and entrepreneurship, said Project Wing lead Dave Vos. Our collaboration will generate new data on the operation of a delivery system and aircraft and will help gather insights about how people might use an aerial delivery system in their daily lives. Were grateful to all the partners across Virginia and the FAA who have made these tests possible.

This round of testing will explore food delivery, which has constraints such as time, temperature, frequency, packaging, and volume that make it an ideal research platform.



Last year while discussing the entrepreneurial spirit at Virginia Tech, I jokingly speculated we might one day have quadcopters delivering ramen noodles around campus  apparently I wasnt off by much, said Virginia Tech President Tim Sands. This is what happens when great partners work together in a collaborative, innovative environment. We are continuously seeking new opportunities to support Virginias economy and prepare our students for the future.
Photo: Larry Busacca/Getty Images for MTV

Rapper Desiigner was arrested along with four other people last night in New York City following an alleged road-rage incident near Times Square, TMZ reports. The event began when the driver of Desiigners SUV reportedly got into an argument with the driver of another car. During the dispute, the Panda rapper allegedly pointed a gun at the other driver. After the altercation ended, the driver called 911 and reported the SUVs license-plate number. Police subsequently tracked down the vehicle and found a large quantity of loose pills in the center console, including Oxycontin. An NYPD spokesperson told Billboard that the altercation was a road-rage incident, and confirmed that Desiigner, whose given name is Sidney Royel Selby III, and four others were arrested and charged with felony criminal possession of a controlled substance and felony criminal possession of drugs with intent to sell. Desiigner alone was charged with criminal possession of a loaded weapon, which is also a felony, as well as menacing.
Photo: Michael Loccisano/Getty Images

The Toronto International Film Festival happening means high potential for casting candy, and a few of the latest actors to ink deals are Jeffrey Tambor, Emma Roberts, and Jane Levy, who will all appear in the family drama Four Seasons, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The name of the movie ties to its story structure, as the narrative will unfold over the course of four chapters, with each one corresponding to a different season. Tambor will play Walter, the father of a family in shambles who is leaving his alcoholic wife while trying to manage a troubled daughter, played by Emma Roberts. Meanwhile, Walters son is trying to start a new life across the country in Los Angeles with his girlfriend, Ashley (Levy), but of course its not long before he is mired in the family troubles once again. Tambors character is also a successful public-radio host, which is a job he could probably pull off very well in real life, too. Peter Kline and Pete Shanel will direct Seasons together from a script they wrote.
After a tense exit from Greys Anatomy, youd better believe it took something big to get Patrick Dempsey back in scrubs. That something is a whole host of expert TV physicians gathering across space and time and television universes to tell you to watch out for your health, dummy! Joining McDreamy in the Cigna campaign are Alan Alda (Hawkeye on M*A*S*H), Lisa Edelstein (Cuddy on House), Noah Wyle (John Carter on ER), and Donald Faison (Turk on Scrubs). Were pretty sure that Turk appearing without J.D. violates some kind of international accords, but well let it slide so long as Dempsey gets his doctor pose in shape. Hes the most recent TV practitioner of the crew, but, dang, the man is rusty! Take a lolly and watch above.
Photo: Amazon

You look like shit. Thats how Tig (Tig Notaro), the heroine of One Mississippi, is greeted at the airport near her hometown, and it could serve as a catchall description for this half-hour comedys methods.

Did I type comedy? Sorry, force of habit. Notaro is the star of this Amazon show, its co-creator (with Juno scribe Diablo Cody, her main writing partner), and an executive producer, alongside Louis C.K., whose longtime director of photography shot the show. The result absolutely fits the description of the Comedy in Theory, a 30-minutes-or-less production that might look and feel like a sitcom in some ways, or at least some of the time, but that tends to prize discomfort and brutal honesty over slapstick and jokes. This series is a logical outgrowth of Notaros stand-up career and talk-show appearances, which tend to dwell on (or at least circle back around to) her misfortunes. Shes had plenty, most of them concentrated in a year that included a breast-cancer diagnosis, a double mastectomy, the death of her mother, and a nasty breakup. Yikes, I forgot about the intestinal parasite: Thats covered here, too, and its probably the main reason Tig looks like shit when she arrives home.

Even if her life were going swimmingly, she might still look less than daisy-fresh: Tigs mother is terminally ill, and the instant she arrives, she has to decide  with help from her brother Remy (Noah Harpster) and her stepfather Bill (John Rothman)  whether to pull the plug. The handling of Tigs mothers death confirms what that airport greeting made you suspect: This show isnt into sugarcoating at all. Tig thought terminating life support would just let the old woman slip into the great hereafter, the way it does in movies. Turns out its much messier than that.

Whats the show about? What happens? Those are the questions people tend to ask when you recommend a new series, and here  as is the case with Atlanta and Better Things  Im not certain how to answer them. I guess you could say that One Mississippi is about grief and mourning. It addresses those issues head-on, particularly in scenes that show Bill and Tig arguing about how and when to deal with the estate. Bill is a brilliant study in denial and suppression all by his lonesome; Rothmans delicate layering of resentment and anger over the course of three episodes should be studied by aspiring actors who want to know how to illustrate a basic aspect of the human condition over a long span of screen time without underlining or boldfacing anything. Tig, too, seems as if shes not entirely in touch with the depths of her own pain. As as storyteller-DJ, she is used to turning her life into art, often before life has had a chance to settle; we see her dictating what amounts to an extended answering-machine message to the mother who can no longer hear her, and working out material for her radio show, including song cues for her producer (Now go into One of Us Is Dead, by the Earlies). How much of this artistic woolgathering is truly a means of confronting pain, though, and how much is an elaborate sort of evasion? The show doesnt answer this, but the question is implicit.

One Mississippi is also about more than the darker emotions. Its at its best, perhaps, when showing the emotional complexities of family. Harpster, Rothman, and Notaro have such convincing chemistry that whenever theyre in the same room together, the characters peculiarities of speech and gesture feel so lived-in that you feel as if youre sharing a table with them. Bills anti-sentimental attitude and tendency to fuss and fume agitate Tig and her brother, yet they try not to jump on him too hard under the circumstances. They often express their opinions through very dry, sarcastic asides; Tig calls Bill the only person in the world who can get a cat on a schedule.



Bill tends to view everything in terms of harsh practicalities, as if they are all struggling to survive a zombie apocalypse rather than dealing with sad but mundane events in a Mississippi town. Some of the exchanges are laugh-out-loud funny precisely because they sound like stories youd tell to relatives about your own family members when the subject of the tale is out of earshot. An early-morning kitchen scene finds Remy advising Bill that he doesnt have to wait for the coffee pot to finish brewing, that he can just rob the pot. I prefer to let the machine complete its process, he says. The lively cast of supporting characters include Casey Wilson as Tigs girlfriend, Brooke, whos sweet and upbeat, but also a tad chirpy and smothering, and Stacie Greenwell as Bugsy, who tells Tig that she and her mother and a lot of other people prayed for her recovery, and thats why she survived breast cancer. Tig is skeptical about that, with good reason, but Bugsy wont back down. God, she says, loves everybody, just like any father loves all of his kids, but He appreciates the ones that call Him, and He rewards them more.
The army would launch a major offensive against militants believed to have crossed over from Pakistan

By Indo-Asian News Service: Dozens of civilians were injured in clashes with security forces in continuing protests in the Kashmir Valley today as the army was set to be deployed in the restive southern districts.

Home Minister Rajnath Singh said in Panaji that the situation in the valley was "under better control than earlier" and "will be under complete control" in coming days.

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The comments came as government sources in Srinagar said that more paramilitary troopers were being sent to the Valley and the army was being deployed in south Kashmir, the hub of the ongoing unrest on the streets.

However, the army, which is neither trained in nor equipped with non-lethal weapons, has been told not to get into mob control and react only in "self-defense" if their pickets and camps are attacked by stone-pelting protesters.

MAJOR OFFENSIVE AGAINST MILITANTS

The sources said the army would launch a major offensive against militants believed to have crossed over from Pakistan and are fanning trouble in the aftermath of the July 8 killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani. At least 76 persons have been killed and over 12,000 injured in the violent unrest.

Also at Panaji, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said the increased deployment of troops was for anti-terror activities as the "army does not act in internal matters unless asked by the local authority".

"The local civil administration will have to ask (for) the army there like it happened in Haryana, where the (Jat) agitation took place. When the local administration called the army in, we went there only then and followed the orders of the local administration. We don't operate anywhere internally on our own," Parrikar said.

ARMY CHIEF REVIEW

Significantly, Army chief General Dalbir Singh today reviewed the security situation in the valley, especially in the south, defence sources said here. He also visited forward areas along the Line of Control in Kupwara district.

The street agitation, security restrictions, and separatist-called shutdown have disrupted normal life in the valley for 62 days now. Shops, businesses, schools and private and government offices have remained closed since July 9 - a day after Wani's killing.

The curfew, largely removed since the beginning of this week, was re-imposed on Friday as the authorities feared more violence. But people at various places in Srinagar, south and north Kashmir regions defied the restrictions to march on the streets, shouting anti-government and pro-freedom slogans.

VIOLENT PROTEST

The protesters threw stones at security forces at these places. The forces retaliated with pellet guns, leaving dozens of protesters injured.

The authorities also didn't allow congregational midday prayers at Srinagar's Jamia Masjid - the largest mosque in Jammu and Kashmir - for the eighth Friday in a row.

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Police said curfew was imposed in the old city that houses the mosque to prevent post-Friday prayer stone-pelting protests in the volatile areas around Jamia Masjid.

Police also foiled a scheduled press conference of hardline separatist Syed Ali Shah Geelani at his Hyderpora residence.

Geelani later issued a nearly 2,000-word press statement to the media in which he thanked Pakistan and China for their support to Kashmiris "in their fight for the right to self-determination".

The separatist leader vowed to carry on with the agitation as the "spirit of the struggle for freedom has been seamlessly passed on to the next generation.

"No fight is possible without people willing to sacrifice their lives and livelihoods," he said, hinting that the shutdown won't be called off even as the Muslim festival of Eid is being celebrated on Tuesday.



Kashmir unrest: Centre wants to ramp up security to counter ISIS ideology

Kashmir unrest: PDP whispers turn into clamours for CM Mehbooba Mufti to resign



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Years of organization and work toward a Cultural District designation for Waco paid off when the Texas Commission on the Arts approved Wacos application Wednesday.

Commissioners voted unanimously at their September meeting in Austin to approve the Waco Downtown Cultural District, one of seven new cultural districts named by the state. Wacos district, which covers the same area as the citys downtown Public Improvement District, joins other new ones in Salado, Arlington, Amarillo, downtown Plano, Texarkana and Rockport.

Fiona Bond, executive director of the nonprofit Creative Waco, formed in part to establish a cultural district, said Wacos application topped the stack of the 12 submitted to the Texas Commission on the Arts in June, thanks partly to demonstrated community and political support.

We scored considerably higher than the others. It was extremely gratifying, Bond said after returning from the TCA meeting in Austin. The real strength of our application was that it was such a community effort.

The states approval of the district adds outside support to what many Waco arts supporters, businesspeople and city leaders have argued for years: The arts are an important aspect of the citys economic and cultural life and add considerably to Wacos quality of life, Bond said.

This validates what Waco has been working for so long, she said. Its another feather in Wacos cap.

Attracting funds

This weeks TCA action bumped the number of Texas cultural districts to 35. Cultural districts are designated areas in a city or a community known for a clustering of historic buildings, arts venues, shops, restaurants and similar ventures. Formal cultural district status can attract funding to stimulate arts- related development through tax breaks, economic incentives and financial grants for businesses and organizations in the district.

Its that prospect for economic stimulus that excites Creative Waco board President Charlie Olson, who was delighted at the news of district approval.

This is the result of years of work by lots of people, Olson said. It will pay off big time for the economy of Waco . . . Its a great springboard.

A formal ceremony acknowledging Wacos new cultural district will take place in upcoming weeks, Bond said. One of the first orders of business for the new district will be creating the organizational infrastructure that will allow collection and distribution of various forms of funding for arts programming, organizations and new arts-related startups. By the start of 2017, the district should start on a broader cultural plan that seeks to develop cultural activity in downtown Waco, boost Waco arts organizations and support Wacos creative sector.

Joining Bond in representing Waco at the TCA meeting were TCA board member Linda Hatchel of Woodway; Creative Waco vice president Lisa Sheldon; arts management consultant Luann Jennings; Central Texas Artist Collective co-director Angie Veracruz; Waco filmmaker Louis Hunter; Art Forum of Waco volunteer Jennifer Warren; and Waco artist Michelangelo Flores. The office of State Rep. Charles Doc Anderson, R-Waco, also sent a representative, Bond said.

The collaborative effort behind Wacos cultural district application helped open some eyes to a broader sense of the citys cultural and artistic assets, Veracruz said.

Going through the application process to determine if Waco has what it takes to be a cultural arts district was interesting and definitely led to interesting conversations, she said. Quickly, we began to realize the many cultural gems  landmarks and people  Waco has to offer.
Kejriwal, who was on his way to Amritsar on the second day of his four-day visit to Punjab, was sitting in the front seat of the Innova when it hit the escort vehicle which was moving ahead of it, police said.

By PTI: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal today escaped unhurt when the SUV in which he was travelling rammed into an escort vehicle near PAP chowk on Jalandhar-Amritsar road.

Also read:

Sukhbir Badal has got 63 fake CDs on AAP leaders, alleges Kejriwal

Protests mark Arvind Kejriwal's train ride from Delhi to LudhianaBJP protests against Kejriwal as he begins his Punjab tour

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Kejriwal, who was on his way to Amritsar on the second day of his four-day visit to Punjab, was sitting in the front seat of the Innova when it hit the escort vehicle which was moving ahead of it, police said.

NO ONE INJURED



No one was injured in the mishap. The bumper of Kejriwal's car was damaged, they said.

Besides Kejriwal, others in his car were AAP leaders Bhagwant Mann and Gurpreet Ghuggi. Kejriwal is on a four-day tour of Punjab to give a push to Aam Aadmi Partys poll campaign.

He carried on with his journey to Amritsar where he will pay obeisance at the Golden Temple, a party spokesman said.



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By PTI: Karachi, Sep 9 (PTI) The teenage son of a minister in Pakistans troubled Balochistan province, who was abducted by unknown armed men in May this year, was recovered near the Pak-Afghan border.

Asad Tareen who was kidnapped while returning home from college in Pishin district on May 20 was recovered from the Dolangi area in Killa Abdullah district yesterday.

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Tareen is the son of Balochistans local government minister Sardar Mustafa Tareen.

According to Deputy Commissioner Pishin Abdul Wahid Kakar, Asad Tareen had been shifted to Quetta under tight security.

It is not yet clear whether Asad was recovered as a result of a security forces operation or after the payment of ransom.

Shahbaz Taseer, the son of former slain Punjab governor, Salman Taseer was recovered in March from the Balochistan province after spending five years in captivity. He was kidnapped by militants and kept in Afghanistan.

In May, Ali Haider the son of former Prime Minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani who was kidnapped from Multan was recovered from Afghanistan after three years in captivity of militant outfits. The son of Chief Justice of Sindh High Court was also recovered in July.

Karachi which is Pakistans economic hub and biggest city has for years been a hotbed for criminals, gangsters and militants who are involved in kidnapping for ransom, target killings, sectarian violence, terrorism, bank robberies and other crimes. PTI CORR AJR

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Waco Coin Clubs annual Fall Coin Show will be from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday at the Bellmead Civic Center, 3900 Parrish St.

The show will include more than 20 dealers and collectors who will provide free appraisals and buy and sell United States and foreign coins, gold and silver.

Admission costs $2 for adults and is free to children with paid adults. Proceeds will go toward scholarships at local colleges.

Security and free parking will be provided.

For more information, call Tom Campbell at 224-7761 or email trcam_51@hotmail.com.

Free food distribution

Capital Area Food Bank of Texas and The Shepherds Heart Food Pantry will have the Wheels of Sharing Mobile Food Pantry available for a free food-distribution event from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday in the parking lot at 3300 Franklin Ave.

Participants will receive a variety of fresh food including meat, beans, canned vegetables and fruit, soup, cereal, potatoes, rice, pasta and more.

Clients must bring a box, basket or other container to carry their food.

For more information, call 799-8810 or 716-7064.

Book signing

Local authors Bill and Ellen Foster will have a book signing from 3 to 6 p.m. Friday at Collin Street Bakery, 701 N. Interstate 35 in Bellmead.

Bill Foster will sign copies of his book, Press Pass Gets You in the Door, and Ellen Foster will sign copies of her book, A Bees Eye View.

Both books will be available to purchase for $15 each.

For more information, call 756-0347.

BU costume sale

Baylor University Theatre will have a costume sale from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday at Downtown Storage, 225 Franklin Ave.

The sale will feature pieces that can be used for Halloween, cosplay, etc.

Sale proceeds will benefit the James W. Swain Endowed Scholarship.

For more information, call 710-1861.

Cub Scout car wash

Cub Scout Pack 1400, which meets at New Deliverance Missionary Baptist Church, will have a car wash fundraiser from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday at Auto Zone, 2611 N. 18th St.

Cost is an $8 per car donation.

For more information, call 867-1109 or 749-2441.

Brazos Button Club

Brazos Button Club will meet from 9:30 a.m. to noon Saturday in the Fellowship Hall at Bellmead Church of Christ, 907 Hogan Lane.

Freda Knight will present a program titled Button Superstitions.

Refreshments will be served.

For more information, call Kathy May at 715-8439.

Writers groups

Creative Minds, an all-genre writers group, will meet at 11 a.m. Saturday in the Conference Room at the West Waco Library, 5301 Bosque Blvd.

Jason Stanley will present a program titled Format Your E-Book in Word.

Stanley also will present the program to the Heart of Texas Chapter of Romance Writers of America at 10:30 a.m. at the library.

Both groups are open to the public.

Submit items for Briefly to Briefly, P.O. Box 2588, Waco 76702-2588; fax to 757-0302; or email to goingson@wacotrib.com.
A 17-year-old Brookhaven Youth Ranch resident was arrested Wednesday after a fight broke out between at least two residents, Sheriff Parnell McNamara said.

Saul Alberto Barboza was arrested on a third-degree felony charge of injury to a child after the fight at the nonprofit residential treatment center for youth, located at 5467 Rogers Hill Road near West, McNamara said.

He did not comment on the age of the victim but said Barboza allegedly hit the victim at least three times, causing injuries.

No additional details were available in Barbozas arrest Thursday. He remained in McLennan County Jail on Thursday evening in lieu of a $10,000 surety bond.

Brookhaven, a nonprofit residential treatment center for youth ages 13 to 17, can serve up to 61 teens who are typically referred by the Texas Juvenile Justice Department and the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, according to the ranchs website.

In 2014, a 16-year-old boy was charged with murder in the death of Christian Cuellar, 15, of Travis County. According to Tribune-Herald archives, the two teens started arguing in a dormitory before the argument moved outside, where it became a physical altercation in the parking lot.

McNamara previously told the Tribune-Herald that no knives or guns were used but indicated something might have been used as a weapon in the 15-year-olds death. The suspects name was never released because of his age, despite the murder charge.
Authorities in Lampasas County arrested a man Thursday who they believe robbed a Waco credit union Tuesday and a Midland bank earlier in the week, Lampasas police Lt. Jody Cummings said.

Kevin Lee Renfro, 40, of Childress, was arrested on a second-degree robbery charge at a Country Inn in Lampasas. Kevin Renfro was identified as a suspect in the September 6 robbery of CT Waco Federal Credit Union, at 7804 Central Park Drive, after he allegedly entered the credit union, demanded money from the teller and fled on foot.

Waco police Sgt. W. Patrick Swanton previously reported that an unidentified man entered CT Waco Federal Credit Union and demanded money from the teller at about 2:30 p.m. Tuesday. The teller complied with the suspects demand, giving him an undisclosed amount of money before he fled from the credit union and was last seen running west, he said.

Kevin Renfro was also identified as a suspect in the September 1 robbery of a Midland bank, Cummings said. Officers executed a robbery arrest warrant for Kevin Renfro after members with the U.S. Marshals and Lampasas Sheriffs Office located him in the Country Inn.

In addition to Kevin Renfro, officers arrested Lois Renfro, 46, on a charge hindering apprehension or prosecution and Allen Keith Jackson, 41, on two outstanding traffic warrants. They were contacted at the hotel where officers found Kevin Renfro. Officials seized two vehicles they believe were used in the robberies, plus about 1.5 grams of suspected methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia, Cummings said in a press release.

Each suspect was taken to the Lampasas County Jail, Cummings said. The incident and arrests remain under investigation, Cummings stated.
Officials still are trying to track down who made a threat through a social media app early Wednesday morning that put Midway High School under a soft lockdown part of the day, saying the post could have originated out of state and likely was not directed at Midway.

Hewitt Police Chief Jim Devlin and interim Principal Brent Merritt clarified details of the investigation Thursday morning after the schools Parent-Teacher Association held an open meeting for parents to ask questions and have any concerns answered.

A parent told Hewitt police about 1 a.m. Wednesday about a Snapchat post showing a hand holding a handgun with a statement that said, if you want to be safe, dont go to MHS tomorrow, Merritt said. Snapchat, a mobile storytelling app, deletes certain types of posts a few seconds after they are viewed.

Without the tip from the parent, the police wouldnt have known about the possible threat, Devlin said, praising the See something, say something campaign that encourages people to report suspicious activity.

A student was detained as a person of interest during the investigation, Devlin said Wednesday. As of Thursday morning, no students were facing discipline or charges related to the matter, Merritt and Devlin said.

At this time, Merritt doesnt know where the image originated or whether the letters MHS related to Midway High School or another campus with those initials, he said.

We havent found the original person who posted it and sent it yet, Devlin said. We dont know if its out of state.

About 5 a.m., district officials were given a name that may have been associated with the post. By the time students began arriving, officials thought they had narrowed down the possibilities to four students with the name, Merritt said. As soon as those students arrived at school, they were brought into the office for questioning, Merritt said.

Snapchat handles

We did our investigating, and it led to a lot of interviews with kids with certain names based on Snapchat handles and things like that, Merritt said.

All I have to say is we were able to narrow it down to speculation and rumor from a student who heard it at University (High), who had heard it from someone at Tennyson (Middle School), who heard it from a student at Connally (High School), who originally saw the first Snapchat from a certain handle.

Administrators at every one of those schools were helpful in getting to the original source of the rumor, Merritt said. Devlin confirmed police had to manually verify who sent pictures to whom, from one student to another, which took the investigation outside of Midway to other school districts, though he did not say which ones.

Were going through multiple avenues to track down the originator of this post, Devlin said.

The Connally student told investigators she had been following the handle for a few months but didnt know who the person is, where the person is located or whether MHS actually meant Midway High School, Merritt said. Both Devlin and Merritt urged parents to be aware of their childs social media use.

Students were sent to classrooms earlier than usual as they arrived to campus, and parents were notified through a districtwide email about the incident, Merritt said. The early-morning change was the only operational difference in the day. District officials also discovered a glitch in their messaging system to parents and will be working to resolve the issue, he said.

We dont know if this kid is from Michigan, Washington or Louisiana, but we had to treat it as if it was here because of the information we were given, Merritt said, naming random states. At the end of the day, we felt 99.9 percent certain that picture wasnt meant for Midway High School, but we cant say 100 percent because it did say MHS.
I dont know if he was drunk, just irate or both, but the frustration of at least some American voters might well have been caught up in a graying man only steps behind me as I strolled into Republican Congressman Bill Flores summer town-hall meeting at Texas State Technical College last week. The guy seemed to be spoiling for a fight.

Actually, the gentleman  who proved anything but as the evening unfolded  might have been a few steps ahead of me except that, in pulling into the parking lot, he stopped, rolled down his window and insulted protesters holding up a banner about climate change. Among other things, he claimed that climate change was a hoax and that scientists have been bought off by billionaire financier George Soros.

After parking, he paused, turned their way again and hurled one final insult: Lying fruitcakes! Then, heading for the hall, he told another man that he sure hoped he hadnt fallen for silly climate-change arguments.

Yep. Democracy in action. His opinion counts  and nobody elses.

Republicans inside found themselves more put out with him than the climate protesters were. (The latter are well accustomed to such vitriol.) At one point, while low-key Flores was talking of President Obamas being intractable, the fellow who hated climate-change protesters blurted out: Why do you not impeach him? And when Flores began talking of Lyndon Johnsons failed War on Poverty, the man loudly stole his punchline: It hasnt worked!

And when Flores listed issues that his otherwise well-mannered audience of about 75 might want to discuss and cited climate change, the gentleman shouted: Non-issue!

Finally, after the man complained how nothing ever gets done, even with Republicans in control of the House and Senate, two fellows in the hall older than he was strolled up and made it clear it was time for him to pipe down. One constituent quietly said that he too could yell if it was absolutely necessary.

Two security officers then appeared and the man decided that, well, yes, maybe it was time to pipe down.

The town-hall meeting went on, but it was impossible for Flores or any of the rest of us to forget the man, who, true to his word, remained silent the rest of the evening. But his remarks betrayed the truth about politics today: Even when we elect Republicans to power, nothing much seems to get accomplished.

Flores spent much time during the meeting blaming the failure of one initiative or another on President Obama (who, lets face it, will soon be out of the White House, despite right-wing zealots who once claimed he would never forsake power  any conspiracy buffs still up for that bet?). Flores also attacked the Republican-led Senate with its filibuster rule, which will likely remain in effect if for no other reason than both parties know they might one day need it if they wind up in that chambers minority.

Flores is right about the filibuster but only in the narrowest sense. Its nowhere in the Constitution. But then neither is the House of Representatives destructive Hastert Rule, named for the former Republican House speaker whose misdeeds as a serial child molester landed him in prison: The rule only allows legislation to progress if its stamped for approval by a majority of the majority party in control (rather than a clear majority of the entire House). This means Republicans must cater to the extremists in their party. That in turn guarantees tough sledding for any bill in the Senate, where some consensus is required between parties.

Its wildly disingenuous for Flores to fault the Senate for the filibuster rule while tolerating the Hastert Rule in the House. If Flores wants to end gridlock, he must start by pressing fellow House leaders to scrap the Hastert Rule.

Flores left one other thing unsaid that evening. One reason nothing gets done in Washington is because we regularly elect people who promise to fight for our values and never compromise. Thats terrific  except other people in other parts of our nation who feel very differently on issues such as immigration, tax reform and climate change also elect lawmakers with the same instructions. So everyone convenes in Washington, a lot of grandstanding goes on for the benefit of the folks back home  and nothing of consequence gets done.

If we want change  progress in which we get something by giving something  we better look inward before blaming Flores, Obama or the Republican-led Senate. And we might start by forswearing such behavior as popping off and calling people with whom we disagree lying fruitcakes.
One shouldnt marvel too deeply at the fact 15 years have passed since the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington left nearly 3,000 dead and, however briefly, united us as a nation against radical Islam. Today, sadly, we are a changed nation where we spend more time imagining the worst about one another rather than focusing on the work of defeating our actual enemies.

Granted, foreign policy blunders by two presidents  one a Republican, the other a Democrat  havent helped matters, fueling political discontent. But our response has not done us honor. While cherished few among us signed up to fight against those who attacked us, many of us remained on the homefront, lazily complaining of any sacrifice asked of us. Consequently, two wars against terrorism went largely unpaid for.

Weve also allowed ourselves to be played for fools. Example: Absurd claims the United States recently paid a ransom of some $400 million in cash to free five American prisoners held in Iran. The simple fact is this: The United States owed Iran $400 million in an unrelated dispute going back nearly four decades (when the shah was in power)  and U.S. officials refused to pay the amount owed Iran unless it released those Americans.

Imagine the political uproar if President Obama had paid this old debt to Iran and not used this cash as leverage to secure release of fellow Americans.

Typical reaction from a political party that earlier encouraged the widespread belief that President Obama was foreign-born, Muslim and thus illegitimate as president: Tweets from Central Texas Republican Congressman Roger Williams detailing what overall payments to Iran might have bought, such as a million pallets of Shiner Bock beer. If only foreign policy were as simple and silly as some lawmakers would have us believe.

Americans should be wiser than to swallow such nonsense. If the post-9/11 world has taught us anything, its that radical Islam will not be conquered through ignorance and political shams. We must demand that our leaders  in the White House and Congress  demonstrate more smarts than weve seen so far. That includes recognizing the complex inner war raging in Islam between Shiites and Sunnis all across the Mideast.

Then-President Bush warned Americans the war against Islamic terrorists might endure longer than conventional wars in the past. Time has proven him right, though again foreign policy mistakes over two administrations have contributed to an increase in terrorism throughout the Middle East as well as in Asia, Europe and the United States.

Tough decisions lie ahead, but if we want to honor the dead of 9/11 this Sunday, we must stop treating our fellow Americans with the same disdain that we show Muslim terrorists. Whipping up unnecessary division in the ranks only increases the odds of victory for our sworn enemies.
WAHOO  The Christian Womens Connection will meet at noon on Tuesday, Sept. 13 at South Haven, 1400 Mark Drive, Wahoo.

The guest speaker will be Joyce Yexley of West Fargo, N.D. Joyces topic will be A Broken Dream: From Fiery Trial to New Purpose. Megan Otte will promote her business Paw Spa, located on Broadway in Wahoo.

Lunch will be catered by Cookies and Cream Cafe of Wahoo. For reservations call Barb 402-443-1299 or Mary 402-944-2306. $9 all inclusive. Babysitting is provided with prior notification.
GREENWOOD  Candidates vying for seats on local village boards were required to file by Aug. 1 to appear on the ballot. After the dust settled, it became clear that at least one race would be a crowded affair.

Eight individuals filed to take three available seats on the Greenwood Village Board of Trustees. Nathan Ahlman, Matt Star, Kevin Gerlach, Jeffrey Stewart, Michele Oltrogge, Ann Corey, Jim Shafer and Megan Piehl all filed ahead of the Aug. 1 deadline.

None of the incumbents up for re-election  Harry Swenson, Jim Wrich or Board Chairperson David Moll  filed to re-take their seat. No matter how the at-large election turns out, more than half of the board will be composed of new faces next year.
WAHOO  Local businesses will get their chance to say thanks to customers who shop local during the Wahoo Chamber of Commerces second annual Customer Appreciation Picnic in the Park.

The public is invited to attend the free picnic Sept. 9 at Smith Park in Wahoo. Business sponsors will be serving a Wahoo Weiner, chips, cookie and drink meal from 11 a.m. until 2 p.m.

Chamber President Stacy Ideus said anyone that supports local business is welcome to attend.

We had awesome weather last year, and were hoping for the same this year, along with good fellowship, Ideus said.

According to Wahoo Chamber of Commerce Executive Assistant Jennifer Woita, 54 local businesses are sponsoring this years picnic. With a $40 sponsorship, businesses are welcome to distribute fliers, coupons and other promotional material during the picnic, Woita added.

Woita said the Chamber decided to continue the picnic in the park for the annual appreciation meal after a successful first year revitalizing the concept. She said before last year, businesses sponsored a pancake feed.

Our number in sponsors were kind of dwindling and number of people coming to the pancake feed kept going down, she said. So we decided to change it up a little last year, and we doubled the number of sponsors, businesses that came to work the day of the picnic and the numbers of people we served went up, too.

About 800 Wahoo Wieners and more than 500 individuals were served during last years first picnic in the park. Woita said she expects similar numbers Sept. 9.

Businesses may still sponsor the event. To sign up, businesses may email woita@wahoo.com or call the Chamber office at 402:443-4001.
Intelligence agencies have reported that two of the most wanted terrorists, Hafiz Saeed and Syed Salahuddin are collecting donations across Pakistan to create turbulence in Kashmir Valley.

By Snehanshu Shekhar: Lashkar-e-Toiba chief Hafiz Saeed and Hizbul Mujahideen chief Syed Salahuddin are collecting donations across Pakistan to support their Kashmir campaign. The two most wanted terrorists have involved their NGOs in this task.

Intelligence agencies are learnt to have submitted their reports to the Ministry of Home Affairs on Thursday giving details of the anti-India activities across the border. Hafiz Saeed is seeking donations from Pakistani people through his outfits Jamaat-ud-Dawa and Tehrik-e-Azadi-e-Kashmir.

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Volunteers of the two outfits were spotted in Vijaywali village in Pakistan's Punjab province seeking donations. They made announcements from the village mosque asking people of the area to donate money 'for Kashmiri people'.

PROPAGANDA ABOUT KASHMIR

"Kashmiri brothers don't have money to make their both ends meet. Please help Kashmiri people by giving donations," the Jamaat volunteers were found making announcements.

The terror outfits have set up several camps across Pakistan to collect fund and donation. They told the locals that with the collected donations every Kashmiri civilian would be paid Rs 10,000 while Rs 30,000 would be spent for the treatment of those injured in the clashes with security forces in the Valley.

BURHAN WANI FACTOR

Hafiz Saeed and Syed Salahuddin tried to make a hero out of slain Hizbul commander Burhan Wani, who was killed in an encounter with the security forces on July 8. Burhan's posters were being put up in Pakistan by the terror outfits to secure donations from the locals.

Anti-India slogans were also raised at Jamaat-ud-Dawa camps. The donation camps of the terror outfits also have banners with 'Movement for Kashmir liberation' written on them.

The posters put out by Jamaat-ud-Dawa shows Burhan along with Hafiz Saeed. Another organization headed by Hafiz Saeed, Fallah-e-Insaniyat is also involved in the aggressive collection of funds.

FRESH TERROR ALERTS

The intelligence agencies have also reported that the terror organizations operating out of Pakistan's soil are planning fresh attacks on military installations in Jammu and Kashmir, Haryana, Delhi and Rajasthan.

MHA has issued fresh alerts to the concerned states on the basis of new information.



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WAHOO  Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Wahoo will host a special breakfast and church service on Sunday, Sept. 11 to honor area first responders.

We want to show solidarity with our first line of defense and first line of help and honor those that do that kind of work for us, said Pastor Robert Hayden.

The breakfast and church service are open to the community, but especially those first responders, doctors, nurses and dispatchers, Hayden said.

A pancake and sausage breakfast will begin at 8 a.m. at the church.

Appreciation baskets will be taken to those first responders in the community that are working or on duty, he added.

At 10 a.m. a special church service will commence, with guest speakers from the community giving their perspective on where were at today, said Saunders County Sheriff Kevin Stukenholtz.

Its the 15th anniversary of 9-11, and with the backdrop of whats been going on, the summer has not been pleasant for a lot of police around the nation, Hayden said.

Stukenholtz and Dr. Jared Pehrson will be two area representatives speaking on Sunday morning.
Every day, at the crack of dawn, Sohail Khan, a progressive farmer from Chittora village in the Raisen district of Madhya Pradesh (MP), sets out on his tractor for his paddy fields, wading through the slush created by a surplus monsoon. For the past five years, ever since branded rice companies began making their way to this area to buy produce, Khan has sown rice paddy and reaped the benefits. Khan's agricultural arsenal includes tractors, heavy-duty hydraulic trolleys, ploughs, drills and sprays, all well maintained and self funded from his farm income. Khan's pride in his farm, his work and his achievements is palpable: "Even if I had a choice, I wouldn't do anything else by way of a profession," he says. At work, Khan oversees the manual weeding process and spraying of pesticides, making sure that not a single furrow is overlooked by the hired labour. It is, after all, his gold. He will return home only around sunset, tired but pleased at the prospect of a bumper crop some months from now.

Madhya Pradesh clocked more than 20 per cent growth in 2014-15 over the previous year. It has come a long way from the (-)4.7 per cent recorded in 2004-05, and in the process won the Union government's Krishi Karman award, for the highest growth in food production, for four years on the trot. Agricultural production has doubled in the past 10 years, and MP is now the second largest producer of wheat from being the fourth largest some years ago. The numbers are even more impressive when one takes into account the fact that agricultural output in the country grew at a paltry 1.1 per cent in 2014-15, and that the farm sector's contribution to the GDP is constantly declining.

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MP's chief minister, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who occupied the state's top political office while this turnaround took place, has a direct connect with this issue. He is known to visit his farm at Bais village in Vidisha district, about 60 km from state capital Bhopal, two to three times a month. There, in consultation with caretakers, he oversees his pomegranate plantation and poly house-a kind of greenhouse-in which Gerbera daisies are grown, and keeps tabs on how his flowers fare at the market. Having already used the 'kisan putra' tag to his advantage in his political career, CM Chouhan often holds forth these days as a kisan himself-one of the 9.88 million farmers in the state-speaking at numerous public meetings on the virtues of adopting progressive agricultural practices over traditional ones to make farming remunerative. However, to lay all the credit for this turnaround at one man's door would be simplistic. There are many factors that have contributed to the resurgence in MP's agricultural fortunes, and one of them is the enterprise of the farmers themselves.

Rewind to year 2005. Soyabean cultivation, once hailed as a sure route to prosperity for MP's farmers, had become mired in macro-level issues such as low exports, erratic rainfall, and increasingly problematic pest-control. The initial success with soyabean cultivation from the '80s onward had ushered in a wave of mechanisation and rural prosperity. But by 2005, returns on that crop had plummeted, and farmers were looking for the next big thing. It was then that they began to consider the cultivation of 'basmati' paddy as a viable alternative. (MP is currently fighting a legal battle to allow its rice crop to be certified as 'Basmati', which is a geographical tag, just as 'Darjeeling' is for tea and 'Champagne' is for sparkling wine. At present, MP's rice crop has not been granted that distinction.)

Paddy of the traditional kind has been cultivated for long in the eastern and northern parts of the state. However, the central Narmada region, including the districts of Raisen, Hoshangabad, Narsinghpur and Harda-of late, the most prosperous areas for agriculture in MP-took to rice cultivation in a big way, preparing the ground for a transformation. Today, produce is being procured from farmers of this region by numerous branded rice companies, mainly for export. While procurement prices depend on global factors, the crop has offered unprecedentedly high returns-as much as Rs 4,500 a quintal, or Rs 90,000 per acre-which is six times more than soyabean. The introduction of long grain rice, such as Basmati, has ensured a productivity increase from 6.6 quintals per hectare in 2002-03 to 24.5 quintals per hectare in 2014-15.

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Dharmendra Chauhan, a farmer in the Bai tehsil of Raisen district, narrates a story to illustrate the booming prosperity. "One night, a few years ago, a farmer from a neighbouring village came to my house on his way back from the mandi, after selling his crop. He said he didn't want to carry a gunny bag he was holding at that hour, and wanted to leave it with me. I casually told him to keep it in the shed, asking him what it contained. When he told me it was cash from the sale of 600 quintals of paddy, I could barely believe my ears. I offered to keep the bag safely inside the house," says Chauhan.

Soon, companies manufacturing consumer goods were scouting the area to tap its disposable wealth. "There was a consistently high growth, of about 30 per cent, in the sales of SUVs on either side of the Narmada, in Raisen and Hoshangabad district, for about three years. It was mainly possible after farmers took to cultivation of rice in the area. Growth was recorded in sales in all areas, except Bundelkhand, where sales were sluggish. A similar jump was seen in tractor sales as well," says Virendra Singh of Win Win automobiles, a Mahindra dealership in the area.

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This success would not have been possible without some key interventions on the part of the state government. Ensuring the availability of water for irrigation was one such. The implementation of already-announced irrigation projects was speeded up, and a restructuring of the water sector also took place, thanks to aid from the World Bank. The rural development department also contributed to this increase in productivity, via schemes such as Kapil Dhara, under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS). The increased availability of certified seeds was another such state government intervention. There has been an almost ninefold increase in availability of certified seeds over the past 20 years, which was considered a key driver of growth. In a similar vein, the shortage of fertilisers was an enduring theme in MP's agriculture cycle till about five years ago. Administrative interventions such as advance stock building have helped increase the amount available for use by farmers.

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Mechanisation has been on a steady rise too. There has been a threefold increase in tractor sales in the past 10 years, which is partly due to the easy credit available to farmers for the purpose. Two hundred villages have been developed as yantradoot gram (mechanised villages), where output increases in agriculture have been recorded in third-party evaluations. However, naysayers point to the fact that the surge in tractor sales corresponded with the infrastructure boom in the country, and especially the spike in road construction in rural areas under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY). The investment in tractors during this period, they say, was indirectly subsidised by the high demand for rental earthmovers by road contractors. Nonetheless, the availability of tractors seems to have helped bring a larger area under cultivation in the state.

Another factor contributing to the increased production is the availability of power for agricultural use. This has been a contentious issue in MP for quite some time now-power availability was the 'B' in 'BSP', or 'bijli, sadak, paani', the issue successfully invoked by the BJP in the 2003 assembly elections to oust the Congress. In 2008-09, the availability of power for pumps stood at 0.80 Kilowatts (Kw) per hectare. By 2013-14, that number had increased to 1.36 Kw per hectare. Currently, about 16.1 billion units of power is being supplied to the agriculture sector, up from 6.7 billion units in 2009-10.

One of the most striking incentives offered by the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government has been farm credit at zero per cent interest, available since 2012-13. In the past, farm loans were given at 5 per cent interest. The waiving of interest not only ensures that farmers buy fertilisers and seeds on credit, but also leaves them with cash in hand for other expenses. "There are about 2.8 million farmers in MP in the credit net," says cooperatives minister Vishwas Sarang. "We plan to increase this number to 3.8 million in the next two years. A total amount of about Rs 13,500 is disbursed as credit to each farmer through state government cooperative banks at zero per cent interest in a given year."

In a bid to keep up the tempo, the state government has decided to focus on soil health, to determine what kind of fertilisers need to be supplied. Soil health cards are to be issued to 10.7 million farmers, and to better predict seasonal changes, 1,200 automated weather stations and 33,000 rain gauges will be placed across the state. There is also a focus on the use of customised farming equipment as this will promote mechanisation. Another focus area will be to bring more area under cultivation for the 'third crop cycle' in the summer months; currently, this stands at 3.6 lakh hectares. The state government has also adopted the target of doubling farm incomes in the next five years. The critics, however, point to an interesting statistic that mars the MP story. The 2001 census put the number of farmers in the state at 11 million, but as per the 2011 census, there were only 9.88 million farmers. In other words, there was a net drop of 1.12 million in the number of farmers in these ten years. If farming in MP was so profitable, ask some, why would this happen? Moreover, in 2001, there were 7 million people working as agriculture labour; this increased to 12.2 million in 2011. Do these numbers suggest that farmers have been becoming labour on their own lands, or did the increase in labour supply come from somewhere else?

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On Sept.7, 2016, four members of the CAF Capital Wing participated in a vintage WWII-era aircraft flyover during the inurnment ceremony for Women Air Force Service Pilot (WASP) Second Lieutenant Elaine D. Harmon at Arlington National Cemetery. The flyover took place at approximately 10:05 a.m. over Arlington.

Harmon requested that her ashes be inurned at Arlington National Cemetery, with other WASP. However, former Army Secretary John McHugh ruled in March 2015 that WASP should not be buried at Arlington under then-current law. Harmons family spearheaded the effort to reverse the policy, and in early 2016 Senators and members of Congress from both parties introduced legislation to change the law. On May 20, 2016, President Obama signed a bipartisan, bicameral legislation into law that restored burial rights of the WASP, allowing inurnment at Arlington National Cemetery.

Harmon, a native of Rockville, Maryland, passed away April 21, 2015 at the age of 95. She trained at Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas as a member of WASP class 44-9, and after completing training in November 1944, was stationed at Nellis Air Base, Nevada. During Harmons career, she flew the PT-17, BT-13 and AT-6 Texan, and served as co-pilot on the B-17 Flying Fortress.

CAF Capitol Wing Leader Daniel Haug, Executive Officer James Koch, and members Michael Hogan and Brian Cotter volunteered to participate in the flyover for Harmon, to honor not only Harmons service, but also that of all WASP who served during WWII. Scott Scooter Yoak and Robert Dickson also participated in the flyover with their own P-51 Mustangs. Mike Hogan was the pilot in command and Brian Cotter the passenger of a unique T-6 Texan that served with the WASP while assigned to the 318th Army Air Forces Flying Training Detachment, the unit with the mission to train WASP at Avenger Field. The T-6 Texan was manufactured at the North American Aviation Factory in Dallas, as one of 2, 970 AT-6Cs for the U.S. Army Air Forces and designated as an AT-6C-10-NT. It was assigned USAAF serial number 42-4125, and Manufacturers Serial Number 88-12254. Cotter said he became motivated to volunteer after learning the connection the T-6 Texan had with the WASP and at the same time hearing about how the Harmon family fighting for their grandmothers right to be inurned at Arlington National Cemetery. Im very pleased we were able to make this happen, said Cotter, and that the family appreciated our efforts.

Aircraft accident records indicate that this aircraft was present for duty and suffered a minor mishap on Oct. 13, 1943, with civilian pilot Mr. O.L. Birchfield, a flight instructor, and Constance B. Turner, a WASP Class 43-W-7 Woman Pilot student on board. Luckily, damage to the aircraft was slight.North American Aviation later remanufactured the aircraft to T-6G standards at the NAA plant in Downey, California, and assigned it construction number 168-47. Technicians completed the project on May 22, 1950. In the early 1960s the USAF surplused the aircraft, and it entered the civilian registry circa 1963 as N6253C. The aircraft is now based at Culpeper Airport, Brandy Station, Virginia.

The CAF introduced a new initiative to launch a new educational program, RISE ABOVE: WASP, which will focus on educating young minds of the tremendous acts and braveries of the Women Airforce Service Pilots of WWII. Visit www.riseabovewasp.org for more information about the up-and-coming program.


Huang Xiangmo and Sam Dastyari at a press conference for the Chinese community in Sydney on July 17, 2016. Still Dastyari was determined to stick it out, hence the disastrous press conference he held on Tuesday this week, the performance that finally undid him. Asked time and again why he had asked a company to pay his bill, he was unable to give an answer. To anyone watching, the reasonable conclusion was that Dastyari did not pay his bill because he did not want to, because he was greedy, and because Australian politicians simply don't have to pay bills if there is someone else around willing to - even if that person happens to be a friend of a foreign government. Dr Zhu with Gillard government foreign minister Bob Carr after being appointed to the Chinese Ministerial Consultative Committee. Credit:TEI The following day Dastyari resigned from his frontbench positions.

Australia's political parties are addicted to cash, particularly donations. Over the past five financial years, the major parties - Labor, Liberal, the Nationals and the Greens - have taken in about $887 million, according to Australian Electoral Commission returns, in public funding, donations, membership fees and fundraising efforts. Donations form a significant portion of this pie, but the exact size is obscured by loose disclosure laws and associated fundraising vehicles. Prime Minister Turnbull now finds himself under increasing pressure to reform donor laws. Speaking from a series of summits in Asia this week, he reiterated his long-standing personal view that donations would "ideally" be limited to individuals on the Australian electoral roll, striking off corporations, unions and foreign nationals. "I've always felt that would be a good measure," he said. Whatever his feelings on the matter, so far the PM has taken little action. He has suggested reforms should be considered by the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, a committee as yet unformed in this Parliament and one that has historically been seen as a paper tiger. Meanwhile, his ever-enthusiastic predecessor, Tony Abbott, has seized the initiative, calling for sweeping reforms to curb "influence-buying" and "subversion of the system".

Labor is pushing hard for a ban on foreign donations, and Liberal figures as diverse as Christopher Pyne, Cory Bernardi and Steve Ciobo have thrown their weight behind change in various forms. Several roadblocks stand in the way of reform, chief among them self-interest (the horse that's always trying, as Paul Keating once observed). Both Labor and the Coalition rely heavily on corporate cash, and Labor on funds from unions. A Fairfax Media analysis this week showed the major political parties would lose 90 per cent of their high-value donations if donations were limited to individuals on the electoral roll. Then there is the High Court. The former NSW premier, Barry O'Farrell, (a man brought down by a gift) legislated a comprehensive ban on donations from corporations, unions and other organisations. But the ban was struck down by the High Court following a challenge led by the unions, with the bench ruling that banning certain types of donors was an unjustified burden on political communication. The case saw Unions NSW and the libertarian Institute of Public Affairs forge an unlikely alliance, and on Friday the IPA railed against Abbott's prescriptions as an undemocratic, unconstitutional "attack on freedom of speech". Critics say any attempt to replicate O'Farrell's failed reforms nationally would die a similar High Court death, but Adjunct Professor Colleen Lewis of Monash University, who has written a report on the issue, dismisses the concern. "You can just step over the High Court problem," she says.

Lewis argues that if the size limit on donations was lowered to, say, $1000 or less, you would not have to ban certain types of donors, like developers, because their influence would be no larger than an individual's. She does, however, support bans on foreign citizens and entities donating to Australian candidates or parties, which brings us back to Dastyari and China. This week Dastyari might have felt himself to be at the centre of this story, but in truth he is just a minor cog in a far larger machine of political gift-giving and influence-peddling that China has built to advance its global influence. Australia's politicians and political parties took $5.5 million in donations from Chinese-linked firms in the two years to June 2015, according to an ABC analysis of disclosures to the Australian Electoral Commission, and both sides of politics have benefited. Chief among the donors is property developer Yuhu Group and its chairman Huang Xiangmo.

More than $1 million in donations to both major parties have come from companies and individuals associated with Huang, who uses his position as chair of the Australian Council for the Promotion of Peaceful Reunification of China (ACPPRC) to promote Beijing's core interests, including lobbying against Tibet and Taiwan independence. The Bayside Forum, which supports the federal Liberal seat of Goldstein which was held by former trade minister Andrew Robb up until his retirement, received $100,000 from interests linked to Huang, including $50,000 on the day the China-Australia free trade agreement was finalised and announced by Robb and then prime minister Tony Abbott. Robb also endorsed Yuhu's $2 billion agriculture investment joint venture fund at its launch in September 2014. And interests linked to Huang donated $280,000 to the Western Australian division of the Liberal Party. Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop, the leading federal member of the party in that state, has been effusive in praise of Huang's contribution to Australia and helped open the Australia-China Relations Institute (ACRI) at the University of Technology , which was funded by Huang's $1.8 million donation. In the end, it was a $5000 payment from Huang to Dastyari to help settle the senator's legal bills that has claimed a political scalp. Huang was alongside Dastyari as the Labor senator pledged to respect China's position on the South China Sea during a June federal election campaign press conference. Even if reforms preventing foreigners from making political donations in Australia were passed, they would have little effect on China's deployment of soft power on our shores. Many major donors with Chinese government ties, including property and media tycoon Chau Chak Wing, and Top Education's Minshen Zhu, have long been Australian citizens.

And no tweaking of donations laws would have had an effect on the money Dastyari took, which was a personal gift. Besides, China has many more weapons in its soft-power arsenal than cash. Chinese government influence can be heard in the voices of Australian business figures who warn that the Australian government's stance on the South China Sea could damage their business interests in China. It can be seen in media deals too. Fairfax Media, publisher of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, prints and distributes a monthly news liftout from the China Daily. And separately, the ABC cut its local Chinese language radio service as it sought a semi-commercial deal to operate in China. The Chinese government has made its presence felt on university campuses across the country with the establishment of Confucius Institutes, which teach language and culture at discounted rates.

It disseminates research via institutions such as ACRI, which Huang himself chairs and personally appointed former foreign minister and NSW premier Bob Carr to be its director. From that position, Carr has been enthusiastic in championing policy positions that have coincided with Chinese state views. After the Foreign Investment Review Board blocked the sale of Ausgrid to China, for example, Carr condemned the decision across Australian media. In response, the Treasurer, Scott Morrison, said Carr had not been privy to the national security briefings he had received and was uttering "complete nonsense". "Frankly the former foreign minister should know better," he said. In a statement this week Carr told Fairfax Media, "We take an unabashedly positive and optimistic view of the Australia-China relationship. Our position is no different from think tanks in Australia that receive American funding and take an optimistic and positive view of America and the US alliance."

Carr finds himself bound to this story by Dastyari too. In February 2012, following the sudden resignation of Mark Arbib from the Senate, Dastyari was able to lure Carr out of political retirement with the offer of not just a Senate seat, but the plum foreign affairs portfolio. Dastyari had joined Carr's staff the day before he stepped down as NSW premier in 2005. Now he was playing kingmaker. Both Carr and Dastyari, along with Labor frontbencher Chris Bowen, Liberal elder Philip Ruddock and Barry O'Farrell were listed as patrons of the pro-Beijing ACPPRC which Huang chairs. Both Dastyari and Bowen have since been removed from the council's website. Writing in a comment piece for the Global Times last month after an ABC investigation detailed millions Chinese-linked interests poured into Liberal and Labor Party coffers, Huang Xiangmo said the scrutiny smacked of "racism" and blurred the lines between Chinese nationals and Australians of Chinese ethnicity. He rejected suggestions his and other donations had the potential to "skew Australia's democracy". One of Australia's leading China observers is John Fitzgerald, director of Swinburne University's Program for Asia-Pacific Social Investment and Philanthropy.
A member of Malcolm Turnbull's leadership group has backed reform of Australia's political donations laws, suggesting unions and corporates should be banned from giving money and real-time disclosure implemented.

Deputy Nationals leader Fiona Nash told Fairfax Media on Friday that she backed changes to the donations system to "level the playing field in Australian politics".

At the same time, the Australian Council of Trade Unions, the Australian Industry Group and third party campaigners GetUp! all backed changes to Australia's donations system to rebuild confidence and trust in the political system - though those groups split on what changes should be implemented.

Senator Nash's comments come as momentum for reform builds in the wake of the scandal that engulfed Labor senator Sam Dastyari this week over donors picking up legal and travel bills.
"A few months ago my teenage son thought racism towards Muslims was dropping," says one woman at a meeting for Muslim mothers in western Sydney. "Yesterday he was asking me how Pauline Hanson secured four seats in the Senate. How do I respond to that?"

Her comment sparked an avalanche of examples of external influences plaguing Muslims parents, from radicalisation, racism, hate, cult groups and terrorism to loss of identity.

The woman, who has not been identified, was wearing a headscarf when a stranger lit her clothes on fire. Credit:Jessica Islam Lia

The future of Muslim boys in Australia was one of the many fears mothers highlighted at a recent Mothers Inspire Mothers (MIM) meeting held at the Muslim Women's Association's half way house, in Bass Hill, last month.

Raising boys is becoming an increasingly tough and daunting task for Muslim mothers. Many said they were finding it difficult to keep their sons motivated and positive in an era where racism was on the rise and angry youths were rebelling against authority.
The Australia Day fireworks in the southern suburbs are officially dead after the City of Cockburn decided it couldn't afford to foot the bill for the event.

Late last month the City of Fremantle voted to scrap the fireworks after deeming the event "culturally insensitive".

Fremantle's Australian Day fireworks event will no longer take place. Credit:Jay Cronan

The cancellation of the fireworks sparked condemnation from many quarters with the Chair of the Prime Minister's Indigenous Advisory Council, Warren Mundine, saying it was a "silly decision".

Cockburn council, which contributed $25,000 a year towards the $170,000 annual event, was hoping to continue the Indian Ocean Fireworks, but after crunching the numbers found it was going to leave the city almost a quarter of a million dollars out of pocket.
By PTI: irrigation

Bhubaneswar, Sep 9 (PTI) Ahead of the proposed meeting between Odisha and Chhattishgarh Chief Ministers over Mahanadi water dispute, former irrigation minister Niranjan Patnaik today suggested the BJD government demand a special package from the Centre for development of irrigation facilities.

"Take a strong stand in the meeting with the Chhattisgarh Chief Minister and ask for a special package from the Union government," he wrote in a letter to Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik.

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Welcoming the proposed meeting between Naveen Patnaik and Raman Singh likely on September 17, the Congress leader said the two states should soon be able to agree to a just solution over sharing of Mahanadi waters.

Asserting that Hirakud Dam is a national project and it is the responsibility of the Centre to protect the catchment area of Mahanadi. The state should not allow it to die a silent death and the Centre must restore status quo ante, Niranjan said. PTI AAM MD NSD

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MRIs, doctors' latest weapon against prostate cancer, are saving lives  but at up to $800, they can be a financial bridge too far for someone on the pension or the poverty line, without private insurance.

Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer killer of men. Traditional Medicare-covered diagnostics are the dreaded digital exam and blood tests, with biopsies needed for the final say.

Neither is accurate enough to distinguish potentially fatal cancers from benign tumours and both tests also miss harmful cancers, the Cancer Council website says.

MRIs are becoming central to the management of prostate cancer and greatly increase effectiveness of such diagnostics, but despite MRI checks for most common cancers being subsidised by Medicare, prostate examinations are not yet on the list.
We've all been guilty of sniffing that one-week-old carton of milk in the fridge to check for any unwanted signs of life.

But would you do the same for old meat?

The National Retail Association has slammed proposed amendments to trading hours legislation.

A Perth supermarket is in hot water after being publicly named and shamed by the Health Department for selling expired food to its customers.

Willetton IGA was guilty of selling a range of food products including meat, cheese and yoghurt beyond their use by dates.
Air Force One over Midway Atoll, which Obama visited last week to expand the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument. Credit:A.J. Chavar/New York Times Obama chalks up the contradictions both to politics and to the amorphous, unseen nature of the threat. "It feels like, 'Meh, we can put this off a little bit'," he said. The president spoke in a cottage on a Marine base that overlooks Kaneohe Bay in his home state, Hawaii. Angry waves crashed on the rocks below the house, the sea churned by one of two hurricanes spinning close to the island. Hawaii, as one of Obama's climate advisers pointed out, normally does not get back-to-back hurricanes. "When you see severe environmental strains of one sort or another on cultures, on civilisations, on nations, the byproducts of that are unpredictable and can be very dangerous," Obama said. "If the current projections, the current trend lines on a warming planet continue, it is certainly going to be enormously disruptive worldwide."

'All bets are off' Eight years ago, when Obama ran for president against Republican Senator John McCain, both men had essentially the same position on global warming: It is caused by humans, and Congress should enact legislation to cap greenhouse gas emissions and force polluters to buy and trade permits that would slowly lower overall emissions of climate-warming gases. But in the summer of 2010, a cap-and-trade bill Obama had tried to push through Congress failed, blocked by senators from both parties. "One would have hoped for transformational leadership, in the way JFK would have done it," said Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. That domestic defeat was compounded by failure on the world stage after efforts to enact a highly anticipated United Nations climate change treaty in Copenhagen fell apart in 2009.

By the fall of 2010, Tea Party super PACs supported by the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch had seized on cap-and-trade as a political weapon, with attacks that helped Republicans take control of the House. Polls showed that few Americans thought of climate change as a high public policy priority, and the percentage of voters who accepted the reality that it was caused by humans had tumbled. "There is the notion that there's something I might have done that would prevent Republicans to deny climate change," Obama said. "I guess hypothetically, maybe there was some trick up my sleeve that would have cast a spell on the Republican caucus and changed their minds." In fact, some Republicans, including Senator Lamar Alexander, were willing to go forward with a more limited climate bill that would have restricted emissions only from power plants. But the president's own party would not unify even around that, with Democrats from industrial and coal states digging in against him. Ironically, Obama would end up with regulations that narrowly target power plant emissions. "The White House wanted 60 votes on climate, and they weren't interested in Republican votes," Alexander said in an interview. "Now it's back to power plant only. The lesson here is that if people who want a result would be a little bit more flexible, they might actually get one."

In defeat, the president appeared cowed. Campaigning against Mitt Romney in 2012, he barely mentioned climate change. But soon after Election Day, Obama interrupted a broad discussion with historians about the country's challenges with a surprising assertion. Douglas Brinkley, a historian who attended the session, recalled, "Out of nowhere, he said, 'If we don't do anything on the climate issue, all bets are off'." Obama, who understood that a legislative push would be fruitless, told his advisers to figure out how to enact deep emissions cuts without Congress. They found a way through the Clean Air Act of 1970, which gives the Environmental Protection Agency the authority to issue regulations on dangerous pollutants. In 2014, Obama unveiled the first draft of what would become the Clean Power Plan: a set of Clean Air Act rules that could lead to the closing of hundreds of coal-fired power plants. The move enraged critics, including Senator majority leader Mitch McConnell, whose state Kentucky relies heavily on coal.

The legality of the climate rules is likely to be decided by the Supreme Court, the composition of which depends on the outcome of the presidential election. Deep-pocketed corporations will not give up the legal fight easily, even after a Supreme Court decision, and Republicans in Congress will continue their legislative attacks. If the rules survive, they will almost certainly cost the coal industry thousands of jobs. "What we owe the remaining people who are making a living mining coal is to be honest with them," Obama said, "and to say that, look, the economy is shifting. How we use energy is shifting. That's going to be true here, but it's also going to be true internationally." Scrutinising the science Few people would have described Obama as a climate evangelist when he ran for the White House in 2008. While he invoked the rising seas and heating planet to thrill his young supporters, he did not have the long record of climate activism of Al Gore or John Kerry, who is now his secretary of state. Like many things with Obama, his evolution on climate was essentially an intellectual journey. Obama immersed himself in the scientific literature, which left little doubt that the planet was warming at an accelerating rate. "My top science adviser, John Holdren, periodically will issue some chart or report or graph in the morning meetings," he said, "and they're terrifying".

The morning Obama unveiled the final version of the Clean Power Plan last year, he summoned his senior climate adviser, Brian Deese, to the Oval Office. Deese expected that the president would hand him some last-minute changes to his speech. Instead, he brought up an article in the journal Science on melting permafrost. The research not only documented faster increases in temperatures, but also drew direct links between fossil fuel emissions and extreme weather. Obama scrutinised reports like the 2014 National Climate Assessment, which tied climate change to events like flooding in Miami and longer, hotter heat waves in the south-west. "More and more, there are events that are happening that are astoundingly unusual, that knock your socks off, like the flooding in Louisiana," said Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University. "Those are the kinds of events where it's becoming possible to draw attribution." Ben Rhodes, one of the president's closest aides, recalled Obama talking about Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Jared Diamond's 2005 best seller, which explored the environmental changes that wiped out ancient societies like Easter Island and discussed how modern equivalents like climate change and overpopulation could yield the same destruction.

The president's Pacific roots also came into play. In Honolulu last week, he told a meeting of Pacific Island leaders that few people understood the stakes of climate change better than residents of their part of the planet. Crops are withering in the Marshall Islands, he noted. Kiribati is buying property in another country for the day that its own land vanishes beneath the waves. And villagers in Fiji have been forced from their homes by high seas. Shifting monsoon patterns in South Asia could affect one billion people who depend on low-lying agriculture, Obama said. "If you have even a portion of those billion people displaced," he said, "you now have the sorts of refugee crises and potential conflicts that we haven't seen in our lifetimes." "That," he added, "promises to make life a lot more difficult for our children and grandchildren." Joining forces with China

Obama and Hillary Clinton never seem to tire of telling the story of Copenhagen: In December 2009, with the climate conference on the verge of failure, the two learned of a meeting of the leaders of Brazil, China, India and South Africa, from which they had been pointedly excluded. Elbowing their way past a Chinese security guard, they crashed the meeting, and over the course of 90 minutes of tense negotiations with the abashed leaders, they extracted an agreement to set goals for lowering emissions. The Europeans, who had been cut out of the talks, derided the deal as toothless, but Obama learned from the experience. A global climate accord could not simply be a compact among developed economies, he said. It had to include the major developing economies, even if they resented being held to standards that had never applied to the club of wealthy nations. And any agreement had to be led by the two largest emitters, the United States and China. Obama set about persuading Chinese President Xi Jinping to join the United States in setting ambitious reduction targets for carbon emissions. Tensions were already high over China's hacking of US companies, and the United States was balking at China's slow-motion colonisation of the South China Sea. A casual, get-acquainted summit meeting between Obama and Xi at the Sunnylands estate in California in June 2013 had failed to break the ice. But the meeting did produce one headline: an agreement to explore ways to reduce emissions of hydrofluorocarbons, known as HFCs, potent planet-warming chemicals found in refrigerants. In hindsight, it would prove significant. The final international accord on the chemicals is expected to be ratified next month in Rwanda. "It was a place Obama and Xi found some common ground," said John Podesta, a chief of staff to President Bill Clinton whom Obama recruited to lead his climate efforts in his second term. (Podesta is now the chairman of Clinton's presidential campaign.)

Podesta and Todd Stern, the State Department's climate envoy, began arduous negotiations with China. They were backed by Kerry and Obama, who sent Xi a letter with a proposal in which the United States would pledge to increase its target for reducing carbon emissions by 2025 if the Chinese pledged to cap and then gradually reduce their emissions. China had historically resisted such agreements, but the air pollution there had become so bad, Obama noted, that the most-visited Twitter page in China was the daily air-quality monitor maintained by the US Embassy in Beijing. "One of the reasons I think that China was prepared to go further than it had been prepared to go previously," Obama said, "is that their overriding concern tends to be political stability. Interestingly, one of their greatest political vulnerabilities is the environment. People who go to Beijing know that it can be hard to breathe." The Chinese were also swayed by Obama's announcement in 2014 of his regulations to reduce emissions from coal-fired power plants, which gave Kerry and his team of climate diplomats the leverage they needed in months of meetings with China. On November 11, 2014, after a quiet stroll across a bridge in the Chinese leadership compound beside the Forbidden City, Xi and Obama sealed their agreement. "By locking in China," Obama said, "it now allowed me to go to India and South Africa and Brazil and others and say to them: 'Look, we don't expect countries with big poverty rates and relatively low per-capita carbon emissions to do exactly the same thing that the United States or Germany or other advanced countries are doing. But you've got to do something'."

A little more than a year later, in Paris, the United States led negotiations among 195 countries that resulted in the most significant climate change agreement in history. And this past weekend in Hangzhou, China, Obama and Xi formally committed their two nations to the Paris accord. For Obama, it was not just redemption for Copenhagen, but a vindication of his theory of the United States' role in the world. "There are certain things that the United States can do by itself," Obama said. "But if we're going to actually solve a problem, then our most important role is as a leader, vision setter and convener." An ambitious, divisive legacy To his successor, Obama leaves an ambitious and divisive legacy: a raft of new emissions rules that promise to transform the US economy but are likely to draw continuing fire from Republicans, and an aggressive  some say unrealistic  pledge made in Paris to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 per cent from 2005 levels by 2050. All of this, he acknowledges, could be undone at the ballot box. "I think it's fair to say that if Donald Trump is elected, for example, you have a pretty big shift now with how the EPA operates," he said.

Clinton has embraced Obama's go-it-alone approach, promising to meet and in some cases exceed his goals without trying to pass cap-and-trade legislation. She is proposing marquee projects like installing 500 million solar panels by 2020 and giving states and cities $60 billion to invest in energy-efficient public transportation and buildings. "It will be first-order business," Podesta said. But Clinton will face the same partisan fire Obama has. He noted that, like him, Clinton had been pilloried in coal country for acknowledging that coal mining would have a declining role in a 21st-century economy. Obama's bet is that as his regulations get woven into the fabric of the economy, they will be harder for anyone to unwind. He says that his successor should promote past victories, including those of Republicans like Richard Nixon and George Bush. For his part, Obama said he planned to stay active in fighting climate change in his post-presidential life. During his tour of the wildlife on Midway, he paused to make an improbable remark. "My hope," he said, "is that maybe as ex-president I can have a little more influence on some of my Republican friends, who I think up until now have been resistant to the science."
A police officer and a suspect were injured in the raid on an apartment in Boussy-Saint-Antoine, south-east of Paris, on Thursday evening.

The arrests came on the same day as French police arrested three women for plotting what Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said were imminent terrorist attacks.

British police arrest two brothers in a raid and a third person said to be connected with the pair on Thursday. Credit:Bloomberg/File

The pair, who are understood to be brothers, were arrested in a dawn raid at a property in west London on Thursday morning London time.

London: Two men have been arrested on suspicion of plotting a Paris-style terror attack on the streets of Britain.

The arrests resulted from an investigation of a car containing gas cylinders found near Paris' Notre Dame cathedral earlier this week. The owner of the car was the father of one of the suspects, France Info radio reported.

The car's owner had gone to police on Sunday to report that his daughter had disappeared with his car. She is known to police for wanting to leave for Syria, officials said.

Security sources said the London raid had interrupted a "significant" terrorist plot said to have been inspired by Islamic State and which was believed to involve guns and possibly bombs.

Security sources suggested that rather than a "lone wolf" attack, the plot was more widespread and serious in nature. However, the suspects are not believed to have been in possession of weapons at the time of their arrests and the raids are thought to have taken place at what was an early stage in the alleged plot.

The arrests come just days after Islamist preacher Anjem Choudary was jailed for pledging allegiance to IS. There had been concern Choudary supporters might try to mount some sort of attack in revenge, but it was not clear if the plot was connected.
The issue of cow protection has become controversial across the country with incidents of vigilantism by self proclaimed 'gau rakshaks'.

By Veena Naveen Soni: The issue of cow protection has become controversial across the country with incidents of vigilantism by self proclaimed 'gau rakshaks'. Ahead of Bakrid, the Maharashtra government has directed the police to ensure that gau rakshaks don't carry out any raids on their own.

The 2-page circular issued by the office of the Director General of Police says, "If gau rakshaks have any information on beef being transported or cows butchered, the information should be conveyed to the local police station and only the duty officer should conduct the raids.

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A circular lists the various dos and don'ts that police should follow ahead of Bakrid in connection with implementation of the provision of the newly amended law.

In 2014, the Devendra Fadnavis-led BJP government introduce a ban on slaughter of animals belonging to the cow progeny (bulls, bullocks, ox) by amending the Maharashtra Protection of Animals, Act of 1990s. As per law, it is illegal to sell or posses beef in Maharashtra, anyone found selling beef or possessing it could be jailed up to five years, besides a fine.

Policemen have also been informed that if there is information on beef being transported in public vehicles, then the raids should be such that they don't cause inconvenience to fellow passengers.

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By PTI: Leading RE Developer - Wind (Attn.editors: The following press release comes to you under an arrangement with PRNewswire. PTI takes no editorial responsibility for the same). Mytrah Energy Wins Renewable Energy India Award 2016 as Leading RE Developer - Wind

NEW DELHI, September 9, 2016/PRNewswire/ --Mytrah Energy, one of Indias largest independent power producers in renewable energy bagged the Leading Developer in Wind Award at the recently concluded Renewable Energy India Awards 2016. (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160909/405970 )

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As a prelude to the 10th Annual Renewable Energy India Expo, Renewable Energy India Awards, hosted by UBM India in association with Ernst and Young as the process advisors, announced the industry winners amidst global audience, selected on parameters of excellence and innovation across facets of performance and project development. These included renewable energy developers, manufacturers and individuals for their achievements and contributions.

Commenting on the award, Mr. Vikram Kailas, Managing Director & CEO, Mytrah Energy, said, "The award validates Mytrahs mantra of doing something unique which helped us emerge as one of Indias fastest growing renewable energy companies in a span of just 5 years."

The Jury panel included, Mr. Ajit Gupta, Former Advisor MNRE, Mr. K S Popli, CMD, IREDA, Dr. Bibek Bandyopadhyay, Former Advisor MNRE & Senior Advisor, PACE D Technical Assistance Program, Ms. Rajasree Ray, Economic Advisor MNRE, Dr. S N Srinivas, Programme Analyst, UNDP, Mr. Pankaj Batra, Chief Engineer, Central Electricity Authority and Mr. Shirish Garud, Director and Senior Fellow, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI).

About Mytrah Energy India Limited Mytrah Energy is a pioneer and one of Indias largest independent power producers in renewable energy with 15 projects across 8 states and has over 200 wind masts installed across multiple states in India. As Indias smart utility, Mytrah through a diversified renewable energy portfolio leverages its robust end-to-end capabilities in generating renewable energy for its projects in India. Media contact: Priya Badshah priya.badshah@mytrah.com +91-4033760203 Corporate Communication Mytrah Energy (India) Limited Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160909/405970 Source: Mytrah Energy PRNewswire GSV

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By PTI: From Shirish B Pradhan

Kathmandu, Sept 9 (PTI) Nepal Foreign Minister Prakash Sharan Mahat will travel to New Delhi on Sunday to prepare ground for the visit of Prime Minister Prachanda to India, his first foreign trip after assuming office.

Prime Minister Prachanda is embarking on a four-day state visit to India from September 15 at the invitation of his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi.

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Mahat will hold talks with senior Indian leaders, including his counterpart Sushma Swaraj and discuss about the preparations and agenda of the Prime Ministers forthcoming official visit, the first foreign trip of Prachanda after taking charge of the government last month.

This will also be the first foreign trip of Foreign Minister Mahat after assuming office.

During the visit, Mahat is likely to discuss various areas of cooperation with the Indian officials, sources said.

Nepals relationship with India had soured after a months-long border blockade last year by ethnic minority protesters over the new Constitution which they claimed marginalised them.

Kathmandu accused India of imposing an "unofficial blockade" on the landlocked nation in support of the Madhesis, who share close cultural, linguistic and family links with Indians across the border.

Meanwhile, a senior Madhesi leader said that the Prime Minister should address the current problem facing the country before embarking on a visit to India.

"The Prime Minister should have resolved the current political problem before leaving for New Delhi," said Upendra Yadav, chairman of Madhesi Peoples Rights Forum Nepal, one of the agitating Madhesi parties.

"The prestige and dignity of the country would be in stake if the Prime Minister visits the southern neighbour without addressing the current problem," he said.

He urged the Prime Minister to initiate the process of amending the Constitution for addressing the demands raised by the Madhesi Front. PTI SBP NSA

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By PTI: Chennai,Sep 9 (PTI) Seeking to prevent further development of unauthorised layouts and conversion of agricultural areas for non-agriculture use in an unplanned way, Madras High Court today restrained authorities in Tamil Nadu from registering sale deeds for plots in such layouts or any flats or buildings constructed on them. "This order becomes necessary to prevent further development of unauthorised layouts and conversion of agricultural areas for non-agriculture use in an unplanned manner as also to save ecology and prevent flooding,"the first bench, comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice R Mahadevan said while giving time to Government to come out with the necessary policy documents and legislative changes. The bench stated this while passing an interim order on a PIL from an advocate Elephant Rajendran, seeking to forbear authorities concerned from giving approval or permission to convert agricultural land into layouts and construct flats or buildings on them. Earlier when the matter came up on August 5,the bench had directed senior officers of Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority and Registration Department to be personally present in court to explain the situation to enable it pass orders. When the matter came up today, government submitted that that the authority concerned cannot refuse registration where plots in unauthorised colonies are sought to be registered. Asked how this could be so, the bench was informed that the boundaries of the area of which registration is sought have to be specified in the sale deed. To this, the bench said that "the sale itself will become incapable of registration when the developer sells the unauthorised property where sanction has not been obtained to develop the layouts."

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"We are of the view that this aspect would brook no delay till the government develops some thought process for plans and brings into force Section 22-A of the Registration (Tamil Nadu Amendment) Act, 2008," it said. The bench then directed that no registering authority in the state shall register any sale deed.

"We thus hereby direct that no registering authority shall register any sale deed in respect of any plots in unauthorised layouts or any flats/buildings constructed on such plots," the bench said.

It also directed the Inspector General of Registration to circulate the order to all the registering authorities forthwith for compliance and posted the matter for further hearing to October 21. PTI COR APR RCJ DK

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By Tim Brockwell

Sep. 06, 2016 | PADUCAH, KY

By Tim Brockwell Sep. 06, 2016 | 12:49 PM | PADUCAH, KY

A local taxi cab service has been forced to cease operations in Paducah, after getting a letter from the city claiming the company was not in compliance with city licensing ordinances.



Chiz Cabz, Inc. owner Nicole Doran said her company got a letter from Paducah City Manager Jeff Pederson on Aug. 31 stating that its license to operate within Paducah city limits was suspended for the entire month of September. The letter said two drivers who had been working for the company had been previously denied taxi licenses because they had criminal records. The letter also says the company did not have a valid 2016 business license, but Doran said that issue has been resolved.



Doran said she was unaware that the drivers had criminal records, and that they have since been terminated. She said she has filed an appeal with the city in an effort to restore her company's right to operate in Paducah.



The suspension is already having a huge negative impact on business, said Doran, but she is trying to compensate by spreading out into a wider area. "We are on line right now with the City of Murray, and they are welcoming us with open arms. We're servicing Metropolis more, Ballard, and trying to hit Livingston. That's about the best we can do. It's killing us." Doran said.



Doran says she doesn't think it's fair for her drivers to be punished financially for the actions of two other drivers who have already been let go. "Those drivers have been terminated. Everybody who is still here has a taxi license, and they're hurting now too. It's really not fair to them," Doran said. "I guess this is like a punishment. I don't know why I've been punished, or why my drivers have been punished."



Calls to the City Manager's office for comment have not been returned.
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By West Kentucky Star Staff

Sep. 09, 2016 | PADUCAH, KY

By West Kentucky Star Staff Sep. 09, 2016 | 08:26 AM | PADUCAH, KY

A couple getting into an apparent fight ended with the boyfriend behind bars.



According to the McCracken County Sheriff's Department, the incident happened at around 7:00 Thursday evening, when Paducah resident Greg Thomas (age not disclosed by police) allegedly assaulted his live-in girlfriend. Deputies say Thomas ran away before deputies got there.



Deputies then say after they left, the girlfriend notified them and said Thomas had returned, allegedly threatened her with a handgun, and then took her vehicle somewhere in the area.



Deputies found Thomas in the girlfriend's vehicle on Dixie Avenue in Paducah. Thomas allegedly refused to get out of the vehicle, then took off in the vehicle once again. He turned onto Smith Avenue, drove through a driveway, into the back yard, and jumped out of the vehicle while it was still moving.



Deputies say he then ran into the woods. Additional deputies were brought in to find Thomas. He was eventually found in the attic of his home and taken into custody on two felony charges of fleeing or evading police, 4th degree domestic assault, and some moving violations regarding a railroad crossing gate, and stop sign.




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By West Kentucky Star Staff

Sep. 09, 2016 | PADUCAH, KY

By West Kentucky Star Staff Sep. 09, 2016 | 01:19 PM | PADUCAH, KY

A tip about possible drug activity on Madison Street led to the arrest of a Paducah man Thursday night.



According to the McCracken County Sheriff's Department, drug detectives learned that 46-year-old Dennis Osborne might be selling and using drugs at the home in the 3200 block of Madison Street. Their investigation led to getting a search warrant for the home, and they executed it around 8:30 pm.



Detectives say the search yielded more than 10 grams of methamphetamine packaged for sale, a loaded handgun, marijuana, hash, smoking pipes, and doses of Hydrocodone. Digital scales, baggies and other items typically related to drug trafficking were also reportedly found. Detectives also seized $1,569 in cash that they believed to be the proceeds of drug sales.



The Sheriff's Department says the estimated street value of the methamphetamine is more than $1,000.



Osborne was arrested on charges of firearm-enhanced trafficking in methamphetamine, possession of Hydrocodone, possession of marijuana and for possession of drugs and drug paraphernalia. He was taken to McCracken County Regional Jail.
By West Kentucky Star Staff Sep. 09, 2016 | 10:20 AM | PADUCAH, KY





A Farley woman was arrested Thursday afternoon on drug charges at the McCracken County Courthouse.According to the McCracken County Sheriff's Department, 23-year-old Jessica Rogers, of Farley, walked into the courthouse at around 3 pm, Thursday, to conduct some business.When she got to the security checkpoint and placed her purse on the conveyor belt for the x-ray machine, that's when things went wrong for Rogers.Deputies say as Rogers' purse was going through the x-ray, the screen showed what looked like a knife inside the purse. Deputies then did a physical check of the purse and found a toy pistol. They then looked a little deeper inside the purse and found a Meth smoking pipe, digital scales, and Clonazepam prescription pills without the prescription bottle.Rogers was placed under arrest in the lobby by deputies and booked in to the McCracken County Jail. At the time of her arrest, Rogers was out on bond from an arrest in May on Meth charges. She will now add additional drug charges to her record.
North Koreans have been asked to keep their mouth shut because criticism, apparently, is a bitter pill to swallow for Kim Jong-un.

By India Today Web Desk:

North Korea has forbidden its people from making any sarcastic comments about their favourite man Kim Jong-un. Or perhaps they were being sarcastic about it. We don't know. Honest.

Even indirect criticism of the authoritarian government has been banned, Asian media reported. Since North Korea is a secretive country, none of this information could be corroborated. So, is this propaganda from the south or the truth of a totalitarian regime, remains a mystery.

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Residents were clearly warned against criticising the state in a series of mass meetings held by functionaries across the country.

"One state security official personally organised a meeting to alert local residents to potential 'hostile actions' by internal rebellious elements," a source in Jagang Province told Radio Free Asia's Korean Service.

"The main point of the lecture was 'Keep your mouths shut.'"

Hilariously, officials told people that even sarcastic expressions like "This is all America's fault" would constitute unacceptable criticism of the regime.

"This habit of the central authorities of blaming the wrong country when a problem's cause obviously lies elsewhere has led citizens to mock the party," an anonymous source said.

Regional media has reported a rise in public acts of dissent in the country lately, and another mocking expression, "A fool who cannot see the outside world," has done the rounds in North Korea mocking their hermit leader.



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By West Kentucky Star Staff

Sep. 09, 2016 | PADUCAH, KY

By West Kentucky Star Staff Sep. 09, 2016 | 12:55 PM | PADUCAH, KY

A McCracken County woman was arrested Thursday night for assaulting her uncle after an altercation at her home.



Paducah Police were called just after 7 pm to a disturbance at a home in the 1100 block of North 13th Street. At about the same time, a man called 911 from his home on South 5th Street and reported he had been stabbed.



When police spoke to 23-year-old Farren Sims at the scene, she said 44-year-old William Patrick Sims came to her home and assaulted her, so she stabbed him in self-defense.



William Sims told police he was asked to come to the home and was ambushed when he arrived.



He was taken to Baptist Health Paducah for treatment of a cut to his forearm and a puncture wound to his back.



Farren Sims was arrested on a charge of 2nd degree assault and booked into McCracken County Regional Jail.
By West Kentucky Star Staff Sep. 09, 2016 | 12:28 PM | DRAFFENVILLE, KY

A Marshall County man faces numerous charges after his arrest early Friday morning.

The Marshall County Sheriff's Office said just before 4 am, a deputy observed a car in Draffenville which matched the description of a car stolen earlier in Benton. After confirming it was the stolen car, the deputy conducted a traffic stop.

The driver, 34-year-old Joshua Barnes of Benton, was arrested and charged with receiving stolen property $10,000 or more, DUI, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, escape and operating on a suspended or revoked license. The escape charge stems from trying to push himself through the rear window of the cruiser while it was at a traffic light.

Barnes was also charged with tampering with physical evidence for allegedly kicking away a pill that he removed from his pocket. Deputies said four firearms were found inside the car.

Barnes was taken to the Marshall County Detention Center.
By West Kentucky Star Staff Sep. 09, 2016 | 09:24 AM | PADUCAH, KY

Singing the National Anthem to open an event is an honor that many vocalists dream of, and one young man has his sights set on doing just that at the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo this year.Wyatt Wood from McCracken County has worked his way up to the top 50 in the National Anthem contest for the rodeo, but he needs to be in the top three. You can put him there, by going to the link below and voting for him.The top three contestants will be the ones who open the rodeo in Las Vegas this December. Click the link and vote for Wyatt Wood below.(Wood is currently on page 5, if he moves up in the standings, he'll be on lower numbered pages, you may have to scroll to find him.)

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By West Kentucky Star Staff Sep. 08, 2016 | 06:18 PM | LOBELVILLE, TN

A Mayfield woman wanted on a kidnapping charge has been arrested in Tennessee. According to Graves County Sheriff Dewayne Redmon, 30-year-old Elizabeth Suzanne Storey was taken into custody late Wednesday night in Lobelville, TN, about two hours from Mayfield.

The Cabinet for Health and Family Services had recently been awarded custody of Storey's six-month-old child but when investigators spoke with Storey last week, she refused to release the child. Redmon said Storey absconded and took her child with her.

Redmon said the Perry County Sheriff's Office in Tennessee received information that Storey was in Lobelville and had contacted a local man by phone about needing a ride. The sheriff's office had a deputy pose as the man who had been contacted by Storey.

According to Redmon, the undercover deputy went to the home where Storey was staying and arrested her. Redmon said the child was found inside the home unharmed and was released to a legal guardian.

Storey, who also goes by the name Suzanne Storey Beck, was jailed at the Perry County Jail. She waived extradition Thursday afternoon and will be sent back to Graves County on Saturday to face the kidnapping charge and other warrants.
Even with 5-0 lead, Verlander can't get 1st World Series win
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There is something wonderful about watching a great actor in action and Kathryn Hunter is one of the best. In The Emperor she stands on a virtually bare stage and in swift, almost seamless motion, brings a whole world to life. The world is that of the Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, as conjured by the words of his servants which were recorded by the Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski and have been adapted for theatre by Colin Teevan. The play is directed by Walter Meierjohann, thus reuniting the writer, director, actor team that last worked together on Kafka's Monkey.

Like that piece, this is a tour de force of theatrical story-telling. With the simplest of props  a stick, a hat, a jacket unbuttoned or closed  Hunter embodies a range of characters, from the loyal valet, to the camp master of ceremonies, to a timid door opener, to the minister of information so devoted to his master that even the death of his own son cannot shake his faith.

The words recorded and delivered are extraordinary in their force of detail. They recount how a man, "King of Kings of Ethiopia and Elect of God" slowly lost control of his own kingdom, a land where a servant followed him around with cushions so that his feet were never left dangling from a throne, where his people bowed before him as he walked amongst them, where he controlled every aspect of their lives.

It asks questions about the way power corrupts and warps not only an absolute ruler, but also those around him  and makes a distinction between "development" which builds an infrastructure and the welfare of a people. It was unrest among students and neglect of the poor in a famine that brought Haile Selassie down, and we briefly see Jonathan Dimbleby's famous film which exposed the suffering.

But otherwise it is Hunter we rely on, alone save for the musician Temesgen Zeleke, providing music, a sung commentary and  briefly  incarnating the lost, rebellious son. They sit quietly together at start and end, before Hunter begins her acts of evocation, suggesting with small shifts of voice and gesture not only the character of the speakers but also the events they are describing, and the stance and influence of the man they believed was a God.

She has a stand-up comedian's timing, and sense of the presence of her audience; she rounds each anecdote with graceful precision, her hands carving shapes in the air, making you see the bird of paradise that the words describe, or the puffed up officials who have received promotion. Her ability to find and communicate feeling is astonishing. Tears suddenly spring into the Minister of Information's eyes as he matter-of-factly describes his son's arrest and death; just as quickly they are wiped away.

When the Emperor's clerk is sacked in one of the palace purges, Hunter makes him shrivel in front of you. "I was sent home for ever. I no longer existed." And the final scenes, when the palace is dark, and the rain falls and only the valet is left to serve a man who once ruled all he surveyed, echo with a sense of history. It is a richly absorbing hour.

The Emperor is at the Young Vic until September 24; Home, Manchester from Sept 28-Oct 8; Les Theatres de la Ville, Luxembourg Oct 12-14
A South Korean government official said it was a suspected nuclear test and Seoul called for an emergency National Security Council meeting.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un provides field guidance during a fire drill of ballistic rockets by Hwasong artillery units of the KPA Strategic Force. (Image: KCNA)

By Reuters: A seismic tremor was recorded in an area around North Korea's known nuclear site today, and was suspected to be the fifth nuclear test by the isolated nation, South Korea's Yonhap news agency said.

US, European and Chinese seismological agencies reported that the tremor was recorded at 0030 GMT at surface level.

A South Korean government official said it was a suspected nuclear test, Yonhap reported, and Seoul called for an emergency National Security Council meeting.

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The China Earthquake Networks Center said the tremor was a suspected explosion.

Japan's top government spokesman also said there was a high possibility the seismic event indicated that North Korea had conducted a nuclear test and that relevant ministries had been instructed to gather information.

KIM JONG UN BLACKLISTED

Two months ago, US-based 38 North, a North Korea monitoring project, said satellite images showed a high level of activity at North Korea's nuclear test site, called Punggye-ri.

Speculation has intensified that North Korea may conduct a fifth nuclear test after the United States blacklisted its leader, Kim Jong Un, on July 6 for human rights abuses.

North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test in January, resulting in tough new UN sanctions. It has conducted a series of missile tests this year, including a submarine-launched missile.

The January test was recorded with a magnitude of 5.1, according to the US Geological Survey.

North Korea has been under UN Security Council sanctions since it first tested an atomic device in 2006.

ALSO READ:

North Korea says UN condemnation of missile tests 'provocation'

North Korea test-fires ballistic missile from submarine





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Ex-Udinese stalwart Antonio Di Natale has called on Roma to retire the No.10 shirt as and when current incumbent Francesco Totti calls it quits.

Totti signed a new one-year contract extension over the summer to keep him playing past his 40th birthday but is fully expected to retire at the end of the current season.

When that time inevitably comes, Di Natale reckons its only right that the Giallorossi give their beautiful and extraordinary veteran the send off he so richly deserves.

Di Natale, who proudly wore the No.10 shirt for Udinese for 12 years before stepping down in May, told Gazzetta dello Sport:

Its a very heavy shirt Its worn by someone who has something extraordinary, off the cuff, and did important things. Totti? Hes a friend, a beautiful person and an extraordinary player. I have his jersey and Im proud. Even in his case, the club (Roma) will decide what to do with his No. 10, but I wouldnt give it to anybody.

Hear hear.

Frankly, its the least Roma could, and probably will do to commemorate Tottis immense dedication and service over the course of the past 22 years.

The man deserves a big bronze statue in all four corners of the stadium.
North Korea conducted its fifth nuclear test after seismic tremor was recorded near country's nuclear test site.

By Reuters: North Korea today announced that it had conducted its fifth nuclear test, hours after seismic monitors detected a blast near the secretive country's nuclear test site.

North Korea's state TV said the North was now capable of mounting nuclear warheads on ballistic rockets. It said no leakage of nuclear material had occurred in the test and that there was no environmental impact.



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SEISMIC TREMOR FELT



A seismic tremor was recorded in an area around North Korea's known nuclear site today, and was suspected to be the fifth nuclear test by the isolated nation, South Korea's Yonhap news agency had earlier said.

Also read: North Korea suspected to have conducted fifth nuclear test

US, European and Chinese seismological agencies reported that the tremor was recorded at 0030 GMT at surface level.

A South Korean government official said it was a suspected nuclear test, Yonhap reported, and Seoul had called for an emergency National Security Council meeting.

Japan's top government spokesman had also indicated that North Korea conducted a nuclear test and that relevant ministries had been instructed to gather information.

KIM JONG UN BLACKLISTED

Two months ago, US-based 38 North, a North Korea monitoring project, said satellite images showed a high level of activity at North Korea's nuclear test site, called Punggye-ri.

Also read: UN condemns latest missile launches by N Korea

North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test in January, resulting in tough new UN sanctions. It has conducted a series of missile tests this year, including a submarine-launched missile.

The January test was recorded with a magnitude of 5.1, according to the US Geological Survey.

North Korea has been under UN Security Council sanctions since it first tested an atomic device in 2006.

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15 people are feared dead while several have been injured when a bus fell off a bridge in Odisha's Angul district.

By Indrajit Kundu: At least 15 people are feared dead while several have been injured when a bus fell off a bridge in Odisha's Angul district this morning.

The private bus carrying around 50 passengers was travelling from Boudh to Athamallick in Angul district when the driver lost control and the bus fell off the bridge from a height of 50 feet.

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District police and locals began rescue work and the injured were rushed to the Athmallik sub-divisional hospital. Others were sent to the Angul district hospital and the SCB Medical college hospital in Cuttack. Special medical teams and fire personnel have been rushed to the spot to expedite the rescue and relief operation.

DEATH TOLL MAY RISE



The death toll may go up as some of those injured are in a critical condition. According to local eyewitnesses, the driver was talking over his mobile phone while crossing the bridge. It was then that a bicycle suddenly came in front following which the driver took a sharp turn to avoid hitting the cycle but lost control as the vehicle fell off the edge of the bridge.

(Photo: Indrajit Kundu)

EXPEDITE RESCUE OPERATION: NAVEEN PATNAIK



Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik has directed the district administration to expedite the rescue operation and provide medical assistance to the injured persons.



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A 28-year-old man who died in the River Thames near Old Windsor on Wednesday has been named.

The body of Daniel Hutton, of De Santa Maria Calle Lila Elviria, Spain, was discovered by emergency services after they were called to reports of a disturbance in Burfield Road at about 3.40am.

Friend Lee Orrell called Mr Hutton the life of the party on social media.

He added: I cannot believe someone I have known and been friends with for such a long time has gone in this way.

From being in Liverpool together and then to Spain together we always had a ball (mostly around a beer a ten with a few shots involved). Goodnight my friend.
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 09/09/2016 (2241 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In its 41st year, the Toronto International Film Festival is kicking off with a bang, or several hundred pistol bangs, with Antoine Fuquas opening-night gala screening of the western remake The Magnificent Seven.

But while its easy to be distracted by such a purely Hollywood kind of kickoff (Denzel Washington! Chris Pratt!), it is good to remember that the heart of TIFF is found not in its big red-carpet galas but in the smaller, scrappier independent films from around the world.

In a sense, the sole Winnipeg film to play the festival embodies that sensibility, both in its subject matter and in the artists behind it.

Premiering Friday in the festivals Short Cuts program, Imitations is a film by local collective MarkusMilosIanFabian, which consists of Markus Henkel, Milos Mitrovic, Ian Bawa and Fabian Velasco.

The film has been kept under wraps locally, but its safe to say its an oddball offering. It follows a star-worshipping introvert named Arnold (played by Mitrovic) who lives to adore pop star Austin Kelsey (played by Conor Sweeney, a member Astron-6, another local film collective with TIFF history). Arnold gets plastic surgery to look like his pop-star idol, but the surgery doesnt take and Arnolds face suffers cataclysmic disintegration on the very night he debuts his new look at a karaoke event.

SUPPLIED Milos Mitrovic plays a star worshipper who undergoes plastic surgery in the film Imitations.

Befitting TIFFs international claim, the filmmakers themselves are an international quartet. Henkel arrived in Winnipeg from Germany four years ago. Velasco emigrated here from Argentina at the age of 14. Mitrovic is from Bosnia. Bawa is a home-grown Winnipegger. Velasco, Bawa and Mitrovic met at the University of Winnipeg, where they were all studying film.

Velasco says he and his fellow filmmakers will arrive in Toronto on Thursday, opening day, open to the festival experience.

We dont really know what to expect, he says.

They had sent previous films to TIFF for consideration in the short-film program, including The Champ and Under the Neon Lights. Those films were picked up by smaller festivals, including the 2013 Toronto After Dark Festival, and the 2015 Fantastic Fest. But it was Imitations that finally got them the prized TIFF slot.

It was the surprise of all surprises, says Bawa, 30. Of all the films we made, this wasnt the one we were expecting to blow up. But its one of the ego boosts you need every once in a while.

Its a film that could have appeal to a wider audience, says Velasco, 28, although it has hasnt been subjected to the kind of exhaustive test-screening process that usually accompanies Hollywood blockbusters.

Ive only shown it to one or two close friends, he says. Since its inclusion on the TIFF program, we have had some interest from some distribution companies, Velasco says, attributing the interest to the films subject matter.

Its a satire of celebrity worship and that world, and it also has to do with our own insecurities, of wanting to be someone else.

The four filmmakers intend to saturate themselves in the festival, Velasco says, given their access to TIFFs press-and-industry screenings, which function as a utilitarian shadow festival in which all TIFF movies are screened without the red carpeting and hype surrounding the public screenings.

Well probably be watching one of two movies a day, on top of all the parties and brunches that they have, he says. The quartet will attend the annual Manitoba Night party at the Drake Hotel, held annually on the evening of the first Sunday of the fest.

Henkel, 28, came from Germany because his girlfriend lives here, but also because he got a job working on post-production duties at Farpoint Films. He says the TIFF experience isnt necessarily a game-changer.

But its a step towards a career in film and it may help us get funding in the future for other projects, he says.

And if we can actually make movies for a living, that will be a game-changer for us, Bawa says.

Imitations will be eligible for the Short Cuts Award for Best Film, and the Short Cuts Award for Best Canadian Film. Past festivals have been kind to short filmmakers from Winnipeg, including Deco Dawson, who won the best Canadian short film prize in 2001 for Film(dzama).

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @FreepKing

If you value coverage of Manitobas arts scene, help us do more.

Your contribution of $10, $25 or more will allow the Free Press to deepen our reporting on theatre, dance, music and galleries while also ensuring the broadest possible audience can access our arts journalism. BECOME AN ARTS JOURNALISM SUPPORTER Click here to learn more about the project.

SUPPLIED The braintrust behind Winnipegs TIFF-bound short film Imitations (from left): Milos Mitrovic, Ian Bawa, Fabian Velasco and Markus Henkel
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 09/09/2016 (2241 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Say you find yourself as a character in a Tom Hanks movie plot. Congratulations! What an opportunity.

But just be careful to steer clear of all modes of transportation.

Tom Hanks is a great actor and seems like a swell guy, but Tom Hanks in movies does not have a safe track record when it comes to travel. The latest instalment in the maybe dont go anywhere with Tom Hanks list is Sully, which opens today. In the movie, Hanks is a pilot whose plane is disabled after it strikes a flock of geese. The lesson: dont get onto a plane piloted by Tom Hanks.

Thats something we should have learned long ago. We had plenty of opportunities, and here they are:

UNIVERSAL PICTURES Bill Paxton, left, Tom Hanks, centre and Kevin Bacon.

Apollo 13 (1995)

Hanks, an astronaut with dreams of walking on the moon, goes into space with two crew members. But after an explosion, they abort the mission and spend the rest of the movie just trying to make it home alive. Dont get onto a spacecraft with Tom Hanks.

Cast Away (2000)

Hanks boards a FedEx plane that crashes into the Pacific Ocean during a violent storm. He hangs out on a remote island for four years and passes the time by growing a beard, catching fish and developing a close bond with a volleyball. Dont get on a plane headed for Malaysia with Tom Hanks.

TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX Don't get in a car with Tom Hanks.

Road to Perdition (2002)

Hanks is in the mob, and his son hides in his car and witnesses another mobster kill a guy. The son is now a murder witness, and the mobster spends the movie going after him. Dont get into a car with Tom Hanks.

Cloud Atlas (2012)

Hanks plays a bunch of different roles. In the 1800s, he is a doctor who slowly poisons an American lawyer while theyre travelling on a ship. In the 1970s, Hanks is a nuclear power plant scientist whose plane gets blown up. Dont get onto a ship or on a plane (you should know this by now) with Tom Hanks.

Leonardo DiCaprio, left, with Tom Hanks.

Catch Me If You Can (2002)

Hanks chases Leonardo DiCaprio, a con artist, and when he finally catches Leo in France, he extradites him back to the United States. While theyre aboard the plane, Hanks breaks the news to Leo that his dad died the previous year. Dont have Tom Hanks escort you on a plane home. Hell probably tell you bad news.

Captain Phillips (2013)

Hanks is the captain of an unarmed container ship. The ship gets hijacked by Somali pirates. Dont travel on a ship with Tom Hanks.

Dreamworks The Terminal

The Terminal (2004)

Hanks arrives at New Yorks JFK airport from his country, Krakozhia. Upon arrival, he discovers civil war has broken out in his homeland, and the United States doesnt recognize Hanks passport. Hanks, now stateless, has to live in the airport terminal for nine months. Dont travel from a fictional former Soviet country to the United States with Tom Hanks.

 Washington Post
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 09/09/2016 (2241 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Fans of the Strangeloves 1965 garage rock classic I Want Candy  covered in 1982 by British new wave darlings Bow Wow Wow and in 2007 by ex-Spice Girl Melanie C  will happily tell you that the candy in the songs lyrics is a euphemism for, well, nookie.

That might explain why a woman recently entered Teeyahs, a three-month-old specialty candy store at 166 Hargrave St., to ask owner Tia Medeiros if she was peddling something besides Milk Duds and bonbons.

She said after seeing my sign, she thought maybe this was a sex shop, Medeiros said with a laugh, as she rang in a sale for a fellow in his 20s who, because he couldnt decide between a Baby Ruth bar, a Cadbury Caramello and a Nestle Toffee Crisp, ended up walking out the door with all three. (Excellent decision!)

Medeiros, a married mother of two, is an executive project manager for Wakefield Foods Inc., a position that requires her to distribute ice cream products to grocery stores throughout Winnipeg. In February 2016, she was at home watching TV when she had a sudden craving for an Abba-Zaba, a taffy bar with a peanut butter centre she tried for the first time a few years ago, after purchasing one at a candy store on Corydon Avenue.

She hopped in her car and made the 20-kilometre trip from Transcona to Corydon, only to discover Sugar Mountain, her destination-point, had ceased to exist. Medeiros knew the stores owners had opened an alternate location at The Forks, so she turned her vehicle around and headed downtown. Fifteen minutes later, she was thwarted again when she learned the converted railcar that houses that particular outlet is closed from Oct. 1 until the end of May.

JOE BRYKSA / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Tia Medeiros, owner of specialty candy shop Teeyah's.

As soon as I got back home, I went online to see if there was anywhere in Winnipeg I could buy an Abba-Zaba, but nothing came up, she said.

What I did end up finding, mind you, were a bunch of wholesalers that sold the bars by the caseload. Its not like I needed an Abba-Zaba that badly  I mean, a box of 24 cost $30, plus shipping  but because my curiosity had gotten the better of me by then, I began wondering how many Id have to buy to get around paying shipping fees.

By the end of the evening, not only had Medeiros placed an order for $500 worth of Abba-Zabas, she had also opened an on-line store on Shopify, an e-commerce site based in Ottawa, reasoning that she might be able to recoup a portion of her investment by reselling whatever bars she and her family members didnt eat.

(Teeyahs, the tag she chose for her biz, is a play on Tia, her given name. Growing up, she and her brother Joey had a secret language that involved spelling certain words phonetically. Teeyah is a silent tribute to him, she explained.)

Medeiros filled her first order a few days later for a customer who lived in Ottawa. As the number of requests grew  and as regulars began asking if she carried this, that or another thing  she started importing a wider variety of confections to keep up with peoples demands.

I started with one fold-out table in my basement where I kept all my stuff. That quickly turned into two tables and by the time I was ready to add a fourth, my husband said enough was enough. So I went on Kijiji, spotted this place for rent and opened on June 1.

JOE BRYKSA / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS The candy shop includes a selection of British crisps.

Medeiros carries hundreds of different types of candy, all of which are imported from south of the border or the United Kingdom. As one customer perused a wall stocked with, among other delights, Charleston Chews, Fruit Stripe Gum and  were not too sure about this one  draft beer-flavoured Jelly Bellys, another quizzed Medeiros, asking her to clarify the difference between conventional potato chips (if youre interested, she has Honey Mustard Pringles) and crisps, which hail from Britain.

There are different types (of crisps), she explained, but the ones made by Brannigans are quite a bit thicker than the kind of chips were used to. I have one customer who used to live in London who bought a boxful, saying he was so happy he didnt have to ask his mom and dad for care packages anymore.

Because of Medeiross primary career, she doesnt get to spend as much time at her store as she might like. Thats OK, she maintained, because one of her two employees is a person very much after her own heart.

I was a teen mom. I had my son Nicholas when I was 16 and my daughter Katrina when I was 18. Its something Im very proud of now, but something that I never used to be proud of, before, said Medeiros, who graduated from Red River Colleges Marketing Management program by taking the course online.

Joe Bryksa / Winnipeg Free Press Moon Pies!

I now volunteer with Big Brothers and Big Sisters and my mentee, Brianna, is a teen mom, just like I was. Ive kind of taken her under my wing, I guess, because she works here at the store and soon shes going to do her schooling online, the same way I did. Hopefully shell be as successful at it as I was.

As for what the future has in store for Teeyahs, Medeiros politely corrects a scribe after he asks her if she intends to open more candy stores, in the months and years ahead.

Its not a matter of if  its when, she says, smiling. My ultimate goal is 10 (stores) and though major centres would be nice, Im thinking Id rather go into smaller cities, such as Regina, instead of places like Toronto or Montreal. Its easier to own a small city, I think, and build a name for myself, that way.

For a complete list of products Teeyahs carries, go to www.teeyahs.com.

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca

Joe Bryksa / Winnipeg Free Press ...And Big Hunk bars.
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 09/09/2016 (2241 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

AFTER Apples big announcement of the iPhone 7 lineup Wednesday, theres probably one major question lingering in the minds of Apple fans: how will my life change without the iPhone headphone jack?

To be clear, users will still be able to use their older headphones thanks to an adapter that will be included with each new iPhone. But it will be an odd vestigial tail, either sticking out of the phone or on the end of the headphones.

Apple, of course, has its own slick solution to the problem: AirPods  the companys new US$159 wireless ear buds ($219 in Canada)  which look almost exactly like the companys current headphones but without the wires.

Gary Reyes / Bay Area News Group Wireless AirPods are demonstrated following the product launch of the iPhone 7 at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco.

In an ears-on demo, I was impressed with the design of the AirPods. It seemed a lot of thought went into making the little earpieces, which sit snugly in a case that doubles as an external battery.

Pairing the AirPods was easy. An Apple employee at the demonstration held a pair, in their case, next to the iPhone 7 I was holding. A notification popped up on the phone. I tapped to approve the connection. There was no entering a Bluetooth code or listening for beeps, as is the case with other Bluetooth headsets. (On non-Apple devices, you will have to go through a normal Bluetooth set-up process.)

With the AirPods still in their case, we started playing a song through the iPhone speakers. When I popped the buds into my ear, the music immediately began to play through the headphones. When I took them out again, the music went back to playing through the phone  a seamless transition that should also work if you switch from using an iPhone to an iPad or Mac.

It was, all in all, a very neat trick.

Double-tapping on one bud called up Siri, which was able to understand what I was saying even in a noisy demonstration room. Sadly, it was hard to judge sound quality in a noisy room, but the headphones did an admirable job of blocking out a lot of noise while they were in my ears.

The headphones also stayed put after a few jumps and head shakes, though I certainly didnt simulate any sort of vigorous activity, such as running, that could knock them loose.

Despite being impressed with the AirPods, Im worried about getting them after thinking about my own headphone use.

The headphones I use daily are not the ones that came with my phone  I bought these after misplacing my first pair in the chaos of a big move. In the past, losing a pair of headphones was annoying, but easily remedied with a sigh of regret, US$15 and an airport magazine stand. Failing to keep track of the AirPods and their case would be a different story.

Even as I was typing up my impressions of the event, someone walked by and asked me a question. I popped one side of my headphones out by reflex and let it hang  an almost involuntary response that would send US$80 of my money plummeting to the ground with an AirPod.

All in all, there was nothing wrong with the AirPods in the short demo I had. Im not sure, however, if I would personally spend US$159 for them  the convenience they offer for me is eclipsed by the fact I dont trust myself with nice things. The AirPods are well-designed, but theyre also perfect candidates for getting lost.

Its not them, its me. But, I suspect, its a lot of you out there, too.

 Washington Post
By PTI: Kolkata, Spet 9 (PTI) One student was injured while trying to escape a fire which broke out inside the server room of Presidency University library in the city this afternoon, police said.

Thick black smoke engulfed the entire College Street campus of the University after fire broke out at around 1.30PM inside the server room of the library probablydue to an electrical botch-up in the air conditioning machine, a senior police officer said.

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A student suffered minor injuries when he along with others fell down while trying to flee fearing the blaze was a massive fire, the officer said.

Five fire tenders were pressed into service and students as well as teachers were evacuated from the century-old building, he said.

In October 2010 a major fire had broken out at the Baker building of the university that houses the chemistry department where chemicals and gas cylinders were stored. PTI SCH KK KK

--- ENDS ---
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 08/09/2016 (2242 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Monday morning meeting at city hall could be the start of a healing process between the mayors office and the development community or proof of the extent of the gulf between the two sides over the issue of growth fees.

Brian Bowman has invited some of Winnipegs development and business community leaders to meet with him and Coun. John Orlikow.

The first thing I want to hear at that Monday meeting is what is the plan for consultation, said Loren Remillard, president and CEO of the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce.

PHIL HOSSACK / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS New housing construction in Ridgewood west, bordering the Harte Trail and Perimeter highway.

The Winnipeg Chamber is one of several groups that will meet with Bowman and Orlikow. The other groups include the Manitoba Home Builders Association, the Urban Development Institute, Winnipeg Realtors, Manitoba Chambers of Commerce, the Manitoba Business Council and the Winnipeg Construction Association.

Remillard said his group is still determining a position on the need for growth fees but he wants to make sure the process isnt being rushed.

The critical thing shouldnt be when this has to happen, but that we get the right plan for Winnipeg to implement and that takes time, Remillard said. The issue is too important to rush.

The citys development community has been in an uproar over the issue. City hall hired Hemson Consulting, a Toronto-based firm, at the end of May to study growth in Winnipeg and how it was impacting civic services.

While preliminary briefings with the development community suggested Hemson would recommend growth fees, the issue came to a head last week when Hemson released its final report, stating new developments are not covering the costs of required infrastructure. The report detailed a range of hefty fees recommended the city charge for residential and non-residential development.

The industry claimed the process was rushed and that Hemson ignored studies that it had commissioned showing new development more than paid for itself and benefited the city overall.

Bowman said the Hemson report confirmed what he had been saying for months and told reporters he expected an administration report on how to proceed as soon as possible  before council begins debating the 2017 budget.

Mike Moore, president of the Manitoba Home Builders Association, said the Hemson report lacked evidence to support the claim that growth isnt paying for growth. Moore said city hall shouldnt be dictating a new fee program.

If the appropriate parties sit down and put together (a plan) for how Winnipeg can grow better, I think the costs and benefits associated with growth will become more evident to both parties, he said.

A spokesman for Bowman said Thursday the mayor appreciates that large developers and others are keenly interested in this discussion, and he wants to listen to them and discuss Hemsons report directly with them.

Remillard said the Hemson report should be the starting point for a thorough conversation with not only the development industry, but all Winnipeggers.

We can either do this right or we can do this right now, but we cant do both. Lets take the time, he said. We recognize as a community we need to have a conversation around this. If the consensus is we need to move forward with (growth fees), lets make sure we have a thorough conversation and hear the input of all stakeholders in crafting the right approach for Winnipeg.

The critical thing shouldnt be when this has to happen but that we get the right plan for Winnipeg to implement and that takes time.

aldo.santin@freepress.mb.ca
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 09/09/2016 (2241 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Ending human trafficking between Manitoba and North Dakota is on the table at a round table discussion today between representatives from both the province and the U.S. state in Winnipeg.

About 50 representatives from both jurisdictions at the meeting at the Canad Inns Club Regent Casino Hotel will be brainstorming strategies for cross-border collaboration aimed at ending human trafficking as well as beginning to develop an international protocol for protecting and providing relevant services to survivors.

Human trafficking is happening right here in Manitoba, and is more widespread that many people are aware, said Diane Redsky, the executive director of the Ma Mawi Wi Chi Itata Centre Inc. in Winnipeg.

PHIL HOSSACK / FREE PRESS FILES Human trafficking happens everywhere says Diane Redsky.

The thing about human trafficking is that it happens everywhere. Theres no city, town, province, state, that is immune from human trafficking, Redsky said in a telephone interview with the Winnipeg Free Press.

We know that in Manitoba. We have the first provincial strategy to address the sexual exploitation and sex trafficking of people in our province. We know anecdotally from survivors that it is common, Redsky said. Because it is such a profitable crime for criminals who are traffickers, borders mean nothing. Its about where theyre going to make the most money and profit from the sexual exploitation of women and girls. We also have the labour trafficking which happens also cross border.

Redsky said authorities need to know more about whats happening in Manitoba and North Dakota to improve and strengthen collaboration in the law enforcement, government and community levels to respond to victims when they come forward.

Also being reviewed at the meeting are emerging practices in the areas of intelligence gathering, response and enforcement procedures, information sharing, safety planning, professional training, and leadership. State-of-the-art technology to seek out traffickers, buyers and individuals victimized by both will be demonstrated at the meeting.

One of the expected outcomes of the meeting will be a published report and recommendations for next steps.

This important cross border collaboration between multi-disciplined stakeholders is the first of its kind, Barb Gosse, CEO of the Canadian Centre to End Human Trafficking, said in a statement. With a view to ending human trafficking, this meeting will allow for detailed discussions on disrupting human trafficking efforts through innovations in intelligence efforts, response and enforcement, public education and awareness, as well as professional training for those in position to recognize the signs of human trafficking and respond appropriately.

Gosse said stakeholders at the meeting in addition to Canadian Centre to End Human Trafficking and the Ma Mawi Wi Chi Itata Centre include the Consulate General of the United States and the Provincial Ministry of Justice.

ashley.prest@freepress.mb.ca
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 09/09/2016 (2241 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The hidden history of Canadas Indian residential schools will be front and centre this fall, backed by the Tragically Hip band frontman Gord Downie and his groundbreaking multimedia project Secret Path.

Downie will be releasing Secret Path, a solo album and graphic novel illustrated by Jeff Lemire, on Oct. 18. The songs on the album and the graphic novel tell the story of 12-year-old Chanie Wenjack, an indigenous boy who died in 1966 while trying to return home from Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School in Kenora, Ontario. He had been renamed Charlie at the school.

Chanie haunts me. His story is Canadas story. This is about Canada. We are not the country we thought we were. History will be re-written, Downie said in a statement. We are all accountable, but this begins in the late 1800s and goes to 1996. White Canada knew  on somebodys purpose  nothing about this. We werent taught it in school; it was hardly ever mentioned.

We are all accountable, but this begins in the late 1800s and goes to 1996. White Canada knew  on somebodys purpose  nothing about this. We werent taught it in school; it was hardly ever mentioned.

On Oct. 23, an animated film The Secret Path will be broadcast by CBC, based on Chanies story through Downies music and Lemires illustrations. A press release about the project said the broadcast date is the 50th anniversary of the morning Chanies body was found frozen beside railroad tracks only 19 kilometres into his 644-kilometre journey.

Proceeds from the Secret Path multimedia project will be donated by Downie to support the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliations work in honouring the stories of residential school survivors and initiatives related to missing children and unmarked burials. The NCTR is located at the University of Manitoba.

Downie said in a statement that he is trying in this small way to help spread what Murray Sinclair said, This is not an aboriginal problem. This is a Canadian problem.' Sinclair is the Manitoba justice, now also a senator, who led the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in chronicling the stories of residential schools survivors.

David Barnard, president and vice-chancellor at the University of Manitoba, said Downies project is unique and inspiring and his generosity will support the legacy of the NCTR.

Were very gratified and excited that Gord Downie would bring his interest in indigenous people to align with the work of the Centre and take this project and its proceeds to contribute to the work of the Centre, Barnard told the Free Press in a telephone interview. Its very, very exciting for us to have that kind of alignment with someone who brings, I think, a sincere desire to do something and a visibility to the project. Its fantastic.

Barnard said he and the U of M community were deeply moved by the courage, candor and humanity Gord Downie has exhibited on the final tour of The Tragically Hip last month when he redirected the spotlight on him to the right to dignity and well-being of Canadas indigenous peoples. The Secret Path project backs up that appeal.

Through Mr. Downies efforts, Charlies story will rightfully live on in all our hearts, Barnard stated.

Barnard said the financial impact of Downie donating the proceeds of the overall project to the centre is not known.

JOE BRYKSA / FREE PRESS FILES Gord Downie will release a new solo album along with a graphic novel and an animated film tellilng the story of 12-year-old Chanie Wenjack, an indigenous boy who died in 1966 while trying to return home from Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School in Kenora, Ontario.

I dont know that thats been discussed at all, but the symbolic value of it is huge, Barnard said.

A press release about the project said Downie and NCTR director Ry Moran recently visited the Ogoki Post in northwestern Ontario, Chanies home community and final resting place.

With Gord shining his light on Charlies story, I hope Canadians will take another step along the path to realize just how harmful and devastating those schools were for the over 150,000 children that attended them, Moran said in a statement. Gords contribution to the Centre will enable us to continue the work of identifying and remembering those children that never returned home from the schools.

The Secret Path album is based on 10 poems Gord wrote after his brother Mike Downie gave him the Feb. 6, 1967 story in Macleans magazine by Ian Adams called The Lonely Death of Charlie Wenjack.

ashley.prest@freepress.mb.ca
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 09/09/2016 (2241 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Winnipeg police are planning to flood areas of the downtown with additional foot patrol officers and cadets, part of a new safety initiative called CentreLine.

Deputy chief Gord Perrier told the police board Friday that an additional 35 officers and cadets will be deployed in key areas in the heart of the city.

Within our business plan, one of our premier items has been a downtown safety strategy, Perrier told the board, adding the initiative will be launched within 30 days, when more details will be released.

JOE BRYKSA / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES 35 additional officers and cadets will hit the ground in key downtown areas.

Perrier said the initiative is the product of extensive consultations with business owners, the Downtown BIZ, residents and social service agencies .

Officers and cadets will be positioned where people are, including transit stops and walkways, for example, he said.

aldo.santin@freepress.mb.ca
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 09/09/2016 (2241 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

MARQUETTE  A proposed $9-million swine-genetics facility is just a hog barn by another name, say some residents who oppose the project in the north of the city.

Topigs Norsvin unveiled its proposed facility for the RM of Woodlands, about 35 kilometres north of Winnipeg, at an open house Thursday.

The facility would employ up to 15 people, including four CT scanner operators, and local people would have first dibs on jobs, the company said.

bILL REDEKOP / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Topigs Norsvin project consultant Peter Mah listens to arguments at the open house for a proposed swine-genetics facility.

The Canadian head office for Topigs is in Winnipeg, but the company is a partnership of two farmer co-operatives in Norway and the Netherlands.

Canadian general manager Cam McGavin said the company already has two facilities in Norway, and the Netherlands is too densely populated with people and hogs. A swine-genetics facility needs to be at least eight kilometres from the nearest hog barn for biosecurity reasons, McGavin said.

Woodlands was chosen because its a farming community near Richardson International Airport. The company plans to ship top boars for breeding to more than 50 countries. Hogs are typically shipped about 40 at a time, travelling inside an airplanes hold, said McGavin.

Reaction has been swift in the Woodlands area, which first heard of the proposal in July.

Grant Broadfoot, who attended the open house, said his acreage is 13 kilometres from an existing hog barn, and thats not a big enough buffer. When the wind blows south for two days, you smell it, he said. Neither is that on days when liquid manure is injected into fields as fertilizer.

Topigs project manager Peter Mah said the company could consider covering the sewage lagoon with plastic to prevent smells.

An information board showed the swine-genetics facility would pay about $10,000 per year in property taxes: $6,000 to the municipality and $4,000 for education. Broadfoot said thats not much considering he pays $4,000 in property taxes for his 80-acre hobby farm. He maintained Woodlands is too densely populated with rural residential housing to accommodate the facility.

Ron Stelck, who lives in the area, believes the facility is little more than a hog barn. Thats a way to get around the moratorium on hogs in Manitoba, he said.

Stelck claims the proposed facility is in the Assiniboine River watershed, and therefore threatens to drain nutrients such as phosphorus into Lake Winnipeg.

Mah said the facility will have to meet stringent provincial safeguards no matter where it builds. He said manure injections into the soil would occur just once a year, with injections in the fall calibrated to meet the crop uptake of manure so there is no runoff.

Smell is minimal. If it smells at all, it would be two days in the fall. In a farming area, that should be acceptable, said Mah.

The company had a site chosen but the owner changed his mind about selling. McGavin maintained the owner caved in to local pressure. Topigs is now looking for another site in Woodlands.

McGavin said the facility will house about 2,600 hogs, all boars, less than half the number in a commercial hog barn. Boars will be tested using a hospital CT scanner for such things as growth, feed conversion, fat, muscle and bone structure, before determining the top boars for sale.

bill.redekop@freepress.mb.ca
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 09/09/2016 (2241 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

GILLAM  Before Clint Sawchuk started his jet boat service to York Factory, you had to earn your visit to one of Canadas foremost historic sites.

The only visitors were hardcore canoeists paddling the Hayes River, and people in float planes. The total was maybe 25 to 30 people per year.

Last year, the number of visitors jumped to 79. This year, the number will surpass 260.

BILL REDEKOP / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Clint Sawchuk talks with a passenger on Gillam Island on the Nelson River, near where it empties into Hudson Bay.

Clints boat here has opened the floodgates, said Parks Canadas Claude Daudet, with tongue only partly planted in cheek. Daudet is one of two Parks Canada officials who are more used to living like monks all summer while staffing the remote heritage site.

Sawchuk, owner of Nelson River Adventures, has opened up the historic site to the casual tourist.

Its a first, and he has trouble believing hes the one doing it, having grown up on a landlocked farm in Manitobas Parkland region.

(Im) a farmer from Inglis who grew up with the 12-foot boat and 3.5-horsepower motor his grandfather gave him, he said. He used to putt-putt around pothole lakes outside Riding Mountain National Park.

York Factory is a fur trade fort opened by the Hudsons Bay Co. in 1684 and operated until 1957. York Factory was HBCs base for most of Canada, making it one of the countrys most important historic sites. A three-storey depot built in 1831, along with the library and the cemetery, still stand.

Sawchuk, 33, has been an electrician for Manitoba Hydro in Gillam, northeast of Thompson, for the last 11 years. His entrepreneurship grew out of his love of rivers, and the York Factory site itself. He travelled there by plane with his wife about 10 years ago. That set the wheels in motion for returning and sharing the experience with others.

Everyone travels to Churchill. Why cant they stop at York Factory? Sawchuk said.

He began operating in 2011 with a jet boat that carried six passengers. He made six trips that summer.

By 2015, he was up to 15 trips, in a 12-passenger boat. This year, hell make 40 trips.

The technology of the jet boat is key. It gets propulsion by drawing water into a jet pump and shooting it out the back. Its a big boat that can travel in shallow water, unlike boats with engine propellers. The boats draft is a mere 20 centimetres.

The Nelson is a massive river, close to a kilometre wide, that empties Lake Winnipeg into Hudson Bay. It can be surprisingly shallow. There are many reefs, sandbars and tidal flats, Sawchuk said.

Tides that rise and fall twice daily can easily strand the boat on the tidal flats. Tides reach more than four metres. Sawchuk times his departures two hours before high tide and returns two hours after high tide.

The boats hull is reinforced to navigate rapids. Sawchuk navigates a long rapid to get to York Factory. Its also a twin engine, so if one engine fails, he still has the other.

I like rivers. I dont like lakes. Anyone can go on a lake, he said.

His jet boat is fast. He travels at 80 km/h downstream, and 68 km/h upstream on return. It takes about three hours to travel from the foot of Manitoba Hydros Limestone Generating Station to York Factory. Speed is needed to cover the round trip of about 350 kilometres in one day.

Wildlife sightings can be expected. We saw large seals, beluga whales, a black bear and three polar bears, said Alvin Suderman of Winnipeg, who took the trip in 2015.

The round trip to York Factory costs $600 per person and a group of at least six is required: the minimum charge per trip is $3,500.

That may seem pricey but Sawchuks boat cost $300,000, and he goes through 1,200 litres of fuel per trip. He operates 12-hour days. He has had numerous difficulties of a start-up entrepreneur, including needing various licences and the high cost of insurance.

No one had done tours out here before so there was no one to ask, he said.

Its a short season, too. The ice builds up 20 metres high on the Nelson River shoreline in winter, and doesnt melt until the third week in June. So Sawchuk operates from the second week of July until the second week in September.

He cant go every day. Sometimes, the high tide is 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. Thats no good. He charts his travel days a year in advance using a tidal app on his smartphone.

He burns vacation days to travel, and Manitoba Hydro allows him great flexibility. The Town of Gillam is virtually owned by Hydro, and Sawchuks company attracts business into the area.

He finds it gratifying to give people the opportunity to see a river and historic site that many thought they would never live to see.

Its kind of a once-in-a-lifetime experience for many people, he said.

bill.redekop@freepress.mb.ca
By PTI: Carrier Elisa in August (Attn.editors: The following press release comes to you under an arrangement with PRNewswire. PTI takes no editorial responsibility for the same). OnePlus 3 Leads All Smartphone Sales in Finland for Top Carrier Elisa in August

BANGALORE, September 9, 2016/PRNewswire/ -- Dash Charge, Excellent Camera and Premium Unibody Aluminum Design Make OnePlus 3 the Most Coveted Smartphone Among Elisa Customers The OnePlus 3, the latest flagship smartphone from global mobile technology startup OnePlus, earned the top position as the best-selling smartphone in August in Finland for Elisa, the countrys leading telecom carrier. Finland has one of the highest per capita rates of mobile data consumption in the world, while Elisa has one of the most active data user bases in Finland. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160909/405943LOGO )

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Since May 2016, OnePlus has been selling flagship smartphones through Elisa, and in a short time span has seen significant success in the market. The OnePlus 3 has quickly gained popularity among Finnish smartphone users as the best-selling phone online for Elisa in June and July. The upward trend continued through August, when the OnePlus 3 became the best selling device overall for Elisa.

"Were super excited about how the OnePlus 3 is performing in Finland," said Carl Pei, co-founder of OnePlus. "Elisa has proven to be the right partner to bring our products to the Finnish market in innovative ways. This partnership shows that the potential for Elisa and OnePlus to continue growing aggressively together in Finland. So watch out!" more PRNewswire GSV

--- ENDS ---
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 08/09/2016 (2242 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

While Tolko Industries has not rejected The Pas Mayor Jim Scotts offer of a municipal and school tax holiday, the company wants to know if any potential buyer would get the same deal.

Im not sure how to read that, Scott said Thursday afternoon. Thats not what we were after.

Scott said he made the offer of a three-year holiday from municipal and school taxes to try to persuade Tolko to keep operating the mill and retain its 300-plus jobs for three years beyond the scheduled December closing while the town searches for another entity to take it over.

Trevor Wright / Opasquia Times The Tolko kraft paper mill in The Pas is to close Dec. 2, but the towns mayor is offering incentives to keep it open while a new owner is sought.

While they didnt reject it, (they said) if they found someone to buy it, could they make that same offer to a new buyer? Scott said.

The company did not respond to an interview request Thursday.

Scott said it makes no sense to offer such a deal to someone taking over the plant. The community wants to make it financially possible for Tolko to keep going another three years and then have someone new in place ready to go.

We dont have a moment to waste, Scott said. Tolko is leaving  theres no doubt in anyones mind. We dont want the mill to shut down and have to restart.

Scott said Growth, Enterprise and Trade Minister Cliff Cullen will be in The Pas Monday: We want to sit down and tell him our story.

The mayor said Cullen will be accompanied by deputy minister Jamie Wilson, the former education director at neighbouring Opaskwayak Cree Nation.

Jodie Madden, the towns chief financial officer, said Thursday Tolko pays the town $411,836 a year in taxes, about seven per cent of the towns revenue.

Kelsey School Division gets $238,359 a year from Tolko in school taxes  about 5.3 per cent of the divisions property tax revenue each year.

Some people are surprised Tolko isnt paying more, said Madden  some of Tolkos 10 properties have aged so much or not been used in so long, such as the sawmill, that the assessed value of much of its property has dropped significantly.

Scott pointed out Tolkos closed-down sawmill property has gone from being a valuable and active property seven years ago to derelict status  meaning it now pays almost no taxes. Thats what will happen to the paper mill propertys assessed value if Tolko shuts it down, he said.

Town assessment records show Tolko has 10 properties, eight of which have a property value of $6,200 to $19,200.

A ninth is valued at $1,402,300, but it is the final property on which the paper mill operates that is valued at $18,293,400. If its value goes, so does its taxes.

Tolko constitutes one-third of the commercial tax base of financially hurting Kelsey School Division and even more of the business base within the town limits.

The division said Thursday it was blindsided when Scott offered to give the Tolko mill a three-year holiday from local taxes.

The school division insists the town council has no legal authority to forgive school taxes.

I didnt know anything about it, Kelsey superintendent Julia McKay said. It would have been nice if they had talked to us first, but they didnt.

Scott said hes been asking Kelsey for a meeting, but trustees cant accommodate him until next week. The mayor acknowledged he did not tell the school division he was offering a tax holiday, but argued, Theyre just slow on the draw. Its been out there a couple of days.

McKay said the town collects education property taxes on behalf of the school division but has no legal right to waive school taxes for any property owner: They cant do that to us, she said.

McKay said Kelsey trustees will hold their first board meeting Monday night since the news broke that the mill will shut down its local operations.

Were hoping to set up a meeting with the town next week, said McKay.

The most recent provincial FRAME (Financial Reporting and Accounting in Manitoba Education) report shows Kelsey has the provinces highest mill rate  tied with nearby Flin Flon  and only the geographically large Frontier School Division has a lower assessment base per student.

Kelseys property assessment per student  a reflection of property values and the taxes they generate  is barely one-third of the provincial average. There are divisions with four and even five times as much property assessment available per student.

Kelsey has never been flush with cash, but its assessment base and its enrolment have been steadily eroding. Meanwhile, its teachers are the fourth-highest-paid in Manitoba.

Scott said if the mill closes and unemployed workers leave the community, Kelsey could lose 150 students or more. The province paid the division $9,989 per student in direct support in the 2015-16 school year.

Were asking them to cough up $250,000 a year to keep those kids here  thats a much better deal, Scott said.

An aide to Education Minister Ian Wishart said Thursday the school division has not asked the province for help.

Commercial assessment makes up less than 30 per cent of the assessment base in The Pas  although it should be noted business owners are taxed at 65 per cent of their propertys assessed value and homeowners at 45 per cent of value.

A mill rate is determined by deciding how much a council or school board needs to raise from taxes and dividing that number by the assessment base.

If Tolko closes and its property value plummets, every other property owner in the community would be forced to pick up a bigger chunk of the tax burden.

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 09/09/2016 (2241 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A recent decision by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to ban anti-bacterial hand and body washes is a step in the right direction. It is time for Canada to follow suit.

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are considered one of the biggest threats to human health today. By 2050, infections that cannot be treated with antibiotics are expected to kill more people than cancer. Antibiotics are not only used for treating bacterial infections, but also for preventing infections during surgical procedures, treatment of cancer, etc. Antibiotic resistance threatens to reverse some of the major medical advances we have made within the last century.

Overuse and misuse of antibiotics are key factors leading to bacteria becoming resistant to antibiotics. Another contributing factor we often forget about is the use of anti-bacterial products at home. Most contain chemicals such as triclosan or quaternary ammonium compounds (QACs).

KIICHIRO SATO / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FILES The U.S. government has banned more than a dozen chemicals, including triclosan, long used in antibacterial soaps and washes.

Anti-bacterial products have never proven to be any better than products without triclosan or QACs. For example, there is no evidence a hand soap containing triclosan or QACs is any better at removing bacteria from our skin than plain soap. And washing hands with plain soap and water is the most effective step to avoid getting sick and to prevent the spread of germs.

In spite of this, markets are literally flooded with anti-bacterial products. We now find anti-bacterial compounds in soaps, toothpastes, clothing, mattresses, cutting boards, office supplies, computer keyboards, shopping carts  the list goes on. Triclosan, for example, is quite stable under high temperatures, which makes it ideal for incorporation in plastics and fabrics. Such products are distributed under the trademark Microban.

While the use of compounds such as triclosan was originally confined to health-care settings, their extensive use in our homes in the recent years means these can be detected quite readily in the environment. These compounds also tend to be extremely stable in nature and can persist in our environments for a long time. It is therefore not surprising that triclosan can now be detected in soil as well as water bodies.

For years, various laboratories, including ours, have shown it is very easy to find bacteria resistant to triclosan and QACs. More concerning is the fact the mechanisms of resistance can be exactly the same mechanisms bacteria use to become resistant to antibiotics, a phenomenon called cross-resistance. This means using products that contain triclosan and QACs at home can kill off normal bacteria but leave behind those that are resistant to both these compounds and antibiotics. In the scientific community, it is well-accepted that the widespread use of triclosan and QACs likely contributes to the prevalence of bacteria resistant to antibiotic medication.

In addition to selecting for bacteria with reduced susceptibility to antibiotics, there is also recent evidence triclosan can alter the composition of good bacteria that reside on or in us that may have an impact on health as well. There is also evidence that triclosan can act as an endocrine disruptor, chemicals that can interfere with the bodys hormone system.

After three years of deliberations, the FDA determined there is simply no evidence the use of anti-bacterial soaps is better at preventing illness than plain soap and water, and the risks of using chemicals such as triclosan in domestic settings by far outweigh its benefits, if any.

Even though the current FDA ban does not include QACs, its decision to eliminate triclosan and 18 similar chemicals from hand and body washes is only a first, but significant step. Health Canada should waste no time in going at least that far.

Microbiologist Ayush Kumar is an associate professor in the department of microbiology at the University of Manitoba and studies antibiotic resistance in bacteria.
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 09/09/2016 (2241 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Never one to shy away from controversy, outspoken Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre said recently Stephen Harper created a more just society than Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Poilievre was speaking strictly in financial terms, highlighting the former Harper governments achievements concerning income equality and poverty reduction.

However, Trudeau (who was prime minister from 1964-79 and 1980-84) was not just referring to economics in his understanding of social justice. He also felt moralism was detrimental to a just society, a practice that had no place in either public policy or law. From this perspective, it could be argued Harper conservatism created a more unjust society. Moralism  principled or religious  was an inherent feature of Harpers social agenda surrounding gay rights, prostitution laws and assisted suicide.

For Trudeau, the just society involved freeing the individual from outmoded shackles of the law in order that he be able to use his freedom to express himself as he sees fit. By this, Trudeau meant the law should be divorced from morality. This is why Trudeau Liberals voted in favour of Bill C-150 in 1969, which decriminalized same-sex acts between consenting adults in private. John Diefenbaker and the Conservatives fell on the wrong side of history by voting against the bill.

JONATHAN HAYWARD / THE CANADIAN PRESS FILES In 2005, the Conservatives led by Stephen Harper opposed same-sex marriage, a stance the party did not change until a decade after it was made legal.

Fast-forward to 2005. When same-sex marriage emerged as a political issue that year, Harper stood firm against any change in the traditional definition of marriage (one man, one woman). Instead, civil unions were offered as a separate but equal solution. When the Liberals (under Paul Martin) passed Bill C-38, the Civil Marriage Act, same-sex marriage became legally recognized. Conservatives once again fell on the wrong side of history by voting against the bill. It was not until 2016 the Conservative party voted for marriage equality, 11 years after the fact.

Prostitution also became a moral issue for the Harperites. In 2014, then-justice minister Peter MacKay pushed for new legislation, Bill C-36, he claimed was needed to protect those who are most vulnerable by going after the perpetrators, the perverts, those who are consumers of this degrading practice. This is precisely the kind of moral judgment Trudeau rejected during his stint as minister of justice.

After the Supreme Court voted 9-0 to strike down the Criminal Code provisions against prostitution, MacKays response was to adopt a recycled version of the Nordic model, one that punished the demand for sexual services. The contrast between Liberal and Conservative governance is striking. While Trudeau took consenting homosexual adults out of prison, the Harper government was intent on putting consenting heterosexual adults in prison.

The Harper regimes attitude toward assisted death was also ideologically driven. In 2012, then-justice minister Rob Nicholson rejected the British Columbia Supreme Court ruling in Carter v. Canada (Attorney General) that found the prohibition against assisted suicide unconstitutional. Nicholson also challenged the courts exemption for Gloria Taylor who was dying of ALS. In 2014, Harper simply dismissed the issue outright: The government of Canada at this time has no intention of reopening that debate.

But the Liberals did address assisted suicide head-on. Led this time by Justin Trudeau, the Liberal party voted in favour of legalizing medical assistance in dying at its national convention in February 2014. In June 2016, the Liberals passed Bill C-14, which provided compassionate relief for Canadians whose deaths were imminent.

Stephen Harper frequently chastised liberals for embracing moral relativism, as if his fondness for moral certainty was something to be proud of. Yet, it was Harpers brand of rigid moralism that marginalized sexual minorities, impinged on individual liberty and increased the suffering of dying patients. In an ironic twist of fate, Harpers affinity for absolutes led to a Liberal majority, allowing Justin Trudeau to continue his fathers legacy of a more just society.

Stuart Chambers is a professor in the faculties of arts and social sciences at the University of Ottawa.

schamber@uottawa.ca
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 09/09/2016 (2241 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Winnipeg Police Service quarterly update goes before the police board today with more bad news: the figures show a $6.5-million deficit, with a drop in photo-radar ticket revenue largely blamed.

Weve been down this road before. Concerns about how the police service spends tax dollars and deficits have been ongoing, particularly given Winnipeg has one of the highest number of police officers for its size, replete with vanity projects such as a helicopter and an armoured car. Salaries, overtime and pensions are considered the key culprits in terms of cost overruns. One concern is the police pension budget is facing a shortfall and extra money must be found to cover those future costs.

This is not new. In 2013, the City of Winnipeg attempted to negotiate with the police union to obtain a solvency exemption for the pension plan, in the unlikely scenario the city goes bankrupt. The union refused, and the city had to obtain a letter of credit (which expires this month and the city has no choice but to renew it again). In January, an administrative report called for another $800,000 for the police budget to cover the citys contribution rate that ensures the pension plan can cover its benefits. Add to that an additional $95,000 for the citys annual cost of a letter of credit paid out in December.

WAYNE GLOWACKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Mayor Brian Bowman

The concerns about pension insolvency are not limited to the Winnipeg Police Service. Federally, the Liberal government has been told there is a substantive shortfall in public service pensions that must be made up to the tune of $426 million during the next 15 years. In the private sector, Air Canada was also facing a pension shortfall of more than $4 billion in 2013 but rebounded to a surplus just two years later. (In part, it came from employee concessions and changes to the pension plan for all future hires.)

Revamping pensions was one of the main planks of Brian Bowmans mayoral election bid in 2014. After his win, he told the Free Press editorial board reforming the civic pension plan was something he planned to pursue. What I said during the election campaign was that Im not convinced the current model is sustainable for taxpayers, Mr. Bowman said. What Id like to do is meet with stakeholders, including our unions, collaboratively, to see how we can make sure the programs are sustainable.

It is two years later, Mr. Bowman, and were still waiting.

In December, Coun. Russ Wyatt (Transcona) suggested it may be the time to explore a two-tiered pension system adopted by many private and public-sector organizations (including Air Canada, Winnipeg Free Press and the University of Winnipeg). It would mean future employees would not receive a defined pension upon retirement, and instead, contributions by both employer and employee would be made into managed retirement funds.

When this was first brought forward by Mr. Wyatt, the mayor, the citys finance committee chairman (Marty Morantz) and the police association, all seemed to at least be open to the idea.

Its time to show some leadership and take action.
PICKWICK  When Opal Fitch was a young girl, her family would go to the old mill.

Pickwick Mill, a great yellow-stone building in the bluffs about 10 miles southeast of Winona, was old and tired even then; it had once churned out flour day and night for the Union Army.

Opals family came to the mill in the 1930s to grind corn into cornmeal and to draw water from the creek out back. Pickwick Mill was vital to this little community, having supported families like Opals for generations.

The mills operations were shut down in 1978, the building itself was nearly torn down in 1980, and ever since, Opal Fitch has spent her days supporting the mill right back.

It is a fabulous place, she said, just a fabulous place.

Opal, 92, is president of Pickwick Mill Inc. and hosts board meetings in her dining room. The first Monday of each month, she pulls out the leaves on her dining room table and bakes at least two kinds of cookies.

Ask Opal a question about herself, and she will find a way to deflect attention back toward the mill. She is irreversibly linked with the place, even shares an address with it, living in a farmhouse a mile or so down the country road.

Opal, lately, has been arranging the mills annual celebration, Pickwick Mill Day, when people visit the mill for wagon rides and blacksmithing demonstrations. In the days before the celebration, she makes signs to hang and pies to sell. She does her best to convince anyone with a heartbeat and a little cash to invest in a raffle ticket.

My boys tease me, she said. I quit a job that paid me so I could do this.

Pickwick Mill has a powerful hold on some people.

The mill was built in 1856 by settlers George Grant and Timothy Davis. Powered by the falls of Big Trout Creek, it was one of the largest and most productive flour mills in Minnesota, shipping barrels across the country and to port cities in Europe and South America.

This is living history, said Vic Gardner, who gives tours of the mill-turned-museum, which looks very much how it did before.

You have to go a long ways, Gardner said, before you will find something like this.

The museum is home to items so obsolete they are difficult to recognize  old bread makers and ice skates. Opal contributed her mothers bowl and butter paddles, figuring they were not doing much good stored away in her house.

Even Vic, who has memorized facts about the mill and recites them almost automatically, yields to Opal and her expertise when it comes to the mills history.

Shes a sharp old lady, Gardner said. Shes a walking history book.

Perhaps more than anything, Opal likes to talk about the time Pickwick nearly lost its mill.

In September 1980, the valley was hit with the worst flood anyone here can remember. The water rose to touch the windows of some houses.

The dam and the mills spillway were destroyed, and the building itself was critically damaged. The owners started to talk of tearing it down.

It was about that time people in the valley came together. In 1982, they formed Pickwick Mill Inc. and purchased the mill. They vowed to restore it and to preserve the machinery inside.

They requested a study by the U.S. Department of Agriculture into measures that could prevent another destructive flood.

In 1987, they pulled in nearly $400,000 to rebuild the dam and to install erosion-control dikes.

We did what they said we couldnt, Opal said. Maybe thats why I like doing this.

A couple days before Mill Day, she leans over her dining room table, writing on poster board, using a yardstick to keep her lines straight.

Later, she has 30 or so pies to bake  nine each of pumpkin and pecan.

She does not do all of this by herself, she says, though it might sometimes look that way.

It takes everyone, she says, to keep it going.

Opal does not have limitless energy. She admits her Mill Day work can get tedious, and she wishes young people would gravitate toward the mill the way she did.

I dont know how Im getting out of this job, she says.

Then she lifts a hand, points to the ground and smiles.
The Winona Family YMCA has scored a major grant to help it move forward with its planned move out of downtown.

The Otto Bremer Trust announced Thursday afternoon that it has awarded $250,000 to the YMCA to be put toward the organizations ongoing capital campaign. The YMCA has long held plans to move from its Winona Street location and into a new home near Winona Health on the citys east end, with work continuing on the project.

The YMCA and Kwik Trip tentatively announced plans for the convenience store chain to buy the existing location and create a convenience store there, but after responses from the neighboring Windom Park community and others, they backed away from the plans.

The YMCAs leadership and its board then announced plans to re-engage homeowners in the historic Windom Park neighborhood and others to see if there was a different solution to funding the YMCAs move. The YMCA also announced plans to publicly list the building and land for sale.

The YMCA is continuing discussions with city of Winona planning staff and officials about revising the comprehensive plan, a prerequisite to rezoning the land, currently zoned as residential.

The foundation Thursday also announced two other substantial grants to Winona-area organizations:

The Winona State University foundation will receive $66,340 to increase the diversity and number of qualified healthcare workers in Minnesota;

The Southeast Minnesota Rural Education and Resource Center in St. Charles will receive $27,233 for operational expansion and capital improvements to the new food shelf in St. Charles. The center, under new leadership, has undergone substantial changes in recent years, moving into a new location and increasing services for area residents.
By PTI: From Sajjad Hussain

Islamabad, Sep 9 (PTI) Pakistan cabinet led by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif today decided to allow about three million Afghan refugees to stay in the country till March next year, saying adequate and concrete steps would be taken for them.

"Afghans are our brothers and very dear to us. Adequate and concrete steps will be ensured for facilitation of Afghan refugees living in Pakistan," said an official statement of the cabinet meeting held here.

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The meeting approved to extend the stay of Afghan refugees in Pakistan till March 31, 2017. Previously, the government had set a deadline of December 31 this year for their return.

Of the three million refugees, about half are illegally living in Pakistan while others have legal status to stay.

Both the Afghan government and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) had been pushing Pakistan to extend the deadline of sending Afghan refugees back as war-torn Afghanistan was not still ready to absorb the influx of refugees.

These refugees came in 1980s in Pakistan during Afghan war and most of them are still staying despite repeated warnings and deadlines by Pakistan to go back. PTI SH CPS SAI CPS

--- ENDS ---
Police say a Turkish exchange student threatened to kill a Lake Delton security guard in an attempt to extort money from him.

Prosecutors have charged 25-year-old Arcan Anil of Wisconsin Dells with a felony count of threatening to injure or accuse of a crime. The threat was allegedly made as part of a retaliation against the guard, who had turned Anil in for smoking marijuana.

According to the criminal complaint, the guard smelled marijuana coming from one of the rooms at the Hiawatha Residence Hall while he was making the rounds Sept. 2. He notified law enforcement, and officers later issued citations to two exchange students from Turkey.

The next day, the security guard called police to report that Anil  one of the two who was cited  threatened to kill him. The guard said the Anil threatened to kill him if he didnt pay him $500, the cost of the fine.

The security guard allegedly told police that several Turkish students discussed harming him before they leave for Turkey. Anil is slated to return to Turkey on Sept. 20, and his employer is in the process of revoking his J1 Visa, according to the complaint.

The officer reported that when he came to the dorm to arrest Anil, there were numerous Turkish students watching, and at least one was staring at the security guard, who also was present.

In court Thursday, prosecutors amended the charge to misdemeanor disorderly conduct in exchange for a no contest plea. A judge found him guilty and sentenced him to five days in jail with four days credit for time already served.

He must return to Turkey on Sept. 20, provide a DNA sample, and pay $443 in court costs, which was taken from the $750 cash bond he posted.
Columbus High School alum and Olympic athlete Heather Miller-Koch will get a heros welcome when she returns to town on Sunday, Sept. 11, with a parade and open house being held in her honor.

The Columbus Fire Departments ladder truck will pick up Miller-Koch and her husband in the Columbus Community Hospital parking lot at 11:30 a.m. The truck will travel down Park Avenue, through the Four Corners, turn right on Mill street, right on Water Street, right on James Street and then left back down Park Avenue to Firemans Park.

At the park, there will be an open house and festivities to welcome her home and celebrate her Olympic achievements.

A 2005 graduate of CHS, Miller-Koch placed 18th overall in the heptathlon at the Olympics in Rio de Janiero earlier this summer. The heptathlon is a track and field combined events contest made up of the 100-meter-hurdles, the high jump, the shot put, the 200-meter dash, the long jump, the javelin and the 800-meter run.

On Tuesday, the Columbus City Council approved a proclamation declaring Aug. 5, which was opening day of the Rio Summer Games, Heather Miller-Koch Day in Columbus.
Aug. 24, 2:27 p.m. The Columbus Fire Department responded to power line down on Sanderson Road in the town of Hampden.

Aug. 26, 4:31 p.m. The Columbus Fire Department responded to mutual aid the Sun Prairie Fire Department to standby at their station in case they get another call.

Aug. 27, 10:05 p.m. The Columbus Fire Department responded to a motor vehicle accident with no injuries on Highway 151 in the town of Columbus.

Aug. 29, 7:25 a.m. The Columbus Fire Department responded to a smoke investigation on River Road in the city of Columbus.

Aug. 30, 11:43 p.m. The Columbus Fire Department responded to a motor vehicle accident with injuries on Highway 60 and West James Street in the city of Columbus.

Sept. 1, 12:30 p.m. The Columbus Fire Department responded to a motorcycle accident with injuries on Highway 73 in the town of Columbus.

Sept. 3, 1:14 a.m. The Columbus Fire Department responded to assist the Dodge County Sheriff Department with the use of our drone to search for a person in a field on Highway 73 in the town of Calamus.

Sept. 3, 5:21 p.m. The Columbus Fire Department was dispatched and canceled while enroute.

Sept. 5, 7:06 p.m. The Columbus Fire Department responded to assist EMS on Highway 151 in the town of Elba.

Total fire calls for the year so far: 137
A Baraboo man faces charges of sexually assaulting a child after police say he carried on a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old girl.

The charges of repeated sexual assault of a child and second degree sexual assault of a child against 35-year-old Michael S. Huebsch each carry a maximum penalty of 40 years in prison and $100,000 in fines. In an interview with authorities, Huebsch denied the allegations.

According to the criminal complaint, the girl told a Baraboo Police Department officer that on an unknown date in April she was playing video games in Huebschs room, fell asleep, and awoke to him touching her inappropriately.

The girl told authorities that Huebsch then had intercourse with her on multiple occasions between April and August and that she did say no at some point to Huebsch but did not recall him ever saying anything back.

The officer reported that the girl seemed visibly uncomfortable while describing her activity with Huebsch, because she made a disgusted face while describing it.

The girl told police that Huebsch sent her inappropriate messages on social media, came to her workplace and caused scenes, and even harassed her boyfriend and his family after she broke off contact, according to the complaint.

Another witness said Huebsch told her that the girl better resolve the matter or he could see things getting to the level of Columbine, a reference to the 1999 mass shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado.

When interviewed by an officer, Huebsch allegedly denied that he ever had a sexual relationship with the girl, but admitted that they had accidentally kissed one time.

Huebsch has been jailed on a $5,000 cash bond and ordered to have no contact with the alleged victim, her family, or any other minor females except in public with another adult. He also is prohibited from using social media as a condition of his bond. Huebsch is due to appear in court Oct. 7.
Members of St. Vincent de Paul in Mauston held a school supply drive to help out local teachers and students on Wednesday.

The thrift store and church organization purchased the supplies and dropped them off to elementary schools in the Juneau County area.

Ive been trying to make sure that people are aware that we do give back to the community in more ways than we do, said St. Vincent de Paul outreach director Stacy Hartje. A lot of people think we keep the money and make a profit or it goes back to the church  none of those are true  all of the proceeds go back to the public.

Hartje thought a school supply drive would be an ideal way to give back to the community, especially with a new school year just getting underway.

We were able to get things like crayons, markers, pencils, along with disinfectant wipes and hand sanitizers, items like that, Hartje said.

Hartje began the school supply drive last year after discussing the idea with her sister her teaches in the New Lisbon school district. She also reached out to other teachers in the area.

My sister made the comment that if a kid doesnt have a pencil, they cant do their homework, she said. A lot of the elementary teachers said they needed disinfectant wipes because they go through a lot of them.

With school budgets tight, Hartje said schools could use a boost with help for supplies every year. St. Vincent de Paul has also helped local citizens with other needs on a regular basis.

I hate to know that teachers are spending out of their own paycheck to help make sure they have the necessities to teach my kids in school, Hartje said. I would like to do this every September.

Hartje said St. Vincent de Paul is always looking for school supply donations and people to help organize and deliver the supplies.

If anyone wants to chip in, I love having helpers, Hartje said.

St. Vincent de Pauls goal is to assist students, teachers and residents in the Mauston-Lyndon Station area. For more information or to donate to St. Vincent de Paul, call 608-847-6235.
A Spanish teacher at Reedsburg Area High School has won the 2016-17 Wisconsin High School Teacher of the Year Award.

Sarah Breckley received the honor from State Superintendent Tony Evers during a surprise ceremony at the school on Sept. 9. Students and staff gathered for an assembly that included Evers as a guest speaker and music by the school band.

Breckley took home a plaque and will also receive $3,000 from the Herb Kohl Educational Foundation.

She said she has been with the school district for nine years. Breckley, a California native, fosters a love of language through both classroom instruction and travel to Spanish-speaking countries.

Shes also an active volunteer at Cornerstone Missionary Baptist Church, a church she helped found in Reedsburg.

Breckley told the Times-Press she was completely surprised by the award. She said she was more excited about visitors from the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) and thought it was special having them stop by the district. She had no idea they were there to honor her.

They called my name and I was in shock, she said.

She said she doesnt try to stand out as a teacher. She said good teachers collaborate and use what they have learned to better serve their students.

As soon as teachers set themselves apart or be different thats when it falls apart, she said. You have to share everything you do.

Its difficult to be a cruel, angry person when your job is to be excited and engaged, she said. Breckley said her upbeat attitude as a teacher keeps her going even outside the classroom.

Evers said Reedsburg has an excellent teacher in your midst. He said DPI and Herb Kohls foundation work together to recognize exceptional educators.

Choosing a winner is difficult because there are around 60,000 teachers in about 2,000 public school buildings in Wisconsin. The top teacher is selected by a panel of former educators of the year.

Its hard work and the reason its hard is because we have such outstanding teachers all across the state of Wisconsin, he said.

For more photos and video from the ceremony visit www.reedsburgtimespress.com.
Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson isnt saying what he thinks of his partys presidential nominee, Donald Trump, praising Russian president Vladimir Putin in a public forum Wednesday night.

Trump has drawn bipartisan criticism for his admiring take on Putin at an NBC News forum Wednesday night for Trump and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

Trump touted Putins popularity in Russia, hailed him as having very strong control over a country and described him as a better leader than President Barack Obama.

If he says great things about me, Im going to say great things about him, Trump said of Putin.

Trumps remarks depart sharply from the skepticism  and in many cases, hostility  shown toward Putin by most U.S. political leaders in both parties. Putin is widely regarded in the West as an autocrat, having been criticized for annexing Crimea from Ukraine, for allegations of widespread fraud in Russian elections and for his human-rights record in Russia, including his alleged sanctioning of the murder of political opponents.

As Senate Homeland Security chairman, Johnson, R-Oshkosh, is one of Capitol Hills top-ranking lawmakers on national security issues.

Johnsons campaign declined to respond Thursday to Trumps comments.

He is seeking re-election in November and is challenged by Democrat Russ Feingold.

Johnsons House counterpart, U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, pushed back against Trump Thursday, saying the idea that Russia is somehow a friend of ours, or that Putin is a friend, is a false narrative.

Clinton hammered Trump for the comments in a press conference Thursday morning, calling them unpatriotic and insulting.

What would Ronald Reagan say about a Republican nominee who attacks Americas generals and heaps praise on Russias president? I think we know the answer, Clinton said.

Johnson has sharply criticized Putin in the past, calling him a megalomaniac who must be confronted.

More recently, Johnson told the Wisconsin State Journal that the menace of Russia in eastern Europe, under Putins leadership, is among the top national security challenges facing the U.S.

Johnson is on record supporting Trumps candidacy.

He has parted ways with Trump on some of the GOP nominees most widely criticized statements, such as his call to ban Muslims from traveling into the U.S. and his claim that a U.S.-born judge of Mexican ancestry could not fairly preside over lawsuits against Trump University.
President overstepped constitution

Evidently you are not well informed on what goes on in Washington. You need to pay closer attention and use discernment. In this free country all decisions are supposed to be made according to our constitution and must go through congress. President Barack Obama bypassed Congress more than once and did things on his own in the guise of executive privileges. Even executive privileges must be in accordance with our constitution.
"Pakistan has clung stubbornly to its own perceptions of national interest, and refused to compromise them even when it seemed irrational or self-defeating to US eyes," an ex-CIA official said.

By Press Trust of India: Pakistan was "nearly placed" on a formal US list of state sponsors of terrorism during 1993 to 1994, an ex-CIA official has said.

WHAT EX-CIA OFFICIAL SAID



"At the start of the (Bill) Clinton administration, in 1993 and 1994, I was a special assistant to the Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, on loan from CIA, deeply involved in an annual terrorism review which nearly resulted in Pakistans being placed on the formal list of state sponsors of terrorism," Robert L Grenier, a former CIA official, said yesterday.

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He was addressing members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during a Congressional hearing on Pakistan.

Also read:

Want full accountability from Pakistan on Mumbai attacks: US

Pakistan must push harder against terrorists, do more to clear sanctuaries: US

Pakistan army admits IS presence in territory



Grenier said that over the past five decades, the US has been willing, episodically to overlook its concerns with aspects of Pakistani behaviour and to subordinate those concerns in the face of what have appeared, at the time, to be overriding national security priorities only to revert to a more contentious relationship when those interests no longer pertained.

"Thus, in the 1980s, the US was willing not only to overlook growing evidence of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program in deference to joint US-Pak support to the anti-Soviet Afghan Mujahiddin, but also to provide Pakistan with generous economic and military rewards in the bargain," he said.

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11 attacks, needing a platform for operations in Afghanistan and a partner to intercept Al-Qaeda militants fleeing that country, the US was again willing to subordinate its broader concerns with Pakistani-based militancy in Kashmir and with Pakistan's ambivalent attitude toward the Afghan Taliban, he said.

"Pakistan has clung stubbornly to its own perceptions of national interest, and refused to compromise them even when it seemed irrational or self-defeating to US eyes," he said.

He also said the same has happened in the context of nuclear weapons doctrine, in its assessment of the threat from India, or in its calculus regarding both foreign and domestic militant groups.

Pakistani adherence to its perceived interests, in fact, has persisted, irrespective of US-administered punishments or inducements, Greiner said.

"US MUST HELP PAK MAINTAIN LARGE CONVENTIONAL ARMED FORCES"



However, the former CIA station chief in Islamabad, warned the lawmakers against taking any punitive action or sanctions against Pakistan. In fact he encouraged that the US should help Pakistan maintain a large conventional armed forces.

"Pakistans conventional military forces will need to be maintained if we are to avoid quick recourse to nuclear weapons at a time when Kashmir remains a social and political tinderbox, and the threat of Indo-Pak war still hangs like an incubus across the region," he said.

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"The US dares not turn its back on Pakistan as it seeks to protect its serious national security interests in South- Central Asia," Grenier said.

--- ENDS ---
A Friesland man who has been in jail since his arrest Tuesday on charges of sexually assaulting a young relative over several years in the 1990s appeared in court Thursday, facing a potential maximum sentence of 120 years in prison.

Enos Bontrager, 48, is charged with four counts of sexual assault of a child under 13 years old, two counts of second-degree sexual assault of a child, and one count of sexual assault of a child under 16.

This kind of vile, heinous, reprehensible behavior is just something that should not happen in our society, said Assistant District Attorney Cliff Burdon. This happened over half a decade from the early 90s until roughly 1997. We look to our family for trust, not to be the subject of victimization.

In the time since the alleged offenses, Wisconsin law has changed regarding sexual assault as a repeated offense. The case was charged as seven separate offenses from each year.

So I feel that with each of those seven counts, $10,000 cash would be appropriate. Were asking for $70,000 cash bond, said Burdon. Hes facing 120 years in prison, so he is clearly a flight risk. He is also a danger to the public because he has gone unchecked all these years with this behavior.

The case was opened July 22 when the Columbia County Sheriffs Office received a call from a woman reporting a series of incidents beginning when she was 9 years old until she was 16 or 17. The woman had not told anyone about the experiences until about two months earlier, a deputy reported, as the woman explained that it came out while being treated for depression.

The criminal complaint included what were reportedly second-hand texts from the month before contact with authorities  messages passed through an intermediary and texted to the alleged victim, from Bontrager and his wife, expressing sympathy, regret and concern.

Mr. Bontrager is 48 years old and has lived in Friesland since 1989, said defense attorney Nathaniel Wojan. He has been married for 30 years and they are currently transitioning residences to the Fond du Lac area.

Acknowledging the seriousness of the charges, but saying that the most recent allegation was from nearly 20 years ago, Wojan asked for cash bond to be set at $10,000 to $15,000.

Although he has a lot of years he could serve if he is convicted of all counts, said Judge Alan White, he has been a resident here for many years and has a business here. Cash bail is going to be set at $20,000.

Bontrager is scheduled to next appear in court Nov. 29.
MADISON  The Sauk City Fire Department received an inflatable search and rescue boat from the Firehouse Subs Public Safety Foundation on Sept. 8.

The boat and its trailer are worth $13,500 and will be used by the fire department to conduct rescue missions on local lakes and rivers where traditional boats cant go.

Sauk City Assistant Fire Chief Michael Breunig said the Wisconsin River presents unique challenges for the department, and the new boat will save valuable time during rescue missions.

The Wisconsin River changes every day, creating a navigational nightmare, he said. With this inflatable rescue boat and its jet engine, well be able operate in as little as four inches of water.

Breunig filled out a grant application for the boat and said he was surprised to receive it from the safety foundation. With recent budget cuts, he said the boat will fill an important need for the department.

In the past, weve had to rely on what limited resources we had on rescues and on mutual aid, all of which loses valuable time, he said. Some people dont have that time.

Eric Erwin hosted the donation event at his Firehouse Subs restaurant on Mineral Point Road in Madison. He said his two Firehouse Subs locations are leading contributors to the public safety foundation.

We love to help donate life-saving equipment, Erwin said.

The Firehouse Subs Public Safety Foundation was started in 2005 to help purchase life-saving equipment for first responders and public safety organizations. The foundation has donated more than $20 million to safety organizations across the United States, and more than $180,000 in Wisconsin.

Foundation Development Manager Meghan Vargas said a majority of the fundraising comes from in-store donations. Customers can donate their change in the canister at the register or round their bill up to the nearest dollar to donate to the foundation. The restaurant also sells recycled five-gallon pickle jars for $2 each and donates the profits to the foundation.
Sauk Prairie first responders will recognize those who died in the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C. on 9/11 with a procession through the communities on the 15th anniversary of the attacks.

The Prairie du Sac Fire Department, Sauk City Fire Department, Sauk Prairie Ambulance Service and Sauk Prairie Police Department will gather at the Sauk Prairie High School parking lot at 8:30 a.m. Sept. 11. They then will lead their vehicles north on 13th Street beginning at 8:46 a.m., the same time Flight 11 crashed into 1 World Trade Center. The procession will turn east on Prairie Street before heading south through Prairie du Sac and Sauk City on Water Street. The vehicles will then head west on Phillips Boulevard before turning north on Sycamore Street and returning to the high school parking lot.
Former CIA official Robert L Grenier old members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during a Congressional hearing on Pakistan that the country was being placed on the formal list of state sponsors of terrorism.

By Press Trust of India: A former CIA official has said that Pakistan was "nearly placed" on the list of state sponsored terrorism during 1993 to 1994.

"At the start of the (Bill) Clinton administration, in 1993 and 1994, I was a special assistant to the Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, on loan from CIA, deeply involved in an annual terrorism review which nearly resulted in Pakistan being placed on the formal list of state sponsors of terrorism," Robert L Grenier, a former CIA official told members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during a Congressional hearing on Pakistan.

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WHY AMERICA!

Grenier said that over the past five decades, the US has been willing, episodically to overlook its concerns with aspects of Pakistani behaviour and to subordinate those concerns in the face of what have appeared, at the time, to be overriding national security priorities only to revert to a more contentious relationship when those interests no longer pertained.

"Thus, in the 1980s, the US was willing not only to overlook growing evidence of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program in deference to joint US-Pak support to the anti-Soviet Afghan Mujahiddin, but also to provide Pakistan with generous economic and military rewards in the bargain," he said.

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11 attacks, needing a platform for operations in Afghanistan and a partner to intercept Al-Qaeda militants fleeing that country, the US was again willing to subordinate its broader concerns with Pakistani-based militancy in Kashmir and with Pakistan's ambivalent attitude toward the Afghan Taliban, he said.

PAKISTAN'S DEFINITION OF NATIONAL INTEREST

Pakistan has clung stubbornly to its own perceptions of national interest, and refused to compromise them even when it seemed irrational or self-defeating to US eyes, he said.

He also said the same has happened in the context of nuclear weapons doctrine, in its assessment of the threat from India, or in its calculus regarding both foreign and domestic militant groups.

Pakistani adherence to its perceived interests, in fact, has persisted, irrespective of US-administered punishments or inducements, Greiner said.

However, the former CIA station chief in Islamabad, warned the lawmakers against taking any punitive action or sanctions against Pakistan. In fact he encouraged that the US should help Pakistan maintain a large conventional armed forces.

"Pakistans conventional military forces will need to be maintained if we are to avoid quick recourse to nuclear weapons at a time when Kashmir remains a social and political tinderbox, and the threat of Indo-Pak war still hangs like an incubus across the region," he said.

"The US dares not turn its back on Pakistan as it seeks to protect its serious national security interests in South-Central Asia," Grenier said.

--- ENDS ---
Sally Beauty Holdings, Inc. operates as a specialty retailer and distributor of professional beauty supplies. The company operates through two segments, Sally Beauty Supply and Beauty Systems Group. The Sally Beauty Supply segment offers beauty products, including hair color and care products, skin and nail care products, styling tools, and other beauty products for retail customers, salons, and salon professionals. This segment also provides products under third-party brands, such as Wella, Clairol, OPI, Conair, and L'Oreal, as well as exclusive-label brand merchandise. The Beauty Systems Group segment offers professional beauty products, such as hair color and care products, skin and nail care products, styling tools, and other beauty items directly to salons and salon professionals through its professional-only stores, e-commerce platforms, and sales force, as well as through franchised stores under the Armstrong McCall store name. This segment also sells products under third-party brands, such as Paul Mitchell, Wella, Matrix, Schwarzkopf, Kenra, Goldwell, Joico, and Olaplex. As of September 30, 2021, the company operated 4,777 stores, including 134 franchised units in the United States, Puerto Rico, Canada, Mexico, Chile, Peru, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Spain, and Germany. It also distributes its products through full-service/exclusive distributors, open-line distributors, direct sales, and mega-salon stores. Sally Beauty Holdings, Inc. was founded in 1964 and is headquartered in Denton, Texas.
ResMed Inc. develops, manufactures, distributes, and markets medical devices and cloud-based software applications for the healthcare markets. The company operates in two segments, Sleep and Respiratory Care, and Software as a Service. It offers various products and solutions for a range of respiratory disorders, including technologies to be applied in medical and consumer products, ventilation devices, diagnostic products, mask systems for use in the hospital and home, headgear and other accessories, dental devices, and cloud-based software informatics solutions to manage patient outcomes, as well as provides customer and business processes. The company also provides AirView, a cloud-based system that enables remote monitoring and changing of patients' device settings; myAir, a personalized therapy management application for patients with sleep apnea that provides support, education, and troubleshooting tools for increased patient engagement and improved compliance; U-Sleep, a compliance monitoring solution that enables home medical equipment (HME)to streamline their sleep programs; connectivity module and propeller solutions; and Propeller portal. It offers out-of-hospital software solution, such as Brightree business management software and service solutions to providers of HME, pharmacy, home infusion, orthotics, and prosthetics services; MatrixCare care management and related ancillary solutions to senior living, skilled nursing, life plan communities, home health, home care, and hospice organizations, as well as related accountable care organizations; and HEALTHCAREfirst that offers electronic health record, software, billing and coding services, and analytics for home health and hospice agencies. The company markets its products primarily to sleep clinics, home healthcare dealers, and hospitals through a network of distributors and direct sales force in approximately 140 countries. ResMed Inc. was founded in 1989 and is headquartered in San Diego, California.
After being cornered by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at G-20 and ASEAN summits for sponsoring terrorism, Pakistan tried to deflect attention at home by leveling counter-allegation. Islamabad on Friday accused India of 'destabilizing' it.

By India Today Web Desk: Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a strong pitch at G-20 summit in China and at the ASEAN summit in Vietnam for isolating Pakistan for sponsoring terrorism in south Asia. After being cornered internationally, Islamabad on Friday launched a counter-offensive by accusing India of 'destabilizing it by financing terrorism and supporting militancy'.

Addressing a press conference in Islamabad, Pakistan's Foreign Office spokesperson Nafees Zakaria repeated Modi's verbatim in leveling accusations against India. Zakaria said, "India is the one single nation in South Asia which is spreading agents of terror in countries of our region."



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READ: One country in neighbourhood producing, exporting terror: PM



MODI'S VERBATIM REPEATED

Earlier, PM Modi rapped Islamabad for producing and exporting terror in south Asia. Modi had said that exporting terror is Pakistan's only advantage. External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup shared highlights of Modi's speech at the G-20 summit in a series of tweets on September 5.

"Terrorist is a terrorist. 1 single nation in S. Asia is spreading agents of terror in our region. Isolate & sanction supporters of terrorism' Urge int'l community to act in unity & respond against terrorism," read tweets from Swarup.

Zakaria used these very words in leveling accusations against India. In its fresh counter-offensive, Islamabad said, "India is financing terrorism in Pakistan and open evidences are available on its involvement in subversive activities".

PRESSURE FROM THE US

Incidentally, Pakistan's frustration has come out a day after the US slammed it for selective action against terror groups in Pakistan. The blunt message from the US came after PM Modi called for a united action against the state sponsors of terrorism.

US State Department deputy spokesperson Mark Toner said, "We made it very clear that Pakistan can't pick and choose which terrorist groups it goes after and it has to go after those groups that seek to do harm to its neighbours and may seek refuge on Pakistani soil."

ALSO READ:

Export of terror common security threat: PM Modi to ASEAN nations

PM Modi's tough talk continues: Exporting terror Pakistan's only competitive advantage







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B&G Foods, Inc. manufactures, sells, and distributes a portfolio of shelf-stable and frozen foods, and household products in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. The company's products include frozen and canned vegetables, vegetables, canola and other cooking oils, vegetable shortening, cooking sprays, oatmeal and other hot cereals, fruit spreads, canned meats and beans, bagel chips, spices, seasonings, hot sauces, wine vinegar, maple syrups, molasses, salad dressings, pizza crusts, Mexican-style sauces, dry soups, taco shells and kits, salsas, pickles, peppers, tomato-based products, baking powder and soda, corn starch, cookies and crackers, nut clusters, and other specialty products. It markets its products under various brands, including Ac'cent, B&G, B&M, Back to Nature, Baker's Joy, Bear Creek Country Kitchens, Brer Rabbit, Canoleo, Cary's, Clabber Girl, Cream of Rice, Cream of Wheat, Crisco, Dash, Davis, Devonsheer, Don Pepino, Durkee, Emeril's, Grandma's Molasses, Green Giant, Joan of Arc, Las Palmas, Le Sueur, MacDonald's, Mama Mary's, Maple Grove Farms of Vermont, McCann's, Molly McButter, New York Flatbreads, New York Style, Old London, Ortega, Polaner, Red Devil, Regina, Rumford, Sa-son, Sclafani, Spice Islands, Spring Tree, Sugar Twin, Tone's, Trappey's, TrueNorth, Underwood, Vermont Maid, Victoria, and Weber and Wright's. The company also sells, markets, and distributes household products under the Static Guard brand. It sells and distributes its products directly, as well as through a network of independent brokers and distributors to supermarket chains, foodservice outlets, mass merchants, warehouse clubs, non-food outlets, and specialty distributors. The company was formerly known as B&G Foods Holdings Corp. and changed its name to B&G Foods, Inc. in October 2004. B&G Foods, Inc. was founded in 1822 and is headquartered in Parsippany, New Jersey.
By PTI: Islamabad, Sep 9 (PTI) Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will raise the issue of Kashmir situation at the upcoming United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) session, a spokesperson of his office said here today.

"The Prime Minister has expressed grave concern during todays meeting over Indias use of excessive force in Kashmir," the spokesperson said, adding the issue will be raised during the UNGA session.

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The issue was high on the agenda of the meeting held on the UNGA session, Dawn reported.

India has blamed Pakistan for the ongoing unrest in Kashmir which was triggered by the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani on July 8.

Over 70 people, including two police personnel, have been killed and several thousand others injured in the clashes between stone pelters and security forces in the Valley over the last two months. PTI SH UZM AKK AKK

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Telecom Argentina S.A., together with its subsidiaries, provides telecommunications services in Argentina and internationally. The company offers telephone services, including local, domestic, and international long-distance telephone services, as well as public telephone services; and other related supplementary services, such as call waiting, call forwarding, conference calls, caller ID, voice mail, itemized billing, and maintenance services. It also provides interconnection services, such as traffic and interconnection resource, dedicated Internet access, video signals transportation in standard and high definitions, audio and video streaming, dedicated links, backhaul links for mobile operators, data center hosting/housing services, dedicated links, layer 2 and layer 3 transport networks, video links, value-added services, and other services. In addition, the company offers mobile telecommunications services, including voice communications, high-speed mobile Internet content and applications download, online streaming, and other services; and sells mobile communication devices, such as handsets, Modems MiFi and wingles, and smart watches under the Personal brand. Further, it provides internet connectivity products, including virtual private network services, traditional Internet protocol links, and other products; data services; and programming and other cable television services. The company was formerly known as Cablevision S.A. and changed its name to Telecom Argentina S.A. in January 2018. Telecom Argentina S.A. was founded in 1979 and is based in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Babcock International Group PLC, together with its subsidiaries, provides value-add services for aerospace, defense, and security in the United Kingdom, rest of Europe, Africa, North America, Australasia, and internationally. The company operates through four segments: Marine, Nuclear, Land, and Aviation. It designs, procures, operates, and manages critical utility and process equipment; offers asset management, defense and maritime training, information and intelligence, equipment and system, and facilities and infrastructure services, as well as naval platforms; and designs, manufactures, and provides through-life support for mechanical and electrical systems and equipment. The company also offers naval architecture, engineering, and project management services; submarines and complex engineering services in support of various decommissioning programs and projects, training and operation support, new build program management, and design and installation; critical vehicle fleet management, and equipment support and training services for military and civil customers; and designs, assesses, manufactures, installs, maintains, and decommissions vehicles for police, fire and ambulance, civil service, military, and other security-focused organizations. In addition, it provides plain line track renewal services; and engineering services for track projects, signaling, telecommunications, and on-track plants. Further, the company offers critical engineering services to defense and civil customers, including pilot training, equipment support, and airbase management, as well as operates aviation fleets that provide delivering emergency services. Babcock International Group PLC was founded in 1891 and is headquartered in London, the United Kingdom.
The following companies are subsidiares of Cummins: Anvl, Apollo FC Holdings Ltd., Atlantis Acquisitionco Canada Corporation, Atlantis Holdco UK Limited, Brammo, CIFC Worldwide Partner C.V., CMI Africa Holdings BV, CMI CGT Holdings LLC, CMI Canada Financing Ltd., CMI Canada LP, CMI Foreign Holdings B.V., CMI Global Equity Holdings B.V., CMI Global Equity Holdings C.V., CMI Global Holdings B.V., CMI Global Partner 2 C.V., CMI Global Partners B.V., CMI Group Holdings B.V., CMI Group Holdings Cooperatief U.A., CMI International Finance Partner 1 LLC, CMI International Finance Partner 2 LLC, CMI International Finance Partner 3 LLC, CMI International Finance Partner 4 LLC, CMI International Finance Partner 5 LLC, CMI Mexico LLC, CMI Netherlands Holdings B.V., CMI PGI Holdings LLC, CMI PGI International Holdings LLC, CMI Turkish Holdings B.V., CMI UK Finance LP, CMI UK Financing LP, Cherry Island Renewable Energy LLC, Consolidated Diesel Company, Consolidated Diesel Inc., Consolidated Diesel of North Carolina Inc., Cummins (China) Investment Co. Ltd., Cummins (Xiangyang) Machining Co. Ltd., Cummins Africa Middle East (Pty) Ltd., Cummins Afrique de l'Ouest, Cummins Americas Inc., Cummins Angola Lda., Cummins Argentina-Servicios Mineros S.A., Cummins Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., Cummins Aust Technologies Pty. Ltd., Cummins BLR LLC, Cummins Battery Systems North America LLC, Cummins Belgium N.V., Cummins Botswana (Pty.) Ltd., Cummins Brasil Ltda., Cummins Burkina Faso SARL, Cummins CDC Holding Inc., Cummins CV Member LLC, Cummins Canada ULC, Cummins Caribbean LLC, Cummins Center of Excellence Singapore Pte. Ltd., Cummins Centroamerica Holding S.de R.L., Cummins Child Development Center Inc., Cummins Colombia S.A.S., Cummins Comercializadora S. de R.L. de C.V., Cummins Corporation, Cummins Cote d'Ivoire SARL, Cummins Czech Republic s.r.o., Cummins Deutschland GmbH, Cummins Diesel International Ltd., Cummins Distribution Holdco Inc., Cummins EMEA Holdings Limited, Cummins East Asia Research & Development Co. Ltd., Cummins Eastern Marine Inc., Cummins Electrified Power Europe Ltd., Cummins Electrified Power NA Inc., Cummins Emission Solutions (China) Co. Ltd., Cummins Emission Solutions Inc., Cummins Empresas Filantropicas, Cummins Energetica Ltda., Cummins Engine (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Cummins Engine (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Cummins Engine (Shanghai) Trading & Services Co. Ltd., Cummins Engine Holding Company Inc., Cummins Engine IP Inc., Cummins Engine Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., Cummins Engine Venture Corporation, Cummins Enterprise LLC, Cummins Filtration (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Cummins Filtration GmbH, Cummins Filtration IP Inc., Cummins Filtration Inc., Cummins Filtration International Corp., Cummins Filtration Ltd., Cummins Filtration SARL, Cummins Filtration Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Cummins Filtros Ltda., Cummins Franchise Holdco LLC, Cummins Fuel Systems (Wuhan) Co. Ltd., Cummins Generator Technologies (China) Co. Ltd., Cummins Generator Technologies Americas Inc., Cummins Generator Technologies Germany GmbH, Cummins Generator Technologies India Private Ltd., Cummins Generator Technologies Italy SRL, Cummins Generator Technologies Limited, Cummins Generator Technologies Romania S.A., Cummins Generator Technologies Singapore Pte Ltd., Cummins Ghana Limited, Cummins Ghana Mining Limited, Cummins Global Financing LP, Cummins Global Technologies LLP, Cummins Grupo Comercial Y. de Servicios S. de R.L. de C.V., Cummins Grupo Industrial S. de R.L. de C.V., Cummins Holland B.V., Cummins Hong Kong Ltd., Cummins India Ltd., Cummins Intellectual Property Inc., Cummins International Finance LLC, Cummins International Holdings Cooperatief U.A., Cummins International Holdings LLC, Cummins Italia S.P.A., Cummins Japan Ltd., Cummins Korea Co. Ltd., Cummins LLC Member Inc., Cummins Ltd., Cummins Maroc SARL, Cummins Middle East FZE, Cummins Mining Services S. de R.L. de C.V., Cummins Mobility Services Inc., Cummins Mongolia Investment LLC, Cummins Mozambique Ltda., Cummins NV, Cummins Namibia Engine Sales and Service PTY LTD, Cummins Natural Gas Engines Inc., Cummins New Zealand Limited, Cummins Nigeria Ltd., Cummins Norte de Colombia S.A.S., Cummins North Africa Regional Office SARL, Cummins Norway AS, Cummins PGI Holdings Ltd., Cummins Power Generation (China) Co. Ltd., Cummins Power Generation (S) Pte. Ltd., Cummins Power Generation (U.K.) Limited, Cummins Power Generation Deutschland GmbH, Cummins Power Generation Inc., Cummins Power Generation Limited, Cummins PowerGen IP Inc., Cummins Research and Technology India Private Ltd., Cummins Romania Srl, Cummins S. de R.L. de C.V., Cummins Sales and Service Korea Co. Ltd., Cummins Sales and Service Philippines Inc., Cummins Sales and Service Private Limited, Cummins Sales and Service Sdn. Bhd., Cummins Sales and Service Singapore Pte. Ltd., Cummins Sinai ve Otomotiv Urunleri Sanayi ve Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Cummins South Africa (Pty.) Ltd., Cummins South Pacific Pty. Limited, Cummins Southern Plains LLC, Cummins Spain S.L., Cummins Sweden AB, Cummins Technologies India, Cummins Trade Receivables LLC, Cummins Turbo Technologies Limited, Cummins Turkey Motor Guc Sistemleri Sats Servis Limited Sirketi, Cummins U.K. Holdings Ltd., Cummins U.K. Pension Plan Trustee Ltd., Cummins UK Global Holdings Ltd., Cummins UK Holdings LLC, Cummins Vendas e Servicos de Motores e Geradores Ltda., Cummins Venture Corporation, Cummins West Africa Limited, Cummins West Balkans d.o.o. Nova Pasova, Cummins XBorder Operations (Pty) Ltd, Cummins Zambia Ltd., Cummins Zimbabwe Pvt. Ltd., Distribuidora Cummins Centroamerica Costa Rica S.de R.L., Distribuidora Cummins Centroamerica El Salvador S.de R.L., Distribuidora Cummins Centroamerica Guatemala Ltda., Distribuidora Cummins Centroamerica Honduras S.de R.L., Distribuidora Cummins S.A., Distribuidora Cummins Sucursal Paraguay SRL, Distribuidora Cummins de Panama S. de R.L., Dynamo Insurance Company Inc., Efficient Drivetrains, Efficient Drivetrains (Beijing) New Power Technology Co. Ltd., Efficient Drivetrains (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Hilite International, Hydrogenics, Hydrogenics Corporation, Hydrogenics Europe N.V., Hydrogenics GmbH, Hydrogenics Holding GmbH, Hydrogenics USA Inc., Markon Engineering Company Ltd., Nelson Burgess Ltd., Nelson Industries, Newage Engineers GmbH, Newage Ltd. (U.K.), Newage Machine Tools Ltd., OOO Cummins, Petbow Limited, Power Group International (Overseas Holdings) B.V., Power Group International (Overseas Holdings) Ltd., Power Group International Ltd., Quickstart Energy Projects SpA, Shanghai Cummins Trade Co. Ltd., TOO Cummins, Taiwan Cummins Sales & Services Co. Ltd., Worldwide Partner CV Member LLC, Wuxi Cummins Turbo Technologies Co. Ltd., Wuxi New Energy Automotive Technologies Co. Ltd., and ZED Connect Inc..

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By PTI: Hyderabad, Sep 9 (PTI) Pandemonium broke out in the Andhra Pradesh Assembly on second day of the three-day monsoon session here today with the opposition YSR Congress members creating a ruckus over the issue of special category status for the state.

Unruly scenes were witnessed as the opposition legislators entered into a scuffle withmarshals inside the House, as the MLAs stormed the Speakers podium for the second consecutive day demanding an immediate discussion on the special status issue.

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An adjournment of the proceedings did not ensure any order, but only led to more trouble as some of the unrelenting YSRC MLAs climbed onto the House reporters table in front of the Speakers podium.

One MLA was found breaking the Speakers mike while a couple of others broke the railing to the podium.

A television camera, placed adjacent to the Speakers podium, recording the House proceedings was also damaged in the melee.

There was pushing and shoving between the YSRC legislators and the marshals with the latter trying to block the former from advancing towards the Speaker.

Speaker Kodela Sivaprasada Rao then adjourned the House for the second time.

Earlier in the day, the Speaker admonished both the MLAs and the marshals, and adjourned the proceedings for 10 minutes as the opposition protest grew noisy.

The YSRC members, wearing black robes, were on their feet as soon as the House sat for the days proceedingsat 9 AM. They demanded that a discussion, through their adjournment motion, be immediately taken up on the special status issue.

Legislative Affairs Minister Yanamala Ramakrishnudu said the government on its own agreed to make a statement in the House on the announcement made by Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley extending a special financial package to AP.

"The Chief Minister was ready to make the statement yesterday but you did not allow it. As decided in the Business Advisory Committee meeting, we can have a discussion in the House only after the Chief Minister makes the statement," Yanamala said. (MORE) PTI DBV GK SMJ

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Neenah, Inc., a specialty materials company, engages in the performance-based technical products, and fine paper and packaging products businesses in North America, Germany, Spain, and rest of Europe. Its Technical Products segment offers filtration media for transportation, water, and other end use applications; saturated and unsaturated crepe, and flat paper tapes; and coated lightweight abrasive papers for automotive, construction, metal, and woodworking industries. It also provides digital transfer media; label and tag products for digital printing; latex saturated and coated, premask, medical packaging, digital transfer, publishing, security, clean room, passports, and release papers; furniture backers; and release liners. The company's Fine Paper and Packaging segment offers writing, text, cover, and specialty papers; and envelopes used in commercial printing services, corporate identity packages, and advertising collaterals. It also provides packaging products for retail, cosmetics, spirits, and electronics end-use markets; bright papers for direct mails, advertising inserts, scrapbooks, and marketing collaterals; cardstock, stationary paper, journals, and planners; and translucent and art papers; and papers for optical scanning and other specialized applications. The company markets its products under the JET-PRO SofStretch, KIMDURA, PREVAIL, NEENAH, GESSNER, CLASSIC, CLASSIC CREST, ENVIRONMENT, ROYAL SUNDANCE, TOUCHE, ASTROBRIGHTS, SOUTHWORTH, ESTATE LABEL, IMAGEMAX, SKIVERTEX, PELLAQ, CORVON, SENZO, and KIVAR brand names through authorized paper distributors, converters, retailers, and specialty businesses, as well as direct to end users. The company was formerly known as Neenah Paper, Inc. and changed its name to Neenah, Inc. in January 2018. Neenah, Inc. was incorporated in 2004 and is headquartered in Alpharetta, Georgia.
Wipro Limited operates as information technology (IT), consulting, and business process services company worldwide. It operates through three segments: IT Services, IT Products, and India State Run Enterprise Services (ISRE). The IT Services segment offers IT and IT-enabled services, including digital strategy advisory, customer-centric design, technology and IT consulting, custom application design, development, re-engineering and maintenance, systems integration, package implementation, cloud and infrastructure, business process, cloud, mobility and analytics, research and development, and hardware and software design services to enterprises. It serves customers in various industry sectors, such as healthcare and medical devices, consumer goods and life sciences, retail, transportation and services, communications, media and information services, technology products and platforms, banking, financial services and insurance, manufacturing, hi-tech, energy, and utilities. The IT Products segment provides a range of third-party IT products comprising enterprise platforms, networking solutions, software and data storage products, contact center infrastructure, enterprise security, IT optimization technologies, video solutions, and end-user computing solutions. It serves enterprises in various industries primarily in the India market, which comprise the government, defense, IT and IT-enabled services, telecommunications, manufacturing, utilities, education, and financial services sectors. The ISRE segment offers IT services to entities and departments owned or controlled by the Government of India and/or various Indian State Governments. The company was incorporated in 1945 and is based in Bengaluru, India.
AptarGroup, Inc. provides a range of dispensing, sealing, and material science solutions primarily for the beauty, personal care, home care, prescription drug, consumer health care, injectable, and food and beverage markets. The company operates through three segments: Pharma, Beauty + Home, and Food + Beverage. The Pharma segment provides pumps for nasal allergy treatments; and metered dose inhaler valves for respiratory ailments, such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases in pharmaceutical market; elastomer for injectable primary packaging components; and active material science solutions. The Beauty + Home segment primarily sells pumps, closures, aerosol valves, accessories, and sealing solutions to the personal care and home care markets; and pumps and decorative components to the beauty market. The Food + Beverage segment offers dispensing and non-dispensing closures, elastomeric flow control components, spray pumps, and aerosol valves to the food and beverage markets. It sells its products through own sales force, as well as independent representatives and distributors in Asia, Europe, Latin America, and North America. The company has a strategic partnership with PureCycle Technologies LLC to develop ultra-pure recycled polypropylene into dispensing applications; and a collaboration with Sonmol for developing a digital therapies and services platform targeting respiratory and other diseases. AptarGroup, Inc. was incorporated in 1992 and is headquartered in Crystal Lake, Illinois.
Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar has said that the government should withdraw all the facilities currently extended to Kashmiri separatist leaders, who tow an anti-India line.

By India Today Web Desk: Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar has told India Today that facilities extended to the Kashmiri separatist leaders should have been withdrawn long back. Parrikar's comment has come at a time when the Centre is believed to have mooted a similar proposal during all party meet earlier this week and a PIL is pending before the Supreme Court seeking a similar action.

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"There is a concern about such people (separatists) in the country. Who is funding these people? And, why are they getting facilities (from the government)? We don't provide such facilities to the common man yet extending the same to those, who talk of separation (from India). This is not right. This decision (Centre's decision to withdraw facilities) is appropriate," Parrikar told India Today.

"The decision is delayed. But, I think, it is required, at times, to show that we took all the chances (to resolve the issue)," Parrikar added.

READ: Hurriyat praises and justifies presence of PLA inside PoK



GOVT MULLING OPTION

After three rounds of all-party meet on Kashmir and a visit to the Valley, the government is inching towards taking tough measures against the separatists. The Centre may withdraw all facilities currently being extended to separatist leaders.

During Kashmir visit of the all-party delegation, CPI-M general secretary Sitaram Yechury and AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi went to meet Hurriyat leaders. But, the separatists refused to discuss anything with them.

The all-party delegation met once again in New Delhi after their return from the Valley. The dominant view at the meet was in favour of withdrawing facilities extended to the separatist leaders.

PIL IN SUPREME COURT

Meanwhile, a public interest litigation was filed in the Supreme Court seeking immediate withdrawal of facilities extended to the separatists. Admitting the PIL, a bench led by Justice Anil R Dave said, "We also share the same feeling. Everybody sitting here feels the same."

The petitioner has claimed that in the last five years, the government has spent Rs 356 crore on the security, travel and hotel stay of the separatist leaders. The government has also spent Rs 21 crore on putting up these separatists in luxury hotels and Rs 26.43 crore on fuel for them to travel around and spread their anti-India venom, the PIL says.

READ: Muslim clerics slam Pakistan and separatists, to conduct Aman Yatra in Kashmir



Another report suggested that as many as 1,472 separatist leaders and their supporters or family members are provided security on government expenditure.

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A total of 708 vehicles are said to be kept for the use by 481 separatist leaders. Some 440 separatists are accommodated in secure hotels on taxpayers' money.

The matter will come up for hearing in the apex court on September 14.



ALSO READ:

After Hurriyat snub, Centre to crack down on separatists, withdraw security cover

Supreme Court agrees to hear PIL to stop funding of Kashmiri separatists





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By PTI: Washington, Sep 9 (PTI) In an unusual move, the US aviation safety regulator today "strongly advised" passengers not to turn on or charge their Samsung new Galaxy Note 7 smartphones during flights after reports of the devices catching fire.

Following recent incidents and concerns raised by Samsung about its Galaxy Note 7 devices, the Federal Aviation Administration said it "strongly advises passengers not to turn on or charge these devices on board aircraft, and not to stow them in any checked baggage."

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The unusual warning adds to the headache for Samsung, the worlds biggest smartphone marker, as it scrambles to replace millions of Note 7 phones around the world.

Some international airlines have already taken steps to stop people from using the devices on their aircraft.

Singapore Airlines, Qantas and Virgin Australia say they are telling passengers not to turn on Note 7s or charge them on flights.

It wasnt immediately clear how major US airlines would respond to the announcement by the FAA, which has previously warned that fires caused by the type of batteries found in cellphones can be very difficult to extinguish aboard planes, CNN reported.

Delta (DAL) said in a statement that it would "comply with any directive and are studying this matter." American (AAL) said it was "in touch with the FAA" regarding the issue.

Korean Air, the flag carrier in Samsungs home market of South Korea, said it does not so far have any plans to restrict use of the Note 7 on its planes. It said South Korean transportation ministry officials had met with Samsung representatives and did not issue any guidance regarding the phone afterward.

Samsung said a week ago that it was halting sales of the Note 7 and would recall 2.5 million devices in 10 countries, including South Korea and the US. The company will replace them with new Note 7 phones.

Samsung was responding to dozens of complaints from customers that their phones had caught fire while charging. It said it had investigated the issue and found a problem with the batteries in a small number of Note 7 devices.

The embarrassing announcement came just two weeks after the flagship phones release and days ahead of the unveiling of rival Apples iPhone 7.

US federal transportation rules permit the lithium batteries found in cellphones and similar electronic devices to be checked or carried on board planes. But recalled or damaged batteries are forbidden.

A comprehensive US ban on using the Note 7 on airplanes could be triggered by an official recall on the product. Such a decision needs to be made by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which so far has not commented on the Samsung phone, the CNN report said. PTI AKJ AKJ

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Paving a new path in high school education

Path Finders: Warhill High School hosted an orientation the week of August 29 for students participating in the Pathways Project, an innovative new curriculum developed in partnership with W&M School of Education professors. Photo by Joshua Chung

Path Finders: W&M Professor Mark Hofer presents a mini-design thinking challenge to students: build a more innovative backpack. Photo by Joshua Chung

Path Finders: Students worked in groups to conceptualize, design, and build a better backpack from materials such as fabric, belts, duct tape, and pipe cleaners. Photo by Joshua Chung

Path Finders: Following the exercise, students described their backpacks to Lindy Johnson, assistant professor of English education. Many designs included creative (and invisible) additions such as coolers, WiFi hot spots, iPhone chargers, and a jet pack. Photo by Joshua Chung

Path Finders: Warhill High School Principal Jeff Carroll welcomes the new Pathways students, some of whom were zoned to attend another WJCC high school, to the campus. Photo by Joshua Chung Photo - of - Hide Caption

In the commons area at Warhill High School in Williamsburg, dozens of rising ninth grade students scramble about, racing against a timer to build something out of mundane materials like scraps of fabric, duct tape, pipe cleaner, plastic buckets, belts and their own wild imaginations.

The challenge  to create a more innovative backpack  was being led by Mark Hofer, professor of education, and Lindy Johnson, assistant professor of English education at William & Mary. It was intended to serve as an example of design thinking  a concept these students will come to know very well during their freshman year of high school.

As thousands of kids in the Williamsburg-James City County school district completed the first week of the new year this week, these 100 students embarked on an entirely different adventure. Theyre part of a group of students who opted into an alternative curriculum this year called the Pathways Project.

Co-designed by Williamsburg-James City County Public Schools and Johnson and Hofer, co-directors of the W&M School of Educations new Center for Innovation in Learning Design, the project abandons the typical prescribed high school curriculum and instead allows students to work at their own pace and choose classes and a career direction that interest them.

Pathways is about finding out what youre passionate about and what youre good at, and then figuring out the best way to achieve that goal, said Johnson. My sense is that throughout the course of these four years, the students will have a much better idea of what they want to do after high school, because not every kid wants to go to college, so it doesnt really make sense to push that one-size-fits-all approach onto everyone.

The Pathways Project came to fruition this year after more than a year of planning. The idea was first born out of a call for applications from the Virginia Department of Education for a high school innovation planning grant. WJCC Public Schools  one of five districts to receive grants in the state  received $50,000 last July to research and develop a curriculum for Pathways. This summer, they received an additional $50,000 grant for implementation.

We looked a lot at how we could creatively use existing structures to develop sustainable innovation, said Jeff Carroll, principal of Warhill High School. So, for example, every 7th grader in this district completes a plan of study that includes identifying one of 16 career clusters [part of a national curriculum] that theyre interested in. So we tied a lot of Pathways to this idea of identifying a career cluster so we could build off of that knowledge and not have to reinvent the wheel.

The 16 career clusters will be taught to Pathways students in a class called Design Your On Ramp, which will give each kid hands-on exposure to many different careers through job site visits and meetings from professionals in each career category.

In addition to a personalized, career-focused curriculum, the students will also be exposed to unique types of teaching that incorporates e-learning, real-world challenges and hands-on training. In the Humanities by Design class, which combines English and social studies, students will be participating in a national civic campaign called Letters to the Next President, in which theyll be creating multimedia presentations that ask the incoming president to address certain issues that are important to them.

Physics by Design, a class that blends physics with applied math, will utilize design thinking and project-based learning by tasking students with planning and designing their own amusement park.

High school kids are increasingly disengaged in school because they dont think what theyre learning is relevant or meaningful to their lives, said Hofer. A lot of these projects and the approaches to teaching are intended to directly address that lack of engagement.

Throughout the year, Hofer and Johnson will be working with Carroll and the Warhill High School teachers involved in Pathways to conduct research on what aspects of the teaching methods are successful and which ones are not in the hopes of fine-tuning the curriculum for the second semester and the following years.

Were interested in their engagement, their motivation, their vision for their future, their ability to explore their careers, their confidence in learning online, and any challenges they encounter, because this is going to be new for most if not all of them, said Hofer.

Hofer and Johnson hope the lessons they learn through the Pathways Project can also help and encourage other schools throughout Virginia to adopt similar programs or aspects of the program.

This is a huge leap of faith  $50,000 and one year to plan a new high school experience is not much, said Hofer. But what has struck me all along is how enthusiastic Jeff and the teachers are, and its because of the students. They feel like this is a way to make school a better experience for the students, and to me, that is so inspiring.
Patanjali's success at becoming the third largest seller of FMCG products is seen as a major threat for the thriving FMCG giants in the country.

By Virendrasingh Ghunawat: Few days back, Baba Ramdev's Patanjali Ayurved made headlines by becoming the third largest seller of FMCG products at the shelves of Kishore Biyani-led Future Retail. The number one is still Hindustan Unilever Ltd (HUL) followed by P&G, whereas, Patanjali was followed by rivals like GCPL, Dabur, Emami and few others.

Seldom does a new company become the focal point of discussion at strategy meetings of FMCG giants. A company can take up to several decades to establish itself in the FMCG sector. Yet, Patanjali Ayurved, set up merely a decade ago, is challenging multinational companies such as Nestle, P&G and Unilever.

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Endorsed by Baba Ramdev - a man dressed in saffron robes and armed with the skills of a yoga master - the company is forcing these multinationals to rethink their business models and marketing strategies.

REVENUE CROSSES RS 5,000 CRORES

Over the last few years, Patanjali Ayurved has emerged out of nowhere to become one of India's leading FMCG brands. News reports suggest that according to revenues in Financial Year 2016 Patanjali has crossed Rs 5,000 crores. Currently, the company is present in all kinds of product segments, from food to personal care to home care to hygiene.

Also read: Power Yogi: How Baba Ramdev became India's swadeshi FMCG baron

In Indian FMCG sector, never has any emerging FMCG player attacked simultaneously across so many products. Little wonder that all the FMCG companies are worried, and analysts are buzzing around trying to figure out what's happening. After all, Indian consumer stocks enjoy rich valuations and there is a lot at stake. The question on everybody's mind is - "Is it sustainable?".

Also read: MP govt allots 40 acre land at Rs 10 cr to Patanjali Ayurved

Though definitive answers to these questions will require substantial research, ValueNotes conducted a limited dipstick study of Patanjali consumers to see if any quick insights were forthcoming. ValueNotes specialises in the management of competitive and market intelligence, information and research. ValueNotes' strengths lies in its industry expertise, proven methodology for research and anlaysis, and a team of experienced researchers.

CONSUMER ANALYSIS

According to ValueNotes, the intention was to get a sense of what customers (of Patanjali) think about their products, and why they like (or buy them). Some of the products categories studied in this report included personal care(toothpaste, hair care, soap), home care (detergents, floor cleaners), food products (biscuits, honey)and ayurveda products (healthcare).

The results, presented in a report by ValueNotes - titled Patanjali is here to stay! - has given some very interesting and surprising inputs. As per the research :

46 per cent of the respondents began using Patanjali products after recommendations from friends or relatives.

The early adopters were mostly aged between 45 and 75, and their recommendations carry weight with the younger generation.

The brand is strongly associated with health - high quality herbal and natural products.

The firm's toothpaste brand had the highest consumption with 80 per cent of the respondents being satisfied with the product (47 per cent of them were very satisfied).

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In just about a decade, Patanjali has emerged as one of the top FMCG players in the country - seriously challenging the likes of Unilever, Colgate, P&G, Dabur and Godrej in several categories. In doing so, the company has created its own rules and re-written others - especially around branding and distribution - both fundamental to success in consumer products.

ValueNotes' inputs on Patanjali in nutshell To start with Baba Ramdev built a huge fan following around the themes of yoga, health and "swadeshi". These ardent supporters were the early adopters of medicinal and FMCG products, and allowed Patanjali to experiment with a wide range of products. These devotees became unpaid marketers, driven by an almost evangelical faith in the Baba, and his mission towards healthy living. They propagate the brand because they believe in it. Way better than paid employees could ever do! These initial referrals helped spread the word to family, friends, neighbours and especially the younger generation. Distribution (especially in India) is critical. Getting shelf space is tough, and incumbent FMCG companies have substantial bargaining power. What did Patanjali do? They "empowered" a significant number (~10,000) of their fans to become dealers/franchisees. This helped Patanjali reach customers across India, bypassing traditional distribution channels, and enabling cheaper prices. Better still, the shopkeepers truly believe in the values of Baba Ramdev and Patanjali. This captive dealer network has also allowed Patanjali to test reaction to new products. Traditional FMCG companies are cautious, launching and building new product categories in a slow, focused manner - taking time to understand and master new markets. However, Patanjali has defied conventional wisdom, and unleashed a veritable shower of products - literally hundreds, across almost every conceivable FMCG category. More are in the pipeline! Even small shares in so many markets leads to big bucks. All product sell under a single brand, so more buck for brand-building expenses.

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So, today, the brand is so huge that mainstream retailers want to get onto the Patanjali bandwagon. Some are even ready to have separate sections dedicated to Patanjali! Not even Hindustan Unilever has that kind of pull.

Reports suggest that Patanjali's revenues crossed Rs 50 billion last year, making them amongst the top 10 FMCG players in India - already!

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In a business where brand and distribution take decades to build in a large, diverse market like India - Patanjali's growth resembles that of an e-commerce company.

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"For the past 16 months, I have been asking for course correction. It is and it was an unnatural alliance with the BJP and it should have broken long long ago," said senior PDP leader and Srinagar MP Tariq Hamid Karra

By Naseer Ganai: As Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti continues her tough posturing over the unrest in the Valley saying that only five per cent of the people are creating havoc, voices within her party asking her to call off the 'unnatural alliance' with BJP continues to grow.

UNNATURAL ALLIANCE

"For the past 16 months, I have been asking for course correction. It is and it was an unnatural alliance with the BJP and it should have broken long long ago," senior PDP leader and Srinagar MP Tariq Hamid Karra told Mail Today. Earlier, PDP MP from north Kashmir, Muzaffer Baig, had told news channels in Delhi that Mehbooba should step down as chief minister if she feels she cannot control the situation.

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He said that the alliance with the BJP has failed as it has not worked for the PDP. Karra, however, said that unlike other leaders of his party, he had been 'consistently consistent' in his opposition to the PDP's alliance with BJP.

He said that the present anger in the Valley was against this alliance. "To my understanding, today's anger is basically against the alliance. Other things accumulated in the past 16 months leading to the present situation," Karra said.

The Srinagar MP said that the day PDP joined hands with BJP, it was a betrayal of the mandate given to the party. "And people feel it," he said. In protests which broke out after the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Muzaffer Wani, at least 75 people have been killed and around 10,000 wounded.

DIVISIVE ALLIANCE

Karra said that the alliance with BJP was temperamentally unacceptable and antithesis to what the PDP had been promoting over the years. He rubbished the argument that the alliance would bring Kashmir and Jammu together. "It has divided the regions further," Karra said, adding that the alliance should have gone in the first stint of Mufti Mohammad Sayeed.

"And in the second spell of Mehbooba Mufti, the alliance should not have been there at the first place," Karra said, arguing that other parties were then ready to support it.

He said that did not get anything through this alliance except 'broken promises'. Meanwhile, on Wednesday night, militants snatched four assault rifles from policemen guarding a political leader in south Kashmir's Kulgam district.

The militants attacked the police guardroom of Abdul Rashid Khanday at Bigund in Kulgam. Former CM Omar Abdullah said the incident is an indicator of the serious situation in south Kashmir. Police said they had retaliated but the militants escaped.

The snatched weapons include one SLR, one 303 Rifle and two INSAS. In another incident in South Kashmir, militants attacked a police station on Wednesday midnight. The police said an exchange of fire between militants and policemen continued for nearly 10 minutes.



ALSO READ:

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Kashmir unrest: PDP whispers turn into clamours for CM Mehbooba Mufti to resign

Mehbooba should have released Hurriyat leaders: Omar





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By PTI: Toronto, Sep 9 (PTI) Animal-assisted therapy, such as interactions with pet dogs, can help university students combat homesickness as well as reduce drop-out rates, a new study has found.

"Transitioning from high school to university can prove to be a challenge for many first-year students," said John Tyler Binfet, Assistant Professor at University of British Columbia in Canada.

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"Given that students who experience homesickness are more likely than their non-homesick cohorts to drop out of university, universities have a vested interest in supporting students during their first-year transition," Tyler said.

In the study, 44 first-year university students who self-identified as homesick were given a survey to measure levels of homesickness, satisfaction with life and connectedness with campus.

Half of the students completed eight weeks of dog therapy, while the other half were informed that their sessions would begin in eight weeks time.

Dog therapy included 45-minute weekly sessions involving small group interactions with the dogs and handlers, and engagement with other first-year students participating in the study.

Following the initial eight-week session, participants in both the treatment group and the non-treatment group completed the survey again.

Participants who completed the eight-week programme experienced significant reductions in homesickness and greater increase in satisfaction with life.

Participants reported that sessions "felt like they were at home chatting with friends who brought their puppies."

While the non-treatment group reported an increase in their feelings of homesickness.

A total of 29 per cent of students who dropped out cited more interactions and friendships with other students as a factor that would have influenced their decision to stay longer.

A universitys ability to influence campus connections could be a useful tool in lowering drop-out rates in first-year students, said Binfet.

"Many first-year university students face the challenge of integrating into their new campus community," said Binfet.

"Homesick students are three times more likely than those who manage their homesickness to disengage and drop out of university," he said.

The research was published in the journal Anthrozoos. PTI MHN SAR MHN

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Low emissions from Canadian uranium mining

09 September 2016

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Uranium mining and milling contribute only a small amount to nuclear energy's already low greenhouse gas emissions, the first comprehensive life cycle assessment of greenhouse gas emissions produced from Canadian uranium mining operations has found.

(L-R) Gordon Sparks, David Parker (both University of Saskatchewan) and Cameron McNaughton (Golder Associates) who carried out the work (Image: Fedoruk Centre)

The work by David Parker, Cameron McNaughton and Gordon Sparks has been published in Environmental Science and Technology, an online peer-reviewed journal.

The life cycle assessment involved gathering information on all the greenhouse gases emitted by everything used in the mining and milling of uranium at three Saskatchewan sites, including fuel used in heavy machinery and to power facilities, the concrete and steel used in construction, emissions from flying workers to and from the mine sites and even took into account emissions from company head offices.

The researchers also visited mine and mill sites and worked alongside uranium producers Areva and Cameco. They found the dominant sources of emissions to be the electricity consumed and the propane used for heating at the sites in northern Saskatchewan.

They found that uranium mining and milling contributes about 1 gram of CO2 equivalent per kilowatt-hour of electricity generated from the uranium. "Saskatchewan has the highest grade uranium in the world, and the emissions from uranium mining in Canada are very, very low when compared to extracting fossil fuels," Parker, a graduate student at the University of Saskatchewan College of Engineering, said.

"We hypothesized that the emissions from the mining and milling of uranium would be low, and we're finding that's the case - and they're even lower than we had expected at the start," McNaughton, an environmental engineer at Saskatoon-based Golder Associates, said in a video explaining the work.

2014 figures from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change cite a mid-range value of 12 grams CO2 equivalent per kilowatt hour for nuclear power, which is similar to wind power, while coal produces over 800 grams per kilowatt hour and natural gas about 500 grams.

"Many people think that the mining and milling of uranium is a hidden source of greenhouse gas emissions related to nuclear power - that its the dirty end of the stick", McNaughton said. "This study, which is the most rigorous done to date, showed that the mining and milling of uranium produces only a small amount of emissions."

The work was funded through a grant from the University of Saskatchewan's Fedoruk Centre, which was established in 2011 as the Canadian Centre for Nuclear Innovation. The researchers hope to expand their work to look at the impact of ore grade and different mining processes on emissions as well as broadening it to consider other environmental impacts beyond greenhouse gases.

Researched and written

by World Nuclear News

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Pressure mounts for government decision on Hinkley

09 September 2016

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The UK's finance minister, Philip Hammond, has described the terms of the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant project as a "well-designed transfer of risk". Meanwhile British company Rolls-Royce has for the second time become a 'preferred bidder' for the project in Somerset, and members of EDF Energy's advisory panel have argued it is "strongly in the national interest to press ahead with the plant".

Hinkley Point C received a long-awaited and positive final investment decision (FID) from the EDF board on 28 July, only for the UK government to postpone signing its supporting agreements. Prime Minister Theresa May is reviewing the deal and will decide this month whether to commit the government's support.

May became the new British prime minister and leader of the Conservative Party on 13 July. She replaced David Cameron who resigned after the UK voted to leave the European Union in a referendum held on 23 June. May appointed Hammond, Cameron's foreign secretary, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, replacing George Osborne.

Rate of return

In his first appearance before a parliamentary committee as chancellor, Hammond was asked by the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee yesterday to justify the rate of return EDF would receive from the Hinkley project that had been agreed with the previous government.

Committee chairman Clive Hollick said: "It seems to be being financed to generate a near 10% return, which is twice the level of return that would be expected by institutional investors and the tab is being picked up over the next 35 years by the electricity consumers in this country. And in terms of transferring risk, it's one thing to transfer risk to a corporate entity or to a partnership where you're confident they are going to be able to deliver the goods, but there seem to be many questions hanging over whether in fact Hinkley can ever be delivered, so surely it would fail the test of being a well-designed off-balance sheet transaction."

In response, Hammond said, "As you know, the Prime Minister is reviewing the whole Hinkley Point project and has promised to reach a decision by the end of this month. When I referred to well-designed off-balance sheet transactions, I was talking specifically about the transfer of risk and the financing of projects.

"I believe that the assumed return in the EDF model is 9%, but what one has to remember is that this project as proposed delivers something that has never been delivered by a civil nuclear project anywhere in the world. It transfers the design, construction and operation risk entirely to the operator.

"Now, there's a very hefty insurance premium in there and that's why the rate of return may look high. But if the project doesn't generate electricity, it will never generate a penny of return. If it generates late, that will be a penalty suffered by the investor, the provider, not by the taxpayer or energy consumer and, indeed, the way the project is structured, there is a penalty for late delivery in the price structure. So not only do they suffer a deferred rate of return on their capital investment, they will suffer a lower price if the project is very delayed.

"So I think it does meet the criteria for a well-designed transfer of risk in an area where risk has never been effectively transferred from the buyer to the seller before."

Key element

Hammond was referring to a key element of the agreement between EDF Energy and the government - the contract for difference (CfD), which is a private law contract between a low-carbon electricity generator and the Low Carbon Contracts Company, which is government owned.

The generator is paid the difference between the 'strike price' - a price for electricity reflecting the cost of investing in a particular low-carbon technology - and the 'reference price' - a measure of the average UK market price for electricity. The CfD enables greater certainty and stability of revenues to electricity generators by reducing their exposure to volatile wholesale prices, whilst protecting consumers from paying for higher support costs when electricity prices are high.

The CfD for Hinkley Point C includes a strike price of 92.50/MWh, falling to 89.50/MWh if a FID is taken on Sizewell C. It has a payment duration of 35 years from the point at which each reactor at Hinkley becomes commercially operational or the last day of the target commissioning window for that reactor, whichever is earlier.

Hugo Robson, chief negotiator at the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), told the Energy and Climate Change Committee in May that the CfD element of the contract would be cancelled if the Hinkley project is delivered eight years later than planned, in 2033. Robson confirmed there is a time-limit on a CfD in the event a low-carbon-project, whether based on renewables or nuclear power technology, is late. "From 2025-2029 they get a 35-year CfD. After 2029 the CfD is shortened by one year of delay up to 2033, after which it would be cancelled. They would be able to get revenues from the market, but not top-up revenues from the CfD," Robson said. "If there is a very significant delay, and we're talking about eight years, then at that point we are able to cancel the contract. As is the case for all CfDs, there is a back-stop date," he added.

Soon after her appointment as prime minister, May scrapped DECC and folded its brief into the newly-created Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) department. BEIS is led by the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, Greg Clark.

Hammond told the parliamentary committee meeting yesterday he would make his first budget statement on 23 November.

In his last Autumn Statement, on 26 November last year, Osborne said the UK will invest at least 250 million ($377 million) over the next five years in an "ambitious" nuclear research and development program. In October the same year, EDF Energy and China General Nuclear agreed a deal for the Chinese company to take a 33.5% stake in the 18 billion Hinkley project. In addition, the two companies agreed they would develop projects to build new plants at Sizewell in Suffolk and Bradwell in Essex, the latter using Chinese reactor technology. EDF's share in the project stands at 66.5%, but the company has said it intends to offer other investors stakes in the project. However, it plans to retain at least a 50% stake itself.

Last September, Osborne announced up to 2 billion in UK government support for the Hinkley plant. The guarantee will be provided by Infrastructure UK, a unit within the Treasury, which works on the UK's long-term infrastructure priorities and secures private sector investment. The European Commission approved the Hinkley Point C state aid case in October 2014. The 2 billion is covered by that approval.

Plea for positive decision

In a letter to the Financial Times newspaper published today, members of EDF Energy's stakeholder advisory panel set out "the five main reasons" why they believe the prime minister should decide in favour of the Hinkley project. They also noted that the pricing arrangement of the Hinkley deal "has already been subject to lengthy and robust analysis by the Treasury".

Firstly, the UK "needs new nuclear generating capacity to replace its ageing fleet, to provide stable supplies of low-carbon electricity for decades and to reduce the country's reliance on imported energy," they wrote.

Secondly, EDF Energy has an "outstanding record" as a nuclear power plant operator and the "productivity of Britain's nuclear power generation has increased significantly under its ownership".

Thirdly, "When it comes to value for money, we do not know what the price of electricity will be in 30 years. But we do believe today's depressed wholesale prices are not a basis for comparison, and that the deal that has been struck for Hinkley Point C is competitive with other future generation opetions when the price of carbon is properly costed."

Fourthly, EDF has been working closely with its Chinese partners in the Hinkley project "for many years" and they are "close to the successful completion" of two reactors at Taishan, China.

Finally, they wrote, the project will provide a "vital part" of the UK's industrial strategy.

The letter was signed by: Richard Lambert, former director general of the Confederation of British Industry; Diane Coyle, professor of economics at the University of Manchester; Chris Patten, chancellor of Oxford University, former governor of Hong Kong and former European commissioner; Simon Robertson, former chairman of Rolls-Royce and former deputy chairman of HSBC; and Helen Alexander, chair of British events group UBM.

Companies waiting to sign contracts

Rolls-Royce announced today it has been awarded preferred bidder status for a contract to supply an integrated nuclear emergency diesel system for Hinkley Point C, comprising an MTU diesel generator made by Rolls-Royce Power Systems and Rolls-Royce patented instrumentation and control technology.

The company said this is in addition to the preferred bidder status it had already been awarded for contracts to design and manufacture a number of heat exchangers, and coolant treatment equipment for the reactor systems.

Harry Holt, president of Rolls-Royce's nuclear business, said: "We hope very much to be able to finalise these important contracts as soon as we are able to do so, and play our part in the delivery of the UK's first nuclear reactors in more than 20 years, which will provide reliable, low carbon electricity for future generations."

Today's announcement brings the total preferred bidder contracts awarded to Rolls-Royce to over 160 million for Hinkley Point C. This includes a 75 million contract awarded to a Rolls-Royce/Nuvia Partnership last year to design, procure, install and commission two systems for the treatment and waste processing of reactor coolant at the Hinkley plant.

Yesterday, Wales-based Express Reinforcements said it is to supply 200,000 tonnes of reinforcing steel to Hinkley. The company has been given preferred bidder status via the Tier 1 contractor BYLOR as part of the continuing preparatory work for the project in Somerset, England. Express is based in Neath, but also has manufacturing capability in Newport, using steel produced by CELSA Steel in Cardiff. BYLOR is a joint venture between Bouygues and Laing O'Rourke.

Andy Lodge, managing director of Express Reinforcements, said: "We are pleased to be the preferred supplier of reinforcing steel to this contract through BYLOR. It cements long-term relationships and puts Express at the forefront of reinforcing steel supply, having already been a major supplier to other key infrastructure projects such as Crossrail and Heathrow Terminal 5. It shows that our proven track record in delivering on these significant projects is highly valued and local, responsibly-sourced steel to the highest quality standards (Eco-Reinforcement/BES 6001) is fundamental to all involved on this construction."

Researched and written

by World Nuclear News

Related topics
The US state of Florida, a panhandle that juts out into the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, is one of five biodiversity hotspots in North America. The area is divided between humid subtropical and tropical climates which sustain the vast variety of flora and fauna living here. Its coastal waters are filled with dolphins, whales and manatees and inland areas host deer, fox, coyote, bear, and opossum. The state is rich in amphibian, reptile, and bird species as well. Over 3,000 wildflower species grow here, and the east coast hosts a large mangrove forest.

6. Everglades National Park

The southern tip of Florida hosts the Everglades National Park. This park is one of the most visited national parks in Florida. The government declared this a national park to protect its fragile environment (a mix of freshwater sloughs, mangroves, and dry forests) from urban development. It contains the largest subtropical wilderness in the United States and is home to 36 endangered species including American crocodiles, manatees, and Florida panthers. It is the biggest breeding ground for wading birds in North America and home to around 350 bird species.

Not only is the area protected by national park status, but also as an International Biosphere Reserve and UNESCO World Heritage Site. Visitors have several activities to choose from including fishing, camping, and hiking. Today, this park is threatened by water loss which leaves fish exposed to predators and kills the plants that feed wading birds prey. The urban areas surrounding the park are using more freshwater than is actually available and the park is forced to artificially create more freshwater resources just to keep the area alive.

5. Dry Tortugas National Park

Made up of seven islands in the Gulf of Mexico, 70 miles west of Key West is the Dry Tortugas National Park, another member of the Florida National Parks. The islands are important breeding grounds for tropical birds, and the surrounding waters are filled with coral reef ecosystems. The 299 bird species found here include the hooded warbler, common yellowthroat, and American redstart. Its location has allowed it to escape human development, and visitors can only reach the islands by boat or seaplane. Currently, the biggest threat to these islands is invasive species like Casuarina trees and agave. The National Park Service has an ongoing eradication program to remove these plants.

4. Biscayne National Park

Biscayne National Park is located in southern Florida near Miami. The area serves to protect the bay and its barrier reefs. Only 5% of the park is on land, and the majority of that is covered by mangrove swamps. Within the bay, manatees, corals, and sponges live. This park provides shelter to 16 endangered species which include: green sea turtle, hawksbill sea turtle, and Schaus swallowtail butterflies. Visitors can enjoy snorkeling, swimming, boating, scuba diving, and camping.

3. Gulf Islands National Seashore

The Gulf Islands National Seashore, stretches across Florida and Mississippi and encompasses both mainland shores and several islands. The park is filled with natural beaches, picnic areas, campgrounds, and hiking trails. Environmental threats to the area include naturally occurring disasters such as hurricanes and potential oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico. Though not one of the national parks in Florida, Gulf Islands National Seashore finds it mention on this list due to its ecological significance in Florida.

2. Canaveral National Seashore

Canaveral National Seashore is located on a barrier island off the northeast coast of Florida. It includes a 24-mile long stretch of undeveloped beach which is the longest on the east coast of the state. Over 1,000 plant species and over 300 bird species can be found here.

1. Big Cypress National Preserve

Though not a national park in Florida but a national preserve, the Big Cypress National Preserve finds its position on our list of Florida National Parks.The Big Cypress National Preserve encompasses 720,000 acres and is located about 45 miles west of Miami. This preserve shares a border with the previously mentioned Everglades National Park. Before this area was purchased by the government, much of the old growth cypress was cut down for the timber industry and to make way for the railroad, alligators and crocodiles were victims of poaching, and feathers from herons and egrets were popular for hat making. Today, the wildlife has made a slight comeback, and the area protects the homes of cottonmouth snakes, Florida black bears, and mangroves. For visitors, the preserve offers camping and hiking.
A Secret War

While the US-led war in Vietnam raged, confronted with massive public protests and civil disobedience on American soil, another war was taking place in the shadows. Between December of 1964 and March of 1973, the US launched more than 270 million cluster bombs on Laos during Operation Barrel Roll. This number is equivalent to dropping a full plane cargo load every 8 minutes, 24 hours a day, for 9 years. Laos is thus the most heavily bombed country in the world.

Reason For Operation Barrel Roll

After fighting between the Pathet Lao communist military group and the Royal Lao Army reached the strategic Plain of Jars region of Laos, North Vietnamese communist forces took control of the northeastern region of the country. The Royal Lao government, unable to gain ground against the communist rebels, made a formal request for assistance to the United States. Due to its strategic location between 6 other countries, the US accepted the request, hoping to show communist leaders its perseverance in the fight against them.

US military leaders proposed the Operation Barrel Roll strategy to stop North Vietnamese infiltration of Laos to the government. The Royal Lao government and other political parties opposing the communists agreed to move forward with the plan. The US began its covert operations. When Operation Barrel Roll did little to stop communist guerilla rebels from moving through Laos, the US military changed its strategy. US forces increased their airstrikes to destroy the Ho Chi Minh trail which ran from North Vietnam into Laos and then south to the border between Vietnam and Cambodia. This road was critical to the Vietnamese communist group, the Peoples Army of Vietnam because it allowed them to move weapons and supplies to their military efforts in South Vietnam.

Aircrafts, Bombs, And Casualties

Most of the air missions over the country were conducted with high -performance jet-bombers, World War II cargo planes, Douglas A-1 Skyraiders, and AT-28 Trojans. These last two were Korean War-era machines that could be maneuvered at close range. Cluster bombs were the weapon of choice, hundreds of little bombs packed into canisters. As fighters released these cluster bombs from high above the ground, the canisters would open in the air. This action released hundreds of bombs over a wide radius simultaneously. Estimates suggest that two-thirds of these bombs exploded over the region, taking with them 350,000 casualties across northeastern Laos. The US government lost 131 aircraft during the operation, a miniscule number when compared with the lives lost.

Withdrawal

When US forces finally withdrew after having trained the Lao government and handed over power little by little to establish a coalition government, communist forces once again took over the Plain of Jars area. People from the Hmong community, who had backed the US war strategy, fled the country going to Thailand and some to the US. By December of 1975, the communist Pathet Lao movement gained complete control of the country, and Lao Peoples Democratic Republic was born.

Legacy And Aftermath

The legacy of this once secret war continues today. More than 80,000,000 undetonated bombs are strewn across the country threatening the lives of its people. Since the end of the operation in 1973, over 20,000 people have died or been injured by these remaining bombs. At any moment, a farmer may strike one while plowing or a child may find one while playing. In response to a stifled economy with little employment opportunities, some people actually search for these bombs to sell them as scrap metal. Countless have died in the attempt. Estimates suggest that as many as 100 civilians fall victim every year. Millions of dollars have been spent in cleanup efforts, yet only 1% of Laos territory has been cleared of bombs.
The longest river in India is the Indus River. The very term India is an adaptation of the word Indus. That word itself was an indirect derivation from the Sanskrit word Sindh, which the localities used to address the Indus River. With religious, economic, cultural, and social importance, the river Ganga is undoubtedly the soul of the country. Meanwhile, the Brahmaputra River is a major support pillar of this nation.

Major Rivers by Length

10. Narmada - 1,312

The Narmada flows through the central part of the country. When considering rivers that flow only entirely within India, the Narmada is technically the third longest, after the Godavari and the Krishna. The Narmada is unique for the fact that it flows westward, unlike many other rivers in the country which flow eastward. Narmada is considered to be the holiest river in the country.

9. Gadilam - 1,333

The Gadilam is a river in the southern portion of the country, in the state of Tamil Nadu. It is sometimes called the Kedilam River. Like other entires on this list, the Gadilam flows into the Bay of Bengal.

8. Yamuna - 1,376 km

Like others on this list, Yamuna also originates from a glacier - specifically the Yamunotri Glacier. The Yamuna then continues to flow for 1,376 km, where it sustains the livelihood of over 50 million people. The Yamuna is notable for being the largest river in the country that does not ever flow to the sea. It is one of the Ganges River's main tributaries.

7. Krishna - 1,400

Also called the Krishnaveni Reiver, the Krishna is found in the Western Ghats in the southeastern portion of the country. It flows through the states of Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Karnataka. Its origin is at Mahabaleshwar, a small town in the state of Maharashtra. Its largest tributaries are the Tungabhadra River and the Bhima River.The Krishna is known for its quick flow and intense deepness, which can easily reach a depth of 23 m. The area surrounding the Krishna is prone to soil erosion during monsoon season.

6. Sutlej - 1,450 km

The Sutlej, sometimes called the Satluj or the Satadree, runs through northern Indian states, as well as through China, India, and Pakistan. The majority of the river is in Pakistan. Due to its very fast flow, the Sutlej is a major source for hydroelectric power in the region. Several dams have been completed on the river. The river is notable for flowing at a very high altitude. The Sutlej is part of the Indus river system.

5. Godavari - 1,465

The Godavari River has its source in Maharashtra in western India. Sometimes dubbed the "Ganges of the South", the Godavari shares a storied history with its more famous cousin. and has been a feature in Hindu scriptures since ancient times. The river delta supports more than 700 people per square km - an astonishing amount for one river alone.

4. Ganges - 2,525 km

The Ganges River is one of the country's longest rivers, as well as its most famous. It flows for 2,525 km within Indian borders before flowing into Bangladesh. Although technically the Indus River is longer, much of it does not technically flower within India. Also called the Ganga, the Ganges River rises in the western Himalayas of India, and flows throughout the north of the country before it travels to the Bay of Bengal through Bangladesh. It serves as an economic and spiritual need of the civilians.

3. Yarlung Tsangpo - 2,840 km

The longest river of Tibet, the Yarlung Tsangpo, also flows within India in the state of Arunachal Pradesh in the country's extreme northeast. The river is responsible for the formation of a canyon that shares the name same, called the Yarlung Tsangpo canyon, which is both the deepest and the longest canyon in the world.

2. Brahmaputra - 2,900 km

The Brahmaputra runs through the states of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh as well as its neighboring countries of China and Bangladesh. It begins at the Angsi Glacier in the Himalayas and flows through Tibet into Arunachal Pradesh and continues its journey to the southwest into Assam and southward through Bangladesh. There it empties into the Bay of Bengal.

1. Indus - 3,180 km

At 2,900 km long, the river Indus, which originates in the locale of Lake Mansarovar in Tibet before it enters India, flows through Ladakh up to Punjab, and unites with the Arabian Sea at the port of Karachi. The Indus is the longest river of India. The Indus River flows through Himachal Pradesh and notably supplies water to the Punjab, the agricultural production center of India.
Danube River is shared with nine other European countries, and it is the longest river to pass through Germany, while the Main is the longest river flowing entirely in Germany. Most of the rivers flowing through the country also source, drain, flow or pass through other European countries. Other rivers that flow solely in Germany are Weser (281 miles long) and Saale (257 miles long). Germany has one of the most developed river networks in the world. The rivers connect the European country to other European nations. Today, Germany taps this natural resource to produce one of the richest economies in the world.

Danube

The river rises from the Black Forest of Donaueschingen in Germany. It flows southeast through four capital cities including Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest, and Belgrade of Central Europe before draining in the black sea at Danube Delta. The Danube is the second longest river in Europe and the longest in Germany with 1,777 miles long. It passes through 9 other countries Serbia, Austria, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Croatia, Ukraine, and Moldova. It is a source of water to more than 20 million people and provides beautiful sceneries that attract more than six million tourists each year. The Naturpark Obere Donau is an important natural spot lying in the German portion of the Danube.

Rhine

River Rhine is the second largest river in Germany with 764 miles. The river sources from Lake Tomasee, and Paradies Glacier in Switzerland flows through the German cities of Karlsruhe, Mannheim, Wiesbaden, Bonn, and Duisburg. It also flows through Austria, and France where it serves as a boundary between Germany and France, before draining in the Hook, Rotterdam, Netherlands. It flows through many deep gorges and meanders with steep sided valleys of Vineyards and castles making it a prime tourist spot in Germany. It has many tributaries majorly the ILL, Main, Lahn, Neckar, and Ruhr.

Elbe

The Elbe river sources from the mountains in the Czech Republic to flow through the western and eastern parts of Germany. It then changes course to the northeast to empty into the North Sea at the port of Hamburg. It is 678 miles long and the rivers of Vltaza, Mulde, Ohre, Havel, Saale, and Schwarz Elster pours their waters in the Elbe River. In eastern Germany, the river serves as a river port to Torgau, Magdeburg, Aken, and Dessau among others. The river serves as the most historic river in Germany. It once separated East Germany from West Germany. Sources have it the remains of Adolf Hitler were scattered in the river to indicate his permanent departure.

Main

The river rises from Kulmbach in Franconia where the Red Main and White Main join to from the Main River. The White Main sources in the Fichtelgebirge mountains, while the Red Main from Franconia Jura. The river flows through the cities of Frankfurt am Main where it is the primary transportation artery and Wurzburg. The Main is navigable from the Rhine basin to Bamberg. Some dams and locks have been constructed on its course. The 2,200 miles long Main-Danube Canal connects the Main with the Danube and the Rhine rivers. The Main-Radweg is the most prominent German bicycle recreation course with over 370 miles. In the world War II era, the river separated Southern German Catholic population from Northern Germany Federation.

The Importance Of Rivers In Germany

The rivers in Germany have played a significant role in developing the country. German has one of the most developed inland navigation systems in the world thanks to all the rivers flowing through it, to or from other European countries. The rivers have also been a primary source for hydroelectric generation, recreational platforms, marking national borders and most importantly creating a vibrant ecosystem.

The construction of the Rhine-Danube Canal made the barge transportation of freight from the North Sea to the Black Sea possible. The Rhine river is the primary pillar of commerce and trade in Germany. The Rhine Valley is the most famous growing region of the Germanys Riesling wine. The Oder river flowing through the boundaries of Poland and Germany provides a critical path for waterborne freight. The Elbe-Haviel Canal provides a transport route from Magdeburg to Berlin and Poland. Artists from all over the world have traveled to Germany just to capture the breathtaking beauty of a country with a unique biodiversity.
Hawaii, the most recently declared state of the US, received its statehood in 1959. This state is the only US state that is located in Oceania, is completely composed of islands, and is not physically a part of the Americas.

The uniqueness of Hawaii is not limited to its geographical and political aspects but also extends to encompass its inhabitants. The physical isolation of Hawaii has triggered the evolution of many endemic forms of wildlife on the Hawaiian Islands. The highest rates of endemism have been observed among Hawaiian birds. The Hawaiian goose or nene, apapane, amakihi,elepaio are some of the endemic avifauna of this US state. The Hawaiian hoary bat and the Hawaiian monk seal are two endemic mammals of Hawaii. Many animals found in Hawaii are, however, introduced species like the Indian mongoose, chital deer, feral wallaby, feral cattle, etc. Being an island country, Hawaii also supports a rich marine life with its offshore waters hosting coral reefs, whales and dolphins, several species of sea turtles, many species of fish, and a variety of other marine fauna.

12. Hawaiian Monk Seal and Northern Elephant Seal

A Hawaiian monk seal. Image credit: Sophiebalanay18/Shutterstock.com

The rarest seal species on Earth, with only about a few hundred remaining, the endemic Hawaiian monk seal is found only in Hawaii. If one is lucky, one might spot this seal basking in the Hawaiian sun on a beach in Hawaii. Visitors are requested to respect the privacy of these creatures and not disturb them or approach too close (maintain a minimum distance of 45 meters) to them on the beach. These seals come to the shore for basking, resting, or giving birth. Seal pups are particularly vulnerable and therefore must not be disturbed at any cost. These Hawaiian monk seals are also susceptible to canine pathogens and hence pets must not be allowed to interact with these species.

The northern elephant seal is named so for its relatively large size and the proboscis of the males of this species using which they make loud, roaring noises. Unlike the Hawaiian monk seal, the northern elephant seal has a more widespread distribution and is not immediately threatened.

11. Whales And Dolphins

Two dolphins in the sea in Hawaii. Image credit: Willyam Bradberry/Shutterstock.com

Besides seals, the other major marine dwellers that find their place in our list of What Animals Live In Hawaii? are the whales and dolphins. Both are commonly spotted in Hawaiian waters. Every year, these whales migrate from Alaska to Hawaii during the winter. Mating of the humpback whales takes place in Hawaiian waters, and females give birth to calves the following year. Other whales like the North Pacific right whale, minke whale, Brydes blue whale, and the fin whale are also occasionally observed in the coastal waters of Hawaii.

Dolphins also find their refuge in the sea waters around Hawaii. Spinner dolphins are particularly common. These creatures are relatively small (about 6 feet in length), have unique body coloration (dorsal surface is dark gray in color, a less deep shade of gray in the middle, and the ventral surface is light colored). Dolphins often reside in the shallow bays of Hawaii which also serve as their mating grounds. Tourists and tourism operators are advised to maintain safe distances from whales and dolphins so that unpleasant confrontations with these sea-dwellers might be avoided. Human presence also disturbs the sense of peace and social life of these creatures. Boaters and swimmers are strictly told to maintain respectable distances from these aquatic animals.

10. Hawaiian Hoary Bat

Hawaiian hoary bat. Image credit: Forest and Kim Starr/Wikimedia.org

The Hawaiian hoary bat is one of the two surviving mammals (the second being the Hawaiian monk seal) that are endemic to Hawaii. Thus, it finds it position in our list of What Animals Live In Hawaii? Earlier, it was believed that the bat was just a sub-species of the hoary bat, but molecular analysis of genetic specimens of this bat proved it to be a distinct species. The Hawaiian hoary bat weighs about 14 to 18 g, and females are larger in size than males. The body of these bats are shaped like half a taro leaf. These bats are nocturnal insectivores. Though these bats were once widespread in Hawaii, today they have been documented in only two islands of the region, Hawaii, and Kauai. Thus, they are classified as Endangered by IUCN.

9. Indian Mongoose

An Indian mongoose in Hawaii.

The Indian mongoose is a non-native species in Hawaii. It was introduced to the archipelago in 1883 from India to control the rat population in the sugar plantations of Hawaii. The mongoose population soon grew rapidly and today is widespread across Hawaii. They are weasel-like creatures with a length of about 26 inches, a tail as long as its brownish body, a pointed nose, and rounded ears. The introduction of the mongoose to Hawaii was a big mistake since the animal heavily predated on the ground-nesting birds, bird hatchlings, eggs, and endangered turtles of the island. Large populations of the Hawaiian crow, Hawaiian goose, and other endemic birds of the archipelago have been lost due to predation by the Indian mongoose.

8. Axis Deer And Mule Deer

An axis deer or chital in Hawaii.

The axis deer or chital, native to the Indian subcontinent, are well-known for their spotted coat, docile nature, and graceful gait. This deer species has always been in high demand in countries across the world. Though not native to Hawaii, this species also finds its place in our list of What Animals Live In Hawaii? This deer was first introduced in Hawaii when Hong Kong gifted one to King Kamehameha V, the ruler of the Kingdom of Hawaii (1863 to 1872). Today, the Hawaiian island of Lanai houses a large population of the axis deer.

A deer species indigenous to western parts of North America, the mule deer was introduced to the Kauai Island of Hawaii by humans. Today, a significant population of this deer species also exist in Hawaii.

7. Feral Wallaby

Wallabies were introduced in Hawaii by humans. Image credit: Martin Pelanek/Shutterstock.com

Wallabies are small to mid-sized macropods that are native to New Guinea and Australia. In Hawaii, humans introduced these wallabies as exhibits in a Hawaiian zoo. In 1916, a small population of brush-tailed rock-wallaby managed to escape the zoo. As these animals bred outside in the wild, a feral population of these creatures was established. Today, these wild wallabies can be found in Oahu Islands Kalihi Valley. These animals are classified as Near Threatened by the IUCN.

6. Feral Cattle, Pig, Goat, Donkey, And Sheep

A feral goat in Hawaii.

With humans came their animals and so cattle, pigs, goats, donkeys, and sheep all became inhabitants of the island of Hawaii. Thus, they are mentioned here on What Animals Live In Hawaii? Many populations started growing in the wild as feral populations. Though these species had less adverse effect on the islands bird population than feral cats, dogs, and rats; these animals decimated the native vegetation of Hawaii as they grazed on the land. The foraging habit of these animals, in turn, adversely impacted the endemic species of Hawaii that depended on this vegetation for their food source.

5. Hawksbill Sea Turtle

A hawksbill sea turtle swimming among the corals in the sea off the Hawaiian coast.

Hawaii is the home of the critically endangered hawksbill sea turtle. Hawksbill seat turtles prefer to feast on sea sponges and can often be found in coral reefs. However, the hawksbill sea turtle moves around a lot, often changing its location within the ocean. Unfortunately, these turtles have been relentlessly targeted for their decorative shells and are now a critically endangered species.

4. Rodents And Rabbits

House mouse (Mus musculus) on Haleakala in Maui, Hawaii. Image credit: Amy Olson/Shutterstock.com

Both rodents and rabbits have been introduced in Hawaii and today are widespread in this archipelago. The arrival of rats to Hawaii spelled disaster for the Hawaiian birds as these creatures started preying on the hatchlings and eggs of the ground-nesting birds of Hawaii. Much like the other invasive species, rodents also played a significant role in the decimation and extinction of many bird species in the US state.

3. Seabirds Of Hawaii

Hawaiian Black Crowned Night Heron (Nycticorax nycticoras) or Auku'u perched on a lava rock in the Pacific ocean off the coast of Hawaii as it hunts for fish. Image credit: Jeff W. Jarrett/Shutterstock.com

Speaking of What Animals Live In Hawaii? we definitely need to mention the unique sea and forest birds of this Archipelago. Hawaii was once the epicenter of endemism with about 113 endemic bird species. However, today the birds of Hawaii are the most threatened species of birds of the entire planet. Since the arrival of humans, the archipelago has lost 71 bird species, 48 before, and 23 after the arrival of the Europeans. Hawaiian birds may be classified as sea birds and forest birds depending on the habitat of these avians. Laysan albatross, great frigate birds, noddies, shearwaters, red and white-tailed tropic birds are some of the seabirds of Hawaii.

2. Forest Birds Of Hawaii

Hawaiian honeycreeper. Image credit: Thomas Chlebecek/Shutterstock.com

The forest birds of Hawaii have lost much of their range over time. Today, they can be spotted in the last remaining forests of Hawaii, especially at higher elevations (1,400 meters and above) where humans have not yet disturbed the wild habitat to a great extent. The black-billed apapane, salmon-billed iiwi, the white and brown elepaio, and the yellow-green colored amakihi are some of the forest birds of Hawaii that can still be spotted in these forests.

1. Nene

A pair of Hawaiian Geese (Nene) in Kauai. Image credit: Randy Bjorklund/Shutterstock.com

Officially declared as the state bird of Hawaii, the nene or the Hawaiian goose (Branta sandvicensis) is found exclusively on the Hawaiian islands of Maui, Molokai, Hawaii, Oahu, and Kauai. This endemic species is believed to have evolved about 500,000 years ago from the Canada goose which might have migrated to the Hawaiian Islands during this time. The geese are about 41 cm tall. They are often sighted flying from their feeding grounds to their nesting grounds. These herbivorous birds feed on plant parts like seeds, fruits, flowers, and leaves. Hunting by humans and predation by invasive species has drastically reduced the numbers of nene. Today, they are the rarest species of geese in the world, classified as Vulnerable by the IUCN.
5. Background

The Kyoto Protocol was an international agreement which was signed in Kyoto, Japan in 1997. The agreement mandated 37 industrialized countries and the European Community, made up of 15 nations at the time of the Kyoto negotiations, to cut their greenhouse gas emissions. The protocol, however, exempted more than 100 developing countries, including China and India, from the mandatory reductions.

Kyoto originated from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which was signed at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. The UNFCCC is one of the three Rio Conventions. The other two conventions are the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Convention to Combat Desertification. Conference of Parties (COP) is the supreme decision-making body of the Convention. The COP meets every year to review the Conventions implementation. The first COP took place in Berlin in 1995. It was at the COP3, when the Kyoto Protocol was adopted.

4. Terms and Conditions

There were two key conditions for the Kyoto protocol to come into effect. The first condition was that the protocol should be ratified by at least 55 countries involved in the UNFCCC. This condition was met on May 23, 2002, when Iceland became the 55th country to ratify the protocol.

The second condition was that the ratifying countries should account for at least 55% of the worlds total Carbon Dioxide emissions in 1990. With Russia ratifying the protocol on November 18, 2004, the second condition was also satisfied and the Kyoto Protocol came into effect on February 16, 2005.

The ratifying countries agreed to cut their annual carbon discharges as measured through their releases of six greenhouse gases by varying amounts, aimed at averaging 5.2% below 1990 levels. These six gases identified were Carbon Dioxide (CO2), Methane (CH4), Nitrous Oxide (N2O), Sulfur Hexafluoride (SF6), Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), and Perfluorocarbons (PFCs).

The ratifying countries were required to decrease their carbon emission during the Protocols first commitment period of 2008 to 2012. The countries could use flexibility mechanisms (Kyoto Mechanisms) to meet their commitments. Flexibility mechanisms include International Emissions Trading (IET), Joint implementations (JI) and Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).

3. Accomplishments

The Kyoto Protocol was the worlds first major global emissions reduction treaty, and increased awareness and international cooperation towards resolving the climate change crisis. This was the first treaty to legally bind countries to their commitments on greenhouse gas emission reductions.

Christiana Figueres, while Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, stated, The Kyoto Protocol was a remarkable achievement in many ways. It not only underscored the scientific reality that greenhouse gas emissions need to fall. But it also put in place pioneering concepts, flexible options, practical solutions and procedures for accountability that we often take for granted today.

2. Controversies and Shortcomings

Many protocol signatory countries succeeded in cutting their emissions. As a result, the sum of emissions from nations with Kyoto targets fell. However, the global atmospheric Carbon dioxide levels have increased enormously. Most of this increase has come from the developing countries and emerging economies, which were asked to comply voluntarily in the protocol. By some estimates, if one takes in to account, the total carbon footprint of each nation, including imports and excluding exports, the success of Kyoto would appear very poor. For example, Europe's savings will be reduced to 1% and the developed world as a whole will see its emissions rise by 7% during 1990 to 2008 period.

Another failure of the treaty was that it could not gain a commitment from the United States, one of the largest sources of carbon emission. In 2011, Canada, Russia, and Japan announced that they would not take on further Kyoto targets. Thereafter, Canada formally withdrew from the protocol in December of 2011.

1. Major International Climate Change Treaties Since Kyoto

Although the United States did not ratify the Kyoto Protocol, it was a leader in forming the Asia-Pacific Partnership for Clean Development and Climate, an international agreement announced in July of 2005 at a meeting of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). The COP21, the Paris Climate Conference, was held in Paris, France, in December of 2015. At this meeting 195 countries adopted the first ever universal, legally binding global climate agreement. This agreement sets out a global action plan to put the world on track to avoid dangerous climate change by limiting global warming to below 2 Celsius. The agreement is due to come into force in 2020.
Catholicism is the largest organized Christian denomination in the world. The Catholic Church has played important political and social roles in different countries around the world. Brazil has more Catholics than any other country, while the Philippines and the Democratic Republic of the Congo are the sole entries from their respective continents.

Brazil

Brazil accounts for 9.94% of the entire Catholic population in the world today. The population of Brazil is 204,259,812, and the population of Catholics in the country is 124,598,485. The prevalence of Roman Catholicism in Brazil stands at 61%. Roman Catholicism in Brazil was the product of efforts by European settlers in the 19th century. The religion was firmly established during colonization and was subsequently made the official state religion in the 19th century. Although the constitution of 1891 made Brazil a secular state, the Catholic Church remained intertwined with the political and social life in Brazil. The Catholic Church made alliances with politicians who bestowed power upon the Church.

The influence of the Catholic Church on political matters in Brazil started waning after World War II, when urbanization and education gave Brazilians more religious options. The Church became vocal in regard to social and political injustice, assuming the position of the most radical Catholic Church in the Latin America. The Catholic Church was at the forefront of the fight for democracy in the 1980s, alongside opposition political parties and grassroots organizations. The Catholic Church in Brazil re-invented itself through Africanized masses and more empowered and charismatic clergy, to amass the huge following enjoys till today. Most festivals in Brazil are based on Catholic doctrines.

Mexico

Mexico accounts for 7.86% of the Catholics found across the globe. Catholicism can be traced back to Spanish conquests that started in 1519. The Spanish considered it their mission to offer salvation to the pagan Indians. They set about to destroy indigenous temples and erect churches in their place. Conversion to Catholicism was met by resistance, which the Virgin of Guadalupe figure diluted. She had tanned skin similar to that of the native peoples, and facilitated their conversion to Catholicism. The Basilica of the Virgin of Guadalupe attracts thousands of Catholic pilgrims annually. The figure is a national symbol in modern Mexico.

The Roman Catholic Church played a significant role in Mexicos independence, and enjoyed supremacy in the new republic formed thereafter, where recognized citizens had to be Catholic adherents. The Church attempted to curb the rise of liberals in the 1850s by supporting Austrian Archduke Maximilian, to assume the position of emperor and liberal elements subsequently executed him. The government asserted controls on the activities of the Church, a move that inspired more following from the masses. Priests that were killed resisting the controls were venerated as martyrs. Catholicism in Mexico took a unique turn with the veneration of special saints and incorporation of native traditions, and elements still noticeable today. The church and the state are separate institutions in modern day Mexico. Catholicism in Mexico is expected to assert some level of influence on how Mexican views emerging issues such as homosexuality and contraception in the future.

Philippines

The Philippines has a 6.56% share of all global Catholics. The population of the Philippines is 100,998,376, and the number of Catholic believers in the country is 82,212,678. The prevalence of Roman Catholicism in the country stands at 81.4%. Catholicism rapidly spread in the Philippines during Spanish colonization, largely due to lack of competition from another religions. The religion quickly became an element of national identity. Catholicism and Spanish rule became firmly integrated, and the Church was accused of taking part in social injustice. The Spanish clergy became wealthy through ownership of large tracts of land which they leased to tenants. Local priests were opposed to this situation and immersed themselves in nationalistic movements in the 19th century. The separation of the state and the church was facilitated by subsequent American rule. Influence of the Catholic Church re-emerged in the 1930s as a champion of social and political justice. The Church helped to organize the protests that overthrew the dictator Ferdinand Marcos. The Church and the State are separate in modern day Philippines, and the Church asserts only moral influence in the country. The Catholic Church opinions on emerging concerns such as reproduction are expected to influence the opinions of its adherents.

There are numerous pilgrimage sites in the country, and at many of these different likenesses of the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ, are venerated. Saints' Days in various cities and towns are celebrated, and there are also different festivals celebrated in the Philippines.

United States of America

The Catholic Church has 66,844,724 followers out the total population of 321,368,864 in the United States. The US accounts for a 5.33% of all global Catholics, which equates to 20.8% of the population in the country. Catholicism in the US was introduced by European immigrants and missionaries, amidst great native resistance. The church in the US has been vocal regarding several political and social issues over the years, such as labor, welfare, immigration, and reproductive rights. The Church, however, is separate from the state although there are numerous politicians in office who are Catholics. Strict control has recently been placed on the affairs of the Catholic Church in the US in light of sexual and negligence allegations.

Projections of Growth for Catholicism in the Years to Come

Other countries with large Catholic populations, and their respective shares of the global total Catholic population, are Italy (4.09%), Colombia (2.80%), France (3.16%), Poland (2.67%), Spain (2.67%), Argentina (2.46%), and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (2.33%). Catholics in the world are expected to grow by an estimated 500 million by 2050. Much of this growth is expected in developing countries mainly in Sub-Saharan Africa. Latin America is projected to lead with Catholic population, while Catholics in Europe are expected to decrease in number.
By Harish V Nair: At a time the Centre is planning a crack down on Kashmiri separatists, the Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to hear a PIL next week which sought a direction to the government to immediately stop the funding of separatist groups in the state.



SC "SHARED THE SAME FEELING"

Incidentally, the apex court also said that it 'shared the same feeling'. "We also share the same feeling. Everybody sitting here feels the same," Justice Anil Dave, heading the bench, told petitioner and lawyer Manohar Lal Sharma. Sharma wanted the funding to be declared 'unconstitutional and illegal' as the government 'cannot be allowed to provide money to those acting against the nation's interest'.

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"The government has spent Rs 21 crore to put these separatists in luxury hotels and Rs 26.43 crore on fuel for them to travel around and spread their anti-India venom. While the separatists speak for and instigate militancy and Pakistan's terrorist proxies such as Hizbul Mujahideen, which are responsible for killing thousands of people, both security forces and civilians since 1990, India goes out of its way to protect them," the PIL said.

"India has spent Rs 309 crore to provide security to separatists over the last five years, with some 950 security men guarding them round-the-clock, according to data provided by the J&K government in 2015", the PIL added.

Sharma cited media reports questioning the grant of funds to separatists for travel, accommodation, logistics and other purposes.

UNAUTHORISED EXPENDITURE

The PIL also claimed that this expenditure was made without informing the Parliament and the CAG has never adduced any audit report on how these funds were used while the money was used to wage a war against the country. Sharma has sought initiation of criminal prosecution against those who have illegally authorised the release of this money from the Consolidated Fund of India.

The PIL, which has made the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), Jammu and Kashmir government and CBI as parties, also alleged that an offence of corruption for misusing public office and funds has been made out in the case. It also sought a direction to the MHA and the Jammu and Kashmir government asking them not to release/provide any fund either from the Consolidated Fund of India or the state treasury under any heads or object.

ALSO READ:

Muslim clerics slam Pakistan and separatists, to conduct Aman Yatra in Kashmir

After Hurriyat snub, Centre to crack down on separatists, withdraw security cover

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Lawrence John Ripple

By: Feng Qian

(Scroll down for video) An elderly man was arrested on a charge of robbery after allegedly robbing a bank because he wanted to be in jail rather than live at home with his wife, according to police in Kansas.

Kansas City police said that they have arrested 70-year-old Lawrence John Ripple, after being accused of using a gun to threaten a teller at the bank.

In court, Ripple pleaded not guilty to one count of bank robbery. He was booked into the Wyandotte County Detention Center.

According to the police investigation, Ripple had been arguing with his wife before he told her that he would rather be in jail than live with her.

He then wrote a note, in which he demanded money from the bank, in front of his wife.

Ripple went to a Brotherhood Bank and Trust branch, and gave the note to a bank teller on Friday, demanding cash and warning that he had a gun.

Ripple took the $3,000 in cash and sat down in the lobby, where he told a security guard that he was the guy that the police were looking for.
Brendan Duffy

By: Mahesh Sarin

(Scroll down for video) A man said that he wanted to call an Uber taxi, but the battery of his cellphone has died.

Brendan Duffy of Florida, decided to flag down a Pinellas police officer, who was driving on Gandy Boulevard, and asked him to charge his cellphone so that he can call Uber for a ride.

After the officer agreed to plug in and charge Duffyas phone, he sat down on a nearby bench. Duffy then whipped out a pocket full of credit cards.

The officer took a closer look and realized that the cards had different names on them, and Duffy was arrested.

Jerrica May said that she received a call from police, who informed her that they found her debit card and they wanted to know if Duffy was authorized to use her card.

May told police that she did not realize she lost her debit card while she was at Kahuna Bar and Grille on Gandy Boulevard, until they called her.

She also informed the detective that Duffy did not have her permission to use her card.

Duffy was charged with theft and is being held on $150 bail.
A young man wanted to make a point about racism in the United States, but his plan backfired when he was exposed for a liar by police. 20-year-old Khalil Cavil of Texas was working at the Saltgrass Steak House in Odessa when he claimed he was discriminated against because of his Muslim name. Cavil took
Marsavious Frazier and Daqarion Hunter

By: Tanya Malhotra

(Scroll down for video) Two families are mourning to loss of their teenage sons after a tragic accident.

Police said that three 17-year-old boys of Michigan, were playing with a gun in an alley in Kalamazoo on Monday night, before two of them were shot dead.

A witness told police that one of the teens was holding the gun when it accidentally went off and hit his friend. The teenager was horrified when he realized that he killed his close friend.

The distraught boy turned the gun on himself to commit suicide.

Police identified the teenage victims as Marsavious Frazier and Daquarion Hunter. Frazieras father Jonathan, said that police informed him that his son was holding the gun at around 9:00 p.m., when he accidentally pulled the trigger, shooting his friend.

When police arrived, they found the friends lying dead next to each other.

Police determined that there was no argument or altercation before the shots were fired and that it has been a tragic accident.

aThe young man thought there was no way out. He felt responsible for taking his friendas life. In that moment of despair, he took his own life,a said Capt. Victor Ledbetter with the Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety.

He added that the third boy who witnessed the incident, held one of them as he died, aso this young man is going to need some prayers and some counseling,a Ledbetter said.

Hunter graduated from Loy Norrix High School in June, while Frazier was a student at Phoenix High School.
By PTI: Mumbai, Sep 9 (PTI) The countrys export of plastics finished goods is set to nearly double to USD 15 billion in the next five years from the present USD 7.9 billion, according to a top official from the plastics industry.

"The export of plastics finished goods is set to nearly double to USD 15 billion in next five years. The country exports USD 7.9 billion worth plastics finished goods. The industry is determined to play a significant role in executing governments vision of raising exports to USD 900 billion by 2020," Plastindia Foundation president K K Seksaria told reporters after the formal launch of Plastindia 2018 here today.

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Plastics is one of the fastest growing industries in India witnessing a double digit growth rate annually, on an average.

Initiatives like Make in India, Skill India, Digital India, Swachh Bharat Abhiyan and Start up India by government are opening up opportunities for even more accelerated growth in this industry, Seksaria said.

The domestic plastics consumption is also set to increase from the current 12 million metric tonnes per annum to 20 million metric tonnes per annum by 2020 due to rapid growth of infrastructure, agri and automobile sectors.

By 2020, plastics consumption in India is set to increase from the current 12 million metric tonnes per annum to 20 million metric tonnes per annum.

India will deploy 1,80,000 machines by 2020 as compared to the current 1,13,000, Chairman of National Executive Council, Palstindia 2018, Rajeev Chitalia said.

Indian plastics industry is geared up for the challenges of quantitative and qualitative growth for serving the nation and its citizens and also to take the country to a higher growth path, Seksaria said.

Plastindia 201 8- 10th International Plastics Exhibition & Conference, will be held in February 2018 at Gandhinagar in Gujarat. About 2,000 companies including 600 from across 40 countries would display their products, technologies and innovations. PTI AP ARS JM PTP

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Polling in DU and JNU began today morning for the post of president, vice-president, secretary and joint secretary.

By Indo-Asian News Service: Polling began today morning in the two politically active varsities - University of Delhi and Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) - for the post of president, vice-president, secretary and joint secretary.

The elections for the morning colleges of the Delhi University (DU) started at 8.30 am across 117 booths set up at 51 colleges of Delhi University and end at 12.30 pm while the elections for the evening colleges will start at 3 pm and end at 7 pm.

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Meanwhile, the polling in the JNU started at 9 am and will go on till 5 pm.

Also read: JNU permits students guilty in Feb 9 incident to vote in union

CANDIDATES IN THE FRAY

According to the Chief Election Commissioner for DUSU polls, a total of 17 candidates are in fray for the four posts of Delhi University Students' Union office-bearers.

Seven candidates are in race for the post of president and four for the post of vice-president. Three contestants each are in fray for the secretary and joint secretary post.

The votes will be counted on Saturday and the results declared on the same day.

Also read: Protection against order of JNU authority to continue: HC

"It is going to be a close fight. But we are confident of winning," Angellica Aribam, National General Secretary of National Students' Union of India (NSUI) told IANS.

The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), affiliated to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), swept all the four posts by huge margins in last year's elections.

Last year, ABVP defeated Chhatra Yuva Sangharsh Samiti (CYSS), affiliated to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), NSUI, affiliated to the Congress and All India Students' Association (AISA), affiliated to the the Communist Party of India.

Amit Tanwar is the ABVP presidential candidate this year.

The NSUI has fielded first-year LLB student Nikhil Yadav as its presidential candidate. The AISA's presidential candidate is Kawalpreet Kaur, who is also a law student.

The CYSS is not contesting this year. It was unable to win any seat last year during its first contest in the DUSU elections.

The results of the JNU polls would be declared on Sunday.

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Andy Niklaus has worked for the Berlin Transport Company (BVG) for 25 years and is running as a candidate of the Partei fur Soziale Gleichheit (Socialist Equality Party) in the elections for the Berlin Senate to be held September 18. He has issued the following appeal.

Dear colleagues,

I have worked for 25 years in the Berlin Transport Company (BVG) and I am running as a candidate of the Partei fur Soziale Gleichheit (PSG) in the elections for the Berlin House of Representatives to be held on September 18.

I call on my fellow workers at the BVG and all other companies to read the election program of the PSG and build a workplace committee of the PSG.

The Berlin elections are taking place in a period of extraordinary crisis. While all of the established parties act as though peace, joy and sunshine prevail, the world resembles a powder keg. All of the ghosts of the past are back again: economic crisis, mass poverty, dictatorship and the drive to war.

When the German government announced during the last week of August that the population must prepare itself for attacks from chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, many people could not believe their ears.

But the instructions to stockpile food and water and maintain a supply of medication, warm blankets, flashlights, loaded batteries and reserves of cashas well as the plans for the reintroduction of compulsory military service and the announcement that the Federal Labour Office is authorized to conscript men and women to work in areas vital to the nations defence in the event of warmust be taken seriously.

These directives make clear that a war conspiracy is taking place behind the backs of the population in which all of the established parties are implicated. If the working class does not intervene to stop the drive to war, we will be threatened with a catastrophe even worse than those of the First and Second World Wars.

But in order to intervene in these social developments, the working class needs its own party which combines the fight against war with the fight against capitalism, poverty and want; a party that fights for an anti-capitalist and socialist program and for the international cooperation and unity of all workers.

That is why I am running as a candidate of the PSG. The PSG represents this program and is part of an international organization, the Fourth International, led by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI).

Building the PSG is also of the utmost importance for the immediate problems confronting workers. All problems in the companies are today posed as political problems. To solve them, one needs a socialist program and an international strategy.

This is clearly demonstrated in the Berlin Transport Company. For years, a systematic social regression has taken place. The wages of BVG workers, like those of other public service workers, are being reduced to an extremely low level. Rising food costs and, above all, the exploding rents in Berlin quickly eat up any savings.

Chiefly responsible are the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Left Party and the Verdi union. During the period when the SPD and the Left Party were in power in Berlin under the leadership of Klaus Wowereit (2001-2011), a veritable low-wage sector was established among local transport workers. The first step in this process took place in 1999 in the Senate controlled by the Christian Democrat Party (CDU) and Berlin mayor Eberhard Diepgen, when the Berlin Transport GmbH was founded with poorly paid personnel. The largest cuts then happened in 2005 under Wowereit.

In 2003, the so-called Red-Red Coalition left the federal employers association so that they could lower wages and salaries for public sector workers by 12 percent. Two years later, this was applied to the BVG.

In the local transport wage agreement TV-N, Verdi made arrangements with the Red-Red Senate not only to drastically cut wages by more than 10 percent and reduce Christmas bonuses and paid vacations. They also organized the division of the workforce into old and new employees with salary differences of up to one third.

That is why Im an avowed opponent of Verdi.

Verdi does not represent the interests of workers. It is a bureaucratic apparatus with close ties to state institutions. It works closely with the SPD, the Left Party and the Greens. One can see how well integrated into the state apparatus Verdi has become when one examines the leadership of Berlins Municipal Employers Association (KAV), which has for years led negotiations for several state and private businesses with Verdi and other trade unions. It is mostly composed of Verdi members.

A good example is the chairman of the KAV-Berlin, Martin Urban, who rose from Verdi predecessor OTV, the public service, transport and traffic union, to become head of personnel at the waste disposal company BSR. According to the Berliner Morgenpost, as chairman of the KAV, Urban now pockets an annual salary of around 350,000. In the contract negotiations with Berlins Municipal Employers Association, Verdi was negotiating with Verdi.

Like all other unions, Verdi sees their main task as the suppression of the class struggle and the stifling of every independent movement of workers the moment they begin. For years, labour agreements have come in the form of adhesion contracts enforcing wage cuts, speed-ups and terrible working conditions.

That is why opposition to Verdi is growing. In the last 10 years, more than 200,000 Verdi members have left the union nationwide. In the BVG, the number of union resignations has also increased.

Because of this, an oppositional Verdi group was formed in the BVG some time ago, describing itself as Verdi-activedemocratic, open, and transparent. They call for a return to real class-struggle style and open democratic trade union work and seek to transform Verdi into a strong and powerful union.

But it is just as impossible to turn Verdi into a real class-struggle style union as it is impossible to turn the SPD once more into a workers party. The SPD is and remains the Hartz-IV and war party and is justly hated. So it is with Verdi. It remains a corrupt, bureaucratic apparatus which has served as a steppingstone into management and high incomes and privileges for many of its functionaries.

The transformation of Verdi and all other trade unions into agents of management and instruments of the state apparatus is not only a result of widespread corruption of its leading functionaries, but has deep objective roots.

As long as the labour market and working conditions were largely of a national character, the unions could apply pressure to achieve higher wages and social improvements. The globalization of production has created conditions in which unrestricted worldwide competition prevails. Now the unions no longer apply pressure to management to achieve gains for workers. Instead, they gouge the workers for wage and social cuts to improve the conditions of competition for the companies.

That is also why Verdi-active raises only the most limited, minimal demands and declares at the beginning of negotiations that it would be satisfied with achieving half of its goals. To be absolutely clear: Anyone who wants only to beg for alms should not be considered a representative of the workers.

In reality, Verdi-active is allied with the Left Party and its pseudo-left milieu and is attempting to intercept the growing opposition to Verdi and keep it confined within trade unionist channels.

I reject that. It is necessary to break free from the straitjacket of the union and build a socialist party that stands opposed to the capitalist logic of profit and unites the working class in a struggle against wage and social cuts and the preparations for war. And only on this basis is the consistent enforcement of operational requirements possible.

I therefore call on you: Read the election program of the PSG! Distribute it on Facebook and come to the discussion meetings of the PSG!
US President Barack Obama intervened during the final day of the three-day Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Laos to inflame regional antagonisms and escalate the danger of war. Obama provocatively insisted that the summit acknowledge the July ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA), which declared Beijings territorial claim in the South China Sea to be illegala topic the ASEAN member countries had carefully avoided.

The summits final day consisted of the expanded East Asia Summit (EAS), which incorporated eight other countries in the discussions, including the United States, China, Russia, Japan and Australia.

Obama singled out China, saying Beijing could not ignore the PCA ruling. He stated: The landmark arbitration ruling in July, which is binding, helped to clarify maritime rights in the region.

The US president continued: I recognize this raises tensions but I also look forward to discussing how we can constructively move forward together to lower tensions and promote diplomacy and stability.

Obamas insistence on the rulings binding character was a rejection of Chinas legal right under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) to opt out of binding arbitration. Along with China, other countries have also opted out, including the United Kingdom, Australia, Italy, France, Canada and Spain. Washington, which is using the PCA to tighten a military noose around China, is not even a signatory to UNCLOS.

Customarily Washington would have relied on a proxy member of ASEAN to articulate its geopolitical interests at the summit. Obama would have then expressed strong US support for this allys position.

From Washingtons perspective, the country that should have raised the PCA ruling was the Philippines. Under former President Benigno Aquino, Manila filed a case against China that was drawn up and argued by Washington-based attorneys.

New Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, however, has taken a more conciliatory tack toward China. Until recently, he avoided mentioning the PCA ruling in an effort to secure enhanced diplomatic and increased trade ties with Beijing.

Washington has begun raising the specter of human rights accusations against Dutertes murderous anti-drug crusade as a means of pressuring Manila into line with the agenda of the pivot to Asia. Duterte responded with an angry tirade during a press conference before the ASEAN summit, mouthing nationalist denunciations of US crimes as a means of justifying his own criminal policies. The White House announced it was calling off Obamas planned meeting with Duterte during the summit.

On Wednesday, Duterte expressed his regrets over having offended Obama. Manila announced on the same day it had evidence that China was engaged in island construction on the disputed Scarborough Shoal, in violation of the PCA ruling. It released photographs to the press that it claimed documented this construction activity.

Washington responded by announcing it would give two surveillance planes to the Philippine coast guard, so the country could better assess the state of its territorial claims and protect against intrusions into Philippine-claimed territory. Japan announced on the same day it would provide Vietnam with new patrol boats to defend that countrys territorial claims in the disputed waters.

Duterte and Obama met briefly and amicably on Wednesday evening. Dutertes entourage supplied the Wall Street Journal with a copy of the speech he planned to deliver during the East Asia Summit. The draft speech raised the question of Chinese violations of the PCA ruling and would have made the South China Sea dispute the center of the EAS.

Duterte, a volatile political figure stung by Washingtons muted human rights criticisms, instead delivered what Foreign Affairs Secretary Perfecto Yasay called an impromptu speech. In the closed-door session, Duterte showed the delegates, including Obama, photographs of carnage from the 18991902 Philippine-American War and stated This is my ancestor they killed. Why now [the Americans] are talking about human rights?

Unable to enlist the Philippines or a reliable proxy from the other ASEAN members, Obama was compelled to directly intervene in the summit to assert the US stance.

Japan followed Obamas suit. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said the PCA ruling was legally binding. He added: I am seriously concerned with the continuing attempts to change unilaterally the status quo in the East and South China seas.

The reference to unilaterally changing the status quo was a direct attack against China and its alleged island-building activities in the South China Sea.

China responded by denouncing the US provocation. Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin told the press that a couple of extra-regional countriesmeaning the US and Japanstill wanted to use the occasion of the East Asia Summit to talk about the South China Sea, particularly to press on the regional countries to abide by the arbitration, which is untimely and inappropriate.

During the recent G20 summit in Hangzhou, Russian President Vladimir Putin expanded the geopolitical scope of the conflict. He told the media: The intervention of third-party non-regional powers, in my opinion, is harmful and counterproductive.

Putin continued: We stand in solidarity and support of Chinas position on this issuenot to recognize the decision of this court This is not a political position, but purely legal. It lies in the fact that any arbitration proceedings should be initiated by the disputing parties, while the arbitration court should hear the arguments and positions of the disputing parties. As you know, China did not address The Hague arbitration and no one listened to its position there. How can you recognize these decisions as fair?

The EAS Summit official communique has not yet been released, but according to Reuters, a draft of a statement tiptoed around the regional strains caused by competing claims to areas of the strategically important sea. The delay in releasing the communique was doubtless the result of ongoing contentions over its character.

Manila has now assumed the role of ASEAN chair for the coming year. Foreign Affairs Secretary Yasay will travel to the United States next week, with the clear intent of attempting to patch up relations with Washington. He will speak on September 15 at the influential think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The ominous reality facing the ruling elite of every Asian country is that US imperialism has transformed the South China Sea into a powder keg. The US Navy announced on Thursday it was considering conducting a joint patrol with the Philippine Navy to the Scarborough Shoala reef claimed by China as well. This raises the possibility of an armed standoff between US and Chinese vessels in the disputed waters. Russia and China are slated to hold joint military exercises in the South China Sea this month.

Obamas direct intervention in the East Asia Summit reflects the desperation of Washington. As the economic and diplomatic weakness of the United States becomes increasingly pronounced, Washington is responding by the direct militarisation of every global dispute, raising at every turn the danger of world war.
On Tuesday evening, a discussion took place at rbb television studio between the leading candidates for multiple parties standing in the election to the Berlin Senate on September 18.

This so-called elephant round has a long tradition and is usually mind-numbingly boring. All of the established parties are on the same wavelength and their programs virtually interchangeable. All of them have been involved in different government coalitions in recent decades and are responsible for the social misery in the capital.

In the past all parties with representation in the Berlin Senate were invited to participate in the 90-minute program. This time around the rules were altered to allow the AfD (Alternative for Germany) to spout its racist and far right policies.

The rapidly implemented rule change opened up the program to all parties expected to exceed the five percent hurdle for representation in the Senate. In addition to bringing in the AfD this also allowed the establishment parties to dispense with the Pirate Party, which entered the state parliament after the last election with 15 MPs, but is expected to crash in the polls in ten days time.

The result Tuesday night was a repulsive spectacle, in which politicians and moderators, most of whom have known each other for years, cracked jokes and exchanged pleasantries. Whoever was able to sit through the program for an hour and a half at least knew by the end who they should not vote for on 18 September.

The most striking thing about the evening was the level of agreement between the parties. The only differences were over small details.

What might be called the German Unity Party, which reaches from the right wing of the CDU and the AfD to the left wing of the Left Party, discussed among themselves. And yes, the AfD is one of them.

It is no accident that the deputy AfD chairman Alexander Gauland explicitly praised the statement on the deportation of refugees made by Left Party leader, Sahra Wagenknecht, a few months ago.

Wagenknecht had supported the CSU demand for the accelerated removal of so-called criminal aliens as follows: Whoever abuses our hospitality has forfeited any right to hospitality. Gauland responded: It is pleasing to see the extent to which the Left Party is capable of realpolitik.

On Tuesday evening political agreement between all parties emerged particularly over the issue of security. All parties vied with one another with demands for more police, better equipment, more weapons, more effective coordination between departments and closer cooperation between the different security agencies.

For weeks the CDU has been conducting a law-and-order campaign. There is only one issue on its postersthe need for stronger police powers.

A few days ago CDU candidate Frank Henkel, together with the chief of police announced that the Berlin police are to be equipped with stun guns. These stun guns fire metal arrows into victims at a distance of up to ten meters. The electrodes are delivered with barbs that penetrate clothing up to a thickness of 5 centimeters. Once the projectiles have penetrated the body tissue of a victim, they can be repeatedly activated by pulling a trigger.

The weapons are part of the preparations to suppress unwanted mass gatherings, demonstrations and riots and they serve to brutalize the police.

In the elephant round the SPDs top candidate Mayor Michael Muller was asked about the new police weapons. He replied, I wonder why you do not ask the interior minister first when it comes to internal security? Interior minister and top candidate of the CDU, Frank Henkel, stood beside him, grinning.

After Muller explained that he has long advocated significant increases in personnel and equipment for the police and security agencies, Henkel replied: I am very happy you first asked the Mayor, because I have not heard so much support for my policy in a long time.

Already in May the Greens had called for a police with sufficient personnel that is technically and conceptually well-equipped and well-trained in a policy paper. Their top candidate Ramona Pop repeated this position on Tuesday.

The leading candidate of the Left Party, Klaus Lederer, also agreed with Henkel. A better equipped police force was one of the few issues upon which he could support the interior minister.

However, Lederer went on to declare that he saw a lack of ideas when it came to the expansion and modernization of the security apparatus. New measures to enhance surveillance of the population would not increase security. Even now, the flow of data was hard to cope with. Lederer declared: If one is looking for a needle in a haystack, it makes no sense to increase the size of the haystack." What was necessary was more and better qualified staff in the security apparatus.

Under these conditions, the AfDs leading candidate Georg Pazderski had an easy run. As a former army officerduring the broadcast it was stressed he was a former general staff officerhe posed as an expert on security. Although his statement on refugee policy provoked critical comments, the friendly exchanges with him continued. Regarding refugees Pazderski said: I am in favour of training these people, but not integrating them. We have to prepare these people to go back where they came from.

Seventy-one years after the end of the Nazi terror and the crimes of the German army, an army officer leads a far right and openly racist party in Berlin, and no one from the ranks of the established parties dares to oppose him. There could be no stronger indication of the bankruptcy of the German political elite.

After Tuesday night it should be absolutely clear that the Socialist Equality Party (PSG) is the only party that opposes the massive rearmament of the police and army.

The PSG was featured on a program dedicated to smaller parties on German television Thursday evening. I will address the central issue of current political development that is being systematically hidden by all the other parties: the rapid military buildup and preparations for war. The struggle against war is the focus of our campaign" declared Christoph Vandreier, who represented the PSG on the rbb broadcast.
The Australian Greens underlined their pro-business agenda by a portfolio reshuffle last month in the wake of the July 2 federal election. The demotion of prominent federal senators has exacerbated factional conflicts over how to position the Greens amid a deepening crisis of the two-party system.

Senator Sarah Hanson-Young was stripped of the immigration portfolio in favor of Nick McKim, a representative of the partys right-wing, who played a central role in attacks on public education in Tasmania.

Adam Bandt, the only Greens MP in the House of Representatives, was replaced as treasury spokesperson by Senator Peter Whish-Wilson, a former Wall Street banker and entrepreneur.

Greens leader Richard Di Natales moves followed bitter recriminations within the party over its failure to extend its representation in either the House of Representatives or the Senate.

Di Natale and the partys national leadership claimed that a left grouping based in New South Wales (NSW) and led by Senator Lee Rhiannon is responsible for the election result. Rhiannons faction responded by warning that the party is increasingly compromised by its open integration into the political establishment.

Throughout the election campaign, the Greens stated their willingness to form a coalition government with the Labor Party. They sought to promote themselves as the party of parliamentary stability amid mass hostility to Labor and the Liberals, and fears within the corporate elite that a hung parliament, or minority government, would be unable to implement the austerity program demanded by international finance.

Di Natale repeatedly invoked the Greens-backed Labor government from 2010 to 2013 as a model to be emulated. That government carried out a wholesale assault on welfare, healthcare and education, while integrating Australia into the US preparations for war against China.

The Greens openly right-wing pitch only won significant support in a handful of the most affluent electorates in Sydney and Melbourne. Following the election, Di Natale listed four seats he said would go Green next time. Each was among the top-ten wealthiest electorates in the country, by home value.

The portfolio appointments were aimed at appealing to this constituency, and the financial elite itself. Whish-Wilson is a former vice-president at Merrill-Lynch, one of the worlds largest brokerage firms, and at Deutsche Bank. His installation as a Greens federal senator in 2012 was welcomed by the financial press.

In 2013, the Murdoch-owned Australian published an article titled Green on board with business, which favourably cited Whish-Wilsons calls for the abolition of weekend penalty rates for workers. The Greens senator denounced the Liberal-Nationals and the Labor Party for not heeding the calls of business, and declared that weekend entitlements were outdated and an Anglo-Saxon cultural thing.

In his maiden speech as treasury spokesperson last week, Whish-Wilson declared that the government did not have an economic vision for reform. He touted the Greens support for a tax cut to small businesses and called for productive investments aimed at protecting Australias Triple A credit rating. His comments underscored the Greens commitment to the demands of business for an intensified assault on the working class.

McKim, who has taken the prominent immigration portfolio, has a record of carrying out sweeping attacks on public spending. As education minister in the former Labor-Green state government in Tasmania, he spearheaded a plan to shut 20 schools as part of a broader pro-business offensive, slashing healthcare and the public service. The government was forced to back down on the school closures after widespread hostility, but proceeded to cut spending by axing programs and other measures.

The promotion of such figures is not limited to the federal Greens. In August, with the backing of Di Natale, Justin Field was installed as a new Greens representative in the NSW upper house. Fields campaign promoted his credentials as a former military intelligence officer.

At the same time, the move against the Rhiannon wing of the party has intensified. After the federal election, Greens founder, Bob Brown issued a call for her resignation, and demanded a clean out of the NSW Greens. Public conflicts have broken out within the NSW Greens, with state MP Jeremy Buckingham this week denouncing the states unaccountable leadership in comments directed against Rhiannon.

There are no principled political differences between the groupings. Brown and Di Natale, however, are fearful that the Rhiannon wings ties to various protest groups will jeopardise their overtures to the corporate elite.

Hanson-Young, the partys only senator in South Australia, is not part of the Rhiannon grouping. However, the two campaigned together during the last federal election, and like Rhiannon, Hanson-Young has cultivated a host of ties to protest organisations in a bid to posture as a progressive. She has repeatedly clashed with the Liberal-National government over immigration policy, and was blocked from visiting the Nauru detention centre days before her removal from the portfolio.

Hanson-Young said she had fought hard to keep the portfolio, and told the ABC, I dont agree with it, I dont accept it.

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton welcomed Di Natales move, declaring: Richard Di Natale obviously had enough of her outrageous and over the top behaviour and her demotion has been a long time coming.

Prominent Labor Senator Stephen Conroy said the Greens party room was divided and Di Natale was seeking to marginalise Hanson-Young and Rhiannon. Hanson-Young has since threatened to cross the floor and vote for the governments proposal for a plebiscite on gay marriage.

The reshuffle follows indications that the Greens may be shifting their position on refugees.

The party has always accepted the framework of border protection and immigration restrictions, which are the basis of the oppression of asylum seekers. However the Greens have sought to win support from young people by denouncing mandatory offshore detention, which consigns refugees to squalid detention camps in the South Pacific.

In late June, Di Natale declared that the partys position on offshore detention would only be a starting point in negotiations with a Labor government. After a public backlash, he stated that the issue was non-negotiable.

During the election campaign, Greens representatives called for a regional solution which would inevitably entail dumping refugees in impoverished South East Asian nations. Greens candidates acknowledged similarities between their proposal, and the Malaysian solution put forward by the Labor government of Julia Gillard. That policy, which would have involved a people swap of asylum-seekers with the Malaysian government, was ruled illegal, partly because it flouted international law.

Rhiannon and Hanson-Young both played a key role in backing Gillards government as it implemented war abroad, an assault on the working class and the persecution of asylum seekers, including the reopening of the detention centres on Manus Island and Nauru. Now, however, they fear that amid a developing political radicalisation of workers and young people, the Greens are exposing themselves too explicitly as a capitalist party of the affluent upper middle class.
South Koreas Hanjin Shipping is facing major restructuring after filing for bankruptcy protection last week. A Seoul court placed the worlds seventh largest cargo transportation line under court receivership on September 1, leading to worldwide disruptions at ports and terminals. The countrys shipping lines and shipbuilders have been struggling in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and the drop in global trade.

On Tuesday, Hanjin announced it was able to secure 100 billion won (US$90.6 million) to begin unloading dozens of vessels around the world. Forty billion won will come from Hanjun chairman Cho Yang-hos personal wealth while 60 billion won will come from loans, using stakes in terminals such as that at Long Beach, California as collateral.

According to the company, 73 out of 141 ships had been left stranded at sea, unable to dock or offload their cargo amid fears the company would be unable to pay dock and port workers. Hanjin called us and said, Were going bankrupt and we cant pay any billsso dont bother asking, stated J. Kip Louttit, executive director of the Marine Exchange of Southern California, last week.

The injection of funds, however, will do little to help the company in the long run. At the end of June, Hanjin faced debt worth 6 trillion won (US$5.46 billion), which included operating losses of 228.9 billion won (US$208.6 million) in the second quarter of this year. The state-run Korea Development Bank (KDB), one of the companys major creditors, rejected a company plan to raise 500 billion won (US$446 million), leading the company to seek court-led restructuring. Creditors in Singapore also seized one of the companys vessels, the Hanjin Rome, on August 30, which also prompted the bankruptcy decision as Hanjin sought to protect its fleet.

South Koreas export-driven economy already struggles with job losses at its shipbuilders, similarly undergoing restructuring, and high youth unemployment. We decided quickly to begin court receivership for Hanjin Shipping, the countrys leading shipper and the worlds major container shipping line, given its presence in the local shipping industry and its impact on the economy as a whole, said the Seoul Central District Court last week.

The bankruptcy has had a ripple effect on the global economy. Overall, there was a reported $14 billion worth of cargo on the stranded ships. Hanjin, for example, handles 20 percent and 40 percent of cargo for LG Electronics and Samsung Electronics respectively. The US Department of Agriculture also stated that Hanjins bankruptcy would cause shipping difficulties for the next two to three months.

Jonathon Gold, the vice president of supply chain and customs policy at the National Retail Federation, stated last week: Retailers main concern is that there is millions of dollars worth of merchandise that needs to be on store shelves that could be impacted by this.

It is understandable that port terminal operators, railroads, trucking companies and others dont want to do work for Hanjin if they are concerned they wont get paid, Gold continued. However, we need all parties to work together to find solutions to move this cargo so it does not have a broader impact on the economy.

Ports around the world have refused to accept Hanjin ships, including at Shanghai, China, Valencia, Spain, and at Long Beach in Southern California. The Port of Oakland continued unloading Hanjin ships, but refused to load US exports without payment first. Hanjin, which was also granted temporary bankruptcy protection in a United States court, handles about 8 percent of trans-Pacific US cargo, which normally includes auto parts, furniture, and pulp and paper products.

Hanjin Shipping has been struggling for several years. The company is part of the Hanjin Group, a chaebol (family-owned conglomerate) that also owns Korean Air. The airline purchased a 15.4 percent share in the shipping company for 250 billion won in 2013, following two years of consecutive losses. Korean Air purchased another 17.8 percent share in Hanjin the following year for 400 billion won. Both purchases were emergency measures to help stabilize the company.

In general, shipping companies continued to purchase vessels on the expectation that Chinas economy would remain strong after 2008. However, the opposite occurred. Well, China stumbled and global trade projections went nearly flat, said Jock OConnell, a trade adviser at Beacon Economics in Los Angeles. All these shipping lines are stuck with large vessels and overcapacity.

The impact on workers in South Korea and internationally was felt immediately. According to the union representing Hanjin workers, more than 1,000 crewmembers on the companys ships were left at sea. As many as 10,000 jobs in the industry could be lost during restructuring, according to the Korea Times. Longshoremen at ports were unable to work. The gates have been shut. Nobody is coming to work, said Mark Jurisic, a business agent with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, Local 13 at the Port of Long Beach. Today we would have had 200 to 300 employees here.

However, the labor unions in South Korea have backed the restructuring plans. The head of Hanjin Shippings labor union, Lee Yo-han, claimed The union will actively respond to prevent difficulties in sailors lives while also protecting jobs and improving working conditions.

However, instead of appealing to workers, especially those in the related shipbuilding industry who are also facing mass job losses, Hanjins union led demonstrations in Busan, South Koreas second largest city, calling on the government and courts to intervene and protect the company. Hanjin handles 10 percent of the shipping through Busan.

The union is maneuvering workers into a dead end. Attempts to pressure political leaders or the courts are meant to prevent the independent movement of the South Korean working class. Hanjin Group, which controls Hanjin Shipping, is the eleventh largest chaebol in South Korea and the countrys largest shipping company. Chaebols and their leading officials regularly receive government protection from poor business decisions and criminal behavior.

South Koreas shipbuilders, including industry leaders Hyundai Heavy, Samsung and Daewoo, are similarly undergoing restructuring, with workers facing the prospect of tens of thousands of job losses. The turmoil and complete lack of planning at all of these companies, coupled with their international impact, make clear the necessity for socialist control and reorganization of the economy.
Administrators at Long Island University (LIU) launched a Labor Day assault on faculty and students this past weekend, locking out over 400 full- and part-time professors at the institutions Brooklyn, New York campus. The unprecedented action directed against university faculty signals an intensification of the drive to impose a corporate education model in which success is judged by credit ratings and budget surpluses rather than a quality education.

In attempting to further convert classroom lecturers into a casual labor force, push through wage cuts and curtail academic freedom of professors, LIU took immediate action on September 1 to lock out employees as the contract with the LIU Faculty Federation, part of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), expired.

The concession demands by the university would result in draconian pay cuts of up to 35 percent in some cases. Adjunct professors would see their teaching load reduced from 12 to nine credit hours, while their classrooms are packed with more students. Pay for office hours would be eliminated under the universitys proposal, as would the Adjuncts Benefits Trust Fund, which helps offset some health insurance costs. LIU further intends to establish a two-tier wage system under which new hires would be paid even less.

Full time professors are also under attack. Half of them currently make 20 percent less than their colleagues at LIUs C.W. Post campus in Brookville, New York. The administration is demanding changes to tenure, including a first of its kind post-tenure review process that would restrict academic freedom and allow administrators greater control over courses.

LIU is seeking to break the resistance of the locked-out faculty by immediately suspending health benefits for its workers. They also cut off access to university email, a vital means of communication for many professors. Most adjuncts will not qualify for state unemployment benefits, unless their sole employment is at LIUa rare occurrence given the low pay and lack of decent benefits for adjuncts.

Presented with the final contract offer, faculty on Tuesday defiantly rejected the concessions by a vote of 226 to 10. They also passed a motion of no confidence in the universitys president, Kimberly R. Cline, and vice president for academic affairs, Jeffrey Kane, by a similar overwhelming margin.

Negotiations over the contract had been proceeding since April. Despite the fact that there was no movement towards a settlement and a strike authorization vote by faculty in May, the union planned no job action, expecting professors to return to classes and keep teaching without a contract this past Wednesday. However, the spinelessness of the union did not prevent LIU from taking the initiative. It prepared for a lockout over the course of months, reaching out to adjuncts at other schools and placing ads in job web sites in an attempt to recruit scabs. In the end, the university announced it had hired 140 replacement teachers. Where their scab operation has come up short, the administration is requiring non-locked-out staff, often grossly unqualified, to step in as teachers.

Other unions at LIU, including four at the Brooklyn campus presently working without a contract and the AFT faculty union at the Post campus, remain on the job. LIU is counting on this continued strikebreaking by the union leadership to isolate the Brooklyn faculty.

The lockout is a preemptive attack aimed at heading off a growing mood of militancy among workers, including, but not limited to, the Brooklyn faculty. LIU professors have struck during five out of the last six contracts, most recently for six days in 2011. LIU-Brooklyn lies just one block away from a major Verizon call center, where workers walked out for 40 days this spring. Public education workers across the country, from Detroit to Chicago, are taking action to defend jobs and improve conditions for their students.

Key to the LIU administration strategy is to drive a wedge between teachers and students. LIU vice president Kane authored a letter to students as the lockout began claiming that every dollar spent on faculty salaries and benefits is a dollar not spent on student scholarships, new labs and facilities for safety.

The reality is that both students and teachers are targets of a nationwide attack on education. Tuition at this private university has soared to nearly $35,000 per year, not including room, board and other fees, which easily amount to another $15,000. LIU students, like their counterparts at other public and private colleges, typically rack up tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt seeking a degree.

Meanwhile, LIU is relying ever more on a pool of adjunct professors for classroom instruction. Already, more than half of the course offerings are taught by this highly exploited section of academics, reflecting a national trend. Adjuncts are typically forced to take jobs at multiple schools in order to make ends meet. Theyre under-compensated and with little or no benefits in terms of health care, retirement and job protections. Tenure tracks are being eliminated and the rights of tenured faculty watered down.

Universities are being subject to the discipline of the market. At LIU this took the form of a series of financial crises spanning most of the past decade. President Cline was brought on in large part due to her previous experience imposing cuts on students and faculty, first as president of Mercy College, then as CFO/COO in the State University of New York system. As LIU faced the danger of its credit rating being downgraded to junk status, Cline doubled down on a program of cutbacks, layoffs and administrative changes. Even as the budget outlook of LIU improved, Cline continued the assault, setting a precedent for similar attacks on university faculty across the United States.

Behind these attacks is a systematic withholding of funds from universities and school districts. Both political parties insist that resources for education must be cut, not increased, while vast sums are diverted to the military. The Obama administration has spearheaded an attack on public education, encouraging such reactionary measures as merit pay and the spread of charters through its Race to the Top program.

This framework is accepted by the AFT, which seeks only to have a say in where and how cuts are carried out. The hostility of the AFT to any struggle to defend education is exemplified by its all-out support to the right-wing campaign of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. It is determined to isolate and strangle any independent struggle by educators that will interfere with its campaign for the Democrats.

The prerequisite for a serious struggle against the attacks on education is a break with the AFT and the forging of new, democratic organizations of struggle to mobilize all sections of the working class, students and the unemployed against the attack on education.
A World Socialist Web Site reporting team spoke with locked-out faculty and supporting students at Long Island University (LIU) on Tuesday, when the former overwhelmingly rejected the universitys final offer, and on Wednesday, the first day of the lockout.

Michael Pelias has been a professor of philosophy at LIU for 26 years and is a member of the LIUFF (the faculty union) Executive Committee and negotiating team. We are known to strike. We had strikes in 1994, 2003 and 2011. We traditionally authorize a strike to show our strength in negotiations and we did so in May. The contract ended August 31st. Then Saturday 10 a.m. we were suddenly locked out. There has been no movement by management on any of our proposals or any reasonable activity, except for accepting half of a proposal on tenure, out of 25 proposals. We had 20 bargaining meetings since April.

This is a draconian contract. It is part of the war on higher education in general. They want more control by a post-tenure review process. In higher education, most people are not reviewed after they have gained tenure. This is corporatization of the university system. They are testing in New York City to try to get post-tenure review. They are also testing a faculty lock out. There has never been a lockout of a university faculty before. Their contract demands are heavily against part-timers, who are 50 percent of the faculty and who teach 55 to 60 percent of the courses.

Asked about the way the unions have undermined the struggles of workers through their support of the Democratic Party, Professor Pelias replied, I am part of the Executive Committee. I am part of the Executive Committee for our union, but I hate the higher-ups in the unions. I cannot stand the Democrats. You got welfare-to-workfare under the Clintons and it is the party of war. And this is all taking place on Obamas watch.

The lockout brings into sharp focus the increasing drive toward the corporatization of education and the casualization of the teaching staff. An LIU professor of biology for six years, who did not want her name used, said, Many of us are adjuncts. Tenured professors thought they were secure, but now we are all deprived of our jobs. No one can say they, their jobs, are safe anymore.

The attacks on the faculty by the university are not new. Michael Sohn, a non-tenured teacher of English for 17 years, recalled, Five years ago when we were on strike, we accepted a contract that froze wages and cut health benefits and so it amounted to a wage cut. The university told us then that they were about to eliminate health benefits.

Now, he continued, The University wants to cut the number of hours that the adjuncts teach from 12 to nine. We have no health benefits, but have a health care fund of about $80,000 that helps us buy health insurance. They want to cut that.

John Katsigeorgis, an adjunct professor, has taught microbiology for eight years at LIU. Everyone understands the lockout may continue. The four other unions have not had a contract for four years. That is why they were not locked out. The administration is trying to divide and conquer. It is not like we are asking for more. They are trying to pull away more. That is why everyone will stand up. We are giving up financially by this struggle for those who come after us.

They try to make it look like they would be giving more money for adjuncts. But how are we getting more money if they cut the number of credits we can teach a semester by 25 percent, from 12 credits to nine? The science faculty teach a course of six credits because we have labs. I teach two courses, so I get paid for teaching 12 credits worth. But if I am limited to only nine credits, then I cannot do two courses and cannot make money for 12 credits. In addition, the new contract would pay new hires less. Full-time faculty came out, but can get unemployment. Adjuncts cannot get unemployment unless they are working only one job. But adjuncts need to work more than one job. We have families.

Quality will suffer. They will not be able to attract experienced people to come in and fill positions. Those that do will only do it for a while, while looking for something else. With eight years, I am still the low man because if people like their job, they stay. But this will change now.

All the people hired as replacements probably do not even know they are temporary and could be out of a job in a few weeks. I know a colleague who got called in for a job in biology and was interviewed by Human Resources instead of the way it is supposed to be, with an interview from the Biology Department. They did this because they were planning the lockout.

The determination by faculty to oppose their mistreatment at the hands of the university was expressed by Philip Wong, a professor of psychology, who declared, I would be willing to strike even if the lockout ends and negotiations resume. We need the best contract possible.

Another professor, who became an adjunct for the LIU nursing school after retiring from her permanent position, spoke about the relation of the lockout to the broader political situation. She responded, The working guy is getting the shaft today. Health care is getting worse and the mortality rate is going up. Hillary is so freakin dishonest. I dont like Trump.

A permanent member of the faculty, teaching a course on ethics, Herb Sherman, also expressed frustration with the political situation. Regarding the elections, Trump and Hillary are both embarrassments. People are waking up. The question is how do you bring people along to ideological change? How do you deal with it in a productive way? We need a system that gives people what they need.

Many faculty spoke about the university president, who is spearheading the attack on the faculty as part of the corporatization of education.

An adjunct, who teaches directing, TV production and acting, told the WSWS, Kimberly Cline, the LIU President, is trying to make a name for herself. She is Trumps girl, very right wing. She knows what she is doing. She is a major administration money person.

It is not about education, but about the bottom line, commented a professor of business. It is not about the welfare of the students. It is just about how Cline looks on her resume. I teach my students that corporations are not working in their interests.

A full-time psychology professor stated, This is obscene. Cline came from Mercy College. I know people there. They told me the people were literally dancing when she left there. This is an awful thing for education. It used to be equitable. Everyone ought to be valued the same. Now, if we are divided, we are defeated.

Students expressed strong support for their professors.

Kruti Shah, a second year graduate student for a masters of arts in speech language pathology, said, The lockout is unfair to both faculty and students. We cant have the classes with the incredibly good professors that we signed up and paid tuition for. We are paying a lot of money $1,300 for one credit. We should be taught by the faculty that we adore.

Jessica Smith, a second year student, expressed similar sentiments. This lockout is unfair. It is slowing down our learning and jeopardizing our future. We pay $33,000 per year. I already have more than $10,000 in student loans.

I dont understand how the university is declaring that it is having financial difficulties with all this tuition. Where does this money go?

Seeing all these professors out here protesting opens your eyes to reality; what the real world is all about.

Students expressed concerns about their own futures. Oksana Smith, a third semester student, said, I am studying early childhood education in order to teach children. I feel that it is very hard for people to find work in our profession.

If we cant find jobs that we want, then we will have to find work on side jobs like working in Burger King that do not pay anything, which is what I am doing now. No one can live off of less than $300 per week.

Everyone wants to able to go to college tuition-free. Right now I am working to pay off my student loans. Everyone here is in the same situation.
By PTI: New Delhi, Sep 8 (PTI) President Pranab Mukherjee today congratulated ISRO on the successful launch of the 10th flight of GSLV-F05, carrying an advanced weather satellite INSAT-3DR.

In his message to ISRO Chairman A S Kiran Kumar, he said this launch has demonstrated, yet again, Indias increasing space capabilities.

"I extend my heartiest congratulations and best wishes to you and your entire team at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on the successful launch of the tenth flight of Indias Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle GSLV-F05, carrying an advanced weather satellite INSAT -3DR," the President said in his message.

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"I understand this is the first operational flight of GSLV carrying an indigenously developed Cryogenic Upper Stage(CUS). This (satellite) will help study weather patterns as well as support surface-level search and rescue operations," he said. PTI ABS SMJ ZMN SMJ

--- ENDS ---
It is now two months until the US presidential elections, but it is not necessary to wait until November 8 to foresee what the American peopleand the population of the worldwill confront, regardless of who wins. Whether it is Democrat Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump who occupies the White House, the next administration will be one of war, economic austerity and the violent repression of democratic rights.

The two candidates offered by the main capitalist parties, each in their own way, express the deep crisis of American capitalism.

In the Fortress America campaign of Trump, a section of the ruling class is seeking to lay the foundation for a fascistic authoritarian movement based on extreme nationalism and militarism. Over the past several days, Trump has called for a massive $90 billion increase in US military spending. In Wednesdays Commander-in-Chief forum before military veterans, he said that the United States should take the oil of the Middle Eastan articulation in the candidates particularly crude language of the essential motivation for US policy in the region. He has also demanded the resumption of the open use of torture and other criminal policies.

Trump calls for the elimination of all corporate regulations and a reduction in taxes for the rich. This is combined with a demagogic nationalism: vilifying immigrants, demanding the erection of a great wall on the US-Mexico border and the creation of what amounts to concentration camps to detain and deport the undocumented.

Trumps opponent, Clinton, is the consensus candidate of the most powerful sections of the corporate-financial elite and the military-intelligence apparatus. Over the past month, she spent nearly all her time raising money from the ultra-rich who are her real constituency, pulling in $143 million in August, a record for the campaign so far. She has centered her campaign on winning over prominent Republicans, including war criminals from the Bush administration, and top military generals.

In the aftermath of Wednesdays forum, Clinton intensified her denunciations of Trump as a tool of Russian President Vladimir Putin. What would Ronald Reagan say about a Republican nominee who attacks American generals and heaps praise on Russias president? she asked on Thursday. Trump, she declared, was unpatriotic, scary and a danger to national securityi.e., the geostrategic interests of American imperialism.

Clinton has made anti-Russian sabre-rattling the central theme of her campaign. In an American Legion speech last week, she threatened that cyberattacks and hacking by Russiacharges that are completely unsubstantiatedshould be met with a military response. One of her first acts as president, she said, will be to order a Nuclear Posture Review to make sure Americas arsenal is prepared to meet future threats.

Despite all the mudslinging, the differences between Clinton and Trump center on how best to advance the national and global interests of the corporate and financial elite that controls the US. The Democratic and Republican candidates differ over means, not goals. Though they denounce each other, they share a common enemy: the American and international working class. Regardless of who wins, the new administration will combine the worst features of both candidates.

In the final analysis, the overriding factor driving the campaigns of Trump and Clinton is the crisis of American and world capitalism, overseen by a parasitic financial-corporate aristocracy dedicated to a policy of war and social counter-revolution.

Here it is worth noting two important anniversaries. This coming Sunday marks 15 years since the attacks of September 11, 2001. These attacks, which have never been subject to a serious independent investigation, were utilized to justify a campaign of war and violence in Central Asia and the Middle East and a vast expansion of police-state powers at home.

Within the framework of the war on terror, the American ruling class, under Bush and Obama, escalated a policy of unending war that had begun 10 years earlier with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The attempts by the ruling class to reverse the decline of American capitalism through force have failed, however, and the regional wars and proxy conflicts are now developing into a direct clash between the US and its larger rivals, including Russia and China.

This coming Thursday is the eighth anniversary of the collapse of the investment bank Lehman Brothers, a highpoint of the 2008 crash that nearly brought down the entire financial system. Over the past eight years, world central banks, led by the US Federal Reserve, have funnelled trillions of dollars into the markets, inflating new asset bubbles and sending the wealth of the financial aristocracy to new heights. Meanwhile, the world economy stagnates, social inequality is at record highs and there are growing signs of a resurgence of the class struggle internationally.

Masses of working people in the United States and internationally are moving to the left. The millions of people who voted for Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders during the Democratic Party primaries because they thought he was a socialist have not changed their views. Despite the pathetic collapse of his political revolution and his support for Clinton, the process of mass political radicalization continues.

The 2016 elections provide an object lesson in the bankruptcy of lesser-evilism, the effort to find a solution within the framework of the existing political and economic system.

The basic and pressing task is to prepare for the struggles that will emerge in the aftermath of the elections. The Socialist Equality Party launched the election campaign of Jerry White and Niles Niemuth not to get votes, but to lay the foundations for a mass socialist movement of the working class. The SEP is fighting to politically organize the majority of the population, the bottom 90 percent, who are effectively excluded from political life.

Our campaign advances the following demands:

1) Oppose US militarism! Stop the drive to World War III!

In political solidarity with the International Committee of the Fourth International, the SEP is fighting to build a mass anti-war movement, based on the international working class. The horrific consequences of the US war drive, which threatens to unleash a third world war waged with nuclear weapons, can only be prevented through the independent intervention of the working class. We insist that there can be no fight for socialism without a struggle against war and there can be no fight against war without a struggle for socialism.

2) Put an end to poverty and inequality!

The same crisis that produces imperialist war also produces the objective basis for socialist revolution, in the form of growing social opposition and the class struggle. Millions of people in the US, and billions throughout the world, face a future of poverty, unemployment and economic insecurity. To guarantee the basic social rights of the working classto a decent-paying job, to housing and education, to healthcare and a secure retirementthe wealth of the corporate and financial elite must be expropriated and the giant forces of production placed at the services of social need, not private profit.

3) Defend democratic rights! No to government spying and police violence!

The crisis of bourgeois democracy is inextricably linked to the policy of endless war and social reaction. In the erection of an apparatus of domestic spying and the development of local police forces throughout the country into instruments of violence and terror, the ruling class is preparing for social unrest. Genuine democracy is not compatible with the continuation of a social system dedicated to the interests of a tiny section of the population and the brutal exploitation of the vast majority.

To achieve these aims, the working class internationally must be politically unified on the basis of a socialist and revolutionary program.

We call on all our readers to take up this fight as your own. The SEP has laid the political framework for an international socialist movement, but you must build it. Support the SEP election campaign and donate to help make it as successful as possible. Make plans to attend an election meeting, which are being held in cities throughout the country.

These meetings will culminate in a special one-day conference in Detroit, Michigan on November 5, to review the experiences of the past year and outline the tasks and agenda for the period to come. You can register today at sep2016.com/conference.

Above all, we call on all of our readers and supporters to make the decision to join the Socialist Equality Party and its youth movement, the International Youth and Students for Social Equality. Not only is a mass socialist movement necessary, the objective foundations for such a movement are far advanced. This potential can only be realized, however, through the decision of workers and young people throughout the world to draw the urgent conclusions of their experiences and build a political leadership.
Moscow and Washington traded accusations yesterday over an incident involving US reconnaissance aircraft and Russian SU27 fighters in the Black Sea that once again demonstrates how perilously close a military clash between the two nuclear-armed powers is.

Two US defense officials denounced Russia for carrying out an unsafe and unprofessional act by flying within 10 feet of two US spy planes conducting patrols over the Black Sea. A Pentagon spokesman told RT that a P-8A Poseidon aircraft was conducting routine operations in international airspace when it was approached by the fighter jets around 11:20 a.m.

The Russian Defense Ministry shot back that two US planes approached the Russian border after turning off their transponders, a radar signal used by others to identify a planes location. The jets were acting in strict accordance with international flight rules, the statement from Major General Igor Konashenkov continued.

Whatever the precise cause of the incident and regardless of who provoked it, primary responsibility for the exacerbation of tensions in the Black Sea region and throughout Eastern Europe lies with US imperialism and its NATO allies. Since backing a right-wing coup in Kiev in February 2014 to topple Ukraines pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych, Washington has pursued a deliberate policy of isolating and encircling Russia both economically and militarily.

The presence of the US spy planes in the area was highly provocative given that Russia had just begun a major war games exercise code-named Caucasus 2016. Part of President Vladimir Putins reactionary stoking of nationalism and militarism in response to the US-led imperialist aggression, the exercise runs from September 5 to 10 and involves 12,500 servicemen, including ground, air and naval forces. The Black Sea fleet based in Crimea and the Caspian Sea flotilla participated.

This mobilization pales in comparison to NATOs largest military exercise in its history, which was held earlier this summer and involved over 30,000 armed forces personnel in maneuvers aimed explicitly at Russia.

US officials have continued to ratchet up tensions with Moscow. In a blistering attack on Russia in a speech delivered at Oxford University Wednesday, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter cast Moscow as the principal destabilizing force in the world today. Despite the progress that we made together in the aftermath of the Cold War, Russias actions in recent yearswith its violations of Ukrainian and Georgian territorial integrity, its unprofessional behavior in the air, in space, and in cyberspace, as well as its nuclear sabre rattlingall have demonstrated that Russia has clear ambition to erode the principled international order, he declared.

Such brazen lies, which are repeated incessantly by a compliant media, turn reality on its head. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union by the Stalinist bureaucracy in 1991, Washington has been the chief cause of global instability as it has sought via military means to offset its protracted economic decline and retain its unchallenged position as the global hegemon.

Successive US governments have systematically worked to expand their sphere of influence at Russias expense, above all by shifting NATOs borders more than 800 miles to the east through the incorporation of former Warsaw Pact states, and even former Soviet republics, into the US-led alliance.

In the wake of the Kiev coup, Washington heightened the stakes still further when President Obama proclaimed that the US had an eternal commitment to defend the Baltic republics against Russian aggressiona commitment he reiterated earlier this year. The US has thus vowed to go to war in support of virulently anti-Russian regimes and has positioned military forces little more than five minutes flying time from St. Petersburg.

Carter also made an oblique reference to unsubstantiated allegations that Russia was behind the hacking of emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) when he warned ominously that the US would respond to attacks on our democratic structures. These allegations have been used by the Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and the media to attack Republican Donald Trump from the right for being too close to Russia and prepare the ground for a massive escalation of military violence after the election.

Washington and its NATO allies are already implementing plans for a further military buildup on Russias borders, making future confrontations between aircraft and ground forces not only highly likely, but inevitable.

Just a day prior to the Black Sea incident, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced that NATO would step up its presence in the Black Sea. Following a NATO-Georgia Commission meeting in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, Stoltenberg held a joint press conference with Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili in which he blamed Russia for aggression in three areas: the Baltic, the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea. We have seen an increased Russian presence in the Black Sea region and we have also seen a substantial military build-up in Crimea by Russia, Stoltenberg claimed.

Stoltenberg said military planners were drawing up proposals for a greater military presence in the region. While Georgia and Ukraine are not NATO members, Stoltenberg made clear that their status as NATO partners meant they would be fully involved. For NATO and NATO allies, it is important to have close contact with partner countries like Ukraine and Georgiabeing non-NATO members but NATO partnersand to dialogue with them regarding our increased presence in the Black Sea, he stated. This will be a further provocation to Russia, which firmly opposes the integration of Kiev and Tbilisi into the US-led alliance.

Discussions were held at the Warsaw summit on increasing NATOs presence in the Black Sea, where Russias naval fleet has been based since the collapse of the Soviet Union. NATO members Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey pressed for a permanent NATO naval presence, a move which would likely breach international law because of a treaty known as the Montreux Convention which commits all states that do not border the Black Sea to deploy military forces there for no more than 21 days.

NATOs escalation of tensions in the Black Sea comes just two months after it unveiled the deployment of 4,000 soldiers to the Baltic republics and Poland, backed up by a rapid reaction force of some 40,000 troops capable of reaching the region in days. Missile defense systems are also planned for installation in Romania and Poland.

If Europe is not the scene of the next flashpoint between Washington and Moscow, it will most likely be a clash in Syria. Talks between Obama and Putin on the sidelines of the G20 summit broke down earlier this week without an agreement being reached on military cooperation against ISIS and other Islamist extremist groups, many of which have been funded by the US in its regime-change war against the government of Bashar al-Assad. US officials cited the failure to make progress on Washingtons long-term goals as the reason for the stalling of the talks. In other words, Moscow has failed to acquiesce to the installation of a pro-Western puppet regime.

Speaking to the BBC after his Oxford University speech, Carter repeated his denunciation of Russian aggression and vowed he would not support military cooperation with the Kremlin in Syria until it stopped attacking US-backed interests, according to ABC News.

The US backing for the Turkish incursion into northern Syria has placed NATO troops on the ground and more aircraft in the skies under conditions where Russia has intervened to prop up its most important Middle Eastern ally. With calls from Turkey in particular for the creation of a safe zone, a pretext used time and again to justify imperialist wars over recent decades, or a direct ground assault on ISIS strongholds with NATO backing, the potential for a direct conflict between NATO and Russian forces is increasing daily.
The Summit of Southern Europe hosted today by Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras in Athens, and presented yesterday in a front-page interview of Tsipras in Le Monde, is a cynical fraud. The Greek, Cypriot, Maltese, Portuguese, Spanish, French and Italian officials attendingincluding French President Francois Hollande and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renziall speak for governments discredited by their reactionary austerity measures.

Tsipras is trying to rally support for all these regimes, including his own, and give them a new face with carefully calculated, demagogic criticisms of Berlin. Last year, Tsipras own Syriza (Coalition of the Radical Left) government trampled repeated popular votes in Greece against austerity and worked out a deal with Paris and Berlin to impose a new austerity package. Now, as he imposes these attacks, he is trying to divert mounting social anger along nationalist lines, attacking Germany while simultaneously asking Berlin for financial concessions.

Recovery is slow, particularly because we are not getting the necessary generosity from our partners on debt relief. If they refuse to advance on this issue, it will be hard for my country to see growth, Tsipras complained. Tsipras identified Berlin as the key obstacle to his agenda. Beyond debt relief, he called for loosening EU limits on budget deficits, a policy strongly opposed by Berlin, and for vaguely-defined pro-growth policies.

We must collectively decide if we are a European Union or a German Europe. We need a strong, democratic, European Germany, rather than a Germany that acts like a savings bank with excessive budget surpluses, he told Le Monde .

The timing of Tsipras summit makes clear the calculations underlying his criticisms of Berlin. This week, Greek pensioners felt the brunt of Syrizas cuts of up to 50 percent to supplementary pension schemes. Retired public sector workers, bank tellers and shipping and transport workers were hit, as well as retirees from upper middle class layers from which Syrizas own social base is drawn. As Syriza announced more privatizations of natural gas, electricity and highway authorities, pensioners protested outside the Labor Ministry.

Tsipras approval rating plunged below 10 percent in a University of Macedonia poll, to the lowest numbers recorded by a Greek government in decades. As a result, Greek Reporter noted: [I]n view of his sliding popularity, Tsipras is putting emphasis on improving his image domestically.

Tsipras turned down an invitation to Berlin for talks, in the run-up to next weeks EU summit in Bratislava, and instead organized a counter-summit including the euro zones second and third largest economies, France and Italy.

Tsipras attacks on Berlin are empty demagogy, however. While they incite anger against Germany, they do not signify any shift away from the austerity policies also demanded by the ruling class in Greece, France and Italyi.e., by raising wages or launching state programs to create the tens of millions of jobs needed to end mass unemployment in Europe. Despite his noisy attacks on Berlin, Tsipras was careful to make clear to Le Monde that he still supports EU austerity.

We are still obligated to apply a strict policy of budgetary adjustment, but things are getting better, he blandly declared in response to a question about Greeces shattered, stagnant economy.

Tsipras defended the reactionary record of his government, which consists of repeated betrayals of his election promises to the Greek people to end austerity. When our country was put with its back to the wall, we had to make a painful compromise, which we submitted to our people, who voted for us again, he told Le Monde. But despite everything, we still have all the remaining room for maneuver to introduce measures of a social character.

Syrizas record is not one of enlightened social policy, but treachery and deceit. Before its election, it hoped to manipulate antagonisms between the major powers to obtain limited concessions from the EU, primarily using France and Italy to push for a pro-growth policy against Germany. This strategy collapsed, however. Failing to obtain any concessions, Syriza moved rapidly to attack the working class, in the interests of finance capital and Syrizas own privileged middle-class social base, and block an international struggle of European workers against EU austerity.

Tsipras was elected in January 2015 based on promises to scrap the EU austerity Memorandumpromises that he promptly tore up, agreeing a few weeks later to keep the Memorandum. Then, in July 2015, when the EU threatened to cut off the bailout of Greece, Tsipras organized a referendum on EU austerity, hoping to lose and hand over power to a right-wing government. When he obtained a landslide 61 percent no vote against EU austerity, he promptly trampled it, agreeing to billions in new social cuts in talks with Berlin and Paris.

At no point did Syriza appeal for support in the European working class against EU austerity, even as social anger mounted in Germany, France, Italy and across the EU. It defended the EU and the euro. This reflected the interests of the Greek ruling class and layers of the affluent middle class, who feared the collapse of their wealth if their assets were shifted from euros into a devalued Greek national currency, and overwhelmingly voted yes in the July 2015 referendum.

Despite rising tensions among EU countries, the fundamental strategy of Greeces propertied classes was to pursue an alliance with the EU bourgeoisie against the workers. Frequent clashes between Berlin and Athens, while they settled various financial conflicts to Berlins advantage, were subordinated to the common goal of saving the EU, the euro and the political framework of EU austerity.

They served another key purpose, namely, promoting the lie that Syriza was fighting for the Greek people at the EU. In fact, Tsipras offered no meaningful resistance. His role resembled that of a Nazi agent in the Resistance in Occupied Greece during World War II: periodically asking his German overlords to hit him, so that other Resistance fighters would believe that he was with them, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

These policies have produced a disaster, however, as Tsipras himself all but admitted to Le Monde. With Britains exit from the EU, a vast banking crisis shaking Italy and millions of refugees fleeing to Europe from imperialist wars in the Middle East and Africa, the EU is disintegrating.

Europe is threatened with decomposition, with more referendums rejecting the EU and more anti-European governments in its midst, Tsipras said, adding: I think continuing, after Brexit, to act as if nothing had changed would be a tragic error. Europe is deep in crisis, it is sleepwalking towards a cliff. We must sound the alarm.

Tsipras also endorsed the EUs reactionary deal with Turkey to block the flow of refugees from Syria and Iraq to Europe, pledging all possible efforts to preserve it despite the difficulties.

Tsipras, who offers no perspective but attempting to preserve EU as Fortress Europe, is politically bankrupt. His program of appealing to Hollande and Renzi for support against Berlin within the EU, while it produces nothing but austerity and wars for the workers, plays a significant role in stoking the increasingly toxic divisions inside the Europe which Tsipras claims to oppose.
Wells Fargo, the worlds most valuable retail bank, has agreed to pay $185 million in fines after the exposure of schemes that defrauded customers in line with a business model, organised from the highest levels of the company, to boost its profits and growth.

According to the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the bank opened 1.5 million deposit accounts and more than half a million credit card accounts without customers authorisation. Bank employees moved funds from customers accounts into newly-created accounts without their knowledge or consent.

The CFPB said this practice was widespread and resulted in customers being charged for insufficient funds or overdraft fees because required amounts were not in their accounts. The bank also created more than 565,000 credit card accounts, of which some 14,000 incurred more than $400,000 in fees and interest charges.

The bank is attempting to lay the blame on rogue employees and revealed that since 2011 it had sacked 5,300 staff. But the fraud operation resulted from a strategy imposed from the top.

Moreover, it beggars belief that a company supposedly operating with tight internal controls and regulations did not know about the creation of more than two million fake accounts.

Under chief executive John Stumpf, the banks business model was to sell additional products to customers who held a current account with it. This was a core element of the strategy that helped increase the banks market capitalisation to $250 billion. Its biggest shareholder is Berkshire Hathaway, the investment firm run by Warren Buffett.

In a statement on the fraud, the Los Angeles City Attorneys Office said the unauthorised accounts were funded with money from customers existing accounts to satisfy goals and earn financial rewards under the banks incentive-compensation program.

There was direct pressure on employees to engage in the practice. According to a statement by Kahlid Taha, a former employee: When I worked at Wells Fargo, I faced the threat of being fired if I didnt meet their unreasonable sales quota every day.

Under the $185 million settlement, in which Wells Fargo has neither admitted nor denied the allegations against it, the bank will pay $100 million to the CFPB, $35 million to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and $50 million to the Los Angeles City Attorney.

There are two crucial aspects to the agreement and the fine. First, as David Vladeck, a Georgetown University law professor and former director of the Federal Trade Commissions Bureau of Consumer Protection, told CNN: It sounds like a big number, but for a bank the size of Wells Fargo, it isnt really.

Second, the fine is written off the profit and loss account of the bank. There is no penalty imposed on the senior executives and top management, whose business strategies and demands on employees created the conditions for the fraud to take place.

In a memo to employees issued on Thursday, the bank said: At Wells Fargo, when we make mistakes, we are open about it, we take responsibility for it.

However, the exposure of the fraud did not come from Wells Fargo but from actions initiated by the Los Angeles City Attorney over unauthorised accounts in May 2015.

As for being open, in recent regulatory filings the bank did not disclose that it was under investigation.

Each quarter we consider all available relevant and appropriate facts and circumstances in determining whether a litigation matter is material and disclosed in our public filings, Wells Fargo spokeswoman Mary Eshet said in an email. Based upon that review, we determined that the matter was not material.

Upon release of the fraud charges, leading Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren, who has sought to elevate herself into national prominence with denunciations of the big banks, and had a major hand in creating the CFPB, stepped forward to cover up the implications of the fraud.

Thanks to the CFPB, she said, customers were getting their money and the bank is paying a record-breaking fine that will cause the next bank to think again before engaging in this kind of misconduct. The consumer agency continues to deliver for working families.

In fact, the very opposite conclusion must be drawn. The 2011 Senate report into the circumstances of the 2008 meltdown disclosed the criminal activities of major banks. But in view of the fact that no one was tried, let alone jailed, and any fines that were imposed came out of corporate cash flows, such activity has continued.
On September 3, the Socialist Equality Party of Sri Lanka celebrated the seventy-fifth birthday of its general secretary, Wije Dias. We publish below the greetings sent to Comrade Dias by David North, the national chairman of the SEP in the United States.

Dear Comrade Wije,

As your comrades in Sri Lanka gather to celebrate your seventy-fifth birthday, they are joined by your comrades and friends in the Socialist Equality Party in the United States and the sections of the International Committee throughout the world, who are filled with profound appreciation, respect and gratitude for all that you have done for the cause of the Fourth International, world socialism and the liberation of humanity from capitalist exploitation, oppression and violence.

Wije Dias [Photo: WSWS]

But even as we celebrate, it is not possible to avoid reflecting on the significance of the life you have lived within the context of the historical epoch that determined the framework of your social experience and political decisions. The year of your birth, 1941, was a fateful one. The Second World War was underway. Imperialism was providing a horrifying demonstration of the barbarism of which it was capable. Little more than two months before you were born, the Nazi regime in Germany had invaded the Soviet Union. By the end of 1941, Japan, Britain and the United States were engaged in a ferocious struggle to determine which imperialist power would achieve mastery over the vast Asian continent. But even as these forces contended brutally for power, the masses throughout Asia were stirring. They were not willing to passively wait for the war to decide which imperialist power would emerge as their new overlord. Rather, the masses sought the overthrow of the entire regime of colonial oppression.

But how was this to be achieved? The various nationalist leaders of the Asian bourgeoisie counseled caution and patience. They feared, above all, that the mass struggle against colonialism might assume a socialist dimension that would threaten their own class interests. Nowhere in Asia did this class-based fear find more explicit expression than in India, where Gandhis pacifism was directed, above all, against the revolutionary mobilization of the working class. For their part, the Indian Stalinists, following the line of the Soviet bureaucracy, insisted that the working class subordinate itself to the political domination of the bourgeois Congress Party, and, still further, do nothing that threatened British imperialist interests as long as the war continued.

In opposition to the program of the bourgeois nationalists and their Stalinist allies, however, another perspective was being raised before the masses: that of permanent revolution. In July 1939, on the eve of the outbreak of World War II, Leon Trotsky addressed An Open Letter to the Workers of India. He wrote:

The Indian bourgeoisie is incapable of leading a revolutionary struggle. They are closely bound up with and dependent upon British capitalism. They tremble for their own property. They stand in fear of the masses. They seek compromises with British imperialism no matter what the price and lull the Indian masses with hopes of reforms from above. The leader and prophet of this bourgeoisie is Gandhi. A fake leader and a false prophet!  The Indian people must divorce their fate from the very outset from that of British imperialism. The oppressors and the oppressed stand on opposite sides of the trenches. No aid whatsoever to the slave owners! On the contrary, those immense difficulties, which the war will bring in its wake, must be utilized so as to deal a mortal blow to all the ruling classes. That is how the oppressed classes and peoples in all countries should act, irrespective of whether Messrs. Imperialists don democratic or fascist masks. To realize such a policy a revolutionary party, basing itself on the vanguard of the proletariat, is necessary. Such a party does not yet exist in India. The Fourth International offers this party its program, its experience, its collaboration. The basic conditions for this party are: complete independence from imperialist democracy, complete independence from the Second and Third Internationals and complete independence from the national Indian bourgeoisie.

These words, written in faraway Mexico, were to exert immense influence on the Indian sub-continent, and especially in Ceylon, where the principles advanced in Trotskys Open Letter provided the essential political orientation to the young leaders of the new Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP). In 1942, the LSSP became a section of the Fourth International. This historic decision, which was taken during the first year of your life, laid the foundations for the political and intellectual culture that was to exercise such a profound influence on yourself and an entire generation of Ceylonese youth, who flocked to the banner of the BLPI (Bolshevik Leninist Party of India) and LSSP between the late 1940s and early 1960s.

As you know, Comrade Wije, I have asked you many times to relate your experiences in the youth movement of the LSSP during the fateful years of the early 1960s. You witnessed the retreat of Colvin de Silva and others from the revolutionary principles that they had espoused. The betrayal of the LSSP in 1964its entry into the coalition government of Bandaranaikewas the first great political test that brought your political youth to an end. Against and in opposition to your elders, you repudiated their capitulation and set about to uphold the banner of genuine Trotskyism in Sri Lanka.

The years that followed were immensely challenging. The betrayal of the LSSP was of a magnitude that generated disorientation and discouragement. The International Pabloite organizationwhose revisions of the Trotskyist program from 1953 on had legitimized and facilitated the growth of opportunism in the LSSPdid everything possible to block a serious analysis of the roots of the betrayal in Ceylon. This was the role assigned by the Pabloite leader Ernest Mandel and his cohorts to the newly-formed LSSP (Revolutionary).

Despite the difficult conditions, the critical work of political clarification proceeded. With the important assistance of Wilfred Spike Pereira, the International Committee of the Fourth International was able to make contact with you and others in the Shakthi groupprincipally Comrades Ratnayake, Keerthi, and Wickswho were seeking to break out of the LSSP (R)s miasma of centrist evasions. Of course, the process was complicated and contradictory. But between 1966 and 1968, the struggle for the defense and recovery of revolutionary principles culminated in the foundation of the Revolutionary Communist League (RCL)the predecessor of the Socialist Equality Party of Sri Lankaas a section of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI).

Having already passed through this immense political experience, you were still a young man in your twenties. But there was to be no respite from the challenges that confronted the RCL. Again and again, the party leadership had to demonstrate its political firmness. The detailed enumeration of these experiences would constitute nothing less than a political history of Sri Lanka, the Asian sub-continent, and, of course, the development of the Fourth International over the past half-century. The events that come immediately to mind are 1) the JVP (Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna) uprising of 1971, in which the RCLnotwithstanding its unbridgeable differences with this Maoist organization and at great risk to itselfdefended the JVP and the rural youth under its influence against savage government repression; 2) the vicious counter-offensive against the Sri Lankan working class that followed the victory of the United National Party in the 1977 elections; 3) the eruption of the civil war in 1983, in which the RCL stood alone in its opposition to both the racialist anti-Tamil policies of the Colombo regime and the bourgeois-nationalist and separatist program of the LTTE; and 4) the violent campaign in the late 1980s unleashed by the JVP, which targeted the RCL because of its unrelenting opposition to Sinhala chauvinism.

Between 1971 and 1985, the RCL had to confront this unending succession of political crises under conditions in which the British Socialist Labour League (SLL)-Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP) was in the process of repudiating the Trotskyist foundations of the International Committee. To be blunt, the WRP leadership of Healy, Banda and Slaughter had never forgotten or forgiven the correct and devastating criticism made by Comrade Keerthi, with the support of the Political Committee of the RCL, of the SLLs opportunist support for the 1971 invasion of East Pakistan, ordered by the Indian government of Indira Gandhi.

The Workers Revolutionary Party sought to prevent a principled exchange of political views within the International Committee. The Revolutionary Communist League was kept completely in the dark about the criticisms of the political line of the WRP raised by the Workers League between 1982 and 1984. The WRP leadership ignored my specific request that the RCL be informed of and invited to a meeting of the ICFI in February 1984, which was called to discuss the differences between the Workers League and Workers Revolutionary Party. It is obvious that Healy, Banda and Slaughter resorted to this unprincipled maneuver because they assumed that the RCL leadership would be in agreement with the Workers Leagues criticisms of the WRP leaders abandonment of the theory of permanent revolution and their reactionary alliances with bourgeois nationalists.

However, the eruption of a political crisis inside the WRP in 1985 brought its reactionary domination of the International Committee to an end.

The meeting of IC delegates in London, in October 1985, marked a new and immensely significant stage in the history of the Trotskyist movement. What we have characterized as the protracted civil war within the Fourth International, which began with the issuing of the Open Letter in 1953, in opposition to the revisionist insurgency led by Pablo and Mandel, culminated in the rout of the anti-Trotskyist forces within the International Committee.

In the course of the split with the WRP opportunists, and in its immediate aftermath, Comrade Keerthi Balasuriya played a critical and decisive role within the leadership of the International Committee. However, his exceptional contribution reflected the immense experience and political firmness of the RCL leadership and cadre, derived from the previous decades of struggle for Trotskyism.

It is for this reason that the RCL was able to endure the untimely and totally unexpected loss of Comrade Keerthi in December 1987. His death, at the age of 39, was a cruel and tragic loss to the Revolutionary Communist League and the International Committee. The fact that the RCL was able to withstand the impact of Keerthis deathin the midst of civil war, the attacks of the JVP assassins, and continuous government persecutionwas, by any objective standard, a demonstration of the RCL leaderships extraordinary political strength. But it must also be acknowledgedand there is not a single comrade in either the RCL/SEP or the International Committee who would challenge this judgmentthat you, Comrade Wije, played the decisive role in maintaining the unity of the party, upholding its revolutionary internationalist orientation, and leading it forward.

More than 45 years have passed since we first met. We have worked together closely for the past 30 years. I cannot adequately convey in words the depth of my respect for you as a comrade, a fighter and a human being. I am sure that you have your share of faults, but excuse me if I confess that none of them comes to mind at the moment. You have been intransigent in your defense of Marxist principles. During a stint in jail, even the prison warden was impressed by your devotion to the cause of socialist revolution!

Throughout Sri Lanka, you are respectedeven by political opponentsas a man of unimpeachable revolutionary integrity. You are the only political leader in Sri Lanka who commands the respect and admiration of the oppressed in both the Sinhalese and Tamil communities. They recognize that only the Socialist Equality Party fights for the unity of the entire working class, and opposes every form of racialist sectarianism. In the course of political struggles that span more than a half century, and in the face of countless hardshipsincluding the loss of your beloved wife, Comrade Piyaseeliyou have held high the banner of the Fourth International.

There is no doubting that this birthday is a milestone. No matter how one juggles the figures, 75 is a significant number of years. But with age came ever-greater wisdom, and some years back you foreswore the two greatest threats to your longevityriding a motorcycle and smoking cigarettes. And so we have every reason to expect that you will remain in the front ranks of the revolutionary struggle for years to come.

Your comrade forever,

David North
A beauty contest was judged by artificial intelligence and the robots went racist when they did not like people with dark skin.

By India Today Web Desk:

The first international beauty contest was judged by "machines" and it was supposed to use objective factors such as facial symmetry and wrinkles to identify the most attractive contestants.

After a portal named Beauty.AI was launched this year, nearly 6,000 people from more than 100 countries submitted photos in the hopes that artificial intelligence, supported by complex algorithms, would determine that their faces most closely resembled "human beauty".

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But when the results came in, the creators were dismayed to see that there was a glaring factor linking the winners: the robots did not like people with dark skin. Ouch!

Out of 44 winners, nearly all were white, a handful were Asian, and only one had dark skin. That's despite the fact that, although the majority of contestants were white, many people of colour submitted photos, including large groups from India and Africa.



ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND DEEP LEARNING

Beauty.AI which was created by a "deep learning" group called Youth Laboratories and supported by Microsoft - relied on large datasets of photos to build an algorithm that assessed beauty.

The Beauty.AI results offer "the perfect illustration of the problem", said Bernard Harcourt, Columbia University professor of law and political science who has studied "predictive policing", which has increasingly relied on machines. "The idea that you could come up with a culturally neutral, racially neutral conception of beauty is simply mind-boggling."

The case is a reminder that "humans are really doing the thinking, even when it's couched as algorithms and we think it's neutral and scientific," he said.



DEEP PROBLEM?

"The main problem was that the data the project used to establish standards of attractiveness did not include enough minorities", said Alex Zhavoronkov, Beauty.AI's chief science officer.

Although the group did not build the algorithm to treat light skin as a sign of beauty, the input data effectively led the robot judges to reach that conclusion



YOU'RE BEAUTIFUL ANYWAY

Which brings us to think, if robots are the best judges of physical appearance.

--- ENDS ---
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) - The Florida Supreme Court is reducing the sentence of a death row inmate after the U.S. Supreme Court ordered it to reconsider his intellectual abilities.

After Thursday's ruling, Freddie Lee Hall will be sentenced to life for the 1978 murder of a 21-year-old pregnant woman who was abducted while leaving a grocery store.

The state Supreme Court originally upheld Hall's death sentence based on multiple IQ tests that scored above 70 - the level at which people are considered to be intellectually disabled.

But the U.S. Supreme Court said there's a margin of error in IQ tests and ruled that the scores alone can't be used to determine whether a person is intellectually disabled.

That ruling sent Hall's case back to the state high court, which now says Hall is intellectually disabled and can't be executed.

(Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)
DAVIE, Fla. (AP) - Authorities in South Florida have captured a massive alligator near a bicycle path that is close to two schools.

Davie police tell news outlets that officers and a licensed trapper were able to subdue the 11-foot, 450-pound gator along a canal bank Wednesday morning. No one was hurt.

The reptile was about two blocks away from Falcon Cove Middle School and Cypress Bay High School.

Officer Tony Berardo says captured alligators are usually euthanized, but because of its large size the animal will likely be taken to a preserve.

Berardo says the gator did not seem to be afraid of humans, meaning it had likely been getting fed by them, which is a misdemeanor.

(Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)
Bristol, FL (WTXL) - The Florida Department of Corrections says a correctional officer at the Liberty County Correction Institution was assaulted by an inmate early Wednesday morning.

The Department says inmate Nathan Diaz was undergoing counseling when he attacked a correctional officer at 12:53 a.m. Wednesday. Officials say he used a handmade weapon.

Staff and other officers where able to immediately respond to the situation and subdue Diaz, according to FDC.

The wounded officer was screened by medical staff, the department says they noted a puncture wound to the head of the officer.

Diaz will be filed for a disciplinary report for the incident, officials have not released the name of the wounded officer.

Further investigations will be conducted by the Inspector General from the Department of Corrections Office.
TALLAHASSEE, FL (WTXL) - The Tallahassee Police Department has released all probable cause reports involving the murder of FSU Law Professor Dan Markel.

TPD has released probable cause documents for Charlie Adelson, brother of Markel's ex-wife, Katherine Magbanua, who was involved in a personal relationship with Charlie, Luis Rivera, and 2 for Sigfredo Garcia.

According to the documents, police believed that after Wendi Adelson's divorce from Markel, her family was determined to relocate her and the two children to South Florida where her parents live. They believe that after they exhausted all options, they turned to an illegal remedy.

Cellular records revealed that Magbanua contacted both Charlie and Garcia multiple times throughout the timeline of Markel's murder. Police were also able to confirm that Garcia was the father of Magbanua's children.

Because of this, police believe Magbanua enlisted the help of Garcia and his close associate, Rivera, to carry out the murder. They say Magbanua is the only link between Garcia and Rivera to Markel and her only tie to Markel is Charlie Adelson.

Investigators also said cellphone location data places Magbanua in the same area in Miami as Garcia and Rivera following the murder of Markel. She also called Charlie while near the two accused of killing the FSU professor.

TPD submitted these findings to the State Attorney's Office.

TPDs Violent Crimes Unit and its investigators are continuing to work all known leads and can be reached by calling the Tip Line (850) 891-4462 or you can choose to report any information to Crime Stoppers at (850) 574-TIPS.
Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi today visited Hanumangarhi temple in Ayodhya, barely one kilometre away from the Ramjanmabhoomi-Babri Masjid site. He is first Gandhi to visit Ayodhya since Babri demolition.

By India Today Web Desk: Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Friday visited Hanumangarhi temple in Ayodhya. He, thus, became the first from Nehru-Gandhi family to visit Ayodhya since 1992, when Babri mosque was demolished.

The Congress leader visited the town as part of his ongoing Kisan Mahayatra. A convoy of cars, buses and open trucks reached Ayodhya on the fourth day his UP tour. Rahul Gandhi is touring the state to revive his party's fortunes in the upcoming assembly elections.

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Congress vice-president began his day in Ayodhya by offering prayers at the famous Hanumangarhi temple, which is merely a kilometre from the disputed Ramjanmabhoomi-Babri Masjid site.

TEMPLE VISIT HAS A PAST

Rahul Gandhi's visit to the Hanuman Garhi temple has a past connection with his father late Rajiv Gandhi. The former prime minister had planned to visit this temple 26 years ago during his visit to the religious town in 1990.

Rajiv Gandhi could not visit the Hanumangarhi temple for the paucity of time. Unfortunately, Rajiv could never come back as he was assassinated the next year on May 21, 1991. Rahul was 20 then. He perhaps fulfilled his father's wish at 46.

A POLITICAL VISIT?

Rahul Gandhi's visit to the temple could be an attempt to shake off the anti-Hindutva tag associated with the party. It is also being said that Congress's election strategist Prashant Kishor has devised a Brahman centric campaign for the party in UP. Rahul's visit to Hanumangarhi temple was part of the strategy.

BJP was quick to react to Rahul's temple visit. Party spokesperson Siddhartha Nath Singh said, "His party (Congress) always accused BJP of playing politics whenever we talked about Ram temple or about going there. Rahul has understood the power of Ram."



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--- ENDS ---
YAKIMA, Wash. -- Nearly a week after Yakima saw three officer-involved shootings in just over 24 hours, the City Council is scheduled to vote 
Seven jurors were seated Monday to review evidence and witness statements in the 2015 death of a man shot by three Pasco police officers.
The BJP's loss may not be Congress' gain, but the party is likely to be happy if it helped BJP lose some even if it doesn't win some.

By Kumar Shakti Shekhar: Prashant Kishor and the statewide Rahul Padyatra notwithstanding, the Congress is not expected to make much of a mark in UP Assembly elections next year. But if you examine closely, the strategists know this well. It's not 2017 but 2019 that the party has set focus on. In 2017, all it wants to do is dent BJP enough to make a mark in 2019. The BJP's loss may not be Congress' gain, but the party is likely to be happy if it helped BJP lose some even if it doesn't win some.

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Brahmins have been the traditional vote bank of Congress, until the BJP emerged and Congress' cadre base eroded in the state, ruled by Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party. With a non-existent Congress and weakened BJP, the Brahmins put their weight behind Mayawati, who was ready with tickets in two successive elections. This time, the Brahmin vote was expected to be divided between BJP and BSP with the BJP getting the lion's share.

But the Congress has queered the pitch as it is single-mindedly pursuing the Brahmin chunk this time. Party vice-president Rahul Gandhi visited Ayodhya today, the fourth day of his ongoing Kisan Yatra ahead of the 2017 Assembly elections in the State. But he did not visit the Ramlala temple. He chose Hanumangarhi instead. Visiting the temple would have turned it into a Hindu-Muslim issue, while all he wishes is to please Brahmins. The Janmbhoomi is barely a kilometre away, but he wouldn't antagonise the Muslims who form 18 per cent of the state's population.

The Brahmins are not only a dominant caste in UP but they also constitute 13 per cent of the State's population.

The stopover at Ayodhya is one of the several symbolisms being attempted at by the Congress to shrug off the anti-Hindu image which has got associated with the party. Rahul's father late Rajiv Gandhi had planned to visit Hanumangarhi temple during his visit to the religious town in 1990. However, he could not, due to paucity of time.

Rajiv could never come back as he was assassinated the next year on May 21, 1991. Rahul seems to have fulfilled his father's wish 26 years later.

In fact, it was Rajiv Gandhi who had got the locks of the Ramjanmbhoomi-Babri Masjid opened on February 1, 1986 to appease the Hindus. This was a balancing act for surrendering to the Muslims in the Shah Bano case a year ago.

Rahul seems to be retracing the steps treaded by his father. A visit to Ayodhya is just another step in the move to win over the Brahmins and the upper castes. He launched the Kisan Yatra on September 6 by visiting Dugdheshwarnath temple in Deoria and getting his forehead smeared with 'tilak'. In fact the first four days of his yatra took him to places where Brahmins are dominant and large land-holders.

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As a matter of fact, in Uttar Pradesh, Rahul Gandhi's pitch has been loan waivers and other sops for farmers. The land-ownership is largely with Brahmins, Thakurs, Yadavs and Kurmis. Yadavs are with the SP and the Kurmis with BSP. The Kisan sops will largely attract the Brahmins. This will be complemented by the ticket distribution where Congress will allot a substantial share to the upper caste candidates.

Rahul seems to be retracing the steps treaded by his father. A visit to Ayodhya is just another step in the move to win over the Brahmins and the upper castes. PTI photo

The Congress has declared former Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit its chief ministerial candidate for UP Assembly elections to garner Brahmin votes. Her father-in-law, Uma Shankar Dikshit, was a strong Brahmin leader from the State. He was the Union home minister in the 1970s.

His mother and Congress president Sonia Gandhi was too scheduled to visit the famous Kashi Vishwanath temple in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Lok Sabha constituency Varanasi during her road show on August 2. However, she was forced to abandon it as she fell ill midway.

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"Saddened that due to my ill health, I had to cut my visit to Varanasi short. Couldn't visit Kashi Vishwanath Temple either. I will come back very soon, and then visit the Kashi Vishwanath Temple," she said at the Varanasi airport before leaving for Delhi.

She would come back. Rahul is already meeting every pandit of stature on his yatra as the gossip goes, Congressmen asked the pujari of Hanumangarhi temple in Ayodhya to pray for his ascension to the Prime Minister's chair. Just another hint that it's 2019 that he's looking at.

--- ENDS ---
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I'm pretty convinced that Yesh Atid Chairman Yair Lapid is pretty happy with those who are writing on Facebook that he's worse than Bibi and that they would never vote for him. Lapid needs the left's alienation to put him at the center of the political map. Another ridiculing post against him, another biting satire programLapid just jumps in the polls

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And here's the thing: Most of the voters who move to his party come from the center-left side of the map, according to a deep look into the data. The left prefers Bibi? Dont lie to yourselves.

For too long, the Israeli center has turned into a hypenate: "center-left." Lapid understands very well that it's impossible, based on the basic trends of Israeli society, to win like this. He was also never really a leftist, so it's hard to understand why the left is so angry with him. He doesn't even come from a home with left-wing opinions; after all, his father, the late Yosef Lapid, was accused of being late Prime Minister Menachem Begin's man in the Israel Broadcasting Authority.

Yair Lapid. Unlike other politicians, he really wants to win (Photo: Amit Shabi)

Lapid is disappointing people who never pinned their hopes on him because of the feeling of a missed opportunity in the left. Prime ministerial candidates cannot be brought in from outside the system or invented, not even generals. It requires knowledge of the public, positioning, and media interest. There are no other candidates today apart from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Lapid who create this buzz, and no such candidate is likely to pop up until the next elections.

And here's the essential political point: Lapid really wants to win. You may be surprised, but this is a refreshing novelty in any place and party that isn't Bibi and his wife. I know political candidates for the most senior positions who dreamt of a national unity government rather than of one led by them. The camp which has not been winning for many years now has completely forgotten that politics is not a youth-movement activity. It requires strategy as well as compromising on principleseven before the coalition negotiations.

US President Barack Obama tried to attract independent voters in the Democratic Party elections in 2008, so he dropped the democratic vision of governmental health insurance for all Americans in favor of supervised private insurance. Hillary Clinton stuck to her principles and raised the flag high; she lost to Obama. And here, I almost don't need to mention, the left despised Yitzhak Rabin and later Ehud Barak. It accused both of them of flattering the right. The truth is that the left's diagnosis was correct. The left was correct, and Rabin and Barak won.

Lapid's surge in polls A crack in the iceberg Sima Kadmon Analysis: Netanyahu isn't stupid. He understands that Likud voters are moving in droves to other parties, that they are fed up with his conduct, preferences and his family's behavior. He realizes that if he fails to change his conduct immediately, he is finished. A crack in the iceberg

Here are a few basic facts: Israeli politics are a system of blocs. Without right-wing voters moving to the center or to the left, Likud will never lose. These voters are looking for a figure they perceive as central and leaning to the right. Here's another basic fact: Without the ultra-Orthodox, any centrist or leftist candidate doesn't stand a chance. So when Lapid says in a Channel 10 interview about the train issue that "the ultra-Orthodox have nothing to do with the crisis," it raises a bitter smile, but it also demonstrates political discipline. "Do you want to have fun, or do you want to win?" late Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's bureau chief, Uri Shani, would ask him sometimes in his great battles against Netanyahu. Sharon, with clenched teeth, preferred to win.

Lapid still has a lot to prove: that apart from his desire to win, he's willing to take brave steps as an opposition leader, steps which are right in principle, although initially unpopular. Policy movesones which will inspire honest public discourse, which is greatly needed in Israel.

Breaking the Silence is an important organization in the current atmosphere of an attacked Israeli democracy. Lapid, for his part, believes they are serving Israel's enemies, and that is a very common opinion among the Israeli public. But where does he stand in regards to the larger issue which cannot be denied, the attempt to perforate democracy itself?

Expected attacks on the left and speaking in front of a supportive audience in the heart of the deep darkness of Stockholm will not really do the trick. What is needed is ideological weight and risks. Lapid already proved in the previous elections that he is not an "atmosphere party." He is now proving that he is the main candidate for prime minister who is not Netanyahu. Now he must prove that he is an opposition.
From an "embassy" helping Jews, the Chabad House in Nigeriathe only one of its kind in central Africahas become a ray of light for local Africans.

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In a country torn by terror attacks and a deep interreligious rift, the Jews have become a moderating element helping both sides. Between conducting Passover seders and providing Jewish education, the local Chabad House has been busy building a boarding school for children with special needs and providing baby food to Muslim refugees.

Nigerian children. 'It's a country of believers. They see the 'chosen people' as very special people. It's part of their Christian tradition, so they are very excited about it.' (Photo: Israel Uzon)

Three years ago, Rabbi Israel Uzon founded the Chabad branch known to every Jew in Nigeria in a bid to help mostly Israeli businessmen and families residing in the country for short periods for business purposes.

He first discovered Africa as a young man. The French-born rabbi would arrive in neighboring Congo to conduct a Passover seder for Jewish businessmen.

"There was no need to open a Chabad House in central Africa at the time, as there were no Jewish communities in the area," he says. "Chabad's activity there focused on helping businessmen who found themselves in the country during the holidays. That is how I began hosting seders in Congo, Ivory Coast and Guinea, and that is how I reached Nigeria as well and found myself there more and more."

What is a Hasid doing in Nigeria?

Uzon became very attached to the local community of businesspeople who settled in the country for short periods of time, but his marriage interrupted the series of visits.

"I got married, and they asked why I wasn't coming anymore. I said it had become complicated. It's third-world conditions, with all that it implies," the rabbi says, referring to the difficult sanitation conditions and infrastructure which challenge every Western person used to a much higher standard of living.

"We finally arrived for one holiday, and my wife kept wanting to come back. Slowly, she also developed a good relationship with the Israeli group."

A special-needs child in Nigeria. 'There is a local belief that they are possessed by an evil spirit.' (Photo: Israel Uzon)

At first, the couple only arrived for the holidays, until three years ago the family decided to move to Nigeria. "We connected to the people," Uzon explains the move, which was not easy. "I realized that every time I go, there is nothing the next day, so we said to ourselves that we should perhaps consider it seriously, and eventually we went there.

"The goal was to help the Jewish community there, which is mostly made up of Israelis, as regularly as possible. Forty percent of them are in Lagos, 40% in Abuja, the capital, and the other 20% are scattered across the country."

Uzon says that at first he devoted most of this activity to creating a community from the hundreds of Israelis in the country. "We mainly invested in education, opening a 'Sunday school' for children studying at the American school in Abuja, and today we already have a regular Israeli school for the community's children. Last Passover, we held five seders in different centers across the country. Today we are based in five to six different cities in the country and we have good relations with the locals."

No driving out 'evil spirits'

So far, it all sounds like routine Chabad House activity, but here things take a less familiar turn. The idea of being an emissary in a third-world country became not only a challenging educational, economic and security mission, but also concealed another mission: Helping the local residents.

Helping both Muslims and Christians. 'We looked for places we could integrate into with the Hasidic spirit we bring.' (Photo: Israel Uzon)

"From our first day in Nigeria, we decided it was very important not only to care for the Jews, but also to see what change we could bring to this place," the rabbi says. "My insight was that if we want to be part of it, and really engage in Kiddush Hashem (sanctifying God's name through acts of kindness), we must look into ways to help. Nigeria is a very poor country, and there is no shortage of things that can be done. We looked for places we could integrate into with the Hasidic spirit we bring with us."

The search did not last long, and Uzon found himself attracted to helping local children with special needs.

"In the past, I volunteered with special children in Canada, and I am bringing my experience," he says. "These children suffer, it seems, from a double difficulty: On the one hand, it's a poor country, which finds it difficult to help even its non-special children. In addition, there is a local belief that these children are possessed by an evil spirit, and that leads to their abandonment in the good-case scenario, or to ceremonies aimed at driving out the spirit, which put their life in danger, in radical cases.

"We began working with a local Christian institution. We sat with them, and saw that they have two urgent needs: One, to establish a normal boarding school for the children, and two, to open a protected employment center for the older ones in a way which will both give the institution some income and provide employment for the older youth."

The new boarding school has already been inaugurated, Uzon says, and now the plan is to also establish a candle factory and a chicken coop which will provide the institution with an income and employment.

How do the Nigerians react to all of this?

"Nigeria is a country of believers. They see the 'Chosen People' (as they call the Jews) as very special people. It's part of their Christian tradition, so they are very excited about it. I also had the opportunity to take part in the Nigerian president's visit to Israel. They really, really appreciate it.

"We receive financial backing from a charity fund of the Waki family from France, together with Israeli companies which operate in the country, some in different security fields, like Eyal Mesika's company, and they help fund these projects."

Funding projects for both religions

Another project is operated by the rabbi for the Muslim communityfor refugees' children, to be more exact. "It's for Muslim youth that flee northern Nigeria because of the terror of groups such as Boko Haram. There are many needy families.

"There is an existing humanitarian organization, and we are funding two projects through it: one, a basic roof, and the other, infant formula. Because of the security-related circumstances, it is important for us to fund projects for both religions, to make it clear that we support all the needy, regardless of their religion."

You do realize that whoever reads this may be surprised. The Chabad House is supposed to be for Jews, isn't it?

"That's completely untrue. The Lubavitcher Rebbe addressed this issue explicitly and stressed the need to contribute to the local community. In this sense, we are no exception. There are Chabad Houses in other places that help the local community in different ways. It's a Jewish value to help whoever needs it, regardless of whether they are Jewish or not, and there is of course a lot of Kiddush Hashem in it."
A rabbi and another Orthodox Jewish man were arrested in New York in connection with a plot to kidnap and murder a man whose wife wanted to divorce him, federal officials said on Wednesday.

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Israel-based rabbi Aharon Goldberg, 55, and Shimen Liebowitz, 25, were taken into custody in Central Valley, New York, while meeting to discuss the plot on Tuesday, the Manhattan US Attorney's Office said in a statement.

The statement said they were charged with one count each of conspiracy to commit kidnapping, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison, and conspiracy to commit murder for hire.

Photo: Shutterstock

Xavier Donaldson, an attorney for Goldberg, declined to comment when reached by email on Wednesday night. An attorney for Liebowitz, who prosecutors said is a member of Satmar Hasidic community in Kiryas Joel, New York, could not be immediately reached for comment.

Prosecutors said Liebowitz and Goldberg recruited an individual to carry out the crimes and force the man to issue a document called a "get" to allow his wife to divorce him. An Orthodox Jewish woman cannot get a religious divorce unless her husband consents through a get. Without the document, a divorce can only occur if the husband dies.

Prosecutors said the recruit contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigation in July about the plot and began recording their conversations.

The group discussed kidnapping, torturing and forcing the get from the target while the intended victim was in the United States or on a planned trip to Ukraine, prosecutors said. As the plotting continued, the group decided they wanted the victim murdered as well, prosecutors allege.

In total, the pair paid the informant around $60,000 to carry out the kidnapping and murder.
By India Today Web Desk: More trouble is brewing for standup comedian and popular TV personality Kapil Sharma. After BJP leader Ram Kadam lodged a police complaint against him, Raj Thackeray's Maharashtra Navnirman Sena on Friday upped its ante against Kapil Sharma.

MNS asked Kapil Sharma to show proof for his claim that a BMC official demanded Rs five lakh as bribe for approving his office space. "Kapil Sharma should provide proof for his allegations else MNS workers will deal with him in their own style," the MNS said.

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"Kapil Sharma must tender apology for leveling false allegations. Unless he tenders apology to MNS, we will not let Kapil's show go on air. We will not let him continue shooting here," MNS said.



READ: Kapil Sharma bribery tweet: Comedian summoned by Mumbai Police for questioning



KAPIL SHOULD BE ARRESTED

Rejecting Kapil Sharma's claim, the MNS slammed the comedian alleging that he illegally removed vast stretch of mangroves for the construction of his office. "Kapil Sharma should be arrested for removing mangroves illegally in that area. Action should be taken against him for trying to convert illegal structures into legal. The set of Kapil Sharma show itself is illegal." MNS said.



READ: Kapil Sharma's office is an illegal construction: BMC reacts to comedian's tweet

MNS lashed out at Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadanvis for responding to Kapil Sharma's complaint on twitter and promising strict action against the guilty officials. "Why is the Chief Minister supporting Kapil Shama if his structure is illegal," asked MNS.



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Kapil Sharma alleges he was asked to cough up Rs 5 lakh bribe by BMC; tweets to PM Modi asking if this is 'achhe din'

BJP sees red over Kapil Sharma's tweet; MP Manoj Tiwari says he should not have dragged PM into this



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AMMAN- The top military commander of the militant group Jabhat Fateh al Sham, the former al Qaeda offshoot in Syria, was killed in an aerial raid that targeted a meeting of the group's leaders, both the group and rebel sources said on Thursday.

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The commander Abu Hajer al Homsi, whose alias is Abu Omar Saraqeb, was killed in a rural area of Aleppo province, they said, where the group has played an instrumental role in ongoing battles against the Syrian army troops and Iranian-backed Shi'ite militias in the gateway city of Aleppo.

An announcement by the group said he was "martyred" in an air strike in the countryside of Aleppo. The nationality of the jets that hit the location was not immediately known, but a rebel source said initial information suggested it was most likely a US jet that struck the hideout.

Since the US-led coalition was launched, air strikes have targeted Nusra Front figures in Syria, killing scores. But this marked the first time a key figure has been targeted since the group's name change.

Abu Omar Saraqeb was a founding member of Nusra Front, Al Qaeda's powerful Syrian branch, and had been among the jihadists who fought US forces in Iraq after the US invasion in 2003 before returning to Syria.

Smoke rises over Aleppo (Photo: AFP)

Along with other leaders, the jihadist figure set up Jaish al Fateh or the army of conquest - a military alliance of Islamist rebel groups that last year drove the Syrian army from the northwestern city of Idlib at the height of insurgents' advances.

The major Russian military campaign at the end of last year turned the tide in Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's favour and thwarted the Sunni insurgents' rapid gains that brought them close to Assad's minority Alawite stronghold on the coast.

Another Islamist insurgent source told Reuters the militants were present in a secret hideout in the village of Kafr Naha when the raid took place. The leader of the group abu Mohammad al-Jolani was apparently not at the meeting.

Few other details emerged of the strike, but a photo of another top leader known as Abu Muslim al Shami circulated on social media showing him alive in an effort to refute reports he had also been killed.

The Nusra Front announced last July it was ending its relationship with al Qaeda, the global jihadist network founded by Osama bin Laden, to remove a pretext used by world powers to inflict civilian casualties.

The move appeared to be an attempt to appeal to Syrians who have long had deep misgivings about Nusra's links with al Qaeda and the presence of foreign jihadists in its ranks.

The move was dismissed by Washington, which said it did not change its stance on the organisation that is listed as a terrorist group and remained a fair target. Washington said altering the name of the group did not signal a shedding of its hardline al Qaeda-style ideology.

US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov have been trying to reach a deal on deeper cooperation

between the US and Russian militaries against radical groups operating in Syria, particularly ISIS and the former Nusra Front.

One of the complications is that former Nusra operates side by side with Western-backed moderate Free Syrian Army (FSA) rebel groups in major frontlines against the Syrian army that is aided by heavy Russian air power and fighters from Iran-backed militias.
Reports from Russia on Thursday claimed that there is a real possibility for a meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas in Moscow. However, officials in Jerusalem are in no hurry to book their plane tickets.

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"There was also an agreement in principle before, but Abbas didn't remove the preconditions. Drop the preconditions and come," said a source. "In light of the fact that there are still preconditions, there is nothing for now."

Netanyahu and Abbas in September, 2010 (Photo: gettyimages)

Russian Deputy Ambassador to Israel Alexey Drobinin also confirmed that there is a meeting in principle between Jerusalem and Ramallah, however the date and topics of the meeting are not yet on the agenda. "The basic issue the parties will discuss is what needs to be done to get out of the current impasse in the diplomatic process," said Drobinin.

"We don't take it upon ourselves to decide the issues that they need to discuss," Drobinin clarified. "This is something that the parties themselves should discuss. The timing of the meeting also depends on the parties themselves. President Putin's proposal stands. Now the parties themselves need to decide when they're ready to come."

In an answer to the question of the agreement to meet in principle simply being an illusion that both parties have sold to Russia, Drobinin responded, "We have no illusions. It is certainly possible that in the end there will be no meeting."

At a press conference in the Netherlands, Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed the Palestinian claim that Abbas agreed to the meeting, while Netanyahu rejected it. "I am ready to meet with Abbas at any time without preconditions for direct talks. It's something I've said a hundred times and I'm repeating it here. I'm not picky about the place, it can be in the Netherlands or in Moscow, no problem. It can certainly be Moscow. I've said that to President Putin and I've said it to the Russian envoy Bogdanov.

"The main question is if Abbas is ready to meet without preconditions. We hear conflicting versions. Just yesterday, a Palestinian spokesman made it clear that they are willing to meet, but they have conditions such as the release of prisoners and they want to know in advance what the results of the talks will be. If Abbas wants to meet without preconditions for direct talks, I am ready anytime. I've been calling on him to do it for seven years, so if he agrees, there could be a meeting."
SEOUL -- China has condemned North Korea's fifth nuclear test, a key denunciation for Pyongyang by its economic lifeline and only major ally.

The Foreign Ministry issued a statement Friday criticizing North Korea for carrying out a test with "disregard" for international objections.

The statement said China "resolutely opposes" the test and called on North Korea to stop any behavior that "worsens the situation."

The statement did not indicate whether China would take any immediate action or support new sanctions.
In a special conference held at the US Congress, in front of more than a hundred participants, Yossi Dagan, head of the Samaria Regional Council, explained why BDS is anti-Semitic and its only purpose is to harm the State of Israel.

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In the panel held on Thursday, which was attended by members of Congress, a Palestinian youth from Nablus explained that BDS actions primarily damage Palestinians by harming joint economic ventures with settlements.

BDS panel with US Congressmen (Photo: Samaria Regional Council)

Yossi Dagan speaking before BDS conference (:    .)

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Congressman Doug Lamborn compared BDS activities with those of the Nazis prior to the Holocaust. "The Nazis and the BDS movement started operating an economic boycott," said Lamborn. "A lot of people want to believe the tragic history of anti-Semitism ended after World War II, but unfortunately, it is rearing its ugly head today in the form of BDS."

Conference speakers also included Congressmen Pete Sessions, Erik Paulsen and Louie Gohmert, who addressed BDS activists and said, "We will not let you move forward with this any further than you already have. We will pursue your investment and cripple your pockets until you stop this anti-Israel activity."

At the end of the conference, Dagan noted that, "Although the United States is a friendly country to Israel, support in the war against BDS and support for Samaria are not obvious." Dagan went on to further express the hope that "the State of Israel and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will join advocacy efforts that puts Samaria in the heart of Israel's interests."
The IDF Homefront Command has located a fourth body out of the rubble of the collapsed parking garage in Tel Aviv on Friday. The soldiers are working to pull the body from the rubble.

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Search and rescue operations are continuing in areas where it is believed that survivors may still be trapped. Rescuers believe that there is one body left in the rubble, however, it has yet to be located.

Those who have been killed so far are named as: Oleg Yakubov, 60, from Tel Aviv; Iyad Rimawi, 34, from Rima; and Dennis Dyachenko , 28, from Ukraine.





One of the bodies pulled from the rubble of the collapsed parking garage (Photo: Ryan)

A four-level subterranean parking lot in a building site on HaBarzel Street in the Ramat Hahayal neighborhood of Tel Aviv collapsed Monday morning . At least two persons have been killed while several are said to be missing and 23 were injured.

Rescuing one of the trapped workers (:    ,   )

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The collapsed parking garage (Photo: Dana Koppel)

The Labor and Welfare Committee of the Knesset held an emergency session on Thursday with the CEO of the construction company that built the parking garage that collapsed, Ronen Ginzburg of Danya Cebus, to discuss the circumstances surrounding the collapse of the structure.

Kulanu MK Elie Elalouf, the committee chairman, said "The committee sadly foresaw this. We held seven hearings on the situation. We saw that there is serious negligence in the construction sector. No one held a discussion on the required preparations for the massive amount of construction going on in the country, which is only expected to grow. We've also seen the lack of preparedness on the part of government ministries."
ANKARA- Turkish air strikes destroyed four stationary targets in northern Syria on Friday, the military said in a statement, as it continues attacks against militants in the region.

Turkey last month launched an operation it calls Euphrates Shield, its first major incursion into Syria since the start of the five-year-old civil war, aimed at clearing ISIS militants and Syrian Kurdish fighters from its borders.
FEODOSIYA -- Russia has deployed cruise missiles, multiple rocket launchers, tanks and its latest anti-aircraft system during massive military drills in Crimea.

The defense ministry invited dozens of journalists Friday to a remote firing range at the Black Sea coast to display elaborate war games which involved paratroopers, tanks, cruise missiles launched from a submarine and the S-400 anti-aircraft missile system.

The drills, which began across southern Russia and Crimea earlier this week and involve over 120,000 troops, are some of the largest exercises Russia has held for years.
TEHRAN- Thousands of Iranians have taken to the streets to protest against Saudi Arabia ahead of this year's hajj pilgrimage.

The demonstrators shouted "Death to Al Saud!" -- a reference to the kingdom's ruling family. State media reported similar protests across the country after Friday prayers.

Iranians won't be attending this year's pilgrimage as diplomatic ties between Shiite power and the Sunni-ruled kingdom remain severed amid tensions between the two Mideast nations.
Head of IDF Military Intelligence, Maj. Gen. Herzi Halevy, in cooperation with the IDF manpower directorate, have come up with a revolutionary plan in order to stem the brain drain of technical personnel from elite units such as Unit 8200 and the research department of military intelligence.

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As revealed in Yedioth Ahronoth, 2015 was the most difficult year for the IDF in terms of the departure of technical personnel. Surveys by the IDF Behavioral Sciences Department showed that in 2015, 34.4% of officers designated by their commanders as desired candidates for continuation of service decided to opt for release instead. This is a marked increase from 2011, when that number stood at only 13.2%.

Chief of IDF Military Intelligence Maj. Gen. Herzi Halevy (Photo: Shaul Golan)

According to officials in the General Staff, brain drain is a serious strategic problem that is only expected to get worse when major intelligence units will be moved from the center of the country to the south. Officials also admitted that it is difficult to retain officers who are earning approximately NIS 7,000 per month, when they can be earning double or even triple that in the private sector.

The plan has two main pillars, the first of which is the construction of a service path that allows outstanding officers and NCOs serving in technological units to work in the private sector for a period of two years, after which they will return to the IDF fulltime, or work one day a week in the private sector.

Conference for Unit 8200 veterans (Photo: Ben Klemmer)

The second possible solution is a system similar to that of pilots in the IAF, who are required to serve until age 28. The idea is for qualified candidates of specific technological units to serve a mandatory period of service that includes time beyond the required two or three years.

While there are those in military intelligence who believe that such a decision will deter high caliber individuals from joining these units, others believe the additional time of service will be a humble investment when compared with the experience and skills that soldiers can take to civilian life, which they can use to earn significant wages.

A report compiled by the Locker Commission recommended a new model in which those officers and NCOs who are deemed vital receive individual contracts. The IDF has not implemented the recommendation out of fear of harming equality, but in the end, the inevitable decision ultimately lies with the Chief of Staff, who must see to it that the needs of the present are met, while looking to the future. Lt. Gen. Eizenkot understands that this is the most serious manpower challenge facing the IDF at present and should it continue unabated, the damage could be serious.
The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned North Koreas latest nuclear test on Friday, issuing a statement saying the act stands in contradiction to international norms and UN Security Council decisions. Its representatives further stated that North Koreas nuclear acts require continued activity by the international community, so that nuclear proliferation to the Middle East from the mostly-isolated state may be prevented.
"Posts of more than 4,000 subordinate judges are lying vacant. Why are they not being filled up?" Law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said at the silver jubilee celebrations of the Akhil Bharatiya Adhivakta Parishad,

By Harish V Nair: Law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad turned the tables on Chief Justice of India TS Thakur on Thursday over the issue of judges' appointments by questioning the judiciary's inaction in filling more than 4,000 vacancies in subordinate courts over which "the Centre or state has no role".

His remarks came a week after Supreme Court judge J Chelameswar triggered a controversy by informing the CJI about his decision to skip meetings of the collegiums- a closed group of the Chief Justice- till highest judiciary ushers in transparency.



UNFILLED VACANCIES

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"Posts of more than 4,000 subordinate judges are lying vacant. Why are they not being filled up?" Prasad said at the silver jubilee celebrations of the Akhil Bharatiya Adhivakta Parishad, a lawyers body affiliated to the RSS. "In this, the central government or state government has no role because these are to be filled by the respective high courts either themselves or through the public service commission."

The CJI has been vocal about the shortage of judges. He said this year that the country needs to double the number of judges from its current strength of 21,000. Prasad echoed Chelameswar's views, saying "There can be no compromise on transparency, objectivity and reasonableness, fairness in procedure in matters of appointment of judges. This is not me saying but it was the direction of the constitution bench of the apex court itself. Transparent judiciary is integral to good governance."

Chelameswar is part of the fivemember collegium headed by the CJI and justice AR Dave, justice JS Khehar and justice Dipak Misra. He objected to some recent transfers and expressed his unwillingness to attend the meetings, pointing out that no record was kept of the discussion between the top five judges. Deep differences persist between the collegium headed by the CJI and the Centre over the memorandum of procedure (MOP) for the appointment of SC and HC judges being drafted by the government.

TRANSPARENCY DEMANDED

The apex court last year struck down a new law that replaced the system of judges appointing judges with a panel in which the executive was to have a say in appointments, saying it eroded judicial independence. "No we are not for confrontation," Prasad said. "No we are not for any veto by government of India. But the process should be transparent, fair reasonable. This precisely was the direction of the constitution bench of the Supreme Court."

On April 25, during the national conference of state chief justices and chief ministers, an emotional CJI launched an unprecedented attack on the government over blaming the judiciary for mounting backlog of cases, which touched an alarming 3.14 crore, but at the same time "doing nothing" to increase the number of judges and courts despite repeated pleas.

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Thakur has repeated the allegation at various forums and also threatened to pass a judicial order for appointment of sufficient judges. Prasad tried to establish with facts and figures that CJI Thakur's allegations on the Centre ignoring the judiciary were wrong.

JUSTICE DELIVERY AND GOOD GOVERNANCE

He said the government has confirmed 112 additional judges to high courts, appointed 53 HC judges, appointed chief justices to 10 high courts, confirmed 30 transfers of HC judges and appointed four judges to the Supreme Court. "Justice delivery is part of good governance. Independence of judiciary is an article of faith for us," said the minister. "The Prime Minister always says judiciary should be provided all support to enhance infrastructure."

Millions of cases are pending in India's courts, draining litigants of resources and pointing towards an urgent need for more judges and judicial reforms. "Till now the total allotment for judiciary was Rs 5,300 crore and out of that Rs 1,950 crore is Modi government's allotment," said Prasad. "That itself speaks volumes about our commitment. We increased the number of posts for high court judges to 1,079 from the earlier 906. We increased the number of trial courts from 16, 513 to 20,447. At present there are 14,420 flats for subordinate court judges. We are constructing 1, 870 more."



ALSO READ:

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Vacancies in judiciary be filled soon; CJIs concern natural

Supreme Court judge, who opposed scrapping of NJAC, now questions collegium seeking more transparency





--- ENDS ---
Turkey will recruit 20,000 new police officers in the coming period and will deploy half of them to special forces units, Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu told state-run broadcaster TRT on Friday.

Turkish authorities had announced they would strengthen the police force following a failed coup on July 15 in which rogue soldiers commandeered fighter jets and tanks in an attempt to overthrow the government.

He also said administrators would be appointed to 28 municipalities. Security officials and the state-run Anadolu agency on Thursday said the government was appointing administrators to replace member pro-Kurdish HDP opposition party because of alleged support for Kurdish militants.
Two Grissom KC-135R Stratotankers had the rare privilege of refueling an aircraft from the U.S. Air Force Air Demonstration Squadron, also known as the Thunderbirds, Sept. 7.The Thunderbird required a refuel on its way to an air show hosted by the 122nd Fighter Wing out of Fort Wayne, Indiana. The air show is scheduled to take place on Sept. 10-11, 2016.Refueling the Thunderbirds showcases Grissoms diverse range of aerial refueling capabilities, said Col. Larry Shaw, 434th Air Refueling Wing commander. Whether it be at home or abroad, Grissom remains ready to proudly serve our nations mission, and this is a prime example of just that!Master Sgt. Nick Obusek, 74th Air Refueling Squadron boom operator, said he was excited that he got the chance to refuel such a famous aircraft.It was really cool, said Obusek. Ive seen the Thunderbirds at air shows but flying next to them and being the person giving them fuel was an awesome experience.The Thunderbirds are based out of Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada and the squadron preforms approximately 75 demonstrations per year. Each demonstration is a mix of formation and solo flying during which the pilots perform approximately 30 maneuvers showcasing the training of the pilots and the capabilities of the F-16 Fighting Falcon.In addition to their responsibilities as the official U.S. Air Force aerial demonstration team, the Thunderbirds are part of our combat force. If required, the team's personnel and aircraft can be rapidly integrated into a fighter unit at Nellis AFB. Since the aircraft are only slightly modified, they can be made combat-ready in less than 72 hours.The 434th ARW is the largest KC-135R Stratotanker unit in the Air Force Reserve Command . Men and women from the Hoosier Wing routinely deploy around the world in support of the Air Force mission.Stay connected with the 434th ARW on Facebook and Twitter. Facebook and Twitter
This has been a long time in the making, but in our continuing pursuit to bring only the best of firearms, 2nd Amendment and defence related news to our readers, we are very excited to announce the next step in our evolution as a company.

As of 2020, Minuteman Review is now the proud owner and operator of Your Defence News, a website with a long history of breaking huge news stories and investigative journalism.

We hope you are equally as excited as us.

This means that now the teams of Minuteman can combine with the firepower of Your Defence News to stay at the absolute forefront for our readers.

Keep an eye. Big things are coming soon. We couldn't be more excited.

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With her confident strut at the New York Fashion Week, Reshma Qureshi's inspired everyone. Know her story.

By Hemul Goel: A self-confessed Katrina Kaif fan, Reshma Bano Qureshi was only 17 years old and prepping with all things pretty for an upcoming wedding.

The daughter of a Mumbai-based taxi driver, Reshma's life changed drastically in 2014 when, during a visit to her hometown in Uttar Pradesh, her brother-in-law and his friends assaulted her at a railway station and threw acid on her face. Reshma's brother-in-law mistook her for her elder sister, since both of them were wearing burqas, and that's how the attack took place.

Ria Sharma helped Reshma Qureshi overcome her depression. Picture courtesy: Instagram/@makelovenotscars

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In the months that followed, Reshma's life plunged into darkness. Aid didn't come easily, and Reshma started having suicidal thoughts about herself.

Also read: Acid attack survivor Reshma Qureshi killed it on the New York Fashion Week runway

However, things started taking a turn for the better when she met Ria Sharma, the founder of Make Love Not Scars, an NGO that pioneered the #EndAcidSale movement in India. From helping her overcome depression to being supportive of Reshma's decision of not covering her face in public, Ria stood by her.

Reshma during her press interview in New York. Photo: Reuters

In 2015, Ria launched the #EndAcidSale campaign with Reshma as its ambassador. They used short videos to propagate their message and in the episodes Reshma would usually give a beauty tip and follow it up by talking about how it was easier to buy concentrated acid in the country, than getting your hands on the perfect beauty product. See one of the videos, below.



Her red lipstick video from the same series went viral, receiving over 15 lakh views. In 2016, the campaign also went on to clinch major accolades at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

Reshma walked the runway for fashion designer Archana Kochhar. Photo: Reuters

Soon, FTL Moda invited her to walk the runway at New York Fashion Week, one of the hottest events of the global fashion calendar. FTL Moda always tries to add plurality to the runway, with the previous year's edition making a lot of noise by having Madeline Stuart, a model with Down Syndrome, walk the runway.

Also read: Don't miss acid-attack survivor Reshma Qureshi's confident strut on the New York Fashion Week runway



And, yesterday, September 8, two years after the acid attack, Reshma confidently sashayed down the runway, as a beacon of hope to so many other acid attack survivors, aspiring of moving on to a better life. Hopefully, not only will her step help change the societal perception of beauty but more importantly turn the lens on an important issue plaguing the women of the country.

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By PTI: Mumbai, Sep 9 (PTI) A controversy erupted today after popular stand-up comedian Kapil Sharma alleged that he had been asked to pay a bribe of Rs 5 lakh by an official of the civic body BMC which, in turn, claimed that the actor had carried out "illegal construction" at his office for which a notice had been served on him.

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Kapil levelled the bribe allegation in tweets in which he tagged Prime Minister Narendra Modi, asking if this was the "achche din" (good days) he had promised.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis was quick to respond to Sharmas angst and assured him that strict action would be taken against the culprit.

Expressing his anguish and raising the issue of corruption, Kapil tweeted this morning, "I am paying 15 cr income tax from last 5 year n still i have to pay 5 lacs bribe to BMC office for making my office @narendramodi (sic)."

In another tweet, he wrote, "Yeh hain aapke achhe din? @narendramodi (are these your good days)," referring to Modis 2014 poll slogan of "good days are ahead".

The post of Sharma, who has over 6.22 million followers on Twitter, was retweeted and liked by thousands on the social media platform.

Taking cognisance of the matter, Fadnavis requested Sharma to provide the authorities with necessary information to punish the culprit.

"Kapilbhai pls provide all info. Have directed MC, BMC to take strictest action. We will not spare the culprit," the Chief Minister said in a tweet.

Later, Sharma thanked Fadnavis in another tweet saying, "@Dev_Fadnavis thank u so much for ur concern sir.. Would like to come n discuss this matter with u in person .."

However, a senior Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation official claimed that the actor had made some "illegal construction" at his office in Versova area of suburban Mumbai and had been served a notice regarding the same, but he did not pay heed to it.

"Kapil was then sent a notice by BMC on July 16 to stop or remove the construction, but he didnt reply to it," he said.

BMC also asked Kapil to reveal the name of the officer who allegedly demanded the bribe.

Stung by corruption allegations, Shiv Sena, which rules the BMC along with BJP, dared Kapil to name the bribe seeker.

"This is not a comedy show where he can tweet what is going on in his life. He needs to immediately name the person publicly who asked for a bribe or people would watch the whole episode like a comedy drama, laugh over it and forget about it," Sena spokesperson Manisha Kayande said.

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"Kapil Sharma is a very famous person and thus the moot question he needs to answer is that why would he give the bribe when somebody asked for it. Giving bribe makes him as much of a culprit as the one who asked for it," she added. (MORE) PTI APM MM GK NM KIS AKK

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By PTI: Patna, Sep 9 (PTI) Appreciating the 10.5 per cent economic growth registered by Bihar in the last decade, Vice President Hamid Ansari today underlined rule of law as an essential prerequisite for creating an environment that supports economic growth and draws foreign investments.

"The state needs to expand economic growth and maintain its rapid tempo for at least two decades if it aspires to join the league of developed states," he said addressing a function to mark the 90th anniversary of Bihar Chamber of Commerce and Industries.

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Quoting from 10th Bihar Economic survey report 2015-16, Ansari said the last decade has seen remarkable growth in the state and some sectors like manufacturing, construction, insurance and banking grew at over 15 per cent during the period.

The per capita income in Bihar has also increased from Rs 7,914 to Rs 15,640, he said, adding that its contribution to the countrys economy has increased from 2.6 per cent to 3.3 per cent during the period.

Impressive as these gains are, these have to be seen in the context of small economic base to begin with, he said.

"States like Haryana and Goa have outperformed Bihar. Bihar still has one of the lowest per capita income levels in the country and lags behind Madhya Pradesh by 10 years and India by 15 years.

"The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation data shows the states economy was the 14th largest in the country in 2014-15, having moved one spot from 15th position it occupied in 2004-5," he said.

The Vice President underlined existence of rule of law as an essential prerequisite for creating an environment that supports economic growth and draws foreign investments. It was also an essential ingredient of proper governance and therefore of economic prosperity, he said.

The rule of law, he said, has three ingredients -- the absolute supremacy of regular law, equality before law and access to justice and development of law by judges on a case by case basis, he said.

"Its purpose is avoidance of tyranical laws or their execution in a tyranical manner. This approach has been upheld in judicial pronouncements with the Supreme Court describing the rule of law as a potent instrument of social justice to bring about equality in results.

"Maintaining law and order will thus be essential to attracting investment for rapid growth. Bihar has to create an environment where more businesses see Bihar as a gateway to consumers in the eastern part of the country and as a place where cost of setting up a plant will be competitive with an abundant supply of workers," Ansari said. PTI SNS KK KIS

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As a homeowner, you probably already know that you should be working to maintain your home. But, chances are, you Read More
Dobra, k. Szczecina 900 m2

40 miejsc parkingowych



Atut: Dodatkowe dochody z paczkomatow InPostu, a juz niedugo i z myjni samoobsugowej.



Tradycyjny zakup nieruchomosci, mozliwosc wykupienia uzytkowania wieczystego.
Neeraj Pandey said the film even got an ex-Navy officer's help to write the film but somehow over-looked basic mistakes in the film.

By India Today Web Desk: Rustom might have turned into Akshay Kumar's third consecutive superhit in 2016, after Airlift and Housefull 3, but looking back producer and frequent collaborator Neeraj Pandey said, he's unhappy with the film's detailing which caused the movie to have included some pedestrian mistakes.

ALSO READ: Aamir Khan wanted to make a movie on the Nanavati case with Neerja director

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ALSO READ: Everything wrong with Rustom and Akshay Kumar's uniform in the film

Speaking to a city-based daily, the producer said, "The fact is that Tinu Suresh Desai (Rustom's director) worked hard on the film. I was not happy with the detailing in so many ways, because with the kind of movies that we make, Shital (Bhatia, production partner) and I are careful to not get basic facts wrong."

The Producer also admitted that they seemed to have missed a few points inspite of having an ex-navy officer on board as a co-writer for the film. He said, "That's why we had on board an ex-Navy officer (Vipul K Rawal), who is the writer of the film as well, to look at these kinds of details. But somewhere it (the detailing) slipped. That irks me."

The film directed by debutante Tinu Suresh Desai, was ridiculed by critics for being 'unintellgible' and getting many of the facts wrong about the sensational Nanavati case wrong. Rustom still went on to cross the Rs 100-crore mark in 10 days, and become a superhit at the box-office.

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Stiri pe aceeasi tema

- MV Petrom Group has reported RON 9.156 billion in net profit nine months into 2022, more than five times higher than the one reported in the same period last year, of 1.676 billion lei, amid high prices for coal and natural gas, according to the company's unaudited financial reports for January -

- Imagini ireale din Coreea de Nord, cu sute de militari care incearca disperati sa il atinga pe Kim Jong-un, aflat intr-o barca, au ajuns virale. Happy people of North Korea see off their leader, who is sailing away from them on a boat. pic.twitter.com/c4yGuiMtde NEXTA (@nexta_tv) October 23, 2022 Imaginile

- Ucrainenii fac progrese in lupta lor pentru recuperarea teritoriilor din sud si est  potrivit lui Volodimir Zelenski, fortele Kievului au recucerit 6.000 de kilometri patrati de teren de la inceputul lunii septembrie -, insa contraofensiva a incetinit usor. Consilierul militar prezidential a declarat,

- Bucharest Stock Exchange (BVB) Group obtained a net profit of 3.32 million RON in the second quarter, up 6 times compared to Q2 2021, and an individual net profit of 4.71 million RON, up more than 3 times from Q2 2021, according to a report by BVB. Fii la curent cu cele mai noi stiri.

- OTP Bank Romania has recorded a loss of 14 million RON in H1 2022 mainly as a result of rising risk costs, the bank announced on Thursday. Fii la curent cu cele mai noi stiri. Urmareste stiripesurse.ro pe Facebook stiripesurse.ro  Help your friends know more about Romania!

- Presa ucraineana si cea rusa au prezentat primele imagini video din satul Novofedorivka, unde ieri au avut loc explozii puternice la aerodromul militar Saki. RUS Saki Airbase after UKR strike ? - Artificial intelligence upscaled 150- + dehalo + compression reverse + injection 30 to 60 FPS + 300- Slow

- Turism, Hoteluri, Restaurante (THR) Marea Neagra company recorded increasing losses to 15.25 million RON after the first half of this year, on the background of a reduction of over 50% in revenues, according to the results published on Wednesday by the company on the Bucharest Stock Exchange (BVB).

- The activity of the National Consumer Protection Authority's county offices will be assessed daily, and according to the new standard, each inspector is required to produce on average 1.1 control reports a day, president of the consumer watchdog Horia Constantinescu told a press conference on Thursday,
By Romita Datta, Indrajit Kundu: Former West Bengal cabinet minister and Trinamool Congress heavyweight Madan Mitra has finally been granted bail by Kolkata's Alipore's court today. Chargesheeted by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), Mitra was arrested on December 12, 2014 in the Saradha chit fund scam. This comes as a huge relief for the beleaguered Trinamool leader who have spent more than 21 months in jail.

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Mitra was granted bail on a personal bond of Rs 30 lakh to be paid in two instalments. The court has also asked Mitra to submit his passport and present himself before the local CBI office once every week. "He has been granted an interim bail. We argued that he is now an ordinary person. He is no more an MLA. He has been in custody for 634 days so there is no problem if he is released on bail now," said Gopal Halder, Mitra's lawyer.

CBI OPPOSED BAIL PLEA



The Central Bureau of Investigation which is probing the Saradha scam has been repeatedly opposing Mitra's bail plea claiming that he was an influential leader who could tamper with evidence. The Kolkata High court too had earlier rejected his bail plea.

The CBI had repeatedly argued in court that being a heavyweight leader Madan Mitra still had access to witnesses in the case and if granted bail he will try to influence them. Mitra, who was named in the chargesheet is accused of entering into a criminal conspiracy with Sudipta Sen, the Saradha boss who is also in jail right now.

Trinamool chief Mamata Banerjee had re-nominated Mitra as the party candidate from his Kamarhati constituency in the state assembly elections this year. However, contesting the elections from jail, Mitra lost his seat. Reacting to the development, the Trinamool Congress has welcomed the court's order.

"A social worker like Madan had to remain behind bars for so long while others were released. He could not even campaign for the elections. Yet as a Trinamool member he remained a committed soldier of our leader Mamata Banerjee," party general-secretary Partha Chatterjee said.

--- ENDS ---
By PTI: From Aditi Khanna

London, Sep 9 (PTI) Scotland Yard today said it will "assess" the case of UKs longest serving Indian-origin Labour MP Keith Vaz to see if any criminal offences were committed by him after a British tabloid published allegations that he hired two male prostitutes and made references to drugs.

The Metropolitan Police stressed that no investigation has been launched yet and that the issue has been referred to its "Special Enquiry Team" after it received a letter in relation to the allegations which appeared in the Sunday Mirror.

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"Following allegations in the Sunday Mirror on Sunday, September 4, concerning a Member of Parliament, the Metropolitan Police Service can confirm a letter was received on Wednesday, September 7, requesting police consider the matter," a Met Police statement said.

"The letter has been forwarded to Mets Special Enquiry Team, part of Specialist Crime and Operations, to assess and identify what criminal offences - if any - may have been committed. At this stage a police investigation has not been launched," it said.

Earlier this week, the 59-year-old influential lawmaker had resigned from his post as chair of the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee in the wake of the sex scandal.

His resignation followed allegations published by the tabloidthat the married, father of two, had met two male escorts from eastern Europe at his north London flat last month.

The high-profile politician is also alleged to have told the escorts to bring the party drug known as "poppers" and is also quoted as discussing the possibility of paying for cocaine at a future meeting, but added that he would not take the drug himself.

In the wake of the revelations, Tory MP Andrew Bridgen had indicated that he would be writing to Scotland Yard calling for Vaz to be investigated for misconduct in a public office and conspiracy to supply controlled substances.

Vaz, Leicester East MP for Labour since 1987, has referred the allegations to his lawyer and has indicated that he intends to remain an MP and a member of Labours National Executive Committee.

Vaz was born to Goan parents in Aden, Yemen, in 1956 and went on to study law at Cambridge University. He served as minister for Europe in former prime minister Tony Blairs cabinet, becoming the first Indian-origin minister to occupy a senior cabinet portfolio at the time. PTI AK ABH AKJ ABH

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District of Columbia: The House of Representatives passed legislation Friday that would allow victims of the 9/11 attacks and their relatives to sue foreign governments suspected of backing acts of terrorism against the United States.

The Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act -- approved in the House by unanimous voice vote some four months after its Senate passage -- is strongly opposed by the government of Saudi Arabia, the home nation of 15 of the 19 hijackers in the September 11, 2001, attacks.

It now heads to President Barack Obama`s desk, just days before the 15th anniversary of 9/11. The White House has signaled its opposition to the measure because it would essentially waive the doctrine of sovereign immunity that protects nation states from civil suits or criminal prosecution.

"This legislation would change long-standing, international law regarding sovereign immunity. And the president of the United States continues to harbor serious concerns that this legislation would make the United States vulnerable to other court systems around the world," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said back in May after the Senate unanimously approved the bill.

The measure would allow 9/11 families to pursue cases in federal court against foreign governments, notably Saudi Arabia, and demand compensation if such governments are proven to bear some responsibility for the attacks.

Under current law, victims of terrorism can only sue countries officially designated by the State Department as sponsors of terrorism, such as Iran and Syria.

No official Saudi complicity in the al Qaeda attacks has been proven, and the kingdom has never been formally implicated. It is not a designated sponsor of terrorism.

In February, Zacarias Moussaoui, dubbed the 20th hijacker, told US lawyers that members of the Saudi royal family donated millions of dollars to al Qaeda in the 1990s.

The Saudi Embassy denied Moussaoui`s claims. But his accusations revived debate over whether the Obama administration should release a still-classified 28-page section of the 9/11 Commission Report.

The documents were declassified and released in mid-July. They showed that while the United States probed links between the government of Saudi Arabia and the 9/11 attacks, it found multiple suspicions but no proven ties.
Hyderabad: Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu on Friday said the State richly deserves the financial package announced by the Centre but asserted it will continue to seek special category status.

"We are wounded soldiers. We richly deserve the (special financial) package. I thank the Prime Minister for what has been done to the State so far but a lot more still needs to be done," he said here.

"At the same time, we are still seeking grant of special category status to Andhra Pradesh if there is any scope," Naidu said.

The NDA Government on Wednesday night announced a financial package for Andhra Pradesh that included full funding of Polavaram irrigation project, tax concessions and a special assistance, but stopped short of giving the state a special category status. Naidu's TDP is part of the BJP-led ruling coalition at the Centre.

Addressing a gathering in the Assembly lobby this evening, Naidu said he would write a letter to the Prime Minister seeking legal safeguards to the financial package.

"All that has been announced (by Union Finance Minister Arun) Jaitley should have legal backing and specific timelines for implementation. The industrial incentives should not be limited to just the backward areas but extend to all parts of the state. That's our demand," he said.

He said there was no question of any "compromise" on the promised new Railway zone at Visakhapatnam.

"The new Railway zone should be established in Visakhapatnam only and not anywhere else as being speculated. There will be no compromise on that."

Referring to Jaitley's announcement that the Centre would fund 100 per cent of the Polavaram project cost, Naidu remarked it gave him "satisfaction, happiness and confidence" about the completion of the multi-purpose venture by 2018.

"It's a relief for me," the Chief Minister said, adding the State Government would be ready to hand over the project to the Centre for execution if it promised to complete it within a specific time period.

When pointed out that the Centre has said it would fund only the irrigation component of the project, Naidu said it would include the resettlement and rehabilitation aspects as well.
Hyderabad: There was utter bedlam in the Andhra Pradesh assembly on Friday as opposition legislators jostled with marshals near the speaker's podium and uprooted the mike.

One of the television cameras near the podium was also damaged in the melee.

The issue of special status to the state rocked the house for a second consecutive day as YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) legislators, demanding an immediate debate on the matter, trooped near the Speaker's podium.

Wearing black shirts, holding placards and raising slogans to protest denial of special status to the state by the Centre, they encircled the Speaker's chair.

They also tried to prevent Speaker Kodela Sivaprasad Rao from conducting the proceedings.

Amid the din, Legislative Affairs Minister Y. Ramakrishnudu said the government will make a statement on the issue and the debate could be taken up subsequently. The lone opposition party did not relent and insisted on a debate straightaway.

There was high tension in the house as the legislators had reached close to the Speaker, who had to call in the marshals.

The security personnel of the assembly tried to keep the protesting MLAs away, leading to pushing and jostling. The Speaker repeatedly told the opposition members that they were making grave mistake by attacking the marshals.

Amid the uproar, the Speaker adjourned the House for 10 minutes. When the House reassembled, the opposition further intensified its protest.

A couple of MLAs stood on benches near the Speaker's podium. Another group was seen again pushing and jostling with the marshals. One of the MLAs uprooted the mike in front of the Speaker and threw it away.

With the situation slipping out of control, the Speaker again adjourned the house for 15 minutes.

YSRCP members alleged that the marshals attacked them while leaders of ruling Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and its alliance partner Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) accused the opposition of assaulting the marshals.

YSRCP member Chevireddy Bhaskar Reddy said the opposition had every right to protest in the House.

He said there was no question of keeping quiet as the central government has refused to give special status to the state. He alleged that TDP and BJP have betrayed the people of the state.
Vijayawada: Telugu film star and Jana Sena Party chief Pawan Kalyan on Friday launched a vitriolic attack on the Centre for denying special category state status to Andhra Pradesh and accused it of stabbing the people in the belly.

"The Congress stabbed (the people of AP) in the back (by dividing the state) and, when we sought justice, the BJP stabbed in the stomach," Kalyan lashed out, addressing the "Andhrula Atma Gourava Sabha" (Andhra's self-respect) rally in Kakinada town, around 200km from here, this evening.

Both parties should apologise to the people, he added.

Instead of beating around the bush and citing excuses in the name of 14th Finance Commission, Constitution or something else, the Centre should clearly say "we will or we will not" give special status, he said.

"Don't speak in language that people cannot comprehend. AP people had been seeking special status to the state but after keeping them in hope for over two years, the Centre finally thrust two stale 'laddus' in their hands."

He singled out Union Minister and BJP leader M Venkaiah Naidu for the attack, saying he failed to get special status for AP despite repeated promises.

"I have nothing against you personally but I differ with your political policies. Please don't do injustice to AP. Wake up and do justice," Kalyan told Venkaiah.

"Venkaiah Naidu effectively killed the BJP in AP. It's better for that party cadre to search for alternatives," he alleged.

Training his guns on the ruling Telugu Desam Party, the actor-turned-politician said, "If you can't fight (for special status), leave it to Jana Sena. We will show how to fight and what we can do.

"I strained my relationship with my eldest brother (Chiranjeevi), mother and other family members and supported the TDP-BJP combine (in the 2014 elections). I didn't care even if my life was endangered."

"Don't mortgage the self-respect of Andhra at the feet of the Centre. Hold your head high and demand for special status that is our right," he told the TDP.

"I have the capacity to corner you and cause adequate trouble for the next two-and-a-half years. You have committed those many mistakes," the 45-year-old Jana Sena leader said.

This was Kalyan's second public meeting after the one in Tirupati on August 27.

The popular filmstar, who supported the TDP-BJP combine in the 2014 elections, vowed to fight till AP was granted special status as promised.

On Wednesday night, the Centre announced a financial package for Andhra Pradesh that includes full funding of Pollavaram irrigation project, tax concessions and a special assistance, but stopped short of giving the state a special category status.
Hyderabad: Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu today rejected Leader of Opposition Y S Jaganmohan Reddy's demand of resignation for "failing" to secure special category status for the state.

"If I resign, will he get money (from the Centre)," Naidu questioned while addressing a meeting in the Assembly lobby here this evening.

Minutes earlier, Jagan addressed a press conference in the Assembly committee hall where he demanded that Chandrababu quit his post for having "welcomed" the Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's assertion that Andhra Pradesh would not be granted any special status.

"Chandrababu should not only resign but also pull out from the NDA government at the Centre. He should also tender apology to the people of Andhra Pradesh for having failed them," the YSR Congress chief said.

Responding to this, Naidu said, "Why should I resign? I will resign. Will you get funds (from the Centre)?"

TDP joined the NDA government at the Centre essentially to protect the interests of the state, he said.

"We did not join the NDA government led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 1999 though we were offered seven to eight minister posts. We only accepted the Lok Sabha Speaker's post to maintain a link between the TDP and the BJP," Naidu recalled.

The Chief Minister also found fault with the YSRC and other opposition parties for the Andhra Pradesh bandh call tomorrow saying, "Do you want an already suffering state to suffer further? There is only a bad motive behind the bandh call."
New Delhi: Political parties should do their "homework" instead of sticking to their demand of seeking special status for Andhra Pradesh, Union Minister Nirmala Sitharaman today said.

"Political parties are unfortunately sticking on to this label, special status, and making an issue out of it.

"I will appeal to them to please do some homework on what exactly the central government has extended to Andhra Pradesh. Whether this will be of significance for kick-starting the economy and making it vibrant or not should be debated on facts rather than just on emotions," she told reporters here.

She was speaking after meeting the BJP leadership of Andhra Pradesh.

Congress has attacked the Modi government for not keeping the promise of granting special category status to Andhra Pradesh, a commitment that was given by previous UPA regime.

Seeking to put a lid on the debate in Andhra Pradesh, the government yesterday said the system of according special category status for states has gone out of vogue following the recommendations of the 14th Finance Commission.

Andhra Pradesh, the government yesterday said the system of according special category status for states has gone out of vogue following the recommendations of the 14th Finance Commission.

Sitharaman also said emotions are important and everybody sympathises with the newly created state which is in "terrible financial situation" and all are committed for the development of the state.

"I would appeal to everybody to please look at the details (of the package) and look at the facts, see what commitments have been made," she added.

In order to revive the economy of Andhra Pradesh which is in a big revenue deficit situation, the Centre has worked together with the state to ensure the holistic development, she said.

The Union Minister also said the national project at Polavaram will be completely constructed at central government's expense.

"It is critical for the well being of the state," she added.

The package includes full funding of Polavaram irrigation project, tax concessions and a special assistance.

Andhra Pradesh, which financially suffered because of creation of separate state of Telangana in June 2014, will get a railway zone as also all cost incurred on the irrigation part of Polavaram project from the date it was declared a National Project on April 1, 2014, will be funded by the Centre.
Damascus: A 22-year-old female fighter nicknamed the Kurdish Angelina Jolie has reportedly been killed in a fight against global terror group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) near the Syrian-Turkey border, according to several international news websites.

According to reports, Asia Ramazan Antar died while fighting near Minbic, a town recently liberated from ISIS control.

Norway-based Kurdish supporters We want Freedom for Kurdistan had announced in a post on Facebook that Antar was killed while fighting ISIS.

However, other agencies reported that the young fighter was killed while fighting the Turkish-backed Syrian opposition fighters.

Antar belonged to the Womens Protection Units, a group of around 7-10,000 female fighters allied to the Democratic Union Party in the Kurdish region of Syria.

She had reportedly joined the group in 2014 and took part in several campaigns against the terror group.

Her social media pictures during the recent offensive on Manbij earned her the nickname of the Kurdish Angelina Jolie because of her resemblance to the Hollywood actor.
Chandrakeshwar Prasad, an elderly man who lost all his three sons within a span of 7 seven years allegedly at the hands of Shahabuddin, is now worried about the safety of his wife and himself.

By Rohit Kumar Singh: Mafia don turned politician Md. Shahabuddin is all set for a Saturday release from the Bhagalpur jail after he was granted bail by the Patna High Court earlier this week. There is massive jubilation amongst his supporters in Siwan at the prospects of Sahab's (name he is addressed by his followers) return.

"We are eagerly waiting for Sahab's return from jail. There will be more than 1500 vehicles in Sahab's cavalcade when he returns to Siwan from Bhagalpur," said Lilawati Giri, RJD leader.

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READ: Sushil Modi slams Bihar goverment for releasing Shahabuddin from jail



However, there are families in the Siwan who are getting anxious and restless at the prospects of Shahabuddin's return. There is a sense of fear that is seeping deep in the hearts of these families.

One such family is of Chandrakeshwar Prasad, an elderly man who lost all his three sons within a span of 7 seven years allegedly at the hands of Shahabuddin. Prasad's two sons Satish Raj and Girish Raj were kidnapped and murdered on August 16, 2004. The former RJD MP's hand was suspected in the killing. It was though the manner in which Prasad's both sons were killed that created a sensation. Both Satish and Girish were drenched in acid tank before being killed.

Rajiv Roshan, Prasad's third son who was also kidnapped along with his two brothers though managed to escape. He was the sole witness in the murder case of his two brothers. However, he was also gunned down allegedly by Shahabuddin's men in 2011, three days before he was to be appearing in the Court.

"We are fearing for our lives from Shahabudin. He was the one who killed all my three sons. We are not happy with grant of bail to Shahabuddin", said Chandrakeshwar Prasad.

Chandrakeshwar's wife, Kalawati is also scared after she heard about Shahabuddin's bail. A mother who lost all her three sons now has her hopes pinned only on God.

Also Read:Patna High Court grants bail to Shahabuddin in murder case, to walk out from jail soon



"We will not appeal against Shahabuddin's bail. We are now leaving everything to destiny," said Kalawati Devi.



--- ENDS ---
Washington: US President Barack Obama today warned North Korea of "serious consequences" as he consulted leaders of South Korea and Japan after Pyongyang conducted its fifth nuclear test - believed to be its most powerful ever.

"The president indicated he would continue to consult our allies and partners in the days ahead to ensure provocative actions from North Korea are met with serious consequences," White House press secretary Josh Earnest said.

He said President Obama was briefed on the situation as he flew home from a visit to Asia aboard Air Force One.

Obama consulted with South Korean President Park Geun-hye and Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in separate phone calls from the presidential aircraft.

"The president reiterated the unbreakable US commitment to the security of our allies in Asia and around the world," Earnest said.

Earlier, National Security Council spokesman Ned Price said the US was monitoring and continuing to assess the situation in view of the seismic activity on the Korean Peninsula in the vicinity of a known nuclear site.

"We are monitoring and continuing to assess the situation in close coordination with our regional partners," Price said.

His statement came after South Korean and international monitoring agencies reported an earthquake near North Korea's north-eastern nuclear test site, indicating that Pyongyang may have detonated a new atomic test to mark the 68th anniversary of the country's founding.

"Our monitoring stations picked up an unusual seismic event in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) today at 00:30 (UTC). So far, 25 of our stations are contributing to the analysis," CTBT Organisation's executive secretary Lassina Zerbo said in a statement.

"The event seems to have been slightly larger than the one our system recorded on 6 January this year and the location is very similar to that event. Our initial location estimate shows that the event took place in the area of the DPRK's nuclear test site.

"If confirmed as a nuclear test, this act constitutes yet another breach of the universally accepted norm against nuclear testing; a norm that has been respected by 183 countries since 1996," she said.
Damascus: Syria's Jaish al-Fateh rebel coalition has announced the death of its general commander in an airstrike in Aleppo city.

Abu Omar Saraqeb, the group's commander in Aleppo, was killed among other rebels when an airstrike targeted their gathering place in Aleppo on Thursday, Xinhua news agency reported.

The airstrike killed a number of leaders of the group, also known as the Army of Conquest, including one of its founders, and a commander of the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, previously known as the Al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front, a military source said.

Among those killed is also Abu Omar al-Homsi, the head of the military operations of the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham.

The commanders were meeting in the countryside of Aleppo when the strike hit.

According to the al-Jazeera, the US-led anti-terror coalition was behind the strike, making it the first US-led airstrike to target Jaish al-Fateh.

The airstrike comes as the Syrian Army on Thursday recaptured the key town of al-Ramouseh in the southern countryside of Aleppo, further tightening the noose on the rebels.

Jaish al-Fateh, an alliance of several rebel factions, was formed in March last year under the supervision and coordination of Saudi cleric Abdullah al-Muhaysini.

Some of its factions are active in the provinces of Hama and Latakia. The group seized most of Idlib province in northwestern Syria last year and it is actively supported by Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
Itanagar: The Arunachal Pradesh Police on Friday rescued the son of a panchayat vice-president who was abducted by suspected ULFA-I militants after 20 days of massive search.

Kuldeep Moran, the son of Tinsukia district panchayat vice-president Ratneshwar Moran, was abducted from Nampong in Changlang district on August 1.

Highly-placed police sources from Changlang told PTI that the police team rescued Kuldeep from a cliff in a dense jungle around 10 km from Longvi village bordering Myanmar in the afternoon.

Longvi is the last village on the Indian side and several km away from Nampong, the sources said.

A day after his abduction, Kuldeep's father had received a call from someone claiming to be from ULFA-I. The caller had asked for Rs one crore to be arranged from BJP MLA Bolin Chetia from Sadiya in upper Assam for Kuldeep's release.

The rebel group also e-mailed a statement to media houses seeking the ransom.

The rebels claimed that Kuldeep was indulging in extortion in the name of the ULFA-I. Immediately after the abduction, the Assam police sought the help of Arunachal police to trace the abducted boy.
Bengaluru: A 12-hour Karnataka bandh called by pro-Kannada and farmers outfits to protest the Supreme Court's direction to release water to Tamil Nadu on Friday brought the India's tech hub Bengaluru and Cauvery basin districts to a standstill and evoked a mixed response elsewhere in the state.

Concerned over the "extreme unrest" over the release of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to call for an immediate meeting to resolve the inter-state row.

Global software firms and many start-ups declared a holiday in support of the shutdown and due to the absence of public/private transport across the city.

"We will work on the next weekend to make up for the loss," an Infosys spokesperson told IANS.

A Wipro spokesperson said the company was closed on Friday but would work on Saturday, which is normally an off-day.

Though the protest did not affect trains and flights, hundreds of passengers who alighted at the international airport here and at railway stations were stranded in the absence of buses and cabs.

"We were caught unaware by the shutdown and are at the railway station since morning," said a passenger who came from Pune with his family.

"It is unfortunate Bengaluru is facing many shutdowns over some or the other issue," lamented SN Murthy, a techie with a leading IT firm.

Drawing Modi's attention to the unrest in the Cauvery basin on releasing 15,000 cusecs daily to Tamil Nadu for 10 days from Wednesday in compliance with the Supreme Court's September 5 order, Siddaramaiah said any more release would deprive Bengaluru of drinking water and affect crops.

"The unrest, if continued, will also impact the livelihood of the common man adversely in large parts of the state," the Chief Minister said in a letter to Modi and urged him to urgently convene a meeting of the chief ministers on the issue.

"I request you not only as Prime Minister but also as head of the federal system to call a meeting of the chief ministers of the states at a few hours' notice to resolve the impasse," he said.

Citing a precedent, when under similar circumstances, the Supreme Court on December 28, 1995, requested then Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao to resolve the issue of implementation, which was "then duly done to the satisfaction of all parties," the Chief Minister said the "unrest", if continued, would have a serious impact on the state's economy as also the IT economy, which brought enormous revenue and foreign exchange to the country.

Meanwhile, the state-run Bengaluru Metro Rail Corp, which suspended service during the shutdown, resumed operations after 6.15 pm.

Some 14,000 security personnel were deployed here, bolstered by Karnataka State Reserve Police, City Armed Reserve and Rapid Action Force.

Earlier, the state government declared a holiday for all schools and colleges to avoid inconvenience to students and teachers in the absence of transport services. Similarly, factories, offices, banks, markets, shops, malls, hotels, eateries, pubs, bars, theatres and petrol bunks were closed in support of the shutdown.

"The shutdown was in protest against the Supreme Court's order and to express resentment over the state government releasing the river water when we don't have it for drinking and irrigation," said strike leader, Vatal Nagaraj.

There were also huge protests by farmers, traders, and youth in the Mysuru region.

Hundreds of people staged demonstrations and took out rallies in Bengaluru, Mandya, Mysuru, and other cities and towns across the state.

About 5,000 people, including Kannada film stars, producers, and directors, marched in a procession from Town Hall to Freedom Park here and urged the government to stop releasing water to Tamil Nadu.

Though the shutdown was peaceful, protesters burnt tyres in the centre of roads and highways to prevent movement of even private vehicles.

Mock funerals of Siddaramaiah and his Tamil Nadu counterpart Jayalalithaa were conducted in Bengaluru, Mandya, Davangere and Tumakuru.

Posters and placards carrying pictures of Siddaramaiah and Jayalalithaa were garlanded and slapped with footwear and carried on donkeys to express anger.

"We will give our blood but not Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu. How can the government release our water to grow crops in another state when we don't have enough of it for drinking?" asked activist, Pravin Shetty.

In Mandya district, police carried out baton charges and fired teargas shells to disperse protestors and clashing with rival groups.

(With Agency inputs)
Patna: Celebrations erupted at former RJD parliamentarian Mohammad Shahabuddin`s native village in Bihar`s Siwan district and elsewhere ahead of his imminent release from jail after nearly 13 years behind bars.

The residents of his native village Pratappur in Siwan as well as the residents of Siwan town distributed sweets, burst firecrackers and announced a grand welcome for the criminal-turned-politician with a music band.

After the Patna High Court granted bail to him in a case related to the killing of a murder witness, Shahabuddin is set to be released on Saturday morning as the process for the same is in the final stage, a police official in Siwan said.

Shahabuddin`s wife Hina Sahab told the media in Siwan that she had been waiting for his release since 2003.

"I have faith in God and ultimately justice has been done to him; he will be released on bail now," she said.

Interestingly, while Shahabuddin was behind the bars, she contested two Lok Sabha polls from Siwan but without success.

Shahabuddin`s supporters, including over a dozen ruling Rashtriya Janata Dal legislators and former ministers, have plans to accord him a grand welcome on his release from Bhagalpur jail.

"We will arrange a rare welcome on his release from jail," RJD legislator Gridhari Yadav claimed on his Facebook wall on Friday.

In May, Shahabuddin was shifted from Siwan district jail to Bhagalpur Central Jail after the murder of Hindustan newspaper`s journalist Rajdeo Ranjan.

The opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders alleged that Shahabuddin had been pulling the strings from the jail in Siwan and had played a role in the killing of Ranjan.

Ranjan, the Siwan bureau chief of Hindustan, was shot dead in May in a busy market near the Station Road in the district.

Shahabuddin was lodged in Siwan jail for over a decade. He has twice been shifted to the Bhagalpur and Gaya jails for brief periods only.
Patna: Responding to Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's call for investment, Vedanta Resources founder Anil Agarwal today said he was planning to start a minerals processing plant and a world-class university at his home state Bihar.

Vedanta will build 4,000 'Nand Ghar' replacing Aganwadis as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility initiative, a majority of which would be in Bihar, he said.

Agarwal, who was here to participate in the 90th anniversary celebrations of Bihar Chamber of Commerce and Industries, said the proposed processing plant in Bihar for minerals like zinc, silver and copper would be built at a cost of Rs 50 crore to Rs 500 crore.

He welcomed Nitish Kumar government's Industrial Promotion Policy, 2016 and said that the existing law and order situation is not a deterrent for investing in the state.

"By further tightening law and order, such minor irritants could be ended, " Agarwal said.

He, however, underlined the need for providing capital subsidy to further attract investors to Bihar.

Saying that it was his "dream" to set up a world class university in Bihar, he said, "In addition to Vedanta University in Odisha, we can have another similar world-class university akin to Oxford in Bihar."

Referring to the proposed 'Nand Ghar' plan, Agarwal said it will help in improving nutrition and education for children and economically empower the rural women and benefit 30 million children and women.

"We have asked the Union ministry of Women and Child Welfare to identify 4,000 Aganwadis, majority of which should be in Bihar that would be adopted by us under the project," he said.

'Nand Ghar' are quake proof structures constructed in Israeli style that would impart education to children with the help of TVs and internet and also provide packed food to them, he said.

Vice-president Hamid Ansari was the chief guest at the programme, which was attended by Governor Ramnath Kovind, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and Deputy Chief Minister Tejaswi Prasad Yadav.

Agarwal was born at Goria Toli in Patna and is an alumnus of Miller High School. His group was the first Indian company to be listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2003.

Vedanta's Cairn India produces 30 per cent of total oil in the country while Hindustan Zinc, the world's second largest zinc producer, makes 85 per cent of total zinc.

The group has business presence in four continents -- Australia, Africa, Europe and Asia -- with major businesses operating in India.
New Delhi: A court on Friday sent sacked AAP minister Sandeep Kumar, arrested on charges of rape on a complaint by a woman who figured in a video with him, to 14 days in judicial custody.

Special Judge Poonam Chaudhary remanded Kumar in judicial custody till September 23 after he was presented before her on expiry of his police custody.

The police told court that the accused was not required for further custodial interrogation.

The former Social Welfare and Women and Child Development Minister in Delhi government was arrested last Saturday after a woman approached Sultanpuri police station in north Delhi with a complaint of sexual harassment against him.

He was booked under sections 376 (punishment for rape) and 328 (causing hurt by means of poison, with intent to commit an offence) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

He was also charged under the Information Technology Act`s section 67A (punishment for publishing or transmitting of material containing sexually explicit act in electronic form).

The woman had alleged in her complaint that she was sexually harassed by Kumar at his office-cum-residence in the Sultanpuri area of the capital where she had gone to get her ration card made.

She had also alleged that Kumar had offered her a spiked cold drink following which she could not recall what exactly happened with her and how she had acted.

A Delhi Police team on Sunday visited the same house where the woman had alleged she was raped.

Kumar was sacked after an alleged "sex video" involving him became viral.

He later defended himself, saying he had resigned on his own and alleged that he had been targeted because he was a Dalit.
New Delhi: Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain told the Assembly on Friday that he will seek a probe from Delhi Police into the alleged leak of the security detail of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.

Jain was responding to the issue raised by Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) legislator from Laxmi Nagar Nitin Tyagi during the special Assembly session. Tyagi asked why action was not taken against those protesting against Kejriwal at the New Delhi railway station on Thursday and demanded a proper probe into the issue.

The BJP Mahila Morcha had staged a demonstration here at the New Delhi railway station against Kejriwal when he was about to leave for Punjab.

Jain said that "manhandling" and "attack" on Kejriwal at the railway station was "pre-planned" and came a day after security details of the chief minister came to the media ahead of his visit to Punjab.

He said that giving out security details of the chief minister and of his tour programme to Punjab was "a serious issue" and he will ask Delhi Police Commissioner to probe the matter. Security details of the chief minister should not be shared, he stressed.

Tourism Minister Kapil Mishra said: "Whatever happened yesterday (Thursday) has diminished the image of Indian Railway as well as of the country".

"How is it possible that such huge gathering of protesters was allowed to reach the platform and managed to manhandle the CM?" he asked.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday refused to stay as of now the Delhi High Court ruling that Delhi was a Union Territory (UT) and the Lieutenant Governor (LG) its administrative head.

The apex court issued notice to Centre on Aam Aadmi Party governments six appeals against Delhi HC order giving primacy to Lt Governor in administration of NCT.

The SC refused to stay for now the operation of HC verdict, also LG's direction to set up panel to examine AAP government's past decisions.

The top court granted six weeks to Centre to file replies and fixed them for final hearing on November 15.

The Arvind Kejrwial-led AAP government had filed the appeal questioning all findings arrived at by the high court including that the LG is the head as Delhi is a UT.

The verdict had come on a batch of petitions, including those filed by the BJP-led Centre and Delhi government, on the issues relating to exercise of legislative powers and the executive control in the administration of National Capital Territory of Delhi. The high court had dismissed the AAP governments plea to quash July 23, 2014 notification, issued by MHA, at a time when Delhi did not have an elected government and was under direct rule of the Centre, restricting the executive power of GNCTD, acting through ACB, to investigate officers and employees of the city government only.

The Delhi government on May 28 last year had moved the high court, a day after the Centre had approached the Supreme Court challenging a high court order which had termed as suspect the Union Home Ministrys notification barring the city governments ACB from acting against its officers in criminal offences.

The Delhi government had argued before the high court that in a democratic set up, there cannot be two reporting authorities  the LG and the Chief Minister.
New Delhi: Over 36 percent of students exercised their franchise on Friday in the keenly contested Delhi University Students' Union (DUSU) polls with the voting percentage recording a dip of over 7 percent from last year's overall turnout of 43.3 percent.

Meanwhile, the students' council elections also took place in 44 colleges where Congress-affiliated National Students Union of India (NSUI) won the five-member panels in 33 colleges while the BJP's student wing Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) emerged victorious in 11 colleges.

While DUSU is the representative body of the students from most colleges and faculties of the varsity, colleges have their individual students' councils.

The Chief Election Officer for DUSU elections, D S Rawat, said the voting went off peacefully with 35.89 per cent of students casting their vote in the morning leg of polls.

"The polling which was conducted in two phases went off smoothly. The maximum turnout of 91 per cent was recorded at the Ayurvedic and Unani Tibbia College and the minimum was in Campus Law Centre II at 6.79 per cent," he said.

"Minor technical glitches were reported in Aurobindo College in the morning phase but was rectified within a few minutes," he added.

The counting of votes will be taken up tomorrow after which the results will be declared.

"The university had deployed a team of observers who visited the 51 centres where the polling took place in teams of two to check violations of the code of conduct.

"DU administration had also installed CCTV cameras, besides hiring commercial videographers, to record election activities to ensure free and fair polling," Rawat said.

According to a senior police official, the polling went off peacefully and no incidents of violence were reported.

"A huge contingent of police was deployed at various polling centres of the university to ensure that no untoward incident takes place.

"The movement of vehicles was also restricted on Chatra Marg in North Campus to avoid any chaos or discomfort to students. The polling was peaceful," the official added.

While four colleges didn't conduct their students' union polls, many students kept away from the DUSU central panel polls.

The student outfits attributed the low turnout to the new policy of allowing only those students to vote who took admission and paid their fees by August 31.

Some students were also turned away by colleges from the voting counters as they did not have ID cards.

Polling began in morning colleges from 8.30 am and concluded by 12.30 pm, while the students of evening colleges can cast their votes from 3 pm to 7 pm.

While the political slugfest at DU has over the decades been between NSUI and ABVP, Left-affiliated All India Students Association (AISA) is vying for the central panel posts with a series of campaigns done by the outfit in recent months to thwart alleged attempts of attacks on university campuses across the country.

Last year, ABVP had swept all four seats trouncing NSUI and AAP's Chhatra Yuva Sangharsh Samiti (CYSS). The AAP's student wing is not contesting the polls this year.

A total of 17 candidates are in the fray for the four posts of DUSU office-bearers.

While seven candidates are in the race for the post of President, 4 nominations have been validated for the post of Vice-President. With a total of 1,23,246 voters, polling is taking place at 117 booths in 51 colleges.
Shahabuddin who has been languishing in Siwan jail for last 11 years was granted bail in an eyewitness murder case by the Patna High Court.

By Rohit Kumar Singh: Dreaded gangster turned politician Md. Shahabuddin is all set to be released from jail on Saturday after he was granted bail by the Patna High Court on Wednesday. Shahabuddin who has been languishing in Siwan jail for last 11 years was granted bail in an eyewitness murder case on Wednesday by the Patna High Court.

Rajiv Roshan, an eyewitness in the acid attack case of Siwan was gunned down allegedly by Shahabuddin's sharp shooters in 2011. Roshan was eyewitness in the murder of his two brothers Satish Raj and Girish Raj who were sons of a noted businessman Chandrakeshwar Prasad. Satish and Girish were kidnapped and murdered on August 16, 2004 in Siwan, the turf of the former RJD MP Shahabuddin. However, it was the brutal manner in which both brothers were killed that shocked everyone. Both, brother were drenched in acid before being killed allegedly on Shahabuddin's direction.

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READ: Sushil Modi slams Bihar goverment for releasing Shahabuddin from jail



Rajiv who was the sole witness in the killing of his two brothers was to appear before the court three days later from when he was killed. Shahabudin was sentenced to life imprisonment in the killing of the two brothers by a special court in December, 2015. He, however, got bail in March 2016 in this case.

"We are very scared now that Shahabuddin is returning. There is threat that he may also eliminate me and my wife," said Chandrakeshwar Prasad, father of the three brothers.

39 CASES AGAINST SHAHABUDDIN



Known as terror of Siwan, Shahabuddin has almost 39 cases against his name relating to murders and kidnapping. In 38 cases, either he has been acquitted in many of them or has been granted bail. The murder case of Rajiv Roshan was the 39th case which held him inside the jail. After the High Court granted bail, it paved way for his release from the jail.

Shahabuddin who was recently inducted into the national executive of the RJD is considered very close to Lalu Prasad. Sources say, Lalu played a key role in Shahabuddin's ouster from jail as the Bihar government did not pursue the case of eyewitness Rajiv Roshan's murder seriously.

Shahabuddin's role also came under scanner in the killing of a Rajdev Ranjan, bureau chief of a Hindi daily in May this year. Ranjan was killed after he was gunned down allegedly by Shahabuddin's sharp shooters. Shahabuddin was lodged in Siwan jail till then was immediately shifted to Bhagalpur jail in order to prevent him from influencing the probe.

It was Bihar CM Nitish Kumar who soon after coming to power in November 2005 cracked down on Shahabuddin and pushed him inside the jail.

Shahabuddin has been listed as "A" type history sheeter by Bihar government which means that a criminal who is beyond reforms.

Also Read:

Patna High Court grants bail to Shahabuddin in murder case, to walk out from jail soon



--- ENDS ---
Paris: Three women arrested after a car loaded with gas cylinders was found near Notre Dame cathedral had been planning to attack a Paris railway station, the French Interior Ministry said.

The Peugeot 607 was found early on Sunday laden with seven gas cylinders and three jerry cans of diesel, said police, although no detonators were discovered.

"A group has been neutralised. Others are out there," French President Francois Hollande said on the sidelines of a summit of southern European states in Athens on Friday.

The car`s discovery triggered a terrorism investigation and revived fears about further attacks in a country where Islamist militants have killed more than 230 people since January 2015.

One of the women stabbed a police officer during her arrest before being shot and wounded, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said late on Thursday.

"These three women aged 39, 23 and 19 had been radicalised, were fanatics and were in all likelihood preparing an imminent, violent act," Cazeneuve said in a televised statement.

TV footage showed a policeman leaving the scene of the arrests in the Boussy-Saint-Antoine suburb, some 30 km (20 miles) southeast of Paris, carrying a large knife.

Scores of radicalised people of French and other nationalities are in Syria and Iraq fighting for Islamic State. Many of those involved in recent attacks in France have either taken part in the fighting or had plans to.

France is among the countries bombing Islamic State strongholds, and the group has urged supporters to launch more attacks on French soil.

The Interior Ministry said all train stations had been put on alert but that the intended target had been the Gare de Lyon, a mainline train station less than 3 km (two miles) from Notre Dame in central Paris.

The Interior Ministry official said the youngest of the three women, a 19 year-old whose father owned the car, was already suspected by police of wanting to wage jihad for Islamic State in Syria. She had written a letter pledging allegiance to the militant Islamist group, the official said.

The car`s owner was taken into custody earlier this week but later released. He had gone to police on Sunday to report that his daughter had disappeared with his car, officials said.

Four people were detained earlier in the week, and another man, the fiance of the 23-year-old woman, has also since been arrested, police sources said.

The newly arrested man has a connection to another attack in which a police couple was killed near Paris in June, the sources said, identifying him as the brother of a friend of the police killer, Larossi Abballa.
Brussels: Belgium's two nuclear power plants will be guarded by a special armed anti-terrorist unit from early next year, a spokeswoman for Belgian Interior Minister Jan Jambon said on Friday.

"We have decided to create a new police unit which will be in charge of surveillance of buildings such as embassies, courts and tribunals and nuclear plants," the spokeswoman told AFP.

The force, comprising around 1,660 armed police officers, will be deployed within the next few months.

Nuclear plants in Belgium were placed under guard by 140 military personnel as part of an anti-terrorist plan following the November 2015 attacks in Paris.

Belgium also temporarily boosted its security at nuclear plants after the March 22 attacks on Brussels's airport and metro system.

In February, investigators probing the Paris attacks found video footage of a senior Belgian nuclear official at the property of a key suspect.

The reinforced security is "not a response to a concrete threat," said a spokesperson for Engie Electrabel.

"It has been in the planning for months and is part of our continued improvement of security at our sites."
Paris: The French Police have arrested the boyfriend of one of three women held over the discovery of a car laden with gas cylinders in Paris, sources close to the probe said on Friday.

The man, arrested late yesterday, was known to intelligence services for links to radical Islam, the sources said.

His brother is in custody over suspected links to Larossi Abballa, a jihadist who killed a police officer and his girlfriend in a Paris suburb in June, the sources said.

Three female suspects in the probe into the car found near Notre Dame cathedral in central Paris were also arrested yesterday, with Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve saying they were believed to be preparing attacks.

One of the women, a daughter of the car's owner, was reportedly shot and injured during the arrest.

She had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group in a letter, according to a source close to the investigation.

A police source said security services had issued a warning Thursday about a possible attack on train stations in Paris and the suburb where the women lived.

Four people - two brothers and their girlfriends - were already in custody over the car, found just a few hundred metres (yards) from the Notre Dame cathedral, an area always thronged with tourists.
Attica: Seeing Europe at a turning point, Greece will seek common ground at a mini-summit that opened in Athens on Friday with fellow southern EU states struggling with migration and austerity.

"Europe`s Mediterranean countries can and must raise their voice", Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said in an interview with news site EurActiv ahead of the seven-nation huddle.

With French President Francois Hollande and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi in attendance, the gathering comes less than two weeks after rescuers saved a one-day record of 6,500 migrants making the perilous journey across the Mediterranean to Europe.

"It is now common knowledge that Europe is at a critical crossroads," Tsipras added.

"Economic stagnation, social cohesion problems, the rise of Euroscepticism and isolationism, the strengthening of far-right populist phenomena, are issues that we cannot bypass."

The four-hour conclave is also a chance to craft a common platform ahead of a major summit in Bratislava next month to chart the union`s post-Brexit future.

The 27 EU leaders -- the entire bloc, except Britain -- will gather September 16 to discuss the fallout from the British vote in June to quit the EU.

The so-called Visegrad group -- made up of Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Poland -- has demanded a tougher EU stance on migration.

"Visegrad countries cannot be allowed to dominate the debate on Europe`s future," Tsipras said in an interview with French daily Le Monde on Friday.

Leaders of Portugal, Malta and Cyprus are also expected in Athens, though Spain`s acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy will skip the meeting amid desperate efforts in Madrid to form a coalition government.

A showdown is expected in Bratislava, with the Visegrad four already holding their own meeting in June to present a united front."There is a clear need for southern EU states to coordinate their position in order to counterbalance the Visegrad bloc," said analyst George Pagoulatos.

More than 850,000 people -- most of them fleeing conflict in war-ravaged Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan -- arrived on the Greek islands last year alone after often risking their lives on unseaworthy boats and dinghies.

"We need to reach a European asylum system that is realistic and shows solidarity, instead of shifting the burden to entry states," Greece`s junior foreign minister for European affairs, Nikos Xydakis, said in an interview with AFP.

Human Rights Watch called on Greece Friday to end the detention of migrant and refugee children, pointing to "cramped and filthy conditions."

Greek authorities registered more than 3,300 unaccompanied asylum-seeking and other migrant children who arrived in Greece in the first seven months of 2016, HRW said.

Tsipras, an anti-austerity champion who says the fiscal straitjacket favoured by Germany will never allow weak economies such as Greece`s to recover, is also trying to swing more EU states to his vision.

The EU stability pact, whose budget deficit limits are already tested by France, Italy, Spain and Portugal, "is not the word of God, but rules we have agreed to and must improve", Tsipras told Le Monde on Thursday.

"We must collectively agree if we are a European Union or a German Union," he added.

Even so, Friday`s meeting is unlikely to bang the austerity revision drum too loudly to avoid antagonising Berlin, which has otherwise proven very sympathetic to southern states on migration, Pagoulatos notes.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble was not optimistic over the impact of the gathering.

"It is a meeting of party leaders, I won`t comment. In addition, when socialist party leaders meet nothing terribly intelligent comes out of it most of the time," he told reporters.
Paris: Three "radicalised and fanatical" women who allegedly planned an "imminent and violent" attack in France have been arrested, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve has said.

"An anti-terrorism operation led to the arrest of three women linked to an abandoned car containing gas cylinders on Thursday," Xinhua news agency quoted Cazeneuve as saying.

The suspects aged 19, 23 and 39 were "likely preparing a violent and imminent action", he said.

A police officer was injured on the shoulder when one of the women attacked him with a knife in the southeast of Paris, the minister said.

The 19-year-old woman is known to the police for attempting to leave for Syria.

The car owner, who is on the intelligence services watchlist for radicalisation, was taken into custody earlier this week but later released due to lack of evidence.

He had gone to police on Sunday to report that his daughter had disappeared with his car, officials said.

A bar employee working near Notre Dame had first raised an alarm on Sunday after noticing a gas cylinder in the back seat of a grey Peugeot 607, the police said.

The car, with no registration plates, contained seven gas cylinders, including an empty one on the passenger seat and three cans of diesel fuel. It was found parked in a no-parking area with its hazard lights flashing.

"It may have been that they were on a test run," said a source close to the case.

"There was nobody in the car, and the cannisters were not connected to any detonator or explosives. Documents written in Arabic were also found in the car," The Daily Mail quoted the source as saying.

Florence Berthout, mayor of Paris`s Fifth Arrondissement, said the incident had highlighted the need to beef up security and put more police on patrol in one of the world`s most visited cities.

This comes after four people -- two brothers and their girlfriends -- were arrested for links with radical Islamists.

The first couple, a 34-year-old man and a 29-year-old woman, were arrested on a motorway in southern France and are known to the security services for links to radical Islamists. The man`s brother and his girlfriend, both aged 26, were arrested late Wednesday.

At least 84 people were killed and more than 250 injured when a heavy duty white truck ploughed into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day on July 14 in the southern city of Nice.
New Delhi: The Social Justice Ministry has proposed release of 90 percent of the total allocated funds to Gujarat for various welfare schemes for Dalits, two months after seven youths of the community were flogged by cow vigilantes' in the state leading to widespread protests there.

"The Department of Social Justice and Empowerment has proposed for sanction of Rs 8.60 crore under the centrally sponsored schemes for implementation of the Protection of Civil Rights Act, and the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act during the current financial year," it said.

The state government can also use funds for awareness generation, special courts, incentives for inter-caste marriage and vigilance squads, according to a proposal prepared by the ministry.

According to sources, the total budgetary allocation for the state is Rs 9.50 crore, and the move is aimed to ensure that there should not be any shortage of funds for the welfare of Dalits in the state.

The move came nearly two months after seven Dalit youths were flogged allegedly by self-styled cow vigilantes at Una in Gujarat, which triggered outrage and protests across the state.

The state police filed a charge sheet against 34 people for the Una incident, including four police personnel who were also arrested on charges of dereliction of duty.

The state CID has also filed a separate charge sheet against three minors in the case before the Juvenile Justice Board at Junagadh.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday said that a three-judge bench will examine the validity of the Gujarat government ordinance for 10 per cent reservation for the economically weaker sections of society which was quashed by the Gujarat High Court in August.

While saying that the matter would be heard by a three-judge bench, the bench of Chief Justice T.S. Thakur, Justice A.M. Khanwilkar and Justice D.Y. Chandrachud said that the admissions made prior to the quashing of the ordinance by the High Court would not be distributed.

The bench said that after the completion of the pleadings, the three-judge bench would take a call if the issue has to be heard and decided by the constitution bench.

The court said this as Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi told the bench that ultimately this matter has to be heard by the constitution bench.

Issuing notice to the affected students who had challenged the notification providing 10 per cent reservation, the court in its order said that all the admissions made prior to the quashing of the ordinance by the High Court would not be affected and no further action toward the implementation of the notification qua admission and services is possible.

The Gujarat government had issued an ordinance giving 10 per cent reservation to economically weaker sections in the wake of the Patel Patidar agitation seeking reservation in educational institutions and services.
Chandigarh: The biryani meat samples collected by Police and animal husbandry department officials from meat-sellers across Mewat in Haryana have been found positive for beef, according to a report.

According to News18.com, a report prepared by Lala Lajpat Rai University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences in Hisar has confirmed the presence of beef in all the seven meat samples of biryani.

Dr Shrikant Sharma, vice-chancellor of the university was quoted as saying that the laboratory's report has already been sent to the government.

On August 24, the Haryana government issued orders to collect Biryani samples to check alleged beef consumption in Biryani at shops and markets in the area and seven meat samples were collected from food stalls for lab test.

"All seven samples of biryani collected by the Mewat police have been found positive for beef. This is a serious offence," a government source was also quoted as saying.

Deputy Director of Mewat Animal Husbandry Department Narender Kumar further informed that more samples will be collected if such complaints were received.

The Cow Protection Task Force (CPTF) has spruced up its network of informers in areas where beef consumption is suspected to be high, official sources said.

Bharti Arora, CPTFs nodal officer and the Deputy Inspector General of Police, said they are yet to receive the report on the seven samples taken from Mundaka.

Arora, who was appointed the nodal officer on July 5, added that checking biryanis is a part of other measures taken by the task force to curb beef consumption.

Arora held a meeting with Mewat superintendent of police Kuldeep Singh and chairperson of Haryana Gau Seva Aayog Bhani Ram Mangla at Nuh on Tuesday and directed officials to be on their toes in the wake of complaints about the usage of beef in biryani.

Meanwhile, Haryana Congress vice-president Aftab Ahmed said the measures were a "humiliation to the minority community and the particular area".

Earlier in March, the Haryana government enforced Haryana Gauvansh Sanrakshan and Gau Samvardhan Act 2015 making cow slaughter punishable with rigorous imprisonment up to 10 years and a fine of Rs 1 lakh.

Meanwhile, police and cow vigilantes in Haryana are keeping close vigil to avoid any such incident in view of Eid al-Adha to be celebrated next week.
New Delhi: Himachal Pradesh Forest Minister Thakur Singh Bharmouri on Friday asked the central government to lift the ban on export of Rhesus monkeys to help the state in getting rid of the monkey menace.

Raising the issue with top officials of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change here, he said the ban on exporting monkeys was imposed in 1978.

To tackle the abnormal increase in their population in the state, Bharmouri also proposed to explore the possibility of translocation of monkeys to the north eastern region as the habitat there is congenial for them.

Himachal Pradesh on August 31 announced a cash incentive of Rs. 300 for killing a monkey in areas outside the forests where they have been declared as vermin by the central government.

A notification was issued on March 14 by the central government declaring monkeys vermin in Shimla for a period of six months.

Another notification was issued in May to treat monkeys as vermin for a period of one year in 38 tehsils of the state including Chamba, Kangra, Una, Bilaspur, Sirmaur, Kullu, Hamirpur, Solan and Mandi.

The minister also sought central funding for the state`s Rs. 1,300 crore project named "Himachal Pradesh: Forests for Prosperity" that aims to increase economic development and increase rural livelihood.
Panaji: Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Friday said he wants the Indian Coast Guard to extend Prime Minister Narendra Modi`s Swachh Bharat Mission to the seas.

Speaking during a commissioning ceremony of an Indian Coast Guard offshore patrol vessel (OPV) "Sarathi", in Goa`s Vasco town, Singh said that since the waters off the Indian coastline were threatened with pollution, the maritime force should start a Swachh Sagar Abhiyaan to ensure clean seas off India.

"We are running the Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan on land, there is a need to run a Swachh Sagar Abhiyaan in our seas. Indian Coast Guard has been working in the field of pollution control in the seas in the past. Therefore they should have no difficult in running the Swachh Sagar Abhiyaan," Singh said.

"I believe, that the Indian Coast Guard should also link security of the coastline to the safety of the marine ecosystem. The Indian Coast Guard needs to be alert to the perils of pollution along the coastline. For example, if there is an oil spill or the coastline is being sullied on purpose, then it is the duty and the responsibility of the force to stop it," he also said.
By Rahul Noronha: Agriculture has unmistakably been the thrust area for the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government in Madhya Pradesh. Be it a separate agriculture cabinet, the payment of bonus on procurement of wheat (now withdrawn on orders of the centre), bank loans for farmers at zero percent interest, focus on development of irrigation facilities and market interventions whenever the agriculture community is in distress, the latest example of this being the procurement of onions by the government when prices crashed- the CM's years in government have been marked by focus on the agriculture sector.

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A high growth rate in agriculture has been achieved, which has been acknowledged by the union government over the past 4 years. However doubts persist about the growth figures with other statistics pointing to a crisis in agriculture. The CM speaks India Today Associate Editor, Rahul Naronha, on the achievements, the doubts raised and future planning for the sector. Excerpts:



Q: MP has recorded phenomenal agri growth in last decade. How much of this is people driven and how much of it is government driven?

A: It is a mix. While farmers of the state consecrated their toil to grow more, the government backed their endeavour with financial and policy support. We followed a two-pronged strategy. On the one hand we took effective measures to reduce cost of farming by providing subsidized power, interest free cooperative loans, timely and adequate supply of seeds, fertilizers and other inputs; on the other we ensured that farmers get remunerative returns of their produce. Besides, we made suitable amendments in the rules to ensure maximum relief to the farmers affected by natural calamities.

Q: Your detractors say the agriculture growth figures are cooked up. Agriculture is actually in distress. Your comments.

A: This an insult to our farmers. The figures are not arrived at by state government. The final figures are verified by the Central government and it is only after proper verification that GoI confers the Krishi Karman Award. Madhya Pradesh has been receiving this prestigious award for last four years in a row. Of course, a lot still needs to be done to further improve farm sector to desired level. We are sparing no efforts to this end. Our roadmap is in place to double incomes of farmers in next five years. Besides, Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana is being implemented in right earnest. More than 40 lakh farmers are going to be covered by end of the year under it in the state.

Q: As per the previous census 1.1 million people have quit agriculture as a profession. Your comments.

A: As a result of above mentioned measures the trend of farmers quitting their ancestral occupation of farming has been considerably checked. Now they look forward to a bright future in this occupation. We have placed equal emphasis on horticulture and allied sectors. Horticulture crops are cash crops and farmers are increasingly taking to horticulture. They are also adopting modern farm techniques. Things are improving fast and the trend will further reduce in the years to come.

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Q: In a developed economy, the share of agriculture in GDP is lowest compared to production and services. Do you want Madhya Pradesh to continue in agriculture or the future is about enabling a shift of people from agriculture to other professions?

A: Already service sector and industry have emerged as major job providers. I realize that agriculture alone cannot sustain the economy. That is why, greater push has been given to industry and service sectors. Along with major industries we are promoting MSME in a big way by providing lucrative incentives to micro, small and medium industries. We have implemented an entrepreneur friendly MSME policy with suitable provisions to create an enabling atmosphere. Cottage industries are also growing fast following availability of adequate power supply in rural areas plus the financial, technical and marketing support from the government.

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Shillong: Meghalaya Assembly Speaker Abu Taher Mondal on Friday admitted a resolution seeking his removal and posted the matter for discussion on September 16, the last day of the session.

The resolution was moved by opposition National People's Party legislator James K Sangma who accused Mondal of curtailing the vibrancy of the legislature and delaying construction of the Assembly building.

Sangma moved the resolution under Clause(c) of Article 179 of the Constitution and Rule 135 of the Rules and Procedure of Business in the Meghalaya Legislative Assembly on the first day of the autumn session.

"Whereas, Speaker A T Mondal has failed to carry out his duties and responsibilities as a Speaker. Now therefore, this House expresses its want of confidence in him and hereby resolves to remove him from the office of the Speaker," the resolution said.

The Speaker allowed the motion after 12 opposition MLAs stood up in support of the resolution. He had survived a similar move by the Opposition in March.

Sangma said the resolution was moved in view of the short duration of session despite repeated requests. "By doing this, the Speaker is curtailing the vibrancy of the legislature. He is not allowing the legislature to function properly and effectively which is why we feel it is high time we give a strong message in the form of this resolution seeking his removal."

There are many other issues and the one on construction of Meghalaya assembly building has been pending for the past 12 years. "It is very unfortunate and very shameful that we as people of Meghalaya, specially we as legislators, as law makers and members of this august house don't have an assembly building even till date," he said.

Mondal announced that the letter received from Chief Minister Mukul Sangma informing about the resignation of Congress MLA W D Sangma from the post of Parliamentary Secretary was accepted.

Meanwhile, the Speaker also nominated four MLAs--Dikkanchi D Shira, W D Sangma, Titosstarwell Chyne and Witting Mawsor-- to the panel of chairmen.
Kathmandu: Nepal Foreign Minister Prakash Sharan Mahat will travel to New Delhi on Sunday to prepare ground for the visit of Prime Minister Prachanda to India, his first foreign trip after assuming office.

Prime Minister Prachanda is embarking on a four-day state visit to India from September 15 at the invitation of his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi.

Mahat will hold talks with senior Indian leaders, including his counterpart Sushma Swaraj and discuss about the preparations and agenda of the Prime Minister's forthcoming official visit, the first foreign trip of Prachanda after taking charge of the government last month.

This will also be the first foreign trip of Foreign Minister Mahat after assuming office.

During the visit, Mahat is likely to discuss various areas of cooperation with the Indian officials, sources said.

Nepal's relationship with India had soured after a months-long border blockade last year by ethnic minority protesters over the new Constitution which they claimed marginalised them.

Kathmandu accused India of imposing an "unofficial blockade" on the landlocked nation in support of the Madhesis, who share close cultural, linguistic and family links with Indians across the border.

Meanwhile, a senior Madhesi leader said that the Prime Minister should address the current problem facing the country before embarking on a visit to India.

"The Prime Minister should have resolved the current political problem before leaving for New Delhi," said Upendra Yadav, chairman of Madhesi Peoples Rights Forum Nepal, one of the agitating Madhesi parties.

"The prestige and dignity of the country would be in stake if the Prime Minister visits the southern neighbour without addressing the current problem," he said.

He urged the Prime Minister to initiate the process of amending the Constitution for addressing the demands raised by the Madhesi Front.
Srinagar: The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has invited chairman of moderate Hurriyat Conference Mirwaiz Umar Farooq for its annual 'Coordination Meeting of Foreign Ministers' as well as the 'Meeting of Contact Group on Jammu and Kashmir' in New York later this month.

Mirwaiz got the invitation through a letter from OIC Director-General of Cabinet Yusuf Al-Othaimeen, which was released to media by the Hurriyat Conference here today.

"I have the honour to inform you that the annual Coordination Meeting of the OIC Foreign Ministers as well as the Meeting of the OIC Contact Group on Jammu and Kashmir will be held during the 71st session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) at the UN Headquarters in New York, on 19-22 September 2016.

"In this regard, I have the pleasure to invite you to attend the above-mentioned meetings in New York, as an invitee," Othaimeen said in the letter addressed to Mirwaiz.

The Hurriyat said the participation of Mirwaiz is not possible as he continues to be under arrest and his passport stands seized by the government for the last four years.

Mirwaiz, who is part of the separatist camp spearheading the ongoing agitation in the valley, was arrested on August 26 after remaining under house arrest since July 9. He is currently lodged at Cheshma Shahi sub-jail here.
New Delhi: A number of videos go viral every day, but there are only some which move you. This video showing a boy asking for money from Muslims to celebrate Ganesha festival is one such recording which will touch your heart.

Shot in one of the states of a communally sensitive country like India, the video shows the true colour of humanity.

Watch the video here:
New Delhi: Rajya Sabha member Subramanian Swamy on Friday stoked a row by saying that controversial Islamic preacher Zakir Naik gave Rs 50 lakhs to Rajiv Gandhi Foundation in 2011.

The NRI televangelist shot into prominence recently after an accused allegedly involved in a terror attack in Bangladesh claimed he was inspired by Naik's preaching and teachings.

After that the Mumbai Police examined several of Naik's sermons, speeches and his NGO Islamic Research Foundation (IRF) literature to ascertain if he was using provocative or inflammatory language that had the potential to create a communal rift.

Taking to Twitter, Swamy said:

Guess how that notorious terrorist compliant Zakir Naik gave to TDK's RG Foundation? Rs 50 lakes in 2011  Subramanian Swamy (@Swamy39) September 9, 2016

The televangelist is on a tour of some Arab and African countries since the past couple of months and addressed Mumbai media via teleconferencing on July 15.

The Rajiv Gandhi Foundation was established in 1991 to realise the vision of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi.
Jammu: Asserting that Balochistan is a very important security concern for India, Union Minister Jitendra Singh on Friday said Pakistan should put an end to "operational atrocities" unleashed by Islamabad in the region.

"Balochistan is a very important security concern for India", Singh told reporters here.

Singh was replying to a question about India's reaction to the atrocities and operational terror by Pakistan on the people of Balochistan.

"You cannot allow your neighbourhood to be on fire because sooner or later it is going to impact you, you cannot build a heaven inside and leave a hell outside," the minister said.

Singh said that it is example of a boundary wall with another house and the other house being constantly in trouble and sooner or later you run a risk of being impacted by it.

He asked Pakistan to put an end to operational atrocities and bring peace in the region.

The minister further said "Therefore, it is also part of our responsibility to safeguard the security concerns of India".

"We have to ensure that Balochistan, as a situation, is peaceful, is normal and there is an end to operational atrocities unleashed by Islamabad," Singh said.
New Delhi: Plans are afoot to deploy additional contingents of security forces and impose prohibitory orders under Section 144 CrPC in sensitive areas of the Kashmir Valley in view of the forthcoming Eid celebrations.

Officials said a "concerned" central government has chalked out a plan of action to ensure peace and security during Eid-ul Azha on September 12 with steps like avoiding large congregations on the streets and advising people to celebrate at home.

They said additional forces are expected to be deployed in the Valley to beef up security measures.

Section 144 of CrPC (unlawful assembly) in selected and sensitive areas in the Valley would be imposed to keep gathering of crowds under check.

Normal life has remained paralysed for the 63rd consecutive day today in the unrest-hit Valley where 73 persons have been killed in the violence which erupted after a militant Burhan Wani was gunned down by security forces.

The separatists' groups have extended the shutdown call till September 16.
Srinagar: Curfew was on Friday reimposed in many parts of Kashmir for maintaining law and order ahead of Friday prayers.

Normal life remained paralysed for 63rd consecutive day in the unrest-hit Valley where 73 persons have been killed and several thousand others injured in the violence which erupted after Hizbul Mujahideen militant Burhan Wani was gunned down by security forces.

"Curfew has been imposed in many parts of Srinagar city and major towns of the Valley as a precautionary measure in view of apprehensions of violent protests after Friday prayers," a police official said.

He said 14 police station areas of Srinagar -- the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir -- and towns of Anantnag, Pulwama, Kulgam, Shopian, Pampore, Awantipora, Tral, Baramulla, Pattan and Palhallan have been placed under curfew.

There are restrictions on the movement and assembly of people in rest of the Valley, he said.

Normal life remained crippled due to curfew and the shutdown call by separatists groups.

While shops, business establishments and petrol pumps continued to remain shut during the day, markets in Srinagar and other places came to life late in the evening yesterday in view of the 12-hour relaxation in the strike from 6 PM announced by separatists.

The separatists have extended the shutdown programme till September 16.

Schools, colleges and other educational institutions in the Valley continued to remain closed.

The attendance in government offices and banks, which had improved significantly over the past four days, dipped today owing to curfew and apprehension of violence.

The roads and streets, which had witnessed increased movement of private vehicles in recent days, wore a deserted look and public transport continued to be off the roads.
Srinagar: The authorities on Friday foiled a scheduled press conference here by senior hardline separatist leader Syed Ali Geelani, officials said.

Geelani had called a press conference at his uptown Hyderpora residence in Srinagar where he has been placed under house arrest.

As journalists arrived outside Geelani's residence around 11 am, a large contingent of police and Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) intervened, asking the media persons to leave the place.

The press conference could not be held due to the intervention of the security forces.
Bengaluru: With the "extreme unrest" in Karnataka over release of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah today requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi to call forthwith "on a few hours notice" a meeting of chief ministers of the two states to end the impasse.

As the Cauvery row hotted up with the state observing a 12-hour bandh today, Siddaramaiah dashed off a missive to Modi saying that the "unrest", if continued, would have a serious impact on the state's economy as also the IT economy which brings enormous revenue and foreign exchange to the country.

"By this communication, I earnestly request you not only as Prime Minister, but as Head of the entire Federal system, to call a meeting of the Chief Ministers of the States (forthwith on a few hours notice) to resolve the impasse," Siddaramaiah said in the letter released to the media here.

He pointed to a precedent of December 1995, where under similar circumstances of deficit flows, the Supreme Court had requested the Prime Minister to resolve the issue.

"The Supreme Court by order dated 28 December, 1995 ? requested the Prime Minister to resolve the issue of? implementation of its order, which was?then duly done to the satisfaction of all parties," he said.

Complying with the apex court's order, Karnataka government has been releasing 15,000 cusecs of water to Tamil Nadu since Tuesday, triggering a wave of protests particularly in the Cauvery basin districts with Mandya being the epicentre of the stir.

While maintaining that the release was "inevitable", Karnataka government has said it would seek modification of the apex court's September five order to spare water for 10 days because of the difficulties in implementing it given that the live storage in four reservoirs in the Cauvery basin now was 46.7 TMCFT against their capacity of 104 TMCFT.

The present live storage is 45 per cent against the?live storage of 104 TMCFT in the Krishnaraja Sagar, Harangi, Hemavathi and Kabini reservoirs, the government has said.

Siddaramaiah, in his letter, has invited the Prime Minister's "immediate attention to the stark facts already in the public arena about extreme unrest in the Cauvery basin, especially in Bengaluru..." against the court's interim order on release of water.

He said the daily release of 15,000 cusecs of Cauvery water at the inter state border, Biligundulu, which, if continued, "would completely deprive the drinking water not? only to the residents of Bangalore City but also to farmers of Cauvery basin and water for the only crop they grow."
By PTI: Los Angeles, Sep 9 (PTI) Actor Patrick Dempsey says he was done with "Greys Anatomy" and should have left the series way back.

The 50-year-old actor played Dr Derek Shepherd for 11 seasons on the Shonda Rhimes drama, reported People magazine.

"It had been long enough. It was time for me to move on with other things and other interests. I probably should have moved on a couple of years earlier. I stayed a bit longer than I should have.

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"Im very grateful for Greys Anatomy. Its given me the opportunity to do everything. But at the same time, there was a cost," Dempsey said.

The actor said his commitment to the show took a toll on his relationship with his wife Jillian and their three children.

"I think after a certain period of time, no matter how much money you make, you want control out of your own schedule."

Dempsey reveals that he had discussion with series creator Rhimes about his exit, but his characters departure was kept a secret.

"It was clear we were both ready. But we kept it very quiet," he recalls, adding, "I knew he was going to be gone, but I didnt know how she was going to handle it. Shonda just said, Im going to do it in a really good way and she did her thing." PTI SHD SG

--- ENDS ---
Bengaluru: The normal life was thrown out of gear across Karnataka due to the day-long strike called by pro-Kannada outfits on Friday to protest against the Supreme Court's direction to release Cauvery river water to Tamil Nadu.

LIVE updates:

- Karnataka Chief Minister has written a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking his urgent intervention. The CM told PM that release of water as per honourable Supreme Court's order has caused greater unrest and disquiet among public, farmers across the state.

- He asked the PM to call a meeting of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka CMs for speedy resolution of the dispute.

Copy of the letter written to the hon'ble Prime Minister of India seeking his urgent intervention @PMOIndia #Cauvery pic.twitter.com/CeAubV3cZN  CM of Karnataka (@CMofKarnataka) September 9, 2016

Apprised PM - daily release of 15,000 cusecs would deprive BLR of drinking water & farmers in Cauvery basin water for only crop they grow  CM of Karnataka (@CMofKarnataka) September 9, 2016

Informed him that despite oppn view to not release water, as Constitutional Chief Executive, I took it upon myself to obey orders of Hon.SC  CM of Karnataka (@CMofKarnataka) September 9, 2016

But release of water as per Hon. SC's order has caused greater unrest & disquiet among public, farmers across the state @PMOIndia  CM of Karnataka (@CMofKarnataka) September 9, 2016

Since unrest across K'taka will have serious impact on economy, livelihood & peace of citizens, I request his immediate intervention  CM of Karnataka (@CMofKarnataka) September 9, 2016

And urge Hon. PM to call a meeting of CMs of concerned states for speedy resolution of this dispute. K'taka awaits a favourable response.  CM of Karnataka (@CMofKarnataka) September 9, 2016

- Effigies and posters of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa were burnt in some areas, reports say.

- Clashes break out between police and Jai Karnataka activists in Gulbarga, Karnataka.

- Bengaluru Police have made elaborate security arrangement to maintain law and order situation in the city.

@BlrCityPolice Belagavi railway station situation peaceful and bandobast arrangements. pic.twitter.com/z2batzWn92  KAR Railway Police (@KARailwayPolice) September 9, 2016

- Few activists of pro-Kannada organisations who tried to enter the departure terminal of the Kempegowda International Airport and the railway station here were stopped and detained by the police.

- Attendance at government offices was comparatively less today as officials had informed that it will not be "compulsory" to work today.

- Karnataka's Shivamogga and Hassan area observe bandh. Buses, taxis stay away from roads.

- Cauvery water issue disrupts normal life in Gulbarga area. People are left stranded in bus stands as no public transport is available.

- Roads across Bengaluru bore a deserted look, as but public transport, including metro services, are not plying. All the Bengaluru Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) buses remain parked at the Banashankari bus depot.

Keeping in view the law and order problem, the schools, colleges have been shut.

Big IT companies in Bengaluru  Wipro, Infosys and other multinationals have declared a holiday.

Public transport will be severely affected as as the state bus transport and cab services have announced their support to the protest.

This is the second bandh that the state is bracing for in less than a week's time and the fourth this year.

Officials said with the bandh on the emotive Cauvery issue is being supported by several organisations, unions and political parties.

With Karnataka Cable Operators Association supporting the band, the Tamil channels will be off air.

Banks, shops, markets, malls, hotels, bars, pubs, eateries, restaurant, theatres and petrol bunks will also remain closed during the day.

In Bengaluru, more than 14,000 police personnel will be deployed. 36 Karnataka State Reserve Police, 30 City Armed Reserve platoons and one company Rapid Action Force have been deployed.

Bowing to the apex court's Monday order, the state began releasing 15,000 cusecs of water daily from early Wednesday from its reservoirs across the river basin for 10 days amid protests and demonstrations by farmers, traders and the youth in the Mysuru region.
Panna: Members of a panchayat in Madhya Pradesh`s Panna district showed their anger against the District Magistrate -- who refused to meet them to hear their complaint of misbehaviour against an officer -- by handing over the memorandum to a dog.

Representatives of the panchayat on Thursday went to meet District Magistrate JP Irene Cynthia demanding action against an administrative officer for alleged misbehaviour with a woman panchayat member and wanted to hand over a memorandum to her.

However, the DM did not come out to meet the villagers and instead sent the same officer against whom allegations of misbehaviour were levelled.

DP Dhankad, President of the panchayat representatives, told the media: "When the DM did not come to meet us despite our repeated attempts, and she sent the same officer who had misbehaved with the woman, we handed over our memorandum to a dog."

Dhankad told IANS: "We have been told by others that if we complain against any officer, then the same officer is appointed to investigate the allegations levelled against him or her. But in Panna the situation is worse -- where the officer who misbehaved with the woman panchayat member was himself sent to receive the complaint memorandum.

"We thought a dog is more loyal than the errant officer, and thus we handed over the memorandum to a dog."
Mumbai: The BJP, the Shiv Sena and the MNS on Friday took on comedian-actor Kapil Sharma complained to Prime Minister Narendra Modi that he was asked to pay a bribe by a municipal officer.

"I am paying Rs 15 crore income tax from last five years and still I have to pay Rs 5 lakh bribe to BMC office (every year) for making my office. Is this your `Achhe Din`?" Sharma tweeted to Modi.

Stung by the 35-year-old popular comedian`s allegation, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis immediately called for "strictest action" and asked him to provide all information regarding the bribery allegation.

"We will not spare the culprits," Fadnavis said.

But within hours, accusing fingers were pointed at Kapil. And by late evening, he had virtually retracted his morning allegations with a tweet: "I just voiced my concern on the corruption I faced with certain individuals. It is no blame on any political party be in BJP, MNS or Shiv Sena."

The Shiv Sena and the Bharatiya Janata Party control the BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC).

BMC`s Chief of Vigilance Department Manohar Pawar said it had taken a serious view of the allegation and told Kapil to lodge a formal complaint and identify the officer who allegedly demanded bribe for speeding up the work on his under-construction office.

Later, the BMC revealed it had slapped a notice on July 16 this year, accusing Kapil of usurping 16 feet of government land by indulging in an illegal construction of his office in Andheri West.

Some of his neighbours and local activists also joined the chorus alleging that the comedian used his star status to bulldoze opponents and indulging in questionable activities.

Kapil came out with a fresh allegation that local Shiv Sena and MNS activists also demanded money from him and that he had earlier complained to the civic body but no action was taken.

Though Shiv Sena youth leader Aaditya Thackeray earlier lauded Kapil, hours later the party alleged that an "outsider" was trying to defame the BMC, India`s biggest and richest municipal body.

Maharashtra Navnirman Sena`s (MNS) Chitrapat Sena President Amey Khopkar dared Kapil to prove his allegation or they would bar him from conducting his shootings in the city.

Khopkar charged that a studio set used by the comedian for shooting his shows was illegal. Kapil must apologize or face the music, he warned.

Obviously eyeing dividends from the upcoming civic election in February 2017, Mumbai Congress President Sanjay Nirupam and NCP city President Sachin Ahir lauded Kapil for his boldness in raising the issue.

While BJP MP Kirit Somaiya said he was pained to hear the comedian`s experience, party MLA Ram Kadam chided Kapil for taking to social media instead of complaining when the incident happened.

Perhaps taken aback by the rebounding effect of his allegations, Kapil thanked Fadnavis for his intervention and sought a meeting to discuss the issue with him.

Lionised on the social media till afternoon, the actor was later trolled and jeered. Some demanded his arrest.

BJP MP Manoj Tiwari demanded an apology from Kapil to Modi.

Congress spokesman Randeep S. Surjewala had a sarcastic tweet: "Everyone believed Modiji will deposit Rs 15 lakh in every account. Instead, it seems they will recover Rs 5 lakh from us."
Mumbai: With Kapil Sharma's tweet about Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) officer, seeking a Rs 5 lakh bribe for his office triggering a political row, Shiv Sena on Friday hit out at the star comedian and labelled him as an 'outsider'.

Sena termed Sharma as an 'outsider' saying, people come from outside and look to defame Mumbai.

While attacking the the winner of "The Great Indian Laughter Challenge" in 2007, Sena leader Sanjay Raut accused Sharma of reading out prepared scripts.

Sharma today created furore with his tweet to Prime Minister Narendra Modi saying, "I am paying Rs 15 crore income tax from last five years and still I have to pay Rs 5 lakh bribe to BMC office (every year) for making my office. Is this your 'Achhe Din'?"

Reacting swiftly, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis assured of strict action against the culprit and asked the comedian to reveal the name of the person who demanded bribe.

Kapilbhai pls provide all info.

Have directed MC,BMC to take strictest action.

We will not spare the culprit.@KapilSharmaK9 @narendramodi  Devendra Fadnavis (@Dev_Fadnavis) September 9, 2016

The BMC also asked Sharma to reveal the name of the officer who allegedly demanded the bribe.

Manohar Pawar, chief engineer of vigilance department in BMC said, I have requested Kapil Sharmaji to reveal the name of the officer who demanded bribe so that we can initiate inquiry and appropriate action against him or her. We hope that he will cooperate with us."

Sharma hosts the popular comedy chat programme "The Kapil Sharma Show" on television.

Interestingly, the Shiv Sena-BJP combine governs the country's richest municipal body.
Bhubaneswar: At least 16 persons were killed and 25 injured when a bus fell off a bridge in Odisha`s Angul district on Friday.

The tragedy took place near Puruna Manitri in Angul district when the bus driver lost control over the wheels. The bus fell off the bridge from a height of 50 feet.

Angul Collector Anil Samal said the accident took place when the vehicle, carrying around 50 passengers, was on the way to Athmallik from Boudh.

Director General of Police K.B. Singh said the injured have been admitted in different hospitals.

"The driver has fled... All the passengers have been taken out of the vehicle," said an official, Gopal Patnaik.

Police and fire brigade launched rescue operation. The death toll is likely to go up, said one official.

Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik announced free treatment to the injured.

"This is a tragic incident. The reason behind it will be probed," said Transport Minister Ramesh Majhi.
Bhubaneswar: At least 21 people were killed on Friday when a passenger bus fell off a bridge in Odishas Angul district, a media report said.

Fourteen people were killed on the spot while seven others died in hospitals in Angul and Cuttack. Of the 30 injured, at least 15 are said to be serious, the Indian Express reported.

The bus was on its way from Boudh to Athmallik in Angul district when the accident took place. The bus fell off the old Manitri bridge after the driver reportedly lost control of the vehicle.

A witness said the driver was talking over phone when a kid riding a bicycle suddenly came from the opposite side. The driver suddenly took a left turn and broke off the bridge railings, the report quoted a witness as saying.

The bus has been destroyed in the accident. All the passengers have been taken out of the vehicle, District collector Anil Samal said.

Arrangements are being made to shift the injured ones to Angul and other hospitals, the report quoted him as saying.

The injured are being treated for free.

Among the dead are four school students of Boudh.

The state government has ordered a probe into the accident.

Meanwhile, Chief minister Naveen Patnaik has announced an ex-gratia of Rs 2 lakh for the next of the kin of the deceased.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Dharmendra Pradhan expressed their condolence over Twitter.
Chandigarh: The Aam Aadmi Party in Punjab has filed criminal defamation cases against its Delhi MLA Devender Sehrawat, who had accused the party's state leaders of exploiting women in return for tickets, and former party leaders HS Kingra and Paviter Singh.

AAP's Punjab affairs in-charge Sanjay Singh and National Organisation Building Secretary Durgesh Pathak filed the cases in the court of Chief Judicial Magistrate, Chandigarh.

An AAP release said Singh and Pathak filed a joint case of criminal defamation against Sehrawat whose allegations, they said, "defame the women of Punjab".

In Delhi, AAP city Convener Dilip Pandey said he will also file a separate defamation suit against Sehrawat soon.

Responding to it, Sehrawat said he stands by "every word I've written in that letter and when the case comes in the court, we will take appropriate action".

He said filing a defamation case at this time is all "politics and posturing".

"The people will decide who should rule Punjab. Should the Punjabis rule Punjab? Should those rule Punjab who are not even able to start a minor enquiry and find out if an observation has been given and push the thing into the court," he said.

Against former AAP leader Kingra, Singh and Pathak filed separate cases of criminal defamation, as he had leveled separate "false defamatory allegations" against them in a press conference here recently.

The release said Singh and Pathak filed a joint case of criminal defamation in the court against rebel AAP leader Paviter Singh, who levelled allegations against party leaders of demanding money in return for party ticket.

In a joint statement, Singh and Pathak alleged these leaders levelled "hollow and baseless" allegations against them.

On Sehrawat's allegations, the AAP leaders said he tried to "defame the women of Punjab" by making false allegations and has failed to provide any evidence in support of his allegations.

Earlier, AAP's women wing in Punjab had filed complaints against Sehrawat with Women Commission and the Punjab SC Commission.

Meanwhile, Jat Samaj, Najafgarh, has called a 'mahapanchayat' in support of Shehrawat tomorrow near Anaj Mandi, Najafgarh.
Chandigarh: Ludhiana's Bains brothers, the two Independent MLAs who are part of the 'Awaaz-e-Punjab' front of Navjot Singh Sidhu, were on Friday "physically moved out" of the Punjab Assembly for disrupting proceedings.

Ahead of a discussion on the contribution of BR Ambedkar on the occasion of his 125th birth anniversary during the ongoing monsoon session of the Assembly here, Simarjit Singh Bains and Balwinder Singh Bains requested Speaker Charanjit Singh Atwal to bring a private resolution on the issue of water.

However, the Speaker refused to give the permission to the Bains and warned them not to disrupt proceedings of the House.

After repeated warnings, the Bains brothers continued to speak. They did not even let Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal speak about the contribution of Ambedkar following which the Speaker 'named' Simarjit Singh Bains and asked watch and ward staff to take him out of the assembly.

When the brothers refused to go out, the watch and ward staff took them out of the House.

Accusing SAD-BJP government of "throwing them out" of the House, Simarjit said he was just demanding that Punjab should recover the amount of the supply of canal water to Rajasthan which was being supplied since 1965.

"Punjab is supplying 11.2 MAF of water to Rajasthan since 1965 and being a riparian state, it should recover the cost of supply from Rajasthan," he told reporters.

Bains also cited a copy of the record of the decisions arrived at the inter-state conference on the development and utilization of the waters of Ravi and Beas rivers in a meeting held in New Delhi in January 1955.

"What was the problem in sending the bill for the supply of water to Rajasthan," Bains asked adding that he would continue to fight for the rights of Punjab.

Meanwhile, Congress spokesperson Sunil Jakhar has described this demand as untenable, saying if it is accepted then Himachal Pradesh will seek cost of water from Punjab.
Faizabad (Uttar Pradesh: Taking a dig at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for calling Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi`s `Khat Sabha` a flop show, Leader of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad today said that this reflected the frustration and jealousy on part of the saffron party that has not been able to host such a thriving programme.

"All of Rahul Gandhi`s programmmes are extremely successful whether you talk about `Khat Sabha` or the padyatra in the city and villages. Wherever he`s going, he`s doing extremely well. What else can the BJP do?" he added.Azad also downplayed the cots controversy and said the Congress vice-president has given a befitting reply to the BJP.

"I agree with Rahul ji`s comments. The BJP is calling these poor farmers thieves because they walked away with a khat. However, big businessmen involved in scandals worth crores are not thieves because the government helps them leave the country," added Azad.

"The agenda of this kisan yatra is to have the loans of poor farmers excused so that they can have a debt free existence," mentioned Azad.Rahul Gandhi had earlier responded to the same allegations by saying, "Kisan khatiya le jata hai, to wo `chor` kehte hain. Magar jab bade bade udyogpati Mallya jaise bhaag jate hain, toh usse `defaulter` kehte hain."

State BJP chief Keshav Prasad Maurya had alleged that villagers were lured into attending the `Khat Sabha` on the promise of getting cots."The khat loot that followed proves us right. It also shows that the villagers had come for the cots than to hear Rahul Gandhi," Maurya said.
New Delhi: CBI on Friday restarted its probe in the Bulandshahr rape case after Supreme Court gave its nod as the agency sent its team to the crime scene.

CBI sources said a team of forensic experts, investigators and support staff reached the crime scene and tried to recreate the events based on details given to them by the victims.

The sources said the move came after the Supreme Court lifted its stay on the probe.

A 13-year-old girl and her mother were dragged out of their car and raped by a group of assailants in a field while the victims along with their family were travelling from Noida to Shahjahanpur on the intervening night of July 29-30.

The case was transferred to CBI on the instructions of the Allahabad High Court. The agency had registered a case on August 18 and sent a team of forensic experts and a DIG-ranked officer to the crime scene.

UP Police, which had earlier received flak from the Allahabad High Court, had claimed to have solved the blind case within nine days of the incident with arrest of Salim Bawariya, the head of a gang from Rajasthan.

On the basis of his interrogation, two other gang members -- Zubair and Sajid -- were arrested by the Special Task Force of UP Police. Later, three more accused -- Naresh (25), Bablu (22) and Rais (28) - were arrested.
By PTI: Colombo, Sep 8 (PTI) A Sri Lankan court today gave permission to police to exhume the body of a high-profile newspaper editor whose murder under the previous Mahinda Rajapaksa regime remains unsolved.

The Colombo suburban Mount Lavinia magistrates court has issued the order on the killing of Sunday Leader editor Lasantha Wickrematunga in January 2009 following an application by the Polices Crime Investigation Department (CID).

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Editor Wickrematunga and his newspaper were staunch critics of Rajapaksa. He was a sharp critic of the then governments alleged human rights violations during a civil war with the ethnic Tamil rebels.

The reason for exhumation is to determine the exact cause of his death. The original autopsy report on the death by the Judicial Medical Officer had been inconclusive.

The officer who carried out the autopsy reported that the death occurred due to gunshot wounds while the surgeon said the wounds were not from bullets, the police said.

The Sri Lankan government led by Maithripala Sirisena, who came to power in January 2015, had reopened investigations into Wickremetungas murder, pledging to arrest all those involved in the killing.

A number of journalists were killed, reported as missing after being abducted by government paramilitaries, or beaten up under Rajapaksas administration. No one has been convicted.

The exhumation is to take place on September 27 at the Colombo General cemetery. PTI CORR AMS NSA AMS

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Ambedkar Nagar: Sharpening his attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the issue of farmers' plight, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday said the erstwhile UPA government had "waived their Rs 70,000 crore loans" even when the shape of the country's economy was not "all that bright".

"Crude petroleum was being sold at USD 140 a barrel. The government had no money, still, we decided to waive their (farmers) loans," he said.

The Congress vice president was speaking during a meeting here in the course of his roadshow on the fourth day of 'kisan yatra' from Deoria to Delhi.

He said when the then prime minister Manmohan Singh announced the waiver, BJP members asked in Parliament as to how the government would manage the money.

"How can it be possible? From where Congress will get the funds," Rahul said they posed questions like this.

"We are determined to work for the sake of farmers unlike the Modi government which neglects them," he claimed.

Rahul said when a farmers' delegation had met Singh and shared their plight requesting the loan waiver, the UPA government took the decision within 10 days and wrote off the loans.

The Congress leader is out on a 'mahayatra' during which he will cover 39 districts spread over 55 of the 80 Lok Sabha constituencies in Uttar Pradesh where Assembly Elections are due early next year.
Lucknow: In an unprecedented move, Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi on Friday offered prayers at Hanuman Garhi temple in Ayodhya, becoming the first member of the Nehru-Gandhi family to visit Ayodhya since the demolition of the disputed structure in 1992 Babri demolition.

Hanuman Garhi temple is about a kilometre away from the Ram Temple at the disputed Ramjanmbhoomi-Babri Masjid site.

The Gandhi scion also met Mahant Gyan Das. Notably, Das is a vocal critic of Vishwa Hindu Parshad, which has long advocated for a grand Ram temple to be built in Ayodhya.

Interestingly, the Amethi MP stayed away from the site of 'shilanyas', the foundation stone that had been laid there in 1989 for the construction of Ram Temple in Ayodhya.

After his brief visit to Hanuman Garhi temple, Rahul tried to play a balancing act by visiting the Kichaucha Sharif Dargah, a Muslim shrine in Ambedkar Nagar.

Some political analysts are seeing Rahul's visit as a soft Hindutva agenda to counter the Narendra Modi-powered Bharatiya Janata Party.

Keeping the caste factor in mind, the Congress has announced Sheila Dikhsit, a Brahmin face, as its chief ministerial candidate for the high-voltage Uttar Pradesh Elections 2017.

The Congress vice president will later hold a road show in Faizabad.

Rahul's every move is being decided by master poll strategist Prashant Kishor, who has been roped by the Congress to bring back its golden days in the Hindi heartland.

The Congress vice president Rahul on Thursday said if his party forms government in UP it will representation from all section of society in the state.

"Though Sheila Dikshit is the chief ministerial candidate of the party in the state, I can assure you that when Congress party distributes tickets for the Assembly polls, people from all religion and castes will find a place", Rahul said in a "khaat sabha" in Gonda on the third day of his 'Deoria to Dilli' yatra.

"We will not form the government of any one caste but that of all the castes ..It will be a government which is that of farmers, labourers and all those who have problems in life, don't forget this fact", Gandhi assured.
Mirzapur: In yet another incident of alleged negligence, a woman died for want of "medical attention" at the district hospital here two days after she gave birth to a stillborn, leading to a protest by local residents and activists of Apna Dal.

The pictures of the 20-year-old's father-in-law carrying her in arms have gone viral on social media.

Anshu Pandey was on September 4 admitted to the district hospital, where she gave birth to a stillborn the next day, Chief Medical Officer VS Rai said.

Soon after, her condition deteriorated and her father-in -law took her to a private hospital for further treatment.

However, the authorities at the private hospital denied to take her in, following which she was brought back to the district hospital, her father-in-law Hriday Narain Pandey said.

"When we returned to the district hospital, the staff asked why we went to the private hospital and misbehaved with us," Hriday alleged.

"The hospital staff refused to provide us a stretcher and I had to carry her in my arms from one place to another," he further alleged.

The woman was then taken to a hospital in Varanasi where she died on Wednesday.

Hriday alleged medical negligence on the part of the district hospital staff and said it lead to Anshu's death.

However, the CMO said: "The district hospital staff did not advise the woman's father-in-law to take her to the private hospital. He did that on his own. Also, we did not refer her to the Varanasi hospital. It was his decision."

Meanwhile, Apna Dal which led the protest of locals demanded that a case be lodged against the hospital staff and submitted a memorandum to this effect to the administration.
Kolkata: Two days after hoax calls were made about bomb threat at NSC Bose International Airport, another call was made to the state secretariat 'Nabanna' today, claiming that a bomb had been planted there.

The call sent the police into a tizzy but it turned out to be hoax as nothing was found by the bomb squad.

A male voice called up the state secretariat control room at around 9.30 AM claiming that a bomb has been planted there which will blow up the building at 2 PM today, a senior officer in charge of security at 'Nabanna' said.

"Following the call, security has been beefed up at the Secretariat. Generally, two to three check-ups are done on regular basis but today we have added two three more layers to it," he said.

Kolkata police bomb squad personnel and sniffer dogs combed the entire 14-storied building on the bank of Hooghly river but they did not find anything "suspicious", the officer said.

"We are trying to trace the call by locating its tower position. Hopefully the person will be nabbed soon," he said.

A few months back, a person in his mid-50s was arrested from the city's Kalighat area for making a similar call.

On Wednesday, three phone calls were made threatening to blow up the NSC Bose International Airport. While the first two calls were made to city police headquarters in Lalbazar, the third one was made to Bidhannagar Police Commissionerate, under which the airport falls.

The calls however, turned out to be hoax.
Kolkata: One student was injured while trying to escape a fire which broke out inside the server room of Presidency University library in the city Friday afternoon, police said.

Thick black smoke engulfed the entire College Street campus of the University after fire broke out at around 1.30 PM inside the server room of the library probably due to an electrical botch-up in the air conditioning machine, a senior police officer said.

A student suffered minor injuries when he along with others fell down while trying to flee fearing the blaze was a massive fire, the officer said.

Five fire tenders were pressed into service and students as well as teachers were evacuated from the century-old building, he said.

In October 2010 a major fire had broken out at the Baker building of the university that houses the chemistry department where chemicals and gas cylinders were stored.
Kolkata: Former West Bengal minister and Trinamool Congress leader Madan Mitra was on Friday granted bail by a court here, over 21 months after his arrest in the multi-crore rupee Saradha chit fund scam.

Durga Puja arrived early for Mitra`s family and supporters as people in large numbers celebrated his bail, while the ruling Trinamool Congress hailed the court`s verdict.

Mitra was behind bars since his arrest on December 12, 2014, except for a brief period in October 2015, when he was granted bail by a lower court. The relief was subsequently cancelled by the Calcutta High Court.

On Friday, the court of Chief judicial Magistrate, Alipore, granted him bail on twin bonds of Rs 15 lakh each.

Indicted of cheating, conspiracy and criminal breach of trust, the former state Transport and Sports Minister was one of the most high-profile arrests in the Saradha scam after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) took over the probe.

Describing Mitra as an "influential personality", the prosecution had been opposing his bail, and the judiciary, including the Calcutta High Court, had denied him the relief on previous occasions.

Incidentally, Mitra had stepped down as a minister on November 19 last year, hours before the Calcutta High Court eventually cancelled his bail granted by a lower court.

"He has been in custody for over 600 days but the CBI has not been able to submit anything against him. The CBI has filed several supplementary charge sheets but there was nothing against Mitra. The court was pleased to grant him bail on two bonds of Rs 15 lakh each," said Mitra`s counsel.

Welcoming the move, Trinamool secretary general Partha Chatterjee hit out at the CBI.

"Even a murder accused gets bail within a matter of days, while Mitra had to remain in custody for 629 days. On behalf of (Chief Minister) Mamata Banerjee and the entire party we welcome the court`s verdict and wish Mitra and his family a very healthy life and congratulate his family.

"Mitra has always been with the people and the party and will continue to do so," said Chatterjee.
Beirut: The top military commander of the Army of Conquest, the largest Syrian rebel alliance, was killed in an airstrike during a meeting of the group's leaders, jihadist sources have said.

The former Al-Nusra Front, renamed Fateh al-Sham Front, announced on Twitter "the martyrdom" of commander Abu Omar Sarakeb during an air strike in Syria's Aleppo province.

The Syrian Observatory for Human rights confirmed that airstrikes by unknown warplanes -- from the US-led coalition, Russia or the Syrian regime -- hit an Army of Conquest meeting in urban Aleppo in northern Syria and killed Omar Sarakeb and another military commander named as Abu Muslem al-Shami.

The Army of Conquest is the largest anti-regime rebel alliance in Syria, grouping Islamist factions including Ahrar al-Sham and Faylaq al-Sham with jihadists such as the Fateh al-Sham Front, previously Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front.

According to the Syrian Observatory, Abu Omar Sarakib was the rebel commander in last year's battle for control of Syria's northwestern Idlib province and a known Al-Qaeda in Iraq jihadist.

The Army of Conquest controls Idlib province, but last week suffered a major loss in southern Aleppo after a month-long rebel and jihadist offensive.
Washington: Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz is committing USD 20 million to help Hillary Clinton and her Democratic Party in the upcoming US election.

Moskovitz, a Harvard roommate of Mark Zuckerberg who was part of the founding group of the social networking giant, said he and his wife Cari made the decision to pour in millions because "polarization in America today has yielded a race that is about much more than policies and ideas."

The election "has become a referendum on who we want to be - as individuals, as a nation and as a society," he wrote in a blog post on Medium.

Moskovitz said this was the first time he and his wife are endorsing a candidate and donating.

"The Republican Party, and Donald Trump in particular, is running on a zero-sum vision, stressing a false contest between their constituency and the rest of the world," he wrote.

"We believe their positions, especially on immigration, which purport to improve the lives of Americans, would in practice hurt citizens and noncitizens alike."

He added that he hopes his efforts "make it a little more likely that Secretary Clinton is able to pursue the agenda she's outlined, and serve as a signal to the Republican Party that by running this kind of campaign - one built on fear and hostility - and supporting this kind of candidate, they compel people to act in response."

The donations will go to various political action committees including the Hillary Victory Fund, Democratic congressional groups, the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) Victory Fund, For Our Future PAC, MoveOn.Org, Color Of Change and several nonpartisan voter registration efforts.
New York: Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, who has faced criticism for being aloof, told a popular blog she is aware she can be perceived as "cold or unemotional" and is not like President Barack Obama and her husband Bill Clinton with an "appealing" naturalness.

"I know that I can be perceived as aloof or cold or unemotional. But I had to learn as a young woman to control my emotions. And that's a hard path to walk," Clinton told the immensely popular 'Humans of New York' blog on Facebook.

Clinton cited an "intense" incident of how she was heckled by men during a law school admissions test in Harvard.

She said she was among only a handful of women in the room when a group of men "began to yell things like: 'You don't need to be here.' And 'There's plenty else you can do'.

"One of them even said: 'If you take my spot, I'll get drafted, and I'll go to Vietnam, and I'll die'. Clinton said even though the insinuations became "personal", she could not respond as she couldn't afford to get distracted and mess up the test.

"So I just kept looking down, hoping that the proctor would walk in the room. Because you need to protect yourself, you need to keep steady, but at the same time you don't want to seem 'walled off'. And sometimes I think I come across more in the 'walled off' arena," the 68-year-old former secretary of state said.

Clinton said in the blog post that is she takes responsibility for creating the perception of being walled off but she is not cold or unemotional.

"I don't view myself as cold or unemotional. And neither do my friends. And neither does my family. But if that sometimes is the perception I create, then I can't blame people for thinking that," she said.

In another post, Clinton said she is not like Obama and her husband Bill Clinton.

"I'm not Barack Obama. I'm not Bill Clinton. Both of them carry themselves with a naturalness that is very appealing to audiences. But I'm married to one and I've worked for the other, so I know how hard they work at being natural. It's not something they just dial in," she said, adding that both the US presidents work and practice what they are going to say.

"It's not that they're trying to be somebody else. But it's hard work to present yourself in the best possible way. You have to communicate in a way that people say: 'OK, I get her.' And that can be more difficult for a woman," she said.

Clinton said women running for the Senate or Presidency have fewer women to look top to since most of the role models are men.

"And what works for them won't work for you. Women are seen through a different lens. It's not bad. It's just a fact," she said.

Clinton said she has learnt she cannot be as passionate in her presentation as the men.

"I love to wave my arms, but apparently that's a little bit scary to people. And I can't yell too much. It comes across as 'too loud' or 'too shrill' or 'too this' or 'too that'. Which is funny, because I'm always convinced that the people in the front row are loving it," she said.
By PTI: Colombo, Sep 8 (PTI) A Sri Lankan court today gave permission to police to exhume the body of a high-profile newspaper editor whose murder under the previous Mahinda Rajapaksa regime remains unsolved.

The Colombo suburban Mount Lavinia magistrates court has issued the order on the killing of Sunday Leader editor Lasantha Wickrematunga in January 2009 following an application by the Polices Crime Investigation Department (CID).

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Editor Wickrematunga and his newspaper were staunch critics of Rajapaksa. He was a sharp critic of the then governments alleged human rights violations during a civil war with the ethnic Tamil rebels.

The reason for exhumation is to determine the exact cause of his death. The original autopsy report on the death by the Judicial Medical Officer had been inconclusive.

The officer who carried out the autopsy reported that the death occurred due to gunshot wounds while the surgeon said the wounds were not from bullets, the police said.

The Sri Lankan government led by Maithripala Sirisena, who came to power in January 2015, had reopened investigations into Wickremetungas murder, pledging to arrest all those involved in the killing.

A number of journalists were killed, reported as missing after being abducted by government paramilitaries, or beaten up under Rajapaksas administration. No one has been convicted.

The exhumation is to take place on September 27 at the Colombo General cemetery. PTI CORR AMS NSA AMS DK

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Moscow: Russia's Foreign Ministry announced today that the Israeli and the Palestinian leaders have agreed "in principle" to meet in Moscow for talks in what the Russians hope will relaunch the Mideast peace process after a more than two-year break.

But the wide gaps between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas left it uncertain if or when the meeting will take place, and raised doubts about whether they would make any progress if they do get together.

In another twist, an Israeli TV station reported that a document discovered by two Israeli researchers indicated that Abbas had worked for the Soviet intelligence agency, the KGB, while living in Syria in the early 1980s.

The professors said they were coming forward with the information to discredit Moscow as an honest broker in peace talks.

After years of taking a back seat to the US in Mideast diplomacy, Russia has increasingly sought to take a leadership role in the region. It has developed close ties with Iran and sent fighter jets to Syria to back President Bashar Assad in his war against rebel groups.

In Washington, a spokesman said the US State Department is following the Russian efforts closely and would "be supportive" of any kind of effort to bring the parties together.

Today's announcement in Moscow indicates that Russia is pushing forward with its attempt to become a peace broker after a setback earlier in the week. On Tuesday, Abbas said that a meeting scheduled in Moscow this week had been delayed at Israel's request.

While bringing the men together would represent an accomplishment for Moscow, a diplomatic breakthrough seems unlikely.

Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remain far apart on key issues, and their differences have prevented meaningful talks since Netanyahu took office in 2009.

The last round of peace talks broke down two and a half years ago, with no progress reported during months of US-brokered negotiations.

In Moscow, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Abbas and Netanyahu had accepted an invitation to meet in the Russian capital, but a date has not been set yet.
Karachi: The teenage son of a minister in Pakistan's troubled Balochistan province, who was abducted by unknown armed men in May this year, was recovered near the Pak-Afghan border.

Asad Tareen who was kidnapped while returning home from college in Pishin district on May 20 was recovered from the Dolangi area in Killa Abdullah district yesterday.

Tareen is the son of Balochistan's local government minister Sardar Mustafa Tareen.

According to Deputy Commissioner Pishin Abdul Wahid Kakar, Asad Tareen had been shifted to Quetta under tight security.

It is not yet clear whether Asad was recovered as a result of a security forces operation or after the payment of ransom.

Shahbaz Taseer, the son of former slain Punjab governor, Salman Taseer was recovered in March from the Balochistan province after spending five years in captivity. He was kidnapped by militants and kept in Afghanistan.

In May, Ali Haider the son of former Prime Minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani who was kidnapped from Multan was recovered from Afghanistan after three years in captivity of militant outfits. The son of Chief Justice of Sindh High Court was also recovered in July.

Karachi which is Pakistan's economic hub and biggest city has for years been a hotbed for criminals, gangsters and militants who are involved in kidnapping for ransom, target killings, sectarian violence, terrorism, bank robberies and other crimes.
Haute-Garonne: A Kuwaiti conglomerate has given up a prolonged battle for Muammar Gaddafi`s luxury personal jetliner, which has been parked in France since 2012, lawyers said Friday.

Al-Kharafi group sought to have the opulently-furnished Airbus A340 seized over a debt related to a contract to build a beach resort in Libya.

Reviled by Libya`s rebels as a symbol of Gaddafi`s extravagance, the four-engined jetliner boasts a double bed, silver leather sofas, a private cinema and first-class seating for the dictator`s female bodyguards and other staff.

In 2012, shortly after Gaddafi was killed in the Libyan uprising, the plane was flown to the southwestern French city of Perpignan, where it underwent three million euros` ($3.36 million) worth of repairs and maintenance by an Air France sub-contractor.

Al-Kharafi`s move to pull out of the case was recorded in an August 25 decision by the court in Perpignan, according to a document seen by AFP.

Its withdrawal brings the battle to a close.

"We have preferred to focus on the seizure of other Libyan assets, which will be more feasible," Al-Kharafi`s French lawyer, Remi Barousse, said.

In 2006 Al-Kharafi signed a contract with the Gaddafi regime to build a beach resort on Libya`s Mediterranean coast, which it was to run for 90 years, but Tripoli cancelled the deal unilaterally in 2010.

A Cairo court in 2013 ruled Al-Kharafi was owed $937 million (835 million euros) over the broken contract and the company filed to seize the plane to recover some of the money.

Its bid was opposed by a Libyan state entity, the Executive Authority for Special Flights (EASF), the owner of the plane.

In November 2015, a Perpignan court ruled that the plane had immunity from seizure as it was state property.

Gaddafi was killed in October 2011, after which the oil-rich country slid into chaos, with the Islamic State group making inroads.

A unity government was set up in Tripoli in late March after a UN-backed agreement in Morocco in December 2015.

But it has struggled to assert its authority across the country, facing opposition from a rival government in the east.
Mecca: Close to two million pilgrims have converged on western Saudi Arabia for the annual hajj where new measures aim to prevent a recurrence of last year`s stampede which killed around 2,300.

The stampede legacy has contributed to renewed tensions between Saudi Arabia and its regional rival Iran, which is not sending pilgrims for the first time in nearly three decades.

While the main rites of the six-day event begin on Saturday, pilgrims have already been swirling around the holy Kaaba at the Grand Mosque in Mecca, in a procession that continues day and night.

It is one of the first rites of the pilgrimage, which is among the largest religious gatherings in the world.

The hajj is one of the five pillars of Islam, which capable Muslims must perform at least once, marking the spiritual peak of their lives.

Rich and poor alike come dressed in the same white garments.

"I feel no fear at all," said Adil Abdulrahman, a British pilgrim confident that authorities have tried to make the faithful feel safe.

A Nigerian visitor, Lawan Nasir, 45, said the loss of a cousin in last year`s stampede did not stop him from coming.

"The pains have not dulled a bit," he told AFP, but it would be "silly" to stay away.

"Death will come when it will come and nothing can save one from its claws."

In one of several safety measures implemented after the stampede, access to the Kaaba -- a black cube that Muslims across the globe face while they pray -- is suspended during prayers, and the walk around it is stopped to avoid overcrowding.

The Saudi Gazette on Friday quoted mosque officials as saying the circumambulation area has been expanded to hold about 30,000 pilgrims an hour, up from 19,000.

Security has also been reinforced around Islam`s holiest site, with officers in red berets and camouflage uniforms manning green plastic barricades to control the crowd.

During the main weekly Friday prayers, the white-clad throng made the area around the Kaaba resemble a snow-dusted field from above.

A helicopter flew overhead and main roads in the city were shut to allow hundreds of thousands of pedestrians access.

With temperatures of 43 Celsius (110 Fahrenheit) as they marched, some pilgrims seemed faint. They carried water and tried to help each other under the unyielding sun.The kingdom has begun issuing pilgrims with identification bracelets, after some foreign officials expressed concern about difficulties in identifying the stampede dead.

Each bracelet carries a bar code readable by smartphone. It indicates the pilgrim`s identity, nationality, place of lodging in Mecca, as well as other information, the vice secretary of the ministry of hajj and umrah, Issa Rawas, told AFP.

"The aim is to equip all pilgrims" from abroad, who are expected to number more than 1.4 million, he said.

Local media say more than 300,000 faithful from inside Saudi Arabia are also expected.

Zakou Bakar, 50, a pilgrim from Niger, said the bracelet was reassuring.

"If I die or if there are problems -- of course we hope not -- but if it does happen I know I will be identified," he told AFP.

Jane Kinninmont, deputy head of the Middle East and North Africa programme at Chatham House, a London think-tank, said the stampede exposed "clearly some big organisational failings, to say the least".

There was also "an absence of real transparency" about what went wrong, she said.

Saudi Arabia also has an economic stake in pilgrims.

As part of efforts to diversify its oil-dependent economy, it wants to foster a year-round religious tourism sector relying on those who perform the umrah, or lesser pilgrimage, at any time of the year.

It targets 15 million umrah visitors annually by 2020, up from six million.

Absent from this year`s hajj will be tens of thousands of Iranian pilgrims after talks between Tehran and Riyadh on logistics and security fell apart in May.

Iran said 464 nationals died in last year`s crush, the largest number of dead by nationality.
Seoul: North Korea is believed to have conducted a fifth nuclear test, its most powerful to date, South Korea`s military said Friday after monitors detected a 5.3-magnitude "artificial earthquake" near its main nuclear site.

A confirmed test by the isolated North would send tensions soaring over its nuclear and ballistic missile ambitions, which have already earned international condemnation and United Nations sanctions.

The quake was detected near North Korea`s Punggye-ri nuclear test site as the country celebrates Foundation Day, which marks the anniversary of the founding of the nation in 1948.

"We believe that it was a nuclear test. We are trying to figure out whether it was successful. The blast measured about 10 kilotons," a defence ministry spokesman told reporters.

The North`s third nuclear test, staged in February 2013, was previously considered the most powerful to date, with a yield of six to nine kilotons.

Authorities in Japan and South Korea said the tremor, measured at 5.3 by the US Geological Survey, showed every sign of another test, the latest since a January 6 test at Punggye-ri.

"The 10-kiloton blast was nearly twice the fourth nuclear test and slightly less than the Hiroshima bombing, which was measured about 15 kilotons," said Kim Nam-Wook from the South`s meteorological agency said.

Japan`s public broadcaster NHK reported the country`s defence ministry was preparing to dispatch aircraft to analyse air samples to see if any radiation could be detected.

"If North Korea conducted a nuclear test, that can never be tolerated. We must lodge a strong protest," said Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

The US National Security Council said it was aware of seismic activity in the region of the test site and was "monitoring and continuing to assess the situation in close coordination with our regional partners."North Korea has been hit by five sets of United Nations sanctions since it first tested a nuclear device in 2006. Since the January test concern has also grown over a series of provocative ballistic missile launches.

Pyongyang test-fired three missiles Monday as world powers gathered for a G20 meeting in China, with leader Kim Jong-Un hailing the tests as "perfect", and US President Barack Obama warning it would only up the pressure.

North Korea has always insisted it will continue nuclear tests despite global condemnation and toughened sanctions. Experts say they are likely aimed at refining warhead design and reliability as well as increasing yield.

Outside monitors will now attempt to analyse the yield -- the strength of the bomb -- to try to determine what kind of a breakthrough it represents.

North Korean nuclear tests are usually heralded by chatter among analysts about preparations at Punggye-ri but there had been little discussion in recent weeks over any signs of a test.

"The test caught many off guard, although Seoul officials have for months maintained that the North was maintaining a condition in which it was ready to stage a nuclear test any time," said Kim Jin-Moo, an analyst at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses.Kim said the recent series of missile tests, including one launched from a submarine that far exceeded the range of previous such exercises, was a precursor to this "show of force" planned for months and timed to coincide with the anniversary.

"Also, the test was staged right after the G20 summit was held in its neighbour China. I think it was also aimed at maximising shock to the international community," he said.

The test is another slap in the face to the North`s chief ally China which has been under pressure to rein in its behaviour, and diminishes any chance of a resumption of six-country talks on North Korea`s nuclear programme.

"I believe China will be driven into the most difficult position" as the international community expects Beijing to act to ease tensions, said Shunji Hiraiwa, professor at Kwansei Gakuin University and an expert on the Korean peninsula.

North Korea claimed its January test was of a miniaturised hydrogen bomb, which can be far more powerful than other nuclear devices.

But scientists say the estimated yield of around six kilotons was similar to the North`s previous nuclear test in 2013, and far too low for a thermonuclear device.

However, at a rare ruling party congress in Pyongyang in May, Kim Jong-Un hailed what he called a "historic" landmark, and insisted it had been a hydrogen blast.

He praised the country`s scientists for "creating milestone miracles with the magnificent and exhilarating sound of the first H-bomb of our republic".
Vienna: North Korea's latest and fifth nuclear test, if confirmed, is "deeply troubling and regrettable", the head of the UN atomic watchdog said today.

"This is in clear violation of numerous UN Security Council resolutions and in complete disregard of the repeated demands of the international community," said Yukiya Amano, chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

"It is a deeply troubling and regrettable act," Amano said in a statement.

The UN Security Council had in Resolution 2270 in March "condemned in the strongest terms" North Korea's previous test in January, Amano said.

It had reaffirmed that Pyongyang must "abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programmes in a complete, verifiable and irreversible manner, and immediately cease all related activities," he recalled.

"The Agency continues to closely follow the DPRK (North Korea) nuclear issue. We remain ready to contribute to its peaceful resolution by resuming our verification activities in the country once a political agreement is reached among countries concerned," Amano said.

The Vienna-based IAEA was kicked out of North Korea in 2009.

Pyongyang's state media said the latest test, which comes after a series of ballistic missile launches that have drawn international condemnation and UN sanctions, had achieved its goal of being able to fit a miniaturised nuclear warhead on a rocket.
New York: North Korea on Friday conducted its fifth and biggest nuclear test and said it had mastered the ability to mount a warhead on a ballistic missile, prompting world powers to express outrage.

South Korea, the United States, Japan, Russia and China all condemned the blast at the Punggye-ri nuclear site, the North`s fifth and most powerful yet at 10 kilotons.

Under 32-year-old third-generation leader Kim Jong Un, North Korea has sped up development of its nuclear and missile programs, despite UN sanctions that were tightened in March and have further isolated the impoverished country.

The United States, meanwhile, called on China to put pressure on North Korea to denuclearise.

US Defense Secretary Ash Carter, on a visit to Norway, also reaffirmed an "iron-clad" commitment to defend South Korea and condemned the North Korean test as a direct challenge to the entire international community.

At the United Nations, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged the Security Council to take "appropriate action" after what he called a "brazen breach" of the council`s resolutions.

"The patience on our side and that of the international community has already reached its limit," South Korean President Park Geun-Hye said, slamming the North`s young leader Kim Jong-Un for his "maniacal recklessness."

The news drew swift condemnation from US President Barack Obama, who called the test "a grave threat to regional security and to international peace and stability" and vowed to push for new international sanctions.

Japan condemned the test as "absolutely unacceptable," Russia expressed "extreme concern," and the head of the UN atomic watchdog said it was a "clear violation" of numerous Security Council resolutions.

"I count on the Security Council to remain united and take appropriate action. We must urgently break this accelerating spiral of escalation," Ban told reporters ahead of the Security Council talks called by the United States and Japan.

Obama said he had called the leaders of South Korea and Japan to confer over the crisis, with Park and Japanese leader Shinzo Abe also agreeing to cooperate closely with each other.

Pyongyang`s state media said the test, which comes after a series of ballistic missile launches, had realized the country`s goal of being able to fit a miniaturized warhead on a rocket.

"Our nuclear scientists staged a nuclear explosion test on a newly developed nuclear warhead at the country`s northern nuclear test site," a North Korean TV presenter said.

First indications of an underground explosion came when seismic monitors detected a 5.3-magnitude "artificial earthquake" near the Punggye-ri nuclear site.

"The 10-kiloton blast was nearly twice the (power of the) fourth nuclear test and slightly less than the Hiroshima bombing, which was measured about 15 kilotons," said Kim Nam-Wook of the South`s meteorological agency.

But attention soon shifted from the blast`s power to Pyongyang`s claim that it was a miniaturized warhead.

This week`s events pose yet another challenge for Pyongyang`s chief ally, China, which has been under pressure to rein in its increasingly aggressive neighbor.

Beijing said on Friday it "firmly opposes" the test, but it has limited room to maneuver. Its priority is to avoid the regime`s collapse, which would create a crisis on its border and shift the balance of power on the Korean peninsula toward the United States.

If Pyongyang can make a nuclear device small enough to fit on a rocket -- and bolster the range and accuracy of its missiles -- it might achieve its oft-stated aim of hitting US targets. But its past claims to have achieved that have been discounted.

However, North Koreans who gathered around public screens to watch the official announcement of the test -- which came on the 68th anniversary of the country`s founding -- were approving.

"US bastards may be saying this and that, but we fear nothing as our military power has strengthened further," said a woman who did not give her name.

Ordinary North Koreans usually express only officially sanctioned views when questioned by foreign news organizations.

Pyongyang routinely insists Washington is on the verge of launching an all-out war against it.

North Korea has been hit by five sets of United Nations sanctions since it first tested a nuclear device in 2006, but has insisted it will continue come what may.

The nuclear program has accompanied a series of ballistic missile launches, the latest of which took place on Monday as world powers gathered for a G20 meeting in China.

(With Agency inputs)
Seoul: South Korean President Park Geun-Hye on Friday condemned North Korea`s latest nuclear test as an act of "self-destruction" that will further deepen its isolation in the international community.

The impoverished but nuclear-armed North staged its fifth nuclear test Friday morning, she said in a statement, describing it as a "grave challenge" to the international community.

"With the nuclear test, Kim Jong-Un`s regime will only earn more sanctions and isolation... and such provocation will further accelerate its path to self-destruction," she said, referring to the North`s young ruler.

The latest nuclear test -- described as the North`s most powerful to date by Seoul`s military -- proves Kim`s "manic recklessness" and his obsession with building a nuclear arsenal despite global criticism, she added.
Tokyo: Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Friday said the nuclear test conducted by North Korea was unacceptable and would be protested.

Abe also said that Japan would liaise closely on the matter with the US and South Korea as the situation unfolds, Xinhua news agency reported.

The Japanese Prime Minister said he had instructed all relevant officials in his office and applicable ministries to gather more information about North Korea`s testing of a nuclear device.

His instructions followed Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) detecting an artificial earthquake centred in North Korea close to a previous test site, which it believes may have been a nuclear test.

An artificial quake of magnitude 5 was detected around 9.30 a.m. at North Korea`s main Punggye-ri nuclear test site. The US Geological Survey said the tremor was a 5.3-magnitude earthquake.

In a press conference, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said on Friday the government is currently gathering more information about the possible nuclear test.

Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida also said that Japan would convene an emergency meeting of its National Security Council (NSC) to discuss issues relevant to the incident.

Government officials here have also said that if the test is confirmed, Japan will call for an emergency UN Security Council meeting on the matter.

North Korea is banned by UN sanctions from any tests of nuclear or missile technology. It conducted a fourth nuclear test in January this year.
Columbia: President Barack Obama vowed Friday to push for new international sanctions in retaliation for the "grave threat" posed by North Korea`s latest nuclear test.

The US leader consulted by telephone with South Korean President Geun-Hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe following news of the reclusive country`s fifth and most powerful test.

"We agreed to work with the UN Security Council, our other Six-Party partners, and the international community to vigorously implement existing measures imposed in previous resolutions, and to take additional significant steps, including new sanctions," Obama said in a statement.

"The United States condemns North Korea`s September 9 nuclear test in the strongest possible terms as a grave threat to regional security and to international peace and stability," he said.

Obama, who has pleaded since first taking office in 2009 for a world without nuclear weapons, denounced North Korea`s actions as "unlawful and dangerous."

"To be clear, the United States does not, and never will, accept North Korea as a nuclear state," the president declared.

"As Commander in Chief, I have a responsibility to safeguard the American people and ensure that the United States is leading the international community in responding to this threat and North Korea`s other provocations with commensurate resolve and condemnation," Obama said.

North Korea has been hit by five sets of UN sanctions since it first tested a nuclear device in 2006.

The Security Council will meet Friday at 3 pm (1900 GMT) at the request of the United States and Japan to discuss Pyongyang`s latest test.

Obama reaffirmed, as he has done repeatedly following North Korean ballistic missile launches, the US commitment to "take necessary steps to defend our allies in the region," namely South Korea and Japan.

North Korea claimed Friday it had successfully tested a nuclear warhead that could be mounted on a missile, drawing condemnation from South Korea`s government over the "maniacal recklessness" of young ruler Kim Jong-Un.

At 10 kilotons the blast approached the might of the bomb that devastated Hiroshima in 1945, experts in Seoul said.
Youths seeking employment in the Navy had gathered outside the base for the exam, where no proper arrangements were made.

By India Today Web Desk: Several people were injured at the naval base in Malad, Mumbai who had come to appear for an exam, when a stampede broke out.

At least 10,000 youths were present at INS Hamla to appear in an exam organised by the Indian Navy.

The people seeking jobs with the navy were gathering outside the base for the exam, where no proper arrangements were made for the people coming in. While the crowd tried to get past the gate, the police used batons to control them that led to the stampede.

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OVERWHELMING RESPONSE LED TO STAMPEDE



Soon after the incident, the Navy issued a statement saying that the response for the recruitment was overwhelming and crowd control created a bit of confusion which was subsequently handled very efficiently by local police and navy officials. The Navy also said, "The recruitment drive is going on smoothly now"



INS Hamla is a naval base on the western shore of Mumbai.

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Washington: Pakistan was "nearly placed" on a formal US list of state sponsors of terrorism during 1993 to 1994, an ex-CIA official has said.

"At the start of the (Bill) Clinton administration, in 1993 and 1994, I was a special assistant to the Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, on loan from CIA, deeply involved in an annual terrorism review which nearly resulted in Pakistan's being placed on the formal list of state sponsors of terrorism," Robert L Grenier, a former CIA official, said yesterday.

He was addressing members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during a Congressional hearing on Pakistan.

Grenier said that over the past five decades, the US has been willing, episodically to overlook its concerns with aspects of Pakistani behaviour and to subordinate those concerns in the face of what have appeared, at the time, to be overriding national security priorities ? only to revert to a more contentious relationship when those interests no longer pertained.

"Thus, in the 1980's, the US was willing not only to overlook growing evidence of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program in deference to joint US-Pak support to the anti-Soviet Afghan Mujahiddin but also to provide Pakistan with generous economic and military rewards in the bargain," he said.

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11 attacks, needing a platform for operations in Afghanistan and a partner to intercept al Qaeda militants fleeing that country, the US was again willing to subordinate its broader concerns with Pakistani-based militancy in Kashmir and with Pakistan's ambivalent attitude toward the Afghan Taliban, he said.

Pakistan has clung stubbornly to its own perceptions of national interest, and refused to compromise them even when it seemed irrational or self-defeating to US eyes, he said.

He also said the same has happened in the context of nuclear weapons doctrine, in its assessment of the threat from India, or in its calculus regarding both foreign and domestic militant groups.

Pakistani adherence to its perceived interests, in fact, has persisted, irrespective of US-administered punishments or inducements, Greiner said.

However, the former CIA station chief in Islamabad warned the lawmakers against taking any punitive action or sanctions against Pakistan. In fact, he encouraged that the US should help Pakistan maintain large conventional armed forces.

"Pakistan's conventional military forces will need to be maintained if we are to avoid quick recourse to nuclear weapons at a time when Kashmir remains a social and political tinderbox, and the threat of Indo-Pak war still hangs like an incubus across the region," he said.

"The US dares not turn its back on Pakistan as it seeks to protect its serious national security interests in South- Central Asia," Grenier said.
Bangkok: Fighting terrorism and cracking down on smuggling across their restive border will top the agenda at Friday`s talks between Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak and Thailand`s junta, officials said.

Thailand`s three Muslim-majority southernmost provinces are plagued by a bloody insurgency, and the porous 650-kilometre (400 mile) border with Malaysia is also a crime hotbed, criss-crossed by human traffickers, drug mules and weapon smugglers.

During Najib`s state visit to Bangkok, the Malaysian leader and his Thai counterpart Prayut Chan-O-Cha will discuss building a new stretch of fence along a small section of the border, according to Thailand`s defence ministry spokesman.

"It is an effort to prevent the smuggling of contraband, human trafficking and increase security," Major General Kongcheep Tantravanich told AFP, adding that the idea is still at an early stage.

Muslim insurgents are thought to routinely slip across the border to seek refuge from Thai troops seeking to quell their fight for greater autonomy from the Buddhist-majority state.

The insurgency has killed thousands of people, mostly civilians, since the most recent wave of rebellion erupted in 2004.

The Malaysian premier`s visit comes amid a flare-up of violence in the region, with three deadly bombings in the past month.

While the violence has historically been contained to the southernmost provinces, analysts believe the rebels were also behind a string of bombings that struck Thai tourist towns further north in August.

The Thai and Malaysian leaders will discuss ways to advance dialogue with the insurgents, according to Thailand`s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Malaysia is currently hosting talks between the Thai government and a group that claims to represent the insurgents, with the latest meeting held in Kuala Lumpur last week.

However the talks have yet to bear any fruit and the recent uptick in violence suggests the rebel negotiators have little sway over fighters on the ground.

In comments published in the Bangkok Post Friday, Najib stressed the two governments` commitment to fending off terrorism and said Malaysia was "honoured to be the facilitator of the peace process".

The two leaders are also looking to increase trade and strengthen economic ties during Najib`s visit.
Attica: French President Francois Hollande said Friday an attack has been foiled and a terror cell "destroyed" after the discovery of a car laden with gas cylinders in Paris last weekend.

"A group has been destroyed, but there are others," he warned during a visit to Athens, adding: "An attack has been foiled."
Bangkok: Thailand`s King Bhumibol Adulyadej on Friday endorsed a new army chief in an annual reshuffle, an appointment from outside the faction that has dominated the army for several years, surprising some experts.

The military has always been powerful in Thailand, and a 2014 coup established it as the country`s pre-eminent institution - arguably more so than the monarchy, which faces uncertain times as the health of the revered 88-year-old king fades.

The implications of the new appointment were not immediately clear but it may signal a willingness to compromise with other factions in the army and prevent any discord.

General Chalermchai Sitthisart, who is now assistant army chief, was appointed head of the army, while General Pisit Sitthisart, the army chief of staff, and a top contender for the post, was made deputy army chief.

Chalermchai`s appointment marks a departure from the Burapha Payak royalist military faction - known as the "Eastern Tigers" - that propelled junta chief Prayut Chan-ocha to power.

Chalermchai does not belong to the Eastern Tigers faction which has dominated the army for more than a decade and includes Prayuth and his allies.

As army chief Prayuth launched a coup in May 2014 that overthrew the civilian government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, a move he said was aimed at ending years of political turmoil in the Southeast Asian nation.

"Burapha Phayak has dominated the army for the last ten years. Many people thought General Pisit would get it," Wanwichit Boonprong, assistant professor of political science at Rangsit University, told Reuters.

"But Chalermchai became a major first, before Pisit, so in a way it follows the natural order," he said.

Approval of the appointments by King Bhumibol Adulyadej was a formality. The appointments take effect from October 1.

Since helping to overthrow an absolute monarchy in what was then the Kingdom of Siam in 1932, the military has staged 19 coups, 12 of them successful, and has provided 12 of the country`s 29 prime ministers in that time.
Washington: The US has asked India and Pakistan to engage in peace talks to de-escalate tensions in the region as it appealed to both the countries to maintain strong, cordial and productive relations.

"We strongly encourage in all of our dealings with either India and or Pakistan stronger relations between the two countries. It's clearly in the security interests of the region that they work to de-escalate tensions and that they have dialogue," State Department Deputy Spokesman Mark Toner told reporters yesterday at his daily news conference.

"That's something we constantly encourage for just that ? or out of just that concern, which is that we don't want to see tensions escalate, spiral out of control, and lead to some kind of incident," he said.

"It is important for the two countries, the two governments to maintain strong, cordial, and productive relations," Toner said in response to a question.

The US, he said, wants Pakistan to take more action against terrorist network.

"Our discussions continue to focus on the fact that we're urging the Government of Pakistan to take concerted action against safe havens and terrorist groups that threaten other countries in the region and we've been very clear about that," he said.

"And we have seen them attempt to address it. We want to see more action taken, but it continues to be a topic of conversation with them," he added.

Toner said America's relationship with India and Pakistan is not a zero sum game.

"As we've said many times, there's no zero-sum game here. We need to have a very strong and robust relationship with India and we do ? the world's largest democracy. And we also want to have a strong relationship with Pakistan. It's in the interests of the region to do so," he said.

"The recent India and Bangladesh visit of the Secretary of State (John Kerry) and not going to Pakistan should not be treated otherwise," Toner said.

"It doesn't clearly indicate anything about our relationship with Pakistan. The Secretary has a very intense travel schedule. He's been to Pakistan recently; he speaks often to senior Pakistani leadership," he said,

"Specifically, he was in India for the Strategic and Commercial Dialogue and took the opportunity to also visit Bangladesh ? I think the first time he's been there," he added.
Columbia: The House of Representatives passed legislation Friday that would allow victims of the 9/11 attacks and their relatives to sue foreign governments suspected of backing acts of terrorism against the United States.

The Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act -- approved in the House by unanimous voice vote some four months after its Senate passage -- is strongly opposed by the government of Saudi Arabia, the home nation of 15 of the 19 hijackers in the September 11, 2001 attacks.

It now heads to President Barack Obama`s desk, just days before the 15th anniversary of 9/11. The White House has signaled its opposition to the measure because it would essentially waive the doctrine of sovereign immunity that protects nation states from civil suits or criminal prosecution.

"This legislation would change long-standing, international law regarding sovereign immunity. And the president of the United States continues to harbor serious concerns that this legislation would make the United States vulnerable in other court systems around the world," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said back in May, after the Senate unanimously approved the bill.

The measure would allow 9/11 families to pursue cases in federal court against foreign governments, notably Saudi Arabia, and demand compensation if such governments are proven to bear some responsibility for the attacks.

Under current law, victims of terrorism can only sue countries officially designated by the State Department as sponsors of terrorism, such as Iran and Syria.

No official Saudi complicity in the Al-Qaeda attacks has been proven, and the kingdom has never been formally implicated. It is not a designated sponsor of terrorism.

In February Zacarias Moussaoui, dubbed the 20th hijacker, told US lawyers that members of the Saudi royal family donated millions of dollars to Al-Qaeda in the 1990s.

The Saudi Embassy denied Moussaoui`s claims. But his accusations revived debate over whether the Obama administration should release a still-classified 28-page section of the 9/11 Commission Report.

The documents were declassified and released in mid-July. They showed that while the United States probed links between the government of Saudi Arabia and the 9/11 attacks, it found multiple suspicions but no proven ties.
Geneva: US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will meet in Geneva on Friday for high-level peace talks on Syria, with Washington warning its patience is wearing thin.

The top diplomats from the two powers, which support opposite sides in the five-year conflict, will meet in the Swiss city to push for a peace agreement, Russia said.

Washington later confirmed Kerry was leaving for face-to-face talks with Lavrov.

The diplomatic news came after the US pressed Russia on Thursday for a "true cessation of hostilities" against a backdrop of continued military turmoil.

Coalition-backed forces were continuing to push the Islamic State group away from the Turkish border, an Islamist rebel leader died in a bombing attack and pro-regime forces made major gains on the outskirts of the ravaged city of Aleppo.

The talks "will focus on reducing violence, expanding humanitarian assistance for the Syrian people, and moving toward a political solution needed to end the civil war," State Department spokesman John Kirby said in a statement.

US Defense Secretary Ash Carter told BBC radio that there was "quite a long way to go" before a final peace deal could be struck.

He called for "a true cessation of hostilities -- not what you`ve seen, which is a partial cessation of hostilities," adding: "Our patience is not unlimited."

Both sides have agreed that a deal must involve a durable ceasefire, humanitarian access to conflict-wracked areas and a resumption of peace talks.

Amid a flurry of diplomatic efforts, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin agreed to intensify efforts for a ceasefire "as soon as possible" in Aleppo, the Turkish news agency Anadolu reported.

Moscow backs the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, while Ankara supports the opposition seeking his ouster.

US President Barack Obama earlier held talks with Putin on the sidelines of the G20 summit in China but the two failed to bridge their differences.

Lavrov suggested that problems in another part of the world -- namely, US sanctions against Russia over the Ukraine crisis -- may be hampering efforts between the former Cold War rivals to resolve "regional conflicts," a reference to the Syrian war.

And Carter noted: "We have our differences, serious differences, with Russia elsewhere, especially here in Europe with Ukraine."Fighting in the complex war continued to claim lives, with Turkish shelling over the border into Syria killing six Kurdish fighters aligned with US forces on Thursday.

Syrian rebels supported by Turkish and coalition air strikes pushed further west into areas held by the Islamic State group in northern Syria.

The top military commander of the Army of Conquest, the largest Syrian rebel alliance, was killed in an air strike during a meeting of the leaders of the anti-government group, Islamist sources said Thursday.

The former Al-Nusra Front, renamed Fateh al-Sham Front, announced on Twitter "the martyrdom" of commander Abu Omar Sarakeb.

Pro-regime forces meanwhile overran a strategically important district on the southern outskirts of Aleppo, rolling back nearly every gain from a major month-long rebel offensive there, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Thursday.

The government advance further seals off Aleppo`s opposition-held eastern districts. Regime forces backed by the Russian air force have completely encircled opposition-held neighbourhoods.

"Rebels are now back to square one, under an even more ruthless siege," Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the observatory, told AFP.

Shops in the city`s east have been struggling since Sunday to secure goods and prices are skyrocketing.

"The price of a kilo of meat rose from 3,000 pounds ($6) to 6,000," complained Ahmad, a father of three, in the Bustan al-Qasr district, ravaged by air strikes.

In London on Wednesday, the Syria opposition, under pressure, fleshed out a proposal for a transition to democracy without Assad after a six-month negotiating phase with the regime.

The opposition hopes new talks would result in an 18-month transition that would see Syria governed by an interim body made up of opposition figures, current government representatives and members of civil society, according to a 25-page blueprint.

The Syrian war -- which began as a pro-democracy revolt in 2011 but morphed into a multi-front conflict after the regime unleashed a crackdown -- has killed more than 290,000 people and forced more than half the population to flee their homes.

The Islamic State group has used the chaos to spread throughout the country and into Iraq. But it has lost ground in recent weeks.

Turkey said Wednesday that it favoured a joint operation with the US to oust the jihadists from their de facto capital of Raqa in northern Syria.

Erdogan said he had agreed with Obama to do "what is necessary."
Geneva: The United States and Russia will make a fresh bid to end the bloodshed in Syria Friday, as Moscow-backed regime forces make new advances against rebel fighters on the ground.

US Secretary of State John Kerry flew into Geneva for crunch talks with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, with Washington warning talks could not go on forever without a breakthrough.

The two powers back opposite sides in the five-year conflict, with Moscow supporting the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and the US behind the rebels.

Senior Kerry officials said he would not have flown out to the high-level face-to-face talks with Lavrov unless he thought there was a chance of progress.

But they warned there was no guarantee of a final agreement within the narrow window available before both men return home later Friday.

The pair met at a hotel on the banks of lake Geneva and made brief remarks to reporters about North Korea`s latest nuclear test before beginning their closed-door talks on Syria.Washington wants concrete steps from Russia to force its Syrian ally Assad to stop bombing his own people and to lift the siege of Aleppo.

"We need to see a situation where it`s clear within whatever is being agreed with the Russians that there won`t be a siege of Aleppo," a senior US official told reporters.

Pro-regime forces have taken back a strategically important district on Aleppo`s southern outskirts, rolling back nearly every gain from a major month-long rebel offensive there, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Thursday.

The government advance further seals off Aleppo`s opposition-held eastern districts and regime troop backed by the Russian air force have completely encircled opposition-held neighbourhoods.

And in a further setback for the rebels, the top military commander of the Army of Conquest, the largest Syrian rebel alliance, was killed in an air strike during a meeting of the leaders of the anti-government group, Islamist sources said Thursday.

The former Al-Nusra Front, renamed Fateh al-Sham Front, announced on Twitter "the martyrdom" of commander Abu Omar Sarakeb.

"Rebels are now back to square one, under an even more ruthless siege," Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the observatory, told AFP. Shops in the east of Aleppo have been struggling since Sunday to secure goods and prices are skyrocketing.

"The price of a kilo of meat rose from 3,000 pounds to 6,000 (from $6 to $12)," complained father-of-three Ahmad in the strike-hit district of Bustan al-Qasr.Ahead of the Geneva talks, the US pressed Russia for a "true cessation of hostilities" against a backdrop of continued military turmoil but warned that its patience is running thin.

US Defence Secretary Ash Carter told BBC radio on Thursday there was "quite a long way to go" before a final peace deal could be struck.

He called for "a true cessation of hostilities -- not what you`ve seen, which is a partial cessation of hostilities," adding: "Our patience is not unlimited."

The Geneva talks "will focus on reducing violence, expanding humanitarian assistance for the Syrian people, and moving toward a political solution needed to end the civil war," State Department spokesman John Kirby said in a statement.

Adding to the flurry of diplomatic efforts, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin also agreed to intensify efforts for a ceasefire "as soon as possible" in Aleppo, the Turkish news agency Anadolu reported.

Lavrov has suggested that problems in another part of the world -- namely, US sanctions against Russia over the Ukraine crisis -- may be hampering efforts between the former Cold War rivals to resolve "regional conflicts," a reference to the Syrian war.

And Carter noted: "We have our differences, serious differences, with Russia elsewhere, especially here in Europe with Ukraine."While diplomats wrangled, fighting in the complex war continued to claim lives, with Turkish shelling over the border into Syria killing six Kurdish fighters aligned with US forces on Thursday.

Syrian rebels supported by Turkish and coalition air strikes pushed further west into areas held by Islamic State (IS) group militants in northern Syria.

The Syrian war -- which began as a pro-democracy revolt in 2011 but morphed into a multi-front conflict after the regime unleashed a crackdown -- has killed more than 290,000 people and forced more than half the population to flee their homes.

IS has used the chaos to spread throughout the country and into Iraq.
Geneva: US-Russian talks on stilling the fighting in Syria could powerfully boost efforts to provide aid and a political solution if they succeed, UN envoy Staffan de Mistura said Friday.

"(It) would have a major impact on humanitarian access, and in turn would have a positive impact on the way the political process would be relaunched," de Mistura said as US Secretary of State John Kerry met Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Geneva.

"Their conclusion could make... a major difference," de Mistura said. "So these meetings today are important."

The Syrian conflict began as a pro-democracy revolt in 2011 but snowballed into a multi-front war after the regime unleashed a crackdown.

Nearly 300,000 people have been killed and half of the population have fled their homes.

Russia and the United States back opposite sides, with Moscow supporting the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and the US behind a coalition of rebel groups it regards as moderate.
Washington: Top US lawmakers have expressed frustration in Pakistan's selective nature in taking actions against terrorist networks, saying that there exists "duplicity" in America's relations with Pakistan.

"The Government of Pakistan knows where the leaders of the Haqqani network live...The Pakistan Army knows exactly where these Haqqani networks and their families are," Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Senator Bob Corker said during a Congressional hearing on Thursday.

In his remarks, Corker alleged that the Pakistan Army is not willing to take out terrorist networks the Haqqani network in particular, who have now moved to the suburban areas.

Now that they have moved to the suburban areas, the US can not use drones to kill them as it did when they lived in the tribal areas of FATA.

Corker, who had successfully put a hold on the sale of F-16 to Pakistan, said that the terrorist safe havens continued to exist in Pakistan with the connivance of the establishment.

"Whereas at one time we were using our drones to ferret out terrorists in that region, what ultimately happened was they moved to the suburbs of Pakistan. They are now getting medical care. The Haqqani network leadership has been living there. The government of Pakistan knows where they live. As a matter of fact, they have safe havens there," Corker disclosed.

"They are the number one killers of the US and Afghan forces... Extreme duplicity exists with this relationship," he said, alleging that Pakistan is harbouring people and terrorist networks, and the US has paid USD 43 billion in aid to Islamabad since 2001.

"This is a very frustrating relationship. We all are more and more frustrated with the relationship," Corker said.

The US senators threatened aid cuts to Pakistan.

"We've gone through a period of time where we've both viewed our relationship as very transactional. We tried to change that and deal with Pakistan in a different manner and to create a whole relationship with them. From my standpoint, that hasn't been very successful," Republican senator Bob Corker declared.

Senator Ben Cardin, the Ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the US ties with Pakistan is very challenging.

"They have been very selective in going after terrorist networks, in particular, the Haqqani network and LeT. We have problems with Pakistan," Cardin said.

Testifying before the Congressional Committee, Daniel Markey, Senior Research Professor, International Relations; Academic Director, Global Policy Program School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, said that the US should "limit its expectations" in ties with Pakistan.

A former CIA official and the agencies Station Chief in Islamabad in the late 90s, Robert L Grenier said that over the past few decades, the US has "overlooked" Pakistan's support to terrorist networks including "its support to militancy in Kashmir" and its clandestine nuclear policy.

"Pakistan, for its part, has clung stubbornly to its own perceptions of national interest, and has generally refused to compromise those perceived interests, even when their pursuit has seemed irrational or self-defeating to US eyes - whether in the context of nuclear weapons doctrine, in its assessment of the threat from India, or in its calculus regarding both foreign and domestic militant groups," he said.

(With PTI inputs)
Actor Nayanthara has been roped in to play the female lead in Suriya's next with director Vignesh Shivan, say reports.

By India Today Web Desk: Actor Suriya is currently wrapping up the shoot of his upcoming actioner Singam 3, the third part of the Singam series. Earlier this week, Suriya announced his next project with director Vignesh Shivan, which will have music by Anirudh Ravichander.

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Reports now suggest that actor Nayanthara has been roped in to play the female lead in the upcoming film. Notably, Nayanthara played the lead role in the director's Naanum Rowdy Dhaan. Nayanthara has acted with Suriya in films like Ghajini, Aadhavan and Mass.

However, we await a confirmation from the makers. This film is also touted to be an action drama on the contrary to Naanum Rowdy Dhaan.

Meanwhile, Suriya has already signed his next project with Muttiah, which is touted to be a rural entertainer.

Actor Keerthy Suresh has been roped in to star opposite Suriya in the film. Also, actor Ritika Singh, who shot to fame after Madhavan's Irudhi Suttru, has been approached to play Suriya's sister in the film.

Suriya's film with Muttiah is said to be an action drama based on father-son relationship, set in the rural backdrop of Tamil Nadu.

After Singam 3, Suriya was supposed to act under director Pa Ranjith's direction. The project which was supposed to take off next year, seem to have been shelved now.

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Almaty: Ex-Soviet Uzbekistan`s new interim president Shavkat Mirziyoyev has ruled out military alliances, the government said Friday, following the same course as the late veteran strongman Islam Karimov.

Mirziyoyev -- who served as the Central Asian country`s prime minister for nearly 13 years -- is the frontrunner to replace Karimov. The presidential election in set to take place on December 4, the country`s election commission said Friday.

"The firm position of our country, as before, is non-membership in all military-political alliances and not allowing other states` military bases and facilities on the territory of Uzbekistan," Mirziyoyev told lawmakers, according to a foreign ministry statement.

"No one should doubt that any attempt by internal and external forces to encroach on the sovereignty and independence of our country will be severely suppressed."

Under Karimov, authoritarian Uzbekistan kept strategic partners Russia and the United States at arm`s length while attempting to benefit from their rivalry in the majority Muslim region.

The country quit a Russia-led security organisation in 2012 and cancelled the lease of a US military base used in Afghanistan operations after Washington called for an independent investigation into a brutal crackdown in 2005.

Mirziyoyev`s remarks were made at a parliament session in which he was appointed interim president ahead of upcoming elections.

He was granted the position after being backed by Senate leader Nigmatilla Yuldashev, who under the constitution should have become interim president ahead of the presidential elections.

Analysts have speculated that powerful deputy premier and finance minister Rustam Azimov could now take on the prime minister`s role.

Karimov, 78, was pronounced dead last week after suffering a stroke and falling into a coma following days of speculation about his rapidly failing health.

Karimov led the ex-Soviet state with an iron grip for some 27 years, earning a reputation abroad as one of the region`s most savage despots who ruthlessly stamped out opposition and violated human rights.

Before his death, Karimov was one of two reigning presidents in Central Asia to have begun ruling his country before independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

The other, Kazakhstan`s Nursultan Nazarbayev, is 76 and has never identified a successor.
By PTI: New Delhi, Sep 9 (PTI) Amid ongoing war between incumbent and new telecom operators over interconnect issue, sector regulator Trai today asked them to resolve the matter without compromising on service quality but Airtel continued to accuse Reliance Jio of abusing network by "tsunami of free traffic". Trai today met Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea to discuss ongoing tussle over network interconnection, but barred officials of industry body COAI, which on the behalf of incumbents has been leading the fight against new player Reliance Jio, from the meeting. According to sources, Trai Secretary Sudhir Gupta asked operators to resolve issue among themselves without compromising on quality of service norms laid down by the regulator.

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Cellular operators association COAI claimed that players have agreed to discuss and negotiate "reasonable" points of connectivity that can be provided to Jio.

COAI said the operators will meet one-on-one to negotiate the "reasonable" incremental capacity to be provided to Reliance Jio, and following agreement will have 90 days to comply to the latters request for interconnection ports.

Despite the "constructive dialogue" on the matter, the largest mobile operator Bharti Airtel hit out at Mukesh Ambanis telecom venture and asked Trai to find a way to curb the "massive asymmetric traffic" and ensure that receiving networks are not "abused by tsunami of free traffic".

"In this regard, Interconnection Usage Charges is an effective tool in the hands of Trai, which we hope they will use judiciously," Bharti Airtel said in a statement. The issue of interconnectivity among telecom networks has become the flashpoint for one of the fiercest corporate battles in the sector.

Interconnection is required to enable mobile users to make calls to customers of other telecom networks, and is all-important for Reliance Jio which is scripting a disruptive entry into 4G market by offering free voice calls. Reliance Jio, which commercially launched its services on September 5, has accused incumbent players for not releasing sufficient interconnection ports and had sought legal action against them. Existing operators, however, have argued that they cannot release more ports as their networks are already under stress due to surge in traffic following free voice call offer by the Mukesh Ambani-led company. Emerging from the hour-long meeting with Trai, Reliance Jio Infocomm Board Member Mahendra Nahata told reporters that "this is fight for justice, fight for customers". PTI PRS MBI MR

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Greece is struggling to deliver on fresh reforms that are needed to unlock a further 2.8 billion euros ($3 billion) in bailout loans

Eurogroup head Jeroen Dijsselbloem warned Athens on Friday to swiftly deliver on overdue reforms as its massive bailout programme fell off track triggering fears of a new row with Greece.

Leftist-led Greece is struggling to deliver on fresh reforms that are needed to unlock a further 2.8 billion euros ($3 billion) in bailout loans and more crucially, launch negotiations on debt relief later in the year.

"The pressure is back on. We really need some progress. The summer is over, pack up the camping gear, get back to work," Dijsselbloem, who leads the group of 19 finance ministers from the eurozone, told reporters in Bratislava.

Athens has committed to deliver on the reforms by the end of the month. They include the long delayed launch of a massive privatisation fund and reforms in the highly sensitive energy sector.

The EU's Economic Affairs commissioner Pierre Moscovici said Athens must deliver on 15 reforms, with only two of those achieved so far.

"It's not a secret ... that there is a lot to be done to complete these reforms," he said after the ministers discussed Greece's bailout.

"The Greek authorities must know that we are waiting for them, for the matter of trust and efficiency," he said.

Greece's creditors are mostly concerned with staffing picks proposed by Athens to run the privatisation fund, which are seen as too inexperienced or too politically linked to the ruling Syriza party, a European source told AFP.

- 'Still time' -

The influential German Finance Minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, said Greece still had a short period of time to get back in line on its 86 billion euro bailout programme, agreed amid much bitterness in July 2015.

"They have to do this until the end of September, so there is still time for Greece," Schaeuble said.

Left unaddressed at the talks was the part played by the IMF, which was key to Greece's three bailouts but is now holding off until the eurozone ministers commit to debt relief for Athens.

"The IMF is in a very constructive mode and I'm very happy about that", Dijsselbloem said, adding that the Washington-based fund would take a decision on its role by the end of the year.

Story continues

Mujtaba Rahman of the Eurasia risk assessment group warned that the tensions risked boiling over early next year "when the government needs cash and its ECB obligations are once again around the corner."

Delays by Athens make it easier "for creditors to hide their differences and blame Greece. As such it pushes off the need for Germany and the IMF to come to a deal over debt relief," he added.

The eurozone ministers met in the Slovak capital as Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, an anti-austerity champion, hosted a mini-summit between the European Union's seven Mediterranean states in Athens.

Schaeuble belittled the summit as a political meeting of "socialist party leaders", even though non-left leaders attended.

"And when socialist party leaders meet, most of the time, nothing intelligent comes out of it," he added.
"I don't think the guy's qualified to be president of the United States, and every time he speaks, that opinion is confirmed," Obama told a news conference.

US President Barack Obama holds a news conference at the conclusion of his participation in the ASEAN Summits in Vientiane, Laos (Photo: Reuters)

By Reuters: US President Barack Obama hit back at Donald Trump on Thursday for criticising his foreign policy record, saying the Republican nominee was unfit to follow him into the Oval Office and the public should press him on his "outright wacky ideas".

Speaking in Laos at the end of the second of two Asian summits, Obama said the tycoon's lack of leadership credentials was exposed whenever he spoke and American voters were aware of that.



UNQUALIFIED

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"I don't think the guy's qualified to be president of the United States, and every time he speaks, that opinion is confirmed," Obama told a news conference.

"The most important thing for the public and the press is to just listen to what he says and follow up and ask questions about what appear to be either contradictory or uninformed, or outright wacky, ideas."

Trump declared on Wednesday during a televised forum attended by military veterans that Russian President Vladimir Putin had been a better leader than Obama.

TRUMP'S ATTACK

Trump said the progress of U.S. military generals had been stymied, or "reduced to rubble" with Obama as commander-in-chief and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton as his first secretary of state. It was the first time Trump and Clinton had squared off on the same stage since securing their nominations in July.

Obama said he believed his foreign policy legacy would be one of success, particularly his so-called "rebalance" to Asia. He said Asian leaders would be puzzled by Trump's remarks, and Americans would know who to choose as president on Nov. 8.

"I have confidence that if, in fact, people just listen to what he had to say, look at his track record or lack thereof, that they'll make a good decision," he said.



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Donald Trump eliminates his "black list" of media banned from his campaign rallies





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By Susan Taylor TORONTO (Reuters) - Canadian newspaper publisher the Globe and Mail offered voluntary buyouts to all staff on Thursday in an effort to 'right-size' the business, publisher Philip Crawley said. The newspaper, which has about 650 staff, is looking for about 40 people to volunteer for the buyout, Crawley said in an email sent to employees and seen by Reuters. In 2013, when the paper last offered buyouts, more than 60 employees accepted the offer, he said. Newspapers are under increasing pressure to cut costs to offset sharp declines in print advertising sales. The package is open to union and non-unionized staff and management, with enhanced severance for employees with more than 30 year of service, Crawley said. "I made it clear today that this is about right-sizing the business. It would have happened now, with or without a new building," Crawley said in an email, referencing the newspaper's planned move to a new office building in downtown Toronto later this year. In the email, the company said that under a three-year plan it had reduced its expense run rate by C$25 million ($19.34 million) through cost-cutting measures including a new print plant contract and reduced marketing budget. The Globe hopes to reduce its staff by mid-November, the email said. The Globe is majority-owned by Canada's Thomson family, which is also a majority owner of Reuters' parent company, Thomson Reuters Corp . ($1 = 1.2924 Canadian dollars) (Reporting by Susan Taylor; Editing by James Dalgleish)
By Philip Blenkinsop BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A deal that would allow Canada to sell maple syrup duty free in the EU and Europeans to ship more cheese to Canadian shops has become the focus of a battle with anti-globalization groups that is key to the future of Europe's free trade agreements. Supporters of the huge deal say it would increase trade between the EU and Canada on a range of products, from cars to investment and farm products, by nearly a quarter, boosting the EU economy by 12 billion euros. But anti-globalization and other groups emboldened by France's call to suspend EU trade talks with the United States, have turned their attention to the deal already reached with Canada which has not yet been approved. There is a growing public backlash in the West against free trade and globalization, which critics blame for factory closures, depressed wages and a widening gap between rich and poor. Britain's decision to leave the European Union was partly seen as a protest by some voters against globalization. "CETA (EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement) is the little brother of TTIP (EU-U.S. Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) and needs to be buried alongside it," said Fabio De Masi, a German member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the leftist Die Linke party. Canada is not impressed. "If the EU cannot do a deal with Canada, I think it is legitimate to say who the heck can it do a deal with," Canadian Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland said in June. Other supporters say CETA is the most modern trade deal ever made and that the new Canadian government bent over backwards to accept EU demands for a new way of settling investor claims. "There are no deals that are comparable in their quality with CETA," said Artis Pabriks, a member of the European Parliament. "I would say it is a gold standard." The deal would eliminate tariffs on almost 99 percent of goods. The beneficiaries would include, for example, carmakers or the EU textile sector, for which Canadian duties can be up to 18 percent. Service companies could also benefit and EU companies would be able to tender for public contracts at Canadian provincial and municipal level, the first time Canada has offered this. VOTERS IN MIND The deal, agreed by negotiators two years ago after five years of talks, should get the green light from EU member states next month before it is signed during Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's visit to Brussels on Oct. 27. However, there are risks it will not. Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern said last week he would start a "conflict" over CETA, while toning down his opposition a day later. Observers say Kern and others are responding to public mistrust of the planned TTIP in particular what critics call a "race to the bottom" in environmental and food standards. CETA, say opponents, is just a mini-TTIP and indeed more advanced, given TTIP is simply under negotiation and not yet a deal. France and Germany hold elections next year and politicians are curbing their enthusiasm for trade deals. Germany's Social Democrats will vote on CETA at a party meeting on Sept 19, a year before Germans chose a chancellor. "I am confident that the closer to election days we come, more politicians will think twice whether to pass these agreements or not," said De Masi. Trade is unusual in the EU because it is one of the few policy areas where the European Commission negotiates on behalf of national governments, rather than each country doing it individually. The deal will still need backing from the European Parliament, with a vote possible in December, as well as ratification from up to 30 national and regional parliaments, which could take up to five years or more. The Belgian regional parliament of Wallonia has already voted to reject CETA. "There is the sense that globalization is the thing that's at fault," said Jeffrey Bergstrand, finance professor at Notre Dame University in Indiana. "There is clearly this momentum toward a protectionist attitude, back to what we had in the Great Depression." UNRELIABLE PARTNER Even if CETA is not blocked it could face a crippling delay. Luisa Santos, international relations director at business federation BusinessEurope, says waiting for final ratification could mean CETA taking almost 15 years from start to finish. "You are jeopardising the positive effects that might come from a free trade agreement," she said. Hosuk Lee-Makiyama says the drawn-out TTIP and CETA experiences demonstrate to would-be trade partners that the EU is a less reliable counterpart in negotiations, less able to agree a deal and less likely to implement a deal when agreed. "If you are Australia, New Zealand or Japan why make concessions when you're not really sure what you'll get in return?" he said. The EU will also be smaller when Britain leaves, taking with it strong ties to the United States and Commonwealth countries. "Imagine if the United States said, for instance, 'Well maybe TTIP will not apply to California'," the U.S. chief TTIP negotiator said, adding a "certain reflection" was now required. (Editing by Anna Willard)
By Terje Solsvik and Yasmeen Abutaleb OSLO/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc on Friday reinstated a Vietnam War-era photo of a naked girl fleeing a napalm attack, after a public outcry over its removal of the image including harsh criticism from Norway's prime minister. In a clash between a democratically elected leader and the social media giant over how to patrol the Internet, Norway Prime Minister Erna Solberg said Facebook was editing history by erasing images of the iconic 1972 "Napalm Girl" photograph, which showed children running from a bombed village. The company initially said the photo violated its Community Standards barring child nudity on the site. "After hearing from our community, we looked again at how our Community Standards were applied in this case," Facebook said in a later statement, adding it recognized "the history and global importance of this image in documenting a particular moment in time." Solberg posted the iconic "Napalm Girl" news photograph on her Facebook page after the company had deleted it from sites of Norwegian authors and the daily Aftenposten. Facebook had also removed the photo from the page of the woman who had been photographed as a girl. Captured by Pulitzer Prize-winner Nick Ut of the Associated Press, the image of screaming children running from a napalm attack shows a naked nine-year-old girl at its center. Solberg said Facebook's ban put unacceptable limits on freedom of speech. "They must see the difference between editing out child pornography and editing out history," she told Reuters. "It's perfectly possible for a company like Facebook to sort this out. Otherwise we risk more censorship," she said. Protesting Facebook's move, Solberg re-posted the photo with a black square covering the naked girl, and published a range of other historic images blacking over faces of people such as Ronald Reagan or Winston Churchill. She also posted a version of the "Tank Man" image from the 1989 protests in China's Tiananmen Square, with a black square covering a man standing in front of a row of army tanks. Solberg wrote on her Facebook account: "I want my children and other children to grow up in a society where history is taught as it was." Aftenposten splashed the Vietnam photograph across its front page on Friday, next to a large Facebook logo, and wrote a front-page editorial headlined "Dear Mark Zuckerberg", saying the social network was undermining democracy. Earlier, Facebook said in a statement its rules were more blunt than the company itself would prefer, adding that restrictions on nudity were necessary on a global platform. Norway is a big investor in Facebook. Its $891 billion sovereign wealth fund, the world's biggest, had a stake of 0.52 percent in Facebook worth $1.54 billion at the start of 2016. Solberg told Reuters she intended to maintain her Facebook account. ($1 = 8.2667 Norwegian crowns) (Additional reporting by Yasmeen Abutaleb in San Francisco; Editing by Alister Doyle and David Gregorio)
There was a time, not long ago in the scheme of things, when there was no border dividing this continent into a Canada and a United States.

For some Aboriginal Canadians, that is still the case when it comes to their ongoing battle against oil pipelines.

Hundreds of First Nations have flocked to the side of the Standing Rock Sioux in North Dakota as they try to halt a multibillion-dollar oil pipeline near their reservation.

Members of Montreals Indigenous community protested in front of the U.S. consulate this week.

On Monday, a solidarity rally is planned in Vancouver. Other protests are taking shape for next week, when the Standing Rock Sioux have appealed for actions to show solidarity.

For me its really personal, says Rose Stiffarm, one of the organizers of the Vancouver rally.

Stiffarm is part Nakota, one of the tribes who say their water is threatened by the pipeline.

Water is life. It is quite an attack on a basic human resource so its important we show solidarity with those who are on the front lines, says Stiffarm, who is a member of the border-hopping Coast Salish people.

The 1,700-kilometre Dakota Access pipeline would transport oil from just north of the Standing Rock Sioux reservation to Illinois, where an existing pipeline would ultimately deliver it to the Gulf Coast. Championed by a subsidiary of Texas-based Energy Transfer Crude Oil Company, the project has ties to Calgary-based Enbridge, the proponent of the controversial Northern Gateway pipeline to British Columbias north coast.

Its the same fight. Its the fight for water, for survival, says Stiffarm.

Stiffarm says environmental and First Nations groups in Vancouver are in the midst of their own battle, against Kinder Morgans proposed TransMountain pipeline.

There are pipelines that want to come through here. There are tankers that want to come through here. Were defending the water here, too, she says.

Its a constant threat.

Clashes on the front lines



Story continues

The Dakota Access line would not enter Sioux tribal land but runs about a kilometre outside of the boundary. The tribes say it will destroy a sacred burial ground and poses a threat to nearby rivers that provide their water source.

Protests began in April and the ranks have swelled to several thousand.

The Sioux turned to the courts to halt the project but a U.S. District Court judge denied an injunction on Friday. An appeal is set to be heard next Wednesday.

The U.S. Justice Department issued a statement on Friday though saying it would not authorize construction on federal lands pending a review.

The department called on Energy Transfer to voluntarily pause construction activity, saying: This case has highlighted the need for a serious discussion on whether there should be nationwide reform with respect to considering tribes views on these types of infrastructure projects.

Clashes erupted on the front lines earlier this week between protesters and private security guards hired by the pipeline company. There were reports that dogs and pepper spray were used on the protesters by the private security staff.

Keystone, Energy East, Northern Gateway, Dakota Access  the issues are the same, says Cecil James, a council member of the Roseau River First Nation in southern Manitoba who travelled down to the North Dakota protest camp a few weeks ago. Hes hoping to return this weekend.

It caught my attention, especially after what we went through with the oil spill on the North Saskatchewan River here, he tells Yahoo Canada News, referring to a Husky Oil spill in the river in July.

He says there were hundreds of Canadians at the camp, which grew from about 1,500 to more than 3,000 over the few days he was there.

The different tribes across North America are definitely leading the charge but we do have non-Aboriginals that are involved in the fight, James says.

It isnt just a First Nations problem. We all drink water.

There are lessons to be learned from the Sioux by Canadian First Nations for their own battles against resource development, James says.

This fight is going to go all the way across this country, he says. Its going to come right through my territory with Line 3 and Energy East, so Im taking note of what theyre doing down there. When that fight comes to my territory Im hoping to get that same type of support.


[City of East Liverpool, Ohio/Facebook]

Ohio police are posting harrowing images on Facebook in an attempt to deter people from using heroin.



The two photos show a man and woman, passed out with their mouths agape in the front seats of a vehicle. Behind the adults, a child can be seen sitting alert in a back car seat.



Authorities in East Liverpool, Ohio, intentionally published the photos online to illustrate the dangerous potential of heroin, which police believe the suspects had injected before being pulled over.



We feel it necessary to show the other side of this horrible drug, the post published by the city reads. We feel we need to be a voice for the children caught up in this horrible mess.

This child cant speak for himself but we are hopeful this story can convince another user to think twice about injecting this poison while having a child in their custody.



According to the police report, an officer spotted an SUV with West Virginia licence plates driving erratically Wednesday. The vehicle stopped in the middle of the road near a school bus dropping off students.



When the officer approached the vehicle, he noticed the driver was unintelligible and bobbing his head. The man, identified as James Acord, told police he was taking the passenger, Rhonda Pasek, to the hospital. Soon after, the man passed out and an ambulance was dispatched to resuscitate the adults.

Narcan, a drug used to reverse the effects of a heroin overdose, was given to Acord and Pasek, who managed to regain consciousness and were taken to hospital.



Acord faces several charges, including operating a vehicle while intoxicated, endangering children and slowing or stopping in a roadway. Pasek has been charged with endangering children, public intoxication and not wearing a seat belt. The young boy, who is Paseks son, was taken into the custody of Columbiana County Children Services.



The comments on the Facebook post ranged from sadness to anger and some people attempted to address the complexity of addiction.



Hopefully they get the help they need, wrote Jennifer Shurko.



I hope they get the help they need but please please take that poor child out of this hell!, commented Amy Holzmiller Bowers.

Story continues

Drug addiction is a real problem, Katie Manly added.



Poor Kid, said Patrick McVey.



[City of East Liverpool, Ohio/Facebook]


Harnaam Kaur from Slough in Berkshire in south-east England, entered the Guinness World Records for sporting a six-inch-long beard.

By PTI: A 24-year-old British Sikh model-cum-campaigner sporting a six-inch-long facial hair today entered the Guinness World Records as the youngest female with a beard.

Harnaam Kaur from Slough in Berkshire in south-east England, described her entry as "absolutely humbling".

"Now with a beard measuring as long as six inches in places, she overcame years of bullying to take ownership of her appearance and achieved this record title at the age of 24 years," her record citation reads.

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"She describes her place in the 'Guinness World Records' book as 'absolutely humbling' and hopes it will help her to impart her empowering message.

WHO IS HARNAAM KAUR

2016 has been a huge year for Harnaam, having become the first female with a beard to walk the runway at London Fashion Week in March," it adds.

Kaur has polycystic ovary syndrome, a hormonal condition that can result in the growth of excess facial hair.

She describes herself on social media as "Bearded Dame, Body confidence activist, Anti-Bully Activist, Plus Size Model" and dresses in a Sikh turban.

"I can now proudly announce that I am a 'Guinness World Record' book holder. I have been wanting to publish this news for absolutely ages, but I had to keep things under wrap until the book launched," she said in a social media post.

PROUD MOMENT

She added, "I am super proud to hold this record, the inner child in me is so pleased. I grew up reading this book, I even tried breaking some of my own records wanting to be in this book. It is amazing to be valued and celebrated being a Bearded Lady. I am proud to hold this amazing record."

She said, "I hope those who read or see my record can take away positivity, inspiration and realise that no matter who you are or what you look like, you are officially amazing!"

Kaur, who was bullied as a child, has gone on to model for Urban Bridesmaid Photography and made her debut on the catwalk by opening the Marianna Harutunian Royal Fashion Day show in March, wearing her traditional Sikh turban, a navy dress and black heels.

The longest pet cat and a llama who has made the highest jump are among the other stand-out entries this year.

"The 2017 edition teems with fun and educational content that will fascinate, entertain and educate knowledge-seekers of all ages and interests," 'Guinness World Records' said in a statement.

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AIM: MARL

TSXV: MRA







9 September 2016



Suite 102, 3 Eden Street

North Sydney, NSW 2060

Australia

THIS NEWS RELEASE IS NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO THE UNITED STATES NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES.

Issue of Equity- Option Exercise

GUERNSEY, United Kingdom, Sept. 9, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Mariana Resources Ltd ("Mariana" or the "Company"), the AIM and TSXV listed exploration and development company with projects in Turkey and South America, announces that 47,550 options, relating to the Aegean Acquisition, exercisable into ordinary shares at the consolidated figure of 43.4p each have been exercised for funds received.

The Company will issue and allot 47,550 new ordinary shares.

Admission to AIM

Application has been made to the London Stock Exchange for the new ordinary shares to be admitted to trading on AIM and the TSXV. Dealings are expected to commence on or about 14 September 2016 ("Admission").

Following Admission, there will be a total of 120,413,991 ordinary shares on issue.

**ENDS**

For further information please visit website at www.marianaresources.com or contact the following.

In Australia: Glen Parsons (CEO) Mariana Resources Ltd +61 2 9437 4588 Eric Roth (COO) Mariana Resources Ltd +56 9 8818 1243 Rob Adamson RFC Ambrian Limited (Nomad) +61 2 9250 0041 Will Souter RFC Ambrian Limited (Nomad) +61 2 9250 0050 In U.K. Oliver Stansfield Brandon Hill Capital (UK Broker) +44 20 3463 5061 Jonathan Evans Brandon Hill Capital (UK Broker) +44 20 3463 5016 Camilla Horsfall Blytheweigh (Financial PR) +44 20 7138 3224 Megan Ray Blytheweigh (Financial PR) +44 20 7138 3203

About Mariana Resources

Mariana Resources Ltd is an AIM (MARL) and TSXV (MRA) quoted exploration and development company with an extensive portfolio of gold, silver and copper projects in South America and Turkey.

Mariana's most advanced asset is the Hot Maden gold-copper project in north east Turkey, which is a joint venture with its Turkish JV partner Lidya (30% Mariana and 70% Lidya) and rapidly advancing to development. An updated mineral resource estimate of 3.43 Moz gold Equivalent (Indicated Category) and 0.09 Moz gold Equivalent (Inferred Category) (100% basis) in the main resource zone as well as a maiden 351,000 Moz gold Equivalent (Inferred Category) (100% basis) in the new southern discovery zone was reported for Hot Maden on July 25, 2015. Elsewhere in Turkey, Mariana holds a 100% interest in the Ergama gold-copper project.

In southern Argentina, the Company's core gold-silver projects are Las Calandrias (100%), Sierra Blanca (100%), Los Cisnes (100%), Bozal (100%). These projects are part of a 160,000+ Ha land package in the Deseado Massif epithermal gold-silver district in mining-friendly Santa Cruz Province.

In Suriname, Mariana has a direct holding of 10.2% of the Nassau Gold project. The Nassau Gold Project is a 28,000 Ha exploration concession located approximately 125 km south east of the capital Paramaribo and immediately adjacent to Newmont Mining's 4.2Moz gold Merian project.

In Peru and Chile, Mariana is focusing on acquiring new opportunities which complement its current portfolio.

Safe Harbour

This press release contains certain statements which may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are made as at the date of this press release and include, without limitation, statements regarding discussions of future plans, the realization, cost, timing and extent of mineral resource estimates, estimated future exploration expenditures, costs and timing of the development of new deposits, success of exploration activities, permitting time lines, and requirements for additional capital. The words "plans", "expects", "budget", "scheduled", "estimate", "forecasts", "intend", "anticipate", "believe", "may", "will", or similar expressions or variations of such words are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other factors that may cause actual results to vary materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to: the effects of general economic conditions; the price of gold, silver and copper; misjudgements in the course of preparing forward-looking statements; risks associated with international operations; the need for additional financing; risks inherent in exploration results; conclusions of economic evaluations; changes in project parameters; currency and commodity price fluctuations; title matters; environmental liability claims; unanticipated operational risks; accidents, labour disputes and other risks of the mining industry; delays in obtaining governmental approvals or in the completion of development or construction activities; political risk; and other risks and uncertainties described in the Company's annual financial statements for the most recently completed financial year which is available on the Company's website at www.marianaresources.com . Although we believe that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are based upon reasonable assumptions and have attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such forward-looking statements. Accordingly, readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. We do not undertake to update any forward-looking statements, except in accordance with applicable securities laws.
Lithuanian English

Alytus, Lithuania, 2016-09-09 13:33 CEST (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- On 30 September 2016 the extraordinary General Meeting of Shareholders of Snaige AB, the address of head office Pramones str. 6, Alytus, the company code 249664610 (hereinafter, the Company) is convened the ordinary General Meeting of Shareholders (hereinafter, the Meeting).

The place of the meeting at AB Snaige office, at the address Kareiviu str. 6, Vilnius, Lithuania.

The Meeting commences  at 10 a.m. (registration starts at 9.45 a.m.).

The Meetings accounting day  23 September 2016 (the persons who are shareholders of the Company at the end of accounting day of the General Meeting of Shareholders or authorized persons by them, or the persons with whom shareholders concluded the agreements on the disposal of voting right, shall have the right to attend and vote at the General Meeting of Shareholders).

The Board of directors of the Company initiates and convenes the meeting.

Agenda of the Meeting:

1. Regarding formation the revaluation reserve

The Company shall not provide the possibility to participate and vote in the Meeting through electronic communication channels.

Draft resolutions on agenda issues, documents be submitted to the General Meeting of Shareholders and other information related with the exercising of the shareholders rights are available on the website of the Company www.snaige.lt on menu item For investors. This information will be also available for the shareholders at the head office of the Company (Pramones street 6, Alytus) on business days from 9:00 am. till 16:00 pm. (on Fridays till 14:00), tel. +370 315 56206, +370 5 2361970.

Shareholders holding shares that grant at least 1/20 of all votes shall have the right of proposing to supplement the agenda of the Meeting by providing the Meeting draft resolution on each additionally proposed issue or in case no resolution is required - the explanation. The proposals to supplement the agenda shall be submitted in writing or by e-mail. The proposals shall be presented in writing to the Company on business days or by sending it by registered mail at the address Snaige AB, Pramones street 6, LT-62175 Alytus, Lithuania. The proposals submitted via the e-mail shall be sent on vilniaus.biuras@snaige.lt. The proposals to supplement the agenda with the additional issues shall be submitted till the 15 September 2016, 4:00 p.m. In case the agenda of the Meeting is supplemented the Company will report on it no later than 10 days before the Meeting in the same ways as on convening of the Meeting.

Shareholders holding shares that grant at least 1/20 of all votes shall have the right of proposing new draft resolutions on the issues already included or to be included in the agenda of the Meeting, audit firms for auditing purposes of financial statements. The proposals shall be submitted in writing or by e-mail. The proposals shall be presented in writing to the Company on business days till 29 September 2016, 2 p.m. or by sending it by registered mail at the address Snaige AB, Pramones street 6, LT-62175 Alytus, Lithuania. During the Meeting the proposals shall be submitted to the Chairman of the Meeting after he announces the Meeting agenda and no later than the Meeting starts working on the issues of agenda. The proposals submitted via the electronic mail shall be sent on vilniaus.biuras@snaige.lt. The proposals submitted on this e-mail till 29 September 2016, 2:00 p.m. will be discussed during the Meeting.

The shareholders shall have the right to present questions related to the General Meeting of Shareholders' agenda issues to the Company in advance in writing. The shareholders shall present the questions not later than 3 business days before the Meeting via the electronic mail on vilniaus.biuras@snaige.lt. The Company undertakes to respond to the submitted questions via the electronic mail till the Meeting day, except the questions related to the Companys commercial secret and confidential information.

During the registration to attend the Meeting the shareholders or the persons authorized by them shall submit a document which is a proof of his identity. The shareholders' authorized persons shall submit the power of attorney confirmed by the established order. The power of attorney issued by the natural person shall be notarized. A power of attorney issued in a foreign state must be translated into Lithuanian and legalized in the manner prescribed by law. Representative can be authorized by more than one shareholder and shall have a right to vote differently under the orders of each shareholder. The shareholder holding shares of the Bank, where the shares have been acquired on his own behalf, but for the benefit of other persons, must disclose before voting at the General Meeting of Shareholders to the Company the identity of the final customer, the number of shares that are put to the vote and the content of the voting instructions submitted to him or any other explanation regarding the participation agreed upon with the customer and voting at the General Meeting of Shareholders.

Shareholder shall also have the right to authorize through electronic communication channels another person (natural or legal) to participate and vote in the Meeting on shareholder's behalf. Such authorization shall not be confirmed by the notary officer. The power of attorney issued through electronic communication channels must be confirmed by the shareholder with a safe electronic signature developed by safe signature equipment and approved by a qualified certificate effective in the Republic of Lithuania. The shareholder shall inform the Company on the power of attorney issued through electronic communication channels by e-mail vilniaus.biuras@snaige.lt no later than the last business day before the meeting at 2:00 p.m. The power of attorney and notification shall be issued in writing. The power of attorney and notification to the Company shall be signed with the Electronic Signature but not the letters sent via the e-mail. By submitting the notification to the Company the shareholder shall include the Internet address from which it would be possible to download free of charge software to verify an Electronic Signature of the shareholder.

Each shareholder or representative thereof shall have the right to cast his/her vote in advance in writing by filling in a general ballot paper. The general ballot paper form is on the Company's website www.snaige.lt on menu item For Investors. Upon the written shareholders request, the Company no later than 10 days before the Meeting shall send a general ballot paper by registered mail or hand it in person against signature. The general ballot paper filled shall be signed by the shareholder or his/her representative. In case the ballot paper is signed by the shareholder's authorized representative, such person along with the filled ballot paper shall submit the document to confirm the voting right. The ballot paper filled and the document confirming the voting right (if required) shall be submitted in a written form to the Company by registered mail at the address Snaige AB, Pramones street 6, LT-62175, Alytus, Lithuania, or by submitting it to the Company. Validated will be dully filled-in ballot papers, received until the meeting.

The following information and documents are available on the website of the Company www.snaige.lt on menu item For Investors:

- report on the convening of the Meeting;

- the total number of the Companys shares and the number of shares with voting rights on the convening day of the Meeting;

- draft resolutions on each agenda issue (in general ballot paper) and other documents to be submitted to the Meeting;

- general ballot paper form.

Additional information on the stock event is provided by telephone: +370 5 2361970.

Draft resolutions of the General Meeting of Shareholders are attached.
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State Department Deputy Spokesperson Mark Toner says, "It's clearly in the security interests of the region that they work to de-escalate tensions and that they have dialogue."

By Press Trust of India: The US has called for dialogue between India and Pakistan to de-escalate tensions in security interests of the region, saying it does not want to see "tensions spiral out of control" and lead to "some kind of incident".

"It's clearly in the security interests of the region that they work to de-escalate tensions and that they have dialogue," State Department Deputy Spokesperson Mark Toner said.

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"That's something we constantly encourage for just that or out of just that concern, which is that we don't want to see tensions escalate, spiral out of control, and lead to some kind of incident," he said.

"It is important for the two countries, the two governments to maintain strong, cordial, and productive relations," Toner said in response to a question seeking his reaction on American senators' remarks that the US should play the role of mediator between Pakistan and India.

TAKE ACTION AGAINST TERRORIST NETWORK: US



The US, he said, wants Pakistan to take more action against terrorist network.

"Our discussions continue to focus on the fact that we're urging the Government of Pakistan to take concerted action against safe havens and terrorist groups that threaten other countries in the region and we've been very clear about that," he said.

"And we have seen them attempt to address it. We want to see more action taken, but it continues to be a topic of conversation with them," he added.

Toner said America's relationship with India and Pakistan is not a zero-sum game.

"As we've said many times, there's no zero-sum game here. We need to have a very strong and robust relationship with India. And we also want to have a strong relationship with Pakistan. It's in the interests of the region to do so," he said.

"The recent India and Bangladesh visit of the Secretary of State (John Kerry) and not going to Pakistan should not be treated otherwise," Toner said.

"It doesn't clearly indicate anything about our relationship with Pakistan. The secretary has a very intense travel schedule. He's been to Pakistan recently; he speaks often to senior Pakistani leadership," he said,

"Specifically, he was in India for the Strategic and Commercial Dialogue and took the opportunity to also visit Bangladesh I think the first time he's been there," he added.

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With little hopes left of the revival of Congress that has been virtually rendered irrelevant in UP for the past 27 years, the trio of Rahul Gandhi, Ghulam Nabi Azad and Raj Babbar is busy trying to resurrect the party in the state.

By Siraj Qureshi: With little hopes left of the revival of Congress that has been virtually rendered irrelevant in UP for the past 27 years, the trio of Rahul Gandhi, Ghulam Nabi Azad and Raj Babbar is busy trying to resurrect the party in the state.

While these efforts at reviving the party are beginning to show some results, the Congress is far from being called, single-handedly, a force to be reckoned with in UP. The "Jan Sandesh Yatra" of the Congress has been welcomed and praised statewide, but reports from "Khat par Charcha" have not been positive, forcing the Congress to change tactics.



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OPPONENTS SCARED OF CONG'S POPULARITY: BABBAR

India Today spoke to Congress state president Raj Babbar on the issue. Addressing a question on the possibility of a pre-electoral alliance of the Congress with any party in UP, Babbar said that the only coalition that the Congress forms would be with the people of UP. "Our opponents are scared of the growing popularity of the Congress and are hence spreading baseless rumours. The Congress will not compromise on seats with anyone and will contest on all seats in UP alone", he added.

Also read: Rahul visits temple in Ayodhya; first Gandhi scion to do so since Babri demolition



Babbar said that the slogan "27 saal UP Behaal" is not merely a chant for the sake of sloganeering, but also reflects the pain of the people of UP. He said that since the Congress lost power in the state, the condition of UP has worsened as all the parties that ruled here in all these years concentrated on dividing the state along the lines of caste, religion and communities for votebank politics, plunging the state deep into the abyss of darkness. He said that the Congress would bring back the good old days of UP and the beginning of this long journey is symbolised by the "Jan Sandesh Yatra", which has gone about the state asking people about their problems and difficulties.



HONOUR-BOUND TO SUPPORT FARMERS: CONG



He said that the Congress is honour-bound to support the farmers. Babbar added that PM Modi had promised that the sugar mills of UP would be reopened soon. But he has failed to keep his word for the past 2 years, even as farmers are sitting at his doorstep demanding the reopening of the same.

Commenting on the present UP government, Babbar said that the politics of development has lost to the politics of caste and religion in UP. Police alone is not responsible for the lack of law and order in the state as policemen get postings of their choice by bribing politicians and then indulge in corruption to recover the amount paid. As a result, nothing positive gets done in UP. Only the Congress can and will bring this practice to an end. Opposition parties are beginning to lose sleep seeing the way in which the Congress is receiving support from the people.

Also read: How BSP is rewriting battle lines in UP to the chagrin of BJP



--- ENDS ---
By PTI: Thiruvananthapuram, Sep 9 (PTI) Congress leader and former Kerala chief minister Oommen Chandy today claimed that the Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau (VACB) had not moved "an inch forward" in investigating the allegations levelled against former state minister K Babu in the bar bribery scam.

"Vigilance has not come out with any evidence against Babu. They have not moved an inch forward in probing the charges levelled against him," he told reporters here.

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"We welcome the crusade against corruption and any probe, but the hidden motive behind it cannot be accepted," he added.

Targeting VACB Director Jacob Thomas, Chandy alleged that the raids at the houses of Babu and his relatives were carried out "without any preliminary findings".

"The truth will come out in the next few days," he added.

Asked whether he was the next target of the VACB, the former chief minister said he was not afraid of any probe.

"We have not done anything wrong. The charge was levelled by a person who had suffered loss due to the governments decision on the liquor policy," he said.

Recently, the VACB had raided the residences of former Kerala excise minister Babu and his two daughters in connection with a disproportionate assets case against him.

Babu, who had a controversial stint as excise minister in the previous UDF government, had resigned after a Thrissur vigilance court ordered the Vigilance Department to register an FIR against him in connection with the bar bribery scam.

He was later reinstated in the post. PTI JRK APR RC

--- ENDS ---
By PTI: Los Angeles, Sep 9 (PTI) "Friends" has fans all over the world, but actor Matt LeBlanc was surprised when people living in the caves recognized him as Joey from the series.

The 49-year-old actor, who starred as Joey Tribbiani on the series that ended 12 years back, was shooting in the Atlas Mountains in Morocco when the surprising incident happened, reported People magazine.

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"I was in the Atlas Mountains in Morocco, shooting a thing for Top Gear. I mean, we were far away from civilization. And these people were wearing robes, and they live in caves and stuff.

"They called me Joey and said, How you doin? in a really butchered accent. It was like, Oh wow. Did not see that one coming.... The show is everywhere. It still holds up," LeBlanc said.

The actor will next be seen in CBS upcoming sitcom "Man with a Plan." PTI SHD SHD

--- ENDS ---
Behind the Facades in France: What expats and the mainstream media (French and American alike) fail to notice (or fail to tell you) about French attitudes, principles, values, and official positions
Workwear For Women

In the 1970s, only 38 percent of women were in the workforce, according to the United States Department of Labor (DOL). Today, the DOL reports that 57 percent of women participate in the labor force  occupying a range of positions in an incredibly wide variety of industries. These industries include those historically dominated by men, such as firefighting, oil and gas, and utilities. While women still occupy a small percentage of the total workforce in these markets, efforts to encourage female participation are on the rise through industry-related associations, women's groups and beyond.

This is especially true in firefighting  an industry that has seen a 73-percent increase in the number of female workers from 1983 to 2012, according to the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA). While women have been a part of the industry for centuries, it wasn't until the 1970s that they were paid for their efforts. Firefighter's ABC's credits Judith Livers as the first documented paid female firefighter, with her hiring in 1974 by the Arlington County Fire Department.

Now, women account for approximately 5.7 percent of the total employed in the occupation  and they are increasingly taking on higher positions, such as lieutenant, battalion chief, assistant chief and beyond. The International Association of Women in Fire and Emergency Services (iWomen) has aided in this growth since its founding in 1982. The iWomen association has provided resources, networking and communications for women in fire service; advocated for constructive changes within the industry; and developed policy guidelines for fire service  all in an effort to promote the participation of women in the fire service.

Beyond fire service, the oil and gas industry has also seen steady increases in female workers in recent years  with women now accounting for approximately 17 percent of total employment in the oil and natural gas and petrochemical industries, according to a study by the American Petroleum Institute (API). In the study, API also indicated that the aforementioned industries could fill 290,000 jobs with women through 2035. With this increase, the study contends that women would attain more high-level jobs in the industry, such as petroleum engineer, environmental scientist, accountant and technician.
Eric Song, information technology manager at Opening Ceremony, said:

We wanted to get EMV as quickly as possible. We opted to change processors at the same time in order to get EMV faster, and Shift4 and Multidev made the transition very straightforward. Once we had EMV set up on our account, all we had to do was plug in some settings, and then things started working. The process was much quicker than I thought it would be, and we are looking forward to experiencing fewer chargebacks.

Howard Finch, vice president of sales, Ingenico Group, said:

Ingenico Group has been very dedicated to helping retailers migrate their payments systems to accept EMV chip cards, and Opening Ceremony is just the latest example. Our payment solutions allow retail businesses to accept new forms of payments, including NFC/contactless, that allow guests to pay their way, enhancing their shopping experience.

Joseph Amzallag, president, Multidev Technologies, said:

Multidev is committed to offering retail solutions that continually evolve and transform to meet the needs of businesses today. We are excited to partner with Shift4 to offer retailers a truly secure EMV solution that protects against card fraud, reduces PCI scope, and prevents breaches.

Dave Oder, CEO, Shift4, said:

Shift4 works with the industrys technology leaders to provide merchants the most capable solutions available. Were proud to partner with Multidev and Ingenico to offer our friends at Opening Ceremony stores, as well as thousands of other retailers, a comprehensive EMV solution that keeps payment data out of their environment entirely  leaving hackers nothing to steal.

About Shift4 Corporation

Shift4 stands alone as the last major player in the payments space to remain independent, self funded, and merchant focused. Our DOLLARS ON THE NET payment gateway comes with all the bells and whistles: pre- and post-settlement auditing, fraud controls, support for new technologies like EMV and mobile, secure connections to nearly every major bank and processor in North America, and 350+ certified integrations to leading POS, PMS, and e-commerce platforms. Shift4 invests heavily in payment security  we invented tokenization and own eight payment-security patents. We empower our 33,000+ merchant customers with the flexibility to customize our secure payment processing solutions to fit their business. Learn more at shift4.com.

About Multidev Technologies

Multidev Technologies Inc. is an industry leader in the development of fully-integrated ERP and Omni-channel software for retail, e-tail and wholesale. Dedicated to providing advanced innovation and technology, Multidevs revolutionary software allows retailers to manage all channels of their business with one complete unified real-time system. Our software powers the success of some of the most impressive retailers throughout North America in industry specific segments including, but not limited to, Apparel, Footwear, Jewelry, Sporting Goods Specialty, Home Goods and Department Store.

About Ingenico Group

Ingenico Group (Euronext: FR0000125346  ING) is the global leader in seamless payment, providing smart, trusted and secure solutions to empower commerce across all channels, in-store, online and mobile. With the worlds largest payment acceptance network, we deliver secure payment solutions with a local, national and international scope. We are the trusted world-class partner for financial institutions and retailers, from small merchants to several of the worlds best-known global brands. Our solutions enable merchants to simplify payment and deliver their brand promise. Learn more at www.ingenico.com or twitter.com/Ingenico.
The round is the first investment by Red Dot, a Singaporean fund which controls a US$150 million war chest dedicated solely to Israeli startups

Celeno, a Raanana-based startup making chips for high-speed WiFi, announced a massive US$38 million Series F round led by Temasek-backed Red Dot Capital Partners. The round also brought in Poalim Capital Markets and OurCrowd as new investors who join returning investors Liberty Global, Cisco, Pitango, 83North, Miven and Vintage. This brings their total funding haul to US$106.2 million, building off of the US$68.2 million raised in their previous rounds, the company told Geektime.

With this significant new investment round, combined with the caliber of investors backing us, we are able to continue executing our strategy, building a world class global company that will bring value to investors and shape the industry as a market leader, Celeno CEO Gilad Rozen said in a statement. With this new round we have taken Celeno to the next level and are able to further accelerate our growth and expansion in the market as well as focus on enhancing R&D efforts and further developing our disruptive solutions.

The company produces a number of 802.11ac chips used for high-speed internet and video broadcasting within high-interference and dense network scenarios, according to their own description. They claim Liberty Global, Deutsche Telecom, Time Warner Cable among some 100 service providers using their chips.

Also Read: [Updated] Born into poverty in rural China, this guy made an app that gives free WiFi, got 900M users and raised US$52M

As video streaming continues drawing more consumer demand for bandwidth, the market for WiFi chipsets is projected to reach a US$20.4 billion value by 2017 according to Markets and Markets. Celeno is considered one of the stronger companies in the business. One prominent startup competitor is Sequoia-backed and California-based Quantenna Communications, which last scored a US$22 million round in December 2014, also post-Series E. Their funding dwarfs Celenos, coming in at US$161.15 million according to Crunchbase. Qualcomm-owned Atheros and Broadcom are also prominent players in the global industry.

Story continues

Celeno has made the crucial transition from an innovative, disruptive startup to a global player alongside some of the Wi-Fi semiconductor industrys largest players and the solution of choice for many of the most important global service providers, Zvika Naggan said in a statement, managing partner for Red Dot who will now take a seat on the board.

Red Dot, which was only announced in February of this year, is a US$150 million fund operated by Singapores state-owned investment firm Temasek dedicated solely to investing in mature Israeli startups. Its chaired by Vertex Venture Capitals founder, Yoram Oron. The two countries have seen trade, particularly in startups, expand in 2016. This also continues OurCrowds growing relationship with partners in the city-state following a US$10 million investment in the equity crowdfunding company by Singapores United Overseas Bank. Earlier this year, Israeli startup Trax received a US$40 million Series C round investment led by formerly Temasek-backed Broad Peak Investment Advisers.

Also Read: This Singapore public bus service is now offering WiFi-On-The-Go

Celeno was founded in 2005 and maintains its headquarters in Raanana, Israel with offices around the world.

It is worth noting that Celeno already has their feet on the ground with offices in China, which has spoken openly of its intention to significantly grow their own domestic chip production through strategic partnerships with foreign firms. For their part, Celeno like many other Israeli producers of high quality chips, has been steadily increasing their business in the East. Following this deal, these connections are likely to strengthen and more cooperation is likely to follow.



The article Israeli WiFi startup Celeno snags $38 million from Singapore investment fund Red Dot, Pitango and OurCrowd first appeared on Geektime.

The post Israeli WiFi startup Celeno snags US$38M from Singapore investment fund Red Dot, Pitango and OurCrowd appeared first on e27.
Egyptian police investigated Italian student Giulio Regeni days before his abduction, torture and murder but dropped the probe after assessing he posed no threat, Egyptian and Italian prosecutors said Friday. Regeni, a 28-year-old Cambridge University PhD student, disappeared on January 25 in central Cairo. His body was later found by the side of a road bearing signs of brutal torture. Egypt has denied that its security forces were involved, but Italy recalled its ambassador to Cairo in April in protest at what it said was a lack of progress in the investigation. The state prosecutor met his counterpart in Rome this week to further the investigation. In a joint statement, the two prosecutors said Regeni, who was researching Egyptian street vendor trade unions, had been under investigation for three days by Egyptian police in January. "The Egyptian state prosecutor pointed to information that the head of the street vendor union passed on specific information about the Italian student to Cairo police," the statement said. "Police probed his activities for three days that concluded that his activities were of no concern to national security, and based on that dropped the investigation." This is the first official Egyptian acknowledgement that Regeni had been on the radar of security services. Trade unions are an especially sensitive political issue in Egypt, with successive governments fearing strikes and labour unrest. Police officials had at first suggested Regeni might have died in a road accident, and have since offered little information on their investigation. An Italian autopsy showed that his body was covered with cuts and his bones were broken, indicating he was hit with "fists, batons and hammers". A letter "X" was carved on his forehead and hand, according to the report cited by Italian media. His parents, Paola and Claudio Regeni, said the report suggested he had been tortured by a "professional". "It seems clear to us that the torture inflicted, and the number of times our son had to endure it and the methods, can only be the perverse deed of some torture professional," they told Italian media on Wednesday. In March, police linked a gang that it said extorted foreigners to Regeni's death, saying his belongings had been found in the home of the gang leader's wife. He and four others were killed in a shootout with police. Friday's statement said Egypt's prosecution service was still investigating the gang's links to Regeni's abduction. The Egyptian and Rome prosecution would also continue trying to retrieve footage from CCTV cameras in a metro station that Regeni is believed to have entered before being abducted. Egypt had said the programme to retrieve the deleted footage was very expensive, and had asked Italy to help. It had also accused the Italian prosecution of "unconstitutionally" demanding thousands of phone records which it refused to provide.
A Vietnam court convicted 36 former bank employees, including the chairman, for stealing more than $400 million, an official said Friday, the largest sum ever pilfered from Vietnam's scandal-hit banking sector.

The bankers from the joint-stock Vietnam Construction Bank secretly withdrew money from clients' saving accounts, using the cash for loans or depositing it into their own accounts, reports said.

"The defendants were convicted Friday of deliberately breaking laws on economic management and violating bank lending activities," the Ho Chi Minh City court clerk told AFP.

"Former bank chairman Pham Cong Danh was given 30 years in jail. Others were sentenced to between 22 years in jail and three years probation," he added.

The bankers were responsible for losses of more than $400 million, "the greatest loss for the Vietnamese banking sector to date", state-run Tuoi Tre newspaper reported.

Communist Vietnam's economic growth hit 6.7 percent last year, its fastest rate in five years, boosted by strong exports, foreign investment and buoyant domestic consumption.

But soaring public debts, bloated state-owned enterprises and rampant official corruption have made economic progress vulnerable.

The country's banking sector has been rocked by a series of scandals in recent years, with the high-profile arrests of wealthy businessmen and executives over allegations of corruption, embezzlement or incompetence.

Earlier this year, three senior former bankers and six securities officials were arrested over a fraud worth millions of dollars at the partly state-run MHB Bank.

In July last year police arrested the former chairman of state oil giant PetroVietnam over mistakes that allegedly led to the loss of a $38 million investment in Ocean Bank.

The troubled lender had been taken over by the government after being rocked by a major scandal of its own.

Ocean Bank's former chairman, Ha Van Tham, once one of Vietnam's richest businessmen, is now in detention, pending trial for violations of lending regulations, including approving millions of dollars of loans without proper collateral.
Gabon's Ali Bongo on Wednesday rejected criticism of his disputed presidential election victory, accusing EU observers of bias towards his rival and insisting that only the country's top court could order a recount. Oil-rich Gabon has been in turmoil since the August 27 poll, in which Bongo's rival Jean Ping also claimed victory. Several people have been killed in violence triggered by the results, which showed Bongo winning a second term by a wafer-thin margin of some 6,000 votes. On Tuesday, an EU election observer team reported a "clear anomaly" in voting in Haut-Ogooue province, Bongo's heartland. Official results gave turnout in the province at more than 99 percent, with 95 percent backing the incumbent. Reacting to the criticism, Bongo, 57, told France's RTL radio: "I would also have liked them to have noted some anomalies in the fiefdom of Mr Ping. "If we're raising anomalies, we have to be clear, balanced and raise all the anomalies that have been noted." The opposition has accused Bongo of rigging the vote and called for a recount -- a call echoed by Manuel Valls, prime minister of Gabon's former colonial power France. A defiant Bongo ruled out any new tally unless the Constitutional Court ordered one. "I cannot violate the (electoral) law," he insisted. "African governments are often accused of not respecting the law. For once we're respecting the law and we're being told to circumvent it, it's strange," he said. Ping has yet to announce whether he will challenge the election in the Constitutional Court. The deadline for doing so is 1500 GMT on Thursday. In their analysis, the EU election monitors said the number of non-voters and of blank and disqualified votes revealed a "clear anomaly in the final results in Haut-Ogooue." In an interview with Europe 1 radio, Bongo accused the EU observers of "overstepping their mandate" and said he too was preparing to challenge some of the results. - 'Chaos will not take hold' - Bongo is under increasing pressure at home and abroad after Justice Minister Seraphin Moundounga resigned on Monday demanding a recount "polling station by polling station." In the chaos following the result, opposition demonstrators clashed with police and the country's parliament was set on fire. Ping, 73, has called for a general strike but the appeal seems to have gone largely unheeded. "Mr Ping's call went unheeded...it failed," Bongo declared, vowing: "Chaos will not take hold." Bongo accused Ping, a former African Union Commission chairman, of attempting "massive fraud" and said it was difficult to envisage dialogue with "people who ask the Gabonese to go into the street to loot and destroy and burn things." Several people have died since the violence erupted in the central African nation, which has been ruled by the Bongo family since 1967. According to an AFP count, the post-election chaos has claimed at least seven lives. Gabonese authorities have reported three killed and 105 wounded, with the government saying some deaths had previously been incorrectly attributed to the clashes. Bongo dismissed a toll of between 50 and 100 dead given by Ping's camp as "fanciful" but said that "around 100" had been hurt in the violence. Some 800 people have been arrested in recent days in the capital Libreville, with the authorities accusing them of looting, while lawyers say they are being held in "deplorable" conditions. Gabon, a country roughly the size of Britain but with a population of 1.8 million, has only known three presidents since it won independence from France in 1960. One third of its population lives in poverty, even though the country boasts one of Africa's highest per capita incomes -- $8,300 annually -- thanks to its oil wealth.
The Drawing Boards crew take a pit stop on a recent trip to Holland to have a session at Belgiums incredible Mechelen DIY, with Ash Challis, Jak Tonge, Dean Robertson, Louis Antoine and Adam Keats making the most of a park that should be on everyones skate-based bucket lists!

The City Slickers Jam 2016 took place at Better Extreme a couple of week's ago, and now you can see some of the highlights from...

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MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The arms embargo against Libya will remain in place as long as the country does not have a single army which could ask for the restriction to be lifted, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Libya Martin Kobler told Sputnik.

"Only a Libyan Army, under the authority of the presidency council can request the lifting of the weapons embargo, and this army is not yet there," Kobler said.

According to the official, the Libyan national army is in the east of the country, but there are also separate armed formations in the east and the west of Libya.
In October last year, Merete Hodne rejected Malika Bayan from her hairdressing salon in Bryne, a small town in southwestern Norway. Now, Merete Hodne is facing a prison sentence of up to six months for religious discrimination, Norwegian national broadcaster NRK reported.

According to the charges, Bayan, who was going to have her hair dyed, was advised to find someplace else, because Hodne reportedly said "she did not accept clients like her."

Previously, the wayward hairdresser refused to pay a fine of 8,000 kroner (roughly $980) for religious discrimination, which is why the case ended up in Jren District Court. Police officials want to raise the fine to 9,600 kroner (roughly $1,080) and will seek a jail sentence of 19 days if Hodne refuses to pay up.
Earlier, Danish Integration Minister Inger Stjberg stated that Danes should never become a minority in the country's schools, which triggered harsh criticism in liberal circles.

Turkish-born commentator and former lawmaker Ozlem Cekic promised to report the school to Denmark's Board of Equal Treatment.

"When a principal isolates the brown children from the white, it is part of sending a signal that the whites must be protected from the brown," she wrote on Facebook.

Human rights lawyer Nanna Krusaa told broadcaster TV2 that placing students solely based on race or ethnicity was "clearly illegal."

On the other hand, Danish Education Minister Ellen Trane Nrby said that she had requested a report from the school to ensure that the law was being upheld, but that she was also looking at introducing legislation to make upper secondary schools in Denmark more ethnically mixed. According to her Facebook post, Denmark's fundamental problem is "having ghetto schools with a too high ratio of students with a different background than Danish."

"You have to create an environment where the Danish students are not in the minority," Niels Egelund, a professor at Aarhus University and one of the supporters of the division, concurred. He went on to support Bundgaard by stating that he would have done the same, had he been principal.
The earthquake was detected near a location where the DPRK's fourth nuclear test occurred in January.

Radiation monitoring posts in Russias Far East have not detected any excess radiation after the seismic event, a Far East representative of the Russian Emergencies Ministry told RIA Novosti.

"The radiation control systems did not record any excess background radiation," the representative said on Friday morning.

South Korean presidential Blue House will hold an emergency National Security Council meeting after the seismic activity.

The United States is aware of the seismic event and is coordinating with its partners in the region, National Security Council Spokesperson Ned Price told RIA Novosti.

"We are aware of seismic activity on the Korean Peninsula in the vicinity of a known North Korean nuclear test site. We are monitoring and continuing to assess the situation in close coordination with our regional partners," Price said.

Pyongyang has conducted a series of nuclear and ballistic missile tests since January, resulting in harsh new sanctions being implemented by the UN Security Council.

Last month, security experts said that indications showed North Korea's nuclear arsenal to be expanding rapidly.

"Assuming the current rate of development, while North Korea still faces significant technological challenges including building a new class of submarine to carry the missile, it is on track to develop the capability to strike targets in the region  including Japan  by 2020," reads a recent report by the US Korea Institute at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at John Hopkins University.
TOKYO (Sputnik)  The Japanese government will now hold a senior ministry officials meeting at the office of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the newspaper said on Friday.

The US Geological Survey (USGS), as well as Japans and Chinas meteorological services and South Koreas military, detected a ground-level (0 kilometer depth) seismic event northeast of the town of Sungjibaegam in North Korea on Friday, saying it could be an explosion.

The South Korean military said it suspected that North Korea had carried out its fifth, "biggest-ever" nuclear test on the occasion of the 68th anniversary of the foundation of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, marked on Friday.
The US Geological Survey (USGS), as well as Japans and Chinas meteorological services, detected a ground-level (0 kilometer depth) seismic event northeast of the town of Sungjibaegam in North Korea on Friday, saying it could be an explosion.

According to Yonhap, the seismic event was centered around the same location where North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test in January.

Pyongyangs January nuclear test and a long-range rocket launch in February resulted in the tightening of sanctions against North Korea in a new UN Security Council resolution adopted in March.

The United Nations previously imposed sanctions on North Korea for three tests it carried out in 2006, 2009 and 2013.
YUZHNO-SAKHALINSK (Sputnik)  The seismic event detected in North Korea on Friday morning is identical to what was registered when Pyongyang conducted a nuclear test in January, the head of the Sakhalin seismological station told RIA Novosti.

"The earthquake could be artificial as it is analogous to what we registered on January 6 of the current year, when DPRK declared nuclear tests. We have studied the nature of the seismic waves today [comparing it] to the January 6 wave map, they are identical," Elena Semenova said on Friday.

She added that the Friday data is also similar to what was registered in 2006, 2009 and 2013, when North Korea conducted its other nuclear tests.
Earlier on Friday, the South Korean military said that North Korea could have carried out its fifth and "biggest-ever" nuclear test, on the occasion of the 68th anniversary of the foundation of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

The declaration came after several seismological services, including the US Geological Survey, reported a ground-level seismic event on Friday morning northeast of the town of Sungjibaegam, near the Punggye-ri nuclear test site in North Korea.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  A magnitude 5.3 earthquake was registered in North Korea with presumed links to the countrys fifth and latest nuclear tests, the Hydrometeorological Centre of Russia said Friday.

"At 03:30 a.m. Moscow time [12:30 GMT], tremors 5.3 in magnitude were registered in North Korea, presumably a nuclear test," the weather agency told RIA Novosti.

Pyongyang has officially confirmed that it successfully carried out a new nuclear test early Friday after a seismic event was registered near a test site in the countrys northeast. North Korea's Central News Agency (KCNA) announced the test confirmed that "standardized" nuclear warheads can be mounted on "strategic ballistic rockets."
Nuclear Test Confirms Capacity of Ballistic Missile-Mounted Warheads

Pyongyangs latest nuclear tests confirmed the capacity of nuclear warheads to be mounted on ballistic missiles, the North Korean Embassy said.

"The nuclear test finally examined and confirmed the structure and specific features of movement of nuclear warhead that has been standardized to be able to be mounted on strategic ballistic rockets of the Hwasong artillery pieces units of the Strategic Force of the Korean Peoples Army as well as its performance and power."

North Korea Able to Produce Many Various Types of Light Nuclear Warheads

Pyongyang is able to produce a variety of light and diverse nuclear warheads after its latest test, the embassy in Russia said.

"The standardization of the nuclear warhead will enable the DPRK to produce at will and as many as it wants a variety of smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear warheads of higher strike power," the statement reads.

The mission confirmed that the test did not lead to a leak of radioactive materials.

North Korea to Continue Boosting Nuclear Force After Latest Test

Pyongyang will continue strengthening its nuclear force, the North Korean Embassy in Russia said.

"We will take further measures to bolster the state nuclear force in quality and quantity for safeguarding the dignity and the right to existence of the DPRK and genuine peace from the US increasing threat of a nuclear war," the statement reads.



Pyongyang has officially confirmed that it successfully carried out a new nuclear test early Friday after a seismic event was registered near a test site in the countrys northeast.




MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The nuclear experiment is believed to be the fifth and largest since Pyongyang started pursuing nuclear and ballistic missile programs, drawing condemnation from the international community.

The presidents of the United States and Japan agreed, in an urgent phone call, that more steps, including additional sanctions, were needed to tackle the Norths nuclear research.

Suspicious Seismic Activity
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Earlier in the day, North Korea said it had carried out the fifth nuclear test, believed to be the largest since the country started to pursue nuclear programs in violation of UN resolutions. The country announced that it was capable of mounting nuclear warheads on "strategic ballistic rockets."

"The actions of DPRK, aimed at undermining the global nonproliferation regime, pose a serious threat to peace and security on the Korean peninsula and the Asia-Pacific region. This will have negative consequences primarily for DPRK itself. We insist that the North Korean side stop its dangerous escapades and strictly fulfil all the requirements of the UN Security Council, fully renounce its missile and nuclear programs and return to the Non-Proliferation Treaty regime," the ministry said in a statement.

According to the ministry, North Koreas "demonstrative disregard" for international law deserves the "strongest condemnation."
Following the recent nuclear test, South Korea was quick to condemn the North for a new provocation, with President Park Geun-hye warning Pyongyang that its pursuit of nuclear weapons would lead to deeper isolation and accelerate the nation's eventual "self-destruction."

Earlier, on August 29 a group of South Korean law-makers suggested considering the possibility of placing nuclear submarines in the waters near the country in order to counter North Korea.

"There has been no solution made so far, but since there is a vivid debate about the necessity of such step, the Ministry of Defense will consider this issue," Defense Minister of South Korea Han Ming Gu stated.

South Korea, Japan and the United states called on the United Nations to hold a crisis meeting to address North Korea's nuclear ambition. The emergency meeting of the UN Security Council is expected to take place later on Friday.

"By now it has become clear that the sanctions have not had a noticeable effect on the state of the North Korean economy. So there is reason to believe that a new round of international sanctions  the most serious in the history of North Korea  would fail in the same way as the previous one," political analyst and professor Kookmin University in Seoul Andrei Lankov believes.

Lankov also argued that the sanctions are unlikely to reach their main goal, which is to force the North Korean leadership to abandon nuclear weapons, and would only negatively affect the country's population.

"Most likely, this goal is now unattainable in principle, but the international community can't recognize this sad fact and does not want to do it," the expert concluded.
The bank has not announced any job cuts due to such mass scale automation, but has instead clarified that the existing human personnel would be deployed in other areas of operation. Nevertheless, the news had triggered a sense of fear among employment seekers.

The banking sector is considered = one of the brightest spots to generate employment for 13 million citizens entering the workforce every year in India. Automation could change the landscape across the banking sector and many other private banks may follow this trend very soon.

However, 26 public sector banks may delay this trend. Harvinder Singh, a senior officer of Bank of India, says, Private sectors decisions are taken on the basis of input received from Hong Kong or Singapore. But, automation in public sector banks is not even discussed ever at the top level or at government level.

The Indian banking sector employs more than a million workers and to improve the efficiency with less spending, all of them are hiring casual or contractual workers at low wages.
North Korea officially acknowledged that on September 9 it conducted a nuclear test, a move viewed as a provocation by its neighboring states and strongly condemned by the international community.

Since 2011, when the current country's leader Kim Jong-un came to power, North Korea has carried out more than 30 missile tests, with the country's military activities intensifying in 2016.

Replying to the question, of whether the possession of nuclear weapons by North Korea will pose a threat to other countries, in particular Russia and China, the expert said that such scenario is quite unlikely.

"Russia and China are not directly threatened by these missiles. Like any other means of nuclear deterrence, they threaten those would attack the owner of nuclear weapons. It is obvious that it makes no sense for the DPRK to go crazy' and press the red button without any reason. They could commit suicide in many other, simpler ways," the expert said.

According to Khrustalev, what North Korea seeks to do is to create a means of guaranteed credible deterrence which would give the country a relatively high chance of survival in case of a potential attack.

"In this case, any scenario of attack on the DPRK makes no sense because the attacker would pay a price that would scare away anyone considering such attempts. In fact, it is a reproduction of the model, which was between the Soviet Union and the United States and which now exists between India and Pakistan," the expert concluded.
"Experts pointed out that for India, China is undoubtedly its largest opponent and therefore every move of the Chinese military will touch the nerve of Indian media," it said, adding, "India is not yet the biggest threat for China and though confrontation events along the border would occur from time to time, the overall situation is rather stable."

Chinese statements also detailed that Beijings main focus is strengthening its military and not antagonizing other nations.

"In this way, China does not put too much emphasis and focus targeting India. Chinese equipment deployment and drills along the border are mostly confirmatory, mainly to gain experience, improve high-altitude combat capability, and form deterrent ability," it said.
In the United States, this process of democratic corrosion has already destabilized the presidential elections where Russia is blamed for just about anything.

Recently, the head of the Washington think tank known as the Center for American Progress made the scandalous accusation that British anti-EU politicians have accepted foreign funding. We have also seen an ongoing media campaign to malign Russia and anyone who might wish to look at a plethora of issues, from Ukraine to Olympic doping allegations, in an objective manner.
When the documents from Irkutsk arrived in St. Petersburg, imperial artists responsible for drawing the coat of arms were at a loss, not knowing just what on Earth a babr was. As they couldnt google what it was back then, they ended up drawing a mysterious babr as something resembling a panther with the feet of a dragon. And so the babr became the symbol of Irkutsk.

Despite the city being deep in Siberia, geographically Irkutsk is actually right in the center of Russia. I was quick to burst into laughter, but then I was told that if one takes the distance between St. Petersburg and the Kuril Islands in the Sakhalin Oblast, Irkutsk would be right in the middle.

Dude, were right at the center of Russia, a local guy, Dmitry, told me over dinner.

Its worth noting that the distance between Moscow and Irkutsk is 5,200 km by car. It goes to show just how big Russia is.

Being an old Siberian town, Irkutsk has a lot of old buildings and architecture which give the city its unique look. However, some people claim that the other side of the coin of keeping all these old buildings is that a few of them are filled with ghosts and other paranormal beings.
"Algeria is ready to suggest initiatives to these countries to look for decisions. We have ideas on such decisions."

Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak and his Algerian counterpart Noureddine Boutafra discussed Friday outlooks for Russian energy giant Gazprom drilling for shale gas in Algeria.

OPEC member states are expected to renew talks on a possible oil output freeze with non-member states at the September 26-28 International Energy Forum (IEF) in Algiers, Algeria.

Moscow and Riyadh signed a joint statement to step up cooperation in stabilizing the oil market and ensuring stable long-term investment in China on Monday.


MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Novak and Algerian Energy Minister Noureddine Boutefra discussed a range of topics, including in the field of renewable energy, the press release added.

"There are plans in Algeria to implement a large program on the construction of solar and wind power plants with a total capacity of over 5,000 MW. Our companies are already considering the possibility of their participation in the construction of these facilities," Novak said in a statement published on the ministry website.
MANAMA (Sputnik)  On Tuesday, Russia and Bahrain signed four cooperation agreements following a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Isa Al Khalifa in Moscow.

Russias energy giant Gazprom and NOGA signed a memorandum of understanding on expansion of cooperation in the liquefied natural gas (LNG) sector, while Russia's Rosgeologia company and NOGA inked an agreement on strengthening cooperation in geological surveying for production of oil and natural gas.

"The company will start contacts with the Russian party in the near future, which is a start of implementing the memorandum of understanding between the Kingdom of Bahrain and Russia," the statement said.
CETA has the same lobbyists in the EU who have promoted the TTIP deal. A year ago, European Commissioner for Trade Cecilia Malstrom complained that the TTIP negotiations faced criticism. After Brexit, she insisted that the talks had made progress. Now, she is defending the CETA from criticism. And the main lobbyists of the deal (like also in the event of the TTIP) is President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker.

Now, after France and Germany openly expressed concerns over the TTIP, the CETA deal is a new chance for corporations to take control over the European market, the article read.

In May, the European Commission recommended approving CETA by vote in the European Parliament. However, opponents managed to oppose the decision.

In fact, French and German business elites recruited socialists, anti-globalists and human rights activists to protect the interests of national companies from international corporations.

Leader of the German socialists Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel said that attempts to approve the CETA without discussions in national parliaments would be absurd. French far-left presidential candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon accused Juncker of trying to impose the deal "by force."

In June, French business elites and politicians struggled to pressure Brussels. Brexit dealt the final blow to Juncker. It was a sign that Britain does not want to get involved in the EUs global projects, including the TTIP and CETA. Finally, Juncker adopted a mixed option for the CETA  before a vote in the European Parliament the document must be approved by the national parliaments of all EU members.
The social media company has now reinstated the image.

"After hearing from our community, we looked again at how our Community Standards were applied in this case. An image of a naked child would normally be presumed to violate our Community Standards, and in some countries might even qualify as child pornography," reads a statement from Facebook, provided to Mashable.

"Because of its status as an iconic image of historical importance, the value of permitting sharing outweighs the value of protecting the community by removal, so we have decided to reinstate the image on Facebook where we are aware it has been removed."

The company also pledged to evaluate its policies to ensure that freedom of expression is not hindered.
It was recorded by foreign journalists, the facts were in print: Vietnam and the world began to see evidence of war crimes in Vietnam by America and its puppet regime the Republic of Vietnam, VU Quang Hien.

The historian said that the photos prompted the world community to act more actively to end the war. That is the value of this picture. It is not only against the war in Vietnam but against war itself. It is a historical document, it is  the truth.

Quang Hien further said that it is a pity that Facebook moderators did not understand. They obviously have bad historical memory and bad understanding of historical reality, or they just do not know history. It is surprising because this picture is well known, the historian said.

Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten published an open letter to Facebook that accused CEO Mark Zuckerberg of "abusing your power."

"I am worried that the worlds most important medium is limiting freedom instead of trying to extend it, and that this occasionally happens in an authoritarian way."

Huin further said that on Facebook they just saw a naked child?! They did not bother to think: why is this girl in the photo with no clothes? Why around her there are crying children and soldiers? Because this is a war, bombing, because her clothes are burnt and there are terrible burns on the girls body from napalm, the historian said.

He noted that maybe there is another version to this narrative behind Facebooks move. In the Internet and social networks there are a lot of photos of pornographic nature. Facebook itself sins with that. Therefore, I have a question: what purpose did Facebook moderators pursue by removing this documentary photo?

In my opinion, the Norwegian newspaper did the right thing, calling the photo with Napalm girl one of the seven shots that changed the history of warfare. I think the decision of the moderators to shut the newspapers account and remove the historical document is a big mistake, the historian concluded.

Two weeks ago journalist and author Tom Egeland posted the photo and it was quickly taken down by Facebook, in accordance with what it terms community standards.

The photograph, taken by AP photographer Nick Ut in 1972, instantly became an iconic depiction of the Vietnam War, showed injured Vietnamese children running from a napalm attack.

Among the children and South Vietnamese soldiers in the image, a severely injured and naked 9-year-old girl, Kim Phuc, is at the center, and it is her nudity that is the stated reason for the ban. Any photograph of people displaying fully nude genitalia or buttocks, or fully nude female breast, will be removed, according to Facebook policy.

But later on, Facebook released a new statement, "After hearing from our community, we looked again at how our Community Standards were applied in this case. An image of a naked child would normally be presumed to violate our Community Standards, and in some countries might even qualify as child pornography," reads a statement from Facebook, provided to Mashable.

"Because of its status as an iconic image of historical importance, the value of permitting sharing outweighs the value of protecting the community by removal, so we have decided to reinstate the image on Facebook where we are aware it has been removed."
The Langkaer upper secondary school has required that at least 50 percent of students in three of seven first grade classes this year must be of Danish descent. The rest of the children will be both migrants that have entered Europe in the last year and native-born Danes whose older relatives migrated to the country in previous years.

School officials explained the move will assist schools to more effectively integrate foreign-born children into Danish society.

Since the beginning of the current EU migrant crisis, the Langkaer school, and Denmark in general, has seen migrant inflow levels surge. As of now 80 percent of students in Langkaer are migrants, a significant increase compared to 2007, when non-Danish students stood at 25 percent of the total.
That incidence of censorship has been strongly criticized by Norwegian users. Many reposted the photo, protesting what they see as censorship. The Norwegian Journalism Association joined the protest, encouraging other media outlets to do the same. The social network continued to delete the image.

Norway's largest newspaper, Aftenposten, published an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg on its front page, accusing him of an abuse of power in his use of a global information distribution platform. Editor-in-chief Espen Egil Hansen wrote, "First you create rules that don't distinguish between child pornography and famous war photographs. Then you practice these rules without allowing space for good judgement."
STOCKHOLM (Sputnik)  On Thursday, a Swedish prosecutor said that Stockholm's court would announce its decision on whether to rescind the arrest warrant against the whistleblower on Friday, September 9.

"The decision on this case will be announced next week, but not today," the source said.

On August 9, Assange lodged an appeal with a Swedish court, calling on the country to comply with a UN ruling recognizing his deprivation of liberty as unlawful.
BERLIN (Sputnik)  German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier welcomed on Friday the destruction in the German city of Muenster of 500 metric tons of precursor chemicals which could be used to synthesize poison gases, delivered from Libya.

"Germany works very specifically together with the international community and with many partners, and helps the Libyan National Unity government to neutralize and dispose of the remnants of the Libyan chemical weapons program in accordance with the environmental safety standards," Steinmeier told journalists.

It is crucial to prevent toxic chemicals from falling into the wrong hands and, by doing this, to contribute to the security of Germany, Europe and Libya, he added.
Just like the contract we signed to buy F-16 fighter planes. All we can do to make the Americans pay attention to us is to sign deals that are financially beneficial to them and make the Polish people pay for them. This is even cheaper than hosting CIA prisons in our territory, Olszewski continued.

He added, however, that he wasnt sure that Poland was actually going to shell out the $10 billion-plus for the patriot missiles.

I see this as just a PR stunt on the part of our defense minister who is eager to arm our military and sign contracts. Besides, this smacks too much of politics and political preferences which, sadly enough, do not always coincide with our military needs.

As to whether Poland can afford such outlays, we should not forget that Poland is far from being an economic superpower. With the government trying hard to bring our spending in line with what we earn, we should be extremely careful about our military spending. Thats why I dont think this [deal to buy Patriot missiles] will ever come to fruition, Mariusz Olszewski said in conclusion.

Warsaw wants to buy 6 to 8 Patriot batteries from US manufacturing company Raytheon.

Raytheons Patriot is an advanced air and missile defense system capable of taking down ballistic and cruise missiles, planes and drones.

In 2009, the United States and NATO agreed to include Poland in its ballistic missile defense system in Europe. Russia has raised concerns over the close proximity of the ballistic missile systems to its borders, pointing out that deployments could upset regional strategic balance.
He added that some countries argued that recognizing Kosovo does not necessarily mean their wholesale support for everything that is going on there and for each and every demand made by this quasi-state.

When asked to comment on the recent announcement by Kosovo President Hashim Thaci that Pope Francis has allegedly informed him of his decision to visit Kosovo and recognize the new reality in the Balkans, Darko Tanaskovic advised those who take Mr. Thacis words seriously to recall his previous statements about the Popes alleged desire to come to Pristina and recognize Kosovo.

As far as I know, the head of the Roman-Catholic Church does meet with representatives of disputed territories, but only unofficially. The Vatican keeps its doors open to all and the Pope will certainly not refuse to meet anyone, especially someone who used the canonization of Mother Teresa as a pretext for showing his face at the Vatican, Tanaskovic said, adding that a final decision on Kosovos recognition depended on its influential sponsors.

Commenting on some media reports about Hashim Thaci willing to pay 10 million euros in exchange for the Vaticans recognition of Kosovo and that the money could be used to bribe some of the Popes close associates, Tanaskovic said that such intentions would only hamper Kosovos efforts to win international recognition and were an insult to the Holy See.

Well, I think such allegations are absolutely inappropriate and insulting to the Vatican. Im not authorized to speculate on whether the Popes visit to Pristina will be a certain sign of international recognition of the Albanian functionaries policy, but I dont think that even if the Pope visited Kosovo, which according to international law, is part of Serbia, this doesnt mean that the Vatican has recognized or is going to recognize Kosovo as an independent state, Darko Tanaskovic said in conclusion.


Elsewhere in the UK, police recently voiced their concerns over so-called "pop-up" brothels in the Cornish seaside resort of Newquay.

Two have been discovered so far this summer but because of the very temporary nature of the brothels  often only open for a week  it's difficult for police and the public to spot the signs.

Inspector Dave Meredith said: "The booking is usually for one week, after which the premises is vacated and, due to the short period of time the premises is used as a brothel, it is often difficult for police to establish that sex workers are residing there before they move on."

Police in Newquay are concerned about the increase in the number of sex workers in the area, which means more women are being exploited.

"Women who work in these pop-up brothels are often subjects of human trafficking and work under duress."

"Modern slavery is of concern to us all and includes sex trafficking where women are forced into the commercial sex industry and held against their will be force, fraud and coercion," Inspector Meredith said.

#IDoNotTrustAnyoneWho

Keeps my passport and pays me a pittance #modernslavery pic.twitter.com/HqIcHm4yaR  Sunita Gamblin QPM (@SunitaGamblin) August 29, 2016

The UK anti-slavery commissioner is hoping that members of the public will help uncover brothels or apartments used in London for prostitution purposes, many of which are set up on residential streets.

A report published in 2013, highlighted major concerns about the scale of human trafficking in England. The report, "Shadow City," suggested nearly 50 percent of modern slavery victims are found in London and the Home Counties.

Today @Assembly_Tories & @AndrewBoff launch their report Shadow City  Exposing Human Trafficking in everyday London http://t.co/w3IHFGd1rE  Robert Rams (@RobertRams1) October 14, 2013

Three years later and UK's anti-slavery commissioner is calling for Londoners to be more aware of what's going on around them to help combat sex slavery in Britain's capital.

According to the report, in London, you are never more than a few hundred yards away from a victim of human trafficking.
"Poland is good at growing apples. The incident with Polish apples in Sweden just shows that the competition for the goods markets is quite serious," the expert said.

The case with Polish apples is not a singular example, Vardul explained.

"I can cite a similar example. Recently, Kazakhstan refused to buy Ukrainian wheat. And this was despite the fact that Ukraine is the world-recognized breadbasket! It could be said that there was something to do with politics and Kazakhstan being a Russian ally. But in the case with Polish apples the complaint was made by the Swedes, who are by no means allies of Russia," he said, adding that this means that market competition is very intense.

"I think that Poland will solve this problem. Although, I feel sorry that they have lost the Russian market. However, that's a pity for us, too, because the beautiful and juicy Polish apples had always been in a great demand among Russians," the expert said.
Rats

A new report from Human Rights Watch (HRW) has found that Greek police routinely lock up unaccompanied children in small, overcrowded, and unhygienic cells for weeks and months.

Greece: Migrant Children Held in Deplorable Conditions https://t.co/3FvsBNbIpI  Human Rights Watch (@hrw) September 9, 2016

The report, "Why Are You Keeping Me Here?: Unaccompanied Children Detained in Greece," is based on interviews with 42 children who were or had been detained, as well as visits to two police stations and two detention centers in mainland Greece.

Greece has a chronic shortage of space and detains children in so-called protective custody while they await space in the overburdened shelter system. Greek law says unaccompanied children may be detained for 25 days pending transfer to a shelter, and for up to 45 days in very limited cases.

Human Rights Watch found that children were often detained for longer than these already excessive periods, with an average stay of 40 days. A 16-year-old boy from Afghanistan who had been in police custody for 52 days, said:

"The situation is very badI feel alone here, far from my family, from my friends I need to get out of this hell."

And a 15-year-old Algerian boy detained at the Amygdaleza detention center told HRW:

"I swear to God, I sleep next to rats."

Many had fled violence and armed conflict, including in Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq. A 16-year-old Kurdish boy from Iraq who was locked in a police cell, said he fled after Daesh ighters (also known as ISIL) captured his hometown of Mosul and executed his father. The children traveled on their own to Europe or became separated from their families in transit.

The HRW report said: "Greece's failure to provide accommodation for unaccompanied migrant children is a chronic problem. Greek authorities have acknowledged the issue, but done far too little to effectively address the lack of accommodation."
His opinion was fully echoed by political analyst Aleksandar Pavic, who said that Montenegro had won its national identity on the battlefield and its perseverance.

Entering NATO would bring about a change in this countrys genetic code, its matrix, Pavic insisted.

Matija Nikolic said that despite the wide-scale pro-NATO campaign being waged by the government, most of Montenegrins remain opposed to the idea of joining the North Atlantic Alliance. He also said that after it joined NATO Montenegro would be forced to be in confrontation with Russia, including militarily.

This would be a hard test for Montenegro, which has always been a friend of Russia and considers Russia an old friend and defender, he said, adding that he did not believe those who insist that being in NATO will ensure stability, investments and security.

Meanwhile, we can see that [stability, investments and security] are exactly what many NATO countries have problems with, thats why I dont believe that [by joining NATO] Montenegro will be able to strengthen its security, Nikolic continued.

To this Aleksandar Pavic added that NATO membership would only benefit the countrys leaders by further legitimizing them in the West and giving them additional perks.

We should be ready for an influx of prostitutes who keep an eagle eye on NATO soldiers arriving in the country, and also for a spike in drug trade.

As for NATO itself, Montenegros inclusion will be a psychological coup de force for Brussels, which will now be able to show everyone that its existence still makes sense and that all rumors about its death are a bit exaggerated.

This would also add strength to the pro-NATO forces in Serbia who will argue that, being encircled by NATO-members, the country had no choice other than to join in too.

Anyway, any future war between NATO and Russia, would invite a retaliatory strike from Russia that would consider Montenegro as an enemy territory, Aleksandar Pavic warned.
TALLINN (Sputnik)  In Estonia, the parliament votes to elect the president but if none of the candidates win the required number of votes the elections continue at an electoral college, made up of parliamentarians and local representatives.

"Marina Kaljurand has informed me of her decision to stand in the presidential elections. Though the participation of several like-minded candidates in the elections will reduce their chances of victory, this is Kaljurand's personal decision and her constitutional right," the prime minister said, as quoted in the statement.

Roivase also confirmed that his Reform party, which is the country's ruling party, would support the candidacy of former Vice President of the European Commission Siim Kallas.
The Commission has decided to refer Greece to the European Court of Justice because it failed to comply with a 2008 Commission decision ordering the recovery of unlawful aid to Hellenic Shipyards. This follows a 2012 ruling by the Court condemning Greece for its failure to implement the decision.

The harsh austerity measures have become deeply unpopular in Greece, where there are frequent demonstrations against changes to the tax and pension system. Both the Commission and the European Central Bank (ECB) have been demanding swingeing fiscal changes in order to bring Greece into a surplus of 3.5 percent of GDP.

The Greek creditors  the European Commission, the ECB and the International Monetary Fund (IMF)  known as the Troika had been at odds for six years over the sustainability of Greece's three bailout programs.

Meanwhile, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has been pressing for a greater relaxation of tight EU fiscal rules  particularly over deficit targets within the Eurozone  as he struggles to kick-start the Italian economy.

Spain and Portugal escaped fines for breaching deficit targets  the so-called "Stability Pact"  because the European Commission thought it would enflame anti-EU sentiment.

Ahead of the mini-summit, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras told Euractiv.com:

"It is now common knowledge that Europe is at a critical crossroads. Economic stagnation, social cohesion problems, the rise of Euroscepticism and isolationism, the strengthening of far-right populist phenomena, are issues that we cannot bypass in a serious debate on the future development of European integration."

Regional cooperation is essential for the EU. Nordics, Baltics, Visegrad and Benelux already know that. Now the Mediterranean. #EUMedSummit  Filipe S Henriques (@FHenriques) September 9, 2016

"In such a debate, Europe's Mediterranean countries can and must raise their voice. The way to have a bigger say is to seek a common approach and common positions. Having that in mind, we turned to the leaders of France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Cyprus and Malta, for a first meeting in Athens. I believe that regardless of the political origin of each of us, there is ground for joint action."
These latest developments come shortly after the police in Scotland said they would allow Muslim women to wear the hijab and will make it an official optional part of the forces' uniform.

The hijab is now an optional part of Police Scotland uniform. More at https://t.co/IeOAJGsORZ #PolScotRecruit 1/2  Police Scotland (@policescotland) August 23, 2016

However, not everyone in Europe feels the same way. It was only last month that police officers in Nice forced a Muslim woman to remove her burkini in front of people on a packed beach.

The debate and controversy around the burkini  and to some degree the hijab  have caused many women, from all backgrounds and faiths, to protest at what they see as intolerance and inequality.

@Titanic_Britain Unbelievable! West Midlands police is thinking of hiring women who wear full burqa as part of the uniform. What the heck?  Mira S. Ghoshal (@MiraGhoshal) 9 September 2016

West Midlands Police has announced the recruitment of around 800 new police officers. Around 30 per cent of the West Midlands community are from black and minority ethnic backgrounds (BME) while 9 per cent of West Midlands' 7,000 police officers are from the BME community.

"What's important here is that we reflect the community we serve. We've already taken significant steps with a third of our current recruits from BME backgrounds but there's far more to be done," Chief Constable Thompson told Sputnik.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The former undercover officers worked in the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), a special undercover unit of the Metropolitan Police Service (Met) that spied on at least 460 political groups in 1968  2008.

In one of the documents seen by The Guardian police said that there were a number of reasons for strained relations between the officers and the Met.

According to another document, the Met said that some of the undercover officers "assert that they have suffered psychiatric damage as a consequence of their deployments."
#TTIP puts in place parallel legal system that allows multinationals to sue govts over regs https://t.co/zCj1XQOQ7J pic.twitter.com/6S4Bo1ZmHr  Global Trade Watch (@PCGTW) August 31, 2016

Moreover, the investor-state dispute settlement system (ISDS)  comprising separate tribunals  can be used by big business to sue governments who refuse to allow their goods to be sold, or put up barriers affecting their profits. There is major opposition to this aspect of TTIP in the European Parliament, which is likely to delay Obama's plans.

"I am sure that we wait for the end of the negotiations and then make an assessment," she told news agency Funke Mediengruppe.

This was in sharp contrast to her Vice-Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel, who recently said: "In my opinion, the negotiations with the United States have de facto failed, even though nobody is really admitting it."

'Clear Break'

It follows similar comments from Belgian PM Charles Michel, who told the newspaper L'Echo: "This treaty could represent growth and jobs for Europe on condition that it is balanced. What is on the table doesn't seem to be. So, for the moment, I prefer to say that it's not right and that perhaps we will resume negotiations later."

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has called for a "clear break" to the negotiations.

"The agreement on the table is, under these conditions, unacceptable. We need a clear halt in order to resume from a new basis". He implied that the current negotiations were more favorable to the US than to the EU," Valls said.

The TTIP talks have been condemned by many campaign groups and MEPs for being conducted behind closed doors, with restricted access to the discussion documents. Moreover, billions have been spent to large corporation on lobbying to secure good terms in the negotiations.

The major stumbling block is regulation. Trade in the EU is regulated by Brussels, whose food, environment, health and other standards are commonly agreed. However, they do not equate necessarily to US standards. Opponents say the US is putting pressure on the EU to water down its regulatory standards.
According to the expert, the main question in this regard is whether this move would change the geopolitics.

"I think the big question is, if the European Army is formed, will it really be a rival to NATO and what does that mean. Because if it is a rival to NATO, does it mean that it will be a rival to the United States? The United States has previously been in favor of a European Army. So, would that mean that Europe, for example, would reconfigure its foreign policy?," the expert suggested.

For now, there is a split among European politicians with regard to sanctions against Russia. There is great pressure on the EU leadership to soften its policy toward Moscow and, according to O'Colmain, there is a possibility that the EU countries might really change their political course.
On Thursday, police arrested three "radicalized" women, suspected of intention to explode the car, following the anti-terrorist operation in the department of Essonne in the Ile-de-France region. One of them, wounded by a policeman, became known to the French intelligence services after being prevented from fleeing to Syria.

On July 14, a truck was driven into a crowd in Nice celebrating Bastille Day with 86 people killed and more than 400 injured. On July 26 another attack was carried out in a church near Rouen where a priest was killed and another person wounded.

On November 13, Islamic terrorists conducted a series of coordinated attacks in Paris, killing 130 people and injuring over 360. The Daesh group, outlawed in Russia and many other countries, claimed responsibility for the attack.
"Closing Fabric is not the answer to the drug-related problems. Clubs like ours are working to prevent, and sets a troubling precedent for the future of Londons night time economy."

Over the last 8 years London has lost 50% of its nightclubs and 40% of its live music venues. This decline must stop. #fabric  Mayor of London (@MayorofLondon) September 7, 2016

Many other nightclubs and music promoters are continually facing the prospect of closure;, be it from potential noise abatement orders with hotels and luxury flats popping up all over Shoreditch or sky-rocketing rents in Mayfair and Soho pressurizing licenses.

RIP Cable, RIP Fabric.. RIP Brixton, RIP Shoreditch, RIP Camden. RIP London. I'm 23 and I've seen this city change so much man.. it's so sad  UMI Says (@TheCaseUK) September 7, 2016

One club promoter who has been working in the industry for over a decade in London, agreed to speak anonymously to Sputnik about London's night scene.

"Closing down venues started more than five years ago. From what I've experienced and seen, local authorities have been extremely aggressive, revoking club licenses with little explanation," the club promoter told Sputnik.

"A clampdown was needed on a lot of venues taking liberties with their licenses, but the situation is concerning."

"On one hand you have London Mayor Sadiq Khan extending the hours on the tube through the night  but after 3am there are very few places to go out in London's West End. You can see the places that are closing down are being replaced by hotels, flats and restaurants. It seems bigger money is muscling in on central London and taking out all the clubs."

Messages of solidarity from punters, promoters and nightclub owners filled social media with the unifying rhetoric suggesting that closing nightclubs doesn't make clubbing any safer. For many, the closure highlights the need for authorities and club owners to work together in conjunction with the police to make the experience safer.

London's Mayor, Sadiq Khan said he was disappointed an agreement had not been reached between Fabric, the Metropolitan Police and Islington Council.

Fabric is an iconic and essential part of Londons cultural landscape  Im disappointed an agreement couldnt be reached to keep it open.  Mayor of London (@MayorofLondon) September 7, 2016

Meanwhile, an investigation carried out by London newspaper the Independent, following a Freedom of Information (FoI) request to Islington Council, suggested that Fabric's closure:

"was a long pre-planned event, orchestrated by a cash-strapped council, using the police as pawns."

Islington Council's official statement listed eleven bullet points justifying its decision to close Fabric. Two relate to the deaths of two individuals and the rest relate to an undercover police operation, aptly named "Operation Lenor" that was carried out in July 2016 inside the venue.

Looks like Fabric has been rinsed out by #operationlenor  hamilton (@hamiltonuk) September 7, 2016

Police found no hard evidence of drug taking inside the venue, but observations that individuals were "manifesting symptoms showing that they were [on drugs.]"

"This included sweating, glazed red eyes and staring into space."

The UKs dark web drugs market now dwarfs any other in Europe.

Information, education, constructive dialogue and intervention are needed.  ElephantintheRoom (@elephantimpact) September 5, 2016

The undercover police report also stated that:

"The general atmosphere of the club was friendly and non-threatening," and that "there was a diverse demographic in regards to race."

These findings, or the Independent report, did not make it into Islington Council's statement. It appears that the police were not targeting drug dealers  but the club itself.

Fabric had been forced to use sniffer dogs under a condition of its license issued by Islington Council, a condition that was later successfully overturned after concerns were raised that the sniffer dogs made drug taking more dangerous.

In an interview with DJ Gilles Peterson on his Worldwide FM show, following the council's decision to shut Fabric, Keith Reilly, co-founder of Fabric reiterated the concerns over the role the sniffer dogs played.

"Not only are the drugs stronger  ten times stronger, what happened when young people come round the corner, they see the dogs and panic. They take everything in their pocket, that's what killed them."

talking to Keith Reilly creator of @fabriclondon. right now @worldwidefm..  Gilles Peterson (@gillespeterson) September 8, 2016

"The judge highlighted that, what they tried to make us do was counterproductive, to the licensing initiative and endangering young lives," Reilly said.

'Arcane Laws'

However, it seems Fabric isn't going to take a soft approach to the authorities' decision to close it down and will appeal. On Worldwide FM, Reilly also announced that they will fight for Fabric and other clubs facing threat of closure due to "arcane laws."

Meanwhile London's Mayor Sadiq Khan is on the hunt for a new night time czar, in an attempt to preserve London's diminishing night scene, while questions are being asked why one of London's iconic clubs has been shut down.
TALLINN (Sputnik)  Earlier in the day, Roivas held a meeting with European Council President Donald Tusk in Tallinn, where the sides discussed the future of the European Union after Brexit.

"I am pleased to say that during today's meeting with the European Council president we have agreed that Europe does not have time to wait for overcoming of a shock from Brexit, we should move beyond it. We should remember every day that our common values, such as peace, stability and economic prosperity in united Europe, are a historic achievement, which we should preserve and develop," Roivas told reporters after the meeting.
STOCKHOLM (Sputnik)  On Thursday, a Swedish prosecutor said that Stockholm's court would announce its decision on whether to rescind the arrest warrant against the whistleblower on Friday. On Friday, a source in the court said that the ruling is expected next week.

Ny gave a press conference on Wednesday and dealt with details of the investigation which were not linked to any significant news or progress made in the case.

The prosecutor's obsession with publicity and prestige has put her ability to conduct a fair, impartial and professional trial into question, Assange said, as quioted by the Swedish TT news agency.
According to the survey, the lowest level of public support for the country's membership in the EU was identified in the Czech Republic. Only 32 percent of Czechs positively evaluated their country's membership in the EU.

In Slovakia and Hungary, over 50 percent supported membership in the EU. Negative attitude stowards the EU were estimated at 24 percent of Czech respondents as opposed to 14 percent in Slovakia and 8 percent in Hungary.

As for NATO membership, among these three states, the strongest support was found in Hungary with 47 percent of the total vote. The Czech Republic came second with 44 percent, while the lowest level of support for NATO membership was in Slovakia with only 30 percent.
This innuendo linking both men to the KGB however, does not wash for a very simple reason.

Bogdanov is a career diplomat, well known and respected across the Middle East  including Israel, where he was Russian Ambassador in 1997-2002. He had worked in the Soviet Embassy in Damascus from 1983. Mahmoud Abbas completed his PhD studies in Moscow in 1982.

So if the KGB had ever wanted to recruit him, his academic stint in Moscow in the early 80s presented a perfect opportunity  without the risk of compromising anyone in Damascus or elsewhere in the Middle East. Moreover, according to the Times of Israel, "after earning his doctorate, Abbas moved to Tunisia where he took a more active role in PLO leadership."

A Tale of Two Moles

Yet, the entry in Mitrokhin's notes, alleging that Abbas was a KGB agent in Damascus, is under the heading "KGB recruiting efforts in 1983."

So it isn't entirely clear from the notes, if "Krotov's" alleged recruitment was successful or not.

Isabella Ginor, as quoted by the New York Times, admitted thatL

"we don't know what happened later on and if Abu Mazen (another name for Abbas) went on with his service or work for the Soviets."

There is another discrepancy which the two Israeli researchers have not mentioned.

The name Krotov appears in Mitrokhin's notes at least twice. Under entry No. 217, page 40, Krotov I.A. is referred to as a career officer of the KGB's First Chief Directorate (foreign intelligence) in Moscow, working on Middle East issues.
"It wouldn't have weighed any more than a few kilos," Ioannis Fakas, the honorary chairman of the Cyprus astronomical society, told the Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation. "When it crossed Cyprus it exploded."

According to the specialist, it had a 45 degree tilt, and a bang could be heard as the meteorite passed over Cyprus. Meteorite fragments could have fallen into the sea to the north of Cyprus, Fakas added.

The event was recorded on a video by security cameras in Paphos: the meteor could be seen in the reflection of a car.
"We are absolutely thrilled at receiving such an unexpected honor and it really is a result from over 4 years of hard work and research by our team in Moscow.

"To receive such recognition from the international community in the world of design makes this award that much more special. We owe a great deal of thanks to our supporters who include the Russian Ministry of Industry and Trade, and we hope we can continue to encourage more innovation from what is a relatively young design industry in our country," Natalia Goldchteine told Sputnik.

The three week takeover at Somerset House in Central London takes visitors on an "around-the-world" journey through both contemporary and historical design exhibits and with an entertaining and inspiring exploration of the role it plays in all of our collective futures worldwide.
KIEV (Sputnik)  Earlier in the day, the two leaders held a telephone conversation. The diplomatic counsellor of French President Francois Hollande also took part in the telephone conversation at the french leader's request.

"The sides agreed to bolster diplomatic efforts in the Normandy format and contact group format in a bid to implement Minsk agreements, notably the security component," the statement reads.
ANKARA (Sputnik)  On Thursday, the Turkish government allowed German lawmakers to visit Incirlik Air Base after restricting them access to the facility in June.

"Germany made a very important statement, which must be an example and a lesson for everybody. They said that the term genocide is juridical not political one. And a courts verdict is needed in order to recognize the situation genocide. This statement satisfied us, that is why we told the German government that the commission that will arrive to us in early October will be allowed to visit Incirlik after the necessary German request," Cavusoglu said at a press conference.

He also called the German recognition of the Armenian genocide nonsense.
Meanwhile, the participants of the current meeting in Athens apparently have a different understanding of what a united Europe should look like.

"They want more of Europe, they want a Europe in which such strong countries like Germany would help weaker ones. They want a different EU," the newspaper wrote.

Earlier, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras criticized Germany's policy saying that if it won't give up its austerity measures, the EU will be on the edge of dissolution.

The motto of the meeting will be "economic growth instead of austerity". During the meeting, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras will host his colleagues from France, Portugal, Italy, Malta, Cyprus and Spain.

According to Greek authorities, the summit is aimed at "boosting cooperation between the EU's Mediterranean countries so that these countries would increase their influence on the European politics." The summit is expected be the beginning of a series of other meetings of that kind.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  On August 24, a 6.0-magnitude quake shook central Italy, causing damage across numerous towns and resulting in the deaths of over 290 people. The earthquake was followed by multiple aftershocks.

"Italian authorities are grateful to the Russian rescuers who sent a group of experts in assessment of safety of buildings and constructions for valuable assistance. The experts have carried out all the tasks at the highest professional level in the city of Amatrice most affected by the earthquake," Fabricio Kurcho, the head of the Department of Civil Protection at the ministerial Council, said as quoted by the Russian Emergencies Ministry.

According to the ministry, Kurcho sent a grateful letter to Russian Emergencies Minister Vladimir Puchkov stating that all technical recommendations by the Russian experts would be used by relevant bodies for further implementation.
According to the journalist, another major problem is that the Italian authorities and people do not know what happens at the US bases in Italy.

"This problem has long been debated but there is still no answer. First of all, there are US bases and there are NATO bases. For example, the Sigonella base in Sicily is controlled by the US Air Force and Navy. The Italian authorities cannot know whats happening there. However, part of this base is fully controlled by NATO, and the 41st regiment of the Italian Air Force is stationed there," Mazzeo explained.

Despite the fact that the situation with military bases in Italy violates the constitution and is not controlled by the parliament, the government does not want to interfere, he said.

"Public reaction is minimal. People even dont know what is happening at the bases. Even the parliament doesnt want to discuss the problem. Major media doesnt cover the situation so its no surprise that people are not aware," the journalist said.

Being part of NATOs aggressive policy, including the growing number of bases, could create serious risks for countrys national interests, he said.

"NATO has never been a defense alliance. It could pretend to be during the Cold War. But after the fall of the Berlin Wall its aggressive role became clear. The alliance has changed and become more complex. Some members like Turkey, France and Britain are not controlled by the US. Thus, there is the risk that Italy could be dragged into a more aggressive Atlantic alliance whose interests are different from Italys political, economic and military interests. Such an alliance would influence on the domestic and foreign policy in Italy," Mazzeo concluded.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  The United States warns its citizens in France that the Islamic State (Daesh), along with other terror organizations, continues to plan attacks in that country, the US Embassy in Paris said in a security message on Friday.

"Credible information suggests that ISIL [Daesh] and other terrorist groups continue to plan terrorist attacks in France, as detailed in the Departments Worldwide Caution," the security message stated.

The US Embassy noted that Europe continue to face a threat from "unaffiliated persons" who can carry out attacks inspired by major terrorist groups.
He added that that the 1,000 megawatts generated by Bushehr-1 accounted for a mere one-seventieth of Irans overall consumption.

However, Russia has already invested in the modernization of our Ramin thermal power station and is working hard to develop natural gas sector of this countrys energy market, Hassan Beheshtipour noted.

He said that Bushehr-2 could take between three and five years to build now that most of the problems holding up the construction had already been solved.

Thats why Im confident that the second stage of the Bushehr power station will have been completed by 2019-2021, Hassan Beheshtipour said.

An agreement to expand civilian nuclear energy cooperation and construct a total of eight additional nuclear reactors at Bushehr was signed between Russia and Iran on November 11, 2014.

The agreement for the construction of the Bushehr-1 nuclear power plant was finalized in 1995, but the project was delayed several times due to a number of technical and financial issues.

Bushehr-1 was launched in September 2011 and reached its maximum power generation capacity in August 2012.

In September 2013, Iran officially took over from Russia the first unit of its first 1,000-megawatt nuclear power plant, and in November 2014 the two countries signed an agreement whereby Russia was commissioned to build an additional seven such units.
If the Turks were building this wall on their side of the border, it wouldnt concern us, but they are trying to build it here in Kobani. Our people will never let this happen. Turkey is against the federative system we have here, thats why it is helping the Free Syrian Army and other radical groups, Enver Muslim said.

He added that Ankara decided to build the wall in Kobani after the failure of its military operation in Jarablus.

This will never happen because the people of Kobani will not allow this annexation of our territory. Instead of ramping up tensions and stoking up hatred in the region Turkey should look for ways to end this crisis and restore peace, Enver Muslim said, adding that Turkeys actions were antagonizing the local population.
ALEPPO (Sputnik)  The Syrian army and militias retook control over the Aleppos Ramuse region and secured unblocked southern entrance to the city, a RIA Novosti correspondent reported Friday.

Ramuse was fully cleared of terrorists on Friday morning. The Syrian army is currently allowing a limited number of vehicles.
The Army of Conquest is an umbrella organization that was created in March 2015. Al-Nusra Front and Ahrar ash-Sham form the bulk of its forces. It is mainly active in the Idlib province, but has also carried out operations in the provinces of Latakia and Hama.

The field commander told Sputnik that the SAA pushed the militants out using heavy artillery and warplanes.
Soon after, Fatima had an idea to turn her house into a small textile shop, where other women in need of labor and funds could also work. She organized her home into a factory and started to help widows learn the technique of stitching clothes.

I started to teach women the basics of sewing. We stayed up late at night at the workplace, learning how to sew beautifully. After a long period, we became a working team that was able to fulfill orders and bring money to their families. We sell our products to private retail stores, Fatima explained.

When Fatima hears that a female acquaintance has become a widow and is in need of help, she organizes fundraising among everyone she knows in an effort to try and help the woman in distress because she knows what it is like to be a widow in Syria.

Currently, the official number of women who have started working during the war exceeds 977,000.

These women are forced to work because of a loss of income or due to a difficult financial situation in the family, caused by many years of the civil war.

Syria has been mired in civil war since 2011, with government forces loyal to President Bashar Assad fighting numerous opposition factions and extremist groups. On February 27, a US-Russia brokered ceasefire came into force in Syria.
The goal of the Euphrates Shield military operation is to establish a 90 km long and 40 km wide safe zone in northern Syria, Hasan Oktay, head of the Ankara-based Kafkassam Center for Strategic Studies, told RIA Novosti

On August 24, the Turkish military launched an offensive against Daesh in the northern Syrian city of Jarablus. In turn, representatives of Syrian Kurds have claimed that the operation was aimed against Kurdish forces.

"Ankara wants to take control within a safe zone in northern Syria. This area will be nearly 40 km deep in Syrian territory and 90 km long at the Turkish border as Turkish leaders have repeatedly proposed," Oktay said.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg welcomed on Friday the increased efforts of Turkey and other allies in fighting the Daesh terrorist group in Syria.

"I welcome the increased efforts of Turkey but also other allies in fighting ISIL [Daesh] in Syria," Stoltenberg told reporters.

Stoltenberg also noted "the importance of training local forces" in countries where extremist groups are present.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The Wilayat Sinai terror group linked to Daesh and active on Egypt's Sinai Peninsula is plotting a terror attack against Israel, which could happen within six months, The Telegraph newspaper reported, citing an Israeli military officer on Friday.

"It could happen today, tomorrow, in a month but within the next six months we will come into an engagement with Wilayat Sinai In the next six months they will try to carry out an attack and try to do something against Israel," the officer said on condition of anonymity.
GENEVA (Sputnik)  A ministerial meeting on Syria scheduled for September 21 is a target date to ensure all actors in the Syrian political process are involved in making headway toward the crisis settlement, UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura told Sputnik on Friday.

"September 21st will be an important date. The window of opportunity is quickly coming to a close. It is high time to cease the opportunity and make another push to the political process in Syria. So that is the target date for making sure that everyone is actively involved in producing some positive outcome on this conflict," de Mistura said.
BERLIN (Sputnik)  At a conference at the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Berlin, Steinmeier said:

"The most important thing for now is a humanitarian pause for Aleppo, and it would be preferable to make it last for 48 hours. Talks are currently being held on implementing a ceasefire for between seven and 10 days."

The discussions are taking place at the ongoing meeting between Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and US Secretary of State John Kerry, who are discussing the settlement of the Syrian conflict, according to the minister.
There were rumors that Assad was negotiating for a political asylum abroad. The governments army suffered enormous damage, from its pre-war days of having 325,000 soldiers dwindled to only 100,000.

However, with the support of Russian Aerospace Forces, which began conducting sorties in September 2015, Damascus managed to reverse the situation and take back all key areas.

Currently, the Syrian Army controls a total of about 40-45% of the country, including all major cities of Damascus, Latakia, Tartous, Homs, Hama, Aleppo (60%), Deir ez-Zor and Daraa (50%).

Second Life of the Free Syrian Army

Another party to the conflict is the so-called Syria's moderate opposition. At the beginning of combat operations its main striking force was the Free Syrian Army (FSA), which for a time being united almost all of the anti-government factions.

Support for the moderate Syrian opposition was openly declared by Britain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the US, Turkey and France. The opposition received solid help in terms of weapons, equipment and vehicles. The volume of this aid is estimated to be of several hundred million dollars.

However, external support has not helped to preserve the unity of the Syrian opposition. Within just a few years of the conflict, the opposition split into separate groups and lost its role as the main combatant against the Syrian government, giving way to various extremist and terrorist groups.

In fact, with the advent of Daesh and al-Nusra Front the moderate opposition and the FSA, in particular, ceased to exist as an independent armed group with a centralized command.
Earlier on Friday, the Syrian army and militias retook control over Aleppos Ramuse region, secured and unblocked the southern entrance to the city. Terrorists were pushed to the nearby Sadkop oil storage facility.

Currently, engineering units of the Syrian Army are clearing the liberated areas of mines and shells. The area of the oil depots is the last defense line of the terrorists in Aleppo.

At the same time, the Syrian military delivered an ultimatum to terrorists in the eastern part of the city. Aircraft of the Syrian Air Force dropped leaflets calling for the terrorists to lay down arms.
"The population of Mosul and the Kurdish regional leadership insist on their participation in the upcoming operation. Of course, the central Iraqi government realizes that it is inevitable," Abbas said.

The important thing, however, Abbas argued, is that the Peshmerga forces are expected to play only a supportive role in the Mosul operation: this means they won't directly participate in the armed clashes in the city.

"Thus the inhabitants of the city are expected to play the main part in its liberation, while the Peshmerga forces will provide support when necessary. The central Iraqi government insists on it, too," Abbas said.

Commenting on why the operation in Mosul has been delayed for such a long time, the expert said that the main reason behind it was disagreement between the parties over who will eventually get control of the city.

"This has significantly delayed the start of operation," he said. "There are suggestions that after the operation Mosul will be divided into three parts, or become a part Iraqi Kurdistan under the federative system," Abbas added.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The Islamic State (Daesh) militants and Jabhat Fatah al Sham fighters fired a number of civilian objects with multiple launch rocket systems (MRLS) and mortars in Syria's Aleppo and Damascus provinces over the past 24 hours, the Russian Defense Ministry said Friday.

"Within last 24 hours, in the Aleppo province terrorists have fired with MLRS and mortars against the Khai-al-Ansari and "1070", areas of the the military school of armament and the "Kastello" trade centre. In the Damascus province mortar fire has been opened against inhabited areas Haush-Nasri, Ibn-Sina, Kaush-Harabu, the school of medical service in the Harasta inhabited area as well as a school in the Jaubar settlement," the ministry said in a daily bulletin posted on its website.

Moreover, the Makharda and Kaukab inhabited areas have been shelled in the Hama province, the ministry said.
Speaking to reporters, Kerry expressed hope that the new plan could be the moment when multilateral diplomatic efforts begin to take hold.

"We must go after these terrorists. Not indiscriminately, but in a systematic way," he said.

Russia and the US are calling on all sides to honor a nationwide cessation of hostilities beginning at sundown on September 12. This involves halting all attacks, including airstrikes.
TOKYO (Sputnik)  The Friday test allowed North Korea to assess the potential of nuclear power and to confirm the features of a "standardized" nuclear warhead that can be mounted on "strategic ballistic rockets," KCNA said on Friday.

Earlier, Pyongyang officially confirmed having successfully carried out its fifth nuclear test on Friday morning, according to the South Korean Yonhap news agency.
The Russian Defense Ministry unveiled its next-generation Armata tank at the May 9 Victory Day military parade in Moscow in 2015.

The tank's turret is unmanned and is operated by the crew located in an armored capsule at the front of the vehicle. Its main armament includes a 125-mm smoothbore cannon and a 7.62-mm remote-control machine gun.

Five-percent cuts in state defense orders will not affect Russias advanced combat vehicles built on the Armata platform, the Russian Defense Ministrys chief of main vehicles and armor department told Sputnik on Friday.

"The main armored vehicle department is primarily financed by long-term research and development programs. Perhaps the reduction in funding will affect something else, but not in the development of weapons and military equipment," Shevchenko said.

Shevchenko noted that work on the Armata, along with the Kurganets and Bumerang armored personnel carriers, are prioritized because they form the "basis for the future."
KUBINKA (Sputnik)  The T-90 is a third-generation Russian battle tank that entered service in 1993. The tank is a moderate variation of the T-72B and incorporates many features found on the T-80U.

"This is the Proryv-3 program, we have already discussed it at the forum, this tank will be even better than the existing T-90," Alexander Shevchenko said on the sidelines of the Army-2016 military expo.
OPUK RANGE (Crimea) (Sputnik)  The announcer noted the systems efficiency in combating a variety of modern air attacks under jamming and adverse weather conditions.

"Pay attention to the monitors: the advanced S-400 Triumf anti-aircraft missile system is dealing a blow to the Southern aircraft," the correspondent quoted the announcer as saying at the drills.

"You are observing on monitors a cruise missile launch from the Novorossiysk submarine at the Northern main landing forces naval formation. The target has been struck," the announcer added.
The joint helicopter company is now expected to be incorporated and will later rope in a private sector partner to share work. India needs more than 200 Kamov choppers.

Anil Ambani owned Reliance Industries or Pune based Kalyani Strategic Systems is likely to be private sector partner to manufacture the Kamov Ka-226 choppers.

As per the agreement, out of the 200 Kamov Ka-226 Light Utility Helicopters, the first 40 are to be made in Russia and the rest 160 will be made in India with transfer of technology and license for production. These light utility Kamov Ka-226 choppers will ultimately replace the Cheetah and Chetak helicopters. In fact, India wants to become an export hub for the Kamov Ka-226 choppers as several countries have shown their interest in buying this most efficient chopper. I think president Putins visit will definitely give a spur to Indo-Russian defense cooperation. India is still dependent on Russia for nearly 60 to 70 percent of its defense supplies and it will remain as such in the years to come despite our defense ties with US, former spokesperson of the Defense Ministry and Wing Commander (Rtd) Praful Bakshi told Sputnik.
The latest version of the bomber is the heavily redesigned air-launched cruise missile-carrying H-6K, which, according to United States Department of Defense, will give the PLA long range standoff offensive air capabilities with precision-guided munitions.

The H-6K is designed for long-range attacks and stand-off attacks. It is also considered as a strategic bomber and according to reports is capable of attacking US carrier battle groups and priority targets in Asia.

This aircraft has nuclear strike capabilities, while previous models had limited missile capacities, the H-6K can carry up to six YJ-12 and 6-7 LACMs; a single regiment of 18 H-6Ks fully loaded out with YJ-12s can flood enemy ships with over 100 supersonic missiles.

However, according to Kashin, the Chinese Air Force needs a bomber which has a long range and high speed but is also not so costly to manufacture.

The potential jet needs a powerful set of electronic warfare and it should be hardly noticeable to the enemy radar. The manufacture of such a jet will have a very difficult technical task.

As the expert noted, according to some provided information, China has previously worked on its US counterpart, the B-2 bomber. At what stage the progress is remains unknown, Kashin pointed out.

Russia is also working on its analogue of B-2 bomber, but right now it looks like the project has been postponed. Currently, the production of an upgraded version of the Tu-160, which will have the name Tu-160 M, has become a priority.
SAAB has offered to develop, manufacture and undertake the final assembly of its Gripen E fighter jet in India with actual Transfer of Technology under the Make in India project. This would be a big relief for SAAB as India has not signed any major deal with the Swedish firm after a political storm triggered by allegations of corruption in the purchase of Bofors howitzers in 1987.

Recently, India rejected SAABs offer to set up a production line under 'Make in India' and to supply the latest Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar to Hindustan Aeronautics Limited for the indigenous fighter aircraft Tejas MK1A.

In an interview to All India Radio in May this year, Manohar Parrikar said, India will select a good fighter by the end of this financial year to be made domestically. It is not yet decided which aircraft it would be. It may be F-18, Rafale, Eurofighter or Gripen. The decision in this regard will be taken in this financial year.
SANAA (Sputnik)  According to the source, UN Yemen envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed arrived in Omans capital of Muscat on Saturday.

The UN-brokered talks to end the Yemeni conflict started in Kuwait in April and ended in early August, with the government and Houthi rebels failing to come to an agreement. As the talks wrapped up, the Houthi delegation flew to Oman for consultation with local authorities. From there, they tried to return to the Yemeni capital Sanaa, but failed over the government ban.

A week ago, US Secretary of State John Kerry announced that the United States and the leaders of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Britain have agreed on a new plan to resolving the ongoing conflict in Yemen. The newly-agreed approach will include prompt establishment of a new unity government in Yemen and the transfer of arms to a third party.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Bulgarias ties with Russia soured after the start of the Ukraine crisis in 2014 when the European Union accused Moscow of meddling in Ukraines domestic affairs. Russia denied having a hand in the eastern conflict.

"Bulgaria must have an independent foreign policy. Bulgaria must follow its own objective. We lost a lot by more or less declaring Russia our enemy," Maj. Gen. Radev told Darik News on Saturday.

The former air force commander said it was time for the Eastern European nation to look for friends, rather than enemies, especially for economic and trade partners. Russia could become a lucrative market for Bulgarian companies, he noted.
The resettlement of residents of Liberty to European countries is a triumph given the resources the Iranian regime dedicated to their annihilation.

The residents had been under an eight-year siege, and were subjected to a range of attacks by the regimes proxies which left 177 dead. The regime also used fake arrest warrants to try to prevent the departures.

The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) commended the tireless efforts of its President-elect, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, as well as those of distinguished American, European and Arab figures, to protect Liberty residents.

The safety of the residents has not been achieved without cost, however. The regime used its influence with the Iraqi authorities to ensure that residents were not permitted to take any personal possessions and that collective resources were disposed of without compensation.
TOKYO (Sputnik)  The planned meeting was scheduled after a joint request by South Korea, Japan and the United States, the Yonhap news agency said on Friday citing South Korean diplomatic sources.

On Friday, the US Geological Survey (USGS), as well as Japans and Chinas meteorological services, detected a ground-level (0 kilometer depth) seismic event northeast of the town of Sungjibaegam, near the Punggye-ri nuclear test site in North Korea, saying it could be an explosion.

The South Korean military said that North Korea could have carried out its fifth and "biggest-ever" nuclear test on Friday, on the occasion of the 68th anniversary of the foundation of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
An unnamed Japanese official reportedly cited the US president who said Washington was committed to Japans security, and the two allies would work together to address the threat posed by Pyongyang.

The United Nations has banned North Korea from developing nuclear and ballistic missile technologies and imposed fresh sanctions on it after the fourth nuclear test in January.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Pyongyang officially confirmed that it had successfully carried out a new nuclear test earlier in the day after a seismic event had been registered near a test site in the countrys northeast. North Korea's Central News Agency (KCNA) announced the test confirmed that "standardized" nuclear warheads could be mounted on "strategic ballistic rockets."

"The international community should unite amid North Korea's fresh provocation, which came after a unanimous condemnation by the [UN] Security Council of the launch of ballistic missiles by North Korea earlier on Monday," the statement reads.
Ankara has been increasingly active in Syria, with the Turkish military launching a ground cross border operation on August 24, something that Turkish authorities are said to have been planning for more than two years. The offensive saw Turkish warplanes, tanks, artillery and special forces, as well as the Free Syrian Army push Daesh out of Jarablus and ensure that Kurdish fighters do not expand territories under their control to the west of the Euphrates.

The Turkish military is said to have secured a 90-kilometer (56-mile) stretch of land along the country's border with Syria, but it is ready to advance further south, Deputy Prime Minister Nurettin Canikli said on Wednesday.

Mithat Sancar suggested that the US and Turkey could have reached an informal agreement that while the Turkish military remains in areas close to Jarablus and does not move deeper into the Syrian territory, there will be no direct confrontation with other forces, including the Kurds.

"The most dangerous scenario for Turkey involves a war with the Kurds. Ankara understands that a direct military confrontation with the YPG will lead to a major deterioration of Turkey's relations with Russia and other unpredictable consequences," the professor said.

Mithat Sancar further added that the Turkish government wanted to play a more prominent role in Syria, but has "clearly overestimated" its capabilities and has settled for a limited engagement.

"Turkey's operation in northern Syria is a PR campaign for Turkish leadership aimed at improving its image in the world. But if Ankara crosses a line drawn by the US in Syria it will get into serious trouble," he asserted.
GENEVA (Sputnik)  Moscow is concerned by the fifth and latest nuclear test carried out by North Korea earlier in the day, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Friday, urging adherence to UN resolutions.

"Moscow is seriously concerned about North Koreas nuclear test, UN Security Council resolutions must be followed," Lavrov told reporters.
The program , run by the Nordic Council, will support cooperation within all areas of mutual Nordic-Russian interest: from local and regional authorities to educational institutions, business organizations and think-tanks.

"We are counting on there being great interest in the program," said Jens Nytoft Rasmussen, senior advisor at the Nordic Council of Ministers. "Internal Nordic organization and cooperation partners, as well as external interested parties, can apply for funds from the program. A condition to receive funds is that there must be at least two Nordic nations and one Russian part involved in the project being applied for," he explained.

Currently, some 6 million DKK (over $900,000) has been earmarked for the program, which is expected to run until 2017, when it will be evaluated.
GENEVA (Sputnik)  US State Secretary John Kerry told reporters ahead of talks with Lavrov in Geneva he had "serious" conversations with counterparts from South Korea and Japan on the subject.

I will also discuss this issue with the colleague [Kishida] in the morning. We will have a break in negotiations [with Kerry], Lavrov said after voicing deep concern about Pyongyang's nuclear test.
TALLINN (Sputnik)  According to the daily, the information about Kaljurand's resignation has not been officially confirmed yet.

The term of current President Toomas Hendrik Ilves is due to expire in the fall. This is his second term in office, the maximum permitted under the countrys constitution.
BEIJING (Sputnik)  Earlier in the day, North Korea said it had carried out the fifth nuclear test, believed to be the largest since the country started to pursue nuclear programs in violation of UN resolutions. The country announced that it was capable of mounting nuclear warheads on "strategic ballistic rockets."

"We believe that all sides' security concerns may be dealt with only in a way acceptable for everyone. We urge the sides to have a prudent approach and avoid provoking each other, to jointly seek denuclearization and maintain peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula," Hua said at a briefing.

Earlier in the day, South Korea, Japan and the United states called on the United Nations to hold a crisis meeting to address North Koreas nuclear ambition. The emergency meeting of the UN Security Council is expected to take place later on Friday.
"We worked hard to open a new page in our relationship. Such a unilateral step by Washington in disregard of Russian and even allies interests dashed our hopes for a new start," he said.

According to Ivanov, the Iraq War signaled a rollback of cooperation between the two countries security agencies.

However, Russians showed the highest level of support of US citizens after the tragedy of September 11, 2001, Russias then Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov told Sputnik.

"When I arrived at the US Embassy in Moscow on September 11 to write in the book of condolences I was amazed by a large number of our citizens lining up to lay flowers outside the Embassy as a tribute," Ivanov said.

"For months afterwards, opinion polls in Russia showed what I think was the highest level of support among Russians of the United States," he said.

More than 3,000 people died in a series of coordinated terror attacks by al-Qaeda militants on New York City and Washington, DC on September 11, 2001.
Shahin Gobadi, spokesperson for the Peoples Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI or MEK), commented on Friday on the news that the final group of residents of Camp Liberty were successfully relocated on Friday from Iraq to Europe.

Mr. Gobadi said: The successful conclusion of the relocation process of the residents of Camp Liberty, members of the Peoples Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI or MEK), out of Iraq was a major blow to the clerical regime and a major victory for the Iranian Resistance.

One has to keep in mind that this happened despite all the conniving and conspiracy and obstructions by the clerical regime which sought to force the residents to either give up resistance and succumb or to be massacred.

Exploiting the post 2003 situation in Iraq the clerical regime resorted to its utmost to make this a reality. It resorted to three massacres, five rocket attacks, two abductions, imposing a totally inhumane siege on the camp residents. There were only a part of the major scheme that the mullahs pursued in order to achieve their ominous objective. But they failed utterly. As such, this was a major victory for the Iranian Resistance.

The fact that this coincides with the growing movement inside and outside of Iran seeking justice for the 30,000 members of the PMOI who were massacred back in 1988, this development heralds a new dawn for the Iranian Resistance and leads to the defeat of the Iranian regime, he added.

This, in the midst of the Iranian regimes conspiracies, obstruction and threats, which continued until the very last day. The Iranian regime used several devices, including providing red notices to Interpol and using fake arrest warrants issued by the Iraqi Judiciary to prevent the departure of 1,000 PMOI members, especially officials and other well-known figures. They did their best to destroy the PMOI/MEK with three massacres at Camp Ashraf, five missile attacks on Camp Liberty, two cases of abduction of residents, and the imposition of a full-fledged eight-year siege, which left 177 residents dead.

But the PMOI/MEK werent destro yed, and the regimes defeat in this, especially taking place simultaneously with growing calls for justice for 30,000 political prisoners massacred in 1988, creates a new atmosphere of solidarity for the Iranian people and Resistance. Additionally, the support extended to the Iranian Resistance by distinguished American, European and Arab personalities gave voice to the dissidents words around the world. The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) commended these supporters, thanking them for providing a political shield for the resettlement of PMOI members, and praised the tireless efforts of its President-elect Mrs. Maryam Rajavi.

Over the past year, due to efforts by the Iranian Resistance, the United States Congress, the European Parliament, parliaments in the United Kingdom, as well as in other European and Middle Eastern countries have adopted legislation that obliged them take necessary measures to protect the residents of Liberty and safely transfer them out of Iraq.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees stated, UNHCR is supporting a steady and growing stream of movements out of Iraq in coming months. It is hoped that the process will be completed well before year end. This progress has been achieved with the cooperation of the residents who have proceeded with the relocation process despite difficult circumstances, including the attack on 4 July 2016, which fortunately did not result in any casualties, on July 19, 2016.

Ongoing success in the implementation of solutions has also been assisted by the residents commitment to meeting the bulk of the associated costs, particularly for long term support of all residents relocated out of Iraq who have no access to state-sponsored assistance. The UNHCR added.

That must have been difficult for the residents, as Iraqi intelligence agents, acting at the behest of the Iranian regimes ambassador to Iraq (a commander of the terrorist Quds Force), prevented the residents from taking with them their personal belongings, such as computers, radios, cell phones, and even electric shavers, and despite its previous commitments, they prevented the sale of over 90 percent of the residents property. The residents had signed a contract with a government-approved Iraqi merchant to sell their property for $10.7 million, but, instead, were only allowed the sale of 10 percent of the property at one-fourth of the market price. As well, during former Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Malikis tenure, residents property, worth $550 million was seized and placed at the disposal of the Iraqi military and militias. The Iranian Resistance states its right to legally pursue this matter in courts in order to receive commensurate compensation for the property.

The clerical regimes Quds Force has provided an assortment of missiles in recent weeks, including a missile-equipped truck at a location near Camp Liberty. Fortunately, the plan to attack was discovered and thwarted by Iraqs Federal Police.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The United States has funded missile defense research since the 1970s, but was constrained from fielding a nationwide ballistic missile defense system under the ABM Treaty with Russia. In 2002, the United States unilaterally withdrew from the ABM Treaty and began work on its missile shield in Europe.

"The terrorist attacks were not the reason for this decision. I reiterate, the firm position Russia assumed regarding the September 11 terrorist attacks promoted a notable improvement in the Russia-US relations," Ivanov said.
The increasingly warm relations between Russia and Japan have also contributed to Beijing's recent stance. Moscow and Tokyo have been locked in a decades-long territorial dispute, but both nations appear to be genuinely willing to search for a common ground and ink a peace deal that would also find a mutually-acceptable formula to resolve the issue over the islands known as the Kurils in Russia and Northern Territories in Japan.

Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe last week in Vladivostok. Although no breakthrough was reached, both sides were optimistic that a compromise could be reached.

"A rapprochement between Russia and Japan is a challenge not only for the US, but also China. Beijing and Tokyo have traditionally competed for the leading role in Southeast Asia," the analyst observed.

China has nothing to worry about as long as relations between Russia and Japan remain strained. This appears to be no longer the case.

"This is why Beijing wants to transform an informal bilateral political and military alliance that is meant to protect both countries from America's hegemonism to formal obligations that would guarantee mutual assistance not only against the US, but also its allies," the analyst suggested, adding that for China this is primarily Japan.

These geostrategic trends have prompted Ishchenko to say that the process of formalizing relations between Russia and China will be "complicated, but a treaty will eventually be signed."
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The United States responded to the warning by arguing that Hussein's government must be removed to make way for a new Iraq, he added.

"Everything that happened after the start of the war in Iraq  the rise in extremist attitudes, the wave of terror, the spread of terrorism across the entire Middle East region, the turning of the country into a terrorist hub  all of those was predictable, even if not in great detail. We warned about this. I repeatedly told [former US Secretary of State] Colin Powell about this, we warned other US officials about this. Unfortunately, these predictions came true, and we see what this has led to," Ivanov said.

Ivanov, the president of the Russian International Affairs Council and the countrys foreign minister between 1998 and 2004, stressed that the US-led invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan should not be compared despite both having grave consequences in terms of international security.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Mogherini was speaking after a high-level meeting with Turkeys Minister for EU Affairs Omer Celik. She reaffirmed that the European Union and each member state considered the Kurdish militia PKK a terrorist organization.

"We believe all violence and terrorist attacks have to stop and arms [to be] laid down and a political process [to be] started, and the European Union, obviously, would be ready to accompany this process," Mogherini said at a press briefing.

The EU will continue talks with Turkey on moving toward a visa-free regime between the country and the bloc and the customs union, she said.
TASHKENT (Sputnik)  The vote comes after the death of long-time Uzbek leader Islam Karimov, who died last week at the age of 78. Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyoyev was named acting president until the next elections.

"In accordance with the Central Election Commissions decision and the corresponding articles of the Constitution and the law on presidential elections of the Republic of Uzbekistan, set December 4 as the day of the presidential elections," Mirza-Ulugbek Abdusalomov told reporters.

Abdusalomov said the election campaign kicks off on September 9.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Mogherini said the nuclear test was another direct violation of the country's international obligations not to produce or test nuclear weapons and a serious threat to peace and security of the entire region and beyond.

"I call on the DPRK to re-engage in a credible and meaningful dialogue with the international community, in particular in the framework of the six-party talks, and to cease this illegal and extremely dangerous behavior," Mogherini said in a statement.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Pyongyang confirmed earlier in the day that it had tested a nuclear warhead at its northeastern nuclear test site. The experiment was its fifth nuclear test and the largest ever performed by North Korea.

Schaefer said that the North Korean ambassador would be summoned later on Friday to be informed "very clearly" about the federal governments stance on what it deems a new provocation by Pyongyang.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The Bahraini King visited Moscow for talks on Tuesday. He also attended the Army-2016 military expo not far from the Russian capital.

"The Russian side actively discussed issues of military and technical cooperation with Bahrain, including at the Russian President's meeting with the visiting King [of Bahrain] here," Peskov told reporters.

This came in response to a question by journalists whether the two countries discussed the possibility of Russian exports of S-400 air defense systems to Bahrain.
VIENNA (Sputnik)  Pyongyang confirmed earlier in the day that it had tested a nuclear warhead at its northeastern nuclear test site. The experiment was its fifth nuclear test and the largest ever performed by North Korea.

"It is debatable how successful the sanctions regime is for stopping this adventurist policy. Even a serious sanctions package did not stop the North Korean leadership ahead of this test. An automatic introduction of any new sanctions or talks of sanctions could lead to an opposite result, " Voronkov told RIA Novosti.

According to the official, the US-South Korea military exercises could have been one factors that pushed the North Korean authorities to carry out the test.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  The United States and its allies must impose new sanctions following North Koreas latest nuclear test on Friday, US House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce said in a statement.

"The North Korean regimes continued belligerence demands a strong and swift response," Royce stated on Friday. "The United States cannot accept a nuclear North Korea that threatens America and our foreign partners with mass destruction."

Royce noted that the Obama administration has not imposed sanctions on Chinese companies and banks accused in a United Nations report of supporting the government in Pyongyang.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  A fifth test, North Korea's most powerful nuclear experiment so far, is believed to have been carried out overnight at the country's northeastern nuclear test site.

"Canada strongly condemns North Korea's latest nuclear test as a threat to regional stability and unacceptable violation of UNSC resolutions," Trudeau tweeted on Friday.

Canada strongly condemns North Korea's latest nuclear test as a threat to regional stability and unacceptable violation of UNSC resolutions.  Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) 9  2016 .

The test was registered by monitoring services as having caused a moderate earthquake.
TBILISI (Sputnik)  The Georgian law requires that ministers and the National Security Council's members included in a party list of candidates should step down, making the only exception for the prime minister.

"We have accomplished a lot of projects, and some are still going on. I have moved houses many times in my life and the Energy Ministry was also a home to me. From this day on I am not your minister any more," Kaladze told journalists.

Kaladze who ranks second in the Georgian Dream party list following Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili will run the party's electoral campaign after the resignation.
Apart from mixed reaction to the US-led Iraqi campaign, Germans treat the mainstream account of the September 11 events with most skepticism in Europe. A poll conducted by the Emnid Institute on the 10th anniversary of the destruction of the World Trade Center showed that as much as 89 percent of the German respondents did not believe the official story behind the 9/11 events.

"Like in the US large parts of the German people don't trust the official story of 9/11, which is sold to them by their governments and mainstream media. On the other hand, there is a large 'cognitive dissonance' in realizing that our own democratic states and services could be actively involved in horrible crimes like that. So it's psychologically more easy and convenient to push the blame on an evil towel-head in an Afghan cave, even if you know that this can't be really true," Broeckers said.

A poll conducted in 2008 by WorldPublicOpinion.org found that the majority in nine out of 17 countries, besides the United States, believed al-Qaeda had carried out the attacks. Many others still believe in a number of 9/11 conspiracy theories with some suggesting that Israel was somehow involved in the attacks and that members of the US government may have deliberately covered up and falsified events in order to hide negligence or even complicity in the attacks with the idea that the World Trade Center buildings were destroyed by controlled demolition.

Broeckers authored two books titled "Conspiracies, Conspiracy Theories and the Secrets of 9/11" and "Facts, Forgeries and the Suppressed Evidence of 9/11," in which he is casting doubt on the official version of the events that shocked the world 15 years ago.
Stoltenberg welcomed the increased efforts of Turkey and other allies in fighting Daesh terrorist group in Syria.

Stoltenberg also noted "the importance of training local forces" in countries where extremist groups are present.

"I believe that it is better to train local forces enabling them to fight terrorism, enabling them to stabilize on country instead of NATO deploying large number of combat troops in combat operations," the NATO chief added.

Turkey's Euphrates Shield operation started on August 24 in the northern Syrian city of Jarablus and was backed by a US-led international coalition. At the time, nearly 40 Turkish tanks backed by some 1,000 Syrian rebel forces entered Syria.


MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Lavrov and Kerry are now holding talks in Geneva, focusing on the joint fight against terrorism, as well as on the Syrian political process.

"We are first hoping for restoring the cessation of hostilities overall in Syria, not only some areas We need a full credible truce, according to which, if it is violated, the violator is punished," Kodmani said, asked about her expectations from Fridays Lavrov-Kerry talks.

Earlier in the week, the HNC unveiled a three-stage plan to complete a political transition in the war-torn country. The plan, said to be based on the Geneva Communique made in 2014 by international mediators, allocates six months to finalizing a peace deal before moving on to the 1.5-year second stage, when a transitional government would preside between the departure of Syrian President Bashar Assad and fresh elections. The third stage would see to UN-supported local, legislative, and presidential elections being held in the country.
"We hope that Russia's military operations aimed at defeating terrorists in Syria and Iraq will go on until the final victory when security in these countries and the region will be restored," the journalist noted.

Shemshadi also said that the war in Syria had nothing to do with the will of the Syrian people. It is rather an "attempt of foreign plotters to fulfill their nefarious goals."

"It should be mentioned that the influx of foreign recruits for terrorist groups in Syria was organized right from the beginning. Western intelligence agencies, particularly in the US, have acknowledged that tens of thousands of terrorists from 90 countries are fighting against legitimate authorities in Iraq and Syria," he said.
UNITED NATIONS (Sputnik)  The question of sanctions may be discussed in the future, he added.

I think we should condemn it first of all. And then well see whats next, Churkin told journalists.
"In order to harass and intimidate Russia, the US-led NATO alliance is conducting some military activities," the Turkish scholar underscored referring to the bloc's Anaconda-2016 joint military drills, which were kicked off on June 5 in Poland, bringing together 31,000 troops from 24 states, including such non-aligned countries as Ukraine and Georgia.

"These military exercises were regarded as threat to Russia and Russia was concerned with these drills," Cakmak highlighted.

In addition to Anaconda exercises, BALTOPS 16 (Baltic Operation) was conducted in the Baltic Sea in June, involving 6,000 troops, 45 war planes and 60 war ships from 15 states. The Turkish scholar drew attention to the fact that the maneuvers were also targeted at Russia.

Furthermore, NATO's Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS), deployed at the Turkish Incirlik airbase, is monitoring the situation in Iraq and Syria.

"Russia and regional players, especially Turkey, are very disturbed about this monitoring and are skeptical about these [NATO] activities," Cakmak emphasized.
ANKARA (Sputnik)  Discussions of enforcing a no-fly zone in Syria resurfaced this week after Turkey had launched its Euphrates Shield operation with US-led coalition backing and the stated aim of clearing the border town of Jabulus from Daesh.

"After the territory is fully cleared from Daesh, a de-facto security zone will be created there. If the no-fly zone is created, the process of returning refugees will be accelerated. We have been offering creation of the no-fly zone in northern Syria for a long time. That is not only the NATO work  the decision must be made by the UN Security Council," Cavusoglu said at the joint press conference with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.

He added that life in the northern Syrian territories liberated from Daesh terrorists was going back to normal with Syrian refugees returning from Turkey.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Russia can use its sway over eastern Libya's Torbuk-based Council of Deputies and forces under its control to bring about a functioning government of national accord by converging Libya's two rival governments, UN Secretary-General for Libya Martin Kobler told Sputnik on Friday after holding a meeting with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov in Moscow.

"I asked the help of the Russian side to help us to bring east and west more closely together. Because they have to meet in order to bring about this government of national accord [and] in particular the role of Haftar has to be determined, and I know that Russia has good relations to the east, has good relations to general Haftar, and I briefed them on my difficulties right now in my outreach to the east, in particular with general Haftar," Kobler said.

Gen. Khalifa Haftar, who heads the armed forces loyal to the Council of Deputies, visited Russia in late June, where he discussed a number of issues, including weapons deliveries, with Russia's Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  Members of the US Congress have strongly supported renewing the Iran Sanctions Act before it expires at the end of 2016. Many portions of the Act were waived during the implementation of the Iran nuclear deal.

"I know there has been some discussion about whether or not to renew [the Iran Sanctions Act] and I think when we see an actual bill, we will consider our position," Backemeyer said at an Atlantic Council forum on Iran sanctions.

Obama has threatened to veto any legislation that prevents the implementation of the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement, or JCPOA, which strictly limited Tehrans nuclear program in exchange for significant sanctions relief.
BERLIN (Sputnik)  Ankara plays a key role in the Middle East region devastated by the Syrian conflict, Steinmeier stressed, adding that Germany and Turkey should strive to iron out their differences in a bid to settle the migration crisis.

"Surely the relations with Turkey have worsened over the last years. We got through another flare-up following the response of the Turkish government to the putsch in Turkey. We have disagreements in many spheres, they will vanish neither tomorrow nor the day after," Steinmeier said, as he spoke at the conference of The Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung foundation (FES).

Ankara has already detained over 40,000 people in connection with the coup attempt which took place on July 15 and was suppressed the following day. Brussels criticizes Ankara for what it believes is a disproportionate response to the coup, accusing the Turkish government of human rights violations and crackdown on media.
D'Auzon points to the steady Russian-Iranian rapprochement in economic, political and military fields.

"As a result Russia has become an unofficial partner of the Shia Axis in the Middle East," the French author underscored, referring to such state actors as Iran, Iraq and Syria.

In contrast, the US is losing its Sunni partners: the failure of the Arab Spring has discredited the Western model of society in the eyes of the Arabs. According to d'Auzon, trouble is brewing for the Western coalition in the Middle East.

To add insult to injury, Riyadh, Ankara and Tehran are becoming increasingly disenchanted with Washington, the author continued.

Saudi Arabia is fuming over the US' nuclear deal with Iran; Turkey is disappointed by Washington's unwillingness to extradite cleric Fethullah Gulen, the alleged mastermind behind the attempted July coup in Turkey; Iran is expressing its frustration over the US' hesitancy to lift sanctions imposed on Tehran.
UNITED NATIONS (Sputnik)  The UN Security Council will start working immediately on measures in response to the latest nuclear test by North Korea, the council's president, Gerard van Bohemen of New Zealand, told reporters at UN headquarters in New York on Friday.

"Members of the Security Council will begin to work immediately on appropriate measures under Article 41 [of the UN Charter] and the Security Council resolutions," van Bohemen said.

The Security Council met on Friday after North Korea confirmed earlier in the day that it had carried out a nuclear test in the country's northeast. The blast is believed to be the fifth and largest since Pyongyang began pursuing nuclear and ballistic missile programs, drawing condemnation from the international community. Council members also denounced the test, calling it a threat to international security.
Alexander Nekrassov, a London-based investigative journalist and broadcaster joins the programme to discuss this topic. Alexanders first point is that we are living in a neoliberal society now in the West, where a lot of things have changed dramatically over the last 100 years.

What we have seen now is that western governments have basically become obsessed with political correctness, because it is a very handy political tool which gives them a sort of appeal to the masses, it makes the government look cool in the eyes of the young, and yet, it doesnt demand any delivery. We had a master of political correctness in Tony Blair, and he promised the world. He didnt deliver on anything, but he had such a huge following because all of his offers to people, all of his slogans, were very catchy and basically sounded good.

Political correctness is now not just the realm of politicians, it is moving out to students union groups, womens groups and others, suggested John Harrison. Alexander answered: Political correctness is very contagious, because it is a simplified version of life. For the young, its an easier route, because it gives you the answers without supplying them. All rock music is politically correct. It was presented as revolutionary and rebellious, but I can tell you, I have interviewed a lot of those rock bands and top of the range rock artists. After a few beers, and a few vodkas, they would tell me things, that would make me realise that these people have a very simplified version of life. Once popular music becomes politically correct, obviously the young are the first to feel it. You would struggle to find a single rock song (now) that has any real controversy in it. If you look at art, television, practically everything, there is a politically correct message everywhere. That is why comedy and satire has basically vanished in the West.
Sunday marks the 15th anniversary of the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 that ushered in George W. Bushs war on terror. Fifteen years later, have any U.S. goals been achieved as this endless war continues to inflict unimaginable suffering on people around the world?

Today marks the 45th anniversary of the beginning of the Attica prison uprising in which over 1,000 prisoners took control of the facility in New York, demanding political rights and improved conditions. The lessons of this rebellion continue to be relevant today. Becker talks with Dr. Anthony Monteiro about the importance of what took place at Attica in 1971 and how the crushing of the uprising ushered in a new era of right-wing attacks on the progressive movement.

Even kids arent safe from the mass incarceration machine in the United States  and this is especially true for children from poor families. A recently-released report found that kids are being locked up because their parents are unable to pay court fees and fines that are imposed on them by the juvenile justice system. Journalist Nika Knight joins Becker to talk about what she discovered when looking into the issue.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has arrived in Crimea where one of the key stages of the Kavkaz-2016 military drills will take place on Friday, the Russian Defense Ministry informs.

"The head of the ministry will personally inspect the operation of the military headquarters and troops during the Kavkaz-2016 strategic exercises," ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said on Friday.

The Strategic Kavkaz-2016 drills kicked off in Russia on Monday and will last until September 10.
In the future, the Russian winemaker plans to make premium wine. Bulk wine is the money product.

Some manufacturers use a minimum of their own grapes, do the cooking with god only knows what, after which they import grapes from Spain, Italy and South Africa, mix it all and introduce it in the market. This is what I call bulk wine. This kind of production is out of my interest, announced Alexey.

Alexey also works as a wine consultant at other winemaking ventures.

According to Akchurin, Crimea is the perfect place for growing grapes. It has a combination of a temperate climate paired with a rich regional culture and history,.

Choose the right wine

Buyers of Crimean wine need to be careful. Wine with a Crimean label might be bottled in Chelyabinsk.

When buying, I advise you to look at the back of the label to see geographical location. There is no need to buy cheap brands, said Director of the analytic project Our Wine Dmitry Kovalev.

According to Kovalev, wine for sold for 150 rubles is made out of low quality ingredients, mixed with spirts and water.
KUBINKA (Sputnik)  RD-180 boosters are a key component of the US most powerful rocket, the Atlas V, which launched NASAs first asteroid sampling mission into space on Thursday night.

"The expiry date of the license agreement is 2030. There is still time, so we will continue cooperating with the US, supplying them with RD-180 engines produced by Energomash in Russia," the engineering firms Director General Igor Arbuzov told RIA Novosti.
According to the report, AlpraKing, who sells Xanax, a prescription drug belonging to the benzodiazepine family used to treat anxiety and panic disorders, allegedly uploaded photographs of their operation.

The discovery, revealed on Reddit stated: "Over 10 million pills were produced there over the course of 9 months."

What about not taking pictures of easily identifiable items? pic.twitter.com/zTbpexiPue  Moustache (@lamoustache) September 8, 2016

Motherboard asked AplraKing why it would bother uploading the allegedly incriminating pictures, to which AlpraKing replied in an online message:

"I'd say fan-service. Any publicity is good publicity. It may seem like a bad choice for a drug dealer, but not so long ago, shipping drugs via mail seemed like a bad choice for a drug dealer as well."

AlpraKing continued to tell Motherboard that running a virtual drugs business on the dark web had similar demands to running a company above board and in the real world.

"That means more visibility and discussion = more sales."

However, Twitter user "La Moustache" has been quick to point out the errors of such allegedly open dealings on the dark web by highlighting incriminating bits of information that can be spotted on the pictures initially published by Motherboard.

That being said they've been running what seems to be a tight operation for a while so they must be doing sth right https://t.co/OqawLl6CBv  Moustache (@lamoustache) September 8, 2016

But it's not just AlpraKing, who is allegedly and so fragrantly lifting the lid on its drug production and distribution methods. So-called dealer "BenzoChems" uploaded a video of their alleged employees in their lab.

This is what a Chinese Alprazolam (Xanax powder) lab looks like. Courtesy of DNM vendor BenzoChems.https://t.co/hmRxJsge4U  Moustache (@lamoustache) September 6, 2016

According to Motherboard, boasting on the dark web about the volume of pills produced is becoming increasingly common among Xanax dealers, "probably because it's a trending drug or that law enforcement don't seem to give it too much attention," AlpraKing suggested.

Xanax is a highly addictive drug, prescribed by doctors to treat patients suffering from anxiety disorders. It is known for its sedative effects. According to drugabuse.com addicts often build up a tolerance to Xanax meaning more are needed to reach a similar high, reached when it was first used.
"In light of the recent incidents involving battery incidents with Samsung concerning its Galaxy Note 7 devices globally, travelers on airlines are advised not to switch on these mobiles during the flight or stow them in any checked in baggage," read an order released by DGCA.

The ban comes after the FAA issued a warning against the mobile phone.

DGCA stated that a passenger can carry the phone on board if it has been switched off and is kept in cabin baggage. The DGCA order follows the US Federal Aviation Authority warning on use of same device.
Talking about the ambitious project he spoke about how currently there is an enormous amount of digital documentation and 3D visualization that is used in anything like new architect designs, to new buildings and interiors.

Wilson said that within archaeology there is a lot of interest in physically touching, moving and manipulating an understanding from everything like artefacts to all the way up to monuments and landscapes.

This technology is allowing taking heritage to people in a way that we have not managed to do in the past.

He further spoke about how with this project it will be possible to create a historic environment record and in developing counties it will eventually be able to provide contextual information to sites and monuments, allowing them to be put back into the setting in which they were originally found.

Under their ambitious project, thousands of photographs will be used to reconstruct the sites in 3D. Using computer software, researchers and other visitors will be able to take a virtual tour around the reconstructed buildings.

Notably, the projects findings could be used to restore devastated sites like the ancient Aramaic city of Palmyra in Syria and the medieval walled city of Dubrovnik in Croatia.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  Seventy-six migrant farm workers have been awarded $576,000 in back wages that were lost in forced kickbacks to a farmer in the US state of Minnesota and a labor recruitment firm, the US Department of Labor announced in a press release on Thursday.

"Lining your pockets with the hard-earned wages of foreign workers is unacceptable and undermines the foreign visa programs value to supply thousands of workers to the American agricultural industry," the Labor Departments Wage and Hour Division Administrator David Weil said in the release.

From 2010 to 2015, Minnesota vegetable farmer John Svihel kept a percentage of the workers wages  totaling about $90,000  that he spent on personal travel and leisure, the release explained.
"It was definitely a safe space because you see people that look like you, that are going through the same things youre going through," she told a Sacramento CBS affiliate.

Brenden Petitt, director of the Office of Student Development at UC Davis, emphasized that the housing isnt exclusively black. "Many of our students who live in this community identify as African or African-Americans," he explained, "but we also have a number of students who do not, and they want to be there to learn from other students."

Halisi resident Jonathan Thomas described the housing as a place of comfort or cultural unity. "You can go and be yourself and not have to worry about explaining how youre doing because of your skin color," he said.
That fee will increase to $930 this year.

"The present marijuana regime that has existed now for many years in both Canada and the United States has clearly failed Canadian and American young people because North American teenagers are among the biggest users of marijuana in the western world," said Canadian Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale.

The Canadian government is preparing to legalize and regulate marijuana, a move that could cause increased conflicts between Ottawa and Washington.

"We will certainly work very hard to make sure that they understand that were moving a regime with respect to marijuana that will be far more effective than theirs."
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  The families of men and women who were killed in the 9/11 attacks filed the lawsuit against the Saudis back in 2002, but the US Supreme Court has refrained from getting involved.

"In September, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is supposed to schedule hearings," Goldman said prior to the 15th anniversary of the tragic event. "Here is my prediction: the proceedings will take place in the late fall."

"When I took this case I felt that we would prevail at some point," Goldman added. "I still do."
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  The bill will override current Saudi claims to sovereign immunity, allowing families of September 11 victims to bring a long-standing federal court case against the Saudi government for allegedly sponsoring the 2001 terrorist attacks.

"This is a great day for America," US Congressman from New York and bill sponsor Peter King said prior to the vote. "We can be proud going into the 15th anniversary of the [September 11] attacks, that we have not given up the fight."
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  The letter, signed by member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Dan Coats and Senator Marco Rubio, argued that seeking a UN Security Council resolution on nuclear weapons testing ban would be "abuse of the separation of powers."

"If you decide to pursue a Security Council resolution that accepts the imposition of international obligations that the Senate has explicitly rejected, we would make every effort to prevent the authorization or appropriation of the approximately $32 million per year," the letter stated.

The money comprises about 25 percent of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) Preparatory Commission budget, according to the senators.
Zambrano-Montes was the third person killed by Pasco police in a six-month period.

On Friday, Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson announced that the actions of the officers were justified.

"I believe that the use of deadly force in this case, though legally justified, was not the only possible way to protect the police and the public from his dangerous behavior," he said in a letter to Governor Jay Inslee.

Two weeks prior to Fergusons announcement, the US Justice Department had declined to file federal charges against the officers.

Relatives of Zambrano-Montes have filed a lawsuit against the officers charging wrongful death.
According to Lieutenant General Vincent Stewart, director of the US Defense Intelligence Agency, the Mosul operation could be initiated in two or three months and the operation would be long and difficult. Mosul is one of the last areas in Iraq occupied by Daesh. Aware of the weakness of their position, Daesh extremists have reportedly been killing inhabitants and destroying cultural artifacts.

The battle is anticipted to be especially challenging as the one million citizens in the city are feared to be in danger of being used as human shields. Iraqi warplanes dropped some one million leaflets over as-Sherqat asking civilians to stay indoors and not get close to Daesh sites, said a Kurdish official, according to Asharq Al-Awsat.
[September 09, 2016] Pica8 Demonstrates SDN Innovations for LiveIP Media Networks at IBC 2016 Booth 6.A15

Pica8 Inc., the one-stop source for white box networking, invites participants and attendees at IBC 2016 to attend Pica8 speaking sessions, live demonstrations, and meet company executives at the event. Together with our leading partners, Pica8 is transforming the way broadcasting companies can build networks with COTS SDN switches. The combination of white box switching and SDN technology delivers the throughput and non-blocking capabilities needed to transition SDI-based router networks to IP, while also providing a faster way to converge and switch video streams for live broadcast. Here is a list of Pica8's key activities at the show: Demonstrations Nevion (News - Alert) SDN Interoperability with Pica8's PicOS running on COTS switches, Nevion Media nodes, and Nevion's VideoPath SDN management and orchestration system for LiveIP media Locatin (STORDIS booth): Booth 6.A15

VRT-EBU LiveIP studio A showcase of technologies that are helping to product live television today, leveraging interoperability between twelve leading technology partners. Location (EBU booth): Booth 10.F20





Presentations High Performance SDN for LiveIP The transition to 4K and 8K UHD has created greater demands on the network, and legacy SDI infrastructure is struggling to keep up. The combination of white box switching and SDN technology offers an easy transition to IP in a cost-effective manner. Times: September 10, 2016 - 11:00 - 11:30 September 11, 2016 - 13:00 - 13:30 September 12, 2016 - 14:00 - 14:30 Speaker: Dan Tuchler, [email protected] Vice President of Product Management, Pica8 Location (ELEMENTS | Syslink GmbH booth): Booth 7.B08

About Pica8, Inc.

Pica8 is breaking barriers to truly customizable application performance through open networking. With its Linux-based PicOS network operating system, Pica8 enables custom traffic engineering and empowers white box and brite box switches to integrate easily with existing Layer 2/Layer 3 networks and deliver unlimited SDN scalability through OpenFlow. Since 2009, Pica8 has pioneered new open networking technologies such as Linux-based networking, CrossFlow networking, vASIC and Table Type Patterns. Through ongoing innovation, Pica8 is a trusted brand that unlocks the potential of made-to-order networking, offering a mainstream alternative to legacy proprietary systems. For more information, visit www.pica8.com or follow us on Twitter (News - Alert) @pica8. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160908006721/en/

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As intricate as the system was, Buckles told the Omaha World Herald, nothing prepared StratCom for the scale and tactics used on 9/11.

"Our sensors on 9/11 became CNN. It was the television that was telling us about the actual attack. There was no warningAs we found out, we had totally postured wrong."

The North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) quickly grounded over 3,000 commercial planes fearing that they may also have been hijacked.

"You have an event youve never anticipated," said Adm. Richard Mies, who commanded StratCom at the time. "There was a lot of uncertainty in all our minds. You didnt know if it was the first wave of a much broader attack."

Buckles admits that the unpreparedness of the US defense network was troubling. "For a while there was chaos as we figured out the real picture, he said. While we functioned and got the job done, it didnt match what everyone had been trained for."
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  There are no plans to hold six-party talks on North Koreas denuclearization following the latest nuclear tests confirmed to have been carried out by Pyongyang, a source in the Russian Foreign Ministry told RIA Novosti on Friday.

"At this stage, the issue of convening the six-party talks by any of its parties is not on the agenda," the source said.

On June 22, a high-level North Korean diplomat on nuclear affairs said at a security conference in China that the six-party talks on the dismantling of Pyongyangs nuclear program were "dead."
MADRID (Sputnik)  Pyongyang confirmed earlier in the day that it had tested a nuclear warhead at its northeastern nuclear test site. The experiment was its fifth nuclear test and the largest ever performed by North Korea.

"As a chairman of the UNSC 1718 committee on sanctions against North Korea, Spain proceeds to convene a session of the 1718 committee as soon as possible to analyze the acts and coordinate a strong response from the international community. Spain will remain firmly committed to the effective implementation of the sanctions regime with an aim of the DPRK dismantling its nuclear and missile programs in a complete, verifiable and irreversible fashion," the statement read.
1926

The Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine 1926 was given to Johannes Fibiger for his discovery of the Spiroptera carcinoma, the Nobel Prize official website reports.

However, Fibiger received the prize only 1927 as the Nobel Committee decided that the years nominees did not met the necessary criteria. In fact, after being awarded with the Nobel Prize, Fibigers theory was overturned.

1949

The 1949 Nobel laurite was was Portugal physiologist and neurosurgeon, Antonio Egas Moniz, for discovering the therapeutic value of leucotomy in certain psychoses, Nobel Prize official website reports.

Psychosurgery, also known as lobotomy, is a neurosurgical procedure and was widely used in the United States until late the 1950s, but the surgery usually led to catastrophic intellectual level decline. More than 50,000 patients were operated on.

American physician Walter Jackson Freeman II, who was enthusiastic about lobotomy, once said that even though one fourth of patients ended up with intellectual abilities of a home pet, he still was pleased with them.

Rosemary Kennedy, sister of John Kennedy, suffered from a personality disorder. At the age of 23, doctors advised the family to take up the new neurosurgical procedure, lobotomy, to calm her violent mood swings. After the procedure, her intellectual capacities decreased to a level of 2-year-old. She could not walk nor talk. She was also separated from her family and was not visited for 20 years.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  The international community should respond to the latest North Korean nuclear test by redoubling pressure on Pyongyang after it conducted its fifth nuclear test, US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter said on Friday.

"We need to redouble the pressure on North Korea," Carter stated at a press conference in Norway.

Carter noted that he spoke to his South Korean counterpart Han Min-koo about North Koreas nuclear test.
Senator Paul opposes selling additional weapons to the Middle Eastern kingdom, arguing that Riyadh was responsible for empowering extremists in the region and killing thousands of civilians with American bombs and missiles.

In spring 2016, alongside Senator Chris Murphy, Paul proposed a bill that would require Riyadh to follow safeguards to minimize civilian deaths in the Arabian Peninsula, during an ongoing Saudi-led bombing campaign that has seen over 4000 civilians killed.

Meanwhile, CNN's Wolf Blitzer expressed his concern, first and foremost about weapon builders' jobs, as opposed to acknowledging Saudi Arabia's human rights record. The anchor said Thursday that blocking a $1.1 billion sale deal would harm the US economy and cause fewer jobs for weapons manufacturers, distributors and retail sellers.
Classroom Management

AristotleInsight::K12 Security Updates Improve Chromebook Classroom Management

A security technology company has just updated its flagship product for schools. Sergeant Laboratories announced a new release of AristotleInsight::K12, which provides technology for managing students as they work on their computing devices.

The latest version provides functionality for locating missing devices, measuring usage, monitoring printers and filtering online activity, with an emphasis on addressing the needs of Chromebook classrooms.

The new release includes an agent for simpler Chromebook monitoring. Teachers can filter, monitor and geo-locate Chromebook devices. That includes being able to view a list of blocked websites and tell when a student has bypassed a filter to view a restricted site. The geo-location feature allows the teacher or IT person to check the first time a Chromebook was active, the last time it was active before the loss, which student last logged onto the device and what an active user is doing on the device.

Web filtering functionality in the software is intended to help schools comply with CIPA, the Children's Internet Protection Act. Along with ensuring acceptable use compliance on sites visited, the feature also allows educators to monitor students' online activities in other ways. For example, the teacher can receive real-time notifications when inappropriate communication signaling bullying has taken place among students.

"With the help of feedback from educators, we have added functionality that includes monitoring of Chromebooks and CIPA-compliant web filtering," said company CEO Eric Anderholm, in a press release. "This will make the task of keeping students focused much easier for teachers, while still allowing them to integrate technology into their classrooms."

Among the 1,800 schools that have tried Aristotle Insight K12 are the School District of Altoona and Chippewa Falls Area Unified School District, both in the company's home state of Wisconsin.
LONDON (Reuters) - About 46 million people in Britain could potentially benefit from a legal case brought against Mastercard demanding 14 billion pounds ($19 billion) in damages for allegedly charging excessive fees, according to court documents filed in London.

The case brought by a former chief financial services ombudsman alleges the payments company set unlawfully high fees charged to stores when shoppers swipe their debit or credit cards that were passed on to consumers in higher prices.

Mastercard was accused of doing this for 16 years between 1992 and 2008, according to the documents filed at the Competition Appeal Tribunal on Thursday.

The company said in a statement it denied any wrongdoing."We continue to firmly disagree with the basis of this claim and we intend to oppose it vigorously," the world's second-largest credit card and debit card issuer said.

The lawsuit comes after the European Union's antitrust regulator found in 2014 Mastercard's fees to store owners to process payments were excessive.Law firm Quinn Emanuel said the lawsuit was the largest damages claim in British history and would be brought under a law meaning consumers would automatically be claimants unless they opt out. "MasterCard charged billion of pounds of unlawfully high fees for its sole benefit and to the detriment of consumers," Walter Merricks, who is bringing the case, said in a statement.

"The filing of this claim is the first step towards consumers obtaining compensation."

Merricks was head of Britain's financial services ombudsmen for ten years until 2009, helping to settle disputes between consumers and financial services companies. Consumers no longer living in Britain, but who lived there between 1992 and 2008, can opt in to the collective claim.

(Reporting by Andrew MacAskill; Editing by Mark Potter)
[September 09, 2016] Arrow Electronics Sponsors Denver Startup Week Opening Party

Over 1,200 people are scheduled to attend the Denver Startup Week Opening Party on Monday, Sept. 12 from 6 to 9 p.m. MDT at Denver Union Station, sponsored by Colorado-based global technology company Arrow Electronics, Inc. (NYSE: ARW). This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160909005476/en/ Arrow Electronics (News - Alert) is sponsoring the Denver Startup Week Opening Party on Monday, Sept. 12. Arrow experts will be on hand to discuss Arrow's new collaboration with the crowdfunding site Indiegogo and how Denver-area startups and entrepreneurs can apply for up to $500,000 in prototyping and manufacturing support and a share of $1 million in flash-funding. (Graphic: Business Wire) In addition to fun, food and festivities, Arrow experts will be on hand to answer questions about the company's new collaboration with Indiegogo. Last month, Arrow anounced it is providing up to $500,000 in prototyping and manufacturing support to select startups and entrepreneurs on the global crowdfunding site. In addition, Arrow-Certified campaigns on Indiegogo are eligible to receive a share of $1 million in flash-funding from Arrow.*



"Arrow is bringing its unparalleled design-to-production engine-used by the largest companies, creating some of the most sophisticated new technologies-to the world of crowdfunding. With Arrow's dedicated support and expertise, promising startups can get their technology to market faster and easier than ever before," said Matt Anderson, Arrow's chief digital officer. "There is so much exciting innovation happening right in our own background-I'm really looking forward to catching up with and meeting new Denver-area entrepreneurs and finding ways that Arrow can help make their ideas a reality," continued Anderson.

Arrow will give away hundreds of Raspberry Pi 3 single-board computers at the Opening Party. In addition to sponsoring the party, Arrow is a Design Track sponsor of Denver Startup Week. Denver Startup Week is the largest free entrepreneurial event of its kind in North America, bringing more than 250 programs to Downtown Denver from Sept. 12-16 to celebrate and grow Denver's culture of innovation and entrepreneurship. *For the full terms and conditions of the Arrow certification on Indiegogo program, please visit: https://www.arrow.com/en/indiegogo/terms-and-conditions. About Arrow Electronics Arrow Electronics is a global provider of products, services and solutions to industrial and commercial users of electronic components and enterprise computing solutions. Arrow serves as a supply channel partner for more than 100,000 original equipment manufacturers, contract manufacturers and commercial customers through a global network of more than 460 locations serving over 85 countries. Learn more at www.fiveyearsout.com and www.arrow.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160909005476/en/

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Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte gestures during his first State of the Nation Address at the Philippine Congress in Quezon city, Metro Manila, Philippines July 25, 2016. REUTERS/Erik De Castro

The bluster and vitriol of the Philippines' recently elected president has captured international attention, as has the wave of violence that has swept the country since he entered office promising to wipe out drug-related crime.

And with that violence and bravado, Rodrigo Duterte's administration has implemented an antidrug policy that is likely to be wildly counterproductive, say drug-policy experts.

Duterte, who was elected president in May and took office on June 30, said during his campaign that his policy toward people in the drug trade was "kill them all," and he promised to kill 100,000 criminals in his first six months in office. While the violence has yet to reach those levels, about 2,400 people have been killed since Duterte took office.

"This is an exterminationist policy, an eliminationist policy." Sanho Tree, the director of the Drug Policy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, said in an interview with CCTV. This is not a well-thought-out plan."

The violence has largely affected the poorest parts of the country and targeted low-level members of the country's drug trade. At this level, targets  and people who appear to be targets  are plentiful, but attacking them is unlikely to seriously affect organized crime in the country, experts say.

"There is a high chance that Dutertes hunting down of low-level pushers (and those accused of being pushers) will in fact significantly increase organized crime in the Philippines and intensify corruption," Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, wrote recently.

Jennelyn Olaires, 26, cradles the body of her partner, who was killed on a street by a vigilante group, according to police, in a spate of drug related killings in Pasay city, Metro Manila, Philippines July 23, 2016. REUTERS/Czar Dancel

Story continues

Low-level pushers are common in the drug trade, but the power they hold in the industry is minimal, and eliminating them will probably not seriously erode drug cartels' and other criminal organizations' ability to operate.

Instead, according to Tree, it produces a "filtering effect," where "sloppy" and "inefficient traffickers" tend to get caught while more potent and capable criminals carry on.

"By eliminating low-level, mostly non-violent dealers, Duterte is paradoxically and counterproductively setting up a situation where more organized and powerful drug traffickers and distribution will emerge," Felbab-Brown wrote.

Similarly, an atmosphere permissive to violence can embolden criminal groups and civilians to lash out at rivals, using the drug war to legitimize and cover up their actions. The same dynamic can arise among corrupt elements within the government and law enforcement, which would only entrench the rot Duterte has promised to root out.

Many Filipinos involved in the drug trade are likely to flee further underground, which would isolate them from society further and "increase the chance of overdoses as well as a rapid spread of HIV/AIDS, drug-resistant tuberculosis, and hepatitis," Felbab-Brown noted.

Philippines drug war crime vigilante justice extrajudicial killings

Almost 700,000 people have turned themselves in to authorities for drug-related matters since Duterte took office, but instead of rooting the criminal economy, packing prisons is more likely to exacerbate the issue, experts say.

One facility in Manila already has five times the number of inmates it's designed to hold. It is far from the only prison straining under the weight of Duterte's campaign.

Overcrowded prisons often become recruitment sites for criminal organizations, and the conditions in such prisons, coupled with the lack of treatment provided to incarcerated addicts, frequently causes high recidivism rates.

Similar wars on drugs, according to Felbab-Brown, have ended with countries backpedaling years later, as in Thailand and Vietnam in the early 2000s. Despite such policies' initial popularity, countries like Thailand are now thinking about decriminalizing some drugs, says Tree.

"They tried the toughest ways, and theyve failed," Tree said.

Philippines drug war violence killing funeral

In Philippines, these policies had large support from the public.

Duterte built his reputation on aggressive anticrime measures as mayor of the southern Philippine city of Davao, an office he held for much of the last 30 years.

The lethal vigilante justice that has swept the country was common in the city during his tenure, and some residents there hold him in high regard, even though Davao is still the murder capital of the country.

A nationwide poll conducted in early July, a month after he took office, found he had a 91% approval rating  and a less than 0.5% disapproval rating.

That Duterte's tough talk has gained traction is perhaps not surprising. Effective antidrug policies are often counterintuitive and take time to implement. Those factors make such approaches unappealing to people facing these problems on a daily basis.

"They just want this thing to go away," Tree said.

NOW WATCH: Obama canceled a meeting with the Philippines president after he called him a 'son of a b----'





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By Dmitry Solovyov OSH, Kyrgyzstan (Reuters) - Whoever takes over the Central Asian state of Uzbekistan after its president's death faces a challenge to keep a lid on Islamist militants who have become foot soldiers in global jihadist groups. Uzbek fighters are deeply embedded in Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, fight alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan, have secret outposts in the biggest Russian cities and have ties with Muslim militants from China who reject Beijing's rule. Veteran Uzbek leader Islam Karimov, who died last week from a stroke, used brutal methods and a vast security apparatus to keep tabs on a militant movement born in the 1990s out of an insurgency in Uzbekistan, a former Soviet republic. With Karimov dead and a lack of clarity on who will succeed him, despite Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyoyev being named interim president by parliament, the security forces' ability to contain the Islamist network is unclear. Uzbek militants have not had as high a profile as other groups in the global jihadi movement. While fighters from Iraq, Tunisia, Russia and western Europe command units and lead suicide attacks, Uzbeks tend to form the rank-and-file. But Reuters interviews with security officials, militant fighters and their families indicate that the Uzbek fighters number in the thousands, are battle-hardened and skilled at networking with other jihadist groups. These fighters view the Uzbek authorities as "Taghut", a Koranic term for tyrants who set themselves up as false Gods, and most now focus on waging jihad abroad. But in a report last year, the International Crisis Group wrote: "Should a significant portion of these radicalised migrants return, they risk challenging security and stability throughout Central Asia." MILITANTS BRED IN VALLEY The heart of Islamist militancy in Central Asia is the Ferghana Valley, a fertile and densely populated strip of land that straddles Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. Sitting in the yard of his home in Osh, a Kyrgyz city in the Ferghana valley where a large part of the population are ethnic Uzbeks, 57-year-old ethnic Uzbek Abdurasul Yuldashev described how his estranged wife went to Syria with their son and two daughters while he was away working in Russia. In Syria, the son, 19-year-old Mukhammadislam, joined an Islamist group. "One day I received a call from an unidentified number and someone said: 'Congratulations, your son has become a shahid'," Yuldashev said, using the Arabic term for a martyr. He said he shouted at them, and they called him a "kafir", or infidel. Malokhat Mamatadzhiyeva, a 41-year-old ethic Uzbek who lives in Osh, received a similar call on July 9 last year informing her about the death of her son, Nurmukhammad. She said he had gone to the Russian city of Vladimir to work on a construction site but told her in November 2014 that he was going to a remote location in Russia for work. The next time she heard from him, in March 2015, he was calling from Syria. "I started weeping. I said: 'Do not leave me.' But the call got cut off," Mamatadzhiyeva said. She later learned that he had been killed in the fighting in Syria. SYRIA BATTLEFIELD Ethnic Uzbeks are active in militant groups in Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan, according to a wanted list of militants published by the United Nations. Security officials say the militants also have ties to militants from the Chinese Uighur ethnic group, who reject Beijing's rule. A suicide bomb attack on China's embassy in Kyrgyzstan last month was ordered by Uighur groups, and several ethnic Uzbeks helped organise it, Kyrgyz state security say. Ethnic Uzbeks operate in their own fighting units in Syria, according a Russian who fought there. "There was a decent number of them," said the fighter, who has now left Syria and asked not to be identified. Last year state security officials in Osh detained several people on allegations they fought alongside militants in Syria. In a videotaped interrogation shown to Reuters at the time in Osh, one of them said he went to Syria in October 2013 and for three months was a fighter with the Nusra front, then an affiliate of al Qaeda. The man, an ethnic Uzbek, said he was ordered to return to Central Asia to carry out attacks. Reuters was unable to establish whether he had made his statement under duress. There is no evidence Uzbek fighters plan to leave Syria and Afghanistan en masse to launch attacks in Uzbekistan. But they could return home if Islamic State is squeezed out of the territory it controls in northern Syria and Iraq. This could be a concern for the government and foreign states. "Practically everyone overseas will be ready to recognise any form of rule in Uzbekistan that is going to guarantee stability," said Kazakh political analyst Dosym Satpayev. (Additional reporting by Olzhas Auyezov in Almaty and Maria Tsvetkova in Moscow, Writing by Christian Lowe,; Editing bv Timothy Heritage)
FARMINGTON  The long-term impact review team established in the wake of the Gold King Mine spill will host a public meeting in Farmington next week.

The review team is a multi-agency group formed to monitor the effects of the spill, which released more than 3 million gallons of toxic wastewater into the Animas and San Juan rivers after the mine was breached on Aug. 5.

In addition, the review team will conduct research, collaborate with communities and share information about the potential impact of the spill.

Gov. Susana Martinez announced the formation of the team in August. It includes staff from the New Mexico Environment Department, Office of the State Engineer, Department of Agriculture, Department of Game and Fish, Department of Health and Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.

The teams Oct. 20 meeting will focus on developing a plan for ongoing monitoring of activities and continuing a dialogue among affected parties.

Environment department spokeswoman Allison Scott Majure said there are five areas for continuing oversight  agriculture, wildlife, health, sediment and water. Majure added that when the spill occurred, the department documented and analyzed the publics concerns to develop the list.

Next weeks meeting will also allow officials to share information about the citizen advisory committee, which will work alongside the review team.

The advisory committee will consist of five to seven members and represent communities affected by the spill, Majure said. The committee is a key to addressing concerns raised by the public, she said.

The meeting will also continue a discussion about meaningful environmental oversight, Environment Department Cabinet Secretary Ryan Flynn said in a press release.

Through working together and sharing ideas and information based on the publics input and different agencies areas of expertise, well be able to better ensure that New Mexicans are protected from any potential long-term effects of this catastrophe, Flynn said in the release.

Noel Lyn Smith covers the Navajo Nation for The Daily Times. She can be reached at 505-564-4636.

If you go

What: Long-term impact review team meeting

When: 5:30 to 8 p.m. Oct. 20

Where: Rooms 9008 and 9010 of the Henderson Fine Arts Center at San Juan College, 4601 College Blvd. in Farmington



2015 The Daily Times (Farmington, N.M.)

Visit The Daily Times (Farmington, N.M.) at www.daily-times.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

_____

Topics: t000002537,t000040178,t000040350,t000002664,t000002671,g000219985,g000065627,g000362661,g000066164
A man suspected in a string of bike shop burglaries that have cost Albuquerque businesses more than $100,000 since November 2015 has been arrested.

Bernalillo County sheriffs deputies caught up with Melchor Reyes, 34, also identified in court records as Melchor Reyes-Aguirre, on Thursday and charged him with multiple felonies.

A BCSO detective began investigating in February after various bike shops had been repeatedly burglarized for high-end mountain bikes. A white Ford F-150 was spotted at the scene of some of the crimes and the detective traced that truck to a man named Carlos Nevarez-May, according to a criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court.

Nevarez-May told the detective that Reyes, an acquaintance of his, had been traveling to Albuquerque from Mexico and borrowing his truck to commit the burglaries. Reyes then stored some of the bikes at a home in the South Valley, and took others down to Ciudad Juarez and sold them, according to the complaint. The victims of some of the crimes say they noticed their bikes being sold on a Facebook page out of Juarez.

The detective then did surveillance on the South Valley home, which is in the 2300 block of Meadow SW, and said he saw what he thought was narcotics trafficking.

The man who lives at the home, Hugo Talamantes-Delacruz, told the detective Reyes stored the bicycles there.

When deputies executed a search warrant, they found multiple bikes, as well as numerous guns, a large amount of cash and evidence of the manufacturing of false identification and identity theft, according to the complaint.

The detective says Reyes, Nevarez-May, Talamantes-Delacruz and a fourth man, David Arriola, were all part of the plot.

Reyes was charged with burglary, larceny, conspiracy to commit burglary, tampering with evidence and harboring/aiding a felon, and booked into the county jail on $75,000 cash or surety bail.

Deputies have issued an arrest warrant for Nevarez-May.

BCSO spokeswoman Felicia Romero said Friday that she didnt know if Talamantes-Delacruz and Arriola will also face charges.
Where else besides New Mexico do people watch chile roasting with the same focus as they watch the NFL?

Who else but New Mexicans would find the sight of chiles scorching as they spin round and round in propane-powered roasters thoroughly entertaining?

At Wagner Farms in Corrales, the hottest ticket in town is a folding chair in front of the chile roasters. The price of admission is the cost of a burlap sack of fresh-picked chile.

There you can see your carefully selected pods meticulously poured into the roasters. Big Jims and Sandias take the heat as each roaster goes round and round while the green pods within acquire their glorious black char and emit an aroma to swoon for. For many local families, the spectacle is an annual pilgrimage, often with several generations in attendance.

So it is convenient that alongside bins of squash, melon, corn, peppers and apples for sale, Wagner Farms Apple Tree Cafe next to the farm store offers dishes made from their very own fresh-roasted chile. A bowl of four-alarm chile stew ($4.75) is the favorite seasonal accompaniment to a farm visit and a reminder that nothing beats going to the source. The indoor location is utterly simple, reminiscent of a remodeled shed, and the experience sitting outside at the oilcloth-covered cafe table is about as good as it gets.

Did I mention the chile stew is hot? Warning: This is not the way to introduce Aunt Hazel and Uncle Milt from Dayton, Ohio, to the local cuisine.

I find it addictive, but I have a love-hate relationship with this particular brew of ground meat, chunky potatoes, chile and spices. After every bite, my singed taste buds scream, No more! before I take another bite.

My husband, on the other hand, thinks it is perfect. He is a New Mexico native and as such is many years of chile tolerance ahead of me. However, the milder, meaty, flavorful chile used in the plump breakfast burritos is layered with bacon (not crispy enough for my taste) scrambled eggs and potatoes ($5 plain; $6.95 smothered). Wagners breakfast burritos earned a place on New Mexico Trues Breakfast Burrito Byway.

Apple Trees menu developed alongside the farms growing ecotourism opportunities. The green chile cheeseburger with fries ($6.95) and the red chile cheese enchilada plate ($7.95) are worthy orders.

Fall means a trip not only to Wagners, a family farm that has served the area since 1910 and is now in the fourth generation, but to the corn maze, pumpkin patch, petting zoo, hay rides and Pumpkin and Apple Festival put on by Wagner Farmland Experience.

We were disappointed in the apple pie ($6) which we were told was home-baked, but the overly thick crust encased apples that tasted canned. There are seven flavors of ice cream to choose among. Half a cantaloupe with ice cream is $5, and the peach cobbler looks good.

Fresh watermelon juice and sweet tea plus an assortment of refreshing fresh, fruity beverages are available.

Apple Tree Cafe is only open for the fall chile roasting season until Nov. 1, allowing time to get your ristra once red chiles come in; however, the cafes burritos are available at the Corrales Growers Market on Sundays.

Apple Tree Cafe

LOCATION: 5000 Corrales Road, 270-7056, Corrales

HOURS: 10:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Wednesday-Friday; 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday-Sunday; closed Monday-Tuesday

NO ALCOHOL
[September 09, 2016] Fitch Affirms Calallen ISD, TX ULT Bonds at 'AA-'; Outlook Stable

Fitch Ratings has affirmed the rating on Calallen Independent School District, TX's (the district) outstanding $49.7 million unlimited tax (ULT) bonds at 'AA-'. In addition, Fitch has affirmed the district's Issuer Default Rating (IDR) at 'AA-'. The Rating Outlook is Stable. SECURITY The bonds are payable from an unlimited ad valorem tax levied against all taxable property within the district, and are further backed by the Texas Permanent School Fund (PSF) bond guaranty program, rated 'AAA' by Fitch. (For more information on the Texas Permanent School Fund see 'Fitch Affirms Texas PSF Rating at 'AAA'; Outlook Stable', dated Aug. 5, 2015). KEY RATING DRIVERS The 'AA-' IDR reflects the district's sound overall financial profile and concentrated economic base. The district's strong operating profile is supported by solid expenditure flexibility and strong gap-closing capacity. Flat enrollment performance is mitigated by continued taxable assessed value (TAV) growth and supports Fitch's expectation for solid revenue growth going forward. Economic Resource Base Calallen ISD (the district) is a small, 30-square mile district located within the northwestern portion of Corpus Christi (IDR rated 'AA'/Stable Outlook), the eighth largest city in Texas. The district serves a population of just over 21,200 people with 2015-2016 enrollment at about 4,000 students. Revenue Framework: 'a' factor assessment A combination of local property taxes and state aid supports district operations. Fitch expects that modest enrollment projections will temper revenue growth going forward. The district's legal ability to raise revenues is limited, as the current operating tax rate is at the legal limit. Expenditure Framework: 'aa' factor assessment The natural pace of spending growth is expected to remain in line to marginally above that of revenues, given limited near-term borrowing needs. The district's low carrying costs reflect state support for retiree benefits, bolstering spending flexibility. Long-Term Liability Burden: 'aa' factor assessment The combined burden of long-term debt and pension liabilities absorbs a moderate share of local personal income. Fitch expects debt levels to remain manageable, given the district's minimal borrowing needs. Retiree benefit obligations do not represent a significant burden on the district. Operating Performance: 'aaa' factor assessment The 'aaa' operating performance assessment reflects the district's strong reserve funding levels relative to Fitch's expectations of revenue sensitivity, and a significant level of spending flexibility in the event of revenue declines. RATING SENSITIVITIES Maintenance of Financial Flexibility: The rating is sensitive to material changes in the district's currently strong expenditure flexibility and sound reserve levels, which Fitch expects it to maintain through a typical economic cycle. CREDIT PROFILE The district's tax base is notably concentrated in the oil and petrochemical industry. This concentration is somewhat mitigated by a more diversified employment base anchored by military, education, government and health services. Unemployment is low, with above-average measures of income and wealth. Revenue Framework Funding for public schools in Texas is provided by a combination of local (property tax), state and federal resources. The state budgets the majority of instructional activity through the Foundation School Program (FSP), which uses a statutory formula to allocate school aid taking into account each district's property taxes, projected enrollment, and amounts appropriated by the legislature in the biennial budget process. The majority of districts are funded using a target revenue approach, whereby the combination of local and state funding for operations meets a predetermined per pupil amount (which varies from district to district). Approximately 52% of district operating revenues come from state aid, with the remainder generated by local property tax revenues. Enrollment trends drive revenue performance, as any variations in property tax revenues due to TAV performance will be offset by state aid adjustments. Enrollment has nominally decreased over the last decade and the district anticipates minimal growth in the next few years.



District revenues have grown at a compounded annual growth rate of 3.1% over the last decade, modestly above national CPI and below GDP growth. Fitch anticipates the natural pace of district revenue growth to be modest in future years, given projections for flat enrollment. Fitch's expectations for strong state revenue growth somewhat offset concerns related to potentially flat changes in intermediate term district enrollment figures, as state aid is tied to overall state revenue performance and not just to matriculation. The district's independent legal ability to raise revenues is limited, as the current maintenance and operations (M&O) tax rate is at the statutory cap of $1.17 per $100 TAV. The district levied a separate, unlimited debt service tax rate of $0.1885 per $100 TAV for fiscal 2015, well below the statutory cap of $0.50 per $100 TAV, allowing for ample flexibility in regards to new debt issuances.

Expenditure Framework The district spends the vast majority of its operating budget on instruction. The district also funds some annual capital outlay from general fund revenues for maintenance and repairs on facilities. Fitch expects the natural pace of spending growth to remain commensurate with revenues absent policy action, given continued tax base growth and modest capital needs. The district's ample expenditure flexibility reflects control over workforce costs and low carrying costs for debt service, pension and other post-employment benefits (OPEB) of 9.1% of fiscal 2015 governmental spending (net of state support for debt service). Carrying costs also benefit from state-wide support for school district pension and OPEB obligations. Long-Term Liability Burden The district's long-term liability burden is moderate at about 10.6% of personal income. The debt is comprised of about equal parts overlapping debt and the district's slow-amortizing outstanding debt load. The district's upcoming capital needs suggest that debt levels may increase but will remain manageable in future years, barring any major new borrowing by overlapping entities. The district participates in the Texas Teachers Retirement System (TRS), a cost-sharing multiple employer pension system. Under GASB 67 and 68, TRS' assets covered 83.3% of liabilities as of TRS fiscal 2015, a ratio that falls to 75% using a more conservative 7% return assumption. The state assumes the majority of TRS' employer contributions and net pension liability on behalf of school districts, except for small amounts which state statute requires districts to assume. Like all Texas school districts, the district is vulnerable to future policy changes that shift more of the contributions and liabilities onto districts as evidenced by a relatively modest 1.5% of salary contribution requirement, effective fiscal year 2015 for certain districts. The proportionate share of the system's net pension liability paid by the district is minimal. Operating Performance The district has maintained a financial cushion at robust levels despite recessionary pressures and state funding cuts, garnering an 'aaa' assessment. Fitch believes the district would use its considerable expenditure flexibility to maintain a satisfactory level of financial flexibility in a moderate economic decline scenario. The district has demonstrated a strong commitment to supporting financial flexibility. Budgeting is conservative and management has been proactive in using excess revenues to limit debt issuance and boost reserves. Fiscal 2015 concluded with a $1.4 million surplus, equal to 4.4% of spending. Conservative budgeting produced positive budgetary variances, with revenues exceeding budgeted amounts by approximately $1.2 million and expenditures coming in at approximately $72,000 below budget. Unrestricted fund balance for the year was approximately $9.5 million or about 29% of spending. Fiscal 2016 revenues preliminarily exceed expenditures. Nevertheless, the district projects a slight drawdown in fund balance attributable to a $1.2 million appropriation for capital improvements. The fiscal 2017 budget includes an appropriation of approximately $1 million in reserves for capital improvements. A budgeted deficit assumes a fund balance drawdown that also reflects salary increases of approximately 4%. Additional information is available at 'www.fitchratings.com'. In addition to the sources of information identified in the applicable criteria specified below, this action was informed by information from Lumesis and InvestorTools. Applicable Criteria U.S. Tax-Supported Rating Criteria (pub. 18 Apr 2016) https://www.fitchratings.com/site/re/879478 Additional Disclosures Dodd-Frank Rating Information Disclosure Form https://www.fitchratings.com/creditdesk/press_releases/content/ridf_frame.cfm?pr_id=1011460 Solicitation Status https://www.fitchratings.com/gws/en/disclosure/solicitation?pr_id=1011460 Endorsement Policy https://www.fitchratings.com/jsp/creditdesk/PolicyRegulation.faces?context=2&detail=31 ALL FITCH CREDIT RATINGS ARE SUBJECT TO CERTAIN LIMITATIONS AND DISCLAIMERS. PLEASE READ THESE LIMITATIONS AND DISCLAIMERS BY FOLLOWING THIS LINK: HTTP://FITCHRATINGS.COM/UNDERSTANDINGCREDITRATINGS. IN ADDITION, RATING DEFINITIONS AND THE TERMS OF USE OF SUCH RATINGS ARE AVAILABLE ON (News - Alert) THE AGENCY'S PUBLIC WEBSITE 'WWW.FITCHRATINGS.COM'. PUBLISHED RATINGS, CRITERIA AND METHODOLOGIES ARE AVAILABLE FROM THIS SITE AT ALL TIMES. FITCH'S CODE OF CONDUCT, CONFIDENTIALITY, CONFLICTS OF INTEREST, AFFILIATE FIREWALL, COMPLIANCE AND OTHER RELEVANT POLICIES AND PROCEDURES ARE ALSO AVAILABLE FROM THE 'CODE OF CONDUCT' SECTION OF THIS SITE. FITCH MAY HAVE PROVIDED ANOTHER PERMISSIBLE SERVICE TO THE RATED ENTITY OR ITS RELATED THIRD PARTIES. DETAILS OF THIS SERVICE FOR RATINGS FOR WHICH THE LEAD ANALYST IS BASED IN AN EU-REGISTERED ENTITY CAN BE FOUND ON THE ENTITY SUMMARY PAGE FOR THIS ISSUER ON THE FITCH WEBSITE. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160909005748/en/

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Jews in Poland flee the Nazis in this stitched artwork by Esther Nisenthal Krinitz. She, her sister and a cousin are shown in the foreground. Ingrid J. Smith, an immigrant from Guatemala, produced this story cloth that will be displayed with "Stitching Stories." Esther Nisenthal Krinitz shows herself on stilts, leading the way as her brother and sisters head to their grandparents house in 1938. Under her mother's direction, Esther Nisenthal Krinitz and her sisters flee to the woods to escape the Gestapo in this image she sewed. Esther Nisenthal Krinitz depicted her arrival in New York City as a young mother and wife, after World War II had taken the lives of many of her family members. This piece of fabric art by Esther Nisenthal Krinitz shows her home and family, together with animals and crops, on their small farm in Poland before the Germans invaded. Prev 1 of 6 Next

Esther Nisenthal Krinitz wanted to show her two daughters something of her childhood, so, stitch by stitch, she created the farmhouse and outbuildings, the road and the river, the chickens and the flowers of a bucolic scene in rural Poland.

But, later, other scenes came pouring out in a rush of some 36 within 10 years: She and her sister parting from their parents and other siblings when the Nazis ordered them to report to the train station.

Seeking anonymity and protection as farm laborers. Watching young men dragged into the birches to be shot. Visiting a nearby extermination camp after the war, where she sorted through thousands of pairs of shoes to see if she could find her mothers.

While the borders of those scenes turned black, the stitched images themselves retained the birds, the flowering trees, the vibrancy of nature amid the tragedies of war.

My mother had such appreciation for the beauty of the world  she couldnt have left that out of the picture, said Bernice Steinhardt, who has joined with Cecile Lipworth of Ripple Catalyst Studio and others to display vivid photographic reproductions of her mothers stitched stories in the Community Gallery at Santa Fes convention center.

In conjunction with the exhibit, they have been conducting workshops with both students and adults to inspire them to tell their own stories of immigration to this country. Story cloths produced from those sessions are displayed alongside Krinitzs depiction of her journey from Poland to Brooklyn.

Lipworth pointed out one meticulously detailed cloth made by Ingrid J. Smith from Guatemala that shows her home with a thatched roof and colorful flowers, her first encounter with snow and her job now as a preschool teacher. (She had been chief financial officer for a car dealership before leaving her country, Lipworth said.)

Someone told Smith that she was stealing someone elses job and that this country needed her only to pick lettuce or tomatoes, according to Lipworth. In tribute to the people who do that grueling work, this storyteller depicted a man at work in just those fields in the top right corner of her cloth, an angel hovering over him.

Immigrants stories

A community conversation at 5:30 p.m. on Sept. 21 is designed to help incorporate recent immigrants into the multicultural weave of Santa Fe, to help people who otherwise may have little or no contact get to know each other.

In telling their stories, the immigrants can come alive to others as individual human beings instead of statistics, while also gaining the dignity of being recognized and having their voices heard.

Part of what we hope to do is make clear that this is a welcoming community, Steinhardt said.

Lipworth said she is an immigrant herself, coming from South Africa with a green card for opportunities offered in the United States. Im very accepted here, she said, noting that she has white skin and what people consider a charming accent. The same welcome mat often isnt extended to people of other skin colors and languages, she said.

And while Steinhardts mother may have come out of a different time and place, there are many aspects of her story that current immigrants can identify with, the women said. All immigrants know what its like to leave home, to leave family and friends behind. They also may know what its like to flee because their lives are in danger. And they know the difficulties of adjusting to a new country and culture.

One of Krinitzs stitched scenes shows her standing with her husband, along with a cousin who sponsored their arrival in this country, facing the Statue of Liberty, gulls soaring through the skies. Sleeping on her fathers shoulder as a baby is Steinholdt herself.

She has been told that, upon greeting them, the cousin addressed her with these words: My dear child, this will be your America.

Synagogue exhibit

Krinitzs sewn stories  she had been apprenticed to a seamstress at the age of 8 and sewed many of her childrens clothes as they grew up  initially were intended only for her daughters, Steinhardt said.

But as they added up and more people viewed them in her home, they attracted notice and one day were put on exhibition in a major synagogue in Washington, D.C., where Krinitz spoke before a congregation of about 300 people, Steinhardt said.

So she knew there was interest in her work, she said of her mother, who died in 2001.

They also have traveled in exhibits since then, including to her native Poland. Steinhardt said the people who came to view them didnt know much about the Holocaust history there  the generation that experienced it didnt talk about it much  and were eager to learn more.

Esther Nisenthal was 12 years old in 1939 when the Germans occupied her village; she was 15 in 1942 when the Germans ordered the people of the village to report to the train station. Esther didnt want to go. She wanted to find work on a farm in the area instead, asking her father for the name of someone who might help her.

The parents, the two youngest daughters and their son went off to the train station; Esther and her 13-year-old sister Mania stayed. It was the last time the separating family members saw each other and the moment of parting was one Krinitz felt compelled to return to in her work.

Esther and Mania adopted new names and non-Jewish identities, traveling to a village where they were not known, where they found work on a farm.

Two of the earliest images she sewed came from dreams she had during her time in hiding, dreams so powerful that they stayed with her even as she started stitching her stories as a grandmother, Steinhardt said.

In one, Krinitzs mother appeared in the village where she was hiding, took her by the hand and began running, telling her the sky was falling and they would die if they stayed there, Steinhardt said.

In the other, the young girl is shown standing in front of her grandfather (already deceased at the time of the dream) in his home, with details such as lace curtains and brass candlesticks faithfully reproduced. In her dream, she begged him to help her because he was close to God, Steinhardt said, adding, He was very reassuring.

Family missing

After the Russians drove the Germans from her part of Poland, Krinitz joined the Polish Army and participated in the push into Germany. One of her cloths shows a scene of that armys passing rows of German soldiers hanging by the neck from roadside trees.

After the war ended, the sisters visited displaced persons camps and checked other sources, but never found evidence of the family members who had gone to the train station.

Esther Nisenthal Krinitz survived, her daughter said, because she was disobedient, unwilling to report to the train station as ordered. Her sister Mania survived because she was obedient, going with Esther when, at two different points, her mother and then her cousin told her to remain with her sister.

She was always afraid that people would turn her in, Steinhardt said of her mother, but she was also saved by others.

If you go

WHAT: Stitching Our Stories: Weaving Immigrant and Local Communities Through Story Cloths and Conversations

WHEN: Exhibit runs through Oct. 20

Community conversation takes place 5:30 p.m. Sept. 21

WHERE: Community Gallery, 201 W. Marcy St.

HOW MUCH: Free
Its no secret that the Colorado River is the lifeblood of the Southwest, supplying water to 40 million people across seven states and Mexico.

The river is also the economic engine for Colorados rural high country, the heart of the states $13 billion outdoor recreation industry. The booming Front Range, however, is scheming to divert even more of the Colorados headwaters from Grand County, population 14,000.

In 2003, Denver Water, the water provider for 1.4 million people in Denver and its neighboring suburbs, proposed the Gross Dam-Moffat Tunnel project, which would divert an additional 15,000 acre-feet per year from the Fraser and Williams Fork rivers, tripling the height of the existing dam to triple the capacity of its reservoir.

With final federal environmental reviews looming, its time to ask: Is this project needed, are its impacts justified and are there better alternatives?

Well, more water is not needed. In 2014, Denvers water use was the lowest in 40 years, despite the city having 350,000 more people than in 1984. Water demand plateaued in 2002 and has not approached peak 1990s levels since.

Water use is no longer increasing with population growth in Denver and, across the Southwest, conservation is working. Were channeling the frontier spirit by living within our means.

The Moffat project is really about lawns. According to Grand County, over half of (Denvers) residential water use goes to keep Kentucky bluegrass thriving in a high plains desert. Moffat is needed only to keep lawns lush during extended droughts.

Meanwhile, scientists are sounding the alarm that the Colorado has nothing left to give. Downstream of existing diversions, federal experts have found that fish populations in at least 15 tributary streams are already past, near or on the brink of the ecological tipping point and fisheries in 10 streams are collapsed or near collapse.

Healthy rivers depend on flow regimes and temperatures within natural ranges to maintain habitat integrity and water quality. In the Upper Colorado, increased diversions caused by the project will lop off spring flushing flows.

Less water means increasing sediment, higher concentrations of metals and wastewater effluent, endangered native fisheries and further compromise to the once-legendary water clarity of Grand Lake.

In Gross Reservoir, the larger dam will elevate methylmercury concentrations throughout the food chain and make fish unfit for consumption. Construction would also flood Forsythe Falls, inundate scenic canyons and displace a migratory elk herd.

In South Boulder Creek, freezing flows below the dam would compromise nutrient production and trout habitat above Eldorado Canyon State Park. This is because Denver insists on releasing the coldest water from the very bottom of the new dam instead of installing a Multi-Level Outlet Works to mitigate these impacts.

Boulder County would bear 100 percent of the environmental impacts on the Front Range, while reaping zero benefits. Does Denver expect Boulder to betray its constituents and sacrifice its environment  to shy away from addressing climate change and wasteful consumption?

Grand County officials have endorsed a Learning By Doing mitigation package with Denver Water that candidly admits the drafters dont know what theyre doing. According to state water quality experts, this large-scale science experiment is untested in a real-life situation.

Conservation-minded Coloradans prefer healthy rivers to Chemlawn trucks. We would rather spend our summer weekends floating currents or breathing fresh air along the banks of a free-flowing mountain stream than mowing lawns and plucking dandelions.

Federal law requires the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to deny the dam permit if Moffat is not the least environmentally damaging practicable alternative. It isnt. Conservation works. It worked after the Two Forks veto blocked a destructive dam in 1990. Conservation and continued innovation to make the most of existing supplies will work for Denver.

With Lower Colorado reservoirs Lake Mead and Lake Powell at record low levels, and California facing a record drought, grabbing more water out of the Colorado seems just plain crazy. Why spend $380 million on damaging diversions when investing in conservation and greener alternatives would reap far better returns?

Moffat is gross, unnecessary, wasteful and will probably be found unlawful. Across the continent, dams are coming down. Why not put Moffat to a vote on both sides of the Continental Divide? Let citizens choose between another 20th-century dam and the 21st-century solutions inspired by conservation.

Mike Chiropolos is a contributor to Writers on the Range, the opinion service of High Country News (hcn.org). He is an environmental attorney representing Save the Colorado and The Environment Group of Coal Creek Canyon.
Author and filmmaker Jaima Chevalier is hoping to capture history in the making by training five cameras on this years presentation of the Entrada de Don Diego de Vargas.

A demonstration and march by American Indian groups is planned for the re-enactment, scheduled to begin at 2 p.m. today. The groups are protesting a depiction of what they call a one-sided and incomplete version of the reconquest of Santa Fe and northern New Mexico by Spanish colonialists more than 300 years ago.

I believe the history of our town after Friday will be changed, she said in an interview at her home studio this week. It has to.

Chevalier has met with protest organizers and believes they will keep demonstrating until the Entrada, performed each year on the citys downtown Plaza since the late 1950s, is altered to include the perspective of Native Americans. They will not be placated, she said of the protesters.

Chevalier has been filming a documentary for the past 18 months and plans to incorporate some of the footage from this years demonstration into the film. The working title of the project is Veiled Lightning: A Native R/evolution.

Lightning bolts bring light to darkness, so its a metaphor for the film trying to bring light to where darkness exists, she said.

The darkness is the Native view people of other races dont often see, she said. It has to do with the subjugation of Native people by those of the dominant culture. They feel a very deep wound from that time period, she said, referring to the reconquest of northern New Mexico by the Spanish in the late 1600s. They dont feel that its over. They want social change; they want social justice.

Chevalier, of Santa Fe, said the original concept for the film was to tell the story of American Indians through their art and artists. About 70 people  including Cochiti Pueblo artist and fashion designer Virgil Ortiz, Chiricahua Apache sculptor Bob Haozous, Cherokee painter America Meredith and Hopi potter Rachel Sahmie Nampeyo  have been interviewed. The project evolved to include interviews with non-artists, as well.

The purpose of the film is to examine questions about who owns the past? Who owns the history of New Mexico? she said.

The film allows American Indians to tell their version of events. The protest during the Entrada is their opportunity to answer back. A key question is what relevance does the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 have to do with modern culture, she said. Its definitely a story many, many people are interested in.

Chevalier plans to place cameras on the roofs of the Palace of the Governors and First State Bank, and have three others on the ground to capture the demonstration and performance from every angle.

Chevalier said it will be among the last footage shot for the documentary. She hopes a rough cut will be finished before the end of the year and that the film will be ready to show at various film festivals next year. We hope ultimately it would serve an educational purpose, she said.

She also hopes it will be used for healing wounds more than 300 years old.

Until you reconcile the past, these deep hurts will persist, she said.

A preview of the documentary is available at veiledlightning.com.



Vl Theatrical Trailer 5-6 from Brian Fishbine on Vimeo.
An old church is one of the structures on the Salman Ranch property. (Eddie Moore/Albuquerque Journal) Colleen Hinker of Santa Rosa makes her way down the raspberry rows Thursday at Salman Ranch in La Cueva. Pick-your-own is continuing under the propertys new ownership. (Eddie Moore/Albuquerque Journal) The old La Cueva Mill that was built by Vicente Romero in the 1870s is part of the Salman Ranch property in Mora County. (Eddie Moore/Albuquerque Journal) Larry Geld of St. Louis, Mo., was one of the visitors picking raspberries at Salman Ranch on Thursday. (Eddie Moore/Albuquerque Journal) Prev 1 of 4 Next

The historic Salman Raspberry Ranch in Mora County, a scenic outpost and tourist stop that has been owned and operated by a prominent northern New Mexico family for decades, has been sold to a Texas-based rancher whose firm is one of the biggest property owners in the United States.

The property transfer of 2,229 acres, including the six-acre berry farm, to G. Hughes Abell of Austin was recorded July 21 at the Mora County Clerks Office.

Abell, who about 16 years ago purchased an adjacent, 30,000-plus acres of the Salman familys holdings, said he plans no changes to the store, cafe and raspberry patch located in the La Cueva community between Mora and Las Vegas, other than a few minor upgrades. Rumors that visitors will no longer be able to pick their own berries arent true, he said.

Just tell people to come pick raspberries, buy something at the store and eat at the cafe, he said in a phone interview. Well try to make it the same experience its always been.

Frances Salman Koenig, a clinical psychologist in Albuquerque whose father acquired the ranch after his military service in World War II, said it hasnt been easy to part with the place where she and her two brothers, David (who served as a state representative) and William (who helped start Santa Fe Greenhouses), grew up, attending Las Vegas public schools.

Its a magical place, she said this week. Its hard to find the words to fully describe the specialness of it. It was beautiful, it was receptive, it was productive and it was challenging. The ranchs National Historic Site includes an 8,000-square-foot hacienda, a church and a grist mill from the 19th century. The store, with parts also from the 1800s, sells jams, toppings and vinegar.

Koenig added: When the clouds gather in the afternoon before a heavy rain, and the air turns cool and it becomes earthly quiet, you have that moment where you sort of collect yourself and say, Something special is going on here. 

Koening said that, to understand what the ranch has meant to the Salman clan, you have to understand what it meant to our father.

Col. William Salman, a Jewish immigrant from Poland who went from being a stevedore on Houston docks to running a steamboat business that was the worlds largest shipper of newsprint, was Army commander of the ports of Cardiff, Wales, and Le Havre, France, during World War II.

With much of his family imprisoned or killed in concentration camps, he wanted a post-war place that would be a safe haven for his family, said Koenig. He and a friend drove all over Texas and New Mexico before they found the La Cueva property.

There were two things Jews couldnt do in Poland: international trade and own land. So both became important to him, said Koenig.

And the colonel ran his steamship business from Mora County, a feat unto itself, she said.

David Salman, who died in 2010, ran the ranch for 40 years and developed ponds or lakes that made the ranch a flyway stop for thousands of Canadian geese. Koenig was in charge the past 16 years. But her generations children havent wanted to devote their lives to the place as she and David did, said Koenig.

Its a property that demands that attention, she said. You have to deeply care for it to take care of it.

Abell had bought the first part of the property earlier and wanted to reunite the original Romero Land Grant, so it seemed appropriate for him to take the property and make it whole again, she said.

Its still, for all of us, very sad, and we will never be able to replace its importance. But I think each of us feels it was the right thing to do in the right way at the right time.

New ownership firm

The raspberry ranch is owned by a new Abell company, La Cueva Partners, LTD. His Llano Partners consistently shows up in the top third of the Top 100 landowners in the country.

The Land Report, the magazine of the American landowner, ranked Llano Partners as having the 32nd-largest U.S. land holdings for 2015, far below the likes of Ted Turner and the heirs of New Mexicos Henry Singleton, but close to Amazons Jeff Bezos and the Babbitt heirs of Arizona.

The magazine said Llano Partners had 265,000 acres as of the September 2015 listing.

With vast ranching, farming and cattle operations throughout Texas and New Mexico, Hughes Abell remains the sole proprietor of an eponymous livestock operation while also offering leadership on the executive committee of the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association as well as the National Cattlemens Beef Promotion and Research Board, the magazine said. Abell also has land in Florida.

Abell told the Journal this week that he has about 100,000 acres in New Mexico, including the Buena Vista Ranch next to the Salman ranch and property in Colfax County. Its a family operation, he said. Were not a corporate entity.

His New Mexico land is used for cattle ranching and a hunting program, and as a location for filming movies and TV advertisements, said Abell.

He said several feature films  including the Coen brothers version of True Grit with Jeff Bridges, Tommy Lee Jones The Homesman and the soon-to-be-released The Magnificent Seven remake  used the property. We have several (films) in the works right now, Abell added.

He said he has had a cordial relationship with the Salmans and his transactions with them have been friendly. Theyve been a lot of help on showing us the ropes over there, Abell said.

Were very pleased to own it and are very pleased to be part of the community, and look forward to operating it as it is, he said. About the only change made so far at the raspberry farm, he said, is a new oven for the cafe to go back to making the pies they used to make.

Koenig said Abell agreed to keep on the raspberry ranchs long-term employees as part of the deal. These are folks weve grown up with and grown old with, she said.

Koenig said she and her brother William want to thank the raspberry operations loyal customers who came back year after year. We want to make sure that our customers and friends realize how much were going to miss them and have treasured them over the years, she said.
While American Indian rights groups plan another silent protest during todays Entrada de Don Diego de Vargas  a re-enactment of the Spaniards re-occupation of Santa Fe in 1692 staged on the historic Plaza as part of the annual Fiesta de Santa Fe  they expect their voice will resonate much louder this time around.

American Indian rights groups the Red Nation and the Spirit of Popay, and Showing Up for Racial Justice, a civil rights group, plan to march on the Plaza just prior to the 2 p.m. Entrada.

How many protesters will assemble an hour earlier at nearby Cathedral Park, where a statute of de Vargas stands, is uncertain, but it figures to be more than the modest number of demonstrators at last years event.

I feel the momentum, said Elena Ortiz, who heads the Spirit of Popay, named for the Ohkay Owingeh medicine man who led the Pueblo Revolt in 1680. I feel the time is ready for a change.

The demonstrators want the Fiesta schedule to be changed to eliminate the Entrada as a public event supported by the city of Santa Fe, which contributes $50,000 to the promotion of the Fiesta, and steps up police and EMT services for the event. The Entrada doesnt tell the whole story, they say  leaving out the killings and enslavement of pueblo people that came in the aftermath of de Vargas arrival  and it celebrates the subjugation of one race of people by another.

Fiesta organizers say thats not it at all. The Entrada is about faith, they say. Don Diego de Vargas, the leader of the reconquest that came 12 years after the Pueblo Revolt sent the Spanish out of northern New Mexico, prayed to La Conquistadora, a Marian statue that plays a key role in the story of the Entrada, for a peaceful resettlement of the territory.

But Native people are focused on correcting what they call the revisionist history portrayed by the Entrada, which depicts a Tesuque cacique welcoming de Vargas back to the city.

While no blood was shed that day, de Vargas own journals reveal that he used intimidation tactics, showing his cannons and threatening to cut off the water supply. And, in the aftermath, horrific violence was used by both the Native and Spanish peoples against each other.

Celebrating the wrong history

During last years Entrada, fewer than 20 people took part in the protest, some of them wearing T-shirts with 1680 printed across the front and carrying signs that read Don Diego Showed His Ammunition and Prepared for War, and In 1693 Don Diego executed 70 Warriors and Enslaved Hundreds of Women & Children.

The protest was organized by Jessica Montoya, then with Tewa Women United, an intertribal support group for women based in Espanola, who once ran unsuccessfully for Fiesta Queen and participated in the Fiesta as a princessa. She wanted to step back from the controversy this year and asked Ortiz to step up.

I said absolutely. I would be honored to do so, said Ortiz, who remembers being subjected to the Fiesta Court as a student in Santa Fe schools. The Fiesta Court, including the actors who play roles in the Entrada, makes the rounds during Fiesta week, visiting local businesses and schools.

Ortiz says her mother told her, This is not for us, when the pageantry of the court paraded by. She has said the same to her daughter and son, Its felt very deeply and personal, particularly coming from Ohkay Owingeh, Ortiz said, Popays pueblo.

I think the Entrada needs to go away, she said. As human beings, this is not something we should be celebrating.

Their side of the story

The Entrada, which dates from late 1950s and is staged by Los Cabelleros de Vargas, a Catholic ministry, has been interrupted by demonstrations in other years. A few times, the men playing the part of the cacique veered off script to chastise de Vargas during the performance.

City Councilor Carmichael Dominguez told the Journal recently that he encountered a line of Native people while portraying de Vargas during the 2000 Entrada. Though they just stood there and said nothing, It was kind of intimidating, he said.

In 1977, and for some years afterward, 19 pueblos staged a boycott of the entire Fiesta after the head of the Fiesta Council wrote a letter asking Indian vendors not to sell their wares on the Plaza during the event.

Ortiz estimates that from 35 to 100 people will participate in the protest today. The Red Nation, a Native rights advocacy group allied with Kiva Club students at the University of New Mexico, is expected to bring a crowd up from Albuquerque.

The group made news earlier this year by raising objections to UNMs official seal, which features a Spanish conquistador and an Anglo frontiersman, which they find offensive and another example of subjugation by dominant cultures.

Also, a YouTube video taken Aug. 20 during the Santa Fe Indian Market shows a small group of protesters carrying a Red Nation banner getting into a brief tug-of-war with security guards.

Ortiz said Showing Up for Racial Justice, or SURJ, is a national organization that, as its name suggests, comes out for demonstrations that center on racial issues. The group is made up of white people who lend their race to the cause as white people are less likely to be accosted by objectors or police during protests that become emotionally charged, Ortiz said.

A SURJ member declined to comment for this article, saying its the Native voices that should be heard.

Organizers intend to address those gathered at Cathedral Park at 1:30 p.m., encouraging them to remain peaceful and non-confrontational, before marching to the Plaza. She said there are no plans to interrupt the presentation of the hourlong Entrada itself. This is meant to be peaceful, respectful, she said. Were not trying to destroy the Fiesta for Santa Fe. We just want to see it become more inclusive.

Santa Fe Police Chief Patrick Gallagher said he was meeting with the mayor and police officers Thursday to discuss how to handle what has the potential to become a volatile situation. Thats what our officers deal with on a daily basis, be it a domestic incident or child custody, he said. Asked what he will tell his officers, he said, Empathy is always a good skill to use, and patience. And thats what well be stressing.

Gallagher said he was also reaching out to protest organizers to help make sure things dont get out of hand.

They can show up to tell their story, but telling it violently tells a different story, he said.

Little progress in past year

The citys response to last years protest has been unsatisfactory in the eyes of those who want to see change.

A day after last years demonstration, Mayor Javier Gonzales, who portrayed de Vargas during the Entrada in 1989, called for a more truthful telling of the story.

Also, city councilors introduced a resolution to hold a symposium each year that would address the history of Santa Fe and Fiestas, and the dynamic interplay of cultures within the city of Santa Fe, both then and now.

But the measure went nowhere. The city also flubbed what might have been viewed as an act of reconciliation by declaring the traditional Columbus Day holiday Indigenous Peoples Day, but only after the fact.

In August, the mayor announced that he would introduce legislation to make Indigenous Peoples Day permanent. The same release said the mayor was convening groundbreaking talks between the Fiesta Council and Tesuque Pueblo about Fiesta, and that the Fiesta Council and Los Caballeros de Vargas had agreed to sit down at the table, face to face, with the Tesuque people to begin a long overdue conversation.

Fiesta Council President Dean Milligan said this week that those discussions havent happened yet. It will happen after Fiestas, he said in a phone interview. The mayor had suggested a few dates this week, Milligan said, but, with Fiestas going on, there wasnt time to fit them into his schedule.

Milligan said that any changes in the Entrada this year were up to Los Caballeros. We have no say in what they do. The Caballeros, they do their own thing, he said.

Joe Mier, the Caballeros president, didnt return a recent phone call from the Journal. Its a celebration, not that we conquered anyone, Mier told the Journal in July. Its a religious celebration. That should be the main focus.

Milligan made a point in saying that the Fiesta Council itself has reached out to the American Indian community and that two Native people are on the council. Weve always had Native Americans a part of us. They know exactly what the Fiesta Council does, he said, adding that Native people select representatives on the Fiestas Royal Court, approved by the pueblo governor.

Milligan also said that he hasnt heard from the protesters. Everybody has a right to free speech, but unless they reach out and try to discuss what theyre protesting about, how can we discuss those problems? he asked.

Mayor Gonzales said this week that hes confident discussions between Fiesta organizers and Native people will happen soon. Asked if it might be time for the Entrada to be eliminated from the Fiesta program, the mayor wouldnt go that far. But he suggested that the script was in need of changing.

I think that its certainly time to have an honest narrative of what happened in 1692, he said.

Gonzales said he grew up believing the story that there was a peaceful resettlement 400 years ago, only to learn otherwise as he grew older. He said that, had he known the whole story, he would have given more thought to portraying de Vargas in 1989, as his father had done before him.

He remains proud of his own heritage, he said, but for Santa Fe to truly be a city that celebrates its unique blend of cultures, a more honest dialogue needs to take place. Its important if were going to be able to heal the wounds of what happened in 1692 with the reentry of de Vargas, he said.

Coming full circle

The Fiesta Court on Wednesday visited Monte del Sol charter school, where Ortizs son is a senior. The court came by a day after former Tesuque Gov. Gil Vigil, now executive director of the Eight Northern Indian Pueblos Council, talked to students about the Entrada from the Native perspective.

That perspective was never presented when Ortiz was in school. The fact that it was before her son graduated is encouraging to her and a sign that the call for change is picking up momentum.

She is also encouraged that a small group of students at Santa Fe High School silently protested the appearance of the Fiesta Court this week by displaying signs, one of which read Stop celebrating an inaccurate Entrada.

The times are changing, Ortiz said. It seems its time for the entire thing to come full circle.
Dorothy, a 3-week-old female medical cannabis plant, made her debut at the opening day of the New Mexico State Fair on Thursday but was booted out before the days end.

The plant was on display at a booth paid for by New Mexico Top Organics  Ultra Health LLC.

Her presence was advertised in a company press release as only the second time a cannabis plant has made an appearance at a state fair in the United States, given that marijuana is still illegal at the federal level and is authorized in New Mexico for certain medical conditions.

We hope that the fair will raise the profile of medical cannabis as an agricultural asset in New Mexico, similar to the Hatch green chile, pecans and pinon nuts, Duke Rodriguez, CEO of Ultra Health, one of the states 35 licensed medical marijuana producers, said in the press release.

But after Ultra Health set up the booth, a State Fair manager told Rodriguez that there has been a huge mistake and asked him to remove the plant, together with printed materials that contained images of cannabis plants, Rodriguez said in a phone interview late Thursday. Initially, State Fair personnel agreed to let the booth remain through the end of the day.

But a State Police officer later approached Rodriguez and said he needed to remove the plant and other items immediately, he said.

Ultra Health had signed a contract with the New Mexico State Fair and paid a $2,000 fee for a booth, Rodriguez said. We disclosed the items that would be there, including a plant, he said.

David Morgan, public information officer for the state Department of Health, said the department plans to investigate because the production of medical cannabis is supposed to occur in a secure facility approved by the state.

We are looking into the matter and will take appropriate action, which can include suspending their business operation or other disciplinary action, Morgan said in an email to the Journal.
Inclusive curriculum can transform students self-esteem and academic performance, according to the founder of a controversial Mexican-American studies program that was banned by the Arizona Legislature.

Augustine Romero, principal at Tucsons Pueblo Magnet High, stressed that kids need identity, purpose and hope Thursday during an Albuquerque conference organized by the Mission: Graduate education partnership.

Mexican-American studies and other culturally sensitive classes can give students that foundation, he said, particularly when teachers help them realize their own capabilities.

We recognized that our students were intellectuals, Romero said. Intellectual means having the capacity to think.

His talk comes roughly three months after Albuquerque Public Schools announced that all 13 district high schools will offer ethnic studies by August 2017.

APS began exploring curriculum options during a June workshop that included community members, advocates and teachers from across the district.

At the time, administrators said several studies provide strong support for ethnic studies. For instance, minority kids who participated in the classes at San Francisco schools had better GPAs and attendance records, as well as larger class loads.

Romeros data is similar: his students were over 120 percent more likely to graduate from high school than other Hispanic teens. They also had higher passing rates on Arizonas mandatory standardized test, AIMS.

The result is a transformation of the status quo, where minority and low-income children are consistently left behind, Romero said.

We have to put students at the center of everything we do, Romero added. How do we help them understand the power they have?

He touched on his battle with Arizona legislators, who outlawed Tucsons Mexican-American studies program in 2012, citing statues banning classes that promote the overthrow of the United States government, promote resentment toward a race or class of people, are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group or advocate ethnic solidarity rather than the treatment of pupils as individuals.

Its time to get real, he said. Our state wants to deny that there is any oppression going on in this country.

Thursdays conference also included a recognition of American Graduate Champions, sponsored by KNME-TV (New Mexico PBS)  educators and advocates who have found new ways to help Albuquerque students.

Mission: Graduate, the sponsoring organization, is a United Way of Central New Mexico initiative that aims to add 60,000 graduates with college degrees or certificates by 2020.

American Graduate Champions

Robert Baade: Director RFK Charter High School

Dr. Carletta Bullock: Family practitioner and RFK Charter High School, School Based Health Clinic

Marisol Campos: Volunteer who partnered with Target to get new clothing for the West Mesa High School clothing bank

Lorilei Chavez: Native American Liaison/Impact Aid Coordinator at Bernalillo High School, advocate for Native American children

Andy Hsi: Director of the Health Sciences Institute for Resilience, Health, and Justice, and professor and general pediatrician at University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center

Robb Janov: Rock and Rhythm band leader and teacher at Jefferson Middle School

Gilberto Lobo: Dual Language Middle School science teacher and team leader

David Powless: Former NFL player, founder of Spirit of Hoops basketball camps
Enock Arvizo isnt set for trial until next spring on charges that he sexually assaulted inmates under his authority while he was a corrections officer at the Metropolitan Detention Center.

But a new civil lawsuit alleges jail and county officials were aware of Arvisos history as far back as 2007, making them liable for actual and punitive damages of a female inmate allegedly sexually assaulted in a holding cell of the 2nd Judicial District Court.

The civil rights lawsuit was filed on behalf of Aubrianna Sanchez against Arvizo, MDC supervisors Conrad Armijo and Reyna McCann and the Bernalillo County commissioners.

MDC spokeswoman Nataura Powdrell said it is jail policy not to comment on pending litigation. Arvizo resigned after being arrested on the criminal charges. McCann and Armijo remain at MDC as supervisors.

According to the civil lawsuit filed by Santa Fe attorney Adam Baker, Sanchez was transported from the womens prison in Grants to the jail in advance of a probation violation hearing in state court in March 2015, and then from the jail to court.

While Sanchez was waiting for her case to be called, the lawsuit says, she realized shed left paperwork in the holding cell, and asked to be escorted back to get it.

According to the allegations, Arvizo kissed her on the lips, exposed himself and forced her to perform sexual acts  all while she was shackled and handcuffed  before taking her back. When she noticed his surname on his badge, she asked for his first name, and he allegedly said, Youre not going to tell on me, are you?

Sanchez initially did not, but she became concerned about a possible pregnancy and told an attorney about the incident three weeks later and ultimately disclosed the alleged rape to jail officials.

Arvizo was indicted in February by a grand jury on 11 counts of criminal sexual penetration of an inmate, criminal sexual contact, battery and assault. He entered a not guilty plea and was released on a $250,000 bond.

Last month, the New Mexico Attorney Generals Office dismissed nine of the counts due to the death of an essential witness and the need for further investigation. Assistant Attorney General Greer Rose said the prosecution will proceed on the remaining nine charges.

District Judge Briana Zamora agreed with the defense that there should be separate trials for charges pertaining to each of the individual alleged victims. The first trial is set for May 8 and the final trial on Aug. 25.
A group of about a dozen people on Thursday carried signs and handed out fliers on Civic Plaza, protesting harassment against women.

They called for the firing of Deputy County Clerk Roman Montoya, and accused his boss, County Clerk Maggie Toulouse Oliver, of not protecting the women who work for her.

In May, a woman hired as a temp worker in the Clerks Office, filed a formal complaint against Montoya, alleging violations of the countys anti-harassment policy. The allegations were sustained following an investigation and Montoya received a letter of counsel, essentially a reprimand that required he complete sensitivity and anti-harassment training. The letter was signed by Toulouse Oliver.

Contacted Thursday, Montoya said he was at a disadvantage because he has been instructed to not speak about the sexual harassment allegations, investigation or the letter of counsel. He did say that the protest was clearly a political ploy to go after Maggie, who is running for secretary of state.

A spokesman in Toulouse Olivers office, Joey Keefe, said the office does not comment on personnel matters.

We are sick and tired of reading reports about sexual harassment in which no action or inadequate action was taken, said Chris Banks, the state chairman of the Party for Socialism and Liberation.

He pointed to a Department of Justice report criticizing the University of New Mexicos inadequate response to the high incidence of sexual harassment among students, and the DOJs assessment of the county jail as among the worst in the nation for sexual harassment or abuse by staff against inmates.

Now we get a report at the county level of government, that an entry level worker, a young women, comes in and was abused by the second in command in the Clerks Office and the first in command, the county clerk, treats it as a non-issue.

Another protester, Katie Rubio, 22, a student at UNM, said she was picketing against sexual harassment within our government and to speak out against the systemic sexism and sexual violence in our society. Rubio said she wants Montoya fired from his job because he has yet to face real consequences from his actions.
PENSCACOLA, Fla.  Hillary Clinton said Friday it was time for a rethinking of Americas strategy for North Korea following the regimes latest test of a nuclear weapon. Donald Trump and his campaign chief, meanwhile, refused to outline the Republican presidential candidates plans for defusing tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

The New York billionaire, however, vowed to deploy military muscle to attack Americas enemies if provoked.

Largely ignoring North Korea, he noted a recent incident in which he said Iranian ships were toying with an American destroyer near the Strait of Hormuz. During a Trump presidency, he promised at a Friday night rally in Pensacola, Florida, ships trying to provoke the U.S. will be shot out of the water.

In New York, Clinton was focused on the North Korean threat after meeting with a bipartisan group of national security experts.

The former secretary of state said she would seek to impose tougher sanctions on the communist nation, arguing the latest test provides an opening to pressure China, which has been tepid in its response to North Koreas nuclear ambitions.

I think we have an opening here that we havent had for the last several years that I intend to do everything I can to take advantage of, Clinton said.

Clinton spoke hours after Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, pressed repeatedly on Trumps plans for the region, said only, He wouldnt do whats being done now.

Hes not going to reveal all of his plans and hes made that very clear. And maybe someone can ask him in a debate, Conway told CBS This Morning. But the fact is that this entire world would be put on notice that theres a strong leader in the White House.

North Koreas latest atomic test was its fifth, and the second in eight months. South Korean President Park Geun-hye said the detonation, which Seoul estimated was the Norths biggest ever in explosive yield, was an act of fanatic recklessness and a sign that leader Kim Jong Un is spiraling out of control.

President Barack Obama condemned the test and said the U.S. would never accept the country as a nuclear power.

In appearances in Florida and Washington, Trump used the North Korean development to attack Clinton. North Korea, like so many other things, is one more Hillary Clinton failure, he said in Pensacola.

He did not say whether he had a plan to address North Koreas claim the test will allow it to build an array of stronger, smaller and lighter nuclear weapons.

He focused instead on attacking Clintons credibility. He said Clinton was being protected during the Justice Departments investigation into her use of a private email server while secretary of state.

She could walk right into this arena right now and shoot somebody with 20,000 people watching, right smack in the middle of the heart, and she wouldnt be prosecuted, Trump said.

Meanwhile, Clinton said the United States would not let North Korea pursue a nuclear weapon and said that as president, she would seek new sanctions and work closely with allies in the region, such as South Korea and Japan.

But she also said she would consider discussions similar to recent negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, because sanctions arent enough.

The development in North Korea comes at the end of a week in which Trump and Clinton clashed repeatedly over national security.

The New York billionaire attacked Clintons record as the nations chief diplomat, yet he faced criticism from within his own party for refusing to outline his plans for combating foreign policy challenges, including threats posed by the Islamic State group. Trump said this week that he does indeed have a plan, but would convene military leaders in his first 30 days in office to craft another plan.

Trump has also faced criticism for praising Russian President Vladimir Putin during a high-profile national security forum earlier in the week, and appearing on a Russian-backed television network Thursday evening.

On Friday, Clinton said she was disappointed by Trumps decision to appear on RT America, saying that every day that goes by this just becomes more and more of a reality television show. Its not a serious presidential campaign.

With several prominent Republican national security officials already concerned about Trumps national security acumen, Clinton has tried to cast herself as the better potential commander in chief. She has aggressively promoted her growing list of military endorsements from both parties.

On Friday, her campaign said the number of retired generals and admirals endorsing Clinton for president has grown to 110. Trump quickly countered by saying his list had ballooned to 120 former U.S. generals and admirals earlier in the week.

Trumps running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, received his first intelligence briefing Friday. The vice presidential nominee declined to offer any specifics since the information was classified.

Continuing her aggressive fundraising push, Clinton appeared at two fundraisers in New York. One of them was an LGBT event featuring Barbra Streisand.

Clinton is getting some help from another wealthy backer as well. Billionaire Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz said Friday hes giving $20 million to help defeat Trump.

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Lucey reported from New York. Associated Press writer Julie Bykowicz contributed to this report.

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What political news is the world searching for on Google and talking about on Twitter? Find out via APs Election Buzz interactive. http://elections.ap.org/buzz
WASHINGTON  The Latest on the 2016 presidential campaign (all times EDT):

12:30 a.m.

Donald Trumps campaign manager is objecting to Hillary Clintons depiction of half of his supporters as a basket of deplorables.

Clinton was speaking at an LGBT fundraiser in New York City Friday night when she described those supporters as racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic  you name it. But she stressed that the rest of the Republican nominees supporters are people who feel let down by the government and the economy and are just desperate for change, and said those people need sympathy.

Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway quickly responded on Twitter, writing, One day after promising to be aspirational & uplifting, Hillary insults millions of Americans.

Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill tweeted that Clinton was referring to alt-right voters who appear to make up half his crowd.

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10:50 p.m.

Barbra Streisand is putting her feelings about Donald Trump into song.

At an LGBT fundraiser Friday for Hillary Clinton, the singer performed a parody of the Stephen Sondheim song Send in the Clowns with lyrics about the Republican nominee.

Is he that rich, maybe hes poor, til he reveals his returns, who can be sure? Streisand sang to an applauding crowd. Somethings amiss, I dont approve, if he were running the free world, where would we move?

Streisand continued: And if by chance he gets to heaven, even up there, hell declare chapter 11. This sad, vulgar clown. Youre fired, you clown.

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9:35 p.m.

Hillary Clinton is encouraging supporters at an LGBT fundraiser to stage an intervention if they have friends considering Donald Trump.

She says, That may be one conversion therapy Id endorse, referring to a type of counseling designed to urge gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender children to change their sexual orientation. Clinton stressed during the New York City event Friday night that she wants to end the practice.

Clinton says, Friends dont let friends vote Trump. She says that while some Trumps supporters are deplorables, others are frustrated by hard times and merit sympathy.

She is pledging to fight alongside the LGBT community, and says Trump will not support them.

Fridays fundraiser featured a performance from Barbra Streisand.

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9:15 p.m.

Donald Trump says hed order an attack on Iranian boats if they harassed the U.S. Navy.

The tough-talking Republican made the charge Friday night at a crowded rally in Pensacola, Florida. He was referring to a recent incident in which Iranian boats harassed a Navy destroyer near the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump says the boats were taunting us and toying with us. He says if Irans little boats circle our beautiful destroyers when hes president, They will be shot out of the water.

Trump and Hillary Clinton have clashed over national security for much of the week. Each says the other doesnt have the temperament to be commander in chief.

The New York billionaire added another accusation Friday night, saying, Personally, I think shes an unstable person.

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6:35 p.m.

Donald Trump hasnt publicity released his tax returns. The same can no longer be said of his running mate, Mike Pence.

The Republican vice presidential nominee and Indiana governor on Friday released a decade worth of returns, roughly a month after promising to do so.

The campaign says Pence paid a state and federal tax rate that ranged between 10 percent and 16 percent over the past decade.

His income topped out at $187,000 while he was still a member of Congress, but dropped to $113,000 last year.

Spokesman Marc Lotter says the returns demonstrate Pence has not enriched himself during his years of public service.

Major party presidential nominees have publicly released their taxes since 1976, but Trump is the exception. He says he is waiting for the conclusion of an audit.

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5:20 p.m.

Hillary Clinton says she is disappointed that Donald Trump would continue to praise Russian President Vladimir Putin on a Russia-funded television network.

Speaking after a meeting she convened with security experts in New York, Clinton said: Every day that goes by this just becomes more and more of a reality television show. Its not a serious presidential campaign.

The Republican nominee has faced backlash from both parties in recent days for praising the Russian leader.

Trump was interviewed Thursday by Larry King, a veteran American journalist whose current show airs on RT America. That network is funded by the Russian government.

Clinton said it was beyond ones imagination to have a candidate for president praising a Russian autocrat like Vladimir Putin.

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5:15 p.m.

Hillary Clinton says North Koreas latest nuclear test should prompt a rethinking of Americas strategy to deal with the rogue nation.

The Democratic presidential candidate promised Friday to impose tougher sanctions on the country. She also said that the latest test provides an opening to pressure China, which sees the country as an important.

Clinton said she will protect allies and treaty partners in the region including equipping them with missile defense systems.

It was the countrys fifth atomic test and second in eight months.

She spoke after meeting with a bipartisan group of national security experts in New York City.

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3:50 p.m.

Donald Trump is promising religious activists that he will cherish, protect and defend Christian values like theyve never seen before.

The thrice-married New York billionaire delivered a speech Friday afternoon at the Values Voter Summit in Washington. Its among the largest gatherings of conservative Christians ahead of the November election.

Trump declared that political leaders have abandoned people of faith in America. And he said that todays media culture often mocks and demeans people of faith.

He made the religious conservatives a promise: In a Trump administration, our Christian heritage will be cherished, protected, defended like youve never seen before.

Trump also promised to repeal the so-called Johnson amendment. The law prevents religious institutions and other tax-exempt groups from endorsing political candidates.

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2:15 p.m.

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are sparring over which of them is better fit to respond to North Koreas nuclear ambitions.

Clinton condemned Fridays test explosion, saying it shows the need for America to elect a president who confronts threats with steadiness and strength.

Clinton said in a statement that the U.S. needs a commander-in-chief committed to reducing, not increasing, the number of nuclear weapons and nuclear states in the world.

Trump has previously suggested that he would be open to U.S. allies Japan and South Korea obtaining their own nuclear weapons.

Trump senior communications adviser Jason Miller said the Norths nuclear test was another example of Clintons catastrophic failures when she was the top U.S. diplomat.

He said Clinton had promised to work to end the Norths nuclear program but it has only grown in strength and sophistication.

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1:50 p.m.

Tim Kaine says Donald Trump was using his charitable foundation as a front to suppress fraud investigations into Trump University.

Kaine raised ethical questions about the foundations donations to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi and a new report from Yahoo News that the foundation helped fund a lawsuit against New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who sued Trump for fraud over Trump University. Kaine made his remarks to reporters Friday in Birmingham, Alabama.

Charities cannot legally donate to political activities.

Kaine said Trump was used the foundation to promote a money-making fraudulent venture of Donald Trumps, which is not what charities are supposed to do.

Kaine suggested there could be more questionable donations form the foundation and argued people need to keep investigating.

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1:00 p.m.

Mike Pence has received his first national security briefing since becoming Donald Trumps running mate.

Pences briefing Friday lasted about two hours and was held at an Indiana National Guard base in Indianapolis.

The Republican Indiana governor said afterward that he was grateful for the thorough and informative briefing.

Pence said he couldnt discuss specifics due to classified nature, but vowed that he and Trump would be ready on day one should they be elected in November.

He did not take questions afterward, but said he was honored to take part in the tradition, which he says extends back to the time of Harry Truman.

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11:35 a.m.

The Republican Party is storming into what it sees as 11 presidential battleground states on Saturday.

About 1,000 employees and 4,000 volunteers will be knocking on doors to speak with voters in states including Ohio, Wisconsin and Virginia. The Republican National Committee expects to hit roughly 330,000 doors in a single day.

The party will promote its presidential nominee Donald Trump and other Republican candidates for office. Door knockers will focus on voter registration and in places such as Florida and Iowa, will urge voters to request absentee ballots as a way to ensure more votes.

The all-day event follows what the RNC dubbed its month of action in August. Party leaders say they knocked on 2 million doors, more than in July and June combined.

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10:20 a.m.

Minnesota Democrats are asking the states Supreme Court to remove Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump from the ballot.

The state party filed a petition Thursday seeking to have Minnesotas secretary of state strip Trump and running mate Mike Pence from the ballot for the general election.

They argued that the Republican Party of Minnesota erred in how it sent in Trumps name for a spot on the ballot.

State law requires political parties to select alternate electors at conventions as part of putting a nominee on the ballot, and the clock is ticking for a resolution. Early voting in Minnesota begins Sept. 23.

But Democrats contend those GOP alternates were chosen last-minute by party leaders to meet a looming deadline last month. The states Democratic party says that invalidates the GOPs ballot submission and that Secretary of State Steve Simon should have rejected it.

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10:10 a.m.

The number of retired generals and admirals endorsing Hillary Clinton for president has grown to 110.

The Democratic presidential nominee announced her newest supporters Friday. Clinton stressed that she has more military backing than rival Donald Trump, who touted endorsements from 88 retired U.S. generals and admirals earlier in the week.

The new endorsements include former Democratic Pennsylvania congressman Joe Sestak, a retired Navy admiral.

Clinton is continuing to promote herself as the best choice for commander-in-chief, questioning Trump credentials and judgment. On Friday afternoon, she plans to meet with foreign policy and national security experts in New York City to discuss ways to combat terrorism.

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9:55 a.m.

Hillary Clinton is now opting to mark the fifteenth anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks with a visit to ground zero.

A spokeswoman for Clinton confirmed the visit to The Associated Press on Friday.

Clinton, who was a U.S. senator from New York in 2001, was not initially scheduled to visit the memorial site on the anniversary. But her campaign notified officials at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum late Thursday that she would attend the mornings events.

Her Republican rival, Donald Trump, is currently not slated to attend.

Clinton is not expected to make any public remarks but wanted to honor the attacks victims.

Both candidates previously pledged to avoid campaigning on the somber anniversary.

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8:30 a.m.

Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine is doing his share of fundraising to help fuel the final push toward Election Day.

Hillary Clintons campaign said five people paid up to $500,000 each to attend a fundraiser with Kaine in New York on Thursday night. Thats one of four fundraisers Kaine attended in New York that day. He did not do any public events.

He met with approximately 120 people who paid either $5,000, $10,000 or $50,000.

Kaine on Wednesday met with donors twice in Washington, D.C., and once in Potomac, Maryland. On Tuesday he raised money in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Kaine will raise money and campaign Friday in Birmingham, Alabama and attend a public event in Norfolk, Virginia.

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8:20 a.m.

Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine says Donald Trump demonstrates an irrational hostility toward President Barack Obama.

In an interview with CBS This Morning Friday, the Virginia senator said Trumps comments favoring Russian President Vladimir Putin over Obama are unpatriotic.

He said that Putin has invaded other countries, run the Russian economy into the ground, and persecuted Russian journalists and members of the gay and lesbian community.

He said, you wouldnt get out of a fifth grade civics exam if you dont understand the difference between dictatorship and leadership, referring to the Republican nominee.

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7:15 a.m.

Donald Trumps campaign manager says if hes president and North Korea fired ballistic rockets, Trump wouldnt do whats done now.

Kellyanne Conway told CBSs Charlie Rose Friday that Trumps position is to put America first, but she offered no details for how the Republican nominee would handle North Koreas growing nuclear threat.

North Korea conducted its fifth nuclear test on Friday, just eight months after it claimed it successfully detonated a small hydrogen bomb. It was the first time the Asian nation conducted two nuclear tests in one year.

Conway said that if Trump is president, North Korea will know that the Americans arent messin around.

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7 a.m.

Voting in the 2016 election is getting underway.

Advance voting is beginning Friday in North Carolina  the first of 37 states that will allow balloting by mail for any reason or in person before Election Day, which is Nov. 8.

Its part of a nearly nine-week campaign frenzy during which millions of voters will have the ability to fill out a ballot for the 2016 presidential race.

Data compiled by The Associated Press shows that people who vote in advance are expected to make up between 50 percent to 75 percent or more of all ballots in some of the races most pivotal states  North Carolina, Colorado, Florida, Nevada, Arizona and Georgia.

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6:50 a.m.

A billionaire Facebook co-founder says hes giving $20 million to help defeat Donald Trump.

Dustin Moskovitz says the Republican presidential nominee is divisive and dangerous. And he says Trumps appeals to people who feel left behind are, in Moskovitzs words, quite possibly a deliberate con.

By contrast, he says Democrats and nominee Hillary Clinton are running on what he says is a vision of optimism, pragmatism, inclusiveness and mutual benefit.

Moskovitz wrote about the contributions in a Thursday night posting on the website Medium.

He and his wife, Cari Tuna, are giving half of the $20 million to the League of Conservation Voters and to the For Our Future political action committee.

That second latter group is a get-out-the-vote effort in battleground states. Its paid for primarily by labor unions and hedge fund billionaire Tom Steyer.
GENEVA  The United States and Russia early Saturday announced a breakthrough agreement on Syria that foresees a nationwide cease-fire starting on Monday, followed a week later by an unexpected new military partnership targeting the Islamic State and al-Qaida as well as the establishment of new limits on President Bashar Assads forces.

After a daylong final negotiating session in Geneva, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said shortly after midnight Saturday that the plan could reduce violence in Syria and lead to a long-sought political transition, ending more than five years of bloodshed. He called the deal a potential turning point in a conflict that has killed as many as 500,000 people, if complied with by Syrias Russian-backed government and U.S.-supported rebel groups.

The cease-fire begins at sundown Sept. 12, Kerry said, coinciding with the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday.

Today the United States and Russia are announcing a plan which we hope will reduce violence, ease suffering and resume movement toward a negotiated peace and a political transition in Syria, Kerry said. We are announcing an arrangement that we think has the capability of sticking, but it is dependent on peoples choices.

It has the ability to stick, provided the regime and the opposition both meet their obligations, which we  and we expect other supporting countries  will strongly encourage them to do, he added.

Kerrys negotiating partner, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, confirmed the agreement and said it could help expand the counterterrorism fight and aid deliveries to Syrian civilians under U.N. auspices that have been stalled for weeks. He said Syrian President Bashar Assads government was informed of the accord, and prepared to comply.

The United States is going the extra mile here because we believe that Russia, and my colleague, have the capability to press the Assad regime to stop this conflict and to come to the table and make peace, Kerry said, citing a number of recent meetings with Lavrov.

This is just the beginning of our new relations, Lavrov said.

The deal culminates months of frenetic diplomacy that included four meetings between Kerry and Lavrov since Aug. 26, and a lengthy face-to-face in China between Presidents Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin. The arrangement hinges on Moscow pressuring Assads government to halt all offensive operations against Syrias armed opposition in specific areas, which were not detailed. Washington must persuade U.S.-backed rebels to break ranks with Fath al-Sham, an al-Qaida-linked group previously known as the Nusra Front, and other extremist groups.

The military deal would go into effect after both sides abide by the truce for a week and allow unimpeded humanitarian deliveries. Then, the U.S. and Russia would begin intelligence sharing and targeting coordination, while Assads air and ground forces would no longer be permitted to target Nusra any longer; they would be restricted to operations against the Islamic State.

The arrangement would ultimately aim to step up and concentrate the firepower of two of the worlds most powerful militaries against Islamic State and Nusra, listed by the United Nations as terrorist groups.

Both sides have failed to deliver their ends of the bargain over several previous truces.

But the new arrangement goes further by promising a new U.S.-Russian counterterrorism alliance, only a year after Obama chastised Putin for a military intervention that U.S. officials said was mainly designed to keep Assad in power and target more moderate anti-Assad forces.

Russia, in response, has chafed at Americas financial and military assistance to groups that have intermingled with the Nusra Front on the battlefield. Kerry said it would be wise for opposition forces to separate completely from Nusra, a statement Lavrov hailed.

Going after Nusra is not a concession to anybody, Kerry said. It is profoundly in the interests of the United States.

Getting Assads government and rebel groups to comply with the deal may now be more difficult as fighting rages around Aleppo, Syrias most populous city and the new focus of a war that has killed as many as 500,000 people.

Assads government appeared to tighten its siege of the former Syrian commercial hub in the last several days, seizing several key transit points. Forty days of fighting in Aleppo has killed nearly 700 civilians, including 160 children, according to a Syrian human rights group.

The proposed level of U.S.-Russian interaction has upset several leading national security officials in Washington, including Defense Secretary Ash Carter and National Intelligence Director James Clapper, and Kerry only appeared at the news conference after several hours of internal U.S. discussions.

After the Geneva announcement, Pentagon secretary Peter Cook offered a guarded endorsement of the arrangement and cautioned, We will be watching closely the implementation of this understanding in the days ahead.

At one point, Lavrov said he was considering calling it a day on talks, expressing frustration with what he described as an hours-long wait for a U.S. response. He then presented journalists with several boxes of pizza, saying, This is from the U.S. delegation, and two bottles of vodka, adding, This is from the Russian delegation.

The Geneva negotiating session, which lasted more than 13 hours, underscored the complexity of a conflict that includes myriad militant groups, shifting alliances and the rival interests of the U.S. and Russia, Saudi Arabia and Iran, and Turkey and the Kurds.

Kerry outlined several steps the government and rebels would have to take. They must now pull back from demilitarized zones, and allow civilian traffic and humanitarian deliveries  notably into Aleppo.

If Aleppo is at peace, we believe that the prospects for a diplomatic solution will brighten, he said. If Aleppo continues to be torn apart, the prospects for Syria and its people are grim.

But as with previous blueprints for peace, Saturdays plan appears to lack enforcement mechanisms. Russia could, in theory, threaten to act against rebel groups that break the deal. But if Assad bombs his opponents, the U.S. is unlikely to take any action against him given Obamas longstanding opposition to entering the civil war.
WASHINGTON  The Senate is preparing to head home earlier than planned this month in hopes of avoiding a pre-election showdown with House Republicans over legislation needed to keep the government from shutting down at the end of the month.

The most optimistic timeline could have senators finishing up their work by late next week, more than two weeks before the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30. Senate leaders are eager to get out of town so the 22 GOP senators up for re-election can return home to campaign ahead of the November election. A speedy resolution would also allow Senate leaders to try and force the House to accept whatever spending resolution can pass the Senate, potentially avoiding another ugly intra-party budget fight.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., announced Wednesday that he is prepared next week to move a stopgap funding measure, known as a continuing resolution (CR), that would keep the government open through Dec. 9. House conservatives have generally rejected that idea, arguing that negotiating a final year-end funding package during the post-election lame-duck session will lead to a massive package filled with higher spending and special interests handouts. They are advocating for passing a stop-gap bill this month that would last into next year, leaving final spending negotiations to a new Congress and president.

But National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss., told reporters on Thursday that he thinks the Senate could easily attach $1.1 billion in funding to fight the spread of the Zika virus, another top priority, to McConnells proposed spending bill and pass the legislation by the end of next week.

[Its a] very good suggestion. Wicker said. I think we have to ask ourselves what realistically can be accomplished between now and our departure for the election.

Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, said he is confident the Senate will reach an agreement on the plan to pair Zika funding with the CR but he was less optimistic about wrapping up by Sept. 16.

I think our hope is we can take up the continuing resolution next week and pass it and send it to the House and that could take place by the end of next week, Cornyn said. It would take all of the stars aligning in a perfect way with no intervening influence.

That idea frustrates House Conservatives who had hoped to have more influence over any stop-gap bill.

It certainly is a concern if were not going to be here and able to go back and forth, said Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C. Then it becomes an either-or situation and I dont think any of us want a shutdown.

Some conservatives have considered the possibility of accepting policy concessions in exchange for their votes on a CR. Members of the Republican Study Committee met Thursday to discuss options for a spending bill. Members discussed adding a provision that would delay plans for the U.S. government to give up control over a global nonprofit that oversees the internet domain system. The government is scheduled to relinquish control of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) on Oct. 1 and conservatives, including Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, are pushing Congress to hold off on those plans.

RSC Chairman Bill Flores, R-Texas, said Thursday that he had been in talks with Cruz about the issue and they both support a delay. Rep. Mark Walker, R-N.C., said RSC members discussed the ICANN provision as well as a measure that would would effectively halt the the resettlement of refugees from Iraq and Syria in the United States.

There was some discussion about if we want to be effective during this time that that would be the kind of thing that would be considered, Walker said. I think there was some favorability to that.

The RSC is expected to pitch several options for a path forward on spending to the full House Republican Conference during a policy meeting scheduled for Friday morning.

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Copyright  2016 Albuquerque Journal

State District Judge Alan Malott granted a temporary restraining order late Friday that bars Bernalillo County from printing ballots that dont include a summary of the proposed sick-leave initiative.

He also scheduled a hearing Monday afternoon to further consider the case  a critical step because the county must submit its ballot to the state by 5 p.m. the next day.

His order says the plaintiffs have a substantial likelihood of success on the merits, but hell decide after Mondays hearing whether to turn the order into a more lasting injunction.

Fridays temporary decision came after supporters of the sick-leave initiative filed an emergency petition asking the court to step in and order the question be put on the Nov. 8 ballot.

Supporters said the city attorney incorrectly told Bernalillo County commissioners that the full seven-page ordinance had to be placed on the ballot, not just a summary of the measure.

The full text wont fit, and the County Commission, in a special meeting Thursday, refused to add the question to the ballot. Commissioners cited a shortage of ballot space and a reluctance to get involved in a city government decision.

Adriann Barboa, a spokeswoman for the coalition supporting the sick-leave initiative, said Friday that voters deserve a chance to decide on the proposal this year.

We hope the court will recognize that the County Commission and city attorney are playing politics with the lives of working families and undermining the democratic process by trying to delay a vote on our proposal till next year, she said in a written statement.

On the other side, Terri Cole, president and CEO of the Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce, said voters deserve to see the entire sick-leave ordinance, not just the summary that would fit on this years ballot.

If the proposal isnt on this years ballot, it could go before voters in the October 2017 city election.

Despite the fact that Judge Malott granted a temporary restraining order, Cole said, we believe the publics need for maximum transparency will prevail. The initiative is more burdensome than it sounds and will hurt small business. The public needs to understand the gravity of the initiative before voting on it.

Legal arguments

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit, including the Healthy Workforce ABQ campaign and other supporters, argue that the City Council and County Commission had a duty to place the measure on the general election ballot this year.

They say their campaign in favor of the sick-leave ordinance successfully gathered enough petition signatures to trigger a City Charter provision that requires the question to go before voters at the next general election or regular municipal election.

And the full text of the proposal isnt required, the plaintiffs argue. The charter itself calls for the ballot to include the proposed measure as originally submitted, and the supporters original submittal to the city included a summary, the lawsuit says.

Furthermore, the City Charter doesnt explicitly say the full text of the ordinance must go on the ballot, supporters argue.

Were confident in our case, said Tim Davis, an attorney for the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty, which filed the emergency petition for ballot access. The law is on our side  from Supreme Court precedent, state statute, as well as the city of Albuquerque charter.

City Attorney Jessica Hernandez, meanwhile, told the county that she believes the entire ordinance must go on the ballot. The City Charter requirement for publication of the proposed measure suggests that the full text is required, she said, not simply a summary.

The city asked voters last year, in fact, for explicit permission to publish summaries of proposed charter amendments rather than the full text, but the proposal failed.

People on both sides of the issue say they have history on their side. In 2013, the city ballot included a copy of an entire ordinance that sought to ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

But in 2012, a summary of a minimum wage ordinance appeared on the general election ballot.

Voters rejected the abortion ordinance; they passed the minimum wage bill.

Sick-leave mandates

The proposed ordinance would require employers in Albuquerque, regardless of size, to allow their workers to earn paid sick time off. It would apply to full-time, part-time and temporary workers at any business with a physical presence in Albuquerque.

Supporters say passage of the ordinance would ensure that no one has to choose between their paycheck and caring for a sick loved one. Supporters include the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty, OLE New Mexico, the SouthWest Organizing Project and El Centro de Igualdad y Derechos.

Opponents say that the proposal is more onerous than it sounds and that it could force small companies out of business, because of the cost and because of new record-keeping requirements. Opponents include the New Mexico Restaurant Association, Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce, the New Mexico Association of Commerce and Industry and NAIOP, the commercial real estate development association.
MOSCOW  Masked men carrying pistols, knives and truncheons stormed a Greenpeace camp site and severely beat volunteer firefighters in southern Russian on Friday, the environmentalist group said, leaving one activist with a broken nose and another with fractured ribs.

The reason for the assault wasnt clear. But Greenpeace Russia has been at odds with Russian officials over a variety of issues, including recent claims that Russias regional governments were underreporting the size of local forest fires by as much as 80 percent to portray the situation as under control.

Greenpeace deploys volunteer firefighters and runs fire fighting training in many regions.

The attack capped 24 hours of harassment by apparent patriotic vigilantes in the Krasnodar region, an area near the Black Sea, where Greenpeace firefighters had traveled to help put out local grass fires. They had already been confronted by men who identified themselves as Cossacks, socially conservative, pro-Kremlin activists who claim they are descendants of Czarist-era horsemen.

The attackers climbed through a fence surrounding a temporary Greenpeace camp in the region, the head of Greenpeace Russias firefighting project, Grigory Kuksin, said in a statement.

He said the attackers had truncheons, knives, pistols and also damaged cars and slashes tents.

They said that if we dont leave here before morning, then no one would find us, that we should go to our America,' Kuksin added.

Greenpeace posted a photo of the bloodstained face of Mikhail Kreindlin, a member of the firefighting team who suffered a broken nose, and said that the activists were seeking a safe place and medical attention.

While fighting forest fires may seem an apolitical task, environmental activism can carry a serious price in Russia  particularly when local business interests are involved.

Greenpeaces most sensational conflict in Russia came in 2013 when a crew of 30 activists and journalists aboard the groups ship, Arctic Sunrise, were arrested near an oil rig owned by a subsidiary of Gazprom, the Russian state energy giant, in the Pechora Sea in northwest Russia. The team aboard the ship was charged with piracy, but later pardoned after international negotiations.

Khalimat Tekeeva, a Greenpeace Russia press officer, called Fridays attack unprecedented.

Weve never faced incidents like this: a group of people attacking a group of Greenpeace activists, Tekeeva wrote. We work with lots of firefighting groups in different regions in Russia and everything was okay.

She added that the Russian firefighting authorities had asked for our help and welcomed our trip to the Black Sea region.

In May, a group wearing the traditional fleece hats of Cossacks assaults a group of anti-corruption activists at an airport in southern Russia.

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Advocates for the return of a dozen free-range horses to Lincoln County won their fight Thursday to temporarily stop the state Livestock Board from selling the herd while they pursue their legal effort to return it permanently to the Alto area where it was seized last month.

At a hearing in Carrizozo Thursday, 12th District Judge Dan Bryant granted a temporary restraining order that bars the Livestock Board from taking any action to sell or divide the herd while the case goes forward.

Bryant also gave the plaintiff Wild Horse Observers Association and the more than 100 people who turned out to show support for bringing the horses back a good deal more to cheer about.

The judge invited the Livestock Board to consider returning the horses immediately to Lincoln County into the custody of anyone willing to provide space and care for them and also to sign a certificate agreeing to comply with any future orders the judge issues in the case.

And he sent a strong signal that WHOA has a strong shot at eventually persuading him that the Alto herd should be designated wild horses under state law and that the Livestock Board was wrong to take custody of them and put them up for sale in the first place.

I have heard substantial evidence that this band may be wild horses as the legislature intended to define them in the statute, Bryant said. And I have heard substantial evidence that the Livestock Board may have violated the law.

The judge referred several times during the nearly four-hour hearing and in his ruling to a New Mexico Court of Appeals decision last year which held that a similar group of unowned horses in Placitas were wild horses, not estray livestock as the Livestock Board had claimed.

Bryant was careful to emphasize that his ruling doesnt mean that WHOA is sure to win its case. But in order to grant a restraining order against the Livestock Board, the judge was implicitly finding a substantial likelihood that WHOA would succeed in proving its case on the merits.

Livestock Board executive director William Bunce said in an email to the News Thursday afternoon that no bids had yet been received but bids would remain open until Monday unless the court stopped the sale.

If the bidding continues it will be for five mare/colt or filly pairs, and two individuals, he said. If the sale is stopped by court order, he added, the horses would remain at a Livestock Board holding facility in Santa Fe.

But Bryant encouraged the Board and WHOA supporters to work out a better arrangement.

Bryants ruling capped a long afternoon of sometimes emotional testimony from horse advocates and also from Caroline McCoy, the Alto property owner who penned up the 12 horses on Aug. 25 and summoned the Livestock Board to take them away.

I had no idea that people thought of these horses as free pets, she said. It was a big surprise.
LONDON  The flow of foreign fighters to the ranks of the Islamic State  once a mighty current of thousands of radicalized men and women converging on Syrian and Iraqi battlefields from nations across the globe  has been cut to a trickle this year as the groups territory has shrunk and its ambitions have withered.

The decline, officials and experts say, has been dramatic, prolonged and geographically widespread, with the number of Europeans, Americans, North Africans and others joining up to fight and die for the idea of a revived Islamic caliphate falling as precipitously as the terrorist groups fortunes.

From a peak of 2,000 new foreign recruits crossing the Turkish-Syrian border each month, the Islamic State and other extremist groups operating in Syria are down to as low as 50, according to U.S. intelligence assessments.

Governments from Britain to Tunisia say their citizens are less likely than they have been in years to heed Islamic State calls for front-line volunteers, depriving the organization of needed reinforcements and further eroding its ability to cast itself as the rebirth of a vast Islamic empire.

Its a massive falloff, said Peter Neumann, director of the International Center for the Study of Radicalization at Kings College London. And its basically because Islamic State is a failing entity now. The appeal of Islamic State rested on its strength and its winning. Now that its losing, its no longer attractive.

The sustained decline marks an important milestone in global efforts to defeat the Islamic State, reflecting measures ranging from a multinational military campaign to, in at least one nation, rules requiring parental permission slips before young men can leave the country.

But Neumann and others said the decline in Islamic State recruiting figures  which has come almost as quickly as they rose following leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadis declaration of a caliphate in June 2014  is hardly an unmitigated success for the United States and its allies.

Instead, it may be just the beginning of a dangerous new phase, one in which would-be fighters choose to carry out attacks at home rather than travel abroad and battle-hardened veterans seek out new lands for conflict.

Its like after the Afghanistan war in the 1980s, said Neumann, citing the period after Soviet troops withdrew and legions of foreign fighters formed a diaspora of radicalized veterans that gave rise to al-Qaida. Theyll be asking themselves: Whats next? 

That peril helps explain why U.S. and other officials have been cautious in trumpeting the declining foreign-fighter numbers.

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve announced this week that there had been a fourfold decrease in the number of French citizens who had traveled to the Islamic States domain in the first six months of 2016, compared to 69 over the same period last year.

Rather than celebrate, however, French officials have been bracing the public for what could happen if some among the almost 700 French citizens or residents who are still fighting in Syria and Iraq decide its time to come home.

Their return represents an additional menace for our national security, said Prime Minister Manuel Valls, whose country has been hit by repeated terrorist attacks in the past two years.

One European law enforcement official said that although the number of people departing for Syria has been dropping, the security threat may simply be changing, not diminishing.

If you look at one side, fewer people leaving would also mean fewer people getting radicalized and also being passed out from Syria and Iraq to commit attacks, said Wil van Gemert, the head of the operations department at Europol, the European Union law enforcement agency.

But if you look at the summer, you see what kind of attacks weve had, he said, listing incidents in France, Germany and Belgium. We had people who had been radically inspired, and I.S. took a position where they claimed them to be their soldiers, he said, using an abbreviation for the Islamic State.

In many cases, however, the Islamic States connections with those attackers were tenuous at best.

And as the group fights for its survival amid a U.S.-led assault from the air and Turkish, Kurdish and Iraqi military offensives on the ground, the Islamic State has struggled to draw significant numbers of new foreign fighters under its direct control.

As of December, up to 31,000 people from at least 86 countries had traveled to Syria or Iraq to fight alongside the Islamic State or other extremist groups, according to a comprehensive analysis by the Soufan Group, an international security consulting firm.

The extraordinary flows  outpacing those from all other recent conflicts  gave the Islamic State a virtually unending supply of fighters with which to battle the groups myriad enemies. Even more important than battlefield ranks, however, was the propaganda value of an army that matched the scope of Islamic State rhetoric, which called for a global Islamic uprising against infidel regimes.

But since late last year, amid a succession of battlefield losses, that has become a harder case to make as the flows have sharply slowed, creating a self-reinforcing spiral of decline.

The ranks of new fighters have diminished so dramatically that certain countries, such as Belgium and Britain, have not even increased their estimates this year of the number of citizens who have left home to fight.

Olivier Van Raemdonck, a spokesman for Belgiums Coordinating Unit for Threat Analysis, the countrys main terrorism tracking body, said Belgian authorities had received information about a few people departing this year but that they had not been able to confirm the tips. Belgium has had the highest per capita flow of foreign fighters to Syria in all of Europe. But now an entire channel has been shut down, Van Raemdonck said.

In the United States, which has been a far less significant source of fighters than many European nations, the average number of Americans traveling to fight for Islamic State in Syria dropped from 6 to 10 per month during the first half of 2015 to just one a month, FBI Director James B. Comey said in May. He cited the groups lost luster as the cause.

ISIS, the so-called Islamic State brand, has lost significant power in the United States, he said.

The groups reduced international cachet isnt the only explanation for the lower numbers. The increasing difficulty of traveling to Islamic State territory has also hurt recruitment figures, experts and officials say.

Dramatically stepped-up restrictions, including tanks lined up at 50-yard intervals in some places where fighters are known to cross and walls and ditches erected in others, have made it far harder to infiltrate the favored path into Islamic State terrain: the Turkish-Syrian border.

Late last month, the group lost its last remaining foothold on that border, cutting off a valuable conduit through which recruits had long passed. We expect this development to have a positive impact on further reducing the flow of foreign fighters, said a senior Turkish official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Enhanced intelligence-sharing between Turkey and Western governments has also helped to make what was once a relatively easy journey from Europe to Syrian battlefields far more difficult. The Turkish government says it has added more than 40,000 names to its no-entry list based on intelligence supplied by foreign governments in the past year and a half, compared to fewer than 5,000 names in 2014. The rise has been accompanied by a sharp increase in the number of deportations as Turkish authorities intercept would-be fighters and send them home.

The lack of fresh Islamic State manpower is evident on the battlefield. Brig. Gen. Yahya Rasoul, a spokesman for the Iraqi military, said the group has begun to recruit children to plug the gap as adult militants are killed and foreigners leave for Syria or home.

There is big confusion in their ranks, said Rasoul. Whereas the group once used foreign fighters as suicide bombers, Islamic State is increasingly tapping young Iraqi boys, he said.

Besieged senior Islamic State officials have begun to acknowledge that there will be no cavalry coming to bolster their ranks.

In his last speech before he was killed in an airstrike last month, spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani alluded to the increasing problems facing foreigners wishing to travel to Islamic State territory. He also issued the sort of threat that explains why Western security officials fear extremist-fueled attacks wont end just because access to the battlefields of Syria and Iraq has been restricted.

If the tyrants have closed in your faces the door of hijrah [migration], then open in their face the door of jihad and make their act a source of pain for them, he said in a late May audio recording. The smallest action you do in the heart of their land is dearer to us than the largest action by us, and more effective and more damaging to them.

He urged his followers to strike civilian rather than military targets as hitting them is more damaging.

Overstretched European security agencies remain ill-prepared to deal with the consequences if that call is heeded by Islamic State sympathizers, or if the flows start to reverse and fighters return home in large numbers.

Its a five-letter word, and its called intel, said Francois Heisbourg, a former member of a French presidential commission on defense and national security. The only thing you can seriously do is to ramp up the ability to track and keep track of those who are here and those who are coming here.

In Germany, where the flow of foreign fighters to Syria has been cut from an average of dozens a month to a small handful, the head of the Federal Criminal Police Office, Holger Munch, recently told Berlin daily Der Tagesspiegel that those who have already spent a long time with IS, have been exposed to brutal war experiences and established many contacts represent a special threat to German security if they return.

Concern over a reverse flow  or over extremists who decide to strike at home rather than go abroad  is hardly limited to the West.

In Tunisia, the source of the single largest contingent of foreign fighters to the conflicts in Syria and Iraq, the flows have declined as travel to the battlefields has become more difficult, according to officials and analysts. Among the new measures blocking the path of would-be recruits: All men under 35 seeking to travel outside Tunisia need written permission from their parents stating their purpose for leaving.

But the reduced flows have only fueled growing worries that the problem of militant extremism will become even more pronounced domestically.

The battle is shifting from Syria to North Africa, said Badra Gaaloul, a researcher with the Tunis-based International Center of Strategic, Security and Military Studies.

There are a lot of ISIS sleeping cells still active in Tunisia, so many that we call them awake cells,  said Gaaloul. They want to start a caliphate in Tunisia.

As evidence, Gaaloul cited the assault on the border town of Ben Guerdane by Islamic State militants earlier this year, which Tunisian and regional officials say was an attempt to create a new safe haven as the group faces pressure in its Libyan stronghold of Sirte.

In recent days, senior Tunisian officials  who say there are still 4,000 countrymen fighting for the Islamic State and other extremist groups  have publicly expressed concern that Tunisian fighters fleeing Libya and Syria would return.

The danger is real. Those who leave Sirte are heading south to eventually join Boko Haram, but some are also going west [to Tunisia], the countrys defense minister, Farhat Hachani, told journalists, referring to the Nigerian militant group that has pledged support for the Islamic State.

Egypt, too, has seen reduced outflows, having paid off tribes along the Libyan border that run human-smuggling networks to block the path of would-be fighters, according to Mohannad Sabry, an Egyptian journalist and author of a book on the Islamist insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula.

But just because radicalized Egyptians arent formally joining up with the Islamic State doesnt mean they arent a threat, especially as the government feeds extremism by cracking down on its political opponents.

The numbers are decreasing, Sabry said, but actually the number of wannabes is rising.



Raghavan reported from Cairo and McAuley from Paris. Liz Sly in Beirut, Loveday Morris in Baghdad, Karla Adam in London, Stephanie Kirchner in Berlin, Michael Birnbaum and Annabell Van den Berghe in Brussels, and Matt Zapotosky in Washington contributed to this report.

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The U.S. Education Department announced it will begin collecting data this year about allegations of discrimination or bullying of students based on their religion, bringing new attention to what educators and advocates call a growing problem in public schools, particularly for Muslim students.

Catherine E. Lhamon, the departments assistant secretary for civil rights, said the department plans to work with schools and communities to promote inclusive school environments for everyone.

Students of all religions should feel safe, welcome and valued in our nations schools, she said in an announcement.

The news was welcomed by Muslim advocates. Terrorist attacks in Paris, San Bernadino, and Orlando by individuals who claimed allegiance to the Islamic State, and a presidential candidate who has proposed a ban on all Muslims entering the country have fueled a wave of anti-Muslim sentiment.

Frightening headlines and rhetoric on the campaign trial are seeping into school lunch rooms and hallways and being felt by Muslim children, advocates said.

Everything from being called terrorist to jokes about Where is your bomb? Obviously, they are not really jokes, said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

It is creating a kind of toxic learning environment in which these students feel like they are under attack because of their faith, he said.

On December 31, outgoing U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and current U.S. Education Secretary John B. King Jr. sent a joint letter to school leaders across the country enlisting their help to protect against discrimination and harassment of students based on their race or national origin and religion.

The letter said that historic levels of refugees fleeing violence in Syria and other international and domestic events are creating an urgent need for safe spaces for students.

It said students especially at risk of harassment include those who are, or are perceived to be, Syrian, Muslim, Middle Eastern, or Arab, as well as those who are Sikh, Jewish, or students of color.

The letter said educators have a chance to make a real difference in the way communities respond to these events, and it encouraged them to help students grapple with current events and conflicting viewpoints in constructive ways, and not in ways that result in the targeting of particular students for harassment or blame.

The departments Office of Civil Rights enforces Title VI of the Civil Rights Act which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in programs receiving federal funding. Discrimination based on religion is included when it is related to someones actual or perceived shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics.

Last year the office received more than 10,000 complaints of alleged discrimination, including some relating to religion. Those cases were typically not reported separately, as they will be in the future.

In districts found to have hostile environments, federal officials helped to improve harassment policies, training, and school climate surveys.

A better understanding of the prevalence of religious discrimination will help policy makers and educators understand the scope of the problem and protect more students, educators say.

The California Chapter of CAIR found in a 2014 survey of youth that more than half  or 55 percent  of American Muslim students surveyed reported experiencing some form of bullying based on their religious identity while at school.

Zahra, a 17-year old college freshman at Montgomery College, who gave her first name only because of fear of anti-Muslim sentiment, recalled what it felt like when she was a new immigrant to the United States, starting middle school outside of Dallas.

She recalled that she or family members were called her names. In the seventh grade, when she started wearing the hijab, one girl that she considered a friend stopped talking to her at school. Her school bus driver called her a terrorist. For a while she stopped wearing it.

I wanted to not go to school. I would rather be home-schooled, She said. It was terrible for me.

As she got older, she said, teasing or taunts bothered her less. And when she decided to wear the hijab, she did it because she felt proud to wear it.

Now she wants to educate people about Islam.

People are ignorant, that is why they are fearful, she said.

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PARIS  On Friday, President Francois Hollande praised French security forces for apprehending a group of suspected terrorists believed to be plotting another major attack.

On Friday morning, an Interior Ministry official told the Reuters news agency that this foiled attack had been planned for the Gare de Lyon, a train station in the southeast quadrant of the city that is one of the busiest in Europe.

Theres a group that has been annihilated, but there are others, Hollande said. Information we were able to get from our intelligence services allowed us to act before it was too late.

Still reeling from two major attacks in 2015, the French capital has been on edge since Sunday, when authorities discovered an abandoned Peugeot 607 full of gas cylinders parked near Notre Dame Cathedral, in the geographic center of the city.

The area is a major tourist destination that frequently draws crowds to its pedestrian streets and sidewalk cafes, places similar to those near the seaside promenade struck in the Nice attack in July, which killed 86 and injured hundreds more.

On Thursday, authorities arrested three women outside Paris in connection with this suspected plot  aged 19, 23 and 39, respectively. The youngest of them, identified by the Associated Press as Ines Madani, stabbed a police officer during the confrontation, officials told French media.

According to the RTL radio network, Madani had written a letter pledging her support to the Islamic State. The three women were apparently attempting to avenge the death of Abu Muhammad al-Andani, the Islamic States lead propaganda officer killed in Syria in late August, RTL reported.

Before his death, Andani had called on followers of the self-proclaimed caliphate to carry out small-scale attacks on nonbelievers in Europe and the United States, an injunction that became a reality in France and Germany this summer. In July, Islamic State-inspired attackers slit the throat of a French village priest, stabbed tourists on a German train, and shot at random in a Munich shopping mall.

According to the Le Monde newspaper, Ines Madani had been known to authorities since 2015, when she attempted, unsuccessfully, to leave France for Syria, where thousands of foreign-born fighters joined the Islamic State in previous years.

Earlier this week, Frances Interior Minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, announced that the flow of French citizens and residents decamping for Syria has significantly decreased, raising concerns about the possibility of more domestic attacks by would-be fighters who have opted to stay home as the Islamic State loses territory.

As the country struggles to formulate a plan to prevent future attacks of the type planned on the Gare de Lyon, analysts argue that a stronger intelligence infrastructure must be the primary focus of any policy or plan.

Jean-Charles Brisard, the director of the Paris-based Center for the Analysis of Terrorism, argued that an increase in the number of visible military officers, such as those dispatched in the French governments newly minted Operation Sentinel, pales in comparison to intelligence improvements that have largely been ignored.

In June 2015, largely in response to the attack on the Charlie Hebdo newspaper office, the French parliament passed a new intelligence bill that increased the governments powers to monitor its citizens communications.

But, Brisard said in an interview, certain key provisions in this bill  such as the pledged use of ISMI telephone eavesdropping technologies and black boxes designed to catch specific threats sent over communication channels  have not yet been enacted, more than a year after the bill was passed.

In this particular foiled plot, investigators only noticed the abandoned Peugeot when a shopkeeper happened to report it. It sat there, lights flashing, for at least two hours, Florence Duthout, the mayor of Pariss Fifth district, where Notre Dame is located, wrote in a letter to the Paris Police Prefect earlier this week.

In total, seven suspects  two men and five women  have been arrested in the ongoing investigation into the foiled Notre Dame plot. According to an unnamed official quoted in an AP report, one of the men arrested had ties to Larossi Abballa, who live-streamed the murder of a French police officer in June.

The car belonged to the father of Ines Madani, who later reported his daughter to French authorities.

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Kristin Smart went to a college party on a May night in 1996.

She was a freshman at the California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo at the time, and the night of the party, she was wearing running shorts and what the Los Angeles Times described as a short-cropped T-shirt. She left with other students, the newspaper reported, including Paul Flores, who was the last person to see the 19-year-old Smart alive and would later become a person of interest in her disappearance.

Smart went missing after that party.

Now, 20 years later, local and federal authorities have begun an excavation project on the Cal Poly campus to determine whether Smarts remains are on the premises.

After a comprehensive review of the Smart case, a lead was developed over the past two years that strongly suggested the remains of Kristin might be buried on the hillside near the Cal Poly P landmark, the San Luis Obispo County Sheriffs Office said in a statement.

Dogs brought in to search the area earlier this year had alerted on sites in the area, according to the sheriffs office. The agency said the P wasnt the only location that investigators were focusing on, but it was disclosed because of its high-profile nature.

Due to its high visibility, we really decided that it was best just to go ahead and disclose why we are here, Sheriff Ian Parkinson told reporters.

About 25 FBI agents and about 15 members of the sheriffs office would search the site in the coming days, Parkinson said at a news conference.

Were not sure where this is going to take us, he said. Obviously, we want to be [as] optimistic as possible. And we hope that this leads us to either Kristin or evidence of Kristin.

In a statement, Smarts family said they were encouraged and hopeful for the new developments in the case.

We have been hoping, praying and waiting for the last 20 years for the return of our daughter. And while the road has been difficult beyond words; our hopes were rekindled when Sheriff Parkinson took office, the statement read.

The San Luis Obispo Tribune reported that a steady hum of machinery filled the air on a steep Cal Poly hillside Wednesday as members of the FBI Evidence Response Team combed through thousands of cubic feet of dirt.

It is hard labor, FBI Special Agent Tom Brenneis said, according to the Tribune, which noted:

Over the next few days, the team will sift through 20,000 cubic feet of dirt  the equivalent of about a dozen 26-foot-long moving trucks filled to capacity  at each of three different locations on the hillside near the Cal Poly P, the landmark concrete letter that has overlooked campus since 1919. 

Sheriffs officials did not say Wednesday whether anything of interest had been unearthed. Sheriff Ian Parkinson will determine the timing of any announcement, spokesman Tony Cipolla said.

 I think hes just waiting to see what, if anything, is found before we do any kind of announcement, Cipolla said, noting that Parkinson would not want to jeopardize the investigation.

He added: A lot of people are excited that we may find her. Well, we havent. Not yet. 

We are always hopeful, that really keeps us going, Kristin Smarts father, Stan, told KCRA. And its been 20 long years, so we are excited that they are looking  but its a long stretch.

The L.A. Times on Thursday reported that investigators had located items of interest during the dig, though the specifics remained unclear.

We are not disclosing what those items are at this point, Cipolla told the Times. They are being analyzed to see if they are related to this investigation.

Cipolla did not immediately return a telephone message from The Washington Post on Friday.

This is not the first time authorities have tried to locate Smarts remains. Hundreds searched the campus in June 1996, after the teens disappearance, according to the Tribune. And in July of that year, authorities visited the home of Flores, the male student who was the last person to be seen with Smart.

Flores, authorities said this week, remains a person of interest in the case.

The searches continued through the years, but investigators never found Smarts body.

Her roommate told ABC News that she grew concerned when Smart wasnt around after the party in 1996. The roommate tried to alert campus authorities, but her efforts werent successful.

They were like, Its Memorial Day weekend, and if we did this, if we filled out a missing persons [report] for every student who went away for the weekend, etc.,' Smarts roommate, Crystal Calvin, told ABC. You know thats not really necessary. Im sure shell be back.'

A few days later, Smart was declared missing.

She was last seen with Flores, who had also been at the party, the Times reported in 2006. Another student who had been with Smart, Cheryl Anderson, later said in a deposition that she broke away from the duo as they walked back to the dorms.

I said, Will you walk her to her room? you know, Will you take her back to her room? she said. And he said, Yes. And I said something about Yes? and he said  and I said, If you wont, I will do it. I will walk her to her room, you know. . . . I didnt want to have to do it. But, you know, if he didnt want to do it I was  I was going to do it.

Smart had previously been seen on a lawn near the party, according to the Times. Another student, Tim Davis, told investigators that he saw her there. Smart looked like she had passed out, the Times reported, and Davis  who was clearing out the party around 2 a.m.  told authorities that he got her up.

But Smart wasnt in a state in which she could get back to her dorm by herself. Thats how she ended up walking back with Anderson and Flores.

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When Diana Lee Craig cast off on the Oceania Rivieras 10-day Eastern Caribbean cruise, there were no surprises. The ship left Miami as scheduled, stopping in San Juan, St. John, Punta Cana and Nassau, before returning to Florida.

The shock came after she returned home. Gradually, the mailbox of her Sonoma, Calif., winery began to fill with unwanted brochures. First, there was a glossy Oceania flyer promoting sailings in Alaska, the Mediterranean and Asia. But soon more arrived from other cruise lines and tour operators  all vying for her future business.

Now I receive the brochures almost daily, she complains. I have no intention of going on a cruise ever again. Whenever cruise trips come up in social conversation, this  these brochures  seem to be a huge problem.

Oceania automatically adds customers to its mailing list after they book a cruise. A cruise line representative said most passengers enjoy receiving the pamphlets, and that it leads to repeat business.

Guests can certainly opt out of our mailings at any time, either via the website or by contacting us directly, said Oceania spokesman Jason Lasecki.

After I contacted Oceania about Craigs case, the company deleted her name from its mailing list.

But Craig will almost certainly continue to receive brochures. The reason: Other parties, such as her travel agent, may have sold her mailing address to a third party. Shes probably on everyones mailing list now because she lives in affluent Sonoma County and is tagged as a hot prospect for booking a luxury cruise.

While there are several ways to remove your name from these lists, they take time and effort. Her case, and others like it, highlight the inadequacy of federal laws and voluntary compliance by an industry that sometimes doesnt seem to know when enough is enough.

Jay Acunzo, a Boston marketing consultant, says the assault on Craigs mailbox is a sign of the times. Marketing has a long history of convincing itself that non-marketers actually enjoy marketing, says Acunzo, who is the founder of Unthinkable.fm, a podcast and radio show exploring creative intuition in marketing. Thats simply not true.

Travel companies that automatically add clients to their lists are betting theyll get their repeat business by carpet-bombing them with offers. This only works for a small percentage of customers, but thats still enough to make it worthwhile to advertisers.

Although the American Society of Travel Agents (ASTA), a trade organization, has a clause in its code of ethics that prevents agents from disclosing any information without permission of the client, unless required by law, its relatively easy for customers to inadvertently opt in online. No one reads the fine print on those terms and conditions, anyway. That allows a travel adviser to freely share or sell a clients address to a third party. (An ASTA spokesman said he could not recall any guidance on email marketing from the organization.)

Transmitting unsolicited email messages is restricted by federal law, but sending brochures through the U. S. Postal Service isnt.

We have no control over the selling of mailing lists by other organizations, says Darleen Reid-DeMeo, a Postal Service spokeswoman.

According to Ken Kosky, the promotions director for Indiana Dunes, a popular vacation area on the southern tip of Lake Michigan, there is an unspoken industry standard on this issue.

People must opt in and request our information, he says. And even when someone asks for information, theres a limit. Our organization only does one additional mailing beyond the initially requested one  the second mailing comes the next year, he adds.

Apparently, though, the standard is not widely embraced.

There are steps consumers can take to avoid unwanted mailings. The Direct Marketing Association (DMA), a trade group, allows you to opt out of all mailing lists at its site, DMAchoice.org. (It also reminds readers, before they opt out, that direct mail is critical to the economic well-being of communities, representing more than $686 billion in sales and supporting jobs at more than 300,000 small businesses across the country. So noted.)

Senny Boone, DMAs general counsel, said companies that ignore the opt-out list face enforcement actions from the organization, which may include publishing the offending organizations name in a report. A consumer should be able to make a choice about direct mailing, she says. But, she adds, DMA doesnt support regulating the industry or moving to an opt-in rule because it would limit their members ability to market to Americans, which would have an impact on the economy.

Consumers dont necessarily agree.

I dont think any company should be able to give your name to any mailing lists, says Marjorie Yasueda, a retired travel agent from San Francisco.

She recommends two steps for getting off the lists: First, call the companys 800 number and opt out. Typically, these requests take about a week to process, and you may receive an errant brochure or two in the meantime. Second, use Catalog Choice, an opt-out service run by a nonprofit organization thats dedicated to stopping junk mail. Theres no charge, and its most effective when used in tandem with the DMA service, she says.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesnt. Before asking me for help, Craig registered at the DMA site. She contacted her travel agency four times to ask it to remove her name from its mailing lists and asked Oceania twice to opt out.

Then theres Carlos Vargas. A retired small-business owner from Chicago, Vargas says hes inundated with brochures, mostly from cruise lines. Thats not including the often-daily email newsletters they send him.

I wonder why they waste so much money in the digital era? he said.

His own behavior answers that question. Vargas has booked dozens of cruises through Royal Caribbean, Holland America, Princess and Celebrity. And for all the perceived waste, he hasnt asked to be removed from the lists, at least not yet.

In other words, the brochures may annoy some recipients  but they work.

But does that make them okay? Should customers like Craig and Yasueda have to take extraordinary steps to keep their mailboxes uncluttered, or is the burden on travel companies to ask for permission to send them brochures? The bottom line: Junk mail, a problem that goes far beyond the travel industry, is almost entirely unregulated. Maybe that needs to change.



Elliott is a consumer advocate, journalist and co-founder of the advocacy group Travelers United. Email him at chris@elliott.org.

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The worlds leaders expressed outrage and alarm Friday over North Koreas latest nuclear test, as Pyongyangs accelerating nuclear program is emerging as a major national security threat that a new U.S. president will confront.

In a White House statement, President Barack Obama condemned Fridays test as provocative and destabilizing and a grave threat to regional and international stability. He said the United States and its allies will seek new United Nations sanctions and take other measures to demonstrate to North Korea that there are consequences to its unlawful and dangerous actions.

To be clear, the United States does not, and never will, accept North Korea as a nuclear state, he said.

The U.N., which in March imposed some of the harshest economic sanctions ever against North Korea, called an emergency meeting to discuss the test, which state news media claimed now allows Pyongyang to produce nuclear warheads small enough to attach to ballistic missiles. The latest test, North Korea said, was its biggest yet, although it may take several days to determine how powerful it was.

At the United Nations, diplomats called for more resolutions and actions.

Jean-Marc Ayrault, the foreign minister of France, a permanent member of the Security Council, said North Koreas latest provocation cannot be left without consequences, especially at the U.N. Security Council.

Secretary General Ban Ki-moon condemned what he called a brazen breach of U.N. resolutions.

I count on the Security Council to remain united and take appropriate action, he told reporters. We must urgently break this accelerating spiral of escalation.

Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States would work with other Security Council members to take robust steps in response, and he urged North Korea to resume denuclearization talks it abandoned in 2009.

We remain open to credible and authentic talks aimed at full and verifiable denuclearization of the DPRK, he said, referring to the countrys official name, the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea. Sadly, the DPRK has chosen a different path and made clear it would not be a credible negotiating partner.

Other leaders used particularly blunt language to denounce what Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull called North Koreas reckless, provocative, dangerous actions.

South Korea accused the Norths leader, Kim Jong Un, of fanatic recklessness. South Korean President Park Geun-hye said his mental state is spiraling out of control.

Japan branded North Korea an outlaw nation in the neighborhood. Russia insisted that Pyongyang stop its dangerous escapades. The International Atomic Energy Agency said North Korea had displayed complete disregard of the repeated demands of the international community.

Even China, Pyongyangs only ally and its economic lifeline to the outside world, said it was resolutely opposed to the test and warned North Korea to refrain from further actions that would worsen the situation.

Although North Korea is not believed to be capable of delivering warheads to the U.S. mainland, it is considered a threat on U.S. troops in South Korea and Japan.

North Koreas fifth missile test, its second this year, reflects the stepped-up pace of its nuclear missile program. After a test in January, the Security Council imposed sweeping new sanctions that bar most trading with the regime for anything other than food, medicine and other humanitarian purposes. But the sanctions have done nothing to stop the governments determination to further its quest to develop ballistics missiles with nuclear warheads. Nor is it clear that further sanctions would be a deterrent.

The current sanctions-only approach, however tough, is simply not working, and continuing on that track is a recipe for even greater failure, said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association. The next president, even before Inauguration Day, will have to have a strategy in place to try to effectively engage with the North to try to leverage the sanctions regime in place to achieve some restraint on North Koreas nuclear missile activities.

The latest test comes as several countries and institutions are on the cusp of transition. Ban, a diplomat from South Korea, will finish his term by the end of the year. South Korea will hold presidential elections next year. And U.S. elections are two months away.

Despite a number of failed missile tests this year, North Koreas nuclear ambitions have barely been mentioned in this years U.S. presidential race. Experts on North Korea and nuclear nonproliferation said the latest nuclear test could change that.

The U.N. has passed five Security Council resolutions and had a major General Assembly vote condemning North Korea for human rights abuses, said Victor Cha, a Korea scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. But the problem is none of this is working. And whether its Clinton or Trump, this is going to be the number one issue. There is no bigger security threat to the homeland than this.

Though it is difficult to assess North Koreas claims about the potency of its nuclear test, experts say it underscores the regimes determination to mass-produce warheads and eventually to deploy them on missiles in the field.

If it doesnt have the capability to threaten its neighbors with nuclear weapons yet, it will at some point, probably sooner rather than later, said James Acton, a physicist who is co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. People disagree about whether theres any chance of threatening the continental United States at the moment. But the trajectory is clear.

So far, nobody has come up with a policy or reaction likely to convince Pyongyang to stop or slow down its nuclear program. Scott Snyder, director of the Program on U.S.-Korea Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the threat is growing as the strategy of patience is proving futile and the potential for confrontation grows.

The current administrations policy has been pursued because of the perception that there was still time to turn North Korea around, he said. But the closer Kim Jong Un gets to having a direct-strike capability, the greater the pressure will be, presenting a new administration with only two options  acquiescence to North Korea as a nuclear state, and use of military force in order to deprive North Korea of that capability. Thats basically the territory we are entering.

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Christopher Cook, 38, of Albuquerque pleaded guilty in federal court Friday to violating the federal firearms laws by unlawfully possessing a firearm and ammunition on Jan. 3, 2015, the day he shot and seriously injured officer Lou Golson of the Albuquerque Police Department.

The U.S. Attorneys Office, in a news release, said the guilty plea was entered without the benefit of a plea agreement.

Cook faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison for the charges unless the court determines that Cook is an armed career criminal. If that happens, he could face a mandatory minimum of 15 years to a maximum of life in prison.

Previously, Cook was sentenced in the Second Judicial District Court for shooting of officer Golson and other charges to 20 years in state prison.

Cooks guilty pleas to both federal and state charges were the result of a collaborative investigative effort involving the U.S. Attorneys Office, Second Judicial District Attorneys Office, ATF, FBI, U.S. Marshals Service, APD, Bernalillo County Sheriffs Office, and New Mexico State Police.

We cannot and will not tolerate violence against law enforcement officers, U.S. Attorney Damon P. Martinez said in a statement. Those who seek to harm the courageous men and women who put their lives on the line to safeguard us and protect our communities are, by definition, the worst of the worst offenders. The entire law enforcement community  federal, state, county, local and tribal  is committed to working collaboratively to thoroughly and completely investigate these individuals, and the District Attorneys and I are united in our resolve to prosecute them  in both the federal and state judicial systems  to the fullest extent of the law.

Second Judicial District Attorney Kari E. Brandenburg said, The worst of the worst initiative is proving to be a very successful cooperative endeavor between state and federal law enforcement. This partnership is making our community safer.
EL PASO, Texas  A U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer has been sentenced to 7 years in federal prison for smuggling Mexican nationals illegally into the United States.

A federal judge in El Paso sentenced 53-year-old Lawrence Madrid on Friday. Senior U.S. District Judge David Briones also ordered Madrid to serve three years of supervised release after he leave prison.

On May 26, a federal jury found Madrid guilty of single counts of conspiracy to smuggle immigrants and aiding and abetting immigrant smuggling, as well as two counts of taking a bribe.

Investigators accused Madrid of allowing three Mexican nationals to enter the country illegally in August 2010, then allowing a Mexican national to enter illegally in September 2011.

Wife Odet Madrid also is charged in the case but is considered a fugitive.
The New Mexico Tourism Department is yanking the welcome mat at half of the visitor centers it operates around the state, citing declines in usage.

The Raton, Chama, Anthony and La Bajada centers are set to close at the end of the day Oct. 7, resulting in the loss of nine jobs and an annual cost savings of $556,342. Officials, however, are hopeful that local communities in those areas will find a way to continue the services with their own staffs.

Gov. Susana Martinez recently directed all state agencies under her purview to reduce spending by 5 percent as part of the states current budget crisis, which would mean about $678,000 for the Tourism Department. Cabinet Secretary Rebecca Latham said budgetary considerations played a role in the decision, but the center closures had been under consideration for some time. A total of 595,249 visited the eight centers in 2015, which is down 52 percent from 2009, according to the state.

The four locations being closed averaged 20,000 visitors per year, the state said.

Its something that weve been thinking about for a long time, and the overall budget situation just gave us the timing, Latham said of the move. It made sense.

The New Mexico Department of Transportation will continue running the traveler rest areas at the Anthony and La Bajada locations.

The centers the Tourism Department will keep open are in Lordsburg, Glenrio, Manuelito and Santa Fe.

Most people stop at the facilities to use their public restrooms, Latham said. Fewer rely on them for information anymore since many travelers look to the internet for driving directions or restaurant recommendations.

Overall thats the real struggle across the country, is people are just able to go to Yelp and find where they should have a good cheeseburger, she said.

Latham said other states have started moving away from a state-funded model and relied on partnerships with local communities to operate visitor centers. At the Anthony and La Bajada locations, for example, the state could provide the space if another agency provided employees or volunteers.

(A) public-private partnership is something thats really working well in many states for tourism marketing, she said.
PHOENIX  State Senate President Andy Biggs stretched his lead to 16 votes over former internet executive Christine Jones after a judge ordered Maricopa County to count 18 additional ballots in the Republican primary in a Phoenix-area congressional district.

Following the ruling, election officials counted the additional ballots to add them to the some 85,000 votes already tabulated in the four-way 5th Congressional District race.

However, the additional counting wont decide the outcome because a recount is planned next week.

State law requires a recount because of Biggs small margin over Jones. He led by nine votes after last months primary.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Joshua Rogers ruled in a lawsuit filed by Jones that 18 uncounted ballots must be tallied because those voters cast provisional ballots at incorrect polling places during the Aug. 30 primary and were not told that their votes wouldnt be counted.

Before the counting of the 18 additional ballots, Biggs had 25,228 votes and Jones 25,219 while two other candidates  Don Stapley and Justin Olson  each about 17,000 votes.

Biggs now has 25,240 votes after picking up 12 Friday while Jones got five votes and now has a 25,224 total. The other vote among the 18 provisional ballots counted went to Stapley.

The GOP nominee in the heavily Republican district in southeastern Phoenix suburbs will almost certainly replace Republican Rep. Matt Salmon, who is retiring.

With the required additional counting, county officials now plan to canvass the primary election results Monday.

The state canvass is also set for Monday, after the county submits its official results. State officials then will seek court permission for a recount.

The recount itself could begin and finish by Friday.

While Jones lawsuit argued that Maricopa County should have counted votes from at least 300 eligible voters who cast ballots that werent counted for various reasons, an attorney for Biggs argued during a hearing that Jones was creating chaos and disruptions in an attempt to win the election.

Rogers rejected several of Jones arguments but said the 18 voters were denied their right to vote by poll workers failure to direct them to the correct precincts.

The judge said numerous voters who were either told by poll workers that their vote would count or, by silence, were misled to believe that their vote would count, were disenfranchised.

Joseph Kanefield, an attorney for Jones, sent a letter to Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell on Friday afternoon asking her count 136 provisional ballots that were cast in the wrong polling place.

He said it was a matter of fundamental constitutional law and the right thing to do for the voters in the county and district.

Unfortunately, it now appears that Christine Jones is headed back to court to further delay the voters will and attempt to find a way to erase her 16-vote deficit, Biggs campaign consultant Adam Deguire said in a statement. I suppose after losing the election and then losing the lawsuit, she is now hoping that a third times a charm.'

Matt Roberts, a spokesman for the Arizona Secretary of States Office, said either or both campaigns could go to court next week to contest the official results once the state approves the canvass.

This court fight is just getting started, he predicted.

___

AP writer Walter Berry contributed to this report.
OAKLAND, Calif.  Seven current and former San Francisco Bay Area police officers will be charged in a sexual misconduct scandal involving a teenager who was later arrested in Florida in an unrelated assault case, a prosecutor said Friday.

The wide-ranging scandal surfaced in June when the teenager, who described herself as a prostitute, said she had sex with about 30 law enforcement officials in Oakland and elsewhere in the region.

Alameda County District Attorney Nancy OMalley said Friday she was waiting until shes certain the teen can be returned to California before filing charges against the officers.

The teen was jailed in Florida on suspicion of assaulting a guard at a drug treatment center where she was living.

OMalley criticized the Richmond Police Department for helping arrange for the teen, now 19, to stay at the center on the other side of the country, saying her unavailability could hurt the prosecution if she is unable to testify.

The teen has said she had sexual encounters with six Richmond police officers and two dozen other law enforcement officials, including some from Oakland, during the past two years.

Richmond Police Chief Allwyn Brown and department spokesman Lt. Felix Tan didnt return phone calls and emails seeking comment.

The teen said she had sex with four officers before she turned 18 and sometimes traded sex for protection from arrest or tips about planned prostitution stings.

OMalley identified the officers to be charged as former Contra Costa sheriffs Deputy Ricardo Perez; former Livermore police Officer Dan Black; Oakland police Officers Brian Bunton, Giovani LoVerde and Warit Utappa; and former Oakland police Officers Tyrell Smith and Leroy Johnson.

The prosecutor said Perez and LoVerde will be charged with oral copulation with a minor, a felony, and Bunton will be charged with felony obstruction of justice and misdemeanor engaging in an act of prostitution.

The other four suspects will face misdemeanor counts of engaging in prostitution and unauthorized access of a confidential criminal justice database, OMalley said.

Efforts to reach the officers were not immediately successful, and its unclear if any of them are represented by attorneys.

Barry Donelan, president of the union representing Oakland officers, didnt return a call or respond to an email seeking comment.

The union said in a prepared statement that it was disappointed by the scandal and assured residents the majority of officers are hardworking and upstanding.

The ever-deepening scandal has thrown the Oakland Police Department into crisis and put dozens of officers under suspicion.

The saga began in September when Oakland officer Brendan OBrien killed himself, leaving behind a suicide note discussing the relationships that he and other officers had with the teen.

In March, a federal judge with oversight of the troubled department said he was dissatisfied with the internal affairs investigation and ordered a re-examination of OBriens suicide.

In June, the teen told The Associated Press and other media outlets that she had sex with four officers when she was younger than 18.

OMalley said her investigation was limited to Alameda County but authorities had found evidence that the teen had sex with police officers in other jurisdictions in San Francisco, Contra Costa and San Joaquin counties.

OMalley also said the teen had friended many, many officers on social media and a large number of them engaged in sexually charged exchanges online.

OMalley said those exchanges were morally reprehensible but not crimes.

The Associated Press generally doesnt identify people who say they are victims of sex crimes.

Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf previously said disciplinary action has begun against a dozen officers in the city, including dismissal proceedings against four.

Seven will serve a range of unpaid suspensions before being allowed to return to duty and another will be required to attend training classes.

The Oakland department previously said two officers implicated in the scandal have resigned in addition to OBriens suicide.

The department cycled through three chiefs in 10 days in June after the allegations were first reported in the media.

A Livermore officer who had been on administrative leave resigned Thursday after seeing the results of the investigation by his department.

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AP writers Janie Har and Kristen Bender contributed to this story.

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This story has been corrected to say charges will be filed against seven officers, not have been filed.
TOKYO  North Korea has taken a key step toward its goal of developing a nuclear-tipped missile capable of reaching the mainland United States, analysts said Friday after Kim Jong Un ordered yet another nuclear test.

The test, which Pyongyang said was a nuclear warhead explosion, appeared to be North Koreas biggest yet.

Its a clear indication of progress towards developing a miniaturized nuclear warhead for North Koreas ballistic missiles, said Alison Evans, a North Korea analyst at IHS Markit, a consultancy.

We estimate that North Korea has an inventory of 15 or 20 nuclear weapons and that they could be put on a truck or a short-range missile. But what North Korea is aiming for is to put them on an intercontinental ballistic missile, she said.

North Korea was officially founded 68 years ago Friday  the day of the nuclear test  with opposition to the United States as its raison detre. Its propaganda lauds the protection the Kim family has provided from the hostile Americans.

But the reclusive country has dramatically accelerated its nuclear and missile programs since Kim Jong Un became North Koreas third-generation leader almost five years ago, conducting three of its five nuclear tests in that time.

Since early 2014, Pyongyang has also noticeably stepped up its missile testing, launching a variety of vehicles, including some long-range missiles. Last month, it successfully launched a ballistic missile from a submarine.

On Monday, North Korea launched three extended-range Scud missiles in quick succession, apparently to try to outsmart U.S. and Japanese missile-defense systems in the region.

Then, on Friday, it said it had standardized nuclear warheads so that it could produce a variety of smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear warheads of higher strike power.

The test showed that North Korea is ready to retaliate against the enemies and has practical countermeasures to the racket of threat and sanctions against Pyongyang, the official Korean Central News Agency said.

It is impossible to verify North Koreas claim to have mastered the technology to fit warheads to missiles, as that proof would come only with a test. And Pyongyang does have a habit of exaggerating its abilities, with its claim to have tested a hydrogen bomb in January immediately dismissed as fanciful.

But Kims regime has clearly been working toward being able to deliver a nuclear-tipped missile on target.

In March, state media announced that North Korean scientists had miniaturized a nuclear warhead, and photos were published of Kim examining what was described as a miniaturized weapon  a mirrored device that looked like a disco ball.

While there is still considerable skepticism that North Korea has been able to make such a breakthrough, there is also an increasing assumption among military officials in South Korea and the United States that its only a matter of time until North Korea gets there.

Twenty years ago, the idea of North Korea being able to deliver a nuclear warhead to the U.S. seemed far-fetched, said Sharon Squassoni, director of the proliferation prevention program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Theyre not there yet, but with each round of tests, they inch a little bit closer.

But the countries in North Koreas neighborhood are already at risk, Squassoni said. This nuclear material could be put on a boat or an airplane or even a wheelbarrow and delivered to North Koreas neighbors.

Indeed, the way North Korea described its capabilities  linking them to an artillery unit  suggests that it is focused closer to home, said Joshua Pollack, editor of the Nonproliferation Review.

They described this as a step that was necessary for them to mass-produce warheads for the theater, underscoring that regional powers ought to be taking this seriously, he said.

North Korea has been hinting of more provocations to come. In an angry statement released after the U.N. Security Council condemned its submarine-launched ballistic missile test late last month, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry in Pyongyang warned of deadly strikes to be made by the enraged people of North Korea.

Now that the U.S. posed threats to the dignity and the right to existence of the DPRK, defying its serious warning, it will continue to take a series of eventful action steps as a full-fledged military power, the spokesman said, using the official abbreviation for North Korea.

While it is easy to dismiss North Koreas florid rhetoric as exaggeration, analysts carefully parse such statements for clues as to what Pyongyang might do next and have found that they sometimes bear out.

Dealing with North Korea will be a major challenge for the next U.S. administration, regardless of who wins the presidency. President Barack Obamas administration has generally followed a policy of strategic patience, trying to wait out North Korea, which, under Kim, has shown very little interest in negotiating away its nuclear program.

The international community should try to stymie North Koreas progress before it reaches its goal, Squassoni said. Its still a little way off in the future until that capacity emerges, but we should not wait until this is a real threat before we try to deal with it.

One immediate effect of North Koreas latest nuclear test is that it could bolster calls for South Korea to have its own nuclear weapons, said Euan Graham, a security expert at the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney who once served as a British diplomat in Pyongyang.

As North Korea has made advances in its nuclear weapons technology, a small but growing number of prominent politicians and academics have been openly advocating for South Korea to have nuclear weapons, too.

Some people in South Korea might question if the U.S.s nuclear deterrence is enough, Graham said, and wonder if they should have weapons, too, or if they should be pushing for the U.S. to bring nuclear weapons back to South Korea.

That idea was gaining traction on social media Friday.

I strongly support South Koreas nuke armament, one commenter said in a forum on the Naver Internet portal, according to the Yonhap News Agency. As I should know how to protect myself, we should defend our own country. An independent defense is the answer.

nkorea-3rdld-writethru
September 9, 2016, 10:50 a.m.

[Provisional Translation]



The Japan Meteorological Agency detected seismic waves which may differ from the ordinary waveform of a natural earthquake. There is the possibility that North Korea went ahead with a nuclear test. I already issued three instructions: to collect and analyze information with a sense of urgency; to provide information to the Japanese public in an accurate manner; and to coordinate closely with the United States and the Republic of Korea (ROK) as well as other relevant countries such as China and Russia.

If North Korea did indeed conduct a nuclear test, then it is totally unacceptable and we must lodge our serious protest.

Later, after the cabinet meeting, we are scheduled to hold a National Security Council (NSC) meeting to share and analyze information. Going forward, I believe that we must continue to collaborate closely with the United States and ROK. I exchanged views on the issue of North Koreas ballistic missiles with President Park Geun-hye and with President Obama in Hangzhou and Vientiane, and we will continue to work closely with them. Furthermore, Japan is currently a nonpermanent member of the Security Council and we must also collaborate in New York on how we respond if North Korea indeed conducted a nuclear test.


[Provisional Translation]





1. Today at around 9:30 a.m., the Japan Meterological Agency detected seismic waves which may differ from the ordinary waveform of a natural earthquake, with an epicenter located in North Korea or in its vicinity. Based on a comprehensive consideration of the information including this, the Government of Japan considers that North Korea conducted a nuclear test.

2. The countries concerned including Japan and the international community have repeatedly called on North Korea to fully comply with the relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions (UNSCRs), and repeatedly requested, with strong warnings, not to conduct any further provocation, including nuclear tests and ballistic missile launches. Furthermore, following North Koreas nuclear test in January and ballistic missile launch, which it purported to be a satellite, in February, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 2270 in March, which, in addition to strongly condemning them, greatly increased and strengthened sanctions. This nuclear test, which North Korea conducted today despite these calls, is totally unacceptable. In the light of the fact that North Korea went ahead with a series of nuclear tests in an unprecedentedly short period of time, as well as the fact that, this year, North Korea has launched 21 ballistic missiles which could serve as means to deliver weapons of mass destruction, and that it has been enhancing their capability, North Koreas nuclear development constitutes a grave threat to Japans security and seriously undermines the peace and security of the region as well as the international community. The nuclear test by North Korea is a clear and repeated violation of the relevant UNSCRs, and represents a grave challenge to the international disarmament and non-proliferation regime centered on the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). It also violates the Japan-DPRK Pyongyang Declaration as well as the Joint Statement of the Six-Party Talks. Japan lodges a serious protest against North Korea, and condemns North Korea in the strongest possible terms.

3. Japan has initiated coordination for a prompt meeting of the United Nations Security Council, taking into account UNSCR 2270 which clearly expressed the determination to take further significant measures against North Korea in the event of another nuclear test. Japan reiterates its strong demand for North Korea to immediately and fully implement the relevant UNSCRs and to take concrete action towards comprehensively resolving outstanding issues of concern, including the abductions, nuclear and missile issues.

4. The Government of Japan, based on my instructions, will continue to thoroughly ensure the collection and analysis of information on the situation in North Korea including this matter, and provide the public with accurate information. Furthermore, the Government will also seamlessly maintain necessary posture, to prevent contingencies and to respond most appropriately when they occur, and work closely together with the United States and others, and thereby take all possible measures to ensure peace and security of Japan as well as the security and safety of the people. In addition, with regard to the effect on Japan of radioactive materials associated with the nuclear test, the Governments Liaison Meetings for Radiological Countermeasures will take the lead in making utmost efforts to strengthen the monitoring system in coordination with the countries concerned.

Japan will steadily implement measures of its own including those decided in February and measures under the relevant UNSCRs. Furthermore, the Government will further strengthen collaboration with the countries concerned, such as the United States, the Republic of Korea, China and Russia, seek to ensure the effectiveness of UNSCR 2270 and the other relevant UNSCRs, and consider further measures against North Korea including further action in the United Nations Security Council.


Published On Sep 09, 2016 12:40 PM By Arun

Jeep has kicked off with retail sales in India, with the inauguration of their first dealership in the country. Located in the bustling metro of Ahmedabad, the 'destination store' as Jeep likes to call it, is spread over 7,400 square-feet. The store is first of 10 the American brand plans on opening in 2016. Cities in line to get Jeep dealerships this year include Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Kochi, Chandigarh and New Delhi.

Notably, Jeep kick-started its after sales operations, by inaugurating a massive 12,000 square-feet workshop located in Sanand. The manufacturer also pointed out that their products such as the Jeep Wrangler and the Jeep Grand Cherokee come bundled with a two year / unlimited kilometre warranty as standard. The warranty has international coverage and is transferable to the second owner as well. Jeep will also provide roadside assistance in the unfortunate event of a breakdown, under the 'Jeep Assist' umbrella. "Toll free assistance will be provided 24/7 in case of accidents and breakdowns and additionally, customers will be provided with a return journey Business Class air ticket or a hotel stay," read a press release issued by Jeep India.

Also read: Jeep Grand Cherokee: 27 Years Of Evolution

The manufacturer currently retails two products, namely the Jeep Wrangler Unlimited and the Jeep Grand Cherokee. The souped-up, performance-oriented SRT version of the Grand Cherokee is on offer as well. The products, though competent, have faced some flak for the high pricing. Nonetheless, the manufacturer plans on stepping up its game in the country and will be manufacturing Jeeps locally for export as well as domestic sales.

Recommended Read: Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT vs BMW X5M
MATTOON -- Current Lake Land College students and community members are invited to attend Transfer Day which will be held Wednesday from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in the Lake Land College Field House.

More than 15 colleges and universities from all across Illinois will attend the event to discuss transfer options to four-year colleges or universities. Additionally, opportunities to discuss admission requirements, special major requirements, tuition costs and disability services will be available.

The event is free and open to community members who would like to attend.

Institutions present at the event include:

Southeast Missouri State University, Franklin University, Indiana State University, Blackburn College, Barnes-Jewish College, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Lincoln Christian University, MyCreditsTransfer, Northern Illinois University, Eastern Illinois University, Methodist College, Lakeview College of Nursing,

Illinois College, Butler University, Saint Louis College of Pharmacy, Eastern Illinois University Army ROTC, University of Illinois at Springfield, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Illinois State University.

For more information, contact Ellie Claybaugh in Counseling Services at 217-234-5574.
Modified On Sep 12, 2016 12:12 PM By Raunak for Hyundai Elite i20 2017-2020

The Elite i20 borrows the petrol automatic drivetrain from the first-generation model and we pitch it against the rest of the options available in the same price band.

One of the premium hatchback segments best-sellers  the Elite i20  is finally offering a long-awaited automatic option. Hyundai has launched the Elite i20 automatic with a 1.4-litre petrol engine at a price of Rs 9.01 lakh (ex-showroom, New Delhi). The 1.4-litre petrol engine in the i20 attracts more duties (in sub-4m vehicles, petrol engines that are 1.2 litres and lower attract lower taxes), which has landed the Hyundai in the price territory of the turbocharged Polo GT TSI, while making it more expensive than its direct rivals  the Maruti Suzuki Baleno and the Honda Jazz. Heres what all the four petrol automatics have to offer.

Prices (ex-showroom New Delhi)

Mechanicals

The Volkswagen Polo GT TSI is the most powerful car in this comparison with its turbocharged 1.2-litre petrol motor. It also has a modern seven-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission as against the CVT of the Jazz and the Baleno, while the Elite i20 offers an ancient four-speed unit. It is worth mentioning that the Honda Jazz also comes with segment-first steering-mounted paddle shifters (borrowed from the Honda City)!

Features

The Hyundai Elite i20 loses severely in terms of features, courtesy the fact that the automatic variant based on the trim that is second to the base  Magna.

Maruti has recently introduced the automatic option in the Zeta trim of the Baleno, which is just below the range-topping Alpha variant. The Baleno Zeta comes with UV cut glasses, leather-wrapped steering wheel, automatic headlamps, auto-dimming IRVM, rear wash-wipe and defogger, rear parking sensors, electrically foldable ORVMs, auto AC and push-button engine start-stop, among others. It offers a Bluetooth-enabled audio system featuring connectivity options such as AUX-in and USB, along with CD playback.

The Honda Jazz V CVT is also one of the most feature-loaded cars here, like the Baleno Zeta. The Honda comes with a five-inch audio system (non-touch) featuring Bluetooth phone integration, along with AUX-in and USB connectivity. The unit also offers support for the rear-view camera and it comes with multiple camera views. The rest of the features include electrically foldable ORVMs, leather-wrapped steering wheel and gearshift knob, touch-based auto AC and rear wash-wipe and defogger. The Honda Jazz also offers class-leading 354 litres of boot space.

The Polo GT TSI offers an audio system with Bluetooth phone integration, along with AUX-in, USB connectivity and SD card input. The rest of the features include rear parking sensors, auto-dimming IRVM, ambient lights, leather-wrapped flat-bottom steering wheel and gearshift knob, auto AC, cruise control and aluminium pedal cluster.

The poorly equipped Elite i20 automatic offers an audio system with built-in one gigabyte of memory, along with Bluetooth phone integration, and AUX-in and USB connectivity. It also comes with manual AC with rear vents and electronically adjustable ORVMs.

Except the Elite i20 that offers steel wheels, all the three cars come with alloy wheels. However, the Baleno offers 16-inchers as opposed to 15-inch wheels on the remaining two. The Baleno and the Jazz also come with LED tail lamps. The Polo features fog lamps with cornering lamps.

Safety

All the four hatchbacks come with dual-front airbags and, with the exception of the Hyundai Elite i20, ABS (Anti-lock Braking System) is also offered on the remaining cars. Besides this, the VW Polo GT TSI also comes with features such as Electronic Stabilisation Programme (ESP) and hill-hold control.

In a nutshell, the Hyundai Elite i20 clearly lacks in terms of equipment on offer as opposed to the Jazz, the Baleno, and even the GT. Though it has a more powerful engine than the Baleno and the Jazz, the equally priced Polo GT TSI outperforms the i20 in this department. The Elite i20 has borrowed the automatic drivetrain from the first-generation model and when the latter was on sale, there wasnt much competition, but things are different now. Do let us know in the comments section what you think about the Elite i20 automatic.

Read More on : Elite i20
The National Institute of Standards and Technology, which publishes guidelines, recently confirmed something security professionals have been saying for a number of years, that SMS is not totally protected.

SMS is really a vulnerable two-factor authentication method, pointed out Michael Lynch, chief strategy officer for Boston-based digital device intelligence company InAuth. SMS is frequently targeted by fraudsters especially when it is used as some type of one time code or verification.

NIST, the non-regulatory agency of the Commerce Department, specifically singled out risk of SMS when used in 2FA in its latest draft of the Digital Authentication Guideline. NIST stated that SMS messages are vulnerable to interception and redirection. NIST made it clear in a blog that it was not yet banning use of SMS, only discouraging its use. The final guidelines, however, might discourage the use of SMS-based authentication for out-of-band verification.
Wouldnt it be great to have a steady supply of Godiva chocolates anytime you want? How about Dom Perignon? Even better, season tickets to all your favorite teams games? Nice, but hardly necessities.

When credit unions first offered convenience services, like remote deposit and electronic bill payment, they were seen as nice to have for members, but not something the credit union really had to offer. Thats changed. Retailers and service providers are expected to offer easy-to-use apps that consumers can access on their own tech devices anytime they want. In fact, 90% of the time Americans spend on their smartphones is for apps, according to Yahoos Flurry. Flurry saw it coming; three years ago, the analytics firm famously said, Its an App World. The Web Just Lives in It.

Looking at our industry, new research by The Pew Charitable Trusts found that 46% of all U.S. adults have made payments via mobile apps  some 114 million people. In 2011 44% of cells were smartphones; todays share is nearly double that. And the Feds report, Consumers and Mobile Financial Services 2016, revealed that more than half the people who have smartphones used mobile banking in the last year.

Discontent breeds innovation

As with most financial services, mobile banking is no longer a delighter  its an expected function, almost to the point of commoditization. Thats the normal curve when ideas turn into usable products and services. Thomas Edison said, Discontent is the first necessity of progress. He went on to say anyone who is thoroughly satisfied is likely a failure. Strong words. But consider: If we cant think of anything to change, we wont try to make life better.

I suspect many credit union executives are hesitant to upgrade their product offerings, not because theyre happy with the status quo but because of other priorities. New technologies that can bring cutting-edge services to their members are often met with, yeah, it would be nice to have, but were in the middle of a big [fill in the blank], and this isnt something we need right now. I get it. Faced with all the other challenges on managers plates, who needs a self-inflicted wound? But what if your credit union hadnt launched ATMs? How about online banking? Would your members have stuck around?

Must-haves benefit everyone

Cloud technology offers a good example of nice  and necessary. Financial institutions often worry about using resources to research and implement a cloud solution. But thats short-sighted. While most cant afford to deep-six their legacy systems, they could save considerable staff time  and hard dollars  by using secure cloud technology to connect their systems to consumers tech devices. The result: greater efficiencies, reduced costs and satisfied members, which translates into loyal members.

Many credit unions also shy away from the cloud because of security concerns. Its no wonder when you consider the growing number of data breaches, phishing scams and ransomware schemes. The truth is, the public cloud is scary, with data from people, companies and other organizations mixed together in one huge, risk-infested stew.

Services like Virtual StrongBoxs secure customer engagement platform also illustrates nice but needed technology. When we launched our ultra-secure private storage solutions, many service providers considered it a sticky product  something that would be nice to offer consumers as an extra, but not that useful to the institution. Thats changing as high-security-risk enterprises are recognizing the power of a truly safe way to store and share documents with their customers.

Initially, credit unions, banks and wealth-management firms began providing their members/customers their own, discrete virtual safe-deposit boxes in which to store vital personal papers  a nice service. But now these institutions  and even credit union regulators  are seeing the real value: need to have features such as patented, end-to-end encryption technology; secure file-exchange with permission-based document sharing; and private-cloud infrastructure that is SSAE16 SOC-compliant and includes redundant servers.

Mobile apps and secure cloud technology are more than nice to have  theyre transforming every industry. In the same way, Virtual StrongBoxs Business Outsource Processing simplifies workflows while protecting sensitive company data  a must-have bridge uniting security and member convenience.

Edisons caution against becoming too content is a good reminder that, in large measure, loyalty depends on our ability to continue satisfying members needs  and wants. I remember folks in my parents generation being amused at Facebook and other social media, seeing it as passing fancy and time waster. I bet these same people are happy to use the technology now to keep up with the grandkids. Nice idea.
The U.S. Treasurys Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) published a proposed rule to remove the anti-money laundering (AML) program exemption for banks that lack a federal functional regulator, including, but not limited to, private banks, non-federally insured credit unions and certain trust companies. Comments are due by Oct. 24.

Most financial institutions became subject to an AML program requirement under the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) with FinCENs issuance of an interim final rule in 2002. The interim final rule stated that an institution regulated by a federal functional regulator shall be deemed to satisfy the requirements of 31 U.S.C. 5318(h)(1) if it implements and maintains an [AML] program that complies with the regulation of its Federal functional regulator governing such programs.

Federal functional regulator includes the NCUA, each of the federal banking agencies, as well as the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. NCUAs BSA-AML program requirements are found in Part 748.2 of the agencys regulations.
Are US Voting Machines Secure From Hackers?

Some key swing states have declined an offer from the Homeland Security Department to scan voting systems for hackers ahead of the presidential elections.

As suspected Russian-sponsored attackers compromise Democratic Party and other US political data allegedly to sway voter opinion, some security experts say it wouldnt even take the resources of a foreign nation to manipulate actual votes using this countrys antiquated tallying systems.

Against this backdrop, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson during an Aug. 15 call with state election officials, offered states DHS services that can inspect voting systems for bugs and other hacker entryways. Earlier in the month, he also suggested the federal government label election systems as official US critical infrastructure, like the power grid.

But some battleground states, including Georgia and Pennsylvania, say they will rely on in-house security crews to maintain the integrity of voter data.

The question remains whether the federal government will subvert the Constitution to achieve the goal of federalizing elections under the guise of security, Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp told Nextgov in an email. Designating voting systems or any other election system as critical infrastructure would be a vast federal overreach, the cost of which would not equally improve the security of elections in the United States.

Georgia, where some projections show presidential contenders Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump neck and neck, reportedly could use a vote machine reboot.

Georgia, which is running electronic-only machinestheres no paper trail.  And the machines theyre using are more than a decade old, so the hardware is falling apart. And the operating system theyre using is Windows 2000, which hasnt been updated for security for years, which means its a sitting duck, Zeynep Tufekci, a University of North Carolina information and library science professor, told NPR on recently.

There is no evidence ballot manipulation has ever occurred in the United States, and, per Johnson, DHS is not aware of any credible cyber-threats related to 2016 general election systems.

All the same, vote machine hacks are all the rage among researchers at Las Vegas hacker confabs.

Even top White House tech privacy adviser Ed Felten helped demonstrate the weaknesses of digital voting booths in his previous life as a Princeton University academic. In a 2009 paper Felten co-authored, researchers commanded an AVC Advantage voting machine, the kind still deployed in Pennsylvania and other states, to steal votes. No Internet required. They altered a pretend election by inserting a malicious memory cartridge the size of a paperback book that would typically be used for recording votes. The tainted device combined snippets of authorized code inside the system to cause the unauthorized behavior.

An attacker who has access to the machine the night before an election can use our techniques to affect the outcome of an election by replacing the election program with another whose visible behavior is nearly indistinguishable from the legitimate program but that adds, removes or changes votes as the attacker wishes, Felten and colleagues from Princeton, University of California at San Diego and the University of Michigan wrote in Proceedings of the 2009 Electronic Voting Technology Workshop.

No Recounts

Because of hacking concerns, many states are keeping a paper trail to audit the vote count, but not all. In addition to Georgia, parts of Pennsylvania, another tossup state, do not maintain paper backups in the event of a hack, Tufekci said.

Pennsylvania officials say cybersecurity experts from the commonwealths IT shop work closely with the state elections team to secure voting-related infrastructure. Pennsylvania has implemented policies, technologies, best practices and procedures around the safeguarding of data and the protection of our applications, systems and resources, Pennsylvania Department of State spokeswoman Wanda Murren said. We constantly monitor our data and systems for vulnerabilities and attempted attacks in order to keep pace with the rapidly evolving threat landscape.

She declined to go into specifics as a matter of policy.

A Homeland Security spokesman told Nextgov on background several states currently use DHS hygiene scans and assessment services for voting systems. He would not disclose the names of any jurisdictions.

Florida, where Trump has been down nine points, declined to say whether it will ask DHS to scan local voting machines but did participate in the national teleconference with Johnson.

The Florida secretary of State Department is engaged with DHS, in addition to all of our other state and federal stakeholders, on an ongoing basis to help ensure the security and integrity of Florida elections, department spokeswoman Meredith M. Beatrice said.

Ohio, where Clinton has a narrow advantage over Trump, appears to be taking advantage of some DHS support for election cybersecurity.

The Ohio Department of Homeland Security is working with their federal counterparts, so we are working through them to perform the needed scans, Ohio secretary of state spokesman Joshua Eck told Nextgov in an email.

Richard Clarke, a former National Security Council adviser under presidents Bill Clinton and both of the George Bushes, cautions it could be hard to detect a slight manipulation of voter data in some swing precincts.

Smart malware can be programmed to switch only a small percentage of votes from what the voters intended. That may be all that is needed, Clarke, now an ABC News consultant, commented recently.

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CHARLESTON -- Police discovered social media messages in which a Charleston High School student said he "already planned out" how to murder the school's assistant principal, according to court records.

The records in the case charging the student, Andrew Paul Watts, with disorderly conduct say the Sept. 2 online conversation indicated Watts was upset with CHS Assistant Principal Tim Keefe for intervening in an argument between Watts and another student.

Watts, 18, for whom court records list an address of 340 N. Seventh St., Charleston, is charged with a felony offense that accuses him of making a statement that could "alarm and disturb" Keefe and "provoke a breach of the peace."

Records in his case say his arrest followed a police review of a Facebook conversation he had with a girl, describing the encounter with Keefe and saying he was going to "murder that clown."

Keefe told police the incident at CHS involving Watts and the other student took place on Sept. 1, the records also say.

After Keefe intervened, he said, Watts remarked that "they can protect you in school but not out," which Keefe interpreted as a threat toward him, according to the records.

CHS Principal Trevor Doughty first notified police about the Facebook conversation and that he wanted to press charges against Watts for making the threat, the records say.

The records also say the officer who questioned Watts told him "schools could no longer ignore threats in today's modern times." Watts first denied threatening Keefe but ultimately said he understood how the comments might be interpreted, according to the records.

Circuit Judge James Glenn reviewed the records, which make up a police affidavit detailing the reasons for the arrest, and ordered Watts' case to continue pending a court appearance.

The judge set Watts' bond at a level that would require him to post $10,000 for release and he was still in custody Friday, according to Coles County jail records.

Conditions if Watts does post bond include no contact with Keefe and that he not return to or be within 100 feet of CHS.

Watts' first court appearance is scheduled for Monday. The charge against him can result in a prison sentence of two to five years or up to 2 1/2 years of probation with a conviction.
Congratulations to Familias Unidas por la Justicia (FUJ)! FUJ is an independent farmworkers union and one of our newest members! After a three-year struggle, on September 4, 2016, FUJ reached an agreement with Sakuma Brothers Farm in Washington state to conduct a secret ballot election so the workers on the farm can vote whether they want FUJ to be their union. Sakuma Brothers is a supplier to Driscoll's Berries.

This is a big victory as FUJ has been asking to negotiate a contract with management on behalf of farmworkers since 2013 because of child labor, wage theft, hostile working conditions, poverty wages, and impossible standards of production. Please see below for a message from the officers of FUJ about this agreement.Farmworkers in San Quintin, Baja California, Mexico, continue to organize for living wages and safer working conditions, and they have called on consumers to continue boycotting Driscoll's Berries. The Food Chain Workers Alliance will continue to support and honor the Driscoll's boycott until the farmworkers in Mexico win the dignity and respect that they deserve.FUJ Message:Dear Supporters,As of today, Sept. 4, 2016 Sakuma Brothers Farms and Familias Unidas por La Justicia have mutually agreed to conduct a secret ballot election within the next 8 days. The election will determine if the employees want to be represented by Familias Unidas por La Justicia in collective bargaining with Sakuma Farms. Thanks to your tireless efforts we are entering into this next phase of our unions development with hope and determination. At this time we are calling for an end of the boycott, and all boycott activities. Out of respect for the process and our memorandum of understanding with the company please do not contact past, present or potential customers, purchasers, sellers or users of products coming from Sakuma Bros Berry Farm to convey criticism of any and all aspects of Sakumas business and operations.Please stay tuned at the Familias Unidas por La Justicia Facebook page for updates.Gracias,Ramon TorresFelimon PinedaFUJFood Chain Workers AllianceFamilias Unidas por la JusticiaBoycott Driscoll's
A new study published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention connects the spreading Zika virus to a significant increase in birth defects in Brazil. According to the study, birth defects involving the nervous system nearly doubled after Zika arrived in Brazil, and researchers linked the virus' spread to poverty and living conditions in Northeast Brazil.

A new study published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention connects the spreading Zika virus to a significant increase in birth defects in Brazil. According to the study, birth defects involving the nervous system nearly doubled after Zika arrived in Brazil, and researchers linked the virus' spread to poverty and living conditions in Northeast Brazil. Brazil is currently in the deepest recession of its history and its debt grew 33% in the past 5 years relative to the size of its economy."Poverty is a central cause of the Zika health crisis," noted Eric LeCompte, executive director of the religious development coalition Jubilee USA, which led efforts that cancelled $100 million in debt to support healthcare initiatives in Ebola-impacted West African countries in 2015. "What we're seeing in Brazil and in Puerto Rico, and what we saw with Ebola, is that poverty fuels the spread of infectious disease.""Because of the poverty, we have a more closely packed population and sanitary conditions are worse [in Northeast Brazil where the virus is most prevalent]," Zika researcher Dr. Jamary Oliveira Filho told CNN. "It's the perfect setup for epidemic to occur, where there's already inadequate social conditions." The study noted malnutrition and contaminated drinking water could additionally encourage the virus to spread.Brazil, the 9th largest economy in the world, is struggling to fund government services as its debt grows. More than 20% of its population lives below the poverty line and the ratings agency Moody's downgraded Brazilian bonds to "junk" status in 2016. In Puerto Rico, over 15,000 residents have tested positive for the Zika virus while the government cuts health care spending amidst a growing debt crisis."Brazil's economy is at a critical juncture," stated LeCompte, who serves on UN expert working groups on debt. "Brazil's debt could prevent economic recovery and the consequences could be dire for its people."Jubilee USA Network is an alliance of more than 75 US organizations and 550 faith communities working with 50 Jubilee global partners. Jubilee USA builds an economy that serves, protects and promotes the participation of the most vulnerable. Jubilee USA has won critical global financial reforms and more than $130 billion in debt relief to benefit the world's poorest people. http://www.jubileeusa.org
Michelle Erenberg from Lift Louisiana on All Access event sat night by wtul news

Michelle Erenberg of Lift Louisiana gives us the lowdown on the Sat night concert event, All Access New Orleans, September 10, 2016 at 6:00 PM Sanctuary Cultural Arts Center - 2525 Burgundy St - New Orleans, LA 70117. On September 10th, Lift Louisiana, the National Council of Jewish Women New Orleans Section, Women With a Vision and Tulane Universitys If When How Chapter are hosting a party where the All Access 2016 concert will be streamed live. WWAV's Policy Director Nia Weeks will be one of the many speakers, along with New Orleans City Councilwoman Latoya Cantrell.

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Michelle Erenberg of Lift Louisiana gives us the lowdown on the Sat night concert event, All Access New Orleans, September 10, 2016 at 6:00 PM Sanctuary Cultural Arts Center - 2525 Burgundy St - New Orleans, LA 70117. On September 10th, Lift Louisiana, the National Council of Jewish Women New Orleans Section, Women With a Vision and Tulane Universitys If When How Chapter are hosting a party where the All Access 2016 concert will be streamed live. WWAV's Policy Director Nia Weeks will be one of the many speakers, along with New Orleans City Councilwoman Latoya Cantrell.
Illinois Wesleyan Now a Peace Corps Prep Program

Sept. 9, 2016

BLOOMINGTON, Ill.  Illinois Wesleyan University is now a university partner with the Peace Corps through the Peace Corps Prep program  a partnership offering students a unique combination of undergraduate coursework and community service that prepares them for careers in an international realm.

Illinois Wesleyan students can now apply to the new Peace Corps Prep program, which will be housed in the Action Research Center (ARC). The program is open to all students of any major. Upon completion of the program, students will receive a signed certificate of completion from the Peace Corps.

Students interested in learning about the program can attend a program launch event Tuesday, Sept. 20, from 1 to 3 p.m. at Illinois State Universitys Bone Student Center, 200 N. University St., Normal. Illinois State is also a new Peace Corps Prep university partner. Current and returned Peace Corps volunteers will be on hand to answer questions, along with Sheila Crowley of the Washington, D.C. Peace Corps office.

The Peace Corps Prep program prepares students for international development fieldwork and potential Peace Corps service. To receive a certificate from the Peace Corps, students must complete work sector training, master a foreign language, and gain intercultural, leadership and professional development experience through existing Illinois Wesleyan courses and community service opportunities.

We believe the Peace Corps Prep program allows our students to live out the Universitys mission as students seek meaningful opportunities to make a difference in the world, said Deborah Halperin, ARC director. Illinois Wesleyan students who join the Peace Corps return to campus with wonderful stories of how their Illinois Wesleyan experience prepared them to serve, in both expected and unexpected ways.

In recent years, Illinois Wesleyan has averaged five or six Peace Corps volunteers in each graduating class, according to Provost and Dean of the Faculty Jonathan Green. We are proud to build on our history of over 130 Peace Corps volunteers, which is a logical outgrowth of the Universitys long-standing commitments to global citizenship and social justice. By becoming a Peace Corps Prep institution, we are affirming this tradition, and we are providing current and prospective students a clear and visible pathway to service in the Peace Corps.

Three Illinois Wesleyan students have already joined the Peace Corps Prep program, including Raelynn Parmely 17, the president of the newly established Peace Corps Prep registered student organization.

Through an internship at ARC this summer, Parmely discovered her passion for helping other students access service work and become more competitive in their respective fields of work.

Completion of the Peace Corps Prep program will not only make me more competitive for community and economic development graduate programs, but it also neatly presents my skills and assets, said Parmely, who is double majoring in anthropology and sociology.

Halperin stressed that students do not have to apply to the Peace Corps to receive Peace Corps Prep certification nor do they have to apply to the Peace Corps after they receive the certificate. In addition, completion of the certificate does not guarantee acceptance into the Peace Corps, which has seen a record number of applications in recent years.

Students who are interested in learning more about the Peace Corps Prep program can visit the Action Research Center in CLA or follow the program on Facebook.

More than 70 leading academic institutions nationwide offer Peace Corps Prep programs. Established in 2007, the program aims to support college and university efforts to provide substantive, globally focused experiences for their students. Those who successfully complete the Peace Corps Prep program make competitive Peace Corps applicants.

About the Peace Corps: The Peace Corps sends the best and brightest Americans abroad on behalf of the United States to take the most pressing needs of people around the world. Volunteers work at the grassroots level to develop sustainable solutions that address challenges in education, health, economic development, agriculture, environment and youth development. Through their service, volunteers gain a unique cultural understanding and a life-long commitment to service that positions them to succeed in todays global economy. Since President John F. Kennedy established the Peace Corps in 1961, nearly 220,000 Americans of all ages have served in 140 countries worldwide. For more information, visit peacecorps.gov and follow the Peace Corps on Facebook and Twitter .
FREE TAXOTERE HAIR LOSS LAWSUIT EVALUATION Send your Taxotere Hair Loss claim to a lawyer who will review your claim at NO COST or obligation.

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Breast Cancer Drug Manual & Statistics

Hair loss, including on the head, eyebrows, eyelashes, pubic area, and underarm, occurs in most patients. Alopecia has a sudden onset, and occurs 14-21 days after treatment has begun. Hair should grow back once treatment has been completed; however, cases of poor hair re-growth and/or persistent hair loss have been reported. Reports suggest some patients may experience prolonged hair loss lasting beyond 24 months, and possibly irreversibly.





A womans risk of developing breast cancer at any point in her lifetime is about one in nine, and 1 in 29 women will die from it

In 2015, about 25,000 Canadian women will be diagnosed with breast cancer and 5,000 will die from it.

Approximately 68 Canadian women will be diagnosed with breast cancer every day

Approximately 14 Canadian women will be die of breast cancer every day

In 2009, about 10,000 patients, including an estimated 6,500 with breast cancer, were treated with Taxotere, according to the Globe and Mail .

. The side effect of persistent alopecia (hair loss) is suffered by about 3 per cent of patients who take Taxotere with other chemotherapy drugs, according to Sanofi-Aventis own studies. A different study suggests the incidence of persistent alopecia could be as high as 6 per cent.)

Canadian hospitals and drug stores spent $70.4-million on Taxotere in 2009, according to IMS Health Canada, a private company that tracks prescription-drug sales.

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Sep-9-16

Taxotere (generic name docetaxel) is a chemotherapy drug used in the treatment of certain cancers, including breast cancer. One drug side effect includes permanent hair loss, called alopecia. Taxotere lawsuits have been filed against Sanofi-Aventis, the manufacturer, claiming the drug company failed to warn of Taxotere hair loss. Canadian women first reported Taxotere alopecia to Health Canada in 2010.Health Canada approved Taxotere in 1995 to treat locally advanced or metastatic breast cancer and non-small cell lung cancer after failure of prior chemotherapy. According to Sanofi-Aventis, the manufacturer, the new drug submission was based on clinical trials involving more than 800 patients worldwide. In 2005 it received approval from the Canadian Health Protection Branch to treat metastatic prostate cancer in men. The FDA first approved taxotere in 1996.In 2012 Health Canada was alerted by Sanofi-Aventis to the risk of permanent hair loss from Taxotere. (Sanofi-Aventis allegedly failed to notify the FDA until late winter in 2015.) In 2010, thereported that three Canadian women lodged complaints of alopecia caused by Taxotere to Health Canada. One Canadian oncologist said that she gives her patients a choice of whether to undergo 12 cycles of Taxol with a tiny risk of permanent hair loss, versus four cycles of Taxotere and a heightened risk of permanent hair loss: fewer chemo treatments, but with a greater risk of Taxotere alopecia.interviewed one of the three women who allegedly suffered permanent hair loss as a result of Taxotere. Cynthia MacGregor said she was not warned by her medical team that she could lose hair permanently. Instead, she expected her hair to grow back after Taxotere therapy, as was stated on a pamphlet she was given at Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal where her treatment took place. The seven-page pamphlet was created by the Quebec Association of Pharmacists of Health Institutions and states: "Total loss of body hair will occur. However, don't worry  your hair will grow back. ( McGregors complaint, along with two other Canadian patients, led to an investigation by Health Canada.)The lawsuits filed against Sanofi-Aventis (the manufacturer of Taxotere) claim the company failed to warn of the increased risks of permanent alopecia (loss of hair). Taxotere chemotherapy patients claim that if the manufacturer had properly warned of the risks, patients would have been prescribed a different chemotherapy drug (such as Taxol), which is just as effective but does not result in permanent hair loss. Women in particular who are living with this avoidable condition feel like they are still having to fight cancer.The side effect of persistent alopecia is listed on the product monograph since December, 2006, says Laurent-Didier Jacobs, vice-president of medical affairs for Sanofi-aventis Canada.A Taxotere lawsuit was filed against Sanofi-Aventis in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio. Hattie Carson, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2004 and underwent chemotherapy with Taxotere, claims that it caused her permanent baldness and the manufacturer failed to adequately warn female breast cancer patients and doctors about the risk of permanent baldness from Taxotere. Carson's lawsuit states that, Although alopecia is a common side effect related to chemotherapy drugs, permanent alopecia is not. Defendants, through its publications and marketing material, misled Plaintiff, the public, and the medical community to believe that, as with other chemotherapy drugs that cause alopecia, patients hair would grow back.Carson further claims that Sanofi-Aventis warned doctors and patients in Europe in 2005 and inabout the risks of permanent hair loss from Taxotere side effects, but failed to provide such warnings to the U.S. patients and doctors until January 2016.The BC Cancer Agency Cancer Drug Manual (May 2012 Revised: 1 April 2013, 1 July 20) states the following regarding Docetaxel:When breast cancer is detected early on, or even if it is found to be in its late stages, chemotherapy drugs are generally considered one of the most common and effective forms of treatment. One of the most common treatments is the drug combination of Adriamycin and Taxotere. The chemo drug can also be prescribed to treat prostate cancer, non-small cell lung cancer, advanced stomach cancer and head and neck cancer. Taxotere (other brand names are Docefrez, and Docetaxel Injection) works by interfering with the growth and spread of cancer cells in the body.2006: A study by Dr. Scot Sedlacek at the Rocky Mountain Cancer Centers in Colorado found that 6.3 percent of breast cancer patients grew back less than 50 percent of their hair after they were given Taxotere in combination with Adriamycin (docorubicin) and Cytoxan (cyclophosphamide). The study concluded: Such an emotionally devastating long-term toxicity from this combination must be taken into account when deciding on adjuvant chemotherapy programs in women who likely will be cured of their breast cancer.2010:: A study by the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology warned about an increasing number of reports of permanent chemotherapy-induced alopecia, and blamed Taxotere for some of the cases.2013: A study published by the National Cancer Research Institute found permanent hair loss as a side effect in 10-15 percent of patients who took Taxotere.Balding women from Canada, the US and Europe are calling themselves the Taxotears. They include one Taxoterrorist, the nickname for Ms. Ledlie, of Brittany, France. She posted pictures of her balding head on the Facebook page of the manufacturer, Sanofi. We want every woman whos been offered Taxotere to know it is a possibility, so it is her choice whether to take the risk or not, Ms. Ledlie said.If you or a loved one has suffered similar damages or injuries, please click the link below and your complaint will be sent to a lawyer who may evaluate your claim at no cost or obligation.
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ARCOLA -- A veteran competitor's experience was what it took Friday to be the best at pushing broom corn seed through a plywood maze.

It's only at the National Sweeping Contest that's a part of the annual Arcola Broom Corn Festival where that doesn't sound unusual but instead always draws top interest.

On Friday, Diane Rush of Morrisonville took top sweeping honors with nearly 2 pounds of seed swept through the maze.

She said she's traveled to Arcola for the festival every year for the last nine years and won the sweeping contest three years ago.

"At the end, it's best to go slow," Rush said of her sweeping technique. She added that it's easy to get nervous when the final seconds of sweeping time are counted down.

A full slate of 18 contestants took part in Friday's competition, starting with 3 pounds of seed and seeing how much they could sweep through the maze and into a container in 45 seconds.

Marj Jauch of Tampa, Fla., set an early mark with her opening sweep of 1.85 pounds. Joshua Kotowski of Chicago soon tied her mark before Rush took over, and held onto, the lead with 1.95 pounds.

Jauch then won a "sweep off" against Kotowski to determine second place. Her second try resulted in 1.75 pounds to edge Kotowski's 1.70 pounds.

She said she and her husband learned about the Broom Corn Festival and decided to stop for the contest along the way on a trip to Canada.

"I've done a lot of sweeping but never broom corn seed," she said.

She added that she was lucky enough to meet Rush and talk with her just before the contest started. Jauch said she benefited from Rush's "words of wisdom and encouragement."

Kotowski said he's a regular visitor to the Broom Corn festival because he's friends with Arcola's Monahan family and a member of the Lawn Rangers "precision lawn mower drill team."

He finished second one year and fourth another time and said his method also includes trying to slow down at the end of the sweeping, but that's only part of it.

"It's making sure that in the beginning you get everything and take your time," he said.

Rush received $20 for first place, Jauch got $10 for second and Kotowski received $5 for third, and all three of the top competitors also received a commemorative festival broom.

Friday's event had a traditional kickoff with a "celebrity" contest but different than in past years when area news personalities took part.

Instead, organizers recognized Sunday's 15th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and had members of Arcola emergency response agencies take part.

Eve Adams, an Arcola emergency medical technician took honors with 1.65 pounds while Terri Condarco of the fire department swept 0.4 pounds.

The Broom Corn Festival continues in Arcola on Saturday and Sunday.
The Astros will be without shortstop Carlos Correa for at least two games as he travels back to Houston to get his ailing shoulder examined, manager A.J. Hinch told reporters, including Jake Kaplan of the Houston Chronicle. Correa is believed to be troubled by some inflammation in his shoulder, and despite his leaving the team, the injury doesnt appear to be serious in nature just yet, as Hinch said the teams expectation is that Correa will play at some point this weekend. If thats the case, its a minor hiccup for the Astros, but a more prolonged absence is something the Astros can ill afford as they sit two games back in the American League Wild Card hunt. With Correa absent, Alex Bregman saw his first Major League action at shortstop last night.

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- Lt. Gen. Tukur Buratai says 10,000 troops will be deployed in Niger Delta by 2017

- He says 3000 soldiers are currently in the region

- Governor Dickson urges the military to adopt dialogue as a means of fighting criminality in Niger Delta region

The Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Tukur Buratai, has revealed that 10,000 troops will be deployed in Niger Delta by 2017, The Punch reports.

According to him, the government has so far deployed 3,000 military personnel as part of its operation, codenamed, Operation Crocodile Smile in the region.

READ ALSO: Soldiers invade 3 communities in Bayelsa

Buratai made this known when he paid a courtesy visit to Governor Seriake Dickson of Bayelsa state at the Government House, Yenagoa on Thursday, September 8.

He said: The army has deployed about 3,000 officers and men, as well as equipment for the exercise.

The number of personnel will be increased to 10,000 by next year.

Buratai told Dickson that theOperation Crocodile Smile is aimed at training officers in marine combat operations.

He added that the operation is needed because the state is largely riverine and borders the Atlantic Ocean and therefore prone to external aggression, which we have to prevent.

Buratai assured the communities in the Niger Delta that the on-going military exercise was designed to protect them.

He told the communities to remain calm, noting that troops involved in the exercise understood the rules of engagement and would strictly adhere to them.

The COAS added that the military had also been engaged in promoting civil, military relationship in the areas of medical outreach to citizens, road maintenance and education.

Governor Dickson on his part, appreciated the military for their selflessness in discharging their duties.

READ ALSO: JUST IN: Avengers expose dirty operations of Buharis army

The governor also commiserated with them over the death of some soldiers in a boat mishap that occurred in the state.

He urged them to adopt dialogue as a means of fighting criminality in the region.

Buratai recently said that the Nigerian army has what it takes to deal with militants in the Niger Delta region.

He gave this assurance on Wednesday, September 7 during the unveiling of the Exercise Crocodile Smile at the jetty of the Amphibious Training School in Calabar.

Militancy in the region has risen since President Muhammadu Buhari came to power with the vandalism of oil and gas pipelines.

Source: Legit.ng
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- Due to the activities of Fulani herdsmen in the country, Hausas and Igbos in Abia signed an agreement

- The agreement is meant to prevent Fulani herdsmen attack and foster inter-ethnic relationship

- The commissioner of police in the state was made the chairman of the committee

In the spirit of fostering peace in Nigeria, Hausas and Igbos in Abia came together to sign an accord for peaceful coexistence.

Daily Post reports that due to the activities of Fulani herdsmen that has claimed lives and destruction of properties, leaders of Hausa/Fulani herdsmen in Abia met with community leaders to reach an agreement.

READ ALSO: Araba, Biafra and 'your land or your blood' (part 2) - Fani-Kayode

The accord was initiated by the state government, the police and leaders of various communities in Abia, and was signed at a Town Hall meeting organised by the state committee on herdsmen and farmers conflict resolution at the Police Officers Mess in Umuahia.

File photo of Igbo elders with President Muhammadu Buhari

Adeleye Oyebade who is the state commissioner for police and chairman of the committee said the meeting was necessary because the unity of this country is paramount and not negotiable.

He explained that the government organised the committee to prevent the sort of clashes that were happening in neighbouring states and foster a better relationship between the Hausa/Fulani and Igbo communities.

Oyebade disclosed that the committee has designed short, medium and long term resolution and urged the traditional rulers to carry their people along in negotiating with herdsmen.

He said: Just as the herdsmen have the right to migrate to any part of the country, the law does not allow the destruction of anothers property/farm.

The same way, communities should not kill the cows in reprisal but should take the proper channel of conflict resolution, including dialogue and reporting to security agencies.

He also charged the divisional police officers in the affected local government areas to replicate the state committee with heads of security agencies.

READ ALSO: Blasphemy: Hausa youths attack chemist in Lagos

The issue of destroying of farms crops, killing of cows and poisoning of water which in most cases breed trouble is what we are trying to find a lasting solution to with the aim of avoiding unnecessary conflicts now or in the future.

Chief Ukpai Agwu Ukpai who is the deputy chief of staff to Governor Okezie Ikpeazu spoke on his behalf. He said the committee was set up to foster unity between the two communities and prevent clashes between farmers and herdsmen.

Similarly, the Hausa and Igbo communities in Jemaa local government area of Kaduna state decided to come together to fight vice and crime in the region.

Vanguard reports that the communities made the decision on Monday, September 5 to partner with security agencies to wipe crime out.

The decision was reached at a joint meeting of the two communities held at the Igbo community town hall in Kafanchan.

Alhaji Kabir Kasim who is the Deputy Chief Imam of Jemaa was the chairman of the meeting.

He said it was the responsibility of everyone to support security agencies and promised that other tribes will be included in Kafanchan to achieve maximum success.

Source: Legit.ng
Governor Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti has reportedly signed documents directing the state's accountant-general to immediately refund monies over-deducted from the salaries of teachers who had bought some facilities from government during the previous administration of former Governor Kayode Fayemi.

Fayemi is now the minister of Solid Minerals Development in the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari.

A few years ago, teachers had bought cars and laptops among other facilities from government on loan with an arrangement for monthly installmental deductions from their salaries.

Teachers in Nigeria often complain of being short-changed by the government

According the Ekiti state chairman of the Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT) , Comrade Samuel Akosile, the over-deductions from the teachers' salaries has been a perennial problem but when brought to the notice of Governor Fayose, he promptly set up a committee to look into the complaint, giving an ultimatum of 30 days to report back to him.

Spokesperson to the governor, Lere Olayinka, said the report and its recommendations were submitted to the governor on Thursday, September 8, 2016, at Osuntokun hall of the government office, Ado-Ekiti, the state capital.

READ ALSO: Governor Ayo Fayose criticises old governor's office

Fayose, while signing the report, said: "There have been complaints of over-deductions in terms of facilities they have enjoyed such as laptop, car loans and others.

"The teachers have paid for these facilities but deductions is still being made. And a proper system that is functioning is not supposed to be like that.

"The system I inhertied has not been functioning and I have to put a committee in place because these are complaints that are germane to the well being of the teachers.

"The committee sat and listened to them and over N10 million over-deduction was discovered.

"Though, some are just N2000, others are N5000 while the highest may be N50,000. But to the teachers, N2000, N5000 is a lot of money, especially in times like this.

READ ALSO: Too much hunger in the country, Fayose tells Buhari

"And if they still have complaints after the end of this month wen I have directed that the deductions be refunded, this committee will still be around to listen to them."

Agitations by teachers and other government workers often lead to protests such as this

The governor added: "The people voted for me because they were convinced I could solve their problems. I can't continue to blame it on the past administration because the people wouldn't have voted them out if they still want them. It is now my responsibility and I've risen up to the challenge."

Fayose who has started the process of giving full autonomy to local governments in the state, harped on the need for state governments to respect the constitution that created the third tiers of government, adding that governors should not subvert these laws with their executive powers.

READ ALSO: Why APC postponed Edo election - Fayose

"Local government creation and all that guides its creation is entrenched in the constitution of Nigeria.

"It is only in Nigeria that we do a lot of things to subvert the law because we have executive powers.

"So, whatever is in the constitution should be obeyed. Autonomy of the local government must be adhered to in Ekiti and I will review the laws regulating their operations through the state House of Assembly and strengthen them to be able to manage their affairs. The management of their resources must be left to them."

Responding, Akosile said: "This problem you have laid to rest has been on since the time e-payment was introduced into the state.

READ ALSO: Fulani herders insist on carrying arms despite anti-grazing law

"For you to have taken the bull by the horn and solved this perennial problem once and for all we pray that God will bless you and strengthen.

"You are already raising the hopes of the teachers. We also want to thank you for having started paying the outstanding salaries of primary school teachers. N200,000 million has been raised on this so far."

Earlier in the week, the administration also stated that more houses in Ado Ekiti, the state capital, would be demolished to pave way for the ongoing construction of a flyover.

According to Fayose, the demolition exercise will commence on September 12.

Source: Legit.ng
- A sister to the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra Nnamdi Kanu has shared her ordeal with soldiers of the Nigerian army during one of her visits to her brother in prison custody

- Princess Tonia Kanu said she and some of her uncles were harassed by 14 security officers at Kuje prison facility on Tuesday, September 6

Nnamdi Kanu with his mother, Sally Kanu and siblings

Source: Original

A sister to the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra has the manner at which she and some other members of her family faced in the hands of some soldiers.

Princess Tonia Kanu while speaking to Legit.ng said she had gone to Kuje prison to pay her brother a visit on Tuesday, September 6, when 14 security operatives  12 soldiers and 2 others on mufti  accosted her and some other family members.

Princess said: Actually what really happened is that I went to Kuje to see my brother as usual! Coincidentally I met three of my uncles there They also came to see my brother and they had already filled their form."

She said because her uncles were at the facility before her, they were also privileged to meet with Kanu before it was her turn.

After they finished with him, on their way coming out I was about going in they told me not to be in a haste that my brother have told them to wait for me so they can drop me in any close place for me to pick a cab and go home, Princess said.

Continuing, Kanus sister said after the visitation, there had just left the facility when the heavily armed men with a white Toyota Hiace bus with registration number BV 718 RSH double crossed them.

They ordered all of us to come down and enter their own vehicle, which we did and they kept us there for more than 30mins until my uncle asked one of the officers to explain what was happening and what our offence was.

Princess said the officer in question said they should remain quiet and exercise patience as they will be well informed of their offence when they get to where they would be taken to.

"So, immediately I wanted to make a call with my phone but then, they asked me not to try it.

"Then one of the men on mufti said we look familiar (me and my uncle), he said it seems he sees me on TV. That was when my uncle, Emeka Ndumele told him that he is Nnamdi Kanus brother," Kanu's sister said.

READ ALSO: 5 canisters of tear gas thrown into Nnamdi Kanus cell in Kuje prison  Lawyer

"They left us in the bus with the armed soldiers while they went to one corner to make calls. After a very long call, they came back and said we should drop our mobile phone numbers and addresses.

Princess told Legit.ng that they obeyed the officer directive, without argument.

She said the officers also informed them they were acting on orders from above.

She also said although the security officer did not beat or try to torture them, she felt embarrassed and disappointed.

"One of the officers had Ejiofor on his name tag, I dont know what they want from us, if they want my brother to die of hunger there because I am the one that goes there to know what he needs almost every day.

"Although they never mentioned my brothers name...but according to my uncles when they were inside the prison with him, the one on mufti was working around there monitoring them and their discussion with my brother.

Then he sat beside them as if he is also waiting to see his own inmate, not knowing he was probably there as an informant. It was when those soldiers surrounded us then he appear from behind a building and he was also the one making all the calls.

Despite the ordeal, Sonia said: The incident cannot spoke me from going to visit my brother in Kuje, unless they want him to die there."

READ ALSO: Starvation in Nigeria: IPOB raises alarm

Attempts to reach army spokesperson Sani Usman on the incident was futile as his mobile line did not connect.

Also Usman is yet to reply an inquiry sent to his phone on the matter.

But counsel to Kanu, who spoke to Legit.ng said the incident was a total ambush and hostage situation perpetrated by the military.

Kanus lawyer, Ifeanyi Ejiofor said: A team of soldiers numbering about 12, fully armed to the teeth apparently acting through an informant was trailing Nnamdi Kanus family members.

Stating that the team of soldiers were led by one Major Yushau, Ejiofor said the news of temporary abducted of Princess and her family member is shocking.

It is to say the least, the height of brazen violation of our laws. While under prison custody, the law allows all inmates including Nnamdi Kanu to receive visitors including family members, provided that the visitors subject themselves to requisite security screening before gaining entrance, Ejiofor, Kanu's lawyer said.

READ ALSO: Biafra Agitation: Nnamdi Kanu becomes president in Kuje prison

He further noted that all intending visitors are also to be guided by the rules and regulations operational in the prison custody.

This development is a clear attempt to ban Nnamdi kanu from receiving visitors including his family members, as the intendment is to instil fears on people that may wish to pay him visit.

When this is achieve, his life will then be exposed to more dangers in detention. Especially, against the backdrop of visible but repeated threats to his life.

We must challenge this abduction, intimidation and harassment in a court of law, as it is a clear violation of the constitutional rights of the citizens that paid him visit.

We are still investigating further details provided with a view to coming up with the appropriate cause of action, deserving in the circumstance. This lawlessness and impunity must stop.

We find it extremely unacceptable as it offends all known democratic norms," he concluded.

Source: Legit.ng
There have been claims that the life of pro-Biafra leader, Nnamdi Kanu is in danger, the Indegenous People of Biafra (IPOB) have for quite a while raised alarms regarding the threat to their leader's life.

Famil, friends and supporters of Nnamdi Kanu have been raising alarms over plots to kill the pro-Biafra leader while still in custody.

Some photos have emerged, of tear gas canisters recovered from Nnamdi Kanu's cell in kuje. The pictures have stirred great debate over the fate of the Radio Biafra director, who is still held in custody for crimes bordering on treason.

READ ALSO: Nnamdi Kanus sister shares her ordeal with soldiers at Kuje prison

Tear gas canisters were reportedly recovered from Nnamdi Kanu's cell room in Kuje prison.

A lawyer to the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) Nnamdi Kanu has alleged fears of threat to the life of his client currently under custody at the Kuje prison facility in Abuja.

Ifeanyi Ejiofor who spoke to Legit.ng said security operatives at the Kuje prison shot five canisters of tear gas into Kanus cell during a riot that broke out at the facility on Monday, August 29.

READ ALSO: Biafra Agitation: Nnamdi Kanu becomes president in Kuje prison

Ejiofor said: As we speak right no, Nnamdi Kanus life is under threat, there is a situation in the prison custody right now. There was a particular cell  very far from where he is  the cell was being searched by security operatives in the course of their routine exercise, Ejiofor said.

READ ALSO: Tension: Riot breaks out at Kuje Prison, gunshots fired, life feared lost

This is happening now as I am talking to you this moment, now, that cell is being searched and in the cause of the search, the security operatives had problems with the inmates.

This particular cell is far far far away from where Nnamdi Kanu is being kept, the security personnel now started shooting tear gas and also shooting guns indiscriminately, he said.

Source: Legit.ng
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September 9, 2016 Jody Lyle , (307) 344-2015 On Wednesday, September 7, Yellowstone National Park hosted a ceremony for 35 immigrants as they became official US citizens. The Honorable Mark L. Carman, United States Magistrate Judge for the District of Wyoming, held court at the base of the Mammoth Hot Springs terraces.

Judge Carman presided over the naturalization ceremony which included family and friends, the national anthem sung acapella by National Park Service ranger Michael Breis, and a taped audio address by President Barack Obama. Guest speakers were Angela Barrows, Denver District Director of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, Yellowstone National Park Deputy Superintendent Steve Iobst, and Assistant US Attorney Lee Pico.

The National Park Service is proud to partner with the US Citizenship and Immigration Services to host ceremonies like this in national parks around the country. Americas national parks belong to every American citizen. We invite you to visit, to learn, to volunteer, to have fun, and to join us in the stewardship of these places that were entrusted to the care of the National Park Service 100 years ago, said Yellowstone National Park Deputy Superintendent Steve Iobst.



The 35 immigrants sworn in during the ceremony originated from 15 different countries: Burma, Canada, Peoples Republic of China, Colombia, El Salvdor, Mexico, Peru, Phillipines, Spain, South Africa, Tonga, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, and Yugoslavia.



Naturalization is the process by which foreign citizens or nationals attain US citizenship after fulfilling the requirements established by Congress. According to statistics from the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, in fiscal year 2015, nearly 730,000 immigrants became naturalized US citizens nationwide.



Editors Note: Publication quality images of the ceremony are available online at The National Park Service is proud to partner with the US Citizenship and Immigration Services to host ceremonies like this in national parks around the country. Americas national parks belong to every American citizen. We invite you to visit, to learn, to volunteer, to have fun, and to join us in the stewardship of these places that were entrusted to the care of the National Park Service 100 years ago, said Yellowstone National Park Deputy Superintendent Steve Iobst.The 35 immigrants sworn in during the ceremony originated from 15 different countries: Burma, Canada, Peoples Republic of China, Colombia, El Salvdor, Mexico, Peru, Phillipines, Spain, South Africa, Tonga, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, and Yugoslavia.Naturalization is the process by which foreign citizens or nationals attain US citizenship after fulfilling the requirements established by Congress. According to statistics from the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, in fiscal year 2015, nearly 730,000 immigrants became naturalized US citizens nationwide.Publication quality images of the ceremony are available online at https://www.flickr.com/ photos/yellowstonenps/albums/ 72157668680150793




New York Universitys Taub Center for Israel Studies will host Tzipi Livni, former foreign minister of Israel and a current opposition member of the Knesset, for a public lecture, Israel in a Changing Middle East, on Tues., Sept. 20, 6:30 p.m. at NYUs Kimmel Center for University Life, Room 914 (60 Washington Square South [at LaGuardia Pl.]).

The event is free and open to the public. RSVP by calling 212.992.9797 or emailing rsvp.taub@nyu.edu. Space limited to availability. Subways: A, B, C, D, E, F, M (West 4th St.).

Livni has held a variety of ministerial positions in the Israeli government. In addition to serving as minister of foreign affairs, she has been acting prime minister, minister of justice, and head of the Israeli team in the peace process negotiations with the Palestinians in 2008 and 2013.

She was a member of the National Security Cabinet and the Senior Security Cabinet during the Second Lebanon War, Operation Cast Lead, and Operation Protective Edge. She served as a lieutenant in the Israel Defense Forces and later in the Mossad. Livni holds a law degree and has practiced law for over a decade. She also served as director general of the Government Companies Authority.



Livni is currently the head of the Hatnua Party and co-leader of the Zionist Union, which heads the opposition in the Knesset. She is a member of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee and head of the Subcommittee for International Legal Warfare, focusing on issues of asymmetrical warfare and Israels national security.

The event is co-sponsored with NYUs Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life and Tamid Group at NYU.

Editors Note:

The Taub Center was established with a gift from the Henry and Marilyn Taub Foundation. The gift supports an endowed professorship and two graduate fellowships in Israel Studies, and funds lectures, seminars, scholarly colloquia at the Center, and other special programs for students, faculty, and the community. In addition to offering its own programming, the Taub Center works closely with NYUs departments to create cross-disciplinary programming, serving to broaden NYUs offerings in Judaic and Middle Eastern studies.
Yesterday Bob Weir premiered the second single from his forthcoming solo album, a track in which he looks to fly from my troubles to a place called Gonesville.

Weir ran away from home when he was 15 to be a Wyoming cowboy. He bunked at a ranch with older cowboys who spent their evenings singing songs together. I was the kid with the guitar, so I was the accompaniment, he said in a recent video interview with TRI Studios LLC. I learned a bunch of those songs and got steeped in that tradition. Its a tradition thats almost gone. Ive been sort of wondering what to do with that for decades now.

His solution: a full album of cowboy-inspired music, titled Blue Mountain, to be released at the end of this month. This isnt Weirs first foray into performing cowboy music: he sang tunes like El Paso and Jack Straw, among others, with the Grateful Dead. It is, however, his inaugural effort to make this a theme for an entire body of work.

Not only that, but this is the first time weve gotten a release of entirely new music from Weir in decades. Its only the third solo album he has recorded in a musical career of more than fifty years (not counting the compilation release Weir Here).

On his Instagram page (not even ex-cowboy hippies are immune to the demands of social media marketing), Weir explained that Gonesville is a take on a Rockabilly tune. I was trying to go back and channel Elvis for that one, for the vocal, and for the music as well.

Josh Ritter also collaborated on the writing of Gonesville. Blue Mountain will come out on Sept. 30 via Legacy Recordings/Columbia Records. Listen to Gonesville below.
In December 2014, chef Mashama Bailey debuted the hit Savannah, Georgia restaurant The Grey. Set in a 1938 Greyhound bus station (which once had a separate waiting and rest room for African Americans) and elegantly renovated in art deco style with metal, wood and tile by New York native John O. Morisano, it was named the most beautiful restaurant of 2015.

The Grey soon made it onto Bill Addisons 21 Best New Restaurants list, was named one of Food & Wines top five new restaurants, and both the restaurant and Bailey were semifinalists for a James Beard award. Though Bailey grew up mostly in New York  where she was sous chef at Gabrielle Hamiltons Prune  she has roots in Savannah, where her mother was born, and where she spent time from age 5 to 11.

At The Grey, 41-year-old Bailey continually reinvents classic southern dishes, deliciously upsetting gastronomic preconceptions about the South and African-American cooking in particular. Her cuisine has been described as both audacious and accessible. Bailey spoke with Paste Food about her take on these classic Southern dishes.



A variation on chicken and dumplings, using briny, tender clams from pristine waters off nearby Sapelo Island. Says Bailey: I wanted to do a clam dish, but I didnt want to do the traditional clams and linguine. Im not Italian. I wanted something brothy that made you feel like you were eating clams and bread, and I was trying to tap into my own Southern childhood as well. I use a drop dumpling. The batter is made of flour, baking powder, butter, salt, water, sometimes milk or buttermilk, dropped into the boiling liquid.

I purge the clams by soaking them in a bit of salt and water, agitating them to filter it through. We cook to order, about 10 clams at a time, covered halfway up with water and white wine. We drop the dumpling biscuits into the clam broth. I add a homemade salsa verde, of chopped parsley and arugula ground in a mortar and pestle, with a bit of olive oil, garlic and chili flakes. Then we put the clams in, put dry white wine in, and let it all steam up. That gets the dumplings seasoned with the clam juice and the wine. I cook them on each side for about two minutes, five dumplings per 10 clams.



I went to the Southern Foodways Alliance in October and was invited to do the Friday lunchlike the pre-credits rolling into the main event. It was a boxed lunch and for dessert I made watermelon rind brittle over custard. We candied the watermelon rind using a local Georgia watermelon that is to die forand has a nice, soft rind. We took the rinds, added sugar and brought the sugar up to a boil. At a certain point the sugar turns from a liquid into a hard candy. It was delicious.



Middlins, or broken rice, are a tradition of low-country cooking. In colonial Carolina and Georgia, African slave women were tasked to hand pound rice and screen it for brokens (called middlins). The fine white rice was reserved for the tables of the elite, while the slaves developed low country dishes centered around the middlins, which were tender and easily absorbed flavor. Rice middlins, or rice grits are now staging a comeback. I do a mushroom, butternut squash and sunchoke dish with middlins, says Bailey. Its true comfort food.



Right above nearby Darien, Georgia, which is famous for its shrimp, wild oysters grow in abundance alongside the salt marshes. They grow in riotous clusters that form enormous mounds. I never knew Georgia had such delicious, salty, wild, clean-tasting oysters, says Bailey. I found a recipe in an old Savannah cookbook from 1937 for pickled oysters. I only pickle oysters that are in season here  from October to May. I pickle them and add a fatback lard, Serrano pepper, and serve them on saltine crackers.



A reference to Savannahs 77-acre city Daffin Park, and the nearby neighborhood of her childhood, where locals would freeze sugar and juice in paper cups and serve like popsicles in the summer as treats for the kids. Here, the juice is taken from local muscadine grapes, and the frozen pop is served in a paper Dixie cup with a small wooden spoon, as a cleanser to the palate after a meal. Pure fun. Experiment with your own local fruits and berries.
Trumps boring meeting in Mexico killed the possibility of an Orange President. Trump, whatever the media said, was running as an act of political performance, like Kaepernick refusing to stand during the national anthem.

The media and pols never understood that the act itself was the point. Trump didnt fail because he changed his message  he changed that daily on the campaign trail. He didnt collapse by deciding to become a different kind of politician.

Days later, I understand the truthDonald lost by acting like politician at all. He had one bullet in his holster but it was the best one  in retrospect, almost magical. It was this: You dont have to trust or like me, you dont even have to think Im always honest  but if this system was working, I wouldnt be here. We could forgive anything but a bad performance.

Our editor, Shane Ryan, refused to send me to cover the Trump-Nieto meeting in Mexico City, mostly because I didnt ask at all, just stared at a map on the wall and kept poking at Ciduad de Mexico and repeating the word Me There Now. Making a real-boy request would have been unseemly, somehow.

Nonetheless, I got to see it all: Trump, the loudmouth, awkward candidate of America, went down south on the invitation of the unpopular, awkward president of Mexico, Nieto. You know, when the Prophet Sanders retired from the field, I thought this is the end of the Curb Your Enthusiasm section of the race. Now I see the episode never ended. The Orangeman made a series of anodyne, politician-like statements about how Mexico was less of a tar pit than he imagined. Then he flew back North. In Arizona that evening, he rattled off the usual albino tone poem about how great the countrys internment camps would be when he got the steering wheel between his manicured, microscopic hands. The details were simple, simple.

One conservative writer described the meeting thus: All in all, it looked like any other meeting of an American leader at an international summit. In a much-revised article, the Times described Trump as displaying an almost unrecognizable demeanor during his afternoon in Mexico, appearing measured and diplomatic.

Theyre wrong. Trumps visit was the end.

You have to understand why Trump matters, and why he has been so misjudged. When I say misjudged, I dont mean Donald himself. Everything they say about Trump is true. He really is a gargantuan, racist, loudmouth fraud, who will probably pass away in some hilariously poetic mishap ten years from now, perhaps while choking on a falafel after bulldozing a Mexican childrens zoo for a series of single-man condos.

But there is this one factor, the American people, which you cannot get around. After the Dems went on their convention riff about how America was already awesome, the gruesome old bastard sent out this Tweet: Our country does not feel great already to the millions of wonderful people living in poverty, violence and despair. For the sake of the election, it doesnt matter if Trump actually believes this or not.

The alt-right loves to mock safe spaces and trigger warnings, but the irony is that Trump is the most prominent emotional shepherd of the entire election: Our country does not feel. The Orangeman deals in emotional reality, not factual truth. When Trump says that Americas military is weak, or that Muslims were celebrating on 9/11, or that Hillary is already medically dead, he is either oblivious or lying. But the emotions he taps into are real feelings, from real people. This doesnt validate beating up reportersMatt Lauer justifies thatbut it explains why Donald has any traction at all. The neoliberals cant Vox-splain this one away.

The people who support Trump are not empty-minded rubes ready for any strongman to fill them full of purpose. These arent extras from To Kill a Mockingbird, but real people, with real FOX News subscriptions. Their outrage may be expressed in ways which are odious, backwards, and misspelled, and aimed at the wrong targets, but their ache is real, as reactionary as it seems to me and everyone else who covets the BBCs fine programming lineup. Trump would have no power if people were not actually hurting.

If you are part of the higher stratus of this country, this seems like the best of all possible worlds. Its good to be prosperous and well-connected in America. From this perspective, to be outraged about the distribution of goods would seem perverse, almost Floridian: who could resent anything about our shining meritocracy? Indeed, from the high castles on both coasts, who could be bothered to care that one in three black men can expect to go to prison in their lifetime, or that suicide among middle-aged white people without university degrees has skyrocketed? The world was made for you, and you were made for the world.

If you accept the meritocracy and economic system we live in, you probably think this is already a just enough country. From this perspective, resentment seems unnecessary, a lark one does during college, like swing dancing, questionable tattoos, or improv classes. If the world is just, then the people who are complaining either A) like to complain or B) are dupes being led astray by a Pied Piper. Option B is what the media has seized to explain the Orange Horde.

This is why the media keeps getting Trump wrong, trying to fit him with the wrong shape. Writers love to creep around what they really want to say, which is that Trump is Hitler, Trump is Biff Tannen, etc. None of these are accurate. But they keep treating him like an actual normal politician. This results from a fundamental misunderstanding of Trump and what is function is.

Trump is a new game. Trump isnt the spokesman for a single idea, because he doesnt have one. This is what gives journalistic hacks in Washington the easy short path to fascism or populism as Trumps descriptors, but that wont do. Trump voters know what he is, and anyone who thinks for longer than five minutes knows the man doesnt have much of a deep self beyond the hat. Nor is Trump simply viewable as that old canard, the mouthpiece of the people. His personality, like the dyers hand, is too stained in what it works, and his personality is too well-known, too cultivated, to be masked over with any kind of embodied yearning. Trump is supported by the resentment, but his theories are his own.

The Orangeman is not an avatar of Goldman Sachs-level evil. Far from it. He is the logical, rational result of the American publics desire to be entertained at a level commensurate with their knowledge of the frailty and fraudulence of our national politics. Irony Twitter was inevitable. Feminist Disney heroines were inevitable. Long-form TV wonder dramas like The Wire and Breaking Bad were inevitable. And Donald Trump, the ultimate satirist of our political process, was inevitable.

For years, conservatives wondered where their Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert was. Here he is.

What is Trevor Noah next to him? An amateur, a hack. Jon Oliver is a pop gun, and Samantha Bee a sputtering flare in the night. As a political satirist, Trump is the second coming of Voltaire, Jonathan Swift. Heres a satire which could actually destroy the world.

The Daily Show was inevitable. Although its thought of as the principle launching pad for smug, enlightened liberal snark, the programs subject was not actually the conservative movement, but the lack of substance or seriousness in our national dialogue. In other words, they were there mostly to mock cable news. When it became clear that our media had become mortgaged to massive information conglomerates, something had to give, and it happened to give on Comedy Central.

And when it became obvious that the American working class (and in time, the American middle class) were being hollowed out and absolutely nobody in either party gave three hoots in hell about itwhen our political process was shown to be an audition for the Kochs and Merill LynchTrumps rise became a piece of destiny.

Trump the satirical performance is the living embodiment of our political systems failure. It happens to be a great show, so we watch it, even if we hate it, even if we feel guilty about enjoying it. Because Donald is so obviously objectionable, in so many clear ways, and because he lies, the political elite of our two major parties disregard his command over the electorate as a hidden proof that the voters are profoundly stupid. They arent. They earnestly believe they have no better choices. Trump is the focus point of rage against the system. Point out that he does not deserve to be president, which a child could see, is like telling someone eating cardboard that their nephew is not quite Boston Latin material. Trumps existence in the race is a Kaepernick-level performative act.

It may seem odd to compare this grotesque bigot and the Colin Kaepernick, a legitimate crusader for social justice, in the same sentence. Kaepernick is engaged in a brave, principled gesture of public defiance that could seriously damage his career and his future in the league. Trump is a leather bag of race science pamphlets found on a Queens park bench.

Yet they are alike in one way, and one way only. Trump, like Kaepernick, operates in an institution where there is a bullshit consensus that serves the interest of the people at the top. A little discussion is allowed, but not much. The NFL, like the American governing class, is so obviously full of it, but nobody inside the system, nobody with power, will call them on it.

For an insider to flagrantly defy their own institution is so against expectation, so unusual, that it almost doesnt matter what you say: what counts is the act of refusal. That is what is meant by a performative act.

How you feel about Kaepernick refusing to stand or Trump insulting Ted Cruz probably depends on how unsatisfied you are with the status quo. Unusual public acts of prominent people, no matter how irrelevant they may seem, show the real possibility that this reign of thieves will not continue forever. Much as I would not expect Kaepernick to have a detailed twenty-page program of how to stop young African-American men from being killed by the police, Donalds followers arent bothered when he lacks a fleshed-out agenda for bombing ISIS.

Trumps stance showed how little he thought of the political process, and by extension, how little we ought to think of it. All of his opponents attacks werent just the sad counterattacks of lanyard-fetishizing dipshits or Beltway vegetables. They were the actions of befuddled men and women who did not understand what was happening. Rubios approach must have worked very well in front of the Koch think tanks or Tea Party gatherings. Ted Cruzs debate club patter probably scored big with his fellow gigantic centipedes in whatever underground civilization he originally called home. Jebs hard sell, Im sure, worked well in the mirror at Dillards. They would have dazzled the faithful back in 2000 or 2004. Not now.

The Mexico meeting finishes all of that. Moreover, not only was the Nieto appearance the end of the opera, but a tragic loss for the art of satire. I was promised WrestleMania and I got C-SPANs Booknotes. Was this the great tin god army of socially-awkward Twitter tweens? Is this the best you can do, Donald? A fumbling, clean-shaven press conference? I wanted Foxcatcher rich dude weirdness, and all I got was the awkward last act of a Bill Murray vanity project.

In his article on recent Trump, Taibbi argued the folly of Trump 2.0 is Donalds yearning to be presidential: he began to play the part of a normie. He is halfway correct. Trumps problem is not merely that he is throwing out less raw meat, or that his spiel has changed.

He broke character, and that was the master-sin. He forgot the joke. It was as if Jon Stewart started writing Tom Friedmans column. Commentators have speculated that Trump 2.0 isnt running for president any longer, but setting up a media platform, an unholy breeding of Breitbart and FOX News. Rumor has it that the whole campaign is a yuge Napoleonic gambit by Trump. Even if he loses, they say, Donald will make himself over into the William Randolph Hearts of lying to old white people and young alt-right dorks.

But how will this strategy suffice? Trump has already begun to lose ground on this very level. How will he sell his news channel, when the very things he could have pushed  himself and his brand- has come down in value? Trump gave up his edge so easily. For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his Pepe memes?

I remember the RNC debates. It was a funny thing, watching them. Here was a man who, rationally, I was pretty sure would end the Republic, if not all animal life on the planet, in a reign of raw nuclear fire. But I was delighted all the same. It was like watching Satan appear onstage a ball of fire and mock his feckless understudies for doing such a piss-poor job of corrupting the Earth. How could anyone look away?

Indeed, at a basic, unconscious level, the thought of a Trump campaign was somehow an exciting thought, like image of every bank in every city in the world spontaneously erupting into flames. It sent a thrill through the observer, much as leaning too far over the railing from a high balcony does. But this alt-right Godspell only worked so long as the performance did. When Trump silenced the joke, he stopped his chances, and that is the last, and best, laugh of all.
Of the many comforts Democrats offer themselves as bad news pours in regarding the viability of Trumps candidacy, the latest and greatest is the electoral map myththe idea that even if Trump manages to stay close to Clinton on a national level, he cant summon the necessary electoral votes to reach 270 and actually win.

And like the rest of the comforts, this one has lately proved to stand on a faulty foundation. A series of Quinnipiac polls released on Thursday shows Trump leading Clinton in Ohio by four points, and tied in Florida at 43 percent each. Meanwhile, Clinton actually leads in North Carolina and has a slim edge in Pennsylvania, while another poll shows that Trump is within five points in Colorado.

There are two conclusions to draw here. The first is that we could be in for the strangest electoral map in recent history, with traditionally blue states veering red, especially in the rust belt, and reliably red states like Texas and North Carolina (which, to be fair, went to Obama in 2008) shifting in the opposite direction.

The second conclusion is that yes, there is a realistic path to electoral victory for Trump. If he wins Florida and Ohio, he would only need one other statelike, say Virginia nor New Mexicoto go his way in order to beat Clinton. If none of those states turn red, he could still win Virginia and tie Clinton at 269 votes apiece, thereby sending the race into chaos. Check out that potential outcome, in an image from CNNs interactive map:

Clinton still holds the advantage, and would need to win only one of the toss-up races like Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, or New Hampshire to secure a victory, but if you project Trumps resurgence outward to November, whos to say he wont actually improve his numbers in swing states?

The point is, as much as it may hurt to consider the possibility of a Trump presidency, thats exactly what the electorate needs to do, and fast. Complacencyincluding media complacencyhas bestowed legitimacy on a man who keeps slouching closer and closer to our nations highest office.
The doleful underperformance of public office-holders through the ages, which has left the worlds most populous black nation stuck, like a desperate invalid needing urgent life-support, has been attributed to the long-term deficit in the reading habits of political actors at all levels in Nigeria.

The ensuing slide of national discourse into muddling exchanges of insults, intolerant stereotyping and incoherent chatter in the midst of a growing crisis, must be halted if Nigeria must survive the current mass suffering enveloping the land, APC Senator, Kaduna Central, Shehu Sani has warned.

He sounded this alarm while inaugurating the Local Organising Committee for the Association of Nigerian Authors, ANAs 35th anniversary international convention to be hosted by the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, between 27-30 October this year.

Senator Sani, who has been chosen by ANA to play Chief Host at the forthcoming ANA convention, assured the associations President, Denja Abdullahi and his National Executive Council, that he would give his full support to ensure a successful convention, explaining that this was part of his campaign to help revive the decline in the reading culture in Nigeria:

Our young people are no more interested in reading books. They prefer to tweet and to post. But if one only tweets and posts without reading books, you will be tweeting and posting rubbish. Our political leaders dont read books. They are more engrossed in politics of attrition and vendetta. You can see that the decline in reading culture has done a serious damage to our psyche. The decline in the nations reading culture is largely responsible for the deficiencies in the intellectual content of our political discourse.

I am going to do everything I can to help the association to host the convention and will also assist to contact individuals and organisations to give back to society. The dearth of books and the decline in the reading culture have corroded the quality of our national discourse. I believe the reading culture can be revived, needs to be revived.

The well-known activist and a man of letters in his own right, said apart from playing the role of Chief Host for the upcoming ANA convention, he has also made a legislative intervention on behalf of writers:

A bill on the National Endowment Fund for Literature and the Arts that I sponsored in the Senate has passed first reading. And, after realising that a similar bill from the Ministry of Information and Culture will soon be presented to the Senate for consideration after the recess in September, I have stepped it down for more consultations with ANA and the Ministry.

Narrating how he was inspired by the example of late radical politician, Aminu Kano, and his qualitative inputs into national discourse, Sani said: I remember when I visited the home of Mallam Aminu Kano, books by Achebe, Soyinka, JP Clark Bekederemo, and other African authors were all over the shelf. He was among the few thinking and ideologically focused politicians of his time. Whenever he spoke, his peers listened and esteemed his contributions to national discourse, even if they disagreed on the finer points of methodology.

This is why I oppose the statement by the Emir of Katsina that people should not be critical of President Buharis government. The supporters have no bigger right than the so called detractors. If people are allowed to go hungry enmasse by the system, you should also allow them to speak out. Most times solutions to national problems can come from the so called enemy camp.

Just as the APC leader, Asiwaju Tinubu, didnt hold back criticism of NNPC during the fuel crisis and the governor of my state, Nasir el Rufai, didnt spare the Central Bank, even though they are supporters of the Federal Government, nobody should stop anyone. We cannot win the war on corruption by arresting bloggers and journalists. It is a violation of the fundamental human rights of citizens and must in no way be condoned by anybody.

Earlier at the meeting hall of the City Plaza, Garki, Abuja, President of ANA, Denja Abdullahi, had read out detailed plans for hosting Nigerian writers at the 35th Convention of the association that also includes the keynote address on the theme: Re-Contextualizing African Literature for the African Renaissance  Emergent Trends, Realities and Strategies for the 21st Century, which will be delivered by Professor Isidore Diala.

Abdullahi said further that: The present national executive council in its bid to give the association one of the best conventions in recent times has gathered a team to assist.

The members of the LOC includes the President of ANA; General Secretary; Chairman, ANA FCT Abuja chapter, Ben Ubiri; and others, namely, Teresa Oyibo Ameh, Chinyere Obi-Obasi and Salamatu Sule.
ASUSTOR adds hubiC cloud storage sync backup service for European users, suitable for use on ADM 2.6.3 and onwards, available for download from App Central.

Contact

ASUSTOR Inc.

marketing@asustor.com

+886277370888 ASUSTOR Inc.+886277370888

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-- ASUSTOR Inc., a leading innovator and provider of network storage solutions, has announced the release of a NAS syncing App for hubiC users. Users who are using ADM 2.6.3 and onwards will be able to download and install this App from App Central. Setup can be completed in just a few easy steps, allowing users to easily connect to their hubiC accounts and perform backup configurations."The hubiC's cloud storage service has a large user base in Europe, particularly in France," said Vincent Tseng, Product Manager at ASUSTOR. "We are elated to be able to expand our support for cloud storage services to include hubiC, satisfying the needs of ASUSTOR NAS users with hubiC accounts."In addition to hubiC, ASUSTOR NAS also supports a wide range of popular cloud storage services including Amazon S3, Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive and HiDrive. A variety of backup syncing Apps are also supported, such as BitTorrent Sync, CrashPlan, ownCloud, Pydio, Ralus, Syncthing, WonderBox and xCloud. Users are free to select the appropriate service in order to meet their needs.Since its establishment in 2011, ASUSTOR has been expanding NAS functionality by continuously enhancing product compatibility and quickly expanding the number of Apps in App Central which now includes over 210 Apps. ASUSTOR has recently added the well known OVH DDNS service for European users, giving them another domain name choice to use when creating dedicated cloud storage.For more product information please visit: http://www.asustor.com hubiC is suitable for use on all ASUSTOR NAS models.Founded in 2011, ASUSTOR Inc. was established via direct investment from ASUSTeK Computer Inc. The ASUSTOR brand name was created as a portmanteau of "ASUS" and "Storage". ASUSTOR is a leading innovator and provider of private cloud storage (network attached storage) and video surveillance (network video recorder) solutions, also specializing in the development and integration of related firmware, hardware and applications. We are devoted to providing the world with unparalleled user experiences and the most complete set of network storage solutions possible.Press Contact: marketing@asustor.com
By: Affiris AG

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-- AFFiRiS AG announced today results of AFF008A, a Phase I clinical trial to assess boost immunizations with AFFITOPE PD01A, an active vaccine against Parkinson's disease (PD). The study was funded by a $1.04 million grant from The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research.The "boost" study AFF008A was designed to assess one boost immunization with AFFITOPE PD01A per patient with regard to safety/tolerability and immunological and clinical activity in those patients who had already received the vaccine (four "priming" vaccinations at four-week intervals) within the first-in-man clinical study AFF008. Six PD patients on best medical care, including standard symptomatic medication, served as a comparison group. In the "boost" study, two different doses of AFFITOPE PD01A (15 g and 75 g) were again safe and well tolerated, meeting the primary endpoint of the trial.Patients belonging to the low-dose group of AFF008 were randomized in two equally distributed groups receiving either 15 g or 75 g AFFITOPE PD01A. The same was done with patients of the AFF008 high-dose group, in order to allow for evaluation of four different vaccination schedules.Across all patients, no antibody concentration limiting toxicity was observed. Adverse events were similar across all five groups except injection site reactions, which only occurred in the active treatment groups, and psychiatric disorders, reported at a lower rate in the active groups. All of the 28 patients completed the study and received all planned vaccinations. Only one serious adverse event was reported, which was classified as being not related to AFFITOPE PD01A administration.An immune response against AFFITOPE PD01A was seen in 19 of 22 (86%) of vaccinated patients and 12 of 19 (63%) of these responders generated aSyn-specific serum antibodies. The immune response sustained throughout the entire observation period of 24 weeks. Patients on low dose and then high dose had a clear immunological boost. This data supports that further dose and scheduling may significantly influence antibody titer/concentration and further studies need to be performed. Additionally, vaccine-induced antibodies were detectable in cerebrospinal fluid. This induction of antibodies against aSyn supports the concept of the principle of AFFiRiS' proprietary therapeutic vaccine.Parallel laboratory experiments using recombinant aSyn protein to assess selectivity showed that AFFITOPE PD01A-induced antibodies preferentially bind to aSyn fibrils, which are believed to be the toxic form of the protein, as compared to the monomeric form.Due to the limitations of the Phase I trial design (the study was not double-blind, and assignment to the comparison group was not randomized), it is not known whether effects seen in the active groups are indicative of treatment effects or due to confounding factors.Efficacy variables were evaluated in an explorative manner with regard to the small sample size. Preliminary observations showed that in eight of the 19 (42%) immunological responders, no increase of the concomitant dopaminergic PD medication was needed throughout the observational period (on average three years per subject). Among the same group, five of eight (63%) patients had stable UPDRS III scores at the end of the "boost" study.Continuous efforts are undertaken to follow this patient cohort and to further characterize their immunological and clinical response to treatment with AFFITOPE PD01A. The next study, AFF008AA, is focusing primarily on the long-term safety and, in addition, on the assessment of the immunological and clinical effects of a second boost vaccination ("reboost"). That study is also funded by The Michael J. Fox Foundation, as was the AFF008 trial. Recruitment of patients for AFF008AA has been completed; results are expected in Q2 2017.AFFITOPE PD01A targets the protein alpha-Synuclein, which plays a key role in the onset and progression of Parkinson's as well as multiple system atrophy (MSA), an orphan disease. During the first-in-man study AFF008, AFFITOPE PD01A was safe and well tolerated, meeting the primary endpoint of the trial. PD01A is one of two vaccine candidates currently being studied in three ongoing Phase I studies AFF008AA, AFF009 and AFF011 in which currently 92 Parkinson's and Multiple System Atrophy (MSA) patients are receiving either PD01A or PD03A. During these Phase I studies patients are being observed for up to 48 months with regard to long-term safety, immunological and clinical parameters. Results are expected for Q4 2017.Bettina WessaKarl-Farkas-Gasse 221030 Vienna, AustriaT +43 / (0)1 / 798 15 75  300E bettina.wessa@affiris.com
#1 Creative Staffing Agency in the Nation Opens Its 27th Office

By: Creative Circle

Creative Circle

Media Contact

Adam Bleibtreu

Creative Circle

***@creativecircle.com

(323) 930-2333 Adam BleibtreuCreative Circle(323) 930-2333

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-- Creative Circle, the nation's largest creative staffing agency, announces its newest office opening, in Austin, Texas."With its great number of startups and reputation for being a creative and tech hub, we know Austin is the place to be," says Abigail Allen,Creative Circle's area manager overseeing the Austin and Dallas offices. "We've been warmly welcomed and are eager to be involved in Austin's rapidly growing tech and creative economies."Creative Circle is dedicated to matching companies with the best talent to fit their growing creative, digital, marketing and interactive needs. Their downtown location on Congress Avenue is the 27th office for the firm, whose approach is differentiated by investing time in personal interviews with candidates and clients alike, to insure the best fit for each placement for both parties.Austin is well-known for its large freelance community as well as its fast-growing startups and established companies like Whole Foods, HomeAway, and Dell. "Our expansion into Austin offers companies a way to get high-level creatives in the door to fuel their growth, and also allows candidates to continue to choose projects that are the best fit for them, without being led into the resume black hole," adds Allen.As of 2015, it was reported that 29% of the national workforce was freelance or part-time. That amounts to 44 million Americans. "An agency like Creative Circle is best able to leverage the sources of quality candidates with the skills, experience, and pay rate that meets the clients' needs, ensuring a successful match," says Brenda Holley, Vice President of Operations at Creative Circle. Creative Circle's latest expansion into the Austin market is designed to fill this need with speed, accuracy and quality.Creative Circle, a division of On Assignment, is a specialized staffing agency representing innovative advertising, creative, digital, marketing and interactive professionals. The company connects creatives to agencies, brands and companies requiring creative, marketing or interactive talent on both a freelance and full-time basis. With offices in 27 major cities throughout the U.S. and Canada, Creative Circle is strategically positioned to work with clients of all sizes from innovative startups to large corporations nationwide. To learn more about Creative Circle, go to www.creativecircle.com On Assignment, Inc. is a leading global provider of in-demand, skilled professionals in the growing technology, life sciences, and creative sectors, where quality people are the key to success. The Company goes beyond matching resumes with job descriptions to match people they know into positions they understand for temporary, contract-to-hire, and direct hire assignments. Clients recognize On Assignment for its quality candidates, quick response, and successful assignments. Professionals think of On Assignment as career-building partners with the depth and breadth of experience to help them reach their goals. On Assignment, which is based in Calabasas, California, was founded in 1985 and went public in 1992. The Company has a network of branch offices throughout the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and Europe.
By: Ares International Corp.

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-- Information security issues are emerging recently, well-known bank ATM robbery, leading semiconductor GaAs[u1] (Gallium arsenide) foundry production line theft case ... and etc., are causing great concerns to business and government information security protection. Taiwan software company Ares International Corp. provides ARES PP (ARES Privacy Protector) that helps enterprises to manage confidential documents and archives, and set authorization and user status according to different demands, to provide instant notification when errors occur. It is the best information security protective measure for the outposts.ARES PP product manager James Ju said: ARES PP uses transparent encryption and decryption technologies, from establishing, revising, releasing to destroying documents, to provide comprehensive document lifecycle protection. ARES PP further uses visualization audit, document-mobilization, and protection on cloud to guard intellectual properties and confidential documents, to avoid problems arising from improper use of digital information.ARES PP product manager Ju pointed out that confidential business information such as business secrets, contracts, patents and design; if the unauthorized information is sent or leaked by a mobile phone, corporate reputation will be greatly damaged. To solve the issue, ARES PP has a special protection scheme that can detect mobile phone photo-taking, to provide enterprise a safer and better information security protection choice.Ares financial department manager Tom Hsi stated: ARES PP is confident to become enterprises powerful back-up, with highly-flexible convenient procedures and highly-efficient security to aim at hackers' attempt at the loopholes. ARES PP is the key to creating a best privacy protection for enterprises, which can further earn clients trust!ARES PP uses audit visualization, document mobilization, and cloud protection to secure intellectual property and confidential documents to provide comprehensive document life-cycle protection, avoiding problems arising from improper use of digital information. ARES PP is widely adopted in universities and institutes, governmental organizations, and enterprises, providing high security and reliability.For more details: http://www.ares.com.tw/ en/products/ ares-pp/ First Taiwan-based software company to be listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TSE) and has been dedicated to IT services for thirty five yearsProfessional information management system provider of greater China, specializing in research and development technology and system integration, and provides informatization services from single products to total solutions for main service clients throughout financial, government, industrial and commercial enterprisesCertified regional partner of SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication)in TaiwanFirst government-acknowledged IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards) ERP solution provider, first Oracle partner in Taiwan and Microsoft Gold Certified PartnerLargest provider of Manufacturing Execution System in Taiwan LED industryTop player of the Taiwan foreign exchange and core banking solution provider, which even has been mentioned in Gartner reportsContact Person: Julia ChenEmail: marketing@ares.com.twTel: 886-2-2522-1351 ext.386( ARES, ARES PP, are registered trademarks to Ares International Corp. Other names and trademarks belong to headquarters and branches. )
Mauritius Conscious is the first online guide that promotes ecotourism and sustainable lifestyle. It invites travellers to experience Mauritius in an authentic way through its sustainable traveller card, the #IslandLife pass.

By: Mauritius Conscious Guide

Media Contact

Romina Tello Soberanes

Mauritius Conscious Guide (Conscious Travel Ltd)

***@gmail.com

+230 5981 8746 Romina Tello SoberanesMauritius Conscious Guide (Conscious Travel Ltd)+230 5981 8746

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-- Mauritius Conscious promotes sustainable travel in Mauritius. Its business model is designed to change the way travellers and locals discover and experience the island, proposing a more respectful and conscious approach to tourism.Our mission is to support local initiatives and eco-conscious operators, offering authenticexperiences to visitors and assuring that their travel dollar contributes to sustain the community they are visiting.This is a Sustainable Travel Card which comes along with a map of Mauritius that guides travellers through suggested itineraries. The route includes exploration of hidden gems of the island and visits to our eco-conscious partners, offering the real feel of the island life.One #IslandLife Pass entitles the cardholder for 20% discount in the total bill for 2 persons in our partners' accommodation, transport, food & beverage, activities, crafts and well-being products & services.Travellers can buy an #IslandLife Pass for 10 days at 49 EUROS or for 30 days at 75 EUROS. The latter being attractive for long-stay travellers and residents.To be eligible to be part of Mauritius Conscious partner network, businesses need to be registered as a company and comply withlearn more atTravellers can book their #IslandLife Pass online at www.mauritiusconscious.com/ islandlife and choose where to pick it up once they arrive in Mauritius, or find it directly with our network of partners all over the island.Mauritius Conscious, incorporated in Mauritius in May 2016, is a travel tech start-up that aims to bring a shift in the Mauritian tourism landscape by using state of the art technologies coupled with best in class digital marketing practices to promote ecotourism and sustainable travel lifestyle as the natural choice for travellers visiting the island.Romina Tello SoberanesMauritius Conscious Guide (Conscious Travel Ltd)121, Morcellement Jhuboo, Trou aux Biches. Mauritius+230 5981 8746mauritiusconscious@gmail.comwww.mauritiusconscious.com
Cubic Logics India's first CSP in true sense to provide complete bundled Office service & apps with its own IP ie. Management System, Expense Reimbursement, Resource Management, Help Desk, Asset Tracker, Meeting Management, Employee Directory, etc.

Contact

Cubic Logics

Roopa N

***@cubiclogics.com Cubic LogicsRoopa N

End

-- Cubic Logics, leading Collaboration & Messaging Solution Provider announces Cubic Logics as the first Indian Premier Microsoft Cloud Solution Partner in true sense to provide complete bundled Office 365 offerings with its own IP and products. It is Cubic's unparalleled technical competency & capabilities which provide robust, advanced and niche products to India & global SMEs customers at affordable cost.Cubic Logics is offering its Office 365 Apps built on Office 365 platform for productivity needs of organization such asAll these apps uses Office 365 resources, with no need to have additional servers, third party cloud subscriptions, excel sheets, etc. Further CEO of Cubic Logics, Mr. Manoj Kumar briefed, we have designed and developed these apps to work on Office 365 / SharePoint online / SharePoint 2016 fully integrated with SSO, existing user names and passwords. As a limited time offer, we are offering selective apps for one year along with Office 365 subscriptions.More information is available onfor Office 365 Apps & Office 365 Add insAbout Cubic LogicsCubic Logics, leading cloud solution provider, Microsoft CSP, Gold partner & solution provider offers a basket of cutting edge technologies to the global industry. Cubic group leads and serves the industry since 2002 in Application development, SharePoint applications and development, Office 365 solutions, Office 365 deployment & migrations, Skype for Business deployments, Managed Infrastructure Services, & provide development and support to reduce IT operational cost & save time in managing IT application.
Solutions were sought with Clean Vallisaari Innovation Competition

Contact

Johanna Lemola

City of Helsinki

***@aol.com Johanna LemolaCity of Helsinki

End

-- Two previously closed islands off the Helsinki city center shoreline opened to the public in May 2016, vacated from earlier use by the Finnish Defense Forces. Located 2.5 miles  15 minutes by waterbus  from Helsinki Market Square in the South Harbor, the twin fortress islands ofandprovide high potential for recreation and tourism, featuring unique nature and deep layers of Finnish cultural history.The islands' governing body, Finnish wildlife administration Metsahallitus, and the City of Helsinki seek to develop the largely undeveloped islands for eco-tourism using Smart & Clean technologies and solutions. Together they announced an innovation competition entitled Clean Vallisaari in March 2016, looking for ideas to support the development of the islands and to contribute new insights to the story of the islands.The City of Helsinki also looked to use the competition as a reference case in its strategic Smart & Clean development plan.The competitors were asked to provide solutions for water, waste and energy management in ways that respect the nature and cultural values of the islands, add to the appeal of the islands, and enable a minimum environmental footprint of the proposed development, while creating jobs and business opportunities. The organizers looked for proposals from multidisciplinary teams addressing the evaluation criteria "Unique island experience" and "Sustainable technologies and solutions."The competition received 12 entries, and the jury announced its decision on September 1, 2016. According to the jury, the proposals included many creative and applicable solutions. The jury named two winners and and awarded each with a 12,500-euro prize.The jury cites Precious Vallisaari for its human-centric approach, which incorporates greenhouses and local food production. Development is based on circular economy (an economy that produces no waste and pollution). The proposal also incorporates the learning experience.Virgin Island, according to the jury, emphasizes self-sustained systems and presents a convincing basis for creating a showcase for clean technologies. The proposal well incorporates the user experience.Chairman of the jury, former U.S. Ambassador to Finland (20092015)Bruce Oreck comments, "It's really unique that the development is done in complete harmony with nature." Ambassador Oreck continues to live and work in Finland.The Vallisaari and Kuninkaansaari islands are nature reserves that support a wide variety of plant and animal species. They feature fortification structures built during the Swedish rule (1809) and Russian rule (18091917)of Finland. Vallisaari was used to support the Suomenlinna sea fortress, which is today a UNESCO World Heritage site.Clean Vallisaari Innovation Competition, Jury Evaluation Report: http://www.hel.fi/ static/kanslia/ elo/puhdas-vallisaari- poytakirja.pdf City of Helsinki: http://www.hel.fi/ www/helsinki/ en
In Kiev, "Ukrainian Crisis Media Center" held a press conference devoted to summarizing children's charity project "The summer cinema camp of peace".

Media Contact

Igor Iankovskyi Charity Foundation

***@iff-charity.org

+380444590304 Igor Iankovskyi Charity Foundation+380444590304

End

-- During the press conference, its position on the need for intensive work with children living in frontline areas of Donbass, shared initiators of the project - Producer Anna Kapustin (cultural and educational initiative "Yellow Bus"), filmmaker Larysa Artyushina (NGO "New Donbass") founder of the Foundation "Initiative for the future" Igor Iankovskyi, who sponsored the initiative, as well as a representative of the Embassy of Lithuania in Ukraine - Jonas Danilyauskas and the participating young girl-actress Sonia Lysenko."The summer cinema camp of peace"  is a volunteer cultural and educational project whose organizers set a goal to not only the patriotic education of youth, but also establishing interaction between children from peaceful areas and from front-line areas, training and creative development through language cinema. The team joined the project promising professionals in the field of cinema, theater, music, fine arts and other creative professions.Founder of Foundation "Initiative for the Future", patron Igor Iankovskyi said the high level of professionalism with which the creative process came organizers and volunteers "are the movies filmed children are flush with the short films presented at Cannes or Berlin film festivals. This is made possible through the efforts of the organizers and volunteers " The summer cinema camp of peace", I'm sure, that the entire world should meet with Ukraine because of the work of talented young people and prompted me to support this wonderful initiative. I call on other foundations, community organizations support such projects in Ukraine ", - said the philanthropist Igor Iankovskyi."The cinema camp participants were 48 children-students aged from 10 to 16 years old. They were chosen based on the results of a competition that is held in Mar'yinka Village, Krasnohorivka Village and Luhansk city in the May of this year "- said the director Larisa Artyushina. In just two weeks they were able not only to create the full creative teams but also capture the four (4) short films where children are the writers, cameramen, directors and actors, and even tried myself in ten contiguous cinematic professions.Earlier, just after returning from "The summer cinema camp of peace" near Odessa, the initiators of the action with their young wards met in Kiev with the Igor Iankovskyi, who supported the charity project. During the meeting, which was held in an informal setting, project organizers thanked Igor Iankovskyi for financial support, through which they can realize all its plans. The talented children shared their vivid impressions they received from the time spent in the camp, from training, participation in the realization of their film projects. During the meeting, the children presented their short films that impressed all participants with its depth and professionalism.Igor Iankovskyi Charity Foundation "Initiative for the Future" develops active cooperation with NGOs and activists that aim to support the younger generation Ukrainian, talented children from different regions of the Ukraine. Thus, care for the children who were in the zone of military conflict in Eastern Ukraine Foundation Igor Iankovskyi in cooperation with the NGO "All-Ukrainian Organization for IDPs," this summer provided the great rest for 90 refugee children from the Ukrainian cities of the zone of military conflict  Lugansk city, Donetsk city, Anthracite city, Gorlovka city and Mariupol city. Thanks to financial support, patron, children, whose fate touched by the war, and the rest were rehabilitated in the children's restcamp "Zmina", which is in Borodyanka district, Kyiv region."Childhood should not be burnt by war, as the new younger generation Ukraine - is our common future, that we must protect and nurture with the care and attention," - emphasizes its position of principle Igor Iankovskyi. Patron promised that he will continue to support the initiatives in arts and culture for supporting the talented Ukrainian youth.
Tempo Money Transfer: Cuban remittances market features highest growth in Latin America. The inbound remittances reached a record level of $3.4 billion in 2015.

By: Tempo Money Transfer

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-- France and Germany-based Tempo Money Transfer, has just completed its study on the remittances segment in Cuba. The company said that in 2015, remittances sent to the island reached a record level of nearly $3,4 billion, with over 15 percent growth per annum.The president for Tempo, Mr. Jeffrey Phaneuf said that the volumes of remittances flow, mostly depend on the difference in life standards and GDP per capita in various countries. Cuba is becoming one of the significant donors in the region, surpassing the growth recorded by the Dominican Republic and Guatemala, the two other fast growing remittances markets in Latin America.Phaneuf said that for several decades this market with huge potential was under US embargo. Now the situation has changed completely. The rapprochement policieshave given a huge boost to this attractive segment.He said that in 2016 the company expects Cuba to keep its growth (up to 17 percent per year), as far as remittances is concerned.Tempo Money Transfer, just started its operations in Cuba in alliance with More Money Transfers.
John Gibson Associates have welcomed the news of further Government investment in the Midlands automotive business zone

By: John Gibson Associates

Contact

John Gibson Associates

***@jgauk.com

01904 820 758 John Gibson Associates01904 820 758

End

-- Production and sales figures from the first half of 2016 illustrate the remarkable success of the UK automotive sector. Significant growth is reflected in every aspect, from the manufacture of new vehicles through to high levels of sales in the second hand car market. The key critical factor for all involved in the industry is to ensure this success is sustained. John Gibson Associates, the leading name for automotive recruitment in the UK, endorse and support all initiatives which are designed to secure sustainability.One of the most notable initiatives in this respect is the recently announced investment in the Midlands automotive business zone. The UK Government announced an investment of 35million into the region. This has been supported by a further 10million investment through enterprise partnerships with district and city councils in the surrounding Coventry area. The investment is anticipated to create some 3,000 new jobs, which would be a 75% increase on the current employment figure recorded for the business zone.John Gibson Associates have welcomed this investment initiative. The automotive business zone in the Midlands has been at the forefront of the success achieved by the UK motor industry, which is why it is so important to ensure growth is sustained. Ensuring that the best and most appropriate candidates possible are employed in the newly created positions is crucial to achieving the intended success with the investment. Over the years the name John Gibson Associates is the one which has come to be the one trusted for automotive recruitment excellence.The recent announcement that new car production in the UK for the year had exceeded one million units by July serves to illustrate the success experienced within the automotive industry. Reaching the highest mid-year production figure recorded for over a decade has been possible by a combination of strategic investment and successful, long term employment strategies.Automotive recruitment services are provided nationwide by John Gibson Associates, with motor trade job specialists serving in every area of the United Kingdom. Over the years they have become the organization trusted by businesses in the sector to deliver effective and successful candidates for meeting long term employment requirements.For more information please visit www.jgauk.com
The Inaugural Havana Culinary Exchange this month brings together Leading Chefs, Sommeliers, Mixologists and Wineries from United States and Cuba for a week of great food and wine on the island of Cuba.

By: Global Events & Incentives, LLC

Havana- Culinary- Exchange_ top

Media Contact

Mildred Diaz

Havana Culinary Exchange

***@globaleventsincentives.com

(305) 809 8042 Mildred DiazHavana Culinary Exchange(305) 809 8042

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-- In the 1950's, a time when meat pies, frozen vegetables and tuna casseroles along with a glass of Tang reigned in the good ol' US of A, Havana was catering to the rich jet-setters seeking a luxurious lifestyle. Socialites, debutantes, celebrities like Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra, and American mobsters came to play in the Cuban paradise and dine on succulent roast pig, fresh seafood and sip on mojitos. Then the revolution happened.Since then Cubans have been cut off from many of the innovations and the blending of flavors of different ethnic cuisines not to mention the lack of a wide variety of fresh ingredients that we are so accustomed to in the states. They work with canned products, inadequate equipment and have to deal with rations. Just as other aspects of their culture have been frozen in time, so has their food.The Havana Culinary Exchange envisioned by Chef Douglas Rodriguez, the Godfather of Latino Cuisine, is bringing a squad of top US chefs, sommeliers and mixologists to share new food techniques, equipment and recipes with the Cuban chefs and have them share their time-honored traditional cuisine with them."I'm honored that all of these extraordinarily talented folks are taking time from their busy schedules" remarks Chef Rodriguez, "to share their passion for food and wines in my parent's beautiful homeland."The roster of culinary talent includes:Aaron May (Scottsdale)- Executive Chef & Owner LTB Concepts, Arizona Culinary Hall of FameBernie Matz (Miami) - "Connoisseur of Tacos", Executive Chef & Owner LA Cafe, Bodega Taqueria y TequilaBrad Kilgore (Miami) - 2016 Best Chef in America, Food & Wine's Best New Chef 2016, Executive Chef, Alter named Best New Restaurants in America 2016Cheryl Forberg (Napa) - NBC's Biggest Loser Nutritionist, James Beard Award Winning Chef, New York Times best-selling authorDarlene Tenes (Silicon Valley) - eHow Food & Lifestyle Expert, Owner & Founder of CasaQ by Darlene, co-host Best Darn Tamale ContestDean Corbett (Louisville)- Executive Chef & Owner Corbett's: An American Place, Honorable Order of the Golden Toque named Esquire's "Best New Restaurants"Douglas Rodriguez (Miami) - Godfather of Nuevo Latino Cusisine, Executive Chef & Owner Alma de Cuba, James Beard Award WinnerFernando Martinez (Louisville)- Executive Chef & Owner Ole Oh Let's Eat Restaurant GroupIvan Ruiz (Summit) - Sommelier and Owner of winelistsummit.com, Co-Founder The Wine List SommelierJohn Mooney (NYC & DC) - StarChefs.com Rising Star Sustainability Chef, Bell Book & CandleKevin Sbraga(Philadelphia)- Top Chef Winner Season 7, MasterChef Judge, Executive Chef & Owner Sbraga DiningMichael Aeyal Ginor (New York) - Owner, Hudson Valley Foie Gras & New York State Foie Gras, James Beard Award WinnerMike Isabella(DC)- Bravo T's Top Chef, Top Chef Allstars, Man vs. Child: Chef Showdown, Executive Chef & Owner Isabella ConceptsRodolfo Cuadros (Chicago) - Executive Chef, Carnivale ChicagoCollectively they have appeared as competitors and judges across Food Network's Chopped, Iron Chef, BravoTV's Top Chef, FYI's Man vs. Child: Chef Showdown and appeared in Gourmet, Restaurant, Food & Wine, Conde Nast Traveler, Sunset Magazine, USA Today and every major network.Food aficionados and adventurous travelers can partake in the Havana Culinary Exchange from September 24  October 1, 2016 to explore the island's beautiful culture and music then savor amazing cuisine every day from the top chefs in the USA and Cuba.For more information, visitt http://www.globaleventsincentives.com/ havanaculinaryexchange or by calling 305-809-8042.
Neinver continues its growth in Europe by entering the Czech market, the eighth market in which the company has a presence. Neinver has partnered with The Prague Outlet to forge a joint venture launching Prague The Style Outlets, the first premium outlet centre in the Czech Republic. Neinver will be

[]
International Road Federation 18th World Road Meeting was held from November 14-17, 2017 wherein the theme is Safe Roads and Smart Mobility: The Engines of Economic Growth. A curtain raiser was held today, when a host of mandatory safety features were revealed.

Noting increasing number of accidents involving small children and pedestrians, the Road Ministry is planning on making it compulsory for all vehicles to sport rear parking sensors which will greatly reduce the risk of children coming under the wheels of reversing vehicles.

Even though as on date, all cars have rear view mirrors, these only detect vehicles at the rear and are not sufficient for detecting small children or objects on the ground. They fall under the cars blind spot and it has been seen that a rising number of small children have been run down due to absence of this feature.

The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) will be issuing a notification making rear view sensors mandatory on all vehicles while speed warning and beep audio warning will also be made compulsory as is seen in the case of seat belt warning signs. The system will function by giving off a beep once the vehicle reaches a speed of 80 kmph while after 90 kmph a continuous beep will warn the driver of overspeeding.

road accidents in India

The Government of India will also be making anti-lock braking system and combined braking system compulsory for all two wheelers from April 2019 while rear-view sensors, speed warning and airbags on all vehicles will be compulsory by October 1, 2018.

The major highlight of the WRM 2017 will be an exhibition showcasing state-of-the-art technologies on road safety and traffic regulations including control systems, communication and navigation devices, driver training systems, Intelligent Transport System (ITS), Barriers, Vehicle Detection, Speed Cameras, License Plate Recognition, Vehicle Classification, Fibre Optics, Road Signs, Highway Infrastructure, latest parking technologies, Road Building, Road Marking & Equipment, Street Lighting, Parking, Pay & Display, Traffic Management, Display Systems, Traffic Monitoring, and Traffic Control Signalling, said Mr Kapila.

Updated on 4th December, 2018.
Maruti Suzuki Ciaz and Honda City are two very popular sedans in India. The former was launched to dethrone the latter, and sales numbers reveal that after three years of launch, Ciaz has finally taken over the reign of Honda City in India.

Both Honda City and Maruti Ciaz are commanding a position of pride for their respective automakers. While demand for both models is high, the Ciaz, launched in October 2014 entered a segment largely commanded by the Honda City and Hyundai Verna.

Maruti Ciaz immediately managed to carve a niche for itself in the market, thanks to aggressive pricing, luxurious interiors. After about 3 years of launch, Ciaz has reported higher sales than that of Citys over a period of ten months of this fiscal. During the period April 2016 to January 2017, 53,644 units of Ciaz were sold as against 45,395 units of the Honda City.

Speaking about the sales release shared by Maruti Suzuki India  In January 2017, sales of Maruti Suzuki Ciaz has surpassed that of Honda City. Sales of Maruti Suzuki Ciaz for January 2017 stood at 6,530 units as against 6,355 units of Honda City sold in the same month. Ciaz sales registered a 20% increase in sales over 5,431 units sold in January 2016 while Honda City sales were at 8,037 units in January 2016.

Skoda Rapid, another sedan making waves across the sedan segment, reported sales of 959 units in January 2017, a decline of 8.1% as compared to sales of 1,044 units in January 2016 while sales of Volkswagen Vento also dipped substantially by 61% from 1,393 units sold in January 2016 to just 543 units sold in the past month.

Cumulative sales of Maruti Suzuki Ciaz during April 2016 to January 2017 has also stood ahead of that of Honda City with 53,644 units sold during that period as against 45,395 units of Honda City sold. 13,246 units of Hyundai Verna were sold during April 2016 to January 2017 while sales of Volkswagen Vento and Skoda Rapid also experienced lower sales at 8,347 units and 7,402 units respectively.

Maruti always wanted to capture the segment which had the Honda City as No 1. This was a lucrative segment as it not only offered customers a sense of premiumness, but also that of pride in the society. Their earlier attempt, SX4 sedan, failed miserably. But they have leart from their mistakes, and are at the no 1 position in the segment now.

New Honda City facelift.

Honda City is in its fourth generation, launched in January 2014. To date, sales have exceeded the 2.2 lakh unit mark and the City is regaled as a practical choice for buyers seeking a mid size sedan.

Maruti Ciaz overtook the Honda City in terms of sales primarily due to a price difference of nearly INR 2 lakhs, more variant options and significantly lower maintenance costs. But with Honda all set to launch the new City facelift on 14th February, should Maruti be worried?

News Release
Traditional age-based grade levels may be hampering the progress of millions of K-12 students in the United States and should be a target for reform, according to a new study co-authored by a UNC Charlotte education professor.

Using data from a sample of state and national assessments, Michael Matthews, associate professor of special education and child development, and colleagues found that between 15 and 45 percent of students enter upper elementary school classrooms already performing at least one year above grade level.

Legislation like the Every Student Succeeds Act and its predecessors emphasize "getting students to grade level" to a degree that doing so is suggested at least implicitly to be the primary purpose of schooling, the authors argue. As a result, students' class assignments are established with a rigidity that prevents some from reaching their potential, while also foisting on teachers the burdensome task of providing appropriately differentiated instruction to a vast range of abilities.

Published by the Institute for Education Policy at Johns Hopkins University, the study is one of only a handful to examine in detail the number of students outpacing age-based grade level expectations.

"The numbers are far higher than we expected, especially for the proportion of children who already are achieving three or more years above grade level in elementary school," Matthews said. "We already knew that acceleration is tremendously underutilized, but it looks like vastly more students could benefit from being allowed to move through the educational system at a more rapid pace."

The study found that 11 to 30 percent of elementary school students perform at least one year above their current grade level in mathematics, and between 20 and 40 percent of students are a level ahead in reading. As a result, billions of dollars are wasted annually teaching students content they already know, the researchers say. They recommend more systematic monitoring of the numbers of advanced students and a more liberal application of acceleration policies, including grade skipping.

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The benefits of this approach would likely extend beyond advanced students.

"Regardless of the instructional level, it is far more likely that teachers will be highly effective when they have a narrower range of ability to address in their classroom," Matthews said, noting that currently, the average upper elementary teacher has around a nine-year range of a reading ability among students in the classroom.

"It is difficult, if not impossible, for one person to design effective instruction at an appropriate level for all of these learners within the constraints of a 24-hour day," he said.

The study's authors suggest instructional models that cluster students based on their level of prior learning could narrow that range and improve achievement of children at all levels.

Helping high-achieving students does not mean foregoing support for those at other levels, Matthews said, and even beyond economic arguments and national interest, there are other important reasons for schools to ensure high-ability students reach their potential.

"Schools currently spend substantially more on bringing underperforming students up than on their students who already are achieving at or above grade level," Matthews noted.

"This leads to the unfortunate situation that students who are high achievers often rely a lot on their families to provide them with access to appropriately advanced learning experiences, and consequently as a society, we probably are missing large numbers of potentially high-achieving students who come from homes whose resources don't permit them as much access to such experiences."

By providing details on the scope of the problem, the authors say they hope to convince schools and policymakers to take a closer look at accommodations for high-achieving learners.

A longer paper now being prepared by the same researchers will include more detailed data from different states. The original policy brief is available here.
On Wednesday Google announced that they are bringing "reviews from the web" to the local knowledge panel section of the search results.

Well, last night it went live and dozens of emails and tweets came my way letting me know. Now if you search for a local business and the local knowledge panel comes up for the business, Google may show these reviews from the web. Here is a screen shot for my company:

How do you help get these on your business listing? Google said:

By implementing review snippet markup and meeting our criteria, your sites user-generated composite ratings will be eligible for inclusion. Add the Local Business markup to help Google match reviews to the right review subject and help grow your sites coverage. For more information on the guidelines for the Reviews from the web, critic review and top places lists features, check out our developer site.

Forum discussion at Twitter.
Oftentimes, those who've been protected and served are the ones most eager to return the favor. Just ask these bighearted cops in Chile, and the rescued dogs who have insisted on joining the force.

Dodo Shows Soulmates Pig Loves To Launch Himself Onto His Dad's Lap

Law enforcement personnel in the city of Quilpue are normally tasked with fighting crime, but in this case they're making amends for one that already occurred. When someone abandoned a group of dogs in a vacant lot near the police station where they're headquartered, the officers took compassionate action. Rather than try to shoo the animals away when they lingered out front, they instead offered them food, water and a place to stay in their precinct. For their act of kindness, the police gained five loyal new partners in return. And with that, the dogs found their calling.

From that point forward, the adopted dogs began to accompany the police as they made the rounds about town. If the officer enters a building, the dogs will even wait patiently outside - securing the perimeter, perhaps, or waiting for a pet or two from passersby. "They are very loyal, very loyal. They never leave you," one officer told Chile National Television. "Where I am, they are. If I walk, they walk." A few months ago, the dogs' position on the force became all but official with the addition of a reflective uniform, not unlike the ones their human partners wear on their beats.
There's nothing visceral about these pictures taking aim at China's dog and cat meat industry. Nothing that immediately rattles the heart. Or sends the senses running for cover. Instead, the images, made by people who responded to a call from Animals Asia, perfectly capture the cruelty of the trade without a hint of bloodshed.

Look for just a moment and the insidious nature of the dog and meat industry sinks deep down into the soul. The pictures are part of a contest asking people from across China to come up with visuals for the organization's campaign against the trade.

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"Internationally we associate campaigns to end cat and dog meat eating with very in-your-face scenes of animal cruelty," Irene Feng of Animals Asia noted in a press release. "Most of the pictures we have seen here deal instead with emotions. The emotions of the affected animals and their human companions who have lost members of their family due to dog thieves." Feng is referring to the pets stolen from people's homes who help fuel the meat industry in China. Many pilfered pets and strays end up at the widely condemned Yulin dog meat festival, an annual event in southwestern China that was founded in 2010 for the sole purpose of lining the pockets of dog meat traders. This picture, called "Brightness and Fear," earned the top prize.

Yang Mengyun, the design student who created it, told Animals Asia her inspiration for the work was the many stray dogs and cats she feeds on campus. "I hope one day when people see stray animals, they won't think of eating or hurting them," she told the organization. "So that the stray cats or dogs can play under the sun, relax and enjoy free lives." "Brightness is good for humans," she added. "We don't connect anything scary to brightness. But to stray animals it is not the same. Exposed by the sun or light means they can easily be spotted by dog or cat dealers. I guess they'd rather be living in the darkness, where they can hide and be far away from bad people."

Another design student, Nie Chonghao, took second place with the following image, called "Companion":

"Cats and dogs should be our friends," Chonghao told the organization. "To lose a friend because someone has eaten them is too sad. In my design, the paw prints beside the footprints not only represent companion animals like cats and dogs, but all the animals in the world." Animals Asia is hoping the campaign, which will display these images in prominent places throughout the country, will fuel momentum to end the dog and cat meat trade in China.
For all his life, George, an 11-year-old orange cat, had only known love. He and his owner, Fiona, lived in Sydney, Australia, together - but all that changed in March of this year, when Fiona became ill.

George | Facebook/Please Help Bring George Home

As a result, Fiona had to travel back home to Ireland, but was unable to take George with her at the time and decided to leave him with a neighbor. Fiona planned on returning to Sydney as soon as she recovered - but her health issues were more pressing than she realized, and so she had to remain in Ireland. Meanwhile, George remained in Australia, with no idea why his mom had left him or when she would return to him. Fiona thought that even if she couldn't be with George just yet, at the very least, he was fed and sheltered. Soon, she found out that was far from the case.

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"A couple of months ago, [Fiona's] neighbors moved away and left poor George to fend for himself," Sara Daly, a friend of Fiona's, wrote on George's GoFundMe page. Whether he was dumped or had managed to escape from his foster home before they left, George was later found 12 miles away from the only neighborhood he ever knew. It's unknown how long he wandered or the difficulties he encountered as a senior house cat suddenly left on his own - but luckily for him, he was rescued from the streets by kind strangers and taken to a local animal shelter. Since George was microchipped, Fiona was notified about where and how he'd been found. Naturally, she wanted him back - but didn't have the funds needed to ship him from from Australia to Ireland. With time running out before he'd be put up for adoption after being admitted to an animal hospital, Fiona's friends got involved.

"In late July two friends of the cat's owner, Fiona, Cait Commins and Sara Daly, came into my office," Ronan Cahill, a web developer in Fiona's Irish town of Athenry, told The Dodo. "They explained about George and that they'd just come from the bank after opening a bank account to raise money for him." Cahill joined their fundraising efforts and created a Facebook page with a linked GoFundMe account to help spread the word about George and Fiona's plight. In just four weeks, friends, family and strangers came together to raise the amount needed to get George on a plane - and finally back in Fiona's arms.

Facebook/Please Help Bring George Home

"He was very poorly; he had been fending for himself for a long time," Cahill said. "The animal hospital took great care of him though and when he got home, he was in top condition. We were amazed."

George with Fiona and her friends | Facebook/Please Help Bring George Home

Cahill added that George recognized Fiona immediately, and the photos of the two together after being separated for so long tell just how much they missed one another.

Facebook/Please Help Bring George Home

"She said it was one of the best days of her life to be reunited with the friend she never thought she'd meet again," Cahill told local news outlet Independent.ie. "She had been sick, but feels like life has completely turned around now that she has her baby back. It's unbelievable, she thought her friends were joking and didn't believe it was possible. She is completely overwhelmed."

Facebook/Please Help Bring George Home
<p><a href="https://www.edgarsmission.org.au/" target="_blank">Edgar's Mission Farm Sanctuary</a></p>

Harry the lamb was in bad shape when he arrived at Edgar's Mission Farm Sanctuary - he was weak, bloated and crying out in pain. When his rescuers discovered he had a life-threatening congenital condition, they rushed Harry to the vet for emergency surgery. The operation was risky, but Harry beat the odds and pulled through. As the lamb recovered, Pam Ahern, founder of Edgar's Mission, couldn't help but wonder, what about Harry's mother? Could she save the mother too?

"I thought about the producer of 'Charlotte's Web,' Bernie Williams, and how he found homes for all of the piglets involved in the movie, some who came to live at Edgar's Mission," Ahern told The Dodo. "But Bernie also thought of the mother pig and decided to save her, too. She came to live at Edgar's Mission, and I named her Alice. Thinking of this, I knew I had to save Harry's mum, and reunite her with her baby!" A deal was negotiated with the farmer who had Harry's mom, and she was transported to Edgar's Mission. Ahern named the mother sheep Alicia after Alice, the mother of the piglets from "Charlotte's Web." "Alicia wasn't used to people, and she would have had no idea what was going to happen to her," Ahern said. "Can you imagine if a stranger, far more powerful than you, came along and took you away from the place where you lived with your buddies? Then you found yourself in a small area, with sights, sounds and smells you didn't recognize? Alicia had no idea we were the good guys and that we wouldn't harm her."

Dodo Shows Foster Diaries This Pregnant Pittie Foster Story Is The Happiest Thing Ever

When Alicia arrived at the sanctuary, Harry still hadn't come back from the veterinary clinic, and they didn't expect him for several more days. Ahern worried Alicia's milk supply would dry up, so she introduced Alicia to the other young lambs to see if she'd let them nurse. She didn't - Alicia got scared when the lambs approached her, and bolted from them. Then the vet called: Harry could come home that afternoon, which meant Alicia would be reunited with her baby sooner than expected. "We placed Alicia in our nursery and told her she was in for the surprise of her life," said Ahern, "but she continued to look terrified."

Would Alicia recognize her baby after spending so many days apart from him? Harry might have lost his familiar scent after being in the veterinary clinic.

When Harry entered the nursery, Ahern realized she had nothing to worry about. "As soon as Alicia saw Harry, she trotted straight up to him, tugging hard on the lead that was holding her," said Ahern. "We gently ushered Harry towards her - he looked at her face and went searching for her udder. Alicia was stunned, and she kept looking from Harry to me." Harry is still recovering from his surgery, so he and Alicia spend most of their time inside the nursery ...

And they couldn't be happier.

Mama and baby also get lots of time out in the grass and sunshine.

"Nothing could have prepared me for the exhilaration," Ahern said. "I knew it was going to be magical if we could pull it off, but I had no idea just how special it would be. Poor Alicia probably thought she'd never ever see her baby again, but now the two are inseparable. Harry curls up night next to her body whenever they take a rest."
Friday, September 09, 2016 ABQ Mayoral Race Reshaped As Boost To Public Financing Is Killed By BernCo Commission, Plus: Gary Johnson's Aleppo Moment Tim Keller The '17 ABQ mayoral race was reshaped by the Bernalillo County Commission Thursday when it



The blow to increased public financing is seen as most impacting the potential candidacy of Dem State Auditor Tim Keller. The favorite of the progressives hoped to see the new spending limit rise from the current $362,000 to $630,000. Republican City Councilor Dan Lewis also takes a hit. The possible contender was another potential hopeful who wanted the public money limit raised.



The only officially announced candidate, former Dem BernCo Commissioner Deanna Archuleta, is already raising private money. Former Dem Party Chairman Brian Colon is all but in the race and he too is expected to take the private financing route.



Among those against placing the measure on the ballot was Republican Commissioner Wayne Johnson who is also on the list of potential mayoral candidates making the rounds. The key decision came from Dem Commissioner Art De La Cruz who killed it by joining with Johnson and Republican Lonnie Talbert.



De La Cruz has tangled with the progressive wing of the party and his crucial votes Thursday on public financing and sick leave, both favored by liberals, was his last kick in their pants as he finishes his final term at the end of the year. But maybe the progressives will get a chance for revenge. De La Cruz is said to be considering a run for the '18 Dem lieutenant governor nomination.



THE ALEPPO GAFFE



New Mexicans familiar with Gary Johnson from his two terms as a Republican Governor here could hardly be surprised by his



Johnson's genial personality and the distaste for the two major presidential nominees has buoyed his candidacy but now he faces



Reader John Taber gets the last word on this:



What would Gary Johnson do about Aleppo? Whatever it is, he'd probably veto it.



This is the home of New Mexico politics.



E-mail your news and comments. (jmonahan@ix.netcom.com)



Interested in reaching New Mexico's most informed audience? Advertise here.



( c)NM POLITICS WITH JOE MONAHAN 2016 The '17 ABQ mayoral race was reshaped by the Bernalillo County Commission Thursday when it refused to place on the November election ballot a city of ABQ initiative that, if approved by voters, would have nearly doubled the amount of money a publicly financed candidate could receive to run their campaign. It is highly unlikely the city will call a special election--or a court would order one--before next year's city election to have it considered. Ditto for a controversial city sick leave initiative that also was kept off the ballot at the special commission meeting.The blow to increased public financing is seen as most impacting the potential candidacy of Dem State Auditor Tim Keller. The favorite of the progressives hoped to see the new spending limit rise from the current $362,000 to $630,000. Republican City Councilor Dan Lewis also takes a hit. The possible contender was another potential hopeful who wanted the public money limit raised.The only officially announced candidate, former Dem BernCo Commissioner Deanna Archuleta, is already raising private money. Former Dem Party Chairman Brian Colon is all but in the race and he too is expected to take the private financing route.Among those against placing the measure on the ballot was Republican Commissioner Wayne Johnson who is also on the list of potential mayoral candidates making the rounds. The key decision came from Dem Commissioner Art De La Cruz who killed it by joining with Johnson and Republican Lonnie Talbert.De La Cruz has tangled with the progressive wing of the party and his crucial votes Thursday on public financing and sick leave, both favored by liberals, was his last kick in their pants as he finishes his final term at the end of the year. But maybe the progressives will get a chance for revenge. De La Cruz is said to be considering a run for the '18 Dem lieutenant governor nomination.New Mexicans familiar with Gary Johnson from his two terms as a Republican Governor here could hardly be surprised by his foreign policy gaffe that had jaws dropping elsewhere. He never has been one for details as he pursues a shoot-from-the-hip style with knowledge gleaned from grazing the headlines. Still, that sky high 25 percent that Johnson was garnering in the state in the latest WaPo poll was bound to come down and now will probably slide quicker. If it does the pundits think it will mainly benefit Clinton who Johnson seems to be pulling a bit more support from than Trump.Johnson's genial personality and the distaste for the two major presidential nominees has buoyed his candidacy but now he faces two withering months to try to persuade voters Aleppo was a fluke. But it wasn't. There's an old saying: "Some men are discovered, others are found out." Aleppo was the usual Gary Johnson around here, but it was his"found out" moment for the rest of the nation.Reader John Taber gets the last word on this:This is the home of New Mexico politics.
A veteran Volkswagen AG engineer pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud U.S. regulators and customers, the first criminal charge in the Justice Departments year-long investigation into the companys rigging of federal air-pollution tests.

The engineer, James Liang, who entered his plea in Detroit federal court on Friday, is cooperating with the investigation, increasing pressure on higher-ranking officials of the company.

Liang worked at Volkswagen for decades, beginning in Germany and then moving to the U.S. in 2008  two years after the government says the conspiracy began. He appeared in court with a translator.

He admitted to a charge of conspiracy to commit fraud against U.S. regulators and customers. He faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison.

Liang was one of the engineers at Volkswagen in Wolfsburg, Germany, who was directly involved in the development of the defeat device for the Jetta in 2006, according to a lawsuit filed in July by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.

In 2014 and 2015, he was conducting tests at the companys Oxnard, California, facility as part of Volkswagens effort to conceal from regulators that the defeat devices were responsible for the illegal emissions, according to the New York complaint.

Although the company has already agreed to settlements that may total $16.5 billion (U.S.) to get 482,000 emissions-cheating diesel cars off U.S. roads, the U.S. is continuing its criminal inquiry into the companys manipulation of emissions systems.

Settlement talks in the criminal matter against the company could be resolved by the end of the year, according to two people familiar with the matter. Germany and South Korea are also conducting criminal probes of the company.

Jeannine Ginivan, a Volkswagen spokeswoman, declined to comment on Liangs guilty plea.

After VW admitted last September that it had systematically rigged environmental tests since 2009, it suspended several engineers for their involvement in the scheme. They included several managers whom an internal investigation found had turned a blind eye to the effort.

The U.S. Justice Department a year ago put in place a policy requiring that all corporate cases include a plan to charge individuals  a policy that came amid criticism that company officials werent being held accountable even as the businesses paid billions of dollars in fines. The department has said companies that want credit for cooperating with investigators must name individuals whom they consider responsible for any misconduct.

Top-ranking auto executives have rarely been prosecuted in their companies scandals. In cases brought against General Motors Co. for ignition problems and Toyota Motor Corp. for uncontrolled acceleration, no high-ranking executives were accused of wrongdoing in the U.S.

VW still faces lawsuits by at least five states and by investors and dealerships in the U.S. There are parallel lawsuits, including consumer complaints, in Germany, all of which could raise the scandals price tag for the automaker.

Future expenses could include hundreds of millions of dollars in fees for the lawyers who secured the multibillion-dollar deal for car owners.

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A photo caption in this very newspaper a week ago was a masterwork of understatement.

Pictured was Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, holding a lobster, standing alongside Jack Ma, also holding a lobster. The caption identified Mr. Ma as the head of Alibaba Group, which sells lobster.

Thats one way of describing the monster online retailer that posted 2016 revenues of $15.7 billion (U.S.) and which is on track this year to smash that figure. (First quarter revenues for 2017 surpassed $4.8 billion.)

The real significance of the photo op was not noted: Canada has now joined the growing club of countries establishing pavilions on Alibabas Tmall Global platform, joining the likes of New Zealand and its product offerings (black strap molasses) and Italy, which this week hosted a wine and spirits festival through the Italian pavilion. The Hangzhou, China-based Mr. Ma aims to become The 5th Avenue of e-commerce. And so e-shoppers in China are now invited to shop an online Canadian product platform, designed against a picture pastiche of the Peace Tower, autumn leaves and the Rockies. For their shopping pleasure: Lululemon yoga mats, pure maple syrup, Inniskillin ice wine and those picture-perfect live lobsters banded with their Clearwater labels. And more.

For the countrys agri-food industry, Alibaba and online retailers like it present enormous opportunity. The platform is a way to bring a focus to Canadian products, says Ted Bilyea, chair of the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute. A year ago, CAPI sponsored a forum on the future. Speakers included Michael Evans, president of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. An interesting factoid: Evans, ex of Goldman Sachs and currently a member of the board at Barrick Gold Corp., is Canadian. His central message was this: Chinese consumers seek food, fresh and processed, that they can trust. Alibaba has the means to connect consumers with highly-trusted food suppliers from abroad, says CAPI CEO David McInnes via email, recalling Evans comments on that day. Its go-to-market strategy definitely included Canada as a place to help meet that need.

Ultimately, Evans underscored the fact that Canada simply wasnt participating at the optimum level that it should be.

Which is weird. Trust is, unsurprisingly, part of Canadas branding, as the countrys Tmall platform suggests. But, cautions Bilyea, We need to earn that designation.

Very Canadian  were not ones to toot our own horn too loudly.

But we are eager, at last, to tap a country that may become the largest cross-border business-to-consumer e-market before the decade is out.

What are the barriers?

There are a few. I would be cautious to not get out of balance with the fact that the majority of Chinese still buy their food in the retail format, says Bilyea. Retail that is still bricks and mortar, that is. Then theres the question of e-delivery. Food has to be treated somewhat differently in terms of distribution than, say, a widget. These platforms were largely built for distributing material and products that have no shelf life issues, so it is quite a challenge with a country that has a long way to go with its system of warehousing and refrigeration.

Then theres the processed food industry, which Canada, and Ontario in particular, desperately needs to grow. Consider this dispiriting just-released assessment from the Guelph, Ont.-based Agri-Food Economic Systems. Canadas food processing industry finds itself in a precarious position, says the report. While net trade in animals and animal products, grains, oilseeds, pulses, fruit, vegetables and other crops, and fats and oils show positive trade balances, the trade balance in manufactured food products has declined steadily since about 2004.

We have a large food processing industry in Canada, says Bilyea. If you can supply a large restaurant company in Canada why cant you do it in China?

Part of the answer lies in scale. Part of the answer lies in regulatory hurdles. Part of the answer lies in time and patience.

Part of the solution in Bilyeas view lies in government co-ordination to assist Canadian companies, especially those that dont operate on a global scale. Its hard for them to have staff on hand to be up to date on every rule change that China is going to make, he says.

China is one of the worlds largest food importers. Canada has a wealth of small and medium sized businesses eager to meet demand. Thats what Prime Minister Trudeau was touting at the time of that photo op. The challenge will be in making that dream come true not just for seafood exports and niche products, but for the Canadian food industry as a whole.

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Heres a country buffeted by the Chinese economic slowdown, overly reliant on resource extraction and hostage to plummeting commodities prices.

Welcome to Australia, land of milk and honey, at least compared with Canada, the OECD country that most closely resembles it. Despite the liabilities above, which the Aussies share with Canada, Australia is on course this year to eclipse the Netherlands record of an unbroken 26 years of GDP growth.

Australias jobless rate is 5.7 per cent. Canadas is 7.0 per cent. Average annual wages in Australia in 2015 were $64,680, to Canadas $61,684. (All figures in Canadian dollars.)

Low-paid workers make up a smaller share of total employment in Australia than Canada, at 18.9 per cent and 21.8 per cent, respectively. The yawning gap in pay between men and women in Canada is 19.5 per cent. Australian women, by contrast, are paid just 13.8 less than men for work of the same value. (Mind you, the gold standard is New Zealands 5.9 per cent.)

By mature-economy standards, Australia has been booming, with annual GDP growth of 3.1 per cent for the fiscal year ending June 1, outperforming the U.S. and the European Union (EU). By contrast, Canadas GDP growth over the first half of 2016 has been a pitiful increase of 0.8 per cent.

Australia and Canada each got through the Great Recession relatively unscathed, buoyed by continued resource exports to a still-booming China. But since the Chinese economic slowdown, Canadas GDP growth has flat-lined, while Australian GDP growth is still robust.

Is Australia a model for future Canadian prosperity?

Yes, there is much to emulate.

But first we have to factor out those many things we already have in common. These include Medicare, above-average student performance, the fiscal prudence shown by Canberra and Ottawa over the past two decades, and our mutual striving to diversify away from over-reliance on resource extraction.

Canberras tough-love spending restraint beginning in the 1990s enabled Australia to spend more on stimulus per capita to cushion the blow from the Great Recession than any country but China. Ottawa was able to do the same, and for the same reason, having accumulated 11 consecutive budget surpluses ahead of the epic downturn, a record unmatched by any country.

Yet while Canada, Brazil, South Africa and Russia have taken a blow from the Chinese economic slowdown, Australia has managed to profit from a continued robust level of resource exports to China.

Australias decade-long boom in iron ore and thermal coal exports, mostly to China, boosted disposable household income by 13 per cent, and wages by 6 per cent, according to the Reserve Bank of Australia, the central bank.

More important, perhaps, is that the huge foreign investment in efficient, lower-cost Australian mining capacity has enabled Australia to make up in volume most of what it has lost in price. Australias decision to devalue its currency has been an additional stimulant to continued export strength.

Canada has also allowed a deep devaluation of the loonie. But the Aussies are making a more determined effort to exploit that competitive advantage.

Among Australias fastest-growing exports are education and tourism. The Aussies are also investing heavily in transforming the export sector into one that develops high-tech, value-added breakthroughs.

Australia is emerging as one of the worlds biggest education exporters. This $17.8-billion industry now ranks second to mining among Australias largest industries.

Australias first-rate colleges and universities can draw on the entire Pacific Rim, one of the worlds most heavily populated and increasingly affluent markets for international students. Enrolment of international students jumped 11 per cent last year alone.

Middle class Asian students seeking a higher education in English are coming to Australia in record numbers. Students see Australia as closer and cheaper than the old standbys of England and North America.

And tourism receipts, now a $3.7-billion industry for Australia, are up a whopping 31 per cent in the past two years alone. For Pac-Rim vacationers, Australia is relatively nearby, safe, relatively cheap yet exotic.

Australias tourism trade generates an impressive $4,589 per foreign tourist per stay. Canada, which still relies on daytrippers from the U.S. for tourism receipts, gets a mere $480 on average per international tourist.

Finally, Australias industrial renewal strategy calls for Victoria, the southeastern most state, to become an incubator of export-oriented startups developing commercialized breakthroughs in high-tech medicine, communications, transportation and other fields.

Heavily industrialized Victoria, like Southern Ontario, has taken a hit from offshoring to lower-wage jurisdictions and a high-priced dollar that made its goods uncompetitive. Victoria was also overlooked by Canberra in favour of a Western Australia where the mining boom was underway.

Now, Canberras attention  and investment  is focused on high-tech startups in eastern Australia with potential for value-added exports. And international students are encouraged to spend four years in Australia, or embrace it as their adopted homeland. Its hoped that this will provide Aussie startups with one of the worlds youngest, smartest and culturally diverse workforces.

Note that well-paid jobs in education and tourism are not easily off-shored. And start-ups, of course, create good jobs.

The cri de coeur of Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull is We must be more innovative, competitive and productive if were to remain an affluent, high-wage country.

Thats easily recognizable as the economic challenge for Canada, too.

In recent years, the big three foreign-based automakers in Australia, complaining of high labour costs, closed their plants.

Having balked at unreasonable demands for subsidies by the automakers, Canberra instead got to work leveraging the technological skills of one of the worlds oldest automaking jurisdictions. Many of the startups Australia has financed are based on the wide range of auto-related skills, from electrical engineering to advanced electric power systems.

That young effort has already spawned impressive new Aussie enterprises that are exporting high value-added goods and even setting up satellites elsewhere, including Silicon Valley.

Ontarios auto sector is still an engine of the Canadian economy. But it too is a high-wage jurisdiction, entirely foreign owned, and vulnerable to the same abandonment dealt to Australia.

The Australian model of re-invigorated education and tourism sectors and high-tech incubators that create promising entrepreneurial startups is indeed relevant in shaping a substantive Canadian industrial policy.

Australia is still vulnerable to volatile commodity prices. The transformation to a more knowledge-based Aussie economy will require patience and persistence. And just as Canada is overly reliant on the U.S., Australia remains over-exposed to China, whom many fear is due for a housing and financial crash.

Yet Australia has taken control of its economic destiny as few countries have. And that alone should command our attention.

Correction - September 12, 2016: This article was edited from a previous version that mistakenly described Victoria as southwestern state in Australia.

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For 20 years, Barb McMillan has worked as a rural mail carrier for Canada Post in the Ottawa Valley.

It has always irked her that her pay structure  a complicated formula based on the number of addresses on her 105-kilometre route  is different from carriers in the urban unit, who work out of the same post office in Arnprior, Ont.

She figures she earns at least 25 per cent less, not counting vacation time, benefits or even paid breaks, which she doesnt get. And if she doesnt finish her route in the allotted 9.3 hours a day, she doesnt get paid overtime, even if theres a snowstorm.

I think that the work we do is identical in value. We do the exact same job, said McMillan, 53, who served on the negotiating committee for the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, which just reached a contract last week with the crown corporation. We feel like a second-class employee.

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As part of the settlement, the two sides have agreed to a pay equity review process, with an arbitrator, with a final ruling expected within 19 months. The review has already begun, and is not contingent on the ratification of the tentative deal, expected to take several months.

Canada Post has consistently argued there isnt any pay equity issue because the jobs are structured differently  and so they shouldnt be compared that way.

We have some concerns about the argument that the union was putting forward, said Canada Post spokesman Jon Hamilton, adding the company compensates its employees fairly, through provisions negotiated in collective agreements.

These issues are complex. There are two different viewpoints, he said. Its helpful to take the time to study and bring in experts and an objective third party.

We will fully participate and ensure it is a fulsome process. Well see where it ends, Hamilton added.

The union believes it will win.

From our perspective, its a cut and dry case of pay inequity, by equal wage guidelines and Canadian law, said Mike Palecek, CUPWs national president. The question has been about enforcement.

McMillans group also includes suburban carriers, who deliver to community mailboxes, with many rural and suburban carriers working next to urban carriers in the same post office, in big cities like Ottawa and Brampton, with the only difference being the colour of their shirts.

Canada Post, they see us as their competitive advantage, so they want it to continue, she said, saying she earns $19.44 an hour, while her urban counterpart would get $25.95 an hour.

The union made pay equity  given that the 8,000 members in the rural and suburban unit are predominantly women, at 70 per cent, compared to the 42,000 members in the urban unit, who are 68 per cent men, a key issue in this years contract talks.

It wants to bring up the wages of those in the rural and suburban units  or merge all the carriers into a single unit  arguing its more effective to bring change at the bargaining table. It doesnt want to fight court battles that can drag on for decades.

In fact, a pay equity complaint on behalf of clerical workers at Canada Post stretched out for nearly 30 years  as lawyers made their arguments and appeals before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, Federal Court and Federal Court of Appeal.

The case finally ended in 2011, when the Supreme Court of Canada issued a rare unanimous ruling, just 20 minutes after hearing the case, ordering the crown corporation to pay up.

Canada Post believes virtually anyone who is owed a payment in that case has been paid  almost 16,000 individuals, though it is not saying how much was paid out. Estimates have pegged it at as much as $250 million, once interest was factored in.

A similar battle is going on with another small union  the Canadian Postmaster and Assistants Association, which represents Canada Post staff in rural post offices across the country.

That group filed a pay equity complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Commission more than 20 years ago, and the case has been repeatedly delayed for various reasons  but was reactivated years later.

The commission then ordered the case to a tribunal hearing, though Canada Post recently went to Federal Court to block the hearing, arguing procedural unfairness.

Federal Court Justice Patrick Gleeson refused Canada Posts application, siding with the commissions decision.

While I have concluded that the CHRC decision was reasonable, I cannot leave this matter without addressing the serious impact the delay in this case has on the repute on the administration of justice, Gleeson said in a July 28 decision.

The system has failed over 6,000 individuals who have been waiting for over 20 years for a determination of a complaint that alleges they have been financially impacted as the result of systemic gender discrimination, he wrote.

This case is an unfortunate example of the pay equity complaint process not serving the individual members of the claimant group, the parties, the broader public or the interests of justice, Gleeson said, imploring the parties and future decision makers to ensure the matter proceeds as expeditiously as possible.

Canada Post has declined to appeal the case to the Supreme Court, so it will now proceed to the tribunal though no hearing date has been set.

We will not let go of this, said Brenda McAuley, National President of the postmasters union. My bigger concern is that we are going to be sending cheques to estates (because it has dragged on so long).

Our members want pay equity, and our new prime minister is a self-proclaimed feminist, she said, referring to Justin Trudeau and his promise to ensure gender parity in his cabinet.

It can no longer be ignored, she said, adding new federal pay equity legislation is expected next year.

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I partied in a one-time Grand & Toy store.

How was your Thursday night?

Circulating at a party for the movie Free Fire Thursday, Brie Larson worked an Alexander McQueen dress as she soulfully stirred a straw in her drink, Armie Hammer standing close looking like the picture of square-jawed prep-town. Then it came to my attention that the bar we were standing in, on King St. W., had, indeed, for years, been a place to stockpile hole punches and three-ring binders.

Here lay ballpoint pens, someone quipped as we considered the rather funny TIFF business that so often consists of going to venues that used to be other venues that, oh, used to be something else. The parade goes on.

Its not just the bars that have backstories. The boldface making their pitches in Toronto do, too. Its been an amazing year, Larson told me. Bien sur. One year ago the actress was here to premiere the little-flick-that-could, Room, which won her the Oscar for Best Actress. Shes been on a roll for the last 12 months. Only her mother  and perhaps Wikipedia  remembers that before she was Brie Larson, Serious Actress, she was a striving pop star who put out an album in the vein of mid-aughts teen tarts like Hilary Duff and Lindsay Lohan. (Look it up: The album was called Finally Out of P.E., and it sold 3,500 copies.)

Hammer, meanwhile, has his own interesting backstory. Looking extra-tall and as Winklevoss-ish as ever, hes not exactly cut from the starving actor template. Hammer is the great-grandson of oil tycoon, power-broker and art collector Armand Hammer. Now hes known for his roles in films like Mirror Mirror, J. Edgar and The Man from U.N.C.L.E., hes been candid about the grief he got from his parents for dropping out of high school to start an acting career. No Hammer man has even dropped out of college without getting an MBA or a PhD, hes recalled them saying. They wanted me to go to Columbia. That was the goal.

The actor seemed to be on track in other ways: his wife, TV presenter Elizabeth Chambers, joined him at the party. She was showing a visible baby bump. The couple are expecting their second child.

PARTY WATCH

Ewan McGregor isnt just making his directorial debut with the Friday night premiere of American Pastoral. The Scot also happens to be in the best shape of his life: the preternaturally young-looking rogue, in Toronto with the movie adaptation of Philip Roths novel, recently took up running, and has been doing 10ks up to five times a week.

Eleanor Coppola (Franciss wife and Sofias mom!) is making her own feature debut here with Paris Can Wait at a plucky 80 years old. Im this housewife who suddenly decided shes going to write a film and actually direct it, she says.

Jeremy Renner and Catherine Keener are among the co-hosts of the Artists for Peace and Justice gala at Casa Loma this weekend.

Adam Driver, Elisabeth Moss, Sigourney Weaver, and Pharrell: some of the names on tap to visit this years Variety Studio, presented by Airbnb and sponsored by Holt Renfrew, at the Burroughes Building this week.

One more thing:

If hearing the word aplomb spoken in an Australian accent was on your wish list for TIFF, the Shangri-La Thursday morning was the best place to be. Thats where the winsome Naomi Watts appeared (and, yes, threw out that word) at a small reception hosted by LOreal Paris. The party, helmed by the LOreal ambassador, was held to formally announce Women of Worth, a program geared at recognizing accomplished women in a variety of fields across Canada.

Shinan Govanis transportation for the Toronto International Film Festival has been provided by BMW Canada.

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This is one in an occasional series on the science and significance of sleep.

For most of us, theres no need to get up at dawn and plow a field or break camp, so sleeping through the night may seem obsolete.

A growing number of people are experimenting with polyphasic sleep, a way to wring more wakeful hours from the day by subverting the circadian rhythm.

These sleep interventionists say they can compress their sleep into shorter, higher-quality periods. Polyphasic sleep divides rest into two or more short periods during day and night.

My non-scientific theory is that your brain will use sleep based on how its offered sleep, says Marie Staver, 38, of Cambridge, Mass., who literally wrote the book on polyphasic sleep, Ubersleep: Nap-Based Sleep Schedules and the Polyphasic Lifestyle, and helped start the worldwide phenomenon with a few blog posts in the late 90s. Nearly two decades ago, Staver was once a nine-hours-a-night sleeper. She now gets by on four.

According to Statistics Canada, the average Canadian adult gets eight hours and 12 minutes of relatively uninterrupted sleep, which moves through stages from light and jerky Stage 1 to deep and immobilizing Stage 4. The last is Rapid Eye Movement, where most dreaming happens. A complete cycle takes around 90 minutes and is typically repeated several times during the night.

Polysleepers rearrange this sleep architecture. To shorten total hours of rest, they try to eliminate lighter sleep in favour of slow-wave sleep. There are various recommended regimens, but they usually include one core sleep and several naps throughout the day.

The idea has spurred the Polyphasic Society, a loosely organized, mostly online group of about 400 active polysleep enthusiasts. There is also a robust Reddit group of about 2,600 readers dedicated to the discussion of the lifestyle. They seek feedback on their napcharts and advice on making polysleeping compatible with exercise, sex, children, vacations, puppy training, working the night shift, and certain medications. The main response from veterans is: stick to the schedule.

The society credits Staver as the first known Uberman, the name she gave to a system of sleeping in brief naps, though she is not affiliated with the group. Staver herself fields countless queries from people seeking her wisdom: how to nap at work, how to get a good snooze on a park bench, how to avoid police when sleeping in public. The most frequent question is how to cut corners on the schedule. She tells them cutting corners will bring on severe sleep deprivation.

Thats something she knows well. When she fought crippling insomnia while studying at St. Johns College in Santa Fe, N.M., in 1999, Staver decided to reset her body clock. She heard that American inventor and visionary Buckminster Fuller, who died in 1983 at age 87, slept for just 30 minutes four times a day. Staver wondered if a similar schedule could help her achieve at least a few decent hours of sleep.

She committed to a month-long adjustment period where she would completely adhere to a schedule of six 20-minute naps, totalling just two hours. The philosophy student called it the Uberman after Friedrich Nietzsches Ubermensch, a theoretical ideal man who could transcend human limitations.

The first six days were torture, she says in a phone interview.

Itll hospitalize or kill me in a month, or Im going to adjust to it, Staver thought at the time.

She took to carrying around a stack of expensive dishes in the middle of the night to keep from nodding off. Just looking at the couch could produce a rush of endorphins. But by Day 7, she felt prolonged periods of normalcy. By Day 10, she felt utterly fantastic. She says shell never return to monophasic sleep.

Polyphasic sleep is strict. For example, a core sleep often accommodates two 90-minute sleep cycles. Naps are essential, but should only last as long as the regimen permits. There are several variations, ranging from four naps to the more widely known afternoon siesta plus a short sleep at night.

The sleep schedule has to be put ahead of everything else, says Staver, now a tech manager.

After college, Staver couldnt prioritize the naps required from Uberman, so she designed and now follows the Everyman schedule, which is a core sleep of three hours from 1 to 4 a.m., with three 20-minute naps during the day. Those extra hours over 17 years left Staver with time to master Tai Chi, time to be alone, and time to write.

Polysleepers argue sleeping in short spells, like newborn babies and many mammals, is a more natural pattern than the customary eight hours. Historian A. Roger Ekirch wrote in his 2005 book At Days Close: Night in Times Past that pre-industrial humans slept in two intervals. The first ended at midnight and the second at dawn, with a period of wakefulness in between. Prayer was common. So was sex.

Ekirch cites a 1992 experiment that appeared to confirm people deprived of artificial light in a lab setting would return to broken sleep, including a period of non-anxious wakefulness that experiment leader Thomas Wehr likened to meditation. The French called this dreamlike, semi-conscious state dorveille.

But today those wakeful hours are more likely to be filled with obliging work demands than quiet reflection.

Eric Poulin, 41, has attempted the Everyman three times in the past five years, sleeping from 10 p.m. until 1 a.m. and taking three naps.

I was looking to have more productive hours of time to use, Poulin says. Im an entrepreneur. I work from home. I have piles and piles of work thats never completed  If I could get four more hours a day, Im getting an edge on everybody.

But the Courtice, Ont., father of five never got past zombie mode. Not only was adaptation brutal, brutal, brutal, but it backfired. Poulin is a software developer and needs sharp focus but was in a fog. He felt hed need a week off to adjust but never found the time. Poulin is now precious about his nightly eight hours.

Doctors say the need for sleep is genetically determined, based on how much the body requires for optimal cognitive function. There is little long-term scientific data on polyphasic sleeping, but Dr. Andrew Lim, sleep neurologist at Sunnybrook Hospital, says it can be healthy as long as the total amount of sleep is adequate.

The benefits of napping are well-known and Lim says even a quick doze can help those who dont meet their inherent sleep needs. There is also a scientific explanation behind the idea that polyphasic sleepers can enter a deeper sleep faster than most, even during a 30-minute nap  they may be sleep-deprived.

In the same way someone who is starving, and then all of a sudden is given a steak, will probably eat faster, Lim says. Though I dont think thats necessarily an argument we should starve ourselves just to eat more efficiently.

Hes not convinced polyphasic sleeping is somehow more natural. A 2015 study of several modern-day hunter-gatherer societies found the adults did not sleep in multiple phases despite having no access to artificial light.

The findings were published in the journal Current Biology. A research team led by UCLAs Jerome Siegel collected the sleep data of 94 adults, who slept an average of six hours, 25 minutes. They didnt nap, went to bed three hours and 20 minutes after sunset, and slept through the night.

Different kinds of polyphasic sleep schedules

Basic polyphasic schedules, according to the Polyphasic Society.

Siesta: Many tropical, southern European and Middle Eastern societies sleep for five or six hours during the night and rest during the mid-afternoon for another hour or two to manage the midday energy drop.

Triphasic: This regimen includes three 90-minute naps a day, no more than eight hours or less than four hours apart.

Everyman: A core nighttime sleep of around three hours is taken close to dusk. Thats followed by three 20-minute naps close to dawn and during the day when energy levels naturally dip. There are many variations of this basic schedule.

Uberman: The day revolves around six naps spaced equally apart. The Polyphasic Society warns that the long-term health effects are not known, and that no one has adapted to the schedule without help, often in the form of a human alarm system.

Dymaxion: Four 30-minute naps are spaced throughout the day, named for American inventor Buckminster Fuller, who invented the Dymaxion car and first advocated the sleeping pattern in the 1920s. Dymaxion is a portmanteau of dynamic, maximum and ion.

Segmented: This typically represents a full nights sleep in two chunks with two or three hours of wakefulness during the middle of the night. These Biphasic sleepers go to bed around dusk, waking for several hours in the night before sleeping again until dawn.

I tried it: Polyphasic sleeping

The Stars Zoe McKnight gave polyphasic sleeping a try. She failed.

I have always been a deep sleeper.

Ive slept through countless alarms, and nearly missed graduating high school on time because I didnt make it to so many first-period classes.

This winter, I boiled a pot of water to make coffee and then crawled back into bed for that perfect just one more minute. I woke 45 minutes later to a shrieking smoke detector, then fell off a chair trying to disarm it as black clouds filled my kitchen (I bought a kettle with an auto-off switch the next day).

So I was interested in conquering my need to sleep, if only to avoid burning the house down.

I asked the Polyphasic Society whether it was advisable to just jump into a routine, most of which severely curtail sleep. What if I could sleep just five hours a day, wake feeling rested and stop hitting snooze?

Because the adjustment period can be treacherous  risks include zombie mode, where cognitive function is seriously impaired due to sleep deprivation  Dusan Milakara at the Polyphasic Society recommended the Siesta Sleep schedule, which is a core sleep of around five hours at night and a 60-90 minute nap during the day. Siesta is common to many Mediterranean cultures. It seemed doable.

I normally go to bed around 10 p.m. and get up around 5:30 a.m. I decided to try it for a week, sleeping from around 11 p.m. to 4:30 a.m., and napping at some point in the afternoon. At least that was the idea.

Monday

Total failure. I fell asleep with the lights on around 10:40 p.m. and woke up at 5:32 a.m. the next day, according to my Sleep Cycle app. The app doesnt know I finally got out of bed an hour later. I didnt need an afternoon nap. Polysleepers recommend an adaptation period of consistent napping or a full nights sleep deprivation to help adjusting to the new schedule. This might have been wise.

Tuesday

Forced myself to stay awake till 11 p.m. the night before, waking at 4:24 a.m. I went for a run, made a pie, cleaned my apartment and was still early for work. I felt energetic, if a little wired. Diehard polysleepers avoid caffeine because it can interfere with napping schedules. But I couldnt nap at work, as I worried about my email and deadlines. I had a coffee instead.

Wednesday

Stayed up Tuesday until midnight, waking at around 5 a.m., but tossing and turning for a while. I felt suspiciously untired. My colleague said I seemed manic. I also had to choose between sleep and a social life: a friend wanted to meet for a drink after work, when I should ostensibly be napping. I finished work at 8:30 p.m. I chose the drink. This sleep regimen would be very difficult to maintain if I didnt live alone.

Thursday

I managed to be asleep by 12:37 a.m., waking at 5:31 a.m. Brain fog set in. My work schedule and body clock made it impossible to nap. It took me days to write a little story about Snapchat; I stared blankly at my computer instead. I tried to pump my bike tires, found it confusing, and wound up with a flat. Alcohol is verboten and I understand why. I nearly fell asleep right after work. While walking. At 7 p.m.

Friday

Both polysleepers and doctors say a little sleep deprivation forces your body to enter a deep sleep quickly. My app says I was comatose for most of the night, waking just once to open a window around midnight. The key to polysleeping is sticking to the regimen. Naps are critical. After four days of barely sleeping, zero naps and breaking all the rules, I snuck seven glorious hours. I woke up feeling like a human again.

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In fairness to Kellie Leitch  no wait, come back  it would have been surprising if no candidate for the Conservative Party of Canada leadership had run on identity politics.

Leitch, of course, is the physician and Conservative MP who has been vaulted from obscurity into a sort of pallid, sickly limelight for suggesting it would be a swell idea to screen potential immigrants for anti-Canadian views that include intolerance towards other religions, cultures and sexual orientations, violent and/or misogynist behaviour and/or a lack of acceptance of our Canadian tradition of personal and economic freedoms.

There are enough examples around the world of politicians who have sought to profit from fear of outsiders that I was actually wondering, before Leitch made her move, why that particular tactical position seemed destined to lay unoccupied in the Conservative race. From Marine Le Pen in France to the anti-immigrant UKIP party in Britain, to Donald Trump in the U.S., there are plenty of examples. Trump, in particular, will have plenty of imitators in years to come. Surely, demagogues and race-baiters around the world are telling themselves, I could push the same buttons Trump pushes and come across as less of a bellowing orange-faced country-club mutant. Win-win!

Candidates who stake out such positions usually find there is a low ceiling to their support. Even running as a far less ulcerous and stale-dated candidate than her father, French National Front founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, Marine Le Pen seems unlikely to beat any serious opponent in the second round of the French presidential election. But, crucially, such candidates can often rely on a high floor for their support, too. There are a lot of scared people out there who are pretty sure newcomers are the problem. They have shown they will vote for the candidate who tells them theyre right.

And in the Conservative leadership race, a high floor will soon come in handy.

Its getting crowded. Five candidates have paid their deposit, including Maxime Bernier and Tony Clement. Others are likely to get in  Andrew Scheer, the former Speaker of the Commons, is said to be the latest to commit. Lisa Raitt and Peter MacKay could well run. Running isnt cheap  a total of $100,000 in entry deposits and a $5-million campaign spending limit  but despite that, there could be eight or more candidates.

How do you distinguish yourself in that mob? Until last month, Leitch was running on economic freedom, defined essentially as low taxes. But that position will be fiercely defended by Mad Max Bernier, who wants to shut down all subsidies, shrink the federal state to the size of a dinner muffin, and privatize the sidewalks. You cant get to his right on economic issues.

Whats left? Urbane super-moderate? Thats Mike Chong. Regional power base? MacKay. Sympathy vote? Clement. Even Calgary MP Deepak Obhrai  who has entered the race essentially to warn against the snitch-line policies Leitch championed in last years election, before recanting and then coming back around for a second try  will reduce the room for anyone else who might want to run as the candidate of a post-Jason-Kenney openness to immigrants.

All those candidates leave suspicion about newcomers as one of the few bits of undefended territory on the Conservative leadership board. It is hard to believe Leitch went there out of anything resembling conviction, but there she is.

But enough about Leitchs calculations. Conservatives must make their own. They will do well to avoid two traps.

The first is what is emerging as the chronic 21st-century reflex of U.S. Republicans: Pick a party standard-bearer who is desperately exciting to party activists and unacceptable to the broader electorate. Sarah Palin, Donald Trump.

The second is Ernie Eves-ism: The urge to so thoroughly moderate your message that you end up saying nothing. In the federal Liberals, that impulse led to Michael Ignatieff. In the NDP, to Tom Mulcair.

Party members feel best when they follow leaders who they know, for sure, share their convictions. And Conservatives may need to follow their next leader for quite a while, perhaps through more than one election before victory. So they need somebody recognizably conservative, relatively young and patiently optimistic. In the current field of certain or probable candidates, the two who most closely fit those requirements are Andrew Scheer, the former Speaker, and Erin OToole, the former minister of veterans affairs.

Paul Wells is a national affairs writer. His column appears Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.

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CALGARYFederal Conservative leadership candidate Kellie Leitch hasnt thought through her controversial position on screening immigrants for anti-Canadian values, former Tory immigration minister Jason Kenney says.

Following a speech in downtown Calgary on Friday, Kenney, who is seeking the Alberta Progressive Conservative leadership, said he believes Leitch is pursuing an improvised position without understanding the negative impact of her words.

I dont take her position seriously, shes never articulated it before, Kenney said.

Shes never said a word about this in Parliament, caucus or cabinet. I dont think she understands the nuance around these issues. You have to be very careful in the way you articulate questions about integration.

Leitch, a Conservative MP from Ontario, emailed a survey last week to supporters that included a question about whether the federal government should screen potential immigrants and refugees for anti-Canadian values.

She later said she is protecting Canadian values from people who believe that women are property and can be beaten or that gays and lesbians should be stoned.

Despite widespread criticism including unflattering comparisons to U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump, Leitch has defended her position that screening is needed without saying how immigration officials would actually vet new Canadians.

Kenney, a federal MP representing Calgary since 1997, was immigration minister from October 2008 to July 2013.

He boasted Friday that more immigrants became permanent residents of Canada  1.5 million  when he was minister than under any other immigration minister.

He also defended the Conservatives as a pro-immigration government, adding that it improved security screening and brought in a law allowing quicker deportation of convicted foreign criminals.

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Two GTA women have pleaded guilty to mischief and smoking on an aircraft after a 2014 incident on a Cuba-bound Sunwing airplane that sent fighter jets scrambling to escort the jet back to Toronto.

Milana Muzikante entered her guilty pleas Friday in a Brampton courtroom, two months after co-accused Lilia Ratmanski did the same.

Muzikante declined to comment following Fridays court appearance, as did her lawyer, Donald Bitter, and no agreed statement of facts explaining what happened on the plane was provided to the court.

However, immediately after the August 2014 incident, a Sunwing spokesperson alleged that Muzikante, then 26, and Ratmanski, then 25, drank a significant quantity of alcohol and lit a cigarette in the airplane washroom, which triggered the on-board smoke detector.

The women then allegedly got into a physical fight with each other and threatened the aircraft, which was en route to Cuba from Torontos Pearson International Airport. The pilot decided to turn the plane back to Toronto where the women were arrested shortly after landing, the Star reported at the time.

Muzikante and Ratmanski were charged with endangering the safety of an aircraft, mischief over $5,000, mischief endangering life and uttering threats. They were also charged with smoking on an aircraft, under the Canadian Aviation Regulations.

The women will have a sentencing hearing together on Nov. 25. An agreed statement of facts is expected to be filed at that hearing. The Crown is seeking a suspended sentence, while Bitter told the court he will be asking for an absolute or conditional discharge.

Bitter told the court that Muzikante has already agreed to complete 100 hours of community service. He said he will speak during the sentencing hearing on how the case could affect Muzikante's immigration status  she is from Germany and hopes to continue her nursing education in Canada, eventually becoming a permanent resident, the court heard.

RELATED:

Military jets escort plane back to Pearson

Police identify two women charged with threatening Sunwing flight

The most serious charge the women faced was endangering the safety of an aircraft, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.

As part of their bail conditions, both women were forbidden from consuming, purchasing or possessing alcohol, being on an airplane or at an airport and communicating with the other.

The two women each studied nursing at York University. Muzikante graduated in 2014, earning a bachelor of science with honours and was listed as a member of the deans honour roll.

The fighter jets were launched after Canadas NORAD sector in Winnipeg put in a call to the Royal Canadian Air Force base in Bagotville, Que., and ordered them to scramble two CF-18 fighter jets, NORAD spokesperson Wright Erubie told the Star at the time.

Just out of an abundance of caution, the NORAD jets were launched and monitored the situation from the air, said NORAD spokesperson U.S. army Capt. Ruth Castro.

The CF-18s met the Sunwing jet at the Canadian border after its pilot decided to turn around and go back to Pearson. The planes did not enter American airspace, according to a NORAD spokesperson, who said the escort lasted just four minutes.

Prior to Muzikantes plea, Ontario Court Justice Patrice Band warned Muzikante that she may be subject to a victim surcharge fee as well as restitution. The amount she would be expected to pay in restitution remains to be decided, and Sunwing will be consulted, court heard.

At Ratmanskis plea appearance on July 7, her lawyer Michael Simrod told the court that his client, a Canadian citizen, is both working and continuing her education.

Ratmanski aims to complete counselling and a period of community service before the sentencing hearing in November, court heard

With files from Star staff

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On 3-5 October 2017 Kyiv is going to host the Space and Future Forum to network international experts and youth, many of whom will also participate at the first CosmoHack in the world. Joinfo provides media coverage of the Forum, and some of its topics were already discussed ...
Seaton House is continuing to fight a bacterial outbreak that has sickened at least 41 residents and staff since March, but Toronto Public Health says the end of the battle may now be in sight.

Certainly, the number of cases were identifying as part of the outbreak continues to decline, Dr. Michael Finkelstein, TPH associate medical officer of health, told the Star Wednesday.

Officials declared an outbreak of Group A streptococcus (GAS), also known simply as strep A, at Torontos largest shelter on March 17. The bacteria can live on skin and in peoples throats without causing the carrier any issues, but can also cause superficial infections with symptoms like strep throat and fever, as well as infect existing wounds. The more serious cases, known as invasive infections, can lead to flesh-eating disease, meningitis or sepsis. Two strains, 74 and 101, are involved in the Seaton House outbreak.

Thirty-nine residents and two staff have been sickened by the outbreak; five of the residents had invasive infections requiring hospitalization.

TPH identified eight infected people in June, six in July but only three in August, Finkelstein said, a sign that were on the right track . . . were kind of slowly smothering it, smothering the outbreak.

None of the cases identified in August were invasive. However, one of the three men was part of Seatons hostel population  unusual, Finkelstein said, because the outbreak is believed to be contained to the buildings third and fourth floors, where longer-term residents reside.

The only other case of a hostel population member becoming infected was in late June.

Finkelstein attributed the drop in cases to several measures put in place in over the summer after TPH consulted outside experts. For example, staff has been requested to use single-use versions of devices such as scissors during medical treatment, and to use moistened sterile gauze for gentle wound cleaning instead of more vigorous methods; employees have also been given guidance on how to properly put on, take off and dispose of protective equipment like gloves.

As well, in early August, TPH took throat swabs of 540 people  185 residents and 355 staff, both permanent and from outside agencies that work with Seaton House  and tested them for strep A. Ten people were found to be carrying the bacteria, Finkelstein said, but only five  three residents and two staff  were carrying strains associated with the outbreak.

That was actually the whole point of the mass screening, because we knew people might be carrying it without knowing it and theyre at risk of coughing, they can spread (the bacteria to others), Finkelstein said.

Once identified, the carriers were given the same treatment as the infected  a 10-day regiment of antibiotics and then tested three times afterwards. If, after the third test, no signs of strep A remain, they are cleared. TPH is currently waiting on around a dozen people to be cleared, Finkelstein said; the process typically takes around five to six weeks.

That wont be the end of it, though.

Once we do clear all those people, theres going to be a period, probably measured in months, where were going to do some active work with Seaton House just to make sure that we dont see the bacteria coming back, Finkelstein said, describing the period as additional surveillance.

There wont be any more shelter-wide testing but staff will be keeping a lookout for any symptoms of infection; other than that, Finkelstein said TPH is still consulting on what exactly the surveillance plan will look like.

Were going to be working with experts to set up that type of surveillance to try to make sure that we dont miss anything once we have no more cases identified in the outbreak, he said.

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Two women testified in court on Friday that they found a hidden camera in a faux-DVD player while subletting a Queen St. condo from a television actor last year.

J.P. Manoux, known for his role on the CTV sitcom Spun Out, as well as other shows in the U.S., is on trial for two counts of mischief relating to the camera. Two voyeurism charges were dropped in July 2015.

The 47-year-old actor rented a condo at 1171 Queen St. W., and connected with the two women online in late 2014, when he was going to be working in Los Angeles for four months, according to testimony heard Friday. They agreed to pay two-thirds of the rent and stay there from January to April 2015, the women told the court.

Their names are covered by a publication ban.

One of the complainants testified that she and her roommate felt like they were being watched in the condo, because Manoux knew she had moved in early and once texted to accuse her of lying that her roommate wasnt home when he called. She said they searched for cameras and couldnt find any, and then scoured the Internet for products that can hold secret recording devices. Thats when they found an image of the DVD player, which they had previously ignored because they always watched Netflix, she said.

I didnt know how to react, what to do, where to call, she said. I dont want to ever rent again. Everywhere I go now Im looking for cameras.

Manouxs lawyer, Adam Weisberg, described the DVD player as a home security device with a camera, and asserted in cross-examination that the agreement between his client and the women was that Manoux was still a roommate, and that their presence was similar to house-sitting while renting two bedrooms.

The complainants said they felt the entire unit was their rented space, and Weisberg suggested they were lying because its advantageous in their civil suit against Manoux, in which they each claim $185,000 for invasion of privacy. Both women disagreed.

The trial continues at Old City Hall on Oct. 25.

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Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie has pushed forward a parking exemption for Mondays Eid al-Adha celebrations across the city, after a councillor was accused of religious discrimination at Wednesdays council meeting when the exemption was deferred.

We are an inclusive, multicultural, multi-religious city and country, Crombie said Friday, explaining that after missing Wednesdays council meeting because she was out of the province attending a conference, she was dismayed to hear the parking exemption did not get approved, but was instead referred back to staff for a report to determine which major religious holidays should qualify for city-wide parking exemptions.

Things have moved quickly  11 per cent of our population will be celebrating Eid al-Adha on Monday, so my council colleagues and I just approved a temporary parking exemption across the city for Monday. We are notifying all the citys mosques and the public right now.

Crombie said the support she received Friday for the temporary parking exemption, before a resolution for a permanent one for all major religious holidays is dealt with, came via email from council members. She said all councillors who responded supported the decision, except Councillor Pat Saito.

During Wednesdays meeting, Councillor Carolyn Parrish, who supports the parking exemption, suggested Saito was guilty of religious intolerance because she would not support the move without a proper staff report on the implications.

I said to her if it was a Christian holiday we wouldnt be having this debate, Parrish said Friday. Such a parking exemption should be passed for all our major holidays for all our major religions in Mississauga, and frankly across Canada. Mississauga is an incredibly diverse city, a modern city, with a modern mayor, and hopefully a modern council. We passed the exact same last-minute exemption for this past Easter Sunday in 30 seconds.

Saito explained that she technically did not vote in the email process, because she could only support a temporary exemption for Monday if a particular street in her ward was not included.

Im putting their safety ahead of someones request for parking exemptions, Saito said.

She said the cul-de-sac in question gets overcrowded by cars because of overflow from a nearby mosque that does not have adequate parking. Saito said she would make peoples safety a priority ahead of any reason.

Asked if she was opposed to a similar city-wide temporary parking exemption approved last-minute before Easter Sunday, Saito said she was not opposed and supported the move because, It was still part of the Easter weekend and thats why we supported it.

The city has a parking exemption in place for all statutory holidays, but because Easter Sunday is not such a holiday, council, including Saito, passed a temporary parking exemption just prior to the significant date for Christians, and later passed a formal resolution to exempt city-wide parking restrictions on Easter Sunday going forward.

Last year, Saito came under fire when she was the only member of council who would not support the application, which staff approved, for a new mosque in her ward, as the issue had divided many in the neighbourhood. Her opposition was due to concerns that there was not enough parking at the mosque and that it would overflow onto surrounding streets.

Saito said Friday she believes all major religious holidays of all the major religions practiced in Mississauga should have parking exemptions to allow celebratory gatherings, but she said staff would have to determine what those significant holidays are.

I believe in doing my homework . . . my residents know that my decisions are not based on race, religion or anything. I base my decisions on facts and the impact to the community.

Eid al-Adha is one of the two significant religious holidays on the Islamic calendar, marking the end of the hajj, the spiritual journey to the valley of Mecca.

This is not an exclusively Christian country, or city, Parrish said. It angers me that this parking debate is even happening in 2016.

Jamal Ibrahim, a volunteer at Mississaugas Masjid (mosque) Al-Farooq, said the move Friday by Crombie and her determined push for the exemption along with Parrish is fantastic. Im very thankful that the mayor and the councillor and council have shown empathy for the Muslim community and all faith groups. The parking exemption is fair for all religions, all individuals in Mississauga.

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Walls and fences, barriers and sealed ghettos, fortifications and bubbles  it all adds up to the ugly containment of restless humanity.

An ancient idea, from the Great Wall of China to Hadrians Wall demarking the northernmost frontier of Roman Empire. Except invading Mongols manoeuvred around the former and marauding Germanic tribes outflanked the latter, encroaching from the east while Rome had focused its anxiety on Celtic incursions southwards.

In the long view of history, its never worked  keeping out the hordes forever and ever.

The Berlin Wall came down. The Israeli separation barrier against West Bank Palestinians went up  a short bead on history, justified as security shell for a tiny nation surrounded by enemy states.

Even the walls of Jericho eventually tumbled.

While most of the world rightly mocks Donald Trump for cleaving to his absurdist wall vow along the Mexican frontier, the United Kingdom announced this week that it will proceed, beginning next month, to build a controversial wall blockading a French port 23 miles across the English Channel from Dover  The Great Wall of Calais, as it was instantly christened by critics.

Not enough that the UK is an island, with the sea its centuries-old natural protection. Or that the majority of refugees and asylum-seekers over the years have arrived by air. This week, the British government confirmed it will erect a concrete wall intended to keep migrants and refugees from crossing the English Channel. But it will be constructed, with English financing, on the other side of the strait, in Calais.

A 2003 agreement technically extends British border control into the shores of northern France. In tandem, the French have pledged, yet again, to close down The Jungle, Europes largest migrant encampment just outside Calais, the border city which has become a violence-plagued bottleneck for determined migrants trying to make their way to England  the end point of a trek which, for many, began with flight from war-torn Syria, Afghanistan and chaotic Horn of Africa countries. About half of The Jungle was dismantled early this year but somewhere between 7,000 and 9,000 people still live there in squalid conditions.

Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, aiming to run for the office again in 2017, has already called upon the British to establish their own holding pen on their side of the Channel to ease the containment onus on France. Paris alone, according to its mayor, is home to 10,000 illegal immigrants, though authorities claim to have taken another 15,000 immigrants off the streets since June, 2015.

Mayor Anne Hidalgo a few days ago detailed plans for two temporary shelters for arriving migrants  one for men, one for women and children. The male facility, run by a charitable group and due to open in mid-October, is located in an old northern-suburbs railway house, the reception centre situated inside an inflatable structure that Hidalgo has referred to as a bubble. Migrants will receive a medical checkup and legal aid but are expected to move on within two weeks to more suitable housing. The centres, added Hidalgo, would be shuttered in two to four years.

This endeavour, said Hidalgo, should alleviate the stress on Calais, where many of the migrants would otherwise be headed. But citizens are skeptical, expressing the same complaints of farmers and other residents in the Calais region, who claim occupants removed from The Jungle have simply returned to the area. Because the target is, ultimately, the Chunnel by truck or the Channel by ferry.

Britain doesnt want them, at least no more than the 20,000 Syrian refugees the former David Cameron government had committed to resettle.

Hence the wall, central to a $22.65-million Franco-British security package signed in March, which will complement a barbed wire security fence already erected around the Calais port and entrance to the Channel Tunnel. A fence that plainly hasnt worked. People-smugglers and stowaways who cant afford that cost have been flooding across the Channel in recent years, often ambushing long-distance truckers bound for England or concealing themselves inside rigs stopped at lay-bys.

Official figures from July alone showed that one migrant is caught trying to sneak into the UK every six minutes  84,088 detentions at the border in 2015. In June, a French police commissioner said there had been 22,000 breaches of the existing port road defences, compared with 3,000 in January, a huge escalation blamed on the pending, subsequently successful, Brexit referendum to exit the European Union, thereby halting movement from the Continent.

We are going to start building this big new wall very soon, Robert Goodwill, the British immigration minister, said in Westminster on Tuesday. Weve done the fence, now we are doing the wall.

That wall, conceived as an obstacle to illegal liberty for the wretched masses aspiring to better lives, will be 13 feet high, stretching for a kilometre along the main road to Calais and constructed of concrete, purportedly too slippery to gain a foothold for anyone attempting to clamber over it.

But ingenuity and despair always find a way, just as some of these unwelcome migrants have already pitched into the sea trying to escape in decrepit boats from Syria to Turkey or Libya to Italy, swimming towards freedom. Theyve frozen to death on refrigerated trucks crossing France and clung to the underside of train carriages in Germany, such is the yearning versus the risk.

Even the association representing haulers  whove been attacked running the gauntlet by migrants employing increasingly aggressive tactics  has criticized the wall as a waste of taxpayers money, arguing instead to boost security along the approach roads to the Chunnel. French law enforcement counters that it cant secure the approach roads to the tunnel. It is impossible for me to post a policeman every 10 metres in order to secure the road, Police Commission Patrick Visser-Bourdon told reporters. I would have to mobilize 2,000 officers every night.

A continent bursting from the influx of migrants  more than a million refugees crossing into Europe in 2015  has been run ragged trying to process and house the newcomers, with Germany and Sweden the most welcoming, certainly the most willing to accept more than their fair share of the burden. Other countries are opting for walls, walls, walls: Hungary has built a reinforced fence on its frontier with Serbia; Austria has announced plans for a massive new barrier along its border with Hungary to shut down the Balkans route; Macedonia has begun building a second razor-wire fence alongside the existing one on its border with Greece to discourage migrants in transit.

Among the millions in desperate diaspora, some are doubtless economic refugees. But most are clearly fleeing war, violence, persecution and dreadful poverty. Walls wont stop them; might only funnel the rampage to other ports, other means of crossing a narrow waterway.

Walls will, however, reinforce of the heartless view of migrants as barbarians at the gate.

Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.

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Nathaniel Erskine-Smith wasnt at the big summer gathering of Liberal members of Parliament in Saguenay, Que., last month.

But the rookie MP for BeachesEast York had a good excuse: his wife, Toronto chef Amy Symington, had given birth days before to the couples first son, Mackinlay.

No one was likely to accuse Erskine-Smith of slacking off, at any rate. Even if he was absent, he still got a shout-out at the Saguenay meeting for being one of the top canvassers since the election last year.

Erskine-Smith says he keeps knocking on doors as a way of keeping a promise. Last year, during the campaign, one East York resident told him that politicians only show up on the doorstep every four years, when theyre looking for votes. I just really dont want to be that politician, Erskine-Smith says.

This refusal to play to type has earned Erskine-Smith, even with less than a year in the Commons, a reputation as a bit of a contrarian. He hasnt been afraid to vote against his party  at least 15 times, by his own count, over the past year. On issues such as assisted dying, decriminalizing marijuana and whether to condemn Daesh (also known as ISIS or ISIL) for genocide, the 32-year-old lawyer turned politician has unapologetically parted ways with his own governing Liberals. He says it hasnt got him into any trouble, at least not yet.

I should say, for all the talk of disagreement, it sometimes strikes me as funny because I agree far more than I disagree, he says. If I were voting against the budget or our election platform, I think that would be a major concern. But exercising free votes on issues  in response to constituents concerns in many cases, I dont think anyone has an issue with that.

Certainly many of his constituents and supporters dont mind. When I embarked on this series about rookie MPs early this summer, I sought out recommendations from readers on which MPs to profile. The number of people who wrote in to suggest Erskine-Smith far surpassed any other suggestions  in what I was assured later was not any type of organized campaign.

Many of the messages, though, made note of the MPs independent-mindedness, and some, from people who had voted in the past for other parties, said they were pleased that they hadnt sent a trained seal to Ottawa.

Still, despite that well-earned reputation for avoiding predictable political stereotypes, Erskine-Smith could easily be seen as an exemplar of a downtown Toronto politician  the kind that tends to gets disparaged in populist waves against the 416 area code.

Hes a well-educated Toronto lawyer who studied political philosophy and constitutional law at Oxford, and also did a stint with the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. He was raised a vegetarian, is now a vegan and is married to one of Torontos top vegan chefs and nutritionists. Erskine-Smiths biggest initiative as an MP so far is an animal welfare bill, which would ban the import of shark fins and toughen up animal cruelty laws.

In introducing the bill in February, Erskine-Smith gave a nod to his mother, for instilling in him a respect for animals as he was growing up. But he also offered assurances that he wasnt cracking down on hunting, fishing or farming. Nonetheless, his Conservative critics stood up to suggest that the legislation was an attempt to force an animal rights agenda on Canadians.

Erskine-Smith says that if he has any agenda, its simply about staying true to his principles  and also his idealism about politics. He likes the big-picture work that political life can accomplish. While he gets job satisfaction from the casework at a constituency level, for instance, he still has his sights on making a bigger difference.

Practising law, you can have a great impact on an individual case, and that is important, he says. But the reason he left law for politics was to tackle issues of broad public policy that will impact far more people.

So not surprisingly, some of his most memorable moments over the past year revolve around international gatherings  a speech about youth and politics to a huge Inter-Parliamentary Union gathering in Zambia, and an appearance in February at the United Nations, to represent Canada at talks on drug laws.

He came home from the UN and said to his wife: I can retire now.

Erskine-Smith, the youngest MP from the GTA, is far from retirement. Last year he became an MP and this year he became a father. He was warned that Ottawa would change him. Of course he takes the contrary view.

I like to think that the independence Ive exhibited so far suggests that thats not the case, and that regardless of what comes of it, I remain committed to grassroots politics, he says. So I like to think it hasnt changed me too much.

House-trained is a summer series on new Ontario MPs. sdelacourt@bell.net

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WASHINGTONCongress sent President Barack Obama a bipartisan bill that would allow families of Sept. 11 victims to sue the government of Saudi Arabia, putting lawmakers on a collision course with the White House on the eve of the 15th anniversary of the attacks.

The House passed the legislation Friday by voice vote, about four months after the measure cleared the Senate despite vehement objections from Saudi Arabia. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals.

The legislation gives victims families the right to sue in U.S. court for any role that elements of the Saudi government may have played in the 2001 attacks that killed thousands in New York, the Washington, D.C., area and Pennsylvania.

The White House has signalled Obama would veto the legislation over the potential for it to backfire and apprehension about undermining a long-standing yet strained relationship with a critical U.S. ally in the Middle East. The Obama administration has warned that if U.S. citizens can take the Saudis to court, then a foreign country could in turn sue the United States.

Votes from two-thirds of the members in the House and Senate would be needed to override a veto.

Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, said the U.S. government should be more concerned about the families of the victims than diplomatic niceties. Poe said he doesnt know if the Saudi government had a role in the Sept. 11 attacks.

Thats for a jury of Americans to decide, Poe said.

There was no immediate comment from Saudi Arabia. The timing of the vote could be seen as an additional slap at the kingdom, which was preparing for the annual hajj pilgrimage beginning Saturday. But a sponsor of the bill, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said lawmakers were focused only on the symbolism of bringing the bill to the floor as close to the 15th anniversary as possible.

The bills proponents disputed the argument that there will be a boomerang effect if the measure is signed into law. Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., another sponsor, said foreign governments cannot look the other way if terrorist activities are being plotted or launched from their countries.

Terry Strada, national head of 9/11 Families United For Justice Against Terrorism, dismissed fears the U.S. could be the target of lawsuits.

If were not funding terrorist organizations and killing people, then we dont have anything to worry about, she said.

The vote came after House members from both parties briefly adjourned to commemorate the anniversary of the attacks. House Speaker Paul Ryan led a moment of silence on the Capitol steps, and lawmakers sang God Bless America in remembrance of 9/11, when lawmakers gathered in the same location to sing the song immediately after the attacks on New York and Washington.

The Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act had triggered a threat from Riyadh to pull billions of dollars from the U.S. economy if the legislation is enacted. But Saudi Foreign Minister Adel bin Ahmed Al-Jubeir denied in May that the kingdom made any threats over the bill. He said Riyadh had warned that investor confidence in the U.S. would shrink if the bill became law.

In fact what they (Congress) are doing is stripping the principle of sovereign immunities, which would turn the world for international law into the law of the jungle, Al-Jubeir said.

The House vote came two months after Congress released 28 declassified pages from a congressional report into 9/11 that reignited speculation over links at least a few of the attackers had to Saudis, including government officials. The allegations were never substantiated by later U.S. investigations into the terrorist attacks.

Brian McGlinchey, director of advocacy website 28pages.org, said making the documents public strengthened the resolve of 9/11 families and other advocates of justice to bring about the enactment of the bill.

A decision by Obama to veto legislation that would give 9/11 families their well-deserved day in court would truly stain his legacy, McGlinchey said.

In a separate development, a bipartisan group of senators are seeking to block the Obama administrations proposed sale of more than $1 billion (U.S.) worth of U.S. weapons to Saudi Arabia.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., cited Saudi Arabias poor human rights record and the kingdoms role in Yemens civil war.

The war is pitting Yemens internationally recognized government and a Saudi-led coalition against the Shiite rebels known as Houthis, who are allied with army units loyal to a former president. The Saudi-led coalition has been carrying out airstrikes in Yemen since March 2015.

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ATHENS, GREECEGreek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras hosted leaders of Europes Mediterranean countries Friday as his government rejected a return to European Union immigration rules that existed before last years crisis.

Fridays talks are in preparation for next weeks informal EU leaders summit in Bratislava, Slovakia, as the bloc remains rattled by Britains referendum vote to leave the EU and recent gains for the nationalist vote in Germany.

Tsipras met French President Francois Hollande, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, and leaders from Portugal, Cyprus and Malta in Athens to discuss the bloc migration and debt crises. Spains Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy did not attend.

Regardless of our ideological backgrounds, what unites us are our common sea, and common problems, and faith in a European vision, Tsipras said at the start of the talks.

Immigration is high on the agenda. But a Greek government spokesman on immigration said Athens is rejecting the reactivation of the so-called Dublin Regulation, which would allow other EU members to send asylum seekers back to Greece.

A country such as Greece, which receives a large number of refugees from Turkey and also hosts a large number of refugees  practically without any outside help  cannot be asked to receive refugees from other European countries, Giorgos Kyritsis told The Associated Press. That would be outrageous.

The Dublin Regulation that governs Europes Schengen passport-free area stipulates that people wishing to apply for asylum must do so in the first member country they arrive in. In most cases that was Greece, whose eastern islands were overwhelmed last year by migrants packed into smugglers boats from Turkey.

But even before last years migration crisis, many of its EU partners had stopped enforcing the rule because Greeces asylum and migrant reception systems were below standard.

Unless there is an effective means of redistribution across the EU, a revised Dublin system will force refugees upon receiving states closest to the external border, above all Greece, Italy and to a lesser extent Spain, said Brad Blitz, migration expert and professor of international politics at Middlesex University in Britain.

That will create an ever greater strain on (Greeces) asylum system and reception capacity.

More than a million refugees and migrants travelled across Greece since the start of last year and authorities are struggling to cope with 60,000 people stranded here by European border closures.

Fearing a surge in anti-migrant sentiment across the EU, Greece is pressing member states to abide by commitments made for a relocation program  that has covered less that 10 per cent of the 33,000 placements promised to migrants in Greece so far.

The wave of xenophobia and racism must be countered. . . . United Europe needs to return to its founding principles, deputy foreign minister Nikos Xydakis said.

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WASHINGTONThe prepared text of Donald Trumps Friday speech criticized Hillary Clintons support of regime change in foreign countries.

Before Trump got there, he ad-libbed an endorsement of regime change in Iran.

In the latest contradiction of his dizzying campaign, the Republican nominee who has been railing against American intervention in other nations castigated President Barack Obama for declining to intervene in support of the Green Movement protests that followed the disputed 2009 presidential election victory of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

They were dying a few years ago. The sanctions were choking them. They would have fallen, Trump said in Washington, seeming to refer to the Islamic clerics who are in charge of the country. But Obama didnt support the people that would have taken over, and I think in this case would have taken over the right way. Had no support.

Seven minutes later, Trump arrived at his prepared line about his Democratic opponent.

Her tenure has brought us only war and destruction and death. Shes just too quick to intervene, invade, or to push for regime change, he told the Values Voter Summit of Christian conservatives. He added: With people  we dont even know who they are. They take over, theyre far worse.

Trumps campaign did not immediately respond to a request for clarification.

The duelling comments underscored the tension between Trumps record of interventionist statements and his current platform. Though he has eagerly supported regime change in Egypt and Libya, in addition to the invasion of Iraq and other interventions, he is now running as the candidate of caution, claiming he never actually wanted to intervene.

For years, Ive been a critic of this kind of reckless foreign invasions, and, look, lets face it, interventions, he said of the Iraq war on Thursday. In a major speech in mid-August, he said, Our current strategy of nation-building and regime change is a proven failure.

Obama has been criticized by numerous Republicans for his response to the Green Movement, sometimes called the Green Revolution. Both publicly and privately, he declined to back the opposition.

Obama said he was deeply troubled by the regimes violent crackdown on the protests. But he also took pains to emphasize that he respected Iranian sovereignty, and he argued that the difference between hard-line Ahmadinejad and his reformist rival, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, may not be as great as has been advertised.

It is far from clear that American intervention would have succeeded in toppling Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his clerical allies in the Islamic republic.

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TEHRAN, IRANThousands of Iranians marched through the streets Friday to protest Saudi Arabia ahead of the hajj, a sign of soured relations between the two countries following last years crush and stampede during the annual pilgrimage.

Iranians wont be taking part in this years hajj, required of all able-bodied Muslims once in their life, over tensions between majority Sunni Saudi Arabia and majority Shiite Iran, regional rivals divided over a host of issues.

Demonstrators waved signs after Friday prayers depicting Saudi King Salman holding a bloody sword, his head wrapped in an American flag and his shirt bearing a blue Star of David similar to that on the Israeli flag.

Death to Al Saud and the traitors! protesters in Tehran shouted. State media reported similar protests across the country.

We dont have any problems with the people of Saudi Arabia. They are Sunnis and are our brothers, protester Habibullah Abulfazli said. But the Al Saud family are puppets of Britain and America. They are fighting proxy wars against Shiites and against all Muslims.

Tensions soared in January after the kingdom executed a prominent Saudi Shiite cleric. Angry demonstrators later attacked two Saudi diplomatic posts in Iran and Saudi Arabia cut diplomatic ties to the Islamic Republic. The two countries also support opposing sides in the civil wars in Syria and Yemen.

In their recent criticisms, Iranian officials have focused on the Sept. 24, 2015, stampede and crush of pilgrims at last years hajj that killed at least 2,426 people, according to an Associated Press count. Tehran has said the disaster killed 464 Iranians.

The official Saudi toll of 769 people killed and 934 injured has not changed since Sept. 26. The kingdom has never addressed the discrepancy, nor has it released any results of an investigation authorities promised to conduct over the disaster.

On Monday, Irans Ayatollah Ali Khamenei raised the stakes in the dispute by saying Saudi officials had murdered hajj pilgrims who were injured in the stampede. Saudi Arabias Grand Mufti Abdulaziz Al Sheikh countered by claiming that Iranians are not Muslims.

A member of Lebanons Hezbollah meanwhile said the Iran-backed Shiite militant group has asked its members to refrain from going on the hajj this year because of tensions with Saudi Arabia.

The member, who spoke to The Associated Press this week, said the decision came after Saudi Arabia named Hezbollah a terrorist organization. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

He said the organizational measures would only affect Hezbollah members and not their families or the groups supporters.

Tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran periodically have simmered and cooled since Irans 1979 Islamic Revolution installed its Shiite cleric-ruled democracy. The hajj, which begins Saturday this year, hasnt been spared.

In 1987, demonstrating Iranian pilgrims on hajj battled Saudi riot police in clashes that killed at least 402 people. Iran claimed 600 of its pilgrims were killed and said police fired machine-guns at the crowd. Iran did not send pilgrims to the hajj in 1988 and 1989, while Saudi Arabia severed diplomatic ties over the violence and Iranian attacks on shipping in the Persian Gulf during the Iran-Iraq War.

Iran has called for an independent body to take over administering the five-day hajj, something the Al Saud family has refused. Its overseeing of Islamic holy sites, along with Saudi Arabias oil wealth, gives the kingdom major influence in the Muslim world.

During Fridays protests, demonstrators also shouted slogans against the U.S. and Britain, long targets of suspicion among Iranian hard-liners. But protesters offered their harshest criticism for Saudi Arabia.

They have stabbed Muslims in the heart, protester Zabihullah Pirhayati said.

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SEOULNorth Korea is touting technological progress in its nuclear program, saying after a nuclear test Friday that it can now produce smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear warheads of higher strike power. But it is also making strides in its missile program, analysts say  advances that could enable it to outsmart defence systems.

North Korea conducted what it called a nuclear warhead explosion test Friday. It was the countrys fifth nuclear test, but the third since Kim Jong Un took power at the end of 2011 and the second this year alone.

Under Kims leadership, North Korea has also sharply accelerated the pace of missile testing, with almost two dozen launches this year. While many of this years tests have not been successful and there are still many unknowns about North Koreas nuclear and missile programs, there have still been noticeable  and concerning  improvements.

It seems like North Korea is trying to qualitatively improve its missiles and develop options to evade or fool U.S. missile defences, said Kelsey Davenport, director for non-proliferation policy at the Arms Control Association. If this continues unchecked, they could develop an intercontinental ballistic missile that could pose a threat to the United States in the next decade.

In its most recent salvo, North Korea launched three medium-range missiles Monday as China, which had joined the international condemnation of last months submarine-launched ballistic missile, was hosting the G20 summit in Hangzhou.

The rockets flew about 950 kilometres  putting Hangzhou within range. But they were sent in the other direction, falling inside Japans air defence identification zone.

Arms control experts have since been poring over photos of the launches released by the North Korean media. Video footage, complete with stirring revolutionary music, shows three missiles being launched in the space of a minute from trucks parked on a highway south of Pyongyang.

The location is within the security belt protecting Kim and the other regime elites in the capital, said Michael Madden, editor of the North Korean Leadership Watch website. That meant the drills could be simulating the collapse of the state or the presence of hostile forces within the country, he said.

But it was the modifications to the missile that surprised the rocket scientists at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif. It appears that North Korea has extended the distance a short-range Scud can fly, essentially turning it into a medium-range missile, which the North Koreans call the Rodong.

That means that a longer-range missile could be wheeled out on an existing Scud transporter  obviating the need to produce new trucks. Syria is among the countries thought to have bought short-range Scuds from North Korea, in about 2000.

This is a really nice upgrade, said Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program in Monterey. Countries looking to buy North Korean missiles are probably looking at this and thinking, Ooooh, thats nice.

North Korea has been concentrating on developing road-mobile missiles that can be fuelled in a shelter or tunnel, instead of on a traditional launch pad that can be detected by satellites  and theoretically invite a pre-emptive strike.

Japan did not detect Mondays launch in advance, the Nikkei newspaper reported, also saying this underscored the limits of Japans defences.

In the past, when activity had been seen around the launch pad, Japans self-defence forces would roll out Patriot Advanced Capability (PAC-3) interceptors at the defence ministry headquarters in Tokyo. But road-mobile missiles can be readied for launch in a matter of minutes, cutting the time available to respond.

Japan is very concerned that North Korea has launched so many different missiles in such a short period, said Atsuya Tanimoto of the Japanese Defense Ministrys intelligence analysis office. North Korea is improving its technology, he said.

North Korea also appears to be looking for other ways to avoid interception, no doubt motivated by South Koreas recent decision to host a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) antimissile unit for the U.S. military. The battery is due to be deployed to a site south of Seoul next year.

But by firing the three missiles within the space of a minute, rather than over the usual course of an hour or so, North Korea appeared to be testing a way to make it more difficult to intercept incoming missiles, said Joseph S. Bermudez Jr., a military analyst affiliated with the Washington-based U.S.-Korea Institute at SAIS.

This launch was probably designed to test not only operational readiness but to develop tricks to defeat antimissile defences in Japan and South Korea, Bermudez said.

When you launch in a barrage at the same time, it complicates missile defence. So theyve shown they have not just the technological capability but the operational capability for simultaneous launches.

Furthermore, it appeared that missile tested Monday separates after launch  making it harder for missile defence systems to intercept the detached warhead.

When a solid warhead remains attached to the missile, its easier to hit because its a bigger target, Lewis said. If you were in Egypt, staring at Israel, you might really like a warhead like this.

North Korea has not demonstrated any capacity to make a nuclear warhead small enough to attach to a missile, let alone the ability to deliver a nuclear-tipped missile to a target.

Still, the progress in its medium-range missile program follows observable advances in North Koreas quest to launch missiles from sea as well as from land.

North Korea was ridiculed for apparently photoshopping a ballistic missile launch from a submarine in May. But last month it successfully launched a missile from a submarine near its east coast port of Sinpo. It flew about 480 kilometres toward Japan before falling into the sea.

This showed that its missile program might be progressing faster than originally expected, said John Schilling, an aerospace engineer who studies North Koreas missiles.

However, this does not mean it will be ready next week, next month, or even next year, he wrote in a commentary for the 38 North website.

But North Koreas submarine-launched ballistic missiles could be operational by the second half of 2018, he wrote.

Concurrent with making progress on its delivery systems, North Korea has also been refurbishing its old missile production infrastructure.

Kim visited the January 18 General Machinery Plant, which makes sensitive missile components, at the end of last year and joked that it looked so good, visitors might think they were in a resort.

International sanctions imposed through the United Nations, as well as direct sanctions from the United States, South Korea and Japan, have been designed to cut off North Koreas ability to buy parts for its nuclear and missile programs, as well as stanch financial flows.

But the steady rat-a-tat of missile tests suggests that North Korea has plenty of missile parts to play with.

Some American officials suggest that North Korea might be racing against the clock, trying to test and make as much progress as it can before the latest round of sanctions really bites.

While Bermudez warned against getting too excited about the most recent developments, saying they simply reinforce what had been seen previously, Lewis said the developments should disabuse anyone of the notion that North Korea was not serious about its missile program.

Theyre testing at a really fast rate because the program is real, he said. The idea that this is a Potemkin missile program is just nonsense.

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PARISThree women behind a thwarted attack near Notre Dame Cathedral were radicalized by Daesh, also known as ISIS or ISIL, commanders in Syria, and one had been engaged to an extremist who killed a priest in July, the Paris prosecutor said Friday.

Francois Molins spoke a day after three women were dramatically arrested over the failed attack that centred on a car discovered Sunday morning in central Paris abandoned and loaded with gas canisters. No detonators were found in the car.

In the last few days and hours a terrorist cell was dismantled, composed of young women totally receptive to the deadly Daesh ideology, Molins said.

The women who spearheaded the failed plot included a 19-year-old whose father owned the abandoned Peugeot car. Her written pledge of allegiance to Daesh was found by police, a security official said Friday.

The teen, Ines Madani, stabbed a police officer with a knife and was shot in the leg Thursday evening in a raid south of Paris, police said. She was being treated in a hospital.

Five women and two men have been arrested in the case.

One of the women detained in a police raid, referred to as Sarah H. and who was wearing a veil, was betrothed separately to two French extremists who carried out deadly attacks this year, the Paris prosecutor said.

Sarah H. was engaged to Larossi Abballa, who killed two police officials in Magnanville in June and filmed the aftermath on Facebook Live before dying in a police raid.

She was also betrothed to Adel Kermiche, who slit the throat of an elderly French priest during morning Mass in July before being killed by police, Molins added. He didnt say when she was engaged to either man.

Frances interior minister described the pursuit as a race against time to find Madani and the two women with her before they could strike.

A man arrested Thursday also had ties to Abballa, one of the officials said.

Theres a group that has been annihilated, but there are others, French President Francois Hollande said Friday. Information we were able to get from our intelligence services allowed us to act before it was too late.

A security official, who also cannot be identified when speaking about the investigation, said Madani had pulled a knife during the raid outside a small apartment building near the Boussy-Saint-Antoine train station.

In video filmed by a neighbour, a veiled woman, her face uncovered, is seen being carried away by police as she cries out Allahu akbar or God is the Greatest in Arabic.

A plot conceived and carried out by a group of women would mark a new step in Daeshs attempts to sow fear in Europe.

Its at the same time rare and predictable, Matthieu Suc, author of Wives of Jihadis, told France Info radio.

Women in the group do not take part in attacks, he said, but are there to ensure the longevity of the caliphate by having babies and providing moral support. But, he added, there are often young girls, who are just as radicalized as the young men, and they also want the status of martyr, and they want to act.

The car loaded with gas cylinders belonged to Madanis father, who flagged her to police on Sunday 14 hours after the vehicle was discovered. Since then, authorities have worked frantically to untangle the relationships within the group and thwart what they increasingly feared was another plot.

More than one-third of the nearly 700 French citizens who have reached the war zones of Iraq and Syria are women, according to government figures. And officials have said for months that those being recruited by Daesh in France are increasingly adolescent girls and young women.

Security around Paris was visibly higher Friday as the investigation widened.

A bomb squad, sniffer dogs and a scanner were deployed when a gas canister with a timer but no detonator was found outside a police station Friday morning in the suburb town of La Plaine Saint Denis, just north of Paris, a local police official said.

In a sign of fraying nerves, the son of a gas delivery driver was briefly detained because he had canisters in his car. Elsewhere, police in Paris used explosives to disable an illegally parked motorcycle.

Explosive gas canisters filled with nails were the weapon used in bomb attacks by Algerian extremists on Paris in the 1990s.

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JAKARTA, INDONESIAPhilippine President Rodrigo Duterte said Friday he told President Barack Obama during their encounter in Laos that he never cursed him.

On a visit to Indonesia, Duterte told the Filipino community there that he told Obama: President Obama, Im President Duterte. I never made that statement, check it out.

He said that Obama responded: My men will talk to you, and he replied OK.

Duterte blamed the media for distorting his words, saying he did utter son of a b---- but it was not directed at Obama.

Before travelling to Laos for regional summits, Duterte said Monday that Obama should not question him about the rising death toll in his war on drugs, which has been criticized abroad and by Dutertes opponents in the Philippines. More than 2,800 suspected drug dealers and users have been killed since Duterte took office.

Asked how he would explain the killings to Obama, he said in a long answer that the Philippines has long ceased to be a colony of the United States and he did not have a master except the Filipino people.

I do not care about him. Who is he? Duterte said. You must be respectful. Do not just throw questions and statements. Putang Ina, I will swear at you at that forum, he added, using the Tagalog phrase for son of a bitch.

Obama then cancelled a meeting with Duterte in Laos but the two met informally on Wednesday in a holding room before attending a gala dinner.

Duterte, who assumed the presidency in June, has had an uneasy relationship with the U.S., his countrys longtime treaty ally. He has said he is charting a foreign policy not dependent on the U.S., and has moved to reduce tensions with China over rival territorial claims.

He also said he showed a picture of an atrocity during the U.S. pacification campaign in the southern Philippines at the beginning of the last century at the East Asia Summit in Laos that included Obama, in order to stop criticism over human rights violations in the war on illegal drugs. The photograph showed about 200 dead Filipino Moros stacked in a common pit, with an American soldier holding a rifle while stepping on the breasts of a naked Moro woman.

He said he told the leaders, This is human rights, what do you intend to do? and Human rights violations whether committed by Moses or Abraham, is still violation of human rights.

The whole room was silent and he waited for Obama to respond but he remained quiet, Duterte said.

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WASHINGTONDonald Trump claims that Hillary Clinton lacks the strength or the stamina to run the country. He questioned in a tweet this week why the media was not covering a coughing fit she had at a rally in Cleveland. His partys chairman scolded her for not smiling enough.

And Trump insisted that the former senator and secretary of state does not resemble a commander in chief: I just dont think she has a presidential look.

The escalating attacks by Trump and his allies on Clintons vigor and appearance are providing new fodder for critics who say the real estate developer is trafficking in sexist stereotypes and fueling false Internet rumors in attempts to undermine her image with voters.

Many Republican strategists warn that the approach is perilous for a GOP nominee who already has low standing among women, saying his jabs could resonate in a negative way for those who have encountered similar put-downs from men in their own lives.

For women who have had to put up with inappropriate suggestions about their appearance or stamina, it probably doesnt sit really well when they come out of the mouth of a presidential candidate, said GOP pollster Whit Ayres, who is not supporting Trump.

Jackson Katz, author of the book Man Enough? Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and the Politics of Presidential Masculinity, said Trump is using a tactic similar to one he employed against his Republican opponents in the primary, when he mocked former Florida governor Jeb Bush as low energy and belittled little Marco Rubio. With Clinton, that approach also appears to implicate her gender.

This attack on Hillary Clintons stamina, her energy, her health, is a way of attacking her virility or vigor without coming at it directly, he said. Donald Trump is playing on the anxieties of a lot of men and women who are uncomfortable with the notion of a woman as a president.

Trump campaign officials did not respond to requests for comment. But Kellyanne Conway, his campaign manager, told MSNBC last month that Trumps remarks pale compared with the personal derision he fields from Democrats.

Somehow its OK for them to insult this guy six ways to Sunday, every chance they get, and if he shoots back with one comment, its Ahh, look at him, hes attacking a woman, hes taking on her health,  she said.

The GOP candidate has been taking swipes at Clintons energy level for much of the year, describing her as exhausted and sleeping too much, citing no evidence. He routinely complains about the sound of her voice, at one point calling it very shrill.

The 70-year-old business executive has only intensified his remarks about his 68-year-old rivals physical fitness in recent weeks. She doesnt have the strength or the stamina to make America great again, he told supporters in Phoenix last week.

In an interview with ABC on Monday, Trump maintained that Clinton does not look the part, saying, You need a presidential look. You have to get the job done.

The liberal group Emilys List rushed to turn his words against him, tweeting images of Trump and comments he has made about women with the hashtag #ThatPresidentialLook.

Women know exactly what he means when he thinks he is being coy about these attacks, and its just one more reason why we dont trust and dont like Donald Trump, said Marcy Stech, a spokeswoman for the group.

Rob Stutzman, a Sacramento-based GOP consultant, said Trump could have avoided giving his opponents an opening if he had been more careful with his language.

When there is the first woman nominee and her male opponent is saying she doesnt look presidential, of course that can be taken as a reference to gender, he said.

If done with some nuance, you can raise reasonable questions about your opponents health, but Trump doesnt have any nuance, so its been this brutal sledgehammer declaring she is unfit, Stutzman added. A smart campaign would have reasonable third party raising those questions in a respectful way.

Instead, some of Trumps surrogates have gone even further than him, promoting unsubstantiated or debunked theories about Clintons health that have been widely circulated conspiracy sources.

 I do know that there are 14, 15 videos of her that show her in very, very strange condition, former New York City mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, a close adviser to Trump, told MSNBCs Chris Matthews Thursday, adding:

All I do is see all these incidents of her coughing all the time. I dont know what it is. And I have seen her in several other situations where she didnt look healthy.

The speculation about Clintons health ratcheted up with the release Friday of documents summarizing an interview she gave the FBI this summer as part of its investigation into the handling of classified information. Clinton told agents that she could not recall every briefing she received following a concussion she suffered in a 2012 fall, the documents show.

I think we need to know if shes healthy, conservative host Sean Hannity said on his radio show Tuesday. She doesnt seem to have a lot of energy. If she had that bad of a concussion that she cant remember, I think we have a right to know if there is any other damage in there, right?

His guest, former House speaker Newt Gingrich, concurred: Has that recovered? Does she now have a better memory? . . . There are a lot of questions that come out of this that are kind of weird, frankly.

Clintons campaign has dismissed such suggestions, accusing Trumps campaign of peddling deranged conspiracy theories.

On Monday, Clinton told reporters that a recent persistent cough was due to seasonal allergies. Asked whether footage of the cough would feed into rumors about her health, Clinton said: Im not concerned about the conspiracy theories. There are so many of them Ive lost track . . . and so I pay no attention to them.

Among the unfounded rumors circulating online is that one of Clintons Secret Service agents is actually a doctor who carries a Diazepam pen in case she has a seizure. The Secret Service has said the supposed doctor is actually an agent who was probably carrying a flashlight.

Neither candidate has yet released the kind of extensive medical records that Sen. John McCain did during his 2008 bid. The senator from Arizona, then 71, made more than 1,000 pages of medical documents available to reporters, including details about the care he received while fighting cancer.

Clinton has released a two-page letter from her doctor detailing her current health, medical history, medications and family medical history, as well as her recovery from the 2012 fall.

Trump has distributed a four-paragraph letter from his doctor that contained few specifics but declared that he would be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency. The doctor, a gastroenterologist, has since said in interviews that he wrote the note in five minutes and purposely injected it with over-the-top language.

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GENEVAThe United States and Russia announced early Saturday a breakthrough agreement on Syria that foresees a nationwide ceasefire starting early next week, followed by an unlikely new military partnership between the rival governments targeting the Islamic State and al-Qaida.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the plan could reduce violence in Syria and lead to a long-sought political transition, ending more than five years of bloodshed. He called the deal a potential turning point in a conflict that has killed as many as 500,000 people, if complied with by Syrias Russian-backed government and U.S.-supported rebel groups.

The ceasefire begins at sundown Monday, Kerry said, coinciding with the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday.

Kerrys negotiating partner, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, confirmed the agreement and said it could help expand the counterterrorism fight and aid deliveries to Syrian civilians. He said Syrian President Bashar Assads government was prepared to comply.

The deal culminates months of frenetic diplomacy that included four meetings between Kerry and Lavrov since Aug. 26. The arrangement hinges on Moscow pressuring Assads government to halt all offensive operations against Syrias armed opposition and civilian areas. Washington must persuade moderate rebels to break ranks with the Nusra Front, Al Qaedas Syria affiliate and other extremist groups.

Both sides have failed to deliver their ends of the bargain over several previous truces.

But the new arrangement goes further by promising a new U.S.-Russian counterterrorism alliance, only a year after President Barack Obama chastised Russia for a military intervention that U.S. officials said was mainly designed to keep Assad in power and target more moderate anti-Assad forces.

The deal includes intelligence sharing and targeting co-ordination, a level of U.S.-Russian interaction that has upset several leading national security officials in Washington, including Defence Secretary Ash Carter and National Intelligence Director James Clapper. The joint military work would only begin after several days of adherence to the new ceasefire.

Kerry appeared at the news conference after several hours of internal U.S. discussions.

At one point, Lavrov said he was considering calling it a day on talks, expressing frustration with what he described as an hours-long wait for a U.S. response. He then presented journalists with several boxes of pizza, saying, This is from the U.S. delegation, and two bottles of vodka, adding, This is from the Russian delegation.

The Geneva negotiating session, which last more than 13 hours, underscored the complexity of a conflict that includes myriad militant groups, shifting alliances and the rival interests of the U.S. and Russia, Saudi Arabia and Iran, and Turkey and the Kurds.

Getting Assads government and rebel groups to comply with the deal may now be more difficult as fighting rages around the divided city of Aleppo, Syrias most populous and the new focus of a war that has killed as many as 500,000 people.

Assads government appeared to tighten its siege of the former Syrian commercial hub in the last several days, seizing several key transit points. Forty days of fighting in Aleppo has killed nearly 700 civilians, including 160 children, according to a Syrian human rights group. Volunteer first responders said they pulled the bodies of nine people, including four children, from rubble following air raids Friday on a rebel-held area.

In addition to those killed, Syrias conflict has chased millions of people from their homes, contributing to Europes worst refugee crisis since World War II. Amid the chaos of fighting between Syrias government and rebels, the Islamic State group has emerged as a global terror threat.

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Women have their uses. In the case of Federal Court Judge Robin Camp, its as a backdrop, a sort of wallpaper but with soft fabrics and flowing hair.

I have written before about using fellow humans as flattering adjacencies, which means standing beside people who make you look morally fabulous in comparison. You will always look shiny next to Gary Aleppo Johnson or Kellie Leitch. So go stand next to them. No?

Camp, South African-educated, is appearing before a Canadian Judicial Council committee after numerous complaints about his extreme misconduct towards a complainant, a 19-year-old homeless indigenous woman allegedly sexually assaulted by an Alexander Wagar in a bathroom. (After this notorious Alberta provincial court case, Camp was promoted to Federal Court, where appeals from female refugees fleeing sexual violence are often heard.)

Camp showed up like the Canadian flag, a human maple leaf (in a pink tie) flanked by wife and daughter the way we are flanked by oceans. Camp doesnt want to look fabulous in comparison to them. He wants to be seen as someone they are willing to be in a room with, a voluntary adjacency. His photo-staging declares I know women! Some women like me!

In the 2014 trial he had referred to the complainant as the accused, asked why she didnt keep her knees together, asked why she had allowed the sex to happen if she didnt want it and had told the female Crown, in a bizarre joke, that he hoped she didnt live too long.

Camp defended himself in a letter to the panel on Friday, saying he regretted almost all his remarks in court. And then he spoke. The things I feel worst about are the questions I asked about the accused, he said, again astoundingly referring to her as the accused.

In exculpation, he told the panel he often refers to the dishwasher as the washing machine, so theres that. He then re-insulted her by calling her a fragile personality. And 40 minutes later, he once again called her the accused. But not a washing machine.

As for his daughter, who told the hearing that Camp had been very kind to her after she was raped in her own home, her statement wasnt as helpful as shed hoped. The case in which Camp tormented the complainant occurred years after his own daughters rape. He had learned nothing.

Weve seen a lot of voluntary female adjacencies recently. Nate Parker, the American director of The Birth of a Nation, who was acquitted in 1999 of raping a fellow student who later killed herself, has wrapped himself in chance adjacencies. Ive got five daughters and a lovely wife. My mom lives here with me; I brought her here. Ive got four younger sisters, he told Deadline when the rape case came up as his movie was beginning its triumphal opening march. I know women! Some women like me!

The notorious ex-CBC radio host Jian Ghomeshi, eventually acquitted of sexual assault, and showed up in court with his mother and sister.

Bill Cosby is amply defended by his wife, a significant adjacency for a man accused of having spent his adult life drugging and raping unconscious women. And now he is claiming to have gone blind, so it is really good to be seen leaning on the arm she offers.

Roger Ailes, a tormentor of women at Fox News, hired a self-proclaimed feminist lawyer, Susan Estrich, to defend him and then negotiate his exit. She did a good job. He will get $40 million (U.S.) from Fox as he departs, double what one of his victims, Gretchen Carlson, will get.

Camp was supported in the hearing by big-league female witnesses  Manitoba Judge Deborah McCawley, who mentored him, sexual diversity expert Brenda Cossman, who guided him, and psychologist Lori Haskell, who questioned him  hired by him to train him in what we thought judges understood: the law and courtroom behaviour. They were enthusiastic about his eagerness to learn. Camps remark that sex and pain sometimes go together was brushed away, as was every grotesque thing he said in court. They were his voluntary adjacencies.

Cossman defended Camps comments, like the one about women keeping their knees together, as genuine though insensitive evidentiary inquiries. It was puzzling, as these rare judicial hearings always are. But to see Judge McCawley metaphorically wrap her legal robes around Camp and exclaim over his enthusiasm? Now that is flattering. Maybe the trio could start their own agency, The Adjacency Agency.

I was very unhappy, Camp said of Alberta Justice Minister Kathleen Ganleys complaint that triggered the hearing. My thinking isnt really sexist but old-fashioned. He believed that women all behave the same way when they are attacked.

I am grateful that feminist groups like LEAF have intervenor status at the hearing, and that the rape case itself will be heard again before an educated and civilized judge. I hope the panel will recommend Camps removal and the council will ask the federal justice minister to consult Parliament. I cannot see how a modern nation with a feminist prime minister can have judges like this.

One sees a lonely figure. She is a raped indigenous Canadian woman who has wanted to kill herself since these events. She is a University of Pennsylvania student who committed suicide after her rape case failed. She is a helpless actress, felled by a famous predators drug.

These women have no flattering male adjacencies. There is no team of men surrounding them with aid, advice and care. It has always been thus.

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If youre a Canadian who has travelled abroad over the last 10 months, chances are something like this has happened to you. You jump into a taxi at a foreign airport. The cabbie asks you where youre from. You reply Canada and thats his cue to launch into rhapsodies about Justin Trudeau.

In fact, the response is pretty well the same across the board  from hard-nosed business executives, to jaded journalists, to diplomatic and political veterans  You Canadians are so lucky. We wish we had a leader like yours.

Its important not to read too much into this infatuation. Like all long-distance crushes, it is largely a grass-is-always-greener phenomenon. But those conditions wont be disappearing any time soon. And Trudeaus embrace of pluralism and diversity, his unabashed championing of globalism and open trade  even the relentless optimism of his sunny ways  will continue to stand in sharp relief against the prevailing winds of retrenchment, protectionism, sectarianism, xenophobia and political polarization gripping much of the world.

And yes, the PMs youth and non-stop energy  and even the millennial glamour that is an undeniable part of his appeal  will continue to be assets for a while to come. Just remember, for example, the next American president  whichever candidate wins  will be old enough to be Justin Trudeaus mother or father.

Essentially, from the moment he took office  from the Davos glitziest in January, to this months whirlwind trip to China  the prime minister has cannily seized on his international star appeal to try to create commercial benefit for the Canadian economy. And the right people are noticing. Witness last weeks comments from Jack Ma, the founder of the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba: Mr. Trudeau also has a very, very special aura  in him you can see and feel the spark, image and confidence of Canada ... He is the future of Canada.

The challenge is how to build this opportunity. Our prime minister can and should be the door opener. But he cant be the whole show. No one individual can be. What we need is an integrated, comprehensive and ongoing branding and marketing campaign that can capitalize on the new buzz about our prime minister and our country. The world wants a little more Canada. Lets give it to them. Not in episodic prime ministerial visits, but in a sustained, aggressive, and decidedly, well, un-Canadian way.

The first step should be to create a true international non-partisan marketing consortium for Canada, involving federal and provincial governments and the private sector. Give this new agency the means and the authority to map out and execute a sustained campaign. Above all, remove it from any hint of politics or partisanship.

In the 1990s, Prime Minister Jean Chretien broke new ground, bringing all of Canadas provincial premiers along on a successful run of Team Canada trade missions. Trudeau should reinstate that initiative and go one better, bringing along Canadas opposition leaders on missions that promote our country. The fact is that a strong bipartisan consensus exists regarding the Canadian model  economically in terms of trade, and socially in terms of the value of, for example, diversity and a strong social safety net. Whatever our politics, when were abroad we all promote Canada. Lets use that common ground to grow our economy and further our countrys interests.

Similarly, a successful campaign would also deploy the global diaspora of Canadians. Some three million Canadians live abroad. They include social and business leaders, and an impressive clutch of internationally renowned artists and entertainers  some of the leading stars in contemporary pop culture. They all prize their Canadian identity and want to see Canada succeed. Lets harness their connections and drawing power for this project.

What would an international campaign look like? In short, bringing Canada to the world and the world to Canada.

In terms of the former, that would mean Canadian commercial and trade fairs, festivals and cultural celebrations in the worlds leading cities. It would mean more, and bigger, trade missions. It would mean advertising and promotion abroad on an unprecedented level, along with an emphasis on public diplomacy beyond anything Canada has previously undertaken.

In terms of the latter, it would mean bringing in the leading thinkers, capitalists, opinion leaders  from global CEOs to international site locators to Nobel Prize-winning scientists  to see Canada up close. Regardless of our conceits, our country is not on the international circuit. And a faint  albeit very positive  sense of Canada wont seal the deal for investment or relocation. We need to bring these decision makers here  on our dime.

This kind of international campaign would not come cheap. We live in world in which Coca Cola spends $3 billion a year in advertising and the average Hollywood summer blockbusters have a budget well north of $100 million. Canada has an annual GDP of $2.3 trillion. Surely, between the public and private sector, we can pull together $100 million a year (the budget of a single Hollywood summer movie) to aggressively promote Canada and grow that GDP.

This will not be an easy sell in a country that begrudges a cabinet minister the use of an Air Canada lounge. Or where turf wars too often keep us from acting in our collective self-interest. In the Greater Toronto Region, for example, efforts to bring together the myriad of small-time local foreign investment attraction operations into a single regionwide agency have been glacially slow  and thats with all the governments supporting the move!

The risk is that we Canadians will continue to bask in the current spotlight, and enjoy the frisson of this global version of Trudeaumania with nothing substantial to show for it.

The fact is that the qualities Trudeau is being celebrated for internationally are, writ-large, pretty well what makes Canada so important in todays fractured and very edgy world. Our stability. Our inclusiveness. Our civility and fairness. Our essentially post-national sensibility. People around the world look at us and they see the future  or rather, the best future. Its our moment. Lets seize it.

Peter Donolo is vice chairman of Hill + Knowlton Canada. He was director of communications to Prime Minister Jean Chretien.

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Kellie Leitch, an Ontario MP and would-be Conservative leader, is taking a hammering for suggesting only immigrants who accept Canadian values should be allowed into the country.

Interim Conservative leader Rona Ambrose says its a bad idea. So does rival leadership candidate and Calgary MP Deepak Obhrai.

Critics accuse the Collingwood physician of trying to whip up anti-Muslim sentiment. Ontario MP Michael Chong, who is also contesting the Conservative leadership, has called her proposal the worst of dog-whistle politics.

She has been reviled in the countrys editorial pages as an intolerant xenophobe.

But she is sticking to her guns, as she did Thursday on CBC Radio. I suspect thats because she figures a lot of Conservative Party members  and a fair number of Canadians generally  agree with her.

Immigration is a fraught topic in Canada. We are all immigrants or descended from them. Even the original First Nations came from somewhere else.

But at the same time, large-scale immigration can be unnerving for those who are already here. Just ask those same First Nations.

Canadians like to pride themselves on their ability to tolerate differences. Yet if the public opinion polls can be believed, there are limits to this tolerance.

As the Star reported in July, a province-wide poll commissioned by the Ontario government and the City of Toronto found that 53 per cent of Ontarians think Canada should accept immigrants only from those countries with similar values  which is close to what Leitch wants.

The same poll found that 75 per cent of Ontarians think Muslim values differ from those of other Canadians and that more than half believe that mainstream Islamic doctrines support violence.

Some 46 per cent of those polled said Canada admits too many immigrants.

The surveys findings jibe with an Angus Reid poll taken earlier this year. It found Canadians are still deeply divided over the Liberal governments plan to resettle Syrian refugees in Canada, with 52 per cent in favour and 44 per cent opposed.

Ontarians will remember former Premier Dalton McGuintys 2005 decision to scrap all faith-based arbitration rather than allow Muslim sharia law to be used in family dispute-settlement cases.

Jews and Roman Catholics had been quietly using faith-based arbitration for years but McGuinty figured  probably correctly  that giving the same status to Muslims would be politically explosive.

In Quebec, meanwhile, the intense debate over so-called reasonable accommodation of cultural minorities  particularly Muslims  has quieted down.

But it hasnt disappeared. The issue lingers on in the form of a government bill that would require all of those offering and receiving public services to keep their faces uncovered.

All of which is to say that Canadians may not be as welcoming of newcomers as they claim to be.

Leitch has dismissed as unfair any suggestion that her position on immigration echoes that of U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump.

And there are some differences. She doesnt want to build a wall along the southern border. He does.

However, there are also similarities. Trump began by calling for a flat-out ban on Muslim immigrants. Now, like Leitch, he has embraced the more subtle notion of limiting immigration to those who share our values and respect our people

But lets not fool ourselves. Both Trump and Leitch are taking aim at the same target here. When Leitch said she wouldnt allow into Canada those who believe that gays and lesbians should be stoned, she was deliberately playing to a stereotypical view of Islam.

The reigning assumption behind Canadian politics today is that former Prime Minister Stephen Harpers hard-edged approach to Muslim immigrants was counterproductive  that it cost him votes.

Similarly, the reigning assumption behind American politics four years ago was that the Republicans, if they were to win, had to become more immigrant-friendly.

Yet in the end the Republicans chose the very immigrant-unfriendly Trump.

Can the miracle be repeated? Kellie Leitch hopes so.

Thomas Walkoms column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

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Re: Calgary judge worked hard to change, mentor testifies, Sept. 8

Calgary judge worked hard to change, mentor testifies, Sept. 8

In this article about the judge who made sexist assumptions and remarks about the complainant in a sexual assault case, the reporter notes that she is a slight young woman. Would he describe a man this way?

Journalists, like judges, need to be aware of their gendered assumptions. Neither her case against her rapist not her case against the judge have anything to do with her looks, size or age.

Stop slighting women with language that both objectifies and connotes weakness.

Denise Handlarski, Toronto

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The European Central Bank and Bank of Italy have cleared Verona-based Banco Popolare Group to buy Banca Popolare di Milano Scarl , handing Rome a key victory in its efforts to shore up Italy's fragile banking sector.

The merger, which has been awaiting approval since March, will create a new lender to be called Banco BPM that will rank No.3 in Italy by market share behind UniCredit SpA and Intesa Sanpaolo SpA.

The ECB had previously refused to approve the combination as it felt that the Verona-based buyer's capital reserves were too small to cover underperforming and non-performing loans. That problem was rectified in June when the bank raised 1 billion ($1.12 billion) selling new shares.

"The Bank of Italy, considering the result of its investigation and in the absence of objections from the European Central Bank, has given authorization for the merger," the central banks said in a statement.

The Italian government has spent years cajoling Italy's fragmented banking sector into consolidation after ending by regional banks turned sour, leaving lenders with between 200 billion and 300 billion of bad loans, depending on the measure used.

The all-share combination of the Veronese and Milanese banks is being pitched as a merger and still needs shareholder approval. If it completes it will leave Banco Popolare shareholders with 54% of the combined group. It will have a market value of about 4.13 billion, based on the two banks' current capitalization.

The banks expect the combination to deliver savings and synergies of about 365 million in 2018. The combined group will have about 14 billion of non-performing loans and about 26.6 billion of total impaired loans.

The deal has won widespread support from analysts and was seen as a key test of new Italian rules that loosened ownership in a bid to encourage consolidation.

The news came after the CEO of Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA, Fabrizio Viola, resigned Thursday just weeks after revealing a plan to turn around the deeply troubled bank. The bank gave no reason for the decision and said Viola will stay on until it appoints a new CEO.

BMPS, as the bank is known, on July 29 unveiled plans to sell up to 5 billion of new shares and 9.2 billion of non-performing loans. Bank stress tests conducted in July revealed BMPS's core tier 1 ratio, a measure of bank solidity, to be minus 2.4% in an adverse case scenario, implying the bank would be insolvent.

Banco Popolare shares traded Friday at 2.39, up 0.02, or just under 1%, leaving the group with a market capitalization of about 2 billion. Banca Popolare di Milano shares traded at 0.396, up 0.003, or under 1%, equating to a market capitalization of 1.74 billion. BMPS shares traded Friday at 0.243, marginally lower than their Thursday close.
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Facebook (FB) may not be violating EU competition laws even though it is battling with privacy regulators over its privacy policy, European Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said on Friday.

"The German authority is concerned that Facebook may have forced its users to accept privacy terms that aren't in line with the data protection rules," she said at a Copenhagen conference, Reuters reports.

However, Vestager noted that this does not mean the company has breached antitrust rules as well.

In March, Germany's competition regulators opened an investigation into Facebook to determine if the company forced users to accept privacy terms that breach data protection laws.

"Even if Facebook has broken those rules, that doesn't automatically mean it has also broken the competition rules as well," Vestager noted today, Reuters reports.

Shares of Facebook were lower in pre-market trading on Friday.

(Facebookis held in Jim Cramer's charitable trust Action Alerts PLUS. See all of his holding with a free trialhere.)

Separately, TheStreet Ratings objectively rated this stock according to its "risk-adjusted" total return prospect over a 12-month investment horizon. Not based on the news in any given day, the rating may differ from Jim Cramer's view or that of this articles's author.

TheStreet Ratings rated this stock as a "buy" with a ratings score of A-.

The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its robust revenue growth, largely solid financial position with reasonable debt levels by most measures, impressive record of earnings per share growth, compelling growth in net income and expanding profit margins. We feel its strengths outweigh the fact that the company is trading at a premium valuation based on our review of its current price compared to such things as earnings and book value.

You can view the full analysis from the report here: FB'
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Shares of Teva Pharmaceuticals (TEVA) were down in early-afternoon trading on Friday as the Israeli pharmaceutical company said it hopes to gain U.S. approval by 2017 for 2018 of its generic version of Mylan's (MYL) EpiPen device.

Mylan has recently come under fire for the price of its EpiPen product, which is a portable allergic reaction inhibitor. Late last month, the Canonsburg, PA-based pharmaceutical company said it would offer the product at a 50% discount.

Teva hopes to meet with the FDA about potentially re-submitting its marketing application for an EpiPen-like device, the company said in a webcast on Friday, Reuters reports. The FDA in February declined to authorize the product based on dosage problems.

Sigurdur Olafsson, Teva's head of global generic medicines, said FDA officials had reached out to the company in recent weeks.

Separately, TheStreet Ratings objectively rated this stock according to its "risk-adjusted" total return prospect over a 12-month investment horizon. Not based on the news in any given day, the rating may differ from Jim Cramer's view or that of this articles's author. TheStreet Ratings has this to say about the recommendation:

The team rates Teva Pharmaceuticals as a Buy with a ratings score of B. This is driven by several positive factors, which it believes should have a greater impact than any weaknesses, and should give investors a better performance opportunity than most stocks it covers. The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its revenue growth, largely solid financial position with reasonable debt levels by most measures and expanding profit margins. The team feels its strengths outweigh the fact that the company has had lackluster performance in the stock itself.

You can view the full analysis from the report here:

TEVA

TEVA data by YCharts
Editors' pick: Originally published Sept. 9

Americans are raising their taste in liquors, and that's good news for top-shelf spirit-maker Pernod Ricard (PDRDF) .

"The market is being driven by premium brands and that is good news for the likes of Jameson," said Alexandre Ricard, CEO of Pernod Ricard. "The higher you go up the ladder, the more dynamic that is for the industry."

Last week, the world's second-based drinks maker after Diageo (DEO) said profit from recurring operations rose 2% to just under 2.28 billion ($2.54 billion) in the fiscal year ended June. It attributed the rise to tight management of resources and operational efficiency initiatives.

On an organic basis, sales rose 2% to 8.68 billion in fiscal 2016, as growth in the Americas picked up momentum particularly in the U.S. Sales in the Americas grew by 4%, up from a 2% growth rate the year before.

Pernod's U.S. sales continued to be driven by Jameson, which grew by 23% in Nielsen channels, as well as from upscale brands The Glenlivet (+9%) and Martell (+25%) and a positive performance by Malibu (+2%).

In Asia and the rest of the world, double-digit growth in India and Africa and the Middle East offset difficulties in China, Korea and travel retail, while in Europe the company reported "encouraging" growth in most markets, led by Spain.

"We are very bullish on China medium term, but right now the environment in China is a little subdued," said Ricard.

On its home turf of France, Ricard said the decline in tourism due to recent terrorist incidents is not hurting the company's overall business, as tourists will consume their products elsewhere.

Focusing on Pernod Ricard's brands, strong performances of Jameson, Ballantines, Perrier-Jouet and Indian whiskies outshone Chivas and Absolut, where the company said it experienced difficulties, although year-on-year trends in the U.S. are improving.
Updated from 3:30 p.m. EDT

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Shares of Energy Transfer Equity (ETE) closed down in Friday's trading session after the U.S. government said it would halt construction on the company's 1,172-mile crude oil pipeline in North Dakota less than an hour after a federal judge decided construction could continue.

The Department of Justice has asked that work on the pipeline pause until the Army Corps of Engineers decides whether to allow construction around Lake Oahe, which is near the border of North and South Dakota, Bloomberg reports.

Earlier today, a federal judge rejected a request by Native Americans and environmentalists to halt construction on the pipeline. Critics claimed that the Dakota Access Pipeline would have damaged culturally significant sites and caused environmental harm.

Energy Transfer believes that construction of the $3.8 billion pipeline will create between 8,000 to 12,000 jobs.

Separately, TheStreet Ratings team rates the stock as a "hold" with a ratings score of C.

Energy Transfer's strengths such as its expanding profit margins are countered by weaknesses including a generally disappointing performance in the stock itself, weak operating cash flow and feeble growth in the company's earnings per share.

You can view the full analysis from the report here: ETE

TheStreet Ratings objectively rated this stock according to its "risk-adjusted" total return prospect over a 12-month investment horizon. Not based on the news in any given day, the rating may differ from Jim Cramer's view or that of this article's author.
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With Roost, clients can rent out driveways, parking spaces and even closets. (iStock photo)

Thanks to the sharing economy, you can rent out your house, your yacht, even your helicopter.

Now you can also make a little money on your closets, driveway and parking space.

Roost, a San Francisco-based start-up that expanded to the District last month, has connected more than 100 area residents with takers for their extra spaces. Among its clients: the ride-sharing company Zipcar, which uses Roost to secure parking spots throughout the city.

Jonathan Gillon, 26, a graduate of Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Md., founded Roost two years ago when he was unemployed and making ends meet renting out his apartment on Airbnb and assembling furniture through TaskRabbit.

Today, the company has grown into Gillons full-time job. He has raised $2 million in venture capital and says he expects to be profitable by 2018. Revenue, now in the six figures, is growing 30 percent a month, Gillon said.

Jonathan Gillon, 26, founded Roost two years ago. (Courtesy of Roost)

Among the listings recently on the site: Off-street parking in Dupont Circle for $350 a month and assigned garage parking in Georgetown for a monthly rate of $300. No storage spaces were available, but Gillon said those typically command about $1.75 per square foot. The site makes money by taking a 15 percent cut of each deal.

In many ways, he says Roost is an obvious offshoot of a new economic reality in which people are eager to make a quick buck any way they can. But there are also obvious hurdles  namely security and privacy.

Roost insures items for up to $1 million and encourages people to take photos of their possessions before leaving them behind. Gillon also cautions against stashing valuables in other peoples homes.

But, he concedes, there are risks.

Trust is the biggest issue for us, he said. Everything we do with our software is built around that: Ratings, reviews, vetting hosts, offering insurance.

Experts say more public rental spaces  a vacant storage facility, say, or parking spot  may be an easier sell than closet or attic space, at least initially.

For something like parking, there is huge potential in the peer-to-peer model, said Arun Sundararajan, a professor at New York Universitys Stern School of Business. Theres a shortage of it in pretty much every large city, and it typically doesnt require using space inside someones house.

But, he added, it wasnt so long ago that the thought of sharing cars and homes with strangers seemed crazy. Today, Airbnb, Zipcar, Uber and Lyft are all booming businesses.

Over the last 10 years, our sense of trust with strangers has gotten higher and higher, said Sundararajan, author of The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism. We used to be wary of these things, but now were getting into their cars and sleeping in their bedrooms.

Gillon got the idea for Roost three years ago when his brother moved from Austin to San Francisco and needed a place to temporarily stow his belongings. Traditional storage facilities were too far away and most required a year-long contract, he said.

That got him thinking: What if he could find a way to bring together short-term renters with homeowners in their neighborhood?

Gillon put in $5,000 of his money to get started. His brother put in another $5,000, while his father, a lawyer who lives in the Districts Palisades neighborhood, contributed $20,000.

Eight months later, Gillon had a running site. But now he needed users. He went door-to-door in his San Francisco neighborhood looking for people willing to rent out closets, attics, basements and other unused spaces.

It was basically me, with a glorified spreadsheet, running around the city knocking on doors, trying to find space, Gillon said.

After he had secured about 100 rentals, Gillon caught wind of a local storage facility that was going out of business. For two weeks, he showed up to the facility with a folding chair, turkey sandwich and laptop, and spent six hours a day camped outside the building. Whenever a customer came in to empty a storage unit, he handed him a flier for Roost.

He was able to rent 30 units that way.

Today, he has helped find renters for more than 2,500 storage and parking spaces in the Bay Area. Among Gillons investors are NewGen Venture Partners (which contributed $200,000), 500 Startups ($100,000) and ChinaRock Capital Management ($50,000.) The company has eight full-time employees.

This is hardly Gillons first venture. His first four  ideas he came up with during his time at Lehigh University  fizzled within months. They included a line of indoor socks and Terra Water, a nutrition-packed bottled water.

Gillon, for his part, makes $75 a month renting out a hallway closet to a neighbor who uses it to store books, Christmas decorations and a snowboard. He is also a paying client, shelling out $250 a month to rent a parking space in an apartment building near his office.

Zipcar, which uses more than 1,000 parking spaces in the Washington area, rents four spaces through Roost.com, according to Forrest Neilson, general manager of the companys Washington office. The ride-sharing company typically partners with private companies and residents, as well as public agencies including the District Department of Transportation to rent parking spots.

Were continuously working to find the most convenient parking spots for our members, he said. And Roost is one way in which we are able to identify optimal locations right where our members live.

Nolan Rodman, 26, makes $300 a month renting out a parking spot on 14th Street NW to Zipcar.

Rodman, a manager at his familys business, Rodmans Discount Gourmet, originally posted an ad on Craigslist asking for $300 in exchange for his parking space. But days passed without any replies.

Then he got a call from a Roost representative. Within a week, his parking spot had been rented out.

Coming from someone whos really busy all the time and doesnt have time to deal with showing people the space and collecting checks, its really nice, he said.
The future USS Zumwalt heads down the Kennebec River en route to its U.S. Navy commissioning ceremony after leaving the Bath, Maine, Iron Works on Wednesday. The nations biggest and most technologically sophisticated destroyer has a crew of 147, the smallest of any destroyer built since the 1930s thanks to extensive automation. And the skipper of the futuristic ship? Capt. James Kirk, of course. (Robert F. Bukaty/Associated Press)

AUTOMOTIVE

Mazda, Ford recall millions of vehicles

Mazda said it is recalling 2.2 million cars and SUVs worldwide because the rear hatches can fall on people and injure them.

Meanwhile, Ford will spend $640 million to replace door latches on nearly 2.4 million cars, trucks and vans this year because the doors can pop open while the vehicles are moving.

The Mazda recall covers certain 2010 through 2013 Mazda 3 compact cars, as well as 2012 through 2015 Mazda 5 vans. Also included are certain 2013 to 2016 CX-5 and 2016 CX-3 SUVs. More than 759,000 vehicles in the United States and Canada are affected.

Mazda said the corrosion-protection coating applied to the hatch lift supports at the factory was not sufficient. Over time, water containing road salt can get into the supports, causing them to corrode and break. Mazda said it has no reports of accidents or injuries from the problem.

On Thursday, Ford announced that it would add 1.5 million vehicles to a pesky and growing recall that has become so costly that the company had to cut its estimated full-year pretax profit to $10.2 billion from at least $10.8 billion.

The announcement came under pressure from the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which deemed an Aug. 4 recall of about 830,000 vehicles inadequate because it wasnt nationwide.

Ford said in a regulatory filing that the $640 million will cover the cost of both the Thursday recall and the one announced Aug. 4.

Ford said a spring tab in the door latches could break and the doors may be unable to close or could pop open.

 Associated Press

MERGERS

HP software unit, British firm strike deal

Hewlett Packard Enterprise is combining some software assets with Micro Focus International of the United Kingdom in a deal valued at about $8.8 billion as chief executive Meg Whitman takes further steps to slim down the U.S. companys operations.

HPE will contribute its software businesses in areas such as application delivery management, big data analytics and enterprise security to Micro Focus, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company said this week. In return, HPE will get $2.5 billion in cash and its shareholders will own 50.1 percent of the merged company.

Whitman  who split HPE from sister company HP in November  is looking to make HPE nimbler to woo corporate customers with more options from cloud-computing providers such as Amazon and Microsoft. The move follows the announcement in May that HPE would merge its technology-services division with Computer Sciences Corp. in a deal valued at about $8.5 billion.

The Micro Focus deal is the biggest announced acquisition by a U.K. buyer of an overseas target since British voters opted June 23 to leave the European Union. Micro Focus is one of Britains largest technology companies.

The new company will have annual revenue of about $4.5 billion, Micro Focus said. The board will include an HPE senior executive, and HPE will nominate half the independent directors.

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Medtronic's original headquarters in Fridley, Minn. Medtronic shifted its official headquarters to Ireland after acquiring Dublin-based rival Covidien for $50 billion in January 2015. Irish corporations are taxed at about a third of the rate of U.S. companies. (Glen Stubbe/Star Tribune)

Medical device maker Medtronic found itself in an enviable position in March when one of its executives joined a U.S. trade mission to Peru, where there is a booming health-care market. The trip included matchmaking meetings with Peruvian businesses and networking luncheons with the Lima Chamber of Commerce.

The delegation of more than a dozen health-care companies also visited a new $75 million hospital serving 600,000 people in Villa El Salvador, a sprawling shantytown on the outskirts of Lima. There, Medtronic received an influential shout-out. Toured new state of the art hospital . . . Mission member @Medtronic provided their tech, Bruce Andrews, the deputy secretary of Commerce leading the trip, said in a Twitter post.

In promoting the three-day trip, the Commerce Department had promised opportunities for U.S. companies . . . to expand their footprint in the country, and Medtronic was now a featured player.

Except by the time the trip took place, Medtronic, a behemoth that started humbly in a Minnesota garage in 1949, had claimed Ireland as its corporate home and given up its U.S. citizenship.

In doing so, Medtronic joined a parade of prominent U.S. companies that have set up operations overseas to lower their tax bills. The migration has grown so large it is attracting scrutiny from tax collectors on both sides of the Atlantic. In late August, the European Union ruled that Apple must pay $14.5 billion in uncollected taxes to Ireland, and regulators there are investigating tax arrangements involving McDonalds and Amazon.



CEO Omar Ishrak orchestrated the move to Ireland. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg)

The maneuver used by Medtronic  an inversion  has attracted particularly harsh criticism and is expected to be the centerpiece of a contentious fight over reform of the corporate tax code next year. It is also a presidential campaign issue. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump wants to lower the U.S. corporate tax rate, while Democrat Hillary Clinton would subject companies that move their headquarters overseas to an exit tax.

Medtronic shifted its official headquarters to Ireland after acquiring Dublin-based rival Covidien for $50 billion in January 2015. Irish corporations are taxed at about a third of the rate of U.S. companies  12.5 percent, instead of 35 percent  and the move allows Medtronic to spend more of its overseas profit without paying U.S. taxes on it.

The move, lambasted by critics as unpatriotic, has saved Medtronic more than $3 billion in taxes and helped the company fund an acquisition spree as it emerged as the worlds largest medical device maker, overtaking Johnson & Johnson in that market. By moving its headquarters, which did not require company executives to decamp from their offices outside Minneapolis, the firm has turned a corner that it says will help it compete in the rapidly evolving health-care market.

What Medtronic hasnt done is give up many perks of being a U.S. company. In addition to attending U.S. trade missions, which can help it find customers, Medtronic still holds dozens of government contracts. Since its inversion, it has been awarded more than $40 million in contracts, according to federal procurement data.

We should be, shareholders should be, angry that Medtronic has access to as much of the benefits of U.S. citizenship as they do, said Matt Gardner, executive director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a nonpartisan think tank.

The Commerce Department and Medtronic both said that no rules bar foreign-owned companies from participating in trade missions. Medtronic, noting that it still has about 43,000 employees in the United States, says it is typically invited on such trips. The company has hired an additional 1,300 U.S. workers since the merger was announced and has deep relationships with suppliers across the country, company spokesman Fernando Vivanco said. The companys participation has a direct benefit to the United States, he added.

We are not aware of any policies that restrict foreign-owned companies from participating in this activity, Vivanco said. Nor do we believe there should be as it will limit the impact of the U.S. government to meet its objectives of growing the U.S. market.

During a White House briefing in April, President Obama took note of the duplicity of companies moving their headquarters overseas but continuing to operate as an American company.

These companies effectively renounce their citizenship, Obama said. They declare that theyre based somewhere else, thereby getting all the rewards of being an American company without fulfilling the responsibilities to pay their taxes the way everyone else is supposed to pay them.

But breaking the bond between a company and the U.S. government can be difficult.

Aon, a professional services firm, announced in January 2012 that it would move its headquarters from Chicago to London. The move, though not an inversion, has helped the company push its effective tax rate below 20 percent.

Still, later that year, the U.S. ambassador to Romania held a reception to celebrate the companys success in that market. Our Romanian office rented an event space in the U.S. Embassy  a common practice  and paid to do so, a company spokesman said.

The Obama administration has repeatedly adopted rules intended to make inversions less appealing, but the governments response has become more muddled as European authorities launch their own investigations.



Apple CEO Timothy Cook testified before the Senate about the company's offshore profit shifting and tax strategies in 2013. European authorities ruled this month that Apple must pay $14.5 billion in back taxes after using phantom home offices in Ireland. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

In 2013, for instance, Tim Cook, Apples chief executive, was called before a U.S. Senate panel to explain the tech giants tax strategies. A Senate investigation had concluded that Apple used a complex web of offshore entities to shield at least $74 billion in profits from U.S. tax laws between 2009 and 2012. The company had a special arrangement with Irish authorities to pay little to no taxes on profit housed in its subsidiaries, the report found.

But when European authorities ruled recently that the tech giant owed $14.5 billion in back taxes after using phantom home offices in Ireland to push its tax rate to less than 1 percent some years, lawmakers jumped to Apples defense.

This is a cheap money grab by the European Commission, targeting U.S. businesses and the U.S. tax base, Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said.

Even executives have a mixed response. Just a month before Medtronic announced its deal to merge with Covidien, Medtronics former chief executive, Bill George, penned a scathing op-ed criticizing pharmaceutical giant Pfizers plan to merge with AstraZeneca and move its headquarters to England.

Is the role of leading large pharmaceutical companies to discover lifesaving drugs or to make money for shareholders through financial engineering? George said in the New York Times in May 2014. Does anyone believe pharmaceutical companies can create long-term shareholder value by chasing lower tax venues and cutting research and development spending? (The acquisition fell through.)

But when Medtronic announced its merger, George struck a softer note.

George said in an interview that he quizzed Medtronic executives about the motivations behind the acquisition of Covidien and was ultimately convinced that it made sense strategically  and not just financially. While Medtronic specialized in medical devices that could be implanted in the body, Covidien had a strong business in the equipment used during surgery.

It wasnt like [Medtronic was] going to Bermuda; it was a real place, he said. They love Ireland, I know that, noting that Medtronic already had employees there.



Founded more than 60 years ago in Minnesota, Medtronic is now a global operation. An employee works on the stent graft production line at the Medtronic plant in Tijuana, Mexico. (David Maung/Bloomberg)

Founded more than 60 years ago as a medical equipment repair shop, the firms first breakout technology was a wearable, battery-powered cardiac pacemaker. It now sells thousands of pieces of medical devices, from ventilators to intubation tubes, across the world.

But by the time it began to consider acquiring Covidien in 2014, the medical device industry was under pressure. The hospitals that bought the bulk of the industrys equipment were demanding lower prices. Several manufacturers looked to consolidate, hoping that by being bigger, they would be able to negotiate better deals for themselves, industry analysts say.

They saw the writing on the wall  that the medical device industry needed to become more realistic about the future, said Joshua Jennings, a physician who is now an analyst who covers the industry for the Cowen Group.

Acquiring Covidien made sense, company executives decided. And there was a bonus. Covidien traced its roots to 1903 and a small textile mill in Massachusetts but had been based in Ireland since 2007.

For years, Medtronic has been sitting on billions in foreign profits. By 2014, the stockpile had reached $14 billion, but bringing it back to the United States would mean paying a 35 percent tax on it.

The company was eager to access some of that trapped cash.

We were struggling with how to get cash back to the shareholders, acquisitions were harder, said Gary Ellis, Medtronics executive vice president of global operations.

The deal immediately drew criticism from skeptics, who said the company was abandoning its roots. Congress and regulators rushed into action, and so did Medtronic.

The firm spent a record $5.3 million on its lobbying efforts in 2014, according to Opensecrets.org, including hiring former Sens. Trent Lott and John Breaux to help defend it against anti-inversion legislation introduced in Congress. It also promised to invest $10 billion over 10 years in the United States if the deal went through, helping garner some support. For Minnesota it promised to add 1,000 jobs over five years.

The deal closed about eight months after it was announced.

Not everyone was happy. Many long-term shareholders were hit with a capital gains tax as part of the inversion.

Among them was Donald Zibell, 78, who has owned Medtronic shares for more than 20 years, and paid a $135,000 capital gains tax on his 12,000 shares. Most of that has been recouped through the stocks recent appreciation but that is still not enough for Zibell, a retired attorney.

I think it was unfair to the shareholders, he said.

For Medtronic, the inversion has proven transformative. The merged company was able to put to use nearly $10 billion in overseas profit. Instead of paying a 35 percent tax on those funds  more than $3 billion  it paid 5 percent, or $500 million.

Now an Irish company, Medtronic spent more than $1 billion to buy 14 companies in 2015. The company also spent about $5 billion buying back shares of its stock  which helped boost its share price  and increased its dividend to shareholders.

Medtronic says the deal has given it new financial flexibility. Before the merger, 60 percent of its cash flow  the money moving in and out of the company  could not be accessed without paying the U.S. tax. Now that is down to 40 percent, company executives say.

As frustrating as it is, Ellis said, the reality is that the inversion structure was important for us to be able to actually invest more in the U.S.

Simeon Tegel in Peru contributed to this report.


The National Theatre production of "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time," starring Alex Sharp at the Kennedy Center. (Joan Marcus)

Picking favorites before sampling them is an act of high-wire guesswork. So, presented with an admirably robust menu of Washington theatergoing options this fall, Im raising the odds of identifying something that might appeal to you  by offering up a preemptive top 10 list for autumn-early winter 2016-2017.

If all goes smoothly, many of the productions will meet these upper-level expectations and be seasonal standouts (Hey, no pressure!). The pair of plays I featured in the spring preview, Signature Theatres The Flick and Arena Stages Disgraced, did live up to my hopes, and emerged as two of the most compelling theater pieces of the year. Based on the longer list assembled here, perhaps this new set of suggestions will be five times as helpful:

1. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.  Ill start with a no-brainer: Simon Stephenss adaptation of Mark Haddons 2003 novel, about the neurological and domestic turbulence in the life of a boy on the autism spectrum, is a visual delight. Under Marianne Elliotts direction, the fears, joys and disturbances coursing through a childs mind are mesmerizingly illuminated. This touring version of the Tony Award-winning play visits the Kennedy Center, Oct. 5-23.

2. Freaky Friday. Talk about switcheroos: The songwriting team of Brian Yorkey and Tom Kitt, who brought you the deeply moving, Pulitzer Prize-winning Next to Normal, turns up at Signature Theatre for this Disney-supported world premiere of a musical based on Mary Rodgerss fantastical story of a mom and teenage daughter who magically trade bodies. The shows book is by Bridget Carpenter, the director is Broadway vet Christopher Ashley, and Heidi Blickenstaff and Emma Hunton play the gobsmacked suburban mother and child. At Signature, Oct. 4-Nov. 20.



"Sense and Sensibility" at Folger Shakespeare Library stars Erin Weaver as Marianne Dashwood and Jacob Fishel as John Willoughby. (James Kegley)

3. Sense and Sensibility. Jane Austens buoyant novel is mounted at Folger Theatre with a script by Kate Hamill and direction by Eric Tucker of New Yorks innovative Bedlam theater company, whose smash hit original version is still running in Greenwich Village. The Washington production features Erin Weaver and Maggie McDowell as the Dashwood sisters. At Folger, Tuesday-Oct. 30.

4. Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Holly Twyford as Martha. Need I say more? At Fords Theatre, Jan. 21-Feb. 19.

5. Into the Woods. Fiasco Theatre, which staged the beguiling world premiere of its The Two Gentlemen of Verona at Folger in 2014, brings its literate, intimate aesthetic back to the city with this witty, thoroughly disarming version of the Stephen Sondheim-James Lapine musical. Its a seductively unvarnished antidote to the recent overwrought movie adaptation. At the Kennedy Center, Dec. 6-Jan. 8.

6. Fully Committed. This is about as good as casting gets: Tom Story as the frenetic reservations-taker (and everyone else, including the snooty chef) in a Manhattan restaurant so hot its patrons would sell their souls for a corner table. The one-man play by Becky Mode, directed by Alan Paul, gives the versatile, hardworking Story the opportunity to cross tour de force off his bucket list. At MetroStage in Alexandria, Dec. 8-Jan. 8.

7. The Gulf. A wild card in my deck is this two-person comedy by Audrey Cefaly, directed by Joe Calarco, and featuring Rachel Zampelli (Evita) and Maria Rizzo (Gypsy), about lovers whose relationship is tested when theyre stranded in a boat on an Alabama river. Another work by Cefaly, a D.C.-based playwright, was produced last season in the citys Womens Voices Theatre Festival; this world premiere at Signature is one of the byproducts of that sprawling venture. At Signature, Tuesday-Nov. 6.



Sara Bruner as Norma McCorvey and Sarah Jane Agnew as Sarah Weddington in Roe, which runs Jan. 12 - Feb. 19 at Arena Stage. (Jenny Graham/Oregon Shakespeare Festival)

8. Roe. The name, when paired with Wade, connotes both a historic 1973 Supreme Court case affirming a womans right to abortion, and the passionate debate that rages to this day. The rhetorical heat makes it a natural for the stage, too, and particularly for Arena Stage, which with dramas such as The Originalist and Camp David has invested heavily in hot-button topicality. Lisa Loomers play, directed by Oregon Shakespeare Festivals Bill Rauch, keys in on plaintiff Norma McCorvey, who brought the case using the pseudonym Jane Roe. At Arena Stage, Jan. 12-Feb. 19.



Erin Driscoll, Bobby Smith and Hasani Allen star in "Titanic" at Signature Theatre. (Christopher Mueller)

9. Titanic. The 1997 musical by composer Maury Yeston and the late Peter Stone ran for two years on Broadway, yet has always been viewed as having fallen short of greatness, despite Yestons first-rate score and truly gorgeous opening number. Now, Signatures Eric Schaeffer tries to show us what might have been missing, in a staging that envelops the audience on all sides. Somehow, though, immersive seems the wrong word. At Signature, Dec. 13-Jan. 29.

10. A View From the Bridge. The stage maestro Ivo van Hove won a Tony Award in June for his direction of a devastating and blazingly original reimagining of Arthur Millers 1955 drama about the self-destructive betrayal engineered by a Brooklyn longshoreman because of his confused love for his niece. Now, happily, the revival turns up in these parts to deliver its knockout punch to Washington playgoers. At Kennedy Center, Nov. 18-Dec. 3.
Masters of Sex (Showtime at 10): The Season 4 premiere finds Masters (Michael Sheen) and Johnson (Lizzy Caplan) attempting to forge their own identities after a falling out. (Warren Feldman/Showtime)

FINALE

Aquarius (NBC at 9) Hodiak confronts a brazen serial killer in the two-hour season finale.

SUNDAY LISTINGS

Fox News Sunday (Fox at 9 a.m.) Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.)

This Is America & the World (WETA at 10 and WHUT at 7:30 p.m.) Jesus Sierra Victoria, Panamas ambassador to the Organization of American States.

Meet the Press (NBC at 10:30) Johnson and former deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz.

Face the Nation (CBS at 10:30) CIA Director John Brennan, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.).

Sunday Morning Futures With Maria Bartiromo (Fox at noon; note special airtime) Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Tex.); Dick Grasso, former chairman of the New York Stock Exchange; former attorney general John D. Ashcroft.

Churchills Secret (WETA and MPT at 8) This two-hour film chronicles Winston Churchills 1953 stroke and the challenging recovery he hid from the world.

The 2017 Miss America Competition (ABC at 9) Chris Harrison and Sage Steele host live from Atlantic City. Gymnast Gabby Douglas is among this years judges.

premieres

Son of Zorn (Fox at 8) Jason Sudeikis voices this comedys lone animated character  a warrior named Zorn, who heads to California to reconnect with his teenage son (Johnny Pemberton). Cheryl Hines stars as Zorns ex-wife, Edie, and Tim Meadows plays her fiance.

Rob & Chyna (E! at 9) Now you can keep up with even the most reclusive Kardashian.

[Rob Kardashian, once distant from his fame-obsessed family, is lured back to TV]

DOCUMENTARIES

102 Minutes That Changed America: 15th Anniversary (History at 8) New interviews are featured in this update of Historys Emmy Award-winning documentary about the 9/11 attacks.

Americas 9/11 Flag: Rise From the Ashes (History at 10:30) Author Brad Meltzer hosts this film about the disappearance of the famous Ground Zero flag.

returning

Indian Summers (WETA and MPT at 10) Season 2.

FINALE

BrainDead (CBS at 9) Laurel and her friends try to stop the bugs from taking over Washington in the two-episode season finale.

The Last Ship (TNT at 9) Chandler faces a potentially life-altering challenge as the fight for America reaches its inevitable conclusion.


Tom Hanks stars as hero pilot Chelsey Sully Sullenberger in Sully, a film directed by Clint Eastwood. (Keith Bernstein/Warner Bros. Pictures)

After a summer of bombast and belly-flops, the fall movie season gets off to a refreshingly sure-footed start with Sully, a four-square, upstanding, rock-solid example of filmmaking at its most direct and honestly affecting.

Tom Hanks plays Chesley Sully Sullenberger, the US Airways pilot who landed a plane bound from LaGuardia airport to Charlotte on the Hudson River in 2009, after his craft was struck by a flock of Canada geese. But this is no simplistic tale of heroism and crack timing  although theyre in there. Instead Sully, which Clint Eastwood directed from a script by Todd Komarnicki, introduces viewers to a man wracked by second thoughts and nightmare visions of what could have happened had he made the wrong decision. Whats more, hes not the only one with doubts: The films framing device is an investigation held by the National Transportation Safety Board, whose extensive simulations and computer algorithms suggested that Sullenberger probably had the engine power and time to make a safe landing back at LaGuardia, or in New Jersey.

For audiences whose image of Sullenberger is the paragon of modesty and skill, aw-shucks-ing it through interviews with Katie Couric and David Letterman, this part of his story will come as a revelation, and an infuriating one at that: It seems impossible that anyone could second-guess a pilot whose 40-year career was so exemplary that he was known in the field as a safety expert. This alternative glimpse, as well as Eastwoods graceful staging of Sullys darkest what-if fantasies, as well as the landing itself, makes Sully thoroughly engrossing and exciting to watch, even though viewers know the outcome.



Sullenberger flies with first officer Jeff Skiles (Aaron Eckhart), left. (Warner Bros. Pictures)

Sporting a head of cropped white hair and a modest mustache, his face a sallow mask of discomfort with sudden fame and attention, Hanks is the perfect actor to play Sullenberger, whose reserve and low-key assuredness may remind the audience of the title character the actor played a few years ago in Captain Phillips. There are laughs to be had in Sully, especially in the banter between Sullenberger and first officer Jeff Skiles, played with bristling, barely contained energy by Aaron Eckhart. But theres nothing gratuitously ingratiating in a movie that instead goes to great pains to adopt the terse, economical work ethic of its protagonist. (Sully joins Sam Shepards Chuck Yeager and Ed Harriss John Glenn in the pantheon of cinematic air heroes: taciturn, inherently trustworthy men of action, not showboating.)

Beautifully filmed in and around a wintry Manhattan, and featuring spectacular sequences re-creating that iconic landing and rescue on Jan. 15, Sully is also suffused with a particularly mournful sense of poignancy; the sight of a plane coming so perilously close to the buildings along the Upper West Side cant help but conjure the citys most grievous day eight years earlier, an observation made late in the film by one of Sullys colleagues. (New York deserves a happy ending, he tells him, especially one involving planes.)

Its fitting that Sully is arriving in theaters on the 15th anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001, a date that hovers around the proceedings like a tender, ghostly presence. Eastwood and his team not only pay fitting homage to Sullenberger, but to the squads of first responders who did their jobs so heroically on both days. Sully is a classy, enormously satisfying ode to simple competence. To paraphrase the title character, its just a movie doing its job. And amen to that.
The Saturday farmers market on the concrete plaza at 18th Street and Columbia Road in Adams Morgan. Activists are fighting a plan by a developer to create a residential and retail building on the privately-owned spot. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)

On most days, the concrete plaza at the busy intersection in Northwest Washington is a barren, soulless dead zone, a monument to the eminently forgettable architecture of the 1970s.

Cue the developer who has arrived with the answer du jour: Luxury Apartments! Retail! Transformation!

Most neighborhoods would uncork a collective bottle of chardonnay.

But this asphalt triangle is at the center of the Districts capital of contrarian quirk  the neighborhood of Adams Morgan  where one residents vision of progress is anothers sequel to Apocalypse Now.

Rest assured, there are select points of agreement in this roiling debate, one of which is that the plaza  interrupted by five irrefutably uncomfortable benches at 18th Street and Columbia Road NW  is about as charming as an elevator shaft.

The same could be said of the concave-shaped building that houses the plazas sole occupant, SunTrust Bank, which, alongside the neighborhoods early 20th-century rowhouses, appears to have arrived from outer space.

That is one of the ugliest buildings in all of Washington, D.C., said Al Jirikovic, 64, a longtime Adams Morgan bar owner, sipping coffee and gazing at the three-story bank from a table outside the Starbucks across the street.

His bearded smile turned into a grimace. The open space is horrible, he said.

But rip it up for another gush of one- and two-bedroom pads?

Not so fast.

Even to its many critics, the plaza is Adams Morgans gateway, and a reminder of its history as a cradle of protest and flower power (In 1967, Jimi Hendrix played in a theater that occupied the space). The plaza is at the hub of the neighborhoods commercial area and serves as a focal point for the annual Adams Morgan Day festival, which takes place Sunday.

There also is the not-so-insignificant matter of a small farmers market on the plaza, where on Saturdays for four decades shoppers have counted on finding a quality cucumber, among other things.

Knickerbocker Theater disaster, [1/30/22 (n/a/Library of Congress)

That the plaza is private property  despite its history as an unofficial public square  does nothing to dull the neighborhoods sense of entitlement.

Sometimes places can hold the spirit of a neighborhood  theyre like sacred sites, said Bryan Weaver, an Adams Morgan resident who is all too aware of the plazas aesthetic challenges.

Its awful but it doesnt change what it is, he said. Its our version of Mayberry.

Only this Mayberry is being remade for affluent professionals gorging on Adams Morgans ever-expanding supply of lattes, artisanal stillwater and quartz countertops, as one new condominium building advertises.

Of course, the neighborhood has its ragtag offerings  billiards for a dollar a game at one joint; bongs and blow-up dolls at another; cheap beer and greasy pizza seemingly everywhere.

But that condo with the quartz? It replaced a gas station. On the condos ground floor, theres a Philz coffee house, from which a man emerged the other day sipping what he said was a $10 cup of Jamaican brew. Where a Latino-owned grocery once presided on Columbia Road, a four-star bistro serves $33 whole roasted black sea bass and $18 bacon cheeseburgers.

A couple of blocks east, construction crews are turning the century-old First Church of Christ, Scientist into a boutique hotel, its eight stories dwarfing the conical spires atop the three- and four-story buildings along 18th Street.

These and other projects were completed or were well underway when developer PN Hoffman announced plans to turn the SunTrust plaza into a 58-unit, six-story apartment complex topped by a penthouse.

Cue the dyspepsia.

The sniping on the neighborhoods Yahoo email group has turned vituperative enough many commenters enter the fray girded for battle.

Now bring on the name calling again as I expect that you will . . . so be it! Christine Brooks, a neighborhood resident for more than 20 years, wrote after declaring support for developing the plaza.

Whats wrong with a new building and some open space? Brooks asked in an interview. Cmon now, we can do better than whats there.

It may be homely, but its ours

Denis James, president of the Kalorama Citizens Association, has lived in Adams Morgan since 1971, long enough to remember when the plaza was a rubble-filled lot and activists stopped a BP gas station from locating there.

BP Our People Want No Gas Station someone scrawled on a neighboring building to announce the communitys opposition.

There were more protests when Perpetual Federal Savings, a bank with a poor record of making loans to low-income home buyers, bought the site a few years later. Hoping to endear itself to the neighborhood, then largely Latino, the bank agreed to offer improved lending terms and allow outdoor food vendors regular use of the large plaza it envisioned for the site.

That plaza is a monument to that victory, James said. Sure, its homely and it hasnt been maintained, but its the idea of the plaza. It memorializes the communitys pushback against outside forces.

Perpetual stayed until the early 1990s, when the bank failed and was taken over by another bank, which merged with SunTrust later that decade.

Dismissing PN Hoffmans proposed building as too massive, James contends that the project violates Perpetual Federals pledge to maintain a public plaza and said that he and other opponents are exploring whether to hire a lawyer.

If they dont want to come to the table in a meaningful way, James said of PN Hoffman, we will use whatever means necessary to come up with a reasonable solution.

Monty Hoffman, the founder of PN Hoffman, said in an interview that he is certain were doing the right thing by redeveloping the site, a project that requires approval from the Districts Historic Preservation Review Board.

Hoffman said that in more than two decades of development in the District, he has not faced the level of hostility he has encountered on this project.

He has tried to ease anxieties, including in his design a public plaza, although smaller than the existing one (he declined to say how much smaller, but opponents estimate that its less than one-eighth the size).

The new plaza would not be large enough to accommodate the farmers market, but Hoffmans team has held discussions with city officials about relocating it to another corner of Columbia Road.

Although he expressed appreciation for the plazas history, he said, We dont live in a museum and described the SunTrust site as urban planning of 1970.

Its time has passed, he said.

Seymour Auerbach, 87, is the architect who designed the bank and plaza. Shrugging off complaints about the architecture, Auerbach said by phone that a plaza at that intersection  no matter how its built  is a visual anchor to all that is Adams Morgan.

I understand they want to build  you cant criticize them for that, he said. But I think it destroys the history. Its like putting the Empire State Building in the middle of Central Park. You just dont do it.

Old activists make a last stand

A century ago, there was no plaza.

The parcel was occupied by the Knickerbocker Theater, where Washingtonians went to the movies. On Jan. 28, 1922, after 28 inches of snow fell on the city, the theaters roof collapsed during a screening of the silent film Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford. Ninety-eight people died.

The Knickerbocker was rebuilt as the Ambassador Theater, where Hendrix played and where Norman Mailer was the meandering master of ceremonies for a rally before the 1967 march on the Pentagon to protest the Vietnam War.

After the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. sparked rioting in the District, a wrecking ball turned the Ambassador into a parking lot. In 1973, Mike Tabor brought his farmers market to the corner. His customers included Marion Barry, whom he knew from activist circles, and Carl Bernstein, then a Washington Post reporter, who lived nearby.

Tabors market was a fixture as the neighborhood declined and then thrived anew, prompting merchants in the mid-1980s to fear the Georgetownization of Adams Morgan, as The Post put it.

Now, after 43 years, Tabor worries that a low-cost market like his no longer fits in with the neighborhoods emerging culture. The environment has changed, he said. Where is the place for community activists? Is it all about money and transforming Washington into expensive neighborhoods?

Pat Patrick, an Adams Morgan-based real estate agent since the early 1970s, has little patience for those clinging to another time. Millennials are coming, he said, and Adams Morgan is where they want to be.

If they were around 100 years ago, they would have been against the automobile, he said of those opposing the plazas redevelopment. Theyll say no to anything. They come from a class of no.

Val Morgan, the longtime owner of the Idle Time bookshop on 18th Street, dismisses the notion that new condos and expensive restaurants represent progress. As imperfect as it may be, she said, the plaza is a place to see the sky and feel the air.

It has a lot of loony people and homeless people  its the peoples plaza, Morgan said. You can be out of your brain and play the guitar and no one will bother you.

Others are frustrated by the choice  a new apartment building on the one hand or uninviting concrete on the other.

It becomes this ridiculous measuring stick, Weaver said. Theres nothing in the middle.
This file photo from 2007 shows an Advanced Placement statistics class at Calvin Coolidge High School in Washington, D.C. The city has seen a significant increase in the number of AP exams its students take during the past decade. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)

Maria Flores was not a strong writer, and she knew that rhetorical essay assignments and analyzing complex texts would be a huge challenge.

Thats why the 17-year-old signed up to take her first Advanced Placement English course at Cardozo Education Campus last year. The D.C. high school student became one of a rapidly rising number in city public schools to take the college-level courses as a way of pushing themselves in a way many had never before thought possible.

I am not the best writer, but I improved from where I was at the beginning of the year, said Flores, who is now a senior.

She is one of 3,000 students in D.C. Public Schools who took an AP exam last school year, representing an increase of 73 percent since 2010. The number of students passing the exam also is growing, a trend not common in many school districts despite increased enrollment in AP courses; rising participation usually comes with declines in overall performance.

The school systems 35 percent passage rate is still well below the national average of 60 percent. But school officials say that while passing the test and receiving college credit is the ultimate goal, exposing students to more rigorous courses pays off in many other ways.

Flores, for example, did not pass her AP English exam, but she said the class was helpful. Because she was required to complete timed writing assignments, her time-management skills improved.

She passed the class with a B, pushing herself through a heavier load of homework and more difficult material, and she encourages her classmates to try it, too.

If they dont push themselves to become better, I think its going to be harder when they get to college, Flores said.

School districts across the country are increasing access to high-level course work  including AP and dual-credit courses  especially for students who have not historically had access to the advanced classes that aim to mimic college work. Experts say such courses can be key to preparing students for the demands of college even if students dont pass, which is in line with nationwide efforts to get high school graduates ready for higher education and careers.

This academic year, every D.C. high school is required to offer at least eight AP courses.

[See Jay Mathews Americas Most Challenging High School rankings]

Banneker High School, an application school in Ward 1, had the highest jump in the number of students passing AP exams since 2014. Half of the students passed their exams last school year, up from 20 percent two years ago.

Principal Anita Berger said every student in the school is required to take at least one AP class before they graduate. This school year Banneker is offering 13 AP courses, including in history, economics and art history.

Berger attributes the schools higher passage rates to teachers working together to expose students earlier in their high school careers to the rigor of the advanced courses.

The first AP history course, for example, isnt offered until sophomore year, but the AP history teachers gave freshman social studies teachers a list of all the vocabulary words that students should know by the time they get to the AP class.

They now know all the words, and we dont have to spend as much time teaching that when they first come in, said Joseph Presley, an AP world history teacher at Banneker.

Banneker, Wilson High School and School Without Walls  the top-performing schools in the District, all of which rank highly in the Americas Most Challenging High School rankings  account for more than 85 percent of the 1,700 AP exams that received a 3 or higher, the passing score on a 5-point scale.

At Wilson, 720 students took at least one exam, the highest number in the school system.

Although participation in AP courses has increased at the citys low-income schools, stark disparities still exist. At Ballou, 74 students took an AP exam last year. One passed. Anacostia had 47 students taking an AP test, and none passed.

Brian Pick, the districts chief of teaching and learning, acknowledges that there is more work to do to ensure students are not only taking advanced classes but also progressing enough to pass the exams. The school district plans to send teachers to summer institutes for AP training and offers pre-AP courses at some schools, including Cardozo.

Such preparatory courses do not have a final exam for college credit, but they are designed to help students deal with the higher volume of homework and critical thinking that comes with AP courses.

Beginning in sixth grade, Cardozo students can enroll in pre-AP courses. Principal Tanya Roane hopes that will help improve the chances that students like Flores pass the exam.

Last year, only one Cardozo student passed an AP test.

There is work to be done, Roane said. Our goal is to have students experience being in AP courses so that they are prepared for the rigor of taking a college-level course.

Not passing the English test did not deter Flores; she is taking four AP courses during her senior year, including statistics and literature.

Floress older sister was the first in her family to go to college. Flores plans to follow her footsteps. An avid dog lover, she dreams of going to the University of California at Davis to become a veterinarian.

Even though I didnt pass the test, I feel like I can go to college, she said.
Segun C. Eubanks, chairman of the Prince Georges County Board of Education, pictured in 2012, called for an review of the districts troubled Head Start Program. (Mike Yourishian/Prince Georges County)

The chairman of the Prince Georges County Board of Education has asked for a review of events that led to recent federal findings detailing corporal punishment and the humiliation of children in the districts Head Start early-education program.

But the chairman, Segun C. Eubanks, stopped short of calling for the independent outside investigation that some community members, board members and other elected officials have called for in recent days.

Eubanks asked Thursday night for a full review and public, written debriefing from Kevin M. Maxwell, the school districts chief executive, following findings from the Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Children and Families, which funds Head Start.

Federal officials ended the school systems $6.4 million grant for Head Start in mid-August, saying that Prince Georges officials had failed to correct problems related to the conduct of its staff. The school system had had the grant for 50 years.

The federal scrutiny came after a mothers report about a 3-year-old who wet his pants and was forced to mop urine in front of his class. His teacher texted a photo to his mother, with a caption describing the punishment and saying: LOL. He worked that mop tho!

Two other incidents were cited from June  one involving two children made to hold heavy objects over their heads as a punishment, and another about a child who wandered away and walked home, unsupervised for 50 minutes.

[How a Maryland school system lost its Head Start grant]

Eubanks said in a statement Thursday night that Maxwells review would come as part of a broader discussion of Head Start in Prince Georges County  past, present and future and that he would also invite federal officials to address the board at a public meeting.

We believe it would be helpful for the board and public to hear not only how they arrived at their conclusions, but their recommendations for avoiding future occurrences, he said.

Community members spoke angrily at the board meeting, decrying the districts handling of problems in Head Start. Juwan Blocker, the student board member, made a motion asking for an external review of the districts actions.

The vote failed, with four in favor, five against, three abstaining and two absent.

Board member Edward Burroughs III (District 8), who supported the proposal, said that he and others would continue to push for someone outside the school system to assess its handling of Head Start.

There is a serious lack of trust between the community and the school system, and in order to rebuild that trust, we must move forward in the most ethical and transparent way possible, and that starts with an external investigation, Burroughs said after the meeting.

School officials have said they have taken disciplinary action against six employees with direct involvement in incidents the federal authorities identified.

[Prince Georges takes disciplinary action against staff in troubled Head Start program]

Head Start began its school year in Prince Georges on Aug. 29, under the management of a Denver-based organization called Community Development Institute Head Start. The group will shepherd the countys program, which enrolls 932 children from low-income families, until a new grant competition takes place.

Our students, families and community need to understand, just as we all do, how this happened and how we plan to move forward, Eubanks said at the Thursday meeting. We must examine not only our policies, procedures and actions, but we must also take stock of the underlying culture in our system and how it must transform.
As schools were busy readying students for state exams, teachers at Cora Kelly School for Math, Science and Technology, a high-poverty school in Alexandria, were poring over data to determine which students would probably not do well on the tests.

But according to a school district investigation, the effort wasnt aimed at giving those students extra help. Instead, Principal Brandon Davis allegedly told teachers this spring to call the parents of students who appeared on the brink of failing the exams to inform them of their right to opt out of the tests, according to the investigation. Three dozen parents decided to pull their children from the state Standards of Learning exams; no parents at the school had done so the previous year.

The move, which meant those students scores would not be considered for state accreditation purposes, probably artificially inflated the schools overall performance and masked the fact that some students were not performing up to standards. It also means the data used to evaluate the school is potentially flawed and presents evidence that a new Virginia law allowing students to opt out of tests without it affecting a schools rating could compromise the ability to assess schools.

The findings of the report, which the Virginia Department of Education released to The Washington Post on Thursday, come a week before the state publishes its accreditation ratings. The state Department of Education reported that there has been a rise in the number of opt-outs as a result of the new Virginia law.

Alexandria school officials said Davis told teachers to identify students who may not do well on the SOL test, and contact parents of these students regarding their right to refuse SOL testing. The students whose parents were contacted had scored 425 or below on exams; a 400 is the passing rate.

Helen Lloyd, a spokeswoman for the district, said that teachers told parents only about their right to opt out and about the state law, passed in the spring, which would mean their childs score of zero would not negatively impact the schools accreditation rating. The report does not explain why Davis would instruct teachers to place calls only to parents of students who were on the brink of failing.

Lloyd said Davis was disciplined, but declined to comment further, citing personnel confidentiality. Davis remains the principal at Cora Kelly.

ACPS regrets that this happened, Superintendent Alvin L. Crawley said in a statement Thursday. ACPS believes the principal exercised poor judgment, and we took the appropriate actions as a result.

Davis did not respond to a request for comment. In a statement released in July in response to inquiries from the Alexandria Gazette Packet  which reported that Davis was being disciplined for contacting parents about opting out of tests  Davis apologized: I wish to stress that I did not do anything that I perceived was intentionally wrong at the time. The statement in July did not indicate that the school only contacted families of low-

performing students.

Davis came under investigation just months after he was named Distinguished Principal of the Year by the Virginia Association of Elementary School Principals. It was an accolade he earned after overseeing massive gains in test scores at a school that serves mostly black and Hispanic students; 87 percent of Cora Kellys students qualified for free and reduced-price meals last year. He also received a Washington Post Distinguished Education Leadership Award in 2014.

Accountability experts say standardized tests are an important way to keep tabs on achievement gaps. Civil rights advocates say efforts to remove poor performers from the testing pool undermine the ability to discover  and advocate for  students who are underachieving.

This is no different from the cheating scandals that other districts have had, said Kati Haycock, chief executive of the Education Trust, an advocacy group. Kids who are not tested do not count. . . . If schools can push out, opt out their poor kids, their kids of color, their disproportionately low-achieving kids, they will never do the work to get those kids to achieve at high levels.

Im just horrified, Haycock said, noting that she has seen schools opting out the children who make them look bad.

[Why civil rights groups say parents who opt out of tests are hurting kids]

Whether schools should face sanctions for low test participation rates has become a matter of national debate. The Education Department is finalizing new federal rules regarding such consequences.

Cora Kelly has been lauded for its high performance on test scores. Last year, Cora Kelly was accredited after seeing gains of between 8 and 12 points in every subject.

The school system said it learned of the phone calls to parents before the exams were given and that officials called the parents back to ensure they understood the opt-out process. Eleven of the 37 families opted back in to take the tests.

Karen Graf, chairman of the Alexandria School Board, said she is confident in the integrity of the scores: It seems that the superintendent and the state did a thorough review and that the test was administered after the unfortunate scenario was discovered.

Emma Brown contributed to this report.
Maj. Heather Penney, and her father Col. John Penney, both pilots. Maj. Penny flew an F-16 on Sept. 11, 2001, that was destined to intercept and possibly bring down Flight 93.

Maj. Heather Penney, and her father Col. John Penney, both pilots. Maj. Penny flew an F-16 on Sept. 11, 2001, that was destined to intercept and possibly bring down Flight 93. Penny Family Photo

Penney was to stop Flight 93  knowing the pilot could be her father.

Penney was prepared to give her life on Sept. 11 when she was ordered to down the hijacked planes  even knowing that the pilot for one of them could have been her father.

Penney was prepared to give her life on Sept. 11 when she was ordered to down the hijacked planes  even knowing that the pilot for one of them could have been her father.

Late in the morning of the Tuesday that changed everything, Lt. Heather Lucky Penney was on a runway at Andrews Air Force Base and ready to fly. She had her hand on the throttle of an F-16 and she had her orders: Bring down United Airlines Flight 93. The days fourth hijacked airliner seemed to be hurtling toward Washington. Penney, one of the first two combat pilots in the air that morning, was told to stop it.

The one thing she didnt have as she roared into the crystalline sky was live ammunition. Or missiles. Or anything at all to throw at a hostile aircraft.

Except her own plane. So that was the plan.

Because the surprise attacks were unfolding, in that innocent age, faster than they could arm war planes, Penney and her commanding officer went up to fly their jets straight into a Boeing 757.

We wouldnt be shooting it down. Wed be ramming the aircraft, Penney recalls of her charge that day. I would essentially be a kamikaze pilot.

In this 2011 interview, Major Heather Penney talks about how she heard about the Sept. 11 attacks. (C-SPAN)

For years, Penney, one of the first generation of female combat pilots in the country, gave no interviews about her experiences on Sept. 11 (which included, eventually, escorting Air Force One back into Washingtons suddenly highly restricted airspace).

But 10 years later, she is reflecting on one of the lesser-told tales of that endlessly examined morning: how the first counterpunch the U.S. military prepared to throw at the attackers was effectively a suicide mission.

We had to protect the airspace any way we could, she said last week in her office at Lockheed Martin, where she is a director in the F-35 program.

Penney, now a major but still a petite blonde with a Colgate grin, is no longer a combat flier. She flew two tours in Iraq and she serves as a part-time National Guard pilot, mostly hauling VIPs around in a military Gulfstream. She takes the stick of her own vintage 1941 Taylorcraft tail-dragger whenever she can.

But none of her thousands of hours in the air quite compare with the urgent rush of launching on what was supposed to be a one-way flight to a midair collision.

First of her kind

She was a rookie in the autumn of 2001, the first female F-16 pilot theyd ever had at the 121st Fighter Squadron of the D.C. Air National Guard. She had grown up smelling jet fuel. Her father flew jets in Vietnam and still races them. Penney got her pilots licence when she was a literature major at Purdue. She planned to be a teacher. But during a graduate program in American studies, Congress opened up combat aviation to women.

I signed up immediately, Penney says. I wanted to be a fighter pilot like my dad.

On that Tuesday, they had just finished two weeks of air combat training in Nevada. They were sitting around a briefing table when someone looked in to say a plane had hit the World Trade Center in New York. When it happened once, they assumed it was some yahoo in a Cessna. When it happened again, they knew it was war.

[On 9/11, a tiny Canadian town opened its runways and its heart to 7,000 stranded travelers]

But the surprise was complete. In the monumental confusion of those first hours, it was impossible to get clear orders. Nothing was ready. The jets were still equipped with dummy bullets from the training mission.

As remarkable as it seems now, there were no armed aircraft standing by and no system in place to scramble them over Washington. Before that morning, all eyes were looking outward, still scanning the old Cold War threat paths for planes and missiles coming over the polar ice cap.

There was no perceived threat at the time, especially one coming from the homeland like that, says Col. George Degnon, vice commander of the 113th Wing at Andrews. It was a little bit of a helpless feeling, but we did everything humanly possible to get the aircraft armed and in the air. It was amazing to see people react.

Things are different today, Degnon says. At least two hot-cocked planes are ready at all times, their pilots never more than yards from the cockpit.

A third plane hit the Pentagon, and almost at once came word that a fourth plane could be on the way, maybe more. The jets would be armed within an hour, but somebody had to fly now, weapons or no weapons.

Lucky, youre coming with me, barked Col. Marc Sasseville.

They were gearing up in the pre-flight life-support area when Sasseville, struggling into his flight suit, met her eye.

Im going to go for the cockpit, Sasseville said.

She replied without hesitating.

Ill take the tail.

It was a plan. And a pact.

Lets go!

Penney had never scrambled a jet before. Normally the pre-flight is a half-hour or so of methodical checks. She automatically started going down the list.

Lucky, what are you doing? Get your butt up there and lets go! Sasseville shouted.

She climbed in, rushed to power up the engines, screamed for her ground crew to pull the chocks. The crew chief still had his headphones plugged into the fuselage as she nudged the throttle forward. He ran along pulling safety pins from the jet as it moved forward.

She muttered a fighter pilots prayer  God, dont let me [expletive] up  and followed Sasseville into the sky.

They screamed over the smoldering Pentagon, heading northwest at more than 400 mph, flying low and scanning the clear horizon. Her commander had time to think about the best place to hit the enemy.

We dont train to bring down airliners, said Sasseville, now stationed at the Pentagon. If you just hit the engine, it could still glide and you could guide it to a target. My thought was the cockpit or the wing.

He also thought about his ejection seat. Would there be an instant just before impact?

I was hoping to do both at the same time, he says. It probably wasnt going to work, but thats what I was hoping.

Penney worried about missing the target if she tried to bail out.

If you eject and your jet soars through without impact . . . she trails off, the thought of failing more dreadful than the thought of dying.

But she didnt have to die. She didnt have to knock down an airliner full of kids and salesmen and girlfriends. They did that themselves.

It would be hours before Penney and Sasseville learned that United 93 had already gone down in Pennsylvania, an insurrection by hostages willing to do just what the two Guard pilots had been willing to do: Anything. And everything.

The real heroes are the passengers on Flight 93 who were willing to sacrifice themselves, Penney says. I was just an accidental witness to history.

She and Sasseville flew the rest of the day, clearing the airspace, escorting the president, looking down onto a city that would soon be sending them to war.

Later, as the Penney family checked in on each other from around the country, they marveled at the other fateful twist on the extraordinary events: the possibility that Penneys own father could well have been in the cockpit of her airliner target.

John Penney was a captain at United Airlines at the time. He had been flying East Coasts routes all the previous month. The daughter had no way of knowing whether the father was airborne or not.

We talked about the possibility that I could have been on the plane, Col. John Penney said. She knew I was flying that kind of rotation. But we never fell down and emotionally broke apart or anything like that. Shes a fighter pilot; Im a fighter pilot.

Penney is a single mom of two girls now. She still loves to fly. And she still thinks often of that extraordinary ride down the runway a decade ago.

I genuinely believed that was going to be the last time I took off, she says. If we did it right, this would be it.
Ethan Ethan Saylor, here in this undated family photo, died after three off-duty Frederick County sheriffs deputies tried to eject him from a movie theater. (Family photo)

A federal judge in Maryland ruled Friday that a lawsuit against three Frederick County sheriffs deputies will move forward to trial, allowing a jury to decide whether their actions led to the death of a young man with Down syndrome.

In January 2013, Robert Ethan Saylor, 26, went with an aide to watch Zero Dark Thirty at a Frederick-area mall and, after refusing to leave the theater during a second showing, was forced from his seat by the deputies who were working off-duty as security officers.

During a struggle, Saylor  who went by his middle name  ended up on the floor and suffered a fractured larynx. His death was later ruled a homicide as a result of asphyxia.

[Questions haunt family of man with Down syndrome who died in police custody]

This case matters on two levels, Ethans mother, Patti Saylor, said Friday. It matters personally because Ethans life matters. He didnt deserve to die the way he did. And on a greater level, it matters because people with disabilities are part of our community, and first responders and law enforcement need to know and respect their needs.

The 65-page ruling from U.S. District Judge William M. Nickerson came in response to motions to have the case dismissed filed by the deputies, the state of Maryland and Hill Management Services, which manages the Westview Promenade shopping center where the theater is located. Nickerson determined that there was enough evidence to support claims against all three parties.

Mr. Saylor was sitting quietly in his seat and there is absolutely nothing in the record to support the conclusion that, if left alone, he would not have remained there until his mother arrived, he wrote.

Daniel Karp, a Baltimore attorney for the deputies, said Friday that he had not yet read the ruling and could not comment on specifics.

I think you can anticipate that the defendants are disappointed, but we respect the ruling, Karp said.

Joseph B. Espo, the attorney for the Saylor family, called the ruling a critical juncture in the case.

We are happy that the case will proceed and that there will be an opportunity for a full airing of the events of the night that Ethan Saylor died, Espo said. And were happy that a jury will have the opportunity to finally judge the conduct of the sheriff deputies who have so far had no repercussions for their actions.

The deputies  Lt. Scott Jewell, Sgt. Rich Rochford and Deputy 1st Class James Harris  were cleared of wrongdoing in an internal affairs investigation, and a county grand jury determined that criminal charges were not warranted.

An employee at the theater called the deputies for help after Saylor refused to leave the theater after slipping back in while his aide went to get the car. Before the deputies encountered Saylor, according to the lawsuit, the aide gave warning that he would freak out if touched.

A trial date has not been set.
It's not often that a restaurant chain gives a city another try after the first go-round doesn't work out. But Firehouse Subs is betting that a better location will mean a better outcome the second time around.

The sub sandwich chain plans to open its Lincoln store Monday at East Park Plaza, less than two years after closing a location downtown.

New franchisee Tom Mejstrik said the downtown location, which was in the Larson Building at 13th and Q streets for two years, was popular but was hampered by a lack of nearby parking.

Even though the restaurant had several floors of a parking garage right above it, it took too much time and was too much of a hassle for customers to park there, he said.

"If they had adequate parking, I wouldn't be talking to you today, Mejstrik said.

He might not be talking about Firehouse Subs today, either, if not for a health scare with his wife, Pam.

Mejstrik said she was diagnosed with breast cancer two years ago, which led him to retire from Village Inn, where he was a vice president in charge of developing new locations.

After his wife recovered, she jokingly told him he needed to "get out of the house and get a job," he said.

That led him to Firehouse, which he had encountered down in Texas while scouting out Village Inn locations.

He said he was really impressed with the concept, not only the hot sub sandwiches but also the owners' commitment to supporting the communities in which they operate. The chain was started in 1994 by two firefighter brothers in Jacksonville, Florida, and it donates heavily to local police and fire organizations.

Mejstrik, who is an Omaha native and has lived in Lincoln for more than two decades, said he looked at locations for more than a year before settling on a spot at East Park in the strip mall building that fronts 66th Street.

He said he sees it as a perfect location that is close not only to shopping but also employment centers. It's also "underserved for the type of food we prepare."

He said he also was impressed by the amount of investment that is going into the mall from new owners and some of the tenants.

"This really is going to be a great location," Mejstrik said.

And it won't be the only one.

He said his franchise agreement requires him to open two more stores in Lincoln within five years, although he thinks the market can support three more.

Mejstrik didn't offer a timetable for additional restaurants, but he said he has his eye on a couple of other sites already.
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R), the symbolic head of the Maryland Republican Party, will not attend the state GOPs annual fundraiser in Glen Burnie Friday night featuring Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R).

Margot Crouch, finance director for the state party, said Hogan is out of town and wont be able to make it back in time for the Red, White and Blue, the partys major dinner of the year.

Doug Mayer, a spokesman for Hogan, said the popular governor would miss the annual event due to a personal scheduling conflict. He said Hogan, whose approval rating is hovering around 70 percent, traveled by train to New York on Thursday for an economic development meeting and is expected back on Friday.

[Scott Walker to headline Maryland GOP fundraiser]

The spokesman would not give more details about Hogans trip, which was not included on the governors public schedule.

Hogan tweeted Friday morning that he toured the New York Stock Exchange and met with President Tom Farley and saw the exchange behind the scenes.

Officials with Change Maryland, Hogans campaign, did not return calls Friday seeking comment.

Joe Cluster, executive director of the Maryland Republican Party, said Walker offered only one date for an appearance in Maryland, and the party didnt want to turn him down after scheduling conflicts had prevented booking him for the past several years.

When I called his staff to let them know, Cluster said of Hogan, they said something was already on his schedule ... Wed turned Walker down a couple times, and I wasnt going to do it a third time.

It is the second year in a row that Hogan has missed the partys big fundraiser.

The governor was unable to attend last years dinner, when future GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump was the guest speaker, because he was undergoing chemotherapy. The event was marked as a big success, raising $100,000 for the state party.

[In deep-blue Maryland, Republicans are also raking in cash]

Hogan riled some members of the state party by clearly distancing himself from Trump during the Republican presidential primaries earlier this year. He has said he does not think Trump is a good candidate, he did not attend the nominating convention in Cleveland, and he has pledged not to vote for him in November.

A Washington Post-SurveyMonkey poll released this week shows Trump trails Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in heavily Democratic Maryland by 30 points.

Friday nights fundraiser costs $125 for general admission tickets and $300 for VIP tickets. Party officials estimate that they will raise about $55,000.

Members of the state employees union said they plan to protest Walkers appearance, because the governor battled against unions in Wisconsin and, while running for president, proposed abolishing unions for federal workers.

Scott Walker is the most anti-working-family governor in America, Jeff Pittman, a spokesman for AFSME, said in an email. Maryland working families are disappointed that Gov. Larry Hogan would invite such a divisive figure to our state to raise money for his political party.

Correction: An earlier version of this story gave incorrect price for general admission tickets to the Maryland GOP fundraising dinner.
Black Maryland state lawmakers are planning to propose emergency legislation to address the dearth of minority-owned businesses approved to grow medical marijuana in the state and may demand scrapping the results of a nine-month application process and starting over.

Del. Cheryl D. Glenn (D-Baltimore) announced the plans at a Friday meeting of the Legislative Black Caucus aimed at addressing diversity in the burgeoning and potentially lucrative medical cannabis industry. The meeting was packed with about 100 people involved in prospective marijuana businesses who were divided on how to address the issue.

[Missing from Marylands legal pot growers? Black business leaders.]

Black lawmakers had pushed for language in the 2014 medical marijuana legalization law requiring regulators to actively seek to achieve racial and ethnic diversity in the growing industry.

But in a state that is nearly a third black, none of the 15 companies granted preliminary cultivation licenses in August is led by an African American.

This is a good modern-day civil rights fight, Glenn said. We are not going to delay anything, but are going to make sure its fair.

The Maryland Medical Cannabis Commission says it did not give any extra weight to applicants with minority ownership, citing a letter from the attorney generals office suggesting that such a move would be illegal without a study showing discrimination in the industry.

But the attorney generals office has since said that the commission could have ordered a study of disparities in industries similar to medical marijuana, such as pharmaceutical manufacturing, to justify racial preferences.

Paul W. Davies, chairman of the cannabis commission, met with Attorney General Brian E. Frosh (D) on Tuesday and said their offices will work together to come up with ways to achieve diversity.

We want to explore every possible avenue in order to ensure maximum minority involvement in the medical cannabis program at every level, Davies said after that meeting.

[Hogan, Frosh concerned over lack of diversity in medical pot]

But Glenn said she is concerned the commission will not do enough, which is why she wants to push through legislation on an emergency basis when the General Assembly convenes in January.

The ideas floated at Fridays meeting included eliminating caps on marijuana growing licenses to allow all minority companies to compete, conducting another round of licensing exclusively for minority-owned businesses and even starting the entire application process over, with race taken into account.

Any proposal will probably provoke a backlash from companies that were awarded licenses last month and could lose those licenses or market share, depending on what changes are made.

Prospective growers whose applications were ranked 16 through 20, just outside the cutoff, sent a letter to the black caucus touting their minority and female ownership and leadership. Their representatives told lawmakers the easiest solution for diversity would be to expand approvals to include them.

Meanwhile, John Pica, a lobbyist for a black-owned company that was not highly ranked, said he is considering suing the commission for failing to take steps to achieve racial diversity and wants the process restarted. Other witnesses countered that restarting the application review would be costly to all businesses and exacerbate delays in making the drug available for patients.

What Im hearing is the same thing: I dont want to start the process all over again, because of time and energy and money. But on the other side, Im hearing, This is all jacked up,  said Del. Darryl Barnes (D-Prince Georges). At some point, we have to figure out how to make it all work.

Gov. Larry Hogan (R) has dispatched two top staff members to work with black lawmakers on the issue.

House Speaker Michael E. Busch (D-Anne Arundel) pulled Glenn out of Fridays meeting for a private conversation, later telling meeting attendees that the diversity issue was getting thoroughly vetted.

Glenn said Busch is committing to fast-tracking legislation when the next session begins. Buschs chief of staff, Alex Hughes, said that the speaker is open to legislation but that his support hinges on the details.
An Arlington man who fled to Guatemala in 1999 after being accused of killing a woman and stashing her body in his car has been captured and charged with murder, police said Friday.

On May 11, 1999, at about 4:30 p.m., Arlington County Police responded to the report of a dead body in a vehicle in the 1300 block of North Pierce Street, a statement from Arlington County said. The woman, found in a red 1994 Toyota Celica belonging to Ludvin Estrada, was identified as 27-year-old Eva Veliz, an immigrant from El Salvador who lived in Arlington.

[Slaying suspect fled the United States, police say]

An investigation revealed that Veliz and Estrada were out dancing and were last seen together at 2:45 a.m., the statement said. Following an argument, Estrada strangled Veliz and fled the country, according to the statement, and though a warrant was issued for his arrest, efforts to locate him in Guatemala were unsuccessful.

Arlingtons cold case unit was assigned the case in 2012 and found additional information that confirmed Estrada was the killer, police said. The search for Estrada resumed, and he was caught in Guatemala in April, according to police.

Tracking D.C.-area homicides Mapping homicides in the District and the surrounding suburbs since 2000.



Ludvin Estrada (Arlington County Police)

Estrada, now 46, arrived in the United States on Friday, and is being held in the Arlington County Detention Facility on a murder charge, police said.
Manslaughter charges against a Prince Georges County bus driver who fatally struck a woman crossing the street were dismissed Thursday, but the driver was found guilty of two traffic-related charges and will have to pay $200 in fines.

Michelle Murray, 30, had been indicted on charges of manslaughter, reckless driving, negligent driving and failing to avoid a pedestrian collision in the July 31, 2014, death of Patsy Stokes Burton, 69, of La Plata, Md.

Murrays trial started Wednesday, but after prosecutors rested their case Thursday, Judge Dwight Jackson granted a motion for a judgment of acquittal on the criminal charges, according to John Erzen, a spokesman for the Prince Georges County States Attorneys Office. The ruling meant the judge had determined prosecutors did not present enough evidence to send the charges to the jury for consideration.

[Bookkeeper fatally struck by Pr. Georges bus was dedicated to clients, family says]

Prosecutors alleged that Murray was making a left turn when the bus hit Burton, a bookkeeper, who was crossing a street outside the Prince Georges County Courthouse in Upper Marlboro. Burton was dragged 40 feet before the bus stopped.

Erzen said prosecutors were disappointed in the judges decision.

We felt we had the evidence to get this case to a jury and allow them to decide, Erzen said. We certainly presented evidence that shows [Burton] was in the crosswalk for an extended period of time and we had a driver that was distracted and not looking.

Kimberly Righter, an attorney for Murray, said her client was obeying all traffic laws at the time and that the incident was an unfortunate accident.

She was driving a very large bus and unfortunately, with the architecture of the bus, there is a huge area where the bus driver cant see, Righter said. But she was doing everything a normal driver would do.

After Murray was acquitted of the manslaughter charges, she waived her right to a jury trial for the remaining traffic charges, asking the judge to render a verdict instead, Erzen said. Jackson found Murray guilty of negligent driving and failure to use caution to avoid a pedestrian accident, Erzen said.

Murray worked for Transdev, a private company that provides contractual transportation services for the county, authorities said.
( On left, murder suspect Oscar Delgado-Perez, 28, before a police manhunt for him. His photo on right was taken after his arrest this week. Source: Montgomery County police photos )

A 28-year-old gang member charged in the brutal stabbing death of a Maryland teenager had been deported twice to El Salvador in the past two years, according to U.S. immigration officials and Montgomery County prosecutors.

Oscar Delgado-Perez was ordered held without bond during his first court appearance Friday in a killing that detectives suspect was over gang bragging rights.

On June 16, Delgado-Perez and at least two other members of the MS-13 gang stabbed Cristian Villagran-Morales, 18, more than 40 times in a park in Gaithersburg as he begged for his life, according to authorities. Delgado-Perez directed the attack, detectives wrote in an affidavit filed in court. Police had been searching for him for more than two months and found him Wednesday at a Red Roof Inn in Rockville.

Parked nearby was a car with Texas license plates, belonging to an associate ready to take him from the area, said Robert Hill, a prosecutor with the Montgomery States Attorneys Office.

He was just about to leave that day for Texas to flee the area. He knew that there was a warrant out for his arrest, Hill said.

( Cristian Antonio Villagran-Morales, killed in June, was known for his easy smile  at dinner, at his landscaping job and on the beach. Source: Family photos )

After officers apprehended Delgado-Perez, he allegedly told them theyd caught a break. He said to police: If I hadnt been drunk this morning, you guys would never have caught me,  Hill said.

Delgado-Perez, charged with first-degree murder, had been living in the Montgomery Village area and working as a roofer to support his 6-year-old child, according to Stephanie Ferner, a public defender who represented him in court Friday.

She questioned the strength of the case against Delgado-Perez, saying it rests on the word of two co-defendants. Once they were charged, then they pointed the finger at my client, Ferner said.

At the county jail, according to Fridays court hearing, officials said theyd found no previous adult convictions for him.

In the case that led to the murder charge against Delgado-Perez, a 19-year-old named Vanesa Alvarado allegedly used the promise of sex to entice Villagran-Morales into Malcolm King Park in Gaithersburg.

Once they arrived, MS-13 members came up to Alvarado and Villagran-Morales and asked him whether he wanted to go into the woods to smoke marijuana, police said. He agreed to do so.

It was a trap, Montgomery States Attorney John McCarthy said Friday.

( Vanesa Alvarado, 19, has been arrested in the case. Police are still looking for Jose Coreas Ventura, also known as Josue Corea, 20. (Montgomery County police photos.) )

How Delgado-Perez repeatedly entered the United States, and why he was deported twice, remain unclear.

On Sept. 16, 2014, an immigration judge in Batavia, N.Y., ordered him removed from the country, according to spokesman for the Justice Departments Executive Office for Immigration Review. Delgado-Perez was removed to El Salvador the next month, according U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, also known as ICE.

After entering the United States again, he was removed to El Salvador on Feb. 26, 2015, according to ICE. At some point, he returned.

ICE has placed a hold on him at the Montgomery jail, because he could face a deportation case, too. If he were convicted in Maryland courts in the murder case, he likely would serve his full sentence before being returned home a third time.

While the challenges of illegal immigration are part of the national political debate, they confront local police every day in complicated ways.

The Montgomery County Police Department supports ICEs efforts to deport violent offenders, said Police Chief Tom Manger. But on the streets, Montgomery officers and detectives also must have the trust of immigrant communities, he said. That means being able to talk with undocumented residents and not ask about their immigration status, he said, so they are willing to report crimes and help solve them.

We have to strike that right balance, said Manger. Weve got to be able to go into those communities and have trust and cooperation.

Manger said he understands the anger residents feel when they hear about deported individuals who return and commit violent crimes. Certainly any community is better off without these individuals, he said.

In Montgomery County, the challenges are playing out in the context of a rise in homicides linked to MS-13, the violent gang with ties to Central America.

[Gang allegedly stabbed, stoned victim]

Last year, assailants with links to MS-13 allegedly stabbed and hurled heavy rocks on a victim as he crawled away from an attack toward a stream, according to court records. In another homicide, the victim was told, Get on your knees, before being shot in the face, neck and shoulder while in the woods.

[In brutal killings, officials see MS-13 attempt to rebuild]

In July, police arrested Alvarado and one of the alleged gang members who approached Villagran-Morales at the park: Juan Gutierrez-Vasquez, 16, who was charged as an adult. He told detectives the victim was thought to be a rival gang member, according to court records. But authorities said they found no evidence of that and said the attackers may have made up the claim to gain street credibility.

Gutierrez-Vasquez came to Montgomery County from El Salvador earlier this year, police believe, and joined MS-13 after arriving. I think he was recruited here, Detective Dimitry Ruvin has said in an earlier interview.

The victim, Villagran-Morales, was born in Guatemala and arrived in Montgomery this year from New Jersey to live with relatives, police said. He had been doing landscaping work. He sent money home to his father in Guatemala, according to friends.

Even though there is still tremendous pain in all of our hearts, we feel a bit more calm that justice is being served and that the culprits are being caught, Jennifer Torres, a girlfriend of one of Villagran-Moraless cousins, said Friday. We are still hoping that the other or others will be found.

Police said they continue to look for suspect Jose Coreas Ventura, 20, who also goes by the name Josue Corea, and should be considered armed and dangerous.

Police officials ask that anyone with information about Ventura or the slaying call 301-279-8000. To be eligible for a reward, tipsters should call 1-866-411-TIPS (8477). Callers may remain anonymous.
Surveillance video from the Islamic Community Center parking lot in Laurel, Md., appeared to capture a white tractor trailer backing into the mosque, then pulling away and backing into the mosque again. (CAIR)

Surveillance video from the Islamic Community Center parking lot in Laurel, Md., appeared to capture a white tractor trailer backing into the mosque, then pulling away and backing into the mosque again. (CAIR)

A prominent Muslim advocacy organization is calling for a federal investigation after a tractor-trailer rammed into a mosque in Laurel.

About 11 p.m. on Sept. 5, surveillance video from the Islamic Community Center of Laurels parking lot appeared to capture a white tractor-trailer backing into the mosque, pulling away and then backing into the mosque again.

No one was in the mosque at the time, but railings and an awning were damaged, according to a statement from the Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an advocacy group.

Ibrahim Zuberi, the mosques president, said theres no reason a truck would be in a residential area at that time of night making a U-turn in the narrowest part of the mosques parking lot.

Theres the obvious problem of a person making that impact and not reporting it, Zuberi said. Some type of crime has taken place, regardless of the bias potential.

Laurel police confirmed that the mosque had filed a report.

The Islamic Community Center opened in Laurel in the 1980s, Zuberi said. Earlier this year, someone verbally abused parishioners in the parking lot, he said, and someone urinated at the front of the mosque last year during Ramadan.

Everyones already on edge, he said.

CAIR condemned the incident and called for federal action.

In light of the hostile political climate impacting the American Muslim community, and because of the spike in hate crimes and threats targeting Muslims and their institutions, we urge federal law enforcement authorities to add their resources to the investigation to help bring the perpetrators to justice and to establish a motive for this disturbing crime, Zainab Chaudry, CAIR outreach manager for Maryland, said in a statement.
A Maryland woman was arrested for theft Wednesday after allegedly stealing three french fries from a D.C. police officer, police said.

About 9:40 p.m., a D.C. police officer was eating in a restaurant at 1110 U St. NW when a 26-year-old woman approached him and ate one of his french fries, a D.C. police spokesman said. Despite repeated warnings, the woman continued to eat the french fries, police said.

She was arrested for second-degree theft.

As a police report explained: The listed offender appropriated the listed property without the consent of the listed complainant.

The report also listed the stolen property as French Fried Potato . . . quantity 3.
Former Lt. Gov. LaVon Heidemann has a new job.

NioCorp Developments Ltd., the company hoping to mine rare metals from a site in Johnson County, has announced that Heidemann has joined the company as a business development consultant.

Heidemann, who farms near the site of NioCorps Elk Creek Superalloy Materials Project, will assist NioCorp on a consulting basis in various aspects of moving the Elk Creek Superalloy Materials Project to commercial operation, the company said in a news release. His primary focus will be on developing business opportunities and the support infrastructure in the Southeast Nebraska area for NioCorps proposed project.

Heidemann served as lieutenant governor for former Gov. Dave Heineman from 2013-2014, before resigning because of a family conflict that led to him being served with a protection order. Before that, he was a state senator who served as chairman of the Nebraska Legislature's Appropriations Committee.

"We could not be more pleased to have someone of Lavon's deep experience and unshakable commitment to a brighter future for all Nebraskans join the NioCorp team," Scott Honan, President of Elk Creek Resources Corporation, said in a news release. "Lavon will help us continue to accelerate the effort to bring the Elk Creek Superalloy Materials project to commercial reality, to the benefit of southeast Nebraska, the state, and the region."

In pursuit of that effort, NioCorp got some good news earlier this week.

On Thursday, the company announced it had completed its Jurisdictional Determination review with the Army Corps of Engineers, which determined there are no federally protected wetlands or streams in the immediate footprint of the projects mine mouth and product processing facilities.

NioCorp said that should help speed up the permitting process.

On Wednesday, the company announced the successful completion of five pilot processing tests for extracting niobium, scandium and titanium, the metals it hopes to mine at the Elk Creek site.

NioCorp said it will now proceed to its final pilot tests needed to complete its feasibility study.

The company, which is based in the Denver area, has been working on the Elk Creek project since 2009.

It has estimated that a mine there would produce pre-tax cash flow of $438 million a year, employ 300 people on a permanent basis and have a lifespan of more than 30 years.

However, the cost to build and operate the mine is estimated at close to $1 billion, money that NioCorp will have to raise from lenders and investors.

A feasibility study will show those potential lenders and investors the commercial viability of the project.
In Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, J.D. Vance sheds light on the world he grew up in, exploring how social policies and other factors affect some of the poorest communities in America. (Naomi McColloch/Naomi McColloch)

J.D. Vance grew up with God but, except for a few years as a teen, without church. His family members rarely found themselves in a pew on Sunday morning, and they didnt turn to faith leaders for help in times of crisis.

Contrary to popular opinion, this approach to religious life is relatively widespread in that region of the United States that stretches along the Appalachian Mountains, according to Vance, who grew up in southern Ohio. Families talk about God but dont trust religious institutions.

In his New York Times bestseller, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, Vance sheds light on the world he grew up in, exploring how social policies and other factors affect some of the poorest communities in America.

A principal at a Silicon Valley investment firm, Vance, 32, was mostly raised in Middletown, Ohio, by his grandparents while his mother struggled with drug addiction. He nearly failed out of high school but regrouped and made his way to the Marine Corps, college and then Yale Law School.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

J.D. Vance's book, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, has become a bestseller. ( / )

Whats the most common misconception about religious practice in the part of the country where you grew up?

Well, I guess Id pick two.

The first is that people wrongly believe religion is the province of people who are weak or poor or stupid. To use a political phrase, people who are clinging to their guns and religion.

It would appear that folks who are most destitute in these areas are the least likely to go to church. Church is increasingly something that is relatively confined to upper-income, well-educated people. I think thats something people should recognize about the role of religious faith in this part of the world.

The second thing is that we tend to think of these areas as the Bible Belt, where everyone is going to church and everyone is actively involved in religious community. Thats not that true.

If you look at the statistics and see some of the things Ive seen, you recognize that these people, despite being very religious and having their Christian faith as something important to them, arent attending church that much. They dont have that much of a connection to a traditional religious institution.

Religion is important. That conception is right. But religion is quirky, and its not traditionally practiced in religious institutions.

What do you mean by quirky?

Its on a scale. At the best end of the scale, people read the Bible regularly, pray and think very seriously about their Christian faith and what it requires of them.

The other way religious belief is expressed is not especially good. Faith becomes what Id call a cultural tchotchke. Its like something you wear on your breast or that you pin to your identity. But it isnt actually that significant to you in a lot of ways.

The point is that for at least a fair number of people in these areas, Christian faith isnt motivating their behavior. Its just another identifier. They listen to country music, live in a rural area, like to fish, and theyre also Christians.

For some people, faith is a very important part of their life even if theyre not going to church. But for a few people, religion is more about what it signifies for their identity as red-state Americans.

What role did faith play in your childhood?

I lived in a pretty chaotic and hopeless world. Faith gave me the belief that there was somebody looking out for me, that there was a hopeful future on the other side of all the things I was going through.

Going to church showed me a lot of really positive traits that I hadnt seen before. I saw people of different races and classes worshiping together. I saw that there were certain moral expectations from my peers of what I should do.

The kids on my block in Middletown, if they cared at all about what you were doing, they were typically urging you to do drugs or take a drink. Church exposed me to an entire enclave of kids who were my age and like me, but they expected me to not do drugs or have premarital sex or drink alcohol.

But the church you went to with your dad also seemed to urge you to withdraw from the world. Can that be problematic?

The kind of conservative, evangelical Christianity I practiced encourages a cultural paranoia where you dont trust and want to withdraw from a lot of parts of the world.

Its very hard to be a practicing Christian in the 21st-century world if you set things up as, Everyone is against us. You cant believe modern science, modern media or modern political institutions because theyre all conspiring against Christians.

That creates a stark choice in a lot of people: You can believe in certain parts of modern science, or you can be a good Christian. But you cant do both. It creates isolating pressure from the faith. I eventually got to the point where I was like, Well, if I cant believe in the Big Bang Theory and be a good Christian, then maybe Im not a good Christian.

In the book, you share a study on access to the American Dream and note that churches can play a role in upward mobility. Do you think faith communities in the region where you grew up should do more to help people escape poverty?

I definitely do. A few months ago, I told a friend that I think the [Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints] in Utah is a really good model for how Christian churches should exist in communities like mine.

In Utah, the church as an institution is very strong. People are active and participate across racial and class lines. In the study I cited, one of the biggest markers of whether a place had low upward mobility is if poor kids live in cut-off enclaves.

Utah does really well on this metric. And my guess is that the Mormon Church plays a role in that. It brings people together, and members arent afraid to go into poor communities and minister to people. Thats not something you see in the Cincinnati, Ohios, of the world.

I dont think there was a church within walking distance of my house when I was growing up. But it was very hard to find an upper-income part of Middletown where there wasnt a church within walking distance.

Churches are geographically and culturally isolated from poor people.

When you entered law school, you had to navigate a new, more elite world. How did your classmates religious practices differ from your childhood faith?

When I started law school in 2010, I would have called myself an atheist. When I graduated law school in 2013, I was exploring my faith again. A lot changed in those three years.

Back home, kids who grew up to be relatively successful tended to abandon their faith. All of my close friends growing up were all really religious but, with the exception of one of us, we all considered ourselves nonreligious by age 25.

At Yale, I was exposed to faith groups in which that didnt seem to be happening.

Mormons and Catholics at Yale Law School, who were really smart and successful, were engaged with their faith. There was a moment when I was like, Maybe it is possible to have Christian faith in an upwardly mobile world. You can be a member of your faith and still be a reasonably successful person. Thats not the world I grew up in, but maybe thats true.

What do you think explains the differences?

My guess  and I dont have the data to support it  is that a lot of the isolating pressures I experienced as a young, conservative, evangelical Protestant arent present for Catholics and Mormons. Both of those faiths are very intense about the moral rules they want their followers to follow, but theyre also engaged not just with modern science but with the modern world.

Catholics and Mormons seem to be much better at figuring out how to practice their faith in a multicultural world. My sense is that its because there arent those isolating pressures. They dont feel like they had to choose between the world and their faith. They can influence the world through their faith.

How would you describe your faith life now?

Ive been going to church for the past year or so. Not as much as I should, but more than I have been. Ive been thinking very seriously about converting to Catholicism because of some of the things we were talking about.

Im in a weird place where I would describe myself as Christian, but Im not an active participant in any denomination. If I were to jump back in, it would be through a formal conversion process.

Kelsey Dallas is a writer for the Deseret News. This article was distributed by Religion News Service
Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-Va.) on Friday will begin airing the first television commercial of her reelection campaign as she fends off a challenge from Democrat LuAnn Bennett.

The 30-second spot features Comstocks adult daughter, Caity, and portrays the congresswoman as a champion of families who has passed legislation intended to address human trafficking and heroin. She supports research and a strong national defense, according to the ad.

People call her hard-working . . . but I just call her Mom, her daughter says in the commercial, which also features one of her grandchildren.

Comstock faces a competitive challenge from businesswoman Bennett in a Northern Virginia district flush with independent women voters who are key to both presidential campaigns strategies for winning Virginia.

The congresswoman has tried to distance herself from her partys polarizing nominee. She has not endorsed Donald Trump, saying he hasnt earned her vote, and she did not attend the Republican National Convention.

Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-Va) released the first television ad of her re-election campaign on Sept., 8. The 30-second ad features Comstock's adult daughter Caity sharing why her mother should be re-elected to her Congress seat representing a Northern Virginia district. Comstock is facing a challenge from Democrat LuAnn Bennett, a businesswoman. (Barbara Comstock)

Bennett  with help from national Democratic groups  has tried to link Comstock with Trump, saying they both oppose abortion, favor defunding Planned Parenthood and have targeted illegal immigration.

The race illustrates the challenge Republicans in moderate districts face as the national GOP tries to take back the White House with Trump, the most unconventional presidential nominee in recent memory.

Because of Trumps candidacy, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report changed its prediction in the Northern Virginia race from likely Republican to lean Republican, signaling a more competitive contest.

The Bennett campaign has already aired two television ads  one on equal pay for women, the other focused on her life story  in an effort to get a jump on her rival.

Comstock spent five years in the Virginia House of Delegates before winning the seat held by former Republican congressman Frank R. Wolf upon his retirement.
Jacqueline Pineda, an eight-year resident of the East End Mobile Home Park, voices her concerns to Manassas officials at the social-services offices on Sept. 8. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)

Despite the brown water that sometimes flows out of their faucets, residents of the East End Mobile Home Park say they have built good, quiet lives in their community  outfitting their trailers with decks, renovated kitchens and extra bedrooms for their growing families.

Their $450 monthly lot fees are cheaper than rent for a comparable home or apartment in increasingly expensive Northern Virginia, and the trailers cost much less than a free-standing house.

But the occupants of the 58 trailers must vacate the park by February, part of a deal brokered by the city of Manassas after the limited liability corporation that owns the park said it could not afford to fix leaks in its private sewage and water system that allow raw sewage to flow into the ground during heavy rains.

The Manassas City Council  calling the site a public-health hazard  voted in April to purchase the land for $1.86 million on the condition that it be cleared of mobile homes.

[Nowhere to go: Manassas trailer-park residents must leave]

Amando Romero has extensively renovated the trailer where he lives with his wife, Hilda Hernandez, and their three daughters. They say they cannot afford to move the trailer when the mobile-home park is shut down. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)

Thursday night, city officials offered park residents $2,300 per trailer to help with moving expenses  an amount the residents said was too little to make a real difference.

Thank you for the assistance you are offering, but unfortunately for us, it is not help, because we are left without housing, Selfo Sosa said to Manassas Social Services Director Ronald King. What are we going to buy with $2,300 if I dont have a house to live in with my family? Basically, we are lost.

Amando Romero, a husband and father of three who has lived at the park for a decade, said it would cost several thousand more dollars to move the trailer  and there are relatively few mobile parks in the area to which such a move would be possible.

Basically, this is all garbage, Romero, a home contractor, said of the trailer that he has renovated over the years to the tune of about $15,000, replacing missing doors and broken windows and adding granite kitchen countertops. Were going to lose it.

City officials have not said what they plan to do with the property, about 30 miles west of Washington, once it is vacant. They say they have cited the landowner nine times since 2008 for cracked sewer and water lines, to no avail.

If the property is not cleared of the mobile homes, then the city still has a landowner with a private water and sewer system that has failed, said Patrick Small, who as the citys economic development director is overseeing the land purchase.

In that scenario, the sewer system would probably be shut down and the site would be declared uninhabitable, forcing the residents to leave anyway, Small said.

Timothy A. Cope, a lawyer who represents the property owner, did not return a phone call for comment Friday.

Residents of the park have said they want the city to repair the sewer and water system and let them remain in the park.

At the meeting Thursday night, residents packed into a city government conference room, many of them listening via headphones to a Spanish translation of what officials were saying.

[Without Social Security numbers, mobile-home residents face eviction]

Marvin Pineda said he moved his family into the park in January after paying $15,000 for his trailer, unaware of any plumbing issues.

Why didnt they tell me about this problem? he said. Its unjust that I now have to lose that money.

City officials asked park residents to itemize their anticipated moving costs, and they did not rule out offering additional assistance.

Inside the mobile-home park later that night, the air carried a musky scent after a recent storm and mosquitoes were out in force. Several trailer owners wondered aloud how being exposed to raw sewage for so long might affect the health of their families.

If we had known about this sooner, we would have left, because I wouldnt have let my children breathe in raw sewage, said Melissa Watson, a mother of three who has lived in the park for 14 years. Thats negligence.

Several residents said they were unsure about their next steps.

They gathered for an informal meeting in the park, discussing whether they should keep paying their lot fees before they are forced to leave the property.

They broke the contract, Watson said, arguing that the park owners were obligated to provide a functioning sewer and water system.

Others opposed that idea.

If we pay our rent, we have more of a right to fight to get more money, Jacqueline Pineda said. We have to stay united in this.

Correction: Amando Romeros name was misspelled in an earlier version of this article.
About three years ago Dustin Witte saw Alfred Hitchcocks 1944 thriller Lifeboat for the first time.

Set during World War II, the film, based on a John Steinbeck story, is a psychological thriller telling the story of survivors of a torpedoed cruise liner who find themselves stranded in the same lifeboat with one of the men who sunk it, a German sailor.

Watching the film resulted in one of those a-ha moments for Witte.

I was captivated by the isolation of the setting and the confinement of the characters, he said. Afterward I started talking about how (the story) would lend itself really well to a theatrical event.

So Witte, co-founder of OmniArts Nebraska, went from talking to writing. For the past year and a half hes worked on adapting the film for the stage. On Wednesday, his work will come to fruition when he directs the OmniArts Nebraska premiere of his play at Johnny Carson Theater.

Performances of Lifeboat will continue through Sept. 15 at Carson.

Bringing Hitchcock to the stage isnt new. Last fall, the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis staged The Birds, while the Jungle Theater in Minneapolis did Dial M for Murder, which Hitchcock, interestingly, adapted his 1954 film from a 1952 play.

And a parody of The 39 Steps has enjoyed success on Broadway and in regional theaters, including the Nebraska Repertory Theatre.

Witte felt Lifeboat, one of Hitchcocks most underrated and under-appreciated films, would be perfect for the stage because of its high-stakes drama, which unfolds in close quarters.

I definitely was interested in exploring the relationships and giving the characters more depth, especially the women, said Witte, who noted the film didnt give its female characters much to do.

To make Lifeboat happen, Wittes adaptation will feature a stark scenic installation, with the actors confined to an undulating platform of a boat. Stage hands, dressed in black, will rock and rotate the boat.

The play will feature a nine-person cast, with most of them never leaving the stage (except for intermission) in Wittes two-act drama. The cast includes Sarah Gibson, Kenyon Koenig, Mark Feit, Jessie Porter, Amber Nore, Jesse Snider, Daniel Kubert, Tim Peglow, and Bret Olsen.

The audience will see what theyre doing the entire evening, Witte said. There isnt a camera to pan away from them, so theyve all have had to become invested in the action of the scenes.
Jennifer L. Steele is an associate professor of education at American University and studies education economics and policy.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) recently issued an executive order that will lengthen summer vacation for nearly every school district in Maryland. It requires the states public schools not only to start the school year after Labor Day  the first Monday in September  but also to end by June 15. The move, which has previously been rejected by the General Assembly, is aimed at stimulating the states summer tourism industry. But it may do so at the cost of student achievement, especially for the states most vulnerable students.

Like many states, Maryland requires public schools to provide at least 180 instructional days per school year, and the executive order doesnt change that. But now districts will have to allocate almost 12 weeks of each year for summer vacation, which is one to two weeks more than the status quo. For districts that currently exceed the 180-day minimum, such as Baltimore County with 188 days and Montgomery County with 184, the order may be especially onerous, requiring that they request a state waiver or shorten the instructional year.

The big question is how the order will affect student learning. Decades of research have shown that students forget some of their learning during the summer, especially in math  a phenomenon known as summer slide. Worse, the size of the slide depends on students socioeconomic backgrounds, with those from low-income backgrounds losing more ground, especially in reading. Why? One factor may be that wealthier students have greater access to enriching summer activities  camps, travel and internships. They may also spend more time on literacy-related tasks.

In fact, some of the best evidence about summer learning disparities comes from Baltimore City. A team of Johns Hopkins University sociologists found that differences in students summer learning between kindergarten and fifth grade explained two-thirds of the reading achievement gap between high- and low-income students in ninth grade. It also predicted at least a quarter of the gap in high school completion and at least half the gap in college entry. In other words, summer matters.

To be fair, the executive order will force most districts not to shorten their academic years but to compress them, by slashing teacher planning days and midyear breaks. Though the research on compressing vs. expanding the instructional calendar is mixed, there is at least some evidence that distributing breaks at regular intervals across the year may benefit the lowest-income students.

The state has estimated that the longer summer will add $74 million a year to the tourism economy and more than $5 million in state tax revenue. But the latter figure is dwarfed by the $6.3 billion the state will spend on K-12 public education in 2017, and it would yield only about $40 in new state tax dollars for each school-age child living in poverty in Maryland. It is not nearly enough to fund a statewide summer enrichment program for low-income youths, but perhaps the revenue, if it materializes, could finance seed grants to support local summer programs.

The takeaway? When it comes to growing the Maryland economy, forcing districts to compress the school year may be penny-wise and pound-foolish. Lengthening summer vacation will not help and may hurt student learning, especially for the children whose success depends the most on their schools. For a long-term economic boost, the governor should put education first.
Rosalind Wiseman is a parenting educator and the author of Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends and Other Realities of Adolescence.

In recent years, bullying has become a hot topic at schools, online and even in our current presidential election, with Democrat Hillary Clinton describing a Trump effect among children  an increase in bullying tied to the GOP nominees inflammatory rhetoric. Here are the best books, plays, articles and videos to help us understand the phenomenon.

Henry IV, Part 1, by William Shakespeare

Shakespeare created some great bullies, but Prince Hal in Henry IV, Part 1 is particularly appropriate for todays political climate. As the Bardolator blog explains, Hal prides himself on being able to speak the language of the common people, and sees that as a selling point for his new generation of kingship. He then exploits the people he charms. Case in point: his treatment of Francis, the local taverns busboy. Francis is overworked and underpaid, and instead of pitying his need to work so hard, Hal creates more obstacles to prevent him from getting his job done, the Bardolator explains.

The Depressive and the Psychopath, by Dave Cullen

After the 1999 Columbine High School shooting, the media depicted gunmen Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris as misfits who sought revenge for being bullied. Reporter Dave Cullen set the record straight. Harris, he reported in Slate, was a psychopath and Klebold deeply depressed; they planned the mass murder to terrorize the entire nation. As Cullen writes: Their slaughter was aimed at students and teachers, but it was not motivated by resentment of them. Despite Cullens reporting, the original narrative  of victims exacting revenge  still comes up, affecting media coverage of subsequent shootings and also the mythology young attackers embrace.

School Bully, Key & Peele

In this two-minute comedy sketch, Keegan-Michael Key is a high school nerd, and Jordan Peele is a hilariously introspective bully who explains: I really dont want to get left back, so when I see somebody reading for fun it makes me feel that much more stupid. And then I get mad. The skit is funny because it hits so close to home.

Wonder, by R. J. Palacio

This well-crafted book tells the story of August, a boy born with a facial deformity who attends mainstream school for the first time at age 10. I wont describe what I look like, he tells readers. Whatever youre thinking, its probably worse. Wonder begins from Auggies point of view but shifts to the perspectives of his schoolmates, his sister, her boyfriend and others.

Bullying Today: Bullet Points and Best Practices, by Justin Patchin and Sameer Hinduja

In this book, Patchin and Hinduja show how to distinguish bullying from other hurtful behaviors, explain the connection between cyberbullying and in-person bullying and outline best practices for school-based prevention.

Assholes: A Theory, by Aaron James

The philosophers 2012 book is a highly amusing guide for how to interact with (or ignore) a raging, entitled narcissist who amuses himself by mocking others.

Kid President

Leave it to a grade-school YouTube star to remind us how to treat one another and handle bullies. Kid Presidents many videos have one theme: Be awesome to each other. If we all listened to this wise, funny young man, wed be much better off.

Twitter: @cultureodignity

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OVER THE past three years, the D.C. attorney generals office has sent out about 450 form letters to landlords advising them of tenants who had been accused of unlawful activities and the need to take corrective action. Landlords were fearful of being sued by the city and therefore, in many cases, evicted their tenants. Some people deserved to lose their homes because their activities clearly were a neighborhood nuisance. But others were blameless or represented no threat to the community. That lawyers for the city didnt take the time to differentiate between the two is concerning and must be addressed by city officials.

Problems with how the attorney generals office enforced the Drug-, Firearm-, or Prostitution-Related Nuisance Abatement Act were detailed in a recent Post investigation. Under the law, passed in the late 1990s to give the city legal muscle against properties that had become havens for drugs, prostitution or other illegalities, properties raided by police are referred to the attorney generals office. It is supposed to examine each case to determine whether there is a real nuisance, but it acted more as a rubber stamp. If police referred a case, a letter was sent, no questions asked.

Among those caught up in what Post reporters called an assembly line of government agencies that merely processed paperwork: a grandmother forced from her Southwest home over one gram of marijuana, and an advisory neighborhood commissioner who had to move after a small amount of marijuana, drug paraphernalia and shotgun shells were found in the room of her apartment-mate. A lot of tenants, Beth Harrison of the Legal Aid Society of the District of Columbia told The Post, are dragged into court who shouldnt be, and a lot of landlords are being forced to bring these [eviction] cases even when they dont have enough evidence.

To their credit, officials in the attorney generals office owned up to the problem. After being shown The Posts review of nuisance-abatement letters, officials imposed a moratorium, pending a review. Attorney General Karl A. Racine told us that while the Districts legalization of marijuana likely has made many of these cases moot, he wants to be sure the proper checks and balances are in place. The Legal Aid Society has some ideas  including establishment of clear, written guidelines  on how to improve the process, and we are glad officials are taking up the group on its offer to meet. It is important that the District have the ability to move against properties that are a community threat, but it should be able to do so without ensnaring  and hurting  innocent people.
The most revealing moment in the presidential candidates first joint forum Wednesday night came when Donald Trump told the world how much he admires Vladimir Putin .

Never mind that the Russian strongman invaded Ukraine and seized Crimea. Never mind that he supports the butcher Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Never mind that so many of his political opponents end up murdered or imprisoned. Never mind that U.S. officials suspect his government of trying to disrupt our election with cyberattacks. In Trumps star-struck eyes, all of this makes him a leader, far more than our president has been a leader.

Putin, you see, once paid Trump a compliment. If he says great things about me, Trump told moderator Matt Lauer, Im going to say great things about him.

There you have it, folks, the distilled essence of Trumps disgraceful campaign. Its not about immigration or foreign policy or making America great again, whatever that means. Its entirely about Trump and his raging egomania.

Trump is sincere when he expresses preening self-regard. All the rest is just verbiage tossed with a light vinaigrette.

On Sept. 7, during a town hall event hosted by MSNBC, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump stated he would have a good relationship with Russian president Vladimir Putin. It wasnt the first time he made that claim. (Adriana Usero/The Washington Post)

The candidates appeared sequentially, not face to face, at the USS Intrepid museum in New York before an audience of military service members and veterans. The old aircraft carrier, commissioned during World War II and retired after Vietnam, was an apt setting for hearing the candidates positions on foreign and defense policy. But only one of them had anything meaningful to say.

Hillary Clinton went first and was immediately hit with a barrage of questions about her emails. Some commentators said afterward that she sounded defensive, but that line of criticism is absurd. How is one supposed to sound when pressed to defend oneself? Have we finally reached the point when a woman is allowed to speak forcefully on her own behalf? Or do we still expect, at all times, a demure smile?

As would be anticipated from a former senator and secretary of state, Clinton displayed her knowledge and experience. The headline, I suppose, would be this pledge: We are not putting ground troops into Iraq ever again. And were not putting ground troops into Syria. Those who worry she might prove too hawkish as president may feel relieved.

But the evening was really about Trump, and the stakes are far too high for him to be graded on a curve. No, he did not rant and rave like a crazy man or threaten to nuke anybody. But neither did he give the slightest indication he knew anything about the issues he was supposed to be talking about. Read the transcript and try to find one sensible and substantive thing he had to say.

On top of insisting that Putin is a great guy, Trump denigrated the U.S. militarys high command. I think under the leadership of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the generals have been reduced to rubble, he said. They have been reduced to a point where its embarrassing for our country.

Lauer recalled that Trump has long claimed to have a secret plan for defeating the Islamic State, but now says he would ask the generals to submit a plan within 30 days for victory over the terrorist group. Reminded that he has boasted that he knows more about the Islamic State than our military leaders do, yet now says he wants them to come up with a plan, Trump replied: Well, theyll probably be different generals, to be honest with you.

In other words, he promises a purge at the Pentagon. Maybe his friend Vladimir can give him pointers.

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and her Republican opponent Donald Trump answered questions on national security and foreign policy Sept. 7 during a commander-in-chief forum on NBC News. (Video: NBC News/Photos: Melina Mara/Post, Mike Segar/Reuters)

And theres more: Trump repeated his complaint that the United States should have taken the oil in Iraq, noting that it used to be, to the victor belong the spoils.

Yes, that was true in the time of Genghis Khan. Today, under international law, plunder is a war crime  and not the only one Trump wants our military to commit. He has said in the past that our forces also should practice torture worse than waterboarding against suspected terrorists. He would ask our service members to dishonor the uniform and all it represents.

Trump defended a 2013 tweet about the problem of sexual assault in the military in which he asked, What did these geniuses expect when they put men & women together? He said the solution was to set up a court system within the military. Unbelievable.

Face the truth: Trump has to be the most dangerously ignorant major-party presidential candidate in history.

Read more from Eugene Robinsons archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. You can also join him Tuesdays at 1 p.m. for a live Q&A.
Donald Trump, who had five draft deferments, never had to fight in the jungles of Vietnam.

But he had a different sort of war record, as he told radio host Howard Stern years ago: He slept with many women without getting STDs. It is my personal Vietnam, he said. I feel like a great and very brave soldier. Whats more, Trump added: This is better than Vietnam. Its more fun.

Said Stern: Every vagina is a landmine. Havent we both said that in private?

Trump concurred: I think it is a potential landmine. Theres some real danger there.

At a rally in Greenville, N.C., Sept. 6, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said that as president he would give his top generals 30 days to present him with a plan to defeat the Islamic State terrorist group. (The Washington Post)

I recalled this Trump war story after his latest disparagement of the U.S. military Wednesday night. Asked to elaborate on his previous boast that I know more about ISIS than the generals do, Trump said at NBCs national security forum Wednesday that, under the Obama administration, the generals have been reduced to rubble. They have been reduced to a point where its embarrassing for our country.

Trump later implied that he would fire current generals  who, in the American tradition, are avowedly nonpartisan  and replace them with retired generals who have supported him politically. His advisers on defeating the Islamic State will probably be different generals from the current ones. My former Post colleague Tom Ricks, author of The Generals and four other books on the military, tells me that would be banana republicanism.

Its difficult to think of a major political figure who has belittled the U.S. military as Trump has. Sunday is the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, which ushered in a support our troops spirit that has endured regardless of party or opinion of the wars that followed. But Trump goes beyond the standard criticism of the president and civilian leaders to condemn the military itself.

Our military is a disaster, he has said.

And: The military is in shambles.

Soon after launching his campaign, Trump said of John McCain, the prisoner-of-war-cum-senator, hes not a war hero and that I like people who werent captured. He later backtracked but said he didnt regret the remarks because my poll numbers went up.

He said that he felt that I was in the military because as a boy he went to a military-themed boarding school, where he got more training militarily than a lot of the guys that go into the military.

The day after the New York Times reported he received five draft deferments during Vietnam, GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump told rally-goers in Ashburn, Va., that a man had just given him his Purple Heart medal. Trump added, "I always wanted to get the Purple Heart. This was much easier." (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)

He recently accepted a wounded-in-action veterans Purple Heart, saying: I always wanted to get the Purple Heart. This was much easier.

He played down dangers troops face in up-armored Humvees: If a bomb goes off . . . theyre okay. They go for a little ride upward and they come down.

He suggested troops responsible for distributing cash in Iraq and Afghanistan had stolen the money, saying, I think theyre living very well right now, whoever they may be, and those soldiers  I wouldnt be that surprised if the cash didnt get there.

He said, before backtracking, that he would order the military to torture detainees and to target innocent family members of terrorists  even though both are illegal: If I say do it, theyre going to do it.

He later engaged in a high-profile squabble with the Gold Star parents of a U.S. soldier killed in Iraq because they criticized him at the Democratic convention.

Though Trump talks often about veterans, he didnt make good on a promised contribution to veterans charities after a fundraiser this year until The Post noted his failure to do so. (Years ago, he opposed veterans working as street vendors on New Yorks Fifth Avenue, calling it deplorable to have them on the prestigious shopping street.)

Trump has called John Allen, the retired officer who coordinated efforts against the Islamic State and now backs Hillary Clinton, a failed general. And, though Trump said at Wednesdays forum that the body language of the intelligence officials in his security briefings indicated they disagree with Obama administration policies, he previously said he didnt trust U.S. intelligence officials.

Polling shows Trump leads among veterans and active-duty military members, though by less than Republicans typically do. Perhaps members of the military will change their views if a President Trump does, as he suggested, replace current generals with some of the 88 retired military officials who signed a letter endorsing his candidacy this week.

These include retired Lt. Gen. William G. Jerry Boykin, now an official at the Family Research Council, who believes Satan is working through Islam and who says gay rights are an evil that must be opposed by Gods army. Also on Trumps list is retired Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney, a Fox News commentator who supported an Army officer who refused to deploy to Afghanistan, claiming President Obama was foreign-born and therefore an illegitimate commander in chief.

The officer, Lt. Col. Terry Lakin, was sentenced to military prison in a court-martial. But if Trump wins, perhaps the political supporters he appoints to replace the nations nonpartisan generals will reinstate and promote him.

Twitter: @Milbank

Read more from Dana Milbanks archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.
Hayley Tsukayama covers consumer technology for The Washington Post.

Americans are estimated to check their smartphones a collective 8 billion times per day, and Nielsen says we spend an average of one hour and 39 minutes on our smartphones each day  up 60 percent from last year. But while many of us consider our smartphones to be an essential part of our lives, there are many misconceptions about how we use them and how they affect us.

Myth No. 1

Smartphones give people cancer.

The World Health Organization (WHO) set off a small flurry of panic in 2011 when it classified the radiation from cellphones as possibly carcinogenic. And worrywarts for years have been concerned about the radiation from handheld devices. Gwyneth Paltrows lifestyle site, Goop, asks, Are Cell Phones and WiFi Signals Toxic? The city of Berkeley, Calif., passed a Right to Know measure in 2015 that requires all cellphone stores to warn buyers that the devices emit radiation. Even if the science isnt firm, if theres a risk, we should proceed with caution, Berkeley City Council member Max Anderson told the New York Times at the time.

But scientists have never established a direct link between cellphones and cancer, as even the WHO admitted. The groups fact sheet, issued at the same time as its classification, says, To date, no adverse health effects have been established as being caused by mobile phone use. Researchers have yet to definitively rule out suggestions that phones can increase cases of two types of brain cancer, a malignant form called glioma and a benign form called acoustic neuroma, but a definitive causal link has never been found. And the National Cancer Institute says there has been no significant increase in brain cancers in the past decade as cellphone use has increased.

Myth No. 2

Smartphones are a luxury

that poor people dont need.

The perception that smartphones are beyond the reach of the poor surfaces in political debates about government-subsidized phones. Critics of the Lifeline program  incorrectly nicknamed the Obama phone program  that provides subsidies for cellphone service have been particularly shocked that it can be used to reimburse smartphone use. The federal government should only be providing services for emergencies. You and I, taxpayers, shouldnt be paying for cellphones so someone can have a social life, then-Rep. Tim Griffin (R-Ark.) told the Daily Caller in 2012. I just dont think its appropriate. More recently, critics of aid to Syrian refugees have pointed to photos of them holding their smartphones, asking how dire their situation could be if they still had a means to snap selfies.

But the dropping price of smartphones has put these devices in reach of many more people. Companies such as Motorola and Chinese manufacturers Huawei and OnePlus have focused on selling affordable phones, particularly in the international market. The Pew Research Center reported that, as of last year, 54 percent of people across 21 emerging and developing countries reported using the internet at least occasionally or owning a smartphone. In Malaysia, for instance, where the median monthly income is about $1,130 , Pew found that 65 percent of people had a smartphone.

Smartphones have become a daily necessity, not just a perk for the middle class. For many low-income families, as the Commerce Department found, the devices provide the only reliable access to the Internet  which they need to apply for jobs or do homework, among other things. This spring, the department reported that 29 percent of online households with family incomes below $25,000 only used mobile Internet service at home, compared with 15 percent of those households with incomes of $100,000 or more.

Whats more, in crisis situations, smartphones have become the most reliable way to get information, apply for aid and find a place to live. Time magazine, which called smartphones a lifeline for refugees, asked a man from Syria which was more important, food or power? He answered without hesitation: Charging my phone.

Myth No. 3

Smartphones make you more productive.

How does your smartphone make you feel? Productive was the most common answer (followed by happy) among respondents asked to link their phones to an emotion in Pews 2015 study on smartphone use. Productivity is a big selling point for smartphone makers. Samsungs ad campaign for its latest smartphone trumpets the virtue of being busy, busy, busy  and explains how the device can help buyers stay that way.

But tapping away at your smartphone all day doesnt necessarily mean youre getting things done. A study released in August, commissioned by the security firm Kaspersky Lab, found quite the opposite. Researchers from the Universities of Wurzburg and Nottingham-Trent asked 95 participants to perform tasks with their phones placed in their pockets, on their desks, in a locked drawer or outside the room. As the phones got farther away, productivity levels went steadily up. Overall, those whose smartphones were outside the room performed 26 percent better on the tests than other participants did.

Myth No. 4

Smartphones make usdumb and antisocial.

It seems intuitive, especially considering the glazed, vacant-eyed stares on most peoples faces when they use their phones. And think of all those selfie-related fatalities. Researchers at Microsoft grabbed headlines when they found that the average human attention span had dropped from 12 seconds in 2000 to eight seconds in 2015  less than that of a goldfish  and that digital media use helped contribute to that decline. The coverage practically writes itself: Are smartphones making us dumber? asked one from the Huffington Post. Butterfly brain: why smartphones are making us stupid, read another from the Telegraph.

But theres nothing inherent in smartphones that turns us into dunces. When it comes to actual intelligence, some studies suggest that they in fact make us smarter. Researchers studying the Flynn effect  a trend that suggests IQ overall has been improving over the years  in people older than 50 say mobile phones and computers seem to contribute considerably  to peoples ability to stay in intellectually demanding jobs for longer periods of time. On average, test scores of people aged 50+ today correspond to test scores from people 4-8 years younger and tested 6 years earlier, researcher Valeria Bordone told Science Daily.

There are certainly cases in which digital media can prompt isolating behaviors; more and more researchers treat excessive smartphone and Internet use as an addiction. But that doesnt necessarily make users antisocial. In fact, smartphones enable us to speak more with close friends and relatives than ever before, as well as to meet new people and organize social events. A 2015 Pew study showed that coordinating plans and talking to family and friends were the second and third most common uses for smartphones, behind finding information.

Myth No. 5

Smartphones are killing retail stores.

For many pundits, its a foregone conclusion: Online sales will supplant brick-and-mortar shops. Retail guys are going to go out of business, and ecommerce will become the place everyone buys, tech investor Marc Andreessen said in 2013. You are not going to have a choice. When Amazon announced that it was making a smartphone with special shopping features in 2014, Salon said it was chief executive Jeff Bezoss path to kill off brick-and-mortar retail, once and for all. (Bezos also owns The Washington Post.)

There is no denying that smartphones have altered the way we shop and that online shopping provides competition for the traditional storefront. But about 90 percent of purchases are still made in stores. Often, stores and smartphones have developed a symbiotic relationship, as retailers experiment with ways to incorporate mobile shopping into in-person shopping. One example is the rise of in-store pickup programs, which give customers the convenience of mobile shopping and the immediacy of real-world shopping  all without the shipping times. Meanwhile, Amazons smartphone, which was designed so that shoppers could bypass stores altogether, was discontinued after about a year.

Mobile shopping is on the rise  up 30 percent between the holiday seasons of 2014 and 2015, according to IBM  but brick-and-mortar stores are also popular with young people. An August report from eMarketer found that teens prefer shopping in a real store for just about everything apart from games. Perhaps shopping in a store will become the next hipster trend.

Twitter: @htsuka

Five myths is a weekly feature challenging everything you think you know. You can check out previous myths, read more from Outlook or follow our updates on Facebook and Twitter.
A New York Times report sheds new light on the close ties between Donald Trumps campaign chairman and Kremlin cronies in Ukraine and elsewhere  the Atlantic, Aug. 15. U.S. investigating potential covert Russian plan to disrupt November elections  The Post, Sept. 6. Wouldnt it be nice if we actually got along, as an example, with Russia?  Donald Trump, July 27.

Good grief.

One of the years most underreported stories is the Kremlins covert efforts to influence our presidential election  a development with potentially far-reaching impact on our nations security. That U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement agencies are reportedly investigating this broad Russian operation in the United States is reassuring. Voters heading to the polls, however, ought to be aware of the threat.

To be sure, my view of the former U.S.S.R. and todays Russian Federation is rooted in both my military service and my work as a sworn federal law-enforcement officer with responsibility for the security of State Department personnel and sensitive information.

I was a newly minted U.S. Army second lieutenant on active duty in 1961 when President John F. Kennedy activated some 150,000 reservists in preparation for military conflict with the Nikita Khrushchev-led Soviet Union over the status of Berlin.

On Sept. 7, during a town hall event hosted by MSNBC, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump stated he would have a good relationship with Russian president Vladimir Putin. It wasnt the first time he's been friendly towards him. (Adriana Usero/The Washington Post)

I was the duty officer on the October 1962 evening when the cable arrived at my upstate New York military post raising our alert status. Elsewhere, B-52s went on airborne alert for strikes within the Soviet Union, and plans were developed for a strike on Cuba. It was a crisis brought on by the discovery of Russian attempts to place nuclear missiles in Cuba. Thirteen days on the brink of nuclear war.

There was nothing abstract about the Cold War.

In August 1968, we watched from the U.S. Embassy in Bonn as Soviet-led Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia to break the back of the reform movement there.

It wasnt only what we saw, but also what we knew, that convinced us Russia was a chief adversary. There was the fact of Soviet-bloc agents embedded in West Germany surrounding our diplomatic missions. It was a country filled with Soviet-controlled spies out to obtain classified information through the recruitment of our staff or the technical penetration of our facilities.

Donald wouldnt it be nice if we actually got along with Russia Trump undoubtedly will put down this column as a throwback to days long gone. Its now a Russia led by Vladimir Putin, a man who Trump gushed is so highly respected within his own country and beyond.

Espionage sagas are things of the past, the man who lavishes praise on KGB veteran Putin might say.

He would be wrong.

The U.S.S.R.s annexation of the Baltic States in the 1940s has nothing on Putin. Recall Russias annexation of Crimea in 2014.

The KGB may be gone, but Russian foreign intelligence, operating with the initials SVR, is thriving.

Proof: Evgeny Buryakov, the Russian agent who, beginning in 2012, operated undercover as a banker in New York City gathering intelligence, trading coded messages with other Russian spies who sent clandestinely collected information back to Moscow. He was caught, was indicted and pleaded guilty in March.

Theres the reported Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee and the release of 20,000 DNC emails. Jumping to Putins defense, Trump said at NBC News Wednesday night national security forum, Well, nobody knows that for a fact. Tell that to the intelligence community.

Then there was the temporary elevation of Paul Manafort to Trump campaign chairman  the same Manafort who helped elect former Kremlin puppet Viktor Yanukovych president in Ukraine. After Yanukovych failed to sign a European Union trade deal, he fled protests in Ukraine for Putins Russia  and his ouster sparked Russian intervention in Ukraine.

The same Manafort whose Trump campaign team at the Republican convention in Cleveland, my Post colleague Josh Rogin reported, orchestrated a set of events to make sure that the GOP would not pledge to give Ukraine the weapons it has been asking for from the United States.

With media attention drawn to allegations of secretive payments for his Ukraine work  which he denies  Manafort quit the campaign.

Then theres Trump himself.

Reports The Post: There is strong evidence that Trumps businesses have received significant funding from Russian investors.

Turn over the keys to Trump, who mingles with Putins Russian oligarchs, hustles business opportunities in Moscow, blithely looks past Putins annexation of Crimea, and glosses over the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its support for Iran and Bashar al-Assad in Syria? Who says the NATO-member Baltic states can count on our help only if threatened by Russia if they have fulfilled their obligations to us ? Who says of Russian election meddling: Im not going to tell Putin what to do?

No wonder Putin, covert manipulator of the West, smirks.

In Donald Trump, Russia will never have had it so good.

Something voters may wish to think about.

Read more from Colbert Kings archive.
The writer is a contributing editor to The Post.

The surge of populist right-wing parties in Europe has now damaged the standing of the continents most important leader, German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Worse, the rise of movements fueled by nationalistic and racist programs signals that a core ethos of the European-American alliance vital to global stability for seven decades is threatened by extremist politics on both sides of the Atlantic.

There are many tangible factors in the lurch to the narrow nationalism reflected in Britains vote to quit the European Union, the defeat of Merkels conservative forces by the three-year-old Alternative for Germany party in a key state election last Sunday, and the earlier rise of such movements in Poland, Hungary, France and elsewhere.

These factors include a backlash to economic dislocation caused by globalization, the floodtide of refugees coming from Syria and other failed states on Europes southern periphery, and the terrorist outrages committed by the Islamic State and other jihadist forces.

But there is an intangible factor as well that merits close attention in this turbulent U.S. political season. It is the waning of the cohesion and steadying influence brought by the large U.S. military, commercial and cultural commitment to a vulnerable Europe since 1945  the steady weakening of an American ideal of engaged internationalism that was absorbed into the intellectual bloodstream of post-war Europe as the Old and New Worlds joined to rebuild a devastated continent and confront a clear Soviet menace.

That internationalist ideal was clearly imprinted on the still-war-damaged Europe I first saw in 1961 and which I was to study and work in, or frequently visit, since.

The United States was, after all, originally a nation that proudly stated as its purpose the absorbing of the worlds tired . . . poor . . . huddled masses yearning to breathe free. It supported with troops, defense spending and active public diplomacy the spirit of a broad internationalism that was the opposite of the European chauvinistic hatreds that had triggered two world wars. The founders of what is today the European Union saw the United States as a model for the community they wanted to build.

The European idea of a certain America helped discourage the breeding of bitter nationalistic politics and anti-immigration stances, as did of course the memories of the recent conflagrations.

This is not to claim that the United States itself ever fully lived up to the ideal that, for a time at least, helped Europe find its way. American disasters abroad, running from Vietnam to Iraq, and continuing racial and social strife at home, have left the United States in no position to lecture other nations in moralistic terms or tones.

That is to my way of thinking Europes misfortune as well as Americas. This years stomach-turning U.S. presidential campaign threatens to remove us as a model for anybody elses politics. By the standards set by Donald Trump, the Alternative for Germanys fear-mongering nativism is politics as usual, not an evil to be quashed.

The right-wing party finished ahead of Merkels Christian Democratic Union in elections for the legislature of the Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, a northern state known for its shipyards and quiet beaches and for being the chancellors political home base.

The AfD  its initials in German  won 20 percent in the state, and is polling around 14 percent nationally. The incumbent Social Democratic Party maintained its leadership of the state legislature, making Merkels defeat largely symbolic. But that will handicap her ability to fill the appalling leadership vacuum that exists today in Europes major capitals.

Meanwhile, Trump would have us believe that the American ideal is fading globally solely because of President Obamas weak foreign policy. Obamas strategic retrenchment and initial benign neglect of Europe did contribute to the problem. But the long-term redistribution of economic power globally, to Americas detriment, and the American publics fatigue with distant wars and entanglements weigh much more heavily on historys scales than do Obamas policies.

In any event, Trumps remedies would only accelerate the erosion of alliance cohesion. The enthusiastic wheeler-dealerism he promises to establish with Russian President Vladimir Putin  a hero to Frances Marine Le Pen and other European ultra-rightists who subscribe to notions of racial and national superiority  will force politically volatile European nations to scramble to strike their own bargains with Russia.

Count on a European stampede toward Moscow  and an even more precipitous swing to the nationalistic right in European politics  if Trump is declared the winner here in November. That moment would also mark the final burial of that American ideal of internationalism that helped to make Europe a more prosperous and peaceful continent for the second half of the 20th century.
LIBERTARIAN PRESIDENTIAL nominee Gary Johnson embarrassed himself Thursday when he was asked about the epicenter of Syrias civil war and responded, What is Aleppo? The moment, on an MSNBC morning program, deserves to become iconic because it encapsulates why Mr. Johnson is not fit to be president. His disregard for U.S. foreign policy and strategic interests is so profound that he did not recognize a reference to Syrias largest city, which, for several years, has been the site of intense fighting, massive war crimes and an ongoing humanitarian crisis that has, with its tidal wave of refugees, rocked prime U.S. allies in Europe.

But lets be fair to Mr. Johnson: In the context of the 2016 presidential campaign, hes far from winning the cluelessness contest. Following his gaffe, the former New Mexico governor offered a relatively cogent summary of U.S. support for various Syrian factions. Later, he apologized, saying that he thought Aleppo was an acronym. I feel horrible, he said to Bloomberg Politics. I have to get smarter, and thats just part of the process.

Its refreshing, at least, to hear a national candidate acknowledge error and vow to do better. Contrast that with Donald Trump, who in a televised national security forum Wednesday offered a staggering array of ignorant and mendacious assertions  and acknowledged no regrets about any of them. In addition to repeating his false claims to having opposed the U.S. interventions in Iraq and Libya, Mr. Trump defended a tweet saying that military sexual assault was the result of men and women serving together, and he suggested the solution was to set up a court system within the military because right now, the court system practically doesnt exist. Does he really mean to replace the U.S. military justice system?

At least that would be easier than Mr. Trumps plan to take the oil of Iraq: Just we would leave a certain group behind, and you would take various sections where they have the oil. The jaw-dropping imbecility of this idea surely would make even Mr. Johnson wince.

Most troubling of all was Mr. Trumps renewed endorsement for Vladimir Putin, in spite of the mounting evidence that the Russian government is attempting to directly interfere in the U.S. election campaign. Confronted with a litany of Mr. Putins offenses, including the military actions in Ukraine and Syria and the computer hack of the Democratic National Committee, Mr. Trump responded, Do you want me to start naming some of the things that President Obama does at the same time?  as if there were equivalent U.S. actions.

Appearing on MSNBC's "Morning Joe, Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson was asked what he would do about Aleppo if he were elected president. Johnson replied, What is Aleppo? Here's what he needs to know. (Jason Aldag/The Washington Post)

He is really very much of a leader, Mr. Trump said of a man who has overseen the murder of his domestic political opponents and critical journalists, the rigging of elections, a global campaign of disinformation and a foreign policy whose first aim is to increase Russian influence at U.S. expense.

Mr. Johnson may not know what Aleppo is. But in the contest between the United States and an autocratic and increasingly belligerent Russia, Mr. Trump appears not to be sure which side he is on.
The president of the United States lands with all the majesty of Air Force One, waiting to exit the front door and stride down the rolling staircase to the red-carpeted tarmac. Except that there is no rolling staircase. He is forced to exit  as one China expert put it rather undiplomatically  through the ass of the plane.

This happened Saturday at Hangzhou airport. Yes, in China. If the Chinese didnt invent diplomatic protocol, they surely are its most venerable and experienced practitioners. Theyve been at it for 4,000 years. They are the masters of every tributary gesture, every nuance of hierarchical ritual. In a land so exquisitely sensitive to protocol, rolling staircases dont just disappear at arrival ceremonies. Indeed, not one of the other G-20 world leaders was left stranded on his plane upon arrival.

Did President Xi Jinping directly order airport personnel and diplomatic functionaries to deny President Obama a proper welcome? Who knows? But the message, whether intentional or not, wasnt very subtle. The authorities expressed no regret, no remorse and certainly no apology. On the contrary, they scolded the media for even reporting the snub.

No surprise. Chinas ostentatious rudeness was perfectly reflective of the worlds general disdain for Obama. His high-minded lectures about global norms and demands that others live up to their international obligations are no longer amusing. Theyre irritating.

Foreign leaders have reciprocated by taking this administration down a notch knowing they pay no price. In May 2013, Vladimir Putin reportedly kept the U.S. secretary of state cooling his heels for three hours outside his office before deigning to receive him. Even as Obama was hailing the nuclear deal with Iran as a great breakthrough, the ayatollah vowed no change in his policy, which remained diametrically opposed to U.S. arrogant system. The mullahs followed by openly conducting illegal ballistic missile tests  calculating, correctly, that Obama would do nothing. And when Iran took prisoner 10 American sailors in the Persian Gulf, made them kneel and broadcast the video, what was the U.S. response? Upon their release, John Kerry publicly thanked Iran for its good conduct.

President Obama traveled to China and Laos to attend the G20 and ASEAN conferences. Along the way there were more than a few times when the geopolitical discourse surrounding the events became awkward. (Jason Aldag,William Wan/The Washington Post)

Why should Xi treat Obama with any greater deference? Beijing illegally expands into the South China Sea, meeting only the most perfunctory pushback from the U.S. Obama told CNN that he warned Xi to desist or there will be consequences. Is there a threat less credible?

Putin annexes Crimea and Obama crows about the isolation he has imposed on Russia. Look around. Moscow has become Grand Central Station for Middle East leaders seeking outside help in their various conflicts. As for Ukraine, both the French president and the German chancellor have hastened to Moscow to plead with Putin to make peace. Some isolation.

Iran regularly harasses our vessels in the Persian Gulf. Russian fighters buzzed a U.S. destroyer in the Baltic Sea. And just Wednesday, a Russian fighter flew within 10 feet of an American military jet. The price they paid? Being admonished that such provocations are unsafe and unprofessional. An OSHA citation is more ominous.

Add to that American acquiescence not just to ransoming hostages held by Iran, but to delivering the loot by unmarked plane filled with stacks of cold (untraceable) cash, like a desert drug deal. Why the stealth? Obviously to conceal the manner of the transaction from Congress and the American public. Some humiliations are so grotesque that even the Obama team cant miss it.

Now the latest. At the G-20, Obama said he spoke to Putin about cyberwarfare, amid revelations that Russian hackers have been interfering in our political campaigns. We are more technologically advanced, both offensively and defensively, in this arena than any of our adversaries, said Obama, but we really dont want another Cold War-style arms race.

Instead, we must all adhere to norms of international behavior.

It makes you want to weep. This KGB thug adhering to norms? He invades Ukraine, annexes Crimea, bombs hospitals in Aleppo  and we expect him to observe cyber-code etiquette? Rather than exploit our technological lead  with countermeasures and deterrent threats  to ensure our own cyber-safety?

1 of 56 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  What Obama is doing on his final trip to Asia as president View Photos President Obama travels to China for three days to attend the Group of 20 economic summit and then a first presidential visit to Laos. Caption President Obama travels to China for three days to attend the Group of 20 economic summit and then a first presidential visit to Laos. Sept. 8, 2016 President Obama speaks to the media during a news conference at the landmark Mekong Riverside Hotel in Vientiane, Laos. Nyein Chan Naing/European Pressphoto Agency Wait 1 second to continue.

Were back to 1929 when Secretary of State Henry Stimson shut down a U.S. code-breaking operation after it gave him decoded Japanese telegrams. He famously explained that gentlemen do not read each others mail.

Well, comrade, Putin is no gentleman. And hes reading our mail.

Read more from Charles Krauthammers archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.
NORTH KOREAS fifth nuclear test, on Friday, its largest yet, prompted South Koreas president to describe North Koreas ruler, Kim Jong Un, as spiraling out of control. Theres a basis for that: In defiance of mounting international sanctions, the Kim regime has now staged two nuclear tests in nine months, along with a steady stream of illegal missile launches. As South Korean leader Park Geun-hye put it, the young dictator is not listening to any words from the international community or neighboring countries in his attempt to cling to power.

It could be, as some South Korean analysts suggest, that the Kim regime is cracking  there have been several significant defections recently, and a senior official was reportedly shot by a firing squad several weeks ago. But more likely, Mr. Kim is firmly in control and overseeing a breakneck drive to develop a nuclear arsenal capable of directly threatening the United States. Pyongyang claimed the latest test confirmed its ability to produce miniaturized warheads capable of fitting on a missile  like the intermediate-range rockets North Korea has been testing. The last launch, just over two weeks ago, came from a submarine.

Western analysts used to dismiss North Koreas tests as political stunts, meant to impress the domestic audience, capture international attention and leverage aid. Though the latest detonation came on a national holiday, that explanation is looking implausible. As it has frequently said publicly, the regime now aims to be recognized as a nuclear power and to acquire the ability to deter not just South Korea and Japan, but also the United States.

President Obama reiterated Friday that the United States does not, and never will, accept North Korea as a nuclear state. But Mr. Obama has failed to take the North Korean buildup seriously enough. For years, his administration pursued a policy of strategic patience, which mostly consisted of ignoring North Korea while mildly cajoling China to put more pressure on the regime. In February, Mr. Obama signed into law a bill pushed by congressional Republicans that gave him broad new powers to sanction North Korea and cut off its economic lifelines. The next month, the United Nations Security Council unanimously passed a resolution imposing new sanctions on the regime, including limits on its trade.

However, China has not aggressively implemented the U.N. sanctions  and Mr. Obama has not used the powers Congress gave him. As The Posts Anna Fifield recently reported, customs data shows that Chinas trade with North Korea in June was almost 10 percent higher than the previous year, in spite of the sanctions. Though the White House has issued executive orders sanctioning Mr. Kim and other senior leaders, congressional leaders point out that it has yet to penalize any Chinese companies or banks for continuing to do business with the regime.

The latest test will prompt some in the West to argue that the sanctions strategy isnt working  which is exactly what the Kim regime (and China) wants. In fact, as the Iran nuclear diplomacy shows, sanctions can get results, but only if they are very tough and sustained over several years. Thats the strategy that Mr. Obama, and the president who succeeds him, need to embrace.
While I have always been ashamed of and horrified by our nations history of slavery, I must take exception to not only Courtland Milloys Sept. 7 Metro column, Sorry, Georgetown: Slave apology misses big picture, but also Georgetown Universitys ham-handed attempt to provide restitution for something that happened almost 200 years ago.

At that time slavery was legal, and w hat Georgetown did was acceptable under the social norms of the period. If everyone who has ever been wronged, according to the more enlightened standards of a future age, should be compensated, everyone would be eligible for compensation. Many of my relatives were murdered in the Holocaust. Should I sue Germany? What should I demand? Why not sue Egypt for enslaving my ancestors 3,000 years ago?

As much as I deplore the sad history of slavery and Georgetowns participation in it, all its officials really needed to do, if anything, was to issue the following statement: We are ashamed of what our predecessors did. Today we are doing everything we can to ensure equal and compassionate treatment of all human beings and pledge to continue to do so as long as we exist as an institution.

There has to be a reasonable statute of limitations on such things, otherwise, why not, for example, also compensate descendants of the Native Americans who were murdered and displaced from the land where the university was subsequently established?

Norman Dovberg, Reston
Dina Temple-Raston is NPRs Counter-terrorism correspondent and the author of four non-fiction books, including The Jihad Next Door: Rough Justice in the Age of Terror.

Not long ago, a former National Security Agency director sat down with a mathematician who had come to work for him  and a pop quiz quickly ensued.

Whats the most important thing about encryption? the mathematician asked the head of the NSA.

Scrambled text, his boss replied, thinking that preventing the enemy from reading a coded message was paramount.

Wrong, the visitor said. The single most important thing is attribution.

"Cyberspies: The Secret History of Surveillance, Hacking, and Digital Espionage" by Gordon Corera (Pegasus)

Attribution is so important, he continued, because only one person can give the order to fire nuclear weapons  the president  so it is critical to know that the order is coming from him and no one else.

Whats the second most important thing about encryption? the mathematician continued.

Scrambled text, the director said hopefully.

No. It is the integrity of the data. Thats because, he explained, a corrupted message, with a single digit wrong, could cause a nuclear missile to be launched at the wrong target.

So begins just one of the fascinating episodes that appear in BBC journalist Gordon Coreras terrifically engrossing new book, Cyber Spies: The Secret History of Surveillance, Hacking, and Digital Espionage.

In this new digital age, he reports, scrambling a message so someone cant read it  once the staple of any self-respecting spy organization  doesnt even rank in the top four most important things about encryption. In Coreras telling, non-repudiation and availability (a system that cant go down) have become much more important than what was traditionally a top priority: writing a message others cant read.

The NSA director story offers an important glimpse into the challenges facing modern-day spies. Computers may offer new, clever ways to hide messages and steal secrets, but Corera argues that they cut both ways. Few outside the intelligence world understand the extent to which spies in the US and Britain percieve technology as an existential threat to their work, Corera writes. An arms race is on between spy services to exploit technology. Only those who adapt will survive.

Cyber Spies goes a long way toward making sense of this evolution. The account is chronological, so it is blissfully easy to follow. It opens inside the barracks of Bletchley Park, as Corera masterfully re-creates the anguish Britains code-breakers felt as they tried to unravel German code during World War II.

He chronicles the accidental release of the first global computer virus, known as the Morris worm  unleashed by an unsuspecting MIT student in November 1988 (theres a twist here, but I wont ruin it). Theres a simple equation here, Corera writes, explaining why such an event was inevitable. The easier you made it for machines to talk to one another, the easier you made it for something bad to spread among them.

As the BBCs security correspondent, Corera clearly has developed a knack for dissecting the complicated and making it comprehensible. Some of the books most powerful sections explain some infamously complex hacks, from Stuxnet, the cyberattack that destroyed centrifuges in an Iranian nuclear facility, to North Koreas foray through Sony Pictures servers, to Chinas alleged ingestion of some 21 million government personnel files from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

Had Cyber Spies been given a fall publication date instead of a summer one, Corera is sure to have included the latest breach: the hacking of email systems at the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. While U.S. officials have yet to say publicly that Moscow was behind the intrusion, Corera helpfully presents readers with an easy guide to international hackers.

Chinas programmers are said to employ well-known tools; Russians are more likely to write their own code, Corera reports. Chinas hacking is often sloppier and easier to spot (hence all the attention), while Russias hackers are more expert and operate below the radar.

He provides a crafty but sinister example in which Russians began trolling for information about a particular executive whom the intelligence services had determined was gay but not out of the closet. The hackers then sent him an email from a gay rights organization which they suspected he would open since it looked as if it was sent to him, but in fact held malware, Corera writes. They then counted on the fact that, even if the executive did suspect it was malware, he would not be willing to go to his companys IT department or security team for fear it would reveal his sexuality. This is classic, high level, targeted Russian espionage.

Russian hackers also differ from Chinese ones, Corera reports, in that it is widely understood that leaders in Moscow will leave them alone on two conditions: first, that they dont attack Mother Russia, and second, that when the state calls upon them, they will do its bidding.

It has even been claimed that Russian hackers who are convicted are offered the chance to work for the intelligence services rather than go to jail, he writes. All of this would provide a significant but also largely deniable capability for the Russian state, wielded in conjunction with intelligence services.

Not to be outdone, the United States and Britain also have their own hacking teams. Britains elite cyberspies are part of the Government Communications Headquarters Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group, and, Corera writes, they have moved beyond simply gobbling up an enemys data.

They also have the capacity to deny, disrupt, degrade or deceive a target online, he writes. This might involve taking an opponents computer offline, or it could involve manipulating information using all the old-fashioned tricks. . . . This is what spies have always done. But now they do it online.

One effort called, rather colorfully, Operation Cupcake involved changing an article in an al-Qaeda publication. Instead of a recipe for a bomb that would help would-be jihadists build a device on their own, the Brits had its content replaced with garbled code which proved to be recipes for cupcakes.

Cyber-sabotage is becoming increasingly common. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter has made clear that cyberattacks on the Islamic State will be a major part of the operation to retake the Iraqi city of Mosul. He has talked about disrupting the groups command and control, to cause them to lose confidence in their networks, to overload their network so they cant function. Carter told NPR in an interview that this was something thats new in this war. He added, without providing detail, that some of the cyberattacks will be surprising when they are finally made public.

Surprising to some, maybe, but perhaps less so to readers of Cyber Spies. In laying out such an accessible, comprehensive history, Corera has prepared us for the future  when espionage, diplomacy, science and technology all come crashing ashore. He makes clear that when the power of computers is fused with the imagination of the human mind, anything  for good or ill  can happen.
IF DONALD TRUMP were treated like an ordinary presidential candidate, the speculations swirling around an illegal donation his charitable foundation gave to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi (R) might dog his campaign from now until Election Day. The situation smells of influence-buying. Even if one takes Ms. Bondis explanations seriously, the facts already on the record are damning.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (D) sued Trump University and other Trump-affiliated for-profit educational ventures in 2013. Subsequently, the Trump family donated to Ms. Bondi. Around the same time, the Donald J. Trump Foundation also gave $25,000 to a political committee backing Ms. Bondis campaign.

Ms. Bondis office could easily have taken up a case similar to Mr. Schneidermans. Trump University and the Trump Institute, another Trump-related enterprise, were very active in Florida. The attorney generals office had reportedly received dozens of complaints about Trump-associated educational entities in 2008. According to a spokesman, staff in Ms. Bondis office reviewed the Schneiderman allegations to see if they have any relevance to Florida. Yet Ms. Bondis office did not launch an investigation or file a lawsuit.

A Bondi spokesman told the Associated Press that Ms. Bondi did not know about complaints regarding Mr. Trumps educational companies when she solicited the $25,000 donation. Ms. Bondis associates have also said that someone else made the decision not to investigate Trump University and the Trump Institute.

It is possible that is true. But, given Mr. Trumps bragging that he regularly bought politicians to serve his own ends, it seems unlikely he gave to Ms. Bondi for principled reasons. Even if Ms. Bondi did not know she was being bought, it is a good bet that was Mr. Trumps intention. Either way, Ms. Bondis office abandoned desperate people who claim they were scammed by Trump-associated educational companies. After that  and a fancy, Trump-subsidized gala at Mr. Trumps Mar-a-Lago resort  she became an early surrogate for Mr. Trump during this presidential race.

At the very least, the news should remind voters of two of the many disqualifying elements of Mr. Trumps record. First is the scandal of Trump University and the Trump Institute, sleazy operations that took thousands of dollars from poor, uneducated and credulous people who thought they would learn the secrets of the real estate business. Many report getting little to nothing for their money. This is among the pieces of evidence suggesting that Mr. Trump is not a brilliant businessman but a shameless hustler.

Voters should also see how Mr. Trump once again attempted to use his charitable foundation, which other people have funded over the past several years, for his own personal ends. The $25,000 he transferred from the foundation to Ms. Bondi was an illegal donation; charitable groups cannot give to campaigns. The Internal Revenue Service only recently fined Mr. Trump for this transgression because a supposed clerical error made it seem legitimate. Even if that mistake were genuine, why was Mr. Trump attempting to use money meant for charity to fund a political campaign?

These points, among others, suggest that Mr. Trumps penchant for lying and deception does not end with relatively harmless campaign-season overstatement. It is a business strategy, and it has real-world consequences.
The Two Rivers Public Charter School sitting at corner of Florida Avenue and 4th Street NE. (Mark Gail/THE WASHINGTON POST)

Richard Whitmire is a senior fellow at the Kauffman Foundation and the author of The Founders: Inside the revolution to invent (and re-invent) Americas best charter schools.

Not long ago, I traveled to Los Angeles to report on the charter school fights there. Nasty business. Then I visited Boston to report on its battle over lifting the lid on charters. More nasty business.

And then I returned to the District, where exactly nobody is fighting over charters. How can that be?

Isnt this the city where everyone fights about pretty much everything every day of the year? And yet, while the rest of the country seems to be tossing pitchforks over charters, here in the District, theres peace in the land.

Not only is there peace, but at times charter schools and District schools intermingle, cooperating or collaborating on issues such as common enrollment and discipline.

Is there a secret sauce here that other cities could use to heal battle wounds?

After talking with a wide range of D.C. educators, I came up with some answers.

1. Whos your daddy?

The daddy in the District is the author of D.C.s charter law: Congress, which rode to the rescue when schools were flat-out awful and parents desperately needed alternatives. The law was written with students in mind  in most cases, education policy gets passed with adults interests in mind. Charters were allowed enough flexibility to succeed and enough accountability to weed out the worst schools. Baked to perfection.

2. Who says money cant buy happiness?

Educators in other states are astonished when they learn how much the District spends per student and how much teachers get paid. The District has the highest first-year teacher salary in the country. The very best can be making a six-figure salary within seven years.

As for per-pupil spending, the exact figure is hard to come by, but it ranks at the top of the nation: Including facility spending, an estimate is slightly more than $18,000 for charter students and more than $22,000 for traditional D.C. Public Schools students.

3. Political leaders morphing into education activists.

Okay, so no one was all that surprised when then-Mayor Adrian Fenty (D) laid down the gauntlet as an education revolutionary, first by winning mayoral control of schools, and then by bringing in firebrand chancellor Michelle Rhee.

But then-Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D), who beat Fenty partly based on the perception that he was going to sweep the schools clean of those fierce Rhee reforms, changed course once he won. The Rhee reforms didnt look so bad, and Rhees deputy, Kaya Henderson, seemed like the perfect chancellor. Against all odds, the Rhee reforms won a continuance. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) has kept the thread alive.

4. Benevolent dictators are benevolent.

Scott Pearson isnt really a dictator, although he may seem that way to struggling charter school operators begging for just another year to turn things around. Pearson runs D.C.s Public Charter School Board, regarded as among the leading authorizers in the country.

Being the best means dispensing tough love: The board closed 20 charter schools over the past five years, including 15 for low academic performance.

Thats just a taste of how Pearson polices the charter sector: His mystery shopper campaign, in which investigators pose as prospective parents, helps ensure that charters dont exclude certain children. The boards campaign to change expulsion and suspension rates produced dramatic decreases in both.

Another result of his fairness campaign: Compared with DCPS schools, the charters here serve a higher percentage of poor kids, higher percentage of African American students and nearly as many special-education students.

5. A weak union getting weaker.

In Los Angeles and Massachusetts, the anti-charter campaigns are being led by strong, charismatic union leaders. In L.A., the union increased dues by a third to fight charters.

In the District, the Washington Teachers Union (WTU) struggles to get its members to vote in union elections. And Rhee exercised unique powers granted to a D.C. chancellor to impose a teacher evaluation system based partly on student outcomes and to lay off teachers based on a lack of merit rather than a lack of seniority.

6. Cant fight over shared facilities if youre not sharing.

In New York and L.A., much of the tension bubbles up over laws mandating that school districts offer co-located space in underused school buildings. In the District, co-location is not part of the law.

7. Safety in numbers.

With nearly half of D.C. students in charters, challenging the charters gets tough. Who would tell Ward 8 parents they couldnt send their kids to Achievement Prep or the Rocketship charter?

Thats probably what keeps the powerful American Federation of Teachers out of D.C. school politics. Not only does AFT President Randi Weingarten have a weak partner in the WTU, but a white union president trying to stir up a cap-the-charters movement here radiates the wrong racial optics.

8. Relative racial peace.

Nationally, the NAACP and Black Lives Matter have embraced the union position on charters: Cap them. But nary a peep locally. Here, thankfully, there have been no police-shooting tragedies. Also, here, a fair number of African American leaders send their children to charters.

9. Nothing perpetuates success like success.

D.C. charters are really good. Stanford Universitys Center for Research on Education Outcomes found that charters in the District add an average of about 70 days of learning in reading compared with traditional school students and 100 days in math.

10. D.C. leaders put children first.

Say what you will about Rhee, but there was never a question about who got protected first, the bureaucracy or the students. Same for Henderson, and ditto for Mayors Fenty, Gray and Bowser.
On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, I was driving on the Long Island Expressway, heading out to a friends house to spend a few weeks working on a book. An hour into my drive, I switched from music to news and listened with horror to reports that two large passenger planes had crashed into the World Trade Center. I turned around instantly, realizing that my sabbatical was over. So was Americas.

Its difficult now to recall the mood of the 1990s. The Cold War had ended, overwhelmingly on American terms. A world that had been divided into two camps, politically and economically, was now one. Dozens of countries from Latin America to Africa to Asia that were once staunchly socialist were moving toward capitalism and democracy, embracing a global order they once decried as unjust and imperial.

America in the 1990s was consumed by talk of economics and technology. The information revolution was just taking off. I try to explain to my children that only two decades ago, much of the world that seems indispensable today  the Internet, cellphones  did not exist for most people. In the early 1990s, AOL and Netscape gave everyday Americans the chance to browse the Internet. Until then, the revolutionary technology that had broken down government censorship and opened access to information in the communist bloc was  the fax machine. Explaining its effects, the strategist Albert Wohlstetter had written an essay for the Wall Street Journal titled The Fax Will Make You Free.

What few of us recognized at the time was that one part of the world was not being reshaped by these winds of change  the Middle East. As communism crumbled, Latin American juntas yielded, apartheid cracked and Asian strongmen gave way to elected leaders, the Middle East remained stagnant. Almost every regime in the region, from Libya to Egypt to Syria, was run by the same authoritarian system that had been in place for decades. The rulers were mostly secular, autocratic and deeply repressive. They had maintained political control but produced economic despair and social paralysis. For a young man in the Middle East  and there was a surfeit of young men  the world was moving forward everywhere except at home.

Into this void entered political Islam. There had always been preachers and thinkers who believed that Islam was not just a religion but a complete system of politics, economics and law. As the Arab worlds secular dictatorships produced misery, more and more people listened to ideologues who had a simple slogan  Islam is the answer  by which they meant a radical, literalist Islam. The seductiveness of that slogan is really at the heart of the problem we still face today. It is what drives some young, alienated Muslim men (and even a few women) not just to kill but  far more difficult to understand  to die.

Where do things stand now? Since that day in September 2001, the United States has waged two major wars, embarked on dozens of smaller military missions, built a vast bureaucracy of homeland security and established rules and processes all meant to protect the United States and its allies from the dangers of Islamist terrorism.

Some of these actions have protected the United States and its allies. But the striking change that has taken place across the Middle East is that stability has been replaced by instability. The United States intervention in Iraq might have been the spark, but the kindling had been piling up high. The Arab Spring, for example, was the result of powerful demographic, economic and social pressures pushing up against regimes that had lost the ability to respond or adapt. Growing sectarianism  Shiite vs. Sunni, Arab vs. Kurd  had reshaped the politics of countries such as Iraq and Syria. When the repressive ruler was toppled  Hussein, Saleh, Gaddafi  the entire political order unraveled and the nation (a recent creation in the Arab world) itself fell apart.

The challenge in defeating the Islamic State is not really about vanquishing it on the battlefield. The United States has won battles like that for 15 years in Afghanistan and Iraq only to discover that once U.S. forces leave, the Taliban or the Islamic State or some other radical group returns. The way to have these groups stay defeated is to help Muslim countries find some form of politics that addresses the basic aspirations of their people  all their people. The goal is simple to express: to stop waves of disaffected young men from falling into despair at their conditions, surfing the Web and finding within it the same old slogan  Islam is the answer. When those young men stop clicking on that link, that is when the war on terrorism will be won.

Read more from Fareed Zakarias archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.
The United States has had better weeks than the one just past.

Only days away from the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates convened for what was dubbed the Commander-in-Chief Forum, sponsored by NBC News and hosted by Where in the world is Matt Lauer?

Indeed.

And then there was the Libertarian candidate, Gary Johnson, whose spaceship apparently had just landed in the middle of Earths 2016. Appearing Thursday on Morning Joe, he responded to Mike Barnicles question about Aleppo with, And what is Aleppo? Barnicle might as well have said it was an Italian coffeemaker and moved on.

At the forum, we learned that Lauer apparently just got wind that Clinton used a private email server because he devoted fully one-third of her allotted time to questions about the email, which has been investigated exhaustively, including by the FBI, for about two years. Otherwise, we learned that Clintons top counterterrorism goal is to defeat the Islamic State, which failed to awaken any of the thousands of people who requested an induced coma until after Nov. 8.

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and her Republican opponent Donald Trump answered questions on national security and foreign policy Sept. 7 during a commander-in-chief forum on NBC News. (Video: NBC News/Photos: Melina Mara/Post, Mike Segar/Reuters)

From Trump we learned that he built a great company, which was news to us, and that he has a plan for defeating the Islamic State but hes not about to tell anyone because he might win the election and then the terrorists would know that he intends to ask his top generals for a plan.

We also learned, because weve never heard this before, that the U.S.-led Iraq invasion was a mistake that Clinton once favored and that Trump did not, except that he did. But who, pray tell, ever cared what Trump the New York real estate developer thought about our military plans for Iraq? Why not just ask Joe the doorman at 30 E. 76th Street? Or the cashier at Madison Avenues 3 Guys Restaurant?

Today, lets face it, everybodys against it after they were for it.

Clinton seems to have abandoned even her qualifying trope for voting for the Iraq invasion  based on the intelligence we had at the time. At the forum, rising from her seat, she simply and solemnly intoned that it was a mistake.

This was a noteworthy moment, obviously premeditated in anticipation of the question, and seems to have been choreographed to convey statesmanlike buck-stops-here gravitas. A curious choice when speaking to the military audience gathered and an unqualified obscenity to the ears of families whose loved ones perished. Why not use the opportunity to say that as commander in chief, her first order of business would be to ensure no such intelligence failure ever happens again?

Similarly curious was Trumps response outlining his qualifications to command the military: Ive built a great company. For real? He missed an obvious opening to say something thoughtful and original that highlights what he has over his opponent  a record of dealmaking and negotiation. He had a chance to create a new narrative: If war is a failure of diplomacy, then Trump could say hes uniquely qualified to use his talents to end all wars.

This isnt necessarily so, but it sure beats his usual campaign Big Talk about nukes and jingoism. Instead, he essentially finessed the forum by saying so little of substance that no ones the wiser and his supporters can continue to invent whatever fantasy narrative gets them through the night. Including, it would seem, that its okay for the Republican nominee to blow kisses at Vladimir Putin, whom Mitt Romney long ago, and to much eye-rolling, identified as our greatest geopolitical foe.

Not to Trump, who declared Wednesday that Putin is a far better leader for Russia than Barack Obama has been for the United States.. Never mind that Putin  former KGB officer, aggressor, oppressor, autocrat and, yes, dictator  leads in part by ensuring that his opponents cease breathing. Is this really Trumps idea of leadership? What could go wrong?

To distill the week: Clinton proved herself knowledgeable, if foggy, and experienced in public affairs, as well as in artifice and deceit. Trump is a substance-free figment of his own imagination, whose stated reason for running for president is that he thinks he can win. Finally, Johnson is a former governor who stopped smoking pot to run for commander in chief because a crow landed on his shoulder in the New Mexico desert and whispered in his ear that he should.

Missing Romney yet?

Read more from Kathleen Parkers archive, follow her on Twitter or find her on Facebook.
There are many better reasons to oppose Donald Trump than his rampant sexism. But the brazenness of Trumps recent comments, and the not-so-subtle piling on by the Republican National Committee, demand some attention. The remarks are worth noting not only because of what they tell us about Trump & Co., but also because they illustrate some of the gender-based challenges that Hillary Clinton confronts as she seeks to become the nations first female president, and that she would continue to face in office.

At NBCs Commander-in-Chief Forum on Wednesday night, Trump was asked about his 2013 tweet on sexual assaults in the military: What did these geniuses expect when they put men & women together?

There is only one possible answer when questioned about this tweet: That was dumb, and I retract it.

It will not surprise you that was not Trumps response. It is a correct tweet, he told Matt Lauer. Trump went on to call for more prosecutions, but that does not begin to address the ignorant sexism behind his geniuses remark.

Sure, its easy to avoid claims of sexual assaults if you exclude women from the military  or from the workplace, for that matter. But keeping women out of jobs for which they are qualified isnt the solution, nor is the answer to blame the victim of sexual assault for her presence on the scene. The fault of sexual assault lies with its perpetrator, not with the fact that enlightened public policy created the possibility.

After Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton spoke at a national security forum Sept. 7, RNC Chair Reince Priebus criticized her in a tweet for having "no smile" and looking "uncomfortable." Here's how she responded. (The Washington Post)

As Post fact-checker Michelle Ye Hee Lee noted, the Pentagon report that Trump was citing actually found that 50 percent of the episodes involve assaults of men, mostly by other men. But the more fundamental point is this: In Trumps world, the smart solution would be to segregate the sexes, and keep the women out.

That was only the latest. This week already had brought Trump proclaiming that Clinton doesnt look presidential, does she, fellas? And, in case anyone could have failed to take that as the gender putdown, conscious or subconscious, that it was, Trump rephrased it the next day, I just dont think she has a presidential look. And you need a presidential look.

Hmmm, what about Clinton looks different from all those other, um, fellas? Hint to Trump: If youre down by 23 points among white women with college degrees, maybe this isnt the smartest move.

Trumps sexism should no longer be surprising. This campaign alone, we have had his references to Megyn Kellys blood coming out of her wherever, his disparaging of Carly Fiorinas looks (Look at that face. Would anyone vote for that?) and his Mad Men attitude toward sexual harassment (find another career or find another company).

What is surprising, at least given his partys deficit with female voters, is that Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus would so blithely join in. @HillaryClinton was angry + defensive the entire time  no smile and uncomfortable, he tweeted. Really? Would Priebus complain about a male candidates failure to smile?

Im not arguing that this was intentionally demeaning, rather that it was unintentionally revealing of a double standard. Girls are supposed to be nice. Nice girls smile pleasantly. Clinton does not smile pleasantly. Therefore she is not a nice girl. And while nice guys may finish last, girls face risks either way.

For women, there is an elusive, pardon the phrase, sweet spot, between too meek and too tough, too frivolous and too serious. For a would-be first female president, even for one who has been a senator and secretary of state, that balance is even harder to find. Its hard to be likable enough.

Thus the Clinton campaigns move Thursday, in a post on the blog Humans of New York, to explain  womansplain?  her seeming emotional inaccessibility, recalling how male students heckled her when she was taking the LSATs, complaining that she had no business taking their spots in law school.

I know that I can be perceived as aloof or cold or unemotional, Clinton said. But I had to learn as a young woman to control my emotions. And thats a hard path to walk. Because you need to protect yourself, you need to keep steady, but at the same time you dont want to seem walled off. And sometimes I think I come across more in the walled off arena.

Sigh. Barack Obama is aloof. Mitt Romney wasnt exactly warm and fuzzy. The country may be on the verge of electing the first female president. But as this campaign demonstrates, shattering that glass ceiling will still leave a lot of cleanup work to even the gender playing field.

Read more from Ruth Marcuss archive, follow her on Twitter or subscribe to her updates on Facebook.
Fifteen years after one of the most vivid and violent days in American history, there is still a debate over what the events of Sept. 11, 2001, actually mean.

For some individuals, it is clear enough. They experience horrible, continuing and unrecoverable loss  the immense absence of friends and family chosen for death at random or led there by duty.

But the place of these events in our national life remains disputed in a way that, say, Pearl Harbor was not. No one accused President Franklin D. Roosevelt of overreacting to the Imperial Japanese threat. This charge, however, is routinely made in assessing the war against terrorism  that the United States overreacted in the surveillance of citizens; in the pursuit, interrogation and killing of enemy combatants; and in the use of the military to confront emerging threats. After the killing of Osama bin Laden in particular, some in the Obama administration seemed to regard the threat of terrorism as diminished, contained and manageable.

This viewpoint  while offering important corrections  has become dramatically less credible with the collapse of sovereignty at the heart of the Middle East; with ongoing mass atrocities against civilians in Syria; with a refugee crisis that incubates resentment and now shakes the foundations of the European Union; and with the establishment of a physical place  a quasi-state  that claims to be the Islamic caliphate. The second-largest city in Iraq has been controlled by a terrorist organization for more than two years. And the existence of this faux caliphate, according to security expert Juan Zarate, has rejuvenated [terrorism] networks in Europe, in Southeast Asia, in the Middle East and elsewhere that were previously suppressed.

Clearly, national passivity  as a matter of conviction or indecision  can also invite serious strategic and moral challenges.

Yet this argument against inaction is becoming dated in some respects. President Obama has returned military advisers to Iraq and slowly escalated the U.S. commitment to the defeat of the Islamic State. (There are several thousand U.S. troops now in Iraq and Syria.) Progress is being made in significant increments. Obama is attempting to shape an American role that offers intelligence, coordination and air power while building up the capabilities of allies and proxies. The effort has been limited and late  perhaps too late in Syria  but developing this sort of capacity is the correct goal dictated by the correct question: How does the United States exercise maximum military influence without the risks of invasion and occupation?

And the Obama administration has devoted increasing, useful attention to the ideological battle against Islamist extremism. In one respect, the propaganda produced by the Islamic State has a narrow goal  produce volunteers to fight for, operate and populate its sad excuse for a caliphate. The effort, at its height, produced perhaps 40,000 foreign recruits. As the likelihood of dying on terrorist vacation has increased, recruitment has slowed. And efforts to counter Islamic State propaganda have skillfully employed defectors who describe menial work, desperate conditions and disappointed expectations.

One response by the Islamic State to military reverses has been to call for terrorist attacks in place  claiming that Muslims can demonstrate their fidelity by shooting up a local nightclub or running a truck into a crowd. This approach is not new. But the Islamic State, according to Zarate, has made it a core part of their strategy.

In some ways, fighting a geographic caliphate is the kind of thing the United States does best, applying deadly force with great precision. But disputes about theology and identity are unfamiliar terrain for the U.S. government. Violent Islamists dont require mass appeal. They set out, via social media and the Deep Web, to exploit the angry, damaged and vulnerable. Identifying the radicalized involves attention to individuals by family members, peers and imams. And it requires an atmosphere of trust between the FBI and the Muslim community.

In this context, the argument by the Republican presidential nominee that America is too engaged in the world and too soft on Islam is utterly, dangerously wrong on both counts. When he proposes a religious test at the border, or demonizes Muslim refugees, or calls for the murder of the families of terrorists, he feeds social division, alienates important allies, materially complicates the war on terrorism and puts our country at additional risk.

Fifteen years on from 9/11, the main task remains the ideological and religious isolation of the enemy  placing them on an island of unholy cruelty. A war of civilizations  the war they want  will not be won.

Read more from Michael Gersons archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook .
Janis Owens, a novelist and folklorist, is author of The Cracker Kitchen: A Cookbook in Celebration of Cornbread-Fed, Down Home Family Stories and Cuisine. Her most recent novel is American Ghost.

Im a native of Florida. Yes, the place where news of the weird seems to have been invented. In just the past two weeks: A woman in Ocala announced that shes challenging the Guinness world record for longest tongue  at four-plus inches, with a YouTube video to verify the claim. And in Vero, adventuresome travelers in search of that perfect Oz vacation can rent an Airbnb room in the former Indian River Correctional Institution. They can sip lattes in the yard or sharpen a shiv whilst binge-watching Downton Abbey.

Among Floridians, this wackiness is almost a point of pride. In my case: I really was bitten by a brown recluse spider. We do own 20 lush acres so pockmarked by sinkholes that in the rainy season theres the possibility that the sandy soil will spontaneously open and well find ourselves dog paddling in the aquifer below. My father really did have two fingers chopped off in a childhood accident, and he kept them in a bottle of moonshine in the closet so he could bury them with the rest of his mortal remains. And when he died, I really did call my sister-in-law and tell her that wed have to bury him without his fingers, because I couldnt find them anywhere. I said it with exasperation and conscious irony, as it was true and it was weird, and thats the way we like it here in Florida.

[White Trash  a cultural and political history of an American underclass]

"Oh, Florida!: How America's Weirdest State Influences the Rest of the Country" by Craig Pittman (St. Martin's )

In his book Oh, Florida! Craig Pittman delivers a convincing case that Floridas reputation for off-the-chain zaniness is not only historically accurate but an evolving carnival of delight. Pittman has deep roots in the state, and his joyous deconstruction is offered with the humor, zest and storytelling skill of a roomful of uncles telling tall tales at a family funeral.

Pittmans modern Florida is a multicultural catch-all: a sunny refuge for the desperate and the desperately insane, who in every aspect of life, sooner or later, seem to let their freaky flags fly. The stories are loosely gathered into chapters (The Gunshine State; Confederacy of Dunces) and packed with all manner of hilarious factoids and unlikely anecdotes, taken straight out of local police blotters (the fugitive was caught because he responded to people who were making fun of his wanted poster on the Pasco County Sheriffs Facebook page.)

Embedded in this roll call of insanity are brief, bright revisionist histories of all the usual suspects in official Florida history: fierce aboriginals, lost conquistadors, colorful but apparently mythic pirates in Tampa Bay. Pittman, a columnist for the Tampa Bay Times, doesnt shy away from calling foul on the outright fabrications (too many to name) but for the most part seems to revel in the madness. Though he never strays far from his lust for the laughable, a good many lesser-known heroes emerge in Floridas checkered past, including Robert Hayling, a black dentist in St. Augustine who instigated and survived one of the worst episodes in the history of U.S. civil rights, and John Gorrie, the seriously under-celebrated inventor of the air conditioner.

Pittmans Florida is a hovering oasis of natural beauty, created by God but gilded by man for the pleasure of the tourist, the gawker, the desperate transplant, who come to the state with the expectation of a gonzo, one-of-a-kind experience. Oh, Florida! proves the state is still well up to the task.
A federal grand jury has indicted a 48-year-old Nebraska man on child pornography charges, according to a court filing unsealed Thursday.

Brian A. Farrar was charged with one count of receiving child porn, an offense alleged to have occurred Dec. 1, 2015, the indictment said.

The indictment's second count charges him with possessing child porn on March 29 of this year.

Further details of the charges weren't disclosed in the indictment, and federal prosecutors didn't respond to a request for comment.

Farrar worked as a security supervisor in the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services Children and Family Services' division, according to a department spokeswoman.

Farrar's last day with the department was Thursday, the spokeswoman said.

She didn't address the allegations in the indictment.

Attempts to reach him for comment Thursday were unsuccessful.
The Supreme Court on Friday refused to let Michigan enforce a ban on casting straight-ticket ballots in the coming election after lower courts found the prohibition was likely to discriminate against African Americans and result in long lines at the polls.

The justices declined to get involved in a controversy that began when the states Republican leadership passed a bill to end 125 years of straight-ticket voting, which allows a voter to choose all the candidates of a desired party by casting a single vote.

The Supreme Court gave no reason for its decision to turn down Michigans request that it be allowed to enforce the ban. But the decision was another sign that it will be difficult for those bringing election controversies to the court in advance of November to prevail.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. said they would have granted the states request but also did not reveal their reasoning.

[Without conservative Supreme Court majority, voting law opponents make gains]

Last week, the court deadlocked on North Carolinas request to use a strict voting measure that an appeals court had found deliberately discriminated against African Americans. The law will not be in place for the coming elections.

In Michigan, voters have twice rejected attempts to abolish straight-ticket voting.

But the legislature in late 2015 did just that, joining 40 other states that do not allow the practice. The state said eliminating the option increased the chance that a voter would not overlook nonpartisan issues on the ballot and also would make a more informed vote by examining the credentials and values of each candidate.

[Supreme Court wont let North Carolina use strict voting law]

But Democrats said the action by the states Republican leadership, including Gov. Rick Snyder, was partisan. The black labor organization, the A. Philip Randolph Institute, and Common Cause sued, saying the law was meant to discourage minority voters who overwhelmingly choose Democrats.

A district judge and then a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit agreed, saying the elimination of the procedure would slow the voting process and create long lines in precincts where African Americans are most likely to vote. They also held that the new state-approved ballot, which could be construed to make voters think straight-party voting was still allowed, was confusing.

The courts agreed the law would not likely survive constitutional challenge, might violate the Voting Rights Act and could not be used in the coming election.

The challengers presented unrebutted evidence in the record demonstrating that [the law] will increase the time that it takes to vote, particularly in African-American communities where straight-party voting is prominent and where lines are often already long, wrote Circuit Judge Karen Nelson Moore. The district court also found that the law was likely to increase voter confusion and miscast ballots. Although this burden is not severe, it is also not slight. In the face of this burden, the state has offered only vague and largely unsupported justifications of fostering voter knowledge and engagement.

The Michigan news organization MLive.com found in a survey that about half of Michigan voters in 2012 used the straight-ticket option. About 30 percent of voters chose the Democratic Party using the option, while a little under 20 percent chose Republicans, according to the survey.

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette, a Republican, had urged the Supreme Court not to allow lower courts to prevent the state from doing what other states have done.

Having voters actually cast a vote for their chosen candidate  rather than blindly voting for all candidates of a party  is the very act of voting, so it cannot rationally be characterized as a burden on the right to vote, he wrote in his petition to the court.

The challengers said the suit was not claiming a constitutional right to straight-ticket voting. It is about the unconstitutional consequences for millions of voters of eliminating this option in the unique context of Michigan elections, they told the court.
At a news conference the day after MSNBC's Sept. 7 national security forum, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton wondered, "What would Ronald Reagan say about a Republican nominee who attacks America's generals and heaps praise on Russia's president?" (The Washington Post)

At a news conference the day after MSNBC's Sept. 7 national security forum, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton wondered, "What would Ronald Reagan say about a Republican nominee who attacks America's generals and heaps praise on Russia's president?" (The Washington Post)

On Thursday, the full force of the Democratic Party, including President Obama, rallied around Hillary Clinton, saying that rival Donald Trump is unfit for office.

On the Republican side, there was no such unity as lawmakers struggled with how to respond to the GOP nominees claim that Russian President Vladimir Putin was a stronger leader than Obama.

And both parties fiercely criticized the role of the media in an election that is testing time-worn theories on how to cover presidential campaigns, aiming much of their fire Thursday at the performance of NBCs Matt Lauer in moderating a foreign-policy forum this week.

Taken together, Thursdays events offered a glimpse of where the final two months of the campaign appear to be headed, as the contest tightens and anxiety in both parties grows over the nominees chances and the possible impact on House and Senate races down the ballot.

Senior Republicans such as House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) tried to avoid commenting directly on Trumps claim that Putin has been a leader, far more than our president has been a leader. Trump had also said at the NBC forum Wednesday night that he welcomed compliments from Putin and praised the Russian leaders poll numbers. Trump then appeared Thursday on RT, a Russian state-funded television company, where he criticized U.S. foreign policy and the U.S. political press corps.

On Sept. 7, during a town hall event hosted by MSNBC, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump stated he would have a good relationship with Russian president Vladimir Putin. It wasnt the first time he made that claim. (Adriana Usero/The Washington Post)

When asked about the praise of an autocratic foe over the sitting U.S. president, Ryan said only that Putin is an aggressor that does not share our interests and that the Russian president is acting like an adversary.

[The first Clinton vs. Trump showdown of 2016, annotated]

Other top Republicans were less reserved.

Other than destroying every instrument of democracy in his own country, having opposition people killed, dismembering neighbors through military force and being the benefactor of the butcher of Damascus, hes a good guy, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) quipped about Putin.

Graham, a former presidential candidate, has often sparred with Trump and is one of his most vocal critics. This calculation by Trump unnerves me to my core.

The GOP responses were a far cry from Obamas warm embrace of Clinton. Speaking at a news conference in Laos on Thursday, Obama said Trumps behavior is unacceptable and outrageous and warned that it has become normalized in this election. He said the media had insufficiently scrutinized Trumps claims and behaviors but said he thinks voters will make a good decision.

I dont think the guys qualified to be president of the United States, and every time he speaks, that opinion is confirmed, Obama said. There is this process that seems to take place over the course of the election season where somehow behavior that in normal times we consider completely unacceptable and outrageous becomes normalized, and people think we ought to be grading on a curve.

1 of 57 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail View Photos The Democratic presidential nominee hits the road after her partys national convention. Caption Hillary Clinton loses to Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. Nov. 9, 2016 Hillary Clinton speaks in New York while her husband, former president Bill Clinton, applauds. Melina Mara/The Washington Post Wait 1 second to continue.

Clinton herself was intent on keeping Trumps controversial comments alive. Speaking before boarding her campaign plane en route to North Carolina, Clinton said Trump had failed once again to come off as a credible commander in chief and said it was scary to hear him praise Putin.

Meanwhile, bizarrely, once again, he praised Russias strongman, Vladimir Putin, even taking the astonishing step of suggesting that he prefers the Russian president to our American president, Clinton said. Now that is not just unpatriotic and insulting to the people of our country as well as to our commander in chief, it is scary.

[Trump praises Putin at national security forum]

Clinton also dinged Trump for his discussion of what he has been told during intelligence briefings, which he receives as the GOP nominee. During the forum, Trump said the briefers had intimated that Obama and others did not follow the advice of the experts  an impression Trump said he gathered in part from the body language of his briefers.

I think what he said was totally inappropriate and undisciplined, Clinton said Thursday.

As he often does, Trump took to Twitter in response: Hillary just gave a disastrous news conference on the tarmac to make up for poor performance last night.

His running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, also came to Trumps defense during a television interview.

I think its inarguable that Vladimir Putin has been a stronger leader in his country than Barack Obama has been in this country, Pence told CNN. And thats going to change the day that Donald Trump becomes president of the United States of America.

Meanwhile, some members of the media were caught in the middle. Lauer was widely panned Thursday by journalists and political strategists, who said he should have been better prepared to challenge the candidates on misleading claims they made during the Wednesday night forum, which was held at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York.

The criticism elevates the stakes for the moderators of the presidential debates  the first of which will be held in three weeks  to prepare for their performances in front of millions of live viewers watching on their television screens.

Democrats accused Lauer of focusing too intently on questions over Clintons handling of a private email server while secretary of state and for failing to challenge Trumps bogus claim that he opposed the Iraq War from the beginning. Republicans, meanwhile, said Lauer failed to ask Clinton several key questions about her tenure as the State Department.

On Iraq, Trump stuck with his false claim of opposition to the Iraq War, which he has repeated throughout his campaign. Fact checkers have repeatedly debunked the assertion, citing recorded comments before and after the invasion.

Iraq is one of the biggest differences in this race, Trump said Thursday during a campaign event in Cleveland. I opposed going in  and I did oppose it, despite the media saying, Oh, yes, no. I opposed going in. . . . But I was opposed to the war from the beginning, long after my interview with Howard Stern.

During an interview on Sterns radio show on Sept. 11, 2002  before the war  Trump responded affirmatively when asked if he supported it. He later praised the 2003 invasion on another show as a tremendous success.

[Fact Checker video: Donald Trumps far-reaching but false claim about the Iraq War]

Democrats and their liberal allies fired salvos at Trump on Thursday on several fronts, from the Iraq claim to his defense of a 2013 tweet in which he suggested that sexual assaults in the military were inevitable when they put men & women together.

But it was Trumps praise of Putin, a major U.S. foe, that garnered most of the attention. Trumps surrogates on the Hill scrambled to either dismiss Trumps admiring take as so much noise in the wind  as Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.) put it  or to attempt to cast Trumps approach as strategic.

You know, maybe hes playing to Putins ego, said Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), emerging from a meeting of the GOP nominees surrogates Thursday morning. Russia is a threat, and I think Mr. Trump may be playing it very smart with how he addresses Mr. Putin.

Other lawmakers were concerned about the idea that Trump welcomes praise from Putin. He said in the forum that when he calls me brilliant, I think Ill take the compliment, okay?

You know, flattery can be used as a tool that sometimes bears very negative fruit, said Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who was once on the shortlist to be Trumps vice-presidential nominee. One has to be careful about letting flattery affect ones relationship with a person or a country.

In a campus visit Thursday afternoon at historically black Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, Clinton urged young people to vote. Early voting by mail begins Friday in North Carolina, a battleground where Clinton leads Trump by 1.2 percentage points in the latest RealClearPolitics average.

She criticized what she said are deliberate Republican attempts to stymie voting in the state and railed against the states law requiring transgender people to use restrooms corresponding to the gender on their birth certificate.

But much of her address was an amplification of her earlier attack on Trump for what she called insulting answers during the forum the night before.

Its hard to forget what Trump did last night. It was a test, and he failed it, Clinton said.

He denigrated active-duty military and praised Putin, she said.

People who have sacrificed and spent their lives protecting our country, valuing what makes us exceptional and already great, see Donald Trump and know he should not be anywhere near the White House, she said.
The GOP presidential nominee is out on the trail ahead of the general election in November.

The GOP presidential nominee is out on the trail ahead of the general election in November.

What Donald Trump is doing on the campaign trail

What Donald Trump is doing on the campaign trail

Donald Trump claims that Hillary Clinton lacks the strength or the stamina to run the country. He questioned in a tweet this week why the media was not covering a coughing fit she had at a rally in Cleveland. His partys chairman scolded her for not smiling enough.

And Trump has insisted that the former senator and secretary of state does not resemble a commander in chief: I just dont think she has a presidential look.

The escalating attacks by Trump and his allies on Clintons vigor and appearance are providing new fodder for critics who say the real estate developer is trafficking in sexist stereotypes and fueling false Internet rumors in attempts to undermine his Democratic rivals image with voters.

Many Republican strategists warn that the approach is perilous for a GOP nominee who already has low standing among women across the political spectrum, saying his jabs could resonate in a negative way for those who have encountered similar put-downs from men in their own lives.

After Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton spoke at a national security forum Sept. 7, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus criticized her in a tweet for having "no smile" and looking "uncomfortable." Here's how she responded. (The Washington Post)

For women who have had to put up with inappropriate suggestions about their appearance or stamina, it probably doesnt sit really well when they come out of the mouth of a presidential candidate, said GOP pollster Whit Ayres, who is not supporting Trump.

Jackson Katz, author of the book Man Enough? Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and the Politics of Presidential Masculinity, said Trump is using a tactic similar to one he employed against his opponents in the Republican primary contest, when he mocked former Florida governor Jeb Bush as low energy and belittled little Marco Rubio. With Clinton, that approach also appears to implicate her gender.

This attack on Hillary Clintons stamina, her energy, her health is a way of attacking her virility or vigor without coming at it directly, Katz said. Donald Trump is playing on the anxieties of a lot of men and women who are uncomfortable with the notion of a woman as a president.

Trump campaign officials did not respond to requests for comment. But Kellyanne Conway, his campaign manager, told MSNBC last month that Trumps remarks pale compared with the personal derision he fields from Democrats.

Somehow its okay for them to insult this guy six ways to Sunday, every chance they get, and if he shoots back with one comment, its Ahh, look at him, hes attacking a woman, hes taking on her health,  she said.

The rumors that Clinton is hiding a medical condition are being aggressively pushed by conservative sources. The conspiracy website Infowars, pointing to an unclear photograph, published a story this week suggesting that Clinton was wearing an earpiece so that someone could feed her answers during a live NBC presidential forum Wednesday night. Donald Trump Jr., one of the candidates sons, tweeted a link to the story Thursday morning. There is no evidence of an earpiece in numerous photos from the event, and the Clinton campaign said there was no such device.

Earlier in the week, Donald Trump Jr. said questions about Clintons health were fair game.

Twice this week, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump went after Democrat Hillary Clinton for her physical health. Heres how that claim checks out. (Sarah Parnass,Julio Negron,Osman Malik/The Washington Post)

This is a person that, again, has a track record of not taking that phone call at 3 oclock in the morning, he told radio host Mike Gallagher, a dig at a Clinton television ad from her 2008 presidential campaign. You need somebody who is going to be able to do this. Listen, if there is something that no one is ever going to say, its my father doesnt have the energy to do this job.

[Trump praises Putin at national security forum]

Donald Trumps running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, has also been emphasizing the real estate developers strength, praising him on the trail as a man with broad shoulders.

The GOP candidate has been taking swipes at Clintons energy level for much of the year, describing her as exhausted and sleeping too much, citing no evidence. He routinely complains about the sound of her voice, at one point calling it very shrill.

The 70-year-old business executive has only intensified his remarks about his 68-year-old rivals physical fitness in recent weeks. She doesnt have the strength or the stamina to make America great again, he told supporters in Phoenix last week.

In an interview with ABC News on Monday, Trump maintained that Clinton does not look the part, saying: You need a presidential look. You have to get the job done.

The liberal group Emilys List rushed to turn his words against him, tweeting images of Trump and comments he has made about women with the hashtag #ThatPresidentialLook.

Women know exactly what he means when he thinks he is being coy about these attacks, and its just one more reason why we dont trust and dont like Donald Trump, said Marcy Stech, a spokeswoman for the group.

Rob Stutzman, a Sacramento-based GOP consultant, said Trump could have avoided giving his opponents an opening if he had been more careful with his language.

When there is the first woman nominee and her male opponent is saying she doesnt look presidential, of course that can be taken as a reference to gender, he said.

If done with some nuance, you can raise reasonable questions about your opponents health, but Trump doesnt have any nuance, so its been this brutal sledgehammer declaring she is unfit, Stutzman added. A smart campaign would have a reasonable third party raising those questions in a respectful way.

[Trumps claim that Clinton lacks the physical stamina to be president]

Instead, some of Trumps surrogates have gone even further than him, promoting unsubstantiated or debunked theories about Clintons health.

I do know that there are 14, 15 videos of her that show her in very, very strange condition, former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, a close adviser to Trump, told MSNBCs Chris Matthews on Thursday.

On Friday, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.) told attendees at the annual Values Voter Summit in Washington that Hillary Clinton is mentally impaired and has special needs because of a 2012 concussion.

The speculation about Clintons health ratcheted up with the Sept. 2 release of documents summarizing an interview she gave the FBI this summer as part of its investigation into the handling of classified information. Clinton told agents that she could not recall every briefing she received following the concussion, which she suffered in a 2012 fall, the documents show.

I think we need to know if shes healthy, conservative host Sean Hannity said on his radio show Tuesday. She doesnt seem to have a lot of energy. If she had that bad of a concussion that she cant remember, I think we have a right to know if theres any other damage in there, right?

His guest, former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), concurred: Has that recovered? Does she now have a better memory? . . . Theres a lot of questions that come out of all this that are kind of weird, frankly.

Clintons team has dismissed such suggestions, accusing Trumps campaign of peddling deranged conspiracy theories.

[How Hillary Clinton can get that presidential look]

On Monday, Clinton told reporters that a recent persistent cough was due to seasonal allergies. Asked whether it would feed into rumors about her health, she said: Im not concerned about the conspiracy theories. There are so many of them Ive lost track . . . and so I pay no attention to them.

Among the unfounded rumors circulating online is that one of Clintons Secret Service agents is actually a doctor who carries a Diazepam pen in case she has a seizure. The Secret Service has said the supposed doctor is an agent who was probably carrying a flashlight.

Although both candidates have released letters from their personal physicians attesting to their health, neither has provided the kind of extensive medical records that Sen. John McCain did during his 2008 bid. The Republican from Arizona, then 71, made more than 1,000 pages of medical documents available to reporters, including details about the care he received while fighting cancer.

Clinton has released a two-page letter from her doctor detailing her current health, medical history, medications and family medical history, as well as her recovery from the 2012 fall.

Trump has distributed a four-paragraph letter from his doctor that contains few specifics but declares that he would be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency. The doctor, a gastroenterologist, has since said in interviews that he wrote the note in five minutes and purposely injected it with over-the-top language.

The Republican candidate told ABC this week that he will release his full medical records, reversing a long-held position that he would do so only if Clinton did first. Trump and his daughter Ivanka are scheduled to appear on The Dr. Oz Show next week to reveal his personal health regimen, the show announced Friday; it was unclear if that would include a medical-records release.
1 of 15 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  Where We Live | University Park in Prince Georges County View Photos With development swirling around it, this close-knit 80-year-old community has remained largely untouched. Caption With development swirling around it, this close-knit 80-year-old community has remained largely untouched. University Park is an incorporated town in Prince Georges County with a population of approximately 2,300 residents. Amanda Voisard/For The Washington Post Wait 1 second to continue.

Connie Visnic doesnt have to wonder what it might be like to live in the same town most of her life.

Except for attending college nearby at the University of Maryland, Visnic, now 40, has always lived in University Park, Md., a town in Prince Georges County with a population of approximately 2,300.

Its a very close-knit community, said Visnic, who is president of the University Park Civic Association and the mother of two children, ages 7 and 9. Its a real neighborhood, she said. Everybody watches out for one another.

Visnic would know. She is the third generation of her family to make University Park home. Her maternal grandparents came to University Park when Visnics mother was a teenager. And Visnic and her husband, Aaron, and their children live in her now-deceased grandparents house. Visnics parents live in a different house in town.

There are 924 houses in University Park, mostly built in the 1920s and 1930s. The town was incorporated in 1936.

The town feels like there is a little bubble over it, Visnic said.

[16th Street Heights offers a new vibrancy near Rock Creek Park]





People who grew up there return: Situated within a quarter mile of the University of Maryland, University Park has its own full-time mayor and a board of seven council members who govern the town as well as its own police force of eight officers.

There is no commercial development within the town but plenty of retail and a changing retail landscape just outside of University Park.

Its a residential oasis surrounded by areas that are developing, said Mayor Len Carey, who has lived in the town since 2004.

Quite a number of people who grew up in University Park are drawn back to the tree-lined streets and the University Park Elementary School they attended during their childhoods. They grew up here, went off for a few years, and are moving back into the neighborhood with their families, Visnic said. They remember growing up in this town and are moving back so their kids can enjoy the same thing.

In addition, a lot of new families have moved into University Park for the same reasons. Rebekah Benson-Flannery and her husband, Seth Benson-Flannery, bought a house in University Park in 2013 after living on Capitol Hill for seven years. We needed a bigger house, said Rebekah Benson-Flannery, 40, the mother of three children, ages 7, 4 and 2.

We like that the neighborhood has these older homes that are different, she said. This is a well-located town because you are near D.C.

Indeed, University Park is just two miles from the District line. Rebekah Benson-Flannery works at the nearby College Park Academy, a blended middle and high school, where she teaches 10th-grade English. Living in University Park means you can make a difference, she said. You feel like your voice is heard when you say something.

Her husband, a software developer, works in Rockville.

The town has definitely gotten younger and more diverse, Carey said.

Among the residents are University of Maryland faculty and staff as well as people who work in a variety of other professions and fields.

[Tucked away in McLean, Woodside Estates is a leafy enclave close to Tysons]

Some residents with young children are concerned about where their kids will attend middle and high school, though many find the University Park Elementary School couldnt be better.



A yellow-crowned night heron chainsaw sculpture was commissioned by the city as an alternative to removing dead trees. (Amanda Voisard/For the Washington Post)

A memorial for the victims of acts of terrorism and war was erected in the University Park town park. (Amanda Voisard/For the Washington Post)

The Interior Departments National Park Service named University Park a historic district. According to its documents, the Town of University Park and the historic district are nestled in a mature mixed hardwood forest of oaks, tulip, poplar, maples, sycamore and sweetgum, which from their size appear to predate the development of the town, founded in 1936.

Where to shop: For basic shopping, residents rely on a variety of places, including a new Safeway that has opened on East-West Highway, a Moms Market, a Giant and other retail outlets farther away, such as the Trader Joes on Colesville Road in Silver Spring.

Although a new development on Baltimore Avenue (Route 1) is in the works, it was not welcomed by everyone in the neighborhood. Some thought it would bring even more traffic to an already heavily traveled route. Yet some of those same people are looking forward to the opening of a Whole Foods Market, probably next year.

Living there: The neighborhood is bounded roughly by Baltimore Avenue (Route 1) to the east, East-West Highway to the south, Adelphi Road to the west and Wells Parkway, Clagett Road and Pineway to the north.

According to Jean Bourne Pirovic, an agent with Long and Foster Real Estate, in the past 12 months, 21 houses were sold in University Park, ranging from a four-bedroom, three-bath Colonial for $325,000 to a five-bedroom, three-bath Colonial for $648,000. There are two houses on the market: a four-bedroom, four-bath Tudor for $407,000 and a three-bedroom, three-bath Colonial for $389,500.



Local federal employees play soccer during their lunch break in the University Park town park. (Amanda Voisard/For the Washington Post)

Despite nearby change, University Park remains largely untouched. Part of it is because it has its own government, Visnic said. Generation after generation carries on the traditions.

Event planner Beth Domingo, who has lived in University Park for 24 years and raised four children in the town, calls it a hidden gem.

Transit: Public transportation includes the Prince Georges Plaza and College Park-University of Maryland Metro stations on the Green line, the F4 Metro bus and the Town of University Park shuttle.

Schools: University Park Elementary, Hyattsville Middle, Northwestern High, College Park Academy, Eleanor Roosevelt High.

Crime: According to University Park Chief of Police Michael Wynnyk, in the past 12 months, there were eight burglaries and one simple assault in the neighborhood.
The Washington Post's Anna Fifield reports on North Korea's fifth nuclear test and what it means for the region and one of Kim Jong Un's few remaining allies, China. (Jason Aldag,Anna Fifield/The Washington Post)

North Korea is touting technological progress in its nuclear program, saying after a nuclear test Friday that it can now produce smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear warheads of higher strike power. But it is also making strides in its missile program, analysts say  advances that could enable it to outsmart missile defense systems, which could make the missiles more attractive to potential customers.

North Korea conducted what it called a nuclear warhead explosion test Friday. The country has conducted only five nuclear tests since its program began, but this is the third since Kim Jong Un took power at the end of 2011 and its second this year.

[North Korea conducts fifth nuclear test, claims it has made warheads with higher strike power]

Under Kims leadership, North Korea has also sharply accelerated the pace of missile testing, with almost two dozen launches this year alone. While many of this years tests have not been successful and there are still many unknowns about North Koreas nuclear and missile programs, there have still been noticeable  and concerning  improvements.

It seems like North Korea is trying to qualitatively improve its missiles and develop options to evade or fool U.S. missile defenses, said Kelsey Davenport, director for nonproliferation policy at the Arms Control Association. If this continues unchecked, they could develop an intercontinental ballistic missile that could pose a threat to the United States in the next decade.

In its most recent salvo, North Korea launched three medium-range missiles Monday as China, which had joined the international condemnation of last months submarine-launched ballistic missile, was hosting the Group of 20 summit in Hangzhou.

The rockets flew about 600 miles  putting Hangzhou within range. But they were sent in the other direction, falling inside Japans air defense identification zone.

Arms control experts have since been poring over photos of the launches released by the North Korean media. Video footage, complete with stirring revolutionary music, shows three missiles being launched in the space of a minute from trucks parked on a highway south of Pyongyang.

[Everything you need to know about the North Korean nuclear test]

The location is within the security belt protecting Kim and the other regime elites in the capital, said Michael Madden, editor of the North Korean Leadership Watch website. That meant the drills could be simulating the collapse of the state or the presence of hostile forces within the country, he said.

Graphic: Produced by the Center for Nonproliferation Studies for the Nuclear Threat Initiative

But it was the modifications to the missile that surprised the rocket scientists at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif. It appears that North Korea has extended the distance a short-range Scud can fly, making it halfway between a Scud and a medium-range missile, which the North Koreans call the Rodong.

That means that a longer-range missile could be wheeled out on an existing Scud transporter  obviating the need to produce new trucks. Syria is among the countries thought to have bought short-range Scuds from North Korea, in about 2000.

This is a really nice upgrade, said Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program in Monterey. Countries looking to buy North Korean missiles are probably looking at this and thinking, Ooooh, thats nice. 

North Korea has been concentrating on developing road-mobile missiles that can be fueled in a shelter or tunnel, instead of on a traditional launchpad that can be detected by satellites  and theoretically invite a preemptive strike.

Japans self-defense forces did not detect Mondays launch in advance, the Nikkei newspaper reported. It said this underscored the limits of Japans traditional defense capability program.

In the past, when activity was seen around the launchpad, Japans self-defense forces would roll out Patriot Advanced Capability (PAC-3) interceptors at the Defense Ministry headquarters in Tokyo. But road-mobile missiles can be readied for launch in a matter of minutes, cutting the time available to respond.

Japan is very concerned that North Korea has launched so many different missiles in such a short period, said Atsuya Tanimoto of the Japanese Defense Ministrys intelligence analysis office. North Korea is improving its technology, he said.

North Korea also appears to be looking for other ways to avoid interception, no doubt motivated by South Koreas recent decision to host a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) antimissile unit for the U.S. military. The battery is due to be deployed to a site south of Seoul next year.

But by firing the three missiles within the space of a minute, rather than over the usual course of an hour or so, North Korea appeared to be testing a way to make it more difficult to intercept incoming missiles, said Joseph S. Bermudez Jr., chief analytics officer at AllSource Analysis, a Colorado-based consultant group.

This launch was probably designed to test not only operational readiness but to develop tricks to defeat antimissile defenses in Japan and South Korea, Bermudez said.

When you launch in a barrage at the same time, it complicates missile defense. So theyve shown they have not just the technological capability but the operational capability for simultaneous launches.

Furthermore, it appeared that the missile tested Monday separates after launch  making it harder for missile defense systems to intercept.

When a solid warhead remains attached to the missile, its easier to hit because its a bigger target, Lewis said. If you were in Egypt, staring at Israel, you might really like a warhead like this.

North Korea conducted its fifth nuclear test on Sept. 9, drawing strong condemnation from global leaders. ( / Reuters)

North Korea has not demonstrated any capacity to make a nuclear warhead small enough to attach to a missile, let alone the ability to deliver a nuclear-tipped missile to a target.

Still, the progress in its medium-range missile program follows observable advances in North Koreas quest to launch missiles from sea as well as from land.

[North Korea hails greatest success of submarine-launched ballistic missile]

North Korea was ridiculed for apparently Photoshopping a ballistic missile launch from a submarine in May. But last month it successfully launched a missile from a submarine near its east coast port of Sinpo. It flew about 300 miles toward Japan before falling into the sea.

This showed that its missile program might be progressing faster than originally expected, said John Schilling, an aerospace engineer who studies North Koreas missiles.

However, this does not mean it will be ready next week, next month, or even next year, he wrote in a commentary for the 38 North website.

But North Koreas submarine-launched ballistic missiles could be operational by the second half of 2018, he wrote.

Concurrent with making progress on its delivery systems, North Korea has also been refurbishing its old missile production infrastructure.

Kim has toured the January 18 General Machinery Plant, which makes sensitive missile components, several times over the past year. During one visit, he joked that it looked so good that visitors might think they were in a resort.

[U.S. policy on North Korea relies on China  and provokes it at the same time]

International sanctions imposed through the United Nations, as well as direct sanctions from the United States, South Korea and Japan, have been designed to cut off North Koreas ability to buy parts for its nuclear and missile programs, as well as stanch financial flows.

But the steady rat-a-tat of missile tests suggests that North Korea has plenty of missile parts to play with.

Some American officials suggest that North Korea might be racing against the clock, trying to test and make as much progress as it can before the latest round of sanctions really bites.

While Bermudez warned against getting too excited about the most recent developments, saying they simply reinforce what had been seen previously, Lewis said the developments should disabuse anyone of the notion that North Korea was not serious about its missile program.

Theyre testing at a really fast rate because the program is real, he said. The idea that this is a Potemkin missile program is just nonsense.

Read more:

North Korea fires 3 missiles as G-20 continues in China

North Korean missile lands perilously close to Japan

North Korean missile test a failure, Seoul says

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world
Islamic State militants who were killed during an attack in March were buried in unmarked graves in Ben Guerdane, Tunisia. (Lorenzo Tugnoli/for The Washington Post)

The flow of foreign fighters to the ranks of the Islamic State  once a mighty current of thousands of radicalized men and women converging on Syrian and Iraqi battlefields from nations across the globe  has been cut to a trickle this year as the groups territory has shrunk and its ambitions have withered.

The decline, officials and experts say, has been dramatic, prolonged and geographically widespread, with the number of Europeans, Americans, North Africans and others joining up to fight and die for the idea of a revived Islamic caliphate falling as precipitously as the terrorist groups fortunes.

From a peak of 2,000 foreign recruits crossing the Turkey-Syria border each month, the Islamic State and other extremist groups operating in Syria are down to as few as 50, according to U.S. intelligence assessments.

Governments from Britain to Tunisia say their citizens are less likely than they have been in years to heed the Islamic States calls for front-line volunteers.

Diminished flows deprive the organization of needed reinforcements and further erode its ability to cast itself as the rebirth of a vast Islamic empire. But they also raise questions about whether the terrorism threat is actually easing or just morphing into a more dangerous new phase.

Its a massive falloff, said Peter Neumann, director of the International Center for the Study of Radicalization at Kings College London. And its basically because Islamic State is a failing entity now. The appeal of Islamic State rested on its strength and its winning. Now that its losing, its no longer attractive.

The sustained decline marks an important milestone in global efforts to defeat the Islamic State, reflecting measures ranging from a multinational military campaign to, in at least one nation, rules requiring parental permission slips before young men can leave the country.

[10 new wars that could be unleashed as a result of the one against ISIS]

But Neumann and others said the decline in Islamic State recruiting figures  which has come almost as quickly as the rise following leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadis declaration of a caliphate in June 2014  is hardly an unmitigated success for the United States and its allies.

Instead, it may be the beginning of a new stage, one in which would-be fighters choose to carry out attacks at home rather than travel abroad, and battlehardened veterans seek out new lands for conflict.

Its like after the Afghanistan war in the 1980s, said Neumann, citing the period after Soviet troops withdrew in 1989 and legions of foreign fighters formed a diaspora of radicalized veterans that subsequently fueled the rise of al-Qaeda. Theyll be asking themselves, Whats next? 

That peril helps explain why U.S. and other officials have been cautious in trumpeting the declining foreign-fighter numbers.

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve announced this week that there was a fourfold decrease in the number of French citizens who have traveled to the Islamic States domain in the first six months of 2016, compared with the 69 fighters who did so over the same period last year.

Rather than celebrate, however, French officials have been bracing the public for what could happen if some among the almost 700 French citizens or residents who are still fighting in Syria and Iraq decide it is time to come home.

Their return represents an additional menace for our national security, said French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, whose country has been hit by repeated terrorist attacks in the past two years.

One European law enforcement official said that although the number of people departing for Syria has been dropping, the security threat may simply be changing, not diminishing.

If you look at one side, fewer people leaving would also mean fewer people getting radicalized and also being passed out from Syria and Iraq to commit attacks, said Wil M. van Gemert, the head of the operations department at Europol, the European Union law enforcement agency.

But if you look at the summer, you see what kind of attacks weve had, he said, listing incidents in France, Germany and Belgium. We had people who had been radically inspired, and IS took a position where they claimed them to be their soldiers, he said, using an abbreviation for the Islamic State, which is also known as ISIS or ISIL.

In many cases, however, the Islamic States connections with those attackers were tenuous at best.

And as the group fights for its survival amid a U.S.-led assault from the air and Turkish, Kurdish and Iraqi military offensives on the ground, the Islamic State has struggled to draw significant numbers of new foreign fighters under its direct control.

Spiral of decline

As of December, up to 31,000 people from at least 86 countries had traveled to Syria or Iraq to fight alongside the Islamic State or other extremist groups, according to a comprehensive analysis by the Soufan Group, an international security consulting firm.

The extraordinary flows  outpacing those from all other recent conflicts  gave the Islamic State a virtually unending supply of fighters with which to battle the groups myriad enemies. Even more important than battlefield ranks, however, was the propaganda value of an army that matched the scope of the groups rhetoric, which called for a global Muslim uprising against infidel regimes.

But since late last year, amid a succession of battlefield losses, that has become a harder case to make as the flows have sharply slowed, creating a self-reinforcing spiral of decline.

The ranks of new fighters have diminished so dramatically that certain countries, such as Belgium and Britain, have not even increased their estimates this year of the number of citizens who have left home to fight.

Olivier Van Raemdonck, a spokesman for Belgiums Coordinating Unit for Threat Analysis, the countrys main terrorism tracking body, said that Belgian authorities have received information about a few people departing this year but that they have not been able to confirm such tips. Belgium has had the highest per-capita flow of foreign fighters to Syria of any European country. But now an entire channel has been shut down, Van Raemdonck said.

In the United States, which has been a far less significant source of fighters than many European nations, the average number of Americans traveling to fight for the Islamic State in Syria dropped from six to 10 per month during the first half of 2015 to just one a month, FBI Director James B. Comey said in May. He cited the groups lost luster as the cause.

ISIS, the so-called Islamic State brand, has lost significant power in the United States, he said.

[For the first time since 2013, ISIS has no border with NATO]

The groups reduced international cachet is not the only explanation for the lower numbers. The increasing difficulty of traveling to Islamic State-held territory also has hurt recruitment figures, experts and officials say.

Dramatically stepped-up restrictions, including tanks lined up at 50-yard intervals in some places where fighters are known to cross and walls and ditches constructed in others, have made it far harder to infiltrate along the favored path into Islamic State terrain: the Turkey-Syria border.

Late last month, the group lost its last remaining foothold on that border, cutting off a valuable conduit through which recruits had long passed. We expect this development to have a positive impact on further reducing the flow of foreign fighters, said a senior Turkish official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Enhanced intelligence-sharing between Turkey and Western governments also has helped to make what was once a relatively easy journey from Europe to Syrian battlefields far more difficult. The Turkish government says it has added more than 40,000 names to its no-entry list based on intelligence supplied by foreign governments in the past 1 years, compared with fewer than 5,000 names in 2014. The rise has been accompanied by a sharp increase in the number of deportations, as Turkish authorities intercept would-be fighters and send them home.

The lack of fresh Islamic State manpower is evident on the battlefield. Brig. Gen. Yahya Rasoul, a spokesman for the Iraqi military, said the group has begun to recruit children to plug the gap as adult militants are killed and foreigners leave for Syria or home.

There is big confusion in their ranks, said Rasoul. Whereas the Islamic State once used foreign fighters as suicide bombers, it is increasingly tapping young Iraqi boys, he said.

Besieged senior Islamic State officials have begun to acknowledge that there will be no cavalry coming to bolster their ranks.

[In potential blow to propaganda power, Islamic State reports death of senior leader in Syria]

In his last speech before he was killed in an airstrike last month, spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani alluded to the increasing problems facing foreigners wishing to travel to Islamic State territory. He also issued the sort of threat that explains why Western security officials fear that extremist-fueled attacks will not end just because access to the battlefields of Syria and Iraq has been restricted.

If the tyrants have closed in your faces the door of hijrah [migration], then open in their face the door of jihad and make their act a source of pain for them, he said in a late-May audio recording. The smallest action you do in the heart of their land is dearer to us than the largest action by us, and more effective and more damaging to them.

He urged his followers to strike civilian rather than military targets, as hitting the former is more damaging.

Reverse flows

Overstretched European security agencies remain ill-prepared to deal with the consequences if that call is heeded by Islamic State sympathizers, or if the flows start to reverse and fighters return home in large numbers.

Its a five-letter word, and its called intel, said Francois Heisbourg, a former member of a French presidential commission on defense and national security. The only thing you can seriously do is to ramp up the ability to track and keep track of those who are here and those who are coming here.

In Germany, where the flow of foreign fighters to Syria has been cut from an average of dozens a month to a small handful, the head of the Federal Criminal Police Office, Holger Munch, recently told the Berlin daily Der Tagesspiegel that those who have already spent a long time with IS, have been exposed to brutal war experiences and established many contacts represent a special threat to German security if they return.

Concern over a reverse flow  or over extremists who decide to strike at home rather than go abroad  is hardly limited to the West.

[Amateur terrorist attacks may mark a new chapter in the ISIS war in Europe]

In Tunisia, the source of the single largest contingent of foreign fighters to the conflicts in Syria and Iraq, the flows have declined as travel to the battlefields has become more difficult, according to officials and analysts. Among the new measures blocking the path of would-be recruits: All men under 35 seeking to travel outside Tunisia need written permission from their parents stating their purpose for leaving.

But the reduced flows have stoked growing worries that the problem of militant extremism will become even more pronounced domestically.

The battle is shifting from Syria to North Africa, said Badra Gaaloul, a researcher with the Tunis-based International Center of Strategic, Security and Military Studies.

There are a lot of ISIS sleeping cells still active in Tunisia, so many that we call them awake cells,  said Gaaloul. They want to start a caliphate in Tunisia.

As evidence, Gaaloul cited the assault on the border town of Ben Guerdane by Islamic State militants this year, which Tunisian and regional officials say was an attempt to create a new safe haven as the group faces pressure in its Libyan stronghold of Sirte.

In recent days, senior Tunisian officials  who say there are still 4,000 countrymen fighting for the Islamic State and other extremist groups  have publicly expressed concern that Tunisian fighters fleeing Libya and Syria would return.

The danger is real. Those who leave Sirte are heading south to eventually join Boko Haram, but some are also going west [to Tunisia], the countrys defense minister, Farhat Hachani, told journalists, referring to the Nigerian militant group that has pledged support for the Islamic State.

Egypt, too, has seen reduced outflows, having paid off tribes along the Libyan border that run human-smuggling networks to block the path of would-be fighters, according to Mohannad Sabry, an Egyptian journalist and author of a book on the Islamist insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula.

But just because radicalized Egyptians are not formally linking up with the Islamic State does not mean they are not a threat, especially as the government feeds extremism by cracking down on its political opponents.

The numbers are decreasing, Sabry said, but actually the number of wannabes is rising.

Raghavan reported from Cairo and McAuley from Paris. Liz Sly in Beirut, Loveday Morris in Baghdad, Karla Adam in London, Stephanie Kirchner in Berlin, Michael Birnbaum and Annabell Van den Berghe in Brussels, and Matt Zapotosky in Washington contributed to this report.

Read more:

Islamic State, losing fighters and territory, increasingly turns to child bombers

Gallery: The remnants of war that ISIS fighters left behind

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world
Addy and Josh Andersen had mixed luck at the races Thursday.

The horses the six-year-old Lincoln twins picked in the races at the Lincoln Race Course lost.

But their favorite mascot, Scotty the Squirrel from Lost in Fun, dominated the field of seven competitors in the feature foot race.

The mixed results didnt bother the Andersens, they said. They were just happy to see the horses. Itll be year before they get another chance to see live horse racing in Lincoln.

The young fans were two of about 1,000 people who turned out the tracks sole day of live racing.

The event got a major upgrade this year with two horse races, a live band, the mascot foot race, a T-shirt toss and door prizes for the first 300 to show up. Both races boasted $6,500 purses.

The event this year got rave reviews from 22-year-old Landon Kester of Malcom and his friend, 23-year-old Marsha Pendilton, who moved to Lincoln last month from Missouri. The race was short, they said, but exciting, with the crowd cheering and the thunder of hooves on the track.

Its a great environment for college kids.  You can tell theyre trying to attract a younger crowd, Kester said.

Its not every day you go out and see horse races, Pendilton said. They should start doing more of it.

Based on the positive reaction this year, organizers are planning even more festivities next year, said Mike Newlin, vice president of Omaha Exposition and Racing, which manages the Lincoln Race Course on behalf of Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association.

Were going to try and make it bigger and bigger every year, Newlin said.

If we can get more sponsors, more people involved with what were doing out here, then we can get more racing.

Newlin said the purse for the second race was funded by a combination of sponsors and proceeds from Horsemens Park in Omaha.

Omaha had a good year. Omaha paid all of its own purses. We ran two weekends in Omaha and were up (the handle) about 7 percent, he said.

But the races will remain short sprints until the HBPA finds enough funding to build a full track. Nic a Jack, ridden by Michael Ziegler, won the first race Thursday in 12.26 seconds, while Husker Ridge, ridden by Ricardo Martinez, narrowly won the second race in 12.6 seconds.

The race course moved to its current site near U.S. 77 and West Denton Road after the University of Nebraska-Lincoln converted State Fair Park into Innovation Campus.

The previous couple years, Lincoln Race Course hosted only a single perfunctory race. State law requires the facility to run at least one live race annually to qualify for a license to run betting on simulcast state and national races.

Craig Wulf, president of Omaha Exposition and a board member of the Nebraska HBPA, said horsemen are still looking for money to finish the Lincoln track.

Were still working on it, Wulf said. Its about funding. With the petition drive not going through, that was a big hitch in the giddy-up for us. That will be revisited at some point I think.

An effort to have voters decide whether to allow expanded gambling at the states race courses -- which would have helped fund the track -- failed this year because organizers didn't get enough signatures to get the issue on the November ballot.
Paris Prosecutor Francois Molins, right, with Director of the Judicial Police Mireille Ballestrazzi, left, addresses the media in Paris on Friday about a failed attack involving a car loaded with gas canisters near Notre Dame Cathedral. (Francois Mori/AP)

President Francois Hollande praised French security forces Friday for apprehending a group of terrorism suspects believed to be plotting a major attack.

An Interior Ministry official told the Reuters news agency that the foiled attack had been planned for the Gare de Lyon, a train station in the southeast quadrant of Paris that is one of the busiest in Europe.

Theres a group that has been annihilated, but there are others, Hollande said. Information we were able to get from our intelligence services allowed us to act before it was too late.

Still reeling from two major attacks in 2015, the French capital has been on edge since Sunday, when authorities found an abandoned car full of gas cylinders near Notre Dame Cathedral.

The area is a major tourist destination that frequently draws crowds to its pedestrian-friendly streets and sidewalk cafes, places similar to those near the seaside promenade struck in the July attack on Nice, in southern France, that killed 86 and injured hundreds more.

Police officers stand guard as they take part in a raid in Boussy-Saint-Antoine, east of Paris. (Thibault Camus/AP)

On Thursday, authorities arrested three women outside Paris in connection with the suspected plot  ages 19, 23 and 39. The youngest, identified by the Associated Press as Ines Madani, stabbed a police officer during the confrontation, officials told French media.

According to the RTL radio network, Madani had written a letter pledging her support to the Islamic State. The three women were apparently attempting to avenge the death of Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, the Islamic States lead propaganda officer killed in Syria in late August, RTL reported.

[Flow of foreign fighters plummets as Islamic State loses its edge]

Before his death, Adnani had called on followers of the self-proclaimed caliphate to carry out small-scale attacks on nonbelievers in Europe and the United States, an injunction that became a reality in France and Germany this summer. In July, attackers inspired or claimed by the Islamic State slit the throat of a French village priest, stabbed tourists on a German train and shot at random in a Munich shopping mall.

According to the Le Monde newspaper, Madani had been known to authorities since 2015, when she unsuccessfully attempted to leave France for Syria, where thousands of foreign-born fighters had joined the Islamic State.

This week, Frances interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, announced that the flow of French citizens and residents decamping for Syria has significantly decreased, raising concerns about the possibility of more domestic attacks by would-be fighters who have opted to stay home as the Islamic State loses territory.

[Amateur terrorist attacks may mark a new chapter in the ISIS war in Europe]

A police bomb disposal van arrives at the Gare de Lyon railway station in Paris, France, following the discovery of a suspect package, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. (Francois Mori/AP)

As France struggles to formulate a strategy to prevent attacks of the type that appears to have been planned for the Gare de Lyon, analysts argue that a stronger intelligence infrastructure must be the primary focus.

In June 2015, largely in response to the attack on the Charlie Hebdo newspaper office, the French Parliament passed intelligence legislation that increased the governments powers to monitor its citizens communications. But Jean-Charles Brisard, chairman of the Paris-based Center for the Analysis of Terrorism, said key provisions of the law  such as the pledged use of eavesdropping technologies and black boxes designed to catch threats sent electronically  have not been enacted, more than a year after the law was passed.

In the suspected plot, investigators found the car only after a shopkeeper reported it. It sat with its lights flashing for at least two hours, Florence Berthout, the mayor of Pariss 5th arrondissement, where Notre Dame is located, wrote in a letter to the Paris Police Prefecture this week.

In total, seven suspects  two men and five women  have been arrested in the ongoing investigation into the foiled plot. According to an unnamed official quoted in an Associated Press report, one of the men arrested had ties to Larossi Abballa, who live-streamed the murder of a French police officer in June.

The car belonged to the Madanis father, who later reported his daughter to French authorities

Read more:

Fake Seine beaches are part of a Paris summer. This year, theyre making officials nervous.

To curb radicalism, France targets foreign funding for mosques

Frances top administrative court overturns burkini ban

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world
A photo released by Greenpeace shows Michael Kreindlin, a Greenpeace Russia staff member, after being beaten by attackers in southern Russia. (Maria Vasileva/AP)

Masked men carrying pistols, knives and truncheons stormed a Greenpeace camp site and severely beat volunteer firefighters in southern Russian on Friday, the environmentalist group said, leaving one activist with a broken nose and another with fractured ribs.

The reason for the assault wasnt clear. But Greenpeace Russia has been at odds with Russian officials over a variety of issues, including recent claims that Russias regional governments were underreporting the size of local forest fires by as much as 80 percent to portray the situation as under control.

Greenpeace deploys volunteer firefighters and runs fire fighting training in many regions.

The attack capped 24 hours of harassment by apparent patriotic vigilantes in the Krasnodar region, an area near the Black Sea, where Greenpeace firefighters had traveled to help put out local grass fires. They had already been confronted by men who identified themselves as Cossacks, socially conservative, pro-Kremlin activists who claim they are descendants of Czarist-era horsemen.

[What you need to know about Russias Cossacks]

The attackers climbed through a fence surrounding a temporary Greenpeace camp in the region, the head of Greenpeace Russias firefighting project, Grigory Kuksin, said in a statement.

He said the attackers had truncheons, knives, pistols and also damaged cars and slashed tents.

They said that if we dont leave here before morning, then no one would find us, that we should go 'to our America,'" Kuksin added.

Greenpeace posted a photo of the bloodstained face of Mikhail Kreindlin, a member of the firefighting team who suffered a broken nose, and said that the activists were seeking a safe place and medical attention.

While fighting forest fires may seem an apolitical task, environmental activism can carry a serious price in Russia  particularly when local business interests are involved.

Greenpeaces most sensational conflict in Russia came in 2013 when a crew of 30 activists and journalists aboard the groups ship, Arctic Sunrise, were arrested near an oil rig owned by a subsidiary of Gazprom, the Russian state energy giant, in the Pechora Sea in northwest Russia. The team aboard the ship was charged with piracy, but later pardoned after international negotiations.

Khalimat Tekeeva, a Greenpeace Russia press officer, called Fridays attack unprecedented.

We've never faced incidents like this: a group of people attacking a group of Greenpeace activists, Tekeeva wrote. We work with lots of firefighting groups in different regions in Russia and everything was okay.

She added that the Russian firefighting authorities had asked for our help and welcomed our trip to the Black Sea region.

In May, a group wearing the traditional fleece hats of Cossacks assaults a group of anti-corruption activists at an airport in southern Russia.

Read more

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world
The worlds leaders expressed outrage and alarm Friday over North Koreas latest nuclear test, as Pyongyangs accelerating nuclear program is emerging as a major national security threat that a new U.S. president will confront.

In a White House statement, President Obama condemned Fridays test as provocative and destabilizing and a grave threat to regional and international stability. He said the United States and its allies will seek new U.N. sanctions and take other measures to demonstrate to North Korea that there are consequences to its unlawful and dangerous actions.

To be clear, the United States does not, and never will, accept North Korea as a nuclear state, he said.

[North Korea has been making a lot threats these days]

The United Nations, which in March imposed some of the harshest economic sanctions ever against North Korea, called an emergency meeting to discuss the test, which state news media claimed now allows Pyongyang to produce nuclear warheads small enough to attach to ballistic missiles. The latest test, North Korea said, was its biggest yet, although it may take several days to determine how powerful it was.

At the United Nations, diplomats called for more resolutions and actions.

Jean-Marc Ayrault, the foreign minister of France, a permanent member of the Security Council, said North Koreas latest provocation cannot be left without consequences, especially at the U.N. Security Council.

Secretary General Ban Ki-moon condemned what he called a brazen breach of U.N. resolutions.

I count on the Security Council to remain united and take appropriate action, he told reporters. We must urgently break this accelerating spiral of escalation.

Secretary of State John F. Kerry said the United States would work with other Security Council members to take robust steps in response, and he urged North Korea to resume denuclearization talks it abandoned in 2009.

We remain open to credible and authentic talks aimed at full and verifiable denuclearization of the DPRK, he said, referring to the countrys official name, the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea. Sadly, the DPRK has chosen a different path and made clear it would not be a credible negotiating partner.

Other leaders used particularly blunt language to denounce what Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull called North Koreas reckless, provocative, dangerous actions.

South Korea accused the Norths leader, Kim Jong Un, of fanatic recklessness. South Korean President Park Geun-hye said his mental state is spiraling out of control.

[North Korea has threatened to blow up airports in South Korea]

Japan branded North Korea an outlaw nation in the neighborhood. Russia insisted that Pyongyang stop its dangerous escapades. The International Atomic Energy Agency said North Korea had displayed complete disregard of the repeated demands of the international community.

Even China, Pyongyangs only ally and its economic lifeline to the outside world, said it was resolutely opposed to the test and warned North Korea to refrain from further actions that would worsen the situation.

Although North Korea is not believed to be capable of delivering warheads to the U.S. mainland, it is considered a threat on U.S. troops in South Korea and Japan.

North Koreas fifth missile test, its second this year, reflects the stepped-up pace of its nuclear missile program. After a test in January, the Security Council imposed sweeping new sanctions that bar most trading with the regime for anything other than food, medicine and other humanitarian purposes. But the sanctions have done nothing to stop the governments determination to further its quest to develop ballistics missiles with nuclear warheads. Nor is it clear that further sanctions would be a deterrent.

The current sanctions-only approach, however tough, is simply not working, and continuing on that track is a recipe for even greater failure, said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association. The next president, even before Inauguration Day, will have to have a strategy in place to try to effectively engage with the North to try to leverage the sanctions regime in place to achieve some restraint on North Koreas nuclear missile activities.

The latest test comes as several countries and institutions are on the cusp of transition. Ban, a diplomat from South Korea, will finish his term by the end of the year. South Korea will hold presidential elections next year. And U.S. elections are two months away.

Despite a number of failed missile tests this year, North Koreas nuclear ambitions have barely been mentioned in this years U.S. presidential race. Experts on North Korea and nuclear nonproliferation said the latest nuclear test could change that.

The U.N. has passed five Security Council resolutions and had a major General Assembly vote condemning North Korea for human rights abuses, said Victor Cha, a Korea scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. But the problem is none of this is working. And whether its Clinton or Trump, this is going to be the number one issue. There is no bigger security threat to the homeland than this.

[North Korea claims it could wipe out Manhattan]

Though it is difficult to assess North Koreas claims about the potency of its nuclear test, experts say it underscores the regimes determination to mass-produce warheads and eventually to deploy them on missiles in the field.

If it doesnt have the capability to threaten its neighbors with nuclear weapons yet, it will at some point, probably sooner rather than later, said James Acton, a physicist who is co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. People disagree about whether theres any chance of threatening the continental United States at the moment. But the trajectory is clear.

So far, nobody has come up with a policy or reaction likely to convince Pyongyang to stop or slow down its nuclear program. Scott Snyder, director of the Program on U.S.-Korea Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the threat is growing as the strategy of patience is proving futile and the potential for confrontation grows.

The current administrations policy has been pursued because of the perception that there was still time to turn North Korea around, he said. But the closer Kim Jong Un gets to having a direct-strike capability, the greater the pressure will be, presenting a new administration with only two options  acquiescence to North Korea as a nuclear state, and use of military force in order to deprive North Korea of that capability. Thats basically the territory we are entering.

Read more:

A look at North Koreas nuclear missile developments, in 2016 alone

North Korea is an urgent challenge for the next president

Ignoring North Koreas nuclear threat could be a dangerous mistake
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov walk into their meeting room in Geneva on Sept. 9, 2016. (Kevin Lamarque/AP)

The United States and Russia struggled Friday to make headway in talks over a possible Syria peace deal, saying that an agreement was possible but expressing little optimism it was imminent.

Meanwhile, the U.N. envoy to the Syrian crisis, Staffan de Mistura, described the worsening humanitarian situation inside Syria and urged the parties to reach a deal to ease the fighting and allow the flow of desperately needed relief aid.

In broad terms, the proposed pact calls for a pause in the fighting between the U.S.-backed Syrian opposition and forces of President Bashar al-Assad and his Russian and Iranian allies  particularly around the besieged city of Aleppo  to allow safe and sustained delivery of humanitarian aid.

That would followed by a more wide-ranging cease-fire, along the lines of a truce agreed last February that lasted only several weeks.

[Syrian deal faces many hurdles]

Syrian opposition leaders have refused to return to U.N.-brokered political talks until the fighting stops  particularly Syrian and Russian bombing of civilian areas. On a separate front, a U.S.-led coalition is also conducting airstrikes against Islamic State strongholds in Syria.

We cant guarantee in any way at this point that we are on the cusp of finishing, a senior administration official told reporters who flew to Geneva with Secretary of State John F. Kerry. That said, I think if we didnt think that . . . it remained a possibility of getting this done, we wouldnt be going back to Geneva.

Were going to try, but our patience is not infinite, a second senior official said. Were not going to just keep going . . . if we dont reach a conclusion relatively soon.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the talks.

An early morning meeting between Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov  their third in less than two weeks  broke after little more than an hour. Both envoys retreated temporarily to their respective suites in a lakefront hotel to consult with their capitals and address other pressing matters, such as the latest new nuclear test by North Korea.

[Hey, Gary Johnson, people in Aleppo dont know you, either]

Ninety minutes later, the two diplomats, trailed by briefcase-toting aides, strode back across the hotel lobby into a basement meeting room, and closed the door. That pattern continued throughout the day, with frequent pauses for consultations at home.

As the day-long talks moved into the evening, the two sides were said to be making progress. But we are not in a position right now to say whether or not a final deal can be reached, a senior State Department official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the negotiations. Both Kerry and Lavrov indicated they would not continue the current round of discussions and will leave Geneva Friday night, regardless of whether an agreement is concluded.

Final terms of any agreement must be approved by President Obama and others with equities in the deal, including some in the White House and the Pentagon, where there is deep skepticism about Russian intentions.

The proposed agreement  first authorized by Obama and presented by Kerry to Russian President Vladimir Putin in mid-July  has been refined several times in response to demands of various parties and changing circumstances in Syria. Kerry delivered the most recent U.S. version to Lavrov when they met last weekend in China, where Obama also met with Putin on the sidelines of a Group of 20 meeting.

Kerry decided to travel Thursday afternoon to Geneva after receiving a written response from Moscow.

The opposition tell us they want us to reach a deal with the Russians if, in fact, it would stop some of the worst forms of violence against the Syrian people. So they want us to continue, the second U.S. official said. If we reach a deal, then thats great. And if we dont, were not going to go on forever for the sake of pursuing a deal.

[For first time since 2013, the Islamic State has no border with NATO]

Russia has insisted it is targeting only designated terrorist groups that were not party to the original cease-fire, in particular the Front for the Conquest of Syria, or Jabhat Fatah al-Sham. The group, formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra, recently announced it had broken with al-Qaeda.

But Syrian rebels, and their Western and Arab backers, claim that Russian air attacks have hit anti-Assad forces. Activists also have accused Syria of carrying out bombing raids using chlorine weapons, leaving hundreds of people stricken.

There are also questions of how to withdraw forces from access roads so that aid can be delivered, how to monitor compliance of both sides, and the sequence of withdrawals.

Once a sustained cease-fire and the rest of the agreement is in place, the administration has said it is willing to coordinate targeting and airstrikes against the Front and the Islamic State.

Some in the administration have argued that the Russians are only trying to run out the clock until the end of the Obama administration in January, in hopes of a better deal from his successor. Others insist that Moscow is aware that there is a better-than-even chance it could get a worse deal, particularly with the election of Hillary Clinton.

Asked whether the Russians were playing for time and dragging out the talks while helping Assads forces gain more territory on the ground, the second U.S. official said that if we get to a point where we think theyre just playing for time, thats probably when youll see us go in a different direction.

Read more:

500-pound bombs struck their targets in a Syrian village. But who was killed?

10 new wars that could be unleashed as a result of the one against ISIS

Russia, Syria violated international law by dropping incendiary munitions, report says
The Washington Post's Anna Fifield reports on North Korea's fifth nuclear test and what it means for the region and one of Kim Jong Un's few remaining allies, China. (Jason Aldag,Anna Fifield/The Washington Post)

North Korea defiantly celebrated its fifth nuclear test Friday, claiming that it can now make warheads small enough to fit onto a missile and warning its "enemies"  specifically the United States  that it has the ability to counter any attack.

Although the Norths proclaimed advancements could not be verified  and Pyongyang has a track record of exaggeration  the test appeared to mark another step toward North Koreas goal of putting a nuclear warhead on a weapon capable of reaching the mainland United States.

Fridays test  the Norths second this year  underscored the ability of Kim Jong Uns regime to make progress on its nuclear and missile programs despite waves of international sanctions and isolation.

[Everything you need to know about the North Korea nuclear test]

This is our response to hostile powers, including the United States. We are sending out a message that if the enemies attack us, we can counterattack," Ri Chun Hee, a veteran North Korean newsreader, said on state television. "We will continue taking measures to protect our dignity and our right to exist from the American threat."

The test also appeared to be much bigger than North Korea's previous four detonations since its first in 2006.

The U.S. Geological Survey detected an artificial 5.3-magnitude earthquake near North Korea's nuclear test site at 9 a.m. local time on Friday, a national holiday marking the 68th anniversary of the formation of the communist regime by Kim Il Sung, the current leaders grandfather.

This is clearly a nuclear test, said Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia nonproliferation program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif. He estimated the size at between 10 and 20 kilotons. The Norths last nuclear test, carried out in January, was about six kilotons.

The test happened just a few hours after President Obama's plane stopped in Japan to refuel on his way home from Laos, where he attended a summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The president talked to South Korea's president, Park Geun-hye, who was still in Laos, and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, said White House press secretary Josh Earnest.

In a White House statement Friday, Obama called the test a grave threat to regional and international security and noted Pyongyangs claims to be developing nuclear warheads capable of hitting the United States and its allies.

The United States does not, and never will, accept North Korea as a nuclear state, Obama said. Far from achieving its stated national security and economic development goals, North Koreas provocative and destabilizing actions have instead served to isolate and impoverish its people through its relentless pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile capabilities. He said the latest test shows that North Korea has no interest in being a responsible member of the international community.

After consulting by phone with the South Korean and Japanese leaders, Obama said they would work with the U.N. Security Council and international community to impose significant penalties, including new sanctions. He also vowed to push ahead with deployment of a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery in South Korea and pledged to provide extended deterrence, guaranteed by the full spectrum of U.S. defense capabilities.





At a news conference Thursday in Laos, Obama dismissed Chinas objections to the THAAD deployment, saying he told Chinese President Xi Jinping that we cannot have a situation where were unable to defend either ourselves or our treaty allies against increasingly provocative behavior and escalating capabilities by the North Koreans. Obama added: And I indicated to him that if the THAAD bothered him, particularly since it has no purpose other than defensive and does not change the strategic balance between the United States and China, that they need to work with us more effectively to change Pyongyangs behavior.

[These North Korean missile launches are adding up to something very troubling]

China, the closest thing North Korea has to an ally, issued a statement resolutely opposing the test, which it said took place despite the widespread objection of the international community.

We strongly urge North Korea to keep its promise to denuclearize, to abide by relevant resolutions from the U.N. Security Council and to stop making any moves that worsen the situation, the statement from China's Foreign Ministry said.

In its official announcement of what it said was a nuclear warhead explosion test, North Korea claimed that it had been able to make smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear warheads of higher strike power.

This has definitely put on a higher level the [countrys] technology of mounting nuclear warheads on ballistic rockets, said the statement, carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

Kim has been ordering speedy progress on missile development  as evidenced by recent salvos of medium-range missiles  and has been making observable gains with nuclear devices. But there remains no clear evidence that North Korea's scientists have been able to put the two together to make a warhead that can be delivered to a target.

However, a growing number of analysts and American military chiefs believe it is just a matter of time until North Korea masters this technology.

This test seemed to have a dual purpose, said Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.

Domestically, Kim Jong Un wants to present himself as a strong leader standing strong against the U.S., he said. He suggested that this could be because Kim, at 32, is young but also perhaps because recent high-level defections have raised speculation of cracks in the regime.

Internationally, this test is designed to show that sanctions imposed against North Korea and international pressure are not working. Theyre urging the world to accept its failure and revise its North Korea policy, Yang said.

Fridays test highlights North Koreas continued defiance, but also the ineffectiveness of even the most recent waves of tough sanctions imposed after the nuclear test in January, analysts said.

1 of 69 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  What life looks like for North Koreas elite View Photos From mass dances to going to the zoo, a glimpse inside the Hermit Kingdom. Caption From mass dances to going to the zoo, a glimpse inside the Hermit Kingdom. Sept. 9, 2018 Soldiers march in Pyongyang as part of a military parade marking the 70th anniversary of North Koreas foundation. DANISH SIDDIQUI/Reuters Wait 1 second to continue.

The whole expectation eight or nine months ago was that sanctions were finally going to bring North Korea to heel, but clearly that is not the case, said David Kang, a professor of international relations at the University of Southern California. Clearly they respond to pressure with pressure of their own.

[North Korea hails greatest success of submarine-launched ballistic missile]

Still, the international community is expected to look for ways to inflict more pain on North Korea, which is already under sweeping sanctions.

North Koreas desperate dependence on nuclear development is testimony to Kim Jong Uns fanatical recklessness, said Park, the South Korean president, who cut short her visit to Laos to return to Seoul. North Koreas provocations will do nothing but accelerate its self-destruction.

In Tokyo, prime minister Abe also struck an angry tone."If North Korea conducted a nuclear test, I cant absolutely tolerate it," he said. "We have to strongly protest."

After North Korea's nuclear test in January  which the regime claimed was of a hydrogen bomb  and a long-range ballistic missile test in February, the U.N. Security Council imposed tough new sanctions.

It ordered a ban on mineral exports from North Korea, a major source of income for the regime, and strict inspections of all cargo going in and out of the country. The United States followed with new financial sanctions and by designating Kim Jong Un by name for human rights abuses. South Korea has also taken a strident approach, closing an inter-Korean industrial park that had been a major source of revenue for the regime.

But Kim has not wavered, testing a range of missiles this year and apparently making some technological progress, including on a submarine-launched ballistic missile.

Theres now obvious progress in North Koreas nuclear and missile programs. They seem to be making precisely the technical progress that people dont want, said Euan Graham, a security expert at the Lowy Institute in Sydney who once served as a British diplomat in Pyongyang. North Korea is obviously prepared to take the economic pain and is able to continue to materially supply the two programs.

[ U.S. policy on North Korea relies on China  and provokes it at the same time]

On Monday, North Korea launched three medium-range missiles as China was hosting a meeting of Group of 20 leaders, including Obama. The rockets flew 620 miles, falling inside Japans air defense identification zone.

A day after those launches, the Security Council issued its latest condemnation.

The members of the Security Council deplore all the Democratic Peoples Republic of Koreas ballistic missile activities, including these launches, noting that such activities contribute to [its] development of nuclear weapons delivery systems and increase tension, the council said in statement Tuesday, using North Koreas official name.

Analysts expect another round of discussions on ways to put pressure on North Korea.

"Sanctions and targeted financial measures may take time to have an impact on the regimes financial condition," said Bruce Klingner, a northeast Asia specialist at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington-based think tank.

The difficulty, Klingner said, would be in maintaining international resolve. Sanctions can not be effectively implemented without the support of China.

China's implementation of sanctions has been patchy in the past, and some analysts are concerned that Beijing, angered by South Korea's decision to host an American anti-missile battery, might lose its appetite for enforcement.

William Branigin in Washington, Yoonjung Seo in Seoul, Gu Jinglu in Beijing and Yuki Oda in Tokyo contributed to this report.

Read more

North Korea fires 3 missiles as G-20 continues in China

North Korea hails greatest success of submarine-launched ballistic missile

North Korean missile lands perilously close to Japan

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world
The American Indians challenging an oil pipeline that would cross four states have some legal advantages in a courtroom, particularly their tribe's status as a sovereign nation with long ties to the land in question.

But stopping a major project like the Dakota Access pipeline after construction has begun is difficult, and even if the Standing Rock Sioux win in federal court, the end result might simply be an altered route.

A judge is expected to rule Friday on whether to block construction of the pipeline that is supposed to pass close to the tribal reservation near the North Dakota-South Dakota border. No matter what the court decides, opponents seem prepared for a long fight, following many of the same tactics used to defeat the Canada-to-Nebraska segment of the Keystone XL pipeline.

The tribe's lawsuit alleges that the Dakota Access pipeline violates several federal laws, including the National Historic Preservation Act, and threatens the region's water supply and sacred ancient sites outside of the 2.3-million acre reservation.

The tribe argues that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers should not have used a streamlined permit process when it reviewed the pipeline and that engineers did not do enough to consult with tribal members about the $3.8 billion project as required by the historic-preservation law.

The Corps disputes those allegations.

The consultation requirement is an example of how the tribe's status as a sovereign nation could give it more influence, said Tom King, a consultant who has worked with tribes and businesses on historic-preservation issues for roughly five decades.

As a sovereign nation, the tribe is entitled to a formal process for airing any concerns. That process does not apply to a nearby rancher, for instance.

Other tribes have prevailed under similar circumstances.

Earlier this year, federal officials cancelled an oil and gas lease in northwest Montana because the Blackfoot tribes of the U.S. and Canada said the project would disturb an area they consider sacred.

The Corps rejected a $700 million coal-export terminal proposed for Washington state because regulators decided the project would violate the Lummi tribe's treaty-protected fishing rights.

The 1,172-mile Dakota Access project gained enough state and federal approvals to begin construction this summer on some sections of the route through North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and Illinois. Some of the work is on hold until the judge rules.

The success of the fight against the failed Keystone XL pipeline has emboldened environmental groups, said Indiana University Professor David Konisky, but he does not think the protests and lawsuits will stop the Dakota Access project.

"I suspect it will be delayed and possibly changed, but all indications are it will be built," said Konisky, who studies public policy and has written a book about public attitudes on energy.

This week's ruling isn't likely to settle the dispute. Appeals are likely no matter who wins this round.

There have been other legal challenges and protests of the pipeline, with the most aggressive ones in North Dakota and Iowa. Several dozen protesters have been arrested after chaining themselves to construction equipment or otherwise trying to block the work.

The fight over the Keystone XL lasted seven years. Forcing a significant delay in the Dakota Access project might be considered a victory in itself.

"Delays are often critical elements to victory," said Omaha attorney Brian Jorde, who helped develop the pipeline-fighting plan while representing Nebraska landowners fighting Keystone XL. "It's a death by a thousand cuts. If there are so many delays and frustration on the overall project, you have a better chance of it not going through."

Jorde was part of a group that gathered over the summer in Atlanta with environmentalists and landowner-rights groups to build support for future pipeline battles.

Other projects such as the Constitution pipeline in New York and Pennsylvania and the Palmetto pipeline in the Southeast have encountered strong opposition, said University of Minnesota Professor Alexandra Klass. Both South Carolina and Georgia recently banned the use of eminent domain to secure land for oil pipelines.

"Environmental groups didn't used to be that involved in oil and gas pipelines," said Klass, who specializes in energy law. "Now there is much more of a greater focus on making it difficult to transport fossil fuels, so that we can move more to renewable energy. So you have new alliances over climate change between national environmental groups and landowner groups that you didn't see 10 years ago."

The strong opposition to a project like the Dakota Access pipeline can polarize public opinion, said Mark Barteau, director of the University of Michigan's Energy Institute. That can make it hard for any energy infrastructure project to be approved.

"It's become increasingly difficult to look at projects like this," Barteau said, "and evaluate them on their merits and costs and benefits."
The United States and Russia agreed here Friday to the renewal of a cease-fire in Syria, to begin Monday with the cessation of all air and ground attacks by all parties, including the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

If the truce holds for seven consecutive days and humanitarian aid begins to flow unimpeded to besieged areas, Secretary of State John F. Kerry said the United States and Russia will then establish a Joint Implementation Center to coordinate their intelligence and air attacks against agreed terrorist targets in Syria.

A bedrock of the agreement, Kerry said, is Russias ensuring that Assads air force will no longer fly combat missions over opposition and civilian areas. This step is absolutely essential, Kerry said. By all accounts, Assad air attacks have been the main driver of civilian casualties and migration flows out of Syria.

[How Russian special forces are shaping the fight in Syria]

The agreement is the culmination of months of up-and-down talks between Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who met here Friday for a marathon negotiating session whose end was delayed by several hours of consultations between Kerry and senior national security officials in Washington.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov speaks to reporters during a break in his meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in Geneva, Switzerland where they have been discussing the crisis in Syria September 9, 2016. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

President Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the proposed deal during talks last weekend in China.

And it was welcomed Friday in Geneva by Staffan de Mistura, the U.N. special envoy for Syria. The United Nations hopes that the political will that led to this understanding is sustained, he said. It creates a real window of opportunity which all relevant actors in the region and beyond should seize to put the crisis in Syria on a different path and ease the violence and suffering being endured by the Syrian people.

Both Kerry and Lavrov emphasized that outside supporters

of all non-terrorist belligerents would have to bring their allies in line. They provided no details on how they would deal with violations.

Documents outlining the specifics of the agreement were not released, and Lavrov said at a news conference that they would be withheld to prevent terrorist targets from anticipating attacks against them. Only the broad outlines were described at the news conference.

Final approval from Washington came after Kerry spent hours late Friday on a secure conference video with top national security officials in Washington, some of whom  particularly in the Pentagon  have disagreed with proposed coordination of counterterrorism airstrikes with Russia.

Lavrov took advantage of the delay to score some propaganda points with the media awaiting their joint news conference, distributing pizza and bottles of vodka to reporters.

In the news conference, the Russian minister underlined that agreement had been undermined by a deep lack of confidence and trust between Russia and the American partners, particularly, but not exclusively, in Syria.

1 of 41 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  Scenes from Aleppo View Photos The Syrian government has dropped two chlorine bombs in the past month on the besieged, rebel-held city. Caption Images from inside the Syrian city. Dec. 19, 2016 Syrians evacuated from Fuaa and Kafraya, two Shiite villages under rebel siege, are welcomed by pro-government forces as they arrive in Jibrin, on the eastern outskirts of Aleppo. George Ourfalian/AFP/Getty Images Wait 1 second to continue.

It is the primary responsibility of the leading powers, first of all Russia and the United States . . . to do everything to create the necessary conditions to settle this very difficult conflict, he said, despite all the problems that have arisen . . . [and] all the mistrust still with us.

[Iran ends Russian use of air base because of unwanted publicity]

As Kerry negotiated with the Russians over the past several months, officials at the Pentagon and some at the White House did little to hide their skepticism about the proposed deal. Some argued that Moscow was trying the run out the clock until the end of the administration in hopes of a better deal from Obamas successor. Others insisted that Russia was certain that its chances of agreement would worsen, particularly if Hillary Clinton was elected.

The intensive diplomacy that led to Fridays meeting began in July, when Kerry discussed with Lavrov, and then carried personally to Putin, an Obama-approved proposal to share intelligence and coordinate air operations against agreed-upon terrorist groups, in particular the Front for the Conquest of Syria  or Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, the group formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra, which recently announced it had broken with al-Qaeda. U.S. officials have said the claim of a split is not credible.

In technical discussions over the last several weeks, U.S. and Russian military and intelligence officials have mapped out boxes in Syria, designating areas with a preponderance of Front forces, those regions where the terrorists overlap with opposition groups, and areas that are primarily opposition and civilians. Russia has continued to call on the United States to separate the opposition forces it supports from militant groups.

Both Kerry and Lavrov dismissed suggestions that the military coordination to target the Front was a U.S. concession to Russia. It is profoundly in the interest of the United States to target . . . al-Qaedas affiliate in Syria, which is Nusra, an organ that is opposed to peaceful transition . . . the enemy of legitimate opposition and currently plotting attacks beyond Syrias borders, including against the United States.

Kerry acknowledged the truth of the Russian charge that some opposition groups are fighting in tandem with the Front and said it was incumbent on them to now make a choice.

While the cease-fire is to cover all of Syria, both Kerry and Lavrov emphasized the initial importance of allowing humanitarian convoys to reach Aleppo, where hundreds of thousands are without food, water and electricity. If Aleppo continues to be torn apart, the prospects for Syria are doomed, Kerry said.

[Chlorine attack deepens fears among besieged Aleppo residents]

The track record for Syrian agreements is not good. After years of failed attempts to stem the fighting, Kerry organized a group of more than a dozen countries, including Russia and Iran, that last November pledged to stop their own attacks and those of their allies inside the country.

In December, the U.N. Security Council bolstered the pledge with a resolution; two months later, the group set a late February date for implementation. The truce had been in force little more than a month when fighting again erupted.
In this undated image made from video distributed Sept. 6, 2016, by North Korean broadcaster KRT, a missile is launched during a drill at an undisclosed location in North Korea. (AP)

North Korea has taken a key step toward its goal of developing a nuclear-tipped missile capable of reaching the mainland United States, analysts said Friday after Kim Jong Un ordered yet another nuclear test.

The test, which Pyongyang said was a nuclear warhead explosion, appeared to be North Koreas biggest yet.

Its a clear indication of progress towards developing a miniaturized nuclear warhead for North Koreas ballistic missiles, said Alison Evans, a North Korea analyst at IHS Markit, a consultancy.

We estimate that North Korea has an inventory of 15 or 20 nuclear weapons and that they could be put on a truck or a short-range missile. But what North Korea is aiming for is to put them on an intercontinental ballistic missile, she said.

North Korea was officially founded 68 years ago Friday  the day of the nuclear test  with opposition to the United States as its raison detre. Its propaganda lauds the protection the Kim family has provided from the hostile Americans.

The Washington Post's Anna Fifield reports on North Korea's fifth nuclear test and what it means for the region and one of Kim Jong Uns few allies, China. (Jason Aldag,Anna Fifield/The Washington Post)

But the reclusive country has dramatically accelerated its nuclear and missile programs since Kim Jong Un became North Koreas third-generation leader almost five years ago, conducting three of its five nuclear tests in that time.

[ North Korea conducts fifth nuclear test, claims it has made warheads with higher strike power ]

Since early 2014, Pyongyang has also noticeably stepped up its missile testing, launching a variety of vehicles, including some long-range missiles. Last month, it successfully launched a ballistic missile from a submarine.

On Monday, North Korea launched three extended-range Scud missiles in quick succession, apparently to try to outsmart U.S. and Japanese missile-defense systems in the region.

Then, on Friday, it said it had standardized nuclear warheads so that it could produce a variety of smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear warheads of higher strike power.

The test showed that North Korea is ready to retaliate against the enemies and has practical countermeasures to the racket of threat and sanctions against Pyongyang, the official Korean Central News Agency said.

It is impossible to verify North Koreas claim to have mastered the technology to fit warheads to missiles, as that proof would come only with a test. And Pyongyang does have a habit of exaggerating its abilities, with its claim to have tested a hydrogen bomb in January immediately dismissed as fanciful.

But Kims regime has clearly been working toward being able to deliver a nuclear-tipped missile on target.

In March, state media announced that North Korean scientists had miniaturized a nuclear warhead, and photos were published of Kim examining what was described as a miniaturized weapon  a mirrored device that looked like a disco ball.

While there is still considerable skepticism that North Korea has been able to make such a breakthrough, there is also an increasing assumption among military officials in South Korea and the United States that its only a matter of time until North Korea gets there.

[These North Korean missile launches are adding up to something very troubling]

Twenty years ago, the idea of North Korea being able to deliver a nuclear warhead to the U.S. seemed far-fetched, said Sharon Squassoni, director of the proliferation prevention program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Theyre not there yet, but with each round of tests, they inch a little bit closer.

But the countries in North Koreas neighborhood are already at risk, Squassoni said. This nuclear material could be put on a boat or an airplane or even a wheelbarrow and delivered to North Koreas neighbors.

Indeed, the way North Korea described its capabilities  linking them to an artillery unit  suggests that it is focused closer to home, said Joshua Pollack, editor of the Nonproliferation Review.

They described this as a step that was necessary for them to mass-produce warheads for the theater, underscoring that regional powers ought to be taking this seriously, he said.

North Korea has been hinting of more provocations to come. In an angry statement released after the U.N. Security Council condemned its submarine-launched ballistic missile test late last month, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry in Pyongyang warned of deadly strikes to be made by the enraged people of North Korea.

Now that the U.S. posed threats to the dignity and the right to existence of the DPRK, defying its serious warning, it will continue to take a series of eventful action steps as a full-fledged military power, the spokesman said, using the official abbreviation for North Korea.

While it is easy to dismiss North Koreas florid rhetoric as exaggeration, analysts carefully parse such statements for clues as to what Pyongyang might do next and have found that they sometimes bear out.

[Everything you need to know about the North Korean nuclear test]

Dealing with North Korea will be a major challenge for the next U.S. administration, regardless of who wins the presidency. The Obama administration has generally followed a policy of strategic patience, trying to wait out North Korea, which, under Kim, has shown very little interest in negotiating away its nuclear program.

The international community should try to stymie North Koreas progress before it reaches its goal, Squassoni said. Its still a little way off in the future until that capacity emerges, but we should not wait until this is a real threat before we try to deal with it.

One immediate effect of North Koreas latest nuclear test is that it could bolster calls for South Korea to have its own nuclear weapons, said Euan Graham, a security expert at the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney who once served as a British diplomat in Pyongyang.

As North Korea has made advances in its nuclear weapons technology, a small but growing number of prominent politicians and academics have been openly advocating for South Korea to have nuclear weapons, too.

Some people in South Korea might question if the U.S.s nuclear deterrence is enough, Graham said, and wonder if they should have weapons, too, or if they should be pushing for the U.S. to bring nuclear weapons back to South Korea.

That idea was gaining traction on social media Friday.

I strongly support South Koreas nuke armament, one commenter said in a forum on the Naver Internet portal, according to the Yonhap News Agency. As I should know how to protect myself, we should defend our own country. An independent defense is the answer.

Read more

North Korea fires 3 missiles as G-20 continues in China

North Korea hails greatest success of submarine-launched ballistic missile

North Korean missile lands perilously close to Japan

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world
Senator Sam Dastyari, a key Labor Party factional powerbroker, this week became an initial casualty of a virulent anti-China witch-hunt that swiftly emerged to dominate the Australian media and political establishment over the past week.

Dastyaris rapid removal from office sends a wider message to the parliamentary elite that no dissent will be tolerated to the bipartisan policy of backing Washington in its escalating strategic and military confrontation with Beijing.

A key supporter of Labor leader Bill Shorten, Dastyari was forced to resign on Wednesday as a shadow minister and leader of opposition business in the Senate. He quit just six days after the Fairfax Media highlighted a $1,670 donation from a Chinese-Australian business tycoon to the senator to pay the bill for an overused parliamentary travel allowance.

Dastyari had previously disclosed the gift in his parliamentary record of donations. But it suddenly became linked by the media, spearheaded by Fairfaxs Australian Financial Review and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, to comments he allegedly had made supporting Chinas stance on the territorial disputes in the South China Sea.

Dastyari was accused of betraying Australias national interests by adopting a position at odds with the policy of the Liberal-National Coalition government and the Labor Party to insist that Beijing abide by the July 12 arbitration court ruling in The Hague, which rejected Chinas territorial claims as invalid.

This bipartisan front is in line with the Obama administrations increasingly provocative demands for China to obey the ruling, which resulted from a US-orchestrated challenge by the Philippines to a court whose jurisdiction the Beijing regime never accepted.

The Murdoch-owned media outlets quickly joined the attack, insisting that Shorten must sack Dastyari. In yesterdays Australian, foreign editor Greg Sheridan declared that the real scandal was not the money, but Dastyaris comments on the South China Sea.

Sheridan charged Dastyari with making comments which slavishly followed Beijings line and contradicted Labor policy on a critical national security issue. Dastyaris words and actions were so scandalous he had to be removed from all frontbench political posts.

The previous day, an Australian editorial accused Dastyari of disloyalty to Australias interests on a matter of national security. The editorial said any notion that Australia should remain neutral and respect Chinas decision to build military bases and harbours in the South China Sea was anathema to patriotic Australians.

Significantly, the move against Dastyari came amid concerns in the US media about Australias reliability as an ally in a war against China. In the Wall Street Journal, David Feith wrote on Wednesday that President Barack Obamas visit to Asia for a round of summits showed how fickle were Americas allies in the region.

Feith said Australia was ambivalent about deterring Chinese misbehavior because China was its largest trading partner and polls taken by the University of Sydneys US Studies Centre had found the public more likely to support stronger ties with China than with America.

Pointing to the political instability in Australia, Feith stated: Given that Australia now rotates through leaders about once every two years, it may not be long before one rises with plans to distance the country from Washington.

In response to the anti-China drumbeat, Shorten not only sacked Dastyari but publicly committed himself, for the first time, to sending Australian warships into the 12-mile territorial limits around Chinese-controlled islets to directly confront China.

Until now, the US has been alone in conducting such provocations, under the fraudulent banner of freedom of navigation operations. It needs Australia to follow suit in order to demonstrate that it is not isolated in the region. That demand was reinforced by US Vice President Joe Bidens four-day visit to Australia just after the July 2 election, in which Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbulls government barely survived.

Previously, Shorten had not explicitly backed calls by Labors former defence spokesman Stephen Conroy for Australia to mount such operations, and Conroys bellicose criticisms of Turnbull for not doing so.

This week, clearly concerned for his own political future, Shorten declared that both he and Conroy were absolutely resolute about supporting the right of the Australian Navy to have freedom of navigation exercises in these areas.

Shortens shift underscores Labors position as outflanking Turnbulls government in committing itself to Washingtons drive for a showdown with China. Earlier this year, the Australians Sheridan hailed Conroys bold call on the South China Sea and said Labor was now more reliable on foreign policy than the Coalition.

The feverish media campaign extends far beyond Dastyari. An article in todays Australian quoted one senior Labor source alleging that former Labor Foreign Minister Bob Carr was pushing an aggressive pro-China position inside the Labor Party. Sam was just the monkeythe organ-grinder is Bob Carr, the source said.

Carr is under growing fire for heading the Australia-China Relations Institute at the University of Technology, Sydney, which was established in 2014 with a $1.8 million donation from property developer Huang Xiangmo.

Also in the firing line is former Prime Minister Paul Keating, who recently restated his opposition to any reflexive support for US strategies to counter Chinas influence. An Australian column by Griffith University politics professor Andrew ONeil said Keatings position amounted to rolling over to accommodate China.

These sharp conflicts reflect the intensifying dilemma of Australian capitalism, caught between the US, the strategic and military protector on which it has depended since World War II, and China, on whose markets its major companies, particularly the mining giants, rely heavily.

Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd proposed an accommodationist stance, suggesting that Washington concede greater regional influence to Beijing in order to avoid warwhile stressing his support for the US alliance. He was ousted in mid-2010 by Labors US-backed powerbrokers to make way for Julia Gillard. Her governments unconditional alignment with Washington was underlined in November 2011 when Obama used the Australian parliament as a platform to formally announce the US pivot to Asia to confront China.

In response to Washingtons demands that Australia take a frontline role in the South China Sea, a renewed purge of any dissenting voices has begun. This drive will not stop at the Labor Party. Already, the media has reported that the countrys intelligence agencies, which have intimate ties with their US counterparts, do not trust Turnbull because he isnt taking their warnings about the security threat posed by China seriously enough.

The Dastyari affair has been escalated into a whipping up of anti-Chinese sentiment, demonising any politician, business figure or organisation that questions a militarist policy toward Beijing. In the Sydney Morning Herald, international editor Peter Hartcher called for a Four Pests Campaign to defend Australia against such rats, flies, mosquitoes and sparrows. Dastyari was just one rat, he asserted. There will be many more.

In this fetid atmosphere, one million Australian residents of Chinese background, along with some 140,000 Chinese students in Australia, are being depicted as a potentially traitorous fifth column inside the country.
Arianna Quan made history when she became the first Asian-American and naturalized citizen to be named Miss Michigan  but not everyone was happy about it.



A lot of people have reached out to me, both extremely negatively and positively, Quan, 23, tells PEOPLE. Its been a very polarizing response. Its been really interesting to see the discussions that have been erupting from just me being crowned, and its been an extremely humbling experience to be a part of those conversations.



Quans crowning received media attention domestically as well as abroad in her native China.



All this negativity came out, especially about my appearance and how Im apparently unfit to represent the Chinese population because Im ugly,  she says.



But she isnt letting the harsh criticism bring her down.



I see it as a part of my job as a state title-holder and potential Miss America, says Quan. My goal is to just drive the conversation in an important direction, because there are so many things we have to discuss about immigration and diversity in this country right now.



RELATED VIDEO: Miss America Host Chris Harrison Takes People Behind the Scenes of the Surprising Vanessa Williams Apology

To that end, Quans platform issue is Being American: Immigration & Citizenship Education.

Its something that started this past year when I started competing because of what I saw throughout the selection year, she says. Immigrants and first-generation Americans are deeply underrepresented. My platform is about engaging minorities in this country, and about prompting Americans that have been here for generations to celebrate their culture.

The automotive design student hopes to bring pride to underrepresented groups as she competes for the Miss America crown.

[Winning] would mean being able to represent a population of people in this country that are underrepresented right now: the immigrant population, the first-generation American population, Asian-Americans, she says. I think it would mean exponentially more to them than it would to me.

Story continues

The 2017 Miss America competition airs Sunday, September 11 at 9/8c on ABC.

Related:

For more news videos visit Yahoo View.
Former Greys Anatomy actress Melissa George was hospitalized Wednesday after being assaulted by her partner, French website Paris Match reports.



The 40-year-old Australian reportedly accused her partner Jean-David Blanc, the founder of French movie website Allocine, of causing her injuries that included a swollen face, bodily pain, nausea and dizziness.



According to the report, George called the police from her home on Wednesday evening to report the incident.



George, who appeared on Greys from 2008 to 2009 as Dr. Sadie Harris, was hospitalized for over 24 hours at Cochin Hospital in Paris, the report states.



The Golden Globe-nominated actress most recently starred in The Slap and Heartbeat and has two young children  sons Raphael, 2, and Solal, 10 months  with Blanc.



A rep for the actress did not immediately respond to PEOPLEs request for comment.
The Magnificent Seven (Photo: Sam Emerson/MGM)



By Owen Gleiberman, Variety

Now that the Summer of Rehashes is over, a lot of people suddenly seem to agree that remaking movies, especially when theyre beloved and indelible classics, is a lousy idea for Hollywood to be pursuing. Its evidence of creative bankruptcy  an addiction to non-originality. That said, just because a movie is a copy doesnt mean its bad. (There are good remakes, like Oceans Eleven or Cape Fear, and good sequels, like the Bourne films.) The cheeky but square, dutifully manufactured, ultimately uninspired remake of The Magnificent Seven, which kicks off the 41st Toronto International Film Festival, points to a deeper reason why remakes often dont pan out: The appeal of the original tends to be rooted in the way it expresses something of its era, so trying to recapture what made it winning is a fools game. You can reassemble the same plot and characters; whats tricky is reigniting the materials inner spark.

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The Magnificent Seven is a case in point. The original, made in 1960, is a fondly remembered Western  itself a rawhide remake of Kurosawas Seven Samurai  thats a classic more by dint of nostalgia than greatness. Its graced with one of the most ecstatic musical themes in Hollywood history (Dun! Dun de dun! Dun! de dun-dun-dun!), but the movie itself is what Variety, in the old days, would have called a light-hearted, action-heavy oater. It gave seven actors, led by the diamond-sharp glare of Yul Brynner, a chance to strut their hambone stuff. The logic of remakes says: Why not round up a new cavalry of stars to step into their spurs? Its not blasphemy.

Well, heres why. When The Magnificent Seven came out, six years after Kurosawas epic, the premise was colorful and novel and, in its way, kind of late-1950s badass. Seven gunslingers band together, for mercenary reasons (but really because theyre noble wastrels), to save the residents of a Mexican village from an evil bandit. The size of the cast allowed for shtick and diversity: At heart, this was a non-serious Western about a bunch of machos who have to learn to work together, and who get to shoot up a town. (Oceans 11, a much worse movie made the same year, had a related premise.)

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But consider, for a moment, how un-novel that premise sounds now. It has been more than 50 years since The Magnificent Seven, and since then countless movies have showcased the antic jostle and thrust, the shoulder-poke camaraderie of gunslingers in groups, starting with two memorably dark and bold ones in the late 60s: The Dirty Dozen (which was The Magnificent Seven spiked with nihilism) and The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpahs staggering free-range bloodbath of alienation). Fast forward to today, when action heroes in big-group form are legion. Theyve taken over the superhero genre (The Avengers, X-Men, Suicide Squad), theyre the new kings of pop sci-fi (Guardians of the Galaxy), theyre the defining dynamic of heist thrillers (from Point Break to the Oceans series), and theyve staked out a manly relic museum wing of B-movie kitsch (the Expendables films). Theres this rowdy bunch of sort of outlaw guys, see, and they all band together, andsnore. It worked in 1960 because it was fresh. In 2016, its old Stetson.

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Yet if theres a so-what? quality to it all, Antoine Fuquas Magnificent Seven is still a reasonably engaging movie for its first hour or so, when Sam Chisolm (Denzel Washington), a bounty hunter, gathers up a passel of supposedly disreputable but more-convivial-than-they-look cowboys for hire. Its all because Bogue (Peter Sarsgaard), a gold-greedy industrialist, wants to take over the town of Rose Creek and mine every inch of it, grabbing the land from the residents and paying them close to dirt. How do you make a black-hatted Western villain sing today? Eli Wallach had a silky menace in the original, but Sarsgaard just acts sulky and irked; he comes off as a corporate weakling protected by a wall of henchmen (though thats supposed to be the point). At a meeting in the town church, he equates capitalism and democracy in the films token nugget of relevance, and when the townsfolk speak out against him, they get tomahawked in the back. For good measure, Bogues men set the church on fire.

Enter Denzel. Dressed in black, rocking a bolero hat, he saunters into a bar and messes with the bartenders mind (hes been hired to kill him), which Washington does better than anyone. Its all in the ironic way he uses those upbeat, lawyerly cadences of his  he turns friendly into ominous. When Chisolm learns that the townsfolk have been given just three weeks before Bogue grabs their land, he sets out  for a price  to put together a band of protectors.

If Washington is the films sly center of gravity, Chris Pratt, as the hard-drinking reckless charmer Josh Faraday, who uses card tricks to distract his enemies into letting him shoot them, has its most combustible star quality. He had it in Guardians of the Galaxy too, and in The Magnificent Seven Pratt pops onscreen. Hes like a good guy with an outlaw inside  a gunman who can hardly wait to start shooting. Which makes the other five men seem like kernels who pop about halfway. Ethan Hawke shows up as Goodnight Robicheaux, a haunted former Confederate soldier who has interesting facial hair but not much personality. He turns out to be old buddies with Chisolm  we can tell because Washington flashes his smile for the first, and just about only, time  and he also brings along his Asian road-show partner, Billy Rocks (Byung-hun Lee), whos a wizard with a pen-knife. This is very much a multiculti Magnificent Seven: In addition to Billy, there is Vasquez (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), a Texican with a mean streak, and Red Harvest (Martin Sensmeier), a Comanche in face paint that he changes like a mood ring. Aside from Washington and Pratt, though, the only actor who makes a true impression is Vincent DOnofrio as Jack Horne, whos like an off-his-rocker religious-nut Grizzly Adams in a long furry animal-tail cap (Pratt: I believe that bear was wearing peoples clothes).

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Fuqua is trying for John Ford meets Sergio Leone: a funky classical sweep, with room for delirious shootouts. The trouble is that he mimics the trademarks of those directors without their elan, and the plot that was once catchy is now rote. Chisolm gathers up his men, they head into town and shoot the handful of goons Bogue has put in place, then they wait for Bogue to retaliate by bringing in a vast army of goons. Thats it: No twists, no fuss. Fuqua has shown that he can be a subtle, layered filmmaker (just watch Wesley Snipes and Hawke in the dread-ridden indie cop drama Brooklyns Finest), but his Hollywood movies have a way of clinging to the noisy violent surface.

Which is all the second hour of The Magnificent Seven is. Bogue shows up with his army and a gleaming black-and-gold Gatling gun, and the film basically says, Let the Old West mortal-combat videogames begin! Pistols, tomahawks, bow and arrows, that Gatling gun: All are deployed to standard destructive effect. That seven sharpshooters could take on this many bad guys and never raise our pulses by a beat says something about the audience threshold for outrageous violence  but then, weve seen it all 70 times before. And though, in the end, not everyone gets out alive, it would be an overstatement to say that created any sense of loss. In the original, it did, but thats not about to happen in a remake that would have been more aptly called The Adequate Seven.

The Magnificent Seven: Watch a trailer for the 2016 version:


Customs officials in Germany have confiscated about 1,2 tons of ivory - the biggest such haul in the country, officials said in a news conference in Berlin on Friday (September 09). The find - several complete tusks but also ivory carvings and cut up pieces - is worth over 1 million euros, German customs said in a statement. "We are talking about the biggest amount of ivory that was ever confiscated in Germany. We checked records of the last ten years in Europe as well and can say for that period of time that it is also the biggest catch in Europe," German customs president Uwe Schroeder said in a news conference Last May, authorities at Schoenefeld airport near Berlin were suspicious of several packages declared as marble clocks destined for Vietnam. Customs officials found 625 kilograms of ivory after opening the boxes, which led to the arrest of two suspects in a warehouse near Koblenz in Rhineland-Palatinate at the end of August. Investigators found some 570 kilograms of ivory there, as well as grinding and cutting machines. Prosecutor Bernhard Brocher and his team could hardly believe their luck: "To our total surprise one of the suspects, who we thought was in Vietnam, had indeed returned to Germany. And furthermore he was still working with the second suspect. And the whole place was packed with ivory. Including all the necessary machinery," he said. Authorities now try to shed more light on the case as there are still many unanswered questions, Brochter said. "The whole background - why ivory from Africa, bound for Asia, is processed in a basement in a former industrial area in the Hunsrueck mountains and who in what way took part in the whole operation - that remains a thrilling question that we need to answer," he said.
From Cosmopolitan

A female student has died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound after shooting and injuring another female student at a high school in the West Texas town of Alpine, the Brewster County sheriff said.

"The shooter appears to have shot herself," Brewster County Sheriff Ronny Dodson told radio station KVLF. A gun was found near the suspected shooter, he said.

The sheriff said a federal law enforcement officer was also injured during the incident, which began shortly before 9 a.m. at Alpine High School in the town of 5,900 in Texas's Big Bend region. The officer was struck when another officer's gun accidentally discharged.

Further details about the injured officer's and student's conditions were not available.

The shooting prompted a lockdown at Alpine's three public schools.

Dodson said the shooting at the high school was part of a chaotic series of events that included a bomb threat called in at nearby Sul Ross State University, which required law enforcement personnel to rush there from the high school.

"That's ridiculous for someone to call in something like this when we've got this situation going on," Dodson said. "This community does not expect this, we don't want this, and we can't explain it yet."

Alpine is 220 miles southeast of El Paso and 110 miles north of Big Bend National Park.

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WASHINGTON -- Donald Trump just renewed his vow of opacity.

Asked by ABC News's David Muir on Monday afternoon whether he'd be releasing his income-tax returns, as every other major-party presidential nominee has done for 40 years, Trump brushed off the inquiry.

"I think people don't care," the GOP nominee declared.

No? A Quinnipiac University poll two weeks ago found that 74 percent of likely voters, including 62 percent of Republicans, think Trump should release his tax returns.

And for those Americans who don't care, there's more evidence every day that they should. As Trump was again dismissing the tax-return matter, The Post that afternoon published an extensive report by Dana Priest, Ellen Nakashima and Tom Hamburger laying out what U.S. intelligence officials believe is "a broad covert Russian operation in the United States to sow public distrust in the upcoming presidential election and in U.S. political institutions."

If Vladimir Putin's government -- widely believed to be behind cyberattacks on the Democratic National Committee and state election operations -- has this "ambitious" plan to influence the election, it stands to reason that Putin would also like to influence the candidates. Trump and his advisers have taken a strikingly pro-Putin line, and Trump and his advisers also have had extensive financial ties to Russia. There's one sure way to know how beholden Trump is to Putin's regime: release his tax returns.

This doesn't mean Trump is some sort of Manchurian Candidate in cahoots with Putin. But it's bad enough if a President Trump were to feel pressure to tilt in Russia's favor because he was indebted to Putin-allied investors. Trump dismisses the possibility as nonsense -- so why won't he come clean with his taxes?

The potential for such conflict is a big reason it's routine for nominees to release their returns. Hillary Clinton has released almost 40 years' worth, Tim Kaine has released 10, and Mike Pence said he'll release his this week.

When Trump says nobody cares about the release of his tax returns, he's forgetting a long list of Republicans who have called for Trump to disclose. Mitt Romney, the last Republican nominee, called Trump's refusal "disqualifying" and speculated that the returns could contain a "bombshell."

Much has been made of Clinton's allergy to transparency, and I don't excuse her obsessive secrecy over her emails and her nearly 280 days without a news conference. Clinton and Trump should both release more medical information.

But when it comes to transparency, Trump is by far the biggest offender. He's still banning The Post and other news organizations he doesn't like. Clinton released the names of her top money-raising "bundlers"; Trump refuses. Clinton has said the Clinton Foundation would stop taking foreign and corporate contributions if she were elected (she should go further, by severing all family ties with the foundation) while Trump has no plans to minimize such conflicts of interest -- or even to disclose them.

Trump's excuse, that he's waiting for audits to end, has no legal justification. His own accountants have said his audits from 2002 to 2008 have been "closed," yet his returns from those years remain unreleased.

Do the unreleased returns illustrate shady connections? The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Trump's real estate investments "brought the GOP nominee into regular contact with people who had ties to organized crime." Do they show (as earlier returns did) that he paid little or nothing in taxes? Do they confirm reporting by The Washington Post's David A. Fahrenthold that Trump has been stingy with charities?

Very likely, they would show that Trump has a great deal of debt owned by foreign interests that don't necessarily share his America First views. The New York Times reported recently that companies directly owned by Trump hold at least $650 million in debt -- twice the amount that could be found from his campaign disclosures -- and much of Trump's wealth is in three investments that owe an additional $2 billion.

Wealthy candidates running for high office typically promise to put their investments in a "blind trust" so they can avoid conflicts of interest by not controlling, or even knowing about, their financial interests. But Trump has no plan to do that; he says he'll have his children run the business while he runs the country.

By refusing to disclose his financial obligations, and by declining to remove any potential conflicts of interest he has with Putin and other foreign entities, Trump has come up with a different notion of blind trust: He wants us to trust him, blindly.
James Petrovic approached the Transportation Security Administration checkpoint at Chicago's O'Hare airport. The 60-year-old had just landed on a flight from his hometown Detroit on Aug. 10. He'd seen something and needed to say something.

"While I was on my flight, I was going to do some work and noticed I had my gun in my bag," he said, according to a TSA report shared with U.S. News.

Not just a gun: Petrovic was packing a .38 Smith & Wesson revolver loaded with four bullets and another in the chamber -- roughly a pound and a half of lethal metal in his carry-on that went undetected by TSA screeners in Detroit. That he turned himself in is the only reason anyone found out.

The incident was never made public by the TSA. Petrovic was charged with a misdemeanor, and his court date is in October, according to the Chicago Police Department, which arrested him. The TSA says a screener in Detroit was reassigned while the incident undergoes review.

"TSA will take appropriate corrective measures if warranted based on the results of the review," the agency says in a statement. "Traveler security is TSA's first priority and we remain intensely focused on our important mission."

The security lapse, though, seems anything but unusual.

A show-stopping leak in May 2015 revealed that mock explosives and guns slipped past screeners 95 percent of the time in undercover tests at dozens of the nation's busiest airports . A review by the TSA's inspector general a month later found the agency failed to identify 73 aviation workers with potential links to terrorism. In testimony before House lawmakers this spring, TSA executives and whistleblowers described a toxic culture of retaliation and recrimination among the agency's highest ranks. And while the TSA spent $878 million through 2012 on specialized training to detect travelers who seem to be acting suspiciously, an audit the next year found it had yet to implement any measure for determining if the program is effective.

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"It is excellent security theater," says Philip Baum, editor of the journal Aviation Security International and the author of a history on airline hijackings and bombings. "But it's highly questionable how effective it really is in preventing the next attack."

The TSA keeps the results of its airport security audits secret -- the better, it says, to keep terrorists unaware of which places are weakest. Contacted by U.S. News, the agency declined to make any officials available. After the statement on the gun, the TSA did not return multiple phone and email requests for comment.

In that void there are only the public statements from the agency's administrator, Peter Neffenger, who insists that TSA's nearly 60,000 employees "join together every day to execute a complex, challenging mission," as he did in congressional testimony in April. But the question remains: 15 years since the blue-shirted ranks of the Transportation Security Administration rose from the ashes of 9/11, the role of securing America's skies seized from private contractors to be consolidated under the newly minted Department of Homeland Security, how well is the TSA safeguarding U.S. aviation? Can we even know?

Experts say yes -- but they paint a picture that's far from reassuring.

"The execution by management and personnel has, from every measure of evaluation, been a failure," says Anthony Roman, a security consultant and president of Roman & Associates, an investigations and risk-management firm. "But rather surprisingly and conversely, there have been no successful bombings of aircraft, no successful hijackings. So in a practical sense, the program's been a success when by every measure it should not have been."

So how long can that record stay perfect, especially against enemies that still seem determined to attack not just airlines, but airports themselves, as happened in Istanbul in June and Brussels in March? For if and when the next attack comes, recent history suggests the consequences will prove yet more dire, and more deadly, than they already seem.

"Everything we've done," says aviation security consultant John Huey, "how we approach security, being in Iraq and Afghanistan, it's all a result of a failure of airport security in 2001."

Dial-In Every two weeks, from the spring of 2013 through the spring of 2016, top TSA officials at the nation's busiest airports joined a 30-minute conference call with the agency's then-chief of security, Kelly Hoggan, assistant administrator for the office of security operations.

"You know what we'd talk about? We'd talk about wait times, and how wait times are too long, and what are we going to do about it?" says Andrew Rhoades, an assistant federal security director for TSA at Minneapolis-St. Paul airport. "We'd shift resources between airports at an enormous cost -- to do what? Not to defeat the threat, but to reduce wait times."

Others at TSA corroborated Rhoades' account. "Not once did Hoggan or anyone else raise security as a prime concern or even mention security," one recounted, asking not to be named because the official is still employed at TSA. "If you had a five-minute wait time, you were on the phone having to explain it."

Wait times are not entirely irrelevant: Large crowds of people make an attractive target. They can also undercut the agency's credibility, reinforcing its reputation for inefficiency, rather than as a security force to be respected.

But insiders say the emphasis on wait times suggested something larger was at work: While the administrator at the time, John Pistole, came from the FBI, many of the TSA's executives, including Hoggan, hailed not from counterterrorism jobs, but customer-service positions with the airlines and airports. And just about everyone hoped to avoid being chewed out in public on Capitol Hill, for few issues make as easy a punching bag for lawmakers as long security lines.

"The managers are more worried about wait times, and they're putting the pressure on front-line employees to get people through the line, and if they make a mistake they're fired," says Mark Livingston, once the second in command in TSA's intelligence office and currently a senior risk analysis officer.

[WATCH 9/11 Anniversary Videos Show a Generation Untouched by the Attack]

Dissent was ruthlessly punished. Ed Goodwin, an outspoken but respected leader in Florida, a former state trooper caring for his elderly parents and with a daughter in high school, was abruptly reassigned to Iowa in May 2014, Rhoades testified in April. Two months earlier, Ken Kasprisin, a former TSA administrator, found himself suddenly reassigned from Minneapolis to Alaska.

Rhoades and Livingston have filed their own complaints with the Office of Special Counsel accusing superiors of retaliation: Rhodes alleges in his complaint that he was reassigned for challenging how the agency relocated officers. In his House testimony, he said he was also targeted because superiors mistakenly believed he'd leaked information to the media. Livingston, who filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security, says he was demoted and reassigned for reporting another supervisor's sexual harassment of a female employee.

"All the people who will do the right thing, who will stand up and say, 'No, I'm not going to rush people through like a cattle car,' those are the people who were pushed out of the agency," says Rhoades, who testified about the reassignments before the House oversight committee in April. "All you're left with is sycophants."

And that's far more than a mere morale problem, says Livingston, who testified alongside Rhoades at April's hearing: "If you're more fearful of your supervisor than a terrorist, no one is going to say anything."

Changes

For all the criticism, there are some things the TSA is doing better. It's installed more advanced technology to screen checked and carry-on bags, and it's implemented centralized training for entry-level screeners. The PreCheck program introduced in 2011, while not flawless, is widely regarded as a success, allowing low-risk passengers to undergo less screening and in turn freeing up more officers to check everyone else. Even the behavioral detection program is seen as a positive step, even if its effectiveness remains unclear.

"The TSA probably does a better job than most of America gives them credit for. They have some of the same challenges that any large organization has as far as consistency with staff and training," says Lindsey McFarren, owner of McFarren Aviation Consulting and a former assistant general manager at TSA in 2008. "The vast majority of people who are there are competent and do want to do their job well."

And there are still the questions that don't have easy answers, the ones that make the rounds after every airport or airline attack: Should screening checkpoints be moved from inside airport terminals to their entrances or even farther? Can current screening technology detect very small amounts of an explosive?

Even seemingly straightforward solutions, like installing locked cockpit doors to prevent midair hijackings, can have unpredictable consequences: The door prevented passengers and crew members from overtaking Germanwings pilot Andreas Lubitz, who purposely flew the aircraft and all 149 onboard into the side of a mountain in March 2015. The sound of the captain pounding on the door, trying to break it down, was captured by the black box recorder.

[AMERICAN AVIATION A System Built for Comfort--Not Safety]

"Each year gets better, but we should be much more advanced and more secure than we are today," says Rick Withers, former TSA deputy federal security director in the U.S. Virgin Islands from 2002-2003, and a consulting practice lead with Triad Consulting.

By last fall, it was hard to imagine an agency more derided than the TSA -- including even the IRS. A poll released in October found 87 percent of Americans were unhappy with the TSA, and barely 10 percent had confidence it was effective at its job.

By the spring, as security lines stretched ever longer, operators of some of the nation's largest airports -- Atlanta, Newark, LaGuardia, JFK -- were threatening to privatize security screening, expanding a version of the model used pre-9/11, one that's still employed at close to two dozen airports from Punta Gorda Airport in Florida to San Francisco International.

All the while, the TSA's top executives were awarding and enriching themselves: As many as nine top officials were awarded four- and five-figure bonuses, despite the interminable waits and the flunked security audits.

Hoggan, the agency's head of security, quietly took home a total of $90,000 through 2013 and 2014 atop a $183,300 salary, the bonus meted out in roughly $10,000 increments that largely circumvented reporting requirements. Only after House lawmakers castigated the agency at a hearing in April was Hoggan stripped of his position -- but even now, he's still on TSA's payroll. Others who collected the bonuses are also still at their posts.

"The American public would be absolutely horrified," Rhoades says. "Why are people getting bonuses for failed performance? It just doesn't make sense."

TSA's Future

Pistole, tapped to lead the TSA in October 2010, retired at the end of 2014. He's now president of Anderson University, a private Christian liberal arts college in Indiana. At TSA, his post has been assumed by Vice Adm. Neffenger, who has pledged to clean up the agency's senior management and rein in the bonus payments. The agency is rolling out so-called Innovation Lanes, a kind of E-ZPass for pedestrians, allowing them to be screened while walking. The TSA's also won more funding from Congress, allowing it to hire more screeners and cut wait times.

The conference calls -- now known as Operations Situation Reports -- have changed, too. Every morning, top TSA officials at the nation's airports raise concerns about security, warn others of glitches, and coordinate with the airport and airline officials who also listen in. Wait times are rarely discussed.

Senior staffers acknowledge Neffenger inherited "a mess," as one insider describes it. Some are cautiously optimistic he'll be able to implement lasting improvements.

"The people who have been creating problems are the same people who have been creating problems for years, and the current administration has put those people in a box," one official says. "But there needs to be a culture established, a level of accountability, for after the departure of this leadership team."

Alan Neuhauser covers law enforcement and criminal justice for U.S. News & World Report. He also contributes to STEM and Healthcare of Tomorrow, and previously reported on energy and the environment. You can follow him on Twitter or reach him at aneuhauser@usnews.com.






Fifteen years after the 9/11 attacks, the military trial of the five men accused of plotting the deaths of nearly 3,000 people has not even begun  and defense lawyers and outside experts estimate there are at least four more years of delays and pretrial motions before it will start.

The delay has left family members of the victims in a heartbreaking and frustrating limbo, as some have begun to doubt they will ever see justice done for the murders of their loved ones. Meanwhile, public attention to the trial has all but evaporated, leaving them isolated in their grief.

Frustrating is not the word for it. Painful is the word for it, said Rita Lasar, whose brother, Avrame Zelmanowitz, died while waiting for paramedics to rescue his wheelchair-bound co-worker in the North Tower.

Lasar is turning 85 years old next week and fears that she will not be alive to see the trial begin.

I feel helpless to do anything. Its just like having grit in your heart, said Debra Burlingame, whose brother Charles was the captain of the American Airlines plane that was hijacked and crashed into the Pentagon that morning.

The current military tribunal began four years ago after President Obama abandoned a plan to move the men into the civilian court system, facing fierce political blowback that included opposition from a faction of family members who were worried the men could be acquitted in federal court. Burlingame led the group of 9/11 families who supported a military trial for the defendants, who are being tried together as co-conspirators, while Lasar led a smaller faction that wanted the men tried in civilian court.

While these two groups of family members continue to disagree on a lot, theres a consensus that the current system has been a disaster.

I am not of the opinion that the process is failing. Im of the opinion that it has failed, Kristen Breitweiser, who became a political activist after she lost her husband in the attacks, said on Friday during a Yahoo News roundtable on the 9/11 anniversary. We are a nation of laws. If we cant adequately prosecute the co-conspirators of the 9/11 attacks, then I dont know what kind of democracy we live in.

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Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other four suspected co-conspirators were captured just two years after the attacks, but they were kept in CIA custody and subjected to torture before being transferred to Guantanamo Bay in 2006. Those backing a military tribunal feared that the use of torture could get the governments case against the men thrown out of a civilian court. They thought military commissions would guarantee swift justice.

Rita Lasar, 84, on the balcony of her East Village apartment in New York. Lasar watches the 9/11 pretrial hearings at Fort Hamilton Army Base in Brooklyn. (Photo: Yahoo News/Gordon Donovan)

But the opposite has been true. The tribunals have only successfully convicted eight people on terror charges, and four of those convictions were later thrown out. Meanwhile, hundreds of terrorists have been convicted in the federal system since 9/11. Ahmed Ghailani, who also faced torture in CIA custody after he was suspected of plotting the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings, was successfully convicted in federal court in 2010, though on only one of the 285 counts he faced.

The 9/11 trial has been bogged down in pretrial motion after pretrial motion since it began in 2012, as defense attorneys, lead prosecutor Brig. Gen. Mark Martins and Judge James Pohl, an army colonel, try to figure out a brand-new system. Everything seems up for debate, including whether the Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees a right to a speedy trial, applies in the proceedings. The judge has not yet answered that particular question in a motion by the defense.

Everyones projecting 2020 or 2021 when we might go to trial, said James Harrington, who defends accused terrorist Ramzi bin al-Shibh. Its just kind of being realistic about all the work thats being done and the time that takes.

Burlingame, who argued for the trial to take place in Guantanamo Bay, said she blames Pohl, not the tribunal system, for the delays.

I put it squarely on the judge. Hes the one who controls the courtroom. He does not have to allow an oral argument for every damn motion that comes into his bench, she said.

But Steve Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas who used to be a defense lawyer at Guantanamo Bay, said he doesnt think the delays are Pohls fault.

There are two ways to approach this brand-new court system, says Vladeck. The first is to walk carefully through every issue, to make sure youre not skipping a step. And the second is to not care. The judge and the prosecution care, he added.

Many legal experts believe the five suspects would have already been convicted by now if they had faced trial in federal court.

The government defended the molasses-slow pace of justice in a statement, and called the 2020 estimate of a trial date speculation.

Resolution of remaining or pending motions and completion of discovery are necessary steps in order to hold fair trials that comply with the law, and to seek justice for both the victims and the accused, said Defense Department spokeswoman Lt. Col. Valerie Henderson. Prediction of when trial on the merits might start would be speculation at this point. The law requires military commission trials to be deliberate and methodical, free of outside influence.

Meanwhile, family members of 9/11 victims are growing older as the date of the attacks drifts further into the past. Burlingame says her other brother Brad died of pancreatic cancer in December. He never got to see justice done for our brother, she said.

We feel weve been very, very patient with the process, but its just overwhelmingly frustrating, said Colleen Kelly, whose brother, Bill, died in the North Tower. And you cant even say theres not an end in sight  theres no beginning in sight yet.

Pretrial hearings are set to begin again in the case on Oct 3.

_____

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On September 9, 1776, the Second Continental Congress adopted a new name for what had been called the United Colonies. The moniker United States of America has remained since then as a symbol of freedom and independence.

Benjamin Franklin popularized the concept of a political union in his famous Join, Or Die cartoon in 1754. A generation later, the concept of unity became a reality.

Thomas Jefferson is credited as being the first person to come up with the name, as he was drafting the Declaration of Independence. In June 1776, Jeffersons draft version of the Declaration started with the following sentence:

A Declaration of the Representatives of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, in General Congress assembled.

The final version of the Declaration starts with the date July 4, 1776 and the following statement: The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America.

Richard Henry Lee of Virginia had used the name United Colonies in a June resolution to Congress: Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved, Lee wrote.

These thoughts are included in the Declarations final paragraph. We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, it reads.

On Monday, September 9, 1776, the Congress moved to approve some important resolutions, including payments for the army. The fifth resolution read as follows: That in all continental commissions, and other instruments, where, heretofore, the words United Colonies have been used, the stile be altered for the future to the United States.

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John C. Fitzpatrick from the Library of Congress, back in 1920, explained the origin of United Colonies and the abbreviation U.S.A. in an article for the Daughters of the American Revolution magazine.

Fitzpatrick said the words United Colonies were used by the Congress when it appointed George Washington as commander in chief in June 1775. The abbreviation U.S.A. had its origins as a way that government inspectors approved official gunpowder. Fitzpatrick said the army needed to have inspectors verify that gunpowder met certain standards, and it stamped U.S.A. on the casks as a mark, starting in August 1776,

Also, the words United States of America appeared in the first draft of the Articles of Confederation on July 8, 1776, as it was submitted to Congress. The Articles werent ratified by the states until March 1781.

History Stories on Constitution Daily

Forgotten facts about George Washingtons private life

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Bird vs plane, who would win? If you think planes always come out on top, youre wrong (both metaphorically and literally), because a single bird can cause the downfall of a plane if the pilot cant wing it with a faulty engine. If you thought otherwise, then youve probably watched Sully already.

Birds can fly straight into an engine and get caught in its moving parts, causing everything to jam. At best, the engine will stall, and at worst, the engine will burst into flames and explode. Thats what caused US Airways Flight 1549 to crash into the Hudson River in real life, and in Sully.

But thats the US. How about our homegrown airline, Singapore Airlines? Theyve met their fair share of accidents too, and here are five SIA incidents that could top the bird strike in Sully. Dont worry though, flying is still one of the safest forms of travel, as long as you avoid birds.

Fin. (Singapore Airlines Facebook Page)

1. Flight 117 - Pakistani terrorists

In a story taken right out of GI Joe, four Pakistani terrorists hijacked Flight 117 on 26 March, 1991, while flying from Malaysia to Singapore. They held the plane passengers when it landed for a few hours, before Singapores commandos stormed in and took them down in less than five minutes. With no casualties at all.

And we have the SAF to thank for that.

Cold flight. (Singapore Airlines Facebook Page)

2. Flight 006 - Crashed while taking off

Flight 006 took off at Taiwans Taoyuan International Airport on 31 October, 2000, but due to poor visibility (it was raining at the time), the plane crashed into a construction machinery on a closed runway and ended up bursting into flames, resulting in 85 fatalities. If youre wondering why the plane took off during a heavy storm, its actually normal for planes to leave in bad weather.

But it was a very bad accident.

Collapsed plane. (AhTan Lors Instagram Profile)

3. Airbus A330-300 - Collapsed at Changi Airport

If youre wondering how a plane can collapse (they dont stand up, after all), its because the nose gear of the plane was retracted while it was still on the ground. This happened on 11 October, 2015, but fortunately nobody was hurt. There was an engineer on board but he was unscathed. There were a lot of photos as everyone rushed to publicise this very odd sight on social media.

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This is why you dont press random buttons even when the plane is parked.

Parallel lines. (Singapore Airlines Facebook Page)

4. Flight 016 - Near collision at Incheon Airport

9 May this year was a normal day for Flight 016 as it was taking off when Flight KE929 suddenly loomed into its path on the runway. It managed to stop in time, but it was such a dramatic brake that all the tyres on Flight 016 were shredded. It happened because apparently, the pilots of KE929 ignored the air traffic controllers instructions. However, they took off just 2 hours later, while our plane had a 19-hour delay as the tyres were hastily replaced.

At least all the passengers were safe.

Plane on the runway. (Singapore Airlines Facebook Page)

5. Flight 368 - Oil leak in midair

And just 2 months earlier, on 27 June, Flight 368 was on the way to Milan when there was an oil leak on the right engine. It managed to turn back and land at Changi Airport just before the right engine caught fire. Since they were on the ground already, the fire was put out safely, and nobody was injured.

But still, an oil leak in midair? What could have caused that?





Despite these mishaps, SIA pilots have been able to keep their passengers safe and out of harms way (for most cases), so we want to emphasise once again that flying really is the safest way to travel.

Have you heard of any airplane incidents comparable to the one in Sully?





Marcus Goh is a Singapore television scriptwriter. Hes also a Transformers enthusiast and avid pop culture scholar. He Tweets/Instagrams at Optimarcusand writes at marcusgohmarcusgoh.com. The views expressed are his own.


Andy Smith, a certified financial planner and host of the radio show Investing Sense, recalls the most original way he's heard of to pay off debt. "A son chose not to report his father's death and collected his Social Security benefits for a year," Smith says.

While that method of gaining extra money is bound to end with a trip to jail, there are other uncommon, yet perfectly legal, ways people find to wipe out their debt. Here are six options -- along with their pros and cons -- for those who have already cut their budget to the bone or simply can't work a night or evening job into their schedule.

[Read: Trying to Dig Out of Debt? Don't Make These Mistakes.]

Shopping, followed by selling. Shopping would seem to be the reason many people find themselves in debt, but it is also how some are digging themselves out. The internet is awash with tales of people buying clearance items or garage sale treasures locally and then selling them for a profit online. Meanwhile, websites such as TheSellingFamily.com and FBAFreedom.com promise to explain how to make a full-time income using the Fulfillment by Amazon service.

The drawback to this money-making method is the upfront investment needed to purchase items in the hopes they will sell. That could be a risky proposition. It can be difficult to stand out on eBay. Someone who is unable to sell his items for a profit may find he ends up compounding their debt problem, rather than solving it.

Redeeming credit card rewards wisely. Credit cards are another way people get into trouble with debt, but an unconventional approach to paying it off may involve charging more. Using a rewards credit card to charge necessities such as food and gas can result in points that may, depending on the program, be redeemed as a statement credit. That may not eliminate a person's debt completely, but it can chip away at an existing balance.

However, this option only reduces debt if a person pays off all new charges each month. Otherwise, the charges simply add to the balance and dig a deeper financial hole. Kelsa Dickey, owner of Fiscal Fitness Phoenix, adds many people will find a credit card only leads to larger and more impulsive purchases. "It gives you another justification to buy something," she says.

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Getting involved in the sharing economy. For those who can't find the time for a traditional second job, working in the sharing economy may be a more feasible option. Driving for Uber, pet sitting through Dog Vacay and doing odd jobs through Task Rabbit are all options to pick up extra money without a significant time commitment. Dickey has one client who earned extra money to clear out debt by renting a room through Airbnb to flight attendants who were stopping over in the area.

Most sharing economy jobs -- or gigs, as they are commonly called -- require little upfront investment. It may be as simple as signing up on a website and creating a profile page. The downside to these easy entry jobs is there can be significant competition, and once all the time is factored in, the hourly wage may be less than what could be earned through a more traditional second job.

[Read: How to Balance Debt Reduction and Retirement Savings.]

Asking for money from family. Financial advisors say asking for loans from family members has the potential to ruin future holiday get-togethers, but those in dire straits may find financial relief by asking for an advance on expected cash. "It can be a bit uncomfortable, but they could ask for an advance on Christmas gifts," says Joseph Heider, founder of Cirrus Wealth Management in Cleveland, Ohio. "I've seen people advance inheritances to pay off debt."

If relatives balk at the suggestion, it could make for strained family dynamics. However, even if they do grant the request, this method to becoming debt-free could have a downside. Without having to make any sacrifices to pay off debt, people may find they quickly rack up new bills because they haven't broken their bad spending habits.

Renegotiating the balance. Although not an option for everyone, those who are behind on their bills may be able to negotiate their balance down to a lower amount. "I always say to shoot for 40 percent [of the balance]," Dickey says. Credit card companies and debt collectors may be willing to accept a lower lump sum payment to close out an overdue account.

The catch is an account typically must be delinquent before a creditor is willing to negotiate, and allowing bills to go unpaid can seriously impair a person's credit score. What's more, if a portion of the debt is forgiven, that amount may end up being taxable under federal law.

Borrowing money from a 401(k). While the debt doesn't disappear with a 401(k) loan, the interest ends up being paid into the retirement account rather than a credit card company's pockets. However, financial advisors strongly caution that a 401(k) loan should be used only as a last resort. "You're facing bankruptcy. You're facing medical liens," Smith says. "These are the times when you need to think about taking out a 401(k) loan."

A 401(k) loan could have negative effects on a person's ability to retire comfortably. If too much money is pulled from the account for too long, workers may miss out on some of the benefits of compound interest. Plus, if they leave their job before the loan is paid off, the entire balance becomes due immediately. Failing to pay can result in the loan amount being subject to income taxes and also a 10 percent early withdrawal penalty for workers younger than age 59 .

[See: 10 Ways to Avoid the IRA Early Withdrawal Penalty.]

The problem with borrowing money from a 401(k) or any other quick fix to eliminating debt is that these solutions rarely change a person's spending habits. "The temptation is to celebrate being debt-free by going on vacation or buying a new car," Heider says. Instead of looking for a way to painlessly eliminate debt, he suggests, "The critical part [of long-term success] is to build a budget to incorporate the retirement of debt."
LA Times

Myra Lewis Williams, who married her cousin Jerry Lee Lewis when she was 13, wrote two books and said in 2015 that he is 'no longer part of my life.'
Retirement is meant to be a reward after decades of hard work and focused saving. The last thing you might be thinking of after retiring is heading back to the workforce but for some Americans, it is reality.

Mounting medical bills may require some seniors to go back to work in their 60s or even beyond. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that the typical 55- to 64-year-old spends 8.8 percent of their annual income on health care. Once they reach age 65, it climbs to 12.2 percent.

In some instances, it's a too-small nest egg that leaves retirees looking to fill the income gap. An analysis from the National Institute on Retirement Security found that 65 percent of American households are at risk of falling short in retirement. The mean retirement savings for households aged 56 to 61 is less than $164,000, according to data from the Economic Policy Institute, far short of the $1 million or more that industry experts recommend.

[See: 12 Great Things About Retirement.]

Regardless of the reason, seniors who are headed back to work will need to take a second look at their finances, taking into account how working again may affect their short- and long-term financial future.

Start with your budget. Gary Swim, a retirement planner with Swim Retirement in Wichita, Kansas, advises retirees re-entering the workforce to look beyond their paychecks.

"If you're considering going back to work you have to remember that although you'll be making money, there are new expenses that you may need to consider as well," Swim says.

He points to increased costs for gas, food and workplace attire as some of the expenses retirees need to factor in. Swim also cautions seniors to think about the tax implications of going back to work.

"Your new income will be subject to income and payroll taxes. When you combine that with your existing income, it may alter your tax situation," Swim says.

He suggests taking the time to crunch the numbers and do the 'what if' planning before going back to work.

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Scott Hanson, a senior partner and co-founder of Hanson McClain Advisors, headquartered in Sacramento, California, says retirees should keep a watchful eye on their spending once they're back on the job.

"One of the big dangers with someone going back to work after retirement is that they'll increase their standard of living to a point where they'll never be able to retire again," he says. "Once they re-enter the workforce, they need to be really careful about how they budget."

Check your withdrawal rate. When you have money coming in from employment, you have to decide whether it makes sense to keep pulling funds out of your retirement savings. Stuart Ritter, a senior vice president with PNC Wealth Management offers a relatively simple formula for determining how much of your savings you may need.

"A good starting point is to plan on withdrawing 4 percent of your balance in the first year of retirement, but if you're going back to work, you can use your new income instead of having to tap your savings," Ritter says. "The easiest approach is to simply subtract your income from what you would have withdrawn and only take out the remainder."

Sandy Young, founder of SY Financial Group in Hampstead, Maryland, acknowledges the importance of factoring longevity into your calculations.

"Making that nest last is crucial," Young says.

She also points out that where you have your retirement savings invested impacts how far the money will go.

[See: 8 Cheap ETFs That You Won't Regret.]

"The older you get, the more money you should have in a safe environment. The 4 percent withdrawal rate is being challenged in today's economy," Young says. "In the face of high fees, low bond yield and high stock market valuations, the safe withdrawal rate is considerably lower for new retirees in 2016."

Take advantages of opportunities to add to your savings. If you're making enough to cover expenses and still have something left, determine the best way to use that remainder. Eric Palmer, a financial educator with Outlook Advisors in Fountain Hills, Arizona, advocates contributing to your employer's 401(k) plan, if one is available.

"If the new employer has a strong plan, with a match and conservative investment options, participating may be a good strategy," Palmer says.

He does, however, urge retirees to think about the time frame before making a move.

"If you only plan to work again for a short time to accumulate additional savings, the level of risk needs to be strongly considered when choosing where to invest," he says.

Manuel Andrade, senior vice president of wealth management at People's United Wealth Management in Bridgeport, Connecticut, reminds retirees to do their homework.

"In most cases, you should be able to contribute to your employer's qualified retirement plan as long as you're working," Andrade says. "The ability to make annual contributions to an IRA, however, depends on your income and filing status."

He proposes a Roth IRA for seniors who expect to be in the same or a higher tax bracket when they do finally retire permanently, since distributions would be completely tax-free at the federal level.

Evaluate your Social Security situation. Going back to work after you've already signed up for Social Security can potentially reduce those benefits, something retirees need to be prepared for, Andrade says.

"If you're receiving Social Security benefits and you haven't reached full retirement age, some of your earnings may be subject to the earnings cap restriction. That could reduce or even eliminate your benefits, depending on how much you earn," Andrade says.

The good news is benefits that are withheld while you're working can be paid back out to you once you reach full retirement age. At that point, you'd be able to earn as much as you want, without your benefits being affected.

Swim emphasizes how taxes can impact retirees' Social Security outlook.

"Many people don't think their Social Security can be affected when they go back to work but they'll get penalized if they make too much money," he says.

Between 50 percent and 85 percent of Social Security can be taxed, based on your filing status and how much you earn. If you're working and receiving Social Security, that could result in an increased tax liability.

[Read: 9 Steps a Single Person Can Take for Retirement.]

Swim's advice to retirees who contemplating returning to work? "You really have to be aware of the tax implications on that additional income and decide what will work best for you."





More From US News & World Report


The Nebraska State Board of Education gets an A for its quick action to employ the ACT for its statewide testing of high school juniors, a year before it is required by state law.

The previous statewide tests for fourth, eighth and eleventh graders were fraught with problem in the writing portion. Those assessments for all three grade levels are changing. But the changes will be biggest for eleventh graders, where the results, in the aggregate, will serve as a tool to measure districts progress, and individually, the scores can be used by students for college admissions and scholarships. And for any student who would've done both, he or she is spared one test.

The board weighed proposals from both ACT and SAT administrators. Already more popular in Nebraska, the ACT came up the winner for a variety of solid reasons.

The ACT was closer to previous statewide tests in terms of its range of content. The ACT proposal includes direct communication with parents as well as with school officials. And schools get to choose whether to administer the tests via computer or with paper and good old No. 2 pencils.

Computer glitches only add to the stress of test-taking, and giving districts this option lets them decide for themselves if they have confidence in the technology and their own setup to use it.

Another big benefit  given the ACTs key role in the college admissions process in Nebraska  is the fact that some students will now be taking the ACT who previously might not have done so when it was a separate test. This means that at least a few students might end up considering college who otherwise wouldn't.

On top of all this, the ACT proposal was less expensive that the one floated by SAT.

The ACT test, for Nebraskans, it seems, comes up a winner. The last piece  and one that the ACT folks have pledged to help with  is getting the test approved as a measurement of accountability for federal education standards. That approval should be a no-brainer for all the same reasons that the ACT was such a solid pick for Nebraska.
By Suleiman Al-Khalidi AMMAN (Reuters) - The top military commander of the militant group Jabhat Fateh al Sham, the former al Qaeda offshoot in Syria, was killed in an aerial raid that targeted a meeting of the group's leaders, both the group and rebel sources said on Thursday. The commander Abu Hajer al Homsi, whose alias is Abu Omar Saraqeb, was killed in a rural area of Aleppo province, they said, where the group has played an instrumental role in ongoing battles against the Syrian army troops and Iranian-backed Shi'ite militias in the gateway city of Aleppo. An announcement by the group said he was "martyred" in an air strike in the countryside of Aleppo. The nationality of the jets that hit the location was not immediately known, but a rebel source said initial information suggested it was most likely a U.S. jet that struck the hideout. Since the U.S.-led coalition was launched, air strikes have targeted Nusra Front figures in Syria, killing scores. But this marked the first time a key figure has been targeted since the group's name change. Abu Omar Saraqeb was a founding member of Nusra Front, Al Qaeda's powerful Syrian branch, and had been among the jihadists who fought U.S. forces in Iraq after the U.S. invasion in 2003 before returning to Syria. Along with other leaders, the jihadist figure set up Jaish al Fateh or the army of conquest - a military alliance of Islamist rebel groups that last year drove the Syrian army from the northwestern city of Idlib at the height of insurgents' advances. The major Russian military campaign at the end of last year turned the tide in Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's favor and thwarted the Sunni insurgents' rapid gains that brought them close to Assad's minority Alawite stronghold on the coast. Another Islamist insurgent source told Reuters the militants were present in a secret hideout in the village of Kafr Naha when the raid took place. The leader of the group Abu Mohammad al-Jolani was apparently not at the meeting. Few other details emerged of the strike, but a photo of another top leader known as Abu Muslim al Shami circulated on social media showing him alive in an effort to refute reports he had also been killed. The Nusra Front announced last July it was ending its relationship with al Qaeda, the global jihadist network founded by Osama bin Laden, to remove a pretext used by world powers to inflict civilian casualties. The move appeared to be an attempt to appeal to Syrians who have long had deep misgivings about Nusra's links with al Qaeda and the presence of foreign jihadists in its ranks. The move was dismissed by Washington, which said it did not change its stance on the organization that is listed as a terrorist group and remained a fair target. Washington said altering the name of the group did not signal a shedding of its hardline al Qaeda-style ideology. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov have been trying to reach a deal on deeper cooperation between the U.S. and Russian militaries against radical groups operating in Syria, particularly Islamic State and the former Nusra Front. One of the complications is that former Nusra operates side by side with Western-backed moderate Free Syrian Army (FSA) rebel groups in major frontlines against the Syrian army that is aided by heavy Russian air power and fighters from Iran-backed militias. (Reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi; editing by Leslie Adler and G Crosse)
Alaska to Argentina PTSD Awareness Ride on Honda CB500X

Army vet supports The Soldiers Project

Iraq combat vet Zachary Sherman is riding a Honda CB500X from Alaska to Argentina to raise awareness of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and raise money for The Soldiers Project. The non-profit organization provides free mental health services to post-9/11 veterans.

Sherman's 9,500-mile route includes events in Seattle (September 13-14), Sacramento (September 23 26), and Los Angeles (September 29 30). In each city he will meet with Soldiers Project Regional Chapter Directors and local therapists, who provide the free counseling services. Some of them may even hop on their own bikes and accompany him for part of his journey.

After serving with the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team in Iraq, Sherman was diagnosed with PTSD and TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury). Sherman took a job in law enforcement, but his career was cut short by the effects of PTSD. While nearly suicidal, he overcame his depression with community support; only to see six men from his former unit take their own lives. In researching veteran service providers he came across The Soldiers Project.

"The Soldiers Project provides free of charge counseling to post-9/11 service members, veterans, and their families. There isn't a higher calling that I can think of," Sherman said. "I wish that I had been aware of them before it cost me my career."

According to the latest research from the Department of Veterans Affairs, more than 20 military veterans take their own lives every day in the United States.

"When a veteran suffers from PTSD or any other mental health consequence after separating from military service, it has a ripple effect," said Soldiers Project Interim Executive Director Andrea Schmitt. "Spouses, partners and even children and friends can be affected. That's why The Soldiers Project provides care not only to veterans but to their family members as well. This issue affects entire communities."

The Soldiers Project provides free, confidential and unlimited mental health services to post-9/11 military veterans and their families. Chapters are located across the United States, including Seattle, Sacramento, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Houston. For more information or to get services, call Toll-Free: (877) 576-5343 or visit www.thesoldiersproject.org

To support Expedition Recovery, visit www.crowdrise.com/expedition-recovery
By Lamine Chikhi ALGIERS (Reuters) - Algeria's President Abdelaziz Bouteflika made a rare public appearance on Thursday to inaugurate a conference centre, touring the site in a wheelchair. Since suffering a stroke three years ago Bouteflika has dramatically reduced his public activity, leading Algeria's opposition to question his ability to rule Africa's biggest country, and to continuing speculation over the 79-year-old president's health. Presidential polls are not due until 2019, but Bouteflika's opponents have called for early elections because of his physical frailty. Legislative elections are scheduled for the first half of 2017. Analysts said Bouteflika's appearance was designed to dampen demands for early presidential elections. "An anticipated presidential election is not an option for now," political analyst Arslan Chikhaoui told Reuters. Bouteflika was last seen openly in public two years ago when he voted from his wheelchair in the ballot that saw him elected for a fourth five-year term. His most recent previous appearance this year was for Algeria's independence day celebrations on July 5, and he is usually only seen in brief state television videos greeting visiting dignitaries at his presidential residence. Talk of transition comes at a sensitive time, as Algeria tries to cut spending and subsidies to offset a sharp drop in revenues from oil sales. Algeria is a key supplier of gas to Europe and has positioned itself as an important Western ally in efforts to tackle Islamist militancy in North Africa and the Sahel. First elected in 1999, Bouteflika led Algeria out of international isolation and a war with armed Islamists that left an estimated 200,000 people dead in the 1990s. The conference centre that Bouteflika inaugurated, west of the capital Algiers, is to be used for a meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) on Sept. 26-28. (Reporting by Lamine Chikhi; Editing by Aidan Lewis; editing by Ralph Boulton)
Who better than a veteran supermodel to weigh in on the biggest modeling controversy of New York Fashion Week so far?

Amber Valletta, who has already been busy walking for Tom Ford on Wednesday (Sept. 7) evening and making various #NYFW appearances, gave her two cents about the execution of Kanye West's Yeezy Season 4 presentation Thursday night at Roosevelt Island.

Kanye West's Yeezy 4 Fashion Show: Hot Mess Or Performance Art?

"I felt bad for the girls," she told Pret-a-Reporter during Jimmy Choo's 20th anniversary party on Thursday night. "I think what people really need to think about is when you design something, you need to see it move and breathe. You need to think about different conditions - especially if you're going to do a show."

Kanye West Confirms Drake Collaborative Album

"If you're going to do it outside in 85-degree weather, you have to ask, 'What are these shoes going to do?' Or 'Can my girls walk?' It's important!" Considering not one, but two models faced shoe issues -- one in the form of broken heels, which resulted in her being ushered down the runway by a kindly showgoer, and another whose shoes were so uncomfortable that she kicked them off mid-catwalk -- 'Ye would be wise to heed Valletta's advice in advance of Yeezy Season 5. "That, to me, was an oversight," she noted.

Here's What Critics & Celebs Had to Say About Kanye West's Yeezy Season 4 Show

As for her own upcoming modeling work, the 42-year-old hinted that she might have a couple catwalks left this Fashion Week. Though her highlight so far was walking in Ford's glamorous presentation Wednesday evening. "I've been working with Tom back since he had his first Gucci show back 15-20 years ago," she said. "It's just amazing to still have a relationship with him and be a part of his inspiration."

This article was originally published by The Hollywood Reporter.
In 2002, with the footage of collapsing World Trade Centers still fresh in American minds, the pollsters at Pew Research posed a question. Do you think the ability of terrorists to launch another major attack on the U.S., they asked, is greater, the same, or less than it was at the time of the September 11th terrorist attacks?

A slim plurality of respondents, 39 percent, said nothing had changed in the past year. A third allowed that things had gotten better. The rest22 percentsaid America was actually less safe, despite the billions spent on a military incursion into Afghanistan and the creation of an entire new cabinet-level department devoted to homeland security.

It turns out 2002 was a relatively optimistic year. According to Pews latest figures, 40 percent of Americans now believe the country is more vulnerable to terrorism than it was in 2001, the highest ever. Republicans lead that charge: More than half think terrorists have grown stronger, while only a third of Democrats agree. And if the GOP is scared, Donald Trump is there to helpor rile things up. If we dont get tough, and if we dont get smart, and fast, were not going to have our country anymore, he said in June, following the mass shooting at a nightclub in Orlando. There will be nothingabsolutely nothingleft.

Recommended: Fear of a Female President

But are Republicans really worried about terrorism? I had my suspicions. Heres why:

It turns out Americans sense of security is tied to partisan identification. Democrats were the pessimistic party for most of the last decade. Republicans, on the other hand, were fairly confident in the countrys security. But as soon as Barack Obama took office, the polarity flipped; Republican discomfort soared, and Democrats suddenly felt a lot safer. Looking at these figures, it seems each sides sense of security tracks more closely to whether their guy is sitting in the Oval Office, rather than any empiric judgement about the state of the world.

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Recommended: What Is Aleppo?

Republicans are expressing doubts about the ability of the country to handle a terrorist attack under a Democratic president, said Jocelyn Kiley, associate director of research at Pew. It reflects confidence in the commander-in-chiefits not really a surprise that theres a flip here.

The parties havent changed their minds on the tradeoffs of national security, where they sharply diverge. For years, Democratic respondents have said they care more about making sure anti-terrorism policies dont restrict civil liberties, while Republicans maintain the government hasnt done enough to protect the U.S. These two trendlines briefly converged in 2013, when pretty much everyone freaked out over government intrusion after documents leaked by Edward Snowden became public. Besides that, the two parties have followed the same predictable paths. Viewed in that light, Pews recent findings dont seem that remarkable.

But researchers are alarmednot by the presence of the divide, which will probably always exist, but the degree. Kiley thinks the gap between Democrats and Republicans on security has grown so large that it cant be explained by presidential preference alone.

Its not simply that Republicans are skeptical about Obamas handling of terrorism in the same way Democrats were worried about Bush, she said. This marks the first year in the surveys history that a majority of either party thinks terrorists have the upper hand. And only 29 percent of Republicans think the government is doing a good job in reducing the threat of terrorism, compared to 75 percent of Democrats.

Recommended: Tougher Questions Won't Stop Donald Trump

Part of the GOPs concern about security is definitely linked to their distrust of Obama. Maybe even most of it. But Republican voters are reporting enough discomfort to indicate genuine fear. Its that kind of fear that makes people think crime is going up, even when its going down, or that immigrants threaten national security, when researchers agree they dont.

Trumps success, then, is a chicken-or-egg question. Did he sense growing disquiet and offer solutions? Or have his dire predictions made everything seem worse? The answer, like your sense of safety, probably depends on your party registration.

Related Video:

Read more from The Atlantic:

This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
Mumbai (AFP) - Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan turns 74 next month but he says he's still hungry for new challenges after his latest movie about sexual violence against women left him deeply moved.

In an interview at his sumptuous Mumbai office, the Hindi film legend of almost half a century said courtroom drama "Pink", to be released on September 16, would challenge attitudes in conservative India.

"During the course of the film there will be substance that will talk about women, society and how morality views them," Bachchan said of the thriller set in India's capital.

"Delhi has been chosen deliberately as many of these cases have been occurring in Delhi," he added, a reference to several high-profile attacks that have shone a global spotlight on frightening levels of violence against women in India.

Rape and sexual assault occur regularly, with incidents hitting the headlines on an almost daily basis, despite tough new laws following the fatal gang-rape of a Delhi student in December 2012.

"Pink", which sees Bachchan play an ageing lawyer with bipolar disorder, centres on three women in their 20s who are molested one night by a group of drunk, socially influential men.

However, it's the women who end up on trial. A short trailer released by the production company shows one of them being accused of defamation and another of soliciting while a policeman appears unsympathetic to their plight.

"It was a very emotional experience having to enact the circumstances that women go through, what they feel or how society should look at them," said Bachchan, wearing a lime green Nehru jacket.

The actor affectionately known as "Big B", a reference to his decades-long command over Bollywood as well as his six foot one inch frame, was so moved that he penned an open letter to his two granddaughters this week.

- India's 'angry young man' -

In it he urged them and all of India's granddaughters to make their own choices and "don't let anyone make you believe the length of your skirt is a measure of your character".

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His experiences shooting "Pink", which is directed by Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury, "became a source of inspiration to write that letter", Bachchan explained to AFP in his famous, deep baritone voice.

The 73-year-old, whose birthday on October 11 will see hoards of fans gather outside his home, shot to stardom in the early 1970s on the back of powerful roles in hits "Zanjeer" and "Sholay".

He was dubbed India's "angry young man" due to his portrayal of violent heroes fighting against an unjust system as Bollywood movies, which had previously been polite romances, added a new aggressive element.

Bachchan quickly became Bollywood's most internationally-recognised star due to a string of starring roles.

He is married to former leading heroine of Hindi cinema Jaya Bhaduri and hosts the Indian version of TV quiz show "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire".

His son Abhishek is also an actor while his daughter-in-law Aishwarya Rai Bachchan is a former Miss World and leading Hindi film actress.

Bachchan, whose father was a renowned poet, said dealing with the adoration of millions throughout his career had been easy because it was the only life he had ever known.

"I was born in fame. I was always recognised and known. Personally I feel normal about it," he insisted.

"I don't know how others think about me, but if I have to walk the streets, I will, and if I need to stand in a queue at the airport, that's ok.

"I am not conscious of the fact that something special should be done for me," Bachchan added.

- 'New challenges' -

He said one of the biggest changes to India's century-old Hindi film industry that he had seen over his career was the number of women now working on Bollywood film sets.

"There are a lot of women on set in every department... taking charge of production, camera and administration. These were all jobs that were done by men.

"The only ladies you saw on set were the leading lady and maybe, as her chaperone, her mother," he said, wearing his trademark round black spectacles, his white goatee contrasting with his brown hair.

"Pink" will be Bachchan's third release of the year following crime thrillers "Wazir" and "Te3n" and he is clearly revelling in being cast as a troubled elderly male in recent roles.

Bachchan said it was "wonderful" to work on films where the average age is 25-30 and insisted he has no plans to slow down.

"At 74, beggars are not choosers. I get whatever comes to me. Fortunately they are stories that are commensurate with my age so I accept them. I need to work and I am happy to be working," he said.

"As an actor I love to be challenged. I love to be put in a different sphere and hope I can tackle it. I hope there are still new things out there for me to try."
Https%3a%2f%2fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2fuploads%2fcard%2fimage%2f204879%2felevator

For Amanda Carpenter, getting trapped in an elevator was a nightmare.

Back in February, the former communication director for Sen. Ted Cruz found herself in an unfavorable situation: she was trapped in an Amtrak elevator at BaltimoreWashington International Airport.

In an attempt to free herself from the commuter prison, Carpenter tweeted to her 90,000+ followers asking for help.

SEE ALSO: Man plays an unexpected pop tune on the harp and it's fantastic

Guys. I'm trapped in an amtrak elevator at Bwi airport. Help?  Amanda Carpenter (@amandacarpenter) February 14, 2016

To make matters worse, the elevator's certificate of compliance was well past its expiration date.

Here is the notice showing inspection expiration for the elevator I was trapped inside. Thx Amtrak pic.twitter.com/BkTKciOki5  Amanda Carpenter (@amandacarpenter) February 14, 2016

On Wednesday, nearly seven months later, Amtrak came to Carpenter's rescue and responded to her original tweet, asking if she was still trapped inside the elevator.

@amandacarpenter We are sorry to hear that. Are you still in the elevator?  Amtrak (@Amtrak) September 7, 2016

Amtrak later cleared up the confusion by stating that someone had recently re-tweeted the call for help, which put it back on its radar.

While social media slip-ups from brands are the norm on Twitter, Amtrak's failure to notice how much time had passed was a breath of fresh air. It was an honest mistake that anyone could have made.

@amandacarpenter Someone just re-tweeted it. Wanted to make sure. Glad you're out :)  Amtrak (@Amtrak) September 7, 2016

@amandacarpenter We're happy to have you aboard.  Amtrak (@Amtrak) September 7, 2016

After the tweet gained some attention, Amtrak attempted to remedy the situation by offering Carpenter a free ride on its Acela service.

Story continues

@amandacarpenter Not our finest hour yesterday. We'd love to offer you an Acela ride on us for the inconvenience back in February.  Amtrak (@Amtrak) September 8, 2016

After all, Amtrak actually did respond to Carpenter's original tweet back in February, only 16 minutes after she originally reached out.

@amandacarpenter BWI agents are aware of you, and are working to get you out.  Amtrak (@Amtrak) February 14, 2016

Regardless, the damage was done and the internet was highly amused.

[h/t:Vocativ]
Angelina Jolie made a surprise appearance at the United Nations Peacekeeping Defense Conference at the Lancaster House in London on Thursday.

WATCH: Angelina Jolie Saves Children From Unruly Mob in Greece

The 41-year-old actress stunned in a knee-length black dress with sheer long sleeves as she was greeted by UK Vice Chief of the Defense Staff General Sir Gordon Messenger.

Getty Images

Getty Images

Wearing small diamond earrings with her hair swept back in a lose bun, Jolie gave an impassioned speech during the summit to attendees from 80 countries.

Getty Images

Getty Images

NEWS: Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie Take Their Twins Out For Birthday Breakfast in West Hollywood

Jolie paid tribute to servicemen and women for "their commitment and their sacrifice," before calling for more female peacekeepers, amid growing allegations of sexual assault by troops sent to areas of conflict.

The "quality and credibility of UN peacemaking," is being "undermined," Jolie said according to The Guardian. She noted the "few" but "intolerable cases of women and children being sexually exploited by the very people in charge of protecting them."

"The fact is that increasing the number of UN peacekeepers alone will not be enough to fix the conflicts we are experiencing," Jolie said. "It has to be accompanied by a new way of conducting peacekeeping. One that has the rights and protection of women at it's heart."

Jolie stressed that adding more women, who account for less than 5 percent of UN peacekeepers, is essential to reshaping the UN's efforts.

"Peacekeeping forces can only gain and keep the trust of the local populations if they are able to engage with women as well men in that community," she said.

Angelina Jolie says UN Peacekeeping needs "the rights and protection and involvement of women at its heart" https://t.co/NIR2sxwcyp  Sky News (@SkyNews) September 8, 2016

Story continues

MORE: Jennifer Aniston, Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Lawrence: 7 of the Most Empowering Op-Eds From Female Stars

The Oscar-winner has dedicated several years to the UN, and was promoted to UN Special Envoy in 2012.

With so much globetrotting it's good that Jolie's six children are all learning different languages. See more in the video below.

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Sen. Deb Fischer expressed concern Thursday over remarks by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who praised Russian President Vladimir Putin's leadership qualities and appeared to dismiss concerns about sexual assault in the U.S. military.

"I refer to (Putin) as an aggressor," the Republican senator said during a telephone conference call from Washington. "His actions are belligerent."

"I take the man seriously," Fischer said. "And I believe the current administration needs to step up and be more forceful (and) bolster our NATO allies and our friends."

Fischer, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said she has been working with a number of other senators to address sexual assault in the military and try to prevent or reduce its occurrence.

Trump was questioned about Putin and about a tweet he had shared in 2013 about sexual assault in the military during a televised commander-in-chief forum Wednesday night.

The tweet stated: "26,000 unreported sexual assaults in the military -- only 238 convictions. What did these geniuses expect when they put men and women together?"

Fischer said: "I don't agree with the way he phrased that tweet."

Last February, Fischer endorsed Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida in the Republican presidential race. She supports Trump in his general election match with Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

On other issues, Fischer expressed disappointment with Senate Democratic filibusters that have stalled a defense appropriations bill but said there is no danger of a government shutdown as Washington approaches the Sept. 30 conclusion of the fiscal year.

"There is no crisis," Fischer said. "The government will be funded."

What members of Congress need to do is build the kind of trust that will allow them to return to the established practice of funding the federal government through a series of appropriations bills rather than resorting to last-minute, short-term continuing resolutions, she said.

The current standoff, which has blocked funding to combat the Zika virus, apparently was triggered by a Republican provision that would deny Zika funding to Planned Parenthood health centers in Puerto Rico.

Reports from Washington suggested that Senate leaders are likely to reach a compromise on that issue, clearing the way for Senate action. However, the issue may not be as close to resolution in the House.
Buenos Aires (AFP) - An Argentine mother who first sued military officers nearly 38 years ago for the disappearance of her pregnant daughter under the former dictatorship finally saw them convicted on Thursday.

"I see that justice comes late, but it comes," said Rosa Roisinblit, 97, a prominent campaigner for victims of the 1976-1983 dictatorship.

The court handed 25-year jail sentences to former air force commanders Omar Graffigna, 90, and Luis Trillo, 75, and a 12-year term to ex-intelligence officer Francisco Gomez, 70.

Roisinblit's grandchildren Mariana and Guillermo embraced her in the courtroom after the ruling was announced.

"I am happy to have lived to witness what I have just seen and heard," Roisinblit said.

The former officers were convicted of "illegal privation of liberty and aggravated torture."

Patricia Roisinblit and her husband Jose Manuel Perez Rojo were kidnapped by air force personnel in 1978 and have never been found.

Rosa Roisinblit is one of the leaders of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a prominent campaign group.

Campaigners say 30,000 people were victims of forced "disappearances."

The former dictator Jorge Videla and other top members of the regime were sentenced to life in prison in 1985.

Mariana Roisinblit was looked after by her paternal grandparents after her mother and father were seized when she was 15 months old.

Guillermo was born while his mother was in custody and later identified with the help of the Grandmothers group.
Ariel Winter's college dreams are currently on hold.

Although the 18-year-old actress told ET last month that she was picking out classes in preparation for her first year at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Winter now says she's deferring college for a year.

"I was all ready to go, but production couldn't make it work so that I could go," Winter tells ET's Katie Krause. "Due to that, I had to defer until next year. [I'm] definitely still going though when I'm able to! My college dream is not going away."

"It all got worked out so late," she adds about the change of plans. "It wasn't supposed to work out this way, but unfortunately, it did!"

WATCH: EXCLUSIVE -- Ariel Winter on Getting Ready for College and Voting in Her First Election -- 'I Wish There Were Better Candidates'

Winter is still planning on majoring in political science.

"I've been acting my whole life so I feel like ... I should have knowledge in another subject because the industry is so -- you can't predict what's going to happen," she told ET in August about her choice of majors. "I could be working now and then never work again the next 10 years, so I thought it's important to have knowledge in another subject that you like, that you could have as a plan in the future."

She was also looking forward to having the typical college experience.

"Having that experience I think is something that really just enriches your life, and I think it's going to be amazing for me to go to college with other undergraduate students, find people that are studying the same thing as me, people that aren't, just meet a more diverse group of people and that's what I'm really excited for," she said. "I'm also just excited to be a college student."

Winter's decision to defer college isn't too surprising, given how much she has on her plate these days. Aside from her recurring role as Alex Dunphy on Modern Family, she's currently filming Dog Years alongside Burt Reynolds. She also teased an upcoming secret photo shoot on Wednesday, when she donned a short blonde wig and gave us some major Marilyn Monroe vibes while striking a booty-flaunting pose.

Story continues

WATCH: Ariel Winter Goes Blonde, Flaunts Her Booty for Secret Photoshoot

And of course, there's the business of being a normal teenager and having fun with friends. Winter attended Drake's concert in Los Angeles on Wednesday, sporting a matching cream crop top and skirt, and nude high heels.

Watch below:

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Armada Hoffler Properties, Inc. AHH recently announced new development project in Charlotte, North Carolina. Particularly, the company has struck a deal to develop and own a new $45 million multifamily property in Charlotte as the majority partner in a joint venture with Southern Apartment Group.



This move comes as part of Armada Hofflers strategic focus on fortifying its footprint in the Carolinas. The company plans to break ground during fourth-quarter 2016 and targets for a mid-2018 completion.



Comprising 225 apartment homes over eight floors, this project has the potential to command much attention from renters for being positioned in the growing Midtown Charlotte on the East Morehead corridor. It is close to downtown Charlotte and near to the Carolinas Medical Center which is one of the largest employers in Charlotte. This raises hopes of a higher demand for apartments in the property.



Moreover, the expansion seems a strategic fit for Armada Hoffler given that the Charlotte MSA is a thriving market of 2.4 million people with a median household income surpassing $50,000.



Armada Hoffler is engaged in developing, building, owning and managing office, retail and multifamily properties in attractive markets throughout the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern United States. It is based in Virginia Beach, United States.



Armada Hoffler has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Investors can consider better-ranked stocks like Equity LifeStyle Properties, Inc. ELS, Silver Bay Realty Trust Corp. SBY and Sun Communities Inc. SUI. Each of these stocks carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can also see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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Congrats to Armie Hammer and wife Elizabeth Chambers, who are expecting their second child!

The Free Fire star announced the news on Instagram before hitting the red carpet at the Toronto International Film Festival on Thursday.

"Ready to start the #torontointernationalfilmfestival festivities," Hammer captioned the proud pic. "All three of us!"

Ready to start the #torontointernationalfilmfestival festivities... All three of us! A photo posted by Armie Hammer (@armiehammer) on Sep 8, 2016 at 6:46pm PDT

RELATED: See the First Photo of Armie Hammer's Baby Girl Harper!

Chambers shared the same shot, writing, "Dressed and ready for the premiere of #Freefire. And the premiere of baby Hammer Number 2!"

The couple are already parents to a daughter, Harper, who will turn two on Dec. 1. Just a week ago, Hammer shared an adorable pic of his daughter squaring off against his Hotel Mumbai co-star, Jason Isaacs.

"Harper wasn't on set 15 minutes before @therealjasonisaacs challenged her to a fight," he captioned the cute shot. "Harper won. #10pointstogryffindor."

Harper wasn't on set 15 minutes before @therealjasonisaacs challenged her to a fight. Harper won. #10pointstogryffindor A photo posted by Armie Hammer (@armiehammer) on Aug 30, 2016 at 5:03am PDT

FLASHBACK: Armie Hammer Plays Two Roles at Once

One thing's for sure, like Harper, the couple's new baby will get to be lulled to sleep by their dad's impressive ukulele skills. Check out Hammer playing for the ET cameras in the video below!



WATCH: Armie Hammer Plays the Ukulele  and He's Pretty Amazing at It

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Paris (AFP) - A 19-year-old woman arrested in a probe into a car found laden with gas cylinders in Paris had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group and was preparing an imminent attack, officials said Friday.

French President Francois Hollande said a terror cell had been shut down and an attack "foiled," after Ines Madani, 19, and two other women were arrested.

Police shot and wounded Madani as they swooped on her and her accomplices aged 23 and 39 in a suburb south of Paris on Thursday.

Investigators believe Madani is the main suspect in a probe into the Peugeot 607 found a few hundred metres (yards) from Notre Dame cathedral on Sunday.

She is the daughter of the car's owner.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said the three women "were apparently preparing new, violent and, what is more, imminent actions".

The women were "radicalised and fanaticised", he said.

Madani had sworn allegiance to the Islamic State group in a letter found in her possession, according to a source in the investigation.

A police officer suffered a knife wound to the stomach during the arrests late Thursday in Boussy-Saint-Antoine, south of Paris.

Hollande, speaking on a visit to Athens, said: "An attack has been foiled."

"A group has been destroyed," he said, but he warned: "There are others."

A police source said security services had issued a warning Thursday about a possible attack on train stations in Paris and the area where the women lived.

Police are now convinced that the car found with five full gas cylinders in its boot was intended to be used in an attack.

The car was discovered with its hazard lights flashing and its licence plates had been removed.

Three bottles of diesel fuel were also discovered in the vehicle, but police did not find any detonators.

- Jihadist links -

Police said the boyfriend of one of the three women was arrested on Thursday.

The man's brother is himself in custody over suspected links to Larossi Abballa, a jihadist who killed a police officer and his girlfriend in a Paris suburb in June, a source said.

Story continues

Four people -- two brothers and their girlfriends -- are already in custody over the discovery of the car.

The first couple arrested, a 34-year-old man and a 29-year-old woman, have been held since Tuesday and are known to the security services for links to radical Islam.

Police then arrested the man's brother and his girlfriend, both aged 26.

Paris prosecutor Francois Molins will give a news conference on the investigation at 1530 GMT Friday.

France is on high alert after Islamic State called on its followers to attack the country in revenge for air strikes on the group's bases in Syria and Iraq.

IS has claimed responsibility for a string of jihadist attacks, including last November's coordinated bloodshed in which gunmen and suicide bombers killed 130 people.

Cazeneuve, the interior minister, on Friday told French daily La Presse that 260 people have been arrested in connection with terrorist networks or operations since the beginning of the year.

- 'Strange method' -

A bar employee working near Notre Dame had first raised the alert after noticing a gas cylinder on a seat of the parked Peugeot, police said.

Although that cylinder was empty, five full cylinders were discovered in the boot.

"If it was an attack plot, the method was very strange," a police source said Thursday.

The discovery followed a deadly summer in France in which 86 people were killed when a truck ploughed into a Bastille Day crowd in the southern resort of Nice.

IS said the truck was driven by one of its followers.

Less than two weeks later, two young jihadists murdered a priest near the northern city of Rouen.

In May, the head of France's DGSI domestic intelligence service, Patrick Calvar, warned of a "new form of attack" in which explosive devices would be left near sites that attract large crowds.
Even in the aftermath, it wasnt immediately clear what had gone wrong at Attica Correctional Facility on Sept. 9, 1971. Was it the word that, the day before, an inmate been accosted for refusing to leave his cell? Or was it when reports spread that two inmates had been beaten in the aftermath of throwing a piece of glass at a guard? In any case, around 8:30 that morning, the New York State prison was the scene of an uprising that remains, 45 years later, one of the most famous and infamous events in the history of criminal justice in the United States.

For days, about half of the prisoners at Attica held control of one whole cell block, in addition to other parts of the facility, and about 40 hostages. After negotiations stalled and authorities violently retook the prison on Sept. 13, dozens of inmates and nine hostages were dead. Many more were injured.

For some time to come in the U.S., that word will not be primarily identified with the plain upon which ancient Athens nurtured philosophy and democracy, TIME noted two weeks later, in a cover story about the event. Nor will it simply stand for the bucolic little town that gave its name to a turreted prison, mislabeled a correctional facility. Attica will evoke the bloodiest prison rebellion in U.S. history. It will take its place alongside Kent State, Jackson State, My Lai and other traumatic events that have shaken the American conscience and incited searing controversy over the application of forceand the pressures that provoke it.

Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletter

Heres how TIME described the retaking of the prison:

At 9:32, a radio observer in a helicopter reported that hostages, guarded by six inmates, were confined within a circle of park benches in the yard. Sharpshooters were advised to take aim at the threatening convictsbut youll have to have hostile action by the inmates to fire. Then the two helicopters, loaded with tear-gas canisters, swept low over the prison, one of them barely clearing the walls. To all posts, barked the command radio. Jackpot One is about to make drop. There was a pause. Jackpot has made drop. Base to all posts move in; launch the offensive. The choking gas, which induces tears and nausea, filled the yard. At first the gunfire was barely audible over the roar of the choppers. From one helicopter, an amplified voice kept repeating: Put your hands over your head. Walk to the outside of the yard. You will not be harmed. Do not harm the hostages. But as troopers dropped into the clouded compound, hostage blurred with prisoner. Some rescuers tried to reach the captive guards and pull them to safety. Others headed unresisting inmates toward the secure cell blocks. But there was an abundance of shooting. We piled through and raced past Times Square, recalled one police sergeant. The ones that resistedthrowing spears and Molotov cocktailswere cut down. We caught some men with arms extended to throw weapons. Anybody that resisted was killed. Claimed one officer: They came at us like a banzai charge, waving knives and spears. Those we had to shoot. Yet much of the shooting may not have been all that necessary. A team of doctors who treated prisoners in their cells later said inmates in widely-separated parts of the prison described in identical detail instances of indiscriminate firing by the officers and the calculated slaying of unresisting convicts. Reported Dr. Lionel Sifontes of Buffalo: Many of the ringleaders were approached by guards and shot systematically. Some had their hands in the air surrendering. Some were lying on the ground.

That issue, the question that swept the nation in the aftermath of the riot, helped turn Attica into more than just an isolated moment of darkness. Had it been necessary? To some, the use of force had simply not come soon enough; to others, it was a symbol of the tragic inhumanity of the entire prison system. The riot exposed not merely the problems that affected the inmates at one particular prison, but also the fault lines that ran throughout American society.

Read the entire cover story, here in the TIME Vault: War at Attica
NAYPYIDAW, Myanmar  The government and military held their first peace conference with ethnic rebel groups since Aung San Suu Kyi became Myanmars de facto leader when her party took office in April. Last week, she managed to bring together the largest group of stakeholders yet, in an attempt to end a civil war that has plagued the countrys resource-rich frontier regions since its independence in 1948.

The grand event, held in an enormous convention center in the sprawling, military-built capital of Naypyidaw, brought to the table government officials, lawmakers, political party delegates, military officers, and representatives of 18 ethnic armed groups. All participants in the four-day event, which ended Saturday, had a chance to present their ideas for establishing peace and a democratic federal government in Myanmar. It was the first such sharing of opinions over the countrys political structure since 1947.

Dozens of ethnic groups, which make up around 35 percent of the population and live mostly in Myanmars rugged borderlands, have long been fighting for political autonomy. During its five-decade rule, the Bamar majority-dominated military brutally suppressed the rebellions, but the groups managed to survive through local popular support, taxing the flow of timber and jade, and large-scale involvement in the opium trade.

Aung San Suu Kyi, who leads the National League for Democracy (NLD) government, cast the peace talks as a historic first step toward a nationwide cease-fire and political solution for years of conflict. If all those who play a part, however big or small, in the peace process cultivate the wisdom to reconcile differing views  we will surely be able to build the democratic federal union of our dreams, she said, as U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, leaders of parliament, and the powerful army chief, Min Aung Hlaing, looked on from the front row.

A diverse crowd of hundreds of observers listened intently to the democracy icon. Many NLD members wore orange shirts and longyis  sarong-like garments  styled after Myanmars independence leaders while ethnic representatives donned an array of traditional garb and headgear, some adorned with peacock feathers, silvery jewelry, and precious stones.

Story continues

Ban hailed the conferences inclusiveness, saying, There is a long road ahead, but the path is very promising. This is the first time that such a peace process has been initiated in the 70-year history of conflict [in Myanmar].

Sai Kyaw Nyunt, a member of a peace process committee and representative of the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy, a major ethnic political party, said the event was breaking new ground. Through the speeches at the conference, the whole of Myanmar now has a chance to hear all the ethnic voices and desires. We didnt get that in seven decades. Now we can consider how we can shape our country, he said during a break in the conference.

Aung San Suu Kyi had raised expectations for the peace talks after she called the event the 21st-Century Panglong Conference, referring to the 1947 Panglong Agreement between independence hero Aung San (the NLD leaders father) and major ethnic groups. The deal granted them political autonomy from the Bamar majority, but it collapsed after Aung Sans assassination just five months later, sparking a civil war that has continued to this day and has displaced more than 200,000 civilians. The military seized power in 1962 and ruled with a vise-like grip for nearly 50 years. A democratic transition began in 2011, leading to elections last year, which the NLD won.

Despite the conferences heavy symbolism and historic inclusiveness, most participants and observers expressed limited optimism about its ability to effect lasting change, noting it was merely an opening ceremony for a NLD-led peace process and lacked nitty-gritty political discussions. We view this as the first step for the new government to open the way toward peace  that is the only reason we decided to join this conference, said Khu Oo Reh, the general secretary of the United Nationalities Federal Council (UNFC), an 11-member armed ethnic alliance.

He said the next conference, expected in six months time, should include proper negotiations. But we dont know if the next meeting will be as inclusive, he told Foreign Policy, noting that the army might be reluctant to allow as many stakeholders to participate in political talks.

Many here at the conference have staked their hopes for peace on Aung San Suu Kyis political power and skill in persuading the military to negotiate a nationwide cease-fire and amend the military-drafted constitution. The charter grants the army extensive powers and the central government control over ethnic states. The peace process is part of the army-initiated democratic transition, but the military has kept tight control of the pace and scope of the negotiations, leading many ethnic groups to wonder if it will ever allow changes to the constitution.

The United States has closely supported Myanmars transition but appears to have little involvement in the peace talks. Aung San Suu Kyi is scheduled to visit Washington next week to discuss the progress of her new government. China is considered influential in the peace process due to its historic ties to powerful rebels in northern Myanmar (whom Beijing backed until they gave up their communist cause in 1989), though its role remains unclear. The European Union has supported negotiations and created, with several other Western donors, a $100 million Joint Peace Fund last year to further aid the process.

Ban has strongly backed the countrys democratic reforms, and during his visit he also urged the government to resolve tensions between Buddhists and stateless Rohingya Muslims in western Myanmar. A week before his visit, and perhaps in anticipation of it, Aung San Suu Kyi announced the formation of a commission lead by former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan that will try to address the conflict. Myanmars government has come under international criticism for its treatment of the Rohingya but has long maintained that outsiders do not understand the situation. Although many in Myanmar are likely to find the Annan commissions suggestions unthinkable, its formation does suggest some openness to new ideas on the governments part.

After taking power in April, Aung San Suu Kyi moved quickly to resume the peace process initiated by the previous, quasi-civilian government and adopted its negotiating mechanisms and road map to a nationwide cease-fire. Last year, eight ethnic organizations signed a joint cease-fire agreement with the government, but 7 groups opted out  including the Kachin Independence Organization, whose armed wing, the Kachin Independence Army, has been active conflict with the military since 2011, leading to the displacement of 120,000 civilians in northern Myanmar.

The nonsignatory groups are now expected to negotiate with the government and army for adaptions to the political conditions of last years accord.

Khu Oo Reh, the UNFC general secretary, said that even though Aung San Suu Kyi appears to have found a modus operandi for working with army chief Min Aung Hlaing, ethnic leaders are unsure if she can coax the military into accepting the political conditions for a nationwide cease-fire or agree to constitutional change. It is too early to say whether the new government and the army can get along or not [in the peace process], he said.

Aung San Suu Kyi has stated numerous times that resolving ethnic conflict as soon as possible, through an all-inclusive peace process involving all groups, is her governments top priority  as she sees internal conflict as the root cause of poverty, instability, and poor rule of law in Myanmar.

But the armys enduring power was on show ahead of the conference when it demanded that three rebel groups representing the ethnic Taang, Rakhine, and Kokang peoples publicly commit to ending their armed struggle  a position the NLD government endorsed. The groups refused and were barred from the event, to the dismay of the UNFC alliance, of which they are members.

Mai Lyruk, an activist with the Taang Students and Youth Union who did not attend the conference, said its success rang hollow among the Taang community, some of whom have been displaced in recent years. Whatever people in Naypyidaw say about peace, we have a situation where there is fighting and villagers are fleeing every day, he said.

Tom Kramer, an expert on Myanmars ethnic conflict for the Transnational Institute, a Netherlands-based policy organization, said the exclusion of the groups could signal trouble ahead for the NLD-led peace process. All the rebel groups are allies. How can you have a cease-fire with some and not the others? Excluding these three groups can have serious political and military consequences, he said.

At the conference, the NLD governments organizational capacity to guide the peace process also came into question. On the opening day, participants received no agenda or time slots for their speeches while conference staff erroneously gave delegates of the United Wa State Army  the most powerful rebel group, with 20,000 fighters and heavy Chinese arms  observer passes.

Upon noticing that it appeared to have been treated differently than other groups, the Wa delegation decided to walk out on the second day. The mistake was particularly painful because the government had faced difficulty persuading the Wa to join the nationwide talks to begin with. Zaw Htay, a spokesman for Aung San Suu Kyi, told FP that a letter had been sent to the Wa leadership explaining that the incident was caused by a technical error by a volunteer staffer.

He played it down as a minor mishap and said the conference was a resounding success.

We can see the common ground: Firstly, all in the conference agreed to work on the peace process together; second, all agree to make our country a democratic federal union. So now we can negotiate on the table, and give and take, Zaw Htay said.

Photo credit: YE AUNG THU/AFP/Getty Images
Ballard Power Systems Inc. BLDP announced that it signed an agreement with Shenzhen UpPower Technology Co., Ltd. ("UpPowerTech"), a leading fuel cell bus systems integrator in China, for the supply of 10 FCveloCity-MD 30-kilowatt fuel cell power modules. These modules will be utilized by UpPowerTech in its clean energy buses.



The fuel cell buses will be deployed in the City of Nanning in the Province of Guangxi with an aim to lower emission levels. Ballard Power is expected to deliver the order by this year, with the buses projected to be deployed in 2017.



Ballards Presence in China



Earlier this month, Ballard Power announced that it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with its strategic partner Zhongshan Broad-Ocean Motor Company Limited ("Broad-Ocean"). Under the deal, the companies will produce fuel cell modules for use in buses and commercial vehicles in select cities and regions across China. (Read more:Ballard Power Fortifies Hold in China with Broad-Ocean Deal)

Scope for Fuel Cell Buses



China is projected to be the big market for fuel cell buses. Chinese authorities are now focused on reducing pollution by factories and utilities. The countrys government also intends to lower emissions generated by vehicles.



The huge population in China translates into increasing demand for mass transportation. Thus, eco-friendly fuel cell buses will be able cater to a significant portion of the population, while ensuring lower emission levels.

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Ballards Presence in Asia



This July, Ballard Power and China-based Guangdong Nation Synergy Hydrogen Power Technology Co. Ltd. formed a joint venture to produce fuel cell stacks at a facility located in Yunfu city, northwest of Hong Kong. This five-year deal has the potential to generate total revenue of $168 million for Ballard Power.



In August, Ballard Power inked an agreement with Toyota Tsusho Corporation ("TTC"), a unit of the Toyota Group, to expand its operations in Japan. This strategic tie-up will allow Ballard market its fuel cell products in Japan.



Our View



The Chinese market is apparently a happy hunting ground for Ballard Power. The company has inked quite a few deals in the recent months for its fuel cell modules.



We expect further growth in the demand for fuel cell modules in China and Ballards high-quality fuel cell modules should be able to capture a major share of the market.



Zacks Rank & Key Picks



Ballard Power Systems currently has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Better-ranked stocks in the same industry include Nidec Corporation NJDCY, Stoneridge Inc. SRI and TTM Technologies Inc. TTMI. All these stocks sport a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

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Some of the Beatles' most famous concerts took place at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, where the group played on Aug. 23, 1964 and Aug. 29-30, 1965. The concerts were recorded with the thought of putting them out on LP, though part of one 1965 show was found to be unusable because of a mic problem. It took until 1977 for a compilation of tracks from the shows to first be issued on LP and cassette, and despite the Beatles' ongoing popularity, those shows never saw release on CD or digital platforms. Until now. On Sept. 8, all of the tracks previously issued, and four bonus tracks, are coming out on legitimate CD and digital platforms for the first time, giving the world a peek into the hysteria of Beatlemania.

The Beatles' 50 Biggest Billboard Hits

Michele Marotta remembers the Hollywood Bowl mania from firsthand experience -- she actually attended the first Bowl show in 1964. At the time, her father, Randy Wood, was president of Vee Jay Records, which was responsible for several Beatles releases, among them the Introducing the Beatles album. "We were in maybe the second row of box seats," she tells Billboard. It was a wild scene, she recalls. "You could barely hear them. I remember we did have an escort up to the Bowl because it was just nuts. We had an escort back to our limo, but my mom was freaking because girls were rushing the stage and diving into the pools to get to the Beatles."

Though she and her family didn't visit with the Beatles at the Bowl, she did get to meet them after the show at a party at the Cinnamon Cinder, a place owned by Bob Eubanks, who was one of those responsible for the Beatles playing the Bowl. Her meeting with the band lasted "for maybe five minutes," she says. "I thought they were old, because they were, like, 20," she laughs. "There was just a lot of people there. And my parents got both my brother and I out of there quickly. It was like, 'OK, you're here. You've met them. We're going home.' We were there maybe 45 minutes tops."

Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr & Ron Howard Sit Down for Hilarious, Heartfelt Chat About New Beatles Documentary

Barbara Chamberlain saw them the third time they played the venue on Aug. 30, 1965, a day before their 1965 tour ended. She had seen them in San Diego just two days earlier. "We got our tickets by clipping out a coupon from an ad in the Los Angeles Times," she tells Billboard. "My friends and I had a slumber party the night before the newspaper ad was to appear. We got up at the crack of dawn to get the coupon and we all walked to the Post Office bright and early and mailed in the coupon with payment. We were so excited when our tickets came in the mail! We didn't know what it was like to see the Beatles up close, so we were happy as can be just to see them!"

A friend's dad drove them to the show, and when they arrived, there was commotion across the street. "We heard a siren and an ambulance arrived at the parking lot. We wondered what was going on. The next day we found out that a lady was having a baby there." She said they then headed to the Bowl and bought Beatle programs and buttons. "I remember there were fans sitting on the hill above the Hollywood Bowl to watch the show. There was super excitement all around us, that magical happy feeling of Beatlemania." She said fans during the show called out names of various Beatles. For her, it was "Paul!"

Beatles Doc Screenings Will Include Bonus Shea Stadium Concert Footage

She said she was able to hear the show. "The screaming did interfere with how well, but yes, I could hear. My friend Linda says, 'No' to this question, but I do remember hearing them and singing along. I will always remember Paul introducing 'Can't Buy Me Love' by asking the audience to join in and 'Stamp your hands and clap your feet!,'" she says. "And I do remember clapping my hands and stamping my feet to that song. My friends and I really loved how they rocked on 'I'm Down' and that's still a special favorite for us today."

She said a couple of her friends left their seats before the show ended, hoping to make contact with the Beatles as they were leaving, and they did. "They were in the crowd that surrounded the armored car. They were excited to report to us later that one of them touched the armored car!"

But Chamberlain said she and her friends had a Beatles encounter before the concert. "My friend Linda's dad, who drove us to the Hollywood Bowl, also was nice enough to drive us to the house where the Beatles were staying in Benedict Canyon the afternoon of Aug. 30. We stood by the gate at the driveway but couldn't see anything," she said.

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"He suggested that we should go up the street where it curves, and perhaps when the Beatles would leave the house, they would surely drive up the street, and the car would have to slow down at the curve. So, we did just that! And it really wasn't long at all when the Beatles shiny black limo [license ZZZ 007] came up the street and slowed where we were standing. The windows were dark, but Linda and I both still have permanently engraved in our minds the close-up view we had of John and his auburn sideburns. He looked so great and he was so close to us."

The Beatles Played Their Final Concert 50 Years Ago: Fan Who Was There Remembers the 'Energy & Insanity'

Aside from the Hollywood Bowl releases on CD and digital, there's more coming next week. A Ron Howard-directed movie about Beatlemania, Eight Days A Week: The Beatles Touring Years, will premiere in theaters nationwide on Sept. 16. The movie, which covers some of the same ground as The Beatles Anthology, is highlighted by rare footage -- some in color for the first time -- and observations from the Fab Four on their years touring the world with some new comments from surviving Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr. In addition to its theatrical release, U.S. fans can catch the film on Hulu, which will have exclusive streaming rights to Eight Days a Week beginning Sept. 17. A White Horse Pictures spokesman told Billboard that Japanese fans will see a special version cut specifically for that country that will expand on The Beatles' performance in Tokyo and will also highlight the work of photographer Shimpei Asai, who photographed them during their stay.
Red Bull TV is livestreaming the picturesque Bestival music festival from the British Isle of Wight in the English Channel. Headliners include Major Lazer, Odesza and Wiz Khalifa.

Located in the wooded country park of Robin Hill, the award-winning Bestival music festival also will host The Cure, Sean Paul, Diplo, Bastille and many more. The four-day festival kicked off Thursday.

The festival also features attractions ranging from the worlds largest bounce house to interactive art exhibits to wood-fired hot tubs. From 11 a.m.-5 p.m. PT Sept. 9-11, music and art fans can watch the Red Bull TV livestream below to experience Bestival for themselves.

For the full lineup and information on the attractions, visit bestival.net.
Legal experts say Bill Cosbys attempts to claim racial prejudice in the rape allegations against him could be an attempt to sway potential jurors.

On Tuesday, lawyers for the comedian said in a statement that attorney Gloria Allred, who represents many of Cosbys accusers, has launched a campaign against Cosby which builds on racial bias and prejudice that can pollute the court of public opinion.

I think that youve always got to have in mind whos your jury pool, high-profile lawyer Mark Geragos told the Associated Press. Thats probably the end game.

Also Read: Bill Cosby's Lawyers Play Race Card as Comedian Heads Back to Court

It is ironic that a man who has chastised the black poor for making race an excuse would now have to lean upon that as part of his defense strategy  If youre more cynical, you might say, What manipulation of racial rhetoric in defense of the indefensible,' Georgetown University sociology professor Michael Eric Dyson also told the AP.

Dyson is author of the book Is Bill Cosby Right? Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind?

In Tuesdays statement, Cosbys lawyers accused Allred of grandstanding to the detriment of Cosbys civil rights.

She calls herself a civil rights attorney, but her campaign against Mr. Cosby builds on racial bias and prejudice that can pollute the court of public opinion, the attorneys said. And when the media repeats her accusations  with no evidence, no trial and no jury  we are moved backwards as a country and away from the America that our civil rights leaders sacrificed so much to create.

Also Read: Bill Cosby Drops Lawsuit Against Accuser Andrea Constand

Cosby has been accused of rape or sexual assault by dozens of women, many of whom claimed that he drugged them beforehand. The comedian has denied the allegations, and in some cases has sued his accusers.

A tentative trial date was set for June 5, 2017, pushed back from this fall due to what Judge Steven ONeill called the extraordinarily overbooked schedule of the comedians main defense lawyer.

Story continues

Related stories from TheWrap:

Bill Cosby's Lawyers Play Race Card as Comedian Heads Back to Court

Amy Schumer Defends Her Writer Who Mocked Rape Accusers: 'He's Not Bill Cosby'

Bill Cosby Drops Lawsuit Against Accuser Andrea Constand
By Jonathan Stempel

(Reuters) - Bond fund manager Bill Gross on Friday said Pacific Investment Management Co and its lawyers should be punished for unfairly impeding him from pursuing his $200 million lawsuit against the asset management firm, which he co-founded.

In a court filing, Gross accused Pimco of "willful and bad-faith obstruction" of his efforts to gather evidence to which he is entitled, including by scheduling depositions in London and Hong Kong, some 6,000 miles (9,656 km) apart, on consecutive days in early November.

"Discovery is not, and should not be, a game to be manipulated in this manner," Gross said in a filing with the California Superior Court in Santa Ana.

"Substantial sanctions" against Pimco and its lawyers are justified to cover his legal bills stemming from the alleged misconduct, and "to punish Pimco's gamesmanship," he added.

Pimco spokesman Michael Reid said: "Mr. Gross' version of events is inaccurate. This is a legal matter which our attorneys will deal with in court."

Both sides are expected to appear in court on Sept. 16 to discuss what evidence Gross is entitled to receive.

Gross, who now works for Denver-based Janus Capital Group Inc (JNS.N), sued Pimco last October to recoup the bonus he said he was owed following his 2014 ouster from the Newport Beach, California-based firm.

Pimco, a unit of German insurer Allianz SE (ALVG.DE), has said it had good cause to oust Gross, citing his alleged abusive behavior toward colleagues and refusal to accept decisions by management.

A billionaire, Gross has pledged to donate any proceeds from the lawsuit to charity.

At Pimco, Gross had built the Pimco Total Return fund (PTTRX.O) into the world's largest bond fund, a title it no longer holds. He now runs the much smaller Janus Global Unconstrained Bond fund (JUCAX.O).

The case is Gross v. Pacific Investment Management Co et al, California Superior Court, Orange County, No. 2015-00813636.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Additional reporting by Jennifer Ablan; Editing by Howard Goller)
Tour de Lincoln, our citys premier public art project, took place in 2003 when 71 bike sculptures were created, emphasizing the value placed on public art by our community and acknowledging how integral bikes are to our quality of life. In fact, if you had to name a city with a long-standing and thriving trail culture, Lincoln may not come to mind, but perhaps it should as we currently boast 133 miles of multi-use trails.

At the time the project was being developed, methodically, piece by piece over 27 months, the Tour de Lincoln committee did not build in money for future maintenance for the bikes, and the citys funds for restoration are limited. For that reason, the bikes on public and school installation sites are being restored, one by one, according to need.

Thus far, 11 bikes have been restored. Pedal Power is currently in the art room at Lincoln Southeast High School, as art specialist Isaac Jefferson and his students will be working with the bikes artist, Jane Stricker, to create the ceramic roses, adhere them to the bikes surface and reinstall the piece for public view.

Bikes to be refurbished are prioritized according to need; estimates for the refurbishment work range from $350 to $2,200, depending on the time, labor and materials necessary. Requests for the funds begin with the individual(s), organization or business that either sponsored the bike or purchased it at the auction. Sometimes, it is necessary to collect checks or monetary promises, one by one, until the restoration amount has been attained.

In the case of (T)rail Rider, a call was made to Elaine Hammer of the Great Plains Trails Network (GPTN), an all-volunteer organization, which has raised approximately $3.75 million over 25 years for local trail projects, including the MoPac. Hammers dedicated history with the MoPac is legendary, as she and a handful of others believed in the trails potential so strongly that they mortgaged their own homes to help purchase the abandoned Missouri Pacific Railroad (MoPac) corridor when it came up for sale (Laura Stark, Americas Trails, May 12, 2015).

As one of the cornerstones of Lincolns network, the MoPac Trail begins at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln downtown campus and stretches eastward 27 miles, ending at Wabash, just west of the Platte River. The ultimate vision is for the MoPac Trail to connect Lincoln and Omaha.

As a result of GPTNs generosity, early in the morning on Aug. 26, a small group of its proud members gathered as (T)rail Rider, the most recent Tour de Lincoln bike to be restored, was returned and installed near the MoPacs 84th Street trailhead. (T)rail Rider is a memorial to Howard E. Mitchell, M.D. Mitchell, who rode from Gateway Manor to Eagle on most nice days, was killed in a tragic accident as he crossed A Street on the MoPac Trail. A memorial fund established in his honor was supplemented by the Mitchell family to purchase the sculpture.

Lincoln continues to love the bikes! For that reason, the city acknowledges the generosity of the GPTN and all those who have stepped forward to keep the Tour de Lincolns bikes displayed, front and center, as a vital part of our citys outstanding public art collection.

If you have questions about Tour de Lincoln bike art restoration, contact Liz Shea-McCoy at liz_shea@windstream.net or 402-430-5923.
(Adds details about case, comment from BOK)

By Suzanne Barlyn

Sept 9 (Reuters) - A BOK Financial Corporation unit has agreed to pay more than $1.6 million to settle civil charges for failing to alert investors to problems in municipal bond offerings that turned out to be part of fraudulent scheme, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said on Friday.

The agency also filed a civil fraud complaint in a Newark, New Jersey federal court against Marrien Neilson, a former senior vice president at the unit, saying she was chiefly responsible for the failures of the bank's corporate trust department.

Oklahoma-based BOKF NA, as indenture trustee, had overseen the offerings which raised $190 million from investors who believed they had a stake in retirement home income. The SEC charged Atlanta-based businessman Christopher F. Brogdon, who managed the offerings, with fraud in November for tapping those funds for other business and personal expenses.

A court later ordered Brogdon to repay $85 million to investors, according to the SEC.

BOKF, which was also the dissemination agent, failed in its "gatekeeper role," the SEC said.

BOKF, in the settlement, neither admitted nor denied the SEC's allegations. BOKF had set aside funds in the first quarter to cover the penalty, the company said in a statement.

Neilson's lawyer, Robert Heim, in New York, said in a telephone call that she "vigorously denies the SEC's allegations and we look forward to proving her innocence in court."

BOKF and Neilson became aware that Brogdon was withdrawing money from reserve funds for the bond offerings and failing to replenish them, the SEC said in the settlement.

The agency added that BOKF and Neilson knew that the nursing home facilities serving as collateral for one of the offerings had been closed for years, and that Brogdon had failed to file annual financial statements for the deals.

(Reporting by Suzanne Barlyn; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Richard Chang)
Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Putin's favorability rating has taken an amazing turn among Republicans since Donald Trump began praising the Russian president.

According to a YouGov/Economist poll, Putin's favorability rating in July 2014, after the Russian annexation of Crimea, was -54 among Democrats and -66 among Republicans.

A poll from the same outlets released in August 2016 showed that Putin's favorability rating among Democrats remained identical. But the Russian leader's rating among Republicans improved dramatically, from -66 to -27.

That's likely at least partially a byproduct of Trump, the Republican nominee, heaping praise on Putin as a strong leader and comparing him favorably with US President Barack Obama.

Taking a closer look, in the 2014 poll, 3% of Republicans had very favorable views of Putin in addition to 7% who had somewhat favorable views. That poll showed that 25% of Republicans had somewhat unfavorable views, while a whopping 51% had very unfavorable views of Putin.

The August 2016 poll showed that some of those numbers took a drastic swing.

In that survey, the percentage of Republicans who viewed him very unfavorably dipped from 51% to 22%, and those who viewed him somewhat favorably increased from 7% to 19%. In addition, the percentage of Republicans who answered that they didn't know how they felt increased from 15% to 26%.

Trump again heaped praise on Putin during NBC's Commander-in-Chief Forum on Wednesday.

"He is really very much of a leader," Trump said of Putin. "You can say, 'Oh, isn't that a terrible thing,' I mean, the man has very strong control over his country. Now, it's a very different system, and I don't happen to like the system, but certainly in that system he's been a leader, far more than our president has been a leader."

NOW WATCH: Clinton just released a brutal ad linking Trump to white supremacists





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London (AFP) - Britain's Serious Fraud Office on Friday charged three former executives of Tesco with fraud and false accounting in a criminal probe into an accounting scandal at the supermarket giant.

Carl Rogberg, Chris Bush and John Scouler -- Tesco's former UK finance chief, UK managing director and food commercial head respectively -- were charged with one count of fraud by abuse of position and one count of false accounting.

The three men will appear at Westminster Magistrates' Court on September 22, the SFO said in a statement, adding its investigation was still ongoing.

The SFO launched a criminal probe into Tesco in October 2014 after the company revealed it had overstated profits by an amount which has since risen to as much as 326 million ($435 million, 386 million euros).

The alleged activity occurred between February 2014 and September 2014, according to the SFO.

Tesco, which is Britain's biggest retailer, said it will continue to cooperate with the probe.

"We note the decision of the SFO to bring a prosecution against former colleagues in relation to historic issues and acknowledge the investigation into the company is ongoing. Tesco continues to co-operate with the SFO's investigation," it said in a brief statement.

"The last two years have seen an extensive programme of change at Tesco, but given this is an ongoing legal matter, we are unable to provide any further comment at this time."

The supermarket titan was plunged into crisis two years ago after it admitted overstating profits in an accounting error.

In recent years, the group has also been hit hard by fierce competition in main market Britain, particularly from German-owned discount retailers Aldi and Lidl -- but also from Asda, Morrisons and Sainsbury's.

In a bid to turn around its fortunes, Tesco appointed outsider and former Unilever executive Dave Lewis in July 2014 to replace long-standing chief executive Philip Clarke and oversee a drastic restructuring.

Tesco is the world's third-biggest supermarket group after France's Carrefour and global leader and US giant Wal-Mart.
LONDON (Reuters) - The UK Independence Party on Friday denied a newspaper report that its former leader, Nigel Farage, had been offered his own television show by a Russian state-funded broadcaster. Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper reported that RT had offered Farage - one of the prominent members of the Leave campaign in Britain's EU referendum - his own television show and that Farage had held talks with the Moscow-based broadcaster. "Nigel has not been offered a show by RT," a UKIP spokesman said by telephone when asked about the report. "There has been no negotiation on a show for RT. This report is incorrect." Once known as Russia Today, RT was launched in 2005 as an attempt by the Kremlin to deliver an alternative to what it sees as Western-dominated news coverage. "RT provides an alternative perspective on major global events, and acquaints international audience with a Russian viewpoint," the station says on its website. A spokeswoman for RT declined to comment on any ongoing negotiations. "RT is proud to work with top international talent and fascinating personalities, such as Larry King and Ed Schultz, and we will continue this tradition," the spokeswoman said. "Perhaps the next face you will see on RT UK will be the Queen." Farage lent his support to Donald Trump last month, saying the Republican U.S. presidential nominee represented the same type of anti-establishment movement that he crafted in Britain. Once dismissed by former Prime Minister David Cameron as "a bunch of ... fruitcakes and loonies and closet racists", UKIP ultimately helped force Cameron to call the EU referendum in which UKIP successfully campaigned for an exit. In the June 23 vote, 51.9 percent, or 17.41 people voted to leave the EU, while 48.1 percent, or 16.14 people, voted to stay in the EU. (Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge in London and Dmitry Solovyov in Moscow; editing by Michael Holden)
Most missing persons cases are resolved quickly and quietly. Craig Baxters wasnt. Fueled by social media, the search for the 28-year-old North Platte man went viral and nationwide. Six days later, it ended in a central Lincoln carport, where he was found dead of carbon monoxide poisoning in his SUV.

Baxters family took reporter Peter Salter behind the scenes of the search and Craigs life, why they believe it was a tragic accident and how they drew strength from the thousands of people who invested time and effort in the search.

Baxters story ended in sorrow, but it ended. We talked with family, friends and investigators involved in several other missing persons cases that remain open. Our stories shed light on the real people who are missing, what folks know and what they suspect about each disappearance and, most importantly for loved ones, they put the spotlight, however briefly back on someone who vanished. As one family member said, Someone knows what happened  These stories gave families another hope for closure.

Lincoln Police Department Det. Luke Wilke thanked the team for shedding light on so many cold cases, noting that every time these stories and photos are shared, they shake out a new tip or two. To maximize audience and to help spread the word, we turned the stories and photos about each person into one gallery, where they could all be viewed easily. We also ran them online as separate stories, promoting and sharing them individually, one each day, on our site and Facebook, making it easy for users to share.

These stories needed to be told accurately and sensitively because sources did open up for us. Perhaps most sensitive was the story of Baxter, where the family saw an accidental death but many believed suicide was involved. Baxters father, who talked extensively to our Peter Salter, texted after the story: Peter, your article (about) Craig and missing persons was very well done, to say the least. I cant tell you how many positive comments we have received about the story and how well written it was. We were very blessed that you chose to write about Craig and to tell his story in such a beautiful way. Hope we can stay in touch and meet up again someday.

While offering families a glimmer of new hope, these stories also made an impact on audiences. Overall, more than 95,000 users read the package, accounting for 530,000 pageviews. Those numbers indicate that readers stayed with the package, with each user looking at an average of 5 elements. The most-read item in the series was the main story on Craig Baxter, which was read by more than than 25,000 users.

In addition to our profiles, we produced a slideshow of nearly 200 people registered in the Nebraska Missing Persons Information Clearinghouse.

Missing persons stories are mysteries. But behind the mysteries are real people who are gone and real people who are grieving and seeking answers. The Disappeared tells those stories, while at the same time sharing information about the resources and support available for people on the run and people who are searching for them. And sharing these stories in print and digitally puts them, perhaps, in front of someone who can end the mystery and the misery for one family.
(Reuters) - Capacity at Rough, Britain's largest natural gas storage site, will be permanently reduced, operator Centrica Storage Limited said on Friday, as it withdraws an offshore platform that operates four of Rough's approximately 30 wells. Centrica confirmed it expected to have 20 wells available for gas withdrawal at Rough from November 1 as planned as part of maintenance at the site. Rough is a partially depleted North Sea gas field used for storage since 1985. Centrica announced extended maintenance for the site's 47/8A platform in August 2015. "Permanently withdrawing 47/8A from service will have a minimal impact on Roughs capabilities and CSL has prepared for the possibility that it would never return to service," Centrica said. (Reporting by Swati Verma in Bengaluru and Nerijus Adomaitis in Oslo; editing by Jason Neely)
London (AFP) - A British-Iranian woman accused of taking part in anti-regime protests in 2009 has been sentenced to five years in prison, her husband said Friday, but added that the specific charges had not been revealed.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who works for the Thomson Reuters Foundation and was arrested on April 3, called her husband Richard on Tuesday to inform him of her sentence, he said in a statement.

"Nazanin has been sentenced for five years' imprisonment. The charges justifying this sentence remain secret," Richard Ratcliffe said.

He said the sentence was handed down on Tuesday, the day after Britain and Iran announced they were appointing new ambassadors to each other's countries as part of an easing of strained diplomatic ties following the Iran nuclear accord last year.

Britain's Foreign Office said it was "deeply concerned" by the reports and offered to help bring the couple's daughter back to Britain.

Thomson Reuters Foundation CEO Monique Villa said she was "outraged" by the sentence and stressed that her organisation had no involvement in Iran.

"This is a very serious condemnation that comes without any charges or evidence being made public... I am convinced of her innocence," she wrote.

The foundation is a charity organisation coordinating training programmes for journalists around the world.

Ratcliffe said that in her phone-call from prison Zaghari-Ratcliffe had told him: "I can't bear to be in this place any longer.

"It has been horrendous. I do not want to wake up each morning and remember where I am. I want to stay in my dreams," he quoted her as saying.

"It remains extraordinary that Nazanin's interrogators clarify the sentence but not the crime -- because there is none," he said, adding that the case was "shrouded in shadows and internal politics".

"Nazanin's detention and charges have always felt like she and Gabriella are being held as a political bargaining chip for internal and international politics," he said, referring to their daughter.

Story continues

Britain's foreign ministry said Prime Minister Theresa May and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson had both raised the case with their counterparts in Iran.

"We continue to press the Iranians for consular access and for due process to be followed," it said.

Iran does not recognise dual citizenship.

- Daughter stranded in Iran -

Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards earlier accused Zaghari-Ratcliffe of having taken part in the "sedition movement" of widespread protests that followed the 2009 re-election of former hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

According to a Guards statement in June, Zaghari-Ratcliffe was "identified and arrested after massive intelligence operations" as one of "the heads of foreign-linked hostile networks".

At a rally outside the Iranian embassy in London in June, Ratcliffe told AFP his wife was arrested as she prepared to return to Britain with Gabriella after visiting family in Iran.

Gabriella was born in Britain and has a British passport, which was confiscated by the Iranian authorities, leaving her stranded with her grandparents in Iran, he said.

Iran and Britain on Monday appointed new ambassadors for the first time since a mob ransacked the British embassy in Tehran in 2011, as part of a series of measures to boost relations after last year's nuclear deal.

British Airways also this month became the first British airline in four years to fly directly to Iran following the lifting of some sanctions after the deal between Iran and Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States.

Iran maintains a deep historical distrust of Britain, dating back to the early 20th century when London meddled frequently in Iranian politics in order to secure cheap access to oil for the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, which later became BP.

Britain played a key role in prodding the Central Intelligence Agency into carrying out a coup in 1953, toppling the hugely popular prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh who had called for Iran's oil to be nationalised.
London (AFP) - A British lawyer suing MasterCard for A14 billion (17 billion euros, $19 billion) over card charges accused the US financial giant on Friday of indirectly pushing up prices for all British consumers.

"Our case is that businesses that had to pay these fees then naturally passed on their costs... to consumers," Walter Merricks from law firm Quinn Emanuel said on BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

Mark Barnett, head of MasterCard in Britain, told the BBC that card services had benefited consumers, adding: "We will be vigorously defending the case... We don't think consumers have suffered in any way".

The law firm, which launched its collective action on Thursday, said MasterCard had imposed unlawfully high card fees between 1992 and 2007 and added the claim was "the biggest in UK legal history".

The European Commission last year said the US credit-card giant overcharged customers and retailers, having already found rival Visa at fault over fees levied on card payments.

The Commission said it believed MasterCard was in breach of EU single market competition rules.

"Many consumers use payment cards every day, when they shop for food, clothes or purchase anything online. We currently suspect MasterCard is artificially raising the costs of card payments, which would harm consumers and retailers in the EU," EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said last year.

"We have concerns both in relation to the rules MasterCard applies to cross-border transactions within the EU, as well as the fees charged to retailers for receiving payments made with cards issued outside Europe," Vestager said.
London (AFP) - British Prime Minister Theresa May set out bold plans on Friday for more selection in schools, raising a deeply divisive issue two months into a premiership that has so far been defined by Brexit.

The Conservative leader announced the end of a two-decade ban on new grammar schools, which only accept the brightest pupils, as part of a package of reforms intended to build a "truly meritocratic Britain".

Her proposals, described by the press as an "education revolution", delighted many Conservatives but are opposed by Labour, and there are questions about whether they will get through parliament.

The campaign ahead of Britain's vote in June to quit the European Union exposed divisions within the Conservative Party, which only has a small majority in the House of Commons.

May took over in July and her first two months have been dominated by questions over how and when she will implement Brexit.

But she has vowed to use her office to make Britain a fairer country, and laid out Friday her first steps to address what she said was a widespread desire for change.

In her first major domestic policy speech, she said she wanted to "give ordinary, working-class people the better deal they deserve".

She added: "In a true meritocracy, we should not be apologetic about stretching the most academically able to the very highest standards of excellence."

Grammar schools had their heyday in the 1950s, but were phased out from the mid-1960s and a ban was introduced on new schools in 1998.

Some 163 survive in England, and most are oversubscribed.

Supporters say such schools offer poor, bright students an academically rigorous education. But critics say they are divisive and take far fewer poor pupils than other schools.

The chief inspector of schools, Michael Wilshaw, said the proposals risked two decades of progress in education.

"We will fail as a nation if we only get the top 15 to 20 percent of our children achieving well," he told BBC radio.

Labour education spokeswoman Angela Rayner said the plan would "entrench inequality and disadvantage".

May said new grammars would be required to take a proportion of children from poorer backgrounds.
The Broncos Brandon Marshall, kneeling during the national anthem (AP)

After Thursdays game, Denver Broncos linebacker Brandon Marshall spoke thoughtfully about why he ultimately decided to take a knee during the singing of the national anthem before his team played the Carolina Panthers.

Marshall made it clear that his protest was for just one reason  Im against social injustice. Im not against the military, the police or America at all. Im against social injustice.

But one company that was working with Marshall decided quickly to end its arrangement with the veteran player.

Air Academy Federal Credit Union made the announcement on its Facebook page on Friday.

(Facebook)

The credit union made the decision despite the fact that Marshall said he will be donating to various charities, including those that support military veterans. Its hard for vets in this country as well, he told reporters.
Art Basel recently launched Art Basel Cities

As the Art Basel Cities initiative gets underway, Art Basel has announced that its first partnership will be with the city of Buenos Aires.

The partnership will highlight Buenos Aires' rich cultural contributions to the international art world, providing a platform for the city to engage with Art Basel's global audience.

In the coming months, the city of Buenos Aires and Art Basel will design a program that uses the city's cultural landscape, infrastructure and resources to their full advantage.

Since launching in March 2016, Art Basel Cities goes beyond art fairs and works directly with cities and governments to develop cultural events with an international scope.
Marc Bartra has no doubt in his mind that the arrival of Luis Enrique was the beginning of the end for his Barcelona career.

Having made his debut under Pep Guardiola back in 2010, Bartra had always found it difficult to cement his spot as an undisputed starter for the Blaugrana. But when he started 24 matches under Gerardo "Tata" Martino in the 2013/2014 campaign, in a season where he also made his national team debut, things were certainly looking positive for him.

The following season, Enrique's first at the club, he began encouragingly but his minutes slowly began to diminish. While he managed 22 starts, there were ominous signs that his manager never truly believed he possessed the necessary quality to usurp the brilliant duo of Gerard Pique and Javier Mascherano and become a starter.

Playing only 12 games from the outset in the 2015/2016 crusade confirmed to Bartra that his manager didn't entirely have faith in him. Feeling unwanted after his gradual, 18 month fall down the pecking order, the 25-year-old felt he had no other choice but to leave the club he joined as a 12-year-old, played over 150 times for and loves so dearly.

"When I made my debut under Pep, I felt his confidence," he said. "Tito (Vilanova) decided to put me in the first team. With Tata I played practically 30 games which gave me the chance to play for the national team.

"I was on an upwards ascent until Luis Enrique arrived. I started well with him, but later I stopped counting. It was a tough 18 months for me.

"One of the highlights of my season was returning to the national team. I played a match against England and was really happy yet I was then left out of the Clasico. It was at that moment it was clear I shouldn't stay at Barcelona."

Taking control of his destiny, Bartra decided to take the brave step of moving to Germany, to a country with an unfamiliar league, language and culture. Working under the expert tutelage of Thomas Tuchel and the exciting project he's created were clearly pivotal aspects in him wanting to join Borussia Dortmund. But the club's unbridled desire to secure his services made him feel wanted and appreciated, something that Bartra knew he needed after his struggles at Barca.

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"It was a difficult change, the most important decision I've made in my life and the best I've taken. Dortmund had a lot of interest in me from the very beginning," explained the 8 million signing.

"It was very satisfying to be part of Barcelona, but I feel very excited to be able to keep developing [at Borussia Dortmund]. Now that I think about it, I do not regret leaving Barcelona."

El defensa espanol del Borussia de Dortmund compartio tras el encuentro una fotografia en sus redes sociales donde se le ve magullada su cara

Judging on his fine start to life with the Black and Yellows and the way he's smoothly integrated into Tuchel's squad, there's absolutely no reason for him to regret leaving the Catalan giants, where, had he stayed, he would've been resigned to a place on the bench.

After making such an accomplished Bundesliga debut in his side's 2-1 victory over Mainz 05, Bartra would've felt an additional sense of vindication that he did indeed make the right choice.

From his left sided central defensive station, the Spaniard put in a shift littered with upside and, importantly, one that was bereft of mistakes. Clean, polished and assured throughout, Bartra looked right at home alongside his new defensive partner, Sokratis Papastathopoulos.

Up against a Mainz attacking unit that consisted of Yunus Malli, Karim Onisiwo and the pacy Christian Clemens, Bartra dealt with the varying skillsets of each player capably whenever they were in his designated area of operation. Being so adept at reading the play and so positionally intelligent provided him with the perfect platform to deal with his adversaries. Combine this with his superb judgement when to tackle, hold his ground or apply pressure, and it's unsurprising the Mainz attackers found little joy in their duels with Bartra. Moreover, he used all of his 184cm frame and underrated leap to dominate in the air.

His defensive contribution didn't stop there, however, for he astutely slid across to cover his left-back, Marcel Schmelzer, whenever he bombed forward to ensure coverage was present in case of a turnover. While his supreme concentration and awareness enabled him to pick up any of Mainz's midfield runners in order to tidy up any blown marking assignments committed by his midfielders.

As ever, Bartra's exceptional passing game, that he honed since the age of 12 within the confines of Barca's famed La Masia academy, enabled him to have a profound impact in Dortmund's possession phases too. Seeing as Martin Schmidt loves his side to press aggressively, Bartra's composure and ability to make concise decisions under heavy duress saw him act as vital component when BVB were passing the ball out from the back.

Uber den Umweg Frankreich zieht es Marc Bartra vom FC Barcelona zu Borussia Dortmund . Der Innenverteidiger spricht uber die Zeit unter Luis Enrique und erklart seine Beweggrunde, den Klub zu wechseln. Eine Klausel existiert nicht.

Once he evaded the 05ers' best attentions, the elegant defender showcased his vast passing repetoire to kickstart many an attack for the home side. His 50 yard cross field diagonals, much like Jerome Boateng does for Bayern Munich, added yet another layer of menace to Dortmund's already multifaceted offensive unit.

In addition, the way he smartly bypassed Mainz's lines of pressure by playing some pinpoint deliveries into the feet of Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Shinji Kagawa only accentuated his quality in this regard.

His utterly accomplished showing was duly punctuated by his statistics that state he made two tackles, three interceptions, three clearances, one block and completed 114 passes at a 90% success rate.

I was really looking forward to playing my first game in the Bundesliga, and doing so with a win is important. It gives us confidence," he told the Set Pieces after the match.

"I feel very good in the position, I feel comfortable. Theres not really much difference in the position to how I played at Barcelona. I turn the pressure into motivation and desire."

The man who's bulging trophy cabinet includes five La Liga titles and two coveted Champions League crowns will be hoping he can back up his strong debut by putting in equally outstanding showing against RB Leipzig at the weekend. Courtesy of their Red Bull ownership, Leipzig are now widely recognised as the most hated club in Germany. But, nonetheless, the match at the Red Bull Arena promises to be a special, historic occasion, for it's Leipzig's first ever home game in the Bundesliga.

An expected capacity crowd of 44,300 should set a stirring backdrop for the clash too. Additional interest from the match will arrive with the impending debut of Leipzig's gifted new signing, Oliver Burke. The Scottish international, who joined for a hefty 13 million from Nottingham Forest, amid interest from the likes of Bayern Munich and Barcelona, is already being touted as the next Gareth Bale due to his power, skill and physically imposing approach.

Bartra and his colleagues' battle with the 19-year-old looms as a highly intriguing subplot to the contest, but Dortmund will also have to be wary of the Red Bulls' other dangerous offensive weapons. Facing the likes of Emil Forsberg, Davie Selke, Marcel Sabitzer, Yussuf Poulsen and Timo Werner means Bartra will need to on top of his game to deal with the dynamism of Leipzig going forward.

It'll unquestionably be a memorable experience for the languid stopper, but his familiarity with playing in front of huge, intimidating crowds with club and country should hold him great stead to remain calm and have a profound impact on the contest.

Although Bartra admits it was one of the toughest decisions he's ever had to make leaving Barca, his fantastic start to life at Dortmund only reinforces his belief that he made the right call.

And that's why he justifiably feels no regrets whatsoever about joining Dortmund.
Once you've finished the house hunting process and found a home to your liking, it's time to put in an offer and make an agreement with the seller. But before you purchase your home, there's some additional digging to do.

The due diligence stage in a real estate transaction is a vital part of the homebuying experience, giving the buyer an opportunity to have the home inspected, investigate possible neighborhood downfalls and work with his or her lender to determine whether this the home.

While many states require home sellers to disclose a property's known defects, Carolyn J. Smith, broker at Exclusive Buyer's Realty in Savannah, Georgia, explains that it most often falls on the buyer to inspect every detail that may affect his or her purchase decision.

"To prove that everything is all right, then it's up to the buyer to do the inspection and due diligence," Smith says.

When due diligence occurs during a transaction can vary by state, region or even municipality, so you should inquire with your local agent to be sure you understand the timing.

In Savannah, for example, due diligence is conducted immediately after the contract agreement is signed and lasts for an agreed-upon number of days by the buyer and seller, as stipulated in the contract.

In New York, the due diligence period occurs in the days before a property goes under contract, explains Ian Katz, principal real estate broker for the Ian K. Katz Group, based in New York City and Westchester, New York. In a fairly balanced market between buyers and sellers, the due diligence period typically lasts a couple of weeks, but in a tight seller's market, buyers may agree to a shorter due diligence period -- as short as two to three days -- to gain an edge over a competing offer, according to Katz.

[See: The Best Apps for House Hunting.]

Here are seven things every homebuyer should do during the due diligence process.

Work with your lender. You should already be preapproved for a mortgage, so whether your due diligence period is before or after you go under contract, you should be ready to discuss your lender's willingness to underwrite a loan for the specific property.

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In Manhattan, Katz notes that newly developed condominiums whose associations may not have much financial history or whose reserve funds may be low could be red flags for lenders. These are details that can be addressed when conducting due diligence on a property.

"This is something that we're going to want to clear with the bank so that we know that the bank will be comfortable moving forward transacting in the building and underwriting a loan in the building," Katz says.

Inquire with an insurer. As you discuss the home with your lender, begin the process of finding a homeowners insurance provider and determining what insurance on the home will cost. If the home is in a flood zone or in a tornado-prone area, insurance might be more expensive than you bargained for or even more difficult to obtain.

"[Flood insurance] can be very costly in our area. Those are some of the things buyers immediately ask about: Are we in a flood zone, and how much is insurance?" Smith says.

Check out the ownership history of the property. A home's history can say a lot about how it's been treated -- whether it's been flipped previously or foreclosed on. Also, the length of time the current owner has occupied the home can be an key in understanding why the seller is moving.

Property reports from sites like HomeDisclosure.com, which pulls detailed property and neighborhood information from public records, includes crime statistics, school information and other neighborhood details, while also helping to paint the picture of the home's past ownership.

"That can really help you understand the situation of the homeowner and how motivated they are to sell -- knowing the equity in the home," says Daren Blomquist, senior vice president of communications for Attom Data Solutions, which powers Home Disclosure.

[See: 4 Sites That Will Tell You More Than You Want to Know About Your Home.]

Research the neighborhood. While you may have assessed the neighborhood's characteristics during your home search, now is the time to make sure it's an area you're comfortable living in.

If you're concerned about crime, inquire with the local police department and investigate using online resources such as NeighborhoodScout.com and FamilyWatchdog. These are details real estate agents can't tell you on their own. "It's up to the buyer to determine if there are any sex offenders in the neighborhood, or we can provide websites or local crime reports to be sure the buyer is in a safe neighborhood," Smith says.

Have the home inspected. The last thing you want is to discover costly home defects as soon as you move in.

"If there are any ... deal-breaking items, we have a chance to renegotiate the terms of the transaction, which could include a price adjustment or a seller going out and making some sort of repair as a condition to or contingency of the contract," Katz says.

Not all inspections check for everything, though. When you speak with your inspector, clarify what the inspection entails. You may have to pay extra or hire another professional for a roof or termite inspection or to have the inspector confirm previous renovations were properly permitted.

Determine potential environmental hazards. Concerns about dangers to your health, such as radon or mold in the home and air or water pollution in the area, should be addressed during the allotted time period.

Smith recalls a previous client who grew worried about possible radiation emissions from heavy power lines located near the property the family was considering. Despite a low chance of the power lines being a problem, the buyers chose to err on the side of caution and terminate the contract, Smith says.

[See: Weird Home Features That May Confuse Homebuyers.]

Search for other information of interest. You have your own plans once you own the home, so be sure to conduct thorough research for your specific goals. This could mean zoning if you're hoping to build a shed in the backyard or municipal rules for running a business out of your home.

Blomquist notes a popular feature of Home Disclosure reports is the number of renters versus owners in a neighborhood, as well as the average rent, in case "you're buying a property and you're thinking, 'Oh, I might want to put this on Airbnb or I might want to rent it at some point.'"
Courmayeur (Italy) (AFP) - More than 30 tourists who spent a dramatic night stranded in cable cars above the French Alps were brought to the ground Friday after an 18-hour ordeal, operators said.

They were the last of 110 sightseers trapped when the cable cars ground to a halt Thursday afternoon in the shadow of Mont Blanc, western Europe's loftiest peak.

After a night in the frozen dark, dangling at an altitude of 3,800 metres (12,500 feet), the string of cars lurched into movement at around 8 am (0600 GMT).

The incident was caused by cables that got crossed for "unknown reasons", but a gust of wind is thought to have played a part, said Mathieu Dechavanne, boss of the Mont-Blanc Company which manages the system.

The cars were restarted after the last cable was untangled, he told AFP.

The 33 remaining passengers were able to reach the ground by exiting the cars at three points on the way down, an official said.

Teams on Thursday had been able to rescue 77 passengers, most of them by helicopters and others who were able to climb down with help.

But as darkness fell and the weather deteriorated, the operation was suspended, leaving the remaining tourists, one of them a 12-year-old boy, to spend the night suspended in mid-air.

The boy's sister, Italian tourist Maria Elena Perrone, 18, was rescued on Thursday but then had an agonising wait for news of her brother and parents who were in a different cable car.

"It was terrible. My brother had to stay up there with my parents and they were only wearing sweatshirts. When the Sun set, it was cold," she told AFP, sobbing.

"For two and a half hours we didn't know what had happened and the cable car was moving a lot when they were trying to untangle the cables."

- 'Last hour was very long' -

An elderly man was treated for hypothermia but all the passengers trapped overnight in the small, four-person pods were in good condition despite their ordeal, police said.

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"We were in contact with them throughout the night, the people were cold" but there did not appear to be any health emergencies, the local police chief, Stephane Bozon, told AFP.

"The last hour seemed very, very long. We called the operators who explained that three cables got snarled up and they had to be untangled but they didn't manage to do it," a man who was one of the first tourists to be rescued told French radio, without giving his name.

The top official in the Haute-Savoie region, Georges-Francois Leclerc, said rescuers had been forced to halt their operation at 8:45 pm Thursday as they could not "guarantee the safety of the pilots, rescuers and the people stuck in the cars".

During the night, a team of rescuers, three French and two Italian police officers also attempted to reach the trapped tourists.

One of the officers managed to get into the car where the 12-year-old boy was.

The trapped passengers had access to emergency blankets, energy bars and bottles of water, which are stocked aboard the cars.

The five-kilometre (three-mile) -long system, which went into operation in 1950, connects Aiguille du Midi on the French side of the mountains with Pointe Helbronner on the Italian border, offering panoramic views of Mont Blanc.

On the most eye-catching part of the trip, the cars are a dizzying 400 metres above ground.

In 2011, around 40 people were stuck for nearly seven hours on the Grande-Motte cable car in the southeastern French Alps after it broke down.

They were evacuated through trap doors in the cars, using ropes to reach the ground 40 metres below.
Give Other People some credit. You will know within 60 seconds exactly whether the movie is for you or not.

Writer-director Chris Kellys debut feature is a semi-autobiographical account of his mother dying of cancer, and the film goes right to the moment wed be dreading in another similar movie. In the opening scene, Joanne (Molly Shannon) has just died, the family is gathered around her in bed sobbing.

And then the phone rings. Its a distant acquaintance calling who has just heard about Joannes illness, and leaves a message with the usual get-well platitudes. Then she interrupts herself mid-condolence to order fast food from a drive thru, the grieving family listening all the while. Its very inappropriate. Its also very funny.

Kelly, who was just named a co-head writer for Saturday Night Live, beautifully balances comic and dramatic moments like these in Other People, and all of it has the ring of truth. When someone goes through traumatic loss, its often the little moments between the big moments that stick in the mind, and Kelly gets that. Its also very funny. I feel I need to add the Its also very funny to the end of every paragraph of this review so as not to scare anybody away from this wonderful little movie.

After that opening scene, Kelly backtracks to show us the previous year. JoAnne is still in chemo, and David (Jesse Plemons of Friday Night Lights) has moved home to Sacramento to help take care of her. Now a New York comedy writer and actor, David looks with amused disdain at his old hometown, a place where Trains Drops of Jupiter is always on the radio, and his mothers friends think the height of comedy is wearing a pair of novelty teeth.

There are also plenty of awkward conversations with Dad (Bradley Whitford), who seems like a well-meaning man but never quite accepted Davids coming out a decade earlier. Meanwhile, Joanne is trying to figure out how to live what will be the last year of her life, and Shannons powerhouse performance is heartbreaking, delightful, fiery and wistful. Often its at least two of those emotions in the same moment.

Having a parent dying is often a hackneyed subplot of a coming-of-age film, something to engender sympathy in a less-than-likable protagonist. But Other People has the wisdom and the empathy of lived experience, which lets it transcend cliche to find those perfect little moments of real life. There are a couple of big emotional scenes, but the one that wrecked me is when Joanne gazes at a photo of her younger, vivacious self, and quietly murmurs Oh, well.

As sad as the material can get, the arc of the film is a gently uplifting one, as David learns to see the family and friends he left behind in Sacramento not as suburban caricatures, but other people just as real as he is. As the year goes on, Kelly returns to the same long shot of David and JoAnne in a park, and as we see JoAnnes condition worsen, a house is being built in the background. Something is lost, but something is gained too.

Its also very funny.
By Prak Chan Thul PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - A Cambodian court on Friday sentenced opposition leader Kem Sokha to five months in jail in absentia amid what activists say is a crackdown on critics of Prime Minister Hun Sen ahead of local and general elections. Phnom Penh Municipal Court found Sokha, 63, guilty of failing to appear in court as a witness in a case against two MPs from his Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) accused of procuring a prostitute for him. Hundreds of Sokha's supporters clashed briefly with police outside the court as police tried to remove banners and loudspeakers proclaiming Sokha's innocence. Tension has risen as other opposition members have been charged and jailed. On July 10, Kem Ley, a prominent activist and frequent critic of Hun Sen, was murdered in the capital Phnom Penh and Ley's family have fled abroad fearing for their safety. Sokha and his lawyers boycotted the trial on Friday, arguing that his immunity from prosecution as an elected MP was still in place. Sokha, who has been holed up at the CNRP headquarters to avoid arrest for months, said on Friday that Hun Sen was using the judiciary to prevent him standing in local and general elections in 2017 and 2018. "This is an attack on a multiparty democracy as guaranteed in Cambodia's constitution," Sokha said in a rare public speech since taking refuge at the CNRP headquarters on May 6. Hun Sen and his government have repeatedly denied wrongdoing. (Editing by Nick Macfie)
Washington (AFP) - A top Donald Trump aide said Friday the Republican nominee now believes President Barack Obama was born in the United States, seeking to shelve the "birther" controversy that hurt Trump's standing with minority voters.

"He believes President Obama was born here... He was born in Hawaii," Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway told CNN.

The remarks echoed those of Trump surrogate Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, who went on television late Thursday to assure Americans that Trump now accepts the legitimacy of Obama's citizenship.

"Donald Trump believes now that (Obama) was born in the United States," Giuliani told MSNBC.

"I believe it. He believes it. We all believe it. It took a long time to get out."

Trump was the most prominent early proponent of a theory that Obama, the nation's first black president, was not born in the United States and therefore, under the US Constitution, ineligible to be commander in chief.

Trump embraced the long-debunked "birther movement" in early 2011, eager to push the theory as a way to connect with white conservatives and catapult himself into prominence while he mulled his own run for the White House.

That year, he routinely called on Obama to produce his long-form birth certificate, a demand that African-American leaders warned was stirring up racial animosity in the middle of Obama's presidency.

Obama eventually did produce the document in 2011, which appeared at the time to put the matter to rest once and for all.

But in August 2012, just three months before that year's election, Trump revived the controversy with a stunning tweet: "An 'extremely credible source' has called my office and told me that @BarackObama's birth certificate is a fraud."

Nearly four years later, in 2016, Trump rode to primary victory thanks overwhelmingly to white support.

But with Democratic rival Hillary Clinton leading him in most polls, Trump will need to expand his base of support in order to win the White House. Distancing himself from his birther claims is seen as an important step in that effort.

Asked why Trump himself has not yet announced his belief that Obama was born in the United States, Conway said "you have to ask him."

"But the point is, what kind of president has he been?" she posed. "He's not been a particularly successful president, and that's what this campaign is about on our side."
(Adds reaction from federal government, TransCanada)

By David Ljunggren

OTTAWA, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Canada's energy regulator said on Friday that a panel assessing TransCanada Corp's proposed Energy East pipeline was quitting, a decision that will drag out an already-lengthy appraisal process.

Critics had demanded two of three panel members quit after it emerged they had privately discussed the project last year with former Quebec Premier Jean Charest, who was working for TransCanada as a consultant at the time.

The regulator, the National Energy Board (NEB), said in a statement that the panel was stepping down "to preserve the integrity" of the board and the Energy East review.

Although the panel members had talked to Charest and others in good faith, "they understand that their participation in these meetings may have created an apprehension of bias," which could undermine the board's credibility, the statement said.

The announcement represents another challenge for the project, which is designed to carry 1.1 million barrels of crude per day from Alberta's oil sands to Canada's East Coast, where it can be sold onto more lucrative international markets.

The push for Energy East came after U.S. President Barack Obama last November rejected TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline to the United States. Environmentalists fear the projects would spur development of Canada's carbon-intensive oil sands.

The panel that quit had been probing the section of the pipeline that would cross the predominantly French-speaking eastern province of Quebec.

That hearing will now be suspended until the NEB names another panel. This could take time since there are very few qualified French-speaking experts, officials say.

As it stands, the NEB has until March 16, 2018, to issue its final report.

Keith Brooks, a program director for Environmental Defence, a leading green group, welcomed the announcement, but complained it did not go far enough.

"The apprehension of bias ... has damaged the entire review process beyond repair," he said in a statement.

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A spokesman for Canadian Energy Minister Jim Carr described the delay of the review as unfortunate, but added it was crucial that the NEB showed itself to be independent and neutral.

TransCanada said it accepts the panel's decision and looks forward to the hearings resuming, according to a company spokesman.

In January, the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said it would modernize the NEB, but not before the regulator had examined Energy East.

More than 50 environmental groups sent a letter to Carr and Trudeau on Thursday demanding an overhaul of the regulator before an Energy East decision.

(Reporting by David Ljunggren; editing by Andrew Hay and G Crosse)
T2C_The_Sea_Rises,_by_Phiz

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness..."

That's part of the opening line of Charles Dickens' oft-quoted but rarely read novel "A Tale of Two Cities."

In a recent note to clients, Capital Economics' Canada team suggested that the book's title actually serves to explain what's going on in the Canadian housing market bubble right now.

And although it's not a perfect metaphor, it still an interesting way to contextualize things.

The two cities in question are Vancouver and Toronto  the former saw home sales decline by 23% year-over-year in August, while the latter saw home sales surge by 23.5% year-over-year.

Screen Shot 2016 09 09 at 11.59.27 AM

This divergence "demonstrates that even though the Vancouver market may be softening, there is no sign of any weakness in the country's biggest city," Toronto, said the Capital Economics team, led by Chief North American Economist Paul Ashworth.

"A few commentators tried to link the surge in August specifically with the introduction of the foreign buyer tax in Vancouver, claiming that foreigners were now switching their focus to the [Greater Toronto Area]," they wrote. However, "Toronto home sales (again, seasonally adjusted by ourselves) have been on a steep upward trend since late 2012."

It's also worth noting that Vancouver's home sales peaked in February and have fallen by a cumulative 40% since then, according to data from the Vancouver Real Estate Board cited by Capital Economics.

Moreover, the area's home sales fell by 27% year-over-year in July, which suggests that the recent tax implemented on foreign buyers might not be the primary catalyst in August's drop, according to the team.

In light of all that, it's worth considering what could eventually lead Toronto's housing market to start falling as well.

Here's Capital Economics again:

"The truth is that, for all the talk of so-called triggers, when they get that big, bubbles often end up collapse under their own weight. Vancouver housing is another illustration of that with no obvious trigger, just as the original stock market crash in 1929 had no obvious trigger and nor did the bursting of the dot com bubble in 2000. The Toronto housing market is running a little behind Vancouver, but we suspect it won't be long before it peaks too."

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In short, it's something to keep an eye on in Canada.

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Canadian Pacific Railways Limited CP, based in Calgary, Canada, announced that its Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and Executive Vice-President, Mark Erceg, has resigned. The company has appointed Nadeem Velani as the interim Vice President and CFO. Velani will take up this role, effective from Sep 9, 2016.

Erceg is expected to return to the U.S. and join a NYSE-listed company in the nation. As part of his new role, Erceg will be responsible for the Finance and Information Systems divisions.

Velani, on the other hand, has been associated with Canadian Pacific since Mar 2013. He was currently serving in the capacity of the companys Vice President Investor Relations. Velani has years of experience in the railway industry. He has served various roles in Financial Planning, Sales and Marketing and Investor Relations at Canadian National Railways Co. CNI for fifteen years before joining Canadian Pacific.

Changes to the Board

The resignation of Canadian Pacifics CFO comes on the heels of the companys announcement of a change in its board of directors. Bill Ackman recently resigned from the companys board after his fund  Pershing Square  sold its entire stake in Canadian Pacific. The company appointed Jill Denham and William R. Fatt as the new directors after Ackmans resignation. Notably, Ackman had been instrumental in the positive turnaround Canadian Pacific has seen in the past four years.

Zacks Rank and Stocks to Consider

Canadian Pacific currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Investors interested in the broader transportation sector may consider stocks like Air Transport Services Group Inc. ATSG and Gaslog Partners LP GLOP. Both these stocks carry a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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Ottawa (AFP) - The Canadian economy created 26,000 jobs in August, a bit better than expected amid a struggling economy, and the unemployment rate ticked higher to seven percent, the government said Friday.

The increase in unemployment occurred because "more people participated in the labor market," Statistics Canada reported.

Economists had predicted 25,000 new jobs and a decline in the jobless rate to 6.8 percent from 6.9 percent in July.

The lackluster jobs numbers come at a rough moment for the Canadian economy, which contracted at an annual rate of 1.6 percent in the second quarter following a large drop in oil production caused by wildfires in the Alberta oil-sands region.

The public sector created 57,000 jobs in August "offsetting declines observed in July," Statistics Canada said.

The level of private-sector jobs was little changed from July, but was up by 97,000 compared with a year ago.

The professional, scientific and technical services industry lost 23,000 jobs month-over-month.

Employment rose by 22,000 jobs in August among youths age 15 to 24, with the unemployment rate little changed at 13.2 percent.

For those 55 and older, there was jobs growth of 29,000 payrolls, with unemployment unchanged at 6.0 percent.

Meanwhile, those 25 to 54 saw a decrease of 25,000 jobs for the month. Their unemployment rate rose to 6.6 percent from 6.3 percent.

Geographically, the eastern province of Quebec created 22,000 jobs in August, with the jobless rate stable at 7.1 percent.

Ontario -- Canada's richest and most populated province -- saw unemployment rise 0.3 percentage points to 6.7 percent with virtually no change in employment.
Baghdad (AFP) - Two bomb blasts outside a shopping mall in central Baghdad claimed by the Islamic State group killed at least 13 people, security and medical officials said on Saturday.

The bombings were the latest in a series of deadly attacks at Baghdad shopping centres this year that have been claimed by IS, including one that killed more than 300 people in early July.

The jihadist group issued an online statement on the attack, saying it targeted Shiites and was carried out by two Iraqi suicide bombers, one of whom wore an explosive belt and another who drove an explosives-rigged vehicle.

IS and other Sunni extremists consider Shiite Muslims to be heretics, and frequently target them in bombings.

The statement said the bomber who drove the explosives-rigged vehicle was from Fallujah, a city west of Baghdad that was retaken from IS in late June.

The blasts, which hit just before midnight (2100 GMT) Friday, shattered windows at the multi-storey Nakheel Mall on Palestine Street in the city centre, and damaged a fence surrounding it.

As people worked to clean up the rubble outside on Saturday, a private security company guarding the mall sought to prevent images being taken, seizing the cameras of two photographers and a video journalist.

The cameras were eventually returned, but video footage shot by an AFP photographer was deleted by the firm.

Nakheel Mall opened last year and shops were likely to have remained open late ahead of the Muslim feast of Eid al-Adha which begins on Monday.

The mall also houses one of the city's most popular cinemas.

IS claims most major attacks in Baghdad, including some carried out at shopping centres earlier in the year.

On Tuesday, a car bomb near a hospital killed at least seven people in Baghdad's Karrada district -- an area still reeling from a July 3 suicide bombing that set nearby shopping centres ablaze and left more than 300 people dead.

IS claimed the Karrada blasts, as well as an attack involving gunmen and a car bomb that killed at least 12 people near another Baghdad mall in January.

IS has suffered a string of military defeats over the past year and the caliphate it proclaimed in June 2014 is rapidly shrinking.

As the jihadist organisation loses territory across Iraq, officials have warned that it may step up revenge attacks against civilians in Baghdad and other cities.
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Twelve people were killed late on Friday in two suicide bombings claimed by Islamic State at a shopping mall in eastern Baghdad, police and hospital sources said. More than 40 people were wounded in the attack at Nakheel Mall across from the oil ministry, the sources said. One bomb went off at the entrance to the mall, the other in the parking lot. Unconfirmed amateur video published on Facebook showed what appeared to be four separate fires, including two cars engulfed in flames, under a highway overpass near the mall amid the wailing sirens of first responders. Amaq news agency, which supports Islamic State, said in an online statement that two suicide bombers, one wearing a vest and the other in a car, had targeted "a gathering of Shi'ites" on Palestine Street. The fight against Islamic State, which seized a third of Iraq's territory in 2014, has exacerbated a long-running sectarian conflict in Iraq, mostly between the Shi'ite majority and the Sunni minority. The militants have lost ground in the past year to U.S.-backed government forces and Iranian-backed Shi'ite militias, and Iraq is gearing up for an offensive next month to recapture the northern city of Mosul. Yet such bombings show the group can still strike outside the territory its controls in northern and western Iraq. A car bomb near a hospital in central Baghdad killed nine people on Monday, and another one down the road in July killed 324, one of the deadliest such attacks since the U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein 13 years ago. (Reporting by Kareem Raheem in Baghdad and Omar Fahmy in Cairo; Writing by Stephen Kalin; Editing by Will Dunham and Grant McCool)
(Reuters) - A spate of creepy clown sightings in South Carolina has perplexed police and worried parents, but their frightening appearance was no surprise to best-selling U.S. horror author Stephen King.

King, whose 1986 novel "It" tells the story of a supernatural being that appears as a clown to terrorize the residents of a small Maine town, told the Bangor Daily News that fear of clowns touches a nerve with children and adults alike.

"Kids love clowns, but they also fear them; clowns with their white faces and red lips are so different and so grotesque compared to 'normal' people," the newspaper quoted King as saying in an article posted on Friday. "The clown furor will pass, as these things do, but it will come back, because under the right circumstances, clowns really can be terrifying."

The clown sightings started around Greenville, South Carolina, last month when police began getting reports of clowns standing silently by roadsides, lurking near laundromats and trying to lure children into the woods with bags of cash and green laser lights.

Police in North Carolina have over the past week also reported a wave of sightings, suggesting a slow migration in the direction of the fictional town of Derry, Maine, where King's Pennywise carried out his rampage.

But police urged residents to remain calm after an adult man saw a clown emerge from the woods and chased the clown with a machete in Greensboro, North Carolina on Tuesday. A 911 dispatcher calmed the man down and the clown escaped unharmed, police said.

King's macabre imagination has produced dozens of shiver-inducing works including "The Shining" and "Misery." In 2014 he was awarded the U.S. National Medal for the Arts in recognition of his large oeuvre.

King admitted he'd be unnerved to find a pale-faced, red-lipped prankster skulking near his Bangor home.

"If I saw a clown lurking under a lonely bridge (or peering up at me from a sewer grate, with or without balloons), Id be scared, too," he told the newspaper.

(Reporting by Scott Malone in Boston; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)
* Zloty off 2-week high vs euro * Moody's downgrade of Poland unlikely, but worries linger * Kuna, Croatian bonds steady ahead of Sunday elections (Adds Croatian elections, Czech forwards) By Sandor Peto and Marcin Goettig BUDAPEST/WARSAW, Sept 9 (Reuters) - The zloty led a retreat of Central European currencies on Friday, hit by concerns that Moody's may downgrade Poland's credit rating later in the day as investors locked in recent broad-based gains.

The zloty eased by 0.4 percent to 4.3371 against the euro by 1257 GMT, lagging its regional peers.

Moody's, expected to publish its review after European markets close, has the highest rating on Poland among the three major credit agencies.

It caused alarm two weeks ago when it warned that reforms of Poland's constitutional court, which have angered Brussels, might hit investments. In a Reuters poll that time, 15 out of 20 analysts said Moody's would not downgrade Poland.

But worries resurfaced by Friday as some investors took profits after a week of regional market gains as prospects of a U.S. rate hike this month faded.

KBC analysts called the Moody's review a "wild card" while BZ WBK Bank said a downgrade would not be justified. A downgrade could weaken the zloty towards 4.4 per euro, but it could firm past 4.31 if the rating is left unchanged, Bank Pekao said.

Warsaw's bluechip equities index shed 1.8 percent.

Polish and Hungarian government bond yields rose 2-5 basis points in line with euro zone yields, after the European Central Bank announced no further monetary stimulus plans on Thursday.

The Czech crown eased slightly to 27.02 versus the euro from Thursday's 27.007 close, but it remains within a whisker of the central bank's cap of 27.

Czech one-year outright forwards have dropped since August from an implied crown rate of around 27 to around 26.70, indicating expectations for a crown surge when the central bank removes the cap, which it has said it would do around mid-2017.

Story continues

"There has been a higher activity of investors since the beginning of September, so the central bank has to defend its commitment ever more by (currency) interventions," Komercni Banka analysts said.

The kuna was flat and Croatian bonds moved little ahead of a snap election on Sunday. Local markets could fall if the vote fails to resolve a political stalemate that has hindered efforts to cut public debt, Commerzbank said in a note.

"If a government is formed quickly, yields may fall somewhat," one Zagreb-based dealer said.
By Agnieszka Flak VENICE (Reuters) - It was director Lav Diaz' art of exploring human drama at length that tempted Charo Santos-Concio back to the screen after nearly two decades, the actress-turned-media executive said at the Venice film festival on Friday. Santos-Concio plays the lead in "Ang Babaeng Humayo" (The Woman Who Left), a 226-minute Philippine drama about revenge and forgiveness that premiered in Venice on Friday. It is one of 20 U.S. and international films competing for the coveted Golden Lion that will be awarded on Saturday. "I really wanted to work with this director ... I wanted to understand the aesthetics behind his cinema, why he produces long-running films," Santos-Concio, the former president and CEO of ABS-CBN Corporation, told Reuters. "He doesn't manipulate the audience, he doesn't manipulate the characters, he allows the characters to go through the journey and to feel the journey." The movie tells the story of Horacia, a school teacher who spent 30 years in a correctional facility for a crime she did not commit. When she is finally released, she struggles with the desire for revenge and forgiveness. Diaz shot the movie in black and white and on a Philippine island where Santos-Concio grew up. "Emotionally she is attached to the geography, to the grounds, so it's easier for her, you can actually feel it, she was very emotional about the location, it helped contextualize the character," Diaz said. "The Woman Who Left" is premiering just months after Diaz's more than eight hour "Hele Sa Hiwagang Hapis" (A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery), featured in Berlin. "Whenever I shoot a film, I'm not thinking about length ... my cinema is very free in terms of structuring and form," the 57-year-old director said, calling for others to challenge the boundaries of conventional cinema. "I can shoot even without money. I have my own small camera, I have my small crew ... we go to an obscure island, invite some actors, they'll be with us for a month and we create some cinema there," he said. For Diaz, his latest movie is a search for what defines the Philippines after years of foreign rule and the leadership that followed. But he also challenges viewers to examine why there is so much trauma and torment in society. "This is the 21st century and we're still barbaric, we are still very primal, we still act like animals. Why? We should question that," he said. (Reporting by Agnieszka Flak; Editing by Alison Williams)
By Madeline Kennedy (Reuters Health) - Due to better treatments and better monitoring, childhood cancer survivors are living longer, healthier lives, according to a study in the U.K. Looking at 60 years of data on nearly 35,000 childhood cancer survivors, researchers found decreasing mortality rates overall, and fewer deaths from cancer itself or from after-effects of cancer treatment. By the time survivors are in their 60s, circulatory problems like cardiovascular disease are their biggest cause of death  just like the rest of the population. Survival after almost all specific types of childhood cancer has improved substantially, said lead author Miranda Fidler of the Center for Childhood Cancer Survivor Studies at the University of Birmingham. The improvements align with new developments such as chemotherapy, introduced around 1970, and bone marrow transplants, developed around 1990, both of which are life-saving, Fidler told Reuters Health. To investigate long-term health outcomes for childhood cancer survivors, the researchers analyzed data on 34,489 survivors of childhood cancer diagnosed between 1940 and 2006. Using death information from national registries, the researchers determined how long patients survived and what eventually caused their death. Overall, 4,475 subjects, or 13 percent, died, representing a mortality rate more than nine times that of the general population. Researchers calculated the proportion of excess deaths  those beyond what would be expected in the general population  for the childhood cancer patients overall and looked at death rates and causes by age group. Overall, 66 percent of excess deaths were from a return or progression of the original cancer, 17 percent were due to a new cancer and 5.6 percent of the excess deaths were attributed to circulatory conditions such as heart disease and high blood pressure. The number of excess deaths was much lower among those treated more recently for childhood cancer. For example, there were 70 percent fewer excess deaths among survivors treated between 1990 and 2006 than among those treated before 1970. Patients treated after 1990 also had 70 percent fewer deaths from recurrence or progression of their original cancer, according to the results in The BMJ. The longer people lived, the less likely their deaths would be linked to their original cancer or to a new one. Among cancer survivors in their 50s, 41 percent of excess deaths were caused by new cancers and 22 percent by circulatory conditions. After age 60, 31 percent of excess deaths were caused by new cancers compared with 37 percent caused by circulatory issues. This is the first study to observe this shift to where the greatest risks to a group of childhood cancer survivors are circulatory diseases, the study team writes. Still, the extra circulatory deaths may be due to organ damage children suffered during radiotherapy and chemotherapy, said Mary McBride of the British Columbia Cancer Agency in Vancouver, who was not involved in the study. Newer and more complex treatments have led to higher likelihood of survival from cancer in children and adults, but sometimes at the cost of damaging complications, McBride said by email. These effects can be mitigated, however, she told Reuters Health. With appropriate follow-up care, these complications can sometimes be prevented or managed to reduce the harmful side-effects of these life-saving treatments and improve survivor quality of life. Both doctors and patients should be aware of the risks of developing circulatory conditions later in life, and long-term follow-up programs should aim to prevent these issues through education and interventions, Fidler said. SOURCE: bit.ly/2cdmpXL The BMJ, Online September 1, 2016.
Oslo (AFP) - US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter on Friday called for further pressure on North Korea after the renegade state carried out a new nuclear test, but said China bore "responsibility" for tackling the problem.

"We need to... redouble the pressure on North Korea," Carter told reporters on a visit to Oslo.

He pointed to moves to strengthen defences in the region, including the deployment of advanced anti-missile systems.

"One of the things I'd like to single out is the role of China," Carter said, referring to North Korea's main ally.

"China shares important responsibility for this development and has an important responsibility to reverse it," he said.

"It's important that it use its location, its history and its influence to further the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula and not the direction things have been going."

The underground test, the fifth and most powerful in North Korea's controversial nuclear programme, was announced by state media in Pyongyang earlier Friday.

The explosion had a yield of 10,000 kilotonnes, according to experts.

The UN Security Council was to meet later Friday to discuss a response.

North Korea has been hit by five sets of UN sanctions since it first tested a nuclear device in 2006.
Reserve sales in China jumped back to 99% of offers this week, following several weeks of low purchases. In Pakistan, there seems to be dueling state agencies with their own set of stats and data. The All Pak Textile Mill Ass. says imports will be 3.9 Mb, vs the USDA of 2.2 Mb. They peg production at 8.75 Mb, vs USDA at 8.0 Mb. The Pak basis, and price, and a key synthetic were all slightly lower yesterday, as harvest has begun in the Sind.



In the US, time has reached the point in areas below Memphis and the NC/SC border when a rain is slightly harmful. Same can be said for Texas for cotton south of Midland. The north Delta, NC and VA can handle rain for now, but this crop is quickly reaching maturity. A rough guess for W TX, OK and KS is late Sep for the crossover from helpful to hurtful rainfall. Rain is forecast Sat for 2S, 3, 4 in TX districts, OK and KS.

Varner View

If our numbers are about correct, price will not stay near 70c. This years ratio and end stocks are much above the last 3 years, when annual lows were 62c, 57c, and 56c. At 70c, the market is assuming a much higher export figure than 11.865 Mb. So far this year has started out with a bang, so the bulls can make a point for now. But will these big, early season numbers continue in the face of China destocking, and Pakistan finally getting its inventory back to normal? Thats the main price determinant of this year.

Technicals

Dec is slightly above the 21 day and slightly below the 55 day. It is right at the very popular up trend line, crossing today at 6910. COT reports show the spec remains larded up on long side at an historically high level. Seasonal history is choppy, but there is a sell on 9/21. Sep highs are numerous, these will be shown in a table tomorrow. The largest ever % move into a Sep high was 9/24/1973, spot hitting 9900, all-time futures high. The highest price spike was 9/08/2011 at 11547.

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By Ben Blanchard and Michael Martina BEIJING (Reuters) - China criticized North Korea's nuclear test on Friday but Beijing is unlikely to follow up with strong action because its influence is limited and it believes the United States and South Korea share responsibility for growing tensions in the region. China, Pyongyang's main diplomatic ally, is key in any effort to rein in North Korea's nuclear program. But it has been infuriated by the isolated nation's nuclear and missile tests and has signed up to increasingly tough United Nations sanctions. Foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said China would lodge a diplomatic protest with North Korea at its embassy in Beijing for conducting the test. Beijing has also repeatedly expressed anger since the United States and South Korea decided in July to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) anti-missile system in the South to counter missile and nuclear threats from North Korea. China says this is a threat to its own security and will do nothing to bring North Korea back to the negotiating table on its nuclear program. China's official Xinhua news agency, in a commentary after North Korea confirmed the test, said it was shocking and unwise and would only "add oil to the flames". But it added that nobody benefited from chaos or war in Korea and all parties in the international community should exercise restraint and avoid doing anything that is "mutually irritating". "Not long along, South Korea ignored the strong opposition of neighboring countries and decided to deploy the THAAD system, which is diametrically opposed to efforts to maintain peace and stability on the peninsula, has seriously damaged regional strategic balance and caused a rise in tensions on the peninsula." Previous recent comments from China following North Korean missile tests, including one on Monday when China was hosting the G20 summit, have pointedly not mentioned North Korea by name. One senior Beijing-based Western official, who has worked in Pyongyang, said China had little influence and no control over North Korea, despite the popular perception in Washington. "The North Koreans don't like the Chinese and certainly don't listen to them," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity. It's also a misunderstanding to think that the North's youthful leader Kim Jong Un is unhinged, he added. "The North Korean leadership knows exactly what they are doing and how far they can push things. They know it would be the end of their country if they really provoked a war as the Americans would just flatten them." ADVANCE WARNING Michael Madden, an expert on the North Korean leadership, said he was fairly confident that North Korea would have given Russia and China advance warning of the test. Choe Son Hui, North Korea's negotiator for the stalled talks on Pyongyang's nuclear program, visited Beijing this week, while Yun Tong Hyon, the vice chief of the Ministry of the People's Armed Forces, led a North Korean military delegation to Moscow this week. "Both would have direct knowledge about a forthcoming test and would be tasked to pass along a heavily implicit message," said Madden. Hua, the Chinese spokeswoman, said she had no information to provide on whether Beijing received advance warning. She would also not be drawn on whether China would support further sanctions, saying only that it has fulfilled previous U.N. resolutions and would continue to take a responsible and constructive attitude toward talks at the Security Council. Another Beijing-based diplomatic source said the level of Beijing's anger with South Korea could be seen with what he termed as the unusually strong public comments about THAAD by President Xi Jinping when he met South Korea's president this week on the sidelines of the G20 summit. "Mishandling the issue is not conducive to strategic stability in the region and could intensify disputes," Xi was quoted by China's Foreign Ministry as saying. The diplomatic source said it was not expected that China would publicize such comments. "China blames South Korea and the United States just as much as it does North Korea for the current state of tensions," the source said. To be sure, there is little public sympathy in China for Kim, who is derisively referred to on Chinese social media as "Fatty Kim the Third" after his father and grandfather. On Friday, China's Twitter-like Weibo service blocked searches for that term, although there were still plenty of comments condemning him. "Fatty the Third has gone crazy," wrote one user. China is also upset with the United States for what it sees as Washington's interference in the disputed South China Sea. Jin Qiangyi, Director of Yanbian University's Centre for North and South Korea Studies on the Chinese side of the North Korea border, said China would be in a quandary about a substantive reaction. "We can't completely not cooperate with the United States, but we can't completely be at their beck and call," Jin said, pointing to the South China Sea as an issue that China is unhappy with the United States about. Still, China's options are limited for a country already under tough sanctions which in any case does little trade with the outside world. "If North Korea does not listen, of course we can try pressure, to use sanctions to resolve things," Jin said. "But if that does not work what then? Is there anything else we can do? The answer is no." (Additional reporting by Beijing newsroom, and James Pearson in Seoul; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Clarence Fernandez)
SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Chinese Premier Li Keqiang told Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte he hopes the two countries can work together to bring bilateral ties back to a normal track, the Chinese foreign ministry said in a statement posted on its website on Friday. The two leaders met on the sidelines of a regional summit in the Lao capital Vientiane on Thursday at a time of tension between China and the Philippines over disputed territory in the South China Sea. Li said he hoped bilateral relations could "realize healthy, stable development", the statement said. Duterte said Li's remarks represented one of his own principles and he said improving relations with China was his "active desire", according to the statement. China claims much of the South China Sea, through which more than $5 trillion of trade moves annually. Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan also have claims. China has over the past year alarmed other claimants, and outside powers such as the United States and Japan, by re-claiming land on several disputed reefs through dredging, and building air fields and port facilities. In July, an international arbitration case brought and won by Manila ruled that China's building of numerous artificial islands was illegal and its claims to most of the South China Sea had no legal basis. China has rejected the ruling. (Reporting by John Ruwitch; Editing by Michael Perry)
This Chinese-born Miss America contestant responds to haters and has THIS to say about a super important issue

This Chinese-born Miss America contestant responds to haters and has THIS to say about a super important issue

Chinese-born classical pianist Arianna Quan has had a stellar year. As in, she recently made history by becoming the first Asian-American and naturalized citizen to be crowned Miss Michigan.

And not only that, shell now have an opportunity to win the celebrated Miss America competition.

As you can imagine, Quan received a lot of comments after her win. But unfortunately, not all of them came in a congratulatory form. Its been a very polarizing response, Quan told People magazine.

Some of the comments attacked Quans appearance, calling her too ugly to represent the Chinese community (WHAT?!).

But Quan hasnt let this stop her, nor prevent her from pushing ahead with her main mission: to open the national dialogue about immigration and naturalized citizens. I see it as a part of my job as a state title-holder and potential Miss America. My goal is to just drive the conversation in an important direction, because there are so many things we have to discuss about immigration and diversity in this country right now, she said.

As you can see, Quan is taking a very mature approach to this hurtful situation, hoping to raise awareness about the lack of diverse representation in America.

My platform is about engaging minorities in this country, and about prompting Americans that have been here for generations to celebrate their culture.

Sign my name, sign my name Michigan is officially on the map! #missmichigan #crownbound A photo posted by Miss Michigan (@missamericami) on Aug 31, 2016 at 3:46pm PDT

SO MUCH YES. We salute you, Arianna! Way to turn something so negative into something so positive. Best of luck for the days ahead  were supporting you 100%.

The post This Chinese-born Miss America contestant responds to haters and has THIS to say about a super important issue appeared first on HelloGiggles.
Google parent Alphabet Inc. GOOGL has reportedly joined forces with Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. CMG and Virginia Tech to accelerate its drone delivery efforts.

According to reports, the company will stage an experimental burrito delivery service through automated drones on the Virginia Tech campus.

A Well-timed Move

Only a month has passed since Alphabet received Federal Aviation Administrations (FAA) nod to test drone delivery and the companys Project Wing hasnt wasted any time to initiate the experiment.

Automated self-guided hybrids or drones carrying burritos will fly from a Chipotle food truck and lower the edibles to people ordering it some hundred meters away at the Virginia Tech campus.

The project will test if the packaging system can keep the food warm and edible after its encounter with birds and breeze at a low height.

Keeping FAAs safety regulations in mind, a closed portion of the campus will be used for deliveries and participants will be shielded. The project will be initiated this month and last a few weeks.

A Clever Choice of Site

Virginia Tech appears to be the right place for the test as it is engaged in a program for "next generation transportation and infrastructure" and thus has the right people to source important information from. Moreover, it gives Alphabet the opportunity to test the drones in a realistic urban setting.

ALPHABET INC-A Price

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A Bigger Ambition

The test will allow both Alphabet and the FAA to have a fair understanding of the usability of drones in a safe and reliable manner in the logistics industry. Additionally, it will also help to set the operating rules and safety regulations that are required for the development of the drone industry going forward.

The move also reflects Alphabets growing efforts to leapfrog competitors like Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. WMT in the race of delivering products via drones.

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By Makini Brice PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - U.N.-led foreign funding has dried up for Haiti's fight against cholera, thought to have been introduced by Nepali peacekeepers, triggering a surge of deaths this year even as the global body vowed to help overcome the epidemic. The lack of support is notable because Haiti was free of cholera until 2010, when U.N. peacekeepers dumped infected sewage into a river, according to investigators. Since then, more than 9,000 people have died of the disease that causes uncontrollable diarrhea and 800,000 people have fallen ill, mostly in the first two years of the outbreak. The United Nations has not legally accepted responsibility for the outbreak. An independent panel appointed by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued a 2011 report that did not determine conclusively how the cholera was introduced to Haiti. However, a new report by the independent U.N. Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights that will be presented to the U.N. General Assembly later this year concluded that scientific evidence "now points overwhelmingly to the responsibility of the peacekeeping mission as the source of the outbreak." In August, Ban said the United Nations has a "moral responsibility" to help Haiti's cholera victims and their families. The outbreak and subsequent failure by the United Nations to help Haiti stamp out the disease will be a stain on the legacy of Ban, who steps down at the end of 2016 after serving two five-year terms that have been blighted by accusations of sexual abuse and exploitation by U.N. peacekeepers in the Central African Republic and elsewhere. Ban, whose successor will be elected by the General Assembly, launched a major appeal aimed at eradicating cholera in Haiti four years ago. But foreign governments largely ignored the plea and funding has almost halved to $7.9 million in 2016 from a year ago. That has led to a reduction in prevention and treatment services, and 227 deaths in the first seven months of the year, a third more than a year earlier. "These results are due to the reduction of funding available for cholera response projects," the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a curt statement last week. Even OCHA's Central Emergency Relief Fund, which channels funds from other U.N. agencies to humanitarian crises, stopped funding cholera relief in Haiti this year, public documents show. Because of the funding crunch, many charity teams that do street work to trace the source of local outbreaks wound down activities from April, treatment centers have been shuttered, and those still active complain of shortages of antibiotics. GRIMY POND In Carrefour, a working class district in the hills above Port-au-Prince, cholera is resurfacing at an alarming rate, aid group Solidarite International said, with 1,100 cases detected this year, and 220 of those in August alone. An open cistern of grayish water serves as a spot for bathing, washing clothes and bottling drinking water in one square near Carrefour. Known as the Boyer Source, aid workers say the surrounding streets were high risk for cholera, with 16 cases in August. "Every time it rains, this source becomes contaminated," said Wangcos Laurore, head of the cholera response program at Solidarite International, looking over the grimy pond on a sweltering day last week. Carrefour only has one cholera treatment center, after one shut last year. Here, four patients, all children, lay on camping beds. Zamar Marie Magdalah, a nurse, said capacity had been reduced from treating 60 cases at one time in previous years to 40 in June. Now the limit is 15 patients. Those with conditions like high blood pressure and diabetes as well as cholera are turned away, because of the center lacks medicines to treat them. "These are basic materials that we are supposed to have," said Magdalah. Nearby, Clerette Morenvil, the mother of a 10-year-old girl being treated at the center, showed members of a Solidarite International rapid response team a corner store whose owner sold her water from a spigot, where customers filled bottles for 1 Haitian gourde ($0.015) apiece. "The water comes from a well," said store owner Frantz Terin, to questions posed by the team. "We dont treat the water. We don't have the authority to do so ... we use it to wash our clothes. Me, I drink it. Everyone drinks it." Such emergency rapid-response teams, who visit the homes of cholera victims and their neighbors and trace the source of outbreaks, were scaled back by about 40 percent in April, according to UNICEF. Monthly support for the teams was cut by up to 50 percent in the first half of 2016, a government source said. From January to July, nearly 25,000 cholera cases were registered, a 22 percent rise over the same period last year. FADING APPEAL The world's sympathy was with Haiti in the wake of the 2010 earthquake that killed more than 300,000 people and the response to the cholera epidemic was initially massive, helping rapidly reduce the number of deaths and infections. But interest faded fast, with humanitarian crises such as Syria, Iraq, Yemen and South Sudan all competing for resources. Haiti's lack of stable government and multiple failed elections may also have dulled donors' funding appetite. In 2012, Ban launched a $2.2 billion funding drive aimed at eradicating the disease from Haiti within a decade. So far, the campaign has only raised 18 percent of the target from international donors, according to documents from the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. "Despite repeated appeals, these efforts have been seriously underfunded and severe and persistent funding shortfalls remain," Ban's office said in August. Of the top six donors who have contributed to the cholera response since the outbreak in 2010, only the EUs European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations and Canada have contributed significant funds this year. The United States, Sweden, the U.Ns CERF and OCHA's emergency fund have not. Ban has vowed a new approach, due to be unveiled in October. Given the lack of funds available for his first plan, it is not clear how he intends to finance a package that his spokesman said would provide material assistance and support to those Haitians most directly affected by cholera and address issues of water, sanitation and health systems in Haiti. In 2011, rights group the Institute for Justice and Democracy filed a class action case against the United Nations over the epidemic, demanding it install a water and sanitation system in Haiti, compensation for victims and an apology. The group, which recently lost a bid in a U.S. court to strip the U.N. of immunity from victims' claims, said it would wait for Ban's new plan before launching a Supreme Court appeal. "If the U.N. does present a robust response that responds to victims' rights, it would make further litigation unnecessary," said Beatrice Lindstrom, a lawyer for the group. (Additional reporting by Michelle Nichols at the United Nations and Lawrence Hurley in Washington; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Kieran Murray)
South Korea, Japan, China and the U.S. have been swift to condemn North Koreas fifth nuclear test, which took place early Friday local time.

President Park Geun-hye of South Korea slammed the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un. In a statement cited by the Associated Press reports, she said that the test reflected his regimes fanatic recklessness.

Japans Prime Minister Shinzo Abe also voiced his countrys displeasure at this news. If North Korea did conduct a nuclear test, it is absolutely not acceptable, and we must lodge a strong protest, the news agency reported him as saying. Tremors from the test were detected by Japans meteorological agency.

China, Pyongyangs sole major ally and economic partner, has also denounced the test. A statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs quoted by AP said that China resolutely opposes the test and criticized Pyongyang for its disregard for international sanctions. The statement also included a plea to North Korea to not do anything that worsens the situation.

U.S. President Barack Obama, who has just returned to Washington from his final trip to Asia as President, was made aware of the situation while aboard Air Force One.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest says that Obama talked to Park and Abe on the phone, and reiterated the unbreakable U.S. commitment to the security of Americas allies in Asia and around the world. He added that the President would ensure provocative actions from North Korea are met with serious consequences, saying that Obama would be consulting American allies and partners as the situation unfolds.

[AP]
A 45-year-old man who'd served time for attempting to kill his wife in 2002 has pleaded not guilty to fatally shooting the couple's teenage daughter, PEOPLE confirms.



Walter DaSilva, a Brazilian national who resides in Connecticut, has been charged with murder and weapons violations for his daughter Sabrina DaSilva's recent shooting death.



The 19-year-old woman was fatally shot on July 3 as she returned to her New Bedford, Massachusetts, apartment following a brief shopping trip, according to authorities.



DaSilva, who works as a painter, had been estranged from his daughter for nearly 10 years, while he was serving a prison stint for trying to kill his wife some 14 years ago, authorities said.



According to police, the father and daughter reunited back in May, authorities said. Soon after, DaSilva was deported back to Brazil. Authorities were unaware he'd allegedly returned to the states illegally.



 Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter.



Investigators allege DaSilva shot his daughter multiple times because he disapproved of her 56-year-old boyfriend. When Sabrina refused to visit him for Father's Day, DaSilva allegedly became enraged, police tell PEOPLE.



Sabrina suffered gunshot wounds to the face, neck, back, shoulder and left arm, according to police.



DaSilva was arrested in early August and charged with his daughter's murder.



During his arraignment Wednesday, DaSilva pleaded not guilty to the charges. But authorities insist he has confessed to his daughters slaying, and even told police about his plans to murder her boyfriend and mother.



DaSilva also allegedly led investigators to the murder weapon, a semiautomatic 9mm handgun. The gun was recovered from his Connecticut home's attic.



He is being held without bail.



DaSilva's defense attorney John J. Connors tells PEOPLE, "Right now, we are at the beginning of the case. I know that the District Attorney has given out a lot of information, some of which we will challenge and we will go forward from there."



A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement official claims DaSilva was deported to Brazil twice  once in 1999, and again in 2012  and eventually returned to the United States.



Sabrina is survived by her 2-year-old daughter, Victoria.
On August 15, 2016, the Pentagon announced that it had transferred 15 detainees held at the Detention Facility at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba (GTMO, or Gitmo) to the United Arab Emiratesthe largest single transfer of detainees of the Obama administration. This transfer is part of President Obamas new diplomatic push to persuade other countries to accept detainees in a last-minute effort to fulfill his 2008 campaign promise to close Gitmo for good.

Yet several high-level detainees like Khalid Sheikh Mohammedthe mastermind of 9/11remain, while 31 detainees are still being held in indefinite law-of-war detention and have not yet been recommended for transfer. Meanwhile, some lawmakers have warned that, [i]n its race to close Gitmo, the Obama administration is doubling down on policies that put American lives at risk.

The Gitmo detention facility was created after the September 11 attacks to house suspected combatants captured during the war in Afghanistan. The first detainees arrived in January 2002. As the conflict waged, more detainees arrived; but controversies arose over their indefinite detention and legal status, leading to several landmark Supreme Court decisions. Gitmo has indeed sparked many important constitutional debates: from procedural issues concerning the length of time detainees have been held without chargeover 14 years in some casesand civil rights concerns for detainee treatment, to conflicts among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches over Gitmo policy.

In a recent podcast, Karen Greenberg and John Yoo debated Gitmos constitutional issues, discussed below, in greater detail.

Article I

Most detainee litigation has centered on Article I, Section 9, Clause 2the Suspension Clause, which describes the circumstances (when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it) by which the right of habeas corpus may be suspended (most agree by Congress). In early 2002, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) began to file habeas petitions on behalf of Gitmo detainees, challenging the U.S. governments right to hold them indefinitely.

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In 2004, the Supreme Court ruled in Rasul v. Bush that federal courts have jurisdiction over Gitmo habeas petitions, but in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld found that Congresss 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) authorized law of war detention for enemy combatants, noting that detention is a fundamental . . . incident to war. The Hamdi plurality emphasized the limited category of individuals it was considering for the duration of the particular conflict in which they were captured; and as an American citizen held in the United States, Yasir Hamdi had the right to challenge his designation in this category.

Justice Scalia dissented in both cases. In Rasul he argued that the Court went too far in erroneously extending habeas to aliens held beyond the sovereign territory of the United States and beyond the territorial jurisdiction of its courts; but in Hamdi he argued that it had not gone far enoughthere was no military exigency requiring the detention of an American citizen without charge: either Congress must suspend the writ, or Hamdi must be tried under criminal law. As Scalia explained: No one contends that the congressional Authorization for Use of Military Force, on which the Government relies to justify its actions here, is an implementation of the Suspension Clause.

Responding to the due process guidelines set forth in Hamdi, the President created tribunals to determine Gitmo detainees enemy combatant status, but these were held to be unlawful in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (2006). Finally, Congress passed the Military Commissions Act (MCA) in 2006, reestablishing military tribunals while attempting to strip courts of the power to consider habeas petitions for enemy combatants held outside the United States. But in another landmark ruling, Boumediene v. Bush (2008), the Court held that the Suspension Clause had full effect at Guantanamo Bay, and that the jurisdiction-stripping provision of the MCA was an unconstitutional suspension of the writ. If Congress wanted to deny habeas to detainees, Justice Kennedy wrote, then Congress must act in accordance with the requirements of the Suspension Clause. Otherwise, Gitmo prisoners have a constitutional right to challenge their detention in U.S. courts.

Justice Scalia dissented here as well, finding that the Suspension Clause did not apply: The writ of habeas corpus does not, and never has, run in favor of aliens abroad, he wrote.

Article II

After 9/11, the Justice Department argued for an expansive view of Executive power to enable the President to take whatever actions he deems appropriate to pre-empt or respond to terrorist threats from new quarters, as John Yoo, then-deputy assistant attorney general, wrote. For instance, the doctrine of extraordinary rendition was justified on the basis that the President has plenary constitutional authority, as the Commander in Chief to transfer aliens being held outside the United States to third countries for the purposes of extrajudicial detention and interrogation.

The Supreme Court in Hamdi focused on the AUMF as statutory authority for detaining enemy combatants and did not address the Presidents Article II power to do so. But in Hamdan, the Court limited presidential power by invalidating executive military commissions that bypassed both Congress and the judiciary. Hamdan explained the important separation and balance of powers in war making: that Article II, Section 2, Clause 1 of the Constitution makes the President the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, but vests in Congress the powers to declare War  and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water,  to raise and support Armies, to define and punish  Offences against the Law of Nations, and To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces. Legal commentators also emphasized the deliberate structural divisions of power the Framers envisioned as a crucial check on unfettered Executive actioneven in the face of potential national security threats.

Separation of powers concerns have likewise been implicated in Obamas recent push to close Gitmo. Congress, which controls the power of the purse, has tied spending bills with prohibitions on Gitmo detainees being brought to U.S. soileven for prosecution. Though Obama has suggested he could override this prohibition with an executive order, others have cautioned against executive overreach which could cross a red line and shatter the system hardwired into the Framers Constitution.

Bill of Rights

Finally, while some assert that Gitmo detainees have no constitutional rights, others insist that Bill of Rights provisions from the Fifth to the Eighth Amendments should apply to them.

In Boumediene, the Court did not rule on whether Gitmo detainees have any Fifth Amendment rights. But in Hamdi, the Court held that the Fifth Amendments due process guarantees gave Hamdi, an American citizen, the right to contest his designation as an enemy combatant before a neutral decision maker.

Some advocacy groups like CCR have further argued that the Eighth Amendments prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment (as well as international law) protects detainees from inhuman or degrading treatment and torture. If detainee trials do eventually proceed, however, how a court might evaluate mistreatment claims is an open question.

Conclusion

At its height in June 2003, Gitmo housed over 660 detainees; as of August 2016, 710 total detainees have been transferred out. But though many have left, with more transfers pending, 61 detainees remain. Gitmo remains a constitutional and political enigma, and its end is not quite yet in sight.

Lana Ulrich is associate in-house counsel at the National Constitution Center.

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The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) said Friday that owners of the Samsung Galaxy Note7 smartphone should stop using the devices. The warning follows reports of the phone exploding while charging, and Samsung's decision to stop selling it.



The CPSC also said that it's working with Samsung on an official recall of the Note7.

"Lithium-ion batteries pack a lot of power into a small package," the CPSC said in a statement. "When these batteries overheat and burst, the results can be serious."

The announcement comes just a day after the Federal Aviation Administration said that airline passengers should avoid using the phone on planes or packing it in checked baggage.

The official recall, which Consumer Reports has called for, would make it illegal to sell the phone, trigger government oversight of Samsung's plan to replace potentially faulty units, and provide clear guidance to consumers.

"CPSC and Samsung are working cooperatively to formally announce an official recall of the devices, as soon as possible," the agency said. "CPSC is working quickly to determine whether a replacement Galaxy Note7 is an acceptable remedy for Samsung or their phone carriers to provide to consumers."

Samsung confirmed that it's working with the CPSC, and said owners should power down their phones now. The company added that owners should exchange their phones. Owners who want a new Note7 can get a J Series loaner phone at some outlets until new Note7s are available. Samsung also is offering to exchange the Note7 for a Galaxy S7 or S7 edge.

Consumer Reports welcomed the progress on an official recall.

We echo the CPSCs warning that consumers should stop using the Note7," said Maria Rerecich, Consumer Reports director of electronics testing. "This is a serious potential safety hazard, and we are glad to hear that the agency and Samsung are working together on an official recall to most effectively protect the public. We initially called for a recall because such an action would make it illegal to sell the product, require an appropriate fix be in place, and provide clear and consistent guidance to consumers.

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The CPSC announcement comes as reports of problems with the Samsung Galaxy Note7 continue to surface. For instance, a Florida man said a charging Note7 caused his Jeep Grand Cherokee to catch fire, according to Fox 13 in Tampa, Fla.

Other owners of the phone have complained about their phones overheating, even when no fire has resulted.

Larry Joyner, a Maryland project engineer for a construction firm, said his phone started getting uncomfortably hot after just a few minutes of useeven when it wasn't plugged in to charge.

It got to a point where I had to say Sis, Ive got to put you on speakerphone because I dont want burn my cheek, Joyner said.





More from Consumer Reports:

Top pick tires for 2016

Best used cars for $25,000 and less

7 best mattresses for couples





Consumer Reports has no relationship with any advertisers on this website. Copyright  2006-2016 Consumers Union of U.S.
A Texas mattress company promoting a "Twin Tower sale" just days away from the 15th anniversary of the deadliest attack on U.S. soil has stirred outrage over its 9/11 ad.

In the ad, Miracle Mattress of San Antonio displayed two mattresses vertically side-by-side to resemble the World Trade Center towers. A woman announces the twin price sale on all mattresses while two men standing behind her stumble backwards into the mattresses, knocking them down.

In an interview with the FOX Business Networks The Intelligence Report, branding expert Bruce Turkel discussed whether this is the beginning of the commercialization of 9/11.

I think we better hope that is not. More importantly, unless your customer is Islamic Jihadist, you better hope that its not as well because upsetting your consumer and your potential consumers is about the dumbest thing a company can do, Turkel said.

Some fear theres a generation that simply does not recall the horrific actions on that 2001 fall day, and lack a sense of respect toward such tragedies.

I dont think it is [generational] at all, Turkel told host Cheryl Casone. It never works to dance on peoples graves and I dont care what generation you are from, I dont care what you remember when, dancing on the grave of innocent victims is always a mistake. 

Miracle Mattress owner Mike Bonanno issued an apology after receiving backlash for the commercial and called the ad "tasteless."

"I say this unequivocally, with sincere regret, the video is tasteless and an affront to the men and women who lost their lives on 9/11," Bonanno wrote. I am disgusted such a video would have been conceived as a promotional tool. And even more incensed it was created and posted on any social media site that represents Miracle Mattress."

Turkel also discussed the offensive nature behind a Walmart (NYSE:WMT) in Panama City Beach, Florida that assembled cases of Coca-Cola (NYSE:KO) products to resemble the towers with a banner above that read, We Will Never Forget.

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Memorial day is now generic enough that people dont know what it means. But you put those towers up what are you saying? Three-thousand innocent Americans die, buy our sugar water. Of course its offensive, Turkel said.

The All About Them author suggests both companies donate $911 to the 9/11 first responders from every sale they make in the wake of the controversy surrounding their displays.

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RACINE  As James Eaton awaits trial in the cold-case homicide of Illinois runaway Amber Creek, defense attorneys say there is evidence that points to another suspect in the brutal 1997 killing.

In a motion filed last week in Racine County Circuit Court, attorneys for Eaton name a man who they argue had the motive and opportunity to commit the crime. The motion asks the court to allow the defense to make that argument during Eatons jury trial, which as of Thursday was slated to take place later next month.

Eaton, who is accused of killing 14-year-old Amber and leaving her beaten and sexually assaulted body in the Karcher Wildlife Area in the Town of Burlington, was arrested in the Chicago area in April 2014 by Racine County Sheriffs deputies. The arrest was reportedly made after DNA from cigarette butts he discarded were tested and found to match DNA found on Ambers body.

Eaton and Amber are both of Palatine, Ill., a northwest suburb of Chicago. Amber died from asphyxiation after allegedly being choked and suffocated with a plastic bag, according to Eatons criminal complaint. She also suffered blunt-force facial trauma and pattern cutting injuries on her face, the complaint states.

Choking acts and DNA

The DNA from the cigarette butts, which reportedly matched semen found on the teens body, was collected by investigators after new fingerprint comparison technology reportedly linked fingerprints on the bag found around Ambers head to Eaton.

But while that fingerprint and DNA evidence might implicate Eaton in Ambers death, his defense attorneys argue that other evidence, including DNA evidence, points to a man with whom Amber reportedly had a sexual relationship.

According to the motion, the one-time suspect in the murder was questioned by police in 1997 and 2015, and in both interviews admitted to knowing Amber for about a year and a half prior to her death. The man reportedly told police that he considered Amber a good friend, and stated that he had sex with the teen more than 10 times. The man also allegedly admitted to officers that he engaged in choking acts during sexual contact with Amber.

These choking acts are consistent with the cause of death and provide a reason for the abrasions around (Ambers) neck, Eatons attorneys Katie Gutowski and Margaret Johnson state in the motion.

Whats more, the attorneys note, is that the one-time suspect was found to be a contributor to the DNA mixture located on the victims underwear by the Wisconsin State Crime Lab. His DNA was also located at the crime scene, the motion states.

Messages were left with Gutowski and Racine County District Attorney Rich Chiapete to see if either wanted to make a comment, but neither responded.

Denny test

In order to use the evidence at trial, however, Gutowski and Johnson, must be able to prove to Racine County Circuit Judge Eugene Gasiorkiewicz that their evidence meets the Denny rule used by Wisconsin courts to determine whether a defendant can offer evidence that could implicate someone else for the crime.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled in May 2015 that to pass the Denny test a defendant must show a third-party had a motive and the opportunity to commit the crime, as well as a direct connection to it.

In the Steven Avery case, made famous by the popular Netflix documentary Making a Murderer, defense attorneys came up against the Denny rule when seeking to argue that other would-be suspects could have murdered Teresa Halbach. The court in that case found that their evidence was insufficient, and the defense attorneys were not allowed to tell the jury who they thought committed the crime.

In their motion for Eaton, Gutowski and Johnson argue that the evidence presented regarding the former suspect satisfies all elements of the Denny rule but the issue may be further argued in court during a motion hearing slated to take place at 8:30 a.m. on Thursday, Sept. 22.

Eaton has been charged with first-degree intentional homicide and hiding a corpse, in connection with the slaying. His jury trial is currently slated to begin on Oct. 24, but that date could get pushed back.

He remains in Racine County Jail on $500,000 bond.
On Friday, a New Jersey appeals court overturned the conviction of Dharun Ravi, PEOPLE confirms.



The court has also ordered a new trial for the former Rutgers University student  who was found guilty four years ago of invasion of privacy and bias intimidation after secretly filming roommate Tyler Clementi's romantic encounters with another man, days before Clementi killed himself.



Attorneys for Ravi, who was found guilty in 2012, argued that a recent change in the state's bias law should nullify their client's conviction. His defense has long argued Ravi's actions did not play a role in Clementi's death.



In its decision, the New Jersey Superior Court's appellate division determined evidence presented by the prosecution during Ravi's trial ultimately "tainted" the jury's verdict.



But the court nonetheless "condemned" Ravi's conduct.



"The social environment that transformed a private act of sexual intimacy into a grotesque voyeuristic spectacle must be unequivocally condemned in the strongest possible way," the court said in its decision.



"The fact that this occurred in a university dormitory, housing first-year college students, only exacerbates our collective sense of disbelief and disorientation," the court said. "All of the young men and women who had any association with this tragedy must pause to reflect and assess whether this experience has cast an indelible moral shadow on their character."



In their opposition to the appeal, prosecutors argued Ravi's sentencing judge imposed too light a sentence



Neither Middlesex County prosecutors nor Ravi's defense immediately responded to PEOPLE's request for comment.



Criminal charges were filed against Ravi in 2010 soon after Clementi, his roommate, killed himself. Clementi jumped to his death from the George Washington Bridge days after Ravi shared the invasive webcam footage with other students.



After his conviction, Ravi was sentenced to serve 30 days in the Middlesex County Adult Corrections Center in North Brunswick, New Jersey, and was ordered to pay more than $11,000 in fines.



Additionally, Ravi had to complete 309 hours of community service and counseling and was on probation until this year.



 Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter.



While he had been facing 10 years prison time, Ravi ended up serving just 20 days in jail and was released in June 2012.



Ravi has said his actions were motivated by stupidity, not homophobia: "I did do things wrong and I was stupid about a lot of stuff. I was a dumb kid not thinking about it," he previously told ABC News.



And he told the Star-Ledger, "I didn't act out of hate and I wasn't uncomfortable with Tyler being gay."



"It's far from over," Ravi's attorney Steven Altman said Friday after the ruling, according to NJ.com. "I'm extraordinarily pleased with the decision. I haven't spoken with the Ravi family yet, but I can only imagine they're pleased as well."



In a statement issued Friday, Tyler's parent, Joe and Jane Clementi, said the ruling "shows us how much more work there is to be done, and will push us forward with stronger determination to create a kinder more empathic society where every person is valued and respected."



The Clementis added: "We know that Tyler's private moments were stolen from him and used to humiliate him. His life was forever affected and the lives of those who knew and loved him have been forever changed. We will continue to work even harder sharing Tyler's story through the Tyler Clementi Foundation and our many partners."
When we tally up the clicks on homes for sale around the country each week, sometimes the stories just write themselves. This is one of those weeksthe most popular home on realtor.com this week is a cave. Seriously.

The dwelling in Festus, MO, is a three-bedroom home built into a previously existing cave. The owners purchased the massive complex on eBay in 2003 and spent years building their home into a mountainside gash.

Now a buyer can snag the fruits of their subterranean labor for only $349,900. If the siren call of the cave home isnt enough, perhaps you can be swayed by the former roller-skating rink (also in a cave!) thats now a massive 8,000-square-foot storage area on the property. Theres a lot to explore, and were hoping a buyer will let us in for a tour once a deal is struck. Call us. Seriously, call us.

Back above ground, you clicked on an intriguing blend of properties. Reba McEntires mansion wound up in second place, a brewery-turned-residence in Illinois comes with its own fermentation cellar, and you were also intrigued by a penthouse in NYC being eyed by a house-hunting Alec Baldwin.

This weeks most popular properties are certainly eye-catching, so we advise you to dig in.

Price: $424,700

Why its here: Listing agent Judi Agostinelli said this log cabin is popular because its not a cookie-cutter home. True. And a buyer could enjoy a country lifestyle, yet live only 30 minutes outside of Pittsburgh. The agent also attributes interest to the homes 2-acre lot. The home has all the modern amenities buyers want but with a country, rustic feel, she added.

Buffalo Township, PA realtor.com



Price: $1,200,000

Why its here: About an hour and a half outside of Omaha, this property on the prairie comes with 40 acres of land. Listing agent Mike Proffitt said the quality of the house was impeccable, and the listing was passed around on social media. In a city where the median price is around $140,000, this is at the top end of the market, which spurs curious lookers. Proffitt said buyers are few and far between, but he thinks a prosperous professional will pick up this beautiful home.

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Norfolk, NE realtor.com



Price: $249,900

Why its here: Its a 70s-era ranch home with a finished basement. Priced below the citys median list price of $275,000, this four-bedroom home has generated plenty of local interest.

Ballwin, MO realtor.com



Price: $249,900

Why its here: After less than a week on the market, the price on this charming home was sliced by $10,000. Fully renovated, this three-bedroom home offers oodles of curb appeal.

Bay Village, OH realtor.com



Price: $235,000

Why its here: It looks like a cool contemporary from the outside. However, an intriguing roofline and interesting angles arent all the home offers. The interiors of this three-bedroom home are wide open and airy, and the back deck looks like a perfect spot to plop down after work.

Marietta, GA realtor.com



Price: $115,000

Why its here: Will someone please buy this 11-bedroom bargain already? After topping our list a few weeks back, its continued to rack up tons of clicks. However, no purchaser has stepped to the altar for this former church.

Odell, IL realtor.com



Price: $16,500,000

Why its here: This luxury penthouse has caught the sparkling blue eyes of actor Alec Baldwin. Page Six reported the Match Game host has made at least three visits to the apartment, which reportedly belongs to Sopranos creator David Chase.

Manhattan, NY Compass



Price: $378,000

Why its here: Someones gonna get a bargain with this former brewery, which was built in 1842. Listing agent Diane Self told us the current owners have spent around $480,000 restoring the home with care and attention to detail. Self said, everyone who sees it loves it, but the price is a hurdle in an area where the median list price is $116,000. Were in love with the former fermentation cellar, which would make for a simply awesome man cave.

Galena, IL realtor.com



Price: $7,900,000

Why its here: Its Reba McEntires mansion! The 83-acre spread known as Starstruck Farm comes with an equestrian center, home theater, and wine room. Well toast to a tantalizing opportunity in Tennessee!

Lebanon, TN realtor.com



Price: $349,900

Why its here: Its a cave! Weve never stumbled across a home carved into the face of a mountain until now. For one, think of the utility savings. If youre able to overlook the whole subterranean spookiness, the listing touts the homes perfect temperature year round for living comfortably.

Exterior of home in a cave Caveland.com

According to the listing, there are three distinct chambers in the cave complexa front chamber which is the living area, a middle chamber, and an enormous third chamber measuring over 8,000 square feet. The third chamber was a roller rink and live music venue known as Caveland, and it hosted musicians including Ted Nugent and Bob Seger. If these cave walls could talk

And its not the first go-round on the market for these below-ground digs. It was up for sale on eBay in 2009 with an opening bid of $300,000. The home never changed hands, and the owners now have a site devoted to the homes history.

Festus, MO realtor.com

The post Craving a Cave? This Weeks Most Popular Home Is Totally Underground appeared first on Real Estate News and Advice - realtor.com.
Hedy Mok (left) leading her aunt Chung Khin Chun out of court, together with other family members. Photo: Nicholas Yong

Former tour guide Yang Yin spun a web of calculated lies in his attempts to evade the law, and showed a total lack of respect for the judicial process, said Deputy Public Prosecutor Sanjiv Vaswani.



Yang, 42, abused the profound quality and degree of trust that his victim Chung Khin Chun, 89, had shown in him, which was a deep betrayal. Furthermore, Vaswani noted, Yang had shown a lack of remorse, compounded by his failure to make restitution to Chung.

Given the extensive number of aggravating factors, Vaswani asked for a sentence of 10 to 12 years for the Chinese national, in his sentencing submission on Friday (9 September).

Last month, Yang pleaded guilty to two charges of criminal breach of trust for misappropriating $1.1 million from Chung, a widow. Yang misappropriated $500,000 and $600,000 from her, in 2010 and 2012, respectively.

Numerous cunning deceptions

Yang Yin abused the elderly Chungs trust, said the DPP. Yahoo Singapore file photo

The DPP noted the extent to which Yang had gone in order to hide his crimes. For example, with regard to the first charge of misappropriating $500,000, Yang realised that if he were to remit such a large sum to China from his bank account in Singapore, questions might be asked as he was unemployed and had no source of income in Singapore.

In February 2010, he therefore got Chung to remit the money to China, on the false premise that he would use the money to buy a painting titled Yin Ma Tu by the renowned painter Xu Bei Hong.

Yang admitted in an earlier hearing that he pocketed the money instead, and bought a cheap knockoff in China for $200. He also procured a falsified receipt for the equivalent amount.

Subsequently, when Yang was questioned by officers from the Commercial Affairs Department (CAD), he repeated the lie more than a dozen times that the painting was genuine.

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On another occasion, when Yang was brought by CAD officers to Chungs house at 2F Gerald Crescent, he had the audacity to select five paintings which he claimed he had purchased using the separate sum of $600,000, said Vaswani.

The flippancy of Yang

Yangs lawyer Irving Choh, who replaced his previous lawyer Joseph Liow in April. Photo: Nicholas Yong

Vaswani also took issue with Yangs conduct during his lengthy trial, which he said had repeatedly caused inconvenience to the Court.

For example, after indicating his desire to plead guilty on 8 July, Yang changed his mind after a plead-guilty mention date had been set. Then, while giving evidence at a hearing in August, he asked to speak to his lawyer and proceedings were adjourned.

The next day, Yang refused to come out of the witness room and asked to change the DPP. This was refused, and he then claimed that he was not feeling well.

At the next hearing on 15 August, Yang asked to speak to the Deputy Presiding Judge, which was also refused. The following day, he decided to plead guilty. All of these circumstances, said Vaswani, were highly aggravating.

Mitigating circumstances

Yang Yin and Chung Khin Chun were genuinely close, said his lawyer. Photo: Weng Yandan, who is Yang Yins wife



In his mitigation plea, Yangs lawyer Irving Choh asked for a sentence of no more than three years. I say that my client is arguably no better than the many stories we hear of a younger person cheating the feelings of an older person. Should my client deserve a heavier punishment as a result?

Choh said that his clients desire to pay off his familys debts had gotten the better of him, as he was overtaken by moments of folly and desperation. These debts had been accrued from his late grandmothers illness.

A substantial amount of the $1.1 million in question was used to pay his familys debts by Yang, who is also a first-time offender and suffers from an acute stress disorder.

Further, Yang and Chung had enjoyed a genuine grandmother-grandson relationship, and lived happily together from 2009 to 2014. On two occasions, she even gave him ang pows, or red packets, which totaled $16,000.

As evidence of their close relationship, several photos of the duo were produced, including one that showed Yang clipping her toenails.

But the DPP noted that the photos had been taken on 20 August, 2014, just under three weeks after Chungs niece Hedy Mok filed a civil suit against Yang Yin. Further, Yang became aware of Chungs dementia diagnosis on 12 August.

Vaswani also pointed out that despite Yangs claims that Chung needed his assistance at home, he did not spend significant amount of time with the widow throughout the day.

Records from the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) showed that between September 2009 and September 2014, Yang travelled out of Singapore on 43 occasions and was away a total of 307 days.

The case will resume on 21 September, when Judge Bala Reddy will hear further submissions from both sides.
Havana (AFP) - Cuba said Friday the United States's 54-year-old trade embargo has cost the island $4.7 billion since April 2015 despite the former Cold War enemies' historic rapprochement.

Washington and Havana announced in December 2014 they would move to restore ties after more than half a century of enmity, and renewed diplomatic relations in July 2015.

But while US President Barack Obama has chipped away at certain restrictions on Cuba, he has not managed to persuade a Congress controlled by his Republican opponents to lift the full embargo imposed on the communist island since 1962.

Cuba calculates the embargo has cost it $125.8 billion overall at current prices.

"The embargo is the main cause of our economy's problems, the main obstacle to our development," Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said at a press conference to release the latest figure, which runs from April 2015 through March 2016.

"There's no sector in Cuba that doesn't suffer the consequences of the blockade."

The United States for its part says Cuba owes it $10 billion for seizing American property and companies after Fidel Castro took control of the country in the Cuban Revolution in 1959.

It has become an annual rite for Cuba to present a non-binding resolution calling for the end of the embargo before the United Nations General Assembly, which has passed with overwhelming support every year since 1992.

This year's resolution will be presented on October 26. Last year, only the United States and Israel voted against.
Dallas Criminal Defense Attorney Mick Mickelsen Growing Problem of Violence Against Individuals Based on Their Sexual Orientation

DALLAS, TX / ACCESSWIRE / September 9, 2016 / Hate crimes are not always easy to define. In some cases, it's easy to recognize an offense as a hate crime. For example, violence against someone who wears particular religious clothing is widely acknowledged as a hate crime. In Oklahoma, a man was recently charged with a hate crime after he murdered his neighbor for no other reason than the man was a Lebanese immigrant. Carrying out violence against someone based on the person's religion or ethnicity is generally what people think of when asked to describe a hate crime.

However, hate crimes can also involve an individual's sexual preference. These cases are sometimes overlooked as hate crimes, as the victims don't always stand out or look different from their attacker. What many people do not realize is that members of the LGBT community have a higher risk of being a victim of a hate crime than members of any other group in the country. Any time someone is targeted based on inclusion (or perceived inclusion) in a group, it's a hate crime.

Prison Sentence for Man Who Poured Boiling Water on LGBT Couple

Recently, a jury in Atlanta convicted a Georgia man of eight counts of aggravated battery and two counts of aggravated assault after he poured a pot of boiling hot water over two sleeping men.

According to the Washington Post, the men were asleep at the time of the incident. They had been dating for two weeks and were staying at the home of one of the men's mother. Asleep in the living room, they woke to searing agony as scalding hot water was poured over their bodies.

Their attacker, a 48-year-old truck driver who stayed at the home whenever he was in town for work, claimed "it was just a little hot water."

Court documents show one of the victims must wear compression garments 23 hours a day for two years to help heal his burns. The other victim sustained burns over 60 percent of his body and was placed in a medically-induced coma for weeks as doctors fought to save his life.

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The judge sentenced the attacker to 40 years in prison, stating the defendant had many chances to contemplate the severity of his crime, considering the length of time required to heat a pot of water to boiling. The defendant's lawyer claimed his attack was not a hate crime, but merely "old-school thinking."

Because Georgia is one of just five states in the country without a hate crime statute, the charges were filed as assault crimes.

LGBT Twice as Likely to Be a Victim of a Hate Crime

The case shines an important spotlight on the growing problem of violence against individuals based on their sexual orientation. Recent reports state that members of the LBGT community are twice as likely to be victims of hate crimes as African-Americans or members of the Jewish faith.

According to FBI data, one-fifth of all reported hate crimes in 2014 were motivated by opposition to the victim's sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation. Researchers say they have also seen a surge in these crimes since the Supreme Court struck down the ban on gay marriage.

Contact a Texas Criminal Defense Lawyer about Your Case

If you are facing criminal charges, our Dallas Federal Criminal Defense attorneys at Broden & Mickelsen have earned a reputation for taking on difficult cases other firms won't touch. Call us today to speak to a criminal defense lawyer about your case and your options. Contact us online or call 214-720-9552 to speak to a lawyer 24/7.

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The reviews for Matt Lauer's performance as interviewer-in-chief at NBC News' forum on the USS Intrepid were mostly pans. The so-called Commander-in-Chief Forum on Sept. 7, featured successive half-hour Q&As with the main parties' presidential candidates, first Hillary Clinton, then Donald Trump.

The punning buzz on social media was that Matt had succeeded in #LaueringTheBar of journalistic quality, which his fellow news anchors will have to exceed when it comes their turn as moderators of the presidential debates, the first of which will take place Monday, Sept. 26, with Lauer's NBC News colleague Lester Holt overseeing the proceedings.

Some of the criticism of Lauer amounted to working the refs: seeking to impose a set of expectations on future moderators not to replicate decisions that Lauer made. For example, Lauer was panned for spending too much time on the former secretary of state's emails, or for failing to contradict Trump'sclaims about the timing of his opposition to the War in Iraq, or for his lack of preparatory homework on the issues at hand. It does not take much subtlety to pick up a pro-Brooklyn push underlying these complaints.

Fox News Channel anchor Chris Wallace, who will moderate the final presidential debate on Oct. 19, has already declared that it is not his job to "be a truth squad" and fact-checkstatements made during the course of the debate. The pans for Lauer have put Wallace on notice that his failure to do so will subject him to similar negative reviews. Wallace has stiffened his spine somewhat since, noting that if the candidates do not fact-check each other, he will. "My preference is that they ride herd and keep check on each other," he told Brit Hume on Sept. 8. "But I'm not saying if they don't, I won't."

Irrespective of whether Lauer was as lackluster as his critics claimed, and irrespective of the particular decisions he made in the conduct of his interviews, the controversy over the Commander-In-Chief Forum has laid bare a couple of structural problems that television news faces as it prepares to present the presidential debates this fall.

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They are problems of accuracy and proportion.

First, accuracy. In the fragmented media landscape of this digital age, the old-fashioned mass medium of television can still claim one indispensable national role. It is preeminently successful at presenting our great ritual contests. Television knows how to stage a competition. It is embraced as the medium par excellence for providing a clear, comprehensible, accessible view of such annual contests as the Academy Awards and the Super Bowl and, yes, the quadrennial contests of the presidential debates, too. In 2008, the last time two non-incumbents ran for president, only the 106 million audience of the Super Bowl exceeded the 52 million all-network audience for the Barack Obama-John McCain debates.

On television, we not only receive the verbal arguments that the candidates make as they argue with each other, we also hear their tone of voice, we see their body language. Television can offer what social media cannot: an accurate depiction of the contest at hand. So the first role of the moderators is akin to that of the officials at the Super Bowl: to supervise the contest so that the accuracy of its presentation is unimpeded, mediated with as light a touch as possible.

The structural problem for debate moderators is that, as journalists, they have a second, equally pressing obligation of accuracy. Besides ensuring the accuracy of the presentation, they are also duty-bound to ensure the accuracy of the content. As journalists, rather than stenographers, their duty to their viewers includes an obligation to the truth. When a he-said-she-said is not merely an exchange of opinion but an exchange between fact and hood, those moderators who fail to point out truth versus fiction fail as journalists. Such a failure makes it seem as if the lie has been disseminated with their imprimatur. In a normal election, in which both candidates have a track record of abiding by norms of truth-telling and of responsiveness to fact-checking, this second obligation would be marginal. The backlash against Lauer tells us that this year is different.

Second, proportion. The Commander-in-Chief Forum gave us a taste of the structural problems presented by a format that treats both candidates equally. Until now, television news has made the opposite judgment. There is nothing symmetrical about Trump and Clinton. Take the broadcast networks' weekday nightly newscasts as a yardstick. Year-to-date through Labor Day, all three newscasts have paid more attention by far to the Trump campaign (822 minutes compared to 296 on ABC, CBS, NBC combined) than to Clinton's.

That means more publicity for Trump and more scrutiny. And quite right, too. The Trump phenomenon is more newsworthy. Compared with Clinton, he is more accessible, more outlandish, more entertaining, more flamboyant, more unpredictable and, by far, a more radical departure from political norms. Any regular viewer of the nightly newscasts would by now have a fully formed, and accurate, picture of the two candidates. He is an egoist, unconcerned with public policy, risk-taking, verbally undisciplined. She is uncomfortable in public, wonkish, conventional, lawyerly, precise. Her campaign has been so buttoned-down that coverage of her email operation as secretary of state has attracted almost a third as much coverage (89 minutes) as her candidacy proper (296 minutes). When Lauer spent so much time questioning her about those damned emails, he was merely following the same agenda of newsworthiness.

Now the debates are upon us. The moderators will have to jettison their journalistic judgment of the last eight months and suddenly treat both candidates as if they are symmetrically worthy of scrutiny. They are not symmetrical. And when the moderators appear on television with a straight face and act as if they are, they will receive the same shellacking that befell Lauer. And there is nothing they can do about it.

Read more: TV Ratings: NBC's Clinton-Trump Forum With Matt Lauer Tops Wednesday, Lands 15 Million Viewers
Thanks to its strong performance in the Philippines market.

Despite gaining traction in its Asian market, Food and Beverage (F&B) company Del Monte Pacific still registered net loss in its first quarter, with sales falling 2.8% to $628.9 million due to lower non-branded sales in the United States.

The group explained in a press statement that its US subsidiary, Del Monte Foods, Inc (DMFI), which accounted for 75% of Group sales, generated revenue of US$350.9 million, 6% lower than prior year quarter.

This is due to the continued impact of unbranded sales, ie unsuccessful low-margin US Department of Agriculture bids from the second half of FY2016 plus reduced sales in private label and foodservice business lines," the group said in a statement, the group noted.

However, its net loss in the previous year of of $14.5 million have improved 18.3% to $11.8 million this year, partially helped by the strong performance in the Philippines under the Del Monte brand, and the rest of Asia under the S&W brand.

"Del Monte delivered a strong performance in the Philippines in the first quarter, with sales up 14% in peso terms, driven by expanded penetration and increased consumption of its packaged pineapple, culinary products and beverages as a result of new advertising campaigns. Foodservice channel continued to outperform the market, growing by 28% in peso terms," the group explained.

Meanwhile, it exhibited strong earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA), spiking 20% higher to $32 million. This is due to lower operating expenses as a result of initial savings from the group's restructuring.

According to Del Monte Pacific CEO Joselito Campos, the group's first quarter is seasonally its weakest quarter accounting for only 19-21% of full year sales. Dipping sales also reflect on profit performance where the group historically endures a loss in the first quarter.

He claimed the sales would peak in the second and third quarter due to holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas.

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"With the first quarter being seasonally the weakest quarter in the US, we expect improved profitability in the coming quarters. We continue to align operations with our strategic direction to strengthen the Groups core business, gain market share, increase margins and expand into adjacent categories as part of a long-range plan to grow our sales and profits in the years ahead," he said.





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MOUNT PLEASANT  Police have arrested the suspect in the Aug. 30 robbery of Community State Bank, 8930 Washington Ave., Mount Pleasant Police Chief Tim Zarzecki said Friday.

Terry W. Neal, 50, of the 1700 block of 12th Street in Racine, was arrested Thursday at the home of a relative in Kaukauna. Neal was taken into custody without incident or injury, according to Zarzecki. Police also located the vehicle he allegedly used in the robbery.

Zarzecki said Neal is currently being held on a Department of Corrections warrant for violating a previous probation and the bank robbery charges are pending. Neals court records show he is a convicted felon, most recently being convicted of second-degree sexual assault in a 2003 incident.

The Mount Pleasant Police Department received assistance from Racine Police Department detectives, as well as aid from the Kaukauna and Appleton police departments and the Outagamie County Sheriffs Department. The Outagamie Emergency Response Team, similar to a SWAT team, assisted the department with executing the search warrant Thursday.

Working together was seamless, Zarzecki said. Because of the nature of the crime, we didnt want to take any chances.

According to a department release, Neal allegedly entered the bank at about 8:20 a.m. on Aug. 30 and passed a threatening note to a teller that demanded cash. After he obtained the cash, he allegedly fled the scene in the vehicle located by police during the investigation.
In a bid to further expand its operations Atlanta, GA-based Delta Air Lines DAL recently announced the launch of non-stop flights from Atlanta to Seoul. The airline behemoth declared that the non-stop flights from Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport to Seoul Incheon International Airport will start from Jun 3, 2017.

The carrier intends to strengthen its Asian presence through the introduction of these daily flights. Delta will utilize a 291-seat, Boeing 777-200LR aircraft for operating the flights between the two cities.

Delta has been looking to strengthen its Asian presence for quite some time. Earlier this year, the carrier announced plans to introduce new flights to key markets like China and India. Moreover, Delta had announced its decision to shell out $450 million to own 3.55% of China Eastern Airlines CEA, last year.

DELTA AIR LINES Price

DELTA AIR LINES Price | DELTA AIR LINES Quote

Korean Air Codeshare Expanded

Apart from announcing the Atlanta-Seoul flights, Delta declared that it has expanded the codeshare agreement with Korean Air. Notably, the carriers were among the four founding members of the SkyTeam alliance in 2000. However, their association apparently turned sour later on due to differences of opinion regarding a joint venture across the Pacific.

We remind investors that last month, the carrier had announced its decision to end some flights to Tokyo's Narita Airport. The expansion of the codeshare pact with Korean Air can be seen as part of its shifting strategy as far as Asian markets are concerned.

The expansion of the codeshare pact is naturally a huge positive for passengers as it will facilitate travel between the U.S. and China to a great extent. The carriers intend to introduce the new codeshare by the end of this year.

A codeshare deal allows sharing of flights, which implies that a passenger has the free will to avail any flight operated by either of the companies under the agreement, irrespective of the flight number.

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Korean Air will be eligible to place its code on Delta flights to 115 destinations in the U.S. and Canada (beyond Atlanta, Los Angeles and New York City) once the agreement becomes effective. Deltas Atlanta-Seoul flight will also have Korean Airs code. In turn, the U.S. carrier will be able to do the same for 32 destinations beyond Seoul served by Korean Air. The destinations include Taipei, Osaka, Singapore, Nagoya and Okinawa.

Zacks Rank

Delta currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Some better-ranked stocks in the broader transportation space include Green Plain Partners LP GPP and The Greenbrier Companies, Inc. GBX. Both stocks sport a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

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DNC snapchat

Democrats are trolling the Republican National Committee on Snapchat over Donald Trump's claim that Hillary Clinton "doesn't have a presidential look."

The Democratic National Committee rolled out a Snapchat filter on Thursday with the text "This Is My Presidential Face," arguing that any face can look presidential.

The filter is available in targeted locations like the RNC headquarters near Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.

"When Donald Trump said Hillary Clinton doesnt look presidential, and Reince Priebus said she should smile more, we wanted to give supporters an opportunity to tell them otherwise," DNC spokesperson Jenna Price told Business Insider in an email.

She added: "What better way to prove them wrong than by showing them that faces of all genders, races, and faiths can be presidential, whether or not theyre smiling."

This week, Democrats blasted both Trump and RNC Chairman Reince Priebus for their comments about Clinton's appearance.

Snapchat filters are one of many tactics Democrats are using this cycle to woo millennial voters.

While millennials overwhelmingly favor Clinton over Trump, a vast majority backed Sen. Bernie Sanders over Clinton during the Democratic presidential primary in large numbers.

Large Democratic-leaning groups have invested heavily in digital media campaigns on platforms like Snapchat attempting to reach young potential Democratic voters.

Emily's List, a group that backs pro-choice female Democratic lawmakers, launched a $20 million ad partnership with Clinton-backing super PAC Priorities USA targeted specifically at reaching millennial voters. NextGen Climate launched a similar $25 million effort to spur turnout among younger voters.

NOW WATCH: Trump rips a protester in Pennsylvania: 'Your mother is voting for Trump'





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FRANKFURT, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Deutsche Bank is expected to settle U.S. investigations into past misselling mortgage-backed securities for more than $2.4 billion, a German monthly magazine reported.

The U.S. Department of Justice is expected to send Deutsche Bank a roughly 100-page statement of facts early next week, manager magazin said, adding that the document will specify how much Deutsche must pay to settle the case.

Deutsche Bank declined to comment.

In July, Chief Executive John Cryan said that he hoped to draw a line under the bank's four largest remaining litigation cases this year.

These comprise the mortgages case, alleged manipulation of foreign exchange rates, a probe into suspicious equities trades in Russia, and remaining investigations into alleged money laundering.

(Reporting by Arno Schuetze; editing by Christoph Steitz and Jason Neely)
On todays episode of the Zacks Friday Finish Line podcast, Content Writer Ryan McQueeney and Editor Maddy Johnson take on this weeks biggest news from the investment and financial world.

The hosts kicked off the show with even more news from Mylan MYL. The makers of the EpiPen are once again in the spotlight after an antitrust probe into the companys EpiPens4School program was launched in New York this week.

For our full coverage on the probe, go here: Pharma Round-Up: Mylan's Antitrust Probe

Maddy and Ryan moved on to discussing the for-profit education business, another industry that has been under fire from government regulators recently. The focus this week was ITT Educational Services ESI, which announced it would be shutting down all of its schools just days after the U.S. Department of Education banned the company from enrolling new students who depend on federal financial aid.

Check out our latest story on ITT Tech: ITT Educational Faces the Wrath of Department of Education

The hosts then started their discussion on Wednesdays Apple AAPL keynote by looking at why Nintendo NTDOY stock soared following the event. Shares of the videogame giant skyrocketed over 26% after the company joined the Apple keynote to announce that a new Mario-based game would be launching on the App Store this year.

For more on that story, go here: Here's Why Nintendo Stock Soared Today

Finally, Maddy and Ryan got into the rest of the Apple event, including the announcement of the Watch OS3, the Apple Watch Series 2, and the new iPhone 7 and 7 Plus. The hosts discussed all of the new features and designs, including the controversial decision to remove the standard 3.5mm headphone jack on the new phone.

Find our full coverage of the Apple event here: Here's Everything We Learned From Today's Apple Event

As always, thanks for checking out this weeks episode of the Zacks Friday Finish Line, and make sure to check back next week for even more news from the investment and financial world!

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New York State lawmakers are considering the Medical Aid in Dying Act, a reason why the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo held a forum Thursday night to address why the Catholic Church is against it. Suicide is considered a mortal sin under Catholic doctri
Lion, the true Story of Saroo Brierley, who used Google Earth to reunite with his long-lost family in India after being raised by adoptive parents in Australia, is one of the most hotly anticipated projects at this years Toronto Film Festival. Sight unseen, the inspirational drama  which will be released Nov. 25 in the U.S. by The Weinstein Co.  has already been labeled as an awards season front-runner.

The feature-film directing debut of Garth Davis, who earned his stripes overseeing buzzy television like the miniseries Top of the Lake, Lion is expected to draw Oscar attention for Dev Patels transformative work as Brierley  a man who never stopped dreaming about the family he left behind.

Davis spoke to Variety about, among other things, Googles response to the film, pushing Patel to the limit, and what its like to be in the Oscar race.

What attracted you to the project?

It was a miracle of a story. I loved how it traversed India and contemporary worlds like two worlds. It was fascinating how technology helped Saroo find home. Its so much like the mythical tales of the little boy that leaves a village, learns about the world, and then comes home. In fact, when Saroo returned home, some of the people in the village felt that he was delivered by God.

Did you reach out to Saroo and his family while you were making the film?

Before I even started imagining what the film would be, I felt I had to go and visit all the real people in the story. I retraced Saroos steps in India and met his adopted family and all his friends in Australia. It was important that I honor all of their stories and hear from them firsthand what it was like, so I could earn their respect and trust. You have to do that legwork.

Dev Patel seems to have undergone a major transformation for the role. Did you really make him gain weight?

I sure did. Dev definitely had to do some physical work to become an Australian guy. He was very thin, and I wanted to get him into a performance space that hed never been in before, which is complete cinematic realism. He put on a lot of weight, he did a lot of training, a lot of accent work. I gave him the challenge, and he embraced it.

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What does Google think of the movie?

They love it. Its a wonderful advert for them.

Do you use Google Earth?

I do. I used Google Earth to find a lot of the locations for the film.

Do you believe that technology can be a force for good?

It depends on whos behind the wheel. It certainly is true that Saroo would never have found his family without it.

The film has already been anointed as an Oscar front-runner. What kind of pressure does that sort of handicapping put on you?

I dont even go there. I just wanted to make the most beautiful and moving film that I could. I just wanted audiences to be affected by it, and have a little bit more hope in their lives  and a little more courage, too.

Your next project is Mary Magdalene. Do you think it will be controversial?

Im sure it will. Its impossible not to be. Im just trying to approach what I make with as much respect and research as I can, and just make it with a good heart. But people find controversy in everything. Whats really exciting about Mary Magdalene is were going to be telling a biblical story from a human perspective.

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VENICE (Reuters) - Andrei Konchalovsky does not expect "Rai" to change the course of the world, but he hopes the Holocaust drama about evil in the name of good will inspire some compassion, the veteran Russian director told Reuters at the Venice film festival on Friday. "Rai" (Paradise), a black-and-white World War II drama about three individuals whose lives cross paths and are forced to make life-altering choices, is one of 20 films competing for the coveted Golden Lion that will awarded on Saturday. "I dont see myself as a prophet or someone who can deliver something that will change the course of the world  thats ridiculous ... I want the audience to come out and to shut-up for 10 minutes," the 79-year-old Konchalovsky told Reuters in an interview. The movie tells the story of Olga, played by Julia Vysotskaya, a Russian noblewoman and part of the French resistance, who gets arrested by the Nazis for hiding two Jewish children. When she is jailed, she meets French collaborator Jules, who offers to ease her punishment in exchange for sex. Olga eventually ends up in a concentration camp, where she meets a former flame, Helmut, now a high-ranking SS officer. Vysotskaya, who had to shave off her hair for the role, said all the actors enjoyed being on set, despite the film's painful theme. She also said that she was surprised about her own reaction when watching the movie for the first time during its premiere in Venice on Thursday. "I thought it's incredible how I feel that the evil is so attractive," she said. "At least you can chose and then when you chose, you're responsible." (Reporting by Sarah Mills; writing by Agnieszka Flak; editing by Larry King)
For years, the relationship between Discovery Communications and LMNO Cable Group was a fruitful one, producing more than a dozen reality shows including The Little Couple, Killer Confessions, Unusual Suspects, Bipolar Mysteries, Insane Bathrooms, Surreal Estate and more. The separation between the two companies has become a nasty affair, with dueling claims of larceny and hostage-taking.

Producer LMNO, subject of an ongoing FBI investigation, blames its former accountant for allegedly cooking the books and attempting an extortion while also suing Discovery for exploiting its darkest hour with an attempt to seize ownership of the co-produced shows. In response, Discovery has filed counterclaims, claiming that after LMNO's accountant - described as a "whistleblower" - revealed how Discovery was being systemically defrauded via inflated production costs for these shows, Discovery has every contractual right to take over ownership.

Most of the Discovery-LMNO reality series were co-productions, but on Thursday, a California federal judge's attention was directed toward 7 Little Johnstons, which even LMNO acknowledges in court papers was produced as a "commission."

Discovery now has brought a fairly unusual motion for a writ of possession, the kind of legal maneuver that one might see when a producer and director are fighting over final cut and the director has squirreled away the footage, to the producer's consternation and demands for a turnover.

In this instance, LMNO is holding on to season-two footage of 7 Little Johnstons, a TLC program about a family of achondroplasia dwarfs.

Discovery says it already has paid more than $2 million for second-season work and that, under the commission arrangement, it owns the intellectual property.

"Discovery lawfully terminated all of its contractual dealings with LMNO on June 17, 2016, and in what appears to be a retributive act for such lawful termination, LMNO is holding the Program Deliverables for 7 Little Johnstons hostage, demanding that Discovery pay it hundreds of thousands of dollars more before it will release these materials," states a memorandum supporting the writ. "Discovery should not have to pay a ransom for materials it already owns and that LMNO is unlawfully retaining."

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Here's the full memorandum.

In reaction to the move, LMNO tells THR that "Discovery failed to sign the negotiated contract for this season of the show and failed and refused to pay the agreed-upon price for these episodes. Now, Discovery wants to obtain the footage without paying for it; in the absence of a signed contract, they have no right to do so."

As Magistrate Judge Steve Kim gets ready to hear arguments on whether or not to order LMNO to fork over footage of 7 Little Johnstons on Oct. 12, LMNO has separately brought a motion aimed at dismissing Discovery's counterclaims of fraud and breach of contract.

Most notably, LMNO is arguing that a proposed budget for shooting a reality show can't serve as the basis for a fraud claim.

"First, a 'budget' is not a representation about an existing fact - it is an authorization document in which parties negotiate about what will be spent in the future," argues LMNO. "If a couple 'budgets' $2,000 for next year's vacation, there cannot be a 'fraud' in that negotiation because nothing has happened yet - it is merely a discussion regarding how much they think it is reasonable to spend. At best, a budget might include an estimate of how much a particular thing will cost. But estimates of future costs are just opinions, not representations of existing facts."

LMNO also argues that show budgets were negotiated and that Discovery was a sophisticated party. Here's the full motion.
RACINE  Gateway Technical College is reaching out to ITT Technical Institute students after the announcement this week that all 130 ITT campuses will close.

As ITT students scramble to find last-minute options, Gateway officials have set up workshops for ITT students and have a team of student specialists, advisers, financial aid representatives and other staff members available to work with them, officials said.

ITT students likely will not have their credits transfer directly to Gateway, said Stacy Riley, associate vice president of student success. That has also been the case elsewhere around the country because ITT was not a regionally accredited institution, according to media reports.

However, Gateway offers a Credit for Prior Learning program that gives students a chance to demonstrate knowledge gained from past courses and possibly receive credit that way, Riley said.

For example, credits earned at ITT for an Accounting I class wouldnt directly transfer to Gateway, but the college may have an option to test out of an equivalent class, she said.

Basically, some demonstration of knowledge  it could be a written or computerized exam, it could be a skills performance, a portfolio document, Riley said.

Gateway has received a number of inquiries from ITT students about transferring, Riley said, and has set up two seminars to assist affected students.

Seminars will be held from 3 to 5 p.m. Tuesday at the student services center on the Racine campus, 1001 S. Main St., and 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Thursday at the student services center on the Kenosha campus, 3520 30th Ave.

Gateway is offering to waive a $30 application fee for ITT students who attend a workshop, award one $250 tuition voucher at each workshop to students who successfully enroll at Gateway and waive costs for its Credit for Prior Learning assessment and course.

A small number of ITT students have also contacted the University of Wisconsin-Parkside about attending school there. Officials are working with them on educational opportunities that might be available, Parkside spokesman John Mielke said.

ITT faced sanctions

ITT announced on Tuesday campuses would not open for the fall term scheduled to begin Sept. 12. It blamed the shutdown on recent sanctions by the U.S. Department of Education, with one official saying ITT was the victim of a regulatory assault and never had the chance to defend itself.

The chain was banned Aug. 25 from enrolling new students who used federal financial aid, because, Education Department officials said, the company had become a risk to students and taxpayers. The department also ordered ITT to pay $152 million within 30 days to help cover student refunds and other liabilities if the chain closed.

ITT had also been investigated by state and federal authorities who accused the chain of pushing students into risky loans and of misleading students about the quality of programs.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
ATLANTA, GA / ACCESSWIRE / September 9, 2016 / Dominovas Energy Corporation (DNRG) today announces the appointment of Dr. Emma Rasolovoahangy as Ambassador for Renewable Energy Projects and Special Advisor for the Republic of Madagascar. Dr. Rasolovoahangy will immediately assume responsibility for Dominovas Energy's sub-Saharan renewable energy projects, as she is charged with the specific mandate to oversee and direct operations for the proliferation of the Company's technologies. Dr. "Emma" as she is affectionately known to the Dominovas Energy team will report to Michael Watkins, Chief Operating Officer of Dominovas Energy. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roseline_Emma_Rasolovoahangy)

"We are truly excited to welcome Dr. Emma to the Dominovas Energy team. Her technical expertise and her intellectual prowess as a highly acclaimed scientist, along with her industry knowledge, respect and recognition around the globe as one of the best in the field, and with her unyielding love for her native country of the Republic of Madagascar and unique in-country perspective, collectively makes her a truly invaluable addition to the Dominovas Energy team. We are quite fortunate to have someone of her caliber join us," said Dominovas Energy chairman and CEO Neal Allen.

Dr. Emma is very excited to join the Dominovas Energy Corporation. "My journey from my home town of Fianarantsoa in the Republic of Madagascar to working with Global Multi-national companies and obtaining my PhD from one of the world's most prestigious university's in the United States of America in Stanford has been absolutely remarkable to say the least. As a Malgasy national I acknowledge my roots and endeavor to make a major impact on my country and people for generations to come. I am excited to join Dominovas Energy Corporation in the pursuit of clean and efficient production of electricity via Solid Oxide Fuel Cell technology as well as its hydroelectric division, CURRENTERGY. I am filled with optimism about the strength of the team, the technologies, and the opportunity we have to magnify our impact in improving the quality of lives of millions of Malagasy people and sub-Saharan Africans. I am truly thankful for the opportunity to be part of Dominovas Energy and look forward to the journey ahead," said Dr. Rasolovoahangy about her appointment.

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Vassilis Koutras, Managing Director for Francophone countries for Dominovas Energy added, "The addition of Malagasy entrepreneur and philanthropist, Dr. Emma comes at the right time as we make huge strides forward in deploying both our RUBICON and ORCAS technologies throughout Africa. Madagascar's hydro potential of 7000MW represents a tremendous opportunity for Dominovas Energy and signifies a leap forward for Madagascar. Madagascar is one of our top priorities for development and operation of multiple power projects."

About Dominovas Energy Corporation (DNRG)

Founded in 2005, Dominovas Energy Corporation (DEC) is a publicly traded company, based in Nevada. With its operating headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, Dominovas Energy Corporation is a leading power solutions provider to emerging markets around the world. DEC employs its proprietary RUBICON Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) technology for deployment in multi-megawatt power generation units worldwide. The worldwide pursuit of clean and efficient production of electricity via Solid Oxide Fuel Cell technology inspired its founders to create an "energy solutions" company. Recognizing that "green" and "alternative energy" markets offer immense potential for growth, Dominovas Energy is aggressively moving to allocate its intellectual and financial capital forthwith, in order to strategically address a green energy solution that is 100% reliable, efficient, and measurably cleaner than GenSets and CCGT. Additionally, unlike wind and solar solutions the RUBICON provides baseload power 24/7/365 days a year. By manufacturing and deploying the RUBICON throughout of the world, Dominovas Energy is committed to creating shareholder value by not only generating guaranteed revenue streams, but also by increasing the value of "human and community capital." Devoted to core values by operating under the utmost of honesty and integrity in all its business transactions, Dominovas Energy is additionally dedicated to respecting the rights of all individuals, while acknowledging and respecting all cultures necessary to support the growth and development of the communities and countries in which it operates. The Company strongly believes in the impact this singularly advanced technology will make on the world and is resolute in its mission to provide electricity where and when economically viable.

For more information, visit www.dominovasenergy.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release, as well as other statements made by Dominovas Energy Corporation (the "Company"), contain forward-looking statements that reflect, when made, the Company's current views with respect to current events and financial performance. Such forward-looking statements are subject to many risks, uncertainties and factors relating to the Company's operations and business environment, which may cause the actual results of the Company to be materially different from any future results. All statements that address future operating, financial or business performance or the Company's strategies or expectations are forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements as is applicable would be discussed under captions as follows: "Risk Factors" and "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations" in the Company's filings as would be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission as required. New risks and uncertainties arise from time to time, and it is impossible for us to predict these events or how they may affect the Company. It should be remembered that the price of the ordinary shares and any income from them can go down as well as up. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events and/or otherwise, except as may be required by law.

Media and Investor Contact:

QualityStocks

Scottsdale, Arizona

www.QualityStocks.com

480.374.1336 Office

Editor@QualityStocks.net

Investor Questions:

ir@dominovasenergy.com

SOURCE: Dominovas Energy Corporation
Donald Trump criticized the state of the Americas media and its leader on Thursday in an interview aired on a state-owned Russian television network.

In an interview with journalist Larry King broadcast on RT America, Trump said the thing that most surprised him about the American political process was the dishonesty of the media, the Washington Post reports. The media has been unbelievably dishonest, he said. I mean theyll take a statement that you make which is perfect and theyll cut it up and chop it up and shorten it or lengthen it or do something with it.

He also voiced familiar criticisms of President Barack Obama and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton with her policies and Barack Obama  you know, look, we should have never gone into Iraq. Period, Trump said. (Trump claims he was against the invasion of Iraq from the beginning, which is not true.) But once we went in, Larry, we shouldnt have gotten out the way we got out. And the way they got out really caused ISIS, if you think about it. We got out in such a horrible, foolish fashion, instead of leaving some troops behind.

The interview comes as Trump continues to struggle with allegations that hes too close to the Russian government. In July, he called on Russia to hack Clintons emails. His former campaign chairman Paul Manafort resigned in August over questions about his links to Ukraines former pro-Russia regime. And Trump himself expresses open admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Wednesday night, one day before the interview aired, Trump said of Putin in an NBC military form, Certainly, in that system, hes been a leader, far more than our president has been a leader.

Trumps campaign claimed they did not know the interview was to be aired on the Russian network. A spokesperson told the Post, Mr. Trump recorded a short interview with Larry King for his podcast as a favor to Mr. King. What Larry King does with the interview content is up to him; we have nothing to do with it.

Hes not the only politician to appear on the network, accidentally or otherwise. British politician Nigel Farage, who appeared onstage with Trump in August, makes regular guest appearances and was recently offered his own television show on RT, according to media reports.

[WaPo]
The Dr. Oz Show this morning promised GOP nominee Donald Trump is going to address why the health of the presidential candidates has become such a big issue in this campaign. Trump will talk about Hillary Clintons health, and his, on September 15 during the first week of the shows eighth season.

The two candidates health has given us some of this election cycles best made-for-TV moments. It has only been a couple weeks, for instance, since Hillary Clinton was consumed with Pickle Jar-gate and Trump had to contend with an interview his personal doctor gave to NBC News, in which the good doctor said he had anxiously dashed off in five minutes that document he wrote proclaiming Trump to be in astonishingly excellent health.

In the one-on-one with Trump on Thursday, the candidate will discuss with Dr. Mehmet Oz his health regimen and share his vision for Americas health. He also will answer questions about your well-being, security, money and more.

The Dr. Oz Shows new season premieres Monday, featuring mothers of police officers killed in Dallas and Baton Rouge and a discussion of gun violence. The premiere week of the syndicated daily series, produced by Harpo Productions and distributed by Sony Pictures TV, wraps with an episode in which Oz talks to CNNs doctor Sanjay Gupta about how people can protect themselves from the zika virus and a segment honoring doctors who treated Orlando nightclub shooting victims.

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Donald Trump speaks outside the New York Stock Exchange on Sept. 18, 2001. (Photo: Todd Maisel/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images)

Like many Americans, Donald Trump was watching television when it happened.

It was a little before 8:45 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, and the New York real estate mogul had just turned on NBCs Today show to watch a friend, Jack Welch, the former chairman and chief executive of General Electric, give an interview about his new book. But suddenly, coverage was interrupted by a shaky shot of the north tower of the World Trade Center, its steel facade rent by a jagged gash that was pouring ominous puffs of dark black smoke and flames.

As he later recalled to talk show host Larry King and others, Trump, a native New Yorker and developer who had spent his entire life around the Manhattan skyline, was flabbergasted.

Im saying, Whats this?  You knew it couldnt be the boiler. Thats down in the basement, Trump told King in 2010. You know, youre saying, What is this? What could be possibly this?

By his account, Trump, who was at home in his 66th-floor penthouse at Trump Tower in Midtown Manhattan, turned to a south-facing window that offered majestic views of the Empire State Building, in which he owned a stake at the time, and beyond it, the Twin Towers. From four miles away, he could see firsthand the black smoke from the north tower trailing slowly up into the clear blue sky. It was around 9 a.m.

As the television behind him narrated the frantic moments at the scene, including witness accounts that a plane had hit the building, Trump stared in shock toward lower Manhattan, trying to understand what had happened. In subsequent interviews, including with the Daily Mail last year, he would recall that moment, how he thought he saw something in his peripheral vision, perhaps a shadow over the Hudson River. He couldnt say for sure, but suddenly, as he stared at the Twin Towers, the buildings were engulfed in a massive fireball. Behind him, stunned television anchors confirmed the unbelievable: a second plane had hit.

Speaking to King in 2004, Trump recalled thinking, Now you know what it is.

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Every American of a certain age remembers where they were and what they were doing the moment they learned of what would be the worst terrorist attack on American soil, a strike that left nearly 3,000 people dead in New York, Washington and western Pennsylvania. And Trump, who was by then established as one of the larger than life personalities of New York, is no different.

Like other New Yorkers, he watched it play out not just on television, but right in front of him. The city was bearing the physical and emotional burden of an attack so unbelievable that national security officials later described it as a failure of the imagination, as no one had envisioned terrorists attacking landmarks with planes in such a coordinated way.

Fifteen years later, Trumps experience of that day is now part of what shapes his unlikely campaign for the presidency. During his bid for the Republican presidential nomination and now as the nominee, Trump often invokes memories of 9/11 as he campaigns on a pledge to keep America safe  insisting there needs to be new immigration safeguards to prevent people like the 9/11 hijackers from entering the country.

At the same time, Trumps recollection of 9/11 seems to include what he described as in his bestselling book The Art of the Deal as truthful hyperbole  which he defined as a little bit of exaggeration. Or so it seems.

Donald Trump speaks at a rally in Columbus, Ohio, Nov. 23, 2015. (Photo: Jay LaPrete/Reuters)

At a campaign stop in Columbus, Ohio, last November, Trump told an audience that he could see people jumping to their deaths from the World Trade Center from his vantage point at Trump Tower. I watched people jumping off the building, he declared to a crowd of 14,000 people who sat rapt in silence. How would you like to be 102 stories up, and your choice is to burn or jump? Many people jumped. I witnessed that. I watched that.

Explaining to supporters about the direct view he had from his apartment, Trump added, I watched as people jumped, and I watched as the second plane came in. And I was watching television when the first plane hit.  I saw the second plane come in, and I said, Wow, thats unbelievable.

The Trump campaign declined to say at the time how the candidate could see people jumping from the building from four miles away  or if he was simply blending memories of watching what was unfolding in front of him with what he was seeing on television.

His team has also declined to say if Trump knew anyone who was killed in the attacks  though the candidate has repeatedly said he knew numerous people who died at the World Trade Center. At a Republican primary debate in South Carolina in February, Trump mentioned unnamed friends who had been killed as he argued that former President George W. Bush hadnt kept the nation safe during his time in the White House.

I lost hundreds of friends. The World Trade Center came down during the reign of George Bush. He kept us safe? That is not safe, Trump said, prompting boos from the crowd.

At the same time, Trump has been forced to defend other recollections of that day, including his claim at a rally in Alabama last November that he saw television footage on 9/11 of Muslims in New Jersey cheering the attacks.

I watched when the World Trade Center came tumbling down. And I watched in Jersey City, New Jersey, where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down. Thousands of people were cheering, he said.

Trump pushed back on questions about whether he had mistaken footage of Muslims in the Middle East celebrating the attacks as footage from the U.S. It did happen, Trump insisted of American Muslims allegedly cheering the attack from New Jersey. After 9/11, Both the Washington Post and Associated Press cited rumors of celebrations, but so far none have been substantiated. And Trump hasnt repeated the claim in months.

Through a spokeswoman, Trump declined to be interviewed for this article, citing a concern about appearing too political on a day in which he and his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton have pledged to refrain from campaigning.

The GOP candidate has also occasionally spoken of how he tried to help during the days following the attacks  though its not entirely clear exactly what he did, and his campaign declined to comment on how he spent the early days after the attacks. But Trump, who owns a building on Wall Street just blocks from the World Trade Center site, did go down to check on his property and employees there, according to what he later told reporters.

On September 13, he made his way to Ground Zero, where news accounts say he met with police officers and firefighters. Afterward, against the backdrop of smoke still rising from the smoldering site, the businessman gave an interview to a German television reporter about what he had witnessed.

Ive never seen anything like it, the devastation, the human life thats been just wasted for no reason whatsoever. It is a terrible scene, said Trump, who wore a business suit in the interview, his hair a bit disheveled. In the interview, he said he had brought employees down to the site to help. We have over 100 and another 125 coming, he said, while offering no details on what they were doing.

At an April campaign rally in Buffalo ahead of the New York primary, Trump expounded on his memory of that time, telling supporters how he helped at Ground Zero. Everyone who helped clear the rubble. And I was there, and I watched, and I helped a little bit, he said. But I want to tell you: Those people were amazing. Clearing the rubble. Trying to find additional lives. You didnt know what was going to come down on all of us, and they handled it.

Trump also retrieved memories of the terror attack in order to bludgeon GOP rival Sen. Ted Cruz, who accused Trump of embodying New York values. Cruz was referring to the cosmopolitan social values of Manhattan, but Trump, speaking during a primary debate, invoked the smell of death in the air as New Yorkers united after the towers came down. We rebuilt downtown Manhattan, and everybody in the world watched, he said.

What is clear about Trump in the aftermath of 9/11 is that the developer, known for his brash style and personality, seemed to try to offer a voice of reason to the debate over how to handle what was then sacred land. He argued against redeveloping too quickly, saying time was needed not just for the city to heal but to consider what would be best for the neighborhood around the site.

But he also broke with friends, including then Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who suggested early on that the land should remain empty in honor of the victims. Trump argued that not to rebuild something in its place would be a victory for the terrorists.

We have to rebuild in some form that is just as majestic, Trump said in the German television interview.

Trump, who in the early moments of his 1980s heyday once publicly mused about buying the World Trade Center, later admitted he didnt love the buildings so much. The architecture wasnt beautiful, and the complex, which he felt cut off the development from the surrounding neighborhood, felt cold, he told reporters.

But staring south from his windows at Trump Tower toward the World Trade Center site, which remained engulfed in smoke for months after 9/11, the developer admitted he felt sad looking at the skyline, that the attacks had taken something away that he had never appreciated in the way that he should have.

Its like you lose somebody that you love. You never loved them that much, but you lose them, and all of a sudden, you love, Trump told King in 2010. Everybody loved the World Trade Center after it was gone.

_____

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Donald Trump didnt realize his Thursday interview with Larry King would be on a Russian state-run television network, his campaign subsequently claimed.

Nobody said it was going to be on Russian TV, Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said Friday on CNNs New Day. Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks also told the Associated Press that the King interview was for his podcast as a favor to Mr. King.

What Larry King does with the interview content is up to him. We have nothing to do with it. Hicks added.

The GOP nominees appearance on RT, the Moscow-based media organization previously known as Russia Today, drew immediate scrutiny as the station is used to back the Kremlins messaging efforts. During his interview on RTs Politicking With Larry King, Trump criticized U.S. foreign policy and cast doubt on the idea that the Kremlin is trying to influence the U.S. presidential race.

U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies reportedly are investigating whether Russia launched a covert operation to disrupt the 2016 election. What do you make of that? King asked Trump.

I think its probably unlikely, Trump replied. I think maybe the Democrats are putting that out, who knows? But I think its pretty unlikely. But who knows?

At the end of last month, Yahoo News Michael Isikoff reported that the FBI had issued a warning about foreign hackers infiltrating U.S. election systems. And U.S. experts have widely stated that Russian hackers were behind the July release of politically embarrassing Democratic National Committee emails.

Trump has adopted a strikingly soft stance on Russia throughout his campaign. In addition to questioning whether Russia was really behind the DNC hack, the GOP property magnate has echoed the Kremlins messaging about its annexation of Crimea and praised Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Indeed, during an interview this week on NBC News, Trump touted Putins poll numbers and called the Russian autocrat a better leader than U.S. President Obama.

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Ive already said he is really very much a leader. I mean, you can say, Oh, isnt that a terrible thing? The man has very strong control over a country, Trump said Wednesday of Putin. But certainly in that system hes been a leader far more than our president has been a leader. We have a divided country, he continued.

For its part, RT doesnt appear to be especially concerned about the flap over its Trump interview: It published a Friday story titled: US media, Trumps own campaign freak out about his interview on Kremlin RT.
By Manuel Mogato VIENTIANE (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte shook hands and had a brief chat on Wednesday, officials said, easing a standoff after Duterte called Obama a "son of a bitch" ahead of a summit of Asian leaders in Laos. The presidents of the two longtime allies were due to hold talks on Tuesday but the White House canceled the meeting after Duterte's insult. "I'm very happy that it happened," Philippines' foreign minister, Perfecto Yasay, said of their short meeting. "It all springs from the fact that the relationship between the Philippines and the United States is firm, very strong." Duterte had his outburst on Monday when he was defending his war on drugs that has killed at least 2,400 Filipinos. Notorious for his tirades and for cursing during interviews and speeches, he later expressed regret for offending Obama. The two men shook hands and chatted for about two minutes as they waited to take their seats at a gala dinner ahead of Thursday's East Asia Summit, according to Yasay and several of Duterte's aides. Alan Cayetano, who was Duterte's vice-presidential running mate in this year's election, described the atmosphere as "warm and cordial", while a White House official said "the exchange consisted of pleasantries between the two". Tensions between the United States and the Philippines, its former colony, are unusual at high-level meetings. The two countries are treaty allies and Washington has strongly backed Manila's calls for China to abide by a recent ruling over the South China Sea, which the Philippines won. China is among the countries taking part in Thursday's summit, which includes the 10 Association of South East Asian Nations member states and Japan, South Korea, Australia, India, Russia and the United States Philippines ambassador to the United States, Marciano Paynor, said the tiff with Obama was part of a learning curve for Duterte, who needed a chance to make the transition from being a city mayor to a head of state. "He has to experience it," he said. "If you don't experience it, you don't know how it's done, you'll be grappling." (This version of the story corrects to say Paynor is Philippines ambassador to United States in twelfth paragraph) (Additional reporting by Roberta Rampton; Writing by Martin Petty; Editing by Louise Ireland)
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte insisted Friday he had not intended to insult US leader Barack Obama, but immediately took aim at another global figure by labelling UN chief Ban Ki-moon a "fool".

Duterte sparked a storm on the eve of an Asian summit this week by labelling Obama a "son of a whore", prompting the US president to cancel a planned meeting. The pair met briefly later at the gathering in Laos after Duterte expressed regret.

But acid-tongued Duterte on Friday said the Philippine expression "putangina" should not be taken at face value, and it was "an ordinary expression (used) by everyone".

"It's son of a bitch or son of a gun. It's not son of a whore," he told an audience of Filipinos during a visit to the Indonesian capital Jakarta.

He insisted his remarks were not directed at Obama but at the US State Department, which has raised concerns over potential human rights violations in Duterte's anti-crime campaign which has left almost 3,000 dead in just over two months.

"I got really angry about these threats over this human rights issue. This is the fault of the crazy people in the State Department," he said.

Duterte said he had clarified his comments to Obama when they met.

The Philippine leader has become famous for his profane outbursts, and has branded Pope Francis and the US ambassador to Manila "sons of whores".

The United Nations has also spoken out against his crime crackdown and on Friday Duterte added UN chief Ban, who spoke at the Asian summit, to the list of those he has insulted.

"I told myself, you're just one more fool," Duterte said of Ban.

"I will continue the campaign against the criminals. I do not have any pity for them," he added.

"I don't give a shit. I am the president of the Philippines, not the republic of the international community."

Duterte was elected to office in a landslide this year after pledging to kill 100,000 people in an unprecedented war on crime. But his brutal crackdown has sparked a wave of international condemnation.
By Fergus Jensen and Karen Lema JAKARTA (Reuters) - Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte told Barack Obama he never called him a "son of a bitch", he said on Friday, but he maintained a defiant stance on his war on drugs, saying U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon was a fool for bringing up human rights. U.S. President Obama canceled a planned meeting with Duterte at this week's ASEAN summit in Laos after the Philippine leader's alleged insult in his native Tagalog, but the two met briefly later as they waited to take their seats at a banquet. On a visit to the Indonesian capital on Friday, Duterte told a group of Filipinos that the slur was not directed at the U.S. president and that he had told him so. "I was ready (for Obama). I was waiting for Obama to respond. Lawyer to lawyer, we are both lawyers anyway... I said I never made the statement. Check it out. "...I said that, but not in relation to Obama," he said. "I'm not fighting with America." Obama and Duterte shook hands and had a brief chat on Wednesday, officials said, easing the standoff. Duterte had his outburst on Monday when he was defending his war on drugs that has killed at least 2,400 Filipinos. Duterte on Friday said he thought U.N. Secretary-General Ban a fool for bringing up the issue of human rights violations weeks before the summit in Laos. "Even Ban Ki-moon weighed in," Duterte said. "Also gave a statement before, several weeks ago, about the human rights violation. Sabi ko, isa ka pang tarantado (you are another fool)." Duterte also said he would try to boost security for ships using the waters between Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia, where there have been several kidnappings and other attacks. The Philippines would let Indonesian forces pursuing pirates enter its waters, he said. ""This time we make it clear that if the chase began in Indonesia, then crosses in international waters, and inside Philippine waters, they can go ahead and blast them off." (Reporting by Fergus Jensen in JAKARTA and Karen Lema; in MANILA; Additional reporting by Gayatri Suroyo; Writing by Eveline Danubrata; Editing by Nick Macfie)
It is interesting the FBI picked Friday before Labor Day to do a document dump detailing part of its investigation into the Hillary Clinton email scandal. Its widely known agencies often dump documents on the Friday before holiday weekends. One, it prevents reporters from asking questions. Two, often people have booked weekends, keeping them from watching the Sunday morning talk shows and hearing detailed reports of what has been going on.

We would have thought the FBI would want to release the documents at a better time, making an extra effort to show they are not partisan in any way. But then again maybe they forgot about the Friday perception. After all, the documents that were released indicated that Clinton forgot or could not recall a lot of the government briefings that she has had, reportedly because she had suffered a concussion.

With every Clinton scandal, there is always a Donald Trump one that follows right along. According to recently released reports, the Donald J. Trump Foundation sent a $25,000 check to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondis fundraising committee in 2013.

It is easily perceived as a way to bribe Bondis office not to join a lawsuit against the former Trump University. Trump denies it, saying he never discussed the lawsuit with Bondi. But it smells of corruption and makes Trump look like a hypocrite.

Just last month, Trump was calling for a special prosecutor to investigate allegations that his Democratic opponent sold access to the State Department while she was Secretary of State in exchange for donations to the Clinton Foundation.

It is impossible to figure out where the Clinton Foundation ends and the State Department begins, Trump said. Trumps actions dont look any better. It seems to be a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

Christmas came early for hundreds of teachers this week when they learned that the Herb Kohl Philanthropies flash funded all Wisconsin teacher projects on www.donorschoose.org. More than 700 projects were funded in 140 districts to support teachers at the start of the school year, the organization said.

It was seriously Christmas, said Carrie Snorek, a kindergarten teacher at Fratt Elementary School. I screamed.

Other schools in the Racine Unified School District with projects funded include Mitchell elementary and middle schools, Roosevelt Elementary, Goodland Elementary, Gifford Elementary, Knapp Elementary, Case High School and Horlick High School.

Thank you, Herb Kohl. Many teachers donate hundreds of their own dollars each school year to help students. This is a great way to help them and recognize teachers who are going above and beyond to try to help their classrooms.

Last year, the United Way of Racine County saw a reduction in donations of approximately 15 percent.

Stephen McLaughlin, United Way volunteer and vice chairman of community investment said, The economy has remained fairly static, it hasnt increased a great deal  we have more competition for funds that companies and individuals are supporting, so that has also increased.

As a result of the decrease, area nonprofits are feeling the sting, according to a report in The Journal Times last Saturday. For instance, the Family Literacy of Racine recently closed their doors for the foreseeable future after the United Way did not fund them $77,000. In addition, Racine Vocational Ministry, which helps ex-convicts find jobs and tries to address issues like homelessness and substance abuse, saw a roughly 20 percent decrease in funds. Bethany Apartments and Homeless Assistance Leadership Organization also saw decreases, among many others.

The reality is that money cannot come out of thin air, when less money is donated, cuts have to happen somewhere.

To help, people need to step up and donate if they can.
VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / September 9, 2016 / Ecuador Gold & Copper Corp. (EGX.V) (the "Company"), wishes to announce that further to its news release dated June 27, 2016, it is announcing the completion of a non-brokered private placement offering of US$1,250,000 of convertible debentures (the "Debentures") of the Company, comprised of US$232,784 senior secured Debentures and US$1,017,216 unsecured convertible debentures. Each Debenture bears interest of 12% per year with the principal amount and interest due and payable on the maturity date of December 31, 2016 (the "Maturity Date") unless converted into units of the Company (the "Units") prior to the Maturity Date at a conversion price of $0.40 per Unit. Each Unit is comprised of one common share and one half common share purchase warrant (each whole warrant a "Warrant"), and each Warrant then entitles the holder to acquire a common share at an exercise price of $0.40 per share for a period of 24 months from the date of issuance. Of the presently outstanding US$3,156,025 Amended & Restated Debentures, US$290,134 of that principal amount was previously accrued interest (and not US$551,025 as was reported on March 31, 2016), US$260,891 fresh investment, and US$2,605,000 previously outstanding principal. The issuance of the Debentures does not result in the creation of a new control person.

The sale of the Debentures was made to new arm's length investors and three of the major existing shareholders of the Company, including Aura International Services Ltd. ("Aura"), in reliance of certain prospectus exemptions. Aura presently owns 12,906,358 common shares of the Company, representing 50.2% ownership. Accordingly, Aura is a control person of the Company under applicable securities laws and is therefore also a related party to the Company. Consequently, the sale of New Debentures to Aura is a related party transaction, which was carried out under exemptions from the requirements of Multilateral Instrument 61-101 - Protection of Minority Security Holders in Special Transactions ("MI 61-101"). Likewise, the Debenture Amendments also constituted a related party transaction under MI 61-101, and such amendments were conditionally approved by the TSXV and were approved by the majority of the minority shareholders. For the Debenture Amendments, the Company has relied upon an exemption from formal valuation requirements under section 5.5(b) of MI 61-101 as described below in the context of the New Debenture offering.

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Under the Debenture offering, the Company is relying upon exemptions from both the formal valuation requirements and minority shareholder approval requirements of MI 61-101 under sections 5.5(b) and 5.7(1)(b) thereof, respectively. The Company is not aware of any valuation of the Company or its mineral properties. The Company is entitled to rely upon the exemption under section 5.5(b) because it is listed only on the TSX Venture Exchange and not one of the specified markets listed therein. The Company is entitled to rely on the exemption under section 5.7(1)(b) because the Debenture offering is a distribution of securities for cash of not more than $2,500,000. Aura has acquired Debentures in the principal amount of US$180,411 under the Debenture offering and has already acquired prior Debentures having an aggregate principal amount of US$2,998,957. If Aura were to convert all such Debentures and prior Debentures as well as the Warrants contained in the Units together with all other common share purchase warrants of the Company held by Aura at the applicable conversion prices, and assuming that no other holders of convertible securities of the Company converted or exercised their securities, then Aura would hold approximately 43,025,698 common shares of the Company (assuming an exchange rate of C$1.30/USD) representing approximately 77.0% ownership.

The proceeds of the Debenture Offering will be used for the Company's Condor Gold Project, in-country working capital in Ecuador, and as additional working capital of the Company. The Debenture Offering is subject to approval of the TSX Venture Exchange and all securities issued under the Debenture Offering will be subject to a statutory four-month hold period from the date of issuance. No finders fees will be paid in connection with the Debenture Offering.

About Ecuador Gold and Copper Corp.

Ecuador Gold and Copper Corp. is a Canadian exploration and mining company focused on its gold and copper mineral properties located in the Province of Zamora-Chinchipe in southern Ecuador. The Company has completed a Preliminary Economic Assessment of its Santa Barbara Gold and Copper Project dated May 29, 2015, and is currently listed on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol "EGX". For additional information, please visit us at www.ecuadorgoldandcopper.com.

For further information please contact:

Heye Daun

President, Chief Executive Officer and Director

Telephone: +1-604-687 2038 (Vancouver Office)

Email: hdaun@ecuadorgoldandcopper.com

Cautionary Note

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Not for distribution to U.S. Newswire Services or for dissemination in the United States. Any failure to comply with this restriction may constitute a violation of U.S. securities laws.

SOURCE: Ecuador Gold & Copper Corp.
By Steve Scherer ROME (Reuters) - The head of Egypt's independent union of street vendors reported Italian graduate student Giulio Regeni to police a few weeks before he disappeared and was murdered, an Egyptian prosecutor said in Rome. The body of Regeni, 28, was found on the side of a roadway on the outskirts of Cairo on Feb. 3, more than a week after he vanished. The body showed signs of torture, including cigarette burns, cuts and contusions. Government and security services deny ever taking Regeni into custody. But security and intelligence sources told Reuters in April he had been arrested by police outside a Cairo metro station on Jan. 25 and was taken to a Homeland Security compound. Rome's chief prosecutor Giuseppe Pignatone and Egyptian general prosecutor Nabeel Sadek met for the third time this year on Thursday and Friday to exchange information collected during their respective investigations. Sadek "said that he confirmed that Cairo police, on Jan. 7, 2016, received a report from the head of the independent union of street vendors on Giulio Regeni," according to a joint statement by prosecutors released on Friday. "Afterward the police carried out checks on (Regeni's) activity. After the checks, which lasted three days, no activity of interest to national security was discovered and, as a consequence, the checks were stopped," the statement said. Regeni had been researching independent labor unions in Egypt for his doctorate studies at Cambridge University, and had been in contact with the leaders of the street vendors' union. COMMITMENT TO "THE TRUTH" In April, Italy recalled its ambassador to Egypt for consultations in protest against Egypt's failure to hand over evidence related to Regeni's death after the first meeting between Rome and Cairo prosecutors. On Friday, Sadek "illustrated and delivered an ample, complete and in-depth report on the cell phone traffic in the area where Giulio Regeni disappeared and where his body was found," the statement said. The cell phone traffic data had been sought by Rome investigators for months. But another piece of evidence requested by the Italians - CCTV footage from the metro station where Regeni was last seen - was still not provided. The statement said there was a "common commitment" to overcome "technical obstacles" in recovering the video, without elaborating. The two prosecutors also said they renewed their commitment to exchange information and find the truth about Regeni's death. Sadek also said he was willing to meet Regeni's parents to reassure them he was trying to get to the bottom of "such a serious crime". Italy has significant economic interests in Egypt, including the giant offshore Zohr gas field, which is being developed by Italy's state energy producer Eni. Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has also sought to be Egypt's main political partner in Europe, offering to be "a bridge" to the region for Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. (Reporting by Steve Scherer)
Space X founder and chief executive Elon Musk says the investigation into the Falcon 9 rocket which exploded during a routine filling operation is the most complicated in the companys history.

Still working on the Falcon fireball investigation, he tweeted early Friday. Turning out to be the most difficult and complex failure we have ever had in 14 years.

Still working on the Falcon fireball investigation. Turning out to be the most difficult and complex failure we have ever had in 14 years.  Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 9, 2016

He added that there was no apparent heat source and engineers were not present when the incident took place, before appealing to NASA, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the U.S. Air Force for support and advice. SpaceXs official Twitter account asked those with audio, photos or videos of the explosion to get in touch.

If you have audio, photos or videos of our anomaly last week, please send to report@spacex.com. Material may be useful for investigation  SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 9, 2016

The rocket, which exploded on September 1, destroyed a satellite Facebook was planning to use to offer Internet access in parts of Africa. As Im here in Africa, Im deeply disappointed to hear that SpaceXs launch failure destroyed our satellite that would have provided connectivity to so many entrepreneurs and everyone else across the continent, Mark Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook hours after the incident.

The explosion marks a blemish on SpaceXs record, which had been clean since another Falcon 9 was lost during a launch in June of last year.
By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - SpaceX founder and chief Elon Musk said on Friday he was unsure why one of the companys Falcon rockets burst into flames on its Florida launch pad last week, destroying both the rocket and an Israeli communications satellite it was due to lift into orbit. Still working on the Falcon fireball investigation. Turning out to be the most difficult and complex failure we have ever had in 14 years, Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur who is also the chief executive of Telsa Motors, wrote on Twitter. A SpaceX-led accident investigation is underway, overseen by the Federal Aviation Administration's Commercial Space Transportation office. A massive fireball enveloped the rocket on Sept. 1 as it was being fueled for a routine test of its first stage. The rocket was scheduled to blast off two days later. The rockets nine engines had not yet ignited for a test firing when a fireball engulfed the upper stage. There was no apparent heat source, Musk said on Friday. The accident destroyed the $200 million communications satellite owned by Israel-based Space Communication, which was going to be used by Facebook and Eutelsat to expand internet access in Africa. Hawthorne, California-based SpaceX has not yet said how much damage was done to its launch pad, located at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. SpaceX has backlog of more than 70 launches for commercial and government customers, worth more than $10 billion. The rocket that was destroyed was the second of 29 Falcon 9 rockets to fail. It took SpaceX about three weeks to identify the likely cause of its previous accident, which occurred on June 28, 2015. The problem was traced to a faulty bracket, which was holding a bottle of helium inside the rockets upper stage. When the strut broke about two minutes after liftoff, the upper-stage liquid oxygen tank over-pressurized and ruptured, triggering an explosion. SpaceX replaced thousands of struts throughout its fleet and had successfully flown nine times before last weeks failure. "We remain fully confident in the results of (that) investigation ... The current investigation has no bearing on this," SpaceX spokesman Dex Torricke-Barton wrote in an email to Reuters. SpaceX's next flight had been slated for later this month from a second launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. We have confidence that SpaceX will resolve the matter and when they do we will be ready to launch, SpaceXs customer, Iridium Communications Inc, told Reuters on Friday. SpaceX said last week it was looking to shift its Florida launches to a nearly completed pad at NASAs Kennedy Space Center, adjacent to its Cape Canaveral site. (Reporting by Irene Klotz; Editing by Tom Brown)
elon musk falcon 9 rocket launchpad explosion getty uslaunchreport 4x3

A little more than a week after SpaceX's launchpad rocket explosion, tech entrepreneur Elon Musk  the aerospace company's founder, CEO, and CTO  has hinted at how trying its investigation has become.

"Still working on the Falcon fireball investigation," Musk wrote on Twitter early Friday morning. "Turning out to be the most difficult and complex failure we have ever had in 14 years."

The cause of the September 1 mishap isn't yet known, but experts say the incident will hamper SpaceX's ambitious launch schedule.

"It typically takes nine to 12 months for people to return to flight. That's what the history is," Tory Bruno, CEO of United Launch Alliance, told Reuters reporter Irene Klotz.

And the ramifications will extend well beyond SpaceX's walls, says Wayne Hale, an engineer, aerospace consultant, and NASA's former space-shuttle program director.

"It sets back the whole industry," Hale told Business Insider, adding that such accidents remind people of the "risky business" of launching rockets. Hale also said the blast leads "to the perception that folks aren't doing their jobs quite as well as they could" in the spaceflight industry.

SpaceX declined to respond on the record to Hale's comments and did not immediately respond to a question about Bruno's comments on the potentially lengthy nature of the investigation.

However, John Logsdon, a space policy expert and historian at George Washington University's Space Policy Institute, told Business Insider that Bruno's comment is based on past experience with other rockets, not SpaceX's.

"Until [the] investigation finds cause, all anyone (like Bruno) can do is informed-by-experience speculation," Logsdon wrote in an email to Business Insider.

Other industry experts have expressed some measured optimism in the fallout of SpaceX's latest failure. Samantha Masunaga at The Los Angeles Times reported on September 1:

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"Bill Ostrove, an aerospace and defense analyst at Forecast International, said SpaceX's reliability with the Falcon 9 is 93%, which is 'right in the ballpark' of the industry average of 95%."

Michael Blades, a senior industry analyst for aerospace and defense at Frost & Sullivan, also told The LA Times:

"The investment [in private space efforts] will still happen. I don't think the technology is in jeopardy. It's just going to be a bump in the road."

Investigating the fireball

The explosion happened on Sept. 1 at 9:07 a.m., just a few minutes before the 229-foot-tall Falcon 9 rocket was supposed to briefly test-fire its engines.

At that moment, the rocket catastrophically blew up at a launchpad called Space Launch Center 40, or SLC-40, leading to a giant fireball and several smaller explosions.

No one was hurt during the blast, which destroyed Facebook's $200 million Amos-6 satellite  a device that was supposed to help provide internet service to the developing world.

The blast reportedly shattered windows nearby, knocked sliding doors off people's homes farther away, and was heard as far as 30 miles from SLC-40, according to local Florida TV stations.

SpaceX would not disclose the damage to SLC-40 and declined Business Insider's request for the company's own photos and video of the accident.

However, the damage could be worse than meets the eye, according to a source who's employed at a company that does work at Cape Canaveral.

The source  who asked to remain anonymous because of security concerns  told Business Insider that he has driven by SLC-40, as have his colleagues, and says it appears that a lot of the rocket's kerosene-like fuel spilled out during the accident, leaking into crucial launchpad structures.

"The foundation of these structures are from the mid '60s," the source wrote in a text message. "Concrete doesn't react well to being subjected to prolonged [heating]."

Musk's company also wouldn't comment on the $50 million reimbursement being sought by Spacecom, the maker of Facebook's satellite. "We don't disclose contract or insurance terms," a SpaceX spokesperson wrote in an email to Business Insider.

SpaceX's statement

launch pad 39a spacex florida

On September 2, SpaceX issued a full statement about the explosion.

Note that instances of "anomaly" refer to the explosion (though Musk wrote on Twitter that it's more of a fireball), and we've emphasized certain parts in bold:

"SpaceX has begun the careful and deliberate process of understanding the causes and fixes for yesterday's incident. We will continue to provide regular updates on our progress and findings, to the fullest extent we can share publicly.

"We deeply regret the loss of Amos-6, and safely and reliably returning to flight to meet the demands of our customers is our chief priority. SpaceX's business is robust, with approximately 70 missions on our manifest worth over $10 billion. In the aftermath of yesterday's events, we are grateful for the continued support and unwavering confidence that our commercial customers as well as NASA and the United States Air Force have placed in us.

"Overview of the incident:

Yesterday, at SpaceX's Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, an anomaly took place about eight minutes in advance of a scheduled test firing of a Falcon 9 rocket.

The anomaly on the pad resulted in the loss of the vehicle.

This was part of a standard pre-launch static fire to demonstrate the health of the vehicle prior to an eventual launch.

At the time of the loss, the launch vehicle was vertical and in the process of being fueled for the test. At this time, the data indicates the anomaly originated around the upper stage liquid oxygen tank. Per standard operating procedure, all personnel were clear of the pad. There were no injuries.

"To identify the root cause of the anomaly, SpaceX began its investigation immediately after the loss, consistent with accident investigation plans prepared for such a contingency. These plans include the preservation of all possible evidence and the assembly of an Accident Investigation Team, with oversight by the Federal Aviation Administration and participation by NASA, the United States Air Force and other industry experts. We are currently in the early process of reviewing approximately 3000 channels of telemetry and video data covering a time period of just 35-55 milliseconds.

"As for the Launch Pad itself, our teams are now investigating the status of SLC-40. The pad clearly incurred damage, but the scope has yet to be fully determined. We will share more data as it becomes available. SpaceX currently operates 3 launch pads  2 in Florida and 1 in California at Vandenberg Air Force Base. SpaceX's other launch sites were not affected by yesterday's events. Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Air Force Base is in the final stages of an operational upgrade and Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center remains on schedule to be operational in November. Both pads are capable of supporting Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches. We are confident the two launch pads can support our return to flight and fulfill our upcoming manifest needs.

"Again, our number one priority is to safely and reliably return to flight for our customers, as well as to take all the necessary steps to ensure the highest possible levels of safety for future crewed missions with the Falcon 9. We will carefully and thoroughly investigate and address this issue."

NASA's statement

spacex dragon spacecraft GettyImages 494548549

Business Insider also contacted NASA about any potential disruptions to its Commercial Crew Program, through which SpaceX and Boeing are designing, building, and testing spacecraft to launch astronauts to the International Space Station.

The ultimate goal of CCP is to replace the astronaut-launching ability of the Space Shuttle program, ended in mid-2011, and prevent the space agency from having to pay Russia billions of dollars for the privilege.

NASA spokesperson Tabatha Thompson told Business Insider on September 2 (emphasis added):

"NASA remains confident in our commercial partners and in the goals of the Commercial Crew Program to take astronauts to and from low-Earth orbit. It is too early to know whether Thursday's incident will impact their development schedules. Spacecraft and launch vehicles designed for the Commercial Crew Program must meet NASA's stringent safety criteria before being certified to launch crews into space. Successfully meeting those requirements has always taken precedence over schedule.

"Both companies working with the Commercial Crew Program are required to carry numerous additional safeguards including a launch abort system that can be activated while the rocket is still on the launch pad. Those systems must be proven in flight tests before NASA will certify them for missions carrying astronauts. SpaceX tested its launch abort system from the pad successfully in May 2015. Both SpaceX and Boeing plan to further test launch abort systems in 2017.

"NASA and our partners remain committed to meeting the goals of the Commercial Crew Program."

NOW WATCH: Watch the dramatic moment SpaceX rocket explodes





More From Business Insider


Elon Musk says the SpaceX rocket that blew up into a fireball on a Cape Canaveral launch pad is proving to be the most complex failure the firm has faced in 14 years.

The Falcon 9 rocket blew up on September 1, destroying a Spacecom communications satellite which included a Facebook project designed to expand internet access in sub-Saharan Africa.

In a Tweet Friday, Musk outlined the challenge facing the investigation which involves NASA, the Air Force and the Federal Aviation Administration.

As the company tries to piece together what went wrong, SpaceX asked people with audio, photos or videos of the incident to forward the materials to the company.

Shortly after the accident, SpaceX CEO Musk said the explosion happened when propellant was being loaded but the actual root cause has yet to be determined.

Today Musk said there is still no obvious cause.

Musk also used Twitter to ask anyone for support and advice from people, particularly those who had recordings of the event.

Israel's Space Communication, who lost the satellite in the inferno, said Sunday it could seek $50 million or a free flight from SpaceX.

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In a final tweet Musk said he would return to working on a blog posting updating on Tesla's autopilot software tomorrow.







More From CNBC


By Bruno Federowski SAO PAULO, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Latin American currencies and stocks slumped on Thursday, weighed down by concerns over North Korea's latest nuclear test and hawkish comments by a U.S. Federal Reserve policymaker.

Traders scurried for the safety of the U.S. dollar at market open after North Korea announced it had conducted its fifth nuclear test.

The search for safe havens accelerated following a speech by Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren, who said the U.S. central bank increasingly faces risks if it waits too much longer to raise rates.

His remarks rekindled expectations that the Fed could tighten policy soon after a batch of surprisingly weak economic figures triggered a collapse of bets on a September rate hike.

Most Latin American currencies dropped more than 1 percent, with the Colombian peso weakening more than its peers as prices of crude oil, a key export and source of tax revenue, fell below $49 per barrel.

The Brazilian real retreated about 2 percent to the greenback as traders worried that newly inducted President Michel Temer could struggle to find support for painful austerity measures among both voters and lawmakers.

Central bank figures showing strong outflows last week also fostered concerns that expectations of a flurry of foreign capital following the impeachment of Temer's predecessor, Dilma Rousseff, could have been overly optimistic.

Nearly all shares in Brazil's benchmark Bovespa stock index fell. Pulpmakers Suzano Papel e Celulose SA and Fibria Celulose SA were the only gainers, with the weaker real boosting the export-heavy sector.

Shares in Usinas Siderurgicas de Minas Gerais fell about 1 percent after its board approved the terms of a debt renegotiation deal with banks and bondholders involving 92 percent of the steelmaker's total debt.

Key Latin American stock indexes and currencies at 1500 GMT: Stock indexes daily % YTD % change change Latest MSCI Emerging Markets 909.56 -1.91 16.77 MSCI LatAm 2407.30 -3.88 36.88 Brazil Bovespa 58911.16 -2.19 35.90 Mexico IPC 46769.51 -1.37 8.82 Chile IPSA 4088.64 -0.43 11.10 Chile IGPA 20334.58 -0.35 12.03 Argentina MerVal 16135.65 -1.95 38.20 Colombia IGBC 10364.75 -0.9 21.26 Venezuela IBC 11993.15 0.06 -17.79 Currencies daily % YTD % change change Latest Brazil real 3.2642 -1.69 20.92 Mexico peso 18.8600 -0.95 -8.64 Chile peso 670.5 -0.97 5.85 Colombia peso 2903.09 -2.04 9.17 Peru sol 3.385 -0.59 0.86 Argentina peso (interbank) 15.0700 0.00 -13.85 Argentina peso (parallel) 15.24 0.26 -6.36 (Reporting by Bruno Federowski; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)
BRATISLAVA, Sept 9 (Reuters) - The euro zone's bailout fund has not discussed the provision of financial aid to Italian banks, the head of the fund said on Friday, dismissing reports that the Italian government had considered such a move to support its ailing banking sector.

"The ESM (European Stability Mechanism) has an instrument available to inject capital into banks," Klaus Regling told a news conference in the Slovak capital Bratislava at the end of a regular meeting of euro zone finance ministers.

"But there is no discussion at all to use this instrument. I don't see that at all happening. It would require a unanimous decision of the board of governors," Regling added.

La Stampa newspaper reported on Monday, citing three sources with knowledge of the matter, that Prime Minister Matteo Renzi was considering trying to tap the ESM to help Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena. An Italian government official denied the report immediately after its publication.

(Reporting by Francesco Guarascio; Editing by Gareth Jones)
By Ece Toksabay and Tulay Karadeniz ANKARA (Reuters) - Two of the European Union's top officials sought to smooth fractious relations with Turkey on Friday, vowing deeper trade ties and continued cooperation on migration, but there was no immediate end to a deadlock over visa-free travel for Turks. The visit by EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini and Enlargement Commissioner Johannes Hahn comes almost two months after a failed coup which tested Turkey's relationship with the 28-member bloc it aspires to join. Many Turks were incensed by what they saw as Europe's failure to show speedier solidarity over the July 15 putsch, in which more than 240 people died, accusing it of xenophobia and hostility to President Tayyip Erdogan. "I was, I think, the first in those dramatic hours to communicate publicly the need to strongly defend and support the democratically elected institutions," Mogherini told a joint news conference with Turkey's foreign and EU ministers, defending Brussels' reaction to the events. Turkey has long aspired to join the EU, but has accused Europeans of blocking progress because of bias against the Muslim nation. European officials have said Turkey still falls short of EU demands on basic rights and freedoms. Mogherini said the talks in Ankara had been "frank, open, respectful and constructive", touching on issues including deepening a customs union and supporting Turkey as it copes with an influx of some 3 million Syrian refugees. She said both sides had agreed to "talk more to each other and a little bit less about each other". One of the biggest obstacles in Turkey's relations with the EU is Ankara's refusal to recognize EU member Cyprus, the Mediterranean island divided for four decades between the Turkish-controlled north, recognized only by Ankara, and the Greek Cypriot south, which has international recognition. "We see a window of more than hope for this issue to be solved ... in the coming months," Mogherini said, adding both Turkey and the EU had a common interest in a solution. But there appeared less hope of an immediate solution to the deadlock over a deal to grant Turks visa-free access to Europe by October. Brussels first wants Turkey to change its anti-terrorism law, which it deems too broad for European standards. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said a concrete roadmap needed to be agreed for the deal, but Hahn said the timing would be up to the Turks. Turkey says its anti-terrorism law is needed to fight threats from Islamic State and Kurdish militants. The EU says the law has been used too broadly, pointing to the prosecution of journalists and academics. Hahn also said that internal preparations for discussions on upgrading a customs union with Turkey should be finalised by the end of the year and that negotiations should start in 2017. Turkey wants to upgrade its 20-year customs union with the EU to include agriculture and services. That could nearly double its trade with the bloc to $300 billion and make it the EU's third-largest trading partner, officials have said. (Writing by Nick Tattersall)
FBI: US Homicide Rate at 51-Year Low



(Larger graphic within the article)

By Ryan McMaken. June 15th, 2016

The US homicide rate in 2014, the most recent year available, was 4.5 per 100,000. The 2014 total follows a long downward trend and is the lowest homicide rate recorded since 1963 when the rate was 4.6 per 100,000. To find a lower homicide rate, we must travel back to 1957 when the total homicide rate hit 4.0 per 100,000.

Homicide rates were considerably higher in the United States during the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, but over the past 25 years, have fallen nearly continuously:

Ask the average American if crime is falling in the United States, however, and you're unlikely to hear about how homicide is at a 51-year low.

As Pew has reported in recent years, in fact, the American public is "unaware" that the homicide rate in the United States has fallen by 49 percent over the past twenty years. And while Pew doesn't report on it, it's also a safe bet that the public is also unaware that homicide rates have collapsed as total gun ownership in the United States has increased significantly. .......

In the pro-gun community, we already see the relationship between a steady reduction of homicides vs the steady increase in firearms ownership. This is something of course that the anti-gun people and the media choose to ignore, concentrating instead on high profile events such as mass shootings - not to mention the absurd emphasis on "assault weapons". There is no better deterrant against armed crime than an armed law abiding society.

"You don't have to be Jewish to fight by our side."

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* Greece, southern Europe partners call for action to boost growth

* Eurozone tells Athens it needs to get back to work, on reforms

* Greece says summit not intended to divide Europe (Updates throughout)

By Michele Kambas and Renee Maltezou

ATHENS, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and other leaders in southern Europe called for action to boost flagging growth in the bloc on Friday, saying they needed a bigger say in Europe.

But the Athens summit drew outright derision from some European Union policymakers who saw it as an attempt by Greece to ease pressure over the reforms needed under a multi-billion euro bailout accord.

At a euro zone finance ministers' meeting in Bratislava earlier on Friday, lenders called on Greece to stay on track to meet its obligations on reforms before getting any new aid money..

Holding court in Athens, Tsipras with his counterparts from France, Italy, Malta, Portugal, Cyprus and a representative of the Spanish government, said priorities of Europe needed a re-think.

The group is often referred to as "Club Med", even though Portugal is not on the Mediterranean.

"We need to take measures which spur growth and employment and which reinforce the feeling of security among European citizens," said Tsipras.

Flanked by European leaders, including French President Francois Hollande, he added: "We aspire to be an initiative of dialogue which seeks to unite Europe more, and not to divide it."

Friday's meeting was held against the backdrop of faltering growth in the bloc, a deepening migrant crisis and British plans to quit the EU.

EU leaders were scheduled to meet in Bratislava next week. At that meeting, Hollande said, leaders wanted to put forward ideas on security and defence, growth, and the migration crisis, which should not exclude the right of people to asylum.

"It is important ... (that) when the populists hope that Europe is going to fall apart that we should send out a message of unity and cohesion," said Hollande.

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Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said number-crunching needed a rethink. "Europe can't just continue reeling off rules, technicalities, fiscal (issues) and austerity," he said.

"The Europe of tomorrow must be based on its deeper values. A social Europe, of ideals and of virtue."

'TRICKS'

Greece has made a point of saying the Athens summit is not intended to drive a wedge within the bloc. The next meeting of the grouping was scheduled in Portugal, Tsipras said.

But this triggered derision in some quarters of the EU.

The summit in Athens drew criticism from German lawmaker Manfred Weber who chairs the European Peoples Party Group in the European parliament.

"Prime Minister Tsipras is up to his usual tricks again. What Europe needs now is unity and definitely not new attempts of division," German lawmaker Manfred Weber, who chairs the European Peoples Party Group in the European parliament, said in a statement.

He urged Athens to deliver on promised reforms under its third bailout.

"The fact that (French) President Hollande - probably for internal political reasons - and (Italian) Prime Minister Renzi are letting Mr. Tsipras manipulate them is not really a sign of responsibility," Weber said.

Greece signed up to a third international bailout in mid-2015 worth up to 86 billion euros, with the gradual release of aid contingent on financial reforms ranging from privatisations to changes to the energy market.

The country has already passed a raft of pension and tax reforms.

(Editing by Richard Balmforth)
By Jan Strupczewski and Francesco Guarascio

BRATISLAVA, Sept 9 (Reuters) - European Union finance ministers and central bank governors discussed on Friday the idea of a euro zone budget, called a "fiscal capacity", amid some scepticism if it was needed and under what conditions.

There was no agreement on any aspects of the idea, except that talks should continue.

"The majority agreed on the fact it is important to discuss these issues, and agreed it is not for tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. It takes some time," Slovak deputy finance minister Ivan Lesay told a news conference.

The idea of a euro zone budget has been around since the sovereign debt crisis in 2012 and is part of plans for further euro zone economic integration over the medium to long term.

It is seen as a necessary final stage of building a monetary union to provide a counterbalance, together with a euro zone treasury, to the monetary policy of the European Central Bank and as a way to help the single currency area absorb external economic and financial shocks.

But the issue is sensitive because it carries a risk that more fiscally prudent countries may end up bank-rolling spendthrift ones.

"There were very different opinions," Swedish Finance Minister Magdalena Andersson said on leaving the informal talks.

"Some countries are very enthusiastic whereas other countries were a lot less enthusiastic. So there is absolutely no agreement there should be a European fiscal capacity. We are not even close to talking about a timeline," she said.

Slovakia, which holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, outlined several options for the set-up of such a "fiscal capacity", also called "stabilisation function" in a paper prepared for the ministers.

"Some ministers seemed to be in favour of a stabilisation mechanism built around an unemployment scheme, others looked more towards investment-based mechanisms," European Commission Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis told reporters.

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"But there were also some doubts expressed by some other ministers that this may not be the time to launch new initiatives," he said.

Officials said there was agreement among the ministers and central bankers that before a euro zone budget could be constructed, euro zone countries would have to act to restore mutual trust between themselves through respect to already existing rules on budget deficit and public debt.

"There was a common view in the meeting that any additional initiative requires mutual trust among the countries that rules will be respected," said ECB Vice-President Vitor Constancio.

The Slovak paper prepared for the discussions noted that a euro zone budget could improve compliance with EU fiscal rules, now often disregarded and not enforced, because the money could be made available only to countries that obey the rules .

The fund could take the form of a European Unemployment Insurance Scheme, the paper said, complementing national unemployment plans. Under the scheme, countries that accumulate surpluses in economic good times could spend the money to help cover deficits in countries in recession.

Another option would be an investment fund that would finance large, pan-European infrastructure projects, similar to the European Fund for Strategic Investment now in operation, the paper said.

(Additional reporting by Jason Hovet, Tatiana Jancarikova and Shadia Nasralla in Bratislava)
BRUSSELS, Sept 9 (REUTERS) - EU antitrust regulators have halted their scrutiny of Dow Chemical Co and DuPont's proposed merger while the companies provide more information regarding their $130 billion deal.

The European Commission opened a full investigation into the case in August, concerned that the deal to create the world's largest integrated crop protection and seeds company may reduce competition in these sectors as well as certain petrochemicals.

"The Commission has stopped the clock in its in-depth investigation into the proposed merger between Dow and Dupont," a spokesman said.

"This procedure in merger investigations is activated if the parties do not provide an important piece of information that the Commission has requested from them."

The EU antitrust enforcer will set a new deadline for its investigation once it has received the required data. DuPont and Dow Chemicals, which aim to close the deal in early 2017, had previously offered concessions which regulators said were insufficient.

The agrichemicals industry has seen a wave of consolidation in recent months. ChemChina may seek EU approval next week for its $43 billion takeover of Swiss pesticides and seeds group Syngenta, according to a person familiar with the matter.

German pharmaceutical and crop chemicals manufacturer Bayer AG is also pursuing U.S. peer and world No. 1 seeds company Monsanto Co.

(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle)
By Barbara Lewis

LONDON (Reuters) - EU regulators are poised to propose a binding target to cut energy use by 30 percent by 2030, a more ambitious goal than previously discussed, according to a draft document seen by Reuters.

The draft law, which the European Commission is expected to publish next month, is part of a set of proposals to implement 2030 goals on cutting emissions, increasing renewable energy use and preventing energy waste.

A preliminary agreement was reached in October 2014 when the 28 member states agreed to increase energy savings by at least 27 percent compared with business as usual.

Since then, political momentum for a deeper cut has grown as using less energy curbs dependency on imports from nations such as Russia, while creating jobs in construction and insulation.

Following Britain's vote in June to leave the European Union, the EU executive has also been keen to promote the social benefits of its policies.

Climate and Energy Commissioner Miguel Arias Canete has said every 1 percent improvement in energy efficiency could lift 7 million people out of energy poverty because their homes would be better insulated with lower energy bills.

A draft seen by Reuters refers to a 2030 30 percent binding headline target on energy efficiency. The document has yet to be agreed formally by the EU Commissioners.

The 30 percent compares with an existing target of 20 percent for 2020, which initially was not binding and the bloc was far from achieving until a law in 2012 forced progress.

The European Commission said it could not comment on an unpublished document.

EU sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there was broad support in the Commission for the 30 percent binding target, which had the related benefit of cutting emissions because less energy would be burnt.

They said the Commission was keen to use the target as a step towards implementing the Paris Agreement on climate change, especially as the United States and China have beaten the European Union to ratifying the deal.

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A proposal to share out a 2030 target to cut greenhouse gases by at least 40 percent was published in July. It has to be debated by member states and the European Parliament before it can become law.

Non-governmental organizations have pushed for an efficiency goal of 40 percent, which is supported by the building insulation industry and efficiency campaigners.

"Going for the higher numbers would significantly increase the benefits. So it's a case of job half done," said Brook Riley, a campaigner at Friends of the Earth Europe.

EU sources said the Commission proposal struck a balance given concerns about the extra upfront costs, including deeper renovation, of a much higher goal.

(Editing by Hugh Lawson)
(Recasts with more ministers' quotes, background)

By Tatiana Jancarikova and Shadia Nasralla

BRATISLAVA, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Spain and Portugal must still tackle their excessive budget gaps even though they escaped being fined in July for breaking European Union deficit limits, euro zone finance ministers said on Friday.

"I expect a very brief discussion and especially effective action from our Portuguese and Spanish colleagues," Slovak Finance Minister Peter Kazimir, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, told reporters on entering a meeting of finance ministers.

At the recommendation of the European Commission, the EU decided not to penalise Madrid and Lisbon for not reducing the deficits to below the EU limit of 3 percent of gross domestic product.

The decision, however, coming after similar leniency for serial deficit-limits offender France last year, has raised fresh doubts whether EU budget rules, sharpened during the recent sovereign debt crisis, can ever be enforced.

But with populist and euro sceptic movements gaining support across Europe and elections in Germany, France, the Netherlands and a referendum in Italy all scheduled for the next 12 months, some officials would like to see the rules relaxed further, rather than enforced more strictly.

The leaders of Greece, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Malta and Cyprus meet later in Athens and are expected to push for tight budget rules to be eased.

One of the arguments for scrapping fines was that Spain has been effectively without a government since last December because of two inconclusive parliamentary elections.

Mediocre growth, which could be further damaged by cuts in public spending, was another and the sentiment seemed to be shared by many ministers.

"At a time when we have weak growth one should not throttle that growth through economic sanctions," Austrian Finance Minister Joerg Schelling said.

Under EU rules, Spain and Portugal must take effective action to reduce their excessive budget deficits by October 15, which is also a deadline for presenting to the Commission draft budget plans for 2017 for all euro zone countries.

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But since Spain is still run by a caretaker government, which is in no position to make binding budget proposals, the ministers will discuss how the rules could accommodate that.

"We'll discuss the procedural side of things, what should the government do when it's really a caretaker government," the chairman of euro zone finance ministers Jeroen Dijsselbloem told reporters before the meeting.

But he noted Madrid would have to deal with the deficit sooner or later.

"Any new government in Spain will still have to get the budget back on track, independent of the decisions of this summer," he said. "The budgetary problems of Spain haven't evaporated, they are still there but it will be for a new government to pick up on that, get back on track." (Additional reporting by Jason Hovet, writing by Jan Strupczewski Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)
LONDON, Sept 9 (Reuters) - European stock markets fell on Friday, weighed down by a drop in the shares of healthcare companies, while the latest nuclear test conducted by North Korea also rattled markets.

The pan-European STOXX 600 index was down 0.4 percent in early trading, adding to a pullback from the previous session after some investors expressed disappointment at the fact that the European Central Bank (ECB) had not discussed an extension of the timetable for its economic stimulus programme.

The STOXX Europe 600 Healthcare index underperformed to shed 0.7 percent, with Novo Nordisk down 1.7 percent after JP Morgan cut its rating on the stock to "neutral" from "overweight".

World stock markets in general were also lower after North Korea conducted its fifth nuclear test on Friday.

(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta; Editing by Gareth Jones)
Sydney (AFP) - Circular stone foundations discovered on an island in Western Australia suggest that Aborigines were building "houses" up to 9,000 years ago, a researcher said Friday.

University of Western Australia archaeologists discovered the series of knee-high stone rings on Rosemary Island in the Dampier Archipelago, an area rich in Aboriginal rock art, several years ago.

But they were only recently dated to being 8,000 to 9,000 years old, meaning the island is home to one of Australia's oldest settlements.

"Excavations on Rosemary Island, one of the outer islands, have uncovered evidence of one of the earliest known domestic structures in Australia, dated between 8,000 and 9,000 years ago," researcher Jo McDonald said in a statement this week.

"This is an astounding find and has not only enormous scientific significance but will be of great benefit to Aboriginal communities in the area, enhancing their connections to their deep past and cultural heritage."

Professor McDonald, director of the university's Centre for Rock Art Research and Management, said the "houses" would probably have been covered with roofs made from plants or skins.

The spaces were divided up, with one area apparently used for grinding seeds while another held the remains of shells gathered for food. There were also engravings on several of the boulders.

McDonald said the find suggested that Aboriginal people had occupied the island before and through the last ice age but that as rising sea levels flooded what were once coastal plains, they were forced to live in more cramped spaces.

"The fact that people that long ago are thinking about how they can better deal with space... it certainly challenges most people's idea of what a hunter-gatherer is," McDonald told AFP on Friday.

The researchers hope their work, which is in collaboration with the Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation, will help the site gain World Heritage listing.

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The Dampier Archipelago -- home to a major port catering to miners shipping out iron ore and other minerals -- contains one of the densest concentrations of rock engravings in Australia.

The area, which is made up of 42 islands as well as reefs, shoals, channels and straits, is also the traditional home of five Aboriginal language groups.

"We anticipate that this extraordinary rock art estate will produce some spectacular insights into what life was really like in deep history," McDonald said.
Camille Grammer is shaking up the new season of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, and it's already promising to be a juicy one.

ET chatted with the 48-year-old reality star at New York Fashion Week on Thursday, when she supported her 14-year-old daughter, Mason Grammer, who walked the runway for designer Malan Breton. Mason's father is Camille's ex-husband, actor Kelsey Grammer.

Great job.. So proud of you my girl @mason.grammer @malanbreton #nyfw #malanbreton #nyfwss17 @douglasjsalons A photo posted by Camille Grammer (@therealcamille) on Sep 8, 2016 at 3:25pm PDT

PICS: Genetic Jackpot! Top Celebrity Kids Turned Models

"This is something, you know, it is all hers -- nothing to do with me or my ex-husband," Camille proudly told ET. "This is her own thing and I am very proud of her."

Camille confirmed she's currently filming for season seven of RHOBH. A production source tells ET that while Camille is back on the show, she's not a full-time cast member. Currently, the cast remains Lisa Vanderpump, Lisa Rinna, Kyle Richards, Erika Jayne, Eileen Davidson and Dorit Kemsley. The mother of two hasn't been a full-time cast member of the Bravo reality show since 2013, but has made appearances in almost every season since.

"We are filming now," Camille said, though she was careful to not give away too much. "We are in the throes of it now, and we had a fun party last week in Malibu, so you will see that in the show and that was really exciting."

Last week, Camille posted pics of a Great Gatsby-themed soiree she had in Malibu, California, and guests included her fellow RHOBH star, Kyle, as well as Kyle's husband, Mauricio Umansky.

Thank you @kylerichards18 and @mumansky18 for an amazing night. Thank you for everything  Malibu party. Amazing house and views. A photo posted by Camille Grammer (@therealcamille) on Sep 3, 2016 at 12:10am PDT

What a way to celebrate with these lovely diva's  Malibu A photo posted by Camille Grammer (@therealcamille) on Sep 2, 2016 at 10:56pm PDT

Camille is, of course, bringing the drama to RHOBH's highly anticipated seventh season.

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"There is drama this year, and there is a different type of drama," she says. "I don't know, I don't think that I can say too much ... but um, our show never lacks it. I can say that it never lacks the drama."

WATCH: Yolanda Hadid Quit 'Real Housewives of Beverly Hills' Due to Demotion

ET also spoke with Camille in July, when she gushed about filming RHOBH and her famous girlfriends.

"Oh, I love being a part of it for what, it's gonna be six, seven seasons? Oh my God, that's a long time!" she acknowledged. "I call it my dysfunctional family, working with these girls -- but no, they're wonderful. I miss them when I'm not around them. They're fun."

Watch below:

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By Dan Freed

NEW YORK, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Multinational financial companies met on Friday with U.S. and Cuban officials to discuss making financial transactions between the two countries easier but reported no concrete signs of progress.

Speaking at a luncheon hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Central Bank of Cuba First Vice President Irma Martinez Castrillon said global financial institutions are afraid of facing U.S. sanctions for allowing money to move through Cuba. She said the financial sector has lagged other industries in embracing the thawing of relations between the United States and Cuba.

"In terms of policy and diplomacy, there has been great progress but in the financial sector there is a great deal of fear," she said.

The luncheon, which was open to the press, followed a private "workshop" where the U.S. executives asked questions of U.S. and Cuban officials. Representatives from General Electric Co, Credit Suisse Group AG, Western Union Co and Visa Inc were among the roughly 100 people in attendance at the luncheon.

"We frankly still see hesitance on the part of U.S. international banks" in processing financial transactions, said Mark Feierstein, a senior White House official who spoke at the lunch. Martinez Castrillon said there were more companies in attendance at Friday's workshop than a similar one held recently in Cuba.

U.S. President Barack Obama loosened financial services restrictions with Cuba earlier this year, shortly before his historic visit to the island. But banks have been slow on the uptake, burned by past sanctions for breaking the embargo.

In October 2015, for example, U.S. regulators slapped Credit Agricole with a $787 million fine for violating sanctions against several countries including Cuba.

Only one bank, Stonegate, has so far issued U.S. credit cards that can be used in Cuba, so most American travelers bring wads of cash when they visit. Companies complain they cannot get credit to do business with Cuba.

Former U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, who has been leading efforts by the Chamber of Commerce to promote U.S.-Cuban business relations, cited "clarification" and "relationship-building," as Friday's major accomplishments.

(Reporting by Dan Freed in New York; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
(Samsung Galaxy Note 7AP)

Samsungs nightmare just keeps getting worse, as reports continue to spread that some Galaxy Note 7 smartphones are equipped with batteries that might explode.

Now, the Federal Aviation Administration is strongly advising that passengers not turn on or charge their Samsung Galaxy Note 7 smartphones onboard any aircraft, amid concerns that they might explode.

Heres the FAAs full advisory:

In light of recent incidents and concerns raised by Samsung about its Galaxy Note 7 devices, the Federal Aviation Administration strongly advises passengers not to turn on or charge these devices on board aircraft and not to stow them in any checked baggage.

Thats one more black eye for Samsung, as airline passengers are now officially discouraged from using their shiny new Note 7 devices while flying, let alone placing them in a checked suitcase.

Its anyones guess how a Galaxy Note 7 might be treated at an airport security check, where everything from bottles of water to toothpaste tubes are viewed with suspicion.

In any case, it couldnt happen at a worse time for Samsung, just one day after Apple announced its new iPhone 7.

Samsung has a recall program in place where you can send your Galaxy Note 7 in for a full replacement. In the meantime, new shipments of the Galaxy Note 7 will be delayed and given additional quality testing.

Samsung did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

NOW WATCH: Samsung is recalling its newest smartphone because of exploding batteries

More From Business Insider
Oslo (AFP) - Facebook was confronted Friday with fierce indignation in Norway as the nation's top newspaper, the prime minister and users voiced outrage over the network's decision to censor a historic Vietnam War photo.

Facebook has been deleting from users' pages, including that of Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg, the 1972 picture of a naked Vietnamese girl running from a napalm attack, one of the war's defining images.

Taken by Vietnamese photographer Nick Ut Cong Huynh for Associated Press, the picture was honoured with the Pulitzer Prize.

"Facebook is taking the wrong road when it censors photos like this. This contributes to blocking freedom of expression," the prime minister wrote on her Facebook page early Friday, in a comment that quickly received thousands of "likes".

The affair began several weeks ago after Norwegian author Tom Egeland published a post about war photos, illustrated by the iconic picture. It was promptly deleted by Facebook.

Egeland's fans rose to his defence and published the photo, posts which Facebook also deleted in line with its rules barring nudity.

In recent days, Facebook has continued to remove the photo and even suspended the accounts of other Norwegians who posted it.

Facebook's moves have sparked fierce reactions in Norway, an ardent defender of civil liberties.

"I appreciate the work done by Facebook and other media to stop images and content showing physical abuse and violence. It's important that we all contribute to the fight against violence and physical abuse of children," the prime minister's Facebook post said.

That post was deleted at midday, with the prime minister's office saying later Facebook had removed it.

- Front page photo -

Solberg re-posted the picture several hours later, this time with the nudity blacked out in protest and a plea to Facebook to "review its censorship policy and assume the responsibility befitting of a large company with a broad communication platform."

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Norway's biggest daily Aftenposten also shot back against Facebook's censorship by publishing the photo on its print front page on Friday, under Facebook's logo, accompanied by a two-page open letter to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

"I write you this letter because I'm concerned by the fact that the biggest media in the world is limiting freedoms instead of trying to broaden them, and because this is happening in a sometimes authoritarian fashion," editor-in-chief Espen Egil Hansen wrote under the headline "Dear Mark."

Aftenposten had also published the picture on its Facebook page several days previously. Facebook had asked it to take down the picture, but then deleted it before Aftenposten editors could respond to Facebook's request.

"I'm afraid we're becoming a society where the lowest common denominator determines what is shocking to the global population," Hansen told AFP.

"The information has to be as acceptable in a small village in Pakistan as in an intellectual milieu in Paris. This lowest common denominator is a very dangerous mechanism when it is implemented by the most influential editor-in-chief in the world," he said in reference to Zuckerberg.

The affair has taken on such proportions that the Norwegian Press Federation has asked the country's powerful pension fund, the world's largest sovereign wealth fund, to examine whether the censorship practice was in line with its ethical criteria for investments.

At the end of 2015, the fund owned 0.52 percent of Facebook.

This is not the first time Facebook has been accused of censorship, which is problematic because of its growing importance as a key channel of information for many people.

Facebook has in the past blocked several artworks.

The company is to go on trial in France after a schoolteacher accused it of censorship for blocking his account after he posted a photo of a painting by Gustave Courbet called "L'Origine du monde" (The Origin of the World) that shows a woman's genitals.

And earlier this year, a Danish lawmaker also complained that Facebook had removed her picture of the Copenhagen statue of the Little Mermaid because of its nudity rules.
Facebook has said that it will re-publish posts that include the iconic Vietnam War photo "The Terror of War" after facing criticism over its initial censorship of the image.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning photo at the heart of the controversy, taken in 1972 and showing a young girl running naked from a napalm attack, is one of the most recognized images from the war. But Facebook deleted a post using the image from Norwegian writer Tom Egeland, who published it as part of a discussion on wartime photography.

The response across Norway was swift. Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg posted the photo on her own page only to have Facebook also delete the post. And Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten criticized Facebook with a letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg that chastised him for censoring the photo.

At first, Facebook defended the decision to remove the photo, providing a statement to outlets including The Wall Street Journal that said it "is difficult to create a distinction between allowing a photograph of a nude child in one instance and not in others."

But now Facebook has changed its stance and has said that it will reinstate the image on Facebook where it was removed. In a statement provided to The Hollywood Reporter by a Facebook spokeswoman, the social networking giant also said that it would adjust its review algorithm to make sure the photo is not censored in the future. "We recognize the history and global importance of this image in documenting a particular moment in time," the statement reads.

The initial censoring of the photo comes in the midst of a wide-ranging debate over the role of Facebook in the media, even as Zuckerberg maintain that the social network is a technology company, not a media company. The discussion began to gain steam in May after reports that Facebook's trending topics section was biased against conservative media outlets. Facebook conducted an investigation into the allegations and found no evidence of bias.

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In August, Facebook removed its human editors for the feature and began to rely entirely on its algorithms to populate the section. Not long after the change, many users saw areport in the trending section that claimed Megyn Kelly had been fired from Fox.

Read Facebook's full statement about the decision to reinstate the photo here:

"After hearing from our community, we looked again at how our Community Standards were applied in this case. An image of a naked child would normally be presumed to violate our Community Standards, and in some countries might even qualify as child pornography. In this case, we recognize the history and global importance of this image in documenting a particular moment in time. Because of its status as an iconic image of historical importance, the value of permitting sharing outweighs the value of protecting the community by removal, so we have decided to reinstate the image on Facebook where we are aware it has been removed. We will also adjust our review mechanisms to permit sharing of the image going forward. It will take some time to adjust these systems but the photo should be available for sharing in the coming days. We are always looking to improve our policies to make sure they both promote free expression and keep our community safe, and we will be engaging with publishers and other members of our global community on these important questions going forward."
Dustin Moskovitz headshot

Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz has pledged $20 million to fight Donald Trump ahead of the November election.

In a blog post titled, "Compelled to Act," published on Thursday, Moskovitz announced that he and his wife, Cari Tuna, would donate to several Democratic organizations  including the Hillary Victory Fund and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee  citing the unprecedented nature of this year's presidential election.

"If Donald Trump wins, the country will fall backward, and become more isolated from the global community," Moskovitz wrote.

He added: "The Democratic Party, and Hillary Clinton in particular, is running on a vision of optimism, pragmatism, inclusiveness, and mutual benefit."

For the most part, political donations from Silicon Valley moguls have run the gamut during this election cycle, with Oracle's Larry Ellison and PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel boosting GOP candidates. Napster founder Sean Parker and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff have thrown their money behind Hillary Clinton.

Until now, Ellison had been the tech industry's biggest political donor. He gave $5 million to support Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida. Rubio dropped out of the GOP primary in March.

Moskovitz, who said he has not donated to nor endorsed a candidate in a presidential election before, summed up his reasons for doing it now:

"We hope these efforts make it a little more likely that Secretary Clinton is able to pursue the agenda shes outlined, and serve as a signal to the Republican Party that by running this kind of campaign  one built on fear and hostility  and supporting this kind of candidate, they compel people to act in response. We are not the only ones being activated so strongly during this election."

NOW WATCH: Trump has more support from veterans, except when it comes to nuclear weapons





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Samsung said it was working with the family to investigate the case. A local fire rescue said it was also investigating the cause of the vehicle fire.
Douma (Syria) (AFP) - Thousands of miles from the Rio Paralympics, a small group of wheelchair-bound Syrians lined up at the start of a race in the besieged town of Douma.

The unusual event was organised Thursday by the local Wafa Association, an NGO that assists handicapped people living in the rebel-held town, an opposition stronghold near the capital Damascus.

Surrounded by government troops since 2013, and subject to relentless regime shelling, Douma is not the likeliest spot for a makeshift wheelchair race.

But that did not stop around a dozen handicapped men, young and old, lining up outside Wafa's building in wheelchairs to participate.

Some had feet or legs amputated, while others were paralysed in parts of their lower body, injuries sustained in the shelling and bombardment that regularly rocks the rebel stronghold.

They waited impatiently for the signal to begin, before propelling themselves forward, pushing their wheels furiously as they raced along a tree-lined street, passing shops and food stalls and some partially-destroyed buildings.

Alongside the race stood curious bystanders, including children, who gawped as the racers went by.

The event was the first of its kind in Douma, and comes as Rio de Janeiro hosts the Paralympic Games, which includes for the first time a team of refugee competitors, among them Syrian swimmer Ibrahim al-Hussein.

The Douma race took place Thursday during an almost miraculous respite in the bombing -- which resumed again Friday killing at least two people and wounding dozens more.

The goal is "to search for meaning in our lives and boost our morale," said participant Mohamed al-Sheikh, in his 20s, who suffers from paralysis in his lower body.

"We hope there will be more activities like these. So long as we can use our brains, we can overcome our physical handicaps," added Abu Ahmad, in his 30s and similarly paralysed.

The participants sported white T-shirts emblazoned with the Wafa Association logo.

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"We helped rehabilitate those who suffered spinal cord injuries so they were able to use wheelchairs," said Abu Ali, a supervisor from the NGO.

The association says it has provided psychological support to 200 disabled people in Douma.

"We hope to organise other activities for them so that they could feel useful," Abu Ali added.

At the end of the race, participants received medals as a child waved the flag of the Syrian uprising.

According to Douma's medical centre, there were at least 126 amputations between August 2015 and July 2016.

The cluster bombs that have been dropped on the town and elsewhere in Syria are among the deadliest of the armaments, tending to damage the lower part of the body.

More than 290,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began with anti-government protests in March 2011.

By some estimates, one million people have been injured, with many suffering wounds that have left them permanently handicapped.

Douma has been among the most targeted opposition-held areas in Syria, with its residents also suffering shortages of basic goods caused by a lengthy government siege.

According to the UN, some 600,000 people in Syria are living under sieges, most imposed by government forces, though rebels and the Islamic State group also use the tactic.
From Esquire

UPDATE: On September 8, the St. Clair County Circuit Court found Peyton not guilty by reason of mental defect. The court remanded him to a state mental-health facility to receive a Least Restrictive Environment recommendation. According to his lawyer, Peyton will either be confined to a state hospital, placed in a mental-health group home, or be released to go home-possibly with stipulations. His defense team plans to then push for acquittal.

Tony Pruitt was in the middle of a shift at a tattoo parlor in Oxford, Alabama, when his cell phone rang. An FBI agent was on the other end, asking him to come to the St. Clair County Sheriff's Office in Pell City at 9:00 the next morning to answer a few questions.

"What's this about?" Tony demanded, his drawl deepening as his concern grew. He has lived in Alabama his whole life. His arms are covered in intricate inked sleeves of crosses and biblical phrases in Hebrew. He's an evangelical Christian, a firm supporter of the Second Amendment, a onetime long-haired member of a Christian rock band Ruach-Hebrew for "holy spirit"-and now a professional marksman. His most notable experience with law enforcement up to that point was helping the sheriff install 911 communication systems for the county when he worked as an electrical engineer.

The FBI agent reassured him that it wasn't a big deal. In fact, he said, Tony would "probably laugh" when he found out what this was all about.

The next morning, November 13, 2015, Tony arrived at the sheriff's office, a small clapboard building across the street from the county courthouse. He was led into a room by an FBI agent and an officer with the Northern Alabama Terrorism Task Force, a joint project between local and federal law enforcement with a focus on domestic and international terrorism. They showed him a screenshot of the Facebook page of a person named Usamah Anthony and asked if he'd seen it before. Tony replied that he didn't know any Muslims.

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The agents said they believed Peyton, Tony's mentally disabled son, might be involved.

Photo credit: Benedict Evans

Tony asked for a lawyer and was told that if he decided such action was necessary, the representative would have to be there that day. Their questions could not wait any longer.

The agent assured Tony they weren't trying to set him up. Overwhelmed and hoping that cooperation would clear up what he still thought was a misunderstanding, Tony agreed to allow the agents to search his home and question him and his children.

At their request, Tony took the agents to his home on the outskirts of Pell City to pick up Peyton, eighteen, and his daughter, Cassady, twenty-three. On the ride back to the sheriff's office, Cassady was afraid and kept saying she hadn't done anything wrong. Peyton, as usual, remained stoic.

The agents said they believed Peyton, Tony's mentally disabled son, might be involved.

At the office, Peyton, Tony, and Cassady were separated for individual questioning. Peyton, wearing a wrinkled blue T-shirt and a disheveled cardigan, was interrogated on his own-no Tony, no lawyer.

Tony says that Peyton has been diagnosed with mental retardation, autism, and attention deficit disorder. He functions at the level of an eight-year-old child. He's never lived on his own, has never had a job, and can't tie his own shoes. He lacks motor coordination and cannot button a shirt or put on a belt. He has unruly dark hair that he never combs and a vacant stare behind Coke-bottle glasses that he obsessively pushes up his nose. He speaks slowly, haltingly, and he has a tendency to rock his chair back and forth when he is anxious and to pace when he is excited.

Peyton was wary during the interview. When asked if he knew what a lawyer was, he said he wasn't sure. After signing away his right to an attorney, he was asked whether he knew a person named Usamah Anthony, based on records related to the case. The question made Peyton uncomfortable, and he froze under the pressure, drinking two bottles of water instead of responding.

Photo credit: Benedict Evans

Meanwhile, a team of FBI agents searched Tony's house-with his permission-atop a hill on a nine-acre pasture and wooded property five miles away, a converted mobile home set into a cement foundation. Tony says they confiscated Cassady's iPad, three household laptops, a PlayStation, two toy swords, and a paperback copy of Inside ISIS by journalist Benjamin Hall found on top of a dusty bookshelf.

Peyton's interview stretched on for four hours. When he was finally reunited with Tony, an agent informed them that the Sheriff was taking over the case and that Peyton was under arrest for providing support for an act of terrorism. They had evidence, the agent claimed, that Peyton had sent bomb-making instructions to someone he thought was a member of ISIS. Tony put his head in his hands and began to cry.

The recommended bail amount in Alabama for a Class C felony, the charge that Peyton was facing, is $2,500 to $15,000. The judge on duty that day assigned Peyton's bail at $1 million.

When Peyton was five, Tony, certain that something was wrong with his son, took him to a developmental psychologist at Children's Hospital in Birmingham to be evaluated. The resulting medical report described Peyton's difficulty focusing on tasks and his lack of motor coordination. When asked to draw a picture, he could draw only a single line. He was diagnosed with cognitive deficits and attention-deficit disorder.

This wasn't the family's first brush with disability. Their oldest child, Patrick, was a healthy boy; today, he's twenty-eight years old and lives with his wife and their three daughters in Texas. Cassady, however, suffered from a developmental impairment from an early age. Her case is less severe than Peyton's; today, she lives on her own, cooks her own meals, and works as a prep cook in a restaurant, though she cannot drive or manage a bank account.

Photo credit: Benedict Evans

At first, Tony took Peyton's diagnoses in stride, doing his best to keep his son's education on a steady path forward. Peyton was placed into special education at the local public school. But the program didn't have sufficient resources, according to Tony, and Peyton fell further behind. By law, Peyton's condition could have qualified him to receive one-on-one assistance, but Tony says such services were not offered. Teachers passed Peyton from grade to grade-a formality in special-needs education-but he never learned to multiply single-digit numbers. He wasn't a disciplinary problem; he was just barely there.

Frustrated with the lack of support, Tony pulled Peyton out of school in 2009-"he was bringing home seventh-grade homework but was at a second-grade level," Tony says-and began homeschooling him.

Peyton wasn't a disciplinary problem; he was just barely there.

In 2012, when Peyton was fifteen, Tony and his first wife-the mother of his three children-got divorced, and Tony received full custody. Until then he'd had a white-collar job, working as a government contractor on projects involving camera systems and outdoor warning sirens. But with two special-needs children to care for, he needed a more flexible job that allowed him to be at home more often. So he took lessons from the owner of a tattoo parlor and soon began working there part-time.

Photo credit: Benedict Evans

In 2013, Tony hired an elementary school teacher who worked with special-needs students to tutor Peyton three times a week in reading, writing, and math. Tony and she eventually fell in love and got married in March 2014. Tony and the children moved in with her. Shortly after, Patrick moved back into the house on the hill. Cassady and Peyton split their time between the two households.

According to Tony, spending time at his childhood home was Peyton's choice as much as anyone else's-he wanted computer games, not companions. There, Peyton slept during the day and stayed up at night, using two nearly broken computers to spend hours online.

As soon as Peyton was taken to the St. Clair County Jail in Pell City, Tony begged the sheriff, Terry Surles, to let him see his son. Surles, a barrel-chested Southern gentleman who's held his position for five terms and counting, allowed the two to meet in his office for an hour while he stood watch. Peyton insisted on sitting in Tony's lap and prattled on about what he would do when he got home as Tony sank deeper into desperation-how could his mentally handicapped son be accused of such atrocious behavior?

Tony returned to the jail the next day and spoke with a nurse who, through tear-soaked eyes, recounted how Peyton hadn't been able to fill out his paperwork naming his next of kin and medical conditions such as allergies. "He doesn't belong here," Tony recalls her and female jailors saying.

Nevertheless, Peyton remained in jail-in solitary confinement, not because he was a risk to others but because he was in danger among the general population. There, he had next to nothing in his cell. Tony's wife tried to bring Peyton coloring books so that he could have something to do, but her request was denied.

On December 22, 2015, a hearing to formally charge Peyton took place. The FBI was no longer leading the case; it handed over the matter to the state without giving Tony or Peyton a clear reason why. What was clear was that such a move is unusual: According to a 2014 report by Human Rights Watch and Columbia Law School, nearly five hundred individuals were prosecuted for terrorism or related offenses in U.S. federal courts between 2002 and 2011. Peyton is not the first mentally disabled person to face terrorism-related charges in the U.S.-the report outlines eight such cases in the ten years that it covers. But terrorism experts I spoke with said that it's atypical to file state charges against someone accused of colluding with terrorists, especially given Peyton's mental acuity. "When looking at ISIS in America, it's important to think of it as a spectrum," says Seamus Hughes, deputy director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University's Center for Cyber & Homeland Security. "Given the state-level charges and Peyton's apparent cognitive issues, he falls more in the category of a would-be ISIS misfit than a true ISIS recruit."

Hughes maintains a database of all U.S.-based ISIS recruits, and Peyton is not included. He says that Peyton's is "a bit of a tough case to look at" because of "the state charges, the mental issues."

Photo credit: Benedict Evans

St. Clair County's elected district attorney, Richard Minor, led the prosecution. Minor has deep roots in the community: His brother, Judge Robert J. Minor, sits on the Pell City court, as does Minor's brother-in-law Judge Philip Seay, who is scheduled to preside over Peyton's trial. Minor has spoken publicly about the dangers that the Internet and social media pose to the youth in his community. According to documents relating to the case, the prosecution seemed to be gathering evidence in support of the argument that Peyton is an ISIS-friendly Rain Man, mentally incapable of most things but extraordinarily gifted at one: terrorism.

During the preliminary hearing, Peyton sat on one side of the courtroom with his lead counsel, Carl Gibson Holladay, a public defender assigned to the trial earlier that month. Tony was there as well, dressed in a dark suit. He has a round, pale face with light eyelashes and eyes ringed with red. He has attended court each time Peyton has made an appearance.

The judge at the preliminary hearing, Alan C. Furr, heard from Thomas Dixon, the sheriff's chief investigator, who testified for the prosecution to support the allegations that Peyton was a terrorist. Under cross-examination, Dixon testified that he had no independent knowledge of anything Peyton had done, and that he was basing his testimony solely on Peyton's statement to the FBI. "I know what I was told, sir," he said.

The prosecution seemed to be gathering evidence in support of the argument that Peyton is an ISIS-friendly Rain Man, mentally incapable of most things but extraordinarily gifted at one: terrorism.

Holladay's goals that morning were twofold: First, he moved to dismiss the charges as unsubstantiated, arguing that the prosecution had not presented any evidence beyond the FBI interrogation. Second, he pushed to have Peyton's bond reduced, given his disability. Over the course of two hours, the court heard from Peyton's teachers, his caretakers, and the pastor from his church, who all addressed Peyton's mental conditions.

Judge Furr denied both of Holladay's motions. The terrorism charges moved forward.

Tony says that shortly after the preliminary hearing, he ran into Dixon, who had just testified against Peyton, outside of the jailhouse. He told Tony that putting his son in jail was just part of his job. Dixon put his hand on his chest and said, "If you could only see my heart. I have lost many nights of sleep thinking about you and your family." Tony says they prayed right there on the sidewalk.

Tony is fifty-one, has high cholesterol, and recently had malignant carcinomas excised from his back and ankle. "I need my kids prepared for life after Dad," he says. Peyton couldn't hit a nail with a hammer, let alone brush his teeth or buy groceries. So in the fall of 2014, Tony enrolled him at the E.H. Gentry Facility in Talladega, Alabama, a rehabilitation program for adults with sensory disabilities that focuses on independent living. Cassady had done well there in a vocational program a year earlier. Peyton, more dependent than his sister, was placed under twenty-four-hour supervision.

Gentry, on a tree-lined campus twenty miles southeast of Pell City, is a state-run facility that's part of the Alabama Institute for the Deaf and Blind. Republican governor Robert Bentley-whose fear of an ISIS attack within his state is so strong that he's proudly turned away Syrian refugees in need of a home-is an ex officio member of its board. (Bentley is currently embroiled in a fight against impeachment after it was revealed in March that he was having an affair with a senior advisor.)

Photo credit: Benedict Evans

Peyton was enrolled in three programs-Basic Academics, Independent Living, and Work. He also had access to a computer, and to the Internet. He'd always been drawn to antiauthoritarian sites: The hacking group Anonymous interested him because of its dedication to preventing animal cruelty. In an anime group, he was drawn into a conversation about the work performed by Russian hackers. Then he discovered ISIS.

In an interview I conducted with Peyton in March 2016, he gave two reasons for his newfound fascination with the terrorist group: "At Gentrythe staff would always watch the news in the mornings, and they talked a lot about Islam on the news." Also, he said, he liked to friend people from the "Friend Suggestions" feature, and a growing number of those people happened to be Muslims who opposed Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

Peyton had always been drawn to antiauthoritarian sites. Then he discovered ISIS.

According to records relating to the case, Peyton altered his Facebook page to fit a new persona. He deleted his non-Muslim friends and changed his listed name to Usamah Anthony, a hybrid of Osama and his own father's name. At the behest of some of his new online friends, he joined Wickr, an instant-messaging app popular with dissidents because of its strong encryption capabilities. Through chats conducted on both platforms, Peyton communicated with more than one person who claimed to be interested in or affiliated with ISIS.

According to someone close to the investigation, he professed that he wanted to enroll at a Tunisian university so that he could cross the border into Libya and join a terrorist group. He sent one recipient a link to an article from Inspire, Al Qaeda's official English-language magazine, that contained bomb-making instructions. These chats could be a linchpin for District Attorney Minor's case against him.

Many of Peyton's messages bear remarkable similarities to phrases and sentences found in articles floating around the Internet, according to someone close to the investigation: lines from Al-Baqara in the Quran, speeches by Chicago Imam Sheikh Mohamed Elimam, and quotes from Junaid Hussain, a notorious hacker and ISIS recruiter who died in August 2015. Whether Peyton understood the meaning behind the messages he allegedly sent is at the core of his defense.

On April 15, 2015, one of Peyton's instructors at Gentry, Debbie Gilliam, wrote an incident report stating that she'd found him watching videos of beheadings. She wrote that she asked Peyton if he "agreed with ISIS." He allegedly responded that he "was neutral" but that he "likes Osama bin Laden and hates Christians," and that he thought there would be another 9/11.

A meeting was held with Gentry's director of security, Michael Hubbard. (He and all other Gentry employees refused to comment for this story.) Hubbard sent a notice on April 20, 2015, to the regional FBI office in Montgomery, Alabama.

According to internal Gentry emails, an employee relayed Hubbard's instructions to Peyton's teachers to observe him for other signs of interest in terrorism. In one email, another employee asked, "Safe to assume dad will not be involved?"

"I hope not!!!" Peyton's caseworker, Suzy McCullough, responded. Perhaps this was because, according to documents relating to the case, Gentry staff thought Tony was difficult to deal with and "a very unique individual." The year before, there had been a standoff over a boy Cassady was dating-Tony didn't approve of Cassady leaving campus to stay at his place, but Gentry staff said she was an adult and could do as she pleased-the aftermath of which bled into Peyton's stay. Furthermore, the staff thought that Tony underestimated Peyton. Several employees said that they did not approve of his habit of talking about Peyton's disability in front of him.

In any event, McCullough got her wish: Tony was never notified.

Photo credit: Benedict Evans

According to internal Gentry emails, shortly after, four classmates informed a teacher that at a Gentry-sponsored outing to Walmart intended to teach students about using money, Peyton purchased the book Inside ISIS-the same book the FBI would later find in Tony's house.

By May 2015, Peyton's hygiene had declined; he began hiding his soiled clothes in a closet, and they were discovered by a caretaker because of their smell. He went for days without bathing. His socks and shoes were thrown out because they could not be salvaged with soap. "He was regressing," Tony says. "On one visit I asked him when was the last time he had bathed, and he told me it had been four days."

The longer Peyton was at Gentry, the more problems Tony noticed with his son's care: They bought Peyton the incorrect shoe size. They didn't help Peyton put on a smock in art class, so a lot of his clothes were stained with paint. Even though progress reports from Gentry indicated that Peyton was doing well-he was talking about taking driver's ed and his instructors thought that he was adapting to school-Tony disagreed.

Angry that another institution had failed Peyton-especially one that was tailored to handle challenging cases like his-Tony pulled him from the program. Peyton moved back to the house on the hill.

Even then, no one-not teachers, not administrators, not Gentry security-told Tony anything about Facebook or ISIS or the FBI.

By then, Peyton's older brother, Patrick, had joined the military and moved out of the house with his family. Peyton and Cassady still spent some time at their childhood home. Cassady made dinner and they had a Labrador retriever puppy that Peyton loved to play with. Tony says he was there, or Peyton was with him, most of the week. He shopped for his children's food and paid their bills, and when he wasn't with them he called up to fifteen times per day. The home had a security system complete with cameras, and a next-door neighbor checked in on them from time to time.

No one-not teachers, not administrators, not Gentry security-told Tony anything about Facebook or ISIS or the FBI.

After Peyton left Gentry, he had no job, no school, and no friends, freeing him up to continue his alleged online life as Usamah Anthony. Then the FBI arrived.

In February 2016, James Gallini took over Peyton's defense. Gallini, whose daughter was diagnosed with autism, is a special-needs attorney, more used to dealing with vulnerable kids than with cases involving the FBI. To help with the trial, he brought on board two criminal-defense attorneys, Edward A. Merrell and Kenneth Baumann; all three are working pro bono. Gallini has strong opinions and expresses them loudly. In a written statement on the trial, he began with "We live in the worst version of Seinfeld's 'Bizarro World' where our governments on every level are engaging in flagrant acts of deception, theft, lying, assault, murder, brutality, injustice, and nepotism." He has ambitions to one day run for governor. There is nothing subtle about the man.

In March, Peyton entered the Pell City Circuit Court with a dozen other inmates, chained at both wrists and ankles, bedecked in orange-and-white-striped uniforms, the white sections so worn they were nearly brown. The courtroom was half full, and Tony sat straight-faced and alone in the front row.

Peyton had been in the county jail for four months. Despite the bracing late-winter day, he wore a broken pair of orange plastic shower sandals and a T-shirt. His discolored toenails were untrimmed and curved toward the floor. Once seated, he looked straight ahead, his eyes only occasionally drifting to his father.

Photo credit: Benedict Evans

As with the public defender's failed motion in December, Gallini's primary goal that day was to persuade the judge to green-light a full battery of psychological and intelligence tests for Peyton that would demonstrate the severity of his limitations. Gallini hoped to show that his client wasn't competent enough to stand trial, never mind knowingly offer material support to people he believed were terrorists. The fixations of disabled youth, he explained to the judge, are proof of their disorder, not an argument to negate it. "This is prosecutorial overreach," he said.

Stepping off the platform when his name was called, Peyton looked down with surprise, as if he'd forgotten the shackles. A bailiff put out her hand to catch his elbow so that he didn't fall. Judge Seay, district attorney Richard Minor's brother-in-law, quickly disposed of Gallini's pretrial motions sotto voce, giving permission to defer a plea and to conduct a competency exam to show the extent of Peyton's disability. Gallini retained the right to request that Peyton get youthful-offender status and have the trial adjudicated in juvenile court, since the alleged crime was committed when he was eighteen. (The age of adulthood in Alabama is nineteen.)

Photo credit: Benedict Evans

Afterward, I met with Peyton and his lawyers in a small conference room in the courthouse. When I introduced myself, Peyton was indifferent. He was hesitant to talk; Gallini had to repeat my questions to prompt answers. Peyton paused for uncomfortably long stretches, his brain flipping to find the right words. He was so difficult to understand that I repeated his answers to make sure I'd heard him correctly. He never asked me who I was or why I was there.

Peyton's chains clanked as he rocked from side to side. He didn't deny his interest in ISIS. He said it stemmed from his opposition to Syria's president because "it's very clear that Assad has committed many crimes." Peyton said he wanted to "live according to Sharia law." When asked to describe what that meant, he could only remember the rules that "non-Muslims must pay a tax to live in an Islamic land" and "that homosexual people are killed." He claimed to have read "eight chapters" of the Quran, but "I don't got any of it memorized."

Peyton paused for uncomfortably long stretches, his brain flipping to find the right words.

He did, however, remember a pledge in support of ISIS he claimed to have invented at the prompting of someone he communicated with online. He recited it without hesitation: "All praises due to Allah. Peace and blessings be upon his servant Muhammad.I pledge allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. I will obey him. Allah is my witness." This was the most I had heard him say at one time.

At the end of our conversation, Gallini told Peyton he would ask a nurse to look at his infected big toe. He wasn't wearing socks; he said he'd left them in the shower. He stared down at the black nail as if he hadn't noticed it before. When he smiled, half of his teeth were stained brown.

Photo credit: Benedict Evans

Shortly before I saw Peyton, he'd been moved to the Ashville jail, about twenty miles down the road from the Pell City jail, because it houses inmates closer to his age, Tony says. Peyton was again placed in a solitary cell without a television, a radio, books, or blank paper. This move did not necessarily make him safer: In June, Tony says, another inmate assaulted him. Peyton just took it.

With Sheriff Surles's blessing, Peyton has received special privileges. He's no longer in solitary. The jail staff has adopted him as a son of sorts. One older man who sweeps the jail's hallways has been teaching Peyton hymns. Peyton is allowed to watch television while the other inmates are locked in their cells. According to Tony, Sheriff Surles "is the best sheriff in the country. He goes to bat for my son every single day." (Surles did not return a request for comment.)

Peyton receives regular schooling from the St Clair Board of Education and autism-specific services through a private group called Behavioral 1. Both are the result of a lawsuit Gallini filed in February seeking to enforce the state's legal requirement to provide Peyton with educational services until he is twenty-one.

Tony is allowed to visit Peyton, separated by a glass partition, for twenty minutes each Saturday. The first time they spoke, it took several minutes for Peyton to understand how the phone receiver worked.

Tony suffers along with his son. He's terrified of the attention the trial will bring to his family; his twin sister won't go on the record about the case for fear of losing her job. In anticipation of potential legal fees, Tony sold his house on the hill and his nine acres of land for well below the market value. He was in what he described as "panic mode," parting with the house so quickly that he didn't have a chance to remove the furniture-almost everything was donated to charity.

Photo credit: Benedict Evans

On June 4, psychologists Glen King and Karl Kirkland issued the results of the examination Gallini had petitioned for, and Judge Seay had granted, in March. In the section labeled "Forensic Assessment," King wrote, "All the information available to me indicates that Peyton Pruitt has a mental defect, mild to moderate intellectual disability (formally known as mental retardation).The defendant gives an account of the circumstances surrounding the offense that indicates that he was experiencing a mental defect, mental retardation, such that he was unable to appreciate the nature and quality of his actions or the wrongfulness of his acts."

The report's findings are scheduled to be presented in court on September 8, at which time Judge Seay is expected to determine whether the trial should move forward. In the meantime, Peyton is alone, other than the jail staff with whom he speaks. He goes outside for thirty minutes twice a week, the three-hundred-square-foot yard his only opportunity to feel sunlight fall on his face.

Jessica Pishko is a writer in San Francisco. You can find her on Twitter here.

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(JACKSON, Miss.) A federal judge Thursday dismissed a lawsuit that sought to have the Confederate battle emblem on the Mississippi flag declared an unconstitutional relic of slavery.

U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves ruled that the attorney who filed the suit, Carlos Moore, failed to show the emblem caused a cognizable legal injury. However, in dismissing the suit, Reeves also picked apart arguments made outside the courtroom by many flag supporters who say that Mississippis secession from the union before the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery.

Reeves quoted the states 1861 secession declaration, which said: Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery  the greatest material interest of the world.'

Then, the judge continued in his own words: To put it plainly, Mississippi was so devoted to the subjugation of African-Americans that it sought to form a new nation predicated upon white supremacy.

Mississippi has used the same flag since 1894. Its upper left corner has the Confederate battle emblem  a red field topped by a blue X dotted with 13 white stars. Voters chose to keep the banner in a 2001 referendum. Its the last state flag in the nation to prominently feature the emblem.

Like other Confederate symbols, the Mississippi flag has come under increased scrutiny since the June 2015 killings of black worshippers in South Carolina. The white man charged in that case had posed with the Confederate battle flag in photos published online. Several cities and counties and seven of Mississippis eight public universities have stopped flying the state flag.

Moores arguments are phrased as constitutional claims, yet his allegations of physical injuries suggest that he is making an emotional distress tort claim, Reeves wrote. To succeed in constitutional litigation, however, Moore needs to identify that part of the Constitution which guarantees a legal right to be free from anxiety at State displays of historical racism. There is none.

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Moore, a 39-year-old African-American from Grenada, Mississippi, filed the suit in February, asking Reeves to declare the flag an unconstitutional relic of slavery.

In his ruling, Reeves, who is black, wrote: The emblem offends more than just African-Americans. Mississippians of all creeds and colors regard it as one of the most repulsive symbols of the past. It is difficult to imagine how a symbol borne of the Souths intention to maintain slavery can unite Mississippians in the 21st century.

Moore said Thursday has not decided whether to appeal the ruling to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal in New Orleans.

He said he has mixed emotions about the lawsuit being dismissed even after receiving three death threats because he filed the case.

Im relieved that the death threats to me and my family should subside, Moore told The Associated Press. Im disappointed that my daughter, for the foreseeable future, still has to live under a regime with an offensive Confederate emblem on the Mississippi flag.

Moore had argued in the lawsuit that his daughter, who started kindergarten this year, should not have to attend a public school with a state flag featuring the Confederate battle emblem.

Its not just my daughter, Moore said Thursday. Its countless other African-Americans and other lovers of justice and equality.

Flag supporters and opponents are circulating petitions seeking another statewide vote on the symbol.

The Confederate battle emblem has no place in shaping a New Mississippi, and is better left retired to history, Reeves wrote. For that change to happen through the judiciary, however, the Confederate battle emblem must have caused a cognizable legal injury. In this case no such injury has been articulated. Whether that could be shown in a future case, or whether the people themselves will act to change the state flag, remains to be seen.
From Esquire

This is what the 2016 Republican platform says about Social Security. It's really a pile of substance-averse mush, but the implications of it are clear.

We reject the old maxim that Social Security is the "Third Rail" of American politics, deadly for anyone who would change it. The Democratic Party still treats it that way, even though everyone knows that its current course will lead to a financial and social disaster. Younger Americans have lost all faith in the program and expect little return for what they are paying into it. As the party of America's future, we accept the responsibility to preserve and modernize a system of retirement security forged in an old industrial era beyond the memory of most Americans. Current retirees and those close to retirement can be assured of their benefits. Of the many reforms being proposed, all options should be considered to preserve Social Security. As Republicans, we oppose tax increases and believe in the power of markets to create wealth and to help secure the future of our Social Security system. Saving Social Security is more than a challenge. It is our moral obligation to those who trusted in the government's word.

Hey, I've got an idea. Let's let folks take the money that Social Security takes out of their paychecks and invest it in the big ol' casino in lower Manhattan.

Yeah, that's the ticket, right, CNN Money?

On Thursday, federal regulators said Wells Fargo (WFC) employees secretly created millions of unauthorized bank and credit card accounts-without their customers knowing it-since 2011. The phony accounts earned the bank unwarranted fees and allowed Wells Fargo employees to boost their sales figures and make more money. "Wells Fargo employees secretly opened unauthorized accounts to hit sales targets and receive bonuses," Richard Cordray, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, said in a statement.

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Again, the CFPB is the brainchild of Senator Professor Warren, whom the Republicans brilliantly kept from being its director so that she could run for the Senate, where she can really stick it to them, day after day. It has saved ordinary Americans billions of dollars already.

The Republican Party considers the CFPB to be an example of "onerous regulation" and has vowed to kill it dead so that Americans can be free to get swindled by these sharpers.

The scope of the scandal is shocking. An analysis conducted by a consulting firm hired by Wells Fargo concluded that bank employees opened over 1.5 million deposit accounts that may not have been authorized. The way it worked was that employees moved funds from customers' existing accounts into newly-created ones without their knowledge or consent, regulators say. The CFPB described this practice as "widespread." Customers were being charged for insufficient funds or overdraft fees-because there wasn't enough money in their original accounts. Additionally, Wells Fargo employees also submitted applications for 565,443 credit card accounts without their customers' knowledge or consent. Roughly 14,000 of those accounts incurred over $400,000 in fees, including annual fees, interest charges and overdraft-protection fees.

There are days when I sadly contemplate the possibility that the American imagination is now solely the property of a bunch of crooks with spreadsheets. You have to give it to them. Eight years after their industry nearly incinerated the entire world economy, they're still coming up with new and spectacular ways to steal money from their customers. It is really a remarkable thing, if predatory pillage is your thing.

Wells Fargo is being slapped with the largest penalty since the CFPB was founded in 2011. The bank agreed to pay $185 million in fines, along with $5 million to refund customers. "We regret and take responsibility for any instances where customers may have received a product that they did not request," Wells Fargo said in a statement.

Apparently, it is the position of WF that 5,300 of its employees all had the same great idea for massive consumer fraud largely independent of one another. The problem is, even if this were true, and it's not entirely implausible that some variation of the argument might be, this says something truly awful about the company's upper management and the culture that has developed at all levels of the institution. A den of thieves, with elevators and Christmas bonuses. The truest thing that Bernie Sanders said in his stump speech always was that the basic business plan of this industry is fraud. It also was one of the few examples of understatement he allowed himself.

[contentlinks align="center" textonly="false" numbered="false" headline="Related Story" customtitles="What We Learn from Elizabeth Warren" customimages="" content="article.26352"]

Elsewhere on the trail, Tailgunner Ted Cruz summed up the Republican position.

"Don't let the name fool you, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau does little to protect consumers. The agency continues to grow in power and magnitude without any accountability to Congress and the people. The only way to stop this runaway agency is by eliminating it altogether," Sen. Cruz stated. "The legislation that Rep. Ratcliffe and I are introducing today gives Congress the opportunity to free consumers and small businesses from the CFPB's regulatory blockades and financial activism, which stunt economic growth. While there's much more to do to scale back the harmful regulatory impositions of Dodd-Frank, this legislation takes a critical step in the right direction. So today let's celebrate the CFPB's fourth and final anniversary," Sen. Cruz concluded.

Two million ghost accounts.

Small price to pay for freedom, suckers.

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By turns poignant and plodding, affecting and affected, Ithaca is the sort of frustrating movie thats just good enough to make you wish it were a lot better. First-time feature director Meg Ryan  yes, that Meg Ryan  and screenwriter Eric Jendresen have reconstituted William Saroyans 1943 novel The Human Comedy as a wildly uneven period piece that, despite several dramatically potent episodes, never really develops a sense of narrative momentum.

Indeed, there is a point scarcely 20 minutes into the film where it easily could have ended, and come off as a reasonably satisfying short. Equally problematic: Actors are burdened with too many lines that sound more like declarations than dialogue  and not just during the intrusive stretches of voiceover narration  while tragedies are foreshadowed so heavy-handedly that two obviously doomed characters might as well have vultures perched on their shoulders right from the get-go.

And yet, despite its predictability and other conspicuous flaws, Ithaca is surprisingly successful in fits and starts when it comes to sustaining interest and empathy, thanks partly to Ryans ability to subtly yet vividly evoke particulars of time and place on an indie-movie budget, and largely because of some compelling performances in lead and secondary roles.

The setting is Ithaca  Saroyans fictional version of his real-life home town of Fresno, Calif.  during the early days of U.S. involvement in World War II. (The movie was shot on various Virginia locations.) When his older brother (Jack Quaid, son of Ryan and ex-husband Dennis Quaid) joins the military, 14-year-old Homer Macauley (newcomer Alex Neustaedter) assumes his siblings role as man of the house for a family that includes his widowed mother (Ryan), his sister Bess (Christian Nelson), and his younger brother Ulysses (Spencer Howell).

As Ithaca begins, Homer lands a job delivering telegrams for the local branch of Postal Telegraph, where he quickly impresses easygoing manager Tom Spangler (Hamish Linklater) and amiably boozy telegrapher Willie Grogan (Sam Shepard). Unfortunately, the job requires Homer to occasionally deliver messages announcing the deaths of soldiers to their next of kin. When he tells his mom about this grim task, she responds with a loving warning: Youre becoming aware of a world in which youve been a child.

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In the margins of the coming-of-age storyline, there are other reminders and reflections of the far-off war: A bartender bitterly complains that the war to end all wars  his war, World War I  didnt live up to its billing. Three soldiers shyly invite two local girls (one of them Homers sister) to join them for a night at the movies  the night before they ship out. Meanwhile, Marcus, Homers older brother, bonds with a fellow soldier, an orphan named Tobey (Gabriel Basso), by regaling him with affectionate tales of his family back home.

Ithaca unfolds at a steady pace that, truth to tell, makes the movie seem longer than it is. Worse, screen time is not fairly apportioned  some interesting characters arent around nearly often enough, while others either overstay their welcome, or arent welcome at all. Chief among the latter: Homers dead father, who periodically appears as a fond memory, or maybe a ghost, to Homers mom. It doesnt help at all that this apparition is played, almost entirely without dialogue, by Tom Hanks, whose stunt casting distractingly recalls his more entertaining screen pairings with Ryan in Youve Got Mail and Sleepless in Seattle.

On the other hand, Sam Shepard is so wonderfully engaging as the crusty Willie Grogan, an avuncular alcoholic who spouts wisdom while sporting Harold Lloyd-type glasses, you cant help thinking that, in almost any other context, his performance might generate award-season consideration. Ryan doesnt give herself much to do as Homers mother, but she does encourage a credible and creditable performance from Neustaedter, who brings depth of feeling and welcome touches of humor to his portrayal of a character who might have come off as just your standard-issue sensitive adolescent. Linklater slyly suggests the effortless charm of a young James Stewart  think George Bailey during the happier scenes in Its a Wonderful Life  while young Howell is a charming scene stealer even W.C. Fields might have loved.

John Mellencamps folky, period-appropriate musical score is effective and evocative throughout Ithaca, but especially during the final scene, a dead-solid perfect coda that, not unlike the quietly powerful ending of Peter Fondas The Hired Hand, suggests an outsider can find redemption by filling the void left by a fallen friend. Its a profoundly mixed blessing, but a blessing nonetheless.

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As the first reality dating competition series to feature an all-gay cast, Logos Finding Prince Charming is actually pretty historic. But as we all learned from falling asleep during social studies, history isnt always exciting.

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Thursdays premiere introduced America to 33-year-old interior designer Robert Sepulveda, Jr., accurately described by one of his suitors as the prototype Disney prince. And he really is, from his perfectly coiffed hair to his utter lack of enthusiasm. (The fact that he used to be an escort, easily the most interesting aspect of Prince Charmings past, is never discussed on-screen.)

Unfortunately, this theme seems to be woven into the very fabric of Finding Prince Charming. Of the 15 men featured in Thursdays premiere, including Robert and host Lance Bass, approximately four of them have personalities. They all do, however, have a portfolio of immaculately filtered gym/beach selfies, which were displayed while the suitors described themselves using a single hashtag  most of which came across like Real Housewives taglines. (Example: #WhyBeANineWhenYouCanBeATen?)

The two suitors who made the strongest impressions, for better or worse, were 31-year-old fitness guru Sam and 26-year-old beauty professional Robby  so, naturally, they went head-to-head in the shows first official fight. It was basically Sam projecting his own insecurities about his masculinity, accusing Robby of being inauthentic before yelling, Fix your dress! at the poor guy, who simply cant help that he was born a less-southern version of Will & Graces Beverly Leslie.

A next-day pool party offered an opportunity for excitement, but aside from Roberts big shirtless reveal  the guys anticipation was so high that Roberts gradual disrobing got its own commercial break  the shows first soiree was pretty uneventful.

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Finding Prince Charming

Heck, Robert wouldnt even tell Lance which guy he thought looked best in swimwear. (Because thats what we want from reality TV  a gentleman.)

Then came the first eliminations, which  true to form  were also pretty chill. And I cant say I was surprised to see Charlie, Nick and Brodney get the boot. (I was, however, surprised that Robert had to physically dress each of his picks in a tie. Whose idea was that?!)

Stray observations:

* I have a couple of questions about some of these suitors names, specifically Jasen and Brodney.

* Could Sams feelings for Robby be any more obvious?

* Did Dillon really tell Robert, I didnt come to make friends? This guy was born to be on reality TV.

* How did Robert not giggle when, during a pre-elimination interview, Lance asked him, Who might be on the bottom tonight? (I swear, that man is made of wood.)

OK, now its your turn to start judging: Grade the episode below, then drop a comment with your thoughts (and predictions) about Finding Prince Charming.





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HELSINKI, Sept 9 (Reuters) - The European Union should stick to the deficit rules in its Stability and Growth Pact, the EU's former top economic official Olli Rehn said when asked about the bloc's July decision to not penalise Spain and Portugal for breaking deficit limits.

Amid fears of growing euro scepticism in the bloc, Madrid and Lisbon escaped being fined for not reducing their budget gaps to below 3 percent of gross domestic product.

Asked about that decision, Rehn - currently Finland's minister of economic affairs - told Reuters that the bloc should obey its rules.

"(When assessing a member state's fiscal policy) it is good to take into account such structural reforms that truly support sustainable growth and employment," said Rehn, who stepped down from the commission in 2014.

"But once we have agreed on these rules, they should also be obeyed," he said. "But I'm not aware of all the details behind the decisions on Spain and Portugal."

One of the arguments for scrapping fines was that Spain has been effectively without a government since last December. Mediocre growth, which could be further damaged by cuts in public spending, was another.

Euro zone finance ministers discussed budget gaps in Bratislava on Friday, and the leaders of southern European states, due to meet later in Athens, are expected to push for budget rules to be eased.

Rehn was the EU's top economic official during the euro zone debt crisis. He has applied for a seat on the board of the Bank of Finland as he looks to switch from government to monetary policy.

(Reporting by Jussi Rosendahl and Tuomas Forsell; Editing by Jon Boyle)
ARLINGTON, Va. -- Arlington County Fire Department Battalion Chief James Bonzano was attending a leadership seminar about a mile from the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, when he heard a blast and felt the ground tremble. It was 9:37 a.m. Monitors in the room carried news of planes striking the World Trade Center in New York. Now an American Airlines Boeing 757 carrying 64 people had slammed into the Pentagon. As fighter jets circled above, Bonzano soon boarded a bus filled with other firefighters and headed toward the crash scene.

As the bus crested the last hill, the Pentagon appeared on the horizon, black smoke pouring from a fiery gash that exposed the wreckage within. The firefighters fell silent, awed by the destruction and the challenge they faced. The Pentagon lies within Arlington County's jurisdiction. It was their responsibility to lead the response to a plane crash, building collapse and fire in the headquarters of the U.S. military -- a vast, secure installation with 23,000 employees and 17 miles of corridors.

"You could have heard a pin drop on that bus," Bonzano says.

Remarkably, the department had trained for just such a scenario. A year before the Sept. 11 attacks, Arlington firefighters, working with police, military and other public safety agencies, had staged a tabletop scenario envisioning a plane crash into the Pentagon's inner courtyard. They worked through every detail, from the arrival of the first fire truck until the moment control was restored. "We were there at the Pentagon with all the important folks," says Arlington Battalion Chief Robert Cornwell, now retired, who was an architect of the exercise. "We tried to make it as realistic as possible."

The effort paid off on 9/11, not least because the first responders knew each other and spoke the same language, says Bonzano, now the Arlington fire chief. "We had a great working relationship with [the folks at] the Pentagon, both military and civilian. We had trained with them and could put faces behind names."

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For every first responder, 9/11 marks a watershed moment when the risks they face -- and the magnitude of their responsibility to the public -- became chillingly clear. Violent extremists and anyone else with access to a weapon and an inclination to kill are increasingly turning communal spaces in every corner of the world into battlefields, using whatever weapon lies close at hand.

On 9/11, no one was prepared for terrorists to hijack four passenger jets and turn them into winged missiles weighing as much as 270,000 pounds loaded with jet fuel and traveling at 400 miles per hour. Upon impact, the fuel exploded, transforming each jet's 600,000 rivets and airframe bolts into white hot shrapnel that bored through concrete and steel, according to the Arlington County Fire Department's after-action report. At the Pentagon, the shrapnel penetrated the building's five rings. The ground glittered with aluminum shards from the plane's fuselage.

The attacks killed approximately 3,000 people and injured 6,000 more. Nearly 350 New York firefighters lost their lives. At the Pentagon, 125 people died. The toll might have been much higher if the offices struck by the plane had not been under construction. Firefighters at the scene encountered chaos. "There was a tremendous amount of exterior fire, a lot of activity, confusion, people running," says Cornwell, who led the fight that day to put the fire out. "There were a lot of people with weapons, military personnel. It reminded me of Vietnam, to be honest with you."

The 9/11 attack drove home the reality that terrorists were clever enough, and resourceful enough, to dictate where battles would be fought.

"All of a sudden there was the realization that we lived in a much larger, more threatening world," says Timothy Manning, deputy administrator for Protection and National Preparedness at the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

This new world was one first responders were ill-prepared for. Before 9/11, firefighters and emergency medical personnel were trained to fight fires and respond to medical emergencies, jobs that are risky enough. Public safety professionals in fields from emergency medicine to law enforcement and public health also focused on sharpening their skills in their own realms. But they tended to work in their own silos rather than in teams trained to respond to all hazards.

"They didn't recognize the importance of working together," Manning says.

[READ: Jon Stewart Lobbies Congress for 9/11 First Responders]

The critical need for an all-hazards approach to public safety was reinforced by a new crisis a week after 9/11. With the nation still in mourning, a perpetrator later identified by the FBI as U.S. Army biologist Bruce Ivins unleashed a series of anthrax attacks. The perpetrator mailed millions of deadly anthrax spores to U.S. Senate offices and news organizations. The attacks killed five, infected 17 and kindled a new fear on the heels of 9/11: weapons of mass destruction.

The convergence of the 9/11 and anthrax attacks propelled the U.S. into wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The onslaught in Iraq was framed by the Bush administration as necessary to protect the U.S. homeland from Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's rumored stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons, which were never found. They also plunged first responders in the U.S. into renewed soul-searching about their roles and how best to combat these threats.

The Arlington County Fire Department was ahead of the curve. Six years before 9/11, then-Fire Chief Ed Plaugher listened with deep concern to reports of a sarin nerve gas release by a cult then known as Aum Shinrikyo during rush hour in the Tokyo subway. The gas, estimated to be 26 times more lethal than cyanide, killed 12 people and injured many more. Plaugher believed that the nation's first responders were not trained or prepared to deal with such an event. At Plaugher's urging, county officials relayed his concerns in a letter to the White House.

Plaugher launched collaborations -- and joint training exercises, including the tabletop at the Pentagon -- with federal, state and local public safety agencies. "He always had his eye on the big picture, on all hazards," Bonzano says. "To the boots-on-the-ground fireman, me being one of those guys, I always found his thoughts esoteric, not very tangible. He turned out to be spot on."

In the wake of 9/11, with an infusion of homeland security funding, the department stepped up its efforts and developed new protocols for training and equipment, scrapping a battered ambulance used as a makeshift hazardous materials truck and replacing it with a state-of-the-art vehicle. Arlington fire trucks were stocked with antidotes to sarin and other chemical and biological agents.

The multi-agency approach that the Arlington County Fire Department and other officials before 9/11 rehearsed at the Pentagon has become the model followed nationwide. And first responders nationwide now train for myriad threats, from nuclear radiation to chemical and biological weapons.

"We are ready to deal with just about anything you've heard of that's being used, planned or thought of," New York City Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro says.

Training is a constant. And, given the need for a coordinated response in a high threat environment, the focus is now on an integrated response, involving the police department, hospitals, even the FBI, which handles intelligence and carries out criminal investigations. The settings include malls, elementary schools, office buildings, hotels, movie theaters -- anywhere an attack may take place.

"The training we're doing is no longer reactive, it's preemptive," Bonzano says. "We have set and defined responsibilities, variables that are almost plug and play. We train to the point where it's almost second nature.

[READ: Are WTC First Responders at Higher Risk for Cancer?]

"If you ask the boots on the ground, they'll say, 'We've done enough training, Chief.' But that's what we're doing."

These training scenarios incorporate lessons that cost lives in such places as London, Madrid, Mumbai, San Bernardino and Orlando. "Today, combined with other gruesome weapons, there's the use of fire. It was used in Mumbai. It was used in Benghazi. We're planning for when it's used here," New York's Nigro says.

Active shooters are among the current concerns. Perhaps the most tragic lessons for first responders come from places like the Columbine school shootings and the London transit bombings, where medics waited for the threats to be eliminated before they plunged in to save lives. The credo: Don't become a casualty.

That is beginning to change, says Dr. Reed Smith, medical director at the Arlington County Fire Department. First responders can no longer wait by the curb when people are dying. "The battlefield has changed for us," he says. "What we find is that it's much more like a combat environment."

Rather than hanging back, firefighters are increasingly practicing "warm-zone care" -- entering the danger zone escorted by police in active-shooter situations. The police establish a secure perimeter, within which medics can apply tourniquets and other battlefield techniques to sustain victims until they can be evacuated.

[FLASHBACK: On 9/11, a Smooth and Quick Medical Response]

"We're the experts at stopping the dying," Smith says. "Get me to the side of the patient as quickly as you can, as safely as you can, and I will stop the dying as quickly as I can."

Smith acknowledges that the approach puts firefighters at risk. "Of course, what we do is dangerous," he says. "We lose 50 to 80 firefighters a year fighting fires. But we've never had a hard time going into fires or earthquakes. Historically, we've had a hard time going into places where there are bullets and blasts."

That's no longer the case in Arlington County, he says, where police and fire have run scenarios like the shootings at Orlando's Pulse nightclub several times. And support for the warm-zone approach is growing, Smith says, endorsed by the International Association of Fire Fighters, the International Association of Fire Chiefs and other organizations. The federal government has poured $47 billion in grant money into public safety agencies to bolster their equipment and training. "You see it in the news and don't even realize that it's something we couldn't have done 16 years before," FEMA's Manning says.

The bomb robot used to stop the Dallas police shooter and the armored police unit used to penetrate Pulse were purchased with federal grant money, Manning says.

What is most heartening, Bonzano says, is that there are so many first responders who'll put themselves in harm's way to save lives.

"I just met with our rookies," he says. "We have 19 or 20 of them in school. They're just the best bunch of kids. They're going to see a lot of stuff, God forbid, but that's what they're here for."

Steve Sternberg is a senior writer for U.S. News and a data journalist covering health care performance, health policy, clinical medicine and public health. You can follow him on Twitter (@stevensternberg), connect with him on LinkedIn or email him at ssternberg@usnews.com.


From Popular Mechanics

Last week Samsung issued a recall of its new Galaxy Note 7 smartphone due to batteries that run the risk of exploding while they are being charged. As hoverboards (and battle robots) have taught us, an exploding battery is no good on its own, but for Nathan Dornacher of St. Petersburg, Florida, things seem to have been a bit worse.

As Dornacher told Fox 13 News, he had left his Note 7 in his beloved Jeep to charge, walked away for a little bit, and returned to an inferno that required a call to the Fire Department to extinguish. He also posted his story, and some pictures of the inferno, to Facebook.

Dornacher told FOX News that the Jeep was not only important to him personally, but had also been extensively (and one assumes expensively) modified. Sound at all fishy? Seems like it might to Samsung, which Dornacher says has given him "the runaround" so far. Samsung, for its part, told Fox it is "working with Mr. Dornacher to investigate his case and ensure we do everything we can for him."

Samsung's recall of the Note 7 was announced on September 2nd, after 35 confirmed explosions and the phones have since been removed from store shelves in the United States. As part of the recall, Samsung will let Note 7 owners swap their phones for a new one, no questions asked, but it's a process not expected to start for another week. Dornacher tells Fox News that he wasn't aware of the recall. While Samsung is more than willing to accept blame for the exploding phones, it might put up more of a fight over a whole, expensive Jeep. Fortunately, no one was hurt in the blaze.

So if you still have a Note 7, take this as a warning. Don't charge it, and send it in as soon as you can.

Source: Fox 13 News via Gizmodo

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Yahoo Chief Investigative Correspondent Michael Isikoff spoke with the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Matthew Olsen, and discussed Olsens recent article, Why ISIS Supports Donald Trump. Olsen explained he wrote the article because Trumps rhetoric toward Muslims and the religion of Islam is dangerous. He also said it is important to make allies of the majority of Muslim countries in the region and to not alienate Muslim Americans in the United States.
The terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, Sept. 11, 2001. (Photo by Justin Lane/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)

Two days before the 15th anniversary of 9/11, Jake Lemonda, a New York City Fire Dept. battalion chief and president of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association, took a moment to discuss the ongoing suffering of the first responders fighting critical illnesses that stem from the lethal mix of toxins they inhaled at Ground Zero.

The firefighting community lost 343 people on Sept. 11, 2001, and 127 more firefighters have died from 9/11-related illnesses  including 17 since last year, according to the association.

For all of us that responded  theres a saying, Time heals all wounds  theres not enough time. You take off the bandage and the wounds are raw, especially in the days leading up to the day and on that day itself, Lemonda said at the associations office in downtown Manhattan Friday.

I have a great executive board and we reach out to our membership who are sick or ill. And some of them are dying, to be very honest with you, he said.

On Sunday, it will have been 15 years since 19 al-Qaida terrorists hijacked four American airplanes. They crashed two into the World Trade Center Twin Towers in New York and one into the Pentagon building in Arlington County, Va. The fourth plane had initially been steered toward Washington, D.C., but crashed in a field outside Shanksville, Pa.

Uniformed Fire Officers Association President Jake Lemonda discusses Ground Zero-related illnesses in New York, September 9, 2016. (Photo: Michael Walsh/Yahoo News)

The 9/11 attacks were the deadliest to occur on U.S. soil. The terrorists killed 2,996 people, including 23 NYPD officers and 47 Port Authority officers. Thousands more were wounded.

The toll continues to mount for us, Lemonda said.

To date, roughly two-thirds of all FDNY first responders have at least one Ground Zero-related health condition  thats more than 10,000 firefighters. He said over 1,300 members have come down with a form of cancer, nearly 3,800 have gastrointestinal conditions, roughly 5,000 have lower airway ailments and about 5,000 have upper airway illnesses.

Theres not one member of our union, of this department, that we have reached out to that ever said they regretted responding down there, Lemonda, who worked at Ground Zero after 9/11, continued. Even though they have these terrible illnesses, they all said the same thing: They would do it all over again.

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In December, Congress voted overwhelmingly in favor of extending the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Reauthorization Act, which provides health monitoring and treatment for first responders, for 75 years.

State police join rescue workers amid the rubble of the World Trade Center, Sept. 12, 2001. (Photo: Virgil Case/AP)

James Zadroga was an NYC police officer who died of a respiratory disease in 2006. He had spent hundreds of hours working in the recovery efforts at Ground Zero. The bill bearing his name was a milestone for recognizing the link between 9/11 and certain ailments and providing appropriate coverage.

At the press conference, Yahoo News asked Lemonda what his groups next step would be to ensure that all 9/11 first responders get treatment.

Our big concern right now it that were seeing a lot of illnesses that are coming to light and we want to get these included in the Zadroga Act, he said. We need documentation so we can point to medical evidence that [shows] we can make the connection between the events of that day and these illnesses.

In September 2015, for instance, the WTC Health Programs administration received a petition to add the autoimmune disease multiple sclerosis to the list of Ground Zero-associated health conditions.

Capt. George Farinacci, financial secretary of the UFOA, was active in urging Congress to reauthorize the Zadroga Act. The association organized many bus trips to Washington to illustrate the importance of the legislation.

Near where the World Trade Center buildings collapsed, Sept. 11, 2001. (Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images)

What we dont know right now is exactly how many new illnesses we may find, he told Yahoo News. There can be stuff thats in the pipeline  that theyve been noticing a rise in  unnatural incidents of this illness with this population. When it gets to a certain number they can say, OK, this is definitely related. This is not natural.

Both said the organization is forever indebted to the politicians who supported them and the retired firefighters battling illnesses who made the trip  sometimes in-between chemotherapy treatments. He also thanked former Daily Show host Jon Stewart for drawing attention to their cause.

And not all 9/11-related illnesses were developed at Ground Zero.

Retired NYPD detective Al Meller, 57, who at the time lived in Commack, N.Y., 46 miles outside Manhattan on Long Island, went to the site of the terrorist attack several times but spent the bulk of his time in the aftermath of 9/11 at the NYC Office of Chief Medical Examiner.

He suffers from respiratory issues, neuropathy and post-traumatic stress disorder from his 60 days in triage. He said his ailments did not set in for three years.

The Brotherhood for the Fallen participate in an event in memory of NYPD officers lost in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Sept. 9, 2016. (Photo: Michael Walsh/Yahoo News)

Meller was responsible for looking at the remains of the victims to see if there was anything that could help lead to a positive identification.

I must have opened 6,000 body bags, he said in an interview with Yahoo News. The thing that I can share with you that people should know is that every remain recovered was treated with the utmost respect.

The citys chief medical examiner provided the operational statistics for the World Trade Center from September 2016. To date, of the 2,753 victims, 60 percent (1,640) have been identified and 40 percent (1,113) have not.

In 2001, the Office of Chief Medical Examiner committed to the longterm work of identifying the victims of the World Trade Center disaster. The effort is ongoing, and we will continue the work in order to provide all the answers we possibly can to the families of victims, New York City Chief Medical Examiner Barbara Sampson said in a statement to Yahoo News.

Retired New York Police Sgt. Peter Walsh, who lived on Staten Island at the time, has not been affected with a 9/11 illness. [Disclosure: Walsh is a relative of the writer of this article.] He said that working to bring closure to the victims families was a true team effort that spanned many departments and beyond. It involved NYPD detectives, Port Authority officers, FDNY fire marshals, state troopers, dentists and many others.

A group of firefighters stands near the destroyed World Trade Center, Sept. 11, 2001. (Photo: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters)

It was very frustrating at that time to be in law enforcement and have this happen in your city and not [be] able to do anything. What could we do? How could we help? And how we helped was to help people get closure on it, he told Yahoo News. I was working six days a week, 12 hours a day for months. Thats what you did. Thats what everybody did.

When someone was reported missing, he explained, his or her family would receive a seven-page questionnaire asking for the birthday, body markings, wedding anniversary, name of spouse and anything else that might help lead to an identification. Sometimes, for instance, they would find hands with wedding bands bearing inscriptions with wedding dates.

When asked if it was emotionally difficult to handle, Walsh replied, I think it wouldve been a lot worse to sit around in a detective office and not do anything. Pretty much everyone was of the same mind.  Well, at least were doing something.



_____

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Four species of parasitoid wasps have been discovered in northwest China, a new study reports.

The new species belong to the genus Gasteruption. These wasps have slender bodies and inflated, club-shaped hind legs. They also have elongated necks, and keep their abdomens raised and hind legs dangling during their slow, quiet flights. Their heads have a satin-like sheen and long eyes that extend almost to their mouth, the researchers said.

The four new species  G. bicoloratum, G. huangshii, G. pannuceum and G. shengi  have a body covering that resembles black leather with grooves and stitches. The bugs range in size from 0.3 inches (8 millimeters) long to 0.5 inches (13 mm) long, and females are typically larger than males. [Googly Eyes: Photos of Striking Wasp Faces]

The newfound species are parasitoid wasps whose larvae are parasites that kill their hosts. Adults hover outside the nests of solitary bees. While females hover to find an opportunity to sneak their own eggs into solitary bee nests, males typically linger in search of these females. Using a long, tube-like organ, called an ovipositor, the female lays eggs inside bee nests. The emerging larvae feed on bee eggs and larvae, and the food reserves of the nest. The young wasps pupate in their hosts' nests and emerge as adults in spring.

The adult wasps can be locally abundant at times, particularly when they are feeding on pollen and nectar at flowers, said Jiang-Li Tan, an entomologist in the College of Life Sciences at Northwest University in China. But, "they are not encountered frequently and, in many regions of the world, are rarely collected," she said.

A total of 28 species of Gasteruption were known from China before the new finds. Tan's team discovered four new species in the mountainous region of China's Shaanxi and Ningxia provinces. Tan lives near the Qinling mountains in Shaanxi, and every weekend during spring and summer, she would drive there with her students to sample wasps.

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"I am not surprised to find four new species," Tan told Live Science in an email. She added that there are likely more wasp species waiting to be found. But, it is not easy to identify a new species, Tan said. A combination of characteristics such as the shape of the head and legs, length of ovipositor, skin pattern, body color, and wing pattern and color, were used.

G. bicoloratum was found at an elevation of around 3,600 feet (1,100 meters) above sea level. The species gets its name from its bicoloured hind legs, which are ivory and yellowish-brown. At 0.05 inches (1.2 mm) long, the ovipositor of females is very short, the scientists note in the paper. [No Creepy Crawlies Here: Gallery of the Cutest Bugs]

G. huangshii was named after Huang Shi Gong  believed to be a teacher of a Han Dynasty general  since the wasp was found near his statue. It was found at an elevation of 4,400 feet (1,350 m) above sea level. In females of this species, the ovipositor is very long, about 1.2 times the length of the body, the study finds.

G. pannuceum (from the Latin word "pannuceus," meaning "wrinkled") gets its name from the wrinkled sheath covering its midbody. And, G. shengi was named after its collector, Mao-Ling Sheng, in recognition of his work on parasitoid wasps of China. The largest of the four new species, G. shengi wasps are covered in dense, silvery hair, the researchers wrote in the study.

The findings were published online Aug. 23 in the journal ZooKeys.

Original article on Live Science.

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Monrovia (AFP) - Peace in Liberia remains "fragile" 13 years after the end of civil war, a top UN peacekeeping official has said, as the world body considers whether to withdraw its longstanding mission in the country.

UN peacekeepers largely ensured the country's security until June when they handed over to retrained domestic forces, ahead of a Security Council decision in December on whether to pull out its remaining personnel.

Government forces and rebel groups raped, maimed and massacred hundreds of thousands of people during two conflicts between 1989 and 2003, and the highly politicised police and army were disbanded after committing some of the worse abuses.

After completing a two-week assessment of the country's security capabilities and political institutions, UN Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, El Ghassim Wane, said Thursday the west African nation had come a long way but remained vulnerable.

"Liberians should be proud of their country's assumption of full responsibility for its own security on 30 June, which is a major milestone in consolidating peace," he said in a statement released by the UN.

"But building peace is a long-term endeavour, and while Liberia is on the right track, all of our interlocutors recognised that peace remains fragile."

Wane's recommendations will be used by the Security Council to seal the fate of the mission, known as UNMIL, which at its height counted 15,000 peacekeepers compared with just over 1,800 today.

A key flashpoint could be a presidential election due next year, which will represent the first time Liberia's own security forces have overseen an event of such national importance, Wane added.

The broadly unifying figure of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf will be absent from the 2017 vote, which is likely to be contested by several former warlords.

Despite being revamped, Liberia's police force is chronically underfunded, with basic equipment in short supply, salaries paltry and the number of armed officers in the low hundreds of a 5,170-strong corps.

Wane said his team had observed "a number of concerns about the remaining gaps in logistics and training of the security institutions."
PARIS (Reuters) - France condemned a nuclear test conducted by North Korea on Friday, hours after seismic monitors detected a blast near the secretive country's nuclear test site. "France vigorously condemns the new nuclear test that was conducted last night by North Korea and calls the United Nations' security council to take up this violation of its resolutions," the French presidency said in a statement. North Korea's state TV said the North was now capable of mounting nuclear warheads on ballistic rockets. It said no leakage of nuclear material had occurred in the test and that there was no environmental impact. (Reporting by Matthias Blamont; Editing by Richard Lough)
Paris (AFP) - France and Germany are preparing joint proposals for a "more active and more useful" European defence policy, the French defence ministry told AFP Friday.

The document, by French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian and his German counterpart Ursula von der Leyen, will serve as a "basis for considering a relaunch of European defence", the ministry said and comes ahead of a European Union summit to discuss plans to boost the bloc's security and defence mechanisms.

The objective is to make European defence "more active and more useful without substituting it for national defence bodies which remain, by definition, the key to the security of EU member states," a member of Le Drian's entourage said.

"What we are looking for is to trigger EU operations more easily," he added, without revealing details of the plans.

He did say, however, that these were "concrete" proposals and not just "grand ideas".

The Franco-German document proposes the establishment of a European defence headquarters, a common satellite surveillance system and the sharing of logistics and military medical resources, according to the Saturday edition of the German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung

There would be a tighter circle of EU members for some defence projects where it proves impossible to gain agreement from all, the paper added, citing the document.

There is also a suggestion for better use of Eurocorps, an intergovernmental military body that has France and Germany at its centre.

Belgium, Spain and Luxembourg are members of the Strasbourg-based Eurocorps, set up for rapid deployment to hotspots.

The EU has already been involved in the training of foreign armies, as part of conflict resolution, and might become involved in financing their equipment.

The bloc could also become engaged in research and development, to strengthen the European defence industry.

The discussions are in part due to the June vote by Britain to leave the EU.

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According to von der Leyen, London had long "paralysed" European efforts to have a more closely integrated security policy.

French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel initiated the joint security initiative on the margins of a NATO summit in July and are set to present the resulting ideas for discussion at the EU summit in Bratislava next week.

The informal meeting is expected to provide a new impetus for the EU in several areas, including youth and investments, as the bloc seeks to forge its future without Britain.

However British Prime Minister Theresa May reaffirmed Thursday that she would not launch Brexit talks this year.
PARIS (Reuters) - Gabon's constitutional court must examine the opposition's challenge to the presidential election with transparency and impartiality, France's foreign minister said on Friday. "France continues to follow carefully developments in Gabon," Jean-Marc Ayrault said in a statement. "The constitutional court has been asked to examine the provisional presidential results. "It must examine these with transparency and impartiality and all means must be put in place to ensure the respect of its principles and establishment of the sincerity of the vote." (Reporting By John Irish; editing by Leigh Thomas)
PARIS (Reuters) - France's foreign minister said on Friday North Korea's latest nuclear test could not be left without consequences at the United Nations Security Council. Speaking after talking with his South Korean counterpart, Jean-Marc Ayrault said the two men had agreed "that this new provocation could not be left without consequences, especially at the U.N. Security Council." (Reporting By John Irish; editing by Leigh Thomas)
The erstwhile King of Good Times, ex liquor baron Vijay Mallya has seen far better times. While the management of the United Breweries Limited (UBL), has come out in support of Mallya and wants him to continue as the Chairman of the Group, the Enforcement Directorate has been cracking their whips at him, and relieving him of his worldly possessions, one by one.

Mallya, who is known for his penchant of living the big life, is, or rather was, the proud owner of a number of high net worth items. But, after being declared as one of the countrys biggest willful defaulters, and, with his flight - a fugitive, the former industrialist and Rajya Sabha MP, who now owes banks Rs. 9000 crores, has 17 banks and financial institutions chasing him, and is faced with charges of money laundering and financial irregularities, is seeing his wealth slipping away.

From luxury jets and yachts to villas, resorts and islands, we take a look at Mallyas prized possessions, and what all have been taken away from him:

Luxury jets, yachts and cars: Once the sign of a King who flew high, Mallyas personal Kingfisher Jet, a 30 year old 9+2 seater, HS 125-700B, which was bought from the Oberoi Group in 2005, was auctioned in 2015 for a sum of Rs 22 lakhs to Mumbai based company Silent Enterprises. This was as part of Mumbai International Airport Limiteds (MIAL) bid to recover the airport dues which the now-defunt Kingfisher Airlines owed the Airport. The jet has since been taken apart and sold for scrap.



The Service Tax Department has also been trying to auction another one of Mallyas luxury jets  an Airbus A 319, which can seat 22 passengers plus two crew members, leased to Kingfisher by CJ Leasing (Cayman). The jet is up for auction along with couches, cushions and a bathrobe, and has already gone though two rounds of bids, as the jet has failed to reach anywhere close to the reserve price of Rs 152 crores. The highest bid amount has been Rs 27 crores offered by SGI Commex. The Service Tax Department had confiscated the plane in December 2013, over Mallyas failure to pay tax dues of over Rs 800 crores from his defunct Kingfisher Airlines.

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Among his other luxury toys is a yacht, named Indian Empress, which Mallya bought in 2006 from its previous owner, the Prime Minister of Qatar. The yacht is famous for being the venue of numerous Formula One after parties. Mallya also has a collection of around 250 luxury and vintage cars, including a Bentley Turbo, a 2010 Rolls Royce Phantom and a Lancia Vintage. 30 of these vintage cars were put on auction by the liquor giant Diageo controlled United Spirits. The online auction saw a number of people bidding for the cars, with a 1903 Humber, said to be the oldest car in the country going for Rs 1 crore, and a British made Lanchaster going for Rs 2 crores.

Properties: While Mallya reportedly lives in a USD 13 million, three storey mansion called Ladywalk, located an hour away from London in a village called Tewin-in-Hertforshire, the former business tycoon has reportedly splurged on real estate during his heydays, with numerous properties across India and abroad. His Rs 90 crores Kingfisher Villa, near Calangute Beach in Goa, which has been the venue for a number of his famous ultra lavish bashes, has been taken over by banks, with a notice erected by SBICAP Trustee. Mallyas Rs 150 crore Kingfisher House in Mumbai, is also being auctioned by the consortium of banks led by State Bank of India, to recover part of the Rs 6,900 crore debt due by Kingfisher Airlines. While it was first auctioned in March, this year, it failed to attract any buyers as the going price of Rs 153 crores was deemed too high. It was again auctioned for Rs 135 crores on August 3, this year, but no buyer seemed interested in it. The ED has also ordered for the seizure of a farm house in Mandwa, Alibaug which is worth Rs 25 crores and several flats at the Kingfisher Towers in Bengaluru, worth Rs 565 crores.

Mallya also has private islands and prime real estate in Europe and the US, including a penthouse in the uber-luxurious Trump Towers in New York, and a mansion in Sausalito, San Francisco Bay Area, which has sweeping views of the bay, and has hosted the likes of Tiger Woods, the Williams Sisters and actor Robert Redford. The Government of Karnataka has also leased the Kunigal stud farm, which is near Bengaluru, to Mallya, where he keeps many imported stallions. Mallya recently faced charges for buying a race horse for Rs 9 crores, reportedly with the money loaned to him by IDBI to run the Kingfisher Airlines. Mallya also owns a private game reserve  the Mabula Game Lodge, located north of Johannesburg, and sitting on 12,000 hectares of land.

Brands and logos: Various brands and logos of the defunct airline, including Fly with the Good Times, and the Kingfisher logo were placed for auction, but has not seen any interest from buyers. In April, this year, banks tried to auction the brands and trademarks at Rs 366.70 crores, but failed as no one was willing to buy at such a price. The second round of bidding held in August, where the reserve price was lowered to Rs 330.03 crores, also failed to get any interest from buyers. The other brands and trademarks on sale were Flying Models trademark, Flyliner trademark, Fly Kingfisher trademark and Flying Bird Device Trademark.
By Gerauds Wilfied Obangome LIBREVILLE (Reuters) - If there is no recount of votes in Gabon's presidential election, the country will face "profound and sustained instability", the man who lost by less than 6,000 votes said on Friday. Jean Ping has applied to the Constitutional Court to authorize a recount in a province where President Ali Bongo won 95 percent of the votes on a 99.9 percent turnout. But he has already said he has no faith in the judicial body he thinks is too close to the government, and suggested on Friday that people would take to the streets if it does not order a recount. "I strongly fear that a new false step by the Constitutional Court would be the cause of profound and sustained instability in Gabon," Ping told a news conference where he also called for an international inquiry into the killing of several of his supporters during post-election riots. "If ... the Gabonese people don't accept the constitutional court's decision (if it rules against a recount), the people will assume their responsibility, and I will stand by their side," Ping said, hinting at a return to street protests. Ping says between 50 and 100 people were killed in the riots after the election results were announced, much more than the government's death toll of six. Ali Bongo, first elected in 2009 after the death of his father Omar who ruled the former French colony for 42 years, has accused Ping - a close ally of then-president Omar Bongo - of cheating in the August election. EU observers said they found anomalies in the vote in Haut-Ogooue province where Ping is demanding a recount. France has called for a recount and the United States and European Union have urged the government to release polling station results. France said on Friday it was closely following the case in the oil-rich Central African country which is home to 14,000 of its citizens and a permanent military base. "(The court) must examine (the results) with transparency and impartiality and all means must be put in place to ensure the respect of its principles and establishment of the integrity of the vote," Jean-Marc Ayrault said in a statement. Gabon recalled its ambassador to Paris in January after France's Prime Minister Manuel Valls appeared to question the legitimacy of Bongo's 2009 election, marking a new low in relations with the former colonial power with whom Omar Bongo enjoyed close ties. (Reporting by Gerauds Wilfried Obangome; Additional reporting by John Irish in Paris; Writing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Joe Bavier; Editing by Aaron Ross)
Game of Thrones vet Richard Madden has been cast as the lead in the Amazon drama pilot Strange New Things.

Based on the 2014 sci-fi novel The Book of Strange New Things from Michael Faber, Amazons upcoming pilot follows a priest who is sent into space to help launch a new colony but what he ends up discovering not only puts his faith to the test  but life as we know it.

Madden, who starred as Robb Stark on the HBO fantasy drama for three seasons until the infamous Red Wedding, will play the lead role of Peter, who is described as a soulful, intense priest who has a history.

Also Read: Jason Ritter Joins Amazon Drama 'Goliath'

The pilot will be written and executive produced by Matt Charman (Bridge of Spies) and produced by Andy Harries (Strike Back) and Lila Rawlings (Left Bank Productions). Kevin MacDonald (The Last King of Scotland) will direct.

The one-hour drama pilot is an Amazon Studios and Left Bank Productions co-production.

Related stories from TheWrap:

Jason Ritter Joins Amazon Drama 'Goliath'

'Black-ish' Actress Cast as Lead on Amazon's Live-Action 'American Girl' Special

'The Departed' TV Series Adaptation in Development at Amazon
U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter said the U.S. and its allies would not ignore Russias attempts to interfere with our democratic processes during a speech in England earlier this week.

Carters warning comes as speculation grows as to whether Russian President Vladimir Putin would attempt to influence the outcome of the U.S. presidential election. The leak of Democratic National Committee emails in July, which security experts believe had ties to Russian hackers, is fueling speculation.

Garry Kasparov, a Russian chess grandmaster, joined the FOX Business Network to discuss Russias interest in U.S. and global politics.

[Putins] getting more and more active not only in the United States but across Europe, Kasparov said. He has clear goals After so many years of the weak foreign policy of the Obama administration, Putin believes that he could go for the highest price, which is to influence U.S. presidential elections.

The Russian chess grandmaster believes Putin and President Obama have comfortable relations, but that Putin has the upper hand.

Obama says whatever he wants to say, Putin does whatever he wants to do, said Kasparov. And if you look at the mapyou look at the Middle East, you look at Europefor any observer, Putin is winning. Obama keeps sending John Kerry to the Middle East and Putin keeps sending tanks and jet fighters. Obama retreated from some key parts of the geopolitical map. Putin immediately filled the vacuum. Putins everywhere and without Putin, Obama doesnt see any solution of the problems America has been facing.

Regarding the U.S. presidential election, Kasparov has this advice for our next Commander in Chief.

What we need now, and neither candidate can offer us any comfort, we need to restore the credibility of the Oval Office, that has been badly damaged by Obamas eight years in the White House, he said. With Hillary Clinton well get almost all the same. I think shell be better than Obama on Russia.

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He added: With Donald Trump its highly unpredictable. Its like having a fresh drinkits a 50/50 chance of it being poisoned.

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GAZA (Reuters) - An 18-year-old Palestinian was killed during a rock-throwing protest near the Gaza-Israel border on Friday and a Palestinian health official said Israeli soldiers shot him, but the Israeli army said troops were not responsible. Gaza health ministry spokesman Ashraf Al-Qidra said Abdel-Rahman Al-Dabbagh was killed by an Israeli bullet to the head during the border clash in the central Gaza Strip. The Israeli military said troops had sought to contain the violence on the other side of the border fence and had used only tear gas. "Dozens of rioters breached the buffer zone and attempted to damage the security (border) fence. ... Forces stationed at the border used tear gas that led to the dispersal of the riot. Following a preliminary review, the Israel Defense Forces did not conduct the reported shooting," a military statement said. In violence since October in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, at least 210 Palestinians have been killed, 141 of whom Israel said were assailants. Others died during clashes and protests. Palestinians, many of them acting alone and with rudimentary weapons, have killed at least 33 Israelis and two visiting Americans. Palestinian leaders say assailants have acted out of desperation over the collapse of peace talks in 2014 and Israeli settlement expansion in Israeli-occupied territory that Palestinians seek for an independent state. (Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi; Writing by Ori Lewis; Editing by Will Dunham)
Gaza City (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) - Israeli troops shot and killed a Gazan teenager during clashes on Friday near the border fence, Palestinian sources said, with the Israeli military denying having used live fire.

Gaza health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra identified the teenager as 16-year-old Abdel Rahman al-Dabbagh, and said he was killed east of Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza.

Witnesses said a group of young Palestinians gathered near the security barrier between Israel and the Gaza Strip and threw stones at Israeli lookout towers, prompting soldiers to open fire.

Qudra said the teenager was hit in the head and taken to hospital where he was pronounced dead.

The Israeli army, however, stressed that forces only used tear gas to disperse the youths.

"Dozens of rioters breached the buffer zone and attempted to damage the security fence," a military statement read.

"Attempting to prevent an escalation of violence, the forces stationed at the border used tear gas that led to the dispersal of the riot."

"Following a preliminary review, the IDF (Israel defence forces) did not conduct the reported shooting," the statement read.

The border region between Israel and Gaza is the scene of near weekly Friday confrontations.

Witnesses said dozens of young Palestinians pelted the lookout tower with stones and that the soldiers repeatedly opened fire at them.

Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza have fought three wars since 2008 and there are frequent flare-ups along the border.

Israel regularly responds to rocket fire from militants in Gaza with air strikes.

Last month, it carried out dozens of strikes in Gaza in response to rocket fire, a greater response than usual.

The Gaza Strip is run by the Islamist Palestinian movement Hamas.

It has been under Israeli blockade for around a decade and its border with Egypt also remains largely closed.
From Popular Mechanics

Beer just got its first genetic family tree.

From crisp lagers to hearty pale ales to cloudy hefeweizens, beer owes much of its stunning variety to the hundreds of strains of yeast that ferment it. Now a team of geneticists has created the first family tree of those yeasts, using samples collected from nearly a hundred breweries around the world.

The tree demystifies the historic spread of modern beermaking across Europe and America and outlines the relationship between yeasts used in different breweries-from Belgium's Duvel brewery to Sam Adams, Stone, and Sierra Nevada in the USA. One of the oddest takeaways from the family tree is the fact that modern brewing yeasts were domesticated in two separate lineages, and both pretty recently. The scientists published the family tree today in the journal Cell.

"It's pretty fascinating to think that we started domesticating these creatures before we even knew that they existed."

The genetics research was led by Kevin Verstrepen, a yeast biologist at the Flanders Institute for Biotechnology and the University of Leuven, in Belgium. Verstrepen and his colleagues genetically sequenced more than 150 yeasts for the project. Most are brewers yeasts, with some wine, sake, bread, and biofuel-making yeasts thrown in to boot. Verstrepen notes that today's family tree focuses heavily on the yeast behind ales, and that his team is currently working on the genetic linage of the yeasts behind crisper, lighter lagers.

Domesticated Microbes

To be sure, brewing beer is an activity as old as civilization itself. It reaches as far back as at least the early Sumerian civilization, five thousand years ago. But Verstrepen found that brewing yeasts were only truly domesticated sometime in the late 1500s or early 1600s. That's when yeasts were still unknown to humans-before Louis Pasteur discovered microbes for the first time. "It's pretty fascinating to think that we started domesticating these creatures before we even knew that they existed," Verstrepen says.

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It was then, Verstrepen says, that brewing yeasts started to look genetically quite different from their feral cousins. In particular, beer yeasts lost the ability to sexually reproduce and gained genes that helped them chomp through a type of sugar called maltose that is abundant in the grainy slop prepared by brewers. "With this domestication, the yeasts started to look almost like a new species, much like how dogs don't look like wolves anymore," he says.

Photo credit: Cell

So why did this happen in the 1500s, and not earlier? "You have to understand, for most of human history beer making happened in homes and sporadically. Because it keeps for a long time, you can imagine making beer only once a month or so," Verstrepen says. That's important, because if you're making beer sporadically, your short-lived yeasts will have to survive in the wild for generations between batches. They'll interbreed and share genes with other wild yeasts and stay feral. This is one reason why wine yeasts-which are used just once per year-look almost identical to wild yeasts even today.

"But around the 1500's and 1600's in Europe, you start to see more commercial brewing, in towns and cities and monasteries," he says. "You have brewers continuously making beer, and practicing what's called 'backslopping', where you take sediment that forms at the end of the brewing process-which contains yeast-and inoculate your next batch with it." By this time, people had an intuitive understanding that leftover brewing waste somehow helped beer taste consistent. This is the period when brewing yeasts started to live in batches of beer for generations without returning to the wild.

Yeast Family Tree

By comparing the genetic makeup of modern yeasts the world over, Verstrepen found that the first linage of domesticated brewing yeasts (called Beer 1) formed around this time, the turn of the 17th century. This linage of yeasts started in breweries around Germany and Belgium. As brewers shared tips, tools, and yeast sediment, those yeast spread to breweries in the U.K., and then branched off into American breweries. Most of the yeasts used in brewing today fall under this Beer 1 linage.

Photo credit: Cell

But half a century later, around roughly 1650, another linage of beer-making yeasts arose independently. This linage is called Beer 2, and generally speaking these yeasts make beers with higher alcohol content. Based on these microbes' genes, scientists can tell that they evolved from yeasts found in wineries. Because this new yeast was rapidly shared among brewers across the U.K., America, and Europe, Verstrepen says it's hard to place exactly where it first arose.

It's almost impossible to distinguish which of the two lineages a yeast comes from based on the flavor alone. That's because yeasts can create such a wild menagerie of flavors that the brewing differences between even two closely related yeasts can be vast.

Although Verstrepen's team collected yeasts used in famous breweries around the world, from Sam Adams to Duvel, in the new family tree "we deliberately obfuscated which yeast came from which specific brewery, to protect the brewers," he says. That's because many brewers-especially old, longstanding institutions-still "consider their yeasts something of a top-secret ingredient."

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The man we knew as the blustering genius who invented our mighty Fox News Channel is a deceitful, selfish misogynist, if the charges against him are true. And if they are true, then his shame and banishment are well earned.

Like virtually all my colleagues at Fox News, I was totally blindsided by his sexual harassment scandal, which is why I responded to Gretchen Carlsons initial filing of her lawsuit with extreme skepticism. The man she described in her pleadings was unknown even to those of us who thought we knew him well.

Roger and I have known each other for decades. I always pictured him as a hail-fellow well met, a corporate barroom brawler, more likely to tear your throat out than engage in sweet talk, as my first Tweet on the matter indicates.

Geraldo Rivera @GeraldoRivera Jul 12Manhattan, NY

Ive known him 40 years. Hes about as flirty as the grizzly in #TheRevenant. I stand with Roger Ailes

He hired me in 1994 when he ran CNBC, and I was looking for respectability after a decade in the daytime talk show business. Roger gave me a nightly public affairs show, but not before expressing his piercing skepticism. During our first meeting, he warned against my trying too hard to be legitimate. I dont want shows about crocheting, he said peering as only he can, laser-like into my eyes, adding sharply, If I want to watch ice melting Ill tune in Sunday Morning on CBS.

Putting it in direct competition with CNNs Larry King Live, the dominant cable talk show of that era, Roger gave the CNBC show its name, Rivera Live, told me it was ok to wear my reading glasses on camera, and gave me free rein to chase O.J. Simpsons white Bronco. When Larry later joked how we had ripped his show off, stealing his title, I countered that what we ripped off was his ratings.

Roger and I never really hung out or traveled together, but were close enough that even though he had gone on to create Fox News, and I was still at CNBC, Roger and Beth invited me to their intimate 1998 Valentines Day City Hall wedding, presided over by Mayor Rudy Giuliani. My wife Erica and I ache thinking about how she must be suffering.

Three years later, we reunited professionally in the awful aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks. I left the comfortable confines of CNBC to rejoin him at Fox News as senior war correspondent assigned 22 times to cover the bloody battlefields of Afghanistan and later Iraq. Through that period, he had my back through thick and thin, and I knew he would be there for my family if anything befell me in the field.

His personal and professional loyalty over the years impelled me to Tweet again on Rogers behalf, even as his scandal deepened.

Geraldo Rivera @GeraldoRivera Jul 19Cleveland, OH Dont believe the crap about #RogerAiles. Only ones talking dirt are those who hate #FoxNews & want to hurt network thats kicking their ass

Roger resigned two days later when it became apparent that Gretchen was not alone in alleging abhorrent behavior behind his closed doors. Now I am filled with regret for stubbornly discounting their various allegations. The Murdochs would not have turned the world upside down but for good cause. Moreover, I apologize for my skepticism. Like victims of sexual assault, those alleging harassment deserve the presumption of credibility.

Even Ailes personal Inspector Javert, Gabriel Sherman, the New York Magazine writer I have called a nerd with a grudge deserves my apology. He is on the right side of history. Might does not mean right. I was wrong, and am paying the price.

I learned Tuesday September 6th that after being enthusiastically received, because of my uninformed support of Mr. Ailes, and the relatively flattering portrayal of him in an early manuscript of my war memoir, Geraldo of Arabia, From Tora Bora to Trump,  as a direct result, HarperCollins has chosen not to publish.

So what happens now? For one thing, the Ailes scandal will continue to percolate at least in part because of the fear and loathing by competitors for Fox News, the ratings leader. Because it suits their perceived competitive advantage, CNN and other news networks will continue to report, repeat and regurgitate every detail in this melancholy saga. Now that Mr. Sherman has been hired by MSNBC, he will most assuredly be encouraged to stay obsessively focused.

Although that is understandable, it is not fair. Having worked at all the networks over the last 47 years I can say definitively that the social culture is industry wide. Our rivals would all be better served to clean their own houses.

For a lot of reasons, news is a flirty business. With its pressure cooker environment and long hours, it is sometimes the only place young professionals can meet. Just add up all the newsroom romances that have resulted in marriage over the years.

Managements role is to keep the playing field level, professional and fair. As society evolved from the Mad Men era of the 1950-60s, giant steps have been taken to protect subordinate employees from harassment and unwelcome advances, particularly by superiors. Sure, there is far to go, but as the seismic response to Gretchen and the other purported victims makes clear, the news business will no longer tolerate boorish conduct by anyone, however powerful. Strict policies including sensitivity training are in place. Perpetrators do so at tremendous peril to their careers and families.

To all the victims of sexual harassment, direct and indirect, I am sorry for what happened to you. As the father of three daughters, including one in the news business, I urge all who have been offended to reach out. Similarly, if you see harassment, say harassment, even if the alleged offender is an old friend.
EXCLUSIVE: German actor Frederick Lau, who starred in Dennis Gansels socio-political thriller The Wave, has signed with London-based talent agency United Agents.

The young actor, who has more than 50 roles under his belt, most recently won critics over for his role as streetwise alpha male Sonne in Sebastian Schippers 2015 Berlinale prize winner Victoria. The movie, which was filmed on a single mobile shot lasting more than two hours follows the story of a group of friends whose wild night of partying culminates in a bank robbery. It picked up an Outstanding Artistic Contribution Silver Bear at the fest.

Lau first rocked the boat on his home turf in 2008 for his turn as young student Tim in The Wave, a tale based on Ron Jones social experiment The Third Wave. In the film, a charismatic high school teacher is forced to teach a class on autocracy and introduces a social experiment to his students, who all take to the project eagerly only to soon infect the behaviour of the entire school. Film was a major hit in Germany, taking $23.6M in cinemas.

Lau picked up two German Film Awards for his roles in both The Wave and Victoria. He is currently shooting mini series 4 Blocks for TNT and is set to star in Govinda van Maeles upcoming feature Gutland.

Lau is also repped by Madelaine Jakwert at Players in Germany.

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BERLIN (Reuters) - North Korea's ambassador to Germany will probably be summoned for talks after Pyongyang conducted its fifth and biggest nuclear test on Friday, a spokesman for the German foreign ministry said. Asked if the ambassador would be summoned, Martin Schaefer told a regular government news conference: "You can expect that." Berlin condemned the nuclear test, especially because it was not the only provocation from North Korea this year, German government spokesman Steffen Seibert said. (Reporting by Michelle Martin and Joseph Nasr; Editing by Andrea Shalal)
BRATISLAVA, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Germany has no plans to reduce its export surplus, Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said on Friday, as the European Central Bank (ECB) has not changed its monetary policy which has led to a weaker euro which in turn boosts German exports.

Schaueble dismissed a suggestion this week by ECB head Mario Draghi that Germany should use fiscal room for manoeuvre to decrease its export surplus.

"Even before the European Central Bank decided its policies of unusual monetary policy, which also led to the euro exchange rate falling significantly, I said that we will increase German export surplus," Schaueble told reporters.

"If the surplus in the euro zone as a whole rises by a total of 3.6 percent , one should not be surprised that the German export surplus has also risen, if not by 3.6 percent but by 2 percent," he said before meeting other European finance ministers.

When asked whether he had any plans to decrease Germany's export surplus, Schaeuble said: "I haven't heard that the ECB is changing its monetary policy."

Berlin expects domestic demand to be the sole driver of economic growth this year, with an estimated expansion rate of 1.7 percent in 2016.

The Munich-based Ifo economic institute has said Germany's current account surplus would probably hit a new record of 278 billion euros ($313.28 billion) this year, overtaking that of China again to become the world's largest.

($1 = 0.8874 euros) (Reporting By Shadia Nasralla)
2016 Cadillac CT6

General Motors semi-autonomous driving system will have one high-tech feature that its competitors dont: An eye-tracking system.

The company plans to launch the system, called Super Cruise, on its Cadillac CT6 next year. And according to a report from the Wall Street Journal, Super Cruises eye-tracking tech will enable the system to better monitor whether the driver is paying attention or not.

For example, if a driver falls asleep at the wheel while Super Cruise is activated, the system will detect that the driver's gaze has drifted and the car will begin to send visual and audio alerts to get the person's attention. If the driver still doesnt respond, an operator from the companys OnStar service will try to make contact with the driver. If all of these alerts fail, the car will then pull over to the side of the road.

2016 Cadillac CT6

Other semi-autonomous systems, like Teslas Autopilot, differ in that they primarily rely on sensors built into the steering wheel to detect when a driver isnt paying attention. If a driver takes his or her hands off the wheel for too long, the system then sends audio and visual alerts to get the driver to keep his or her hands on the wheel.

While this strategy is mostly effective, critics argue there should be more safeguards in place to ensure the driver is paying attention because these systems still have a number of limitations.

For example, they are only meant for highway use, and most rely on lane markings to operate correctly. Because of these limitations, its critical that the driver is always prepared to take control in case the car runs into a problem it doesnt know how to handle.

To address this problem, automakers are all working to create an interface that helps ensure the driver is aware.

Sensors in the steering wheel and in the seat will continue to play a role in gauging the drivers awareness, but its likely well also begin to see eye-tracking tech become more common as car companies try to figure out the best way to monitor a drivers behavior while the car is in self-driving mode.

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In fact, Audi has already committed to using eye tracking tech in future cars and Toyota is already using it some cars as a safety feature.

GM has not revealed how much its Super Cruise system will cost or details about all of its capabilities.

But Lyndon Lie, GMs chief vehicle engineer for luxury cars, told Business Insider in a recent interview that Super Cruise will be more reliable than other systems.

We are taking a lot of lessons learned from our competitors and evaluating their cars as well, Lie said. I think we will have an overall safer system. It will be more reliable, people will be more comfortable with it.

NOW WATCH: Cadillac's new CT6 luxury sedan is a direct challenge to BMW and Mercedes





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Gold prices recoil from two-month trend resistance

Crude oil prices extend rally on EIA inventory data

Fed officials comments in focus into the week-end

Gold languished in digestion mode amid a lull in Fed-linked event risk yesterday, as expected. Comments from Boston and Dallas Fed Presidents Eric Rosengren and Robert Kaplan may rekindle volatility as traders absorb the last bits of guidance before the pre-FOMC meeting blackout period that begins on Tuesday. Hawkish overtones in line with recent remarks from other US central bank officials may boost rate hike speculation, boosting the US Dollar and weighing on the yellow metal.

Crude oil prices continued to push higher as the official set of EIA inventories report showed stockpiles dropped by a whopping 14.5 million barrels, an outcome that stands in stark contrast with expectations calling for a 631k-barrel build. The outcome was foreshadowed by an estimate from API yesterday. A slowdown in oil-specific news flow puts prices at the mercy of external factor, with the impact of Fed-speak on the trajectory of the greenback lining up as an important consideration. Headline risk related to the upcoming OPEC meeting remains a potential source of volatility as well.

Are retail traders buying or selling gold? Find out here!

GOLD TECHNICAL ANALYSIS  Gold prices corrected gently lower after testing trend line resistance set from early July. Near-term support is at 1333.62, the 23.6% Fibonacci retracement, with push below that targeting the 1303.62-08.00 area (May 2 high, 38.2% level). Alternatively, a breach of trend line resistance (now at 1351.35) on a daily closing basis exposes the 1367.15-69.41 zone (double top, 38.2% Fib expansion).

Gold Prices May Retreat as Fed Officials Stoke Rate Hike Bets

CRUDE OIL TECHNICAL ANALYSIS  Crude oil prices advanced to a two-week high having set a bottom as expected after the appearance of a bullish Piercing Line candlestick pattern. Near-term resistance is now at 47.92, the 50%Fibonacci expansion, with a daily close above that targeting the 48.97-49.07 area (August 22 high, 61.8% level). Alternatively, a reversal back below the 38.2% Fib at 46.76 sees the next downside barrier at 45.33, the 23.6%expansion.

Story continues

Gold Prices May Retreat as Fed Officials Stoke Rate Hike Bets

--- Written by Ilya Spivak, Currency Strategist for DailyFX.com

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Contact and follow Ilya on Twitter: @IlyaSpivak



original source

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trump-pence

New York (AFP)  Goldman Sachs has barred partners from donating to some US political campaigns, including the Trump-Pence presidential ticket, according to a company memo seen by AFP on Wednesday.

The Trump-Pence campaign was one of several cases listed as prohibited because of 2010 US regulations intended to block donations to state and local officials that could sway the awarding of government investment business, said the memo, which was dated August 29.

The memo barred donations to Trump-Pence because vice presidential candidate, Mike Pence, is governor of the state of Indiana.

The restriction does not extend to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who does not currently hold office, or to her vice presidential nominee, US Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia.

The policy change is meant to prevent inadvertently violating pay-to-play rules, said the memo, which was provided to AFP by a person familiar with the matter.

The penalties for failing to comply with these rules can be severe and include fines and a ban on the firm from doing business with government clients in a particular jurisdiction for a period of at least two years.

Goldman partners also cannot donate to state and local officials or candidates, state and local party committees, such as the Democratic Party of Virginia, or to inauguration or transition committees for newly elected state and local officials.

The policy pertains to Goldman partners, an elite group of about 470 employees out of the investment banks 34,800 global staff.



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By Michele Kambas and Renee Maltezou

ATHENS (Reuters) - Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and other leaders in southern Europe called for action to boost flagging growth in the bloc on Friday, saying they needed a bigger say in Europe.

But the Athens summit drew outright derision from some European Union policymakers who saw it as an attempt by Greece to ease pressure over the reforms needed under a multi-billion euro bailout accord.

At a euro zone finance ministers' meeting in Bratislava earlier on Friday, lenders called on Greece to stay on track to meet its obligations on reforms before getting any new aid money..

Holding court in Athens, Tsipras with his counterparts from France, Italy, Malta, Portugal, Cyprus and a representative of the Spanish government, said priorities of Europe needed a re-think.

The group is often referred to as "Club Med", even though Portugal is not on the Mediterranean.

"We need to take measures which spur growth and employment and which reinforce the feeling of security among European citizens," said Tsipras.

Flanked by European leaders, including French President Francois Hollande, he added: "We aspire to be an initiative of dialogue which seeks to unite Europe more, and not to divide it."

Friday's meeting was held against the backdrop of faltering growth in the bloc, a deepening migrant crisis and British plans to quit the EU.

EU leaders were scheduled to meet in Bratislava next week. At that meeting, Hollande said, leaders wanted to put forward ideas on security and defence, growth, and the migration crisis, which should not exclude the right of people to asylum.

"It is important ... (that) when the populists hope that Europe is going to fall apart that we should send out a message of unity and cohesion," said Hollande.

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said number-crunching needed a rethink. "Europe can't just continue reeling off rules, technicalities, fiscal (issues) and austerity," he said.

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"The Europe of tomorrow must be based on its deeper values. A social Europe, of ideals and of virtue."

'TRICKS'

Greece has made a point of saying the Athens summit is not intended to drive a wedge within the bloc. The next meeting of the grouping was scheduled in Portugal, Tsipras said.

But this triggered derision in some quarters of the EU.

The summit in Athens drew criticism from German lawmaker Manfred Weber who chairs the European Peoples Party Group in the European parliament.

"Prime Minister Tsipras is up to his usual tricks again. What Europe needs now is unity and definitely not new attempts of division," German lawmaker Manfred Weber, who chairs the European Peoples Party Group in the European parliament, said in a statement.

He urged Athens to deliver on promised reforms under its third bailout.

"The fact that (French) President Hollande - probably for internal political reasons  and (Italian) Prime Minister Renzi are letting Mr. Tsipras manipulate them is not really a sign of responsibility," Weber said.

Greece signed up to a third international bailout in mid-2015 worth up to 86 billion euros, with the gradual release of aid contingent on financial reforms ranging from privatisations to changes to the energy market.

The country has already passed a raft of pension and tax reforms.

(Editing by Richard Balmforth)
BRATISLAVA, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Euro zone finance ministers pushed Greece on Friday to get back to work and speed up a reform drive it agreed to in a bailout package before getting a new tranche of money.

Under a deal signed last year with euro zone countries, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, Greece can receive financial assistance of up to 86 billion euros by 2018 in return for agreed reforms.

The Eurogroup, comprising euro zone finance ministers, had approved a tranche of 10.3 billion euros for Greece in May from the overall package. An initial 7.5 billion euros of that sum had been transferred to Athens with the rest available to Greece until the end of October if it meets some conditions.

Ministers at an informal summit in Bratislava on Friday expressed concern that the country, which was due to update the group, was falling behind schedule in its efforts.

"I'm not feeling very good about Greece, agreements are there to be implemented," Austrian Finance Minister Hans Joerg Schelling told reporters ahead of the meeting.

Schelling joined others in saying the aid release would be linked to meeting agreed conditions and pushing Greece to move faster. The head of the Eurogroup, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, said a lot of time had already been lost.

"The pressure is back on, it really needs progress," he said. "The summer is over. Pack up the camping gear, get back to work."

Greece is due to fulfil 15 reforms, including privatisation plans and energy sector changes, in September to get the final 2.8 billion euros available in this tranche.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said Greece still could complete its work.

"Today is Sept. 9, so there is still time for Greece," he told reporters. "It's not new that, with Greece, we see the implementation of the measures that have been agreed towards the final phase of the agreed time frame."

With the highest debt to GDP ratio in the euro zone at more than 175 percent of national output, and after three international bailouts, Athens is hoping its official lenders will specify debt relief measures by the end of this year.

It is also hoping to get back to borrowing markets and, according to sources, may sell one or two small bonds following the inclusion of its debt in the European Central Bank's quantitative easing programme.

(Reporting by Tatiana Jancarikova, Shadia Nasralla and Jason Hovet)
* Euro zone lenders say lost time needs to be made up

* Greece striving to meet reform conditions for aid

* Eurogroup head: joint interest in staying on track

* Austria finmin says "not feeling good" about Greece (Updates with news conference, more comments)

By Jan Strupczewski and Jason Hovet

BRATISLAVA, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Euro zone lenders pushed Greece on Friday to make up for lost time by speeding up a reform drive it agreed to in a bailout package before getting any new aid money.

Under a deal signed last year with euro zone countries, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, Greece can receive financial assistance of up to 86 billion euros by 2018 in return for agreed reforms.

With a deadline for important reforms this month and a closing window to available funds, euro zone officials sought to make sure Greece stayed on track to meet its obligations to receive 2.8 billion euros by the end of October.

"As the Eurogroup, we took the more general point and message that the summer is over, we really need to restart and pick up on the time lost," Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the head of the euro zone finance ministers, said after talks in Bratislava.

"And the Greek minister, our Greek colleague, was, I think, convinced there was a joint interest for all of us to keep this on track."

The Eurogroup, comprising euro zone finance ministers, had approved a tranche of 10.3 billion euros for Greece in May from the overall package. An initial 7.5 billion euros of that sum had been transferred to Athens with the rest available to Greece until the end of October if it meets some conditions.

With the highest debt to GDP ratio in the euro zone at more than 175 percent of national output, and after three international bailouts, Athens is hoping to show its lenders and investors the country is getting back on its feet.

But it still has work to do, including privatisations, energy market reforms and establishing an independent revenue agency that are part of 15 reforms it has promised.

Story continues

"One could have wished to see more progress than we have but what I state is that we have seen in recent days an intensification of efforts by the Greek authorities," EU commissioner for economic and tax affairs Pierre Moscovici said.

Other ministers meeting in Bratislava on Friday expressed concern that Greece was falling behind schedule.

Austrian Finance Minister Hans Joerg Schelling told reporters ahead of the meeting he was "not feeling very good about Greece". But German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said Greece still had time to complete its work, saying Athens has in the past come through on required measures at the wire.

Athens is keen to keep the process on track as it also seeks debt relief and a return to debt markets following the inclusion of its debt in the ECB's quantitative easing programme.

"There are serious concerns regarding the sustainability of Greek debt and it is in the interest not only of the Greeks but of the whole euro zone to find a lasting solution," ECB executive board member Benoit Coeure said.

(Additional reporting by Tatiana Jancarikova, Shadia Nasralla and Francesco Guarascio)
Moscow (AFP) - At least two people were seriously injured when armed masked men attacked a team of volunteer Greenpeace firefighters and a local environmental group early Friday, activists said.

A little after midnight, eight masked men broke into the camp of volunteers who were three days into an expedition to put out fires in the wetlands of the Kuban river delta in southern Russia's Krasnodar region, Greenpeace said.

Before nightfall, a drone had hovered over the fenced camp, according to Environmental Watch on North Caucasus (EWNC), a group working with Greenpeace in the area.

The attackers cut up the activists' tents, threatened them with a gun and severely beat up two people, said Grigory Kuksin, who coordinates the wildfire prevention programme at Greenpeace Russia.

"They broke the nose of (the head of Greenpeace Russia's protected areas programme) Mikhail Kreindlin, who also has a concussion. Another activist is suspected of having his ribs broken," Kuksin told AFP, adding that they had to be taken to hospital.

"The people also suffered from chemical burns from some substance in glass vials that the attackers threw," he added.

The attackers wrote derogatory slogans on the fence around the property where volunteers pitched their camp, including "Pendosy here", using an insulting term for "Americans", Greenpeace said.

Police had visited the scene and some officers had stayed behind to protect the activists.

"This is the first time in our experience this has happened," said Kuksin, who has trained wildfire prevention volunteers and worked with local authorities in Russia for about a decade.

"We understood that fires are dangerous here, but we didn't know that we need bulletproof vests in addition to firefighting helmets," he said.

Amnesty International condemned the attack, saying that failure to investigate would be "akin to official acquiescence" of the incident.

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- Police probes -

Local police said in a statement they had launched three probes -- into death treats, theft and bodily harm -- and were looking for suspects involved in the attack.

Andrei Rudomakha, the head of EWNC, which protects the Kuban river delta and had some activists in the expedition, said the attack had probably been coordinated with the security services.

"This was a professional attack, same as before the (2014 Sochi) Olympic Games, when our office was attacked and one of our cars was trashed," he said.

EWNC said the earlier presence of the drone explained how the attackers knew how to locate the tents and vehicles in the dark.

Rudomakha said his group had for years opposed a local state fish farm, which had unsuccessfully sued EWNC for slander and "sets fire to the reeds" in the delta to boost fish production.

Russia's Kuban river delta is a key bird sanctuary on a major migration route, including for rare species like the Dalmatian pelican, but it is also a major agriculture, fishing and hunting area.
From Redbook

Imagine getting your cervix stitched shut. Yes, like with a needle and thread. Now imagine having that done three separate times, the third time a double stitch (two stitches, one just higher than the other) for good measure. That's exactly what Kristen Morgan, a mother of four from Memphis, Tennessee, went through to get her babies here. And it was worth every bit of pain, she says.

Cerclage, a procedure where a woman's cervix is literally sewed shut, is typically done between 16 and 20 weeks gestation to prevent pre-term delivery when a mother shows signs of going into labor too early. "A cerclage is done when a woman has, or is suspected of having, an incompetent cervix, meaning that it is too short or has begun to open too early," explains Sarah Yamaguchi, M.D., an ob-gyn at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles. The doctor uses sutures - normally one but in some cases more - to cinch the cervix shut to keep the baby in. If all goes well, the stitches are removed at 37 weeks to allow the woman to give birth vaginally.

Cerclage may sound like a medieval torture practice, but it was actually developed in the 1950s. And even though it's a fairly rare procedure - less than one percent of pregnant women need one, according to the American Pregnancy Association - it has been credited with saving thousands of babies lives over the years.

Morgan got pregnant with twins at age 27. It was her first pregnancy, and when her doctor discovered at her 18-week check-up that her cervix was nearly 100 percent effaced (meaning the cervix had already entirely thinned out in preparation for delivery) and was beginning to dilate, she was terrified. If the babies were born that early, their chances of survival would be very small. At that point, Morgan had to act fast if she had any hope of keeping her babies in.

Unfortunately, this is an all-too-common scenario. "Once this process of dilation and effacing starts, it can't be reversed - the more dilated the cervix is, the less effective the cerclage will be, so time is of the essence," Yamaguchi explains. "There's not a lot of options at that point. There are no medications to stop the dilation and effacing, so it's cerclage or nothing."

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Cerclage may sound like a medieval torture practice, but it has been credited with saving thousands of babies lives over the years.

Morgan agreed to the cerclage and the doctor put the stitch in, using just spinal anesthesia. It wasn't too painful, she recalls. "I had mild cramping for a few days and felt a little sore deep inside, but that was it," she says. "I'd get a sharp pain every once in a while. It was more annoying than anything else."

Unfortunately, the procedure wasn't enough to stave off labor, and at 24 weeks gestation, Kathryn, the older twin, tore through Morgan's thinned cervix; William was born shortly thereafter.

"Ironically, the cerclage actually held. The pressure from Kathryn was too great and she tore a new hole through my cervix," she says. "They had to go in and remove the cerclage after they were born to get the placentas out." Tragically, neither baby survived.

Morgan's situation, while rare, isn't unheard of. One in every 100 pregnant women will experience an incompetent cervix, according to the American Pregnancy Association, and because it's painless, most women don't find out it's an issue until their baby is in danger. At that point, as in Morgan's case, an emergency cerclage is necessary. But only 40-60 percent of emergency cerclages actually keep the baby in utero until 37 weeks, reports a study published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.

Why exactly a cerclage fails is a controversial topic. In Morgan's case, it was likely because her cervix had already thinned and shortened too much. "There is a point where it simply becomes too late," Yamaguchi says.

Photo credit: Getty

But in other cases, the failure may be due to the type of cerclage performed. Cerclages done with a thick "braided" suture can easily become infected and accelerate a pre-term birth rather than prevent it, according to a new study published in Science Translational Medicine, whereas those done with a thinner, microbe-resistant "microfilament" thread can lead to more successful outcomes.

But even if the stitches hold and no infection develops, emergency cerclages still may not make much of a difference in preventing infant death. One study of nearly 4,000 woman, published online by Cochrane Pregnancy and Childbirth Group, found that even though an emergency cerclage could delay the onset of labor, it still didn't affect the overall outcome of that labor.

"When cerclage was compared with no treatment, there was no clear difference in the number of babies dying before or at birth (a miscarriage or stillbirth) or around the time of birth or from illness, despite a clear reduction in the number of preterm births," explains lead author Zarko Alfirevic, M.D., a professor in the department of Women's and Children's Health at The University of Liverpool. He adds that the women who receive a cerclage were also more likely to need a C-section and experienced other side effects like vaginal discharge, bleeding, and fever, although they weren't generally serious.

These findings have made some question whether or not the procedure is a good idea, with some doctors refusing to perform emergency cerclages all together. Alfirevic advises that rather than making it the standard treatment for preventing pre-term delivery, it should be "personalized" and evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

For Yamaguchi, however, it's not so black and white. "I do them - I guess you can say I'm 'pro-cerclage' - but I have a very serious talk with the mother first. She has to accept the risk; it's a very tricky situation," she says. "I tell them, 'You're not looking at a full-term baby, that's not realistic. And premature babies aren't as healthy.' A lot of women envision having the baby and taking it home the next day, but that's not always reality and I want them to be prepared for something going wrong."

When a baby's life is at stake and the choice is to do nothing or to do something, most mothers will choose to do something. Which begs the question: Why are there no other options?

But while the medical community debates emergency cerclages, one thing is clear: Preventative cerclages do help. In a woman with a history of premature labor, a short cervix, or a previously incompetent cervix, a preventative cerclage can be put in before the cervix has a chance to thin or open. These have a very high success rate, with about 80 percent of babies making it to full term and 93 percent surviving, according to a study published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.

This is why, despite her bad experience with her first cerclage, Morgan opted to have a preventative cerclage put in early the next two times she got pregnant. "I just felt much more comfortable knowing it was there," she says. And it worked: She's now a mother to Riley, 13, and Ella, 8.

But cerclage is not a cure-all for pre-term birth - it won't help at all if the cause is unrelated to the cervix - and both emergency and preventative cerclages come with risks. "There are immediate risks, like the bag of water being accidentally ruptured or the cervix becoming irritated, both of which can cause immediate labor," Yamaguchi says. "In the long-term, the woman is more likely to have a C-section, get an infection, or sustain serious damage to her cervix from the stitch."

Until other treatments are developed, however, these are necessary risks. When a baby's life is at stake and the choice is to do nothing or to do something, most mothers will choose to do something, Yamaguchi says. Which begs the question: Why are there no other options? Women desperately need more research into what causes an incompetent cervix and what can safely be done to protect the health of both baby and mother.

As researchers work to answer those questions, more effort needs to be made to screen women earlier in their pregnancy for an incompetent or inefficient cervix, especially in women with a history of pregnancy loss, uterine abnormalities, or surgery on or injury to the cervix. While there is no direct test for an incompetent cervix, doctors may be able to detect it during a pelvic exam or with a transvaginal ultrasound, according to the Mayo Clinic. In some cases, an amniocentesis or MRI scan may also be ordered. Early detection allows for a preventative cerclage, without the pain of having to lose a baby first.

Despite the risks, Morgan says she doesn't regret any of her cerclages. "I'd do it again in a heartbeat if I had to," she says. "But we're done! I think three cerclages and four births is enough damage to my poor cervix!"

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LONDON -- In the run-up to the world's largest annual gathering of people, Saudi Arabia and Iran have stepped up their verbal attacks, highlighting the increased resentment between the two countries. While Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, implied the Saudi government was not competent in administering the Hajj, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel AlJubeir called on Iran to choose between whether it is "exporting the revolution" or a state that respects international law.

The exchange of salvos came this week in advance of the Hajj, which begins on Friday and runs to Sept. 14. More than 1.5 million Muslims will participate in the annual pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia -- while 1.6 billion Muslims globally mark the holy days of the month of Dhu Hijjah. The fifth pillar of Islam, the Hajj is obligatory for all able-bodied and financially capable Muslims once in their lifetime. For those not participating in the Hajj, the time is meant to be time of peace and reflection, culminating in Eid Al-Adha, the feast of sacrifice.

The Hajj is observed annually in Mecca, the city seen as the heart of Islam. However, this year the Hajj has become highly politicized, as Iranian officials have engaged in a war of words with their Saudi counterparts. While relations between the two countries officially broke down at the start of the year, and tensions have been escalating for longer, Tehran's direct challenging Riyadh's administration of the Hajj is unprecedented.

[READ: Saudi Arabia's top cleric says Iran's leaders 'not Muslims']

On Monday, Khamenei gave his "Hajj Sermon," saying that Saudi rule is "dependent on defending the arrogant powers of the world, on alliances with Zionism and the U.S." Khameni blamed Riyadh for the lack of Iranian pilgrims this year, even though it was the Iranian government that took the decision in last year to boycott the Hajj.

Iranian officials' criticisms center on a deadly stampede at last year's Hajj; official figures placed the death toll at 769, however some estimates say more than 2,400 died, including at least 400 Iranians. Saudi Arabia has been accused of not being forthcoming in the details of how the stampede happened, while Saudi officials denounce criticism of their handling of the incident as politicizing a tragedy.

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This week marked a significant escalation from Iran of the heated exchanges and political accusations. The suggestion by Khamenei that "The world of Islam must fundamentally reconsider the management of the two holy places and Hajj" directly threatens the Saudi leadership. The Saudi king holds the title of the "Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques" and Khamenei is intentionally seeking to undermine that role.

Saudi Arabia has both the privilege and burden of organizing the Hajj; by hosting millions of pilgrims each year, the country gains political status in the Muslim world. However, hosting the event is accompanied by security threats and the organizational burden of annually staging the largest human gathering under strict rules.

Following Khamenei's statements, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani asked countries to "punish Saudi Arabia" for last year's Hajj stampede. Meanwhile, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif questioned the "Islam of Saudi Arabia," as a rebuke to Saudi Grand Mufti Abdulaziz AlSheikh, who was quoted by a Saudi newspaper as saying Iranian leaders are not real Muslims since they are descendants of 'AlMajuws,' in reference to Zoroastrians.

On Wednesday, AlJubeir, the Saudi foreign minister, spoke about an "Iranian rampage" in the region. Speaking at Chatham House in London, he insisted that Saudi Arabia offered to work with the Iranian government to ensure their eligible citizens can participate, including allowing for consular assistance despite the lack of diplomatic relations between the two countries. AlJubeir said Tehran refused the Saudi offer and they are "responsible in the eyes of God and the eyes of their people."

Saudi Arabia is concerned about the possibility of any terrorist threat. The Islamic State has repeatedly threatened the country and has claimed responsibility for several attacks. Last July, there were four attacks within the space of a few hours. One of them shook Muslims around the world, since it was at AlMasjid Alnabawi, the burial site of the Prophet Mohammad in Medina and the second-most holy site in Islam. While the bombing of a nearby parking lot led to four fatalities, it marked the first such targeting of a holy Muslim site in Saudi Arabia. However, attacks on holy sites in Iraq and Syria have been more frequent in the last few years. The last day of Hajj this year falls on the 15 th anniversary of the September 11 th attacks on the United States and at a time that ISIS is facing increasing pressures in Iraq and Syria, which could incentivise potential attackers.

[MORE: Iran: Punish Saudi Arabia for 2015 Hajj Disaster]

Taking into account these risks, Saudi authorities have issued electronic bracelets to all pilgrims, in addition to dispersing 17,000 security personnel in Mecca, according to the Ministry of Hajj. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Nayef, who is the country's interior minister, warned this week that Iran seeks to "politicize Hajj and convert it into an occasion to violate the teachings of Islam, through shouting slogans and disturbing the security of pilgrims." Saudi officials have expressed concern that pro-Iranian pilgrims could use the Hajj to stage a protest against Saudi Arabia. Saudi officials have been adamant that any political action will not be tolerated at the holy sites.

At a time of discord and wars in several Muslim countries, of humanitarian crises and mass migration, the Hajj is intended to remind people that they are created equal. Class and ethnic divisions are meant to be overcome as all male pilgrims must wear only two unstitched pieces of white cloth. Muslims around the world marking the journey of Prophet Mohammad in his farewell pilgrimage and honoring the legacy of the Prophet Abraham, is meant to bring communities together. And while for the vast majority of Muslims it will, the politicization of the Hajj will cast its shadow on this sacred week as no resolution is in sight.

The discord between Iran and Saudi Arabia is a far cry from Mohammad's final sermon, where he preached "Every Muslim is a brother to every Muslim. Do not, therefore, do injustice to yourselves."
By Huw Jones

LONDON (Reuters) - Chancellor Philip Hammond warned other European Union countries they would be making a "huge mistake" if they tried to break up London's dominance as a global financial centre after the country leaves the bloc.

In a sign of tense negotiations that lie ahead as Britain tries to negotiate its exit from the EU while keeping as much access as possible to its single market, Hammond said London's "complex ecosystem" of banks and financial services could not be replicated elsewhere.

"To break it up or try to damage it in the pursuit of some very narrow and hypothetical national advantage would be a huge mistake for any of our European Union partners to follow," he told lawmakers.

"London's financial services market supports the real economy across Europe, and not just in the UK. German car manufacturers, Italian manufacturers of consumer white goods use the City of London," Hammond said.

His comments were among the strongest yet in support of the City of London finance industry since the referendum, and echo arguments being put forward by the sector itself.

London dominates much of European finance, accounting for 78 percent of its foreign currency trading, 85 percent of hedge fund assets and 74 percent of off-exchange derivatives trading, according to TheCityUK, which promotes UK financial services.

After voters decided in a referendum in June to leave the EU, Britain will have to negotiate new trading terms with the bloc. The financial sector, which represents more than 10 percent of Britain's economy, is worried that it will lose "passporting" rights to do business across the single market.

Hammond said Britain would leave the single market and would try to secure a deal that was suited to the country's interests.

"The arrangements we negotiate with the EU will be bespoke, I have no doubt whatsoever about that," Hammond said.

The financial sector has acknowledged that some parts of the industry would not need a passport because they do not do much business in the EU.

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EU leaders have said full access to the single market must be matched by the freedom for EU citizens to work in Britain.

HIGHLY SKILLED BANKERS WELCOME

Hammond said Britain could not accept uncontrolled free movement of people from the bloc given the political message from the June referendum, but he wanted a deal which gave British businesses as much access as possible to the EU.

Banks in London recruit large numbers of workers from the bloc and have warned they may have to move elsewhere if they are unable to continue doing so.

"I would expect that using the control that we will have over the movement of people, we would use it in a sensible way that would certainly facilitate the movement of highly skilled people between financial institutions and businesses in order to support investment in the UK economy," Hammond said.

He dismissed warnings that the clearing of euro-denominated transactions such as derivatives will shift to the euro zone after Brexit, as called for by French President Francois Hollande and others.

Former Bank of England deputy governor Charlie Bean said on Wednesday that Britain would lose that market.

"Clearing in London is a massive business and it benefits from huge economies of scale," Hammond said.

"Most of the people I am talking to do not believe that you can break off bits of the clearing system. Most of them do not believe you can persuade clearing to go to any place it does not want naturally to go."

After London, the most likely destination for clearing would be New York rather than anywhere in Europe, Hammond said.

(Additional reporting by David Milliken, Andy Bruce and Laura Gardner Cuesta; editing by William Schomberg)
By Huw Jones LONDON (Reuters) - Chancellor Philip Hammond warned other European Union countries they would be making a "huge mistake" if they tried to break up London's dominance as a global financial centre after the country leaves the bloc. In a sign of tense negotiations that lie ahead as Britain tries to negotiate its exit from the EU while keeping as much access as possible to its single market, Hammond said London's "complex ecosystem" of banks and financial services could not be replicated elsewhere. "To break it up or try to damage it in the pursuit of some very narrow and hypothetical national advantage would be a huge mistake for any of our European Union partners to follow," he told lawmakers. "London's financial services market supports the real economy across Europe, and not just in the UK. German car manufacturers, Italian manufacturers of consumer white goods use the City of London," Hammond said. His comments were among the strongest yet in support of the City of London finance industry since the referendum, and echo arguments being put forward by the sector itself. London dominates much of European finance, accounting for 78 percent of its foreign currency trading, 85 percent of hedge fund assets and 74 percent of off-exchange derivatives trading, according to TheCityUK, which promotes UK financial services. After voters decided in a referendum in June to leave the EU, Britain will have to negotiate new trading terms with the bloc. The financial sector, which represents more than 10 percent of Britain's economy, is worried that it will lose "passporting" rights to do business across the single market. Hammond said Britain would leave the single market and would try to secure a deal that was suited to the country's interests. "The arrangements we negotiate with the EU will be bespoke, I have no doubt whatsoever about that," Hammond said. The financial sector has acknowledged that some parts of the industry would not need a passport because they do not do much business in the EU. EU leaders have said full access to the single market must be matched by the freedom for EU citizens to work in Britain. HIGHLY SKILLED BANKERS WELCOME Hammond said Britain could not accept uncontrolled free movement of people from the bloc given the political message from the June referendum, but he wanted a deal which gave British businesses as much access as possible to the EU. Banks in London recruit large numbers of workers from the bloc and have warned they may have to move elsewhere if they are unable to continue doing so. "I would expect that using the control that we will have over the movement of people, we would use it in a sensible way that would certainly facilitate the movement of highly skilled people between financial institutions and businesses in order to support investment in the UK economy," Hammond said. He dismissed warnings that the clearing of euro-denominated transactions such as derivatives will shift to the euro zone after Brexit, as called for by French President Francois Hollande and others. Former Bank of England deputy governor Charlie Bean said on Wednesday that Britain would lose that market. "Clearing in London is a massive business and it benefits from huge economies of scale," Hammond said. "Most of the people I am talking to do not believe that you can break off bits of the clearing system. Most of them do not believe you can persuade clearing to go to any place it does not want naturally to go." After London, the most likely destination for clearing would be New York rather than anywhere in Europe, Hammond said. (Additional reporting by David Milliken, Andy Bruce and Laura Gardner Cuesta; editing by William Schomberg)
By Tom Hals

Sept 9 (Reuters) - Hanjin Shipping Co Ltd has received authority to spend the money needed to dock at U.S. ports and begin unloading four vessels that have been stranded at sea by the company's failure last week, a company lawyer told a U.S. court on Friday.

"We have the money to fully service those four ships," Ilana Volkov, a Hanjin attorney, told a U.S. Bankruptcy Court hearing in Newark, New Jersey on Friday.

Around $14 billion of cargo has been tied up globally as ports, tug boat operators and cargo handling firms refuse to work for Hanjin, the world's seventh-largest container carrier, which filed for receivership in a Seoul court last week.

(Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware; Editing by Bernard Orr)
By Tom Hals

(Reuters) - A U.S. judge said on Friday he will grant Hanjin Shipping Co Ltd provisional protection from creditors in the United States, enabling some vessels to dock and unload at U.S. ports.

South Korea's Hanjin asked U.S. Bankruptcy Judge John Sherwood to issue an order that would prevent creditors from seizing Hanjin ships or property, and allow cargo owners to make arrangements to retrieve goods stranded in warehouses. Sherwood said he would sign the order later on Friday.

Earlier, the company received authority to spend the money needed to dock at U.S. ports and begin unloading four vessels that have been stranded at sea by the company's failure last week, a company lawyer told a U.S. court on Friday.

"We have the money," said Ilana Volkov, an attorney for Hanjin, told a U.S. Bankruptcy Court hearing in Newark, New Jersey on Friday. "We want to call these ports and say, please accept our ships and we want to pay for the services to work the ships.

Volkov said at least $10 million was authorized by a Korean court to begin servicing the four ships. Hanjin identified 14 U.S.-bound ships in court papers, but Volkov said she did not have information about the other vessels.

The company said that some ships may not dock at their original destinations, which could become an issue for companies like HP Inc (HPQ.N), Samsung Electronics and Home Shopping Network, who said in court records or in court they had cargo on those ships.

The four U.S.-bound ships are the Hanjin Boston, Hanjin Greece, Hanjin Jungil and Hanjin Gdynia.

Around $14 billion of cargo has been tied up globally as ports, tugboat operators and cargo handling firms refuse to work for Hanjin, the world's seventh-largest container carrier, which filed for receivership in a Seoul court last week.

HAVOC FOR GLOBAL TRADE

Hanjin has been struggling to arrange financing to resume normal operations. Korean Air Lines , the biggest shareholder in Hanjin, delayed on Friday a decision on a funding plan.

Story continues

The collapse of Hanjin has caused havoc in global trade networks and a surge in freight rates, as more than half of Hanjin's 141 ships have been blocked from docking at ports. Four vessels have also been seized as of Thursday, according to Hanjin Shipping.

As ships await at sea, anchored off various ports from Long Beach, California, Mexico to Panama City, problems for the financially-strapped company mount as fuel suppliers also demand payment and provisions run low on the ships.

An arrest warrant was entered against the Hanjin Montevideo, currently anchored off Long Beach, and the ship was seized. The parties pressing for arrest were World Fuel Services Inc and OceanConnet Marine PTE Ltd, and Hanjin's attorney said the company expected to work out an arrangement to release the ship next week.

The judge asked companies along the supply chain to hammer out a protocol agreement over the weekend that would get goods moving again. Hanjin has suggested cargo owners were free to pay cargo handling fees owed by Hanjin, which Samsung Electronics called ransom payments.

Hanjin's woes were having wider knock-on effects. Sherwood was told that port terminals were not accepting the routine return of empty Hanjin shipping containers from retailers, forcing stores to spend to store them.

Uncertainty about freight fees was leading to vast numbers of containers clogging warehouses at port terminals. As containers piled up with retailers and on docks, the available pool of chassis used to transport containers was dwindling.

Sherwood repeatedly urged the parties to "self-help" and work out the problems as best they could.

Hanjin's collapse could also hit the bottom line at several companies as it came during the peak shipping period ahead of the year-end holiday season.

But import cargo volume at the nation's major retail container ports should be at near-peak levels for September, according to the monthly Global Port Tracker report by the National Retail Federation and Hackett Associates.

Hanjin should not significantly affect volume for the month since alternative arrangements to unload those containers or shift cargo elsewhere should be dealt with by the time the numbers are tallied, NRF Vice President for Supply Chain and Customs Policy Jonathan Gold said.

Merchandise is in limbo at the moment and retailers are working hard to make sure it ends up on store shelves in time for the holidays.

The shipping line has filed for so-called U.S. Chapter 15 bankruptcy, which allows a company to seek recognition by U.S. courts of orders issued overseas.

(Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware; Writing by Bernard Orr; Editing by Nick Zieminski)
By Tom Hals

(Reuters) - A U.S. judge said on Friday he will grant Hanjin Shipping Co Ltd provisional protection from creditors in the United States, enabling some vessels to dock and unload at U.S. ports.

South Korea's Hanjin asked U.S. Bankruptcy Judge John Sherwood to issue an order that would prevent creditors from seizing Hanjin ships or property, and allow cargo owners to make arrangements to retrieve goods stranded in warehouses. Sherwood said he would sign the order later on Friday.

Earlier, the company received authority to spend the money needed to dock at U.S. ports and begin unloading four vessels that have been stranded at sea by the company's failure last week, a company lawyer told a U.S. court on Friday.

"We have the money," said Ilana Volkov, an attorney for Hanjin, told a U.S. Bankruptcy Court hearing in Newark, New Jersey on Friday. "We want to call these ports and say, please accept our ships and we want to pay for the services to work the ships.

Volkov said at least $10 million (8 million pounds) was authorized by a Korean court to begin servicing the four ships. Hanjin identified 14 U.S.-bound ships in court papers, but Volkov said she did not have information about the other vessels.

The company said that some ships may not dock at their original destinations, which could become an issue for companies like HP Inc (HPQ.N), Samsung Electronics and Home Shopping Network, who said in court records or in court they had cargo on those ships.

The four U.S.-bound ships are the Hanjin Boston, Hanjin Greece, Hanjin Jungil and Hanjin Gdynia.

Around $14 billion of cargo has been tied up globally as ports, tugboat operators and cargo handling firms refuse to work for Hanjin, the world's seventh-largest container carrier, which filed for receivership in a Seoul court last week.

HAVOC FOR GLOBAL TRADE

Hanjin has been struggling to arrange financing to resume normal operations. Korean Air Lines , the biggest shareholder in Hanjin, delayed on Friday a decision on a funding plan.

Story continues

The collapse of Hanjin has caused havoc in global trade networks and a surge in freight rates, as more than half of Hanjin's 141 ships have been blocked from docking at ports. Four vessels have also been seized as of Thursday, according to Hanjin Shipping.

As ships await at sea, anchored off various ports from Long Beach, California, Mexico to Panama City, problems for the financially-strapped company mount as fuel suppliers also demand payment and provisions run low on the ships.

An arrest warrant was entered against the Hanjin Montevideo, currently anchored off Long Beach, and the ship was seized. The parties pressing for arrest were World Fuel Services Inc and OceanConnet Marine PTE Ltd, and Hanjin's attorney said the company expected to work out an arrangement to release the ship next week.

The judge asked companies along the supply chain to hammer out a protocol agreement over the weekend that would get goods moving again. Hanjin has suggested cargo owners were free to pay cargo handling fees owed by Hanjin, which Samsung Electronics called ransom payments.

Hanjin's woes were having wider knock-on effects. Sherwood was told that port terminals were not accepting the routine return of empty Hanjin shipping containers from retailers, forcing stores to spend to store them.

Uncertainty about freight fees was leading to vast numbers of containers clogging warehouses at port terminals. As containers piled up with retailers and on docks, the available pool of chassis used to transport containers was dwindling.

Sherwood repeatedly urged the parties to "self-help" and work out the problems as best they could.

Hanjin's collapse could also hit the bottom line at several companies as it came during the peak shipping period ahead of the year-end holiday season.

But import cargo volume at the nation's major retail container ports should be at near-peak levels for September, according to the monthly Global Port Tracker report by the National Retail Federation and Hackett Associates.

Hanjin should not significantly affect volume for the month since alternative arrangements to unload those containers or shift cargo elsewhere should be dealt with by the time the numbers are tallied, NRF Vice President for Supply Chain and Customs Policy Jonathan Gold said.

Merchandise is in limbo at the moment and retailers are working hard to make sure it ends up on store shelves in time for the holidays.

The shipping line has filed for so-called U.S. Chapter 15 bankruptcy, which allows a company to seek recognition by U.S. courts of orders issued overseas.

(Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware; Writing by Bernard Orr; Editing by Nick Zieminski)
Leopard gives birth to 3 cubs in abandoned house

A leopard has given birth to three cubs in a deserted house belonging to one Lalit Jung Thapa of Sirutar in Bhaktapur district.
Federal police officers stand guard outside the ranch where an intense gun battle occurred between police and suspected drug cartel members in Vista Hermosa, Michoacan State, on May 22, 2015

On Tuesday, unidentified gunmen reportedly shot down a Mexican government helicopter in the restive southwest state of Michoacan.

The downing came amid a series of gun battles between Mexican security forces and members of one of the many gangs operating in the region.

The possibility that these gunmen knocked a helicopter out of the sky not only demonstrates the firepower that these criminal groups have; it is also a sign that organized crime in Michoacan and the surrounding area has not been rooted out  and that violence related to it could get much worse.

The fighting broke out on Tuesday afternoon after the attempted kidnapping of a local businessman in Michoacan's Tierra Caliente region. Local residents responded to fight off the would-be kidnappers, and the arrival of Mexican security forces initiated the gun battles that ultimately led to the helicopter's downing, which killed five.

Since then, however, a confused picture of the groups involved has emerged, reflecting the fractured and uncertain state of the criminal underworld in Michoacan and the region around it.

Michoacan was the stomping ground of the Knights Templar, or Caballeros Templarios, cartel from about 2010 until about 2014, when pushback from local civilian-defense groups and the heavy deployment of federal security forces fractured and weakened it.

Mexican officials arrive at the site where a police helicopter participating in an operation to capture leaders of an unidentified criminal group, fell on September 6, 2016 in La Huacana, Michoacan State

What was left on the criminal landscape were remnants of the Knights Templar, regional groups, and a new entrant in the area: the Jalisco New Generation cartel (CJNG), which is now one of the country's most powerful criminal organizations.

Story continues

"In Michoacan, when the federal government came in and essentially put the state in a lockdown, it was to the benefit of, if not the explicit intended benefit of, the cartel de Jalisco de Nueva Generacion [CJNG] against the Templarios," David Shirk, a professor at San Diego University, told Business Insider. "Massive federal deployments helped to take out the Templarios."

A former civilian-self-defense force leader in the state told AFP that fighting among what remained of the Templarios was driving the violence. "It's a fight among them," he said. "They are divided, they are killing each other, they are still kidnapping, they are still extorting."

In all, according to officials at the 43rd Military Zone of Apatzingan in Michoacan state, there are 12 criminal groups operating in the state, all them allied with either the Knights Templar or the CJNG.

Michoacan map

According to a report from Vice, however, the two poles around which Michoacan's criminal world revolve are the CJNG and the Sinaloa cartel, the powerful organization headed by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman prior to his capture.

Armed groups purporting to take up the anti-crime, anti-corruption mantle of civilian-self-defense groups  but likely tied to the legacy of the Templarios  have also emerged in recent months.

Michoacan is valuable to these groups because of its long history of marijuana and methamphetamine production, as well as the state's extensive road networks and coastline that are amenable to smuggling activity. This is particularly true of the Tierra Caliente region, where the helicopter was downed.

Recent reports from Michoacan indicate that the Knights Templar, or elements thereof, have reappeared, and links between a Knights Templar leader and one of the men killed in Tuesday's gunfights suggested that gunmen tied to the Templarios could have brought down the government's helicopter.

But a federal government source who spoke to AFP said there was "suspicion" the CJNG, which shot down a military helicopter in May 2015, was responsible for Tuesday's crash.

Homicides in Michoacan

While it remains unclear what criminal groups are committing what crimes in Michoacan, the affect this fighting has had on violence in the state is much more obvious.

The 771 homicides registered there through July this year are almost as many as the 943 recorded last year.

The 187 homicides that occurred in July this year were more than double the number in the same month last year and made the month Michoacan's most violent since 2006.

That there are so many criminal groups so active in the area makes it likely that this violence will intensify before it diminishes.

"In general, violence drops when control of a state is uncontested (because either the state has control or a single criminal group dominates) while violence increases when two or more groups (criminal groups or the state) are fighting each other," James Bosworth, the CEO of regional advisory firm Southern Pulse, told Business Insider.

NOW WATCH: There's a terrifying reason people are warned to stay inside at 5:45 p.m. in parts of Mexico





More From Business Insider


The world's governments now have around $60 trillion in debt which is then sold to investors as bonds.

So who owns this debt?

In a note sent out to clients on Friday, Deutsche Bank chief global economist Torsten Slk broke down who owns various countries' debts. One chart breaks down debt ownership for selected developed markets and the other for emerging market countries.

For the US, the largest chunk of government debt is held by US-based non-bank investors followed by the governments of other countries.

Notably, Japan (which has the highest debt to GDP ratio in the world) has the largest chunk of its debt held by its own central bank.

On the emerging market side, China has a huge swath of its debt owned by domestic banks, with the lion's share controlled by state-owned banks.

Here's developed countries:

Screen Shot 2016 09 09 at 11.30.57 AM

And emerging markets:

Screen Shot 2016 09 09 at 11.30.50 AM

NOW WATCH: Krugman reveals the economic risks of a Trump presidency





More From Business Insider


Traders make cappuccino in their booth on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in New York December 22, 2014. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri

Via Dave Lutz, head of ETFs at JonesTrading, here's a quick guide to what traders are talking about right now:

Good Morning! US Futures are retreating 30bp and on overnight lows as a bevy of macro headwinds weigh early. Its a Sea of red over in Europe as the ECB inaction continues to weigh  The DAX is down 50bp as Energy and Bond Proxies retreat sharply on tough German Trade Data, while the EU Fins are bucking the trend, gaining 50bp despite Italian Banks under pressure on Capital Raising Headers from UniCredit. The FTSE is off 25bp as gains in the London banks offset some of the losses in Industrials and Miners. Volumes are heavy in Europe, with Frankfurt trading 50% above normal trends. North Koreas fifth nuclear test weighed on Asian shares Friday - Aussie lost 90bp as metals fell - Shanghai dropped 60bp, while South Koreas Kospi was whacked for 1.3%. Nikkei closed flat, while Hang Seng rallied on more chatter of the Shanghai connect.

The US 10YY continues to move upward, gaining 3bp and hitting the highest since June as the doves grow cautious ahead of the Brainard speech Monday, while Bund Yields have moved close to 0% as the continue sell off after the ECB disappointment. The DXY is flat, as gains in Euro and Sterling are offset by losses in the Yen and Commodity Currencies. Ore in China dropped 50bp to 11week lows, weighing on the Metals, with Silver and Gold firmly in the red. The Energy complex is retreating from yesterdays spike, as WTI drops 1.4% and Gasoline 2.2% - but Natty continues to stay green as a heat-wave grips the North-East. Softs look pretty weak across the board.

Ahead of us today, we get Fed's Rosengren to delivering a Economic Forecast in Boston at 7:45. With the 15th anniversary of the September 11th attacks falling on Sunday, The NYSE will ring a single bell this morning for a Moment of Silence at 9:20am. At 9:30 the Brookings Institution holds discussion on speeding up economic growth  and at 10 we get Wholesale Inventories, then attention turns to the Baker Hughes Rig Count at 1pm. Commitment of Traders data is normally due at 3:30, but may be delayed due to the shortened week.

Story continues

NOW WATCH: Paul Krugman weighs in on the Apple tax debate





More From Business Insider


United Nations (United States) (AFP) - The UN Security Council met behind closed doors Friday for urgent talks on North Korea's fifth nuclear test as calls mounted for new sanctions against Pyongyang.

South Korea, the United States, Japan, Russia and China all condemned the blast at the Punggye-ri nuclear site, the North's most powerful yet at 10 kilotons.

US President Barack Obama called the test "a grave threat to regional security and to international peace and stability" and vowed to push for new international sanctions.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged the council to take "appropriate action" after what he called a "brazen breach" of UN resolutions.

"The patience on our side and that of the international community has already reached its limit," South Korean President Park Geun-Hye said, slamming the North's leader Kim Jong-Un for his "maniacal recklessness."

Japan condemned the test as "absolutely unacceptable" and Russia expressed "extreme concern."

France urged the council to begin work on a resolution that would impose a new raft of sanctions -- the sixth set of UN punitive measures to hit Pyongyang since it first tested a nuclear device in 2006.

"We believe new sanctions are indispensable," French Ambassador Francois Delattre told reporters as he headed into the emergency meeting.

The council met at the request of Japan, South Korea and the United States to try to agree on a response, but it remained unclear if China, Pyongyang's ally, would support tougher measures.

US Ambassador Samantha Power appealed for council unity, warning in a clear reference to China that divisions "only embolden the DPRK to further provocations."

After Pyongyang carried out its fourth nuclear test, the council in March adopted the toughest sanctions resolution to date targeting North Korea's trade in minerals and tightening banking restrictions.

Story continues

North Korea has carried out 21 ballistic missile launches since that resolution, Power said, describing those tests and Pyongyang's second nuclear detonation this year as "more than brazen defiance."

- Announcement on North Korean TV -

Pyongyang's state media said the nuclear test had realized the country's goal of being able to fit a miniaturized warhead on a rocket.

"Our nuclear scientists staged a nuclear explosion test on a newly developed nuclear warhead at the country's northern nuclear test site," a North Korean TV presenter said.

The first indications of an underground explosion came when seismic monitors detected a 5.3-magnitude "artificial earthquake" near the Punggye-ri nuclear site.

"The 10-kiloton blast was nearly twice the (power of the) fourth nuclear test and slightly less than the Hiroshima bombing, which was measured about 15 kilotons," said Kim Nam-Wook of the South's meteorological agency.

But attention soon shifted from the blast's power to Pyongyang's claim that it was a miniaturized warhead.

If Pyongyang can make a nuclear device small enough to fit on a rocket -- and bolster the range and accuracy of its missiles -- it might achieve its oft-stated aim of hitting US targets. But its past claims to have achieved that have been discounted.

North Koreans gathered around public screens to watch the official announcement of the test -- which came on the 68th anniversary of the country's founding.

The test came as American and South Korean forces staged a re-enactment of the Incheon landing, 66 years after the start of Operation Chromite, the battle that turned the tide in the Korean War.

Outside experts said authenticating North Korea's claim to have mastered miniaturization would be difficult using seismic data alone.

"We would need to see it tested on a missile, like China did in the 1960s," said Melissa Hanham, a North Korea expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.

"Nobody wants to see that. There is no way they could do that test in a safe way, and it could easily start a war."

- Another challenge for China -

North Korea's nuclear program has accompanied a series of ballistic missile launches, the latest of which took place on Monday as world powers gathered for a G20 meeting in China.

This week's events pose yet another challenge for China, which has been under pressure to rein in its increasingly aggressive neighbor.

Beijing said Friday it "firmly opposes" the test, but it has limited room to maneuver. Its priority is to avoid the regime's collapse, which would create a crisis on its border and shift the balance of power on the Korean peninsula toward the United States.

US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter called for further pressure on North Korea, but said China bore "responsibility" for tackling the problem.

"China shares important responsibility for this development and has an important responsibility to reverse it," he said.

"It's important that it use its location, its history and its influence to further the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula and not the direction things have been going."
On Sep 9, 2016, we issued an updated research report on RenaissanceRe Holdings Ltd. RNR.



RenaissanceRe is a globally renowned Property and Casualty insurer. However, the companys bottom line has been weak since 2008 due to its exposure to substantial losses associated with several catastrophic events worldwide. The continuous plunge in underwriting income and deteriorating combined ratio also impacted its underwriting results adversely. The last reported quarter was no exception to the trend, wherein the company reported cat loss of $41 million from weather events in Texas and the Fort McMurray wildfires in Canada.



Moreover, in this face of sustained catastrophic events, the pricing pressure caused by the overflow of alternative capital and increased retentions of primary companies have put pressure on the profit margin of the companys catastrophe reinsurance business. In fact, the company suffered severely in the initial quarters of 2016 due to continuous reduction in gross premium written in the particular segment. Based on the current market conditions, the company now expects 10% deterioration in its managed catastrophe business for full-year 2016.



Nevertheless, the Zacks Rank #4 (Sell) insurers relentless efforts and several inorganic growth strategies to establish its presence across the globe has started to bear fruit. Also, the company remains committed to creating shareholders value and hence, engages in effective capital deployment through share repurchases and dividend payments. In addition, divesture of risky and non-performing businesses and frequent reframing of its product portfolio have helped it retain its market position over the years.



The recent reiteration of issuer credit ratings of a- and all issue ratings by rating giant A.M Best also reflects the companys level of risk-adjusted capitalization, its strong management team and potential to deliver long-term profitability.

Story continues

RENAISSANCERE Price

RENAISSANCERE Price | RENAISSANCERE Quote

Stocks to Consider



Some better-ranked stocks from the same space include Allied World Assurance Company Holdings, AG AWH, National Interstate Corporation NATL and NMI Holdings Inc NMIH. All of the stocks sport Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.



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Hillary Clinton explains why she appears cold and it will break your heart

Hillary Clinton explains why she appears cold and it will break your heart

Hillary Clintons historic achievement  she is the first woman presidential nominee for a major political party in America  has represented enormous progress, while also revealing the pervasive sexism still plaguing our country.

Democratic Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton Campaigns In Charlotte, North Carolina

Whether Donald Trump is telling a CNN anchor, When I came out, I was competing against 17 very capable people and a woman, or Twitter users are telling Hillary to smile during her acceptance speech, the Democratic candidate has been no stranger to disgusting sexism throughout her entire career.

I have never seen a more constant resting b****h face then tonight @HillaryClinton Do u ever smile a genuine smile? I didn't think so  rocny1021 (@rocnyrn1021) July 29, 2016

But in a Humans Of New York post from earlier today, Hillary Clinton openly discussed one of the worst sexist attacks she experienced in law school  and she was more candid than ever before about the endless sexist comments that she receives.

I was taking a law school admissions test in a big classroom at Harvard. My friend and I were some of the only women... Posted by Humans of New York on Thursday, September 8, 2016

In the post, Hillary recalls the time she took the Harvard Law School admissions exam with her friend; they were some of the only female students there:

While were waiting for the exam to start, a group of men began to yell things like: You dont need to be here. And Theres plenty else you can do. It turned into a real pile on. One of them even said: If you take my spot, Ill get drafted, and Ill go to Vietnam, and Ill die. And they werent kidding around. It was intense.

Despite the personal attacks, Hillary chose to ignore them as an act of self-preservation, refusing to respond:

Story continues

I couldnt afford to get distracted because I didnt want to mess up the test. So I just kept looking down, hoping that the proctor would walk in the room.

Hillary then connected this sexism from her college days with the remarks she still hears regularly:

I know that I can be perceived as aloof or cold or unemotional. But I had to learn as a young woman to control my emotions And if I create that [walled-off] perception, then I take responsibility. I dont view myself as cold or unemotional. And neither do my friends [or] my family. But if that sometimes is the perception I create, then I cant blame people for thinking that.

We strongly suggest that you read her post in its entirety. A lot of women on Facebook are commenting about how much this post relates to their own lives.

Screen Shot 2016-09-08 at 4.02.56 PM

We are so grateful that a woman as accomplished as Hillary Clinton has helped us continue this extremely important conversation.

The post Hillary Clinton explains why she appears cold and it will break your heart appeared first on HelloGiggles.
Hillary Clinton said she was not surprised that rival Donald Trump appeared on a Russian-owned television network to praise Vladimir Putin.

After a press conference on national security, Clinton was walking away from the podium when a reporter shouted out a question about Trumps interview with journalist Larry King on a state-owned Russian TV network Thursday. She shrugged for comic effect then returned to the podium.

Every day that goes by, this just becomes more and more of a reality television show, she said. Its not a serious presidential campaign. And it is beyond ones imagination to have a candidate for president praising a Russian autocrat like Vladimir Putin and throwing his lot in with him in the way that he has.

Clinton criticized Trump for not acknowledging that Putin has invaded Ukraine, saying the Republican nominee approved of (Putins) wishlist and doesnt even really understand what Putin has already done and calling his praise an unseemly identification.

Trump has repeatedly expressed admiration for Putin, including at a commander in chief forum on NBC Wednesday in which he argued that Putin has been more of a leader than President Obama. But his campaign claimed they did not know that the King interviewin which Trump bashed the American media as well as Clinton and Obamawould be broadcast on RT America.

Can I say I was surprised? Clinton said. Im not sure anything surprises us any more.
Hillary Clinton is trying to make some lemonade from NBCs Commander-in-Chief lemon of a forum Wednesday night, using Matt Lauers universally-panned performance as a moderator to solicit donations.

On Thursday, the Clinton campaign fired off an email calling out the Today show host for sitting quietly as Donald Trump claimed, once again, that hes always opposed the Iraq War, despite evidence to the contrary.

Not only did the moderator, Matt Lauer, fail to fact-check Trump  he then kept the conversation moving, the email read. The worst part is, theres nothing new about this happening.

Also Read: Matt Lauer Panned By Left and Right For 'Pathetic Job' During Presidential Town Hall

The email went on to say that, At this point, we should understand that we just cant sit around and wait for fact checkers in the media to keep Trump honest.

Clintons camp then took a shot at the media for not doing its job.

We all know that Trump lies a lot. And we all know that many outlets in the press apparently lack the wherewithall to call him out  and help voters understand that what theyre hearing from Trump isnt normal political talk, but an unprecedented descent into unqualified nonsense from a major-party presidential nominee.

As TheWrap previously reported, Lauer has been put through the ringer after what many have called a pathetic performance at Wednesday nights event, which apparently got equally bad reviews from NBC execs. CNN reported Thursday that one Peacock brass called Lauer a disaster.

Early in his interview with Trump, Lauer failed to challenge Trump when the GOP nominee said hed opposed the invasion of Iraq as early as 2002, a claim that has been repeatedly debunked. Trumps backers said Lauer gave Clinton a pass while treating their candidate with disrespect.

Even if Lauer had been simply listening to [Trumps] response and had the the memory of an earthworm, NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik said Thursday, he wouldve heard Trump say, look, you could go back to an article in 2004 in Esquire where I was against it. That would have been a year after the invasion of Iraq.

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Also Read: Donald Trump Slammed for Lying About Iraq War in Town Hall

Trump cited a 2004 Esquire article in which he questioned the Bush administrations handling of the war. On Thursday, Esquire appended an editors note to the piece noting that the Iraq War began in March 2003, more than a year before the article ran, thus nullifying Trumps timeline.

Richard Grenell, a spokesman for Mitt Romneys 2012 presidential campaign, also slammed Lauer, tweeting Wednesday: @MLauer didnt ask Hillary about her Classified briefings & how it relates to her political commitment to not send troops to a conflict.

Other media outlets werent any kinder. The New York Times declared Thursday, Matt Lauer Loses the War in a Battle Between the Candidates. While New York Magazine went with the headline: Matt Lauers Pathetic Interview of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump Is the Scariest Thing Ive Seen in This Campaign.

Related stories from TheWrap:

NBC's Commander-in-Chief Forum Draws 14.7 Million Viewers

Matt Lauer Was Not a Member of Clinton Global Initiative, Insiders Say

Ryan Lochte Tells Matt Lauer It's All His Fault in Rio: 'It Was My Immature Behavior'
By Promit Mukherjee

MUMBAI (Reuters) - India's third biggest crude oil refiner, Hindustan Petroleum Corp (HPCL), plans to expand its refining capacity to more than 60 million tonnes annually, or about 1.2 million barrels of oil per day by 2030, according to a senior company official.

This will not only help the company fill the yawning gap between the volume it refines and the volume it markets through its retail outlets, but also help in meeting the burgeoning fuel demand in the country, said HPCL Chairman Mukesh Kumar Surana at a conference late on Thursday.

While Hindustan Petroleum, which is largely known as a marketer of fuel products, currently sells 34.20 million tonnes of fuel products every year through its retail outlets and bulk sales, its refining capacity is only about half that.

According to a 2015 report by the International Energy Agency (IEA), India will require up to 329 million tonnes of oil products annually by 2030. As of last year India consumed 183 million tonnes of fuel products, government data showed.

Analysts have often pointed out the heavy reliance on outside purchase of fuel products as a double-edged sword for the company. While HPCL is not directly exposed to crude oil fluctuations, it misses out on the refining margins that its peers clock.

"We would like to have 60 plus (million tonnes) refining capacity by 2030," Surana said.

Separately, a company official said the internal target is to have not more than 15 percent reliance on outside purchase of fuel by 2030.

A major chunk of this refining capacity is expected to come from a joint venture project for a 60-million-tonne proposed refinery in the western state of Maharashtra.

Hindustan Petroleum will own a 25 percent stake in this JV. India's biggest state-owned refiner Indian Oil and No. 2 player Bharat Petroleum will hold 50 percent and 25 percent stakes respectively.

India's Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said in June that it would also like to bring in a strategic partner in the refinery and Saudi Arabian oil giant Saudi Arabia Oil has shown interest in it.

To meet the 60-million-tonne target the company will have to set up yet another greenfield refinery, HPCL's director of refineries, B K Namdeo, said.

(Reporting by Promit Mukherjee; Editing by Sunil Nair)
Commissions should be made strong: TRC chair

Strengthening national transitional justice mechanisms and letting them function properly is the only way to avoid trial against Nepali nationals accused of war-era crimes in foreign countries, Surya Kiran Gurung, chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, said on Thursday.
By Patricia Zengerle WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation on Friday that would allow the families of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks to sue Saudi Arabia's government for damages, despite the White House's threat to veto the measure. The U.S. Senate in May unanimously passed the "Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act," known as JASTA. The bill's passage in the House by voice vote, two days before the 15th anniversary of the attacks that killed about 3,000 people, was greeted with cheers and applause in the chamber. "We can no longer allow those who injure and kill Americans to hide behind legal loopholes, denying justice to the victims of terrorism," said Republican Representative Bob Goodlatte, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. Fifteen of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers who crashed airliners in New York, outside Washington and in Pennsylvania were Saudi nationals. The Saudi government, which strongly denies responsibility, has lobbied against the bill. Opponents of the measure said it could strain relations with Saudi Arabia and lead to retaliatory laws that would allow foreign nationals to sue Americans for alleged involvement in terrorist attacks. The White House on Friday reiterated that President Barack Obama would veto the bill. But some members of Congress have become increasingly restive about relations with Saudi Arabia, long an important player in U.S. Middle East policy. On Thursday, four senators introduced a resolution seeking to block a $1.15 billion arms sale to the kingdom, after 64 House members signed a letter in August asking Obama to delay the sale. If Obama carries out the veto threat and the required two-thirds of both the Republican-majority House and Senate still support the bill, it would be the first time since Obama's presidency began in 2009 that Congress had overridden a veto. The House passed the measure by voice vote, without objections or recorded individual votes. That could make it easier for Obama's fellow Democrats to uphold his veto later without officially changing their positions. SOVEREIGN IMMUNITY JASTA would remove sovereign immunity, preventing lawsuits against governments, for countries found to be involved in terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. It also would allow survivors, and relatives of those killed in them to seek damages from other countries. In this case, it would allow suits to proceed in federal court in New York as lawyers try to prove that the Saudis were involved in the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Backers say passage is long overdue. They argue that if Saudi Arabia, or any other government, is innocent of involvement in attacks, they have nothing to fear from the legislation. "If they've done nothing wrong, they have nothing to worry about," said Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, a vocal advocate for the measure. Previous versions of the bill had stalled in Congress because they provided fewer protections for countries against lawsuits. Lawmakers had been under intense pressure from the Sept. 11 families to pass JASTA before the 15th anniversary of the attacks on Sunday. A member of the French parliament, Pierre Lellouche, said he would consider retaliatory legislation in France, and would anticipate it elsewhere, if the final version of JASTA does not include waivers for countries that are U.S. allies and actively involved in fighting terrorism. "It may trigger similar acts all over the place, and then you enter into a 'state of jungle' where everybody sues everybody," Lellouche, who runs a parliamentary committee on international law, told reporters on a conference call on Friday. (Additional reporting by Timothy Gardner and Ayesha Rascoe; Editing by Will Dunham and Tom Brown)
Ahead of the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill Friday that would allow the families of the victims to sue Saudi Arabia over its alleged support for terrorism. If it passes, it will amount to a largely symbolic gesture.

Thats because President Barack Obama has promised to veto the bill, but there could be enough support in Congress to overcome his seal of disapproval; it passed unanimously in the House and Senate. He maintains the bill would harm Washingtons relationship with Riyadh and that such a measure would put Americans overseas at risk.

The Senate passed the bill in May, even as the White House said it would reject it if it ever got to the presidents desk. If the bill were to become law, it would allow courts to waive immunity claims by foreign officials related to those terrorist attacks.

Saudi officials have long denied any involvement in the 9/11 attacks. This summer, 28 pages of previously classified material from a congressional investigation into the 9/11 attacks concerning suspected connections between Saudi officials and the hijackers who carried out the attacks were released. The pages showed no new information linking Saudis to the attackers. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were Saudis.

Families of the victims have long advocated for the bill. It wasnt debated on either the House or Senate floors.

Photo credit: SPENCER PLATT/Getty Images
Photo credit: Alec Hemer

Christian Siriano has that curious love of green, which, as Oscar Wilde would say, is always the sign of a subtle artistic temperament. But just a few steps beyond the entryway and the equally verdant living room of the designer's Danbury, Connecticut home, you'll discover a creative streak that goes far beyond the bounds of subtlety.

Photo credit: Alec Hemer

There is, for one, the sunny yellow seating area where we started our Saturday morning tour. Christian  who spends weekends here entertaining fresh-air-starved friends from New York City and catching his breath after a whirlwind summer that included dressing Michelle Obama, getting married, and launching a bedding collection at Bed Bath & Beyond  seems slow to relinquish that Manhattan intensity fellow creatives know well.

Or maybe it's the exuberance of the home  a 19th-century colonial, which he shares with his husband, Brad Walsh  we're picking up on.

It is impossible to miss.

Photo credit: Alec Hemer

"I wanted to make sure the house was super colorful and bright," Christian says of his vision for the space. "It's a getaway house, so we can do things that we wouldn't normally do... fill it with things that we just love."

Photo credit: Alec Hemer

Take, for instance, the turquoise console flanked by a bust Christian picked up at the nearby Newburgh Vintage Emporium  a favorite weekend haunt of the couple  and topped with a framed clipping from an old issue of Ladies Home Journal magazine.

In the formal living room (not to be confused with the family room at the back of the house), stripes meet ikat and clean-lined florals to captivating effect, while a pair of chinoiserie cabinets stand guard against boredom, showcasing a small sampling of the tchotchkes Brad admits he has a hard time passing up.

Photo credit: Alec Hemer

"The house is quite eclectic," Christian notes, "And because I'm a designer, it's all about the prints and the fabric and the textiles."

That is, however, where the overlap between Christian's expertise as a fashion designer and his penchant for interior design ends.

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Photo credit: Alec Hemer

"Brad says I'm not allowed to design a room based on a collection I'm working on, but I kind of did that upstairs," he says, referencing a second bright yellow space featuring a nature motif hand-drawn by friend and artist Anna Hafner. "We were doing an African, jungle-inspired collection and I was decorating that room at the same time. It's so vibrant."

Photo credit: Alec Hemer

By contrast, Christian and Brad occupy what they describe as a more neutral-hued, French-inspired apartment in New York City. The impact of that space on their design decisions here are most evident up a second flight of stairs in the couple's attic-turned-master bedroom and bath, where whitewashed floors, white walls and white bedding create a cocoon-like vibe.

Photo credit: Alec Hemer

The room also stands as a testament to Christian's ability to make design decisions practically on the fly. "We remodeled the attic in the last four months and it was decorated the day it was finished," Christian says. "I had the bed ordered, I had the lamps downstairs, the settee... everything else we bought in one day, all vintage, in Connecticut," he says.

Photo credit: Alec Hemer

Growing up, he remembers the design process being far more gradual though. "My mother just loved decorating, but it would take her two years to pick out a sofa," he jokes.

Here, where Christian and Brad have spent weekends for the past three years, design happens fast, with accessories and art constantly making their way out of suitcases and flea markets and storage, and finding their rightful place along the home's colorful walls and shelves.

Photo credit: Alec Hemer

"The house is full. Not much more can go in here," Christian says. And that could only mean one thing: That he's already plotting on something new -- next summer's overhaul of the barn out back.

But first, Fashion Week.

Photo credit: Alec Hemer

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NEW DELHI/SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd (HPCL.NS) shut a unit at its 130,000 barrels per day (bpd) refinery in Mumbai last week due to a technical glitch, and has since been importing gasoline, the head of its refineries told Reuters on Friday.

BK Namdeo said the refinery's reformer unit was shut on Sept. 1 due to a technical emergency and would resume operations by Sept. 13 or Sept. 14.

HPCL issued a tender this week to buy 40,000 tonnes of gasoline, partly made up of 20,000 tonnes of a 91.8-octane grade and 10,000 tonnes of 92-octane fuel for Sept. 22-25 arrival at the port of Mundra on India's west coast, according to a tender document seen by Reuters.

It is also looking to buy 10,000 tonnes of the 92-octane grade for Sept. 22-25 arrival further south at Mumbai.

The tender closes on Sept. 12.

HPCL is not a regular importer of gasoline but the shutdown of the reformer prompted it to look outside India for supplies. It could buy one more gasoline cargo, an industry source said.

The Indian refiner, however, may not need to import diesel, the source said. Domestic demand for the fuel is flat due to the monsoon season, which reduces the need to run irrigation pumps.

HPCL's buy tender comes just as gasoline markets are strengthening as traders expect peak refinery maintenance in Asia to cut supplies.

One of Asia's key gasoline exporters, for instance, Taiwan's Formosa Petrochemical Corp , has maintenance scheduled in September at a secondary unit that would affect its gasoline output.

The stronger fundamentals pushed Asia's gasoline crack (GL92-SIN-CRK) to a three-month high of $8.42 a barrel on Thursday despite this being a low-demand season. The current crack is more than double the value seen a month ago.

State-controlled HPCL plans to boost the capacity of its Mumbai refinery to 190,000 bpd by July 2019, while its second refinery in south India's Vizag will ramp up to 300,000 bpd from 166,000 bpd by July 2020.

(Reporting by Krishna N. Das in NEW DELHI, Seng Li Peng in SINGAPORE and Jessica Jaganathan in OSLO; Editing by Tom Hogue)
Refresh for latest Samuel Goldwyn Films and Orion Pictures have acquired Ian Olds mystery thriller Burn Country, which was called The Fixer when it premiered at this years Tribeca Film Festival. Dominic Rains, who won the Best Actor prize at that fest, stars alongside Melissa Leo, James Franco, Rachel Brosnahan and Thomas Jay Ryan. A December 9 day-and-date is planned, and Mongrel International is selling international rights at the Toronto Film Festival. Rains stars as Osman, who leaves behind his life as a fixer for Western journalists reporting on the war in Afghanistan and ends up in a bohemian Northern California town, working as a crime reporter for the local newspaper. When a friend goes missing, he is drawn deep into the backwoods and things take a dangerous turn. Olds and Paul Felten wrote the script. The deal was negotiated on behalf of the filmmakers by CAA.

Vertical Entertainment has landed U.S. rights to Nathan Morlandos Mean Dreams, which stars Bill Paxton, Colm Feore, Sophie Nelisse and Josh Wiggins. A day-and-date theatrical release is planned for early 2017 for the movie, which is part of the Special Presentations lineup in Toronto and screens September 13. The coming-of-age thriller centers on a courageous local farm boy Jonas (Wiggins) and the new girl next door, Casey (Nelisse), as they embark on a journey that will change their lives forever after they steal a bag full of drug money from Caseys corrupt and abusive father (Paxton), a local cop. Kevin Coughlin and Ryan Grassby penned the script.

Kino Lorber has acquired North American distribution rights to Oren Shais debut feature The Frontier, from Rocking Films and Dana Lustig Productions. A theatrical release is in the works for the pic, which bowed at SXSW 2015. Written by Shai and Webb Wilcoxen, the neo-noir thriller centers on a female drifter who discovers a violent gang of thieves at a desert motel and hatches a plan to escape with their stolen cash. Jocelin Donahue, Kelly Lynch, Jim Beaver, Izabella Miko, Jamie Harris, AJ Bowen and Liam Aiken star.

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iHeartMedia is taking a gigantic plunge into the Latin marketplace with the launch of a new Latin music division that will be helmed by Hispanic radio personality Enrique Santos.

Santos will serve as chairman and chief creative officer of the newly-created iHeartLatino and will determine iHeartmedia's Latin direction and strategy. He'll also be responsible for creating new English-language programming on broadcast, digital and social platforms for the company.

"Words cannot describe how ecstatic and how proud I am for the future of Latinos in radio," Santos told Billboard. "We have a media group that respects Latins and is giving us, in a very special and historic moment in history, this super highway to create, to elevate and to pave the path for our music our people and culture."

iHeart's move is momentous for U.S. radio, whose Latin programming is dominated by Spanish-language networks. This would be the first time a mainstream radio company -- in this case the biggest radio company in the country -- creates a Latin division, and it sends a strong message that the Latin marketplace cannot be ignored and needs dedicated and specialized attention.

"There's never been a deal like this in the history of Spanish language radio in this country," said Michel Vega, CEO of Magnus Media, which represents Santos and negotiated the deal on his behalf along with attorney Alexander Brown of The Concept Law Group. "You have a radio personality who is being given the reigns to program and strategize a media company that reaches 200 million people a month."

By choosing Santos to helm their Latin efforts, they've gone with a homegrown (the 41 year old was born in Illinois to Cuban parents), fully bilingual and highly influential media personality who's been on the air for 20 years and who can navigate two cultures and languages with ease. That's precisely the Latin audience -- homegrown, bicultural and second generation -- whose numbers are growing in the U.S.

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Santos was most recently at Univision Radio, where for nine years he hosted the nationally syndicated "Enrique Santos Show."

While Santos will be overseeing programming and content strategies, as well as talent at iHeartLatino, he will also host his daily signature show, which will be syndicated across 25 stations nationwide and will kick off in the coming weeks. He will also host a syndicated two-hour English language show and will curate digital stations in English and Spanish.

Santos' first move at his new job is to take over at iHeart's Miami station, Mega 94.9, which is being renamed TU 94.9 as of noon today (Sept. 9).

"It's the first step of a very big operation that's about much more than what [I'm] about," says Santos. "It's about creating a new super highway for Latinos content-wise. It goes way beyond music. It's iHeartLatino."

Despite its massive size and reach, iHeart hasn't been as highly visible in Spanish-language radio because it doesn't have Latin stations in many key markets.

However, the company has been demonstrating increasing interest in expanding its Latin footprint, as evidenced by initiatives like its iHeartLatino Radio Festival, which is entering its third year and has featured A talent from the onset.

In addition, iHeart's Hispanic presence potential is still massive. It has 20 Spanish language broadcast stations and 100 stations on iHeartMedia that have significant Hispanic composition, like KIIS in Los Angeles. iHeartRadio also has approximately 100 Spanish language stations.

The launch of an entire division, centered around such a recognizable personality and affording him so much freedom, however, signals a far bigger commitment.

"Approximately 35 percent of iHeartMedia Hispanic listeners are Spanish dominant. So we reach both Spanish dominant and English speaking Hispanic audiences," said Bob Pittman, Chairman and CEO of iHeartMedia, Inc. in a statement to Billboard. "One of the things that makes Enrique so unusual is he is comfortable, fluent, and attuned to both of these segments of the Hispanic community. He will lead our efforts to do what no media company has yet done, which is bridge the gap between the two to maximize the crossover potential for Latin artists, and to develop new opportunities for advertisers as well as serve listeners in a way no one ever has. Fortunately for us, as we developed this plan we found the perfect quarterback."

"The stars have aligned," said Santos. "I've always been compared to Ryan Seacrest. So now to be able to work alongside Ryan Seacrest, Elvis Duran, the bad asses of radio, to brainstorm with Bob Pittman. I'm very proud."
(Adds more comments, background)

LONDON, Sept 9 (Reuters) - The expected release of an IMF loan tranche next week will allow Ukraine to continue liberalising its foreign exchange regime, including dividend repatriation by investors, the chief economic adviser to the prime minister said on Friday.

Kiev will hear on Sept. 14 whether the International Monetary Fund will release the tranche, which could be as much as $1.7 billion and has been delayed since last October due to political upheaval and patchy reform progress.

"I don't know if it will be the full $1.7 billion - there was an argument that it could be divided into parts, but it is a very important signal that Ukraine continues doing reforms," Ivan Miklos told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of an investment conference in London.

"It is a very important signal for Ukraine as it allows us to continue the foreign exchange liberalisation."

The central bank imposed restrictions on interbank foreign exchange markets two years ago to limit foreign currency outflows, including curbs on foreign investors repatriating profits and dividends.

The bank earlier this year said it would gradually allow investors to repatriate 2014 and 2015 profits, and also lowered the level of mandatory sales of foreign income for companies to 65 percent from 75 percent.

Miklos confirmed the liberalisation process would be gradual but expected that dividend repatriation - a key point for foreign investors - would "certainly" be part of the next steps following the receipt of the IMF money.

The IMF tranche should unlock an additional $2 billion of loans from Western countries.

Miklos said Ukraine remained committed to reforms and to the IMF programme, demonstrating this through this year's one-step energy tarriff liberalisation.

The government is due to submit its draft budget to parliament on Sept 15.

"The government is preparing a realistic budget. The budget deficit will be, under the framework of the programme, under 3 percent," Miklos said.

(Reporting by Karin Strohecker and Sujata Rao; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
Committed to statute amendment, says PM

Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal on Thursday reiterated his commitment to address the concerns raised by the agitating regional parties but stopped short of giving a timeline for the same.
By Nate Raymond NEW YORK (Reuters) - A father-son team of informants testified on Friday that they repeatedly lied to U.S. investigators in order to secretly traffic drugs, even while they were working on a narcotics probe of two nephews of Venezuela's first lady. Testifying in Manhattan federal court, the informants also said they engaged in other unauthorized activities, including sleeping with prostitutes in the midst of a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) probe of Franqui Francisco Flores de Freitas and Efrain Antonio Campo Flores. Their activities trafficking drugs into the United States behind the DEA's back led both men, key witnesses in the case, to be charged and plead guilty to narcotics-related charges as well as to having lied to authorities, they said. The testimony came as lawyers for the nephews of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's wife, Cilia Flores, sought to call into question the informants' credibility in order to have evidence gathered against their clients suppressed. The nephews were arrested in November 2015 and are fighting U.S. charges that they worked with others to try to send 800 kilograms of cocaine from Venezuela to Honduras for importation into the United States. The two informants at issue are a father and son who, according to testimony and court papers, posed as the Mexican boss of the Sinaloa cartel and his son while meeting with the nephews in 2015 to discuss a cocaine-trafficking venture. Both have for years worked for the DEA and local authorities as undercover informants. The Mexican-born 34-year-old son, referred to only as CS-2, said he has earned $400,000 as an informant. The 55-year-old father, called CS-1, said he has earned about $1 million since 2003. But in recent years, both men said they had been working with others to bring drugs into the United States, without DEA knowledge. Authorities confronted them earlier this year, they said, and both are now in jail after pleading guilty. "You'd been lying to them for years?" John Zach, a lawyer for Campo Flores, asked. "Yes I did lie to them," CS-2 said. The informants testified that while in Caracas, they also had sex with prostitutes, one on which the son said one of the defendants paid for. The father acknowledged that he did not tell prosecutors about one of these incidents until a lunch break after his son had testified. Asked if prosecutors had threatened to rip up his cooperation agreement as a result, the father said: "They are extremely unhappy and are going to review everything." (Reporting by Nate Raymond in New York)
LOS ANGELES, CA / ACCESSWIRE / September 9, 2016 / Lundin Law PC (the "Firm") announces a class action lawsuit has been filed against Corrections Corporation of America ("Corrections Corporation" or the "Company") (NYSE: CXW) concerning possible violations of federal securities laws between February 27, 2012 and August 17, 2016 (the "Class Period"). Investors, who purchased or otherwise acquired shares during the Class Period, should contact the Firm in advance of the October 24, 2016 lead plaintiff motion deadline.

To participate in this class action lawsuit, click here. You can also call Brian Lundin, Esquire, of Lundin Law PC, at 888-713-1033, or e-mail him at brian@lundinlawpc.com.

No class has been certified in the above action. Until a class is certified, you are not considered represented by an attorney. You may also choose to do nothing and be an absent class member.

The complaint alleges that during the Class Period, the Company made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose: that Corrections Corporation's facilities lacked adequate safety and security standards and were less efficient at offering correctional services than the Federal Bureau of Prisons' ("BOP") facilities; that the Company's rehabilitative services for inmates were less effective than the BOP's services; that the U.S. Department of Justice ("DOJ") was unlikely to renew and/or extend its contracts with Corrections Corporation; and that as a result of the above, Corrections Corporation's public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times. On August 18, 2016, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates announced that the DOJ decided to stop using private prisons, since they are less safe and less effective than federal government-run prisons. When this news was released to the public, shares of Corrections Corporation fell in value, which caused investors harm.

Lundin Law PC was founded by Brian Lundin, a securities litigator based in Los Angeles dedicated to upholding shareholders' rights.

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This press release may be considered Attorney Advertising in some jurisdictions under the applicable law and ethical rules.

Contact:

Lundin Law PC

Brian Lundin, Esq.

Telephone: 888-713-1033

Facsimile: 888-713-1125

brian@lundinlawpc.com

http://lundinlawpc.com/

SOURCE: Lundin Law PC
(Repeats with no changes)

By Ana Mano

SAO PAULO, Sept 8 (Reuters) - Investors planning a bid to take over Brazil's bankrupt phone carrier Oi SA said Thursday they can win over disgruntled creditors with a more attractive debt repayment offer than the company's management put forward early this week.

A group of potential bidders led by New York-based investment boutique ACGM Inc and Sao Paulo-based turnaround firm Integra Associados told Reuters their plan will include a financial and an operational overhaul of Oi that would repay lenders more of the company's debt faster and turn Oi around as a company.

After creditors holding at least 40 percent of Oi's unsecured debt rejected management's restructuring proposal soon after it was presented on Monday, the group came forward and told Reuters on Thursday it plans to present a counter proposal.

"One thing that distinguishes our proposal is that it is both a financial and operational restructuring plan," Carlos Abadi, founding partner of ACGM, said.

Renato Carvalho Franco, founding partner of Integra added: "We understand the issues concerning both sides," the company's shareholders and lenders.

ACGM and Integra represent about three dozen investors whom they were not permitted to name. They did say the potential investors included hedge funds, private equity firms and at least one telephone carrier.

In Oi's plan, unsecured creditors faced a debt writedown of 22 billion reais ($6.8 billion), meaning a 70 percent haircut on all such claims.

ACGM says its preliminary plan would offer a 60 percent haircut on the nominal value of unsecured debt and shorter repayment schedules for secured creditors such as Brazil's BNDES development bank.

The group, however, did not elaborate on its plan or the timing of when it will be unveiled, which will be vital for convincing the shareholders and lenders of Oi to let it take over the company.

Abadi and Franco said they have been waiting to present their plan until after Oi submitted its debt reorganization proposal.

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Oi's plan to restructure about 65.4 billion reais of liabilities was not well received by an ad hoc group of bondholders, who accused the carrier of imposing unfair losses on them while putting the interests of the shareholders first.

Any alternative plan will need company, creditor and court approval before implementation. After bondholders with about 34 billion reais of unpaid debt, the government is Oi's largest creditor with a combined 20 billion reais of claims.

($1 = 3.2149 Brazilian reais) (Reporting by Ana Mano; Editing by Reese Ewing and Cynthia Osterman)
ipod ad

Remember those "silhouette" iPod ads from over a decade ago, showing young, hip people having a better time than you while decked out in all-white Apple gear? Remember how popular they were, and how many parodies they inspired?

Those ads worked so well for Apple because they promoted the all-important idea that the iPod wasn't a gadget  it was a lifestyle. You, too, can have as good a time as these earbud-wearing hipsters!

It laid the groundwork for Apple's further ad campaigns, like the famous "Get a Mac" ads, with the younger, ostensibly cooler Justin Long playing the Mac against John Hodgman's older, nerdier PC. Or the first wave of iPhone commercials in 2007, which featured young creatives talking about how the new phone let them express themselves.

The coded subtext of every Apple ad is that your life is maybe not being lived to the fullest without an Apple gadget. It works very well, and it's a big driver of Apple's position as manufacturers of the phone, laptop, watch, and tablet you need to own if you want to be a part of the elusive in-crowd.

iPhone 7

It's a position that Apple has paid dearly to attain: In 2015 alone, Apple spent $1.8 billion on advertising, which was 50% over 2014. Indeed, Apple's ad spend has been on a pretty steady rise since the iPhone's introduction in 2007.

Now, with the introduction of the iPhone 7, it looks like Apple's massive investments in marketing and branding are paying off, with a new model of phone that actually removes a key functionality, while delivering only incremental updates  and that will likely still sell like crazy, regardless.

It's easy when you're the best

From the time it launched in 2007, the iPhone quickly established itself as the best, most premium phone on the market. The BlackBerry was fine if you were a square; the first wave of Android phones were highly unpolished compared to the details-driven iPhone.

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It's always been the coolest. Actors, musicians, and other tastemakers use the iPhone, and will even shell out for fancy cases and luxury accessories. Among private citizens, using the iPhone is a signal of status and ability to pay for the best, the same way that a nice suit or expensive BMW shows that you mean business.

taylor swift iphone

Maintaining its position as a status symbol hasn't always been easy for Apple: Competitors, namely Samsung, have drastically upped their game in both product design and marketing, keeping Apple well on its toes as it both builds and promotes new iPhone models.

But for the most part, the iPhone is an easy sell. Each new iPhone has always been the best phone in the year it's released, or at least a viable contender for that title. And Apple's ongoing ad blitz reassures people that the newest iPhone will only improve their lifestyle.

iphone ad

It's created a pleasant cycle of people excited to upgrade because they know Apple will provide them only the best, supported by advertising that tells them that this is so.

It's worked out well for Apple so far, leading it to becoming the most valuable company in the world. Now, it's taking control of that cycle like never before.

Jacked

If you take Apple at face value, removing the headphone jack from the iPhone 7 is a move designed to usher in a huge industry shift towards wireless headphones. They call it "courage."

If you're more cynical, like me, you can see it as an attempt to take control of the lucrative headphones market by rendering all existing wired units obsolete. That is, unless you use an unsightly and easy-to-lose dongle. But dongles aren't cool, and the iPhone is all about cool.

Apple iPhone Earpod

No matter how you look at it, iPhone 7 owners are going to be buying a phone that will, more likely than not, result in them having to buy lots of new accessories, including but not limited to a $40 adapter that lets you charge and listen to music at the same time, and/or Apple's new $159 AirPod wireless earbuds.

Apple isn't the first manufacturer to remove the headphone jack from their phones: LeEco and Motorola have both released Android devices without them. But those are relative blips against the many other top-tier Android phones out there, notably the Samsung Galaxy S7 and its larger cousin, the S7 Note.

That lack of a headphone jack is going to give a lot of people pause. But because Apple has spent the better part of a decade building trust with its core customers that the new iPhone is always the best phone available, more people are going to take the leap than I think some industry-watchers are prepared for.

apple airpods

It's good news for Apple, in terms of both iPhone sales and the long-term viability of its Beats headphones business. That ongoing push to keep customers upgrading their iPhones and spending more in accessories per unit is important for Apple, as the overall smartphone industry starts to flatten out.

That said, whether iPhone customers still feel like they're getting the most premium phone available after the iPhone 7 comes out remains to be seen. Marketing is great for earning the benefit of the doubt. In a world flooded with smartphone options, the onus is still on Apple to deliver the best product possible.

NOW WATCH: Here's how the iPhone 7 compares to the Samsung Galaxy S7





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Tehran (AFP) - The head of Iran's Hajj Organisation accused Saudi Arabia on Friday of deliberately barring Iranians from the pilgrimage and refusing to discuss security measures despite last year's deadly stampede.

Tens of thousands of Iranians who usually attend will be absent from the annual pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia when it starts on Saturday, after talks between the increasingly bitter rivals fell apart in May.

"How are you going to invite 1.5 million pilgrims and not even allow yourself to think about the security measures?" Said Ohadi, head of Iran's Hajj Organisation, told AFP.

Iran had the highest confirmed death toll among foreign nationalities in last year's stampede with hundreds of its citizens killed.

An AFP tally found that a total of at least 2,300 people died, but Tehran says the overall toll was much higher.

"Seven thousand people were martyred, were killed, from 39 countries," Ohadi said.

Saudi Arabia says the figure was only 769, but has refused to release the details of its investigation.

Ohadi said that during this year's negotiations the Saudis simply fell back on verses of the Koran stating that anyone who enters Saudi Arabia has "full security".

"Last year we had those verses in the Koran too."

Ohadi said the last straw in the hajj talks was a demand from the Saudis that Iranian pilgrims "cannot have any contact with any Muslim from any other country", despite the Koranic verses' emphasis on the importance of mingling with Muslims from around the world during the pilgrimage.

His Saudi counterpart Mohammed Bentin told him there were concerns that Iranians would try to "convert" Sunnis to their Shiite branch of Islam, Ohadi said.

"I said, minister, this is really funny. If you are not ready to accept the Iranians, please very frankly and transparently say that you are not going to allow Iranians. Why? Because you are afraid they will expose what happened last year."

Story continues

Saudi Arabia has countered that Tehran made "unacceptable" demands during the talks, including the right to organise demonstrations "that would cause chaos".

But right from the start, Ohadi said there was "very bad hospitality" and "weird attitudes" from the Saudis -- including a refusal to give delegates diplomatic entry, or even cars to their hotel.

Ohadi said depriving the Iranian faithful of the chance to perform the hajj was "unacceptable", especially given the 15-20 year waiting list.

The Saudis "believe they are the owners -- that Mecca and Medina are their properties," he said.

"No -- they are the properties of Islam."
By Rania El Gamal SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Iran has told OPEC it pumped 3.63 million barrels of oil per day (bpd) in August, up 10,000 bpd from July, an OPEC source said, marking a slowdown in the rapid growth that followed the lifting of Western sanctions in January. Iran has been the main factor preventing an output deal between OPEC and non-OPEC Russia to boost prices, as Tehran has said it should be excluded before its production recovers. Renewed talks on an output pact are under way. The Iranian production figure is due to be published on Monday in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries' next monthly report. The report will also show the secondary sources OPEC uses to estimate its output also see Iran's August production at 3.63 million bpd, unchanged from July. The latest OPEC figures suggest Iranian production has reached the level it pumped in late 2011, before the last round of sanctions were tightened leading to a drop in Iranian exports. (Reporting by Rania El Gamal, Writing by Alex Lawler; Editing by Mark Potter)
(Reuters) - An Iranian Revolutionary court has sentenced Iranian-British aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe to five years in prison on charges that remain secret, her family said on Friday. Zaghari-Ratcliffe was detained in early April as she tried to leave Iran after a visit with her two-year-old daughter. Iran's hardline Revolutionary Guards have accused her of trying to overthrow Iran's clerical establishment. The official charges against her have not been made public and the Iranian authorities were not immediately available for comment. "On 6 September Nazanin was sentenced to five years imprisonment by Judge Salavati of the Revolutionary Court," her family said in a statement. "Nazanin confirmed this sentence to her husband in a phone call today (9 September). She is expected to serve her sentence in Evin prison," the statement added. Her husband Richard Ratcliffe said in the family's statement: "A sentence with secret charges still seems crazy. Literally it is a punishment without a crime." Iranian officials were not immediately available for comment. Zaghari-Ratcliffe works for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, a London-based charity that is independent of Thomson Reuters and operates independently of Reuters News. The Foundation and her husband have dismissed the Revolutionary Guards' accusation. The 37-year-old, who appeared in court for the first time in August, according to Iranian media and her family, was arrested at Tehran's Imam Khomeini International Airport as she tried to leave Iran after visiting her parents. She was separated from her two-year-old daughter, Gabriella, who has remained in the care of her grandparents. Several Iranian dual nationals from the United States, Britain, Canada and France have been detained in the past few months on various charges, including espionage or collaborating with a hostile government. Thomson Reuters Foundation CEO Monique Villa sharply criticized the sentence against Zaghari-Ratcliffe and called for her release. "I have instructed the Thomson Reuters Foundations lawyers to find out what these charges are and I know that Nazanins family has asked the same of their lawyer in Iran," she said in a statement. "We continue to work very closely with Richard, the UK Foreign Office and the British authorities to find a resolution to this terrible situation, she added. In a statement, Britain's Foreign Office said: "We are deeply concerned by reports that Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been sentenced without confirmation of the charges made against her." Senior British officials, including Prime Minister Theresa May, had raised the case with Iran and would continue to do so, it said, adding that London will press for consular access to Zaghari-Ratcliffe and was ready to help secure her daughter's return to Britain. (Reporting by Dubai and London newsrooms; Editing by Jon Boyle)
Tehran (AFP) - With Iranians barred from the annual hajj pilgrimage, thousands protested in Tehran on Friday and officials criticised Saudi Arabia's refusal to discuss last year's deadly stampede.

Around 64,000 Iranians allocated places for the hajj under a quota system will be absent when it starts on Saturday, after talks between the increasingly bitter rivals fell apart earlier this year.

As a war of words grows between the two regional rivals, several thousand people took to the streets of the Iranian capital after the Friday weekly prayers.

The Saudis have "blocked the path to Allah. It's a crime and they must be tried," said Javad Zolfaghari, a cleric who joined the protests.

In an interview with AFP, the head of Iran's Hajj Organisation blamed the Saudis for refusing to discuss security measures despite the stampede that killed thousands during last year's hajj.

"How are you going to invite 1.5 million pilgrims and not even allow yourself to think about the security measures?" asked Said Ohadi.

He said that during negotiations in April and May, the Saudis simply fell back on verses of the Koran holy book stating that anyone who enters Saudi Arabia has "full security".

"Last year we had those verses in the Koran too," said Ohadi.

An AFP tally found that a total of at least 2,300 people died in last year's stampede, including 464 Iranians, the highest confirmed death toll among foreigners who died in the tragedy.

But Tehran says the overall toll was much higher.

"Seven thousand people were martyred, were killed, from 39 countries," Ohadi said.

Saudi Arabia says the figure was only 769, but has refused to release the details of its investigation.

Ohadi said the last straw in the hajj talks was a demand from the Saudis that Iranian pilgrims "cannot have any contact with any Muslim from any other country".

That was despite the Koranic verses' emphasis on the importance of mingling with Muslims from around the world during the pilgrimage to Islam's holiest sites in Mecca and Medina, in western Saudi Arabia, he said.

Story continues

- 'Biased support' -

Saudi Arabia has countered that Tehran had made "unacceptable" demands during the talks, including the right to organise demonstrations "that would cause chaos".

But right from the start, Ohadi said there was "very bad hospitality" and "weird attitudes" from the Saudis -- including a refusal to give delegates diplomatic entry, or even cars to their hotel.

Ohadi said depriving the Iranian faithful of the chance to perform the hajj was "unacceptable", especially given the 15-20 year waiting list.

The Saudis "believe they are the owners -- that Mecca and Medina are their properties," he said.

"No -- they are the properties of Islam."

Also on Friday, foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi on called on Arab foreign ministers to end their "unilateral, biased and unjust support" for Saudi Arabia and instead ask Riyadh to stop "supporting terrorism in the region".

His comments come after the council of Arab foreign ministers Thursday weighed in on the bitter dispute between Iran and Saudi Arabia over the hajj pilgrimage.

On Monday, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei questioned Riyadh's management of Islam's holy sites, saying the "cursed, evil" Saudi ruling family did not deserve to be the custodian of the shrines in Mecca and Medina.
QAYYARA AIRBASE, Iraq, Sept 9 (Reuters)  The U.S.-led war on Islamic State has depleted the groups funds, leadership and foreign fighters, but the biggest battle yet is expected later this year in Iraqs northern city of Mosul, where Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared his caliphate two years ago.

The jihadist insurgents have lost more than half the territory they seized in Iraq and nearly as much in neighboring Syria, but still manage to control their twin capitals of Mosul and Raqqa, symbols of the state they sought to build at the heart of the Middle East.

Military and humanitarian preparations are now in full swing to retake Mosul, the largest city under the ultra-hardline groups control. American troops are establishing a logistics hub to the south, while the United Nations warns of the worlds most complex humanitarian operation this year.

Iraqs recapture over the summer of Qayyara airbase and surrounding areas along the Tigris river 60 km (nearly 40 miles) south of Mosul have set the stage for a big push on the city, which commanders say could start by late October.

Whether Islamic State makes a final stand in Mosul or slips away to fight another day remains in question, but Baghdad expects a fierce battle and the international coalition backing it is preparing for one.

The densely populated river valley may hold obstacles for the military, though Islamic State appears to be putting up relatively little resistance, possibly to conserve fighters for a showdown in Mosul where their forces are estimated at between 3,000 and 9,000.

Hardcore fighters have likely slipped out already through the desert and into Syria, while many top leaders and foreign fighters have been killed in targeted air strikes, according to Major General Najm al-Jabouri, the Mosul operations commander.

He told Reuters that victory by years end would be easy, in keeping with pledges by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.

Story continues

We will go to Mosul, they will go to Tel Afar. We will go to Tel Afar, they will go to Baaj, said Jabouri, referring to IS-controlled districts 70 km (44 miles) and 140 km (87 miles)west of Mosul, respectively, which can be used to reach Syria.

We will go to Baaj, maybe. It depends on the situation in Syria. They can get to Syria but the situation there is not like before. It is not a safe haven for them now.

TURNING TIDE

Lieutenant General Vincent Stewart, Director of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, said on Thursday he expected the Mosul operation could unfold in the next two or three months but that it would be long and difficult.

Urban warfighting is not easy and this is a large city that has had at least two years to prepare to defend its position  Its going to be a multi-dimensional fight, Stewart said at a national security summit in Washington.

The war against jihadist insurgents in the Middle East has ebbed and flowed but there is a palpable sense in the region that the tide has turned against Islamic State.

In the past year and a half, the group has lost swathes of territory and strategic outposts. In Iraq it was driven out of Tikrit and Sinjar in the north, the oil refinery town of Baiji, and finally Ramadi and Falluja in western Anbar province, the heart of the insurgency following the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 that toppled Saddam Hussein.

In northern Syria, U.S.-allied Kurdish militia of the Peoples Protection Units (YPG) have taken vital territory and border crossings below the frontier with Turkey after capturing Kobani and later taking Tel Abyad, a key supply line for the jihadist capital Raqqa further south. The YPG has expanded its territory west of the Euphrates, seizing Manbij last month.

Meanwhile Turkey, backing Syrian rebels, this month cleared Islamic State from its southern border by seizing some 20 villages while Libyan government forces are close to flushing IS insurgents from holdouts in Sirte.

Amid those territorial losses, Islamic State has claimed credit for a surge in global attacks this year beyond its main Middle East theater. European countries remain on alert for additional strikes based on undisclosed information.

Nonetheless, the U.S. military has said Iraq is on track to retake Mosul later this year. Over the past two weeks, convoys of sophisticated engineering vehicles have been seen approaching Qayyara airbase, which Islamic State wrecked before withdrawing in July.

Repairing it to help supply the 20,000 to 30,000 Iraqi troops expected to be used in the campaign could take another two months. Until then, forces trained by the U.S.-led coalition are amassing further afield.

Mosul fell to Islamic State in June 2014 when Iraqi security forces, riddled with corruption and sectarianism despite billions of dollars in U.S. aid, dropped their weapons and fled from the insurgents.

KURDISH AND SHIITE FORCES

Kurdish peshmerga forces, entrenched east, north and northwest of Mosul since 2014, will help tighten the noose around the city but might not enter central districts to avoid aggravating political sensitivities.

After retaking 11 villages southeast of Mosul last month, they are now eyeing eastern Christian and Shabak villages long abandoned by minority communities the group seeks to eliminate.

The peshmergas role is complicated by tensions with the central government, which claims territory the Kurds have taken from IS and effectively annexed to their autonomous region. The Kurds say Baghdad is not forthcoming about its military strategy for Mosul or its plans to manage it after the battle.

If we do not prepare the politics of it, we may not succeed in the military plan or we may succeed in the military plan but lose the political plan and that would be disastrous, Falah Mustafa Bakir, the head of Kurdistans Foreign Relations Department, told Reuters last week.

The participation of the Hashid Shaabi, a government umbrella for mostly Shiite militias, is also unresolved. Powerful commanders have pledged to take part, despite fears among Mosuls Sunni leaders and residents of rights abuses.

Prime Minister Abadi said this week the demands of the battle would dictate the disposition of forces but that no decision had been made to bar the Hashid.

Confrontation that inflames sectarian tensions between Shiite-led government forces and the Sunni jihadists of Islamic State risks turning Mosul into a bloodbath, according to a Western diplomat in Baghdad.

HUMANITARIAN CRISIS

The Mosul operation has also triggered large-scale humanitarian planning, with the U.N. predicting up to one million people could flee the city in all directions.

The Kurds expect half of those leaving will head towards their territory, which already struggles to accommodate more than one million displaced people.

Regional authorities, fearing a new wave will exacerbate demographic and security concerns, aim to settle new arrivals in camps outside of main cities.

In the best-case scenario, though, there is only enough land and funding for about 450,000 people, according to a senior U.N. official, raising the prospect of housing others in unused buildings or abandoned villages.

If there is mass displacement, there could be shantytowns in the disputed border areas because the plan for camps doesnt accommodate them all, said Tom Robinson, director of Rise Foundation, which analyzes Iraqs humanitarian crisis.

Aid workers say the authorities are limiting the construction of new camps to discourage displacement. In fact, the military is urging residents to shelter in place as it advances, but that will only be feasible if fighting doesnt lay waste to homes and infrastructure as it has before.

Jabouri, the top Iraqi commander, dismissed concerns that such a scheme jeopardizes civilians safety, saying: What does it mean if some areas receive mortars? Thats not the end of the world. We are in Iraq, not in Switzerland.

(Additional reporting by Yara Bayoumy in Washington; Writing by Stephen Kalin; Editing by Samia Nakhoul, Janet McBride and James Dalgleish)
DoSM preparing to file cases against 7 firms

The Department of Supply Management (DoSM) is making preparations to file cases against seven business outlets found to have involvement in anomalies.
Shellanoo Group O.D. Kobo

An amazing drama unfolded this week in Israel's tech community after tech startup Shellanoo Group filed to go public in the Tel Aviv stock exchange.

The tight-knit community, who knew the company's work intimately was appalled at some of the claims made in the IPO documents, with one VC calling the company a "sham."

They led an uprising on Facebook and eventually shut-down the IPO.

With no IPO coming to provide income, Shellanoo Group reportedly laid off half of its workforce, about 30 people, Israeli news outlet The Marker reports, and its future is uncertain.

An IPO and Blindspot

Shellanoo (which means "our" in Hebrew) is a tech accelerator founded by O.D. Kobo in 2014. It's a place where startups can work and raise seed money. It claims to have supported a number of successful startups, but "only one or two of them were active," one person involved in the uprising told Business Insider.

Blindspot billboard

Worse still, its best-known success is a controversial app called Blindspot that a lot of people spoke out against.

Blindspot is an anonymous messaging app that was heavily promoted on billboards and ads all over Israel.

"Kids in Israel started bullying other kids via this app," one person told us. "People approached Shallanoo and asked them to stop this app, please block it. And of course, they didn't do anything. This created a big negative buzz on them."

Everyone from media pundits to members of the country's Parliament had been criticizing the Blindspot app for months. At one point it was even the subject of an anti-Blindspot video, which depicts a family covering a coffin decorated with the apps logo. (The video has been taken down.)

When Shellanoo Group filed for its IPO, attempting to raise $200 million, the Israeli tech community was upset. Beyond Blindspot, they felt that other claims the company made in its prospectus didn't match what they knew about its business and its startups.

Story continues

They were also concerned that the IPO valuation came from well-known accounting firm BDO, the securities were underwritten by local investment bank IBI Securities, and all of it had passed the regulators' scrutiny.

That almost surely meant a successful IPO where unsuspecting institutional investors like insurance companies and pension funds would be investing everyone's money into this company.

'Vapor' company and 'fraudulent' claims

Michael Eisenberg Benchmark

A-list Israeli venture capitalist Michael Eisenberg, formerly with Benchmark and now with his own VC firm, Aleph, called Shellanoo Group a "sham" and a "vapor company" on Medium (emphasis ours):

"The Shellanoo Group filed to go public on Israels Tel Aviv Stock Exchange at a valuation of almost $200MM. They claimed that their app downloads (9 Million) were users and it was abundantly clear that their projected revenues derived from 'businesses' and 'technologies' that did not exist yet.

"Immediately, Israels high tech entrepreneurs took to Facebook to rally the troops against this IPO and the institutional investors who would dare or unwittingly invest our money in this vapor company. They decried the blatantly misleading use of celebrities who had invested in the company previously, the fraudulent claims in the prospectus, and the specious valuation performed by BDO.

"Some members of our community (who know a bit about how some of the pension funds and institutional investors in Israel act and invest), immediately became worried that those investors would deploy our hard-earned money into this sham."

Uprising successful

The outpouring on Facebook caught the attention of the local media and on Wednesday, Shellanoo Group withdrew its IPO.

David Strauss, head of PR for the Shellanoo Group, blamed the media and competitors for its cancelled IPO, telling us:

"In the last few weeks our company, employees and shareholders were subject to brutal attacks by certain journalists and local personalities (competitors). Our initial belief was, and still is, that Israeli tech companies can flourish on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. However, due to such out of proportions attacks on us by certain members of the press and local competitors we have simply decided to focus our business activities elsewhere. Therefore, we had withdrawn our Israeli IPO."

When asked about accusations of fraudulent claims in the prospectus, Strauss said, "It is completely preposterous. I assume they are simply jealous or angry competitors."

According to one person in the tech community that was not directly involved in the uprising, Israel's startup community is happy about the outcome, convinced that the good guys won this one.

"The general feeling is that they are shady and there was no justification for this IPO. And that the social pressure did its thing. Everyone is very happy they canceled the IPO," this person told us.

NOW WATCH: WhatsApp is now sharing your data with Facebook  here's how to turn it off





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Cairo (AFP) - Egyptian police investigated Italian student Giulio Regeni days before his abduction, torture and murder but dropped the probe after assessing he posed no threat, Egyptian and Italian prosecutors said Friday.

Regeni, a 28-year-old Cambridge University PhD student, disappeared on January 25 in central Cairo.

His body was later found by the side of a road bearing signs of brutal torture.

Egypt has denied that its security forces were involved, but Italy recalled its ambassador to Cairo in April in protest at what it said was a lack of progress in the investigation.

The state prosecutor met his counterpart in Rome this week to further the investigation.

In a joint statement, the two prosecutors said Regeni, who was researching Egyptian street vendor trade unions, had been under investigation for three days by Egyptian police in January.

"The Egyptian state prosecutor pointed to information that the head of the street vendor union passed on specific information about the Italian student to Cairo police," the statement said.

"Police probed his activities for three days that concluded that his activities were of no concern to national security, and based on that dropped the investigation."

This is the first official Egyptian acknowledgement that Regeni had been on the radar of security services.

Trade unions are an especially sensitive political issue in Egypt, with successive governments fearing strikes and labour unrest.

Police officials had at first suggested Regeni might have died in a road accident, and have since offered little information on their investigation.

An Italian autopsy showed that his body was covered with cuts and his bones were broken, indicating he was hit with "fists, batons and hammers".

A letter "X" was carved on his forehead and hand, according to the report cited by Italian media.

His parents, Paola and Claudio Regeni, said the report suggested he had been tortured by a "professional".

Story continues

"It seems clear to us that the torture inflicted, and the number of times our son had to endure it and the methods, can only be the perverse deed of some torture professional," they told Italian media on Wednesday.

In March, police linked a gang that it said extorted foreigners to Regeni's death, saying his belongings had been found in the home of the gang leader's wife.

He and four others were killed in a shootout with police.

Friday's statement said Egypt's prosecution service was still investigating the gang's links to Regeni's abduction.

The Egyptian and Rome prosecution would also continue trying to retrieve footage from CCTV cameras in a metro station that Regeni is believed to have entered before being abducted.

Egypt had said the programme to retrieve the deleted footage was very expensive, and had asked Italy to help.

It had also accused the Italian prosecution of "unconstitutionally" demanding thousands of phone records which it refused to provide.
By Steve Scherer ROME (Reuters) - An Italian judge acquitted two men accused of people smuggling and murder, saying they had been forced at gunpoint by Libyan traffickers to drive a rubber boat packed with migrants last year. A judge in the Sicilian city of Palermo on Wednesday ordered that Jammeh Sulieman and Dampha Bakary, from Senegal and Gambia respectively, be released from prison, according to a copy of the ruling. Hundreds of similar cases are pending in Italy, and the ruling may have set a "historic" precedent, said one of the defence lawyers in the case. The two were accused of both people smuggling and murder because 12 people died during the attempted crossing in July 2015 when the rubber boat they were driving started to deflate. The prosecution had sought life sentences for both. The other migrants on the boat were rescued by an Italian coastguard vessel, along with the accused smugglers, who were taken into custody when the rescue ship reached Palermo. "The defendants did not autonomously and freely set out in the Mediterranean at the helm of a flimsy boat impossibly packed with people," Judge Gigi Omar Modica wrote in his ruling. Libyan people smugglers forced them to take the helm at gunpoint, and then handed them control of the boat only after it had taken to sea. If they had turned back, it "would have meant certain death at the hands of the Libyans", Modica said. NO RETURN TO LIBYA Palermo prosecutors Claudio Camilleri and Maurizio Scalia said they planned to appeal the decision. In Italy, both prosecutors and defendants can appeal court rulings. Almost 800 suspected "scafisti" or "boat smugglers" were arrested in the 12 months to July, the Interior Ministry said in August. More than 700 were arrested in the previous 12 months. "I have many clients who are accused of driving the boats, and it's always the same story," Cinzia Pecoraro, one of the two defence lawyers, told Reuters on Thursday. Armed men take them to the boats, start the engines, load migrants onto the vessels and then accompany them as they set out to sea. Before abandoning the boat and returning to shore, they tell the drivers they will be shot if they return to Libya, she said. "Now courts can look at each case with this sentence in mind," Pecoraro said. Mass migration to Europe from Asia, the Middle East and Africa is now in its third year, and Italy has been on the front line since it started in 2013. Hundreds of thousands have set out fleeing violence and poverty at home. (Additional reporting by Wladimir Pantaleone in Palermo; editing by Ralph Boulton)
ABIDJAN (Reuters) - Ivory Coast has re-opened its western borders with Liberia and Guinea two years after they were closed to prevent the spread of an Ebola epidemic that killed thousands across West Africa, an Ivorian government spokesman said on Friday. Around 29,000 people contracted the hemorrhagic fever during the more than two-year long outbreak, the worst on record. Over 11,000 died before it finally ended in June, nearly all of them in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. "We had to take these measures to protect our country. And the fact we didn't have a single case must be considered a real success," Bruno Kone said, referring to the border closure measure. Ivory Coast, French-speaking West Africa's largest economy, shut its borders in August 2014. It came under criticism at the time from some health organizations that argued the closure risked aggravating the epidemic and would worsen hardship in countries already struggling with the economic fallout from Ebola. Several other regional nations, including Mali and Senegal, also shut their borders temporarily as a precaution. (Reporting by Joe Bavier; Editing by Tim Cocks)
Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. JEC has secured a position in a prominent South Australian transport project. The company is now part of a joint venture that has won a sub-contract from the Gateway South Consortium, for offering services in the Darlington Upgrade project in Adelaide, Australia. The new deal is likely to enhance Jacobs Buildings & Infrastructure business in the near term.



Gateway South Consortium is a joint venture between Laing ORourke and Fulton Hogan. This association has extended the sub-contract to another joint venture formed by Jacobs, SMEC Holdings Limited and KBR. Financial details of the sub-contract have not been disclosed.



As per the offer extended by Gateway South Consortium, Jacobs and its two venture partners will be offering construction and designing services in the Darlington Upgrade project. It is a vital transportation project in Australia, with a budget of roughly $400 million. This project intends to augment safety and reduce congestion and travel time in the region.



The sub-contract calls for the reconfiguration of the 3.3-kilometer road connecting the north of Tonsley Boulevard to Southern Expressway. Also, the companies will provide the design for a non-stop motorway beneath Mimosa Terrance, Flinders Driver, Sturt Road and Tonsley Boulevard. All legal formalities related to the prestigious project are expected to be accomplished by 2018.



Moving Forward



Share price of the company was $51.57 per share as of Sep 8, 2016. We expect the aforesaid announcement to boost investors confidence in the stock. Higher transportation investments incurred by the government authorities of Australia and U.K, the recently passed U.S. Highway Bill and strategic acquisition of J.L. Patterson & Associates in Dec 2015 are all expected to boost Jacobs Buildings & Infrastructure segments top line in the near term.

JACOBS ENGIN GR Price

JACOBS ENGIN GR Price | JACOBS ENGIN GR Quote

Zacks Rank

Jacobs currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). The company remains on track to boost its financials via new contracts, improved backlogs, greater operational efficiency and increased innovations. However, headwinds like a strong U.S. dollar, robust industry competition and dismal pricing environment in the global mining and energy market raise concerns.

Stocks to Consider



Better-ranked stocks within the industry include Willdan Group, Inc. WLDN, Boise Cascade Company BCC and Caesarstone Ltd. CSTE. All the three companies presently hold a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here .



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TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's top government spokesman said on Friday there is a high possibility that North Korea conducted a nuclear test. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has instructed the relevant ministries to collect and analyze information regarding North Korea, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a news conference. A seismic event in North Korea on Friday morning measured by the U.S. Geological Survey with a magnitude of 5.3 appeared to be a nuclear test, South Korea's meteorological agency said earlier. (Reporting by Kaori Kaneko; Editing by Chris Gallagher)
Shutterstock/USA Today

Lets say youre Jerry Jones. You are crazy rich and you are arguably overly involved in the day-to-day logistics of the Dallas Cowboys. It takes you an hour to drive from your teams headquarters to your massive stadium. What do you do to alleviate this unimaginable hassle? You buy a custom helicopter for your own personal use.

Yes, Jones will be traveling around Dallas in a helicopter now. To me it kind of says a little bit about the glitz  the glamour, if you will  of the Dallas Cowboys, Jones said. The base model for the particular helicopter Jones has purchased is $8.5 million, but considering that Jones copter has the Cowboys logo on the tail, one assumed he did not go for the standard model. After all, Jones says the copter will be a tool that we want to really use to be a part of the function of the franchise. See, this isnt a ridiculous extravagance for some obscenely wealthy billionaire! Its a function of the franchise!

Its also apparently usable as a tool to rain death from above on pigs. Discussing the many benefits of helicopter ownership, Jones said, You can shoot out of it. You can shoot pigs out of it. You can do a lot of things in this helicopter. One can only assume that Jones has plans to shoot pigs from his helicopter. Otherwise, its an odd thing to mention. If you see a field of murdered pigs around Dallas, you probably know who to blame.

Jerry Jones on his new helicopter: "You can shoot out of it. You can shoot pigs out of it. You can do a lot of things in this helicopter."  Jon Machota (@jonmachota) September 9, 2016

(Via FOX Sports)
Government told to re-table three subsidiary bills fast

The House Finance Committee instructed the government on Tuesday to re-table three subsidiary billsFinancial Bill, Bill to Raise Domestic Debt and Debt and Guarantee Billin Parliament without delay.
By Gina Cherelus and Joseph Ax

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A New Jersey appeals court on Friday threw out the conviction of a former Rutgers University student who used a webcam to record his roommate kissing another man, leading the roommate to commit suicide.

Dharun Ravi was convicted in 2012 on 15 charges, including several bias intimidation counts, after he allegedly led a group of students to spy on his roommate Tyler Clementi in 2010.

Clementi, 18, jumped off the George Washington Bridge a week later and died from his injuries after Ravi broadcast images of Clementi and the man online. His death sparked a national debate over cyberbullying and gay discrimination.

Under Friday's ruling, Ravi will face a new trial on some of the original charges, but not all of them, due to a change in state law since his 2012 trial. Ravi's attorney and a representative for the Clementi family did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Last year, the state's Supreme Court struck down part of the law under which Ravi was charged as unconstitutionally vague. As a result, prosecutors conceded that Ravi's guilty verdict on those counts should be vacated but argued that his conviction for other crimes, like invasion of privacy and witness tampering, should stand.

But the Appellate Division of the Superior Court concluded that none of the convictions could remain in place because the bias allegations loomed over the entire case.

"It is clear that the evidence the State presented to prove the bias intimidation charges... permeated the entire case against defendant, rendering any attempt to salvage the convictions under the remaining charges futile," wrote Judge Jose Fuentes for the court in a 61-page opinion. "It is unreasonable to expect a rational juror to remain unaffected by this evidence."

The court threw out four bias intimidation counts, as well as one unrelated charge for lack of evidence, and ordered a new trial on the other counts.

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The Middlesex County Prosecutor's office has several options, including appealing to the state Supreme Court, retrying Ravi or dropping the case entirely. The office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Ravi, who was found guilty on all counts, faced up to 10 years in prison, but a trial judge eventually sentenced him to 30 days.

His sentence also included three years of probation, 300 hours of community service, cyber-bullying counseling and a $10,000 contribution to an organization dedicated to helping victims of bias crimes.

(Reporting by Gina Cherelus and Joseph Ax; Editing by Andrew Hay)
TOKYO, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Japanese government bonds slipped on Friday, taking cues from higher yields overseas, while the yield curve steepened as longer maturities underperformed.

The 20-year yield rose 5 basis points to a five-month high of 0.435 percent, while the 30-year JGB yield added 7 basis points to 0.515 percent.

The benchmark 10-year yield was up 2.5 basis points at minus 0.015 percent, while September 10-year futures ended down 0.18 point at 151.13.

U.S. Treasury yields rose across the board on Thursday, in line with European bonds, after European Central Bank President Mario Draghi left the door open for additional monetary policy easing but gave no indication that more stimulus was actually coming.

The Bank of Japan bought only shorter zones in its buying operations earlier on Friday. The central bank offered to buy 70 billion yen of JGBs maturing in one year, 400 billion yen of 1- to 3-year JGBs, and 420 billion yen of 3- to 5-year JGBs in its asset purchase programme.

Also weighing on the superlong zone was news that Japan's Ministry of Finance is considering raising the amount of 40-year JGBs sold at each auction to 500 billion yen from the current level of 400 billion yen, according to a senior ministry official.

The MOF floated the plan in a meeting with JGB primary dealers on Thursday, and will make a formal decision after meeting with JGB investors on Friday, the official said.

(Reporting by Tokyo markets team; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu)
(Updates prices, adds Eurogroup meeting comments)

By Abhinav Ramnarayan

LONDON, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Euro zone bond yields rose on Friday with investors anxious the European Central Bank's policy meeting had ushered in a new "wait-and-see" stance.

Having already risen on Thursday, yields on Germany's 30-year Bunds rose over 8 basis points to 0.59 percent, the highest level since the day after the Brexit vote in June.

That was over 18 basis points higher than Thursday's low of 0.41 percent.

Most euro zone government bond yields were also up 3-5 bps on Friday.

The ECB left monetary policy unchanged the day before and gave few hints about its next move.

"The ECB has gone from 'jumping the gun' to 'wait and see' mode and that has taken the market a little bit by surprise," said David Schnautz, a rates strategist at Commerzbank.

"The market is also realising that a lot of the monetary policy tools are exhausted and there's not that much juice left," he said.

Expectations were that the ECB would extend its asset purchase programme beyond the current cut-off date of March 2017 and tweak the criteria to expand the pool of eligible assets.

However, though the central bank kept the door open for further stimulus, it was reticent over what measures it would take.

The euro zone's central bank kept its deposit rate at -0.4 percent, charging banks for parking cash overnight, and held the main refinancing rate, which determines the cost of credit in the economy, unchanged at 0.00 percent.

Lower-rated euro zone sovereigns may particularly be under pressure in the next few trading sessions. Portugal's 10-year yield hit its highest level in over seven weeks, rising 7 bps to 3.16 percent.

"The underperformance of large peripherals is not completely surprising given the referendum in Italy, uncertainty in Spain and problems in Portugal," said Schnautz.

Portugal is seen as particularly vulnerable because DBRS, the only remaining agency to give it investment grade status, is due to review the rating on Oct. 21. A move to junk status would make the country ineligible for ECB purchases.

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Last month the ratings agency told Reuters that pressure was mounting on Portugal's rating.

Euro zone finance ministers pushed Greece on Friday to speed up a reform drive it agreed to in a bailout package before getting a new tranche of money.

For Reuters new Live Markets blog on European and UK stock markets see reuters://realtime/verb=Open/url=http://emea1.apps.cp.extranet.thomsonreuters.biz/cms/?pageId=livemarkets (Reporting by Abhinav Ramnarayan; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)
WASHINGTON (AP)  Secretary of State John Kerry is heading to Geneva for yet another meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to try to forge a nationwide truce in Syria, improve humanitarian aid deliveries and restart peace talks.

The State Department said Kerry was departing Thursday to see Lavrov on Friday. On Wednesday, the Russian foreign ministry had announced the pair would meet Thursday and Friday, but the State Department never confirmed two days of talks.

Since Aug. 26, Kerry and Lavrov have met three times to discuss Syria  once in Geneva and twice in Hangzhou, China. The State Department said they have spoken by phone four times in the past two days: three times Wednesday and once Thursday.

Lavrov briefly met with the U.N. special envoy on Syria, Staffan de Mistura, at a lakefront hotel in Geneva on Thursday night. No details were immediately available.

Russia, a key ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad, has been conducting airstrikes to bolster his forces for nearly a year. The U.S. supports rebels fighting to overthrow Assad and has called on him to step down.
Azraq (Jordan) (AFP) - US actress Angelina Jolie on Friday urged the international community to come to the rescue of tens of thousands of Syrian refugees stranded without humanitarian aid on Jordan's border.

"Seventy-five thousand Syrians are stranded at the berm in no man's land at the Jordanian border including children, pregnant women and gravely ill patients," she told reporters during a visit to Azraq refugee camp, 100 kilometres (60 miles) northeast of the Jordanian capital Amman.

"None of the basic protections under international law are being applied," said Jolie, special envoy for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

"This is not a problem of Jordan's making, or that Jordan should be left to bear alone," she said.

"Jordan has been warning for years that they could reach a point where they on their own could do no more," said Jolie, who toured the windy desert camp in a black robe under a blazing sun.

"The world has known about the situation on the berm for months but no solution has been put forward."

On security grounds, Jordan has since June 21 blocked the passage of aid to the refugees and their entry after a suicide bombing claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group killed seven of its soldiers in the border area.

Since then, humanitarian organisations have been able to send aid to the refugees just once, in early August, lifting it across the frontier using drones and cranes.

Jolie said the UNHCR and other agencies had received only half of the funds needed from donors to provide humanitarian assistance to refugees during Syria's brutal five-year-old conflict.

Ahead of the UN General Assembly which opens at the end of September, she urged world leaders "to ask the fundamental question of what are the root causes of the Syrian conflict and what it would take to end it.

"And please, put that at the centre of your discussions," she said.

"Refugees want to know when can they get back to their home, they don't want to be passive recipients of aid, they want a political solution," Jolie said.

Jordan hosts more than 600,000 Syrian refugees according to the United Nations, a figure Amman puts at 1.4 million.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.  NASA's OSIRIS REx mission has officially kicked off its seven-year, round-trip journey to an asteroid.

The space probe left Earth last night (Sept. 8) when it successfully lifted off from Cape Canaveral's Complex 41 in Florida, atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket.

OSIRIS-REx (which stands for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer) catapulted into space at 7:05 p.m. EDT (2305 GMT) yesterday, the first extraterrestrial step in its voyage to the asteroid Bennu and back. [Launch Photos: NASA's OSIRIS-REx Asteroid Mission Blasts Off]

"Tonight is a night for celebration," NASA Chief Scientist Ellen Stofan said at the post-launch news conference. "We are on our way to an asteroid."

"A safe, smooth, slow high-five"

When NASA started looking for an asteroid to sample, one of its prime requirements was to find one located not too far from our planet. Bennu loops around the sun every two years, in an orbit very similar to Earth's. Bennu can get as close to Earth as 279,000 miles (449,000 kilometers), just outside the orbit of the moon, though it only passes this close every six years. Today, the asteroid is only about 140 million miles (225 million km) from Earth.

"By virtue of the mission design, we're going to an asteroid with a similar trajectory to Earth," principal investigator Dante Lauretta said in a mission briefing Tuesday (Sept. 6).

Of course, OSIRIS-REx won't be taking a straight path to its target. Bennu's orbit is titled about 6 degrees compared to Earth's. Next year, the spacecraft will fly by Earth again, relying on the planet's gravity to help shift its orbital angle.

In August 2018, nearly two years after leaving Earth, OSIRIS-REx will reach Bennu. Its instruments will start thoroughly mapping the asteroid, a project that will take anywhere from 18 months to two years. The spacecraft will carefully maneuver around the small, spinning asteroid, taking detailed photographs that will detect penny-size objects on the surface. Using these observations, scientists will select the best candidate site from which to collect a sample.

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Once the site is selected, OSIRIS-REx will slowly drift down toward the asteroid. Rather than touching down on the unstable surface, the spacecraft will extend its 11-foot (3.15-meter) Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Arm (TAGSAM). A burst of nitrogen gas will stir up loose material on the surface, lofting it upward into the collection container at the tip of the arm. Then OSIRIS-REx will back away from the asteroid into the vacuum of space.

"We'll be able to match the rotation speed and do a safe, smooth, slow high-five," OSIRIS-REx Deputy Program Scientist Christina Richey said at the science press conference on Tuesday.

To accomplish its scientific goals, TAGSAM needs to collect at least 2 ounces (60 grams) of material, though it can hold as much as 4.4 pounds (2 kilograms). To calculate that mass, OSIRIS-REx will make a controlled spin to produce forces that allow scientists to "weigh" the material. If the brief kiss from OSIRIS-REx doesnt collect a large enough sample on the first go, the spacecraft carries another two canisters of gas for a second and, if necessary, third attempt.

If additional material is required, the first collection wont be dumped into space, OSIRIS-REx project scientist Jason Dworkin told Space.com. Instead, it will be mixed with the second sample. The arm will drop the samples into a storage capsule on board the spacecraft.

Once OSIRIS-REx gathers sufficient material, its science operations will be complete.

"There are no other science operations after the sample is stowed," Dworkin said at Tuesday's mission briefing. "It's all about keeping that precious sample safe, doing nothing that can possibly jeopardize it."

The journey home

Once OSIRIS-REx has captured and safely stowed its sample, it will wait for Bennu and Earth to line up in March 2021. That's to take advantage of the closest approach of the two celestial bodies.

"We're lining it up to where it takes the least amount of fuel possible [to return to Earth]," Richey told Space.com.

After leaving the asteroid, OSIRIS-REx will begin its 2.5-year journey home, making two loops around the sun before it reaches Earth in September 2023. As it draws close, the spacecraft will release the sample return capsule, which will plummet through Earth's atmosphere at more than 27,000 mph (43,452 km/h), protected by its heat shield. A parachute will deploy 1.9 miles (3 km) above the surface, and the tiny capsule will drift down for a soft landing at the Utah Test and Training Range about 80 miles west of Salt Lake City. The capsule will then make its final journey to Johnson Space Center in Houston, where scientists will spend approximately two years analyzing the material blown from the surface of the asteroid.

In the meantime, OSIRIS-REx will continue to orbit the sun. Depending several factors, including the amount of remaining fuel, the probe may be able to be repurposed for other scientific goals, NASA representatives said during the briefing. However, with its sample return capsule back on Earth, it will no longer be able to collect other material from the solar system.

"It's really quite a milestone," NASA Planetary Science Division Director Jim Green told the press after the launch. When it comes to planetary science, "we just keep hitting it out of the ballpark."

OSIRIS-REx continued that grand tradition.

"Tonight we hit it off the face of the Earth," he said.

Follow Nola Taylor Redd on Twitter @NolaTReddor Google+. Follow us at @Spacedotcom, Facebookor Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

Editor's Recommendations

Copyright 2016 SPACE.com, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
EXCLUSIVE: Screening today at the Toronto International Film Festival is Bronwen Hughes The Journey Is the Destination from Voltage which is based on the first of three journals by English- photojournalist African activist Dan Eldon who was stoned to death with three of his colleagues by an angry mob in Mogadishu. Raised in Nairobi, by the time he was a teenager, Eldon was organizing a daredevil supply run to Mozambican refugees. Eldon opted to skip high school to cover such events as the end of apartheid in South Africa and the violence and famine in Somalia. This sequence from The Journey is the Destination is a turning point int he film. Eldon has brought together a group of friends from all over the world to form S.T.A.  Student Transport Aid. They have raised money, and traveled across five countries to hand-deliver the much-needed aid to the refugee camps of Mozambique. Its been a life-changing experience for all of them, but as they head home, Dan realizes this represents a beginning, not an end. From here, Eldons journey to change the world truly begins.

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* Withdrawal of draft on "fair use" after consumer disappointment

* But mobile operators complain proposal was already too generous

* Juncker, reacting to Brexit, seeks to show EU works for voters (Adds industry reaction, EU officials, edits)

By Julia Fioretti and Alastair Macdonald

BRUSSELS, Sept 9 (Reuters) - The European Commission withdrew proposals on Friday that would limit next year's abolition of mobile phone roaming charges after criticism that the rules should do more to favour telecoms firms' customers.

In a dramatic U-turn, four days after officials published rules to restrict how many days consumers could use phones abroad without extra fees, President Jean-Claude Juncker ordered the draft revised in what allies and officials said showed that the EU executive wanted to be seen to listen to ordinary voters.

Three months after the British public delivered a shattering blow to the European Union by opting to leave the bloc, Juncker and leaders of the other EU states are working to restore trust in an institution which insurgent eurosceptics say is out of touch and in the pockets of big, globalised corporations.

The telecoms industry, however, was unimpressed, saying the Commission's original proposal was already painful for them.

After years of progressively capping roaming charges, EU law will end the practice altogether in the middle of next year for customers who make "fair use" of the service, in terms of how much time and data they use and how long they spend abroad.

Under Monday's draft definition of "fair use", published for public comment, firms could charge clients extra who use their phones abroad for more than 90 days a year or 30 in a row. The Commission says the average European is abroad 12 days a year.

Juncker, who will make his annual State of the Union speech on Wednesday, did not see the proposal before it went out but heard public feedback, a Commission spokesman said: "We have been listening and now we are going back to the drawing board."

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EU officials told Reuters their main concern was that the proposal was not good enough for consumers. Mobile operators association GSMA said it also welcomed a review, calling the draft over-complex for customers - as well as "unworkable" on a commercial and technical level for the companies themselves.

Another group, ETNO, said the 90-day allowance went far beyond the spirit of the law that will take effect next June.

Companies pay firms in the other country wholesale prices for data and calls when a customer of theirs roams abroad. They argue that big variations in mobile prices across the bloc make it uneconomic for them to offer totally free roaming to all.

Commission spokesman Alexander Winterstein insisted that, despite negative media commentary this week on the limitations for consumers, most Europeans would benefit from new regulations that were a "major success" for EU policymakers.

"Roaming charges are going to disappear entirely by June 2017. Period," he told a news conference.

CITIZENS PROMISED

For a decade, battles over roaming charges have provided a barometer of EU politics. Europeans, millions of whom frequently cross often nearby borders, have been irritated by charges for making calls or using data abroad that seem very much greater than any additional costs required to provide such a service.

The Commission, in its role as enforcer of a single market blind to national frontiers inside the EU, has long cited its campaign to cap roaming charges, forcing them down by some 90 percent since 2007, in efforts to show voters it works for them.

But rearguard action by phone companies, defending profits and citing big discrepancies in the prices customers pay across domestic markets that range from Bulgaria to wealthy Luxembourg, has left disappointed consumer groups accusing the EU of caving in to corporate lobbying in Brussels and in national capitals.

The German leader of the centre-right bloc in the European Parliament, which supported the conservative Luxemburger in his appointment as Commission president, hailed Juncker's move and said people expected him to keep pledges made by Brussels.

"We are pushing for an end to roaming fees for European consumers in 2017 in full transparency," Manfred Weber said. "This is what we promised citizens ... We expect the European Commission to give a strong signal in this direction next week."

Officials say Juncker's State of the Union address to the parliament in Strasbourg on Wednesday is likely to contain proposals to promote economic growth and the single EU market following Britain's vote for Brexit on June 23.

EU officials say that Juncker is determined to fight back against the rise of eurosceptic parties, including in France, Germany and the Netherlands which hold elections next year, by ensuring the Commission demonstrates it is acting for voters.

Over the summer, the Commission decided not to levy fines on Spain and Portugal for breaking budget rules in the euro zone.

Last week, it made headlines by handing a record 13-billion euro tax demand to iPhone maker Apple Inc, saying the Irish government had effectively given it illegal subsidies by failing to collect taxes on profits routed through Ireland.

(Editing by Philip Blenkinsop and Alison Williams)
House meeting postponed due to lack of quorum

A meeting of the Legislature-Parliament has been postponed on Friday after most of the parliamentarians who were in attendence exited the meet mid-way to attend a programme organised by an INGO at Budhanilkantha-based Park Village Resort .
We just found out some surprising news about Giraffes, and theyre way more diverse than we thought

We just found out some surprising news about Giraffes, and theyre way more diverse than we thought

If you thought all giraffes were created equal, think again: There are actually four distinct species of giraffes in the world!

g turn

The delightful, long-necked animals had previously all been considered members of Giraffa camelopardalis, a single species.

Now, though, new genetic analysis has revealed tells us that the genus Giraffa actually encompasses FOUR distinct species  and there might even be more!

The Washington Post shared this big giraffe news, which was published in Current Biology this week. Interestingly, though, the three species of giraffe some people consider to be new already existed  they were just previously thought of as one subspecies of Giraffa camelopardalis, or the northern giraffe. However, these new findings reveal the southern giraffe, the Masai giraffe, and the reticulated giraffe as individual, unique species.

giraffes

As for why scientists are just figuring this out now, well, apparently giraffes arent exactly the most popular animal to research. According to study author Axel Janke, an evolutionary biologist at the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Center in Germany as told to National Geographic:

Only 400 scientific papers have been written about giraffes, versus 20,000 papers on white rhinos.

g chew

The comparative lack of research on giraffes is pretty shocking; However, we do know that there are nine giraffe subspecies (this includes the four that the study recommends promoting to full species). Also, the DNA samples analyzed during this study tells us that the four potential species last shared an ancestor between 1.5 and 2 million years ago.

This news might also have a huge impact on giraffe conservation: Although the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) considers giraffes to be a species of least concern, the new distinctions might mean that each individual one is in fact endangered.

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In a statement, study author Julian Fennessy of Giraffe Conservation Foundation in Namibia explained: As an example, northern giraffe number less than 4,750 individuals in the wild, and reticulated giraffe number less than 8,700 individuals  as distinct species, it makes them some of the most endangered large mammals in the world.

Luckily, with this new knowledge from the study, its more likely that giraffes will be correctly classified, and that conservationists can begin their work preserving each distinct species in the genus.

cozy gs

The post We just found out some surprising news about Giraffes, and theyre way more diverse than we thought appeared first on HelloGiggles.
By Dustin Volz

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department has formed a threat analysis team to study potential national security challenges posed by self-driving cars, medical devices and other Internet-connected tools, a senior official said.

The new group's goal is to secure the so-called "internet of things" from exploitation by terrorist threats and by others who might try to hack devices to cause loss of life or achieve political or economic gain, according to Assistant Attorney General John Carlin, head of the Justice Departments national security division.

The impetus for the team, which has been informally active for about six months, was an understanding that the internet is vulnerable to cyber attacks partly because it was not designed with security in mind, Carlin told Reuters, after announcing the group on Thursday at the Intelligence and National Security Alliance conference in Washington.

Carlin said the group, a small team of about five to 10 people, did not want to be alarmist about new technologies such as self-driving cars, but that it wanted to identify and address security challenges presented by the internet of things before they are exploited.

He cited the July truck attack in Nice, France, in which 86 people were killed, as an example of how automated driving systems could present a national security threat if they were remotely hijacked.

"The internet on wheels ... clearly is going to present national security risks as this transformation takes place, Carlin said.

Transportation and public health experts say that self-driving cars could dramatically reduce auto fatalities and injuries, most of which are due to human error.

Car hacking has grown as a cyber security concern in recent years.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) issued a bulletin in March warning that motor vehicles were increasingly vulnerable to hacking.

In July 2015, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV recalled 1.4 million U.S. vehicles to install software after a magazine report raised concerns about hacking, the first action of its kind for the auto industry.

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Carlin said he has been to Detroit twice in the past six months on trips that included visits with auto industry executives to discuss national security issues surrounding smart cars.

The group is being led by Adam Hickey, acting deputy assistant attorney general of the national security division, and will include industry experts and partnerships with other federal agencies, a Justice Department spokesman said.

(Reporting by Dustin Volz; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)
Since the start of his eponymous label in 2005, Tom Ford has never been one to follow fashion week rules. His runway shows have traveled from London to Los Angeles. Last night, he finally landed back in New York, drawing in a star-studded crowd from Uma Thurman to Alicia Keys. Instead of showing what's to come for Spring, Ford sent his fall collection down the runway that is available to buy today. To end the glamorous evening in style, guests enjoyed a performance by Leon Bridges, and had their portraits taken by Inez and Vinoodh. Click through to see the best photos of the night.
Actress Kate Beckinsale, known for her roles in such films as Total Recall, The Aviator, and Laurel Canyon, will be the recipient of the San Diego International Film Festivals Cinema Vanguard Award. The honor will be presented on Sept. 29 at the Night of the Stars Tribute at the Museum of Contemporary Art in La Jolla, Calif.

Now in its 15th year, SDiFF will run from Sept. 28 through Oct. 2.

The Cinema Vanguard Award honors an actor who has the tenacity to forge new ground within their craft, per the fests announcement. Beckinsale is an immensely gifted actress who has proven to be one of the industrys most versatile and charismatic performers.

Each year SDiFF screens a diverse slate of movies, ranging from narrative to documentaries to shorts. Screenings will be held in the newly renovated historic Balboa Theater and Regal Theaters in Downtown San Diego, and ArcLight Cinemas in La Jolla.

Beckinsale received critical praise for her role as Lady Susan in Whits Stillmans romantic drama Love and Friendship, an adaptation of a Jane Austens novella that premiered at Sundance this year.

Kate is a wonderful performer and we couldnt be happier to present her with the Cinema Vanguard Award, which is an indication of all the fine work she has done in such a wide variety of film roles, said Tonya Mantooth, the festivals executive and artistic director. The actress will next be seen in the fifth installment of the sci-fi fantasy Underworld: Blood Wars, where she reprises her role as the action hero Selene.

SDiFF is produced by the San Diego Film Foundation.

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From Harper's BAZAAR

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are parents to two little royals, and they seem to want a third. Kate Middleton and Prince William "want a third baby soon," a source close to the family told US Weekly. "It would not surprise me if they were pregnant by Christmas," the insider added.

Photo credit: Getty

Currently the couple has two children, three-year-old Prince George and one-year-old Princess Charlotte. The family of four is scheduled to travel to Canada for a two-week tour this month. But if the Duchess becomes pregnant before any tours in 2017, they'll have to cut back on the traveling, the source said.

Imagine this happy family having one more mini royal member:

Photo credit: Getty

Photo credit: Kensington Palace/Instagram

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Looking to spark some excitement in the great state of Utah? Stroll into any PTA, Elks Club, or town council meeting, step to the microphone, and ever so gently broach the subject of Bears Ears. Then duck and cover as peoples heads start to explode.

Despite the darling moniker, Bears Ears is not some deep-fried carnival snack or ancient Chinese libido booster. It is, rather, political shorthand for 1.9 million acres in southeast Utah that President Obama is pondering designating a national monument. The ears in question are twin buttes hovering over the surrounding San Juan County, a sprawling stretch of wilderness that now finds itself at the white-hot center of a brawl over public-land management, presidential authority, and the 110-year-old Antiquities Act.

Chock full of Native American burial sites, much of Bears Ears is importantsacred evento local tribes. For decades, folks have been feuding over how the region should be managed and by whom. Last year, representatives from five tribes petitioned Obama to intervene using the Antiquities Act, a (Teddy) Roosevelt-era law giving presidents the power to declare public lands as national monuments. Environmental groups, 20 additional tribes, and a big chunk of preservation-minded Utahans support the proposal.

But land management is a flammable issue in Utah. Were talking Al-Sharpton-going-to-see-Hamilton-with-David-Duke level flammable. This is hardly surprising when you consider that 65 percent of the states land is owned by the federal government. So while much of the nation has cheered Obamas second-term flurry of monument making (hes named 23 sites thus far, more than any other U.S. president), Utahans are more skeptical.

Recommended: Theres Nothing Better Than a Scared, Rich Candidate

Many residents, in fact, get downright ornery about the possibility of a presidentespecially a Democratic presidentunilaterally placing monument restrictions on huge swaths of their state. Part of it is a dislike of Washington D.C. generally and of presidential authority in particular. Utah loves government process, explained Ted Wilson, a long-time environmental activist and former mayor of Salt Lake City. They like to see issues hashed out in the state legislature and in Congress, he said. So the idea that a president can just put pen to paper is anathema.

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More particularly, there remains much ill will in Utah over President Clintons designation of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in 1996. It was, pretty much all of Utah agreed, handled badly. The president didnt bother giving a heads up to state leaders, and then went to Arizona to deliver the announcement, Wilson recalled. Even the Democrats were mad about that one, he said. I was co-chair of Clintons campaign that year, and I was so upset about it, I threatened to resign.

Given this dynamic, the battle over Bears Ears has devolved into what youd expect: name-calling, dirty tricks, accusations of corruption, and other assorted ugliness. (Last December, a San Juan County Commissioner known for his anti-Washington fervor was slapped with 10 days in jail and three years probation for leading a protest of armed ATV riders through a canyon that is off-limits to motorized vehicles.) At this point, its hard to gauge overall local support. Polls vary wildly, and even respondents who want Bears Ears to receive some type of protected status say they prefer not to have it achieved by presidential decree.

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Complicating matters, Utahs congressional leadersa uniformly Republican lot mistrustful of Obama on even noncombustible issuesadamantly oppose the executive branchs involvement. For years, in fact, multiple members have been working on their own plan for managing the land that would curtail agency regulators influence.

Leading the charge is Representative Rob Bishop, the chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources. Since 2013, Bishop and Representative Jason Chaffetz, whose district contains much of Bears Ears, have been hammering out a detailed legislative package governing the use of a whopping 18 million acres in eastern Utah, including Bears Ears. In July, the duo at last rolled out their Public Lands Initiative.

Alas, the plan was poorly received by environmentalists and the tribal coalition favoring a monument. (The PLI has been disparaged by most environmental people who say it just cut too much out of the protection side and left too much in the drilling side, Wilson said.) Bishop and Chaffetz say they have received zero feedback from the administration. No matter: Bishop will hold final hearings on the bill next week, and then start moving it out of committee. Still, the chairman acknowledged that the plan likely wouldnt get to the House floor before the election. But I expect there to be a long lame duck session, and a great deal can be accomplished during that time.

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For Bishop, this battle is about more than the fate of 1.9 millionor even 18 millionacres in his home state.

A Tea Party conservative, Bishop is famous for his opposition to the federal oversight of public lands in general. Last year, he and fellow Utah Representative Chris Stewart launched the Federal Land Action Group (FLAG), aimed at developing a legislative framework for transferring public lands to local ownership and control. Thisand other similar effortsprompted the Center for American Progress to dub Bishop the head of Congresss anti-parks caucus.

For Bishop, this battle is about more than the fate of 1.9 millionor even 18 millionacres in his home state.

But Bishop harbors a special loathing for the Antiquities Act. It is, he told a gathering of Western state land commissioners last summer, the most evil act ever invented. Of its fans, he said: If anyone here likes the Antiquities Act the way it is written, die. I mean, [get the] stupidity out of the gene pool!

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Bishops PLI package would specifically prohibit the president from using the Antiquities Act in the seven Utah counties covered by the plan.

There are a number of fundamental problems with the law, Bishop told me. For starters, its terribly outdated, enacted when there were [45] states and no environmental laws. Worse still, he said, its intellectually flawed. Decisions about public lands, he believes, should be a legislative not an administrative concept. It was dumb for Congress to cede this authority back in the day. But it doesnt mean they should continue on just because they did something dumb last century.

The PLI is far from Bishops first shot at reining in this presidential prerogative. I have done things in the past, he assured me, including an effort to subject the president to the same procedural hoops that Congress must jump through when protecting land. Bishop says that over the years he has gotten a myriad of such bills through the Housejust not the Senate.

Bishop isnt fighting this fight alone. Chaffetz is firmly on the anti-Antiquities Act bandwagon. Its the intrusiveness of the federal government that is unrelenting, he said. It feels like Washington, D.C., is coming into our backyard and altering peoples lives.

In June, FLAG co-founder Stewart introduced an amendment to the Interior Appropriations Bill that would bar use of the act throughout the West. Of course, any bill seeking to curtail presidential power carries a high risk of veto, as even Bishop acknowledges: Its not logical, but the administration and the [Interior] Department always say, You shouldnt restrict the power of the president to do things.

While Bishop sees the post-election season as an opportunity to advance the PLI, Chaffetz fears it will simply allow Obama to make his monument proclamation without concern for electoral backlash. If that happened, he predicted, I think the state, from top to bottom, would become absolutely unglued.

What exactly unglued would look likemore armed ATV rides, a Bundy-style siege, or just really loud snipingChaffetz leaves to the individual imagination. But theres no question that Utahans take their Bears Ears very seriously.

Read more from The Atlantic:

This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
From ELLE

Last night, Kendall and Kylie Jenner, two of the most famous siblings in the world, effectively shut down Manhattan's Meatpacking District with the launch of their latest fashion range.

Are Kendall, 20, and Kylie, 19, overwhelmed by the attention? Maybe. After all, the summons to their soiree commanded, "do not approach the girls with any questions inside the event."

Then again, maybe not... since they gamely talked to ELLE.com about everything from high school mean girls to Kanye's wild mind.

Here we go...

We saw you at Yeezy today. Any thoughts?

Kylie: "Wow." Is that a thought? [Laughing.]

Kendall: It's very inspiring going to something like that. It's also just amazing, because you're seeing [Kanye's] creative thoughts expressed as looks.

Kylie: It's interesting to me because I feel like he never gets it wrong. I can never doubt anything he does because it's just always cool.

Everyone wants to dress like you, wear your makeup, even have your facial features. Where's the line between using someone as a muse, and being a straight-up copycat?

KENDALL: Ooh. That's an interesting one. Okay. I think it's definitely great to be inspired by someone's style, and we're obviously really honored that so many people want to use our style as a guide. But when we made this line, it wasn't with the mindset of, 'you need to wear these pieces exactly the way we would, head-to-toe.'

KYLIE: Not at all.

KENDALL: It's more like, we put our name on this collection because we would wear every piece, we do wear every piece, and you can too, any way that feels like you. Now our hardcore fans who are so awesome and dedicated, they can have a whole collection with our names on it, and by wearing it, they put themselves into it, too. It's us and them. And that's really important.

Speaking of hardcore fans, while we're at fashion week, millions of teenage girls are going back to school... and judging from our Snapchat messages, they're obsessed with you.

KYLIE: Aww! That's awesome.

Story continues

What advice do you have for them as they start high school?

KENDALL: Other girls are mean.

KYLIE: Ohhh...

KENDALL: They are! They can be very mean.

What should a girl do if her classmates are bitches?

KENDALL: She should be a boss and not worry about it. Do your own thing. Because other girls are just jealous. [Kylie laughs.] They are! Of course they are!

You've both been settling into new houses. Any decorating disasters?

KYLIE: Oh for sure. I did a painting with one of my best friends. We did it on the front lawn. The grass turned all different colors. It was cool for a minute, and then it was like, "How do we fix this...?" And there's no easy way. So I would highly recommend putting mats down before you paint. Sometimes you get excited and don't prepare.

How about fashion DIY disasters?

KENDALL: I've tried cutting the necklines on my T-shirts before and that's led to some serious problems. I always cut it too short by accident. Then my boobs are out!

[At this point, a publicist swiftly cuts us off. Goodnight, Kendall and Kylie!]

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By Larry Fine NEW YORK (Reuters) - Reaching top of the world seems to agree with Angelique Kerber, who celebrated her ascension to the number one ranking with a 6-4 6-3 win over Caroline Wozniacki on Thursday to advance to Saturday's U.S. Open final. The German left-hander was assured of becoming number one when the new rankings come out on Monday after top-seeded American Serena Williams was defeated by Czech 10th seed Karolina Pliskova 6-2 7-6(5) in the earlier semi-final. Australian Open champion Kerber, who leads the WTA for most main draw match wins this season at 53-14, clinched victory with a backhand that actually landed just beyond the baseline but went unchallenged by former number one Wozniacki of Denmark. "It's just incredible. It's a great day," Kerber said on court. "To be here in the final for the first time, that means a lot. To be number one in the world, it sounds amazing." Kerber will become the second German to top the women's rankings, following Steffi Graf. "For me, its just amazing to be after Steffi the next number one player in Germany," said Kerber, who at 28 will become the oldest player to reach number one. "Steffi is a great champion, she's a great person. I think shes proud of me to be the next one after her." Wozniacki, who has slipped to 74th in the rankings coming back from injuries, saluted Kerber. "Obviously, she's had a great year," the Dane said. "She gets a lot of balls back. She knows how to change the pace. She gets good angles. "She's playing really well." Kerber had downplayed talk about becoming number one but admitted it felt "just great". "To be now the number one in the world, that was always a dream for me," she added. The changing of the guard as women's top player also safeguarded Graf's share of the record for most consecutive weeks at number one with Williams at 186. The derailing of Williams' bid for a record-setting seventh U.S. Open title kept the American stalled at 22 grand slam singles titles - tied with Graf for most in the Open era. Kerber, who beat Williams in the Australian Open final for her first slam and fell to the same player in the Wimbledon title match, has one unfinished piece of business - getting even with Pliskova, who beat her in last month's Cincinnati final. "I will try to take the revenge against her," said Kerber, who holds a 4-3 career edge over the big-serving Pliskova. (Editing by Sudipto Ganguly/Peter Rutherford)
House panel asks for status report on Fast Track, airport projects

The parliamentary Development Committee on Thursday directed the government to issue a white paper on the status of the proposed Second International Airport (SIA) in Nijgadh and the Kathmandu-Tarai Fast Track, two mega projects that have been dogged by controversy from their inception.
GENEVA (Reuters) - The United States and Russia hailed a breakthrough deal on Saturday to put Syria's peace process back on track, including a nationwide ceasefire effective from sundown on Monday, improved aid access and joint targeting of banned Islamist groups. "Today, Sergei Lavrov and I, on behalf of our president and our countries call on every Syrian stakeholder to support the plan that the United States and Russia have reached, to ... bring this catastrophic conflict to the quickest possible end through a political process," U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that despite continuing mistrust, the two sides had developed five documents that would enable coordination of the fight against terrorism and a revival of Syria's failed truce in an enhanced form. "This all creates the necessary conditions for resumption of the political process which has been stalling for a long time," Lavrov told a news conference. (Reporting by Tom Miles and David Brunnstrom; Editing by Tom Brown)
North Korea carried out its fifth and most powerful nuclear test on Friday, sparking condemnation from regional leaders.

Here are some key dates in North Korean history and in its development of long-range missiles and nuclear weapons:

1945: Japan's colonial rule over Korea ends with its World War II surrender.

1948: Korea is formally divided at the 38th parallel between the North, backed by the Soviet Union, and the South, supported by the United States.

1950-53: The North invades the South and war breaks out. The US intervenes on behalf of the South as part of a United Nations force, while China sides with the North. Some four million are killed. War ends with an armistice, not a formal peace treaty.

Late 1970s: North Korea starts working on a version of the Soviet Scud-B (range 300 kilometres or 190 miles). Test-fired in 1984.

1987-92: North begins developing variant of Scud-C (500 km), Rodong-1 (1,300 km), Taepodong-1 (2,500 km), Musudan-1 (3,000 km) and Taepodong-2 (6,700 km).

1989: US satellite pictures reveal a nuclear reprocessing plant at North Korea's Yongbyon complex.

1994: The US comes close to war with North Korea over its removal of spent fuel rods from the Yongbyon reactor.

1994, July 8: Founding president Kim Il-Sung dies aged 82. He is succeeded by his son Kim Jong-Il.

1998: North Korea test-fires its first long-range ballistic missile, a Taepodong-1, over Japan as part of failed satellite launch.

2000: North and South Korea hold their first-ever summit. A second is held in 2007.

2003: North Korea withdraws from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

2005: For the first time, North Korea states that it has nuclear weapons.

2006, July 5: North test-fires seven missiles, including a long-range Taepodong-2 which explodes after 40 seconds, triggering UN condemnation and sanctions.

2006, October: first nuclear test

2007: North Korea agrees in February to scrap its nuclear facilities in return for economic aid and diplomatic benefits, claims site is closed in July.

Story continues

2009, April 5: the North launches a long-range rocket and announces it will restart its Yongbyon complex.

2009, May 25: second nuclear test

2011, December 19: North Korean state media say Kim Jong-Il has died at 69 of a heart attack and urges people to support his son and successor Kim Jong-Un.

2012: North Korea test fires rockets, including a long-range one in December which the international community condemns as a disguised ballistic missile test.

2013, February 12: third nuclear test

2013, December 13: North Korea announces the execution of Kim Jong-Un's uncle and political mentor, in a move seen by some as a sign of internal dissent.

2015, May: North Korea test-fires a submarine-launched ballistic missile, but experts say it was short of a full flight test.

-- December 3: Satellite images indicate North Korea is excavating a new tunnel at its main nuclear test site at Punggye-ri, US think tank says.

-- December 11: Kim Jong-Un claims North Korea has developed a hydrogen bomb, but Washington says it doubts Pyongyang has a thermonuclear device.

2016, January 6: fourth nuclear test, which North Korea claims was a hydrogen bomb

2016 February 7: North Korea launches a satellite-bearing rocket, an operation widely seen as a covert ballistic missile test

-- March 9: North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un claims his country has successfully miniaturised a thermo-nuclear warhead.

-- April 15: North Korea tries but fails to test-fire what appears to be a medium-range missile on the birthday of founding leader Kim Il-Sung.

-- April 23: North Korea test fires a submarine-launched ballistic missile.

-- July 6: The United States places North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un on its sanctions blacklist.

-- July 8: US and South Korea announce plans to deploy an advanced missile defence system -- the US THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defence).

-- August 3: North Korea fires a ballistic missile directly into Japanese-controlled waters for the first time.

-- August 24: Successfully test-fires a submarinelaunched ballistic missile, in what it says is retaliation for large-scale South Korea-US military exercises.

-- September 5: North Korea fires three ballistic missiles off its east coast in a new show of force that comes as top world leaders meet at the G20 summit in China.

2016, September 9: Fifth nuclear test.
By Katy Migiro NAIROBI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Looting, kidnapping and sexual violence are increasing in South Sudan, refugees arriving in Uganda have told the United Nations, while hunger and disease are worsening as conflict continues. Over 103,000 South Sudanese have fled to Uganda since fierce fighting in the capital between troops loyal to President Salva Kiir and his former deputy Riek Machar in July raised fears that the five-year-old nation could slide back into civil war. Fighting and insecurity in the Equatoria states bordering Uganda continue to drive thousands from their homes, the U.N. said in its latest update late on Thursday. Most of the new arrivals -- totaling nearly 14,000 in one week up to Sept. 2 -- are fleeing Central Equatoria State, home to the capital Juba, it said. "New arrivals to Uganda from Central Equatoria report having been harassed by armed actors and increasing violence across the area," the U.N. update said. Refugees from neighboring Eastern Equatoria reported widespread looting and killing of civilians by armed men, it said. "Activities by armed actors are reportedly increasing, including looting, kidnapping, and sexual violence," it said. "The eruption of violence in July 2016 has heightened food insecurity and been accompanied by... checkpoints, road ambushes, looting and theft of properties," it said, citing a recent humanitarian assessment in Eastern Equatoria. One in five of South Sudan's 12 million people have fled their homes since war broke out almost three years ago, triggering widespread hunger as farmers and markets have been unable to function. Staple food prices spiked to more than 10 times the five-year average in parts of the northwest in late August, the U.N. said, ahead of the autumn harvest. The Famine Early Warning Systems Network last month predicted localized famine -- or IPC Phase 5 -- in parts of northern South Sudan. "It is likely an increasing number of households in these areas are exhausting their capacity to cope and may be moving to Catastrophe (IPC Phase 5) and experiencing an extreme lack of food," it said, calling for aid agencies and traders to be given increased access to hungry people. Disease is further weakening populations, with 1.3 million cases of malaria reported since the start of 2016 and cholera spreading to new locations, the U.N. said. Kiir publicly agreed last month to accept 4,000 additional U.N. peacekeepers to the 12,000-strong mission already on the ground but details of the deployment still need to be worked out. (Reporting by Katy Migiro; Editing by Ros Russell; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, womens rights, trafficking, property rights and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org to see more stories.)
By Katy Migiro NAIROBI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Looting, kidnapping and sexual violence are increasing in South Sudan, refugees arriving in Uganda have told the United Nations, while hunger and disease are worsening as conflict continues. Over 103,000 South Sudanese have fled to Uganda since fierce fighting in the capital between troops loyal to President Salva Kiir and his former deputy Riek Machar in July raised fears that the five-year-old nation could slide back into civil war. Fighting and insecurity in the Equatoria states bordering Uganda continue to drive thousands from their homes, the U.N. said in its latest update late on Thursday. Most of the new arrivals -- totalling nearly 14,000 in one week up to Sept. 2 -- are fleeing Central Equatoria State, home to the capital Juba, it said. "New arrivals to Uganda from Central Equatoria report having been harassed by armed actors and increasing violence across the area," the U.N. update said. Refugees from neighbouring Eastern Equatoria reported widespread looting and killing of civilians by armed men, it said. "Activities by armed actors are reportedly increasing, including looting, kidnapping, and sexual violence," it said. "The eruption of violence in July 2016 has heightened food insecurity and been accompanied by... checkpoints, road ambushes, looting and theft of properties," it said, citing a recent humanitarian assessment in Eastern Equatoria. One in five of South Sudan's 12 million people have fled their homes since war broke out almost three years ago, triggering widespread hunger as farmers and markets have been unable to function. Staple food prices spiked to more than 10 times the five-year average in parts of the northwest in late August, the U.N. said, ahead of the autumn harvest. The Famine Early Warning Systems Network last month predicted localised famine -- or IPC Phase 5 -- in parts of northern South Sudan. "It is likely an increasing number of households in these areas are exhausting their capacity to cope and may be moving to Catastrophe (IPC Phase 5) and experiencing an extreme lack of food," it said, calling for aid agencies and traders to be given increased access to hungry people. Disease is further weakening populations, with 1.3 million cases of malaria reported since the start of 2016 and cholera spreading to new locations, the U.N. said. Kiir publicly agreed last month to accept 4,000 additional U.N. peacekeepers to the 12,000-strong mission already on the ground but details of the deployment still need to be worked out. (Reporting by Katy Migiro; Editing by Ros Russell; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, womens rights, trafficking, property rights and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org to see more stories.)
Jimmy Kimmel called on one of Tom Hanks buddies to help pay tribute to the Hollywood icon.

RELATEDEmmys: Girls Dad Peter Scolari Enters Race After Veep Nod Is Nixed

Peter Scolari on Thursday made a surprise cameo in Jimmy Kimmel Lives trailer for the not-so-real biopic Hanks, a film that chronicles the two-time Oscar winners rise from Bosom Buddies co-lead to star of such films as Forrest Gump and Cast Away, featuring Captain Sully Sullenberger in the title role.

Scolari appears throughout the three-minute clip, first backstage on the set of the aforementioned sitcom, then at the 1993 Academy Awards  still dressed as onetime alter-ego Hildegard  where Hanks won his first gold statue for Philadelphia.

Press PLAY on the clip above, then head to the comments and answer the following question: Does four-time Emmy nominee Scolari deserve a fifth nom for his work in Hanks?

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Kris Versteeg didnt have to wait long for another shot at the NHL.

Days after parting with SC Bern of the Swiss league, the 30-year-old Versteeg signed a tryout deal with the Edmonton Oilers.

Versteeg had originally signed a one-year deal with SC Bern in July. But after arriving in Switzerland earlier this month, things didnt work out and depending on who you ask you might get a different answer. The players side will tell you due to hip surgery he had four years ago he was unable to get full insurance coverage. The team will tell you he failed his physical.

[Yahoo Sports Fantasy Hockey: Sign up and join a league today!]

Bruce McCurdy of the Edmonton Journal likes the gamble for the Oilers and believes should Versteeg make the team he could provide valuable depth on the right side.

Its a deep group in the sense that there are ten players on it including some decent futures, but not enough present. Among them, just Jordan Eberle managed as many as 10 goals or 25 points last season.

Last season Versteeg recorded 15 goals and 38 points in 77 games between the Carolina Hurricanes and Los Angeles Kings. Hes not quite a lottery ticket, but he could definitely be a serviceable winger in the right situation.

      

Sean Leahy is the associate editor for Puck Daddy on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
Toulouse (France) (AFP) - A Kuwaiti conglomerate has given up a prolonged battle for Moamer Kadhafi's luxury personal jetliner, which has been parked in France since 2012, lawyers said Friday.

Al-Kharafi group sought to have the opulently-furnished Airbus A340 seized over a debt related to a contract to build a beach resort in Libya.

Reviled by Libya's rebels as a symbol of Kadhafi's extravagance, the four-engined jetliner boasts a double bed, silver leather sofas, a private cinema and first-class seating for the dictator's female bodyguards and other staff.

In 2012, shortly after Kadhafi was killed in the Libyan uprising, the plane was flown to the southwestern French city of Perpignan, where it underwent three million euros' ($3.36 million) worth of repairs and maintenance by an Air France sub-contractor.

Al-Kharafi's move to pull out of the case was recorded in an August 25 decision by the court in Perpignan, according to a document seen by AFP.

Its withdrawal brings the battle to a close.

"We have preferred to focus on the seizure of other Libyan assets, which will be more feasible," Al-Kharafi's French lawyer, Remi Barousse, said.

In 2006 Al-Kharafi signed a contract with the Kadhafi regime to build a beach resort on Libya's Mediterranean coast, which it was to run for 90 years, but Tripoli cancelled the deal unilaterally in 2010.

A Cairo court in 2013 ruled Al-Kharafi was owed $937 million (835 million euros) over the broken contract and the company filed to seize the plane to recover some of the money.

Its bid was opposed by a Libyan state entity, the Executive Authority for Special Flights (EASF), the owner of the plane.

In November 2015, a Perpignan court ruled that the plane had immunity from seizure as it was state property.

Kadhafi was killed in October 2011, after which the oil-rich country slid into chaos, with the Islamic State group making inroads.

A unity government was set up in Tripoli in late March after a UN-backed agreement in Morocco in December 2015.

But it has struggled to assert its authority across the country, facing opposition from a rival government in the east.
HRW blames government for child marriage menace

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By Yara Bayoumy and Yeganeh Torbati WASHINGTON (Reuters) - North Korea's fifth nuclear test, its fourth on U.S. President Barack Obama's watch, leaves Washington yet again hoping that Beijing will crack down on Pyongyang. Given China's longstanding fear of a North Korean collapse that could send thousands of refugees across their 870-mile (1,400 km) border, North Korea analysts said significantly tougher Chinese economic sanctions on North Korea are highly unlikely. They said the best hope is that China might better enforce or tighten U.N. sanctions by eliminating a loophole that allows Chinese imports of North Korean coal, cutting the remittances of North Korean workers or limiting the work of Chinese factories that process North Korean textiles. Mark Fitzpatrick, executive director of the IISS-Americas think tank, said it was worth seeing if China might increase pressure on the North in return for the United States and South Korea halting plans to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile defense system designed to protect against North Korea's missile and nuclear threats. China has said the THAAD system would destabilize the regional security balance without achieving anything to end North Korea's nuclear program. "We cant assume that China is going to solve this for us," Fitzpatrick said. "If there was a prospect of a tradeoff I think China would consider it," Fitzpatrick said, referring to introducing THAAD as a bargaining chip. North Korea conducted its fifth and biggest nuclear test on Friday and said it had mastered the ability to mount a warhead on a ballistic missile, ratcheting up a threat that rivals and the United Nations have been powerless to contain. Under 32-year-old third-generation leader Kim Jong Un, North Korea has sped up development of its nuclear and missile programs, despite U.N. sanctions that were tightened in March and have further isolated the impoverished country. There is little scientific evidence to verify that North Korea has perfected the science of creating a nuclear bomb small enough to fit on a ballistic missile, let alone to withstand the physics of atmospheric re-entry. But analysts said it may be getting closer and its testing of ballistic missiles, including those designed to launch from submarines, accentuates the threat it poses to U.S. allies South Korea and Japan and ultimately the United States itself. SANCTION LOOPHOLES U.N. Security Council Resolution 2270, which was passed in March after the North's fourth nuclear test, provided a loophole allowing imports of North Korean coal if such transactions are solely for the North's "livelihood" and will not yield revenue for its nuclear, ballistic missile or other restricted programs. Mira Rapp-Hooper of the Center for a New American Security think tank said the international community could crack down by limiting Chinese processing of North Korean textiles and by restricting the earnings that North Koreans abroad send home, perhaps by curtailing the number of visas given to such workers. "I think the fifth test will be an occasion where we can close some of the loopholes of the previous sanctions," said Robert Manning, a fellow at the Atlantic Council's Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security. He noted that 90 percent of North Korea's trade is with China. President Barack Obama in March signed into law sweeping new "secondary sanctions" allowing the United States to go after foreign firms that do business with North Korea by effectively barring them from the global financial system, analysts said it was unclear if he would do so before his term ends in January. (Reporting By David Alexander, Yara Bayoumy, Arshad Mohammed and Yeganeh Torbati; Writing by Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Grant McCool and Tom Brown)
From ELLE

Before we kept up with the Kardashians, we climbed The Hills with Audrina, Speidi, and the rest of MTV's postmodern brat pack. But though Spencer Pratt's public profile has (mercifully) simmered down, Hills star Lauren Conrad still thrives as a California golden child with a lifestyle site, a Fair Trade e-shop, and a Kohl's partnership in her portfolio.

As she debuts her latest fast fashion collection for the retail giant, we met with MTV's most successful reality star to discuss style bloggers, spending habits, and how to make the perfect mascara tear.

Your Kohl's line is really cute, but did you actually shop there as a teen? That footage was mysteriously missing from Laguna Beach...

You know, I never shopped for clothes there in high school, but my family was-and continues to be-huge Kohl's shoppers. They get really into their Kohl's Cash rewards and everything. When I first started doing my line with them, they were so excited.

Your personal style is famous, but it involves a lot of designer brands, too. What kinds of things do you wear from your Kohl's line, and what do you get at Barneys instead?

I love a high-low look. That's the way I dress and shop. I invest in trans-seasonal pieces that I can wear for years. But for something trendy, that I might wear for one season and then put away for a while until it comes back into style again, why would I buy something more expensive? That's not smart.

You're a partner in The Little Market, a Fair Trade company that helps female-driven businesses in developing areas. What about how Kohl's makes their clothes? Do you work with them on promoting Fair Trade standards, too?

That's a great question. I personally haven't been to any of the Kohl's facilities, but a lot of the girls on the design team are going to the factories where this stuff is produced. When they first approached me about working together, that was the very first thing I asked them about. Their standards are very high.

Story continues

You're responsible for one of the most famous beauty looks in Internet history-the Crying Mascara GIF.

Oh yes. That, and the one where I'm super excited about something. And I have no idea what I was so excited about. I can't remember. [Laughing.] Where are they getting this stuff from?

If we want to make our own Crying Mascara GIF, are there certain products we should use?

You know what's funny? Everyone calls it "Crying Mascara," but it's not mascara. I'm actually crying eyeliner. I used to wear so much liquid eyeliner, and it wasn't waterproof, it was just whatever I'd buy at [the drugstore]. I always wore waterproof mascara, but I'd never realized the rest of your eye makeup can drip, too.

So all you need...

Is runny black liquid eyeliner. Yeah. And now I only wear waterproof eyeliner, but the best one is from Avon's mark line. They discontinued it. I have two more in my fridge and then I'm out. And I have no idea what I'm going to do.

Your success as a "lifestyle brand" inspired so many young women. What do you think of fashion bloggers and Instagram stars?

I think there's a lot of them, right? I can't remember any of them specifically, because there are just too many, but some of them are really great. If I'm going on a blog, I'm going on Who What Wear or Pinterest so that I can see a little bit of everybody's featured style. Because honestly, I can't keep track.

If you'd been born ten years later, do you think you'd have gotten famous on Instagram instead of MTV?

No. I don't think I could be a fashion blogger. It's so much work. You need new outfits every day. You need new settings every day. When I was [on The Hills], it truly didn't happen that way. It's embarrassing to think about now, but I would throw some makeup on, my hair would still be wet, and we'd go film. And that certainly wasn't every day. I didn't need a constant stream of "content" about my life, you know? I genuinely can't take a good selfie. I have to have someone else take it, and then I'll put my arm in it so it looks like I'm holding the camera.

You're lying!

No! I don't have it together that much! Listen, I mean, clean up good! I can pull my act together and look good when I need to. But even now, if I don't have to put on makeup, I'm thrilled.

Our ELLE.com interns need some advice. If their boss asks them to go to Paris, even though their boyfriend wants them to stay in New York...

The answer is always go to Paris. Always. But come on! I WENT TO PARIS! I went to Paris for work the very next season! And I was emotionally stable in Paris and it was way better.

You got to wear an Alberta Ferretti gown on a motorcycle.

Except that was a really rough ride. I had an up-do with a hundred safety pins in it, and so when they put the helmet on, it really hurt. And you have to wear a helmet because of [insurance]. Plus, I'd had a couple of glasses of champagne-which is how they convinced me to get on that motorcycle in the first place-and once that wore off, I was in pain, I was scared it was a bad ride.

You're a working woman who runs your own business. Do you want to talk about the upcoming election and its issues?

Not even a little bit! That's not my responsibility. I'm not a politician. I can talk to you about what I know-lace and faux fur.

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This tear just keeps on falling! Even though its been 10 years since The Hills hit small screens, fans are still stuck on one of the MTV series most #iconic moments: Lauren Conrads black tear.

PHOTOS: The Hills Stars: Then and Now

The LC Lauren Conrad Runway Collection designer, 30, got into a season 4 spat with then-friend Audrina Patridge, which resulted in a whole lot of crying  and what viewers believed to be a lone mascara tear that ran down Conrads cheek.

PHOTOS: Lauren Conrad's Best Hairstyles Ever

I just put on too much mascara and it became a thing! Conrad, whos married to lawyer William Tell, told Us Weekly in May. She also revealed that the moment was another byproduct of Hollywood magic. They slowed it down for dramatic effect!

Now shes expounding more on the cry heard 'round the world. You know whats funny?  Im actually crying eyeliner, she told Elle in a Thursday, September 8, story. I used to wear so much liquid eyeliner, and it wasn't waterproof; it was just whatever I'd buy at [the drugstore]. I always wore waterproof mascara, but I'd never realized the rest of your eye makeup can drip too.

These days, Conrad is more proactive when it comes to preserving her glam. Now I only wear waterproof eyeliner, she continued. But the best one is from Avon's mark line. They discontinued it. I have two more in my fridge and then I'm out. And I have no idea what I'm going to do.

PHOTOS: Lauren Conrad Announces Second Runway Collection for Kohl's: Get a Sneak Peek!

The cant-live-without staple in question? marks Get In Line Hook Up Liquid Waterproof Eyeliner. I worked with them years ago and I just always loved them, she told Us in a past interview. Thats my favorite. Thankfully, Conrad doesnt have to shed a tear: mark offers a similar product, Saved By the Gel Waterproof Eyeliner, on avon.com.







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Geneva (AFP) - Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov urged reporters waiting for the end of talks on the Syrian crisis to be patient Friday and said US officials were checking back with Washington.

Separately, senior US official confirmed Secretary of State John Kerry was in talks with his government on the results of efforts to strike a deal with Russia to agree a ceasefire Syria.

Moscow's envoy appeared briefly in a Geneva hotel ballroom room set aside for a news conference to mark the end of talks with Kerry but did not mount the podium that had been prepared.

Instead, in a brief chat with reporters, he said in English: "I believe it is important for them to check with Washington. That's why I apologise for the delay. We cannot help it.

"It's going to be announced very soon I think. I hope before Washington goes to sleep, we can get some news. My appeal to you is to be patient. Same as me," he added.

The United Nations envoy to the Syrian conflict also briefly entered the room to appeal for patience, but there was no sign of Kerry, who had earlier met with both Lavrov and De Mistura.

Both Kerry and Lavrov had been expected to fly home later Friday, but all three officials said they still hoped to hold a news conference to announce the results of the negotiation.
ILO proposes cost free ticketing and visa for international workers

The International Labour Organization (ILO) has proposed scrapping the existing practice of charging employees and job-seekers recruitment frees and related costs.
GENEVA (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry expressed concern after North Korea conducted its fifth nuclear test on Friday. Lavrov told reporters while meeting Kerry in Geneva to discuss Syria peace efforts that a message must be sent "very strongly" on implementing U.N. resolutions on North Korea. Kerry said he expected President Barack Obama to address the issue on Friday and said there would be discussions at the United Nations. "We're trying to monitor to precisely find out what took place," Kerry said. "I'm very much concerned and the resolution of the Security Council must be implemented and we must send this message very strongly," Lavrov said when asked by a pool reporter about the test. Kerry said he had talked on Friday to the foreign ministers of Japan and South Korea. "We had a serious conversation about it. Obviously Japan and South Korea, particularly, are deeply concerned because of the neighborhood. But I think it's fair to say China, Russia and the United States, everybody shares concerns about it," he said. "At the appropriate moment today I'm confident President Obama will address (this) and we will certainly be discussing this in the context of the United Nations, for sure." Earlier on Friday, Obama said any provocative actions by North Korea would have "serious consequences." Obama had been briefed on board Air Force One by National Security Adviser Susan Rice about reported seismic activity near North Korea's nuclear test site earlier on Friday, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said. North Korea set off a blast on Friday that was more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, and said it had mastered the ability to mount a warhead on a ballistic missile. Its most powerful explosion to date follows a test in January that prompted the U.N. Security Council to impose tightened sanctions that increased North Korea's isolation but failed to prevent it from accelerating weapons development. North Korea's continued testing despite sanctions presents a severe challenge to Obama in the final months of his presidency and could become a factor in the U.S. presidential election in November. (Reporting by David Brunnstrom; Editing by Dominic Evans)
GENEVA (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov used pizza and vodka to have a dig at his U.S. counterpart Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday, as talks between the two veteran diplomats on Syria dragged on towards midnight in Geneva. Lavrov made three unscheduled visits to the windowless basement ballroom of the President Wilson Hotel where journalists had been waiting for hours for news of a possible breakthrough in the talks. On his first appearance, Lavrov made clear that the waiting reporters should blame Kerry for the delay, and expressed disbelief that things were taking so long. "I hope before Washington goes to sleep we can get some news," he said. An hour or so later, he fed the eager press corps another tidbit - literally. A beaming Lavrov, accompanied by a posse of officials, including one bearing a tall stack of pizza boxes, announced that they were a gift "from the U.S. delegation". As ravenous reporters quickly polished off the pizza, Lavrov came again, this time to hand over two bottles of Russian vodka. "Pizza from the American delegation. This is from the Russian delegation," he said. (Reporting by Tom Miles and David Brunnstrom; Editing by James Dalgleish)
SpaceX and Space Needle

The Commercial Spaceflight Federation set the stage for new leadership as well as new initiatives during its meeting in Seattle this week, says the industry groups president.

CSF President Eric Stallmer told GeekWire that the meeting signaled the Emerald Citys rising status amid a rising wave of entrepreneurship focused on the space frontier.

Seattle has really become a hub city for commercial space activity, he said, so its really a no-brainer for us to come here.  I foresee more companies developing and coming up to Seattle.

Those companies will follow in the footsteps of ventures such as Blue Origin (founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos), Vulcan Aerospace (funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen), Planetary Resources (which counts Google execs and Virgin billionaire Richard Branson among its founding investors) and Spaceflight Industries (backed by Allens Vulcan Capital and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiels Mithril Capital, among others).

Stallmer said Seattles investment base, plus the talent base fostered by such companies as Boeing, Microsoft and Amazon, added to the regions natural appeal.

The Washington, D.C.-based Commercial Spaceflight Federation was founded a decade ago, in the wake of the privately funded flights of the SpaceShipOne rocket plane, to nurture up-and-comers in the commercial space industry. Its more than 70 members include Seattle space ventures as well as SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, Bigelow Aerospace, Moon Express and Sierra Nevada Corp.

During this weeks meeting, planetary scientist Alan Stern was chosen to take the helm as chairman, Stallmer said. Stern is a researcher at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo., as well as principal investigator for NASAs New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt.

Alan Stern

Sterns ties to the commercial space industry include roles as chief scientist for World View Enterprises, co-founder and CEO of Uwingu and co-founder of the CSFs Suborbital Applications Researchers Group. Over the years, he has been a consultant to Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, Moon Express and other space ventures  and served as NASAs associate administrator for science in 2007-2008.

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Stern will take over the chairmanship from Frank DiBello, president and CEO of Space Florida.

Stallmer mentioned two initiatives that came to the fore during the Seattle meeting: One is a plan to pay tribute to Patti Grace Smith, who blazed a trail for private-sector spaceflight as the Federal Aviation Administrations associate administrator for commercial space transportation between 1997 and 2008.

Smith passed away in June at the age of 68 after battling pancreatic cancer.

She was just a great champion for us, Stallmer said. The CSF plans to establish a scholarship program in her name, to fund education and travel for students interested in the commercial space industry, he said.

Another initiative involves coordination between commercial air traffic and the rising number of commercial space launches. As more spaceports ramp up for business, some air carriers have expressed concern about the potential for route changes and flight delays.

Its not going to let up, Stallmer said of the rise in launches. There are only going to be more.  We want to get ahead of this.

Stallmer said the CSF plans to increase its contacts with airlines and aviation officials to address the challenge.

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EXCLUSIVE: The Limehouse Golem, from Stephen Woolley and Elizabeth Karlsens Number 9 Films, has its world premiere on Saturday as a Special Presentation in Toronto. The gothic murder mystery is written by Jane Goldman based on Peter Ackroyds 1994 novel Dan Leno And The Limeshouse Golem. Its set in an atmospheric 1880 London when a series of murders has shaken the community to the point where people believe that only a legendary creature from dark times  the mythical Golem  must be responsible. Woolley has said the film comes with a twist more sensational than The Crying Game. Juan Carlos Medina (Painless) directs. Check out an exclusive clip above that sets the scene inside one of the boisterous music halls of the time.

The crime thriller uses Londons seedy Limehouse district as its backdrop. Police inspector John Kildare (Bill Nighy) is brought in to solve the mystery and calm the panicked population. He is talked through the past of Elizabeth Cree (Olivia Cooke), a music hall performer accused of poisoning her husband, as he seeks clues that might help his investigation and is soon hot on the trail of the deranged killer. The story incorporates fictionalized versions of historical figures while an essence of Jack the Ripper looms. Eddie Marsan also stars.

The period piece has been described as being in the style of David Finchers Seven and James Watkins The Woman In Black. It was adapted by the versatile and in-demand Goldman who also penned Woman In Black. Her other credits include the X-Men and Kingsman franchises and Tim Burtons upcoming Miss Peregrines Home For Peculiar Children. Toronto is her first film festival with one of her pictures.

Goldman says she first discovered Ackroyds novel before she was a screenwriter and thought it would make a movie I would love to see. I looked it up and saw Stephen was attached and thought, Oh, good, someone is making it. Fast-forward several years and during a stint on an awards jury with Woolley, she asked what had happened to the project. An earlier option had lapsed, but had just become available again and Woolley called her a few days later to say, I got you the rights.

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She was drawn to the material because there is a wonderful twist Im very, very, very happy to be tricked and caught off guard. I also love the world that its set in: Victorian period vaudeville theater. And, she adds, all English people have a fascination with Jack the Ripper. I dont know why because its so dreadful, but such a strange endearing part of our culture. Morbid fascination sums it up.

The cast was set back in April 2015 with Alan Rickman due to star as Kildare. When he became ill, he reluctantly pulled out and subsequently passed away in January this year. His mark, however, remains on the part of the intrepid Kildare. Goldman tells me she had incorporated some changes which came from Rickmans own notes and thoughts on the character. Its lovely to feel his spirit in there.

Lionsgate quickly acquired UK rights and Hanway is selling The Limehouse Golem internationally with WME on domestic. Goldman says, I know how much I adored the book and have given it to friends. When I say I just adapted it, people are very excited. I hope the film finds its audience and captivates in the same way as the book.

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Powerful men dont have to be cruel. Heres the first teaser trailer for Live by Night, which Ben Affleck directed and stars in as Joe Coughlin, the black-sheep son of a police captain who gets involved in Prohibition Era organized crime in Boston. But when he crosses a boss, things go south  all the way to Tampa, where Joe climbs the ladder of the Florida citys steamy, rum-running underworld.

Theres no shortage of suave hats, flapper molls, flying bullets or falling bodies in the Warner Bros film, which Affleck adapted from Dennis Lehanes novel. Add to that some explosions, knifings and car chases. The cast also includes Elle Fanning, Brendan Gleeson, Chris Messina, Zoe Saldana, Sienna Miller, Chris Cooper and Scott Eastwood. Affleck also produced along with Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Davisson of Appian Way Films and Jennifer Todd, preisdent of Afflecks Pearl Street Films.

Afflecks directorial follow-up to Best Picture Oscar winner Argo has seen a number of release dates, starting with June 2014 and finally ending up as January 13. Have a look  and a listen as Hoziers Arsonists Lullaby plays  and tell us what you think. Meanwhile, here is the new poster for the film:

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtFZcAuH-qI&w=970&h=546]

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LONDON (Reuters) - The London Metal Exchange (LME) has fined Worldwide Warehouse Solutions UK Ltd (WWS) 30,000 pounds for errors in recording movements of lead inventories, the exchange said on Friday.

The exchange, the world's oldest and largest market for industrial metals, said in a statement the errors resulted in mistaken data being released in February about 31,700 tonnes of lead inventories at the WWS warehouse in the Dutch port of Vlissingen.

The LME, owned by Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Ltd., said the settlement and fine took account of the fact that WWS notified the exchange as soon as it discovered the problem, which was down to human error.

(Reporting by Eric Onstad and Clara Denina; editing by David Clarke)
On Emmy weekend, members of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts will converge on the London West Hollywood for its annual BAFTA TV Tea Party. The Sept. 17 party - in partnership with BBC America - will be one of the first events to fall under a new official relationship as the London West Hollywood at Beverly Hills becomes the premier West Coast home for BAFTA members.

The London has just announced a partnership with BAFTA to provide its members with an official meeting and social events space. The partnership kicks off this month with the Tea Party as well as a private BAFTA Clubhouse event at for new and renewing members. Along with serving as a formal location for events, BAFTA LA and The London will curate custom Clubhouse programming for members throughout the year including breakfasts, after-work gatherings and screenings in the hotel's private screening room (pictured above).

Upon arrival to The London, BAFTA members can present their membership card for hotel privileges and a British-inspired welcome amenity. Membership benefits include a 10 percent discount on rooms, a 15 percent discount at Boxwood restaurant, and booking access to a private cabana at the rooftop pool overlooking the Los Angeles skyline. Members will also be provided entry to select British themed events hosted at The London that create additional community opportunities for BAFTA members and their guests.

"Our industry is built upon connections and collaborations and we are therefore proud to be working with The London to create a comfortable and elegant space for our BAFTA membership to meet, work and relax here in Los Angeles." said Matthew Wiseman, BAFTA Los Angeles' chief operating officer. "Through this new partnership, we will expand our year-round membership events as well as explore new opportunities to highlight and strengthen the important connection between the U.S. and U.K. film, TV and games industries.."

In addition to discounts and events, The London will display iconic BAFTA photographic artwork and decor. Images from the BAFTA photographic archives will be displayed in The London's Screening Room lobby, and BAFTA-inspired decor will be sprinkled throughout Boxwood's sitting room. Boxwood also plans to feature a signature BAFTA-named cocktail on their menu, reports the hotel.

"The London West Hollywood at Beverly Hills has always been a wonderful tale of two cities, London and Los Angeles. BAFTA LA shares a similar storyline making a partnership with this prestigious arts organization seamless and ideal," said general manager, Jeff Kulek.
Every weekend, Longform highlights its favorite international articles of the week. For daily picks of new and classic nonfiction, check out Longform or follow @longform on Twitter. Have an iPad? Download Longforms new app and read all of the latest in-depth stories from dozens of magazines, including Foreign Policy.

WASHINGTON - MARCH 09: The seal of the F.B.I. hangs in the Flag Room at the bureau's headquaters March 9, 2007 in Washington, DC. F.B.I. Director Robert Mueller was responding to a report by the Justice Department inspector general that concluded the FBI had committed 22 violations in its collection of information through the use of national security letters. The letters, which the audit numbered at 47,000 in 2005, allow the agency to collect information like telephone, banking and e-mail records without a judicially approved subpoena. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The FBI Accused Him of Terrorism. He Couldnt Tie His Shoes. by Jessica Pishko, Esquire

According to records relating to the case, Peyton altered his Facebook page to fit a new persona. He deleted his non-Muslim friends and changed his listed name to Usamah Anthony, a hybrid of Osama and his own fathers name. At the behest of some of his new online friends, he joined Wickr, an instant-messaging app popular with dissidents because of its strong encryption capabilities. Through chats conducted on both platforms, Peyton communicated with more than one person who claimed to be interested in or affiliated with ISIS.

According to someone close to the investigation, he professed that he wanted to enroll at a Tunisian university so that he could cross the border into Libya and join a terrorist group. He sent one recipient a link to an article from Inspire, Al Qaedas official English-language magazine, that contained bomb-making instructions. These chats could be a linchpin for District Attorney Minors case against him.

Whale Hunters of the Warming Arctic by Tom Kizzia, The New Yorker

Few Americans are as affected by climate change as Alaskas Inupiat, or as dependent on the fossil-fuel economy.

The spring hunt started promisingly last year for the village of Point Hope, on the Chukchi Sea in northern Alaska: crews harpooned two bowhead whales and pulled them onto the ice for butchering. But then the winds shifted. Out on the pack where the water opened up, the ice at the edge was what is called sikuliaq, too young and unreliable to bear a thirty-ton whale carcass. The hunters could do nothing but watch the shining black backs of bowheads, breathing calmly, almost close enough to touch.

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On a trip to the ice edge, Tariek Oviuk, a hunter from Point Hope, felt a strange sensation: the lift of ocean waves beneath his feet. The older men, nervous about the rising wind, hurried back toward shore, but the younger hunters remained, stripping blubber from a few small beluga whales. Then the crack of three warning shots came rolling across the ice, and the hunters scrambled for their snowmobiles. As soon as we heard those shots, my heart started pounding, Oviuk recalled.

Jonas Despinasse, from Haiti, sits as he waits for the Custom and Border Protection agents to seek for asylum in the United States, on the Mexican side of the San Isidro Port of Entry, on May 26, 2016, in Tijuana, northwestern Mexico. On the past couple of weeks some 600 hundred migrants, mainly from Haiti and some African countries, arrived to Tijuana to try to ask for asylum to the U.S. government through the local points of entry. / AFP / GUILLERMO ARIAS (Photo credit should read GUILLERMO ARIAS/AFP/Getty Images)

Passage through Mexico: the global migration to the US by Nina Lakhani, The Guardian

While waiting for travel documents in Tapachula, African and Asian migrants recount the treacherous journeys they took to get one step closer to a new home.

Michael left Uganda for Rio Branco in northern Brazil in September 2015. He spent a few months learning Portuguese and planning his route, before crossing into Peru in May 2016. Next, he travelled overland on buses with the help of connectors  an organised network of individuals who help migrants buy bus tickets and find cheap hotels  through Ecuador and Colombia. In Turbo on Colombias west coast, he took a boat to Panama where he walked with Africans, Bangladeshis and Haitians for five exhausting days through acres of mountainous jungle with a coyote.

CLEVELAND, USA - JULY 21: Donald Trump greets his daughter, Ivanka, as he comes on stage to accept the Republican nomination for President at the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, USA on July 21, 2016. (Photo by Samuel Corum/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

Is Ivanka for Real? Hannah Seligson, The Huffington Post

One of the greatest enigmas of 2016, explained.

Not long after her parents very public, very mortifying divorce, an adolescent Ivanka Trump sat with her father in the back of his private plane, waiting to leave New York for Palm Beach. The doors were closed and the engines were on, but they were still missing Marla Maples. Donalds second wifethe woman he had left Ivankas mother forwas late. She was always late. This drove Donald crazy.

They were just about to take off when Ivanka spotted a distressed Marla rushing toward the plane. Ivanka tapped Donald to alert him to the figure on the tarmac below. Maybe, she thought, he could tell the pilot to cut the engines. But Donald merely raised his hands. Pretty soon his wife was just a speck on the ground.

BOONE, NC - JULY 29 Ginseng plants belonging to Travis Cornett are photographed on Cornett's land in Boone, North Carolina on July 29, 2016. (Photo by Jacob Biba for Foreign Policy)

Chinas Gold Rush in the Hills of Appalachia by Suzy Khimm, Foreign Policy

Buyers in Hong Kong and Beijing are paying top dollar for wild American ginseng, fueling a digging frenzy that could decimate the revered root for good.

On the outskirts of Boone, North Carolina, a small college and ski town in the Blue Ridge Mountains, Travis Cornett had turned his bucolic farm into a virtual fortress. Hed started by installing a handful of security cameras across his 12 acres of sloping pine woods. Then hed nailed 15 bright red signs to tree trunks along the property line that warned, Trespassers will be prosecuted. He also kept a .22 Ruger rifle and a Kalashnikov on hand.

As far as Cornett was concerned, no one was going to touch his ginseng.

It was the fall of 2013, six years since Cornett had planted his first sang, as locals call it: some 40 pounds of seed in a patch of forest shade. Initially, Cornett wasnt too worried about poachers, well known around Boone for stealing ginseng from land that isnt theirs. His fledging crop, low growing with green, jagged-edged leaves, had looked like wild strawberry plants. Now, though, it was coming into its prime. The maturing stems were taking on a distinctive purple tinge, their leaves multiplying, their berries turning lipstick red. Cornett knew that the plants roots, which are more valuable with age, could soon fetch hundreds of dollars per pound. It was only a matter of time before the rest of his farm, where hed planted more seed over the years, would grow ripe for profit  and for theft.

Photo credits: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images; AP/YouTube; GUILLERMO ARIAS/AFP/Getty Images; Samuel Corum/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images; Jacob Biba for Foreign Policy
Its not over yet

Nepal should hold people accused of torture and other ill-treatment accountable through fair trials in its own courts
Hot on the heels of the brand's smash 20th anniversary bash at #NYFW, Jimmy Choo's creative director Sandra Choi talks Carrie Bradshaw, the perfect polish and the craziest request she ever received for a red carpet awards show (hint: children's Choos!).

Pret-a-Reporter: Jimmy Choo is a London-based label, so what made you decide to host your 20th anniversary party in New York City?

Sandra Choi: We're a British company, but people think of Jimmy Choo as a global brand and I really wanted to reflect that ... London is on one side and L.A. is on the other, but New York is right bang in the middle, so it just felt right.

What are a few of the top NYC Jimmy Choo moments of all time?

Most definitely our store opening here in 1998 - it was the first one outside of the U.K. And, of course, Sex and the City. It was part of our DNA - Carrie Bradshaw [Sarah Jessica Parker] was like, "I lost my Choo!" Who could forget that?

The cast of Sex and The City

What shoes trends do you love right now?

The 90's are huge, but it needs to have a twist. I recently launched a new 'Romy' pump. It has a sharp heel, but unlike the long toe-shapes seen in the nineties, it has a bit shorter and more slender toe. It feels fresh. I'm really into volume and height too. And, we're seeing a lot of novelty with shoes - furry insoles. I also love that you can wear evening shoes with daytime jeans and it's okay.

What's the perfect nail color for pedicures going into fall and red carpet season?

I'm a sucker for red! I love a deep seductive red. But, it's all about finding the right tone - I like reds with a touch of pink. I'm actually still looking for the perfect polish. I ask people all of the time what shade they're wearing.

What are Jimmy Choo's top three red carpet moments?

For me, the first standout is Princess Diana. Very early on I made some shoes and delivered them to her and when I'd see her wearing them it was like, 'Oh wow!'. I also loved my first Oscar experience - it was Cate Blanchett. We did everything via long distance. I think she wore a Galliano dress and it had a very low mesh back in midnight blue. Cate's an amazingly talented actress and she can wear absolutely any designer she chooses, but she chose us! My third favorite moment involves a rule breaker - Uma Thurman stepped out onto the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival and walked up the Grand Palais steps wearing flat sandals with an evening gown. It was different and I loved it - and she had the height to pull it off. Who's to say that glamour has to be trying? I think that really spoke to the modern woman.

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Cate Blanchett at the 1999 Oscars donning Jimmy Choo heels

What's the craziest request you've ever received for a red carpet shoe?

Abigail Breslin was going to the Oscars for Little Miss Sunshine and her publicist asked for a pair of shoes. I think she was around 9-years-old. I wanted to create something age-appropriate, but at the same time I wanted her to feel great and just like the other grownups. We made her a custom pair of strappy sandals with a little, teeny-tiny heel in a shoe size one or two.

You just unveiled a new ad campaign last night at the 20th anniversary event - can you tell us a little bit about it?

I picked seven women that represent all of the different facets of Jimmy Choo, whether dynamic or fun or edgy or elegant, but all strong and confident - Amber Valletta, Milla Jovovich, Taylor Hill, Lexi Boling.... I wanted it to be inclusive of all the different types of women we know and just fun!
kimmie

Updated 10:15 a.m.

WASHINGTON, DC  On the 68th anniversary of North Korea's founding, the rogue regime carried out its fifth and largest nuclear test.

According to some estimates, the blast from the nuclear warhead mounted to a ballistic missile was more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

"That's the largest DPRK test to date, 20-30 kiloton, at least. Not a happy day," Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, told Reuters.

South Korea's President, Park Geun-hye, called the test an act of "fanatic recklessness. President Barack Obama condemned the launch and said in a statement, "the United States does not, and never will, accept North Korea as a nuclear state."

Members of the United Nations Security Council will discuss the test at a closed-door meeting on Friday.

The Hermit Kingdom's latest test comes just four days after it fired ballistic missiles in violation of UN Security Council resolutions (again).

On Monday just after noon local time, the North launched three medium-range Rodong-class ballistic missiles from a region called Hwangju, according to South Korea's Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Monday's launch came hours after Chinese President Xi Jinping and South Korean President Park Geun-hye met on the sidelines of the G20 Summit meeting.

xi park

During the meeting, Xi, Pyongyang's closest ally, reaffirmed China's commitment to denuclearize the Korean peninsula.

Xi added that Beijing still opposes the future deployment of America's most advanced missile-defense system to the region.

China argues that since the bilateral decision between Seoul and Washington to deploy a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery, North Korean missile tests have expanded and are poised to rise.

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Monday's launch comes two weeks after the rogue regime fired a submarine-based missile off the country's eastern coast near the city of Sinpo.

Pyongyang first attempted a submarine-based missile launch last year and again at the end of April this year.

Earlier this month the rogue regime simultaneously launched two "No Dong" intermediate-range ballistic missiles.

nk missile or whatever

According to US Strategic Command (STRATCOM), one of the missiles exploded immediately after launch, while the other was tracked over North Korea before ultimately landing in the Sea of Japan. Notably, this was the first time that the rogue nation had targeted Japan.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe described the launch as a "grave threat" to Japan and said that Tokyo "strongly protested." Japan also said that its self-defense force would remain on alert in case of further defiant launches from the North.

So far this year, North Korea has conducted a little more than 13 rounds of ballistic-missile tests and has fired 29 various rockets.

NOW WATCH: Meet THAAD: Americas answer to North Korean threats





More From Business Insider


kimmie

WASHINGTON On Friday, the 68th anniversary of North Korea's founding, the rogue regime carried out its fifth and largest nuclear test.

According to some estimates, the blast from the nuclear warhead mounted to a ballistic missile was more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

"That's the largest DPRK test to date, 20-30 kiloton at least. Not a happy day," Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, told Reuters.

South Korea's President, Park Geun-hye, called the test an act of "fanatic recklessness." President Barack Obama condemned the launch and said in a statement, "the United States does not, and never will, accept North Korea as a nuclear state."

Members of the United Nations Security Council will discuss the test at a closed-door meeting on Friday.

The Hermit Kingdom's latest test comes just four days after it fired ballistic missiles in violation of UN Security Council resolutions (again). On Monday just after noon local time, North Korea launched three medium-range Rodong-class ballistic missiles from a region called Hwangju, according to South Korea's Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Monday's launch came hours after Park and Chinese President Xi Jinping met on the sidelines of the G-20 Summit meeting.

xi park

During the meeting, Xi, Pyongyang's closest ally, reaffirmed China's commitment to denuclearize the Korean peninsula.

Xi added that Beijing still opposes the future deployment of America's most advanced missile-defense system to the region.

China argues that since the bilateral decision between Seoul and Washington to deploy a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery, North Korean missile tests have expanded and are poised to rise.

Story continues

Thomas Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, downplayed the potential for a rise in tests due to THAAD, telling Business Insider, "I would not say that, North Korea has conducted more missile tests this year than ever before and their pace of testing has gone up dramatically."

"The United States and South Korea have been looking at this very closely for a number of years and THAAD is the solution that the head of US Forces Korea forces has been recommending," Karako added.

"It's about time that the two allies are moving forward on a more capable and more robust defensive posture in addition to the limited Patriot deployments we have today."

"North Korea appears to be on the cusp of significant advances towards longer range missiles, mobile and potentially sea launched missiles. So the missile threat isn't going down, it's going up and I think you're gonna see increased missile defense activities from the United States, Japan and South Korea," Karako added.

park obama

Monday's launch came two weeks after the rogue regime fired a submarine-based missile off the country's eastern coast, near the city of Sinpo.

Pyongyang first attempted a submarine-based missile launch last year and again at the end of April this year.

In early August, the rogue regime simultaneously launched two "No Dong" intermediate-range ballistic missiles.

nk missile or whatever

According to US Strategic Command, one of the missiles exploded immediately after launch, while the other was tracked over North Korea before ultimately landing in the Sea of Japan. Notably, this was the first time that the rogue nation had targeted Japan.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe described the launch as a "grave threat" to Japan and said that Tokyo "strongly protested." Japan also said that its self-defense force would remain on alert in case of further defiant launches from the North.

So far this year, North Korea has conducted a little more than 13 rounds of ballistic-missile tests and has fired 29 various rockets.

NOW WATCH: Meet THAAD: Americas answer to North Korean threats





More From Business Insider


Lydia from Mrs. Doubtfire grew up to be a beautiful storyteller

Lydia from Mrs. Doubtfire grew up to be a beautiful storyteller

When Mrs. Doubtfire hit theaters 23 years ago, we all fell in love with the entire Hillard family, and of course, the instantly iconic Euphegenia Doubtfire herself. And since then, the youngest Hillard members Lydia, Chris, and Natalie have all grown up to be wonderful adults in real life.

Those faces, tho!

kids mrs doubtfire

Weve seen how gorgeous Chris, played by Matthew Lawrence, still is today. Young Nattie, played by the lovely Mara Wilson, has proved to be a seriously talented writer. And, similarly to Mara, eldest Hillard kid Lydia, played by Lisa Jakub, has turned out to be a serious writing force, too.

NBD!

Exploring the subtle differences between memorizing a speech and taking a nap. A photo posted by Lisa Jakub (@lisajakub108) on Mar 8, 2016 at 11:12am PST

Not to mention shes still crazy adorable!

Happy Monday. Let's all be radically compassionate and entirely awesome this week. A photo posted by Lisa Jakub (@lisajakub108) on May 16, 2016 at 8:22am PDT

After spending the majority of her youth working in film and TV, at the age of 22, Lisa left Hollywood for a quieter life in Virginia and settled down for her very own happy Hollywood ending.

11 years ago I said "don't try to make your vows funny because funny vows are never funny." I was so wrong. And he still makes me fall down laughing. Happy anniversary, J. Thanks for marrying me. A photo posted by Lisa Jakub (@lisajakub108) on Jun 23, 2016 at 5:48am PDT

However, it was around this time where her career as a writer began, too. Lisa has since written for publications like Newsweek, Today.com, and even our very own HelloGiggles. Shes also the author of the memoir You Look Like That Girl.

And, because she is that perfect, Lisa is also a very gifted Yogi!

Yoga in the woods. #yogaeverydamnday #hikingadventures #standingbow A photo posted by Lisa Jakub (@lisajakub108) on Jul 3, 2016 at 1:33pm PDT

Like the headstrong Lydia from Mrs. Doubtfire, Lisa is still a woman seriously in charge today.

Story continues

And we love it.

A photo posted by Lisa Jakub (@lisajakub108) on Oct 31, 2015 at 2:21pm PDT

The post Lydia from Mrs. Doubtfire grew up to be a beautiful storyteller appeared first on HelloGiggles.
Jumla students send rice to Prime Minister

The governments decision to provide 20 kg rice to each family of Karnali region during birth and death ceremony has drawn flak.
Nab the serial killers

Accidents cannot be prevented but they can and should be minimised so that five innocent people do not die every day
KINSHASA (Reuters) - Three people were killed in riots on Friday near a border crossing between Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia that serves as the main export route for Congolese copper, Congo's government said. Authorities in both countries closed the border in response, Christabel Mulala, the mayor of the Zambian border town of Chililabombwe, told Reuters. Clashes between young protesters and police broke out in the Congolese town of Kasumbalesa after a money changer was killed overnight, Congo's government spokesman Lambert Mende told Reuters. It was not immediately clear who the three people killed on Friday were, or how they were killed. "(The demonstrators) accuse the police of being indolent," Mende said. Eric Monga, the local president of Congo's chamber of commerce, said trucks were being held 10 km (6 miles) away from the Congolese side of the border after rioters burned vehicles and administrative buildings. Congo, Africa's leading copper producer, mined nearly 1 million tonnes of the metal last year. Nearly all of the country's copper exports pass through the Kasumbalesa crossing. (Reporting by Aaron Ross in Kinshasa and Chris Mfula in Lusaka; Editing by Joe Bavier and Alison Williams)
Last month's decision by a judge to reverse the 2006 homicide conviction of Making a Murderer subject Brendan Dassey is being challenged.



As expected, Wisconsin's Attorney General Brad Schimel filed an appeal on Friday, opposing a federal judge's decision to overturn Dassey's conviction for the 2005 murder of photographer Teresa Halbach.



At the age of 16, Dassey confessed to investigators that he had helped his uncle, Steven Avery, rape and murder Halbach on Oct. 31, 2005. His confession is documented in the Netflix docu-series Making a Murderer.



He later recanted, saying the confession had been coerced.



Dassey's conviction for Halbach's murder was overturned by a federal judge on August 12.



The judge's order states the detectives who were investigating Halbach's murder promised Dassey prosecutorial leniency in exchange for his cooperation during his interrogation. The day of the confession, lead investigators Tom Fassbender and Mark Wiegert pulled Dassey out of school and questioned him alone for hours.



 Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter.



"The investigators repeatedly claimed to already know what happened on Oct. 31 and assured Dassey that he had nothing to worry about," the decision reads. "These repeated false promises, when considered in conjunction with all relevant factors, most especially Dassey's age, intellectual deficits, and the absence of a supportive adult, rendered Dassey's confession involuntary under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments."



Because of the appeal, last month's order to rescind the conviction is now stayed.



In a statement to PEOPLE, Schmiel said, "We believe the magistrate judge's decision that Brendan Dassey's confession was coerced by investigators, and that no reasonable court could have concluded otherwise, is wrong on the facts and wrong on the law."



"Two state courts carefully examined the evidence and properly concluded that Brendan Dassey's confession to sexually assaulting and murdering Teresa Halbach with his uncle, Steven Avery, was voluntary, and the investigators did not use constitutionally impermissible tactics," the statement continued.



"The Halbach family has been notified of the appeal and fully supports the state's decision to seek justice on behalf of their daughter," it continued.



After watching portions of the confession on the Netflix series, many viewers came to believe Dassey was coerced by Fassbender and Wiegert, who repeatedly questioned him until the teen gave them a confession.



In a recorded exchange with his mother, Barb Janda, following the confession, Dassey says, "They got in my head." The teen later denied that he ever saw Halbach and said he had nothing to do with her murder.



Filming for Making a Murderer's second season has begun in Manitowac, Wisconsin. It has not been announced when the second season of the Netflix show will start airing.
Wisconsin is appealing the overturned conviction of Making a Murderer subject Brendan Dassey in relation to the murder of Teresa Halbach.

We believe the magistrate judges decision that Brendan Dasseys confession was coerced by investigators, and that no reasonable court could have concluded otherwise, is wrong on the facts and wrong on the law, Attorney General Brad Schimel said. Two state courts carefully examined the evidence and properly concluded that Brendan Dasseys confession to sexually assaulting and murdering Teresa Halbach with his uncle, Steven Avery, was voluntary, and the investigators did not use constitutionally impermissible tactics.

Dassey, 26, was a teen when he was convicted in 2007, along with his uncle Steven Avery, of murdering Halbach in 2005. Dassey is sentenced to 41 years in prison on charges of first-degree intentional homicide, second-degree sexual assault, and mutilation of a corpse in the Manitowoc County case. He turns 27 on Oct. 19.

Dasseys confession, and the murder of Halbach in general, returned to the spotlight thanks to Netflixs documentary series Making a Murderer. The 10-part show followed him and his uncle Averys first conviction, which landed him in prison for 18 years until he was exonerated. He was later accused of murdering Halbach, a photographer who had photographed his car for Auto Trader magazine.

On Aug. 12, federal magistrate judge William E. Duffin granted Dasseys petition for a writ of habeas corpus. Duffin wrote that the misconduct of Dasseys court-appointed attorney Len Kachinsky was indefensible.

The Halbach family has been notified of the appeal and fully supports the States decision to seek justice on behalf of their daughter Schimel added in his statement. The Attorney General filed the notice of said appeal in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin on Friday.

Netflix will be releasing more Making a Murderer episodes chronicling the post-conviction process.

Story continues

Related stories

'Making a Murderer': Steven Avery's Lawyer Seeks More Evidence Testing

'Making a Murderer's' Brendan Dassey Has Conviction Overturned

'Making a Murderer' Gets New Episodes on Netflix
The state of Wisconsin is appealing Brendan Dasseys overturned conviction in the murder of Teresa Halbach as chronicled in Netflixs Making a Murderer.

We believe the magistrate judges decision that Brendan Dasseys confession was coerced by investigators, and that no reasonable court could have concluded otherwise, is wrong on the facts and wrong on the law, Attorney General Brad Schimel said in a statement.

Two state courts carefully examined the evidence and properly concluded that Brendan Dasseys confession to sexually assaulting and murdering Teresa Halbach with his uncle, Steven Avery, was voluntary, and the investigators did not use constitutionally impermissible tactics.

Also Read: 'Making a Murderer': Brendan Dassey Retrial May Hinge on Teresa Halbach Family Decision

Schimel filed the notice of appeal in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin on Friday.

The Halbach family has been notified of the appeal and fully supports the States decision to seek justice on behalf of their daughter, he added.

On Aug. 12, federal magistrate judge William E. Duffin granted Dasseys writ for a petition of habeas corpus, finding that Dasseys imprisonment was unlawful because his confession to the murder of Teresa Halbach was involuntary.

In reaching that decision, Duffin wrote that the misconduct of Len Kachinsky, Dasseys court-appointed attorney, was indefensible.

Also Read: 'Making a Murderer': Steven Avery Speaks Out on Brendan Dassey's Overturned Conviction

The state of Wisconsin had 90 days to initiate retrial proceedings or Dassey would have been released from prison, where he has been serving a life sentence with eligibility for parole in 2048.

Dassey, who is now 26, was convicted in 2007 of first-degree intentional homicide, second-degree sexual assault and mutilation of a corpse in Halbachs murder. His lawyers filed the writ of habeas corpus in 2014.

The saga surrounding Halbachs killing in Wisconsin on Halloween 2005 and whether Dasseys uncle Steven Avery committed the brutal act was the focus of Netflixs hit docuseries Making a Murderer, which gained wide acclaim and interest after it was released last December.

Story continues

Related stories from TheWrap:

'Making a Murderer': Steven Avery Legal Team Gets Shake-Up

'Making a Murderer': Steven Avery's Lawyer Hints at Brendan Dassey Decision
The New York Police Department has arrested a man they say robbed $600 from a 93-year-old woman who had the cash stuffed in her bra while she shopped.

Read: 70-Year-Old Says He Held Up Bank to Get Away From His Wife: Cops

Maria Vasquez was shopping in a Harlem department store in a wheelchair after cashing her Social Security check Wednesday when police say the brazen thief snatched the money, tucked in an envelope inside her undergarment.

A security video showing the suspect reaching into the woman's shirt to pull out the cash was shared by police Thursday, quickly drawing the ire of New Yorkers and a call to action to find the fiend.

Caught on video! Heartless theft robbed 93 y/o female inside A clothing store located at 176 E. 116 St in @NYPD25Pct pic.twitter.com/zhWXFV8bEz  New York City Alerts (@NYCityAlerts) September 9, 2016

On Friday morning, police arrested Broyoan Lopez, 26, of Brooklyn, who was charged with grand larceny, robbery and criminal possession of stolen property. He has not yet been arraigned.

Vasquez said the man must have been following her from the bank to the store. By the time she called for help, the suspect was gone.

Vasquez, who is from the Dominican Republic, does not speak English and requires an aide; she says the money was meant to last her the rest of the month.

I use it to pay for everything. Everything I have to pay for, she told the Daily News. I need it ... because my husband died seven years ago, and Im alone.

Read: The Fast and the Furious: Handcuffed Suspect Steals Police Car, Leads Cops on Chase

The department store where the incident occurred said that Vasquez is a loyal customer and will replace the money that was taken from her.

Story continues

A manager named William told CBS News it was the least they could do.

Vasquez, a devout Jehovahs Witness, told the Daily News: I felt terrible, but I prayed to Jehovah in my heart, and he helped me to bear it. She also said she feels no ill will toward the thief.

Watch: Babysitter Robs Bank While Watching Two Little Kids, Police Say

Related Articles:
ISTANBUL  It was something of a curious sight in early October last year, when Angela Merkel stepped into the prime-time spotlight on the popular political talk show Anne Will. The reticent German chancellor is not known to be a great fan of television appearances.

But she is a political realist, and Merkel had good reason to believe her survival was at stake. Over the previous six weeks, since she made the decision to suspend the Dublin Regulation and allow all Syrian asylum-seekers to stay in Germany, Merkel had watched her seemingly ironclad popularity levels unravel at an alarming rate. Germany was well on its way to receiving more than a million asylum-seekers in one year, and Germans were feeling overwhelmed. Farther afield, Merkels European partners were in open mutiny, balking at calls to resettle refugees. From the right, left, and center, the heat was on. Merkels mantra of Wir schaffen das (We can do this)  a tepid version of Barack Obamas Yes, we can  was wearing thin.

For almost half an hour, Merkel fielded a relentless stream of questions from journalist and host Anne Will on how Germany would be able to cope. Under fire, she vowed to tackle the crisis head on. I have a plan, she declared, but it doesnt just depend on me. Germany would work hand in hand with Turkey, she said. Ankara would help stop smuggling operations on its end; in exchange, Germany would invest in improving conditions for refugees in Turkey and work to resettle Syrians in Europe in an orderly, legal manner.

In a cafe near Moscows Red Square, Gerald Knaus was scouring German news sites when he began to pick up on chatter about Merkels new plan. Knaus perked up  the strategy the chancellor was detailing was his.

Knaus is the founding chairman of a small Berlin-based think tank called the European Stability Initiative, or ESI, and just three days earlier, hed emailed out the details of this very plan to various journalists and high-ranking policymakers. It didnt come entirely as a surprise that the German government had gotten wind of the blueprint: The ESI has long punched above its weight in Europe and has worked on issues of asylum and migration for years. Its policy papers reach movers and shakers from Berlin to Brussels.

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Still, for a policy to take just three days to go from Knauss outbox to the mouth of the chancellor was a first. He shot off an email to his colleagues as he played back the show online.

The most important thing in this interview when it comes to policy is that Angela Merkel accepted our plan for how to move to an orderly process, he wrote, linking to a YouTube clip of the chancellor speaking. The big issue now is to persuade those she needs to persuade and implement it. This will be very hard.

Knaus hoped, cautiously, that this would be the turning point in managing Europes dilemma. Instead, he says, a series of missteps and errors ensued. Valuable time was wasted, and talks stalled. Now, nearly a year after Merkels TV promise, the architect of the EU-Turkey migration deal is warning its about to fail. And hes doing all he can to rescue it.

But a year ago all of that was still to come.

I think so far this has been going rather well, Knaus added in his note before signing off.

* * *

On paper, the ESIs plan appeared straightforward: Turkey was to take back all new irregular migrants who reached Greek territory after March 20. In return, the European Union would provide Ankara financial support to help care for refugees there and open the doors to visa-free travel for Turks; EU member states would then resettle Syrian refugees directly from Turkey, providing legal, safe access to asylum.

In the real world, the plan has unraveled quickly.

Greece was the first snag. Greek officials were supposed to screen and send new arrivals back to Turkey as soon as possible. Brussels demanded that Athens create a series of hotspot registration centers to speed up the process. It agreed to provide more than 200 million euros in funding and send personnel  asylum officers, translators, guards  from other member states to help process applications and patrol the coasts.

But more than 50,000 refugees and migrants were already stranded on the mainland and islands  a staggering burden for a country already crippled by economic crisis. It took several months to organize the hotspots, and Greeces asylum agency still lacks adequate manpower and facilities. By mid-June, around 140 European asylum officers and guards were helping improve the situation, but hundreds more are still required. Asylum-seekers are often left in limbo for months with no income, no ability to work, and little supervision if they decide to migrate elsewhere in Europe.

The EU vowed in September 2015 to resettle up to 160,000 refugees from Greece and Italy, but, according to the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR), only a little more than 3,000 have been relocated so far, largely due to a lack of willingness among member states to open their doors. Slovakia and Hungary have even launched legal challenges to the blocs redistribution plans.

Then, after the failed coup attempt in Turkey, Ankara pulled back its officers in Greece who were supposed to oversee deportations, putting a crucial part of the agreement on indefinite hold. By the start of August, only 468 irregular migrants had been returned to Turkey from Greece, and just 849 Syrian refugees had been resettled in the EU under the scheme. Greeces camps and reception centers remain overcrowded and chaotic.

Meanwhile, deep cracks are showing in the EUs relationship with Turkey, a linchpin of the deal. Ankara has been a controversial partner from the start. Many have called the countrys human rights record into question, raising serious doubts over whether European officials should treat it as a safe country of return for those fleeing war. Julys failed coup attempt and the subsequent crackdown have only amplified these concerns. Ankara, for its part, is threatening to reopen the floodgates back toward Greece if the EU doesnt deliver on its promise of visa liberalization, even though Turkey hasnt met all of the requirements and, in the wake of the coup attempt, seems increasingly unlikely to do so.

The number of migrants and refugees arriving in Greece has dropped off dramatically in comparison to the previous year: Frontex, the EUs border management agency, reported the number of arrivals was down 90 percent in April, as migrants believed the new agreement was being implemented or would be eventually. German officials are predicting around 300,000 refugees and migrants will arrive in the country in 2016, a far cry from 1.1 million in 2015.

Still, officials registered a spike in new arrivals in August, and even small fluctuations in the number of migrants threaten to derail any progress that has been made in Greece. Meanwhile, policymakers in Europe have only grown more skeptical over time. Greek Migration Minister Ioannis Mouzalas told the German newspaper Bild that Europe needed to come up with a Plan B. German lawmakers have stepped up pressure on Merkel to push back against Ankaras authoritarian turn, with some calling on Brussels to break off talks over EU accession for Turkey entirely. And a survey conducted by the market research group Emnid for Bilds Sunday edition, Bild am Sonntag, showed 52 percent of Germans want their government to scrap the deal.

Wiry and boyish at 46, Knaus says he never intended for himself, or the ESI, to become personally involved in arguments over how the migration deal should be implemented, and theres good reason to believe him. Migration is just one of many issues in the think tanks purview, and its staff wasnt sure the organizations sudden visibility was wise. In part, thats because should their efforts to fix the deal fail, it could affect the ESIs reputation on other projects.

But its also because any involvement in the debate over migration is emotionally and psychologically taxing. As the think tank has stepped up its campaign to save the deal, public attention on the small institute has grown. It includes gross exaggeration in German media outlets (one regional headline proclaimed Knaus the man saving Merkel) to angry emails and tweets from members of the far right, who accuse the ESI of tearing apart Germanys cultural fabric by importing foreigners or claim it is driven by American interests (the ESI has twice received funding from George Soross Open Society Foundations for projects on human rights and Azerbaijan).

Think tankers forget that the moment you step into the public arena and try to influence real things, theres so much blowback, he said. This is such an emotional debate. Very often, it has very little to do with facts.

But he and his colleagues felt they had little choice but to roll up their sleeves when they witnessed the EU dropping the ball on implementing their strategy. In its missive laying out the plan, the ESI had argued it was crucial to move quickly, before the situation ballooned out of control and before right-wing groups seized on the chaos for their gain. Yet instead of making Germany take the lead in negotiations with Turkey, European leaders handed over responsibility to the notoriously slow-moving and less influential European Commission. It took until March 18  some five months after Merkels TV announcement  for the EU and Turkey to finally ink an agreement.

Knaus was also disappointed by the inflammatory rhetoric surrounding visa liberalization for Turkey. He had envisioned Ankaras guarantee of safe and humane conditions for all refugees as the central requirement for receiving visa waiver; instead, Europe stuck to its checklist of 72 political and legal benchmarks. Knaus also believes the outcry over Turkeys commitment to human rights misses the point: The country might not meet the legal definition of a safe country of origin right now, he says, but it can become one with financial support and close monitoring by human rights groups. And it is, after all, Europes only real hope in stemming illegal immigration. The core idea here is that you cant control a sea border without cooperating with your neighbor on the other side, he said. You cant build fences on water.

Knaus becomes visibly agitated when discussing the situation in Greeces refugee camps. Hed expected European officials to deploy ample expertise on the ground to help create a credible, well-functioning asylum system in Greece. But identifying and training personnel has proved to be a bigger hurdle than expected. And EU member states resistance to resettling refugees has been troubling, he says: With the exception of Germany and Sweden, most European countries have turned their backs on their international obligations. The policy at the moment is not humane; its not human rights compatible. Its basically detention, Knaus said, shifting his gaze to his hands. Its like the old man in The Muppet Show who sits in the balcony and watches things as they play out. They are content with watching as Greece buckles.

The ESIs refugee plan was designed to be a sturdy table. But European policymakers had already begun hacking away at each of its legs. As Knaus watched the deal start to wobble, he jumped into action.

* * *

For months, Knaus has been shuttling between the EU and Turkey to listen, persuade, and cajole policymakers and to rally the European public. Everywhere he goes, whether in private or public, he discusses the migration deal with the conviction of an evangelist, roaming from broad strokes to minutiae, punctuated by a slight Viennese accent. But its not yet clear whether hes winning any new converts.

He spent much of August in cafes and offices in Ankara and Istanbul, meeting with trusted lawmakers he describes as pretty high up, with access to the president, as well as representatives from the Turkish Foreign Ministry and ambassadors. There, he listened to objections to the agreement and tried to convince them to keep the floodgates closed for now while explaining how Turkey can become a visibly safe country of origin for refugees.

In July, Knaus canvassed various Greek refugee camps on the mainland and on Lesbos, in an effort to try to diagnose the ills of the countrys asylum system. He interviewed Greek journalists, refugees, Greek government officials, and representatives from the asylum service. He connected with two refugees, a Syrian and an Afghan, in Athens, and he still calls them to check in on their asylum status. He has sent ESI colleagues back to conduct more interviews with asylum-seekers, a real-time way to assess what is working and what isnt.

Since the start of the year, he has gone on the offensive on German and Austrian television, radio, and newspapers, sometimes fielding several interviews a day, hoping to convince viewers and listeners that the deal is worth preserving. He weaves in familiar key phrases (You cant build fences on water) and warnings (There is no viable alternative) among his talking points, aiming to whittle down a complex plan to a few accessible arguments.

On a recent sun-drenched Wednesday along Istanbuls seaside promenade, Knaus took calls and emails from his perch in an air-conditioned Italian cafe. He dialed colleagues to request a series of documents for his next meeting, a closed-door session with major human rights organizations, which hes trying to convince to fully support the deal. By working with asylum officials on the ground in Greece and Turkey, they can help monitor the situation and ensure that all migrants and refugees are receiving fair and humane treatment, he says.

And yet Knaus is the first to admit that hes not sure the ESIs efforts will be enough to save a deal that is being torn apart by large-scale forces even the likes of Merkel may not be able to contain.

That is why he has lobbied the EU for months to appoint a high-level envoy of sorts, a powerful diplomat who will serve as an enforcer to ensure the various moving parts are being implemented. This proposal has yet to find any traction.

Politics in Europe involves so many people to persuade. Theres always such a wide gap between whats on paper and whats in a speech, he said. When [European Commission President Jean-Claude] Juncker makes a speech and urges for something to happen, I feel like hes as powerless as the think tankers outside.

Andreas Nick, a member of Merkels Christian Democratic Union, has been fighting for Knauss agreement to succeed from within the Bundestag, Germanys parliament, as part of its Foreign Affairs Committee. He praised Knaus as an exceptional think tanker able to develop practical, fact-based solutions. But he has watched firsthand as policymakers in Brussels and Ankara have ratcheted up their negative rhetoric in order to play politics. And hes not sure Knauss message will carry above the fray.

[Knaus] makes his case for implementation passionately and tirelessly, Nick said. But [those arguments] alone might not be sufficient to ensure the willingness of European decision-makers to base their actions on rational assessments rather than pandering to domestic audiences for short-term gains and to stir up populist sentiments.

And so, Knaus has turned to the method that has worked for him previously: Hes using the past few months of travel, research, and advocacy as fodder for his next position paper.

He has spent the latter part of August working feverishly to finish and distribute the paper ahead of an EU ministers meeting in September. It urges all sides to move forward, explaining how Ankara can create safe refugee conditions, how Greek authorities (with EU help) must rapidly assess who can be sent back to Turkey, and how European officials must deliver on their promise to loosen visa restrictions for Turks.

Everything  the entire deal  is at stake, and the next few weeks will be the deciding factor, Knaus says. He is meeting with German and Swedish policymakers in the coming days and holding a joint event with Amnesty International in the Netherlands. The latest election results in Germany have shown right-wing, anti-immigrant sentiment might tip the scales. Knaus is convinced there will be more of the same in federal polls in Germany and the Netherlands next year, if Europe doesnt gain control fast.

He hopes the latest paper will be a key road map for EU and Turkish officials, to guide them back to the negotiating table.

When you get the sense that things might depend on how persuasive your writing is, then you end up rewriting things obsessively, he laughed self-consciously. Thats the stressful part  the sense and privilege that what you write might matter.

Photo credit: Staten Generaal
NEA MD Kafle resigns

Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) Managing Director Mukesh Raj kafle has resigned from his post. He went to PM's official residence in Baluwater on Friday to submit his resignation letter to Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal.
Https%3a%2f%2fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2fuploads%2fstory%2fthumbnail%2f20275%2fscreen_shot_2016-09-09_at_11.00.44_am

LONDON  In "things-that-capture-our-attention-because-of-their-phallic-shape" news, Avon and Somerset Police released a map that some social media users very astutely noted resembles "a giant red penis."

Sigh. Really guys? Really?

SEE ALSO: Parents upset over penis-shaped Play-Doh toy

@ASPolice major incident as giant red penis covers shire & Avonmouth pic.twitter.com/CuOKOzqAlp  L Bomb (@LBomb001) September 5, 2016

Okay yes, that is definitely very penis-like.

@LBomb001 Really? Would suggest that giant needs to pay a visit to their GP!   Avon&Somerset Police (@ASPolice) September 5, 2016

The map was issued on Monday as part of an appeal for witnesses to an assault in Shirehampton on Friday, and has since been updated to a more mundane shape.

No more phallic distractions here.

Image: Avon and somerset police

In a BBC article, a police spokeswoman is quoted as saying, "This is a serious appeal for information after a man was left in need of hospital treatment following a violent assault.

"Whatever the map may have resembled should not distract from the severity of the crime and our request for help from the public."

Quite right. To that end, the 26-year-old victim remains in critical but stable condition, and a 27-year-old woman and a 30-year-old man have been arrested and subsequently released on bail pending further inquiries.

Internet, grow up.
By Andrew MacAskill LONDON (Reuters) - Some 46 million people in Britain could potentially benefit from a legal case brought against Mastercard demanding 14 billion pounds ($19 billion) in damages for allegedly charging excessive fees, according to court documents filed in London. The case brought by a former chief financial services ombudsman alleges the payments company charged unlawfully high fees to stores when shoppers swiped their debit or credit cards and these were passed on to consumers in higher prices. Mastercard is alleged to have done this for 16 years between 1992 and 2008, in more than 600 pages of documents filed at the Competition Appeal Tribunal on Thursday."This was almost an invisible tax," Walter Merricks, who is bringing the case, told the BBC. "Mastercard has behaved disgracefully in this. They have not had the reasonableness to accept that what this was doing was damaging UK consumers." Mastercard said in a statement it denied any wrongdoing."We continue to firmly disagree with the basis of this claim and we intend to oppose it vigorously," the world's second-largest payments network said. The lawsuit comes after the European Union's antitrust regulator found in 2014 Mastercard's fees to store owners to process international payments within the EU were excessive.Law firm Quinn Emanuel said the lawsuit was the largest damages claim in British history and would be brought under a law meaning consumers would automatically be claimants unless they opt out. Any person living in Britain who used a credit card, cash or cheques and was over 16 years old in the period covered by the lawsuit will automatically be part of the claim.If the 14 billion pound claim was shared equally between the number of eligible claimants, each person could receive more than 300 pounds each, according to a Reuters' calculation.A lawyer working on the case said Mastercard charged shops fees in excess of 1 percent for card use on international transactions between 1992 and 2008.Although the EU's anti-trust regulator only ruled Mastercard's international fees were illegal, this impacted British consumers as it was the default fee used in Britain. Two years ago, the European Union capped the fees retailers pay at 0.2 percent for debit cards and 0.3 percent for credit cards. Merricks in a statement said the case is a watershed moment for consumer compensation in Britain.Merricks was head of Britain's financial services ombudsmen for ten years until 2009, helping to settle disputes between consumers and financial services companies. Britain's banks have been caught in a range of mis-selling cases in the last five years. They have paid 24 billion pounds in compensation for mis-selling loan payment insurance, making it Britain's costliest scandal in financial services.Consumers no longer living in Britain, but who lived in the country between 1992 and 2008, can opt in to the collective claim against Mastercard.Any hearing on the case is not expected until early 2018, unless MasterCard settle it out of court. ($1 = 0.7523 pounds) (Editing by Mark Potter and Alexander Smith)
The MC5's Wayne Kramer will take the Ford Theater stage tonight (Sept. 9) in Los Angeles alongside Shooter Jennings, Gilbey Clarke, Marshall Crenshaw, Jill Sobule, Keith Morris, Don Was, Jason Heath & The Greedy Souls and The Wild Reeds for the Rock Out 3 concert, a benefit for Jail Guitar Doors, the prison-reform organization Kramer has worked with for several years. Kramer feels lucky to be there at all.

"I'm a returned citizen," Kramer says, "I served a federal prison term." In 1974 the Detroit native was part of a drug sting, supposedly the result of his and his bandmates' connections to political activism the White Panther party, by the federal government, which resulted in a four-year prison term. Kramer says the prison term he received for procuring a pound-and-a-half of cocaine for an informant with a briefcase full of of $100 bills would have ended with a life sentence today.

MC5's Michael Davis Remembered by Wayne Kramer, Ted Nugent

Like millions of other non-violent-drug offenders, Kramer served under harsh conditions with no personal safety, scant edible food or decent health care.

Lucky, at least, that he served his time alongside Red Rodney (a.k.a. Robert Roland Chudnic), a trumpet player for Charlie Parker who Kramer says "was a great man and an unbelievable musician," and who became his mentor and "musical father."

After his release, Kramer wanted to work on issues of justice and prison reform. So in 2008 he gathered a group of legendary musicians -- including Tom Morello, Don Was, Jerry Cantrell, Handsome Dick Manitoba, Don Was, Gilby Clark, Perry Farrell and Billy Bragg -- to perform at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in upstate New York. While there, Bragg told Kramer about a project he had started in his native England called Jail Guitar Doors, which provided prisoners with instruments. Serendipitously, the organization's name had come from a Clash song that Joe Strummer -- a patron saint of sorts to Jail Guitar Doors -- had written in homage to Kramer. It begins with the lyric: "Let me tell you 'bout Wayne and his deals of cocaine."

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Then and there, Kramer decided he would head up the prison reform group's U.S. branch.

Since it inception, Jail Guitar Doors has lobbies against overly long prison terms, the privatization of prisons for profit and, more elementally, a restoration of humanity. The organization has since donated guitars to over 65 American prisons and has run songwriting workshops in county jails across the country, including in Los Angeles, San Diego, Cook County (Chicago) and Travis County (Austin).

"We are the most prison-crazed country in the history of the world," the outspoken Kramer says. "We have five percent of the world's population and 25 percent of the world's prisoners." He attributes much of the prison crisis to politicians who parlayed being tough on crime into votes, which he says led to the ineffective war on drugs. "It's the greatest failure of social policy in America's history," Kramer says, "They locked up more people and did great harm to communities across the country. Meanwhile today we're amidst the greatest drug crisis in history where you can buy more drugs cheaper than you could 30 years ago when all of this started."

When asked if he's at all encouraged by recent government efforts to clamp down on private prisons and the Obama's administration's release of 111 non-violent drug offenders, Kramer is cautious. "Well, these are good symbolic steps," he says, "But we are nowhere near justice and I don't think I'll see that in my lifetime. It's like turning the Titanic -- this is an $80 billion a year industry. People like to say the justice department is broke, but it's not, it's a big hit -- it's number one with a bullet."

Tickets for tonight's benefit are still available.at www.jailguitardoors.org .
Nepathya gear up for another Int'l tour

Folk-rock ensemble Nepathya sets out to perform in three cities around the worldSeoul, New York and San Francisco.
By Jean Luis Arce MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's new finance minister on Thursday delivered a stern reproach to Donald Trump, saying the only thing he agreed on with the U.S. Republican presidential candidate was that his predecessor in the ministry was an excellent public servant. The comments follow the resignation of Luis Videgaray as finance minister on Wednesday after he came under fire for Trump's visit to Mexico City last week, which Mexican diplomats said he was instrumental in arranging. Trump has infuriated Mexicans with a series of broadsides against the United States' southern neighbor, and his hastily arranged visit to meet President Enrique Pena Nieto a week ago sparked heavy criticism of the government. Presenting the government's 2017 budget plan just a day after his appointment, the new finance minister, Jose Antonio Meade, did not mince his words when he was asked about recent comments by Trump on Videgaray at a news conference. "I'd like to point out that the only thing, absolutely the only thing I agree on with candidate Trump is that Luis Videgaray is an exceptional public servant," Meade said. The outspoken American real estate mogul has vowed to make Mexico pay for a border wall to keep out illegal immigrants, as well as threatening to carry out mass deportations and tear up trade treaties crucial to its economy. Late on Wednesday, Trump commented on Videgaray's resignation on NBC television when he was asked if the United States could take a chance with him as commander-in-chief. "Well, I think absolutely," he said. "I think if you saw what happened in Mexico the other day...I let them know where the United States stands. I mean, we've been badly hurt by Mexico...And if you look at what happened, look at the aftermath today where the people that arranged the trip in Mexico have been forced out of government. That's how well we did." In an apparent u-turn on those remarks, on Thursday Trump tweeted his appreciation for Videgaray, who was widely seen as Pena Nieto's closest advisor in the Cabinet. "Mexico has lost a brilliant finance minister and wonderful man who I know is highly respected by President Pena Nieto," he said. "With Luis, Mexico and the United States would have made wonderful deals together - where both Mexico and the United States would have benefitted." Meade, a friend of Videgaray's, was foreign minister when Trump launched his presidential bid in June 2015. He later moved to another ministry before his appointment on Wednesday as finance minister, a job he also held in the previous government. (Writing by Dave Graham; Editing by Andrew Hay)
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's new finance minister on Thursday delivered a stern reproach to Donald Trump, saying the only thing he agreed on with the U.S. Republican presidential candidate was that his predecessor in the ministry was an excellent public servant. "I'd like to point out that the only thing, absolutely the only thing I agree on with candidate Trump is that Luis Videgaray is an exceptional public servant," Finance Minister Jose Antonio Meade told a news conference. Videgaray resigned as finance minister on Wednesday after coming under fire for the visit of Trump to Mexico City last week, which Mexican diplomats said he was instrumental in arranging. (Reporting by Jean Luis Arce)
Warsaw (AFP) - A porcelain Mickey Mouse figurine that once belonged to a child the Nazis deported to the Auschwitz death camp has been rediscovered after more than 70 years, a local foundation told AFP on Friday.

"It's a sad object because it reminds us of a child who was probably gassed to death in the camp," Agnieszka Molenda, who runs the Foundation of Memory Sites near Auschwitz-Birkenau (FPMP,) told AFP.

"Farmers found the figurine after the war near the banks of the Vistula river over a kilometre from the camp and then stored it along side other smaller items that we recently received," she said.

Set up in 2013 by private collectors with a passion for local history, the foundation gathers items related to the death camp and its annexes that covered some 40 square kilometers (15.4 square miles).

Working with the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum on the site of the former Nazi death camp in Osciecim, southern Poland, the foundation has collected thousands of items kept in private homes since the war.

"We'll probably never know who the figurine belonged to," Molenda added.

"Experts told us that it was manufactured in Germany in the 1930s, without a Disney copyright.

"It is a model that was sold in Germany between 1929 and 1932 and was exported in large numbers to neighbouring European countries."

The donor, who wanted to remain anonymous, told Molenda that her grandfather dug up the figurine while working in a field after the war.

He also found coins from the Nazi-run Jewish ghetto in the city of Lodz and some small brushes that he stored in the attic of his house.

One million European Jews died at the camp set up by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland in 1940-1945.

More than 100,000 others including non-Jewish Poles, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war and anti-Nazi resistance fighters also died there, according to the museum.

An estimated 232,000 of Auschwitz victims were children.
The commander of al-Qaedas former Syrian division has been killed by an airstrike in rural Aleppo, according to reports from Reuters.

The militant group, which changed its name in July from the Nusra Front to Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, has been battling the Syrian army and Iranian-funded Shiite militias in the regions war-torn city, Aleppo.

Abu Hajer al-Homsi, also known as Abu Omar Saraqeb, was a founding member of Jabat Fateh al-Sham, and the top military commander. The group confirmed that he was killed in the area around Aleppo.

A source in the area told Reuters the attack was likely to have come from a U.S. warplane.

Al-Homsi had fought U.S. forces since the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. Reuters quoted an Islamist source as saying that he was at a hideout in the village of Kafr Naha when the strike occurred.

[Reuters]
Rome (AFP) - Two cats have been pulled from the ruins of Italy's deadly earthquake more than two weeks after the disaster which claimed nearly 300 lives, officials said Friday.

In the town of Amatrice, the worst affected by the August 24 quake, firefighters rescued Pietro the cat after his owners -- who came back to retrieve some belongings -- heard him meowing weakly. Dehydrated and weak, he was taken into the care of vets.

Meanwhile in the nearby hamlet of Illica, another cat called Giorgiana was plucked from a ruined house. Her owners were killed in the quake but their daughters, who survived, asked animal welfare group Oipa to look for their three cats.

After a series of unsuccessful attempts, Oipa volunteers leaving food and calling the cat were surprised to hear at long last a quiet meowing. Freed by firefighters, Giorgiana was weak and dehydrated but alive.

Last week firefighters pulled a golden retriever called Romeo alive from the rubble of his owners' house in the village of San Lorenzo a Flaviano, more than nine days after he was given up for dead.
Seven years after Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger splash-landed a plane on the Hudson River, his grateful passengers have reunited to relive the incredible story.

Thirty-five passengers from US Airways Flight 1549 traveled to the Carolinas Aviation Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina, where the aircraft now lives after being fished from the Hudson River.

"It's amazing that all of us survived that day," one passenger told Inside Edition.

Read: See Tom Hanks as Captain 'Sully' Sullenberger in New Movie Trailer

Their reunion comes ahead of Friday's release of Sully, the Clint Eastwood-directed film that documents the captain's heroic actions.

His flight was traveling from New York's LaGuardia Airport to Charlotte Douglas International Airport in January 2009 when it flew into a gaggle of geese, causing both engines to fail.

"I heard a loud boom," passenger Ben Bostic recalled. "The plane shook violently, then I looked out the window and saw the left engine on fire."

Mark Hood and Denise Lockie were sitting next to each other in first class.

"That's when I leaned over and grabbed Denise's hand," Hood said, "and I knew we were going to die."

Captain Sully announced he would be making an emergency landing in the Hudson River.

Read: Pilot who Crash Landed on Busy Highway Remembers Horrifying Flight

For Michele Winegar, hearing Sully say "brace for impact" was the most emotional part of the ordeal. When the plane landed in the river, she felt freezing water rising around her.

"We just survived a plane crash and now we're going to drown," she thought.

But all 155 passengers and crew were able to evacuate the plane by climbing out onto the wings.

The survivors, many of whom haven't seen each other in years, marveled at the aircraft, which stayed largely intact during the splashdown.

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"That's part of the miracle," one passenger said. "It only sustained minor damage. We were all able to get out and ultimately no loss of life."

For the passengers' messages to Captain Sully, tune in to Inside Edition on Friday.

Watch: Federal Investigator: The 'Sully' Movie Portrays Me Unfairly

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A missing piece of a painting by Belgian artist Rene Magritte has been discovered in a small museum in eastern England, concealed under one of his other works, it was announced Thursday.

Experts at Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery found the lower right quarter of "La Pose Enchantee" (The Enchanted Pose), which had until three years ago been thought lost, underneath "La Condition Humaine" (The Human Condition).

The first two quarters of the 89-year-old painting, which was only known by a black and white photograph, were discovered in 2013 under works by Magritte held in New York and Stockholm.

"All we need to discover now is where the fourth and final, upper-right-hand quarter is. Then this exciting art world jigsaw puzzle will be complete," said Giorgia Bottinelli, curator at Norwich Castle.

"La Pose Enchantee" is a large painting showing two near identical female nudes, which was first exhibited in 1927.

There was correspondence relating to it in 1932, when it was returned to Magritte, but neither he nor anyone else mentioned it again. He died in 1967.

Then in 2013, conservationists at the Museum of Modern Art in New York discovered the upper left section of the missing work lay underneath their 1935 Magritte "The Portrait".

The revelation prompted the Moderna Museet in Stockholm to examine one of its Magritte paintings, 1935's "The Red Model" -- which turned out to be the lower left quarter.

It is thought that the artist decided to cut up his painting and re-use the four canvases in preparation for a major exhibition in 1936.

"It seems that for some reason, Magritte must have decided to cut the painting into quarters, and then painted four completely different paintings over the top," Bottinelli said.

"So our painting 'La Condition Humaine' has in fact been successfully hiding part of 'La Pose Enchantee' for more than 80 years."

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The clue to the hidden paintings lay in the edges of the painting which were, unusually for Magritte, painted over and round the stretcher.

Norwich conservator Alice Tavares da Silva spotted the discrepancy while examining the painting for an exhibition of Magritte's work in Paris starting on September 21.

"It was a hugely exciting discovery so I immediately arranged to take the painting to the Hamilton Kerr Institute, at the University of Cambridge to be x-rayed and analysed," she said.

"The results confirmed my initial observations that 'La Condition Humaine' was indeed the lower right-hand quarter of the missing painting."
The three banks have been registering higher LDRs.

As singapore banking heavyweights experiencing a quarter of hard knocks with lower net interest margins (NIMs), its steady increases on loan-deposit ratios (LDR) make the burn less painful.

According to a report by Maybank Kim Eng analyst Ng Li Hiang, steady increases in LDRs have mitigated part of the contraction in banks net interest margins, caused by easing rates and lower credit spreads.

For instance, DBS' group LDR skyrocketed an all-time high from 59.9% in 2002 to 91.8% in the previous quarter.

UOB has a lower LDR but still on the high side at 84%. OCBC, on the other hand, has 82.2%.

"DBS typically has a big catchment of SGD deposits and a lower SGD LDR than peers. Its high group LDR was partly attributable to a high USD LDR of 99.2% vs peers 63-64% as of 2Q16," Ng explained.

However, with its high LDR and tighter liquidity than peers, the analyst expressed worry that it may have already maxed out its LDR.

"Indonesias recent tax amnesty adds to the uncertainties. Anecdotal evidence already points to the repatriation of some Indonesian funds parked in Singapore. Any large outflows could tighten liquidity in the system, spike LDRs and squeeze banks which fund loans through the interbank market," he said

The three Singapore bank giants have registered an average net interest margin (NIM) of 1.74% this second quarter, a partial dip from the recorded 1.79% the previous quarter, with only DBS registering an improvement to 1.87%.

OCBC's NIM fell from 1.75% last quarter to 1.68% while, UOB's 1.78% NIM for the first quarter dropped to 1.68%.





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Morgan Spurlock is set to tackle the so-called "Patriot" movement for an untitled documentary that he will produce for Spotlight financier First Look Media.

David Byars (Self Storage), who shot the film and is directing, went inside the 2016 occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon during the siege that sparked international headlines.

The doc is said to offer unfettered access to the armed protest led by Ammon Bundy, the son of the defiant leader of the anti-federal lands movement Cliven Bundy. With an insider's view of a new breed of American ideologues, the film delves into the dramatic rise and inner workings of the movement and gives audiences an unprecedented first-hand look into the occupiers' beliefs by living amongst them and giving them a voice.

Oscar winner Spurlock (Super Size Me) is producing via his Warrior Poets production company, with Impact Partners (Queen of Versailles) also on board as producers.

Emmy nominee Jeremy Chilnick (What Would Jesus Buy?, The Third Wave) also is producing alongside David Holbrooke (The Diplomat).

"From the first moment I saw the raw footage David captured in Oregon, I knew I had to make this movie," said Spurlock. "Audiences will be blown away. It's so timely and beyond powerful."

Added Impact Partners' Dan Cogan: "Ammon and Cliven Bundy, heroes of the Patriot movement, have zoomed from the radical fringe to the mainstream with lightning speed. If you want to understand American politics and American life today, you need to understand where they and their movement are coming from. With astonishing access and a great storyteller's eye for detail, David Byars brings you into the heart of their world in eye-popping fashion. I cannot wait for the world to see this film."

The doc will look at the incendiary combination of disaffection, government mistrust and an affinity for guns and vigilante justice that is synonymous with the movement. It also references the meteoric rise of Donald Trump, whose views often dovetail with those espoused by movement members. Byars captures the story of the right-wing and libertarian extremist rebellion, with exclusive access into the Oregon compound for the occupation.

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The project extends First Look's support of innovative political documentary filmmaking as seen in AJ Schnack's election docuseries NomiNation, a portrait of America's political process, and Laura Poitras' new Julian Assange film Risk.

Impact Partners is a well-respected brand in the documentary space, having produced Danfung Dennis' Oscar-nominated Hell and Back Again and Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady's Detropia.

"David Byars captured something truly exceptional in Oregon, a clear-eyed vision of an America we hear a lot about but rarely see up close," said Adam Pincus, executive vp of programming and content for First Look. "He's managed to make a complicated, controversial story utterly human, and that's something we're thrilled to be a part of."

Spurlock is repped by CAA and The Arlook Group.
North Korea conducts 'fifth and biggest nuclear test'

North Korea is believed to have carried out its fifth and largest ever test of a nuclear device, South Korean military officials say.
Manchester (United Kingdom) (AFP) - Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho played down the focus on his rivalry with Manchester City counterpart Pep Guardiola on Friday and said Saturday's derby would be decided by the players.

This weekend's encounter has been billed as a grudge match between Mourinho and Guardiola, who had several stormy encounters during their time in charge of Real Madrid and Barcelona respectively.

It is three years since they last faced off in a match, but Mourinho said the on-pitch action at Old Trafford will be more important than what happens on the touchline.

Asked whether the presence of Guardiola in the opposition dug-out presented a particular problem, Mourinho told journalists at United's Aon Training Complex: "Just the players."

Mourinho emphasised the need for "emotional control" in the match, which will see United and City attempt to end each other's perfect starts to the Premier League season.

When he was told the match was being cast as a rematch between himself and Guardiola, he replied: "That's no problem."

"They are a very good team," he added.

"They were a very good team last season, two, three, four seasons ago. Maybe since the new owners arrived at Man City, it's a very good squad, it's a very good team.

"They had very good managers. They have now a very good manager. They had always very good players. They bought some more very good players.

"So they are what they are since I return to England in 2013. They're a title contender and we have to respect them that way, that's for sure."

United's hopes of winning the derby have been aided by the absence of City striker Sergio Aguero, who is serving a three-game ban for elbowing West Ham United's Winston Reid.

Mourinho, however, claimed the uncertainty about who Guardiola will select to replace the Argentina striker actually makes life harder for him.

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- Flight frustration -

"It changed the approach because it's more difficult," Mourinho said.

"When Aguero is available, we know Aguero plays. We know the formation, we know their dynamic. Nobody has doubts: when a player like him is ready, he plays.

"In this moment, he doesn't play. They are an amazing, rich squad in options. On the other hand, he can have many decisions, different decisions.

"One thing if he decides to play with (Kelechi) Iheanacho, another thing if he decides to play with (Raheem) Sterling.

"Another one is if he decides to play with (David) Silva as a fake number nine between the lines.

"They have so many options that for us, in preparation of the game, we have to go step by step, situation after situation.

"We try to reduce the unpredictability of the game. We know they have so many options. To do that for the players is more difficult.

"It feels a bit of a contradiction, but without Aguero it's more difficult."

Mourinho reported a clean bill of health ahead of the game, but he expressed reservations about the time it had taken United's two Argentina players to return after international duty.

City's Argentine players Pablo Zabaleta and Nicolas Otamendi were able to return to Manchester directly after Argentina's 2-2 draw away to Venezuela in World Cup qualifying on Tuesday.

But United pair Sergio Romero and Marcos Rojo were obliged to make more complicated journeys.

"Sergio and Marcos, they went around the globe," said the United manager.

"They played in Venezuela and then they go to Argentina and then from Argentina they go back to Europe.

"Man City spent the money to bring them on direct flights from Venezuela or maybe they sent one of the planes from the owner.

"But our boys went to Argentina and from Argentina they come and arrive this morning in time to train."
From Country Living

The best wedding photographs are often the candid ones, taken without the couple even being aware the lens was focused on them. Case in point: The photograph above, taken by Mike Karas, a tourist visiting Yosemite's Taft Point from Honolulu. Mike was trying to take a photo of the beautiful vista when a bride and groom stepped right into his shot. He captured the magical moment on camera, but the couple left before he was able to grab their attention.

However, Mike knew the striking images were too breathtaking not to share with the couple. He posted one of them on Instagram, asking his followers if they could help him identify the couple in the shot. The image quickly went viral, with almost 1,000 people commenting.

Days later, Mike was contacted by Taylor McCutchan, who photographed the couple's Yosemite wedding along with Derek Copenhaver. Taylor helped Mike contact bride Catherine Mack and groom Rick Donald, both Australian actors.

"She was laughing and happy about the photo and the whole story and loved it," Mike told the New York Times. "She didn't know how big exactly the story had become."

After identifying the couple Mike posted on Instagram again to share the news. "I'll be sending them a few photos later this week for their own personal use," he explained. "Congratulations again to Catherine and Rick and I hope you two have an amazing honeymoon!"

Download the free Country Living Now app to stay up-to-date on the latest country decor, craft ideas, comfort food recipes, and more.

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From Popular Mechanics

When tropical storm Hermine was working its way up to Virginia, the Air Force realized it needed to do something to guard F-22 Raptors from the harsh weather conditions. That's when they called NASA.

Fortunately, the local Air Force base is located fairly close to NASA's Langley Research Center, and its hangar was made to handle a Category 2 hurricane. The hangar's site manager, Dale Bowser, didn't hesitate. Like a good neighbor he worked to make room for the 13 planes that were coming his way. The hangar was built over 60 years ago, but measures an enormous 85,200 square feet. It took some serious maneuvering, but NASA employees finagled the 22 planes in like puzzle pieces.

Katherine Barnstoff, NASA Langley's media relations specialist, told Wired:

"Even though the hangar in Hampton already had a large visitor-a C-130 from the Wallops Flight Facility on Virginia's Eastern Shore-the hangar was able to carefully sandwich in more than a dozen Air Force fighters and offer them the protection of our hurricane-rated facility," says Katherine Barnstoff, NASA Langley's media relations specialist.

By the time Hermine reached Hampton it had calmed down to just a tropical storm and never went past a Category 1 hurricane. Still, the Air Force and NASA were both happy to have worked together. They even went to Twitter to let the world know how they felt about each other, and it was pretty sweet.

Happy to help out our neighbors! Your fighters look mighty nice in our hangar. Let's all be safe this weekend. https://t.co/5mfk8iHR4m - NASA_Langley (@NASA_Langley) September 2, 2016

Source: Wired

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(Adds quotes from scientists, updates with spacecraft's release)

By Irene Klotz

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., Sept 8 (Reuters) - An Atlas 5 rocket blasted off from Florida on Thursday carrying a robot space probe on NASA's first quest to collect samples from an asteroid and return them to Earth in hopes of learning more about the origins of life.

The 19-story rocket, built and flown for NASA by United Launch Alliance, lifted off at 7:05 p.m. (2305 GMT) from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, hurling the satellite explorer Osiris-Rex on its voyage to the near-Earth asteroid Bennu.

The 3,300-pound (1,500-kg) solar-powered probe separated from the rocket's upper stage an hour after blastoff, soaring into space at 22,000 mph (35,400 kph) - more than 28 times the speed of sound - to begin its $1 billion, seven-year mission.

It will take Osiris-Rex two years to reach its destination, a dark, rocky mass roughly a third of a mile wide and shaped like a giant acorn orbiting the sun at roughly the same distance as Earth.

Bennu is thought to be covered with organic compounds dating back to the earliest days of the solar system.

"You can think of these asteroids as literally prebiotic chemical factories that were producing building blocks of life 4.5 billion years ago, before Earth formed, before life started here," NASA astrobiologist Daniel Glavin said before launch.

Scientists believe asteroids and comets crashing into early Earth delivered water and organic compounds that seeded the planet for life. Atomic-level analysis of samples from Bennu could help them prove that theory.

Once it settles into orbit around Bennu in 2018, Osiris-Rex will spend up to two more years mapping the asteroid's surface and taking inventory of its chemical and mineral composition.

Scientists will ultimately choose a promising site on Bennu to sample and command Osiris-Rex to fly close enough to extend its robot arm to the asteroid's surface. A sampling container will then release a swirl of nitrogen gas, which will stir up gravel and soil for collection.

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"The more big pieces we can get the better ... they could contain the carbon molecules that we want to see," Jim Garvin, chief scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, said on NASA TV.

After gathering at least 2 ounces (60 grams) of material, Osiris-Rex will fly back to Earth, jettisoning a capsule bearing the asteroid-sample container for a parachute descent and landing in the Utah desert in September 2023.

Only one other spacecraft, Japan's Hayabusa, has previously returned samples from an asteroid to Earth, but it collected less than a milligram of material because of a series of problems. A follow-on mission, Hayabusa 2, is under way, with a return to Earth planned for December 2020.

The U.S. space agency also hopes Osiris-Rex will demonstrate the advanced imaging and mapping techniques needed for future science missions and for upcoming commercial asteroid-mining expeditions.

Although Bennu occupies the same approximate orbital distance from the sun, it poses little threat to Earth. NASA estimates that there is a one-in-2,700 chance that Bennu might hit Earth sometime between 2175 and 2199.

United Launch Alliance is a partnership of Lockheed Martin and Boeing.

(Reporting by Irene Klotz at Cape Canaveral, Fla.; Editing by Steve Gorman and Peter Cooney)
The Toronto Film Festival is The Birth of a Nation director Nate Parker's first time in a festival spotlight since the storm of controversy over details of his college rape trial surfaced this summer. Will the scrutinized TIFF screenings allow his film to finally take center stage - or will it further deepen the controversy?

It's been just eight months since Parker's Nat Turner biopic received a standing ovation before the movie even screened, later selling to Fox Searchlight in a record $17.5 million deal. "It was almost like confirmation that people were ready for this movement, even more so than they were ready for the film," Parker told The Hollywood Reporter that January night. The Cinderella-like Sundance experience seemed to cement the film's fate as an awards frontrunner.

But everything came unglued in August when Parker, who wrote, directed, produced and stars in the film, was interviewed about the 1999 rape case in which he and Penn State friend and Birth co-writer Jean Celestin were accused by a female classmate of rape. The details of the trial (Parker was acquitted and Celestin was found guilty before the conviction was overturned on appeal) and the news that the accuser had committed suicide in 2012 caused many to wonder about Birth's box-office and awards chances as several activists and industry insiders vowed not to see the film.

Read more: Toronto Film Buyers Beware: 'Birth of a Nation' Blowup Casts Shadow on Dealmaking

If the events of the past month had not occurred, TIFF would be a natural next stop for Parker, 36, who was expected to be the main promoter of the film during its promo campaign (including a planned college campus tour) ahead of its Oct. 7 wide release. Instead, the question became whether the film would even remain in the TIFF lineup.

"We think Birth of a Nation tells an important story that's too long been absent from American cinema," TIFF artistic director Cameron Bailey told THR of the festival's decision to keep it on the schedule. "The debate we've witnessed is also an important one, and people will make their own decisions about seeing the film. The great thing about films, though, is that once seen, they belong to each viewer as much as they do to the filmmaker."

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Many awards insiders and publicity experts expected Parker to back out of doing press in Toronto (AFI recently postponed a screening of the film and instead hosted a conversation about campus sexual-assault issues). While Fox Searchlight has canceled several interviews at news outlets' lounges in Toronto, citing time constraints, the distributor has booked Parker and his cast for a full day of TV interviews Sept. 10 and a news conference the following day.

Searchlight may be banking on the fact that TIFF audiences have a reputation for being friendly (there's rarely booing, like in Cannes), and some insiders say an especially warm reception could put the film back on track. But several top publicists not involved with Birth who spoke to THR believe it will take more than strong applause for the spotlight to move away from Parker's past, especially if he continues to do interviews on the subject.

Read more: Nate Parker's Path to Forgiveness  How 'The Birth of a Nation' Can Survive a Rape Trial Scandal

"Before this happened, I think the film was a rousing celebration because everyone wanted to correct the past mistakes," says one seasoned rep, referring to the furor about the lack of nonwhite Oscar acting nominees the past two years. "But now the film is tainted, and I'm not sure he can come back from this."

It remains to be seen if Parker will participate in an on-stage Q&A session that traditionally follows TIFF screenings (Birth screens at 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. on Sept. 9). Even a single heckler would be disastrous for the film, given the international media and other tastemakers in attendance. No activist group has announced any planned protests of the film or Parker at TIFF. Even the Women's Law Project - which represented Parker's Penn State accuser in her complaint against how the university handled her harassment after reporting the alleged assault (resulting in a settlement of $17,500) - tells THR they would "not personally support a boycott" of Parker's film.

"While we have compassion for sexual-assault survivors and advocates who choose to not see the film, we do not personally support a boycott of Birth of a Nation," says executive director Carol E. Tracy. "We don't believe that protesting a film that encourages dialogue about slavery and racial justice will result in a deeper analysis of sexual violence. To make progress, we need to explore both of these problems and the many ways they are intertwined - in history, in media and in the criminal justice system."

Read more: 'The Birth of a Nation' Actress Gabrielle Union Says Nate Parker Controversy Has Caused "Stomach-Churning Confusion"

One group waiting to see how the drama is received at TIFF is the Vancouver Film Festival, which runs Sept. 29 to Oct. 14. Parker is expected to attend to introduce his film, but executive director Jacqueline Dupuis tells THR the festival is holding off until after TIFF to determine how it will manage the audience in Vancouver.

"After we see what happens at Toronto, we'll have more of an idea of what we might be dealing with," says Dupuis. "For now, we just hope that audiences will come out and enjoy it and express their opinions and beliefs. And if they don't enjoy it, we hope they'll do the same."
With Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton each calling the other unqualified to be commander in chief, WSJ national politics editor Aaron Zitner explains why national security has become a front-and-center issue again on the campaign trail. Photo: AP
Navistar International Corporation NAV reported third-quarter (ended Jul 31, 2016) fiscal 2016 adjusted loss of 13 cents per share, compared with adjusted loss of 19 cents per share recorded in the year-ago quarter. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the reported quarter was of a profit of 12 cents per share. Results benefited from continued progress in business operations and initiatives to effectively manage costs.

Including non-recurring items, net loss amounted to $34 million or 42 cents per share, compared to a net loss of $28 million or 34 cents per share in the third quarter of fiscal 2015.

Navistars revenues fell 18% year over year to $2.09 billion in the reported quarter, missing the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $2.15 billion. The decline resulted from lower chargeouts in the company's core markets due to sluggish industry conditions.

NAVISTAR INTL Price, Consensus and EPS Surprise

NAVISTAR INTL Price, Consensus and EPS Surprise | NAVISTAR INTL Quote

Segment Details

Revenues at Navistars Truck segment decreased 24% year over year to $1.4 billion. The decline was due to lower core truck and export truck volumes, the adverse impact of a shift in product mix in core markets, and lower used truck revenue. The segment recorded a loss from continuing operations of $54 million, considerably wider than a loss of $36 million in the prior-year quarter. This deterioration was due to higher adjustments to pre-existing warranty and lower used truck margins, which offset the lower structural cost and product costs, improved purchasing costs and better product mix.

Revenues at Navistars Parts segment dropped 4% year over year to $647 million in the reported quarter due to lower volumes. The segment registered a profit of $152 million, in line with the figure recorded in the year-ago period. Margin improvements in the U.S. and cost-reduction initiatives were offset by unfavorable movements in foreign currency exchange rates.

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Revenues at Navistars Global Operations segment plunged 22% to $85 million. The decline resulted from a downturn in South America engine operations due to lower volumes. The segment recorded a loss of $5 million in the quarter, narrower than a loss of $26 million a year ago. The year-over-year change was primarily due to lower manufacturing and structural costs.

Revenues at Navistars Financial Services segment dropped 4.8% to $60 million from $63 million a year ago. The segment registered a profit of $26 million, in line with the third quarter of fiscal 2015. Gains from operating lease early terminations, decreases in the provisions for loan losses in Mexico and ongoing cost reduction initiatives were offset by an increase in interest expense, decrease in revenues and the unfavorable movement in foreign currency exchange rates.

Financial Position

Navistar had cash and cash equivalents of $547 million as of Jul 31, 2016, down from $912 million as of Oct 31, 2015. As of Jul 31, 2016, notes payable and long-term debt was $5.1 billion compared to $5.3 billion as of Oct 31, 2015.

Net cash used in operations totaled $14 million in the first nine months of fiscal 2016, unchanged from the year-ago period. Capital expenditure was $83 million, up from $72 million in the comparable year-ago period.

Guidance

Navistar projects Class 68 retail deliveries in the U.S. and Canada in the range of 330,000360,000 units for fiscal 2016. Class 8 deliveries should be in the range of 220,000250,000 units, down from 279,000 units in fiscal 2015. Sales volume of the medium, school bus and severe service segments are expected to improve.

Revenues are anticipated in the band of $8.2$8.6 billion for fiscal 2016. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be $550$600 million. Manufacturing cash at the end of fiscal 2016 is estimated to be $800 million.

Class 6 and 7 medium-duty truck and bus industry volumes are expected to remain strong in fiscal 2017. However, Class 8 industry volumes are likely to decline marginally.

Navistar manufactures and sells commercial trucks, mid-range diesel engines, buses, military vehicles, and chassis for motor homes and step-vans. It also provides service parts for trucks and diesel engines.

Zacks Rank

Currently, Navistar carries a Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell). Some better-ranked automobile stocks include Spartan Motors Inc. SPAR, Superior Industries International, Inc. SUP and Cooper-Standard Holdings Inc. CPS. All the three stocks sport a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy).You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

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PM offers Rs 700k succour to kins of deceased migrants

Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal on Thursday announced to increase the compensation amount being provided by the state to the families of migrant workers who die in labour destinations, from the existing Rs 300,000 to Rs 700,000.
Despite Matt Lauer's panned performance as moderator of the Commander-in-Chief Forum on Sept. 7, NBC News chairman Andrew Lack praised the anchor in an email sent to staff on Friday afternoon. He noted that Lauer's questioning of Donald Trump, which drew fire from Clinton surrogates as well as many in the media for being soft, had made news.

"Every major paper and news broadcast around the world has led with headlines about Putin, Iraq, ISIS, and intelligence briefings," wrote Lack.

And it is true that Lauer's questions elicited some headline-grabbing statements from Trump. But he was also forcefully criticized for not asking Trump about his criticism of the family of slain Army soldier Humayun Khan, a Muslim who died fighting in Iraq, Trump's deferments during Vietnam and failing to challenge the candidate on his widely debunked assertion that he was against the War in Iraq from the beginning.

It is the first response
Despite Matt Lauer's panned performance as moderator of the Commander-In-Chief Forum on Sept. 7, NBC News chairman Andrew Lack had praise for the anchor in an email sent to staff on Friday afternoon. He noted that Lauer's questioning of Donald Trump, which drew fire from Clinton surrogates as well as many in the media for being soft, had made news.

"Every major paper and news broadcast around the world has led with headlines about Putin, Iraq, ISIS, and intelligence briefings," wrote Lack.

And it is true that Lauer's questions elicited some headline-grabbing statements from Trump. But he was also forcefully criticized for not asking Trump about his criticism of the family of slain Army soldier Humayun Khan, a Muslim who died fighting in Iraq, Trump's deferments during Vietnam and failing to challenge the candidate on his widely debunked assertion that he was against the War in Iraq from the beginning.

It is the first response from the network since social media erupted in a cascade of brickbats popularizing the hashtag LaueringTheBar. And it comes as Lauer's colleague Lester Holt is preparing to moderate the first presidential debate on Sept. 26.

The full note:

Dear Colleagues,

Before this week comes to an end, I wanted to take just a moment to share how proud I am of all the work our teams produced together this week. After a summer of success at the Conventions and the Olympics, we broke more new ground Wednesday night with the first ever Commander-in-Chief Forum.

Against all odds we were able to bring the two presidential nominees together for the first time and presented an important examination of what each would bring to the role of Commander-in-Chief. Because of our event, national security has dominated the news cycle for days. Every major paper and news broadcast around the world has led with headlines about Putin, Iraq, ISIS, and intelligence briefings. Matt did a tremendous job - driving one of the most serious discussions to date on these topics. Nearly 15 million people watched the event, and over 26 million tuned in at some point during the hour.

Story continues

My deepest thanks to everyone who helped pull off this remarkable achievement.

Have a wonderful weekend!

With much respect and affection,

Andy
Mecca (Saudi Arabia) (AFP) - Nearly 1.5 million pilgrims have converged on western Saudi Arabia for the annual hajj where new measures aim to prevent a recurrence of last year's stampede which killed around 2,300.

The stampede legacy has contributed to renewed tensions between Saudi Arabia and its regional rival Iran, which is not sending pilgrims for the first time in nearly three decades.

While the main rites of the six-day event begin on Saturday, pilgrims have already been swirling around the holy Kaaba at the Grand Mosque in Mecca, a procession that continues day and night.

It is one of the first rites of the pilgrimage, which is among the largest religious gatherings in the world.

The hajj is one of the five pillars of Islam, which capable Muslims must perform at least once, marking the spiritual peak of their lives.

Rich and poor alike come dressed in the same white garments.

"We don't come here with fear in our hearts," said Naouri Abdelkarim, 50, of Casablanca, Morocco.

Death can come at any time, pilgrims say, and for Lawan Nasir, 45, that meant there was no reason to avoid the hajj even though he lost a cousin in last year's stampede.

"The pains have not dulled a bit," but it would be "silly" to stay away, the Nigerian told AFP.

In one of several safety measures implemented after the stampede, access to the Kaaba is suspended during prayers, and the walk around it is stopped to avoid overcrowding.

The Kaaba is a black cubic structure that Muslims across the globe face while they pray.

Security has also been reinforced around Islam's holiest site, where officers in red berets and camouflage uniforms man green plastic barricades to control the crowd.

During the main weekly Friday prayers, the white-clad throng made the area around the Kaaba resemble a snow-dusted field from above.

Worshippers overflowed into surrounding streets shut to allow access for hundreds of thousands of people as a helicopter monitored the scene.

Story continues

Pilgrims have also been told to follow the rules.

"They said not to stray from our group, not to linger when buses arrive and depart, and to properly respect the designated routes," said Rasha Mohammed, 36, of Alexandria, Egypt.

With temperatures of 43 Celsius (109 Fahrenheit) as they marched, some pilgrims seemed faint. They carried water and tried to help each other under the unyielding sun.

- 'Absence of transparency' -

The kingdom has begun issuing pilgrims with identification bracelets, after some foreign officials expressed concern about difficulties in identifying the stampede dead.

Each bracelet carries a bar code readable by smartphone. It holds data including the pilgrim's identity, nationality, and place of lodging in Mecca, the vice secretary of the ministry of hajj and umrah, Issa Rawas, told AFP.

He said: "The aim is to equip all pilgrims" from abroad, who are expected to number more than 1.4 million, according to the latest official figures.

The rest of the numbers will be made up of people from inside Saudi Arabia.

Zakou Bakar, 50, a pilgrim from Niger, said the bracelet was reassuring.

"If I die or if there are problems -- of course we hope not -- but if it does happen I know I will be identified," he told AFP.

Despite the Saudi steps, the head of Iran's Hajj Organisation, Said Ohadi, on Friday asked how the kingdom could invite the world's Muslims and not allow questions about the security measures to be raised.

Absent from this year's hajj are tens of thousands of Iranians after talks between Tehran and Riyadh on logistics and security fell apart in May.

Thousands of people in Tehran on Friday protested their country's absence from the pilgrimage.

Iran said 464 nationals died in last year's crush, the highest number of fatalities reported by any country.

Jane Kinninmont, deputy head of the Middle East and North Africa programme at Chatham House, a London think tank, said the stampede exposed "clearly some big organisational failings, to say the least".

There was also "an absence of real transparency" about what went wrong, she said.

Saudi Arabia has an economic stake in ensuring pilgrims' comfort and safety.

As part of efforts to diversify its oil-dependent economy, the kingdom wants to foster a year-round religious tourism sector relying on millions who perform the umrah, or lesser pilgrimage.
It's that time of year!

The leaves are starting to turn, the air is getting crisp, and kids are boarding yellow buses, looking sharp, ready to get another year of education!

This is even true in Hollywood (except for the weather, which is pretty much the same), where lots of celebrity parents have been getting their kids ready for the new school year, and sharing pics of their adorable first day outfits!

Here are 8 of the sweetest celebrity kid 2016 back-to-school snaps.

WATCH: Tim McGraw and Faith Hill's Daughters Are All Grown Up

1. Neil Patrick Harris kids -- Harper Scott and Gideon Grace, 5

Kindergarten fits these two well. #firstdayofschool A photo posted by Neil Patrick Harris (@nph) on Sep 8, 2016 at 6:04am PDT

OMG!

The How I Met Your Mother stars twins had an absolutely legen.... wait for it... DARY look for their first day of kindergarten.

"Kindergarten fits these two well. #firstdayofschool," the 43-year-old actor captionded the pic.

2. Justin Bieber's little brother -- Jaxon, 6

Jaxon was looking just like a little Justin in this pic his dad, Jeremy Bieber shared to Twitter on Tuesday, writing, "Jaxons first day look. ##school."

Also, very fitting that the future Bieber was rocking a shirt that literally says, "The Future."

Watch out Justin! Jaxon could be coming for your pop throne.

WATCH: Tim McGraw Performs Sweet Duet With 18-Year-Old Daughter Gracie

3. Kate Beckinsale's daughter -- Lily, 17

First first day of school/last first day of school. Love you so much @lily_beckinsale  A photo posted by Kate Beckinsale (@katebeckinsale) on Aug 29, 2016 at 1:50pm PDT

Last first day...

Story continues

Kate shared this sentimental throwback split of Lily on her "first" first and "last" first days of school, writing, "First first day of school/last first day of school. Love you so much."

4. Kelly Ripa's youngest kids -- Lola, 15 and Joaquin, 13

First day of 8th and 10th grade! So far so good. #backtoschool A photo posted by Kelly Ripa (@kellyripa) on Sep 8, 2016 at 5:02am PDT

They grow up so fast...

Kelly Ripa's kids looked ready to learn in a sweet shot the Live! With Kelly host shared on Thursday, writing, "First day of 8th and 10th grade! So far so good. #backtoschool."

WATCH: Neil Patrick Harris' Cute Kids Have a Morning Routine and It's Beyond Adorable

5. Nick and Vanessa Lachey's son -- Camden, 4

#RockOn Preschool! Love you, Buddy!  A photo posted by Vanessa Lachey (@vanessalachey) on Sep 7, 2016 at 12:04pm PDT

Well, Camden is so much cooler than we ever were.

The couple's son had his fist raised and a stylish polka dot button down for his first day, which Vanessa captured, writing, "#RockOn Preschool! Love you, Buddy!"

6. Tori Spelling's oldest kids -- Liam, 9 and Stella, 8

#firstdayofschool for my 2 oldest babes! Can't believe my Monkey and Buggy are in 4th and 3rd grade... Time flies! #proudmama A photo posted by Tori Spelling (@torispelling) on Sep 6, 2016 at 9:53am PDT

Gotta stick together.

Tori snapped this shot of her kiddos next to each other before heading off to school, writing, "#firstdayofschool for my 2 oldest babes! Can't believe my Monkey and Buggy are in 4th and 3rd grade... Time flies! #proudmama."

7. Tiffani Thiessen's daughter -- Harper, 6

First day of 1st grade! Woo hoo #proudparents #firstgrader #schoolsback #summerover #lovethiskid A photo posted by Tiffani Thiessen (@tiffanithiessen) on Sep 6, 2016 at 10:50am PDT

It's o-fish-al!

Years after she was Saved by the Bell Tiffani's adorable daughter held up this adorable sign while gearing up for first grade.

"First day of 1st grade! Woo hoo #proudparents #firstgrader #schoolsback #summerover #lovethiskid," Tiffani captioned the pic.

NEWS: Neil Patrick Harris Joins His Twins for Tea Time -- See the Adorable Pics!

8. Faith Hill's daughter -- Maggie, 18

Day 1: #BadBlood singalong w/ Maggie on the way to college! @taylorswift A video posted by Faith Hill (@faithhill) on Sep 6, 2016 at 8:57am PDT

Just a couple of Swifties!

The country legend drove her daughter to college this week, and the two passed the time by singing along to Taylor Swift's "Bad Blood."

WATCH: Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos Step Out With Their Adorable Kids -- See the Pic!

We've got to say, Taylor seems like the perfect road trip companion as you embark on the next chapter of your life.

The future's looking bright, and super, super cute!

Make us proud, kids.

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JERUSALEM, (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday said the Palestinians wanted to form a state devoid of a Jewish population and termed it "ethnic cleansing", drawing sharp criticism from the United States. In a video message, Netanyahu said in reference to the removal of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, "The Palestinian leadership actually demands a Palestinian state with one pre-condition: No Jews. There's a phrase for that: It's called ethnic cleansing. And this demand is outrageous." Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has stated that a future Palestinian state would not permit a single Israeli settler to live within its borders. After viewing the video clip that was circulated on social media, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau said at a briefing in Washington that the Israeli leader's words were "inappropriate and unhelpful." We obviously strongly disagree with the characterization that those who oppose settlement activity or view it as an obstacle to peace are somehow calling for ethnic cleansing of Jews from the West Bank. We believe that using that type of terminology is inappropriate and unhelpful, she said. Most countries view Israeli West Bank settlements as illegal and an obstacle to peace. Israel rejects this, saying Jews have been living in the territory for thousands of years. The Palestinians hope to establish an independent state in the occupied West Bank, which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war, along with the Hamas-controled Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem as its capital. Trudeau added in her briefing that the United States feels the settlement policy raises "real questions about Israel's long-term intentions in the West Bank." Last week, after Israel approved the building of 284 new housing units in West Bank settlements, the United States said the policies could expand settlements in a "potentially unlimited way." U.S. officials said the criticism from the U.S. State Department marked the first time it has suggested in public that Israel may be moving towards unlimited settlement expansion on land the Palestinians seek for their state. The U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the latest language was unusually strong but reflected a change in tone rather than any major shift in U.S. policy. (Writing by Ori Lewis; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
In the vein of hit documentary series, "Making a Murderer," Netflix has released the trailers of its latest whodunit story -- a documentary on Amanda Knox.

"Amanda Knox" looks at the Seattle native's role in the murder of her British roommate Meredith Kercher while the two were students in Italy in 2007. The highly mediatized case divided the globe, with some saying Knox was an innocent student in the wrong place at the wrong time, and others calling her a cold-blooded killer.

Netflix has released two trailers -- "Suspect Her" and "Believe Her" -- to let viewers decide for themselves about Knox's involvement in the case.

The series will launch globally on September 30.
Matt Lauers performance as moderator of the Commander-in-Chief Forum was skewered by political analysts Wednesday night. On Thursday, the late night hosts took their own turn.

I dont know what the fk he was doing, and neither did he, Trevor Noah said. Because with just 30 minutes to ask Hillary [Clinton] about her national security strategy, he spent one-third of the time digging through her inbox.

Noah echoed critics who said Lauer completely mismanaged his time, made evident when he asked the Democratic presidential candidate to summarize her strategy to combat ISIS as briefly as you can. Things only got worse from there, according to the Daily Show host.

If he wasnt good with Hillary Clinton, he was terrible when handling Trump, Noah bemoaned. He just let Trump get away with blatant lies, referencing the Republican candidates changing stances on the Iraq War. Watch the video below.

Stephen Colbert also took jabs at Lauer on the Late Show.

During his monologue, Colbert called out the same things analysts and Noah did: Lauers overemphasis on Clintons emails and lack of follow-up on Trumps responses.

After airing a montage of Lauer hurrying and cutting off Clinton, Colbert mocked Lauer. Sorry Secretary Clinton, foreign policy is like pizza delivery. If you cant get your plan out in 30 seconds or less, Russia gets a free Ukraine.

Twitter agreed with both hosts, with the hashtag #Laueringthebar trending after the televised town hall. Lauer has not commented further on his performance.

The first presidential debate, moderated by Lester Holt, is scheduled for September 26.

Related stories

Matt Lauer Gets Pummeled Over His Questions, or Lack Thereof, at Commander-in-Chief Forum

Univision Chief Asks for Hispanic Moderator to Be Added to Trump-Clinton Debates

Stephen Colbert Dubs Donald Trump's 'Softening' on Immigration 'Electile Dysfunction'
Subedi is Nepals envoy to UK

Durga Bahadur Subedi, the joint secretary at Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has been appointed the countrys ambassador to the United Kingdom.
DETROIT (Reuters) - Nissan Motor Co is recalling about 134,000 late-model cars, mainly in the United States and Canada, because a fluid leak in the braking system could lead to a fire, the company and U.S. regulators said on Friday.

No one has been injured due to the potential defect but several incidents were reported to Nissan of "thermal damage" to vehicles that could include some fires, a Nissan spokesman said.

Models involved are certain 2016-2017 Maxima sedans, 2015-2017 Murano SUVs, and 2015-2016 Murano Hybrid SUVs.

Drivers are advised that if they notice the anti-lock brake system (ABS) warning light on the dashboard illuminated, they should stop driving the car immediately, park it outside, and call Nissan and a tow truck will be summoned to bring the vehicle to a dealership for inspection, a Nissan spokesman said.

"A brake fluid leak onto the circuit board will result in an electrical short, increasing the risk of a fire," said a report posted on Friday by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Nissan told NHTSA that the issue of possibly defective seals stems from a third-tier supplier.

About 120,000 of the vehicles to be recalled are registered in the United States, about 11,000 in Canada and the remainder in a handful of international markets, Nissan said.

Nissan will replace parts of the braking system if upon inspection the parts are found to be defective, the company said.

(Reporting by Bernie Woodall in Detroit; Editing by Frances Kerry)
The first day of classes can bring anxiety for any returning student, but at one Texas middle school, there are many ways to have a good time.

Richland Middle School principal James Whitfield led his faculty and staff in a rousing rendition of The Village Peoples hit "YMCA" August 22 to shake off any jitters the students may have had on the first day.

Read: With Honors: 6 Graduation Stories That Will Inspire You for the New School Year

Whitfield wore a smile on his face as he high-fived students upon their arrival.

The "YMCA" can be heard in the background and Whitfield led the famous dance from the disco-era with his colleagues.

One student even got so excited that he started poppin and lockin as he danced with the staff.

The school posted the clip of the dancing as a Facebook Live video. Since then, it has gained more than 1.2 million views.

Some of the students were not so jazzed to return to school and tried to avoid embarrassment at all costs.

Read: The Epic 12-Song Lip Dub More 2,000 Oklahoma High School Students Made

Whitfield wrote in the comments section of the video: We strive to make RMS a magical place that you all LOVE and want to be at. Each day we all take on meaningful and challenging work, but we want to let it be known that we can attack any challenge with a spirit of family and positivity that will keep us on our path towards greatness!!!

He was certainly off to a good start on Day 1.

Watch: Here Comes the Duck: Bold Bird Crashes Couple's Wedding, Upstaging the Bride

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Washington (AFP) - The Pentagon on Friday said it played no role in the death of the commander of Syria's largest rebel coalition, who was killed in an air strike near Aleppo.

Abu Omar Saraqeb, who led the former Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front, which took on the new name of Fateh al-Sham Front in July, reportedly died when a strike hit a meeting of rebel leaders.

The jihadist Fateh al-Sham is a leading member of the Army of Conquest alliance, which was meeting Thursday night, killing Saraqeb and another rebel commander.

"It was not a US strike," Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said.

"Whatever happened there, it was not something that the US military did."

A US-led coalition is conducting daily strikes in northern Syria, but its focus is on IS and it has steered clear of the carnage unfolding in Aleppo, where Russian and Syrian government forces are battling rebels.

"We don't have any reason to be in Aleppo, it's not a place where ISIS is," Davis said, using an IS acronym.

A US defense official later told AFP that Russia was the "leading suspect" in the strike.
From Woman's Day

On the second floor of Most Excellent Way Life Center, selected residents string beads into jewelry for Same Sky, a nonprofit organization that raises money for female survivors of the Rwandan genocide who are HIV-positive.

Film producer Francine LeFrak started the program in Africa in 2008. Five years later, Jim McGreevey, executive director of the Jersey City Employment and Training Program, asked LeFrak to start a chapter of Same Sky, to provide employment opportunities to underserved women there as well.

Photo credit: Courtesy of Same Sky

LeFrak and her team conceive the designs, then send materials to women in Rwanda and New Jersey, who earn more than the local minimum wage, to assemble and customize the stunning pieces (check them out at samesky.com). All net proceeds are reinvested in employing and training more artisans in Rwanda.

Photo credit: Courtesy of Same Sky

"When you give these women beautiful material to work with, they get creative," says LeFrak.

Many Most Excellent Way residents continue to make jewelry for Same Sky after completing their rehabilitation. Barbara Murray has a simple reason for participating: "I do it out of love."

Photo credit: Lisa Weatherbee

Photo credit: Lisa Weatherbee

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SEOUL (Reuters) - A 5.3 magnitude seismic event in North Korea on Friday, thought to have been the North's fifth nuclear test, would indicate a device with a 20- to 30-kilotonne yield, an analyst said, the largest yield estimate yet of a North Korean nuclear device. "That's the largest DPRK test to date, 20-30kt, at least. Not a happy day," Jeffrey Lewis of the California-based Middlebury Institute of International Studies told Reuters, using the North's official title of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. "Yield estimates are always kind of approximate. The point is that it is the biggest one to date unless they revise the yield downward," he said. Initial analysis of North Korea's January 2016 test estimated a yield of just 6 kilotons. (Reporting by James Pearson; Editing by Paul Tait)
North Korea conducted a fifth nuclear test on Friday, an underground blast it claimed was of a miniaturised warhead.

Here are some key questions around the blast and the isolated state's nuclear programme.

What do we know so far?

Seismologists detected a powerful artificial earthquake at 0030 GMT Friday, which they said was centred around Punggye-ri, North Korea's nuclear test site.

South Korea said the quake was caused by a nuclear device, with a yield of 10 kilotons -- the most powerful of Pyongyang's five nuclear tests to date.

Pyongyang hailed the "successful" test of a home-grown nuclear warhead -- a miniaturised device -- and claimed it represented a major step forward in its ability to launch missile-mounted nuclear strikes.

Why have they carried out another test?

The North Korean leadership says a credible nuclear deterrent is critical to the nation's survival, claiming it is under constant threat from an aggressive United States.

Although it has regularly threatened neighbouring South Korea, its main priority is developing a effective strike threat against the US mainland.

It has always insisted it will continue testing, ignoring global condemnation and toughened UN sanctions.

Its first nuclear test was in 2006. That was followed by one in 2009 and another in 2013. The most recent test was in January this year.

Experts say the tests are likely aimed at refining designs and reliability as well as increasing yield.

Outside monitors will analyse the yield from Friday's test to try and determine whether it signals any breakthrough.

How advanced is North Korea's weapons programme?

The four previous confirmed tests resulted in artificial quakes of increasing size. Friday's quake followed that pattern, registering at 5.3 magnitude.

Seoul said the 10-kiloton yield was the "most powerful to date".

The bomb that destroyed Hiroshima had a yield of 15 kilotons, and the most powerful nuclear test ever was a Russian blast in 1961 with an estimated yield of 50,000 kilotons.

Story continues

Pyongyang claims its January test was of a miniaturised hydrogen bomb, which has the potential to be far more powerful than other nuclear devices.

However, scientists say the six-kiloton yield was far too low for a thermonuclear device.

There was similar scepticism from experts this time around.

"What we can tell from the seismic waves so far is that this is likely not a thermonuclear test," said Jenny Town, managing editor of 38 North, a website focusing North Korea.

"We are still in the preliminary stages but our analysts believe they tested a basic nuclear device not an advanced device."

Was it a miniaturised warhead?

The claim of miniaturisation is a significant worry for the international community, especially in the light of an apparently stepped-up missile testing programme over recent months and years.

If Pyongyang can make a nuclear device small enough to fit on a warhead, and can bolster the range and accuracy of its missiles, it might one day achieve its oft-stated aim of hitting US targets.

Melissa Hanham, a North Korea expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, said it was not possible from seismic data to tell if it was a warhead.

"We would need to see it tested on a missile like China did in the 1960s. Nobody wants to see that. There is no way they could do that test in a safe way, and it could easily start a war."

But, she warned, if the claim turns out to be true "they can threaten not just their neighbours but the US as well. There is no upside to this scenario. No way to sugarcoat it."

How will the international community react?

The test drew swift condemnation from the US and its regional allies South Korea and Japan, as well as calls for yet more sanctions from the United Nations Security Council.

Beijing also condemned the test and called for a resumption of the long-stalled six-party talks aimed at ending Pyongyang's nuclear programme.

Beijing has been North Korea's main diplomatic supporter and protector for decades, shielding its errant ally from harsh international action.

But its patience is running thin. It strongly opposes Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions, which it sees as a source of instability.

China's seeming inability to rein in Kim Jong-Un is increasingly embarrassing for Beijing: the North's latest missile tests this week came as China was hosting a G20 summit.

However, Beijing's problem is that while it wants Pyongyang to stop causing trouble, it is desperate to avoid anything that might imperil the stability of the regime.

Its nightmare scenario is that if the regime collapses, millions of hungry North Koreans might flood over its border -- and Washington-allied South would take over, meaning US troops could be stationed right on the Chinese border.
North Korea conducted a fifth nuclear test on Friday, an underground blast that Seoul quickly labelled its "most powerful to date".

Here are some key questions around the blast and the isolated state's nuclear programme.

What do we know so far?

Seismologists detected a powerful artificial earthquake at 0030 GMT Friday, which they said was centred around Punggye-ri, North Korea's nuclear test site.

South Korea says it believes the quake was caused by the testing of a nuclear device, with a yield of 10 kilotons. That would make it the most powerful of Pyongyang's five nuclear tests to date.

Why have they carried out another test?

The North Korean leadership says a credible nuclear deterrent is critical to the nation's survival, claiming it is under constant threat from an aggressive United States.

Although it has regularly threatened neighbouring South Korea, its main priority is developing a effective strike threat against the US mainland.

It has always insisted it will continue testing, ignoring global condemnation and toughened UN sanctions.

Its first nuclear test was in 2006. That was followed by one in 2009 and another in 2013. The most recent test was in January this year.

Experts say the tests are likely aimed at refining designs and reliability as well as increasing yield.

Outside monitors will analyse the yield from Friday's test to try to determine whether it signals any fresh breakthrough.

How advanced is North Korea's weapons programme?

The four confirmed tests so far have resulted in artificial quakes of increasing size. Friday's quake followed that pattern, registering 5.3 magnitude.

Seoul said the 10-kiloton yield was the "most powerful to date".

The bomb that destroyed Hiroshima had a yield of 15 kilotons, and the most powerful nuclear test ever was a Russian blast in 1961 with an estimated yield of 50,000 kilotons.

Pyongyang claims its January test was of a miniaturised hydrogen bomb, which has the potential to be far more powerful than other nuclear devices.

Story continues

However, scientists say the six-kiloton yield was far too low for a thermonuclear device.

But experts caution Pyongyang is clearly making progress -- regardless of whether or not it has mastered hydrogen bomb technology.

"With each test they can learn a lot," atomic scientist Siegfried Hecker said in January.

The claim of miniaturisation is a significant worry for the international community, especially in the light of an apparently stepped-up missile testing programme over recent months and years.

If Pyongyang can make a nuclear device small enough to fit on a warhead, and can bolster the range and accuracy of its missiles, it might one day achieve its oft-stated aim of hitting US targets.

How will the international community react?

Condemnation from the United States and its allies will likely be swift and sharp, and will almost certainly include calls for action from the United Nations Security Council.

However, the world will be watching most keenly for what China does.

Beijing has been North Korea's main diplomatic supporter and protector for decades, shielding its errant ally from harsh international action.

But its patience is running thin. It strongly opposes Pyongyang's nuclear programme, which it sees as a source of instability.

And China's seeming inability to rein in Kim Jong-Un is increasingly embarrassing for Beijing: the North's latest missile tests this week came as China was hosting a G20 summit.

However, Beijing's problem is that while it wants Pyongyang to stop causing trouble, it is desperate to avoid anything that might imperil the stability of the regime.

Its nightmare scenario is that if the regime collapses, millions of hungry North Koreans might flood over its border -- and the US-allied South would take over, meaning American troops could be stationed right on the Chinese border.
Treatment of scrub typhus to be free

The treatment of 'Scrub Typhus' will be cost-free in government run hospitals of Chitwan after 200 treatment kits were made available for the Bharatpur Hospital by Epidemiology and Communicable Disease Control Division.
Https%3a%2f%2fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2fuploads%2fstory%2fthumbnail%2f20300%2fscreen_shot_2016-09-09_at_1.28.38_pm

When you think Tupac Shakur, burgers might not be the first thing that pops into your mind.

But it turns out, a California Love Burger chowed down with friends and family might have been just what he would have liked all along.

On Sept. 13, Powamekka Cafe will be the place Tupak would have done that. The Fresno pop-up restaurant is set to honor 2pac with a host of dishes inspired by his lyrics and life.

SEE ALSO: Justin Bieber covers Tracy Chapman and 2Pac because he contains multitudes

Before he died, Tupac had plans to open a restaurant with the same name.

The name "Powamekka" derives from the words "power" and "mecca," and in recovered documents that were on exhibition last year, the rapper described it as "a passionate paradise 4 people with power 2 play and parlay."

The pop-up at Fulton Malls, which will also feature musicians performing tributes to the late rapper, is possible because of a partnership between Take 3 Burgers and Sam Hansen, who is behind marketing for the Fresno Grizzlies.

According to an interview with the Fresno Bee, Hansen had worked with other rap artists like Kanye West and was inspired to use the idea of Powamekka to help see Tupac's vision come to life.

The branding comes directly from a sketch by Tupac, ankh symbol and all. The elements he left in those sketches, you can see what he was going for, Hansen told the publication. A lot of people forget that he was profoundly poetic and had a deep connection to those Afro-centric elements."

Tupac Shakur left behind detailed sketches and notes for the logo and menu of the restaurant he planned on opening before his death. Pac's vision becomes a reality on September, 13th. @take3burgers #powamekkacafe *you can zoom in on IG now. A photo posted by Buildestroy (@ftkconstruction) on Sep 5, 2016 at 10:08am PDT

The California Love burger is on the menu, as well as Hennessy Apple Butter chicken wings, a Mac-and-Cheese Burger and Thug Passion cake pops, according to reports. California Love and Hennessy are both Tupac song titles, and Thug Passion takes a clever play on the classic track "Thug Mansion."

Story continues

#powamekkacafe A photo posted by Take 3 (@take3burgers) on Sep 8, 2016 at 7:18pm PDT

According to The Business Journal, Take 3 Burgers and Hansen previously collaborated on another rapper-food tribute for Notorious B.I.G. with a breakfast that included t-bone steak, cheese eggs and Welch's grapeall inspired by the lyrics to "Big Poppa.

Mashable has reached out to Take 3 Burgers and Hansen for further comment.
The New York Stock Exchange held a moment of silence before the opening bell on Friday, September 9, to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks. One ring of the bell was sounded to mark the start of a one-minute moment of silence, followed by another clang of the bell.

Following the moment of silence, the group behind the 9/11 National Day of Service and Remembrance rang the opening bell. The group encourages people to do good deeds and help those in need to commemorate the September 11 anniversary each year.

Sunday marks 15 years since the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington. A fourth airplane, United Airlines Flight 93, crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers thwarted that part of Al-Qaedas attack. The NYPD will hold a memorial march on Friday, and a service will be held at the memorial on Sunday. President Barack Obama will attend the service at the Pentagon on Sunday. Credit: Facebook/New York Stock Exchange
New York Fashion Week really got going Thursday with the opening of the official venues, and a full slate of shows beginning with the budding Newport Beach-based label Brock, which is among the nominees for this year's CFDA Vogue Fashion Fund Awards, and ending with Thakoon's first ever 'see now, buy now' outing.

Here are my takeaways from Day 2.

Tom Ford's Nocturnal Animals Left Me In Knots

At 2 p.m., I caught a screening of Tom Ford's upcoming film, Nocturnal Animals at Soho House. Ford hosted editors from Vogue, the New York Times and other publications at two screenings throughout the day, and pal Julianne Moore even stopped by to take in the film.

"I'm not going to say much because I believe films should speak for themselves," the designer/director told the small group beforehand. "But I hope you enjoy it, I'm very proud of it."

Read more: Everything That Happened at Tom Ford's Star-Studded Fashion Show

Ford being Ford, Noctural Animals, like 2009's A Single Man, is hyper stylized. Amy Adams' slick wardrobe of perfect pencil skirts and killer heels is something to behold, and very Tom Ford, even though the costume designer is Arianne Phillips and Ford told me earlier in the week not one piece of his branded clothing is in the film. "I want to be taken seriously as a filmmaker," he said. "This is not an ad for Tom Ford."

Interestingly, Alessandro Michele at Gucci, the label Ford helped to revive the first go-around, was one of dozens of luxury brands thanked in the end credits. Adams plays an art dealer and there's also a staggering number of artworks credited--by Mark Bradford, Jeff Koons and the like.

In this week's cover story, Ford told THR that Nocturnal Animals is about, "the world of absurd rich [people], the hollowness and emptiness I perceive in our culture." It is. But beneath the surface, it's also full of edge-of-your-seat tension and violence--a West Texas nightmare that stirs up thoughts about bullying, self-blame and remorse. There had to be a lot of personal stuff in there, and Ford, who wrote the script, was brave to let it all hang out. It's not perfect, but it still left me in knots.

Story continues

Creatures of the Wind Channeled David Lynch

Earlier in the day, I caught the collection by New York Fashion Week's reigning masters of quirk, Shane Gabier and Chris Peters. Their label Creatures of the Wind is a favorite with Lena Dunham, Elle Fanning and other Hollywood stars who like to go their own way.

The designers tapped David Lynch muse Julee Cruise, who famously sang the "Falling" theme song to Twin Peaks, to perform at their runway show and set the mood for their wonderfully weird collection of rockabilly-tinged suits and asymmetrical dresses, embellished with a patch of crystal embroidered lace here and there, and OpArty metallic coats and rocker boots. "Music is so tied to atmosphere, in the development of our collections, we're always thinking about the sound," Gabier said backstage. (He and his partner were out in L.A. last month to launch a denim collab at Just One Eye in Hollywood.)

David Lynch muse Julee Cruise serenading us @CreaturesOTW #NYFW pic.twitter.com/qYVGpGi9Xh

- @Booth (@Booth) September 8, 2016

Turns out, it was not Cruise's first fashion show. She sang from a Cadillac on a rotating stage at the Detroit Auto show one year, while models walked a runway around her, she told me.

"But I think this may be the last time I sing," she said, dressed in a silvery dress and boots by COTW. "I'd like to do theater," Cruise added. "Where you make the real money."

Thakoon Tried On See Now, Buy Now

I watched the sunset underneath the Brooklyn Bridge, taking in Thakoon Panichgul's first 'see now, buy now' show, which was full of snuggly, fall season capes, chunky knits and wooly side-slit miniskirts bursting with ruffles, that you can purchase at his new Soho store now (never mind that Manhattan in September is still stiflingly hot, that's a problem for another day). Thakoon, who has dressed Michelle Obama, Emma Roberts and many others, has given up wholesaling and taken his business vertical, with the help of a new backer, and he came out strong. I hope it works for him. He'll be dropping new merchandise deliveries every few weeks and selling through his store and online.

Think you might like to buy this @thakoon @nyfw runway look? You CAN! Now. #seenowbuynow pic.twitter.com/mgRgiwxQw0

- @Booth (@Booth) September 8, 2016

Before the show, I bumped into Priyana Chopra and her stylist Cristina Ehrlich. The "Quantico" actress is attending just two shows during New York Fashion Week, Thakoon and Joseph Altuzarra. On Saturday, she heads to L.A. for the lead up to The Emmys.

She loves Thakoon's clothes, she said, but the two really bonded over Pokemon Go.

"I'm on level 21 now," she said. But will she play on the Emmys red carpet? "I could," Chopra answered. "While I wait!"

Priyanka Chopra and @THR power stylist Cristina Ehrlich @thakoon #NYFW pic.twitter.com/oH9NdqZnb6

- @Booth (@Booth) September 8, 2016
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama condemned North Korea's nuclear test on Friday as a "grave threat" to regional security and international peace and said he would work with U.S. partners on new sanctions against Pyongyang. "To be clear, the United States does not, and never will, accept North Korea as a nuclear state," Obama said in a statement, in which he singled out Pyongyang as the only country to have tested nuclear weapons this century. North Korea's launch on Friday of its fifth and biggest nuclear test also drew condemnation from its main ally, China. Pyongyang said it had mastered the ability to mount a warhead on a ballistic missile, ratcheting up a threat the international community has been powerless to contain. Obama said the test was "a grave threat to regional security and to international peace and stability" and "follows an unprecedented campaign of ballistic missile launches." The test was launched on the 68th anniversary of North Korea's founding, and came as Obama returned to Washington from a nine-day trip to Asia. The U.S. president said he had spoken by telephone with the leaders of South Korea and Japan, who agreed to work with other countries "to take additional significant steps, including new sanctions, to demonstrate to North Korea that there are consequences to its unlawful and dangerous actions." Earlier in the week, North Korea fired three ballistic missiles into the sea off its east coast, the South Korean and U.S. militaries said, as the leaders of the Group of 20 major economies held a summit in China. (Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Bernadette Baum)
(Recasts, adds CDC Director Frieden)

By Timothy Gardner and Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON, Sept 9 (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama has invited congressional leaders to the White House on Monday in an attempt to break deadlocks over government spending plans and funding the fight against the Zika virus.

Congress must pass a temporary spending bill by Sept. 30 or much of the federal government will shut down. With the deadline approaching, Obama is set to meet with House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, both Republicans. Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid and his House counterpart Nancy Pelosi will also be present, White House and congressional officials said on Friday.

Of particular urgency is a program to fight the Zika virus which is running out of money, U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention Director Tom Frieden told reporters.

Frieden also noted the virus, which can cause severe birth defects, would pose a threat well into 2017. "Zika is likely to become endemic in this hemisphere," he told reporters.

Congressional leaders are considering attaching as much as $1.1 billion in Zika spending to a bill to temporarily fund the government during the 2017 fiscal year that begins on Oct. 1.

Congress has yet to approve individual appropriations bills to fund the government in fiscal 2017. If no spending is approved before the end of September, much of the government would have to shut down.

House Republican leaders are considering a Senate Republican proposal to extend the current government spending levels until Dec. 9, House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers, a Republican, told reporters.

Rogers said he wants the package to include funding to combat Zika, but that this was being negotiated. On Thursday, Pelosi called for a temporary funding measure that would include a full year's funding to combat Zika.

In February, Obama asked Congress to approve $1.9 billion in emergency funds to deal with Zika. Since then, both political parties have backed $1.1 billion, but fights over side issues related to abortion have divided them.

Story continues

One of the biggest controversies involves Democrats' opposition to Republican-proposed language that Democrats say would prevent Zika funds for abortion providers like Planned Parenthood, mainly in Puerto Rico.

A spending bill expiring in December would provide time this autumn for lawmakers to negotiate spending levels for the rest of fiscal 2017.

Some House conservatives oppose the idea, preferring to leave decisions up to the next president and a new Congress that take office in January.

(Additional reporting by David Morgan, Susan Cornwell and Susan Heavey; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Andrew Hay)
SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea's presidential office said on Friday U.S. President Barack Obama had indicated he would take every action under a mutual defense treaty with the South, including providing its nuclear umbrella, to protect Seoul from any North Korean threat. Obama and South Korean President Park Geun-hye talked by telephone, South Korea's Blue House said, after a seismic event was recorded in North Korea that Seoul and Tokyo described as a nuclear test. [nL3N1BL174] South Korea's presidential office said the two leaders agreed to use every available means to pressure North Korea to abandon its nuclear program, including adopting a new U.N. Security Council resolution. (Reporting by Ju-min Park and Jack Kim; Editing by Paul Tait)
Ohio police have posted shocking photos of unconscious two adults  who police believe had overdosed on heroin  in a car with a 4-year-old boy in the back seat.



On its Facebook page, the city of East Liverpool, Ohio, shared the photos Thursday, along with a police report. Police say that they responded to a call of an incapacitated driver when they came across the disturbing scene.



In the post, the city explained why they took the unorthodox step of publicizing the pictures. (PEOPLE has chosen to blur the child's face and is not linking to the Facebook page, which shows the child.)



aWe feel it necessary to show the other side of this horrible drug," the city says. "We feel we need to be a voice for the children caught up in this horrible mess. This child canat speak for himself but we are hopeful his story can convince another user to think twice about injecting this poison while having a child in their custody."







aWe are well aware that some may be offended by these images and for that we are truly sorry," the statement continues. "But it is time that the non drug using public sees what we are now dealing with on a daily basis.



"The poison known as heroin has taken a strong grip on many communities, not just ours. The difference is we are willing to fight this problem until itas gone and if that means we offend a few people along the way we are prepared to deal with that."



 Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter.





Ohio Cops Release Images of Couple Passed Out in Suspected Overdose with Boy, 4, in the Car (GRAPHIC CONTENT)| Crime & Courts, True Crime



According to the police report, an officer saw the vehicle allegedly driving erratically and then slamming on the brakes as it approached a school bus.



The officer then approached the vehicle and found James Acord in the driver's seat, according to the report.



"I noted his head bobbing back and forth," the officer wrote in the report. "HIs speech was nearly unintelligible." The officer also noticed that his pupils were dilated.



A passed out woman, Rhonda Pasek, was in the passenger's seat, according to report. The officer said he reached into the vehicle and removed the keys as Acord allegedly attempted to drive away after telling police he was taking Pasek to the hospital, according to the report.



In their back seat, according the report, was a 4-year-old boy identified as Pasek's son.



Acord "eventually went completely unconscious," according to the report.



An ambulance arrived, and paramedics administered Narcan, a drug used to counteract a heroin overdose, according to the report.



The officer also said that a piece of paper with a "pink powdery substance" was allegedly found on the passenger seat between Pasek's legs.



Acord was charged with operating a vehicle while intoxicated, endangering children, and slowing or stopping in a roadway.



Pasek was charged with endangering children, public intoxication and not wearing a seat belt.



The boy is now in the custody of Columbiana County Children Services, according to the report.



Acord, Pasek and local authorities did not immediately return PEOPLE's calls for comment. It was unclear Friday whether Acord or Pasek had retained attorneys or entered pleas.
For more news videos visit Yahoo View.

Like many other communities around the world, East Liverpool, Ohio, is suffering from a heroin epidemic. Which is why the citys police shared chilling images of a man and woman who had allegedly overdosed in their car while a 4-year-old boy sat alert and helpless in the backseat on Wednesday, September 7.



We feel it necessary to show the other side of this horrible drug. We feel we need to be a voice for the child caught up in this horrible mess, read an update on the City of East Liverpool, Ohio, Facebook page. This child cant speak for himself but we are hopeful his story can convince other users to think twice about injecting this poison while having a child in their custody.

PHOTOS: Celebrities Who Have Been to Rehab

We are well aware that some may be offended by these images and for that we are truly sorry, but it is time that the no drug using public sees what we are now dealing with on a daily basis, the post continued. The poison known as heroin has taken a strong grip on many communities not just ours, the difference is we are willing to fight this problem until its gone and if that means we offend a few people along the way we are prepared to deal with that.

The warning has has been shared more than 17,000 times.



According to a police report, officer Kevin Thompson started following a Ford Explorer driven by James Acord after he spotted the vehicle being driven erratically and weaving back and forth. When the SUV came to a stop behind a school bus, Thompson approached. In his report, Thompson noted that the 47-year-olds speech was almost unintelligible, his pupils were pin point and his head was bobbing back and forth. At one point, Acord tried to shift the car back into drive, but Thompson took the keys. In the backseat: front seat passenger Rhonda Paseks son.

PHOTOS: Celebrity Rehab Centers

Before losing consciousness, Acord informed Thompson that he was taking Pasek to the hospital. Per the police report, Lifeteam EMS responders were able to revive both with Narcan, which is used to counter the effects of an opiate overdose.



Story continues

Acord was charged with operating a vehicle while intoxicated, endangering a child and slowing or stopping in a roadway. Pasek, 50, was charged with endangering children, public intoxication and not wearing a seat belt. Both pleaded not guilty and remain in police custody, the Morning Journal reported on Friday. Acord was sentenced to 180 days in jail for each charge, to be served concurrently, and was fined $475, per the paper.

Paseks child is in custody of Columbiana County Childrens Services.

Related Content:
By Catherine Ngai

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil prices surged about 4 percent on Thursday after U.S. inventory data showed a surprisingly large drawdown in crude stocks as imports into the U.S. Gulf Coast slid last week due to Tropical Storm Hermine.

U.S. crude stocks dropped 14.5 million barrels last week to 511.4 million barrels, the biggest weekly drop in stockpiles since January 1999, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Analysts had expected a modest increase in inventories.

Brent crude oil neared $50 a barrel for the first time in two weeks. It rose $1.84 to $49.82 a barrel, a 3.8 percent gain, by 12:56 p.m. EDT (1656 GMT). U.S. crude was up $1.83, or 4 percent, to $47.33 per barrel.

Tropical Storm Hermine, which threatened the Gulf Coast refining region last week, scuttled some U.S. oil production and limited imports and shipping. Gulf Coast crude imports hit the lowest levels on record last week, data showed, even though the storm ultimately did not harm Gulf facilities.

"The drop in crude stocks was caused by the decline in imports after the storm delayed ships going into Louisiana and Texas," said James Williams, president of energy consultant WTRG Economics in Arkansas.

"Next week, crude stocks will likely rise dramatically as those ships offload this week," Williams added.

Key U.S. oil spreads remained little changed after the EIA report. Tariq Zahir, spreads trader at Tyche Capital in New York, said the "drawdown may be viewed as a one-off situation."

Gasoline futures jumped 5 percent after the data release, on higher than expected draws. Gasoline margins also rose sharply.

Oil prices drew support earlier when Chinese trade data showed crude imports in August surged nearly 25 percent from a year ago to the second-highest ever, as independent refiners took advantage of low oil prices before import quotas expire in December.

On Monday, crude prices jumped after Russia and Saudi Arabia agreed to cooperate on stabilising the oil market. Uncertainty remains over the chances that producer nations will agree on an output freeze. An April meeting in Doha, Qatar, failed to reach an agreement.

Story continues

"Implementation remains highly questionable and current OPEC production already approaches levels we had not anticipated until 2018," Macquarie Research analysts said in a note.

Russian average oil production was close to 11 million barrels per day (bpd) in the period of Sept. 1-7, two industry sources told Reuters on Thursday.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and non-OPEC producers such as Russia are expected to discuss the issue at informal talks in Algeria Sept. 26-28.

(Additional reporting by Devika Krishna Kumar and Scott DiSavino in New York and Christopher Johnson in London; Editing by Chris Reese and David Gregorio)
WASHINGTON, DC  North Korea has the dishonorable distinction of being the only country to test nuclear weapons in this century.

On Friday, the rogue regime carried out its largest nuclear test, which was the second one this year and fifth since 2006.

As the following map shows, North Korea is peppered with nuclear facilities.

nk map amanda

"Not only is it speckled or dotted in a sense of being distributed it's also hardened and deeply buried and really what that represents is a conscious and longstanding effort on the part of North Korea to be resistant to being targeted from the air," Thomas Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Business Insider.

"By distributing their forces and by making them hard to destroy they really have shored up a sort of resiliency against attack and incidentally the Iranians are learning from those concepts."

"The Iranians therefore have put up pictures of their missiles on trucks in tunnels underground and so therefore this makes it much harder on our part to target," Karako added.

Members of the United Nations Security Council will discuss North Korea's latest test at a closed-door meeting on Friday.

"North Korea appears to be on the cusp of significant advances towards longer range missiles, mobile and potentially sea launched missiles. So the missile threat isn't going down, it's going up and I think you're gonna see increased missile defense activities from the United States, Japan and South Korea."

NOW WATCH: Meet THAAD: Americas answer to North Korean threats





More From Business Insider


EXCLUSIVE: Stephen Browns Y Production just sealed a distribution deal with Mark Urmans Paladin for the war epic The Ottoman Lieutenant, likely the first movie to look at those on the other side of World War I. The film will be released for an Oscar-qualifying run in December before going wide in February of 2017.

Starring, Michiel Huisman (Game of Thrones, Age of Adeline), Hera Hilmar (Anna Karenina), Josh Hartnett and Ben Kingsley, the film was lensed at the famed Barrandov Studios in Prague (which recently suffered losses in a fire). Other locations were in the Czech Republic and in Turkey.

The films logline: a strong-willed woman (Hilmar), who, frustrated by ongoing injustice at home, leaves the United States after meeting Jude, an American doctor (Hartnett) who runs a remote medical mission within the Ottoman Empire  a world both exotic and dangerous, and on the brink of what is about to become the first World War. There, she finds her loyalty tested to both Jude and the missions founder (Kingsley) when she falls in love with their perceived enemy, a lieutenant in the Ottoman Imperial Army (Huisman). With invading army forces at their doorstep, and the world about to plunge into all-out war she must make a decision.

The Ottoman Lieutenant is directed by Joseph Ruben (Sleeping with the Enemy) from a screenplay by Jeff Stockwell (Bridge to Terabitha). It is a Y Production in association with Eastern Sunrise Films and produced by Stephen Joel Brown.

CAA negotiated the domestic distribution deal while ancillary and international release plans are now being finalized.

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Worlds third largest pizza delivery company, Papa Johns International, Inc. PZZA is geared up to expand further into Mexico. The company has inked a restaurant development agreement with Orquest Foods, whereby it plans to build 60 restaurants during the course of the next eight years.

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Orquest Foods is owned by the Clariond Lozano family, and has been in the food business for the past 10 years. In addition to the 60 stores, Orquest Foods has also recently purchased 26 Papa Johns locations in Mexico City area to develop the Papa Johns brand in various states across the country.



Large scale international expansion has been the backbone of Papa Johns operations recently. Currently, the company has more than 1500 international restaurants, with over 350 restaurants in 16 Latin American countries. It is also planning to expand in Brazil, Honduras, Uruguay and the Bahamas.



Before signing the deal in Mexico, the company inked restaurant development agreements in Russia, Spain, the Netherlands and also debuted in Israel, all in the first half of 2016. The plan is to open their 5000th restaurant globally by the end of 2016.



The company posted a solid second-quarter 2016 results with both top and bottom line surpassing the Zacks Consensus Estimate. It also recorded positive comps for the 23rd consecutive quarter. On the back of these results and the companys focus on menu innovation, international expansion and technological upgrades, Papa Johns currently holds a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).



Other Stocks to Consider



Other well-performing companies in this sector include Del Taco Restaurant, Inc. TACO, Dennys Corporation DENN and Wingstop, Inc. WING, all carrying a Zacks Rank #2. You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.



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By Suzanne Barlyn NEW YORK (Reuters) - As Chuck DeBonis was wrapping up his stint as a civilian paramedic at a military base in Kuwait earlier this year, he found a home he wanted to buy in the Virginia town of Bristow for his return. The problem? His mortgage lender wanted him to sign paperwork, in person, in front of a notary public. So the 30-year-old flew 6,500 miles to sign on the dotted line. "It was ridiculous and unnecessary," DeBonis said in recounting his 14-hour trip. His problem may be unusual in its scope, but it is one that millions of U.S. homeowners and buyers face every day  and one some U.S. lenders and state lawmakers are now trying to solve. As it stands, nothing is official in mortgage documents until there's a face-to-face meeting with a notary public, a person who verifies borrowers' identities. Lenders have long recognized notarization as a critical anti-fraud measure. But the practice  which dates back at least to Ancient Rome  is becoming passe in an era of FaceTime, Skype and live-streamed social media. The financial industry is pressing for change in the form of "remote notarization." The service, available through companies like Notarize Inc and NotaryCam Inc, uses secure webcams to link borrowers and notary publics. Before their virtual meeting, borrowers must answer random questions from their credit histories to prove who they are. But adoption has been limited because a patchwork of laws in most states does not allow for the practice, and city and county governments are slow to change. Investors who buy the loans also impose restrictions, such as requiring original signatures to avoid fraud. Some big players in the mortgage industry want to bring notarization into the 21st Century. Quicken Loans Inc, the nation's third-largest mortgage lender, is one of the biggest advocates for digital notarization because face-to-face meetings clash with its online business model. For USAA, which lends to U.S. military, remote notarization could help customers who move frequently, the company said. Government-backed mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are also supporting remote notarization because they say it has better safeguards against fraud, among other things. Broadly speaking, webcam notarizations could cut expenses for lenders, notaries and borrowers. Even without webcam notaries, signing the documents electronically can save the industry on average up to $1,100 per mortgage, according to Fannie Mae. But as it stands, more than half of the 3,600 local clerk offices across the U.S. only accept paper copies, according to the Property Records Industry Association. Many counties go a step further in requiring original ink signatures. Although the vast majority of state laws allow for some form of electronic real-estate documentation, only two states  Virginia and Montana  expressly approve remote notarization. Some counties, especially smaller ones, do not have the budget to install software capable of processing electronic real estate documents. For others, it's more of a "cultural shift that's required," said Timothy Reiniger, who heads the digital services group for Richmond, Virginia-based FutureLaw, LLC, a law firm and consultancy. The National Association of Secretaries of State held a conference in July that featured panels about remote notarization, and many state notary administrators were in attendance. While some were receptive to the idea, others challenged speakers on everything from fraud to whether video recording of a notary signing could be hacked. Some administrators, sitting around tables arranged in a horseshoe, debated with a Quicken Loans speaker about if notaries would know whether a webcam signer was being held at gunpoint. Reininger, who researched the issue while helping to draft Virginia's legislation, could not find a case in U.S. history in which a notarized document was voided because the signer was held at gunpoint. "It's a red herring argument," he said in an interview. Another challenge for webcam notarization is storing documents and videos made of each signing, exposing them to possible cyber theft. Advocates contend that cloud-based storage is plentiful and point to the security of everyday electronic banking transactions to bolster their case. CHARGING AHEAD Virginia's webcam notaries are valid in the U.S., even if the person signing is anywhere in the world, but Montana's law is more restrictive. In real estate, it applies only to transactions that involve Montana property, and the notary or a "credible witness" must know the signer who typically must be a Montana resident. States including Maryland and Texas are also considering the technology. Even without a nationwide legal infrastructure, some pockets of the financial industry are charging ahead. Quicken Loans is hoping to launch a webcam notarization pilot with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Several webcam notary companies told Reuters they are testing their services with lenders, but declined to name them. In September, the Mortgage Bankers Association will host a meeting in Washington for some of its members to discuss the technology, a spokesman for the industry group said. Fannie and Freddie gave the concept a big boost by voicing support in a June letter to the National Association of Secretaries of State. The two companies stand behind roughly 90 percent of new mortgages issued in the United States. They buy webcam notarized loans, but in very limited instances. Some mortgage closings are already partly electronic because documents are signed on an iPad, but with a notary present. Webcam notary companies say their technology could slice $60 to $100 in expenses from each transaction, mainly related to printing expenses and travel. Even so, most banks have not warmed up to the idea because of a jumble of requirements for recording and selling loans to investors, said Bob Davis, executive vice president for the American Bankers Association. Until more states adopt laws that explicitly allow for digital notarization, the process is stuck in something of a time warp. DeBonis, the paramedic, ultimately made two trips between Kuwait and Virginia to close on the home he now owns because of his lender's intransigence  even in a state where web notarization is formally authorized. His only other choice was trekking to a notary at the U.S. embassy in Kuwait, whose wait list stretched out for at least a week, he said. "It bothers me," said DeBonis, "how a lot of businesses can't keep up with technology." (Editing by Lauren Tara LaCapra, Carmel Crimmins and Edward Tobin)
From Cosmopolitan

When Bon Appetit magazine posted a story Tuesday about a Philadelphia chef's take on pho, the headline declared, in the style of internet hyperbole, "PSA: This Is How You Should be Eating Pho."

By Thursday, Bon Appetit had changed the headline to "We're in Love with This Pho" (the URL slug is still /how-you-should-eating-pho). The companion video, featuring the chef Tyler Akin of the restaurant Stock making pho and explaining how to eat it, had been scrubbed from Bon Appetit's social channels. The restaurant's Instagram had been set to private. Its Yelp page had been slammed with 1-star reviews. The magazine posted a response on the story itself and on the magazine's Facebook page saying that it had never intended to offend its readers.

What could have gone so wrong with a 259-word story about a Vietnamese noodle soup dish?

In the video, according to multiple reports (I did not watch the video before it got taken down), Akin describes the proper way to eat pho. Stock's concept revolves around pho; Akin therefore gets positioned as an expert. In the video, he claims that the common practice of adding condiments to the broth doesn't show enough respect for the broth or the chef. (From the story: "Akin cautions that adding sriracha or hoisin sauce destroys the broth's flavor, which the chef worked so intently on building.") He shows a chopstick technique. The video claims that "pho is the new ramen."

Commenters showed a degree of outrage that's unusual for a Bon Appetit story. Many complained of cultural appropriation by a white chef and mostly white magazine staff. Others took issue with the idea that there's a "right" way to eat pho. "I'm Vietnamese and I always put hoisin or sriracha into my pho," one commenter wrote. "Don't tell me how I eat pho." Still others thought it was inappropriate to juxtapose ramen and pho.

Story continues

Philly has mad Viet owned pho joints. Idk why you'd feature the one pho restaurant owned by a white guy...https://t.co/t8xOSqdNgj - Big Zaddy Ivie (@CHInekeIvie) September 8, 2016

Phil Yu of the blog Angry Asian Man called it "Columbusing at its finest."

Bon Appetit then removed the video and posted this response - not an apology, but an explanation of why it had taken the video down, which it blamed partly on the audience.

Hey Guys,In regards to a recent video we posted about making and eating pho, we want you to know that we hear you and we are listening. It is never our intention to offend our readers, which happened in this case. Thank you for calling us out.We believe in celebrating food from all cultures -- we just want to eat and talk about food, all the time. Moreover, we care deeply about supporting local and international food communities.At the same time, we never want to be a space that allows for harassing comments and threats toward chefs and restaurant owners. Ever. That's not what we're about. Which is why we have taken down this video.Moving forward, we will continue to strive to get people to cook smarter and eat better. And we will always be mindful of the messages we share.Thank you, as always, for being a part of what we do.

The response drew more ire from commenters. "Are you sorry or nah? If you're not, then just say so. It's not that hard," wrote one.

Photo credit: Bon Appetit/Facebook

For his part, Akin told PhillyVoice.com, "My only comment is that I never intended to offend anybody, and I think that's all I can say."

It's clear that neither magazine nor chef had the "intent to offend" - but that's not really the point. What has surfaced in this debate are the thorny issues of race, culture, and prejudice that are inherent in not just food media coverage but in the way we eat, and these issues are not wholly apparent to everyone at the table.

Akin wasn't supposed to go viral. His restaurant Stock got a tiny mention in Bon Appetit's list of restaurant trends of 2016, a feature in its September restaurant issue. Pho "is going mainstream," the magazine wrote in a blurb about the so-called trend. "Don't tell ramen we're slurping something else."

Bon Appetit isn't the first to suggest that ramen is out and pho is coming up - but that in itself is problematic. "Why is it that for all of Asian cuisine, we only get to haveone noodle soup at a time?" said Andrea Nguyen, author of the forthcoming The Pho Cookbook. "It's so frustratingand insulting."

Photo credit: Bon Appetit | Krystalina Tom

"The fact that we even think about [food] trends is absurd," said Krishnendu Ray, associate professor of food studies at NYU and author of The Ethnic Restaurateur. "When was pho not trendy amongst pho eaters?"

Though the magazine blurb mentioned another pho restaurant in Montana called Bone Broth Noodles (owned by a Vietnamese family), it chose to feature Akin in the accompanying web pieces, privileging a white chef over a Vietnamese one and unintentionally launching a fierce debate over ownership.

From Ray's point of view, the conflict is happening on multiple levels. First, there's Akin's position of chef-as-emperor. "He came to it from a chef's point of view," Ray said. "It has increasingly become this irritating, imperial point of view, which is, 'Let me tell you how to eat your food.'"

Nguyen agrees. While she herself is a proponent of keeping the broth in pho condiment-free, she isn't about to stop you. "Who am I to tell them that it's wrong? That's how they enjoyit. That's how they define their relationship with it."

Beyond that, there was the reductive arrogance of the story and video. "For me, appropriation is not about the thing, it is about your posture," Ray said. "Anybody can do anything they want - cook any food - and, in fact, I appreciate that. But do it with a humility and awareness of rich, long, unrecorded, unaccounted histories. Take something that has been used and consumed in a group, and then now it's appropriated by a chef and that becomes his signature? That's cultural malpractice."

For the consumer, or the people who love pho and have for a long time, it's a "structural clash," Ray said. "The power is shifting. Any white chef who cooks this kind offood is going to get in trouble now. What used to be subordinate groups are nolonger subordinate. That's the optimistic part for me."

Internet outrage can reach a pitch that verges on persecution, but sometimes, it can expose blind spots, and in this case, it did. There's a dialogue now, and perhaps more consideration of the reader as needing better, a more thoughtful treatment, even if the story is just about a bowl of noodle soup.

Update, 9/8/16, 7:48 p.m.: The video still exists online, because people on the internet are really resourceful. You can watch it below:

Follow Helin on Instagram.

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American investors in the Philippines on Friday warned that President Rodrigo Duterte's brutal drugs war and foul-mouthed tirades, including branding US leader Barack Obama a "son of a whore", could hit foreign investment.

Obama cancelled a meeting with Duterte after the firebrand leader unleashed a barrage of criticism of the US president, saying he would not be lectured about human rights over his crackdown on narcotics, which has seen police and shadowy assassins kill nearly 3,000 people.

The crackdown has seen Duterte's domestic popularity soar but has prompted widespread international condemnation from the United Nations and human rights watchdogs, and the American Chamber of Commerce in the Philippines said it was also damaging investor sentiment.

The "increased number of killings during the heightened anti-drug campaign is harming the country's image... some investors are now asking whether this campaign reduces the rule of law," it said in a statement sent to AFP Friday.

The US is the Philippines' largest trading partner after China, and a key source of foreign direct investment.

The traditionally strong ties between the US and the Philippines have been "strained by language from Philippine leaders" which is also creating "investor concern," the statement said.

Relations saw a spectacular setback this week when Duterte branded Obama a "son of a whore" after being told the US president planned to raise concerns about his war on drugs.

Obama cancelled a planned meeting over the insults, but later briefly met with Duterte on the sidelines of a regional summit in Laos, urging him to conduct his crime war "the right way".

The high-profile spat "could harm the long-standing optimism of American business to invest in the Philippines," the chamber of commerce added.

Duterte was elected to office in a landslide this year after pledging to kill 100,000 people in an unprecedented war on crime.

He vowed in the campaign that so many bodies would be dumped in Manila Bay that the fish there would grow fat from feeding on them.

Duterte has also repeatedly promised to protect police from prosecution if they are charged over the deaths and insisted human rights cannot get in the way of his war.
In a bid to bolster President Rodrigo Dutertes bloody war on drugs, Philippine Senator Richard Gordon plans to introduce a bill next week calling for the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, which guarantees the legality of a persons detention by the state.

If the bill passes, police will be able to arrest anyone without a warrant, the Philippine Daily Inquirer reports.

We are at war with drugs right now, Gordon said on Thursday, according to the Inquirer. If he [Duterte] has to suspend the writ of habeas corpus to fight drugs and terrorism, lets give him that power so we wont just keep saying people are getting killed, but that cant be proven.

Read next: The Killing Time: Inside Philippine President Rodrigo Dutertes War on Drugs

That war on drugs, a cornerstone of Dutertes successful campaign for his nations top office, has now seen over 3,000 people in just over two months of his tenure, according to the latest figures provided to TIME by the Philippine National Police (PNP). Duterte has reacted to criticism from the international community and advocacy groups by saying he doesnt care about human rights.

The 71-year-old leader also declared a state of emergency this week  following a terrorist attack in his hometown Davao  that gives the Philippine military the power to intervene in police matters. Fears abound that the country may be headed toward martial law, with scars of the two-decade reign of dictator Ferdinand Marcos until 1986 still present.

Lets not be afraid of martial law, Gordon was quoted as saying.
Latest images: Cauvery water dispute People stage a demonstration against against releasing of Cauvery river water to Tamil Nadu on the Supreme Courts directive to the Karnataka government in Bengaluru. The sharing Cauvery river water has been source of a serious conflict between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. (Photo: IANS)

Pro-Kannada organizations on Friday (9th Sept) called for a shutdown in Karnataka over the Cauvery water dispute. Meanwhile, protesters continued to take to the streets, venting their ire against the Supreme Courts decision ordering the state to release the water to Tamil Nadu. Protests continued in Bengaluru, Mysuru, Mandya and the Bengaluru-Mysuru highway was blocked by agitators in different places.

(Story  ANI; Images  IANS)
Libreville (AFP) - Gabon's opposition leader Jean Ping warned Friday that the country faced "long-lasting instability" if the top court rejects his appeal for a recount after his narrow loss in the presidential election to Ali Bongo.

"Yes, I greatly fear that another false step by the Constitutional Court will be the cause of deep and long-lasting instability in Gabon," Ping told hundreds of supporters in Libreville.

"There is no doubt that if the Constitutional Court ignores the reality of the Gabonese vote, the people, who would have nothing left to lose... will take the future into their own hands," said Ping, who continues to refer to himself as "president-elect".

He insists he was the winner of the August 27 poll, which, according to provisional results, saw Bongo re-elected by fewer than 6,000 votes, and prompted several days of rioting in the capital.

On Thursday Ping turned to the court charging there were anomalies in the vote count. The court has 15 days to hand down its ruling.

In particular, Ping is asking for a recount in Haut-Ogooue province, a Bongo family stronghold where the incumbent won more than 95 percent of the vote on an official turnout of more than 99 percent.

An EU election observer mission has also stated that there was a "clear anomaly in the final result in Haut-Ogooue".

- 'Apprehensive' -

Ping admitted that he was "apprehensive" about getting a fair hearing at the court, "which the Gabonese call the Tower of Pisa because it always leans to the side of the ruling power".

But he added to supporters: "2016 is not 2009," referring to the last presidential election when the Constitutional Court upheld Bongo's victory.

The central African nation has been ruled by the Bongo family since 1967.

The rancour sparked by the poll dispute was in further evidence at Ping's headquarters Friday as supporters escorted a television journalist from the premises amid accusations state broadcasters Gabon Television and Gabon24 had been deliberately under-reporting the death toll from recent unrest.

Story continues

Reporter Jean-Raoul Mbadinga was frogmarched out amid a barrage of insults hurled by hundreds of people who had gathered to hear Ping's address.

"I came as I do for (covering) Bongo. I am a journalist," Mbadinga protested.

Ping supporters say state broadcasters have understated the scale of post-poll violence and add that interior ministry figures of just three deaths are highly inaccurate.

- Bodies in 'common grave' -

"Credible sources tell us there is a freezer box at Oloumi (a Libreville suburb) where bodies have been hidden," Ping stated.

He also alluded to "a common grave" in the city and claimed that the Gasepga undertakers firm had been refusing to take delivery of any more bodies.

Members of one Libreville family meanwhile told AFP they had discovered the body of a relative taken by emergency services to the Gasepga morgue.

They said Prosper Mesmain Nang Alongo, a 42-year-old married father of six, had been taken to the morgue in the early hours of September 1, hours after the electoral commission had declared Bongo the election winner.

Alongo's head showed the impact of a bullet, the family said, while indicating they did not know the exact circumstances in which he died.
Ron Shaich isn't afraid to make a bold statement here or there. The CEO of Panera Bread Co (ticker: PNRA) made his latest last month, when he challenged the industry, including McDonald Corp. (MCD) and Subway Restaurants, to clean up their kids' meals.

To back up his proclamation, Shaich's company will not use artificial ingredients and sweeteners in its meals; nor will it attempt marketing gimmicks, like toys, that target children, instead offering sides like fruit and veggies. Panera argues that all fast food and fast-casual restaurants should agree to a similar promise.

Panera is one of the cleanest options available in the fast-casual space in terms of where food is sourced and the number of healthy food choices. The success the company has had also helps to drive the confidence. Over the past year, PNRA stock has jumped 19 percent to more than $215.

And it's riding a wave of health-conscious consumers in order to maintain its edge.

[See: 7 of the Best Socially Responsible Funds.]

Panera has an enticing opportunity in catering. The $52 billion catering industry is about as fragmented of an industry that you will find in the food space. And within that fragment, Panera stands as one of the leaders in market share, despite only accounting for less than 1 percent of the total space's sales, according to KeyBanc Capital Markets analyst Chris O'Cull.

But Panera has made major strides to increase its presence in catering. This has come with a number of one-time costs, like the expense to revamp kitchens and the efforts to improve ordering. The technological improvements, though, may help Panera stand out since its ordering system isn't a tactic mom-and-pop catering services can easily replicate.

O'Cull likens the space to pizza delivery, where although Pizza Hut, owned by Yum Brands (YUM), Domino's Pizza (DPZ) and Papa John's International (PZZA) dominate, they're still dwarfed by the market share that local joints accumulatively garner. The big players, though, have benefited from online ordering, since they have the capability to invest in an easy-to-use platform. This is why a company like Domino's has seen a 9.7 percent surge in same-store sales over the past year.

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Catering offers a "similar opportunity for Panera," says O'Cull, since Panera has the size to invest in a similar platform, which it has done. Currently, the business accounts for 8 percent of all restaurant sales (franchise plus company-owned store sales), or $400 million. O'Cull sees that climbing to $2 billion.

Online ordering helps it stand out from the lunch crowd. In 2013, Panera's success as a budding fast food name seemed to suddenly hit a wall. Same-store sales weren't growing as fast as they used to, and people noticing long lines within the store were unwilling to wait. "Panera had a high-class problem," O'Cull says. Diners would walk into a location, "see the line then leave. Waits were too long."

But Panera acted quickly in order to try and right this trend. It developed its Panera 2.0 strategy in April 2014, which were initiatives built around technology to improve the diner experience. Included in the upgrades were dining kiosks, so patrons could order food via tablets. It also added food to-go ordering features, which is attractive to those eating lunch during a break in the workday. While Panera is "taking a lot of one-time costs" by adding these features, says Edward Jones analyst Jack Russo, the expense "will fall off over time."

It's all an attempt to try and adapt to consumers eating needs. In another effort, Panera has focused its attention on delivery. O'Cull thinks Panera is perfectly positioned for this, since it serves "very portable products," like sandwiches, salads and soups. This has helped turn-around that same-store sales drag, which increased 4.2 percent at company owned bakery-cafes in the second quarter of 2016, compared to the year prior.

[See: 8 Cheap ETFs That You Won't Regret.]

Panera will continue to grow, despite concerning trends. The restaurant industry faces some worrying trends, which give analysts some pause. For one, the growth of minimum wage laws could increase the cost of labor for Panera, as well as other names in the industry. Also, some analysts are warning that restaurant sales could soon slow down, as people eat at home more to save a few dollars.

This hasn't stopped Panera from growing its footprint, though. It currently operates more than 2,000 stores, which it hopes to increase to more than 3,000 stores by boosting store count 3 to 6 percent per year, Russo says. But it's also adjusting the number of franchisee-run stores. This allows the company to collect the royalty from the franchisee, with less cost to operate the location. The number of company-owned stores now stands at 45 percent, compared to 49 percent two years ago.

You'll have to pay a premium, if you think it's worth it. The reason Panera has become so appealing to investors is because it participates in the fast-casual trend -- one of the fastest growing segments in restaurants -- and it offers healthy, organic, gluten-free options, something consumers want right now. Add on the technology initiatives and the growth in its catering business and "no other restaurant story has all those things going at the same time," Russo says.

But that's also why investors have noticed it so quickly. It now stands at 29 times its forward price-earnings, which is above its historical average of 23 times, as well as above the fast-casual and fast food industry median of nearly 26.

O'Cull believes Panera can handle a valuation higher than history would determine because of the growth in catering. If Panera can consolidate market share in the space, then it "will warrant a premium valuation," O'Cull says.

[See: 7 Ways to Tell if a Stock Is a Good Price.]

But Russo points out that PNRA stock is priced higher than Starbucks Corp. (SBUX), which has a similar growth story and ability. Plus, with it being near its all-time high, Russo would rather wait it out than jump in at this price point, even though he expects "good results from the company for a long period of time."

See More Restaurants Stocks

Ryan Derousseau is a journalist with nine years of experience writing about investing and leadership issues. His work has been read in Fortune, Money, CNNMoney and Fast Company, among other publications. You can find more from him on Twitter @ryanderous.
New York (AFP) - Playing drums and bagpipes, police bands paraded through the streets of New York on Friday in a memorial procession honoring those who died in the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.

Seventy-one police officers were killed in the attacks at the World Trade Center when Al-Qaeda operatives crashed airplanes into the twin towers, including 23 members of the New York Police Department.

Every year since then, several NYPD bands, sounding bagpipes, pipes and drums, have paraded near Ground Zero, the site of the attacks.

But for the 15th anniversary of the worst attacks on US soil, the NYPD invited other police bands to join them and they came from Boston, Chicago, Cleveland and Seattle to mark the solemn occasion.

The NYPD's Emerald Society, wearing kilts, led the procession to the New York City Police Memorial in lower Manhattan, not far from the attacks site.

"Fifteen years seems like a long time, but the wounds are still there," NYPD chaplain Robert Romano said in a speech to an audience including New York Mayor Bill de Blasio.

The songs most played, as usual, were the old Christian hymn "Amazing Grace" and patriotic standards such as "America the Beautiful" and "God Bless America."

The bagpipes tradition in the United States comes from the Irish and Scottish immigrants who gained a foothold in police forces in the northeastern states in the 19th century.

The bands "represent the fallen," said Anthony Ferragamo, an officer in the Marine Unit of the Seattle Police. "For this occasion, all the bands came together to show respect for the fallen at the NYPD."

The bands typically play at the funerals of police officers who have died while serving the public.

"It's the first time that all the police bands actually got together," said Ferragamo.

Lightening the mood a bit, one of the NYPD bands played "New York, New York," the upbeat homage to the city made famous by Frank Sinatra.

Some 3,000 people were killed in the attacks in New York City, at the Pentagon just outside the US capital Washington and in Pennsylvania, where one of the planes crashed.
By Dan Whitcomb

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Authorities using cadaver dogs have discovered several "items of interest" as they dig at the edge of a California university campus in hopes of finding the remains of a student who disappeared 20 years ago, a police spokesman said on Thursday.

Police and FBI agents excavating a grassy hillside some 300 yards (274 meters) from where Kristin Smart was last seen near her California Polytechnic State University dormitory in 1996 have turned those objects over to experts, San Luis Obispo County Sheriff's spokesman Tony Cipolla said.

"The items of interest are being analyzed to see if they are related to this case or not. A forensic anthropologist is here and based on his analysis we may have to send them off for DNA analysis," Cipolla said.

He declined to elaborate, citing the ongoing criminal investigation. Smart was declared legally dead in 2002 but no arrests have ever been made.

New leads developed by a comprehensive review of the cold case prompted investigators to believe that Smart's body could be buried on the hill near a 50-foot (15-meter) concrete letter "P" marking the school.

The dogs, specially trained in detecting decomposed human remains and brought in from the Federal Bureau of Investigation's headquarters in Quantico, Virginia, first homed in on three areas of the hillside in January.

"We knew at that point that there was something here," Cipolla said.

The dig at Cal Poly, about 150 miles (241 km) northwest of Los Angeles, has drawn renewed interest in the case two decades after Smart vanished on May 25, 1996.

Smart had left an off-campus party at about 2 a.m. that morning, accompanied by two classmates who believed the freshman was not in a condition not walk home by herself. The group was joined along the way by fellow student Paul Flores.

After they split up on campus, Flores was alone with Smart not far from her Muir Hall dorm. He has told police that he parted company with her there.

Story continues

Flores was the last person to see Smart alive, according to authorities.

During the initial investigation after Smart was reported missing by fellow dorm resident, cadaver dogs alerted to Flores' room, specifically the mattress of his bed.

Flores was questioned by police in June 1996 and has been called a person of interest in the case but has not been arrested or charged.

The attorney who formerly represented Flores was no longer his lawyer, according to his office. It was not immediately clear if Flores has retained new legal counsel.

Smart's parents sued Flores and the university for wrongful death, but that litigation remains on hold during the criminal investigation.

"We are mindful that with or without the hoped-for results from this weeks efforts, we are now on a path that will bring our family peace and comfort, the Smarts wrote in a statement released to the San Luis Obispo Tribune.

Delays in the investigation of Smart's disappearance prompted legislation in California requiring colleges and universities to share information about missing students more quickly with off-campus authorities.

(Reporting by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Dan Grebler and Tom Brown)
Sept 9 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories in the Wall Street Journal. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

- North Korea conducted a fifth nuclear test hours after President Barack Obama wrapped up a tour of Asia, highlighting the U.S.'s struggle to rein in the rising threat from dictator Kim Jong Un. http://on.wsj.com/2cdV1Zr

- U.S. executives contend Liu Zhongtian, founder of aluminum conglomerate China Zhongwang Holdings, used a factory in Mexico to game global trade; Liu denies the accusation. http://on.wsj.com/2ccVucb

- Wells Fargo & Co was slapped with a $185 million fine Thursday for "widespread illegal" sales practices that included opening as many as two million deposit and credit-card accounts without customers' knowledge, federal and local authorities said. http://on.wsj.com/2cJ3KWx

- U.S. air-safety regulators have taken the unusual step of singling out Samsung Electronics Co's Galaxy Note 7 smartphone as a potential airborne fire hazard, urging passengers to avoid using the devices entirely on board airliners, dealing another blow to the technology giant's smartphone recovery efforts. http://on.wsj.com/2cb8aRf

- U.S. military forces tried but failed to rescue two civilian hostages in Afghanistan in a raid launched last month under presidential authority, the Pentagon said Thursday. http://on.wsj.com/2bXP7ha

- Hillary Clinton's campaign, heavy on attacks against Donald Trump, has concluded that it hasn't done enough to telegraph a positive message, and plans a series of speeches aimed at defining her vision for the presidency. http://on.wsj.com/2cwcw5T (Compiled by Aurindom Mukherjee in Bengaluru)
Sept 9 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories on the New York Times business pages. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

- For years, Wells Fargo & Co employees secretly issued credit cards without a customer's consent. They created fake email accounts to sign up customers for online banking services. They set up sham accounts that customers learned about only after they started accumulating fees. On Thursday, these illegal banking practices cost Wells Fargo $185 million in fines, including a $100 million penalty from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the largest such penalty the agency has issued. http://nyti.ms/2bWJ9rR

- The former chief financial officer of the real estate investing giant American Realty Capital Properties Inc was arrested on Thursday morning at his home in Pennsylvania on charges that he fraudulently inflated financial performance numbers for the company in 2014. http://nyti.ms/2bY7iDg

- Short-term rental company Airbnb, under fire over the ease with which its hosts can reject potential renters based on race, age, gender or other factors, told its rental hosts on Thursday that they needed to agree to a "community commitment" starting on Nov. 1 and that they must hew to a new nondiscrimination policy. http://nyti.ms/2bY6G0z

- U.S. regulators are seeking to impose further restrictions on the ability of Wall Street banks to make risky investments with their own money. If the new rules proceed, banks will be prohibited from buying and selling commodities, like copper, and would have to shut down what remains of their in-house private equity operations. http://nyti.ms/2bY98nF

- With the iconic Palace of Westminster, Britain's seat of Parliament, crumbling dangerously after decades of neglect, legislators moved a step closer on Thursday to agreeing on a plan for renovation, which includes vacating the entire building for at least six years. http://nyti.ms/2bY8u9A

- On Friday, the U.S. House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on the Investment Advisers Modernization Act of 2016, a bill that will loosen the information that the industry must report to regulators about the nature of its investments. http://nyti.ms/2bY7qCJ (Compiled by Ismail Shakil in Bengaluru)
Bratislava (AFP) - Eurogroup head Jeroen Dijsselbloem warned Athens on Friday to swiftly deliver on overdue reforms as its massive bailout programme fell off track triggering fears of a new row with Greece.

Leftist-led Greece is struggling to deliver on fresh reforms that are needed to unlock a further 2.8 billion euros ($3 billion) in bailout loans and more crucially, launch negotiations on debt relief later in the year.

"The pressure is back on. We really need some progress. The summer is over, pack up the camping gear, get back to work," Dijsselbloem, who leads the group of 19 finance ministers from the eurozone, told reporters in Bratislava.

Athens has committed to deliver on the reforms by the end of the month. They include the long delayed launch of a massive privatisation fund and reforms in the highly sensitive energy sector.

The EU's Economic Affairs commissioner Pierre Moscovici said Athens must deliver on 15 reforms, with only two of those achieved so far.

"It's not a secret ... that there is a lot to be done to complete these reforms," he said after the ministers discussed Greece's bailout.

"The Greek authorities must know that we are waiting for them, for the matter of trust and efficiency," he said.

Greece's creditors are mostly concerned with staffing picks proposed by Athens to run the privatisation fund, which are seen as too inexperienced or too politically linked to the ruling Syriza party, a European source told AFP.

- 'Still time' -

The influential German Finance Minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, said Greece still had a short period of time to get back in line on its 86 billion euro bailout programme, agreed amid much bitterness in July 2015.

"They have to do this until the end of September, so there is still time for Greece," Schaeuble said.

Left unaddressed at the talks was the part played by the IMF, which was key to Greece's three bailouts but is now holding off until the eurozone ministers commit to debt relief for Athens.

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"The IMF is in a very constructive mode and I'm very happy about that", Dijsselbloem said, adding that the Washington-based fund would take a decision on its role by the end of the year.

Mujtaba Rahman of the Eurasia risk assessment group warned that the tensions risked boiling over early next year "when the government needs cash and its ECB obligations are once again around the corner."

Delays by Athens make it easier "for creditors to hide their differences and blame Greece. As such it pushes off the need for Germany and the IMF to come to a deal over debt relief," he added.

The eurozone ministers met in the Slovak capital as Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, an anti-austerity champion, hosted a mini-summit between the European Union's seven Mediterranean states in Athens.

Schaeuble belittled the summit as a political meeting of "socialist party leaders", even though non-left leaders attended.

"And when socialist party leaders meet, most of the time, nothing intelligent comes out of it," he added.
- Harzand and Minding gave Ireland a classic double at Epsom in June and on Saturday at Leopardstown they will clash in the appropriately titled Irish Champion Stakes. Veteran trainer Dermot Weld -- for whom globetrotting has become second nature saddling two Melbourne Cup winners and a Belmont Stakes victor -- runs Epsom Derby winner Harzand whilst record-breaking compatriot Aidan O'Brien pitches his Oaks champion Minding against the colts for the first time. Aside from the these two stars of the turf there will be the French Derby victors Almanzor (2016) and New Bay (2015), O'Brien's King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes winner Highland Reel, and Godolphin's Eclipse Stakes winner Hawkbill.

AFP
A controversial storyline about domestic abuse in a hugely popular British radio show has had such a profound effect on its listeners that they have raised more than 142,000 ($188,809) for a domestic violence charity in the name of a fictional character who has been abused.

BBC program The Archers is the worlds longest-running radio soap opera. Set in the fictional village of Ambridge in the English midlands, generations of listeners have followed the lives of the shows lovable  and not so lovable  recurring characters since it began in 1950. Since then, more than 180,000 episodes have been broadcast and roughly 4.7 million people tune in to the six fifteen-minute episodes released each week. The drama unfolds in real time, and listeners hear the characters grow and develop alongside their own lives.

But one highly controversial plot has gripped listeners especially hard: the tumultuous relationship between Helen Archer and her husband Robert Titchener. Robs emotional abuse of Helen has been a slow-burning storyline drawn out by the writers over the past two and a half years, from Rob gradually acquiring control every aspect of Helens life from her friendships to her mobile phone, to him raping her over and over again  as was revealed in an episode this week.

It finally reached a climax last April when a depressed and pregnant Helen attacked Rob in self defence. Its your choice, but its the only way I am ever letting you go, Rob said, goading Helen to kill herself after she told him she was leaving him.

A violent scuffle could then be heard and a blade clanking to the floor. Listeners soon learned that Rob had been stabbed, but had survived. Helen has since been charged with attempted murder and wounding with intent and, after months of anticipation, her week-long trial began Sunday.

Hats off to all involved in tonight's #thearchers  powerful, emotional stuff. Shocking twist. Poor Helen!  Jonathan Harvey (@JOJEHARVEY) April 3, 2016

Helens story has transcended radio drama to touch real life. Nigel Pascoe, a barrister from the New Forest, offered her representation in court. I know we are not allowed to tout, he tweeted, but I am more than prepared to represent Helen, along with most of the criminal bar. He had clearly thought through what his legal position would be as when asked he quickly cited: Defences open include loss of control, lack of intent and almost certainly diminished responsibility. Im up for it!.

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I know we are not allowed to tout, but I am more than prepared to represent Helen, along with most of the criminal bar  Nigel Pascoe QC (@nigel_pascoe) April 3, 2016

It has also sparked a national conversation about domestic abuse. British charity Womens Aid, which works to support victims of domestic abuse, has been involved with the show from the beginning of this storyline, advising the producers and introducing actress Louiza Patikas, who plays Helen, to real life survivors of domestic abuse.

The Archers is wonderful as a piece of drama as its absolutely gripping, Polly Neate, the charitys CEO, told TIME. But it has also been incredibly successful in raising awareness of domestic abuse and coercive control.

The plot twist of Helen stabbing Rob has been criticized by some as being melodramatic, but Neate thinks otherwise. We cant shy away from the fact that women do retaliate and when they do it is often used against them and they are treated as the perpetrator when actually they are the victim, she said.

Helens found herself in a familiar situation where an act of retaliation has been interpreted as an act of unprovoked aggression. The story of Rob putting the knife in her hand and taunting her to kill herself rings true; its quite common for perpetrators to manipulate a woman to lose her self-control in some way and then use that to insure she ends up on the wrong side of the law, as a further way of controlling her.

Helen has been a victim of mind games  she lost all her self esteem, started to doubt her own version of events and it took her a really long time to even acknowledge what happened to her. This has opened peoples eyes to a form of abuse they might not have been aware of before.

This was the case with longterm Archers fan Paul Trueman. Utterly moved by Helens moving and eye-opening experience, he was inspired to set up a fundraising page to raise money for Refuge, the countrys largest provider of specialist services for women and children escaping domestic violence, in her name.

Show your solidari-tea with real-life Helens and donate to Refuge via @paultrueman74s fund https://t.co/qnSPStMJ1M #TheArchers  Refuge (@RefugeCharity) September 7, 2016

The JustGiving page, which is called The Helen Titchener (nee Archer) Rescue Fund, has received more than 142,000 ($188,809) since its creation in February  the equivalent of almost 2,900 nights in a refuge for a woman and her children.

The messages left by patrons are heartbreaking. I was a victim of domestic violence 33 years ago. I can only say that it is as if the scriptwriter witnessed those scenes in my life all those years ago. My son and I survived and life became joyful again, a donor under the name Helen wrote.

Something amazing just happened. This person just gave @RefugeCharity a grand. Here's to you grandma x #thearchers pic.twitter.com/x9XKyv5rsc  Paul Trueman (@paultrueman74) September 8, 2016

Trueman, a social media manager from Devon, told TIME the show had opened his eyes to the reality of domestic violence. When I thought of domestic abuse and violence, I thought about physical and sexual abuse  but never the mental side to it, he said. The day I created the page I set the target at 1,000, which felt incredibly presumptuous. Three hours later, I went to bed slightly shaken because we had already reached it, purely through social media.

ARRGH. Woken to find that we're just a fiver off 142,000! Amazing scenes. #thearchers https://t.co/SgJfrS4CWK pic.twitter.com/He5xJlWcgY  Paul Trueman (@paultrueman74) September 9, 2016

As well as raising funds, the program has done wonders for raising awareness about domestic violence and is cited as the reason for a 17% annual increase in calls to Britains national domestic violence helpline, which is run jointly by Womens Aid and Refuge.

The storyline has provided a brilliant opportunity to raise awareness of domestic violence  in particular, its subtle, insidious nature, Sandra Horley, the chief executive of Refuge, said. As it has unfolded, Refuge has been able to share vital messages with listeners, ensuring that women who find themselves in Helens situation know where to turn for support.

Helens trial concludes this week, and millions will tune in to find out her fate. Whatever the result, its clear that this storyline will continue to have an impact long after the sentence is handed down.
Meg Ryan has quietly emerged from her self-imposed Hollywood hiatus to appear in Ithaca, an adaptation of William Saroyan's 1943 novel The Human Comedy that also marks her directorial debut. The drama follows a young boy named Homer (Alex Neustaedter) who works as a bicycle telegraph messenger during World War II. In addition to Ryan, the cast also features her son Jack Quaid, as well as Sam Shepard, Hamish Linklater and Playtone producer Tom Hanks.

Ahead of Ithaca's release - it's opening in limited theaters and on VOD today via Momentum Pictures - Ryan tells The Hollywood Reporter what she learned from her own directors Nora Ephron and Jane Campion, how more women can "give permission" to themselves to jump behind the camera, and why she's looking forward to helming a romantic comedy.

Why direct this adaptation?

[Directing] has always been in the back of my mind. [William Saroyan's novel] wasn't required reading in my high school classes, so I found it when my son was young. I felt moved by the idea that it's a simple story about complicated things. Playtone knew that [screenwriter] Eric Jendresen also loved the book so they put us together, and we loved that thing for maybe eight years before we got it made.

Read more: 'Ithaca': Meg Ryan's Directorial Debut Delivers Heartbreaking WWII Telegrams (Exclusive Video)

The story's so filmic; I don't often read a script and go, "I can see this." Of course, it doesn't turn out anything like what's in your mind's eye, but something happens to your body where you go, "I gotta tell this story." The opportunity was to streamline it as a coming-of-age story - to have it be Homer's story, and to have the three telegrams he delivers be how we strung the narrative along. There's a lot of wisdom in that book - a lot of good things getting said, particularly in that voiceover, that are potent and beautiful.

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Which of your previous directors influenced you on set?

Jane Campion [who directed 2003's In the Cut] - the way she ran a set was so wonderful. She told me before we started shooting, "No matter what, you'll be very tempted to involve yourself with technicalities about light and focus and how fast the camera's gonna move, but make sure that when you're sitting there and watching the actors, that that's when you're the artist too and you really allow yourself to feel your way through every single take." That was really good advice - to have that kind of freedom right then, to have the freedom to feel what the actors were doing. I love that.

And Nora Ephron [who directed 1993's Sleepless in Seattle and 1998's You've Got Mail] - she was so smart and fun, but her intellect gave her authority. There was never any screaming around or anything ridiculous like that; it was always intelligent, and I appreciated that example. And as an actor, I like when directors keep things quiet; I don't like to be directed over a loud speaker or a bullhorn, so I made sure not to do that.

Meg Ryan on the set of Ithaca. Photo credit: Momentum Pictures

What part of filmmaking surprised you most?

It never surprised me when I didn't know - I assumed I would know nothing - but it surprised me what I did know. That, by osmosis, movie sets teach you lots of things. I hadn't been around a movie set in a really long time, and oh my god, I had so many opinions. It surprised me how fierce I was in my own self. I mean fierceness about protecting the artists, protecting the story, loving the story.

Read more: 37 of Fall's Most Anticipated Movies

Technically, I loved finding the shots and talking to the actors - that was such a pleasure - and being in on the creative discovery of all these different kinds of artists, that was incredible. To whisper around with somebody like [cinematographer] Andrew Dunn about light, or talk to [sound editor] Ron Bochar about silence, or talk to Sam Shepard about his process, that is such a privilege to be in that. I really felt like a conductor. It was a great surprise to see how every single actor worked completely differently than another actor, particularly the kids who'd never even done a movie.

The part of that was the "Uh, I gotta get this" was post. The edit is fun because it's like writing again, but you also struggle around with these microscopic things, and that surprised me. "We should start that music cue halfway through the blink, not all the way through the blink."

You reunite with Tom Hanks onscreen. What was it like directing him, after all these years?

Tom was only there for a day, but he asked such great questions - pertinent, smart, not fussy questions about how his character was serving the story. Just exactly spot on and easy and fun - and a great favor he did me by showing up there, my god.

Hollywood is lacking in female directors. What advice would you share to those helming their first film?

I was sitting on set one day, and I thought I was talking to myself, but Sam Shepard was sitting next to me. I was like, "What am I doing? This is a story about a boy becoming a man. I'm surrounded by men on this movie. What do I know about that? Why would I choose to tell this story?" And Sam goes, "Meg, what the hell's wrong with you? Women are the making of men. Women make men men. Of course, you're going to tell the story. Who else is going to tell it? Sam Peckinpah?!" And I just love what he said because that's the permission we should give ourselves: it's a feminine perspective, it's different from a male perspective. And I don't know how, and I don't know exactly how to quantify or qualify that, but it's true. My experience as a mom was the part that I felt the most confident in making the movie. So it's not just telling stories about women, it's telling stories as women.

Sam Shepard and Alex Neustaedter in Ithaca. Photo credit: Momentum Pictures

What do you hope is the film's standout message?

Gosh, I really hope that what people take away from it is the true value of one life. It's such a desensitizing time in our world, and hopefully this movie just sensitizes people to what loss really is. And there's a power in innocence that we often wish away, and it's a visceral thing. In movies, we trade so often in violence and sex and quick cuts and shoot-em-ups and loud, loud, loud, but quiet is visceral too. Quiet is moving; innocence, you can have that kind of reaction as well. I love the quiet smallness of it - it's like a Sunday night movie. That's what I hope: an audience would watch it on a Sunday night.

What have you loved about taking a hiatus from acting?

I've had like a ten-year breather! I loved it. It wasn't a plan or anything like that, but I really discovered myself more as an artist in these last ten years than when I was an actor. And it just has to do with feeling like my hands are on the wheel. No matter what, I'm taking full responsibility for it. For better or worse, I like that.

Who are some directors you look up to?

Soderbergh, Scorsese, Spielberg. Orson Welles and Peter Bogdanovich. John Huston. Wim Wenders. Oh my god, there's so many incredible artists, right? That's just a few of them.

Read more: The Black List for Female Directors? New Survey to "Shine a Spotlight" on Rising Talent (Exclusive)

How are you choosing what to direct next?

Now I'm like everyone else, right? Who just got the bug? You gotta find the project and find the money. I'm just reading. What I understand now, having done it, is you just have to love the story, because in the process you'll hate it, you'll be frustrated by it, you'll love it again, you'll be blinded again. Telling that story has to resonate.

Delia Ephron is writing a [romantic comedy] script that I'm set to direct for Working Title. That's the thing we have in hand, however in hand anything actually ever is.

What excites you about directing a rom-com?

Unlike Ithaca, which is purposefully slow, the romantic comedy, I love the clickety-clack of that. I love language and I'm a big fan of those old movies like Philadelphia Story and Bringing Up Baby and My Man Godfrey, all of those. What I'm hoping is that it's just so fun [because] it's so fun to be in the cultivation of a comic moment. Trying to figure out what's funny or how it's funny, that's a great way to spend your time. Although I always loved Hugh Grant, he said, "Being in a comedy is like being a balloon in a room of pins. But at least you get to be the balloon, right?"
SEOUL, South Korea -- North Korea marked its birthday on Friday with a bang: an underground nuclear test that shook the Earth in the country's remote northeast just after 9 a.m. local time (8:30 p.m. Thursday EDT).

The test is North Korea's fifth illicit nuclear test since 2006, and its second this year. The concern abroad is that with every test, North Korea hones and improves its nuclear technology. Indeed, on Friday, North Korea claimed in its state media to have tested a nuclear warhead, meaning Pyongyang may now be able to mount an atomic weapon on a ballistic missile designed to strike the United States in what would be a significant, and threatening, development.

It also is the latest in a string of provocations ordered by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who has made ballistic missiles and nuclear bombs his calling card.

Just days earlier, Kim presided over the launch of three ballistic missiles test-fired on Monday off North Korea's east coast. Those launches appeared timed to catch the attention of world leaders gathered in Asia this week for two global gatherings: the Group of 20 summit held in Hangzhou, China, just across the border, and the East Asia Summit in Laos.

The provocations are a snub to international pacts banning North Korea from missile and nuclear activity -- and a warning to the region that its defiance must not be ignored. With every launch and test, North Korea improves and hones its technology for mounting a nuclear weapon on a ballistic missiles designed to strike US territory, raising the threat to global security and concerns about nuclear proliferation.

But the missile and nuclear activity has a domestic purpose, as well.

North Korea's young leader, five years into his reign, is still working to solidify and legitimize his place as the third Kim in his family to rule the reclusive nation of 24 million people. It is no coincidence that this year's nuclear tests took place on or near significant days in North Korea: the first took just days before Kim Jong Un's Jan. 8 birthday, an unofficial holiday. Today's suspected test takes place on Sept. 9 th, the day modern North Korea was founded by his grandfather, the late President Kim Il Sung.

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Kim Jong Un's propagandists have sought to make a direct link between grandfather and grandson to legitimize the rule of a young man North Koreans knew little about until his succession campaign began seven years ago.

They have also worked to cement the young Kim's place in North Korean history with milestone events this year, including the first Workers' Party Congress in 36 years, held in May. At that Party Congress, Kim called for a 200-day "speed campaign" to motivate the people -- construction workers, factory girls, scientists -- to perform and deliver during a 6 1/2-month period.

[READ: Decoding North Korea's Propaganda Paintings]

North Korea's nuclear scientists were no doubt under immense pressure to come up with a big cause for celebration on this day that North Korea became a modern republic, presided over by his grandfather. The news should appear today on state TV broadcasts that every North Korean (those with a TV and electricity, anyhow) with an aim of instilling in them a sense of pride. And the test, advertised as a show of force against the United States, will be heralded on banners, posters and in slogans for months to come.

North Korea's regime is in sore need of a political pick-me-up right now. Sanctions imposed by the United Nations and by other governments have targeted the flow of hard currency into North Korea. That, in turn, may has prompted a series of defections among the elites in recent months, including a well-connected deputy ambassador to North Korea's embassy in London. The defections are not only an embarrassment to the regime but a worrying sign for the leadership of growing discontent among the ruling class that helps keep its political system intact.

Friday's nuclear test will be treated at home as a major victory for North Korea and Kim Jong Un: a scientific advancement as well as another weapon in its defense arsenal. The regime knows its provocations will earn global condemnation, and that censure will fit into the narrative fed to the people that Kim is protecting his people from outside enmity.

For regional powers, the challenge will be to find a way to answer the provocation forcefully without igniting a dangerous confrontation. World leaders will be huddling to discuss how to further punish North Korea when sanctions have done little to deter Pyongyang from building nuclear weapons, and how to contain the growing threat to global security and nuclear proliferation.

Jean H. Lee is a former AP bureau chief who opened the news agency's bureau in Pyongyang in 2012. She is now a Seoul-based Global Fellow with the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C., and can be reached on Twitter here.
LONDON (Reuters) - Philip Green, the British retail tycoon vilified for his role in the demise of the BHS department store he used to own, said he was continuing to work with the pensions regulator to find a solution for its 20,000 pensioners.

A July report by lawmakers blamed Green for the collapse of BHS this year after he sold the business in 2015 to a serial bankrupt. BHS's closure resulted in the loss of 11,000 jobs and left its pension fund with a deficit of 571 million pounds.

Green, hoping to salvage his reputation, has promised to help fix the pension scheme deficit and said on Friday it was still his aim to find a solution, after recent media reports questioned his approach.

"Contrary to all the coverage I have been working on this issue on a daily basis, and will continue to do so with my best efforts to achieve a satisfactory outcome for all involved as soon as possible," Green, who owns Topshop, said in a statement.

(Reporting by Sarah Young; editing by David Clarke)
By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - An Atlas 5 rocket blasted off from Florida on Thursday carrying a robot space probe on NASA's first quest to collect samples from an asteroid and return them to Earth in hopes of learning more about the origins of life. The 19-story rocket, built and flown for NASA by United Launch Alliance, lifted off at 7:05 p.m. (2305 GMT) from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, hurling the satellite explorer Osiris-Rex on its voyage to the near-Earth asteroid Bennu. The 3,300-pound (1,500-kg) solar-powered probe separated from the rocket's upper stage an hour after blastoff, soaring into space at 22,000 mph (35,400 kph) - more than 28 times the speed of sound - to begin its $1 billion, seven-year mission. It will take Osiris-Rex two years to reach its destination, a dark, rocky mass roughly a third of a mile wide and shaped like a giant acorn orbiting the sun at roughly the same distance as Earth. Bennu is thought to be covered with organic compounds dating back to the earliest days of the solar system. You can think of these asteroids as literally prebiotic chemical factories that were producing building blocks of life 4.5 billion years ago, before Earth formed, before life started here, NASA astrobiologist Daniel Glavin said before launch. Scientists believe asteroids and comets crashing into early Earth delivered water and organic compounds that seeded the planet for life. Atomic-level analysis of samples from Bennu could help them prove that theory. Once it settles into orbit around Bennu in 2018, Osiris-Rex will spend up to two more years mapping the asteroid's surface and taking inventory of its chemical and mineral composition. Scientists will ultimately choose a promising site on Bennu to sample and command Osiris-Rex to fly close enough to extend its robot arm to the asteroid's surface. A sampling container will then release a swirl of nitrogen gas, which will stir up gravel and soil for collection. "The more big pieces we can get the better ... they could contain the carbon molecules that we want to see," Jim Garvin, chief scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, said on NASA TV. After gathering at least 2 ounces (60 grams) of material, Osiris-Rex will fly back to Earth, jettisoning a capsule bearing the asteroid-sample container for a parachute descent and landing in the Utah desert in September 2023. Only one other spacecraft, Japans Hayabusa, has previously returned samples from an asteroid to Earth, but it collected less than a milligram of material because of a series of problems. A follow-on mission, Hayabusa 2, is under way, with a return to Earth planned for December 2020. The U.S. space agency also hopes Osiris-Rex will demonstrate the advanced imaging and mapping techniques needed for future science missions and for upcoming commercial asteroid-mining expeditions. Although Bennu occupies the same approximate orbital distance from the sun, it poses little threat to Earth. NASA estimates that there is a one-in-2,700 chance that Bennu might hit Earth sometime between 2175 and 2199. United Launch Alliance is a partnership of Lockheed Martin and Boeing . (Reporting by Irene Klotz at Cape Canaveral, Fla.; Editing by Steve Gorman and Peter Cooney)
Rukkas Thund-R Suit Claims Affordable High-Tech

German outfitter Rukka presents the Thund-R suit with Gore-Tex Pro three-layer laminate, and a tough outer layer of Cordura.

The company claims the gear is absolutely waterproof and extremely breathable.

The suit features elastic inserts on the knees and forearms, and width adjustments at the knees and hips.

Impact protection is provided by the comfortable Rukka D3O Air joint protectors, which multiply energy absorption at the moment of impact," according to Rukka.

Rukka Thund-R jacket

The jacket also has a pocket for the Air Allback protector.

Both jacket and pants have removable thermal liners. The pants seat has a non-slip Keprotec-Antiglide panel, and the AirCushion interior acts as a climate buffer against the motorcycles seat, dissipating condensation. The jacket includes four waterproof pockets.

The suit will be available at well sorted dealerships by the end of the year, in black with optional hi-vis yellow trim on the jacket.

The most pleasing moment at the dealership will be when the dealer quotes the price for the Rukka Thund-R suit, says Rukka. However, no pricing was listed.
GENEVA (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov suggested that the United States was holding up a deal on Syria at talks in Geneva with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday and said they may have to be reconvened next week. "We're thinking of maybe calling it a day, maybe meeting next week," Lavrov told reporters waiting for a potential deal to be announced at a press conference between the two diplomats. Asked if Russia had approved a text of a deal, Lavrov said: "We are there, I don't know where our friends are, but I believe it's important for them to check with Washington." Asked about Lavrov's comments, a senior U.S. administration official said Kerry was continuing to discuss the proposals with colleagues in Washington. "Those discussions are ongoing and when we have more to say we will." (Reporting by Tom Miles and David Brunnstrom)
(New throughout, adds analyst and Samsung comments)

By Se Young Lee and Jeffrey Dastin

SEOUL/NEW YORK, Sept 9 (Reuters) - A U.S. government safety agency on Friday urged all consumers to stop using Samsung Galaxy Note 7 phones, which are prone to catch fire, and top airlines globally banned their use during flights.

Following reports that the phones' batteries have combusted during charging and normal use, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said it was working on an official recall of the devices and that users should turn them off in the meantime.

Samsung Electronics Co Ltd said it was working with the agency. It voluntarily issued a recall last week for 10 markets including the United States, and it was expediting shipments of replacement phones to customers.

The U.S. government action heralds more fallout for the South Korean manufacturer, which may take a financial hit from the recall and lose customers who are concerned about the quality of its flagship phones.

For Samsung, which prides itself on manufacturing prowess, the scale of the recall is expected to be unprecedented. Some 2.5 million of the premium devices have been sold worldwide, the company has said. Its shares closed down 3.9 percent on Friday.

Samsung said users in the United States can exchange their phones for one of several models and receive a $25 gift card.

"The cost of the recall is going to be astronomical," said product liability expert and chief executive officer of Real-World Forensic Engineering, Jahan Rasty. "They have to compensate people, fix the problem and give them a revised version of the product that doesn't have the same manufacturing or design defect.

"The longer this story lingers, the more it will etch itself in people's minds," he said.

AIRLINE BANS

One pain point is that the devices are now off limits in a typically high-use setting: aboard planes.

Aviation authorities and airlines from North America to Europe and Asia have issued bans or guidance on the phones. On Thursday, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said travelers should not use or charge them while in the air, or stow them in checked luggage.

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That prompted the world's three largest airlines by passenger traffic - American, Delta and United - to start telling passengers at the gate and on board aircraft to keep the phones switched off until they deplane.

While experts say the bans may be tough for airlines to enforce, they nonetheless may deter would-be customers of the Note 7 in addition to annoying existing customers.

That's because airlines have increasingly made movies and TV shows available free for streaming on smart devices in flight, to avoid the cost of installing new screens on seat-backs. For now, Note 7 customers are cut off from this entertainment.

This is "a huge black eye for Samsung," TECHnalysis Research President Bob O'Donnell said.

Companies ranging from Singapore Airlines Ltd and Qantas Airways Ltd to Air France KLM SA have instituted similar bans on the device.

They are the latest in ongoing efforts in the airline industry to manage the use of lithium-ion batteries, which are known to combust and are used in many devices, from phones and laptops to toys.

Top airlines banned hoverboards during the Christmas holiday season in 2015. Earlier this year, the U.N.'s aviation agency prohibited shipments of lithium-ion batteries as cargo on passenger planes.

A January report from the FAA said at least 171 incidents of smoke, fire, extreme heat or explosion involving batteries have occurred since 1991.

In some instances, they have caused emergency landings, as when a camera short-circuited and started a small fire in the overhead bin of an American Airlines flight in September 2013. Injuries were rare, the report said.

(Reporting by Se Young Lee in Seoul and Jeffrey Dastin in New York; Additional reporting by Victoria Bryan and Deborah Todd; Editing by Tiffany Wu and Cynthia Osterman)
By Tom Hals

(Reuters) - Samsung Electronics Co Ltd on Thursday asked a U.S. judge to allow the South Korean company to pay cargo handlers to remove its goods from Hanjin Shipping Co Ltd's vessels stationed near U.S. ports after the world's seventh-largest container carrier filed for bankruptcy.

Hanjin's collapse last week came during the peak shipping period ahead of the year-end holiday season, stranding cargo for the likes of HP Inc and Samsung.

Around $14 billion of cargo has been tied up globally as ports, tug boat operators and cargo handling firms refuse to work for Hanjin because they fear they will not be paid due to uncertainty over plans to provide new financing.

Samsung said an order this week by a U.S. bankruptcy judge did not encourage the Hanjin ships to enter U.S. ports as intended, which the company blamed on a misunderstanding of maritime law, the bankruptcy code and Korean law.

The maker of electronic goods including Galaxy smartphones said the judge should issue an order barring the seizure of ships and allow it and other cargo owners to retrieve their goods by paying cargo handlers, who have been demanding payment guarantees.

"There's no earthly reason why these parties should not be permitted to cut their own deals," Samsung said in a Thursday court filing with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Newark, New Jersey.

Cargo handler Maher Terminals LLC, which operates a container terminal in the Port of New York and New Jersey, backed the plan to let owners of cargo pay for handling. But it urged the court in a filing not to protect Hanjin vessels from seizure without also considering the rights of suppliers.

"Maher is currently being victimized by having hundreds of Hanjin containers clogging up its facility and impeding the ability of Maher to properly service its other customers," the company said in court papers on Thursday.

Nothing in the court order "should be deemed to compel parties like Maher to continue to provide services without receiving payment or adequate assurance of such payment," it added.

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Total Terminals International LLC, a West Coast marine terminal operator partly owned by Hanjin, earlier in the week cautioned the court that a plan was needed to pay for several levels of port services, such as tug boats and stevedores, and to ensure Hanjin vessels would be able to refuel and leave port.

"This lack of a short term plan for these vessels will lead to mayhem," it said in the filing.

An attorney for Hanjin, Ilana Volkov, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

One Hanjin ship, the Hanjin Scarlet, is in Canada's Port of Prince Rupert, where it is being unloaded, with cargo owners covering charges, port spokesman Kris Schumacher said.

It remains unclear if the vessel would proceed to stops in Vancouver, British Columbia, and Seattle, he added.

"... All the supply chain partners - the pilots, the tug boat operators, the marine terminals operators, railroads and trucking companies - are saying they want a guarantee they will be paid," said Tara Mattina, a spokeswoman for The Northwest Seaport Alliance, a partnership between the ports of Seattle and Tacoma, Washington, that manages their cargo terminal leases.

The U.S. judge, John Sherwood, will hear the request on Friday.

As of Thursday afternoon, two Hanjin ships were near the Port of Long Beach, according to the Marine Exchange of Southern California, which tracks cargo ship traffic. One of the ships, the Hanjin Boston, is scheduled to head into the port on Friday afternoon for re-fueling.

A third ship, the Hanjin Greece, was off the shore of Mexico, where it could avoid U.S. anti-pollution regulations that require use of low-sulfur fuel, the tracking group said. Many ships carry only a limited supply of low-sulfur fuel.

Some cargo owners have already paid fees to terminal operators to allow the release of Hanjin containers held up on the docks, according to a Port of Oakland spokesman.

The Seoul Central District Court is presiding over the receivership filed by Hanjin last week. A foreign representative of the shipping line has filed for so-called Chapter 15 bankruptcy with the Newark court.

Chapter 15 is meant to allow a company to seek recognition by U.S. courts of orders issued overseas and to ask U.S. judges to assist in a foreign corporate debt restructuring.

(Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware; additional reporting by Lisa Richwine in Los Angeles, Jim Christie in San Francisco and Angela Moon in New York; Editing by Alan Crosby and Richard Chang)
(SAN DIEGO)  The San Diego Zoo burned items containing rhinoceros horn with an estimated black market value of $1 million in a symbolic gesture Thursday to show the U.S. is committed to ending illegal wildlife trafficking.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service partnered with the zoo and California Department of Fish and Wildlife to hold the massive bonfire, the first of its kind in the United States.

Countries around the world have been burning and destroying illegal wildlife products to send the message that such products cannot be traded and that poaching of animals for their horns must stop. In April, 120 tons of elephant ivory and 1.3 tons of rhino horn were destroyed in Kenya.

The items  from carved horns to products falsely marketed as having medicinal qualities from the horns  were confiscated in the U.S. and outside the country, zoo spokeswoman Darla Davis said.

Officials say a rhino is poached every eight hours in Africa and they could become extinct in the wild in 15 years. In 2015, 1,175 rhinos were killed in South Africa alone, according to the San Diego zoo.

Gov. Jerry Brown recently signed a bill to close a loophole in the states ban on importing, buying or selling elephant ivory or rhino horns. Supporters said California is a major market for ivory, and the ban would help dry up demand.

The measure by Democratic Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins of San Diego aimed to end the states exemption for selling ivory imported before 1977. She said clamping down on the illegal ivory trade would help bring an end to the poaching of elephants and rhinos.

San Francisco and Los Angeles make up two of the countrys top three hubs for ivory sales. New York, which wildlife officials call the countrys biggest ivory market, banned the sale of most elephant ivory, mammoth tusks and rhinoceros horns last year.
When Darren Lynn Bousman arrived in Hollywood after graduating from film school, he was just another kid with a screenplay. It was called The Desperate, a horror-thriller that was often rejected, he was told, because it was too similar to Saw. Still, Bousman was surprised when he got a call from the producers of the horror franchise - Gregg Hoffman, Oren Koules and Mark Burg - who offered not only to make the movie, but to let Bousman direct. The catch was that The Desperate would be incorporated into the franchise as Saw II. It was the dream of any young filmmaker, and for Bousman, it led to Saw III and Saw IV, which collectively earned more than $450 million worldwide. After living and breathing the gory franchise for four years, however, Bousman says he was ready to move on.

In the years that followed, he made 2008's ill-fated Repo! The Genetic Opera starring Paris Hilton, as well a numerous self-distributed horror titles familiar to few. But now Bousman is back with The Tension Experience: Ascension, beginning Sept. 8 in Boyle Heights in Downtown Los Angeles. It's not a film, but an immersive theatrical event tailored to participants' choices.

"I worked on Saw and learned how to tell a story," Bousman tells The Hollywood Reporter about what went into his current monthslong project that will culminate in the 24-room labyrinth built for Ascension by producer Gordon Bijelonic. "I didn't tiptoe in through the Saw universe. I dove in and did my first real movie. This kind of taught me to tell a story."

Read more: From 'Saw' to Berlin: The Bloody Odyssey of Darren Lynn Bousman

Bousman hopes Ascension will join titles like Sleep No More, a site-specific Macbeth staged in a Manhattan hotel, as a major title in the emerging genre. Having seen the London import roughly 10 times, he lists it and others, like the Lewis Carroll-inspired Then She Fell, among his favorites.

"I've made some extreme risks in my career, and hindsight is 20/20," he reflects of the Saw franchise and years since. "I could be angry, I can be upset or sad I can't get my movie distributed, or I can't get money to make a movie, or I can do something about it. With me, I refuse to fail and I refuse to go away."

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Some participants of The Tension Experience also refused to go away. It began last February with players who dialed a mysterious phone number in small print on the logo of the Facebook page of the O.O.A., a secretive organization. They were given an address, a date and time. Those who showed up met for a consultation, marking the beginning of their part in a story about a missing girl who came to Hollywood and got taken in by the O.O.A. Along the way to this month's culmination with Ascension, some players took things a little too seriously.

Read more: Repo! The Genetic Opera

"There were a few that were completely out of their mind that made some serious threats," Bousman says with a shudder, recalling an incident involving the FBI. "If you're calling and text messaging and showing up to locations, you begin to blur the lines a little bit. That's not everyone, that's a few people out of hundreds who had an issue. It was scary cause you're dealing with a strange 'cult' and you have people who take what you're doing to be non-fiction."

Even scarier might be the prospect of diving into the movie world again after the modest showing of his most recent film, Abattoir. With the Ascension sets already built, the script written and the actors hired, only an idiot wouldn't put it on film. The plan is to continue the production through Halloween, close it down to shoot the movie, then reopen as immersive theater again. After that, he'll confront the real-life horror of finding a distributor and getting Ascension into theaters.

"It's hard to compete. Every day it gets harder and harder cause you have so many movies being released On Demand, Netflix, DirectTV. You have so much content being produced," groans Bousman. "My success is in trying to bend and being outside the box and doing things that are so weird. I think it forces me to step outside my comfort zone. And the weirder and more risks that I take, the more people look. I get their attention."
More than 350 years ago, thousands Scottish soldiers were captured during the English Civil War by the controversial British leader Oliver Cromwell. Many were kept as prisoners and were buried in mass graves when they died of disease and starvation.

Now, some of those soldiers will finally receive a more respectful resting place near Durham University, in northeast England, where the mass graves were found. Once research on the remains is complete, the soldiers will be reburied in a nearby cemetery in Durham, university officials announced in late August.

"The decision follows extensive consultation with a range of interested parties, including in the USA, where some of the surviving soldiers from the Battle of Dunbar were transported," the university said in a statement. [Photos: Mass Graves Hold 17th-Century Prisoners of War]

Archaeologists found the soldiers' remains in 2013, during an excavation at Durham University to clear the area for a library expansion. However, once archaeologists uncovered the skeletons, they halted work immediately.

The researchers unearthed human remains from two mass graves that were directly affected by the construction project. The graves hold an estimated 1,700 individuals, likely Scottish soldiers who were taken prisoner following the Battle of Dunbar in 1650, archaeologists told Live Science in May.

The mass graves are located on the city's World Heritage Site, as designated by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Though the recovered remains will no longer be buried at the UNESCO site, a plaque commemorating them will be placed nearby, and a commemorative event will be held later this year, university officials said.

The final burials will take place after archaeologists have finished studying the soldiers' remains in late 2017. However, Durham University plans to keep a few teeth so that researchers can study them down the line, when new techniques and opportunities become available, according to university officials.

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Ethical dilemmas

The decision to retain the teeth was not made lightly, and was approved by the universitys Executive Committee and the University Ethics Advisory Committee, according to a statement from the school. It was also a difficult decision to determine where to bury the bodies, especially because they were likely Scottish, not English, the university said. [8 Grisly Archaeological Discoveries]

But it was considered to be "morally appropriate" to keep the individuals as close to their comrades as possible, according to the university. Moreover, the United Kingdoms Ministry of Justice asks that reburials be near to original burial sites.

"The decision on where to rebury the soldiers was very complex," David Cowling, pro-vice-chancellor of arts and humanities at Durham University, said in the statement. "We were acutely aware of the strength and depth of interest amongst many about the fate of these soldiers, whilst at the same time recognizing our ethical, moral and legal obligations."

In the end, they felt that "the case for reburying the remains in Durham was strongest," Cowling said.

The team even consulted with people in the United States, some of whom are descendants of surviving soldiers from the Battle of Dunbar. After the battle, thousands of soldiers were marched more than 100 miles (160 kilometers) from southeast Scotland to Durham, university officials said. About 3,000 of the soldiers were held at Durham Cathedral and Castle. Those who survived imprisonment were shipped around the world, including to Virginia and New England, where they worked as indentured servants, the officials said.

"It has been hugely rewarding to see the level of interest in the Scottish Soldiers Archaeology Project both in the U.K. and the USA," said Chris Gerrard, head of the project team and a professor at Durham University.

Original article on Live Science.

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By Michael Flaherty

(Reuters) - Seagate Technology Plc has invited ValueAct Capital in as an investor, selling a roughly 4 percent stake to the activist hedge fund, which will also get a front-row view of its board meetings, the hard-drive maker said on Friday.

ValueAct will receive an "observer board" position that will give it access to directors and their deliberations, but not voting power, as part of the share purchase, whose price was not disclosed. Seagate stock was up 3 percent at $37.40 in morning trading.

Seagate said in a statement that it had reached out to ValueAct to take part in the investment - a twist on the normal activist engagement, which almost always involves the hedge fund approaching the company first.

Activists have aggressively targeted U.S. companies over the last five years, pushing for better cash management, leadership changes and new strategies.

Companies often resist activist campaigns, and sometimes the contention results in a proxy fight, where the hedge fund tries to replace board members with its own nominees.

"Seagate approached ValueAct to execute this transaction and become an investor in our company, given their commitment to and success in creating long-term value for the companies in which they invest," Seagate Chief Executive Officer Steve Luczo said in the statement.

Some other companies have also been more receptive toward activists in the last year. Industrial conglomerate General Electric, for example, said it welcomed Trian Partners' purchase of a stake in October.

ValueAct will obtain 9.5 million Seagate shares through a so-called secondary block trade, the company said. That means that rather than buying shares on the open market, it will exchange them with an existing Seagate investor, who was not identified.

The sale, which Seagate expects to complete by the end of the month, will make ValueAct one of its largest shareholders.

ValueAct's recent investments include a $1.1 billion stake in investment bank Morgan Stanley, where the firm has not yet demanded a board seat or agitated for major changes. The San Francisco-based fund also said in July that it bought a 6.8 percent stake in railcar maker Trinity Industries Inc worth around $111 million.

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ValueAct, which with more than $16 billion under management is one of the largest activist investors, has invested in Seagate before.

Other tech industry investments by ValueAct include Microsoft Corp, where it has a board seat. The firm also had a stake in Adobe Systems Inc that it sold.

(Reporting by Michael Flaherty; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)
By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The notes are handwritten on a legal pad and provide a verbatim account of the shock, pain and grim determination aboard Air Force One on Sept. 11, 2001.

They were scribbled by Ari Fleischer, press secretary for President George W. Bush, and he is releasing them to mark the 15th anniversary on Sunday of the worst attack on American soil since Japanese forces bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941.

There are six pages in all, the only original verbatim text of what Bush said on Air Force One as he and his senior aides absorbed the news.

"Were at war," Bush told Vice President Dick Cheney. Hanging up and turning to his aides, he added: "When we find out who did this, they're not going to like me as president. Somebody's going to pay."

Fleischer adopted the role of presidential note taker as Air Force One lifted off from Florida after the twin towers in New York and the Pentagon were attacked by hijacked passenger jets.

"I always took notes. It's how you do your job," Fleischer told Reuters. "But on Sept. 11 it was instantly clear how much more important it was to have a record of what the president did and said. I basically glued myself to his side almost the entire day and remained in his cabin on Air Force One to listen and take notes."

Much of the material has been part of the public record. Fleischer has used them for annual tweets about Sept. 11 and in speeches and made them available to the commission that investigated the 9/11 attacks. But he has not previously released them in full to the public.

The story that unfolds in Fleischer's penmanship begins with the raw emotions Bush and his aides experienced, the president already itching to retaliate.

"I can't wait to find out who did it," Bush said. "It's going to take a while and we're not going to have a little slap on the wrist crap."

There is a dramatic period in which Bush tries to overcome opposition from the Secret Service to letting him return to Washington. The plane first took him to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, then Offutt air base in Nebraska. He got back to Washington that night.

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"I want to get home as soon as possible," Bush said. "I don't want whoever this is holding me outside Washington."

An aide responded: "Our people are saying it's too unsteady still."

Bush said that was the message he was hearing from Cheney as well.

Bush chief of staff Andy Card said, "The right thing is to let the dust settle."

Fleischer's notes include an eerie reference to a communication heard on the plane from the ground that "Angel is next." Because Air Force One's codename at the time was "angel," there was worry onboard that the plane was a target.

He said an armed guard was stationed outside the door leading to the Air Force One cockpit, just in case someone was a threat on the plane itself.

A month later, Bush and his team were told the reference to "angel" was a miscommunication from the ground. One offshoot of the 9/11 attacks was a major renovation of Air Force One's communications abilities.

The president, only in office for eight months, had another priority in mind as well: making sure his family was safe. Bush's wife, Laura, and their two daughters were whisked to secure locations.

"Barney?" Bush said, inquiring about his beloved Scottish terrier.

"He's nipping at the heels of Osama bin Laden now," said Card.

(Reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by Leslie Adler)
By Huw Jones and James Davey

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's Serious Fraud Office has charged three former senior Tesco (TSCO.L) executives with fraud in its investigation into accounting practices at the country's biggest supermarket chain.

A 250 million pound overstatement of Tesco's first-half profits in August 2014, due to booking deals with suppliers too early, led to the suspension of eight senior members of staff in the following months.

None of them commented at the time.

When Tesco revealed the overstatement, which was later raised to 263 million pounds, it plunged the firm into the worst crisis in its near 100-year history and led to a 4 billion pound drop in the company's stock market value.

Carl Rogberg, Christopher Bush and John Scouler have been charged with one count of fraud by abuse of position and one count of false accounting, the SFO said in a statement on Friday, giving no further details of the charges.

Bush, 50, who was managing director of Tesco UK, Rogberg, 49, who was finance director UK and Scouler, 48, who was UK food commercial director have been asked to appear at a London court on Sept 22, the SFO said.

Hickman & Rose Solicitors, which is representing Bush, said he was "extremely disappointed" by the SFO's decision.

"He is not guilty ... he will vigorously contest these allegations and is confident he will be cleared of any wrong doing," it said.

Norton Rose Fulbright, which is representing Carl Rogberg, said "Our client, Carl Rogberg, has always denied any wrongdoing. He will be vigorously contesting the charges to prove his innocence.

Lawyers for Scouler, who is the commercial director of telecoms company TalkTalk (TALK.L), were not immediately available for comment.

The SFO, which launched its criminal investigation in October 2014, said the alleged activity occurred between February and September of that year. The SFO's statement said its investigation into Tesco is ongoing.

Under SFO rules, if Tesco cooperates with the ongoing inquiry, can show it has put measures in place to prevent any further wrongdoing and agrees to terms, it could qualify for a suspended prosecution, or deferred prosecution agreement (DPA).

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The Tesco probe is seen as a key case for the SFO, an agency established to deal with the most serious and complex fraud cases, that has had a chequered record in securing white collar convictions over its 28-year history.

The convictions of three former Barclays traders in London's third, high-profile Libor trial in July after a bitterly-fought case have helped silence some of its critics.

The SFO's statement also made no mention of Tesco's former chief executive Philip Clarke who was sacked in July 2014.

Clarke, who has not commented since leaving Tesco, was interviewed under caution last year as part of the SFO's investigation.

Tesco said it has introduced a programme of extensive change in the two years since Dave Lewis took over as CEO and could not comment further.

Tesco agreed to pay $12 million in November 2015 to settle a U.S. lawsuit brought by holders of the company's American depository receipts, alleging breaches of federal securities laws in connection with the overstatement of commercial income.

The Financial Reporting Council (FRC), which polices accountants, is still investigating accountants PwC into how the firm audited Tesco's accounts in the run up to the scandal. PwC declined to comment.

($1 = 0.7511 pounds)

(Additional reporting by Kirstin Ridley, Carolyn Cohn and Kate Holton; Editing by Alexander Smith and Elaine Hardcastle)
This California sheriff's office wanted to send a firm warning that every action has its consequences, even when the suspect is a tiny bear that somehow snuck its way into the department.

Read: Puppy Riddled With Mange Makes Incredible Recovery After Being Left For Dead

When the bear cub wandered into the Placer County Sheriff's Office in Sacramento earlier this week, curiosity seemed to get the best of it

The animal can be seen hopping on his hind legs in a video uploaded to Facebook, as the animal turned its attention to a trash can for a snack.

Before he knew what was happening, a sheriff firmly warned, "Do not knock over that garbage can."

As if testing him, the bear seems to look up at the sheriff, before tipping the bin slightly.

"Better not," the sheriff calmly warns. "You better not."

Intimidated, the bear seems to pause where he is.

Read: Black Bear Struggles to Get Coffee Can off His Head: 'He Just Kept Bumping Into the Truck'

While the video cuts off before the end, the Placer County Sheriff's Office assured the public on Facebook: "He didn't knock over the trash can!"

Watch: Follow a Therapy Dog Wearing a GoPro Camera Through A Children's Hospital

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From Esquire

A female student died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound Thursday after shooting and injuring another female student inside a high school in West Texas, according to the local sheriff.

"The shooter appears to have shot herself," Brewster County Sheriff Ronny Dodson told radio station KVLF. A gun was found near the suspected shooter, he said.

The incident began shortly before 9 a.m. at Alpine High School in the town of 5,900 in Texas' Big Bend region. Authorities did not immediately release a possible motive for the gunfire. Dodson said the injured student ran outside seeking help and was taken to a hospital with injuries that weren't considered life threatening.

He said a federal law enforcement officer who was responding to the incident was shot in the leg when another officer's gun accidentally discharged. The shooting prompted a lockdown at Alpine's three public schools.

Dodson said the shooting at the high school was part of a chaotic series of events that included a bomb threat called in at nearby Sul Ross State University, which required law enforcement personnel to rush there from the high school.

"That's ridiculous for someone to call in something like this when we've got this situation going on," Dodson said. "This community does not expect this, we don't want this, and we can't explain it yet."

Alpine is 220 miles southeast of El Paso and 110 miles north of Big Bend National Park.

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A new Chicken Soup for the Soul book has 101 stories of things to be thankful for.

The book, The Power of Gratitude was co-authored by Inside Edition host Deborah Norville.

Inside the inspiring read, there are stories of people who discovered the silver lining in a time of extreme difficulty and turned their lives around.

Read: Librarian Revealed to Have $4 Million Fortune, Which He Leaves to University He Worked at for 50 Years

One of the many stories featured in the book is from Lindy Schneider. She had been downsized out of a new job two months after she got there.

I got a tap on my shoulder and it was my manager. He said: 'Stop what you're doing immediately and follow me to my office.' So, I knew the writing was on the wall, she told Inside Edition.

She looked at the men who were firing her, noticing their weary and dejected faces, as they spoke and they were so weary and their faces so dejected she looked at them and said "thank you."

My manager said: You know that is the one thing I didn't expect to hear today, was 'thank you.'

When she got home that evening, she noticed there was a voicemail. The message was from a recruiter who said she had been recommended for a position. The person who recommended her was the boss to who she had just thanked for firing her.

In another story from the book, we learn about the mother of Mickey Sherman.

Before Sherman launched his successful career as a lawyer, he was just a little boy growing up in Connecticut. His mother had been widowed, and desperately needed a heart operation when he was a child.

As far as Mrs. Sherman was concerned there was only one doctor in the world qualified to do the procedure she needed was world renowned and pioneering cardiologist Dr. Michael Debakey.

She reached out to Dr. Debakey and wrote a letter explaining her situation. "There may be many surgeons who can perform the operation. You are, I am certain, besieged with the same request by many people all over the world, she wrote.

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Incredibly she got a letter back. A letter from Dr. Debakey himself, who said, of course he would do the procedure and "I wouldn't dream of charging you."

Thanks to that procedure, Mrs. Sherman lived more than 30 years. Her son says he will forever be grateful for that gift of that free surgery.

One of the many stories comes from Jody Fuller, who as a teen had gotten into trouble with the law.

The judge said: If you don't straighten out and change your ways, the next time you're going to be in some really serious trouble."

Read: MMA Fighter to Donate Son's Organs in Wake of Suspected DUI Hit-and-Run Tragedy

He listened to the judge and ended up becoming an Army medic, where he treated some of the survivors of the 1993 Mogadishu disaster in Somalia, what became known as Black Hawk Down.

As he was moving up the ranks in the Army, he was also dealing with a pretty profound stutter. When he finally retired from the service he said: Naturally, I became a standup comic.

He is grateful for the judge, and is appreciative for the fact that he stutters and he's thankful for the opportunity he's had to wear the uniform of this country.

Click here to purchase a copy of Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Power of Gratitude.

Click here to download and read a PDF Excerpt of Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Power of Gratitude.

Watch: Toddler Who Survived Under Capsized Boat Reunites With Rescuers: 'You Saved Our World'

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North Korean leader Kim Jong Un reacts during a missile test in June 2016. (Photo: Reuters)



Singapore is deeply concerned and extremely disappointed by North Koreas nuclear test on Friday (9 September).

These sentiments were expressed in a statement made by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), which was issued on the same day after the test.

This deliberate and provocative act seriously jeopardises the peace and stability of the region, the statement said. It also urged North Korea to desist from such actions and to abide by its international obligations and commitments.



North Korea, also known as the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK) claimed on Friday that it had successfully tested a nuclear warhead small enough to be mounted on a ballistic missile.

The DPRK can share in our regions peace and prosperity only if it changes course and works to integrate itself with the region, said the MFA.



The ministry also said that it would be looking to make Singapores views known to the North Korean government through its ambassador here.


Nuclear Friday. North Korea conducted its fifth underground nuclear test  and second this year  on Friday, shrugging off threats of deeper sanctions from the United States and the U.N. in the process. The test demonstrated a nuclear warhead that has been standardized to be able to be mounted on its ballistic missiles the North proclaimed in a statement.

The South Korean government confirmed the test on Friday after recording an unnatural artificial tremor originating from Punggye-ri, where the North has conducted four previous tests. Officials in the South and other experts said that the test was the countrys largest to date, sparking worries that the country is making real progress in its efforts to build a functional nuclear warhead.

North testing like never before. The pace and tenor of North Korean ballistic missile and nuclear tests have undergone a big change this year, Bruce Bennett, a senior defense analyst at the RAND Corporation told SitRep. Since February, North Korea has fired off more than 30 ballistic missiles with a range of at least 200 km, more than the number fired previously by North Korea, ever, he said via email. These more extensive tests should allow North Korea to convert its missile force from a strategic threat/showcase to an operational force that seriously jeopardizes all of its neighbors, including China.

As usual, the international community reacted with outrage. China said it was firmly opposed to the test, while Japan protested adamantly and U.S. president Barack Obama  on his way home from his last trip to Asia as president  warned of serious consequences.

More reax. Karl Dewey, an analyst at IHS Janes said in a statement that the threat of further sanctions is hardly a deterrent to the regime of Kim Jong Un, as his military is thought to have a small standing stock of nuclear weapons, with some estimates placing the national inventory around 15-20 weapons. Sanctions will not have affected this stockpile, or the Norths ability to test.

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The Center for Naval Analysis recently dropped a new look at efforts to deter the North Korean regime, coming to the conclusion that as Kim Jong-un continues to consolidate his power, South Korea and the United States should expect that provocations will continue to be a part of North Koreas strategy.

The calm before Mosul. As many as 500 more U.S. troops have moved into Iraq over the past week, as Baghdad prepares to storm the Islamic State-held city of Mosul in the coming weeks. The deployment pushes the official number of U.S. troops in the country to about 4,400, defense officials said Thursday. President Obama ordered troop increases in Iraq earlier this year, but the troops have only recently begun to arrive as final preparations are made for what is expected to be a long and bloody battle for Iraqs second-largest city.

Many of those troops are expected to move north to the recently recaptured Qayyarah Air Base just south of Mosul, where Iraqi forces will stage for the fight. American officials say theyll be conducting logistics and intelligence operations from the base  along with firing artillery at ISIS positions. The fight looks like itll kick off some time next month in order to meet Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al Abadis timeline to retake the city by the end of the year. Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria, told the Wall Street Journal in a story published Thursday that ultimately, if the desire is to try to get it done around the end of the year, were going to have to start soon. Spokesman for U.S. forces in Iraq, Col. John Dorrian, estimated Thursday that there are about 3,000 to 4,500 ISIS fighters in Mosul.

SEAL raids. American commandos killed seven men thought to be Taliban fighters during a raid launched last month to free two hostages  an American and an Australian  who were kidnapped in Kabul in early August. The team of Navy SEALS who conducted the raid had actually been airborne the day before the raid, but were unable to get the White House to sign off on the raid in time. Its unclear when the hostages were moved from the location, or where they are now.

Geneva to Aleppo. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov are back in Geneva, trying to salvage any hope of the two countries brokering a ceasefire in Syria that would ground the Syrian air force and break the sieges of Aleppo and other cities being squeezed by the regime. Officials travelling with Kerry dont sound hopeful about reaching a deal, according to the Wall Street Journal, reflecting a recent FP story in which a senior defense official said I dont trust the Russians one iotaNo one thinks that any of this is actually going to come to pass.

Good morning and as always, if you have any thoughts, announcements, tips, or national security-related events to share, please pass them along to SitRep HQ. Best way is to send them to: paul.mcleary@foreignpolicy.com or on Twitter: @paulmcleary or @arawnsley

Syria

An airstrike in Aleppo province has killed the top military official in al Qaedas erstwhile affiliate in Syria, Reuters reports. Jaish al-Fateh announced that Abu Omar Saraqeb died in the airstrike, which hit a meeting of the groups senior leadership. The group, formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra, recently announced that it had ended its relationship as al al Qaedas affiliate in Syria in what many believe was an attempt to dissuade the U.S. from further targeting it. Nonetheless, rebel sources tell the wire service that they believe the airstrike which killed Saraqeeb was carried out by an American jet.

Seventy three aid groups operating in Syria are pulling out of the U.N.s information-sharing program, citing concerns that the Assad regime has managed to compromise the integrity and neutrality of the international bodys humanitarian operations in the country. In a letter to the U.N., the groups also accuse the Syrian Arab Red Crescent of having its decisions shaped by the political influence of the Syrian government. The groups were particularly critical of what they say is excessive deference towards the regime by the U.N. office in Damascus.

Drones

Three U.S. Air Force veterans have filed court papers supporting a Yemeni mans lawsuit over the death of his brother-in-law and nephew in a U.S. drone strike in Yemen, according to the Los Angeles Times. The three veterans, who worked on different aspects of drone programs, say they have no direct knowledge of the strike that killed Faisal bin Ali Jabers family members. Nonetheless, they say their experience taught them that the military will sometimes label deaths of unknown persons at the scene of a drone strike as enemy kills.

The Air Force may soon have the drone swarms its always wanted. National Defense magazine reports that the Defense Departments strategic capabilities office is working on a program for fighter jets to act as motherships for deploying swarms of small surveillance drones the size of soda bottles. The program, dubbed Perdix, would use cheap, disposable, 3-D printed drones launched from canisters inside an F-16s flare dispensers. William Roper, head of the strategic capabilities office, says the research shop have already tested the system in over 500 F-16 flights.

Navy drones have been measuring the effects of climate change in the Arctic in order to figure out which areas could soon become areas of strategic competition between the United States and Russia. The Navys Updated Arctic Road Map uses unmanned underwater autonomous robots like the Seaglider to measure temperature and salinity. The melting ice in the Arctic has opened up access to mineral and energy resources as well as new waterways. Russia has moved quickly to take advantage of the new access and some worry that it could lead to new tensions between countries with territory along the Arctic.

Marines

The Marine Corps has punished 20 officers and enlisted personnel following an investigation into the suicide of a Muslim recruit who was allegedly subjected to racist abuse and hazing during training. Raheel Siddiqui died after jumping from a stairwell during training after allegedly being singled out for abuse by drill instructors. The three top officials from Siddiquis unit have already been fired, according to the AP, and a further 17 Marine officials have been temporarily relieved.

Russia

Russias navy just signed a contract for a half dozen new diesel electric-submarines, UPI reports. The contract with the Admiralty Shipyard requires the six Kilo-class subs to be delivered by 2021. The vessels are earmarked for Russias Pacific fleet.

Photo Credit: KNS/AFP/Getty Images
BRUSSELS (AFP) - Jamaica's double Olympic sprint champion Elaine Thompson brought the curtain down on a spectacular season with her 12th straight 100m victory at Brussels' Diamond League meeting on Friday.

In a thrilling night of track and field which featured a couple of botched world record attempts, the stand-out performance unexpectedly came from American pole vaulter Sandi Morris, who became only the second female in history to go over the 5m barrier outdoors after Russian Yelena Isinbayeva.

Although Morris's compatriot Jennifer Suhr has vaulted 5.03m, that was indoors, and the current Olympic silver medallist set a packed King Baudouin stadium alight when she cleared 5.00m.

But she failed at three attempts at 5.07m, 1cm further than Isinbayeva's world record.

On the track, Thompson scorched to victory in a new meeting record of 10.72 seconds ahead of Dutch rival Dafne Schippers.

The victory was Thompson's 12th consecutive in the blue-riband event in 2016, coming just weeks after she wrapped up golds in the 100 and 200m at the Rio Olympics.

"Now I can finally go back home," said the 24-year-old Jamaican, whose winning time meant she became the first woman in history to record four consecutive sub-10.8sec 100m times.

"I keep on smiling because this season was really great. If I had to summarise it in one word: Wonderful!"

European champion Schippers, who came fifth in the Rio 100m and took silver in the 200m, clocked 10.97sec for second ahead of another Jamaican in the shape of Christania Williams.

"I had a decent start in my race but when it came to accelerating at the midway stage, my hamstrings caused me some trouble," Schippers said.

Ethiopian Almaz Ayana fell short in her bid to break compatriot Tirunesh Dibaba's world 5000m record of 14min 11.15sec set in Oslo in 2008.

Ayana, the reigning 5000m world champion who obliterated the world record when winning gold in the 10,000m in Rio, clocked a meeting record of 14:18.89, the eighth-fastest time ever run over the distance.

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She paid the price for a slow opening couple of laps and despite breaking out on her own with 2km to run, the Ethiopian left herself too much to do on the final lap, missing out on the record by 7sec.

Seven of the 17-strong field set personal bests while the USA's Shannon Rowbury set an American continental record.

There was also expected to be a tilt at a world record in the men's 3000m steeplechase, but in-form Kenyan Conseslus Kipruto fell well short of the 7:53.63 mark set in 2004 in Brussels by Kenyan-born Qatari Saif Saaeed Shaheen.

Olympic champion Kipruto made it six wins on the Diamond League circuit this season, however, seeing off American Evan Jager in a winning time of 8:03.74.

- Semenya delight -

South African Caster Semenya, Olympic 800m gold medallist, pulled off an extraordinary victory in the women's 400m, setting a personal best of 50.40sec for the win that looked completely out of question after the first half of the race.

"It's fantastic!" said Semenya. "This is suicide! The 800m is much better, the 400m I do for speed."

The South African judged her finish to perfection to see off Courtney Okolo and a threatening pack of Rio finalists led by Jamaica's Olympic bronze medallist Shericka Jackson.

Three-time world 1500m champion Asbel Kiprop's plans to put his sixth-place finish in Rio behind him faltered as he was trumped by Kenyan team-mate Timothy Cheruiyot in a fast finish.

Cheruiyot just missed out on a sub-3:30 time, clocking a personal best of 3:31.34 with Morocco's Abdelaati Iguider taking second ahead of Kiprop.

Olympic heptathlon champion Nafi Thiam delighted her home crowd by winning the women's high jump on countback from three others who also managed 1.93m, while Colombia's imperious Olympic gold medallist Caterine Ibarguen won the triple jump (14.66m).
From Seventeen

Sofia Richie landed the cover of Billboard Magazine's Style Issue this month. This is great news for the young model, but its even better news for us because she dished some major deets about her maybe relationship with Justin Bieber in an interview with the magazine.

"We have a special relationship," Sofia told Billboard. "Justin is very easy to talk to, and that's hard to find with people in Los Angeles."

Special relationship indeed. The two have been seen together everywhere -Tokyo, Los Angeles, and who could forgot their insane trip to Mexico for her 18th birthday?

Of course, their relationship has caused some issues. Fans trolled both of them, swarming their social media with negative comments, Selena got in on the shade, and Justin even deleted his account.

Despite all of the craziness, Sofia isn't letting the negativity get to her. She's taking a page from her famous big sister Nicole Richie's footsteps, and refusing to let the haters stop her from living her life.

"I remember the paparazzi and the s**t people would say to Nicole [Richie], and she wouldn't respond," said Sofia. "I'm going to be real with you: It. Doesn't. Bother. Me. As long as I'm happy."

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SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea's military believes North Korea has conducted its fifth nuclear test, and the 5.0 magnitude seismic event on Friday indicated the blast was 10 kilotons in yield, the largest ever conducted by the North, Yonhap news agency said. South Korea's military could not immediately confirm the report. (Reporting by Jack Kim and Ju-min Park; Editing by Paul Tait)
SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea's presidential Blue House will hold a National Security Council meeting at 0200 GMT on Friday after seismic activity was detected near North Korea's known nuclear test site, activity South Korea said could have been a nuclear test. The South Korean prime minister will preside over the meeting, a Blue House official said by telephone. South Korea's military has convened a crisis management team after the U.S. Geological Survey recorded a seismic event with a magnitude of 5.3 in North Korea, the defense ministry in Seoul said in a statement. (Reporting by Jack Kim and Ju-min Park; Editing by Paul Tait)
By Michelle Nichols UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - South Sudanese government forces have acquired two jet fighters and truckloads of small arms ammunition and were seeking to manufacture bullets, while opposition troops have not received any significant arms shipments, U.N. sanctions monitors said in a confidential report seen by Reuters on Thursday. They also said that armed government actors were imposing "debilitating movement restrictions" on U.N. peacekeepers and warned that the economy of the world's newest nation has effectively collapsed due to government policies that include buying weapons instead of funding social services. The report, on arms flows and security threats to South Sudan since a transitional government was formed in April, strengthens the case for an arms embargo, a move recommended by the monitors to the Security Council in January. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has also called for an arms embargo. "There is no evidence to suggest that more weapons are required in South Sudan for the government to achieve a stable security environment," the U.N. monitors said. "Rather, the continued influx of weapons ... contributes to spreading instability and the continuation of the conflict." They said that while Sudan had provided small arms, bullets and logistical support to opposition troops, they "found no evidence to date that Sudan - or any other neighboring country - has provided heavy weapons ... which has limited the opposition's ability to mount large-scale operations." However, the monitors received reports that government troops have made significant, ongoing arms procurements including the likely recent acquisition of two L-39 fighter jets. "While the panel has received preliminary reports from two sources that the jets were serviced and painted in Uganda, the panel has not yet been able to confirm their origin or if these jets have been purchased or are on loan," the monitors said. Two truckloads of ammunition were transferred to the capital Juba from Uganda in June, while late last year South Sudanese army chief Paul Malong asked a Lebanese company to begin developing a small 'arms ammunition manufacturing facility in Juba, the monitors said. "It is not clear from currently available information whether this project has proceeded in the intervening period," they added. TALK OF ARMS EMBARGO In the wake of deadly violence in Juba in July, the council said it would discuss an arms embargo if Ban reports this month that the government was not cooperating with the deployment of 4,000 more peacekeepers and was obstructing 12,000 U.N. troops already on the ground. A U.N. peacekeeping mission (UNMISS) has been in South Sudan since the country gained independence from Sudan in 2011. The U.N. monitors said that in rhetoric and action, government-affiliated forces "have actively threatened the operations and personnel of UNMISS and other U.N. agencies, and both parties have continued to target humanitarian workers." During the violence in July, between 80 and 100 uniformed soldiers overran Juba's Hotel Terrain compound, home to the staff of international organizations, and in four hours killed an ethnic Nuer journalist and raped at least five foreign aid workers and other staff working at the compound, the monitors said. The monitors said that given the number of soldiers involved, the number of items stolen and the systematic damage inflicted, "this attack was well coordinated and cannot be considered as an opportunistic act of violence and robbery." The U.N. Security Council has long threatened to impose an arms embargo on South Sudan after the country spiraled into civil war in 2013, but veto powers Russia and China are wary that such a move would benefit opposition fighters because it would be harder to monitor them than to police the government. The Security Council set up a targeted sanctions regime for South Sudan in March 2015, then in July blacklisted six generals - three from each side of the conflict - by subjecting them to an asset freeze and travel ban. A political rivalry between President Salva Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, and opposition leader Riek Machar, a Nuer, sparked the civil war. The pair signed a shaky peace deal a year ago, but fighting has continued. Machar fled the country after the violence between their troops erupted in July. The monitors said in the report - which was requested by the Security Council - that "the actions and policies of the two major parties" pose the most severe security threats to the peace deal and the transitional government. "The focus of many of the central military and political figures on mobilizing their respective tribes has continued to escalate the conflict from a primarily political to a tribal war," the monitors said. (Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
Athens (AFP) - Southern EU leaders on Friday called for revised asylum rules to fight the ongoing migration crisis, and appealed for unity ahead of a showdown on the post-Brexit future of the bloc.

A joint declaration signed by France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Cyprus, Malta and host Greece said the European Union should double the funding for strategic investment and for additional European experts to help the front-line states tackle migration.

It also stressed the need to revise existing cross-nation EU asylum rules.

Under the so-called Dublin Regulation, asylum seekers may be sent back to their first country of arrival in the EU to have their application processed there.

The mostly centre-left or left-leaning leaders were also seeking to close ranks ahead of an expected clash with EU hardliners at a summit next week in Bratislava to chart the union's post-Brexit future -- even as they called for unity.

"We are not, nor do we wish to be, another grouping, another initiative to divide Europe. We wish to be an initiative for dialogue to better unite Europe," said Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.

The 27 EU leaders -- the entire bloc, except Britain -- will gather on September 16 to discuss the fallout from the British vote in June to quit the EU.

"At such a decisive moment, with populists and extremists hoping to see Europe breaking up, it was important to send a message of unity," French President Francois Hollande said in remarks after the four-hour conclave.

"Europe is a soft power, and it can forge a real identity," added Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, referring to the alternative use of economic and cultural influence available to the bloc.

A showdown is expected in Bratislava, where the so-called Visegrad group -- made up of Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Poland -- has demanded a tougher stance on migration.

The Visegrad four have already held their own meeting to present a united front.

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Friday's gathering also came less than two weeks after rescuers saved a one-day record of 6,500 migrants making the perilous journey across the Mediterranean to Europe.

Missing at the talks was Spain's acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy who stayed at home amid desperate efforts in Madrid to form a coalition government.

German reactions to the meeting -- which has been derisively termed 'Club Med' -- were dismissive.

"When socialist party leaders meet nothing terribly intelligent comes out of it most of the time," German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble told reporters.

Manfred Weber, head of the European People's Party, the largest in the European Parliament, was even more scathing.

- 'Little games' -

"Alexis Tsipras is once again playing the little games he knows so well," Weber said, an apparent reference to the leftist leader's attempts to build an anti-austerity alliance last year.

"What Europe needs right now is a message of unity, not new efforts to divide it," he added.

But Renzi, who has often challenged fiscal orthodoxy, stressed Friday that "we are at a phase where Europe cannot go on being just about rules and technicalities."

A day earlier, Tsipras had also hit out at Germany's perceived domination of the EU.

"We must collectively agree if we are a European Union or a German Union," he told French daily Le Monde.

Budget disagreements notwithstanding, Berlin has proven very sympathetic to the southern countries on migration.

More than 850,000 people -- most of them fleeing conflict in war-ravaged Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan -- arrived on the Greek islands last year alone after risking their lives in unseaworthy boats and dinghies.

"We need to reach a European asylum system that is realistic and shows solidarity, instead of shifting the burden to entry states," Greece's junior foreign minister for European affairs, Nikos Xydakis, said in an interview with AFP.

Human Rights Watch called on Greece Friday to end the detention of migrant and refugee children, pointing to "cramped and filthy conditions."

Greek authorities registered more than 3,300 unaccompanied asylum-seeking and other migrant children who arrived in Greece in the first seven months of this year, HRW said.
Miami (AFP) - SpaceX appealed for help from the public and US government agencies on Friday in the investigation of what made a Falcon 9 rocket explode last week during a launch test.

No one was hurt in the September 1 blast, which happened as the rocket was being fueled ahead of a standard, pre-launch test known as a static-fire at Cape Canaveral, Florida.

"Still working on the Falcon fireball investigation," SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote on Twitter.

"Turning out to be the most difficult and complex failure we have ever had in 14 years."

Musk, a billionaire entrepreneur who rose to fame as the co-founder of PayPal, added that the blast happened "during a routine filling operation."

"Engines were not on and there was no apparent heat source."

According to video footage of the incident, the SpaceX rocket and an Israeli communications satellite, Amos-6, suddenly burst into a massive fireball amid what appeared to be a succession of blasts.

"Particularly trying to understand the quieter bang sound a few seconds before the fireball goes off," Musk wrote.

"May come from rocket or something else."

He said "support and advice" from the US space agency NASA, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the US Air Force would be "much appreciated."

The California-based company also issued an appeal to the public.

"Please email any recordings of the event to report@spacex.com."

The accident -- the second of its kind since SpaceX was founded in 2002 -- came just over a year after a Falcon 9 rocket exploded after liftoff on June 28, 2015, destroying a Dragon cargo capsule bound for the International Space Station (ISS).

Before that, SpaceX had logged 18 successful launches of the Falcon 9 -- including six of 12 planned supply missions to the ISS carried out as part of a $1.6 billion contract with NASA.
elon musk spacex rockets GettyImages 111667809

SpaceX founder and tech entrepreneur Elon Musk said on Friday morning that the company's launchpad rocket explosion is proving to be "the most difficult and complex failure" it has ever encountered.

On September 1, something turned a 229-foot-tall Falcon 9 rocket  and Facebook's $200 million Amos-6 satellite  into a giant fireball, utterly destroying the rocket stack.

No one was hurt, but a team of investigators is trying to get to the bottom of the mystery and get SpaceX back to launching rockets.

As part of their internal investigation, Musk and SpaceX are asking the public to help them zero in on a mysterious noise.

"Particularly trying to understand the quieter bang sound a few seconds before the fireball goes off. May come from rocket or something else," Musk wrote on Twitter.

In a following tweet, Musk added: "Support & advice from @NASA, @FAA, @AFPAA & others much appreciated. Please email any recordings of the event to report@spacex.com."

SpaceX later posted along the same lines, asking anyone who has recordings to send them into the company:

If you have audio, photos or videos of our anomaly last week, please send to report@spacex.com. Material may be useful for investigation  SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 9, 2016

It's uncertain what role, if any, the "quieter noise" may have played in the accident.

Whatever the case, Wayne Hale  an engineer, aerospace consultant, and NASA's former space shuttle program director  says it's best to wait until the investigation is complete.

"Those of us who dont have access to the data can speculate all we want," Hale told Business Insider. "But without that information it's worthless to speculate. There are so many potential causes."

A internal investigation

A spokesperson at SpaceX told Business Insider in an email that the aerospace company has rounded up "around 20 people" for a core investigation team.

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"[M]ore than half are representatives from FAA [Federal Aviation Administration], NASA, US Air Force and industry experts," he said, adding that the "FAA has a formal role and vote on the investigation team."

Leading the entire group is Hans Koenigsmann  SpaceX's vice president of mission assurance.

"[W]e believe he is the best person to do so," the spokesperson said. "We are collaborating very closely with the participating agencies, sharing raw data and providing access to meetings."

The representative declined to provide the company's images and video of the incident.

The new team's composition appears to be much different from the one that looked into SpaceX's rocket launch failure on June 28, 2015. For that accident  in which a Falcon 9 rocket blew up in mid-flight  the company enlisted 11 of its employees and one FAA employee, and the group never made its findings public.

The US government allows closed-door rocket mishap investigations like this through a special federal law, though with some oversight by the FAA.

As Dan Leone wrote at SpaceNews in August 2015, following SpaceX's previous failure, the company reportedly told him:

"[C]ompany-led investigations are standard operating procedure when it comes to launch 'mishaps,' which are legally distinct from launch 'accidents' under U.S. federal law. A mishap, SpaceX said in its legalese-laden communique, involves 'no third-party loss, no flight line deviation, and no loss of life.'"

But not all is hunky-dory within the federal government about such a setup, as Samantha Masunaga and Melody Petersen reported for the Los Angeles Times:

"In June, NASAs Office of Inspector General said that having SpaceX do its own investigation 'raises questions about inherent conflicts of interest.'

The internal investigation could leave out contributing factors that 'may not be fully addressed to prevent future failures,' the watchdog warned."

In a sworn June 2016 testimony about overseeing commercial space companies like SpaceX, George Nield  the FAA's associate administrator for commercial space transportation  said the agency follows its mandate to keep red tape to a minimum for rocket-launching businesses:

"[W]hile the FAA has licensed or permitted over 280 launches, there have never been any fatalities, serious injuries, or significant property damage to members of the public. ... [T]he National Space Policy directs federal agencies to, among other things, 'minimize, as much as possible, the regulatory burden for commercial space activities and ensure that the regulatory environment for licensing space activities is timely and responsive.'"

'It sets back the whole industry'

SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket

The cause of the September 1 mishap isn't known at this time, but experts say the incident will hamper SpaceX's ambitious launch schedule.

"It typically takes nine to 12 months for people to return to flight. That's what the history is," Tory Bruno, chief executive of United Launch Alliance (ULA), told Reuters reporter Irene Klotz.

And the ramifications will extend well beyond SpaceX's walls, says Hale.

"It sets back the whole industry," he told Business Insider, adding that such accidents remind people of the "risky business" of launching rockets. Hale also said the blast leads "to the perception that folks aren't doing their jobs quite as well as they could" in the spaceflight industry.

SpaceX declined to respond on the record to Hale's comments, and did not immediately respond to a query about Bruno's comments on the potentially lengthy nature of the investigation.

However, John M. Logsdon, a space policy expert and historian at George Washington University's Space Policy Institute, told Business Insider that Bruno's comment is based on past experience with other rockets, not SpaceX's.

"Until [the] investigation finds cause, all anyone (like Bruno) can do is informed-by-experience speculation," Logsdon wrote in an email to Business Insider.

Other industry experts have expressed some measured optimism in the fallout of SpaceX's latest failure.

Michael Blades, senior industry analyst for aerospace and defense at Frost & Sullivan, told the LA Times:

"The investment [in private space efforts] will still happen. I don't think the technology is in jeopardy. It's just going to be a bump in the road."

And Samantha Masunaga at the Los Angeles Times reported on September 1:

"Bill Ostrove, an aerospace and defense analyst at Forecast International, said SpaceX's reliability with the Falcon 9 is 93%, which is 'right in the ballpark' of the industry average of 95%."

However, Ostrove's comment may be overly generous. Some rockets  like the Atlas V that recently launched NASA's asteroid-bound OSIRIS-REx probe  have success rates as high as 98%, and in one case 100%, over roughly the past decade, according to SpaceLaunchReport.com.

NOW WATCH: Watch the dramatic moment SpaceX rocket explodes





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Starbucks just introduced the Frappuccino weve been waiting for our entire lives

Starbucks just introduced the Frappuccino weve been waiting for our entire lives

Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte is a polarizing thing. Some people adore it beyond all measure, while others scorn it  Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, for example, is not on the Pumpkin Spice Latte train for caloric reasons. It even has its very own dedicated (and verified!) Twitter account where it proclaims itself falls official beverage, for hecks sake!

I'm baaack!and taking this fall thing to literal extremes! #PSLisBACK  pic.twitter.com/pTf6kfIvyW  Pumpkin Spice Latte (@TheRealPSL) September 6, 2016

We, personally, were super psyched when Starbucks announced the return of its signature beverage nationwide earlier this month, but at the same time, not everybody is ready for it to be fall. In some places, summer weather is still in full effect.

Lucky for all of us who are still dealing with 80+ degree weather in early September, Starbucks has ~officially~ added the Pumpkin Spice Frappuccino to its menu, debuting the beautifully bright orange beverage on its Instagram account earlier this week, according to Seventeen.

Behold the wonder:

Yep, these pumpkins are definitely trying to tell us something... #PumpkinSpiceFrappuccino is here! A photo posted by Starbucks Frappuccino (@frappuccino) on Sep 6, 2016 at 10:09am PDT

First of all, Id just like to applaud the social media manager whose job it was to put together the PSFs coming out photo. Aesthetically, this is beautiful. This Frapp is also apparently just as orange as the real-life pumpkins its posed next to, which is pretty impressive.

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While the Pumpkin Spice Frapp isnt technically new  you can order a wide variety of custom-made drinks that are not officially menu items  this is the first time that everybodys fave fall latte is an official Frappuccino offering. Not everybody knows about Starbucks secret menu, so it makes sense that they would want to officially introduce the uber-popular hot beverage to the world of Frapp-only drinkers.

Get thee to Starbucks, PSL-loving friends!

giphy (10)

The post Starbucks just introduced the Frappuccino weve been waiting for our entire lives appeared first on HelloGiggles.
By Kate Kelland LONDON, (Reuters) - The benefits of statins - cholesterol-busting drugs that can dramatically reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes - have been underestimated and their harms exaggerated, scientists said on Thursday in a major review of research. In an effort to counter what they said were misleading reports of high levels of side effects, the scientists said in the Lancet medical journal there was a "serious cost to public health" in such claims, which can dissuade people from taking beneficial medicines. "Our review shows that the numbers of people who avoid heart attacks and strokes by taking statin therapy are very much larger than the numbers who have side effects," said Rory Collins, a professor at the Clinical Trial Service Unit at Britain's Oxford University. He also said that those who experience side effects -- which include muscle pain, nausea and liver problems -- could reverse them by stopping the statin, while the effects of a heart attack or stroke "are irreversible and can be devastating". Once among the biggest revenue generators for drugmakers such as Pfizer and AstraZeneca, most statins are now off-patent and available as cheap generics. U.S. health guidelines recommend aggressive statin therapy for high-risk patients. In Britain, they are taken by an estimated 7 million people and health authorities have said they should be prescribed more widely as preventatives. Cardiovascular diseases such as heart attacks and strokes are the world's number one killers, accounting for an estimated 31 percent of all deaths and claiming 17.5 million lives a year worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. A row over statins erupted in Britain in 2013 when the British Medical Journal published papers by Harvard Medical School's John Abramson and UK cardiologist Aseem Malhotra claiming up to 20 percent of users get side effects. The 20 percent figure was later retracted after the BMJ said it was based on flawed data, but this and other reports affected patient confidence. In their review, Collins' team found that periods of intense public discussion about statins were followed by rises in the proportion of people who stop taking the drugs, and by falls in the number of prescriptions for them. As well as in Britain, studies in Denmark, Australia, Turkey and France have suggested that media debate about side effects of statins has led to measurable effects on their use. David Webb, president of the British Pharmacological Society, said he feared many patients who should take statins had been persuaded against them by exaggerated claims of harm: "It is likely that many lives have been lost based on a received view that statins are dangerous and ineffective," he said. The review found that lowering cholesterol by 2 millimoles per litre with a statin, such as a daily 40 milligram tablet of atorvastatin for 5 years in 10,000 patients would prevent major cardiovascular events in 1,500 people and cause problematic side effects in around 200. ($1 = 0.7482 pounds) (Reporting by Kate Kelland, editing by Jeremy Gaunt)
By Karl Plume

CHICAGO (Reuters) - The collapse of Hanjin Shipping will boost the cost to U.S. businesses and consumers of a wide range of imported goods, from furniture and clothing to fresh fruit and frozen meat, according to federal agencies, shippers and retailers.

With Hanjin's future in doubt, carriers have announced they will hike container freight rates by as much as 50 percent beginning next month as retailers scramble to secure shipping ahead of the peak year-end holiday season, industry sources said.

United Parcel Service Inc (UPS.N) said on Thursday it is seeing a bump in demand for its freight services and is working with customers in Asia to shift goods from Hanjin containers to other ocean freight operators or air freight services. About $14 billion worth of cargo was stranded by the collapse of the seventh largest container carrier in the world.

"Right now, there is much more (freight) demand than there is supply. People are scrambling to find a carrier with space," said Peter Friedmann, executive director of the Agriculture Transportation Coalition shipping industry group.

"But the biggest challenge right now is for people with cargo on Hanjin ships," he said.

Cargo shippers have been forced to pay thousands of dollars in fees to terminal owners and truckers to reclaim their goods from Hanjin ships to prevent perishable foods from spoiling and to avoid losing sales because goods are not available when customers want them.

Hanjin would normally pay the fees for port usage and container handling as part of its freight services. With the South Korean shipper in receivership, it is unclear if shippers would recoup any added costs they pay out of pocket to retrieve their goods.

Singapore-based crop shipper Agrocorp International said that DP World, terminal operator at Port Metro Vancouver, last week held 24 containers, or 600 tonnes, of its Canadian lentils that were bound for India and Bangladesh, demanding a release fee of $450 per container.

Story continues

Industry analysts expect the freight increases to be short-lived as more shipping capacity comes on line.

"The Hanjin ships are going to be off the market for the holiday seasons. It will take several months to sort through the legalities, but any rate increase will be temporary," said David St. Amand, president of Navigistics Consulting.

In the short term, retailers are likely to take hits to their profit margins as they try to shield customers from any more price rises in a hyper-competitive retail market.

"We believe that (the Hanjin collapse) will likely increase our short to medium term ocean freight costs which will minimally impact product cost in all of our operating segments to varying degrees. However, inventory availability is good," Paul Toms, CEO of Hooker Furniture (HOFT.O), said on an earnings conference call on Thursday.

Joe Parsons, CFO for Michael Kors (KORS.K), said from the Goldman Sachs retail conference on Wednesday that the company does not expect a significant long-term impact on its business. But "there is going to be some pricing pressure. At this point, we are continuing to evaluate it," he said.

The American Apparel and Footwear Association said it expects gross margins to be pressured in the near term by the higher shipping prices and additional unloading fees.

Hanjin's collapse could wreak havoc on port operations and shipping lines over the next two to three months and could impact trade between the United States and South Korea, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said in a report published on Thursday.

Container freight charges have more than doubled since May and could appreciate further, the agency said. The average cost to move goods in 40-foot containers from the U.S. West Coast to Asia was quoted at $1,700 this month, up from $788 in May.

(Aditional reporting by Nandita Bose in Chicago, Rod Nickel in Winnipeg and Liz Hampton in Houston; Editing by Bernard Orr)
By Karl Plume CHICAGO (Reuters) - The collapse of Hanjin Shipping <117930.KS> will boost the cost to U.S. businesses and consumers of a wide range of imported goods, from furniture and clothing to fresh fruit and frozen meat, according to federal agencies, shippers and retailers. With Hanjin's future in doubt, carriers have announced they will hike container freight rates by as much as 50 percent beginning next month as retailers scramble to secure shipping ahead of the peak year-end holiday season, industry sources said. United Parcel Service Inc said on Thursday it is seeing a bump in demand for its freight services and is working with customers in Asia to shift goods from Hanjin containers to other ocean freight operators or air freight services. About $14 billion worth of cargo was stranded by the collapse of the seventh largest container carrier in the world. "Right now, there is much more (freight) demand than there is supply. People are scrambling to find a carrier with space," said Peter Friedmann, executive director of the Agriculture Transportation Coalition shipping industry group. "But the biggest challenge right now is for people with cargo on Hanjin ships," he said. Cargo shippers have been forced to pay thousands of dollars in fees to terminal owners and truckers to reclaim their goods from Hanjin ships to prevent perishable foods from spoiling and to avoid losing sales because goods are not available when customers want them. Hanjin would normally pay the fees for port usage and container handling as part of its freight services. With the South Korean shipper in receivership, it is unclear if shippers would recoup any added costs they pay out of pocket to retrieve their goods. Singapore-based crop shipper Agrocorp International said that DP World, terminal operator at Port Metro Vancouver, last week held 24 containers, or 600 tonnes, of its Canadian lentils that were bound for India and Bangladesh, demanding a release fee of $450 per container. Industry analysts expect the freight increases to be short-lived as more shipping capacity comes on line. "The Hanjin ships are going to be off the market for the holiday seasons. It will take several months to sort through the legalities, but any rate increase will be temporary," said David St. Amand, president of Navigistics Consulting. In the short term, retailers are likely to take hits to their profit margins as they try to shield customers from any more price rises in a hyper-competitive retail market. "We believe that (the Hanjin collapse) will likely increase our short to medium term ocean freight costs which will minimally impact product cost in all of our operating segments to varying degrees. However, inventory availability is good," Paul Toms, CEO of Hooker Furniture , said on an earnings conference call on Thursday. Joe Parsons, CFO for Michael Kors , said from the Goldman Sachs retail conference on Wednesday that the company does not expect a significant long-term impact on its business. But "there is going to be some pricing pressure. At this point, we are continuing to evaluate it," he said. The American Apparel and Footwear Association said it expects gross margins to be pressured in the near term by the higher shipping prices and additional unloading fees. Hanjin's collapse could wreak havoc on port operations and shipping lines over the next two to three months and could impact trade between the United States and South Korea, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said in a report published on Thursday. Container freight charges have more than doubled since May and could appreciate further, the agency said. The average cost to move goods in 40-foot containers from the U.S. West Coast to Asia was quoted at $1,700 this month, up from $788 in May. (Aditional reporting by Nandita Bose in Chicago, Rod Nickel in Winnipeg and Liz Hampton in Houston; Editing by Bernard Orr)
Yes, its hard to to tell when one enters the city limits

Yes, they will make the city more inviting

Maybe ... does it really matter?

No, the signs in place are fine

No, it would be a waste of taxpayer dollars

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Stephen King, whose Pennywise the Dancing Clown has menaced readers ever since the publication of It in 1986, has officially weighed in on the real-life scourge of creepy clowns in North Carolina.
By Nate Raymond

Sept 9 (Reuters) - Stifel Financial Corp's brokerage unit has reached a deal with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to resolve claims it misled five Wisconsin school districts about the risks of sinking $200 million in investment products that were involved in the financial crisis of 2008.

The tentative settlement with St. Louis-based Stifel, Nicolaus & Co and David Noack, a former senior vice president, came on the eve of a trial set for Monday, and was disclosed in a filing made public Thursday in federal court in Milwaukee.

The financial terms were not disclosed, but the deal would include the defendants paying a penalty, forfeiting their ill-gotten gains and admitting to certain facts, according to the filing.

The settlement requires the formal approval of the SEC's commissioners, a process that attorneys anticipate could take two months, the filing said.

Stifel, the SEC and Noack's lawyer did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The SEC sued Stifel and Noack in 2011, saying they misled five Wisconsin school districts about the risks of investing in synthetic collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), which are tied to mortgage-backed securities or credit default swaps and were at the heart of the financial crisis eight years ago.

The districts did not invest directly in the CDOs, instead providing funds to trusts that invested in notes issued by special purpose vehicles affiliated with RBC Capital Markets, the SEC said.

In trying to persuade the districts to make the investments, Noack at the time told them it would take "15 Enrons" for them to lose money, and told two districts that it would take 20 to 30 defaults for them to suffer a loss, the SEC said.

But according to the SEC, the investments were a compete failure, causing the districts to suffer over $200 million in losses as the investments declined in value in 2007 and 2008, amid the housing market downturn and financial crisis.

Stifel denied wrongdoing, and contended in court papers that there was no evidence that the defendants had any intent or motive to defraud the districts.

Story continues

RBC, a unit of Royal Bank of Canada, in 2011 reached a $30.4 million settlement with the SEC over its role in misconduct relating to the sale of the investments.

Stifel in 2012 reached a settlement in private litigation by the school districts, agreeing to pay $13 million and providing a letter of credit for an additional $9.5 million to be paid once the SEC's case was resolved.

The case is Securities and Exchange Commission v. Stifel, Nicolaus & Co Inc et al, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Wisconsin, No. 11-00755.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in New York; Editing by Bernadette Baum)
By Nate Raymond

(Reuters) - Stifel Financial Corp's <SF.N> brokerage unit has reached a deal with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to resolve claims it misled five Wisconsin school districts about the risks of sinking $200 million in investment products that were involved in the financial crisis of 2008.

The tentative settlement with St. Louis-based Stifel, Nicolaus & Co and David Noack, a former senior vice president, came on the eve of a trial set for Monday, and was disclosed in a filing made public Thursday in federal court in Milwaukee.

The financial terms were not disclosed, but the deal would include the defendants paying a penalty, forfeiting their ill-gotten gains and admitting to certain facts, according to the filing.

The settlement requires the formal approval of the SEC's commissioners, a process that attorneys anticipate could take two months, the filing said.

Stifel, the SEC and Noack's lawyer did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The SEC sued Stifel and Noack in 2011, saying they misled five Wisconsin school districts about the risks of investing in synthetic collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), which are tied to mortgage-backed securities or credit default swaps and were at the heart of the financial crisis eight years ago.

The districts did not invest directly in the CDOs, instead providing funds to trusts that invested in notes issued by special purpose vehicles affiliated with RBC Capital Markets, the SEC said.

In trying to persuade the districts to make the investments, Noack at the time told them it would take "15 Enrons" for them to lose money, and told two districts that it would take 20 to 30 defaults for them to suffer a loss, the SEC said.

But according to the SEC, the investments were a compete failure, causing the districts to suffer over $200 million in losses as the investments declined in value in 2007 and 2008, amid the housing market downturn and financial crisis.

Story continues

Stifel denied wrongdoing, and contended in court papers that there was no evidence that the defendants had any intent or motive to defraud the districts.

RBC, a unit of Royal Bank of Canada, in 2011 reached a $30.4 million settlement with the SEC over its role in misconduct relating to the sale of the investments.

Stifel in 2012 reached a settlement in private litigation by the school districts, agreeing to pay $13 million and providing a letter of credit for an additional $9.5 million to be paid once the SEC's case was resolved.

The case is Securities and Exchange Commission v. Stifel, Nicolaus & Co Inc et al, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Wisconsin, No. 11-00755.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in New York; Editing by Bernadette Baum)
The first trading week of the fall ends with a massive thud, with stocks selling off. We break down todays big market drop, and why this could be the start of a rocky September. Plus  Wells Fargo whacked  the bank embroiled in a massive fees scandal, why one analyst says this outrageous behavior means sell the stock. And  is the Uber onslaught over? Why the Silicon Valley unicorn could be in trouble. Catch The Final Round with Jen Rogers, markets correspondent Nicole Sinclair, columnist Rick Newman, and Greg Spiegel, Portfolio Manager at Neuberger Berman.

Winners and losers

Stocks getting hit along with the broader market include petroleum refiner PBF Energy on a downgrade to sell by Goldman Sachs, pipeline operator Williams Companies after Enterprise Products Partners announced it is no longer pursuing a merger deal with its rival, and GW Pharmaceuticals. Shares of the medical firm lower after The Daily Mail initially reported a company spokesman dismissed buyout speculation.

Stocks bucking the rough tape today include home-furnishings company Restoration Hardware on an earnings beat, with revenues and margins coming in ahead of consensus, sportswear retailer Zumiez after topping expectations on both its top and bottom lines and Deutsche Bank. Shares higher after media reports that the German bank is nearing a settlement with US authorities on the sale of residential mortgage-backed securities. The fine could be above $2.38 billion, according to reports.

Looking ahead
Photo credit: Jerry Rabinowitz from Serial Entertainer's Passion for Parties by Steven Stoleman, reprinted by permission of Gibbs Smith

From Town & Country

Photo credit: Cover Photograph by Mary Hilliard

When I first got my hands on a copy of photographer Slim Aarons' A Wonderful Time: An Intimate Portrait of the Good Life, the highly prized coffee table book published in 1974, one picture stood out among all the rest: that of socialite C. Z. Guest with her young son and dogs, in front of an exquisite Grecian-style swimming pool.

You see, at one point I had resort-wear shops in some pretty spiffy places like Southampton and Palm Beach. For almost a decade, I worked in one of my stores pretty much every single day, and I kept that book out on a table in whichever store I was stationed in at the time.

Who'd a thunk that one day, the real C. Z. Guest would come in shopping for a sweater set? Of course I asked her to sign her page of the book, as I did others, including Slim Aarons himself. I constantly referred to that book for inspiration as a designer, retailer, and writer. I soon learned that about a million other designers, retailers, and writers did the exact same thing. At least my copy had the distinctive provenance of having been purchased at a yard sale for about $2.

Photo credit: 1stdibs

Imagine my surprise when, upon arriving at a cocktail party at the Palm Beach home of a charming older couple from Cleveland, there was that poolright outside of the living room!

Over time, I learned that the house, named Villa Artemis, was designed in 1916 for Frederick and Amy Phipps Guest by architect F. Burrall Hoffman, who also designed Villa Vizcaya, the grand estate in Miami. It was never C. Z.'s house, although the Slim Aarons photographs certainly gave that impression, so much so that when the iconic poolside pic accompanied her New York Times obituary, the caption read, " . . . in a famous Slim Aarons picture at her Palm Beach, Florida, estate in 1955." Honey and Leighton Rosenthal actually purchased Villa Artemis from the estate of Amy Phipps Guest, C. Z.'s mother-in-law, in 1959.

They were a stunning couplestylish but also incredibly warm and loving, the kind of people that lit up a room. Leighton passed away in 2003; Honey two years later. Their daughters, Cynthia Boardman and Jane Horvitz, and their families, continue to make Villa Artemis their Florida home, with the same joie de vivre and gracious hospitality for which the Rosenthal's were famous. To have been asked to contribute to the design and planning of Cynthia's daughter Sarah's wedding in 2006, which appears on the cover, remains one of the highlights of my life.

Story continues

I wrote to Jane about the first time I was invited to Villa Artemis, and about how much I admired her mom. She responded, "Well, she was just crazy about you." That was probably the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me. It has made the writing of this book worthwhile in ways that I could never adequately explain.

Excerpted from The Serial Entertainer's Passion for Parties by Steven Stolman, reprinted by permission of Gibbs Smith

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London (AFP) - Ships around the world will have to carry ballast water treatment facilities on board from next year to prevent the spread of potentially invasive aquatic species, under a new international treaty.

According to green group WWF, over 10 billion tonnes of water are moved around the world in ballast tanks every year -- pumped in at Shanghai or Tangiers and dumped in the harbours of Rotterdam or Valparaiso to rebalance the ships as they load or unload cargo.

In this way, around 7,000 species of fish, crustaceans, algae, invertebrates and even viruses and bacteria, travel unnoticed across the world's oceans every day.

The deal comes into force on September 8, 2017 after Finland ratified it on Thursday -- 12 years after it was adopted.

"This is a truly significant milestone for the health of our planet," International Maritime Organization secretary-general Kitack Lim said in a statement.

"The spread of invasive species has been recognised as one of the greatest threats to the ecological and the economic well-being of the planet," he said.

Sometimes microscopic in size yet devastating in impact, invasive hitchhiker species can swiftly colonise new marine habitats, wrecking ecosystems on which humans also depend.

In the early 1980s, the North American comb jellyfish quit its Atlantic home, hid away in the belly of a cargo ship and headed for the Black Sea.

By just over a decade later, its descendants had decimated the anchovy population in their new surroundings.

The IMO's Convention on the Control and Management of Ships' Ballast Water and Sediments was adopted in 2014 but had not been ratified by enough sea-faring countries to enter into force.

The convention required a minimum of 30 countries representing no less than 35 percent of global merchant tonnage to ratify it.

Fifty-two countries have now signed up to it.
Over the dissents of two Justices, the Supreme Court on Friday morning allowed Michigan voters to cast a straight-ticket ballot  a single vote that applies to every candidate from one party. In a brief order, the Justices turned down a request by state officials to block such balloting. The order is here.

courtfreize535

Justices Samuel A. Alito, Jr., and Clarence Thomas noted that they would have granted the request to block a federal judges order permitting straight-ticket voting despite a state ban enacted by the legislature last year.

After the judges order, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled the challengers to the ban were likely to win when the case went on trial, on the view that the restriction probably violates the Equal Protection guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment, because of its impact on black voters. Later, the en banc Sixth Circuit Court voted 9-to-6 against reviewing the case at this time.

Michigan has had straight-ticket voting since 1891, and the method is popular with minority and poor voters, who do not have time to wait in long lines to cast votes when the ballot is long.

It would have taken the votes of five of the eight Justices to reimpose the ban for this years election. Fridays order did not provide an explanation of the view of any of the Justices for or against the states request.

Among voting rights disputes, which are multiplying in this election year, the Supreme Court is still considering a request to restore the so-called Golden Week of early voting that had existed in Ohio. An order is likely to come out on that controversy very soon.

Legendary journalist Lyle Denniston is Constitution Dailys Supreme Court correspondent. Denniston has written for us as a contributor since June 2011. Denniston has covered the Supreme Court since 1958. His work also appears on lyldenlawnews.com.
Nairobi (AFP) - Civil society activists who met with UN Security Council diplomats during last week's visit to South Sudan are fleeing a government crackdown, groups said Friday.

Around a dozen activists met with the UN delegation when it visited South Sudan to push for peace after an outbreak of heavy fighting in the capital Juba in July that left hundreds dead.

Since then, one activist has disappeared -- suspected killed -- and at least two have fled the country while others fear for their safety.

Edmond Yakani, executive director of the Juba-based Community Empowerment for Progress Organization, said the situation is "very serious".

On Thursday, the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) said it was "deeply concerned by reports it has received of threats and harassment against some civil society members who met with the United Nations Security Council delegation."

During the meeting, activists spoke about the lack of respect for human rights, the prevalence of rape and of extra-judicial killings, and also discussed solutions to the crisis.

They voiced support for the proposed deployment of a 4,000-strong UN "protection force" to beef up the UN's large peacekeeping mission and to bolster safety in the capital.

At the end of the visit, President Salva Kiir grudgingly agreed to accept the additional force, but his government continues to frustrate efforts to speed up its deployment.

- 'Fearing for their lives' -

Activist Emmanuel Wani, who was at the meeting, was last seen on September 6, and local media reports said he had been shot dead by suspected members of the security services.

"Up to now, his body is not yet found," Yakani said. Other activists are seeking refuge. "They are going for hiding because they are fearing for their lives," he said.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, another activist blamed "members of the national security service" for issuing threats intended "to shut down our voices."

Story continues

Attacks targeting activists who met the high-level UN delegation is just the latest example of the disdain South Sudan government has for the international community.

Peacekeepers and aid workers have been regularly targeted since the start of the civil war in December 2013, a well-marked US diplomatic convoy was shot up by government soldiers in early July and foreign aid workers were gang-raped in an attack on a hotel immediately after July's battles.

A confidential report by UN experts, which was seen by AFP on Thursday, said Kiir and his top military commander had "directed" July's violence and that the hotel assault was "well-coordinated".

On Friday, South Sudan's government denied any crackdown on civil society members.

"These are baseless lies. We believe in freedom of expression," said Akol Paul Kordit, a government spokesman.
How to film an authentic version of the "Miracle on the Hudson" - the Jan. 15, 2009 event when Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger guided his disabled Airbus into New York's Hudson River, saving all 155 lives on board?

Clint Eastwood, working with his longtime cinematographer, Tom Stern, considered various ways of recreating the landing and rescue effort for their new film Sully, which opens today.

"Initially there was a thought to put a wing in the Hudson, but then the Hollywood guys had a meeting with a N.Y. tugboat captain, who said 'well you could do that but it will rip right off.' It turns out there's a 5-knot tide that blows in the river. Anything you stick in the river is going to take off," Stern reveals.

"So we used ferryboats and created an empty void where the plane would be composited," he says. "We shot mid-Hudson for three or four days. It was lightly overcast, and we were fortunate because that was what it was like [when the event occurred]."

The rescue itself was then filmed back in Hollywood. Images shot on the Hudson were combined with footage of an actual airplane - the production bought two retired Airbus A320s that were used as sets - that was set down in Falls Lake, the artificial lake on the Universal Studios lot that was first created in 1926 for a production of Uncle Tom's Cabin. The plane "was dragged up on a flatbed trailer," Stern recounts, adding that it was then placed in the water on a 350-ton gimbal. (The visual effects, combining the two locations, were led by VFX supervisor Michael Owens and lead VFX house MPC).

The only problem was the California light didn't match the look of what had been captured back East. So the airplane was put under a large silk that was hung from a construction crane. "For the lighting itself," says Stern. "We built a harness that hung above the airplane, with light coming in the windows for the interiors, but they had to be soft lights."

Story continues

Read more: 'Sully': Telluride Review

With an Imax release in mind, Stern - an Oscar nominee for Eastwood's Changling - chose to use a model of the new large-format Arri Alexa 65 digital cinematography camera that was developed with additional software from Imax, via an Arri/Imax partnership.

And he put the camera through its paces, taking advantage of New York locations that included The George Washington Bridge, Pier 81 near the Intrepid and La Guardia Airport.

Stern gave the Arri/Imax camera system high marks, saying it was a "very positive" production experience.

Adding to the authenticity, Captain Vincent Peter Lombardi, who had commanded the Thomas Jefferson ferryboat during the actual incident, plays himself. And Officer Michael Delaney and Detective Robert Rodriquez, both of the NYPD SCUBA Air/Sea Rescue Unit, contributed stunt work by jumping out of a helicopter as they would in a real emergency.

Despite the more challenging aspects of the production, Stern emphasized that Eastwood's focus was always on character and performance. "His sets are famously quiet. He obviously has a lot of experience as an actor and he knows what bothers actors. We respond [by making sure] we don't distract them," he says. "The joke is 'one-take Clint,' but he does as many takes as he feels is necessary, though he tends to like the spontaneity of early takes. I understand this. In real time the honest reaction is sorting out [a situation].

"Clint also gets lit up about people second-guessing people - that's the difference between the spectator and the participant. And he's always embraced the participants. That's probably what drew him to this material."

Read more: 'Sully' Premiere: Clint Eastwood Defends Scenes of Planes Crashing Into Manhattan Skyscrapers
From Good Housekeeping

Raise your hand if your chip credit card is the bane of your existence. Sure, they're designed to protect your information, but all you notice is them causing confusion and chaos in the checkout line. Figuring out if you should insert or swipe your card (even though you shouldn't!) is a daily struggle. And now there's another thing to watch out for: additional charges.

ABC12 reported that some business owners in Michigan are charging customers every time they insert their card chip in order help lessen the financial burden of converting to modern technology. "All the merchants are supposed to become compatible sometime in October. If you're not compatible you're responsible for any fraudulent charges on a customer's credit card," Flint business owner, Roger Foutch explained. "To convert my old system into a chip reader, you're talking thousands in software."

Instead of it coming out of the proprietor's pocket, some owners like Foutch looked to a company called Zero Fee Solutions to help them make the switch. They furnish the equipment and then set it up so that customers are charged a small service fee of 3.75% on each bill when they use their chip card. As a result, Foutch expects to save $19,000 this year that will go towards the cost of the new system. Customers on the other hand will lose anywhere from a couple of cents to a couple of dollars, depending on the bill.

While we're not sure if this is happening nation wide, it is a good reminder to check your receipt after every transaction. If you don't mind, swipe away, but for those who don't want to give in, Foutch points out customers can simple pay with cash instead. Just make sure you go to your bank's ATM because the fee to use one that's not yours is way more than a couple of cents.

[h/t ABC12]

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Fifteen years after the Twin Towers fell, Kenneth Summers still finds himself looking up.

The 66-year-old New Yorker, who was badly burned on 9/11 when he was thrown from the lobby of the North Tower as the hijacked American Airlines Flight 11 hit the building, says he scours the skies for airplanes and braces for the earsplitting noise he dreads when one is near.

The sound of the second plane striking the building  it must have been a real whining, high-pitched sound that right to this day goes through me like a knife, he says.

Summers, who worked on the 27th floor of the North Tower as a systems analyst for Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield at the time of the attacks, was among four terror attack survivors who recently recounted their experiences in a series of emotional interviews with TIME ahead of the 15th anniversary of 9/11.

They include Michael and Anjali Pollack, a married couple who were at the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai, India in 2008 when the hotel came under attack, and Fatih Kiyak, who was among hundreds of protesters at a peace rally outside of a railway station in Ankara, Turkey in 2015 when two bombs exploded nearby.

The four survivors say their stories are important to tell in the wake of high-profile terror attacks in Western Europe over the past year and several mass shootings on American soil, including the worst in U.S. history when a gunman killed 49 people at a Florida nightclub in June.

After 9/11, terrorist attacks around the world escalated, and at the peak in 2014, more than 30,000 people globally were killed, according to the U.S. State Department and the Global Terrorism Database. But in 2015, there was a significant drop in the number of attacks and casualties, the groups say. Neither organization has recent figures, but preliminary statistics gathered by IHS Janes Terrorism and Insurgency Center show a global decline.

Each of the survivors who spoke to TIME had a different experience, but they all agreed on the need to keep living, even in the face of fear.

Whatever happens, life is going to go on, Kiyak says. You live anyway. What doesnt kill you makes you stronger.
Stockholm (AFP) - Sweden will next year begin medical testing to determine the age of unaccompanied child refugees, officials said Friday over fears adults are trying to pass themselves off as minors to up their chances of getting asylum.

The National Board of Forensic Medicine told reporters it would begin age tests in early 2017.

Forensic examiners will determine whether an asylum seeker is over or under the age of 18 based on dental assessments of wisdom teeth and magnetic imaging of the knee joint.

"There's no method to medically determine the exact age of an individual... but by studying which phase a person is in, you can draw approximate conclusions," forensic examiner Elias Palm said.

The tests will be conducted when an asylum seeker claiming to be under the age of 18 is unable to prove his or her age, and the case handler is in doubt.

The tests will be voluntary, meaning that an individual can refuse to undergo them.

A spokesman for the Migration Agency, Fredrik Bengtsson, told AFP that minors wanting to prove their real age would welcome the tests.

Those who refuse run the risk of having case handlers determine that they are adults.

Sweden has taken in more unaccompanied child asylum seekers than any other country in Europe.

In 2015, the Scandinavian country took in more than 35,000 unaccompanied children, 90 percent of whom were boys and many of whom do not have identification papers.

- Protection issues -

Sweden has since tightened its asylum regulations, and this year the number has fallen to 1,700 as of the end of August.

According to the Migration Agency, there are age doubts in 70 percent of cases where asylum seekers claim to be between the ages of 15 and 17.

Swedish officials have also expressed concern that some adults passing themselves off as children are being placed in housing centres for children, putting the younger children at risk.

In one case that garnered nationwide, attention, a 12-year-old boy from Afghanistan was raped by two other self-proclaimed "boys" living in the same housing centre for children.

The perpetrators had claimed to be 15 years old on their arrival in Sweden, but were later determined to be adults.

The National Board of Forensic Medicine, which will outsource the testing, said that there would likely be between 4,000 and 18,000 tests carried out overall.
Thomas Reisch, a psychiatrist and researcher in Switzerland, was reviewing the rates of suicide in his country when he noticed something unusual. Right around 2004, the number of gun suicides substantially declined. Reisch, who serves as the medical director of a psychiatric hospital just outside of Bern, wondered why.

Switzerland, a peaceful country of about eight million people, is typically regarded for its pristine ski resorts, economic prosperity, and extraordinarily high life expectancy ratessecond only in the world to Japan. The country also has a well-established gun culture. It boasts the fourth-highest rate of firearm ownership in the worldroughly 30 percent of all Swiss households contain a guntrailing only the United States, Serbia, and Yemen.

The Swiss own so many guns because military service is compulsory, and active members are required to store their firearms at home. When members of the military leave the armed services, they are given the option to purchase their guns at a discount. In March 2003, the Swiss army introduced new reformstitled Army XXIthat reduced the number of troops from approximately 400,000 to 200,000 over the period of one year. Reisch speculated that if there were fewer men in the armyand therefore fewer men with access to guns at homethe law could have contributed to a reduction in the suicide rate.

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I saw this drop, and I asked myself, What could that be? Reisch said. This was hypothesis-driven, but of course I thought it was the army.

The link between gun ownership and suicides is well-documented. One sweeping study in the U.S. of 33 years of suicide and gun ownership data from all 50 states found a direct correlation between the two. The higher the gun ownership rate, the higher the suicide rate, the study found. One explanation for the phenomena: Guns are incredibly lethal when compared to other methods of suicide.

Story continues

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In his research, Reisch seized an opportunity to examine what effect gun ownership has on suicide in his country. Since the reduction in active-duty forces applied just to men ages 18 to 43, Reisch hypothesized that this group would see a reduction in the suicide rate, while rates among women and people outside this age group would remain steady.

It turns out he was right. Reischs study, published in 2013 by The American Journal of Psychiatry, showed that among this particular cohort of men, there were 2.16 fewer suicides per 100,000, meaning about 30 men were saved by the reforms. (In 2013, there were 222 total firearm suicides in Switzerland.)

Reisch found that about 75 percent of the men who would have taken their life with a gun did not choose another method of suicide, like poison or hanging. This evidence contradicts a common talking point among gun-rights groups: that people intent on killing themselves will simply find another means if they do not have access to a gun.

Research in the U.S. shows that between 5 and 11 percent of people who attempt suicide will go on to kill themselvesbut the majority will not.

Its quite clear, Reisch says. Restricting access to guns saves lives. (In what may amount to a substantive change in position, the leading firearms industry trade group recently partnered with the nations largest suicide prevention organization on an education program intended to reduce the number of gun suicides.)

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Reischs research wasnt the first to link changes in military policies to suicides. A 2010 study of the Israeli army, for instance, found that requiring soldiers to leave their weapons on base over the weekend, as opposed to bringing them home, decreased the suicide rate among troops by almost 40 percent.

Reischs work may help inform the understanding of the growing suicide problem in the U.S. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were a total of 21,334 gun suicides in 2014, up from 16,599 in 1999.

Researchers say that reducing access to firearms is an essential strategy to save lives.

Researchers say that reducing access to firearmswhether by keeping them locked in a secure environment, requiring waiting periods, or removing them from households altogetheris an essential strategy to save lives. Thats because suicide is usually an impulsive act: 71 percent of attempts come within the hour of making the decision to commit the act, research shows.

Men are more likely to kill themselves than women, and are much more likely to use a gun. Thats why members of the U.S. military deserve special attention, experts say. In May, the Pentagon released a report that the suicide rate among soldiers was more than twice the national average.

One of the high-profile efforts to prevent suicides in the military is a $50-million study that ultimately created an algorithm to predict which soldiers might be at a high risk for suicide. The algorithm analyzes a variety of data and risk factors, including a service members age, gender, and previous history of mental health and psychiatric disorders. So far, its effectiveness has been difficult to determine.

To researchers like Reisch, though, there are potentially less sophisticated ways to reduce suicides across the board. I think [my study] can be easily transferred to any other country, he says. The principle is always the same. If you are able to restrict people who can get a gun, there will be less suicides.

This post appears courtesy of The Trace.

Read more from The Atlantic:

This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
TAIPEI (Reuters) - Taiwan's two biggest airlines said on Friday they were banning passengers from putting their Samsung Electronics Co Ltd Galaxy Note 7 smartphones in their checked luggage due to concerns over the phone's fire-prone batteries. The decisions of China Airlines and EVA Airways come after the U.S. Federal AviationAdministration said on Thursday it had advised airline passengers not to turn on or charge their Note 7 phones or stow the phones in checked baggage. China Airlines said it also advised passengers not to turn on or charge their phones during a flight. (Reporting by Faith Hung; Editing by Greg Mahlich)
By Jon Herskovitz

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - A Texas mattress store that used bedding to stage a mock collapse of New York City's Twin Towers in an ad for a Sept. 11 sale on Friday said it was closing after facing a barrage of criticism that described the pitch as tasteless and offensive.

In the social media video ad that has since been pulled by San Antonio's Miracle Mattress, a woman appears on screen with two men standing by stacks of bedding. The woman says: "What better way to remember 9/11 than with a Twin Tower sale. Right now you can get any sized mattress for a twin price."

The men knock over the towers of bedding, and the woman says: "Oh my God," lets out a small scream, and says, "We will never forget."

On Sept. 11, 2001, two hijacked planes were slammed into the North and South towers of the World Trade Center. A third plane was flown into the Pentagon near Washington, D.C., and a fourth crashed in a Pennsylvania field. More than 2,600 people were killed.

The store's owner apologized for the ad on Thursday and said on Friday the San Antonio store will be closed indefinitely.

"We take full responsibility for our actions and sincerely regret the hurt and pain caused by this disrespectful advertising campaign," owner Mike Bonanno said in a letter posted on the company's Facebook page on Friday.

A day earlier on Facebook, he wrote on the same page, "the video is tasteless and an affront to the men and women who lost their lives on 9/11."

The apology seemed to fuel anger, with many comments pointing out that the woman in the ad is a family member of the owner. Many chastised the company for making a joke about the worst attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor was bombed in 1941.

"Even your damage control is disgusting. You deserve to go out of business," Ozzy Santos, who lives in San Antonio, wrote in a comment on Facebook ahead of the closing.

A few people said they respected his decision to close.

"It appears to me, based on yesterday's apology and today's letter, you are a man of integrity and honor," Diane Milligan, wrote on the company's Facebook page.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Andrew Hay)
A Texas Mattress store has been subjected to intense backlash after an unwise decision to use imagery from the September 11 terror attacks in a bid to advertise their Twin Tower sale and has now closed indefinitely.

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With two stacks of mattresses towering behind them, three Miracle Mattress employees appeared in the video announcing the sale. In the ad, which appeared on Facebook, Cherise Bonanno says, What better way to remember 9/11 than with the twin tower sale?

Bonanno is the store manager, according to Dallas News.

At the end of the ad, two male employees behind Bonanno fall back onto the mattresses, knocking them over as Bonanno mockingly screams. Before the video cuts out, she says: "We will never forget."

The company also tweeted a link to the Facebook ad.

Outrage towards the video was swift. The store closed Thursday due to death threats, WOAI reported.

The video has since been taken down, but has resurfaced on YouTube. It now has more than 900,000 views.

Mike Bonnano, who owns the store and is reportedly Cherises father, wrote an apology letter that was posted to the Miracle Mattress Facebook page later Thursday.

Today, I was made aware of a social media video produced by our San Antonio team highlighting a promotional sale using the upcoming 9/11 anniversary as the incentive. The video was posted on Facebook without my knowledge or approval from our corporate office in Houston, read the letter.

I say this unequivocally, with sincere regret: the video is tasteless and an affront to the men and women who lost their lives on 9/11. Furthermore, it disrespects the families who lost their loved ones and continue to struggle with the pain of this tragedy every day of their lives.

Despite the apology, Facebook commenters let loose on Miracle Mattress and their ad.

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I am a New Yorker and live in Manhattan. That horrible day will stay with me forever. I cannot believe that ANYONE in their right mind could EVER think it's ok to mock that tragedy, one comment read.

On Friday, Cherise Bonanno resurfaced to offer her own apology

Speaking to WOAI, she said: We are not hate, we are love. We are somebody that stands out, we are Miracle Mattress. We make miracles happen. And for our lives to be in danger  that is not what we ever wanted.

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She added: "It was stupid, it was a stupid idea that we sent out and we apologize for our stupidity and we really hope that you forgive us for what we have done, she said.

The company also vowed to donate 30 percent of sales over the anniversary weekend to the 9/11 Foundation, according to Dallas News.

Watch: Chef Who Began Cooking for Firefighters After 9/11 Cries Over Surprise Cookbook

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clinton trump lauer military plans

It might not be intentional, but there appears to be an arms race between the campaigns of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton to see who can gather more endorsements from military officials.

This week, both campaigns have released several statements about endorsements from US generals and admirals.

The first, from Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, came on Tuesday. The title of the news release was, "88 RETIRED U.S. GENERALS AND ADMIRALS ENDORSE TRUMP." (The media was quick to point out that many names on the list weren't immediately recognizable.)

Trump's release was followed the next day by a release from the campaign of the Democratic nominee. The title of that release: "95 Retired Generals and Admirals Endorse Hillary Clinton."

"Clinton is getting the backing of more senior military service members and former officials with command and management experience than any non-incumbent Democrat," the release noted.

The Clinton campaign's statement also slammed Trump for not getting as many military endorsements as Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee for president in 2012.

"According to yesterdays media reports,Trump has received more than 400 fewer endorsements than Mitt Romney received  88 to Romney's 500," the statement said.

Then, on Friday, the Clinton campaign rolled out more endorsements, with a news release titled, "Number of Generals and Admirals Backing Clinton Grows to 110 After Forum."

The statement, which tied the endorsements to a "commander-in-chief" forum with Trump and Clinton that aired on NBC on Wednesday, again noted Trump's lack of endorsements compared to Romney.

This was followed by a release from the Trump campaign hours later: "32 NEW MILITARY LEADERS ENDORSE DONALD J. TRUMP FOR PRESIDENT." This brought Trump's total number of military endorsements to 120.

"These names were added following Wednesday's Commander-In-Chief Forum, showing Mr. Trump has the respect and trust from a number of military leaders across all branches of service," the campaign said in its statement.

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So for now, Trump is winning the arms race with 120 endorsements compared to Clinton's 110.

A Clinton campaign official told Business Insider that the campaign has been doing outreach to military leaders for months and had planned to release a list on the same day as NBC's Commander-in-Chief Forum. After the forum, the official said, more generals and admirals came forward to offer their endorsements.

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

NOW WATCH: Donald Trump is under fire for his comments about the Iraq War





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A favorite of style icon Rihanna, Adam Selman put himself on the New York Fashion Week map as a must-see in 2014. Remember Rihannas infamous naked dress she wore to the CFDAs? Yeah, well, you can thank Selman for blessing the world with a peek at Riris amazing body. Known for his fun, rebellious, and subversive designs, Selman has one of the most anticipated shows in the sometimes mundane scene of NYFW.

Did your ticket get lost in the mail? Here is everything you need to know to feel you were front row.

The designer: Adam Selman is a favorite of celebs like Rihanna and fashion editors alike. On Thursday, he presented a 90s-inflected collection with a soft color palette of baby blush pink and dusky navy, with shots of sunset orange and yellow. The dreamy palette was accented by denim, corseted details, pleats, pearls, sequins, and platform lace-up shoes. The overall feel was Lolita-raver in the coolest way possible, and as usual, it made us want to follow wherever the Selman girl is going. (Photo: Imax Tree)

The front row: As always, Selman drew an eclectic crowd that included street style stars the Quan sisters in complementary colorful outfits, fashion it girl Alexa Chung in a chic shimmery outfit, and big-deal editors and critics like Cathy Horyn. (Photo: BFA)

#WantItNow: This beautiful spaghetti-strap dress is a rather simple design (with meticulous handiwork), but the iridescent fabric and embellishments make it a standout statement piece that will put all eyes on you wherever you go. In love! (Photo: Imax Tree)

The scene: Selman staged his show in a studio at Fashion Week staple Milk, with a neon Adam Selman sign decorated with a wild floral arrangement, and synthesized electronic music playing in the background. The vibe was a little 90s underground rave  especially once the models came out looking like our Lolita-raver teenage dreams come true! (Photo: Imax Tree)



Trend alert! Ive been seeing wide-legged pants with a half-wrap skirt attached. Is it the new slit skirt? All I know is that I want a pair! This denim one specifically. (Photo: Imax Tree)

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Walk this way: Best shoes of the bunch? The denim western-meets-Victorian corseted platforms! Created in collaboration with Chris Habana, these are every free-spirited girls shoe dreams come true. Perfect to wear with a flowy maxi or denim dress  or those slit wide legs that have been spotted everywhere. (Photo: Imax Tree)



Yahoo Style is live from #NYFW! Keep it here for your front-row view of the best looks and buzziest moments of New York Fashion Week.


Istanbul (AFP) - Three Turkish soldiers were killed and another wounded in an attack Friday on an army tank launched by Islamic State (IS) group jihadists in northern Syria, the Turkish army said in a statement on state media.

The new fatalities come after three Turkish soldiers were killed in a rocket attack by IS this week. Turkey had blamed the death of one soldier on August 28 in a similar attack on Kurdish militia.

In a statement posted on the jihadist accounts, IS claimed the tank attack.

The tank was hit during clashes in the Tel Al-Hawa region in northern Syria, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported, quoting the army statement.

Turkey launched an unprecedented operation inside Syria on August 24, sending tanks and special troops to back Syrian opposition rebels in a bid to remove IS jihadists from the entire border area.

On Friday, the Turkish army said it had struck 15 IS targets 41 times, adding that four IS-held buildings had been destroyed in air operations.

Ankara-backed fighters seized the town of Jarabulus from IS jihadists on the first day of the operation, without much resistance from the extremist group.

As well as attacking the jihadists, Turkey has been working to push out the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its People's Protection Units (YPG) militia from the area.

The latest fatalities come as Turkey is considering an ambitious plan to capture from the jihadists the Syrian town of Raqa, the de facto capital of IS, an operation that would be on a different scale from Jarabulus.

Speculation has grown of a possible joint Turkey-US operation to seize Raqa and possibly IS-held Mosul in northern Iraq after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan revealed he had discussed the issue with US counterpart Barack Obama at the G20 in China.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Friday such an operation to boot out IS could be successful if supported by coalition air power.

The spokesperson of the US-led coalition against IS, John Dorrian, tweeted on Thursday that Turkey, the United States and Syrian opposition fighters were working "to come up with a game plan" for Raqa.

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Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said Friday the Syria operation was aimed at securing Turkey's southern border.

He vowed to press ahead with the military offensive against "not only Daesh (IS) but also other terror groups like PYD and YPG" until this goal is achieved.

Turkey sees the Syrian Kurdish militia force YPG as a terror group affiliated with its outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) waging a bloody campaign against the Turkish state.
ANKARA (Reuters) - Three Turkish soldiers were killed and one soldier was wounded after an attack by Islamic State militants on a tank in northern Syria on Friday, the Turkish army said in a statement. Turkey launched its first major military incursion into Syria just over two weeks ago in a bid to push Islamic State back from its border and prevent Syrian Kurdish militia fighters from seizing territory in their wake. Turkish air strikes hit and destroyed four building used by the Islamic State militants earlier on Friday, the army said. (Reporting by Ece Toksabay and Tulay Karadeniz; Editing by David Dolan)
From Road & Track

Dodge has always offered a Durango with a decent amount of horsepower in the form of the Durango R/t. The original Durango R/T debuted in 2000, and the current one has been around since 2014. But while ordering one in R/T trim gets you a relatively quick SUV, the 360-horsepower V8 under the hood isn't quite enough to make it a real performance SUV. Now, it sounds like Dodge plans to offer a Durango with even more power.

Automotive News reports that Dodge plans to refresh the Durango for 2017, and with that will come the long-rumored Durango SRT. Presumably, it will receive the same 475-horsepower 6.4-liter V8 that Jeep shoved into the Grand Cherokee SRT.

Considering the two SUVs share a platform, weigh approximately the same, and will have the same engine, we expect the Durango SRT to have a 0-60 mph time similar to the Grand Cherokee SRT's 4.6 seconds. Compared to the R/T's 6.2-second 0-60 mph time, that's a serious improvement.

It's obviously still a rumor at this point, but we have to say we like the idea. Additional performance models are always a good thing, and this one looks perfect for the Charger owner with a third kid on the way.

via Motor1

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Germanys Arri Group is launching a support program for international filmmakers at the Toronto Intl. Film Festival.

The Munich-based company, whose operations range from motion picture camera and lighting system to film production and post-production activities, said Sept. 8 that its International Support Program initiative would assist filmmakers who are working on distinctive projects with an international edge.

As part of the program, Arri will offer support ranging from co-production, development and access to state-of-the-art Arri equipment, to post-production and international sales.

The company will officially unveil the program in Toronto. Arri reps from Munich, Berlin, Los Angeles, Toronto, New York and New Orleans will be at the festival to meet with filmmakers.

We like to find ways to give back to the industry and support new talent, so we have created the International Support Program to emphasize our ongoing commitment, said Arri executive board member Joerg Pohlman.

Arris support will be tailored to the individual needs selected projects, the company said, adding that regional constraints no longer existed as the group has subsidiaries across the globe.

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The Hollywood Reporter has released its first Toronto International Film Festival daily issue as the festival kicked off on Thursday. The issue features a look at The Birth of a Nation's TIFF potential (following Nate Parker's controversy), exclusive news of Lost City of Z's theatrical release and an exclusive first look at Margot Robbie's Terminal.

Can Birth Be Reborn?

Toronto is Birth of a Nation director Nate Parker's first time in a festival spotlight since the storm of controversy over details of his college rape trial surfaced this summer. Will the scrutinized TIFF screenings allow his film to finally take center stage - or will it further deepen the controversy? Insiders are mixed about whether a positive response at TIFF can minimize the murmur surrounding its writer-director-star.

Lost City on the Big Screen

A week after Amazon Studios picked up North American rights to the hotly contested Charlie Hunnam starrer, the streaming giant has closed a deal with Bleecker Street to release the film theatrically, THR reports exclusively. Sources peg the overall deal, which was brokered by CAA, at a whopping mid-eight figures. The James Gray-helmed film - also starring Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson and Sienna Miller - eyes a spring release.

Terminal First Look

Robbie not only stars in Vaughn Stein's noir thriller Terminal, but produced as well. The pic, also starring Simon Pegg, Max Irons, Mike Myers and Dexter Fletcher, follows two hitmen who, while on a job, meet Robbie's dynamic character - who may have more to do with their case than they initially thought. THR debuts an image which features Robbie's mysterious character standing with a cigarette.

Click here to download the Day 1 PDF.
London-born director Amma Asante, the daughter of Ghanaian immigrants, has tackled racism in all three of her features: A Way of Life (2004), Belle (2013) and her third Toronto world premiere, the interracial relationship drama A United Kingdom. She talked to Variety about making the transition from child actor to helmer and her very personal connection to her work.

What made you want to be a director?

When I was 14 and acting on my series Grange Hill, I recognized this young actors amazing ability to communicate, and loved watching it unfold. After trying to become an adult actress and realizing there wasnt much work out there, I wanted to stay in a world where I could tell stories.

You began landing development deals at age 23 with the BBC, Channel 4 and Chrysalis, then named your production company Tantrum Films. Why?

There is or was a sense that if youre a female with creative control over your work, you had to be a bit difficult. People would often ask, If you dont get your own way, do you have a tantrum? It became a bit of a joke.

Is there a reason for the nine-year gap between A Way of Life and Belle?

I won a BAFTA for my first film, but found that it was as big a struggle to make my second film, probably because I wanted a slightly bigger budget. In 2008 we hit a credit crunch, and I had three projects just collapse. I was hugely disillusioned and thinking of giving up when the producer of Belle approached me. After Belle, for the first time in my life, I had choice!

You met your CAA agent in Toronto in 2013. Any reason you didnt follow up Belle with a U.S. project?

[Kingdom producer/star] David Oyelowo, whose first job out of drama school was the [UK] series Id written and directed, Brothers and Sisters, called and said, Ive got this passion project. In order to get it greenlit, we need the right director, and I think thats you. I was intrigued by a film involving two continents had been relevant in raising me. And I still had this drive to tell a story that Ive wanted to tell for so long, [called] Where Hands Touch, and knew I might still have to earn some stripes in order to be allowed to make it. A United Kingdom exercises a different muscle for me as a filmmaker. Its epicthere were days where we had 4,000 extrasso I feel really ready for Hollywood.

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Im also fascinated by periods of transition. My dad stood in Independence Square in Ghana at the point when it became the third Sub-Saharan African country to gain independence. When you were born in a colony and then move to the country that once colonized you, it makes for a very interesting dynamic that fascinated me.

How did being in an interracial marriage with a Danish husband affect your approach to the subject matter?

If anything, its just made me see them as normal. But Im interested in characters of color having to assert their identity in situations where not many people are around to support them, so their struggle is harder. Im also interested in love and politics, and interracial relationships often have those thingsa sense of struggle, and a political and personal assertion of identity.

What perspective do you bring to your work as a woman of color?

There are definitely areas of the industry that realize it makes sense to give women of color a voice. There is a whole gaze that weve never had the opportunity to see. If were going to keep on creating fresh ideasor, as Ive always said, opening fresh windows on traditional and classic ideasthen somehow were going to have to open up opportunities to people who have traditionally not been allowed to tell stories or implant their vision onscreen.

Now youre about to make Where Hands Touch in Belgium. What can we expect?

Its a coming-of-age story set in Berlin in 1943, about a girl whos not Jewish and not Aryan, as Hitler would have put it, wanting to find out who she is.

Is it intentional that this will be your fourth film to explore issues of race?

[Laughs.] Once I finished A Way of Life, the only interracial story I was going to tell was Where Hands Touch. But I suppose the way the film industry works, if you do something and people deem that youve done an okay job with it, they bring you a bit more of the same. But it will definitely be time to change it up after Where Hands Touch. Once I finish this film, I will comfortably call myself a filmmaker who has something of a body of work. And I think in some ways it will free me. I love the idea of being able to explore television, and I definitely want to work in Hollywood.

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Already named Saudi Arabias foreign language Oscar submission, the independently financed, satirical comedy Barakah Meets Barakah from debuting writer-director Mahmoud Sabbagh is a smart, charming, and bittersweet tale about the Kingdoms millennial generation and their take on the social and political restrictions that stand in the way of meeting and mingling with the opposite sex.

Barakah (Hisham Fageeh), a laid-back, 20-something, Jeddah municipal law enforcement officer from a humble background, falls for Bibi (Fatima Al Banawi), a rebellious beauty and Instagram star from a wealthy family, when they meet by chance at a photo shoot. As the young, would-be couple attempt to get to know each other better, the film uses acerbic humor to provide an insightful look at a time and place where traditions and laws clash with the modern world of smartphones and social media. A critical and popular favorite at the Berlin festival, Barakah should score with festival and niche arthouse audiences in most territories.

Despite Jeddahs ample and attractive waterfront, public space here, like in the rest of Saudi Arabia, is under the ever-watchful eye of authority. Meeting the opposite sex in public unchaperoned is prohibited and physical contact is verboten. Barakah and Bibi snatch moments together at art exhibitions and in ethnic neighborhoods. He naively suggests that they become engaged in order to meet more easily, but to Bibi, thats outdated thinking, and besides, her snooty family is unwilling to accept Barakah as a suitor.

As the easygoing but inexperienced Barakah, who hasnt so much as held hands with a girl, tries to plan his next move, hes forced to come to terms with who he is and the society he lives in. Sabbagh includes a telling montage of photographs that contrast life in the Kingdom during Barakahs fathers time, replete with unveiled women and cinemas, with the way things are today. Your generation got scared, Barakah notes ruefully.

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Unable to express themselves in public spaces, such as the coffee shop with its inviting sidewalk seating that Barakah closes down as part of his municipal job, young Saudis use social media as an alternative arena. With her avid vlogging, Bibi represents the type of young woman who pushes boundaries by filming herself in bold situations yet keeps her face hidden. Mayada, her adoptive mother, uses Bibis image as the blond trophy brand of her boutique, but Bibi also has her own account in which she sends out positive messages, advising people to patronize artisanal products.

Sabbagh also contrasts the homes and family lives of Barakah and Bibi. Barakah lives in a lively, congested area, full of noise and men smoking the hookah. His neighbors, such as the unrepentant drunk Daash (Sami Hifny) and the garrulous midwife/washerwoman Sadiyya (Khairia Nazmi), are colorful, plainspoken, down-to-earth types who may mock his use of social media words but they truly care about him. In comparison, Bibis enormous, modern art-filled home feels arid. Mayada constantly berates her and uses her as if she is just one more pretty object that she has purchased. And when Mayada becomes pregnant after 20 years of infertility, she and her arrogant husband Hamza casually decide to dispose of Bibi by marrying her off to Hamzas brother.

While Sabbaghs script does contain social criticism, he keeps the tone light. For foreign audiences, the opening text, Note: The pixelization you will experience during this film is totally normal. It is not a commentary on censorship. We repeat, it is not a commentary on censorship, draws immediate laughs.

A graduate of Columbia U.s journalism program in documentary filmmaking, Sabbagh keeps his visuals grounded in Jeddahs ambience and pace, rather than striving to copy Hollywood models. His sympathetic leading actors, neither of whom have been in a feature film before, evince a credible chemistry. Fageeh, who also claims a co-producer credit here, is a standup comedian and internet superstar known for Telfaz 11s hilarious music-video spoof No Woman No Drive. Petite, pretty Al Banawi, a graduate student in theology at Harvard at the time of filming, perfectly embodies an upper-class woman with a mind of her own.

Victor Credis handsome widescreen cinematography does a good job of disguising the films low budget. The other tech credits suit the scrappy tone.

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Flaubert would certainly agree with the titular assessment of I Am Not Madame Bovary: His pretty, hapless bourgeoise femme has very little in common with the heroine of leading populist Chinese director Feng Xiaogangs latest. That latter lady is a modern peasant whos none too pretty  despite being played by Fan Bingbing, duly de-glammed for the occasion  and anything but helpless, as her grudge against a runaway spouse turns into a quest for justice that reaches the highest levels of government.

This sly comic parable, eccentrically tricked out in reductive screen formats (before finally going wide), is the tale of an ant becoming an elephant, one that fittingly strings a long series of small anecdotal sequences into a near-epic narrative arc. Though its marquee names and trenchant social satire will prove most potent on home turf, I Am Not Madame Bovarys often sublimely ridiculously progress could also beguile non-Chinese audiences beyond the fest circuit.

Adapting his own novel, Lin Zhenyuns screenplay first provides a short illustrated lecture explaining how in China Madame Bovary was a fictive beauty (known indigenously as Pan Jinlian) whose infidelity led to murder, her name still a byword for for devious, faithless femininity. That hardly seems relevant to the plight of provincial drudge Li (Bingbing), whom we first meet when shes traipsed far in the rain to arm-twist a local official into representing her in a case against her ex-husband. Its not exactly a simple one: She claims the two got a fake divorce some months earlier in order to access better housing. But once theyd achieved that goal, her hubby jumped ship for real and got married to someone else rather than re-marrying Li as agreed. In her Byzantine logic, the court must invalidate the divorce so she can re-marry, then divorce truck driver Qin (Li Zonghan) anew, this time with full malice.

The judge, however, determines that the original severance was legal, and Lis emotional grievances arent sufficient cause for further official action. While disappointed, shes willing to drop the matter if her ex will simply admit his duplicitousness. But when confronted, he instead publicly humiliates her with the Madame Bovary slur. This has the effect of fanning those dying embers of vengeance into a brand new wildfire. Li now doggedly works her way up the ladder of town, city and province officials, adding each one to her hit list as they serially snub her cause. Finally she journeys all the way to Beijing, where chance affords her fleeting audience with a very high-ranking government figure. His sympathetic ear translates into woeful news to all the bureaucrats whod variably evaded, dismissed and belittled her en route.

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Yet Li still isnt satisfied. At this midpoint juncture I Am Not jumps forward a decade, finding our heroines circumstances changed in some ways, but only some  in fact every year since she has again visited Beijing with her ever-longer petition of petty wrongs that need righting, causing great embarrassment. There are surprising turns as authorities miscalculate with Li once again, renewing her angry determination just as she was about to give up the justice quest in favor of an old flames (Guo Tao) marriage proposal.

Long, relatively low-key but always engaging, I Am Not Madame Bovary wears its expansive scale lightly. While Fengs decision to stick with odd image formatting almost throughout  -circular tunnelvision for the provincial scenes, a scroll-like vertical rectangle for Beijing ones  is somewhat off-putting, it does heighten the tales fable-like nature, not to mention the painterly qualities of Luo Pans handsome compositions. (The scroll and the circle are, of course, traditional Chinese painting formats.) Further adding to the droll overall packages distinctive tenor is a colorfully diverse slate of locations, as well as a score by Du Wei that starts out with thundering taiko-style drums, then runs a wide gamut of additional musical influences.

The men who mostly dog her are portrayed by a starry lineup (including Da Peng as the longest-suffering bureaucrat), while Bingbings Li is a mulishly stubborn figure whose simplicity continually manages to flummox the more powerful  they cant quite believe she means just what she says, or that her nerve so far exceeds her social station. Usually seen in distancing long- or medium shots, this character is an Everywoman in both the proletarian and superheroic sense. Thesp and director (who first worked together on her 2003 breakout Cell Phone) seamlessly unify a tonal range that stretches from farcical absurdism to pathos. Her gender rendering her even more frightening to an all-male roster of suits, outwardly nondescript Li is a triumphant cipher: The nobody who, at least briefly, succeeds in making a slew of Big Somebodies tremble in their well-shined shoes.

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Shakespeares conniving Queen of Scotland is nowhere to be found in it, but a whole lot of courage gets screwed to the sticking place in Lady Macbeth. An impressively stark, narratively ruthless Victorian chamber piece that feels about as modern as its crinolines will permit, William Oldroyds pristine debut feature slowly reveals a violent moral ambiguity that needles the mind far longer than its polite period-piece trappings suggest. This disquieting drama of an arranged marriage gone drastically awry may come to be most remembered, however, as the film that gave 19-year-old Florence Pugh her first leading-lady showcase: Fully realizing the promise of earlier, smaller parts, the British actress impresses with precocious poise, sensuality and venom in a still-waters role just about worthy of the films eponymous inspiration. Though the films austere outlook limits its commercial appeal to the Masterpiece Theater crowd, it has the makings of a more rarefied arthouse conversation piece.

Shrewdly adapted (and anglicised) by first-time scribe Alice Birch from Russian writer Nikolai Leskovs 1865 novella Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk, Lady Macbeth will throw any viewers who approach it seeking overt allusions or parallels to the Scottish Play. The corruption of its characters emerges gradually, in pursuit not of power but of sexual freedom  a kind of power in itself, of course, not least for women still bound to the gender hierarchy of 19th-century England.

In 1865, on an unspecified stretch of farmland streaked in shades of moss and mud, teenage bride Katherine (Pugh) has barely any human liberties left to call her own. To the menfolk in her life, she is quite literally a commodity: Sold by her father, in a package deal with a bonus patch of land, to elderly colliery magnate Boris (Christopher Fairbank), shes forced into nuptials to Boriss glumly unprepossessing, middle-aged son Alexander (Paul Hilton). Birchs script and Nick Emersons economical editing establish the terms of this trap in quick, calm strokes: Were swiftly taken to the conjugal bed, where Alexander  who seems no keener on the arrangement than she  is unable to consummate the marriage.

Like a captive princess in a particularly dour fairytale, Katherine is instructed by her brusque husband and brusquer father-in-law to remain indoors, attending to what limited wifely duties their ample staff of servants (including her impassive handmaid Anna, excellently played with a half-sympathetic, half-critical eye by Naomi Ackie) dont cover. Her growing sense of empty frustration is sharply complemented by Jacqueline Abrahams production design, which foregoes Downton Abbey opulence for a coldly rustic, half-finished puritanism. All blank walls, dark wood and frayed edges, with a bile-hued couch the brightest detail, the otherwise gracious mansion perfectly reflects the amount of living that has been done in it.

When both Boris and Alexander are called away on business, however, Katherine crosses paths with cocksure groomsman James (impressively brooding musician-turned-actor Cosmo Jarvis) and experiences an unfamiliar frisson of actual feeling. The connection is mutual, and its not long before the two are treating the marital mattress to some unfamiliar action. But as familiar as this setup seems, no amount of hoary lady-and-the-stable-boy Harlequin romances will have prepared viewers for the cool-blooded turns this cross-class romance is about to take, as Katherine goes to increasingly untenable lengths to protect her newfound fulfilment.

At one level an extreme, unflinching feminist cautionary tale about the ultimate perils of chauvinistically containing or instructing a womans desires and impulses, Lady Macbeth also works as a fascinatingly inverted character study  wherein continued abuse and silencing gradually makes an oppressor of a victim.

Its a fine-line exercise that requires an actress both commanding and sympathetic enough to pull it off: Pugh, hitherto best known for her small but crucially vivid turn as a charismatic schoolgirl in Carol Morleys U.K. arthouse hit The Falling, doesnt miss a note of Katherines complex, under-the-skin transformation. A child still getting to grips with the womanhood she had unwillingly thrust upon her, let alone the challenging, primal moral transgressions she has made in the name of independence, shes a whirl of petulance and more mature anger, of confusion and seductive self-possession. Pugh folds these contradictions into one composed, consistent characterization, her smoothly expressive face giving us all the text between the lines of her spare dialogue.

Yet while Katherine is front and center in Lady Macbeth, Oldroyds film is quietly attuned to the separate social crises and prejudices faced by its secondary characters. That no overt mention is made on screen on Sebastian and Annas race  both are black it turns out to be a resonant detail as Katherine exploits their disenfranchisement to shore up her own fragile status. As such, Oldroyds film winds up joining Amma Asantes Belle in the limited pantheon of films to address racial relations in the old British gentry; like Andrea Arnolds revisionist Wuthering Heights, however, it does so entirely tacitly.

Arnolds fearless twist on heritage cinema comes to mind several times, in fact, during Lady Macbeth. Both films share a blunt, angular modernity in their approach to corset drama, with Ari Wegners clean, crisp widescreen lensing not adding a hint of old-world lacquer to the Victorian setting: Its sagebrush colors and symmetrical compositions still appear edged with this mornings frost. Costume designer Holly Waddington contributes to the general air of disciplined realism with a selective, regularly recycled wardrobe: Katherines favorite peacock-blue gown, impressively regal at first sight, appropriately looks a little more sullied each time it reappears.

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Washington (AFP) - Donald Trump pledged Friday to cherish and defend America's "Christian heritage" if he is elected president, as he urged religious conservatives to "get out and vote" or risk handing Hillary Clinton the White House in November.

Locked in a brutal campaign with Democrat Clinton, Trump made the blunt appeal to the Values Voter Summit in Washington bringing together about 1,000 faith-based grassroots activists, conservative lawmakers and leaders of religious and pro-life groups.

"Let me say this right up front, in a Trump administration our Christian heritage will be cherished, protected, defended like you've never seen before," the Republican nominee said to a rousing ovation.

"Our politicians have really abandoned you to a large extent," he said in addressing the religious right. "And Hillary Clinton? You can forget about her."

Many evangelical Christians vote reliably Republican, but millions stayed home in 2012 opting not to vote for the party's nominee Mitt Romney.

Several Republican strategists and religious figures argue that a boycott by religious conservatives cost Romney the election against incumbent Barack Obama.

"You have to get out and vote on November 8. You didn't vote four years ago. You didn't vote," Trump told the forum.

"I did," someone shouted.

"Oh you did. A few of you did," Trump acknowledged as the crowd laughed.

"But this time you really have to, and this is your last chance. This is it," he added. "If you don't, could be a very unhappy November 8."

Clinton leads Trump in most national surveys on the presidential race, and is leading in many battleground states like Pennsylvania, polls show.

Trump swept to victory early this year in a hard-fought primary that featured 17 Republican candidates. He often proclaimed that he won largely on the strength of evangelical voters.

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"I got the evangelicals," he boasted Friday.

Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus warned that Americans' religious liberties were under siege, and he applauded conservatives' efforts to "take back our country for freedom and American values."

Other high-profile Republicans warned that staying home on Election Day will only serve to elect Clinton -- with a dark future ahead for America.

"I feel there is a dark cloud over the country now, and we are all witness to Hillary Clinton's lies and corruption," said actor Jon Voight, father of Academy Award winner Angelina Jolie.

"We are the largest voting bloc in the United States," said Michele Bachmann, a former Republican congresswoman who backs Trump.

"We can't say that the moral choice is to support neither candidate, because one will win," she said.

Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor and a Trump surrogate, made a surprise appearance at the gathering to slam Clinton and highlight global terror threats just two days before the nation marks the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks of 2001.

"I feel our country is in more danger today than it was on September 11," Giuliani said.
By Steve Holland and Jeff Mason WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton clashed over national security again on Friday, with Trump calling his Democratic rival "trigger-happy" and Clinton arguing his proposals would make the world a more dangerous place. The two White House hopefuls have waged a running battle this week over who is best placed to command the world's most powerful military, with both touting their support from retired military leaders and attacking their opponent's temperament and judgment. Trump also injected drama into the national security debate this week by wholeheartedly endorsing Russian President Vladimir Putin as a strong leader who has fared better than U.S. President Barack Obama. Clinton, many Democrats and even some in his own Republican party balked. Trump, speaking on Friday at the conservative Value Voters summit in Washington, painted Clinton as a "massive failure" while she was America's top diplomat from 2009 to early 2013, blaming her for the current turmoil in the Middle East. "The problem is, Hillary Clinton is trigger-happy. Her tenure has brought us only war, destruction and death. Shes just too quick to intervene, invade, or to push for regime change," he said at the summit. Meanwhile in New York, Clinton met with national security and foreign policy experts who are supporting her campaign to discuss terrorism. She touted the bipartisan nature of the meeting and vowed to work across the aisle as president to tackle national security challenges. "The nominee on the other side promises to do things that will make us less safe," Clinton told reporters at a news conference on Friday afternoon. "National security experts on both sides of the aisle are chilled by what theyre hearing from the Republican nominee." Both candidates are hoping to capitalize on concerns about national security and paint their opponents as unqualified leading into the Nov. 8 presidential election. WORKING WITH THE RUSSIANS Trump's speech on Friday comes after the candidate took the unusual step of criticizing U.S. policy in a program aired on Thursday night on Russian government-funded television network, RT, a 24-hour news channel that broadcasts in both English and Russian. He said he disagreed with the U.S. decision to invade Iraq in 2003 and that Obama botched the withdrawal. "It's a war we shouldn't have been in, number one," Trump said in the interview. "And it's a war that, when we got out, we got out the wrong way. That's Obama." Critics of the network, which mostly targets audiences outside of Russia, have described it as a propaganda arm of Putin's government. American presidential candidates are not prone to condemn their country before a foreign audience, even if they are fierce critics of the current administration while campaigning in the United States. Trump has said far worse about Obama in appearances on U.S. television networks. Clinton blasted Trump for appearing on the network and praising Putin, as he had done on Wednesday night during a televised national security forum. "Every day that goes by this just becomes more and more of a reality television show," Clinton said. "It's not a serious presidential campaign, and it is beyond one's imagination to have a candidate for president praising a Russian autocrat like Vladimir Putin." The White House said it had no comment on Trump's remarks. The New York businessman also said on RT on Thursday he did not think Russia's government was behind the hack of Democratic National Committee email servers, and doubted it was trying to interfere in the U.S. election. Experts inside and outside the government have pointed to Russian-backed actors as the source of the hack, which has been used to leak information in an attempt to embarrass Democrats. Trump, in his speech on Friday, stuck to his belief that the United States and Russia can work together to defeat Islamic State militants. He said any nation that wants to join the United States against ISIS is welcome. That includes Russia," he said. "If they want to join us in knocking out ISIS, thats just fine as far as Im concerned. Trump also sought on Friday to blame Clinton after reports that North Korea had tested a nuclear weapon, arguing it was the fourth such test since the Democrat became secretary of state in 2009 and that she should have ended the nation's nuclear program before her tenure ended. "It's just one more massive failure from a failed secretary of state," Trump said. Clinton called the North Korea test "outrageous and unacceptable," saying she supports imposing additional U.S. and United Nations sanctions. "It will be on the top of my list in dealing with China on how we're going to prevent what could very well be a serious conflict with North Korea," she said. (Writing by Ginger Gibson.; Reporting by Steve Holland, Doina Chiacu and Emily Stephenson in Washington and Jeff Mason in New York.; Editing by Richard Valdmanis and Mary Milliken)
There may have been better outlets for Donald Trump to air grievances about the media coverage of his campaign than state-supported Russian television, as he fights the image of being too chummy with Russian President Vladimir Putin. But Larry King's Thursday night broadcast on RT, a TV network funded by the Russian Ministry of Communications, played host to Trump's criticisms anyway.

"I mean, they'll take a statement that you make, which is perfect," Trump said, referring to the U.S. media, "and they'll cut it up and chop it up and shorten it or lengthen it, or do something with it, and then all of a sudden, it doesn't look like as good as it did when you actually said it."

The significance of the Russian venue was not lost on Trump's campaign, which has frequently objected to quotes and statements from the GOP nominee being taken out of context.

"Nobody said it was going to be on Russian TV," Trump's campaign manager Kellyanne Conway told Chris Cuomo on CNN's New Day Friday morning. A Trump spokeswoman told Bloomberg reporter Kevin Cirilli she thought the interview was going to be for King's personal podcast, not RT.

Whether genuine mixup or another signal of good faith to Moscow, Trump's appearance comes at a time when accusations are swirling about whether the Russian government is meddling in the U.S. election.

After the Democratic National Committee was hacked in July, exposing institutional bias in favor of candidate Hillary Clinton over opponent Bernie Sanders and forcing DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz to resign, many fingers in Washington pointed to Russian intelligence agencies.

U.S. officials from a range of security agencies said in July there was little doubt that Russia was behind the cyberattack.

Hillary Clinton has criticized Trump for his endorsements of Putin, even sounding notes of conspiracy in the relationship between the two men.

"There is no doubt in my mind," she told ABC's David Muir in an interview on Monday, "that given the close relationships between certain people, present and past in Trump's campaign, with Russian interests all the way up to Putin himself, that there is something going on."

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There's no denying Trump's rhetorical fondness for the Russian leader. In July, he went so far as to suggest that he might not back NATO if a military conflict broke out with Russia. Trump has praised Putin for his leadership skills on numerous occasions, an affinity that Democrats have tried to construe as weak and not in the national interest. Vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine has said that Trump's pro-Putin rhetoric reflects an "irrational hostility" toward Obama.

Trump campaign spokeswoman says that they thought Larry King interview was going to be on King's podcast -- not RT.

- Kevin Cirilli (@kevcirilli) September 9, 2016

Trump campaign spokeswoman tells me that Trump "recorded a short interview with Larry King for his podcast as a favor to Mr. King."

- Kevin Cirilli (@kevcirilli) September 9, 2016

Trump campaign spokeswoman tells me that "what Larry King does with the interview content is up to him, we have nothing to do with it."

- Kevin Cirilli (@kevcirilli) September 9, 2016
rt Donald Trump Larry King

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump spoke with Larry King in an interview that was carried on the Kremlin-backed news outlet, Russia Today.

The pair talked about Iraq, third-party candidates, and immigration.

King asked the real-estate magnate about his plan for Iraq, but Trump refused to give specifics.

"Honestly, I don't like talking about it," Trump said. "I don't want to have to tell the enemy  in order to get two extra votes  exactly what my plan is, when we're going in, what we're going to do. No, I have a very distinct plan, always subject to change of course."

Trump blamed President Barack Obama for the rise of ISIS because of the way he got the troops out of Iraq.

"The timetable was arranged by Bush for the leaving," King interjected.

"Well, you know what, Larry," Trump said, "Ill tell you what, let's look to the future."

King asked Trump whether he thought the fact that Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson appeared to have little knowledge of Aleppo  the city in Syria ravaged by the country's bloody civil war  would hurt his chances of becoming president.

Trump said he didn't think it would, and that if it did, he probably wouldn't gain many of Johnson's supporters.

Donald Trump

King then asked if he'd like Johnson or Green Party candidate Jill Stein to be invited to the presidential debates.

"I'd rather it be Hillary and myself because we're the only two with a chance of winning," Trump replied.

The interview ended rather abruptly after King asked about immigration.

"Let's get something clear, because I've known you a long time," he said. "What are your feelings about Mexican immigrants? What in your gut do you feel about this?"

But Trump was silent.

"Donald, are you there?" King asked. "I don't know what happened there. We did not lose the connection, so something happened. But such is life in the big leagues."

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Donald Trump blasted U.S. media as "unbelievably dishonest" in an interview with Larry King on Russian state-owned television on Thursday.



During the segment for the Kremlin-funded RT America, King asked Trump what surprised him the most about running for president.



"The dishonesty of the media," Trump replied. "The media has been unbelievably dishonest. I mean, they'll take a statement that you make, which is perfect, and they'll cut it up and chop it up and shorten it or lengthen it, or do something with it, then all of a sudden, it doesn't look like as good as it did when you actually said it."



Trump also used the air time to criticize President Obama, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and American foreign policy.







"Hillary Clinton with her policies and Barack Obama  you know, look, we should have never gone into Iraq. Period," said Trump, who claims he was against the Iraq war all along, despite a 2002 Howard Stern interview in which he said he supported the invasion of Iraq. "But once we went in, Larry, we shouldn't have gotten out the way we got out. And the way they got out really caused ISIS, if you think about it. We got out in such a horrible, foolish fashion, instead of leaving some troops behind."





Are you planning on voting in this year's election? We want to know! Take our survey: https://t.co/b6KMj1ZeAt a People Magazine (@people) August 15, 2016





Trump's interview on a state-owned Russian TV network comes as he continues to face criticism about his ties to the country's government. The GOP nominee praised Russian President Vladimir Putin again during NBC's " Commander-in-Chief Forum" on Wednesday, saying, "Certainly, in that system, he's been a leader, far more than our president has been a leader."





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Trump's campaign said it did not know the interview would be aired on the Russian network. A spokesperson told The Washington Post, "Mr. Trump recorded a short interview with Larry King for his podcast as a favor to Mr. King. What Larry King does with the interview content is up to him; we have nothing to do with it."
Donald Trump Matt Lauer

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Friday praised Matt Lauer's interviewing skills during an appearance before the Values Voter Summit in Washington, DC.

Lauer's performance as a moderator at NBC's "Commander-in-Chief" Forum on Wednesday night was derided by critics in the press and on social media.

He was criticized for allegedly lobbing softball questions at Trump, while grilling Hillary Clinton on her use of a private email server, reported Business Insider's Mark Abadi.

"She was blaming Matt Lauer," Trump said of Clinton.

"I thought Matt Lauer did a very good job," he continued. "I mean, his questions to me were very tough."

Trump mentioned that the tougher questions addressed to Clinton at the forum on Wednesday came not from Lauer but audience members. A former Navy officer confronted Clinton, saying that had he communicated top-secret information without following proper protocols, he would have been imprisoned.

"The gentleman who stood up and said honestly, 'You should be imprisoned for what you did.' That was the tough one," Trump said. " It was sort of a question in the form of a statement."

Andy Lack, the chairman of NBC News and MSNBC, also praised Lauer's performance at the forum in a memo to staff obtained by Politico.

"Matt did a tremendous job  driving one of the most serious discussions to date on these topics," Lack wrote. "Nearly 15 million people watched the event, and over 26 million tuned in at some point during the hour."

Trump will debate Clinton for the first time on September 26.

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By Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican presidential nominee Donald Trumps U.S. military buildup plan would cost hundreds of billions of dollars - but with no apparent strategy, defense experts from across the political spectrum said on Thursday. I havent seen any kind of strategy, said William Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy. He (Trump) says nobody is going to challenge us because we will be so strong. But thats not a strategy. Its just a kind of wish-fulfillment. Asked to comment on the criticism, a Trump campaign adviser merely repeated Trump's plan. Trump's proposal, unveiled in a speech on Wednesday, did not spell out how he would accommodate the additional manpower and hardware as the United States shutters military bases, or where and for what purposes the larger forces would be employed. There were no cost estimates and Trump proposed revenue-raising steps that budget experts called insufficient. He just called for higher defense spending without giving us a number and without telling us how he is going to pay for it, said Lawrence Korb, a former Reagan administration Pentagon official and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a think tank aligned with the Obama administration. Trumps Democratic opponent in the Nov. 8 election, Hillary Clinton, advocates tough defense and foreign policies, but has yet to take a stand on the size of the Pentagon budget. Trump pledged to expand the Army to 540,000 active-duty troops from its current 480,000, increase the Marine Corps from 23 to 36 battalions  or as many as 10,000 more Marines  boost the Navy from 276 to 350 ships and submarines, and raise Air Force tactical aircraft from 1,100 to 1,200. He said he would bolster the development of missile defenses and cyber capabilities. He made no mention of U.S. nuclear forces already in the midst of a modernization effort that will cost an estimated $1 trillion over 30 years. To pay for the buildup, Trump said he would ask Congress to lift a Pentagon budget cap and fully offset the increased costs by collecting unpaid taxes, cutting appropriations for federal programs operating without congressional reauthorization, cracking down on social welfare fraud and other fraud, and collecting additional taxes and fees from increased energy production. The Trump campaign adviser, who requested anonymity, said the campaign estimated the cost of the expansion at $600 billion over 10 years. 'SOFT-PEDALING' THE COST Writing in The Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine, Tom Donnelly, a defense scholar at the American Enterprise Institute think tank who opposes Trumps election, praised Trump for embracing a buildup that many mainstream Republicans advocate. However, Trump undercut the power of his proposals by soft-pedaling the cost of such a buildup, he wrote. Independent cost estimates for Trump's plan range from $150 billion in additional spending over 10 years, according to the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, to as much as $900 billion over the same period, as assessed by Todd Harrison, a defense budget analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank. Harrison said that increase could be achieved only by raising the federal budget deficit, raising taxes, or cutting other spending, such as benefits programs for seniors and the poor. None of those things are politically popular, he said. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated that lifting the cap would cost $450 billion over 10 years. The revenue-generating steps proposed by Trump would leave $150 billion of that amount uncovered, it said. Another flaw in Trump's plan is the assumption that Republican members of the House of Representatives who belong to the deficit-fighting tea party movement would agree to end the budget cap. In April, Army Chief of Staff General Mark Milley told a Senate committee that adding more soldiers without a sufficient budget would be disastrous for the country and the Army. Bases would close and programs that support troops and their families would have to be curtailed to make up the shortfall, he said. The Navy already has launched a shipbuilding program to raise the number of vessels to more than 300 by 2021. Trump's plan fails to account for the country's limited shipbuilding capacity and the cost of manning, maintaining and basing the additional warships he proposes to build. The whole thing is unrealistic, said Dov Zakheim, the Pentagons top financial official under former President George W. Bush. Zakheim, who opposes a Trump presidency, estimates that Trumps plan would boost defense spending by roughly $300 billion over five years. Its a soundbite, he said. (Reporting by Jonathan Landay; Additional reporting by Idrees Ali, Arshad Mohammed and Emily Stephenson; Editing by John Walcott and Howard Goller)
Its almost as though the people who follow behind Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, picking up after his various comments, have forgotten that this is 2016 and every cable news hit, radio interview and social media post will be around to haunt them long after Trump has left the political scene, whether he wins the presidency or not.

The two days following Trumps appearance on a commander-in-chief forum hosted by NBC News on Wednesday night have provided a raft of examples as Trump surrogates and supporters have taken to the airwaves to defend Trumps repeated praise of Russian strongman Vladimir Putin and his assertion that the man who has invaded and terrorized his neighbors, presided over the cratering of his countrys economy, and used widespread oppression as a political tool is far more of a leader than President Obama.

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The idea that Trump would suggest that Putin -- whose government appears to be actively working to undermine the credibility of the upcoming U.S. presidential elections -- is a leader preferable to the United States elected president was a bit much. But Trump has been so outrageous for so long that anybody who claims to have been shocked is either being disingenuous or hasnt been paying attention.

What truly was shocking, though, was Trump supporters collective rush to the amen corner.

I think its inarguable that Vladimir Putin has been a stronger leader in his country than Barack Obama has been in this country, said Trumps vice presidential candidate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence in an interview with CNN on Thursday. And thats going to change the day that Donald Trump becomes president.

Vladimir Putin has had a stronger influence on his country than Barack Obama has had here, said former Trump campaign manager and CNN contributor Corey Lewandowski on the Networks New Day program Friday.

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Lewandowski allowed that Putin may have done some terrible things, but said what was more important is that he is against the terror group ISIS. Thats the number one priority.

Trump-supporting conservative radio host and MSNBC commentator Hugh Hewitt was left to fall back on the treacherous Putin may be evil, but  argument:

Putin's an evil man. POTUS a good but incompetent man. Putin has served his country's national interest better. https://t.co/6R2N0dajHM  Hugh Hewitt (@hughhewitt) September 9, 2016

This is really a pretty breathtaking stance for Hewitt -- a supposed foreign policy expert -- to adopt.

Putin has, arguably, increased Russias role on the international stage, but in the same way that a man who stands on his front lawn indiscriminately firing a shotgun into the street raises the familys profile in the neighborhood.

Putins invasion of Ukraine, his backing of armed rebellion in Donbas, his support of Bashar al-Assad, his continued intimidation of his neighbors, have all raised Russias international profile. But saying they have served his countrys interest is bizarre, given that the sanctions resulting from his aggression have contributed to putting the Russian economy into a tailspin.

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(And this doesnt even touch Putins brutal suppression of a free press, of open society movements, and of homosexuals, or his abject failure over more than 17 years in power, to move the Russian economy beyond its utter dependence on the fluctuations of the oil and gas industry.)

At least some in the GOP were willing to take exception to Trumps praise for Putin. Although he expressed anger at being forced to address yet another Trump comment, House Speaker Paul Ryan said, Vladimir Putin is an aggressor that does not share our interests. Vladimir Putin is violating the sovereignty of neighboring countries. It's certainly appears he is conducting in-state sponsored attacks on what appears to be our political system. That is not acting in our interests and that is an adversarial stance and he is acting like an adversary."

In an appearance Friday morning, Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway tried to moderate her clients position, claiming that Ryan and others has misunderstood his comments.

He is not praising him so much as saying that we will work with people, anybody who wants to help stop the advance of ISIS will be welcomed in a Trump/Pence administration to do so.

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Conway said, What he said was he's seen as a stronger in his country and he also said, if you'd pull the whole quote, he said he doesn't agree with that form of government but in that country, Vladimir Putin is strong.

Conway also had to explain why Trump did an interview on Thursday that aired on RT America, the Kremlin-backed Russian news network that regularly airs stories flattering to Moscow. The interview was with former CNN host Larry King, whose show is licensed to RT. Ironically, Trump used the interview to slam the dishonest U.S. media.

Its a matter of opinion which would be more embarrassing for a campaign: not realizing that the show you are appearing on is regularly rebroadcasted by a Kremlin propaganda outlet, or not caring. Conway opted for the ignorance defense.

He actually did an interview with Larry, a friend of his, a friend I'm sure of everyone around the table. And he said he was doing it for his podcast, didn't know it would be on Russian TV, Conway said.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
Prominent people close to Donald Trump have said in recent days that he believes President Barack Obama was born in the United States, reversing his fervent promotion of the birther movement in 2011.

Donald Trump believes now that (Obama) was born in the United States, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said Thursday on MSNBC. I believe it. He believes it. We all believe it. It took a long time to get out. The same day, Trumps vice presidential nominee Mike Pence said, I believe Barack Obama was born in Hawaii, I accept his birthplace.

Friday morning, Trumps campaign manager Kellyanne Conway echoed Giuliani, saying on CNN, He believes President Obama was born here The point is what kind of President has he been He has not been a particularly successful President, that is what this campaign is about.

Trump himself, however, has not given a straight answer on the issue. Asked about it by reporters earlier this week, Trump said, I dont talk about it because if I talk about that, your whole thing will be about that.
Donald Trump would like you to believe that immigration is largely responsible for the difficult economic conditions the working class has experienced in recent decades. But immigration is not the problem. The real culprits are globalization, technological change, and labors dwindling bargaining power in wage negotiations.

Lets start with immigration. Economists are in wide agreement that in the long-run immigrants do not lower the employment prospects for natives. There may be short-run costs as the economy adjusts to new immigrants, and the adjustment costs fall mainly on people with less than a high school education. But in the long-run, the employment prospects for Americans are enhanced by the extra demand for goods and services that immigrants provide.

Related: Trump Dealt Himself a Losing Hand With Fiery Immigration Speech

Immigrants do not lower average wages. There is some evidence that immigrants lower wages for workers with very low levels of education, though not by a large amount. The biggest effect is on the wages of previous immigrants, the people that newcomers are most likely to compete with for jobs. For everyone else the impact of immigration on wages is positive, and on average wages go up.

One reason for this is that low and high-paying jobs are complements. Having more people available to do the lower paying jobs also increases the demand for workers with more skills, and those jobs tend to go to natives. Overall, it is estimated that immigrants are responsible for raising the incomes of natives by $37 billion a year.

A common belief is that immigrants create an undue burden for social programs, but immigrants contribute far more to social programs than they use in benefits. Both documented and undocumented workers, the majority of which are in their prime working years, pay income, Social Security, sales, Medicare taxes, and so on.

Undocumented immigrants are not allowed to participate in Medicaid, food stamps, welfare, CHIP, or SSI programs, and legal permanent residents must contribute to Social Security and Medicare for at least 10 years before they are eligible for benefits (the wait is five years on many other programs).

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Related: Donald Trump Speaks With Forked Tongue on Immigration

Children born here are eligible for benefits, and much of the spending is on them, but even so even so, A National Immigration Forum and Cato Institute report estimated that immigrants paid $162 billion annually in federal, state, and local taxes. A study by the National Research Council concluded that the average immigrant pays nearly $1,800 more in taxes than he or she costs in benefits.

In addition, undocumented workers are paying an estimated $15 billion a year into Social Security with no intention of ever collecting benefits," and "Without the estimated 3.1 million undocumented immigrants paying into the system, Social Security would have entered persistent shortfall of tax revenue to cover payouts starting in 2009.

It is true, however, that the costs are not equally distributed across US states. The federal government receives most of the tax benefits from immigration, but the states pay most of the costs, particularly states where immigration is the most concentrated. However, this could be offset through federal transfers to regions with high levels of immigration, so this is a matter of how the costs and benefits are distributed  overall immigrants are a net positive.

One fear of immigration is that it increases crime, something Donald Trump has emphasized. However, communities with high concentrations of immigrants do not suffer from outsized levels of violence. The opposite is the case. A 2014 study examining a hundred and fifty-seven metropolitan areas in the United States found that violent crime tended to decrease when the population of foreign-born residents rose. Study after study debunks the claim that immigrants commit crimes at a higher rate than natives.

Related: Factbox: Trump's 10-Point Immigration Plan

Immigrants also own a larger share of small businesses than natives, are no more likely to be unemployed, are no less likely to assimilate than in the past (no matter their country of origin), and they have contributed greatly to technological development in the US. One study estimates that 25.3 percent of the technology and engineering businesses launched in the United States between 1995 to 2005 had a foreign-born founder. In California, this percentage was 38.8 percent. In Silicon Valley, the center of the high-tech industry, 52.4 percent of the new tech start-ups had a foreign-born owner.

We cannot, of course, open our doors to anyone and everyone who wants to come here. Immigration must be at levels where newcomers can be absorbed relatively easily into the economy. Levels that are too high could bring significant adjustment costs, particularly for native workers with low levels of education. But immigration at the levels we have seen in recent decades has benefitted the US. Thats not to say there arent costs. As noted above, some states with high levels of immigration have experienced costs that may exceed benefits, but the answer is for the federal government to provide more support for those areas instead of closing our doors to people who, overall, contribute much more than they take.

If immigration isnt the problem, then what is? The real problems faced by workers are globalization, technological change, and lack of bargaining power in wage negotiations, problems for which Donald Trump has no effective solutions. Reducing international trade through tariffs and the trade wars that come with them will make us worse off in the long-run  we will end up with fewer jobs, not more, and theres no reason to think the average job will be any better. Trump has nothing to offer in the way of providing more support for workers who lose their jobs due to the adoption of digital, robotic, and other technology or to help workers gain a stronger hand when wages are negotiated.

People are demanding change, and we have two choices. We can close our doors to international trade as Trump would have us do, blame immigrants for economic problems they are not responsible for, ignore the impact that technological change has had on workers economic security, and do nothing to enhance workers ability to claim a fair share of the output they produce.

Related: Trumps New Plan for Illegal Immigrants: Like Obamas, but With More Energy

Alternatively, we can move toward Bernie Sanders type of social insurance and redistribution to ensure that the gains from immigration, trade, and technological change are widely shared. Workers need better protection when businesses make economic decisions to move production and jobs to other countries or when they adopt new technology that leaves people without jobs and diminished opportunities to find new employment.

Policies are also needed to ensure that workers have more bargaining power so that the growth in output is shared rather than flowing to the top of the income distribution and increasing inequality. When national income is growing, its not too much for workers to expect that their income will be growing too rather than stagnating as they have in recent decades.

Hillary Clinton does not go as far as I would like in dealing with these problems, but at least she is pushing in the right direction and addressing real problems instead of playing on unfounded fears to gain votes. Donald Trumps policies will not solve or even make headway on the biggest problems workers face. If anything, things will get worse.

There are, of course, social and cultural fears about immigration that extend beyond the economic costs and benefits, and Trump is playing on those as well. I believe those fears can and should be dismissed as easily as the economic fears, but it is certainly the case that overall we are much better off economically from having our doors open to people from other countries.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
After several weeks during which Hillary Clinton suffered from a wave of negative publicity, it's now Donald Trump's turn to be engulfed. He has made himself a big target for his opponents, and Clinton has been escalating her use of his own words to deride Trump as never before.

Several new or recycled story lines about Trump emerged this week, some of them fueled by Trump speeches or interviews and others by his incendiary appearance at a national security forum carried by NBC on Wednesday night.

The fact that Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, is at the center of various firestorms isn't new. He has been there before, many times. And Clinton, the Democratic nominee, has gone through the same thing. But a pattern has settled in. Each candidate takes his or her turn at the center of controversy, and then the focus shifts to the other side, and then back again.

There will probably be more such cycles as Election Day approaches on November 8. And it's very possible that the candidate who gets the most negative publicity at the end will be the loser. Clinton leads the race in most major polls, although it remains competitive, and voters have unfavorable views of both candidates.

[READ: Donald Trump Touts Vladimir Putin, Hillary Clinton Plays Defense]

Here are the latest negative Trump story lines from this week:

Trump praised Russian President Vladimir Putin for being a strong leader and derided President Barack Obama for falling short. "Certainly, in that system, he's been a leader, far more than our president has been a leader," Trump said at the NBC forum. "We have a divided country." Trump said Putin has an "82 percent approval rating" but he didn't say where he got that information. Trump added: "I think when he calls me brilliant, I think I'll take the compliment, okay?....If he says great things about me, I'm going to say great things about him."

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Despite a barrage of criticism from prominent Democrats and Republicans, Trump's campaign later reaffirmed his admiration for Putin, an authoritarian leader who has been antagonistic to the United States. Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana, Trump's vice presidential running mate, told CNN, "I think it's inarguable that Vladimir Putin has been a stronger leader in his country than Barack Obama has been in this country."

But on Thursday Clinton said Trump's comments were "not just unpatriotic and insulting to the people of our country, as well as to our commander in chief, it is scary." And House Speaker Paul Ryan, RWis., told reporters, "Vladimir Putin is an aggressor who does not share our interests." Ryan added that Putin has authorized "state-sponsored cyberattacks" on "our political system."

Trump harshly criticized U.S. military leaders. "The generals have been reduced to rubble," he said at the forum, suggesting that he would fire or demote some members of the brass who are now advising Obama or carrying out the president's policies against Islamic extremists.

He made questionable statements about what he learned from official and classified intelligence briefings given to him since be became the Republican presidential nominee. Trump said he "was very, very surprised" to learn that Obama has not done "what our experts said to do" around the world. Even though such briefings are kept under wraps and the briefers are told to be very discreet, Trump claimed that, "In almost every instance, and I could tell I'm pretty good with the body language I could tell, they were not happy. Our leaders did not follow what they were recommending."

Trump is under attack for an alleged "pay to play" arrangement involving Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi. He gave $25,000 to a group supporting her reelection in 2013. After the contribution, her office decided not to join a lawsuit alleging fraud at Trump University. Trump's aides said there was no pay-to-play aspect to his donation. But he did pay a $2,500 penalty to the Internal Revenue Service on a technicality, his spokeswoman told the New York Times. Democrats say the incident indicates corruption.

He alienated Hispanics again with his confusing stand on undocumented workers and how many of them he would deport if he became president.

Trump outraged some critics when he said one reason for the sexual assault problem in the military is that women are allowed to serve with men. At the forum, Trump defended a tweet he posted three years ago in which he said the number of unreported sexual assaults in the military had soared and added: "What did these geniuses expect when they put men & women together?" Asked to explain this comment, Trump said, "It is a correct tweet. There are many people that think that that's absolutely correct....It's happening, right? And, by the way, since then, it's gotten worse." Many critics said his remarks were wrongheaded and showed he doesn't support the advancement of women in the military.

In recent weeks, Clinton has been widely criticized for giving undue access as secretary of state to donors to her family's Clinton Foundation. She has also been attacked for using a private email server while she was secretary of state and being careless with classified information. And she has been criticized for voting for the Iraq war when she was a U.S. senator from New York. She now says the Iraq vote was a mistake and points out that Trump backed the war, too.

Overall, Clinton and her allies are trying to make the election a referendum on Trump. And Trump and his allies are trying the make the election a referendum on Clinton. The race has gotten overwhelmingly negative, and it's likely to stay that way.

Ken Walsh covers the White House and politics for U.S. News. He writes the daily blog "Ken Walsh's Washington," for usnews.com, and "The Presidency" column for the U.S. News Weekly. He is the author of the book "Celebrity in Chief: A History of the Presidents and the Culture of Stardom." He can be reached at kwalsh@usnews.com and followed on Facebook and Twitter.
Through any campaign, candidates have ups and downs in their editorial-page treatment. The concentration of these four editorials in the past 24 hours seems unusual and is worth noting as a possible press recalibration.

1. Tampa Bay Tribune, Feds should investigate Bondi-Trump connection. This is of course about the apparent pay-to-play connection of Donald Trumps donations to the Florida Attorney Generals campaign, and her then deciding against an investigation of Trump university. The editorial begins:

Federal prosecutors should investigate whether there is any connection between the decision by Attorney General Pam Bondis office not to pursue fraud allegations against Trump University and a $25,000 campaign contribution he gave her. Since Florida prosecutors will not touch this mess, the Justice Department is the only option. The appearance of something more than a coincidence is too serious and the unresolved questions are too numerous to accept blanket denials by Bondi and Trump without more digging and an independent review.

The Washington Post also has an editorial on this theme, The Pam Bondi case shows that Trump is more hustler than businessman. What is already known in this caseflow of money, favorable government treatment, exact cause-effect not yet provenis so much starker than what is suspected in the many Clinton Foundation episodes that it is overdue for extra attention.

***

Read more from The Atlantic:

This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
Ankara (AFP) - Turkey and the European Union on Friday agreed to inject new momentum into Ankara's faltering bid to join the bloc, pledging more cooperation and less acrimony following bitter rows in the wake of the country's failed coup.

EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini and Enlargement Commissioner Johannes Hahn -- making the highest-level EU visit to Turkey since the July 15 putsch attempt -- said that new chapters in Ankara's long-running accession process should be opened and that visa liberalisation was still on the table.

Several Turkish and EU officials had engaged in a war of words after the coup, with Brussels slamming the ensuing crackdown and Ankara unhappy with an apparent lack of solidarity from the bloc.

"The key element which we agreed to was that we talk more to each other and a little bit less about each other, showing full respect," Mogherini said after talks with Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu and EU Minister Omer Celik.

Mogherini unequivocally condemned the coup aimed at ousting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, saying: "There is no space whatsoever... for any attempt at a coup."

She said the sides had an "in-depth discussion" about ensuring the rule of law was protected following criticism of the crackdown in which tens of thousands of people have been arrested or dismissed over alleged links to the putsch.

Cavusoglu added: "We must work together because there are problems that emerge that affect all our people. If there is a problem, we must mutually solve it."

- 'A candidate country' -

The comments signalled a desire to keep the momentum in Turkey's EU bid, which sometimes looked to have severely stumbled in the wake of the coup.

Hahn acknowledged there had been "many irritations" on both sides following the coup, emphasising that Turkey had to behave in a manner befitting of a candidate member.

"Turkey was, is and will be a candidate country. And as a candidate country we have to apply higher standards."

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Turkey's bid to join the EU dates back to the 1960s with formal talks starting in 2005 but the duration of the process has caused severe rancour in Ankara.

After the attempted coup, Erdogan mulled bringing back capital punishment, a move which would spell an end to the bid. The issue of the death penalty was not raised at the press conference.

Hahn emphasised that visa liberalisation for Turks travelling to the EU -- which Ankara wants completed this year -- was still on the agenda.

He said chapters 23 and 24 of the accession process -- covering justice and rights and freedom and security -- should be opened as soon as possible and that a settlement to end the division of Cyprus would help this.

Celik said Ankara was ready to open all 35 chapters of the EU accession process. So far, only 16 chapters have been opened.

"Turkey is a European country, a European democracy. Europe's future is our future," he said.

- 'Strong Turkey essential' -

The unresolved situation in Cyprus -- which is divided between the Greek-ruled, internationally-recognised south and the Turkish north -- remains a huge obstacle to Turkey's membership bid, with the Republic of Cyprus blocking the opening of several new chapters.

Mogherini said there was a "window" of hope for Cyprus and expressed confidence there would be a solution "in the near future".

She said the issue of visa liberalisation had been raised in "constructive" talks with Erdogan at the G20 in China.

A key problem in visa liberalisation has been anti-terror laws in Turkey, which Brussels says need to be narrowed. But Celik said Turkey could make a "commitment" at the appropriate time overseen by the Council of Europe.

Later on Friday, Cavusoglu met with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who is also making his first visit to Turkey since the attempted putsch.

Turkey joined the Western military alliance in 1952 shortly after World War II, at the start of the Cold War. Its membership has traditionally been a cornerstone of Turkish foreign policy.

"Turkey is and will remain a strong and highly valued member of NATO," said Stoltenberg. "A democratic, strong and stable Turkey is important for our shared security."
ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey will recruit 20,000 new police officers in the coming period and will deploy half of them to special forces units, Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu told state-run broadcaster TRT on Friday. Turkish authorities had announced they would strengthen the police force following a failed coup on July 15 in which rogue soldiers commandeered fighter jets and tanks in an attempt to overthrow the government. He also said administrators would be appointed to 28 municipalities. Security officials and the state-run Anadolu agency on Thursday said the government was appointing administrators to replace member pro-Kurdish HDP opposition party because of alleged support for Kurdish militants. (Reporting by Nevzat Devranoglu and Ercan Gurses; Writing by Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by Nick Tattersall)
Ankara (AFP) - Turkey said on Friday a ground operation could force out Islamic State (IS) extremists from their de facto capital of Raqa in Syria if it was supported by coalition air forces.

Speculation has grown of a possible joint Turkey-US operation to seize Raqa and possibly IS-held Mosul in northern Iraq after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan revealed he had discussed the issue with US counterpart Barack Obama at the G20 in China.

"If coalition forces give air support and our special forces take part, it is possible to be successful in clearing Daesh (IS) from Raqa and Mosul," Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said at a joint press conference with NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg.

The NATO secretary general was one of the top Western officials to visit Turkey in the wake of the July 15 attempted coup aimed at bringing down the Turkish government.

Cavusoglu referred to the capture of the border town of Jarabulus in northern Syria last month as an example of how a ground operation could remove jihadists.

Pro-Ankara Syrian opposition fighters -- referred to by Turkey as the Free Syrian Army (FSA) -- captured the town in just a day with Turkish support and are now pushing deeper into Syria.

"After the successful operation in Jarabulus, it was an example of how the Free Syrian Army could do certain things" with international support, he added.

The minister did not say from where the air support could come for a Raqa operation but Turkey hosts US warplanes at its Incirlik base.

Ankara launched its most ambitious military operation in Syria on August 24 against IS as well as a Syrian Kurdish militia linked to its own separatist rebels who launch attacks in Turkey.

The spokesperson of the US-led coalition against IS, John Dorrian, tweeted on Thursday that Turkey, the United States and Syrian opposition fighters were working "to come up with a game plan" for Raqa.

Cavusoglu repeated Ankara's call for a secure zone in northern Syria supported by a no-fly zone to protect hundreds of Syrian refugees who have voluntarily returned to Jarabulus this week.

But Stoltenberg said he believed that the bulk of the work on the ground inside Syria should be done by trained local forces rather than NATO troops.

"In the long run, it is better to train local forces, enabling them to fight terrorism, enabling them to stabilise their own country, instead of NATO deploying large numbers of troops in combat operations," he said.
ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish air strikes destroyed four stationary targets in northern Syria on Friday, the military said in a statement, as it continues attacks against militants in the region. Turkey last month launched an operation it calls Euphrates Shield, its first major incursion into Syria since the start of the five-year-old civil war, aimed at clearing Islamic State militants and Syrian Kurdish fighters from its borders. (Reporting by Orhan Coskun; Writing by David Dolan; Editing by Nick Tattersall)
Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart in Twilight. (Photo: Summit)



Before it became a place where vampires hid in the gloom and sparkled in the sun, Forks, Wash., was not a town accustomed to tourists. With a population of 3,500, Forks lies on the far edge of Washington states Olympic Peninsula and is almost a four-hour drive from Seattle. Despite that distance, tourists will descend in droves and covens this week for the towns 10th annual festival devoted to Twilight, the blockbuster series of books and movies about the romance between a teenage girl named Bella Swan and an ageless vampire named Edward Cullen. In both the novels by Stephenie Meyer and the films, Bella and Edward live in Forks, a fictional plot point that has made all the difference to the real-life place. It was unbelievable! said Marcia Bingham, a former resident who worked at the Forks Chamber of Commerce, recalling the early days when Twilight was first becoming popular. It was such a huge gift to a depressed little community in a rainy area.

How big a gift? Well, the town keeps track of people who stop by the visitors center every year. In 2005  the year the first novel was published and before most of the world had heard about Edwards tousled bronze hair  around 5,500 tourists signed the guest book. By 2010, when the four novels were all bestsellers and the movie series was in full swing, that number had jumped to nearly 73,000. And while the numbers have dropped since the height of Twilight mania, 2015 still saw 38,000 visitors, with more than that expected by the end of 2016  and this is four years after the final movie, Breaking Dawn, Part 2, hit theaters. There is a world map at the visitors center, and we invited people to put pins in there right after I started, said Bingham. There is not a country that is not extremely well-represented on that map.

(Photo: Courtesy of Forks Chamber of Commerce)



How a remote, rain-soaked, economically struggling logging town ended up as vampire central is almost as big a part of Twilight lore as the novels explanation of werewolf imprinting. Its a story fans know well: Stephenie Meyer was a stay-at-home mom living in Arizona when she had a dream about a conversation between a human girl and a vampire boy. That vision became the germ of the first novel, which Meyer set in Forks  a town shed never visited before  because she needed an exceedingly rainy place to match her dream. In the Twi-verse, vampires dont burn in the sunlight  they sparkle. So in order for the Cullen clan to pass as undazzling humans, they needed to settle in a place thats permanently overcast.

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I went on Google and looked up rainy and got Olympic Peninsula  rainiest place in the U.S. Meyer said in a 2005 interview. (Forks isnt actually the rainiest place in America, but its up there, averaging almost 10 feet and 212 days of rain per year.) After some more Internet research, Meyer had her novels setting, and for a time, its title: The book was actually called Forks before she and her agent settled on Twilight. (Shed finally visit Forks in 2004 and would later write on her website how relieved she was the town matched her imaginings: This really was like walking around inside of a dream.) Multiple rejection letters later, Meyers book was published in October 2005. And soon after that, unsuspecting Forks residents began hearing tales about vampires and werewolves in their tiny town.

Theres not a Barnes & Noble around here, so thats not something that we see all the time to say, Oh, new book, says Charlene Cross, who runs Leppells Flowers and Gifts in Forks. Soon enough, though, she started seeing strangers in town  often girls with their mothers  who seemed inexplicably thrilled at the sight of Forks High School, where Bella and Edward attended school. Then they would start to get a little brave, and they would poke their head in the flower shop and say, Do you have any Twilight stuff? she said. And Im thinking, What the heck is Twilight stuff? Cross soon learned  her store was one of the first to stock Twilight souvenirs, both official (like T-shirts that said Hot Dog in honor of the novels heroic Quileute werewolf Jacob Black) and homemade (like scrapbook cutouts of wolves, bonfires, and Edwards silver Volvo.)

A 1963 red Chevy pickup  just like Bellas  is parked outside the visitors center in Forks. (Photo: Getty Images)



When the Chamber of Commerce realized that Twilight tourism was already happening, they wanted to make sure visitors had plenty to experience. Restaurants started adding Twilight-themed items to their menus, like the Bella Burger at local restaurant Sullys. The Forks chief of police at the time got used to signing autographs as Bellas dad, the fictional police chief Charlie Swan. And the post office dutifully collected all the letters addressed to the characters, including a wedding invitation for Bella and Edward from a couple in Kentucky. We arranged for tours, and we created places in Forks that matched with what the books said, said Bingham. We would have 200 to 300 people a day come into the offices. And they were so excited; you cant believe how much electricity was running through the air. They kept referring to characters in the book: This is where Jacob stood! This is where Edward lived!

Eventually, bus tours showed off the Cullen house (the Miller Tree Inn, which mostly fits the novels description) and the Swan house, a split-level whose very game owners got used to overzealous fans showing up at  and sometimes inside  their door. Marcia Yanish, a longtime volunteer at the Chamber of Commerce remembers that even the local hospital played along. (Elder vampire Carlisle Cullen is a doctor there in the books.) People were coming into Admitting asking if Dr. Cullen was there, she said. The administrator put up a parking spot for Dr. Cullen, because they realized they cant have these tourists running all over. Theyve moved it about three times now, so its not blocking the ambulance.

A sign outside the Forks hospital, (Photo: Courtesy Forks Chamber of Commerce)

By most accounts, Forks residents had a blast with the vampire boomlet, but it wasnt just for fun. The lumber industry on the Olympic Peninsula has been in decline since the 1990s, and just last year, the last major mill in the area closed. As Yanish points out, the Twilight connection may have kept some businesses afloat. Im not sure that the restaurants and motels would have survived the meltdown in 2008, because people just dont stay overnight in motels or eat out as much  especially the local people, she says. Lissy Andros, the current director of the Chamber of Commerce, agrees. New York City could not have paid for the amount of advertising that little Forks, Wash., has gotten, she said. It keeps restaurants open year-round. It keeps stores staffed.

The biggest bummer in this spooky story may be that Forks never got its close-up on the big screen. When it came time to film the movie version of Twilight, starring Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, in 2008, director Catherine Hardwicke scouted places in Forks. I went to all the cool locations, like the funky diner. I went out to the forest and looked at a lot of the houses. It was really fun for me to soak up all these things, remembered Hardwicke, shortly before the release of her movie Miss You Already last year. In the end, though, Forks had limited facilities and no tax incentives, so the production ended up in Oregon (which had its own Twilight tourism surge for awhile.) It did kind of break my heart, because I really like authenticity, said Hardwicke. I actually got inspired by the [Forks] diner, so I added the diner into the movie.  I kind of expanded the world by going there.

Forks High School (Photo: Courtesy of Forks Chamber of Commerce)



Big-screen disappointments aside, Forks will still host hundreds of people this week for the Forever Twilight festival, which started out as Stephenie Meyer Day and was centered around Sept. 13 (thats Bellas birthday, for all you Twi-nots.) Meyer herself showed up last year for the 10th anniversary of the first novel. This year, the four-day fest includes a breakfast featuring the actors who played Volturi guards Demetri and Felix in the two Breaking Dawn films, appearances by the shirtless cosplaying group the Alpha Males, and a guided Vampire Habitat Walk through the nearby Hoh Rainforest.

The Hoh is part of the Olympic National Forest, a national park that dominates most of the peninsula. Entering it is like parting a heavy curtain and walking into a mist-shrouded, moss-coated land of towering pine trees. Meyer used these woods as the hunting grounds for her vampires, who would leap between the treetops. Its very mysterious here, said Andros. I think that if vampires and werewolves could live somewhere, by God, this is the place they could live.

Watch the trailer for Twilight:




There are TWO Amanda Knox documentary trailers out from Netflix  and theyre both very different, and very freaky

There are TWO Amanda Knox documentary trailers out from Netflix  and theyre both very different, and very freaky

If you decide that you want to take a gander at the new Amanda Knox documentary trailers on Netflix, sure, go for it. In fact, I recommend it, because everyone needs an adrenaline boost every now and again. But I would recommend making sure all the lights are on, the doors are locked, and that youre sitting down. The two trailers for Amanda Knox titled Believe Her followed by Suspect Her tell the story of a seemingly innocent girl or maybe a secret psychopath respectively. Despite both perspectives, it doesnt become any more easy to settle on a real answer.

Knox, a student in a study abroad program in Perugia, Italy, was convicted of murdering her roommate in 2007, went on trial twice and spent years in Italian prison before being acquitted. According to Italian newspaper, Il Messaggero the young woman was acquitted because she had allegedly been abused during one of the first interviews after the crime.

The new documentary premieres Friday, September 8th at the Toronto International Film Festival and hits Netflix September 30th.

It will feature unprecedented access to key people involved and never-before-seen archival material and include interviews with Knox, her ex-boyfriend and (fellow co-defendant) Raffaele Sollecito, Italian prosecutor Giuliano Mignini, and Daily Mail reporter Nick Pisa.

Honestly, from the two trailers, Im not convinced either way as to the guilt of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito. In some ways, she seems like such an innocent, normal girl trying to grow up while studying abroad but getting caught up in a horrible media frenzy. Then, she becomes stern-faced and her cold and says Either I am a psychopath in sheeps clothing or I am you, and she seems sort of guilty. Regardless, the whole situation is high-key terrifying on so many levels.

Technically and judicially, Amanda Knox is innocent. But well just have to wait until the documentary shows up on Netflix to make our own (irrelevant) calls on the matter. Her story is compelling and terrifying and I cannot wait to watch it (with all the lights on and doors firmly latched, no roommates invited).

The post There are TWO Amanda Knox documentary trailers out from Netflix  and theyre both very different, and very freaky appeared first on HelloGiggles.
Jerusalem (AFP) - Israeli military rescuers pulled two bodies from a collapsed Tel Aviv construction site Friday, four days after the accident, bringing the death toll to five, an army spokeswoman told AFP.

Over a hundred Home Front Command soldiers were conducting searches for one last body believed to be buried at the site of the accident, which happened on Monday in the upscale Tel Aviv Ramat Hahayal neighbourhood.

The circumstances of the accident remain unclear, with media reporting it occurred when a floor collapsed during the construction of a four-storey underground parking, which was eventually due to have a a shopping centre built on top.

Israel has seen a high number of construction accidents in comparison to the developed world.

Haaretz newspaper reported in May that 480 people were killed in construction accidents between 2000 and 2015, citing a survey placing Israel third from the bottom in a list that included the United States and 20 European nations.

Police reported 28 people had been killed on construction sites since the beginning of 2016.
By David Shepardson and Joseph White

DETROIT/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Volkswagen AG <VOWG_p.DE> engineer pleaded guilty on Friday to helping the German automaker evade U.S. emission standards, and his lawyer said he would cooperate with federal authorities in their criminal probe.

James Liang, who has worked for VW since 1983 and was part of a team of engineers who developed a diesel engine, was charged with conspiring to commit wire fraud and violating U.S. clean air laws. He is the first person to face criminal charges in connection with the diesel emissions cheating case.

The 62-year-old German citizen, who lives in Newbury Park, California, appeared in U.S. District Court in Detroit on Friday and entered into a plea agreement that includes his cooperation with the government in its investigation.

The indictment says Liang conspired with current and former VW employees to mislead the U.S. government about software that federal regulators called a "defeat device," which allowed the automaker to sell diesel engines that emitted more smog-forming gases than the nation's emission standards allow.

"I knew that Volkswagen did not disclose the defeat device to U.S. regulators," Liang said in court. His lawyer, Daniel Nixon, said after the hearing that his client was "very remorseful."

Liang could face up to five years in prison but may get a much lighter sentence if the government finds he provided substantial assistance.

A grand jury indicted Liang in June, but the indictment was only made public on Friday.

VW spokeswoman Jeannine Ginivan declined to comment on the indictment. "Volkswagen is continuing to cooperate with the U.S. Department of Justice," she said.

Mark Chutkow, chief of the criminal division for the U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Michigan, declined to comment on the investigation.

VW has already agreed to spend up to $16.5 billion to address environmental, state and owner claims in the United States. It still faces billions in potential fines and must resolve the fate of 85,000 polluting 3.0-liter vehicles.

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Reuters reported in August that VW and the Justice Department had held preliminary settlement talks about resolving a criminal probe into the emissions scandal.

BUILDING A DEFEAT DEVICE

Liang was one of the engineers in Wolfsburg, Germany, directly involved in developing the defeat device for the Volkswagen Jetta in 2006, according to the indictment.

The engineers had quickly realized the diesel engines they were designing for vehicles targeted at the U.S. market could not meet government clean air standards while appealing to customers, the indictment stated.

So Liang and others, including employees of an entity referred to as "Company A," designed software that would activate the emission controls of an engine undergoing a government test and deactivate them afterward, according to the indictment.

Liang and others referred to the defeat device as the acoustic function, or "cycle-beating" software, prosecutors said.

The indictment said Liang and his co-conspirators designed a software update in 2014 that VW told consumers would fix discrepancies being found in emissions testing. In fact, the update was to allow the cheat system to more easily detect when the vehicle was being tested, using the angle of the steering wheel.

After a West Virginia University study showed the cars were emitting more pollutants on the road than tests had indicated, Liang and his co-conspirators lied to regulators, telling them the discrepancy was caused by innocent mechanical issues, authorities said.

The indictment quotes early 2015 email exchanges among Liang and other VW employees showing a rising state of fear that officials of the California Air Resources Board could discover the emissions systems were rigged if they conducted more dynamometer testing on early, Generation 1 diesel cars.

"We must be sure to prevent the authority from testing the Gen 1," the indictment said an employee wrote in German. "If Gen 1 goes onto the roller at the CARB, then we'll have nothing more to laugh about!!!!!"

(Reporting by David Shepardson in Washington and Joseph White in Detroit; Additional reporting by Joel Schectman in Washington; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Lisa Von Ahn)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Friday allowed construction to proceed on a crude oil pipeline in North Dakota, denying a request from Native American tribes to enjoin the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to withdraw permits for the project.

U.S. Judge James Boasberg ruled that the Corps "likely" complied with federal law in permitting the 1,100 mile (1,770 km), $3.7 billion Dakota Access pipeline, which would be the first to bring crude oil from the Bakken shale directly to refineries in the U.S. Gulf Coast.

(Reporting by Julia Harte; Editing by Chris Reese)
North Koreas latest underground nuclear test on Friday  which produced its largest ever explosive yield  reinforced fears in Washington and across Asia that Pyongyangs military advances could soon outpace the missile defense systems the United States and its regional allies have laboriously built up over the last decade.

Experts and former officials say the United States and its Asian allies could be in danger of falling behind as North Korea builds longer-range and increasingly reliable missiles that expand its potential reach and threaten to overwhelm expensive missile-defense systems.

North Koreas latest underground nuclear detonation in Punggye-ri, which registered as a 5 magnitude tremor, follows a dramatic spike in ballistic missile tests conducted by the North since February. The missile launches have raised alarms about the true strength of anti-missile shields in South Korea, Japan and the United States, and caused officials to revisit their thinking about the real dangers presented by the North Korean regime.

While the issue has barely registered in the U.S. presidential campaign, the next commander-in-chief will have to find a so far elusive recipe for confronting Pyongyangs relentless pursuit of medium- and long-range missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

The regime of Kim Jung Un has been on a missile-testing frenzy this year, launching more than 30 ballistic missiles in 2016, which is more than the number fired previously by North Korea, ever, Bruce Bennett, a senior defense analyst at the RAND Corp. think tank, told Foreign Policy.

The more elaborate tests could allow North Korea to transform its missile arsenal from a showcase threat to an operational force that seriously jeopardizes all of its neighbors, including China, said Bennett, also a former senior Pentagon official.

One of those tests was the successful June launch of the Musudan intermediate-range ballistic missile, which has an estimated range of roughly 1,000 kilometers (620 miles), potentially threatening the U.S. territory of Guam as well as cities inside China. The missile could potentially carry a nuclear warhead. The North also conducted a successful submarine-launched ballistic missile test last month that flew about 500 km before falling into the Sea of Japan; experts figure that missile, too, has a full range of about 1,000 km.

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The combination of improved missile technology and what appears to be the development of more powerful nuclear weapons is raising alarm on Capitol Hill. Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Tx.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee on Friday called the detonation a stark reminder of the threat posed by the North. He called on President Obama to redouble [his] efforts to strengthen security guarantees and defense relationships with unshakable allies like South Korea and Japan.

Even China, which has often served as the Norths nominal ally and patron, has built up significant missile defense weaponry of its own against Pyongyangs missile threat. The Chinese have invested in Russian-made S-300 missiles, and a Chinese variant, the HQ-9, as well as a missile defense shield that resembles Americas THAAD system, according to Bennett.

What remains to be seen is whether North Koreas successful tests will translate into new and sustainable capabilities. Since the 1990s, the North has suffered a litany of technical failures and embarrassments in its missile tests, often prompting jokes and ridicule. But now, the regime is making steady progress. Experts, citing accounts from defectors, say there is reason to believe that North Korea has improved the accuracy of its missiles thanks to a Russian-made global positioning system.

In the longer term, U.S. officials worry that the North could eventually hit the United States with an intercontinental ballistic missile. At the current pace that North Korea is on, by the early 2020s they could have an operational ICBM capable of hitting the U.S., according to Kingston Reif, director for disarmament and threat reduction policy at the Arms Control Association.

Mindful of the expanding reach of the Norths missiles, South Korea recently announced plans to invest in more sophisticated anti-missile defenses  the U.S.-manufactured Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, or THAAD. With hi-tech radar, THAAD is designed to knock out short and intermediate-range enemy missiles as they zoom downward in their terminal phase.

Acquisition costs, however, are steep: One THAAD system costs about $1.6 billion for six truck-mounted launchers and 49 missiles.

Japan, which relies on radar and anti-missile systems based on Aegis-equipped ships, is also considering purchasing the THAAD system. But even with the system, South Korea and Japan risk being overwhelmed, as they would lack a sufficient number of interceptors to take out North Koreas numerous missiles, experts said. As a result, Seoul and Washington are working on other options that would seek to preemptively destroy North Korean missile batteries, possibly with stealthy aircraft like B-2 bombers.

The math of missile defense is unfavorable. U.S. defense officials have said that their missile-defense programs are time consuming and hugely expensive to produce, while an adversary like Iran or North Korea can build large numbers of cheap projectiles to overwhelm tens of billions of dollars worth of defensive measures.

The cost curve is working against us, Vice Adm. James Syring, director of the Missile Defense Agency said earlier this year.

That makes North Koreas development of intercontinental ballistic missiles even more worrisome, because there are concerns that the United States might not be ready. The nations primary missile defense system is the Ground-based Midcourse Defense, which has never been tested against an ICBM. Despite that deficiency, Washington has placed 30 interceptors split between California and Alaska. Deployed in a hurry by the Bush administration in 2004 before all the testing on the missiles could be completed, it has only scored about a 50 percent success rate  9 out of 17  in more than a decades worth of tests. The next test is slated for later this year.

In testing so far, however, the system hasnt tackled a long-range ballistic missile of the kind that would actually be launched by North Korea or Iran. So other than computer modeling, the fielded missiles are unproven against the threat theyve been developed to defeat. And the tests dont take into account the possibility of a large salvo of missiles.

Despite that, Congress is pushing the Pentagon to spend as much as $4 billion on a third GMD site east of the Mississippi, with sites under consideration in Michigan, New York, and Ohio. The Defense Department has argued against the idea, saying that it would rather spend the money on upgrading the sites it already has, and testing its missiles.

Reflecting the anxiety generated by the North, some military analysts have even floated the idea of deploying U.S. tactical nuclear weapons in the South as a deterrent against the unpredictable North Korean regime.
By Tom Miles GENEVA (Reuters) - The Syrian government has effectively stopped aid convoys this month and the besieged city of Aleppo is close to running out of fuel, making U.S.-Russian peace talks in Geneva on Friday even more urgent, the United Nations said. "Convoys are not rolling at the moment in Syria," the U.N. humanitarian chief told reporters in Geneva, although an air bridge to the Kurdish-controlled northeastern city of Hasaka has continued operating, and there have been a handful of evacuations from the besieged towns of Foua and Madaya. Syria's government vets U.N. aid plans on a monthly basis, and its late and partial approval of the program for this month meant no aid had yet gone in, Stephen O'Brien said. "We are on Sept 9, and the supplies under the September plan have not yet started." As he spoke U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov were meeting nearby for a third time in as many weeks to clinch a nationwide ceasefire deal. U.N. Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura, with de O'Brien, said the talks were "addressing complex, delicate and difficult issues. "The conclusions could make, letss be frank, a major difference," he said. Helping around 250,000 people besieged in eastern Aleppo, where a battle for control has escalated in the past month, was becoming urgent, he said. "There is a growing concern about eastern Aleppo: the issue about food, the issue about the possibility that within perhaps the next few days it will turn out to be dark because there is no fuel, problems of water." Opposition groups say Russia, which co-sponsors the U.N. peace process, is part of the problem and not the solution, because it has provided strong air support for fighters loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. "We ask any party which has influence on any of the warring parties to ensure that they recognize that the demand for humanitarian access is paramount and rises above all the other vested interests," O'Brien said. (Reporting by Tom Miles; Editing by Richard Balmforth)
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council on Friday strong condemned a North Korean nuclear test and said it would begin work immediately on a resolution in response. The United States, Britain and France pushed the Security Council on Friday to impose new sanctions on North Korea over its fifth and biggest nuclear test. (Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Eric Walsh)
(GENEVA)  The United States and Russia announced early Saturday a breakthrough agreement on Syria that foresees a nationwide cease-fire starting early next week, followed by an unlikely new military partnership between the rival governments targeting ISIS and al-Qaida.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the plan could reduce violence in Syria and lead to a long-sought political transition, ending more than five years of bloodshed. He called the deal a potential turning point in a conflict that has killed as many as 500,000 people, if complied with by Syrias Russian-backed government and U.S.-supported rebel groups.

The cease-fire begins at sundown Monday, Kerry said, coinciding with the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday.

Kerrys negotiating partner, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, confirmed the agreement and said it could help expand the counterterrorism fight and aid deliveries to Syrian civilians. He said Syrian President Bashar Assads government was prepared to comply.

The deal culminates months of frenetic diplomacy that included four meetings between Kerry and Lavrov since Aug. 26. The arrangement hinges on Moscow pressuring Assads government to halt all offensive operations against Syrias armed opposition and civilian areas. Washington must persuade moderate rebels to break ranks with the Nusra Front, al-Qaidas Syria affiliate, and other extremist groups.

Both sides have failed to deliver their ends of the bargain over several previous truces.

But the new arrangement goes further by promising a new U.S.-Russian counterterrorism alliance, only a year after President Barack Obama chastised Russia for a military intervention that U.S. officials said was mainly designed to keep Assad in power and target more moderate anti-Assad forces.

The deal includes intelligence sharing and targeting coordination, a level of U.S.-Russian interaction that has upset several leading national security officials in Washington, including Defense Secretary Ash Carter and National Intelligence Director James Clapper. The joint military work would only begin after several days of adherence to the new cease-fire.

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Kerry appeared at the news conference after several hours of internal U.S. discussions.

At one point, Lavrov said he was considering calling it a day on talks, expressing frustration with what he described as an hours-long wait for a U.S. response. He then presented journalists with several boxes of pizza, saying, This is from the U.S. delegation, and two bottles of vodka, adding, This is from the Russian delegation.

The Geneva negotiating session, which last more than 13 hours, underscored the complexity of a conflict that includes myriad militant groups, shifting alliances and the rival interests of the U.S. and Russia, Saudi Arabia and Iran, and Turkey and the Kurds.

Getting Assads government and rebel groups to comply with the deal may now be more difficult as fighting rages around the divided city of Aleppo, Syrias most populous and the new focus of a war that has killed as many as 500,000 people.

Assads government appeared to tighten its siege of the former Syrian commercial hub in the last several days, seizing several key transit points. Forty days of fighting in Aleppo has killed nearly 700 civilians, including 160 children, according to a Syrian human rights group. Volunteer first responders said they pulled the bodies of nine people, including four children, from rubble following air raids Friday on a rebel-held area.

In addition to those killed, Syrias conflict has chased millions of people from their homes, contributing to Europes worst refugee crisis since World War II. Amid the chaos of fighting between Syrias government and rebels, ISIS has emerged as a global terror threat.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The chairman of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee probing Mylan NV's EpiPen price hike on Friday said its response to his query was "incomplete," and called on the drugmaker to give more details over how much government health insurance programs pay for the allergy treatment.

"It's an incomplete response and wouldn't satisfy my constituents who are upset about the EpiPen price increases. It doesn't provide the full picture that I requested, and it doesn't answer all of my questions," U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley said in a statement. He added that it is still unclear how many patients will benefit from Mylan's expanded assistance programme.

(Reporting by Susan Heavey, editing by G Crosse)
By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday rejected a bid by Michigan to reinstate its Republican-backed ban on straight-ticket voting for the Nov. 8 general election.

The justices left in place a decision by a federal district judge in Michigan who in July suspended a law that abolished straight-ticket voting, the practice of using one mark to vote for all candidates from one party, finding that it would disproportionately affect black voters.

The 6th U.S. Court of Appeals upheld that finding last month, prompting the state to seek a stay from the Supreme Court.

Two conservative justices on the eight-member court, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, voted to grant the request, the brief order said.

The Michigan law, passed by a Republican-controlled legislature and signed by a Republican governor, was one of numerous voting measures passed at the state level that put new restrictions on voting. These measures also include stricter voter-identification laws and reduction of early-voting periods before election day.

Proponents of the law, enacted in January, have said most states have moved away from a straight-ticket voting option. Removing the option forces voters to study candidates and encourages voters to make decisions based on criteria other than party affiliation, they said.

Opponents say voting restrictions are aimed at reducing turnout of minorities, who are more likely to vote for Democrats.

U.S. District Judge Gershwin Drain in July granted a preliminary injunction sought by civil rights and labor groups who sued Michigan's Secretary of State Ruth Johnson and Attorney General Bill Schuette. The judge said elimination of straight-ticket voting would be a burden on voting rights and cause long wait times at polls.

After Friday's decision, Schuette said, It is my duty to defend Michigans laws, in this case a law that stands in 40 other states. Now the U.S. Supreme Court has spoken and I will respect that decision.

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The case is one of several voting disputes being litigated ahead of the election and is the second emergency application the Supreme Court has recently been asked to handle. On Aug. 31, the court rejected a bid by North Carolina to reinstate for Novembers elections several voting restrictions, including a requirement that people show identification at the polls.

The high court is short one justice following the death of conservative Antonin Scalia in February. As a result the court is evenly split 4-4 between liberals and conservatives.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Additional reporting by Ben Klayman in Detroit; Editing by Steve Orlofsky and Matthew Lewis)
By Alex Dobuzinskis

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The producer of a History Channel documentary on the D.B. Cooper skyjacking 45 years ago is suing the FBI for release of its case files in an effort to prove his theory on the true identity of the mysterious highjacker.

California-based producer Tom Colbert filed the lawsuit in federal court on Thursday, after the Federal Bureau of Investigation in July announced it was officially closing its investigation into the 1971 crime.

"As the FBI has administratively closed its investigation, release of the requested records could not reasonably be expected to interfere with pending enforcement proceedings," stated Colbert's 21-page lawsuit filed in Washington, D.C.

The lawsuit is an indication that interest in D.B. Cooper, a moniker given to the skyjacker by the media after he vanished, shows no sign of quieting down.

The lawsuit states Colbert and his private investigative team uncovered evidence linking a California man to the skyjacking and that he seeks a release of records "to prove once and for all the true identity of D.B. Cooper."

Colbert's lawsuit cites the U.S. Freedom of Information Act in seeking the investigative file.

The television and film producer, who was involved in a History Channel documentary called "D.B. Cooper: Case Closed?" that aired in July, could not be reached for further comment.

FBI representatives did not return emails seeking comment on the lawsuit.

In the skyjacking, a man who called himself Dan Cooper, dressed in a business suit and tie, boarded a Northwest Orient Airlines flight in Portland, Oregon, bound for Seattle.

After take-off, he showed a flight attendant a mass of wires and red sticks in his briefcase, making her believe it was a bomb, according to the FBI.

The aircraft safely landed in Seattle, where the man freed 36 passengers in exchange for $200,000 in cash from the airline and four parachutes, but kept several crew members aboard as the plane took off again, ordered this time to fly to Mexico City.

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Later, at an altitude of about 10,000 feet (1.9 miles), the man leapt out of the back of the jetliner into the night with a parachute and the ransom money.

Whether Cooper survived the jump over a rugged, wooded landscape somewhere between Seattle and Reno, Nevada, has never been confirmed. The FBI has said it never established his true identity.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
By Lucia Mutikani

WASHINGTON, Sept 9 (Reuters) - U.S. wholesale inventories were unchanged in July as previously reported and sales recorded their biggest drop in six months, suggesting a modest boost to third-quarter economic growth from inventory investment.

An outright drop in inventory investment weighed heavily on economic growth in the second quarter and some economists believe the inventory correction is close to running its course.

The Commerce Department said on Friday that the flat reading followed an upwardly revised 0.3 percent increase in June. Wholesale inventories were previously reported to have gained 0.2 percent in June.

"The trend towards an increase of inventories at the wholesale level gives us greater confidence that GDP growth will be well above 2 percent in the third quarter as factories restart their engines and start to produce the goods to replenish the store shelves," said Chris Rupkey, chief economist at MUFG Union Bank in New York.

The department in its recently introduced monthly advance economic indicators report published last month had estimated that wholesale inventories would be unchanged in July.

The component of wholesale inventories that goes into the calculation of GDP -- wholesale stocks excluding autos -- was also unchanged in July.

Following the report, the Atlanta Federal Reserve trimmed its third-quarter GDP estimate by two-tenths of a percentage point to a 3.3 percent annual rate.

"The forecast of the contribution of inventory investment to third-quarter real GDP growth decreased from 0.62 percentage points to 0.57 percentage points after this morning's wholesale trade report," it said.

Inventories subtracted almost 1.3 percentage points from GDP growth in the second quarter, the largest drag in more than two years, restricting the rise in output to an anemic 1.1 percent pace. They have weighed on GDP growth since the second quarter of 2015 as businesses sold stockpiles of unwanted goods, helping to undercut manufacturing activity.

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In July, wholesale stocks of farm products fell 2.0 percent after increasing 2.8 percent in June. Wholesale inventories of petroleum declined 1.2 percent, while stocks of automobiles rose 0.4 percent.

Sales at wholesalers fell 0.4 percent in July, the biggest drop since January, after jumping 1.7 percent in June. Sales were weighed down by a 3.5 percent drop at petroleum wholesalers, as well as a 0.3 percent fall in auto sales.

At July's sales pace it would take wholesalers 1.34 months to clear shelves, up from 1.33 months in June. While the ratio has declined from 1.37 months touched in January, which was the highest since March 2009, it remains relatively high.

As a result, some economists caution that inventories could still be a drag on output in the third quarter.

"The inventory headwind for GDP continues, as inventory-to-sales ratios remain stubbornly high," said Michael Englund, chief economist at Action Economics in Boulder, Colorado.

(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Andrea Ricci)
HONG KONG, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Global ride-hailing company Uber Technologies has aborted plans to pull out of Macau, citing support from residents in the Chinese-ruled gambling hub.

Uber launched in Macau less than a year ago but announced at the end of August that it would withdraw from the former Portuguese colony because its drivers faced total fines of 10 million patacas ($1.25 million).

The Macau government has taken a firm stance against Uber, with Secretary for Security Wong Sio Chak stating that the service violated local laws.

"After much deliberation, Uber will continue to serve the riders and drivers of Macau, the company said in a statement on its website.

"The unprecedented amount of support we received over the past few weeks has been overwhelming."

The statement said the company had received 23,000-plus online signatures in support of its service and also thanked riders, drivers, residents, visitors and legislators who had championed the company's cause.

"We hope the Government will follow the example set by progressive, pro-innovation policymakers around the region and the world in recognising the role ride-sharing can play in moving Macau forward," Uber said.

Macau government officials were not immediately available to comment.

Uber has about 2,000 full-time and part-time drivers in the territory and though Macau isn't a large market Uber's exit would have been another blow to the fast-growing U.S. company's ambitions in the region.

Its costly two-year battle to break into the potentially lucrative Chinese market was brought to a close this month with the sale of its operations in the country to Didi Chuxing, though the U.S. company has retained a 5 percent stake.

Uber could also be forced out of Taiwan after authorities demanded that the company pay a sales tax bill and it has also come under legal scrutiny in Hong Kong.

(Reporting by Farah Master; Editing by David Goodman)
HONG KONG (Reuters) - Global ride-hailing company Uber Technologies has aborted plans to pull out of Macau, citing support from residents in the Chinese-ruled gambling hub.

Uber launched in Macau less than a year ago but announced at the end of August that it would withdraw from the former Portuguese colony because its drivers faced total fines of 10 million patacas (939,002.40 pounds).

The Macau government has taken a firm stance against Uber, with Secretary for Security Wong Sio Chak stating that the service violated local laws.

After much deliberation, Uber will continue to serve the riders and drivers of Macau, the company said in a statement on its website.

"The unprecedented amount of support we received over the past few weeks has been overwhelming."

The statement said the company had received 23,000-plus online signatures in support of its service and also thanked riders, drivers, residents, visitors and legislators who had championed the company's cause.

We hope the Government will follow the example set by progressive, pro-innovation policymakers around the region and the world in recognising the role ride-sharing can play in moving Macau forward, Uber said.

Macau government officials were not immediately available to comment.

Uber has about 2,000 full-time and part-time drivers in the territory and though Macau isn't a large market Uber's exit would have been another blow to the fast-growing U.S. company's ambitions in the region.

Its costly two-year battle to break into the potentially lucrative Chinese market was brought to a close this month with the sale of its operations in the country to Didi Chuxing, though the U.S. company has retained a 5 percent stake.

Uber could also be forced out of Taiwan after authorities demanded that the company pay a sales tax bill and it has also come under legal scrutiny in Hong Kong.

(Reporting by Farah Master; Editing by David Goodman)
(Adds more detail, Tesco statement)

By Huw Jones

LONDON, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Britain's Serious Fraud Office said it has charged three former senior Tesco executives with fraud in its investigation into accounting practices at the country's biggest grocer.

A 263 million pound ($350 million) overstatement of Tesco's first-half profits in 2014 led to the suspension of eight senior members of staff.

Carl Rogberg, Christopher Bush and John Scouler have been charged with fraud by abuse of position, the SFO said in a statement on Friday.

Bush, 50, was managing director of Tesco UK, Rogberg, 49, was finance director UK and Scouler, 48, was UK food commercial director.

The three have been asked to appear in court on Sept 22, the SFO said, adding that the investigation is ongoing.

Tesco said it has introduced a programme of extensive change in the last two years and could not comment further.

The SFO opened its criminal investigation in October 2014 into accounting practices at the supermarket between February and September of the same year.

Tesco agreed to pay $12 million in November 2015 to settle a U.S. shareholder lawsuit alleging that accounting irregularities inflated the share price of the company.

Last month the Financial Reporting Council, which polices accountants, closed its investigation into Laurie McIlwee, former chief financial officer at Tesco.

The FRC is still investigating accountants PwC in how the firm prepared, approved and audited Tesco's accounts in the run up to the scandal. ($1 = 0.7509 pounds) (Additional reporting by Carolyn Cohn; Editing by Alexander Smith)
LONDON, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Ukraine plans to relaunch its stalled privatisation process, Finance Minister Oleksandr Danylyuk said on Friday, adding the Odessa fertiliser plant would be first in line for sale after an initial effort failed in July.

Ukraine plans to privatise hundreds of state-owned enterprises as part of a reform programme supervised by the International Monetary Fund, but recent efforts, including with the Odessa plant, have come to nought.

"The fact that the privatisation of Odessa Portside Plant didn't happen initially was a bad signal, I openly communicate to you, but it's also a lesson," Danylyuk told an investment conference in London.

"We are re-launching (the) privatisation process, the first being Odessa (plant). I am confident that the next privatiation attempt of Odessa will be successful."

He added: "As a finance minister, I am hungry for privatisations, I need some money." (Reporting by Sujata Rao and Karin Strohecker, editing by Nigel Stephenson)
The UN Security Council will meet on Friday to discuss North Korea's fifth and most powerful nuclear test to date.

The 15 council members will meet at 3:00 pm (1900 GMT) for urgent consultations, at the request of the United States and Japan, said the New Zealand mission.

New Zealand holds this month's presidency of the Security Council.

North Korea's state media said the test, which comes after a series of ballistic missile launches, had realized the country's goal of being able to fit a miniaturized warhead on a rocket.

The blast at the Punggye-ri nuclear site was the North's fifth and most powerful yet at 10 kilotons, according to experts.

The council has strongly condemned North Korea's missile launches and vowed earlier this week to take "further significant measures" against Pyongyang.

Japan is calling for new sanctions, but China, Pyongyang's ally, has repeatedly stressed the need to avoid an escalation of tension on the Korean peninsula.

North Korea has been hit by five sets of UN sanctions since it first tested a nuclear device in 2006.
United Nations (United States) (AFP) - The United Nations will be asking countries from outside east Africa to contribute troops and helicopters to a new regional force to be deployed in South Sudan, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said.

Ban told the Security Council in a report sent late Thursday that the first advance teams of the new 4,000-strong force could begin arriving in Juba by the end of this month.

The council voted last month to deploy the regional protection force (RPF) in Juba, with Ethiopia, Kenya and Rwanda expected to contribute the bulk of the troops.

The new force, which will be under the command of the UN peacekeeping mission in South Sudan, would be comprised of three infantry battalions backed by helicopters, a special forces unit, combat and construction engineers, military police and a field hospital, Ban said.

Countries of the East African IGAD bloc "have indicated their ability to generate most, but not all, of the infantry component of the RPF and some of the enablers," Ban said.

"This means that TCCs (troop-contributing countries) outside the IGAD Plus countries would need to be approached to cover the gap in capabilities," he added.

The regional force is authorized to use all necessary means to ensure security in Juba, including at the airport and to help protect UN premises.

African leaders called for the force after heavy fighting engulfed Juba in early July, setting back efforts to end the devastating war that has raged in South Sudan since December 2013.

Ban said he would report to the council next month on whether South Sudan's government is cooperating with the United Nations on the deployment of the regional force.

The council has threatened to impose an arms embargo if the Juba government blocks the deployment.
LOS ANGELES, CA / ACCESSWIRE / September 9, 2016 / Lundin Law PC (the "Firm") announces a class action lawsuit was filed against Eaton Corporation plc ("Eaton" or the "Company") (NYSE: ETN) concerning possible violations of federal securities laws between November 13, 2013 and July 28, 2014 inclusive (the "Class Period"). Investors who purchased or otherwise acquired shares during the Class Period should contact the Firm in advance of the September 23, 2016 lead plaintiff motion deadline.

To participate in this class action lawsuit, click here. You can also call Brian Lundin, Esquire, of Lundin Law PC, at 888-713-1033, or e-mail him at brian@lundinlawpc.com.

No class has been certified in the above action yet. Until a class is certified, you are not considered represented by an attorney. You may also choose to do nothing and be an absent class member.

According to the complaint, Eaton issued false and misleading statements about the Company's ability to divest its automobile-part manufacturing business. Since 2008, the Company shifted away from its vehicle business and expanded its electrical component businesses. In 2012, Eaton merged with Irish-headquartered Cooper Industries plc, which reincorporated the Company in Ireland. After the merger, Eaton executives assured investors of the continued feasibility of divesting the automobile-part manufacturing business on a tax-free basis. This kept the Eaton stock price artificially inflated. On July 29, 2014, Eaton's CEO Alexander M. Cutler informed investors that the Company could not feasibly divest the automobile-part business until late 2017 because of tax law restrictions related to the merger. Mr. Cutler also revealed that the Company was "well aware" of these restrictions all along. When the true details emerged, shares of Eaton decreased in value, which caused investors harm.

Lundin Law PC was founded by Brian Lundin, a securities litigator based in Los Angeles dedicated to upholding shareholders' rights.

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This press release may be considered Attorney Advertising in certain jurisdictions under the applicable law and ethical rules.

Contact:

Lundin Law PC

Brian Lundin, Esq.

Telephone: 888-713-1033

Facsimile: 888-713-1125

brian@lundinlawpc.com

http://lundinlawpc.com/

SOURCE: Lundin Law PC
DailyFX.com -

Talking Points:

US Dollar may advance as Fed-speak stokes rate hike speculation

Pound gains after Hammond argues for City of London status quo

Yen correcting higher after yesterdays broad-based down move

A relatively uneventful European data docket shifts the spotlight to comments from Boston and Dallas Fed Presidents Eric Rosengren and Robert Kaplan in the final hour of the trading week. Traders are almost certainly eager to onboard the last bits of guidance before the two-week blackout period ahead of this months FOMC meeting. Hawkish posturing in line with recent remarks from other US central bank officials may boost rate hike speculation, sending the US Dollar higher.

The Japanese Yen outperformed in overnight trade, trading broadly higher in a move that appeared to be corrective after the currency lagged its major counterparts in the prior session. The British Pound continued to recover from selling pressure that plagued the UK unit through most of yesterdays European session. Losses appeared to accelerate in the run-up to testimony from Chancellor Philip Hammond before the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee.

Concerns about the post-Brexit future of the City of London as regional financial hub seemed to be front and center for investors. Sterling bottomed and began to recover as Hammond spoke, possibly reflecting the governments apparent commitment to defend the status quo. The Chancellor said the City supports the real economy across Europe and breaking it up  including the splitting up of clearing services  would be a mistake for the EU.

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Asia Session

GMT CCY EVENT ACT EXP PREV 22:45 NZD Card Spending Retail (MoM) (AUG) -0.4% 0.3% 0.2% 22:45 NZD Card Spending Total (MoM) (AUG) -0.8% - 0.3% 23:50 JPY Money Stock M2 (YoY) (AUG) 3.3% 3.3% 3.4% 23:50 JPY Money Stock M3 (YoY) (AUG) 2.8% 2.9% 2.9% 1:30 CNY CPI (YoY) (AUG) 1.3% 1.7% 1.8% 1:30 CNY PPI (YoY) (AUG) -0.8% -0.9% -1.7% 1:30 AUD Home Loans (MoM) (JUL) -4.2% -1.5% 1.7% 1:30 AUD Investment Lending (JUL) 0.5% - 3.3% 1:30 AUD Owner-Occupier Loan Value (MoM) (JUL) -3.1% - 1.6% 4:30 JPY Tertiary Industry Index (MoM) (JUL) 0.4% 0.8%

European Session

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GMT CCY EVENT EXP/ACT PREV IMPACT 5:45 CHF Unemployment Rate (AUG) 3.2% (A) 3.1% Medium 5:45 CHF Unemployment Rate SA (AUG) 3.4% (A) 3.3% Medium 6:00 EUR German Trade Balance (JUL) 19.5b (A) 24.7b Medium 6:00 EUR German Current Account Balance (JUL) 18.6b (A) 26.3b Medium 6:00 EUR German Exports SA (MoM) (JUL) -2.6% (A) 0.2% Low 6:00 EUR German Imports SA (MoM) (JUL) -0.7% (A) 1.1% Low 8:30 GBP Visible Trade Balance (/Mn) (JUL) -11650 -12409 Medium 8:30 GBP Trade Balance Non EU (/Mn) (JUL) -3600 -4159 Low 8:30 GBP Trade Balance (/Mn) (JUL) -4200 -5084 Low 8:30 GBP Construction Output (MoM) (JUL) -0.5% -0.9% Low 8:30 GBP Construction Output (YoY) (JUL) -3.4% -2.2% Low 8:30 GBP BoE/TNS Inflation Next 12 Mths (AUG) - 2.0% Low

Critical Levels

CCY Supp 3 Supp 2 Supp 1 Pivot Point Res 1 Res 2 Res 3 EUR/USD 1.1162 1.1204 1.1222 1.1246 1.1264 1.1288 1.1330 GBP/USD 1.3123 1.3245 1.3293 1.3367 1.3415 1.3489 1.3611

--- Written by Ilya Spivak, Currency Strategist for DailyFX.com

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Contact and follow Ilya on Twitter: @IlyaSpivak



original source

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In a warning issued today, the US Consumer Product Safety Commission warned owners of Samsung Galaxy Note 7 devices to "power them down and stop charging or using" the devices.

Samsung has already issued a recall of sorts, "advising" customers to take their Galaxy Note 7 devices to a store and exchange them for a temporary phone, and eventually a non-exploding device.

DON'T MISS: Galaxy Note 7 caused Jeep to explode, Florida couple says

Numerous reports have emerged in the past weeks of Galaxy Note 7s exploding, including a dramatic fire that incinerated one Florida couple's Jeep. But Samsung has not gone the conventional route for issuing a product recall, which would involve working with the CPSC to recall all affected devices. It appears that is now in the works.

CPSC is working quickly to determine whether a replacement Galaxy Note7 is an acceptable remedy for Samsung or their phone carriers to provide to consumers, the agency told ABC.

These incidents have occurred while charging and during normal use, which has led us to call for consumers to power down their Note 7s."

Currently, Samsung is asking owners to take advantage of the Product Exchange Program it has put in place. That program lets owners exchange their phones for a non-combustible Note 7, and in some cases have a loaner phone for the weeks until a new Note 7 can be issued.

Some airlines have already banned passengers from using or charging their Note 7s while in flight. Those bans are on Australian airlines, but the FAA is reportedly looking into issuing a ban on the carriage or use of Note 7s.

Update 1900 ET: Samsung has issued a statement confirming its collaboration with the CPSC on a US recall:

We are asking users to power down their Galaxy Note7s and exchange them now. says Tim Baxter, president of Samsung Electronics America. New Note7 replacement devices will be issued to exchange program participants upon completion of the CPSC process. In the interim, consumers can return their Note7 for another device. Although there have been only a small number of reported incidents, Samsung is taking great care to provide customers with the support they need. Samsung has identified the affected inventory and stopped sales and shipments of those devices. Customers who have Galaxy Note7 devices can replace their current device with a new device under the terms of the US Note7 Exchange Program. The US Note7 Exchange Program offers consumers the following choices: Select carrier and retail outlets will also provide customers, who prefer a replacement Note7, with a Samsung loaner phone to use until new Note7s are available. Additionally, participants in the US exchange program will receive a $25 gift card or bill credit from select carrier or retail outlets.

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See the original version of this article on BGR.com
Washington (AFP) - The US House of Representatives passed legislation Friday that would allow relatives of victims of the 9/11 attacks to sue Saudi Arabia for compensation -- a move the White House has threatened to veto.

The Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act was approved in the House by unanimous voice vote some four months after its Senate passage -- and only two days before the 15th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

The government of Saudi Arabia, a US ally but also the home nation to 15 of the 19 September 11 hijackers, has worked hard to see the bill defeated.

But it now heads to President Barack Obama's desk, where it faces an uncertain future.

The White House again signaled Friday it would veto the measure, because it would essentially waive the doctrine of sovereign immunity that protects nation states from civil suits or criminal prosecution.

But its easy passage in both chambers of Congress raises the specter of a veto override, which requires a two-thirds vote in the House and Senate. It would be the first time Obama would be dealt such a blow during his presidency.

"This legislation would change long-standing, international law regarding sovereign immunity," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said back in May, after the Senate unanimously approved the bill.

"The president of the United States continues to harbor serious concerns that this legislation would make the United States vulnerable in other court systems around the world," Earnest said.

The measure, known as JASTA, would allow attack survivors and relatives of terror victims to pursue cases in federal court against foreign governments and demand compensation if such governments are proven to bear some responsibility for attacks on US soil.

Senator John Cornyn, a sponsor of the original legislation, said he hopes Obama signs JASTA into law.

"Today's vote sends an unmistakable message that we should combat terrorism with every tool we have, and that the families of those lost in attacks like that on September 11th should have every means at their disposal to seek justice," Cornyn said.

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- 'Blood on its hands?' -

Under current law, victims of terror attacks can only sue countries officially designated by the State Department as sponsors of terrorism, such as Iran and Syria.

No official Saudi complicity in the Al-Qaeda attacks of 9/11 has been proven, and the kingdom has never been formally implicated. It is not a designated sponsor of terrorism.

In February, Zacarias Moussaoui, dubbed the 20th hijacker, told US lawyers that members of the Saudi royal family donated millions of dollars to Al-Qaeda in the 1990s.

The Saudi embassy denied Moussaoui's claims. But his accusations revived debate over whether the Obama administration should release a still-classified 28-page section of the 9/11 Commission Report.

The documents were finally declassified and released in mid-July. They showed that while the United States probed links between the government of Saudi Arabia and the 9/11 attacks, it found multiple suspicions but no proven ties.

Texas Democrat Lloyd Doggett took to the House floor and pointed a finger squarely at Saudi Arabia.

"Wherever you see evidence of radical Islam, that extremism can usually be traced to preachers of hate from Saudi Arabia," he told the chamber.

"The kingdom has blood on its hands. Is it the blood of victims from 9/11? Possibly," he added.

"For our government to obstruct the 9/11 victims, their families, from seeking the truth about Saudi Arabia and its involvement is just flat wrong."
Chicago (AFP) - A US federal judge on Friday denied a request by a Native American tribe to halt an oil pipeline in North Dakota over fears the project could endanger its drinking water.

US District Judge James Boasberg sided with the US Army Corps of Engineers and the pipeline's developer Energy Transfer Partners, ruling that the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe "has not shown it will suffer injury" if the pipeline's construction underneath the Missouri River is allowed to proceed.

The tribe filed a lawsuit against the Corps, saying it did not adequately consider the potential environmental impacts of the project.

The battle has galvanized Native American tribes throughout the US, in a months-long protest that has garnered worldwide attention.

Members of some 200 tribes and supporters have gathered for months at a North Dakota camp site near the pipeline's planned route, some as early as April, to oppose the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Ahead of the judge's decision, tribe chairman David Archambault released a statement urging protesters to remain peaceful.

"We call upon all water protectors to greet any decision with peace and order. Even if the outcome of the court's ruling is not in our favor, we will continue to explore every lawful option and fight against the construction of the pipeline," Archambault said.
Washington (AFP) - The Pentagon on Friday repeated reassurances that the United States and its regional allies are well protected against any threat from North Korean missiles, after Pyongyang conducted a new nuclear test.

The renegade country has now conducted five nuclear tests and dozens of missile launches, and says it has realized its goal of being able to fit a miniaturized warhead on a rocket.

"This is a threat we recognize as very real and we are always ensuring that we are outpacing it," Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said.

"We take them at their word and have built a defensive architecture that assumes that they have the capability -- but we have never actually seen it demonstrated."

The United States has a range of missile-defense technologies at its disposal, including the Aegis Combat System, Patriot missiles and sophisticated radars.

Washington is also working with Seoul to install a missile defense system known as THAAD in South Korea, though the move has infuriated Beijing, which says the hardware poses a significant threat to regional security.

Davis said the THAAD system would be up and ready in 2017, though it could be installed quicker in an emergency.

"There is a lengthy process we are working through with (Seoul) but of course... we can always move it much more quickly," he said.

The US Air Force will fly a specially equipped WC-135 jet that can detect radiation and other particles in the sky to determine what happened in North Korea.

"Certainly all the indications we've seen based on the seismic activity, it's certainly consistent with a nuclear test," Davis said.
Chicago (AFP) - The US government on Friday sought to stop construction on a controversial oil pipeline in North Dakota that has angered Native Americans, blocking any work on federal land and asking the company to "voluntarily pause" work nearby.

The move by the government came after a federal judge denied a request by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe to halt construction on the 1,200-mile (1,930-kilometer) long project amid fears it could endanger its drinking water.

The planned pipeline route would cross the Missouri River -- the tribe's water source -- just a half-mile north of its reservation. The tribe says the route could also destroy culturally significant lands nearby.

It claims those concerns were not properly addressed by the pipeline's developer and the US Army Corps of Engineers, the governmental body responsible for approving construction under the river (the state approved the rest of the route).

US District Judge James Boasberg nevertheless sided with the US Army Corps of Engineers and the pipeline's developer Energy Transfer Partners, saying the tribe "has not shown it will suffer injury" if construction is allowed to proceed.

But after the judge's ruling, the government said the matter needed more consideration, and blocked any work on federal land near Lake Oahe, an artificial lake formed by the damming of the Missouri River.

"The Army will not authorize constructing the Dakota Access pipeline on Corps land bordering or under Lake Oahe until it can determine whether it will need to reconsider any of its previous decisions" on the site, authorities said in a statement.

"In the interim, we request that the pipeline company voluntarily pause all construction activity within 20 miles east or west of Lake Oahe," said the statement from the Army, the Justice Department and the Department of the Interior.

Standing Rock chairman David Archambault said the tribe was considering its legal options, including whether to file an appeal of the judge's ruling.

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"We knew when we entered into this lawsuit that the cards were stacked against us," Archambault told AFP.

"There's a lot of good that can come from today It's not just about Standing Rock. It's about all indigenous people, indigenous rights."

- 'Serious discussion' -

The Dakota Access pipeline would cross four US states, from North Dakota to Illinois, from where it can be shipped to other parts of the country.

It could help reduce the cost of transporting North Dakota oil, enabling it to better compete with cheaper oil from Canada.

The pipeline's developer, Energy Transfer Partners, has argued that the project is safe. A North Dakota state regulatory body approved its construction after a 13-month review of its safety and impact on culturally significant lands.

But the tribe's lawsuit alleged that the Army Corps of Engineers and the pipeline company did not adequately consider the potential environmental impacts of the project and did not seek the tribe's counsel on the cultural ramifications.

A company spokeswoman declined to comment on the case.

The US government statement said "important issues" had been raised by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and other tribal nations about both the Dakota Access pipeline and other such projects.

"This case has highlighted the need for a serious discussion on whether there should be nationwide reform with respect to considering tribes' views on these types of infrastructure projects," it said, adding it would invite tribal leaders to talks on the issue.

The battle has galvanized Native American tribes throughout the United States, in a months-long protest that has garnered worldwide attention.

Members of some 200 tribes and supporters have gathered for months at a North Dakota camp site near the pipeline's planned route, some as early as April, to oppose the project.

Dallas Goldtooth -- who has emerged as one of the camp's leaders -- said the mood among protesters was one of celebration.

"We celebrate this as a victory," Goldtooth told AFP from a rally at the state capital Bismarck. "Not the ultimate victory. But at least a solid step in the right direction."

He said protests would continue until the pipeline project is "officially killed."
The US Federal Aviation Administration strongly urged passengers not to turn on or charge Samsung Galaxy Note 7 smartphones on aircraft following recent reports of explosions from faulty batteries.

The South Korean smartphone maker last week suspended sales of the "phablet" and recalled 2.5 million units following the reports.

"In light of recent incidents and concerns raised by Samsung about its Galaxy Note 7 devices, the Federal Aviation Administration strongly advises passengers not to turn on or charge these devices on board aircraft and not to stow them in any checked baggage," the FAA said in a statement.

Qantas and Virgin Australia also told customers Thursday not to use or charge the devices on their planes.

Samsung is the world's top smartphone maker, outpacing its American rival Apple.
Almaty (Kazakhstan) (AFP) - Ex-Soviet Uzbekistan's new interim president Shavkat Mirziyoyev has ruled out military alliances, the government said Friday, following the same course as the late veteran strongman Islam Karimov.

Mirziyoyev -- who served as the Central Asian country's prime minister for nearly 13 years -- is the frontrunner to replace Karimov. The presidential election in set to take place on December 4, the country's election commission said Friday.

"The firm position of our country, as before, is non-membership in all military-political alliances and not allowing other states' military bases and facilities on the territory of Uzbekistan," Mirziyoyev told lawmakers, according to a foreign ministry statement.

"No one should doubt that any attempt by internal and external forces to encroach on the sovereignty and independence of our country will be severely suppressed."

Under Karimov, authoritarian Uzbekistan kept strategic partners Russia and the United States at arm's length while attempting to benefit from their rivalry in the majority Muslim region.

The country quit a Russia-led security organisation in 2012 and cancelled the lease of a US military base used in Afghanistan operations after Washington called for an independent investigation into a brutal crackdown in 2005.

Mirziyoyev's remarks were made at a parliament session in which he was appointed interim president ahead of upcoming elections.

He was granted the position after being backed by Senate leader Nigmatilla Yuldashev, who under the constitution should have become interim president ahead of the presidential elections.

Analysts have speculated that powerful deputy premier and finance minister Rustam Azimov could now take on the prime minister's role.

Karimov, 78, was pronounced dead last week after suffering a stroke and falling into a coma following days of speculation about his rapidly failing health.

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Karimov led the ex-Soviet state with an iron grip for some 27 years, earning a reputation abroad as one of the region's most savage despots who ruthlessly stamped out opposition and violated human rights.

Before his death, Karimov was one of two reigning presidents in Central Asia to have begun ruling his country before independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

The other, Kazakhstan's Nursultan Nazarbayev, is 76 and has never identified a successor.
Caracas (AFP) - People in violence-stricken Venezuela are trading in their guns for much-needed electrical household gadgets under an official scheme, the government said.

Interior Minister Nestor Reverol said 1,130 Venezuelans have handed in guns in return for TVs, microwaves, washing machines, freezers and tablet devices.

"We are going to give you a television. Thank you, brother, for taking part in this great day of disarmament!" he told one participant, shaking his hand and handing him a certificate at an event in central Caracas.

The pistols, shotguns, rifles and even the odd machine gun were ceremoniously crushed one by one in a hydraulic press.

Venezuela is suffering an economic crisis that has caused food shortages, riots and looting.

That has aggravated insecurity in the country that already has one of the highest homicide rates in the world: 58 for every 100,000 inhabitants, according to officials.

The government says the authorities have destroyed a total of 18,294 firearms in the country this year.

Reverol is a military official who has been indicted in the United States on drug-related charges.
The Venice Film Festival draws to a close tomorrow after a very successful run for some high-profile and arthouse entries from around the world. Roundly in my conversations with industry folk on and off the Lido this past week, the refrain has been how good everything looked across the competition and out-of-competition strands. The first parallel section prizes from Venice Days and Critics Week have been announced today (see below). The Golden Lion and other major awards will be handed out tomorrow night. With such an embarrassment of riches, theres some head-scratching about which way Sam Mendes jury will go  but it would not be surprising to see Hollywood snatch some gold (or silver) after recent years of strong titles that left the Lido empty-handed.

Several Hollywood offerings splashed down on the Lido this week both in and out of the main horse race, and each was warmly embraced - leaving a trail of Oscar buzz as they carried on to Telluride and/or Toronto. One out-of-competition film thats bypassed that circuit is Mel Gibsons Hacksaw Ridge which was among the highlights of this festival and which Lionsgate releases domestically on November 4.

The proceedings had earlier kicked off in style on August 31 with Damien Chazelles lauded La La Land, also from Lionsgate. That Emma Stone/Ryan Gosling contemporary ode to the grand Hollywood musical is in competition and is tied as the best reviewed among international critics polled by the festival. The tying film is Pablo Larrains Jackie, starring Natalie Portman as Jackie Kennedy in the days immediately following the assassination of JFK. Its one of the titles at Toronto that has a lot of acquisitions heat.

Also scoring well among critics was Denis Villeneuves lyrical sci-fi drama Arrival which Paramount has domestically, and Tom Fords noir thriller Nocturnal Animals from Focus. Both helmers have been to Venice before: Villeneuve was in Venice Days with Incendies and Fords A Single Man won the Volpi Cup for Colin Firth in 2009. Among the offshore titles that have played to acclaim are Argentine dramedy El Ciudadano Ilustre (The Distinguished Citizen) from Mariano Cohn and Gaston Duprat; and French pics Stephane Brizes Une Vie and Francois Ozons Frantz.

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But its notable that in recent years, some of the films which have looked like clear favorites or enjoyed the greatest acclaim here have nevertheless failed to win prizes. Thats been the case with both eventual Best Picture Oscar winners Birdman and Spotlight. Gravity, which bowed here in 2013, was not in competition so was not eligible for prizes, but had a stellar awards season run. Last years Anomalisa from Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson did scoop the relatively new Grand Jury Prize and then picked up an Oscar nomination as Best Animated Feature.

The last time a Hollywood filmmaker won the Golden Lion was in 2010 when Sofia Coppolas Somewhere took it. That stoked the ire of the Italian press since her ex-boyfriend Quentin Tarantino was the jury president that year. We have to look back to 2012 for a Hollywood filmmaker to have scooped the Silver Lion for Best Director: Paul Thomas Anderson with The Master.

That films Joaquin Phoenix and the late Philip Seymour Hoffman shared the Best Actor Volpi Cup. In fact, male actors with a big international profile have had a better showing in Venice than any other group in the past several years. Along with Firth, among winners since 2000 have been Javier Bardem, Sean Penn, David Strathairn, Ben Affleck, Brad Pitt, Michael Fassbender and Adam Driver. Among the ladies, Helen Mirren won the Volpi Cup for The Queen in 2006, and later the Oscar. This year, Amy Adams dual turns in Nocturnal and Arrival, as well as Portman in Jackie and Stone in La La Land have won ardent fans.

Will Sam Mendes jury agree with festgoers on those and others? Well be back tomorrow with the winners. In the meantime, heres how Venice Days and Critics Week went today:

The Venice Days jury has given its 2016 award to Syrian documentary The War Show by Andreas Dalsgaard and Obaidah Zytoon. The well-reviewed film follows a group of artists and activists from the promise of the Arab Spring through to the grim realities of war. It next screens in Toronto.

In Critics Week, the Audience Award went to Juan Sebastian Mesas Los Nadie (The Nobodies) from Colombia. Shot over seven days, its the story of five teenage friends living in Medellin. Critics Week also gave a prize to The Last Of Us by Ala Eddine Slim for Best Technical Contribution. The existential road movie from Tunisia, Qatar, the UAE and Lebanon was honored for Amine Messadis editing and Moncef Taleb and Yazid Chabbis sound.

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Time is an elastic element in the cinema of Lav Diaz  not just in the sprawling, searching spread of his films historical purview, but the liberal, some might say liberated, scale of the films themselves. Weighing in at 228 minutes, a restrained runtime by the Filipino directors standards, The Woman Who Left is more contained than much of his work: Its personal and political concerns converge powerfully in the story of one woman, reacquainting herself with her socially ravaged homeland after unjustly spending 30 years in the slammer. At the same time, the films deliberately rambling heft evokes the lingering, far-reaching sorrow of an entire nation. That doesnt entirely quell the sense of strong material being over-extended, particularly in a murky middle stretch, but this occasionally transcendent opus finds Diazs formal powers  not least his own incisive monochrome lensing  at full strength.

A filmmaker who sees no harm in striving for quality and quantity, Diaz hasnt given himself much of a vacation between this and his last, eight-hour feature A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery  a vastly ambitious but disappointingly turgid metaphysical epic that premiered in Berlin a little over six months ago. Half that films length but a more emotionally resonant, intellectually satisfying experience all round, The Woman Who Left jumps a century forward from Lullaby in its historical focus, opening with a radio newsflash announcing Britains handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997. Ostensibly unrelated to the narrative at hand, the news nonetheless chimes in with Diazs ongoing preoccupation with the colonial pasts ramifications in the present  a subtle undercurrent, this time, in a story with more immediate national corruption to process.

For Horacia (Charo Santos-Cancio, in a remarkable return to the screen after two decades in the production realm), the Philippines of the late 1990s is not the same country she knew 30 years before, when she was sentenced to life in a womens correctional facility for a murder she did not commit. Shes unexpectedly released when fellow inmate and best friend Petra (Shamaine Centenera-Buencamino) suddenly confesses that she, coerced by Horacias ex-boyfriend Rodrigo, framed her for the crime all those years ago. Its far from a joyous homecoming, however. Having been cut off from her family during her time inside, she returns to her hometown to find that her husband has passed on, her daughter (Marj Lorico) has moved away, and her son has been missing, presumed dead, in Manila for some time  another casualty, perhaps, of the terrorist-driven kidnapping epidemic surging in the Philippines at the time, word of which casts a veil of anxiety over proceedings throughout.

The Woman Who Left thus finds Lav in a particularly hopeless place  one in which even our kindly, teacherly protagonist alights on violent revenge as her planned course of redemption. Tracking down Rodrigo (Michael De Mesa), now a wealthy underworld boss, she plots his murder from a distance by night. By day, she grows into a charitable pillar of the community, providing succour and shelter to those (even) less fortunate than herself  most notably Hollanda (returning Lullaby ensemble member John Lloyd Cruz), a brutally abused transgender prostitute who seeks to repay her benefactor in a most drastic way. From this highly melodramatic setup, Diaz fashions a thoughtful, far from idealistic meditation on the complex nature of forgiveness and shifting moral accountability  with the government, shown demolishing makeshift communities while letting others fester in poverty and fear, its most consistent antagonist.

Diaz claims to have taken inspiration for his episodically arranged but densely plotted script from Leo Tolstoys 1872 short story God Sees the Truth, But Waits, which also centers on a prisoner belatedly cleared of wrongdoing  though that storys emotional climax, the accuseds forgiveness of those actually guilty, is achieved in the opening stages here. Grace isnt an endpoint in Horacias arc, which is instead build on renewable reserves of loss and despair  though the films trying middle hour, which dwells repetitively on her day-to-night double life and the destitute streetlife she inhabits, risks turning her into a decidedly opaque avenging angel. Its Santos-Cancios soft-skinned but seething performance that must see viewers through the films most challenging passages. She plays Horacias quiet resilience without making her a kind of impenetrable exemplar: A scene in which she leads the defeated Hollanda through a shaky but hopeful rendition of Somewhere from West Side Story is an invaluable moment of pure sweetness amid the austerity.

Working once more in rich but unromantic black and white, Diazs cinematography is the films other most constant reward. Alternating between deep chiaroscuro strokes in the cobwebbed sites of its heroines past to more candid, semi-blurred shooting as she gradually loses her grip on proceedings, no frame here seems carelessly assembled or bereft of perspective. Serving as his own cameraman appears to concentrate the directors worldview; serving as his own editor doesnt have quite the same disciplining effect, but the sheer unpredictable range of runtimes in his oeuvre at least ensures that no two Lav Diaz films move to quite the same rhythm.

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Haytor (United Kingdom) (AFP) - Steve Cummings put himself in pole position to emulate Bradley Wiggins in 2013 and become only the second British rider to win the Tour of Britain after taking the overall lead on Friday.

The 35-year-old is enjoying an Indian Summer in terms of his career with stage wins this year on four major races including the Criterium du Dauphine and the Tour de France.

And he now holds a 49-second lead over Dutchman Tom Dumoulin after Friday's challenging sixth stage from Sidmouth to Haytor on Dartmoor.

Overnight leader Julien Vermote of Belgium -- who had led since winning Monday's second stage -- had an awful day in the saddle and slipped out of the top 10 in the overall standings.

The stage itself went to Dutch rider Wout Poels, the Team Sky rider going clear in the final 1.5km to record his third win on British roads.

Cummings -- second in the 2008 and 2011 editions -- came eighth.

Saturday's stage is a time-trial which could be a cliffhanger as Dumoulin thrives in them having taken silver in the Olympics last month.
Despite being confined to a bed, a dying veteran wanted nothing more than to go fishing one last time, and he received his final wish with the help of a dedicated hospice staff.

Read: Iraq War Veteran With No Arms Saved the Life of a Suicidal Soldier She Had Never Met

Connie Willhite, a Vietnam veteran who served in the U.S. Navy, knew he was nearing the end of his battle with colon cancer, but before he passed, he told the Carl Vinson VA Medical Center, where he had been living out the rest of his days, that he had two final wishes.

His first request was to be baptized before passing. According to Dr. Frank G. Jordan, "He wanted to cross over in good spiritual health."

His second wish, Jordan told InsideEdition, was to catch a fish.

"He loved to hunt, but mostly he loved to fish," Jordan said. "What he liked about fishing was being outside, and being outdoors. It was peaceful, and serene."

Although Willhite was bedridden, their team came up with a plan to get him into a motorized bed, and bring him to Lake Leisure, a recently restored lake on the hospital's property.

Jordan said they were originally worried he wouldn't be able to catch any fish, and hoped he would settle on enjoying the afternoon on the lake one last time.

But as fate would have it, Whillhite caught four fish in four hours  a feat he pondered often in his last days.

Read: Fishermen Use Dead Friend's Ashes to Catch 180-Pound Carp in His Memory

"What's amazing was the positive effect it had on him as he was waiting to pass away," Jordan told InsideEdition.com. "Of course, he was dejected and a little depressed for the last few days of his life, but he was ready to go."

Willhite died three days later, on August 29.

Watch: Over 100 Strangers Gather to Honor Korean War Veteran Who Died With No Family

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In one of the first major pieces of new development outside of the Breaking Bad universe, Vince Gilligan has signed on to write and executive produce Raven, a limited series for HBO about Jim Jones, the infamous leader of the Peoples Temple cult who led his followers to a mass murder-suicide in Jonestown, Guyana, in 1978.

On Raven, Breaking Bad creator/executive producer Gilligan is reuniting with the AMC series executive producer/director Michelle MacLaren, who is set to direct the limited series. The two are executive producing the project with actress Octavia Spencer, who had optioned the source material  the nonfiction book Raven: The Untold Story of Jim Jones and His People by Tim Reiterman, a journalist who survived the events in Guyana  more than four years ago. Reilly Smith, who had secured the rights to the book with Spencer, will co-produce. Sony Pictures TV, where Gilligan and his High Bridge Prods. are based, is the studio. There are no plans for Spencer to act in the project.

Raven is described as the definitive history of Peoples Temple from its idealistic beginnings to its terrible end in Jonestown. The adaptation will focus on Jim Jones but also on his followers, who, by and large, were ordinary people of good will. It tells the mysterious story of how so many of them came to give up their lives for this man.

This is the second Jim Jones/Peoples Temple series in the works. In January, A&E announced an anthology series in development focused on American cults, which is produced by Jake Gyllenhaal. Season 1 focuses on Jones and his cult The Peoples Temple of the Disciples of Christ.

Gilligan and MacLaren shared two best drama series Emmy Awards as executive producers of Breaking Bad. In addition to that show, Gilligan co-created its prequel, Better Call Saul, which has done well with viewers and critics and is nominated for Best Drama Series Emmy for a second consecutive year. Following the end of Breaking Bad, Gilligan also executive produced the CBS series Battle Creek, based on an old pilot script he had written years ago. All series have been produced by Sony TV.

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In addition to her work on Breaking Bad, MacLaren has directed episodes of AMCs The Walking Dead and HBOs Game of Thrones and upcoming David Simon drama The Deuce. She also is set to direct the feature film adaption of Kristin Hannahs bestselling novel The Nightingale.

Oscar winner Spencer, recently seen/heard in Allegiant and Zootopia, next will co-star in Foxs Hidden Figures. She is repped by WME.

Gilligan and MacLaren are repped by ICM Partners. Gilligan is also repped by Del Shaw. MacLaren additionally is repped by Stone Genow.

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HBO is assembling an all-star team to tackle a limited series about the Jonestown massacre.

Raven will be written by Vince Gilligan and directed by Michelle Maclaren and is based on Raven: The Untold Story of Jim Jones and His People, written by Tim Reiterman. The author was a journalist who survived the events in Guyana in 1978 during which 918 people died.

Gilligan and MacLaren will also executive produce the series, along with Octavia Spencer. Spencer originally secured the rights to the book along with co-producer Reilly Smith.

Also Read: HBO Releases New Trailer for Controversial 'Westworld' (Video)

The adaptation will focus on the infamous cult leader Jim Jones, but also on his followers, who, by and large, were ordinary people of good will. It tells the mysterious story of how so many of them came to give up their lives for this man.

Gilligan and MacLaren are reuniting for the first time on the Sony Pictures Television project since Breaking Bad. Gilligan went on to create prequel Better Call Saul and MacLaren was recently announced as the director of the big screen adaptation of Kristin Hannahs The Nightingale.

Also Read: 'Game of Thrones' Star Maisie Williams Has Read Season 7 Scripts: 'S-- Gets Real'

Spencer won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for The Help and will soon be seen in Hidden Figures. She most recently starred in the Divergent franchise. She is represented by WME.

Related stories from TheWrap:

'Better Call Saul' Will Be Set in 2002, Vince Gilligan Says

'Mad' and 'Bad' Exit Strategies: Matt Weiner and Vince Gilligan Reveal Their Endgame

Bryan Singer to Direct Vince Gilligan's CBS Drama 'Battle Creek'
Vince Vaughn looks nearly unrecognizable as a completely bald man.

The 46-year-old star debuted his shocking new 'do when he was spotted going for a walk in New York City on Thursday. Vaughn's rep tells ET that the actor went bald for his upcoming role in Brawl in Cell Block 99.

WATCH: Adam Levine's Bald Look on The Voice Inspired the Best Memes

FAMEFLYNET PICTURES

The action film, which also stars Jennifer Carpenter and Don Johnson, is about a former boxer-turned-drug runner that lands in a prison battleground after a deal gets deadly.

Vaughn's new look comes just days after he showed up with a full head of hair to the premiere of Hacksaw Ridge at the Venice International Film Festival in Italy. The father of two looked quite dapper in his tuxedo as he posed alongside co-stars Mel Gibson, Teresa Palmer and Andrew Garfield.

Getty Images/FameFlynet

EXCLUSIVE: Vince Vaughn's Daughter Is Obsessed With Frozen -- She Watches It 'Like It's Her Job'

Vaughn isn't the only one to go bald for a role. In 2015, Matthew McConaughey appeared to have underwent a complete physical transformation when spotted on the set of Gold. Here's what the 46-year-old heartthrob looks like without any hair:

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Photo: Splash News

Hair today, gone tomorrow! The saying really is true, and Vince Vaughn proves it. Just days ago, the actor walked the red carpet at the Venice Film Festival premiere of his movie Hacksaw Ridge with a full head of hair, and today, those luscious curly locks are gone.

Were surprised photographers realized it was him fast enough to get the shot when he was caught running errands in New York City with a brand new bald head. The True Detective star is completely unrecognizable in a gray T-shirt, track pants, and sneakers. Its a total 180 from his red carpet look last week  a crisp black suit and bowtie.



Photo: Getty Images

Some media outlets are speculating that hes shaved his head for his upcoming role in Brawl in Cell Block 99, which is about a boxer-turned-drug runner who ends up in prison after a deal gets deadly.

That could be it, or it could just be the Dodgeball star being his silly and unpredictable self.

Either way, hes still pretty handsome, in that goofy way of his.



Lets keep in touch! Follow Yahoo Beauty on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.
New York (AFP) - A Volkswagen engineer is expected to help the US pursue its criminal case against the German automaker after pleading guilty Friday to helping create the illegal emissions-cheating device installed on VW diesel cars.

James Liang, 62, agreed to cooperate with US prosecutors developing a criminal case against Volkswagen, after he was indicted in Detroit federal court for his role developing the emissions "defeat devices" equipped on more than a half-million cars sold in the United States.

As an engineer in Germany, Liang helped develop the engines equipped the defeat devices from the earliest stages, said the indictment. He is the first official to be indicted in the US in the now-global scandal involving 11 million diesel cars sold worldwide.

"Almost from the beginning of VW's process to design its new 'clean diesel' vehicles, Liang and his fellow co-conspirators designed these VW diesel vehicles not to meet US emissions standards, but to cheat the testing process by making it appear as if diesel vehicles met US emissions standards when, in fact, they did not," the Justice Department said in a 24-page indictment.

Liang worked on the defeat devices from November 2006 while at Volkswagen headquarters in Wolfsburg, Germany.

He and other VW employees developed a complex software system to keep emissions low when a car was undergoing testing to demonstrate environmental compliance, but to allow them to spew higher emissions on the road while boosting fuel efficiency, the indictment said.

He moved to California in 2008 as Volkswagen ramped up its marketing of its ostensibly "clean diesel" cars with high fuel efficiency in an effort to win greater market share in the US.

His job title in the US was "Leader of Diesel Competence," although he still reported to VW officials in Germany.

The indictment said Liang and others consistently misrepresented the system to federal and state environmental regulators and lied about the issue when regulators probed the discrepancy between the cars' testing and real-world emissions performance.

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"Liang and his co-conspirators attempted to make it appear that there were innocent mechanical and technological problems to blame, while secretly knowing that the primary reason for the discrepancy was the defeat device installed in every VW diesel vehicle sold in the United States."

He faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a fine up of to $250,000.

Liang reportedly expressed remorse to the court.

"I know VW did not disclose the defeat device to US regulators, in order to sell the cars in the US," Liang said, according to Bloomberg News. "That's what makes me guilty."

A Volkswagen spokeswoman declined to comment on Liang's indictment, but said the company "is continuing to cooperate with the US Department of Justice."

- Billion-dollar penalties -

Liang's cooperation could accelerate the US criminal probe into VW, resulting in a large financial penalty, according to a person familiar with the government's thinking.

One outcome could be a deferred prosecution agreement similar to those that resolved earlier criminal cases against General Motors and Toyota for $900 million and $1.2 billion.

That would allow the company to escape criminal conviction as long as it complies with certain requirements in a deal with the justice department.

Volkswagen settled civil cases in June over cheat devices on two-liter engine diesel cars sold in the US in an agreement valued at $14.7 billion that requires it to buy back or fix vehicles, and pay each owner up to $10,000.

It still has to reach a similar deal for its cars with three-liter diesel engines.

Volkswagen has faced global condemnation since US and California state regulators exposed the emissions-cheating conspiracy in September 2015.

The European Commission on Monday urged member states to crack down on Volkswagen for violating consumer protection laws, while Australia's consumer watchdog filed suit against the company on September 1.

Some analysts have estimated the scandal could cost the company $30 billion or more.
Volkswagens year-long dirty diesel saga nabbed its first Volks-villain on Friday, when a veteran engineer for the carmaker pleaded guilty in the first criminal charge related to the VWs use of so-called defeat devices in millions of vehicles in order to skirt federal emissions regulations.

James Liang, who worked at the carmaker for decades in Germany and the U.S., pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud regulators and customers, Bloomberg reports.

Liang, 68, is the first VW employee to face charges from the Department of Justice related to the year-long investigation into the carmakers use of defeat devices in more than 500,000 cars in the U.S.

In addition to being charged with one count of conspiracy to commit fraud, Liang also faced a charge of violating the Clean Air Act.

Liang, who has agreed to cooperate with the U.S. investigation into VW, was previously named as a developer of the defeat device in a lawsuit filed by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman in July.

According to that lawsuit [PDF], Liang was one of the engineers at VWs Wolfsburg plant directly involved in the development of the defeat devices back in 2006.

Liang began working in the U.S. for VW in 2008. Several years later, in 2014, he allegedly began conducting tests at a California facility as part of the carmakers efforts to conceal the devices from regulators.

Fridays guilty plea is just the first in what could be a long line of executives facing charges for wrongdoing. The New York AGs lawsuit alleges several engineers and executives were aware of the use of defeat devices and assisted in covering up the issues.

VW admitted last September to installing defeat devices on more than 11 million vehicles worldwide in order to skirt regulations for nitrogen oxide emissions.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency and California Air Resources Board, the sophisticated software algorithm in the vehicles is programmed to detect when the car is undergoing official emissions testing, and to only turn on full emissions control systems during that testing.

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Since then, the carmaker has worked to put the scandal behind it, agreeing in June to pay at least $15 billion to settle federal allegations.

Additionally, sources close to the matter reported in August, that VW and federal prosecutors were close to reaching an agreement to settle criminal charges against the carmaker itself.

Veteran Volkswagen Engineer Charged in U.S. Emissions Probe [Bloomberg]

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A Volkswagen engineer pleaded guilty in Detroit on Friday and agreed to cooperate in the U.S. criminal probe into the German automaker's diesel emissions scandal.

James Liang, 62, was the first person charged in the U.S. investigation, the Justice Department said.

Liang entered a plea agreement that includes his cooperation with the government, a department spokesman said. VW has already agreed to spend up to $16.5 billion to address environmental, state and owner claims in the United States.

Liang pleaded guilty for his role in an almost 10-year conspiracy to defraud U.S. regulators and U.S. customers, according to the Justice Department. In 2006, Liang developed a software "defeat device" to make vehicles appear cleaner than they were. In 2014, he conducted a test to help conceal emissions-cheating, according to the government.

The Justice Department said he pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to defraud the U.S., to commit wire fraud and to violate the Clean Air Act. The maximum penalty is five years of imprisonment with a $250,000 fine, according to court documents.

"Volkswagen is continuing to cooperate with the U.S. Department of Justice. We cannot comment on this indictment," the company said in a statement.



 Reuters contributed to this story.
By David Shepardson and Joseph White DETROIT/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Volkswagen AG engineer pleaded guilty on Friday to helping the German automaker evade U.S. emission standards, and his lawyer said he would cooperate with federal authorities in their criminal probe. James Liang, who has worked for VW since 1983 and was part of a team of engineers who developed a diesel engine, was charged with conspiring to commit wire fraud and violating U.S. clean air laws. He is the first person to face criminal charges in connection with the diesel emissions cheating case. The 62-year-old German citizen, who lives in Newbury Park, California, appeared in U.S. District Court in Detroit on Friday and entered into a plea agreement that includes his cooperation with the government in its investigation. The indictment says Liang conspired with current and former VW employees to mislead the U.S. government about software that federal regulators called a "defeat device," which allowed the automaker to sell diesel engines that emitted more smog-forming gases than the nation's emission standards allow. "I knew that Volkswagen did not disclose the defeat device to U.S. regulators," Liang said in court. His lawyer, Daniel Nixon, said after the hearing that his client was "very remorseful." Liang could face up to five years in prison but may get a much lighter sentence if the government finds he provided substantial assistance. A grand jury indicted Liang in June, but the indictment was only made public on Friday. VW spokeswoman Jeannine Ginivan declined to comment on the indictment. "Volkswagen is continuing to cooperate with the U.S. Department of Justice," she said. Mark Chutkow, chief of the criminal division for the U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Michigan, declined to comment on the investigation. VW has already agreed to spend up to $16.5 billion to address environmental, state and owner claims in the United States. It still faces billions in potential fines and must resolve the fate of 85,000 polluting 3.0-liter vehicles. Reuters reported in August that VW and the Justice Department had held preliminary settlement talks about resolving a criminal probe into the emissions scandal. BUILDING A DEFEAT DEVICE Liang was one of the engineers in Wolfsburg, Germany, directly involved in developing the defeat device for the Volkswagen Jetta in 2006, according to the indictment. The engineers had quickly realized the diesel engines they were designing for vehicles targeted at the U.S. market could not meet government clean air standards while appealing to customers, the indictment stated. So Liang and others, including employees of an entity referred to as "Company A," designed software that would activate the emission controls of an engine undergoing a government test and deactivate them afterward, according to the indictment. Liang and others referred to the defeat device as the acoustic function, or "cycle-beating" software, prosecutors said. The indictment said Liang and his co-conspirators designed a software update in 2014 that VW told consumers would fix discrepancies being found in emissions testing. In fact, the update was to allow the cheat system to more easily detect when the vehicle was being tested, using the angle of the steering wheel. After a West Virginia University study showed the cars were emitting more pollutants on the road than tests had indicated, Liang and his co-conspirators lied to regulators, telling them the discrepancy was caused by innocent mechanical issues, authorities said. The indictment quotes early 2015 email exchanges among Liang and other VW employees showing a rising state of fear that officials of the California Air Resources Board could discover the emissions systems were rigged if they conducted more dynamometer testing on early, Generation 1 diesel cars. "We must be sure to prevent the authority from testing the Gen 1," the indictment said an employee wrote in German. "If Gen 1 goes onto the roller at the CARB, then we'll have nothing more to laugh about!!!!!" (Reporting by David Shepardson in Washington and Joseph White in Detroit; Additional reporting by Joel Schectman in Washington; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Lisa Von Ahn)
These are the musings, ramblings, rantings and observations of Houston DWI Attorney Paul B. Kennedy on DWI defense, general criminal defense, philosophy and whatever else tickles his fancy.
From Esquire

(Permanent Musical Accompaniment To This Post)

Being our semi-regular weekly survey of what's goin' down in the several states where, as we know, the real work of governmentin' gets done, and where there's a wall of pride that's high and wide.

Sometimes this semi-regular weekly survey gets a little grim, so let's begin our tour this week with a stop in North Dakota, where Reuters reports that the good guys won one, at least for a while.

U.S. Judge James Boasberg said on Tuesday he had granted in part and denied in part the temporary restraining order, and that he would decide by Friday whether to grant the tribes' larger challenge to the pipeline, which would require the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to withdraw permits for the project.

Things got really ugly out there over the weekend, with some Selma-on-the-prairies video featuring attack dogs and goons in Ray-Bans. It's literally in Boasberg's court now. This is, after all, a faith-based occupation in every real sense.

OK, that's enough of that. To buffooneryand beyond!

We begin in Colorado, where Republican senatorial candidate Darryl Glenn continues to amaze and astound. Now, in true Trumpian fashion, he's gotten in a twist over a story in The Denver Post and has declined to participate in a debate sponsored by the state's major newspaper. There will be debates elsewhere, but Glenn has made such a terrible hash out of a winnable race that he may be the best example we have of Trump's downballot effect.

[contentlinks align="center" textonly="false" numbered="false" headline="Related Story" customtitles="The War on Voting" customimages="" content="article.43311"]

Let's slide on down to Alabama where AL.com reports that the NAACP has looked at the state's courts and said to itself, wait, there's something odd here. Can't quite put my finger on it.

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Hmmmm.

The at-large election system has been racially discriminatory towards African Americans, who make up more than a quarter of the state's population, according to the lawsuit that suggests election by single-member districts. As a result of the at-large voting for the judges and justices, no African American has ever served on the state's criminal and civil appellate courts and only three on the nine-member Alabama Supreme Court in the past 36 years, the lawsuit states. The at-large method "unlawfully dilutes the voting strength of African Americans and prevents them from electing candidates of their choice," the lawsuit states.

Longtime regulars here at the shebeen know that an elected judiciary is The Second Worst Idea In American Politics. This is only one of the reasons why.

"Together, the three courts render enormously consequential decisions that profoundly affect the lives of all Alabamians," according to the lawsuit. Nearly 63 percent of Alabama's prison population is black, lawyers for the plaintiffs say.

Pure coinky-dink, I am sure.

Don't have to travel far to finddrumroll, please...Florida Man! The Creative Loafing crew in Tampa found him for us.

Ober acknowledged that the man obviously committed a crime, but despite the victim's mother's comments about the girl crying out for help, he said the victim went to her rapist-who lived in Maryland-voluntarily. "I have a picture of what I call a sex slave, and by no means, do not read between the lines. This young girl this man has committed a crime, so don't read between the lines, here. She was with him voluntarily. She flew to see him," he said. "And consent is not an issue. We differ on-I know the facts of the case." That seems to counter what the victim's mother told Deeson about how the perpetrator "took control of her" and how the girl feared repercussions if she didn't obey him.

I'm no political consultant, but I would think that having your candidate come out on the dubious side of any story containing the phrase "teenage sex slave" would be something to avoid.

Let's skip up to the newly insane state of North Carolina, where its indomitable state legislature isn't taking getting whacked around in federal court lying down, as The Charlotte News-Observer informs us.

The decisions came after the N.C. Republican Party encouraged its appointees on the county boards to "make party line changes to early voting" by limiting the number of hours and keeping polling sites closed on Sundays. While Republicans hold a majority on the local elections board in each of the state's 100 counties, 70 boards voted to offer more early voting hours than they'd had in the 2012 presidential election, while 23 cut hours from 2012.

They aren't even trying hard any more.

"One of my fellow board members informed me that the two Republican members of the board had been given an agenda from the North Carolina Republican Party that he felt bound to follow, and he hoped I would not take offense at the position he intended to take to comply with that agenda," Patterson wrote. He added that the only person who spoke in favor of less early voting during the board's meeting was John Nix. Nix is chairman of the Lenoir County GOP, and his wife Michele is vice-chairwoman of the NCGOP.

But even the newly insane state of North Carolina can't compare to Texas, the modern petri dish for really terrible ideas. Down there, the folks dedicated to restricting the franchise are miles ahead of their Carolinian counterparts. Talk to us, KXAN.

A judge issued a ruling saying Texas was supposed to let voters know that even if they didn't have an approved ID according to the Voter ID law, they would still be able to vote as long as they filled out a form saying why they couldn't get it The US Department of Justice is accusing Texas of giving misleading information to voters. They want Texas officials to update all of their voting material, to make sure people know they can still vote without an ID. In Travis County, they say they're trying to get all people eligible to vote to the polls.

Let us never forget the words with which Chief Justice Roberts blessed us when he declared the Day of Jubilee:

Nearly 50 years later, things have changed dramatically. Shelby County contends that the preclearance requirement, even without regard to its disparate coverage, is now unconstitutional. Its arguments have a good deal of force. In the covered jurisdictions, "[v]oter turnout and registration rates now approach parity. Blatantly discriminatory evasions of federal decrees are rare. And minority candidates hold office at unprecedented levels."  Coverage today is based on decades-old data and eradicated practices.

"Eradicated practices." He really wrote that. No kidding, he did.

And we conclude, as is our custom, in the great (if shaky) state of Oklahoma, where Blog Official Seismic Anomaly Friedman of the Plains brings us the tale of how the Sooners are handling the fact that the ground beneath their feet is presently doing the hula. From Channel 8 in Tulsa:

After Saturday's record earthquake, many Oklahomans are wondering just how safe certain structures are around the area. One of those concerns: dams. But Wade Anderson with the Corps, which oversees 38 dams in and around Oklahoma, said Nguyn is right: the Corps is doing all it can to make sure dams are safe and ready to deal with earthquakes.

Well, speaking on behalf of a couple hundred thousand residents of New Orleans, I'd like to say that I'm convinced.

While there is a point that seismic activity could become too much, Anderson said the Corps isn't sure just how much seismic activity the dams could take. When the dams were built decades ago, earthquakes weren't the problem they are now. "It's hard to estimate ahead of time until it actually happens," Anderson said.

There is so much in this country right now to which that statement can be applied.

This is your democracy, America. Cherish it.

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Brie Larson finds herself amidst plenty of gunplay in A24s redband trailer for Ben Wheatleys action-thriller Free Fire  including being shot in the thigh, then returning fire.

We cant all be nice girls, her gun-toting character asserts.

A24 released the trailer Friday after Free Fire premiered as the first title in the Midnight Madness section of the Toronto International Film Festival.

Free Fire centers around an arms deal that goes spectacularly and explosively wrong. Larson portrays a woman who has brokered a meeting in a deserted warehouse between two Irishmen and a gang selling them a stash of guns. But when shots are fired during the handover, complete pandemonium ensues.

When everyone has a gun, no one is in control, the trailer notes.

Sharlto Copley, Armie Hammer, Cillian Murphy, Jack Reynor, Sam Riley and Noah Taylor also star. Hammer is the wise-cracking associate to Larsons mysterious American businesswoman; Murphy is an IRA arms buyer and Copley is South African gun runner.

Martin Scorsese is exec producing Free Fire. Wheatley is directing from a script he co-wrote with Amy Jump.

Andrew Starke is producing. Additional executive producers include Sikelias Emma Tillinger-Koskoff, Reno Antoniades, Film4s David Kosse and Sam Lavender, along with Ben Roberts and Lizzie Francke from the British Film Institute.

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If you've been talking about learning how to skateboard but have been putting it off for ages, this cat might serve as some inspiration.

Didga (as in "didgeridoo") is an Australian rescue cat who's favourite food is raw kangaroo mince. Now now, she's breezily entered the Guinness World Records for the most skateboard tricks performed by a cat.

With the help of her owner Robert Dollwet, the feline from Tweed Heads managed to complete 20 tricks within a minute on Wednesday, thus making history. I knew she was special but now, with the record, I think that shes just unbelievably special and Im just so proud of her," said Dollwet. "I love her, so much."

And here you are, still trying to master a simple "ollie" in your driveway.

Lady Gaga's new single 'Perfect Illusion' is here and it's everything you need it to be

Lazy cat's mode of transportation is a Roomba

Lucky stoner spider finds a free joint in its web

Migaloo's back: Rare white whale spotted by tourists, this time on reef
A mass strike shut down India's technology capital Bangalore on Friday, with hundreds of companies forced to remain closed and public transport services cancelled as thousands took to the streets over water shortages.

Schools, shops and some government offices also remained closed and there were few private cars on the usually clogged roads in the sprawling capital of southern Karnataka state, which has seen days of street protests.

The strike was called to protest against a Supreme Court order that Karnataka release thousands of gallons of water from its reservoirs into rivers that supply the neighbouring state of Tamil Nadu, which has been suffering from a severe shortage.

"The day-long, state-wide shutdown is in protest against the Supreme Court order and to express resentment over the state government releasing the water when we don't have it for drinking and irrigation," said Vatal Nagaraj, president of a local federation of civil society groups.

Around 5,000 protesters took to the streets of Bangalore, some burning tyres and effigies of Tamil Nadu's Chief Minister Jayalalitha Jayaram.

Technology outsourcing giants Infosys and Wipro said they had told staff to take the day off and make up the time at the weekend.

The shut-down also left hundreds of rail and air passengers stranded at the city's railway station and airport, with no buses or taxis to take them.

India suffers severe water shortages that cause frequent tensions between states.

Earlier this year the government was forced to deploy troops to secure a canal supplying water to New Delhi after it was sabotaged by protesters in neighbouring Haryana state, causing days of shortages in the capital.

"We will give our blood but not Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu," said Bangalore protester Pravin Shetty, referring to the river that flows through both states.

"How can the state government release our water to grow crops in the neighbouring state when we don't have enough of it for drinking purposes this year."
marijuana medical

The legal-weed industry faces many unique challenges to doing business.

Most companies in the space are frozen out of banks, can't use credit cards for transactions, and can't get loans. It all creates huge headaches for the industry.

On top of that, marijuana is like any other commodity: When there's a supply glut, the price plummets. And that's exactly what's happening in legal markets like Colorado.

Cultivators are ramping up production and the price of marijuana is dropping, causing profit margins for growers to decline as well.

Marijuana companies  especially those that deal with the plant directly  are squeezed between the high cost of doing business and lower profit margins from the plummeting price of pot. And then there's the banking problem.

Financial institutions that do business with marijuana companies often charge exorbitant fees to offset some of the risks of dealing with these businesses, as marijuana is still federally illegal.

In its most recent "Beige Book," the Fed made two references to the nascent marijuana industry's banking troubles (emphasis added):

1. In the San Francisco District, financial institutions in states with a legal marijuana industry reported increased operational costs related to regulatory constraints.

2. Financial institutions in a few states with a legal marijuana industry reported increased operational costs related to regulatory constraints on activities linked with that industry.

What the Fed is saying here, essentially, is that banks are being pushed to come up with more rigorous compliance and risk-management controls in states with legal marijuana. And these extra expenses have caused some banks to either raise their costs (sometimes prohibitively) for marijuana business clients or drop their accounts with marijuana companies entirely.

Story continues

marijuana dispensary

The regulations stem from FinCEN, which created a set of guidelines for banks to follow if they do business with marijuana companies, based on the recommendations of the Department of Justice's Cole Memo. The DOJ's memo stipulates the federal law enforcement priorities for dealing with marijuana businesses.

Banks themselves, according to the FinCEN guidelines, must provide the due diligence necessary to show that their clients aren't breaking any federal or state laws. As well, banks must file Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) for any marijuana businesses they work with.

Complying with FinCEN's guidelines is an expensive proposition for banks, and these costs are often transferred onto legally operating marijuana companies. These companies end up getting charged huge sums just for the privilege of putting their money in banks.

The other choice for banks is simply to cease doing business with the marijuana industry. MBank  a small bank in Oregon  decided to close its marijuana accounts because the resources required to comply with the byzantine federal and state regulations vastly outstripped the potential revenue gains, according to American Banker.

It's just too expensive, and too risky, for many banks to do business with marijuana companies. Until the profit potential of marijuana outstrips the costs of compliance for the banks, it's unlikely the situation will change.

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Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., a subsidiary of Wells Fargo & Company WFC, has been fined a combined $190 million by the California and federal regulators. The banks employees were alleged of illegally opening millions of unauthorized accounts to meet their aggressive internal sales goals. Notably, the company neither admitted nor denied the allegations.

Violations Committed

It is alleged that Wells Fargos employees opened around 1.5 million deposit accounts that were not authorized by the customers. The employees then illegally transferred funds from the existing customer accounts to the new accounts, in order to plump their sales numbers and receive additional compensation. These practices hurt the consumers interests as they were sometimes charged for insufficient funds or overdraft fees, because the money was not in their original accounts.

Further, the employees were accused of applying for 565,000 credit cards, without customers authorization. As a result, many consumers incurred annual fees, along with finance or interest fees and other charges.

Moreover, debit cards were requested and issued without the consumers knowledge or consent and the employees went as far as creating PINs. Also, consumers were enrolled for the banks online banking services, without their knowledge or consent.

Penalty in Depth

The San Francisco-based bank will pay $100 million to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the largest in the agencys history, given the severity of the violations. Further, the bank will pay $35 million to the Office of Comptroller of the Currency and $50 million to the City and County of Los Angeles. In addition, the amount included $5 million in customer remediation.

Enforcement Actions

Wells Fargo fired around 5,300 employees, who acted against the banks values and promised to compensate the affected customers. For the same, Wells Fargo refunded $2.6 million to the customers for any charges associated with the products which they may not have requested. Notably, the accounts refunded represented just 1% of the accounts reviewed by a third party consulting firm and refunds averaged $25.

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Additionally, Wells Fargo proposes to invest in enhanced team-member training, monitoring and control. Further, it will ensure following stronger performance measures, which are tied to customer satisfaction, loyalty and ethics. Also, the employees will be sending customers a confirmation email within one hour of opening any deposit account and will send an application acknowledgement and decision status letter, after submitting an application for a credit card.

Conclusion

Wells Fargos aggressive sales tactics were first disclosed by The Los Angeles Times in 2013. At that time, Los Angeles Citys Attorney Mike Feuer began investigation. That probe led to a lawsuit accusing the bank of high-pressure sales goals that encouraged unfair, illegal and fraudulent conduct, such as issuing unwanted credit cards to customers.

Wells Fargo is still known for setting aggressive sales goals for its employees. Nonetheless, in a statement regarding the current allegations, the bank said, Wells Fargo reached these agreements consistent with our commitment to customers and in the interest of putting this matter behind us. Wells Fargo is committed to putting our customers interests first 100 percent of the time, and we regret and take responsibility for any instances where customers may have received a product that they did not request.

Currently, Wells Fargo carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

Other Stocks That Warrant a Look

Some better-ranked stocks in the finance space include Comerica Incorporated CMA, Apollo Global Management, LLC APO and Meta Financial Group, Inc. CASH, each sporting a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy).You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

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wells fargo

Wells Fargo has fired thousands of employees and incurred fines totaling $185 million because of a widespread practice of employees opening new accounts for existing customers without their authorization.

One remarkable aspect of this story is that the abusive practices were often unprofitable for the bank, where I worked from 2005 to 2009. As The New York Times describes:

"In many cases, customers took notice only when they received a letter in the mail congratulating them on opening a new account.

"Many of the questionable accounts were created by moving a small amount of money from the customer's current account to open the new one.

"Shortly after opening the sham account, the bank employee closed it down and moved the money back, according to regulators.

"But Wells employees were still most likely able to get credit for opening new accounts in meeting their sales goals, the regulators said."

Opening and closing unauthorized accounts like this is illegal and annoying for customers, and it doesn't do anything to make money for Wells Fargo.

When they're done properly, account openings drive profitability because they create deeper, stickier customer relationships that will generate revenue far into the future. That's not true of small accounts that are opened using money already on deposit and then quickly closed.

One account-opening scheme described by The Los Angeles Times even sounds like it caused the bank to collect less in money-transfer fees than it would have without shenanigans:

"Estrada said employees would open premium checking accounts for Latino immigrants, enabling them to send money across the border at no charge. Those accounts could be opened with just $50, but customers were supposed to have at least $25,000 on deposit at Wells Fargo within three months or pay a $30 monthly charge.

"To get around those requirements  and keep earning credit toward their quotas  Estrada said employees would downgrade the original accounts and open new premium ones for the customers before the fees kicked in."

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So why did so many employees do things like this? Because they were evaluated and paid based on how many new accounts they opened.

When you pay people to do something measurable (like open accounts) they do more of it  and not necessarily in a way that actually increases the underlying figure (profit) that you wanted to raise.

This is similar to "teaching to the test." Absent consequences, test scores are an excellent measure of underlying educational achievement. But when you make the stakes around a test very high for teachers, they adjust their educational methods to focus on improving test scores, whether or not those shifts actually make students better educated overall. And in some cases, the teachers will cheat.

I'm not saying incentive comp is useless  indeed, I suspect a reason Wells Fargo failed to clamp down on these practices for so long is that the high pressure to cross-sell that spawned these scams was also quite effective at motivating employees to sell real, profitable products to willing customers.

But it's a reminder that paying for performance is difficult, and when you do it, you need to carefully monitor whether your compensation program is inducing employees to break the law, and/or to run up the compensated metrics without generating profits.

NOW WATCH: Self-made millionaire reveals the biggest money mistake you might be making





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WestRock Company WRK said that it will settle $2.5 billion in pension obligations of the WestRock Company Consolidated Pension Plan. The transaction will help in managing future pension cost and risk of the company.



Notably, the transaction will occur through the purchase of a group annuity contract using plan assets. Per the deal, WestRock will transfer payment responsibility for retirement benefits owed to roughly 35,000 U.S. retirees and their beneficiaries to The Prudential Insurance Company of America, a subsidiary of Prudential Financial, Inc. PRU.



The settlement will reduce WestRocks overall U.S. pension obligations by around 40%. The monthly retirement benefit payment amounts currently received by retirees and their beneficiaries will not change. Those plan participants not included in the settlement transaction are staying in the plan.

Westrock Co Price

Westrock Co Price | Quote

The transaction will benefit participants remaining in the plan while entrusting certain retirees and their beneficiaries pensions to a financially strong and secure institution. Following the annuity purchase, the plan is expected to remain in a strong, overfunded financial position. The company noted that the affected retirees and beneficiaries will soon get detailed information packages.



WestRock will not make any cash contributions to the plan. The transaction is anticipated to close in late September, subject to closing conditions. The company does not expect any unfavorable impact to its fiscal 2017 pension income as a result of this settlement.



WestRocks advisors for the transaction include Mercer as lead strategic advisor, Goldman Sachs Asset Management as Outsourced Chief Investment Officer of the plan and Covington & Burling LLP and Mazursky Constantine LLC as legal counsel.



WestRock currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).



Some better-ranked stocks in the industry include UPM-Kymmene Oyj UPMKY and Domtar Corporation UFS, both sporting a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

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It's been 15 years since radical Islamic terrorists hijacked four airliners, crashing two into the World Trade Center complex in New York and another into the Pentagon building in Arlington, Virginia. A fourth plane plowed into the ground near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, as brave passengers and crew members tried to wrest control away from the hijackers. All told, 2,996 people died that day and more than 6,000 others were injured.

While teachers try to explain 9/11 to a generation of students who weren't yet born when it happened, millions of people around the world have the events of the day seared into their minds. U.S. News & World Report asked readers to share their memories of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. You can read more of their thoughts on Facebook.

I was a sophomore in high school... sitting in math class when another teacher rushed in saying to turn on the news. Within three years, nearly half of my friends had enlisted. #NeverForget -- Jessica Bennett Anderson, Sparks, Nevada

I was sitting in my boss' office in the Library of Congress Madison building, watching on TV images of the twin towers falling and the Pentagon burning. The news reported that a plane was missing and presumed to have been hijacked. We looked at each other. What is the next high value target? The Capitol. How would a plane approach it? Down the Mall. What would happen if it hit the dome a glancing blow? It would deflect left to the Hart Building or right to the Madison Building. In the latter case, it would likely hit the building corner where we were sitting. Everybody go home, my boss said. We all left the building and gradually other offices did as well. There was never an evacuation order, though, from Library security office or the Librarian. Happily or sadly, that missing aircraft later crashed in Pennsylvania. Driving home, I remarked to myself how calm and polite the other drivers were on those crowded streets around the Capitol and how cell phones were so oversubscribed that there was no signal. -- Jonathan Sanford, Washington, D.C.

I was a stay at home mom at the time. Katie Couric was on TV, and I was catching a few minutes of news while the kids were watching "Sesame Street." I saw the second plane hit the World Trade Center and called my dad. He started crying, saying, "We're at war." I was transfixed with horror watching the coverage. The kids were allowed to watch PBS kids' shows all morning long while I watched cable news coverage. -- Robyn Harrison Alexander

Stuck on the D train on the Manhattan Bridge. Luckily, things weren't like they are today, with everyone having a smartphone. None of us knew what was going on and no one panicked. It was just another delay on the morning commute. -- Melanie Ali, Fairfax, Virginia

I was living in a guest house in Brussels on an internship without access to TV. It was an incredibly weird experience to learn of perhaps the defining TV-broadcast event of our lifetimes through still images on newspaper front pages the morning after. -- Mark Smith, Manassas, Virginia

I was in 8th grade, just a few weeks into the school year. We basically had no idea during the day. When the last bell rang, that was the first time I realized something was wrong. Normally students milled around the hallways before slowly making their way outside, while most teachers stayed in their rooms working. That day every teacher was in the halls or outside, telling us all the get home as quickly as possible. I asked our social studies teacher what was going on, and with tears in his eyes he just told us to get home and talk to our parents. The teachers knew all day, but they held it together to give us one last day of our old lives. They knew, as a commuter town for NYC, that some of our neighbors would not be coming home. We lost 12 people from our town that day. -- Hannah Carson, Perth, Australia

Sitting in an emergency operations center in Florida talking about wildfire mitigation. I remember someone's pager going off and him coming back to say a plane had hit one of the WTC. We went back to the discussion (thinking it was some small plane) until the pagers all started going off. -- Jane Sibley Frantz

I was at my desk at work. I worked as a technician for Verizon at the time. All of our phones started going off. We turned on the TV and saw it all happen right before our eyes. Went outside to get some air and heard the explosion from the plane hitting the Pentagon. Told my boss I had to go home. Drove directly to my son's school and demanded that they let him out of class. Drove home and gathered all my family near. Hubby went in to work to go down to the Pentagon to fix the phone lines. -- Sharon Srednicki Simpson

I was in 8th grade. I walked into my U.S. history classroom and the television was [showing] the tower burning. I asked my teacher what movie we were watching. She said it was real life. We watched in horror that entire period. A day I will never forget... -- Andrew Flores, Scottsdale, Arizona

I had just walked in from grocery shopping, was going to have a friend for lunch, flipped on the TV, panicked when the plane hit the Pentagon, since hubs had mentioned that he had meeting at the Pentagon that day. Mother then called in a panic, saying she needed me to come get her from work; she worked near the Pentagon and watched the plane go into the side of the building. Hubs called to tell me that the meeting had been canceled because the guy he was suppose to meet with was sick. The plane hit where they would have met. -- Marilyn Spector Morrison, Springfield, Virginia

My daughters and I were at the doctor's office watching the TV. We watched it as it happened and couldn't believe what was happening right before our eyes. The kids wanted to go and get lunch and I said, 'No, we have to go home because your dad is going to have to leave.' When we got to the driveway he was there with all of his gear, ready to go. He was part of the first response to NYC with the USCG PSU. He was gone 3 months and then went to GITMO. -- Sondra Foote, Paw Paw, West Virginia

I was home sick with a bad migraine. When I turned on the news one tower had already been hit and I watched as the second tower was hit and then they went down. I lost a friend that worked in one of the towers. -- Dale Mentnech Baker, Suffolk County, New York

I was headed to Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx to kick off a Learning Leaders mentor program. We canceled it of course as the hospital was standing by for the injured. Our instructor was stuck in a subway but did get out when transportation started moving again. We all thought a small plane hit the tower. News traveled a bit slower then. We watched the smoke from the parking garage and were ready to push beds to rooms. We had a few walk-ins with smoke in their eyes and five firemen. One had bad smoke in his lungs but he survived. We never did revive the mentor program but I was proud to be working at a hospital that was poised with thousands of employees to help the injured. -- Maureen E. Simmons, New Rochelle, New York

At that time I was working at a rail-yard next to Metro airport in Michigan. Before I left for work I had seen the first plane hit on TV. It didn't become real in my mind until I got to work, there was not a plane in the sky. I found out later that the United States had grounded all flights in the U.S. That is when it hit home. -- George Wetzel, Richardson, Texas

I was living and working in Brooklyn and was waiting to meet a colleague coming from Manhattan. She called saying she couldn't get down the West Side Highway and that she had heard a plane flew into a building downtown. She was turning around and going back uptown. I turned on the news in the car and heard it was the World Trade Center. I drove a few blocks West and saw the first tower on fire with my own eyes from across the river. I drove home, and minutes later I saw the first building fall on the TV and eventually the second tower. I lived so close that there was smoke and paperwork and ash drifting into our street. I'll never forget that smell. It smelled like that for weeks. It was a very surreal time. The days and weeks that followed brought news of friends and of friend's families who were unaccounted for. My home town, a Long Island commuter town, was hit very hard with loss. -- Kat Driscoll Barlow, Springfield, Virginia

I was at home working when it came on TV. It seemed surreal. I walked outside and it was eerily quiet. Not even a bird chirping. I will never forget it. -- Janet Oney, Ore City, Texas

I was driving to work and just when I got off the Pentagon exit from 395 I saw an airplane crash right into Pentagon building before my eyes. Then I heard the loud noise and big fire from the building. I felt the heat from my dashboard. I opened the door and got out and every other driver did the same. I was stuck at the exit for six hours and could not move my car forward or backward. Finally I could move forward and just made it to the office in D.C. and found out about the disaster. Took me another 10 hours to go back home in Virginia. Throughout the day we were trying to get in touch with the family to make sure everyone were safe, etc... This was the time when I was so scared of missing loved ones. --Lucy Van, Virginia

I was under the elevated section of the BQE. Making a delivery. Just below the southern tip of Manhattan. Saw and heard much more than I wanted to. My company had contracts with FEMA and I told them, "If we go, it has to be me." Went back two days later, was there for three weeks working as a driver doing USAR support for FEMA. Horrible event, but it changed my life. -- Jesse Bailey

I worked for a money manager in San Diego. I arrived at work to find all employees standing up at their desks, watching the small TVs we each had. No one said a word as we watched the news. About after 30 minutes, we were all told to go home and be with our families. We were in one of the tallest buildings in the city. I made it home before the towers fell. I remember realizing that this day would forever change all Americans and our future. That day I realized the United States was not "safe" or immune from our enemies. Prior to that day, I had always believed no one on the planet would even think of attacking us on our own soil. -- Shannon Robinson

I was teaching in a NYC public elementary school. It was my daughter's first day of Pre-K. Sadly, many of our friends perished that horrible day. Many were 1st responders. "All gave some, some gave all." I do believe that our world changed forever that day and that all the departed will never be forgotten! -- Kerri Ann O'Connor

I was an 8th grader in Rockland, Maine, a tiny coastal town. Picturesque. Sublime. Isolated. As the class bell rang and I heading to Social Studies I passed through a classroom with the TV on. I heard classmates ask what movie we were watching. The teachers didn't answer. They couldn't answer. I remember for many days and weeks after, they couldn't answer our questions. We watched the live news coverage all that next class period until the first tower fell. I recall my teacher quickly rising from her chair, switching off the television power, and making the sign of the cross in a silent prayer. At lunch it was the talk of "World War III," "This is crazy," "What the hell happened" that kept my head spinning. My sister was away at a boarding high school. I was sure she was safe. My dad was a high school teacher just on the other side of town. He was fine. My mom worked for a U.S. senator. She traveled to the Jetport and occasionally to D.C. for work with the senator. Was she safe? Thankfully she was, but what else had happened? Who else was hurt? Did I know anyone in New York? Pennsylvania? D.C.? I remember watching the news that night and for many nights after, sitting with my parents, trying to understand what had happened, what would happen. 15 years later, I now live in D.C., right in the heart of the city on Capitol Hill. I sometime wonder what I would do if there was another terrorist attack of that magnitude in this city. But I do not live in fear. We are a stronger country because of the experiences we have had. We will never forget, but will will continue to live our lives to the fullest. -- Alexandra Linn, Washington, D.C.

These comments have been lightly edited for clarity.

Lylah M. Alphonse is the Managing Editor of News for U.S. News & World Report. You can follow her on Twitter or e-mail her at LAlphonse@usnews.com.
By Dustin Volz WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House on Thursday named a retired U.S. Air Force brigadier general as the governments first federal cyber security chief, a position announced eight months ago that is intended to improve defenses against hackers. Gregory Touhill's job will be to protect government networks and critical infrastructure from cyber threats as federal chief information security officer, according to a statement. The administration of President Barack Obama has made bolstering federal cyber security a top priority in his last year in office. The issue has gained more attention because of high-profile breaches in recent years of government and private sector computers. U.S. intelligence officials suspect Russia was responsible for breaches of Democratic political organizations and state election systems to exert influence on the Nov. 8 presidential election. Russia has dismissed the allegations as absurd. Obama announced the new position in February alongside a budget proposal to Congress asking for $19 billion for cyber security across the U.S. government. The job is a political appointment, meaning Obama's successor can choose to replace Touhill after being sworn in next January. Touhill is currently a deputy assistant secretary for cyber security and communications at the Department of Homeland Security. He will begin his new role later this month, a source familiar with the matter said. Touhill's responsibilities will include creating and implementing policy for best security practices across federal agencies and conducting periodic audits to test for weaknesses, according to the announcement. Grant Schneider, who is the director of cyber security policy at the White Houses National Security Council, will be acting deputy to Touhill, according to the announcement. (Reporting by Dustin Volz; editing by Cynthia Osterman and Grant McCool)
Local authorities still aren't sure what happened to a Montana woman who said she was abducted earlier this week, and allegedly frantically communicated with her family on her cell phone as she was apparently driven across state lines before being found dead in the trunk of her car, according to multiple reports.



Rita Maze, 47, was found dead around midnight Wednesday, Lewis and Clark County Sheriff Leo Dutton has said. Although her death has not yet been ruled a homicide, per the Spokesman-Review and KHQ, her family believes she was kidnapped and killed  and that they were on the phone with her during her final hours alive.



While authorities have said there was a person of interest in the case, a law enforcement source tells PEOPLE that those earlier reports were not accurate. Sheriff Dutton said that an earlier suspect in the case, identified on convenience store video, has been ruled out, according to the Associated Press.



Maze died of a single gunshot wound to her torso. A handgun and two shell casings were found next to her body in the trunk of the car found in a parking lot near Spokane, Washington, according to court documents obtained by the Spokesman-Review.



The Spokane County Medical Examiner's Office said more investigation would be needed and has not ruled Maze's case a homicide, according to the paper.



According to court documents, an officer called Maze's cell phone about 10 p.m. Tuesday, after her family reported her missing.



"Someone answered and the officer said there were gunshots, then silence," KHQ reports.



"We know where the body was located, we know where she started out," Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich said Thursday, according to the paper. "What happened in between? Don't know."



He said people should question the kidnapping, according to the paper, and that nothing in the case  including suicide  has been ruled out, according to KHQ.



The FBI has taken the lead in investigating the case, as it involved multiple states, a spokeswoman tells PEOPLE. In a statement, the agency said, "This remains an active investigation and no further comment will be made at this time."



 Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter.





Why Authorities Are Reportedly Questioning the Story of a Montana Mom Who Died After Calling Family During Her Alleged Kidnapping| Crime & Courts, True Crime



According to the Great Falls Tribune, Maze told her family that on Tuesday a "large man in a black hoodie" hit her on the head and put her in the trunk of her car, at what authorities said was likely a rest stop near Wolf Creek, Montana.



Maze was then apparently driven into Idaho and, finally, Washington.



She was traveling from Helena back to her home in Great Falls after visiting relatives, according to the Tribune. Her husband last spoke to her before noon Tuesday and the family reported her missing about 8:20 p.m., according to the paper.



She made contact with them again  apparently from the trunk of her car during the abduction  later that night, according to the paper. She also spoke to Helena police from the trunk, Sheriff Dutton said Wednesday.



PEOPLE was not immediately able to reach the Maze family or local authorities in Montana or Washington for comment.



But Maze's daughter, Rochelle, believes her mom was kidnapped, she told the Spokesman-Review.



"She did not hit herself, stuff herself in the truck and drive all the way to Spokane and shoot herself," Rochelle said.



"I believe they shot her and left the gun and keys in there to make it look like she killed herself," she said. "I know she did not."
They were hailed as the most comprehensive, robust and unyielding sanctions to date against North Koreas pariah government. Yet just six months after the U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to impose tougher penalties on Pyongyang for testing ballistic and nuclear weapons, the isolated regime has carried out its fifth and possibly most powerful nuclear test to date, creating a 5.3 magnitude tremor at the Punggye-ri test site.

In response to North Koreas illicit blast, President Barack Obama vowed Friday to work with his Japanese and South Korean counterparts to impose new sanctions to show Pyongyang that there are consequences to its unlawful and dangerous actions. But because the previous round of sanctions failed to curb North Koreas drive to advance its nuclear weapons program, doubts remain about the effectiveness of punitive economic measures on the worlds most isolated regime.

The device that was tested on Friday reportedly yielded 20 to 30 kilotons, a much more powerful blast than North Koreas seven to nine kiloton detonation in January. Responding to that explosion, world diplomats agreed to a resolution in March calling for inspecting all cargo going to and from the country, a ban on all weapons trading with Pyongyang, and an expansion of specific Korean officials subject to sanctions. U.N. diplomats touted the measures as the most punishing to date, and a sign of closer cooperation between the United States and China, North Koreas longtime patron.

But its failure to stop Pyongyangs latest provocations is renewing skepticism that Washingtons favorite tool for penalizing Kim Jong Uns regime will ever have any measurable impact.

No amount of sanctions will stop North Korea, Jae Ku, the director of the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, told Foreign Policy. Nuclear weapons are their sole survival strategy.

Ku said as long as North Korea believes a nuclear arsenal is the only thing protecting it from Western efforts toward regime change, sanctions will have a limited impact.

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Other critics agree that sanctions are largely useless, but for different reasons.

William Brown, a Korea expert at Georgetown University, said the regime has long understood how to maintain control of an isolated and blacklisted economy.

Sanctions dont have much impact on an economy that has been essentially bankrupt for a generation and which long ago lost its most important benefactors, he said. Sanctions may even help Kim control the flow of money to individuals that increasingly are seen as rivals to the states authoritarian controls, and even to Kims rule.

But others are still holding out hope for sanctions to work  and say the reason the measures have yet to produce the desired effect has to do with time and enforcement.

Expectations were that it would take about six months for sanctions impact to kick in  and thats if China aggressively implemented them, said Scott Snyder, a Korea expert at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Beijing was long thought to be a potential check on Pyongyangs nuclear ambitions. But since Kim Jong Un took power, relations between the two capitals have soured. The North Korean dictator has never visited China as leader, nor has he met President Xi Jinping. Since taking power, Kim has purged many government officials with strong ties to China. This includes his uncle, Jang Song Thaek, whom he had executed.

Some experts accuse China of failing to enforce the March sanctions and point to the relative stability of North Koreas economy as evidence.

Troy Stangarone, senior director for congressional affairs and trade at the Korea Economic Institute of America, said North Koreas exports to China last spring dropped only 4 percent compared to the winter, and 14 percent from a year ago.

This likely reflects a decline in the export price of coal rather than the effect of sanctions, Stangarone said.

On Friday, Beijing and its state controlled media condemned the latest nuclear test, with Chinas Xinhua news agency calling the detonation unwise.

All parties, including North Korea, should recognize that tumult on the peninsular, war, and instability in Northeast Asia will benefit nobody, the commentary said.

At the same time, China suggested that South Koreas decision to move forward on its plans to host the Thermal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system played a role in North Koreas decision to conduct the test.

Stangarone dismissed Beijings claim, saying the most significant driving factor for Pyongyang was likely that it reached a point where its technical research required a test to determine if a real breakthrough had been made in its weapons development process.

He added that the reclusive regime appears to have made the strategic decision that the cost of sanctions does not outweigh the strategic benefits of a verifiably workable nuclear weapon.

Photo credit: Bloomberg/Getty Images
A great deal of science fiction  at least that which leaves a big mark on pop culture  gets potential readers and viewers in the door with a promise of escapism. Sometimes these tales feature a protagonist like Luke Skywalker who leaves his normal life behind and gets a chance to exchange the dreary and dull for danger and destiny, and we as the audience are invited for a short time to imagine ourselves getting whisked away in the same way.

But ironically, many of these same stories end up putting a high value on the very things we take for granted in the everyday lives that escapism offers release from. In X-Men, Professor X creates the Xavier Institute in part to give young mutants the chance to make friends, go to school, and enjoy the same normal childhood as the kids reading those Marvel comics. In a recent episode of Steven Universe, a show with magical pink lions and immortal gem warriors, a 6,000 year-old gem with the ability to fly praises humans for having superpowers of their own: Youre allowed and expected to invent who you are, she says. What an incredible powerthe ability to grow up.'

Thats why its fitting that the greatest episode of Star Trek, a franchise that is celebrating its 50th anniversary this month, is an episode that replaces the adventure of the starship Enterprise with the simple joys of a having a loving spouse and children. This tale is The Inner Light, an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation that originally aired in 1992 and is one of only four Trek episodes to win a Hugo Award.

Also Read: 'Star Trek: Discovery' - Everything We Learned From Bryan Fuller's TCA Panel

In this episode, the Enterprise stumbles upon a mysterious probe that hits Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) with an energy beam. When he wakes up, he finds himself on a planet called Kataan with a woman named Eline. Eline tells Picard that she is his wife and that he is Kamin, an iron weaver from the village of Ressik. At first, Picard is alarmed by this news and tries to think of some way to contact his crew. Eventually, though, he accepts that there is no way off the planet and begins to live out his life as Kamin. What he doesnt know is that he is actually still unconscious on the bridge of the Enterprise, and that the probe is feeding this vision of another world and another life into his head. By the end of the episode, Picard has lived nearly 40 years of Kamins life while being unconscious for less than half an hour.

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To understand the power of this episode, we need to understand who Picard is. He is a man defined by his duty and his commitment to Starfleet. He is completely dedicated to seeking out new life and new civilizations, and when hes not on duty as a captain, hes diving into intellectual pursuits. What hes never considered is the prospect of having a family, and hell fully admit that hes not good around children.

But in The Inner Light, Picard finds happiness in a life that is completely removed from his own. Instead of an explorer, hes a small-town metal worker. Instead of a captain, hes a regular citizen whose suggestions for addressing the towns drought are shot down. But in spite of this, Picard finds peace in the family he never even would have considered having in his normal life. Id always thought I didnt need children to make my life complete, he muses. Now, I cant imagine life without them.

Also Read: 'Star Trek' 101: The Weirdest Episodes, From Tribbles to The Rock (Videos)

But even as memories of life aboard the Enterprise wane in his mind as the simulation progresses, he doesnt completely lose himself to Kamin. Who he is as Picard has an impact on the life he lives as a villager. His intellectual curiosity and desire to explore manifests itself in his frequent hikes around Ressik and his attempts to investigate the unending drought thats plaguing the planet.Eventually, his firstborn daughter joins him on these hikes, and they inspire her to become a scientist. Rather than transforming into a completely different person, we see what kind of a husband and father Picard could be if he ever actually stepped away from a life in the stars, and it turns out hes quite good at being a family man.

And that makes it all the more heartbreaking when, in the episodes second half, we see Picard watch Eline die and realize that Kataans drought will never end and bring about the end of the planets civilization. The episode ends with Picard seeing a probe launch from his village. He realizes that this probe is the same one he encounters on the Enterprise, and that he now carries the legacy of an entire civilization in his mind. Like waking up from a dream, he returns to his life on the Enterprise and discovers that the probe contained a flute that he frequently played during his life as Kamin. He solemnly plays a tune on the flute alone, lamenting a lost civilization and a life that he never realized he wanted. A life of family and friends found and lost that has now come to an end.

The Inner Light is an episode that is not only a high point for Star Trek, but sci-fi as a whole. We dream of what it would be like to journey on spaceships that can warp through the universe, but for a man who actually fulfills that dream, this probe makes him realize the wonders that come with a life that billions of people enjoy every day. Theres a lot of amazing things you can do in Starfleet, but the most amazing journey of all  having a family  only comes when the starship docks for good.

Star Trek will return with Star Trek: Discovery, premiering on CBS All Access this January. Check out our list of the greatest Trek episodes below and check out our picks for the greatest Trek characters ever here.
Sept 9 (Reuters) - Wisconsin on Friday appealed a federal judge's ruling to overturn the conviction of one of two Wisconsin men serving life sentences for the 2005 slaying of a freelance photographer in a case spotlighted in the popular Netflix television documentary "Making a Murderer."

Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel appealed the case to the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

U.S. Magistrate Judge William Duffin on Aug. 12 ruled that a jury's 2007 guilty verdict against Brendan Dassey was based on a coerced confession the defendant gave as a 16-year-old with a learning disability.

Dassey and his uncle, Steven Avery, were convicted in separate trials of killing freelance photographer Teresa Halbach at Avery's home in Manitowoc County, Wisconsin.

In a statement explaining the decision to appeal, Schimel said two state courts "properly concluded that Dassey's confession was voluntary, and the investigators did not use constitutionally impermissible tactics."

"The Halbach family has been notified of the appeal and fully supports the state's decision to seek justice on behalf of their daughter," Schimel added.

The case was the subject of the 10-part Netflix-released documentary "Making a Murderer," which questioned the handling of the investigation and the motivation of Manitowoc County law enforcement officials, who had sent Avery to prison in 1985 for a rape he did not commit.

Halbach's charred remains were found in an incineration barrel and a burn pit on Avery's property, about 80 miles (130 km) north of Milwaukee.

Laura Nirider, one of Dassey's post-conviction attorneys, said in a statement she was disappointed in the state's decision to appeal.

"We look forward to continuing to defend his rights in court," Nirider said.

(Reporting by Eric M. Johnson in Seattle; Editing by Will Dunham)
By Brendan O'Brien

MILWAUKEE (Reuters) - One of the two Wisconsin girls accused of attacking a classmate to please a fictional character named Slenderman changed her plea to not guilty due to mental illness on Friday, according to court records.

Anissa Weier and Morgan Geyser were charged with attempted first-degree homicide in the May 2014 stabbing attack in Waukesha, a suburb of Milwaukee. All three girls were 12 years old at the time of the stabbing. Weier and Geyser, who will be tried as adults, are now 14. [L1N1AD1NL]

Weier changed her plea from not guilty to not guilty by reason of "mental disease or defect" in a Waukesha County Circuit Court according to online court records filed on Friday. The change of plea was entered by Maura McMahon, one of Weier's attorneys.

Judge Michale Bohren ordered that Weier be evaluated by two doctors by Oct. 6, court records showed. The next hearing for Weier and Geyser is scheduled for Oct. 13.

Geyser's plea was changed to not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect last month, according to court records.

The girls would likely be treated at a mental hospital if they are found not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect.

A Wisconsin appeals court ruled in July that the teenagers should be tried as adults after their attorneys tried to get the case moved to juvenile court. [L1N1AD1NL] They can appeal that decision to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Weier and Geyser could each be sentenced to up to 65 years in prison if convicted as adults. They could be held until the age of 25 if convicted as juveniles.

Wisconsin law requires cases to begin in adult court if they involve juvenile suspects at least 10 years old who are charged with first-degree attempted intentional homicide.

The girls' lawyers had argued the girls were mentally ill when they stabbed their classmate. A judge ruled Weier and Geyser both were competent to stand trial. Health experts testified that Geyser suffers from schizophrenia, but has refused to take medication. Weier was diagnosed with a delusional disorder that made her believe in Slenderman.

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According to prosecutors, the girls lured the classmate into the woods and stabbed her 19 times to impress Slenderman, a fictional supernatural Internet character depicted in stories as stalking and tormenting humans, especially children. The stabbing occurred after a sleepover and had been planned for months.

The victim was found crawling out of the woods by a bicyclist. She spent six days in the hospital and returned to school last fall.

(Reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee, additional reporting by Timothy Mclaughlin in Chicago; editing by Toby Chopra, Jeffrey Benkoe and Diane Craft)
PARIS (Reuters) - One of three women arrested over a failed Islamist attack in Paris had been "promised as a bride" to two men behind attacks on police officers and a priest earlier this year, the Paris prosecutor said on Friday. The revelations highlight the close links between members of radical Islamist circles in France, even though they might live in different parts of the country. Sarah H, a 23-year-old Frenchwoman, was taken into custody on Thursday along with the other two women after police launched a manhunt to find them, believing they were planning an imminent attack on the Gare de Lyon train station in Paris. The three women were being tracked after a car loaded with gas cylinders was found near Notre Dame cathedral at the weekend. Sarah H allegedly stabbed a police officer when she was arrested; another of the women was shot and wounded. Neither the police officer nor the woman shot was seriously injured. Sarah H "is known to intelligence services as being particularly linked to Islamist movements," the prosecutor, Francois Molins, said. "She was previously betrothed to Larossi Abballa, the man responsible for the attack in Magnanville, and Adel Kermiche, who was behind the attack in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray." Abballa was killed by security services after murdering a police commander and his partner in June in Magnanville, an attack claimed by Islamic State. Kermiche and Abdel-Malik Nabir Petitjean were killed in July after slitting the throat of a French priest in a church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray in the name of the group. The three women were determined to carry out Islamic State's "deadly ideology", Molins said, and had been given direction by members of the militant group in Syria. Another man, Mohamed Lamine A, who was due to marry Sarah H, was also arrested on Thursday. That man was also connected to the Abballa attack, according to Molins, who identified him as the brother of a friend of the police killer. (Reporting By John Irish, editing by Larry King)
Arlington National Cemetery added another name to its somber roster Wednesday. Elaine Harmon was a member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots during World War II. Thanks to the passage of legislation this summer that allows for the interment of the WASP in Arlington National Cemetery she rests among others who were willing to risk it all for their nation. Just three WASP escorted Harmon to her final resting place. Only 96 remain of the 1,830 who trained and 1,102 who earned their wings; the youngest of them will turn 94 next year.

The WASP flew for the Army Air Forces from 1942 to 1944. They did what their leader Jacqueline Cochran called aerial dishwashing, executing jobs that no one wanted to do but needed to be done. They ferried desperately needed aircraft across the country, towed targets behind their planes to train male gunners (who fired at them with live ammunition), flew non-flying personnel, test-flew damaged and repaired aircraft, and did any other flying job the Army Air Forces asked them to do. They were unceremoniously sent home in December 1944 when, after an ugly battle, Congress failed to formally bring them into the USAAF.

A college graduate, as most of the WASP were, Harmon earned her pilots license through the governments Civilian Pilot Training Program before the war began. But not everyone accepted her decision to fly. Harmons mother worried what the neighbors would thinkit was very unladylike to fly airplanes. When Harmons husband was about to be shipped overseas, he thought joining the WASP would keep her too busy to worry. Despite the fact that her mother disapproved, Harmon joined the WASP so she could fly the greatest airplanes in her generation and help bring her husband home. After six months of training, she flew BT-13s at Nellis Air Force Base until the women were disbanded in time for Christmas 1944. She worked as an air traffic controller until her husband came home from the war, and together they moved on with their lives.

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When the U.S. Air Force became an independent branch in 1947 they sent letters to the WASP inviting them to join the reserves. The USAF wasnt interested in having women as pilots despite their experience, but Harmon jumped at the chance to serve her country again. Shortly after the birth of her third child, she was disappointed to receive the letter that became familiar to many of the WASP: The USAF did not allow women to serve if they had children under the age of 14. Men with young children continued to serve.

Elaine Harmon was a member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots during World War II. (WASP Archive at Texas Womans University)

The women of the WASP began to reconnect with one another in the late 1960s and 1970s as many of them were beginning to retire. In 1972, the Armed Forces announced that for the first time ever women would be flying American military aircraft. The WASP realized they had been forgotten and were determined to do something about it. Harmon joined the fight to prove that they were veterans. She typed letter after letter and spoke with lawmakers during the multi-year effort. Not long after the WASPs 1977 victory recognizing their service as having been active duty, Harmon and a handful of others realized the bill had been written in a limiting way. It said they were veterans for the purposes of the Veterans Administration, meaning those who served in the reserves or the civil service were not allowed to count their time in the WASP toward retirement. In 1977, the women of the WASP rallied together to gain recognition for their work during the war and for the 38 WASP who had died serving their country. In 1981, Harmon testified with Senator Barry Goldwater, the original bill sponsor, that the intention of the law had been lost. But times had changed by the 1980s, and Congress rejected their argument.

Elaine Harmon spent much of her last 40 years working to make sure the WASP were not forgotten.

In 2009, supporters of the WASP pushed to honor them for their service during the war. Harmon stood behind President Obama as he signed a bill awarding the Congressional Gold Medal to the WASP. She beamed at the 2010 ceremony, reveling in the fact that the WASP were being recognized. The nation was finally remembering them.

As she entered her 90s Harmons health began to fail, and she died in April 2015. Her final wish was to be placed at Arlington National Cemetery. As recently as 2002 the cemetery had determined that the women were eligible for ceremonies as officers, but that was reversed in 2015. While the Veterans Administration runs most military cemeteries, the Secretary of the Army runs Arlington National Cemetery. The WASPs 1977 legislation said they were veterans for the purposes of the Veterans Administration. The Secretary of the Army refused Harmon and other WASPs requests to be interred at the cemetery based on this technicality.

Recommended: Fear of a Female President

Harmons family was crushed and dismayed by Arlingtons refusal. Then they became determined. They set up a Change.org petition in January calling for their inclusion and gathered over 178,000 signatures. In addition to media coverage, politicians also joined in, giving their fight even more traction. Representative Martha McSally, a USAF veteran pilot and friend of the WASP, introduced a bill in the House. It was replicated by Senator Barbara MiKulski, long-time WASP supporter from Harmons home state of Maryland. Both bills gained co-sponsors as fast as they could sign on. After 20 whirlwind weeks, the WASP had a new bill signed by Obamathis one giving them express permission to be interred at Arlington National Cemetery.

Elaine Harmon was my first oral history interview back in 1996. She and I saw each other three or four times a year and she was always sure to share a laugh and a new story or two. She was popular among the WASP for her kind-hearted, adventurous spirit. From bungee jumping in her 80s to sharing laughs with the leader of the free world, Harmon never stopped living her life to its fullest. It is appropriate that she represents the final fight for respect for the WASP. She spent much of her last 40 years working to make sure they were not forgotten. She played a key role in them gaining recognition as veterans in the 1970s and then went on to represent the women at events around the world. She spoke to hundreds of groups over the years, teaching them about the WASP and their part in World War II. And now she is a part of this final lesson: The WASP are veterans.

Read more from The Atlantic:

This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
By Nidal al-Mughrabi GAZA (Reuters) - Christian aid group World Vision has laid off about 120 contractors in the Gaza Strip following allegations by Israel that the agency's operations manager in the territory had diverted funds to the Islamist group Hamas. In an Aug. 29 letter handed to contractors at a meeting in Gaza, the NGO said its bank accounts in Jerusalem had been frozen by Israeli authorities and it was no longer able to transfer money to Gaza, making it impossible to pay them. The letter said World Vision was living through a big crisis and its sources of funding had been affected. It was written in Arabic and a copy was sent to Reuters. "Because of the crisis, we have frozen all our activities in Gaza. Our bank accounts in Jerusalem were frozen by the (Israeli) authorities, which also prevented us from making any transfers to Gaza. "Because of these conditions that are beyond the control of World Vision, we will not be able to keep your job at the present stage because we will not be able to transfer any salaries or any other payments." A spokesman for World Vision spokesman would not confirm that the contractors had been laid off, saying only that the agency's operations in Gaza had been suspended following the accusations against the operations manager, Mohammad El Halabi. "Due to the seriousness of the allegations laid against Mohammad El Halabi, World Vision has suspended operations in Gaza," the organization said. "We are conducting a full review, including an externally conducted forensic audit." Israel arrested El Halabi in June and last month accused him of funneling tens of millions of dollars to Hamas, the Islamist militant group that has controlled the territory since 2007. Halabi has denied any wrongdoing via his lawyer. He has been charged and has appeared at a pre-trial hearing held in secret. World Vision and Amnesty International have called on Israel to ensure he receives a fair and transparent trial. Israeli officials accuse Halabi of siphoning off more than $7 million a year since 2010 to pay Hamas fighters, buy arms, pay for the group's activities and build fortifications. World Vision has disputed the allegations, saying in a statement on Aug. 8 that its total operating budget in Gaza over the past 10 years was around $22.5 million, making the alleged diversion of nearly $50 million "hard to reconcile". Some foreign diplomats have expressed concern at Israel's presentation of the case and sought clearer evidence for the numbers. Since the allegations emerged, however, Australia has suspended funding to the aid group. One of the contractors laid off told Reuters World Vision had emphasized the situation was out of its control. "They said it was about the freezing of transfers and nothing else, when we asked them if that had to do with Halabi's case," he said, asking not to be named because he did not want to jeopardize the payment of funds he is still awaiting. The termination letter informed contractors World Vision was looking at ways to pay all amounts owed to them through legal channels and "we hope this happens in the near future". The statement asked signatories to hand over belongings that they had received from the aid group including mobile phones, work identity cards and computers. (Additional reporting by Luke Baker; editing by Angus MacSwan)
Gaza City (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) - World Vision has cancelled the contracts of 120 Palestinian employees in Gaza, staff told AFP Friday, amid Israeli allegations that the NGO's Gaza head diverted millions to Hamas.

"They informed 120 employees from World Vision in Gaza they were officially cancelling their contracts and stopping all their projects in the enclave," said an employee who declined to be identified.

"The head of the NGO in Palestine and a number of foreign staff met on August 9 with Palestinian employees in the Gaza office and gave them documents to sign which they did," he said.

AFP saw a copy of the document which said that World Vision "is facing a major crisis that has affected the international NGO, including the source of its funding, and due to this crisis all our activities have been suspended in Gaza."

A senior World Vision source confirmed the redundancies.

Senior employees will be kept on partial salaries, the source said.

The employee who spoke to AFP said that World Vision promised to take back the staff once the crisis is resolved.

Last month Israel charged the Gaza head of the US-based Christian charity, Mohammed al-Halabi, with diverting millions of dollars of both materials and cash to Hamas, including its armed wing.

An official from the Shin Bet security service said it amounted to over $7 million a year, with up to 60 percent of the of the NGO's operating costs allegedly siphoned off.

The NGO has disputed the allegations saying it has seen no evidence presented by Israel.

It said in a statement the "cumulative operating budget in Gaza for the past 10 years was approximately $22.5 million, which makes the alleged amount of up to $50 million being diverted hard to reconcile."

The court case is to be held in secret, with Halabi's lawyer saying discussing details could mean jail.

Israel argues the secrecy is necessary for security reasons.
iStock/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) -- The House overwhelmingly approved a bill Friday that would give the families of 9/11 victims the ability to sue Saudi Arabia in U.S. courts, pitting Congress against the White House ahead of the 15th anniversary of the terror attacks.



The White House has suggested that President Obama would veto the measure over concerns that it would open the U.S. up to lawsuits in other countries.



The president of the United States continues to harbor serious concerns that this legislation would make the United States vulnerable in other court systems around the world, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said in May.



If he does, Congress would be in a position to override Obamas veto for the first time in his presidency. More than two-thirds of the members of the House and Senate support the proposal, which Saudi Arabia has criticized.



"There are always diplomatic considerations that get in the way of justice, but if a court proves the Saudis were complicit in 9/11, they should be held accountable," Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-New York, said in a statement today.



Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-New York, said the bill would help the families looking for "closure" 15 years after the attacks.



The bill cleared the House shortly before noon, after the chamber commemorated the 15th anniversary of 9/11 in a ceremony on the House steps.



Many 9/11 families traveled from New York this morning to watch the vote from the House gallery.



The vote comes after the intelligence community released 28 classified pages of Congress' first investigation into the Sept. 11 attacks, which described ties between several of the hijackers and individuals loyal to Saudi Arabia. Saudi officials have denied any connection to the terrorist attack.



Intelligence officials say the information was preliminary and was further investigated in later 9/11 probes.



Copyright  2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
Imagine having a serious, potentially life-threatening condition. Your doctor prescribes a drug that's proven effective to treat your condition. Your insurance company refuses to pay. Paying for the drug out of pocket is out of the question. You're now in health care purgatory and, depending on the disease, you go to sleep at night worrying that you might not wake up in the morning. This nightmare scenario is a reality for people with very high cholesterol who are at risk for heart attack and stroke.

New drugs approved last year by the Food and Drug Adminstration called PCSK9 inhibitors have been proven to lower LDL, or low-density lipoprotein, cholesterol levels, even in patients who don't respond to statins. Yet more than 75 percent of prescriptions for these drugs are denied by payers because of their high cost to the insurance company. For doctors and their staffs, this has meant countless hours fighting an uphill battle to get these denials overturned for their patients.

PCSK9 inhibitors (evolocumab, or Repatha, and alirocumab, or Praluent) work by increasing the longevity of receptors in cells that pull LDL or "bad" cholesterol out of the bloodstream, lowering LDL cholesterol levels. LDL cholesterol is bad because it contributes to plaque deposits in blood vessels, which can lead to heart attacks and strokes.

[See: 10 Ways to Lower Your Risk of Stroke.]

These drugs are indicated for people with clinical arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ACVD) or familial hypercholesterolemia (FH) disorder -- in which high LDL levels are caused by genetic mutations -- who have not reached their target LDL levels, even after taking the maximum tolerated statin dose. The indication includes patients with ACVD or FH whose maximum tolerated statin dose is zero.

While the number of Americans with FH is fairly small -- about 600,000 -- the number of people who may benefit from these drugs is much larger: about 3 million Americans are intolerant of statins. Dr. Seth Baum, incoming president of the American Society for Preventive Cardiology, secretary treasurer of the FH Foundation, and associate professor at Florida Atlantic University Schmidt College of Medicine, says 90 percent of the prescriptions he writes for PCSK9 Inhibitors are denied on the first round, a situation that is "unprecedented" in his 30 years of practice.

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Recently a patient of Baum's with FH and an LDL of 350, who is currently taking a statin, was denied. The fact that he had his first heart attack at age 17 and a bypass surgery in his 30s didn't matter to the insurance company. Baum calls these drugs the "first major breakthrough in lipid-lowering therapy in three decades," and says the denials are dangerous to patients because they "make it harder to manage these patients effectively."

It's not uncommon to go through three or four rounds of appeals with insurance companies. Matthew Stryker, a pharmacist who works in the Albany Medical Center in Albany, New York, says he spends hours each day fighting insurance companies on behalf of patients who are denied these drugs. Often doctors will put patients on a one-month trial with a PCSK9 Inhibitor, and yet even with proof that the drug is working, he says, the insurance company typically sends a form letter saying the patient did not meet the criteria for treatment. When the second appeal is sent, Stryker says the insurance company will often respond with a final adverse determination that is a copy and paste of the first denial. Even more troubling, the doctors reviewing these patients' cases are not always cardiologists or family practitioners; they are board certified in an unrelated field, such as surgery or pediatrics.

[See: The 12 Best Diets for Your Heart.]

At the next level of appeal, with an independent third-party reviewer, the success rate jumps to about 65 percent (compared to the national success rate of 10 to 15 percent). Unfortunately, many doctors' offices don't have the time for such a prolonged and costly fight, and simply give up. And who can blame them? Part of the insurance company strategy is to run the clock down and create so many hoops to jump through that the doctors' offices have no choice but to call it quits. One would think that simple math and logic would prevail, and this wouldn't be an issue, considering that the cost of covering a life-saving medicine will always be much, much cheaper than paying for a patient's trip to an emergency room with a heart attack or a stroke -- not to mention other related costs, such as an ambulance ride or surgery. And yet, patients are expected to possibly endure the worst-case scenarios because of business decisions being made by insurers.

So what can patients and their families do about this? Stryker suggests that patients document everything. For example, if you're intolerant of a statin, make sure your doctor indicates which statin, the dosage, how often it was taken and the specific side effects or reason you can't take it anymore. Also make sure your doctor has a detailed family history of any type of heart disease, as this will make a stronger case for your appeal. Once an appeal is made, touch base with your doctor's office periodically to check on the status, understanding that they're working on your behalf -- so while it's important to be persistent, also be polite.

Baum tells his patients to be their own advocate, and refers them to our Foundation's 50-State Network to learn how to become an advocate and to get involved to help bring this issue into the open. Advocating can be scary if you've never done it, but getting involved is crucial, because if patients don't, nobody else will. And if you've been denied a PCSK9 -- or any medicine for that matter -- don't be afraid to call your insurance company to request an appeal. If your insurance company denies you a drug that's listed on its formulary, now they're breaking the law. Call your local insurance commissioner and report it. It's not always easy to file a complaint with your state's insurance commissioner, but there are resources to help you understand the process. If more people took the time to do this, there's a good chance that we could reform the system and improve access to care.

To try to push for that reform, the ASPC is hosting a town hall meeting open to the public on Sept. 16 at the Boca Resort in Boca Raton, Florida. Baum along with other cardiologists, nurse practitioners, patients, press and others will gather to discuss this issue. If you have been impacted by this issue, or know someone who has, show up at 7 p.m. for the meeting, and make your voice heard. Can't make it to Boca Raton that night? Follow @GHLForg on Twitter for live updates. After the town hall, the ASPC will release a position paper with recommendations.

[See: 17 Ways Heart Health Varies in Women and Men.]

For patients who need PCSK9 inhibitors, the future is uncertain. Outcomes data showing the drugs' impact on heart disease morbidity and mortality are expected next year. Will that be enough to sway payers? Chances are, it won't be. But when patients and their families get involved, and raise their voices with decision-makers like state elected officials and regulators and the media, we can at least have hope.
Toronto (Canada) (AFP) - The radicalization of young Muslims, an uprooted girl's search for identity and post-adolescents on a path to spread terror overseas bloodied the silver screen at the Toronto film festival Friday.

In the aftermath of recent attacks in France and Belgium, and the flight of dozens of Canadian teenagers to join the Islamic State group in Syria, filmmakers behind titles such as "Layla M." and "Heaven Will Wait" have sought to better understand the lure of terror for Western youths.

And Toronto audiences have welcomed their insights.

"It's obviously very topical, and people are trying to come to grips with what goes into the radicalization of youth, what it means and what it looks like, and how it impacts families in particular," said festival co-director Piers Handling.

"Layla M.," by director Mijke de Jong, follows a Dutch-Moroccan teenager disenchanted by her Muslim family's increasing secularism and her adopted country's threat to ban the burqa, the full-body cloak worn by women in some Islamic traditions.

Echoing recent cases reported in the media, Layla, played by Nora El Koussour, drops out of school, marries a devout jihadist and flees to the Middle East in search of identity, community and purpose.

De Jong said she saw "many patterns from my own youth in Layla's story: the passion and commitment to social injustice, the black-and-white simplistic way of thinking and the appeal of us -- against the rest of the world."

The Dutch director sees Layla's choices as "all too fathomable given her circumstances," not made by someone longing for violence but desperate to belong somewhere.

In "Heaven Will Wait," French director Marie-Castille Mention-Schaar traces the separate but similar journeys of Sonia (Noemie Merlant), 17, and Melanie (Naomi Amarger), 16, who are determined to join the Islamic State (IS) group.

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Sonia is arrested as she is about to leave for Syria and disaster is averted while officials and her family guide her through rehabilitation.

But Melanie establishes an online relationship with a young man who changes her worldview with devastating consequences.

- Identity crisis -

The protagonists in these films are motivated by idealism, rebellion and a spiritual need, like most teenagers, but their choices are incomprehensible to their families and policymakers.

In Canada, as in other countries facing this problem, the search for solutions to prevent youth radicalization is mounting.

Last month, Ottawa announced plans for a new center devoted to stem the flow of youth traveling to Syria and taking up arms with IS, after a young man heading out to set off explosives in the Toronto area was shot dead by police in the backseat of a taxi outside his home.

Several other films screening at the Toronto festival also touch on this recent and troubling phenomena, but focus instead on its consequences and links, such as Raja Amari's "Foreign Body."

The film sees a young Samia, played by Sarra Hannachi, living illegally in France after informing on her Islamic extremist brother in Tunisia in the wake of the 2011 Jasmine Revolution, and struggling to find her own identity.

She braves a hostile sea to reach France but her struggles only multiply as she seeks to make a life in a foreign land -- akin to the plight of Syrian refugees flooding Europe.

French director Bertrand Bonello's "Nocturama" and the entry by Canadian directors Mathieu Denis and Simon Lavoie, "Those Who Make Revolution Halfway Only Dig Their Own Graves," take a different tack, respectively following cells that launch attacks in Paris and those sowing mayhem in Montreal in a bid to overthrow the government.

The latter, inspired by massive student protests in Montreal in 2012, tackles the awakening of political consciousness of a group ready to unleash terror against society's inertia.

"Nocturama" follows a small group of youths who set off explosives across Paris, triggering a manhunt.

The script, said Bonello, "emerged from a feeling about the world in which we live."
For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL  September 09, 2016  Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include IBM (IBM), General Electric (GE), Apple (AAPL), Alphabet ( GOOGL) and Fitbit (FIT).

Today, Zacks is promoting its ''Buy'' stock recommendations. Get #1Stock of the Day pick for free.

Here are highlights from Thursdays Analyst Blog:

5 Stocks You Need to Know in the Internet of Things Market

The Internet of Things, i.e. physical objects with an IP address for Internet connectivity, is not like any market that weve known thus far; instead it is more like a rapidly unfolding phenomenon that has its origin in the thought that technology can truly transform our existence by helping us lead more responsible lives. If that seems like too broad a definition, its actually perfect, because it gives you a true sense of the scope of this market that is still in the making.

Technology bloggers have already got our imagination going about robots that can take care of household chores, containers that can sense their emptiness and order replenishments, printers that can order fresh cartridges when required, heating systems that switch on when we are heading home and so on.

But thats just one way of looking at this multi-dimensional market. What if for instance we can swallow a pill that monitors an organ and sends a report in real time to a doctor who writes a prescription or takes other action based on the information? Okay, if that freaks you out too much (although its surely coming), consider the case of a chip implanted in the skin or stitched into your shirt doing much the same thing.

And even this is not all: just as the body can be monitored, vital signs measured, problems diagnosed and controlled so too can entire homes, buildings and cities. It is expected that this will help us find jobs, manage transportation and most importantly, make more judicious use of resources like water and electricity while generating less waste that cant be recycled in some way. In fact, I wouldnt be surprised if the information grid is supplied and replenished (or updated) by IoT devices and the information is then distributed much like a utility where you pay for what you use.

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Who/what would control this system? How would citizens be protected under it? Would privacy become a thing of the past (I know it already is, kind of)? And where are we on the learning curve?

All the major technology companies are trying to figure these things out and also what it could mean for them. Meanwhile, many startups (technology-focused and otherwise) are mushrooming, hoping for a share of the pie.

While we have barely scratched the surface of the opportunity, a McKinsey report says that there are already 7-10 billion of these devices out there. Moreover, its estimated that device sales will grow at a CAGR of 15-20% annually over the next few years to 26-30 billion units by 2020.

Therefore, it makes sense to take a look at where these units will most likely go. Market research firms generally concur that the most important use cases of IoT (and therefore, investment opportunities) are in the following areas:

Smart cities : Smart cities are literally cities that have been developed smarter with the use of telecom networks, computers, storage, software and audio-visual systems collectively called information and communication technology (ICT) on the one hand and IoT devices on the other. This interconnectedness is with the goal of managing power and water supply, educational institutions, transportation systems and hospitals, and even facilitating better law enforcement.

While some smart cities have been planned and are in various stages of implementation, existing cities are also becoming gradually smarter. One example would be Amsterdam, where Cisco and Phillips got together to create network enabled LED street lighting. India is planning 100 smart cities where companies like Cisco, IBM and ABB will be beneficiaries.

Connected Vehicles : These are vehicles that include Internet and WLAN facilitating Internet connectivity and communication with smart devices. The software platform in connected cars is generally provided by either Apple or Alphabet. This increased connectivity is gradually giving way to fully-automated self-driving cars that should be operational in the 2020s.

A lot of companies have jumped into the space, including technology companies like Alphabet, Apple, Uber, Lyft, Didi Chuxing and Baidu and traditional automakers like Ford, Tesla, Volkswagen, General Motors, Volvo and Chrysler. Automakers and technology companies are largely working in collaboration to develop their own technology so they can independently ship the cars. But theres also Intel, which along with Mobileye and BMW is working on a car-agnostic system that automakers will be able to load onto vehicles.

Wearables : This is another segment with a whole lot of players and pretty big variances in the functionality of devices. A Fitbit is more of a fitness device although it does offer some other basic features. The Apple Watch, on the other hand, offers greater functionality at a higher price. Garmin offers premium devices for the niche category of professional sportsmen. Microsoft also offers a fitness Band and then there are a number of companies like Samsung that have built similar bands on the Android Wear platform. TheConsumer Technology Association (CTA) estimates that this segment will grow 39% in 2016.

Connected Homes :This group includes products like thermostats, smart smoke and CO2 detectors, IP/Wi-Fi cameras, smart locks, smart home systems as well as smart switches, dimmers and outlets. This market is expected to grow 29% in 2016. The top technology players are Apple, Alphabet and Amazon, which is piggybacking its Echo facilitator.

Both Alphabet and Amazon are also signing on third-party device makers so they integrate Amazons voice assistant Alexa or Googles Home, which brings them into the respective eco systems. The CTA, which doesnt include these voice activated digital assistants within connected homes says that these devices will grow 32% this year.

But There Are Challenges

The primary hurdle for IoT companies is security given the large amount of data being generated, transported between devices, stored for future use and retrieved when required.

Another problem is a lack of standardization, made worse by the large and growing number of IoT device makers using different standards that affect inter-operability, thereby undermining the usefulness of the device. On a positive note, companies like Intel, IBM, Cisco, GE and AT&T have formed the Industrial Internet Consortium to develop common standards. The process could take time but once available, the standards could generate higher-margin revenue for semiconductor players. There will however be increased scrutiny on privacy considerations.

5 Stocks Worth Keeping an Eye On-

Ive selected the following stocks based on the size of the IoT sub-segment or the number of growing sub-segments they address.

IBM (IBM)

The Zacks Rank #3 stock offers IT infrastructure, data analytics and consulting services, software, and hardware to cloud-focused and IT outsourcing enterprises. IBM targets smart cities, the largest of the IoT segments through its infrastructure services and Watson software platform.

General Electric (GE)

The conglomerate has multiple businesses covering power systems; wind energy solutions; oil and gas drilling and other machinery; aircraft engines, healthcare imaging systems, transportation, and lighting products. The company is developing smart street lighting solutions with some city authorities.

San Diego for example, has installed 4K LED lights with video monitors capturing images of parking spaces. The images are processed in GEs cloud to generate parking suggestions to residents through a dedicated app. Smart street lights are also helping city authorities collect information on the traffic situation and generate solutions. The Zacks Rank #3 stock is therefore also focused on the smart city side of IoT.

Apple (AAPL)

The computing and consumer electronics company targets a number of segments of the IoT market, with its Watch and connected home products. Through acquisitions and the health data collected on its wearables, Apple is growing its capabilities as a provider of technology for pharma/biotech purposes. Its connected home products have also made some progress. The company is also developing self-driving technology but has kept developments mostly to itself. Perhaps the greatest evidence of its interest in the market is the billion dollars it invested in Didi Chuxing.

Alphabet (GOOGL)

Alphabet recently reorganized itself into a conglomerate with multiple interests and if you think about it, many of those interests are connected to IoT. The self-driving car initiative for one seems to have advanced with the company recording many miles of testing and making some key hires (indicating its in the commercialization phase). The Google division has developed the Android Wear OS for wearables. Through its life sciences division, the company partnered with Johnson & Johnson to develop robot-assisted surgical technologies.

Google has a number of offerings in the connected home through its Nest acquisition. Another Google initiative that is currently in incubation is Sidewalk Labs. Little is known about this initiative except that it is supposed to make urban life easier. This along with its fiber efforts seems to indicate a longer-term interest in smart cities.

Fitbit (FIT)

This is one of the few IoT pureplays that have tasted a bit of success. Currently, the market leader in wearables, Fitbit has devices at varying prices for individual and corporate uses. The company pursues corporate healthcare plans and has recorded some major wins in the area. It also seeks to connect users through a social network that tends to increase engagement with the devices.

Summing Up

It's hard to find IoT stocks that are currently being driven by IoT alone. All these companies have many other factors that are curently driving them, so the IoT opportunity is not reflected in either their ranks or their prices. But they are the ones that have made perhaps the greatest progress in the segment and the ones that play a big role in shaping the market as it will be going forward. Therefore they are non-ignorable in a discussion of IoT stocks.

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For Immediate Release

Chicago, ILSeptember 9, 2016Zacks.com looks back on the hottest stories of the week featured in the Stocks in the News blog, where analysts and writers discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks, the financial markets, and the greater investing world.

Here are highlights from this weeks Stocks in the News blog:

General Electric Doubles Down in 3D Printing, Buys SLM & Arcam

Digital industrial company General Electric GE announced plans to purchase two European 3D printing companies, Swedish-based Arcam AB and Germanys SLM Solutions Group AG, for $1.4 billion in order to accelerate its efforts in the growing industry.

Unlike its standard 3D printing competitors, GE is looking to utilize additive manufacturing in order to innovatively build jets, aircraft engines, and other aviation components. Its digital business is booming, and has already employed 3D printing in some capacity.

Pharma Round-Up: Mylans Antitrust Probe

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman opened an investigation into Mylan NV MYL that focuses on the drugmakers contracts with local school districts to purchase its EpiPens. The probe will be broad, but one of the main focus points is whether or not its EpiPens4School program, which offered a significant discount on the drug, locked schools into anti-competitive contracts.

Last month, the pharma leader drew widespread criticism after it was discovered that the company increased the price of EpiPens over 400% over the last several years. Now, a two-pack of EpiPens costs more than $600.

Heres Everything We Learned From Todays Apple Event

Tim Cook and the rest of the Apple Inc. AAPL team hosted their September Keynote event in the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco. Apple announced many new things, like the Watch OS3, the Apple Watch Series 2, and the new iPhone 7 and 7 Plus.

The new iPhone confirmed rumors that have been swirling for some time now: the headphone jack is officially gone. Headphones will now connect via the Lightning port on the phone, and a Lightning adapter will be included in the box with the new phone.

Story continues

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This Immigrant Doctor Is Reimagining Health in the American City

In New England, where I live, this is the time of year when ospreys take their last turn on the waterways before heading south. Theyve mated, reared their young, and seen their fledglings take wing and begin to hunt for themselves. If you are lucky and know your local watering holes, you can still sometimes see them plunging out of the sky and carrying home blood-spangled fish in their talons. It is one of the great spectacles of summer.

But only for a little while longer. Soon the ospreys will migrate 2,500 miles or more, down to the Caribbean or the northeastern coast of South America, where males and females will overwinter separately. Theyll return in March, find their old nest mate (theyre faithful to mates and nest sites, more or less), and begin the ritual once again.

The resurgence of ospreys from near extinction in the 1970s to their modern abundance always makes me think with gratitude of Rachel Carson and the demise of DDT as a standard tool of mosquito control in this country. Her book Silent Spring, published in 1962, first alerted Americans to the risky business of spraying the countryside with as much as 80 million pounds of DDT, an untested chemical, in a single year. One effect of DDT, scientists were demonstrating, was the fatal thinning of the eggshells of ospreys, eagles, peregrine falcons, brown pelicans, and other species. The eggs collapsed under the weight of the nesting parent, and generations were lost. As a result, the osprey population in my home territory, the lower Connecticut River Valley, plummeted from 200 nesting pairs to just two by the early 1970s. The same thing happened to ospreys and other species nationwide. Then the Nixon administration banned most uses of DDT in this country, and wildlife slowly began to recover.

This year, though, my gratitude to Carson, and my pleasure in ospreys, is complicated by the political response to the devastating birth defects and deaths from mosquito-borne Zika virus, along with the persistent effects of mosquito-borne West Nile virus, which has killed more than 2,000 people since it arrived in the United States in 1999. Thats on top of the 438,000 deaths in 2015 from mosquito-borne malaria, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa.

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The Zika outbreak has inspired a proliferation of headlines like the one in a June 6 opinion piece in the New York Post: The Answer to Zika Is Obvious: Bring Back DDT. These articles are always written by right-wing political hacks with limited familiarity with science. Apart from the chance to use DDT as a political brickbat, they also have no real interest in public health.

People who have spent their lives working on mosquito-borne disease would tell them, first of all, that mosquitoes had already evolved resistance to DDT in many areas, long before Rachel Carsons book, in part because manufacturers had enthusiastically promoted its indiscriminate use. Second, the federal government never banned use of DDT for public health issues and had no power to ban it abroad.

Mosquito control efforts began to fail in many countries for lack of funding, brought on largely by complacency and political mismanagement once the malaria threat had been somewhat reduced. If you want a good analogy for what happened, look at the congressional failure earlier this year to allocate emergency funding for Zika control. It was the usual partisan blunder fest: Republicans saddled the bill with provisions promoting the Confederate flag and putting limits on Planned Parenthood. Democrats balked. And the public be damned.

Health workers would tell the political hacks, finally, that DDT continues to be used in many countries, and U.S. tax dollars still pay for it through foreign aid block grants. Antimalaria workers spray DDT on the interior walls of homes as a last resort, when safer pesticides have failed. They do it because it can save babies lives. But they also recognize, as one specialist in tropical diseases and pesticides told me, that they are putting DDT in the mouths of babies through the mothers milk and that studies have linked DDT exposure to increased incidence of high blood pressure, reproductive disorders, and Alzheimers disease, among other health problems. Those political hacks blindly promoting DDT will tell you it is absolutely safe. So offer to spray it in their houses.

In truth, no one wants to live with DDT when other, safer measures are available. The best way to fight Zika and other mosquito-borne diseases is to start by consulting the latest guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which, by the way, is also underfunded because of congressional bickering and complacency. Youll note the key phrase source reduction, which mainly means applying larvicide to kill immature mosquitoes in local waterways and also getting rid of all the incidental placesspare tires, abandoned pools, random containerswhere water accumulates and mosquitoes breed. Repellents, protective clothing, proper window screens, and in problem areas, aerial spraying of less dangerous pesticides can also help. (But just last week, South Carolina learned the danger of aerial spraying even supposedly safe pesticides: One farm lost 2.5 million honeybees on the spot.)

We can have public health without sacrificing our environment, our childrens health, and our wildlife. I will continue to watch my ospreys with pleasure and honor Rachel Carson for helping to save them, and us. The politically motivated call for a return of DDT is just a mindless bid to go back to that blighted era when we thought the only way to save the world was to destroy it.

Sign the Petition: EPA Must Get Serious About Protecting Bees From Toxic Pesticides

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 The Weed Killer Glyphosate Is Being Found Everywherebut Will It Hurt Us?

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Original article from TakePart
Harare (AFP) - Riot police in Zimbabwe fired tear gas Friday to break up the first anti-government protest in Harare since a court overturned a ban on street marches, an organiser said.

Hardlife Mudzingwa, spokesman for Tajamuka, a youth protest movement, said police blocked about 30 demonstrators marching towards parliament in the capital.

"We were singing and marching peacefully and the police blocked us," Mudzingwa told AFP.

"We refused to back down and when they realised we were not stopping, they fired tear gas."

Several protesters suffered minor injuries, he said.

Authorities had banned rallies in the capital following a wave of violent clashes between police and protesters.

President Robert Mugabe has vowed to crack down on the protests, which have erupted in recent months as Zimbabwe has been pitched into a deepening economic crisis.

The high court overturned the ban on Wednesday, despite Mugabe earlier blasting judges for "reckless" rulings allowing previous demonstrations.

Mudzingwa said Friday's march was against "police brutality and the threat by President Robert Mugabe to judges".

On Wednesday, the government announced plans to slash 25,000 jobs after it revealed that nearly 97 percent of its revenue goes towards public workers' salaries.

Soldiers and civil servants have regularly been paid late this year, heightening pressure on Mugabe, 92, who came to power in 1980 and has vowed to stand for re-election in 2018.
Facebook (FB)'s Mark Zuckerberg has been accused of "abusing" his power as the "world's most powerful editor" by Norway's largest newspaper, which slammed the social network for removing an iconic photograph from the Vietnam War.

Espen Egil Hansen, editor-in-chief and chief executive of Aftenposten, called for a change in Facebook's content rules and said the current state of affairs is stifling democratic debate.

"I am upset, disappointed  well, in fact even afraid  of what you are about to do to a mainstay of our democratic society," Hansen wrote in a front-page open letter for his newspaper.

The controversy revolves around a series of pictures posted on Facebook by Norwegian author Tom Egeland depicting scenes from the war. One image was by Associated Press photographer Nick Ut showing a naked girl running from napalm bombs. Hansen called it one of the "world's most famous war photographs."

Facebook removed the picture and prevented Egeland from posting a new photo, Hansen said.

Aftenposten also posted the photo on Facebook with an accompanying article. Hansen said he received an email demanding the removal of the picture on Wednesday, but Facebook removed the image and article before he could write a response.

In an emailed statement to CNBC, a Facebook spokesman said: "While we recognize that this photo is iconic, it's difficult to create a distinction between allowing a photograph of a nude child in one instance and not others."

"We try to find the right balance between enabling people to express themselves while maintaining a safe and respectful experience for our global community," the Facebook spokesman added. "Our solutions won't always be perfect, but we will continue to try to improve our policies and the ways in which we apply them."

The June 8, 1972, photo showing children including a naked 9-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc gained Ut a Pulitzer Prize for spot news photography.

"The image was unprecedented at the time for the Associated Press news wire, due to full frontal nudity depicted of the bombing victims," the AP says in an online post. Ut's supervisors "deemed the photograph newsworthy and its value overrode the nudity in the image and it was widely distributed on the AP newswire."

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Hansen said publishers find it "hard to avoid" Facebook and he doesn't wish to do so, but Zuckerberg should take more responsibility for his role as "the world's most powerful editor."



"Even though I am editor-in-chief of Norway's largest newspaper, I have to realize that you are restricting my room for exercising my editorial responsibility," Hansen wrote.

"I think you are abusing your power, and I find it hard to believe that you have thought it through thoroughly."

It was not only Aftenposten's image that was removed. Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg posted the same image on her own page, and it was taken down by Facebook.







Hansen argues that pictures like the one he posted  even though they have images of naked children  played a role in ending the Vietnam War and contributed to more open and critical debate on the topic.

"The free and independent media have an important task in bringing information, even including pictures, which sometimes may be unpleasant, and which the ruling elite and maybe even ordinary citizens cannot bear to see or hear, but which might be important precisely for that reason," Hansen added.





Aftenposten's editor said the media have a responsibility to consider publication in each individual case, something that shouldn't be "undermined by algorithms encoded in your office in California." Hansen goes on to say that Facebook's objective to make the world more open and connected is being done in a "totally superficial sense."

"If you will not distinguish between child pornography and documentary photographs from a war, this will simply promote stupidity and fail to bring human beings closer to each other," the op-ed said.





Hansen called on Facebook to introduce "geographically differentiated guidelines and rules for publication," rather than one set of rules, and asked the social media firm to distinguish between editors and general Facebook users. And Hansen said Facebook needs to be more "accessible."

"I am worried that the world's most important medium is limiting freedom instead of trying to extend it, and that this occasionally happens in an authoritarian way."

Aftenposten's open letter comes at a time when Facebook's role in news distribution is under scrutiny. Facebook is a key driver of traffic to news sites. But a Gizmodo report earlier this year said the social network routinely prevented stories with a conservative slant from appearing on the site's "trending topics" list. Zuckerberg met with senior conservative leaders in an attempt to assuage fears after the story.











More From CNBC


Leading up to the Zurich Festival, London-based Film Republic has acquired world sales rights to Swiss screenwriter-director Roland Collas Seven Days, the only Swiss movie to receive a Gala Premiere at a festival rich in Swiss movies. The film joins the ranks of Damien Chazelles La La Land and Juan Antonio Bayonas A Monster Calls.

The deal excludes Switzerland and Italy, the territories of the films co-producers. Seven Days will be released domestically in Switzerland by Filmcoopi, which has previously collaborated with Colla.

The latest film from Colla, now a relative veteran in a country increasingly attracting attention for its on-the-rise generation of young filmmakers, Seven Days follows up Collas Summer Games, a coming-of-age tale which played out of competition at 2011s Venice Film Festival, then screened at Toronto.

Seven Days shares with Summer Games the sense of a possibly finite time for happiness. Otherwise, it marks another new direction in Collas career that begun with the 1998 period drama Le monde a lenvers, and also features estranged-sibling drama The Other Half, which won its male leads, Kader Boukhanef and Abel Jari, best actor awards at the 2007 Amiens Festival.

Co-starring Summer GamesAlessia Barela, Seven Days turns on the seemingly impossible love between a man, Ivan, whose brother is marrying on a Sicilian island, and the brides best friend, Chiara. Ivan is reluctant to risk repeating the debacle of his last relationship, and Chiara does not want to endanger her marriage. They determine to enjoy their love for just a few days, but it proves much harder to curtail than they planned.

Seven Days is produced by Elena Pedrazzoli at Zurich-based Peacock Film, co-produced by Prato/Rome-based Emanuele Nespeca at Solaria Film, and associate-produced by Movimento Film, with the assistance of Paris Arsam Sarl.

The Seven Days deal reunites Film Republic with Peacock Film, Collas longtime producer, after Film Republic handled world sales on Claudia Lorenzs Whats Between Us, which Colla co-wrote.

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The Zurich Festival and Switzerland are proving fertile hunting grounds for Film Republic, which represents two 2015 Zurich Festival titles, the Scottish-Spanish production Pikadero and Switzerlands Amateur Teens.

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An Indian model scarred in an acid attack challenged perceptions of beauty as she strutted down the runway at New York Fashion Week to promote a ban on the sale of corrosive substances used to maim thousands of women and children each year.

A smiling Reshma Quereshi, 19, opened the FTL Moda show on Thursday to applause in a long-sleeve, white gown with embroidered appliques by Indian designer Archana Kochhar during her first trip to the United States.

The buzz and glamour of the event was a world away from Allahbad, India, where she suffered severe facial burns and lost an eye two years ago after being attacked with sulfuric acid by her estranged brother-in-law and two men.

Reshma Quereshi has her makeup applied before walking to present Indian designer Archana Kochhar's Spring/Summer 2017 collections during New York Fashion Week. (Photo: Reuters)

Quereshi never thought she would be going abroad, much less modeling in New York.

After enduring numerous skin graft surgeries and contemplating suicide, she met the founder of Make Love Not Scars, a group that helps survivors of the gender-based crimes.

Quereshi is the face of the groups online video campaign, which has been viewed by 1.3 million people and led to her appearance in New York.

I couldnt believe it was happening to me, Quereshi said about the trip through a translator. In that moment I felt extremely happy.

She said she hopes her turn on the catwalk will inspire hope and confidence in other acid attack survivors and spur countries to regulate the sale of cheap and easily available acids.

Reshma Quereshi presents a creation from Indian designer Archana Kochhar's Spring/Summer 2017 collection during New York Fashion Week. (Photo: Reuters)

No one else understands what an acid attack is except the survivors themselves, she said. I do not want this to happen to anyone else.

About 1,500 acid attacks are reported each year, but Jaf Shah, the executive director of the London-based charity Acid Survivors Trust International (ASTI), said the real number is many times higher.

There are whole swathes of regions across the globe where acid attacks are occurring but are not being recorded, he said in an telephone interview.

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It is not reported for fear there might be reprisals from the perpetrators due to the fact that survivors and their immediate family have no confidence in the police or the judiciary to take action.

Quereshi has her makeup applied before walking in Archana Kochhar's Spring/Summer 2017 runway. (Photo: Reuters)

India has the highest number of recorded attacks, which are often a form of revenge by jilted husbands or rejected suitors. ASTI describes it as a global phenomenon that occurs in countries ranging from Afghanistan and Iran to Nigeria and Colombia.

Shah said limiting the sale of acid, punishments for attackers, and compensation and care for survivors, are needed. People like Quereshi speaking out is also very important, he said.

Quereshi during an interview. (Photo: Reuters)

Victims coming forward are defying the perpetrators of the attacks, he added.

Increasing diversity on the catwalk has been an aim of FTL Moda. The production company has featured models with disabilities, in wheelchairs, on crutches and amputees. Australian model Madeline Stuart, who has Down Syndrome, made her runway debut at the FTL Moda show last year.

I think this is a powerful tool, said FTL Moda founder Ilaria Niccolini. I think it can make a change for the better.

(By Patricia Reaney; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)
Samsung announced last week that its recalling millions of its new Galaxy Note 7 smartphones amid reports the devices were overheating and, in some cases, catching fire.

There havent been any known cases of people being physically hurt by the phones. But the devices are being blamed for fires that destroyed a Jeep and did serious damage to a garage. Meanwhile, U.S. aviation officials are now telling fliers to avoid turning the phones on in flight.

The South Korean electronics manufacturer has yet to explain exactly whats causing the fires. What we do know, however, is that the problem stems from their battery.

Like almost all modern smartphones and lots of other consumer electronics, the Note 7 uses a rechargeable lithium-ion battery. Electronics companies favor these kinds of batteries because theyre cheap, they pack plenty of power, and they dont lose a lot of their charge over time when theyre sitting idle. Yet they have also been involved in several high-profile fire incidents, including episodes that more or less ended the hoverboard craze and caused problems with Boeings 787 jetliner.

How do lithium-ion batteries work, and why do they seem to be prone to catching fire? We asked Dr. Donald R. Sadoway, the John F. Elliott Professor of Materials Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (and onetime TIME Most Influential Person), to explain. First, he offered a quick primer on battery chemistry:

[Lithium-ion batteries] are a classical battery in the sense that they have two electrodes separated by an electrolyte. In this case, the negative electrode is typically some kind of a carbon, like a graphite, and the positive electrode is a metal oxide, something like lithium cobalt oxide or lithium manganese oxide. The electrolyte, because its shuttling lithium, it has to be non-aqueous. They cant use an acid or an alkaline solution, they have to use something thats not water, and thats part of the problem. Its an organic liquid and so therefore its volatile and flammable. But it does dissolve lithium salt and it allows lithium to shuttle back and forth between the negative electrode and the positive electrode. Lets [talk about] the battery at full state of charge. At full state of charge, all of the lithium is up inside the negative electrode. Its sitting inside the graphite. On discharge, the lithium wants to go from the graphite over to the cobalt oxide. So it takes a swim through the electrolyte and enters the cobalt oxide, and electrons go through the external circuit and power your devices. Thats what generates the current and so on.

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Sadoway then brought up the battery fires that plagued Sony laptops nearly a decade ago:

What happened there was, somehow during the manufacturing process, very tiny particles of metal had ended up in the electrolyte . . . under the action of electric current, these metal fragments aligned, and they eventually formed an unbroken chain of metal from one electrode to another. So then youve got the current shorting through this filamentary wire, if you will, so youve turned the inner electrode gap into a toaster oven. That causes all of the current to short, and generates a lot of heat, and that causes the electrolyte to bloat, and then the next thing you know, it explodes. If the temperature gets high enough . . . at some point, if you get up to about 400-500 degrees Centigrade, the metal oxide in the negative electrode actually starts liberating oxygen. And thats really dangerous, because now, instead of having a fire . . . getting its oxygen from the air surrounding it, its getting its oxygen from inside the battery itself. The term of art is, this has now become a bomb. Youve got fuel and oxygen in the same place at the same time.

Right now, its hard to tell exactly whats causing Samsungs problems. But Sadoway has some theories:

Its either a statistical fluke in the manufacturing process where there are some local hotspots or there are perhaps some metal shavings, some kind of a shorting. But it seems as though, from what Ive been able to read, the fires occurred when the owners are charging the phone. That means that while theyre forcing current through it, somehow there is a side reaction that is very different from just recharging the battery. And that starts charging the battery, and then the thing goes into thermal runaway.

So does Sadoway think lithium-ion batteries are still safe to use in smartphones and other electronics?
The Consumer Product Safety Commission has issued a warning to owners of the Samsung Galaxy Note7 smartphone to stop using the phone. This comes a week after fires and explosions prompted the company to halt sales. The agency and Samsung say they are preparing an official recall. Meanwhile, the company has provided only sketchy details to U.S. customers on when replacement phones would be available.

However, information released in other countries may provide hints.

A Samsung website in Australia has posted information saying that phones would be replaced in that country starting September 21. The site says that boxes for the new phones will have a small black square on the white barcode, and a round sticker with a big letter S.

The site also says a database would be available starting September 13 that would enable consumers to see if any Note7 was safe by typing in the phone's IMEI number. (IMEI stands for International Mobile Equipment Identity, which is unique to each phone. You can find your phone's IMEI by dialing *#06#; the number should pop up on your screen.) Android Authority was the first to report on the Australian site.

Samsung representatives in the United States wouldn't comment on whether any of those details would apply here. The company promised to provide more details on Monday.

Consumers in the United States who don't want to wait can have their Note7 phones refunded now or get a loaner from "select" retail locations. Customers can also exchange the Note7 for other models.

Here's what the major U.S. mobile carriers are telling their customers today:

Mobile Carrier Exchange/Refund Programs

AT&T

Customers with a Note7 may exchange it for a Galaxy S7, Galaxy S7 edge, Galaxy S7 active, or any other smartphone, and may also return any Note7 accessories. If a customer chooses another Samsung device, he or she will receive a bill credit of $25 per device. Customers who exchange their Note7 can keep their new device, or trade it in for a new Note7 when it becomes available.

Story continues

Sprint

Customers with Note7 phones have three options.

1.They can replace a current Galaxy Note7 with a new one once replacement phones become available.

2. They can exchange the device now for a Samsung Galaxy S7 or Galaxy S7 Edge. They can also exchange or return any Note7 accessories. All customers choosing a new Note7 or Galaxy S7 or S7 Edge will get a $25 service credit applied to their Sprint account within the next 90 days.

3. Customers can also exchange their Note7 for any other Sprint device. The company is waiving restocking and shipping fees.

T-Mobile

Customers have two options.

1. They can return the Note7 to T-Mobile for a full refund on both the phone any Note7 accessories. T-Mobile says it will waive any restocking charges and shipping fees, and customers can keep the free Netflix subscription and Gear Fit or SD card they received with purchase during pre-order.

2. Consumers can wait for new Note7 inventory to arrive, and exchange their current phone for a new one. The company says it will notify customers when the replacement phones are available.

Verizon

Verizon says that through September 30, 2016, it is waiving the restocking fee for any customer who purchased a Galaxy Note7 and wishes to return it or exchange it for a different model.





More from Consumer Reports:

Top pick tires for 2016

Best used cars for $25,000 and less

7 best mattresses for couples





Consumer Reports has no relationship with any advertisers on this website. Copyright  2006-2016 Consumers Union of U.S.
TechCrunch

Twitter's stock will be delisted from the New York Stock Exchange on November 8, according to a new filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. This comes a day after Elon Musk completed the company's takeover after a lengthy ordeal late Thursday. "The New York Stock Exchange hereby notifies the SEC of its intention to remove the entire class of the stated securities from listing and registration on the Exchange at the opening of business on November 08, 2022, pursuant to the provisions of Rule 12d2-2 (a)," the filing reads.
The logo of Facebook is pictured on a window at new Facebook Innovation Hub during a media tour in Berlin, Germany, February 24, 2016. REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch (Reuters)

By Foo Yun Chee

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Facebook's problems with European privacy regulators do not mean that the social network has breached the bloc's competition rules, EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager said on Friday.

"The German authority is concerned that Facebook may have forced its users to accept privacy terms that aren't in line with the data protection rules," Vestager said in the text of a speech to be delivered at a conference in Copenhagen.

"But as our German colleagues rightly point out, even if Facebook has broken those rules, that doesn't automatically mean that it has also broken the competition rules as well," she said.

The German government has been critical of Facebook in the past while political leaders and regulators have also complained that the world's largest social network, with 1.6 billion monthly users, had been slow to tackle hate speech and anti-immigrant messages.

Facebook raised regulatory concerns last month when it loosened the privacy policy of WhatsApp, the world's most popular mobile messaging application, prompting the chair of Europe's leading group of privacy regulators to say that it would closely scrutinize the move. [nL8N1BA3O8]

(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; editing by Philip Blenkinsop)
For as much as Samsung gets ragged on for looking to the iPhone for design inspiration, the South Korean tech giant beat Apple at its own game when it released the alluring Galaxy S6 last year. Featured an eye-catching curved display, some critics questioned the utility of the design and were quick to call it a gimmick. That didnt matter much, though, because most reviewers and users were big fans of the devices sleek new design.

In fact, Samsung was completely caught off-guard by the immense popularity of the S6 edge and had to re-calibrate its supply in order to meet surging and unexpectedly high demand. One year later, when the S7 edge was released, sales of the premium model actually outpaced the flat-screened S7 model, according to reports.

With those two data points in tow, it perhaps shouldnt come as too much of a surprise that Samsung has some interesting plans in the works for its upcoming S8 models.

DON'T MISS: iPhone 7 preorders: We have entered a parallel universe

According to a report from the Korea Herald, both of Samsungs flagship devices for the first half of 2017 will sport curved displays.

Now the Korean tech giant is promoting the curvy screen as its premium smartphone lineups key identity, the report notes. Sources said the company has already started securing display panels in two sizes -- 5.1 inch and 5.5 inch -- from its own display-making unit Samsung Display, the worlds sole producer of double-edged screens. 

Of course, this appears to be in line with Samsungs roadmap given that the recently released Note 7 wasnt available in a traditional flat-screen display model. Could this mean that all of Samsung's high-end handsets will feature curved displays in the coming years?

As for other S8 features we've heard make their way through the rumor mill, word has it that Samsung's next-gen smartphones will feature a dual-camera setup similar to what Apple implemented on the recently unveiled iPhone 7. Additionally, the S8 is said to feature an Iris eye-scanning sensor (a la the Galaxy Note 7) and an improved 8-megapixel front facing camera.

Story continues

Trending right now:

See the original version of this article on BGR.com
ABUJA (Reuters) - Nigeria's telecoms regulator has shut the offices of Nokia-Alcatel for operating in Africa's largest economy without the necessary permit, the watchdog said on Friday. The Nigerian Communications Commission's (NCC) spokesman Tony Ojobo said that the mobile telecoms equipment manufacturer had failed to obtain the 2 million naira ($6,349) licence required for the sale and installation of network equipment. The head of Nokia's Nigerian operations said the company was in talks with the NCC to secure the licence and that its offices would reopen imminently. Nokia-Alcatel had applied for the licence about three months ago but had not completed the process, a separate NCC source said, adding that the company had operated without the permit for some time. Nokia-Alcatel's office will be reopened after they comply, he said. ($1 = 315.00 naira) (Reporting by Camillus Eboh; Writing by Chijioke Ohuocha; Editing by David Goodman)
Samsung probably isnt happy with all the bad publicity the Galaxy Note 7 is getting due to its faulty batteries that keep exploding, but the Korean giant is looking to change things around. Samsung promised that it would replace each one of the 2.5 million units it shipped to carriers and customers so far, and resume sales as well as its international rollout. Today, the company is back with more details about the replacement process.

DONT MISS: iPhone 7 preorders: We have entered a parallel universe

Samsung on Friday announced via its Australian arm that replacement stock of the Galaxy Note 7 will be available in Australia from September 21st. If youre looking to buy a Galaxy Note 7, youll have to wait until early October to get one.

Samsung also provided information on how to identify a replacement unit and tell it apart from a Galaxy Note 7 that has the bad type of battery inside. The new Galaxy Note 7 packaging has identifiers on the box, including a small black square on the white barcode label and a white sticker with a blue S on it, as seen below.

These markings should help both shops and buyers make sure that the units being offered as replacements or sold as new Galaxy Note 7 models have a safe battery.

galaxy-note-7-replacement-identifier

If thats not enough, then you can use the phones unique IMEI to verify that youre indeed receiving a newer, safer unit as a replacement.

More details for Australian Galaxy Note 7 owners are available at the source links below. Its likely that Samsung will soon begin to deliver replacement Galaxy Note 7 units to other markets as well, but so far there haven't been any other announcements from the company.

Trending right now:

See the original version of this article on BGR.com
By Se Young Lee and Jeffrey Dastin SEOUL/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics Co Ltd said on Friday it will expedite new shipments of its Galaxy Note 7 smartphones starting this week in response to a U.S. regulator's advisory to not charge or turn on the phone in flight due to faulty batteries. The South Korean manufacturer last week recalled the Note 7 in 10 markets including the United States, saying the phones' batteries were prone to catch fire. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration late on Thursday said travelers should not charge the phones while in the air or stow them in checked luggage. "We plan to expedite new shipments of Galaxy Note 7 starting from this week in order to alleviate any safety concerns and reduce any inconvenience for our customers," Samsung said in a statement in response to the FAA advisory. Shares of the South Korean company fell 3.9 percent on Friday. For months, pilots and plane makers have raised concerns about lithium-ion batteries, which are used in many consumer devices ranging from phones to laptops to toys. Top airlines banned hoverboards during the Christmas holiday season, and the U.N.'s aviation agency prohibited shipments of lithium-ion batteries as cargo on passenger aircraft. Several airlines said they are taking a closer look at the Samsung smartphones. American Airlines Group Inc, the world's largest carrier, said it was in touch with the FAA about the phones. "We continue to review the FAA's guidance and raise awareness with our employees and passengers about these devices," said United Continental Holdings Inc spokesman Luke Punzenberger. Other airlines including Singapore Airlines Ltd and Qantas Airways Ltd have banned travelers from powering up or charging the Galaxy Note 7 phones on flights, though they still can bring the smartphones on board. Air France KLM SA said its flight attendants will instruct passengers not to use the phones at all during flight "in order to limit our exposure to this risk." Industry experts said such guidelines may be difficult to enforce because it was hard to distinguish the faulty Galaxy Note 7 from other smartphones. "Can anybody tell that particular model of phone by sight?" said consultant Robert Mann, noting that flight crew will have trouble verifying if a customer has a faulty Note 7 or a replaced version. "It's going to set up a persistent issue over time," he said. (Reporting by Se Young Lee in Seoul and Jeffrey Dastin in New York; Additional reporting by Victoria Bryan; Editing by Tiffany Wu)
The ballistic missiles that North Korea test-fired earlier this week are believed to be a longer-range version of the Scud missile, not the medium-range Rodong missile as determined by South Korea, a U.S. expert said Thursday.



Jeffrey Lewis, a North Korea missile expert at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, told the Diplomat magazine that based on analysis of pictures released by the North, he believes that they are the Scud-ER (extended range) missiles.



Lewis was quoted as saying that according to the images, the launchers use a slightly larger cradle, but appear to otherwise be the same kind that Pyongyang uses for other missile launches.



The Scud-ER is a variation on the Scud-C with an elongated fuselage to store additional fuel. The missile is believed to be capable of flying about 1,000 kilometers with a 500 kilogram payload, the report said.



After Monday's launches, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said that the North fired three Rodong medium-range missiles off its east coast and the missiles flew about 1,000 km and landed in waters some 400 km inside Japan's air defense identification zone.



The U.S. Strategic Command said that two of the three missiles were "presumed to be intermediate range ballistic missiles" and the type of the other missile was still being assessed.



The command did not further specify whether the intermediate-range missiles were Rodong as assessed by South Korea's military, or the longer-range Musudan missile, which is believed to be capable of reaching the U.S. territory of Guam.



Melissa Hanham, another expert at CNS, also told the Diplomat that the latest launches suggest the North is likely eager to emphasize its capability to saturate any allied missile defense capability with its existing missiles, as the U.S. and South Korea are working to deploy the THAAD missile defense system. (Yonhap)




Elliott's proposal comes at a difficult time for Samsung, in the midst of a global recall of around 2.5 million Galaxy Note 7s (AFP Photo/Jung Yeon-Je) (AFP/File)

Tokyo (AFP) - Japanese aviation authorities on Friday followed their US counterparts by urging passengers not to turn on or charge Samsung Galaxy Note 7 smartphones on aircraft following reports of explosions from faulty batteries.

The South Korean smartphone maker last week suspended sales of the "phablet" and recalled 2.5 million units following the reports.

"In light of recent incidents and concerns raised by Samsung about its Galaxy Note 7 devices, the Federal Aviation Administration strongly advises passengers not to turn on or charge these devices on board aircraft and not to stow them in any checked baggage," the US watchdog said in a statement Thursday.

Qantas and Virgin Australia also told customers Thursday not to use or charge the devices on their planes.

Japan's transport ministry followed suit on Friday.

The phone is not yet on sale in Japan, but the ministry cited accidents overseas for its warning, which also cautioned against using or charging them onboard, or stowing them in checked bags.

"Until such time that safety measures are taken by Samsung, the ministry has requested that Japanese airlines strongly communicate instructions to passengers regarding bringing Galaxy Note 7 on board planes," the ministry said in a statement.

Samsung is the world's top smartphone maker, outpacing its American rival Apple.
- By Shudeep Chandrasekhar





Microsoft (MSFT) never officially announced any structural changes to its business, but the way the company has been re-aligning its focus areas and shedding unwanted business units it looks like there is, in fact, a major restructuring effort in progress.

Let me elaborate.





Recently, their legacy Windows business was pushed to the sidelines while cloud and Office 365 have become the main focus. After buying Nokia (NOK) for more than $7 billion, the company has now wriggled out of the feature-phone business. And they have spent nearly $26 billion to bring a social network into the mix.

The Nokia story itself is an interesting one because it happened just three months after Nadella took over as CEO. As such, it was one of former CEO Steve Ballmer's legacy moves. But for all his good intentions, hardware-software marriages are only made in Apple heaven it seems. Even Google (GOOG) failed spectacularly in its efforts when it tried to enter the mobile manufacturing world with the Motorola (MSI) acquisition, and Microsoft followed suit.

Nearly a year after the acquisition, Microsoft wrote off its Nokia investment and sold off parts of the mobile business to other players. The impairment charges on the deal alone was $7.6 billion, almost the entire amount that it paid for the Finnish company's business units and patents the year before.

The Mobile Manufacturing Segment





Mobile phone manufacturing is a cut-throat, low-margin business. It is an innovation-intensive industry where you have to keep up with the competition, constantly coming out with new products and keep investing big money for small returns. Except for Apple (AAPL), which boasts operating margins in the 30% range, there is no other mobile phone manufacturing company that comes close to that number. It is also worth noting that Apple's products sit in the luxury category of smartphones and electronic devices, and if they can make only 30% then you can imagine where other players might be.

Story continues

Take a look at the not-so-small Samsung (SSNLF), for example.

xSaP316jDBrqeAvbNNe_HodSyVn9Y4eVYcyrhb6s

During the period between 2012 and 2014, Samsung was only making between 15% and 20% as their profit margin. That suddenly plummeted to slightly over 7% before showing incremental gains. Since then, Samsung has released several premium models with higher margins on them, but the bulk of their sales come from budget and mid-range smartphones.

What Is Microsoft Doing Now?





After shedding their feature-phone business, Microsoft still retained device manufacturing so they would not have to depend on OEMs to build devices that will eventually run on Windows 10 Mobile. With Surface devices, the company is now trying to do what Apple has been very successful at for decades - company-made devices that run on company-made operating systems.

The launch of the Surface brand in 2012 has more to it than merely allowing Microsoft to compete in the tablet market. That market is already very crowded, with everyone from Apple to Samsung to Lenovo (HKSE:00992) in the fray, so Microsoft is not just looking to be a device manufacturer. There is more to it than that.

To understand Microsoft's direction with devices and their need to be in the segment, we need to look at what Nadella told ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley in July of 2015:

"If there are a lot of OEMs, we'll have one strategy. If there are no OEMs, we'll have one strategy. We are committed to having the phones in these three segments. And I think the operational details will become clear to people as they see it."

And the section that makes it clear for all:

"Because all of this comes down to how are you going to get developers to come to Windows. If you come to Windows, you are going to be on the phone, too. Even if you want to come to Windows because of HoloLens, you want to come to it because of Xbox, you want to come to the desktop, all those get you to the phone. It's not about let's do head-on competition. That will never work. You have to have a differentiated point of view." - Windowscentral

So Microsoft wants to do all these things: make their own tablets and phones, work with OEMs (third-party manufacturers) and create an environment that is organically interlinked to its other products and services. But in the end it all leads to mobile first, which is the first part of his 'mobile first, cloud first' mandate as CEO.

But now that makes a full circle back to Windows. But, the Windows of today is vastly different from the Windows of PCs past. Microsoft wants to sit at the edge of the device market, not in the middle of it because there is not much money for non-premium devices. But they need their own devices to push their Windows 10 agenda forward.

So in the end the company is still be about Windows, but with a significant twist to the plot. They are looking at building an ecosystem of hardware and software so developers will come. When the developers come, the consumers will automatically make a beeline for their products, which also carry their software.

As such, Microsoft is not going to give up its device business any time soon. They need it as part of the ecosystem they are building. The upcoming Surface Pro 5, Surface Phone and Surface Cardinal are all part of that ecosystem, as is the Xbox or HoloLens.

The company is not looking to become another Apple Inc. It is merely trying to become a better, stronger Microsoft Corporation. Nothing more, but certainly nothing less.

Disclosure: I have no positions in any of the stocks mentioned above and no intention to initiate a position in the next 72 hours.

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For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL  September 09, 2016  Today, Zacks Equity Research discusses Semiconductors, including Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT), Cisco ( CSCO) and IBM (IBM).

Industry: Semiconductors

Link: https://www.zacks.com/commentary/90023/semiconductor-industry-outlook---september-2016

Some disruption is afoot in the enterprise segment because of the work done by the Open Compute Project (OCP) that Facebook founded and continues to feed. The social networking company generates huge volumes of data that it needs to store, manage and process as quickly and cost-efficiently as possible.

Others with similar interest like Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT) and Google, and differing interest like Cisco ( CSCO) and Juniper also joined in. Facebook designs the chip that is then optimized by the OCP so it becomes something members can standardize on. So far so good. But if the OCP is able to design chips that perform better or comparably with Intel (INTC) chips, the chip makers cloud business can be hurt. This explains why Intel is part of the effort.

But Intel has other challengers too. IBM (IBM) has made some progress in chip design that Google seems to be testing out. Google is reportedly the only top chip buyer that doesnt sell servers but instead builds them for internal use. And the company is now also seeking growth in the IaaS segment. Therefore, Googles decisions are extremely significant in the chip consumption context.

Google has done two things in the recent past that could be viewed as second sourcing or maybe creating leverage against Intel to lower prices. The company has declared that everything it now does also supports IBMs Power systems and it is also hobnobbing with Qualcomm ostensibly to use some of its fledgling ARM-based server chips.

Amazon is the leading provider of cloud infrastructure followed by Microsoft, IBM and Google. This is another chip-hungry segment with long-term demand for the devices. This is perhaps the reason that some time back, Amazon started dabbling with low-end ARM-chips. The company looks interested in making its own devices, but its still too early to comment on its progress.

Story continues

Intels only course of action is to innovate around the problem (increasing performance while reducing cost per watt is a way it could do this). After all, its hard to convince people that you deserve to make a nice margin. Another significant development is Intels decision to license ARM technology perhaps to support its foundry business, or help it speed up its IoT effort, or maybe even to use in some segments of the cloud computing market.

Microsoft seems allied with Intel for now although we dont know how that story will play out since its also a member of the OCP.

Another important segment for semiconductor companies that is relatively low-key is Industrial. Since semiconductors facilitate increased automation on the factory floor, they are increasingly used to drive efficiency and lower cost. Reportedly, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) expects the industrial semiconductor market to grow at a CAGR (compounded annual growth rate) of 9.7% between 2014 and 2019.

IC Insights estimates that global medical semiconductor sales will grow at a 12.3% CAGR to reach $8.2 billion in 2018. Its not clear if this estimate includes wearables that are normally considered IoT and therefore included in consumer. Wearables carry an increasing amount of medical information and consume a good number of semiconductor devices.

One of the fastest-growing emerging markets for semiconductor devices is automotive, as the consumption of electronic components for safety, infotainment, navigation and fuel efficiency continues to increase. Semiconductor consumption in this market was worth around $7 billion in 2015, according to Reportlinker.

Primary areas of strength are hybrid electric vehicles, telematics and connectivity, and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), where the estimated 5-year CAGRs for chip demand are 20%, 19% and 18%, respectively. Infineon, STMicroelectronics, Renesas, Freescale, Texas Instruments and Spansion (owned by Cypress) are major players. Analog Devices, with its ADAS technology, is also a beneficiary.

The market, which saw some consolidation last year, is expected to grow 3.7%. Similar to wearables, the auto market also has an emerging adjacent market in the form of autonomous/self-driving cars that will consumer a huge number of semiconductors, particularly the sensors, processors and other technology enabling the vehicles.

Wireless infrastructure builds have been necessitated by increasing data volumes and connectivity issues (network congestion, power reliability, privacy and security) in wireless networks. These builds will require increased investment in semiconductors thus driving sales.

The PC market still consumes a large number of chips but its importance as a driver continues to decline. Thats because the market itself is shrinking (Gartner estimates that it declined 5.2% in the second quarter while IDC estimates that it declined 4.5%).

The encouraging things here are that first, both firms estimate that North America returned to growth last quarter and second, there is a chance of a stronger, Windows 10-driven second half particularly at enterprise customers. The consumer business wont strengthen as much because consumers are hesitant to spend on upgrades given that they already have many more devices than they need and because Internet and many other conveniences of computers are now easily available on smartphones and tablets.

In either case, its very clear that the steady growth seen in previous years is history. IDC expects the PC market to shrink 7.2% this year and 2.1% in 2017. So semiconductor players with PC market exposure can at best profit from market share gains, BYOD exposure and increased exposure to the top PC vendors, which are Lenovo, HP, Dell, Asus and Apple according to both IDC and Gartner.

Apple makes its own PCs, software and also a lot of its own chips, relying largely on Intel, Qualcomm and Samsung for its other semiconductor requirements. Microsoft makes software and limited quantities of hardware, relying largely on third-party device makers for chips, PCs and mobile devices. Its also a major player in the cloud, which makes it an important ally for semiconductor companies like Intel. Alphabets chromebooks on the other hand are made by a number of hardware makers that use either Intel or ARM technology.

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Libertarian presidential nominee, former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, is having a bad Thursday Sept. 8. During his interview on the MSNBC show Morning Joe, panelist Mike Barnicle and Johnson had the following exchange:

Barnicle: What would you do if you were elected about Aleppo?

Johnson: About?

Barnicle: Aleppo.

Johnson: And what is Aleppo?

Barnicle: Youre kidding.

Johnson: No.

Johnson was then refreshed about Aleppo. In case youre uncertain yourself, it was Syrias most populous city before the civil war began in 2011. Aleppo is now home to many different fighting factions that have all but destroyed the city and the lives of the hundreds of thousands of people who have had to flee or who are still living there. The U.S. has been involved with aid to the rebel army and has taken a stand against Syrian President Bashar Assad, who has been accused of war crimes.

Johnson was grilled further about Aleppo by host Joe Scarborough. Do you really think that foreign policy is so insignificant that somebody who is running for president of the United States [doesnt] know what Aleppo is, where Aleppo is and why it is so important? asked the host. I do understand Aleppo, and I understand the crisis that is going on, Johnson replied.

Johnson made a point of critiquing the U.S. involvement and said the U.S. needs to partner with Russia to find a diplomatic solution. He also criticized the Democratic and Republican parties past support of regime change.

Johnsons media day was not over. Already scheduled to be on The View, he had to offer a reason for his gaffe, blaming no one but himself. No excuse, he told the panel. I was thinking in terms of acronym. Aleppo. Thats no excuse, whatsoever. When asked if it was a fair question, he said, Its fair game. Im running for president of the United States, and everything is fair game. Hey, its how you deal with adversity that ultimately determines success. Thats all of our lives.

Later, the Johnson campaign would put out a statement:

Story continues

This morning, I began my day by setting aside any doubt that Im human. Yes, I understand the dynamics of the Syrian conflict  I talk about them every day. But hit with What about Aleppo?, I immediately was thinking about an acronym, not the Syrian conflict. I blanked. It happens, and it will happen again during the course of this campaign. Can I name every city in Syria? No. Should I have identified Aleppo? Yes. Do I understand its significance? Yes. As Governor, there were many things I didnt know off the top of my head. But I succeeded by surrounding myself with the right people, getting to the bottom of important issues, and making principled decisions. It worked. That is what a President must do.

Johnsons already been praised for his handling of this situation, but some were less forgiving. View co-host Joy Behar told him, I think its a disqualifying statement, frankly. Fair enough, replied Johnson. Fair enough.

CNN Host Says Fox News Had Staff Member Pretend to Date Him, Was Actually Spying:



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Each episode of One Mississippi begins with a jaunty cover of Hank Williamss Jambalaya  the version here, zippy and jolly, is intended as an ironic contrast to the content of this show starring Tig Notaro and based on her life, her standup comedy, the documentary Tig, and her memoir. Indeed, some of the autobiographical details of Notaros life (and now her work) are more like Hank Williams songs as sung by Hank himself  doom-struck compositions such as I Cant Help It If Im Still in Love With You and Im So Lonesome I Could Cry.

It is Notaros gift to be able to turn momentous events in her life  her breast cancer, her mastectomy, the death of her mother  into comedy that is both wry and warm yet doesnt sentimentalize very much. The achievement of One Mississippi, its six-episode first season streaming on Amazon Prime starting on Friday, is that its awfully good at showcasing Notaros standup point-of-view without softening her hardheaded attitude toward life.

The premise of One Mississippi is that a semifictional Tig  a public-radio storyteller  leaves her Los Angeles home to attend her mothers funeral and gets drawn back into her old life with her genial brother, Remy (Noah Harpster), and her emotionally frozen stepfather, Bill (the marvelous character actor John Rothman). Tig, who navigates the world through deadpan jokes, doesnt fit into the rhythm of the folksy, down-home Southern life she long ago left behind. The comedy arises from the tension between Tig and her new setting, with occasional pop-ins from her L.A. girlfriend, played by Casey Wilson.

As an actor, Notaro has a narrow bandwidth, but thats OK: That deadpan delivery based on a standup-comic persona served Bob Newhart awfully well, didnt it? She doesnt need to express a wide array of emotions through her face and gestures when its all there in her words, and in other performers reactions to her. Working with Diablo Cody as a co-writer and director Nicole Holofcener (Enough Said)  plus the ubiquitous Louis C.K. lurking around the edges as an executive producer  Notaro keeps the show moving along with a lot of low-key funny observations while always allowing for moments of seriousness and even sadness to enter into the mix. (The poignance of the project is increased by the exuberant performance of Rya Kihlstedt as Tigs dead mother, seen in flashbacks and Tigs dreams.) There are times when Tig seems so lonesome she could cry, but she always pulls herself together to give those around her  including us  a smile.

One Mississippi is streaming on Amazon Prime.
BUTLER  A Butler woman complained of arm pain after her vehicle crashed Wednesday night west of Butler, the DeKalb County Sheriffs Department reported.

Lauren E. Wilson of the 100 block of West Willow Street, Butler, was taken to DeKalb Health hospital by a DeKalb EMS ambulance crew.

The crash occurred at 10:30 p.m. in the 5300 block of C.R. 28. Police said Wilson was traveling eastbound on C.R. 28 when she drove her 1994 Lincoln Mark VIII off the side of the road and hit an electric utility pole.

County police received assistance from DeKalb EMS and the Butler Fire Department.

Van crashes in ditch

ST. JOE  An Auburn driver suffered injuries in a crash Thursday morning north of St. Joe, the DeKalb County Sheriffs Department reported.

Matthew L. Schwartz, 35, had a laceration to his head and minor bleeding. He declined treatment by DeKalb EMS medics, a news release said.

The crash occurred at 6:14 a.m. on S.R. 8 west of C.R. 59.

Police said Schwartz was driving a 2002 Chevy Astro van eastbound on S.R. 8 and failed to negotiate a sweeping right curve in the road, which was slick from recent rain. The van slid off the right side of the roadway and down the berm, overturning at least once before going into the Sebert drainage ditch west of C.R. 59. The van landed on its top in the bottom of the drainage ditch, facing north. Schwartz was wearing his seatbelt, which kept him suspended.

Police cited Schwartz for allegedly driving at a speed too fast for weather conditions.

The Sheriffs Department was assisted by Southeast Fire and DeKalb EMS.
Students from Garrett and DeKalb high school gather before classes Thursday morning to pray for two DeKalb High School football players who died from their injuries in a car crash Sept. 2, their families and the community. Dozens of DeKalb students accepted the invitation to join the session in Garretts Paul Bateman Gymnasium. It was was moved up 30 minutes to allow them to get back to school on time. Garrett football quarterback Tanner Burns led the prayer. DeKalb students wore green in memory of Lucas Oberkiser, while Garrett students wore blue in honor of Derek Padilla.

PHOTO CONTRIBUTED
ANGOLA  Starting Monday, South John Street from East Maumee to the East South Street intersection will be closed for reconstruction, a news release from the city said.

The closure is set to last two weeks.

The East South Street intersection will remain open.

Also, weather permitting, a city contractor will begin milling starting Monday, Sept. 19. During the milling process, the streets will be open but will be congested. For the safety of construction workers, motorists are asked to avoid the areas whenever possible.

Streets scheduled for milling include:

 North Elizabeth Street between West Broad and West Mill streets.

 Todd Drive.

 Golden Lake Road between U.S. 20 to the first drive.

 Fox Lake Road between Butler Street and the bridge.

 Bluffview Drive between Heather Ridge and Beery Drive.

 Steven Lee Drive.

 East South Street between South Wayne and South Martha streets.

 East South Street between South Martha and South Washington streets.

 East Mill Street between North Martha and Williams streets.

 East South Street between Euclid Avenue and South John Street.

Once milling is done on the above streets, paving will commence. During the paving process, those streets will be closed. Homeowners will be notified before paving begins.

For more details, call the street department at 665-7656.
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The West Salem Village Board briefly discussed a road naming conflict with the town of Hamilton as a result of the Hwy. 16 construction project at Tuesday nights meeting.

Until now, the board had expected the new stub roads branching off Hwy. 16 would have a single name. However, due to the Department of Transportation requirements, the stub roads, which are short access roads leading from a highway to a road parallel to the highway, would have to have different names in and outside the village.

The problem was the stub road's location. The entrance of the stub road located right at Prince of Peace Lutheran Church is in the village, but drivers turning right off the stub road entered the town of Hamilton.

The board had voted to name the stub William Road in honor of William Heider.

Hamilton, however, requested the stub road entrance be named Hardie Road, with the left turn East Church Road and the right turn, West Church Road.

After receiving input for the town of Hamilton, the board unanimously voted to approve the changes.

State land

The board also briefly discussed a land offer by the state of Wisconsin for a small plot located across from the Cenex off Interstate 90.

This hill, known locally as the sledding hill, is zoned business. The village could purchase the land and sell it to a developer, however, there was some question as to whether the village would be able to sell it for any less than the appraised value.

Village attorney Bryant Klos asked the board to table this agenda item until the next meeting so he could have time to review the offer. He said the village should only consider the land if it has a use for it.

Board member Jim Leicht expressed concern over backlash from the community if the sledding hill was developed.
How was your Labor Day weekend? Mine was wonderful. I spent it with 15,000 Muslims.

The Rev. Kent Johnson, associate pastor of Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in La Crescent, and I were invited by Wahhab and Amena Khandker of the Economics Department of UW-La Crosse, to attend the Islamic Society of North America Convention. The weekend began with a four-hour interfaith discussion on the drive to Chicago. The weekend ended with the same on the way home.

What happened in between? For me, it was a weekend of welcome, love and care. Doors were opened for me, both literally by the teenagers who saw me coming and figuratively by the information from the speakers. When it came to justice and peace issues, the speakers said essentially the same things that I had heard at Catholic conventions. However, the language was different. Dalia Fahmy, assistant professor of political science at Long Island University, said it was part of sharia (their ethical principles) to reach out to the homeless, the far too many in prison, African-Americans and other people who face discrimination. She concluded, Justice cannot be about just us.

The most surprising group that she said Muslims must reach out to was middle-age white males seen at Trump rallies. She said the highest suicide rate is among white males with limited education. She said, Dont mock them; they are hurting. Like us, they want to be able to provide for their families, and they are afraid they cannot.

On the way home, we talked about our experience. Johnson commented, I witnessed a group of people who saw the importance of a right relationship with Allah (God). They wanted to live as peaceful people who are unapologetic for being Muslim and who work for justice for all.

Wahhab Khandker was impressed with new leadership that is emerging: They are confident Americans. When they are told to go home, they say they are home. They were born here. They have lived here all their lives. They speak American English like their peers. They are connected to Christians and Jews as brothers and sisters.

Amena Khandker added, I was inspired by the younger generation. They are active, articulate and highly educated. They are broadminded and tolerant. They work for justice for everybody.

These Muslims were profoundly patriotic.

There are two other things that impressed me. The first was they are deeply patriotic in both symbol and word. In symbol, they began the convention with the presentation of the flags of the United States of America and the state of Illinois by a color guard of Girl Scouts. While we remained standing, we all recited the Pledge of Allegiance to the United States of America. As the president of ISNA approached the microphone to begin his welcoming speech, I noticed his lapel flag. This same beginning also happened on the second day of the convention.

In word, many praised the U.S. They praised our higher education system. They praised the opportunities for employment. In spite of the discrimination they experience now, they praised the support of many Americans. As one presenter concluded, There is no other country in the world where we can speak out as we do today.

Women are in leadership roles.

The second thing that impressed me was the number of women in leadership roles. One of the first people to greet us was a female dentist, the newest member of the organizations board. About 48 percent of the speakers were women. At least half of the people attending were women. Thousands of them wore hijabs (veils); thousands did not.

The Labor Day weekend was also my wedding anniversary. Because my wife, Janice, is secure in our relationship, she supported my being away for our anniversary. Because I wanted to keep it that way, I wanted to buy her a present.

The market place area was filled with a huge choice of womens clothing. I started to look through many items for a gift. Then I remembered: While our marriage was successful, my effort to buy clothes for my wife was not. I breathed deeply, got centered, and let the shopping idea go.

In two years, the ISNA convention will again be held in Chicago, probably over the Labor Day weekend. I will invite Janice, who loves shopping more than life itself, to go with me. Then she can choose whatever clothes she wants. Giving her my credit card will help.

I was impressed by the show of patriotism and the number of women in leadership roles.
A group working to connect bike trails from Nelson to Winona and La Crosse has taken another major step toward that goal.

The Buffalo County Land Trails and Trust has been working since 2014 on creating the Flyway Trail, which would link to the bike trails that stop at Trempealeau, and also cross the river to Winona, to bring new traffic and economic support to river towns in Buffalo County.

Last week the group was awarded a grant of over $2 million from the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, one of 33 projects to receive a total of $15 million for alternative transportation projects.

Board chair Dave Schams said it would likely be used in the creation of the trail to Winona, which requires a bridge over railroad tracks with an estimated cost of over $1 million.

The trail to Winona would include the bridge over the BNSF railroad, a bridge deck on existing abutments over the backwaters of the Mississippi River, and around 4 miles of 10-foot-wide limestone surfaced trail.

It would extend the Great River State Trail, which runs from Onalaska to Marshland, Wis., westward and connect it to Latsch Island and then Winona via the bridge.

At the same time the group is hoping for a grant to help purchase land between Cochrane and Alma, which Schams said would be a likely place to start and build concurrently with the Winona connector.

Even with the grants it could be several years from construction, Schams said.

This isnt going to happen overnight, Schams said.

The groups first hurdle was fundraising $80,000 for a feasibility study, which was completed in the end of 2015.

Theyre hoping the net benefit will be worth it.

Schams said the original idea started with the Alma Chamber of Commerce in 2014 while looking for ways to increase economic traffic to smaller cities. The group is hoping to replicate the success and increased tourism other area cities, specifically Lanesboro, have seen from bikers.

A lot of that is because of the bike trail, Schams said. The whole idea is to try and bring more business to these small towns.

After meeting with area chamber of commerces, community members and businesses, the plan grew to what it is now, which would bring a trail down from the area of the Chippewa River and Hwy. 35 in Buffalo County to connect with the trails in Trempealeau, with an additional connection to Winona.

Jim Wilkie, Alma mayor and board treasurer, said the areas nature and location on the river, along with a reliance on tourism, make a bike trail a perfect addition to bring more vitality to the communities.

I think its all going to be very positive, Wilkie said. This is the kind of tourism we want.

Wilkie said they are concentrating on getting physical work done as soon as possible to further bolster interest.

A mile of trail says a lot more than any words, Wilkie said.

A mile of trail says a lot more than any words.  Jim Wilkie, Alma mayor A mile of trail says a lot more than any words.  Jim Wilkie, Alma mayor
There may be fewer of them than at reunions past, but that didnt keep West Salem graduates from getting together Friday to mark 75 years since high school.

Six of the surviving eight members of the West Salem Class of 1941 gathered at Eagle Crest South in La Crosse with friends, family and some honored guests from the classes of 1940 and 1942 to celebrate their reunion. Twenty-seven students graduated from the high school in 1941, a generation defined by the Great Depression and thrust into World War II as they entered adulthood.

Minnetta Coburn, one of the graduates, joined the Army during the war as a nurse. She was stationed stateside and in Guam. Discharged in 1948, she moved to Oregon to be with her family and become a nurse anesthetist. But she has kept in touch with her classmates over the years.

We were thicker than thieves, she said.

Coburns classmate and cousin, Beverly Onsrud of West Salem, who was an honors graduate and the unofficial historian of the group, moved to Washington, D.C., during the war. She joined the FBI during the conflict, starting out as a typist before becoming a radio operator due to her knowledge of Morse code from her Girl Scout days.

After the end of the World War II, many of the classmates returned home, and all 10 men who fought came back safely. Onsrud got a job at Union State Bank in West Salem while one of her classmates, Gordie Miller, took over the family farm.

Miller grew up with two brothers and a sister during the Great Depression and was the only one who stayed home to run the family hog, beef and crop operation after his father died during his freshman year. Miller still lives in West Salem, renting the farm to a neighbor.

In earlier years, Miller said, he hadnt gone to a lot of reunions, but as the number of surviving classmates has been whittled down by the march of time, said he looks forward more and more to reconnecting with his high school friends. Surviving both the Depression and World War II has made the class a hardy bunch, as only four members had died by 45-year reunion in 1986. Thirteen members of the class were still alive when they got together for the 70-year reunion five years ago.

I was sure surprised when I got the card (inviting me), Miller said. Theres not very many of us left.

Miller shouldnt have been too surprised, as Onsrud has been chronicling the class and its adventures over the years. She has scrapbooks filled with information about weddings, births and death announcements, as well as photos and newspaper clippings documenting every time the classmates have gathered.

Only six of the class of 1941 were able to attend the reunion Friday, but the table they gathered at was filled with 16 others: additional students from the classes of 1940 and 1942, sons, daughters, spouses of classmates no longer with them and other guests. Each class member received an anniversary ribbon, and they shared toasts congratulating the class on making it this far and looking forward to the next reunion.

The 75th is a big reunion, Onsrud said. I never thought we would still all be together.
A man convicted of one of the Chicago areas most infamous crimes  the 1993 massacre at a Browns Chicken restaurant in Palatine, Ill.  is seeking a court hearing into allegedly newly discovered evidence, saying a star prosecution witness repeatedly lied in order to obtain a reward worth tens of thousands of dollars.

The petition on behalf of James Degorski slammed the key witness, Anne Lockett, as a troubled woman, prone to dishonesty, and alleged that she had implicated another former boyfriend in addition to Degorski in the killings of seven workers.

The Cook County jury was never told that Lockett would split a nearly $100,000 reward with a friend if Degorski was convicted, according to Degorskis lawyer, Jennifer Bonjean.

Bonjean also accused Palatine police of coercing Degorskis confession and alleged that the department had a long track record of forcing false statements from several suspects during the years-long investigation.

The petition made much of the fact that no physical evidence connected Degorski to the murders of restaurant owners Richard Ehlenfeldt and his wife, Lynn, and employees Thomas Mennes, Marcus Nellsen, Guadalupe Maldonado, Rico Solis and Michael Castro.

Jennifer Shilling of La Crosse, minority leader of the Wisconsin Senate, is the Ehlenfeldts daughter.

The jury took 90 minutes in 2009 to convict Degorski of all seven slayings but then spared him the death penalty. Now 44, he is serving a life sentence at Menard Correctional Center in southern Illinois.

Two years earlier, his co-defendant, Juan Luna, who was linked to the murders through DNA, a palm print and a lengthy video confession, was convicted. He is also serving a life sentence.

Bonjean alleged that the Palatine Police Department had obtained confessions to the slayings from at least five others who were never charged.
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There are more than 6,000 untested rape kits in Wisconsin. A rape kit consists of a forensic exam that is intended to collect DNA evidence after a sexual assault has occurred.

These kits contain the potential to not only verify a survivor's story but also to identify and convict perpetrators.

In 2014, Texas set aside $10.8 million in its state budget to address a rape-kit backlog. With Wisconsin's upcoming state budget, the governor and Legislature should follow Texas' lead and allocate funds to address this problem. It has been proven that men are more likely to commit sexual violence in communities that allow sexual violence to go unpunished, and rape kits collecting dust isn't helping. Wisconsin needs to make this a priority because sexual violence survivors deserve justice and perpetrators deserve to be incarcerated.
An unassuming church on Madison's east side is set to become the first location outside of Milwaukee to host a faith-based employment program championed by Wisconsin's senior U.S. senator.

The first Madison class of The Joseph Project  and the 14th since the program began in Milwaukee  will meet in October at the Capital City Sanctuary Church of God on Jenifer Street, led by Superintendent Raymond Davis.

The program, named for the Robert L. Woodson Sr. book "The Triumphs of Joseph," is a faith-based initiative that seeks to train men and women  often with criminal backgrounds  and find them jobs with Wisconsin businesses. Most of the jobs are in the manufacturing field  an area where Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, who comes from a manufacturing background, is well-positioned to make some introductions.

Much has been written about the Joseph Project lately, particularly in the wake of violence and unrest in Milwaukee spurred by a fatal police shooting last month. The conservative National Review Online and the Wall Street Journal editorial page recently published features on the program's successes in a city marred by stark segregation and its long-term effects on racial equity.

The people involved with the program use words like "life-changing" and "transformational" when they talk about it. Johnson adds another one: "heartwarming."

"It's by far the best thing I've participated in as a U.S. senator," Johnson said Tuesday, after leaving a meeting with program participants in Milwaukee.

Spearheaded by Johnson, his staffer Orlando Owens and Greater Praise Church of God in Christ pastor Jerome Smith, the program has operated in Milwaukee for about a year.

Participants go through an orientation and vetting process, then attend a class in which they learn spiritual fitness, conflict resolution, stress management, interview skills, team building and financial management.

For those who make it through the class and find employment, it can be their first time in a high-paying job that offers things like health insurance or a retirement fund, Smith said. Most of the jobs start at about $10-15 an hour with the potential to earn upwards of $20 an hour, Johnson said.

Employers working with the Milwaukee class have mostly been located in Sheboygan County. Transportation is provided to participants for the first 30 days, then is offered for $10 a day.

The Madison program will work with Perry Way Foods, a Johnsonville Sausage subsidiary located in Watertown. The plant was reopened in June after being shut down for a year after a fire.

Smith said the Joseph Project hopes to partner with businesses in the Waukesha area, a location he thinks could take participants from both the Madison and Milwaukee classes.

Run entirely on donations, funding and sustainability is always a concern, both Smith and Owens said.

"Thats always a concern. Somehow or another, God always makes a way for us," Smith said.

The program doesn't promise "pie in the sky" results, Owens said. But its supporters are proud of the results it delivers.

About 140 people have gone through the class, Smith said. Of those participants, about 120 have had interviews with employers, and about 85 have landed jobs. Those who have found employment have had about a 78 percent retention rate, he said.

Some women have gone through the class, Smith said, but the majority of its participants have been African-American men. Unemployment among African-Americans in Wisconsin was the highest in the nation last year.

So far, somewhere between eight and 10 participants are enrolled in the Madison class, Owens said.

What makes a good candidate for the program and a successful participant is "one and the same," he said. "A great attitude is the biggest thing."

Beyond the program participants, Owens said, the pastor leading the class plays a significant role in offering guidance.

Johnson's biggest asset, both Owens and Smith said, is his ability to meet with manufacturers and identify companies that have open positions.

But beyond that, Owens added, having Johnson's name attached to the project helps lend credibility. Smith describes Johnson's role as "kicking open the door," while he, Owens and another Johnson staffer  Scott Bolstad  try to hold it open.

The nature of the program requires employers to be more flexible than they may have been in the past when it comes to criminal background checks. Having the backing of the Joseph Project and the senator can help encourage employers to take that step, Owens said.

The project shows, Johnson said, "that you really do help people turn their lives around one person at a time."

While the program is still relatively small, Johnson and Owens said they've heard interest from senators on both sides of the aisle  Cory Gardner of Colorado and Cory Booker of New Jersey, for example  in replicating it in other states.

Smith said he "turns a blind eye" to any partisan questions or criticism of the program's political affiliation.

"Either youre here to help or you're not. If you're not, we see past it and thank God for you, but were going to keep moving," Smith said.

The Joseph Project has meant the difference between being able to buy a car, pay the utilities bill and put groceries on the table or not, Smith said, calling the results "life-changing." Owens noted that he's seen participants go from taking the bus and walking to the church for classes to being able to afford a car for the first time.

The difference between this program and other efforts, Owens said, is its tangible results. People are tired, he said, "of having people talk and meet, talk and meet and nothing really happens. Thats really something that's unique about this."

Alvin Savage, a program participant who works for Nemak in Sheboygan, said in a video promoting the project that his experience gave him "more clarity." Willie McShane, who also works at Nemak, was thankful for something straightforward: money in the bank.

"Your compassion is best demonstrated and is most successful when you demonstrate it in your local community, person to person," Johnson said. Thats kind of the bottom line  helping people turn their lives around person to person."
Four Iranian patrol boats made attack runs on the USS Nitze in international waters in the Strait of Hormuz, Tuesday, Aug. 23.

The Iranian boats did everything but launch weapons at the United States guided-missile destroyer.

It was one of several provocative attempts by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps Navy (IRGCN) to provoke United States ships to fire on Iranian naval vessels.

The patrol craft USS Tempest and USS Squall were operating in the northern Persian Gulf when they were approached at high speed by three IRGCN boats. The three Iranian boats crossed the Tempests bow within 600 yards three times.

During all of these incidents, the Iranian ships did not respond to bridge-to-bridge communication and maritime danger signals from the ships whistle.

The incident involving the USS Nitze was captured on video. The restraint shown by the United States Navy in this incident was too much to watch. When does a United States Naval vessel get to defend itself? Its quite likely the United States ships can only return fire once they are fired upon. Thats not very comforting to the families of sailors who serve our nation on those ships.

The United States Fifth Fleet spokesman Cmdr. Bill Urban told United States Naval Institute (USNI) News that the Iranian patrol craft created a risk of collision and a number of other dangers.

In the situation with the USS Squall, only after the Squall fired three warning shots from its 50-caliber machine gun did the Iranian vessel turn away.

The United States Navy makes the high seas safe for commerce. There are many areas where merchant vessels are at risk of piracy. The Strait of Hormuz is important because it is the entry and exit to the Persian Gulf. One-fifth of the worlds petroleum travels through the strait. Areas of the Arabian Sea off the coasts of Yemen and Oman south of the Persian Gulf have been known as danger zones for all sorts of vessels due to piracy.

United States citizens see a great deal of their federal tax dollars go to support the Department of Defense.

Since the end of World War II, the United States and Great Britain have become the police of the high seas. People often look at the United States Navy as our nations bullying fist. In reality, the Navy provides protection to the merchant marine and international commerce.

The issue isnt just about Iran causing international incidents to grab headlines or to strike fear into the hearts of people around the world.

Such crazy seamanship on the part of the Iranians is highly unprofessional and could lead to countless deaths.

The Iranian patrol boats are equipped with missiles that could damage or destroy U.S. ships. The unprofessional behavior by the Iranians is frightening.

Yet, if the United States ships were ultimately forced to defend themselves, theres a likelihood that uninformed citizens would simply blame the incident on our bullying fist.

The IRGCN is separate from the regular Iranian Navy. It answers directly to Irans sectarian leadership, according to the USNI. The IRGCN has regularly harassed United States and British naval vessels while violating maritime laws and standards since 2007.

The United States doesnt know if the IRGCNs actions are ordered by Irans government or are the coordinated actions of some of its leaders. Its a rouge outfit.

All the while Iran is collecting information on how the United States responds to such incidents, so the next time it the IRGCN can throw and new, deadly, wrinkle into its harassment.

Its difficult to watch knowing someday the foolish behavior will likely cost people their lives. Its also unfair to American families who deliver their children to serve in the Navy, all of the armed services really, to see such a reckless, deadly game.
MADISON  Federal agents lacked proper guidance and experience while conducting undercover sting operations in Milwaukee and several other cities that were aimed at disrupting illegal gun sales, according to a U.S. Justice Department report released Thursday.

The Justice Departments inspector generals office report examined shortcomings with U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives storefront sting operations in Milwaukee; Pensacola, Florida; St. Louis; Wichita, Kansas; and Boston. The operations were designed to curb illegal gun trafficking by luring people with illegal weapons into the store, where agents could identify them, buy their guns to get the weapons off the street and trace the guns histories. According to the report, the ATF established 53 storefront operations throughout the country between 2004 and 2013.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel published an expose in 2013 detailing some of the problems with the storefront operation conducted in that city. It found that agents overpaid for guns with taxpayer money, that guns were stolen from an ATF vehicle and that the storefront was burglarized. Whats more, agents left behind an operational plan at the store when they shut it down. The document included undercover agents names, vehicle descriptions, cellphone numbers and secret signals.

Most defendants were charged with low-level offenses and the operation failed to capture any major criminals.

The inspector generals office also found a number of issues with storefront stings in the other cities.

Pensacola agents didnt place a team outside the store to help with potential emergencies and had no plans for dealing with people who couldnt legally possess guns but who left the store armed. The store also was burglarized once; the report said agents didnt install an alarm.

In St. Louis, agents set up their storefront 600 feet from a Boys and Girls Club. Most of the agents involved werent aware of the club and a tactical advisor said its never a good idea to run operations around children.

Boston agents ran their store out of a van that moved around, leading the lead agent to remark that the chance of randomly encountering someone on the street who wants to sell a gun was virtually nonexistent.

The report found that the storefront sting operations problems were caused primarily by poor management and insufficient training and guidance for field agents. A lax culture that failed to emphasize managing risks also played a role.

It also found that agents lacked adequate policies and supervision. The ATF assigned inexperienced agents to run and supervise the operations and shifted them around without adequate support from the bureaus headquarters, which didnt pay enough attention to how the operations were being run.

The report recommended that the ATF consolidate its expertise in running storefront operations and refrain from proceeding with such stings until ATF headquarters agrees that theyre properly designed and executed.

The inspector generals office also examined whether the five storefronts, as well as a sixth in Portland, Oregon, targeted people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The office found no evidence that the ATF targeted or used disabled people because of their disability.

However, the report concluded that Justice Departments law enforcement agencies, including the ATF, FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and U.S. Marshals Service, lack policies addressing how to apply federal law prohibiting discrimination based on disabilities.

The report offered 13 recommendations, including developing operation protocols, using experienced agents, tracing firearms quickly and building a plan to ensure disability compliance.

The report includes an August letter from ATF Deputy Director Thomas Brandon promising to concur with all the recommendations. But in the letter, he also stressed that the five operations the report reviewed prevented more than 780 guns from entering illegal commerce and resulting in charging recommendations against 120 people.

We ... believe that community-impact operations such as storefronts are an appropriate and necessary option in the catalog of federal law enforcement techniques, Brandon wrote.

The report also includes a Sept. 6 letter from U.S. Justice Department Associate Deputy Attorney General Carlos Felipe Uriate saying the agency has put together a disability compliance work group.
Biddeford-Saco-OOB Courier

Those who habitually put items in their recycling bins that don't belong there are the target of the ordinance amendment, not those who make an occasional, accidental mistake, said Public Works Director Jeff Demers.
One American astronaut and two Russians landed safely in Kazakhstan Wednesday after spending nearly six months on the International Space Station.

The U.S. space agency NASA announced that American astronaut Jeff Williams and Russian cosmonauts Aleksey Ovchinin and Oleg Skripochka returned to Earth this week.

Their journey from the space station to Earth took about three and a half hours.

Astronaut Jeff Williams has now spent more time in orbit than any other American. He has spent 534 days in space during four separate missions.

It is a Russian cosmonaut who holds the world record: Gennady Padalka has spent 879 days in space.

NASA wrote about Jeff Williams experience at the space station. The U.S. space agency said Williams performed five space walks during his time there. During one of the space walks, Williams installed a station where commercial space flights can stop.

NASA said Williams played an important role in getting the space station ready for a private U.S. space industry  not just government-operated missions.

Williams also commented on his experience on social media. He posted a picture of Earths outer atmosphere and wrote, "I will certainly miss this view!"

Russian Anatoly Ivanishin took command after Williams left the station. The Russian cosmonaut remains in the space station with American Kate Rubins and Japans Takuya Onishi.

Im Anne Ball.

Joshua Fatzick wrote this story for VOANews.com. Jim Dresbach adapted it for Learning English. Kelly J. Kelly was the editor.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section or visit our Facebook page.

________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

cosmonaut  n. an astronaut in the space program of Russia or the former Soviet Union

mission - n. a job or project that someone is given to do

commercial - adj. related to or used in the buying and selling of goods and services

role - n. a part that someone or something has in an activity or situation

view - n. a way of thinking about something; the things that can be seen from a given area or place
The self-declared republic of Somaliland is exporting millions of sheep and goats to Saudi Arabia for use as sacrificial offerings.

These offerings are very important for the millions of Muslims going to Mecca for religious reasons. Their trip, a religious requirement, is called the Hajj.

Sixty percent of Somaliland's gross domestic product -- the value of all its goods and services -- come from livestock sales to the Middle East. So do 70 percent of its jobs.

Mowlid Hassan Jama has worked at a livestock market in the Somaliland capital, Hargeisa, for 10 years.

He says "I earn my livelihood from this livestock, and, secondly, I feel I am supporting the Islamic community in having a good Hajj festival."

The animals, once sold in the markets, are taken by truck to the Red Sea port of Berbera. There, they wait in quarantine for weeks while they receive blood tests and vaccinations.

In the past, accusations of disease among Somaliland livestock led Saudi Arabia to temporarily ban imports of its animals.

Ali Mahamud Gulled is an expert on animal health. He says the Berbera quarantine holds over a million animals at the height of the Hajj. He says Somaliland takes the health of its livestock seriously.

"It [exporting sick livestock] could result in a ban of our livestock, so we make sure that each and every animal leaving here is free of diseases."

After the restrictions are lifted, sheep and goats are loaded onto ships, often at night when the air is cooler. A single ship can hold between 20,000 and 120,000 animals.

Somaliland now faces competition from Sudan, Australia, and other countries that also export livestock to Saudi Arabia.

Abdi Osman Haji is a researcher with the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization. He says Somaliland must modernize its industry to stay ahead.

He adds that Somaliland needs to treat its animals better, too.

"Animal welfare is not on the agenda here, and that has to be introduced. Also, animals, when they are being exported via ships and also trucks, they are not according to international standards."

Even so, the export of animals from Somaliland to Saudi Arabia remains important for both countries.

Im John Russell.

Jason Patinkin wrote this story for VOANews.com. John Russell adapted his report for Learning English. George Grow was the editor.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section. _______________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

offering  n. something that is given to God or a god as a part of religious worship

livestock  n. farm animals (such as cows, horses, and pigs) that are kept, raised, and used by people

quarantine  n. the situation of being kept away from others to prevent a disease from spreading


A new study shows a vaccine designed to prevent dengue fever could actually be making people sick.

Dengue infects an estimated 400 million people worldwide each year. The virus spreads to human beings through the bite of an insect, the mosquito.

Most people who get dengue suffer health problems like those resulting from a mild case of influenza, like a higher than normal body temperature.

But the illness is more severe the second time a person gets it. In serious cases, it can cause bleeding inside the body and even death. About 25,000 people a year die from the infection.

The drug Dengvaxia is so far the only vaccine approved for use against dengue. Several countries - including Brazil, Mexico, Costa Rica, Paraguay and the Philippines - have already approved use of the drug. But health officials are still trying to decide the best way to release the vaccine.

Trials of Dengvaxia involved more than 30,000 people in 10 countries. Among young people, the drug was found to reduce infections by 60 percent, and hospitalizations by 80 percent. But over time, many of those vaccinated got seriously ill with dengue.

Researchers from Britain and the United States studied the results of the tests. The researchers were from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Imperial College London and the University of Florida. They found that the vaccine acted as a first infection in people who had not had the virus before.

The researchers reported their findings in the journal Science.

The researchers say they are concerned that people who get infected a second time after the vaccine can get severely sick. This could explain why young children especially were getting ill. They had not lived long enough to get previous infections.

Based on the findings, the World Health Organization is warning health care workers not to give the vaccine to anyone younger than nine.

But data showed that people other than children were getting severe dengue cases if they had the vaccine, but were not infected before they received it.

What we suggest is  maybe having been exposed to dengue in the past is more important than age itself, said Isabel Rodriguez-Barraquer of the Bloomberg school.

The study found that the vaccine should not be a problem in countries with many cases of dengue. In such areas, Dengvaxia was found to reduce severe sickness and hospitalizations by 20 percent to 30 percent.

But the researchers warned that in countries where only 10 percent of people have been infected with dengue, the vaccine needs to be carefully used. Ideally, Rodriguez-Barraquer said, people should be tested before getting vaccinated, to see if they have been infected in the past.

The researchers are also looking forward to trial results from additional new dengue vaccines.

Im Bryan Lynn.

Jessica Berman reported this story for VOA News. Bryan Lynn adapted it for Learning English. George Grow was the editor.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments section, and visit our Facebook page.

_____________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

mosquito  n. a small flying insect that bites the skin of people and can spread disease

fever  n. high body temperature caused by illness

trial  n. a test to see if something works and is safe

data  n. information or facts about something

exposed  adj. not protected from something harmful
The U.S. Presidential election is getting closer.

The latest average of major polls shows Democrat Hillary Clinton leading Republican Donald Trump by 3.3 percentage points, according to RealClearPolitics.com.

On August 10, that same average of nine polls had Clinton up by 7.7 percentage points.

A new poll Wednesday by CNN-ORC had Trump ahead by two points -- 45 percent to 43 percent -- among likely voters.

'Bounce' is Gone

Larry Sabato is director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.

He said The tightening is natural. Sabato said it is because the bounce Clinton received in polls after the Democratic Party convention in July has gone.

Sabato said Clinton still leads in most of the important swing states that will decide the presidential election. Swing states are states where both Democrats and Republicans have a good chance of winning.

There's no guarantee she (Clinton) will win, but the odds currently favor her, Sabato said.

In the United States, the candidate who wins the election is not always the one who receives the most votes.

The Electoral College Decides

The election is decided by the Electoral College. Each state has seats in the Electoral College. States with larger populations have more seats.

Trump was very happy about the new CNN poll showing him leading among likely voters. Earlier CNN polls had him losing to Clinton.

Their big poll came out today that Trump is winning, he said. Its good psychology. I know that for a fact, because people that didnt call me yesterday, they are calling me today. So thats the way life works, right?

A close race might increase the importance of two minor party presidential candidates -- Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson and Green Party Candidate Jill Stein. In the new CNN poll, 7 percent of likely voters support Johnson, 2 percent back Stein.

These low numbers for Johnson and Stein are surprising because large numbers of voters say they doubt whether Trump or Clinton would have the ability to lead the country.

Not Much Confidence

A new 50-state Washington Post-SurveyMonkey poll showed these results: 55 percent of registered voters say a Clinton presidency would threaten the well-being of the United States. And 61 percent say a Trump presidency would threaten the nations well-being.

Nate Silver heads the political website fivethirtyeight.com -- named for the number of voting seats in the Electoral College. He still thinks Clinton is leading, but he says he is less sure than before.

The reason Silver is not sure is that so many voters -- about 20 percent  are telling pollsters that they are undecided or they will vote for a minor party candidate.

Silver gives Trump better odds of winning than most other experts who use polls and other information to predict election results. But he said there is also a significant chance of a Clinton landslide, or win by a very large percentage.

A close race could increase the importance of the four televised candidate debates. The three presidential debates will probably be for only Clinton and Trump without the minor candidates. The fourth, for the vice presidential candidates -- will probably be just for Republican Mike Pence and Democrat Tim Kaine.

The first presidential debate takes place September 26. The election is November 8.

Sabato, the University of Virginia expert, said it is possible a very good debate by one of the candidates, or a major mistake by a candidate might cause people to change their opinions.

But usually, Sabato said, voters watch debates with their opinions already settled.

Im Bruce Alpert.

Jim Malone reported this story for VOA News. Bruce Alpert adapted the story, and did additional reporting for Learning English. Pete Heinlein was the editor.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section and share your views on our Facebook Page.

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Words in this Story

bounce -- v. an increase in support because of an event or development

swing -- adj. a state that can support either Democratic or Republican parties

odds -- n. chances of something happening

psychology -- n. the science or study of the mind and behavior
Many countries require young men to serve in the armed forces. But in the United States, military service is voluntary. And joining the U.S. military is not an easy process.

Staff Sergeant Terrelle Thomas joined the Air Force nine years ago. He now works as a military recruiter in Woodbridge, Virginia.

His job is to get volunteers to join the U.S. armed forces.

At the time I was going to school, I was paying for, for school out of my pocket. And I was like 'Man, this is tough,' and I was staying home with my parents. I was like, I don't know if I like this as much anymore. So I went in, talked to a recruiter. He was cool. He broke it down for me, and next thing you know, I'm in...

Benjamin Spahr volunteered for the military. He says other members of his family have served in the armed forces.

My mother was enlisted in the Air National Guard and my father was an officer in the Air Force. So I was accustomed to that lifestyle from a young age moving around...

The armed forces pays its members to attend school, both while they are on active duty and after they leave the military. But not everyone can join the armed forces. There are age limits and volunteers must be successful at mental and physical tests. They must also not be abusing alcohol or taking other drugs.

Training for new recruits is difficult and intense. The recruits must be strong and in good health.

An increasing number of women are joining the military. Madison Foote is one of them.

Its just the pushups I'm worried about. I'm not very good at pushups. But I think I can do everything else...

Some Americans volunteer for the armed forces, even when their parents object. The parents are worried about their children because the military deploys troops to many dangerous areas throughout the world.

Oludare Ogunmadewa is a new recruit. He says not everyone in his family supports his decision to enlist in the military.

My parents are worried, my whole family is worried as well, but its a risk I feel is necessary for myself -- more for my children, to secure their future.

The United States ended forced enlistment in 1973, during the Vietnam War. Now, recruits voluntarily sign an agreement to stay in the military for three to six years, depending on their chosen job.

Some volunteers choose to stay longer. Staff Sergeant Thomas says that is because they discover that serving in the military is unlike any other job they could have.

A lot of veterans that serve their 20, 30 years, the main thing that they talk to me about -- especially when they bring their, their children to the office -- is the camaraderie they establish with the people they met.

Im Christopher Jones-Cruise.

Odil Ruzaliyev reported this story for VOANews.com. Christopher Jones-Cruise adapted the report for Learning English. George Grow was the editor.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section, or visit our Facebook page.

_______________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

recruiter  n. a person who finds suitable people and convinces them to join a company, an organization, the armed forces, etc.

pocket  n. a usually small cloth bag that is sewn into a piece of clothing, a larger bag, etc., and that is open at the top or side so that you can put things into it

break it down  informal expression explain

accustomed  adj. familiar with something so that it seems normal or usual (+ to)

lifestyle  n. a particular way of living; the way a person lives or a group of people live

pushup  n. an exercise in which you lie on your stomach and raise and lower your body by straightening and bending your arms

camaraderie  n. a feeling of good friendship among the people in a group
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The memory of a beloved pet inspires one couple's fight against injustice.
It is often asserted that the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 proved that HWA was right and he really did see the future.

This of course is nonsense. Herbert W. Armstrong said that Christ would return within twenty years in his book Mystery of the Ages. (PCG has since deleted those words so someone in there knows HWA spoke nonsense.) How convenient for them to forget this.

Also Herbert W. Armstrong never said the Soviet Union would collapse. He thought it would survive intact until a few years after Christ's return. It shows how biased some many in the COGs are that they never seem to notice this. This inconvenient truth is just tossed into the memory hole.

It is true that HWA said that some Eastern European states would break away from Moscow's orbit and join the European Empire he said would arise at any moment. But he never talked of the Soviet Union collapsing. He did not teach that. Also he portrayed the rise of the European Empire to be far quicker then what has actually happened. In Mystery of the Ages Christ was supposed to return by 2005 at the most.

So assertions that the fall of the Berlin Wall somehow prove that HWA was right is just complete nonsense spread by people who, for whatever reason, are still in denial that HWA was a false prophet who merely talked out of his own "human reasoning".
Ancient cultures of the Colorado Plateau, Fiji, Mongolia, New Zealand and Easter Island will be the focus of free talks at Coconino Community College for the next five weeks.

A. Dudley Gardner, Ph.D., and CCC Vice President of Academic Affairs, will present a free lecture series at the Lone Tree Campus to share some of his discoveries from excavations around the world.

I hope that people see that at Coconino Community College our endeavors are directly translated into the classroom, Gardner said. And that the student gains from real-life experiences an appreciation for our ancient past.

Gardner is an archaeologist and an historian who has worked in the field of archaeology since 1975. He has published several books, articles and archaeological reports of his fieldwork, and he has even collaborated on work with renowned author Annie Proulx.

His specialty is the Formative Period and 18th century Archaeology from around the Pacific Rim, and he has conducted extensive archaeological excavations in Western Colorado and Wyoming.

The five talks in the lecture series will feature:

Sept. 12, 6:30-7:30 p.m. Paleo-Indians of the Colorado Plateau: In 2007 Gardner received a Bureau of Land Management grant to excavate Eagle Rock Shelter in Colorado. The shelter was occupied from 13,000 BP to 200 BP, and Gardners lecture will explore what was recovered during excavations.

Sept. 19, 6:30-7:30 p.m. Archaeology of Fiji: Gardner will talk about the Lapita People and studies done at the World Heritage Site of Levuka.

Sept. 26, 6:30-7:30 p.m. Archaeology of New Zealand: Gardners lecture will focus on excavations and a survey conducted around the Bay of Islands in New Zealand.

Oct. 11, 6:30-7:30 p.m. Archaeology of Mongolia: Gardner will look at the results of Yale Universitys Tarvagatai Valley Project conducted between 2010 and 2015.

Oct. 18, 6:30-7:30 p.m., Archaeology of Easter Island: Gardner will round out the lecture series by discussing excavations along the Moai Road and work on the Pircas on Easter Island.

I think it would be good for the community because they are from different areas of the world, Gardner said.

Several of the excavations were conducted over a period of several years.

We get to know the areas intensely because we work on them so long, Gardner said.

He added that his talks will not be something hes read in a book. His work has been done in the field and brought directly into the classroom. His aim is to tell the story of what happened on the excavations so that people can appreciate learning about the worlds past.

Often, archaeologists go out and do these projects and never tell anybody about what theyve found, Gardner said. I want to change that.

The CCC Lone Tree Campus is located at 2800 S. Lone Tree Road. For more information about events at CCC, visit www.coconino.edu/calendars.
NASA began an historic mission Thursday evening. The space agency sent its OSIRIS-REx spacecraft on a seven-year journey to study and collect a sample from an asteroid  the first such mission in United States history.

NASA launch for OSIRIS-REx mission

1st US mission to sample an asteroid

Mission will help in search for origins of life

RELATED: Upcoming Space Coast launch schedule



OSIRIS-REx was lifted up on an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in a textbook launch with a lovely evening for viewing.



It's a big mission for a small sample: The spacecraft is heading about 750,000 miles into space to one of several thousand near-Earth asteroids. Asteroid Bennu was selected by NASA because it's not too far from Earth and because of the asteroid's size. Bennu is 500 meters across, which is about the size of a small mountain.

Smaller asteroids tend to spin quicker and can throw any loose debris from its surface.

"About one year after launch, and going around the sun once, we will do a gravity assist and change the plane of the spacecraft, put it in the same plane as Asteroid Bennu," said Michael Donnelly, OSIRIS-REx project manager.

OSIRIS-REx will arrive at Bennu in August 2018, about two years after launch.

"We believe that the composition of the asteroid has perhaps organic material, it has perhaps a significant amount of water, those are the things that were delivered to Earth early on," said Jim Green, NASA's planetary division director.

The critical moments won't happen for two more years, though. In July 2020, the spacecraft's 10-foot-long arm will dip down and, for just three seconds, bounce off Bennu's surface to collect a couple of ounces as a sample.

"We have great science ahead of us," said Dante Lauretta, principal investigator of OSIRIS-REx. "I'm really excited to get to this milestone, launched to its journey to Bennu and back."

The spacecraft is scheduled to return home in September 2023. The sample will be delivered to scientists.

Live Blog LIVE CHAT: Atlas V launch for OSIRIS-REx asteroid mission
Local business solutions provider One Channel is expanding at a rapid pace throughout Africa, largely as a result of traditional mid-market ERP specialists looking for a true-cloud, post-modern ERP solutions for their medium to large customers.

Image by 123RF

In less than a year, One Channel has appointed more than 10 resellers in South Africa alone. The company is also represented by strategic partners in Namibia, Mozambique, DRC, Kenya, Ethiopia and Zambia.

One Channel CEO, Bernard Ford, says this is part of their rapid expansion strategy on the African continent. One Channel is aiming to establish local partnerships to help build teams of resellers and service providers around Acumatica in all African countries.?

One Channel has followed the evolution of business software from core accounting, to ERP and now to extended ERP and Cloud and has adapted its business model to deliver modern, cloud-based extensible systems.

Ford believes Africa will leapfrog the world in ultra-fast broadband and smartphone propagation over the next three to five years. One Channel is positioned to take advantage of this technological advance to unlock the most modern ERP and business software solutions for our African customers.?

Through its partnerships with the best solution providers, software developers and master vendors like Acumatica, One Channel offers the world's leading cloud-based ERP and Mobile Workforce solutions for medium sized to large organisations in many sectors and industry types.
John Abraham has always been the sexiest man in the Hindi movie business. He has shed a lot of his inhibitions along with a lot of his clothes, and emerged as the country's favorite pin-up boy. He also proved the myth wrong that supermodels can't be stars.

However, he opened up about a lot more when he featured on The Firstpost Show with Renil Abraham.

The actor was recently announced as the brand ambassador of Arunachal Pradesh tourism in association with Viacom18. In a discussion about the brands he chooses to endorse, which includes Arunachal Pradesh tourism and Garnier Men, he mentioned that it's highly important for the ideology and identity of the brand to resonate with that of his.

Abraham openly spoke about his personal life, relationships and commitments on the show. The Dishoom actor also played a few rounds of 'Five Second Summaries' with our host and turns out he is quite good at it!
As Baar Baar Dekho hits the screens today, the films debutante director, Nitya Mehra, whos comfortably numb now, recalls the first time she met the leading lady Katrina Kaif.

It was before the narration of the film, which is touted as a new age love story. They were in Katrina's house, and the actress, sans make-up, was giving instructions to her staff, in Hindi.

I was so excited, hoping that she said yes because I knew exactly what I wanted to bring out from her. I felt no one really knows her well and thats all I wanted to tap into. I wanted to merge my character Diya into Katrina and make it believable and real, says the Amritsar-born writer-director.

She further adds, I had seen her films like Namastey London and Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara and finally when I cast her I went and saw Raajneeti. I was so amazed that not many people have tapped into her potential. She has a kind of mystery about her."

When I looked her (Katrina) up on the web, I found very little of her. I didnt understand her at all, she was a blank slate, which in a sense, was great. And now that I know her personally, I feel she is very expressive and articulate. Her social demeanour is very different. You have to really scratch the surface to get to her.

Besides the films hit soundtracks, and quirky promotions for which the lead pair have gone all out, its the crackling chemistry between Katrina and Sidharth Malhotra that has become the talking point of Baar Baar Dekho. The film brings the two actors together on the big screen for the first time.

Mehra elaborates, As a director you can only do that much. You cannot build chemistry but what you can do is build interesting characters. If the actors believe in those characters and characters demand the chemistry, then we are home. All I could do is give actors real characters. Every day Katrina and Sid would arrive on set with the kind of clothes and the look and feel of the film in mind. They felt it and chemistry kept growing.

Casting Sidharth Malhotra was not an immediate thing for Mehra. She took her time, but the interest was always there.

"He interested me because he is fairly new, he is experimental, he is not very flamboyant and he is a very neutral person. I can inject him with my character. I had seen Sidharth in only one film, Hasee Toh Phasee (2014), and I thought he doesnt bring any particular personality to the screen or to the forefront, which is exciting for a director. You can take your character and decorate him with it. He has this thehrav, he is restrained as a person and has a very earnest look in his eyes. I am a huge believer that love stories require such eyes. For me, it was a win-win situation," she says.

When Mehra decided to become a director, she says she wanted to make sure that she didnt fall into the trap of doing the usual boy-meets-girl story. She wanted to push the boundaries.

Most love stories are about how two people meet and then there is a conflict. These are the kind of love stories I watch. My film is about regret and making up for lost time. I wanted to deal with the fact that nobody talks about what is happily ever after. Every film ends with  'And they lived happily ever after'. I wanted to dwell into what it actually means, and what it takes, to remain happily ever after," says the director. She is already working on her next script, which will be ready by the end of the year.

Mehra has worked on both, Hollywood as well as Bollywood films. She holds an impressive CV, having assisted Hollywood director Ang Lee in Life of Pi, and Mira Nair in Namesake and The Reluctant Fundamentalist.

She was also an assistant director to Farhan Akhtar in movies like Lakshya and Don: The Chase.

I have been influenced by all these directors. I was mentored by Mira Nair on Namesake, from whom I learnt passion of film-making; I have learnt the art of Zen film-making, philosophy and how silences are really important from Ang Lee. And I have learnt the art of discipline and meticulousness from Farhan. Assisting all these directors have been my film school, she signs off.
BJP MP Manoj Tiwari on Friday questioned the "timing" of comedian-actor Kapil Sharma's allegation that a Mumbai municipal officer sought a bribe from him.

"The timing of raising the matter is doubtful. Yesterday (Navjot Singh) Sidhu announced the launch of a party, and today he (Sharma) has raised this matter. We know their connection," Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Manoj Tiwari told reporters here.

Sidhu features on Kapil Sharma's popular comedy show.

Tiwari also urged Kapil Sharma to name the official of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) who had sought the bribe. "If somebody has demanded a bribe then he should tell his name. He should have complained against that officer to the competent authority," Tiwari added.

Tiwari's remarks came after Sharma on Friday complained to Prime Minister Narendra Modi about corruption in the Mumbai civic body and even questioned if these were the "achhe din" (good days) he had promised in the run-up the 2014 general elections.

"Taking and giving bribes  both are crimes. This angle is also important," Tiwari said, adding, "There are reports of illegal construction in his house that also needs to be looked into."
New Delhi: Online education start-up Byju's has raised $50 million (about $332.3 crore) from a clutch of investors, led by Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) and Sequoia Capital. Other participants in the series D funding included Sofina, Lightspeed Ventures and Times Internet Ltd.

The new round, which comes within months of a $75 million fund raise from Sequoia Capital and Sofina, will be deployed to fuel international expansion in countries like the US and the UK. It already has a presence in the Middle East.

"We will deploy the fund to fuel international expansion and inspire additional funding from leading companied the world over," said Byju founder and Chief Executive Byju Raveendran in a statement.

This is the first investment of CZI, the philanthropic arm of the online social media network Facebook's co-founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan, in Asia.

The year-old start-up, however, did not disclose the amount of investment made by CZI and each of the four partners to its first round of funding.

"Our application (K-12 app), which has registered 5.5 million downloads, has 250,000 paid annual subscribers across the country," said Raveendran.

The K-12 app offers learning programmes for students in classes 4-12 and competitive exams like JEE, NEET, CAT, IAS, GRE and GMAT.

"Our K-12 app is reinventing how students learn in the age of mobile devices, as our approach combines teachers, pedagogical methods and data science to deliver personalised learning, feedback and assessments for school students," said Raveendran.

Noting that Indian families work hard to give their children education for a better future, CZI's Vivian Wu said Byju's represented an opportunity to help more students develop love for learning and unlock their potential.

"The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative supports innovative models of learning wherever they are around the world," said CZI's Vivian Wu, who will join Byju's board. Byju's represents an opportunity to help even more students develop a love for learning and unlock their potential, he added.

Meanwhile, explaining the rationale behind investing in the Indian education technology startup, Mark Zuckerberg said in an FB post said he was optimistic about the personalised learning sector.

"I'm optimistic about personalized learning and the difference it can make for students everywhere. That's why it's a major focus of our education efforts, and why we're looking forward to working with companies like BYJU's to get these tools into the hands of more students and teachers around the world," he said.

Byju's had raised $9 million from Aarin Capital in 2013, followed by Series B funding of $25 million from Sequoia Capital last year.

The company is profitable in India with an month-on-month growth of 15 percent.

"Revenues in the first five months of this financial year (FY2017) has already crossed the FY16 revenue of Rs 120 crore," the company said.

The company delivers original content, video lessons and interactive activities for students in classes 4-12 (K-12) and competitive exams like JEE, NEET, CAT, IAS, GRE and GMAT. Its app has been downloaded over 5.5 million times and has reached 2.5 lakh annual subscribers across India.

"Our vision closely aligns with their vision of advancing human potential and promoting equality," Byju's founder and CEO Byju Raveendran said.

With PTI & IANS
President Pranab Mukherjee has given his assent to Constitution Amendment Bill on Goods and Services Tax (GST), a major step towards rolling out the new indirect tax regime which the Narendra Modi government wants to come into effect from 1 April next year.

As of now as many as 17 states, including Assam, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Delhi, Nagaland, Maharashtra, Haryana, Sikkim, Mizoram, Telangana, Goa, Odisha and Rajasthan, have ratified the bill as of now.

For the uninitiated, the Goods and Service Tax is being hailed as one of the biggest game changer in the history of Indian economy. With advent of this a unified tax approach is envisaged which would lead India to operate as a single market.

Though, India with its Federal and State level tax structure would require introduction of a dual GST, the same would definitely help in removing cascading effect of taxes by allowing seamless flow of credits and subsuming multiple taxes.

The draft Model GST law has been released in the Public domain in June 2016 for inviting comments from the industry and businesses at large. The Model GST Law poses huge impact on all sectors, key impacted sectors have been discussed below.

Telecom: In comparison to the current indirect tax regime wherein the tax rate applicable on telecom services is low i.e. 15%, it is expected that tax rate under GST shall rise to around 18%-20%. However, there shall be seemless flow of credit, wherein certain taxes such as VAT/ CST and portion of customs duty paid on procurement of goods shall become creditable under GST.

From compliance perspective, there shall be a paradigm shift for telecom operators as they will be required to undertake State wise compliance as against centralised compliances being currently undertaken, resulting in significant burden on the telecom operators.

Ecommerce: The e-commerce companies may have to revamp the current models, as the VAT rate arbitrage available in the current law may not be available in GST. However, the challenges currently faced by the e-commerce companies in undertaking inter - state transfer of goods owing to trade barriers shall ease out under the GST regime.

GST is proposed to introduce a tax collection at source provision for e-commerce operators with respect to goods sold through their portal which shall significantly increase the compliance burden on the industry.

Automobile: It is expected that there shall be a decrease in the tax rates for automobile sector, as the same may come down from 25% - 40% to 18% - 20% impacting the price of the final products. Further, multiple taxes which are applicable on automobiles such as excise duty, VAT/ CST, entry tax, octroi shall be subsumed in GST reducing compliance burden.

The credit flows shall also become favourable, whereby credits of goods and services shall be permitted to be cross utilised.

Real estate: Currently, this sector is broadly subjected to indirect taxes of stamp duty, VAT and service tax. Under GST regime, the stamp duty shall continue, but VAT and service tax shall be subsumed in GST. Thusreducing the tax burden and valuation challenges for computing VAT and service tax.

Inefficiencies of credit are expected to be done away with primarily on account of cross utilisation of the same among goods and services.

Banking: Under GST regime, the tax rates are expected to increase from 15% to 18-20% in comparison to current indirect tax regime. The same may be coupled with efficiency in credits on inputs.

The major impact area for the sector shall be from a compliance perspective, where there is a likelihood of significant increase from centralised compliances to decentralised State wise compliances.

Consumer goods: The effective rate applicable to the sector is likely to come down from 25% - 27% to 18% - 20%. Coupled with reduction in multiplicity of taxes and cross utilisation of credit, we shall witness a positive impact on the prices in the sector for the end consumer. In addition there is also a possibility for the sector to gain logistics efficiency by consolidation of warehouses/stocking points.

Considering that the GST shall have far reaching impact on almost all aspects of business, industry should quickly gear up and analyse GST impact on their businesses universe and look at this as an opportunity to re-assess their supply chains.Proactive planning with a time bound road map is the need of the hour.

(The author is tax partner, Ernst & Young. Views expressed are personal.)
New Delhi - Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman today met Uber India President Amit Jain and discussed ways through which the cab aggregator can help in strengthening the ecosystem for startups.

In the meeting, the cab aggregator expressed its intention to contribute in the development of startup ecosystem.

The ministry suggested the company to do something meaningfull in terms of providing mentorship and connecting venture capital funds to budding entrepreneurs in small cities, an official said.

The ministry is taking several steps to promote these entrepreneurs.

Under the 'Start Up India Action Plan', the government has announced incentives including tax holiday and Inspector Raj-free regime besides capital gains tax exemption and Rs 10,000 crore corpus to fund them.

Sitharaman had also demanded from the Finance Ministry to consider raising tax holiday for startups to 7 years from the current 3 years to encourage budding entrepreneurs.
China, 15 partner nations say it is important to speed up the negotiations

China and 15 partner countries made headway on Thursday on accelerating the pace of negotiations for the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.

The aim is to reach a "balanced, high quality and mutually beneficial" result.

Leaders from China, South Korea, Japan, India, Australia, New Zealand and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations adopted a joint statement, stressing the importance of advancing negotiations over the regional partnership.

The statement was adopted on the sidelines of a series of summits involving ASEAN in Vientiane, the Laotian capital.

"Because China, South Korea and Japan are all manufacturing power-houses and the main export products for the other countries are mainly agricultural products, natural resources and services, it is rational for certain countries to stress the magnitude of a balanced trade agreement," He Jingtong, a professor of trade policy at Nankai University in Tianjin, commented.

The professor said talks on the planned partnership have made strong progress. Breakthroughs have been made in seven areas in the past 18 months, including intellectual property rights protection, a legal mechanism and competition policies.

The Chinese government has said many times that it supports ASEAN's leading role in negotiations on the partnership and hopes the negotiations can be speeded up to promote free trade and convenience.

In 2015, leaders of the 16 countries set a goal to end negotiations on the partnership by the end of this year. But they now believe that more time will be needed to narrow their differences to strike a "balanced" trade deal.

Negotiations on the partnership started in May 2013. Since then, 14 rounds of the talks have been held.

Trade among the 16 countries amounted to $11.9 trillion last year, while their combined output reached $22.4 trillion, 30.6 percent of total global output in 2015.

Zhang Ying, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation in Beijing, said, "Certain ASEAN countries are still expecting to gain some policy guarantees such as getting more favorable tariff policies for their products from bigger economies including Australia, China and South Korea before the deal is sealed.

"As many ASEAN members' economies depend heavily on commodity and natural resources trade, the lower prices of these mining and agricultural products push them to try more policy methods to support their economies," Zhang said.

Countries such as Vietnam and Indonesia are also speeding up the pace of building a relatively modern manufacturing foundation to improve their earning ability, Zhang added.
The Indian Railways has introduced a dynamic pricing structure for its premium trains such as Rajdhani, Duronto and Shatabdi, attracting criticism from political parties and consumers.

The railways has clarified that it is being introduced on an experimental basis and will be reviewed after some time.

Here are all the key facts you need to know about the new mechanism:

What is it all about?

It is called a flexi fare system and is modelled on the mechanism prevalent in the aviation sector. As much as 10 percent of the total seats in these trains will be sold at the normal fare in the beginning. Then the fares will increase by 10 percent with every 10 percent of the berths sold. However, there is a ceiling of 50 percent for fare increase.

AC II, AC III, chair car in the three trains, besides sleeper class in Duronto trains will come under this scheme. First AC and Executive Class have been kept out of the new system of the already prevailing high tariffs.

Flexi system is applicable on the base fares, which means other supplementary charges such as reservation charges, superfast charge, catering charges, service tax etc., as applicable shall be levied separately.

For example, the New Delhi-Mumbai 3AC fare in Mumbai Rajdhani, which is Rs 1,628 as base fare will be Rs 1,791 with 10 percent increase and it will go up to Rs 2,279 with maximum 50 percent increase. (For II AC and Chair Car, the maximum hike will be 50 percent while for III AC, it will be 40 percent.)

Here are two tables that explains how the system works:

Is it beneficial for the consumers?

Doesn't seem so. One reason is, if you are paying more for a service, the service provider should also be providing a value addition. In this case, it is not clear what the value addition is.

Secondly, the system also doesn't seem to work on a demand-supply mechanics. Writer Vivek Kaul explains the unfairness of the system in his Facebook post given below:

Also as Ashok Khemka said on Twitter, such a system is possible only when there is competition. Here Indian Railways is a monopoly.

Surge pricing in train travel exploits citizens' helplessness. Similar step by taxi aggregators, Uber and Ola, was frowned upon.  Ashok Khemka, IAS (@AshokKhemka_IAS) September 8, 2016

Demand-supply argument valid in case of competition. Indian Railways is monopoly. Imagine surge pricing in other monopolies or basic needs.  Ashok Khemka, IAS (@AshokKhemka_IAS) September 8, 2016

There were others too who raised serious concerns related to the Railways move on Twitter:

Surge pricing for trains also needs 1. Private train services as competition; 2. Unbundling premium & non-premium trains into separate corps  Ashok Malik (@MalikAshok) September 8, 2016

Passenger groups have also slammed the move. The railway ministry seems to be making an unhealthy use of passenger earnings. Keeping the first and executive chair class out of the hike further adds to its dubious nature, Shubhash Gupta, chairperson, Railway Yatri Parishad, has been quoted as saying in a report in The Indian Express.

If it is not beneficial for customers, why is the railways doing this?

The simple reason is that the financial position of the railways is not very good, as explained by All India Railway Federation General Secretary Shiv Gopal Mishra. There is a need for some measures to improve the situation, he says.

The passenger revenue target for the current fiscal is Rs 51,000 crore as against Rs 45,000 crore in the last fiscal.

Defending the move, Railway Board Member (Traffic) Mohd Jamshed said train travel is still the cheaper mode of transport in the country compared to air or road. At present, we are facing loss of Rs 33,000 crore in the passenger segment as we charge 36 paisa for one km of travel, Jamshed said.

We are spending Rs 1,800 crore in passenger amenities by improving platform area, installing lifts, water vending machines and many more such facilities, he has said.

Mishra says the hike is not on Garib Rath or Jan Shatabdi trains which are used by the common man. "Rajdhani or Shatabdi trains are generally patronised by those who can afford premier service, he says.

The decision will impact fares of 81 trains. There are total 42 Rajdhani trains, 46 Shatabdi and 54 Duronto trains currently in operation.

However, facing criticism, the railways has said the dynamic ticket pricing is an experiment. It will be reviewed after some time.

But will it be indeed beneficial for the railways?

The railways is looking to raise about Rs 500 crore in current financial year through the mechanism. But it remains to be seen whether it will indeed be able to meet the target. This is because there are concerns that passengers may migrate to airlines as they may see more value in flying. As explained by Jai Mrug in this article in Firstpost, the highest ticket prices under the railways' flexi fares may not be too lower than the flight tickets. A consumer may be willing to pay a little more and fly rather than pay more for train that has no value addition.

One thing is for sure, with the new system, the government has pitted the railways against airlines. Air India already has a Super Saver scheme under which wait-listed Rajdhani passengers can book tickets on its flights four hours prior to the flight departure at a fare which is equivalent to the ticket price IA class of these trains. This scheme is available only until 30 September.

A report in the Mint newspaper also says Air India has devised a strategy to aggressively "poach" Rajdhani, Shatabdi passengers. The report says the airline has decided not to raise fares in routes which Rajdhanis ply.

On the whole, after four months, if the railways indeed reviews the strategy, it may have to tweak it.

With inputs from Kishor Kadam
Highlighting how Marta Karolyi, national team coordinator for USA Gymnastics, chose to have mostly generalists with one outstanding specialist in getting the team ahead for the just concluded Rio Olympics, George Bradt, a contributor to Forbes, was explaining the other day why generalist vs. specialist is an age-old debate. He was trying to make a point on how to excel in business and sports.

According to Bradt, A generalist knows less and less about more and more until eventually he or she knows nothing about everything. A specialist knows more and more about less and less until eventually he or she knows everything about nothing. Being either a generalist or a specialist is useless, and anyone trying to be both at the same time inevitably self-destructs.

Bradts point is worth remembering when one enters the debate over generalist vs. specialist in the Indian bureaucracy, the debate that is as old as one can remember. In fact, ever since the 7th Pay Commission Report has been out (it was implemented last month), the debate has further intensified. So much so that none other than the chairman of the of the 7th Pay Commission, Justice Ashok Desai, has been critical of how the IAS (Indian Administrative Service) cadre is relegating all other services to secondary position, both in occupying key posts and in managing higher pay scale for itself. For Justice Mathur, subject domain should be the criterion for senior appointments, not experience of the generalist IAS officers.

Justice Mathur seems to share the views of many notable Indians, both in the past and at present. Well-known technocrat of yesteryears KL Rao had argued that persons with knowledge of technology and science, not generalist IAS officers, should head developmental enterprises, as a generalist head of department is likely to view things from the point of view of generalist administration of the secretariat rather than the technical work of the department. Infosys founder NR Narayana Murthy goes even to the extent of suggesting the abolition of the IAS and the system of generalist administrators; he would like a cadre of specialists to deal with complex and highly technical governance issues.

Going by this line of argument, departments such as agriculture, power, mining, infrastructural developments (highways, ports), shipping and health should be headed by specialists, not IAS officers. A similar case is made against how the revenue secretary (heading the departments like income tax and custom) has always been an IAS officer, not one belonging to the Indian Revenue Service (IRS). In fact, many do not fathom how the Comptroller and Auditor General of India is always an IAS officer, not the one from the specialised Audits and Accounts Service. Officers belonging to the Indian Police Service (IPS) resent why none of them has ever been a home secretary. It may also be noted in this context that more often than not the high office of the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has gone to IAS officers, not economists  the list of RBI governors till date makes this point obvious; the likes of Manmohan Singh, Raghuram Rajan and Urjit Patel have been exceptions.

It may be noted that IAS officers are chosen because of the higher marks they obtain in the combined civil services examination. That they dominate other civil servants in rank and pay throughout their careers because of better marks in one-time examination is considered unfair by many. Even here, there is a rider. Until recently, the toppers in the civil service examinations were opting for Indian Foreign Service (IFS). But it so happens that the cabinet secretary (the head of the civil service in the country) has always been a IAS person, even if he or she ranked in the civil services examination much below an IFS officer of the same batch. Naturally, there is a sense of resentment in IFS over the IAS-domination.

The principal argument against the domination of the IAS in the Indian bureaucracy is that it has outlived its utility as a generalist service in a world that is increasingly becoming complex and where domain knowledge has become more valuable. The IAS, so runs the argument, is the successor of the Indian Civil Service (ICS) as developed by the British ruling class. As a service it was the instrument of a laissez-faire government at home and a colonial administration in the Empire. Its fundamental role then was to cater to the objectives of a law and order, revenue-collection and administration of justice. A generalist ICS officer was trained how to promote stability and limit changes by citing rules and files.

However, now the administrative agenda has expanded to all-round development, including political, social and economic reforms, which, in turn, calls for increased expertise in policy formulations and implementations that the amateur generalist is unable to deliver upon. In fact, no developed country is run by panel of generalists. Even the United Kingdom, whose legacy the IAS continues, is now allowing lateral entries of the specialists at higher echelons of its bureaucracy on a contractual basis, something the Modi government is not prepared to go for on an experimental basis. Last month, it rejected the idea of lateral entries of specialists in the bureaucracy. While answering to a suggestion by the Congress MP Shashi Tharoor in Lok Sabha, the minister of state in the department of personnel, Jitendra Singh, said that the government was not thinking on those lines.

In contrast, in Japan bureaucrats spend their entire careers in the same ministry, thereby gaining expertise on the job. In the United States it is the rule of the specialists of various hues, each group doing its assigned task under the broad supervision of the "political" executives, mostly secretaries (equivalent to our ministers) and the legislators in certain cases. Unlike the IAS which is trained for coordination by 'rules and files, the American civil servant is judged by innovation in policy and procedure. Unlike in India where a generalist minister is often helped by a generalised secretary, in the US, each minister (called secretary) has his or her own chosen advisers from the private sector (corporations, universities, think-tanks and the media) on contractual basis; they are in the government as long as there is the concerned secretary.

Do the generalists then deserve no place in the bureaucracy? This certainly cannot be the case in India where problems are of long-term adjustment, not mere orderly transition. Administration, after all, is politics in action; hence not divorced from the political process. But then politics is an art of compromises of various, often conflicting, demands. Similarly, the administration, as late Paul H Appleby, an important American theorist of public administration in democracies, said, is derived from the fact that as the divergent points of view get coordinated, filtered and ultimately crystallised into decisions, compromises are affected all along the line in such a manner that an overall general view emerges in the shape of policy. Top management job requires a general understanding. It requires a view of the whole, something a generalist is good at.

Here, a specialist in administration has distinct disadvantages. If his suggestion or decision is accepted then that is weighed in favour of specialisation in such a way that it gets the place of prominence in a policy decision that is of general nature. It is like expecting a heart-specialist or neuro-surgeon to determine the health-policy as a whole. An excellent electrical engineer in a power plant does not necessarily become adept in policies relating to the countrys solar or wind energy. All told, every technical field has got hundreds of branches and thus hundreds of specialists. So which specialist should be chosen to administer that particular technical field? As Appleby has argued "as one's knowledge increases in a specialised way, by study or situation and assignment, one's general ignorance increases disproportionately. The price of specialisation of every kind is parochialism."

Another aspect of a good administration is the language to convey its ideas. Imagine if a non-expert minister is unable to understand what his or her highly specialised secretary advises him on a day-to-day basis. This difficulty in communication is not limited only to minister-secretary relationship but becomes an issue in the inner functioning of the department as well. It is worth citing here the example cited by Appleby. When the Manhattan Project in New York was being undertaken, an English Professor was brought in as interpreter among various specialists. The point is that a lot of capacity for expression in elegant language is required to get the departmental point of view accepted. And in this task, a generalist is usually better than a specialist.

It is also noteworthy that in the strict sense of the term no generalist IAS officer is a downright generalist and that he or she knows nothing of anything else. In many a case, IAS officers, as they move up in their careers, go for specialised training or higher education to best universities, both in the country and abroad; many of them even obtain PhDs. In fact, in many cases the domainknowledge in a particular department is best illustrated by the writings of these IAS officers.

All this is not to suggest that there is no room for reforms in Indias higher bureaucracy. We need definitely more specialists than what is the case now. It is true that many non-IAS officers do head departments like space, atomic energy, railways, posts and external affairs. There are the likes of academicians Manmohan Singh and Montek Singh Ahluwalia who were co-opted as secretaries to the government of India. But this number is small and needs to be enlarged, particularly in core areas of technologies and infrastructures. There is also a strong case for lateral entry of specialists in the upper echelons for specific periods. What India needs today is an ideal blend of generalists and specialists.
Bengaluru: With the "extreme unrest" in Karnataka over release of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Friday requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi to call forthwith "on a few hours notice" a meeting of chief ministers of the two states to end the impasse.

As the Cauvery row hotted up with the state observing a 12-hour bandh on Friday, Siddaramaiah dashed off a missive to Modi saying that the "unrest", if continued, would have a serious impact on the state's economy as also the IT economy which brings enormous revenue and foreign exchange to the country.

"By this communication, I earnestly request you not only as Prime Minister, but as Head of the entire Federal system, to call a meeting of the Chief Ministers of the States (forthwith on a few hours notice) to resolve the impasse," Siddaramaiah said in the letter released to the media.

He pointed to a precedent of December 1995, where under similar circumstances of deficit flows, the Supreme Court had requested the Prime Minister to resolve the issue. "The Supreme Court by order dated 28 December, 1995 requested the Prime Minister to resolve the issue of implementation of its order, which was then duly done to the satisfaction of all parties," he said.

Complying with the apex court's order, Karnataka government has been releasing 15,000 cusecs of water to Tamil Nadu since Tuesday, triggering a wave of protests particularly in the Cauvery basin districts with Mandya being the epicentre of the stir.

While maintaining that the release was "inevitable", Karnataka government has said it would seek modification of the apex court's 5 September order to spare water for 10 days because of the difficulties in implementing it given that the live storage in four reservoirs in the Cauvery basin now was 46.7 TMCFT against their capacity of 104 TMCFT.

The present live storage is 45 percent against the live storage of 104 TMCFT in the Krishnaraja Sagar, Harangi, Hemavathi and Kabini reservoirs, the government has said.

Siddaramaiah, in his letter, has invited the Prime Minister's "immediate attention to the stark facts already in the public arena about extreme unrest in the Cauvery basin, especially in Bengaluru..." against the court's interim order on release of water.

He said the daily release of 15,000 cusecs of Cauvery water at the inter state border, Biligundulu, which, if continued, "would completely deprive the drinking water not only to the residents of Bangalore City but also to farmers of Cauvery basin and water for the only crop they grow."
Pro-Kannada activists called for a total shut down on Friday to protest against the state government releasing Cauvery river water to Tamil Nadu on a Supreme Court directive amid deficit rains.

Bengaluru and parts of south Karnataka have been completely shut down as a result of the statewide bandh.

B'luru & most parts of south K'taka have been completely shut down over #CauveryWaterWar

Pic:CNN-News18's Imran Khan pic.twitter.com/RHqZYLFG9N  News18 (@CNNnews18) September 9, 2016

With political parties also supporting the day-long shutdown called by a federation of over 500 pro-Kannada organisations, including farmers, traders and businesses, security has been stepped up and additional forces deployed across the state to maintain law and order. Over 800 unions have joined the bandh. Shops, banks and schools remained shut on Friday affecting the functioning of essential services, including public transport.

Pro Kannada organizations in Mandya, Karnataka call a shut down over #CauveryWaterWar

(Via ANI) pic.twitter.com/4PKriZ5ZDg  News18 (@CNNnews18) September 9, 2016

#KarnatakaBandh over Cauvery water issue disrupts normal life in Gulbarga, visuals from bus stand. pic.twitter.com/0vdZG1WBXg  ANI (@ANI_news) September 9, 2016

Pro-Kannada organizations call #KarnatakaBandh over Cauvery water issue; visuals from Bengaluru. pic.twitter.com/yGAJ5cig4C  ANI (@ANI_news) September 9, 2016

In Bengaluru, which solely depends on the river for drinking water to its 10-million denizens, the IT industry, comprising software majors Infosys and Wipro and about 400 multinationals, declared a holiday for its techies in support of the shutdown.

In the absence of buses, taxis, autos and other vehicles, there will be no public transport from dawn-to-dusk in cities and towns across the state.

The Karnataka government has declared a holiday for all schools and colleges to prevent inconvenience to students and teachers.

Though government offices will remain open, attendance is likely to be thin in the absence of public transport, including metro services in Bengaluru.

Banks, shops, markets, malls, hotels, bars, pubs, eateries, restaurant, theatres and petrol bunks will also remain closed during the day.

"As releasing water has stirred the sentiments of the people, we do not oppose the bandh (shutdown), but it should be peaceful," Chief Minister Siddaramaiah told reporters here and appealed to the people not to damage public property.

Essential supplies, including milk and medicines, have been exempted from the shutdown. Ambulances will be allowed to ferry patients to hospitals.

Train and air passengers departing or arriving in the city will have to depend on private vehicles for commuting from railway stations and airport or be stranded till evening in the absence of buses, cabs and autos.

Bowing to the apex court's Monday order, the state began releasing daily 15,000 cusecs from early Wednesday from Krishna Raja Sagar (KRS) and Kabini reservoirs across the river basin for 10 days amid protests and demonstrations by farmers, traders and youth in the Mysuru region.

Admitting that frequent shutdowns cause inconvenience to the public, Kannada Okkuta (federation) president Vatal Nagaraj said there was no alternative to protest against injustice and failure of the government in protecting the interests of the people, especially farmers.

With inputs from IANS
Vijayawada: Telugu film star and Jana Sena Party chief Pawan Kalyan on Friday hit out at the Centre, saying it "stabbed" people of Andhra Pradesh in the belly by denying special category status to the state.

"The Congress stabbed (the people of AP) in the back (by dividing the state) and when we sought justice, BJP stabbed in the stomach," Kalyan said addressing the Andhrula Atma Gourava Sabha (Andhra's self-respect) rally in Kakinada town this evening.

The two national parties created instability in the two states (AP and Telangana), Kalyan alleged and demanded that they apologise to the people. "You could not do justice either to AP or Telangana. You denied special status to AP and could not even give a High Court to Telangana," he pointed out.

AP people had been seeking special status to the state but after keeping them in hope for over two years, the Prime Minister finally thrust two stale laddus in their hands. Recalling that BJP passed a resolution in 1996 in Kakinada favouring division of Andhra Pradesh, Kalyan said it was not honouring the commitment (to grant special status) made in Parliament.

"Doesn't the commitment made by all parties in Parliament hold any value? Is your party resolution greater than the Constitution or Parliament?" he asked BJP, adding that it should feel ashamed of itself.

This was Kalyan's second public meeting after the one in Tirupati late last month. The 45-year-old actor, who supported the TDP-BJP combine in the 2014 elections, vowed to fight till AP was granted special status as promised.

On Wednesday, the Centre announced a financial package for Andhra Pradesh that include full funding of Pollavaram irrigation project, tax concessions and a special assistance, but stopped short of giving the state a special status.
Panna: Members of a panchayat in Madhya Pradesh's Panna district showed their anger against the District Magistrate  who refused to meet them to hear their complaint of misbehaviour against an officer  by handing over the memorandum to a dog.

Representatives of the panchayat on Thursday went to meet District Magistrate JP Irene Cynthia demanding action against an administrative officer for alleged misbehaviour with a woman panchayat member, and wanted to hand over a memorandum to her.

However, the DM did not come out to meet the villagers and instead sent the same officer against whom allegations of misbehaviour were levelled.

DP Dhankad, President of the panchayat representatives, told the media: "When the DM did not come to meet us despite our repeated attempts, and she sent the same officer who had misbehaved with the woman, we handed over our memorandum to a dog."

Dhankad told IANS: "We have been told by others that if we complain against any officer, then the same officer is appointed to investigate the allegations leveled against him or her. But in Panna the situation is worse  where the officer who misbehaved with the woman panchayat member was himself sent to receive the complaint memorandum.

"We thought a dog is more loyal than the errant officer, and thus we handed over the memorandum to a dog."
A doctor from Apollo hospital in Gujarat's Gandhinagar was arrested on Friday for allegedly raping a dengue patient in the ICU of the hospital earlier this week. The 21-year-old woman undergoing treatment for dengue filed an FIR with the local police and alleged that she was raped by a doctor and a ward boy over two days.

Two people arrested after a dengue patient was allegedly raped by doctor and hospital ward boy in Ahmedabad: Police pic.twitter.com/XnTussk8fV  ANI (@ANI_news) September 9, 2016

In the FIR, the woman said that a junior doctor raped her between 31 August and 2 September, PTI reported. According to NDTV, the survivor was raped first on Sunday when the accused  28-year-old Ramesh Chauhan  was on the night shift.

"The girl has said that she was raped twice by the accused. She is still in the hospital and her allegation is being probed," inspector K K Pandya was quoted as saying by The Indian Express.

The woman was drugged before the doctor raped her and she could only reveal the details of the incident on Thursday in a letter to her uncle.

The hospital, in a statement, said they were fully cooperating with the police investigation. "The ward where the incident took place has 14 staff members working round the clock, and is equipped with CCTV cameras. We are co-operating fully with the police which are examining CCTV footage and carrying out investigation," Apollo Hospital PRO, Ankit Hingu said.

With inputs from agencies
Panaji: Asserting that Government will take into confidence all parties while taking steps to bring peace and normalcy in Kashmir, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh said on Friday, it is "very difficult" for people to bear unrest for long.

"The government on its own is working on improving the situation there (Kashmir). The discussions are held with the people. After the all-party delegation meeting, there has been a perceptional change," Singh told reporters in Panaji after commissioning off-shore patrol vessel ICG Sarathi.

The Minister said that the government was working on the recommendations made by the all-party delegation that travelled to the state recently. "The all-party delegation went there (J&K) to review ...our efforts will be to take all parties in confidence while taking a step. We are working on it," he said.

"People in Kashmir have realised that it is difficult to bear such a long span of unrest. People are feeling that peace and normalcy should be restored," he said. "In future also, we will be trying that all parties are taken into confidence (on Kashmir)," he said.

The minister said that "there is improvement in the situation in Kashmir" and the Centre was assisting efforts to provide employment and and bring development in the state. "Things are much in control compared to the past. In coming days, the situation in Kashmir would be completely under control," he said.

In order to provide job opportunities to the youths in the state, the central government has ordered for recruitment of 10,000 Special Police Officers (SPOs) in the state, he said.

"Development work is going on. Central government has also funded for all the development works," he said. Responding to a question on cross-border infiltration, the Home Minister said, "Infiltration has been happening in past, but it was less in 2015." "There is increase in 2016 as far as infiltration is concerned but at the same time our army and para-military forces have managed to eliminate the terrorists," he said. Normal life remained paralysed for 63rd consecutive day in the unrest-hit Valley where 73 persons have been killed and several thousand others injured in the violence which erupted after Hizbul Mujahideen militant Burhan Wani was gunned down by security forces.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, like his predecessor Atal Bihari Vajpayee, takes a keen interest in India's space programme. When he was the prime minister, Vajpayee was even thinking of sending an Indian man to the moon. Thats what K Kasturirangan, who was the then chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro), told me during an interview in 2003.

Strong political will, that even Modi is showing to back Indias space programme, is a good thing. It only adds to the gung-ho enthusiasm of Indias talented space scientists who have toiled hard ever since they built the countrys first satellite Aryabhata in 1975.

Congratulations to @isro scientists for time and again demonstrating top-notch skill, unparalleled dedication & remarkable determination.  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) September 8, 2016

Our space programme keeps making us proud with the exemplary achievements. Successful launch of INSAT-3DR is a moment of immense joy.  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) September 8, 2016

In its latest feat, Isro made the GSLV's first operational flight with a home-made cryogenic engine a success on Thursday. This proves Indias capability to launch satellites weighing up to 2,500 kg into geosynchronous transfer orbits at a price cheaper than those of advanced countries, and this gives the country some more edge in the worlds lucrative commercial satellite launch business.

And exactly three months from now  on 8 December to be precise  India would have been proud to launch the Saarc satellite with a similar rocket and from the same launch pad, if everything went off well. But everything didnt. That rankles Indias space community, particularly Modi, whose idea it was.

But mischievously and quite brazenly, Pakistan sabotaged the project, raising questions that ranged between scientific to silly. Pakistan was bent upon denying India any clout in the South Asian region and also pleasing the Chinese, whose help is vital for its own infantile space effort. India is going ahead with the project along with Saarc countries other than Pakistan: Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal and Afghanistan. It will now be called a South Asian Satellite or a South-east Asian Satellite.

As a result of the deliberate confusion kicked up by Pakistan, India has postponed the launch of this Saarc-minus-Pakistan satellite from 8 December, the so-called "Saarc day", this year to sometime next year.

Pakistan first made a false pretence of warming up to the idea, first mooted by Modi soon after he took over as the Prime Minister in 2014. Modis idea was to "gift" a satellite (Rs 235 crore) to Saarc nations to help them in areas like telecommunication, broadcasting and disaster management.

At one point, Pakistan even made some constructive suggestions (words of the Pakistan High Commission in India) but, just when Isro was expediting the process of making the satellite, began to raising questions.

Pakistan demanded that the satellite come under Saarc umbrella but not under that of India alone. Pakistan also insisted on being part of the projects technical team and sharing the cost, but India rejected the idea, saying it was Modis gift.

Pakistan also started asking whether the Saarc satellite would help India steal its sensitive data.

As an Isro scientist pointed out to Firstpost on Thursday, India must forget "the Saarc satellite as a bad dream, must go ahead with it with a different name for the rest of the the region and, most importantly, must focus on its own space programme."

"Indias space programme is now progressing more rapidly than before," he said.

It indeed is.

What next for Indias space programme?

India's PSLV (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle) series is capable of launching satellites weighing up to only 1,800 kg. And the Mark-2 version of GSLV (like Thursdays GSLV-F05 flight) can handle payloads weighing up to 2,500 kg. To launch heavier satellites, India now depends on foreign rockets.

When operational, Indias GSLV Mark-3, whose first developmental flight is tentatively slated for December this year, can loft satellites weighing nearly 5,000 kg.

India is eyeing the global satellite launch market and has the advantage of lower costs. Isro has launched 74 foreign satellites so far and is striving to raise its share in the $-300-billion market, which is currently insignificant in the face of superior capabilities of and stiff competition from agencies such as French multinational Arianespace and SpaceX of the US.

India can launch satellites at costs that are a fraction of what Arianespace and SpaceX charge. An Ariane-5 rocket launch by Arianespace can cost about Rs 660 crore and the Falcon-9 of SpaceX comes at Rs 440 crore. In comparison, the cost of Indias PSLV rocket is as low as approximately Rs 100 crore and GSLV (Mark-2), about Rs 230 crore. But Isro is aware that the Indian insurance costs are higher and that SpaceX is engaged in some very advanced research to bring its costs down even more.

So India must drop its own costs even lower. Thats what Isro is trying to do.

It is as part of that effort that, last month, Isro tested indigenous scramjet engines which reduce the fuel-oxidiser payload and make the rockets lighter and cheaper. Using a reusable launch vehicle (RLV) significantly cuts costs. India made a good beginning in May this year with the successful flight-testing of its RLV-TD (Reusable Launch Vehicle  Technology Demonstrator). But it would take India some more years to perfect both scramjet engines and the RLV technology.

Some well-meaning critics in the scientific community told this writer that India is not moving fast enough in the rapidly progressing area of rocket technology. But the Indian successes so far are indeed no mean achievements. Nobody says rocket science is a childs play.

Here are Isro's future missions for 2016:
Jammu: Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti on Friday launched 'CM Scooty Scheme' for college-going girls from weaker sections. She distributed 150 scooties each at Government College for Women, Parade, and Government College for Women, Gandhi Nagar.

Under 'CM Scooty scheme', J&K CM has distributed scooters to around 300 girl students of two colleges. pic.twitter.com/saGMx8ZOP0  ANI (@ANI_news) September 9, 2016

She said the biggest challenge in the world today is violence and women are its biggest victims. "Women have the biggest stake in peace. We need them to restore it. I feel she is the icon of love, compassion, and binds family and society," Mehbooba said.

"We want to invest in you (girl students), your education and future because only you can free this world, country and state of unrest."

"College girls will be given 50 per cent subsidy on purchase of a scooty", said education minister Naeem Akhtar, adding the idea was "to make women independent in terms of mobility".

To get benefits of the scheme, a student should have at least 65 percent marks and her family's annual income should be less than Rs 4 lakh.

Of the 312 applications from Government College for Women Gandhi Nagar only 150 met the criteria. In May, the government had announced it would have many women centric initiatives, and "CM scooty Scheme" was one of them.

Akhtar asked girls to use the 'scooty scheme' as a tool to rebel against those dictating their terms and imposing directives on them. Mufti also rode pillion on NCC girl cadet's scooty at Parade. "A CM riding a scooty is unseen. It gives us a moral boost", said Deepika, a student.
New Delhi: Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) students cast their ballots on Friday to elect their representatives amid a backdrop heavily tinted with the 9 February incident and an atmosphere charged with strong allegiances.

The students cast their votes at 14 booths assigned to several schools of the university. Polling began at 9 am and went on till 7 pm.

The footfall was relatively low in the first half, but as the day wore on students came in heavy numbers to cast their vote.

The scene at the School of Social Sciences (SSS) booth was not without typical JNU flavour where as students queued up to cast vote, supporters and members of different parties were seen raising slogans and cheering their candidates.

Two major Left parties  Students Federation of India (SFI) and All India Students Association (AISA)  formed an alliance to fight the main opposition, BJP-affiliated Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP).

The interest in the elections this time is more, said a student, clearly referring to the changed nature of dynamics of JNU politics with the outside world, in the wake of the 9 February incident during which anti-India slogans were allegedly raised in the campus.

Omar Khalid, a JNU student and one of the key protesters arrested during the 9 February fracas, emphasised the same point.

"This election should be a mandate against whatever happened in the last six months... the rise of Hindutva politics, the erosion of democratic spaces. It is a referendum against all that and students should cast their votes keeping that backdrop in mind," Khalid told IANS.

Asked which party he was supporting, Khalid said, "I want ABVP to lose. I have differencs with the Left parties, but ABVP is a different animal altogether. We are fighting for our right to debate, our right to differ, which they are completely against."

"Even if ABVP comes to power - hypothetically speaking - it won't be able to change anything that fast.. There's an infrastructural framework within which JNU operates which has been created over three decades; that can't be changed overnight.. It won't become BHU (Benaras Hindu University) that soon," he added.

Sharjeel Imam, an M. Phil.(History) student and AISA member, also said that the fight is between ABVP and the AISA-SFI alliance only.

"Majority of the students of the Sciences department vote for ABVP while School of Languages (SL) and SSS are a stronghold of AISA, and Students' Federation of India (SFI). ABVP has gained a lot of supporter base of late due to the anti-incumbency sentiment against the previous government at Centre, while AISA's appeal is largely among the students from the Hindi heartland," he said.

Birsa Ambedkar Phule Students' Association (BAPSA), a first time contender this year, has gained popularity among students from minority background disaffected with Leftist parties, but not enough to win the elections.

Narendra Kumar, General secretary, BAPSA, explained, "Our aim is not to win the election but to spread the ideals of Jyotiba Phule and Babarao Ambedkar, and to diminish the overbearing influence of Leftist parties in the university, which indulge in vote-bank politics and never recognised Ambedkar, but is now trying to appropriate him."

The votes were cast through ballot papers unlike Delhi University Students Union (DUSU) elections, which happened on the same day, where Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) were used. The result of the JNU election will be declared on September 11.
Pro-Karnataka organisations, along with farmers called for a statewide bandh on Friday after the Karnataka government released Cauvery river water to Tamil Nadu on a Supreme Court directive.

The busiest streets of the IT city are shut, as is the district Mandya and the City of Palaces  Mysuru, among other parts of the state. Petrol pumps, and eateries are reportedly shut, as an extension of support to the farmers' union and pro-Karnataka organisations, as are schools and colleges and a few offices in Bengaluru.

People are staging protests all across including at the border of the two states, and at some of the junctions of Bengaluru like Town Hall, JP Nagar and Manyata Tech Park, among others. Public transports have also been stopped in the city, informed Bengaluru City Police through their Twitter handle.

Social media is quick to take the hashtag #KarnatakaBandh over, and talk about the shutdown. While some of them have said that the issue is baseless, many of them showed their concern over the bandh and the whole controversy around the issue of Cauvery water dispute. Here's how Twitterati has been reacting:

Not only we lost water, Bandh loss will hit us badly.. Politicians dont care. Insult to injury. #KarnatakaBandh  Shanmugam Ramu (@sramu) September 9, 2016

#KarnatakaBandh impact .. shots of city railway station bengaluru pic.twitter.com/rQVERTtHI1  yasir mushtaq (@path2shah) September 9, 2016

A state that destroys water bodies,lakes,under utilises rivers,decides to go on a bandh for sharing water. #KarnatakaBandh #Cauvery #Mhadei  Shantanu Arlekar (@ShantanuVa) September 9, 2016

dear karnataka the water you give saves lives..and also may come back to u in the form of rice vegetable or a fruit..think. #KarnatakaBandh  Suresh INC (@srajendrn) September 9, 2016

It's a matter of 10 days.15000 cusecs to be given to TN. If u use less water and adjust, what's harm in that! #KarnatakaBandh  Sakshi Joshi (@sakshijoshi85) September 9, 2016

I came to office at 5 in the morning. Goons threatened to beat me and burn my bike. #KarnatakaBandh  Nallur Sethuraman (@chandsethu) September 9, 2016

So if the idea is to protest, do it the right way by talking. What will anyone gain by burning bikes and tyres? #Stupidity #KarnatakaBandh  Sindhu Ramesh (@sindhu2093) September 9, 2016

Bandh is for drinking water.. If some people don't support it.. Then don't ask for water #KarnatakaBandh #WeSupportKarnatakaBandh  Team Puneeth  (@TeamPuneeth) September 9, 2016

#KarnatakaBandh Total shutdown in Bengaluru. No buses/autos/metro. Medical shops/ petrol bunks/ banks/malls also shut. No schools & colleges  ChristinMathewPhilip (@ChristinMP_TNIE) September 9, 2016

Instead of giving freebies why can't TN Govt build dams 2 store water instead f getting excess water frm 4 dams of Karnataka #KarnatakaBandh  Sharath SN (@snsharath88) September 9, 2016

I support our farmer's plight due to lack of Cauvery water but I do not support crippling of services in the name of it. #KarnatakaBandh  Aw Digital Man (@ShunaamMajumder) September 8, 2016

#KarnatakaBandh passed off peacefully in #Bengaluru. Here's a view of the usually jam-packed Ballari / Airport Road. pic.twitter.com/Fhl8yZnDku  Rasheed Kappan (@kappansky) July 31, 2016

#KarnatakaBandh Blame it on vision less political system of India,a simple system linking rivers would have sorted out many issues. Sad!  Prof MadhuKrishna (@info97040296) September 9, 2016

Bandh in Karnataka is illegal. This is ploy by politicians to divert people's attention frm basic issues. They be penalised.#KarnatakaBandh  MP Sinha (@IamMadhurendra) September 9, 2016

Just 1 quest. How will shutting down Blr or all of KA going to change anything.. No water already. Now added loss due to #KarnatakaBandh  Tony Vincent (@tonytom77) September 9, 2016

Protestors block Hebbal flyover. #KarnatakaBandh garner's massive support from people. pic.twitter.com/YFIsnTCLGS  Anusha Ravi (@anusharavi10) September 9, 2016

Burning public property, destroying assets is not going to solve the issue .likes of vattal nagarj are pure venom #KarnatakaBandh  Madhav (@mahesh10816) September 9, 2016

Another band in Karnataka , the 4th one in last 45 days.. If the government is not able to govern the state, please resign #KarnatakaBandh  Ashutosh Khaitan (@KhaitanAshutosh) September 9, 2016

Ironically,People from Tamilnadu staying in Bangalore are not mocking he #KarnatakaBandh.People unrelated to both states are the ones crying  Rajasimhan (@simhan87) September 9, 2016
Srinagar: At least 40 people, including security personnel, were injured in clashes at several places in Kashmir on Friday despite curfew being reimposed in many parts of the Valley where normal life remained paralysed for 63rd consecutive day due to separatist-sponsored strike.

Clashes were reported from several places in Baramulla, Bandipora, Shopian and Ganderbal districts of the Valley while peaceful protests were held at many others places, a police official said.

He said at least 40 people including some security force personnel were hurt in the clashes that began soon after Friday prayers at most of the affected places. The clashes took place even as curfew was again imposed in many parts of unrest hit Valley on Friday.

Curfew was imposed in 14 police station areas of Srinagar and towns of Anantnag, Pulwama, Kulgam, Shopian, Pampore, Awantipora, Tral, Baramulla, Pattan and Palhallan as a precautionary measure in view of apprehensions of violent protests after Friday prayers, the official said.

There were also restrictions on the movement and assembly of people in rest of the Valley, he said. Normal life remained crippled due to curfew and the shutdown call by separatists groups against the killing of civilians in security forces' action over the past two months.

While shops, business establishments and petrol pumps continued to remain shut during the day, markets in Srinagar and other places came to life late in the evening on Thursday in view of the 12-hour relaxation in the strike from 6 pm announced by separatists.

There was no relaxation in the shutdown on Friday. The separatists, who are spearheading the ongoing stir, have extended the shutdown programme till 16 September. Schools, colleges and other educational institutions in the Valley continued to remain closed.

The attendance in government offices and banks, which had improved significantly over the past four days, dipped on Friday owing to curfew and apprehensions of violence.

The roads and streets, which had witnessed increased movement of private vehicles in recent days, wore a deserted look, Public transport continued to be off the roads. The deadly violence, in the wake of killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani in an encounter with security forces in south Kashmir on 8 July, has left 73 people, including two cops, dead and several thousand others injured.
Srinagar: The authorities on Friday stopped a scheduled press conference by senior hardline separatist leader Syed Ali Geelani, officials said.

Geelani had called a press conference at his uptown Hyderpora residence in Srinagar where he has been placed under house arrest.

As journalists arrived outside Geelani's residence around 11 am, a large contingent of police and Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) intervened, asking the media persons to leave the place.

The press conference could not be held due to the intervention of the security forces.
Chandigarh: With the ED registering a money laundering case against former Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, Congress today came out in his defence asserting that no wrong had been done and charged the BJP governments at the Centre and in the state with misusing such agencies and unleashing "witch-hunt" and "political vendetta".

Denying any wrongdoing in acquisition of land in Manesar in Gurgaon, Hooda said, "No case is based on facts. It is purely politics of vendetta, vengeance and an attempt to defame us."

Congress' chief spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala said his party would not be cowed down by such cases. "Our leaders, including Hooda, have not committed any crime. They are clean. We are ready to face any inquiry provided the government does not act out of vindictiveness," he said.

Surjewala alleged the BJP governments at the Centre and in the state were using various agencies as their "political extension" and "misusing" them. "We are not deterred by CBI search or CBI case, we are ready to face that also and we will face that in court of law and prove facts, but the issue they should rise above political vindictiveness," he said. Addressing a press conference jointly with Surjewala and former Haryana Assembly Speaker Kuldeep Sharma, Hooda said that "modus operandi of the Haryana government is to register the case and then refer it to CBI."

He alleged that the BJP government was misleading people by "hiding facts".

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) registered a money laundering case against Hooda and others in a case of alleged financial irregularities in acquisition of land in Gurgaon's Manesar in which farmers were allegedly cheated to the tune of Rs 1,500 crore.

The ED has filed a criminal complaint against the Congress leader based on a CBI FIR, under which the probe agency conducted searches in Haryana and the national capital last week.

Hooda said that private persons are registering complaints "and at whose behest they are doing so, everyone knows this."

"It is not prosecution, but naked persecution, which will boomerang on them. They are doing this to divert public attention from their own failures. But I am not going to yield or bend. They cannot keep Congress' or my voice down by such actions. CBI recently conducted searches, but it had to leave empty handed," the two-time former CM said. Surjewala said Haryana CM Manohar Lal Khattar was getting direction from BJP President Amit Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. "It is a nationwide conspiracy against Congress and its leaders and under it tall leaders of our party are being targeted," he said.

Surjewala said when these issues were raised earlier, Congress and Hooda had said they were ready for independent probe. "We had suggested (to Haryana government) to write to the High Court Chief justice to have an inquiry committee of two judges set up and we would present ourselves before that committee with all facts so that everything becomes crystal clear," he said.

"Unfortunately, the BJP government's agenda is to level accusations, defame and work with vendetta, slap false cases and start mudslinging campaign and try to muzzle voice of opponents," he said.

Hooda said the Prakash Singh Committee report on Jat stir issue indicted the people right up to the Chief Minister's Office and virtually held the CM responsible for the failure of the administration to control the situation.

"Now, BJP has unleashed vendetta to cover up its own failures by targeting opponents," he alleged. He said the Justice Dhingra Commission report on land deals during the previous regime shouldbe made public soon. "We are waiting for the report, we will consider moving court, if need arises," he said, "I have full faith in judiciary." In the ED complaint, it has been alleged that a loss of Rs 1,500 crore was caused to the land owners of village Manesar, Naurangpur and Lakhnoula of Gurgaon.

Surjewala said, "As far as facts of Manesar case go, two things are very clear. Repeatedly a lie is spoken like Goebell's Truth that 912 acres of land was released, but Khattar forgets to tell people two facts about the case. The BJP-INLD government had acquired this 912 acres of land and not Congress, and this was on August 27, 2004. Section 4 notification of this land was issued when they were in alliance in Haryana."

"On February 26, 2005, written recommendation to release 350 acres of land from this chunk was made. Even then their government was in power and report of Land Acquisition Officer is on record. Our government was formed on March 5, 2005. But BJP and CBI and even Khattar forgot to tell this truth because he suffers from selective amnesia," the Congress leader said.

He said in between when government changed (Cong came to power in Mar 2005), "on the basis of that (land acquisition officer) report, nearly 224 acres of land was released. It is they who acquire the land, issued Section 4 notification, gave recommendation to release 350 acres of land. You may blame Congress, but they must first look inwards." "...out of 912 acres, 781 acres is either stayed by court or is already released, so what is left is 200 acres, that is what was released only for the purpose to reacquire, in case it is possible to reacquire and not 912 acres," he said.

The then Minister for External Affairs Rao Inderjit Singh too requested the government to withdraw the notification for acquisition of land in Manesar, Surjewala claimed. Hooda said that on August 12, 2015, a person named Om Prakash got a FIR registered in the Manesar land case, eight years after land was released in August 2007. "He could have moved high court, he could have filed private complaint, what stopped him all these years. Who dictated him to file FIR, I know everything, time will tell.

Another complainant is Naresh, whose land was not acquired. It proves who are behind them," he said.

Hooda also said present government released 3600 acres of land in Bawal that too after award for the land was announced. "We demand an inquiry into this," he said.

Surjewala said that they will continue to fight this battle both inside the Court as also in the court of people. "We are neither scared nor deterred. Congress party has seen many such challenges in the past and we will face these in future. Our solidarity and support is with the former CM Hooda and we will unitedly fight this battle inside the court as also in the court of people," he said.
While we all cut a cake and receive some gifts on our birthday, a family from Mumbai thought of a different way to celebrate a birthday in their family. Animals Matter To Me (AMTM), a Mumbai-based animal welfare NGO, helped the family celebrate the occasion by feeding 1,240 stray dogs!

Over 263 volunteers toiled for over five hours to feed the canines. Volunteers, bloggers, fans from Facebook alike got together to spread the joy of the occasion. Even Ganesh Chaturti visarjan traffic couldn't stop the dog lovers from feeding the strays.

A 12-year-old girl told her parents that she didnt want a lavish party for her birthday and wanted to feed strays instead. The Gujarati family doesnt want to reveal their identity, Ganesh Nayak, the co-founder of this charitable trust, told Mid Day.

The NGO has fed over 49,000 strays so far and hopes to have more sponsors and volunteers to continue serving these neglected pooches. Many of the volunteers took to the NGOs Facebook event page to convey their gratitude for this opportunity. Heres to more soul-soothing ways to celebrate birthdays!
Kathmandu: Nepal Foreign Minister Prakash Sharan Mahat will travel to New Delhi on Sunday to prepare ground for the visit of Prime Minister Prachanda to India, his

first foreign trip after assuming office.

Prime Minister Prachanda is embarking on a four-day state visit to India from September 15 at the invitation of his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi.

Mahat will hold talks with senior Indian leaders, including his counterpart Sushma Swaraj and discuss about the preparations and agenda of the Prime Minister's forthcoming official visit, the first foreign trip of Prachanda after taking charge of the government last month.

This will also be the first foreign trip of Foreign Minister Mahat after assuming office. During the visit, Mahat is likely to discuss various areas of cooperation with the Indian officials, sources said. Nepal's relationship with India had soured after a months-long border blockade last year by ethnic minority protesters over the new Constitution which they claimed marginalised them.

Kathmandu accused India of imposing an "unofficial blockade" on the landlocked nation in support of the Madhesis, who share close cultural, linguistic and family links with Indians across the border.

Meanwhile, a senior Madhesi leader said that the Prime Minister should address the current problem facing the country before embarking on a visit to India. "The Prime Minister should have resolved the current political problem before leaving for New Delhi," said Upendra Yadav, chairman of Madhesi Peoples Rights Forum Nepal, one of the agitating Madhesi parties.

"The prestige and dignity of the country would be in stake if the Prime Minister visits the southern neighbour without addressing the current problem," he said. He urged the Prime Minister to initiate the process of amending the Constitution for addressing the demands raised by the Madhesi Front.
Vasco : Terming maritime terrorism as a major threat, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh said on Friday the government has started the process of security audit to identify vulnerable areas in the seas and along the coastline.

After commissioning Coast Guard ship 'Sarathi', Singh said the government has been successful in addressing the issues pertaining to maritime security post Mumbai terror attack in November 2008 which was carried out by terrorists who came through the sea.

"Maritime terrorism continues to be a security threat as we have a long coastline with many big cities and security installations.

"We have started the process of security audit to identify vulnerable areas in our seas and coastal areas," he said in presence of Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar in Vasco.

The Home Minister said the central government has adopted a comprehensive and integrated coastal security scheme to strengthen India's coastal network.

"For better coordination among the agencies responsible for coastal security, the Director General of Coast Guard has been designated as commander of coastal security," he said, adding the coast guarding force should also work towards the safety and conservation of India's maritime ecosystem.

"Oceans and seas act as natural security shields and also bring new opportunities for eco prosperity," he said. Highlighting the role of Coast Guard, the Home Minister hailed it as the central pillar of India's security architecture with two other important pillars of Navy and Marine Police.

The Coast Guard ship 'Sarathi' is the third in the series of six 105 meters offshore patrol vessels. 'Sarathi' meaning 'charioteer' is a projection of Indian Coast Guard's will and commitment to serve and protect the maritime interests of the nation. The ship has been designed and built indigenously by Goa Shipyard Ltd and fitted with advanced navigation and communication equipment and sensors.

The features include an integrated bridge system, integrated machinery control system, power management system and high power external fire fighting system. ICGS 'Sarathi' is designed to carry one twin engine light helicopter and five high-speed boats, including two for fast boarding operations, search and rescue, law enforcement and maritime patrol at sea.

The ship is also capable of carrying pollution response equipment to combat any oil spill contamination at sea. The ship draws 2,350 tonnes and is propelled by two 9,100 KW diesel engine to attain a maximum speed of 23 knots and has an endurance of 6,000 nautical miles at economical speed. The ship has a complement of 14 officers and 98 men.
Reiterating its earlier stand, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) on Thursday made it clear again that it had no connection with the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi.

Making a scathing remark on Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi for the latters allegation that RSS people killed Mahatma Gandhi, the Sangh challenged that if anybody (Rahul Gandhi) has the proof, let him come forward and prove it.

RSS is an open organisation, where people are free to join, leave or even remain inactive despite being with the organisation; but its name never figured in any case related to the assassination of Gandhi. There was no mention of any kind of involvement of RSS in the chargesheet filed with the trial court or high court, said Manmohan Vaidya, RSS national publicity chief (Akhil Bhartiya Prachar Pramukh), on the first day of the two-day All India Coordination meeting (Samanvay Sabha) of the RSS in Udaipur.

Referring to Rahul's allegation that Nathuram Godse was an RSS man, he said, After the assassination of Gandhi, two probe commissions were set up, but none named the Sangh. Nor did the accused ever claimed of having any association with the Sangh. Judicial procedure needs to be respected. Its the job of the court to decide on a case and not those who level allegations.

Rahul, during an election speech, had said that "RSS people" killed Mahatma Gandhi and thereafter had refused to express regret for his comments. As a result, RSS activist Mahadev Kunte filed a defamation suit against Rahul.

Surprisingly, on 24 August, Rahul took a U-turn and told the Supreme Court that he never meant to blame the entire RSS for Gandhis assassination.

A day after, he again changed his stance and said, I will never stop fighting the hateful & divisive agenda of the RSS. I stand by every single word I said.

I will never stop fighting the hateful & divisive agenda of the RSS. I stand by every single word I saidhttps://t.co/bUWzTHrgHW  Office of RG (@OfficeOfRG) August 25, 2016

The court will decide on Rahul's allegations, asserted Vaidya, when he was asked about the Congress vice-president's flip-flop on the issue.

In an indirect jibe at Rahul, Vaidya said, These are the people who attend the meeting of those, whom our judiciary term as terrorists and hail them as well (Yeh woh log hain jo nyayik prakriya dwara ghoshit aatankvadiyon ki baithak mein jaakar unka gungan karte hain). If they have any proof (regarding RSS involvement in Gandhis murder), let them come forward and prove it. They dont have the courage to accept the truth, he added.

An RSS functionary, whos a part of the meeting, told Firstpost on condition of anonymity, Congress party had always played divisive politics by falsely using the name of RSS in Gandhis assassination case. Rahul fearing wrath of the SC took a U-turn and lied in the court. And, on the very next day, he again leveled allegation against Sangh. He doesnt have the moral courage and it shows the double standard of the Congress party.
Kolkata: The special crime branch of the CBI investigating the Saradha scam would move the High Court seeking cancellation of bail granted to TMC leader Madan Mitra on Friday.

"The Sessions Judge has granted bail to Madan Mitra. After receiving the order, we will move the High Court in the first available date to seek cancellation of the bail," a CBI official told PTI.

He said that this had happened earlier when the High Court had cancelled the bail of Mitra which was granted by a lower court last year. Sessions Judge Uttam Kumar Nandy on Friday granted the former state transport minister bail on two sureties of Rs 15 lakh each.

The court also directed Mitra, who was arrested on 12 December, 2014, to surrender his passport to the CBI and appear before the CBI Investigating Officer once every week. He was also directed not to go out of Kolkata.
Kolkata: Saradha scam accused and Trinamool Congress leader Madan Mitra was on Friday granted bail by a special court over 21 months after his arrest. Judge Uttam Kumar Nandy granted the former state transport minister bail on two sureties of Rs 15 lakh each.

He was directed by the court to appear before it on 23 November. The court also directed Mitra to surrender his passport to the CBI and appear before the CBI investigating officer once every week. He was further directed not to go out of Kolkata.

The order came a day after Mitra's counsel pleaded for bail submitting that the TMC leader was no longer an influential person since he was neither a minister now nor was he holding any post in the party. Mitra's counsel also claimed that the CBI was delaying the investigation and there was no reason why he should not be granted bail.

The CBI counsel, however, opposed the bail saying the investigating agency was at a crucial stage of its probe into the multi-crore Saradha scam and releasing Mitra would hamper the process because the former minister was still very influential and still had access to key witnesses in the case.

Mitra, who was arrested on 12 December, 2014, was granted bail by a lower court last year. The TMC leader had surrendered before the court after his bail was cancelled by the Calcutta High Court on 20 November last.

Mitra was briefly admitted to a state-run hospital after he complained of chest pain and breathlessness. He was taken back to Alipore Central Jail this June after he was discharged.

The party, had given Mitra ticket for this year's Assembly elections from Kamarhati, which he had eventually lost. Investigation into the ponzi scam, which came to light in 2013, revealed that the Saradha Group had allegedly cheated investors of Rs 1,200 crore in mainly rural areas, as per an official estimate.

Former Union minister Matang Sinh is among those arrested in the case, while several TMC functionaries, including Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's close aide Mukul Roy, have been questioned. The CBI had taken over the investigation in June, 2014 on following an order of the Supreme Court.
New Delhi: Controversial preacher Zakir Naik's NGO Islamic Research Foundation has been banned from receiving foreign funds directly and the Home Ministry has asked RBI to seek prior permission from it before releasing any money to the NGO.

The decision has been taken after a preliminary inquiry conducted by the Home Ministry found that the NGO was carrying out activities contrary to the Foreign Contribution Regulations Act (FCRA) under which it has to function.

Sources said with IRF being put into prior permission category, the Reserve Bank of India, henceforth, has to inform the Home Ministry about all funds coming to the NGO and permission has to be taken from the ministry before releasing them to IRF.

They said that last month the Home Ministry had renewed the FCRA licence of IRF despite several ongoing probes against the NGO and its founder Naik including one by the Home Ministry itself.

Taking strong exception to the goof-up, the Home Ministry suspended Joint Secretary GK Dwivedi, who was heading the foreigners division of the ministry looking after the FCRA-related issues, and three other officials.

Naik was accused of radicalising and attracting youths for terror acts. Naik has come under the scanner of the security agencies after Bangladeshi newspaper 'Daily Star' had reported that one of the attackers of the July 1 terror strike in Dhaka, Rohan Imtiaz, ran a propaganda on Facebook last year quoting Naik.

He, in a lecture aired on Peace TV, an international Islamic channel, had reportedly "urged all Muslims to be terrorists". Naik, a popular but controversial Islamic orator and founder of Mumbai-based IRF, is banned in the UK and Canada for his hate speeches aimed against other religions. He is among 16 banned Islamic scholars in Malaysia. He is popular in Bangladesh through his Peace TV, although his preachings often demean other religions and even other Muslim sects.
A good administrator, an honest civil servant and a writer of repute; Arunachal Pradesh Governor Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowa earned many such titles in his distinguished career. But his failure to understand the tribal sensibilities in the state, as its constitutional head, cost him all the laurels that the 72-year-old had earned in his lifetime.

Rajkhowa reportedly disclosed to a television channel recently that a minister from the Centre had informed him of the government's desire for him to resign, which he said he refused to follow. The disclosure came as a surprise for many in the region, given the fact that Rajkhowa was among the few governors appointed during the present NDA regime and was also seen as loyal to them.

According to reports, Rajkhowa was asked to resign on health grounds. The pressure from the Centre for him to resign came just weeks after the Supreme Court restored the Congress government in the state.

The Supreme Court had declared Rajkhowas's decision, that resulted in the imposition of Presidents rule in the state and ultimately led to the formation of a new government spearheaded by a faction of rebel Congress ministers, as unconstitutional.

While refusing to resign without an order to do so from the President of India, Rajkhowa reportedly said to the media, I do not have a single blot in my long career in the government. The government must have appointed me as governor on the basis of my spotless track record. I feel very humiliated. It was a bolt from the blue.

Back in his home state Assam, hardly anyone would disagree with Rajkhowas take on his career. In fact, Rajkhowa has always been seen as a decorated personality in the Assamese society  a person with a brilliant academic career who made the state and its people proud by cracking the prestigious Union Public Service Commission exam and getting selected as an Indian Administrative Service officer as early as the year 1968.

His elevation to the post of chief secretary of Assam in 2003 was publicised by the Assamese media with much fanfare. Apart from his drastic moves as the chief secretary to inculcate work culture in the state secretariat, his retirement from the service was also a subject that attracted wide media coverage.

His literary works on the life and preaching of the great saint Srimanta Sankardev, whom the mainstream Assamese swear by, earned him many accolades.

But Rajkhowa stands disgraced today; a persona-non-grata not only for the BJP led NDA government that appointed him as governor a year ago, but also for many in Arunachal and his own society in Assam.

A senior journalist based in Guwahati who did not wish to be named told Firstpost that as an Assamese he is ashamed of what Rajkhowa did in Arunachal  that led to the fall of a democratically elected government.

He further said that today Rajkhowa is not only seen as responsible for violating constitutional norms but also for damaging the fabric of mutual trust between the people of Assam and those of Arunachal Pradesh.

Respecting tribal sensibilities has been a social norm that is widely accepted and practised to a fault in North East India. Every North Easterner is expected to know this norm. But the scene in which a born Assamese, Rajkhowa, was seen interfering in the affairs of a government democratically elected by the people of the tribal state, bruised the emotions in Itanagar.

Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowas fall from grace began right from the start of the constitutional crisis in Arunachal Pradesh. Just two weeks after he decided to advance the Assembly session by more than a month, on 9 December 2015, which the apex court declared unconstitutional in its final verdict this year, the All Nyshi Students Union raised protest in front of the Raj Bhawan in Itanagar.

Nyshi is a dominant tribe in Arunachal Pradesh and Nabam Tuki, the then chief minister of the state who was ousted in this Assembly session, is a leader from this tribe.

But that was not the only pitfall that Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowa stepped on. The protesters sacrificed a mithun, an animal of the bovine species, in front of the Raj Bhawan; which the governor cited as cow slaughter. He saw this act as a serious sign of law and order break down, and cited it as a reason to implement Presidents Rule in the state in his affidavit to the apex court.

A mithun is considered a sacred animal among many tribes in Arunachal Pradesh. Mithun is sacrificed by many such communities as a ritual. But citing the incident of sacrificing as cow slaughter was seen as another example of disrespect to the tribal culture of Arunachal Pradesh.

Another reason why Rajkhowa was accused of playing an anti-Nyshi and anti-Arunachali role was a letter he allegedly wrote to the prime minister during the constitutional crisis itself, in which he advised the government to upgrade an airport in his home state Assam rather than developing one at Itanagar.

The final blow to his image came with the Supreme Court verdict that declared his role in the crisis period as unconstitutional. It only fortified the suspicion against him of playing an anti-Nyshi and anti- Arunachali role.

The Supreme Court indictment on the role of the governors office was seen as his major defeat. Hence his refusal to step down from the post of a governor on the pretext that the President of India has not sacked him yet, is also seen as a desperate attempt to make it not look like one.

Certainly, the BJP also had to pay a political price for the decision of advancing the Assembly session. Since the constitutional crisis in Arunachal Pradesh emerged just six months after Rajkhowa was appointed as the governor, political pundits have every reason to believe that it was 'created' for obvious political gains.

But the price of letting Rajkhowa continuing in his office could be even dearer for the BJP at a time when he has fallen from grace and has turned a bete-noire for the masses in Arunachal Pradesh.

The Bharatiya Janata Party, that has a potent presence in Arunachal Pradesh with 11 MLAs, can hardly afford to be seen in the same light as Rajkhowa before the 2019 Assembly election.

Since the party plans to march ahead to other North Eastern states, following a historic win in Assam, it would not be surprising to see if Rajkhowa is sacked in the near future; in case he remains adamant in his present stance that is.
Ambedkar Nagar: Sharpening his attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the issue of farmers' plight, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday said the erstwhile UPA government had "waived their Rs 70,000 crore loans" even when the shape of the country's economy was not "all that bright".

"Crude petroleum was being sold at $140 a barrel. Government had no money. Still we decided to waive their (farmers) loans," he said.

The Congress vice-president was speaking during a meeting in the course of his roadshow on the fourth day of 'kisan yatra' from Deoria to Delhi.

He said when the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced the waiver, BJP members asked in Parliament as to how the government would manage the money.

"How can it be possible? From where will Congress get the funds," Rahul said they posed questions like this. "We are determined to work for the sake of farmers unlike the Modi government which neglects them," he claimed.

Rahul said when a farmers' delegation had met Singh and shared their plight requesting the loan waiver, the UPA government took the decision within 10 days and wrote off the loans.

The Congress leader is out on a 'mahayatra' during which he will cover 39 districts spread over 55 of the 80 Lok Sabha constituencies in Uttar Pradesh where Assembly elections are due early next year.
Is the BJP's mission outreach toward Patels just failing? If the events of Thursday are anything to go by, then these are definitely warning signals for the ruling party in the state. What was being touted as a show of strength by the party, in the Patel stronghold of Surat, turned out to be a fiasco with slogans in favour of youth icon Hardik and against the BJP. And all this was in the presence of national party chief Amit Shah and newly-appointed CM Vijay Rupshi.

The BJP is well aware of the community's strength and power. Hence, this was the second attempt by the BJP to reach out to the Patels in a matter of few days.

Just the previous month, Prime Minister Nagendra Modi launched the SAUNI (Saurashtra Narmada Avtaran Irrigation) Yojna in the Patel heartland of Saurashtra. And on Thursday, party president Amit Shah tried to reach out from another Patel stronghold of Surat.

But, a rattled Shah wound up his speech in less than six minutes. A proposed show of strength at a place where Hardik had been jailed for more than six months on charges of sedition, will force the BJP to do a rethink of its strategy to reach out to the community that comprises of 18 percent of the population. A bus was burnt and chairs were thrown forcing everyone on the dias to cut short their speeches.

While Shah might have to rethink his strategy, Thursday's development would definitely bring a smile on Hardik's face in Udaipur.

Hardik, who is not only fighting a court case against the charges and his exile, is also trying to keep his flock together which is deserting him. Two members and Hardik aides of PAAS (Patidaar Anamat Andolan Samiti) have quit after levelling allegations that Hardik was busy earning money and deserting the cause. But Surat has ensured that Hardik remains an issue for the forthcoming assembly elections in the state.

On Thursday, BJP president Amit Shah along with Chief Minister Vijay Rupani and other party leaders were booed off stage as the members of Hardik Patel's PAAS created ruckus and vanadalised furniture at a programme to felicitate Patel leaders.

Chaos prevailed outside the venue as well as in Mota Varraccha area, where Patidar community members from the locality hurled stones at police. The function, supposed to be the show of strength of BJP in the Patidar stronghold, wound up hastily within minutes with Patel leaders cutting short their speeches while Shah could speak for hardly four minutes amid sloganeering.

The ruckus started even before the commencement of the function with the Patel quota agitators raising slogans like "Jai Sardar, Jai Patidar" and hailing Hardik, even as they damaged furniture at the venue and flung chairs in air.

The programme was organised by 'Patidar Abhivadan Samiti', an outfit floated by a local businessmen, to felicitate Patidar leaders including the newly-appointed state BJP chief Jitu Vaghani, Deputy Chief Minister Nitin Patel, Union ministers Purshottam Rupala and Manshukh Mandaviya.

Though police detained several members of Patidar community, the protest continued. The slogan shouting continued even when top BJP leaders like Shah and Rupani started their respective address, forcing them to cut short their speech.

While Shah wound up within four minutes, Rupani too could not speak for more than three minutes. The organisers abruptly declared the programme closed and the leaders were whisked away.

The showdown was anticipated as the programme, viewed as BJP's outreach to Patels for 2017 Gujarat Assembly elections, was organised in the Patel-dominated Mota Varraccha area.

Hardik-led PAAS and Sardar Patel Group (SPG) of Lalji Patel, who are spearheading the quota stir, had called upon their supporters on Wednesday to protest at the venue of Thursday's programme.

With inputs from PTI
A senior leader of a Left student wing the Jawaharlal Lal Nehru University (JNU) told this writer in a personal conversation that their chances in these elections are bleak. He went on to the extent of saying that this is for the first time in his memory that Left has stood so weak in the student union elections of JNU. And it is for this reason that ever since its inception, All India Students Association (AISA) has joined hands against its arch rival Students Federation of India to contest the elections.

The All India Students Federation did not contest election despite the popularity of its leader and JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar. However, Kanhaiya cannot not fight the elections himself as well as per the Lyngdoh guidelines.

All this indicates towards one genesis and it is Left organisations are ceding their turf to the Right wing organisations and Ambedkarite parties. The growing influence of Right wing sentiments across the country and also the uprising of the Dalits have made matters even more complicated for the Left-oriented school. This mood, which is now reflecting even at the national level including the university campus where Bapsa (Birsa Ambedkar Phule Student Organisation) is directly pitching against the ABVP. The BJP student wing performed extremely well in the 2015 elections, winning the post of joint secretary and making inroads into the central panel 14 years after Sandeep Mahapatra won the post of president in 2000. It also won 11 councilor seats and stood second on the post of general secretary and vice-president, visibly performing better that many Left outfits in their own bastion.

The Left on the other hand is struggling to retain its vote bank. Many Dalits and Muslims on the campus traditionally considered to be the vote bank of All India Student Association confessed to this writer in one-to-one conversation that this time they will vote for Bapsa and not Left parties as they believe the struggle of oppressed can be led by the oppressed itself. They believe that it is time that leadership of the oppressed is handed into the hands of oppressed itself and be taken away from the Brahminical faces of Left leadership. Students Islamic Organisation of India (SIO) has openly come out in support of Bapsa and hence made a serious dent into the Muslims vote bank of Left parties.

Bapsa president Rahul Sonpimple has also vociferously asserted in his speech about the cause of women, homosexuality, Kashmir and Muslims  all that comes under the umbrella of a progressive struggle earlier considered to be the monopoly of the Left. This should clearly mean that some free floating progressive voters might end up voting for Bapsa. ABVP on the other hand is all set to retain its Right wing vote bank mostly from the School of Social (natural sciences) Sciences. Their share of votes might go up this time after they have successfully constructed a binary of nationalists and anti-nationalists on the campus. All those swearing for a nationalist cause among the Left voters also might end up voting for the saffron outfit.

All this indicates that in JNU, Left parties which have been a dominant force is slowly becoming redundant with hardly any vote bank left of its own. Its traditional voter groups are ceding away right under its nose to Dalit led outfits and ABVP is consolidating its own vote bank quite sturdily.

It is this realisation among the Left parties, that arch rival like AISA and SFI which fought against each other in the past vociferously have come together now. Again this SFI-AISA alliance will erode its support of the latter as it built its base in JNU against the backdrop of atrocities committed by CPM, the parent party of SFI in Singur and Nandigram, no doubt this alliance will be read by many as an opportunistic one than a pragmatic coalition.
New Delhi: In fresh trouble for former Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, the ED has registered a money laundering case against him and others in a case of alleged financial irregularities in acquisition of land in Gurgaon's Manesar in which farmers were cheated to the tune of Rs 1,500 crore.

The ED has filed a criminal complaint against the Congress leader based on a CBI FIR, under which the probe agency conducted searches in Haryana and the national capital last week.

Officials said the Enforcement Directorate (ED) case has been made under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) and the agency has begun identifying the "proceeds of crime" allegedly created illegally as a fallout of the corruption done in the case.

"Summons would be issued to the accused soon. The agency is also looking for assets created out of tainted funds to attach them under PMLA as part of the investigations," they said.

The case pertains to CBI registering a case in this regard last year in September on allegations that private builders in conspiracy with unknown public servants of the Haryana government had purchased around 400 acres of land from farmers and land owners of village Manesar, Naurangpur and Lakhnoula in Gurgaon district at throw away prices, showing the threat of acquisition by the government, during 27 August, 2004- 24 August, 2007.

It was alleged that a loss of Rs 1,500 crore was caused to the land owners of village Manesar, Naurangpur and Lakhnoula of Gurgaon.

During last week's searches at Hooda's residence, CBI had claimed to have found "fund transaction details worth crores of rupees" which are now being scrutinised by the agency.

The ED is expected to seek a copy of these documents from the CBI soon, in order to take its probe forward.

CBI alleged that initially the Haryana government had issued a notification under the Land Acquisition Act for acquiring land measuring about 912 acres for setting up an Industrial Model Township at villages Manesar, Naurangpur and Lakhnoula in Gurgaon.

After that, all the land had allegedly been grabbed from the land owners by private builders at meager rates showing the threat of Government acquisition, CBI had said after registering the case.

It is also alleged that an order was then passed by the the competent authority i.e. the Director of Industries on 24 August, 2007 releasing this land from the acquisition process in violation of the government policy, in favour of the builders, their companies and agents, instead of the original land owners.

The CBI has alleged in its FIR that in the said manner, land measuring about 400 acres whose market value at that time was above Rs four crore per acre approximately totalling about Rs 1,600 crore approximately was allegedly purchased by the private builders and others from the innocent land owners for only about Rs 100 crore.
Mangaluru: In fresh trouble for Kannada actress and former MP Ramya, a local court has directed the police to file a criminal case against her for her recent reported remarks that the RSS colluded with the British.

The direction by the court at Belthangady near Mangaluru comes on a private petition filed by advocate Vasanth Marakada, who moved it after the police refused to register his complaint against Ramya, already facing a complaint in another court for alleged sedition.

The advocate said Ramya might be summoned to record her version after he (complainant) records his statement. Ramya, who was elected to Lok Sabha from Mandya in the 2013 by-election on a Congress ticket, had reportedly stated recently that the RSS had colluded with the British during the nation's struggle for independence.

The 33-year-old multi-lingual actress is already facing a complaint in a court in Kodagu district on sedition and other charges.

After a recent visit to Islamabad as part of a Saarc delegation of young lawmakers, Ramya had reportedly said at a meeting in Mandya, "Pakistan is not hell. People there are just like us. They treated us very well." Her remarks had come as an apparent counter to comments of Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, who while lashing out at Islamabad for promoting terror, had said, "Going to Pakistan is same as going to hell."

Ramya's comments had triggered a bitter backlash but she stood her ground saying she would not apologise. An advocate had filed a complaint in a court at Somwarpet in Kodagu district, seeking action on sedition and other charges against Ramya for "insulting Indian patriots" by her remarks.

Advocate K Vittala Gowda filed the complaint before the Somwarpet Judicial Magistrate First Class (JMFC) court, which has admitted it. The complaint has sought a direction to police to book

Ramya under IPC sections 124(a)(sedition), 344 (wrongful confinement for ten or more days) and 511 (punishment for attempting to commit offences punishable with imprisonment for life or other imprisonment).
Photographs of Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi doing a darshan and puja at Hanumangarhi in Ayodhya shall forever be a part of the Grand Old Party's history, and will endlessly be debated.

The Congress first family's attempts to develop linkages to Ayodhya have evoked a great deal of public interest in the past and has had layered implications for the party and the Indian polity. The Congress men and women, along with their external poll strategist Prashant Kishor, would be hoping that this time around, history wouldnt repeat the same way for son Rahul as it had for his father Rajiv Gandhi in 1989.

Back then, in 1989, Parliamentary and Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections were held simultaneously and Rajiv began his poll campaign from the twin city of Faizabad and Ayodhya with the promise to herald Ram Rajya. He didnt venture to go to Ayodhya because the Ram Mandir issue had become too heated by then .

It must be noted that Rajiv began his establishment of the Ram Rajya poll campaign from Faizabad-Ayodhya in 1989, only months after he as prime minister had ordered the foundation/stone laying for Ram Chabutra at the disputed Ramjanmabhoomi-Babri Masjid site in Ayodhya. That was a bold move by Rajiv, which had many political and social implications.

It would be interesting to briefly dwell on the outcome of the 1989 Parliamentary and UP election results. Rajiv, who riding on a huge sympathy wave in the aftermath of Indira Gandhis assassination, had led Congress to an unprecedented victory with 404 seats in the previous 1984 elections. He was, however thoroughly vanquished.

The BJP, which was reduced to just two in numbers in Parliament, sky-rocketed to 86. A Janata Dal government, led by Congress rebels, was formed at the centre with a unique combination  with BJP and the Lefts support.

In UP, the Congress was comprehensively routed. In the first week of December 1989, both Rajiv and Narayan Dutt Tiwari exited from the posts of prime minister and UP chief minister respectively. That was the first time that Mulayam Singh Yadav became the chief minister of the state.

Since then, the Congress has been trying to find relevance in UP. Ever since 1989, it has gone only one way, down and down. One is thus not sure when the Congress hired poll strategist Prashant Kishor coined their slogan for the upcoming UP polls  27 saal UP behal  and conceived Rahul's landing in Ayodhya. They took time and care to go through leaves in their own partys history, more so Rajivs rise and fall.

Now turn to Rahuls attempts to play soft Hindutva. His puja in Ayodhya and at a Shiva temple in Deoria, before launching his month long Kisan Yatra, is an indicator of just that. This comes after a damning Antony Committee report, written after the 2014 humiliating poll debacle, that the Congress was perceived to be pro-minority and anti-Hindu.

The report has not been made public, but in June 2014 in a public meeting in Kerala, Antony said, Some sections of society have an impression that the party is inclined to certain communities or organisations. Congress' policy is equal justice to everyone. But people have doubts whether that policy is being implemented or not. This doubt is created by the partys proximity towards minority communities and such a situation would open the door for the entry of communal forces into Kerala.

The Congress' answer, or rather Prashant Kishors answer, to that was to find a Brahmin face in Sheila Dikshit, the three time Delhi chief minister who lost on her own constituency in Delhi and subsequently saw Congress reduced to a zero. Kishor wanted Dikshit to be made the chief ministerial candidate in UP in order to lure Brahmins into the party fold. In a way, it aimed at playing soft Hindutva to override the pro-minority image of the party. Its therefore interesting to see that Congress general secretary and architect of 2012 Assembly campaign in UP, Digvijay Singh, is nowhere to be seen in and around UP in 2016.

Now turn to Rajiv again. It goes to his credit that as Prime Minister of India, he got Ramlala unlocked in 1986 and allowed devotees to offer prayers there daily. UP was then ruled by Congress and Vir Bahadur Singh was the chief minister. Ajay Singh had earlier written in Firstpost about how Rajiv erred by making this move.

Rajivs move to get Ramlala unlocked came in the aftermath of Shah Bano case, in which BJP and Sangh Parivar targeted him of minority appeasement. The Supreme Court had ruled in favour of Shah Bano, an old Muslim lady who was a mother of five, for grant of alimony by her husband. There was a huge uproar from the Muslim clerics and Rajiv Gandhi quickly gave in to them by overriding the Supreme Court judgment and passing and enacting the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986. Rajivs answer to the BJP and the saffron brigade's attack on him was to unlock Ramlala.

By doing so, Rajiv made it known to the world that he and his government favoured the Hindus' claim over the disputed Ramjanmabhoomi- Babri Masjid site instead of the Muslims. Till the Ramlala iron door was unlocked, a priest was allowed only once a year to do puja.

Ironically, it was the BJP and not the Congress that benefitted from that. A retired professor of Allahabad University, Ramkishore Shastri, who is an avowed Congress sympathiser, adds that it was the Rajiv Gandhi government that had allowed the telecast of Ramayana and Mahabharata serials on Doordarshan, but it was not the Congress but the BJP and the Sangh Parivar that benefitted from the sentiments these TV serials generated among the public at large.

Shastri says that Rahuls visit to Ayodhya was aimed to let it be known to all that he is a practicing Hindu and has faith in revered Hindu places and Gods. Also, he wanted to put across that he was not a Ram Virodhi  a measure to respond to the Sangh Parivars attacks on him on the subject.

But Rahul avoided going to the Ramlala darshan, which was about 500 meters away from Hanumangarhi in Ayodhya. That would have perhaps been too much for him, and then the media and people during his yatra would have asked for his position on the Ram temple issue.

More so, the Ram temple issue has for long been identified with the BJP, VHP and Sangh Parivar. Unless Rahul had committed himself to go beyond the BJP-VHP-RSS position on the subject, he had no point going there, said a middle ranking Congress leader, requesting anonymity. Even his father, despite opening locks and laying the Ram Chabutra foundation, did not go there.

Indira Gandhi had once been to Ayodhya. But her trip was also limited to Hanumangarhi, and to oversee the construction of Ram ki Pauri on the banks of Sarayu river.

Rahul will make a night halt in Faizabad, where he might visit a dargah there. It would be good if he can revisit his fathers stance on Ayodhya and keep in mind its political fallout.
New Delhi: Sacked Delhi Minister and AAP MLA Sandeep Kumar, arrested on rape charges on the complaint of a woman, was today sent to 14-day judicial custody by a court.

Special Judge Poonam Chaudhry remanded 36-year-old Kumar to judicial custody till 23 September after the Delhi Police submitted he was not required for custodial interrogation. Police sought judicial custody of the MLA, who was produced before the court on expiry of his one-day police remand, to conduct fair investigation and prevent the accused from tampering with evidence.

The police, which had on Thursday got extended Kumar's police custody by a day to recover the original electronic device used for making the alleged objectionable video, said it could not be recovered.

Meanwhile, advocate Pradeep Rana, appearing for Kumar, claimed there was a threat to the MLA's life in jail and he should be provided special armed guards and a separate cell during judicial custody.

To this, the court forwarded the application to the jail superintendent directing him to consider it as per the prison manual. During the hearing, the police responded to another plea moved by the defence counsel alleging that he was illegally

arrested and the probe agency had not given any ground for doing so.

The police said Kumar was arrested on the basis of incriminating evidence collected against him. The prosecution had earlier argued that Kumar was not cooperating in the probe.

Kumar was arrested on 3 September after a woman had approached Sultanpuri police station in North Delhi complaining of sexual harassment against the former Social Welfare and Women and Child Development minister, following which a case was filed. The woman had figured in an objectionable video with him.

Kumar has been booked under sections 376 (rape), 328 (causing hurt by means of poison with intent to commit an offence) of IPC, under section 67A (punishment for publishing or transmitting of material containing sexually explicit act) of IT Act and Section 7 (public servant taking gratification for an official act) of Prevention of Corruption Act.

In her complaint, the woman has alleged that about 11 months ago, she was raped by Kumar when she had gone to his office in Outer Delhi's Sultanpuri area seeking help to obtain a ration card.

Kumar was removed from AAP government on 31 August by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal after the CD surfaced. The MLA from Sultanpur Majra had surrendered before the investigators at the office of DCP (Outer) in Pitampura, where his statement was recorded.

Soon after the controversy, the MLA had defended himself, saying he has been targeted. Kumar's wife has also come out in support of her husband, claiming that he was "falsely implicated" in the scandal.
Paris: Islam can co-exist with secularism, President Francois Hollande said Thursday, warning in a speech seen as preparing the ground for a re-election bid that the anti-terror fight should not undermine French values.

The deeply unpopular Hollande has yet to announce whether he will run for a second term next year, but is widely expected to be a candidate.

In a passionate plea for tolerance, he defended the country's Muslim minority following a vitriolic debate on the banning of the Islamic burkini swimsuit.

"Nothing in the idea of secularism opposes the practice of Islam in France, provided it respects the law," Hollande said.

Secularism was not a "state religion" to be used against other religions, he said in the speech in Paris, denouncing the "stigmatisation of Muslims".

Mayors in around 30 towns this summer cited France's century-old secular laws in banning head-to-toe swimwear on their beaches, unleashing a furore.

Several of the towns later revoked the bans after France's highest administrative court ruled they were a "serious" violation of basic freedoms.

Hollande rejected calls by conservatives, including his arch-rival, former president Nicolas Sarkozy, for the state to ban the burkini, saying it would be "unconstitutional".

Asking whether Islam could co-exist with secularism, like Christianity and Judaism, he insisted: "My answer is yes, certainly."

"The question the Republic must answer is: Is it really ready to embrace a religion that it did not expect to be this big over a century ago? There too, my answer is yes, certainly."

'Democracy is our weapon'

In a wide-ranging address Hollande cast himself as a guardian of democracy, resisting calls for more repressive laws following a string of jihadist attacks that have left over 230 people dead in France since January 2015.

The authorities this week launched another anti-terror investigation, following the discovery of six gas cylinders in an abandoned car near Paris' Notre Dame cathedral.

Seven people are being held over the find, which comes two months after a Tunisian radical slammed a lorry into a crowd of Bastille Day revellers in Nice, killing 86 people.

Hollande said attack plots had been foiled "in recent days" but did not elaborate.

The government has responded to the threat by deploying thousands of troops to patrol the streets, enacting a raft of anti-terror laws and repeatedly extending a state of emergency -- measures deemed insufficient by the conservative opposition.

Sarkozy, who has announced a bid to try to win back the presidency in next year's election, has called for suspected radicals to be interned in camps.

The former president responded late Thursday to Hollande's comments, saying that "democracy can't be weak. We are France, we cannot accept impotence."

Sarkozy, putting himself forward as a strong contrast to Hollande, added; "I want to be president of a Republic which will protect the French people and which will defend France."

Hollande warned that France could not sacrifice its core values of liberty, equality and fraternity.

"The declaration of human rights is not some old scroll to be framed and hung in reception rooms," he said.

"Did the Patriot Act and Guantanamo protect Americans from the (terrorist) threat? No," he said, declaring: "Democracy is our weapon."

Polls predict a drubbing for the 62-year-old Socialist if he throws his hat in the ring again after five years marked by stubbornly high unemployment and only timid attempts at reform.

Hollande has deferred his decision on whether to run until December.

A poll published Tuesday showed he would only get between 11 and 15 percent in the first round of voting.

A separate survey for BFMTV Wednesday showed 88 percent of the French opposed to Hollande standing again.

Three of Hollande's former ministers have already announced their own presidential bids.

They could soon be joined by ambitious former economy minister Emmanuel Macron, who resigned from government last week.

Despite his own camp being in disarray Hollande has cast himself as a unifying force at the helm of the state.

"When there is danger we must come together," he said.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls praised the speech, saying Hollande had set out his vision with "new vitality".
Portugal: A train derailed in northwestern Spain on Friday, leaving at least three people dead and several injured, the rail company and regional authorities in Galicia said.

The train was travelling from the Galician town of Vigo to the city of Porto in Portugal when the accident happened near the town of O Porrino. Authorities in Galicia said three people were killed in the three-carriage train, which was carrying some 65 people.

Footage of the wreck showed one carriage lying on its side, the front of the train completely caved in and mangled. Helicopters and ambulances rushed to the scene to attend to the victims.

Adif, the company that manages railways in Spain and is in charge of the tracks, said the accident happened around 9.30 am local time (0730 GMT) just before arriving into the station of O Porrino. "It's a very straight line," a spokeswoman said.

Pictures posted in local daily La Voz de Galicia showed doctors attending to passengers on the station platform. Ramon Gonzalez, a witness interviewed by Spanish television, said there was a "very strong bang." "It was full of black smoke," he said over the phone. "It's a straight line... so this isn't normal. "There are still some injured here but very not serious, the seriously injured were quickly evacuated."

In a statement, Spain's railway company Renfe said the train and the driver were both Portuguese, adding that railway traffic had been suspended in the area.

Local media said the driver was among the dead, but authorities have yet to confirm this. Galicia was also the scene of one of Spain's worst rail disasters in 2013, when around 80 people were killed and another 144 injured after a train slammed into a concrete wall on the outskirts of Santiago de Compostela.

The train was approaching a curve at more than twice the speed limit on that piece of the track in Galicia.

A pre-trial investigation of the July 24, 2013 crash carried out by a court in Galicia concluded the accident was caused by a lapse in attention by the driver, who was on the telephone at the time of the crash with another rail employee.

The driver of the train has been charged with negligent homicide and released without bail pending trial. He is the only person to face criminal charges over the accident.
Beijing: "Firmly opposing" North Korea's fifth nuclear test, close ally China on Friday lodged a diplomatic protest with the reclusive state and asked it to honour its commitment to denuclearisation and halt any move that could "aggravate the situation."

"We strongly urge the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) to honour the commitment to denuclearisation, abide by the relevant UN Security Council resolutions and halt any moves that could aggravate the situation," China's Foreign Ministry said, using the country's official name.

"China will, along with the international community, keep working toward the goal of denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula and commit to settling problems through the six-party talks," it said in a statement.

The ministry's spokesperson Hua Chunying told reporters that a senior official will lodge representation with South Korea. North Korea's state-run television reported the country has "successfully" conducted a nuclear warhead explosion  its fifth and more powerful than it has earlier conducted  after monitors detected a 5.3-magnitude "artificial earthquake" near its main nuclear site this morning.

The test, which comes eight months after the last one, was expected to further tighten United Nations sanctions. Chinese analysts say North Korea resorted to the fifth test as it was increasingly getting under pressure because of military exercises between the US and the South and also due to the proposed deployment of Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD). China too is worried over the deployment of modern weaponry close to its borders on the Korean peninsula.

Asked if China knew about the test beforehand, Hua said she has "no information", but added developments on the Korean Peninsula this year have seriously damaged peace and stability and gone against the common expectation of the international community.

"As to the possible sanctions to be adopted by UN Security Council... (China) has always been earnestly observing and implementing relevant UNSC Resolutions and we will continue our position of opposing militarisation of Korean peninsula and take part in relevant negotiations in UNSC in a responsible attitude," she said.

But any unilateral action would be a dead end, making the situation more tense and complicated, she added. Soon after the explosion, China ordered radiation monitoring in its border region ith North Korea.

National Radiation Environmental Data Evaluation System said it has not detected any abnormal signs of radiation. Chinese residents living near the border said on social media that they felt a strong tremor similar to when North Korea conducted a nuclear test in January, Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported.
The worlds premier pan-Arab daily newspaper, Asharq Al-Awsat, reported that an international Islamic conference was organised in Grozny, a city in Chechnya with more than 100 top Muslim clerics from all around the world. The agenda was to take an uncompromising stand against the growing Takfiri terrorism that is playing havoc across the world.

The globally renowned Sunni Islamic scholars and clergy unanimously took a stand that the Takfiri terrorists, who loudly claim to belong to 'Sunni' Islam, are not from among the Ahlus Sunnah (the Islamic terminology for the mainstream Sunni Muslims in the world).

Addressing the conference, leading Sufi Sunni scholar and the current Grand Imam of al-Azhar, Sheikh Ahmad al-Tayeb, defined what is meant by 'Ahlus Sunnah' or Sunnism.

He stated: Ahluls Sunna wal Jamaah are the Asharites or Muturidis (adherents of Abu Mansur al-Maturidi's systematic theology which is also identical to Imam Abu Hasan al-Ash'aris school of logical thought). In matters of belief, they are followers of any of the four schools of thought (Hanafi, Shafai, Maliki or Hanbali) and are also the followers of pure Sufism in doctrines, manners and [spiritual] purification.

This statement goes in Arabic as follows:

                               

Having said that, Sheikh Ahmad al-Tayeb allegedly excluded the Salafists from the term of Ahluls Sunna (Sunnis) stating that Salafists also known as Wahhabis  are not from among the Sunnis.

This was, probably the first time that the global Sunni Islamic scholars have disassociated themselves so clearly from the Salafists, who also claim to be the Ahluls Sunna or Sunnis.

Though this report has not received the media attention it deserved, it should be caught up as one of the most underlying news emanating from the Muslim world.

Over 100 Islamic clerics from around the world, including India, have attended this anti-Takfirism Sunni conference in Chechnya. They concluded that Salafism/Wahhabism, the state religion of the Saudi Kingdom flourishing in almost all Muslim-populated courtiers because of the massive Saudi funding, is not the part of mainstream Sunni Islam.

Given the significance of this epoch-making conference, the participating religious leaders called the conference a significant turning point to correct the treacherous and lethal deviation from the true definition of Ahlus Sunna, as a result of the extremists attempts to hijack this glorious epithet, misusing it for themselves.

Scores of Islamic leaders and clerics from various countries like Egypt, India, Russia, Syria, Turkey, Britain, Lebanon, Jordan and the South African countries, who attended this global Sunni conference, echoed in unison and spoke out against the Takfiri terror. They took a resolution to awaken the world about the real terror outfits which are using the name of religion for personal geopolitical agendas.

Shaikh Muhammad Saad al-Azhari, a moderate Egyptian Islamic scholar and professor at the al-Azhar University, who is the religious affairs consultant for the Egyptian president, also participated in this conference. He is widely known in the Arab world for his scholarly refutation of the extremist jihadist theology of IS, as eloquently done in his Arabic book entitled, Al Haqq al-Mubeen fi al-Radd ala Man Talaaba bil Deen. In this book, he has come up with original and fresh ideas attempting to rebut the theology of modern jihadism and political Islamism.

He masterly critiqued Sayyid Qutub, the chief political islamist ideologue and his commentary on the Quran Fi Dilal al-Quran (In the shade of the Quran). The theocratic interpretations on this commentary have twisted Islamic doctrines to fan the fire of Takfirist terrorism.

Therefore, Dr al-Azhari has refuted the radical Islamist underpinnings such as Hakimiyyah (Allahs governance), jihadism (violent misuse of Jihad), Khilafat (Sharia regime), Al wala Wal bara (loyalty to Muslims and disavowal towards others), Dar-ul Harb and Dar-ul Islam (religious classification of non-Muslim countries) point by point.

Remarkably, a considerable number of Indian Sunni Islamic scholars were also seen in this anti-extremism Islamic conclave. For instance, South Indian Sufi Sunni leader, Sheikh Abu Bakr Ahmad, who runs the largest Islamic seminary in Kerala  Jamia Markaz Saqafa Sunniya, and Shaikh Anwar Ahmad al-Baghdadi who teaches at a leading North Indian madrasa Jamia Alimia in UP were there to articulate an Islamic narrative of peace and counter-terror.

The mainstream Indian Sunni scholars have recently begun to refute the literature that has been compiled and disseminated in the country with a view to indoctrinating the radical Wahhabi ideology among Indian Muslim masses, particularly in Kashmir.

In India, the Wahhabi version of Islam, underpinned by Ibn Taimiyas Minhaj al-Sunnah and Ibn Abdul Wahhabs Kitab al-Tawheed, still has to be confronted in a consistent and coherent way. It took roots in the country when the earliest Salfism-inspired Indian clerics like Syed Ahmad Shaheed Rai Barelwi and Maulana Ismail Dehlawi wrote books such as Taqweatul Imaan (strengthening the Islamic faith) and Sirat-e-Mustaqeem (the straight path). In these books, the term jihad which actually elucidates an inner struggle to attain salvation was misconstrued, for the first time in India, as the strait path to the rebellion, separatism and wanton killing of the infidels.

Since the leading Islamic scholars of al-Azhar University have excluded the Salafists from the true adherents of Sunni Islam, it has inevitably caused an uproar among the Saudi Salafist clergy. Agitated reactions continue within the Salafist clerical circle in Saudi Arabia in a bid to oppose the Sunni conference hosted by the Chechen capital, Grozny.

In its report on the issue, the Arabic-language daily Ray al-Youm has told that that the Sunni conference has created a storm of anger among pro-government clerics in Saudi Arabia.

According to the report, several Saudi clerics accuse the Sunni-oriented conference of being an attempt by the Russian government to deepen the gap between Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

It is not prudent to ignite crises and trigger misadventures of political nature, as well as intellectual affiliations and sloganeering, to demonize the Muslims and thereby widening divisions, the council said in a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency.

Notably, the Sunni leaders of the Chechnya conference have recommended the establishment of a national television channel, at the level of Russia, whose objective would be to communicate the true image of Islam.

It is interesting to note that the same Islamist discourse is playing out in India too. It is this very Salafist concern that several Islamist leaders in India expressed when the World Sufi Forum was held in New Delhi. They painted it as the Indian governments effort to frame Sufism as a force opposing Wahhabism/Salafism, though India has averred to combat the religious extremism per se. However, the World Sufi Forums participants seemed more enthusiastic about promoting Sufism as a way of supporting inclusive democracy and pluralism rather than Muslim sectarianism.

As an earlier article on Firstpost noted that Sufis have come all out of their conclaves and hospices to fight back the evils of ideological extremism stemming from the hardcore philosophies in the name of Islam. But the anti-Sufism elements and new movements of extremism in the Indian Muslim society are misleading the nation. They disparage every anti-extremism Sufi practitioner as pseudo-Sufi.

The author is a scholar of Comparative Religion, Classical Arabic and Islamic sciences, cultural analyst and researcher in Media and Communication Studies. Views are personal. He tweets at @GRDehlvi. Email: grdehlavi@gmail.com
Lahore: A former LeT militant, arrested last month for his involvement in the 2008 Mumbai terror attack, has been absolved by Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency which says "no allegation has been proved against him."

Sufayan Zafar was accused of financing Rs 14,800 for Mumbai attack and providing Rs 3.98 million to co-accused Shahid Jameel Riaz prior to the attack. "The FIA has found no evidence against Zafar during investigation," an official of FIA said. He said the allegation that he had financed one of the arrested suspects in Mumbai case could not be proved after thorough investigation.

The official said: "Zafar's role in providing finances to a Mumbai attacks suspect(s) has not been established." He said Zafar would not be charge-sheeted in the court for alleged allegations. "FIA will submit a challan in the trial court in this regard on next hearing on September 22 but will not frame charges against him," the official said.

Zafar was hiding after being declared proclaimed offender in the Mumbai case. He was arrested early last month from his hideout in Kyber-Pakhtaunkhawa province. A resident of Gujrawala district of Punjab, some 80km from Lahore, Zafar is among 21 other (absconding) suspects wanted in this high-profile case.

Six other suspects  Abdul Wajid, Mazhar Iqbal, Hammad Amin Sadiq, Shahid Jameel Riaz, Jamil Ahmed and Younus Anjum  have been lodged in the Adiyala Jail Rrawalpindi since 2009 for abetment to murder, attempted murder, planning and executing the Mumbai attacks.

Prime suspect LeT operations commander Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, believed to be the mastermind of the Mumbai attacks, has been in hiding after getting bail over a year ago. Some 166 people werekilled in the attack carried out by 10 LeT men. Nine terrorists were killed while lone survivor Ajmal Kasab was captured and later executed.
Narendra Modi's unusually bold message against Pakistan from consecutive multinational summits, urging global powers to impose sanctions on India's delinquent neighbour, is not adventurism. It reflects his growing confidence as the leader of a country, that, in turn, is growing in confidence. As India gradually comes to terms with its brawn as Asia's second-largest economy and internalizes the influence it exerts over its immediate neighbourhood, Modi was able to tap into that resource while sending the unequivocal memo.

The sequence of events tell us the way in which India upped the ante in a short span of time.

On Monday, the second and final day of the 11th G20 summit in China's Hangzhou, Modi castigated Islamabad in the concluding session without taking its name. "There are some nations that use it (terror) as an instrument of state policy One single nation in South Asia is spreading these agents of terror in the countries of our region India has a policy of zero tolerance to terrorism. Because anything less than that is not enough. For us, a terrorist is a terrorist," The Times of India quoted him, as saying.

This was the capping off of a busy diplomatic offensive the Prime Minister had launched against Pakistan as soon as he landed in China  holding bilateral meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. He also schmoozed on the sidelines with Brics leaders on counter-terrorism and steps to isolate the terror-sponsoring nation.

Three days later on Thursday, Modi aimed for the jugular. First, during the 14th Asean-India Summit at Vientiane, Laos  a conglomerate of 10 southeast Asian nations  Modi warned that economic prosperity in the region is being hampered by the growing menace of terrorism.

"Export of terror, growing radicalisation and spread of extreme violence are common security threats to our societies The threat is local, regional, and transitional at the same time. Our partnership with Asean seeks to craft a response through coordination, cooperation at multiple levels," said Modi, according to PTI.

The coup de grace was delivered at the same venue, on that very day, this time during the wider East Asia Summit. Along with the Asean members, the EAS also includes Japan, South Korea, China, India, Australia, New Zealand, the US and Russia.

Modi, as The Telegraph reports, said: "We need to target not only terrorists but their entire support system And our strongest action should be reserved for those state actors who employ terrorism as an instrument of state policy. But there is one country in India's neighbourhood whose competitive advantage rests solely in producing and exporting terrorism The time has come for us to stop this global exporter of terror. The time has come for us to isolate and sanction this instigator."

The point is not just that Modi called for sanctions against Pakistan. Though a rarity, it could signal little beyond the fact that the relationship between the two nuclear neighbours is at its lowest ebb. But the significance of the statement lies in the fact that it was delivered from an important geopolitical forum and  as the newspaper mentions  in presence of Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, US President Barack Obama and Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.

Sanctions against Pakistan may not be on anvil. But to chastise Islamabad for its policies, seek its isolation and call for a global effort to discipline it while standing shoulder-to-shoulder with leaders from countries like China or Turkey who have deep strategic and/or ideological ties with Nawaz Sharif government  point to a new confidence in India's approach.

This new, muscular foreign policy, an exhibition of aggression towards forces inimical to India's interest and exertion of pressure must be laid at Modi's door.

In a short span of time, the PM has taken some risks, energized some past relationships, stitched a few new ones and introduced strategic depth into alliances. While it is too early to assess how much of it will bear fruit or stay within the realm of optics, one thing is certain. India seems to be unmistakably moving away from Nehruvian idealism as the cornerstone of its foreign affairs and adopting a new pragmatic approach based on its short-term or long-term strategic interests.

While all of it isn't Modi's doing  the cornerstone of a warmer relationship with the United States, for instance, was laid by Manmohan Singh through the civil nuclear deal  the incumbent PM has certainly taken Indo-US bonhomie to the next level through a combination of personal enterprise and the harnessing of mutual geopolitical needs.



Aside from the fact that Modi and outgoing US president Barack Obama share a personal chemistry, New Delhi's recent shift in foreign policy has also been triggered by dovetailing of Indo-US strategic interests. The pivot of this recalibration in Indo-US relationship lies in Beijing. China's rapid rise as a global power, increased assertion of territorial ambition, deepening ties with Pakistan, strategic initiatives like One Belt, One Road, China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and tactical closeness with Russia point to a changing balance of power in Asia and even beyond. It has naturally alarmed both Washington and New Delhi.

Under the revised world order, India can no longer afford to remain non-aligned. This was evident through reports that Narendra Modi may skip the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) Summit to be held this month in Venezuela. For founding member India to not send its Prime Minister  as Charu Sudan Kasturi indicates in The Telegraph  points to New Delhi's changing priorities.

Washington wouldn't have been innocent of these signals. It has, on cue, lately piled enormous pressure on Pakistan to act against terrorists operating out of its soil, complimented Modi government on GST and sent unequivocal message that it "strongly" backs India's NSG bid.

Modi's Pakistan offensives are the strongest indications yet of the shifting sands in relationships between global powers. Note how Pakistan has been left on its own to defend India's charge through another spate of shrill rhetoric. India's clout is growing. And its neighbours would have noted it.
Miami: The US space agency launched its first mission to collect dust from an asteroid, the kind of cosmic body that may have delivered life-giving materials to Earth billions of years ago.

The unmanned spacecraft, known as OSIRIS-REx, blasted off at 7:05 pm (local time) atop an Atlas V rocket in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

The $800 million mission will travel for two years on a journey to Bennu, a near-Earth asteroid about the size of a small mountain.

Bennu was chosen from the some 5,00,000 asteroids in the solar system because it orbits close to Earth's path around the sun, it is the right size for scientific study, and it is one of the oldest asteroids known to Nasa.

"For primitive, carbon-rich asteroids like Bennu, materials are preserved from over four and a half billion years ago," explained Christina Richey, OSIRIS-REx deputy program scientist at Nasa.

These "may be the precursors to life in Earth or elsewhere in our solar system".

OSIRIS-REx's main goal is to gather dirt and debris from the surface of the asteroid and return it to Earth by 2023 for further study.

Learning more about the origins of life and the beginning of the solar system are key objectives for the SUV-sized OSIRIS-REx, which stands for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security-Regolith Explorer.

The mission should also shed light on how to find precious resources such as water and metals in asteroids, a field that has generated increasing interest worldwide.

"We are going to map this brand-new world that we have never seen before," said Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator and professor at the University of Arizona, Tucson.

Using a suite of cameras, lasers and spectrometers, "we are really going to understand the distribution of materials across the surface of that asteroid," he added.

"We are a trailblazer for that kind of activity because our science requires it."

The spacecraft is expected to reach Bennu in August 2018 and spend two years studying it before it begins the sample collection attempt in July 2020.

Nasa hopes the solar-powered OSIRIS-REx will bring back the largest payload of space samples since the Apollo era of the 1960s and 1970s, when American explorers collected and carried back to Earth some 800 pounds (360 kilogrammes) of moon rocks.

The collection device, known as the Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM), should pick up about two ounces (60 grams) from the asteroid, but in tests so far it has generally picked up five times that amount.

TAGSAM contains a type of reverse-vacuum mechanism that was invented by a Lockheed Martin engineer who tested the concept a decade ago using a red plastic Solo cup in his driveway.
Seoul: North Korea claimed on Friday it had successfully tested a nuclear warhead that could be mounted on a missile, drawing condemnation from the South over the "maniacal recklessness" of young ruler Kim Jong-Un.

The blast at the Punggye-ri nuclear site was the North's fifth and most powerful yet at 10 kilotons  approaching the might of the bomb that devastated Hiroshima in 1945, experts in Seoul said.

Pyongyang's state media said the test, which comes after a series of ballistic missile launches, had realised the country's goal of being able to fit a miniaturised warhead on a rocket.

"Our nuclear scientists staged a nuclear explosion test on a newly developed nuclear warhead at the country's northern nuclear test site," a North Korean TV presenter said.

"Our... party sent a congratulatory message to our nuclear scientists... for conducting the successful nuclear warhead explosion test," said Ri Chun-Hee, a veteran who has delivered all the North's biggest announcements.

The news drew swift condemnation from US President Barack Obama who warned of "serious consequences" and said he had called the leaders of South Korea and Japan to confer over the crisis.

The South's President Park Geun-Hye spoke out against the "maniacal recklessness" of Kim, who since taking control after the death of his father in 2011 has carried out a series of purges and weapons tests designed to show strength and consolidate power.

"Kim Jong-Un's regime will only earn more sanctions and isolation... and such provocation will further accelerate its path to self-destruction," Park said.

US Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, meeting in Geneva, said they would refer the matter to the United Nations.

Search for clues

News of the test emerged when seismic monitors detected a 5.3-magnitude "artificial earthquake" early Friday near the Punggye-ri nuclear site, where the last test took place in January.

"The 10-kiloton blast was nearly twice the (power of the) fourth nuclear test and slightly less than the Hiroshima bombing, which was measured about 15 kilotons," said Kim Nam-Wook from the South's meteorological agency.

If Pyongyang can make a nuclear device small enough to fit on a warhead, and bolster the range and accuracy of its missiles, it might achieve its oft-stated aim of hitting US targets. But its claims to that in the past have been discounted.

However, North Koreans who gathered around public screens to watch the official announcement of the test -- which came on the 68th anniversary of the country's founding  were bullish.

"Though the US imperialists are running amok, we fear nothing as our military power has strengthened further," one woman told AFP in Pyongyang.

Outside experts said authenticating North Korea's claim to have created a weapon-tipped missile would be difficult.

"It's not really possible for us to verify that the test was of a compact warhead from the seismic data," said Melissa Hanham, a North Korea expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.

"We would need to see it tested on a missile, like China did in the 1960s. Nobody wants to see that. There is no way they could do that test in a safe way, and it could easily start a war."

China under pressure

Japan condemned the test as "absolutely unacceptable" while the head of the UN atomic watchdog said it was a "clear violation" of numerous Security Council resolutions.

North Korea has been hit by five sets of United Nations sanctions since it first tested a nuclear device in 2006, but has insisted it will continue, come what may.

The nuclear programme has gone alongside a series of ballistic missile launches; the latest of which took place on Monday even as world powers gathered for a G20 meeting in China.

This week's events are yet another slap in the face for Pyongyang's chief ally, China, which has been under pressure to rein in its increasingly embarrassing neighbour.

China said Friday it "firmly opposes" the test, but it has limited room to manoeuvre, given its priority is to avoid a collapse of the regime that would create a crisis on its border and shift the balance of power on the Korean peninsula towards the US.

The US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University said the latest development made plain that the US and South Korean strategy on restraining North Korea "has clearly failed".

"No one should be surprised that North Korea continues to conduct nuclear tests to enhance the capabilities of its growing arsenal. Nor should they expect China to solve this problem for the United States," said the institute's Joel Wit.

North Korea claimed its January test was of a miniaturised hydrogen bomb, which can be far more powerful than other nuclear devices.

But scientists say the estimated yield of around six kilotons was similar to the North's previous nuclear test in 2013, and far too low for a thermonuclear device. Initial indications from Friday's blast pointed in the same direction.

"What we can tell from the seismic waves so far is that this is likely not a thermonuclear test," said 38 North managing director Jenny Town.

"We are still in the preliminary stages but our analysts believe they tested a basic nuclear device not an advanced device," she said. "If we were looking at a thermonuclear test, we would see very different seismic waves."
Seoul: On Friday, South Korean President Park Geun-Hye condemned North Korea's latest nuclear test as an act of "self-destruction" that will further deepen its isolation in the international community.

The impoverished but nuclear-armed North staged its fifth nuclear test this morning, she said in a statement, describing it as a "grave challenge" to the international community.

"With the nuclear test, Kim Jong-Un's regime will only earn more sanctions and isolation... and such provocation will further accelerate its path to self-destruction," she said, referring to the North's young ruler.

The latest nuclear test  described as the North's most powerful to date by Seoul's military  proves Kim's "manic recklessness" and his obsession with building a nuclear arsenal despite global criticism, she added.

In Tokyo, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Friday called North Korea's latest nuclear test "absolutely unacceptable".

"North Korea's carrying out of a nuclear test is absolutely unacceptable for Japan," Abe said in a statement, after Pyongyang conducted its fifth nuclear test, believed to be its most powerful to date.

"North Korea's nuclear development is becoming a graver threat to Japan's safety and severely undermines the peace and safety of the region and the international community," Abe said.

"Japan lodges a serious protest against North Korea and condemns it in the strongest language," he added.
Islamabad: Pakistan Foreign Secretary Aizaz Chaudhry has proposed partnership with India on nuclear safety and security, media repored on Friday.

Chaudhary said this on Thursday while addressing a conference on "Assessing South Asia's Nuclear Security", Dawn online reported.

Pakistan and India have an agreement on nuclear accidents and an expert group on nuclear confidence-building measures, though it is currently dormant because of the freeze in bilateral ties.

The two countries are also signatories to several international conventions, including those on nuclear safety, early notification of a nuclear accident, assistance in case of a nuclear accident or radiological emergency and physical protection of nuclear material and facilities.

Under the conventions and instruments, the two countries could share best practices, experience and expertise, Chaudhry suggested.

The proposal comes from the realisation that despite problems in their ties, the two countries have a special responsibility to cooperate in the field of nuclear security.

Suggesting cooperation on development of an independent regulatory framework, Chaudhry said Pakistan had extensive experience in maintaining an independent nuclear regulatory body.

The latest proposal comes after Pakistan last month proposed a bilateral moratorium on testing of nuclear weapons which was related to Islamabad's candidature for the Nuclear Suppliers Group.
Jakarta: Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte insisted on Friday he had not intended to insult US leader Barack Obama, but immediately took aim at another global figure by labelling UN chief Ban Ki-moon a "fool".

Duterte sparked a storm on the eve of an Asian summit this week by labelling Obama a "son of a whore", prompting the US president to cancel a planned meeting. The pair met briefly later at the gathering in Laos after Duterte expressed regret.

But acid-tongued Duterte on Friday said the Philippine expression "putangina" should not be taken at face value, and it was "an ordinary expression (used) by everyone".

"It's son of a bitch or son of a gun. It's not son of a whore," he told an audience of Filipinos during a visit to the Indonesian capital Jakarta.

He insisted his remarks were not directed at Obama but at the US State Department, which has raised concerns over potential human rights violations in Duterte's anti-crime campaign which has left almost 3,000 dead in just over two months.

"I got really angry about these threats over this human rights issue. This is the fault of the crazy people in the State Department," he said.

Duterte said he had clarified his comments to Obama when they met.

The Philippine leader has become famous for his profane outbursts, and has branded Pope Francis and the US ambassador to Manila "sons of whores".

The United Nations has also spoken out against his crime crackdown and on Friday Duterte added UN chief Ban, who spoke at the Asian summit, to the list of those he has insulted.

"I told myself, you're just one more fool," Duterte said of Ban.

"I will continue the campaign against the criminals. I do not have any pity for them," he added.

"I don't give a shit. I am the president of the Philippines, not the republic of the international community."

Duterte was elected to office in a landslide this year after pledging to kill 1,00,000 people in an unprecedented war on crime. But his brutal crackdown has sparked a wave of international condemnation.
United Nations: The UN Security Council will meet on Friday to discuss North Korea's fifth and most powerful nuclear test to date.

The 15 council members will meet at 3 pm for urgent consultations, at the request of the United States and Japan, said the New Zealand mission.

New Zealand holds this month's presidency of the Security Council.

North Korea's state media said the test, which comes after a series of ballistic missile launches, had realized the country's goal of being able to fit a miniaturized warhead on a rocket.

The blast at the Punggye-ri nuclear site was the North's fifth and most powerful yet at 10 kilotons, according to experts.

The council has strongly condemned North Korea's missile launches and vowed earlier this week to take "further significant measures" against Pyongyang.

Japan is calling for new sanctions, but China, Pyongyang's ally, has repeatedly stressed the need to avoid an escalation of tension on the Korean peninsula.

North Korea has been hit by five sets of UN sanctions since it first tested a nuclear device in 2006.
The US House of Representatives passed legislation by voice vote on Friday that would allow the families of victims of the 11 September, 2001, attacks to sue Saudi Arabia's government for damages, despite the White House's threat to veto the measure.

The US Senate passed the "Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act," or JASTA, unanimously in May. Opponents of the bill said it could strain relations with Saudi Arabia and lead to retaliatory laws targeting US citizens or corporations in other countries.

The vote's timing was symbolic, passing two days before the 15th anniversary of the hijacked-plane attacks on New York and Washington. Its passage was greeted with cheers and applause in the House chamber.

The White House on Friday reiterated that President Barack Obama would veto the bill.

If Obama carries out his veto threat and the required two-thirds of both the Republican-majority House and Senate still support the bill, it would be the first time since Obama's presidency began in 2009 that Congress had overridden a veto.

The House passed the measure by voice, without recorded individual votes, which is not technically considered unanimous. That could make it easier for Obama's fellow Democrats to uphold his veto later without officially changing their positions.
Washington: The US is monitoring and continuing to assess the situation in view of the seismic activity on the Korean Peninsula in the vicinity of a known North Korean nuclear site, the White House said on Friday.

"We are aware of seismic activity on the Korean Peninsula in the vicinity of a known North Korean nuclear test site," said Ned Price, spokesman of the National Security Council of the White House.

"We are monitoring and continuing to assess the situation in close coordination with our regional partners," Price said.

The White House statement came after South Korean and international monitoring agencies reported an earthquake near North Korea's north-eastern nuclear test site, indicating that Pyongyang may have detonated a new atomic test to mark the 68th anniversary of the country's founding.
The Commander-in-Chief forum with Matt Lauer on NBC Wednesday night has severely been criticised for being misogynyst and liberal on Trump. Lauer also reportedly failed to fact check Trumps statements and Clinton is definitely using it to her advantage.

The dailycaller reported that Clinton sent out an email to her supporters which read as, Not only did the moderator, Matt Lauer, fail to fact-check Trump  he then kept the conversation moving.

He is being grilled on social media for failing to challenge Trump when he said he was always against the Iraq war. Lets assume it was because of his ignorance of Trumps earlier stand or a reluctance to counter him. Nevertheless, lets focus on the broader part of his interview which has managed to irk so many people.

Lauer is being criticised by top media agencies in part for his failure to fact check Trumps statement but, majorly because of his constant interruptions while interviewing Clinton.

The Slate is interested in low-grade fever that caused Matt Lauer to continually interrupt Hillary Clintons sharp, specific answers to his questions.

It is amazing. Lauer interrupted Clinton's answers repeatedly to move on. Not once for Trump. Tough to be a woman running for President  Norman Ornstein (@NormOrnstein) September 8, 2016

Keep in mind that in all probability Lauer did not want to favour Trump. He is closely associated with the Clinton campaign. The Dailymail reported that he is listed as a notable past member of the Clinton global initiative.

This was one of the concerns that the Trump camp had raised before agreeing to have Lauer as the moderator for the debate. One of the theories that emerge after reading his association with Clinton is, he might have appeared liberal with Trump is an attempt to dodge future allegations.

Let's subvert the situation and imagine that he had interrupted Trump instead of Clinton. Result: He would have been accused of being biased towards the Republican presidential candidate because of his past Clinton association.

What he did in the interview can be seen as a defensive move by him.

Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress tweeted that "many people are saying Lauer wouldn't have done this if Clinton was a man."

Many people are saying @MLauer wouldn't have interrupted Hillary so much if she were a man.  Neera Tanden (@neeratanden) September 8, 2016

How can we declare his interruptions as a case of sexism or misogyny? If Clinton wasn't a woman and just another male presidential nominee and Lauer had done exactly the same thing, it would merely have been a question of favoritism.

Last, being a journalist hosting a show, he is bound by time constraints. The designated time for both the nominees was 30 minutes each. For the initial few questions, Clinton spoke at length with just some decent rebuttals from Lauer. However, as time moved on and Lauer still had a number of questions prepared for her, it is possible that he interrupted her or cut her short.

No journalist would want to exceed an interview when another presidential candidate is out waiting for his turn.

The NewYork Times highlighted an incident when Lauer interjected even before Clinton could being replying to an army veteran's question. She was asked to answer "as briefly as you can".

How can anyone look at it from a sexist point of view rather than sensing the panic that would have followed had Lauer allowed Clinton to go on for as long as she wanted. He would have exceeded the show's timing and managed to infuriate Trump.
Baar (CH)/Ras al Khaimah (UAE)/Manama (Bahrain)  SwissSelect Reward Program is not new to many, what's new is the wide array of hotel network that adds to the list contributing to the length and breadth of the program and making it an enticing reward system with time. Swiss International Palace Hotel, which came on board effective July 01, 2016, is the fifth hotel participating under the Swiss-Select Reward Program. Four more hotels are scheduled to be added in the list before the end of the year 2016.

Swiss International Palace Hotel launched Swiss-Select Reward Program on the 1 st August 2016. The launch took place after training the hotel staff in Manama, Bahrain which was took place on the 19th July 2016. Commenting on the launch, the hotel's General Manager, Mr. Harish Bhojwani, said: "We are glad with the successful implementation of the Swiss-Select reward program for the benefit of our hotel guests. Swiss-Select will enable us to recognize our frequent guests and secure their loyalty."

Samira Demeis, Vice President of VOILA Hotel Rewards added, "It is great to see the addition of new hotels under Swiss-Select, and we will continue to provide the support and systems to Swiss International hotels to enhance its membership enrollments and to strengthen the overall Swiss-Select reward program." Swiss-Select and Swiss International are partners of the Voila program worldwide. Please see: www.vhr.com for more information.

Mr. Henri (Hans) Kennedie, CEO of Swiss International Hotels & Resorts, said "Building long-term relationships with our guests has been of immense importance to us. Swiss-Select is a means towards developing established and new relationships with our guests. With the inclusion of our other hotels in the program we intend to create a well-connected network of Swiss International Hotels & Resorts. With the launch of Swiss-Select at Swiss International Palace Hotel  Manama, we expect an enhanced membership growth and increased guest loyalty to the Swiss International Brand."

Swiss-Select allows the members to earn points not only on their stay in any of the Swiss International hotels but also on the stays at any participating hotels within the VOILA hotel worldwide network. A member can exchange their points to earn complimentary room nights or may redeem it with a range of VOILA partners, which includes a range of retailers, such as best buy, amazon, boots, Emaar gift cards etc. The redemption option also extends to airline miles for airlines including France Air, KLM, Southwest Airlines, Virgin America and many more. Along with the redemption opportunities', members also enjoy perks such as priority check-ins, privilege access to hotel amenities, room upgrades, and other member-only benefits. The guests can apply for it online or at the hotel counters. To learn more about Swiss-Select, please visit http://swiss-selectrewards.com

Swiss International Hotels

Founded in 1982, Swiss International Hotels is established in Switzerland. Swiss International Hotels & Resorts is currently associated with hotels in Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands, Greater China, the Middle East and Africa. The company is registered in Baar, Switzerland and is operating from the UAE (Ras Al Khaimah). Swiss International is operating and licensing its hotels under the following brands: Royal Swiss (Luxury), Swiss International Hotels & Resorts (Upscale), Swiss Spirit Hotels & Suites (Mid-market) and Yes Inn (Economy).

Amee Yadav

Corporate Communications - Alpha Hospitality Management Services

+971 7 2433242

Swiss International Hotels & Resorts
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Chinese flag-carrier Air China said yesterday that it had removed copies of its inflight magazine containing an article criticized as racist for telling visitors to take precautions when visiting areas of London with large ethnic-minority populations.

The state-owned airline said in an e-mail to The Associated Press that the September issue of Wings of China used inappropriate language and that the article didnt represent the airlines views.

After discovering this problem, Air China immediately removed this magazine from all flights and demanded that the publishers of Wings of China seriously learn from this lesson, strengthen their content review and avoid making similar mistakes, the airline said.

It also forwarded an email from the magazines publisher apologizing to Air China and saying the fault lay with an editing mistake.

The original article in English read: London is generally a safe place to travel, however precautions are needed when entering areas mainly populated by Indians, Pakistanis and black people. It also advised tourists not to go out alone at night, and for women not to travel alone.

British lawmaker Vivendra Sharma, who represents a diverse London district, said Wednesday that he had written to Chinas ambassador to Britain to demand an apology for the blatantly untrue and racist statements.

In the apology to Air China, China Aviation Media Co. Ltd. said the article ran counter to our original intention to promote the beautiful scenes of London.

It has brought about misunderstanding from some media outlets and readers and also a huge negative impact on your companys business operations and image. We deeply apologize for that, its statement read.

Its not the first time Chinese businesses have been criticized for being tone-deaf over issues of race and ethnicity.

Earlier this year, a Chinese laundry detergent maker apologized for the harm caused to the African people over its TV advertisement that showed a black man being stuffed into a washing machine and coming out a fair-skinned Asian man.

Shanghai Leishang Cosmetics Ltd. Co. said it strongly condemned racial discrimination but blamed foreign media for playing up the controversy.

The examples highlight how companies and much of the population in China remain somewhat oblivious to racial sensitivities, partly a result of Chinas overwhelming ethnic homogeneity and a relative lack of contact with foreigners until recent years that has allowed stereotypes to persist.

Asked about the magazines London travel advice, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying responded that the government only issues tourist alerts to people travelling to high risk areas like war zones.

The Chinese government resolutely opposes all forms of racial discrimination, she said. Louise Watt, Beijing, AP
President Barack Obama put the long-simmering dispute in the South China Sea front and center on the agenda at a regional summit yesterday as it became clear that most of the other leaders gathered in the Laotian capital were going to let China off with a mild rebuke over its territorial expansion in the resource-rich waters.

We will continue to work to ensure that disputes are resolved peacefully including in the South China Sea, Obama said in his opening remarks at a meeting with leaders of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN.

He said an international arbitration ruling on July 12 against China was binding and helped to clarify maritime rights in the region.

ASEAN held a separate summit later with other world powers, including China and the U.S. The summit is expected to let China off with a muted reprimand over its expansionist activities in South China Sea.

The U.S. has repeatedly expressed concern over Beijings actions in the resource-rich sea. Obama brought that up again.

Referring to the arbitration panels ruling that invalidated Chinas claims, Obama said: I realize this raises tensions but I also look forward to discussing how we can constructively move forward together to lower tensions and promote diplomacy and regional stability.

The draft of the summit statement said that ASEAN and its partners reaffirmed the importance of maintaining peace, stability and security and freedom of navigation in and over-flight in the South China Sea.

Several Leaders remained seriously concerned over recent developments in the South China Sea [] We stressed the importance for the parties concerned to resolve their disputes by peaceful means, in accordance with universally recognized principles of international laws, it said.

China has turned shoals and coral reefs into seven man-made islands and built airstrips capable of handling military aircraft on three of them. ASEAN leaders at their earlier summit earlier this week expressed concern over Chinas island-building. AP
The Korean Woori Bank has apologized to its Chinese clients for an advertisement posted by the bank that referred to Macau as a country. The advertisement featured five hands wearing clothes, the sleeves of which were printed with the flags of PRC, Japan, POC, Hong Kong and Macau. However, words written on the advertisement referred to the aforementioned regions as five countries in Asia. The banks official Weibo account announced Tuesday that the post had no relationship with the bank, and that the bank is conducting an investigation regarding the issue. The bank also apologized to its Chinese costumers, according to a report by Apple Daily.

Civil servant caught lying

A civil servant has lied to the police, claiming that he was being robbed, in order to provide his department with a sound reason for having been late for work. Earlier, the man, who is in his 30s, had reported to police saying that he had been robbed of MOP50 at the Tap Seac Square public bathroom. On Monday, the Judiciary Police (PJ) discovered that the man had lied after several discussions with the self-proclaimed victim. The government employee admitted to the PJ that he made up the whole story in order to explain to his supervisor why he had arrived late to work.

Couple falsify robbery case after losing money on gambling

A couple was arrested yesterday by the Judiciary Police (PJ), accused of falsifying a robbery case on Wednesday. Earlier, a convenience store near the Border Gate had reportedly been robbed, according to the two female employees on-duty at that time, one of whom is a suspect. MOP15,000 was supposedly stolen during the robbery. However, after being questioned by the PJ, the female suspect later admitted that the robbery never happened. She claimed that her boyfriend had lost more than MOP10,000 from his earnings on gambling, so she had suggested he falsify the robbery while she was working, according to a report by TDM.
The Central Library is one of the projects outlined in the governments five-year plan and set to be initiated before 2020, to be concluded in 2022.

This matter provoked questioning from the press, due to the recently discovered facts regarding the status of the project, as well as criticism of its proposed location and expected budget of MOP900 million.

The CE responded to the questioning by explaining that the five-year plan draws general guidelines and goals that are possible to reach and that are independent of mandates or government positions. The Secretary for Social Affairs and Culture, Alexis Tam, said, the project isnt a new one. Its in fact a project that was already targeted with a study over a long period of time [last 10 years], he said, reaffirming that the main idea behind converting the old courthouse into a central library is due to the limited size and conditions of the Tap Seac facility.

Tam said, now is the right time to advance with the project after the relocation of the Judiciary Police, a fact that, in the secretarys opinion, has created an opportunity to improve the proposal.

Tam dismissed claims of moving the library to a new location, saying that the Old Court Building is appropriate. The location is good: Easy access and located in the city center, Tam said. At this moment we are not seeing any other possibility in terms of location that is more convenient, he concluded, adding: Ten years ago the idea was already quite good, now it is better!


The University of Macau (UM) Honours College (HC) recently held a ceremony to welcome 48 new students, all of whom are top student leaders selected from 18 academic programs offered by seven faculties. The students will have the opportunity to develop their knowledge, skill-set and leadership abilities through various training courses and activities offered by HC.

At the ceremony, UM University Council Chair Lam Kam Seng and Rector Wei Zhao presented admission certificates to the students. In his speech, HC Dean Mok Kai Meng noted that UMs multicultural campus offers many experiences, and he encouraged the students to take advantage of the opportunities available, work hard and try different things.

According to a statement issued by UM, in the second semester of their second year, the new cohort of students will have the opportunity to study at overseas universities, namely Boston College, the University of Notre Dame du Lac, the University of Rochester, George Washington University, the University of Michigan, Washington University in St Louis, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the University of Coimbra.

UM highlighted in the statement that most HC graduates from the previous cohorts have either found a job [in] multinational companies or chosen to pursue further studies. Some members of the Class of 2016 have been employed by companies like JBA Consulting Engineers (Asia) Limited and PricewaterhouseCoopers in Beijing. Others chose to pursue further studies at renowned universities.

Established in 2009, HC is dedicated to nurturing outstanding undergraduate students into future leaders. The three-year Honours Program provides the students with leadership training courses and offers them access to research programs and creative activities. Students also have the opportunity to study abroad at esteemed universities for one semester to gain a comparative perspective on the disciplines they study, and to develop international awareness and cultural fluency.


The final document of the MSARs first Five-Year Development Plan presented yesterday, highlights the need to create land reserves and to improve urban planning. The Chief Executive (CE), Chui Sai On, who attended the presentation together with all of the government secretaries, stated that one of the governments major priorities over the next five years is the construction of public housing.

Although any differences between this final document and the version presented last April are difficult to recognize, Chui remarked that this final version of the plan is more comprehensive, due to the collection of over 4,200 opinions during the public consultation period and in the 41 presentation sessions held with several sectors of society.

According to the CE, 85 percent of the opinion presented were in favor of the plan.

During the Q&A session that followed the presentation by the CE, Secretary for Transports and Public Works, Raimundo do Rosario, guaranteed that the Master Plan would be ready in 2019.

Rosario also said, regarding the land reserves the priorities are very clear, first [priority] will be public housing, second, some of the land can be allocated for government warehouses and in third priority will be the public services, he said, reaffirming the prioritization of public housing, especially social housing.

On this issue, the CE further added that until the end of this year, 4,000 units will be available, and for zone A of the new landfill, another 28,000 are planned to be built. Chui affirmed that, we are certain that [we] will satisfy the needs of the population.

When questioned by the press regarding the lack of information of the MSARs expected economic growth for the period until 2020, the CE said that the gaming industry, which is the main economic drive, suffered an adjustment over the past 12 months, but since last month restarted its grow. We hope it will continue to grow and we also hope to increase the non-gaming sector that has been growing in the last few years. We expect it to grow from 6.6 percent to 9 percent [until 2020], he added optimistically.

Secretary for Economy and Finance Lionel Leong said, Macau suffers from the influence and fluctuation of the world economy and its difficult to make predictions, adding, we must continue to diversify and bet on the non-gaming sectors as a way to benefit the SMEs and the emerging sectors, Leong said.

The five-year development plan for the MSAR also states that the government expects local SME product and service sales to the gaming concessionaires to grow from 41 percent (2015) to 50 percent (2020); and the same applies to the proportion of local suppliers out of total suppliers for the gaming concessionaires, which is expected to grow by 7 percentage points (from 43 to 50 percent).

The Secretary for Economy and Finance defended the health of the regions economy stating, the best indicator is our very low unemployment rate. This shows that the population is in full employment and thats very important for domestic consumption, adding that the government will continue to regulate the employment area in order to promote career advancements for local residents.

Rosario appeals to population not to waste food

The Secretary for Transports and Public Works, Raimundo do Rosario, has appealed to the population and especially to hotels and resorts not to waste food. The unusual remark came about in response to a question regarding solid waste, which was put forward during the press conference that presented the final version of the governments five-year plan. The majority of the solid waste received is resulting from kitchen waste, which is causing us many problems in terms of the incineration process, Rosario said, highlighting that although the origin of the food waste isnt possible to attest, it certainly will come mostly from the hotels and resorts.
The Uber affair is soon to reach a conclusion, and one that only taxi drivers and taxi owners are happy about.

Macau taxis are renowned across Asia and for the worst reasons: they are scarce, dirty, uncomfortable and smelly to a point where a ride usually ends with the realization of how bad the service is. Its drivers either do not or refuse to speak English, often rude and arguably the worst drivers in the streets, with constant abrupt breaking and rapid accelerations. This is not to mention refusing to take passengers, forcing customers to pay increased fares during typhoons or rush hour and constantly talking on the phone. A ride in a Macau taxi is one of the worst experiences this city has to offer and everybody knows that. This includes our Government officials, who want to promote Macau as a tourism capital in Asia but are apparently doing nothing about it  including putting no pressure on taxi owners to improve the conditions of the vehicles or raising the level of customer service by its drivers.

On the other hand, Uber is everything you would want in urban transportation: it comes to your door, it smells good, drivers are often kind, speak English and can actually drive. You dont even have to pay them directly, and the whole experience is very professional, clean and smooth. Cynics would say that service is better because the drivers need a good rating, but I would argue that this is exactly what taxi service is lacking: inspections and evaluations by local regulators.

So it seems Uber is cheaper, more comfortable and provides better service to locals and tourists. The Government knows this but chooses to do nothing  arguing that there is no local legislative regulation (true) and that Uber operates illegally without specific regulation (not necessarily true). These claims triggered a man-hunt by the police for Uber drivers (shameful). Tourism agencies  and there are hundreds in Macau  are allowed to take customers from point A to point B at a certain price, whether it is or is not included a travel package.

Casinos take their customers in unregulated shuttle services all around Macau. These transportation services are not regulated directly as such, but only through their travel agency and gaming licenses, which are evidently not able to appropriately regulate the activity of transportation  drivers or vehicles are not licensed as such, but only registered without any criteria.

And now, at the same time as the pro-Uber demonstrations and the app-giant announcing that it cannot continue to be punished for trying to offer its (legitimate and excellent) service to the community, a new app is being portrayed as the Holy-Grail of taxi service in Macau.

Considering the timing of the announcement, the way it was praised immediately by DSAT and the fact that it is non-profit, I wonder who is behind it. However, I would not be surprised if the ultimate shareholders are taxi owners or the usual Macau entrepreneurial suspects Taxi-Go is seemingly everything Uber is, but only to those who do not care to see it, since the low-grade taxis and drivers are the same and you need to pay more and in cash for the same unpleasant experience as before. Nothing will change, expect now you must try to get one of the few taxi drivers who will be actually using Taxi-Go, as no one realistically believes that the taxi drivers we know will be efficiently answering app calls to pick you up, let alone magically become clean, comfortable and customer friendly.

All things considered, there is nothing that justifiably explains why the Government is not allowing Uber to operate freely, as it does almost everywhere in the world. For all the sensible reasons: because of free competition, improved transportation services, enhanced support to local tourism and simply because they are countless times better than Macau taxis. Goncalo Mendes da Maia, Partner, MdME


Sands China will launch a new promotion aimed at Macau residents to kick off the opening of its latest property, The Parisian Macao, on Tuesday. The announcement of the new promotion was made at a press conference held yesterday afternoon in anticipation of next weeks launch event.

The promotion, titled Parisian Loves Locals, evidently draws inspiration from the largely underwhelming five-week Macau Loves Locals campaign held earlier this year. As in the previous campaign, recipients must be Macau ID cardholders in order to take advantage of the new Sands China offers.

Running from September 14 to 29, the campaign includes not only discounts at Sands Chinas newest property, but also at its other resorts and in select transportation and retail areas.

For hotel accommodation, prices of the Best Flexible Rates in each of the operators properties will be reduced by 30 percent, except at the Four Seasons Macao, which will have its price cut by 20 percent.

During the two-week promotion, almost 50 restaurants and cafes across the groups resort portfolio will slash their prices by as much as 25 percent.

Parisian Loves Locals will also allow residents to save 20 percent on tickets for percussionist group STOMP and Thriller Live, the latter of which celebrates the life and music of Michael Jackson.

Moreover, numerous other amenities will be discounted over the period, including: Gondola rides at The Venetian (-50 percent); visits to The Parisians Eiffel Tower replica (-50 percent); day visits to childrens clubs Qube I and Qube II (-30 percent); various spa treatments (up to -30 percent); and three-hour complimentary parking at most of Sands Chinas resorts.

Macau ID cardholders will also be able to receive a 20 percent discount on the published rates of select Cotai Water Jet ferries (Cotai Class and Cotai First only).

At yesterdays press conference, Sands China president and COO, Wilfred Wong, described the campaign as a way for the operator to extend The Parisians opening celebrations to a fortnightly affair.

To express our commitment and gratitude to the Macau community during this time of celebration, we are pleased to extend the celebration to two full weeks, said Wong. Under the umbrella of the Parisian Loves Locals campaign, a series of special offers across all Sands China properties have been designed for Macau local residents to encourage them to join the celebration.

A series of performances were held including a quick change act, featuring two artists who frequently and rapidly changed outfits, and a routine with dancers in period French costumes. A curious-looking, mobile pipe organ was also presented to the property at yesterdays event.

Additionally, Wong said that he wants locals to have the opportunity to enjoy a wide range of non-gaming elements, and that Sands China understands the promotion as a way for the company to give something back to the local community and thank them for their years of support.

Paulo Martins Chan, the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau (DICJ) chief, also attended yesterdays press conference, and was presented a miniaturized model of the Eiffel Tower encased in glass panels by the Sands China COO.

The DICJ recently awarded The Parisian a total of 150 new tables, 100 of which are to be available for the resorts opening. However, Wong told the Times in an exclusive interview Wednesday that 310 additional tables will be moved to The Parisian from the operators other properties, the majority of which will be mass market.

13,000-person MICE event at The Venetian

According to Sands China representatives, around 13,000 people are set to stay at the operators properties September 13 and 14, coinciding with The Parisians opening. The delegation will be in the city for a large MICE event, which will be held at The Venetian Macao.

The visitors will occupy between 6,000 and 7,000 rooms at The Venetian and at the companys properties in Sands Cotai Central.

With the addition of The Parisians 3000 guest rooms, the Macau market swells to a total of around 35,000. Should the occupancy rate (around 86 percent) remain stable this month, the MICE visitors will represent between one-fifth and one-quarter of occupied rooms in the territory over September 13 and 14.

How and if the Parisian Macaos opening days might be boosted by the coinciding visit of the large delegation remains to be seen. DB [UPDATED]
We published an article in February this year that touched on the issue of diversification and what it means to Macau.

Diversification here means creating services and products not directly dependent on or related to Casinos. Make no mistake, diversification in Macau is almost impossible under the current circumstances.

Why? A small business in Macau needs 5 things in order to establish itself.

1. An entrepreneur to conceive, create and launch the business

2. Money to fund the business

3. A place to start the business

4. People to work in the business

5. The ability to anticipate bureaucratic government requirements

Anyone who has ever tried to start a business knows how hard it is.

Want to start a restaurant in Macau? Well you may be confident that, as an award-

winning chef, you stand a better chance than most. Now you have to find the money.

In other countries, go and talk with the bank. In Macau, the banks will not fund a new business.

They already know what the outcome will be in 95% of the cases, so they dont lend money to new business.

BUT, money is arguably relatively easy to solve in Macau, and credit where its due, the government do attempt to support small business financially (quite possibly the ONLY way in which they truly support small business).

Anyway, lets say that you find someone who has more money than sense, and likes your cooking. He agrees to put up some money.

Now the fun really starts. You need premises.

Rents are very expensive, and landlords know that once you have spent a small fortune fitting out the place, they have you over a barrel. Every renewal the rent is going up.

In business school across the world, a rule of thumb is that rent should be a maximum of 10% of your revenue. Good luck.

If you overcome this hurdle, you still have the most difficult challenge. You need people. Where are they going to come from? The 1.9% unemployed ? No. What about some work permits? Sure, how many Macau ID holders do you already employ?

If, and its a huge if, you have now managed navigate your way through the minefield described above without blowing up, you can now enjoy the administration process.

Your premises will have to obtain a license, which will require inspections. Oddly, you will not be able to obtain a comprehensive list of requirements beforehand. Thus you will have to hire an architect, a lawyer or consultant to work on your behalf

Anyone who has inside information on the process.

During the application period, the submission of documents, forms, supporting evidence, personal information and everything else that is required, no business can be done. Rents must be paid, staff must receive a salary, but no income.

How long can it take? Sometimes, with a little luck and the right person working for you, it can be a matter of weeks. But mostly, it takes months. This does not take into account the ongoing requirements of each industry.

The energy of the entrepreneur should be on the business. In Macau, it is fighting bureaucracy.

As we pointed out before, it is worth bearing in mind that its easy to be critical, especially in hindsight when everything becomes 100% clear.

Forecasting and solving issues proactively is far more difficult and goes mostly unnoticed since problems are solved before they hit the radar of the general public. However, Macau will need to improve its systems dramatically if it wants to diversify the reputation.

Options and possible solutions (in no particular order);

1. Use public land to create a subsidized retail and commercial space to allow new business to launch and test for a finite period of time, two years for example. Business must move after the fixed period, and if it cant work in that period of time, there is no chance of it going further.

2. Spouse dependent work permits. Macau has so few resources, why let those at its disposal go to waste? Secondary work permits for spouses would allow those people who are currently here going crazy to work. Making the work permit on the primary permit will mean that the person cannot stay independently, but at least they can work whilst they are here.

3. Realize that poor service is a major reason for non-returning customers. When staff are not motivated to do a great job, the company and service levels both suffer. Over protection of jobs creates a dangerously indifferent workforce and service levels suffer. Instead, why not operate a dual tax and benefit system that heavily favours Macau ID holders and encourages employers to look for ID holders FIRST, but also makes it easier to employ work permit holders at a higher cost.

4. Look at Government admin procedures. Closing down a businesses during a license renewal period KILLS the business. Issuing a temporary license with a time scale for obtaining a new one does not. Eliminating moronic and idiotic, anti-business administration practices will go some way to change the reputation of Macau from a laughing stock to a place that at least WANTS to be taken seriously.

Juliet Risdon is a Director of JML Property and a property investor.

Having been established in 1994, JML Property offers Investment Property & Homes. It specializes in managing properties for owners and investors, and providing attractive and comfortable homes for tenants.

www.JMLProperty.com

info@JMLProperty.com
When Rodrigo Duterte became Philippine president many predicted his desire to mend relations with China could alienate the United States. Instead, his deadly war on drugs and refusal to brook criticism on human rights have quickly strained relations with the Obama administration.

Dutertes son of a bitch slur against President Barack Obama scuppered a formal meeting between the two leaders this week, presaging rocky times ahead in one of Washingtons most valued alliances in Asia.

Duertes tough talk and action has struck a chord with Filipinos, but it is rubbing the U.S. the wrong way, although it is ultimately the Philippines which has the most to lose from a fracturing of relations. The U.S. is an important source of assistance for its meager military and is treaty-bound to come to the Philippines defense if it comes under attack.

On Wednesday, the Philippine government released what it says are surveillance pictures of Chinese coast guard ships and barges at a disputed Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea  heightening concern that China may expand its massive campaign of land construction that has alarmed neighbors and rival claimants. That is a scenario which could put to the test what the Obama administration often says is an ironclad commitment to its Philippine ally.

Historically tempestuous ties between the Philippines and the U.S., its former colonial power, blossomed under Dutertes predecessor, Benigno Aquino III, who riled Beijing by challenging its territorial claims at an international tribunal. Shortly before he left office, Aquino agreed to allow U.S. forces access to five Philippine military bases  opening the way to what would be the most significant American military deployment in the Southeast Asian nation since the U.S. was forced to close its own military bases there a quarter-century ago.

Amy Searight, a former senior U.S. defense official who led the final negotiations, said the alliance remains strong and U.S. officials are not too concerned about the pending implementation of the new defense cooperation pact  a key part of the Obama administrations strategic push into Asia.

Duterte has not given any signals that he sees abandoning or substantially weakening the alliance with the United States as a way to reach a better deal with China, nor should he. You dont approach a country like China from a position of weakness, you approach them from a position of strength, said Searight, now director of the Southeast Asia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank.

She said more worrisome in Dutertes outburst was that he was tapping into anti-colonial sentiments against America that lingers in some quarters in the Philippines. She also said that the war on drugs his government is prosecuting would be a significant problem and source of friction in the relationship.

Since he took office as president on June 30, more than 2,000 people have been gunned down in a crackdown on drug dealers and users that has prompted expressions of concern from the U.S. over extra-judicial killings. The crackdown has evoked comparisons with so-called death squads that operated in southern Davao city while Duterte was the longtime, crime-fighting mayor.

Duterte, a brash figure whose trash-talking has become his trademark, took Obama to task on the eve of their first planned meeting at a regional summit in Laos. He warned the worlds most powerful man not to question him about the rising body count in his crackdown or son of a bitch I will swear at you.

The State Department on Tuesday objected to the tone of the rhetoric, saying it had raising questions about whether a productive conversation with the Philippine government on such issues. Spokesman Mark Toner said the U.S. would continue to call for due process.

There must be ways to fight against drugs that are consistent with international standards and norms. And thats going to consistently be our message going forward, Toner told reporters in Washington. He added the U.S. would keep an eye on whether the Philippines was living up to that obligation.

Duterte has expressed regret for his outburst against Obama, and Philippine officials said he met briefly and informally with the U.S. president Wednesday before a banquet at the summit. But continued U.S. scrutiny of his policies could feed into his long-standing antipathy toward what he views as U.S. interference in domestic issues.

That sentiment appears to date back to 2002, when a U.S. citizen was severely wounded in a deadly blast apparently caused by explosives he had stored in his hotel room in Davao. Local authorities contended that the man, believed to be a treasure hunter, was evacuated to the U.S. without their consent. The incident played out during an upsurge in Muslim militant violence in the region.

In subsequent years, Duterte accused Washington of hypocrisy for criticizing other countries on human rights in light of the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath.

The U.S. is the No. 1 human rights violator. They torture prisoners and you call them clean? he told local television in 2007. He even threatened to give a senior State Department official a beating if he came to the city.

Since becoming president, he has unloaded on the U.S. ambassador to Manila, calling him gay in derogatory terms and accusing him of meddling in the elections that Duterte won handily. Matthew Pennington, Washington, AP

Obama, Duterte met informally

President Barack Obama and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte met informally Wednesday night in a holding room before attending a gala dinner at a regional summit, Philippine officials said.

Philippine Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay told yesterday The Associated Press that the leaders had met.

They met at the holding room and they were the last persons to leave the holding room. I cant say how long they met. It all springs from the fact the relationship between the Philippines and the United States is firm, very strong. The basis for this relationship is historical and both leaders realize this. And Im very happy that it happened.
ASEAN President Barack Obama puts the long-simmering dispute in the South China Sea front and center on the agenda at an ASEAN summit as it becomes clear that most of the other leaders gathered in the Laotian capital are going to let China off with a mild rebuke over its territorial expansion.

HONG KONG A van collided with a Dragonair plane that was carrying around 300 people at the Hong Kong International Airport yesterday. According to video footage of the incident, the van driver, who crashed into the plane as it was taxiing for takeoff, seems to have been at fault.

CHINA-SOUTH KOREA China is shunning a security dialogue in Seoul amid an ongoing row over South Koreas decision to deploy a powerful U.S. missile defense system. Beijing has angrily denounced plans for its deployment due to fears that the system will allow the U.S. military to peer deep into northeastern China.



PHILIPPINES Seven Chinese citizens were arrested in a drug raid against a suspected laboratory inside a pig farm. President Rodrigo Duterte, who has launched a massive crackdown on illegal drugs, has said that Chinese citizens are involved in the drug trade in the Philippines.

RUSSIAs Foreign Ministry announced yesterday that the Israeli and the Palestinian leaders have agreed in principle to meet in Moscow for talks in what the Russians hope will relaunch the Mideast peace process after more than a two-year break.

MALDIVES Police in the Maldives have raided the office of one of the countrys leading news websites shortly after the broadcast of a television documentary that accused the countrys president of corruption, money laundering and misrule.



AFGHANISTAN The Taliban pushed into the capital of Afghanistans southern Uruzgan province yesterday, triggering fierce clashes and sending all government officials fleeing from the city, an Afghan official said. Hundreds of Taliban are believed to be involved in the assault.

SYRIAN government forces and their allies captured new ground on the edge of the contested northern city of Aleppo yesterday, tightening the siege on rebel-held parts of the city, state media and an activist group said.



FRANCE President Francois Hollande is hinting that he could seek a second term in elections next year, even though he is the least popular French leader in modern times.


by Paige E. Malott

513-556-6319

Sept. 9, 2016

The day after Thanksgiving 2012, a time when most families were finishing up leftover turkey and beginning their holiday shopping, Mike Prus sat quietly at his desk thumbing through a call for proposals for what would become a high-profile infrastructure project with national recognition: the Cincinnati streetcar, now known as the Cincinnati Bell Connector.



A 3.6-mile route through downtown and Over-The-Rhine was to break ground in early 2013 and feature 18 stations in addition to a maintenance facility to house and service the light rail vehicles. As vice president of Prus Construction, Prus, M (Bus) '00, led the application for the bid process and assembled a local executive team. The joint venture, Messer-Prus-Delta (MPD), included a partnership with Messer Construction and Delta Railroad.



Nearly four years later as streetcar service opens to the public on Sept. 9, 2016, Prus has the unique perspective of having seen the project evolve from start to finish. The five-vehicle system will run 18 hours a day, 365 days a year, and anticipates carrying thousands of passengers daily. An economic development accelerator, officials say the streetcar is credited with attracting businesses and new home buyers to Over-The-Rhine and downtown contributing to the first population increase in the urban core since 1950.



Our mission at Prus Construction is to experience the excitement of building and improving our community, Prus explains. The streetcar project is a great representation of that mission. We are proud that we have played such an integral part in a project of this magnitude.






TWIN FALLS  Community leaders came together Thursday to share success stories and to celebrate 15 years of growth through the Southern Idaho Economic Development Organization.

The organization now boasts having brought 58 new or expanded businesses, $1.8 billion in capital investments and 5,000 jobs to the Magic Valley.

That economic growth is expected to continue, but with that growth comes a caveat that employers must address now  a future shortage of workers.

The valley can expect nearly 14,000 more jobs in the next decade, Ethan Mansfield, a regional labor economist with the Idaho Department of Labor, told community members at the summit. But current projections show there may be 5,000 too few workers to fill them.

We have a transient workforce, said Brett Simms of Workforce Training Solutions in Idaho Falls. We have a workforce that knows if they dont like a job they can move on. Its not a my way or the highway world anymore.

Most workers will hold 12 to 18 different jobs in their lifetime, Simms said.

So the big question for employers is how to retain top talent.

We know they are going to leave, eventually, but how can we get even one more year out of them? Simms said.

Keynote speaker Cally Grindstaff, vice president of corporate relations at Clear Springs Foods, said the employee-owned company is on the right track.

In an environment where businesses are competing for workers, the business must create a workplace culture  or way of life  that benefits the employee, Grindstaff said.

For Clear Springs, that meant increasing incentives: a living wage with perks, education and opportunities for advancement.

We have a lot of compassion for employees, she said.

Alan Horner, president of First Federal Bank, continued Grindstaffs theme of building a company culture  as well as a community culture.

We focus on creating an environment that people want to be a part of, Horner said. But we need to be selective (in bringing in new businesses) versus just taking anything that comes along. We need to chose businesses that fits our culture.

Gooding Mayor Walt Nelson agreed.

We are the heart of Gods country and we hope we can keep it that way, Nelson said.

Partnerships make communities, said SIEDO Executive Director Jeff Hough, and that is what has made SIEDO and the Magic Valley successful.

We are not cautiously optimistic about the Magic Valley, Horner agreed. We are enthusiastically optimistic.
TWIN FALLS  A one-block section of North College Road will be closed for construction Friday, mostly affecting those trying to get to and from Xavier Charter School.

Contractors are completing work Friday on North College Road between Grandview Drive and Wendell Street. Traffic will be detoured to Cheney Drive or Falls Avenue.

Work on that section of North College Road is expected to be complete by 5 p.m. Friday.

Meanwhile, Grandview Drive, which was previously closed from Falls Avenue to North College Road, has been reopened, while Wendell Street from Falls Avenue to North College Road will be open to northbound traffic only.
JEROME  A man forced his way inside a Jerome home Thursday afternoon, fired a round inside when he was told to leave, got in a fight at McDonalds and crashed his car with two children inside, police said.

Antonio Bon, 23 of Jerome was arrested on suspicion of unlawful entry, discharge of a firearm in city limits, reckless driving, disorderly conduct, possession of a controlled substance and injury to a child, Jerome Police Chief Dan Hall said.

Injury to a child because he had two children in the car with him when he went on his little rampage, the chief said.

About 2:25 p.m., police were called for shots fired in the 400 block of Avenue E, Hall said.

Bon had forced his way inside a home there saying he wanted to stay, but the residents told him to leave.

He had a gun with him and fired a round off, Hall said.

Police didnt know Thursday whether the shot was intentional or accidental.

Soon after Bon left the house, police got a call about a fight at the Jerome McDonalds. The people involved  one of them Bon  left in their cars, one chasing the other.

The chase ended in a crash at the homes at Shady Acres.

When our folks got there and sorted everything out, they ended up arresting Antonio Bon, Hall said.

Hall said the incident involved family.

Bon is set to be arraigned on the charges Friday in Jerome County Magistrate Court.
KIMBERLY  Kimberly school trustees voted Wednesday night to approve a $79,008 emergency levy to handle an increase in student numbers.

On the third day of school, attendance was up more than 100 students compared with the same day last year.

It means there are extra expenses, such as for supplies and desks.

School boards are allowed to pursue a levy by the second week of September if average daily attendance rates are higher than the previous year. It doesnt have to be approved by voters.

The levy will pay for one full-time middle school paraprofessional and two part-time special education paraprofessionals.

Money will also be used for desks and chairs, lunchroom supplies such as trays, janitorial supplies, technology needs such as more computers, and classroom and school supplies.

The school district was eligible for more emergency levy money, but decided to keep the levy rate similar to last year.

Money wont be used to hire more classroom teachers, which would be difficult this time of year  especially, with a statewide teacher shortage, Superintendent Luke Schroeder said Thursday.

And it would be disruptive for students to get a different teacher a few weeks into the school year, he added.

School districts use average daily attendance numbers to determine if theyre eligible for an emergency levy.

More students were absent at the beginning of last school year because of the Twin Falls County Fair and illnesses, Schroeder said.

With overall student numbers, theres about 80 more children enrolled this year.

Kimberly school trustees are financially prudent and want to make sure every dime of the emergency levy is used for costs that result from growth, Schroeder said.

In 2015, school trustees approved a $75,408 emergency levy  a third of what the district was eligible for.
JEROME  Its still in the preliminary stages, but George Panagiotous hope for Devils Corral is to bring more outdoor tourism to the Magic Valley with low impact on the environment.

Panagiotou and board members of Devils Corral LLC pitched their idea Thursday for an ecotourism destination valued at $10 million or more in a box canyon in Jerome County, just a few miles from the I.B. Perrine Bridge. The invite-only event brought together officials including Idaho Gov. C.L. Butch Otter, local tourism and economic development leaders and employees of Jerome County.

The owner of Devils Corral wants to develop the land for activities such as cliff hiking, a 3,000-foot water slide, BASE jumping, zip lining and rock climbing.

There are still a lot of questions to be answered, as well as zoning and water rights to be obtained, but Panagiotou is moving full-steam ahead to get everything in place  including the support.

This plan is finally graduated from a dream to a goal, he said. This is a multi-million dollar project. It will require many experts and a lot of people.

Panagiotou is a Greek immigrant, entrepreneur and inventor who has waited 16 years to come up with a development strategy on the 200-acre property.

In the past, he has faced opposition because of the historical significance of the area, including its Native American petroglyphs. Protecting these places  while incorporating outdoor recreation, an equestrian center, housing, and a lodge or hotel  will require expert assistance.

Its going to take a lot of effort, said Bill Baker, vice president and director of environmental activities. Its not going to be easy.

There are uses in the area now, such as hiking and horseback riding, that are uncontrolled, he said.

Other proposed amenities included using via ferrata (iron road) cable systems to hike along the sides of cliffs, and a glass platform for BASE jumpers and paragliders.

To be environmentally-friendly, the company will explore how best to provide power and water to a development. One idea is to include hydroelectric power, Baker said. Panagiotou said homes would be small and solar-powered.

The water slides would use a small portion of natural spring water and contour around natural topography, pooling in natural places, Director of Outdoor Activities Don Campbell said.

The company also highlighted Devils Corrals potential to boost the economy with jobs and tourist dollars.

We want to make history and experience the tremendous growth of the Magic Valley now, in our lifetime, Panagiotou said.

Nonprofit organizations could also use the amenities. The Boy Scouts of America has hosted events at Devils Corral for a number of years.

The only issue we have experienced so far is poor access, local unit executive leader Chris Reid said.

Panagiotou acquired a right-of-way from the Bureau of Land Management to cross federal land leased to Jerome County for a park, which surrounds Devils Corral. He plans to improve and extend existing county roads.

Southern Idaho Economic Development Director Jeff Hough said the project could help develop the quality of life in the Magic Valley.

I would welcome the opportunity to promote Devils Corral and southern Idaho, and recruit the talent we need here, Hough said.

Panagiotou invited attendees to fill out comment cards and come to an investor meeting in February.

Devils Corral is zoned agricultural, and would need rezoning and special permits from Jerome County before the owner could proceed with any plans for development.
TWIN FALLS  Gloria Kajo Mensah walked in high heels to the center of the room and struck a pose.

Mensah walked to the next mark and posed again. On the way back to the first mark, the executive director of the Miss Africa Idaho pageant gave some pointers to the group of women watching her.

When you go back, she told them. Make sure you look at the audience.

Dont look at the floor.

And most important, dont forget to smile.

On Thursday morning, seven of the eight Miss Africa Idaho contestants rehearsed at the College of Southern Idaho. They were preparing for the third annual Miss Africa Idaho pageant that will be held at 7 p.m. Saturday at the CSI Fine Arts Center.

This years pageant will feature three women from Twin Falls, the most to ever participate. The contestants are Neema Niyu, Miss Burundi Idaho 2016; Ushindi Butinda, Miss Congo Idaho 2016 and Jolie Lupumba, Miss Zambia Idaho 2016. They will join other contestants from Boise, Pocatello and Moscow.

The Miss Africa Idaho Pageant is a cultural event that promotes and educates the public about Africas diverse cultures. It provides scholarship opportunities for young African women and empowers women of first- to third-generation African descent to share their culture and make a difference in the local and international community.

Nearly 300 people attended the pageant last year. It features a night of African culture, fashion, dance and talent. Liyah Babayan, owner of Ooh La La Boutique, will host and emcee the event.

Contestants arrived Wednesday and spent all of Thursday rehearsing and attending workshops on financial investment and pageant etiquette. These workshops are new to this years pageant and, Christensen said, they are another tool to further educate the young women.

On Friday, the women will volunteer at the Salvation Army serving lunch and preparing food boxes.

Its time to give back to this community that has been good to us, Christensen said. These ladies have to show they will make changes in their adopted host home before helping their other home.

Jolie Lupumba, 25, a refugee from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, moved to Twin Falls from Zambia, Africa in October. Lupumba said she first learned about the pageant when it was advertised on television.

Lupumba didnt know what a pageant was before Miss Africa Idaho. A friend encouraged her to sign up.

Its about culture and a way of expressing yourself, Lupumba said.

Lupumba plans to sing either a traditional song in Swahili or the song You Raise Me Up in English. Her platform is homelessness and poverty, with an emphasis on women and children.

In Zambia, there are a lot of people who are homeless, she said. A lot of kids.

Though Lupumba was feeling nervous Thursday, she hopes she will inspire others.

Its worth it if I could be an inspiration to someone who is feeling shy, she said.

Another new aspect to this years pageant is a Community Advocate Award.

The Community Advocate Award will be determined by several components including one-on-one interviews and the contestants platform. The winner of the Miss Africa Idaho title will also be required to make 15 appearances at community events instead of 10. This years winner will receive up to $3,000 in scholarships, a huge increase from last years scholarship of $800.

Ushindi Butinda, 27, a student at the College of Southern Idaho, is representing her home country she left in 2005.

Butinda took a break Wednesday inside the CSI Fine Arts Center before going to her afternoon English classes.

Originally from the DR Congo, she lived in Uganda from 2005 to 2015. She came to Twin Falls with her parents, two siblings, one nephew and two nieces last year.

This fall she signed up for college classes at CSI and is studying to become a certified nursing assistant. She will compete as Miss Congo Idaho 2016 in Saturdays pageant.

When a friend first told her about the pageant, Butinda said, she immediately thought she wasnt right for it.

Im fat, Im lazy, Im not cute, she said. Im not those tiny, tall, cute girls.

But she changed her mind after realizing it could help her reach her goal of becoming a psychologist.

Her platform is stability and peace, with an emphasis on helping women and children.

The most important thing, first of all, I need confidence in me, Butinda said. And that confidence will, of course, contribute to fulfill what I want. In order to be in someones life, you have to be confident in yourself.

For her talent, she will sing a song in Swahili called Calling for Peace in Africa.

Im freaking out a little, Butinda said. Im not good at speaking in front of a lot of people. ...My dream is to bring a change in someones life. Very many people affected by the war are women and children. My desire is to be a psychologist to talk to these people. Let them see light in their lives again, how life can get to normal again.

The inaugural Miss Africa Idaho drew four participants three years ago. This years pageant had 15 women apply.

Christensen said the increase in applicants and scholarship money bodes well for the future.

Out of the 15, we picked the best of the best, Christensen said.

The pageant has been held in Twin Falls for the past three years. The first year, Christensen said she had doubts whether it was the right time to bring a pageant like this to Twin Falls.

She doesnt feel that way anymore. Positive feedback from attendees have helped her realize that Twin Falls, and not a city like Boise, is the best place for the pageant.

Why not? Personally, and according to the community of Twin Falls reviews, they love it here, Christensen said. Ive always gotten support from the community. For Idaho to be positively impacted, we have to spread the love.
We made some progress in the last legislative session on important issues facing our district, including public education, the economy, and water resources. As the Senate minority leader, I played a strong role in making this progress happen and will continue to work hard to improve the economy of our communities.

While more investment in education is required, we increased funding to STEM (science, technology, engineering, math), and created a professional/technical and industry partnership fund. We created career technical advisors in middle schools. And we funded a reading initiative.

The Legislature added operational money to all schools across the state. As state revenue increases, the Legislature has been putting half into education, but there is much more to do for our students and teachers. Idahos funding for education is only at the 2009 level and is 49th in the nation. Plus, 95 out of 115 school districts passed supplemental levies. This is 2016, we have 18,000 more students in the system, and we need a skilled workforce that provides good wages and attracts businesses.

Around 78,000 Idahoans lack health care because the Idaho legislature has not adopted Medicaid expansion. Nearly 10,000 of those people who fall into this gap are our veterans.

Idahoans are taxed twice for services we dont receive. We pay taxes to the federal government for Medicaid expansion. Plus, our taxpayers and counties pay for indigent care. We are losing millions of dollars of services and are not providing adequate care for our people. This is not fiscally responsible.

I am the legislative liaison to a water collaborative in District 26 to mitigate water management. The Legislature has committed funding to water adjudications and aquifer recharge. Our economic future rests on this precious resource.

I am honored to serve the people of this district. Many thanks.
HONG KONG - The Belt and Road Initiative is a "game changer" for Pakistan, a former Pakistani prime minister told Xinhua during an exclusive interview on Thursday.

Shaukat Aziz, an economist who served as prime minister of Pakistan from 2004 to 2007, made the comments on the sidelines of the "Belt and Road Summit -- Financing Through Silk Road Bond" held in Hong Kong.

Proposed by China in 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative refers to building a Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road. It is aimed at building a trade and infrastructure network connecting Asia with Europe and Africa along ancient trade routes.

Infrastructure construction along the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a major and pilot project between the two countries under the Belt and Road Initiative, enables economic growth for Pakistan, he said.

"The main areas of finance are drivers of economic growth -- roads, electricity generation, ports, railways etc."

A host of projects focusing on energy and transport infrastructure have been launched in Pakistan under CPEC, which Aziz said lead to job creation in both Pakistan and China.

Incomplete statistics show that CPEC projects under construction have employed more than 6,000 Pakistani workers by the end of March, not to mention the employment indirectly created and driven by the projects.

"People having jobs and getting income from economic activities is where prosperity and development lies," he said.

Aziz said projects under CPEC also means more employment and growth opportunities for China, as it gives Chinese enterprises a market of some 200 million people. "That's why we call it a win-win for both."

The excitement over CPEC in Pakistan is also because China is putting up power plants, which Aziz said will significantly ease the power shortage in Pakistan.

Sixteen projects have been sorted out in the energy sector to be implemented first, which can generate 10.4 million kilowatts of electricity in total, said Chinese Ambassador to Pakistan Sun Weidong during an interview with Xinhua in June.

A solar power plant in the city of Bahawalpur, built by Chinese company ZTE Energy, has recently installed a 300-megawatt generator unit, which can produce electricity enough for the daily power consumption of at least 200,000 Pakistani families, according to the ambassador.

Aziz said the Belt and Road Initiative will take China-Pakistan relationship to the next level.

"Our relationship with China is deep, historic and multi-faceted, and increasing physical linkages will further enrich the relationship," he said.

In a broader sense, the former Pakistani prime minister said the Belt and Road Initiative is a driver for growth, prosperity, peace and better understanding between nations in the entire world.

The connectivity brought by the initiative would create linkages and interdependency between regions and countries, which is a great driver of peace, he said.

"If economies get a little more linked, I believe you will see improvement of the peace paradigm and people will find more positive approaches from countries in the region."

Connectivity is also a driver of economic growth, as it leads to more trade and travel that creates economic activities, according to Aziz.

"Once you do that, there is a common interest for both sides to do well, as you depend on your neighbor and your neighbor depends on you. That also leads to better understanding, and it leads to peace."

Referring to the role of China's Hong Kong in the initiative, Aziz said Hong Kong has a clear advantage to contribute as an international financial center and a "super connector" between the Chinese mainland and the rest of the world.

"Hong Kong, with its special expertise in the service sector and being a part of China, has an edge over any other place."

Hong Kong's financial sector should look at Belt and Road Initiative and other similar initiatives and be the conduit of funds and linkages between countries along the Belt and Road and China, he added.
'Yan na ngani ang inasabi ko ay









BUD DAJO MASSACRE. A photo from http://rarehistoricalphotos.com/ with the title US soldiers pose with the bodies of Moro insurgents, Philippines, 1906 is captioned: The bodies of Moro insurgents and civilians killed by US troops during the Battle of Bud Dajo in the Philippines, March 7, 1906. (Above is same photo from MNLF website)

PRESIDENT Rodrigo Duterte was referring to the killing of 600 Moro people by American soldiers in 1906 when he said Monday, September 5, that the United States has not even apologized to the Philippines for its atrocities during the turn of the century.





Duterte spewed out a tirade of historical extra-judicial killings when asked by a Reuters reporter Monday about discussing extra-judicial killings (EJKs) with US President Barack Obama.





Who is he? When as a matter of fact at the turn of the century, before the Americans left, the Philippines, in the pacification campaign of the Moro in this island, there were around 6 million ang population ng Moro, how many died? Six hundred. If you can answer this question and give an apology, I will answer him, Duterte said.





The incident he was referring to happened in 1906 in the island of Jolo, Sulu. It was named the Battle of Bud Dajo.





It was in December 1898 when the US signed a treaty with Spain, acquiring the Philippines for $20 million. The Filipinos, however, refused the takeout and they waged a war.





On July 4, 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt declared the war over after successfully subjugating the insurrectionist Filipino forces, and in his own proclamation said, except in the country inhabited by the Moro tribes, to which this proclamation does not apply.





The Moro Province was created in 1903, comprising the southern Mindanao and the Sulu islands. Unlike the other provinces, the Moro Province was to be staffed by US Army officers, simply because US believed the Moro Province was backward and need to be civilized and educated on democracy.





The Americans capitalized on the tribal divisions of the Moro Province and subdued them that way. Except those in Jolo. Despite three years of persuasion by Woods, the leader of the Jolo tribes refused to recognize the US as the ruler of the country.





In 1906, hearing words that the Americans were going to invade, the Jolo people fled to the 15-acre wooded crater of Bud Dajo, an extinct volcano, believing that the spirits of the volcano will protect them.





On March 5, 1906, Woods ordered his officers to gather 800 of his men from the 6th and 19th Infantry, the 4th Cavalry, the 28th Artillery Battery, the Sulu Constabulary, and sailors from the gunboat Pampanga, led by Colobnel Duncan, to Jolo.





They were armed with mountain guns, rifles, bayonets, fast-firing pistols and grenades.

When negotiations for the Moro people who sought refuge in Bud Dajo failed, they attacked.





The Moro warriors were armed with kris, barongs, and spears. The attack ended on March 7, 1906, with not one Moro standing; women and children among them.





The Americans lost two dozen men and some 70 wounded. It was a complete massacre.





The victory that was earlier celebrated in the US was immediately tainted with shame after the US Congress realized there were women and children among the dead.





"The PH is not a vassal state, we have long ceased to be a colony of the US. Alam mo, marami diyang mga columnista they look upon Obama and the US as we are the lapdogs of this country. I do not respond to anybody but to the people of the Republic of the Philippines. Wala akong pakialam sa kanya. Who is he to confront me, as a matter of fact, America has one too many to answer for the misdeeds in this country," Duterte said.





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The kingdom of Morocco is to expand its partners in the fight against terrorism as an agreement with Europol (European Police Office) is in the pipeline, reports say.

The announcement was made by the North African countrys Interior Minister Mohamed Hassad during his official visit this week in Brussels, but without giving further details, huffpostmaghreb.com reports.

The Moroccan official on September 7 met with Dimitris Avramopoulos, EU Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship who hailed Moroccos rich experience in counter-terrorism and security. For Avramopoulos Morocco is key partner in securing Europes borders.

The future comprehensive agreement on security will further cement Moroccos cooperation with the EU. Rabat has already sealed security and counter-terrorism agreements with several EU countries among which France, Spain and Belgium.

The future agreement with Europol will concern a number of elements including intelligence exchange among national police establishments, huffpostmaghreb.com reports.

Both Morocco and the EU have already set the tone of the future agreement after an EU delegation and some Europol representatives visited Morocco back in January this year.

Morocco already enjoys an advanced status allowing it to be member of several EU agencies including the Europol.

The Hague-based EU agency expects to bank on Moroccos knowhow to protect its borders and dissipate the fear that terror threats have been causing in the European continent.

Morocco will thus join the United States, Russia, Australia, Canada, Turkey, Colombia and a number of other countries, which have also signed strategic agreements with Europol.
The UN Security Council urged warring parties in Yemen to work with Special Envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed and resume consultations immediately without preconditions and in good faith on the basis of his proposal for a comprehensive agreement covering both security and political issues.

The Security Council reiterated in a statement its support for the unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Yemen and stressed to all parties that any new political arrangement should be the result of an agreement following negotiations under UN auspices, and not the result of unilateral actions by any side.

The talks between the Houthi Movement and the Hadi-led government were suspended after the rebel group refused to adhere to the proposal made by Special Envoy Ismail claiming that it was not comprehensive enough since it did not include the formation of a joint transitional government but only exchange of prisoners, withdrawal from occupied territories and disarmament of armed rebel groups.

The Security Council statement expressed the continued support for and commitment of Ismails effort in bringing the parties to negotiations with a view to reach swiftly a final and comprehensive agreement to end the conflict. It called on the parties concerned to compliment the Special Envoys work by recommitting to and fully respecting the terms and conditions of the cessation of hostilities under the April 10 agreement, which entails a complete halt to ground and air military activities.

The more than two-year conflict has further deteriorated the living conditions of the population of one of the poorest countries in the sub-region and has left thousands of people dead. At the end of last month, an attack claimed by the Islamic State killed at least 65 people in the southern port city of Aden where the government is based after declaring it liberated.

To avoid similar attacks, the members of the Security Council are hoping that a political solution to the crisis is essential to address, in a durable and comprehensive manner, the threat of terrorism in Yemen.
Colonel John Dorrian, a spokesman for the US-led coalition, revealed that US troops have increased from around 4,000 to 4,460 within a week as Iraqi forces continue shaping operations for the assault on Mosul, the capital of the self-declared Islamic State (IS) in 2014. He didnt clearly state if their arrival is linked with the preparations but explained that the deployments had been authorized earlier in the year. There are an estimated 3,000 to 4,500 IS fighters and the US official thinks that they are not all hardcore fighters committed to die in battle.

The battle for Mosul is considered as the one of the most important battles in defeating IS in Iraq and Lieutenant General Stephen Townsend, the new commander of the US-led coalition, seems prepared for it. Were preparing for a hard fight, a long, difficult fight he told the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday but expects the hardest-core fighters who will essentially die in place to be around one-third of the extremist groups fighters. Although he said the assault could be launched next month, Spokesman Dorrian on Thursday said the Iraqi authorities will determine when it will begin.

Iraqi Major General Najm Al Jabouri, the Mosul operations commander, is in high spirits ahead of the assault. We will go to Mosul, they will go to Tel Afar. We will go to Tel Afar, they will go to Baaj, he said, referring to Daesh-controlled districts 70 km and 140 km west of Mosul, respectively, which can be used to reach Syria. We will go to Baaj, maybe. It depends on the situation in Syria. They can get to Syria but the situation there is not like before. It is not a safe haven for them now.

The Iraqi army is stationed 60 kilometers south of Mosul while Kurdish forces have surrounded the northern, eastern and northwestern part of the city. The Qarrayah airbase that was retaken several months ago is expected to serve as the base for the assault.
Washington is supporting the African Unions mediation efforts in the political crisis that has hit Gabon following the August 27 presidential elections, the Department of State said in a statement on Wednesday.

The African Union (AU) said on Monday it was ready to send a delegation to Gabon, where days of post-election violence led to unrest.

A high-level delegation composed of African Heads of State, accompanied by senior officials of the AU Commission and the United Nations, is ready to be dispatched to Libreville, as soon as the conditions for such a visit are met, said the president of the AU, Chadian President Idriss Deby, in a statement.

According to the US Department of State, Washington is keenly following developments in Gabon and fully supports the AUs move. The USA called on the Gabonese government to arrange a visit for the continental bloc as soon as possible.

We strongly support this initiative and call on the Government of Gabon to work with the AU to arrange the visit of such a delegation as soon as possible, the statement read.

Violence broke out in Gabons capital shortly after incumbent president Ali Bongo was announced winner of the August 27 poll, beating his main challenger Jean Ping by some 5,000 votes.

The countrys parliament was torched last Wednesday by protesters opposing the results.

French Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, has said some 15 Franco-Gabonese are among the scores of people arrested by security forces during the crackdown.

Gabons opposition has until this Thursday (Sept.8) at 3 PM GMT to contest the disputed presidential results.

It is not yet clear whether Ali Bongos opponent Jean Ping will petition the court following his criticisms that the countrys constitutional court serves the interests of the presidency.
Hundreds of journalists in Kenya have staged a demonstration on Thursday calling for protection against attacks after recent assaults on reporters.

In a span of one year, five journalists have died mysteriously.

About half a dozen other journalists were beaten by the security of politicians for taking pictures while others were stopped from performing their duties.

The protests come barely a week after a journalist died in Mombasa under mysterious circumstances.

Joseph Masha, a journalist working for the Standard Media Group, died hours after meeting and dining with a local politician.

The demonstration took place concurrently in counties nationwide and journalists in the capital Nairobi presented petitions to parliament, the police chief and director of public prosecutions.

According to CameraAfrica Consultants, who are the protests organizers, the aim of the demonstration is to protest against the increased polarized working conditions that most journalists face. Threats, intimidation, physical assaults, stalking, unwarranted bashing is the lot of journalists when their reporting is considered unfavourable by some persons especially duty bearers.

The journalists said these do not just represent an attack on one of their profession, but on the freedoms guaranteed by the constitution.

Despite the threats, Kenyan media are apparently much less restricted than news organizations in some other East African countries.

Eritrea tops the list of the worlds 10 most censored countries, and Ethiopia is ranked as the fourth most repressive state for journalists.
Penn State researcher Erica Smithwick is investigating ties between land use and disease transmission in southern Africa. Credit: Erica Smithwick / Penn State

Protecting the landscape may also help protect people from some infectious diseases, according to Erica Smithwick, associate professor of geography. Smithwick and her colleagues have been investigating how land use has affected the spread of two diseases in sub-Saharan Africa.

They have found that areas with more landscape edgeswhere different ecosystems meetcorrelate with increased spread of disease. Researchers have observed a similar phenomenon in the U.S., where ticks carrying the Lyme disease parasite attach themselves to deer and mice that feed at the edges of forests, and are then carried by their hosts to new areas they could not have reached on their own. More edges means more hosts, and researchers have shown that this leads to increased incidence of Lyme disease.

Smithwick says the same may be true for two diseases that are common in Africa, malaria and Buruli ulcer.

In terms of infections, Buruli ulcer is fairly new. Reports of skin ulcers in sub-Saharan Africa date back to the early 1900s, but it wasn't until the 1990s that the disease became more prevalent. In 1998, the World Health Organization (WHO) launched a Global Buruli Ulcer Initiative to focus more resources on treating the debilitating disease.

It is caused by a water-borne bacterium, but the exact means of transmission is not yet known; it may be carried by an aquatic insect or may enter breaks in the skin directly from contaminated water. The disease leaves skin lesions and scars on affected individuals, typically on arms, legs and hands. It's treatable with antibiotics, but if it's not addressed early it can cause long-term disabilities.

Erica Smithwick leveraged cartography, geographic information systems (GIS) and reports of disease incidence to research links between land use and the transmission of two diseases in Africa, Buruli ulcer and malaria. Credit: Erica Smithwick / Penn State

"Buruli ulcer is a disease of low-income populations, and it has affected rural parts of Ghana the most," says Smithwick. "It causes physical scarring and deformities on the skin, so there are stigmas associated with it. Sometimes people with the ulcer are ostracized. Without knowing the cause of the disease, it's unlikely that someone would seek treatment for it."

As of 2016, there are no reliable preventive measures for Buruli ulcer, according to WHO. Knowing this, Smithwick and her team sought to understand the social and environmental factors that influence how the disease spreads.

"Our whole project came out of a conversation with community members in Ghana," says Smithwick. "Petra Tschakert, a former Penn State faculty member who is now at the University of Western Australia, had made connections with some local community groups there. They mentioned there was a disease that they didn't understand. We eventually got connected with a doctor in the area, Erasmus Klutse, who had been setting up health clinics in the area, and he became a collaborator on our research."

In his work throughout rural parts of Ghana, Klutse, a co-author on several papers with Smithwick, had obtained data on where the disease had spread. Smithwick and her colleagues compared this to high-resolution satellite images from 20 villages, taking into account different types of land usage.

An alluvial gold mining site in Ghana. Credit: Erica Smithwick / Penn State

"We saw very clear correlations between how land was used, for agriculture or mining, and incidence of disease," she says.

Specifically, edge density, or the number of land edges in a given space, was directly correlated to reports of the disease: In high-edge-density spaces, reports of Buruli ulcer increased by between 2 and 10 times.

The main way edge density increases is through land fragmentation, a process of breaking a piece of land into smaller, unconnected parcels of land. Natural disasters like wildfires can fragment land, but human activities like agriculture and mining create edges at a much higher rate.

"With mining and agriculture, people disturb the land to harvest resources, and in the case of Buruli ulcer, this fits with theories of how the disease is transmitted," Smithwick says. "It travels through water bodies, and you find these in abundance in gold mines and farms in Ghana. In those locations, we saw the highest edge density in the land and the highest reports of Buruli ulcer."

Smithwick's research team and collaborators comprise postdoctoral scholars, graduate students and researchers from multiple universities. Credit: Erica Smithwick

Smithwick also studied the inverse relationship between humans and landhow disease transmission is affected when communities intentionally preserve land. She and a former graduate student, Eric Taber, who now works for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, studied how reports of malaria correlated with areas of protected and unprotected land in more than 20 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. There are seven categories of protected land, which range from national parks to nature reserves to national monument areas, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Borne by mosquitos, malaria has been responsible for millions of deaths over the years, primarily among children in Africa. In 2013 alone, WHO estimates that malaria was responsible for 198 million clinical episodes, and the death of more than 500,000 people.

The researchers looked at the geographic distribution of malaria cases between 2008 and 2012 and overlaid this data on the locations of protected areas.

"What we were seeing is that people living in or near protected areas had a lower malaria incidence than people living far from protected areas," she says.

For her research, Smithwick traveled to several countries in Africa to collect water samples, as well as talk with community members and professionals about how widely two diseases had spread. Credit: Erica Smithwick / Penn State

Better understanding the ties between land conservation and human well-being is driving Smithwick to continue collaborating with researchers and agencies in Africa, like the Donald Woods Foundation, which works to improve health in low-income areas of South Africa.

"To show that landscape pattern matters for health is important because it's connecting ecosystems with well-being," she says. "The broader story is that we are fundamentally changing land use with potentially bad consequences for human well-being."

A key takeaway from her research, Smithwick says, is that these diseases aren't just a medical problem.

"We need the medical community to continue to help us with cures and treatments and unraveling the modes of transmission, but we're also realizing that diseases spread as a product of how we are using and manipulating the landscape," she says. "By using a multifaceted approach to address these problems, we could minimize the influence of the diseases and also help enhance landscapes that promote human well-being."

Explore further Reservoir of deforming tropical disease sought
Children in rural Peru who are stimulated with age-adjusted toys at an early age perform better in categories such as fine motor skills, understanding time and space, or cognitive abilities. The results are published today in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. The community-randomized trial is the first study to assess the impact of an early child development intervention on household level in rural Peru.

Scientists from the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH) and the Peruvian Instituto de Investigacion Nutricional (IIN) adapted the urban-based Peruvian National Early Child Development Programme (Wawa Wasi) and brought it to the doorstep of people living in the rural Cajamarca region. In a community-randomised trial they showed that children aged 6 to 35 months whose mothers playfully interacted with them for half an hour daily performed up to 23% better in categories such as expression of feeling and emotions, fine motor skills or verbal and non-verbal communication than the control group. "Our findings are important because we showed that the national Peruvian programme also succeeds in the rural and impoverished areas," says Claudio Lanata from IIN and co-author of the study.

Possible Impact on Poverty Reduction

The findings contribute to the new Early Child Development Programme (Cuna Mas), which is especially tailored to the rural and impoverished regions. Stimulating the human brain at a very early stage in life might positively affect child development and might be an effective corrective in early child development between rich and poor families.

"We hope that these simple and home-based interventions might reduce inequalities between poor and better-off families and give the disadvantaged children a better start in life," comments Stella Hartinger-Pena, co-director of the Swiss TPH - Cayetano Health Research Platform.

Early Child Development as a Prerequisite for Future Health Development

The 509 children in the study were assigned either to the child development programme (258) or received an intervention to improve kitchen- and household hygiene at their homes (251). The children were evaluated at the beginning and at the end of the study for overall performance in seven psycho-motor developmental domains.

"The results have major implications also for future health research," emphasises Daniel Mausezahl from Swiss TPH. "Hygiene education and preventive measures against infectious diseases are much more successful if physical, emotional and cognitive development are well taken care of in young children."

More information: Stella M. Hartinger, Claudio F. Lanata, Jan Hattendorf, Jennyfer Wolf, Ana Gil, Mariela Obando, Magaly Noblega, Hector Verastegui, Daniel Mausezahl. - Impact of a child stimulation intervention on early child development in rural Peru: A cluster randomised trial using a reciprocal control design, Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health (2016), Journal information: Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health Stella M. Hartinger, Claudio F. Lanata, Jan Hattendorf, Jennyfer Wolf, Ana Gil, Mariela Obando, Magaly Noblega, Hector Verastegui, Daniel Mausezahl. - Impact of a child stimulation intervention on early child development in rural Peru: A cluster randomised trial using a reciprocal control design,(2016), DOI: 10.1136/jech-2015-206536

Provided by Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute
A University of Melbourne ethicist is encouraging doctors to recognise the autonomy of parents, even if this could mean "less than optimal" treatment decisions for their children.

In a new book, When doctors and parents disagree, co-editor Rosalind McDougall said more than ever, doctors' authority is being challenged by parents' access to online sources of information.

"Doctors should respect parents' opinions, even if they are sometimes unorthodox, but they do need to draw the line if parents advocate anything likely to harm their child, now or in the future," she said.

The book, which is aimed at clinicians, contains 26 case studies, including:

parents refusing rehabilitation physiotherapy that is distressing for their child

parents who disagree with each other on whether their seven-year-old, who has ADHD, should be given stimulant medication

parents of a six-week-old child with cystic fibrosis who request genetic testing for their other children to determine if they are carriers

a parent keen for his young child to have surgery to pin back her ears to prevent her being teased at school

Dr McDougall said doctors had traditionally been guided by what was in the child's best interests, but on its own, this principle was often not enough.

"In situations where doctors and parents disagree, often it's just not possible to identify a single course of action that's best for the child," she said.

"There is often a grey zone, and this is where we encourage doctors to strive to balance both the child's wellbeing and the parents' autonomy."

"By invoking what we call the Zone of Parental Discretion, doctors should aim to weigh up the potential harm of each treatment option," she said. "It might result in a decision that is not the doctor's first choice for the child's wellbeing".

Dr McDougall said cases such as that of Oshin Kiszko, a Perth boy with brain cancer, highlighted the ethical complexity of these situations. "In these types of cases, doctors need to consider the harm to the child from the parents' choice, but also the harm to the child if they try to override the parents' choice."

Dr McDougall and her co-editors work in ethics support to clinicians at the Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne, through the Children's Bioethics Centre, a joint RCH-University of Melbourne centre.

She said it was important for doctors to be able to seek advice on treatment dilemmas.

"These decisions are often not straightforward, and it's critical for doctors to have access to a formal way to seek input from their peers, facilitated by ethicists," she said.

"This happens in a few Australian hospitals, but is missing in many other settings. Australia is lagging a long way behind the UK and US in providing ethics support to doctors."

When Doctors and Parents Disagree: Ethics, Paediatrics and the Zone of Parental Discretion, edited by Rosalind McDougall, Clare Delany and Lynn Gillam is published by The Federation Press.
Credit: University of Notre Dame

No competent food critic reviews a restaurant without taking into consideration the ambience of the place, because whether or not a meal is enjoyable greatly depends upon the environment in which it is served.

According to Kim Rollings, assistant professor in the University of Notre Dame's School of Architecture, dining environments can have even more serious consequences for eating behaviors, and in an article published recently in the journal Environment and Behavior she and Nancy Wells, an environmental psychologist from Cornell University, describe some of them.

The article, "Effects of Floor Plan Openness on Eating Behaviors," concerns a study Rollings and Wells conducted with 57 college students in the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell.

The study made use of folding screens to manipulate the arrangement of kitchen and dining areas during the service of buffet-style meals, and two-way mirrors for the unobtrusive observation of variously sized groups of student diners.

"Although more research is needed," Rollings said, "the results of our study suggest that the openness of a floor plan, among many other factors, can affect how much we eat. Eating in an 'open concept kitchen,' with greater visibility and convenience of food access, can set off a chain reaction. We're more likely to get up and head toward the food more often, serve more food and eat more food."

Rollings noticed that each time college students in the study got up to get more food, they ended up eating an average of 170 more calories in the "open" than in the "closed" floor plan kitchen. "Considering that decreasing calorie consumption by 50 to 100 calories per day can reduce or avoid the average annual weight gain of one to two pounds among U.S. adults," she said, "these results have important implications for designers of and consumers in residential kitchens; college, workplace and school cafeterias and dining areas; and buffet-style restaurants."

Not so long ago, most American kitchens were separate, enclosed spaces, purely functional and not intended for entertaining. "Now," Rollings said, "open-concept plans put kitchens on display, which is great for entertaining, but not necessarily for our waistlines. Serving food out of sight from diners in an open kitchen, serving food from a counter in a closed kitchen rather than from a dining table, and creating open kitchens that have the ability to be enclosed may help U.S. adults maintain their weight."

Rollings said that the study findings have important implications not only for college and university students, but also for people who need to eat in health care, group home and military settings.

Explore further Bright lighting encourages healthy food choices
A human embryo that was spontaneously aborted 44 days after fertilization, next to a penny. Credit: PLOS Blogs

Years ago, when I was teaching at a state university, I had the privilege to show real human embryos and fetuses to my genetics classes. An obstetrician back in the 1950s had saved them after patients had miscarried, with permission I was told, and donated the collection to the biology department.

My students were astonished at the forms that floated in size order in their test tubes and flasks, culminating in an 8-month fetus in a giant mayonnaise jar. I handled them with great care and respect.

Once when I was wheeling the collection across campus in a shopping cart to get to class, students accosted me, assuming I was a right-to-lifer en route to an event. No, I explained, they were for a biology class. And one day I brought my 4-year-old to campus and she saw the 8-month fetus and burst into tears  it looked too much like her baby sister.

Years later, I found one of the precious test tubes wrapped in paper towels in a box of exam papers. I didn't take it intentionally. I put it in a special place and unwrapped it for this post. The embryo had been collected on day 44, and it appears to the right next to a penny for perspective.

Viewing organogenesis

Human embryos and fetuses present powerful images. For my students, seeing the real thing was unforgettable in a way that illustrations, photos, and films can't possibly be. Today, billboards near my home depict happy babies with tag lines announcing at which week a heartbeat, fingerprints, and smiles emerged, presumably to lay a guilt trip on women who must choose to end pregnancies. The messages make me yearn for a can of spray paint.

A model of an 8-week human embryo.

Embryologists (aka developmental biologists) have traditionally used a classifying system of 23 prenatal "Carnegie stages" based on physical characteristics visible by certain dates. A day 32 human embryo, for example, is 4 to 6 millimeters long and has buds for legs, pits for ears, thickenings in the outer layer that will become lenses, and 30 body segments (somites) that will develop into specialized body parts. By day 56, the embryo is 27 to 32 mm long, and the head now comprises half of the body. It has a chin, extended limbs fringed with fingers and toes, and the inklings of genitalia.

The period of the embryo lasts from fertilization until day 58, the end of week 8. The two-week mark is when the three primordial tissue layers (ectoderm, endoderm, and mesoderm) emerge and then bend to form the classic gastrula, from which organs unfurl and elaborate according to a precise genetic program.

Starting around week 3, the rudiments of organs begin to form, and a week later this period of organogenesis accelerates. The embryo/fetus transition by the end of the eighth week (counting from conception, not the confusing "last menstrual period" shortcut of obstetricians) is when all the precursor structures are present. Beware posters at Planned Parenthood protests and in the media that conflate embryo and fetus  they are biologically quite distinct stages of prenatal development. I've even seen printed materials at obstetrician offices referring to an embryo or fetus as a baby.

Carnegie staging is based on what's visible. But the genome controls the launching of the observable anatomical changes that drive the journey from embryo to fetus. A stunning recent paper in the journal eLife, from Dave T. Gerrard and Neil Hanley and colleagues from the University of Manchester and Central Manchester University Hospitals, National Health Service Foundation Trust in the UK, offers an entirely new view of the human embryo based on gene expression in and across specific organs.

The investigation differs from past research directions to probing prenatal development, such as analyzing RNA from whole embryos, observing stem cells as their daughter cells differentiate, animal models of human diseases, creating lab-nurtured human organoids, and inferring the developmental detours behind certain birth defects.

Lineage guided PCA enabled the researchers to track gene expression in parts made of multiple tissue types, such as the palate.

Tracking gene expression as embryos develop

The report, "An integrative transcriptomic atlas of organogenesis in human embryos," weds the statistical tool of principal component analysis (PCA) to cell lineage pathways that extend as the initial cleavage cell divisions and tissue layering become organogenesis. PCA reduces huge data sets to a manageable number that represent trends or substructures within the many variables. The approach, which the researchers call LgPCA for "lineage guided PCA," identifies "metagenes," which are groups of genes that partake in the formation of specific body parts in the embryo, some of them multi-tissue.

The new work catalogs RNAs that are transcribed from the genes that are accessed as development proceeds from the end of the third week until the end of the eighth. The research was possible because of the decades-long legacy of ethically obtaining embryo tissue from women undergoing voluntary pregnancy termination in the UK. The Human Tissue Authority website describes every nuance of working with human cells, tissues, and organs. It includes bioethical concerns such as consent and dignity, displays in museums, religious and cultural ideas about donating organs, use of stem cell and other cell lines, and use of embryonic and fetal tissue from pregnancy terminations.

The researchers collected material and then dissected out 15 specific parts for analysis. The specimens included whole organs such as adrenal glands as well as distinct segments, such as the retinal pigment epithelium in the eye, the stomach unhinged from its sphincters, parts of the ureters and trachea, and limb buds. The investigators pooled parts to isolate enough RNA to analyze and identified the genome regions from which they were transcribed.

6,000+ "transcriptional codes"

By isolating RNAs from distinct body parts, the researchers could identify the DNA sequences behind complex congenital anomalies that involve more than one tissue type, such as cleft palate and some forms of congenital heart disease.

A DNA sequence isnt junk just because we dont know its function.

The most unexpected finding was that about 90 percent of 6,251 novel RNA transcripts identified are not the usual protein-encoding variety at all, but are "long intergenic non-coding RNAs," aka "LINC RNAs." They are highly specific to body parts, where they apparently control the deployment of transcription factor proteins, which in turn steer the program of gene activation and suppression that directly oversees the changes of development.

The huge dataset yielded 11 metagenes. An example is "metagene 2," which represents 39 genes that sculpt the embryonic liver. Because the LgPCA approach is based on cell lineages, it can reveal the genetic programs behind developmental syndromes, such as Holt-Oram syndrome that affects the limbs and heart.

Knowing these genetic controls behind organogenesis can perhaps lead to development of diagnostic tests or even identify drug targets. On the research front, knowing the gene expression patterns and signals that herald an event  a spleen forming, for example  might establish benchmarks that can be used in the creation of induced pluripotent stem cells and coaxing them towards specialization.

The bigger picture

I am utterly fascinated with this new lens into organogenesis. The researchers describe the impact of their work best: "the discovery of a major new programme of non-coding transcription adds a fresh layer of detail on the spatiotemporal regulation of the human genome."

I think the identification of a role for non-protein-encoding RNAs in sculpting the organs of the embryo is on a par with that of the finding that genes are in pieces  the introns snipped out, leaving only the exons to encode protein  articulated so beautifully by Walter Gilbert back in 1978. The discovery of introns instantly dispelled the long-held view of the gene as a single, sleek, DNA code for an RNA molecule.

Like introns, LINC RNAs were also once considered part of the garbage heap of the genome termed "junk DNA," a supremely annoying bit of flippancy from Francis Crick that the media embraced and has kept alive to this day. I doubt many geneticists think that DNA sequences could have no use or meaning simply because we haven't discovered them yet, and I've always suspected that the exuberant Dr. Crick was kidding.

The wonder of genetics is that we often think that we know close to all there is to know, only to discover yet another hidden language of life.

Explore further New research uncovers the first steps of how human organs and tissues develop

More information: Dave T Gerrard et al. An integrative transcriptomic atlas of organogenesis in human embryos, eLife (2016). Journal information: eLife Dave T Gerrard et al. An integrative transcriptomic atlas of organogenesis in human embryos,(2016). DOI: 10.7554/eLife.15657

This story is republished courtesy of PLOS Blogs: blogs.plos.org.
A new immunotherapy treatment has shown dramatic results in treating advanced pancreatic cancer, a deadly cancer that has seen little progress in treatment over the last 20 years.

Patients in a trial who received the new treatment, IMM-101 with chemotherapy, showed a significant survival advantage over those receiving chemotherapy alone. Most importantly, the combination resulted in no added toxicity for the recipients, unlike many other cancer treatments.

Immunotherapy treatments help to boost the immune system, enabling it to deal effectively with cancer cells.

Chemotherapy is the only option for advanced pancreatic cancer since any tumours cannot be removed. Gemcitabine is the standard chemotherapy for this type of cancer. It can be combined with other chemotherapy drugs but the resulting toxicity is often high and side-effects can be debilitating for many patients.

In the trial one group of patients received gemcitabine chemotherapy through a drip, as well as a course of IMM-101 injections. The other group received gemcitabine chemotherapy alone.

Some patients given both treatments lived significantly longer (years) than expected, while the overall median survival increased by 59% (2.6 months). This is particularly notable because metastatic pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest forms of cancer, and life expectancy following diagnosis is very short, with median survival about 6 to 11 months.

The study was led by Professor Angus Dalgleish, Professor of Oncology at St George's, University of London, working with independent UK-based biopharma Immodulon, owner of IMM-101.

The results have been published in the British Journal of Cancer.

Professor Dalgleish explained: "In my experience of using IMM-101 to treat cancer patients, we see that using IMM-101 'wakes up' the immune system without any added toxicity. In my melanoma patients in particular, patients have shown greatly increased survival rates and enjoy a much better quality of life. In some patients I've actually seen the cancer disappearing altogether."

IMM-101 is a naturally occurring mycobacterium called M. obuense. It works by harnessing the power of the immune system to recognise, respond to and control cancer in a way that is different to conventional immunotherapy treatments. IMM-101 is not currently licensed, but Professor Dalgliesh wants to see it available as soon as possible.

He said: "I have seen first-hand that this is a hugely beneficial treatment for patients and I'd like to see it translated to every hospital in the country. I believe IMM-101 could revolutionise the way this cancer is treated globally."

Charles Akle, Chairman of Immodulon, said: "The results from this study are remarkable and represent a significant breakthrough in the development of immunotherapy for the treatment of pancreatic cancer. The next phase of testing is imminent, after which, we hope to be able to bring IMM101 to market for patients."

The study was supported by the Institute for Cancer Vaccines and Immunotherapy from the earliest stages. Chair of Trustees, Harry Cotterell OBE, said: "These are exciting results and support our hope that immunotherapy will in future become a generally accepted treatment for a wide range of cancers, improving both survival rates and quality of life."

The Ralph Bates Pancreatic Cancer Research Fund has also supported the investigation. Virginia Bates from the Fund said; "This is a significant milestone and an exciting development after so many years of dedicated research. We're so pleased that there is light at the end of the tunnel as it will bring hope to many people who are suffering from pancreatic cancer".

Explore further Two-drug regimen shows promise against pancreatic cancer

More information: Angus G Dalgleish et al. Randomised, open-label, phase II study of gemcitabine with and without IMM-101 for advanced pancreatic cancer, British Journal of Cancer (2016). Journal information: British Journal of Cancer Angus G Dalgleish et al. Randomised, open-label, phase II study of gemcitabine with and without IMM-101 for advanced pancreatic cancer,(2016). DOI: 10.1038/bjc.2016.271
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Wind in Georgias service says Energy Minister

Final installation procedures and preparations are ongoing at Georgias first wind energy project, a 20MW wind power plant in the Gori municipality in the Shida Kartli region of central Georgia.The countrys Minister of Energy Kakha Kaladze published images from the construction field on his official Facebook page.Our first bird, wind in Georgias service, reads Kaladzes emotional comment of the project, which will revolutionise Georgias energy sector.The $34 million USD project is being funded by the Georgian Energy Development Fund (GEDF), a joint stock company established by the Government of Georgia together with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).The EBRD and Georgia signed an initial agreement on the project in May 2015. The European Bank provided a loan of $24 million for the project  the first of its kind in Georgia.The total installed capacity of the Gori wind farm will be 20MW and it expected to annually generate 85GW of power."As the EBRD's first engagement in wind power generation in the Caucasus region, the project will support the Georgian Governments strategy to foster low carbon generation and cover the country's seasonal winter demand, underlined the EBRD Bank while assessing the transition impact of the project.It is the first wind energy project to be implemented in Georgia and thus set an important precedent for further development, unlocking the wind energy potential in Georgia.Read the article of Genevieve Helliwell How can Georgia become more energy efficient? EBRD explores Georgias energy efficient future in Special Reports section on Agenda.ge to learn more about the project.According to the EBRDs Renewable Development Initiative, hydro power was Georgias most dominant energy resource but wind and geothermal energy sectors were promising resources.The EBRD estimated Georgias wind power potential could reach two GW, while other industry sources estimated the countrys wind potential could reach five GW - almost half the nations annual energy use.A feasibility study by Tbilisis Karenergo Wind Energy Scientific Centre revealed rich wind resources in the Chorokhi River Gorge, Paravani Lake, the Likhi mountain range, Mukhrani field, the outskirts of Kutaisi, parts of Tbilisi, the outskirts of Rustavi and the areas between Khashuri and Gori.Meanwhile one small wind turbine was currently operational in Skra village however the facility could only produce 22,000 KW of energy per year - enough for only a couple of households. The project to establish this wind turbine cost about $25,000 and was funded by United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
SGC to bring huge profit to Azerbaijan

The Southern Gas Corridor (SGC) will bring tens of billions of net profit to Azerbaijan in 2018-2019, President of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) Rovnag Abdullayev told Trend in an interview Sept. 2.Shah Deniz 2 is one of our most promising projects. The development of the huge Shah Deniz field, which has around 1.2 trillion cubic meters of natural gas and 2.2 billion barrels of condensate reserves, will make it possible to increase the natural gas export and will give a momentum to gas and oil processing, Abdullayev said.Currently, SOCAR is on the verge of a new period in the oil and gas industry with such projects as Shah Deniz, Southern Gas Corridor, SOCAR Polymer, STAR refinery, and other large projects, according to Abdullayev.SOCAR is now investing its revenues in important industry projects. Once completed, these projects will bring billions of additional revenues to Azerbaijan, he said.The Southern Gas Corridor is one of the priority energy projects for the EU. It envisages the transportation of 10 billion cubic meters of Azerbaijani gas from the Caspian region to the European countries through Georgia and Turkey.At the initial stage, the gas to be produced as part of the Stage 2 of development of Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz field is considered as the main source for the Southern Gas Corridor project. Other sources can also join this project at a later stage.As part of the Stage 2 of the Shah Deniz development, the gas will be exported to Turkey and European markets by expanding the South Caucasus Pipeline and the construction of Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) and TAP.
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With every boom in the local economy, change and gentrification enter the minds of local residents.

So the topic of gentrification is timely one for a new program by the Montana Repertory Theatre.

On Sunday, the theater-in-residence at the University of Montana will kick off its first "5 by 5" play slam, featuring five, brand-new 15-minute plays by local writers.

Local directors and actors will give staged readings of plays by Cathy Capps, Kirstin Golga, Kathy Witkowsky, Martha Elizabeth, and Rita Barkey.

The Rep's artistic director, Greg Johnson, spent a semester on sabbatical last year in Louisiana, where he studied a similar play slam format.

Writers are given prompts and deadlines before each showing, with the series continuing on on Oct. 9, Dec. 11, March 12 and May 21.

It's intended to draw on the local pool of talent cultivated by the Missoula Colony, the annual gathering of writers and theater-makers featuring top names from outside the area giving instruction and professional guidance to Montanans.

The Montana Repertory Theatre's first "5 on 5" play slam will take place Sunday, Sept. 11, at 2 p.m. in the Masquer Theatre in the PAR/TV Center at the University of Montana. The cost is $5 in cash or check at the door.

For more information, please call the Montana Rep office at 406-243-6809.
Montanas prisons and jails are over capacity. What changes in statute and/or funding at the state level  if any  do you think are necessary? If no changes, why not?

I have been hearing a lot of concern from voters in Kalispell about increased drug use and related criminal activity. While I am ordinarily in favor of investing in jail diversion strategies such as mental health and drug treatment, right now we do need resources for our law enforcement community in terms of more personnel and more jail beds. Flathead County has plans in place to fund a new jail, but that wont have an impact for more than a year. Legislative action must address dual goals  not only protecting the public but preserving young lives from destruction by drugs.

Has the Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission adequately guided the states hunting and fishing concerns, or does the Legislature need to give the Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks more specific direction regarding topics such as land acquisition, wildlife management, predator control, and bison?

The challenge for the Fish and Wildlife Commission is to find the balance between conservation and the needs of our farmers, ranchers and hunters. Recognizing the amount of controversy on these topics, I believe the agency has been doing a good job, using science-based evidence, and endeavoring to clearly protect ranchers from predation. I am not sure legislative involvement is called for at this time; it is rather for the agency to continue the job it is doing, and to communicate its work to the public.

Many Montanans depend on the extraction of fossil fuels for jobs, yet there is a strong demand for clean and renewable energy in the region, especially since prices for the latter are falling. How do you propose to help workers in the coal, oil and natural gas industries find jobs in this new economic landscape?

We face an increasing challenge from climate change and should address it through a combination of energy conservation, energy efficiency, and the development of clean, renewable energy sources. At the same time we must protect displaced workers in the fossil fuel industry by protecting their pensions and other benefits, and by making sure training is available for jobs in renewable energy and the upgrades that will be needed for our electrical infrastructure. We must assure that these workers have a role in this important transition. The Legislature should invest in training programs for all displaced workers.

According to Montana University System records, as recently as 1992, the stated funded 76 percent of the university system. Now, though, state support has fallen to 40 percent, which means tuition funds 60 percent of the system  putting higher education out of reach for some Montana families. Do you as a legislator have a responsibility to help and if so, how? If not, why not?

The state ought to begin increasing its funding level for public higher education, both to make sure we have the qualified workers we need for a vibrant economy, and to be sure those students are not saddled with debt when they graduate. Some of the industries that benefit most from having a pool of qualified workers could perhaps help out by paying a higher education tax. A grant program for Montana graduates would help our students and their families while not increasing debt for them. All our post-secondary colleges need more support from the Legislature.

What do you regard as the most urgent problem facing Montana, and how do you propose dealing with it?

Montana needs to respond vigorously to efforts to commodify our water. This is, after all, water that belongs to all of us, and we need more scrutiny of proposals to withdraw and privatize it. We ought to put a cap on yearly extraction from a given well. We could add a resource severance tax as we do with other resources. We could make sure developers take responsibility for road and transportation impacts. And we could tighten up DNRC and DEQ regulation, providing these agencies the resources to probe impacts more deeply.
NCBI Missoula turns 18 years old this year, so it decided to become independent and change its name.

National Coalition Building Institute Missoula is now EmpowerMT, as of Sept. 1. But it's not only a name change. EmpowerMT transitioned away from being an NCBI International chapter and is now a 501(c)3 nonprofit.

Missoula's was the largest chapter of NCBI International in the nation, since it had the largest budget. NCBI focuses on prejudice reduction, conflict transformation and violence prevention. EmpowerMT will still be an NCBI International affiliate.

"Sometimes I think we're this hidden gem," said executive director Heidi Wallace. "As a whole, I think we're kind of an untouched resource."

That's partially because many people said "Huh?" when they heard of NCBI; it doesn't have a lot of name recognition.

But it's existed in Missoula for 18 years. In 1998, it was started by then-University of Montana student Amie Thurber. That's the year Matthew Shepard was murdered in Laramie, Wyoming  a horror that launched a nationwide debate about hate crimes and LGBTQ+ rights.

Thurber launched Missoula's chapter, which has since worked with 50,000 people  particularly in schools.

"You really start to see some of the students we work with starting to identify beyond who their favorite band is or what ice cream they want to get at Big Dipper," said Kim Spurzem, EmpowerMT director of programs. "They're taking some pride in their own identities: 'I'm gay,' or 'I'm Native,' or 'I have a disability and that's totally OK.' "

After school Wednesday, a group of high schoolers from across Missoula shared their own experiences with prejudice and hate, and the differences they've seen EmpowerMT make in their schools.

"In high schools, I think there's a huge need for EmpowerMT," said Delaney Wascherol, a high school graduate who was home-schooled after a brief, unpleasant stint at an area high school.

***

Spurzem's own high school experience put her on a path that eventually led her to EmpowerMT, where she's worked since 2010.

"When I was in high school, my school was actually a pretty hostile environment for quite a few folks," she said.

She was in high school in the 1990s, and kids started to feel more comfortable coming out, she said. Her peers vandalized the students' cars and lockers, even spitting on them.

"Being a young LGBT person and experiencing all of that pressure to conform and to hide was really immense, and I think it just produces what we're seeing in Montana today ... depression, isolation and anger," she said. "When I found my voice, I began to push back in a way that we really try to empower students to ask for what they need to feel safe at school."

One adult did that for her when she was a kid, she said, and "it completely changed my entire schooling and how I felt about myself."

Spurzem sees today's younger generation being more open and ready to push for positive change.

In a tense situation, that means not having a knee-jerk reaction to someone saying "That's gay" or using racial slurs. Big Sky High senior Jared Burkhart said he was able to calmly explain to two freshmen why saying the "N" word was wrong  and they stopped.

Adults need to listen, Spurzem said.

"I think sometimes we as adults get in the role of protector where we sometimes silence young people," she said, using the example of a mother shushing a child for pointing out a person in a wheelchair, rather than telling the child that being in a wheelchair is OK and the person is just that  a person.

***

Wallace has been executive director nearly four years, but she started 10 years ago as a part-time youth development coordinator  at that time, only the second employee NCBI Missoula had ever hired.

Now, they have six staffers and more than 60 volunteer trainers. Over the past year, they've traveled more than 5,100 miles and worked with 6,000 people, including 4,000 children and 600 educators.

EmpowerMT has eight programs in Missoula County Public Schools: at Hawthorne, Lowell and Russell elementary schools, at all three middle schools and at Big Sky and Hellgate high schools.

One of the most notable transformations over the past decade has been at Big Sky.

"They had a year of really unprecedented violence, boys' fights, girls' fights, people being hurt, bystanders using cellphones to take video," Wallace said of the 2006-2007 school year.

That year, 52 violent incidents were reported.

"The team at Big Sky came together and said we really need to do something to shift this culture," she said.

They brought in NCBI, trained a core group of students and staff in NCBI curriculum "and the rest is history," she said.

By 2008-2009, reported violent incidents had dropped to 18, according to a 2010 University of Montana study of NCBI Missoula's work with Big Sky. Principal Natalie Jaeger said Big Sky had 23 fights last school year.

Hellgate senior Ingrid Biehl-Lucco said there used to be a similar violence problem at her school.

"I was really uncomfortable at Hellgate at that time," she said.

Then EmpowerMT came in, trained students and she noticed a shift.

"I could definitely see a difference in the week after the training," she said. "Everyone was being really nice to each other. In the Hellgate hallways, I've seen shifting attitudes."

***

During a training  which EmpowerMT does every fall and spring for freshmen  a combination of high school and adult trainers lead students through a discussion of their similarities and differences.

They learn about different groups' experiences, the impact of violence, and the communication skills they need "to non-judgmentally interrupt mistreatment, misinformation and prejudicial comments and jokes."

"I think it's really powerful to have all of these high school upperclassmen stand before very ninth-grader in school and say, 'Hey, we care about you, we're all different, but we have a lot of similarities,' " Wallace said.

That peer leadership is what makes EmpowerMT unique, she said, and separates it from an "after-school special" atmosphere.

"They're learning and hearing from each other, so it's not some tanked 'We should all be kind and be respectful,' " Wallace said. "They're actually hearing from their peers their own stories of mistreatment, of being judged, of being targeted."

***

One activity is "caucuses."

Students make a list of groups they belong to that deal with discrimination or judgment. Students break into caucuses based on their shared experiences. They answer two questions: What do you want people to never again do or say to your group? What can we do to make your group feel more welcome?

Those caucuses then share in front of the larger group.

"It's really powerful to hear people's experiences," Wallace said. "We need to listen to each other to better understand. We need to learn to become knowledgeable so we can look at the bigger picture. We have to lead the way in being active allies."

While EmpowerMT incorporates NCBI's curriculum into its work, it goes further, focusing on youth with after-school clubs, an LGBTQ+ group, and in-school trainings. They also work with business and organizations, and in the community.

EmpowerMT wants to be seen "as a Montana organization," Wallace said.

"It's more like just settling home, settling into our own," she said. "The key to our work is relationship building. This type of work doesn't bode well to just swoop in, spend a couple hours and then peace out.

"This is hard work. These aren't easy conversations. We're talking about oppression and racism and classism and privilege. There needs to be an element of trust created for those conversations to happen."

To learn more, go to empowermt.org.

Editor's note: This story previously misidentified Kim Spurzem.
GREAT FALLS  The candidates for an open seat on Montanas Supreme Court each sold themselves as having the right kind of experience for the job at a debate here Thursday.

Dirk Sandefur, a District Court judge, said hes the only one who is qualified and characterized Kristen Juras, an adjunct law professor, as inexperienced and having a political agenda. Juras said her years as an attorney in private practice representing individuals in business and property law cases make her an addition sorely needed to the court.

Sandefur has been a district judge for 14 years and was a Cascade County prosecutor and Havre police officer before that. Juras is an adjunct professor at the University of Montana School of law and has practiced law around the country.

There is no substitute for relevant experience, Sandefur told the crowd of about 100. I have it. Respectfully, Professor Juras does not.  I just dont think shes in the same class as I am as far as relevant qualifications.

Juras showed her educators background in many of her responses, taking time to tell the audience that the race is nonpartisan and explain the courts role.

Having taught for 16 years has actually improved my ability to sit on the Montana Supreme Court, she said, adding she has become skilled at research, analyzing issues and breaking down complex ideas down to teach students. That is a good attribute for an appellate judge to have.

Though shes never been a judge, Juras said the Supreme Court already has several former judges and would benefit from more diversity.

A diverse court is a better court. That is lacking and has been lacking on the court and it would be a gap I would fill.

Juras told the crowd the Supreme Court is not known as being business-friendly because it lacks consistency, and that her experience representing small businesses and corporations makes her the best choice to understand the issue, saying the court too often reverses itself.

We need predictability in application of laws. That unpredictable climate from a business perspective is a climate that doesn't entice investments from Montana.

Sandefur said hes seen the problem first-hand too. I dont like it when the Supreme Court tells a district judge you got it wrong because you followed the precedent, but it does happen from time to time.

Juras rebutted attacks from Sandefur accusing her of bias. Ask any of my students and they would tell you I never brought up a philosophical agenda into the classroom.

The Supreme Court position is nonpartisan, but Sandefur said hes been labeled the liberal in this race. You wont find a hint of bias or partisanship in any decision Ive ever made.

The idea that a former police officer and state prosecutor and state district judge is a liberal is laughable, Sandefur said.

Though the race is nonpartisan, the candidates support tends to split along party lines. Juras endorsements include the Republican-friendly Montana Chamber of Commerce. Sandefur has been endorsed by Montana Conservation Voters, MEA-MFT, Montana AFL-CIO, Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers & Trainmen and the Montana Sportsmen Alliance, groups that traditionally support Democrats.

In an early question asking the candidates about a time their ethics had been challenged, Juras stirred up a past public spat between her and former Gov. Brian Schweitzer.

When asked about a time when her ethics were questioned, Juras told the crowd that she stood her ground even when the governor calls and asks the president of the university to terminate my employment with the university.

In 2012, Juras prepared a report for an interim legislative committee on centrally assessed property taxes that in part criticized the Department of Revenue. Juras had completed the study under contract for Cablevision/Bresnan through her private firm. The company had been mounting a campaign to change the valuation process so its tax burden would be lower.

Gov. Schweitzer was upset with my report, she said. He had called the president of the university and asked for my resignation and of course the president did not ask me to resign.

But Schweitzer said Thursday night that he never called for Juras to be fired.

She sat in front of the legislative committee and identified herself as a law school professor and said Those are my law students. I knew that was a violation of university policy and so I did call Royce Engstrom, he said. To suggest I called for somebodys firing would be inaccurate. Unless they were on the telephone call with Royce Engstrom and myself I would say no one else would be knowledgeable of that phone call.

Sandefur mostly didnt comment on Schweitzers actions but did say Juras didnt do enough to clarify that the opinion she presented the committee was her own. At the time of her testimony before the committee in 2012, Juras did tell lawmakers the report was her own and didnt represent ideas held by the university. The written study did not disclose the distinction.

Sandefur also pointed to a law review article co-authored by Juras that deals with stream access and property rights in Montana.

The article, written with two attorneys for the Florida-based Coalition for Property Rights, criticized the expansion of public access to rivers via private land in several states and critiques previous Montana Supreme Court rulings.

Sandefur said the article characterizes developments in Montana law as a monumental eroding of private property rights and said Juras cited possible federal laws that could reverse state law. Part of the controversy has been that in the law review article she talks about ongoing development and evolution of Montana law, he said.

Juras said private property rights are important but called Montanas 1985 stream access law a good balance of private rights and public access and said she will enforce it.

I think the law is settled, she said, adding the court will continue to hear questions defining issues such as what the high water mark is and what is navigable stream. The cry that were hearing that public access is somehow in danger in Montana is not true.

"There are three seats on the ballot this fall for Montana's Supreme court, though the one Sandefur and Juras are running for is the only one contested. Incumbent Chief Justice Mike McGrath and Jim Shea ran unopposed in the primary.

Each year the court rules on hundreds of civil and criminal case appeals from Montana's district courts. The court also deals with appeals from the Montana Water Court and the Montana Workers Compensation Court.

Sandefur is leading the fundraising race, with $118,964 in the bank at the start of this month to Juras $38,101.09.

***

Reporter Jayme Fraser contributed to this report
A vacant movie theater in Missoula that has become a magnet for crime soon will be torn down to make way for a new bank.

The Missoula Redevelopment Agencys Board of Directors has approved a request from Stockman Bank to proceed with demolishing the old Cine 3 movie theater building at 3601 Brooks.

The bank intends to construct a new two-story bank building and one other commercial or office building at the site. It's expected to be complete within two years because the ongoing construction of a massive new six-story Stockman Bank building downtown is occupying the companys resources.

However, the current movie theater building  which has been vacant for 10 years  has apparently become an immediate problem for both the owners and the Missoula Police Department because it has been frequented recently by people engaging in illegal activity.

The owner is regularly cleaning up used syringes and empty alcoholic beverage containers, and the rear of the building has become a dumping ground for abandoned vehicles, said MRA executive director Ellen Buchanan in a memo. Neighboring businesses are increasingly expressing concern about vandalism and criminal activity.

She added that Missoula Police Chief Mike Brady has requested increased patrols around the building, but there continue to be issues. Brady has also asked that the MRA help expedite the removal of the building and the cleanup of the lot.

The bank asked to proceed with demolishing the building without prejudicing any future requests they may make for Tax Increment Financing (TIF) assistance, because the site is in an Urban Renewal District.

Randy Rupert, the regional director of business development for CTA Architects, is working for Stockman Bank on the building. He said that the bank is ready to demolish the current building within four or five weeks.

Two weeks ago we got broken into again, he said. Its been blighted long enough for the city of Missoula. People know the buildings empty and they find ways in. Its probably the only deserted property around there.

The bank plans to recycle as much of the materials from the deconstruction as it can.

The Missoula Redevelopment Agencys board also approved a request from the Missoula Housing Authority to proceed without prejudice on moving forward with prepping the site at 110 N. California St. for a new six-unit affordable housing complex. The MHA has been awarded a $700,000 state grant for the project, but they need to get going in order to not jeopardize the funding. Each unit will be one-bedroom.

The board also approved a $79,720 TIF request from the North Missoula Community Development Corp. to deconstruct the existing house at 503 E. Front St. to build seven affordable housing units. The NMCDC will own the land, and sell two-bedroom units for around $130,000, and four-bedroom units for around $150,000, well below market value. However, the resale value of each unit is capped so that they remain affordable for future buyers while still rewarding homeowners for the equity theyve put in as good caretakers.

Its really exciting for us to get some permanent affordable homeownership downtown, which is an extremely rare commodity, said Jerry Petasek of the NMCDC.

Finally, the board approved a TIF request of $22,216 from the owners of the 16-unit apartment building at 534 E. Front St., on the corner of Madison Street, for sidewalk improvements. The owners are renovating the entire building, and the taxpayer money will go to fund right-of-way improvements.
A wise man once recommended not clashing with anyone who buys paper by the truckload or ink by the barrel. Likewise, it is probably not prudent to pick a fight with the court that oversees your decisions. However, I am going to do both with an eye towards presenting what I see as the heart of our judicial system.

Our judicial system is anchored by trial by jury. Our forefathers thought this right was so important they put it in our Constitution, not just once, but four times (Article III, Fifth amendment, Sixth Amendment and the Seventh Amendment). As an attorney, I have tried more than 100 jury trials. As a judge, I have tried nearly 200 jury trials. I believe in the jury system. In fact, I fervently believe in our jury system. This is true even though I dont think juries always get it right.

In fact, over my 30 years of trying cases I have found that in about one of 20 cases I would have decided the case differently than the jury did. The Reinlasoder case was one such case. This case was reversed by the Supreme Court and I was not disappointed it was reversed. Thats right. Even though I disagree with the decision, I was not disappointed. Let me explain.

The heart of the jury system is the collective wisdom 12 people bring to a decision. I think we can all agree having 12 people make a decision is generally better than one person making that decision. If two heads are better than one then certainly 12 are better than one. You bring the diverse backgrounds, experiences and common sense of 12 people to bear on an issue. That is powerful.

The Billings Gazette, in an opinion titled High court right on Colstrip appeal published July 26, stated : Last week, the Montana Supreme Court bent the long moral arc toward justice (when) it decided that a Yellowstone County court got a termination case horribly wrong.

The court, and the Gazette, laid out the evidence why the firing was justified. Neither laid out the contrary evidence why the firing may not have been justified. For instance, one witness testified the mayor (whom I thought otherwise did an excellent job as mayor) told her at a grocery store they were going to get rid of former Colstrip Police Chief Larry Reinlasoder, or the favorable job reviews Reinlasoder had received, or Reinlasoders side of the story. The jury heard all this evidence, and more, during the several-day trial.

Like I said, I thought the firing was justified. However, the jury saw it differently. It is true that a judge can overturn a jury verdict. So why didnt I overturn it? Because I believe so strongly in the jury system. How can I say I am smarter than the jury? It would have to be something really extreme, much more than this case, for me to overturn a jury verdict.

The jury trial system has its historical roots dating back to the eighth century. Unfortunately, at least in my view, fewer cases go to jury trial in our current judicial system than even 20 years ago when I first became a judge. While jury trials are time-consuming, inconvenient to jurors and not always perfect, they dispense justice better than any other system devised. Thus, while I did not agree with the jury verdict in the Reinlasoder case, I was not willing to overturn it. A decision I still stand by today.
This Labor Day week, we celebrate the Montana families who go to work every day to support their loved ones, their communities and our economy.

Montana is a state built by the hands of working men and women  from the farms and ranches of the Hi-Line, to the mines of Butte, the natural resource industries in eastern Montana, to the teachers who educate our children, the nurses who take care of our vulnerable, and the entrepreneurs who turn good ideas in businesses and jobs for fellow Montanans.

Thanks to the work of Montanans, our states economy is strong and getting stronger every day.

While other states face stagnant wages and limited job growth, here in Montana more folks are on the job than ever before, wages are rising and unemployment remains low.

Montanas GDP is growing fifth-fastest in the nation, wage growth is ranked sixth in the country and our payroll employment is growing nearly two times faster than the historic average.

Montana continues to be the best in the nation for entrepreneurs and new business start-ups. We are consistently ranked by outside entities as among the top 10 in the nation for innovation, entrepreneurship, business tax climate and income growth.

There is plenty for Montanans to be proud of. But were not stopping here.

As your governor, I have a responsibility to keep an eye towards the future and to seek out ways to build on our strengths and make improvements wherever we can; to lift each other up, not to bet against Montana. Where others may see obstacles, we see opportunities.

We are a state of just over one million people spread out over 147,000 square miles. We have an aging workforce. Montana businesses are looking for workers that have the skills, knowledge and training to fill good-paying, in-demand jobs.

This presents us with an opportunity  an opportunity to invest in Montana workers. To find innovative ways to bridge gaps that have made it difficult for businesses to find the right workers with the right qualifications.

Ample opportunities exist for Montanans to join the workforce in new and high-paying jobs due to continued job growth, combined with many upcoming retirements in the aging populations.

We are already taking important steps. Weve brought together businesses, educators, and workforce professionals to ensure that we have a pipeline for young Montanans to get the skills they need and for experienced workers to up-skill to continue to compete for the jobs of tomorrow  in growing fields like healthcare, welding, bioscience and high-tech manufacturing.

Lt. Gov. Mike Cooney and I get out of Helena as often as we can to hear from hard-working Montanans all across the state, and to reaffirm our commitment to protecting Montana workers and their families and their jobs, always looking for better-paying jobs and new ways to save taxpayers money and to live within our means as Montana families do.

How? By making responsible decisions about the states finances. By improving healthcare and access to mental health services. By improving transparency in our government and our elections. By serving our kids and teachers with the best public education possible. By protecting the rights and freedoms of all Montanans. And by fighting for equal pay for equal work for all Montana workers.

By working with Republicans, Democrats and Independents alike, we are turning our challenges into opportunities to ensure a stronger, better economy for all Montanans.

A state built by workers deserves no less.
Rolling hills of huckleberries to Missoula Countys Parks, Trails and Open Lands Program and the city of Missoula Open Space Program, which celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Open Space Bond yesterday. The $10 million, 20-year bond was overwhelmingly approved by voters in 2006 and has enabled the preservation of 29,000 acres for wildlife, agriculture, outdoor recreation and public enjoyment. And nearly $3 million remains for additional conservation projects in the next decade.

Chokecherries to the steep increase in insurance costs that is squeezing budgets across the state, including the University of Montanas. Since last fiscal year, UMs property insurance costs have risen from $1.08 million to $1.47 million. Meanwhile, tort and liability insurance has increased by 29 percent. The university is now paying $600,000 more to cover insurance costs at a time when declining enrollment has forced painful cuts.

Flying huckleberries to Neptune Aviation and the Montana Community Development Corporation, which are teaming up to use nearly $800,000 in funding from the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Community Services to help launch a new job creation and training program. Neptune, a Missoula-based business with more than 100 employees, will use the money to train and hire low-income workers as entry-level mechanics. When Neptune repays the low-interest loan, MCDC will add the money to its revolving loan fund to help the next local business grow and create more jobs.

Chokecherries to Montanas comparatively low wages, which rank among the bottom in the nation despite the fact that they are rising faster than the national average. According to the annual Labor Day report from the Montana Department of Labor and Industry, Montanas average wage increased 3 percent in 2015, to more than $40,000. State wages have risen by an average of 3.2 percent over the past 10 years, outpacing the national average of 2.7 percent. However, the state still ranks at 48th in the nation for wages.

Huckleberries to the five organizations in Montana set to share more than $2 million in grants from the U.S. Department of Justice to provide legal support to victims of domestic and sexual violence. The Montana Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence in Helena, the Custer Network Against Domestic Abuse in Miles City, the Womens Resource Center in Dillon, the Fort Belknap Indian Community and SAFE Harbor in Ronan now have a little more funding to help provide much-needed guidance to victims who might otherwise be lost in the legal system.
On behalf of the staff and students of the Mission Valley Christian Academy, I would like to thank the Lake County Sheriff's Department for presenting an amazing seminar on school safety last week at our staff training days.

Officers Levi Read, Nate Lundeen and Detective Rick Lenz spent the afternoon instructing the staff on ways to prepare our school in the event of an intruder or school shooter. "Flight, fortify and fight" were given as possible ways to deal with different scenarios and the officers helped us experience various possibilities through role playing with the staff in classrooms.

We hope we never have to experience the trauma of a violent attack at our school, but through the helpful direction of the Lake County officers, we are truly a safer and more prepared school. Our students, parents and families will be the beneficiaries of this training and the steps we have taken to improve our safety protocols.

We are deeply appreciative of Don Bell and his sheriff's department and their commitment to safety for all the citizens of Lake County. May God bless and protect them as they serve the Mission Valley.

Christian Bumgarner,

director,

Missoula Valley Christian Academy,

Polson
From the two-lane county road that cuts a ribbon through the smooth, dark green hills of southern North Dakota, the Standing Rock Sioux encampment sprawls into a massive community. Nestled between the asphalt on the west, the Missouri River on the east and the Cannonball River on the south sit hundreds of campsites, cars parked next to tents, canvas shelters and tepees.

The main entrance to the controversial site is a stretch of packed earth, lined on both sides by dozens of tribal nation flags that produce a steady, muted rumble in the prairie wind. The camp, where hundreds of people, representing more than 250 tribes from across the world, have gathered to oppose the construction of a nearly 1,200-mile oil pipeline, is now considered home for many of the people.

This is not a powwow, said Angela Bibens, a Denver-based attorney, who is volunteering with a legal team based on the camp. The law tent sits next to the school, a large canvas tent housing stacks of children's books where Bibens is working to ensure the curriculum meets educational standards so students get full credit. This is a powerful and profound expression of tribal sovereignty, the likes of which we have never seen before.

Still, over Labor Day weekend, the camps population swelled with new, temporary visitors, supporters, most of whom brought donated supplies to keep the camp fed, hydrated and clean.

We want the Standing Rock Sioux to know that we are serious about our support, said Mark Azure, president of the Fort Belknap Indian Community in central Montana. Azure arrived at the camp Friday evening with about 30 members of the Gros Ventre and Assiniboine tribes who call Fort Belknap home, bringing with them truckloads of food and supplies collected in community donation drives.

It was powerful, Azure said recalling his group arriving into the campground as supporters lined up on both sides of the entrance singing, drumming and cheering as the Fort Belknap vehicles drove between the corridor of flags in the evening light. It was a feeling I dont think will ever be duplicated.

The camp has been building for a month, as the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe stands against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, which would pump nearly a half million barrels of crude oil daily from the Bakken region in northwestern North Dakota to southern Illinois.

Although it would not enter reservation boundaries, the pipeline would run under the Missouri River, just upstream of Standing Sioux reservation and near where the Missouri meets the Cannonball River  a confluence that once formed whirlpools that over time created spherical boulders, sacred to the Standing Rock and namesake to the first of the tribes opposition camps, Sacred Stone.

The tribe opposed the pipeline immediately, fearing any kind of leak would not only further destroy the sacred site, but contaminate the Standing Rock water source. Standing Rock chairman Dave Archimbault II, demanding to be heard, protested at the site in August and was arrested for trespassing, prompting national attention.

Many of the people at the camp say they intend to stay until the end, with only a smile and a nod to answer how long that could be. Bibens, the attorney, said plans are moving forward to start building winter housing at the site, despite the land being owned by the Army Corps of Engineers. So far, the camp has seen no pushback from local law enforcement or the Army Corps. In fact, along Morton County Highway 1806, just to the north and south of the camps are new, gleaming road signs, announcing speed limit decreases, traffic entering and exiting the highway and the presence of pedestrians.

The Standing Rock camp is deliberately peaceful. Security volunteers man the entrances to ensure no alcohol, drugs or intoxicated people enter the site. It is difficult, if not impossible, to find any camp inhabitant who would call the Standing Rock site a protest.

Protest. Its a negative word, it brings negative thoughts, defiance. This is a peaceful gathering, Azure said. It should be called a movement to educate, because thats what were trying to do. I dont see anything wrong with everybody being here and wanting someone to listen.

But later that Saturday afternoon, the Standing Rock camp found itself mired in headlines after an altercation with security agents representing Energy Transfer Partners, the Dallas-based firm behind the pipeline project. Workers had begun digging trenches on the pipeline that afternoon, prompting Standing Rock supporters to stop the machines from digging. The incident led to security guards intervening with dogs and Mace before being driven away.

The story broke headlines worldwide, citing key words violence and protest, and media swarmed the camp the rest of the weekend.

The following day, security at the entrance asked visitors a few more questions, including what tribe visitors represented. New signs were posted, requiring all media to check in and clearly wear credentials. And Desiree Cole, a media representative at the camp, kept a close eye ensuring media representatives followed the guidelines.

Still, the people at the site were as welcoming as ever, if fatigued. The new attention was twofold. It brought new eyes to the issue, but it also associated it with violence. Its almost as if Azure saw it coming.

What does it take to get attention? he asked, only hours before Saturdays altercation. He questioned the lack of mainstream media coverage of the camp and the oil pipeline. Does something bad need to happen to get them here?
HAMILTON  Ravalli County District Judge Jim Haynes followed the terms of a plea agreement and sentenced a Florence man charged with sexually assaulting two girls at Florence High School to 30 days in jail.

Bryce Crete Cobbs, 20, pleaded guilty earlier to charges of sexual abuse of children, criminal endangerment, tampering with evidence and sexual assault.

On Thursday, Haynes agreed to defer sentencing Cobbs for six years. If Cobbs follows conditions of the plea agreement, the charges will be dropped.

Cobbs also will be required to register as a Tier 1 sex offender for the six years.

Cobbs was 16 years old and a student at Florence High School when he had sexual encounters in the school copy room with a 14-year-old eighth-grade student and a 15-year-old student, according to court records.

Cobbs was arrested after texts and videotape recordings were circulated.

In June, Cobbs pleaded guilty to four charges: sexual abuse of children, criminal endangerment, tampering with evidence, all felonies, and sexual assault, a misdemeanor.

At the sentencing Thursday, Haynes asked if texting younger girls is a new way to pump your status.

Cobbs responded that at the time he did not understand the severity of the situation.

I didnt take into account her age. I was 16 and she was 14, Cobbs said. I look back now and I know it was wrong. At the time I didnt understand the severity of what I was doing. Its not a culture [of the school]. It is that I saw she was into me and I didnt understand the severity of what I was doing and I took advantage.

Defense Attorney Nate Halloway said Cobbs is a good candidate for rehabilitation.

Ive seen a changed individual, Halloway said. Ive seen that the system works and the treatments worked in his accountability, understanding and sympathy. Im very hopeful that Mr. Cobbs will do well in life.

Haynes said the sentence is consistent with the lenient attitude of the victims and their families.

One victim was disturbed by the latent time it took to reach this resolution, he said. The attitude of the victims father, I think, may feel a bit of satisfaction with your 30 days in jail.  [The sentence is] consistent with your behavior, Mr. Cobbs, over a long period of time taking advantage of the situation with access to that copy room so you could have the sexual favors you wanted to have.

Haynes said he would have Cobbs talk to high school students about his situation if there was a violation of the sentencing terms.

Cobbs volunteered to donate $250 to Emmas House, an advocacy center for abused children, in Hamilton.
HELENA  One after another in a packed hearing room Friday, people told a legislative interim committee that Colstrip and its 2,300 residents need assistance from the state after Units 1 and 2 of the coal-fired electric plant close by 2022, or else the community could turn into a ghost town.

Plant operator Talen Energy has agreed to shut the two older units at the plant in southeastern Montana as part of a settlement with the Montana Environmental Information Center and the Sierra Club over Clean Air Act violations.

The social costs of sudden layoffs of a sizable group of workers with no future in sight are very steep, said Chuck Dalby, a geologist in Helena who is from Forsyth and helped build housing in Colstrip before the plants were constructed in the 1970s.

The Energy and Telecommunications Interim Committee moved forward six of seven proposed bills, most unanimously, that would divert money to those affected by the partial shutdown of the power plant, which several said Friday is the only reason the town of Colstrip exists.

The bills were all requested by Sen. Duane Ankney, R-Colstrip, who has become a leader in the fight to keep Colstrip operating and mitigate any losses resulting from layoffs.

Lawmakers and participants clashed over approaches. Some argued that new regulations and taxes would unfairly punish utilities in Oregon and Washington, who have been directed by their states' lawmakers to move away from buying electricity generated by coal. Others said the out-of-state owners who are pulling out of the plant should be held responsible and Montana should have as much control over the process as possible.

A bill that would take $50 million from the states coal severance tax trust fund and split it among grants for local governments, economic development organizations and worker retraining programs touched off a battle over who should pay for the social and economic costs of shutting down part of the plant.

Dalby said no one deserves access to the coal tax trust fund, built with taxes on coal mining, more than soon-to-be former coal workers. In 2014 the coal trust fund had $952 million.

Anne Hedges, with the Montana Environmental Information Center, opposed the draft, saying costs would be passed along to ratepayers. Busting the trust should not be one of the things we are depending on to help the workers in Colstrip, she said.

Ankney instead proposed to pay for the programs by doubling a tax on power transmitted from the plant.

The amended bill passed, although it sparked a debate on whether increasing taxes on the utilities who buy power from Colstrip is the best approach, since they can pass the costs along to customers, including Montanans, in the form of higher electricity prices.

Montana AFL-CIO political director Chris Cavasoz said corporations should be held responsible for the decisions they make. There should be a cost for shutting down these plants and that money should go to supporting workers in the community, he said.

Draft bills passed Friday propose to:

 Set aside money so Montana can participate in rate hearings in Washington state and other out-of-state proceedings involving companies that own parts of Colstrip.

 Establish remediation requirements for companies that decommission power plants. The Montana Department of Environmental Quality will continue to refine the bill before the 2017 Legislature convenes in January.

 Double a transmission tax for Colstrip power to 30 cents a megawatt and use the money to pay for programs that support local governments, economic development organizations and displaced workers.

 Establish an impact fee that must be paid by utilities that intend to retire coal-fired plants or parts of one and split the fee, which would be millions of dollars, between school districts, counties, worker retraining programs and the state's general fund.

 Create a task force to look at benefits and retirement security for employees affected by the bankruptcy of any natural-resource based company in Montana;

The only draft bill not to move forward was one that would have allowed large-scale users who currently get power from Colstrip to divert funds that go into energy efficiency programs to offsetting the cost of entering into new power contracts.

Draft bills are assigned a sponsor who will then carry the bill when the 2017 Legislature convenes in January.
NEAR THE STANDING ROCK SIOUX RESERVATION, N.D.  The federal government stepped into the fight over the Dakota Access oil pipeline Friday, ordering work to stop on one segment of the project in North Dakota and asking the Texas-based company building it to "voluntarily pause" action on a wider span that an American Indian tribe says holds sacred artifacts.

The government's order came minutes after a judge rejected a request by the Standing Rock Sioux to halt construction of the $3.8 billion, four-state pipeline.

The tribe, whose cause has drawn thousands to join their protest, has challenged the Army Corps of Engineers' decision to grant permits for the pipeline at more than 200 water crossings. Tribal leaders allege that the project violates several federal laws and will harm water supplies. The tribe also says ancient sites have been disturbed during construction.

The tribe's chairman, Dave Archambault II, spoke at the state Capitol in front of several hundred people, some carrying signs that read "Respect Our Water" and "Water Is Sacred." He called the federal announcement "a beautiful start" and told reporters that the dispute is a long way from over.

"A public policy win is a lot stronger than a judicial win," he said. "Our message is heard."

A joint statement from the Army and the Departments of Justice and the Interior said construction bordering or under Lake Oahe would not go forward and asked the Texas-based pipeline builder, Energy Transfer Partners, to stop work 20 miles to the east and west of the lake while the government reconsiders "any of its previous decisions."

The statement also said the case "highlighted the need for a serious discussion" about nationwide reforms "with respect to considering tribes' views on these types of infrastructure projects."

Vicki Granado, a spokeswoman for the company, said it had no comment.

The president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council said he was disappointed with the government's decision to intervene and called it "flagrant overreach" that will result in more oil being moved by trucks and trains.

The 1,172-mile project will carry nearly a half-million barrels of crude oil daily from North Dakota's oil fields through South Dakota and Iowa to an existing pipeline in Patoka, Illinois.

In denying the tribe's request for a temporary injunction, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in Washington said that the court "does not lightly countenance any depredation of lands that hold significance" to the tribe and that, given the federal government's history with the tribe, the court scrutinized the permitting process "with particular care."

Nonetheless, the judge wrote, the tribe "has not demonstrated that an injunction is warranted here."

Attorney Jan Hasselman with the environmental group Earthjustice, who filed the lawsuit on the tribe's behalf, said earlier this week any such decision would be challenged. "We will have to pursue our options with an appeal and hope that construction isn't completed while that (appeal) process is going forward," he said.

Tribal historian LaDonna Brave Bull Allard said Boasberg's ruling gave her "a great amount of grief. My heart is hurting, but we will continue to stand, and we will look for other legal recourses."

Earlier in the day, thousands of protesters, many from tribes around the country, gathered near the reservation that straddles the North and South Dakota border.

"There's never been a coming together of tribes like this," according to Judith LeBlanc, a member of the Caddo Nation in Oklahoma and director of the New York-based Native Organizers Alliance. People came from as far as New York and Alaska, some bringing their families and children, and hundreds of tribal flags dotted the camp, along with American flags flown upside-down in protest.

The judge's order was announced over a loudspeaker there. John Nelson of Portland, Oregon, came to the camp to support his grandson, Archambault. The 82-year-old says he was not surprised by the ruling, "but it still hurts."

State authorities announced this week that law enforcement officers from across the state were being mobilized at the protest site. They said some National Guard members will work security at traffic checkpoints and another 100 would be on standby. The Great Plains Tribal Chairman's Association asked the Justice Department to send monitors to the site because it said racial profiling is occurring.

Nearly 40 people have been arrested since the protest began in April, including Archambault.

A week ago, protesters and construction workers were injured when, according to tribal officials, workers bulldozed sites on private land that the tribe says in court documents are "of great historic and cultural significance." Energy Transfer Partners denied the allegations.

The state's Private Investigation and Security Board received complaints about the use of dogs and will look into whether the private security teams at the site are properly registered and licensed, board attorney Monte Rogneby said Friday, adding that he would not name the firms.

On Thursday, North Dakota's archaeologist said a piece of private land that was not previously surveyed by the state would be surveyed for artifacts next week.

The company plans to complete the pipeline this year, and said in court papers that stopping the project would cost $1.4 billion the first year, mostly due to lost revenue in hauling crude.

A status conference in the tribe's lawsuit is scheduled for Sept. 16.

***

Kolpack reported from Fargo, North Dakota. Associated Press writers Blake Nicholson in Bismarck, North Dakota, and Doug Glass in Minneapolis contributed to this report.
SPOKANE  Investigators are piecing together a road trip that spanned three states and more than 300 miles, leaving a 47-year-old mother from Great Falls dead in a car trunk in Spokane.

Rita Mazes family believes she was abducted Tuesday morning from a rest stop near Wolf Creek. But authorities have not ruled her death a homicide, and new details add a layer of intrigue to the case.

Maze called her husband and daughter on the way to Spokane, saying a large man in a black hoodie had hit her on the head and put her into the trunk of her black Pontiac Grand Prix. Sheriffs deputies found her at about 12:30 a.m. Wednesday in an industrial area near Geiger Boulevard and Spotted Road.

Court documents say she was in the trunk with a single gunshot wound to the torso. A handgun and two spent casings lay next to her.

Asked if news outlets should question Mazes kidnapping narrative, Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich replied Thursday, Yes, you should.

We know where the body was located; we know where she started out, he said. What happened in between? Dont know.

Death not yet ruled a homicide

The Spokane County Medical Examiners Office concluded Maze died of the single gunshot wound, but said further investigation was needed to determine whether the death was a homicide.

The FBI said Wednesday it had identified a potential suspect, and some news reports indicated a person had been pursued near the industrial area where Mazes body was found. But on Thursday, a law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said those reports were inaccurate. The official would not elaborate.

Another law enforcement official said someone used Mazes credit card at two convenience stores in the hours before her death. According to her daughter, Rochelle Maze, the first purchase was made at 4:16 p.m. Tuesday in Kingston, Idaho, and the second was made at 9:55 p.m. in Ritzville.

Meanwhile, court documents say Mazes car was in Post Falls at about 4 p.m.  not Kingston. A roadside license-plate scanner maintained by the Post Falls Police Department logged the vehicle on a highway crossing Ramsey Road, court documents say. Post Falls is about 39 miles west of Kingston.

Daughter: I believe she was abducted

Rita Maze was supposed to return to Great Falls on Tuesday. She had spent all Monday in Helena visiting her ailing mother. At the rest stop along Interstate 15, she was less than 60 miles from home.

I believe she was abducted, Rochelle Maze said Thursday. She did not hit herself, stuff herself in the truck and drive all the way to Spokane and shoot herself.

Rita Maze was hysterical during the ordeal, her daughter said. She kept a gun in the car, which the alleged kidnapper had access to, she said.

Deputies reported no one else was in the car when they found it. The keys were in the ignition and a purse was in the front seat. There was blood on the ground, and a $20 bill lay nearby.

I believe they shot her and left the gun and keys in there to make it look like she killed herself, Rochelle Maze said. I know she did not.

Knezovich declined to discuss details, but said the case wont be easy to solve. He said people should hesitate to call Mazes death a homicide until we actually find out what is going on.
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A 33-year-old man whose suspended sentence for felony drug possession was revoked in Butte district court Thursday received two years, 206 days to the Montana Department of Corrections.

Butte-Silver Bow County prosecutors filed a petition in April to revoke Aaron Evans three-year suspended sentence because of his continued use of methamphetamine, a violation of his probation.

In handing down his sentence, Judge Brad Newman said there was no question the defendants addiction was driving the bus, and that he was controlled and consumed by meth.

James Cameron, a state probation and parole officer, testified Evans was not participating in treatment and in late August admitted using and tested positive for meth.

Cameron cited Evans recent arrest in connection with stolen tools and a motorcycle as well as possession of meth and marijuana showed the defendants further descent and his need for longer chemical dependency treatment to increase.

Public Defender Walter Hennessey said his client, who declined to make a statement, had a severe drug problem and that his criminal activity was fueled by drug addiction to get money to feed the habit.

Newman said the DOC would determine the appropriate treatment facility for Evans, adding that he NEXUS Treatment Center in Lewistown could be a possibility.
A Butte man whose criminal history fueled a drug addiction was sentenced Thursday to 10 years to the Department of Corrections with six years suspended.

Ralph Louis Lapham, 44, pleaded guilty in June to two felony counts of burglary in connection with separate break-ins in 2015 as part of a plea agreement with Butte-Silver Bow County prosecutors.

In handing down his sentence, Butte district Judge Brad Newman said a sentence of 10 years with six suspended in each case would run concurrent. He granted a minimum of 354 days of credit for jail time served.

Susan Carroll, state probation and parole officer, testified that methamphetamine and marijuana use were the underlying cause for Laphams criminal behavior. His crimes, she said, supported his drug habit and required substantial treatment.

Carroll recommended a 10-year DOC sentence with five years suspended, which was also the recommendation in the plea agreement.

In her testimony, she said restitution had not been determined. One of the victims was more concerned about Lapham getting treatment over his request for restitution, Carroll said.

Prosecutors and defense attorneys argued for the recommended sentence.

Deputy County Attorney Ann Shea said the parties worked hard on the plea deal, adding that there are real victims in the cases.

Defense Attorney Kaylan Minor said Lapham had shown an exceptional amount of remorse in the July 2015 burglary at a Butte business, Skill Built Truss.

Her co-counsel, Dan Miller, said the defendant demonstrated how contrite he is. In September 2015, Lapham broke into a doctors home and stole items including a gold and diamond wedding ring and foreign coins.

In a statement to the victims, Lapham apologized for his actions, saying he had no right to take things that didnt belong to him.

To the doctor, he said: I can only hope for your forgiveness in this matter.

Newman said that with a year of forced sobriety, Lapham was at a starting point for the chemical dependency treatment that the DOC would determine.

With effective treatment  you could remain in a community as a productive citizen, said Newman. You recognize where you are in your life. You recognize what you need to do to change.
A land swap of various parcels between Butte-Silver Bow and Montana Tech is in the discussion stage.

Chief Executive Matt Vincent and Tech Chancellor Don Blackketter outlined the proposed swap at Wednesdays Council of Commissioners meeting.

Blackketter presented the proposed swap, noting that the presentation was informational only and that the deal would have to be approved by both Montanas Board of Regents and the Butte-Silver Bow council at a later date in order to be put into motion.

According to the preliminary plan, the swap involves transferring to Butte-Silver Bow parcels near Big Butte owned by the college (possibly to combine with the nearby open-space park) in exchange for county-owned parcels within and near Tech and the vacation of streets and alleys dotted inside the campus.

The deal would also include land adjacent to the Butte, Anaconda and Pacific Railway walking trail.

Blackketter said the county owns the trail, but the property on both sides of the trail is used more by the college than the county.

To make a more distinct boundary between Butte-Silver Bow and Tech, the chancellor said, the plan is to develop a memorandum of understanding that would establish who is responsible for and controls those pieces of property that protrude into the university.

Should the land swap become a done deal, Blackketter said, for the first time the college would be able to draw a contiguous line around its campus.

Theres some land within the interior of the Montana Tech campus and around the edges of the Montana Tech campus that has mixed ownership, said Blackketter. In some cases, the use of that land is not being used by whom necessarily owns it.

The presentation elicited a few questions, including one from Commissioner Jim Fisher who expressed concern over whether having too many contingencies  the Council of Commissioners and the Board of Regents  would hold the project back.

However, Blackketter said that he didnt anticipate any difficulties with the regents and that the land swap could get on the bodys agenda as early as November.

Theyre going to be very supportive, said Blackketter.

Commissioner Cindy Perdue-Dolan, meanwhile, asked whether the regents have considered similar land swaps for other university locations in Montana and wondered whether the Tech deal would be inventing the wheel from a legal standpoint.

We will have our attorneys at the University of Montana in Missoula doing that for us, said Blackketter.

Meanwhile, the council was also briefed on the formation of a Campus-Community Ad-Hoc Task Force designed to foster the relationship between the county and Tech.

Commissioner Bill Andersen said he thought the task force could help reduce confusion about where students and residents can park near Tech.

(In a Sept. 2 story in The Montana Standard, Vincent alluded to students who protested parking tickets because they were able to prove that a lot used by students was owned by the county and not Tech.)

I know that Commissioner (Cindi) Shaw and myself get quite a few calls about parking, said Andersen. I think that this (task force) could really help sort out an awful lot of those issues. And I think it would make a lot of sense to a lot of the neighbors in the area.

The task force will consist of nine members, five appointed by the chief executive and four from the chancellor. It will meet a couple of times a year and on an on-call basis when we have issues of import, Vincent said.

Blackketter, meanwhile, said he looked forward to presenting a finalized land-swap agreement to the council.

Ill be back, Mr. Chief Executive, Blackketter said.
As part of its ongoing Brown Bag Lunch series, the Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives will host the Montana Conversations program "Dueling Paintbrushes: George Catlin and Karl Bodmer on the Missouri" with Kristi Hager of Missoula, at noon Wednesday, Sept. 14, at the Butte Archives, 17 W. Quartz.

Two painters traveled up the Missouri River within a year of each other, George Catlin in 1832, Karl Bodmer in 1833. They had different temperaments and different styles of painting the same Indian villages, chiefs, sacred rituals, bison herds and river bluffs. Catlin and Bodmer also documented how each tribe painted accounts of their own lives in their own style on tipis, drums, and buffalo hides. This abundance of painting is a rich visual record of the High Plains at a unique time after Lewis and Clark but before the arrival of railways and photography.
DEER LODGE -- A Deer Lodge man who injured a man by slashing him with a knife in the lobby of the sheriffs office on Aug. 17 pleaded not guilty in district court this week to attempted deliberate homicide.

Anthony Ray Keys, 24, also pleaded not guilty to an alternative charge of felony assault with a weapon, and to a misdemeanor charge of trespass to property. The maximum penalty for the first offense is death, life in prison, or not less than 10 years or more than 100 years. The penalty for the assault charge is 20 years and $50,000 fine. He is in custody on $100,000 bond.

In other court action:

-- James Aaron Whittington pleaded not guilty to felony partner/family member assault, third offense. If convicted, he faces five years in prison and $50,000 fine.

According to court records, police responded to a report of domestic violence at 4:05 a.m. on Aug. 26 and found Whittingtons partner with significant injuries. The record indicates Whittington was angry at her for talking to an ex-boyfriend, the father of her children. He is accused of causing injuries to his partners face and head, including knocking out a tooth, and allegedly dragging her by the hair to the bedroom where he continued to beat and choke her. She managed to scream for help outside the bedroom window, and he stopped attacking her and left the residence. A warrant was issued for his arrest and Whittington turned himself in on Aug. 29. He is free on his recognizance pending further court proceedings.

-- Robert Shane Andrews pleaded guilty to felony assault of a Montana State Prison correctional officer on May 20, 2013. He admitted that he disobeyed orders from the officer to turn around and be handcuffed, and instead punched the officer in the face. Judge Ray Dayton said he takes a dim view of assault on law enforcement officers, but considered the self-improvement efforts Andrews has made since the incident and sentenced him to two years, consecutive to his underlying sentence of robbery and assault with a weapon.

-- Jordan Mark Garrison, 23, of Deer Lodge pleaded not guilty to amended charges accusing him of eight felony charges of assault on a minor. He is accused of violent physical abuse of a child under the age of 8 between January 2013 and April 2016. If convicted, he could be sentenced up to 10 years and fined up to $50,000 on each charge. He is being held at the Powell County Detention Center on $50,000 bond concurrent with a $35,000 bond on another assault charge.

-- Darrell Lee Whiteman, Jr. pleaded guilty to felony criminal mischief and misdemeanor theft. He admitted being intoxicated when he took a vehicle and drove it on the wrong side of Interstate 90 endangering others. Judge Dayton ordered a pre-sentence investigation. Whiteman is free on recognizance with conditions until sentencing.

-- Natasha Nicole Dugo pleaded not guilty to felony theft and burglary, and driving with a suspended license, a misdemeanor. She is accused of breaking into her boyfriends home and taking his pitbull dog Cuzo valued at $3,000. She was arrested when the dog was recognized as she was in a car at I-90 Auto Plaza. Her license came back as suspended. Dugo is free on $10,000 bond.

-- Raymond Jones pleaded not guilty to 32 felony charges of indecent exposure and two misdemeanor counts of the same crime. He is accused of masturbation and exposing his genitals to women correctional officers at the state prison between Sept. 3, 2015 and Aug. 22, 2016. If convicted, he could be sentenced up to 10 years and fined $10,000 on each felony count.
Free home-painting workshop Sunday

A free home-painting workshop will be held at 11 a.m. Sunday, Sept. 11, at the corner of Porphyry and Dakota. All materials and supplies will be provided.

Painting properly is probably the easiest, most cost-effective way to transform the look of your home. If you do it right, it will last. This workshop will provide information on the best techniques for exterior preparation and painting that will provide the longest-lasting results.

Animal Control impounds listed

These animals have been picked up by Butte Animal Control. Details: Chelsea Bailey Butte-Silver Bow Animal Shelter at 406-497-6528, or stop by between 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.

Dog:

Four-year-old black and tan Pomeranian, picked up Tuesday at Walmart

Cats:

Ten-year-old male short-haired manx, neutered, picked up Thursday near Star Lanes

Four-year-old female short-haired; black, white and orange; picked up Thursday at Evans and Utah

One-year-old male short-haired, neutered, white with brown and black tiger markings, picked up Sept. 3 on 200 block of East Mercury

Five-year-old short-haired Siamese cross, gray and cream, picked up Sept. 3 on 700 block of South Washington

Details: 406-782-3682.

Two car seat clinics planned

Childrens car seat clinics are planned from 3 to 5 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 14, and 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 21. Both will be held at the Uptown Fire Station, Montana and Galena.

Car seats will be checked for correct installation, making sure the seat matches your childs weight and age, recall information, and more.

For details call Mary Jo Stosich at the Butte-Silver Bow Health Department, 406-497-5087.

Final dance planned Sept. 18 at Star Lanes

The Butte Dance Group will hold its final dance from 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 18, at the Star Lanes Family Center, 4600 Harrison Ave.

Music will be by John Fox (The Highlites). The band plays all types of music from the 1940s to the 1960s including waltz, Latin, polka, and country. Admission is free, and there will be door prizes. Everyone is welcome. Details: 406-494-3251.

Think tank session planned Sept. 30

Fountainhead Coworking and Montana Tech Business Guild are co-hosting a Small Business Think Tank Session at 6:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 30, at Fountainhead, 66 W. Park St. (suite 210).

Attendants can get assistance with marketing, SEO (online presence), website development, and other operational challenges.

Refreshments and materials will be provided. To reserve a spot, contact Maria at 406-299-3256 or Jessica at 406-593-7896.

Walk to Fight Suicide set for Sunday

The second annual Out of the Darkness: A Walk to Fight Suicide will be held Sunday, Sept. 11, at the Butte-Silver Bow Chamber of Commerce, 1000 George.

Check-in, a resource fair, and remembrance activities begin at 1 p.m., and you must be registered by noon Friday, Sept. 9. Register to walk individually or as a team, or pledge your donation on the walk website, www.buttewalk.org. Pre-registering online will make your check-in the day of the walk go much more quickly.

Those who have raised $150 or more by the day of the walk will receive a walk t-shirt. All walkers who are pre-registered will also receive an extra entry into our silent raffle.

Montana Tech to host Running Amuck

The Montana Tech Foundation is hosting the fourth annual Running Amuck for Scholarship Bucks 5K mud run/obstacle race from 9 a.m. to noon Saturday, Sept. 24, on the Tech campus.

The cost is $40 a person or $20 for students. Money raised through Running Amuck for Scholarship Bucks will help fund the Montana Tech Foundation's Butte Initiative, which supports Butte kids attending Montana Tech.

To register, go to runsignup.com/Race/MT/Butte/RunningAmuckforScholarshipBucks.

Alcohol Service Training offered this month

Responsible Alcohol Sales and Service Training Classes will be held in Butte and Fairmont on the following schedule for September, led by state certified trainers Jim and Laura Cross:

Tuesday, Sept. 13, 4:30 p.m.  Comfort Inn, 2777 Harrison Ave.

Thursday, Sept. 15, 6 p.m.  Fairmont Hot Springs, 1500 Fairmont Rd., Anaconda

Tuesday, Sept. 20, 4:30 p.m.  Small Business Development Center, 305 W. Mercury (second floor, education room)

Tuesday, Sept. 27, 4:30 p.m.  Comfort Inn, 2777 Harrison Ave.

This class is for anyone serving or selling alcohol, to include bar owners, bartenders, convenience store clerks, grocery store clerks, servers, and for special events such as festivals where alcohol will be sold or consumed. RASS classes are free and its the LAW to be RASS-certified within 60 days of hire and every three years thereafter to serve or sell alcohol.

RASS trainings are sponsored Southwest Montana Chemical Dependency in partnership with Butte Cares Inc., Town Pump/Comfort Inn, and Fairmont Hot Springs Resort. Details: 406-565-5226 or rassbutte@gmail.com.
ORIGINAL FESTIVAL

The Original Festival continues Saturday, Sept. 10, at the Original Mine yard. A meet and greet with the festivals headlining artist, Ghostface Killah, starts at 9:15 p.m. and 11 p.m. Saturday. Gates open at 2 p.m. Saturday. Details: www.ogfest.com.

Saturdays Original Festival schedule:

Burgman & Boyle Memorial Stage:

2:30-3:30 p.m.  No Fancy

4-5 p.m.  The Soaks

5:30-6:30 p.m.  Butterscotch

7-8 p.m.  The Frights

8:30-9:30  MAYHEM

10-11 p.m.  Ghostface Killah

The Food Court:

3:30-4 p.m.  Chloe Gendrow

5-5:30 p.m.  Sista Otis

6-6:30  Sound Beast

8-8:30 p.m.  Filth and Foul

After Parties

(Must be 18 or older; $5 cover with festival wristband)

Covellite Theatre: 9-10 p.m., Vice Pope; 10-11 p.m., Skillbilliez; 11-midnight, Kapture; and Midnight to 1:30 a.m., Rekoil

Silver Dollar Saloon: 11 p.m. to 1:30 a.m., Snoozy Moon

NAIA POWWOW

The North American Indian Alliance Powwow, an annual celebration of Native American dancing, crafts, food and music, continues from 7:30 a.m. to midnight Saturday, Sept. 10, at the Butte Civic Center. Details: 406-782-0461.

BOULDER FESTIVAL

The ninth annual Boulder Chamber of Commerce Music and Art Festival will be held Saturday-Sunday, Sept. 10-11, at Veterans Park in Boulder. The free, family-friendly festival will feature Montana performers, artists, and authors. The schedule is from noon to 7 p.m. on Saturday and 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday and includes food vendors, craft booths, authors and artist booths.

WEED WHACKERS BALL

The Big Hole Basin Cooperative Weed Management Area will host its 11th annual fundraising banquet, the Weed Whackers Ball, Saturday, Sept. 10, at the Wise River Community Building. Doors open at 5 p.m. for the social hour and silent auction, followed by a barbecue buffet with salads and desserts at 6 p.m. A live auction will follow. Tickets are $35/couple; $25/individual and $10/child (under 12). Details: 406-925-1346 or go to aburch@beaverheadcounty.org.

CHATEAU READING

The final installment of the Clark Chateaus 2016 Summer Speaker Series will be Saturday, Sept. 10, at 321 W. Broadway. Aaron Parrett will give a reading and book signing of "Montana Americana Music: Boot-Stomping in Big Sky Country. Doors open at 6 p.m. and the reading will begin at 7. A $10 donation is suggested at the door.

SPECIAL MASSES

Two special Masses are planned this weekend by Butte Catholic Community North:.

-- A Mass to thank the citys police officers, firemen and emergency medical technicians starts at 4:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 10, at St. Patricks Church, 329 W. Mercury St.

-- The third annual Ecumenical Mass for Tech students, faculty, staff and parents will be held at 7 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 11, in Immaculate Conception Church, Western and Caledonia on Buttes North Side. The Mass is celebrated with Father Patrick Beretta, Pastor Mark Arbaugh of the Baptist Student Union, and Chancellor and Mrs. Don and Vicki Blackketter.

CLUBS AND MEETINGS

BUTTE

An anxiety and depression support group meets at 1:30 p.m. every Saturday at 721 S. Utah St.

Adult Children of Alcoholics meets at 10 a.m. Saturday in the Atherton Apartments community center room, 4500 Continental Dr. Details: 406-396-4112.
WASHINGTON -- The smell of fresh paint greeted lawmakers reacquainting themselves with their workplace after their seven-week break.

The scaffolding was coming down, revealing a gleaming dome and, underneath it, restored friezes, oil paintings and statues. The Capitol has been returned to its former glory.

If only they could do the same to Congress.

After their seven-week recess, which was the longest break since at least 1960, the people's representatives in the House are back for just four weeks before recessing again until the election -- and there has been talk of cutting those four weeks of work to three or even two.

They might as well go home, because the House to-do list could end up looking something like this: Impeach the IRS commissioner. Punish the Democrats. Sue the Saudis.

This is how Donald Trump happened.

Americans are worried and angry about the big issues: stagnant wages, immigration, trade deals, health care, entitlement programs, the Zika virus. Yet the best Congress can do for the moment is to keep the government running on autopilot for a few more months, and even this isn't guaranteed.

With three weeks to go in the fiscal year, Congress has enacted not one of the 12 annual appropriations bills (the House has passed six). While leaders struggle to pass a temporary "continuing resolution," Republicans fight among themselves about how long it should last and hard-liners threaten to derail it by adding language banning Syrian refugees.

As Republicans sat down for their caucus meeting Wednesday morning, the conversation wandered -- this member's new grandchild, that member's engagement, various anecdotes and talking points. GOP leaders held a news conference after the meeting, at which they voiced enthusiastic support for ... a new soapbox that had appeared over the recess to help shorter members of the caucus be seen behind the lectern.

"You could put three people on that thing," House Speaker Paul Ryan said upon entering the room and spying the new piece of furniture.

"Gee whiz!" exclaimed Rep. Lynn Jenkins, R-Kan., trying it out.

With so little happening, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy tried to create the illusion of activity, asserting that in this Congress "a total of 219 bills have been enacted into law. That's an increase over the 25-year average."

Actually, the average number of bills enacted into law in previous Congresses going back to 1991 is 435 -- double the current output. McCarthy's spokesman said the claim was based on when Congress went on its long summer holiday. But as of now, McCarthy's 219 bills are well below the 25-year average of 257 enacted at this point by previous Congresses. And most have been minor "suspension" bills, such as post-office namings.

"People want a positive vision and a clear direction for solving the country's big problems," Ryan declared at his news conference.

But instead, they're getting:

-- An attempt to impeach the IRS commissioner. Some hard-liners, still angry about the IRS' treatment of conservative groups, are trying to force leaders to hold a vote to impeach the current commissioner, John Koskinen, who took over after the alleged wrongdoing occurred.

-- A bid to punish two dozen House Democrats, led by civil rights icon John Lewis, who staged a sit-in on the House floor in June to protest Republicans' refusal to bring up gun-control legislation.

-- Legislation allowing the families of 9/11 victims to sue Saudi Arabia in federal courts, a bill with no chance of getting enough votes.

Instead, House Republicans could spend their fleeting time at work resolving an impasse blocking funds to fight the Zika infection. The Senate reached a bipartisan deal in May to provide $1.1 billion for the effort, but the agreement fell apart when House Republicans added a provision restricting funds from going to Planned Parenthood.

At Wednesday's news conference, CNN's Manu Raju asked Ryan why he wouldn't accept a "clean bill" without the poison pill.

"Look, give me a break," Ryan said, blaming the Senate.

But even some of Ryan's Republicans aren't giving him a break. Rep. Richard Hanna, R-N.Y., told Bloomberg's Billy House that "we become obstructionists" with the Planned Parenthood gambit.

And Rep. David Jolly, R-Fla., carried a jar full of Florida mosquitoes onto the House floor. "During the seven weeks ... we were gone, cases of Zika rose from 4,000 to by some estimates over 16,000 in the country," he said. His constituents "are demanding action and they are seeing inaction, and in that inaction they are angry."

Yes, but have they seen that new soapbox for members of Congress? Gee whiz!

Follow Dana Milbank on Twitter, @Milbank.

(c) 2016, Washington Post Writers Group
I am saddened to write this opinion piece, but after much thought, I must. In my long life I have never voted for a Democrat for president. That will change this year.

The country can survive Hillarys chronic deceptiveness. It might not survive Trumps erratic, ego-driven recklessness.

Trump is an egomaniac conman who poses the greatest threat to our country of any presidential candidate in history. His instability is demonstrated by the fact that he has changed his party registration at least five times. He was a registered Democrat as recently as 2009. By his rhetoric Trump is not a conservative. By the gullibility of the modern Republican Party, he is their candidate for president. His only true loyalty is to himself.

He boasts that he would strengthen the U.S. military, and then signaled that he might not keep our commitments to NATO, which is practically an invitation to Putin to pounce. Trump says he looks forward to an improved relationship with the Russian dictator. Small wonder.

He brags that he knows more about ISIS than our generals, but is ignorant of fundamental facts about the Middle East. He ridicules the military service of U.S. Sen. John McCain, but obtained five military deferments while McCain was being tortured as a prisoner of war.

Trump brags his success in business qualifies him to be a successful president. Since he wont release his tax returns we dont know how successful he has been either in making money or avoiding paying taxes. We do know that his companies have declared bankruptcy at least four times.

Trump brags that he doesnt need to read, that he follows his own intuition, and makes decisions according to his consistently good judgment. Is government by Trumps gut something were willing to risk?

Trump loyalists argue that conservatives must support Trump to keep Clinton from making liberal appointments to the Supreme Court. The truth is that presidential nominations to the Supreme Court are subject to confirmation by the U.S. Senate, and must receive the support of a super-majority of 60 senators before even reaching a final vote. Unless Republicans suffer a huge loss of Senate seats, they can, as they are doing now, prevent confirmation of a nominee they consider too liberal.

No similar checks exist on the president in terms of foreign policy and the critical questions of war and peace. China has expansionistic designs in the South China Sea and Russia in Europe. Who knows about North Korea? When recently asked for his reaction to a possible Trump presidency, President Reagans Secretary of State George Schultz responded, God help us.

He (or She) might have to. In his 1935 novel "It Cant Happen Here," Sinclair Lewis shows how a dictatorial demagogue running as a Democrat could seize control of the country. Radical takeover of the staid and grounded old Republican Party seemed unbelievable, even for a novel, back in 1935. Eighty years later, in a very different Republican Party, we saw it happen.

The Donald, a real life equivalent of Lewiss fictional character Buzz Windrip, has hijacked the Republican Party. In elections during unsettled times, people generally favor change. Foul-mouthed and big-talking Trump certainly is a change from all previous presidential candidates, and he has a real chance to win. For me the choice is painful, but not difficult. Out of respect for my partys heritage, and concern for my countrys future, Ill be voting for the only candidate with a realistic chance of stopping Trump. Ill be voting for Hillary.

-- Bob Brown, of Whitefish, is a former Montana secretary of state and state senate president.
GREAT FALLS  The candidates for an open seat on Montanas Supreme Court each sold themselves as having the right kind of experience for the job at a debate here Thursday.

Dirk Sandefur, a District Court judge, said hes the only one who is qualified and characterized Kristen Juras, an adjunct law professor, as inexperienced and having a political agenda. Juras said her years as an attorney in private practice representing individuals in business and property law cases make her an addition sorely needed to the court.

Sandefur has been a district judge for 14 years and was a Cascade County prosecutor and Havre police officer before that. Juras is an adjunct professor at the University of Montana School of law and has practiced law around the country.

There is no substitute for relevant experience, Sandefur told the crowd of about 100. I have it. Respectfully, Professor Juras does not.  I just dont think shes in the same class as I am as far as relevant qualifications.

Juras showed her educators background in many of her responses, taking time to tell the audience that the race is nonpartisan and explain the courts role.

Having taught for 16 years has actually improved my ability to sit on the Montana Supreme Court, she said, adding she has become skilled at research, analyzing issues and breaking down complex ideas down to teach students. That is a good attribute for an appellate judge to have.

Though shes never been a judge, Juras said the Supreme Court already has several former judges and would benefit from more diversity.

A diverse court is a better court. That is lacking and has been lacking on the court and it would be a gap I would fill.

Juras told the crowd the Supreme Court is not known as being business-friendly because it lacks consistency and that her experience representing small businesses and corporations makes her the best choice to understand the issue, saying the court too often reverses itself.

We need predictability in application of laws. That unpredictable climate from a business perspective is a climate that doesn't entice investments from Montana.

Sandefur said hes seen the problem first-hand too.  I dont like it when the Supreme Court tells a district judge you got it wrong because you followed the precedent, but it does happen from time to time.

Juras rebutted attacks from Sandefur accusing her of bias. Ask any of my students and they would tell you I never brought up a philosophical agenda into the classroom.

The Supreme Court position is nonpartisan, but Sandefur said hes been labeled the liberal in this race. You wont find a hint of bias or partisanship in any decision Ive ever made.

The idea that a former police officer and state prosecutor and state district judge is a liberal is laughable, Sandefur said.

Though the race is nonpartisan, the candidates support tends to split along party lines. Juras endorsements include the Republican-friendly Montana Chamber of Commerce. Sandefur has been endorsed by Montana Conservation Voters, MEA-MFT, Montana AFL-CIO, Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers & Trainmen, and the Montana Sportsmen Alliance, groups that traditionally support Democrats.

In an early question asking the candidates about a time their ethics had been challenged, Juras stirred up a past public spat between her and former Gov. Brian Schweitzer.

When asked about a time when her ethics were questioned, Juras told the crowd that she stood her ground even when the governor calls and asks the president of the university to terminate my employment with the university.

In 2012 Juras prepared a report for an interim legislative committee on centrally assessed property taxes that in part criticized the Department of Revenue. Juras had completed the study under contract for Cablevision/Bresnan through her private firm. The company had been mounting a campaign to change the valuation process so its tax burden would be lower.

Gov. Schweitzer was upset with my report, she said. He had called the president of the university and asked for my resignation, and of course the president did not ask me to resign.

But Schweitzer said Thursday night that he never called for Juras to be fired.

She sat in front of the legislative committee and identified herself as a law school professor and said, Those are my law students. I knew that was a violation of university policy, and so I did call Royce Engstrom, he said. To suggest I called for somebodys firing would be inaccurate. Unless they were on the telephone call with Royce Engstrom and myself, I would say no one else would be knowledgeable of that phone call.

Sandefur mostly didnt comment on Schweitzers actions but did say Juras didnt do enough to clarify that the opinion she presented the committee was her own. At the time of her testimony before the committee in 2012, Juras did tell lawmakers the report was her own and didnt represent ideas held by the university. The written study did not disclose the distinction.

Sandefur also pointed to a law review article co-authored by Juras that deals with stream access and property rights in Montana.

The article, written with two attorneys for the Florida-based Coalition for Property Rights, criticized the expansion of public access to rivers via private land in several states and critiques previous Montana Supreme Court rulings.

Sandefur said the article characterizes developments in Montana law as a monumental eroding of private property rights and said Juras cited possible federal laws that could reverse state law. Part of the controversy has been that in the law review article she talks about ongoing development and evolution of Montana law, he said.

Juras said private property rights are important but called Montanas 1985 stream access law a good balance of private rights and public access and said she will enforce it.

I think the law is settled, she said, adding the court will continue to hear questions defining issues such as what the high water mark is and what is navigable stream. The cry that were hearing that public access is somehow in danger in Montana is not true.

There are three open seats on Montanas Supreme court, though the one Sandefur and Juras are running for is the only one contested. Incumbent Chief Justice Mike McGrath and Jim Shea ran unopposed in the primary.

Each year the court rules on hundreds of civil and criminal case appeals from Montana's District Courts. The court also deals with appeals from the Montana Water Court and the Montana Workers Compensation Court.

Sandefur is leading the fundraising race, with $118,964 in the bank at the start of this month to Juras $38,101.09.
Public Notice is hereby given that the City Council of the City of Muscatine, Iowa will hold a public hearing on an ordinance amending Chapter Four and Five of Title Ten of the City Code, floodplain management regulations. This public hearing will be conducted in the City Hall Council Chambers at 7:00 p.m. on Thursday, September 15, 2016.
MUSCATINE, Iowa  Andrew Fangman, the city planner for Muscatine, provided the council with a zoning ordinance update at Thursday nights in-depth Muscatine City Council session.

The current zoning ordinance largely dates to early 1970s, Fangman said.

In September of 2013, Fangman said the city adopted a new comprehensive plan that included updating the citys zoning ordinance to provide sufficient flexibility, yet still preserve the citys unique character.

He said the plan is also to make it more user-friendly, and illustrate many of the regulations for clear understanding.

Wave one, the first phase of the revisions, will include changes to chapters regulating parking, garage and accessory buildings, fences, cell towers, animals in residential areas, and sight triangle regulations.

Parking regulation changes will include different space size, 9.5 feet by 18 feet, opposed to the current nine feet by 20 feet. Planting trees and other storm water quality management practices will also be required.

Fangman also said parking lots greater than five spaces will be required to provide bicycle parking.

The justification being that we as a community are investing a lot in bike infrastructure and this is part of leveraging the value of that so that people who use it actually have a place to park their bikes at their destination, he said.

Keeping of animals in residential districts will also be updated, with no change for under two acre properties, with only domestic companion animals permitted. Small farm animals, he said, will have four allowed per acre for properties more than two acres, with medium farm animals at two per acre, and large at one per acre.

Regulations for bee keeping will also be added, as the city currently does not have bee keeping regulations.

Its becoming a more popular thing to do, Fangman said.

He said a complete version of the first phase of the changes will come before council at a later date.

In other business, council members Santos Saucedo and Scott Natvig, the at-large council members, were appointed to the newly created nominating commission. Saucedo will serve in the one year position and Natvig for two years, to allow the staggering of appointments for future board members.

Two public hearings will be held, regarding the Grandview Avenue and Park Avenue Urban Revitalization Areas at 7 p.m. on October 13.

City Administrator Gregg Mandsager said the areas are being considered for a tax abatement program to encourage development in key areas of the city.
MUSCATINE, Iowa  Residents within the Muscatine School District will have the opportunity Tuesday to continue a program that has benefited students, parents, faculty and staff over the last 30 years. The Physical Plant & Equipment Levy (PPEL) expires in 2020 and the Muscatine Schools Board of Education approved a special vote which will take place on Tuesday, Sept. 13.

It is important to approve this funding opportunity now because the board is planning for the next 10 years, Lisa Bunn, secretary to the Board of Education, said. "It allows the board to determine what items can be budgeted and what items will have to wait."

The 10-year facility plan that is being developed by the district includes several projects that the PPEL funds will be used for pending approval by the voters. Some of the projects in the planning stages currently are a new gymnasium entrance at the high school along with updated physical education facilities, Phase 3 and 4 of the MHS Renovation Project which includes new science classrooms, the 1:1 computer initiative for grades 6-12, and infrastructure needs such as new roofing, HVAC systems, and security upgrades.

PPEL creates a special revenue fund that the school district can use to help pay for the purchase of equipment and maintenance of buildings, grounds, and other infrastructure needs. The fund cannot be used for salaries, travel, classroom materials, or other printing or media services.

Without this fund the money would come out of the general fund which would take away from what we could do for the students and the teachers, Bunn said.

Some of the most recent infrastructure projects that have utilized PPEL funds are the new Jefferson Elementary school and the new wing at Muscatine High School. The boiler at West Middle School was also replaced out of this fund.

The voter PPEL rate will remain at $1.10 per thousand dollars of assessed valuation. A Board PPEL which does not have to be approved by the voters is at 33 cents per thousand dollars of assessed valuation.

Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday at seven locations:

 Location 1 (Precincts 1 & 2)  Muscatine Community School Administrative Building, 2900 Mulberry Ave.

 Location 2 (Precincts 3 & 4)  Clark House, 117 W. 3rd Street

 Location 3 (Precincts 5 & 6) - Muscatine Community School Administrative Building, 2900 Mulberry Ave.

 Location 4 (Precincts 7, 8, 76/Cedar & Fruitland 1)  Mulford Church, 2400 Hershey Ave.

 Location 5 (Precincts 9 & 10)  McAvoy Center (MCC), 1403 Park Avenue.

 Location 6 (Bloomington & F2/Lake Twps)  Church of Christ, 3603 Mulberry Ave.

 Location 7 (Sweetland Twp., Fulton Twp., Montpelier Twp. & Wilton Twp.)  New Era Fellowship Hall, 3455 New Era Road.

Additional information can be found at the MCSD web site: http://www.muscatine.k12.ia.us/news/physical-plant-equipment-levy-faqs-special-vote-9-13-16
Minister of Public Security Guo Shengkun vows to fight the crime from its source

Fraud suspects who were captured in Armenia are escorted by police officers off a plane at the Baiyun International Airport in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, on Sept 2. [Qian Wenpan/China Daily]

Seventy-eight Taiwan residents and 51 mainlanders suspected of involvement in telephone fraud were repatriated to Guangzhou, Guangdong province, from the Republic of Armenia earlier this month, police said on Thursday.

It is the largest number of Taiwan suspects involved in phone fraud to be repatriated to the mainland in a single case, said Liang Ruiguo, deputy director of the Criminal Investigation Bureau of the Guangdong provincial Department of Public Security.

"After health checks, the Taiwan suspects were put in the Guangzhou No 1 and No 3 detention houses for further investigation. Most of them admitted to committing phone fraud during questioning," Liang told a news conference on Thursday.

Officials from Armenia immediately informed mainland police when they found that many Chinese people had rented luxury villas but never opened the windows after they entered the country.

The Armenian police detained 129 suspects after busting six dens in the capital Yerevan on Aug 20, after they were told by their mainland counterparts that the suspects might be involved in fraud.

Three hundred police officers from Guangzhou were sent to Armenia on Aug 26 to help investigate the case.

The gang members passed themselves off as law enforcement personnel, and had defrauded mainland residents in 13 provinces of more than 7 million yuan ($1.1 million) since June, officials said.

Zhu Weijia, a senior anti-fraud officer from the Ministry of Public Security, said many new internet technologies have been used by fraud suspects, which adds to the difficulties for police.

"But more concrete and effective measures are being introduced to crack down on the crime," Zhu said.

The crackdown in Armenia was launched after many mainland people, including students, committed suicide after being defrauded.

On Aug 29, Cai Shuyan, 19, was found dead in Huilai county of Guangdong. Cai committed suicide after she was defrauded of more than 10,000 yuan that her mother gave her to pay tuition fees.

Cai had received an admission offer from Guangdong Teachers College of Foreign Language and Arts in August.

Similar cases had been reported in the previous month.

Police across Guangdong have detained 5,165 phone fraud suspects after cracking 4,850 cases in the first eight months of this year.

Minister of Public Security Guo Shengkun has promised to introduce more measures to fight fraud.

"We cannot allow a large number of residents to be defrauded, again and again, of tuition fees, pensions or money for medical bills," Guo told a work conference on fraud in Shanghai on Tuesday.

He urged government departments to try to prevent and fight the crime from its source.
Les emplois a Rennes sont abondants et varies. Il y a quelque chose pour tout le monde. Que vous soyez a la recherche dun emploi []
Les blattes ou cafards (Blatta orientalis) sont des insectes qui appartiennent a la famille des Blattoptera. Ils se caracterisent par leur forme allongee, leurs ailes []
The latest MyBroadband speed test results show that MTN provides the fastest average mobile download speeds in South Africa.

MyBroadbands speed test servers use Ooklas platform and are hosted in Teracos vendor-neutral data centres in Johannesburg and Cape Town.

Through NAPAfrica, all network operators at its peering points are provided with a free 1Gbps connection to the MyBroadband speed test platform.

MyBroadband filters speed tests based on network information from Internet service providers to ensure accurate results which reflect real-world conditions.

The table below shows the fastest average download speeds for mobile and wireless providers over the past month.

Top Mobile and Wireless ISPs Rank ISP Service Download Speed Upload Speed 1 MTN Mobile 23.46 Mbps 19.04 Mbps 2 Vodacom Mobile 17.54 Mbps 7.45 Mbps 3 Telkom Fixed LTE 10.59 Mbps 4.38 Mbps 4 Cell C Mobile 8.37 Mbps 4.11 Mbps 5 Telkom Mobile 8.02 Mbps 3.33 Mbps 6 iBurst Wireless 1.28 Mbps 0.38 Mbps

More on broadband

We need to prepare for 5G today: Expert

BitTorrent throttling allowed under new net neutrality rules
The application process is now open, and the administration says the forms should take five minutes to complete. Get more info on that and more recent business news here.
A hit-and-run fatality in the early morning hours last Friday is being charged as a case of murder.

Russell Lee Wyant, 54, of Napa was arraigned before Napa County Superior Court Judge Francisca P. Tisher on Wednesday on charges of murder, assault with a deadly weapon and leaving the scene of an accident.

Wyant is accused of using his 2014 Volkswagen Beetle to kill Michael Dean Green, 54, of Napa, who was found lying in the intersection of Monarch Street and Byway East shortly after 2 a.m. Friday with injuries to his head, according to the police report.

Green was transported to Queen of the Valley Medical Center in critical condition and was pronounced dead at 10:02 a.m. on Saturday.

Green and Wyant were known associates, but had recently had a falling out, according to the police report. The two men lived just two blocks apart in the Springwood Estates area.

Green had been walking home from a relatives house at the time of the incident, said Napa Police Sgt. Amy Hunter.

Wyant, who is being held on $3 million bail, was tied to the death by vehicle parts left at the scene, police said.

Vehicle parts were scattered in the roadway. They were identified as belonging to a silver Volkswagen Beetle between the years of 2012 and 2014.

Police later put out a bulletin for a 2014 silver VW Beetle with license plate 7EFY913 with drivers side damage.

A few hours after Green died from his injuries on Saturday, the California Highway Patrol, responding to a tipster, found Wyant driving the vehicle on Interstate 80 near Tennessee Street in Vallejo.

Police reported that Wyants vehicle had damage consistent with the suspect vehicle and that human biological matter was found on the damaged area.

Wyant was arrested and booked at the Napa County jail.

Wyant had previously told police that he hadnt had the vehicle for about a month, according to the police report. Police said that Wyant had been the only person with the vehicle during the time frame of the wreck.

Greens associates told police that he had been recently followed by a vehicle matching the description of the silver Beetle. They also told police that Green had been having problems with Wyant, according to the police report.

The charges against Wyant include two special allegations  that he used a deadly weapon in the commission of a murder and that he caused the victim to become comatose due to brain injury and to suffer paralysis in the commission of the assault.

Wyants next hearing is scheduled for Sept. 14. The case is still under investigation.
Starting as early as next fall, Napa Fire will answer emergencies in Browns Valley from a station bordering Browns Valley.

Fire Station No. 5  which will serve the citys west-side communities whose residents have long complained of dangerously long response times  is slated to break ground next month at Browns Valley Road and Laurel Street, with completion expected in October 2017.

The station cleared its last major hurdle Tuesday when the City Council approved a $4.23 million construction bid for the project, which has endured years of delays due to the Great Recession, cost concerns and even the residue of a long-closed gas station at the site.

Napa Fires arrival in Browns Valley would assuage a lingering safety concern that has grown since its first housing divisions opened in the 1950s. With the department dispatching trucks west from its downtown station, response times for the neighborhoods more than 8,000 annual calls have stretched to 8  minutes or more, well beyond firefighters normal four-minute target for controlling flames or staving off patient death from heart attacks and strokes.

Council members accepted a bid from Diede Construction Inc., a Lodi firm that submitted the lowest of seven offers. The only Napa-based company in the running, Helmer & Sons Inc., received a 3 percent credit off its $4.26 million offer as a local firm, but still missed out by less than $35,000.

Even Diedes winning bid, however, was nearly $1 million over previous estimates  which Ernie Cabral, a city associate civil engineer, said was largely because of a year-long delay after the city in April 2014 discovered contaminated soil from a Chevron station that had been demolished 25 years before. During the passage of more time while the soil was removed, increasing construction demand led to higher prices from contractors across Northern California, Cabral declared.

Even with that explanation, the price hike gave Councilman Scott Sedgley, a retired firefighter, some pause.

To go up 25 percent in one year from the original cost is really unacceptable, he told public works staff before the vote.  We hear from developers that delays in getting permits will make or break their projects, and I dont often believe them, but 25 percent is just over the top.

Ive been supportive of this fire station for many, many years, added Sedgley, a Napa city firefighter for three decades before his election to the council in 2012, but thats a hard pill to swallow.

Ultimately, though, all five council members accepted Diedes bid, deciding the urgent safety needs in Browns Valley must outweigh any sticker shock.

Theres so much work going on, its a boom time and contractors are scrambling, said Councilwoman Juliana Inman, arguing against a re-bid or any further delay of the fire station. Its hard to get on someones work list if you need an engineer for a project. I dont think the price will go back down  unless we want to wait for another Great Recession.

Slated for a city-owned half-acre lot at 3001 Browns Valley Road and Laurel Street, Napa Fires newest branch will include a 5,145-square-foot fire hall with truck bays, a dormitory, kitchen and fitness center. Drawings released by Shah Kawasaki Architects Inc. of Oakland, Napas design partner, have depicted a low-slung Craftsman-like structure with slanted roofs. City officials expect the station to remain in use for at least half a century.

The citys current budget includes $4.15 million for the fire house, and Napa will add $942,100 out of its capital improvement reserve fund for soil testing, construction management and inspection, and any unexpected costs.

After decades of growth in Browns Valley, sluggish fire response times from downtown became an issue so acute that by 2006, some residents tried to fight the arrival of new developments until their neighborhood received a fire station to ensure the safety of future residents.
The sheriff's deputy paces slowly at the foot of the school auditorium stage, a gold badge pinned to the pocket of his polo shirt, a gun holstered at his hip. His expression is somber. He would look right at home leading a DARE or gang-resistance program, warning teenagers against ruining their lives with drug use or street crime.

But his audience members this morning are fidgety, pint-size 11- and 12-year-olds, and his warnings are about the threats lurking in their laptops and gaming devices and smartphones - such as grown-ups who send messages or photos to kids they don't know, trying to get them to respond. Child abusers have a name for this technique.

"They call it bunny hunting," the deputy says, and the hundred-or-so tweens sitting before him grow very quiet.

The original version of this class was offered only to parents, with an emphatic content warning. But as perils like sexting, sextortion, cyberbullying, sexual predation and identity theft have grown, the sheriff's office in Loudoun County, Virginia, expanded its outreach to include sessions for sixth-graders and ninth-graders - the kids transitioning to middle or high school, still figuring out how to navigate their teen years, even as the devices in their pockets place a world of adult content and consequences at their fingertips.

And so the deputy, Sgt. James Spurlock, a 26-year law enforcement veteran who oversees the sheriff's Crime Prevention and Juvenile Resource Unit, has come to Stone Hill Middle School in Ashburn, Virginia, to lead a program called "Technology Safety for Teens"- an anodyne title that belies its disturbing material - because cops know that the need to teach kids about sexual exploitation online starts younger and younger.

Spurlock begins by asking the middle-schoolers a question.

"If someone threatened you online or sent you something inappropriate, how many of you would immediately go tell your parents?"

Several dozen kids raise their hands right away. A few of their classmates visibly hesitate, then do the same. Other students sit with their arms pinned firmly to their sides.

"OK, not everyone's hand is up," Spurlock says. He doesn't sound surprised. "So let's talk about that."

Educating young people about the dangers of the digital realm has become a growing priority for law enforcement agencies and schools nationwide. Some jurisdictions use specific curriculum or training programs - i-SAFE, a leading technology safety training program employed by officials in the United States, is used in 4,000 school districts across the country - while others conduct their own outreach.

Spurlock has been leading Loudoun's technology safety classes since they began in 2012. He always tells the students that he's not only a cop, but also a dad, and also a weapons designer for the video gaming industry (the Stone Hill crowd is impressed by this revelation). His goal is to connect with kids and leave a lasting impression, which means he doesn't sugarcoat the material.

And he also wants to hear what the kids have to say. So he asks the Stone Hill students why they wouldn't tell their parents if something upsetting happened online - a friend was mean to them, or a stranger contacted them, or someone asked them to send a picture.

"They might take away your phone," one girl says.

"You might just think it's a joke," another girl says.

"Maybe you think you can just handle it yourself," a boy volunteers.

Spurlock explains how important it is for kids to tell an adult if something - anything - makes them feel unsure or uncomfortable online. When he teaches these classes to parents, he says, he always tells them that they shouldn't get angry or punish a kid for telling the truth.

After all, their parents are probably the ones who brought them into the digital world, posting childhood photos and videos. "For most of you, your internet presence started long before you touched your first device," Spurlock says.

A few rows back from the stage, two girls are raptly focused on a paper fortune-teller game.

The session is about an hour long and slightly gentler than the version presented to parents; Spurlock doesn't tell the students about the worst cases - the ones where a teen committed suicide because of bullying, or a child was killed by someone who stalked them online. He avoids mentioning the lives cut short, focusing instead on those who were irrevocably changed.

Like Cassidy Wolf, a onetime Miss Teen USA whose laptop webcam was hacked by a 19- year-old student who took nude photos of her: "Forever, this will follow her, because there's no way to know where those pictures went," Spurlock says. Or Axelle Despiegelaere, a pretty Belgian teen who lost a lucrative modeling contract with L'Oreal after a photo of her posed with a hunting rifle beside a dead oryx antelope surfaced online.

He tells them about a girl who posted a photo online with a "geotag," which meant that an online stalker figured out where she lived and showed up on her front porch. He talks about voice-modulating software that can disguise someone's age and gender - adults often use it when they contact kids through video games. There is a large community of predators out there, he says, and now the two girls with the fortune-teller game are staring at him.

In a recent case in Loudoun, investigators arrested a man who had used Skype to send sexual solicitations to more than 70 children. The man was a government official, Spurlock says, making the point that predators are often seemingly trustworthy figures: "Judges, law enforcement officers, teachers," he says. "It's not the creepy old guy in the basement."

A girl with a curly ponytail raises her hand. "Why would someone work so hard just to hurt a kid?"

For the first time, Spurlock hesitates for a moment. He explains that predators have a range of motivations - "every person is a little different" - but offers no specific examples.

He changes the topic, focusing next on what kids can do to protect themselves. Dozens of iPhones are pulled out of pockets when Spurlock explains how to disable the geotag function on Instagram and check that their accounts are set to "private" instead of "public." He explains that they should never share their family's wireless router password with anyone else (about a dozen raise their hands to admit they already had).

He also reminds the students that they themselves could be considered predators: "If you have nude pictures of a person under the age of 18, you are going to prison," he says. "How old do you have to be in Virginia to be prosecuted as an adult?"

A confident chorus answers: "Eighteen!"

"Fourteen," Spurlock says. This gets the reaction he was looking for; the kids gawk and gasp.

"I know this might all seem unbelievable," he says, "but don't ever think it can't happen to you."

He surveys the grim-faced children in front of him and recites a statistic from a 2014 FBI report about children between ages 12 and 18 who receive unwanted sexual solicitations online.

"One in five of you will be a victim before you turn 18," he says. He repeats: "One in five."

The room is mostly quiet. Some tweens stare at their phones, or at the wall-mounted clock over the auditorium door, ticking down the final minutes of the school day.

Others glance uncomfortably each other's faces, doing the math, wondering when and how and who.
It would have been nice to have been able to compare the candidates for president of the United States, and their plans for the military, veterans and national affairs.

It would have helped to describe how Matt Lauer and NBC could have done a better job in orchestrating their so-called Commander in Chief forum on Wednesday night. It might have been useful to discuss how Hillary Clinton could have avoided giving up a third of her half-hour to questions about her emails. (Answer: It might have helped if she had held regular press conferences over the last year to deal with that issue.)

But none of these subjects seems even as remotely relevant as the plain fact that the Republican nominee demonstrated yet again how he is entirely unprepared to be president.

Donald Trump's answers on Wednesday night rarely reached the level of "wrong." Mostly what he said was incoherent gibberish.

For example, consider his "answers" when asked about the seeming contradictions in his "position" on ISIS. He could not explain his new idea for demanding a plan from "the generals" to defeat Islamic State. Nor would he explain how his old secret plan was going to work. Or why he says he knows more about Islamic State than U.S. generals.

He simply babbled about firing all the current generals. Or about listening to them if they had a better plan. He said nothing at all to show he knew anything about what generals do, or what presidents do, or anything else.

For example: He's still saying "take the oil" as a supposed solution for what to do about Iraq. When challenged (and I don't remember his being challenged on this before), he explained that, well, Iraq has a lot of oil. He didn't supply guidance for how much it would cost in dollars and lives to guard "the oil" indefinitely, or how other nations in the region and allies elsewhere would react if the U.S. acted as an imperial power, extracting resources from conquered provinces. Trump has a line, and he's sticking to it.

When asked about sexual assault in the military, Trump just said it was a big problem, and defended his earlier claim that it stemmed from having men and women in the military together. He mentioned something about creating courts in the military to handle assault cases -- these, of course, already exist. Oh, and these assaults are a big problem.

His answer to a question about veterans was basically to say that veterans love him. And, by the way, Vladimir Putin loves him, too.

This doesn't even include that Trump is still lying about opposing the war in Iraq (he didn't until it started going bad) and the intervention in Libya. He introduced a new whopper, claiming that he knew from the "body language" of Barack Obama's national security officials that they oppose everything the president has done. Needless to say, whatever the officials believe, they certainly weren't going to act so unprofessionally. Trump is slamming them by making the claim.

When asked what he has done to prepare for the presidency, about the best he could offer was that he has (supposedly) met with the retired generals and admirals who have endorsed him.

As appalling as all this is, there is something that tops the list: As far as anyone can tell, Trump really thinks he's prepared for the presidency.

Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg View columnist. He taught political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio and DePauw University and wrote A Plain Blog About Politics.
The choice is no longer violence or nonviolence. Its nonviolence or nonexistence -- Dr. Martin Luther King.

Uttered the night before he died, these words go far beyond marching strategies in Selma, or guidelines for keeping a movement alive. They reflect Dr. Kings belief that the future of humanity ultimately depends on our ability to settle conflicts without resorting to the primitive solution of violence. Sting put it another way: Nothing comes from violence/and nothing ever could.

Yet the reality is that our world is awash in violence, from local gang shootings to domestic violence, and from shootings of and by police to the genocidal, systematic murders performed by ISIS devotees. We live in a world where gross disparities in quality of life are taken more-or-less for granted, and the inequitable distribution of finite resources always threatens to undermine our feeble efforts to improve the lot of our fellow creatures.

Outside of a tiny minority of brainwashed extremists, no one you encounter will tell you that this is the kind of world they want for themselves, or for their children and grandchildren.

The obvious difficulty is how to bridge the gap between where we are and the vision of a future world where violent conflict is only a distant memory. Violence is not one problem, but rather a kind of default response to a vast array of problems and conflicts. When emotions are high and other solutions have failed, violence sometimes seems like the justified, and perhaps the only possible response.

This is where education and consciousness-raising can make a difference. Of the many international efforts to promote peace, including the Declaration of Human Rights and other U.N. initiatives, none has shown greater enthusiasm and involvement, especially at the grassroots level, than Pace E Benes Campaign Nonviolence. Launched in 2014, this movement has grown so rapidly that there were 370 events, in all 50 states and nine countries, in September of 2015.

Centered in Athens Ohio, the group has published John Dears book, The Nonviolent Life, and is serving as an umbrella organization to unify efforts to create a culture of peace and nonviolence.

Locally, the monthly Peace Vigil sponsored by the Napa Valley Unitarian Universalists and the Napa-Sonoma Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) joined its September 2015 vigil with the Campaign Nonviolence cause, drawing a spirited group to the corner of Third and Soscol in Napa for a two-hour peace demonstration.

This years action, also in coordination with Campaign Nonviolence, will take place Sunday, Sept. 25, from 2-4 p.m., also at Third and Soscol. Participants will have the opportunity to meet other local peace activists, to learn more about Pace E Bene and Campaign Nonviolence, and to sign the Campaign Nonviolence pledge, that they will strive to practice nonviolence toward themselves and all others, and will join global movements to abolish war, end poverty, stop the destruction of the earth, and foster a just and peaceful world for all.

This action is not a march  we will stay at the four corners of the intersection, being careful not to interfere with car or foot traffic, and we will show our solidarity with signs, flags, banners, and respectful interactions with the passing public. Participants are urged to bring a hat, water, sunscreen, a chair if you like, and a peace-loving heart.

Think of this as the journey of a thousand miles, and our local peace vigil as a first step, or perhaps just the next step, in your personal and our cultural efforts to achieve a transformation. If not now, when?

Joe Wilcox

Napa
Nine students were injured when a Solano Community College staff member, who appears to have suffered a medical emergency, drove his vehicle into a portable classroom on the Fairfield campus where students were taking a math test Friday morning, a Solano County sheriff's deputy said.

Eight students suffered minor injuries and one student suffered moderate injuries when she was trapped in her desk seat after the crash around 9:15 a.m., Deputy Christine Castillo said.

The male staff member in his late 40s suffered moderate injuries and was taken to a hospital. Drugs or alcohol are not believed to be factors in the crash, Castillo said.

Many students had completed the test but 10-15 students remained when a black Acura SUV crashed into portable classroom 1101, Castillo said. A sheriff's deputy stationed on the campus was the first to respond.

"We're extremely thankful there were not more serious injuries," Castillo said.
The construction site at Gwadar port in the Arabian Sea. Behram Baloch / Agence France-Presse

The recent launch ceremony for the free trade zone in Gwadar Port is a further step toward establishing the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.

The port, which is only 400 kilometers away from the Strait of Hormuz, should have long ago developed into an important trade and logistics base for the Arabian Sea region. However, due to its backward facilities, it has failed to play its deserved role or be included in the global economic network.

However, with the necessary infrastructure it will be able to fulfill this role and become a foundation for the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.

During his visit to Pakistan in April 2015, President Xi Jinping put forward a framework for economic cooperation between the two centered on the construction of such an economic corridor, which comprises the development of a deepwater port at Gwadar, infrastructure construction, and energy and industrial cooperation.

Gwadar Port is thus expected to be a bridgehead for the economic integration between the two neighbors.

The development of Gwadar Port needs China's funds and technologies, but more importantly, its future development needs the Chinese market. If Chinese merchant vessels can make stopovers in Gwadar and if oil can more freely flow from the Persian Gulf to China via Gwadar, the port will become a key part of China's trading network.

China's accelerated efforts at opening-up and the development of its vast western region, as well as its establishment of an increasing number of economic and trade links offer strong economic support to Gwadar's development.

At the same time, Gwadar's prosperity will also help expand local employment and contain the rise of separatism in economically backward Balochistan and promote economic interactions between the region and Pakistan's central government.

--Beijing News
The Military Committee, NATOs highest Military Authority, will meet in Chiefs of Defence (CHoDs) Session from 16-18 September 2016, in Split, Croatia. The Meeting will be hosted by the Croatian Chief of the General Staff, General Mirko Sundov.

The Chiefs of Defence will discuss implementing the decisions taken by NATO Heads of State and Government at the recent NATO Summit held in Warsaw in July 2016. They will review key aspects of ongoing and forthcoming tasks in order to provide additional guidance and direction. The CHoDs will also assess and exchange views on NATO Operations, Missions and Activities.

The meeting will be chaired by General Petr Pavel, the Chairman of the NATO Military Committee. He will be supported in each session by General Curtis M. Scaparrotti (Supreme Allied Commander Europe or SACEUR) and General Denis Mercier (Supreme Allied Commander Transformation or SACT).

The Military Committee meets twice a year at NATO Headquarters in Brussels, at the level of Chiefs of Defence to discuss NATO operations and missions and provide the North Atlantic Council with consensus-based military advice on how the Alliance can best meet global security challenges, and once a year they meet in an Allied member country. On a day-to-day basis, their work is carried out by permanent Military Representatives at NATO Headquarters in Brussels.

Media Opportunities

Friday 16 Sep 2016

18:30-19:00: Official Welcome Ceremony (Gallery Mestrovic)

Saturday 17 Sep 2016

08:30-08:50: Military Committee in Chiefs of Defence Session (Le Meridien Lav)

Opening remarks by General Petr Pavel, Chairman of the NATO Military Committee

Opening remarks by the President of the Republic of Croatia, Mrs Kolinda Grabar - Kitarovic

18:00-18:30: Joint Press conference with General Petr Pavel, Chairman of the NATO Military Committee and General Mirko Sundov, Chief of the General Staff of the Croatian Armed Forces (Le Meridien Lav)

Imagery

Photos and video of all opening sessions will be available online at www.nato.int/ims after each meeting. The joint press conference will not be live streamed, but it will be made available on the http://www.youtube.com/NATO and on the NATO IMS MC Conference event page.

Accreditation

Only accredited media will get press passes for the NATO Military Committee Conference in Croatia. Requests for accreditation will be processed electronically. Accreditation forms must be sent by 10:00 am on 14 September 2016. Forms delivered after this date may be refused.

The forms, photo (if possible) and required copies of the documents should be sent by e-mail to: infor@morh.hr. Please use the following title in the subject of your e-mail: "Accreditation NATO MCC 2016".

Passes must be worn visibly at all times, and security personnel may ask to see another form of ID at any time. We would like to inform the media that security checks will be conducted separately prior to every media event. For this reason, media are expected to at least an hour before the events.

Social Media

We will post the latest information and pictures from the Conference on our official Twitter accounts: @CMC_NATO and @NATO_PASCAD. Please use the hashtag #NATOCHoDs when tweeting about the MC Conference.

Enquiries

Points of Contact for Public Affairs and Strategic Communication for the Military Committee Conference 2016:

Lieutenant Colonel Drazen Jonjic, Senior Advisor, Public Affairs and Publishing Independent Department, Croatian Armed Forces

Tel: + 385 1 4568015

E-mail: drazen.jonjic@morh.hr

Lieutenant Colonel Branimir Gacina - Bilin, Public Affairs Officer, Public Affairs and Publishing Independent Department, Croatian Armed Forces

Tel: +385 95 804 7833

E-mail: bgacina@morh.hr

Points of contact for the Chairman of the NATO Military Committee:

Lieutenant Colonel Robert Koster, Deputy Public Affairs and Strategic Communications Advisor to the Chairman of the NATO Military Committee and NATO International Military Staff

Tel: + 32 490 58 06 47

E-Mail: koster.robert@hq.nato.int

Elizabeth Steenson, Public Affairs Officer, NATO International Military Staff

Tel: + 32 475 75 75 23

E-Mail: steenson.elizabeth@hq.nato.int

For more background information about the NATO Military Committee click here
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg commended Turkey for its contributions to the Alliance and to the international fight against terrorism in a visit to Ankara on Friday (9 September 2016). At a joint press conference with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, Mr. Stoltenberg stressed that ''a democratic, strong and stable Turkey is important for our shared security.''

The Secretary General welcomed that Turkey plays key role in the fight against ISIL, helps build stability in Afghanistan, and is central to NATOs efforts to cut the lines of human trafficking in the Aegean Sea. He stressed that the Alliance supports Turkey with increased naval and air assets, and defensive missile systems on the border with Syria.

Mr. Stoltenberg reiterated NATOs strong condemnation of Julys attempted coup and support for the Turkish people and their democratic institutions. Any attempt to undermine or attack democracy, in any of our countries, is an attack on the very foundation of our Alliance, he said. The Secretary General also expressed condolences for those who lost their lives, and respect for the courage of the Turkish people. He added that those involved in the failed coup should face due legal process. I am confident that Turkey will keep its commitment to the rule of law and the democratic values at the heart of our Alliance, he said.

On Friday, the Secretary General also met with Prime Minister Binali Yldrm, Defence Minister Fikri Isk, several parliamentary leaders, and other senior officials. He also toured the Grand National Assembly, damaged by the failed coup. Mr. Stoltenberg met with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday evening, at the start of his visit to Ankara.
President discusses latest foreign political developments around Artsakh

Azerbaijan officials considering opening embassy in Israel

Armenia PM, EU Special Representative for South Caucasus discuss regional security and peace

Nikol Pashinyan, Garo Paylan exchange views on Armenia-Turkey normalization process

Quake hits Armenia-Turkey border zone

Armenia ruling party adopting new vision regarding Karabakh conflict settlement

Russia MOD: Ukraine carried out terrorist attack on Black Sea Fleet ships, civilian ships in Sevastopol

Premier: CSTO should plan force operation, restore Armenias territorial integrity

Armenia PM: All countries consider Karabakh to be part of Azerbaijan

Armenias Pashinyan: CSTO does not exist

Kremlin responds to question on extending mandate of Russian peacekeepers in Karabakh

Armenia premier: We need to know, ultimately, what Russian peacekeepers are doing in Nagorno-Karabakh

Armenia PM: Im ready to sign document, accept that Russian peacekeepers term in Karabakh be extended 10-20 years

Armenias Pashinyan: We are ready to delegate border guard service operation to Russian border guards

Finland, Sweden promise to join NATO together

European Parliament calls on Armenia to consider diversifying its security partnerships

Visiting Armenia MPs brief Canada lawmaker on recent Azerbaijan military aggression

Armenia PM at ruling party congress: We declared repairing states foundation our primary task

Karabakh President: Russia leaders statement inspires certain hopes

Armenia ruling party congress kicks off

Man breaks into US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's home, demands to speak with her, beats husband with hammer

EU-Armenia Joint Committee on Research and Innovation first meeting to be held in November

Provincial governor of Armenias Gegharkunik: EU monitoring mission already started

US accuses Russia of disinformation regarding Washington intentions towards Armenia, Azerbaijan

Mexico fully legalizes gay marriage

Newspaper: Azerbaijan not inclined to sign anything with Armenia in Russias Sochi

Armenia ruling party convening closed convention

Italian prime minister demands that she be addressed as prime minister in masculine form

Pentagon to send Ukraine new aid package worth $275 million

Europe will ban sale of one type of car

European Commission head announces new aid and investments for Serbia

Biden calls Putin's rhetoric on nuclear weapons 'dangerous'

Lukashenko on Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict: What are you fighting for in these mountains, where not even goats walk?

Swedish authorities offer to create united northern army

Lukashenko: Conflict issue between Armenia and Azerbaijan must be resolved now - with Ilham Aliyev

Lukashenko about situation on Armenian-Azerbaijani border: Where are we racing horses, where are we rushing to?

Pashinyan: Armenia-Diaspora relations undergo profound substantive changes

Lukashenko to Pashinyan: Sit down with Aliyev and make a decision, if you don't make it today, it will be worse

Bulgarian interim government urges to speed up transition to euro zone

President of Karabakh: It is necessary to unite all national potential and efforts

IMF: China's sharp and uncharacteristic economic slowdown will stall growth in Asia by the end of 2023

Iran: Riots in country were planned by the intelligence services of the USA, England, Israel and the KSA

Steinmeier: Ukraine war caused 'epochal break' in Germany's relations with Russia

Gas prices in Europe remain high in coming years

Ararat Mirzoyan and Toivo Klaar stress importance of hosting EU civilian mission in Armenia

Armenia's ambassador-at-large: Daily false propaganda can't cover up Azerbaijani war crimes

Taiwan MFA outraged by Putin's speech on his status and Pelosi's visit

Armenia gives no response to peace treaty proposals, Bayramov says

Netanyahu expects return to power after 5th Israeli election in 4 years

Armenian gravestone found in Trabzon, Turkey neighborhood

Pashinyan: CSTO Secretary General's report mainly reflects existing realities

Azerbaijan talks possible deliveries of its gas to international Turkish hub

CSTO leaders to meet in late November: Situation on Armenian-Azerbaijani border will be discussed

Dollar, euro continue falling in Armenia

Pelosi's house attacked, her husband injured

Russias Putin to have private talks with Armenias Pashinyan, Azerbaijans Aliyev

Mher Grigoryan: CIS needs a new scientific and technical agreement

Pentagon strategy doesn't rule out use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear threats

French National Assembly plans to pass resolution proposing certain sanctions against Azerbaijan

Mher Grigoryan: There are no other corridors in the trilateral statement other than Lachin's

Konstantin Zatulin: Russia should have made maximum efforts so that there would be no war in Karabakh

The Hill: The American people deserve to know how the war in Ukraine will end

Sochi to host trilateral talks of Russian, Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders on October 31

Poland receives first Turkish drones

Hungarian government may extend price limits on fuel and some basic foodstuffs

Armenias Simonyan attends meeting of heads of EEU countries parliaments

Polish general appointed as head of EU mission to train Ukrainian troops

Russia MP: Karabakh status decision is in fact its Armenians safety guarantee

Zatulin: West seeks to push Russia out of negotiation process at any cost

Legislature head proposes to organize, under CIS auspices, return of Armenians detained in Azerbaijan

Iran prevents bomb explosion in Shiraz crowded street

Iraqi parliament expresses vote of confidence in new cabinet

France lawmakers visit Armenian Genocide Memorial in Yerevan

Putin: Moscow is doing everything possible to normalize relations between Yerevan and Baku

Annual shopping festival kicks off in Dubai on December 15

Lazarevsky Club: Minute of silence held in memory of fallen Russian and Armenian soldiers

Bayramov and US Assistant Secretary of State discuss Yerevan-Baku relations

Expansion of cooperation with Interpol is important, Armenia PM says

Armenia defense minister briefs Austria envoy on situation due to recent Azerbaijan military aggression (PHOTOS)

Australia can't rule out energy price caps

Armenia parliament speaker: Use, threat of force undermine processes aimed at establishing peace

Garo Paylan is in Yerevan

Barack Obama tries to help Democrats win midterm elections

Azerbaijan president, Russia first deputy PM discuss North-South transport corridor project

PM Pashinyan receives France-Armenia friendship group delegation from French parliament

Taiwan urges China to start talking

Armen Grigoryan and Toivo Klaar discuss Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiation process

Matviyenko: Russia will continue mediation for signing Armenia-Azerbaijan peace treaty

Politico: Scholz and Macron threaten U.S. trade retaliation

CIS premiers sign several agreements at Kazakhstan meeting

Konstantin Zatulin: Nagorno-Karabakh peoples right to self-determination must be respected

Armenia legislature head: Policy of threats, coercion is unacceptable to us

U.S. must strengthen its defense against growing threats from both China, Russia

Karabakh ex-President: Necessary to rule out mistakes, miscalculations which will have irreversible consequences

EU reaches agreement to ban new cars with internal combustion engine by 2035

Benny Gantz: Future of Israel and Turkey is promising

EU Special Representative for South Caucasus arrives in Armenia

Lazarevsky Club meeting underway in Yerevan, Moscow

Yellen sees no sign of recession in U.S. economy in near future

Cannes palm trees promenade named after Charles Aznavour
YEREVAN.  With the upcoming U.S. presidential elections in November, the Armenian American community relies less upon campaign promises on the Armenian Genocide and more upon the political strength of the community itself. Armenian News-NEWS.am interviewed the Executive Director of the Armenian National Committee of America Mr. Aram Hamparian to learn about communitys expectations.

What is the Armenian community of America expecting from this years presidential vote? Is there difference in positions of the presidential candidates on the Armenian Genocide?

This year's presidential elections are marked by the contrast between an outsider candidate and an insider candidate and the general polarization of the American electorate.

Secretary Clinton has an extensive record and a meaningful level of understanding regarding a range of Armenian issues, including, unfortunately, some highly objectionable actions and statements. Among these were her public assertion that the Armenian Genocide is a matter of historical debate, her ultimately successful efforts to defeat the Armenian Genocide Resolution before the U.S. House in late 2010, and the pressure she applied to Armenia to accept the reckless and irresponsible terms of the Turkey-Armenia Protocols.

By way of contrast, Donald Trump has essentially no record on Armenian issues, short of his multi-million dollar hotel ventures in Turkey and Azerbaijan. In Baku, his business partners included the son of Azerbaijan's Transport Minister, Anar Mammedov, whose Azerbaijan America Alliance spent over $10 million lobbying against Armenian American interests from 2012 - 2015. Mr. Trump has not yet made any public statements on issues of special concern to Armenian American voters - such as the Armenian Genocide, Nagorno Karabakh, and U.S.-Armenia relations.

As someone involved in American politics for more than a generation, Hillary Clinton tends to have more connections to our community than Donald Trump, who is new to electoral politics.

There are ardent backers of both among Armenian Americans, as well as many who are dissatisfied with the two options offered this year by America's two major parties.

Can we expect that there can be shifts in Washingtons policy on the Armenian Genocide and other issues concerning Armenians after the elections?

If we have learned anything over the past several election cycles, it's that we cannot be certain what either candidate would do after the election, even if they were to issue campaign pledges about the Armenian Genocide or other issues of special concern to Armenian Americans. As a practical matter, we rely less upon campaign promises and more upon the political strength of our community and the moral capital of our cause.

Do you think any particular candidates election to the post might bring changes to Washingtons position on Turkey?

Changes to the U.S.-Turkey relationship are being largely driven by Ankara, which is increasingly distancing itself from the U.S.-led security architecture of the post World War II era, so it's not clear at all that this election will mark a watershed in this regard.
YEREVAN.  On Saturday and Sunday, the World Federation of UN Associations (WFUNA), in collaboration with the Armenian UN Association (AUNA), is launching the Mission Possible program in Armenia at Yerevan State University, with the support of the Government of the Republic of South Korea, United Nations Academic Impact, and a Korean NGO called Human in Love.

Mission Possible is a global citizenship education program for high school students that applies the values, principles and methods of the United Nations, as well as WFUNA's and AUNAs many years of experience in education and youth development. Throughout the program, students will acquire global knowledge and 21st century skills, learn about the United Nations and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and apply project management tools through student-led projects to address global issues that are also relevant in local Armenian communities. Upon completion, students come to see themselves as Agents of Change, with the power and skills to contribute positively to the world around them.

For the first cohort of Mission Possible: Armenia, five high schools in Yerevan will participate, engaging 130students and 14 teachers.

On Saturday and Sunday, the program is launching with an interactive workshop, during which representatives of WFUNA from New York City, South Korea and India will visit Armenia and conduct two days of trainings.

Workshop facilitators will also include 10 university students from South Korea who are currently studying education and global citizenship.

The trainings will be delivered in English. All students are welcome to join the program, provided they have excellent knowledge of English. This will facilitate communication in English with other program participants in different countries, as intercultural exchange is a core component of the program.

WFUNAs Mission Possible program has already been implemented in India, and will soon expand to additional countries. Visit the WFUNA website to learn more about Mission Possible: http://www.wfuna.org/mission-possible.
YEREVAN.  National Assembly (NA) of Armenia Vice President Eduard Sharmazanov, who also heads the NA Armenia-Uruguay Parliamentary Friendship Group and is on a working visit to Uruguay, met with Raul Fernando Sendic Rodriguez, Vice President and Senate President of Uruguay.

The parties highlighted the further expansion and development of parliamentary cooperation between the two countries. It was mutually noted that in spite of the great distance, Armenia and Uruguay are friendship countries, the NA informed Armenian News-NEWS.am.

The NA deputy speaker noted that Uruguay was the first country to dispel the darkness of Turkish denial by recognizing Armenian Genocide, in 1965.

We should unitedly fight against Turkish denial, stressed Sharmazanov. Turkey must eventually confront its own history.

Uruguayan Vice President Sendic, for his part, focused on Armenian Genocide recognition and condemnation by the international community.

The interlocutors also touched upon the Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) peace process. In his context, the Armenian parliament vice president particularly noted: Azerbaijan must respect the principle of complete exercise of the right to self-determination of Artsakh Armenians. Azerbaijan is the only obstacle creator in the process of talks, displaying unacceptable behavior.

Raul Sendic, in turn, stated that Uruguay supports the pacific settlement of the Karabakh conflict and is against any attempt of military resolution of the conflict.
YEREVAN.  Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamyan went to the President and offered his resignation by his own decision.

Vahram Baghdasaryan, head of the ruling Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) National Assembly Faction, on Friday told about the aforesaid to reporters.

He recalled that, during his tenure as PM, Abrahamyan interacted with the public and civil society, and he did not evade talks.

Nonetheless, as per Baghdasaryan, there is a need for change in the programs. In his words, however, these changes need to be carried out by way of newer programmatic approaches.

As per Vahram Baghdasaryan, if from now on the authorities fail to make the society sense these changes, the government and the halls of power will have a lot to think about.

He noted that there is a huge gap in Armenias political opposition, and this prevents the authorities from working.

Because everyone seeks to capture the opposition arena, and they target the authorities, added Baghdasaryan.

At the end of Thursdays Cabinet session, Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamyan issued a statement informing that he is stepping down.

And during the RPA Board meeting later in the evening, President of Armenia and RPA Chairman Sargsyan announced that he has decided to nominate Karen Karapetyan as the next Prime Minister of Armenia.

Karapetyan is the former mayor of capital city Yerevan, and former general director of ArmRosGazprom natural gas company.
The international recognition of Karabakh is only a matter of time.

Armenian National Assembly (NA) Vice President and head of Armenia-Uruguay Friendship Group Eduard Sharmazanov, who is on a working visit to Uruguay, said the aforementioned at the meeting with the country's Foreign Minister Rodolfo Nin Novoa.

Sharmazanov noted with satisfaction that Uruguay and Armenia closely cooperate in the international organizations and support each other's candidacies during different elections, the Armenian NA press-service reports.

He also highly appreciated the circumstance that during the voting on resolutions concerning Armenia in the UN, Uruguay always comes up with balanced stance.

Besides, Sharmazanov noted that the international condemnation of the Genocide will help prevent new crimes against humanity.

''In the process of recognizing the Genocide, Uruguay committed itself to a leading role, serving as an example to the whole world and thereby manifesting its allegiance to the universal values,'' the NA Vice President said.

Apart from this, Sharmazanov touched on the Karabakh conflict: ''The Artsakh people should have an opportunity to fully exercise their right to self-determination, achieving full independence. Everyone, including the Azerbaijani, should understand that the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR) cannot be part of Azerbaijan. The international recognition of Karabakh is only a matter of time. ''

He also stressed that Armenia and Karabakh see the solution of the conflict only in the framework of the OSCE Minsk Group, which is the only internationally recognized format of the Karabakh conflict resolution.
YEREVAN. - President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan on Friday received the delegation headed by the leader of the Socialist faction of the French National Assembly (NA) Bruno Le Roux.

The President welcomed the subsequent visit of the French deputies to Armenia, stressing that Armenia is proud of its special relations and warm friendship with France, the close inter-parliamentary cooperation greatly contributing to this.

I would like to stress the consistent work of various French deputies, and especially Mr Le Roux, who contributes to the deepening of the Armenian-French inter-parliamentary ties, as well as the strengthening of interstate cooperation in general, Sargsyan noted.

The President also thanked friendly France for its constant support to Armenia in issues of vital significance. In that context, he highly appreciated the contribution of France in the acknowledgement and condemnation of the Armenian Genocide. Apart from this, President Sargsyan thanked the French authorities and people, attaching importance to the consistent work aimed at the adoption of the law criminalizing the Armenian Genocide denial.

Expressing satisfaction with the regular mutual visits and active communication, Sargsyan stressed that the agenda of the Armenian-French relations is so extensive that even during the frequent meetings there are lots of important and useful issues to be discussed.

At the meeting, the interlocutors discussed the possibilities of deepening the Armenian-French inter-parliamentary cooperation and the steps aimed at enhancing the ties between the two friendly states and peoples.

Mr Le Roux was pleased to recall last years meeting between the Armenian President and the delegation led by him, during which Sargsyan briefed them on the process and objective of the Armenian constitutional reforms.

The leader of the Socialist faction noted that he is happy to see the Armenian President consistently follow the path of the reforms, which he then supported so enthusiastically. The French deputies inquired about the position of Serzh Sargsyan on the implementation of the institutional reforms in Armenia.

The interlocutors also referred to the negotiation process of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The Armenian President highly appreciated Frances balanced stance on the Nagorno-Karabakh issue and its active role in the framework of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairmanship, attaching special attention to the personal efforts of the Armenia peoples friend President Hollande in advancing the negotiation process.
COCOA BEACH, Florida  An officer involved shooting occurred just after 3 p.m. today at the 7-11 convenience store located at 3177 North Atlantic Avenue, Cocoa Beach, Florida.

The area around the gas pumps in front of the 7-11 have been roped off with crime scene tape. The suspect who was involved in the shooting, 30-year-old Oliver H. Babadjide, was airlifted via First Flight medical helicopter to Holmes Regional Medical Center in Melbourne, Florida and is in custody and hospitalized.

Babadjide was previously arrested for battery on a law enforcement officer on April 13, 2012. Below is his mugshot from last months arrest:
At a symposium to start the 20th anniversary programme of Halifield Schools, Maryland, Lagos, Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, on Thursday, warned against the use of force against the#BringBackOurGirlscampaigners, saying that the group should be given their space to protest.

Soyinka was reacting to a warning given by the Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, to the BBOG campaigners on Wednesday, against continuing with their street processions, which he (Idris) said constituted a security threat to public peace and order.

The Nobel laureate noted that as long as the Chibok girls remained Boko Haram captives, protests by the group could not be too much.

In his keynote address, Soyinka added that peaceful demonstration was a democratic right which could not constitute threats to national security and public order.

Firing off his warning to the BBOG campaigners, IGP Idris had stated that the police "will not sit on the fence and watch such a scenario unfold."

But Soyinka noted that it would be dangerous to forget the missing Chibok girls, saying that it could boost their morale and teach pupils in the country the need to stand up for their rights.

He said, "I saw a report in a national daily that demonstrations on behalf of the Chibok girls pose a threat to national security and I thought, not again.

"My mind flew back immediately to another Governor under whose democratic leadership, parents were tear-gassed for demonstrating peacefully about losing their children in a plane crash in Port Harcourt.

"Democracy is not just about campaigning. It is exercising human rights. It is about helping to build the society. Demonstrations cannot be too much as long as those girls are missing. Demonstrations are an act of solidarity. Wherever they are today, when their mothers demonstrate on their behalf, their morale is raised.

"That is my message to security operatives who get scared of those who are agitating for a cause and fire tear gas at them.

"They must be treated with utmost respect and must be given their space. It is an act of solidarity for the children. Otherwise, when you stop these demonstrations, you are saying forget about the children.''

Urging the Federal Government and its agencies to speak with one voice, Soyinka also asked Nigerians to express solidarity with the missing girls and their families.

"We have important things like reviving the economy, and fighting corruption, among others, to worry about. Yes, those things are important but ultimately, the society is for humanity and when one of us is hurt, we must allow ourselves to protest.

"I hope we don't get the negative effects when they bring back our girls. And when we talk about democracy to our children, it is to teach them their rights. Therefore, there has to be greater coherence from the government and its agencies.

"We don't have to know one single individual among the girls. We should demonstrate democratic responsibility.

"Let us continue to recognise solidarity with these girls and one day, they will come back or we will get to know what has become of them," he said.
10,000 troops are to be deployed to the Niger Delta in 2017, by the Federal Government.

This was disclosed on Thursday by the Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Tukur Buratai, when he paid a courtesy visit to the Bayelsa State Governor, Seriake Dickson, at the Government House, Yenagoa.

The deployment is part of the Army's Operation Crocodile Smile (OCS) campaign in the region.

According to the COAS, so far, the Government had deployed 3,000 military personnel to the Niger Delta.

Buratai said, "The army has deployed about 3,000 officers and men, as well as equipment for the exercise.

"The number of personnel will be increased to 10,000 by next year."

Buratai added that the exercise was aimed at training officers in marine combat operations "because the state is largely riverine and borders the Atlantic ocean and therefore prone to external aggression."

He said the exercise was to also prepare the army against external and internal aggression.

Buratai assured the communities in the Niger Delta that the ongoing military exercise was designed to protect them.

He appealed for calm among the indigenes, noting that troops involved in the exercise understood the rules of engagement and would strictly adhere to them.

In his remarks, Dickson appreciated the military for their selflessness in discharging their duties.

The Governor also commiserated with them over the death of some soldiers in a boat mishap that occurred in the state.

He, however, urged them to adopt dialogue as a means of fighting criminality in the region.
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Harn Museum explores conflict's consequences

Jennifer Karady, Former Lance Corporal West Chase, U.S. Marine Corps, Combat Service Support Company 113, I Marine Expeditionary Force, veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom, with fiancee, Emily Peden; Ann Arbor, MI, May 2014

As ceremonies across the country look back on the Sept. 11 attacks 15 years ago, the University of Floridas Harn Museum of Art is using art to reflect on violent conflicts consequences in the United States and abroad.

Curator of Photography Carol McCusker spent two years working with veterans groups, UF faculty and students and the Gainesville community to create the exhibition Aftermath: The Fallout of War America and the Middle East, which features the work of 12 leading photographers from around the world.

We wanted to step back from war and show its impact, McCusker said.

McCuskers gallery talk on Sept. 11 is one of a dozen programs  including a veterans panel on the challenges of homecoming and visits by contributing photographers  designed to spark conversation and reflection.

There was a lot of discussion about striking a balance between showing consequences of war both at home and abroad, she said.

Jennifer Karadys series portrays scenes that American soldiers cant forget, recreated in the midst of their lives back home. For former Marine Lance Corporal West Chase  depicted in Karadys photo above  crowds of people bring back the stress of tense moments during the Fallujah elections. Karady will speak at the Harn on Oct. 23 at 2 p.m. with Lebanese-American photographer Rania Matar, whose work is also part of Aftermath.

Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Lynsey Addario  the subject of a forthcoming Steven Spielberg movie starring Jennifer Lawrence  has seven pieces in the exhibition, including a photograph of a Syrian refugee family so hauntingly beautiful that at first glance its easily mistaken for a Madonna and child painting.

Lynsey Addario, Killis Camp, Turkish/Syrian Border in Turkey, October 22, 2013

In another series, images from Queen Victorias photographer in Afghanistan are juxtaposed with modern equivalents by British photographer Simon Norfolk.

Simon Norfolk, Afghan Police being trained by U.S. Marines, Camp Leatherneck., 20102011, from the series Burke + Norfolk, loan and images courtesy of Simon Norfolk and Gallery Luisotti, Santa Monica, CA

The exhibition also includes video installations and an interactive touch panel with quizzes, maps, news clips and TED talks.

Aftermath is supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts with support from the University of Florida, Harn endowments and private donations.
As part of a massive divestment plan within Petrobras, the company was sold to the Canadian investment fund, Brookfield, it said on Thursday.

While no official value for the sale was given, the Brazilian press placed it at an estimated $6 billion.

Nova Transportadora do Sudeste manages Petrobras pipelines in the states of Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Esprito Santo and Minas Gerais, all states in the southeast of Brazil, where the country's largest oil deposits are located.

Petrobras is undergoing a deep financial crisis due to low oil prices and the discovery of a massive corruption ring within its ranks.

The company is planning to divest assets worth $15 billion by the end of the year as a way to reduce its debt, which reached $124.5 billion in June.

--IANS py/

( 176 Words)

2016-09-09-10:25:57 (IANS)
A daylong shutdown on Friday to protest release of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu has disrupted normal life across Karnataka. With buses, taxis and autos staying off roads, movement of people and goods halted in many cities and towns in the southern state, officials said. Though the shutdown has not affected train and flight operations, hundreds of passengers alighting at railway stations and airports at Bengaluru and Mangaluru in the early hours were stranded in the absence of public or private transport. Many passengers who had to board trains or flights during the day rushed to railway stations and airports in the early hours before the 12-hour shutdown began at 6 a.m. State-run Bengaluru metro rail corporation, which operates on the east-west corridor, also suspended service but may resume late evening if normalcy prevails. The state government declared holiday for all schools and colleges across the state to avoid inconvenience to students and teachers in the absence of transport. Hundreds of IT companies, including Infosys, Wipro and multinationals in Bengaluru and Mysuru declared holiday for their employees, responding to the shutdown call by the Karnataka Okkuta, a federation of 500 pro-Kannada and other organisations. Similarly, factories, private offices, markets, shops, malls, hotels, eateries, pubs, bars, theatres and petrol bunks have remained closed in support of the shutdown. "The day-long state-wide shutdown is in protest against the Supreme Court order and to express resentment over the state government releasing the Cauvery water when we don't have it for drinking and irrigation," said Okkuta president Vatal Nagaraj here. Bowing to the apex court's Monday order, the state began releasing daily 15,000 cusecs since early Wednesday from Krishna Raja Sagar (KRS) and Kabini reservoirs across the river basin for 10 days amid protests and demonstrations by farmers, traders and youth in the Mysuru region. Admitting that frequent shutdowns cause inconvenience to the public, Nagaraj said there was no alternative to protest against injustice and failure of the state government in protecting the interests of the people, especially farmers. The federation, however, exempted supply of essentials, including milk and medicines, from the shutdown. Ambulances will also be allowed to ferry patients to hospitals. Deploying additional police personnel, the state government has tightened security, stepped up vigil and intensified patrolling to maintain peace and law and order. --IANS fb/pgh/dg ( 395 Words) 2016-09-09-11:35:58 (IANS)
The Global Business Travel Association (GBTA), the voice of the global business travel industry, has announced appointments to the newly formed GBTA India Advisory Board. The Advisory Board is made up of prominent senior travel buyers and suppliers who will offer strategic guidance as GBTA expands its member base, supplies industry-leading research and conducts education and networking events in the region. "Regional advisory boards play an important role in GBTA's efforts across the globe," said Gaurav Sundaram, GBTA India's regional director. He further stated, "As India experiences continued double digit business travel spending growth, making it one of today's fastest growing business travel markets in the world, I am pleased to have a group of such experienced industry professionals offering their time and expertise to bring the association's core activities of education, research, advocacy and networking to the region." The 2016-2017 India Advisory Board Members include: Rakesh Bansal, CEO, Amadeus India Neerja Bhatia, Vice President India, Etihad Airways Rajdev Bhattacharya, General Manager, WIPRO Travel Rajeev Goswami, CEO and Co-Founder, WWstay Ashish Kishore, Country Head, dnata International India Mritunjaya Chandra Mohan, APAC Travel Manager, Adobe Systems Gaurav Nagwekar, Head of Corporate Travel, Reliance Industries Limited Chandresh Natu, APAC Lead Procurement, AON Arif Patel, Vice President Sales, India, Accor Hotels Victor Pynn, COO, Amadeus Neal Rogers, APAC - MEA Travel Head, CSC Subrato Sarkaar, Group President Administration, Aditya Birla Group On September 6, GBTA brought together Indian business travel buyers and suppliers for a day of education and networking at the flagship GBTA India Business Travel Symposium. The Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) is the world's premier business travel and meetings trade organization headquartered in the Washington, D.C. area with operations on six continents. GBTA's 8,000-plus members manage more than USD 345 billion of global business travel and meetings expenditures annually. GBTA and the GBTA Foundation deliver world-class education, events, research, advocacy and media to a growing global network of more than 28,000 travel professionals and 125,000 active contacts. (ANI)
New versions of the six formerly "lost" episodes of 'The Power of the Daleks,' featuring Doctor Who from the 1960s, are being remade as animations and coming back this fall. The master negatives of the 'Power of the Daleks,' which was among many early installments of the beloved cult science-fiction series shows, were destroyed in a BBC archive purge in 1974, reports The New York Times. Based on surviving clips, photographs and audio recordings from the episodes, the series is reported to feature Patrick Troughton as the doctor. Charles Norton, the producer and director of the new series, said in a statement that the animated adaptation "is the most ambitious 'Doctor Who' archive restoration ever attempted." This long-running BBC science fiction series is particularly known for the frequent numbers of actors robbed in to play the character of the doctor- the first being William Hartnell replaced by Patrick Troughton. The long list goes on with Peter Capaldi as the eleventh and the current Doctor Who. Exactly 50 years since its first production, the new episodes will stream in England on November 5 and premiere on BBC America on November 12. These special episodes of the 'Power of the Daleks' is already hailed, by Radio Times as the "holy grail for Doctor Who fans." (ANI)
Over 1000 organisations had called for dawn-to-dusk shut off andall roads in the tech hub of Bengaluru, known for its busy trafficwore a deserted look. The entire city was shut barring essentialservices like medical stores, milk supplies and newspaperdistribution.

Public transport was off the roads in the entire state. Businessestablishments, schools and colleges, Government offices, banks inboth public sector and private, IT companies, APMC market and allother public enterprises were shut down for the day across the state.

However train and air services were not affected in the entire state. But many passengers who came from long distances using the two modes faced difficulty as they did not get public transport to reach their homes.

When some private bus operators tried to operate in some northKarnataka districts, farmers protested and some stone peltingincidents were reported leaving some buses damaged.

Police said no major untoward incident was reported and the bandhremained by and far peaceful in the entire state.

The Supreme Court had ordered release of 15,000 tmcft of water toTamil Nadu following a plea by the neighbouring state. The Karnatakagovernment's decision to follow the court order evoked severeprotests across south Karnataka and elsewhere in the state for thelast four days.

Karnataka had witnessed a deficit monsoon this year leaving mostof the reservoirs were only half full in Cauvery and itstributaries, resulting in farmers and activists taking to streetsagainst the court order.

Reports from Mysuru, Mandya, Hassan, Kodagu Chamarajanagara andBengaluru urban and rural districts said total 'bandh' was beingobserved with people from all walks of life supporting the protestcall given by various Kannada organisations and farmers.MORE UNI TEAM CNR-RS CS 1105

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In a grisly act, a 47-year-old man beheaded his wife after domestic spat and placed the severed head in front of a local temple, before surrendering to the police at Vellalankulam village near here today. Police said Muthuraj, a sanitation worker attacked his wife Jamuna (45) indiscriminately with a sickle after asking his younger daughter to go out of the house, this morning. Even as the woman was battling for life in a pool of blood, he decapitated her head. Leaving the torso inside the house, Muthuraj walked on the street with severed head even as shocked locals watched the horrific scene. He went to the local temple and placed the head in front of it. Later, he surrendered before the Seethaparpanallur police station. It was a case of domestic quarrel between the couple where Muthuraj lost his control and murdered his wife, police said. Police investigation revealed that the accused did not have any mental disorders and committed the murder in inebriated condition. The couple have three children, including two girls. The torso and head were removed to government medical college hospital at Palayamkottai for post-mortem. Seethaparpanallur police have registered a case under section 302 (murder) of IPC and are investigating. UNI GSM CS 1158 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0275-925782.Xml
Congress government will continue to press the Centre for a Special Category State (SCS) Status to Puducherry, Chief Minister V Narayansamy told the Assembly today. Replying to a question, Mr.Narayansamy said right from 1994 to 2004, the government had adopted five resolutions in the house in this respect and forwarded to the Centre. Further the viability report prepared by the Finance management and research institution was also forwarded to the Union Home Ministry in 1993,1995,1999 and 2004, he said, adding that the committee comprising of Ministers and Parliament members headed by the Chief Minister had met the President, Prime Minister and pressed for SCS status to uducherry. Apart from this, several other measures were also taken in this respect. AIADMK member A Anbazhagan who posed the question then pointed out that it was the Congress government at the Centre and in Puducherry at the time of adopting the resolution and wondered why it had failed to get SCS status then. To this, Mr.Narayanasamy said that there are certain guidelines in granting it and added that North Eastern states and states with more tribal population were granted this status. He also said that Bihar and Andhra Pradesh had sought this category and was denied by the centre. He said under the SCS status all the four regions of the union territory, geographically scattered could be there and it is not possible under state status. The previous government had also sought state status to Puducherry, he recalled. UNI PAB CS 1210 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0275-925812.Xml
Almost all the political parties specially the Congress and the BJP have launched campaign for the ensuing eleventh Manipur Assembly polls expected to be held early next year. Both Congress and BJP had effected changes in the administrative set up. Congress is now headed by former Speaker, TN Haokip and BJP by Ksh Bhabananda . According to former BJP chief Th. Chaoba those working in the administration including the President may not contest elections. The Congress government headed by Chief Minister, Okram Ibobi Singh will be completing full three terms which in unprecedented in Manipur politics. BJP leaders felt with the BJP heading the government in the centre there may be a change in Manipur politics which has never seen BJP reaching two digit in any elections. BJP has decided to take up various issues and BJP leaders and the two MLAs were staging protests in the streets against cancellation of Manipur police constable recruitment tests. BJP President has also decided to start a foot Yatra covering most constituencies. Govindas, Minister of Commerce and Industries however claimed BJP is not suited to Manipur. Forest and Environment Minister , I Hemochandra said the achievements of the Congress government during the last 15 years is unparallel. The lone woman face in the Cabinet, AK Mirabai , Minister Social Welfare said the allegations made by BJP will not help in overthrowing the Congress government. Meanwhile the Chief Electoral Officer, Vivek Kumar Dewangan informed that a full bench of the Election Commission of India (ECI) is scheduled to arrive in Imphal on September 21 and 22 to review the poll The government has also reallocated posting of 37 junior MCS (Manipur Civil Service) officers . Twenty-two senior IAS officials posted in Manipur including two reserved have also been appointed as electoral roll observers to oversee and monitor the work of the electoral roll officers (EROs) and booth level . The total number of voters is 18,07,843 who will cast their votes in 2794 polling stations. Election official said the Election Commission of India (ECI) has instructed the Chief Secretary to transfer all police officers starting from IGPs to SIs away from their home districts and their current places of posting if they have been there for three years. UNI NS KK AKC ADG RAI1231 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0212-925740.Xml
A complaint by comedian Kapil Sharma of corruption in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation evoked a quick response from the Maharashtra government with Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis asking him to give him details and promising strict action against the culprits. In a sarcastic tweet to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the stand up comedian said he had been asked to pay Rs 5 lakh bribe by the BMC for setting up an office in Mumbai and asked if this was the 'acche din' promised by the PM. ''I am paying Rs 15 cr income tax for the last 5 years n still I have to pay Rs 5 lakh bribe to the BMC to make my office,'' he tweeted. "yeh hain aapke acche din ?,'' he asked the PM in another tweet. As the tweet by the comedian created a buzz on social media, the authorities in Mumbai got into action with the Chief Minister seeking details of the incident from Kapil and promising strict action against the culprits. In his tweet, the CM said, ''Kapilbhai pls provide all info. Have directed MC,BMC to take strictest action. We will not spare the culprit.'' UNI AR SHS ADG 1330 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0329-925735.Xml
Curfew and restrictions on assembly of people are back in the summer capital, Srinagar, where life remained crippled for the 63rd day today, when separatist had urged people to organise 'Azadi March' in their respective areas towards district headquarters. Historic Jamia Masjid, where no Friday prayers could be offered since July 9, a day after Hizbul Mujahideen (HM) commander Burhan Wani and two other militants were killed in an encounter in Anantnag, remained, closed, with main gate locked and security forces deployed in strength to prevent any assembly of devotees. Both the factions of the Hurriyat Conference (HC) and Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), spearheading the present agitation and issuing protest calendars since July 9, have asked people to organise 'Azadi March' from their respective localities and village towards their district headquarters and offer Friday prayers there. There is no relaxation in separatist strike today. Repeated announcements were being made at Maisuma in the heart of the city, stronghold of JKLF by the security forces that curfew has been imposed since early this morning. All roads leading to Maisuma, including at Budshah Chowk, Hajimasjid, Red Cross, Gaw Kadal and Madina chowk, remained closed with barbed wire and nobody was being allowed to enter or leave the area. Similar restrictions were imposed from river Jehlun bund side. The historic Lal Chowk, the nerve centre of summer capital, Srinagar, also remained closed from all sides. The Amira Kadal bridge leading to civil lines from Hari Singh High Street (HSHS) remained closed with barbed wire. ' All banks and commercial establishments in the civil lines remained closed. The foot bridge on river Jehlum connecting Jawahar Nagar with Lal Chowk has also been closed again for any movement. However, the Moulana Azad road was open though large number of security forces were seen deployed on both sides and pedestrian were being questioned. All roads leading to main branch of the State Bank of India (SBI) at Residency road had also been closed and state police personnel were informing the customers, who had come to deposit or withdraw the cash, that curfew has been imposed and bank will remain closed today.MORE UNI BAS PY ADG VP1315 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0153-925765.Xml
As part of the celebration of Mother Teresa's canonization to honour Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Tripura organised two days Teresa international film festival in Agartala from tomorrow.The organisers stated most of the inspiring films on Mother Teresa would be screened in the festival and a cultural programme to mark the canonization of Mother Teresa would be held at Rabindra Satabarshiki Bhawan on September 11 next.The Name of God's Poor, a USA made film is the story of Mother Teresa of Calcutta will be the opening film of the festival. Internationally known actress Geraldine Chaplin offers a moving portrayal of one of the 20th Century's greatest humanitarians.This made-for-television mini-series honours the life and sacrifices made by the feisty Albanian nun who spent most of her life tending the poor and the sick of India. The organisers targeted to bring students and social motivators in the screening of films to encourage them to follow the path of Mother Teresa.Another top rated film 'Mother Teresa - The Legacy' is the dramatic story of Mother Teresa's last day, her sudden death and her moving state funeral which was attended by the poor, the powerful and the rich from around the world would also be screened in the festival.At the heart of this film and for the first time, the audience will see and hear Mother Teresa reveal her simple but profound spirituality that, put into action, transcended religious, political and cultural boundaries and enabled her to open 500 homes for the poor in over 124 countries. The film includes intimate and never-before-seen footage of Mother Teresa's private burial. Living Legend Mother Teresa', a India made film on her, is a film tracing Mother's life, from the time she arrived in Calcutta right up to her last journey on 5th September 1997. The film was first shot in Black and White in 1977 and so is with some rare shots of the Mother and some exclusive visuals of Calcutta and the Loreto School where Mother taught for 17 years. More films of mother Teresa, like 'Love till it hurts', 'Mother Teresa and Me', a film directed and produced by Gautam Lewis, is about Mother Teresa, Gautama Lewis, and the city [Kolkata] that brought them together would also be included in the festival along with Revelation in Kolkata', 'Missionaries of Charity' and 'Madre Teresa'. Mother Teresa declared a Saint by Pope Francis on September 4, 2016 in Rome, Italy, the highest honour to a human person in the Catholic Church.UNI BB KK AKC VP1325 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0212-925801.Xml
Curfew and restrictions have been re-imposed to prevent protests after Friday prayers in Kashmir Valley, where life remained crippled for the 63rd day today, in view of the ongoing unrest that has left 75 civilians dead and over 7000 others injured. Officials said curfew has been re-imposed in Shopian, Kulgam, Pampore and Tral in Pulwama, Palhallan Pattan in Baramulla and Srinagar, while only restrictions continued in rest of the Valley, where separatist have urged people to organize 'Azadi March' in their respective areas towards district headquarters today. They said curfew and restrictions on assembly of more than four people under section 144 CrPc have been imposed in entire Kashmir to maintain law and order. However, the situation on the ground is entirely different as people from other parts of the valley, including Kupwara, Qazigund, Anantnag, Budgam, besides others towns, also alleged that they were not being allowed to move out of their houses since early this morning. Meanwhile, massive clashes were reported yesterday between 'pro-freedom' demonstrators and security forces at several places across the valley, where several dozen protestors were injured majority of them with pellets yesterday. Curfew and restrictions on assembly of people were re-imposed to prevent fresh clashes in view of an 'Azadi march' called both the factions of the Hurriyat Conference (HC) and Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), spearheading the present agitation since the death of Hizbul Mujahideen (HM) commander Burhan Wani and two other militants in an encounter in Anantnag on July 8. Besides extending the strike till September 16, the separatists have also called for 'UN challo' on Eid-al-Adha, which will be celebrated on September 13. Meanwhile, curfew and restrictions have been re-imposed in Srinagar, where security forces and state police personnel, wearing bullet proof jackets and holding automatic weapons could be seen deployed in the city, with majority roads were closed with barbed wire.MORE UNI ABS PY ADG AS1400 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0433-925947.Xml
Under fire post Kapil Sharma's claim that he had to pay a bribe of Rs. five lakh for getting approval for an office in spite of paying income tax regularly, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) on Friday asked the comedian to reveal the names of the erring officials while asserting that appropriate action would be taken against them. BMC's Vigilance Department chief Manohar Pawar said the corporation has taken the complaint seriously, adding that such cases are not tolerated. "But it is imperative for Sharma to give us the name and details. Thereafter, the corporation will take necessary actions according to the rules and regulations," said Pawar while reacting to Sharma's tweet. Earlier today, Sharma lashed out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi on having to pay a "bribe" of Rs. five lakh to the BMC to get his office made, enquiring if that is what is meant by his "acche din". "I am paying 15 cr income tax from last 5 year n still i have to pay 5 lacs bribe to BMC office for making my office @narendramodi. Yeh hain aapke achhe din ? (these are your achhe din?)," he said in a series of tweets. Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis earlier assured the comedian that the culprit would not be spared. "Kapilbhai pls provide all info. Have directed MC,BMC to take strictest action. We will not spare the culprit," Fadnavis tweeted. (ANI)
At a time when attack on policemen have become order of the day, the Thane district court in its recent order, acquitted all the 18 accused who were tried in the infamous case of 2006 related to the riots and attack on a under construction police station in the power loom town of Bhiwandi in the district.In his recent order the District Judge AS Bhaisare, set the accused free on benefit of doubt after the prosecution failed to prove the charges against all the accused. The incident itself kicked up much row as at the same time elsewhere in the night two policemen who were on patrolling duty were killed by the armed irate mob.The police officers who were on duty at Bhiwandi police stations, Ramesh Jagtap and BS Gangurde had become martyrs thus. The case pertaining to this incident of Nizampura police station is yet to be decided in the courts.In the present case in hand the 18 accused who have been acquitted were tried for offences punishable under many sections of the Bombay Police Act and of the Prevention of Destruction of Public Property Act.Appearing for the prosecution the Additional Public Prosecutor Dilip Bahiram, told the court that on July 5, 2006 the mob of Raza Academy headed by Shakil Raza started demolishing the new police station at Kotergate by pelting stones.Raza along with his 200 to 300 associates were shouting slogans, "Police Khade Hai, Unko Pakdo Aur Maro, Kato," he said.Some people from the mob entered in the station, broke the boxes of SRPF and robbed them with cash, ATM card, identity card and the goods lying in the station. They also set the goods of police station on fire. Some policemen were also injured during the attack, he added. While Adv Dhananjay Patil appearing for the alleged accused persons contested the allegations and told the court that the arrested accused were innocent and were not at all involved in the said crime. The judge in his order said, " there is no evidence on record that the accused persons were responsible for the same. Therefore, though the accused persons are more than five, it cannot be said that they were members of unlawful assembly and in prosecution of common object of such unlawful assembly, had committed riot with deadly weapons and caused grievous hurt, caused mischief to the scooter and other goods and robbed by causing grievous hurt to the police officials beyond all reasonable doubts. I therefore, answer to all the points in the negative."UNI XR HK SHS ADG RAI1341 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0169-925750.Xml
Ms Hume was swept away by the powerful currents of the Umngi River,near Phlangwanbroi village in East Khasi Hills district in November last year.

The state government has pressed police, disaster management experts to locate the body in the river, but they failed to rescue the missing kayaker.

However, digital camera Hero 3+ digital camera imprinted with Beth Hume's was found by a local angler distance away, downstream from the area of occurrence last month.

"Yes, a digital camera whom we suspected belonging to Ms Hume has been found by a angler last month," Superintendent of Police in-charge East Khasi Hills district, MH Kharkrang told UNI.

He said the local angler had handed over the camera to police in South West Khasi Hills District.

"We will ask our counterpart to hand over the digital camera it will help us in searching some more of her items from the recovery site," Mr Kharkrang said.

In fact, the family members of the Briton national have already accepted her death after days of frantic search and they have performed her last rites which were carried out at Phlanwanbroi in March this year. The camera chip contains 216 pictures and 144 video clips. UNI RRK KK ADG AS1447

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"Whenever I travel by car and see girls riding scooties, I feel happy and it is pleasure to see them moving freely," Ms Mufti said after handing over 300 scooties to girls in twin women colleges here.

The Chief Minister said riding scooties is really like having 'freedom' and "control" in their lives while moving in open air without any restrictions.

She, however, desired that she would love to have one and wished to ride freely on streets.

Ms Mufti also had a ride on the scooty. She sat as pillion rider on a two-wheeler at Government College for Women, Parade and had round in the main bazar. She also asked the girls to wear helmet and follow traffic rules.

The state government today handed over 300 (150 each) scooties to women in both the colleges.

The government had tied up with Yamaha and the scooties were purchased on 50 per cent subsidy.

Meanwhile, the Chief Minister also asked the girls to be always brave and bold.

"Never hide any kind of harassment they face. Fight against it without worrying about the society," she said while encouraging the college girls.UNI VBH SW AE 1554

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Madurai Bench of Madras High Court has ordered notice to the Centre on a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) petition challenging Constitutional validity of a Section of the Suppression of Unlawful Acts Against Safety of Maritime Navigation and Fixed Platforms on Continental Shelf Act, 2002 that prescribes "death penalty" as the only punishment for certain Maritime offences. The petitioner R.Rameez Ajmal Khan stated that Sections 3(1)(a) to 3 (1)(f) of the Act list out various offences that could be perpetrated against a ship, fixed platform, cargo of a ship or maritime navigational facilities and prescribes different terms of imprisonment for those offences. However, Section 3(1)(g)(i) states that if any of those offences had led to the death of a person, then the offender concerned shall be punished with death. He claimed that the legal provision of Section 3(1)(g)(i) of the Act was against Articles 14 (equality before law and equal protection of laws) and 21 (right to protection of life and personal liberty) of the Constitution. It was against the fundamental right to life guaranteed under the Constitution and against the call given by human rights activists' world-over to abolish death sentence completely from the statute books, he contended. He also pointed out that though Indian Penal Code (IPC) also prescribed death sentence for certain offences, it gives the discretion to the Judges to impose lesser punishment too. Further, the Apex Court had laid down that capital punishment could be imposed only in rarest of rare cases, he said. When the PIL came up for hearing last evening, a Division Bench comprising Justices S.Nagamuthu and M.V.Muralidaran ordered notices to the Union Ministries of Home Affairs and Law and sought their response to the PIL. UNI GSM CS 1506 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0275-926009.Xml
After RJD, the JD(U) today joined its coalition partner Congress over the contentious issue of projecting Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, ahead of Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, as the Prime Ministerial candidate in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. State JD (U) President and party MP Vashishtha Narayan Singh said in no uncertain terms that if a leader had to be projected as PM candidate on the basis of ''efficiency, capability and credential,'' Mr Nitish Kumar was the best choice for holding the top political post of the country. ''A backward state like Bihar has now found a prominent place in the national map due to Mr Kumar's style of functioning, efficiency and capability,'' the state JD (U) chief said, while talking to UNI. Mr Singh, however, said that any party or alliance enjoying majority in the Lok Sabha, would have the privilege to electing the next Prime Minister of the country . Continuing in the same vein, he said ''It will be too early to speculate, if Nitish Kumar will be the next PM as everything will depend on the result of the next Lok Sabha polls''.MORE UNI DH IS RJ SB 1651 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0098-924646.Xml
Andhra Pradesh BJP President and MP K Haribabu welcomed the announcement of special financial package to Andhra Pradesh by the Centre and thanked Union Ministers Arun Jaitley and M Venkaiah Naidu. In a statement here today, he said that under special financial package, the same benefits, which the Special Category Status (SCS) were getting, would be provided to Andhra Pradesh also. He said that the special package consists of hundred per cent funds for the construction of Polavaram projects, bridging of deficit in budget, and extending of funds for the development of backward districts and other benefits. "The announcement of special package to AP is indicating the commitment of BJP led Centre for the development of the state", he said. The BJP president urged the Centre to take early decision on formation of railway zone in Visakhapatnam and establishment of a steel factory in Kadapa.UNI DP CS 1855 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0275-925073.Xml
Union Minister of State for RoadTransport, Highways and Shipping Pon Radhakrishnantoday called on Tamil Nadu Governor CH.Vidyasagar Raoat Raj Bhavan. The meeting was a Courtesy call, a Raj Bhavan communique said. Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu Governor Mr Vidyasagar Rao arrived in Chennai this afternoon and would beparticipating in various functions along with PresidentPranab Mukherjee on tomorrow and the day after. The Governor held discussions with Mr Ramesh Chand Meena, Principal Secretary to Governor, and other officials about the arrangements made for the President's stay at Raj Bhavan. The Governor will be leaving Chennai on the afternoon ofSeptember ten after seeing off the President at Chennai Airport.UNI GV CS 1858 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0275-925099.Xml
At least 100 school children fell ill after consuming polluted drinking water in the temple town of Tirupati today. The affected children were rushed to various hospitals in the pilgrim town.The condition of four of the victims was stated to be serious. Details are awaited.UNI SMS CS 1108 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0275-925737.Xml
A police spokesperson today said that following specific information about transportation of drugs, a checkpoint was established at Kakpora in Pulwama.

He said police intercepted a vehicle at the checkpoint and during search recovered five cardboard boxes containing 26 kg of poppy straw.

Two people, Farooq Ahmad Magray and Sajad Ahmad Bhat, onboard the vehicle were immediately taken into custody.

Police have registered a case and initiated investigation to nab other people involved in the drug racket, he said.UNI ABS CJ AS1848

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Micro-blogging site twitter was abuzz after a poem asking Army to open fire and break the bones of Kashmiris, until they sing Vande Mataram, was tweeted by official handle of Digital India, a flagship Modi-led NDA government initiative for a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy. However, Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has reportedly sought report when the tweet was brought to his notice. He has also suspended the person who tweeted the poem, besides expressing regret. The tweet, which was deleted later, had a screenshot of a poem posted on Facebook, which was labelled as "Heights of #Patriotism..!!!" The Digital India twitter handle, which is managed by Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, has more than 5.34 lakh followers. The poem, written in Hindi to the tune of a popular Bollywood song, asked the Army to fire at people of Kashmir until they come to the city square and sing Vande Mataram. "Issued in public interest; all who love their lives; should quietly come to the city square; sing the national anthem; and not throw any tantrums here," it read. The poem also asked Army not to worry and kill Kashmiris as Prime Minister Narendra Modi allegedly would handle the situation if someone criticised the Armed forces for the mass murders. However, the tweet was soon taken down after it was highlighted by Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Ankit Lal, who twitted the screenshot of the Digital India's post. "Govt verified handle @_DigitalIndia finds poem calling fr mass murder of Kashmiris "Height of Patriotism" #Shame!," he wrote. However, twitteritis reacted very sharply, with some terming it shameful and maligns Army as mass-murderers. "This is a shame. Those running this handle are illiterate or stupid. Worst of all, it maligns Army as mass-murderers," a tweet read. "Dear @_DigitalIndia this rubbish?Why is the Indian tax payer being made to foot the bill for a bigot? @PMOIndia," another twitterit said.UNI ABS AE 1715 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0433-926218.Xml
"Obtaining pictures of patients without their authorisation is against moral and ethical principles. It is mandatory that all clinical images be taken after written consent and the patient should be fully informed as to the purpose of the photography," DAK President Nisar ul Hassan said.

"Whether photos are needed for publications, presentations or media, patient consent is a must. The code of conduct of the MCI states that photographs patients must be taken with informed consent," he said.

Dr Hassan said informed consent is the most important legal doctrine in patients' rights, adding therefore, photographing or videotaping patients without their permission is not only unethical, but is illegal as well.

"Photographs are either taken without patient consent or with casual verbal consent without giving clear explanation of the purpose of photograph," he said.

"Patients may not be in a position to object to this practice because of the stress of illness or the fear that they might be treated badly if they express an objection," he added.UNI ABS ASM AE VP1732

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Started as a pilot project, these all women PCR vans will be placed at five places -- Vigyan Bhavan, Jesus and Mary College, Khan Market metro station, American Centre at Kasturba Gandhi Marg and Moti Lal Nehru Marg.

The PCR vans were flagged off by Police Commissioner Alok Verma in the presence of senior officials.

R K Singh, Deputy Commissioner of Police, PCR, said 20 women police personnel have been trained for the job and each one of them have been provided adequate training in this regard.

"All of them have valid driving licences. Women personnel including four women ASIs, six women head constables, and ten women constables have also undergone training in musketry and firing. They have also been trained in Unarmed Combat skills," he said.

In order to equip them with the new nature of responsibilities, special refresher course was arranged in the Subsidiary Training Unit PCR, about behaviour soft skills, communication skills and law.

This initiative has been taken up with a view that lady distress callers find it easier to communicate with women police personnel and narrate their grievances without any hesitation.

The impact assessment of this initiative would be conducted after a quarter, and if results are encouraging, the project scheme would be extended to other areas of the national capital especially crime prone areas for women.UNI RG/AR SW AE 1941

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As a result of this brickbatting and police action, at least 12 people, including two policemen, women and protestors were injured and admitted to private hospital and CHC for treatment.

The mob stoned and damaged a police bus.

The situation was tense but stated to be under control.

A cattle shed of one Husan Singh on Sajuma road was demolished . The demolition squad comprising Tehsildar cum Duty Magistrate Suresh Kumar Naib and Secretary MC Hari Om reached the pond area at about 1100 hrs and started earmarking the illegal constructed properties and started demolition. As the people noticed movement of officials and police force, they started assembling and started slogans against the demolition

drive. As tension started growing, SDM Om Parkash, DSP Joginder singh and Chander Mohan Bishnoi also reached the spot.

According to information, protestors hurled stones on police force which had to use force. Police fired shots in the air and lobbed teargas shells to control the violent crowd.UNI XC JS RSA AE 1945

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Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal today launched a scathing attack on the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and said its morality has rotten to such an extent that it is accepting and forging alliance with people like Jagmeet Singh Brar who has been discarded by every political dispensation. Interacting with media-persons on the sidelines of Punjab Vidhan Sabha session here, the Deputy Chief Minister said the AAP Convenor and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has got nothing to do with the welfare of the state and its people instead he has hidden intentions to be the CM of the state. He further said that Mr Kejriwal has planned to use Punjab as a battleground to further his ambitions of becoming leader of anti-Modi platform to emerge on the center stage of country's politics. The Deputy Chief Minister further divulged that an agitationist that Kejriwal is, cannot spell out even a single progress centric measure of his government in Delhi. Branding Kejriwal as a responsibility shirker, Mr Badal said if voted to power Mr Kejriwal would spell doom for state's farming community as his constant feuds with the Union government would create procurement and payment problems and would result in non-lifting of wheat and paddy from the mandis as well as godowns. Labelling AAP as a bunch of atheists, Mr Badal said these people indulge in desecration of holy books, have no regard for the cultural traditions of Punjab and its state observers are facing the ire of people owing to charges of moral turpitude in the state. Referring to the announcement of making Amritsar a holy city by Mr Kejriwal, Mr Badal said first AAP leader should make his own party holy especially his party MP Bhagwant Mann, who has appeared in inebriated state to pay his obeisance to Sri Guru Granth Sahib and afterwards concentrate on Amritsar. In a lighter vein, the Deputy CM said Mr Kejriwal should expel those 63 people from his party whose sting CDs he accuses, are lying with him (Deputy Chief Minister). Mr Badal made it clear that he has no such CD. Taking the newly formed fourth front head on, the Deputy Chief Minister branded its main leader Navjot Singh Sidhu as a rank opportunist who only wants to grab power and even exploits the name of revolutionary martyrs for the purpose but the people of Punjab have seen through their devious game plan and would give them a befitting reply. He also dismissed 'Bains brothers', MLAs from Ludhiana, as an undisciplined lot. Not sparing Congress, the Deputy CM said it is really unfortunate that Congress used today's occasion to pay gratitude to Baba Sahib Dr. Bhim Rao Ambedkar for furthering its political agenda in the assembly. Calling Congress the main opponent of the SAD-BJP government, Mr Badal said its leader Sunil Jakhar is sidelined within his own party and has developed a habit of talking without facts to create sensationalism and hog the limelight. Calling Congress a confused party, he said that now a days everything in Congress is decided by PK (Prashant Kishore). Touching the developmental aspect, Mr Badal said the record of previous 9 years of the SAD-BJP is a perfect testimony to the fact that only this alliance has worked wonders for the state in terms of taking the state up on the index of social and economic progress. Disclosing more, he said Union Minister Nitin Gadkari is coming on 14th September in the state to inaugurate three major road projects worth Rs. 10,000 crore. He also reiterated the resolve of the state government to maintain law & order in the state and said that gangsters would not be spared at any cost.UNI JS SHK 1951 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0293-926802.Xml
A ferry and recreational boats pass in front of the Sydney Opera House September 28, 2014. [Photo/Agencies]

The disputes between Australia and its smaller neighbor East Timor over maritime boundaries could serve as a useful lens for others to see through the double standard of some Western countries.

On Aug 29, Australia's Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and the Attorney General George Brandis said in a joint statement that Australia will argue that an arbitration body in The Hague has no jurisdiction to settle a dispute with East Timor over their maritime boundary, adding that Australia did not consider its final report would be binding.

The statement was issued the same day a conciliation commission was due to hear an arbitration case initiated by East Timor against Australia in The Hague over the disputed Timor Sea.

To cut a long story short, the feud between Australia and East Timor stems from the latter's attempt to renegotiate maritime boundaries with Australia in the Timor Sea, which is abundant in oil and natural gas reserves. Over the years, Australia has allegedly resorted to malpractice, such as spying, to gain commercial profits from a bilateral gas deal.

It is not uncommon for countries to have maritime demarcation disputes. Yet, what is uncommon in the Australia-East Timor dispute is the sharp difference between Australia's attitude towards its own maritime dispute and toward the territorial dispute between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea.

Soon after an arbitral tribunal in The Hague handed down its ruling in favor of the Philippines in the South China Sea arbitration case on July 12, Australia joined a chorus led by the United States to press China to accept the ruling, giving a deaf year to China's stance that the arbitral tribunal had no jurisdiction over the case.

The two sets of disputes bear a lot of similarities: Both involve a big country with a smaller neighbor; the two smaller countries have unilaterally brought the disputes to arbitration; there is a bilateral agreement in place in both cases which shores up peaceful resolutions to maritime disputes.
Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain told the assembly on Friday that he will seek a probe from Delhi Police into the alleged leak of security detail of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. Jain was responding to the issue raised by Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) legislator from Laxmi Nagar Nitin Tyagi during the special assembly session. Tyagi asked why action was not taken against those protesting against Kejriwal at the New Delhi railway station on Thursday and demanded a proper probe into the issue. The BJP Mahila Morcha had staged a demonstration here at the New Delhi railway station against Kejriwal when he was about to leave for Punjab. Jain said that "manhandling" and "attack" on Kejriwal at railway station was "pre-planned" and came a day after security details of the chief minister came in the media ahead of his visit to Punjab. He said that giving out security details of chief minister and of his tour programme to Punjab was "a serious issue" and he will ask Delhi Police Commissioner to probe the matter. Security details of chief minister should not be shared, he stressed. Tourism Minister Kapil Mishra said: "Whatever happened yesterday (Thursday) has diminished the image of Indian Railway as well as of the country". "How is it possible that such huge gathering of protesters were allowed to reach the platform and managed to manhandle the CM?" he asked. --IANS am-aks/ps/vd ( 245 Words) 2016-09-09-21:19:57 (IANS)
A leading homeopathic doctor was shot dead by unidentified criminals under Digha police station area today.Police said here that Dr Afzal Ali was gunned down near a government Industrial Training Institute (ITI) when he was going somewhere.Infuriated over the killing, local people blocked Digha-Gandhi Maidan Road. Police Superintendent (City) Chandan Kumar Kushwaha had reached the spot to pacify the mob and lift the road blockade.A massive manhunt is on to nab culprits.UNI DH JW RSA 2140 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0364-927145.Xml
During the meeting, the Finance Minister assured the Patwar Union considering all their pending demands favorably.

Disclosing this after the meeting, Mr Majithia said the Finance Minister has agreed to consider all genuine demands of the patwaris positively with the senior officials of the department.

Mr Majithia said that the Revenue patwar union put three demands before the Finance Minister related to the finance department included disparity in pay of patwars, time scale and delimitation of Kanungo circles in the ratio of 5 patwaris per one kanungo. . UNI XC RSA AN2107

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Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal today unveiled "the full and awesome range of historic conspiracies and untruths plotted and carried out by leaders of the Congress party before and after Independence to block the rise of Dr Bhim Rao Ambedkar to the top political and executive slot in thecorridors of power. In a top-drawer address, worthy of archival placement in parliamentary and legislative history , the Chief Minister drew on historical references and records while paying rich tributes to Baba Saheb on his 125th birth anniversary. Addressing a packed Vidhan Sabha, the CM spoke with touching vehemence which was remarkable both for its deeply emotional tone and its marked departure from the routine, run-of-the-mill descriptions of Dr Ambedkar as "champion of Dalit Samaj. There was nothing formal or ritualistic about Mr Badal's homage to the Messianic visionary. He laid bare and flogged almost every age-old Congress myth of Ambedkar-Congress association and friendship. "When Congress failed to stop him, they hijacked his legacy from his true heirs the common people , especially the poor and the down-trodden," said Mr Badal, and made an impassioned plea for correcting historical falsities on the iconic freedom fighter and Messiah. "The shocking truth is that Congress opposed Ambedkar Sahib's presence in Constituent Assembly because they did not want a Dalit voice in the country's destiny. They foiled Baba Saheb's efforts even to become a Member of the Constituent Assembly from Maharashtra. Fortunately for India, he became a Member from Bengal as a non-Congress candidate," said Mr Badal, adding that the Congress similarly opposed Baba Saheb in all the parliamentary elections too." Referring to the cosmopolitan vision and stature of Baba Saheb, the CM said that it was wrong to describe Dr Ambedkar merely as a Dalit Messiah, although he was that too. "To call him a champion only of the Dalits in the country is to belittle the most outstanding stature of this rare genius. "The country owes its very existence as a sovereign, secular, socialist and democratic republic to the Dr Ambedkar's vision and commitment. He is a global icon for fight against discrimination, exploitation or repression. He stands in the same class as Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela. It is only befitting that Baba Saheb's 125th Birth Anniversary is beingobserved by the UNO," said Mr Badal. The Chief Minister quoted liberally from Sikh scriptures and said,"At the social level, Sikhism is essentially a movement for Dalit dignity, honour and emanicipation. Ambedkar Sahib also retraced for us the path which was shown to us by the great Gurus. Mr Badal said that schemes such as atta daal, shagun scheme, Rs. 50,000 free treatment and 5 lakh free insurance, free 200 units of power, free quality education for children from the poor and the backward families this is SAD-BJP's way of paying homage to Dr Ambedkar ji. These willcontinue during the next tenure also when people entrust us with that responsibility again."UNI JS RSA BD2140 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0293-926885.Xml
Speaking on this occasion, the Governor appreciated Ms Misra for promoting the culture through her pen and said that literature was the biggest instrument to make a person sensitive and kind. He also hoped that Ms Misra would continue to promote literature in future also.

It is the third book authored by Ms Misra after the 'Life of a Light' and 'Zara si Dhoop' which were highly praised by the readers.UNI XC RSA AN2148

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Popular Telugu film actor and Jana Sena party president Pavan Kalyan today advised the political parties not to include impracticable promises in their election manifestos and betray the people. Addressing a well attended public meeting on the demand for special category status to Andhra Pradesh at the JNTUK grounds here, he blamed the BJP and Congress of indulging in opportunistic politics and playing havoc with the future of the people."While the Congress by bifurcating Andhra Pradesh has hit on the people on eyes, the BJP has stabbed in stomach by its great betrayal on Special Category Status (SCS). ''Both the parties should apologise to Seemandhra people. Instead of solving existing problems, the national parties should not create new problems, he remarked. Recalling that several people especially the youth had lost their lives during separatist agitations, Pavan Kalyan has made a fervent appeal for raising a suitable memorial for those martyrs either in Kurnool or Amaravati on the lines of their Telangana counterparts.'' Mr.Kalyan, who is the younger brother of film star turned politician and Congress MP K Chiranjeevi, chided Anakapalli MP Avanti Srinivasarao, Rajahmundry MP Muralimohan and Rajya sabha member from Kurnool T.G. Venkatesh for making derogatory and uncharitable comments against him which he described as quite uncalled for. UNI XR-DP JW RSA 2315 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0364-927183.Xml
The son of an Assam BJP leader who was kidnapped last month by banned ULFA (I), which had reportedly demanded Rs 1 crore in ransom, was released by the outfit today. The kidnapped youth, Kuldeep Moran, was released by the outfit in Arunachal Pradesh, bordering his native Tinsukia in Assam, local media reports said here. Kuldeep was later brought to his Tinsukia residence this evening by local authorities. Talking to local mediapersons, Kuldeep said he was in stable health condition, though he was a bit exhausted. His parents thanked ULFA (I) for releasing their son safely even after they were unable to pay the ransom, as the family does not have resources to pay such a large amount. Kuldeep, son of a local level BJP leader, was kidnapped from Namsai in Arunachal on August 1. The outfit had later released a video of the hostage, claiming that he was kidnapped for acting a government informant. Kuldeep's parents had claimed that they had received an extortion threat of Rs 1 crore and the local legislator, Bolin Cheita, was also reportedly asked by the outfit to pay the amount by ULFA (I). UNI SG JW RSA 2300 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0364-927191.Xml
Women workers of the party today held protests in various parts of the state including Mohali, Jalandhar, Kapurthala and Phagwara, Jagraon, Bathinda and burnt effigies of AAP national convener Arvind Kejriwal.

Waving black flags, women protesters shouted slogans of 'Kejriwal go back' and sought his apologies for hurting women's sentiments.

Punjab's BJP Mahila Morcha president Mona Jaiswal said, "These protests are in response to the shameful acts of Aam Aadmi Party leaders who have no respect for dignity of women. The way Aap leaders have humiliated women in Delhi is being repeated in Punjab. Kejriwal had promised to provide security to women in Delhi, but he has failed in doing so. Now even his women party workers in Punjab have started accusing AAP leaders of sexual exploitation".

"We have worshipped women for centuries and their dignity is supreme for us. The culture we practice is beyond APP's comprehension", added Jaiswal.

Jaiswal also condemned AAP leader Ashutosh for commenting against women in his blog. Jaiswal said said that she was saddened to hear such unacceptable remarks against women from such a senior leader.

Accusing Kejriwal of turning a blind eye to such heinous crimes, Jaiswal stated that it simply reflected how serious AAP is towards women-related issues. Jaiswal said that the Mahila Morcha will intensify its protest in the coming days.UNI JS RSA AN2205

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Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh met in New Delhi a delegation of 30 students from Jammu and Kashmir who were facing difficulties in getting their scholarship under the Prime Minister Special Scholarship Scheme (PMSSS) in some institutes in Rajasthan. "On hearing the problems of non-disbursement of scholarships to students from Jammu and Kashmir in some institutions at Jaipur, the Union Home Minister at his own initiative had spoken to the Education Minister of Rajasthan and obtained the phone numbers of some of the students," an official statement said here. On talking to them, Mr Singh learnt that the students had some difficulties in getting their scholarship under the PMSSS. "The Union Home Minister had asked the Education Minister of Rajasthan to sort out the operational difficulty by September 5 and had invited the students to meet him in Delhi, immediately on return from his J& K tour of September 4-5,, if the problem still persists," it said. It said a delegation of over 30 students representing all the three regions of Jammu and Kashmir - Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh, met and discussed with the Union Home Minister and Human Resource Development Minister Prakash Javadekar in New Delhi yesterday. "These students studying in Rajasthan, Haryana and other states presented their issues. As advised in the meeting on Wednesday, the students yesterday had detailed discussion with Chairman All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), Professor Anil D Sahasrabudhe," it said. The statement further said that some of their problems were resolved instantaneously and some that need to be taken to the Inter Ministerial Committee (IMC), will be put up to the Committee. "Even for those students whose issues need to be taken to IMC, letters have been issued to the institutes stating that their studies should not be discontinued for want of scholarship money," it said. It said the students after meeting the Union Home Minister and HRD Minister and Chairman, AICTE were fully satisfied with approach adopted by the Central Government. "They profusely expressed their sincere gratitude to the initiative taken by the Home Minister, concern of all to their problem and extra ordinary approach for solving them," it added.UNI ABS RSA AN2301 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0433-927161.Xml
The two leaders in a phone call on Thursday discussed Turkish-Russia bilateral ties and the latest developments in Syria, Xinhua news agency reported.

Erdogan reiterated the importance of achieving ceasefire as soon as possible in Aleppo, a rebel-held city under a devastating siege.

The Operation Euphrates Shield was also one of the major topics of discussion, the Turkish presidency statement said.

"The importance of the fact that Turkey's border with Syria is now completely free of the Islamic State militants was emphasised in the call."

Meanwhile, the Kremlin also released a statement confirming the conversation between the two leaders.

The Turkish military launched the cross-border Operation Euphrates Shield on August 24 along with the US-led coalition in Syria's northern border city of Jarablus to clear the area from the IS.

--IANS py/

( 169 Words)

2016-09-09-08:55:57 (IANS)
A retelling of the 1960 American Western 'The Magnificent Seven' espousing women's and minority rights and the fight against grabbing of land for industrialisation has opened the 41st Toronto film festival. Directed by American filmmaker Antoine Fuqua, the Denzel Washington-starring film was screened last night at the festival, which will showcase 397 films from 71 countries over the next ten days. The original 'Magnificent Seven', which had actors like Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson and Yul Brynner, was based on Japanese director Akira Kurosawa's' 'Seven Samurai' (1954). "This year's festival theme is freedom, migration, diversity and evolution of women," said Toronto festival director Piers Handling. "This year, 30 per cent of the festival movies are directed by women," Handling added. Handling and Artistic Director Cameron Bailey introduced the director and cast of 'The Magnificent Seven' amid cheers from the audience. Director Fuqua is known for his earlier films such as 'Training Day' (2001) and 'The Equalizer' (2014) both starring Washington. 'The Magnificent Seven' also stars Ethan Hawke, Chris Patt and Hailey Bennet, all struggling to defend their town from a violent land grabbing industrialist. This year's festival also has a large presence of Indian films in various categories, including three entries in the masters section from Malayalam filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Bengali director Buddhadeb Dasgupta and Toronto-based filmmaker Deepa Mehta. Gopalakrishnan's 'Pinneyum' (Once Again) explores love and relationships as an extended family gets drawn into the vortex of a crime while Dasgupta's 'Tope' (The Bait) weaves together three stories. Mehta handles the 2012 Delhi gang rape in 'Anatomy of Violence'. Actor Konkona Sensharma makes her directorial debut with 'A Death in the Gunj', a coming of age story as part of the special presentations section. 'Salaam Bombay' director Mira Nair will present her new film 'Queen of Katwe' a young chess prodigy's story set in Uganda in the gala section. The other India-related films include a documentary on Sunny Leone 'Mostly Sunny' directed by Dileep Mehta, the brother of Deepa Mehta, 'India in a Day' by Richie Mehta, 'Right to Pray', a virtual reality experimental film by Khushboo Ranka, and 'Barry', on a young Barack Obama by Indian-American director Vikram Gandhi. 'An Insignificant Man', a documentary on Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal by Khushboo Ranka and Vinay Shukla, is also part of the festival. Bollywood producer-director Karan Johar will be seen in conversation with Toronto festival Artistic Director Cameron Bailey during the event. A film from Nepal, 'White Sun' by Deepak Rauniyar, is another highlight of the festival. The festival runs up to September 18.UNI XC SHS ADG 1040 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0329-925602.Xml
US prosecutors moved today to dismiss corruption charges against Republican former Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell and his wife Maureen McDonnell, the US Justice Department said."After carefully considering the Supreme Court's recent decision and the principles of federal prosecution, we have made the decision not to pursue the case further," the department said in a statement. REUTERS PS 0032 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0421-925533.Xml
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed in a phone call on Thursday that efforts should be intensified for a ceasefire in Aleppo over the Eid holiday.They also agreed the importance of ridding the Syrian border area of "terror organisations", notably Islamic State, presidential sources said. REUTERS PS 0231 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0421-925545.Xml
A US Drug Enforcement Administration agent testified that a probe of two nephews of Venezuela's first lady began after a drug trafficker cooperating with authorities told him of a meeting arranged by her brother, a top police official.The agent testified in Manhattan federal court about the origins of the probe of Franqui Francisco Flores de Freitas and Efrain Antonio Campo Flores as he detailed how two key informants deceived investigators to conduct drug deals.The testimony came during proceedings in which lawyers for the nephews of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's wife, Cilia Flores, sought the suppression of evidence against them and statements they gave after their November 2015 arrests.Both men are fighting charges that they worked with others to try to send 800 kg of cocaine from Venezuela to Honduras so it could be imported into the United States.In court, DEA Special Agent Sandalio Gonzalez testified that the probe began after a cooperating witness in Honduras, a drug trafficker called El Sentado, told him in October 2015 a Venezuelan official named Bladimir Flores was going to send his nephew to meet with him."He (cooperating witness) indicated that these individuals wanted to fly drug-laden planes to Honduras with flight plans," Gonzalez said.Gonzalez did not elaborate on the role of Bladimir Flores. He is the brother of Cilia Flores and serves as inspector general of Venezuela's investigative police, known as CIPCP.Bladimir Flores could not be reached for comment.The nephews' case, an embarrassment for Maduro as Venezuela experiences political and economic struggles, was brought last year amid a series of US probes that have linked individuals connected to the Venezuelan government to drug trafficking.In court, Gonzalez characterized the nephews as significant drug traffickers."They indicated they had the run of the main airport in Caracas and then could easily dispatch drug-laden planes on the presidential ramp," he said.But under questioning by the nephews' lawyers, Gonzalez acknowledged a series of problems involving the DEA's reliance on El Sentado and two informants who at its direction posed as Mexican drug traffickers.The informants lied throughout the probe about their own drug dealing and one used Venezuelan prostitutes the defendants paid for, he said. Both have since been charged and are incarcerated, he said.Gonzalez also said El Sentado failed to record his first meeting with the nephews in October 2015, despite instructions to do so. Prosecutors said El Sentado was murdered in Honduras last December. REUTERS PS 0417 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0421-925553.Xml
A 5.3 magnitude seismic event in North Korea today, thought to have been the North's fifth nuclear test, would indicate a device with a 20- to 30-kilotonne yield, an analyst said, the largest yield estimate yet of a North Korean nuclear device."That's the largest DPRK test to date, 20-30kt, at least. Not a happy day," Jeffrey Lewis of the California-based Middlebury Institute of International Studies told Reuters, using the North's official title of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea."Yield estimates are always kind of approximate. The point is that it is the biggest one to date unless they revise the yield downward," he said.Initial analysis of North Korea's January 2016 test estimated a yield of just 6 kilotonnes. REUTERS PS 0718 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0421-925576.Xml
Japan's chief government spokesman said today Tokyo will consider further unilateral sanctions against North Korea after the reclusive North conducted what South Korea said was a nuclear test."North Korea's nuclear development is a grave threat to Japan's safety," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a news conference.South Korean President Park Geun-hye said North Korea had conducted a nuclear test in clear violation of UN Security Council resolutions, after a surface-level seismic event with a magnitude of 5.3 was recorded near the North's nuclear test site. REUTERS AKC RAI0923 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0432-925613.Xml
US President Barack Obama and South Korean President Park Geun-hye spoke by telephone today about North Korea's latest nuclear test, South Korea's presidential office said.Obama and Park talked for fifteen minutes from 0630 IST while Obama was on Air Force One on his way back to the United States from a regional summit in Laos, according to the South Korean presidential office. REUTERS AKC RAI0921 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0432-925618.Xml
All parties in the international community should exercise restraint following North Korea's latest nuclear test as it is in nobody's interest for there to be chaos or war on the Korean peninsula, China's official Xinhua news agency said today.North Korea's nuclear test is "not wise", but South Korea's decision to deploy an advanced US anti-missile system has also seriously damaged regional strategic balance, Xinhua said in a commentary, in China's first official reaction to the test. REUTERS AKC RAI1033 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0432-925666.Xml
A sum of Rs 560 million has been released for the families of the 56 lawyers were killing in the suicide bombing on August 8th at the Civil Hospital in Quetta. According to the Dawn, the deputy commissioner of Quetta has been assigned the task of distributing cheques among the heirs of victims. The provincial Minister for Education and Chairman of the Shuhada Committee, Abdul Raheem Ziaratwal, said that a member of each slain lawyer's family would be provided a government job with relaxation in the government service rules and that the government is planning to make arrangements for the education of the children of deceased lawyers. (ANI)
Pakistan Foreign Secretary Aizaz Chaudhry has proposed a partnership on nuclear safety and security with India to boost the bilateral relations between the two countries. The proposal, comes after Pakistan last month proposed a bilateral moratorium on testing of nuclear weapons which was related to its candidature for the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). Mr Chaudhry, speaking at the inaugural session of a conference, 'Assessing South Asia's Nuclear Security' yesterday said '' despite problems in their ties, the two countries have a special responsibility to cooperate in the field of nuclear security. The two countries could share best practices, experience and expertise," daily Dawn reported. Both the countries already have an agreement on nuclear accidents and an expert group on nuclear confidence building measures. The two countries are also signatories to several international conventions, including those on nuclear safety, assistance in case of a nuclear accident or radiological emergency. Other experts who participated in the conference discussed different issues affecting strategic stability in South Asia. Director South Asia at the Atlantic Council Bharat Gopalaswamy, who was also present at the conference, said, ''the two countries had to deal with similar challenges related to nuclear stability, safety and security.''UNI XC PY ADG 1300 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0298-925653.Xml
China said it resolutely opposed North Korea's nuclear test today but is unlikely to follow up with strong action because its influence is limited and it believes the United States and South Korea share responsibility for growing tensions in the region.China, Pyongyang's main diplomatic ally, is key in any effort to rein in North Korea's nuclear programme. But it has been infuriated by the isolated nation's nuclear and missile tests and has signed up to increasingly tough United Nations sanctions.Beijing has also repeatedly expressed anger since the United States and South Korea decided in July to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) anti-missile system in the South to counter missile and nuclear threats from North Korea.China says this is a threat to its own security and will do nothing to bring North Korea back to the negotiating table on its nuclear programme.China's official Xinhua news agency, in a commentary after North Korea confirmed the test, said it was shocking and unwise and would only "add oil to the flames".But it added that nobody benefited from chaos or war in Korea and all parties in the international community should exercise restraint and avoid doing anything that is "mutually irritating"."Not long along, South Korea ignored the strong opposition of neighbouring countries and decided to deploy the THAAD system, which is diametrically opposed to efforts to maintain peace and stability on the peninsula, has seriously damaged regional strategic balance and caused a rise in tensions on the peninsula."Previous recent comments from China following North Korean missile tests, including one on Monday when China was hosting the G20 summit, have pointedly not mentioned North Korea by name.One senior Beijing-based Western official, who has worked in Pyongyang, said China had little influence and no control over North Korea, despite the popular perception in Washington."The North Koreans don't like the Chinese and certainly don't listen to them," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.It's also a misunderstanding to think that the North's youthful leader Kim Jong Un is unhinged, he added."The North Korean leadership knows exactly what they are doing and how far they can push things. They know it would be the end of their country if they really provoked a war as the Americans would just flatten them."ADVANCE WARNINGMichael Madden, an expert on the North Korean leadership, said he was fairly confident that North Korea would have given Russia and China advance warning of the test.Choe Son Hui, North Korea's negotiator for the stalled talks on Pyongyang's nuclear programme, visited Beijing this week, while Yun Tong Hyon, the vice chief of the Ministry of the People's Armed Forces, led a North Korean military delegation to Moscow this week."Both would have direct knowledge about a forthcoming test and would be tasked to pass along a heavily implicit message," said Madden.Another Beijing-based diplomatic source said the level of Beijing's anger with South Korea could be seen with what he termed as the unusually strong public comments about THAAD by President Xi Jinping when he met South Korea's president this week on the sidelines of the G20 summit."Mishandling the issue is not conducive to strategic stability in the region and could intensify disputes," Xi was quoted by China's Foreign Ministry as saying.The diplomatic source said it was not expected that China would publicise such comments. "China blames South Korea and the United States just as much as it does North Korea for the current state of tensions," the source said.To be sure, there is little public sympathy in China for Kim, who is derisively referred to on Chinese social media as "Fatty Kim the Third" after his father and grandfather.Today, China's Twitter-like Weibo service blocked searches for that term, although there were still plenty of comments condemning him."Fatty the Third has gone crazy," wrote one user.China is also upset with the United States for what it sees as Washington's interference in the disputed South China Sea.Jin Qiangyi, Director of Yanbian University's Centre for North and South Korea Studies on the Chinese side of the North Korea border, said China would be in a quandary about a substantive reaction."We can't completely not cooperate with the United States, but we can't completely be at their beck and call," Jin said, pointing to the South China Sea as an issue that China is unhappy with the United States about.Still, China's options are limited for a country already under tough sanctions which in any case does little trade with the outside world."If North Korea does not listen, of course we can try pressure, to use sanctions to resolve things," Jin said. "But if that does not work what then? Is there anything else we can do? The answer is no."REUTERS AKC RAI1303 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0432-925844.Xml
China said today that it would lodge a diplomatic protest with North Korea's embassy, hours after the country conducted its fifth nuclear test.Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying made the comment during a regular press briefing. REUTERS AKC RAI1317 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0432-925902.Xml
The UK Independence Party today denied a newspaper report that its former leader, Nigel Farage, had been offered his own television show by a Russian state-funded broadcaster.Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper reported that RT had offered Farage - one of the prominent members of the Leave campaign in Britain's EU referendum - his own television show and that Farage had held talks with the Moscow-based broadcaster."Nigel has not been offered a show by RT," a UKIP spokesman said by telephone when asked about the report. "There has been no negotiation on a show for RT. This report is incorrect."Once known as Russia Today, RT was launched in 2005 as an attempt by the Kremlin to deliver an alternative to what it sees as Western-dominated news coverage."RT provides an alternative perspective on major global events, and acquaints international audience with a Russian viewpoint," the station says on its website.A spokeswoman for RT declined immediate comment on the report.Farage lent his support to Donald Trump last month, saying the Republican US presidential nominee represented the same type of anti-establishment movement that he crafted in Britain.Once dismissed by former Prime Minister David Cameron as "a bunch of ... fruitcakes and loonies and closet racists", UKIP ultimately helped force Cameron to call the EU referendum in which UKIP successfully campaigned for an exit.In the June 23 vote, 51.9 percent, or 17.41 people voted to leave the EU, while 48.1 percent, or 16.14 people, voted to stay in the EU. REUTERS AKC AS1420 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0432-926004.Xml
"Russia is seriously concerned over the nuclear test. The resolutions of the UN Security Council must be strictly implemented," Tass news agency reported quoting Mr Lavrov as saying.

The successful nuclear test carried out by North Korea today is the most powerful so far. North Korea has previously conducted four nuclear tests -- in 2006, 2009, 2013 and January, 2016.

Pyongyang said it confirmed that a nuclear warhead can be mounted on the country's ballistic rockets.

The blast had the explosive power of 10 kilotonnes, South Korea's Defence Ministry said.

A source in the Russian Foreign Ministry told Interfax news agency that Moscow will look into all information concerning the fifth nuclear test carried out by North Korea.

"There is a need for in-depth analysis of what has happened," he said.UNI XC SW AE 1534

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"If the chase begins in Indonesia and continues in the international waters, and inside Philippine waters, they can go ahead and blast them off," Efe news quoted Duterte as saying while interacting with the Filipino community in the Indonesian capital.

Piracy is a major concern for leaders of the region, who fear a Somalia-like rise in maritime insecurity in southeast Asia.

Duterte said he has already discussed the issue with his Indonesian counterpart Joko Widodo during the Asean (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) Summit that concluded on Thursday in Laos.

Duterte arrived in Indonesia overnight after attending the Asean conference and is scheduled to meet Widodo to discuss matters of maritime security.

In March, the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia agreed to set up joint patrols in the Sulu Sea, a region from where Filipino militant group Abu Sayyaf has kidnapped several Indonesian and Malaysian sailors in recent months.

--IANS sm/dg

( 192 Words)

2016-09-09-16:55:57 (IANS)
Amid the war of words between India and Pakistan over the unrest in the Kashmir valley, the US has asked the two South Asian neighbours to engage in peace talks to de-escalate tensions even as it again nudged Islamabad to take concerted action against safe havens and terrorist groups which threaten other countries in the region. "We strongly encourage in all of our dealings with either India or Pakistan stronger relations between the two countries. It's clearly in the security interests of the region that they work to de-escalate tensions and that they have dialogue," State Department Deputy Spokesperson Mark Toner told reporters yesterday at his regular press briefing. He said the US administration did not want to see tensions between the two countries to escalate and spiral out of control, leading to some kind of incident. ''It is important for the two countries, the two governments to maintain strong, cordial, and productive relations," he added. Mr Toner said Washington's discussions with Islamabad continued to focus on terrorism and noted that Pakistan had made efforts to address the issue. ''We want to see more action taken, but it continues to be a topic of conversation with them.'' He made it clear that America's relationship with India and Pakistan was not a zero sum game. "As we've said many times, there's no zero-sum game here. We need to have a very strong and robust relationship with India and we do the world's largest democracy. And we also want to have a strong relationship with Pakistan. It's in the interests of the region to do so," he said. "The recent India and Bangladesh visit of the Secretary of State (John Kerry) and not going to Pakistan should not be treated otherwise," the US official said. "It doesn't clearly indicate anything about our relationship with Pakistan. The Secretary has a very intense travel schedule. He's been to Pakistan recently; he speaks often to senior Pakistani leadership," he said, "Specifically, he was in India for the Strategic and Commercial Dialogue and took the opportunity to also visit Bangladesh I think the first time he's been there," he added. UNI XC AT ADG 1158 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0329-925793.Xml
Britain condemned North Korea's latest nuclear test today and said it would consult with international partners on a robust response."These reports are of grave concern," Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said in a statement after North Korea conducted its fifth and biggest nuclear test."The United Kingdom strongly condemns North Korea for conducting a further nuclear test, which is a flagrant violation of UN Security Council Resolutions and a threat to regional peace and stability."REUTERS SDR VP1647 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0431-926334.Xml
Three women arrested after a car loaded with gas cylinders was found near Notre Dame cathedral had been planning to attack a Paris railway station, the French interior ministry said.The Peugeot 607 was found early on Sunday laden with seven gas cylinders and three jerry cans of diesel, said police, although no detonators were discovered."A group has been neutralised. Others are out there," French President Francois Hollande said on the sidelines of a summit of southern European states in Athens today.The car's discovery triggered a terrorism investigation and revived fears about further attacks in a country where Islamist militants have killed more than 230 people since January, 2015.One of the women stabbed a police officer during her arrest before being shot and wounded, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said late yesterday."These three women aged 39, 23 and 19 had been radicalised, were fanatics and were in all likelihood preparing an imminent, violent act," Cazeneuve said in a televised statement.TV footage showed a policeman leaving the scene of the arrests in the Boussy-Saint-Antoine suburb, some 30 km (20 miles) southeast of Paris, carrying a large knife.Scores of radicalised people of French and other nationalities are in Syria and Iraq fighting for Islamic State. Many of those involved in recent attacks in France have either taken part in the fighting or had plans to.France is among the countries bombing Islamic State strongholds, and the group has urged supporters to launch more attacks on French soil.The Interior Ministry said all train stations had been put on alert but that the intended target had been the Gare de Lyon, a mainline train station less than 3 km (two miles) from Notre Dame in central Paris.The Interior Ministry official said the youngest of the three women, a 19 year-old whose father owned the car, was already suspected by police of wanting to wage jihad for Islamic State in Syria. She had written a letter pledging allegiance to the militant Islamist group, the official said.The car's owner was taken into custody earlier this week but later released. He had gone to police on Sunday to report that his daughter had disappeared with his car, officials said.Four people were detained earlier in the week, and another man, the fiance of the 23 year-old woman, has also since been arrested, police sources said.The newly arrested man has a connection to another attack in which a police couple was killed near Paris in June, the sources said, identifying him as the brother of a friend of the police killer, Larossi Abballa.REUTERS SDR RK1815 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0431-926611.Xml
Days after Bangladesh hanged Jamaat leader Mir Quasem Ali for war crimes committed during the country's 1971 Liberation War, India on Friday said it has been supportive of the judicial process of Bangladesh's war crimes tribunal and that it is an internal issue of that country. "India has been supportive of a judicial process under the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) of Bangladesh to address the pending issue of justice for war crimes committed during the movement for the independence of Bangladesh in 1971," MEA spokesperson Vikas Swarup said in a statement. He said the "ICT process to bring the perpetrators of war crimes to justice has wide popular support in Bangladesh. It is also an internal issue of Bangladesh." On September 3, Bangladesh executed Islamist tycoon Mir Quasem, 63, who was the financial backer of the opposition Jamaat-e-Islami party. He had led the Al-Badr militia that supported the Pakistan Army during the nation's Liberation War in 1971. Pakistan had in a statement said it was "saddened" at the execution and maintained that "The act of suppressing the Opposition, through flawed trials, is completely against the spirit of democracy". Bangladesh had protested against Pakistan's "interference" in its internal affairs. --IANS nd/rn/bg ( 212 Words) 2016-09-09-20:41:56 (IANS)
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who has often praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, criticized US policy in Iraq during an interview broadcast on a Kremlin-funded television network.The New York businessman made the comments in an interview with former CNN broadcaster Larry King, whose podcast was aired last night on RT network, a 24-hour, Russian-language news channel.Trump criticized US policy in Iraq from the days of Republican President George W Bush, who ordered the American-led invasion in 2003 in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, al Qaeda attacks on the United States. Trump then attacked President Barack Obama and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, Obama's first secretary of state, for their roles in the US troop withdrawal from Iraq."It's a war we shouldn't have been in, number one," Trump said in the interview. "And it's a war that, when we got out, we got out the wrong way. That's Obama."While Trump has leveled similar criticism in the past, doing so on Russian television could draw more criticism from those who have questioned his overtures to Putin, including a number of Republicans.Trump's interview surfaced as he and Clinton continue to clash over foreign policy in the runuup to the Nov. 8 presidential election. In an televised national security forum on Wednesday night, the two sought to portray themselves as most fit to be commander in chief, with Trump arguing that Putin is a better leader than Obama.Clinton yesterday said Trump's comment was "not just unpatriotic and insulting to the people of our country, as well as to our commander in chief, it is scary."Trump and his running mate, Indiana Governor Mike Pence, defended the comment. Pence called it "inarguable" that Putin is a stronger leader than the US president.House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan - the top elected Republican official who has frequently broken with Trump - again took a sharply different view from that of his party's candidate."Putin is an aggressor that does not share our interests. Vladimir Putin is violating the sovereignty of neighboring countries," Ryan said at his weekly news conference.Clinton was scheduled today to meet with former senior national security officials in New York.Trump and Clinton's intensifying political combat over national security came as Clinton's lead in opinion polls has slipped in recent days. The current average of polls from website RealClearPolitics puts her at 45.6 per cent support, compared with Trump's 42.8 per cent.REUTERS SDR AN2003 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0431-926963.Xml
World leaders should put finding an end to the war in Syria at the centre of their discussions at the United Nations General Assembly in New York this month, actor Angelina Jolie said during a visit to a refugee camp in Jordan today."Ask the fundamental question of what are the root causes of the Syrian conflict and what will it take to end it," she said at the Azraq refugee camp, which she visited in her role as a special envoy for the UN High Commission for Refugees.Syria's five-year-old civil war has killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced 11 million, half the country's pre-war population, including many who have fled overseas, sparking a refugee crisis in the Middle East and Europe."Besides the millions trapped inside Syria whose lives are at risk daily, 75,000 Syrians are stranded in the berm, a no-man's land on the Jordanian border, including children, pregnant women and gravely ill patients. They have had no food since early August, there is next to no humanitarian access," she said.However, world powers are divided over how to end the crisis in Syria, with Russia giving military aid to President Bashar al-Assad and the United States and some Western European countries helping rebels seeking his downfall.Within the Middle East, Iran and Shi'ite militias from Lebanon and Iraq back Assad, while Turkey and Gulf Arab states including Saudi Arabia and Qatar support the rebels.Yesterday US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov resumed negotiations in Geneva aimed at finding a ceasefire deal to allow humanitarian access in Syria after two other meetings in the past three weeks. REUTERS JW AN2109 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0364-927098.Xml
The White House today reiterated that President Barack Obama would veto a bill that would allow the families of the victims of the September 11 attacks to sue Saudi Arabia's government for damages.The House of Representatives was expected to vote on the bill today. The Senate passed it unanimously in May."We are in the same place we were the last time," the White House official said today. Both Obama and a White House spokesman said in April the president would veto the bill.REUTERS JW RK2232 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0364-927154.Xml
Three Turkish soldiers were killed and one soldier was wounded after an attack by Islamic State militants on a tank in northern Syria today, the Turkish army said in a statement.Turkey launched its first major military incursion into Syria just over two weeks ago in a bid to push Islamic State back from its border and prevent Syrian Kurdish militia fighters from seizing territory in their wake.Turkish air strikes hit and destroyed four building used by the Islamic State militants earlier today, the army said.REUTERS JW AN2305 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0364-927159.Xml
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned North Korea's latest nuclear test today as a "brazen breach" of UN Security Council resolutions."I count on the Security Council to remain united and take appropriate action. We must urgently break this accelerating spiral of escalation," he told reporters. REUTERS JW AN2306 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0364-927162.Xml
SpaceX founder and chief Elon Musk said today he was unsure why one of the company's Falcon rockets burst into flames on its Florida launch pad last week, destroying both the rocket and an Israeli communications satellite it was due to lift into orbit."Still working on the Falcon fireball investigation. Turning out to be the most difficult and complex failure we have ever had in 14 years," Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur who is also the chief executive of Telsa Motors, wrote on Twitter.A SpaceX-led accident investigation is underway, overseen by the Federal Aviation Administration's Commercial Space Transportation office.A massive fireball enveloped the rocket on September 1 as it was being fueled for a routine test of its first stage. The rocket was scheduled to blast off two days later.The rocket's nine engines had not yet ignited for a test firing when a fireball engulfed the upper stage. "There was no apparent heat source," Musk said today.The accident destroyed the 200 million dollars communications satellite owned by Israel-based Space Communication, which was going to be used by Facebook and Eutelsat to expand internet access in Africa.Hawthorne, California-based SpaceX has not yet said how much damage was done to its launch pad, located at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.SpaceX has backlog of more than 70 launches for commercial and government customers, worth more than 10 billion dollars.The rocket that was destroyed was the second of 29 Falcon 9 rockets to fail. It took SpaceX about three weeks to identify the likely cause of its previous accident, which occurred on June 28, 2015.The problem was traced to a faulty bracket, which was holding a bottle of helium inside the rocket's upper stage. When the strut broke about two minutes after liftoff, the upper-stage liquid oxygen tank over-pressurized and ruptured, triggering an explosion.SpaceX replaced thousands of struts throughout its fleet and had successfully flown nine times before last week's failure."We remain fully confident in the results of (that) investigation ... The current investigation has no bearing on this," SpaceX spokesman Dex Torricke-Barton wrote in an email to Reuters.SpaceX's next flight had been slated for later this month from a second launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California."We have confidence that SpaceX will resolve the matter and when they do we will be ready to launch," SpaceX's customer, Iridium Communications Inc, told Reuters today.SpaceX said last week it was looking to shift its Florida launches to a nearly completed pad at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, adjacent to its Cape Canaveral site.REUTERS JW AN2334 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0364-927199.Xml
Chinese Defense Minister Chang Wanquan (R) meets with British Secretary of State for Defense Michael Fallon on the sideline of the UN peacekeeping defense ministerial meeting in London, Britain, Sept. 8, 2016. (Xinhua/Han Yan)

LONDON, Sept. 8 (Xinhua) -- China and Britain on Thursday pledged to enhance their exchanges and mutual trust in military to tap their huge cooperation potential.

The latest development came as visiting Chinese Defense Minister Chang Wanquan met with British Secretary of State for Defense Michael Fallon on the sideline of the ongoing UN peacekeeping defense ministerial meeting in London.

Chang, also a Chinese state councilor, said that his country is willing to deepen mutual understanding and political trust with the new British government, expand cooperation and exchanges in various areas and levels so as to make new progress in the bilateral strategy coordination and pragmatic cooperation.

Chang's remarks came as China and Britain reaffirmed their commitments to the "golden era" in the bilateral relationship when the leaders of the two countries met in Hangzhou during the G20 summit a few days ago.

The minister said that the military relations between the two nations had witnessed substantial progress.

He called on the two sides to maintain the momentum of high-level military exchanges and bring new connotation to their pragmatic cooperation.

"We should make our military relations a critical growth pole for our bilateral relations," Chang added.

On his part, Fallon said that Britain is willing to strengthen its exchanges and cooperation with China in military and defense.

The defense ministerial meeting is a follow-up event of the the Leaders'summit on Peacekeeping which was convened in the United States last year.
Director of the Venice Film Festival Alberto Barbera smiles during an interview with Xinhua in Venice, Italy, on Sept. 8, 2016. Chinese cinema could become one of the "big players" in the Western markets, and the Venice Film Festival wishes to help with this, said director of the prestigious international film event Alberto Barbera here on Thursday. (Xinhua/Jin Yu)

by Xinhua writers Gan Chun, Gu Dunyu

VENICE, Sept.8 (Xinhua) -- Chinese cinema could become one of the "big players" in the Western markets, and the Venice Film Festival wishes to help with this, said director of the prestigious international film event Alberto Barbera here on Thursday.

"We would like to increase our relationship with the Chinese film industry and Chinese filmmakers. We will keep on looking for good Chinese films, and keep supporting Chinese films with themes that have international interest," Barbera, a renowned Italian film critic who has headed several international film festivals, told Xinhua in an interview.

There has been long-standing relationship between Venice and Chinese cinema, which began in the late 70s and the early 80s when Chinese films first came to Venice for the competition, Barbera said. "They got awards, international promotion, and attention from all over the world, and we have kept on having a strong interest on Chinese cinema ever since."

Established in 1932, the Venice Film Festival is the oldest-running film festival in the world, and one of the three major European film festivals.

Its 73rd edition, running form Aug. 31 to Sept. 10, attracted participants from some 43 countries and regions, with 20 films competing for the Golden Lion, the highest prize awarded at the festival.

The festival is also witnessing a growing trend of cooperation between Chinese and European film industries.

"I think there is an interest from both sides," said the director. "Because the Chinese film industry needs to open up to the world, and Western companies need to get a share of the Chinese film market, which has become one of the most important markets of the world."

The bilateral interest could find a common field for investment, research, and experimentation to help new filmmakers get access to production, he explained, calling it a "profitable moment for everyone."

The festival itself is seeking more opportunities for cooperation with China. Barbera said they were currently discussing the possibility of working with Chinese film festivals and giving more support to new Chinese filmmakers who are eager to achieve success overseas.

Despite the strong Chinese presence in investment, production, and distribution at this year's festival, no Chinese-language film was selected for the main competition.

"The problem of Chinese cinema, at this particular moment, is that it is focused on the domestic market mainly. It means that most of the films that are produced now in China have excellent quality in terms of the technical and narrative aspects, but they are oriented to get interest from the domestic audience," the director said.

Nonetheless, he believes that as the Chinese film industry continues to mature, filmmakers will soon realize the importance of diversity.

"You cannot concentrate the entire production on commercial films, comedies, or action movies. It is important to have different kinds of films, because diversity is something that could interest different markets in the world," he said.

Barbera expressed confidence in the fast-changing Chinese film industry. "We are in a global market, and the Chinese film industry is open to the world. More and more Chinese films will become active in Western markets and appeal to Western audiences."
PHNOM PENH, Sept. 8 (Xinhua) -- A Cambodian government official on Thursday lauded the ties between China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) over the past 25 years and foresaw a brighter future in their relations.

"China is a very important strategic partner of ASEAN," Kao Kim Hourn, Minister Attached to Cambodian Prime Minister Samdech Techo Hun Sen, told reporters at Phnom Penh International Airport upon Hun Sen's return from ASEAN Summits in Laos.

"In their past-25-year relations, ASEAN and China have established a lot of mechanisms for cooperation in all fields," he said.

China is the largest trading partner of ASEAN, he said, noting that ASEAN total trade with China reached 346.4 billion U.S. dollars in 2015, accounting for 15.2 percent of ASEAN's total trade.

He added that Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) flows from China to ASEAN amounted to 8.2 billion U.S. dollars in 2015, placing China as ASEAN's fourth largest source of FDI.

According to the official, ASEAN and China leaders vowed to boost their two-way trade and investment of 1 trillion U.S. dollars and 150 billion U.S. dollars, respectively by 2020.

Kao said that the South China Sea issue would not hurt ASEAN-China relations since the issue was between some ASEAN member states and China, not between ASEAN and China.

"The South China Sea issue is the bilateral issue between individual countries and China," he said. "Therefore, all parties directly concerned (in the issue) should continue to resolve their disputes peacefully through negotiations and consultations in accordance with international law including the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS)."

ASEAN groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
BRATISLAVA, Sept. 8 (Xinhua) -- Four people were killed when an emergency helicopter crashed in Central Slovakia on Thursday.

Three crew members and a 38-year-old patient were killed when the Air-Transport Europe (ATE) emergency helicopter crashed in the village of Strelniky, ATE spokesperson Zuzana Hopjakova confirmed.

"It's been confirmed that rescue units have found the wreck of the helicopter and four bodies without any signs of life," said the spokesperson, adding that the cause of the crash is still unknown.

Apart from the patient, the Bell 249 helicopter was carrying pilot Jan Rusin, doctor Patricia Krajnakova and rescue worker Frantisek Bartos.

"The helicopter's pilot Jan Rusin was 50 years old. During his career he had racked up more than 4,640 flying hours and so was among the most experienced pilots of the company," said Hopjakova.

"Physician Patricia Krajnakova was 46 years old and had been flying in the helicopter since 2014. There was also 32-year-old rescuer Frantisek Bartos, who previously worked as an aircraft mechanic but became a rescuer in 2009," explained Hopjakova.

The medical team members lost their lives while pursuing their arduous calling of helping and rescuing people in distress.

"Their commitment and hard work deserves our unfathomable thanks and respect," added Hopjakova. Enditem
ISLAMABAD, Sept. 8 (Xinhua) -- At least eight people including seven cops were injured when a bomb went off near a police vehicle in Pakistan's northwest Peshawar city on Thursday, local Urdu media reported.

Express TV reported that the personnel from the Rapid Response Force (RRF) were on routine patrolling on their van when it was hit by the bomb at Warsak Road area of Peshawar, the capital city of the country's northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

Police said that some unknown militants blew up the roadside planted bomb with a remote controlled device and fled the scene.

The injured people were shifted to Lady Reading Hospital where one of them is said to be in critical condition.

Outlawed organization Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan claimed responsibility for the attack in a telephone call to local media, the report added.

Police cordoned off the area for investigations.

Thursday's attack is the continuation of the latest string of attacks on police in the country.

A total of 11 policemen have been killed and three others injured in separate attacks in the country's Sindh, Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces in the last one week.

Earlier on Wednesday night, two policemen were killed in firing by unknown gunmen in Karachi, the provincial capital of Sindh. Enditem
BRUSSELS, Sept. 8 (Xinhua) -- Most people expressed satisfaction with cultural facilities in all European Union (EU) capitals except in Malta's Valletta, official data showed Thursday, suggesting great disparities among the bloc's 28 member states.

Survey data showed a majority of citizens were "very or rather satisfied" with cultural facilities such as concert halls, theatres, museums, and libraries in capitals of 27 EU member states in 2015.

This was in notable contrast to the situation in Valletta where only 34 percent of inhabitants expressed satisfaction, said Eurostat, the bloc's statistic office.

It was not surprising the Austrian capital of Vienna, known as the city of music, won the highest rating with a 97-percent satisfaction rate, followed by Helsinki, Prague and Stockholm, where it was above 90 percent, according to Eurostat.

The statistical office added that Athens witnessed the greatest increase in positive trends between 2012 and 2015, from a 54-percent satisfaction rate in 2012 to 62 percent in 2015.

The data, published on the occasion of European Heritage Days on Thursday, was based on perception survey indicators produced by the European Commission, the bloc's executive arm, Eurostat noted.
DAMASCUS, Sept. 8 (Xinhua) -- Syria's Foreign Ministry denied claims about military gas attack in northern Aleppo province, according to state news agency SANA.

The ministry denied any gas attack by the Syrian army on the rebel-held neighborhood of Sukkary, which allegedly took place on Wednesday.

The ministry accused the rebels and their regional and international backers of carrying out gas attacks against the Syrian civilians.

It further expressed readiness to cooperate with the Organization for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to investigate such crimes.

A day earlier, activists accused the Syrian army of using chlorine gas against the Sukkary neighborhood in Aleppo, adding that civilians suffered from suffocations and breathing difficulties.
WASHINGTON, Sept. 8 (Xinhua) -- U.S. space agency NASA is slated to launch its first mission Thursday to visit an asteroid and bring precious samples back to Earth for analysis that could provide more insight into the evolution of the solar system as well as life on Earth.

The Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft is scheduled to lift off atop an Atlas V rocket at 7:05 p.m. EDT (2305 GMT) from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

The main mission goal is to collect a small sample of rocks and surface soil from a near-Earth asteroid named Bennu, thought to harbor primordial material left over from the formation of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago.

"Sample return is really at the forefront of planetary exploration," SIRIS-REx principal investigator Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona, said at a prelaunch conference. "This is going to be a treasure trove of material for scientists yet to come."

If all goes according to plan, OSIRIS-REx will arrive in August 2018 and spend the next two years photographing and mapping the asteroid's surface to better understand its chemical and mineralogical composition, including selecting the sample site.

Then, in July 2020, the spacecraft will touch the asteroid for only three seconds to collect loose rocks and dust using a device called the Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism and store the material in a sample return capsule.

The spacecraft will depart the asteroid in March 2021 and travel for two-and-a-half years on a trajectory for Earth return in September 2023.

But OSIRIS-REx won't land. Instead, it will eject a small capsule containing the asteroid sample, which will land with the help of parachutes at the Utah Test and Training Range, southwest of Salt Lake City.

Scientists have previously studied pieces of asteroids for decades in the form of meteorites, but all of them were quickly contaminated when they fell to Earth, Lauretta said, noting the sample returned from a primitive asteroid would enable precise analyses that can't be duplicated on the ground.

"We expect these samples will contain organic molecules from the early solar system that may give us information and clues to the origin of life," he said.

The seven-year journey will also help explore how Bennu's orbit is affected by the so-called Yarkovsky effect, the slight push created when the asteroid absorbs sunlight and re-emits that heat as infrared radiation, in the hope of better understanding the hazards of near-Earth space rocks to Earth.

Bennu, with a diameter of 492 meters, is classified as a potentially hazardous object, with a 1 in 2700 chance of impacting Earth in the 22nd century. Lauretta said its orbit has changed by over 160 kilometers due to the Yarkovsky effect since it was discovered in 1999.

"We really want to understand this phenomenon, so that we can better understand asteroid Bennu and apply that understanding to all asteroids not only in near-earth space but throughout our solar system," he said.

The world's first asteroid sample-return spacecraft was Japan's Hayabusa 1, which successfully brought back thousands of dust grains from the asteroid 25143 Itokawa after a seven-year space trip. Its successor, Hayabusa-2, which blasted off in 2014, is now on its way to rendezvous with the asteroid 1993 JU3 in June 2018.
European Council President Donald Tusk (L) shakes hands with Latvian Prime Minister Maris Kucinskis in Riga, Latvia, Sept. 8, 2016. European Council President Donald Tusk said here Thursday next week's European Union (EU) summit in Bratislava has to re-establish political control over the bloc's common future after the Brexit vote in Britain. (Xinhua/Janis)

RIGA, Sept. 8, (Xinhua) -- European Council President Donald Tusk said here Thursday next week's European Union (EU) summit in Bratislava has to re-establish political control over the bloc's common future after the Brexit vote in Britain.

"I am convinced that the summit must be about bringing back political control of our common future. And that it must be about bringing back a strong sense of political community," he told journalists in the Latvian capital.

Tusk also admitted that EU residents were concerned about the migration crisis, terrorism, and external threats, processes they sometimes feel they cannot influence. This is why the EU must demonstrate the will and ability to defend its citizens and offer its residents the feeling of security and stability.

"We have to confront those issues and demonstrate our determination, and our capacity, to ensure on the one hand the openness of Europe, while on the other the protection of our citizens," Tusk said.

"Much of this is under the responsibility of member states, but the EU can assist them. The European Union must help provide a renewed sense of security and stability to Europeans," Tusk said.

He also stressed it was in the interests of all to begin talks on Britain's exit from the EU as soon as possible so as to lessen the uncertainty felt by EU residents.

"But the negotiations cannot begin until the UK activates the process for withdrawal. Article 50 of the (EU) Treaty is very clear. In fact, it is there to protect the interests of the countries remaining in the EU," Tusk said.

Expressing understanding of the concerns Latvians have in regard to Brexit and being permitted to live and work in Britain, Tusk emphasized that one of the most important discussion topics would be to ensure the rights of EU citizens in Britain.

"Our future relationship with the UK requires a balance of rights and obligations -- any access to the single market must be based on the four freedoms, including the freedom of movement," he emphasized.

During his visit, Tusk met with Latvian Prime Minister Maris Kucinskis. The main topic of their talks was the EU summit on Sept. 16 in Bratislava, at which EU leaders planned to discuss the future of the bloc without Britain.
UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 8 (Xinhua) -- UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday welcomed the start of the Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro as a sporting event showcasing abilities of athletes living with disabilities.

Ban "believes that sport has a particularly important role to play in promoting and implementing the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities," UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said at a daily news briefing here. "The Paralympic Movement is a key ally, the secretary-general says."

"Not only do the Paralympic Games showcase the extraordinary abilities and potential of athletes living with disability, they promote the rights of all persons with disabilities and provide a catalyst for lasting change," the spokesman said.

"The secretary-general believes that Paralympic athletes are change makers and role models and are symbols of courage and aspiration to us all," he said.

The Rio Paralympic Games officially opened on Wednesday with a four-hour extravaganza featuring high-octane energy, artistic creativity and touching humanity.

With a central theme of "Everybody has a heart," the opening ceremony's producers promised a show that would "surprise, provoke and celebrate with a Brazilian twist." And they did not disappoint.

Despite wet and windy conditions at the Maracana stadium, a capacity crowd of more than 50,000 attended the show, which was beamed to television viewers in 154 countries and regions.
HAVANA, Sept. 8 (Xinhua)-- Cuba expressed its concern about the "selective and preferential" migration policy maintained by the United States, which it states encourages smuggling and irregular travel by Cubans, according to a press release issued by the island's foreign ministry on Thursday.

On Wednesday, both nations held their second technical meeting on migration and human trafficking in Havana, seeking to increase bilateral cooperation in the area, said the short statement published on the foreign ministry's website on Thursday.

"During the meeting, Cuba expressed its concern to U.S. authorities over the 'wet foot, dry foot' policy and the Cuban Adjustment Act which encourage illegal migration to that nation," it said.

Havana also added that it is worried about the Cuban Medical Professional Parole Program promoted by Washington, which allows Cuban doctors and medical professionals working in third countries to immigrate to the U.S.

"Both policies favor crime, human trafficking and immigration fraud," said the statement.

In February, the first technical meeting between the two sides on human trafficking and immigration fraud took place in Miami.

Immigration is one of the most sensitive issues between both nations, along the embargo that the U.S. government maintains on the island.

In a statement, the U.S. State Department said on Tuesday they "welcomed" the opportunity to bring together technical experts to discuss issues of common interest.

The Cuban Adjustment Act, effective since 1966 as well as the "wet foot, dry foot" policy, grants privileged migratory status to Cuban nationals who reach the U.S. soil, allowing them to apply for permanent residence after just a year living there.
DAMASCUS, Sept. 8 (Xinhua) -- An unidentified warplane struck a meeting of top rebel commanders in northern Syria on Thursday, a military source told Xinhua.

The airstrike killed a number of leaders of the Jaish al-Fateh, or Army of Conquest, including one of its founders, as well as a commander of the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, previously known as the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front, the source said on condition of anonymity.

The rebel commanders were meeting in the countryside of the northern province of Aleppo when the strike hit, the source added, stopping short of giving details about the identity of the warplane.

It wasn't clear yet who was behind the airstrike, as the Qatari-based al-Jazeera reportedly said the U.S.-led anti-terror coalition was behind the strike, while some local reports suggested the Syrian air force was behind the air raid.

Still, the airstrike comes as the Syrian army on Thursday recaptured the key town of al-Ramouseh in the southern countryside of Aleppo, further tightening the noose on the rebels in the eastern side of Aleppo city.
The Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft is seen in an undated NASA artist rendering. (Xinhua/NASA)

WASHINGTON, Sept. 8 (Xinhua) -- U.S. space agency NASA is slated to launch its first mission Thursday to visit an asteroid and bring precious samples back to Earth for analysis that could provide more insight into the evolution of the solar system as well as life on Earth.

The Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft is scheduled to lift off atop an Atlas V rocket at 7:05 p.m. EDT (2305 GMT) from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

The main mission goal is to collect a small sample of rocks and surface soil from a near-Earth asteroid named Bennu, thought to harbor primordial material left over from the formation of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago.

"Sample return is really at the forefront of planetary exploration," SIRIS-REx principal investigator Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona, said at a prelaunch conference. "This is going to be a treasure trove of material for scientists yet to come."

If all goes according to plan, OSIRIS-REx will arrive in August 2018 and spend the next two years photographing and mapping the asteroid's surface to better understand its chemical and mineralogical composition, including selecting the sample site.

Then, in July 2020, the spacecraft will touch the asteroid for only three seconds to collect loose rocks and dust using a device called the Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism and store the material in a sample return capsule.

The spacecraft will depart the asteroid in March 2021 and travel for two-and-a-half years on a trajectory for Earth return in September 2023.

But OSIRIS-REx won't land. Instead, it will eject a small capsule containing the asteroid sample, which will land with the help of parachutes at the Utah Test and Training Range, southwest of Salt Lake City.

Scientists have previously studied pieces of asteroids for decades in the form of meteorites, but all of them were quickly contaminated when they fell to Earth, Lauretta said, noting the sample returned from a primitive asteroid would enable precise analyses that can't be duplicated on the ground.

"We expect these samples will contain organic molecules from the early solar system that may give us information and clues to the origin of life," he said.

The seven-year journey will also help explore how Bennu's orbit is affected by the so-called Yarkovsky effect, the slight push created when the asteroid absorbs sunlight and re-emits that heat as infrared radiation, in the hope of better understanding the hazards of near-Earth space rocks to Earth.

Bennu, with a diameter of 492 meters, is classified as a potentially hazardous object, with a 1 in 2700 chance of impacting Earth in the 22nd century. Lauretta said its orbit has changed by over 160 kilometers due to the Yarkovsky effect since it was discovered in 1999.

"We really want to understand this phenomenon, so that we can better understand asteroid Bennu and apply that understanding to all asteroids not only in near-earth space but throughout our solar system," he said.

The world's first asteroid sample-return spacecraft was Japan's Hayabusa 1, which successfully brought back thousands of dust grains from the asteroid 25143 Itokawa after a seven-year space trip. Its successor, Hayabusa-2, which blasted off in 2014, is now on its way to rendezvous with the asteroid 1993 JU3 in June 2018.
VENICE, Sept. 8 (Xinhua) -- A series of sideline events that aimed at bringing filmmakers together with potential investors have yielded fruitful results at the 73rd Venice Film Festival which is set to conclude on Saturday, according to a report published Thursday by the festival organisers.

For the first time, this year's production and financing events were carried out under the overall title of "Venice Production Bridge," incorporating the Gap Financing Market, the Book Adaptation Rights Area, the Final Cut in Venice prizes, the European Film Forum and other industrial activities.

The report says 1,767 accreditations were registered for this year's events which took place from Sept. 1 to Sept. 5, including 758 Industry Gold accreditations, a 35 percent increase compared to 2015.

Thirty-five screenings were held for professionals and investors, among which 13 were private.

This year in the Gap Financing Market, an occasion where filmmakers could find the money for the final production phase of their works, a total of 656 meetings were held for 40 projects, according to the report.

There projects included fictions, documentaries, TV and Web series, and even Virtual Reality films.

Another event, Final Cut in Venice, aimed at supporting the post production of films from regions affected by poverty and conflicts. Six projects were presented, and four won the prizes.

Established in 1932, the Venice Film Festival has long been known for its preference for artistic films, but in recent years it is also striving to find the balance between artistry and business, which includes launching different platforms to connect industry elites with emerging filmmakers during the festival.

The Director of the festival Alberto Barbera told Xinhua that this year they selected more "audience-oriented" films.

"I think more and more producers today is trying to make films that talk to the people, to find a way to create new storytelling, to involve the new generation and get them passionate about cinema," he said. "The Venice Film Festival can help them get access to investment and bring their ideas into production."

The 73rd Venice Film Festival runs from Aug. 31 to Sept. 10, attracting participants from 43 countries and regions.
SANAA, Sept. 8 (Xinhua) -- A Saudi-led coalition airstrike killed nine civilians, including four children, in Yemen's northern province of Amran on Thursday, a local official said.

The nine from three families were killed when the airstrike hit their three-story residential building, the official told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

Five others were fatally wounded after pulled alive from under the rubble, he said.

Medical officials at Amran hospital confirmed the toll.

The apartment building locates near a public market in central Amran city, the province capital, about 60 km north of the country's capital Sanaa.

The military Arab coalition led by Saudi Arabia has been aerial bombing rebels, Shiite Houthi armed group backed by troops loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, since 2015 after the rebels expelled Saudi-backed internationally recognized government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi into exile.

Houthi fighters and Saleh forces stormed Sanaa, Amran and about half of the country's north in late 2014 and they still dominate despite the 18-month intensified war.

The coalition intervened with air military campaign with the aim to prevent the rebels from controlling the country and restore the government.

The UN-sponsored peace talks between Yemeni rival factions collapsed last month, but UN envoy Ismail Ould Chiekh Ahmed said this week the Yemeni parties agreed to resume negotiations to end war and share future new government.

At least 10,000 people, mostly civilians, were killed in the air strikes and battles, and about three million are displaced. Enditem
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (L) meets with Laotian President Bounnhang Vorachit in Vientiane, Laos, Sept. 8, 2016. (Xinhua/Wang Ye)

VIENTIANE, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- China and Laos, two neighbors that share the same political system, witnessed a great advancement of bilateral ties on Thursday as the two countries signed 20 documents to boost cooperation.

After attending the East Asia Summit in the Laotian capital of Vientiane, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang kicked off his official visit to the landlocked Asian country, expressing readiness to push ahead with major projects in Laos, including the China-Laos railway, economic zones and hydroelectric projects.

Marking the 55th anniversary of bilateral relations, Li and his Laotian counterpart Thongloun Sisoulith signed cooperation documents covering fields ranging from trade and investment to technology and education. The two countries also published a joint communique.

During his talks with Laotian President Bounnhang Vorachit, Li called for closer cooperation in such areas as education and tourism, saying that China and Laos are facing new opportunities for future cooperation.

China, with traditional friendship with Laos, would like to promote their high-level contacts, share their experiences in the governance of their respective countries and deepen pragmatic cooperation, he said.

The premier recalled that the two sides have always respected, treated equally and supported each other since they established diplomatic ties 55 years ago.

During his meeting with Thongloun, Li called for promoting comprehensive strategic partnership with Laos by maintaining close high-level contact, strengthening dialogue and coordination and promoting practical cooperation in various fields.

China and Laos enjoy a high degree of political mutual trust, comprehensive economic cooperation and extensive people-to-people exchanges, which benefit people from two sides and helps maintain regional peace, stability and development, Li said.

The Chinese premier said that China is willing to align its 13th Five-Year Plan with Laos' 8th Five-Year Plan to promote production capacity and investment cooperation and ensure the launch of the flagship project of a high-speed railway before the end of this year.

The construction of an economic cooperation zone at the Mohan-Boten border crossing point and a comprehensive development zone in Vientiane should proceed, Li said, adding that large projects should play a leading role in trade cooperation and regional inter-connectivity.

China is willing to share experience with Laos in fields such as drawing development blueprints, tourism development and agricultural disaster prevention, Li said. He also pointed out that the two countries should strengthen customs and quality control so as to increase convenience of port customs clearance, improve people-to-people exchanges in cultural, media and educational fields, and promote cooperation in defense and law enforcement in order to maintain regional security and stability.

China is willing to keep close coordination with Laos on international and regional issues, firmly support each other, strengthen close cooperation under multilateral frameworks such as East Asia cooperation and the Lancang-Mekong River Cooperation, so as to bring benefit to people of the two countries and the region, Li said.

During his visit, Li also held talks with National Assembly President Pany Yathotou and laid a wreath at Laos' anonymous martyr's monument.
MEXICO CITY, Sept. 8 (Xinhua) -- Mexico is willing to update the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) but only in a "win-win" situation, where the benefits are clear to all sides, said Mexican Minister of Economy Ildefonso Guajardo on Thursday.

Speaking at the Mexico Summit 2016 organized by The Economist, Guajardo said the landmark treaty with the U.S. and Canada could be updated. However, he warned it would have to contend with the entry of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), "which includes new chapters that didn't exist 20 years ago."

He added that these new chapters included topics such as e-commerce and helping SMEs to enter value chains.

Guajardo said he believed NAFTA was still working well, making the re-opening of negotiations unnecessary.

"The way to open NAFTA would be through the TPP, meaning we would not renegotiate the trilateral treaty but complement it and make both treaties co-exist," noted the minister.

"We approved the TPP. Any willingness or not (to update it) will depend on the capacity of President Barack Obama to negotiate toward the end of his government. Finally, a willingness to modernize it...must also come from the exporters," explained Guajardo.

At the same forum, U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Roberta Jacobson explained that the bilateral relationship would survive political and economic difficulties.

Jacobson said the relationship between the countries of North America extended far beyond NAFTA and was complemented by other deals such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

"When we see the three leaders meeting and committing to the North American projects, we can clearly see that many positive things are happening," she emphasized.

Before a crowd of entrepreneurs, academics and politicians, Jacobson said the bilateral relationship "has become more mature and can survive...defensive comments made about Mexicans."
DAR ES SALAAM, Sept. 8 (Xinhua) -- Leaders of the six-member East African Community (EAC) on Thursday requested a three-month extension for deciding whether to sign the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the European Union (EU).

Protection of local industry has surfaced as a major concern as the bloc discussed the pact that will facilitate trade between the EAC and the EU.

At the end of their one-day 17th extraordinary EAC heads of state summit in Dar es Salaam, commercial capital of Tanzania, the leaders said there were still more issues needed to be looked at.

Kenya and Rwanda signed the agreement earlier this month, but it needs approval from all members of the bloc to be operational. Other members of the regional bloc are Tanzania, Uganda, Burundi and South Sudan.

Addressing a news conference at the end of the summit, the EAC Chairman, Tanzanian President John Magufuli, said protection of local industries was among the issues that made the EAC hesitate.

Magufuli said the heads of state had suggested to postpone the official signing, which was originally scheduled for October 1, to January 2017.

The pact gives products from EAC member states duty- and quota-free access to the EU market as long as they meet health and safety standards, while EAC will gradually liberalize 80 percent of its market for EU imports.

"We need to achieve market access of the EU with industrialization of our countries. We cannot continue to export raw materials," said Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.

EAC member states initiated an interim EPA deal in 2007 and another in 2014. Governments were given two years starting in October 2014 to ratify the deal in national parliaments.

Kenya, given its middle-income-country status, stands to lose the most without the agreement, while Tanzania, Burundi, Uganda and Rwanda would continue to get duty- and quota-free access under the EU's Everything But Arms initiative, since they are classified as least developed countries.

"We appeal to the EU not to punish Kenya by denying it access of its products including flowers to the European market," Magufuli said.

Governments in the region also want to ensure that exports such as tea and fresh flowers, which are major sources of foreign exchange, are not hampered by any tariffs on trade with Britain after it leaves the European Union.

The summit also discussed the volatile political situations in Burundi and South Sudan.
HELSINKI, Sept. 8 (Xinhua) -- The European Union (EU) should create a country status of "economic companion", and Britain could be granted such a status, Jyri Hakamies, CEO of the Confederation of Finnish Industries said here on Thursday.

Hakamies made the proposal when addressing a seminar reviewing Britain's future relationship with the EU.

According to the proposal put forward by Hakamies, EU could give the "economic companion" status to its surrounding countries, while its member states are the core.

"The EU and these 'companion countries' would together form the world's largest common market area," he said.

Hakamies believed such a cooperative model could become a realistic alternative not only for Britain, but also for some other countries regarding their relationship with the EU. He did not recommend countries which should be selected by EU as "companion countries" except Britain.

To be admitted into the internal market of the EU, Hakamies said those countries would have to adopt EU legislations.

The "companion countries" should be offered an option of participating in the preparatory work for EU legislations, but they would not be given decision-making powers, he added.

Seeing the free movement of people has become a major concern for the British, Hakamies said:" Restriction of people's free movement could be applied, but labor force should be allowed to move in and out within certain conditions."

"Companion countries" should contribute to the budget of the EU as a compensation for the advantages they get from such a status, suggested Hakamies.

The Finnish industrial leader said the "Norwegian model" could hardly be applied to Britain-EU relations. Hakamies noted that Norway accepted free movement of people, while it has no say in making decisions.

Initially after the Brexit vote, the Norwegian solution was seen in media commentaries as an option for Britain.

Commenting on the proposal of Hakamies, the Finnish Minister for Foreign Trade Kai Mykkanen, who was present at the seminar, said he would promote the thoughts in Brussels. Enditem
PARIS, Sept. 8 (Xinhua) -- French police arrested three "radicalized and fanatical" women in southeast Paris Thursday evening for their alledged connection with an abandoned car in central Paris that contained several gas cylinders.

The women were arrested during an anti-terrorism operation, said French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve.

The suspects, respectively aged 19, 23 and 39, were "likely preparing violent and imminent attacks," he added.

A police officer and one of the women were wounded during the police operation, the minister said, without elaborating.

According to media reports, the injured woman is the daughter of the car owner. She stabbed a police officer before being shot by anti-terrorism units.

The 19-year-old woman is know to police for attempting to leave to Syria.

On Sunday, a Peugeot 607 contained seven gas cylinders, including an empty one on the front passenger seat, in addition to three cans of diesel fuel. Without registration plates, the vehicle was found near the Notre-Dame cathedral in central Paris with its hazard lights flashing.

Anti-terrorism units did not discover detonators in the car while they found documents written in Arabic language.

On Tuesday, police arrested a 34-year-old man and a 29-year-old woman on a motorway in southern France.

The man, the car owner, has been placed on the intelligence services' watchlist for radicalization. He was later released, according to local media reports.

Another couple aged 26 and 27 were arrested late on Wednesday and placed into custody.

France has been on high alert after a series of attacks in France in November last year and July.
UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 8 (Xinhua) -- UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday welcomed the pledges made by countries including China on rapid deployment of peacekeeping operations.

A UN peacekeeping defense ministerial meeting was held in London on Thursday. In support of UN's initiative of setting up a "vanguard brigade" of 4,000 rapid deployable troops, China said it will make part of its 8,000 rapid deployable troops meet the Level II readiness requirement of 60 days.

Ban said he is "particularly encouraged" by the pledges related to rapid deployment to maintain units at a high level of readiness, according to a statement released by his spokesperson.

"The Secretary-General reaffirms the UN's commitment to work with troop- and police-contributing countries in continuing to improve the performance of UN peacekeepers," said the statement.

The London meeting is a follow-up event of the Leaders' Summit on Peacekeeping which was convened last year at the United Nations.

The meeting is expected to improve the planning of UN peacekeeping operations and to promote the implementation of the pledges made by countries at last year's summit.
BRASILIA, Sept. 8 (Xinhua) -- Brazil's Supreme Court on Thursday denied requests filed by impeached President Dilma Rousseff asking for the impeachment vote against her to be suspended and for President Michel Temer to remain in an interim capacity.

Rousseff's petition alleged that irregularities in impeachment process should invalidate it.

In his decision, Justice Teori Zavascki wrote that the Supreme Court would only interfere in the removal of a Brazilian president in an "extreme circumstance."

According to the judge, Rousseff's defense team, led by former Justice Minister Jose Eduardo Cardozo, had the opportunity to protest about the impeachment process and did not succeed in convincing the Senate about Rousseff's innocence.

Furthermore, Zavascki said crimes of responsibility for which Rousseff was removed from office were of an "essentially political character."

However, the justice did ask for additional information on the impeachment process from the institutions involved and sent the case to Brazil's prosecutor-general.

On Aug. 31, the Senate approved Rousseff's impeachment by 61 votes in favor to 20 against. She was tried for fiscal irregularities such as delaying payments to public banks and taking out new loans without congressional approval, in violation of the Fiscal Responsibility Law.

Her impeachment means that Temer will serve as president until the end of 2018.
RIO DE JANEIRO, Sept. 8 (Xinhua) -- China's Jia Honguang expressed surprise after setting a new world record in the men's 100m backstroke S6 at the Rio Paralympics on Thursday.

The 28-year-old clocked 1:12.27, beating the previous record set by his countryman Zheng Tao last year.

"Wow, I just did really well - that was not what I was planning," Jia said.

"My family back in China will be really happy for me, sure - but breaking the world record in the heat doesn't mean I've won a gold medal."

The final of the event was due to be held on Thursday evening, local time.

Jia is competing in his second Paralympic Games, having won a silver medal in the same event in London four years ago.

His left arm and half of his right arm were amputated at age six after he accidentally touched an electrical wire.
Chinese peacekeepers patrol at the Protection of Civilians site 1 beside the United Nations House in Juba, capital of South Sudan, Aug. 11, 2016. (Xinhua/Li Baishun)

UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 8 (Xinhua) -- UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday welcomed the pledges made by countries including China on rapid deployment of peacekeeping operations.

A UN peacekeeping defense ministerial meeting was held in London on Thursday. In support of UN's initiative of setting up a "vanguard brigade" of 4,000 rapid deployable troops, China said it will make part of its 8,000 rapid deployable troops meet the Level II readiness requirement of 60 days.

Ban said he is "particularly encouraged" by the pledges related to rapid deployment to maintain units at a high level of readiness, according to a statement released by his spokesperson.

"The Secretary-General reaffirms the UN's commitment to work with troop- and police-contributing countries in continuing to improve the performance of UN peacekeepers," said the statement.

The London meeting is a follow-up event of the Leaders' Summit on Peacekeeping which was convened last year at the United Nations.

The meeting is expected to improve the planning of UN peacekeeping operations and to promote the implementation of the pledges made by countries at last year's summit.
WASHINGTON, Sept. 8 (Xinhua) -- U.S. space agency NASA on Thursday launched its first mission that will visit an asteroid and bring precious samples back to Earth.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks to Matt Lauer during the Commander in Chief Forum in Manhattan, New York, U.S., September 7, 2016. (Xinhua/REUTERS)

WASHINGTON, Sept.8 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Wednesday laid out his hawkish defense plan which would allow the spending of billions of extra U.S. dollars to expand every branch of the military, pledging an end to mandatory budget caps.

"As soon as I take office, I will ask Congress to fully eliminate the defense sequester and will submit a new budget to rebuild our military," Trump said at a rally in Philadelphia.

"This will increase certainty in the defense community as to funding, and will allow military leaders to plan for our future defense needs," he told the crowd, reading from a teleprompter.

The sequestration measures that went into effect in 2013 affected both military and non-military spending. It is unclear whether Trump believes the cuts to non-military spending should remain.

The latest remarks were seen as a sharp turn from his previous stand since the New York billionaire once repeatedly blasted the Capitol for excessive defense spending, calling for less buying of the newest fighter jets and other weapons and slamming the "special interests" behind military purchases.

In 2013, Trump hailed the cuts, saying they did not go far enough to cut wasteful government spending, according to a Politico report.

On Wednesday, Trump also said he would ask his generals within his first month in White House for a plan to defeat the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, though he claimed just several months ago that he knew more than the generals about the extreme group.

The Republican candidate now advocated for an Army of about 540,000 troops, a Marine Corps of some 36 battalions, an Air Force of 1,200 fighter planes and a Navy with 350 warships. The current size of the Army is 475,000 and the current Navy fleet hovers under 280.

His proposals resonate to many Republican lawmakers on defense issues and are seen as a signal that Trump might steer toward a more Republican mainstream position to push back Democratic attacks against his fitness to serve as commander-in-chief.

However, many of Trump's defense plan would be difficult, if not impossible, to be executed, and would cost tens of billions of dollars, many local analysts said.

In his speech, Trump outlined three major areas he would make savings to pay for his offsets -- cutting unauthorized appropriations, reducing improper payments and underpaid taxes, and shrinking the federal workforce through attrition.

Later on Wednesday, the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget said Trump's defense plan would cost roughly 450 billion dollars over the next 10 years, but his cost offset plans would only cover two-thirds of that sum.

Moreover, as a matter of fact, the goal to end the sequester for the Pentagon has been elusive for Republicans in Congress in the past five years, with the Budget Control Act spending caps still in place through the next president's first term, said the Politico report.

Todd Harrison, a defense budget expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said it is highly unlikely the next president would be able to push through a defense spending increase of this magnitude given all the other pressures on the federal budget.

"It would require some combination of more borrowing, offsetting spending cuts elsewhere, or tax increases -- none of which have been politically viable for the past five years," he said.

Trump comfortably earns the support of military and veteran voters overall, leading Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state, by 19 points in the latest poll issued earlier Wednesday. They got 55 percent and 36 percent of support respectively.

Fifty-three percent of voters who are currently serving or have previously served in the U.S. military said they would be confident in Trump's ability to serve as an effective commander-in-chief of the U.S. military, while 47 percent of these voters said No, the NBC News/SurveyMonkey Weekly Election Tracking Poll has found.

However, among all registered voters, 59 percent would not be confident in his ability to serve as commander-in-chief of the military and just 39 percent would feel confident, the poll shows.

Also on Wednesday, Clinton's campaign announced that 95 retired generals and admirals have endorsed her presidential bid, one day after a group of 88 retired generals and admirals signed an open letter backing Trump to reverse the "hollowing out" of the U.S. military.

The Obama administration has been criticized for overseeing a shrinking of the Pentagon's budget, partly due to the removal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, and partly due to the mandatory budget caps.

The latest NBC News/SurveyMonkey Weekly Election Tracking Poll was conducted online from Aug. 29 through Sept. 4 among 32,226 registered voters, including 3,358 who have previously served or are currently serving in the U.S. military.
SEOUL, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)'s fifth nuclear test is being suspected after an artificial earthquake was detected at a site where its fourth nuclear test was conducted earlier this year, Yonhap news agency reported on Friday.

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) was quoted as saying that artificial earthquake waves of magnitude 5.0 were spotted at about 9:30 a.m. (local time) Friday from the DPRK's main Punggye-ri nuclear test site. The JCS is analyzing the details.

According to the European Mediterranean Seismological Centre, a 5.0-magnitude earthquake was spotted. The U.S. Geological Survey saw the tremor as a 5.3-magnitude quake.

A 5.0-magnitude artificial earthquake was recorded when Pyongyang's fourth nuclear test was conducted on Jan. 6 at Punggye-ri where all of the four DPRK underground nuclear tests had been carried out since 2006.

A government source was quoted as saying that the DPRK may have conducted another nuclear test to mark the country's National Day.

There were media reports that Pyongyang had been preparing for its fifth nuclear test ahead of the 68th anniversary on Sept. 9 of the founding of the state.

Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn called an emergency meeting of the National Security Council (NSC) at 11 a.m., the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae said. President Park Geun-hye is in her overseas trip to Laos.
SEOUL, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) appeared to have conducted its fifth nuclear test after an artificial earthquake was detected at a site where its fourth nuclear test was carried out earlier this year, Yonhap news agency reported on Friday.

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) was quoted as saying that artificial earthquake waves of magnitude 5.0 were detected at about 9:30 a.m. local time (0030 GMT) at the DPRK's main Punggye-ri nuclear test site. The JCS is analyzing the details.

The European Mediterranean Seismological Centre upgraded the artificial quake's magnitude from an initial 5.0 to 5.3. The U.S. Geological Survey saw the tremor as a 5.3-magnitude quake.

The U.S. monitoring agency said the magnitude was caused by an explosion, but it said it could not determine what type of explosion it may be.

A 5.0-magnitude artificial earthquake was recorded before Pyongyang's fourth nuclear test on Jan. 6 at Punggye-ri where all of the four DPRK underground nuclear tests had been carried out since 2006.

An unnamed government source was quoted as saying that the DPRK may have conducted another nuclear test to mark the country's National Day. The source said a nuclear test is highly likely in consideration of the detected site and magnitude.

According to media reports, Pyongyang had been preparing for its fifth nuclear test ahead of the 68th birthday of the nation on Sept. 9.

If confirmed, it would mark the fifth nuclear detonation by the DPRK following the first in October 2006, the second in May 2009, the third in February 2013 and the fourth in January this year.

Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn called an emergency meeting of the National Security Council (NSC) following the suspected test, the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae said. President Park Geun-hye is on her overseas trip to Laos.

Pyongyang has conducted a series of ballistic missile launches since top DPRK leader Kim Jong Un gave an order on March 15 to test a nuclear warhead and ballistic rockets capable of carrying the warhead "in a short time."
UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 8 (Xinhua) -- The UN Security Council on Thursday asked all Yemeni parties to avoid any security vacuums that can be exploited by terrorists or other violent groups.

In a press statement, the 15-nation council voiced its strong concern about intensified terrorist attacks in Yemen, while stressing that a political solution to the country's crisis is essential to address the threat of terrorism.

In late August, a suicide bombing that targeted an army recruiting compound in Yemen's southern port city of Aden left at least 65 people dead and 55 injured. The Islamic State has claimed responsibility.

UN Special Envoy for Yemen Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed warned the Security Council that the current military escalation in Yemen is fueling the expansion of terrorist groups.

Ever since the UN-sponsored peace talks between Yemeni rival factions collapsed last month, fighting escalated inside Yemen and on the northern borders with Saudi Arabia.

In this regard, the Security Council urged the parties in Yemen to immediately resume consultations without preconditions with the UN special envoy.

"The members of the Security Council stressed to all parties that any new political arrangements should be the result of an agreement following negotiations under UN auspices, and not the result of unilateral actions by any side," said the statement.

Yemen, an impoverished Arab country, has been gripped by one of the most active insurgencies in the Middle East.

The security situation in the country has deteriorated since March 2015, when war broke out between the Shiite Houthi group, supported by former President Ali Abdullash Saleh, and the government backed by a Saudi-led Arab coalition.

More than 6,400 people have been killed in ground battles and airstrikes since then, half of them civilians.
BEIJING, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- China's producer price index (PPI), which measures costs for goods at the factory gate, posted a milder decline in August due to a low comparison base, official data showed.

The PPI dropped 0.8 percent year on year in August, a narrower decrease than the 1.7 percent in July, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said Friday.

The reading marked the 54th straight month of decline as China's economic slowdown and industrial overcapacity weighed on prices.

NBS senior statistician Yu Qiumei attributed the milder decline to a low base in the same period last year.

Producer prices for ferrous metal smelting and rolling increased markedly faster in August, while prices for nonferrous metal smelting and rolling returned to growth.

In the first eight months of the year, the PPI dropped 3.2 percent year on year.

On a month-on-month basis, August's PPI edged up 0.2 percent.

The PPI figures came along with the release of the consumer price index, which rose 1.3 percent year on year in August, slowing from 1.8 percent in July.
BEIJING, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- Protectionism is not a solution for tackling global steel woes, China's Ministry of Commerce (MOC) said on Friday following a decision by the United States to impose duties on Chinese steel products.

In a preliminary ruling on Sept. 7, the U.S. Commerce Department set an anti-subsidy duty rate of 210.5 percent for imported carbon alloy steel products from China.

The preliminary ruling was against the commitment made during the G20 Hangzhou summit for members to oppose trade protectionism and support multilateral trading mechanisms in pursuit of trade growth, said the MOC in a statement on its website.

China always advocates coordination and cooperation to solve the difficulties in the global steel industry, rather than frequently resorting to protectionism, the statement said.

The MOC urged the U.S. to abide by World Trade Organization rules,observe the consensus reached during the G20 Hangzhou summit, and shoulder the responsibility to promote the recovery of the global steel industry and improve the global trade environment.
WELLINGTON, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- New Zealand Trade Minister Todd McClay will go to Fiji next week in a bid to advance a controversial trade deal involving 16 Pacific nations.

Last month, New Zealand hosted Pacific trade representatives for crucial talks towards finalizing the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations Plus (PACER Plus) trade and development agreement and "good progress" was made, with the negotiating texts agreed, McClay said Friday.

"However, the momentum needs to be maintained in order to ensure the benefits of PACER Plus are available to all Pacific Island countries and their citizens," McClay said in a statement.

The landmark trade and development agreement aimed to create jobs, raise standards of living and encourage sustainable economic development in the Pacific region, he said.

McClay would also hold talks with Fijian Minister for Industry and Trade and Tourism, Faiyaz Koya, and attend the Fiji-New Zealand, Fiji-Australia Joint Business Council Conference.

New Zealand, Australia, the Cook Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, the Marshall Islands, Samoa, the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu are involved in the PACER Plus negotiations.

At last month's meeting, New Zealand and Australia announced a joint funding package worth 7.7 million AU dollars (5.88 million U.S. dollars) to help Pacific island countries with their domestic ratification processes.

Ministers agreed to conclude remaining market access negotiations by the end of October and sign the agreement by the end of this year.

Civil society groups have criticized the deal, saying Pacific people will most likely lose out and citing concerns about the potential impact of encouraging more foreign investment and greater access for overseas companies.
TOKYO, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Friday said that if the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) has conducted a nuclear test as believed due to the detection of an artificial earthquake, then it was unacceptable and would be protested.

"If North Korea has conducted a nuclear test, it is simply unacceptable. We must strongly protest against it," the prime minister said.

Abe also said that Japan would liaise closely on the matter with the United States and South Korea as the situation unfolds.

The Japanese leader also said he had instructed all relevant officials in his office and applicable ministries to gather more information about the possibility the DPRK had tested a nuclear device.

The prime minister's instructions follow Japan's Meteorological Agency (JMA) detecting an artificial earthquake centered in the DPRK close to a previous test site, which it believes may have been a nuclear test.

The weather agency here said the depth of the artificial earthquake was at 0 kilometers, which is consistent with previous nuclear tests conducted by the DPRK.

In a hastily convened press conference, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said earlier on Friday that the government here is currently gathering more information about the possible nuclear test by the DPRK.

"Given similar cases in the past, we think an earthquake detected in the morning may have been a nuclear test by North Korea," Japan's top government spokesman said, adding that Japan will cooperate with relevant countries to gather and analyze more information regarding the DPRK's possible testing of a nuclear device.

Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida also said that Japan would convene an emergency meeting of its National Security Council (NSC) to discuss issues relevant to the incident.

Government officials here have also said that if the test is confirmed, it will call for an emergency UN Security Council meeting on the matter.

The DPRK is banned by UN sanctions from any tests of nuclear or missile technology.

The DPRK conducted a fourth nuclear test in January this year.
SEOUL, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- South Korea's military believed that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) has conducted its "most powerful" nuclear test so far on Friday after the biggest-ever artificial earthquake was detected at a site where its fourth nuclear test was carried out earlier this year.

A South Korean Defense Ministry official told Xinhua that it was a fifth nuclear test according to a preliminary analysis, saying that artificial seismic waves of a 5.0-magnitude quake were detected at about 9:30 a.m. local time (0030 GMT) from the DPRK's main Punggye-ri nuclear test site.

The official said the 5.0 magnitude put its explosive yield at about 10 kilotons, which is the highest explosive yield yet of any DPRK atomic devices. The explosive yield of the previous nuclear test was estimated at 6 kilotons.

The most powerful test came just 8 months after Pyongyang detonated what it claimed was its first hydrogen bomb, the fourth of its nuclear device tests, on Jan. 6.

The official said that the Seoul military is analyzing details on what type of nuclear material was used and whether the test was successful.

The DPRK had previously tested atomic bombs every three years or so. Pyongyang carried out its first test in October 2006, followed by the second in May 2009 and the third in February 2013.

The size of artificial seismic activities from the DPRK's nuclear tests has gradually increased from 3.9 in the first test to 4.8 in the fourth. The explosive yield has risen from 0.4 kilotons to 6 kilotons in the same period.

Pyongyang has conducted a series of ballistic missile launches since top DPRK leader Kim Jong Un gave an order on March 15 to test a nuclear warhead and ballistic rockets capable of carrying the warhead "in a short time."

Earlier this week, the DPRK test-fired three Rodong ballistic missiles that traveled about 1,000 km and landed near Japan's territorial waters. On Aug. 24, a ballistic missile was launched from a DPRK submarine off its east coast, flying 500 km, the longest-ever distance by the DPRK.

Earlier, the European Mediterranean Seismological Centre revised the seismic tremor's magnitude from an initial 5.0 to 5.2. The U.S. Geological Survey saw the tremor as a 5.3-magnitude earthquake.

The U.S. monitoring agency said the magnitude was caused by an explosion, but it said it could not determine what type of explosion it may be.

China Earthquake Networks Center and South Korea's meteorological agency put the magnitude at 5.0. The Chinese seismological agency said it was a suspected explosion.

An unnamed government source was quoted as saying that the DPRK conducted another nuclear test to mark the country's National Day.

According to media reports, Pyongyang had been preparing for its fifth nuclear test ahead of the 68th anniversary of the founding of the state on Sept. 9.

Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn convened an emergency meeting of the National Security Council (NSC) following the suspected test, the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae said. President Park Geun-hye is in her overseas trip to Laos.
SEOUL, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- South Korean President Park Geun-hye strongly denounced the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)'s fifth nuclear test during her overseas trip of Laos, her office said on Friday.

Park, who has stayed in the Laotian capital of Vientiane to attend the East Asia Summit (EAS), said that the DPRK conducted a second nuclear test this year following the January test, strongly criticizing it as a clear violation of UN Security Council resolutions and a grave challenge to the international society.

Her denunciation followed the DPRK's fifth nuclear test Friday morning at its main Punggye-ri test site. Seoul's military said artificial seismic waves were detected from a 5.0 magnitude quake close to Punggye-ri, where the fourth nuclear detonation was carried out in January.

South Korea regards the latest test as the most powerful as the 5.0 magnitude can put its estimated explosive yield at about 10 kilotons. Six kilotons of explosive yield were spotted from the fourth test.

The president said her government will push for additional harsher sanctions, both bilateral and multilateral in UN Security Council, in cooperation with the international society, vowing to strengthen pressures on Pyongyang with all available measures to make it give up its nuclear program.
BEIJING, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- China's foreign ministry issued a statement on Friday, expressing firm opposition to the nuclear test by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).

The DPRK said earlier Friday that it has conducted a nuclear warhead explosion test, according to the state-run television.
WELLINGTON, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- The New Zealand government Friday said the nuclear test carried out by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea was "a dangerous affront to the international community and a serious threat to regional security."

As the current president of the United Nations Security Council, New Zealand expected to convene a meeting in response to the test shortly, Foreign Minister Murray McCully said.

"This latest nuclear test is highly provocative and deeply concerning, especially as it comes on the back of a series of ballistic missile launches by North Korea recently," McCully said in a statement.

"This is the fifth nuclear test conducted by North Korea, and it directly defies the UN Security Council which has demanded that North Korea stop nuclear testing," he said.

"New Zealand absolutely rejects the testing of nuclear weapons and is strongly committed global disarmament and non-proliferation."
SUVA, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- Fiji has decided to withdraw from negotiations on the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER) Plus, Fijian Minister for Industry, Trade and Tourism Faiyaz Koya announced Friday.

An umbrella agreement between members of the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), PACER Plus aims to create jobs, raise standards of living and encourage sustainable economic development in the Pacific region.

Fiji will not endorse the PACER Plus text at the PIF leaders meeting currently held in the Federated States of Micronesia, Koya said, claiming that Australia and New Zealand have been backtracking on the initial agreement that was made.

"Fiji and the Pacific have demonstrated substantial flexibility in the PACER Plus negotiations. In fact, Australia and New Zealand have back-tracked on their initial commitment of a development-oriented PACER Plus. The two key aspects of this - labor mobility and development cooperation - are both legally non-binding which essentially means Australia and New Zealand can withdraw these arrangements at any time," Koya said at a press conference.

Fiji has been lobbying for development aspects in PACER Plus from day one, and it has come to a stage where the island country can longer be part of the negotiation process, Koya said.
NEW DELHI, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- In a landmark ruling, an Indian court has sentenced to death a 25-year-old man for a fatal acid attack on a woman in Mumbai three years ago.

The trial court in Mumbai Thursday ruled that Ankur Panwar must be hanged for the "rarest of the rare" crime, after convicting him of the acid attack on 23-year-old Preeti Rathi earlier this week.

This is the first such death sentence for an acid attack in India as experts say that many such attacks go unpunished in the country.

The incident dates back to 2013 when Rathi had just arrived in Mumbai from Delhi with her father to begin work as a nurse with the Indian Navy.

At a railway station in Mumbai, Panwar, who had followed his victim from Delhi on the same train.

Tapped Rathi on the shoulder and when she turned around, he flung acid at her.

After a month in hospital, Rathi died of her injuries as parts of her throat and lungs had been destroyed after she accidentally swallowed the acid sloshed across her face.

Panwar, who was the victim's neighbour in the Indian capital, confessed to police in Mumbai after his arrest a year later that he was angry at Rathi as she had rejected her marriage proposal.

Amar Singh Rathi, the victim's father, was very happy with the judgment. "He (Panwar) got what he deserved. There was no possibility of leniency for what he had done," he told the media.

And a month after Rathi's death, India's Supreme Court ordered the central and state governments to regulate the sale of acid, saying it could only be sold to people carrying a valid identity card.

Though there are over 400 death row convicts in the country, according to some estimates, India hardly carries out executions, with two exceptions in recent years.

While Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab, the lone terrorist caught alive in 2008 Mumbai massacre, was hanged in 2013, fruitseller Afzal Guru was executed for 2001 Parliament attack in 2014. Enditem
PYONGYANG, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) said Friday that it has successfully carried out a nuclear warhead explosion.

That marked Pyongyang's fifth nuclear test in defiance of UN resolutions that ban the country from conducting nuclear tests or carrying out ballistic missile launches.

Friday's test examined and confirmed the structure and specific features of the movement of a newly developed nuclear warhead capable of being loaded on the "strategic ballistic rockets of the Hwasong artillery units" of the Korean People's Army, said a statement issued by the DPRK Nuclear Weapons Institute.

Factors measured in the test include "explosion might, nuclear material use coefficient," the statement said. The test had no radioactivity leakage or adverse impact on the surrounding environment, it added.

The nuclear test coincided with the 68th anniversary of the founding of the country.

The DPRK confirmed the nuclear test after various seismic-monitoring agencies reported an earthquake in the country.

Earlier in the day, the China Earthquake Network Center said a 5.0-magnitude earthquake jolted the DPRK at 0030 GMT at a depth of 0.0 km.

Meanwhile, the European Mediterranean Seismological Center said a 5.0-magnitude earthquake was detected in the DPRK and later revised the magnitude to 5.3. The U.S. Geological Survey saw the tremor as a 5.3-magnitude quake.

Pyongyang announced a successful test of its first hydrogen bomb, or its fourth nuclear test, on Jan. 6. The DPRK had also conducted underground nuclear tests in 2006, 2009 and 2013.
BEIJING, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- China's foreign ministry issued a statement on Friday, expressing firm opposition to the nuclear test by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).

"Today the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, regardless of universal opposition from the international community, conducted another nuclear test, to which the Chinese government is firmly opposed," said the statement.

The DPRK state-run television reported earlier Friday that the country has conducted a nuclear warhead explosion test. It is Pyongyang's fifth nuclear test, and comes eight months after the last one.

"We strongly urge the DPRK side to honor the commitment to denuclearization, abide by the relevant UN security council resolutions and halt any moves that could aggravate the situations," according to the statement.
PARIS, Sept. 8 (Xinhua) -- French police arrested on Thursday evening three "radicalized and fanatical" women in Boussy Saint Antoine, southeast of Paris, connected to the gas cylinder probe and planned "violent" and "imminent" attack, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said.

"An anti-terrorism operation led to the arrest of three women involved in the abandoned car containing gas cylinders...," Cazeneuve said.

The suspects aged 19, 23 and 39 were "likely preparing violent and imminent action," he added.

A police officer and one of the women were wounded during the operation, the minister said without elaborating.

According to media report, the injured woman, daughter of the owner of the suspicious car, tried to stab the police officer before she was shot by anti-terror units. The policeman suffered a knife wound but without life risk.

The 19-year-old woman is known to police for attempting to leave to Syria.

The car owner, who is on the intelligence services watchlist for radicalization, was taken into custody earlier this week but later released for lack of evidence. He had gone to police on Sunday to report that his daughter had disappeared with his car, officials said.

On Sunday, a grey Peugeot 607 contained seven gas cylinders, including an empty one on the passenger seat and three cans of diesel fuel, was found near the famous tourist place Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris. The vehicle, with no registration plates, was found park in a no-parking area with its hazard lights flashing and caught the attention of police.

Anti-terrorism units did not discover detonators in the car while they found documents written in Arabic.

A bar employee working near Notre Dame had first raised the alert on Sunday after noticing a gas cylinder in the back seat of the parked car, police said. Although the cylinder in the back seat was empty, six full cylinders were discovered inside the car.

Local media reported that though the police and security services have thwarted the potential terrorist attack, vulnerabilities in anti-terrorism remain.

Florence Berthout, mayor of Paris's Fifth Arrondissement, said the incident had highlighted the need to beef up security and put more police on patrol in one of the world's most visited cities.

She told BFM news channel the vehicle had been left in a zone where parking is strictly prohibited and had remained there for around two hours before it came to the attention of police.

Before the three women were arrested, four people -- two brothers and their girlfriends -- were already in custody over the discovery.

The first couple, 34-year-old man and a 29-year-old woman, were arrested on a motorway in southern France and are known to the security services for links to radical Islamists. The man's brother and his girlfriend, both aged 26, were arrested late Wednesday.

France has been on high alert since at least 130 people were killed by Islamist gunmen and suicide bombers in multiple attacks on Paris last November.

On July 14, at least 84 people were killed when a truck smashed into a crowd in the southern city of Nice during national day celebrations. Around half of the injured were in critical condition.

On July 26, two young men took six hostages in a church in northern France, later slaughtered a priest and seriously wounded another. They were shot dead by the police. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack.




Jiang Zengwei (L Front), chairman of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT), shakes hands with Kith Meng, President of the Cambodia Chamber of Commerce (CCC) in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Sept. 9, 2016. A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed here on Friday between the CCC and the CCPIT. (Xinhua/Sovannara)

(PHNOM PENH, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed here on Friday between the Cambodia Chamber of Commerce (CCC) and the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT).

The deal was inked between CCC President Kith Meng and CCPIT Chairman Jiang Zengwei during a Cambodia-China Investment Forum.

"The MoU will contribute further to enhancing trade and investment relations between the two countries," Kith Meng said.

He added that the deal would basically cover the areas of cooperation such as exchange of information, trade promotion activities, exchange of visits, experience sharing, and capacity building.

Speaking about the Cambodia-China Investment Forum, Jiang said the excellent cooperation between China and Cambodia is a solid foundation encouraging more and more Chinese investors to Cambodia.

"Enterprises play a very important role in promoting trade and investment relations between the two countries," he said. "The CCPIT is ready to encourage more Chinese enterprises to invest in Cambodia and to assist Cambodian companies wishing to do businesses in China."

He was confident that the forum would greatly contribute to developing trade and investment ties between China and Cambodia.

Jiang is leading a delegation of 47 Chinese enterprises on a visit to Cambodia.
CHANGSHA, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- In Mao Anping's living room is a family photo. In the center of the frame sits Chairman Mao Zedong.

"He is my father's second cousin," said the 72-year-old retiree from his front room in the village of Shaoshan in central China's Hunan Province, pointing at the solemn man in a white shirt. "Should he be alive today, he would have been happy to see how his hometown has changed."

Mao, the founder of the People's Republic of China (PRC), was born in Shaoshan in 1893 and lived there for 16 years.

He passed away on Sept. 9, 1976. Forty years after his death, the country he founded has gone through some dramatic changes, but he remains an influential figure.

CHANGES IN SHAOSHAN

Shaoshan was an impoverished village when New China was founded. In Mao Anping's photograph, shot in 1959, some of the villagers were bare foot.

Mao Yushi, 71, the Party chief of Shaoshan, remembers the sadness that rippled through the village when the news broke that Mao had passed away. The village was even more upset when they couldn't find anyone who owned a television to watch his funeral.

Several years later, China began its reform and opening-up drive, and Mao Yushi saw an opportunity.

"We tried to encourage villagers to start businesses," he said. The response was far from positive -- all the villagers refused. "They saw businessmen as mercenaries and said they would bring shame on Chairman Mao and everything he stood for."

Mao Yushi prevailed, he pounded the pavements and went from door to door to talk with the villagers. Tang Ruiren was first to be persuaded.

In 1984, she began to sell food, secretly. She carried a bucket of porridge to Chairman Mao's residence, and set herself up outside, but she only dared sell to visitors. Whenever a fellow villager was nearby, she hid behind a tree.

She forgot how much she earned that day, but the remarks of one visitor struck her. "He told me 'it is good to earn money and support yourself'."

As a result, she carried on, and her business grew and grew. In 1987, she opened a restaurant and called it Maojia, meaning belonging to Mao.

Maojia began opening franchise restaurants in 1994. It now has more than 300 outlets across China. Maojia began selling pre-packed food in 2008, including red-braised pork and fire baked fish -- both favorites of Chairman Mao. The products are now available on online platforms such as Tmall and JD.

Maojia is not the only successful company to come from Shaoshan.

About 15 minutes drive from Chairman Mao's residence is a high-tech industrial district, which is home to 55 enterprises. Their products range from mine carts, computer systems, airplane materials and wind power equipment.

The little village of Shaoshan is now a city with 120,000 residents calling it home. The city posted GDP of seven billion yuan (about 1.05 billion U.S. dollars) last year. Disposable income of urban and rural residents was 32,046 yuan and 20,253 yuan respectively, above the national average.

RESPECT STILL REMAINS

As their lives improved, many villagers built new houses in the village, and, slowly, the peace and serenity of Chairman Mao's hometown was polluted by noisy peddlers and car horns.

The local government asked the restaurants and hostels to relocate so some peace could be restored to the neighborhood. Tang Ruiren's original Maojia restaurant moved in 2002. Starting from March this year, tourists can only access the historical site on tour buses or by foot, all outside traffic has been banned.

"The site where Chairman Mao lived is more like the place when he left a century ago," said Mao Anping.

According to Hu Rong, a 33-year-old tour guide, Shaoshan receives eight million visitors a year, of that number around two percent are from abroad.

"Many people come on his birthday or during Spring Festival, and leave gifts or flowers," she said. "Some young people get married in the front of his bronze statue, so that Chairman Mao can witness their wedding."

Foreigners often come armed with questions.

"They usually ask me why so do many people come to Shaoshan, and what I think of the Cultural Revolution," Hu said.

"I tell them that many people see him as a savior, he was the man that helped the Chinese stand on their own feet.

"As for the Cultural Revolution, if we could walk a day in his shoes we could understand more. And, any way, he was not a deity, he make mistakes," she said.

UNDYING BELIEF

In China, admiration of the late chairman is not confined to Shaoshan.

In Tibet, some people still hang Mao's photo in their homes under a white Hada, a silk cloth used by Tibetans to express respect and greeting.

Zhabsang, 52, lives in Nagqu Prefecture and he is an avid Mao memorabilia collector. Over the past 30 years he has spent more than 100,000 yuan on over 10,000 pieces of "Maomorabilia."

His parents were among the one million people, or 90 percent of the region's population, that were serfs until the peaceful liberation of the region in 1959.

"I used to live in a tent as a child. But look at me now -- my home is spacious and well-lit, and I do not have to worry about food or clothing," said Zhabsang. "We should not forget the well-diggers when drinking from the well."

In north China's Shanxi province, over the past four decades, Yang Jianguang, 67, has not only purchased more than 50,000 items related to the late Chinese paramount leader, but opened a private museum.

"Yushe County, where I am from, was part of a revolutionary base set up by Chairman Mao," he said. "Under his leadership, the peasants became the masters of the country. His theories still apply today."

In Hebei, Li Xianpeng, 22, founded a Mao theory society for his fellow college students. His group has more than 200 members. "Chairman Mao has a lot of fans," he said.

"He made mistakes, but he was on the people's side," he added.

His view was shared by Mao Anping. "Chairman Mao told us to 'seek truth from the facts.' When we talk about him, we must see everything he did -- the right and the wrong," he said.

Mao Anping was a torch bearer for the Beijing Olympics in 2008. The opportunity to visit the nation's capital exposed him to the results of China's growth. "This growth, I think, is what he wanted."
People watch a TV broadcasting a suspected nuclear test held by Democratic People's Republic of Korea, at a train station in Seoul, South Korea, Sept. 9, 2016. (Xinhua/Yao Qilin)

SEOUL, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- South Korean President Park Geun-hye denounced the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)'s fifthnuclear test during her trip to Laos, calling it as "fanatic recklessness," her office said Friday.

Park, who has stayed in the Laotian capital of Vientiane to attend the East Asia Summit (EAS), said that the DPRK conducted a second nuclear test this year following the January test, strongly criticizing it as a clear violation of UN Security Council resolutions and a grave challenge to the international society.

The South Korean president said the DPRK's nuclear test proves the "fanatic recklessness" of Pyongyang adhering to nucleardevelopment in a thorough defiance of the international community's unified will not to accept the DPRK's nuclear program.

Her denunciation followed the DPRK's fifth nuclear test Friday morning at its main Punggye-ri test site. Seoul's military said artificial seismic waves were detected from a 5.0 magnitude quake close to Punggye-ri, where the fourth nuclear detonation was carried out in January.

South Korea regards the latest test as the most powerful as the 5.0 magnitude can put its estimated explosive yield at about 10 kilotons. Six kilotons of explosive yield were spotted from the fourth test.

The DPRK's state media announced it has successfully carried out "nuclear warhead explosion" test, saying this test showed its capability of mounting nuclear warhead on ballistic missiles.

Pyongyang had claimed it already possessed a technology of miniaturizing nuclear warhead small enough to fit on ballistic missiles that can reach the U.S. mainland.

Since top DPRK leader Kim Jong Un gave an order on March 15 to test a nuclear warhead and ballistic rockets capable of carrying the warhead "in a short time," the DPRK has conducted a series of ballistic missile launches including ground-based ballistic missiles and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM).

President Park decided to return to South Korea some four hours earlier than scheduled, right after holding a bilateral summit with Laotian counterpart.

What Pyongyang can gain from nuclear tests, Park said, would only be the international society's tougher sanctions and isolation. She said this provocation would speed up its self-destruction.

The president said her government will push for additional harsher sanctions, both bilateral and multilateral in UN Security Council, in cooperation with the international society, vowing to strengthen pressures on Pyongyang with all available measures to make it give up its nuclear program.

President Park made a phone call with U.S. President Barack Obama, agreeing to take all available measures including fresh tougher sanctions in UN Security Council, according to Park's office. The United States, South Korea and Japan asked for an emergency meeting of UN Security Council to address the DPRK's fresh nuclear detonation.

Cheong Wa Dae announced a separate statement of the government, urging Pyongyang to immediately dismantle its nuclear and missile programs in a complete, verifiable and irreversible manner.

Chairman of South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) convened an emergency video conference with field commanders to review defense readiness against possible provocations from the DPRK. The JCS head ordered a stern, strong retaliation against any DPRK provocation.
by Xinhua writer Wang Haiqing

BEIJING, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) announced on Friday that it has conducted a successful nuclear warhead explosion test.

The test, which marked the DPRK's fifth nuclear test in total and second so far this year, is regrettable and constitutes yet another reckless act of Pyongyang. It runs counter to UN Security Council resolutions as well as the ultimate goal of denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

The blast is full of symbolism as it took place on the 68th anniversary of the country's founding. Yet ironically, it has dealt yet another heavy blow to the foundation of regional security, its own security included.

Pyongyang has depicted nuclear weaponry as a powerful deterrent against possible foreign invasion, and its deep sense of insecurity is justified. But the DPRK should realize that, given the current international circumstances and prevailing trends of the times, a foolhardy pursuit of nuclear capabilities in violation of international obligations will only isolate itself and put the nation's long-term security in jeopardy.

Against the backdrop of Pyongyang's latest nuclear test is an increasingly gloomy picture of the Korean Peninsula featuring a swelling number of uncertainties. The United States and South Korea have kept staging war games, and the DPRK has been firing ballistic missiles.

Adding oil to the flames, Washington and Seoul have decided to install in South Korea an advanced missile defense system, which far exceeds the latter's defense needs and poses a grave threat to the security of other countries in the region.

The string of provocative measures are fueling worries that the Korean Peninsula is plunging into a vicious cycle of escalation and degenerating into a tinderbox that could ignite with any spark.

At such a crucial juncture, it is highly imperative that all sides concerned refrain from any action and rhetoric that could stoke up tension.

China has expressed explicit opposition to the DPRK's nuclear and missile tests and Washington and Seoul's missile shield deployment plan as well as other moves detrimental to regional peace and stability, and has been earnestly calling for dialogue.

Dialogue remains the only viable way to permanent peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and willingness of all parties concerned to return to it is needed more than ever.
MANILA, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- The Philippines' exports declined by 13 percent year-on-year to 4.673 billion U.S. dollars in July due to a decrease in demand for the country's products from traditional markets, the government said on Friday.

Exports in July last year amounted to 5.371 billion U.S. dollars.

National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) Director General Ernesto Pernia, citing the report of the Philippine Statistics Authority, said exports to Japan fell by 14.4 percent to 909.56 million U.S. dollars in July from a year ago level.

Same with the United States, from 811.19 million U.S. dollars, down by 16.6 percent to 777.30 million U.S. dollars, and China, from 557 million U.S. dollars to 520.93 million U.S. dollars.

"We must continue to upgrade and improve our industries to ensure their competitiveness and resiliency to shocks," said Pernia, who is also the socioeconomic planning secretary.

He said the Philippines must continue to expand our presence in non-traditional markets to reduce its dependency on traditional market.

Of the top 10 export commodities for July, eight of them dropped, PSA said.

These include machinery and transport equipment (-36.8 percent), woodcrafts and furniture (-24.2 percent) and mineral products (-18.9 percent) among others.

Total exports for January to July dropped by 8.3 percent to 31.505 billion U.S. dollars from 34.372 billion U.S. dollars in 2015. Enditem
BEIJING, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- China's Foreign Ministry issued a statement on Friday expressing firm opposition to the nuclear test by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).

"Today the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, despite universal opposition from the international community, conducted another nuclear test, to which the Chinese government is firmly opposed," said the statement.

DPRK state-run television reported earlier Friday that the country has conducted a nuclear warhead explosion test. It was Pyongyang's fifth nuclear test and followed the previous one by eight months.

"We strongly urge the DPRK side to honor the commitment to denuclearization, abide by the relevant UN Security Council resolutions and halt any moves that could aggravate the situation," according to the statement.

The statement said China's stance has always been to achieve denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula, prevent nuclear proliferation and maintain peace and stability in Northeast Asia.

"China will, along with the international community, keep working toward the goal of denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula and commit to settling problems through the six-party talks," said the statement.
PYONGYANG, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) said Friday that it successfully conducted a nuclear warhead explosion test at the northern nuclear test ground, the fifth by the country since 2006.

The test aimed to judge the power of a newly developed nuclear warhead, said the DPRK Nuclear Weapons Institute.

"This is definitely a higher level of DPRK's technology of mounting nuclear warheads on ballistic rockets," the official KCNA news agency quoted the institute as saying in a statement.

The test "examined and confirmed the structure and specific features of the movement of a nuclear warhead that has been standardized to be mounted on strategic ballistic rockets of the Hwasong artillery units" of the strategic force of the Korean People's Army, said the statement.

Factors measured in the test include "explosion might, nuclear material use coefficient," the statement said. The test had no radioactivity leakage or adverse impact on the surrounding environment, it added.

The statement also said that the DPRK is now able to produce "a variety of smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear warheads of higher strike power as many as it wants."

The nuclear warhead test was "part of practical countermeasures" to the threat from the United States, the statement said, adding that the DPRK would take further measures to "bolster the country's nuke power in quality and quantity" so as to protect itself from U.S. threats.

The nuclear test coincided with the 68th anniversary of the founding of the country.

The DPRK confirmed the nuclear test after various seismic-monitoring agencies reported an earthquake in the country.

Earlier in the day, the China Earthquake Network Center said a magnitude-5.0 earthquake jolted the DPRK at 0030 GMT at a depth of 0.0 km.

Meanwhile, the European Mediterranean Seismological Center said a magnitude-5.0 earthquake was detected in the DPRK and later revised the magnitude to 5.3. The U.S. Geological Survey saw the tremor as a magnitude-5.3 quake.

The nuclear test is a second in eight months, after a test of the country's first H-bomb. The DPRK also conducted underground nuclear tests respectively in 2006, 2009 and 2013.

On Tuesday, the KCNA reported that top DPRK leader Kim Jong Un has instructed to "continue to make miraculous achievements in bolstering up nuclear force one after another in this historic year," giving a hint that another nuclear test may be in the pipeline.

The DPRK's nuclear tests run counter to relevant UN Security Council resolutions and to the goal of denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
WASHINGTON, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- The first U.S. asteroid sampling mission took flight on Thursday evening, beginning a seven-year journey that could provide more insight into the early solar system and even the origin of life on Earth.

"Here we go!" principal investigator Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona tweeted as the spacecraft, OSIRIS-REx, blasted off atop an Atlas V rocket at 7:05 p.m. EDT (2305 GMT) from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

About an hour later, OSIRIS-REx, which stands for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer, successfully separated from the rocket's upper stage, formally embarking on its long trip to chase the asteroid named Bennu.

"You'll all be real glad to know that we got everything just exactly perfect," Lauretta said at a news conference later in the day. "It was an amazing evening for me and for this team."

"Tonight is a night for celebration -- we are on our way to an asteroid," said Ellen Stofan, chief scientist of the U.S. space agency NASA. "We're going to be answering some of the most fundamental questions that NASA really focuses on."

OSIRIS-REx's main goal is to collect a small sample of rocks and surface soil from Bennu, which was selected for the 800-million-U.S.-dollar mission because of its proximity to Earth, its right size, its primitive composition, and its potentially hazardous orbit.

According to NASA, asteroids like Bennu are remnants from the formation of our solar system more than 4.5 billion years ago and may have been a source of the water and organic molecules for the early Earth and other planetary bodies.

Therefore, this is "a journey that could revolutionize our understanding of the early solar system," NASA said in a statement.

"An uncontaminated asteroid sample from a known source would enable precise analyses, providing results far beyond what can be achieved by spacecraft-based instruments or by studying meteorites," it said.

If all goes according to plan, OSIRIS-REx will arrive in August 2018 and spend the next two years photographing and mapping the asteroid's surface to better understand its chemical and mineralogical composition, including selecting the sample site.

Then, in July 2020, the spacecraft will touch the asteroid for only three seconds to collect at least 60 grams of loose rocks and dust using a robotic arm called the Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism and store the material in a sample return capsule.

The spacecraft will depart the asteroid in March 2021 and travel for two-and-a-half years on a trajectory for a return to Earth in September 2023.

But OSIRIS-REx will not land. Instead, it will eject a small capsule containing the asteroid sample, which will land with the help of parachutes at the Utah Test and Training Range, southwest of Salt Lake City.

NASA said at least 75 percent of the sample will be reserved for investigation and analysis by future generations of scientists.

Meanwhile, the main spacecraft will remain in orbit around the Sun after the sample returns.

Also to be explored is how Bennu's orbit is affected by the so-called Yarkovsky effect, the slight push created when the asteroid absorbs sunlight and re-emits that heat as infrared radiation, in the hopes of better understanding the hazards of near-Earth space rocks to Earth.

Bennu, with a diameter of 492 m, is classified as a potentially hazardous object, with a 1 in 2700 chance of impacting Earth sometime between 2175 and 2199. Lauretta said its orbit has changed by over 160 km due to the Yarkovsky effect since it was discovered in 1999.

"We really want to understand this phenomenon, so that we can better understand asteroid Bennu and apply that understanding to all asteroids not only in near-Earth space but throughout our solar system," he said.

OSIRIS-REx was the first U.S. mission to carry samples from an asteroid back to Earth and the largest sample returned from space since the Apollo era.

The world's first asteroid sample-return spacecraft, however, was Japan's Hayabusa 1, which successfully brought back dust grains from the asteroid 25143 Itokawa after a seven-year space trip.

Its successor, Hayabusa-2, which blasted off in 2014, is now on its way to rendezvous with the asteroid 1993 JU3 in 2018.
XIAMEN, Sept. 9 Xinhua) -- While global downward economic pressure has put pressure on foreign companies in China, new opportunities have emerged as the Chinese market continues to open.

China was no longer the top destination for foreign investors as foreign investment in China slowed last year, according to a report released by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development during the ongoing 19th China International Fair for Investment and Trade.

Foreign firms have felt the pinch. Nokia closed its Shanghai factory in March. Philips decided in May to stop operations at a lighting equipment branch in Shenzhen, while Samsung reportedly adjusted staffing in China.

It is not unusual for foreign companies to adjust their China business due to market changes such as labor costs and return on investment, and does not mean China is losing its appeal to foreign investors. The Chinese mainland is still the third-ranking destination for foreign investment, and many sectors, especially the service sector, offer huge investment potential for multinational companies, according to Ge Shunqi, a researcher on international investment with Nankai University.

Companies cannot do business in China the same as 20 years ago because the market has evolved, according to Harley Seyedin, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in South China, adding that China continues to offer new opportunities to foreign investors and will remain a great destination for U.S. investors for many years to come.

The time for simple manufacturing and exports is gone, and now opportunities to tap Chinese consumption, health care, education and other sectors have arrived, Seyedin said, adding it is important to be Internet-savvy and consumer-minded.

A survey of 246 U.S. companies operating in south China released earlier this year showed that 75.6 percent of all participants report providing goods or services to the Chinese market as their primary business focus rather than creating goods or services for export.

Since it opened up over 30 years ago, China has been the top investment destination among developing countries for 24 consecutive years, with over 850,000 foreign firms investing in China with total investment reaching 1.7 trillion U.S. dollars.

"We have seen fewer investment barriers during the past 30 years, especially in the manufacturing sector. Foreign companies were once required to find a local partner while setting up a branch in China, but now you can set up a wholly foreign-owned company here," said Dong Huijuan, vice president with the China branch of ABB Group, a Switzerland-headquartered global technology company in power and automation.

Facing economic headwinds, China is opening its markets more quickly to attract more foreign investment and will continue to open up, the Chinese leadership vowed during the recent G20 Summit.

China's top legislature revised four laws regulating inbound investment earlier this month, with an easing of rules for foreign and Taiwanese investors looking to start businesses across China. The Ministry of Commerce also released a new set of supporting measures to promote a "negative-list" approach in approving foreign investment.

The Chinese market has been opening up in agriculture, and although investment in some areas such as vegetable oil still faces policy restrictions, the market is almost totally free to foreign investors in China's free trade zones, according to Ma Zheng, vice-president of business affairs at Cargill China.

Chinese authorities decided in late August to set up seven new free trade zones, bringing the total to 11, as China looks to replicate the success of previous trials and open the market wider. The FTZs will be launched after necessary steps are taken, without a given timetable.

"We look forward to more opening up of the agricultural sector, but of course it will be a gradual process, and we will increase investment in China by 2020 to make our accumulated investment commensurate with China' s status among global economies," Ma added.
BEIJING, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- Overseas China-watchers have hailed the country's active and more mature role in the Group of 20 (G20) by hosting a summit that highlighted innovation and cooperation to spur global economic growth.

The G20 summit concluded on Monday in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou with the adoption of a statement outlining the group's direction and development goals, and with the Hangzhou Consensus on facilitating global economic growth through innovative and inclusive long-term measures.

CALLING FOR INNOVATION, COOPERATION

China played an "essential role" at the G20 summit, calling on the world's major economies to promote innovation and cooperation, Gustavo Girado, head of the Buenos Aires-based consulting firm Asia & Argentina, told Xinhua in a recent interview.

China's hosting of the gathering served to steer the group's focus toward these two factors, which could play a key role in reviving the global economy, Girado said.

With terrorism and acts of violence being a continued threat to global stability, China "was willing to reorient the order of interests toward the institutional and economic issues that originally gave rise to the group," Girado said.

As this year's president, China set the tone and agenda by selecting the theme "Toward an innovative, invigorated, interconnected and inclusive global economy."

"It is evident in the group's final declaration that the general guidelines China proposed for the agenda of the meeting have been included, and that's important," said Girado, adding that it helps to raise the bar for the next G20 summit to be held in Germany.

G20 members "agreed on guidelines to coordinate policies and spur growth by promoting innovation, which is an especially important matter for (Chinese) President Xi Jinping, who has taken up this cause," said the economist.

A recession is the main challenge to global economic development, Girado said.

"The slowdown of China's economy, which is undergoing a period of reforms, is a real issue," Girado said, adding that the crux of the matter is that a lot depends on the dynamism of the Chinese economy.

As a result, the world is looking to China and its large-scale development projects, he said.

"Highly ambitious regional development plans, such as The Belt and Road initiative, leveraged by financing from multinational entities such as the AIIB (Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank) and the BRICS bank, have drawn the world's attention," said Girado.

However, Girado said the G20 is a collection of sometimes divergent developed or emerging economies with "important and powerful rival interests" coexisting within the bloc.

"This is where China plays an essential role, and it appears to have duly noted that. Today its interests are more linked than ever to the progress of its partners, even the small ones," he said.

"China has been fundamental in promoting cooperation to spur innovation, and encouraging individual initiatives and coordination schemes in different fields, including supporting a multilateral trade system," he said.H

CONSIDERING INTERESTS OF DEVELOPING NATIONS

As the biggest developing country in the world, China, which shoulders the responsibility of maintaining and expanding the rights and interests of other developing countries, has invited a record number of developing countries to the G20 summit, including Egypt.

"It is the first time for Egypt, which is not a G20 member state, to take part in such a huge event referred to by economists as 'the board of the world economy'... at a time when the Egyptian government is making intensified efforts to reform its economy and facing a bunch of massive challenges," Egyptian state-run daily newspaper Al-Ahram said Wednesday.

In another article published on the newspaper, Mohamed Fayez Farahat, head of Asian Studies unit at the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, held that Egypt's participation in the G20 summit "has important implications not only concerning Egypt's growing weight in the international community but also about the development of the G20 itself, its understanding of a number of challenges still facing the group and the role Egypt could play in dealing with some of these challenges."

The author called for reconsidering the formation structure of the G20, noting that "among the basic motivations for the establishment of the group was to provide a greater chance for fair representation of rising powers and markets in administrating the issues of world economy."

Mansour Abou El-Azam, an Egyptian journalist and writer, said that China has presented an excellent model for the world in hosting the G20 Summit.

He said that China has proven its capability to have an active and more mature role in global affairs.
CANBERRA, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- Aid agencies Friday slammed the "slow" pace in which Australia is settling Syrian refugees, after the government announced that just 3,532 of the promised 12,000 refugees have successfully been relocated to Australia.

A full year after then-Prime Minister Tony Abbott promised to resettle 12,000 Syrians fleeing the conflict in the Middle East, less than a third have so far been processed, and CEO of World Vision Australia, Tim Costello, said it was "puzzling" how "slow" the process was.

"We expected they should all be here (by now)," Costello told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) on Friday.

Costello pointed out that Canada, a nation which employs similar background checks, had settled almost 30,000 Syrian refugees over just four months

"You can't tell me that the Canadians can take 30,000 welcomed by their Prime Minister because somehow they don't have security issues and we do in doing the proper security checks."

But Immigration Minister Peter Dutton defended the government's resettlement process, and said Australia employs a "different approach" to refugee resettlement.

"My priority is to make sure I never compromise the security of our country," Dutton told the ABC.

"I don't have any comment to make about the Canada program because I just don't have any details about the Canada program.

"Canada has a very different approach to the security checks they are conducting and the scrutiny we apply is greater than Canada, there's no question about that."
WELLINGTON, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese senior political advisor has promised to deepen bilateral cooperation and exchanges with New Zealand.

Qi Xuchun, vice chairman of the Naitonal Committe of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, made the remarks when meeting with Speaker of the New Zealand House of Representatives David Carter on Wednesday.

Qi said he hoped to expand people-to-people exchanges and cooperation between the two countries so as to benefit the two peoples.

Carter said New Zealand has attached importance to its ties with China, and is willing to strengthen their cooperation in various fields.

Qi concluded a three-day visit to New Zealand on Friday.
WELLINGTON, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- New Zealand is working with Pacific island countries to fight illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing in the Pacific as part of a package of aid to protect the ocean resource, Prime Minister John Key said Friday.

Key and New Zealand officials were Friday briefing Pacific leaders at the annual Pacific Islands Forum in Pohnpei, Micronesia, on the strong progress made in combating IUU fishing in the Pacific.

"The Pacific's tuna fishery is the region's greatest natural asset and is currently valued at more than 3.2 billion NZ dollars (2.44 billion U.S. dollars)," Key said in a statement from his office.

"At last year's Pacific Islands Forum, New Zealand committed 50 million NZ dollars (38.2 million U.S. dollars) to support fisheries management in the region, to ensure as much benefit as possible is returned to its people," he said.

"This work is well under way, with almost 30 million NZ dollars (22.92 million U.S. dollars) now allocated to important projects including strengthening the management of coastal fisheries, improving long-line tuna management, and tightening monitoring and control of fishing boats in ports."

IUU cost the Pacific tuna fishery an estimated 850 million NZ dollars (649.48 million U.S. dollars) every year and affected the sustainability of the fishery.

Addressing IUU was critical to the success of the region's efforts, said Key.

"We are working with Pacific countries to increase controls at their ports to better monitor fishing vessels and to reduce the practice of fishers transferring catches between boats outside of ports, in order to under-report their total haul. This is a major problem in the region," said Key.

"These efforts sit alongside progress being made to develop a sustainable, catch-based management system for South Pacific albacore tuna to better protect the resource for future generations."
YANGON, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has pledged to address tensions in Myanmar's Rakhine state.

Meeting with press Thursday evening following his first visit to the Rakhine state, Annan expressed his advisory commission's commitment to impartiality in advising the government so as to solve issues in accordance with international norms.

Annan said his commission's primary mission was to provide recommendations and suggestions about how best to meet the international criteria in tackling the sensitive issue of the Rakhine state, while pledging to act righteously and impartially focusing on providing humanitarian aid, reconciliation and development.

Annan said that he would submit a comprehensive report of the commission's findings to the government on a one-year time frame.

Myanmar State Counselor's Office announced on Aug. 24 formation of a nine-member advisory commission on Rakhine state comprising three foreign and six local experts, chaired by Annan, to resolve the protracted and complex Rakhine regional issue.

The commission is tasked to hear the views of all relevant stakeholders, international experts and foreign dignitaries to find the best possible solution to prevailing problems.
The sun sets over the Gaza Strip, as seen from the Israeli side, September 8, 2016. (REUTERS Photo)

GAZA, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- Two years after the ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian militant groups in Gaza, nothing much has changed for aging Um Hassan Moghani and her large family. They still live amid the debris of their destroyed home.

The old lady, just like thousands of others, is still waiting to have her three-storey home rebuilt after it was totally destroyed during the fierce fighting in East of Gaza City.

In 2014, Israel launched an all-out offensive on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip to stop Palestinian rocket fire into its territories. The war left around 2,140 Palestinians dead and more than 10,000 injured.

Despite the ceasefire in September 2014, real reconstruction of thousands of destroyed homes and facilities has scarcely begun, while the Israeli blockade on the territory has been in place since 2007.

According to the United Nations, around 100,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip became displaced at the end of the Israeli offensive.

Um Hassan's 35-member family now lives in the remaining part of what once used to be a big home.

"We were given caravans to live in right after the war, but it is very hot in summer, so we returned to live in the rubbles of our destroyed home," the lady said as she sipped from a hot cup of tea.

Sitting on an old plastic chair with her young grandchildren playing around, Um Hassan said it is unsafe to stay at a home with almost no walls.

"Rats live with us...It is even worse in winter because parts of the roof have already collapsed and we can barely protect ourselves from the rain," she said.

Um Hassan said she needs a better future for her grandchildren, complaining about the slow process of Gaza reconstruction.

"We want a home, a roof over our heads," she said painfully.

In October 2014, international donors pledged 3.5 billion U.S. dollars to support Gaza. But according to the World Bank, only an estimated 40 percent of the amount had been disbursed by April this year.

Recently, UN agencies working in the blockaded Palestinian territory said that the United Nations considers "de-development" in Gaza, a process by which development is not merely hindered but reversed.

Construction materials are shipped into Gaza from Israel through an UN-supervised program that ensures the goods are not diverted to Hamas military projects.

However, the tight Israeli blockade imposed on the war-torn territory is still one of the main obstacles hindering the reconstruction in Gaza.

The UN agencies called for a greater flow of material and funding to address humanitarian needs and boost economic prospects for Gaza's 1.9 million residents.

"There is a reconstruction process, but it is very slow," Adnan Abu Hasna, spokesman for UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East told Xinhua.

He revealed that it will take long years to get things back to normal in Gaza, adding things get worse as the population increases.

"This population needs tens of thousands of homes, infrastructure and electricity. We are moving so slowly," he complained, adding that "only 3000 of 9500 totally destroyed have been rebuilt in two years."

Meanwhile, Palestinian statistics revealed that some 65,000 Palestinians are still homeless after the end of the last large-scale Israeli military offensive on Gaza.

Frequent conflicts as well as the Israeli restrictions have paralyzed the economy of Gaza, especially the construction sector, which used to be the backbone of Gaza's economy.

"It has been two years now since the war ended, and nothing has changed so far. I guess we need 30 years to rebuild Gaza under the UN program," Gaza brick factory owner Awaf Jaror said.
SYDNEY, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- Australia has upped its disaster relief for the Pacific in an attempt to appeasing regional leaders while continuing it's fossil-fuel policies.

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on Friday announced an 80-million-Australian dollar (60.91-million-U.S. dollar) increase to the low-lying Pacific islands vulnerable to climate change at the Pacific Island Forum (PIF) in Micronesia.

The four-year 300-million-Australian dollar package (228.41-million-U.S. dollar) will be used on engineering projects to protect against flooding from cyclones, early warning systems and rain water catchment tanks, Turnbull said.

"For Australia, there is no more pressing need for regional action than on climate change and resilient development," Turnbull told the PIF leaders summit.

Australia and New Zealand were both admonished at the 2015 summit - which preceded the Paris climate talks - for not committing to stronger action on climate change.

Australia has still refused to make a deeper commitment to reducing its own greenhouse gas emissions, continuing policies that encourage fossil fuel use.

In defending his actions, Turnbull told reporters in Pompeii there is no doubt the world needs to significantly reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, where "everyone has to play their part."

"The good thing is we do have a global agreement," Turnbull said, pointing to the COP 21 agreement in Paris where global leaders agreed to keep temperature rises to below 2 degree Celsius.

"Australia has a commitment ... which we are sticking to, which we'll meet."

The Pacific however has consistently been calling on world to restrict the global warming temperature rise to 1.5 degrees, fearing that a 2-degree target will risk the existence of many islands.

It has been reported the small island nation of Kiribati has bought land in Fiji in case the country must evacuate and that sea water is encroaching on grave sites in Marshall Islands.

"Australian governments will also find it increasingly hard to convince Pacific island countries they are a friend as well as a neighbor," University of the South Pacific lecturer in politics and international affairs Wesley Morgan wrote in an opinion editorial published by The Conversation.

A report released by Oxfam Australia claimed Australia was not doing enough in the Pacific to help curb the effects of climate change, calling for an extra 3.2 billion Australian dollars (2.44 billion U.S. dollars) of funding before the end of the decade.
COLOMBO, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- Sri Lanka is targeting at least 300,000 Chinese tourists this year as China has now become the largest market for tourist arrivals in the island nation, the Tourism Ministry said on Friday.

The ministry said in a statement that already 132,842 Chinese Tourists had arrived in the island country during the first two quarters in 2016 and the numbers were expected to increase.

Sri Lanka has become a popular tourist destination in the Indian Ocean region after the end of its conflict against Tamil Tiger rebels in May 2009.

The country has received recognition from international travel agents with Forbes also recommending Sri Lanka as one of their top 10 coolest places to visit for Wildlife in 2015.

The Tourism Ministry said that in the recently held Xi'an Silk Road International Tourism Expo held in China, Sri Lanka secured the most popular destination award.

"China is the second largest outbound travel market for Sri Lanka and Xi'an is one of the top sourcing cities in China," the ministry said.

Sri Lanka Tourism attended the Beijing International Tourism Expo (BITE) in May with over 40 travel companies and the Guangzhou International Travel Fair (GITF) 2016 in February with another 40 companies.

Sri Lanka Tourism is expected to attend tourism expos in Shanghai and in Chengdu later this year.
CAIRO, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- The World Bank (WB) on Friday transferred one billion U.S. dollars to Egypt to boost the Arab country's economic reform program, official news agency MENA reported.

"This is the first batch of a three billion U.S. dollar deal allocated for funding a government economic development plan," Egyptian Minister of International Cooperation Sahar Nassr was quoted by MENA as saying.

The WB fund will support the government efforts to mobilize financial resources for implementing its economic program and the national projects that will help provide job opportunities, improve the citizens' living standards and strengthen the state infrastructure, Nassr said.

She added that the WB fund will be directed to the projects with high employment rates, and will help achieve sustainable economic development.

The Egyptian economy has been battling recession over the past five years due to political turmoil that led to the ouster of two presidents, shrinking the foreign currency reserves at the central bank from 36 billion U.S. dollars in early 2011 to 15.5 billion dollars as of end of July 2016.

The country's main sources of foreign currency -- tourism, the Suez Canal and the remittances of Egyptian expatriates -- declined over the past few years for various reasons.

The country has been struggling to carry out economic reforms and establish national projects to revive its ailing economy which included deals with the world's major financial organizations.

Egypt has recently reached an initial agreement with the International Monetary Fund to get a 12 billion U.S. dollar loan to reduce its budget deficit and carry out a three-year tough economic reform program that will include subsidy cuts and extra tax.
COTONOU, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- Almost 100 people were killed and more than 200 others injured in an explosion which occurred Thursday at a waste-burning site in Benin's largest city and economic capital Cotonou, local media reported on Friday.

Local private television Canal3 reported that the blast had resulted from rotten flour which didn't burn off fully at the landfill site about 20 kilometers north of Cotonou.

The heavy casualties were caused because locals rushed to fetch the rotten flour after authorities monitoring the burning left the site, it reported.

Earlier, under supervision by local police and customs officials, the rotten flour that had been confiscated at the Cotonou customs were carried to the site for burning.

The report added that death toll could further climb because some of the injured were in critical conditions due to severe burnings.
GARISSA, Kenya, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- Kenya said the planned repatriation of Somali refugees from Dadaab refugee camp and subsequent closure of the sprawling Dadaab camps by November is on course.

Regional government official Mohamud Saleh said that the verification exercise of the refugees in the Dadaab refugee camp is going as planned and will be concluded within the time frame.

Saleh dismissed claims that the government had pushed the closure month forward because of logistical problems.

"If there was any intention to push the date forward then it will be communicated by the cabinet secretary for internal security. As of now the exercise is on course and we expect it to be concluded in November as earlier announced," he told journalists in Garissa on Friday.

The government official acknowledged that the absorption rate by UNHCR Somalia is slow because it lacked capacity to receive and accommodate the refugees going back.

"Because of the big number of refugees who have been cleared to return, UNHCR Somalia has not put enough infrastructures to place the refugees before they eventually resettle in their home country," he said.

Kenya in May announced it will close the world's largest refugee camp, Dadaab and plans to repatriate the more than 300,000 Somali refugees.

The East African nation has cited the influence of terror group Al-Shabaab as among the risks of keeping the camps open.

It was not yet clear when the refugee camp closures will begin, but the Kenyan government has already disbanded the Department of Refugee Affairs, which worked with humanitarian organisations for the welfare of the refugees.

UNHCR has developed a plan of action which outlines a process intended to reduce the population of Dadaab, currently 343,043 (326,611 Somalis), by 150,000 by the end of 2016.

Saleh said the number of refugees willing to return home is overwhelming and the government is in collaboration with UNHCR to ensure that the process goes on smoothly without hitches.

"Contrary to some media reports that majority of the refugees were not willing to return home, the number of those who are queuing to go back home is growing by the day," he said.

His remarks came after the UNHCR said about 70,000 Somalia refugees are willing to return back to their home country by the end of the year.

UNHCR Kenya Assistant Representative in Charge of Protection Catherine Hamon Sharpe said that this figure represents approximately 25 percent of Somalia refugees in Kenya.

The regional coordinator reiterated that all concerns arising from the exercise are being addressed noting the entire process was being carried out in a humane manner.
YINCHUAN, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- Tourism between China and the United States has seen significant progress in the past decade, an official said at an ongoing tourism forum in northwest China.

The combined number of tourists from China traveling to the United States and vice versa has exceeded 30 million since the two countries launched a high-level tourism dialogue mechanism in 2007, Li Jinzao, head of the China National Tourism Administration, said at the China-U.S. Tourism Leadership Summit in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region on Friday.

Li said the mechanism has enhanced communication and mutual understanding between people of the two countries and boosted economic growth.

China and the United States are important tourism sources for each other. Since Chinese group tours to the United States began in June 2008, tourism industries in both countries have expanded. Last year, about 4.75 million trips were made between China and the United States, with more than 2 million U.S. tourists coming to China. This year's trips between the two countries are expected to exceed 5 million, a record high.

In 2014, Chinese tourists spent about 165 billion U.S. dollars on overseas tourism, ranking first in global tourism spending, according to the World Tourism Organization under the United Nations. The United States was second in the ranking, with about 111 billion dollars spent.




Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli speaks during a meeting with the country's senior officials on supply-side reform, in Beijing, capital of China, Sept. 9, 2016. (Xinhua/Liu Weibing)

BEIJING, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli on Friday called for solid supply-side reform efforts in a bid to adapt to the current economic climate, known as the "new normal".

The reform is a "major innovation" to meet new changes following the global financial crisis and an "inevitable choice" of China to fit into new economic circumstance that feature slower but higher quality growth, Zhang said during a meeting with the country's senior officials.

Given a prolonged slowdown and entrenched economic problems, China's policymakers are counting on structural reform to inject vitality into the economy.

Zhang described the reform as a "significant and urgent" matter.

He stressed five major tasks of the reform: cutting excess industrial capacity, reducing housing inventory, lowering corporate leverage, relieving corporate burdens and fixing economic weaknesses.

Overcapacity reduction in bloated steel and coal industries should be highlighted, Zhang said, adding that governments should make proper arrangements for laid-off workers and handling corporate debt.

Zhang said different policies should be taken to resolve excessive housing stock in a variety of areas. Helping 100 million rural residents to integrate in cities will be part of the efforts, as will the renovation of dilapidated residences. Affordable housing should also be improved.

To lower corporate leverage, authorities will encourage mergers and acquisitions, help companies liquidize remnant assets and promote equity financing, Zhang said.

China will also reduce corporate burdens in several areas, including tax, financing, labor, land use and logistics, as well as introduce significant spending on weak economic links, such as poverty relief, agriculture, new industries and infrastructure, Zhang said.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (2nd L, front) visits the Lieutou Chinese School in Vientiane, Laos, Sept. 9, 2016. (Xinhua/Rao Aimin)

VIENTIANE, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on Friday visited a Chinese-language school in the Laotian capital of Vientiane.

The Lieutou Chinese School, founded in 1937 and financed by local Chinese, now hosts more than 2,800 students. It teaches both Chinese and Laotian and offers courses from kindergarten to high school.

The Chinese premier received a warm welcome on the campus, where students sang well-known Chinese songs and recited a poem that highlighted China-Laos friendship.

Li also watched a group of students writing Chinese calligraphy and encouraged the youngsters to make contributions to the development of their countries and to the friendship between the two countries.

While meeting with a team of over 20 volunteer teachers from China, Li praised them for sowing the seed of friendship. He expressed the hope that the teachers will promote exchanges between the two peoples.

Li told the students and faculty that China and Laos enjoy strong mutual political trust, long-standing friendship, and close people-to-people and cultural exchanges.

Li arrived in Vientiane on Tuesday for a China-ASEAN leaders' meeting, a meeting between leaders of ASEAN nations and those of China, Japan and South Korea, and an East Asia Summit. He also made an official visit to Laos.
The United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket carrying NASA's Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft lifts off from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, US in this September 8, 2016 handout photo. [Photo/Agencies]

WASHINGTON -- US space agency NASA on Thursday launched the nation's first mission that will visit an asteroid and bring precious samples back to Earth.

The Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft blasted off atop an Atlas V rocket at 7:05 p.m. EDT (2305 GMT) as planned from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

"Liftoff!" a NASA TV commentator said during a live broadcast. "It's a seven-year mission to boldly go to asteroid Bennu and back."

The 800-million-US.-dollar mission's main goal is to collect a small sample of rocks and surface soil from Bennu, thought to harbor primordial material left over from the formation of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago.

"Sample return is really at the forefront of planetary exploration," said SIRIS-REx principal investigator Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona. "This is going to be a treasure trove of material for scientists yet to come."

If all goes according to plan, OSIRIS-REx will arrive in August 2018 and spend the next two years photographing and mapping the asteroid's surface to better understand its chemical and mineralogical composition, including selecting the sample site.

Then, in July 2020, the spacecraft will touch the asteroid for only three seconds to collect at least 60 grams of loose rocks and dust using a device called the Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism and store the material in a sample return capsule.

The spacecraft will depart the asteroid in March 2021 and travel for two-and-a-half years on a trajectory for Earth return in September 2023.

But OSIRIS-REx won't land. Instead, it will eject a small capsule containing the asteroid sample, which will land with the help of parachutes at the Utah Test and Training Range, southwest of Salt Lake City.
GENEVA, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov kicked off the talks on Syria on Friday morning, the U.S. Mission in Geneva quoted a State Department source as saying.

Discussions are taking place in the same luxurious lakeside hotel as two weeks ago when the two officials reached "clarity" on the way forward in enhancing cooperation between both countries.

According to a statement attribute to U.S. State Department spokesperson John Kirby, "discussion follows recent conversations on Syria and will focus on reducing violence, expanding humanitarian assistance for the Syrian people, and moving towards a political solution needed to end the civil war."

An agreement between both countries is hoped to give impetus to the intra-Syrian peace talks which have been on hold since April.
SHIJIAZHUANG, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- Two people were seized by police in Jinzhou, north China's Hebei Province on Friday after an explosion at a chemical processing mill killed five people.

The explosion occurred in an orchard in Donglizhuang township, Jinzhou, at around 11 a.m. Thursday, according to the city government. Five people were killed and another severely injured.

The mill owners, Zhang Chaoyi and Wang Haitao are in police custody, the government said.

Jinzhou invited four hazardous chemicals experts to help deal with the aftermath and prevent secondary disaster.

The initial investigation revealed that the plant was producing dye intermediate, as traces of benzene, methylbenzene, naphthaline and anthracene were found, most likely used as raw materials. Dye intermediate is used in pharmaceutical, pesticide and material industries.
BEIJING, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- The State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs (SAFEA) has announced a pilot program to streamline work applications for foreigners.

The plan was approved by the State Council in a move to make the hiring of foreign talent in China more flexible and competitive.

On hearing the new policy, Gellusch Klaus who has worked in Beijing for five years expressed pleasant surprise. The German engineer described his experience applying for his work permits when he changed company as "crazy".

"It was a long process and I need to submit lots of documents, including those from my company," said Klaus. He said was looking forward to the new system.

Under the current system, foreigners need to apply for two work licenses issued by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social security and the SAFEA before they work in China. The trial program will unify the two permits into a single work permit.

The new work permit will be the legal credential for foreigners to work in China, with a number tied to each applicant forever, said Gao Xiang, director of the Department of Policies and Regulations under the SAFEA.

The pilot program will initially start in Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shanghai, Anhui, Shandong, Guangdong, Sichuan and Ningxia, from October 2016 to March 2017.

From April 2017, the permit will be applied to foreigners across the country.

Zhang Jianguo, head of the SAFEA, said the unification of the two permits will reduce repeated reviews and improve efficiency.

A system, jointly established with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Public Security, will be launched for supervision, credit assessment and rewarding excellent foreigners who work in China, Zhang said.

In addition, applicants will submit less material. A bilingual personal resume is no longer needed.

According to Gao, foreign workers will be classified into categories A, B and C. A, as top-notch personnel; B as professional talent; and C as unskilled workers or those working in the service industry.

The country will open a green channel for top-notch talent to apply for work permits, while limiting B and C categories, which are less needed.
NAIROBI, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- Kenya plans to reduce the percentage contribution of hydropower to the total energy output because its vulnerability to climate change, an official said on Friday.

State-owned Kenya Electricity Generating Company (KenGen) Chief Energy Planner Willis Ochieng told Xinhua in Nairobi that changes in rainfall due to climate change has a big impact on hydropower output.

"The medium term goal is to reduce hydropower contribution from the current 37 percent to 30 percent," Ochieng said.

"This will be achieved by increasing the contribution of geothermal, wind and solar at a faster rate than that of hydropower plants," he said.

Kenya's total electricity installed capacity stands at 2,300MW, out of which KenGen contributes 1,700 MW.

But despite its numerous challenges, hydropower still has advantages such as low maintenance costs over other forms of electricity production, the official said, adding the electricity firm is currently conducting feasibility studies on the best location to build dams for hydropower production.
HONG KONG, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- As the western offshore renminbi (RMB) hub, London will continue play its leading role to help promote the internalization of the Chinese currency, Jeffrey Mountevans, mayor of the City of London said here on Friday.

London welcomed the "truly significant" development of the internalization of RMB, Mountevans told a press conference, adding the city took great pride, together with Hong Kong, to play their roles in the process.

"I think a great deal has been achieved in a very short time," he said.

London will continue help promote RMB products, Mountevans said. "We are committed to developing an industry that supports the currency's growth as China's markets open up."

Over the past few years, financial market collaboration has been a priority for both governments in China and Britain.

There will be many high-value opportunities for the two countries to collaborate in the financial and innovative industries in the future, such as green finance and FinTech, he said.

Moreover, as a maritime Lord Mayor with 44 years in shipbroking, Mountevans said China and Britain have a "very strong" relationship in maritime sections.

"There's a great deal of respect in London for strengthening the capability of Hong Kong market as the ship owning and operating business moves increasingly eastwards," he said.

Mountevans also expected the two countries to build up more mutual interests in maritime finance and maritime arbitration.

Lord Mountevans is leading a business delegation to Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin on Sept. 7-14, in a move to strengthen the commercial ties between Britain and China.

During his three-day visit to Hong Kong, Mountevans has met Financial Secretary of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government John Tsang and representatives from the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Ltd. and Hong Kong Shipowners Association.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) meets with Russian Federation Council Speaker Valentina Matviyenko in Beijing, capital of China, Sept. 9, 2016. (Xinhua/Li Xueren)

BEIJING, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Russian Federation Council Speaker Valentina Matviyenko on Friday, pledging to improve bilateral relations.

Xi said China and Russia enjoy a high-level of mutual political trust and engage in mutually beneficial cooperation.

The comprehensive strategic partnership of collaboration between the two countries has helped shape a new type of international relations with win-win cooperation as its core, he said.

This year marks the 15th anniversary of the signing of the China-Russia Good-Neighborly Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation, as well as the 20th anniversary of the establishment of a strategic partnership of collaboration between the two countries.

Xi met with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Sunday in Hangzhou on the sidelines of the G20 summit, the third meeting between the two leaders this year.

Stressing that he and Putin reached new consensus on ties during the meeting, Xi called on both countries to work together to convert the political advantages into more substantial results, which would benefit the two countries and their people.

Regarding parliamentary relations, Xi spoke highly of the close exchanges between China's National People's Congress (NPC) and the Federal Assembly of Russian Federation in recent years.

He encouraged both sides to continue to share governance, legislation and oversight experience as this would help to consolidate political and strategic mutual trust and support bilateral relations.

Matviyenko spoke highly of the G20 summit in Hangzhou. She said Russia is willing to work with China to implement the consensus reached by two presidents, adding that the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation hopes to improve relations with China's NPC.

Matviyenko is on a three-day visit to China, from Wednesday, at the invitation of Zhang Dejiang, chairman of the NPC Standing Committee.

Later on Friday, Zhang and Matviyenko held talks on exchanges between the two countries' legislatures.

Zhang called on both sides to enhance cooperation in various fields, including under multilateral frameworks, to fully implement the important consensus reached by the two heads of state.

Following the talks, Zhang was presented the medal "Order of Friendship" by Matviyenko, on behalf of President Putin, in recognition of his contribution to China-Russia ties.
The United Nations (UN) Special Envoy for Syria Staffan De Mistura and UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Stephen O'Brien (not in picture) hold a press conference after meeting of the Humanitarian Access Task Force in Geneva, Switzerland, Sept. 9, 2016. The UN special envoy for Syria said Friday that he hoped Friday's meeting between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov here in Geneva will catalyse a turning point for Syria, a country at war since 2011. (Xinhua/Xu Jinquan)

GENEVA, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- The UN special envoy for Syria said Friday that he hoped that Friday's meeting between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov here in Geneva will catalyse a turning point for Syria, a country at war since 2011.

"We are all hoping for positive conclusions. The discussions are addressing complex, delicate and difficult issues,"the special envoy Staffan de Mistura explained.

"If they do succeed... the conclusions could make a major difference on the renewal of the cessation of hostilities which in turn would have a major impact on humanitarian access and in turn would have a positive impact on the way the political process could be relaunched," he added.

According to UN figures, 1,275,750 people living in besieged and hard-to-reach areas have received aid since relief operation kicked off in February this year, a figure which has remained unchanged for weeks now as convoys are denied the access to areas host to thousands of desperate civilians.

The situation is particularly alarming in Aleppo, where government forces and rebel groups are engaged in fierce fighting in a bid to control what was once Syria's largest city.

The UN has repeatedly called for a 48-hour weekly ceasefire to be installed so that aid convoys can safely deliver supplies to the city's population.

De Mistura said that it is crucial that the United States and Russia bridge remaining gaps so that tangible progress can be made to cater to the needs of the Syrian people.

"The priority is for the two co-chairs to come up with an agreed position," he said.

Kerry and his Russian counterpart kicked off the talks here in Geneva on Friday morning to discuss issues on Syria.

Meetings are taking place in the same luxurious lakeside hotel as two weeks ago when the two officials reached "clarity" on the way forward in enhancing cooperation between both countries.
SEOUL, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- South Korea's spy agency on Friday expressed worries about the faster-than-expected progress in the technology of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)'s nuclear weapons miniaturization.

Chief of the National Intelligence Service (NIS) briefed South Korean lawmakers of the parliamentary intelligence committee on what the DPRK claimed was a successful "nuclear warhead explosion" test.

Two members of the ruling Saenuri Party and the main opposition Minjoo Party, who attended the briefing, told reporters that the NIS head expressed concerns about the country's significantly faster-than-expected speed at developing a miniaturized nuclear warhead.

Lee Byung-ho, the spy agency chief, said the DPRK's aim is to develop a nuclear warhead small enough to fit on even a short-range Scud missile.

Even if a warhead is placed on a ballistic missile, the weaponization is a different story, Lee noted, forecasting the weaponziation will not be achieved within one to two years.

Lee, however, said worries increase about faster-than-expected weaponization of the DPRK's nuclear program.

Touching on worries about additional nuclear tests, Lee said it would be no surprise to see Pyongyang conduct another test at any time, given the pace of progress of the fifth test.

Seoul's military estimates the latest test produced the biggest-ever explosive yield of 10 kilotons, stronger than 6 kilotons recorded in the January test in which Pyongyang claimed it detonated its first hydrogen bomb.

Lee said the fifth test was not a detonation of H-bomb, but the NIS chief noted that it cannot be regarded as a failure given the strength of the explosion.

The time gap between the fourth and fifth nuclear tests was only eight months, marking the shortest yet as Pyongyang tested atomic devices every three years or so in previous detonations. The first was staged in October 2006, followed by the second in May 2009 and the third in February 2013.

Kim Hwang-rok, head of the defense ministry's defense intelligence headquarters, said the military spotted signs of the DPRK's completion to prepare for the fifth nuclear test two to three months ago.

Kim said it would take two to three days to make a final confirmation over the fifth test after analyzing figures from gauging devices. The period can be extended to as late as seven days, he added.
BEIJING, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- China's auto market remained in rapid expansion in August with sales growth reaching a new high in more than three years, data from an industry association showed Friday.

About 2.07 million cars were sold on the Chinese market last month, up 24.22 percent year on year, according to China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM). This is an increase from 23 percent registered in July and the fastest growth in around three and half years.

Auto output rose 26.6 percent from a year ago to 1.99 million vehicles in August, the CAAM said.

In the first eight months, sales and output of vehicles increased 11.43 percent and 10.82 percent.
NAIROBI, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- The Eastern Africa Standby Force (EASF), a regional rapid response force, said on Friday its troops are on standby and ready to deploy to South Sudan if the African Union gives the directive.

EASF Director Chanfi Issimail said the rapid-deployment force is well equipped and has the capacity to deploy to the troubled nation within 14 days following command which must be confirmed and endorsed by the AU leaders.

"EASF has a ready full operational capability force of 5,200 military, police and civilian personnel to fulfill its mandate of enhancing peace and security in the Eastern Africa region," Issimail said in Nairobi during a visit by Denmark's ambassador to Kenya Mette Knudsen to sign the joint Danish-EASF project of engagement document.

The rapid deployment force is one of the five regional standby forces under the command of the African Union and draws its membership from ten member states from the Eastern Africa Region, namely Burundi, Comoros, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Seychelles, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda.

EASF is one of the five regional components of the African Standby Force established by the African Union for the purpose of containing conflicts and enhancing peace and security on the continent.

The EASF was established as a regional mechanism to provide capability for rapid deployment of forces to carry out preventive deployment, rapid intervention and peace enforcement.

South Sudan's civil war began in December 2013 when President Salva Kiir accused former first vice president Riek Machar of plotting a coup, which opened ethnic divisions characterized by human rights violations.

Heavy fighting erupted again in July between forces loyal to President Kiir and his former deputy Machar, uprooting thousands of refugees who crossed into regional countries.

Knudsen and Issimail signed a document totaling 3 million U.S. dollars for the project that is designed to facilitate the standby force in achieving its ambition as a key player in the peace and security sector in the region through capacity building for the duration of the program that runs from 2015 to 2017.

Knudsen said the contribution is one element that can be used to support the clamor for peace in Africa.

"EASF is a useful tool and choice for the African Union in implementing peace in the region and a strong instrument that can be used to address stability in the region," the ambassador said.
BANJUL, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- Three opposition parties in Gambia have pulled out of the opposition coalition talks ahead of the country's December 1 presidential election, an inter-party mediation committee confirmed to Xinhua on Friday.

The newly formed Gambia Democratic Congress (GDC), the National Reconciliation Party (NRP) and the People's Democratic Organization for Independence and Socialism (PDOIS) said they had reservations with some of the clauses in the coalition agreement.

"On Thursday, we met, and for us, we pulled out of the negotiation meeting because some opposition members have agreed to nominate an independent presidential candidate," Musa Sonko, NRP deputy party Secretary General said.

GDC Press Secretary Alhagie Essa Jallow meanwhile said part of the reasons his party pulled out of the talks had to do with funding and discrepancy over a large party clause.

Mediation committee chief Kebba Singhateh said the two parties pulled out with the GDC claiming to be the largest opposition party and that it should therefore have its candidate lead the coalition, but sources said a draft resolution sent to participating parties stated that the selected candidate must be a non-partisan candidate.

PDOIS Leader Halifa Sallah vowed to serve only one term if elected under a coalition but opposition leaders have been calling for a non-partisan independent candidate who be elected through a primary.

"The candidate must be presentable and saleable both nationally and internationally, has good moral and educational standing, come from a civil society group operating in Gambia and not affiliated to any political party, and meet the eligibility requirements," Singhateh said.

It is the second time for the opposition parties to fail for the opposition coalition to unseat president Yahya Jammeh who is coming to run for a fifth term.
RAMALLAH, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- The Palestinian leftist Democratic Coalition slammed Thursday night the High Court decision to suspend the local elections in Palestinian territories.

The coalition, which comprises five main left wing political parties, said the decision would also block the general elections and hinder the democratic life.

The five parties include the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), the Palestinian Democratic Union (FIDA), the Palestinian National Initiative (PNI) and the Palestinian People's Party (PPP).

They planned to run for elections together and called for removing the main obstacles to the local council elections across the West Bank and Gaza.

"The most dangerous thing about this decision is that it takes away the right of the Palestinian citizens to choose their representatives and halts the democratic practice," PNI Secretary General Mustafa Barghouti said.

Meanwhile, PPP Secretary General Bassam Salhi said the move "reflects the depth of the crisis of the political system, mainly due to the internal division between the West Bank and Gaza Strip since 2007."

"The Palestine Liberation Organization bodies must be activated, including the National Council, which is considered the highest legislative body of the Palestinian people," he said.

The Palestinian High Court in Ramallah ruled on Thursday to stop the procedures for holding municipal elections slated for Oct. 8.

The ruling came after a special session at the High Court, based on an appeal presented by Palestinian attorney Nael Al-Hooh.

Al-Hooh told the reporters that the court "ordered to stop the elections in its announced date until it comes to a final decision regarding the motion presented to cancel elections."

"The basis of the objection is against not including East Jerusalem in the call for holding the elections and against the status of court houses in Gaza," said Al-Hooh.

As a result of the court ruling, the Central Elections Commission announced "immediate cessation of all electoral activities which commenced two months ago."

Mahmoud al-Zahar, top Hamas leader in Gaza, told Xinhua by telephone that the court ruling is "political, but illegal."

Under a cabinet decision issued on June 21, the Palestinians are now preparing to hold local elections on Oct. 8 to elect local governing bodies such as municipalities and village or town councils.

Observers and law experts warned that this decision would weaken the local bodies, since the local governing councils will become care takers.

Issam Abdeen, a law professor at Birzeit University, said this court ruling "means the end of the road for the Oct. 8 elections, because the entire electoral process has been obstructed."

He also said the hearing session on Sept. 21 is unlikely to bring anything new.

The Islamic Hamas movement has ruled over the Gaza Strip ever since 2007, when the Islamic group violently seized control of the coastal enclave following weeks of internal fighting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' security forces. Efforts have so far failed to end the feuds between the two rivals.

Both Hamas leaders and Abbas have been trading accusations over who is responsible for the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip, despite an agreement to form a technocrat consensus government in June 2014.

Hamas agreed to hand over control of official ministries to the Palestinian government, but insisted on keeping security control of Gaza in its hand.

The last time Hamas campaigned for local elections in the Gaza Strip and West Bank was in 2004 and 2005.

The Palestinian National Authority held local elections in October 2012, but Hamas did not participate, saying the internal split should be ended before holding elections.
BANGKOK, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- Two Thai rice trading firms had their wealth confiscated on Friday in the face of corruption charges involving a previous government's rice subsidy program.

The Anti-Money-Laundering Office (AMLO) announced that an estimated seven billion baht (about 190 million U.S. dollars) in assets of two rice firms, namely Siam Indica Group and Siralai Co., has been confiscated by the agency due to their alleged scams in which they had bought large volumes of low-priced rice from the Foreign Trade Department and doctored documentation to falsely make it look as if it were bound for export under government-to-government dealings.

The rice had not been exported to China as falsely claimed by the firms but ended up in the hands of other profit-sepculating rice traders who had then managed to make huge profits from its sales at increased prices, according to the AMLO.

The Foreign Trade Department, which sold the rice to the firms, had earlier bought the rice directly from farmers for an average of 500 U.S. dollars per ton under the controversial rice subsidy program implemented over the last several years by the government under former leader Yingluck Shinawatra.

In another development, Yingluck appeared in court on Friday to attend a hearing for alleged involvement in the corruption charges over the department's rice dealings.

She had categorically denied all accusations pertaining to her "populist" rice program and dismissed allegations that she had deliberately neglected the duty to see to it that the program would have been carried out in transparent, uncorrupt fashion.

Nevertheless, the rice program already cost her a five-year ban from politics since last year when the National Legislative Assembly, which seized power in the 2014 coup, ruled her guilty of the duty-negligence charges.
DAMASCUS, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- Syrian warplanes dropped leaflets over the rebel-held areas in the northern city of Aleppo Friday, giving rebels 48 hours to surrender, pan-Arab al-Mayadeen TV reported.

The move comes as the Syrian army succeeded to recapture the town of al-Ramouseh on Thursday, the last area that had fallen to the rebels a month earlier in the southern countryside of Aleppo.

Earlier this week, the army units backed by Lebanese Hezbollah group managed to retake control over a series of military bases in southern Aleppo lost to the rebels during a major offensive last month.

The rebels' offensive aimed at breaking the government siege on rebel-held areas in eastern Aleppo.

Now, the Syrian army has rearranged the siege on eastern Aleppo, urging the rebels to surrender.

Located near the Syria's borders with Turkey, Aleppo was the country's largest city and its economic hub before the civil war. It has been a focal point of clashes between the Syrian army and rebels.

In the summer of 2012, thousands of armed militants stormed residential districts of Aleppo from its countryside. The Syrian government has been accusing Turkey of supporting the rebels for undeclared interests in Aleppo.

The rebels captured several districts in eastern Aleppo and kept trying to expand their presence to government-controlled areas in the west.

Military experts said the initial aim of the Syrian army's new battles in Aleppo is to besiege the rebel-held areas and cut off their supply lines to force a surrender.

Another target is to ensure the security of government-controlled areas and to prevent the militant groups from blocking the main road connecting Aleppo with the Syrian coast and provinces in central and southern Syria.

However, observers said the Syrian military's campaign also aims to recapture areas in the northern and southern countryside of Aleppo in the face of Turkey's perceived attempts to establish a safe zone in northern Syria.
ISLAMABAD, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- Pakistan on Friday decided to extend the stay of the registered Afghan refugees until March 2017, officials said.

The period of the legal stay of the registered refugees in Pakistan was scheduled to end on December 31, 2016. However, the registered refugees are now allowed to stay until the end of March next year. Pakistan has issued Proof Registration (PoR) cards to refugees that legally allow their stay in Pakistan.

The cabinet meeting presided over by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif decided a three-month extension in the period of PoR cards, an official statement said.

Pakistan currently hosts around three million Afghan refugees, including 1.6 million registered while a similar number undocumented, according to UN refugee agency.

The Prime Minister directed the Ministry of States and Frontier Regions, which deals with the Afghan refugees, to hold broad-based consultations with the national leaderships of main stream political parties and Afghan representatives for addressing the concerns of Afghan Refugees.

"We would not allow that Afghan refugees living in Pakistan to be terrified in any way. They are our guests and their return plans would be decided in a way that does not create any negative impression in the minds of people living on both sides of the border," further said the Prime Minister.

Officials of the UNHCR in Islamabad also confirmed and hailed the decision.

"The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) welcomes the Cabinet's decision to extend the validity of the Proof of Registration (PoR) cards for registered Afghan refugees until 31 March 2017. This extension will bring much needed relief to anxious Afghan refugees," UNHCR spokesperson Dunya Khan said in a statement.

A representative of the Afghan refugees in Pakistan, Haji Sharafat, also welcomed the decision and said it is a sigh of hopes for the refuges as they cannot go back in view of fragile security in parts of Afghanistan.

Sharafat, however, appealed to the Pakistani government to extends the stay until the end of 2017.

Meanwhile Dunya Khan said nearly 114,000 Afghans have returned to Afghanistan under the UN Refugee's Agency's facilitated voluntary repatriation program so far this year.
YINCHUAN, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- Tourism between China and the United States has seen significant growth over the past decade, an official said at an ongoing tourism forum in northwest China.

The combined number of tourists from China traveling to the United States and vice versa has exceeded 30 million since the two countries launched a high-level tourism dialogue mechanism in 2007, Li Jinzao, head of the China National Tourism Administration, said at the China-U.S. Tourism Leadership Summit in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region on Friday.

Li said the mechanism had enhanced communication and mutual understanding between the people of the two countries and boosted economic growth.

China and the United States are important tourism sources for each other. Since Chinese group tours to the United States began in June 2008, tourism in both countries have posted growth. Last year, about 4.75 million trips have been made between China and the United States, with more than 2 million U.S. tourists coming to China. This year, trips between the two countries are expected to exceed 5 million, a record high.

In 2014, Chinese tourists spent about 165 billion U.S. dollars on overseas tourism, ranking first in global tourism spending, according to the World Tourism Organization under the United Nations. The United States was second in the ranking, with about 111 billion dollars.

Li suggested both countries improve promotion, experience, and communication to elevate tourism to the next level.

China and the U.S. have stepped up tourism exchanges recently. In February, the two countries launched the 2016 China-U.S. Tourism Year. One month later, more than 1,300 people from the U.S. and China took part in a visit to the Great Wall. By the end of this year, about 5,000 Chinese tourists will have visited the U.S. as part of tourism year.

Kelly Craighead, executive director of the United States National Travel and Tourism Office, said that the U.S. views the leadership summit in Ningxia as an important part of the 2016 China-U.S. Tourism Year. She was upbeat that the summit will enhance tourism cooperation between the two countries.

She added that the U.S. hopes to share its experience with the Chinese government and Chinese companies to provide more quality projects and services to Chinese tourists.
MOSCOW, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- The Russian Foreign Ministry on Friday strongly condemned the latest nuclear warhead explosion test executed by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).

"Such demonstrative disregard for international law and opinion of the international community deserves the strongest condemnation," the ministry said in a statement.

The DPRK's state-run television reported early Friday that the country had conducted a nuclear warhead explosion test. It was Pyongyang's fifth nuclear test, which followed the previous one by eight months.

The action undermined the global non-proliferation regime, and poses a serious threat to peace and security on the Korean Peninsula and in the Asia-Pacific region, the statement added.

The ministry warned that the nuclear test, executed in violation of UN Security Council resolutions, will have negative consequences primarily for the DPRK itself.

It called on Pyongyang to stop dangerous adventures, strictly obey all requirements of the UN Security Council, abandon its missile and nuclear programs, and return to the regime of the Non-Proliferation Treaty of nuclear weapons.

Moscow urged all parties concerned to refrain from steps that could lead to further escalation of tension, and confirmed its readiness for a "very tight coordination of steps aiming to elaborate an international response to Pyongyang's provocative actions," said the statement.

The Russian side remains firmly committed to a political and diplomatic settlement of the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula through appropriate negotiations, it added.

In January, the DPRK carried out a test of what it called its first H-bomb. It also conducted underground nuclear tests respectively in 2006, 2009 and 2013.
BEIJING, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- Vice Premier Ma Kai on Friday called for more to be done to promote supply-side reform as a tool to move the manufacturing sector up the value chain.

Although solid progress has been made over the past three decades, challenges remain for the sector, such as overcapacity and a shortage of high-end products, Ma said at a forum.

He called for efforts to propel supply-side reform and the efficient implementation of the "Made in China 2025" initiative to upgrade the manufacturing industry.

Authorities at all levels should try hard to eliminate overcapacity and enhance innovation in all areas, Ma said.

He said the future was in the integration of manufacturing and the Internet, and measures that would help establish modern corporate systems and a salary distribution system.

Ma also called for a more friendly business environment to better protect intellectual property rights and help ensure orderly market competition.
SOFIA, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- Tsvetan Simeonov, president of the Bulgarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI), said here on Friday that he was optimistic about the development of the country's economy.

The situation was not an easy one with the migrant crisis and the turbulence in neighboring countries, but the Bulgarian business had coped with those, Simeonov said at a press conference.

For him, the most important thing was that macroeconomic stability in Bulgaria had been maintained, and taxes had not been increased.

"I can say that companies which are facing difficulties in their own countries, I mean Turkey and Greece, intend to increase their investments in Bulgaria," Simeonov said.

Referring to recent data from the National Statistical Institute, he recalled that in the second quarter of 2016, the country's gross domestic product grew by 3.0 percent year-on-year.

BCCI, established in 1895, is an independent, non-governmental organization for the assistance, promotion, representation, and protection of the business interests of its members.
BERLIN, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- German exports fell sharply in July, official data showed on Friday, concluding the past week which saw disappointing figures of economic performance.

Compared with June, German exports dropped by 2.6 percent in July, said German federal statistics office Destatis. Imports also declined by 0.7 percent.

Germany's trade surplus, the balance between exports and imports, narrowed to 19.4 billion euros (21.8 billion U.S. dollars) in July from 21.4 billion euros in the previous month.

"The foreign trade starts the second half year with a crash landing," said Anton F. Boerner, head of German foreign traders'association BGA.

"The unusually high number of crises left their mark. This leads to an enormous amount of uncertainty, which is accompanied by a lack of investment,"he added.

The data on Friday added another sign that Europe's biggest economy started the third quarter on a weak footing.

Germany's industrial output slumped in July, factory orders growth in the month also missed economists' expectation, suggesting subdued industrial activity in the autumn.

"Today's data confirm the picture already painted by earlier industrial data: the former powerful engine of the German economy, industry, is stuttering," said Carsten Brzeski, ING DiBa bank's chief economist.


Image taken on July 29, 2015 and provided by Electroingenieria S.A. (ELGIN) company shows the arrival of the vessel that transports the first machines for the preliminary construction works of the dams "Nestor Kirchner" and "Jorge Cepernic", in the port of Punta Quilla, Santa Cruz province, 2,810 km away of Buenos Aires city, capital of Argentina. (Xinhua/ELGIN)

BUENOS AIRES, Sept. 8 (Xinhua) -- Argentine and Brazilian industrialists gathered in Buenos Aires Thursday agreed that trade ties with China were "central" to their participation in the global economy.

Members of the Argentine Industrial Union (UIA) and its Brazilian counterpart, the National Confederation of Industry (CNI), met to discuss "the regional industrial situation" and "future outlook" for their respective industrial sectors.

Both countries are members of the Southern Common Market (Mercosur), a South American trade bloc that also includes Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela.

Following their work luncheon, the UIA issued a statement saying, "Mercosur's ties with China and the European Union were defined as central to designing a strategy for intelligent international insertion."

Photo taken on June 7, 2011 shows the first electric multiple unit (EMU) for Rio de Janeiro in Changchun, capital of northeast China's Jilin Province. (Xinhua/Wang Haofei)

In addition, the two industry groups "underscored the need to avoid letting current issues affect the (bloc's) long-term strategic focus for industrial development and the strengthening of the regional market."

By "current issues" the UIA is apparently referring to political differences with bloc member Venezuela. Brazil and Argentina recently objected to Venezuela taking over the rotating presidency of Mercosur, as it was scheduled to do, citing alleged violations of democratic rule by its socialist government.

The UIA and CNI also signed a joint declaration on the creation of an Argentina-Brazil Business Council.

"This framework agreement deepens our commitment to work to expand trade and investment ties between Argentina and Brazil," the statement said.

UIA President Adrian Kaufmann Brea and his CNI counterpart Robson Braga de Andrade headed the encounter.
BEIJING, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- Four executives of online video service Qvod who are on trial for spreading pornography for profits and who had pled innocent in a previous trial, changed their pleas to guilty on Friday in a new open trial in Beijing.

Wang Xin, former CEO of Shenzhen-based Qvod Technology Co. Ltd. and three other executives, all admitted to spreading pornography on the Internet, Beijing's Haidian District People's Court heard.

The company was charged with spreading a large amount of pornography and pirated content on its popular video player since the end of 2012 and by doing so had also made huge profits through charging users and advertisers.

According to Haidian District People's Procuratorate, 21,251 of 29,841 files that police obtained from three servers used by Qvod were pornographic

During the first trial, on January 7-8, the defendants denied all the charges.

In Friday's trial, the procuratorate alleged that the large amount of obscene content had increased Qvod's users, and its profits.

In 2013, the company's business division posted revenue exceeding 140 million yuan (21 million U.S. dollars), according to the procuratorate.

"Our company's revenue is based on user numbers," admitted defendant Zhang Kedong.

Founded in 2007, Qvod is a peer-to-peer video streaming site and it has around 300 million users.

"Faced with the choice between social responsibility and company interests, I chose the the latter, " said Wang. He showed remorse for his actions.

"Spreading obscene content on the Internet did harm to others,especially adolescents. Not only have I broken the law, but I have also neglected my duty," said Wang.

The court will announce the verdicts at a later date.
BEIJING, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese academy for arbitration law on Friday proposed to set up a global arbitration research alliance to strengthen exchange in the field.

Guo Feng, deputy secretary-general of the China Academy of Arbitration Law, said the initiative has been echoed by nine arbitration organizations from such countries as the U.K., Japan and Singapore.

The alliance aims to explore new international arbitration rules, establish cooperation, and enhance international arbitration, he added at a forum held in Beijing Friday.

Guo said the alliance will include hundreds of arbitration organizations worldwide and become the largest exchange platform in the arbitration field.

According to the China Academy of Arbitration Law, China's 61 arbitration commissions handled 1,785 arbitration cases related to other countries as well as Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan in 2014, an increase of 189 from 2013.
JAKARTA, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- The governments of Indonesia and the Philippines on Friday vowed to step up cooperation to boost security in the regional waters and fight against illegal drug abuse.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo met with his Filipino counterpart Rodrigo Duterte at the State Palace on Friday, expressing commitment to fight against extremism in both nations.

"We expressed commitment to take all necessary steps to ensure security in the two seas and maritime areas of common interest," President Duterte told a joint press conference.

The commitment was made as hijacking, mostly undertaken by Abu Sayyaf bandits in the regional waters, has been on the rise since earlier this year.

A total of 25 Indonesian seamen and scores of foreign nationals have been held hostage by Abu Sayyaf captors; 14 of the Indonesians have been released and two others escaped.

On his part, President Widodo expressed gratitude to the Philippines on the cooperation and expected to end this problem in the future.

On drug abuse, the two leaders expressed deep concerns over the illegal trade of drugs and its risks.

"We shared a deep concern on the trade of an illicit and illegal drug and its impact in our societies. We will seek and intensify cooperation and the campaign against this menace. We all will do our parts," said President Duterte.

On terrorism, the two leaders agreed to work together to prevent, arrest and prosecute all of the militants spreading terror in societies, said Duterte.

Militants in Central Sulawesi of Indonesia have cooperated with the Abu Sayyaf to get arm supplies, according to Indonesian police.
BEIJING, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- All 28 suspects in three high-profile telecoms fraud cases that resulted in three student deaths have been apprehended, the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) announced on Friday.

Law enforcers were sent to at least seven provinces in southern and eastern China to search for the suspects and have detained all of them.

Xu Yuyu, an 18-year-old high school graduate in Linyi City, Shandong Province, was reported to have lost 9,900 yuan, meant for university tuition fees, to telecoms fraudsters and died of cardiac arrest on August 19.

Just a few miles away in Shandong, would-be sophomore Song Zhenning, was reported to have died in the same way in August, having lost money in another act of fraud.

In the third case, a college student committed suicide after her money was taken by scammers in Jieyang, Guangdong Province.

The cases caused considerable public anger and the MPS issued a top-level order for the arrest when the cases made the news. The MPS also vowed to crack down on telecoms fraud.
SINGAPORE, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- Singapore is deeply concerned and extremely disappointed by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea(DPRK)'s conduct of yet another nuclear test on Friday, said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) in a statement.

"This deliberate and provocative act seriously jeopardizes the peace and stability of the region," noted MFA.

The ministry said these actions, including the recent missile tests, are flagrant breaches of relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions, including resolution 2270 adopted in March this year.

"We strongly urge the DPRK to desist from such actions, and reiterate our long-standing call for the DPRK to abide by its international obligations and commitments," said MFA.

The ministry added that the DPRK can share in the region's peace and prosperity only if it changes course and works to integrate itself with the region.
A worker works at Mombasa port station of standard gauge railway (SGR) project, in Mombasa, Kenya, on Aug. 31, 2016. (Xinhua/Pan Siwei)

KIGALI, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- Top regional bankers are calling on governments to address Africa's infrastructure challenges stifling regional integration by among others repackaging infrastructure projects to attract funding.

Speaking at the Global African Investment Summit which closed in Kigali on Tuesday, the bankers cautioned that the fruits of integration will not be fully realized without proper infrastructure.

Jonathan Muga, head of Power and Infrastructure Finance (East Africa) at Standard Bank, pointed out that infrastructure financing is most of the times held up by the high risks associated with infrastructural projects.

Currently, he said governments spend 10 percent of the GDP on infrastructure and the significant part of this goes into transport, including roads.

"When it comes to private sector financing infrastructure, we tend to see that the gap between the expectations and the reality is critical. There is therefore a need for governments to restructure the packaging of many projects that require financing from the private sector," said Muga.

George Negatu, the regional director for Eastern Africa, African Development Bank, said while the East African Community seems better integrated on the continent, poor transmission lines, low access to energy, poor air transport, railways, and road networks are hampering trade competitiveness.

"Unless we are able to get improved regional infrastructure we are not going to achieve what we want," he warned.

Negatu also noted that high energy costs affect economic integration, limiting productivity of industry in the region.

"This in itself means that companies and industries in the region are not able to reap benefits of the global value chain," he said.

Negatu faulted the inconsistent or lack of harmonized policies and regulations to allow investments across the region.

There are different policy regimes and regulatory frameworks between countries hence hindering investment, Negatu said, calling for more friendly financial systems that can allow companies to borrow money to invest in long-term investments.

"Non-tariff barriers are also making it impossible for trade to happen. Unless we change this, regional integration will remain a wish," said Negatu.

The bankers urged regional governments to put in place creative financing mechanisms to address infrastructure development.

Edward George, Head of Group Research at Ecobank, said only one in four people in the COMESA region has access to energy and some of the countries tend to use alternative sources like hydro power which makes it complicated especially when it comes to drought seasons.
HO CHI MINH CITY, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- A former chairman of management board of the Vietnam Construction Bank, who along with 35 other defendants had caused the biggest-ever loss of 9,000 billion Vietnamese dong (over 400 million U.S. dollars), on Friday received a jail term of 30 years.

The Ho Chi Minh City People's Court handed down an 18-year imprisonment sentence on Pham Cong Danh, 51, the bank's former chairman and general director of Thien Thanh Company, for intentionally running counter to the State's economic management regulations, resulting in serious consequences.

The court also handed down a 20-year imprisonment sentence on him for violating lending regulations in operations of credit institutions.

However, the maximum imprisonment sentence, excluding life sentence, in Vietnam is 30 years. Therefore, Danh will have to spend 30 years, instead of 38 years, behind bars.

Other defendants are senior officials of the bank or its branch in Ho Chi Minh City, and junior officials and staff of the bank's partners and of Thien Thanh Company. They received suspension or jail terms ranging from 3 years to 22 years.

Among the economic loss of 9,000 billion Vietnamese dong the defendants caused to the bank between 2012 and 2014, some 6,000 billion Vietnamese dong can be retrieved, said the court.
BANJUL, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- The first batch of Gambian students who obtained Chinese government scholarships this year have left for China for studies.

The scholarships for 12 Gambian students were the first batch offered by the Chinese government since the two countries resumed diplomatic ties in March this year.

Chinese ambassador to Zambia Zhang Jiming, in a statement issued earlier this week, emphasized the importance of education as a key area of bilateral cooperation.

The Chinese ambassador challenged the students to work hard, pointing out that they should never forget to align their own dreams with that of their motherland, to which they are so deeply indebted and will have so much to contribute.

"I hope you all will be good ambassadors of your country, and help promote mutual understanding and friendship between our two brotherly peoples and countries," he said.

According to him, the first group of Gambian students receiving Chinese government scholarships also showcased the benefits being fastly delivered through the newly-established ties.

"For the past few months, since China and Gambia resumed diplomatic ties, our bilateral relations have enjoyed a dynamic momentum of development", according to the Chinese diplomat.

He disclosed that more plans and projects are in the pipeline which would lead to more benefits for the two countries and peoples. Enditem
UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- The UN Security Council will hold a closed-door meeting on Friday afternoon on the latest nuclear test conducted by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).

According to UN Spokesperson's Office, the closed-door meeting is scheduled to take place at 3 p.m. local time (1900 GMT).

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will speak to the press on the DPRK's nuclear test at noon, said the office.

The DPRK said earlier Friday that it has carried out a nuclear warhead explosion test, according to the state-run television. It is the country's fifth nuclear test.

The Security Council has adopted five resolutions to curb the DPRK's nuclear and missile programs.

The latest one adopted in March imposes the most severe sanctions yet on the country, including an export ban and asset freeze.
Rescuers work at the site of a derailed train at the O Porrino station, close to the city of Pontevedra in the region of Galicia, northwest Spain, on Sept. 9, 2016. At least four people have been killed after the derailment of the train on Friday in O Porrino.

MADRID, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- At least four people were killed and 47 others injured after the derailment of a train in O Porrino, close to the city of Pontevedra in the region of Galicia in northwest Spain.

The accident happened at 9:30 a.m. local time as the train with 63 people aboard (61 passengers plus the train driver and a guard) was approaching the station of O Porrino where it was not scheduled to stop.

The front wagon of the train operated by Portuguese rail operator, Combois Portugal, went off the track and crashed into a metal tower at the side of the track, bringing the train to an abrupt halt.

Adif, the company which runs the Spanish railway infrastructure, confirmed that the Portuguese driver and the Spanish guard were among the victims, and one victim had been rescued from the wreckage but died in hospital in the nearby city of Vigo.

47 others were injured in the crash and taken to various hospitals and health centers. Emergency services confirmed that all of them had been able to escape from the train and make their way to safe areas along the track before receiving treatment and most had been allowed to leave in the afternoon.

Spanish TV network RTVE reported that firemen are still working to rescue a person from the train and this person could have died, while the presence of others among the wreckage has not been ruled out.

Adif has opened an investigation into the causes of the accident, while Spanish Secretary of State for Infrastructures Julio Gomez-Pomar explained that maintenance work was being carried out at the scene of the accident, which meant that all trains on the route had been using a provisional track.

Meanwhile, Spanish Justice Minister Rafael Catala, confirmed that the train involved in the crash passed a "routine" revision on Thursday and had gone through a "rigorous" check in May.
ANKARA, Sept. 8 (Xinhua) -- Turkey will continue the Euphrates Shield Operation in northern Syria to create a safe zone and to fight against terrorist organizations, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim told press Friday.

Turkey's priority in the border city of Jarablus is to ensure the security of the border, Yildirim stressed, adding that Turkish forces will help locals in northern Syria, who were forced to fled, go back and settle in their homeland.

Meanwhile, Turkish fighter jets hit four Islamic State (IS) targets in northern Syria as part of Euphrates Shield Operation, the Turkish General Staff said in a statement on Friday.

Four targets were destroyed in three different places in northern Syria, it said.

Turkish army launched on Aug. 24 the Euphrates Shield cross-border operation to drive out IS and other terrorists.
GENEVA, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Friday expressed their serious concern over the latest nuclear test by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).

Just before his meeting in a Geneva hotel with Lavrov to discuss issues on Syria, Kerry told reporters that "everybody here is concerned," and the United States is still monitoring so as to find out precisely what took place.

Kerry said that he had phoned the foreign ministers of Japan and South Korea.

Lavrov said that he will also talk to Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida later Friday morning during the break of his meeting with Kerry.

"We're very much concerned, and the resolutions from the Security Council must be implemented and we will send this message very strongly," he stressed.

The DPRK said Friday that it successfully conducted a nuclear warhead explosion test at the northern nuclear test ground, the fifth by the country since 2006.

The test aimed to assess the power of a newly developed nuclear warhead, said the DPRK Nuclear Weapons Institute.
WASHINGTON, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday called the latest nuclear test conducted by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) "a grave threat" to regional and international peace and stability,

Obama said he had spoken separately via phone with South Korean President Park Geun-Hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on the issue.

The DPRK's state-run television reported early Friday that the country had conducted a nuclear warhead explosion test. It was Pyongyang's fifth nuclear test, which followed the previous one by eight months.

The UN Security Council is set to hold a closed-door meeting on Friday afternoon on the latest nuclear test conducted by the DPRK.

According to UN Spokesperson's Office, the closed-door meeting is scheduled to take place at 3 p.m. local time (1900 GMT).

Also on Friday, China's Foreign Ministry issued a statement expressing firm opposition to the nuclear test.

"Today the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, despite universal opposition from the international community, conducted another nuclear test, to which the Chinese government is firmly opposed," said the statement.

The statement said China's stance has always been to achieve denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula, prevent nuclear proliferation and maintain peace and stability in Northeast Asia.

"China will, along with the international community, keep working toward the goal of denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula and commit to settling problems through the six-party talks," said the statement.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu (R) shakes hands with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg during a meeting in Ankara, Turkey, Sept. 9, 2016. Turkish Foreign Minister on Friday reiterated Turkey's call for a no-fly zone over northern Syria to maintain security of the areas cleared from the Islamic State (IS) and enable safe return of refugees. (Xinhua/Mustafa Kaya)

ANKARA, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- Turkish Foreign Minister on Friday reiterated Turkey's call for a no-fly zone over northern Syria to maintain security of the areas cleared from the Islamic State (IS) and enable safe return of refugees.

"The United Nations Security Council should take a decision for a no-fly zone," Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said at a press conference with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.

The minister also stressed requirement for training and equipping local troops to retake territory from IS troops in places such as Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq.

Stoltenberg underlined that training local troops in fight against IS militants would be critical instead of the alliance having to deploy large military forces.

Later on Friday, Stoltenberg met with Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim in Ankara. The meeting lasted about an hour.

On Thursday evening, he has met Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Stoltenberg started his two-day visit to Turkey on Thursday, the fifth since he took on his NATO role in October 2014.
WASHINGTON, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. House of Representatives on Friday passed legislation allowing the families of 9/11 victims to sue Saudi Arabia in U.S. courts, despite the threat by the White House to veto the bill.

The bill, which passed the Senate unanimously in May, now heads to President Barack Obama's desk. The White House has expressed opposition to the measure.

It would require votes from two-thirds of the members in the House and Senate to override a veto.

"Given the concerns we have expressed, it's difficult to imagine the president signing this legislation," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said when the bill passed the Senate in May.

"This legislation would change long-standing, international law regarding sovereign immunity," Earnest said, adding that Obama continues to harbor "serious concerns" that this legislation would make the United States vulnerable in other court systems around the world.

The legislation has also drawn criticism from the Saudi government.

Saudi Arabia has told the Obama administration and members of Congress that it will sell off hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of American assets held by the kingdom if Congress passes the bill, The New York Times reported in April.

Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi foreign minister, delivered the kingdom's message personally in March during a trip to Washington, telling lawmakers that Saudi Arabia would be forced to sell up to 750 billion U.S. dollars in treasury securities and other assets in the United States before they could be in danger of being frozen by American courts, The New York Times reported.

Families of the Sept. 11 victims have used the courts to try to hold members of the Saudi royal family, Saudi banks and charities liable because of what the plaintiffs charged was Saudi financial support for terrorism. These efforts have largely been stymied, in part because of a 1976 law that gives foreign nations some immunity from lawsuits in American courts.

Saudi officials have long denied that the kingdom had any role in the plot of the 2001 terror attacks which killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, Washington D.C area and Pennsylvania.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon speaks to journalists at the UN headquarters in New York on Sept. 9, 2016. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Friday condemned the latest nuclear test conducted by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) "in the strongest possible terms." (Xinhua/Li Muzi)

UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Friday condemned the latest nuclear test conducted by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) "in the strongest possible terms."

The DPRK's state-run television reported early Friday that the country had conducted a nuclear warhead explosion test, the country's fifth one.

"This is yet another brazen breach of the resolutions of the Security Council," Ban told reporters here.

"This unacceptable act endangers peace and security in the region and is another vivid reminder of the urgent need to strengthen the global nuclear test ban regime," he added.

Ban called on the DPRK "to reverse its course and commit to a path of denuclearization."

"Rather than pursuing nuclear weapons and ballistic missile technology, the DPRK should be promoting the well-being of the country's people," he said.

In January, the DPRK carried out a test of what it called its first H-bomb. It also conducted underground nuclear tests respectively in 2006, 2009 and 2013.

The UN Security Council will hold a closed-door meeting on Friday afternoon on the DPRK's latest nuclear test.

The 15-nation council has adopted five resolutions to curb the DPRK's nuclear and missile programs. The latest one adopted in March imposes the most severe sanctions yet on the country, including an export ban and asset freeze.
NICOSIA, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- Cyprus will be separated into two time zones, Turkish Cypriot media reported on Friday.

They said the occupied part of Cyprus decided to keep the summer time all year round when the European summer time ends in October, following the example of Turkey.

Greek Cypriots will revert to winter standard time (GMT+2) and turn their clocks one hour back.

Turkey announced on Tuesday to continue energy saving summer time beyond Oct. 30.

Cyprus was partitioned when Turkey occupied its northern part in a 1974 military operation staged in reaction to a coup by military rulers of Greece at the time.

The United Nations which administer the buffer zone through a peacekeeping force said the two sides will decide when and how to address the time issue.

"The U.N. remains focused on facilitating the sides with their efforts to reach a comprehensive solution as soon as possible," said U.N. spokesman in Nicosia Allen Siddique.

"This is not a serious issue," said Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades, currently in Athens for a summit of Mediterranean European Union countries to coordinate a common strategy policy on foreign affairs, economy and the refugee crisis.

But he added that it adds to the argument of the Greek Cypriot side that Turkey's guarantee rights over Cyprus will have no place when a new federal state comes out of the negotiations between Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities. Enditem
DAR ES SALAAM, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- Tanzanian local industry leaders on Friday commended the East African Community (EAC) leaders for rejecting to sign a trade deal with the European Union before the Oct. 1 deadline.

The Confederation of Tanzania Industries (CTI) and the Tanzania Private Sector Foundation (TPSF) praised President John Magufuli for showing leadership by successfully convincing fellow EAC presidents to reject signing a much-criticized trade agreement.

It would be "foolish" for Tanzania to accept the deal, said the leaders of the two organizations.

The pact, known as the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), gives products from EAC member states duty- and quota-free access to the EU as long as they meet health and safety standards.

Kenya and Rwanda signed the agreement earlier this month, putting pressure on Tanzania and other EAC member states of Burundi and Uganda to follow suit.

But President Magufuli on Thursday chaired an EAC heads of state summit in Dar es Salaam and managed to sway all regional leaders to agree to put off the signing of the deal for at least three months to give the countries more time to discuss the possible impacts of the pact on local industries.

Despite Kenya and Rwanda signing the EPA deal, it still needed approval from all members of the EAC bloc to take effect.

"This issue needs further dialogue between the government and private sector so as to come up with the best decision on the way forward," said the CTI director of policy and advocacy, Hussein Kamote.

He hailed Tanzania's decision to delay signing the deal, saying the country needs to be very cautious before agreeing to the pact.

"Even without EPA, Tanzania enjoys access to European markets through other preferential trade arrangements, such as the Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) and the Everything But Arms (EBA) initiative, in which Tanzanian business people benefit from them," said Kamote.

TPSF executive director, Godfrey Simbeye, expressed his delight at the rejection of the deal, saying it would have spelt doom for the government's much-taunted industrialization plan.

President Magufuli laid out a strong case against the EPA pact in the EAC summit that was attended by Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni and Rwanda's president Paul Kagame.

"There are so many issues which demanded a correct solution. One of the issues was how our community can protect its industries after allowing access to the import of European goods," said Magufuli.

"Tanzania was very hesitant to sign this agreement because we have embarked on a plan to industrialize our economy ... our industries cannot compete with European industries," Magufuli added.

Former Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa has also for years been one of the most vocal critics of the EPA deal, saying it was a bad agreement for Tanzania and the entire east African region. Enditem
DHAKA, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- Bangladesh has signed a 14 billion taka (about 180 million U.S. dollars) loan agreement with the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) to finance the country's first-ever satellite "Bangabandhu-I".

Shahjahan Mahmood, chairman of Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC), and M Mahbub Ur Rahman, deputy chief of HSBC Bangladesh, signed the agreement on behalf of their respective sides on Friday in capital Dhaka.

BTRC Chairman Mahmood said the loan, which is to be repaid in 20 installments, has a duration of 12 years with an annual interest rate of 1.51 percent.

Bangladesh in November last year signed a 19.51 billion taka (about 248 million U.S. dollars) deal with French firm Thales Alenia Space for the satellite project.

Speaking at the contract signing ceremony on Friday, Bangladesh State Minister for Post and Telecommunications Tarana Halim said the loan agreement is another step towards fulfillment of the country's long-cherished dream of launching the first satellite.

"With the launch of the satellite we will become the 54th member of the exclusive club of satellite-owning countries on Dec. 17, 2017."

The Bangladeshi government had previously purchased a 119.1 east longitude orbital slot from Russia-based Intersputnik for 15 years. Enditem
HARARE, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- Zimbabwe has called on Chinese and international investors to invest in the country as it is undertaking ease-of-doing-business reforms to make the country attractive to foreign investment, a senior official has said.

Vice President Phelekezela Mphoko made the remarks at the ongoing 19th China International Fair for Investment and Trade, which opened Thursday in Xiamen City, southeast China's Fujian Province.

Mphoko is leading a high-level delegation comprising senior officials and small to medium scale enterprises representatives there.

"My country Zimbabwe has opportunities in agriculture, mining, tourism, and infrastructure development that we are ready to discuss with interested investors," the vice president was quoted as saying by the state-run Herald newspaper Friday.

While China is one of the few countries bankrolling infrastructure development projects running into billions of dollars after the West imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe, foreign investment into the southern African country has been significantly lower in recent years, averaging around 400 million U.S. dollars per year.

Zimbabwe is currently ranked 155 out of 189 countries in the World Bank ease-of-doing-business index for 2015 and has, with technical support from the World Bank, stepped up reform efforts in the last months to improve the investment climate and boost foreign investment.

The VP said Zimbabwe was ready to engage Chinese companies on a win-win basis in value addition projects.

He also thanked China's National Development and Reform Commission for its support towards the revitalization of Zimbabwe's production capacity under a framework signed last year.

Zimbabwe, he said, stood ready to work with Chinese firms in production sectors including special economic zones and industrial parks that Zimbabwe intends to set up in order to boost industrialization in the country.

Trade Minister Mike Bimha said Zimbabwe was keen to attract more foreign direct investment and technology transfer from China.

"As the second largest economy in the world, China is well placed to contribute to the industrialization and development of Zimbabwe," he said.

Chinese companies could partner Zimbabwe in implementing its five-year economic blueprint ending in 2018 through investment in various projects, the minister added. Enditem
KATHMANDU, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- Nepali Foreign Minister Prakash Sharan Mahat will be visiting India next week at the invitation of his Indian counterpart Sushma Swaraj, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said here Friday.

The foreign minister will visit New Delhi from Sept.11 to 13, just a few days ahead of Nepali Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal's maiden visit to the southern neighbor.

"The foreign minister's trip to India, which is going to take place ahead of prime minister's forthcoming visit, will play a crucial role in strengthening the bilateral relationship between the two countries," the foreign ministry said in a press statement.

Prime Minister Dahal is all set to pay an official visit to India from Sept.15 to 18, according to the Nepali Prime Minister's Office.

Dahal is scheduled to hold a bilateral meeting with his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi on Sept.16, officials said.

This will be the first overseas visit of the Nepali prime minister since he took office in August. Enditem
BANGKOK, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- Leaders of Thailand and Malaysia on Friday met in Bangkok with countering extremism as one of their top agendas at the 6th Malaysia-Thailand Annual Consultation.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, who arrived in Bangkok on Thursday night for a six-day visit, held a closed door meeting with his Thai counterpart Prayut Chan-o-cha.

In a joint statement after the meeting, the two leaders leaders vowed to keeping the 650-kilometer border safe.

The two sides discussed the idea of building a wall at the Thai-Malaysian border, Colonel Yutthanam Petchmuang, a spokesman for Thailand's Internal Security Operations Command told reporters after the meeting.

"The idea of building a wall at the Thai-Malay border is still at its primitive stage," said Yutthanam, "Nothing is confirmed yet in terms of logistics. Both leaders shared the idea when they were at the sidelines of the ASEAN Summit in Vientiane."

Yutthanam added that border security cooperation, measures to combat terrorism, particularly the threat of Islamic State-linked elements and extremists, and a crackdown on human trafficking by sea will be at the top of the agenda during Najib's visit.

"Both Thailand and Malaysia are committed in rooting out elements linked to the violence in the Deep South. Therefore, we will be converging into issues in areas such as joint border management, cooperation in the fight against transnational crime, human trafficking, cyber security, marine security cooperation, piracy, terrorism and extremism," said Prayut.

Najib's visit follows three deadly bomb attacks in southern Thailand over the past month, including a spate of bombs in tourist spots in August that Thai police have linked to Muslim separatists.

The two leaders also discussed enhancing bilateral economic ties.

At the transportation front, Malaysia has proposed a joint project with Thailand that would link the planned high-speed rail line between Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur with the planned high-speed line from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore.

In the joint statement, Najib said Malaysia and Thailand have agreed to boost bilateral trade value to 30 billion U.S. dollars by 2018, an objective he said would create new jobs opportunities in both countries.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu (R) and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg (L) hold a press conference after their meeting at the official residence in Ankara, on September 9, 2016. (Xinhua/AFP Photo)

ANKARA, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- Turkish Foreign Minister on Friday reiterated Turkey's call for a no-fly zone over northern Syria to maintain security of the areas cleared from the Islamic State (IS) and enable safe return of refugees.

"The United Nations Security Council should take a decision for a no-fly zone," Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said at a press conference with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.

The minister also stressed requirement for training and equipping local troops to retake territory from IS troops in places such as Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq.

Stoltenberg underlined that training local troops in fight against IS militants would be critical instead of the alliance having to deploy large military forces.

Later on Friday, Stoltenberg met with Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim in Ankara. The meeting lasted about an hour.

On Thursday evening, he has met Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Stoltenberg started his two-day visit to Turkey on Thursday, the fifth since he took on his NATO role in October 2014.
UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- The fourth straw poll in the UN Security Council to find a candidate to replace retiring UN chief Ban Ki-moon showed on Friday no great change in the top rankings from previous tallies, but all five of the women sank into the lowest rakings of the 10 announced candidates.

Portugal's Antonio Guterres, former head of the UN refugee agency, was still on top, with 10 "Encourage" votes, five "Discourage" ballots and no one casting a "No opinion," according to diplomatic sources.

Slovak Republic Foreign Minister Miroslav Lajcak remained in second place with a tally of 10-4-1.

Former Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic of Serbia, also a former president of the UN General Assembly, came in a clear third this time at 9-4-2, the sources said. At the last straw poll held on Aug. 29, he shared third ranking with Irina Bokova, head of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) who slipped to a fifth place tie this time around, leading the five women at the bottom of the list.

Srgjan Kerim, also a former president of the General Assembly and a former foreign minister of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, came up to fourth place at 8-7-0.

The former president of Slovenia, and a former UN assistant secretary-general, Danilo Turk, tied with Bokova for the number of 5 encourage ballots but had 6 discourage and 2 no opinions to her 5 discourage and 3 no opinions.

Argentina's Susanna Malcorra, Ban's former chef d'cabinet was sixth, followed by former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark, currently head of the UN Development Programme (UNDP), Christina Figuers, former executive secretary of the UN Climate Change convention in Paris, and finally Moldovas's Natalia Gherman who served the last three years as foreign minister.

The informal, secret straw polls are held to get a reading on how candidates are faring. But even though they are held behind closed doors in the Security Council chambers, the results are almost immediately, and widely, leaked by diplomats who want a more transparent process in choosing the next secretary-general, whose term starts on Jan. 1, 2017.

There had been a push for a woman to serve as the next UN chief as well as a push from Eastern European states for winning candidates, but while diplomats in the 15-nation Security Council said they welcomed such diversity they also say they insist on getting the best possible candidate regardless of gender or geo-political region.

The next straw poll is slated on Sept. 26, a UN spokesman said.
by Larry Neild

LONDON, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- British Prime Minister Theresa May put herself on a collision course with her main opposition party Friday by announcing the reintroduction of grammar schools.

In what is her first major domestic speech since entering 10 Downing Street, May unveiled measures to allow for a radical expansion of what she described as "good school places".

May's move has invoked the fury of the main opposition Labour Party who banished grammar schools on the basis they separated pupils at the age of 11 into two groups, one heading to an elite grammar school education that offered a better chance of university places and a profession. The majority went to secondary schools, most pupils destined for blue collar trades.

Labour scrapped the two tier system and instead introduced comprehensive schools for all students aged 11 and above.

Tony Blair, in 1998, a year after becoming Labour prime minister, brought in the School Standards and Framework Act which banned the establishment of any new grammar schools, only allowing those still existing to continue.

There are only 163 grammar schools in England compared to around 3,000 state comprehensive schools where pupils of all abilities and aptitudes are taught together.

A dual education system, viewed by Labour as elitist, is seen as one of the key differences between the two big political parties.

In her speech Friday afternoon May outlined a four-point plan of action to improve education, including a reintroduction of grammar schools.

But she insisted it would not be a return to the grammar schools of the 1950s with their life-changing tests for admission or rejection at the age of 11.

She said: "The debate over selective schools has raged for years."

"Frankly, it is completely illogical to make it illegal to open good new schools. I want to relax the restrictions that stop selective schools from expanding," said May.

"It is not a proposal to go back to the 1950s but to look to the future, and that future I believe is an exciting one," she continued.

"It is a future in which every child should have access to a good school place. And a future in which Britain's education system shifts decisively to support ordinary working class families," she added.

Labour's Shadow Education Secretary Angela Rayner, said: "Theresa May talks about standing up for the majority but her actions reveal the opposite: working for the few at the expense of the many."

Labour's attack continued with May's proposed reforms condemned by Labour shadow minister Jonathan Ashworth.

He said: "It's utterly ludicrous for Theresa May to stand up and talk about creating a 'great meritocracy' and then in the next breathe announce a return to grammar schools."

"We're today calling on the Prime Minister to come to Parliament on Monday and explain why, when these policies weren't even in the Conservative Manifesto, she is now set to press ahead with a policy which is bad for the majority of our children. We will be opposing this regressive policy every step of the way," he said.
JUBA, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- South Sudan said Friday it's facing cash crisis at its foreign embassies stemming from salary delays as well risk eviction for failure to pay rents.

Philip Thon leek, Chairperson of Specialized Committee for Foreign Relations in transitional Parliament, told Xinhua in an interview in Juba that the government is making frantic efforts to rescue the diplomats who may be at risk of eviction due to rental dues.

"The diplomats have been going without salaries for about five months, and some of them are being threatened to be dragged to court for failing to pay rents by their landlords," Leek said.

In March, Juba said it will downsize the number of staff in its embassies across the world in order to cut costs due to economic slump stemming from a two-year civil war.

The move comes amid unconfirmed reports that some of the foreign missions have been served with eviction orders for not paying rent while some staff have not been paid for months due to economic crisis.

"Our diplomats don't get their salaries regularly because scarcity of hard currency has disadvantaged them from paying their house rents abroad," Leek stressed.

The lawmaker explained that the situation has been exacerbated by the current economic crisis that has made foreign currencies to be very scarce, coupled with the large number of diplomats deployed in foreign missions abroad.

Since South Sudan gained its independence from Khartoum in 2011, the world youngest nation has so far opened 32 missions worldwide.

Foreign Affairs Spokesperson Mawien Makol told Xinhua that the delays are due to economic crisis, coupled with recent fighting that forced former first vice president Riek Machar to flee the country.

"We have some economic problems at the moment, but we are trying our best, and also to reduce the number of officials in some of those embassies," Makol said. Enditem
Cargos are piled at Intermodal Terminal DIT in Duisburg, Germany, July 13, 2016. As many as 8 cargo trains from China arrive at this terminal every week, carrying Chinese products to Europe. Cargo trains were a logical development, opening a new channel for the transfer of goods to and from China's central and western regions to compete with the traditional maritime route from the east coast. A total of 16 cities now have regular cargo trains to Europe. (Xinhua/Yan Feng)

BRUSSELS, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- China-proposed Belt and Road initiative that pushes for improved transport infrastructure is good news for Europe as far as trade creation is concerned, says a recent report issued by the Brussels-based think tank Bruegel.

"We estimate how much trade might be created among Belt and Road countries as a consequence of the reduction in transportation costs (both railway and maritime) and find that European Union (EU) countries, especially landlocked countries, should benefit considerably," the report adds.

The Belt and Road initiative aims to stimulate economic development over a vast area covering sub-regions in Asia, Europe and Africa. Over 70 countries and international organizations have taken part in the Belt and Road initiative.

One of the initiative's key objectives is to ease bottlenecks for cross-border trade, in particular through transport infrastructure, which should reduce the cost of transportation, thus stimulating trade between China and these countries, the report notes.

"The same effect should be expected for the other end of the road -- the EU -- because cheaper transportation should also foster its trade with other Belt and Road countries, as well as with China," the report says.

To prove the estimation, authors of the report firstly accessed of the impact of transportation costs on trade. They found that transportation costs are statistically and economically significant in fostering international trade.

"We find that a 10 percent reduction in railway, air and maritime costs increases trade by 2 percent, 5.5 percent and 1.1 percent respectively," the report says.

Secondly, the authors tried to figure out how much transportation costs will be reduced as a result of the improvement in infrastructure.

In this regard, information on the few finalized projects under the Belt and Road initiative has offered a hint of the potential.

Yuxinou railway line, which starts in Chongqing and ends in Duisburg, Germany, has been reported a reduction in transportation cost by 50 percent in 2015, according to the report.

Comparing the impact on trade by regions, the report says the EU will be the biggest winner from the Belt and Road initiative, with trade rising by more than 6 percent.

An infrastructure-centered Belt and Road initiative should be very encouraging for the EU, the report concludes.
Turkey and the European Union on September 9, 2016 agreed to douse tensions that had darkened Ankara's prospects for joining the bloc in the wake of the failed July 15 coup.EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini and Enlargement Commissioner Johannes Hahn -- making the highest-level EU visit to Turkey since the coup -- said that new chapters in Ankara's long-running accession process should be opened and visa liberalisation was still on the table. (Xinhua/AFP Photo)

ANKARA, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu on Friday identified the European Union's stance on failing to open new negotiation chapter as "weakness" as the union cannot stop Cyprus from blocking Turkey's membership process.

"The EU's inability to prevent a country from blocking the opening of new chapters is another display of the EU's weakness in overcoming problems," Cavusoglu said on Friday after an EU-Turkey political dialogue meeting with participation of EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini and Enlargement Commissioner Johannes Hahn.

Turkish minister and EU officials discussed the position of the EU for opening chapters of "23-Judiciary and Fundamental Rights" and "24-Justice, Freedom and Security."

Cavusoglu called on the 28 member-block to open the chapters in current term presidency. Yet Hahn said only a Cyprus peace deal would make that happen.

Brussels and Ankara share a "common interest" in resolving the Cyprus dispute in the coming months, Mogherini said. "We see a window of more than hope for this issue to be solved in the coming month."

"The key element which we agreed to was that we talk more to each other and less about each other, showing full respect," Mogherini stated commenting on Friday's meeting in Turkey's capital Ankara.

Turkish and Greek Cypriots are having talks since May 2015 for reunification of the island, which was split along ethnic lines since 1974 after interference by Turkey in response to a short-lived Greek Cypriot coup.

Cyprus dispute has been a major hurdle in Turkey's bid to join the block as EU member Greek Cypriots, considered by the international community the sole legitimate authority, blockages 6 of 35 negotiation chapters for accession process of Ankara.

Hahn said Turkey remains an EU candidate country. "And in a candidate country, we have to apply the highest standards, as we applied these standards among ourselves."

He believed a solution for the visa liberalization issue is possible and that the timing is up to Ankara.

The Turkish government has suggested that the Council of Europe monitor the implementation of Turkey's anti-terror law, but the union has yet to give a response, and the issue would be discussed at a technical level, according to Hurriyet Daily News.

Turkey and the EU earlier this year implemented a deal to stem the record flow of migrants to Europe in exchange for billions of euros to Turkey and the lifting of short-term visa requirements on Turkish citizens in October.

But the EU has failed to change its visa rules, accusing Turkey of refusing to alter its draconian counter-terrorism laws to meet EU political criteria.
Visiting Vice chairman of China's Central Military Commission Xu Qiliang (5th L) meets with Myanmar State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi(6th L) in Yangon, Myanmar, Sept. 9, 2016. (Xinhua/U Aung)

NAY PYI TAW, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese army will further enhance mutual trust, exchange and cooperation with the Myanmar army at different levels and in different fields, a Chinese senior military official said on Friday.

Visiting Vice chairman of China's Central Military Commission Xu Qiliang made the remarks during his meeting with Myanmar State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi.

China highly values the friendly cooperation between the two countries, said Xu, adding that China firmly upholds a friendly policy towards Myanmar and supports Myanmar's national reconciliation process.

Xu mentioned Aung San Suu Kyi's recent trip to China, during which she reached consensus with the Chinese leadership on further enhancing the comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership between China and Myanmar.

China is willing to continue to play a constructive role in pushing forward Myanmar's peace process and hopes that the two countries would work together to maintain peace and stability at the border areas, Xu said.

For her part, Aung San Suu Kyi said enhancing the friendship, mutual understanding and trust between the two countries is very important for the China-Myanmar relations.

Myanmar highly appreciates China's high attention to the China-Myanmar friendship and the bilateral relations, she said.

She thanked China for its role in Myanmar's peace process and said she hopes to see new progresses in the friendly cooperation between the two sides.
SINGAPORE, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- Three anchor events of Singapore Green Building Week, which focused on rethinking green building for the next decade, concluded here on Friday.

The events included International Green Building Conference 2016, Build Eco Xpo Asia 2016 and Mostra Convegno Expocomfort Asia 2016.

John Keung, chief executive officer of Singapore's Building and Construction Authority, said Singapore Green Building Week 2016 not only reiterates the country's commitment to the region's green building and sustainability sectors, but also acts as a platform for regional stakeholders to come together, and envision the possibilities and opportunities to further green buildings in the next decade.

Themed "Build Green: The Next Decade," this year's International Green Building Conference focused on empowerment and involving the community to drive sustainability with more than 1,000 participants.

Meanwhile, Build Eco Xpo Asia and Mostra Convegno Expocomfort Asia were held in conjunction with the conference from Wednesday to Friday.

Over 450 exhibiting companies as well as thousands of visitors comprising green building experts, policy-makers, academics and built environment practitioners gathered during the occasion.

The exhibitions showcased green building and energy efficient solutions in plumbing technology, sanitary accessories, as well as solar energy for the building and construction industry. In this year's edition, the expo included national pavilions from China, Japan, and Singapore, among others.

Singapore's Building and Construction Authority has reviewed the Green Mark scheme for residential buildings and will be putting the new set of criteria on pilot for a year.

The authority also signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Rwanda Housing Authority to collaborate on capacity building and sharing of best practices in design and development of green buildings and cities. Enditem
ISLAMABAD, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- At least nine militants were killed when Pakistani army launched air strikes in the country's northwest tribal area of Khyber Agency, local media reported.

Dawn News said that the troops backed by jet fighters pounded two militants' hideouts in Tirah Valley area of Khyber Agency, a semi-autonomous tribal region along Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

Identities of the killed militants have not been revealed yet.

Forces have been conducting aerial and ground operations in the Tirah valley region of the Agency since Aug. 16 to reinforce troops' deployment and effectively check and guard against terrorists movement along high mountains and all weather passes in Khyber Agency.

Prior to that there was no check on the movement of the militants as Rajgal valley was out of the control of the forces and the militants used to move freely in the area.

The Inter-Services Public Relations, the media wing of Pakistani army, said that security forces have occupied passes and are now consolidating their positions up in high mountainous areas. Enditem
Officers attend the celebration of the third anniversary of the creation of the Military Police in Tegucigalpa on August 24, 2016. In spite of the creation of the Military Police to combat arms and drug trafficking and violent gangs, Honduras is one of the most violent countries in the world. (Xinhua/AFP Photo)

RABAT, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- Morocco dismantled Friday a criminal gang engaged in production and trafficking of hard and psychotropic drugs in the eastern city of Oujda, police said in a statement.

The police also arrested 7 people, including two Peruvians, a French national of Moroccan origin and four Moroccans in raid on a farm, the statement added.

This operation had led to the seizure of 200 kg of pure cocaine and the discovery of a laboratory containing tools and modern equipment used in the preparation of cocaine and psychotropic tablets, the source said.

The suspects were placed in custody pending the completion of the investigation.

Investigations are underway to highlight all ramifications and links of this criminal gang, according to the same source.
GAZA, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- A Palestinian young man was killed and another injured Friday by Israeli army's gunfire in clashes near the border between eastern Gaza Strip and Israel, medics and eyewitnesses said.

Ashraf al-Qedra, spokesman of the Gaza-based health ministry told reporters that Abdul Rahman al-Dabagh, 18 years old, was shot dead by Israeli soldiers' gunfire east of al-Bureij refugee camp close to the borders with Israel.

Al-Qedra said that the young man was shot by a bullet in the head and arrived dead at one of the hospitals in central Gaza Strip, adding that another young man was moderately injured.

Witnesses said that dozens of young Palestinians demonstrated close to the borders with Israel and threw stones at the soldiers stationed on the borderline.

They said that the soldiers fired tear gas and live ammunition at the demonstrators, causing the young man's death.

Every Friday, dozens of Palestinian youths go to the borderline area to demonstrate against the endless Israeli blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip since Hamas violent takeover of the enclave in 2007.

Since early October last year, tension between Israel and the Palestinians has been mounting in the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in protest to Israel's policies against the Palestinians.

Official figures showed that 223 Palestinians and 40 Israelis were killed in the violence, as peace talks had been stalled since April 2014.
VIENNA, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- The repeat run-off round for the Austrian presidential election scheduled for Oct. 2 is poised to be rescheduled for a second time over ongoing issues surrounding vote cards.

The Austria Press Agency reported Friday that indications from within government and parliamentary circles are strongly pointing towards a rescheduling, something that has up to now been rejected particularly by Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka.

Sobotka appears to have softened his stance Friday however, and is examining the possibility of shifting the election further back. He is reportedly planning to announce a final decision next week.

The catalyst for the ongoing issues surrounding the vote cards has this time been problems with the envelopes they are to be sealed in. There were initially a number of production errors reported, and on Wednesday evening it came to light that their seals were in some instances actually coming undone.

Should they be received by electoral authorities in this state, the vote card inside is subsequently declared invalid.

In response to the talk of rescheduling the election, Chancellor Christian Kern has declared himself open to the possibility, as have a number of politicians from other parties, albeit amidst heavy criticism at the ongoing troubles surrounding the vote procedure.

The election initially held on May 22 had already been ordered to be rescheduled, and in that instance repeated, by the Constitutional Court, for issues including that the vote cards were in some electoral districts opened too early and not in the presence of required electoral officials. Enditem
CHICAGO, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- After marking Chinese Lunar New Years for consecutive three years and achieving fruitful results, the Art Institute of Chicago has enlarged its vision and will celebrate the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival, which will fall on Sept. 15 this year.

The museum has raked through more than 3,500 pieces of collections from China and will exhibit a "Chang E" painting finished in the late Yuan Dynasty or early Ming Dynasty (AD 1350-1400), to cater to the Chinese saying that the Mid-Autumn Festival, or a harvest festival celebrated on the 15th day of the eighth month in the Chinese calendar, is inspired by the legend of Chang E, the Chinese goddess of the Moon.

The painting was originally painted on a bamboo or wood frame and functioned as a fan.

Some other rare Chinese artworks fresh from the museum's collections will also be displayed during the Mid-Autumn Festival celebration period from Sept. 10 to 18.

The museum will also offer visitors bi-lingual self-guided mini-tour and free-curator-led public tours services, provide mooncakes, Asian specialties and Chinese Tsingtao Beer, and stage the performance of the Legend of Chang E.

In the eyes of Wang Tao, director of the Department of Asian Art and curator of Chinese Art at the Art Institute of Chicago, the festival is kind of like the Thanksgiving in Western countries, which brings together family members and friends to celebrate the harvest and the moon.

"Overseas Chinese have a cultural root. Seeing Chinese cultural relics in museums overseas has a special meaning to them, and can help them feel the flow of their cultural blood," Wang said.

By launching the celebration, the Art Institute of Chicago wants to give out a simple message: "the Art Institute has a major commitment to the Chinese community," said David Thurm, Chief Operating Officer of the institute.

Nora Gainer, director of Tourism Marketing Department of the Art Institute of Chicago, said: "we have performances, mooncakes, we are making a moment that will not only be enjoyed by Chinese visitors, but also Americans who are interested in Chinese culture."

To attract more Chinese visitors, the institute is the first museum outside China that opened Weibo, the Chinese version of twitter, and WeChat, a cross-platform instant messaging service developed by China's Tencent.

It has also entered into a partnership with China's UnionPay, and holders of UnionPay cards beginning with digital 62 can get a "buy-one-get-one (ticket) free" bonus.

Thanks to these efforts, Chinese visitors to the Art Institute of Chicago have kept increasing. The museum received 15,000 Chinese visitors in 2015, up 50 percent from 2014. It is expected to receive 17,735 Chinese visitors in 2016.

Founded in 1879, the Art Institute of Chicago is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the United States. It houses more than 300,000 works of art in 10 curatorial departments.
Francois Molins, Paris prosecutor talks to reporters during a press conference in Paris, France on Sept. 9, 2016. The three women arrested over a thwarted attack on Thursday were guided by Islamic State (IS) insurgents in Syria, Francois Molins said on Friday. (Xinhua/Thierry Mahe)

PARIS, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- The three women arrested over a thwarted attack on Thursday were guided by Islamic State (IS) insurgents in Syria, Francois Molins, Paris prosecutor said on Friday.

"In the last few days and hours a terrorist cell was dismantled, composed of young women totally receptive to the deadly Daesh ideology," he told reporters.

"They were guided by individuals in Syria in the ranks of Islamic State ... that intends to use women as combatants," he added, noting that the IS has used even young women who develop their plot from distance.

"This commando's objective was clearly to carry out an attack," Molins said.

On Sunday, a Peugeot 607 containing seven gas cylinders, including an empty one on the front passenger seat, and three cans of diesel fuel was found near the famous tourist place Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris.

Anti-terrorism units did not discover detonators in the car, which carried no registration plate, but they found documents written in Arabic language.

On Thursday evening, police arrested the three female suspects. One of them stabbed a police official before being shot and injured. They are aged 19, 23 and 39 years respectively.

Molins said the youngest of the three women, and also the daughter of the car owner, had written a letter pledging allegiance to the IS group.

She is also known to police for attempting to join insurgents in Syria.

The 23-year-old suspect was also on the intelligence services watch list for radicalization. Previously she has been engaged to Larossi Abballa, who killed two policemen in June and after to Adel Kermiche, one of the men who slaughtered the murder of a priest in July, according to Paris prosecutor.

Her fiance and a 15-year-old teenage,a daughter of one of the suspects were also arrested in connection of the foiled attack near the cathedral.

Earlier this week, four people -- two brothers and their girlfriends -- were already in custody over the discovery.

The first couple were arrested on a motorway in southern France and are known to the security services for links to radical Islamists. The man's brother and his girlfriend were arrested late Wednesday.

Speaking on the sidelines of Mediterranean states summit in Athens, French President Francois Hollande said "a terrorist attack has been thwarted. A group has been neutralised. Others are out there."
WINDHOEK, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- Namibian President Hage Geingob said Friday the strike-threatening teachers are making the country ungovernable.

Teachers in Namibia voted on Wednesday and Thursday on whether they should go on strike following the breakdown of negotiations with the government over salary rise.

The teachers' demand of 8-percent salary increase was unmet by the government's promise of a 5-percent rise and another 7 percent in the next financial year.

Although the results of the vote are not yet published, Geingob, who called for a press conference at State House in Windhoek, said teachers should rethink the strike action.

The president urged the teachers to accept the 5-percent offer.

Last week, the Office of the Prime Minister that is negotiating with teachers, said the government could not afford an 8-percent increase.

Namibia's economic outlook was revised by Fitch Rating from stable to negative last week largely due to the budget deficit and depleted foreign reserves.

The finance minister Calle Schlettwein also said the government will have to cut down on subsistence and travel allowances as well as put on hold a number of capital project to save money. Enditem
ANKARA, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- The Turkish General Staff said Islamic State (IS) militants assaulted a Turkish tank in Tal El-Hawa region of northern Syria on Friday, killing three soldiers and injuring one.

It also said Turkish artillery units fired 41 shots at 15 IS targets, destroying four buildings belonging to the militant group.

The attack marks the seventh Turkish casualty in the Euphrates Shield operation, which has lasted 17 days.

On Sept. 6, three Turkish soldiers were killed and four others wounded in another IS attack on two tanks.

Four Turkish soldiers were injured on Aug. 30 when a rocket fired from the west of Syria's Jarablus region hit a tank in northern Syria.

On Aug. 27, one Tourkish soldier was killed and three others injured when the Syrian Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) attacked their tanks.

On Aug. 24, the Turkish army launched the Euphrates Shield cross-border operation to drive out IS and other terrorist militants through Free Syrian Army fighters, who are bolstered by Turkish weaponry, ammunition, artillery and jets.
Turkish troops drive their tanks on September 4, 2016 on a road near the Syrian village of al-Waqf and some 3km south of al-Rai, the small border town with Turkey. (Xinhua/AFP Photo)

ANKARA, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- The Turkish General Staff said Islamic State (IS) militants assaulted a Turkish tank in Tal El-Hawa region of northern Syria on Friday, killing three soldiers and injuring one.

It also said Turkish artillery units fired 41 shots at 15 IS targets, destroying four buildings belonging to the militant group.

The attack marks the seventh Turkish casualty in the Euphrates Shield operation, which has lasted 17 days.

On Sept. 6, three Turkish soldiers were killed and four others wounded in another IS attack on two tanks.

Four Turkish soldiers were injured on Aug. 30 when a rocket fired from the west of Syria's Jarablus region hit a tank in northern Syria.

On Aug. 27, one Tourkish soldier was killed and three others injured when the Syrian Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) attacked their tanks.

On Aug. 24, the Turkish army launched the Euphrates Shield cross-border operation to drive out IS and other terrorist militants through Free Syrian Army fighters, who are bolstered by Turkish weaponry, ammunition, artillery and jets.
UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- The Independent Special Investigation team appointed by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to look into the violence in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, in July, and the response of the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), arrived in Juba on Friday, a UN spokesman told reporters here.

The team, led by Major General (retired) Patrick Cammaert, will review reports of incidents of attacks on civilians and cases of sexual violence that occurred within or in the vicinity of the UN House Protection of Civilians (PoC) sites in Juba, the spokesman said.

"It will also determine whether UNMISS responded appropriately to prevent and stop these incidents and to protect civilians, within its resources and capabilities at the time," the spokesman said.

The team is also charged to review the UN Mission's response to the July 11 attack on the Terrain Hotel, the spokesman said. "The team is expected to submit its report to the secretary-general within one month."

In August, the secretary-general announced the special investigation into allegations that UNMISS failed to respond properly to the attack on the hotel in Juba in July.

Meanwhile, Ban was also concerned about allegations that UNMISS did not respond appropriately to prevent this and other grave cases of sexual violence committed in Juba, according to the statement.

On July 10, South Sudanese Health Ministry confirmed 271 people were killed in the latest clashes between rival army factions outside the presidential palace in the capital Juba and there is renewed heavy fighting.

In a statement, the Health Ministry said those killed included 32 civilians, five police officers, 44 government troops and 190 soldiers of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement-In Opposition (SPLM-IO) led by Vice President Riek Machar.
UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- The UN emergency fund has released seven million U.S. dollars in a bid to strengthen protection services to internally displaced people in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, UN officials said here Friday.

The resources are from the Somalia Humanitarian Fund to scale up life-saving and life sustaining assistance in the Horn of Africa country, the officials said.

The new funding will provide support for education, food security, health, nutrition, protection, shelter, and water and sanitation activities in the Daynille and Kaxda districts near Mogadishu, they said, quoting a press release issued here Friday.

These two settlements host the majority of the more than 120,000 displaced people, the press release said.

"The internally displaced in Somalia face enormous challenges, and timely and focused humanitarian support is essential to address their urgent needs. Many displaced people who will benefit from this allocation were evicted from settlements in the city centre, where they originally sought refuge," said the UN humanitarian coordinator for Somalia, Peter de Clercq.

The living conditions in these settlements have been described by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) as deplorable; services are limited or non-existent and human rights violations are rife.

This is the second allocation to assist internally displaced people in Somalia this year. The first allocation of 7 million U.S. dollars was released earlier in July for internally displaced people in Baidoa and Kismayo, de Clercq said.

"Humanitarian actors remain committed to alleviate the suffering of displaced people, support livelihoods and catalyse durable solutions linked to development efforts aimed at breaking the cycle of protracted displacement in Somalia," he said.

The statement of the humanitarian coordinator pointed to clan conflicts, military operations in southern and central Somalia, natural disasters and forced evictions as main drivers causing displacements across Somalia.

Currently, Mogadishu hosts some 400,000 internally displaced Somalis in more than 400 settlements; more than 36 percent of the estimated 1.1 million people who remain in protracted displacement across the eastern African country.

The emergency aid comes from the OCHA-managed Somalia Humanitarian Fund. Contributors to the Fund in 2016 included Australia, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, the officials added.
UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) has voiced its concern about the conditions, basic services and security in the territory formerly controlled by Boko Haram insurgents as hundreds of internally displaced people are returning to devastated villages and towns in Nigeria's northeastern Borno state, a UN spokesman told reporters here Friday.

The returning of the displaced Nigerians came after these areas were recently liberated by the West African country's armed forces, and this number is expected to grow in the coming weeks, the spokesman said.

"However, the agency remains concerned about the conditions, basic services and security in the territory formerly controlled by Boko Haram insurgents," said the spokesman.

Assistance from the Nigerian government and aid agencies has been stepped up to the region to help people in 16 newly accessible districts of Borno, the spokesman said, adding that UNHCR and its partners have restricted access to 10 of these districts, where some 800,000 people need urgent help.

"UNHCR stresses that returns should be voluntary, dignified and safe, with people being informed about conditions in their home areas," the spokesman said.

"The agency is in regular touch with state officials and has raised its concerns and offered to closely work with them to help ensure that returns are conducted in accordance with international standards and in dignity and safety," the spokesman added.

Nigeria's northeast region has been a stronghold of the extremist group Boko Haram and has been frequently raided in the past six years. In past months, the Nigerian government has launched several military operations to eliminate the terrorist threat.

Boko Haram, which seeks to impose strict Islamic law in northern Nigeria, has been blamed for some 20,000 deaths and displacing of more than 2.6 million people since 2009.
by Sabina Di Muro

CARACAS, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- The 17th Non-Aligned Movement Summit (NAM) will be held from Sept. 13-18 on the island of Margarita, located off the Venezuelan state of Nueva Esparta.

Venezuela is still checking all the details about hosting representatives from 120 members, who have traditionally struggled to establish a multi-polar world and a new economic order.

The NAM is the second largest international body, after the United Nations, with 53 members from Africa, 39 from Asia, 26 from Latin America and the Caribbean, two from Europe, as well as 17 observer countries and 10 observer organizations.

In March, during a preparatory meeting for the NAM Summit, Venezuela's Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez said "Venezuela will assume in September the rotating presidency of the Non-Aligned Movement, with the intent to continue building a new multi-polar architecture and the independence of our people."

According to Rodriguez, the founding principles of the NAM outline basic objectives, namely establishing an alliance of independent states, the installation of the non-aligned sensibility alongside the international politics of the great powers and the construction of a fair, inclusive, transparent and efficient system of global governance.

"The Summit will offer a broad platform for a fundamental change in international economic relations and the complete economic emancipation of Southern countries," she added.

During a speech in August, President Nicolas Maduro stated that his country was ready to hold the rotating presidency for the next three years, after taking over from Iran during the Summit.

"It will be the first time in history that Venezuela has held the NAM presidency. Venezuela is linked to the emerging powers of the new multi-polar world. Venezuela follows its own path in the development of our diplomacy, linked to the new world, and breaking ties with the new empires," said Maduro.

Venezuela currently also sits on the UN Security Council as a non-permanent member and holds the rotating presidency of the Union of South American Nations (Unasur). However, its presidency of the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) is contested, with Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay refusing to accept its position. Enditem
WASHINGTON, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- Early voting for the 2016 U.S. presidential election kicked off on Friday in North Carolina, ushering in a two-month period of advance voting before the final results will be tallied on Election Day on Nov. 8.

From Friday on, North Carolina residents could submit absentee ballots by mail and in-person early voting would begin late October.

Thirty-seven U.S. states plus the District of Columbia allow voters to cast a ballot ahead of Election Day without having to offer an excuse to do so.

In recent election cycles, early voting, including mail-in ballots and in-person early voting, had become increasingly popular among various kinds of voters, with the share of voters who cast advance ballots increasing from 16 percent in 2000 to 35 percent in 2012.

It is estimated that about 40 percent of voters could choose early voting this year.

Early voting is especially popular among the African-American community. According to local exit polls in the 2012 presidential election, 74 percent of black voters in North Carolina chose to cast ballots before Election Day, compared to 63 percent of white voters who cast advance ballots.

While the preference of early voters would not be known until Election Day, certain U.S. states released limited information in past elections about the number of absentee ballots and in-person early ballots as well as the number of early votes broken out by political parties, offering a glimpse into how successfully each campaign has been working to inspire their supporters to vote.
SANTIAGO, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- Chile is looking to boost its cranberry exports to China, according to the country's ambassador to Beijing, Jorge Heine.

"Cranberries have been one of the great successes of our fruit exports," Heine wrote in a recent article headlined "Betting on our Super Fruit in China."

While "Chile has only cultivated the fruit since the 1980s, it is already the leading exporter of the fruit in the Southern Hemisphere, said Heine.

"With its counter-season production, Chile is the major supplier of the U.S. and European markets (and) since 2012, it has also been exporting to China," said the diplomat.

"In China, the cranberry is something new. Nevertheless, large Chinese conglomerates, such as Legend Holdings, envisioning its great potential, are betting on this fruit, to the extent of even investing in it in Chile," said Heine.

Heine said the peak season for buying fresh fruit in China is during the main holidays, such as the Lunar New Year celebrations and National Day in October, since the Chinese traditionally present each other with gifts of fruit.

"Per capita consumption of cranberries in China is still low, but it's growing. The Chinese consumer values its nutritional value, health benefits and status as an 'exotic' fruit," said Heine.

Considered a "super fruit," the tart red berry is packed with vitamins A and C, and phytonutrients that have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties.

Cranberries were brought over to Chile from New Zealand in the 80s, said Heine, adding that today the South American country plants some 30,000 hectares of the fruit to produce 90,000 tons a year.

Since Chile and China signed a free-trade agreement in 2005, Chile's agricultural and forestry exports to the Asian giant have grown 471 percent to reach 2.439 billion U.S. dollars in 2015, according to an August 2016 report from the Ministry of Agriculture.
RABAT, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- the Moroccan authorities have regularized the situations of nearly 23,000 illegal migrants since 2013, local media reported on Friday.

Citing the secretary general of Morocco's interior ministry, Nourdine Boutaib, Alyoum24 news site said that 23 percent of these unauthorized migrants are Syrians, 21 percent are Senegalese and 19 percent from Democratic Republic of Congo.

Morocco has also deported some 5,000 illegal migrants to their countries, the source added.

The same source pointed out that in three years authorities have dismantled 320 illegal migration networks and foiled some 26,000 illegal migration attempts, chiefly to Europe.

In recent years, Morocco has turned from a country of passage for illegal migrants to Europe to a country of settlement for migrants and refugees from sub-Saharan Africa, Syria and Iraq.

In 2013 Morocco announced a new and more liberal immigration policy that includes avenues for regularization of unauthorized immigrants. Enditem
BAGHDAD, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- At least 11 people were killed and 29 others wounded in two car bombs at a busy mall in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, a police source said on Saturday local time.

The attack occurred shortly before Friday midnight when a booby-trapped car detonated at the car park of al-Nakhil Mall in Palestine Street in eastern Baghdad, while a suicide bomber blew up his explosive-laden car at the busy street outside the mall building, the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

The blasts set fire to several nearby cars at the parking lot and outside the mall and damaged many others, the source said.

Iraqi security forces sealed off the area and blocked the roads leading to the scene, while ambulances and police vehicles evacuated the killed and wounded people to the city hospitals, the source added.

No group has so far claimed responsibility for the attacks, but the Islamic State (IS) militant group, in most cases, is responsible for the suicide attacks, targeting areas where crowds of people gather, including markets, cafes and mosques across Iraq.

Iraq has witnessed worsening violence since the Islamic State (IS) group took control of parts of its northern and western regions in June 2014.

Terrorist acts, violence and armed conflicts killed 691 Iraqis and wounded 1,016 others in August across Iraq, the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq said on Thursday.

Many blame the current chronic instability, cycle of violence, and the emergence of extremist groups, such as the IS, on the U.S. that invaded and occupied Iraq in March 2003.
Ireland's agriculture minister Michael Creed T.D. in an exclusive interview with chinadaily.com.cn in Embassy of Ireland , Beijing on Sept 7, 2016. [Photo/chinadaily.com.cn]

Ireland's agriculture minister Michael Creed T.D. says the European nation has become a leader in selling infant formula in China and is looking to expand its stake in the premium market, as Mr. Creed is leading a trade mission to China with 30 Irish enterprises.

China is Ireland's third largest overseas market in food and drink, behind only Britain and the United States. Last year, Ireland became the second largest supplier of infant formula to China, after taking the place of New Zealand, data from the Irish food board Bord Bia shows.

"We have food that's produced in the most environmentally sustainable way in the dairy site. We are the most carbon efficient producer of milk on the planet," said Michael Creed in an exclusive interview with chinadaily.com.cn in Beijing, as he leads a delegation of 30 Irish enterprises on a trade mission to China. The Irish food authorities have initiated the "Origin Green" scheme, targeting sustainability in its nationa-wide food sector.

Ireland's agri-food exports growth in China nearly tripled between 2012 and 2015. Mr. Creed says the figure continues to be encouraging in the first half of 2016. Among other positive results, cooperation between enterprises in the two countries has strengthened.

A good case in point is the memoranda signed between Chinese state-owned dairy giant Sanyuan and Ireland's Dairygold. It comes after Ireland-based global food company Kerry Group launched the "Green Love" infant formula brand with its Chinese partner Beingmate in 2014.

"There is a lot more about the linkage between Irish and Chinese institutions in terms of research and technology, which will help diversify food sources in China," the Irish minister added. "We also learned a lesson from the 'Brexit' that we were excessively dependent on the UK market, and now we need to search for new market."
Attempted break-in at Immigration Detention Centre

The area on the eastern side of the compound was dark and overgrown with bushes. while the officer was walking, he heard strange noises coming from the bushes on the outer perimeter of the fence. He alerted another officer who was about 60 feet away, a source said. He returned to where he was to monitor the situation when he saw two men tampering with the fence. The men also noticed the officer and one of them pointed an object in his direction and a loud explosion was heard.

The source said the officer returned fire and the situation escalated into a shootout. The Detention Centre officer was not hurt and it was unknown whether any of the two perpetrators were injured during the shootout. A search was conducted by officers of the Immigration Detention Centre and Northern Division Task Force in area where the men were seen. The officers retrieved a hacksaw blade and a wire cutter with which they were attempting to cut the wire fence.

The source added, The officers believe that there was a conspiracy between one or more detainees and criminal elements on the outside. There are 130 male detainees and 33 females at the centre. we also have firearms on the compound, so they could have taken those by force and released the detainees.

In a statement to the media yesterday evening, the National Security Ministry announced that it has launched an investigation into the incident. Additional security arrangements were immediately implemented at the centre. The matter is being investigated by the Trinidad and Tobago Police service.
Woman deaf in right ear after being shot

Lucas is a bartender. The bullet penetrated her left cheek and remains lodged behind her right ear. she also suffered extensive damage to her jaw. According to reports, on August 8, a gunman calmly walked to the bar counter at Tropical Bar, southern Main Road, St Margarets and, without saying a word, shot Lucas in the face before grabbing just over $1,000 cash she was counting at the time. He also made off with her cell phone.

He was arrested several days later and appeared in court. Lucas spent several weeks at the San Fernando General Hospital. She is now at home recuperating and told Newsday yesterday her pain is unbearable. I cant even hear in my right ear. It is real pain I experiencing now and when rain falls it only gets worse, she said. More than that, I am traumatised, I cannot work and my bills are mounting. Im in a sou sou and cant even pay it.

Her common-law husband Jason Andall said Lucas contributed to the support of the home. Right now I am not working and we are beginning to feel it, he said. My wife was working honestly when she was shot. who will pay for her injuries now? On August 21, two other women Jenelle Bernard, 27 and Nisha Danraj, 21, of Quarry Road, Morne Diablo were also shot and wounded while liming at a bar in their village. They are also at home recuperating.
Bullet-riddled body found in Caroni, burnt remains in Caura

Police and emergency services were contacted and officers of the Central Division responded. Preliminary investigations by police determined Samuel may have been shot at least six times, including four times in the head. The body was taken to the Forensic science Centre, St James for an autopsy.

Relatives told Newsday Samuel left his home years ago, and had been in and out of Venezuela for a number of years. The last time his family saw him was about a month ago, when he returned to the house in Tunapuna to borrow a sum of money. The news came as a shock as relatives never knew him to be involved in any illicit activity.

The murder toll for the year has now risen to 315. And the charred remains of a human were discovered in the Caura area yesterday morning. According to reports, a pile of burnt debris was seen at least three days ago by residents at Caura Royal Road. However, it wasnt until yesterday morning that residents checked the rubble and discovered skeletal remains. The police were immediately contacted and officers led by Cpl Bennett of the Central Division responded
Teen in court for allegedly kicking cops

The accused, who cannot be identified because he is legally a minor, appeared in the First Court yesterday before senior Magistrate Indrani Cedeno charged with two counts of assault. Cpl Ramsamooj of the Court and Process Unit laid the charges.

It is alleged that while in custody at the cell block area, located downstairs the courthouse, the young man cuffed and kicked Constables Gour and McLean. It is alleged that earlier that day, the minor had appeared in the Fourth Court before Magistrate Natalie Diop charged with loitering. PC Tuitt laid that charge.

The young man had entered a guilty plea on Tuesday morning when Diop granted him surety bail and adjourned the matter. The magistrate also transferred the loitering case to the sixth Court, where such cases are usually heard. Yesterday attorney, Marissa Bubb, represented the accused and informed Cedeno that her client has a an armed robbery charge pending. That alleged incident is said to have occurred last year and he is on bail for that. Cedeno denied bail and instead remanded him into custody at the st Michaels Home for Boys in Diego Martin. Bubb pointed out that availably of space is an issue at that facility. Cedeno remarked, That is an issue for the state to take up. The matter has been adjourned to Tuesday.
Hunt on for Piparo killer

The teenager, who was also wounded during the attack, yesterday began receiving counselling from the Witness and Victim Support Unit of the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service. Up to yesterday, Heeralals killer was still at large and officers from the San Fernando CID continued the manhunt for him in the Piparo forest. Newsday was told that the suspects relatives also mounted a search for him in the forest after a seer man had informed them that he was in a shed in the bush and his life was running out.

The wanted man, a father of two, is from Borde Narve in Princes Town. According to police reports, at about one oclock on Wednesday, Heeralal was at her Dindial Trace, Piparo home when she and a male relative had an argument. It was reported that he took a cutlass and fatally chopped Heeralal several times about the body. An autopsy performed at the Forensic Science Centre, St James revealed that death was due to nine chop wounds at the back of the head. Heeralals relatives are calling for more police presence in the area until the suspect is found.
Absolute waste of time and money

Addressing the post-Cabinet news conference at the Office of the Prime Minister in St Clair, Rowley showed a copy of the report he received from President Anthony Carmona on Wednesday. Referring to Newsday articles dated September 19, 2014 and November 1, 2014 as he outlined the chronology of Las Alturas, Rowley observed, The only reasonable useful finding that the commission could have made...the commission did not make.

He said this was the failure of the PP and the Housing Development Corporations (HDC) Board it appointed to go after China Jiangsu, the contractor of the two failed towers that were eventually demolished. Explaining that evidence of the towers unfitness for occupation became clear under the PP, Rowley said the former administration and the former HDC board did not exercise the option to recover taxpayers money for the two failed towers under the contract signed between the HDC and China Jiangsu. Saying this could have been done under the four-year statute of limitation, Rowley said from 2011 to 2015 the PP studiously refused to go after China Jiangsu for breaching the contract. He found it curious that the PP did this with the contractor chosen to build a proposed interchange in Curepe but not for China Jiangsu, the main contractor for UWIs Debe Campus.

Indicating the inquiry has cost the country $24.5 million to date, Rowley said the report supported the PNMs position that the PP had 25 geotechnical, structural and investigative reports about Las Alturas failings which made the inquiry irrelevant. He said it found there was insufficient evidence to indicate criminal liability on anyones part. Rowley found it curious there was no finding in the inquirys executive summary that the HDC board constituted under the PP did nothing to protect taxpayers money with respect to the project. He said the inquiry has been shown to be nothing more than a political witch-hunt launched by his predecessor Kamla Persad-Bissessar against Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi and himself which was doomed to fail, do nothing useful and fatten lawyers.
SSA / NOC workers facing the axe

Cabinet agreed to the merger following the strategic service Agency (Amendment) Act 2016 on May 31. In a memo dated August 10 and signed by SSA Director Colonel George Robinson, employees were informed that this fundamental expansion of these agencies, namely SSA, NOC, NSTA and SIA, now dictates that the nascent organisation implements improved structures, systems, procedures and technology to fulfil the new mandate. Consequent to this expanded remit, all areas of human resources and labour relations are being reviewed.

The memo continued, This will include an assessment and re-organisation of employment practices (job descriptions, classifications), compensation practices, performance management, safety and risk management, communications and employee relations. essentially, this agency will be transformed into a high performing organisation that is results oriented. Our intention is to build a cadre of professionals who are committed, talented and passionate, willing to be challenged, are creative and inventive and subscribe to the highest ethical standards.

The memo concluded As a result of the foregoing, our intention is to roll out the key elements of the new organisation within the next few months. we will be reviewing all contracts of employment. engagement of staff will be considered on a case-by-case basis... Newsday understands that several persons who were hired under the last administration and were receiving hefty packages are some of the persons from the four agencies earmarked to be axed in phase one of the exercise. some of the persons include retired police officers, prison and fire officers and some civilians.

Newsday understands that at the NOC, several units have already been shut down while at the sIA and the NTA, employees have not been given new contracts. several of the NOC operations have already been shifted to Cumuto and the intention is to have one headquarters to house the new and restructured SSA. A team of persons will be hired by the Ministry of National security to assist in the phasing out process and all employees are to undergo a re-assessment which will determine whether they will be re-employed into the SSA.

Yesterday employees of the NOC said they have no problem with the re-assessment but added that they hope the review will not be politically tainted. Newsday understands that the re-assessment of employees at the four elite units has the blessings of Minister of National security, Edmund Dillon, who is if the firm view that the SSA must be streamlined in such a way to have the best trained employees and that resources are channelled in such a way to avoid the state wasting resources. efforts to reach Robinson proved futile as calls to his cell phone went unanswered
Schnoor: TT must do more with finance laws

abling legislation is passed and the BIR (Board of Inland Revenue) is able to meet its reporting obligations. schnoor warned that FATCA is but one of a long series of legislative items that need to be urgently addressed to ensure TT meets its obligations to strengthen the financial sector. she said Parliament needs to quickly pass the Insurance Act,

amendments to the Proceeds of Crime Act, the Financial Obligations Regulations, cybercrime legislation, as well as strengthen the Anti-Terrorism Act, the electronic Transfer of Funds Crime Act and many more. It is one thing to have a piece of legislation on the books, its entirely another to have a well equipped and trained police force and other regulatory agencies to ensure en

We again congratulate the Government for signing the Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA) related to FATCA (Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act) that forms the basis for us to meet this important (United states) compliance requirement. The signing of the IGA however is just the start of the process. There is much work left to be done to ensure we meet critical deadlines and become truly compliant with this new regulation. We therefore continue to encourage the Government and Opposition to work together to ensure the enforcement.

Schnoor added that with TT now qualifying for automatic referral to the International Cooperation Review Groups (ICRG) of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and Caribbean Financial Action Task Force (CFATF), it is even more critical that all stakeholders come together and work to ensure we strengthen the enforcement regime before TT is yet again faced with the stark reality of a country grey listing. The implications of this is too concerning for us even to consider.

Asked by Newsday what was at stake, the BATT president noted that if a local bank doesnt have a correspondent bank in the Us, it would not be able to issue credit cards in (TT) anymore because we wouldnt be able to settle (payments) with Visa and MasterCard, wed not be able to do wire transfers. so we we would literally be cut out of the banking system.

Remittances and manufacturers ability to settle overseas bills were two other examples given by Schnoor, who reminded that every US transaction has to go through a US bank and it requires us to have a correspondent relationship. They are not going to bank us if were not in compliance and showing that we take these things seriously. This is not something that only started in the last year. I want to make that clear. Schnoor was speaking with reporters following a function to officially welcome the new BATT executive, held on Wednesday evening at the Scotiabank Hospitality suite, Queens Park Oval, Port-of-Spain.
Frankie hits Cepep $600M bill

My major concern at this time with Cepep is the lack of productivity and value for money. There are currently 265 contractors, some 12,000 employees and a monthly payroll of $50 million. Yet the whole country is in bush, Khan said. He vowed to hold the Cepep Board and management responsible for such production and performance.

He recalled that Cepep was first set up as an entrepreneurial incubator to train unemployed people in basic skill sets to then be able to form small companies to service their communities environmentally. In looking forward, we must look back to original intent. We must remember the real reason for the creation of Cepep. The programme has been criticised for all kinds of things, including painting stones all over the country, but at the heart of the matter Cepep was meant to bring communities together and make communities a cleaner, brighter and safer place to live.

He recalled Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley in August saying Cepep will be moved into his (Khans) ministry from the Ministry of Public Utilities. Under the current Local Government portfolio of the ministry, the Cepep contractors will provide services that complement, rather than duplicate, the work already carried out by the 14 municipal corporations. He saw devolution of power to corporations (by local government reform) as ensuring that Cepep contractors work so as to allow the gainful employment of workers to provide services that are truly needed in the different geographical areas, and to do more for rural development.
Moonilal: PM playing blame game

On the commissions finding that there was insufficient evidence to indicate criminal liability, Moonilal said Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi served on the Housing Development Corporation (HDC) Board at one time and former HDC CEO Noel Garcia is now Urban Development Corporation of TT chairman. Moonilal called for the removal of both men from their respective posts. Calling for the commissions report to be made public, Moonilal said the catastrophic failure of two apartment towers on that project and the wastage of taxpayers money on the project justified the need for the inquiry. He said Las Alturas started during Rowleys tenure as housing minister and he (Moonilal) was blameless. This project is his sordid legacy,  Moonilal declared. He called for Rowley and Garcia to be held accountable for the Las Alturas debacle.
PM non-committal on Marlene

Asked by reporters at the post-Cabinet news conference at the Office of the Prime Minister in st Clair, Port-of-Spain, whether he could end public speculation as to whether or not McDonald could be reinstated as a government minister, he said, No. It all depends on what happens in the future. I have no crystal ball. He continued, There are developments to take place in the future. we just have to get on with our jobs and see what happens.

Rowley reminded reporters that he recently said McDonalds conduct has been called into question and she was removed from the Cabinet awaiting an adjudication on the allegations made against her. He said he had no idea when there would be an adjudication on the allegations or what that adjudication would be. Reiterating that McDonalds case was not an isolated one and members of the former Peoples Partnership government were in the same position, Rowley said, These situations just take too long to come to a conclusion.

He further stated it would be really unfair if because the future is dependent on the outcome of the inquiry...that like the Las Alturas Inquiry...you could have let the clock run out...and five years would have passed...and we have no determination and she (McDonald) would have been allowed to remain there...waiting on a determination.

Recalling that he was subject to unfairness by the Integrity Commission in the past, Rowley said, I had to go to the court for protection. He said this was an example of the failure of certain institutions in TT. The Prime Minister added he could go right down to the Remand Yard and similar situations would be found. Asked if Government was considering either amending the Integrity in Public Life Act or scrapping the commission, he replied, That is not before us at this time.

Rowley removed McDonald as Housing Minister on March 17, after it was revealed that her common-law husband, Michael Carew, and a director of the Calabar Foundation were employed at her Port-of- spain south constituency office for five years, while Carews brother Lennox still worked at the MPs office.
BJP Leaders will soon meet Election Commissioner

New Delhi, Fri, 09 Sep 2016 NI Wire

New Delhi, 8th September: Addressing a Press Conference at the Pradesh Office today BJP Delhi Pradesh President along with Leader of Opposition Shri Vijender Gupta, National Spokesperson Smt. Meenakshi Lekhi and MPs Shri Ramesh Bidhuri, Shri Manoj Tiwari said that the Judgement of Delhi High Court in the case of 21 Parliamentary Secretaries is not an exceptional judgement on the unconstitutional anarchy by Kejriwal Government. Subsequent to the judgement of High Court on the administrative controversy between Lt. Governor and Chief Minister Kejriwal, todays Judgement will be seen as a confirmation of the charges of anarchic behaviour by Kejriwal. RTI activist Shri Vivek Garg and Media Incharge Shri Praveen Shankar Kapoor were also present in the Press Conference.

Commending the work of RTI activist Shri Vivek Garg who had raised this question first of all Shri Upadhyay presented a letter of Delhi Government dated 26th March, 2015 before the media persons which shows that some Parliamentary Secretaries were provided office facilities in the Assembly Premises besides the Secretariat. He said that whatever Kejriwal Government has done in the case of Parliamentary Secretaries is a criminal conspiracy and we had apprised the Election Commission about it. BJP demands that action should be taken against Kejriwal Government and Parliamentary Secretaries for filing false affidavit.

Shri Upadhyay said that Delhi has been pushed into an administrative crisis and it is very regrettable that Chief Minister Kejriwal who has created this crisis is now trying to mislead the people of Punjab. Delhi BJP will ensure that the people of Punjab expose Kejriwal on his misdeeds in every nook & corner of Punjab.

Leader of the Opposition Shri Vijender Gupta said that after coming to power Arvind Kejriwal was not politically stable because his party was divided in various groups. At that time in order to continue in power Shri Arvind Kejriwal appointed MLAs of Delhi as Parliamentary Secretaries violating the constitutional limits of only 7 ministers including the Chief Minister in March, 2015 and provided them all the facilities like the ministers. After the protest of BJP he introduced an unconstitutional Bill in the Assembly through which he tried to get legal powers to appoint unlimited number of Parliamentary Secretaries and give retrospective effect to the date of appointment of these 21 Parliamentary Secretaries. Todays verdict of the High Court is warning of judiciary against his arbitrariness.

Shri Vijender Gupta said that tomorrow the BJP will compel the Government to give its statement on the todays judgement of Delhi High Court, we will not allow the assembly to function till the Government gives its statement and the 21 MLAs resign from the assembly themselves. He said that the BJP Delhi leaders will soon meet the Election Commissioner and handover the copy of the Judgement of the High Court and request the election commission to pronounce its Judgement in the case of disqualification of 21 Parliamentary Secretaries.

MP Smt. Meenakshi Lekhi who is also a member of the Parliamentary Committee on Office of Profit, said that in the Article 299-A, 104, 234 etc. of the constitution it has been made clear that MPs and MLAs cannot be appointed to office of profit. From time to time Parliament and the courts have also defined office of profit and given categorical verdict on it. This is not the first occasion in Delhi. Even during the Sheila Dikshit tenure such controversy has arisen but at that time the Government did not cross all the constitutional limits and even admitted that but the shamelessness of Kejriwal Government is beyond ones imagination.

Smt. Lekhi also said that the first dispute in 1915 on office of profit was seen in Kolkata Municipal Corporation and even at that time the court had delivered such judgement. Similarly in the cases of Smt. Sonia Gandhi and Smt. Jaya Bachchan separate courts disqualified the members and todays judgement of Delhi High Court will certainly discourage the future Government from taking unconstitutional decisions. She said that there are reports about filing false affidavit by the Government in the case of 21 Parliamentary Secretaries and after investigation case should be filed for perjury under Section 340 of IPC.

Pradesh General Secretary Shri Ramesh Bidhuri said that the people of Delhi are suffering due to the mis-governance of Kejriwal. Chief Ministers has been betraying the people of Delhi and the way in which the Minister of Kejriwal Government have made comments on the judgement even after being reprimanded by High Court. It has been proved that Kejriwal Government is anti constitutional Government. He said that it is great irony that we think the Chief Minister held a programme Mann Ki Baat which became controversial, his Convenor insulted the religious Gurus and Minister crossed all the limits when they indulged in Tann Ki Baat and ashamed the people of Delhi. Reminding Kejriwal of Right to Recall proposal Shri Bidhuri said that today the people of Delhi want to exercise the Right to Recall.

Shri Bidhuri announced that tomorrow our MLA will compel the Government to give statement on the 21 Parliamentary Secretaries and the misconduct of the Ministers in the House and outside the Assembly the BJP workers shall demonstrate demanding the expulsion of Sandeep Kumar and other MLAs and resignation of 21 Parliamentary Secretaries.

MP Shri Manoj Tiwari said that the common man of Delhi is feeling to have been cheated when he sees that the women have to face harassment and exploitation by the MLAs and Ministers even for getting their basic needs like water and ration card etc. He said that before the election Kejriwal assured about the purity of his MLAs, now he should come forward and either force his MLAs involved in immoral acts to resign or he should himself resign owning responsibility for all this.

He also said that just like the other citizens of Delhi the members of Purvanchal Samaj are completely disillusioned with the Kejriwal Government. His promise for developing the colonies in habited by Purvanchalis or promise for better education of the students belonging to Purvanchal have not been fulfilled by the Kejriwal Government. Shri Tiwari said that the Purvanchal Samaj of Delhi will expose the Kejriwal Government in every state where his party is trying for its political expansion.
Jitendra Singh addresses the workshop on e-Office organised by DARPG

New Delhi, Fri, 09 Sep 2016 NI Wire

The Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER), MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances, Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr Jitendra Singh inaugurated the workshop on e-Office here. The workshop was organised by the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG), Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Government of India.

The workshop was organised in the light of the fact that the e-Office is an important tool of e-Governance for bringing efficiency and quality in public service delivery and the DARPG is the nodal Department for implementation of e-Office in Central Ministries/Departments. The National Informatics Centre (NIC) is the partner of this Department in implementation of this project.

During the workshop, the Assistant Secretaries attached with various Ministries of the Central Government shared their experiences about different ministries on how the e-Office is being implemented in these ministries and what needs to be done to improve the system. They also suggested that instant messaging system can also be introduced in the Government for developing quick response system.

Speaking on the occasion, Dr Jitendra Singh said that we should switch over to e-office and it should become a part of the culture and get institutionalised. Dr Jitendra Singh said that any effort made by us should be citizen-centric. Being citizen-centric essentially means being youth-centric, he added. He expressed happiness over the enthusiasm and interest shown by the young Assistant Secretaries in implementation of e-Office in the Government functioning. He also listened to the suggestions given by them during their interaction. The Minister said that the experimentation of e-Office and the experiment of attaching Assistant Secretaries to various ministries started at almost same time and both the experiments have been fruitful.

Addressing the workshop, Shri C. Viswanath, Secretary, DARPG said that e-governance needs to be given more importance and the first step towards implementation of e-governance is e-Office. He emphasised upon the importance of the use of technology in all the spheres of governance. He also said that mindset needs to be changed to switch over from old system to the new. He said that e-Office is a safe, secure and easily accessible store system. He said that we need to define cut off date for the implementation of e-Office.

While giving presentation on the successful implementation of e-Office in the Ministry of Rural Development, Shri Santosh Mathew, Joint Secretary of the Ministry said that the Secretaries of all the ministries should be enthusiastic about the utility of the implementation of e-Office.

Source: PIB
Opening Statement by Prime Minister Modi at the 14th ASEAN-India Summit

New Delhi, Fri, 09 Sep 2016 NI Wire

Your Excellency Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith,

Excellencies,

This is my third India-ASEAN .Summit. I am delighted to renew close bonds of friendship that we have nurtured with ASEAN over the years. I would also like to thank you for the excellent arrangements and for the warmth of your welcome.

The visit to the beautiful heritage city of Vientiane reminds me of deep historical and cultural links that the city shares with India. I also commend Vietnam for its able leadership of ASEAN-India relations as the Country Coordinator.

Excellencies,

Our engagement with ASEAN is not just about a solid base of shared civilizational heritage. It is also driven by our common strategic priorities of securing our societies and bringing peace, stability and prosperity to the region. ASEAN is central to India's 'Act East' Policy. And, our ties are a source of balance and harmony in the region.

Excellencies,

The substance of our strategic partnership covers all three major segments of ASEAN activities-security, economic and socio-cultural. And, the ASEAN India Plan of Action for the period 2016-2020 has served us well in fulfilling our objectives. We have already implemented 54 out of 130 activities identified in the Plan of Action.

Excellencies,

Enhancing connectivity in all its dimensions- physical, digital, economic, institutional and cultural-is at the heart of Indias strategic partnership with ASEAN. And, readiness to link our economic success, and share development experiences with ASEAN nations, especially the CLMV countries, drives our engagement.

Excellencies,

In face of growing traditional and non-traditional challenges, politico-security cooperation is a key emerging pillar of our relationship. Rising export of terror, growing radicalization through ideology of hatred, and spread of extreme violence define the landscape of common security threats to our societies. The threat is local, regional and transnational at the same time. Our partnership with ASEAN seeks to craft a response that relies on coordination, cooperation and sharing of experiences at multiple levels.

Excellencies,

Next year will be a historic milestone in our ties. We will celebrate 25 years of our Dialogue Partnership, 15 years of our Summit Level interaction and 5 years of our Strategic Partnership.

The celebrations will be launched at an ASEAN-India Foreign Ministers' Meeting in 2017. We would also host a Commemorative Summit on the theme "Shared Values, Common Destiny. A host of other events - a Business Summit; CEOs Forum; a car rally and sailing expedition; and cultural festivals are also planned. I look forward to working with all of you to make this commemoration a success.



Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Source: PIB
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Thanks to its comprehensive approach that addresses the root-causes of extremism along with its proactive security strategy and vigilant intelligence and security services, Morocco was described by deputies at the European Parliament in Brussels as a bulwark against terrorism in the Mediterranean region.

In this regard, a conference dubbed Security and Stability in The Mediterranean: The Role of Morocco, shed light on the measures taken by the Kingdom to counter the terrorist threat through a multidimensional approach combining security with socio-cultural, religious, development and human rights considerations.

The conference stressed Moroccos key role as an intelligence partner for several European countries after the Kingdom security services helped foil several terrorist attacks that could have taken the lives of many innocents.

Speaking at the conference, Moroccos Interior Minister, Mohammed Hassad, presented an overview of Moroccos approach against extremism which addresses the theological root-causes of terrorism through a reform of the religious sphere by championing the lofty values of moderate Islam and training Imams from Morocco and beyond.

The event was an occasion to highlight the landmark speech by King Mohammed VI last August, in which the Monarch stood up against terrorism by shoving aside bogus religious claims and reminding the world that suicide and murder are not permitted in Islam.

The Interior Minister highlighted the cross-border character of terrorism, saying that combating this scourge hinges on a strengthened international cooperation.

During his visit to Brussels, Hassad met with European Commissioner for Migration and Home Affairs, Dimitris Avramopoulos. The two officials discussed migration issues along with the means to strengthen security and counter-terrorism cooperation between Morocco and the European Union.

The talks were an opportunity to tackle the forthcoming signing of a comprehensive agreement on security cooperation with EUROPOL, Hassad said.

For his part, the European official said that Morocco is a key partner for Europe in the field of security in a regional and international context marked by the upsurge of terrorism and the rise of extremism.
Following the death of the long-serving Polisario ringleader Mohamed Abdelaziz, his family is believed to have left the Tindouf camps (southern Algeria) to live in Spain, according to press reports.

Such a move has raised many questions over the reasons behind such relocation. Is it voluntary or compulsory? It is a sign of a rift within the separatist front? Is it due to a friction or growing tension with new separatist junta?

Khalili Ould Mohamed Abdelaziz, son of the late Polisario chief, who died last May, has reportedly moved to live in the southern Spanish city of Seville where his father has hidden his wealth.

A report by the EUs anti-fraud office (OLAF) had revealed last year the large-scale embezzlement by Polisario leaders of humanitarian aid destined to the Tindouf camps population. The report documented the diversions committed under the watch of Algeria and how the diverted goods were sold in the black market in neighboring countries and even in Algeria.

Apparently, Khalili Ould Abdelaziz, unlike his father, does not want to leave money growing in dormant accounts but looks forward to investing his inherited assets for high returns.

According to some international anti-corruption agencies, it is time for the European Union law enforcement agencies and anti-financial crimes bodies to act and track the aid stolen by Polisario operatives to line up their pockets.

The OLAF report says that large parts of the humanitarian assistance and aid did not reach the Sahrawis sequestered in the Tindouf camps.

The EU has been extending financial support to the Tindouf camps since 1975. OLAF report proved the embezzlement carried out by Polisario leaders whose names were cited by investigators.

The European Commission Humanitarian Office (ECHO) has discovered its products being sold in the markets of Bechar in Algeria, located at 800 km from Tindouf, as well as in Nouakchott, Chingetti and Nema, three Mauritanian cities.

The OLAF report also accused Polisario leaders of submitting inflated invoices and overestimated virtual projects to various donor ONGs.

Algerian Secret services were also cited in the report for their involvement and role in the vast embezzlement operation.

However, it is unclear how new Polisario warlords will react to Khalilis overseas business plan while some analysts wonder whether EU law enforcement agencies will seek to retrieve their stolen money.
A Moroccan inventor has come up with a voting machine to replace traditional ballot papers and boxes, reports say.

Anis Karama, a young engineer, graduate from the Hassan I University (Settat), who is the initiator of the invention, said the machine uses the same pattern as ATM machines used in banks.

In an interview with HuffPost Maroc, the young engineer said voters would not need any ballot papers but will only slot their ID card into the machine and leave their fingerprints so that the machine identifies the bearer of the ID and the voter. The voter will then press the icon of the party or the candidate he wants to elect.

The machine still under manufacturing process will enable a quick release of the vote results, often published later in the day or the following day, HuffPost Maroc reports citing some politicians.

Moroccans are called to polls on October 7 for general elections.

Moroccan authorities have not made any comments on the project and whether they will commission the machine or not.

Anis Karama argues that even if authorities make a request, it will be difficult to use the machine for the October elections just around the corner as keying voters data into the system will take long.

But for a future election, why not? he stressed.
French interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve Thursday announced the arrest of three women allegedly connected to a car found with six gas canisters and suspected to plot a terror attack against a train station.

Those radicalized young women, aged 19, 23 and 39, were apparently preparing some new violent and more importantly eminent actions, Cazeneuve said.

The women were arrested in front of a building at Boussy-Saint-Antoine, some 30 km southeast of Paris. The three militants hired an apartment in the building they used as a hideout, according to the interior ministry

One of the women, Ines, aged 19 was reportedly shot in the ankle and thigh after she hurled at one security officer with a knife upon seeing the police car in front of the building.

Police reports further revealed that when searching the hideout, the police squad came across a will signed by one of the three women pledging allegiance to the Islamic State group.

The three suspects have been connected to a car bomb found in Paris on Saturday, in front of a bar, not far from Notre-Dame Cathedral.

The car bomb contained six gas canisters; five of which were full. The canisters according to the interior ministry were not equipped with any detonator or firing device.

Investigations carried out by police led to the owner of the car who was Iness father. The father had earlier on contacted police to notify Iness disappearance, suspecting that she ran away to Syria. Ines has been on police radar since 2015 for attempts to join IS in Syria.

The three IS sympathizers were plotting several eminent attacks, mainly an attack against a train station. They were police noted waiting to a go-ahead order from an IS official operating in Syria or Iraq.

Police suspects the female militants received order to avenge the death of IS spokesman Abou Mohammed Al-Adnani killed in a raid in Syria.

Four other people have been arrested in connection with the car bomb.
Two car bombs struck Thursday the Libyan capital of Tripoli, near the foreign ministry and the Abu Sitta Naval Base, housing the official office the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA.)

The two car bombings made no casualties, security sources report.

No one claimed responsibility for the attacks.

UN-sponsored GNA since entering Tripoli late March has established its main office in the naval base protected by heavily armed militias that have paid allegiance to nominal Prime Minister Faiez Serraj.

Serraj and his cabinet have gradually expanded their authorities in the capital since March after they took over several ministries formerly occupied by rival Libyan Dawn administration which had been opposed to the GNA arrival in Tripoli.

The GNA birthed out of the Libyan Political Agreement (LPA) signed in Morocco in December, has been tasked to re-unify Libya factions and solve the numerous challenges that have gripped the oil-rich country since the demise of former strongman Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

Enjoying popularity upon arrival in Tripoli, the GNA is now facing growing public discontent due to a number of social issues including shortage of cash, continuous and repeated power cuts, growing humanitarian predicaments.

Speaking to a Swiss media last month, Head of UNSMIL, Martin Kobler, indicated that the GNA is on the verge of falling if nothing is done to meet the social needs.

Another major problem faced by the GNA is the security puzzle in the capital and across the country posed by the Islamic State group.

The unity government are close to a win against the terrorist group in Gaddafis hometown of Sirte. The anti-IS campaign launched in May, and supported later on by US air force, is inching towards the end as Misrata forces aligned with the GNA are about to clear the last holdouts of the terrorist group in the city.

Commenting on the US aerial support, Obamas Secretary of Defense, Ash Carter Wednesday announced he was convinced IS would fall shortly.

The US early last month said it joined the campaign upon Serrajs request. US military command for Africa known as US-Africa Command has launched more than 100 airstrikes against IS positions in Sirte.
Bad memories of Florida 2000 could come back if the presidential election is close, and particularly if Trump loses narrowly. Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Most anyone old enough and tuned-in enough to remember the extended nightmare of the 2000 presidential contest would not want to repeat the experience. I can recall waking up on more than one morning during those November and early December days wondering if I had dreamed up the Florida recount with its bizarre twists and turns  only to turn on the tube and discover the lurid reality all over again. That it would end with a blatantly partisan Supreme Court majority awarding the presidency to George W. Bush seemed a fittingly awful conclusion.

It is always possible that the 2016 election will be insanely close, with the electoral-vote majority hanging in the balance as ballots are recounted by some overwhelmed county canvassing board in a previously obscure locale. But we are already well along the more likely route to a disputed election, based on a combination of paranoia and the very real vulnerabilities of our rickety, state-and-local-backwater-dominated election system.

On the question of systemic vulnerabilities, the possibility of an operation originating in Russia (whether it is government-directed or not) to hack the election results is serious enough to command the attention of top U.S. intelligence officials:

A Russian influence operation in the United States is something were looking very closely at, said one senior intelligence official who, like others interviewed, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter. Officials also are examining potential disruptions to the election process, and the FBI has alerted state and local officials to potential cyberthreats.



The official cautioned that the intelligence community is not saying it has definitive proof of such tampering, or any Russian plans to do so. But even the hint of something impacting the security of our election system would be of significant concern, the official said. Its the key to our democracy, that people have confidence in the election system.

And that is the deeper problem: The alleged Russian operation appears aimed at sowing public distrust in the upcoming presidential election and in U.S. political institutions. So whether or not there is any tampering with vote-casting or vote-counting, the perception that it has happened is victory enough for the perpetrators. And proving that an election has not been hacked is not very easy.

For one thing, four competitive states are still using electronic touch-screen voting machines that do not provide a paper printout for verification of counts. Its far too late to do anything about it before November 8.

Thats plenty of time, however, for the other factor taking us down the road to a 2000-style disputed-election nightmare to build and build: the paranoid conviction among Donald Trump supporters  being fanned very deliberately by the candidate himself and his surrogates  that the election will be stolen by Hillary Clinton, if it has not already been rigged.

After summarizing the many occasions on which Trump and some of his most prominent supporters have warned he might be robbed of the presidency, the New York Times Thomas Edsall quotes political scientist Seth Masket as drawing the ominous implications:

Part of the reason that our nation has been relatively free of political violence is that losers of contests have nearly always accepted their loss and opposed the victor through legitimate means, such as challenging them in future elections or working against their agenda in Congress. The 2000 election was very close and obviously very controversial, but Al Gore nonetheless conceded after the Supreme Courts ruling. Were Trump and his supporters to continue to argue that the election had been stolen from them, it would mean that they reject nonviolent solutions to political differences. It could jeopardize future elections, undermine the legitimacy of the federal government, and create an environment in which political violence becomes more likely.

Just what the mischief-making doctor in the Kremlin may have possibly ordered, eh?

The relevance of either legitimate fears about a hacked election or of highly partisan (if disingenuous) claims of voter fraud or ballot-box stuffing obviously would be maximized by a very close election. As it happens, a very close election is what the polls are pointing toward now.

It would be helpful to fully explode before election day some of the hoary right-wing myths of voter fraud that will otherwise pop up immediately if Clinton narrowly defeats Trump. But that may matter only at the margins. People inclined to believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim born in another country or that the IRS is systematically persecuting Christian conservatives will certainly believe the bad guys could place a thumb on the scales when votes are counted  even if the bad guys most likely to tamper with the election are probably wearing buttons with Hillary for Prison written in Cyrillic script.

So fasten your seat belts, folks, and if you have any spare time, you might want to read or re-read Jeffrey Toobins Too Close to Call: The Thirty-Six-Day Battle to Decide the 2000 Election. Dont know about you, but I cannot count the number of times Ive heard people  not just journalists, but regular folks  say they have never been so eager for an election cycle to end. We could again find ourselves waking up each day to a living nightmare.
Satellite imagery shows a new building at Punggye-ri in July. Photo: DigitalGlobe/38 North via Getty Images

North Korea has apparently conducted a fifth nuclear test, as the regime considers scaring the rest of the world a key part of any national holiday. Around 9:30 a.m. on Friday, as North Korea celebrated the 68th anniversary of the foundation of the communist regime by Kim Il Sung, a magnitude 5.3 artificial earthquake was detected near Punggye-ri. When North Korea launched its fourth nuclear test in January, there was a magnitude 5.1 tremor at the nuclear test site.

Officials from several nations, including the United States Geological Survey, are still gathering information about the seismic event, but many analysts are already convinced that it was a nuclear test. Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, California, told the Washington Post that it appears to be the biggest test North Korea has conducted.

This is clearly a nuclear test, Lewis said. USGS is calling it an explosion because it has all the hallmarks: the waveform is sudden unlike an earthquake, the depth is shallow, the location is the North Korean test site, and it happened on the half hour.

Two months ago, the U.S.-based North Korea monitoring project 38 North said satellite images showed movement at North Koreas nuclear test site. Earlier today, 38 North pointed out that mining carts and a new structure are now visible.



United Nations sanctions against North Korea were tightened earlier this year. On Thursday in Laos, President Obama called on China to take stronger action against its neighbor. China has done more on sanctions implementation than they have on previous UN Security Council resolutions, Obama said. We continue to indicate to them the importance of tightening up.

The U.S. plans to deploy a missile defense system called THAAD to protect South Korea, despite the objections of China and Russia. We cannot have a situation where were unable to defend ourselves or our treaty allies against increasingly provocative behavior, Obama said.


A woman (center, hood) is taken out of a building in Boussy-Saint-Antoine, south of Paris, on September 8, 2016, where female suspects, said to have been planning new acts of violence, were arrested. Photo: Geoffroy Van Der Hasselt/AFP/Getty Images

Last weekend, French police found a car parked, with hazards flashing and no plates, near Notre Dame cathedral in Paris. Inside, police found seven gas canisters, one of them empty on the front seat. Police did not find any detonation device, but did uncover some papers with writing in Arabic, reports The Guardian.

French officials now say three radicalized, fanaticized women linked to that vehicle were close to carrying out an attack on the Gare de Lyon, one of Pariss busiest railway stations. Authorities have arrested those three women  a 19-year-old named Ines Madani, whose father owned the car; a 23-year-old; and a 39-year-old.

French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve called it a race against time to stop these women, who reportedly plotted to attack Thursday. Police moved Thursday night to arrest the women in Boussy-Saint-Antoine, a town southeast of Paris. One of the women police tried to detain stabbed a cop in the shoulder with a knife; officers fired back and wounded the woman in the leg.

Police knew the 19-year-old Madani had terrorist sympathies after she reportedly tried to flee to Syria last year to join up with ISIS. Her dad, who was also on authorities radars for past extremist ties, told police Sunday that his daughter had taken the car. The identities of the other women have not been released.

Earlier this week, French police also arrested and are questioning two couples  a 26-year-old woman and a 27-year-old man, and a 34-year-old man and a 29-year-old woman  in connection with the case. The two men are brothers, and police suspect all of radical Islamism.

France, which has been under a state of emergency since the Paris attacks nearly a year ago, remains on edge. That deadly Paris massacre in November left 130 dead, and in July an ISIS-inspired assailant rammed a semitrailer truck through crowds in Nice, killing more than 80. Later that month, in Normandy, two assailants stormed a church and murdered a Catholic priest in what authorities suspected was an ISIS-inspired attack.
That smile is deadly. Photo: AFP/KCNA VIA KNS

Good morning and welcome to Fresh Intelligence, our roundup of the stories, ideas, and memes youll be talking about today. In this edition, North Korea tests a nuclear bomb, Trumps love affair with Putin continues, and Wells Fargo pays up. Heres the rundown for Friday, September 9.



WEATHER

Not a lot of changes today on the weather front  get it?  with rains continuing across the Plains States, obnoxiously pleasant weather on the West Coast, and high heat and humidity on the East Coast. New York City will be hot if a bit overcast today, with highs in the low 90s. [USA Today]

FRONT PAGE

North Korea Conducts Its Largest Nuclear Test to Date

Following a magnitude 5.3 seismic event in North Korea on Friday morning, the nation confirmed that it has conducted its fifth nuclear test. Experts say the test was three times larger than previous tests, with an estimated explosive yield of 10 kilotons. North Korea said the test was a success and claimed that it can now mount a nuclear warhead on a ballistic missile. The test was timed to coincide with the end of a summit of Asian leaders attended by President Obama and the 68th anniversary of the founding of the North Korean regime.

EARLY AND OFTEN

White House Hires Cyber Expert, Just a Few Years Too Late

The White House named its first federal cyber-security chief yesterday, eight months after forming the position. The job went to retired Air Force brigadier general Gregory Touhill. He will be tasked with protecting the government and other critical infrastructure from cyberattacks, a job that has taken on a new urgency in light of the recent hacks of political organizations that are widely believed to have been sponsored by the Russian government. [Reuters]

All It Took Was One Meeting for Trump to Throw Mexicos Government Into Disarray

The Mexican president announced his new finance minister today after the previous officeholder  his good friend Luis Videgaray  was forced to step down over his role in orchestrating Donald Trumps visit to Mexico City. The new finance minister, Jose Antonio Meade, wasted no time in establishing himself in opposition to Trump. Id like to point out that the only thing, absolutely the only thing I agree on with candidate Trump, he said, is that Luis Videgaray is an exceptional public servant. Thats some good politicking. [Reuters]

Trump Accidentally Gives Interview to Russian State TV, Thought It Was a Podcast

Just a day after singing Russian president Vladimir Putins praises and comparing him favorably to President Obama at the Commander-in-Chief Forum, Donald Trump sat down for an interview with the Russian state-funded television network RT. Speaking to Larry King, Trump said that he felt Russian interference in the presidential election was pretty unlikely and probably a lie spread by the Democrats. He also reminded everyone that any foreign interference would not be appropriate at all. Trumps camp has since confirmed that he believed he was doing an interview for Kings podcast and not RT. Dont you hate when you accidentally give a wide-ranging interview to Russian television? [Politico]

Pence Wants In on Putin Lovefest

It looks like Pences days of going rogue are over. The vice-presidential candidate was eager yesterday to try his hand at the unexpectedly popular GOP campaign pastime of praising a confirmed American adversary. Speaking on CNN, Pence said that I think its inarguable that Vladimir Putin has been a stronger leader in his country than Barack Obama has been in this country, and that thats going to change the day that Donald Trump becomes president of the United States of America. Well, if its inarguable. [WaPo]

THE STREET, THE VALLEY

Wells Fargo to Pay $185 Million Jerk Tax

Wells Fargo was forced to let go 5,300 employees and pay a $185 million fine over a widespread pattern of fraud that saw the bank open 1.5 million checking accounts and sign up for half a million credit cards using fake email addresses, but customers real names and often even their money, all to meet quotas and all without the customers permission.

There Is Finally an Extremely Good Reason to Turn Your Cell Phones Off in Flight

Just as airlines were beginning to loosen up on their whole no using portable electronic devices rule, Samsung releases a phone that could actually take down a plane. The FAA yesterday strongly urged flyers not to turn on or charge their Samsung Galaxy Note 7 smartphones mid-flight. The Galaxy 7s have the unfortunate habit of exploding, you see. [Reuters]



Intrepid Robot Explorer After Intergalactic Dirt

Yesterday, NASA launched a robotic probe tasked with collecting dirt samples from the asteroid Bennu and bringing them back to Earth for analysis. Scientists hope the dirt will hold clues about life elsewhere in the universe. Well have an update for you in seven years when it returns. Watch this space. [Bloomberg]

Airbnb Tackles Its Diversity Problem

Airbnb announced a new push today to address its diversity problem and try to cut down on discriminatory renting by hosts. The company will mandate diversity training for its employees, minimize guests pictures, and encourage hosts to use an instant booking feature that will not reveal the appearance of the guests. Looks like Eric Holder has been working hard. [WSJ]

MEDIA BUBBLE

AP Tries Its Hand at Futility

The Associated Press announced that it had deleted a two-week-old tweet about Hillary Clinton yesterday and used the occasion to unveil a new policy: The news organization will delete and correct any AP tweets found not to meet AP standards. The original tweet read: BREAKING: AP analysis: More than half those who met Clinton as Cabinet secretary gave money to Clinton Foundation. That has been changed to AP review: Many of the discretionary meetings Clinton had at State were with people who gave to Clinton Foundation. [AP]

ProPublica Announces Electionland

A new reporting endeavor developed by ProPublica launched yesterday that should help newsrooms better cover the election in November. The service will monitor sources, including social media, for reports of voting issues and will alert journalists in those areas. Voters and journalists can sign up to be a part of the service here.



People Just Arent Buying Toys, Starbucks, and Sudoku Like They Used To

Things are not going well for Barnes & Noble. The bookstore chain lost $14.4 million this quarter, and sales have fallen 6.6 percent. Sales of its e-reader, the NOOK, have dropped by nearly 25 percent. Now theyll have to remake Youve Got Mail where Meg Ryan works at a massive Barnes & Noble in the mall and falls for Tom Hanks, an Amazon executive. [CNN]

PHOTO OP

North Dakota Reaches a Breaking Point

Thousands who have joined the Standing Rock Sioux await a judges decision today on whether to halt construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline.

It's time to pay attention to what's happening in North Dakota #NoDAPL https://t.co/M3FVDpRGIW pic.twitter.com/ddjEIIu6Fq  The Root (@TheRoot) September 8, 2016

MORNING MEME

Somebody Somewhere Thought This Was a Good Idea

Wow. [Dallas News]

OTHER LOCAL NEWS

Cops Hope People Are More Afraid of Damaging Themselves With Zika Than Meth

A police department in Bath, Michigan, posted a warning on Facebook claiming that some batches of meth had been contaminated by the Zika virus and calling on people to bring their meth down to the station where the cops would test it for them. If you recently bought some meth, you can bring it into the Bath Township Police Department and we can test it for you, the post read, Your safety is our #1 priority! [UPI]

Incident Sends Mixed Message, Luck-Wise

A Delaware highway was nearly shut down yesterday after a tractor-trailer flipped over, spilling thousands of blank pennies across multiple lanes. The truck was reportedly headed to the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia. [UPI]

HAPPENING TODAY

John Kerry to Meet Russian Foreign Minister, Discuss Syria

Secretary of State John Kerry is in Geneva today where he will meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in a push to kick-start the stalled diplomatic effort to end the Syrian civil war. [Reuters]

Clinton to Meet U.S. Official Who Actually Leaked State Secrets

Clinton will meet with a group of national security officials today in New York, including former CIA director David Petraeus and former George W. Bush homeland security chief Michael Chertoff. [Politico]



North Dakota Pipeline Decision Expected Today

North Dakotas governor has said that he will call in the National Guard today in preparation for the federal courts decision on whether to halt the construction of the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline. The pipeline has led massive demonstrations from Native American groups who say that they werent properly consulted on a project that impacts the environment and their holy sites and burial grounds. [LA Times]


Coming in 2019. Photo: Pier55, Inc./Heatherwick Studio

Construction can resume on Pier 55, the floating park in the Hudson River thats largely funded by IAC chairman Barry Diller. New Yorks Apellate Division sided with a lower courts decision and ruled against the City Club of New York and other opponents of the project, saying the Hudson River Park took a sufficient hard look at potential impacts. The court also dismissed the argument that Hudson River Park Trust was required to solicit competing bids before entering into a lease with Dillers nonprofit, Pier55.

Richard Emery, the attorney representing City Club of New York said he was disappointed in the decision, but the group will seek to get the case against Pier 55 heard in the higher Court of Appeals. The City Club also has a separate federal challenge pending against the Army Corp of Engineers, which gave the final okay in April. A Pier 55 spokesperson said theyre pleased to get back on the fall construction schedule, now that crews can resume work. Nine of the 550 piles that are going to support the structure have been installed, but an injunction in June  which stemmed from this suit  had otherwise halted progress on the 2.7-acre park. It should, if moguls stay out of it, be on schedule to open in 2019.
Do they have a time-turner or is this some Superman flies around the Earth thing?

It turns out Ben Carson and Mike Pence didnt need to pressure Donald Trump to finally renounce birtherism this week, because at some point the candidate traveled back in time and accepted that President Obama was born in Hawaii.



Rudy Giuliani revealed this development on Thursday night during a very contentious edition of MSNBCs Hardball, in which Chris Matthews tried to confine the Trump surrogate to facts that are true in the timeline the rest of us occupy. He was born in the United States. Do you confirm that? Do you agree with that? Matthews asked. I confirm that, and Donald Trump now confirms that, Giuliani answered.



Matthews demanded to know when exactly this momentous shift took place. He did two years ago  two years ago  three years ago, Giuliani claimed, later changing his answer to up to five years ago.



He then tried to get Giuliani to commit to having Trump call Obama a legitimate president within the next 24 hours, but the former mayor said that would be unnecessary, as he has said it already. Giuliani also suggested its unfair that Trump is known as the birther-in-chief when he picked this up from Hillary Clinton when she was viciously attacking him.

As the Washington Post notes, neither of these statements are true. But if weve learned anything from Trumps vocal 2003 campaign against the invasion of Iraq, its that if you repeat a lie often enough, eventually people will just accept it as fact.


Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

During Wednesday nights Commander-in-Chief Forum, Donald Trump heaped praise on Russian president Vladimir Putin, complimenting him for having great control over his country, and saying hes been a leader far more than our president has been a leader.

This left Democrats appalled and Republicans once again in the awkward position of disavowing Trumps remarks while standing by their candidate. Vladimir Putin is an aggressor who does not share our interests, House Speaker Paul Ryan said on Thursday, adding that it certainly appears that he is conducting state-sponsored cyberattacks on our political system.



Senator Lindsey Graham, who is no fan of his former primary opponent, summed up Putins less-admirable attributes, quipping, Other than destroying every instrument of democracy in his own country, having opposition people killed, dismembering neighbors through military force, and being the benefactor of the butcher of Damascus, hes a good guy.

Trump responded to the controversy by remaining true to his brand, which is to do basically the opposite of what any rational presidential candidate would do. So, after sending out his running mate to double down on his remarks about Putin, on Thursday night Trump did an interview with the state-funded Russian TV network RT.



Trump kicked off his wide-ranging phone conversation with American journalist Larry King, whose show Politicking airs weekly on RT America, by bashing the U.S. media for its tremendous dishonesty. He was not referring to Matt Lauers widely panned performance at Wednesday nights forum, but it is worth noting that King actually pressed his good friend of over 30 years on a number of issues, including his tax returns, his secret plan to defeat ISIS, and why he doesnt think Hillary Clinton looks presidential. Trump dodged each question, and the interview concluded with Trump going silent when asked how he feels about Mexican immigrants.



King had two questions about Putin. First, does Trump agree with Putins recent comment that the hacking of the Democratic National Committee was a public service?

I dont have any opinion on it. I dont know anything about it. I dont know who hacked. Im not sure. You tell me. Who hacked? Who did the hacking? But I have absolutely no opinion on that. Trump said.

Second, what does he make of reports from U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia orchestrated a covert operation to disrupt the U.S. election?



I think its probably unlikely. I think maybe the Democrats are putting that out, Trump said. I think its pretty unlikely, but who knows? I hope that if they are doing something, I hope that somebodys going to be able to find out, so they can end it, because that would not be appropriate at all.

Apparently Trumps position has evolved since July, when he said during a press conference, Russia, if youre listening, I hope youre able to find the 30,000 [Clinton] emails that are missing.



And theres some other encouraging news for those who were disturbed by Trumps embrace of Putin. Hope Hicks, Trumps spokeswoman, said after the interview aired that the campaign thought he was appearing on Kings podcast. Mr. Trump recorded a short interview with Larry King for his podcast as a favor to Mr. King, Hicks said. What Larry King does with the interview content is up to him. We have nothing to do with it.

So rest assured that Trump wasnt purposely doing an interview on Russian-backed TV, his campaign is just incompetent.


Wei Lin and Mijia Zhang from PH5. Photo: Courtesy of PH5

Its rare to find former roommates who still hang out, let alone have a fashion line together. But Wei Lin and Mijia Zhang, who lived together during their college years, have the perfect Oscar-and-Felix- like contrast that two business partners need. As Lin puts it, Shes the art, Im the science.

A Deloitte veteran, Lin is the business brains behind their line, PH5  and it doesnt hurt that her family owns a knitwear manufacturer in China that produces pieces for Vera Wang and Phillip Lim, among others. Zhang graduated from Parsons and went on to intern for Christopher Kane, whose influence shows up in the palette of neons and neutrals she favors. She then worked as Nikes color designer for sportswear and sneakers, which cemented her obsession with high-tech performance fabrics.



Lin founded the brand beginning with the spring 2015 season and brought on Zhang for fall 2016. I grabbed her, she laughs. I was like, Come do this with me.

A sketch from PH5. Photo: Courtesy of PH5

The brand is named after a neutral PH value, since the line is intended to be, as Lin puts it, gender neutral, slightly feminine. What sets it apart from your typical knitwear line is the complexity and technical sophistication of the pieces: Unlike your great-aunts chunky knits, theyre ethereally light and sometimes incorporate sheer yarn. But they dont feel fragile: Practicality is the duos other focus. All of the pieces are reversible, many have pockets, and the designers strove to make much of the collection machine washable.

We were just talking this over at lunch today, Zhang says. We really want to make clothes that people can buy and wear. We see something online and were like, Wow thats amazing, but the price is like  

$800 a piece, interjects Lin.

We dont want to do that. We want people to enjoy the clothes, Zhang says. So PH5 has stuck to a contemporary price point, starting at $155 and topping out in the $400-to-$500 range.

For spring, Zhang looked to the textured paintings of Florian and Michael Quistrebert, whose show she saw in Paris. Their work combines heavy brushstrokes with layers of clay and LED lights. She drew on this layering concept for the multiple layers of fabric in the knits. Katharina Grosse, best known for this summers hit installation Rockaway!, was also an inspiration for the way she uses herself as the brushstroke, Zhang says. That effect found its way into a painterly printed windbreaker in the collection.

Appropriately enough, considering those inspirations, PH5 will be holding its first-ever New York Fashion Week presentation at an art venue  the Swiss Institute in Tribeca  and treating the collection as an installation of sorts. We wanted to do a presentation, instead of a runway show, Lin notes, because knitwear is something that people have to see and touch.

And they have been fine-tuning everything in preparation. A cloud-printed sweater from the collection was perhaps their biggest challenge to make. The more color a piece has, the more complicated it gets, notes Lin, which is why knitwear is predominantly solid-colored. It drove the factory crazy  it drove my mom crazy. Three months and a lot of back-and-forth went into the result. Zhang camped out in the Chinese factory where the sweater was being made so she could ensure it was perfect. Says Lin, She literally was sleeping on the floor. Would your former roommate be that conscientious?
Photo: Joshua Whitcomb/Getty Images/iStockphoto

Twenty-five-year-old Maine resident John Bennett was arrested on Wednesday for attempting to cross the border illegally into Canada. No, he wasnt desperately craving Timbits or attempting to spot a glimpse of shirtless Justin Trudeau: Bennett had been trying to reach his pregnant Canadian girlfriend and was previously turned away at a border crossing due to the mischief charges he was facing in the United States.

In the face of adversity, he did the next best thing: He bought an air mattress at Walmart, inflated it, and tried to float across the St. Croix River. Lawyer Peter Thorn, whos representing the federal Public Prosecution Service of Canada, told CityNews that he said [his Canadian girlfriend] had an ex-boyfriend who was threatening her, but that hasnt been confirmed by the other party.



Bennett was sentenced to two months in jail on Thursday, but, most notably, may be the first man in history whose girlfriend who lives in Canada actually exists.
hmm.... i don't like it as much as "bang bang" but maybe it'll grow on me with a few more listens



i'm mostly coming in here to complain about Webster Hall's dumb system of having people enter a lottery just for the chance to buy tickets. like i guess they were trying to keep out scalpers but guess what! scalpers are still selling tix to the Webster Hall show for like $400 anyway



anyway i'm really pissed because i didn't get a lottery code and this would've been my only chance to see them on this tour (and possibly my only chance to see Green Day at a small venue at all) because i can't make it to the Starland Ballroom show

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ahhh it sold out hours ago but thank you nonetheless

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So jealous you got DC tix op! I tried today but they were sold out within one minute.



But I am really liking their new music!

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I still can't wrap my mind around Green Day's comeback. Like I remember buying Warning when it came out in 2000 and everyone lulzed at me because they were like, those dudes are so washed up and over with, everyone's mom is obsessed with Time Of Your Life, snooooore.

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I'm gonna see them live with my sister, need to download their new and old stuff so I don't look ridiculous

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Thank you! I haven't listened fully to American Idiot in years! Can't wait!

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They usually play 99 Revolutions and maybe Stop When the Red Lights Flash. Those are prob the only two from the Trilogy you need to know, but a handful of those songs are actually really good. I love Makeout Party and Lazy Bones, tbh.

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biiiiicch i didn't know tickets were going on sale today and ofc the milan date is already sold out :(

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don't worry bb!

i'll try to convince my friends to drive to turin or florence lol

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its alright, none of the tracks have really wowed me but i've been bored w green day since 21st century breakdown. their older albums are some of my all time favorites though.





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sounds like green day.



ugh the 9:30 show is going to be amazing, why did I MOVE

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im digging this! 21st Century Breakdown is their best album especially since it was produced by the Legendary Butch Vig who has a new album with Garbage "Strange Little Birds" <3



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I like it :D

Bummed I'm not going to the Chicago show.

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Learn more about LiveJournal Ratings in Hello! Your entry got to top-25 of the most popular entries in LiveJournal!Learn more about LiveJournal Ratings in FAQ

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I got a ticket to the Detroit show, I'm so excited! My second GD small venue show (saw them and Sweet Children at House of Blues Cleveland last year before the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, which I also attended), I'm so so lucky.



I've had the chorus to the song stuck in my head all day!

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Managed to get London tickets this morning, they're doing larger venues here but it still sold out within minutes. I know a lot of friends who didn't mange to get tickets.

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a tweet from amazon tickets saved me from being ticket-less for o2 lol, i never had a chance on ticketmaster! glad you got tix!

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Yeah, Amazon saved one or two of my friends, I never even thought to look there, in fact I didn't know they did tickets. Glad you got tickets, too, they were gone so quick, especially standing ones.

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i got london tickets this morning but they sold out in .2 seconds on ticketmaster and apparently amazon sells tickets so i got really good ones there haha

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Fuck. Tickets sold out in like 10 seconds. FUCK.

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I got presale tickets to see them in Berkeley. Haven't seen them perform since they played at 924 Gilman last May and I'm so ready for this album and tour.



Not sure if I like this more than Bang Bang, but I'll have it on repeat all day and we'll see.



Edited at 2016-09-09 05:58 pm (UTC)

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Great! I love Billie Joes voice, he could sing anything and I'd be on board.

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this song fucking rocks



so ready for new GD

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Lochte is going to appear on The Ellen Show to talk about the bullshit he pulled in Brazil. In a preview of the episode, he says that his 10-month suspension is "heartbreaking" and "stinks.""You know, I've been swimming my entire life and I've never taken a break, and for someone telling me that I can't do something I've been doing my entire life. It's heartbreaking and it stinks. But there is so much more I want accomplish in the sport of swimming so I do know that I'm still going to be training and when I do come back I'm going to definitely be a better swimmer and a better person.""I reached out to [Michael Phelps] because I knew he hit a low point in his life and he bounced back from it and I knew his answer was gonna be really honest because of our relationship over the years. He said, 'It's not what you did, it's what you do now that will shape who you are.'""I realized I reached the lowest point of my entire life that I never thought I would go to. I was in a really dark place and I didn't know if I should come out, just hide my entire life, but I reached to my family and my friends and they kept me positive and said you know you have to do this you have to get out there. You can't always hide the rest of your life just embrace this opportunity so that's why I'm here.""Yes, I definitely want to [swim in the next Olympics] but you know the past year I was mentally tired of the sport because I've been doing it so long. Now that the suspension and everything has happened I can take that mental break, but I still have goals that I want to accomplish so I will definitely be back and hopefully I'll be ready to rock and roll."
Oil prices fell on Friday, after spiking on Thursday afternoon as a result of an exceptionally strong draw to U.S. crude inventories.

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Friday 9th September 2016

Oil prices surged on Thursday following news from the EIA that showed a colossal drawdown in crude oil stocks. Inventories plunged by 14.5 million barrels for the week ending on September 2, the largest drawdown for this time of year on record. However, before the oil bulls get too excited, it is important to note that the huge drawdown could be a one-off, owing to the hurricane that disrupted shipments in the Gulf of Mexico. Imports were down sharply, leading to a larger-than-usual draw on stocks. "This is an aberrant report of the first order," John Kilduff of Again Capital, told CNBC. Others agree: "I suspect over the next few weeks we're going to see inventories recover to a certain extent, as the imports catch up," said Andrew Lipow of Lipow Oil Associates. "There's still plenty of oil out there. What we're seeing is the result of storm impacts on vessel shipping at the same time we still see members of OPEC to increase their oil production."

Oil prices surged more than 4 percent on the news on Thursday. WTI and Brent pared their gains during early trading on Friday as traders took profits.

Oil prices below $55 for years? Oil prices could remain within a range of $35 to $55 per barrel for years, according to Dennis Gartman of The Gartman Letter. Shrugging off any action from OPEC, Gartman says that the global market is very well supplied, and will continue to be for quite some time. He points to the wide contango in the oil futures market, which indicates a short-term glut in supply.

Apache makes huge discovery in Texas. Apache Corporation (NYSE: APA) announced a massive oil discovery in West Texas this week, which could turn out to be one of the largest finds over the past decade. The Alpine High discovery in the Delaware Basin could hold as much as 3 billion barrels of oil and 75 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Alpine High could be worth as much as $8 billion on the lower end of estimates, or ten times as much on the higher end. The exciting thing for Apache is that it says it can turn a 30 percent profit on wells even at todays prices. The company also says that some of the best natural gas wells could be profitable with natural gas prices at $0.10 per million Btu. Obviously, with natural gas prices much higher than that, the wells could be hugely profitable. As of Friday, Apaches share price was up more than 15 percent for the week.

Asian oil supply in decline. Bloomberg estimates that Asias five largest oil producers  China, India, Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam  could see output fall by a combined 255,000 barrels per day because of low oil prices this year. They could also lose an additional 309,000 barrels per day next year.

California judge shoots down fracking plan. A judge in California put a halt to a plan for fracking on public lands, citing inadequate study on the behalf of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. BLM has leased out public land in central California, allowing the use of fracking on about a quarter of new wells. The judge said that BLM should have taken a hard look at what the effects would be on public lands. The ruling is another setback for drilling in the state.

Irans oil production growth stalls. A new report from Reuters finds that Iran has succeeded in ramping up oil production, but the gains have come to a standstill in recent months. Output hit 3.64 million barrels per day in June, up 800,000 barrels per day from 2015 levels. But Junes high was followed by two months of zero gains, with output standing at 3.63 million barrels per day in August. Iran has shown new willingness to consider coordinated action with OPEC members, but has stopped short of endorsing a production freeze. Iran still insists that it has a right to return to pre-sanctions production levels, which amounts to another 0.5 mb/d in production. The Reuters data suggests Iran, for the time being, is struggling to continue its upward momentum towards that goal.

Enterprise Products Partners LP Abandons Williams Cos. takeover. Enterprise Products Partners LP (NYSE: EPD) officially pulled the plug on its pursuit of Williams Companies (NYSE: WMB), a deal that was thought to be worth about $33 billion. Enterprise said its rival pipeline company refused to engage in talks, something that Williams denies.

Total last company standing in Barnett Shale. Total SA (NYSE: TOT) just became the only company operating in the Barnett Shale in Texas after Chesapeake Energy (NYSE: CHK) pulled out. Total will take on the 75 percent of the shale paly that it doesnt already own, according to the WSJ. In August, Chesapeake paid Williams Partners LP (NYSE: WPZ) $334 million in cash to break its pipeline contract. With Chesapeakes exit, only Total remains. The Barnett Shale was once a major source of natural gas production, but low gas prices have caused drilling to dry up. There are only 3 rigs left in the Barnett, down from more than 80 back in 2011. The Barnett only produces about 65,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day.

Natural gas prices rise on small inventory build. Natural gas prices rose the most in a single day since July after the EIA reported a smaller-than-expected increase in inventories. Stockpiles only rose by 36 billion cubic feet, compared to the expected 43 billion cubic feet. Natural gas prices for October delivery jumped by 13 cents to $2.80 on Thursday.

OPEC officials huddle in Paris. The energy ministers of Algeria and Saudi Arabia are set to meet with the Secretary-General of OPEC on Friday in Paris, putting in place some preparation for the Algiers meeting.

By Evan Kelly of Oilprice.com

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While the industry has struggled to find ways to cope with the decline in oil prices, there has been one positive note: the dip in crude prices has at least in part contributed to a decrease in incidents of piracy in Southeast Asian waters.

Increased law enforcement activity has also been a factor. Promotion Group International, which provides security data about onshore and maritime activities for companies and government, notes that between August 23, 2015 and August 23, 2016, there were only four ship hijackings, as compared to the same period from 2014 to 2015, during which time there were 22. Fifteen of those 2014/2015 incidents involved oil tankers.

Promotion Group Internationals Director, Tom Bacon, noted that because the financial incentive to re-sell stolen oil has declined, so has the siphoning and theft of oil. The price of fuels for ships has followed a similar decline as other markets. As global prices saw an approximate 50 percent drop, from August of 2014 to August of 2016, 380 CST bunker fuel deliveries from Singapore fell 58 percent. S&P Global Platts showed that product was assessed at $260 per metric ton this week.

Law enforcement has also played a role. Several crime rings that have engaged in criminal maritime activity have been broken up, and Indonesia and Malaysia have increased patrols in the Strains of Malacca.

In May, Indonesian naval patrol boats intercepted a hijacked tanker near Indonesia and rescued the crew. At that time, Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia agreed to increase patrols in the Sulu and Celebes seas following activity by militants in those waters. A more stable political situation in Southeast Asia has also been a contributing factor.

Tim Wilkins, the regional Asia manager for the International Association of Independent Tanker owners notes that piracy remains a problem in the Gulf of Guinea because of the political unrest in Nigeria. Pirates there, said Wilkins, are more aggressive and well-coordinated in their use of high-powered weapons.

By Lincoln Brown for Oilprice.com

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Equatorial Guineas economy is expected to shrink by a massive 10 percent in 2016 -- after having already contracted by 7.4 percent last year -- as low oil prices batter the economys dominant oil and gas sector, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said on Thursday.

Since the oil price crash started in 2014, the economy of this tiny central African country has been deteriorating fast, and oil and gas activity dropped 8.9 percent last year, as low crude prices made producers cut costs, hence, output dropped, the IMF said.

The outlook for the near term is very challenging in view of the depressed prices and prolonged decline of oil and gas output. Equatorial Guineas weak oil revenues, on which it heavily relies, will lead to more public spending cuts, and vital sectors such as construction will further shrink, according to the IMF.

In the medium term, the economy is not expected to grow because of the hefty share of hydrocarbons that make up the gross domestic product (GDP).

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), Equatorial Guinea held 1.1 billion barrels of proved crude oil reserves as of January 2015, which made it the eighth-largest crude oil reserve holder in Sub-Saharan Africa. The countrys proved natural gas reserves of 1.3 trillion cubic feet as of January 2015 were the tenth-largest in the region.

Most of Equatorial Guineas reserves and operating fields are offshore near the Bioko Island. Total oil production averaged almost 270,000 barrels per day in 2014, compared to the peak production of 369,000 bpd in 2007.

It was in 2014 when Equatorial Guinea embarked on a PR mission to improve how it is viewed by the outside world. The kleptocratic and reclusive government, often synonymous with the resource curse, hired Richard Attias & Associates, a Madison Avenue-based public relations firm, to clean up the countrys image. The Manhattan PR company specializes in helping African leaders build their global influence.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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Nigerian Army troops have destroyed 74 illegal oil refineries as well as camps of militants in the countrys oil-rich Niger Delta, the Army tweeted on Friday.

As part of an operation code-named Exercise Crocodile Smile, the Army raided on Wednesday illegal makeshift refineries in the southern states Rivers and Bayelsa. Militants in the Nigerian swamps steal crude oil and refine it in illegal refineries. Various militant groups also attacked oil infrastructure in the Niger Delta.

Nigerias Army, who has been trying to stop the insurgents attacks, scored success in fighting militants earlier this week. The Army captured Isaac Romeo, the alleged kingpin of the Niger Delta Avengers (NDA), the militant group that had claimed most of the sabotages on oil facilities in recent months that have dragged Nigerias oil output down by some 700,000 barrels per day to 1.56 million bpd.

NDA halted hostilities in late August, which offered some glimmer of hope of recovering some of the production taken offline. However, other militant groups continue to disrupt oil operations. Just a day after the NDA had said it stopped hostilities, a new militant group attacked a pipeline operated by the state-run Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC).

Observers were right to be skeptical about the success of a complete ceasefire. The NDA is just one of the militant groups operating in the Niger Delta, and a ceasefire with only the NDA does not guarantee a complete cessation of attacks, they had said.

On the bright side for Nigerian production, Shell lifted on Tuesday its force majeure on Bonny Light crude exports. The Nembe Creek Trunk Line was repaired and reopened, allowing Shell to resume exports of its oil, nearly a month after declaring force majeure. Nembe Creek is one of a handful of key pipelines that helps Nigeria brings its oil to the coast for export. The cause of the August outage was not reported on  the pipelines operator, Aiteo, said it was from a leak but did not disclose the cause.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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Eric Von hosts one of Milwaukee's most popular talk shows on 1290 WMCS-AM. Hes a change agent and a community connector who offers a fine perspective on Milwaukee issues. Hes a non-native, who has in less than 17 years moved here, away and back.

As deputy campaign director, he helped Mayor Barrett achieve his office. But, today he is out of the political game choosing to focus on the policies and ideas of the community each and every day from 2 to 6 p.m. on WMCS.

We sat down with Von, a 20-year veteran of media, recently and got some very interesting thoughts on Milwaukee, its people (including grades of key politicians) and its policies.

OMC: Lets begin with an icebreaker. Youre invited to a party and youre asked to bring a dish to pass. What do you bring and why?

Erin Von: Probably something pasta related. I kind of fancy myself a cheap cook. I fix a lot of pasta and shrimp dishes so probably something along those lines.

OMC: Give us, please, the three-minute Eric Von story?

EV: I came here in 91 from (Washington) D.C., where I was born and raised. Worked in radio for a number of years doing music, doing news, did some talk radio. Kind of got the bug and looked for some opportunities in talk radio.

It just so happened that one of the guys that worked with me in DC used to work for Mr. Davis (Willie Davis, former Green Bay Packer and owner of the Milwaukee Radio Alliance) who owns this station. He suggested that I get in touch with either Mr. Davis or somebody in his operation because he thought he had heard that they were looking to do some talk at one of his stations. So, I contacted the program director, sent him a tape and a resume. They invited me out for an interview, and the rest is history. Ive been here since then doing at first the morning show for 10 years -- it was the only talk show on the station for 10 years.

OMC: You left for a while, though?

EV: I left in 2001, moved to Phoenix, and stayed in contact with Mr. Davis while I was away. Then we agreed to finally give a shot to something that I had been suggesting for a long time -- a full talk format. We agreed on that and I came back, I did afternoons and that was new cause we hadnt had anything like that in the afternoons before.

OMC: Did you do radio in Phoenix?

EV: I was the public information officer for the Arizona Game and Fish Department.

OMC: Huh?

EV: Yep, a new field, new life. I dont hunt, I dont fish so I was the odd man out down there with all these guys and women who really lived that life. They love hunting and fishing and when they heard that I didnt shoot animals and I dont throw fishhooks in the water, they thought there was something wrong with me.

OMC: How did the job come about, and why did you move?

EV: Well, the move came about because I was really just tired of Milwaukee, tired in the sense that, you know, when you do this kind of broadcasting, youre dealing with issues almost every day. And I think by nature I look for some change (to come about), I look for improvement to come out of these kinds of things and I really wasnt seeing a whole lot of movement. And, I got tired talking about the same things day in and day out and not seeing the kind of advancement that youd like to see. Im not talking about personally, but I mean in the community, and it begins to weigh on you. So, I just started looking for someplace else. I was also tired of the weather. Its pretty cold here.

OMC: What did you know about Milwaukee when you moved from D.C.?

EV: Not much at all, and I didnt watch Laverne and Shirley so I really knew less than most people. I really didnt know anything about Milwaukee.

OMC: You talked a bit about the community issues driving you away. Now you are back. Do you feel like theres been some good change?

EV: I think theres been considerable change in the city. In fact, I think I was probably a little more fatigued and frustrated than the actual environment not being what I thought it was. It was probably more internal.

There have been a number of advancements and a lot of things that we havent improved on. I think, in the last couple of years weve seen some regression in some things that had at one point advanced. So that, again, is frustrating.

Now, Im a little more up for the challenge. I see our (the stations) role and my role really as a host of the show as that of a catalyst for a lot of the things that can happen in this community, particularly for African Americans, to improve their quality of life.

OMC: Talk a little bit about the media landscape and your thoughts on the current state of Milwaukee media?

EV: Well, I think its changed. A huge change in Milwaukee media has been right here at this radio station with the 2004 change to a 24-hour talk station. Its the first African American station of its kind in the city and really one of very few around the country that do this on a full-time basis. So thats one major step, I think, in the right direction.

For too long African Americans have been considered to be only concerned about music and, Ive always believed that people -- black people -- wanted news and information just like everybody else. They just had to feel like the source was there that could provide them with the news and information that they could rely on and trust.

Certainly, technology has made a huge difference. What you (OnMilwaukee.com) do is different and big. Theres the bloggers, the Web sites. The pace at which we can get information has made our job more challenging. People dont have to wait for the 6 p.m. news and they almost have an expectation that you get information to them almost the minute it happens.

I always find it interesting -- Im on the air from 2 to 6 p.m. and Ill be focusing on one subject when Ill get a call from somebody in the audience wholl say well, this and that happened and why arent you talking about it? Theyre watching CNN, the Web or theyre catching these stories live and they expect me as a talk show host to be discussing those matters just as rapidly.

Because of the Internet, everyday people have access to news that all of us whove been in this business used to only have had access to.

OMC: How do you prepare for your show?

EV: A lot of reading and a lot of talking to people. Im still in the habit of waking up early in the morning. I dont get up as early as I used to, but I still get up earlier than most people because Im just accustomed to being up.

But the first thing I do when I get up in the morning is go to the computer and I start looking for what happened overnight. I read probably five or six news services. I used to read four or five newspapers in hardcopy; fortunately, we dont have to do that anymore.

And then when I see things that I think will be of interest to our listeners, I try to contact the principals that are involved in those stories. Whether were talking local or national, I tend to get a positive response from people who want to talk about whatever the issue is. So I always have the opportunity to have a guest on who is central to whatever the issue is.

OMC: You had a role in Mayor Barretts campaign, correct?

EV: I was deputy campaign director.

OMC: What did you learn from it? What did you like and dislike?

EV: I learned from that that I dont want to have anything else to do with politics and to a degree, I learned some of that even in this business -- that people want you around when they need you. I think its the same thing with politics. Youre the politician who can help them, whatever the issue might be that day. After that, youre like the plague, you know, and if you cant help em, they dont want to have anything to do with you. And thats not the way I believe in building friendships and relationships. Friendships and relationships are important to me and I dont know that you really develop those in that environment.

I ran into Tom a few weeks ago and he said to me that hes probably made more enemies in the three years that hes been mayor than he did in (the) years he was in Washington.

Its not a friendly environment and maybe its not supposed to be, but thats not what I live for. So I made up my mind, leaving the campaign, that I didnt really want to have anything to do with that. I came back here because this is what I enjoy doing.

In campaigns, you meet a lot of important people, you meet a lot of people who know how to get things done, but you also realize that they are so focused on that that they dont have a lot of time for anything else.

OMC: What grade would you give the mayors current tenure?

EV: I dont live in the city (Von resides in the village of Brown Deer), so its kind of difficult. I do, though, work in the city and I talk about the city all the time. I talk to people probably more than most people in this business. I talk to people who are affected by the things that City Hall does and doesnt do.

And my own personal assessment based on what my expectations would have been at the time and of the role of mayor Id have to give him a D.

Unfortunately, I think hes surrounded himself with some people who are not very helpful to him. Theyve been unresponsive. Thats what I hear a lot from people who call me.

I havent had anything to do with his administration from the day he took office, but because of the relationship we developed during the campaign, people assume that I still have this contact with him. So I get calls from people all the time asking me can you talk to the mayor about this? Will you tell the mayor this? And the first thing I tell em is I dont talk to the mayor except when you hear him on the radio.

On a few occasions Ive tried to provide some insight to him, Ive tried to advise him and I dont know that its been heeded, but Im not sure hes heeding anybodys advice. Im not sure exactly what hes listening to.

OMC: Please grade Sheriff Clarke.

EV: I think if David Clarke could be honest with himself and stop saying -- and it seems to be the Republican way now -- Im not a politician. He is a politician and he needs to accept that and stop playing this game. Im not sure what the game is being played for.

I think as far as law enforcement goes -- and Ive told him this -- if he would just stop all the other stuff and just be the sheriff I think he could be the best sheriff this county has known, next to my father-in-law (Richard E. Artison).

But certainly in terms of law enforcement and his expectations, his demands on his department, I think hes right on.

I think he says some things and he does some things because even though hes denying being a politician, he understands that hes a politician somewhere in there. He says some things that are certainly politically motivated, but dont serve him well.

He says he doesnt really want to be the mayor. He says he wants to be the sheriff, he loves his job. Then be the sheriff and just be the sheriff, do the things in and within the department that need to be done. (If he did this) I think he would be revered in this community. But because he has these fits of ego, you know, he says things and does things that rub people the wrong way. As sheriff Id give him a B.

OMC: County Executive, Scott Walker?

EV: Now he is a politician, and he knows it and he doesnt deny it. As far as Scott Walkers concerned, hes just so hard to track. Hes been in this station and he can woo you and swoon you better than any politician Ive ever had to interview or sit across the table from. I cant tell what hes doing. I dont know what hes doing. I know that county is not in good shape. I dont know that hes to blame for it because hes so elusive.

I think he has to accept the blame for it because hes the man at the top, but I think hes caught up in being a Republican politician whos trying to find -- or follow the path that conservative Republicans must follow if thats what theyre gonna be viewed as. So philosophically and even in terms of the day-to-day function of government I disagree with his positions. I dont see anything hes done from cutting bus routes to cutting programs, or at least attempting to  hes at war with Lee Holloway and the more liberal members of the County Board all the time, as well as others in the community.

I tend to agree with the other side, because I see the kinds of problems that come out of the policies that hes advancing and the things that he stands behind. So those are the people I talk to every day, people who complain about that stuff.

OMC: If you had a magic wand for the area and you could change three things, what would they be?

EV: I dont play that game very well, because the problems are huge. You start with families and you try to make families stronger so the kids go to school, but then you look at the kids and you must look back at the parents in those homes.

You need to do what you can to put families on the right track and thats an inclusive project.

Id provide jobs for people because I think this rising crime we see -- or were seeing is a result of people being out of work. Granted, people dont have, in many cases, the skill sets necessary to go to work in some of the jobs that are available out here.

In this society we shouldnt have the numbers of people out of work in a concentrated area like we have without somebody coming up with a plan. There is something that anyone can do to provide for their family, to provide for themselves, even if theyre single, and we shouldnt have all these idle hands around town. So, thats my one thing.

OMC: What is your definition of success?

EV: Thats probably hard for me because I dont feel like Ive been a success or that Ive made it to a successful place yet. Im hoping its a place where when you wake up every day, you feel pretty good about where you are and what youre doing, what youve done. So that if thats your last day, youre not feeling like -- and other people arent feeling like -- you left some work undone.

A lot of people define success by how much money you have in the bank. Well, if that was me, Id have to just quit right now. Id have to consider myself a total failure. I really believe its a matter of looking back at your day, your week, your month, your year and saying, you know, how many of the things that I said I was gonna do did I accomplish? How many of the things that I accomplished really made somebody elses life a little better? I think thats how you measure it.
This week on USA Network's "Mr. Robot," everyones skeletons are finally being revealed  and they're all catching up to them a lot faster than expected.

First off, Trenton and Mobley are still MIA, with no one having a clue what happened to them. Theres a huge possibility that the Dark Army got rid of them, and theyre way deep in the Atlantic somewhere; on the other hand, maybe theyre being held hostage for whatever information they know. Trenton and Mobley were sort of like pawns in the overall fsociety scheme, so I dont think that they would be that valuable to be kept alive by their captors. Theres also a possibility that they disappeared together  I doubt it.

Phillip Price had an intense meeting with Terry Colby. Colby is running for political office and has written a book; while hes excited for whats to come, Price has other plans for him. Price wants Colby to talk to Winston Campbell at the United Nations to arrange a vote to annex the Congo. Price wants China to have national sovereignty over the Congo, but Colby thinks that it would be a terrible idea. An act like that could trigger a string of events, all of which would mean war of some sort; nevertheless, what Phillip Price wants, he gets. He reminded Colby of this with a little speech about his narcissistic thirst for power in every room he enters. There has to be a point when Prices power wont get him anywhere  itll certainly be on the day that Whiterose takes action and gets rid of him.

Joanna Wellick is obviously squirming on the inside, despite her perfectly put together outer appearance. She thinks that Elliot knows of Tyrells whereabouts and that theyre working together, but that cant be true because Tyrell is dead  right? Elliot was surprised by the phone calls Joanna receives from who she believed to be Tyrell, and the only thing he can do to get her off his back is to figure out whos making those calls.

With Joannas bodyguard Mr. Sutherland in tow, Elliot sets out to solve the mystery of the mysterious cell phone. The drive to the tech store seemed to fill Elliot with a bit of guilt as he watched the people of New York scavenge for a remnant of a real life as they sit in squalor. The Five/Nine attack seemed to have only made things worse, and its all because of Elliot.

Maybe everyone was happy being under the control of The Hand, even if they werent truly free. Society is one seriously complex system that cant be controlled by one entity; however, not everyone wants to take responsibility for what happens to our society. Think about it: How many people do you encounter in a week who have no clue whats going on in the world, and only care about the happenings in their own little bubble? Elliot made the decision to free We, The People from The Hand without truly knowing if we wanted to be free in the first place. The fight for freedom ensues only when the majority feel as if said freedom has been threatened.

The mysterious phone rang as Elliot was getting supplies to track the origin of the calls, and all we heard was the usual heavy breathing. Oddly enough, Mr. Robot disappeared just as the phone rang. This event was pretty important, in my opinion. Mr. Robot has always been sketchy about what happened to Tyrell Wellick, to the point where I still question if Tyrell is really dead. Mr. Robots acting as if he hiding some big secret, and I think it involves Tyrell being alive and up to something big. Like Elliot pointed out, Mr. Robot has been dying to get back home for something  but for what? Elliot needs our help in figuring that out, and so do I. As we get a birds eye view of Elliots apartment, my eyes searched endlessly to see what we might be looking for. I couldnt identify what it was; could you?

Elliot and his wits tracked down the location of the mystery phone, and Mr. Sutherland looked bothered by what was found. He can only say that Tyrell certainly didnt make any calls from that location, but what the hell does that mean? Was it just me, or did Elliot seem like he had a slight clue of whose address that was? This is all getting really complicated, and Im just dying to know whats up!

Remember when Cisco seem startled by something he found at the smart house? Well, that startling thing was none other than a badly beaten fsociety member, and we have no clue who put him in that state. Darlene actually had the idea to let the guy die just because hes seen her face  what kind of monster has she become!? It took Cisco giving her the real and pointing out that shes not a leader for her to finally agree to getting the guy to a hospital.

It seems that being forced to wait in an emergency room as someone elses life hangs by a thread is what made Darlene come to her senses. Her story revealing her abduction by a woman with smeared lipstick at Coney Island when she was five was quite telling; the woman provided Darlene with comfort and security in her care, making Darlene feel special for the first time. Being the head of fsociety made her feel special again, but having Elliot in her life means more to her than being the center of attention. Elliot has always been the one that everyone needed, and she always knew that.

While Cisco and Darlene head to a diner for some food, the FBI was closing in on them fast. Ciscos visit to the smart house earlier triggered his composite sketch being aired on the news all over. DiPierro was determined to catch them, and she did. Sad thing is, the FBI werent the only ones looking for Darlene and Cisco. Once again, DiPierro found herself in a bloody shootout as masked men came to take care of the situation. We saw that they shot the diner up and DiPierro survived, but we have no clue if Darlene or Cisco is alive. DiPierro did have a lot of blood all over herself though, so that tells me that one of them is either dead or seriously injured.

Meanwhile, Angela reached her breaking point and finally decided to confess to her role in the Five/Nine attack. She met with Elliot to give him a heads up, and it led to Elliot truly feeling sorry for what he began. Like he said, everyone took all the risk of his plan while he hid in the shadows  what a sucky thing to do, Elliot. With a kiss goodbye, Angela was left crying on the subway. Things are never that easy, of course, because two people were there to abduct her. Could they be the same people who took Trenton and Mobley, and does that mean that theyre alive? Sadly, it could also mean that Angelas about to meet her maker. Personally, I would be a bit sad to see Angela go; shes proven to be a loyal and tough-as-nails ally to fsociety.

Next weeks episode is sure to be an intense one, seeing that lives are at stake and all. I certainly would like to see where Mr. Robot disappeared to and why hes been so iffy lately. Whatevers done in the dark, will always come to light.
We'll not need to worry about the necessity for lies and cover-up for our next war, as both major presidential candidates have already clearly indicated their persuasion to attack the Middle-East , though not exactly whom and with rather unclear specificity as to why. And these announcements always bring deafening applause and lusty cheers from their audiences -- Democrat or Republican.

And this despite the fact that the agreed targeted area is in another hemisphere two seas away.

And we of the popularly maligned "unAmerican" persuasion stubbornly insist to question, "Why". But think about it. Does the popular persuasion that Americans "hate" war actually stand up? Or does the cheering before the fact -- before the bodies come back, fathers, sons, and now mothers and daughters -- indicate a lust for war, and the virtue of patriotism requires such a foundation?

Perhaps after the last fifteen years of domination by the patriots over us "unAmericans," we need to recognize that actual peace is too challenging a moral concept for the majority of citizens in today's "land of the free and home of the brave." Perhaps we should seek some satisfaction in the notion that surely one day, perhaps in a future generation; nirvana will somehow descend upon America to evaporate the lust for war.

Or perhaps not, but that is really difficult to digest. So we hope, and perhaps settle in our generation for some meager comfort from the words of A.E. Houseman: "I, a stranger and afraid, in a world I never made."
Reprinted from The Guardian

Those itching for conflict like to portray Putin as a grandmaster. In reality, his country is weak and his strategy is one of desperation

These days it is en vogue in Washington DC to be itching for conflict with Russia. Politicians and pundits alike are outdoing each other for how they can describe the supposed threat Putin now poses to the west. To his credit, Barack Obama seems to be the only politician not playing into the cold war 2.0 hysteria.

In little noticed comments last week, Hillary Clinton suggested that the US should start preparing "military" responses to cyber-attacks allegedly perpetrated by Russia on the DNC and voter registration files. And her campaign has also spent the last few weeks ratcheting up the fear-mongering that the Trump campaign is secretly a Russian plant of some sort.

Increasing military tensions with Russia is now a bipartisan issue. Republicans not named Donald Trump spent much of the primary earlier this year calling for a no-fly zone -- a certain path to war -- in Syria and were perfectly willing to shoot down Russian planes over the region, despite the real possibility of starting world war three.

Meanwhile, House Democrats recently called on the FBI to "investigate" unknown links between the Trump campaign and Russia, seemingly unaware of the historical analogies (and the irony) of calling for a government investigation into their political enemies. Trump is a menace and a buffoon in countless ways, but the idea that he is secretly doing Putin's bidding is beyond absurd.

The media, in turn, largely seems to be eager to portray Putin as an 11th dimensional chess grandmaster, who is behind every major world event. (Conspiracy theories are almost universally mocked in the US, unless they involve Putin and Russia -- then they are encouraged.)

Even some inside the Obama administration, like defense secretary Ash Carter, seem open to ratcheting up the tension with Russia, which, by the way, the sprawling defense industry is also openly rooting for. The Intercept reported weapons manufacturers have been telling investors that the "new" Russian threat is great for business. (Increased cyber tensions, needless to say, lead to better bottom lines for all the cybersecurity companies that have popped up in recent years as well.)

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Reprinted from WSWS

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton this week publicly accused the Russian government of intervening in the American election on behalf of her Republican opponent Donald Trump.

She cited an investigation by US intelligence agencies, first reported Monday night by the Washington Post, into alleged Russian government hacking into the computer systems of the state election officials in the United States.

Clinton told a press conference Monday there were now "credible reports about Russian interference in our elections," adding, "I want everyone -- Democrat, Republican, Independent -- to understand the real threat that this represents."

Clinton referred both to the Post report about hacking into state government computers in Arizona and Illinois, and to the alleged Russian hacking of the emails of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), which revealed backroom efforts by top DNC officials to ensure Clinton's victory.

Clinton's suggestion of a Trump-Putin axis was followed up Tuesday in a speech in North Carolina by her vice-presidential running mate, Senator Tim Kaine, which was billed as a "major national security address" by the Democratic campaign.

Kaine contrasted Clinton's going "toe-to-toe with Putin" as US secretary of state, to Trump's suggestion that NATO was outmoded and that he could negotiate more successfully with Russia. He then raised the question "why Trump seems to support Russian interests at the expense of American ones," suggesting that the billionaire real estate speculator was keeping his tax returns secret because they might shed light on his financial ties to Russia. He concluded by citing the claim of former acting CIA Director Michael Morell that Trump is an "unwitting agent" of the Russian intelligence services.

Clinton appeared Monday at several Labor Day rallies, but she chose to focus her attack on Trump on national security issues, where she has consistently attacked the billionaire real estate speculator from the right.

Asked by a reporter if the alleged Russian actions amounted to a cyberwar, Clinton replied, "I'm not comfortable using the word 'war.'" This demurral was only to disguise her intentions from the American people. However, in a speech last week to the American Legion convention, Clinton declared that cyberattacks on the United States should be answered by military force.

Clinton claimed that Putin had all but confirmed Russia's role in the hacking of the DNC -- a flat-out lie -- adding, "The team around him certainly believe that there is some benefit to them to doing this." She then declared that the prospect of additional hacking into the state government systems used to conduct the November 8 elections represented "a threat from an adversarial foreign power."

The Democratic candidate also criticized the role of the Russian government in Syria, in backing the regime of President Bashar al-Assad against Islamist forces armed and financed by the United States and the Gulf monarchies. She denounced "the refusal of the Russians and the Iranians to put the kind of pressure on Assad that is necessary ..."

Clinton reiterated her support for imposing a no-fly zone over parts of Syria held by the US-backed "rebels," which would require US air strikes against Syrian anti-aircraft positions and could lead to confrontations between Russian and American warplanes, which both conduct air strikes in the country.

"I think we need leverage," she said. "I've always believed that if that were on the table and it were clear we were going to pursue it, that would give us the leverage we don't have now." Coming just after the well-publicized failure of talks last weekend between Obama and Putin at the G20 summit in China, Clinton was clearly seeking to stake out a more aggressive position on Syria than that of the Obama administration.

The Democrat's claim to have discovered a Trump-Putin axis has two purposes: first, to cement Clinton's standing as the consensus choice of the US military-intelligence apparatus; and second, to integrate the election campaign itself into the war preparations by US imperialism, both in the Middle East and against Russia (as well as China).

If Clinton wins the November 8 election over Trump, she will claim this to be a mandate for the escalation of US military operations in Iraq and Syria, as well as the continued NATO military buildup throughout Eastern Europe, openly aimed at preparing for war with Russia, a country with the world's second-largest nuclear arsenal.

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On September 8, Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson appeared on MSNBC's Morning Joe, where panelist Mike Barnicle hit him with the question:

"What would you do if you were elected about Aleppo?"

Johnson: "About?"

Barnicle: "Aleppo."

Johnson: "And what is a leppo?"

Barnicle: "You're kidding."

Johnson: "No."

Maybe you've heard about this exchange. Maybe you know (or maybe you Googled and found out) that Aleppo is the largest city in Syria and a focal point of the war between Syria's government and Islamic State rebels.

Be warned: If you listened to MSNBC's "expert" on Syria, or read the New York Timesaccount of Johnson's "faux pas," you got bad scoop. They didn't know much about Aleppo either, inaccurately describing the city as the Islamic State's "capital" (that's Raqqa, not Aleppo).

My gut feeling is that the average American will come down on Johnson's side of this teapot tempest, for two reasons.

First, most Americans probably know little if anything about Aleppo and don't care to, so they can probably sympathize. Johnson's foreign policy focus as a presidential candidate is "big picture." He wants the US to stop militarily intervening everywhere around the world at the drop of a hat. He doesn't have to know the name of every city in the world to know that he doesn't want to bomb them.

Secondly, the question was transparently framed as an ambush. Barnicle's obvious intent was to try and get a Dan Quayle or George W. Bush type howler or malapropism out of Johnson.

Any TV talking head who queried Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump on the subject would do so roughly as follows:

"Moving on to Syria: If elected, what is your plan to address the civil war there, destroy ISIS and bring peace to the region? And what do you think of reports of new chemical attacks in the country's largest city, Aleppo, where fighting between regime forces and ISIS has flared up again?"

Not: "What would you do if you were elected about Aleppo?"

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Fix U.S. Law Against Torture -- It's Now or Never

Our laws have human consequences. The actions and rhetoric of our political leaders prove we can no longer trust them to interpret the vague definition of torture written into current U.S. law. It is vital that we clarify our law against torture to guarantee that it can never be distorted or circumvented again.



Protest against George W. Bush speaking at Beth El synagogue in St. Louis Park

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The Republican nominee for president of the United States has repeated his call for the use of torture to punish terrorists because, "They chop off heads and they drown people in cages with 50 in a cage in big steel heavy cages"" To quote Donald Trump, "Would I approve waterboarding? You bet your ass I would. In a heartbeat. I would approve more than that. It works." The Republican candidate then added, ""and if it doesn't work, they deserve it anyway for what they do to us."

The United States of America is one election away from swearing in a president who considers torture an acceptable punishment and a means of revenge. He advocates dropping our national morality down to the level of ISIS and Al-Qaeda, villains who have no regard for human life or human dignity. He plans to ignore international law and treaties. His speeches imply that he will carry-on the legacy of President George W. Bush, who was the first president of the United States to formally authorize torture.

It is disingenuous to say that one cannot make an unambiguous definition of torture. Reasonable people know torture when they see it, but it is necessary to declare it clearly in the law to avoid the trickery we've witnessed in the past. President Obama signed an executive order to limit interrogation techniques to those included in the Army Field Manual. This limitation could be overturned by a future president with the stroke of a pen. We must make it impossible for future administrations to go around the law by amending the United States Code to add subparagraph (2) (E) under "Title 18--Crimes and Criminal Procedure, Chapter 113C--Torture, -2340, Definitions."

Here is a proposed wording for the new paragraph:

(2)(E) The following acts are always torture: water boarding or other means of preventing a person from normal breathing, forced nudity, shackling a person's hands above their heads, sleep deprivation, subjecting a person to extreme temperatures, confinement in a box, slamming a person into a wall, sexual humiliation, threatening a person with animals or insects, stress positions (pain positions), withholding food, withholding medical attention, withholding toilet and washing facilities, solitary confinement, subjecting a person to loud noises or loud music, sensory deprivation, slapping, water-dousing, standing for long periods, electric shock and rape.

Every human being, no matter who they are or what they've done, has an absolute right to be free from torture. We should never ask anyone in our armed forces, police forces or any other government position, to perform acts of torture -- ever.

[Video: Audience Applauds Bush for Using Torture.]

More articles by Joseph Suste:

Do Americans Want a Strongman for President?

It's Time to Update United States Law on Torture
Reprinted from Palestine Chronicle

Division within Palestinian society has reached unprecedented levels, becoming a major hurdle on the path of any unified strategy to end Israel's violent occupation or to rally Palestinians behind a single objective.

Newly-appointed Israeli ultra-nationalist Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman understands this too well. His tactic since his ascension to office last May is centered on investing more in these divisions as a way to break down Palestinian society even further.

Lieberman is an "extremist," even if compared with the low standards of the Israeli military. His past legacy was rife with violent and racist declarations. His more recent exploits include taking on the late Mahmoud Darwish, Palestine's most celebrated poet. He went as far as comparing Darwish's poetry -- which advocates the freedom of his people -- to Adolph Hitler's autobiography, Mein Kampf.

But, of course, this is not Lieberman's most outrageous statement.

Lieberman's past provocations are plenty. Fairly recently, in 2015, he threatened to behead with an ax Palestinian citizens of Israel if they are not fully loyal to the "Jewish state," advocated the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian citizens of Israel, and made a death ultimatum to former Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh.

Outrageous statements aside, Lieberman's latest ploy, however, is the most outlandish yet. Israel's defense minister is planning to color-code Palestinian communities in the Occupied West Bank, dividing them into green and red, where green is "good" and red is "bad"; accordingly, the former shall be rewarded for their good behavior, while the latter collectively punished, even if just one member of that community dares to resist the Israeli occupation army.

A version of this plan was attempted nearly 40 years ago, but utterly failed. The fact that such appalling thinking is occurring well into the 21st century without being accompanied by international uproar is baffling.

Lieberman's color-codes will be accompanied by a campaign to resurrect the "Village Leagues," another failed Israeli experiment to impose an "alternative" Palestinian leadership by "engaging" Palestinian "notables," not democratically-elected leaders.

Lieberman's solution is to manufacture a leadership, which, like the Village Leagues of the 1970s and 80s, will, most certainly, be regarded as collaborators and traitors by the wider Palestinian society.

But what is the "Village Leagues" exactly and will it work this time around?

In October 1978, elected Palestinian mayors, joined by town councilors and various nationalist institutions, began a campaign of mass mobilization under the umbrella of the National Leadership Committee, whose main objective was to challenge the Camp David Treaty -- signed between Egypt and Israel -- and its political consequences of marginalizing Palestinians.

At the time, the movement was the most elaborate and united network of Palestinians ever assembled in the Occupied Territories. Israel immediately cracked down on the mayors, union leaders and nationalists of various professional institutions.

The national response was insisting on the unity of Palestinians in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, among Christians and Muslims, and Palestinians at home and in "shattat," or the Diaspora.

The Israeli response was equally firm. Starting 2 July 1980, an assassination campaign against the democratically-elected mayors ensued.

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Television is not so much interested in the business of communications as in the business of delivering audiences to advertisers. People are the merchandise, not the shows. The shows are merely the bait. That's how former Ohio Rep. Les Brown put it. And he was dead right and on the doggone money. In today's media-driven world the United States Presidential Elections is the show, and the national polls, conducted by these media houses, are the bait -- and switch.

So, maybe it was a slow news cycle after the recent Labor Day. Or maybe the mainstream media salivating over the billions of dollars still lying around in this US Presidential Election cycle just could not help themselves. When CNN announced that its latest polls showed the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in a "virtual dead heat" and that both we "tied" if the elections were held that day, everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, went berserk and into an acute state of panic. People were glued to TV screens to see if they were any answers to the question: "how did this happen?"

Indeed, the very picture, or nightmare, conjured up by these poll numbers, of a President Trump in the White House, sent many a Hillary Clinton supporter reflexively rushing into the nearest restroom suffering an immediate and acute attack of panic diarrhea and nausea. That the corporate news networks routinely do this EVERY presidential election cycle in modern times still do not make these spontaneous stomach attacks and reactions any easier.

Swooping down from its hidden orifices in the opaque clouds, the clawing, hacking Trumpite bird of prey came flashing into the public optical sphere and consciousness with a two-point lead over Hillary Clinton. People cried, I believe, others shuddered involuntarily, and political pundits and media-created talkocracy, searched the far recesses of their collective and feeble brains for answers to this astounding and baffling "new news" development. They went on national television, affecting an air of sagely know-it-all, offering all manner of grim forebodings, political doomsday scenarios, and "what ifs" to an already malleable, "softened and receptive" populace.

Ah, the American corporate media and its legion of gullible believers. My reaction? Really? Where the hell did this come from all of a sudden? CNN and a carefully selected "polling" outfit came up with these "results" and presented them to the American people as "proof" that an enabled Donald Trump was "winning." But who or what is Opinion Research Corporation (ORC) the polling organization that CNN singled out for partnering with to come up with these astounding poll results? First, ORC is a demographic, health, and Market Research company based in New Jersey. Second, The company's expertise is focused in the areas of consumer engagement strategies, market planning & development, employee engagement, corporate brand & reputation management, competitive intelligence and, on-demand business intelligence. [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_Research_Corporation]

Today, no matter which media news outlet is doing it, national polls are the modern political versions of "Nightmare on Elm Street." They are designed to induce shock, fear, and TV ratings that drive super-profits and revenues. So you poor suffering sods continue to hang on to every "recent poll" and experience the same panic, the same rush to the bathroom, and the same reflex action to regurgitate -- time after time. When will you ever learn? So, am I saying that these polls are deliberately fabricated, skewered? Is simply a corporate media invention to drive more advertising dollars to their greedy coffers? Yep, you're darn right I am. My proof? Let's examine the political math.

First, the math is about and based on the ELECTORAL COLLEGE and the number of votes needed to win the presidency of the United States. That number is 270. Second, let's do a Jeopardy! Session: ELECTORAL COLLEGE & US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS for $1,000. When each American voter casts a vote for a single candidate in which the candidate with the most votes wins, then the election procedure is called plurality rule. Many people in the United States think of plurality rule when they think about voting, because they cast a vote for a single candidate in many of the governmental elections, including the U.S. presidential election. But, the election for U.S. president is more complicated than plurality rule, as a candidate becomes the next president of the United States when he or she wins a majority, or 270 of the 538 electoral votes.

For starters, each state in the Union is assigned a number of electoral votes according to its population. The number of electoral votes is set at 538. Each state receives one electoral vote for the number of members it has in the US House of Representatives; this accounts for 435 of the 538 electoral votes. The number of representatives of a state is determined through apportionment that is a function of the U.S. Census population for the state. Accordingly, each state receives one electoral vote for each of its members of the Senate; this accounts for 100 electoral votes, as each state has two senators.

Finally, the District of Columbia has three electoral votes (as granted by the 23rd Amendment). In 48 of the 50 states and in the District of Columbia, the candidate who receives the most votes from its voters -- the plurality winner -- wins all of the electoral votes from that state. The two exceptions are Nebraska and Maine that do not use a winner-take-all system. Instead, these states allow for a split among the electoral votes according to the number of votes each candidate receives and how the votes are distributed.

Now on to the math based NOT on so called Republican "red states" or Democratic "blue states" -- so called safe states -- but on where the elections will be determined -- battleground or as I like to call them "swing states." So no matter what the CNN/ORC poll claims, on a national level the reality is that these polls account for diddley squat. The REAL place where Americans should be focused 60- days to November 8 is on these swing/battleground states.

Let me offer an objective and blunt electoral cautionary tale: Donald Trump, CNN/ ORC et all, could manufacture poll numbers, jigger results, and so everything to confuse and divide American voters but unless he wins Florida AND Pennsylvania he has NO PATH to the 270 Electoral College votes necessary and needed to win the White House.

That said, the followings is where Hillary Clinton leads (conservatively) in the polls (percentage points) against Donald Trump and her projected standing in terms of numbers in the Electoral College Vote (ECV):

Colorado: +4% = 9 ECV

Florida: +2% = 29 ECV

Michigan: +5% = 16 ECV

Minnesota: +5% = 10 ECV

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"Today's letter from top legal experts makes clear: ISDS undermines the American judicial system and tilts the playing field further in favor of big multinational corporations"

By Deirdre Fulton, staff writer



ISDS 'empowers companies to challenge laws and regulations they don't like,' says Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.

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More than 200 legal and economic scholars -- including President Barack Obama's Harvard Law School mentor Laurence Tribe -- have penned a letter to Congress warning that the pro-corporate Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) regime enshrined in the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) "threatens the rule of law and undermines our nation's democratic institutions."

As ISDS "threatens to dilute constitutional protections, weaken the judicial branch, and outsource our domestic legal system to a system of private arbitration that is isolated from essential checks and balances," the academics urge (pdf) lawmakers to reject the TPP, despite the Obama administration's full-court press to pass the trade agreement during the upcoming lame-duck session of Congress.

The signatories -- who also include Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, former California Supreme Court Justice Cruz Reynoso, and Columbia University Professor and UN Senior Adviser Jeffrey Sachs -- note that concerns they outlined in a March 2015 letter opposing the inclusion of ISDS provisions in the TPP and other multinational trade deals were ignored.

In fact, they write, "the final TPP text simply replicates nearly word for word many of the problematic provisions from past agreements, and indeed would vastly expand the U.S. government's potential liability under the ISDS system."

The letter continues:

"If the TPP text were approved by Congress, we would not only be entrenching this inherently flawed mechanism, but significantly expanding it. "[...] In recent years, corporations have challenged a wide range of environmental, health, and safety regulations, fiscal policies, bans on toxins, denials of permits including for toxic waste dumps, moratoria on extraction of natural resources, measures taken in response to financial crises, court decisions on issues ranging from the scope of intellectual property rights to the resolution of bankruptcy claims, policy decisions on privatizations of prisons and healthcare, and efforts to combat tax evasion, among others. Nearly 700 cases have been filed against approximately 100 governments over the past few years. There were 50 known ISDS cases launched in the regime's first three decades combined. But the number of cases has soared in recent years. According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), in 2015 alone, 70 ISDS cases were launched -- more than in any previous year."

"Today's letter from top legal experts makes clear: ISDS undermines the American judicial system and tilts the playing field further in favor of big multinational corporations," said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who has argued many of the same points.

"This provision empowers companies to challenge laws and regulations they don't like," Warren said on Wednesday, "with friendly corporate lawyers instead of judges deciding their disputes. Congress should not approve a TPP agreement that includes ISDS."

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Can the Growing Number of Government-Rebel Reconciliation Agreements End the Bloodshed in Syria?

Al-Moaddamiyeh, Damascus Countryside, Syria. By Franklin Lamb.

September 8, 2016 was a long hot tense day at the border-crossing at al-Moaddamiyeh, at town roughly ten kilometers southwest of Damascus. Approximately 135 Syrian soldiers and 35 volunteers from the Syrian Arab Red Crescent Society (SARCS) evacuated more than 300, mainly civilians, who have spent the past more than four years trapped, two years in Daraya and nearly three next door in al-Moaddamiyeh. Several reporting that sometimes they had nothing to eat but grass.



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[Photo Above: The gentleman above with his family of four daughters fought the Syrian army hard for nearly five years. While apprehensive to say the least, he claims to be a moderate and that Islam had nothing to do with his participation in the fighting. He is willing to give up his fight, board a bus to the Harjalleh area settlement facility south of Damascus and work on getting his children in school when classes start late this month. If he succeeds it will be for the first time in four years any of his lovely children have attended school. (Photo: Paola Nurnberg 9/8/2016)]

The evacuation was the latest one agreed to between rebel forces and the Syrian government and implemented according to President Assad's Amnesty Decree no. 15 issued on July 28, 2016. Another 700 were evacuated from nearby Daraya per a similar agreement achieved on August 25. At least half of dozen similar evacuations from rebel areas are reportedly being negotiated between rebels and the government.

Many of the more than 303 evacuees from the rebel area, a majority being young children who appeared weak, frightened and dazed, waited nearly four to five hours or more to board the waiting buses for the makeshift center set up for them in Harjalleh area in Damascus countryside where in addition to being housed, they will receive medical care and given relief supplies. They will be free to go and come to their new shelters as they wish.



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[Photo Above: Thirty-five Syrian Arab Red Crescent Society (SARCS) volunteers were of critical help to many of the emaciated countrymen boarding SARCS busses with their life possessions moving to the south Damascus resettlement area. (Photo: Franklin Lamb (9/8/2016)]

Among those leaving al-Moaddamiyeh were 62 rebel fighters, a few of whom this observer spoke freely with and who opted to settle their legal status with the government per decree No. 15, noted above. The ceasefire is a bitter landmark for many of the young men pictured below. Some protested as early as 2011 and have fought in the "revolution" until now.



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In his book about President John F. Kennedy, A Question of Character, Professor Thomas C. Reeves draws a distinction between personality and character, finding that the shallowness of a charming personality can conceal harmful and destructive character defects. He wrote that "Good character is an essential framework for the complex mixture of qualities that make an outstanding President and a model leader for a democratic people. Character is a question of values, inclinations, and judgment, all of which are brought to bear in the day-to-day work of leadership."

The job of the President of the United States is to make decisions, and those decisions affect not only the lives of millions of Americans, but the future and well-being of billions of people around the world. President George W. Bush called himself the "Decider-in-Chief," but obstinately incurious and lacking empathy, the poor decisions he made cost untold lives in the Middle East, and the death and maiming of thousands of young American troops in an illegal and unjustified war that continues to this day.

Electoral politics are morally challenging for politicians and for those who vote for them. Candidates compromise and avoid taking positions in order to offend the least number of voters and to attract the greatest number of votes. Forced to choose between a limited slate of candidates, voters have to carefully balance the political philosophy, knowledge, experience, and intelligence of the candidates with their perceived morality.

The manner in which candidates tout their own abilities--and disparage those who oppose them--is a good gauge of their essential character. Do they tell the truth about themselves and their opponents? Are they humble or arrogant? Do they have empathy for others? Where do they get their money? Are they someone you would personally trust with the wealth and health of your immediate family?

Once representatives are elected and begin to exercise their discretion, the long-lasting quality and value of their decisions--and whether they benefit those who elect them--depends to a large extent upon their character. While the art of obfuscation and misrepresentation may play a role in getting the job in the first place, the character trait of intellectual and moral honesty is the best measure of whether decisions will be made for the voters, or for those to who paid for the campaign.

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, the major-party nominees in the 2016 election-- which is predicted to cost more than $3 billion dollars--are among the least respected in the history of presidential politics. Failures to tell the truth and to appreciate the harmful effect of their lying is a primary character flaw in both candidates. Given the fact that Clinton and Trump are generally distrusted by most voters, the electoral strategy of both candidates is to convince people to vote against the character of the other person. With the candidates spending millions of dollars on negative advertising, their campaigns are becoming increasingly nasty and their words less trustworthy with each utterance.

For good reasons, a vast majority of the American People do not believe either candidate has the character to make decisions on their behalf in the future. Nonetheless, one or the other will be elected in November, and the decisions she or he makes will be extraordinarily influenced by the vast amounts of money flowing to them from individuals and corporations with interests that differ from those who actually cast the votes. What choices do the voters have?

While people are being urged that a vote for the lesser of two evils is the only way to go, there is another path. A sizeable vote for third-party candidates would represent a sea change in presidential politics. Long thought to be the best method to govern the Nation, the two-party system no longer works--as the two parties have stopped compromising and no longer legislate or administer the government for the public good. Some people fear that a vote for a third-party candidate might benefit the candidate they most dislike; however, a ballot of conscience will not be wasted if enough people have the courage to vote their interests, rather than their fears. Certainly, it is better than not voting at all.

Republicans who are unwilling to support Trump should consider voting for Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party candidate. Formerly serving as the Republican governor of the small state of New Mexico and more recently as the CEO of Cannabis Sativa, Inc. (a marketer of marijuana products), he presents himself as fiscally conservative, socially liberal, and opposed to military interventions.

Democrats opposed to Clinton should consider voting for Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate. A medical doctor, she favors "a people movement to end unemployment and poverty; avert climate catastrophe; build a sustainable, just economy; and recognize the dignity and human rights of every person."

Given the social and political realities, it will be impossible for Johnson or Stein to obtain an Electoral College majority in November; however, together, they could attract enough votes to deny a majority to either Clinton or Trump.

Having the House of Representatives select the next president and the Senate choose the vice president would be chaotic, but perhaps no more so than a nasty election fueled by $3 billion in negative advertising. Given the increased power of the Green and Libertarian parties--especially if they can successfully elect congressional representatives--the need for negotiation and compromise in the selection of national leaders could set the stage for more effective governance in the future.

The appearance of four or more parties that more closely represent their constituencies--and which are encouraged to negotiate and compromise in achieving effective legislation that actually addresses the needs of the entire electorate--may present opportunities for more candidates who possess the moral character to serve as president.

Americans will have to live with their choices in the 2016 election, but if nothing else, the election clearly demonstrates that something must be done to transform the government of the United States into one that serves its People, rather than those who buy their representatives. This will require changes to the Constitution, and the only comprehensive proposal currently being circulated is the U.S. Voters' Rights Amendment (USVRA). Widespread public disgust with the 2016 election may provide the motivation for its serious consideration.

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Reprinted from Robert Reich Blog

What can be done to deter pharmaceutical companies from jacking up prices of critical drugs? To prevent Wall Street banks from excessive gambling? To nudge CEOs into taking a longer-term view? To restrain runaway CEO pay?

Answer to all four: Fulfill Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign pledge.

When he ran for president, Bill Clinton said he'd bar companies from deducting executive pay above $1 million. Once elected, he asked his economic advisers (among them, yours truly) to put the measure into his first budget.

My colleagues weren't exactly enthusiastic about the new president's campaign promise. "Maybe there's some way we can do this without actually limiting executive pay," one said.

"Look, we're not limiting executive pay," I argued. "Companies could still pay their executives whatever they wanted to pay them. We're just saying society shouldn't subsidize through the tax code any pay over a million bucks."

They weren't convinced.

"Why not require that pay over a million dollars be linked to company performance?" said another. "Executives have to receive it in shares of stock or stock options, that sort of thing. If no linkage, no deduction."

"Good idea," a third chimed in. "It's consistent with what the President promised, and it won't create flak in the business community."

"But," I objected, "we're not just talking about shareholders. The pay gap is widening in this country, and it affects everybody."

"Look, Bob," said the first one. "We shouldn't do social engineering through the tax code And there's no reason to declare class warfare. I think we've arrived at a good compromise. I propose that we recommend it to the President."

The vote was four to one. The measure became section 162(m) of the IRS tax code. It was supposed to cap executive pay. But it just shifted executive pay from salaries to stock options.

After that, not surprisingly, stock options soared -- becoming by far the largest portion of CEO pay.

When Bill Clinton first proposed his plan, compensation for CEOs at America's 350 largest corporations averaged $4.9 million. By the end of the Clinton administration, it had ballooned to $20.3 million. Since then, it's gone into the stratosphere.

And because corporations can deduct all this from their corporate income taxes, you and I and other taxpayers have been subsidizing this growing bonanza.

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Duluth, Minnesota (OpEdNews) September 9, 2016: Tom Wolfe (born in 1931; Ph.D. in American Studies, Yale University, 1957) is a fashionable prose stylist and satirist. In his new book The Kingdom of Speech, he gently spoofs Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory and Noam Charisma's linguistics theory. For his irreverent spoofs, Tom Wolfe may be banished -- or worse! -- by the political-correctness police, because they do not like to have their secular sacred cows spoofed -- especially by one of their fellow atheists.

But what could the political-correctness police say or do to Tom Wolfe that would be worse than banishing him from the ranks of respectable secular intellectuals? Perhaps they could say that Tom Wolfe is really a closet conservative. In fact, that would be sufficient to banish him. After all, he is a southerner (born and raised in Richmond, Virginia). And he studied English at Yale University at a time when the southerner Cleanth Brooks, who distinguished himself as a Faulkner scholar, was a big shot in English at Yale. So perhaps Tom Wolfe is culturally a conservative southern agrarian, not a Yankee industrialist, eh?

Years ago now, the Canadian Catholic convert Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980; Ph.D. in English, Cambridge University, 1943), aligned himself in spirit with the southern agrarians in his article "The Southern Quality," which is reprinted in the book The Interior Landscape: The Literary Criticism of Marshall McLuhan 1943-1962 McGraw-Hill, 1969, pages 185-209).

Years ago now, after McLuhan had published his books The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (University of Toronto Press, 1962) and Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (McGraw-Hill, 1964), Tom Wolfe helped propel him to extraordinary fame by publishing his article "What if He [Marshall McLuhan] is Right?" which is reprinted in Tom Wolfe's book The Pump House Gang (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1968, pages 133-170).

Of course the political-correctness crowd today does not think that Marshall McLuhan is right. For them, he represents one road not taken. But what if Tom Wolfe today still suspects that Marshall McLuhan is right? Wouldn't this help explain why he is spoofing certain sacred cows of the political-correctness crowd? Wouldn't this be sufficient reason for him to risk the wrath of the political-correctness crowd?

Now, Tom Wolfe is not the only person today who is offending against the spirit of political correctness. The developer Donald J. Trump of New York, the Republican Party's 2016 presidential candidate, has garnered an enormous amount of free media coverage of various things he has deliberately said to offend the spirit of political correctness. And he has a fervent base of white middle-class male supporters cheering him on in his assault on the spirit of political correctness. But Trump's fervent supporters do not strike me as likely to read Tom Wolfe's new book, even though he gently spoofs certain secular sacred cows.

Because OEN's Rob Kall has alerted us to bottom-up versus top-down imagery, perhaps we should note here that Trump's fervent white middle-class male supporters see the secular intellectuals in the political-correctness crowd as engaging in top-down social and political change -- to the detriment of their economic and social standing.

Historically in American culture, intellectuals have play a big role. So perhaps top-down political and social change is part of our American heritage, eh?

Now, in Tom Wolfe's estimate, Jesus is one of the six most influential people in world history (page 165). Charles Darwin is another one of the six, but, alas, Noam Chomsky is not.

Tom Wolfe even paraphrases certain points from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, which he characterizes as "the most radical social and political doctrine ever promulgated (page 166). No doubt many Christian believers today would agree with his assessment.

But don't Noam Charisma and the political-correctness crowd fancy themselves as promulgating "the most radical social and political doctrine" in contemporary American culture? You bet, they do. In addition, they tend to see themselves as pitted against Christian and other religious believers. Their secular spirit could be summed up in the rallying cry, "Atheists of the world, unite!"

Unfortunately for the atheists, religionists in American culture still outnumber them by a wide margin, and American religionists tend to be organized at the grassroots level into activist cells known as churches and synagogues and mosques and the like -- some of which tend to be more conservative in terms of social and political doctrine, while others tend to be more liberal and progressive.

However, in terms of contemporary American culture, it is hard to imagine the rallying cry, "Religionists of the world, unite!" Of course in terms of contemporary world culture, it is also hard to imagine the rallying cry, "Religionists of the world, unite!"

But not so long ago, the official anti-religion position of communism did evoke widespread anti-communism in American culture and world culture. Fortunately for contemporary American culture, our idealistic atheist intellectuals/activists under the influence of Noam Charisma and other charismatic leaders have not yet managed to evoke a widespread response as strong as anti-communism hysteria once was in American culture. Nevertheless, the secularists are working on it.

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As the 2016 presidential election enters its final phase, Hillary Clinton has a slight lead over Donald Trump. While it's still possible for Trump to win, this is unlikely to happen because of four traps he has set for himself.

The latest Huffington Post Poll of Polls shows Clinton leading Trump by five percentage points. The current NBC news poll shows Clinton with 272 electoral votes versus 174 for Trump.

On November 8th Trump will lose because of four traps:

1. Alienating people-of-color. Given Trump's history as a "birther" and his track record of discrimination against African-Americans, it's no surprise that Trump is losing the black vote; one poll shows him with zero African-American support.

Nonetheless, Trump could have garnered some Hispanic support if he had taken a more traditional Republican position on immigration. Instead Trump chose to take an extreme position, calling Mexican immigrants, "killers and rapists." Even when give a chance to moderate his position on what to with the 11 million undocumented immigrants currently in the US, Trump time and again has taken the stance: "They all have to leave." Predictably, Hispanic voters have turned against Trump. The most recent poll shows Clinton getting 70 percent of the Latino vote and Trump getting 19 percent. This has put Trump behind in the polls in Colorado, Florida, and Nevada; and it has put into play once safe Republican states such as Arizona and Texas.

2. Alienating women. Pew Research estimates that 31 percent of the 2016 electorate will be "Hispanic, black, Asian, or another racial or ethnic minority." Trump is not only losing with these voters, he is also losing with women. According to 2012 presidential-election-exit polls, 53 percent of voters were women.

Trump has a history of misogyny. As a consequence, female voters favor Clinton. A recent poll found that women favor Clinton over Trump by 24 percentage points.

3. Disdaining to raise money. Trump began the Republican primary season by proclaiming that he was the ultimate outsider and bragging that he would self fund his campaign. Once he secured the Republican nomination, he kept the outsider mantle but announced (sotto voce) that he would accept donations from his adherents.

Trump's problem is that he isn't willing -- or able -- to pay for his entire presidential campaign and he hasn't raised enough money to keep up with Hillary Clinton. The result is a campaign that is massively underfunded. As of August 22nd, Clinton's combined campaign had raised $435 million and Trump's combined campaign had raised $137 million. (For the month of August, Clinton reported raising $143 million while Trump just reported raising approximately $90 million.)

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Bring Bernie Back! With Hillary Clinton now "sick" and other emerging negatives threatening her election, it is time to bring Bernie back rather than to allow the Democrat leadership to select one of their good old boys -- as has already been leaked. Tuesday, September 13, 2016With Hillary Clinton now "sick" and other emerging negatives threatening her election, it is time to bring Bernie back rather than to allow the Democrat leadership to select one of their good old boys -- as has already been leaked.

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All Ready for the Next War No need to wait for the lies to justify our next war. We're already ready. Thursday, September 8, 2016No need to wait for the lies to justify our next war. We're already ready.

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They Got Manning. They Will Get Snowden They will get Snowden because of their need to get him, born of their insatiable power lust. Sunday, June 16, 2013They will get Snowden because of their need to get him, born of their insatiable power lust.

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Norway's 911. And the Reaction? The latest casualty report of the massacre in Norway stands at 92. Our hearts go out to this beautiful frigid country. One can only hope that Norwegians will react to their catastrophe more sensibly, humanely, honestly and morally than has been the American experience. Sunday, July 24, 2011The latest casualty report of the massacre in Norway stands at 92. Our hearts go out to this beautiful frigid country. One can only hope that Norwegians will react to their catastrophe more sensibly, humanely, honestly and morally than has been the American experience.

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Demopublicans or Republicrats? Americans have been betrayed by the charade of a two-party system ascending for the past thirty years, with our government (un)progressively and treacherously managing America for the benefit of the privileged. It's past time for a change, change not possible under the conjoined forces of the Democrats and Republicans. Thursday, July 21, 2011Americans have been betrayed by the charade of a two-party system ascending for the past thirty years, with our government (un)progressively and treacherously managing America for the benefit of the privileged. It's past time for a change, change not possible under the conjoined forces of the Democrats and Republicans.

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The Excrement Pipeline There appears to be no end in sight for the propaganda supporting the War of Lies. Tuesday, July 5, 2011There appears to be no end in sight for the propaganda supporting the War of Lies.

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Addressing Eleven Years of War, Lies, and Bipartisan Corruption America's political leadership is bipartisanly corrupt and indentured to powerful moneyed interests. It is time for correction, the only issue being what means will be employed. Wednesday, June 22, 2011America's political leadership is bipartisanly corrupt and indentured to powerful moneyed interests. It is time for correction, the only issue being what means will be employed.

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Democrats: Beware the Loss of the "Lesser-Evil" Choice It seems that the labor movement is catching on to the "lesser-evil" copout. The Dems may need to exercise some integrity (Wow!) now to convince voters that they'llactually stand by them once they pull the Dem lever. Saturday, May 28, 2011It seems that the labor movement is catching on to the "lesser-evil" copout. The Dems may need to exercise some integrity (Wow!) now to convince voters that they'llactually stand by them once they pull the Dem lever.

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"Lesser-Evil" is Too Evil -- An Entrapment We Must Trash Americans desperately need to grasp the notion that it is possible, if enough of us can muster the insight and integrity, to get beyond the bipartisan proposition that our choice is limited to one of only two parties, that "third parties always fail," and that we'll be the more damned if we do not support the "lesser-evil" choice. Monday, May 16, 2011Americans desperately need to grasp the notion that it is possible, if enough of us can muster the insight and integrity, to get beyond the bipartisan proposition that our choice is limited to one of only two parties, that "third parties always fail," and that we'll be the more damned if we do not support the "lesser-evil" choice.

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Civilization in Reverse, History Going Backwards It is beyond understanding, past comprehension how Americans can tolerate our wretched warring, greed-driven, treacherous government. Will we awaken soon enough to employ a political solution, or await the necessity employed by our founders, that of revolution? Friday, April 29, 2011It is beyond understanding, past comprehension how Americans can tolerate our wretched warring, greed-driven, treacherous government. Will we awaken soon enough to employ a political solution, or await the necessity employed by our founders, that of revolution?

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The Evil of the Lesser-Evil Choice The "Lesser-Evil" choice serves only to fortify the bipartisan government's indenture to the same moneyed masters. Tuesday, April 26, 2011The "Lesser-Evil" choice serves only to fortify the bipartisan government's indenture to the same moneyed masters.

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Two-Party Con Job Too many good Americans have been conned by the propaganda that it is futile to raise a political voice outside the two-party "system." Friday, April 22, 2011Too many good Americans have been conned by the propaganda that it is futile to raise a political voice outside the two-party "system."

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Real Democrat Needed, or Something Else Democrats, even some incumbents, are starting to whisper that different leadership will be needed to win in 2012. Ignoring this message could invite their defeat. Saturday, April 16, 2011Democrats, even some incumbents, are starting to whisper that different leadership will be needed to win in 2012. Ignoring this message could invite their defeat.

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by Sen. Doug Whitsett

Our state governments spending addiction and our failing public school system are Oregons two most serious and pervasive problems.

According to the Taxpayer Association of Oregon, this is the number one tax-and-spend state in the West. In fact, we spend more taxpayer dollars per capita than all but ten other states.

About half of our discretionary revenue is spent on pre-k-16 public education. But despite the immense cost, our K-12 system has one of the worst performance records in the nation. By any measure, homeschoolers, private schools, and even most charter schools, are performing much better. They outperform our public schools, even though they receive significantly less, or often no, outside funding.

Without a doubt, the breakdown of family and personal values contributes to the failure of our public schools. Many Oregon public educators are quick to blame the public school systems failures on this very real and insidious malady. However, the abdication of parent responsibility is neither restricted to Oregon, nor to certain communities.

So why are Oregon public schools doing so much worse than schools in other states?

First and foremost, our public schools are government-sanctioned monopolies that are operated by public employee unions primarily for the benefit of their members. Oregon has taken this reality to a new art form. Public school performance wont improve until union control is addressed.

In my opinion, a three-pronged effort is needed to begin to address the scope of the problem.

First, we need to amend our Constitution to establish Oregon as a right-to-work state. The amendment must originate by initiative petition and be enacted by the people. Under its current leadership, I believe our Legislative Assembly will never change the current law because it is dependent upon, and beholden to, public employee union money.

Next, we must break the government-sanctioned monopoly by introducing competition in how education services are delivered to the public. Competition can best be created by channeling education funding to follow the individual student, rather than flowing directly to the school district. Several methods are available, including creating education vouchers, education tax credits and education savings accounts. All of these methods have proven successful in other states such as Florida, where public school performance also improved measurably with competitive pressure.

Finally, we must provide school districts with teams of professional labor negotiators. Public school labor contracts are too often negotiated between professional union negotiating teams and school board members who have little or no labor negotiation experience.

The outcome is consistent and predictable. To no ones surprise, the union negotiators prevail virtually every time.

We must level that playing field by providing school districts with equally trained professional labor negotiators to offset the experience and expertise of these union labor teams.

Another question that begs answering is, Do Oregon public schools need more money, or do they need more accountability and better management?

In my opinion, school management is the most important influence in how well students perform. I represent Senate District 28, which encompasses about 20 percent of Oregons total landmass and has more than a dozen school districts. Some of those districts excel while others are not performing well.

The state school funding formula equalizes the amount of money each school district receives, plus or minus about $20 per student. High school graduation rates range between the mid-90s and the low-70s among the districts, even though they all receive about the same funding per student.

Good superintendents and principals require significantly different skills than good teachers. Yet the preponderance of school executives have been promoted from the ranks of Oregon teachers. Some, simply, are not adequately trained to do the job.

Both superintendents and principals must know state and federal laws and administrative rules, as they apply to education. But they must also understand financial management, academic curricula, labor negotiations, staff supervision, student and staff discipline, student transportation and the operation and maintenance of physical plants.

Oregon should focus on developing better trained school administrators to run our schools. The total administrative costs may actually be reduced, because good managers routinely need fewer subordinate managers to get the job done.

By any measure, our state school funding formula is flawed. It is based upon Average Daily Weighted Membership, wherein the formula sends a lot more money to the districts for certain kids, such as those living in poverty, English Language Learners and special needs students.

The funding formula functionally creates more than 120,000 phantom students. The amount of money provided to the districts is not based on the actual number of students attending school. Instead, it is calculated off this grossly inflated number of formula students.

Nearly 25 percent of the formula students only exist in Department of Education paperwork. The amount of money the districts receive for each student is inflated by about the same percentage.

Districts and schools are shamelessly gaming the funding formula. They all do it, because they get paid for skirting the rules.

Under state law, the formula caps the percentage of students that can be categorized as special education at 11 percent, with certain waiver exceptions. Whenever the district classifies a kid as special education it get paid twice as much.

The result is predictable. It is my understanding that virtually every school district in Oregon has at least the allowed percentage of special education students. This is not serendipity. Sadly, its often much easier, and more lucrative, to have a child diagnosed with a learning disorder than it is to enforce discipline.

The number of kids in poverty is even easier for the districts to inflate. It is largely calculated off of the number of kids receiving free lunches. Not surprisingly, many schools encourage all of their students to eat a free lunch.

No requirement exists for the districts to improve English Language Learner performance. In fact, there is no requirement that the districts even spend the money allocated for English Language Learners for that purpose. The longer it takes for a kid to learn English, the longer the schools receive the extra money. Schools are essentially getting paid to not improve their students language skills.

I believe the state school funding formula is so dysfunctional that it should be abolished. In the alternative, we must change the formula to require schools to actually spend the extra money they receive on the students who the formula targets. Additionally, schools must be required to meet some performance standard in order to continue collecting increased formula funding.

Currently, there are few such requirements. There is little accountability for how the extra money is spent. Districts and schools can, and do, spend the money pretty much any way they please.

We know that student school absenteeism is directly related to our abysmal graduation rates. Yet our public school system has no monetary incentive to improve attendance. The school funding formula pays school districts for the number of students that are enrolled. Whether students actually attend classes is pretty much irrelevant to how much the districts are paid.

We must change the state school funding formula from average daily membership, where the school gets paid for how many kids are enrolled, to average daily attendance, where the school gets paid for how many students are actually attending class. The new system would only pay each school for each day a student is in the classroom.

This single change was enormously effective for the Texas public school system. Within three years, that states high school graduation rate improved by nearly 20 percent. The number of students who subsequently enrolled in community colleges improved nearly as much. One of the school district that achieved the most improvement is located 12 miles from the Mexican border and has 32,000 students. Forty two percent of those students are English Language Learners and 70 percent are living in poverty.

One reason our education system has been failing is because we are perpetuating institutional absenteeism. Oregon students have experienced among the shortest school years in the nation as measured by minimum instructional time required per school year. Professional development, inclement weather, and even the supervision of breakfast and afternoon snacks, were often defined as instructional time.

Recently enacted laws and administrative rules were aimed at improving the minimum allowable school year. The percentage of students required to receive the minimum instruction time is being incrementally improved and some of the more egregious definitions of instructional time are being removed. Unfortunately, union labor negotiators continue bargaining student contact time by the minute.

School employees such as custodial workers and secretaries, who have been on the job longer, are often earning more than entry level teachers. Many entry level employees, as well as school bus drivers, are compensated nearly as much in benefits as they earn in wages. Unions have even been lobbying the Legislative Assembly in recent years to enact a law allowing school employees to receive unemployment insurance compensation during the summer months.

Both district and school administrations are often bloated with redundant staff. Too often, each task or specialty is delegated to yet another administrator. Virtually all administrators earn more than even experienced teachers.

Rather than addressing the cause of these runway costs, many school districts routinely react by shortening the school year. The start date is delayed, the school year is ended earlier and more days off are added to holidays such as Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years, as well as to Spring break. Institutional absenteeism is perpetuated.

To help resolve these issues, local school boards must have more help in negotiating their labor contracts. The current negotiations between professional union teams and elected school board members are heavily skewed in favor of the unions. The outcomes predictably favor the adults and hurt our kids.

Class attendance, by teachers, may be even more important than student attendance.

I do not mean to malign substitute teachers, but few substitutes are capable of maintaining the discipline, rhythm, daily lessons and substance of a teachers classroom plan. Too often, when the teacher misses a day in class, all of their students miss a day of instruction.

The current system of paid sick leave actually may incentivize teachers not to attend their classes. Because they are usually not required to substantiate an illness, they can use paid sick leave much like paid vacation. Moreover, under most contracts, teachers can only accumulate a certain amount of paid sick leave, so they must either use it or lose it.

School labor contracts regarding paid leave must be restructured to incentivize teachers to attend their classes. Each missed day of instruction costs about twice as much, because both the absent teacher and a substitute teacher are getting paid. More important, a class of students too often functionally misses another day of instruction.

Oregon public school teachers are generally paid by seniority, rather than by classroom performance. There are many very good experienced teachers who are worth every dollar they are paid. The trouble is that performance is irrelevant for tenured teachers. Some with the same amount of experience, who may not be effective, get paid the same amount. Worse, because of contractual seniority benefits, active young teachers are the first to be laid off, regardless of how well they perform in the classroom.

The union stranglehold must be broken by paying teachers commensurate with both their experience and classroom performance. I believe the best way to achieve this outcome is to test each class of students at both the beginning, and the end, of each school year. Teacher performance would be measured by how much student performance improves, in their class, during the school year. The system would be self-governing, because each new teacher will be checking the accuracy and honesty of the student evaluation by the last teacher. Their pay level would depend upon it.

Schools that maintain robust vocational student programs have significantly higher graduation rates. Many students, undeniably, learn better and more efficiently with hands-on experience. Yet Oregon schools are systematically eliminating vocational teaching. If we are serious about improving our public education outcomes, we must reestablish and prioritize our vocational teaching curricula.

The Teachers Standards and Practices Commissions (TSPC) mission is to establish, uphold and enforce professional standards of excellence and communicate those standards to the public and educators for the benefit of Oregon students. Sounds great, right?

In my opinion, this is Oregons must counterproductive state agency. TSPC does very little to benefit students because virtually every one of its licensing and regulatory functions is structured to protect its union members jobs. Its longstanding backlog for addressing complaints and discipline should be an embarrassment for all legislators. I believe TSPC should have been abolished years ago, and have voted against its budget for the past ten years.

Finally, the out-of-control cost of the Public Employee Retirement System (PERS) is eating school district budgets alive. PERS contribution rates for school districts are expected to increase by an average of 4.5 percent of payroll in 2017. The additional cost to Oregon public schools will be around $335 million. To put that huge amount of money into perspective, it is the equivalent of more than 2,000 fewer teachers, absent new funding.

The PERS actuaries are forecasting future additional increases that will be at least that big in both 2019 and 2021. Over the next six years, those cumulative increases will total more than $2 billion for Oregon school districts. All that spending will not hire a single teacher or counselor.

A number of corrective actions are available that our Legislative Counsel believes will withstand court challenges. My office recently produced a newsletter spelling out PERS problems and potential solutions that have been proposed by the Senate Republican Office.

Currently, Senators Tim Knopp (R-Bend) and Betsy Johnson (D-Scappoose) have independently formed a bipartisan work group to explore these, and other, remedies.

The first job of Oregon government should be to take action to fix our broken public education system. Unfortunately, the current political leaders appear to have no solution other than to throw more money at the problem.

Senator Doug Whitsett is the Republican state senator representing Senate District 28  Klamath Falls
From Greg Swank, 12-4-2 You are about to read a list of 45 goals that found their way down the halls of our great Capitol back in 1963. As...
The mathematical (and other) thoughts of a (now retired) math teacher,
The Electoral Commission (EC) of Ghanas identification of 81 constituencies out of the 275 as possible violent-prone areas well ahead of the December 7 polls is a good omen for Ghanas peace, Emmanuel Sowatey, a security expert, has said.



The chairperson of the EC, Mrs Charlotte Osei, speaking at a national colloquium on the security of the upcoming general election at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping and Training Centre at Teshie on Wednesday September 7, announced the identification of the flashpoints.



She revealed the EC had started a project, together with the Ghana Police Service, to map out all the polling stations in the country, especially those within the flashpoints, to ensure adequate security at all polling centres and the ECs regional offices.



Mrs Osei charged political leaders to take responsibility for the actions of their supporters to ensure a peaceful and transparent general election.



She further announced that policemen would be present during the printing of the ballot papers and also escort them to the polling centres. That, she said, was to ensure that there was adequate security at all polling centres.



She also gave an assurance that there would be adequate materials to ensure a smooth voting process.



Speaking in relation to this matter in an interview with Chief Jerry Forson, host of Ghana Yensom on Accra100.5FM on Thursday September 8, Mr Sowatey indicated that the early identification of the flash points presents a priceless opportunity for the security agencies to up their game in their preparations towards the polls.



He added that it would help police to decide which areas need more security officers to protect lives and properties before, during, and after the elections.



He said: The good news is that once you see the indicators early, you have adequate time to look for the actors (and) to look for ways to contain it. Normally the flashpoints have different levels of intensity I dont know what went into the categorisation of the flashpointbut we have different categories and those categories could cut across the constituencies.



[And so] it also helps because you can prepare ahead. It helps the security agencies know the number of police officers to be deployed to particular areas during the elections.

Source: classfmonline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Togbe Afede XIV, the Agbogbomefia of Asogli State, has assured the chiefs and people of Notse in the Republic of Togo of a peaceful general election in Ghana, in December.



I am very confident that we will come out more united, he said. We are a peace-loving people and I can assure you that the voice of the people will be respected.



The assurance by Togbe Afede followed an appeal by Togbui Agokoli IV, Ewefiaga of Notse, asking Ghanaians to be tolerant and conduct the December polls peacefully.



Togbui Agokoli, who is also the President of the Togolese National House of Chiefs, was addressing a grand durbar to climax this years Agbogboza of Ewes at Notse, which attracted Ewes from across the globe and some tourists and members of the diplomatic corps.



He urged the Ghanaian media, political parties and the Electoral Commission to work towards peace to safeguard Ghanas democratic credentials.



Togbe Afede expressed worry about election disputes and conflicts in the sub-region, which he noted were aggravating hunger and poverty on the continent.



He urged political leaders in Africa to shun greed and use the resources in their countries to create jobs, improve health and education.



Komi Selom Klassou, the Prime Minister of Togo, tasked young people on the continent to go into agriculture.





Source: The Ghanaian Times









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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First results from the EU-funded DACCIWA project have revealed that air quality in the West Africa region has been seriously affected by the burning of charcoal, rubbish and agricultural waste.

The project, which is investigating the influence of anthropogenic and natural emissions on the atmospheric composition over Western Africa and their influence on human and ecosystem health, examined the air over West Africa with the help of both research aircraft and ground stations.

'The air over the coastal region of West Africa is a unique mixture of various trace gasses, liquids and particles,' explains Professor Peter Knippertz of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), which is coordinating the project. 'At the same time, multi-layered cloud covers frequently form in the atmosphere and strongly influences local weather and climate.' The sources of these particles and gases are monsoon winds with sea salt from the south, Sahara winds with dust from the north, charcoal fires and burning rubbish from the cities of the region, as well as power plants, ship traffic, oil rigs and outdated engines.

West Africa is a rapidly urbanising region, recording some of the fastest growing population figures on Earth. Coupled with this explosive urban growth, unregulated deforestation in many countries within the region was found to be having a highly detrimental impact on both the weather and general air quality.

Coordinating the campaign

The project team recently coordinated a measurement campaign to study the entire chain of impacts of natural and anthropogenic emissions on the West African atmosphere. In June and July 2016, three research aircraft, the Falcon of the German Aerospace Center (DLR), the Twin Otter propeller plane 'Ice Cold Katy' of the British Antarctic Survey, and the ATR of the Service des Avions Francais Instrumentes pour la Recherche en Environnement (SAFIRE), flew targeted missions over West Africa. The different aircraft were used in different ways based on their strengths, but all three had a comparable instrumentation generating a rich set of reference data.

Air pollution does not stay where it is produced, but extends inland by up to 300 kilometres. For this reason, the aircraft followed the plumes of the big coastal cities of Accra, Abidjan, Lome, and Cotonou on their way from the coast towards the inland forests, savannahs, and the Sahara. For the campaign, the scientists also set up three highly instrumented measuring sites inland. They measured urban emissions and evaluated health data. KIT climate researchers were mainly active in Save, Benin, where they used the 'KITcube' measurement platform.

The observation system integrates instruments for all relevant meteorological parameters and can measure a 'cube' with an edge length of about ten kilometres as a part of the atmosphere. In parallel, a large weather balloon campaign was coordinated in four West African countries. Optimal planning of the measurement flights and balloon launches was based on special forecasts with the COSMO-ART model developed by KIT.

'Surprisingly, first results show that the plumes contain large fractions of organic materials,' commented Knippertz. This finding points towards the burning of charcoal, rubbish, and agricultural waste at low temperature. The particles from these fires lead to a considerable haziness in the atmosphere. Less sunshine reaches the ground, thereby changing the daily patterns of temperature, wind, and clouds. Moreover, the air particles modify the formation of clouds and raindrops in the clouds.

The five-year project, which is due to end in November 2018, will continue to study the impacts of atmospheric composition on cloud formation and air quality in West Africa, evaluate the data measured, and develop a new generation of climate and weather models. Work is also aimed at making more precise prognoses for West Africa. The project team also want to ensure that project results could be transferable for use in other regions of the world.

Explore further Fires pollute the air in West Africa

More information: Project website: Project website: www.dacciwa.eu/
Global map of active Internet subnetworks for the year 2012. This material relates to a paper that appeared in the Sept. 9, 2016, issue of Science, published by AAAS. The paper, by N.B. Weidmann at University of Konstanz in Konstanz, Germany, and colleagues was titled, " Digital discrimination: Political bias in Internet service provision across ethnic groups." Credit: Map by Nils B. Weidmann, background from Natural Earth

The internet may be a great source of empowerment for the disenfranchised - if they're allowed to have it. A new study that examined the internet access of excluded ethnic groups within countries found that groups subjected to political exclusion were significantly less likely to have internet access.

The findings published in the journal Science show that internet access, like other valuable resources, can be controlled politically and distributed unfairly.

In some ways, the internet has opened educational and political opportunities to people who otherwise have limited access to resources. Once-inaccessible documents can now be found with a click or a tap; individuals with common cause can find one another online and foster political movements. Current events seem to back up that idea, the scientists noted.

"In the wake of the Arab Spring, the internet has often been portrayed as a 'liberation technology,'" the study authors wrote. "Specifically, it has been argued that the internet fosters transparency and accountability of nondemocratic governments."

But this idea assumes that those marginalized people, those who might stand to benefit the most from internet access, are getting that access in the first place. The scientists wondered if, within nations, the politically marginalized groups could be getting left behind.

"Research in political science (including mine) now looks increasingly at the more pernicious effects, such as government censorship and online propaganda," lead author Nils Weidmann, a political science professor at the University of Konstanz in Germany, said in an email.

There are two main ways this might happen, they explained. Ethnic groups who hold political power might push for economic and technological improvements in their home regions, at the expense of others. But governments might also be actively preventing certain communities from getting access to this technology in order to prevent those groups from mobilizing politically.

"In most developing countries, governments are the major, if not the only, provider of telecommunication services," the study authors wrote. "At the same time, in many of these countries, politics operates along ethnic lines, so that one or more groups hold political power at the expense of other, marginalized ones. This allows internet technology to be implemented in a way that benefits certain groups while neglecting others."

To find out if this was the case, the researchers looked to the Ethnic Power Relations database, which logs politically relevant groups and their access to state power from 1946 to 2005. (This includes both the groups that have wielded power and those that have found themselves subject to it.)

Then they estimated internet availability among those groups by pinpointing active internet subnetworks, which account for roughly 256 internet addresses apiece. This simplified the process by reducing the amount of data they had to process and also eliminated certain privacy issues that crop up with studying individual IP addresses.

The researchers controlled for a number of different factors that could affect ethnic groups' internet access, including level of development, geographic location and urban versus rural settings. They looked at nighttime light emissions, which have recently been linked to an area's economic performance and, on a local scale, the level of wealth. They also included indicators of terrain ruggedness and distance from the national capital to factor in geographical inaccessibility.

The scientists found that ethnic groups who were excluded from political power had only about 60 percent of the internet access that favored groups did.

"We were not entirely surprised," Weidmann said of the results. "We know from existing research that politically excluded groups also suffer from other disadvantages - for example, they tend to have a lower level of development, infrastructure, etc. ... The digital disadvantage we identify is just another aspect where this plays out."

After analyzing the results, the researchers also found no evidence that democracy alleviates this tendency; authoritarian or autocratic governments were not uniquely to blame for this trend. If a country with a democratic political system excludes certain groups politically, then those groups also experience this "digital discrimination."

"What our results highlight is the need for equality and fairness in the development of modern ICT," or information and communications technologies, Wiedmann said. "So, in other words, if a development agency sponsors the expansion of internet services somewhere, they should insist on a fair distribution of these services, and not let national governments allocate these services primarily to their favored groups."

Explore further Could growing Internet use inspire more democratic uprisings?

More information: N. B. Weidmann et al, Digital discrimination: Political bias in Internet service provision across ethnic groups, Science (2016). Journal information: Science N. B. Weidmann et al, Digital discrimination: Political bias in Internet service provision across ethnic groups,(2016). DOI: 10.1126/science.aaf5062

2016 Los Angeles Times

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Facebook backtracked Friday on a decision to censor an iconic Vietnam War photo of a naked girl escaping a napalm bombing, after its block on the historic image sparked outrage.

The online giant stopped short of apologizing, saying the image had been flagged for violating standards regarding inappropriate posts at the world's leading social network.

"An image of a naked child would normally be presumed to violate our Community Standards, and in some countries might even qualify as child pornography," Facebook said in a statement.

"In this case, we recognize the history and global importance of this image in documenting a particular moment in time."

Taken by photographer Nick Ut Cong Huynh for the Associated Press, the 1972 picture of a naked Vietnamese girl running from a napalm attack is considered one of the war's defining images. It was honored with the Pulitzer Prize.

An active social media user, Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg defied Facebook early Friday by posting the photograph, helping to bring the weekslong controversy to a head.

Her post was taken down several hours later, deleted by Facebook, she said.

After Facebook reversed position on the image, Solberg told the BBC she was a "happy prime minister."

"It shows that using social media can make (a) political change even in social media."

Editing history

Solberg refused to back down, re-posting the photo on her Facebook page, along with several other iconic pictures with sections blacked out, in an attempt to illustrate the absurdity of censoring historic images.

"What Facebook is doing by deleting photos like this, as good as their intentions are, is to edit our common history," she wrote in a post.

Solberg had shared the picture at Facebook in the name of freedom of expression amid a brewing debate in Norway.

The row began several weeks ago after Norwegian author Tom Egeland published a post about war photos, illustrated by the picture. Facebook promptly deleted it.

Egeland expressed delight in a Twitter message written in Norwegian after the Facebook about-face.

"Now I'm happy!" the tweet read in part.

"To all who said 'there's no point,' yes there is a point."

Norwegians had risen to his defense by publishing the photo, posts that Facebook also deleted in line with its rules barring nudity.

The affair took on such proportions that the Norwegian Press Federation asked the country's powerful pension fund, the world's largest sovereign wealth fund, to examine whether the censorship practice was in line with its ethical criteria for investments.

At the end of 2015, the fund owned 0.52 percent of Facebook.

Traditional media also voiced concern about the moves by Facebook, which has become a key source of news and information for hundreds of millions of people.

On Friday, Norway's biggest daily Aftenposten dedicated the front page of its print edition to the photo, and published a two-page open letter to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Tweaking the process

Facebook said it reversed course after the outcry from its members and that is was examining how its standards were applied in the situation.

"Because of its status as an iconic image of historical importance, the value of permitting sharing outweighs the value of protecting the community by removal," California-based Facebook said of the decision to reinstate posts of the image.

Facebook said it was also modifying its review mechanisms to prevent the image from being removed in future, but that process could take some time.

"The photo should be avai lable for sharing in the coming days," Facebook said.

"We will be engaging with publishers and other members of our global community on these important questions going forward."

This is not the first time Facebook has been accused of a lack of sensitivity in how it enforces its rules on appropriate content. The company has in the past blocked seminal artworks because they featured nudity.

Facebook is due to go on trial in France, where a schoolteacher accused it of censorship for blocking his account after he posted a photo of a painting by 19th-century master Gustave Courbet called "L'Origine du monde" (The Origin of the World) that depicts a woman's vagina.

And earlier this year, a Danish lawmaker also complained that Facebook had removed her picture of the Copenhagen statue of the Little Mermaid because of its nudity rules.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) depicted Facebook's censorship of the Vietnam War photo as a grave violation of freedom of information.

"The 'decency' rules used by this social network are so restrictive that they trample on the freedom to inform," RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire said in a statement.

"We call on Facebook to add respect for the journalistic values of photos to these rules, and to ensure that their rules are never more severe than national legislations."

Explore further What Facebook's policy on nudity means in practice

 2016 AFP
When graphic designers at children's tablet and app maker Fuhu Inc. put up a Christmas tree with wacky ornaments for the holidays, an executive ripped them off and trashed them.

They couldn't get a whiteboard for brainstorming or leave colored pencils or markers on their desk.

Former employees said the edict against untidiness emanated from a single leader, co-founder and President Robb Fujioka, whose marching orders effectively banned fixtures of office life as common as filing cabinets and snacking at the desk.

Fujioka has said he runs a democratic dictatorship at the struggling, 8-year-old Los Angeles-area company. His micromanagement - closely monitoring, for instance, details as small as packaging labels and the waist size of animated characters - represented an asset as Fuhu tried to find its footing.

But as Fuhu grew to dominate the market for tablets tailored to children, Fujioka became a liability with a penchant for neatness that stifled creativity, a hot temper that drove workers to tears and a focus on minutiae that stalled projects, interviews with 19 people who worked at or with the company suggest. They are left to wonder whether Fujioka held on too tight, for too long.

"The fundamental issue is that when you have a vision and start the venture, that's markedly different than taking the company to the next level," said Suren Dutia, a former entrepreneur who advises startups on leadership transitions. "Founders must be brutally honest: Are they still qualified to steer the ship?"

With a parking lot overflowing with exotic cars and a string of office renovations, Fuhu appeared a success story, generating nearly $200 million in sales in 2013. But several lawsuits and disputes with vendors, including a $100 million unpaid tab with Taiwanese manufacturing giant Foxconn, had left Fuhu in financial turmoil by last year.

Toy maker Mattel Inc. acquired the more than 400-employee startup for $21.5 million in January out of a bankruptcy auction. It was well below the $1 billion valuation Fujioka had hoped to reach through an initial public offering that he repeatedly vowed was 18 months away. Banks such as Goldman Sachs privately rated the company as far from IPO shape, though it eventually worked with JPMorgan Chase to secretly file a prospectus.

Fuhu spokespeople have refused to make Fujioka available for an interview since the bankruptcy. In Inc. magazine's September issue, he admits many internal issues stemmed from him.

"There was a bankruptcy of the business, but there was also a bankruptcy of the corporate culture," he said.

Fuhu by email denied or disputed characterizations by former employees.

Designers, for instance, had collaboration tools beside whiteboards, eating at desks was welcome and no one discarded decorations, the company said.

"As much as it was able to triumph and overcome, there were many things that could have improved and serve as key learnings that help the team continue to grow," a company statement read.

Fujioka, 46, had run several online marketing companies before he launched Fuhu alongside brothers Steve and John Hui, who had sold a PC business to Gateway. His supporters said Fuhu's downfall primarily is a result of market dynamics. Tech giants such as Samsung and Amazon.com flooded stores with more affordable alternatives to Fuhu tablets. Demand fell as smartphone screens grew larger and people held onto tablets for many years. Fuhu also lacked big contracts with schools.

But former employees say the disorganized and grueling workplace took a toll on company culture and output.

Warned by reviews on jobs site Glassdoor or by friends and family close to the company, many workers expected long hours. They were lured, though, by the buzz around tech startups, their meritocracies and get-rich-quick potential.

But many soon found the conditions extreme.

"People were treated like adults, but being monitored like they were on a playground," said a former worker, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid reprisal from Fuhu and Fujioka.

Many felt pressure to stick around late despite having completed their tasks for their day.

"You sat there like a dunce," another former worker said.

Graphic designers packed notebooks and other supplies into drawers when not in use to appease management.

"It was a giant stress cage," said a former designer. "I felt unsecure worrying about how many implements I had out on the table."

Employees received perks: Unlimited vacation, an office gym with personal trainers, free lunches, loosely monitored overseas work travel and celebrations including a nearly all-expenses, two-day trip to the Hard Rock in Las Vegas in 2014.

But workers said high turnover crowded workloads, starving chances to go on vacation unless Fujioka favored the individuals. Contractors couldn't access free food (although friends sneaked it to them), and one former employee said she got scolded for taking too many snacks.

New hires said they never received a walk-through of Fuhu's tablets and apps. Those who requested a tutorial said they waited months for the experience.

Fujioka's insistence on approving small details distracted him from bigger issues, said two people who interacted with him closely. It's unclear if Fuhu's board of directors recognized the apparent mismanagement or why investors such as Foxconn didn't act sooner. Many, including film studio DreamWorks, declined to comment. Fuhu also had an advisory board, though an industry heavyweight on the panel said he hadn't talked to Fuhu in at least four years. Fuhu said its directors "met regularly and were a part of all key decisions."

Erik Beyer, a veteran game designer who spent a year at Fuhu, described Fujioka as the antithesis of a good leader.

"You've got to trust your employees, that's why you hired them," Beyer said. "Anyone in that role should be focused on the big picture and propagating a vision, but that vision shouldn't include work for the sake of work."

Fujioka's oversights included not enforcing stringent budgets. A former finance staffer - whose assertions Fuhu denied - left stunned that the company spent five times as much to ship tablets by air versus sea for no particular reason.

When it filed for bankruptcy, Fuhu owed Foxconn more than $61 million as cash flow suffered from slowing sales, failed products and thin profit margins. Fuhu also entered a $50 million dispute with distributor D&H, contributing to the bankruptcy of manufacturer Keen High Technologies Co., according to court records.

The Foxconn partnership destabilized over several transgressions, the ex-finance worker said. At one point, Fuhu agreed to sell tablets for less than Foxconn would ever agree to. Last year, Fuhu publicly blamed Foxconn's "mishandling" of tablets for lackluster sales - allegations that Foxconn called "unfounded" and threatened to sue over. Creditors continue to seek repayment from Fuhu.

Daniel Choi, an animator who after two years was laid off, said he should have seen the bankruptcy coming sooner.

"You see poor management," he said. "You see it every day."

Product ideas - unsupported by broad market research - often came from Fujioka talking to his kids. Two former managers said plans to develop baby monitors didn't have any research behind them. Technologists at the company didn't get solid answers to why tablets began requiring proprietary cables. Thorough vetting occurred, and Apple's strategy of proprietary accessories inspired its own, Fuhu said.

Workers felt rushed to complete projects so managers had time to get Fujioka's approval. The rush contributed to faulty products, including a weak charging system now at the center of potential multimillion-dollar class-action litigation.

Fujioka also created "the partnership," a handpicked group of about 20 employees who met with him every Monday. Former employees said partners toted around walkie-talkies, racing over just to hand him eating utensils.

Fujioka viewed the partnership as a motivator. Many partners were young. They received promises of both large stakes in Fuhu and grooming for top positions, according to someone nearly named partner. They served as posse and advisors but never questioned Fujioka's decisions, the person said. Chief Executive Jim Mitchell, largely in charge of relationships with contractors and investors, went along with Fujioka's orders, several people said.

The partnership and other quirks knocked at morale. Although Fuhu denies the allegation, one set of workers expressed distress because its team received public evaluations, with names and performance measurements posted in red pen on a wall.

The only former employees who described a pleasant experience were among the few dozen software developers at the company's technology offices in Silicon Valley and Colorado. Their lone dread was a visit from headquarters - it meant that developers would have to wipe down their desks.

A Fujioka backer described him as an aggressive entrepreneur whose style may have worn thin over time.

In one incident, which Fuhu said never happened, a freelancer complained aloud that his chair had gone missing. Fujioka, who held 10 percent of company shares entering the bankruptcy, overheard.

"That's not your chair, that's my chair," Fujioka said, according to a person who witnessed the encounter.

"He's saying everything in this office is his. He storms off," the person said. The freelancer was soon let go.

Explore further Uber launches a magazine for drivers and a tablet service for families

2016 Los Angeles Times

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Credit: NASA

The Pioneer Fire in Idaho has grown to 181,574 acres and is 56% contained with the containment area being mostly in the southern part of the fire. Most of the suppression is being focused on the northwest side of the fire, east of Deadwood reservoir where the fire appears to be headed. Suppression activities, including controlled burning in areas to remove fuel where possible without unacceptable risk to firefighter safety are being conducted. Where direct engagement is not possible, containment lines are being constructed.

Containment strategies depend heavily on weather. The current period of cool, wet weather is predicted to come to an end by this weekend. Weather forecasts anticipate sunny days, no precipitation, and relative humidity dropping into the teens. All of these weather patterns signal increased fire behavior. Over the several days, continued burning in the fire's interior will continue to create smoke that will impact surrounding areas.

NASA's Suomi NPP satellite collected this natural-color image using the VIIRS (Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) instrument on September 07, 2016. Actively burning areas, detected by MODIS's thermal bands, are outlined in red. NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz LANCE/EOSDIS MODIS Rapid Response Team, GSFC. Caption by Lynn Jenner with information from Inciweb.

Suomi NPP is managed by NASA and NOAA.

Explore further Image: Several wildfires burning in Southern California
By 2022, scientists expect to be able to detect at least 536 antineutrino events per year at these five underground detectors: KamLAND in Japan, Borexino in Italy, SNO+ in Canada, and Jinping and JUNO in China. Credit: Ondrej Sramek

Earth requires fuel to drive plate tectonics, volcanoes and its magnetic field. Like a hybrid car, Earth taps two sources of energy to run its engine: primordial energy from assembling the planet and nuclear energy from the heat produced during natural radioactive decay. Scientists have developed numerous models to predict how much fuel remains inside Earth to drive its enginesand estimates vary widelybut the true amount remains unknown.

In a new paper, a team of geologists and neutrino physicists boldly claims it will be able to determine by 2025 how much nuclear fuel and radioactive power remain in the Earth's tank. The study, authored by scientists from the University of Maryland, Charles University in Prague and the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, was published on September 9, 2016, in the journal Scientific Reports.

"I am one of those scientists who has created a compositional model of the Earth and predicted the amount of fuel inside Earth today," said one of the study's authors William McDonough, a professor of geology at the University of Maryland. "We're in a field of guesses. At this point in my career, I don't care if I'm right or wrong, I just want to know the answer."

To calculate the amount of fuel inside Earth by 2025, the researchers will rely on detecting some of the tiniest subatomic particles known to sciencegeoneutrinos. These antineutrino particles are byproducts of nuclear reactions within stars (including our sun), supernovae, black holes and human-made nuclear reactors. They also result from radioactive decay processes deep within the Earth.

Detecting antineutrinos requires a huge detector the size of a small office building, housed about a mile underground to shield it from cosmic rays that could yield false positive results. Inside the detector, scientists detect antineutrinos when they crash into a hydrogen atom. The collision produces two characteristic light flashes that unequivocally announce the event. The number of events scientists detect relates directly to the number of atoms of uranium and thorium inside the Earth. And the decay of these elements, along with potassium, fuels the vast majority of the heat in the Earth's interior.

To date, detecting antineutrinos has been painfully slow, with scientists recording only about 16 events per year from the underground detectors KamLAND in Japan and Borexino in Italy. However, researchers predict that three new detectors expected to come online by 2022the SNO+ detector in Canada and the Jinping and JUNO detectors in Chinawill add 520 more events per year to the data stream.

"Once we collect three years of antineutrino data from all five detectors, we are confident that we will have developed an accurate fuel gauge for the Earth and be able to calculate the amount of remaining fuel inside Earth," said McDonough.

The new Jinping detector, which will be buried under the slopes of the Himalayas, will be four times bigger than existing detectors. The underground JUNO detector near the coast of southern China will be 20 times bigger than existing detectors.

"Knowing exactly how much radioactive power there is in the Earth will tell us about Earth's consumption rate in the past and its future fuel budget," said McDonough. "By showing how fast the planet has cooled down since its birth, we can estimate how long this fuel will last."

Explore further First global antineutrino emission map highlights Earth's energy budget

More information: "Revealing the Earth's mantle from the tallest mountains using the Jinping Neutrino Experiment," Journal information: Scientific Reports "Revealing the Earth's mantle from the tallest mountains using the Jinping Neutrino Experiment," DOI: 10.1038/srep33034
Douglas V. Gibbs is a proud member of the American Authors Association

Douglas V. Gibbs is a proud member of the Military Writers Society of America.
QUEENSBURY  A Hebron man who led police on a high-speed chase that ended when he slammed into a mobile home and left an injured passenger behind as he ran off is headed to state prison for up to 4 years.

Tyrone A. Wood, 19, of Thunder Way pleaded guilty to first-degree reckless endangerment, a felony, for the Jan. 30 chase that began on the Northway and ended when the car he was driving sped into a tree and mobile home in West Glens Falls. Police said he ran from the car after the chase, leaving an injured passenger behind.

No one was hurt in the home. Police said Wood had been drinking, and he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge related to driving after drinking while underage.

Wood faced 16 charges in all for the pursuit and crash, in which he drove 110 mph on the Northway and 80 mph in a 30 mph zone when he got off the highway, court records show.

The plea to a felony charge satisfied the charges against him.

Court records show he told police he drank 10 shots of vodka shortly before the chase.

I was (messed) up and scared, he told Trooper Robert Milone, according to court records. I dont have a license and I have warrants, thats why I didnt stop. I thought I could get away, but I was too messed up to drive.

The vehicle Wood drove caught the attention of troopers when he was clocked at 110 mph heading south near Exit 19 at about 5:45 a.m. that day, according to State Police.

The car got off the highway at Exit 18, went through red lights and made its way through the state streets to the nearby Homestead Village Mobile Home Park.

Warren County Judge John Hall imposed a 1-1/3- to 4-year prison sentence.
FORT EDWARD  Washington County Judge Kelly McKeighan postponed a felony trial Friday after the mental health of a woman accused of impersonating a federal law enforcement officer and giving false names to police was questioned by her lawyer.

Ayn F. Stern, 67, was scheduled for trial starting Sept. 19, but McKeighan adjourned the case until the end of the month so that Stern could be given a second mental health evaluation to determine whether she can assist with her own defense.

She failed an initial psychiatric review earlier this year and was sent to Mid-Hudson Forensic Psychiatric Center. But doctors there determined she was likely manipulating her diagnosis, and they released her back to the countys custody for the prosecution to continue after 7 days.

Her lawyer, Garfield Raymond, told the judge she has refused to cooperate with him, and he has noted a decomposition of her mental state in recent months.

I dont think she recognizes the charges that are here, he said.

The Washington County District Attorneys Office offered a plea deal Friday with a reduced sentence that would result in her being released from jail immediately, but she refused, Raymond said. She would be required to plead guilty to a felony, but would be able to plead guilty without admitting to the underlying allegations.

She says shes rejecting anything other than a dismissal, he said.

Stern said she has not been happy with Raymonds services, though McKeighan pointed out he is her third lawyer since her arrest. She rambled on for several minutes about not being able to see evidence against her, and a federal case she said she is pursuing.

Stern was arrested in January after a dispute at a store in Whitehall where she allegedly identified herself as a representative of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Police began looking into her background, and when they sought to arrest her for misdemeanor false personation, she allegedly gave a false name of Danby Flatcher and signed it on police and jail documents.

She was later indicted under 14 aliases, as authorities said she has had a history of moving around the country, using various names and becoming involved in fraud before she moved to Washington County from New Mexico. Her criminal record includes a conviction for conspiracy to commit murder in New Jersey in the 1990s, according to prior media reports.

Stern faces four felony counts each of forgery and offering a false instrument for filing and a misdemeanor count of obstructing governmental administration for signing the purportedly false name on police and Washington County Jail documents. She has pleaded not guilty.

Raymond said Stern believes she was legally entitled to use the name she gave police, which was a maiden name. McKeighan, though, questioned why her first name changed when she got married.

Federal court records show she has made a request to move her case to U.S. District Court in Albany, and has sent at least 13 letters to the court alleging she was being wrongfully held in solitary confinement and denied mail and commissary privileges. The court has denied her request to hear the case, though she has sought to appeal.

She paid $505 in federal court filing fees Aug. 25 for her continuing court correspondence.

Stern is being held in Washington County Jail for lack of bail.
LAKE GEORGE  Ken Williams is president of Albany Rods & Kustoms, which means he is one of the main people in charge of the 28th annual Adirondack Nationals car show.

Wearing a ball cap to shield his eyes from the sun, Williams stood in front of the Fort William Henry Hotel on Friday morning, watching the early crowds stream into an already set-up show.

And he had a chance to say something every promoter loves to tell people.

Yes, we have more cars this year than we ever have before, Williams said. Since this is the second year we have the festival grounds (at the Charles R. Wood Park), we have been able to push it up to 1,700 entries. Thats the most ever, by far.

Williams has kind words for local officials, including village Mayor Robert Blais, town Supervisor Dennis Dickinson and Warren County Sheriff Bud York, for their annual cooperation, and this year hes rather pleased with the weather forecasters.

I think were going to have a really good weekend. Look at it out here, Williams said, adding that he did not think the price increase from $10 to $15 for weekend spectator passes will keep the crowd down. Its still a great deal, its for the weekend, and the weather is going to be great.

Children 12 and younger are admitted free.

For Ron Crannell of Broadalbin, who shows a 1957 Dodge pickup truck, its the children who really make the show.

You dont see a lot (Friday) because of school, but Saturday they will be all over, and thats the best part of the show, he said. I love it when you see a grandfather, father and son together looking at cars and trucks.

Special guest

This years special guest is Steve Darnell, an expert in building the custom cars called rat rods, who stars in a reality TV series on the Discovery Channel called Vegas Rat Rods.

Early on, Darnell had not been out on the grounds, but he had watched the passion of the attendees who were waiting for his autograph and the obligatory selfies.

Building a car is like having a kid, Darnell said. You build it, you love it and you take care of it. To me, one of the neatest things is how many people actually look like their cars. Its like the people who look like their dogs. You go take a walk out there and youll see it.

Darnells sister Staci Zundel, who was staffing the memorabilia table, had already been out and about and is thinking about reservations for next year.

I love it here, Zundel said, watching her brother sign autographs. Everyone here is so incredibly nice. You know everyone wants to be here.

In fact, Zundel said, next year shed like to bring her mother from Montana. She would just love it.

Early risers

It was apparent by 10:30 a.m. that a lot of other people loved it, too. The show grounds around the Fort William Henry Hotel and at the nearby festival space were crowded early, and those crowds grew during the day.

Outside the show areas, chairs were lined up most of the way from Northway Exit 21, north on Route 9, to the village. Some contained spectators watching the steady stream of cars headed for the show. Others were simply placeholders, keeping slots for the 7 p.m. cruise through the village, scheduled for both Friday and Saturday.

The cruise route has been changed because of construction. It will leave Fort William Henry, follow Route 9 south onto Beach Road to Million Dollar Beach, then north onto Canada Street. It will avoid the Gateway construction area.

The show grounds will be open from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, and 7 a.m. to noon Sunday. Awards will be announced at 4 p.m. Saturday and a special winners-only show will be held Sunday.

Williams said he thinks there are several keys to the success of the show.

First of all, the quality of the cars is really high, said Williams, who owns a 1965 Ford Falcon but was especially taken by a 1962 Cadillac convertible and a hot rod tow truck that were entered in the show. Plus everybody loves Lake George. Its just a great place to come, and everyone here helps us so much.
















Hezbollah fighters are preparing to move into southern Syria, a stones throw from the border with Israels Golan Heights, Iranian state media reported Monday.





Hezbollah has deployed a large number of its forces at Quneitra passage which has connected the Syrian territories to the occupied Golan, unnamed sources told the semi-official Fars news agency

According to the sources, the Hezbollah fighters will be taking part in an anti-terrorism operation with Syrian ruler Bashar Assads army to fight the various militant groups located in the Syrian Golan Heights.





The IDF would not comment specifically on the reports that Hezbollah would be taking positions close to the Israeli border, but said it closely monitors all of Israels borders, including in the north, and remains prepared for any scenario.





An attempt by the United States and Russia to broker a partial peace deal in Syria fell through this week, though both sides said they were committed to continuing the effort. Washington and Moscow support opposing sides in the five-year conflict, which has killed upwards of 300,000 people and forced millions to flee.





















Syria's army and its allies have regained an important Aleppo district lost to rebels last month, state media and a war monitor said on Thursday, and were pressing an offensive south of the city to further squeeze the insurgents. If sustained, the advance in Ramousah would reverse nearly all gains rebels made in a push last month, tighten a blockade over rebel-held eastern Aleppo and ease access for the army into government-held western districts through the city's south. A second line of attack, aimed at villages south of Aleppo and supported by what a pro-government fighter called "dusk to dawn" bombardment, is intended to isolate Telat al-Eis, a hill captured by rebels in May that commands fire over the region.

The battle for Aleppo has become the focus both for President Bashar al-Assad, backed by Shi'ite militias from Iraq and Lebanon, Iran's Revolutionary Guards, and Russian air power, and for the Sunni rebels seeking to overthrow him.

















American influence over the Middle East could slip a notch after Israel and the Palestinians agreed in principle to Russian-organized talks in Moscow. That is, if the negotiations ever happen.





Russia has clamored unsuccessfully for years to host such a gathering and the Russian Foreign Ministrys announcement on Thursday included no date or agenda for the future get-together. Making the meeting even more uncertain: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas demands that Israel first halt all settlement construction in east Jerusalem and the West Bank, and release about two dozen Palestinian prisoners. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejects the preconditions.





If the meeting occurs, it would surely rattle the regions tumultuous ground further.





The United States has maintained a stranglehold over all Mideast peace processes since the Oslo Accords in the 1990s, seen by Israelis and Palestinians alike as the indispensable mediator and only power that could guarantee a two-state solution. But the Obama administration doesnt appear to enjoy that recognition any longer. The degradation of Americas standing coincides with its difficulty projecting its vision across the Middle East.





























Jew hatred and demonization of Israel are at the highest level of our lifetimes, Israels ambassador to the United Nations said at a high-level forum on anti-Semitism held on Wednesday at the UNs headquarters in New York.









Over 1/3 of European Jews are afraid to wear a yarmulke or Star of David in public, Danny Danon said. More than half of French Jews have considered emigrating because they dont feel safe living as Jews in France. Today we hear things about Jews and the Jewish people that we thought belonged to the pages of history.  Anti-Semitism is returning to everyday life without shame. Danon also said that social media presents a new kind of threat in that anti-Semitism goes global very quickly. We are living in a new era and we face a new kind of anti-Semitism, Danon said. Using the tools of online social networks to demonize the Jewish people and the Jewish state, this is Anti-Semitism 2.0. The enemies of the Jewish people are using the tools of modern technology to target and harass Jews around the world, he said, adding that the modern world makes life easier for anti-Semites since all you need is a wireless connection, a Facebook account, and a deep hatred for the Jewish people. It is more effective than The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, he added. He said that attacks against Jews online lead directly to attacks against Jews on the street.

We know from history that during times of crisis, people look for scapegoats, Danon said. And time and time again that scapegoat has been the Jewish people. So we have to be proactive, we have to speak out and we have to educate our young people about the dangers of online anti-Semitism. And we also have to be honest. Talking is not enough. We need immediate and concrete action.  Media companies have to take preventative steps. Danon slammed some UN member states for expressing openly anti-Semitic sentiments.

































Concern in Russia is increasing over the growing number of hard-to-access, double-purpose medical laboratories, financed by the US Department of Defense, appearing alongside its borders; they are researching biological weapons, indicating that they are "not entirely peaceful".

The US is constantly citing Russia as a "major threat" not only to itself but to its "European allies." Washington has been using this as a pretext for the deployment of additional contingents of NATO troops alongside Russia's borders.









However, it seems this is not the only "preventive measure" which is being set up on the Russian frontiers. Earlier in September, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reminded that Washington opposes the idea of tightening international control over biological weapons.

During his yearly address to future diplomats at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO), Russia's top diplomat said that America's staunch opposition to Russian efforts to create a monitoring mechanism for the execution of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) indicates that the US may be conducting biological research that is "not entirely peaceful."





"It is known that the US has a number of projects in the field of biological research, particularly some joint research programs with our neighboring countries," Lavrov said.









Similar concerns were voiced back in 2015 by Secretary of Russia's Security Council Nikolai Patrushev, who said that the military biological infrastructure overseen by Washington is being set up increasingly closer to Russian borders.





"The number of laboratories which are being controlled and managed by the US has increased twentyfold, many of them have either functioned or currently function on the territories of the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) countries," he said, adding that the US is pouring tens of millions of dollars into military-focused biological weapons.
































































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The comedy movie has been recognized as one of the films with the highest domestic gross in the territories of Bollywood, Nollywood and Hollywood, listed alongside "PK" and "Star Wars: The Force Awakens."

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The actor took to his Instagram page to share the news with his followers.

"This is the first time ever that the Nigerian film industry which is one of the largest in the world, will be achieving such a tremendous success that will be registered by the 'Guinness World Records' since 1955 when it was first published. "I am dedicating this milestone in my career to all the casts and crew of 30 Days In Atlanta. Also to everyone who went to the cinemas to see the movie when it came out. Let's do it again with my new movie 'A Trip to Jamaica' premiering on September 25th, and showing across cinemas in Nigeria from September 30th."

The movie tells the tale of "Akpors: Sharp Warri boy" who wins a 30 days holiday for two to Atlanta, Georgia. He takes his cousin (Richard), an IT specialist on the all-expense paid trip.

The movie stars AY Makun, Vivica Fox, Lynn Whitfield, Karlie Redd, RMD, Ramsey Noauh, Desmond Elliot, Mercy Johnson, Rachel Oniga, Ada Ameh, Uti Nwachukwu, Kese Jabari, Majid Michel, and Juliet Ibrahim.

Directed by Robert Peters, "30 Days in Atlanta" was shot on location in Lagos and Atlanta, and was met with mixed to negative critical reception.

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The comedy movie grossed 76million Nairaseven weeks after it's premiere, went on to bring in a box-office total of over 137million Naira, making it the highest grossing movie in the Nigerian cinema history.

In February 2015, the movie was stolen and sold by a staff of Silverbird Cinemas and was released by Alaba pirates.
Bawumia is calling on government to see this as a national security issue and find lasting solutions to them.

He said the unemployment challenge would worsen next year, when government begins the rationalisation of workers in the civil service as agreed under the International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme.

Speaking at a public lecture at the National Theatre on Thursday, September 8, under the theme: State of Ghanas Economy  Foundation of Concrete or Straw?, he said, The World Bank has reported that youth unemployment in Ghana stands at 48 per cent and an unemployed graduates association has been formed for the first time under this government.

He added that Graduate unemployment has reached crisis proportions with a reported 60% of graduates unable to find a job."
In a statement jointly signed by Ministry of Roads and Highways and the Ministry of Water Resources, Works and Housing, it said the underpass was closed to allow the Ghana Water Company Limited to repair some major pipeline in the area.

READ ALSO: Two feared dead in Legon accident

On Thursday (September 8) there was heavy traffic in some parts of Accra. This was mainly attributed to the closure of the Spintex road underpass. This road leads into East Legon. But the statement assured that those working on the pipelines are taking every step to ensure the road is open by midday today(Friday).

READ ALSO: Government to construct interchange at Tema roundabout to ease traffic
Presidential candidates seeking to be voted for as president are to pay GH50,000 as nomination fee to be able to contest the presidential elections.

The figure is 500 per cent from the GH10,000 paid by presidential candidates in the 2012 elections.

Parliamentary candidates are also to pay 10,000 as against the GH1,000 paid in the last elections. The new figure is a 1,000 per cent increment from the previous amount.

This came to light after at an Inter-Party Advisory Commission (IPAC) meeting held on Thursday September 8.

But some parties in opposition have criticise the EC.

For me, its a lot of money. We did question it but it is the decision of the EC that they also dont want the proliferation of non-existent parties and individuals who come and worry them with their processes. I think there must be a balance of peoples ability to participate in our democracy. Mind you it is not only political parties that present candidates but independent people who are not at this forum also present candidates, he said.

However, the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) said the filing fee is enough.

The Director of Elections, Samuel Ofosu Ampofo, said, Indeed, the Electoral Commission has assured us that any political party that is able to get twelve and half percent of the total votes will have their filing fee refunded to them after the election. We are very confident we will get more than twelve and half percent in the coming election so it is an investment. We will invest in our candidate; we will pay and at the end of the day we believe that we will get a refund from the Electoral Commission so we are not too worried.
President Mahama is expected to be in Kasoa today as part of his campaign tour to canvass votes in the region ahead of the 2016 elections.

According to Accra-based Class FM, it is unclear the reason behind the emergence of the posters, but the same posters appeared in the Cape Coast Metropolis during the NDC was campaign launching in the region in August.

Reports are that some people who are upset about the way the late law Professor died are probably behind the pasting of the posters.

Sections of the general public have often accused the governing NDC of capitalising on the death of the late President for political gains especially in the Central Region.

President Mahama will complete his five-day-tour to the Central Region today. He is touring the Central Region after a campaign tour to the Western and Northern Regions.
The move drew fierce opposition from the New Patriotic Party, while the ruling National Democratic Congress supported it.Also reacting to the decision, the All Peoples Party in a statement released and signed by the General Secretary Razak Opoku said the EC should have charged even higher than GHC50,000.

The All People's Congress(APC) led by Dr. Hassan Ayariga gladly accepts to pay the GHS 50,000 Filing Fee for our Presidential Candidate to contest the 7th December 2016 general election.

The Electoral Commission has done well with such decision but we honestly think that the Presidential Filing Fee should have been GHS 120, 000 because to become the First gentleman of the Land there must be a relatively High standard to comply with.
In a Facebook post on his timeline, Okudzeto Ablakwa called on Dr Bawumia to substantiate his claims.

Dr Bawumia in a lecture about the economy themed The State of the Ghana Economy  A Foundation of Concrete or Straw " said the NDC government used GHC 900,000 to build a teachers bungalow at Dambai College of Education. He said the NPP constructed a similar bungalow on the same campus at GHC 195, 000.

In a response to this claim, Ablakwa said there is no Teacher's Bungalow project at Dambai College of Education built at GHS 900,000 in 2011. We have checked the records and hereby challenge him to prove his allegation.

He asked Dr Bawumia to explain why the NPP could not fulfil its promise of establishing one Polytechnic in each District promised during the 2000 campaign season.

Find below the full text of Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa response

Fact Checking Dr Bawumia on his Education claims:

1) Bolgatanga and Wa Polytechnics were established in 1999 and had enrolled students long before the NPP came to power. His claim that the NPP established both Polytechnics is untrue.

In any case, Dr Bawumia should be telling Ghanaians why they failed in eight years to fulfil their promise of establishing a Polytechnic in EVERY District as contained on Page 29 of the NPP's 2000 Manifesto. (Yes you are right, One District One That is not a new trick in the NPP book).

Instead of accounting for the lost "Decentralized Polytechnics" (as the NPP Manifesto refers), Dr Bawumia is rather attempting to obliterate President Rawlings' legacy in Bolga and Wa.

2) It is intellectually dishonest to claim that the NPP established UMaT which had existed under various forms since 1952. See the official website of the university:http://umat.edu.gh/about_umat/umat_main/university-history.html

3) Carrying out renovations in 36 Senior High Schools cannot be the same as establishing 36 Senior High Schools.

4) There is no Teacher's Bungalow project at Dambai College of Education built at GHS 900,000 in 2011. We have checked the records and hereby challenge him to prove his allegation.

I must add that I am not surprised Dr. Bawumia was this time round dead silent on initial claims he and his boss had trumpeted that current WASSCE results are the worse in history. Clearly, the self-professed lover of data does not appear to fancy that kind of data which cannot advance his political agenda.

Any wonder he conveniently ignored data on universal access to basic education, gender parity, time on task, social intervention programmes, scholarships, gross enrollment, textbook to pupil ratio, pupil teacher ratio, TVET reforms, WASSCE awards, university rankings just to mention a few.

Hard as I have tried, it's exceedingly worrying that I couldn't find a single truthful claim under the education component of Dr Bawumia's unprovoked vicious attacks on President Mahama's Government.

Let those who claim they created paradise in Ghana and yet Ghanaians voted them out in 2008 continue to live in that bubble. We have work to do and a nation to build under the inspiring, selfless, humble, visionary and unifying leadership of President Mahama.

We will stay focused on Changing Lives and Transforming Ghana.
Chief Magistrate Maryam Sabo, in her ruling, ordered that the two suspects Hafsatu Musa, 35, and Zainab Murtala, 20, be remanded in prison custody.

Sabo ordered the prosecutor to send back the case diary to the Kano State criminal investigation department for further investigation.

She said there was need for the police to produce the medical treatment report of the victim after undergoing treatment.

The magistrate said the case diary was incomplete without the medical report.

She ordered the prosecutor to make sure the police completed their investigation within one month as well as obtain the legal advice.

Sabo adjourned the case to October 10. 2016 for mention.

The accused persons were charged with criminal conspiracy and attempt to commit culpable homicide, contrary to sections 248 and 229 of the Penal Code.

The Prosecutor, Insp. Shuaibu Musa, had told the court that Hafsatu and Zainab all of Rimin Gado Village on May 10, conspired and broke the two hands and one of the legs of the minor.
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ALSO READ: Church guards docked for stealing N500k tithes

The sum was reportedly stolen by the suspect, Elochukwu Nnoruga, from St Patrick Catholic Church, Idumaigbo, Lagos State.

The presiding Magistrate, Ade Adefulire seating at the Tinubu Magistrates' Court in Lagos, who gave the sentence today, September 8, ordered that the convict would be spending six months at the Ikoyi Prisons , without an option of fine.

Nnoruga was reportedly arraigned before the courts on August 17, on the suspicion that he had stolen the said amount, The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports.

The suspect pleaded guilty to the one-count charge of theft. While giving his judgement, the magistrate expressed his distaste over the fact that people would actually steal from the house of God.

It is a pity that people do not see the house of God as sacred anymore.

This judgment should serve as a lesson to the public, if you choose crime instead of hard work, the hand of the law will always catch up with you.

Nnoruga, you are hereby sentenced to six months imprisonment without an option of fine, he declared.

ALSO READ: Man arraigned at court for allegedly stealing tithes
The suspect was reportedly arrested during a joint operation by the South African Police Service and other intelligence units on Wednesday, September 7.

A media statement released by the Directorate of Priority Crimes Investigation (HAWKS) read:

"Hawks Organised Crime Unit, SANEB and Crime Intelligence members had a joint operation which led to the arrest of a 26-year-old Nigerian man for possession of drugs in Polokwane on Wednesday, 07 September 2016.

"The suspects apartment was searched and 31 pieces of rock, 17 pieces of half moon and one sachet including R35 000 cash were found. The estimated value of the drugs seized is R20 000. The suspect will appear in the Polokwane Magistrate Court on the 08 of September 2016 for possession of drugs."
Soyinka made the comment after Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris on Wednesday, September 7, termed the group a threat to security.

The Nobel Laureate made the comments at a symposium in Lagos State, Punch reports.

I saw a report in a national daily that demonstrations on behalf of the Chibok girls pose a threat to national security and I thought, not again. My mind flew back immediately to another governor under whose democratic leadership, parents were tear-gassed for demonstrating peacefully about losing their children in a plane crash in Port Harcourt, Soyinka said.

Democracy is not just about campaigning. It is exercising human rights. It is about helping to build the society. Demonstrations cannot be too much as long as those girls are missing. Demonstrations are an act of solidarity. Wherever they are today, when their mothers demonstrate on their behalf, their morale is raised.

That is my message to security operatives who get scared of those who are agitating for a cause and fire tear gas at them. They must be treated with utmost respect and must be given their space. It is an act of solidarity for the children. Otherwise, when you stop these demonstrations, you are saying forget about the children.

We have important things like reviving the economy, and fighting corruption, among others, to worry about. Yes, those things are important but ultimately, the society is for humanity and when one of us is hurt, we must allow ourselves to protest.

I hope we dont get the negative effects when they bring back our girls. And when we talk about democracy to our children, it is to teach them their rights. Therefore, there has to be greater coherence from the government and its agencies.

We dont have to know one single individual among the girls. We should demonstrate democratic responsibility. Let us continue to recognize solidarity with these girls and one day, they will come back or we will get to know what has become of them, he added.
Ezekwesilimade the comment after Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, on Wednesday, September 7, termed the group a threat to security.

The previous administration used all kinds of tactics similar to this one to try to violate our constitutional liberty, the BBOG leader said according to The Cable.

Not only did the constitution uphold our rights, the courts also upheld our rights so he should just read his files. He would be able to find what he needs to educate himself properly about democracy and citizens rights.

Theres no retreat no surrender. Are our girls back? In addition to bring back our girls, we also NOW have a hashtag that says, #AreOurGirlsBack?

If the government says that we are unreasonable for demanding for our Chibok girls in the way that we have been demanding for them since 2014 ,they need to show the evidence that counters our stance," she added.

ALSO READ: Over 100 Police officers disrupt Bring Back Our Girls protest

Idris comments came after police officers prevented BBOG members from holding a protest at the Presidential Villa.
Chinas new Consul-General in Lagos, Mr Chao Kiaoliang, made the remark while briefing Journalists in Lagos on the summits purpose and expected outcomes for the developing countries.

Kiaoliang said that the Chinese government decided to host this years G20 Summit because of its growing interest in offering assistance and sharing experiences with developing countries, including Nigeria.

China knows that the world economy cannot truly recover, without the prosperity of the developing countries.

With current falling prices in the oil market, Nigerias economy is facing some challenges, including harassment from terrorism.

The G20 Summit in Hangzhou is meant to provide some opportunities to Nigeria in tackling these challenges.

China is ready to keep her promise at the Summit, as well as continue to offer assistance and strengthen mutually-beneficial cooperation with Nigeria and other Africa countries, he said.

The consul-general said the summit, which held from Sept.4th to 5th, had set the course for developing the global economy, as well as charting a new path for global economic growth.

Kiaoliang also said members of the G20 agreed to improve global economic and financial governance in building the resilience of the worlds economy.

According to him, the summit also reached a consensus for the revitalisation of international trade and investment that would be beneficial to all nations.
Air China, the nation's flag-carrier, has removed in-flight magazines that made an inappropriate safety suggestion to travelers after a London MP complained to the Chinese ambassador to the UK.

The airline has called on the publishers of the Wings of China magazine, to "reflect upon their negligence" and told them to improve their editing and language to ensure that the mistake is not repeated. The publishers have issued an apology in an open letter.

"Air China has resolutely upheld respect for different cultures and customs in the global community," the airline said in a statement. "Air China stands fully committed to providing premium air services and serving as a bridge that connects people of different ethnic groups and promotes equal exchanges between them."

A safety suggestion to visitors to the UK in one article reads: "London is generally a safe place to travel, however precautions are needed when entering areas mainly populated by Indians, Pakistanis and black people."

The comments immediately caused a stir in the UK and prompted Virendra Sharma, MP for Ealing Southall, to write to Chinese Ambassador Liu Xiaoming complaining about the comments.

At a regular news conference in Beijing on Thursday, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said the Chinese government has consistently advocated for and supported the equality of all ethnicities without exception and opposed all forms of racial discrimination. "Our position in this regard is clear and definite," she said.

Hua also said that China has always encouraged people-to-people exchanges between China and the UK.

"We hope that the people of the two countries can better understand each other through close contact and enhance mutual understanding and have more cooperation," she added.

Sharma said he was pleased with how things were settled by the airline.

"I'm quite pleased that the airline has responded responsibly to the request made by me and many other people that these offensive comments should be taken out. If there are any other ways they want to advise their future visitors, I'm quite happy, along with others, to assist in that matter," he said.

Contact the writer at chenyingqun@chinadaily.com.cn

Mo Jingxi contributed to this story.
Daniel told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Thursday in Gombe that the women were trained on tailoring, tye and dye, fish farming and hair dressing.

She said that the aim of the training was to empower the beneficiaries economically and make them self- reliant.

``The duration of the training is six weeks and very soon they (women) will be graduating and another batch of 600 women will be enrolled.

``The beneficiaries were selected from the 11 Local Government Areas of the state.

``After the training, they will be given resettlement kits and capital to start their business, she said.

The commissioner called on the women to reciprocate the gesture by putting what they learned into practice.

NAN reports that between 2011 and 2014, Gombe state government has trained over 5,000 women on skills acquisition.
They made the plea in separate interviews with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos on Friday.

They said the speed with which the smugglers daily moved their contraband-filled vehicles through the area posed threats to lives, urging the relevant authorities to take appropriate actions.

We are tired of these smugglers and what they are doing in this area. They move their convoy of vehicles en route this area to their destinations in top speed without regard for lives.

A trader was almost knocked down by one of them last week. The Police and Customs should act fast to stop the menace A resident of Megida in Ayobo, Mr Adewale Saheed said.

Saheed said the smugglers used communities in the area because of their easy access to Idiroko, a community bordering the Republic of Benin in Ogun.

According to him, the smugglers usually route contrabands like frozen chicken, vehicles, rice and machine spare parts through the area.

An official of Ipaja Residents Association, Mr Tunde Akilapa, said he was shocked to see the smugglers drove recklessly through the area on a particular day like dare-devil armed robbers.

The day I say these people, I nearly ran for dear life because I had thought they were armed robbers.

They were in a procession of about seven vehicles and the way they were speeding was dangerous.

I think these people should be checked. Because If they knock anybody down

I am not sure they would show any care  he said.

Another resident, Mr Emeka Duru, said he had seen the customs patrolled through Command road, and around Church bus stop but was surprised that they had never deterred the smugglers.

The Customs should be up and doing. If you keep on patrolling and these people keep on doing their business unhindered, it means something is wrong.

The Customs should properly man the escape routes of these saboteurs to put a stop to their illegal activities, he said.

A resident of Igbogila, Ayobo, Mr Wale Adelakun, said that the activities of the smugglers constituted acts of economic sabotage.
Details of the operation were revealed via a statement released by army spokesman, Colonel Sani Usman.

The statement reads:

On Wednesday, 7th September 2016 troops of Sub-Sector Bravo in response to a tip off on the presence of suspected kidnappers at Akupoku community, carried out a raid at the location. But no arrest was made as the kidnappers have fled the area.

However, the team also raided Ke community, at the verge of the Atlantic Ocean where they discovered and destroyed an illegal refinery. The troops recovered and destroyed 3 large cooking pots and 20 tanks filled with illegally refined Automated Gas Oil (AGO).

Similarly, another set of troops also discovered and destroyed another illegal crude oil refinery at Bile. Items recovered and destroyed include 12 large refining cooking pots.

The troops exercising along Abonnema axis were also informed of the presence of suspected kidnappers at Abakrikri Fishing Pot, they swung into action and carried out cordon and search operation, however, no contact or arrest was made.

The troops of 130 Battalion also raided suspected kidnappers camp at Awukiri. Although no contact was made, the troops recovered an AK-47 rifle empty magazine, 6 face masks, 1 machete and several empty shells of expended ammunitions. The troops destroyed the camp.

ALSO READ: Niger Delta Avengers accuse military chiefs of diverting operation funds
Shettima wondered why the campaigners have not come to hold a rally in Chibok, Borno state.

Chibok is the community that hosts the Secondary School where over 200 students were kidnapped by Boko Haram.

The Governor also called on the Federal Government to urgently intervene in the humanitarian crisis hitting Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps in the state.

Shettima said this while speaking with the Minister of women Affairs, Aisha Jumai Alhassan at the Borno state Government House on Friday, September 9, 2016.

The Governor said "Just last week, we expended a whoping sum of N25 million for the education of the 56 Chibok school girls that escaped from Boko Haram and none of the members of BBOG has visited Chibok to know about the feelings of the parents of the girls.

 They can make a whole lot of noise from the comfort of Abuja, They can dramatize the whole thing. Some of them are former minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and know the protocol of visiting the President, but choose to dramatize their visit.

majority of victims of Boko Haram are women and children. In Maiduguri, the capital city of Borno state, we have over 39,000 orphans and in Monguno local government area of the state, we have over 38000 of them and the same applies to other parts of the state. And yet no group or pressure group nor characters in the social media cares to know about this.
Mohammed made the call in his address at the command screening of the movie, ``Oloibiri, in Abuja.

``It is remarkable that the first thing we did when we came into power was to address injustice that has been perpetrated for so long in the Niger Delta.

``We also started the Ogoniland cleanup not too long ago.

``That is why I am here with the Minister of Environment, some members of the National Assembly and other relevant stakeholders, he said.

Mohammed said that the movie, ``Oloibiri, portrayed the fact that diplomacy could not be replaced with violence.

``Oloibiri teaches us that with violence, there are no victors, he added.

The minister stressed that the movies release was timely because some youths had resorted to destroying the countrys infrastructure in order to express their anger.

Mohammed said that the movie was an appeal to the militants that Nigeria belonged to all Nigerians.

News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports the event was attended by personalities from the culture and tourism sector, the movie industry as well as the diplomatic corps.

NAN also reports that the movie was produced by Rightangle Productions; in collaboration with Theatron Media of Canada and Grey house Films of the U.S.

Oloibiri is a community in Bayelsa State where the first crude oil exploitation in Nigeria started in 1958.

The main objective of the movie is to creatively present a deeper understanding of some critical issues in the Niger Delta area so as to forge a stronger partnership with relevant stakeholders in efforts to boost community relations in Nigerias oil-producing areas Nigeria.

Although the film has yet to be premiered, it has been test-screened at the 66th annual Cannes Film Festival in France.
For today, September 9 2016:

THE GUARDIAN NEWSPAPER

INEC postpones Edo governorship election to September 28

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) yesterday postponed the Edo State governorship election scheduled for tomorrow. It based its action on security advice. The polls will now hold on September 28, 2016. READ MORE

Recession cuts telecoms operators earnings by N31b in Q2

The harsh economic climate in the country is having its toll on the telecommunications sector. The earnings of telecommunications operators dipped significantly as over 60 million telephone lines became inactive at the end of the second quarter.

Begin the change, Buhari charges Nigerians

President Muhammadu Buhari has decried lawlessness and loss of values among Nigerians as major challenges impeding Nigerias socio-economic progress. READ MORE

THE VANGUARD NEWSPAPER

Security : INEC buckles, shifts Edo gov polls

BENIN-CITYTHE fog of uncertainty beclouding conduct of the Edo State governorship election has cleared. The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, last night, yielded to security advice and postponed the election to Wednesday, September 28, 2016. READ MORE

Lagos Hausa/Fulani clash: Traders carry charms, knives in fear of reprisal attack

LagosNormalcy has returned to the abattoir, Agege area of Lagos, which was, Wednesday, thrown into pandemonium, following a clash between Hausa and Fulani traders that left three persons dead and scores of others injured.

Buhari and BBOG: A love story gone sour

There was apprehension in the Maitama area of Abuja yesterday evening after police deployed around the Unity Fountain, the venue where for more than two years, the Bring Back Our Girls, BBOG had on a daily basis gathered to clamour for the quick return of the 219 girls spirited from their secondary school in Chibok, Borno State.

THE NATION NEWSPAPER

APC, PDP clash as INEC fixes Sept 28 for Edo poll

Edo State will elect a new governor on September 28 after the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) yesterday postponed the election by 18 days. READ MORE

Buhari to Nigerians: change wont happen overnight

Critics of the governments change campaign got a reply yesterday  President Muhammadu Buhari challenged them to ask themselves how far they have changed in their ways. READ MORE

ICPC arraigns Orubebe over N1.97b fraud

The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) yesterday said it had arraigned former Niger Delta Affairs Minister Godsday Orubebe, before a Federal Capital Territory (FCT) High Court, in Maitama District in Abuja, for alleged N1.97 billlion fraud.

THE PUNCH NEWSPAPER

Army to deploy 10,000 soldiers in Niger Delta

The Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Tukur Buratai, has said the Federal Government will deploy 10,000 troops in the Niger Delta in 2017.

Driver steals UNILAG lecturers ATM card, withdraws N2.7m

A driver, Mayowa Adenuga, has been arrested by operatives of the Lagos State Police Command for allegedly stealing his boss Automated Teller Machine card and withdrawing over N2.7m. READ MORE

FG okays loans from World Bank, China, Japan

The Federal Government has approved plans for external loans from the World Bank, China and Japan.

THE BUSINESSDAY NEWSPAPER

Investors flee hospitality sector over trapped $500m

Investors who rushed into the Nigerian hospitality industry during the boom between 2008 and 2014 are now looking to exit, especially as their over $500 million stake are trapped in stalled projects, on account of the economic downturn.

3 bank CEOs, 22 financial institutions up for BusinessDay Banking Awards today

Finally, at the long awaited BusinessDay Banking Awards today, three bank CEOs and 22 financial institutions will smile home with prestigious awards in recognition of their sterling contributions to the economy.

Nigerias FX earnings must lean on globally competitive manufacturing - Kramer
What better way to ease off the stress of the week than watch a good movie.

With that in mind, check out our list of movies currently showing in cinemas across Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt.

Starring: Bovi Ugboma, Ini Dima-Okojie, Toni Tones Adefuye, Omoni Oboli, Shaffy Bello, Najite Dede, Amanda Ebeye, Adunni Ade, Gregory Ojefua, Thelma Ezeamaka.

Synopsis: when a man proposes to foot the bill for the wedding of his bride, little does he know that she will stop at nothing to have a fairytale wedding; even if it requires his funeral to achieve it.

Showing:

Friday - Thursday: 2:25pm, 4:35pm

Friday - Thursday: 11:10AM, 1:05PM, 7:05PM

Sunday: 1:05PM, 7:05PM

Friday - Thursday: 3:00PM, 6:50PM, 9:00PM

Fri: 2:35 PM

Sat - Thu: 2:35 PM, 7:00 PM, 9:25 PM

Starring: Angelique Kidjo, Jimmy Jean Louis, Wale Ojo, Fatym Layache, Nico Ranagio, Kemi Lala Akindoju, veteran actress Hilda Dokunbo .

Synopsis: Set mainly on a beautiful beach resort on the outskirts of Lagos in Nigeria .The CEO is a mystery-thriller surrounding five top executives from across Africa who are dispatched on a 1-week leadership retreat by a multinational telecommunication firm, to determine which one to appoint as the firms new CEO. Things go awry when one by-one the executives are eliminated in sudden death circumstances, and the finger falls on the last two remaining executive as prime suspects. As the threat of a possible death sentence for multiple homicide looms over them.

Showing:

Friday - Thursday: 1:00PM

Friday - Thursday: 12:05pm

Friday - Thursday: 2:30PM, 6:40PM

Starring: Tom Hanks, Aaron Eckhart, Laura Linney

Synopsis: The story of Chesley Sullenberger, who became a hero after gliding his plane along the water in the Hudson River, saving all of the airplane flights 155 crew and passengers.

Showing:

Friday - Thursday: 1:00PM, 3:00PM, 5:00PM, 7:00PM, 9:00PM

Friday - Thursday: 12:30PM, 7:05PM

Friday - Thursday: 12:40am, 3:35pm, 6:45pm, 8:40pm

Fri- Mon: 2:30 PM, 7:10 PM, 9:20 PM, 11:30 PM

Tue - Thu: 2:30 PM, 7:10 PM, 9:20 PM

<(--VIP SHOWS--)

Daily: 1:20 PM, 3:30 PM

Sat - Thu: 8:00 PM

4.

Starring: Jackie Chan, Johnny Knoxville, Bingbing Fan

Synopsis: A detective from Hong Kong teams up with an American gambler to battle against a notorious Chinese criminal.

Showing:

Friday - Thursday: 3:45pm, 6:15pm, 8:25pm

Fri: 8:00 PM, 10:20 PM

Sat - Thu: 8:00 PM, 10:20 PM

(--VIP SHOWS--)

Sat - Thu: 5:40 PM

Friday - Thursday: 5:30PM, 9:30PM

Friday - Thursday: 3:10PM, 7:10PM, 9:20PM

Starring: Mark Rylance, Ruby Barnhill, Penelope Wilton

Synopsis: A girl named Sophie encounters the Big Friendly Giant who, despite his intimidating appearance, turns out to be a kindhearted soul who is considered an outcast by the other giants because, unlike them, he refuses to eat children.

Showing:

Friday - Thursday: 10:00am

Friday - Thursday: 11:50AM, 2:00PM, 4:20PM

Friday - Thursday: 10:45AM

Daily: 12:00 PM, 4:40 PM

6.

Starring: Jason Statham, Jessica Alba, Tommy Lee Jones

Synopsis: Arthur Bishop thought he had put his murderous past behind him when his most formidable foe kidnaps the love of his life. Now he is forced to travel the globe to complete three impossible assassinations, and do what he does best, make them look like accidents.

Showing:

Friday - Thursday: 3:15pm, 5:15pm, 7:15pm, 9:15pm

Friday - Thursday: 5:45PM, 7:35PM, 9:25PM

Friday - Thursday: 11:30AM, 1:30PM, 3:30PM, 5:30PM, 7:30PM, 9:30PM

Fri: 11:10 AM, 1:20 PM, 3:30 PM, 5:40 PM, 11:20 PM

Sat - Mon: 12:30 PM, 2:40 PM, 4:50 PM, 7:00 PM, 9:10 PM, 11:20 PM

Tue - Thu: 12:30 PM, 2:40 PM, 4:50 PM, 7:00 PM, 9:10 PM

7.

Starring: Jason Statham, Jessica Alba, Tommy Lee Jones

Synopsis: Arthur Bishop thought he had put his murderous past behind him when his most formidable foe kidnaps the love of his life. Now he is forced to travel the globe to complete three impossible assassinations, and do what he does best, make them look like accidents.

Showing:

Friday - Thursday: 4:50pm, 8:55pm

Friday - Thursday: 5:20PM

Friday - Thursday: 1:10PM, 5:20PM

Daily: 12:35 PM, 5:00 PM

Starring: Stephanie Beatriz, Robert Cardone, Neil deGrasse Tyson

Synopsis: Manny, Diego, and Sid join up with Buck to fend off a meteor strike that would destroy the world.

Showing:

Fri-Thur: 10:15am

Friday - Thursday: 1:20PM

Friday - Thursday: 10:30 AM, 12:30 PM

Starring: Nse Ikpe-Etim, Anthony Monjaro, Seun Akindele

Synopsis: Arthur Bishop thought he had put his murderous past behind him when his most formidable foe kidnaps the love of his life. Now he is forced to travel the globe to complete three impossible assassinations, and do what he does best, make them look like accidents.

Showing:

Friday - Thursday: 12:00pm, 6:40pm

Friday - Thursday: 3:55PM, 7:20PM

Friday - Thursday: 11:40AM, 1:20PM, 5:10PM

Starring: Miles Teller, Bradley Cooper, Ana de Armas

Synopsis: Romance Is Overrated is a tapestry of 3 independent but mutually inclusive short films which reveal young individuals who are struggling with their illusions of the idea called love. This unfolds in 3 chapters. Slow Fade, Romance is still Overrated and Two Colors of Rainbow.

Showing:

Friday - Thursday: 11:00AM, 8:55PM

Sunday: 8:55PM

Friday - Thursday: 12:00PM, 4:10PM

Starring: Blake Lively, Oscar Jaenada, Brett Cullen

Synopsis: A mere 200 yards from shore, surfer Nancy is attacked by a great white shark, with her short journey to safety becoming the ultimate contest of wills.

Showing:

Fri-Thur: 11:20am, 3:10pm, 4:50pm, 6:35pm, 8:20pm

Daily: 5:10 PM

Friday - Thursday: 4:00PM, 7:40PM

Friday - Thursday: 2:20PM, 6:30PM, 8:20PM

Starring: Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon

Synopsis: 30 years after Ghostbusters took the world by storm, the beloved franchise makes its long-awaited return. Director Paul Feig brings his fresh take to the supernatural comedy, joined by some of the funniest actors working today.

Showing:

Friday - Thursday: 12:50pm

Starring:Alexander Skarsgard, Rory J. Saper, Christian Stevens

Synopsis: Tarzan, having acclimated to life in London, is called back to his former home in the jungle to investigate the activities at a mining encampment.

Showing:

Friday - Thursday: 5:05PM

15.

Starring: Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Garner, Robbie Amell

Synopsis: A stuffy businessman finds himself trapped inside the body of his family's cat.

Showing:

Daily:12:00 PM, 2:00 PM, 4:00 PM, 6:00 PM

Friday - Thursday: 3:15PM, 9:00PM

Daily: 1:35pm

Starring:Margot Robbie, Cara Delevingne, Jared Leto

Synopsis: A secret government agency recruits imprisoned supervillains to execute dangerous black ops missions in exchange for clemency.

Showing:

Fri-Thur: 1:35pm, 4:00pm, 6:30pm

Friday - Thursday: 1:00PM, 3:30PM, 6:00PM, 8:30PM

Friday - Thursday: 1:25PM, 9:20PM

Starring:Mila Kunis, Kathryn Hahn, Kristen Bell

Synopsis: When three overworked and under-appreciated moms are pushed beyond their limits, they ditch their conventional responsibilities for a jolt of long overdue freedom, fun, and comedic self-indulgence

Showing:

Daily:7:10 PM, 9:20 PM

Fri-Thur: 2:55pm, 8:25pm

Friday - Thursday: 6:40PM, 8:40PM

Starring:Angela Dixon, Nigel Whitmey, Lisa Eichhorn

Synopsis: A single mother on vacation, takes the law into her own hands to take back her abducted child.

Showing:

Friday - Sunday: 10:35AM

Starring: Kenneth Okonkwo, Bovi Ugboma, Lilian Esoro, Ebela Okaro, Alex Ekubo, Brycee Bassey, Anthony Monjaro.

Synopsis: A young woman's innocent online romance soon turn sour when her boyfriend decides to use the unsuspecting wealthy man as a cash cow. If he was duped of money, that's 419 but when you dupe him of Love, it is 41Love.

Showing:
According to the lawmaker, the visit is aimed at meeting with members with the management as a step towards improving the university.

Our visit is to familiarize ourselves with you in order to move the institution forward for the benefit of all because no society can achieve meaningful progress without sound education," he said.

Ogazzi said the ultimate aim is to make NSUK improve the university to international standard.

Uplifting the institution to an international standard will not only make the institution competitive but will also create an avenue for foreigners to study in the institution," he added.

It is only when the institution has been uplifted to an international or world standard that parents, foreigners and others stakeholders will have confidence in an institution.
The Edo APC chairman, Anselm Ojezua said the election was cancelled without consulting relevant stakeholders.

INEC, on Thursday, September 8, 2016, postponed the Edo state elections to September 28, 2016,following the reports of a possible terror attack.

The Department of State Security (DSS) and the Nigeria Police force issued a statement warning the election body that some terrorists had planned to attack Edo state.

He said First, the shift in the date for the election was announced without due consultation with critical stakeholders which include the All Progressives Congress.

We believe that the timing and mode of communication by security agencies could have been better handled by having regards to the very hard work and huge resources deployed towards the election by all concerned.

On our part, we have traversed the nooks and crannies of the state in the course of our electioneering campaigns, and we have been able to effectively market our candidates and our manifesto.

Our members have been fully sensitized and mobilized in readiness for the election, culminating in our final campaign at the Samuel Ogbemudia Stadium on Sept. 6, which recorded the highest level of mobilization ever witnessed in that facility.

It will, therefore, be fair to admit that the decision has adversely affected us somewhat.

We are obliged to defer to the decision of INEC particularly when security threats have been cited as the reason for the postponement.

Although we do not have the details from the security agencies, we have in the past drawn attention to the influx of militants into Edo from neighbouring states during the Continuous Voters Registration exercise.

As a matter of fact, some of them were arrested at Ologbo in Ikpoba Okha L.G.A., and charged to Court, but a host of others made it without detection.

Those ones must be lurking around various locations within our state even as we speak.

Data capturing machines were found to have been given to unauthorized persons to carry out illegal registration. A case in point is that of Alhaji Nakowa, a known PDP chieftain in Etsako Central.

He was arrested with some unscrupulous INEC staff while engaged in illegal registration in a private residence in the middle of the night.

All these, with the reported threat by the Governor of Rivers State, Mr Nyesom Nwike, to the effect that the APC people should go and write their will, should be a source of concern to any right thinking person.

You recall that the last time the same man issued the same threat in Port Harcourt, several people lost their lives including youth corps members who had been deployed to assist in the exercise in that State.

The postponement, therefore, provides an opportunity for security agencies to address these concerns in addition to whatever other threats they may have discovered.
The Department of State Services (DSS) and the Nigerian Police force issued a statement, warning the election body of an impending terror attack in Edo state.

According to Punch, Oluwawole said The righteous is as bold as a lion, but the unrighteous runs while no one is pursuing him. Nigeria is right now in a regime of inconclusive everything.

There have been a lot of inconclusive elections since the APC took over the mantle of rulership.

This is another strategy to rig election. They know they have failed already. Some hours before the postponement, INEC emphatically said it was ready, but it later bowed to their pressure.

They cannot change the will of God and the will of Edo people. Edo people have made up

their minds. In a democratic system, we should allow the will of the people to prevail.
Oshiomhole also alleged that the PDP in Edo state hired 8,000 militants to rig the governorship elections.

The Edo Governor said this when he hosted the Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris at the Edo Government House.

He alleged that the Edo PDP liaised with Governors of Rivers and Delta states to bring militants to the state and disrupt the elections.

According to Leadership, Oshiomhole said In line with my tradition, I have always tried to speak out on any matter that I am worried about. I first raised this alarm on the eve of INEC Continuing Voters Registration exercise, an exercise that has been designed to register those who have become eighteen between the last registration and the current one.

But these criminals who are determined to perpetrate violence and deny us the beauty of a peaceful election, unable to find local participants have chosen to import these militants with the support of two or so of my brothers. When I say brothers, I mean brother governors. It doesnt matter if I disagree with them, they are my brothers.

They are exporting militants to Edo State to register so that with the PVC in their hands, they will appear to have the lawful basis to be present at the designated polling units where they are expected to unleash violence on election day.

He said, When I raised this alarm, I should expect naturally criminals are not as courageous as they seem. They denied that there was any such plan, but happily our ever vigilant, the peace-loving electorate were able to apprehend some of these people from other states that came into Edo State for the purpose of this exercise.

At least, thirteen of them were handed over to the police. The IG may wish to establish what has happened to those people who were handed over. So, we handed them over to the police in line with what we were expected to do as civilised people.

Having done that, we are clear that there are a lot of people, up to eight thousand of them who are non-resident in Edo State, who are not indigenes of Edo State, who are indigenes and residents of Delta and Rivers states and some other states in the South-South, some from Bayelsa state who have registered for the sole purpose not to swell the votes, but to be present in various locations on election day.

Now, as part of the processes they put in place to effect this, they had conspirators in INEC that made available to them data capturing machine in the residences of various opposition leaders. We shared these experiences with the police and the DSS."
The governor made the comments via a statement released by his media aide, Lere Olayinka.

The statement reads:

It is obvious that Falana is driving himself sick because of his personal hatred for Governor Fayose and if care is not taking, his state of mind concerning the governor may graduate from psychology to psychosis one day.

Falana should purge himself of his hatred for anything Fayose because he (Fayose) was not the one who scuttled his (Falana) ambition to be governor of Ekiti State.

It is strange that Falana, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) could go public with accusation of fraud against someone who has not been pronounced guilty by any court of law and the Legal Practitioners Privileges Committee (LPPC) must take particular notice of this.

Is Falana unaware of the diversion of N852, 936,713.92 counterpart fund paid by the Ekiti State Government to access the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) 2012 Marching grant by the Fayemi-led government, which has made it impossible for Ekiti State to access UBEC matching grant for 2013, 2014 and 2015?

Is Falana not aware of the N25 billion bond and other commercial bank loans that the Fayemis government took and misappropriated, on which over N1 billion is being deducted from the State federal allocation now? Why did Falana keep silent when Ekiti State treasury was being looted right, left and center by the APC government of Fayemi? Where was Falana when uncompleted projects like the Oba Adejugbe General Hospital and State Pavilion in Ado Ekiti were being commissioned by Fayemi?

Is Falanas activism concerning Ekiti State only about Fayose and everything about his government? As someone who used to be close to him, my counsel for Daddy Femi Falana is that he should stop thinking that he can realize his governorship ambition in Ekiti State by maligning Governor Peter (the Rock) Ayodele Fayose everywhere he goes. He should rather come to Ekiti and sell himself to the people.
Fayose made the comments via a statement released by his media aide, Lere Olayinka.

The statement reads:

I warned Nigerians not to elect President Muhammadu Buhari because he lacks the mental, moral and intellectual capacities to superintend any civilised society. We are all seeing the results. Our economy is in recession and democracy is also in recession.

Apart from the security agencies that they instructed not to provide security for the election, the Central Bank of Nigeria was under instruction since Wednesday not to release electoral materials to INEC.

It was just a game by the APC-led Federal Government to frustrate the people of Edo State from beginning the journey of changing the APC one-chance change in Nigeria. But they should realize that the power of the people will always be greater than the power of those in power.

How can you postpone an election less than 48 hours to the scheduled date? What manner of security concerns could prevent an election in just one state when elections were held in North-East states that were confronted with Boko Haram insurgents?

Obviously, this is a sign of what to come in 2019 and Nigerians should not be amazed if in 2019, they tell us that elections cannot be conducted. This is sad. It is a sad commentary on democracy in Nigeria and I only hope this Buharis APC government will not collapse democracy in this country.
Oshiomhole made the comments during a recent appearance on Channels TV.

Like everybody else, I was very surprised and I made a comment on that. First, we had our final rally on Tuesday, if I had an idea that the election would be postponed, we would have postponed our rally, he said.

The whole idea was to bring our rally to a close so that we can spend time dealing with election logistics. If they have doubts that Edo state belongs to the APC, that our people have accepted APC for good, the outcome of our rally would have shown them.

PDP was afraid to use an open space for a rally, they used a small hall. Even at that, they couldnt get enough people to fill the hall. But we had the stadium overflowing, sea of heads. I have never seen that kind of crowd in my life. So, who is afraid?

I think two weeks is too long. But first let me say that we have reported to the police and the police arrested PDP officials who collided with INEC electoral officer in Etsako central to use the data capturing machine in the home of PDP leaders.

We also have evidence of the infiltration of militants. I have security reports As for the two weeks, I think INEC is putting it too long. On the 24th would be two weeks, and on the 26th is the coronation of the Oba of Benin. Before that day, there are couple of things that the crown prince is expected to do.

I dont think it will be fair to put an election in that period that a major event will happen in this kingdom. If INEC was ready to do election today, what is wrong with doing it next week? Next week will be fine. Two weeks is too far," he added.

ALSO READ: 3 reasons why Edo election may be postponed
The PDPs comments were contained in a statement released by spokesman, Dayo Adeyeye on Thursday.

The statement reads:

Sequel to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC)s decision this afternoon to go ahead with the Edo state gubernatorial election as scheduled; and their immediate reversal of that patriotic stance, the Leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) led by Senator Ahmed Mohammed Makarfi, CON, has re-iterated its earlier position that the Saturday September 10, 2016 election date should remain sacrosanct since there is no tangible reason(s) evident to tamper with the election.

The call for the postponement of the election by hierarchy of the security agencies predicated on alleged security threat was a less than ingenious attempt to buy time for the APC, which is clearly heading for a major electoral catastrophe on Saturday.

It is shameful and indeed a major constitutional breach for the security agencies to act in concert with the APC to truncate an election that had been planned for months. Nigerians were not deceived by the obvious concoctions of the security agencies whose performances during elections have been less than average since the advent of the Buhari administration. Indeed they have become instruments in the hands of the ruling party to harass, intimidate and punish opponents.

The postponement of the election by INEC is illegal, unconstitutional and a breach of the peoples trust in the commission and the security agencies. It is a coup against the people of Edo state in particular and Nigerians in general. Since APC assumed power, virtually all elections conducted by INEC have either been inconclusive or truncated.

Saturdays Election in Edo state must be an exemption. We will not accept anything less than free, fair and transparent election conducted and concluded the same day. INEC must rise to the occasion to restore the confidence of Nigerians in its operations. Edo is a test case. With the way INEC is performing, how are we sure that it would be able to handle the 2019 national elections. Our democracy is under a serious threat from the APC and its Gestapo security agencies.
Williams also said everybody is taking advantage of the issue of the girls to make money out of it.

She also cited the confrontation that ensued between the Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG) campaign and a Pro-Buhari group.

She said "For me o, I dont believe that there is Chibok girl. We should not use the life of people to play Jambo (game) at all. Some people are using this to make money. Ah ha! How tick is the Sambisa forest is it that people cannot penetrate?

Food for thought; when you come to Niger Delta Area, there is no secret. Let Nigerians do not toil with Nigerians, because before they know it, women will arise and they will see the other side of women.

Speaking on the current economic situation in the country, Williams said Let all of us go back to the drawing board, and forget about oil. Nigeria is a blessed country, a fertile land that has a lot of opportunities to tap. We have forgotten, even the talents giving to us, we dont want to use it.

Now is the time, the era of white-collar jobs is over. If you recall, how did Japan grow after the Hiroshima war? They had nothing but hand work. With determination and self development, they built up Japan. Is Japan no controlling the world today? Nigeria! We can even do better.
The founding president of Believers' Loveworld Incorporated, also known as Christ Embassy, said wives need to be obedient and submissive to their husbands, because both sexes are not equal.

Using the church's Facebook page, the pastor advised women to be submissive to their husbands, as husband means master.

Here is an excerpt of the post, entitled: "Who is a HUSBAND and what is His Role?":

"Husband does not mean the male partner in a marriage, husband means master.

The reason for most problems in Christian marriages is the fact that women refute Gods definition of marriage and form theirs. They believe they are equal partners.

If most women had their fathers bold enough to talk to them, they will be very successful in their marriage and they will be very happy people. Most women have never been taught by their parents, their fathers particularly and thats their biggest problem because they dont know who a man is, they think he is another woman."

As expected, this caused a huge stir on social media, with some agreeing the pastor, while others were vocal about their disagreement.

Pulse readers were asked to weigh in and the results show that majority agree with his position.

85.5% voted yes, while the minority, 14.5%, disagreed.
The demonstration took place today, Friday, September 9, as the school is set to resume on September 18.

The disgruntled parents reportedly marched to the Government House, Little Rayfield, to make their complaints known to the Governor Simon Lalong and the Gbong Gwom Jos, His majesty, DA Jecob Gyang Buba.

The parents complained that the said increase was far too much especially with the situation of the economy.In a letter entitled, Complaint on the hike in School fees and other charges in the Federal Government College, Jos, signed by Mr. Olusegun and addressed to the Gbong Gwom.

ALSO READ: Exam body to combine common entrance tests for unity schools
This was disclosed in a statement issued today, September 9, by the JAMB spokesperson, Fabian Benjamin.

ALSO READ: JAMB Registrar says there will be no written test for 2016 admission

He said that the president of NAL, Olu Obafemi, made the commendation while leading the NALs team, including the Executive Secretary of National Universities Commission, Abubakar Rasheed, to Mr. Oloyedes office in the Bwari area of Abuja.

Mr. Obafemi went on to describe NAL as an intellectual organisation whose mandate is to promote research and scholarship at its highest level in all branches of humanities.

He added that Mr. Oloyede was an active and dynamic member as well as a fellow of NAL.

The appointment of Prof. Is-haq Oloyede is a highly merited one not because he is a former Vice Chancellor but because he has distinguished himself in Nigeria; it is a merited appointment considering his profile and pedigree."

Mr Obafemi also said that the Academys visit was made to assure Mr. Oloyede of its support as well as its collaboration.

Oloyede is extremely gifted intellectually and he is also very hardworking and he would perform in whatever capacity he is appointed to work."

In the same vein, the NUC Executive Secretary, Abubakar Rasheed, emphasised the determination of the commission and JAMB to strengthen their ties in a bid to improve the quality of intakes into the Nigerian Tertiary Institutions.
The Head, Enforcement Unit of NCC, Mr Salisu Abdul, disclosed this when he spoke with newsmen after an enforcement action against the company in Lagos.

Abdul said in July 2015, the outfit was sanctioned to the tune of four million Naira for non type-approving eight different models of its handset phones.

Abdul said the company had forwarded the phones for test, but six models were approved by NCC, while the remaining two were obsolete, hence, not approved.

He said that after the approval of some of the phones, Innjoo had refused to pay the sanction for the marketing of the remaining two set of models without approval.

``We decided to come today to enforce compliance with payment. We have interacted with the officials of Innjoo and they told us that they actually did not receive the notice of sanction.

``The letter of sanction was sent to a lawyer representing Innjoo Technology Ltd, but the company said it never received it.

``So, when we gave them a copy of the letter of sanction, they immediately complied, he said.

He said: ``the company has paid the fine now, in the sum of N4 million, and the enforcement action has now been suspended,'' Abdul said.

He, however, said the commission would not hesitate to sanction operators and dealers that did not seek its approval before selling any device in the countrys telecommunications market.

Abdul said that type-approving a phone was necessary to ensure such device was compatible with the country's telecommunications networks.

He said it was an offence to sell or use any device that was not approved by the regulatory body.

According to him, selling of non type-approved phones is against the provision of sections 131, 132 and 133 of the Nigerian Communications Act.

``Substandard phones hinder network switchings so we have to subject phones to test to determine their qualities.

``Sometimes, using non type-approved handset causes poor quality of service, so this is one of the fundamental aspects why type-approval is necessary.

``So, we are saying that whatever equipment that is brought into the telecommunications market must be compatible with our network, otherwise, approval will not be given,'' he said.
Since suffering a stroke three years ago Bouteflika has dramatically reduced his public activity, leading Algeria's opposition to question his ability to rule Africa's biggest country, and to continuing speculation over the 79-year-old president's health.

Presidential polls are not due until 2019, but Bouteflika's opponents have called for early elections because of his physical frailty. Legislative elections are scheduled for the first half of 2017.

Analysts said Bouteflika's appearance was designed to dampen demands for early presidential elections.

"An anticipated presidential election is not an option for now," political analyst Arslan Chikhaoui told Reuters.

His most recent previous appearance this year was for Algeria's independence day celebrations on July 5, and he is usually only seen in brief state television videos greeting visiting dignitaries at his presidential residence.

Talk of transition comes at a sensitive time, as Algeria tries to cut spending and subsidies to offset a sharp drop in revenues from oil sales.

Algeria is a key supplier of gas to Europe and has positioned itself as an important Western ally in efforts to tackle Islamist militancy in North Africa and the Sahel.

First elected in 1999, Bouteflika led Algeria out of international isolation and a war with armed Islamists that left an estimated 200,000 people dead in the 1990s.
Bosco Ntaganda faces charges for atrocities committed by his troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2002-2003.

"Mr. Bosco Ntaganda has decided to stop eating," defense attorney Stephane Bourgon said, and he will also refuse to attend court hearings.

Ntaganda is unhappy with restrictions imposed on his phone calls and visitation rights in 2014 due to concerns that he was attempting to interfere with witnesses. The measures were upheld by the court last month.

"Ntaganda has lost all faith in the court because of the way he is treated. The situation now is that my client would prefer to die than to be were he is," Bourgon said.

Ntaganda has asked the judges if he can explain his viewpoint when the case resumes on Tuesday. It was unclear if he will be allowed to do so.

Ntaganda, whose trial began a year ago, started his military career in Rwanda when he joined the Rwandan Patriotic Front during the 1994 genocide. He later joined a branch of the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC), before surrendering in 2013.
Over 103,000 South Sudanese have fled to Uganda since fierce fighting in the capital between troops loyal to President Salva Kiir and his former deputy Riek Machar in July raised fears that the five-year-old nation could slide back into civil war.

Fighting and insecurity in the Equatoria states bordering Uganda continue to drive thousands from their homes, the U.N. said in its latest update late on Thursday.

Most of the new arrivals -- totalling nearly 14,000 in one week up to Sept. 2 -- are fleeing Central Equatoria State, home to the capital Juba, it said.

"New arrivals to Uganda from Central Equatoria report having been harassed by armed actors and increasing violence across the area," the U.N. update said.

Refugees from neighbouring Eastern Equatoria reported widespread looting and killing of civilians by armed men, it said.

"Activities by armed actors are reportedly increasing, including looting, kidnapping, and sexual violence," it said.

"The eruption of violence in July 2016 has heightened food insecurity and been accompanied by... checkpoints, road ambushes, looting and theft of properties," it said, citing a recent humanitarian assessment in Eastern Equatoria.

One in five of South Sudan's 12 million people have fled their homes since war broke out almost three years ago, triggering widespread hunger as farmers and markets have been unable to function.

Staple food prices spiked to more than 10 times the five-year average in parts of the northwest in late August, the U.N. said, ahead of the autumn harvest.

The Famine Early Warning Systems Network last month predicted localised famine -- or IPC Phase 5 -- in parts of northern South Sudan.

"It is likely an increasing number of households in these areas are exhausting their capacity to cope and may be moving to Catastrophe (IPC Phase 5) and experiencing an extreme lack of food," it said, calling for aid agencies and traders to be given increased access to hungry people.

Disease is further weakening populations, with 1.3 million cases of malaria reported since the start of 2016 and cholera spreading to new locations, the U.N. said.
Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie, an active campaigner to stop sexual violence in conflict, joined defence ministers and military chiefs from around 70 countries at the summit aiming to improve the performance of U.N. peacekeeping operations.

UK Defence Minister Michael Fallon and other speakers called on U.N. member states to double the number of women peacekeepers by 2020 after UN Women data showed just four percent of peacekeepers in 16 missions globally were women.

The U.N. is currently investigating accusations of sexual exploitation by foreign peacekeepers in Central African Republic and reports South Sudan peacekeepers failed to respond during an attack on foreign aid workers where women were raped and beaten.

Fallon said they needed to "redouble efforts to enable women to participate in all aspects of peacekeeping", saying women's participation could help drive success.

"If we are honest, there are far too few women in our peacekeeping missions when a gender mix can have a major impact on operational effectiveness," Fallon told the one-day summit that followed a meeting in New York last year.

JOLIE'S LEADING ROLE

Boosting women's involvement was a recurrent theme with a final communique urging U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to prioritise the appointment of women in senior peacekeeping roles and double the number of women peacekeepers by 2020.

Jolie, a special envoy for the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR), made a surprise appearance and speech at the summit, praising the work of service men and women around the world.

The actress has played a leading role in combatting sexual violence in conflict since co-founding an initiative in 2012 with Britain's former foreign secretary William Hague to rally global action on such crimes.

All roles in the British Armed Forces have recently been opened up to women following a review of women in close combat.

Fallon said sexual abuse and exploitation must be eliminated and the U.N. must adopt a "zero tolerance" policy towards it.

He cited "shocking examples of poor performance" by peacekeepers, without giving details but saying that he was referring to cases of sexual abuse by peacekeepers.
Gay sex is illegal in Tanzania and punishable by up to 30 years in prison.

The East African country has a reputation for being more tolerant towards LGBTI people than its neighbour Uganda but recent comments attacking the group have sparked fears and condemnation from activists.

In a statement late on Wednesday, the deputy minister for health, community, development and gender, Hamisi Kigwangala, said the Tanzanian government took traditional values seriously and would "always protect them".

"I cannot deny the presence of LGBTI people in our country and the risk they pose in fuelling the spread of HIV/AIDS but we don't subscribe to the assertion that there's a 'gender continuum'," Kigwangala said.

"We still recognise two traditional sexes and there's nothing in between or beyond ... Any effort to claim otherwise is not allowed.

"Tanzania does not allow activist groups carrying out campaigns that promote homosexuality ... Any attempt to commit unnatural offences is illegal and severely punished by law," he added.

Kigwangala's comments came a month after Dar es Salaam Regional Commissioner Paul Makonda announced a crackdown against gay people in Tanzania's commercial capital.

He said he would use social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to identify and arrest people suspected of being gay in the port city.

In July, the government announced it would ban imports and sales of lubricants to "curb" the spread of HIV.

Kigwangala said the government, in conjunction with the Tanzania Commission for AIDS, had started to vet gay rights NGOs.

Nurdeen Supa, a gay rights activist with LGBT Voice of Tanzania, an officially registered NGO, expressed concern the government move would further fuel discrimination against LGBTI people.
Its most powerful explosion to date follows a test in January that prompted the U.N. Security Council to impose tightened sanctions that increased North Korea's isolation but failed to prevent it from accelerating weapons development.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye, in Laos after a summit of Asian leaders ended there on Thursday, said North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was showing "maniacal recklessness" in completely ignoring the world's call to abandon his pursuit of nuclear weapons.

U.S. President Barack Obama, aboard Air Force One on his way home from Laos, said the test would be met with "serious consequences" and held talks with Park and with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the White House said.

China, North Korea's only major diplomatic ally, said it was resolutely opposed to the test and urged Pyongyang to stop taking any actions that would worsen the situation.

North Korea, which labels the South and the United States as its main enemies, said its "scientists and technicians carried out a nuclear explosion test for the judgment of the power of a nuclear warhead," according to a report from its official KCNA news agency.

North Korea said the test proved it is capable of mounting a nuclear warhead on a medium-range ballistic missile, which it last tested on Monday when Obama and other world leaders were gathered in China for a G20 summit.

Its claims of being able to miniaturise a nuclear warhead have never been independently verified.

North Korea has been testing missiles at an unprecedented rate this year, and the capability to mount a nuclear warhead on a missile is especially worrisome for its neighbours South Koreaand Japan.

"The standardisation of the nuclear warhead will enable the DPRK to produce at will and as many as it wants a variety of smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear warheads of higher strike power," KCNA said, referring to the country's formal name, the Democratic People's Republic ofKorea.

Japan Defence Minister Tomomi Inada said the Pyongyang regime's advances in mobile ballistic missile technology posed a grave threat to Japan.

SEVERE CHALLENGE

North Korea's nuclear test coincided with the anniversary of its 1948 foundation as a republic.

Its continued testing despite sanctions presents a severe challenge to Obama in the final months of his presidency and could become a factor in the U.S. presidential election in November.

"Sanctions have already been imposed on almost everything possible, so the policy is at an impasse," said Tadashi Kimiya, a University of Tokyo professor specialising in Korean issues.

"In reality, the means by which the United States, South Korea and Japan can put pressure on North Korea have reached their limits," he said.

Japan's Abe said such a nuclear test could not be tolerated. Japan's foreign minister lodged a protest and Tokyo also sent two military jets to begin measuring for radiation.

China's environment ministry began emergency radiation monitoring along its borders with North Korea in northeast China, state television reported.

Jeffrey Lewis of the California-based Middlebury Institute of International Studies said the highest estimates of seismic magnitude suggested this was the most powerful nuclear test conducted by North Korea so far.

He said the seismic magnitude and surface level indicated a blast with a 20- to 30-kilotonne yield. Such a yield would make this test larger than the nuclear bomb dropped by the United States on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in World War Two and potentially bigger than that dropped on Nagasaki soon after.

"That's the largest DPRK test to date, 20-30kt, at least. Not a happy day," Lewis told Reuters.
Lavrov told reporters while meeting Kerry in Geneva to discuss Syria peace efforts that a message must be sent "very strongly" on implementing U.N. resolutions on North Korea.

Kerry said he expected President Barack Obama to address the issue on Friday and said there would be discussions at the United Nations.

"We're trying to monitor to precisely find out what took place," Kerry said.

"I'm very much concerned and the resolution of the Security Council must be implemented and we must send this message very strongly," Lavrov said when asked by a pool reporter about the test.

Kerry said he had talked on Friday to the foreign ministers of Japan and South Korea.

"We had a serious conversation about it. Obviously Japan and South Korea, particularly, are deeply concerned because of the neighborhood. But I think it's fair to say China, Russia and the United States, everybody shares concerns about it," he said.

"At the appropriate moment today I'm confident President Obama will address (this) and we will certainly be discussing this in the context of the United Nations, for sure."

Earlier on Friday, Obama said any provocative actions by North Korea would have "serious consequences."

Obama had been briefed on board Air Force One by National Security Adviser Susan Rice about reported seismic activity near North Korea's nuclear test site earlier on Friday, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said.

North Korea set off a blast on Friday that was more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, and said it had mastered the ability to mount a warhead on a ballistic missile.

Its most powerful explosion to date follows a test in January that prompted the U.N. Security Council to impose tightened sanctions that increased North Korea's isolation but failed to prevent it from accelerating weapons development.
They also said that armed government actors were imposing "debilitating movement restrictions" on U.N. peacekeepers and warned that the economy of the world's newest nation has effectively collapsed due to government policies that include buying weapons instead of funding social services.

The report, on arms flows and security threats to South Sudan since a transitional government was formed in April, strengthens the case for an arms embargo, a move recommended by the monitors to the Security Council in January. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has also called for an arms embargo.

"There is no evidence to suggest that more weapons are required in South Sudan for the government to achieve a stable security environment," the U.N. monitors said. "Rather, the continued influx of weapons ... contributes to spreading instability and the continuation of the conflict."

They said that while Sudan had provided small arms, bullets and logistical support to opposition troops, they "found no evidence to date that Sudan - or any other neighboring country - has provided heavy weapons ... which has limited the opposition's ability to mount large-scale operations."

However, the monitors received reports that government troops have made significant, ongoing arms procurements including the likely recent acquisition of two L-39 fighter jets.

"While the panel has received preliminary reports from two sources that the jets were serviced and painted in Uganda, the panel has not yet been able to confirm their origin or if these jets have been purchased or are on loan," the monitors said.

Two truckloads of ammunition were transferred to the capital Juba from Uganda in June, while late last year South Sudanese army chief Paul Malong asked a Lebanese company to begin developing a small 'arms ammunition manufacturing facility in Juba, the monitors said.

"It is not clear from currently available information whether this project has proceeded in the intervening period," they added.

TALK OF ARMS EMBARGO

In the wake of deadly violence in Juba in July, the council said it would discuss an arms embargo if Ban reports this month that the government was not cooperating with the deployment of 4,000 more peacekeepers and was obstructing 12,000 U.N. troops already on the ground.

A U.N. peacekeeping mission (UNMISS) has been in South Sudan since the country gained independence from Sudan in 2011.

The U.N. monitors said that in rhetoric and action, government-affiliated forces "have actively threatened the operations and personnel of UNMISS and other U.N. agencies, and both parties have continued to target humanitarian workers."

During the violence in July, between 80 and 100 uniformed soldiers overran Juba's Hotel Terrain compound, home to the staff of international organizations, and in four hours killed an ethnic Nuer journalist and raped at least five foreign aid workers and other staff working at the compound, the monitors said.

The monitors said that given the number of soldiers involved, the number of items stolen and the systematic damage inflicted, "this attack was well coordinated and cannot be considered as an opportunistic act of violence and robbery."

The U.N. Security Council has long threatened to impose an arms embargo on South Sudan after the country spiraled into civil war in 2013, but veto powers Russia and China are wary that such a move would benefit opposition fighters because it would be harder to monitor them than to police the government.

The Security Council set up a targeted sanctions regime for South Sudan in March 2015, then in July blacklisted six generals - three from each side of the conflict - by subjecting them to an asset freeze and travel ban.

A political rivalry between President Salva Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, and opposition leader Riek Machar, a Nuer, sparked the civil war. The pair signed a shaky peace deal a year ago, but fighting has continued. Machar fled the country after the violence between their troops erupted in July.

The monitors said in the report - which was requested by the Security Council - that "the actions and policies of the two major parties" pose the most severe security threats to the peace deal and the transitional government.
The successful prosecution of a murder case in Rock Island County has garnered the county State's Attorney's Office a regional honor.

State's Attorney John McGehee accepted the award from the Mid-States Organized Crime Information Center, according to a news release Thursday from McGehee's office. The Outstanding Cooperation and Performance in Law Enforcement honor was presented at the center's annual conference in Wichita, Kansas. It recognizes successful investigations or prosecutions involving multiple jurisdictions and using the center's services.

The award honored work in convicting Timothy McVay in the December 2013 death of Carrie Olson, Davenport, whose body was found the following April in Hastings, Minn. McVay was found guilty of first-degree murder and was sentenced to 45 years in prison in 2015.

"This case showed a true team environment of the Rock Island Police Department and the Davenport Police Department working together with precision in the presentation of the evidence before a court of law," McGehee said in the release.
Davenport fire officials are investigating the cause of an overnight fire that heavily damaged an apartment building on the city's west side.

Crews were called about 1:30 a.m. to Eagle's Crest Apartments, 1701 Eagles Crest Ave. The apartments are located off West Locust Street across from Emeis Park.

When firefighters arrived, the building was fully involved. Flames could be seen shooting from the roof of the three-story, 15-unit building. The roof later collapsed.

Six fire companies were called to fight the blaze.

All residents living in the building were safely evacuated. Two people were taken to the hospital. The extent of their injuries are unknown at this time.

The cause of the fire is under investigation.

The American Red Cross of the Quad-Cities is assisting residents displaced by the fire with food, clothing and emotional support.
The Crow Creek Recreation Trail continues to lead Bettendorf into dispute with one of its residents.

Chad Miller, whose 10-plus-acre property on Tanglewood Road borders the trail, has had a longstanding dispute with the city over flooding and erosion problems he attributes to the trail, which was installed in 2013.

While Miller and the city have been at odds for some time given Miller's stance that the city never had the proper authority to install the trail, other more recent developments have stoked the flames.

Last week, Scott County District Judicial Magistrate Carrie Coyle ruled in favor of the city after Miller was found to have illegally constructed a wind tunnel in the flood plain without a permit.

Coyle assessed Miller a $75 civil penalty on top of $85 to remove the structure while also rejecting his counterclaims against the city.

In the ruling, Coyle wrote, "Mr. Miller has gone to great lengths to distract the city of Bettendorf and the Court from the issue at hand which is simply obtaining a permit which he failed to do."

On Tuesday, Mayor Bob Gallagher was none too pleased with what he called a diversion of police resources after a police presence was requested at the trail where workers were attempting to dig a trench to install drainage pipes earlier in the day.

"(Public Works Director) Brian Schmidt said that he got a call from one the inspectors that Chad was threatening the workers and inspector," City Administrator Decker Ploehn said. "I called the chief, and the chief sent a couple of officers."

Miller, however, disputed that, saying he called the police after finding workers trespassing on his property.

Miller said he asked the workers not to trespass and for a copy of the flood zone development permit. He said he was told by the workers that they did not have a copy on hand.

The documentation Miller requested was the same item he was fined for not having after he constructed the wind tunnel in the floodplain.

Ploehn said the workers do not have the permit because they are contractors, and if Miller wants to see the permit, the city would gladly supply a copy to him. Ploehn said Miller has not requested the permit from either him or City Attorney Kristine Stone.

Although the working area borders Miller's property, the recurring issue of who really owns the property is again at the issue.

"We're working in the easement, and it's our contention that we can do it because the city owns the easement," Ploehn said. "He just refuses to recognize the easement."

With Miller and the city nowhere near an amicable resolution, he went before the City Council on Tuesday to put his objections on public record and request the city cease and desist "making my problem worse."

"In my opinion, you are violating Iowa drainage law and the Clean Water Act," Miller said. "I've filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Natural Resource Conservation Service, but it seems to be falling on deaf ears. Your city staff is under the impression that it's city property back there even though it's private property."

Miller presented three pictures Tuesday, one before the installation of the recreation trail in 2013, another depicting water being diverted onto Miller's field in 2015 and the third showing some of the measures he has had to take to combat erosion, but none of the pictures were new to the council.

"You have many responses from the city legal department explaining to you why your assumptions are mistaken," Gallagher said.

Stone told Miller that the proper venue to make his objections heard was Scott County District Court, but from the city's standpoint, it is within its rights to proceed with the drainage pipe installation.

"Mr. Miller was informed about the project when it began, and he's been notified about the city's proposal," Stone said. "We have obtained all the required permits from the appropriate regulatory authorities. We do have valid recreation trail easement at the rear of his property, which he continues to dispute."

Miller disputed Stone's comments that he was informed of when work would begin and said, "I'm allowed to use my property any way I want and civil protest is a way to do that."

Miller would not comment any further with legal proceedings still ongoing.
URBANDALE, Iowa  A state task force comprised of stakeholders from across the alcoholic beverages industry met Friday to take a first, introductory step toward changing Iowas alcohol laws.

The group, convened by Gov. Terry Branstad, held its first meeting at the Urbandale Public Library. The group plans to meet another half-dozen times before making recommendations to the governor and state lawmakers prior to next years legislative session.

In their initial comments, stakeholders expressed a desire for clarified and streamlined state alcohol laws.

A central issue sure to come before the task force is whether distilleries that sell spirits such as whiskey and vodka should be allowed to sell the product they make on-site, as is currently permitted for craft breweries and wineries.

Wed like to be treated the same way as breweries and wineries, said Garrett Burchett, a task force member and an owner of Mississippi River Distilling Co. in LeClaire. Weve worked on legislation for five years. We think we have a pretty good thought of what that looks like. Wed like an opportunity to vet that with this group.

Beer wholesalers have pushed back against such changes. They say it would upset the three-tier system around which state alcohol laws are built: an independent distributor must operate between the manufacture and sale of alcohol.

I understand the governors purpose of (the task force). Hes looking at economic development, said Robert Fahr, a task force member and president of Fahr Beverage in Waterloo. But basically, we as an industry, we were built on the three-tier system.  By having the wholesaler, were protecting the distribution to all people on an equal basis.

The state has carved out exceptions to the three-tier system for small breweries and wineries. Distilleries are asking for the same consideration.

Those in border towns see the issue as especially pressing; all six states that border Iowa and 36 total allow distilleries to sell spirits by the glass.

Were losing some business, said Matt Johnson, a task force member and owner of Barleys Bar and Grill in Council Bluffs. People are going (across the border into Nebraska), not to Iowa.

Debi Durham, director of state economic development and a task force co-chair, said some portions of the states alcohol laws are impeding economic growth. She said she hopes the group can suggest changes to state law that create more economic opportunities but won't negatively affect public safety or the three-tier system.

I do think that we will come forth with a plan that we can agree to that is a responsible plan for growth, Durham said.

Stephen Larson, the other task force co-chair and administrator of the states Alcoholic Beverages Division, said the groups work is important because the industry is changing with the recent explosion of craft breweries, wineries and distilleries.

This industry, your industry, is changing rapidly, Larson said. "And we must be able to adapt fairly and rapidly."
A recent survey in Bettendorf has revealed its residents view the city and its services in a favorable light.

The data from the National Citizen Survey, a collaboration between the National Research Center Inc. and the International City/County Management Association, revealed areas in which Bettendorf excels and those in need of improvement, including comparing the city to national benchmarks.

"For the most part, we're really pleased with that we're in the similar or higher category most of the time," City Administrator Decker Ploehn said.

Out of the 1,500 surveys mailed, 476 surveys were returned, which was better than city's typical participation of 300-400 responses and greater than the national average.

City spokeswoman Lauran Haldeman said overall quality of life has improved in the past decade with good and excellent ratings comprising 96 percent of responses.

Bettendorf residents also rated the city's services highly as good and excellent ratings increased from 89 percent to 92 percent over the past decade.

Adding to the trend of improvements, the value of services for taxes paid has increased from 72 percent to 77 percent while customer service satisfaction increased 83 percent to 89 percent.

Although only seven in 10 rated Bettendorf favorably as a place to retire, the city continues to maintain a high livability rating.

Roughly nine in 10 residents gave good or excellent ratings for image, neighborhood, appearance and raising children. All of those metrics are higher than the national benchmarks.

Unlike previous surveys, Bettendorf added an open-ended question for concerns this year, which produced an interesting response for city officials.

While the open-ended question produced a myriad of topics, the most frequent concerns were divided as such:

 17 percent mentioned street repair issues.

 15 percent mentioned speeding and lack of traffic enforcement.

 14 percent mentioned repairs or updates to transportation infrastructure.

 11 percent mentioned code enforcement/city beautification.

Additionally, the city's lowest metric was the downtown/commerical area, which only 25 percent rated positively rated.

In reviewing the answers to the open-ended question about concerns, Alderman Jerry Sechser, 1st Ward, was encouraged with how the responses mirrored the council's priorities for the year.

"It tells me we're doing the right thing," Sechser said.

Although the National Citizen Survey cost the city $15,000, Alderman Gary Mohr, at large, defended the cost, viewing the survey as tool to assess the city's services and areas of improvement.

"I know $15,000 seems like a lot of money, but a statistically valid and reliable survey telling us what our residents think of our services is absolutely critical," Mohr said.

With the International City/County Management Association no longer conducting surveys in the future, budget manager Jason Schadt said the city was looking into a performance consortium with other Iowa cities for the purpose of evaluating services.

Ploehn said Ames, Coralville, Iowa City and Davenport to some extent had expressed interest in the idea.
DES MOINES Members of Iowas largest farm organization want to make sure existing or new state revenues  including a state sales tax increase if need be  are reshaped to make water quality initiatives that help retain nutrients and soil a top funding priority.

Delegates to the 2016 Iowa Farm Bureau Federation summer policy conference Thursday supported a state policy position indicating long-term, dedicated funding for water quality and soil conservation should be financed by reprioritizing existing state revenue and new dedicated revenue sources that include contributions by all Iowans to fund the states nutrient reduction strategy.

The Natural Resources and Outdoor Recreation Trust Fund distribution formula should be redefined to focus on implementing the nutrient reduction strategy and lake or stream restoration projects with minimal emphasis on land acquisition, recreational trails or REAP, according to the policy statement approved by delegates with overwhelming support.

Estimates indicate Iowa will need to invest billions of dollars over a long period of time for conservation measures to improve the quality of Iowas rivers and lakes  more than the farm economy alone can support, said Craig Hill, the organizations president.

The effort is going to require investments from government at the federal and state levels, private sources and farmers to accomplish the goals of reducing rural and urban nitrogen and phosphorus losses that pollute waterways, he said.

Several funding options have been offered in the Iowa Legislature without consensus and a pending lawsuit brought by the Des Moines Water Works against upstream drainage districts in three northern Iowa counties are slated to be argued next year.

Hill said Thursday that farm interests are confident they will prevail in court but they understand the need to address water quality concerns and want state resources retooled to place funding priorities for conservation improvements and soil retention ahead of recreational or other uses.

Were not being bullied by this lawsuit. Our goal is to make sincere efforts at fixing the problem which is holding soil and holding nutrients on our farms, Hill said in an interview.

We have an ambitious interest in getting that funded adequately and getting it implemented and executed, he added. If we dont find the funds and we cant meet the obligation that we have with the nutrient reduction strategy, then its possible new revenue will have to be derived and that may be a sales tax.

Iowa voters agreed overwhelmingly in 2010 to establish a trust fund financed by three-eights of any future one-cent sales tax increase for conservation, resource protection and recreational purposes that would be constitutionally protected. Farm Bureau delegates want legislators to reshape the trust fund spending priorities.

Last legislative session, Gov. Terry Branstad proposed sharing future school infrastructure sales tax revenue with water quality projects as a long-term approach that would not increase current taxes but that concept garnered limited legislative traction. He has since said he would be open to repurposing the penny sales tax for school infrastructure set to expire 2029 by continuing the tax and splitting the ongoing proceeds with five-eighths going to education and three-eighths going into a constitutionally protected natural resources trust that Iowa voters approved in 2010.

The GOP-led Iowa House passed an approach which would shift $478 million over 13 years to water quality projects from a water metering tax and the gambling-funded state infrastructure account. The Iowa Senate did not take up the measure in 2016.

Other state policy statements approved Thursday by federation delegates included:

State government should assume the costs of the mental health and disability services system, with a dollar for dollar reduction in property taxes. Ag land property taxes should remain capped at current levels until reduced.

Counties and cities should not have authority to set minimum wage requirements.

Nuisance lawsuits filed against agriculture are a risk that should be minimized through tort reform with damage awards limited to actual economic damages.

Landowners should not be able to receive an income tax credit for land donations to charitable organizations and government.
Hundreds of people are expected to march across the Centennial Bridge on Sunday as part of an event Modern Woodmen of America is organizing to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Marchers, including local first responders, military members and musical groups, will begin the Salute to Heroes event at 2 p.m. at Modern Woodmen's PMD Center, 2015 2nd Ave., Rock Island, cross the bridge and end at Modern Woodmen Park in Davenport. An event at the ballpark follows, beginning at 3 p.m.

"We would love to see people line the route and help honor folks in the march," said Sharon Snawerdt, manager of corporate communications for Modern Woodmen, the Rock Island-based fraternal financial services organization.

The event is a culmination of what Snawerdt calls Modern Woodmen's summer-long "Be An Everyday Hero" program in which employees were asked to perform at least 2,977 acts of kindness, one for every victim of the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon near Washington, D.C.

The employees logged their individual acts, and Modern Woodmen surpassed its goal by the end of the summer, Snawerdt said.

"It really made people stop and think of ways to care for their fellow human beings," she said of the program.

Modern Woodmen makes a concerted effort every two years to get employees involved in community activities, Snawerdt said. This is the first year the organization is leading a march to honor the military and first responders.

The Davenport Police Department's newest K-9, Dawn, also will be introduced at Sunday's event. Modern Woodmen raised $20,000 to purchase and train the dog for Davenport's tactical operations bureau.
Once a key part of the political season and an important role for newspapers, editorial endorsements of candidates are fading away. A recent announcement that newspapers controlled by the Alden Global Capital hedge fund would no longer endorse candidates for president, governor and U.S. Senate is the latest indicator of the trend. In many cases, endorsements have become victim to both the news industry's troubles and the era's bitter politics. After many newspapers advised against voting for Donald Trump as president in 2016  and he won anyway  many news organizations wonder if it's worth alienating readers when they're hard enough to come by.
CEDAR RAPIDS  The presidential campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump trotted out surrogates Thursday in a series of tit-for-tat appearances and conference calls to question the fitness of their respective opponents.

In Cedar Rapids, former Iowan, University of Iowa graduate and Reagan administration staffer Doug Elmets asked, How can any self-respecting human being look at Donald Trump and say he should be the leader of this country?

Although he has made contributions to Democratic candidates, Elmets said he has never voted for a Democrat since casting his first vote in a presidential election in 1980 for Ronald Reagan.

In contrast to Trump, who will campaign in Clive on Tuesday, he said, Clinton is more prepared to be president than anyone in modern history.

But Col. LaVerne Anderson, retired from the Army after nearly 43 years of service and chairman of Iowa Veterans for Trump, said revelations about Clintons mishandling of sensitive intelligence material should disqualify her as being president.

I think Hillary Clinton and the current administration have endangered our nations security, Anderson said on a conference call. Not only did Hillary expose classified information to actors on her unsecured, I would say home brew, email server, and that has weakened the decision-making in Iraq, Syria, Libya, and its turned those countries into a breeding ground for radical Islamic terror.

While Elmets argued there is no comparison between his former boss and Trump, whom he called a an empty suit, phony and someone lacking grace and humility who offers crazy notions, Republican Party of Iowa Chairman Jeff Kaufmann said comments the GOP nominee made during a national security forum Wednesday reminded him of Reagans peace through strength approach.

I believe thats what Donald Trump represents, I believe thats what Donald Trump can deliver, he said.

Rod Boshart contributed to this story.
NATION

Girl, 14, dies in school shooting

The superintendent of the Texas school district where a 14-year-old girl shot and injured a student before turning the gun on herself says investigators don't believe the girls knew each other.

Alpine Independent School District Superintendent Becky Watley said Friday officials are still looking into possible motives for Thursday's shooting at Alpine High School. She says bullying hasn't been discussed during her conversations with investigators.

The local sheriff and police chief didn't return messages seeking investigation details Friday.

Authorities say the 14-year-old died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound in a bathroom near where the victim was shot. The victim was taken to a local hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

An expert says the case is rare, noting that more than 95 percent of fatal school shootings are committed by males.

Girl enters insanity plea in Slender Man case

The second of two young Wisconsin girls accused of trying to kill a classmate to please horror character Slender Man entered a plea on Friday of not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect to an attempted homicide charge.

Fourteen-year-old Anissa Weier entered the plea during a 15-minute hearing in Waukesha County Circuit Court. Judge Michael Bohren appointed two doctors to examine the girl, who sat silently during the proceedings. The judge ordered the doctors to turn in a report on her mental status by Oct. 6.

Weier and 14-year-old Morgan Geyser each face one count of first-degree attempted intentional homicide as adults for allegedly luring classmate Payton Leutner into a wooded area and repeatedly stabbing her in May 2014. All three girls were 12 years old at the time.

WORLD

Puerto Rico needs help in Zika fight

Doctors in Puerto Rico are warning that the U.S. territory does not have the resources to handle the fallout of a Zika epidemic as officials report an uptick in the number of fetuses with malformations that were carried by women infected with the virus.

The cases are among the first of what health officials believe could reach a couple hundred next year, sparking concerns about the lack of funds and specialists needed to care for children with severe birth defects on an island mired in a deep economic crisis.

"We are talking about babies that will have problems with hearing disorders, developmental disorders," said Dr. Nabal Bracero, who runs a fertility clinic. "And now, because of the complexity of Puerto Rico's financial situation, our health system is not ready for that."

4 die in train derailment

A passenger train derailed Friday in Spain's northwestern Galicia region, killing at least four people, including an American tourist, and injuring 48 others who were taken to hospitals, authorities said.

The accident occurred at 9:30 a.m. in Porrino, about 280 miles northwest of Madrid, the Galician regional government said. The three-car train was travelling between Spain and neighboring Portugal.

The regional government's president, Alberto Nunez Feijoo, told reporters at the scene that the train's Portuguese engineer and Spanish ticket collector were among the dead, as well as two passengers.

Turkey to oust pro-Kurdish mayors, officials

Turkey's government will take over the running of 28 municipalities, ousting elected mayors and other administrators accused of links to the Kurdish rebels, the interior minister said Friday.

The announcement by Suleyman Soylu came a day after the country's education ministry suspended as many as 11,285 of its personnel, including teachers, because of suspicions they may be linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK.

Turkey declared a state of emergency following a failed military coup attempt on July 15 that allows the government to rule by decree. It has since suspended tens of thousands of people from government jobs over suspected links to U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen whom Turkey accuses of masterminding the coup. Gulen has denied any role in the coup attempt.

Thursday's dismissals of the teachers for alleged links to Kurdish militants have led to renewed accusations that the government was engaged in a witch-hunt against critics and opponents.

Hundreds of demonstrators, including teachers who were suspended, took to the streets in the mainly-Kurdish city of Diyarbakir to protest the government move. Police used shields and water cannon to disperse the group and some demonstrators were detained.

A senior government official, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with government rules, has told a group of reporters and the suspension of the teachers were based on "concrete evidence" including financial ties and efforts to recruit for the rebels.

Soylu said the takeover of the municipalities would take place within the next two weeks.

"Under the authority provided by the decree with the force of law, within 15 days, the administration of 28 municipalities will no longer be with the terrorists," the state-run Anadolu Agency quoted Soylu as saying.

"The administration of the 28 municipalities will not be conducted under the orders of Qandil but by the people who have taken the (Turkish flag) into their hearts," he added, referring to Qandil mountain in northern Iraq where the PKK's leadership is based.
A farm tractor operator rear-ended Thursday afternoon by a semitractor-trailer on U.S. 61 near Welton, Iowa, has died, a Clinton County Sheriff's official said.

The semi driver also was injured in the accident around 1:30 p.m. and taken to Genesis Medical Center, DeWitt. The driver's condition is unknown.

The sheriff's office did not release the names.

Lt. Tom Paarmann with the sheriff's office said the accident happened between 190th and 197th streets, about a half mile south of Welton.

Both the open station John Deere tractor and the semi were heading north on U.S. 61 when the semi rear-ended the tractor, Paarmann said. The impact pushed the tractor into the highway's median and the semi went off the roadway and into a ditch.

As of 3:30 p.m., the northbound lanes were still closed, and both vehicles were still on scene. Paarmann said he expected the lanes would remain closed for another hour.
My observations and sightings in nature.
Another pandemic fallout: Used car prices are way up, and the repo man is back
Sainthood could be the next honor for the late Lakota holy man whose name was recently affixed to South Dakotas tallest peak.

A drive to canonize Nicholas Black Elk appears to be gaining momentum. In March, some of his living relatives presented a petition to the Catholic Diocese of Rapid City. The petition, bearing 1,600 signatures, requested that the bishop of the diocese nominate Black Elk for sainthood through a process known as canonization.

There are many who are waiting to share the joy of the day when Nicholas Black Elk, Sr., will be counted among the company of saints by Holy Mother Church, the petition said, in part.

The petition was presented to Bishop Robert Gruss and Deacon Marlon Leneaugh, the dioceses director of Native Ministries, by a group that included Black Elks oldest living grandchild, George Looks Twice.

Black Elk is well-known to many Catholics and religious scholars and to readers of Black Elk Speaks and other books about him. His profile was further elevated in August when the U.S. Board on Geographic Names renamed Harney Peak, a 7,242-foot mountain in the Black Hills, to Black Elk Peak.

The drive to canonize Black Elk faces a multifaceted and potentially years-long process, but Mark Thiel, an archivist for Marquette University where many Black Elk materials are held, thinks the timing may be right for Black Elks cause.

While all causes are arduous, Thiel wrote in a summary of the effort, the sainthood pathway and pace under Pope Francis is the best ever, and his advocacy for indigenous people and the earth resonates well with Black Elk who served Jesus and the Great Spirit while advocating for peace, love, and harmony among all of creation.

Saints can be martyrs  people who are killed because of their religious beliefs  or examples of virtuous living. Black Elk would fall under the latter category, having died a natural death in 1950 after working as a Catholic catechist for many years and leading an estimated 400 people to be baptized. He blended Christianity with the traditional Native American spirituality that he learned as a boy and young man during the years before his Oglala Lakota Sioux people were pushed onto the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in the late 1800s.

For the canonization process to begin, Bishop Gruss must formally open the cause. Leneaugh said the bishop is giving the matter careful consideration.

If the cause is opened, a diocesan tribunal would study relevant writing and testimony about Black Elk and submit evidence of Black Elks worthiness for canonization to Bishop Gruss.

Gruss could then send the tribunals documentation to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in Rome. The congregations theologians would examine the evidence and decide whether to forward it to the congregations cardinals and bishops, who would consider whether to forward it to the pope.

The pope could then confer the title Venerable on Black Elk. Next, if a miracle could be attributed to Black Elk and verified by a team of experts, the pope could give Black Elk the title of Blessed.

If a second miracle could then be attributed to Black Elk and verified, he could be declared a saint.

There are potential miracles in Black Elks life story. Some people who knew Black Elk, for example, reported that he predicted a sign would appear in the heavens upon his death. The night of his wake, people reported seeing an incredible celestial display in the night sky, and some interpreted it as Gods blessing on Black Elk. A Black Elk biographer, Michael Steltenkamp, has also noted that the display could have been a Perseid meteor shower.

Sometimes, miracles emerge after a potential saints death. That happened in the case of the first Native American saint, Kateri Tekakwitha, an Algonquin-Mohawk woman who lived during the 1600s and was beatified in 1980 by Pope John Paul II.

In 2006, the family of a boy stricken with flesh-eating bacteria reported praying to Tekakwitha and receiving a miracle cure. That was considered Tekakwithas second miracle, and she was canonized in 2012 by Pope Benedict XVI. The canonization ceremony in Rome was where Black Elk's grandson, George Looks Twice, met Thiel, the Marquette archivist.

Thiel hopes Black Elk's canonization proceeds faster than the 332 years it took for Tekakwitha following her death.

While causes have taken hundreds of years, Thiel wrote, many today are completed in just ten years.
PIERRE | The South Dakota Aviation Hall of Fame adds five new members this weekend, including Bernie Christenson of Pierre.

Christenson, now a self-described young 78, moved to Pierre in 1973 and started flying part-time for Cecil Ice.

In the 43 years since, Christensen became a co-owner of the air carrier, was the FAA licensing examiner for 1,700 pilots and flew governors for decades.

The others selected for the hall this year include:

The late Grove Rathbun of Rapid City, a past president of the South Dakota Pilots Association;

Rich Krogstad of Spearfish, who helped lead the fundraising drive to build the hall of fame at Spearfish;

Paul Hegg of Sioux Falls, a pilot and businessman whose investment helped turn around Business Aviation in Sioux Falls; and

Bud Sittig of Centennial, Colorado, a 1965 graduate of South Dakota State University who became a chief pilot for United Airlines, worked in a variety of executive posts for airlines and served five years as chief of staff for the Colorado Air National Guard.

The steak fry honoring them is Saturday at the hall of fame in Spearfish.

Christenson grew up at Britton, the same community where Frank Farrar began his political career as state attorney general and governor and still lives.

The state Division of Criminal Investigation is an arm of the attorney generals office, and Christenson served as a state criminal investigator for many years, rising to deputy director.

After retiring from DCI, he won election as a state legislator from the Pierre area and worked at BankWest for a period.

He later was the first executive director for the South Dakota Community Foundation that began under Gov. George S. Mickelson.

He became a partner with Jim Pietz in an air carrier business at Pierre they bought from Cecil Ice on Dec. 31, 1989. Pietz and Christenson spent 16 years in business together.

When Mickelson made his first solo flight, Christensen cut off the governors shirttail as is custom and still has it. That was 26 days before Mickelson and seven other men died in the 1993 crash of the state jet.

Christenson said he planned to retire from flying altogether in 2015. He agreed to continue flying this year part-time for state government.

His last flight recently came when he took Gov. Dennis Daugaard to Britton for its Capital For A Day event.

Oh yeah, its hard to walk away, Christenson said as he sat for an interview over black coffee in the shade on his deck Saturday morning.

But it wasnt difficult to stop being a pilot examiner or a charter pilot.

Been there and done that, he said.

The hall of fame selection caps his career in the air.

He said his successes repeatedly came with the help of others throughout his life, such as Farrar, Mickelson and other governors he flew, Peitz and the tremendous employees they had at Capital City Air Carrier.

There is nothing left. The book has been written and Im pretty darn proud of that book, Christenson said.

He already is in the South Dakota Hall of Fame for his overall achievements. That came three years ago. The aviation honor seems to mean a lot to him, too.

I dont know why I pursued that (flying) with all the vigor I did, but I always wanted to be better, he said.
Masons from across America joined Thursday with their fraternity's members and friends at ceremonies noting the 75th year since Mount Rushmore was completed.

Organized by South Dakota Masons, the ceremonies at the Mount Rushmore amphitheater noted how each of the four presidents depicted by Mason Gutzon Borglum had their own unique connections to the fraternity.

Along with the history of well-known Masons making American history from the Revolutionary War, speakers noted the multi-cultural contributions to the fraternity and nation from Masons.

South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley said the Masons' contributions continue today with the Child Identification Program, or CHIP, that offers parents a free identification package.

"There are 21,700 kids in South Dakota, including my two, who are being protected by the Masonic program," Jackley said.

Keynote speaker Ronald Seale, head of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry Southern Jurisdiction, noted that Masons today are woven into the American community: "When you find them, you find the fabric of America," he said.

Rushmore, crafted through the work of many Masons and others, is a symbol of "the freedom to hope, and to dream, and the freedom to be and the freedom to accomplish," he said.

The Master of ceremonies for the event was the newest Mason on the program. "America Unearthed" host on the History Channel, forensic geologist Scott Wolter, introduced the guests.

Edith Wong not only told of the influence of Masons on her family and Chinese pioneer history in Deadwood, but of another generation of her family who served in America's military and proudly wore Masonic cufflinks.

Ira Briggs Junior of Eagle Butte led Lakota prayer as a Mason and noted that Lakota values and tradition mesh well with those of Freemasonry.

Larry Coleman, head of the Prince Hall Grand Lodge of Kansas, noted how African-American Masons played a role in South Dakota and American military history.

Also linking the Masonic fraternity to the presidents on Mount Rushmore and the American epic were Ridgley Gilmour, president of the George Washington National Masonic Memorial, and George Braatz, executive secretary of the Masonic Service Association of North America.
WASHINGTON | The smell of fresh paint greeted lawmakers reacquainting themselves with their workplace after their seven-week break.

The scaffolding was coming down, revealing a gleaming dome and, underneath it, restored friezes, oil paintings and statues. The Capitol has been returned to its former glory.

If only they could do the same to Congress.

After their seven-week recess, which was the longest break since at least 1960, the people's representatives in the House are back for just four weeks before recessing again until the election  and there has been talk of cutting those four weeks of work to three or even two.

They might as well go home, because the House to-do list could end up looking something like this: Impeach the IRS commissioner. Punish the Democrats. Sue the Saudis.

This is how Donald Trump happened.

Americans are worried and angry about the big issues: stagnant wages, immigration, trade deals, health care, entitlement programs, the Zika virus. Yet the best Congress can do for the moment is to keep the government running on autopilot for a few more months, and even this isn't guaranteed.

With three weeks to go in the fiscal year, Congress has enacted not one of the 12 annual appropriations bills (the House has passed six). While leaders struggle to pass a temporary "continuing resolution," Republicans fight among themselves about how long it should last and hard-liners threaten to derail it by adding language banning Syrian refugees.

As Republicans sat down for their caucus meeting Wednesday morning, the conversation wandered  this member's new grandchild, that member's engagement, various anecdotes and talking points. GOP leaders held a news conference after the meeting, at which they voiced enthusiastic support for ... a new soapbox that had appeared over the recess to help shorter members of the caucus be seen behind the lectern.

"You could put three people on that thing," House Speaker Paul Ryan said upon entering the room and spying the new piece of furniture.

"Gee whiz!" exclaimed Rep. Lynn Jenkins, R-Kan., trying it out.

With so little happening, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy tried to create the illusion of activity, asserting that in this Congress "a total of 219 bills have been enacted into law. That's an increase over the 25-year average."

Actually, the average number of bills enacted into law in previous Congresses going back to 1991 is 435  double the current output. McCarthy's spokesman said the claim was based on when Congress went on its long summer holiday. But as of now, McCarthy's 219 bills are well below the 25-year average of 257 enacted at this point by previous Congresses. And most have been minor "suspension" bills, such as post-office namings.

"People want a positive vision and a clear direction for solving the country's big problems," Ryan declared at his news conference.

But instead, they're getting:

An attempt to impeach the IRS commissioner. Some hard-liners, still angry about the IRS' treatment of conservative groups, are trying to force leaders to hold a vote to impeach the current commissioner, John Koskinen, who took over after the alleged wrongdoing occurred.

A bid to punish two dozen House Democrats, led by civil rights icon John Lewis, who staged a sit-in on the House floor in June to protest Republicans' refusal to bring up gun-control legislation.

Legislation allowing the families of 9/11 victims to sue Saudi Arabia in federal courts, a bill with no chance of getting enough votes.

Instead, House Republicans could spend their fleeting time at work resolving an impasse blocking funds to fight the Zika infection. The Senate reached a bipartisan deal in May to provide $1.1 billion for the effort, but the agreement fell apart when House Republicans added a provision restricting funds from going to Planned Parenthood.

At Wednesday's news conference, CNN's Manu Raju asked Ryan why he wouldn't accept a "clean bill" without the poison pill.

"Look, give me a break," Ryan said, blaming the Senate.

But even some of Ryan's Republicans aren't giving him a break. Rep. Richard Hanna, R-N.Y., told Bloomberg's Billy House that "we become obstructionists" with the Planned Parenthood gambit.

And Rep. David Jolly, R-Fla., carried a jar full of Florida mosquitoes onto the House floor. "During the seven weeks ... we were gone, cases of Zika rose from 4,000 to by some estimates over 16,000 in the country," he said. His constituents "are demanding action and they are seeing inaction, and in that inaction they are angry."

Yes, but have they seen that new soapbox for members of Congress? Gee whiz!
Sentence passed on Russian killer of Armenian family appealed in part - lawyer

MOSCOW, September 8 (RAPSI)  Sentence handed down to Russian soldier Valery Permyakov, who had killed seven members of a family in the Armenian city of Gyumri, was appealed in part, lawyer Eduard Agadzhanyan said in an interview with the News of Armenia on Thursday.

According to the attorney, the appeal lodged on September 7, is connected with charges of attempted border crossing.

On August 23, a court in Armenia sentenced Permyakov to life in prison. He was found guilty on all accounts including murder, assault related to robbery and attempt to cross the border illegally. As Permyakov earlier pleaded guilty to the murder, the lawyer could not appeal these charges, according to legal ethics. Thats why Agadzhanyan has lodged an appeal against the sentence regarding attempted border crossing.

The family, including a six-month-old baby, was killed as a result of an armed assault on January 12, 2015. Valery Permyakov, a soldier at a Russian base in the Armenian town of Gyumri, was arrested and later charged with the murder of two or more persons under the Armenian Criminal Code.

On August 12, 2015, Permyakov was found guilty of desertion, theft of weapons and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

The murder case was singled out for considering it in a separate procedure and passed to the Armenian authorities.

On October 13, Permyakov was found sane despite certain deviations. According to experts, he was not in the heat of passion while committing the crime. He also could recognize the consequences of his actions.

On October 16, Permyakov was additionally charged with armed assault, home-invasion robbery and attempted border crossing.
Russian banker Gitelson owes Finance Committee of Leningrad Region $23 mln - court

MOSCOW, September 9 (RAPSI) - The Commercial Court of St. Petersburg and Leningrad Region has granted an application filed by the Finance Committee of the Leningrad Region seeking to include the debt of bankrupted businessman and banker Alexander estimated at 1.46 billion rubles ($23 million) on the list of creditors' claims, according to court ruling.

Earlier, EEFC-Ural Bank has demanded to include the former banks head Gitelsons debt valued at 300.2 million rubles ($4.7 million) on the register of creditors.

In May, the court granted a petition filed by the Gitelson, who was running banking business in Russia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, for his own bankruptcy.

Gitelson was arrested in Austria in April 2013 and extradited to Russia in December.

In March 2015, Gitelson was convicted and sentenced to three years for embezzling over 2 billion rubles ($31 million) in public funds from Inkasbank. A court in St. Petersburg also fined the banker 500,000 rubles ($7,800).

Inkasbank was declared bankrupt in May 2009. The banks administrator conducted an inquiry into the circumstances of the banks insolvency. As a result, the Russian Federal Security Service received a motion to open a criminal case (premeditated bankruptcy) against the banks former management.

In April 2011, Moscows Meshchansky District Court sentenced Gitelson in absentia to five years in prison and a 1 million ruble ($15,600) fine for embezzling 495 million rubles ($7.7 million) from his acquaintance, MP Adnan Muzykayev.
Russian nationals detained in Poland on charges of aiding and abetting ISIS - report

MOSCOW, September 9 (RAPSI)  A court in Bialystok, the largest city in northeastern Poland, ordered detention of four Russian nationals from Chechnya charged with accessory in financing and recruiting militants for extremist organizations operating in Iraq and Syria including the Islamic State, Radio Poland reported on Friday.

Additionally, they were accused of illegal border crossing. Reportedly, Russian nationals entered Poland without getting a residence permit and entry visa.

According to investigation, they have acted as fund raisers and recruiters of criminal groups in several Polish cities including Warsaw since October 2014. Moreover, they are suspected of purchase and forwarding clothing allowance and gun sights to Iraq and Syria and accessory in delivery of health care to injured militants of jihadist groups, Radio Poland reported.

All defendants whose names have not been disclosed pleaded not guilty.

Russian nationals could face up to 12 years in prison if convicted.

The Islamic State, an organization which is prohibited in Russia, is currently one of the major threats to global security. Over three years, these terrorists have managed to seize large areas of Iraq and Syria. The organization is also attempting to spread its influence to North Africa  particularly, Libya. The area controlled by ISIS covers up to 90,000 square kilometers.
BUTTE  After facing a grizzly bear on his first bow hunt for elk, 12-year-old Hunter Edens says he didnt know if the bear was going to play the Im going to kill you card.

When Hunter and his father, Dan, met with the bear on a private ranch off Gibbonsville Road 10 miles west of Wisdom, Dan was fearful for his son, a seventh grader at Stevensville Middle School.

Having only seen two black bears in the 25 years hes been hunting, Dan didnt think to bring either his pistol or bear spray on this hunt.

The Stevensville pair had been out in the woods for about an hour and decided to take a break. Hunter tried out his brand new elk call and it brought an elk cow right to them.

We made a nice shot. It went across the meadow and we let the elk lay down and do its thing. We started trailing the blood. Then we spotted something moving, Dan said Wednesday.

Hunter saw the grizzly out of the corner of his eye. They thought it was a wolf. Dan used his binoculars and realized what it was just as Hunter said, Dad, its a grizzly.

With silvery gray shoulders, the bear was about 150 yards from the two hunters. Dan described the bear as very large and beautiful.

Dan and Hunter watched the wild animal for a minute or two.

It was a cool thing to see, Dan said.

But the two hunters were standing in the elks blood trail.

We got back into the willows. He did see us and ran over to where we were standing, Dan said.

It came right for us, Hunter said.

The two ran through the willows. By now the bear was only 70 yards away. Neither Dan nor Hunter knew what the grizzly was going to do.

It was an eerie feeling, Dan said.

Hunter called the experience nerve-wracking.

The bear stood up. I started yelling at the bear, making loud noises, Dan said.

The bear got down on all fours and headed into the willows in the direction of the downed elk.

Hunter and Dan ran for a fence and disturbed a few cattle to distract the bear in case it changed its mind and came back for them. When they got to Dans truck, he called his wife who called authorities. Fish, Wildlife and Parks and the Beaverhead County Sheriffs department arrived.

Dan wanted to go back out into the woods to collect his elk. But FWP game warden Regan Dean convinced Dan not to go back out there.

I told him dont worry about that elk, you can find another one, Dean said. He wouldnt want that meat after the grizzly had been crawling around on it.

Because Dan did not tag his elk, he did not lose his elk hunting tag. He would have lost it if he had tagged the elk before the bear arrived, Dean said.

Undaunted by the bear experience, Dan and Hunter plan to head back out to look for another elk to hunt this coming weekend. But they will go to a different hunting spot for now.

Educated in wilderness camp and having been a hunter since the age of 5, Hunter talked about the moment with the bear like it was something that had happened at school, Dan said.

Im not scared to go back out in the woods, Hunter said Wednesday.
If youve been touched by the long hours and hard work that local firefighters and law enforcement officers have put in this wildfire-filled summer, you will want to stop by the Albertsons Grocery store parking lot in Hamilton Saturday.

On that day, the countys first responder community and Heart Ministry will host an appreciation day from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.

It will a chance for people to meet some of the guys and say thank you our first responders, said Ravalli County Sheriffs Chaplain Mark Hawes.

For those who want, Hawes said people can post a sticky note on a sheriffs car or firetruck to express their appreciation for the efforts of the first responders.

We hoping that people will bring their families, he said. We also hoping that firemen will be handing out their plastic badges to the kids.

This is the first time that weve done something like this, Hawes said. We felt like it was appropriate to show our appreciation for all the sacrifices those guys have made this summer.

Some in the sheriffs office are still working 13 hours at the roadblock on their days off, he said.

Everyone is wearing down, Hawes said. It just seems like a good time to recognize them.

Hawes said the community has always shown its support when emergencies arise.

Every time we have a big event like this, the community rallies together, he said. We dont plan for these kinds of things, but its certainly a blessing to see how the community responds.
The successful MAPS program with staffing changes, is starting its 13th season of programming and is hosting an open house Tuesday, Sept. 13.

MAPS Media Institute, the afterschool hands-on technology-learning center, offers free classes to all Ravalli County students in grades 812.

The community is welcome to tour the MAPS studios, meet the staff and learn about MAPS classes during the open house is from 4:30 to 6:40 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 13, at 515 Madison St. in Hamilton.

Peter Rosten, MAPS founder and CEO, has freed himself up to do special projects by hiring Clare Ann Harff as president and program director. Rosten will continue to develop MAPS business model and all growth while Harf will manage the day-to-day business, programming and serve as the point person for the community.

Rosten said he is excited about the future.

Clare Ann is just extraordinary, Rosten said. The job that I have now is Im still l CEO but I get to do the things I want to do. These changes are a natural growth spurt for MAPS to ensure we can continue and exceed the results that we have had for the last 12 years. 2004 was the start and so many people have pushed us on this path and look where we ended up.

MAPS begins its 13th year of afterschool media arts programming with a full slate of classes on Monday, Sept. 19. Classes in design, film, music, technology and entrepreneur continue with new film instructor Dru Carr and AmeriCorps VISTA Kate Welch.

Missoula filmmaker Carr received his M.S. in Environmental Studies from the University of Montana in 1996, and then co-founded the independent filmmaking team High Plains Films in 2000. He is also a founding board member of the Big Sky Film Institute, which runs the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival.

Carr said he values the high standards set by MAPS.

MAPS has established a professional level for high school media arts programming and I am honored to join this accomplished team, he said. Ive been producing films for the last 20 years. My goal as a part of MAPS will be to help young artists engage in, and view more critically, the world around them through the craft of filmmaking.

MAPS is hosting an AmeriCorps VISTA service member for the first time.

Welch, a graduate of Western Washington University, said she is excited to work with MAPS.

Arts education is something Ive always been passionate about, Welch said. In college, I was a reporter, photographer and editor of The Planet, a quarterly student magazine. This experience taught me how important media is in our lives and in society. I find it inspiring that MAPS is dedicated to teaching media skills to students in a rural area that wouldnt otherwise be learning them.

Welch will work with MAPS staff to develop a new community based service-learning program called MAPS Works: Connecting Community Through Media Arts. The program engages MAPS student production crews in the Bitterroot community by producing a series of brief public service announcements for local nonprofits.

Harf said MAPS student production crews have produced many PSAs and short documentaries for local, state and national organizations in the past 12 years.

While MAPS has successfully demonstrated the importance of giving back to your community with client-based productions, Kate will assist in developing MAPS Works and making it an integral and sustainable class, in our year long programming, Harf said. It will also significantly increase the number of organizations MAPS can serve in this creative and civic capacity.

MAPS has received numerous awards for both production quality and investment in youth.

In 2014 and 2016, the Presidents Committee on the Arts and the Humanities recognized MAPS as one of the TOP 50 after-school programs in the country, an award recognizing work providing excellent arts and humanities learning opportunities to young people.

Rosten said MAPS continues to be a great experience.

The irony of this journey is that is has become the most fulfilling professional experience of my life, Rosten said. I had a very good career for 35 years in Hollywood. It does not come close to what MAPS delivers every day in personal satisfaction.

MAPS free-of-charge after school classes begin Monday, Sept. 19. For more information visit on-line mapsmediainstitute.com or call 406-381-7230.
Ravalli County District Judge Jim Haynes followed the terms of a plea bargain agreement and sentenced a Florence man charged with sexually assaulting two girls at Florence High School to 30 days in the detention center.

Bryce Crete Cobbs, 20, pleaded guilty earlier to charges of sexual abuse of children, criminal endangerment, tampering with evidence and sexual assault.

On Thursday, Haynes agreed to defer sentencing Cobbs for six years. If Cobbs follows conditions of the plea bargain agreement, the charges will be dropped.

Cobbs will also be required to register as a Tier 1 sex offender for the six years.

Cobbs was 16 years old and a student at Florence High School when he had sexual encounters in the school copy room with a 14-year-old eighth grade student and a 15-year-old student, according to court records.

Cobbs was arrested after texts and videotape recordings were circulated.

In June, Cobbs pleaded guilty to four charges: sexual abuse of children, criminal endangerment, tampering with evidence, all felonies, and sexual assault, a misdemeanor.

At the sentencing Thursday, Haynes asked if texting younger girls is a new way to pump your status.

Cobb responded that at the time he did not understand the severity of the situation.

I didnt take into account her age. I was 16 and she was 14, Cobb said. I look back now and I know it was wrong. At the time I didnt understand the severity of what I was doing. Its not a culture [of the school]. It is that I saw she was into me and I didnt understand the severity of what I was doing and I took advantage.

Defense Attorney Nate Holloway said Cobb is a good candidate for rehabilitation.

Ive seen a changed individual, Holloway said. Ive seen that the system works and the treatments worked in his accountability, understanding and sympathy. Im very hopeful that Mr. Cobb will do well in life.

Haynes said the sentence is consistent with the lenient attitude of the victims and their families.

One victim was disturbed by the latent time it took to reach this resolution, he said. The attitude of the victims father, I think, may feel a bit of satisfaction with your 30 days in jail[The sentence is] consistent with your behavior, Mr. Cobbs, over a long period of time taking advantage of the situation with access to that copy room so you could have the sexual favors you wanted to have, Haynes said.

Haynes said he would have Cobbs talk to high school students about his situation if there was a violation of the sentencing terms.

Cobb volunteered to donate $250 to Emmas House in Hamilton.
PORT BYRON, N.Y. -- Laurie and Lauren Dates passed by the home countless times on their usual drive to Auburn from their farm in Red Creek.

The brick home was in shambles. What was once the servant's quarters and staircase lay crumbled on the ground. The front door was marked with a large "X".

Despite the home's dilapidated appearance, a for-auction sign in the front lawn made Lauren Dates stop in his tracks.

The pilot and retired Town of Victory judge slammed his brakes and got out of his car. The house had been seized by Cayuga County and for Lauren Dates, after years of passing by the home, which he always considered one of the prettiest in the area despite its poor condition, it could be his.

After three years, lots of elbow grease and enough trips to the Home Depot in Auburn that they're now on a first-name basis with several employees, the house, built in 1875, is back to its original glory.

"It was a hobby, a labor of love," Laurie Dates said. "It's been fun and it keeps us out of trouble."

The home's original owner, Calvin Aldrich, was a prominent lawyer, notary public, and Democratic politician in Cayuga County. He was elected to the New York State Senatorial and Judiciary convention and in 1908, made an unsuccessful run as Cayuga County District Attorney.

Aldrich's initials still mark the original stone carriage step leading from the sidewalk to Main Street.

If Aldrich were to see the house today, it's likely he'd still recognize it, as the Dateses strived to preserve as much of the original detail as possible The crown molding found through the entire downstairs, the American Chestnut doors and the slightly-warped arched windows were all repaired and refinished to what they would have looked like 140 years ago.

An open house is scheduled for Sept. 11, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

THE DETAILS

Address: 207 Main St., Port Byron, N.Y., 13140

Price: $154,500

Size: 2,961 square feet

Acreage: 1 acre

Monthly Mortgage: $550 (based on this week's national average rate of 3.43 percent, according to Freddie Mac, for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage with a 20 percent down payment. Fees and points not included.)

Taxes: $1,600 (Based on assessed value of $54,800)

Built: 1875

School District: Port Byron Central School District

Entryway: A heavy, wooden double front door still has the original doorbell and mail slot.

Living room: The bricked-over fireplace has a stone hearth and original metal grate. Much of the home still has the original pine floors, which have been refinished and stained.

Dining room: A set of double wood doors leads from the living room to the dining room. The dining room includes a working fireplace, access to a half-bathroom and a small reading nook with bay windows.

Kitchen: The eat-in kitchen has a pantry and room for a small table, perfect for a quick breakfast or cup of coffee.

Deck: Accessible from the kitchen, the spacious wooden deckLaurie Dates' favorite part of the houseoverlooks the backyard and barn. "You feel like you're in a treehouse," she said.

Upstairs: A curved, wooden staircase leads to two large bedrooms, one small bedroom and a full bathroom. The stairway has a marble "coffin corner", which contrary to urban legend, were not built to accommodate bringing a coffin down the stairs.

Basement: The finished basement was the original site of the kitchen and dining room, evidenced by the wall-sized cabinet that divides the two rooms, but has drawers accessible from either side. The basement has radiant heat floors and a full bathroom.

Barn: The two-story barn still has the original horse stalls and enough space to double as a garage. Both the home and barn have new metal roofs.

Agent: Lynette Wilson

L. Wilson Realty

6468 Sharon Drive, Auburn, N.Y., 13021

Phone: (315) 252-5203

Email: lwilsonrealty@gmail.com

To nominate a listing for House of the Week, send an email to home@syracuse.com. Contact Jacob Pucci at jpucci@syracuse.com or on Twitter at @jacobpucci.
Volkswagen returns to Kenya after four decade production hiatus

German car maker Volkswagen has made a comeback in Kenya after four decades production hiatus with an announcement that it will make the first car in the country by December this year.

In a move meant to expand its footprint in the East African region, the auto giant announced it will establish an assembly plant to initially produce its Vivo model in collaboration with local carmaker Kenya Vehicle Manufacturers (KVM), in which the government is a major shareholder.

VW, which assembled cars in Kenya in the 1960s and 1970s, will join other brands already being put together in the country, including Isuzu, Toyota, Nissan, and Mitsubishi.

The East African Community has got the potential, and today is the first step in this direction that we want to take with our passenger cars," Volkswagen South Africa chief executive Thomas Schafer said.

According to VW, it was planned to initially assemble up to 5,000 Polo Vivo models, making Thika the carmakers third production site in Africa, after South Africa and Nigeria.

"I am happy to welcome back the Volkswagen Group, currently the largest car manufacturer in the world, back to Kenya," said President Uhuru Kenyatta after meeting VW executives in Nairobi.

President Kenyatta further added that the partnership will fast track the countrys ambitions of becoming a manufacturing hub while providing jobs.

This I believe decent jobs for Kenyans and their families. It means not only joining consumption of imported goods but their production here at home so that their hard earned money can uplift more Kenyans, he added.

Kenya mostly assembles trucks, pick-ups and buses from kits supplied by foreign manufacturers, although data from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics showed that the number of vehicles assembled between January and April was down 31 per cent year-on-year to 2,258 vehicles.

But government in a bid to entice more investors scrapped a 20 per cent tax on on locally assembled vehicles in a bid to attract investors a move pundits say is finally paying off if return of companies like VW is anything to go by.

www.volkswagen-kenya.com
SEOUL, Sept 9: North Korea on Friday conducted its fifth nuclear test, producing its biggest-ever explosive yield, South Korean officials said, with the South's president calling the atomic detonation an act of "fanatic recklessness."

The North's test, which comes eight months after its previous such detonation, defies both tough international sanctions and long-standing diplomatic pressure to curb its nuclear ambitions. It will raise serious worries in many world capitals that Pyongyang has moved another step closer to its goal of a nuclear-armed missile that could one day strike the U.S. mainland.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye strongly condemned the test, saying in a statement that it showed the "fanatic recklessness of the Kim Jong Un government as it clings to nuclear development." Kim is the North Korean leader.

Park's office said she spoke with U.S. President Barack Obama about the test Friday morning, during a regional summit in Laos. Park said South Korea will employ all available measures to put more pressure on North Korea, which has previously conducted nuclear tests every three to four years.

The explosion put the region on edge.

Chinese state media reported that the nation's environmental protection agency started nuclear radiation monitoring. Japanese planes began to collect air samples from national air space to analyze possible radioactive materials. Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike said Japan's capital city is also testing water samples and monitoring radiation levels in the air.

South Korean and international monitors detected unusual seismic activity Friday morning near the North's northeastern nuclear test site. South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement that "artificial seismic waves" from a quake measuring 5.0 were detected near the Punggye-ri test site.

The South's Defense Ministry said it believed the North conducted a nuclear test, while European and U.S. monitoring services also detected similar seismic activity, with the U.S. Geological Survey calling it an "explosion" on its website.

A South Korean Defense Ministry official, who refused to be named because of office rules, said that Seoul detected an estimated explosive yield of 10 kilotons and assessed that it was from a nuclear test. After the North's fourth test, in January, South Korean lawmaker Lee Cheol Woo said Seoul's National Intelligence Service told him that an estimated explosive yield of six kilotons was detected.

The 5.0 magnitude earthquake Friday is the largest of the four past quakes associated with North Korean nuclear tests, according to South Korea's weather agency. Artificial seismic waves measuring 3.9 were reported after North Korea's first nuclear test in 2006; 4.8 was reported from its fourth test this January.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has overseen a robust increase in the number and kinds of missiles tested this year. Not only has the range of the weapons successfully tested jumped significantly, but the country is working to perfect new platforms for launching them submarines and mobile launchers.

The longer ranges and mobile launchers give the North greater ability to threaten the tens of thousands of U.S. troops stationed throughout Asia.

The seismic activity comes on the 68th anniversary of the founding of North Korea's government and just days after world leaders gathered in China for the G-20 economic summit.

Any test will lead to a strong push for new, tougher sanctions at the United Nations and further worsen already abysmal relations between Pyongyang and its neighbors. North Korea is already one of the most heavily sanctioned places on earth, and many question whether the penalties work.

China, the North's economic lifeline and only major ally, has previously offered cover to Pyongyang, though Beijing has expressed growing frustration with what outsiders call provocations.

Pyongyang likely wanted to show the world that strong international sanctions following its fourth nuclear test and long-range rocket launch earlier this year haven't discouraged its efforts to advance its nuclear weapons and missiles programs, according to Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea expert at Seoul's Dongguk University.

"It seems that the North has decided to play an 'end game' where they push things to see how far they can go. It's already being heavily sanctioned and there will be little room for any new sanctions that will meaningfully hurt them more,'" Koh said.

North Korea is thought to have a handful of rudimentary nuclear bombs and has spent decades trying to perfect a multistage, long-range missile to eventually carry smaller versions of those bombs.

After several failures, it put its first satellite into space with a long-range rocket launched in December 2012, and has since launched another such successful launch. Experts say that ballistic missiles and rockets in satellite launches share similar bodies, engines and other technology.

It's unclear whether North Korea has achieved the technology needed to manufacture a miniaturized nuclear warhead that could fit on a long-range missile capable of hitting the United States. Some analysts believe that the country has the ability to arm shorter range missile with warheads.

In January, North Korea claimed to have conducted a hydrogen bomb test, but many foreign governments and experts were skeptical about the claim. After that test, some analysts said the country likely needed only a couple more test explosions before acquiring a miniaturized warhead that could be mounted on a long-range missile.

North Korea's persistent pursuit of missiles and nuclear weapons has long been one of the most intractable foreign policy problems for U.S. administrations.

On Tuesday, North Korea fired three medium-range Rodong missiles that traveled about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) and landed near Japan. And last month, a missile from a North Korean submarine flew about 500 kilometers (310 miles), the longest distance achieved by the North for such a weapon. This worried many South Koreans because submarine-based missiles are harder to detect before launch than land-based weapons.

Diplomacy has so far failed to stop North Korea's progress. Six-nation negotiations on dismantling North Korea's nuclear program in exchange for aid were last held in late 2008 and fell apart in early 2009, when North Korea was led by Kim Jong Un's father, Kim Jong Il, who died in late 2011.

North Korea blames the United States and South Korea for its nuclear program, saying long-running "hostility" from Seoul and Washington to its government makes the development crucial for the small country's survival.

Among Pyongyang's regular demands are for Washington to withdraw its troops from the region and to sign a peace treaty formally ending the Korean War. It also wants recognition as a nuclear weapons state.

The Korean Peninsula remains technically at war, as the 1950-53 conflict ended in an armistice. Washington stations more than 28,000 troops in South Korea as a buttress against any North Korean aggression. Tens of thousands more are in nearby Japan.
KATHMANDU, Sept 9: The main opposition party, CPN (UML) has termed Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal's address in the Legislature-Parliament on Thursday as his wish list.

Speaking during special hour in today's Parliament meeting, CPN (UML) lawmaker Bhim Rawal raised question over the basis of PM Dahal's address in the Parliament in the context when the erstwhile government had already brought the budget as well as policy and programs.

"The issues mentioned by the Prime Minister in his address are like a wish list, he said. He also argued that although the Prime Minister told that the foreign policy should not be brought in a hurry, but it was not seen in practice.

Criticizing PM Dahal for not mentioning about his proposed visit to India, another lawmaker Rajendra Prasad Pandey also raised a question about the news regarding postponement of the Chinese President's Nepal visit.

Pandey said although it was announced to provide Rs 800,000 to quake survivors, they have not yet received Rs 50,000 of the first installment. RSS
Kathmandu, Nepal: The meeting of the Legislature-Parliament has been adjourned for Monday due to lack of quorum.

The meeting of the parliament on Friday was supposed to endorse three important bills  Judicial Administration Bill 2073 BS, Judicial Council Bill 2073 BS and Judicial Service Commission Bill 2073 BS, but adjourned before entering in the formal process due to the lack of quorum.

As lawmaker of the Nepal Workers and Peasants Party (NWPP) Dilli Kafle objected to the meeting when it was started saying that the meeting did not have a quorum, Speaker Onsari Gharti ordered to count the number of lawmakers.

Latter Speaker announced adjournment of the meeting as there were only 126 lawmakers present in the meeting while the required quorum to begin a parliamentary meeting is 149.

It is said that the lawmakers were not attended in the parliament as they have participated in a program organized by the National Democratic Institute (NDI), an international non-governmental organization (INGO), at Park Village Resort, Budanilkantha.

The lawmakers skipped the meeting but went to the meeting of the INGO as the NDI had sent its vehicle to pick the lawmakers from the premises of the Parliament building.

Earlier, Speaker Garti had instructed the lawmakers not to participate in the meeting organized by the INGO/NGO.
TILOTTAMA (Rupandehi), Sept 9: Chairman of the Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP)-Nepal Kamal Thapa has demanded that the country be re-establishing a Hindu nation through amendment to the constitution.

Speaking at a news conference organised by the RPP-Nepal at Butwal this morning, Chairman Thapa reiterated that the partys demand should also be addressed if constitution is amended as per the wish of the Madhes-based parties.

He further said the party was even ready for a referendum if the demands are not addressed in the constitution amendment.

Also former Deputy Prime Minister, Thapa said that the incumbent government has been failed to address the demands of the Madhes-based parties even after a month has passed since its formation. He also blamed the government for not carrying out necessary preparation to hold all three-level elections.

Stating that the constitution could not be amended without a consensus among political parties, Chairman Thapa said either CPN (UML) or RPP-Nepal was needed to garner two-their majority for constitution amendment as three partiesNepali Congress, CPN (Maoist Centre) and Madhes-based parties lack the same. However the government has not held any discussion with our party so far", he said.

The RPP-Nepal Chairman said the country would be pushed into a mishap as a result of constitutional vacuum if elections were not held in the country on time. RSS
BIRATNAGAR: Police arrested two more persons in connection to a murder of a 21-year-old hostel operator in Biratnagar of Morang district recently.

Binod Yadav (21), operator of the local Oxford Hostel, was found dead in a room of Omkar Shresthas house in Biratnagar-13 on Tuesday morning.

Police subsequently had arrested three persons in connection to the case on Wednesday. Police had claimed that the trio had confessed to killing Yadav.

Further, police arrested two 19-year-old youth today, according to the Morang District Police Office. They have been identified as Kamal Dev Das from Golbazaar-19 of Siraha and Titendra Yadav of Dhangadhi-4.

Police said they have charged a murder case against all the arrestees.

Though police had found a sharp weapon, a pistol, eight mobile sets, SIM cards and blood-stained clothes from from the site, the motive behind the cold-blooded murder, however, was not known.RSS
Kathmandu, Nepal: Federal Socialist Forum-Nepal Chairman Upendra Yadav has said that there would be no meaning of Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahals India visit before solving the differences with the agitating Federal Alliance, in which his party is also a member.

Yadav, who is also coordinator of the Federal Alliance, has made the comment while speaking at an interaction program organized in Kathmandu on Friday.

India would not feel good to receive the Nepali Prime Minister Dahal as he is leaving for India without resolving internal issues, Yadav said.

It is wrong to leave on a visit while leaving all burning issues in the nation unaddressed; Yadav claimed adding that he would achieve nothing from the visit.
A screen magnification feature of the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 is demonstrated, in New York on July 28, 2016. Photo: AP/ File

WASHINGTON: US aviation safety officials took the extraordinary step late Thursday of warning airline passengers not to turn on or charge a new-model Samsung smartphone during flights following numerous reports of the devices catching fire.

The Federal Aviation Administration also warned passengers not to put the Galaxy Note 7 phones in their checked bags, citing recent incidents and concerns raised by Samsung about the devices. It is extremely unusual for the FAA to warn passengers about a specific product.

Last week, Samsung ordered a global recall of the jumbo phones after its investigation of explosion reports found the rechargeable lithium batteries were at fault. In one case, a family in St. Petersburg, Florida, reported a Galaxy Note 7 phone left charging in their Jeep caught fire, destroying the vehicle.

Samsung launched the latest version of the Note series in August. The Note series is one of the most expensive lineups released by Samsung, and the devices usually inherit designs and features of the Galaxy S phones that debut in the spring. Samsung also added an iris scanner to the Note 7, which detects patterns in users eyes to unlock the phone.

Before the issue of battery explosions emerged, supplies were not keeping up with higher-than-expected demand for the smartphone.

The Note 7 isnt the only gadget to catch fire thanks to lithium-battery problems, which have afflicted everything from laptops to Tesla cars to Boeings 787 jetliner.

Rechargeable lithium batteries are more susceptible to overheating than other types of batteries if they are exposed to high temperatures, are damaged or have manufacturing flaws. Once the overheating starts, it can lead to thermal runaway in which temperatures continue escalating to very high levels. Water can put out the flames, but doesnt always halt the thermal runaway. Flames will often reappear after initially being quenched.

Lithium batteries have become ubiquitous in consumer electronic devices. Manufacturers like them because they weigh less and pack considerably more energy into the same space than other types of batteries.

Earlier this year, the International Civil Aviation Organisation, a UN agency that sets global aviation safety standards, banned bulk shipments of rechargeable lithium-ion batteries as cargo on passenger planes until better packaging can be developed to prevent a fire from spreading and potentially destroying the plane.
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sacw.net - 9 September 2016

In the wake of horrific Una violence it is clear that anti dalit mindset prevails. This explains as to how such acts have been taking place earlier as well, though they have gone up now during last two years or so (2016). What we need to understand is that this mindset is due to political ideology which upholds the caste system in a subtle way. What need to recall is that cow skinning related Jhajjar violence in Haryana (2002) against dalits; was legitimized by VJHPas Acharya Giriraj Kishore, belonging to Sangh Parivar or RSS combine.

It is true that many countries in Europe could do away with birth based hierarchy of class and gender due to Industrial revolutions ushering in a journey towards substantive democracy. India could not achieve such a desirable goal due to the objective restraints imposed by colonial rule. The industrial revolutions of the West did away with the feudal classes along with their feudal mindset which was justifying the birth-based hierarchies. In India due to the colonial rule, on one hand we see that the modern institutions take birth along with the foundation of modern society: Industrialization and Modern education. This was the foundation of the growth of Indian nationalism, which did aspire for the formal equality of all irrespective of caste, religion and gender.

Due to the colonial set up, colonial masters, British were least interested in doing away with feudal powers. aFeudal-Clergya nexus persisted and gave rise to nationalism in the name of religion, Muslim Nationalism and Hindu nationalism. The pace of change in colonies is not comparable to the other places where the industrial class along with workers and women combine overthrows the social and political alliance of the feudal-clergy combine. So in colonies the process of secularization remains arrested and in post colonial societies the feudal mindset persists with the patronage of the certain sections of society. In these societies the meaning of the word revolution has to be restricted to social transformation. The day to day efforts for social transformation are the revolutionary steps in that sense. India had its own trajectory. Starting with Jotirao Phule the dalits started a slow and long journey towards equality. The journey for womenas equality begins with Savitribai Phule. These streams are totally opposed by the conservative religious elements. These conservatives later crystallize themselves as Muslim League on one side and Hindu Mahasabha-RSS on the other.

The march of Indian nationalism accommodates Ambedkar in some form. While he struggles for social democracy through means of temple entry (Kalaram Mandir), access to public spaces (Chavdar Talao), he goes on to support the burning of Manusmriti and states his resolve for the social equality. We canat be mechanistic in understanding revolution in diverse societies. These steps like those of Jotirao, Saviritibai and Ambedkar, Periyar are revolutionary. These are hesitantly supported by Indian nationalism and totally opposed by Hindu nationalism. Gandhi, symbol of Indian nationalism, did his best to oppose untouchability, while his stand on reserved constituency can be questioned. Nehru, architect of Modern India, later oversees Ambedkar formulate a Constitution which not only gives formal equality to all but also give affirmative-reservations to the dalits. Nehruas attempt to bring in reforms like Hindu Code bill are sabotaged by conservatives within his party and conservatives, Hindu nationalists outside his party.

The persistence of subordination of dalits is mainly due to the persistence of mindset of Hindu nationalism, which even had opposed the Indian Constitution when it was being formed. The Hindu nationalists have been strong opponents of reservations all through; this is what led to anti dalit riots in Ahmadabad in 1981, anti OBC violence again in Ahmadabad in 1986. The Hindu nationalist BJP intensified its Ram Temple assault in the wake of Mandal commission implementation. It is true that those perpetrating crimes have not been punished, but that again is due to the prevalent mindset, which has its roots in Hindutva ideology, which spills beyond the parties-organizations working for Hindu Rashtra (Nation) directly. While BJP is the major proponent of this mindset, there are other parties also which do the same in smaller degrees.

We need a revolution to change this state of affairs. But this revolution will be in daily life. The likes of Udit Raj, Ramvilas Paswan and Ramdas Athwaley, sitting in the lap of Hindu nationalist BJP, are a major obstacle to this needed process of change. Surely the Hindu nationalists are the vehicle of counter revolution as far as social changes are concerned. Since BJP is the political arms of RSS, which aspires for Hindu nation, Hindutva via Hindu nationalism, these so called dalit leaders going with BJP are contributing precisely to the processes which are hampering the transition of caste equations towards those of equality. These so called Dalit need to realize that among other things BJP has been transforming National institutions towards the values which will promote anti dalit mind set. Just one example from many such incidents, BJP has appointed one Sudarshan Rao as head of ICHR. Rao argues that caste system had no problems and nobody had complaints against that. RSS, BJPas ideological father, goes on to say that all castes were equal and problems came in due to the invasion of Muslim Kings!

All this is putting the wool in the eyes of society to perpetuate the ideology which is inherently casteist and leads to the strengthening of mindset which looks down upon dalits. So a Rohith Vemula happens, and so Una happens. If Indian Nationalist movement was a mini revolution, the present politics being unfolded by Hindu nationalism is a counter revolution, duly supported by opportunist dalit leaders. One looks forward to the post Rohith Vemula-Una upsurge of youth, dalits and non-dalits going in the direction of caste annihilation, bypassing these opportunist elements!
Fury over Peels shameful Manchester rebrand of Salfords Lowry Outlet Mall

Business, Salford News

News that Peel are due to rename Salfords Lowry Outlet Mall to Lifestyle Outlet Manchester has enraged locals sick of seeing Salford subsumed with its sister city.

Salford councillor John Warmisham said: Its disgraceful to lose the name of the painter LS Lowry.

The City of Salford put lot money into the Lowry Outlet Mall, we built it, and for Peel to remove the name of one of Salfords favourite sons is shameful.

Peel bought the 80-store Lowry Outlet Mall from developer Emerson Group in 2012 for around 70m.

Since then it has brought in a number of high-profile retailers, including clothing sellers Bench and Next.

Read: End of free parking at Lowry Outlet Mall to cut park and ride

It follows a long list of businesses branding themselves incorrectly, including the University of Salford (Manchester), Salford Quays chain Holiday Inn Manchester, and the Lowry Hotel on Chapel Street in Salford, which calls itself Manchesters only 5* hotel.

Read: Ordsall chosen as huge new home for unique microbrewery and brewery building firm

More: Salfords MediaCityUK given go ahead to double in size

Councillor Warmisham added: Im proud of my city, to have been born here, educated here and work here.

I find it disgusting and upsetting that businesses will try to jump on the success of Salford Quays and name their brands Manchester instead of Salford.

We will always fight for Salfords good name.

On SalfordOnline.coms 18,000-member Facebook group readers are calling for a boycott of the Lowry Outlet Mall.

Peel also own the Manchester Ship Canal, MediaCityUK, the upcoming Port Salford, Scout Moor Wind Farm, Pinewood Studios and 33,000 acres of land in the UK.

The Lowry Outlet Mall has 300,000 sq ft of retail space with 80 stores, cafes and restaurants and a seven-screen Vue cinema.

Salford and Eccles MP Rebecca Long-Bailey has also weighed in on the debate.

She told SalfordOnline.com: Its not acceptable to hear of plans to rename the Lowry Outlet Mall, and seemingly airbrush Salford out of any involvement in the success that is Salford Quays.

After writing an angry letter some time ago to the Outlet about the last name change their response was that the name was changed to the Lowry MediaCityUK Manchester to attract anchor tenants.

Bosses need to look at a proper retail strategy that will attract retailers and shoppers, rather than an offensive name change that upsets the whole city and the Outlets potential customers.

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Donna Polizzi is a regional travel expert and founder of Keys2TheCoast.com. Keys to the Coast is a travel resource for Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Monterey counties, offering recommendations on local choices for the best places to wine, dine and explore.
German director Angela Schanelec's latest look at the nature of migration, stasis and loneliness should prove an equally striking and challenging cinematic event for new viewers, while previous enthusiasts of her opaque and minimalist oeuvre will be elated by this subtle masterwork, one that is filled with powerful political nuance.



The above statement is a bold one to be sure, but as someone who has patiently waited six years since Schanelec's last feature, the multi-narrative Orly, I feel very satisfied in saying as such.

It is important to note that while her near 20 year career has yielded multiple premieres at top tier festivals like Cannes and Locarno, unlike her contemporary Christian Petzold, Schanelec remains largely obscure outside of her native land. While The Dreamed Path is in no way enough of an accessible title to warrant wide exposure even on the indie circuit, the distribution landscape has changed enough since Orly's premiere in 2010 to suggest that cinephile minded outlets like Fandor should be picking her Bressonian catalog up post haste.



Rich and profound in vision, The Dreamed Path flows with a beguiling ease, but is certainly not a lucid affair. Exposition is absent, with plotting a mere shadow. While the narrative is all there, you need to pay close attention. Details can often be found in the framing of silences more so than the glacial tone of dialog. The film works in two parts, each tale chronicling the deterioration of couples in their relationships, some 30 years apart. The first story begins in 1984, and follows young German Theres (Miriam Jakob) and Englishman Kenneth (Thorbjorn Bjornsson) as they travel through Greece, eventually back to Germany, and when Kenneth finds out his mother is seriously ill, he moves on alone to the U.K.. Their separate threads continue through the decade, up until a few months before the fall of the Berlin Wall. The second story is set in present day Berlin and features Ariane (Maren Eggert), an actress, David (Phil Hayes), her often absent anthropologist husband, and their ten-year old daughter Fanny (Anaia Zapp).



While both stories intersect tangentially, most connections between them are found in thematic motifs and aesthetic choices that find their rhythms across the film's 86 minutes. Schanelec and her long-time cinematographer Reinhold Vorschneider's brilliant form of minimalism is so stark that it distils and maximizes time and space to such an effect that the impact of the image we are left with is equally pure and abstracted; rife with absolute meaning and nothingness.

Take for instance the seemingly simple shot of water being poured from a pitcher to a glass. It is perfectly centered in the 4:3 frame. A late afternoon light cuts through, casting a crystallized shadow on the table. Instead of moving onto close ups of the conversation that is at the heart of this scene (one about belief in God and the frustration of his absence) Schanelec stays on the glass until it is emptied. Consider also the moment Kenneth calls home and gets the bad news about his mother. This takes places after he and Theres sit on the sidewalk busking for a few bucks, singing a sweet and tender little version of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight". Instead of cutting to his reaction of the news, Schanelec stays on his shoes, the dropping of his cap, then moves to Theres' reaction, then a torso only shot of a police man catching him before he falls. We then cut to a bunch of Greek youths in the back of a van, then a dog and woman, who asks what has happened. Schanelec very sparingly uses close ups of faces. The few that are used, emotionally count for all the absent moments, months and years.



This expert focus on abstraction through realism is key to the film's lasting power in a number of ways. A visual motif through both stories is the use of feet and hands, sometimes idle, at other times busy. Indeed, the opening of the film consists of close ups of Theres and Kenneth's feet and hands as they scramble up a wooded hillside. Another repeating theme with bodies is illness and disability, from Kenneth's mother's comatose state, to his father's (Alan Williams) near blindness, to Fanny breaking her arm, and a paraplegic boy she swims with at the pool. It is important to note that in a film full of intimate disconnection Kenneth's father and Fanny may in fact be the most present and resilient characters. What we also find in these threads then is the further compression and acceleration of action through seeming stasis and altered ways of living. For nearly all major story points revolve around these conditions and happenings.



Like all of her work, from the coming-of-age journey Places in Cities to the arcane yet enveloping Marseille, Schanelc is very much interested in migration, modern borders and liminal spaces. The suggested inter-play of Germany, the U.K. and Greece in the first story creates a striking thread of histories when one considers how each of these countries has affected the European climate in recent years. Indeed, if the film is about people's inherent inability to connect, then it is also about union, not only between people, but between countries, and especially between one's faith and one's own body and senses.



As such, The Dreamed Path is also about the ways in we watch each other and the world around us. While the emotions of its characters are held tightly to the periphery of the frame, it is in fact through the observational way we enter the work that we are able to relate to their feelings of emptiness. That is not to say the film is dour in conclusion. Like its title, The Dreamed Path suggests just as much hope as it does regret. Inspired by the careful existentialism of Bresson and Kieslowski, Schanelec's film is cinema as question, and nothing more.



That question, of course, is etched by many paths, stretching out across generations, borders, class systems and beyond.



The Dreamed Path had its world premiere in competition at the 2016 Locarno Film Festival. It has its North American premiere as part of the Toronto International Film Festival Monday, September 12th, and plays again Wednesday, September 14th.
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Daveed Diggs, whose Jewish mother in Oakland is certainly very proud of her Tony Award-winning son, arrives in San Francisco this Saturday at JCCSF for a sold-out conversation with another Oakland artist, the writer Chinaka Hodge.

At 34, the multitalented Diggs found national recognition for his dual portrayals of Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson in Hamilton. Diggs departed the cast in July to pursue other projects including a role on ABC's Black-ish and an album with his longstanding noise-rap group Clipping.

The talk begins at 7 p.m. and a live stream is available on the JCC's website. Before Diggs are some very special openers: Megan Bartschat and Maxine Flasher-Duzgunes of Mill Valley and Tova Ricardo of Oakland. The trio of youth spoken word artists were selected for their performances at a poetry slam held by JCCSF and Youth Speaks, where Diggs and Hodge both have roots.

Oh, and before the talk, Hamilton super fans can get out their jitters with the Hamiltunes of SF. JCCSF is hosting the local chapter of the Hamilton sing-along society at 2 p.m. Sadly, that too is sold out. You know, like a ticket to see Hamilton.

Video: Hear Oakland's Own Daveed Diggs Talk About Winning His First Tony Award For 'Hamilton'
Sixty-one people want the job of chief of the San Francisco Police Department. Those 61, a number which includes current acting chief Toney Chaplin, have all applied for the role  submitting detailed applications and resumes in the process. And while the specific details of those applications remains confidential for now, the Examiner reports that the SF Police Commission has released some information on those vying for the job of San Francisco's top cop.

The little bit we do know shows a diverse and experienced pool  including 17 current or former chiefs of police. Other information released reveals that 21 are from out of state, while eleven have applied from within the SFPD, and that five are women.

The varying levels of upper echelon experience possessed by those applying is sure to put pressure on Chaplin, who in recent days has faced controversy for at first refusing to say where he attended college before later clarifying that he studied via Colorado State University's online program, from which he graduated on June 26, 2016, with a Bachelor of Science degree in Organizational Leadership.

This has not prevented the Police Officers Association from coming out in favor of Chaplin, as Bay City News reported on Sunday.

The limited public details on who, just exactly, Chaplin is squaring off against for the job suggest that a host of experienced candidates have applied for the role. And while it is still too early to tell what three candidates the Police Commission will recommend to Mayor Ed Lee (who will then select one for chief), or even who they are, one thing is for sure: Contrary to early reports, the decision as to who will head up the scandal-plagued SFPD is far from a done deal  and Chaplin has his work cut out for him.

Related: As 60 Applicants Vie To Be Next SFPD Chief, Acting Chief Reveals Details Of His Educational Background
Automobile Goliath Ford today announced it will buy Chariot, the private shuttle service based in San Francisco born from startup incubator Y Combinator, in a move that speaks to the company's stated goal to become an integral part of how people move about cities. Business Insider reports the all-cash deal, which is for an undisclosed sum, is the first step in Ford's plan to immediately expand what is currently a San Fransisco-only service to five other cities  at least one of which, according to the Chronicle, is to be outside the US  within 18 months.

What's more, the Chronicle informs us that Ford is also taking over Bay Area Bike Share, partnering with bike-sharing firm Motivate to spread 7,000 bikes throughout the region by 2018  a deal which Mayor Ed Lee touted this morning in a press conference in front of City Hall. The service will now be called Ford GoBike, with many new bike station sites appearing in San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, San Jose and Emeryville. As KQED reports, this is all part of Ford's effort to reimagine itself as an "auto and mobility" business.*

Were taking a look at the whole ecosystem of moving people around, Ford CEO Mark Fields told the Chronicle. Cities are growing. Theyre becoming more congested. Cities are looking for solutions, and we want to be part of the solution.

The purchase of Chariot is likely to inject the growing shuttle service, a company that has managed to avoid the pitfalls that sunk luxury competitor Leap, with even more life. Chariot presently has 28 routes across San Francisco, and has grown in popularity with routes that tend to alternate from the morning to evening to match commuting patterns.

"Mark Fields first came out to San Francisco 18 months ago," Chariot CEO Ali Vahabzadeh told Business Insider. "They knew that the transportation landscape was evolving, and they didn't just want to be part of that, they wanted to be a leader."

Of course, Chariot has also faced significant criticism from transit advocates who say such services only encourage disinvestment in public transportation. But for those who need to get from the Marina to downtown without touching the "Dirty 30," it's been a godsend and cheaper than a cab.

Ford's planned purchase (it has yet to go through) follows the company's announcement that it is working to develop a fleet of self-driving taxis by 2021. It is also of a piece with General Motors investment in ride-hail company Lyft  both car companies are clearly trying to diversify as the 21st century transportation landscape is rapidly defined by the likes of Uber, Lyft, and the promise of self-driving cars.

This, of course, is not the first time car companies have invested in other forms of transportation. As the Chronicle notes, makers of automobiles used to buy up public transportation and then shut it down  driving more people to cars. Hopefully history won't repeat itself.

Related: Ford Promises Self-Driving Taxis With No Steering Wheels By 2021

* This post has been updated with more information about Ford GoBike.


Alameda County District Attorney Nancy E. O'Malley announced Friday that her office would be pursuing multiple charges, including including sex offenses and obstruction of justice, against seven members of three different law enforcement agencies, including current and former members of the Oakland Police Department, the Livermore Police Department, and the Contra Costa County Sheriff's Department. As the AP and LA Times are reporting, all seven officers are implicated in the now one-year-old scandal, first publicized in June, relating to widespread sexual contact and alleged unethical and illegal behavior by multiple law enforcement members with one teenage sex worker who's gone by the name Celeste Guap.

Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf announced disciplinary actions by the police department relating to the scandal Wednesday afternoon, which included the termination of four officers and the suspension of seven others without pay. But this is the first time that criminal charges have been suggested against any of the officers.

The LA Times also has it that "three police executives have been removed from their posts" in addition to those fired and suspended, which may refer to actions taken back in June to put several officers accused of having sex with Guap when she was underage on administrative leave.

Similarly, further disciplinary action may come to one SFPD officer who also was accused of having sexual contact with the underage girl.

Meanwhile the Richmond Police Department and Alameda County Sheriff's Department have both said that they've investigated and cleared all their officers who had contact with Guap, saying none of them did so before she turned 18.

The months-long investigation by the OPD and Mayor's Office involved over 50 interviews, 28,000 text messages, and 8,000 pages of social media.

Similarly, O'Malley says of her office's investigation, "We left no stone unturned."

The scandal began to unfold with an internal investigation into the suicide of Officer Brendan O'Brien in September 2015. O'Brien left behind a suicide note implicating Guap's actions in going to his superiors, in retaliation for his ignoring her, and saying that as many as four other officers had had sex with her while she was underage. She turned 18 in August 2015. Subsequent coverups then led to the forced resignation of Chief Sean Whent in June, which set off several weeks of internal chaos as Mayor Schaaf appointed and then fired two interim chiefs, and a whole separate scandal arose involving racist text messages. Schaaf at the time declared, "I am here to run a police department, not a frat house," and put a civilian city administrator in charge of the department until such time as a new chief can be hired.

Guap, meanwhile, is sitting in a Florida jail following her being "spirited away," allegedly through the actions of Richmond police, to a rehab facility there for heroin addiction. Guap was arrested and booked last week for allegedly biting a guard at the facility.

Contra Costa County Chief Assistant District Attorney John McMaster tells the LA Times that this accusation that she was sent to another state for some nefarious purpose is ridiculous, and she can be brought back at any time by subpoena. Two civil rights attorneys reportedly went to Guap's aid this week.

With these criminal charges today, as the Times suggests, this is "the latest chapter in a controversy that has threatened the Oakland Police Department's hopes of ending 13 years of federal oversight and caused a major shake-up in the agencys command staff." They are referring to a federal compliance director who's been assigned to oversee the department ever since a federal judge declared this necessary in the wake of the Oakland "Riders" case, settled in 2003, in which four officers were alleged to have kidnapped people, planted evidence, and beaten citizens, while other officers turned a blind eye to their misconduct.

Previously: Oakland Mayor Terminates Four Officers, Disciplines Eight Others In OPD Sex Scandal
The shop local mantra shouldn't be limited to just gift boutiques and farmer's markets, but extend to drinking, too. I mean, why not? Wisconsin is rife with distillers, brewers, vintners and cocktail ingredient makers. So the next time you need to stock your home baror if you're starting from scratchconsider purchasing these excellent local products.

Liquor

Great Lakes Distillery Citrus & Honey Vodka  Forget those sickly sweet, candy-flavored citrus vodkas and try this one instead. Actual lemons (imagine that!) give a light, floral scent and Wisconsin honey sweetens it gently. Great for mixing in simple drinks, like vodka tonics. I may have once bought four bottles when they were on clearance at Woodman's...

Central Standard Craft Distillery Anodyne Coffee Vodka  You're getting two Wisconsin products for the price of one. Anodyne coffee beans steep in the distillery's rye-based vodka for a booze that packs a punch. A coffee lover's must.

Death's Door Spirits Gin  Death's Door's distillery is located in Middleton and is named after the body of water between Door County and Washington Island, which is where they get their winter wheat for distilling. Their gin is well balanced between juniper, coriander and fennel and is an excellent all purpose gin.

Old Sugar Distillery Brandy Station  You can't have a Wisconsin home bar without brandy. Madison-based Old Sugar's version is made from local grapes, aged in lightly toasted barrels for vanilla undertones, then aged a second time in charred barrels for the familiar caramel flavors.

45th Parallel Border Bourbon  This straight bourbon is distilled from grains just a few minutes away from the distillery in New Richmond. It's aged in medium char white oak and bottledno blending. This is a spicy, dark amber bourbon.

Twisted Path Distillery Overproof Vodka  Anyone who is thinking about infusing your own spirits, this one's perfect. The higher proof extracts flavors faster and more cleanly, so get ready to experiment with your favorite flavors (just like Twisted Path does in its tasting room).

Liqueur

RumChata  Didn't know that RumChata is a Wisconsin product? Most people don't. It's bottled in Pewaukee and made with Wisconsin dairy. If you've (somehow) never had it, it's based on Mexican horchata, a creamy drink with cinnamon and vanilla. It's great in ice cream drinks, mixed with whiskey or on ice.

Death's Door Spirits Kringle Cream  Why not put our beloved kringle into a creamy liqueur? It's flavored with natural kringle which apparently means heavy on caramel and nuts. Mix with coffee, amaretto or fruit liqueurs to mimic your favorite kringle flavor. Only available in fall and winter.

Travis Hasse Distilling Cherry Pie  This cherry pie flavored liqueur (and it's cinnamon-heavy apple pie brother) tastes exactly like its namesake. It's sweet and 30 proof, so it's a good sipper or shot. Made in Waunakee.

Door County Distillery Cherry Brandy  Door County Montmorency cherries go into this sweet brandy by way of Door Peninsula Winery's cherry wine. The aroma is deep black cherry with a cream finish.

Mixers and Bitters

Top Note Tonic  This Milwaukee-based company produces five tonic concentrates for mixing drinks. Bitter Orange and the complex Indian Tonic with grapefruit and lemongrass are my favorites. Mix with seltzer and add your favorite alcohol.

Jimmy Luv's Bloody Mary Mix  I prefer to make my bloody marys from scratch, but sometimes that's not always practical. Jimmy Luv's is made in the Milwaukee area and is one of the better mixes available.

Jolly Good Soda  Sometimes you just want to mix with soda, and that's OK. Jolly Good, the soda you probably remember from your childhood, is back. Cream soda is probably the best for mixing. Get it at Piggly Wiggly stores.

Bittercube Bitters  I'm of the opinion that you can't make really good cocktails without bitters. Bittercube, a MKE company, makes them in eight varieties to complement all kinds of drinks. Try the cherry bark vanilla in your next old fashioned.

Upcoming Dining and Beer Events

Sept 9: Point Fish Fry and a Flick at Discovery World. Showing Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Sept 10: Tomato Romp. Bloody Mary contest, live music and most importantly, a giant tomato fight.

Sept 10: Erv-toberfest at Erv's Mug in Oak Creek. Unlimited sampling of over 60 seasonal craft beers and a German food buffet. Tickets are $40 in advance, $50 at the door.

Sept 12-21: 10 Days in Tosa. Think Downtown Dining Week, but at restaurants all around Wauwatosa.

Follow BCB on Twitter for more news and events: @BrewCityBooze
Screenings

Free blood pressure screenings, 9:30 to 11 a.m. Wednesdays at Countryside Senior Living, front lobby. No appointment necessary.

Programs/Self-Help Groups

Al-Anon Information Center, call 255-6724.

Al-Anon and Alateen, meetings locally. For times, dates and locations of area meetings, call 255-6724.

Alcoholics Anonymous, beginners information, call 252-1333.

Arc of Woodbury County, serving the mentally challenged, 5:15 p.m. meeting, second Monday of the month at Mid-Step Services, 4303 Stone Ave. For families and interested persons.

Child Care Resource and Referral, provides resources, education and advocacy for children, parents, and child care providers. Assists in child care needs. For more information, call 712-277-1180.

Co-Dependence Anonymous, 7 p.m. Mondays and Thursdays at First Lutheran Church, Fireside Room.

Co-Dependents Anonymous (CODA), 10 a.m. Saturdays at Hawkeye Club, 420 Jones St.

Compassionate Friends, 7 p.m. fourth Wednesday of each month (third Thursday in November and second Sunday December) in Mercy Medical Center's Leiter Room. For families who have lost children. Contact Nancy Webb 712-212-4032 or Don Mulder 712-541-5512.

Children of Divorce, to help children cope with the challenges of parental separation or divorce. Call 712-279-2373 for more information.

Clinics

Siouxland District Health immunization clinics, call for appointment, 712-279-6119 or 1-800-587-3005.

Information

Family and Addictive Illness series, for more information, call 234-2300.

Iowa Fathers, 6 to 8 p.m. fourth Tuesday of each month at Hope Lutheran Church, Education Building, 218 W. 18th St., South Sioux City, Neb. Support group to help single, divorcing and divorced parents residing in the state of Iowa.

Mercy Pathways Outpatient Program, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, on the third floor, Mercy's Central Medical Building, 801 Fifth St., Suite 360. Provides hope, help, opportunity to connect through group therapy for individuals experiencing personal, relationship, psychiatric issues. For more information, call 712-279-5991.

Narcotics Anonymous, meetings daily, various times, dates and locations. For more information, call 712-279-0733.

Overeaters Anonymous, 7 p.m. Mondays at Floyd Valley Hospital, Lower Level, 714 Lincoln St. NE, Le Mars, Iowa; 1 p.m. Tuesdays at Wesley United Methodist Church, 3700 Indian Hills Drive; 6 p.m. Tuesdays at St. John's Lutheran Church, 402 Lane Ave., Storm Lake; 7 p.m. Tuesdays at Church of the Nazarene, 226 N. Main St., Viborg, S.D.; 5:30 p.m. Thursdays and 9 a.m. Saturdays at Newman Center, 320 E. Cherry St., Vermillion, S.D.; 10:30 a.m. Saturdays at Hawkeye Club, 420 Jones St. A 12-step recovery program for people who have problems with food and weight. No fees.

St. Lukes Outpatient Behavioral Health Program, 9 a.m. to noon Monday, Tuesday and Thursday on fifth floor of St. Luke's, located at 2720 Stone Park Blvd. Offers several levels of outpatient care including partial hospitalization, intensive outpatient, and group therapy. This program provides support and integrated treatment to individuals experiencing personal or relationship issues as a result of their mental illness. For more information and admission criteria, call 712-279-3906.

Sobriety By Faith, 8:30 a.m. Saturdays at Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church, 1421 Geneva St. For more information, call James Mothershead at 712-577-9715.

The Link-Recovery and Freedom, at PMA Building, 6000 Gordon Drive; 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. Saturday workshop, and Christian 12-step meeting 7 to 8 p.m. Tuesday. For all ages. Call Dee at 389-7432.

Women in Recovery, meets monthly at Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church, 1421 Geneva St. For details, call 712-255-4623.

Tarahouse Meditation Center, 8 a.m. Mondays through Thursdays; 6:30 p.m. Fridays; 10 a.m. Saturdays and Sundays, all at 3112 Rebecca St. Three easy 10-minute sessions in small group; beginners welcome. For more information, call 490-6410.

Blood pressure and blood sugar screening, 9 to 11 a.m. Wednesdays in the lobby at Westwood Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. Free to public.

Support Groups

Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous, 7-8:30 p.m. Wednesdays at Hawkeye Club basement, 420 Jones St. For more information, call 277-5935.

Celebrate Recovery, Bible-based 12-step recovery group. Thursdays at 6:30 at Sunnybrook Community Church, 5601 Sunnybrook Drive. Daycare provided. 712-490-3343.

PFLAG of Siouxland, (Parents & Friends of Lesbians and Gays), 7 p.m., fourth Monday of January, March, May, July, September and November. St. Mark ELCA Church, 5200 Glenn Ave., in the upstairs meeting area. 712-258-3116.

Singles widowed and divorced, all ages, 4 p.m., Sundays. McDonald's at Sixth Street and Lewis Boulevard. 712-252-2675.

HIV/AIDS Support Group, meets weekly. For more information, call Darla or Teri at Siouxland Community Health Center, 712-252-2477 or 888-371-1965.

La Leche League of Siouxland, breastfeeding support group meets every third Thursday at 11 a.m. at Morningside Lutheran Church. Children are welcome. For more information, call Mary at 712-546-7280 or Jacquie at 712-255-2998.

Living Each Day Cancer Support Group, 7-8 p.m. second Thursday of the month, Floyd Valley Hospital, Conference Center Room 2, Le Mars, Iowa. Open to all cancer patients, cancer survivors and family members. No charge. Pre-register by calling 712-546-3441 or 800-642-6074, ext. 441.

Mom and Baby Support Group, 10-11 a.m. last Monday of the month at the Orange City (Iowa) Hospital, lower level. For new moms and babies. 712-737-5260.

Tri-State Sober Project, 12-step meeting, 7:30-8:30 p.m., Tuesdays, Friendship Community Church, 305 Sergeant Square Drive, Sergeant Bluff. 6-7 p.m., Thursdays, Transitional Services of Iowa, 1221 Pierce St., Sioux City.

Doug's Donors Support Group, information for organ donors and recipients, 12:30-1:30 p.m. Wednesdays, 5:15-6:30 p.m. second and fourth Thursdays of the month at Mercy Cafeteria Woodbury Room. 712-277-1050.

Divorce Care, noon Sundays starting Jan. 10; GriefShare, 6:30 p.m. Tuesdays starting Jan. 12; Single & Parenting, 6:30 p.m. Thursdays starting Jan. 14; all at Sunnybrook Community Church, 5601 Sunnybrook Drive, Sioux City. 712-276-5814.

NAMI Siouxland, (National Alliance on Mental Illness) Support Group meets 6:30 p.m., second Tuesday of the month at Friendship House, 1101 Court St. For individuals and family members dealing with mental illness. 712-255-4209.

New Life Life Support Group, 3:30 p.m. every Saturday at 2929 W. Fourth St. Spiritual 12-step program. For more information, call Donald at 712-574-1744 or James at 712-255-7624.

Post Polio Support Group, 11 a.m. first Thursday of the month at Perkins Restaurant by Menards. 712-490-8213.

Relationship Support Group, 7 p.m. Fridays at Marketplace Mall. For more information, call 239-3129.

Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence, Individual and Support Groups. For more information, call CSADV in Sioux City at 712-258-7233; Plymouth County at 712-546-6764; Monona County at 712-423-3443. Advocacy and support available 24 hours a day at 1-800-982-7233. All services free of charge and confidential.

Sickle Cell Disease Support Group, 11 a.m. third Saturday of each month at St. Luke's Hospital, meeting room 1. For patients, their family and any concerned member. Call La'Keshia Rainey at 712-203-2019 for more information.

Sioux City Association of the Deaf, 7 p.m. third Saturday of the month at Morningside Church of Christ, 5015 Garretson Ave. Regular meeting, September-May; no meeting, June, July, August and December.

Siouxland Autism Support Group, second Thursday of the month at Northwest Area Education Agency, 1520 Morningside Ave. For more information, call Julie Case at 712-490-8939.

Siouxland Epilepsy Support Group, 5 p.m. third Tuesday of the month at Prestwick Apartment Clubhouse, 4230 Hickory Lane. For anyone diagnosed with seizures or epilepsy and family or friends. For more information, call Steve at 274-6927.

Siouxland IC support group, meets quarterly in Sioux City. For patients struggling with interstital cystitis. For more information, call Jacque Dundas 316-641-9766.

Siouxland Informational Group for the Blind, 2-5 p.m. second Tuesday of the month at Northern Hills Retirement Community, 4002 Teton Trace. For more information, call 712-266-8926 or 258-8151.

Grief support group, 5:30-7:30 p.m., beginning Oct. 5 for 13 weeks (may join at any time), Crescent Park United Methodist Church, 2826 Myrtle St., Sioux City. Scott, 712-899-6315.

Siouxland Ostomy Association, 2 p.m. first Sunday of each month (except September, which will be second Sunday; and no meetings June, July, August), in Room 300 at Mercy Medical Center, 801 Fifth St. For more information, call Dick Lindblom at 251-2453.

Siouxland Parkinson Disease Support Group, 1 p.m. fourth Monday of the month at Siouxland Center for Active Generations, 313 Cook St. For more information, call Sally Reinert at 402-987-3516.

Sojourners, support group for families of persons with life-threatening illness, 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays at St. Luke's Regional Medical Center, Room 416. For more information, call Marjorie Jarvill at 402-241-8637.

South Sioux City Weight Support Group, 8:30 a.m. Wednesdays at St. Paul United Methodist Church, South Sioux City. For more information, call 494-1401 or 494-2133.

Disabilities Resource Center of Siouxland, 520 Nebraska St., Suite 101: Women's Support Group, 1:30 p.m. first Wednesday of the month; LGBT Support Group, 1:30 p.m. first Friday of the month; Adult ADHD, 6 p.m. second Tuesday of the month; Advocacy Group, 1:30 p.m. third Tuesday of the month. For more information, call 712-255-1065.

Take Off Pounds Sensibly, group meetings various times, days and locations in Siouxland. For information on the chapter in your area, call 1-800-932-TOPS.

Voice Disorder Support Group, meets as needed at Mercy Medical Center, Buena Vista Room. 712-279-2686.

Women's Peer Support Group, in Wayne and South Sioux City, Neb., for those who have experienced domestic abuse. For more information, call the Wayne office at 402-375-4633 or 1-800-440-4633; in South Sioux City, call 402-494-7592. Help and support available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Services free and confidential.

Woodbury County D.M.D.A., noon-2 p.m. first Saturday of the month at Country Friendship Acres, 4501 West St.; 7-8 p.m. first Tuesday of the month at 515 Court St. in the Community Room; 7-8 p.m. second Tuesday of the month at 441 W. Third St. in the Community Room; 7-8 p.m. third Tuesday of the month at 409 W. Third St. in the Community Room. Support group for people with disabilities and mental disorders.

Natural Mamas in Siouxland, 1 p.m., third Tuesday of each month in the Garretson room of the Morningside Public Library. All ages of children are welcome to come with moms. For sharing natural living tips, recipes, natural remedies and health, homemaking, mothering, etc. For more information, call 402-913-0038 or visit their Facebook page.

A Step Beyond support group, 3:30 p.m. second Tuesday of the month, except for August, November and December when it meets at 5:30 p.m. (no meeting in January) at the Christy-Smith Resource Center, 1819 Morningside Ave. For more information, call 712-276-7319.

Divorce care, 5 p.m., Sundays. Fireside room, Morningside Lutheran Church, 700 South Martha St.

Gamblers Anonymous meetings, 4 p.m. Thursdays at Immanuel Lutheran Church, 315 Hamilton Blvd.; 7 p.m. Wednesdays, Morningside Presbyterian Church, 4327 Morningside Ave.; 7 p.m. Tuesdays, St. John Lutheran Church. 712-277-2901.

Art therapy support group, 5:30 p.m. second Thursday of the month at the June E. Nylen Cancer Center. Registration required, call 252-9387.

After Breast Cancer Support Group, 5:30 p.m. third Tuesday of the month at the June E. Nylen Cancer Center. For more information, call Brenda, 252-9370.

After Prostate Cancer Support Group, 5:15 p.m. first Tuesday of the month at the June E. Nylen Cancer Center. For more information, call 252-9426.

Alzheimer's Association, Big Sioux Chapter Support Group, 2 p.m. second Tuesday of the month; 4 p.m. third Tuesday of the month (under age 65) at 201 Pierce St., Suite 110 (Famous Dave's building); and 6 p.m. first Tuesday of the month at the Barnes and Noble Cafe. For more information, call Emily Lord at 712-279-5802.

Christy-Smith Funeral Homes of Sioux City, extensive grief library at the Morningside location. Open to the public during weekday hours. For more information, call 276-7319.

Chronic Pain/Chronic Illness Support Group, 7:30 p.m. fourth Wednesday of the month in the lower level of the Orange City Hospital. For more information, call 712-737-5260.

Connections Area Agency on Aging, and Mercy Medical Centers Older Adult Services Welcome to Medicare, 1:30-4 p.m., the first Friday of every month at Connections Area Agency on Aging, 2301 Pierce St. To pre-register, or for more information, contact Connections Area Agency on Aging at 712-279-6900.
Orientation Sunday for Sioux City 'Crop Walk'

SIOUX CITY | An orientation and rally for the Sioux City CROP Walk will be held from 1 to 2 p.m. Sunday at Grace United Methodist Church, 1735 Morningside Ave. Congregations and community groups are invited to come and pick up walk materials and contribution packets.

The annual CROP Walk will begin at 1 p.m. Oct. 16 from the church. The event is Sioux City's only annual interdenominational event that raises money to help people both locally and in other countries.

St. John holds Belgian waffle breakfast

SIOUX CITY | St. John Lutheran Church, 2801 Jackson St., will hold its 11th annual Belgian waffle breakfast from 8 to 11 a.m. Saturday. The public is welcome to attend.

Sausage links, coffee, orange juice and milk will be served alongside the giant Belgian waffles.

Tickets are $7 per person, children 5 and under are free. Tickets may be purchased at the door the day of the event.

Whitfield holds fundraiser and rummage sale

SIOUX CITY | Whitfield United Methodist Church, 1319 W. Fifth St., will hold its annual sale from 4 to 8 p.m. Thursday, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sept. 16 and from 8 a.m. to noon Sept. 17.

Anyone wishing to donate items may call Muriel Lyle at 712-258-3853.

Carmelite Board meeting is Monday

SIOUX CITY | The monthly meeting of the Carmelite Board will begin with brunch at 8:30 a.m. Monday. Recitation of the Rosary and prayer with the sisters will begin at 9 a.m., followed by a business meeting at 9:30 a.m.

Installation service for the Rev. Gerald J. Bruhn

SIOUX CITY | An installation service for the Rev. Gerald J. Bruhn will be held at 2 p.m. Sunday at Bethany Lutheran Church, 1201 Dubuque St. A reception and light luncheon will follow in the fellowship hall.

The Rev. Russell C. Senstad of Redeemer Lutheran will give a sermon, along with other Lutheran clergy. Holy Communion will also be offered.

Sunday school kicks off at Grace United

SIOUX CITY | A Sunday school kick-off will begin at 11 a.m. Sunday in the Fellowship Hall of Grace United Methodist Church, 1735 Morningside Ave. Students will enjoy activities and treats while parents register them for classes that will begin on Sept. 18.

Potluck supper set for Wednesday

SIOUX CITY | The first Grace United Methodist potluck supper will be held at 6 p.m. Wednesday at 1735 Morningside Ave. It will feature a report by the Youth Mission Team about their service trip this summer to Puerto Rico.

9/11 tribute service planned Sunday

SIOUX CITY | A service of commemoration and hope to mark the 15th anniversary of 9/11 will begin at 4 p.m. Sunday at Morningside Lutheran Church, 700 S. Martha St.

Mount Zion Baptist Church will provide the music and 9/11 readings will be offered by Sioux City Journal devotional writer Kathy Yoder and the Rev. Sheryl Ashley. A candle ceremony involving veterans, police and fire personnel will conclude the tribute.

International organist to play during concert series

SIOUX CITY | The Cathedral of the Epiphany welcomes Arjan Breukhoven, an international concert organist, at 7 p.m. Tuesday as apart of the Cathedral's fall/winter series showcase.

The series will showcase the high caliber of the Cathedral's music department. Other concerts will be offered on Nov. 2, Nov. 4 and Feb. 17.

Merrill church hosts Sunday school rally day

MERRILL, Iowa | Sunday school rally day will be held Sunday at St. John Lutheran Church, 735 Fifth St. Sunday school begins at 9 a.m., followed by a service at 10 a.m. Free lunch will be served after the service. All children are welcome.

St. Mark participates in Day of Service

SIOUX CITY | St. Mark Lutheran Church ELCA, 5200 Glenn Ave., will join thousands of other ELCA congregations around the country in a Day of Service on Sunday. St. Mark activities will begin with worship at 9:30 a.m., followed by various community services projects throughout the afternoon and a pig roast at 5 p.m.

The theme is "God's work, our hands."

For more information, call St. Mark at 712-276-2418.
SIOUX CITY -- Dee McKennas oldest daughter has just begun her freshman year of high school. As of mom of three, McKenna knows the uncertainty and worry a parent can feel when their child begins another year of school.

So ho does she deal with this uncertainty?

She prays.

McKenna is a member of Moms in Prayer, a non-denominational group that prays for schools, students and teachers.

This Lawton-Bronson-based prayer group welcomes moms and dads from all area churches.

We start each meeting with a short devotional, followed by at least 30 minutes of prayer. We pray for the students, the teachers, the board members  our goal is that the Holy Spirit be present in every area of the school, McKenna said.

All prayer groups meet off public school grounds and the prayers are never specific. Members are cautious that the meeting doesnt turn into a gossip group. We focus on the kids and the schools, McKenna said.

Through our prayer, we trust our kids and their teachers more. Even though teachers dont participate directly, they appreciate the connection. Its about knowing whats going on at your childs school and inside your childs classroom.

Moms in Prayer is an international organization and was founded in 1984 by Fern Nicholas, of Poway, California, when her sons began junior high.

Fern was just searching for another mom who was willing to pray with her, said Rachel Raih, the Iowa state coordinator for Moms in Prayer. Were just ordinary moms who hold a desire and passion to pray for our kids and their schools.

Now there are Moms in Prayer groups in over 140 countries.

Raih joined her local Moms in Prayer group 26 years ago when her oldest daughter began school. Now she prays for her grandchildren.

What happens when you pray for your kids is it never ends. When I became a grandma, I knew Id want to start a group for my grandchildren," she said.

There are 97 Moms in Prayer groups in Iowa.

Right now, our groups have 12 percent of Iowa schools covered in prayer. We aim to cover 100 percent, Raih said. "Nothing gives you a greater peace in this unsettled world than getting together in prayer.
SIOUX CITY | Iowa 4th congressional district Rep. Steve King is echoing Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump's assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin has been a better leader than U.S. President Barack Obama.

"America's dominance in the world has retreated because of the, I'll say, of the direct orders of Barack Obama. That has allowed Putin to be more robust...I want a president that I see as strong," King, R-Kiron, said in an MSNBC interview on Thursday.

Trump's comments about Putin came during NBC's foreign policy forum in New York on Wednesday.

"If (Putin) says great things about me, Im going to say great things about him," Trump said at the forum. "Certainly in that system, hes been a leader, far more than our president has been."

Asked in the MSNBC interview if he agreed Putin is a better leader, King replied, "I look at it that way."

King said Putin's changes have created great nationalistic pride among the Russian people. He said Obama has pulled back the U.S. presence in some international spots, creating "soft spots" that Putin has regrettably entered.

King's comments drew a rebuke from Kim Weaver, his Democratic challenger for the 4th District seat. Weaver in a release said she is getting more confused by how people on the political right can consider King a "patriot."

"What has Vladimir Putin done that so impresses Steve King? Well, he's invaded two countries, Crimea and Ukraine. He murders minorities and oppressed 'sub-groups.' He murders political opponents and journalists who criticize him," Weaver campaign said in a fundraising email.

Also addressing Trump's comments about Putin was U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, who said Thursday she did not agree with the Republican candidate assessment of Putin. Asked if the former KGB agent was a role model for Americans, Ernst, a combat veteran, said "absolutely not."

Editor's Note: An earlier version of this online story had a different headline.
SIOUX CITY | One week after terrorists crashed two hijacked passenger airplanes into New York City's Twin Towers, Paul Andell walked onto the scene at Ground Zero.

Then a Lutheran pastor in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Andell and four friends entered the cordoned off area of Manhatten through separate checkpoints, then walked more than a mile to reach the location of the cleanup. It's a sight he hasn't forgotten.

Andell said he remembers seeing the thick layer of ash that covered everything and the bustle of trucks hauling debris. He said the site was lit by high-beamed lights "like it was a ballpark."

"It was an absolutely surreal visual experience," he said. "We stood there and just watched the military and other personnel drive Jeeps and things -- it looked like something out of World War II."

Nearly 15 years after that visit, Andell, who is now an associate pastor at Morningside Lutheran Church, returned to Ground Zero. Walking along the now-completed National September 11 Memorial & Museum, the scene made another impression.

That's when Andell decided he wanted to do something back home to honor those who had lost their lives 15 years ago in New York City, as well as the other two crash sites at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania.

Andell talked with others at Morningside Lutheran and throughout Siouxland about putting together a program to honor the 15th anniversary of 9/11.

Sunday, the program, entitled "Remembering 9/11: A Siouxland Tribute of Commemoration and Hope," will honor those who represent the veterans and first responders who risked their lives on 9/11, and bring Siouxland community leaders and citizens together for a time of remembrance.

"We're not calling it a service. It is a place for American citizens who love our country," Andell said. "We hope that it's meaningful, ... both as a commemoration for those who have lost their lives and as a reminder that, as Americans, we should never take our country for granted."

The program, which begins at 4 p.m. in the sanctuary at Morningside Lutheran Church, 700 South Martha St., will include speeches by Sioux City Mayor Bob Scott and South Sioux City Mayor Rod Koch. The Mount Zion Baptist Choir, the Rev. David Hemann of St. Michael Church and Kari Swanson will provide featured patriotic music, with readings from Journal Editor Bruce Miller, Kathy Yoder, a devotional writer who contributes to the Journal's Faith page, and the Rev. Cheryl Ashley.

Members of the armed forces, as well as policemen, firemen and other first responders, along with their families, will be honored at the event.

There will be a procession for those who represent those that were directly participating at Ground Zero, Andell said. They can just show up and are welcome to come in uniform.

Andell said the event will both remember and honor those who died on 9/11, as well as look forward to the future. He said the event will end with a prayer for peace.
ANCA Calls for a Sustainable U.S. Policy for Challenges Facing Middle East Christians

WASHINGTON -- Armenian National Committee of America Executive Director Aram Hamparian slammed U.S. policy on Middle East Christians as shortsighted, irresponsible and reckless, calling for a new strategy based on fundamental American values, at the opening press conference of the 2016 In Defense of Christians (IDC) National Advocacy Convention. "Sadly, in place of a truly American approach, successive U.S. Administrations have pursued policies imposed by foreign interests; allowed vetoes exercised by corrupt dictators; even enforced gag-rules silencing our moral voice as a nation," said Hamparian. He went to offer three Armenian examples of failed U.S. policies, including "U.S. complicity in Turkey's obstruction of justice for the Armenian Genocide; a U.S. green light on Turkey's destabilizing offensives into northern Syria; and U.S. backing for a 'peace plan' that would force Christian Nagorno Karabakh under the rule of an Azerbaijani dictatorship." Hamparian then praised In Defense of Christians for its progress "against influential interests and the institutional inertia of more than a century of inaction," citing the unanimous passage of H.Con.Res. 75, spearheaded by Representatives Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE) and Anna Eshoo (D-CA), which condemned ISIS actions against Christians and minorities as 'genocide'; a joint Knights of Columbus / IDC report detailing the genocidal campaign against Christians and other minorities in the Middle East; and the ongoing advocacy efforts defending the rights and safety of Christian communities in the region. He went on to share the ANCA's support for the policy recommendations being advanced during the IDC convention:

Securing a truthful and just international resolution to Turkey's still unpunished crime of genocide against Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks and other Christians through passage of H.Res.154.

Establishing a province for the indigenous Christians (Assyrian, Chaldean and Syriac) and other peoples of the Nineveh Plain region.

Generating U.S. support for security and stability in Lebanon and relief from the Syrian refugee crisis (including those who have reached Armenia).

Encouraging reform of the legal regulations regarding the rebuilding and construction of churches in Egypt.

"These issues are all tied to one another," explained Hamparian. "Progress on one reinforces progress on all. Justice for one represents a step toward justice for all."

The two-hour IDC press conference highlighted insights by Representative David Trott (R-MI); Dr. Katrina Lantos Swett, former Chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF); Robert Nicholson, Executive Director of the Philos Project; Alexis Moukarzel, former Dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of the Holy Spirit in Kaslik, Lebanon; Andrew Doran, journalist and expert on religious persecution in the Middle East; and IDC Executive Director Kirsten Evans. On Wednesday evening, IDC Convention participants gathered at the historic Holy Rosary Catholic Church in Washington, DC for an ecumenical prayer service for Christians in the Middle East. Celebrants included Apostolic Nuncio Archbishop Christophe Pierre, His Eminence Oshagan Choloyan, Archbishop of the Armenian Apostolic Church, the Most Reverend Gregory Mansour and the Most Reverend Abdallah Elias Zaidan, both Bishops of the Maronite Catholic Church, the Reverend Canon Alistair MacDonald-Radcliff of the Anglican Church, the Very Reverend Father Gabriel Adde of the Syrian Orthodox Church of Antioch, the Very Reverend Archdeacon William Toma of the Assyrian Church of the East, the Reverend Andre-Sebastian Mahanna of the Maronite Catholic Church and the Very Reverend Father Joseph Rahal of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Church. The conference will continue on Thursday with a National Advocacy Day on Capitol Hill, where participants will meet with Members of Congress to highlight the plight of Christians and other minorities across the Middle East. That evening, a formal dinner will be held at the Capitol Hill Club that will feature addresses from senior federal policymakers. The last day of the conference (September 9) will feature a policy and awareness symposium at the Dirksen Senate Office Building, followed that evening by the premiere of the movie "Our Last Stand" -- a documentary on the plight of Christian communities in Syria and Iraq.
GSK plc, together with its subsidiaries, engages in the creation, discovery, development, manufacture, and marketing of pharmaceutical products, vaccines, over-the-counter medicines, and health-related consumer products in the United Kingdom, the United States, and internationally. It operates through four segments: Pharmaceuticals, Pharmaceuticals R&D, Vaccines, and Consumer Healthcare. The company offers pharmaceutical products comprising medicines in the therapeutic areas, such as respiratory, HIV, immuno-inflammation, oncology, anti-viral, central nervous system, cardiovascular and urogenital, metabolic, anti-bacterial, and dermatology. It also provides consumer healthcare products in wellness, oral health, nutrition, and skin health categories. The company offers its consumer healthcare products in the form of nasal sprays, tablets, syrups, lozenges, gum and trans-dermal patches, caplets, infant syrup drops, liquid filled suspension, wipes, gels, effervescents, toothpastes, toothbrushes, mouthwashes, denture adhesives and cleansers, topical creams and non-medicated patches, lip balm, gummies, and soft chews. It has collaboration agreements with 23andMe; Lyell Immunopharma, Inc.; Novartis; Sanofi SA; Surface Oncology; Progentec Diagnostics, Inc.; Alector, Inc.; and CureVac AG., as well as strategic partnership with IDEAYA Biosciences, Inc. and Vir Biotechnology, Inc. The company was formerly known as GlaxoSmithKline plc and changed its name to GSK plc in May 2022. GSK plc was founded in 1715 and is headquartered in Brentford, the United Kingdom.
Trinity Industries, Inc. provides rail transportation products and services under the TrinityRail name in North America. It operates in two segments, Railcar Leasing and Management Services Group, and Rail Products Group. The Railcar Leasing and Management Services Group segment leases freight and tank railcars; originates and manages railcar leases for third-party investors; and provides fleet maintenance and management services. As of December 31, 2021, it had a fleet of 106,970 owned or leased railcars. This segment serves industrial shipper and railroad companies operating in agriculture, construction and metals, consumer products, energy, and refined products and chemicals markets. The Rail Products Group segment manufactures freight and tank railcars for transporting various liquids, gases, and dry cargo; and offers railcar maintenance and modification services. This segment serves railroads, leasing companies, and industrial shippers of products in the agriculture, construction and metals, consumer products, energy, and refined products and chemicals markets. It sells or leases products and services through its own sales personnel and independent sales representatives. Trinity Industries, Inc. was incorporated in 1933 and is headquartered in Dallas, Texas.
The following companies are subsidiares of Accenture: 2nd Road, ?What If!, ?What If! China Holdings Limited, ?What If! Holdings Limited, ?What If! Limited, ACN Consulting Co Ltd, AD.Dialeto (Digital Agency acquired by Accenture), AFD.TECH, AGS Business and Technology Services Limited, AIG Shared Services Business Processing Inc, ASM Research Inc., ASM Research LLC, ATAN, Accenture (Botswana) (Proprietary) Limited, Accenture (China) Co. Ltd., Accenture (Shenzhen) Technology Co. Ltd., Accenture (South Africa) Pty Ltd, Accenture (UK) Limited, Accenture 2 Business Process Services S.A., Accenture 2 LLC, Accenture A/S, Accenture AB, Accenture AG, Accenture AS, Accenture Africa Pty Ltd, Accenture Agencia Interativa Ltda, Accenture Australia Holding B.V., Accenture Australia Holdings Pty Ltd, Accenture Australia Pty Ltd, Accenture B.V., Accenture BPM Operations Support Services S.A., Accenture BPM S.C.R.L., Accenture BPS Services S.p. z o.o., Accenture Branch Holdings B.V., Accenture Bulgaria EOOD, Accenture Business Services for Utilities Inc, Accenture Business Services of British Columbia Limited Partnership, Accenture Business and Technology Services LLC, Accenture C.A., Accenture Canada Holdings Inc, Accenture Capital Designated Activity Company, Accenture Capital Inc, Accenture Central Europe B.V., Accenture Chile Asesorias y Servicios Ltda, Accenture Cloud Services GmbH, Accenture Cloud Software Solutions Limited, Accenture Cloud Solutions Australia Pty Ltd, Accenture Cloud Solutions LLC, Accenture Cloud Solutions Pty Ltd, Accenture Co Ltd, Accenture Co. Ltd, Accenture Communications Infrastructure Solutions Ltd, Accenture Company Ltd, Accenture Consulting Pty Ltd, Accenture Consulting Services Ltd Tanzania, Accenture Consultores de Gestao S.A., Accenture Consultoria de Industria e Consumo Ltda, Accenture Consultoria de Recursos Naturais Ltda, Accenture Credit Services LLC, Accenture Customer Services Distribution SASU, Accenture Customer Services Ltd, Accenture Danismanlik Limited Sirketi, Accenture Defined Benefit Pension Plan Trustees Limited, Accenture Defined Contribution Pension Plan Trustees Limited, Accenture Delivery Poland S.p. z o.o., Accenture Dienstleistungen GmbH, Accenture Digital Holdings GmbH, Accenture East Africa Limited, Accenture Ecuador S.A., Accenture Egypt LLC, Accenture Enterprise Development (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Accenture Federal Services LLC, Accenture Finance II Limited, Accenture Finance Limited, Accenture Finance and Accounting BPO Services S.p.A., Accenture Finance and Accounting Services S.r.l., Accenture Financial Advanced Solution & Technology S.r.l., Accenture Flex LLC, Accenture GP LLC, Accenture Global Capital Designated Activity Company, Accenture Global Engagements Limited, Accenture Global Holdings Limited, Accenture Global Services Limited, Accenture Global Solutions Limited, Accenture GmbH, Accenture HR Services S.p.A., Accenture Healthcare Processing Inc, Accenture Holding Brasil Ltda, Accenture Holding GmbH & Co. KG, Accenture Holdings (Iberia) S.L., Accenture Holdings B.V., Accenture Holdings France SASU, Accenture Hungary Holdings Kft, Accenture Inc, Accenture Industrial Software Limited Liability Company, Accenture Industrial Software Solutions Kft, Accenture Industrial Software Solutions SA, Accenture Insurance Services B.V., Accenture Insurance Services LLC, Accenture International B.V., Accenture International LLC, Accenture International Limited, Accenture Japan Ltd, Accenture Korea B.V., Accenture LLC, Accenture LLP, Accenture Lanka (Private) Ltd, Accenture Limited, Accenture Lithuania UAB, Accenture Ltd, Accenture Ltda, Accenture Maghreb S.a.r.l., Accenture Managed Services SRL, Accenture Management GmbH, Accenture Marketing Services LLC, Accenture Marketing Services Limited, Accenture Middle East B.V., Accenture Minority I B.V., Accenture Mozambique Limitada, Accenture Mzansi Pty Ltd, Accenture NV/SA, Accenture NZ Limited, Accenture Nova Scotia Unlimited Liability Co., Accenture OOO, Accenture Operations GmbH, Accenture Operations S.p. z o.o., Accenture Operations Services Private Limited, Accenture Operations Services Sdn Bhd, Accenture Outsourcing S.r.l., Accenture Outsourcing Services S.A., Accenture Oy, Accenture Panama Inc, Accenture Participations B.V., Accenture Participations II Limited, Accenture Peru SRL, Accenture Post Trade Processing SASU, Accenture Post-Trade Processing Limited, Accenture Process (Mauritius) Ltd, Accenture Pte Ltd, Accenture Puerto Rico LLC, Accenture Qiyun Technology (Hangzhou) Co. Ltd, Accenture S.C., Accenture S.L., Accenture S.R.L., Accenture S.p. z o.o., Accenture S.p.A., Accenture SASU, Accenture SG Services Pte Ltd, Accenture SRL, Accenture Saudi Arabia Limited, Accenture Sdn Bhd, Accenture Service Center SRL, Accenture Services (Mauritius) Ltd, Accenture Services AB, Accenture Services AG, Accenture Services AS, Accenture Services GmbH, Accenture Services Morocco SA, Accenture Services Oy, Accenture Services Pty Ltd, Accenture Services S.p. z o.o., Accenture Services SRL, Accenture Services and Technology S.r.l., Accenture Services s.r.o., Accenture Single Member S.A. Organization Information Technology & Business Development, Accenture Solutions Co. Ltd, Accenture Solutions Private Limited, Accenture Solutions Pte Ltd, Accenture Solutions Pty Ltd, Accenture Solutions S.p. z o.o, Accenture Solutions Sdn Bhd, Accenture State Healthcare Services LLC, Accenture Sub II Inc, Accenture Sub III Inc, Accenture Sub LLC, Accenture Systems Integration Limited, Accenture Sarl, Accenture Tanacsado Kolatolt Felelossegu Tarsasag, Accenture Technology Solutions (Dalian) Co. Ltd., Accenture Technology Solutions (HK) Co. Ltd., Accenture Technology Solutions (Thailand) Co. Ltd, Accenture Technology Solutions - Solucoes Informaticas Integradas S.A., Accenture Technology Solutions GmbH, Accenture Technology Solutions Oy, Accenture Technology Solutions Pty Ltd, Accenture Technology Solutions S.A. de C.V., Accenture Technology Solutions S.r.l., Accenture Technology Solutions SASU, Accenture Technology Solutions SRL, Accenture Technology Solutions Sdn Bhd, Accenture Technology Solutions Slovakia s.r.o., Accenture Technology Ventures B.V., Accenture Technology Ventures SPRL, Accenture Tecnologia Consultoria y Outsourcing S.A., Accenture Uruguay SRL, Accenture Vietnam Co. Limited, Accenture Zambia Limited, Accenture do Brasil Ltda, Accenture plc, Accenture s.r.o., Acceria, Acquity Group, Adaptly LLC, Adaptly UK Limited, AddVal Technology, Adqptly, Advantium Inc., Advoco, Agilex Technologies Inc., Alfa Consulting, Allen International, AlphaBeta Advisors, Altevie Technologies S.r.l., Altima, Altima (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Altima Asia Ltd, Altitude, Altitude LLC, Altius Consulting Limited, Altius Data Solutions Private Limited, Analytics 8 LP, Analytics 8 Pty Ltd, Analytics8, Aorui Advertising (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Apis, Apis Group Pty Ltd, Appaloosa Technology SASU, AppsPro, AppsPro, Arca, Arca Ingenieros y Consultoria S.L., Arca Telecom S.L., Ariba - BPO, Arismore, Artio People (Payroll) Pty Ltd, Artio People Pty Ltd, Aspiro Solutions (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Automation Partners Pty Ltd, Avanade (Guangzhou) Computer Technology Development Co. Ltd., Avanade Asia Pte Ltd, Avanade Australia Pty Ltd, Avanade Belgium SPRL, Avanade Canada Inc, Avanade Consulting Poland S.p. z o.o., Avanade Denmark A/S, Avanade Deutschland GmbH, Avanade Europe Holdings Limited, Avanade Europe Services Limited, Avanade Finland Oy, Avanade France SASU, Avanade Holdings LLC, Avanade Hong Kong Ltd, Avanade Inc, Avanade International Corporation, Avanade Ireland Limited, Avanade Italy S.r.l., Avanade Japan KK, Avanade Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Avanade Middle East Limited, Avanade Netherlands B.V., Avanade Norway AS, Avanade Poland S.p. z o.o., Avanade Schweiz GmbH, Avanade South Africa Pty Ltd, Avanade Spain S.L., Avanade Sweden AB, Avanade UK Limited, Avanade do Brasil Ltda , Avanade Osterreich GmbH, Avenai, Avieco, Axia Ltd., BABCN LLC, BCS Consulting, BCT Solutions, BCT Solutions Pty Ltd, BENEXT, BPO Servicos Administrativos Ltda, BRIDGE Energy Group, BRIDGEi2i, Beacon Consulting Group Inc., Beijing Genesis Interactive Technology Co. Ltd., Beijing Zhidao Future Consulting Co. Ltd, Benext, Berico Technologies LLC, Bionic, Bionic Solution LLC, Blue Horseshoe, Boomerang Pharmaceutical Communications, Bow & Arrow, Bow & Arrow Limited, Brand Learning, Brand Learning Group Limited, Brightstep AB, Byte Prophecy, Byte Prophecy Private Limited, CAS, CRMWaypoint, CS Technology (Australia) Pty Ltd, CS Technology (UK) Limited, CS Technology Group LLC, CS Technology LLC, CadenceQuest Inc., Callisto Integration Europe B.V., Callisto Integration Europe Limited, Callisto Integration LLC, Callisto Integration Ltd, Capgemini - North American health practice, Capital Consultancy Services Inc, Certus Solutions Consulting Services Limited, Certus Solutions Ltd, ChangeTrack Research Pty Ltd., Chaotic Moon Studios, Chengdu Mensa Advertising Co. Ltd., Cimation, Cirrus Connect Australia Pty Ltd, Cirrus Connect Limited, Cirruseo, Clarity Insights, ClearEdge Partners, Clearhead, Clearhead Group LLC, ClientHouse GmbH, Cloud Sherpas, Cloud Sherpas (GA) LLC, Cloud Sherpas Japan G.K., Cloud Sherpas New Zealand Limited, Cloudeasier SAS, Cloudpoint Limited, Cloudsherpas Inc, Cloudworks, Cloudworks Consulting Services Inc, Cloudworks Technology LLC, Computer Research and Telecommunications LLC, Concrete Desenvolvimento de Sistemas Ltda, Concrete Solutions, Concrete Solutions Ltda, Context Information Security, Context Information Security LLC, Context Information Security Limited, CoreCompete LLC, CoreCompete Limited, CoreCompete Private Limited, Corliant Inc., Creative Drive LLC, Creative Drive US LLC, CreativeDrive, CreativeDrive Digital Content Services (Shenzhen) Co Ltd., CreativeDrive EMEA Limited, CreativeDrive Singapore Pte Ltd, CreativeDrive UK Group Limited, Cutting Edge Solutions Limited, Cygni AB, Cygni Norrsken AB, Cygni Stockholm AB, Cygni Syd AB, Cygni Vast AB, Cygni Ost AB, Cygni Ostersund AB, DAZ Systems Inc, DAZ Systems LLC, DAZSI Systems (India) Pvt. Limited, DI Futures Corporation, Data Essential SARL, Davies Consulting, DayNine Consulting, DayNine Consulting (New Zealand) Limited, DayNine Consulting LLC, Declarative Holdings LLC, Decora Marketplace LLC, Decorado Marketplace Ltda-EPP, Defense Point Security, Deja vu Security, Design Strategy and Research de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Designaffairs LLC, Digiplug S.A.S., Digital Results Group LLC, Double Digit Limitada, Double Digit Pty SA, Droga5, Droga5 LLC, Droga5 Studios LLC, Droga5 UK Limited, Duck Creek Technologies, ESR Labs, ESR Labs AG, EdenOne Solutions Limited, Edenhouse ERP Holdings Limited, Edenhouse Solutions Limited, Enaxis Consulting, Enaxis Consulting LP, End to End Analytics LLC, End-to-End Analytics, Endorphin Medici (M) Sdn Bhd, Energuia Web S.A., Energy Management Brokers Limited, EnergyQuote JHA, Enimbos, Enimbos Global Services S.L., Enkitec, Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions LLC, Enterprise System Partners, Enterprise System Partners B.V., Enterprise System Partners Bilisim Danismanlik Ticaret Anonim Sirketi, Enterprise System Partners Global Corporation, Enterprise System Partners Limited, Enthusian Pty Ltd, Entropia, Entropia (M) Sdn Bhd, Entropia Holdings Pte Ltd, Entropia Intercraft Sdn Bhd, Epylon, Ergo, Espedia S.r.l., Ethica Consulting Group, Ethica Consulting S.p.A., Evopro Group, Exactside Limited, Experity, Exton Consulting, Exton Consulting Spain Strategy&Management S.L., Exton Germany GmbH, Exton International SAS, Exton Italia S.r.l., Exton SAS, FGM LLC, Fairway Technologies Inc, Farah BidCo Limited, Farah MidCo Limited, Farah Topco Limited, Filmproduction ApS, First Annapolis Consulting Inc., First Annapolis Consulting LLC, Fjord, Focus Group Europe, Formicary, Founders Intelligence, Fruendo S.r.l., FusionX, Future State Consulting LLC, FutureMove (Beijing) Automotive Technology Co. Ltd., FutureMove Automotive, FutureMove Automotive Co. Ltd., GRA Supply Chain Pty Ltd, Gagel Group S de R.L. de C.V., Gapso Servicos de Informatica Ltda, Gapso Servicos de Informatica Ltda., Genfour, George Group Consulting L.P., Gestalt LLC, Gevity, Gren utvikling AS, H.B. Maynard and Co. Inc., HRC Retail Advisory, Hagberg Consulting Group, Hahntel Ltda, Halo Partners LLC, Hamilton Holding Company S.A, Hangzhou Aiyunzhe Technology Co. Ltd., Happen, Happen GP Limited, Happen Limited, Headspring, Hjaltelin Stahl, Hjaltelin Stahl A/S, Hjaltelin Stahl K/S, Hytracc Consulting AS, Hytracc Consulting AS, Hytracc Consulting Malaysia Sdn Bhd, IBB Consulting, ICM.S S.r.l., IMJ Corp, IMJ Corporation, INSITUM, IQSP Consulting LLC, IT One Company Limited, ITBS Servicios Bancarios de Tecnologia de la Informacion SL, Icon Integration, Icon Integration (NZ) Limited, Icon Integration Pty Ltd, Imagine Broadband (USA) Limited, Imagine Broadband USA LLC, Imaginea Inc, Imaginea Technologies LLC, Industrie IT (Hong Kong) Ltd, Industrie IT (Singapore) Pte Ltd, Industrie IT Group Pty Ltd, Industrie IT Pty Ltd, Industrie&Co, Infinity Works Consulting Limited, Infinity Works Holdings Limited, Infinity Works Management Limited, Infinity Works Midco Limited, Informatica de Euskadi S.L., Innotec International EAD, Innotec International S.p. z.o.o., Innotec Marketing GmbH, Innotec Marketing International Ireland Limited, Innotec- Marketing Spain S.L, Insitum Consultoria Argentina SRL, Insitum Consultoria S.A. de C.V., International Biometric Group LLC, International Biometric Group UK Limited, Intrepid, Intrepid Futureworks Sdn Bhd, Intrigo Systems Inc, Intrigo Systems India Pvt. Limited, Intrigo Systems LLC, Inventor Technology Ltd, InvestTech, Investtech Systems Consulting LLC, ItSafer Continuity Services S.L., JKD Consulting LLC, Javelin Group, K Comms Group Limited, KSC Studio LLC, Kaper Communications Limited, Karma Communications Debtco Limited, Karma Communications Group Limited, Karma Communications Holdings Limited, Karmarama, Karmarama Comms Limited, Karmarama Limited, King James Group, Knowledge Rules Inc., Knowledgent, Knowledgent Group LLC, Kogentix, Kogentix LLC, Kogentix Limited, Kogentix Singapore Pte Ltd, Kogentix Technologies Private Limited, Kolle Rebbe, Kolle Rebbe GmbH, Kream Comms Limited, Kunstmaan, Kurt Salmon, Kurt Salmon Canada LTD, Kurt Salmon US LLC, LEXTA, LINKBYNET, LINKBYNET Indian Ocean (L.I.O) Ltd, LabAnswer, Lexta GmbH, Lexta UK Limited, Lien par le reseau Inc, Lien par le reseau infrastructures Inc, Lin Bo (Shanghai) Network Technology Co. Ltd., Link By Net SAS, Link By Net SRL, Link By Net Vietnam Company Limited, Linkbynet East Asia Ltd, Linkbynet Singapore Pte Ltd., Loud & Clear Creative Pty Ltd, Lumenup S.A., MAXIM Systems Inc., MCG US Holdings LLC, Mackevision CG Technology and Service (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Mackevision Japan Co. Ltd., Mackevision Korea Ltd, Mackevision LLC, Mackevision Medien Design, Mackevision Medien Design GmbH, Mackevision Singapore Pte Ltd, Mackevision UK Limited, Maglan, Maglan Information Defense Technologies Research Ltd, Maihiro, Matter, Maud Corp Pty Ltd, Maxamine International, Measuretek LLC, Media Audits Ltd., Media Hive, Mediasenz Pty Ltd., Meredith Specialty LLC, Meredith Xcelerated Marketing, Meredith Xcelerated Marketing LLC, Meridian Informed Purchasing Ltd., Mindtribe, Mistral Wind Operations  Servicos Empresariais Unipessoal Lda., MobGen, Mortgage Cadence LLC, Mortgage Cadence an Accenture Company, Most Champion Ltd, Mudano, Mudano Limited, Myrtle Consulting Group LLC, N3, N3 (Dalian) Business Consulting Co. Ltd., N3 Brazil Consultoria em Marketing Ltda, N3 Germany GmbH, N3 LLC, N3 North America LLC, N3 Results Australia Pty Ltd, N3 Results Ireland Limited, N3 Results Japan G.K., N3 Results Limited, N3 Results Malaysia Sdn Bhd, N3 Results Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., N3 Results S.A.S., N3 Results Singapore Pte Ltd, N3 Results Unipessoal Lda, NYTEC, Nanjing Demeng Advertising Co. Ltd., Nashco Consulting, NaviSys Inc., Nell'Armonia Israel Ltd, Nell'Armonia SAS, Nell'Participation SAS, NellArmonia, Neo Metrics Analytics S.L., Neo Metrics Chile S.A., New Content, New Content Editora e Produtora Ltda, New Energy Group, News Imaging LLC, NewsPage, NewsPage (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, NewsPage Pte Ltd, Northstream, Novetta Holdings LLC, Novetta LLC, Novetta Solutions LLC, Novetta Topco LLC, OCTO Technology, OPS Rules Management Consultants, Octagon Research Solutions Inc., Octo Technology Pty Ltd, Octo Technology SA, Odgaard ApS, Olikka, Olikka Pty Ltd, Olympus Systems Corporation, Openmind, Openmind S.r..l., Openminded, Openminded SAS, Operaciones Accenture S.A. de C.V., OpusLine, Orbium, Orbium AG, Orbium Consulting Limited, Orbium Inc., Orbium Ltd, Orbium Pte Ltd, Orbium Pty Ltd, Origin Digital, PCO Innovation, PLM Systems S.r.l, PRION GmbH, PT Accenture, PT Asta Catur Indra, PT Kogentix Teknologi Indonesia, PacificLink Group, Paja Finanssipalvelut Oy, Parker Fitzgerald Inc, Parker Fitzgerald International Limited, Parker Fitzgerald Limited, Parker Fitzgerald PTY Ltd, Parker Fitzgerald Services Limited, Parker Fitzgerald Solutions Limited, Pecaso Ltd., Pegasus Production A/S, Pegasus Production K/S, Phase One Consulting Group, Pillar Technology, Pollux, Pollux Automation Mexico S.A. de C.V., Pollux Canada Inc, Pollux S.A.S., Pollux USA LLC, Pragsis Bidoop, Pragsis Bidoop UK Limited, Pramati Technologies Europe Limited, Pramati Technologies Private Limited, Presence of IT Workforce Management North America LLC, PrimeQ, PrimeQ Australia Pty Ltd, PrimeQ Ltd, PrimeQ NZ Pty Limited, Procurian Inc., Prof. Homburg GmbH, Proquire LLC, PureApps Ltd., Qi Jie Beijing Information Technologies Co. Ltd., RBCP Fund 1-A Vapor Blocker LLC, RBCP Platform Vapor Blocker I LLC, REPL Consulting LLC, REPL Consulting Limited, REPL Digital Limited, REPL Group K.K., REPL Group Pty Ltd, REPL Group Worldwide Limited, REPL Pte Ltd, REPL Software Limited, REPL Technology Limited, Radiant Services LLC, Random Walk Computing Inc., Reactive Media Pty Ltd., Real Protect, Realworld OO Systems Ltd., Redcore, Redcore (New Zealand) Limited, Redcore Group Holdings Pty Ltd, Redcore Pty Ltd, Revolutionary Security, RiskControl, Root LLC, Rothco, Rothco Limited, S3 TV Technology Ltd., SALT Solutions GmbH, SEC Servizi, SOPIA Corp., Sagacious Consultants, Salt Solutions, Sandbox Studio LLC, Sapling Bidco Limited, Sapling Midco Limited, Sapling Topco Limited, Schlumberger Business Consulting, Seabury Aviation & Aerospace (UK) Limited, Seabury Consulting, Seabury Corporate Advisors LLC, Seabury Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Search Technologies BPO Inc, Search Technologies International LLC, Search Technologies LLC, Search Technologies Limited, Securiview SAS, Sentelis, Sentor Managed Secuirty Services AB, Servicios Tecnicos de Programacion Accenture S.C., Seven Seas Business Ventures LLC, Shackleton, Shackleton Chile S.A., Shackleton S.L.U., Shanghai Baiyue Advertising Co. Ltd., Shun Zhe Technology Development Co. Ltd., SigInt Technologies LLC, Silveo, Silveo Consulting India Private Limited, Simian Pty Ltd, SinnerSchrader, SinnerSchrader AG, SinnerSchrader Content GmbH, SinnerSchrader Deutschland GmbH, SinnerSchrader Praha s.r.o., Sirvart S.A., Sistemes Consulting S.L., Skylink SAS, Soltians Limited, Solutions IQ LLC, SolutionsIQ, SolutionsIQ India Consulting Services Private Limited, Somers Ventures Ireland Limited, Somers Ventures LLC, Spacelink SAS, Storm Digital, Structure Consulting Group LLC, Sutter Mills, Synership LLC, Systor AG, T.A. Cook, TXF LLC, Tambourine, TargetST8, Tech - Avanade Portugal Unipessoal Lda, Tecnilogica Ecosistemas S.A., Tecnilogica, The Brand Learning Partners Limited, The Callisto Integration Corporation, The Monkeys, The Monkeys Pty Ltd, The Myrtle Group, Total Logistics, Tquila, Trivadis, Trivadis AG, Trivadis Austria GmbH, Trivadis Denmark AS, Trivadis Germany GmbH, Trivadis Holding AG, Trivadis Partner AG, Trivadis Services AG, Trivadis Services SRL, Troop Studios Pty Ltd, VanBerlo, Vector Acquisition Company LLC, Vector Topco LLC, Verax Solutions, Vertical Retail Consulting (Shanghai) Ltd, Vertical Retail Consulting Ltd, Vivere Brasil Servicos e Solucoes SA, Vivere Brasil Solucoes De Credito Ltda., Wabion GmbH, WaveStrike LLC, White Cliffs Consulting LLC, Wire Stone, Wire Stone LLC, Wise Partners SAS, Wolox, Wolox Colombia S.A.S, Wolox LLC, Wolox Mexico S.R.L de C.V., Wolox S.A., Wolox SpA, Workforce Insight, Workforce Insight LLC, Yesler, Yesler LLC, Yesler Limited, Yesler Singapore Pte Ltd, Zag, Zag Australia Pty Ltd, Zag Limited, Zag USA LLC, Zebra Worldwide Australia Pty Ltd, Zebra Worldwide Group Limited, Zebra Worldwide Media Pty Ltd, Zenta, Zenta Global Philippines Inc, Zenta Mortgage Services LLC, Zenta Recoveries Inc, Zenta US Holdings Inc, Zestgroup, Zielpuls, Zielpuls (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Zielpuls GmbH, avVenta, designaffairs, designaffairs Business Consulting (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., designaffairs GmbH, designaffairs group China Co. Ltd., dgroup, i4C Analytics, iDefense, solid-serVision.com GmbH, and umlaut.

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The Boeing Company is the worlds largest manufacturer of airplanes and commands more than 50% of the market in some channels and categories. The company and its family of subsidiaries design, develops, manufacture, sell, service, and supports commercial jetliners, military aircraft, satellites, missile defense, human space flight, and related services worldwide. The company operates through four segments including Commercial Airplanes; Defense, Space & Security; Global Services; and Boeing Capital providing products and services to end-users in 150 countries.

Boeing got its start in 1910 when William E. Boeing developed a love for aircraft. Soon after he takes his first plane ride which leads him to build a hangar and begin construction of his first plane. The onset of WWI helped spur the companys growth but business was cut drastically in its wake. The start of WWII was another milestone for the company and one that led to its current position of dominance. The company was incorporated in 1916 and is based in Chicago, Illinois. Boeing employs over 140,000 people in 65 countries making it one of the most diverse employers on the planet.

The Commercial Airplanes segment is built around the iconic 7-series which includes the 737, 747, and 787. The segment provides commercial jet aircraft for passenger and cargo requirements, as well as fleet support services for regional, national, and international air carriers and logistics and freight companies. In terms of global volume, the company estimates about 90% of all air freight is carried aboard one of its jets. This segment also includes the Dreamliner family of planes. The Dreamliner is a game-changing airplane for many carriers as it opens up the potential for new one-stop destinations because of its capacity and range.

The Defense, Space & Security segment develops and manufactures a range of systems including manned and unmanned aircraft, missiles, missile defense systems, satellites, communications equipment, and intelligence systems for governments. Among the many iconic brands within this segment are the AH-64 Apache, Air Force One, B-52, C-17 Globemaster, Chinook, F/A-18, and the V-22 Osprey VTOL aircraft used by the Marines.

The Global Services segment offers a range of products and services that include supply chain and logistics management, engineering, maintenance, upgrades, conversions, spare parts, pilot and maintenance training, technical and maintenance documents, and data analytics to its commercial and defense customers.

Boeing is also a leader in innovation, leveraging its many decades and avenues of experience to further aerospace and defense technology. Among the many innovations is the MQ-25 Stingray which will be the worlds first autonomous aircraft. The Stingray is only one of many areas of research that also include drones and undersea vehicles.
The following companies are subsidiares of Transocean: 15375 Memorial Corporation, Agon Shipping Inc., Aguas Profundas Limitada, AngoSantaFe - Prestacao de Servicos Petroliferos Limitada, Angola Deepwater Drilling Company (Offshore Services) Ltd, Arcade Drilling AS, Asie Sonat Offshore Sdn. Bhd., Barents Rigco Limited, Blegra Asset Management Limited, Blegra Financing Limited, Caledonia Offshore Drilling Services Limited, Challenger Minerals Inc., Covent Garden - Servicos e Marketing Sociedade Unipessoal Lda, Deepwater Drilling (Transocean Ghana) Limited, Deepwater Drilling North Africa LLC - Free Zone, Deepwater Pacific 1 Inc., Deepwater Supply Inc., Drillship Alonissos Owners Inc., Drillship Hydra Owners Inc., Drillship Kithira Owners Inc., Drillship Kythnos Owners Inc., Drillship Paros Owners Inc., Drillship Skiathos Owners Inc., Drillship Skopelos Owners Inc., Drillship Skyros Owners Inc., Eastern Med Consultants Inc., Entities Holdings Inc., GSF Leasing Services GmbH, Global Marine Inc., Global Offshore Drilling Limited, GlobalSantaFe (Labuan) Inc., GlobalSantaFe B.V., GlobalSantaFe C.R. Luigs Limited, GlobalSantaFe Denmark Holdings ApS, GlobalSantaFe Drilling (N.A.) N.V., GlobalSantaFe Drilling Company, GlobalSantaFe Drilling Company (North Sea) Limited, GlobalSantaFe Drilling Company (Overseas) Limited, GlobalSantaFe Drilling Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., GlobalSantaFe Drilling Operations Inc., GlobalSantaFe Drilling Services (North Sea) Limited, GlobalSantaFe Drilling Trinidad LLC, GlobalSantaFe Drilling Venezuela C.A., GlobalSantaFe Financial Services (Luxembourg) S.a.r.l., GlobalSantaFe Group Financing Limited Liability Company, GlobalSantaFe Holding Company (North Sea) Limited, GlobalSantaFe Hungary Services Limited Liability Company, GlobalSantaFe International Drilling Corporation, GlobalSantaFe International Drilling Inc., GlobalSantaFe International Services Inc., GlobalSantaFe Nederland B.V., GlobalSantaFe Offshore Services Inc., GlobalSantaFe Operations (Mexico) LLC, GlobalSantaFe Saudi Arabia Ltd., GlobalSantaFe Services (BVI) Inc., GlobalSantaFe Services Netherlands B.V., GlobalSantaFe Servicios de Venezuela C.A., GlobalSantaFe South America LLC, GlobalSantaFe Tampico S. de R.L. de C.V., GlobalSantaFe Techserv (North Sea) Limited, GlobalSantaFe U.S. Holdings Inc., Indigo Drilling Limited, Inteliwell JV GP Limited, Inteliwell JV LP, Kalambo Operations Inc., OCR Falklands Drilling Inc., OR Norge Operations Inc., Ocean Rig, Ocean Rig 1 Inc, Ocean Rig 2 Inc., Ocean Rig Canada Inc., Ocean Rig Cuanza Operations Inc., Ocean Rig Cubango Operations Inc., Ocean Rig Deepwater Drilling Limited, Ocean Rig Investments Inc., Ocean Rig Management Inc., Ocean Rig Operations Inc., Ocean Rig UDW Inc., Ocean Rig UDW LLC, Offshore Ghana Transocean Limited, Offshore Rig Operations AS, Olympia Rig Angola Holding S.A., Olympia Rig Angola Limitada, Orion Holdings (Cayman) Limited, Orion RigCo (Cayman) Limited, P.T. Santa Fe Supraco Indonesia, PT. Transocean Indonesia, Platform Capital N.V., Platform Financial N.V., Primelead Limited, R&B Falcon (A) Pty Ltd, R&B Falcon (Caledonia) Limited, R&B Falcon (M) Sdn. Bhd., R&B Falcon (U.K.) Limited, R&B Falcon B.V., R&B Falcon Deepwater (UK) Limited, R&B Falcon Drilling Co. LLC, R&B Falcon Exploration Co. LLC, R&B Falcon International Energy Services B.V., RBF Rig Corporation LLC, Ranger Insurance Limited, Reading & Bates Coal Co. LLC, SDS Offshore Limited, Safemal Drilling Sdn. Bhd., Santa Fe Braun Inc., Santa Fe Construction Company, Santa Fe Drilling Company of Venezuela C.A., Saudi Drilling Company Limited, Sedco Forex International Inc., Services Petroliers Transocean, Servicios Petroleros Santa Fe S.A., Ship Investment Ocean Holdings Inc., Songa Offshore Delta Limited, Songa Offshore Drilling Limited, Songa Offshore Enabler Limited, Songa Offshore Encourage Limited, Songa Offshore Endurance Limited, Songa Offshore Equinox Limited, Songa Offshore Equipment Rental Limited, Songa Offshore Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., Songa Offshore Management Limited, Songa Offshore Pte. Ltd., Songa Offshore Rig 2 AS, Songa Offshore Rig 3 AS, Songa Offshore SE, Songa Offshore SE, Songa Offshore Saturn Limited, Songa Offshore T & P Cyprus Limited, Songa Saturn Chartering Pte. Ltd., Spitsbergen Rigco Limited, Sub-Saharan Drilling Inc., T. I. International Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., TILAM Holdings Limited, TRM Holdings Limited, TSSA - Servicos de Apoio Lda., Transocean Africa Drilling Limited, Transocean Asia Services Sdn Bhd, Transocean Asset Holdings 1 Limited, Transocean Asset Holdings 2 Limited, Transocean Asset Holdings 3 Limited, Transocean Atlas Limited, Transocean Barents ASA, Transocean Brasil Ltda., Transocean Britannia Limited, Transocean Canada Drilling Services Ltd., Transocean Conqueror Limited, Transocean Conqueror Opco LLC, Transocean Corporate Services Limited, Transocean Cyprus Capital Management Public Limited, Transocean Cyprus Drilling Operations Public Limited, Transocean Deepwater Drilling Services Limited, Transocean Deepwater Holdings Limited, Transocean Deepwater Inc., Transocean Deepwater Mauritius, Transocean Deepwater Nautilus Limited, Transocean Deepwater Seafarer Services Limited, Transocean Discoverer 534 LLC, Transocean Drilling Enterprises S.a.r.l., Transocean Drilling Israel Ltd., Transocean Drilling Limited, Transocean Drilling Namibia Inc., Transocean Drilling Offshore S.a.r.l., Transocean Drilling Sdn. Bhd., Transocean Drilling Services (India) Private Limited, Transocean Drilling U.K. Limited, Transocean Eastern Pte. 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Varian Medical Systems, Inc. designs, manufactures, sells, and services medical devices and software products for treating cancer and other medical conditions worldwide. It operates through Oncology Systems and Proton Solutions segments. The Oncology Systems segment offers hardware and software products for treating cancer with radiotherapy, fixed field intensity-modulated radiation therapy, image-guided radiation therapy, volumetric modulated arc therapy, stereotactic radiosurgery, stereotactic body radiotherapy, artificial intelligence based adaptive radiotherapy, and brachytherapy, as well as quality assurance equipment. Its products include linear accelerators, brachytherapy afterloaders, treatment accessories, and quality assurance software; and information management, treatment planning, image processing, clinical knowledge exchange, patient care management, decision-making support, and practice management software. This segment serves university research and community hospitals, private and governmental institutions, healthcare agencies, physicians' offices, medical oncology practices, radiotherapy centers, and cancer care clinics. The Proton Solutions segment designs, develops, manufactures, sells, and services products and systems for delivering proton therapy for the treatment of cancer. The company has a strategic agreement with McKesson Corp. to supply treatment delivery systems and planning, services, and radiotherapy information system solutions to its U.S. Oncology Network and Vantage Oncology affiliated sites of care; and a strategic partnership with Siemens AG to represent Siemens diagnostic imaging products to radiation oncology clinics in the United States and other select markets. Varian Medical Systems, Inc. was formerly known as Varian Associates, Inc. and changed its name to Varian Medical Systems, Inc. in April 1999. The company was founded in 1948 and is headquartered in Palo Alto, California.
Robert Gilpin, R.I.P. - The Washington Post : His greatest book was written in 1981, but the main theory in it is perhaps more trenchant now...
The gravity of the existential threat we face from Islamic Jihad is truly of epic proportions. It is essentially a battle pitting free-civilized man against a totalitarian barbarian. What is at stake is the struggle for our very soul - namely who we are and what we represent. The lives that were sacrificed for individual rights and freedoms that we've come to cherish are being chiseled away from right under our noses by the stealth jihadists. And many of us are in denial and totally clueless.



The left's appeasement and pandering to evil is nothing new. What makes their utopian delusions so infuriating and unpardonable is that it is not only they who will have to pay the consequences, and deservedly, so, they are thwarting and undermining our best efforts at resistance and are thus dragging us down in the process as well.







By Peter Lancz,, the head of the Raoul Wallenberg World Campaign Against Racism.
A sampling of the local produce on sale at Homegrown Farmers Market in Lexington Park. (Photo: @homegrownfarmmarket on Facebook)

HOLLYWOOD, Md.

Homegrown Farmers Market in Lexington Park is seen in the background. (Photo: @homegrownfarmmarket on Facebook)

Five years ago when the Homegrown Farmers Market in Lexington Park first opened its doors not everyone was convinced it would be a success, considering it was starting out in an area of South County where businesses have long struggled to stay open.But a success it has become, according to the figures of customers and vendors who have made it a haven for buying and selling fresh grown local produce, locally raised meats and even baked goods and crafts.The celebration of the farmer's market's fifth anniversary Aug. 27 drew in 900 customers in just four hours of operations, and vendors reported one of their best sales days yet."I had family there that day," said Dawn Ulmschneider of Porpoise Creek Farm in Compton, which sold fresh produce. "It was packed with customers."When the market first opened in 2012 the total estimated average attendance was 237 customers a day that has since grown to 612 customers.The estimated sales on a survey day was $3,672.83 and has now more than doubled to $8,086.92.Also the amount of customers surveyed from year to year show that more and more of them came out to South County just for the market to the tune of 84 percent of respondents last year."We had a record crowd," said Donna Sasscer, the county's Agriculture and Seafood specialist with the Department of Economic Development. "We're surprised every week with the dedicated customers who come in."But we're still drawing new customers every week. The market continues to grow."The market has also grown to include wines from the Leonardtown Winery as well as spirits from a locally owned distillery, Sasscer said making it a hub for expanding and sustaining the diversification of agriculture and tourism.The farmers market itself represents shift in thinking from the county's long dependence on tobacco growing years ago to other forms of farming; it was funded in part by tax payer dollars and by money from the massive tobacco industry settlement."We continue to get a variety of new vendors," Sasscer said. "It's a success not only for the agricultural community but for the community as a whole."Sasscer said that a loyal core of residents had chosen to support the farmers market."There's a huge sense of community there," Sasscer said. "It gives people in South County an opportunity to support the concept of buying local. "They've embraced it as a community asset."The market's popularity has grown despite its limited hours of operation; it is open just two days a week on Wednesday and Saturday for only a handful of hours.John K. Parlett, the chair of the county's Agriculture, Seafood and Forestry Advisory Board, which monitors the operations at the farmer's market, said it was one of three in the county that was continuing to thrive.Their existence helps to make agricultural viable in the county."We've got three farmers markets in the county and they're all doing well," Parlett said. "But they don't all have a permanent home like the Homegrown Farmers Market."It's a great example of what a farmers market can be."Without farmers markets, making a living off the land might become more difficult locally, Parlett said, and that meant farms might shrink or even begin to disappear."Agricultural activities would be much less in Southern Maryland," Parlett said. "You might see them not be farms anymore."The Tri-County Council along with the Southern Maryland Agricultural Development Commission is currently working on a way to bring a slaughter facility to a site somewhere in either St. Mary's, Calvert, Charles, Prince George's or Anne Arundel counties, Parlett said, which, as a U.S. Department of Agriculture approved and inspected facility, would make it much easier for local meat producers to bring their products to market.Those local producers must take their meats hours away to another facility just to be inspected before it can be sold, making the final product more expensive.The market is located at 21078 Three Notch Rd, Lexington Park, MD 20653 [Map: goo.gl/maps/XBX66jhNhrH2 ]. Regular updates are posted to www.facebook.com/homegrownfarmmarket/
Recently my colleague Ric Reilly published an article in South Florida Gay News (SFGN) about gay campgrounds in the United States. Reillys article was criticized for omitting certain campgrounds, mainly Vitambi Springs in nearby Clewiston.

Another gay campground that was left out of Reillys piece (though he probably did not know about it) was Whispering Oaks Retreat (www.mywhisperingoaks.org), an all-male clothing optional resort in central Tennessee.

Whispering Oaks Retreat, not to be confused with Whispering Oaks Campground in Manchester, TN (a family owned campground), is located near Mount Pleasant, 1  hours SW of Nashville. Though not as famous as Timberfell Lodge in east Tennessee, Whispering Oaks has earned a reputation for itself during its half decade as a gay resort.

Like other clothing-optional campgrounds, Whispering Oaks is rustic and private; nestled in a scenic natural wooded environment on a creek which, in my humble opinion, is a perfect place for a bare buns and boots hike. (Vitambi Springs is another.)

It has a heated pool, a hot tub, a kitchen, deluxe cabins with a shared bath, private rooms with private baths, private cabins, and a bunk house with bunks. Since my idea of roughing it is staying in a room with air conditioning, I appreciate Whispering Oaks creature comforts. On the other hand, if you want to pitch a tent, you can do that, too. Whispering Oaks provides its members (it is a private club, as is common with gay campgrounds) with tent sites and RV sites with full hookups.

Whispering Oaks provides its members with a variety of events, or even nothing to do if you are so inclined. But, Whispering Oaks best-attended events are sponsored by California Men Enjoying Naturism (CMEN), which calls itself an international social organization for gay and bisexual men who enjoy being nude for social and recreational activities. (www.cmen.info) Though most CMEN events are, obviously, in California  CMENs main event, the West Coast Gathering, will be held in Santa Monica September 2-11 - CMEN hosts its Summer Camp, Southeast Gathering and late September Open House at Whispering Oaks.

For the last two years I have had the pleasure of attending CMENs Southeast Gathering at Whispering Oaks. Though it is not as well-attended (or as expensive) as the Gay Naturist International Gathering in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania, CMENs SE Gathering is a near-perfect get together for those of us who live nearby, hate crowds, or cant get out of work during the first week of school. (This years event, held June 5-12, was only marred at the end by the tragic news from Orlando.)

The Southeast Gathering describes itself as a full week of all male, all nude fun, fresh air, camaraderie, activities, shows and workshops. In addition to the bare buns and boots hikes (watch out for the ticks!), I enjoyed naked yoga, social hour, playtime by the pool, workshops, playshops, camp-style breakfast, lunch and dinner, game shows, beauty contests, movies and the company of other, like-minded men. Participants add to the camaraderie and keep the costs down by doing various chores around the camp; and everyone gets together in one big circle by the flagpole before dinner.

In addition to gay or bisexual men from around the world who attend the Southeast Gathering, Whispering Oaks Retreat is a popular weekend getaway for men who live in central Tennessee or north Alabama. Tennessee has a thriving LGBT community, not only in obvious places like Nashville but also in mid-sized cities like Clarksville. I met some nice locals at camp, including two country bears who own a nearby farm and a bisexual Army veteran who is an AIDS social worker in Nashville. In fact, I enjoyed myself so much that I plan to go to next years Southeast Gathering, from June 4 to 11. Perhaps I will see you then.
(SS) For Richard Christopher Busey, it was supposed to be an evening of cocktails and companionship with a much younger man he met by a canal near his Wilton Manors condo.

But Busey, 69, was bludgeoned to death that April night in 2002, and his date vanished.

Fourteen years later, a 38-year-old drifter walked into a Des Moines, Iowa, police station last month and, citing his relationship with God, confessed to the violent slaying, authorities announced Thursday.

Scene of the crime

A friend in 2002 looked through a sliding glass door of Busey's first floor unit at the River Manor condominium on Northeast Fifth Terrace, saw his body on the living room floor and alerted firefighters.

Detectives found blood pooled around Busey's corpse and pieces of a ceramic vase or lamp on the floor nearby. His feet poked out from beneath a blanket that covered his body. A nearby table was overturned. There were no signs of a break-in.

But Wilton Manors Police had a couple of leads: A homeless man in his 20s, known only as Josh, was believed to have been at Busey's condominium before the killing. A man told detectives that his telephone caller ID showed he received a call from Busey's home that was made by Josh.

The day after the murder, Wilton Manors police arrested a man named Joshua Odom, not for the homicide, but for allegedly stealing a case of beer.

The store, on West Oakland Park Boulevard, was about a half-mile from Busey's home. The arresting officer noted Odom's hands were swollen and discolored, according to court documents.

When Odom was released from custody for the beer bust, he fled Florida, Odom told investigators last month.

A month after the murder and still looking for a suspect, Wilton Manors detectives released a sketch of the man known as Josh, who was about 24 years old, 5-foot-8 and weighed 150 pounds.

He had a surfer look, with long blond hair and a bright blue tattoo of intersecting lines on his chest.

In the 14 years between Busey's homicide and Odom's alleged confession, Broward sheriff's homicide detectives believe he drifted from state to state, making stops in Texas and Indiana before settling in Iowa, an agency spokeswoman said Thursday.

A beloved uncle

Busey's obituary said in 1990, he moved to Florida from the nation's capital, where he had been a member of the Arts Club of Washington.

A veteran of the U.S. Army, Busey was survived by relatives in Virginia and Germany, as well as by his companion, Miguel Santos, the death notice said.

Santos was in Guatemala visiting his family when Busey died. Santos could not be reached Thursday.

Kevin Siford and his sister, Pamela Elliott, of Virginia, were Busey's nephew and niece.

"I am feeling good about the arrest," Kevin Siford said. "We didn't think we'd get any closure to it, but it's funny how things worked out."

Siford said his uncle "probably had the biggest heart of anyone you'd ever meet, and that probably led to his demise. He helped this guy, who robbed him and killed him."

Busey was very generous to Siford and Elliott on their birthdays and holidays, taking them to movies and plays and on sightseeing trips around D.C., they said.

"He'd always give a ride to service personnel back in the day, when people would hitchhike, back in the '70s," Siford said of his favorite uncle. "He was just an all-around good guy."

One of his fondest memories was seeing the movie "Star Wars" with Busey.

"I think of him when there's a new one ["Star Wars"] out," Siford said.

After his military service, Busey was a grounds management consultant for corporations, Elliott said.

She said she was "very grateful" that Odom surrendered to police, but was angry her uncle died in such a violent way.

Busey had "multiple sclerosis and was not strong," Elliott said. "The man was defenseless, and not a big man at all. He had trouble walking. If [Odom]'d asked my uncle for money, he would have given it to him. He didn't have to hurt him."

A confession

Odom was staying in a Des Moines homeless shelter last month when he walked up to a deputy for the Polk County Sheriff's Office and said he needed to confess a homicide.

Odom provided enough details that the deputy referred the case to Des Moines police, said Sgt. Paul Parizek.

"We send a patrol cop over, who talks with Odom and realizes he's serious, but someone with more knowledge about debriefing a suspect and who has access to resources to call Florida authorities needed to talk to him," Parizek said.

At the Des Moines police station, Detective Brad Youngblut "sits down with him, says 'tell me what you want to tell me,' and the detective dug as deep as he could," Parizek said.

Odom "alluded to having substance-abuse issues and there were a lot of blurs in his life," Parizek said. "He wasn't super clear on a lot of those details.

"For instance, he wasn't really sure of where he did it," Parizek said. "But he provided enough details that investigators down there could recognize the incident."

Odom returned to a shelter and Youngblut's bulletin was sent to South Florida police departments.

A detective with Wilton Manors realized it was their unsolved case. A Broward sheriff's detective interviewed Odom at the Des Moines police station, and he was taken into custody.

So why did Odom unburden himself, after all these years?

"The detective said Odom cited his relationship with God, said he'd found religion and he wanted to clear his sins," Parizek said.

Night of the killing

Odom told a Broward sheriff's detective that the men met at a bench along a canal near Busey's home and he was invited to his place.

Odom decided to murder and rob Busey, to get money to buy crack cocaine, according to the arrest warrant.

While Busey was seated in a recliner, Odom told investigators he put him in a chokehold until he was unresponsive. Then he took a vase or a pot and struck Busey in the head.

Odom covered Busey's body with bed linens and attempted to clean the condominium of DNA evidence before leaving, the warrant states.

But Odom's fingerprints were found in a bathroom, according to the investigation.

The younger man told police he returned to the condo and climbed through the bedroom window to take a television and other property that he carried away in a shopping cart.

Odom was flown back to Fort Lauderdale and arrested on suspicion of murder and theft.

On Thursday, Broward County Judge Michael Davis ordered him held without bond in aBroward County jail.

Odom's attorney, Assistant Public Defender Melisa McNeill, could not be reached for comment about her client.

A lost son

From Texas, Odom's heartbroken father Max Odom was reluctant to talk about his son, saying of Busey, "It's not going to bring the man back."

When asked about how his son has lived his life so far, Max Odom said, "It's pretty much evident. When police said he was a drifter, that's pretty much what it's been."

The family last heard from Joshua Odom a couple of years ago.

"The demon of addiction, he fell prey to that," Max Odom said.

Staff researcher Barbara Hijek contributed to this report.
In a time when ridesharing apps are becoming more numerous than cabs at Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport, Yellow Cab CEO John Camillo touts safety, customer service, consistency and reliability as worth the extra cost.

Every cab company is mandated to charge the same amount. I cannot distinguish ourselves based on price but I can distinguish ourselves based on service, said Camillo, who oversees a fleet of 550 cabs and 1,000 independent contractor drivers  the largest in Broward.

My rates are mandated by Broward County and were required to use a meter that is regulated by the Florida Department of Agriculture. So, I cant charge what I want to charge.

But ridesharing with Uber, Lyft and others doesnt always mean cheaper.

When Uber, Lyft and others enact surge pricing on New Years Eve and other peak days, Yellow Cabs rates dont go up. Customers get charged the same on New Years Eve as they do on any other day. What we have is consistent pricing. Unlike Uber and Lyft, there also arent any cancellation fees with Yellow Cab. The company doesnt charge anything unless the service is used.

The drivers also cant cancel a ride on the customer. Once a driver commits to picking up a customer, Yellow Cab makes that driver follow through. In the industry, its called redlining. To prevent it, Camillo said the drivers dont know where theyre going until they accept the fare. After that, they cant back out. Driving the customer to their destination is the only way to get off the ride, so to speak. Theyre obligated to pick up a trip. They cant cancel it.

And then theres the safety factor.

When you call to get a taxi cab, it will look like one. Theres a safety factor there. [When you call an Uber], he may not be an Uber driver at all. Its really legalized hitchhiking.

Along with an FBI background check, We have our drivers screened by the county, which now includes finger printing. We know weve done all we can. I will hold our safety standards up to anyone else in Broward County.

He makes the same claim on customer service.

Camillo points to two drivers as examples of Yellow Cabs customer service.

Nevoyel Belonce and Michael Trotter both received SUNsational Service Courtesy Awards, which are given out to employees in the tourism industry who go above and beyond. One of the first people that you run into when you get off an airplane is a cab driver. Yellow Cab is the only company that had an award winner two years in a row.

He credits that to Yellow Cabs training.

We do have a fairly extensive customer service class that every driver sits through once a year.

That training includes providing service to individuals with disabilities and individuals with service animals. Drivers are also prohibited and prevented from avoiding certain areas they might not like. That goes back to Yellow Cabs use of technology.

Theres also always someone waiting to take customer service calls  even on holidays.

They dont have to go through a call center. And the complaints addressed range from the quality of drivers to the route taken. If a customer feels like their driver took a longer/more expensive route, Camillo says Yellow Cab will review the route taken. We will reimburse them if they went the long way.

Camillo hopes that level of service distinguishes his company from the rest, especially at the airport where customers can choose which company they want to use. They dont have to take the first cab in line at the cab stand. Thats why our signage [at the airport] says Ask for Yellow Cab. Were waiting at the curb.

Although technology defines Uber and Lyft, Camillo said his company has used it long before those companies were conceived.

By downloading 4MyCab FL, customers can use their smartphones to get a Yellow Cab. Its an app that came online the same year as Uber  2010. Owned by the same family since 1960, the company started using computers to dispatch vehicles in 1976, has used GPS to dispatch vehicles since 2002 and added cameras in its fleet in 2013. Hybrid cars were added in 2013.

Weve always tried to up our game in response to available technology.

Visit YellowCabBroward.com for more information.
Expedition 49-50 crew members (from left) Shane Kimbrough, Sergey Ryzhikov and Andrey Borisenko arrive at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Credit: RSC Energia. RSC Energia

As one crew gets used to Earths gravity after 172 days in space, another crew is preparing to launch to the International Space Station in just over two weeks.

Expedition 48 Commander Jeff Williams arrived in the United States just 24 hours after landing Tuesday evening in Kazakhstan and completing his mission. His Expedition 48 crewmates Alexey Ovchinin and Oleg Skripochka, who were seated next to each other in the Soyuz TMA-20M spacecraft, have returned to their home space agency Roscosmos in Russia. Williams has completed one shuttle mission and his third station mission accumulating 534 days in space  a NASA astronaut record.

They will soon be replaced by another trio of Expedition 49-50 crew members who have arrived at their launch site at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough and cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Andrey Borisenko will launch Sept. 23 on a two-day trip to the space station. They are in final preparations for a mission scheduled to last until Feb. 25, 2017.

Back in space, the Expedition 48-49 crew consisting of Commander Anatoly Ivanishin and Flight Engineers Kate Rubins and Takuya Onishi are continuing science operations and maintenance of the orbital laboratory. Rubins continued more DNA sequencing work today and inspected emergency equipment. Onishi cleaned ventilation fans and measured air flow. Ivanishin worked on the Pilot-T experiment exploring how a crew member adapts to the working conditions of a long-term space mission.

On-Orbit Status Report

Biomolecule Sequencer (BMS) Sample Analysis: Yesterday, the crew initiated the third BMS sample off of the task list. Following retrieval of the Flow Cell and Media Syringe Tube from the from Minus Eighty Degree Celsius Laboratory Freezer for ISS (MELFI) and thawing of the sample, the crew injected the sample into the Flow Cell and initiated the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) sequencing via the Surface Pro 3 tablet. The goals of the BMS experiment are to provide a proof-of-concept for the functionality and evaluate crew operability of a DNA sequencer in a space/microgravity environment. The capability for sequencing of DNA in space could provide for a better ability to identify microbes in real-time, instead of requiring sample return and ground based analysis.

Node 1 Starboard Aft Intra-Module Ventilation (IMV) Fan Inlet Cleaning: Yesterday, the crew completed the IMV Fan Inlet cleaning. The purpose of this cleaning is to remove any foreign object or debris (FOD) from Intermodule Ventilation (IMV) Fan inlet flow straighter and Silencers located at the Node 1 Starboard Aft location.

Portable Emergency Provisions (PEPS) Inspection: Today, the crew conducted a regular inspection of the Portable Fire Extinguishers (PFEs), Extension Hose Tee Kits (EHTKs), Portable Breathing Apparatus (PBAs), and Pre-Breathe Masks. Pre-Breathe Masks are not emergency equipment, but have similar maintenance requirements and are included in this inspection.

EXpedite PRocessing of Experiments to Space Station (EXPRESS) Rack 7 (ER7) Solid State Power Control Module (SSPCM) Remove and Replace (R&R): The crew replaced the SSPCM in ER7 to recover the rack. After powering the rack, ground teams report that the SSPCM powered up successfully. The SSPCM failed on July 8, 2016. Following the recovery of ER7 capability, tomorrow the crew will relocate the two Space Automated Bioproduct Laboratories (SABLs) currently in ER8 to ER7 to make room for the SpaceX-9 delivered Phase Change Heat Exchanger (PCHx). The primary objective of the PCHx Project is to create a unique test platform utilizing the EXPRESS Rack on the ISS to advance the technology readiness level of phase change heat exchangers for infusion into future exploration vehicles. Phase change material heat exchangers are a useful technology that helps certain space missions in regulating the thermal conditions on their particular spacecraft. They serve as a supplemental heat rejection device during time-varying heat loads and/or transient environments. It does so by storing waste energy by melting a phase change material during peak loads. It can then reject this energy through a radiator when conditions allow, causing the phase change material to freeze.

Advanced Resistive Exercise Device (ARED) Rope Replace: As part of routine maintenance, the crew replaced both ARED cable arm ropes. After the installation, the crew was unable to engage detents while the ARED Main Arm is on the Upper Stops. Currently the crew is no go for ARED exercise. Ground teams are discussing a forward plan.

Intermodule Ventilation (IMV) Flow Measurements: As part of system health monitoring, the crew utilized a Velocicalc tool in order to obtain measurements of selected ventilation inlets and outlets within the USOS. Todays measurements were taken in the Joint Airlock, Node1, Node 2, Node 3, Cupola, and the Lab.

Todays Planned Activities

All activities were completed unless otherwise noted.

ER7 Removal of Glacier 4 from EXPRESS Rack 7

PILOT-T. Preparation for the experiment

EMCS Opening Gas Valve

PILOT-T. Experiment Ops

Fine Motor Skills (FINEMOTR) Experiment Ops

WRS Recycle Tank Fill from EDV

ER7 Rack Rotation

EMU Conductivity Test

ER7 SSPCM Replacement

PILOT-T. Closeout Ops

Preventive Maintenance of FS1 Laptop

Semi-annual BRI Cleaning

NAPOR-mini RSA. Cleaning Onboard Memory Storage ???-? vents

WRS Recycle Tank Fill from EDV

Testing comm between modules

ARED Rope Replacement

ER7 Rack Rotation

Inspection of Portable Breathing Apparatus (PBA) and Portable Fire Extinguisher (PFE)

BRI log download from RSS1

MPEG2 Multicast Video Streaming Test after BRI Cleaning

??? Maintenance

ER7 Glacier 4 Setup in EXPRESS Rack 7

Configuration Setup for MMB Measurement

IMV Flow Measurement

Photo/TV Camcorder Setup Verification

IMV Flow Measurement

Start EMU Metox Regeneration

Stow Syringes used in ?2? Conductivity Test

Completed Task List Items

JEM Stowage Consolidation for OA-5

Dust Mask Transfer

Ground Activities

All activities were completed unless otherwise noted.

EPS Max Loading Test

Three-Day Look Ahead:

Friday, 09/09: OBT 47S emergency drill, SABL relocate

Saturday, 09/10: Housekeeping, Crew Off Duty

Sunday, 9/11: Crew Off Duty

QUICK ISS Status  Environmental Control Group:

Component  Status

Elektron  On

Vozdukh  Manual

[???] 1  SM Air Conditioner System (SKV1)  Off

[???] 2  SM Air Conditioner System (SKV2)  On

Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly (CDRA) Lab  Standby

Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly (CDRA) Node 3  Operate

Major Constituent Analyzer (MCA) Lab  Idle

Major Constituent Analyzer (MCA) Node 3  Operate

Oxygen Generation Assembly (OGA)  Process

Urine Processing Assembly (UPA)  Standby

Trace Contaminant Control System (TCCS) Lab  Off

Trace Contaminant Control System (TCCS) Node 3  Full Up
OSIRIS-REx Launch NASA

NASAs first asteroid sampling mission launched into space at 7:05 p.m. EDT Thursday from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, beginning a journey that could revolutionize our understanding of the early solar system.

Today, we celebrate a huge milestone for this remarkable mission, and for this mission team, said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. Were very excited about what this mission can tell us about the origin of our solar system, and we celebrate the bigger picture of science that is helping us make discoveries and accomplish milestones that might have been science fiction yesterday, but are science facts today.

The Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft is designed to rendezvous with, study, and return a sample of the asteroid Bennu to Earth. Asteroids like Bennu are remnants from the formation of our solar system more than 4.5 billion years ago. Scientists suspect that asteroids may have been a source of the water and organic molecules for the early Earth and other planetary bodies. An uncontaminated asteroid sample from a known source would enable precise analyses, providing results far beyond what can be achieved by spacecraft-based instruments or by studying meteorites.

OSIRIS-REx separated from its United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket 8:04 p.m. minutes after launch. The solar arrays deployed and are now powering the spacecraft.

With todays successful launch, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft embarks on a journey of exploration to Bennu, said Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator at the University of Arizona, Tucson. I couldnt be more proud of the team that made this mission a reality, and I cant wait to see what we will discover at Bennu.

In 2018, OSIRIS-REx will approach Bennu  which is the size of a small mountain  and begin an intricate dance with the asteroid, mapping and studying Bennu in preparation for sample collection. In July 2020, the spacecraft will perform a daring maneuver in which its 11-foot arm will reach out and perform a five-second high-five to stir up surface material, collecting at least 2 ounces (60 grams) of small rocks and dust in a sample return container. OSIRIS-REx will return the sample to Earth in September 2023, when it will then be transported to NASAs Johnson Space Center in Houston for examination.

The OSIRIS-REx mission will be the first U.S. mission to carry samples from an asteroid back to Earth and the largest sample returned from space since the Apollo era.

Its satisfying to see the culmination of years of effort from this outstanding team, said Mike Donnelly, OSIRIS-REx project manager at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. We were able to deliver OSIRIS-REx on time and under budget to the launch site, and will soon do something that no other NASA spacecraft has done  bring back a sample from an asteroid.

Goddard provides overall mission management, systems engineering and the safety and mission assurance for OSIRIS-REx. The University of Arizona leads the science team and observation planning and processing. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver built the spacecraft. OSIRIS-REx is the third mission in NASAs New Frontiers Program. NASAs Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the agencys New Frontiers Program for its Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Launch and countdown management is the responsibility of NASAs Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

For images, video, and more information, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/osiris-rex and http://www.asteroidmission.org
Thu, 27.10.22 - 11:04

The temperatures will fall in the Murcia Region but the weekend still promises to be warm and sunny Autumn has ye...


It wasnt but a few weeks ago we learned that coffees positive or negative effects on you may be due which variant of the CYP1A2 gene you possess. Now, Science Daily is reporting that coffee consumption itself could also be coded in your genes, and it is thanks to an entirely different gene than the one explored in the previous study.

Performed by the University of Edinburgh, this new study looks into the PDSS2 gene and how it relates to coffee consumption. They did this by examining 2,943 people from three distinct populations  370 from a village in southern Italy, 843 from northeastern Italy, and 1,731 from the Netherlands  cross-referencing which variant of the PDSS2 gene is expressed in each test subject versus their stated coffee consumption.

The researchers found that a certain variation of the PDSS2 tended to lead to lower coffee intake, around a cup per day on average in the Italian populations, though slightly lower in the Dutch; the study notes this drop-off may be due to the Italians favoring espresso, a smaller and less caffeinated drink than that of the filter coffee preferred by the Dutch.

According to the researchers, this finding suggests that, similar to CYP1A2, the PDSS2 gene affects the bodys ability to break down caffeine. If this is the case, it would seem to agree with the research from Dr. Marilyn Cornelis, an assistant professor at Northwestern Universitys Feinberg School of Medicine who believes the metabolism of caffeine is not the work of a single gene. In fact, she was part of a study that shows eight genetic variants have a hand in a persons caffeine affinities.

Who knows what make us love coffee? One gene, two genes, red genes, blue genes. Science has yet to come to a consensus. All we can say for sure is that we dont really have a choice in the matter. Were just giant lumps of atoms careening recklessly down the deterministic slipnslide that is life.

Zac Cadwalader is the news editor at Sprudge Media Network.

*top image via Quotesgram
Montrell Teague will be heading to Ohio on a high note. The 25-year-old pilot won four races on the Harrington Raceway program Thursday as he prepares to leave for Scioto Downs to drive reigning horse of the year Wiggle It JIggleit in the $225,000 Jim Ewart Memorial at Scioto Downs Saturday.

For the third straight night a driver won four races at Harrington. On Tuesday it was Victor Kirby, Jim Morand accomplished the feat on Wednesday and on Thursday Teague had the grand slam on the 11-race program.

Teague's win parade was primarily aboard two-year-olds as Mcmaedle ($2.20), Alone Hanover ($3.20) and Liberty School ($2.10) were all victorious. Paradise Lost ($5.40) was Teague's remaining win as he inches closer to 1,000 career wins with 982. Two of the winners were trained by Clyde Francis and owned by Teague's father, George Teague, Jr.

Live racing continues at Harrington Raceway on a Monday through Thursday schedule through October 20. Harrington's marquee event of the year, the $150,000 Bobby Quillen Memorial, will take place September 19.

(Harrington Raceway)
Ted Kluszewski once said, Im not sure what the hell charisma is, but I get the feeling its Willie Mays. Kluszewski, a star for the Cincinnati Reds in the 1940s and 50s, never got to see Wiggle It Jiggleit, but one gets the feeling he could have uttered the aforementioned statement about harness racings main attraction.

Wiggle It Jiggleit, who races in Saturdays $225,000 Jim Ewart Memorial for older pacers at Eldorado Scioto Downs in central Ohio, has become a fan favourite over the past two years as hes traveled North America and won 35 of 46 races along the way. He has finished worse than third only once in his career -- and that was a fourth-place finish.

He was the Dan Patch Award U.S. Horse of the Year in 2015 and is the No. 1-ranked horse in the sports current Top 10 poll. This season, the four-year-old Wiggle It Jiggleit has won 12 of 19 races and earned more than $1.3 million. He has earned more than $3.6 million lifetime, good for seventh place among all North American pacers in history. None of the six pacers ahead of him have fewer than 85 career races.

Social media posts regarding Wiggle It Jiggleit routinely generate two to three times more interaction than any other topics in harness racing. And fans delight in cheering him on, whether in person or from afar. They also enjoy his winners circle antics, rearing up on his hind legs rather than standing patiently for a photo.

Hes a lot of fun, said Montrell Teague, the 25-year-old son of co-owner George Teague Jr. and regular driver of Wiggle It Jiggleit. I get to travel around with him and meet new people and every single time I talk to new people its all positive about him.

Everybody loves him. They relate to him and follow him around. When he goes to the winners circle, they always look for him to go up in the air. Hes just got a lot of personality and the way he races, he always puts on a good show.

If one race cemented Wiggle It Jiggleits status among fans, it was last Septembers Little Brown Jug final at the Delaware County Fairgrounds in Ohio. Wiggle It Jiggleit, who raced on the outside for most of the mile, appeared to be beaten in the stretch only to rally with a final surge and win by a nose.

I had a guy come up to me a few days later at (Harrahs Philadelphia) and he said Ive been watching harness racing for 50 years and I want to say thank you for giving me the thrill of my lifetime, to watch the best race Ive ever seen. I never would have expected that, Teague said.

The Jug, everyone always talks about that race, and pretty much every race after that. Hes always making conversation.

Wiggle It Jiggleit, who is based in Harrington, Del., with the popular Teague family and trainer Clyde Francis, will be making his first visit to Scioto Downs. It will be the 15th different track at which Wiggle It Jiggleit has raced lifetime and it will be his sixth consecutive start at a different racetrack, following races in New York, New Jersey, Indiana, Quebec, and Ontario. The gelding has won races at 12 different tracks during his career.

A lot of horses cant travel around like that and still race good, Teague said. Hes the exception. Ive never seen it done. It hasnt bothered him yet. Harrington is his home, but weve only raced him there once. It seems like everywhere has been his home track. When people know he is racing at their track, they try to make it out there to see him live.

Wiggle It Jiggleit, who is easy to spot on the racetrack because of his large white shadow roll, heads to the Ewart Memorial off a win in last weekends Canadian Pacing Derby at Mohawk Racetrack. Wiggle It Jiggleit won in gate-to-wire fashion, hitting the opening quarter-mile in :25.3 and turning back all challengers from there. He won by 1-3/4 lengths over Always B Miki in 1:49.

It was one of the strongest times Ive seen him, Teague said. When he came off the gate, I looked to see who was going to challenge and I didnt see anyone out there; I was leaving that fast. I didnt know I was going that fast. I thought I was going to go :27 to the quarter and I wound up going :25.3. Its just unbelievable how easily he does it, so swift and effortlessly.

Wiggle It Jiggleit will start the Ewart Memorial from post eight and is the 8-5 morning line favourite. Always B Miki is the 9-5 second choice, leaving from post six with Brett Miller listed to drive for trainer Jimmy Takter.

$225,000 Jim Ewart Memorial - Race 9 - Post 9:10 p.m. (EDT)

PPHorseDriverTrainer - Line

1. Rockeyed Optimist  Chris Page  Steve Elliott  20/1

2. All Bets Off  Matt Kakaley  Ron Burke  8/1

3. Artistic Major  Aaron Merriman  Steve Elliott  20/1

4. Dealt A Winner  Peter Wrenn  Mark Silva  10/1

5. Luck Be Withyou  Eric Goodell  Chris Oakes  15/1

6. Always B Miki  Brett Miller  Jimmy Takter  9/5

7. Americanprimetime  Josh Sutton  Rick Dane Jr.  20/1

8. Wiggle It Jiggleit  Montrell Teague  Clyde Francis  8/5

9. Freaky Feet Pete  Trace Tetrick  Larry Rheinheimer  9/2

Saturdays card at Scioto Downs also includes the $100,000 Chip Noble Memorial for older trotters.

$100,000 Chip Noble Memorial - Race 5 - Post 7:50 p.m. (EDT)

PPHorseDriverTrainer - Line

1. Wings Of Royalty - Peter Wrenn - George Ducharme - 9/2

2. Maestro Blue Chip - Trace Tetrick - Jo Ann Looney-King - 3/1

3. Bourbon Bay - Aaron Merriman - Ake Svanstedt - 10/1

4. Wind Of The North - Chris Page - Daryl Bier - 8/1

5. Muscle Up The Goal - Aaron Merriman - Chris Beaver - 4/1

6. Homicide Hunter - Eric Goodell - Chris Oakes - 5/2

7. Crazy Wow - Matt Kakaley - Ron Burke - 5/1

This story courtesy of Harness Racing Communications, a division of the U.S. Trotting Association. For more information, visit www.ustrotting.com.
Is this Saturday's (September 10) card the final card of harness racing ever at Canada's oldest racetrack?

That question looms for the Standardbred industry in New Brunswick with the uncertain future surrounding Fredericton Raceway. Horse Racing New Brunswick issued the following press release in advance of Saturday's card at Fredericton, possibly signaling the end of nearly 130 years of harness racing.

This weekend will mark the end of a shortened season of harness racing at Fredericton Raceway. The big question that remains is whether it is the final card of racing ever in the long and storied history of Canada's Oldest Racetrack. On September 28, 1887 harness racing began in Fredericton at its current location, on site at the Fredericton Exhibition Grounds. In 2009 Horse Racing New Brunswick (HRNB) took over operations after Fredericton Exhibition Limited indicated that due to their dire financial situation they could not continue racing. HRNB was formed as the provincial governing body for the industry. President Kathy McLean hopes this isn't the end.

"Hope is a word we use a lot of in harness racing in New Brunswick these days, although its becoming tough to keep that hope up," she says when asked about whether a long-term lease arrangement will be completed between HRNB and the Fredericton Exhibition Ltd group or FEL. "We have asked and offered to meet to discuss a long term arrangement to provide stability to one of the cornerstones of New Brunswick racing however FEL has refused citing pending litigation".

McLean is referring to a lawsuit HRNB has initiated against FEL for locking HRNB out of its VLT, simulcast and bar businesses at Winners Lounge located adjacent to Fredericton Raceway. On Monday, May 16, 2016, HRNB attempted to pay FEL for the property taxes to utilize the building housing Winners Lounge and the entire racetrack area. The lease arrangement stated the taxes were due Sunday, May 15, 2016 however HRNB had 30 days to be compliant. Property tax payment was refused by FEL's Mike Vokey and at approximately 3:00 a.m. on May 17, 2016 the locks were changed to Winners Lounge by FEL. A few days later, Justice Paulette Garnett granted an injunction allowing HRNB and its employees to return to work at Winners Lounge. McLean added that the amount of damages, revenues lost and legal fees is "north of $85,000," something she says "is tough to lose given the state of the industry."

"We really want our harness members and our stakeholders to know just how hard HRNB has been working to solve this difficult situation. FEL has cited the lawsuit as grounds not to meet to discuss a long-term lease, however HRNB's lawyer contends that these lawsuits shouldn't stop the process. We actually proposed dropping both our lawsuit and their countersuit at the signing of a new long-term lease."

Under the current lease arrangements that are set to expire December 31, 2016, HRNB must meet certain financial criteria. First was payment of the property taxes for 2016, a total of $33,209.61 which have been paid in full. Second were monthly payments to a "capital fund" of $3,272.73. This fund now totals approximately $26,178.36. The designation for this fund was capital improvements to the buildings at Fredericton Raceway but the decisions are ultimately left up to the discretion of FEL.

"The most worrisome part of this mess is our horse people. Come December 31, 2016 will they be evicted? Will they be allowed back to train in the spring? It's a stressful time for HRNB and for members of the NBSBOA," says McLean. "The next troubling part is the pending loss of our VLT business. If there isn't a long-term lease signed very soon, ALC has indicated they will reassign the VLT's from Winners to more stable locations in the Fredericton area. This means the damages portion of our lawsuit skyrockets and lots of jobs lost."

Although she wouldn't speculate on how high the lawsuit number could go if ALC pulls the VLT's from Winners Lounge and HRNB, McLean says she's "hopeful but not optimistic. Yeah, that would sum up how HRNB is feeling at this point." So, when the wings close on the Trius Truck Centre Starting Gate and track announcer Brock McEachern says "away they GO" in the Chippin Memorial, which is the feature and final race on Saturday's card, the horses really could be going away from Fredericton Raceway. For good.

(with files from HRNB)
Its been a banner year already for trainer Luc Blais, who has topped $1 million in purses for the first time since he trained for Bayama Farm 15 years ago, and its about to get even more busy.

Blais has four horses entered on Friday and Saturday in eliminations of rich stakes events at Mohawk Racetrack.

Three-year-old trotting filly Emoticon Hanover is the stables representative in the Elegantimage, two-year-old trotting colt Jake has the call in the William Wellwood, three-year-old trotter Warrawee Roo will try to advance in the Canadian Trotting Classic and four-year-old Lookslikeachpndale will strut his stuff in the Maple Leaf Trot.

We've had a super year already, now its time for the playoffs, said Blais, who oversees a 21-horse stable for prominent Quebec stable Determination, owned by Serge Godin. Its his third year heading the Determination string.

Late-blooming Lookslikeachpndale, a son of Muscle Hill who set a track record at Georgian Downs with a 1:51.3 clocking in the $100,000 Earl Rowe Memorial Trot last month, has been one of the bright spots in a season with several, finally fulfilling the promise hes flashed in spots since his two-year-old season. Hes won his last two starts and has four victories and $129,582 made so far this year.

We always liked him and had confidence in him, said Blais. "He won an elimination of the Wellwood at two and was second in the Simcoe at three. The older he got, the better he got. He just lacked strength. We knew hed be a good horse when he got stronger. We waited on him and he responded. You could see the change when he passed five horses in the stretch to finish fifth in the Hambletonian Maturity (in July), then won a Preferred at Mohawk. I feel very good about him now."

Hell still have his work cut out for him advancing from a Maple Leaf Trot elimination that includes millionaires and O'Brien Award winners Flanagan Memory, Resolve and Shake It Cerry.

Itll be a good test, said Blais, who scored a huge upset victory in the Maple Leaf Trot two years ago with Intimidate. Rene Dions horse (Flanagan Memory) is the main worry, I think. Hes unlucky not to have a couple of big stakes wins already this year. Hes always the one closing strongest."

Race 6: Maple Leaf Trot  Elimination #1  Purse: $40,000

1. Lookslikeachpndale  Sylvain Filion  Luc Blais  7-2

2. Shake It Cerry  David Miller  Jimmy Takter  4-1

3. Whiskey Tax  Randy Waples  Tom Durand  12-1

4. Flanagan Memory  Chris Christoforou  Rene Dion  2-1

5. Resolve  Ake Svanstedt  Ake Svanstedt  9-5

6. Musical Rhythm  Mario Baillargeon  Ben Baillargeon  10-1

Race 9: Maple Leaf Trot  Elimination #2  Purse: $40,000

1. Il Sogno Dream  Scott Zeron  Chris Beaver  5-1

2. JL Cruze  John Campbell  Eric Ell  7-2

3. Etruscan Hanover  Mario Baillargeon  Ben Baillargeon  6-1

4. Windsun Revenge  Rick Zeron  Jeff Durham  8-1

5. Hannelore Hanover  Yannick Gingras  Ron Burke  4-5

6. Nahar  Ake Svanstedt  Robert Bergh  8-1

Post time for Saturdays sensational 13-race card is 7:30 p.m. To view the harness racing entries for Saturday at Mohawk, click the following link: Saturday Entries  Mohawk Racetrack.

(A Trot Insider Exclusive by Paul Delean)
It's Election season and our editor's mailbox is overflowing. Who do your neighbors support? Read about it here.
ROYAL OAK, Mich.  Royal Oak calligrapher Vicki Corwin has a hand in many of lifes most important moments. Her calligraphy has graced everything from diplomas at Sacred Heart Seminary and Cranbrook to thousands of wedding invitations, place-cards at million-dollar parties and once even a love letter.

But with computer fonts mimicking the finest scripts, is there really a place for those who still use the old, slow skill of pen and ink?

Actually, yes.

Calligraphy, the skill of beautiful handwriting, is back in style. It is part of societys fascination with handmade things in a high-tech world.

The number of people who are eager for this type of learning is just phenomenal. It is really catching fire. The pendulum is swinging, says Corwin, who learned calligraphy 31 years ago and has worked full time as a calligrapher since 2002.

The reason, she says, is that a computer script, which can perfectly replicate itself a thousand times on a thousand wedding envelopes, just does not have the same look as something handwritten, with its slight differences made by the artists scratching nib across the paper.

Theres a warmth to calligraphy that is missing from machine-generated work.

Artists hand

Working at a broad, slightly slanted art table that takes up most of her living room, she chooses her pen and ink, working with the indirect light streaming in the front windows and a white desk lamp.

In her drawer just to the right of her chair are her inks in little pots, each with a white lid: Ziller Midnight Blue, Cardinal Red, Wild Viola Violet, Sweetgrass Green, Buffalo Brown, Northwind White. She also uses walnut inks, Chinese soot inks and gouache, a watercolor type of paint she can custom mix for odd colors a bride may request, like peach.

Perched high on the shelves above her desk are old fashioned ink pots with quill pens. They are just decorative. Her work is done with something called a pointed pen split nib. The nib of the pen is off to the left of the handle. That makes her hand less tired over time.

As she works, her small gray cat Sweet Pea usually curls up in a small bed next to her on the desk.

She is my assistant; she greets the clients, says Corwin.

And there is a lot of work to do.

Sign here

Sometimes, desperate people will show up at her door, asking her to address one single envelope.

One woman said, Ill pay you anything you want if you address an envelope for me, Corwin says. I said, what is it? She was sending her resume to Kate Spade (fashion house) in New York. So I found a pink business envelope and addressed it for her. She paid me $20, and I handed it back to her and said good luck.

Once, she was the alter-ego of a young man in love.

A young man was really trying to impress this gal, so he asked me to write a love letter, she says. He typed it and e-mailed it to me, and I transcribed it onto the stationery, and it worked! He got the girl.

Another time, she transcribed into script an entire 535-word wedding vow. A husband hired her to create it for his wife as a gift for their one-year anniversary. It was a little bit private, but it was cool, she says.

Corwins sophisticated work finds its way onto poems, proclamations, birth certificates, diplomas, Christmas cards and art mats. She does 60 to 80 diplomas a year for Sacred Heart Seminary graduates in Detroit.

Shes even been hired by New York party planners to attend parties as an emergency place-card writer.

They bring me on-site so I can make last minute changes, say, if someones wife isnt coming I can make a new place-card, she says. They put me in a little closet, and they give me cards, and I bring my ink to match, and I sit there and just make changes.

Mostly, though, she does the calligraphy addresses on wedding invitations. She does most of them in whats called brides hand, traditional copperplate script, but sometimes brides choose something less formal and more contemporary. She has done it for weddings as large as 400 people.

She charges $2.35 per envelope.

It doesnt take me that long, she says. I can write about 40 envelopes a day and maintain quality and spelling. You figure 40 a day, so I can do a 400-piece order in 10 days.

How can she keep doing it without her hand tiring? She wears a soft wrist cast every night to protect against carpal tunnel syndrome and tendonitis. She takes breaks. She takes her time. I try to do 8 at a time, then I stop. Then I do 8 more. I try not to do more than 24 at a time.

Her writing is so graceful that it seems effortless.

That is not true. It is due to years of practice.

In the script

Corwin comes from a family of artists. Both her mother and great-grandfather were painters. Although Corwin did not inherit the painting talent, she loved to doodle and write words on a page as a young child growing up in Cleveland. But she never thought to make a career of it.

At 20, she moved to Michigan. She married Doug Emig 33 years ago and moved to Royal Oak. Over the years, her world has expanded to include 9 nieces, 1 nephew and 2 cats.

Her first career was executive secretary, and she did that for 14 years. Then she opened a business that supplied and maintained plants for office buildings, and that lasted 13 years.

But her life changed in 1985 when a teacher friend needed students for a calligraphy class at Southfield Community Ed and asked Corwin to please sign up.

She was teaching italic, and we used a chisel nib, and I just fell in love with it, she says. So I took the next class, and the next class, and learned the historic alphabets: gothic, uncial, italic and the modern historics like Carolingian.

I found that the key to the whole thing was practice. You build up your muscles and your muscle memory.

In 2001, she was asked by Tiffanys at Troys Somerset Mall to be a resident calligrapher working with brides. She learned to do the formal script called copperplate most used on wedding invitations.

The handwriting was on the wall. Calligraphy was her new career.

Loopy writing

Corwin, whose company is called the Artistic Quill, says that new trends in calligraphy  more free-form, loopy, eccentric styles  are wildly popular with brides, although mothers of brides still go for extremely traditional looks.

The style is changing quite quickly, in fact.

Weve gone from a very formal calligraphy to a flourished, more ornate calligraphy. Pinterest and Etsy post a lot of pictures of wacky, funky, fun calligraphy, and more people are jumping in to do that, she says. She teaches calligraphy in Birmingham, but would like to see more young calligraphers teaching classes in the new styles.

Corwin is the former president of the Michigan Association of Calligraphers, based in metro Detroit, and also is a member of Pen Dragons, a calligraphers group in Kalamazoo, Mich. Shes also a member of the international calligraphy group called IAMPETH, which stands for the flowery International Association of Master Penmen, Engrossers and Teachers of Handwriting.

Two years ago IAMPETH had only 250 members. Now they have 1,300, she says.

Ironically, as calligraphy is getting more popular, the teaching of cursive writing is disappearing in public schools. Corwin worries that future generations wont be able to write their own signatures or read cursive, which means nobody will be able to read documents like the Declaration of Independence or even an old letter from their grandmother.

Cursive evolved over the centuries, but is most familiar to people in the U.S. for the Palmer method, taught to every school child in America in the 20th century.

Today, cursive handwriting, Corwin says, may seem like a quaint luxury reserved for wedding invitations and plaques. It should be more.

Your handwriting is an expression of yourself, she says. It is unique to you.

If you never write anything by hand, part of your identity vanishes.

We have 26 letters, and they come together to form words. If you are not writing them out and enjoying the picture of the words, you miss the way into the story that the words can tell you, Corwin says.

Does she actually write letters to friends by hand? Yes.

Now we message and text and Facebook and tweet, but when I write somebody a letter, its special.

I have a friend in Denver who says she saves the letter until she can sit down, have a cup of tea and find out what Im up to. Writing by hand endears the words to the reader, much more so.

Corwin has a big, elaborate, fancy diploma on the wall of her living room studio. It says that in 2008 she graduated from a master program in the most complex calligraphy techniques. The final exam? Creating the diploma.

Look around her studio, and you realize that it is just one more part of Vicki Corwins script.
Police are searching for a 400-pound bear in Castle Rock, though residents need not worry about an attack.

Someone allegedly stole the bear  a statue made of concrete  from in front of a Castle Rock business, according to a police dispatch report. It was taken within the last several days from in front of a business on the 1300 block of Mount St. Helens Way.
Longview contractor JH Kelly has acquired Bellingham-based electrical contractor Seven Sisters Inc., the company announced this week.

"JH Kellys acquisition of Seven Sisters advances the companys mission of delivering multi-discipline construction services to industrial process facility owners throughout the Pacific Northwest," the company said in a press release.

The merger with Seven Sisters will allow JH Kelly to offer a greater range of services to industrial clients in Northern Washington.

We are thrilled to have the Seven Sisters team joining the JH Kelly family. We look forward to expanding our electrical footprint into the Northern Washington refineries and manufacturing facilities while continuing on with Seven Sisters tradition of quality work performed in a safe manner, said Rob Harris, JH Kelly Vice President of Business Development.

The acquisition is the latest move northward for JH Kelly, which also is seeking to establish a small office in Seattle. In June, the company hired Lisa Ulrich to lead operations in the Emerald City. However, the company has not released details about its plans there yet.
KapStone announced this week plans to build a new packaging plant in Ontario, Calif., and invest as a minority partner in another plant.

The new plant is expected to begin making boxes by January. Its primary purpose is to supply materials to Victory Packagings operations in Southern California. KapStone acquired Victory last spring.

Together, the two investments will total about $25 million, and will largely be funded by the end of the 2016 fiscal year. This is in addition to KapStones acquisition of a box plant in Central Florida in July.

The investment will allow KapStone to control more stages of the box production process, which can reduce turnaround time and cut transportation costs, among other advantages. The business strategy is known as vertical integration.

These investments are consistent with our strategy to increase the vertical integration of KapStones mills, reducing exposure to non-integrated end markets, and are in addition to the 20,000 to 25,000 tons per year vertical integration from the Central Florida Box acquisition, said Roger Stone in a press release. The Ontario, California, sheet plant will further extend our geographic reach to better service KapStones customers while internalizing the production of some of our Victory Packaging corrugated box demand.
Cairo: As the Egyptian presidential elections enters the crucial run-off stage, former IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei has demanded its cancellation, questioning the legitimacy of one of the candidates.

"The real battle right now is writing Egypt's new constitution," ElBaradei who shied away from the tussle said as he demanded that the polls be cancelled.

The Egyptian activist said "the legitimacy of one of the candidates is highly doubtful," apparently referring to former Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq.

He also said there are doubts about the legitimacy of Parliament, and added that he is heading to Tahrir Square to support the cause.

ElBaradei said that he would hold a meeting with the revolutionary youth, claiming that, "The revolution did not achieve any of its goals, including bread, freedom and social justice."

A number of political parties said on Sunday that the presidential election 'under the rule of the military council' are invalid.

The meeting agreed on three demands  the cancellation of the presidential election, the immediate transfer of power from the military council to a civilian presidential council, and holding special "revolutionary tribunals" for the defendants in the Mubarak case.

PTI
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China's second space lab Tiangong-2 will be put into space between September 15 and 20, the office of China's manned space programme said on Friday. The space lab was transferred with its carrier rocket to the launch pad at Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre on Friday, Xinhua news agency said, quoting a statement from the office.

It took 90 minutes to complete the transfer from the assembling centre to the launch pad. "The completion of the transfer signals that the space lab Tiangong-2 mission has entered its launching stage," it said. Technicians completed testing on the assembling of the lab and the rocket after they had been separately delivered to the launch centre in July. The centre will continue testing the rocket and inject the required propellent before the launch.

Tiangong-2 -- which can enable two astronauts to live in space for 30 days, nearly double the national record for space stay -- is capable of receiving manned and cargo spaceships and will be used for testing systems and processes for mid-term space stays and refuelling. It will also be involved in experiments on aerospace medicine, space sciences, on-orbit maintenance and space station technologies.

China's first space lab Tiangong-1, which was launched in September 2011, ended its data service earlier this year. It had docked with Shenzhou-8, Shenzhou-9 and Shenzhou-10 spacecraft and undertaken a series of experiments.

IANS
tech2 News Staff

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's keen interest in the Indian market is no secret. Just like, we know its immense love for a Snapchat-like app. Facebook's Zuckerberg can be quite competitive that way, and we've already seen how. And, it did succeed to a great extent. The company and its founder, among all other accusations, can also be called tenacious. That's why the company won't give up on India even after Internet.org being booted out, at least not yet.

The company is on a mission after all, to connect a billion Indians who don't have access to Internet, bring them online, and eventually on Facebook. Internet.org, later packaged as Free basics, had left a bitter after-taste with Indian netizens, be it how Facebook tried to fool users into signing petitions in support of Free Basics, or hordes of advertising. And let's not forget Marc Andreessens colonialism remark. These are among the various acts by Facebook that makes us skeptical about the company and its 'noble' initiatives. Zuckerberg's India visit, townhall for students in Delhi, and statements like how he missed being in India for Diwali, all seemed to be a part of the bigger plan of achieving this.

The company was quite vocal that it hasn't given up after the net neutrality conundrum, and it hadn't. Months later we saw its attempt called OpenCellular. The initiative aimed at improving facilities at grassroots levels. The pressing need for emerging economies is access to a dependable infrastructure rather than free Internet. Yes, if you remember, most of the reactions or rather feedback during the net neutrality saga, was how Facebook can help improve infrastructure, if it really cares. The company promises a complete open source platform along with hardware design so that telcos, entrepreneurs, OEMs and researchers can build locally, deploy and operate wireless infrastructure using the platform. Facebook is also looking to partner with members of the Telecom Infra Project (TIP) for support of the open source community that is related to cellular access technology and also deciding trial zones.

The reason for all of this is simple: the social network is saturating its markets in the US and other developed nations. So, it has started long for ways to bring more people online from developing markets, of course like India and Africa, which are still struggling with Internet connectivity issues.

The latest comes in the form of bringing Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to India. And, it has started by investing in a popular edu-tech Indian startup Byju's. It has co-invested in the startup along with the likes of Sequoia Capital, Sofina and Lightspeed Ventures. Let's not forget, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan's philanthropy venture had made its first major investment, leading a funding round in a startup that trains and recruits software developers in Africa. We won't be surprised if the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative shows keen interest in India.

Connecting the world is definitely a noble cause, and had the net neutrality saga not unfolded the way it did in India, we would all be appreciating Facebook without a second thought for its latest initiatives.
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Maharashtra's Hingoli district has been chosen for carrying out experiments on the ambitious LIGO project that proved existence of gravitational waves, a major breakthrough in science. It would be third such laboratory in the world, first outside the United States. The existing labarotaries are located in Hanford, Washington, and in Livingston, Louisiana. A senior scientist with the Department of Science and Technology said, "Aundh in Hingoli district is a preferred site for the LIGO project. We've begun work on it, which includes setting up committees to start the preliminary work."

He said a strip of four km on both sides of a 150-metre wide area is needed to carry out the experiments. "So we would not be needing much land," he said. Apart from the Aundh, the government was also looking at another site near Rajasthan's Udaipur, which was initially short listed. "We needed a flat site to carry out the experiments, the four kms strips that would require an unhindered straight and flat site for studying the lasers. The Aundh site fits the bill," said a senior Department of Atomic Energy official.

Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory- India (LIGO-India) will also bring considerable opportunities in cutting edge technology for Indian industries as they will be engaged in the construction of 8 km-long beam tube at ultra- high vaccuum on a levelled terrain. An agreement to set up the LIGO project was recently signed between the scientists from the US' National Science Foundation (NSF) with the India's DAE and the DST. On February 17, the Union Cabinet chaired by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi had given in-principle approval to the LIGO-India mega science proposal for research on gravitational waves.

The project would cost up to Rs. 1200-1300 crore. Indian scientists had played a crucial role in the recent detection of gravitational waves.

PTI
tech2 News Staff

Sanoma Oyjs Dutch unit, has won a case at the European Union court that could lead to ripple effect across the internet. Sanoma is Playboy's publisher in the Netherlands, and it has just managed to get the rights to block links to the pictures on its website if it chooses to.

The whole episode took place when another publisher GeenStijl, owned by GS Media, reportedly broke a copyright law when it published links to pictures of a TV personality on its own website. This happened without the permission from Sanoma that owns the copyright to the hyperlinked Playboy images.

Sanoma took GeenStijl to court and today won the case against GeenStijl, which means that anyone even hyperlinking to the company's copyright images stands a chance of being sued.

According to a statement from the GeenStijl's website, "The consequence is that from now on, you always run the risk of being sued, just for placing a hyperlink." which can literally tear up the internet almost instantly, with thousands of lawsuits showing up everyday.

The move by the court would of course be a good sign for publishers fighting websites on the internet that publish copyright content on their website without any sort of permission.

GeenStijl said that this could be a blow to the free internet as websites will not be able to report news freely and this also makes reporting leaks even more difficult.
tech2 News Staff

It was supposed to Samsung's best hero product ever, but the company's dreams indeed seem shattered at the moment all thanks to a faulty battery. While many may be wondering about whether Samsung tested the Galaxy Note 7 before pushing them out to the market, Samsung clearly has not given a hint about the same so far. What they have given out now, is an explanation about why the battery catches fire.

Samsung has learnt through its investigation that the issue is to do with the innards of the battery cell. Overheating of the cell occurs when the anode-to-cathode come into contact, "which is a rare manufacturing process error."

Samsung UK has pushed out a post on its website detailing the problem and the questions that would arise from its customers about the same. Firstly, the company made all the details regarding the cases crystal clear.

"To date (as of September 1) there have been 35 cases that have been reported globally and we are currently conducting a thorough inspection with our suppliers to identify possible affected batteries in the market. However, because our customers safety is an absolute priority at Samsung, we have stopped sales of the Galaxy Note7."

Post the above, the company also made it clear that the cases that have been reported so far only come from the US (17), Korea (17) and Taiwan (1). Also mentioned was the fact that there have been no reported injuries globally (so far).

In what appears to be precautionary measures, airlines and related organisations too have warned passengers that should not turn on or charge their Samsung Note 7 smartphone during flights or even stow them in checked baggage. These are simply related to concerns about the battery cell catching fire, that the Korean company made public last week.
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If history is any guide, Elon Musk's SpaceX could be grounded for nine to 12 months while it investigates the cause of last week's launch pad accident and makes any repairs, according to the chief executive of SpaceX's primary U.S. competitor on Thursday. "It typically takes nine to 12 months for people to return to flight. That's what the history is," Tory Bruno, chief executive of United Launch Alliance, told Reuters. Bruno did not mention SpaceX by name.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster exploded on the launch pad on Sept. 1 as it was being fueled for a routine pre-launch test. A $200 million Israeli communications satellite was destroyed in the blast, the second failed mission for technology entrepreneur Elon Musk's privately owned SpaceX in 14 months. The cause of the accident is under investigation. SpaceX has not publicly disclosed the extent of damage to its launch pad.

Bruno said the main issue after accidents involving space launches has "always been figuring out what went wrong on the rocket, being confident that you know ... how to fix it and then actually getting that fix in place." Repairing damage to the launch pad is usually not a significant issue, he said. "Historically, it had never been the pad that's taken the longest time," he said.

Bruno spoke with Reuters a few hours before ULA, a partnership of Lockheed-Martin Corp and Boeing Co, was preparing to launch its 111th rocket, so far all successfully. The Atlas 5 rocket, carrying a NASA asteroid sample-return spacecraft, blasted off at 7:05 p.m. EDT (2305 GMT) on Thursday from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, about 1.2 miles (2 km) away from the SpaceX launch site.

Bruno also said he had called SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell shortly after the accident to extend his sympathies and offer help. "It's a small community and issues especially around safety - but even mission success - kind of transcend the competitive piece of this," Bruno added.

ULA and SpaceX are rivals for private space missions and launches by U.S. government agencies. Musk's company in May broke ULA's monopoly on flying U.S. military and national security satellites, winning an $83 million Air Force contract to launch a Global Positioning System satellite in 2018. The two firms are expected to square off over a second satellite launch services bid, which closes on Sept. 19.

Bruno declined to say specifically if ULA would submit a proposal. Bruno said factors that prevented ULA from competing for an earlier military launch, including a trade ban that stymied imports of Russian rocket engines, are no longer obstacles. But ULA will still have to compete with SpaceX on price. "It is still a priced-only competition, which I think is unfortunate and not necessarily, in our view, the best way to select this type of complex and risky service," Bruno said.

Reuters
Nikhil Rastogi

Raghav Somani is dashing guy. Who is he you ask? Hes the reason behind Headphone Zone - the enthusiast headphones, earphones and personal audio devices space which offers personalised advice to ones audio needs. It exists as an online and an offline store as well. We ask Raghav as to why he started something like this, is it passion, money or is he just a rich brat? Read on to find out about his interesting journey and what makes him tick.

What made you start Headphone Zone? What inspired you?

After a degree in Business Management from Singapore Management University in 2010, I was keen to try my hand at entrepreneurship. From my years in Singapore, I could clearly see a big contrast when compared to India, the sheer number of people from all walks of life using essentially earphones, be it on the trains, while waiting for the bus or just sitting at the cafe. With the smartphone boom, every Indian had the means to listen to music in their pockets. The missing link I felt were a good pair of headphones between the ears. Seeing everyone in Singapore wear one inspired me to look further into this as a business opportunity.

When we first started, I was simply distributing and wholesaling headphones and earphones to organised retail chains in India mushrooming all over Indias malls and high streets. Everyone from Croma, Reliance Retail and Big Bazaar were convinced that Headphones category had a large demand.

But the biggest problem? They were terrible at selling good quality headphones to an average Indian consumer. Most had no idea how to even begin. Lack of information and passion for the product, coupled with the lack of priority for such a low ticket category meant that consumers had a lousy experience in-store and simply bought the cheapest earphone they found. Thats really where the opportunity for Headphone Zone emerged.

How far do you think youve gotten since your beginnings in 2010?

Weve done a lot of things right. The way I think about our journey, we dont have to be Indias biggest online store to be the best. Since we dont care about being the biggest, we certainly are working hard every day to be the best at what we do.

We started as a retail store and pivoted eventually to becoming an Online Retailer. But, being at the store dealing with customers every day, taught us the importance of great customer service and being personal in our interaction with every customer. Treating every customer just the way we would like to be treated, is key to building a great, impersonal and trustworthy buying experience for something as personal as a Headphone.

I am proud of the fact that Headphone Zone has built a very passionate fan base who above all, love our direct and personal customer service. Be it in the way that we talk to customers, helping them choose their perfect headphones, the accessibility of the entire team including me, surprise chocolate cakes delivered every time we want to apologise or surprise gifts to our biggest fans whenever we launch a new product, have now become trademarks of Headphone Zone.

Being an online store means that enthusiasts cannot truly try before you buy. How do you address that?

Buying a headphone is a sensory experience, and being able to listen to earphones/headphones/audio devices is certainly extremely important.

We started our first retail store in Bangalore precisely to address this requirement. However, we found that to be able to allow everyone in India to listen to our vast range of Headphones, we would have to open stores everywhere, almost like Cafe Coffee Day outlets. Eventually, with time, I realised that this was impossible in a country like India.

Opening dedicated stores that doubled up as listening centres was just too expensive, and would obviously reflect in the price. As you know, we Indians love good deals, customers would demo in our stores and buy the cheapest online. It just didnt work.

An online retail model allows us to cater to a much wider audience, offer better products at substantially lower prices, and offer a consistent customer experience to everyone.

We had to address the challenge of offering customers the ability to listen to Headphones, especially high-end headphones, and thats where Headphone Connect was conceptualised. Allowing both serious audiophiles, as well as first-time headphone users the ability to listen to some of the best and widest selection of headphones under one roof was our way of replicating the experience of a listening centre. Moreover, it would allow everyone the ability to meet and talk to the Headphone Zone team, including me, and see us as people who are passionate about what we do, rather than just look at us as a website or a shop. This could be done in an unlimited number of towns and cities across India, and at a fraction of the cost. Our focus to make listening experiences to everyone in the future would be to have many more events at a far more regular frequency across India.

Being in this business, do you see any companies sharing the passion for audio rather than seeing consumers as mere numbers on the screen?

Oh, youd be surprised. I was very inspired by the customer service and passion of a relatively small British audio company called RHA based out of Glasgow. Not only do they offer an industry leading 3 years warranty, their products are designed and manufactured with a lot of passion. Their promise of quality and durability is reflected in their customer service from half way across the world, where they replace products with rare manufacturing defects in the fastest and most customer friendly manner Ive seen in the industry. This ultimately comes from their confidence in their own products. Headphone Zone has modelled its own customer service philosophy inspired in no small part by RHA.

What gear/equipment do you personally use to listen to music?

My personal music setup evolves from time to time as I get my hands on new and exciting gear. Right now, Im using an Astell&Kern AK300 Hi-Res Audio Player, along with an Audeze Sine Planar Magnetic On-Ear Headphone. On other occasions, the RHA T20i In-Ear Headphones are my favourite to carry on a quick business trip.

But the truth is, I listen to most of my music in the car while driving up to work and back. Thats hardly a high-end listening experience.

Is there something youd like to share with the community / consumers / audiophiles / enthusiasts?

One of the biggest disappointments is that people still listen to terrible quality MP3 files on high-end headphones. It simply does the headphone no justice. The music industry, record labels, changing technology and online piracy is responsible for quality being compromised for convenience.

We work very hard to try and encourage both audiophiles, and first-time headphone listeners to use better quality files to experience the full capabilities of every headphone. Once someone experiences the difference a Lossless or High-Resolution audio, theres no going back to MP3. Popular music is easily available on the Internet to both illegal downloaders and those who pay for their music. I deleted my collection of 500 GB of music in an instant when I realised how much I was missing out on!

Last year, we decided to launch our own curated collection of Lossless and High-Resolution Music from Independent artists across India under the name Headphone Zones Mixtape HD. The music from Indias best musicians like The Raghu Dixit Project, Shillong Chamber Choir, Swarathma or Bhayanak Mauth, is made available to all our customers in the highest recorded resolution and quality to download for free. We think this should encourage people to make the big switch, and in turn help them better appreciate the value of a great sounding headphone.

A little-known fact, you had entered the Guinness Book of Records at age 13 for your collection of 469 different tags from 115 airlines. Do you still collect baggage tags as a hobby? Whats the count now?

Yes, I still do collect Airline Baggage Tags which is a hobby that I am very passionate about. The collection is now close to 2000 baggage tags. Planes fascinated me as a kid and Airlines were the most glamorous companies while I was growing up. Now I am curious about the history of commercial aviation, and looking at how baggage tags evolved through time is a reflection of not only the history of the airlines but also the countries they represent.

I obviously have a lot of catching up to do because there are so many airlines now around the world. I do not give my collection as much time as I once could and hopefully, Ill be able to make up for it in the future.
Dedicated to the Restoration of Progressive Democracy
The memory of Harambe has reached from coast to coast, but the fascination with honoring the life of the gorilla shot to death in a Cincinnati zoo apparently extends beyond our borders.

A high school student in New Zealand dedicated his quiz teams victory to the life of Harambe, perhaps leaving the local newspaper a bit befuddled.

We still havent had justice for Harambe, Finn Cattaway of New Zealand told the Otago Daily Times, the sponsor for the quiz tournament of high school trivia masters. The headline for the story focused not just on the results of the quiz competition, but the strange decision to dedicate the victory in the memory of Harambe. Ahh, kids.

this is still extremely funny to me pic.twitter.com/E0CDPJ8dDV  Jason Thoughtsman (@lewis_woah) September 8, 2016

Dedicating anything to the honor of Harambe has been running wild in recent months and it appears there is no sign of slowing down the tributes for the deceased gorilla. What better way to honor the mammal than by winning a high school current events quiz tournament, right?

Sorry, Cincinnati Zoo.

[Mashable]
Home rush begins

Gazi Anowarul Hoque :

A large number of people on Thursday left the capital by different modes of transportation for their urban and rural homes to celebrate Eid-ul-Azha, the second biggest festival of the Muslim community, with their kith and kin.

The daylong traffic congestion and journey hassles in the city could not stop them from traveling. Thursday was the beginning of the journey.

Although six-day Eid holidays will start from September 11, many people started leaving the city from Thursday (September 8), as Friday and Saturday (September 9 and 10) are weekly holidays.

The Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority, the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority and the Bangladesh Railway kicked off their first Eid special service on the day.

Visiting different terminals in the capital city, it was seen that many homebound people were favouring launch and train journey due to poor state of roads and highways as well as traffic congestion.

According to various sources,all advance bus, train and launch tickets for the Eid special journey were sold out. The mad rush of homebound passengers would continue till next Monday.

The New Nation correspondent met a government employee Mahmudul Haque who was waiting at Kamalapur Railway Station for the Rangpur express.

"I am leaving the city a bit early just to avoid harassment," said Mahmud. Around 64 pair of trains will leave and arrive at the Kamalapur Railway Station daily. In addition, four pairs of special intercity trains will commute between Dhaka and Dewanganj of Mymensingh, Parbatipur of Dinajpur and Khulna. A new train service was introduced on Thursday between Dhaka and Mohanganj.

Sadarghat launch terminal witnessed a huge rush of passengers yesterday. The vehicular movement from Jagannath University to the terminal came to halt from the afternoon due to the rush of the country's southern region bound passengers.

"I traveled by bus last year. But I am preferring launch this year to avoid traffic jam and accident on the deplorable road," said Mahmud Akash, who was waiting for a Barisal-bound launch at the terminal.

Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority (BIWTA) estimates that nearly 30 lakh people will go to their village homes by launchs during the Eid. But the authorities can't accommodate the huge number of passengers in launches.

According to BIWTA, the special launch service that started from yesterday would run for next five days after Eid. It will operate service on 39 routes in the southern part of the country.

Joynal Abedin, Joint Director of BIWTA of Sadarghat Terminal told the New Nation on Thursday that all necessary steps are being taken to ensure safe journey for the passengers.

He said that the authority deployed 700 cops for security and stopped hawkers disturbing the terminal area.

Sadik Ahmed, Manager of 'Agradut Launch', said, they are trying to maintain discipline.

Although the home-goers are favouring launch and train journey, rush of passengers were also seen at Gabtali, Mohakhali and Sayedabad bus terminals, as many of them did not collect train or launch tickets.

The homesick people, who left the city by bus, suffered more than train and launch, as their vehicles got stuck in severe traffic jams on the highways.

Meanwhile, failing to get tickets from the highway buses, many people bought tickets of small bus operators. It was alleged that some local private bus services are gearing up to lend some of their vehicles to run on the long routes. Some of these buses are 10-20 years old and not even fit to carry passengers within the city.


US pushes Russia on true Syria deal ahead of talks

US Secretary of State John Kerry will meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Geneva.

AFP, Geneva :

US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will meet in Geneva Friday for high-level peace talks on Syria, with Washington warning its patience is wearing thin.

The top diplomats from the two powers, which support opposite sides in the five-year conflict, will meet in the Swiss city to push for a peace agreement, Russia said.

Washington later confirmed Kerry was leaving for face-to-face talks with Lavrov.

The diplomatic news came after the US pressed Russia on Thursday for a "true cessation of hostilities" against a backdrop of continued military turmoil.

Coalition-backed forces were continuing to push the Islamic State group away from the Turkish border, an Islamist rebel leader died in a bombing attack and pro-regime forces made major gains on the outskirts of the ravaged city of Aleppo.

The talks "will focus on reducing violence, expanding humanitarian assistance for the Syrian people, and moving toward a political solution needed to end the civil war," State Department spokesman John Kirby said in a statement.

US Defense Secretary Ash Carter told BBC radio that there was "quite a long way to go" before a final peace deal could be struck.

He called for "a true cessation of hostilities-not what you've seen, which is a partial cessation of hostilities," adding: "Our patience is not unlimited." Both sides have agreed that a deal must involve a durable ceasefire, humanitarian access to conflict-wracked areas and a resumption of peace talks.

Amid a flurry of diplomatic efforts, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin agreed to intensify efforts for a ceasefire "as soon as possible" in Aleppo, the Turkish news agency Anadolu reported.

Moscow backs the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, while Ankara supports the opposition seeking his ouster.

US President Barack Obama earlier held talks with Putin on the sidelines of the G20 summit in China but the two failed to bridge their differences.

Lavrov suggested that problems in another part of the world-namely, US sanctions against Russia over the Ukraine crisis-may be hampering efforts between the former Cold War rivals to resolve "regional conflicts," a reference to the Syrian war.

And Carter noted: "We have our differences, serious differences, with Russia elsewhere, especially here in Europe with Ukraine."
Trump not qualified to be President : Obama

AFP, Vientiane :

Outgoing President Barack Obama condemned Donald Trump as unsuitable to be commander-in-chief Thursday, after the Republican nominee blasted US military brass and praised Vladimir Putin.

"I don't think the guy's qualified to be president of the United States and every time he speaks, that opinion is confirmed," Obama said in unusually caustic language while overseas.

Obama is in Laos for a summit with South East Asia leaders and his final trip to east Asia.

"I can tell you from the interactions I have had over the last eight or nine days with foreign leaders that this is serious business," Obama said.

"You actually have to know what you are talking about and you actually have to have done your homework. When you speak, it should actually reflect thought out policy you can implement."

Trump on Wednesday raised eyebrows by saying that Russia's president was "far more" of a leader than Obama.

Putin is "very much of a leader," Trump said in a televised interview.

"It's a very different system, and I don't happen to like the system. But certainly in that system he's been a leader, far more than our president has been a leader."
Even an absconding accused has the right of fair hearing

High Court Division :

(Criminal Appellate Jurisdiction)

Abu Bakar Siddique J

Mustafa Zaman

Islam J

Judgment

May 10th, 2016

State..Petitioner

vs

Alam Malitha 

Condemned-

Prisoner

Code of Criminal Procedure (V of 1898)

Section 340

Legal Rememberancer's Manual, 1960

Chapter XII, 6th Paragraph

Though a state defence lawyer was appointed at a belated stage to defend the absconding accused, but the state defence lawyer did not serve the purpose of the case for which such appointment was made. Being so, person concerned must be i.e. accused given an opportunity of being heard to defend himself properly by cross-examining the PWs. It is a sine qua non of the right of fair hearing of an absconding accused. .. .... (18)

State vs Abu Hanif Gani, 45 DLR 400; Abdur Rashid vs State, 27 DLR (AD) 1 and Balayet Howlader vs State, 49 DLR 520 ref.

Md Monirujjaman (Rubel), DAG with Kazi Bazlur Rashid, AAG and De/wara Begum (Bela), AAG-For the State.

Momtaz Begum, Advocate - For the State Defence Lawyer.

Judgment

Mustafa Zaman Islam J: This reference under section 374 of the Code of Criminal Procedure and the connecting jail appeal No. 172 of 2011 arise out of the judgment and order of conviction and sentence dated 27-4-20 II passed by the learned judge of Nari-o-Shishu Nirjatan Daman Tribunal, Kushtia for confirmation of death sentence of condemned-prisoner under section 11(Ka) of the Nari-o-Shishu Nirjatan Daman Ain, 2000 for alleged commission of murder of his wife Hazera Khatun.

2. Prosecution case, in short, are that one Hazera Khatun, the deceased, was married with accused Alam Militha (condemned prisoner) about six years ago to the date of occurrence. Out of wedlock, the couple begot a female child age about four years. Few days after marriage, accused along with other co-accused started making demands for dowry of Taka 30,000 but as the demands could not be satisfied resulted the accused would frequently tortured both mentally and physically. Subsequently, considering the happiness of the deceased, the informant was given to accused Alam Malitha as dowry demands of Taka 20,000 for running a business. Thereafter, accused Alam Malitha, again demands of dowry Taka. 20,000 from the deceased and tortured mentally and physically. On 14-9-2008 to 15-9-2008, the accused with the help of other accused persons murdered the deceased Hazera Khatun by beating and throttling for not satisfying the dowry demand and the accused Alam Malitha fled away. On the following day, the informant being informed through mobile phone the death of the deceased, he went to the house of the accused persons and saw the dead body of the deceased with blood stained condition. The local witnesses Md Toki, Zosimuddin and Shiuli Begum also saw the dead body. Hence, the first information report was lodged on 15-9-2008 upon which was recorded as Doulatpur Police Station Case No. 25 dated 15-9-2008 against the accused including other accused persons under section ll(Ka) of the Nari-o-Shishu Daman Ain 2000.

3. The investigating officer examined number of witnesses and after completion of the investigation, placed the charge-sheet for an offence punishable under section l1(Ka) of the Nari-o-Shishu Nirjatan Daman Ain, 2000 against the accused Alam Malitha and other accused person being charge-sheet No. 322 dated 14-11-2008. The condemned prisoner was absconding amid trial was held in his atrence and the accused and other co-accused were charged on 28-9-2009 under section 11(Ka) of the Nari-o-Shishu Nirjatan Daman Ain, 2000 who are the present in the court pleaded not guilty and claimed to be tried in accordance with law.

4. The prosecution, in order to substantiate the offence as alleged against accused Alam Malitha including other co-accused, examined as many as 13 witnesses while the defence examined none.

5. On consideration of the evidence on record, the Tribunal found the accused Alam Malitha guilty under section 11(Ka) of the said Ain, 2000 and sentenced him as mentioned above and co-accused were acquitted from the charge leveled against them.

6. Reference under section 374 of the code at criminal procedure was made to the High Court Division for confirmation of the sentence of death, which was registered as Death Reference No. 21 of 2011 and Jail Appeal No. 172 of 2011 was preferred by the condemned prisoner, which are heard together and are disposed of by this judgment.

7. Mr Md Monirujjaman (Rubel), the learned Deputy Attorney General along with Mr Kazi Bazlur Rashid, AAG appearing on behalf of the State in support of the reference strenuously argued that the circumstantial evidence and the chain of events conclusively suggest the involvement of the accused in the brutal murder of the deceased wife of the accused.

On the basis of the materials he supported the impugned judgment and order of conviction and sentence and submitted that no case is made out to interfere in the impugned judgment and hence it be upheld.

8. Ms Momtaz Begum, the learned Advocate, appearing on behalf of the condemned prisoner as the State defence lawyer, on the other hand, opposes the reference assailing the judgment and order of conviction and sentence under death reference. She submits that the trial was held in violation of provision of sections 87 and 88 of the code of criminal procedure without compliance of those sections vitiated the entire trial, as because, the Tribunal did not receive any service of return or report of compliance of warrant of arrest, proclamation and attachment inspite of notice was issued as per law. Moreover, no opinion has been formed as provided under section 20(1) of the said Ain 2000, learned Tribunal directed publication of notice in daily newspapers. She submits that it would be unsafe to convict the accused based on the testimonies of interested witnesses who are the father, mother, brother and near relatives of the deceased as well as informant. They are living in other village and in this case, it is essential that next door neighbours or those who are living near the place of occurrence be examined but the same were not examined, as such, it impossible to arrive at any proper conclusion that the condemned prisoner in any way was responsible for commission of murder of the deceased wife of the accused and that there was no motive attributed to the accused herein for indulging in the heinous crime of committing murder of the deceased. She submits that the allegations regarding demand of dowry and cruelty inflicted upon the deceased are in general terms and vague and none of the prosecution witnesses had stated as to when, in which date and month, any act of cruelty or tortured in connection with demand of dowry was committed by accused against the deceased. Referring to order sheet of this case, she submits that charge was framed on 24-6-2009 in the absence of the accused. No State defence was appointed before framing of charge to defend the accused at the time of hearing and on 1-2-2010 was fixed for witnesses and on that date Mr Abdul Khalek, the learned Advocate was appointed to defend the absconding accused Alam Malitha and on that date two of the prosecution witnesses were produced and examined, as such the state defence lawyer did not get adequate time to get himself prepared to conduct this case which affected seriously the purpose of the section 340 of the code of criminal procedure. She submits that the State defence lawyer who was appointed to defend the accused did not cross examine the witnesses and was not present on the same dates of the examination of the PWs, the condemned prisoner has been seriously prejudiced and, as such, the order of conviction and sentence is liable to be set-aside. In support of her submissions, the learned Advocate for State defence lawyer relied two decisions of this Court. In the Case of the State vs Abu Hanif Gani reported in 45 DLR 400 and in the Case of Balayet Howlader vs State reported in 49 DLR 520.

9. In reply, the learned DAG submits that, in view of section 21(1) of the Nari-o-Shishu Nirjatan Daman Ain, 2000 provides that Tribunal has a reason to believe that an accused is absconding or concealing himself with a view to avoiding his arrest and trial, it will have a notification published at least in two Bengali daily directing him to appear before Tribunal within a specified period not exceeding 30 days in any case, failing which he would be tried in absentia and there is no illegality committed by the Tribunal and, as such, the conviction and sentence should be upheld.

10. A very strange argument was raised by State defence lawyer, according to her, the prosecution had not proved that the provision of section 20(1) of the Ain, 2000 contemplated sections 87 and 88 of the code of criminal procedure along with section 340 of the said code did not comply with. Before we proceed with the matter, it has to be borne in mind that it is the duty of the court to secure justice and to prevent miscarriage of justice i.e for substantial Justice.

11. We have heard both sides. We have not expressed any opinion on the merits or demerits of the stands taken by both parties. All the legal pleas are kept open.

12. For proper disposal of the instant Death reference along with Jail appeal, it would be profitable to mention the order No. 15 dated 12-2010 as follows-

A` ??????? ???? ??? ????? ???? ??? ????? ? ??? ????? ?? ??? ?????? ?????? ???????????? ????? ?? ???? ?? ?????? ?? ??? @ ??? ???????? ?????? ???'?? ??????? ????? ? ?? ??????? ??? ?? ?????? ????? ?????

13. According to provisions of Law Ld.

Adv. Mr Abdul Khaleque(l) is hereby appointed state defence pleader to conduct the case on behalf of absconding accused Alam Malitha. Inform the Ld. OM Kushtia & Ld. Advocate.

??. ??? ???? ??????????? ??? ??? ??????? ??????? ???????? ????????? ? ???? ???????? ??? ???? ?????? ???? ??????????? ?? ????????? ??? ?????? ????. ? ?????? ??????? ????? ?? ????????? ??? ???? ??? ????????? ????. ? ????? ????? ???????? ????. ?/? ??????? ???? ??? ???? ??????? ??????? ???? ????? ????? ?????

15. It appears from the record of the Tribunal that no state defence lawyer was appointed before framing charge on 24-6-2009 to defend the accused condemned prisoner. On 4-8-2009 was fixed for prosecution witnesses, on 7-9-2009, 1-5-10-2009 and 26-11-2009 were also for witnesses. But no state defence lawyer was yet to be appointed till that date. Lastly, on 1-2-2010 was fixed for witnesses i.e trial and on that date Mr Abdul Khaleque, learned Advocate was appointed as state defence lawyer to defend the absconding accused and on that date two of the prosecution witnesses were produced and examined by the prosecution. It would be mentioned that the state defence lawyer cross examined the two witnesses although the state defence lawyer did not get adequate time to yet himself prepared to conduct this case. It is necessary to say that the state defence lawyer to defend an absconding accused charged with capital offence should be appointed well ahead of time with a view to enable him to prepare this case and the lawyer should be of sufficient standing and able to render assistance. Here, in this case, from the record it is clear that two witnesses were actually cross examined on the date on which state defence lawyer was appointed. More so, the state defence lawyer who was appointed to defend the absconding accused, had no opportunity to go through the relevant papers of this case. In fact, no opportunity has given by the Tribunal, naturally it was not possible on his part to defend the absconding accused in accordance with law. The right of representation by a lawyer is considered to be a part of natural justice and it can be claimed as of right, whereas, the said right is conferred by the statute.

16. It is clear from the record that the two pws were cross examined by the defence lawyer without going through the relevant papers in this case. It is also clear that defence lawyer did not cross examine of Pws. 3-13 in this case nor he was present on the relevant dates. Besides, the investigating officer was not examined by the prosecution. This has seriously prejudiced the accused, the defence was materially affected. We feel it necessary to reproduce the relevant section 340 of the code which runs as follows:

"340(1) Any person accused of an offence before a criminal court, or against whom proceedings are instituted under this code in any such court, may of right be defended by a pleader.

(2) Any person against whom proceedings are instituted in any such Court under section 107, or under Chapter X, Chapter XI, Chapter XII, or Chapter XXXVI, or under section 552, may offer himself as a witness in such proceedings.

(3) .

(a) 

(b) ..

17. From the above, this Section implies that the accused shall have a reasonable opportunity to cross examine and this is a privilege given to the accused. Accused in a criminal case under Section 340 of the code has been given the statutory right of being defended by a lawyer. It is the duty of the court that accused's right to be defended at the state's cost and relevant papers of this case must be supplied and proper opportunity be given for the competent lawyer to make himself ready. We shall now consider the case law relied upon by the learned state defence lawyer. This view finds support in the case of state vs Hanif Gani mentioned above, wherein held that-

"The appointment of the lawyer to defend accused charged of capital offence at the state expense at the last moment has been disapproved by the Superior Courts and in this regard as a case in hand reference may be made to the case of Abdur Rashid vs State reported in 27 DLR (AD) 1 wherein it has been observed as follows:

"a last moment appointment of Advocate for defending a prisoner, accused of capital sentence, results in a breach not only of the provisions of Section 340 CrPC but also of 6th Paragraph of Chapter XI1 of the legal Rememberancer's manual, 1960 and this kind of appointment frustrate the object behind the elaborate provisions of that chapter",

"if the Sessions Judge finds that it is necessary to appoint a counsel for the accused, he shall at once take necessary steps to that end and make all relevant papers including a copy of the brief available to the Advocate appointed for the aforesaid purpose. No court should proceed with the trial by marely nominating a counsel at government expense for the defence of the accused at the commencement of the trial without giving the counsel sufficient opportunity to study the necessary documents and think over the case and if necessary to consult the accused."

"Having regard to the fact that such late engagement of a defence lawyer is of no use, it is necessary that the rules as contained in the legal remembrance's manual in aid of section 340 of the code of criminal procedure must be rigorously followed for ends of justice."

18. We are of the view that reason stated here in above, though a state defence lawyer was appointed at a belated stage to defend the absconding accused, but the said state defence lawyer did not serve the purpose of the instant case for which such appointment was made. Being so, person concerned must be i.e. accused given an opportunity of being heard to defend himself properly by cross examining the PWs. It is a sine qua non of the right of fair hearing of an absconding accused. For this reason, the case is liable to be sent back to the Tribunal for fresh trial. In that view of the above, no decision on merit is given in this appeal.

19. In the light of our above discussion the condemned prisoner Alam Malitha be offered the choice of choosing lawyer to defend himself within a reasonable time. If he does not do so then he as well as condemned prisoner should defence at state expense by a lawyer of sufficient standing allowing him reasonable time to prepare the case and he should be provided with all papers in time.

20. In view of the discussion made herein above, the reference is rejected and the Jail Appeal No. 172 of 2011 is allowed. The impugned judgment and order dated 27-4-2011 passed in the Judge of the Nari-o-Shishu Nirjatan Daman Tribunal, Kushtia is hereby setaside. Condemned prisoner Alam Malitha to death under section l1(Ka) of the Nari-o-Shishu Nirjatan Daman Ain, 2000 is hereby set-aside. The Tribunal is directed to allow an opportunity to the accused condemned prisoner to cross examine the prosecution witness and, the case is sent back on remand to the court of the learned Nari-o-Shishu Nirjatan Daman Tribunal, Kushtia for holding a fresh trial in the light of the observation made in the body of the judgment.

21. The condemned prisoner who was convicted awarded the death sentence by the Tribunal in 2011 and after judgment he was arrested, therefore, is languishing in death cell for about 5 years. Since, there is urgency in this matter, therefore, we direct the Tribunal to decide the matter as expeditiously as possible, in any event within 6 (six) months from the date of communication of this judgment and order. It is needless to mention that this order is confined to the condemned prisoner herein only, however, condemned prisoner remains in custody not in death cell till fresh trial be concluded. The trial court is at liberty to consider the bail matter of the accused namely, Alam Malitha on the event of failure to conclude the trial within 6 months.

Send down the LC record at once.
Obituary

City Desk :

Banesa Khatun, mother of senior journalist of Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha (BSS) and former Treasurer of Bangladesh Federal Union of Journalist (BFUJ) Ataur Rahman, died of old age complications on Thursday night at her residence in Gazipur. She was 76.

She left behind a host of well-wishers including husband, four sons and a daughter to mourn her death.

She was buried at the family graveyard after Namaj-e-Janaza at a mosque at Hyderabad on Friday morning.

Leaders of Bangladesh Federal Union of Journalist (BFUJ) and Dhaka Union of Journalist (DUJ) have condoled the death of Banesa Khatun and expressed sympathy to the bereaved family members.
Rawhide price fixed at six years low

Staff Reporter :

Tanners on Friday fixed the prices of rawhide of sacrificial animals in line with the government's directives.

The price of salted cowhide has been fixed at Tk 50 per square foot for the capital and at Tk 40 for rest of the country, while the salted goatskins at Tk 15-20

per square foot. The price of rawhides so fixed this time is the lowest in six years.

Delwar Hossain, President of Bangladesh Hide and Skin Merchants Association, announced the prices in a press briefing in a city hotel yesterday morning.

"We followed the international rates in fixing the prices of rawhides. The rate in the international markets did not significantly change in last one year," he said

Delwar Hossain hopes that some 50-60 lakh cowhides will be collected this year.

"The price fixation will help maintaining discipline both in the purchasing and processing during Eid-ul-Azha," he affirmed.

Shaheen Ahmed, President of Bangladesh Tanners Association (BTA), and Mohiuddin Ahmed Mahin, President of Bangladesh Leather, Leathergoods and Footwear Manufacturer & Exporters' Association (BLFMEA) were also present at the press conference.

Earlier, the government ordered the tanners to fix the price of rawhides of cattle to be slaughtered during Eid-Ul-Azha amid demands from hide traders and stakeholders.

Last year, the tanners fixed the price of salted cowhide at Tk 50-55 per square foot for the capital and at Tk 40-45 for the rest of the country, while the price of goat hide ranged between Tk 15 and Tk 22 per square foot.

In 2015-16, Bangladesh exported leather and leather goods worth $1.16 billion, which was $1.13 billion in the previous fiscal, and $1.29 billion in 2013-14, according to Export Promotion Bureau.
RU teacher Akter Jahan found dead

RU Correspondent :

A female teacher of Rajshahi University's Journalism department, Akter Jahan Jolly, was found dead at her university residence on the campus on Friday afternoon.

Police recovered the body of Jolly, 45, an

associate professor of the department, from room No 303 of Jubery Bhaban, a teachers' residential block. She used to live at the house alone. Associate Prof Satil Siraj, a teacher of the department, said Jolly's son informed them that he could not reach her mother over her mobile phone.

Later, some teachers of the department went to the residential block in the afternoon and found the door of her room locked from inside. As they did not get any response even after repeated calls, the teachers informed the RU proctor and the police about it. The law enforcers entered the teacher's residence around 5 pm breaking open the door only to see her lying unconscious on her bed. They took her to Rajshahi Medical College Hospital where doctors declared her dead. Campus sources said Jolly got married with Tanveer Ahmad, also an associate professor of the same department, before joining the university as a lecturer in 1999. Tanveer joined the university in 1995. They, however, got separated in 2012.

Following their divorce, Jolly had been living at Jubery Bhaban as a single mother with her school-going son Sowad. Tanveer, however, married a student, Soma Dev, in 2015 when he was the chairman of the department.

Jolly's son has been living with her parents in Dhaka for the last few months as he got admitted to an English medium school there. Her colleagues said Jolly was scheduled to leave Rajshahi for Dhaka on Friday as the eid vacation began at the university on Wednesday. They said her mortal remains have been kept at the Rajshahi Medical College Hospital's mortuary. Jolly's colleague M Mamun Abdul Kaioum said they found her inside a raised curtain in her bed while the ceiling fan was switched on.

Meanwhile, Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid expressed deep shock at the death of the RU teacher.

In a condolence message, he prayed for eternal peace of the departed soul and conveyed his deep sympathy to the bereaved family members.
Eid journey turns sour

Thousands of home-goers waiting at Sadarghat launch terminal to reach their respective destinations for celebrating Eid-ul-Azha with their near and dear ones on Friday.

Gazi Anowarul Hoque :

The Eid journey turned miserable for thousands of home-goers yesterday due to disruption of buses' schedules and unbearable traffic jams on the highways near the ferry ghats.

At Gabtoli, many passengers complained to this Correspondent that they were waiting for buses for hours, but none from the company was giving them clear departure time.

The long tailback on the Dhaka-Aricha highway stretched from Nabinagar to Dhamrai. It was found near the DEPZ on the Nabinagar-Chandra highway, at Zirabo, Ashulia and Zamgarh points at noon. The number of vehicles increased in the morning of the day. The situation worsened due to slow movement of cattle laden trucks.

Hundreds of trucks, buses and small vehicles formed a five-kilometer tailback near the Paturia ferry terminal on Friday post noon.

14 ferries out of 19 were constantly carrying vehicles from all four ghats, said an

official of the Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Corporation (BIWTC) at Aricha.

On the other hand, Shimulia-Kawrakandi ferry service on the Dhaka-Mawa route was unable to cope with the situation. Hundreds of vehicles were remaining stranded at Shimulia end. Many transports were seen to cross the once rapid Padma by speed boats and launches to reach homes hurriedly, risking their safety.

Mosharraf Hossain, in-charge of Mawa Police Outpost, said that around 70 buses, 400 light vehicles and some trucks lined in queue.

"Ferries cruised in two ways due to dredging in the Shimulia-Kawrakandi nautical route." Shah Khaled Newaj, Assistant General Manger (AGM) to the New Nation on Friday.

Meanwhile, there was a mad rush of home-goers on the Dhaka-Chittagong highway for the last three days. A 13-kilometre-long logjam took place from Meghna Bridge to Meghna-Gumti Bridge at Daudkandi.

Thousands of people heading for homes ahead of Eid-ul-Azha were stuck in the tailback for almost 10 hours yesterday. A good number of buses and trucks carrying people and cattle stood were waiting since yesterday morning on a long stretch of highway from Meghna Bridge till Comilla Cantonment.

As the Eid day is coming closer, the traffic load has increased manifolds. The gridlock at Daudkandi part of the highway has almost become unmanageable, said police Sergeant Kamaruzzaman Raj, in-charge of Bhober Char Highway Police Check Post. However, the traffic situation of Dhaka-Tangail highway has improved slightly. Though the vehicles are moving slowly, the tailback that was created earlier eased to a great extent, reports our Tangail Correspondent.

Khalilur Rahman Patwari, Officer-in-Charge of Gorai Highway Police Outpost, said, they have deployed 700 police personnel to facilitate the movement traffic.

They are trying their best to ease the sufferings of the holiday-makers, the OC added.

Apart from the sufferings on roads, the people also have to bear the brunt of extra fare on different inter-district routes. The scenario was same at Railway stations. The number of passengers at Kamalapur Railway Station was abnormal ahead of Eid holidays.

The desperate holiday travellers were found journeying atop trains from the Kamalapur Railway Station.

But when contacted, Kamalapur Railway Station Manager Sheetangshu Chakravarty rejected the accusation and said that adequate preventive measures had been taken to stop passengers from riding on train roofs.

"The Sadarghat Launch Terminal was also overcrowded due to huge rush of passengers. Most of the launches were seen carrying passengers beyond seat capacity. When asked, a launch master said, we are undone. It is not possible to repel waves of passengers before and after two Eids every year.
Education for development

M. A. Jabbar :

Fifty years ago, UNESCO officially declared 8 September as International Literacy Day. Since then, every year the day is observed globally bringing together governments, multi and bilateral organizations, policy-makers, NGOs, private sector, communities, teachers, learners and experts in the field. This year, the day will be observed under the banner "Reading the past, writing the future. The theme is very important and relevant to socio-eoconomic scenario of the countries globally. The day is an opportunity to mobilize the international community and to promote literacy as a tool to empower individuals, communities, and societies. Various activities have already been chaked out and will be implemented globally, which includes among others, awarding international literacy prizes to people with outstanding performamce for achieveing the objectives of the international literacy day.

As literacy is an important indicator of human resources development, it is incorporated in the Sustainable Development Goals agenda- 4, which aims to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote life-long learning opportunites for all. This year's International Literacy Day therefore, carries added importance with its first year of implementation of the 2030 agenda with the vision of life-long learning opportuniteis with special focus on youth and adults.World scenario of literacy data of 2011 reveals that 87% of female youth had basic literacy skills compared to 92% of males. Overall more than half of countries have youth literacy rates of 95% or higher. This gain cannot cast a shining picture as 774 million adults (15 years and older) still cannot read or write, two thirds of them numbering around 493 million are women. of the youth, 123 million are illiterate of which 76 million are female. Even though the size of the global illiterate population is shrinking, the female proportion has remained virtually steady at 63% to 64%. The UNESCO's Global Monitoring Report on Education for All (2006) shows that south and west Asia has the lowest regional adult literacy rate(54.6%), followed by sub-Saharan African(59.5%) and the Arab States (62.7%). Countries with the lowest literacy rates in the world are Burkina faso(12.8%), Niger (14.4%), Mali(19%). The report shows a clear connection between illiteracy and countries with severe poverty and between literacy and prejudice against women.

On the observance of the day, UNESCO Director-General's saying - to provide every women and man with the skills, capacities and opportunities to become everything they wish in dignity and respect is very important as the fact is that literacy is the foundation for building a sustainable future for everybody.

Bangladesh with a surface area of 147570 square kilometers (56,977 square miles) is the eighth most populous country in the world having an average of 964.42 people for every square kilometer of land. Our population is likely to be nearly 200 million by 2020 with 40 percent under the age of 15 years of age. The number is likely to be 220 million by 2050. In such scenario, the importance of mass education has become as a priority issue and cannot be left aside to save people from the curse of illiteracy. It cannot be denied that with the appreciable achievement in the Millennium Development Goals, our country is working to achieve SDS literacy agenda 2030.

The country has already achieved MDG targets in the filed of primary and secondary education, reduction in many aspects of women's empowerment and gender disparity, removing hunger and environmental sustainability, reduction of maternal, infant and child mortality etc. The country also has made progress towards increasing equitable access in education (Net Enrolment Rate: 98.7 percent; girls 99.4 percent, boys: 97.2 percent), reduction of dropouts, improvement in completion of the cycle, and implementation of a number of quality enhancement measures in primary education. Nevertheless, we have to go a long way as we have obstacles to eradicate illiteracy. Some of people are physically and mentally retarded. Enrollment in primary education is beset with many obstacles like poverty, gender, environmental factors, school distance, parent's attitude etc. Some parts of the country like hoar and char areas are lagging behind the national rate. Many areas remain under water during flood and rainy season. Environmental factors and natural calamities act as obstacles for some parts of the country. Yet these should not stand on our journey towards mass education. With the united efforts of all- NGOs, social workers and philanthropic institutions and individuals and working with the government we can address the problem.

We want peace and tranquility. We hate the unfortunate occurance of Gulshan and Solakia or all kinds of terrorist activities. Ours is a peace loving country and the people are inherited peace from time immemorial and have been living with communal harmony. Therefore, any kind of violence is not relevant to socio-economic culture and heritage of our beloved Bangladesh and its people. Our peace-loving people are united to thwart all sorts of terrorist activites.

The way the government is takling the situation and the unity that formed among the mass-people have drawn the global attention with great appreciation. Our youth-force, students, mass-people are united to stand against all kinds of odds and obstacles.The unique unity that created among all-strata of our people against terrorism is worth example for outside the world. International literacy day is an opportunity to work for mass-literacy that can eradicate all sorts of odds and violences from the society. We can utilize the day to create awareness against terrorism and to eradicate drug and dowry and child-marriage. With the united efforts of all, we can achieve the goals.



(M.A. Jabbar is a banker and executive secretary of ADHUNIK, national anti-tobacco organization of Bangladesh.)
Let homebound journey of passengers be safe

THE home rush begins as people wishing to celebrate Eid-ul-Azha with family members in other towns and rural areas are on the move. It is high time their safety issue need to be high on the card. Passengers are now flocking out of the city. Meanwhile home-goers of North and South Bengal are facing the tough challenge to reach destinations by roads and highways as the main ferry ghats at Patauriya and Mawa have collapsed from river erosion. We hope that the Roads and Highways Department will take every step to run the ferries quickly to reduce long traffic congestion on both banks of the river Padma to keep passengers suffering at the low.

Meanwhile tailback on Tangail highway is blocking movement of traffic towards far-north to Bogra, Rangpur and Dinajpur districts. The weather condition appears good this week after several days of rains. There is a big apprehension that if rains start again, the poor condition of roads and highways at many places may make homebound journey more vulnerable to accidents. Tens of thousands of people are on the move making the highways highly congested and their homebound trips longer and hazardous. The tailback on Dhaka-Chittagong highway is also causing long queues. It is time we will call for utmost care of the bus drivers and other operators to move carefully to avoid accidents. Highway Police should keep vigilance and clear the congestion as earlier possible at any spot. We have warned earlier and giving the reminder again nobody should be allowed

to run poor dilapidated vehicles such as buses and launches to carry passengers on this occasion as news report said many have repaired such vehicles to make money at home-goers perils. It will be a big crime.

Traffic jam is also causing rush in waterways overcrowding passengers of southern coastal districts in Sadarghat launch terminals. Many have failed to buy tickets earlier and are gathering at the terminal to get tickets from black marketeers. Meanwhile, concerns remain of their safety as launch operators operate faulty vessels and carry overload on such occasion to cause accidents. It is a total chaotic situation at the city's main launch terminal and we must say law enforcers should keep highest vigilance so that faulty vessels can't leave the terminal.

It appears that journey by train is less risky. Passengers are also flocking to city's main Kamalapur Railway Station and at other stations. Here the problem is that the number of trains is limited compared to passengers' rush and trains are mostly missing their schedules by hours. We must say it is a very challenging task to make sure the safety of several million passengers and there should not be any laxity from any quarter until people can return the city to join their work.


N Korea`s N test sparks global outrage

BBC Online :

World leaders have reacted with anger after North Korea carried out its fifth and reportedly biggest nuclear test.

The South accused the North's leader Kim Jong-un of "maniacal recklessness".

China "firmly opposed" the test, Japan "protested adamantly" and the US warned of "serious consequences". The UN Security Council will meet later behind closed doors to discuss the issue. Such nuclear tests are banned by the UN but this is North Korea's second this year. Kim Jong-un's rhetoric has also become increasingly aggressive, analysts say. The isolated communist nation has been hit by five sets of UN sanctions since its first test in 2006. Talks involving world and regional powers have failed to rein in the North's nuclear programme.

In its statement announcing the underground test, North Korea expressed anger at the "racket of threat and sanctions... kicked up by the US-led hostile forces" to deny a "sovereign state's exercise of the right to self-defence". The test came on the country's National Day, which celebrates the founding of the current regime and which is often used as a show of military strength. Technically, the North said the test was aimed at further developing the miniaturisation of nuclear warheads so they could be mounted on ballistic missiles.

In its statement the North said it could now produce "at will, and as many as it wants, a variety of smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear

warheads of higher strike power". In recent months, the North has conducted a series of ballistic missile launches and has in the past often stated its aim of hitting US targets. The North has previously made claims on "miniaturised" nuclear warheads but they have never been independently confirmed. After the fourth test in January, China agreed to impose tougher UN sanctions. Further and even tougher sanctions are still possible, like blocking the export of fuel oil to North Korea. That would be a drastic step which might halt the economy and cause serious suffering to ordinary people. China's bottom line is that it does not want the collapse of the regime in Pyongyang if that leads to a chaotic power vacuum, possibly filled by the US and its allies. North Korea has also been angered by a US and South Korean plan to install an anti-missile defence system in the South and by the allies' massive annual joint military exercises, which are still taking place. The North's recent actions have sorely tested its only ally, China. It condemned January's test and repeated that on Friday after the latest.

China's foreign ministry said it would lodge a diplomatic protest and urged North Korea to avoid further action that would worsen the situation. The latest test was announced on state TV hours after a 5.3 magnitude tremor was detected near the Punggye-ri underground nuclear site. Estimates of the explosive yield of the latest blast have varied. South Korea's military said it was about 10 kilotonnes, enough to make it the North's "strongest nuclear test ever". Other experts say initial indications suggest 20 kilotonnes or more. The bomb dropped by the US on Hiroshima in 1945 had a yield of about 15 kilotonnes.
2 killed in Tangail road crash

UNB, Tangail :

Two people were killed and four others injured when a truck rammed into a pickup on the Dhaka-Tangail highway at Jamurki in Mirzapur upazila on Thursday midnight.

Highway police camp sources said the accident took place around 12 am when a Dhaka-bound pineapple-laden truck from Madhupur collided head-on with a pickup coming from the opposite direction, leaving the pickup driver killed on the spot and five others injured.
The Undead Archives

I have finally salvaged my pre-Blogger TDR archives and added them into Blogger. They are almost totally in the form of one giant post for each month. And the formatting strayed from the originals. Sorry. But historians everywhere can rejoice that this treasure trove of my thoughts is restored to the world.
If you are looking for the new Immoral Minority posts, you should know that they can be found here at our new home Please stop by to get caught up on politics, join the conversations, or simply check out the new digs.
Brian Popes legal troubles have bled public coffers for close to $300,000, and it doesnt look like its going to stop.

Pope and his primary criminal defense attorney, Kenvin Stockstill, exit a civil hearing earlier this year. Photo by Robin May

With several issues lingering, including an incomplete response to a public records request The Independent filed in November 2015, this news organization sought to wrap up its ongoing public records dispute with Lafayette City Marshal Brian Pope at a hearing held Aug. 29.

More than 10 months since we made our first request in connection with the marshals bungled foray into backchannel politicking, Pope and his attorneys have repeatedly delayed his comeuppance for abusing his office to promote Scott Police Chief Chad Legers 2015 campaign for sheriff. While the last remaining set of records we requested  an email list supplied to the marshals office by Legers campaign to organize an October press conference attacking Legers then-opponent, Mark Garber  were delivered Aug. 29 pending potential redactions by the court, Popes defense team has continued to tack on further court proceedings at the publics expense.

Email records recovered by The IND prove that Leger campaign manager Joe Castille, front, orchestrated Pope's October press conference as a boost for his candidate's electoral bid. Photo by Robin May

From a legal perspective, delay and disrupt is a sound civil defense that the marshal has the right to employ, but in this case one afforded him only by way of public funds. Records indicate that the marshal has paid, to date, more than $105,000 to six different attorneys with checks from the marshals office cost account. And his stipulated testimony filed at the Aug. 29 hearing gives little reason to believe that he intends to stop writing public checks for his defense.

In lieu of taking the stand, the marshal invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination on 34 of 35 questions submitted by IND attorney Gary McGoffin. The questions probed the marshals connection with a plot to unseal Garbers divorce records and whether Pope intends to personally reimburse his office for the public funds hes used to pay costs for his criminal and civil defense. For all but a question confirming his name, Pope pleaded the Fifth in deference to a five-count felony indictment issued against him earlier this month by a Lafayette Parish grand jury  two counts for perjury and three for abuse of public funds to influence an election.

Attorney Joy Rabalais, one of the latest additions to Popes legal team, argued that the marshal should not be held personally liable for attorneys fees and costs awarded to The IND as a consequence of a January ruling by 15th District Court Judge Jules Edwards, including those that accrue as the case continues. She cited a provision in Louisianas public records law that exempts a delinquent custodian from such fees if the custodian operated on advice of counsel.

Pope  again through his office  purchased a $168,000 suspensive appeal bond to cover fees and costs Edwards awarded to The IND as a part of the January ruling that Popes refusal to turn over requested records was arbitrary and capricious and defied court orders. Edwards held Pope in criminal contempt for defying a court order to turn over the records.

IND attorney McGoffin sought an update to the bond amount required to cover the intervening increase in costs and penalties owed, presently just under $200,000, while Pope appeals. Assuming that Edwards updates the required bond  Louisiana law requires that an appeal bond cover 150 percent of the awarded monies  it seems again likely that Pope will use public collateral. Louisianas Third Circuit Court of Appeal has already denied Popes writ appealing the criminal contempt finding and will hear oral arguments on his appeal of the arbitrary and capricious judgment in September.

Joy Rabalais, one of six attorneys advising Pope, is seeking to reduce her client's personal financial liability. Photo by Robin May

All told, Pope has more than $300,000 and counting in play between the civil awards and his civil and criminal defense and, so far, Pope has not spent any of his own money for his defense. Expect that cost to rise swiftly and drag on in similar fashion as his criminal defense displaces his civil problems.

Louisiana law allows Pope to be reimbursed for his criminal defense so long as hes exonerated and the charges arise from the conduct of official business. In-court arguments and a preponderance of records have dispelled time and again Popes claim that the press conference at the heart of this public records dispute was related to his duties as city marshal.

Immediately following The INDs initial requests for emails related to the October press conference, Pope claimed the emails sought were connected to an investigation into illegal immigration that was later discovered to be bogus. When that didnt work, he said under oath that the records didnt exist. That claim was proven false by a cache of emails, many of which Pope deleted, produced by Lafayette Consolidated Government, the marshals email service provider, and 588 pages of emails produced by Popes own IT consultant following a court order.

The email records recovered from LCG proved that Legers campaign manager, Joe Castille, scripted Popes press conference, contrary to testimony Pope gave under oath on the stand and in a video deposition late last year.

That puts the marshal in the curious position of suggesting that he perjured himself because his lawyer told him to, and thus his office  i.e. the public  should pay the cost of his dissembling and attempted destruction of records. Surely, thats not how Louisianas public records law was designed to work.

With criminal proceedings related to Popes cover-up just getting started, its likely up to the district attorney to decide if Pope has criminally fleeced the public to defend his abuse of its trust.

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Photo courtesy Lafayette Parish Correctional Center

In a ruling dizzy with ever-complicated findings of fact, a district court judge found that City Marshal Brian Pope used public funds to try to unseal the divorce records of Sheriff Mark Garber, attempting to bend last years election in favor of Garbers opponent, Scott Chief of Police Chad Leger.

Citing a preponderance of evidence, Judge Jules Edwards of the 15th Judicial District said in the ruling issued Sept. 6 that this newspaper, as plaintiff in an ongoing public records dispute, proved that the marshal paid his then-attorney, Charles K. Middleton, to draft a motion to unseal Garbers divorce records, which was filed into the proceedings by a man named Troyce Thorla. (Middleton has since withdrawn from his representation of Pope.)

A private citizen and reluctant operative, Thorla signed an affidavit asserting that Pope roped him into the botched political maneuver but later regretted his involvement. The affidavit was signed at Garbers law office.

Pope's legal team has argued in court that evidence of pressure from Garber undermines the reliability of Thorla's account. Edwards has nevertheless admitted the affidavit as evidence into the public records case.

According to testimony recorded in the Garber divorce case, Thorla sought a video, rumored by Pope to be filed in the case, which documented Garber running naked in the street after being caught in bed with another woman by his wife. No such DVD or video was ever found.

Thorla claimed in the affidavit that he tried to back out of the plot, but Pope insisted he continue even after the election ended. He also stated that the marshal paid the court costs associated with filing the motion.

Edwards ordered Pope to turn over unredacted invoices requested by The Independent pertaining to the Thorla motion and plot, further complicating the marshals ongoing defense that his interference in the sheriffs race was actually related to a marshals investigation into the immigration policy of outgoing Sheriff Mike Neustrom.

On a November invoice to the city marshal obtained by an IND public records request, Middleton bills the marshal for drafting a motion for a "Mr. Redmond," as referenced in several line items. Given no other court record of such a case or motion and the invoices matched cross-reference with affidavit testimony by Thorla, it appears that Redmond" would be a code name for the Garber divorce plot. (But it may not be. There could be an actual Redmond involved here, but we'll have to get back to you on that.)

When asked about the matters above, the marshal invoked his constitutional right against self-incrimination.

While not a criminal conviction, Edwards ruling jeopardizes the marshals legal defense against a recent felony indictment issued by a Lafayette grand jury in August.

Pope was charged with five felony counts stemming from a staged press conference orchestrated in concert with Legers campaign, in which the marshal attacked Garber for allegedly courting clients among undocumented migrants in a statement scripted by Legers campaign manager, Joe Castille.

By ordering Pope to turn over the Middleton motion that bill for the Thorla or "Mr. Redmond" motion, Edwards positions the marshal to tie off the noose of evidence thats hung around him.

If he produces the invoices, the marshal essentially admits that he paid his attorney to disrupt the election by prying into a candidates personal life  a clear abuse of public money and authority.

If Pope declines to turn the documents over, Edwards could hand down yet another finding of criminal contempt, meaning the marshal could face perhaps more incarceration and penalties. Edwards held the marshal in contempt for defying a December ruling to turn over email records The IND requested last October. Pursuant to that contempt finding, the marshal was ordered to pay thousands in penalties still accruing by the day as of the publishing of this article and was sentenced to a mostly suspended stint under house arrest.

All told, the marshals dalliance in illegal electioneering has rung up a bill of roughly $280,000, including penalties, attorneys' fees and costs awarded to The IND by the court, along with Popes own legal bills. The marshal has paid his six-lawyer legal team more than $100,000 with checks written out of the marshals cost account, which is funded by fees collected from city court.

Among the indicted charges are three counts of abuse of public funds, one of which directly points to the Oct. 7 press conference, and two counts of perjury for lying under oath to cover up the illegal stunt. Further charges could be in the offing at the DAs discretion.

Edwards ruling also increases the bond price Pope must pay while appealing the judgment to $184,710 and compels the production of an email list, provided to Pope by Castille to promote the offending press conference. Pope must deliver the Redmond motion within seven business days of the ruling or otherwise explain it. He has 14 days to produce the email list.

On Wednesday, The Third Circuit Court of Appeal will hear oral arguments on Popes appeal of the January judgment against him.

The IND will be reporting from Lake Charles on that matter.
Certain groups, including top executives, global operations employees in U.S, many employees in chemicals operations and some human resources workers and sales people, exempt from cuts.

Houston-based Baker Hughes is cutting employee pay for many U.S. workers by 5 percent through a new program aimed at lessening the need for additional job reductions.

The oilfield services giant is calling this latest cost-saving measure a furlough program, though the term does not appear to fit whats being implemented because there is no indication from various media reports that the employees will be sent home without pay. Furthering the notion that this is not a furlough program, Baker Hughes confirms in an internal memo that it is giving them extra vacation days to make up for the smaller paycheck.

Fuelfix.com reports:

The pay cuts, which Baker Hughes described as temporary, will stretch from the pay period beginning Sept. 11 through the final paycheck of the year. In exchange for the pay cut, employees will get holidays on Oct. 10, Nov. 23, Dec. 23 and Dec. 28, according to an internal memo acquired by the Houston Chronicle. The memo said the furlough program is designed to help Baker Hughes reduce the need for additional layoffs and to achieve the cost savings needed to enable profitable growth. Among those excluded from the pay cuts are some top executives and other global operations employees in the United States; many employees in chemicals operations; some human resources workers; many sales people; and corporate security and information technology workers, among others. Most leadership is included in the furlough, according to the memo. Baker Hughes spokeswoman Melanie Kania said in a prepared statement, These efforts will allow us to lessen the need for additional workforce reductions while remaining focused on serving customers and maintaining safe, compliant operations.

It's unclear how the pay cuts will impact the local Baker Hughes workforce.

According to The Advertiser, Baker Hughes has 40 locations in Louisiana that employ 1,914 people.

Worldwide the company has 36,000 employees, down from about 62,000 when oil prices began to plummet from more than $100 a barrel in 2014 to about $45 a barrel today, the paper noted.

Read the full Fuelfix.com story here.
Hospital group says more patient care will be added to the systems main campus  Lafayette General Medical Center  as a way to further centralize care and staffing.

[Editors Note: This story has been updated with additional information from Lafayette General Health.]

Citing changes in reimbursement rates, increased patient debt, state and federal funding reductions and the overall economic downturn, Lafayette General Health announced Thursday that it will lay off 70 employees. The layoff represents 1.6 percent of the companys workforce of nearly 4,000 employees.

The majority of the cuts are at the system [administrative] level, LGH President and CEO David Callecod tells ABiz in an emailed response to questions about the layoffs. We did everything we could to protect our clinical services. The hospital group says it has been forced to right-size operations in the most efficient manner and make changes organization wide.

The largest health care provider in the region, LGH is the parent company of Lafayette General Medical Center and also manages six major health care providers across 10 Acadiana parishes. Additionally, its affiliated with several more facilities throughout the region. While many layoffs are at the system level, affected facilities include LGMC, Lafayette General Southwest, University Hospital & Clinics and Acadia General Hospital.

The company also confirms that it is doing away with many contract nursing positions. Our goal is to drastically reduce our use of contract nursing due to its high cost. For the most part, with each agency contract that expires, we hope to hire a full-time nurse to replace each contract nurse, Callecod says, explaining that agency nurses can cost the system two to three times that of a full-time employee.

Lately the group has been paying high recruitment bonuses for some positions  it recently advertised a $5,000 sign-on bonus for surgical techs  a competitive strategy it plans to continue. We are paying bonuses for critical need positions to include RN, surgical techs and inpatient coders, the administrator says.

LGH President and CEO David Callecod Photo by Wynce Nolley

Patient care will not be interrupted during the process, the company stresses in a prepared statement regarding the layoffs, which come as Gov. John Bel Edwards administration and the state Department of Health and Hospitals seeks to renegotiate the terms of the public-private partnerships undertaken during the administration of Edwards predecessor, Bobby Jindal, in which LGH assumed management of Lafayettes University Medical Center, now known as University Hospital and Clinics.

It is multi-factorial, with many things leading to this decision, so it would be unfair to point to one, Callecod says in response to a specific inquiry about the impact of the renegotiated state contract. Reimbursement reductions at the state and federal level play a part, but so does the local economy in that people are unable to pay their high deductibles and co-pays. Health care is not immune to the downturn in our economy. Our accounts receivable is growing.

Last year the hospital group purchased the Regional Medical Center of Acadiana campus, renaming it Lafayette General Southwest and moving its inpatient physician rehabilitation unit to LGSW. Callecod says LGH continues to explore additional clinical service offerings at that Ambassador Caffery Parkway site.

We are consolidating other services and bringing those to Lafayette General Medical Center. This will lower our overall costs, he says, noting that LGSW will remain a fully operational hospital.

Broader plans call for the company to add more ICU and medicine/surgery beds to LGMC. Our goal is two additional ICU beds and 12 more med/surg beds to start, then increasing to a maximum of 36 med/surg beds if we are able to staff it with full-time employees rather than contract nurses, Callecod says.

LGHs closest competitor, Our Lady of Lourdes, has no plans for layoffs at its local facilities, spokeswoman Elisabeth Arnold tells ABiz.

LHG says it continues to work hard to lower costs in other areas to avoid more layoffs. As all health care organizations do, we will continue to evaluate our operations as we move into a value-based payment system, Callecod notes.
University officials say they've been planning retirement and sanctuary for its chimpanzees for more than two years, and "the vast majority" were never part of any research.

Project Chimp/Facebook

UL Lafayette says the first group of nine retired chimpanzees from a Louisiana research lab has arrived at a new animal sanctuary in the north Georgia mountains.

The university and Project Chimps near Blue Ridge, Ga., announced the move Thursday in a joint news release.

The university said the chimps that arrived at the Project Chimps sanctuary Thursday will be followed by many transfers to eventually relocate all 220 chimpanzees from New Iberia.

Project Chimps has said the New Iberia Research Center was among the first non-federal research programs to arrange to release all of its research chimps.

University officials say they've been planning retirement and sanctuary for its chimpanzees for more than two years, and "the vast majority" were never part of any research.
Trimming the detail won't improve security directly, but Downtown officials say the compromise is far from a catastrophe.

Photo by Robin May

Framed as something of a compromise, the city council has shifted $85,000 from the budget for Downtowns weekend police detail to the general overtime budget for the police department. The move knocks the total amount allocated directly to the detail to $200,000 while allowing the police department to assign cops to the district on as needed basis via general overtime funds.

Some have complained that Downtowns weekend scene has been unruly, with large clubs routinely spilling their customers by droves into the street as 2 a.m. rolls around. Last month, a Rayne man died from gun shot wounds suffered during a Downtown attack that left two others injured.

Nathan Norris, chief executive officer of the Downtown Development Authority, says the nature of the compromise on the cut reflects a positive development in a year-long effort to address fundamental regulation enforcement and ordinance issues Downtown. Originally, Downtown officials feared that a budget cut would limit weekend security to only one night a week, which would leave the district reeling for help on either Friday or Saturday.

Lafayette Police Chief Reginald Thomas questioned the wisdom of an outright cut, seeing a definitive need for continued security Downtown, according to a report by The Advocate.

The deal reached by the council keeps both nights on the table.

I think it was a good thing for the council to question the amount of money that goes to the Downtown detail, Norris told The IND by phone. We should be able to lower the amount by giving those in charge of keeping the peace Downtown more tools to work with.

By tools Norris is referring to stop gap enforcement measures and regulatory reforms that he says could allow officials to control basic nuisances and dangerous criminality alike. Nipping problems further down the stem could reduce the amount of police security required long term.

Norris says DDA wants to implement noise control, parking management, localize alcohol permitting  at present managed by the state  and revisit the use of to-go cups in the district. He says that the mix of go cups and abundantly free parking gives rise to impromptu after parties in nearby parking lots that can be problematic for enforcement.

Many of these considerations and solutions were brought to fore earlier this summer by visiting consultant Jim Peters, an expert on the development of so-called "hospitality districts" who criticized Downtown's controversial bar ban.

Councilmen Jay Castille and Kenneth Boudreuax were the primary forces behind the push to trim the Downtown detail. On their view, Downtowns security costs are an unfair burden borne by a city-wide tax base that doesnt benefit directly from the service.

As Downtowns bar moratorium lingers unchanged after 13 years, its not clear how to resolve Downtowns ongoing security issues with its regulatory future uncertain. Since movement on the issue stirred in February of this year, little progress seems to have been made in unlocking the ban, which caps the number of bar licenses Downtown at 16 and tethers them to physical addresses.

The bar license monopoly arguably inflates the price of building stock Downtown, particularly buildings with extant licenses, and all but assures that buildings like the currently vacant former Karma building will remain nightclubs.

Lifting the ban, some say, could exacerbate nightlife-associated crime and further tax the police departments crowd control capacity by proliferating bars. On the other hand, conditions of use like lowered club capacity limitations, security fees and dues or graduated penalties for non-compliance could defray those issues while deflating costs.

Presently, Norris argues, theres little that can be done to control troublesome operations short of shutting them down, effectively tying the hands of officials reluctant to shut clubs down altogether.

Who wants to put someone out of business? Norris says. Thats not the American way.
Pre-purchase property inspection is a relatively new thing in the United Kingdom. Its not something that most people have heard about, but it has become increasingly popular over the last few years with the rise in property prices and increased demand for high quality homes.

What are the benefits of pre-purchase building inspection? What can you expect to find out when you pay someone else to inspect your home before you buy it? And what should you look for during an inspection?

Many people want to know if theyre buying a house thats been well maintained or if its had any serious problems. If youve found a place on the market that seems attractive, but then discover some issues after moving in, you may not be as excited about buying it as you thought you were.

Its important to do your due diligence when looking at properties. A lot goes into making a property appealing to potential buyers, from the landscaping to the flooring to the kitchen appliances. The same applies when inspecting a property  there are many things that need checking over to make sure everything is running smoothly.

Here are some of the benefits of performing a pre-purchase inspection:

You get to see exactly what will happen to your money

When you go shopping for a new car, youll probably be shown several different models. You might even be shown one that looks like a great value, but doesnt fit around all of the extra features that you want. When it comes time to actually buy the vehicle, however, you wont have seen how your money will be spent on it once you drive it off the showroom floor.

Likewise, when you shop for a new home, you dont really know what youre getting yourself into until you move in. In order to get a feel for whether the home youre considering is what you want, you normally have to spend quite a bit of time inside it. This allows you to learn more about everything that youre going to be spending your hard-earned cash on.

A pre-purchase building inspection gives you much the same kind of experience without having to spend thousands of dollars. Since youre paying for the service, you can expect to see exactly what youre paying for, instead of just seeing a vague idea of what you might end up with.

You find out about potential major repairs

Some buildings are very expensive to maintain, which means that owners often neglect them for the sake of saving money. While youre paying for a building inspection, youre also paying for a professional who knows how to spot signs of trouble and repair work that needs doing.

If you notice that a particular area of your new home needs fixing right away, you can call in an expert to take care of it quickly. If you find that theres something wrong with your boiler, you wont have to wait weeks for a plumber to come over and fix it. Instead, youll have access to a solution immediately.

You can save hundreds of pounds by finding out about potential problems early on

One of the biggest expenses when you first buy a home is the cost of moving in. Many people dont realize this until its too late. Buying a home involves not only paying for the actual house, but also for moving costs, furniture, and other items that have to be moved along with the home.

Having a good idea ahead of time of what youre likely to encounter can help you avoid these kinds of costs. If you know youll need to replace the plumbing system, for example, youll be able to put together a budget for the expense and plan accordingly.

You can protect your investment by finding out if the homes been well cared for

While there are plenty of people who think that houses always look better when theyre newly built, youd be surprised at how well maintained older residences can still look nice. Sometimes, though, those homes need some additional maintenance to keep them looking their best.

This could involve repairs that arent so noticeable or small improvements that you wouldnt consider otherwise. Even worse, some houses have fallen into disrepair without anyone noticing. This is why having a professional perform a building inspection prior to purchasing a home is such a big benefit.

Not only will it give you insight into the state of the property, but it will also give you peace of mind knowing youre not getting taken advantage of. As long as youre aware of the potential pitfalls, youll have less reason to worry about the state of your new home.

You can use information gathered during a building inspection to negotiate a lower price

If youre worried about buying a home because you suspect that it may need extensive renovation work, you may already have a rough idea of how much work youll need to do to bring it up to scratch. That knowledge can come in handy if you decide to buy the home.

You can use all of the details that you gather during a building inspection to present a realistic picture of what the home is worth to prospective buyers. If a potential buyer thinks that the home is worth more than what you paid for it, you can try negotiating a lower price.

You can sell your home faster and for more money

If you decide to list your home on the market soon after buying it, youll need to price it accurately in order to attract buyers. But if youve already done a thorough building inspection, youll know exactly what work is needed and what the current market conditions are.

In other words, youll be able to make a more accurate estimate of the amount of money youve invested in the home and how much its worth. If you find that youre selling your house for close to its full market value, you can use this information to convince the potential buyer that your home is worth the asking price.

Even if youre planning to stay in the home for a while before you decide to sell, the fact that you did a thorough building inspection will give you more confidence when listing it. Prospective buyers will know exactly what theyre paying for.

Your home will hold its value longer

As mentioned earlier, the value of a home depends heavily upon the condition of the building itself. If your home is in bad shape, potential buyers wont be interested in buying it. On the other hand, if youve performed a thorough building inspection and know what sort of repairs are necessary, you can offer your prospective buyer a compelling reason to invest in your property.

When you buy a home, youre essentially agreeing to have it inspected periodically to ensure that it stays in top shape. Not only does this allow you to avoid expensive repairs down the road, but it can also increase the value of your home.

You can make smart decisions about property investments

Buying real estate isnt as simple as just driving a couple of minutes to pick up a house. There are lots of considerations involved, ranging from location to cost. The same is true when youre investing in property.

If you find a house that meets all of your requirements, youll want to make sure that you have a solid understanding of where it stands with regards to the rest of the market. If you havent spent enough time researching the area, you could inadvertently end up with a bad deal.

There are lots of resources available online that can help you determine the overall level of competition in your area. They can also help you figure out if there are any properties that meet your requirements that you didnt know about.

If you own rental property, you can use the information to identify tenants who might cause damage

If you own rental property and youve noticed that certain tenants consistently cause damage, you can use the results of a building inspection to identify them. You can then contact them directly to let them know that youre watching them closely and that you dont appreciate the problem theyre causing.

They might start taking better care of their homes, which would be good news for everyone. It could also be the case that youll find out that theyre responsible for previous damages that werent caught during a previous visit.

You can make smarter decisions about hiring contractors

If youve hired contractors to build or repair your home, you might want to ask them for references. However, unless you perform a thorough building inspection, you might not know exactly what to look for.

For instance, maybe you only checked the roof for leaks or the walls for cracks. You might not have looked underneath the foundation for anything that could cause a future issue. By performing a building inspection, you can ensure that you hire reputable contractors who will be trustworthy with your money.

You can avoid purchasing a home thats in poor condition

Of course, the main benefit of structural inspections perth is that it helps you avoid purchasing a home thats in poor condition. Before you make the decision to buy a home, you should do whatever you can to find out about the state of the building.

You can also ask your realtor about what sorts of inspections are typically recommended. Some agents say that its standard practice to check the heating system, the roof, the electrical wiring, and the floors. Others will tell you that they recommend that you check the entire structure.

Either way, if you choose to hire an inspector, youll find out exactly what needs to be fixed and how much it will cost to do so.

As a result, it can be concluded that a pre-purchase building inspection is highly important for the buyers because it provides transparency regarding the current conditions of the structure. Additionally, the building owner is made aware of any upgrades or repairs that are required, which could lead to a fair deal throughout the purchasing and selling process.
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President Joe Biden has decided to ban Russian oil imports, toughening the toll on Russia's economy in retaliation for its invasion of Ukraine. The United States generally imports about 100,000 barrels a day from Russia, only about 5% of Russia's crude oil exports, according to Rystad Energy. Last year, roughly 8% of U.S. imports of oil and petroleum products came from Russia. Gas prices have been rising for weeks due to the conflict and in anticipation of potential sanctions on the Russian energy sector. The U.S. national average for a gallon of gasoline soared 45 cents a gallon in the past week and topped $4.06 on Monday, according to auto club AAA. Should the US ban Russian oil imports over Ukraine war?

You voted:
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Election 2020: Spunky former presidential candidate wins VP slot by a head

Churches in many states to hold services in opened up pubs and bars

Election 2020: Xi Jinping still undecided on vice president for Joe Biden

Reports: Republicans pounce on 'Republicans pounce' reports

Minneapolis launches online looting app to combat Covid-19

DNC study finds lockdowns no longer necessary as the economy is now being destroyed more effectively by looters and rioters

With America in lockdown, China offers to host Democrat primary

Bernie Sanders tests negative for President

In related news, Joe Biden follows other candidates in withdrawing from race and endorsing Joe Biden

New York Governor Cuomo shuts down all 'non-essential' business, surprised to find himself out of a job

Biden commits to picking a woman as running mate as long as she passes his sniff test

Joe Biden's coronavirus prevention tips: always rub hand sanitizer on young girls before sniffing and fondling them

Russian lawmakers warned that the American Democrats are meddling to re-elect Putin

Joe Biden promises lucrative board member jobs as door prizes to get people to his rallies

Democrats now worried they might even lose the illegal alien vote

Soleimani's remains FedExed back to Iran and now no one knows what happened to the box

BREAKING: massive search underway in Iran after Soleimani's boxed FedEx'd remains stolen off front porch

Liz Warren harshly critical of Biden's suggestion to coal miners that they should learn to code, offers to have them trained as romance novelists instead

Pelosi: "First we have to impeach Donald Trump before we can find out why we impeached him."

Schiff calls his Amazon Alexa to testify: 'She knows absolutely everything'

Iran answers to new Reagan statue in Berlin by erecting Obama statue at Tehran airport where he delivered pallets of cash

California accepts award for most progressive environmental policies; further progressive developments to be announced as blackouts permit

BREAKING: Romney DNA test reveals he is 1/1024th Republican

California Governor Gavin Newsom blames electricity blackouts on Ukrainian kulaks, vows revenge

Rat falling from White House ceiling fears for his life, begs reporters for protection, offers a tell-all memoir

Latest UN climate report shows this month so far has seen the scariest climate pronouncements on record

Climate science: there's no need for climate protests in China because China is already communist

Islamic clerics split on whether Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib should be traveling around the world without an accompanying male relative

Dem candidates call for the Beatles' song 'Get Back' and the 'White Album' to be banned; surviving two white guys of the group must pay reparations

Bond's number is up: next 007 will be a black woman, played by Barack Obama

NYT: moon landing was one small step for Man, one giant leap for White Male Supremacy

HURRICANE WATCH: Tropical storm Barry has records sealed, once offshore expected to change name to Barack

Trump politicizes the 4th of July, declares it henceforth to be called the 45th of July, or July the Trumpth

Barack Obama critical of Trump for failing to insert 'I, me, my' into his 4th of July speech: "very unpresidential!"

Congressional Democrats: John Dean's testimony proves Trump is Nixon in disguise and must be impeached

Bernie Sanders admits to being a millionaire, promises to eat himself if nominated

International Women's Day observed, women only paid 73% of attention afforded to men

Democrats: anti-Semitism means never having to say you're sorry

AOC: aborting babies helps preserve the planet for the next generation

Bernie Sanders launches presidential campaign, promises to "build a great big beautiful Iron Curtain" around America if elected

West Virginia renames itself Eastern Kentucky to avoid further embarrassment from Virginia

BREAKING: Justice Ginsburg released from hospital after breaking 3 ribs at late night bar brawl in Adams Morgan

DNA news: Senator Warren tanking in latest totem polls

Orwell studies: 84% of academics believe problems raised in 1984 can be fixed with solutions from Animal Farm

Progress in gender justice: online dating industry issues recommendations for men to wear body cameras, bring attorneys as chaperones

Study: the only people who don't know what socialism is are the socialists

Poll: 1 in 3 #FightFor15 activists believe movement is related to lowering the age of consent across America

CNN expert: Kavanaugh confirmation will increase global warming by 3 degrees

Harry Reid comes forth to say Judge Kavanaugh didn't pay any taxes in high school

Hollywood to America: If you've got a flag on the Moon, you didn't plant that; some other country made that happen

Protest march in straight jackets against Trump ends in chaos as participants try but fail to free themselves

HEADLINES YOU WILL NEVER SEE: California Gov. Jerry Brown single-handedly stops wildfires in his state by issuing an immediate statewide ban on wildfires

San Francisco closes all Planned Parenthood clinics after sting operation catches employees using plastic straws

Vegan mother undergoes experimental surgery to force her breasts to produce almond milk

With none of his emails answered, frustrated Nigerian man commits suicide and leaves $100bn fortune to charity

California gives new meaning to strawman argument as caped Strawman battles supervillains in restaurants, bars, and fast food joints

Violence increases in Mexico as cartels switch from smuggling drugs to plastic straws to San Francisco

Obama proposes a Paris Economic Change agreement among nations to address how world will cope with future runaway economic warming

Stormy Daniels plans border visit to give migrant children freebies

San Francisco: man dumping off 20 lbs of human waste in plastic bag on street corner cited for using non-biodegradable plastic bag

BREAKING: ICE renamed Planned Citizenship, immediately absolving it of all criticism

Senate Democrats demand Supreme Court nominee not be unduly influenced by U.S. Constitution

BREAKING: In 2018, Obama and Biden can finally celebrate Recovery Summer

IG Report: the FBI broke the law, but since there was no criminal intent, no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case

Pelosi on Trump's MS-13 "animals" comments: "Four legs good, two legs bad"

Iran nuclear talks set to resume between the United States and John Kerry

Report: The Mueller investigation has finally determined that the lyrics to Louie Louie are not about Trump and Russian collusion

MARKETS: Demand for carbon credits spikes as Hamas seeks to undo damage to Earth's atmosphere caused by burning 10,000 tires on Gaza border

BREAKING: After state reassignment surgery Pennsylvania will henceforth be known as Transylvania

Experts: If we don't act now, unicorns will be extinct in just ten years. Children will ask, "Mommy, what's a unicorn?" Women and minorities will be forced to seek alternative hallucinations

Korean war must continue: Hawaiian federal judge declares Trump's peace effort unconstitutional

New York: feminists march on Broadway, demand the street be given new, non-misogynistic name

Experts: California's planned transition of all state jobs from citizens to illegal aliens by 2020 will help to avoid bankruptcy and save money for social programs for illegal aliens

Putin: If I didn't want Hillary to be president she would be dead

Doritos maker PepsiCo to introduce snack line for women; new Doritas chips will be 77% as big as Doritos and won't make any scary 'crunchy noises'

TMZ: Tooth Fairy accused of sexually assaulting millions of children, outs self as Transgendered Tooth Recovery Specialist

RUSSIA COLLUSION: Trump offers Putin to trade Rep. Maxine Waters for two unnamed members of the State Duma

Ikea founder dead at 91; his coffin arrived in a box with confusing instructions and took 3 hours to assemble

This Thanksgiving ex-president Obama continues with his tradition of apologizing to turkeys everywhere for the injustice they suffered since America's founding

Oslo, Norway: 2017 Nobel Peace Prize goes to advocacy group about which you'll forget immediately after reading this headline

Cambridge, MA, library to replace racist 'Cat in the Hat' with inclusive 'Che in a Beret'

Millions of men worldwide eagerly await broadcast of Hugh Hefner's funeral, solely for the articles

Bill Gates offers to pay for Trump's wall on condition he gets to install Windows

Bernie Sanders introduces single-payer public transportation bill to end America's unequal, unfair, and expensive private transportation system

DNC embroiled in controversy after official Twitter account accidentally 'likes' pictures of US Constitution and Bill of Rights

Hurricane Irma hits Cuba, causes millions of dollars worth of improvements to property and infrastructure

Climate study: extreme weather may be caused by unlicensed witches casting wrong spells in well-meaning effort to destroy Trump

Ex-president Obama declares Irma "Hurricane of Peace," urges not to jump to conclusions and succumb to stormophobia

CNN: Trump reverses Obama's executive order banning hurricanes

ISIS claims responsibility for a total solar eclipse over the lands of American crusaders and nonbelievers

When asked if they could point to North Korea on a map many college students didn't know what a map was

CNN: We must bring America into the 21st century by replacing the 18th century Constitution with 19th century poetry

Pelosi: 'We have to impeach the president in order to find out what we impeached him for'

BREAKING: As of Saturday July 8, 2017, all of Earth's ecosystems have shut down as per Prince Charles's super scientific pronouncement made 96 months ago. Everything is dead. All is lost. Life on Earth is no more.

DNC to pick new election slogan out of four finalists: 'Give us more government or everyone dies,' 'Vote for Democrats or everyone dies,' 'Impeach Trump or everyone dies,' 'Stop the fearmongering or everyone dies'

Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power" is humanity's last chance to save the Earth before it ends five years ago

Experts: The more we embrace diversity the more everything is the same

BOMBSHELL: TMZ offers Kathy Griffin $5 mil to keep any future sex tape private

DEVELOPING: CNN, WaPo, NYT anonymous sources say Vladimir Putin may have ties to Russia

BREAKING: Manning and Snowden have come out with strong condemnation of Donald Trump leaking classified information to Russia

Gun store goes into lockdown over report an "active university professor" roving the grounds

Dozens injured at Ralph Lauren & Louis Vuitton headquarters after Ivanka calls in missile strikes on rival fashion houses

BOMBSHELL: Evidence proves Donald Trump conspired with his campaign to defeat Hillary Clinton

University ranked "very intolerant of free speech" fights the accusation by banning the study and all involved

Concerned that Russians don't consume enough alcohol in the month of March, Russia's Orthodox Church makes St. Patrick's Day official holiday

Grassroots group calls for "The Million Regulators March" on Washington, supported by all who fear the loss of their betters telling them what to do

Experts: Starbucks CEO Schultz's hiring of 10,000 Muslim refugees likely to blow up in his face

Will the groundprog be frightened by its own shadow and hide - or will there be another season of insane protests?

Trump signs executive order making California and New York national monuments; residents have two days to vacate

Women's March against fascism completed with 400,000 fewer deaths than anticipated

Feminist historians uncover ghastly concentration camps where so-called "housewives" were forced to live inauthentic lives slaving away in kitchens

Dictionary of the future: Global Warming was a popular computer simulation game, where the only way to win was not to play

"Anti-fascist" groups violently protest misspelling of their original name, "aren't-we-fascists"

Post-inauguration blues: millions of democrats distraught as the reality of having to find real jobs sets in

"Journalism is the continuation of war by other means" is exposed as a fake quote by mainstream media journalists

Congressional Democrats: "We cannot just simply replace Obamacare with freedom because then millions of Americans will suddenly become free"

Schoolchildren jailed for building only white snowmen

Obama's reckless attacks on Russia serve as recruitment tool to create more Russian hackers

Hillary: "I lost, so I'm going to follow our democratic traditions, poison the wells, and scorch the earth"

Children in Venezuela cook and eat their Christmas toys

Hillary: "I can hack Russia from my bathroom"

Hillary suggests to counter "fake news" with government newspaper called "Truth" ("Pravda" for Russian speakers)

BREAKING: Millions of uncounted votes found on Hillary's private voting machine in her Chappaqua bathroom

New York Times: Fidel Castro world's sexiest corpse

After years of trial and error, CIA finally succeeds with the "waiting it out" technique on Fidel Castro

Post-election shopping tip: look for the PoliticsFree label at your local grocer to make sure you don't buy from companies that don't want your business anymore

In Hillary's America, email server scrubs you

Obama transfers his Nobel Peace Prize to anti-Trump rioters

Democrats blame Hillary's criminal e-mail server for her loss, demand it face prison

Afraid of "dangerous" Trump presidency, protesters pre-emptively burn America down to the ground

Clinton Foundation in foreclosure as foreign donors demand refunds

Hillary Clinton blames YouTube video for unexpected and spontaneous voter uprising that prevented her inevitable move into the White House

Sudden rise in sea levels explained by disproportionately large tears shed by climate scientists in the aftermath of Trump's electoral victory

FBI director Comey delighted after receiving Nobel Prize for Speed Reading (650,000 emails in one week)

U.N. deploys troops to American college campuses in order to combat staggeringly low rape rates

Responding to Trump's surging poll numbers, Obama preemptively pardons himself for treason

Following hurricane Matthew's failure to devastate Florida, activists flock to the Sunshine State and destroy Trump signs manually

Tim Kaine takes credit for interrupting hurricane Matthew while debating weather in Florida

Study: Many non-voters still undecided on how they're not going to vote

The Evolution of Dissent: on November 8th the nation is to decide whether dissent will stop being racist and become sexist - or it will once again be patriotic as it was for 8 years under George W. Bush

Venezuela solves starvation problem by making it mandatory to buy food

Breaking: the Clinton Foundation set to investigate the FBI

Obama captures rare Pokemon while visiting Hiroshima

Movie news: 'The Big Friendly Giant Government' flops at box office; audiences say "It's creepy"

Barack Obama: "If I had a son, he'd look like Micah Johnson"

White House edits Orlando 911 transcript to say shooter pledged allegiance to NRA and Republican Party

President George Washington: 'Redcoats do not represent British Empire; King George promotes a distorted version of British colonialism'

Following Obama's 'Okie-Doke' speech, stock of Okie-Doke soars; NASDAQ: 'Obama best Okie-Doke salesman'

Weaponized baby formula threatens Planned Parenthood office; ACLU demands federal investigation of Gerber

Experts: melting Antarctic glacier could cause sale levels to rise up to 80% off select items by this weekend

Travel advisory: airlines now offering flights to front of TSA line

As Obama instructs his administration to get ready for presidential transition, Trump preemptively purchases 'T' keys for White House keyboards

John Kasich self-identifies as GOP primary winner, demands access to White House bathroom

Upcoming Trump/Kelly interview on FoxNews sponsored by 'Let's Make a Deal' and 'The Price is Right'

News from 2017: once the evacuation of Lena Dunham and 90% of other Hollywood celebrities to Canada is confirmed, Trump resigns from presidency: "My work here is done"

Non-presidential candidate Paul Ryan pledges not to run for president in new non-presidential non-ad campaign

Trump suggests creating 'Muslim database'; Obama symbolically protests by shredding White House guest logs beginning 2009

National Enquirer: John Kasich's real dad was the milkman, not mailman

National Enquirer: Bound delegates from Colorado, Wyoming found in Ted Cruzs basement

Iran breaks its pinky-swear promise not to support terrorism; US State Department vows rock-paper-scissors strategic response

Women across the country cheer as racist Democrat president on $20 bill is replaced by black pro-gun Republican

Federal Reserve solves budget crisis by writing itself a 20-trillion-dollar check

Widows, orphans claim responsibility for Brussels airport bombing

Che Guevara's son hopes Cuba's communism will rub off on US, proposes a long list of people the government should execute first

Susan Sarandon: "I don't vote with my vagina." Voters in line behind her still suspicious, use hand sanitizer

Campaign memo typo causes Hillary to court 'New Black Panties' vote

New Hampshire votes for socialist Sanders, changes state motto to "Live FOR Free or Die"

Martin O'Malley drops out of race after Iowa Caucus; nation shocked with revelation he has been running for president

Statisticians: one out of three Bernie Sanders supporters is just as dumb as the other two

Hillary campaign denies accusations of smoking-gun evidence in her emails, claims they contain only smoking-circumstantial-gun evidence

Obama stops short of firing US Congress upon realizing the difficulty of assembling another group of such tractable yes-men

In effort to contol wild passions for violent jihad, White House urges gun owners to keep their firearms covered in gun burkas

TV horror live: A Charlie Brown Christmas gets shot up on air by Mohammed cartoons

Democrats vow to burn the country down over Ted Cruz statement, 'The overwhelming majority of violent criminals are Democrats'

Russia's trend to sign bombs dropped on ISIS with "This is for Paris" found response in Obama administration's trend to sign American bombs with "Return to sender"

University researchers of cultural appropriation quit upon discovery that their research is appropriation from a culture that created universities

Archeologists discover remains of what Barack Obama has described as unprecedented, un-American, and not-who-we-are immigration screening process in Ellis Island

Mizzou protests lead to declaring entire state a "safe space," changing Missouri motto to "The don't show me state"

Green energy fact: if we put all green energy subsidies together in one-dollar bills and burn them, we could generate more electricity than has been produced by subsidized green energy

State officials improve chances of healthcare payouts by replacing ObamaCare with state lottery

NASA's new mission to search for racism, sexism, and economic inequality in deep space suffers from race, gender, and class power struggles over multibillion-dollar budget

College progress enforcement squads issue schematic humor charts so students know if a joke may be spontaneously laughed at or if regulations require other action

ISIS opens suicide hotline for US teens depressed by climate change and other progressive doomsday scenarios

Virginia county to close schools after teacher asks students to write 'death to America' in Arabic

'Wear hijab to school day' ends with spontaneous female circumcision and stoning of a classmate during lunch break

ISIS releases new, even more barbaric video in an effort to regain mantle from Planned Parenthood

Impressed by Fox News stellar rating during GOP debates, CNN to use same formula on Democrat candidates asking tough, pointed questions about Republicans

Shocking new book explores pros and cons of socialism, discovers they are same people

Pope outraged by Planned Parenthood's "unfettered capitalism," demands equal redistribution of baby parts to each according to his need

John Kerry accepts Iran's "Golden Taquiyya" award, requests jalapenos on the side

Citizens of Pluto protest US government's surveillance of their planetoid and its moons with New Horizons space drone

John Kerry proposes 3-day waiting period for all terrorist nations trying to acquire nuclear weapons

Chicago Police trying to identify flag that caused nine murders and 53 injuries in the city this past weekend

Cuba opens to affordable medical tourism for Americans who can't afford Obamacare deductibles

State-funded research proves existence of Quantum Aggression Particles (Heterons) in Large Hadron Collider

Student job opportunities: make big bucks this summer as Hillarys Ordinary-American; all expenses paid, travel, free acting lessons

Experts debate whether Iranian negotiators broke John Kerry's leg or he did it himself to get out of negotiations

Junior Varsity takes Ramadi, advances to quarterfinals

US media to GOP pool of candidates: 'Knowing what we know now, would you have had anything to do with the founding of the United States?'

NY Mayor to hold peace talks with rats, apologize for previous Mayor's cowboy diplomacy

China launches cube-shaped space object with a message to aliens: "The inhabitants of Earth will steal your intellectual property, copy it, manufacture it in sweatshops with slave labor, and sell it back to you at ridiculously low prices"

Progressive scientists: Truth is a variable deduced by subtracting 'what is' from 'what ought to be'

Experts agree: Hillary Clinton best candidate to lessen percentage of Americans in top 1%

America's attempts at peace talks with the White House continue to be met with lies, stalling tactics, and bad faith

Starbucks new policy to talk race with customers prompts new hashtag #DontHoldUpTheLine

Hillary: DELETE is the new RESET

Charlie Hebdo receives Islamophobe 2015 award; the cartoonists could not be reached for comment due to their inexplicable, illogical deaths

Russia sends 'reset' button back to Hillary: 'You need it now more than we do'

Barack Obama finds out from CNN that Hillary Clinton spent four years being his Secretary of State

President Obama honors Leonard Nimoy by taking selfie in front of Starship Enterprise

Police: If Obama had a convenience store, it would look like Obama Express Food Market

Study finds stunning lack of racial, gender, and economic diversity among middle-class white males

NASA: We're 80% sure about being 20% sure about being 17% sure about being 38% sure about 2014 being the hottest year on record

People holding '$15 an Hour Now' posters sue Democratic party demanding raise to $15 an hour for rendered professional protesting services

Cuba-US normalization: US tourists flock to see Cuba before it looks like the US and Cubans flock to see the US before it looks like Cuba

White House describes attacks on Sony Pictures as 'spontaneous hacking in response to offensive video mocking Juche and its prophet'

CIA responds to Democrat calls for transparency by releasing the director's cut of The Making Of Obama's Birth Certificate

Obama: 'If I had a city, it would look like Ferguson'

Biden: 'If I had a Ferguson (hic), it would look like a city'

Obama signs executive order renaming 'looters' to 'undocumented shoppers'

Ethicists agree: two wrongs do make a right so long as Bush did it first

The aftermath of the 'War on Women 2014' finds a new 'Lost Generation' of disillusioned Democrat politicians, unable to cope with life out of office

White House: Republican takeover of the Senate is a clear mandate from the American people for President Obama to rule by executive orders

Nurse Kaci Hickox angrily tells reporters that she won't change her clocks for daylight savings time

Democratic Party leaders in panic after recent poll shows most Democratic voters think 'midterm' is when to end pregnancy

Desperate Democratic candidates plead with Obama to stop backing them and instead support their GOP opponents

Ebola Czar issues five-year plan with mandatory quotas of Ebola infections per each state based on voting preferences

Study: crony capitalism is to the free market what the Westboro Baptist Church is to Christianity

Fun facts about world languages: the Left has more words for statism than the Eskimos have for snow

African countries to ban all flights from the United States because "Obama is incompetent, it scares us"

Nobel Peace Prize controversy: Hillary not nominated despite having done even less than Obama to deserve it

Obama: 'Ebola is the JV of viruses'

BREAKING: Secret Service foils Secret Service plot to protect Obama

Revised 1st Amendment: buy one speech, get the second free

Sharpton calls on white NFL players to beat their women in the interests of racial fairness

President Obama appoints his weekly approval poll as new national security adviser

Obama wags pen and phone at Putin; Europe offers support with powerful pens and phones from NATO members

White House pledges to embarrass ISIS back to the Stone Age with a barrage of fearsome Twitter messages and fatally ironic Instagram photos

Obama to fight ISIS with new federal Terrorist Regulatory Agency

Obama vows ISIS will never raise their flag over the eighteenth hole

Harry Reid: "Sometimes I say the wong thing"

Elian Gonzalez wishes he had come to the U.S. on a bus from Central America like all the other kids

Obama visits US-Mexican border, calls for a two-state solution

Obama draws "blue line" in Iraq after Putin took away his red crayon

"Hard Choices," a porno flick loosely based on Hillary Clinton's memoir and starring Hillary Hellfire as a drinking, whoring Secretary of State, wildly outsells the flabby, sagging original

Accusations of siding with the enemy leave Sgt. Bergdahl with only two options: pursue a doctorate at Berkley or become a Senator from Massachusetts

Jay Carney stuck in line behind Eric Shinseki to leave the White House; estimated wait time from 15 min to 6 weeks

100% of scientists agree that if man-made global warming were real, "the last people we'd want to help us is the Obama administration"

Jay Carney says he found out that Obama found out that he found out that Obama found out that he found out about the latest Obama administration scandal on the news

"Anarchy Now!" meeting turns into riot over points of order, bylaws, and whether or not 'kicking the #^@&*! ass' of the person trying to speak is or is not violence

Obama retaliates against Putin by prohibiting unionized federal employees from dating hot Russian girls online during work hours

Russian separatists in Ukraine riot over an offensive YouTube video showing the toppling of Lenin statues

"Free Speech Zones" confuse Obamaphone owners who roam streets in search of additional air minutes

Obamacare bolsters employment for professionals with skills to convert meth back into sudafed

Gloves finally off: Obama uses pen and phone to cancel Putin's Netflix account

Joe Biden to Russia: "We will bury you by turning more of Eastern Europe over to your control!"

In last-ditch effort to help Ukraine, Obama deploys Rev. Sharpton and Rev. Jackson's Rainbow Coalition to Crimea

Al Sharpton: "Not even Putin can withstand our signature chanting, 'racist, sexist, anti-gay, Russian army go away'!"

Mardi Gras in North Korea: "Throw me some food!"

Obama's foreign policy works: "War, invasion, and conquest are signs of weakness; we've got Putin right where we want him"

US offers military solution to Ukraine crisis: "We will only fight countries that have LGBT military"

Putin annexes Brighton Beach to protect ethnic Russians in Brooklyn, Obama appeals to UN and EU for help

The 1980s: "Mr. Obama, we're just calling to ask if you want our foreign policy back. The 1970s are right here with us, and they're wondering, too."

In a stunning act of defiance, Obama courageously unfriends Putin on Facebook

MSNBC: Obama secures alliance with Austro-Hungarian Empire against Russias aggression in Ukraine

Study: springbreak is to STDs what April 15th is to accountants

Efforts to achieve moisture justice for California thwarted by unfair redistribution of snow in America

North Korean voters unanimous: "We are the 100%"

Leader of authoritarian gulag-site, The People's Cube, unanimously 're-elected' with 100% voter turnout

Super Bowl: Obama blames Fox News for Broncos' loss

Feminist author slams gay marriage: "a man needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle"

Beverly Hills campaign heats up between Henry Waxman and Marianne Williamson over the widening income gap between millionaires and billionaires in their district

Biden to lower $10,000-a-plate Dinner For The Homeless to $5,000 so more homeless can attend

Kim becomes world leader, feeds uncle to dogs; Obama eats dogs, becomes world leader, America cries uncle

North Korean leader executes own uncle for talking about Obamacare at family Christmas party

White House hires part-time schizophrenic Mandela sign interpreter to help sell Obamacare

Kim Jong Un executes own "crazy uncle" to keep him from ruining another family Christmas

OFA admits its advice for area activists to give Obamacare Talk at shooting ranges was a bad idea

President resolves Obamacare debacle with executive order declaring all Americans equally healthy

Obama to Iran: "If you like your nuclear program, you can keep your nuclear program"

Bovine community outraged by flatulence coming from Washington DC

Obama: "I'm not particularly ideological; I believe in a good pragmatic five-year plan"

Shocker: Obama had no knowledge he'd been reelected until he read about it in the local newspaper last week

Server problems at HealthCare.gov so bad, it now flashes 'Error 808' message

NSA marks National Best Friend Day with official announcement: "Government is your best friend; we know you like no one else, we're always there, we're always willing to listen"

Al Qaeda cancels attack on USA citing launch of Obamacare as devastating enough

The President's latest talking point on Obamacare: "I didn't build that"

Dizzy with success, Obama renames his wildly popular healthcare mandate to HillaryCare

Carney: huge ObamaCare deductibles won't look as bad come hyperinflation

Washington Redskins drop 'Washington' from their name as offensive to most Americans

Poll: 83% of Americans favor cowboy diplomacy over rodeo clown diplomacy

GOVERNMENT WARNING: If you were able to complete ObamaCare form online, it wasn't a legitimate gov't website; you should report online fraud and change all your passwords

Obama administration gets serious, threatens Syria with ObamaCare

Obama authorizes the use of Vice President Joe Biden's double-barrel shotgun to fire a couple of blasts at Syria

Sharpton: "British royals should have named baby 'Trayvon.' By choosing 'George' they sided with white Hispanic racist Zimmerman"

DNC launches 'Carlos Danger' action figure; proceeds to fund a charity helping survivors of the Republican War on Women

Nancy Pelosi extends abortion rights to the birds and the bees

Hubble discovers planetary drift to the left

Obama: 'If I had a daughter-in-law, she would look like Rachael Jeantel'

FISA court rubberstamps statement denying its portrayal as government's rubber stamp

Every time ObamaCare gets delayed, a Julia somewhere dies

GOP to Schumer: 'Force full implementation of ObamaCare before 2014 or Dems will never win another election'

Obama: 'If I had a son... no, wait, my daughter can now marry a woman!'

Janet Napolitano: TSA findings reveal that since none of the hijackers were babies, elderly, or Tea Partiers, 9/11 was not an act of terrorism

News Flash: Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) can see Canada from South Dakota

Susan Rice: IRS actions against tea parties caused by anti-tax YouTube video that was insulting to their faith

Drudge Report reduces font to fit all White House scandals onto one page

Obama: the IRS is a constitutional right, just like the Second Amendment

White House: top Obama officials using secret email accounts a result of bad IT advice to avoid spam mail from Nigeria

Jay Carney to critics: 'Pinocchio never said anything inconsistent'

Obama: If I had a gay son, he'd look like Jason Collins

Gosnell's office in Benghazi raided by the IRS: mainstream media's worst cover-up challenge to date

IRS targeting pro-gay-marriage LGBT groups leads to gayest tax revolt in U.S. history

After Arlington Cemetery rejects offer to bury Boston bomber, Westboro Babtist Church steps up with premium front lawn plot

Boston: Obama Administration to reclassify marathon bombing as 'sportsplace violence'

Study: Success has many fathers but failure becomes a government program

US Media: Can Pope Francis possibly clear up Vatican bureaucracy and banking without blaming the previous administration?

Michelle Obama praises weekend rampage by Chicago teens as good way to burn calories and stay healthy

This Passover, Obama urges his subjects to paint lamb's blood above doors in order to avoid the Sequester



White House to American children: Sequester causes layoffs among hens that lay Easter eggs; union-wage Easter Bunnies to be replaced by Mexican Chupacabras

Time Mag names Hugo Chavez world's sexiest corpse

Boy, 8, pretends banana is gun, makes daring escape from school

Study: Free lunches overpriced, lack nutrition

Oscars 2013: Michelle Obama announces long-awaited merger of Hollywood and the State

Joe Salazar defends the right of women to be raped in gun-free environment: 'rapists and rapees should work together to prevent gun violence for the common good'

Dept. of Health and Human Services eliminates rape by reclassifying assailants as 'undocumented sex partners'

Kremlin puts out warning not to photoshop Putin riding meteor unless bare-chested

Deeming football too violent, Obama moves to introduce Super Drone Sundays instead

Japan offers to extend nuclear umbrella to cover U.S. should America suffer devastating attack on its own defense spending

Feminists organize one billion women to protest male oppression with one billion lap dances

Urban community protests Mayor Bloomberg's ban on extra-large pop singers owning assault weapons

Concerned with mounting death toll, Taliban offers to send peacekeeping advisers to Chicago

Karl Rove puts an end to Tea Party with new 'Republicans For Democrats' strategy aimed at losing elections

Answering public skepticism, President Obama authorizes unlimited drone attacks on all skeet targets throughout the country

Skeet Ulrich denies claims he had been shot by President but considers changing his name to 'Traps'

White House releases new exciting photos of Obama standing, sitting, looking thoughtful, and even breathing in and out

New York Times hacked by Chinese government, Paul Krugman's economic policies stolen

White House: when President shoots skeet, he donates the meat to food banks that feed the middle class

To prove he is serious, Obama eliminates armed guard protection for President, Vice-President, and their families; establishes Gun-Free Zones around them instead

State Dept to send 100,000 American college students to China as security for US debt obligations

Jay Carney: Al Qaeda is on the run, they're just running forward

President issues executive orders banning cliffs, ceilings, obstructions, statistics, and other notions that prevent us from moving forwards and upward

Fearing the worst, Obama Administration outlaws the fan to prevent it from being hit by certain objects

World ends; S&P soars

Riddle of universe solved; answer not understood

Meek inherit Earth, can't afford estate taxes

Greece abandons Euro; accountants find Greece has no Euros anyway

Wheel finally reinvented; axles to be gradually reinvented in 3rd quarter of 2013

Bigfoot found in Ohio, mysteriously not voting for Obama

As Santa's workshop files for bankruptcy, Fed offers bailout in exchange for control of 'naughty and nice' list

Freak flying pig accident causes bacon to fly off shelves

Obama: green economy likely to transform America into a leading third world country of the new millennium

Report: President Obama to visit the United States in the near future

Obama promises to create thousands more economically neutral jobs

Modernizing Islam: New York imam proposes to canonize Saul Alinsky as religion's latter day prophet

Imam Rauf's peaceful solution: 'Move Ground Zero a few blocks away from the mosque and no one gets hurt'

Study: Obama's threat to burn tax money in Washington 'recruitment bonanza' for Tea Parties

Study: no Social Security reform will be needed if gov't raises retirement age to at least 814 years

Obama attends church service, worships self

Obama proposes national 'Win The Future' lottery; proceeds of new WTF Powerball to finance more gov't spending

Historical revisionists: "Hey, you never know"

Vice President Biden: criticizing Egypt is un-pharaoh

Israelis to Egyptian rioters: "don't damage the pyramids, we will not rebuild"

Lake Superior renamed Lake Inferior in spirit of tolerance and inclusiveness

Al Gore: It's a shame that a family can be torn apart by something as simple as a pack of polar bears

Michael Moore: As long as there is anyone with money to shake down, this country is not broke

Obama's teleprompters unionize, demand collective bargaining rights

Obama calls new taxes 'spending reductions in tax code.' Elsewhere rapists tout 'consent reductions in sexual intercourse'

Obama's teleprompter unhappy with White House Twitter: "Too few words"

Obama's Regulation Reduction committee finds US Constitution to be expensive outdated framework inefficiently regulating federal gov't

Taking a page from the Reagan years, Obama announces new era of Perestroika and Glasnost

Responding to Oslo shootings, Obama declares Christianity "Religion of Peace," praises "moderate Christians," promises to send one into space

Republicans block Obama's $420 billion program to give American families free charms that ward off economic bad luck

White House to impose Chimney tax on Santa Claus

Obama decrees the economy is not soaring as much as previously decreeed

Conservative think tank introduces children to capitalism with pop-up picture book "The Road to Smurfdom"

Al Gore proposes to combat Global Warming by extracting silver linings from clouds in Earth's atmosphere

Obama refutes charges of him being unresponsive to people's suffering: "When you pray to God, do you always hear a response?"

Obama regrets the US government didn't provide his mother with free contraceptives when she was in college

Fluke to Congress: drill, baby, drill!

Planned Parenthood introduces Frequent Flucker reward card: 'Come again soon!'

Obama to tornado victims: 'We inherited this weather from the previous administration'

Obama congratulates Putin on Chicago-style election outcome

People's Cube gives itself Hero of Socialist Labor medal in recognition of continued expert advice provided to the Obama Administration helping to shape its foreign and domestic policies

Hamas: Israeli air defense unfair to 99% of our missiles, "only 1% allowed to reach Israel"

Democrat strategist: without government supervision, women would have never evolved into humans

Voters Without Borders oppose Texas new voter ID law

Enraged by accusation that they are doing Obama's bidding, media leaders demand instructions from White House on how to respond

Obama blames previous Olympics for failure to win at this Olympics

Official: China plans to land on Moon or at least on cheap knockoff thereof

Koran-Contra: Obama secretly arms Syrian rebels

Poll: Progressive slogan 'We should be more like Europe' most popular with members of American Nazi Party

Obama to Evangelicals: Jesus saves, I just spend

May Day: Anarchists plan, schedule, synchronize, and execute a coordinated campaign against all of the above

Midwestern farmers hooked on new erotic novel "50 Shades of Hay"

Study: 99% of Liberals give the rest a bad name

Obama meets with Jewish leaders, proposes deeper circumcisions for the rich

Historians: Before HOPE & CHANGE there was HEMP & CHOOM at ten bucks a bag

Cancer once again fails to cure Venezuela of its "President for Life"

Tragic spelling error causes Muslim protesters to burn local boob-tube factory

Secretary of Energy Steven Chu: due to energy conservation, the light at the end of the tunnel will be switched off

Obama Administration running food stamps across the border with Mexico in an operation code-named "Fat And Furious"

Pakistan explodes in protest over new Adobe Acrobat update; 17 local acrobats killed

White House: "Let them eat statistics"

Special Ops: if Benedict Arnold had a son, he would look like Barack Obama







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The sextoy market is growing quite rapidly in India right now.

Although it is not a big trend, it is a hot topic on the internet as it is secretly expanding its market.

In this article, we will focus on sextoy and introduce recommended sextoy for Indian beginners of sextoy by gender.

India, the birthplace of the Kama Sutra, is very strict about sex.

Also, premarital sex is basically not allowed. Therefore, there are many people who are sexually restricted.

But what happens when you continue to be sexually restricted?

Frustration may build up and you may end up taking your sexual stress out on your partner.

If you are able to adopt sextoy in a timely manner, you can get rid of those problems.

I want to have more exciting sex than Im having now.

I want more variation in masturbation

I want to get even stronger pleasure than I do on my own.

If you have any of these problems, please stay with me until the end.

What is sex toys for Indian?

Sextoy, as the name implies, is a toy used during sex and masturbation.

It is a generic term for vibrators, Egg-vibrators, Electric massagers, dildo, handcuffs and condoms.

They are used to make regular sex more exciting or to make masturbation more pleasurable.

Because sextoy is very stimulating, it can help you to get rid of the problems and frustrations of being in a rut of sex with your partner for a long time, or if you are unhappy with the lack of pleasure in sex with your partner.

The ability to satisfy your desires with movement, texture, and size, which cannot be done by a normal human being, can help you to be satisfied with sex and, as a result, improve your relationship with your partner.

It is also said to help improve sexual dysfunction (inability to get an erection or ejaculate) and difficulty in feeling during sex (insensitivity), which is attracting more attention than in the past.

In recent years, the demand for sextoy has increased due to the spread of smartphones and the Internet and the increasing number of people using online shopping.

Even those who are concerned about the appearance of sextoy (and find it difficult to purchase) can now easily obtain it by using mail order.

In the case of online shopping, most of the stores have taken steps to ensure that the contents of the products delivered to you are not revealed, so you can purchase them without your family members knowing.

Until a while ago, you had to go to the store where the adult goods were sold to buy them, so it was quite a hurdle to overcome.

Also, many people may have an image that sextoy is somehow embarrassing to own.

But nowadays, some of them are so stylish and cute that you cant believe they are sextoy at a glance.

More and more people are using them for travel and outdoor use because they are not too bulky and are suitable for carrying around.

Sextoy situation in India

Before introducing the recommended sextoy for Indians, lets talk about one of the sextoy situations in India in recent years.

In India, due to the high concentration of population, the following six cities have particularly high sales of sextoy in India.

Mumbai

Kolkata

Bangalore

Delhi

Chennai

Hyderabad

These cities account for roughly 70 percent of sextoy sales in India.

In the future, the percentage of sextoy use will gradually increase in other cities in India as well.

If you never talk about sextoy publicly, that girl in your neighborhood might be a sextoy user too.

If you are interested in sextoy, you dont have to suppress your desire for it.

What are Sextoys for beginner?

Among all sextoys, sextoy for beginners are vibrators, dildo, masturbators, Sex Lubricants, and condoms.

Sex Lubricants and condoms, which are familiar to people who have had sex, are also a great beginners sextoy.

I will explain the details of each toy later, but there are many sextoy products that are painful to use and can only be used after some anal expansion.

I assume that the Indian readers of this article are people who have not had much experience with sextoy.

If such people use professional sextoy suddenly, they are at risk of injury or trauma.

Therefore, to introduce sextoy, you need to start with a beginners version and gradually become familiar with it.

Advantages of using sextoy for Indians

There are three advantages of using sextoy for Indians

You can masturbate in a wide variety of ways.

Can have stimulating sex

Can develop new sexual zones

If you try to masturbate with your own fingers or hands, it tends to be a pattern.

However, with sextoy, you can easily masturbate in a variety of ways.

You will definitely be fascinated by the attraction of new stimulation.

Also, your daily sex life will be more exciting than ever.

There are many things in sextoy that are visually stimulating and give you a strong and intense feeling of pleasure.

This allows you to see your partners promiscuity in a way that you wouldnt normally see it.

When you are in a relationship, sex with your partner may become a pattern, but it can also eliminate these problems.

It can also lead to the development of new sexual zones (which is the training of sexual stimulation to allow you to feel orgasms).

For more information on the development of new sexual zones, see the following articles

[Women's Erogenous Zone]How to find and develop, 7 hidden sexual zones !![In India] In this issue, we will dissect the female erogenous zone! ..." Many of you may be like that. Men, in particular, shou...

Thus, the use of sextoy can only be a good thing for the men and women of India.

Sextoy for beginner men in India

So, lets continue with the recommended goods for Indian sextoy beginners.

For ease of understanding, we will introduce them by gender. Lets start with the men!

The following five goods are recommended for novice Indian sextoy men

Masturbator

Cock rings

Love Doll

Sex Lubricants

Toys for the prostate

Lets check each one in detail.

Masturbator

The masturbator is a sextoy for men that elaborately reproduces a womans vagina, mouth, and anus, and is one of the most popular sextoy products.

It is used by men to masturbate, and it is popular because it provides stronger stimulation and pleasure more easily than using hands.

Most are made of good quality silicone, and their softness is something that cannot be achieved with ones own hands.

They can provide stronger pleasure than a real womans vagina, so be careful not to overuse them. (You wont be able to have an orgasm in a womans vagina anymore.)

Again Male masturbators are a wonderful toy. I do not need any favourite timing, bothersome bargaining. You do not have to worry too much.

Revolutionize your masturbation time! ! !

Made in Japan is a wonderful kinky toy.#sextoysindia #SexToyIndia #Japanhttps://t.co/4k70QGzoTP pic.twitter.com/tRVdxTKPpa   SEXToys India PR  (@SextoysIndia) November 12, 2018

Some of them are disposable, while others can be washed and used over and over again, so its fun to buy a few to use depending on your mood.

If you want to know more about masturbator, please click here

Really pleasant male masturbation and how to do it Are you in a rut with your daily masturbation routine? I'm going to show you five ways men masturbate that you might ...

[For Beginners] How to choose and use a male masturbator without fail Gentlemen.Have you ever used a masturbator? The person who sees this article is probably the one who has not experien...

Cock Ring

A cock ring is literally a ring-shaped sextoy that is worn on a mans penis.

It maintains an erection by binding the penis with a ring of rubber and blocking blood flow.

It is sometimes used as an accessory to be worn on the penis, and may be made of metal or plastic as well as rubber.

In some cases, cock rings have parts or vibrators attached to them that stimulate the vagina, so they kill two birds with one stone, giving a woman pleasure while maintaining an erection.

Cock rings are also sometimes used to treat erectile dysfunction.

It can help with erectile dysfunction, where the penis doesnt get hard when you get an erection or doesnt last long when you try to insert it.

Men who are prone to breakage or who are unsure of the hardness and size of their erections can use a cock ring to increase the size of their penis and maintain an erection for a longer period of time.

Cock rings vary in price from around RS700 to over RS2000 with a vibrator function.

Some of them do not fit your penis, so you should check the size of the cock ring before you buy.

You should know the size of your partners or your own penis when it is erect.

[Penis enlargement] What is a cock ring? Types and usage Cock rings can make your penis bigger and harder. It also makes sex with women more fulfilling and increases your sat...

Love Doll

Love dolls, also known as Dutchwives, are dolls with the appearance of a woman who can experience simulated sex.

There are dolls that look like a woman, but they have no face and only have their breasts and lower torso cut off, and some dolls are so realistic that they can actually be mistaken for real women.

Some expensive dolls can cost more than 1 million yen, and the quality of the doll is easily influenced by the price.

The higher the price, the higher the quality of the doll will be, the closer it will be to the real woman, and the cheaper the doll will be, the less elaborate it will be, making it look like a real doll! Something is wrong! That is also true.

You cant go wrong if you choose a balance between price and taste.

There are stores that allow you to make custom-made love dolls, so you can create a girl of your choice.

You can make a girl of your choice. You can start with inexpensive love dolls at first, and once you get used to it, you can try custom-made love dolls.

If you want to know more about Love doll, please click here

Thorough explanation of the charm of sex dolls! Have you ever heard of sex dolls that are used primarily for pseudo-sex purposes? It is a doll that is quite close to...

Sex lubricants

Sex lubricants are used as a substitute for lubricating fluid during sex or as a lubricant for men to use masturbator rules.

It is not uncommon for women to have difficulty getting wet, depending on their physical condition, or to have difficulty getting wet due to their constitution.

Forcing the penis into the vagina at such times can cause painful intercourse.

There are various types of Sex Lubricants, some with a warming effect, some with a cooling effect, and some with a scent.

Changing the Sex Lubricant used during play is recommended as a good sex accent.

If you want to learn more about Sex Lubricants, click here.

What is sex lubricant?Explain the difference and usage of each ingredient The word "sex toy" may seem like a hurdle to overcome, but lotion is actually one of the most familiar sex toys. Many...

Toys for the Prostate

Another sextoy for men is prostate toys.

The most famous prostate toys include Enemagra, which was originally a prostate massager developed by an American urologist to treat an enlarged prostate line.

Modern prostate toys are imitations of Enemagra that have spread as sextoy for men.

Many people think of prostate toys as being used by gay men, but in fact they are often used by straight men.

What is the prostate?

The prostate is an organ found only in men. It is a walnut-sized organ located deep in the pelvis, just below the bladder, and its primary role is to protect and nourish sperm.

You cannot touch the prostate gland from outside the body, but you can touch it by inserting a finger or sextoy through the anus.

By inserting a finger or sextoy through the anus and touching the prostate and developing it, you can feel intense orgasms.

Orgasms felt in the prostate are mainly dry orgasms, which are orgasms that do not involve ejaculation. (You can also feel orgasms with ejaculation through prostate stimulation.)

The prostate is called the male G-spot, and dry orgasms can be much more intense than ejaculation.

Therefore, men who are able to develop a prostate can become addicted to the pleasure.

sextoy for beinner women in India

The following are the recommended goods for Indian women who are new to sextoy.

The following three are recommended for use by women who are new to sextoy.

Vibrator.

Dildo

Electric Masserger

Lets check out what each one is in detail.

If you want to check out womens toys, click here.

[BEST25]Sex Toys for Women in IndiaThat Can Help You Have an Orgasm There are many women who pretend to feel orgasm during sex. But don't worry, you don't have to pretend to feel orgasm...

Vibrators

A vibrator is a sextoy that vibrates with an Egg-Vibrator to provide stimulation and is often referred to simply as a vibrator.

Some vibrate as well as rotate, and there are many variations of sextoy.

It is quite a popular sextoy, and is well recognized by people who do not know much about sextoy.

Its usage is similar to that of a massager, but it is more compact and easier to carry than a massager, and many of them look as cute as a lipstick or a macaroon, so they are popular among women.

For a while, a famous influencer on twitter said, This is good! You may have heard of the topic of this article by introducing the recommended vibrators.

Vibrators are great for women to use on their own, but they are also recommended for men who have difficulty satisfying women with sex.

Since it is powered by electricity, it is far less tiring than moving your hands by yourself.

This makes it easier to satisfy a woman with sex because you can caress her for longer than usual.

Vibrators are mainly used on the female side, but they can also be used on men.

When used on men, they are used to attack the nipples and glans, and in both cases it is recommended to wear a condom for hygiene reasons.

Introducing how to use the vibrator, its purpose, and how to choose it! Vibrator uses the vibrations caused by the rotation of the motor to provide stimulation. It is one or two of the most...

Dildo

A dildo is a model sextoy made to mimic a male penis.

It can be made of silicone, elastomer (think of it as a material similar to PVC), metal or glass.

A dildo can be used by a man for his female partner during sex, or by a woman for masturbation to get pleasure from it.

They are mainly inserted into women, but some can be used in the male anus as well.

It is sometimes used synonymously with vibrators, but the vibrator is not the same thing as a vibrating device.

A model of a penis that does not vibrate is a dildo.

Some of them have suction cups that can be attached to the floor or wall so that you can enjoy realistic masturbation without using your hands.

For fun, there is a dildo made in the shape of your partners penis.

This one is also popular as a gift, and if youve been together for a long time and are having trouble finding a gift for your partner, you might want to pick one.

To learn more about dildo, please click here.

What is Dildo: Orgasms with Dildos for Men and Women A dildo is a model of a male organ that is used by women for masturbation and by men to stimulate the prostate gland. Th...

Electric Masserger

A Electric Masserger is a hand-held electric massager, also known as a handheld massager, and can usually be purchased at electronics stores.

It was originally designed to relieve stiff shoulders and back pain, so the hurdle of buying one in a physical store is quite low.

Many people may have seen or used it in some form or another, as it is often installed in leisure hotels.

Such a massager is highly recommended for beginners because it is easy for women to get pleasure from it when they use it during masturbation.

It is larger than Egg-Vibrator and vibrations are stronger than those of Egg-Vibrators and vibrators, so even just hitting the clitoris can give you a great deal of pleasure.

For those women who have never had an orgasm during sex with their man, the massager may be a good way to get a feel for what it feels like to have an orgasm.

It looks and feels like an electric massager, so you wont have to feel awkward if your roommate finds out.

If you are in a rut of having sex with your partner, if you want to feel an orgasm through masturbation, or if you are thinking of using a sextoy, why dont you try it from a simple massager?

To learn more about Electric Masserger, click here.

What is a massager? Introducing types, selection methods, and usage Originally, the Magic-wand vibrator and the massage machine were sold as a home massage machine used for the back and th...

How to choose a sextoy for Indian

Now that weve covered the different types of sextoy, heres how to choose one.

Especially if you are trying sextoy for the first time, pay attention to the following three points:  Does the size fit you (the partner)?

Does the size fit you (your partner)?

Is the environment able to produce sound without problems?

Price range

First of all, the choice of size is quite important.

Most sextoy are used against or inserted into the genitals, but the genitals are very delicate organs for both men and women.

For this reason, using an inappropriate size may cause damage.

Secondly, the environment should be able to produce sound without problems.

Some sextoys not only wear, but also rotate and vibrate. Its easier to get pleasure from something that moves than something that doesnt, but the fact that it moves means that the internal rotors make some noise.

If you live in a house with thin walls or if you have roommates, you may not be able to concentrate because of the noise, so it is best to choose one that is silent or has a low noise level.

Especially in India, where many people live with their families, it is very important that you dont have to worry about sound when you use it.

Finally, there is the price range.

The price range of sextoy ranges widely, from around RS500 at the cheapest to RS10,000 or more at the highest.

Its good to consider how much money you can afford and how much you want to buy.

Do you want your family to not find out about sextoy?

I live with my family and want to use sextoy without them finding out! If you are a man, you should buy a camouflage sextoy that does not look like a sextoy at first glance.

For men, there are many masturbators that do not look like a sextoy, and for women, there are vibrators that only look like cosmetics.

If you choose such a type, youll be safe in case your family members find out.

How to buy sextoys in India

The best way to purchase sextoy is through online shopping.

For more information on how to purchase sextoy, please see the article below.

Sextoy is one of them.

Therefore, you can easily get sextoy in India by using online shopping.

SexToysINDIA is a long established and stable sextoy store and you can have sextoy delivered to any place in India.

They also offer cash on delivery, so those who are worried about shopping with a credit card do not have to worry.

Of course, the latest security is in place, so your information will not be taken out when you use your credit card.

To begin with, many people may be concerned about whether they are legally allowed to purchase sextoy.

ikmAs it turns out, its not illegal.

Right now, it is not open to the public because the Indian adult market is still in the development stage, but it will gradually spread from now on.

Take advantage of sextoy and open the door to new pleasures and culture.

Cautions for Indians using sextoy

When using sextoy, keep the following three things in mind

Keep sex toys clean

Watch out for electrical leakage

Beware of the heat generated by the body while using a sex toy

As I mentioned earlier, many sextoy products are used for the delicate zone.

Therefore, it is most important to keep the sextoy itself clean. It is very important to keep the sextoy itself clean, because if a slight scratch is created by friction, bacteria can enter and breed there.

It is safe to wear a condom when using the masturbator, just in case.

In addition, many sextoy devices are powered by a power source, so if they are not waterproof, there is a possibility of electric shock or malfunction due to wetness.

Some may even develop heat during continuous use. If the fever becomes too much, you may get burned, so be careful.

If you get a fever during use, stop driving the sextoy immediately and refrain from using it.

You will enjoy sex more if you keep it safe and use it correctly.

Summary

What did you think?

In this article, we have introduced the recommended sextoy for the beginners of sextoy in India.

The sextoy market is growing rapidly in India and it will continue to grow steadily in the future.

As India is a rather closed-minded country, it can be difficult to be open about ones sexual habits and values.

However, being faithful to ones desires by properly dissolving ones sexual desire is very effective for ones physical and mental health.

If this is your first time to learn about sextoy, or if you are interested in using sextoy, why not give it a try?

Indian Sextoys for ur best! will introduce you to sextoy and other trivia about sextoy, sexuality, and sexuality for men and women.

I want to read more! If you think its a great idea, please bookmark it.
A Carbondale man was sentenced to state prison for threatening a public official and false personation of a peace officer, according to a Friday news release from Michael Carr, Jackson County States Attorney.

On March 2, Arseny Shlyapintokh, 39, identified himself as an undercover police officer and ordered three victims in a car in the 1300 block of East Main Street in Carbondale to provide him with their identification. Shlyapintokh then ordered the victims to let him in their vehicle and ordered them to drive him to St. Louis.

After Shlyapintokh was taken into custody, the defendant threatened to kill the police officer by shooting him.

On July 14, Shlyapintokh pleaded guilty to both counts. On Wednesday, Shlyapintokh was sentenced to three years in state prison with a one-year period of mandatory supervised release for each count. The two counts are to be served concurrently.

 The Southern
MARION  Elisa Kirkpatrick, a former Southern Illinois veterinarian who performed surgery on pets after her license was suspended by the state, was sentenced Friday to serve two years of mandatory probation and submit to mental health evaluation and treatment.

Kirkpatrick was found guilty in July of felony aggravated cruel treatment of an animal and 10 misdemeanor charges after investigators found dozens of animals at her Creal Springs home last year.

Judge Brian Lewis declined to sentence Kirkpatrick to 180 days in Williamson County Jail as recommended by the prosecution, saying such a sentence would be detrimental to her mental health.

I think its very clear that there was a domino effect of events in this case that led to a downward spiral, Judge Lewis said in the ruling.

A longtime veterinarian at Carbondales Kitty Klinic, Kirkpatrick had her license suspended by the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation in December 2014 and continued to practice veterinary medicine throughout the following year, picking up animals at owners homes and treating them at her house.

Authorities performed a welfare check at Kirkpatricks home on May 22, 2015, after receiving a report of an offensive odor from an individual who had tried to serve her an eviction notice. They discovered dozens of animals, including 40 dogs, 15 cats, two pigs, a donkey, a cockatoo, a bobcat and an African serval. In the basement, they found bags stuffed with animal carcasses.

Kirkpatrick was convicted of a Class 4 felony of aggravated cruel treatment of an animal for performing a surgical operation of an American Staffordshire terrier named Chief in an unsterile manner on her kitchen island. Chief died within 24 hours of being removed from her home by authorities.

In addition to mandatory probation, Assistant Williamson County States Attorney Joe Cervantez had recommended 180 days of jail time and a $5,000 fine. The prosecution also said Kirkpatrick should be barred from working with, living with or owning animals for the duration of her probation.

Kirkpatricks attorney, John Clemons of the Southern Illinois Law Center, argued against the $5,000 fine, calling Kirkpatrick indigent and unemployed.

She lives with her mother in the house her parents own in Christopher, he said. She doesnt have $5,000. She doesnt have any money.

Clemons called the proposed rule that would prevent Kirkpatrick from working and living with animals extremely problematic and an unnecessary condition, as Kirkpatricks mother owns several animals and Kirkpatrick might be able to secure employment as a researcher.

We dont need to infringe on Dr. Kirkpatricks ability to get some kind of employment, he said.

In the sentencing, Judge Lewis said he would not proscribe Kirkpatrick from being around animals. She was ordered to pay court fees but was not ordered to pay a fine.
CHARLESTON  Eastern Illinois University is seeing the largest deficit in enrollment in comparison to that of recent years, according to new total student numbers.

A press release states the numbers show fall total enrollment sitting at 7,415 students with an on-campus enrollment of 6,548 and an off-campus count of 867. A year ago, the number of students taking on- and off-campus classes was 7,616 and 904, respectively, for a total enrollment of 8,520.

Not only do these numbers show EIU's continuing descent in enrollment since its start a decade ago, but they also show that this years dip in enrollment is steep.

From fall 2015 to today's enrollment, the university saw a deficit of 1,105 students. This the largest drop-off of students in the past decade, according to enrollment numbers.

This decrease was reflected most in undergraduate enrollment. Easterns undergraduate student number rests at 5,957, down from 7,202 last year. This represents a 17.3 percent decrease from last year. This includes a drop in transfer students from 798 in fall 2015 to 536 this semester.

Eastern saw 1,251 freshmen and 536 transfer students coming in this fall, a drop off from the 1,673 freshmen and 798 transfer students the university saw last year.

According to the release, the breakdown of Easterns undergraduate students with fall 2015 figures in parentheses is as follows: freshmen, 1,251 (1,673); sophomores, 1,073 (1,295); juniors, 1,447 (1,791); and seniors, 2,138 (2,385). An additional 48 students are enrolled as post baccalaureate undergraduate students.

While a decrease in enrollment has been steady for a while, Eastern officials largely attribute this latest loss of students to the negativity surrounding state budget issues that have plagued Illinois agencies during the last fiscal year and even into the current year with no full budget passed by lawmakers in Springfield.

Do not lose sight of the fact that just last fall 2015 we had an increase of new freshmen of 2 percent over the previous year, EIU President David Glassman said. We do have a proven strategy to grow our enrollments, and Im positive that once the state budget issue is resolved well resume that growth trajectory very quickly.

Not all the of Eastern's enrollment numbers dropped this year, however.

As previously reported, both graduate student and international student enrollments experienced solid increases. The number of graduate students grew to 1,458 from last years 1,318, which is an increase of 10.6 percent.

International students now number 433, up from 291 in 2015, which is an increase of 48.8 percent. These numbers could not supplement the deficit in undergraduate enrollment, though.

Glassman said in his State of the University address Wednesday that he set a goal for the universitys international recruitment initiative to reach 500 students by fall 2017.

It appears we are well on our way to meeting and even surpassing that goal, he noted in the address.

The percentage of minority students enrolled overall at the university remains nearly identical to last year, making up 26.1 percent of total enrollment, according to the release. Last year, they made up 25.92 percent.

Among minorities, the breakdown, with a parentheses marking fall 2015 numbers, is: Asians, 76 (92); black, not of Hispanic origin, 1,226 (1,441); Hispanic, 449 (471); Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, 5 (4); two or more races, 153 (181).

In addition, the new first-time freshman class is of strong academic quality, according to the university, with average ACT scores (21.34) and high school GPAs (3.08) identical to last year's class.

We deliberately held to our admissions standards, Glassman said in the address. EIU continuously ranks high compared to our peer institutions in retention and graduation rates, metrics we do not want to, nor will we, jeopardize.

In his address, Glassman detailed several plans including using information from the university's new Vitalization Project to better identify what efficiencies and innovations Eastern can make to remain competitive in the market.
This editorial appeared in Thursday's Washington Post.

The deadliest month in two decades. More homicides this year than in New York and Los Angeles combined. Almost twice as many people killed as U.S. soldiers killed in Afghanistan since 2013. With each new homicide in Chicago comes a new description that tries to capture the magnitude  and horror  of the violence that has plagued America's third-largest city.

A wave of shootings  65 people shot, 13 of them fatally  over the Labor Day weekend pushed the number of dead for 2016 past 500, putting Chicago on pace for more than 600 homicides for the year. Among those killed over the holiday weekend: a 44-year-old man killed as he and his wife drove to the grocery store, an 80-year-old pastor shot in the face outside the senior home where he lived and a 17-year-old boy shot in the back. Others gunned down this year include a young woman caught in crossfire as she walked her baby in a stroller and a newborn baby boy who died two days after an emergency delivery necessitated by his mother being shot in the chest.

The violence, reminiscent of the crack-cocaine epidemic that drove murders in cities across the nation in the 1990s, seems to have left officials flummoxed. Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said Tuesday that his department is doing all it can to combat violence. "It's not a police issue, it's a society issue," he said, pointing the finger instead at "impoverished neighborhoods" where "people without hope do these kinds of things."

That sounded like an evasion. No doubt the chief is right about the complexities that give root to crime and violence. But it is clear  as evidenced by the success New York and other cities have had in curtailing homicides  that Chicago has a unique set of problems in which the police play their part. Foremost among them are the tumult and distrust that pervade police-community relations in the wake of the fatal shooting of black teen Laquan McDonald by an officer in October 2014 and the belated release of a troubling video a year later. That the police union urged its members to refuse voluntary overtime over the recent holiday weekend  when they were most needed  suggests there may be a morale problem, the "Ferguson effect" of police not doing all they can.

It is also important to address the flow of illegal guns that fuels the violence in gang-heavy neighborhoods. Despite restrictive gun laws, guns are easily available from nearby jurisdictions, such as Indiana. And despite its reputation for strict control, Chicago has relatively lenient gun penalties. There is a one-year minimum for illegal possession, compared with New York's 3 years.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D) has promised to deliver a major address in mid-September to deal with the violence. "It's a complex set of problems that will be dealt with in a very comprehensive way," he said. "Everything from the police, to children, to what we have to do for their safety, to guns, to making sure we're providing hope where there is despair." That many of his constituents think it more likely that young people will become victims of crime than graduates from college shows the need for urgency in offering solutions.
As Claflin University students begin the new school year, President Dr. Henry N. Tisdale is encouraging them to take advantage of everything the institution has to offer.

Tisdale explained Thursday that the university will be providing opportunities for research, internships, studying abroad, service and service learning.

We need you to take advantage of the opportunities. We need you to be aggressive. We need you to be passionate about pursuing these applied learning opportunities, he said.

We want you to be well prepared to become successful in the workforce and in graduate and professional school, he said.

Tisdale spoke to students about their future, and the universitys, during Claflins 147th Matriculation Day Convocation.

He summarized the universitys vision into two words: Claflin L.E.A.D.S.

The acronym stands for leadership development, experiential learning, academic programs, diversity and student success.

Bookmarks with the vision were given to the students. They carried the message that Claflin University will be recognized as a leading 21st Century institution of higher education that develops a diverse and inclusive community of globally engaged visionary leaders.

A planning grant from the United Negro College Funds Career Pathways Initiative will help students prepare for their future. The grant is funded by the Lily Endowment.

They gave us a grant of $100,000 and challenged us to plan a Career Pathway Initiative and in planning it, they said we can compete for $2 million or more to support this initiative, Tisdale said.

The initiative aims to increase the percentage of students who transition into high-paying jobs immediately after graduation.

We will have each student coming to Claflin develop a four-year career pathway plan when they arrive at the university, Tisdale explained.

The second thing we will do is we will realign the curriculum, if necessary, to ensure that we give students the skills and competency required for success in the 21st century workforce, he said.

The university will expand on its partnerships and relationships by bringing companies to the campus to recruit students for high-paying jobs, Tisdale said.

The Career Pathway Initiative will involve everyone on campus, he said.

Tisdale noted that the university looks to break ground on a health and wellness center this year.

The health and wellness center is being built to serve the students, faculty and staff of Claflin as well as the Orangeburg community, he said.

It will include a walking track, a fitness center, group fitness spaces, a demonstration kitchen, instructional labs, classrooms, locker rooms, office spaces and other amenities.

Tisdale also said the university will be celebrating the successful conclusion of its $100 million capital campaign next month.

Tisdale listed various accomplishments by the university:

 A 60 percent increase in South Carolina Palmetto, Life and Hope scholars. The number increased from 220 to 352 in the class.

 Thirty percent of the incoming students chose majors in the science, technology, engineering and math fields. The top majors are biology, business and the universitys new psychology program.

Its only about two or three years old, but psychology is quickly moving up the ranks at the university as a program of choice, Tisdale said.

 For the tenth year in a row, Claflin has the largest number of James E. Clyburn scholars of any institution in the state, Tisdale said.

120 scholarships were given out statewide. Of those, 36 went to Claflin students in the class of 2020.

 U.S. News and World Report ranked Claflin University alumni as number one among HBCUs for their annual giving rate.

 The campus was listed as one of the 10 most beautiful HBCU campuses in the nation by the magazine Black Southern Belle.

He concluded with a challenge to the students.

With the many challenges facing our state and nation, you can become the change and a new generation of talented problem solvers, Tisdale said. America needs talent, the world needs visionaries.

Also speaking at the program was Dr. Ishita Mukhopadhyay, professor of economics at the University of Calcutta in India.

In 2015, representatives of Claflin University traveled to the University of Calcutta to form a partnership.

This project aims to promote eco-friendly entrepreneurship for women in West Bengal, India, Dr. Karl T. Wright said as he introduced her.

Lessons learned from this initiative will be shared throughout India and, we think, around the world, he said.

We expect our collaboration to (bring) more and more innovative programs, Mukhopadhyay said. Our expectation is to generate ideas.

Among the freshmen at Thursdays event was Caleb Green, a business administration student from Metter, Georgia. He says there have been many new things to get used to, but he has enjoyed his time at Claflin so far.

Its been great, Green said. Ive really been enjoying my experience here.

The faculty and staff have been great, he said, adding that it feels like everyone wants you to succeed.
Strangely, over a century, America's two major political parties gradually reversed identities, like the magnetic poles of Planet Earth switching direction.

When the Republican Party was formed in 1856, it was fiercely liberal, opposing the expansion of slavery, calling for more spending on public education, seeking more open immigration, and the like. Compassionate Abraham Lincoln suited the new party's progressive agenda.

In that era, Democrats were conservatives, partly dominated by the slave-holding South. Those old-style Democrats generally opposed any government action to create jobs or help underdogs.

Through the latter half of the 19th century, the pattern of Republicans as liberals, Democrats as conservatives, generally held true. In 1888, the GOP elected President Benjamin Harrison (1833-1901) on a liberal platform seeking more social services.

Then in 1896, a reversal began when Democrats nominated populist firebrand William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925), "the Great Commoner."

"He was the first liberal to win the Democratic Party presidential nomination," political scholar Rich Rubino wrote. "This represented a radical departure from the conservative roots of the Democratic Party."

Meanwhile, the GOP began shifting to conservative. Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) -- a vice president who took the top office after William McKinley was assassinated in 1901 -- was a Republican liberal who supported a "Square Deal" for working families. He broke up monopolistic trusts of rich corporations. He championed pure food and drugs. He created national parks and forests for the enjoyment of everyone. He won the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize for helping end war between Russia and Japan.

After leaving office, Roosevelt felt that his successor, William Howard Taft (1857-1930), was leading America too far to the right. So T.R. challenged Taft for the GOP nomination in 1912, and lost. In rebellion, Roosevelt gathered his liberal delegates and formed the Progressive Party, with a bold platform bordering on socialism.

The new-formed party called for universal medical care under a National Health Service. It sought government pensions for retirees, plus compensation for the jobless and disabled. It demanded an eight-hour workday and a minimum wage for women. It sought a constitutional amendment to allow a federal income tax. It supported voting by women, more freedom for workers to organize and strike, inheritance tax on rich estates, worker's compensation for on-the-job injuries, and many other left-wing goals.

The Progressive platform attacked big-money influence in politics, vowing "to destroy this invisible government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics."

Roosevelt was a fiery orator and writer, saying: "I believe that there should be a very much heavier progressive tax on very large incomes, a tax which should increase in a very marked fashion for the gigantic incomes."

While Roosevelt was campaigning in Milwaukee in 1912, a crazed assassin, John Schrank -- who claimed that the ghost of William McKinley asked him to avenge McKinley's death by killing Roosevelt -- shot the Progressive candidate in the chest. The bullet was partly deflected by Roosevelt's 50-page speech and his steel eyeglasses case, but wounded him nonetheless. Bleeding, he continued to orate unfazed.

Later, when reporters asked if the wounding would deter his campaign, Roosevelt replied that he was "fit as a bull moose." Thereafter, his party was dubbed the Bull Moose Party.

Progressives won about a fourth of the 1912 popular vote, and Democrat Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) attained the presidency. In 1916, Roosevelt declined the Progressive nomination, and the liberal party he created soon disintegrated.

In a sense, Teddy Roosevelt was the last major Republican liberal. Ensuing decades saw the GOP grow steadily more conservative, and Democrats acquire the liberal mantle. When the Great Depression struck, the "New Deal" of Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945), Theodore's nephew-in-law, achieved landmark progressive reforms.

In the 1960s, the "Great Society" of Democrat Lyndon Johnson (1908- 1973) vastly expanded the public safety net and gave legal equality to African-Americans -- driving racist Dixie out of the Democratic Party and into the GOP.

Then Republican President Ronald Reagan (1911-2004) mobilized the "religious right" of white evangelicals for his party. Later, extreme white conservatives calling themselves "Tea Party" militants emerged in the GOP.

All this outlines America's political flipflop -- how the liberal Republican Party turned conservative, and the conservative Democratic Party turned liberal. It was a fascinating transition.
A new poll from the Public Opinion Research Institute indicates that Donald Trump is down 23 points among Catholics compared to Hillary Clinton. This massive deficit remains one of the most undersold story lines of the 2016 election, according to the Washington Post, but that doesnt mean a lot of ground cant be made up.

Can he win the Catholic vote? That might be tough. As far left as Barack Obama is, he won Catholics by two points in 2012. But Trump can make things a lot more competitive.

Catholics, like any other group of people in America, are very diverse. No one fits into a box. But there are a number of issues that Catholics seem to care deeply about  protecting life, religious liberty, and the treatment of immigrants and the poor. These are all things that Donald Trump can speak to.

After all, he is pro-life. Hillary Clinton is not. He ought to remind us from time to time.

The Little Sisters of the Poor, who went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to protect their religious freedom against the overbearing dictates of Obamacare, may not seem like natural allies of Donald Trump. But when it comes to policy, he is on their side. Clinton is not. He should remind the country why Obamacare is such an economic mess, but also an assault on our religious freedom.

On immigration, he has a real opportunity. Everyone knows he is vehemently opposed to illegal immigration. But he could do a much better job of talking positively about legal immigration. Perhaps its even worth a second stand-alone speech so the two topics arent confused. A positive, optimistic speech about how immigrants have made America a better place could make quite an impact, and he need not look any further than his own wife for a helping hand in telling this story.

Lastly, when it comes to dealing with the poor, Trump has a tremendous story to tell. Hes the only one in this race who has truly created wealth, created jobs and given people the opportunity to rise from nothing. Clinton has done none of that. This is a story that can help not only with the poor, but with Hispanics, African-Americans, and with every other American who hopes to one day achieve the American dream.

Donald Trump can close the gap. He can close it with Catholics and everyone else. He just needs to speak to the issues that matter to them, clearly and continuously.
Birdwatchers on Grand Bahama Island in the Bahamas. Consider the island a true mecca  a place where they can see 18 of the 28 species of Bahamian birds that are not seen in the U.S., Canada, or Europe. (Photo Credit: grandbahamavacatyions.com) Inset: Dr Therese Yarde, Project Coordinator of the CARICOM Secretariats Sustainable Development Programme, says that the workshop was in response to interest shown by Barbados. (Photo Credit: caricom.org)

Barbados is being encouraged to signing onto the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS), as a means of wooing more tourists to the island.





The CMS is by an international environmental treaty that has so far not enticed many Caribbean governments.

Now, however, an effort has begun to entice at least one Caribbean government, Barbados, to think again about the treaty.





Towards this end, officials of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), under which the CMS falls, staged a workshop, last week, at Accra Beach Resort, in conjunction with the Sustainable Development Programme of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretariat.





Barbados Today reported Project Coordinator of the CARICOM Secretariats Sustainable Development Programme Dr Therese Yarde, as saying that "Signing on to the convention could have a positive impact on ecotourism here and in the rest of the Caribbean.





That news agency also quoted a workshop participant as saying, that on her first visit to Barbados, she swam with the sea turtles and she enjoyed that . . . "There is migratory bird watching in the Bahamas, and in Belize you can swim with sharks. These are significant tourist attractions, she said, adding, "So if we conserve these species better, I think it can be a significant tourism attraction for the islands of the region.





Barbados TODAY reported UNEPs Programme Officer for International Governance in the Division of Environmental Law and Conventions Francisco Rilla as explaining that the CMS was an important agreement involving 124 parties, but the Caribbeans participation had been low, and that the aim of the workshop was to raise awareness of the importance of the CMS, so the delegates could return to their respective countries and promote to their governments the benefits of protecting migratory species.





Dr Yarde disclosed that Barbados was among Caribbean delegates who requested more information on the CMS so they could make informed decisions.





The hope is that other CARICOM countries would follow suit. (Source: Barabados News Online)
Commonwealth nationals may now apply for a number of specialist roles in the British Army, thanks to new rules introduced by the government.





The British Army has welcomed soldiers from Commonwealth countries for many years; however, under previous rules people could only join if they had lived in the UK for five years.





Commonwealth nationals will now be able to apply for positions including Medical Technician, Logistic Supply Specialist, Chef, Vehicle Mechanic, Metalsmith and Gunner Logistics Specialist.





General Chris Tickell, General Officer Commanding, Army Recruiting and Training Division, said: "We are delighted that key roles have been opened up to people from across the Commonwealth who are non-resident in the UK. The service given by soldiers from Commonwealth countries helps the Armed Forces to defend the UK at home and abroad, and we look forward to welcoming more Commonwealth recruits following the introduction of the new regulations.

A specialist commonwealth recruiter spokesperson said: "Were looking for candidates that are physically fit, can communicate well in both written and spoken English and can self-fund travel to the UK to attend one of the Army development and selection centres. Full details of the Army recruitment and selection process can be found on the Army website at http://www.army.mod.uk.





For more information about how people from the Commonwealth can apply for the Army without UK residency, visit http://www.army.mod.uk/join/commonwealth_joiners.aspx (Source: CaribPR Wire).
Douglas De Freitas will have his day in a court, outside of capital Kingstown.

Douglas de Freitas, proprietor and manager of Nice Radio has been slapped with eleven charges relating to statements he allegedly made on December 10, 2015, one day after the general elections here.





De Freitas is charged under Section 64(1) of the Criminal Code with making statements that are likely to cause fear or disturb the peace.





When he was ordered to appear in court to plea to the charges, he did so at the Kingstown Magistrate Court presided over by Magistrate Bertie Pompey.





However, Magistrate Pompey has since recused himself from hearing the charges against De Freitas.

There being no other court other than the Serious offences Court sitting in Kingstown, hearing in all the cases against De Freitas has been re-scheduled for Tuesday 13th September 13, at the Calliaqua Magistrate Court, presided over by Zoila Ellis-Browne, wife of former ULP parliamentarian Michael Browne.





De Freitas pleaded not guilty to all the charges. He is being represented by attorney Kay Bacchus-Baptiste.
A little over six months have passed, and there are still no leads or arrests made in connection to attacks on three women earlier this year.





Sarah Badnock, Josette St Hillaire and Sherisse Veira were all victims of attack by an unknown assailant.

All three attacks occurred on Monday, February 15 in the Kingstown area, with Badnock being the first person to be attacked in the vicinity of Block 2000 in Montrose.





The woman said that her attacker dragged her towards an abandoned building, and after attempting to remove her undergarments, struck her in the back of the head and fled.





St Hillaire and Veira were also beaten about their bodies and faces in separate incidents, apparently by the same attacker.

Superintendent of Police (SP) Ruth Jacobs, Head of the Criminal Investigations Department (CID), told THE VINCENTIAN on Tuesday that she was still hoping to give the case some closure, but confirmed that the status remained the same, in that the matters were still being investigated. (DD)
Selmon Walters had been the focus of much concern among Vincentians residing in New York, especially as it related to his management of the affairs of the Consulate there. Left: Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves, in response to concerns about Walters style and performance, told a gathering in New York that he does not place heavy emphasis on mere complaints.

Despite agitation in some quarters in New York, Prime Minister, Dr. Ralph E. Gonsalves says ex-New York Counsel General Selmon Walters was not singled out for recall.





"Its what were trying to make sure that we have fresh faces everywhere, said Dr. Gonsalves in an exclusive interview Tuesday morning. "These are people [diplomats], who have been around in excess of four to five years. The position of ambassador, in some countries, does not exceed five years. We want to ensure that we have fresh faces.





Last month, the Vincentian prime minister recalled Walters, who had been Counsel General in New York for five years, as well as two other overseas diplomats  Ambassadors to Cuba and Venezuela, Dexter Rose and Andreas Wickham, respectively.





Gonsalves, who was on a brief visit to New York, noted that La Celia Prince, the former Ambassador to the United States and the Organization of American States (OAS) departed office last year to assume a top position with the Washington-based OAS.





He confirmed that Cenio Lewis, the long-standing High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, will leave office in a years time.





Gonsalves also noted that the current Counsel General to Canada, Fitzgerald Huggins, succeeded E. Bernard John, and that I. Rhonda King, the Ambassador to the United Nations, took over from Camillo Gonsalves, who became Foreign Affairs Minister and was elected, for the first time, in general elections in St. Vincent and the Grenadines last December.





"Now, its time for Selmon (Walters) to go, the Vincentian leader said. "Its not a commentary on any particular individual.





Gonsalves said his Unity Labor Party (ULP) administration has "found a good replacement in Howie Prince, the former head of the National Emergency Management Organization (NEMO).





"Howie Prince knows how to work with people, he said. "Its difficult to find a person to work with the community.





"He (Prince) has a good temperament, he added. "I think people in New York will like Howie Prince.

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Sir Louis Straker told THE VINCENTIAN last month that Prince possesses "outstanding managerial skills and experience, adding that Prince "will be good for the country.





Walters departure comes about 2  years after a major scandal erupted at the New York Consulate General involving Walters then deputy, Edson Augustus, a former Seventh-day Adventist Church pastor, who was recalled on Feb. 5, 2014, because of what the government said were "activities outside the scope of his employment and inimical to interests of the Consulate General and the Government and people of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.





In the wake of the scandal, Opposition Leader, Arnhim Eustace, called on the government to overhaul the New York Consulate General and to recall Walters, saying that the alleged "scandal had taken place on his watch..

But, even with Augustus long departure, Vincentians, in some quarters in the Big Apple, have reportedly been displeased with Walters performance.





Some also said he was "heavy-handed in dealing with Augustus successor, Chateaubelair-born Sehon Marshall, who, himself, had received a "hot baptism prior to his appointment for condescendingly referring, on local radio, as a talk show host, to some nationals in New York as, among other things, "dog walkers.

Subsequently, at a town hall meeting at the Friends of Crown Heights Educational Center, Walters announced, and new Government minister Camillo Gonsalves, confirmed that Marshall was transferred to the St. Vincent and the Grenadines Mission to the United Nations.





But, even with vehement criticism levelled at Walters tenure, Prime Minister Gonsalves said he does not place heavy emphasis on mere complaints, adding that they must be based strongly on facts.

"I like to get solid information about somebody performing, he said.

"I will have a lot of expectations of him, he added, alluding to Prince.

Gonsalves confirmed that Prince will be working without a deputy.





"We not so much need a deputy, he said. "We need an administrative person. We need to have somebody grounded in the office.





The prime minister also confirmed that his administration will be appointing a new trade attache.

Sir Louis had said last month that Bernadette Ambrose-Black, current head of SVG Invest, will take up that new position.





The prime minister said New York is the hub for trade and investment activities, adding that there are several trade opportunities that could be explored among global diplomats at the United Nations.





Arnhim Eustace, leader of the main opposition New Democratic Party (NDP), had told the VINCENTIAN that, if his party gains power, it would appoint trade attaches at the New York Consulate General, saying that trade investment is the way to go in aiding the countrys economic development.
Left: Olin Dennie, Barrister-at-law, also served as a Magistrate here. Right:Kay Bacchus-Baptiste spoke of Dennie as having been one of those who displayed early consciousness of his African heritage.





The close friendship between veteran local lawyers Olin Dennie and Kay Bacchus-Baptiste, started almost half a century ago, while they were sixth form students of the St Vincent Grammar School.





Dennie, who was also a former Magistrate and Speaker of the House of Assembly in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, died on Thursday September 1, after a period of illness, following a legal career which lasted almost four decades.

Bacchus-Baptiste holds very fond memories of their friendship dating back to the Grammar School sixth form. They were only about 16 years old at the time.





The era, early 1970s, was historic, as it marked the period when the Black Consciousness Movement was sweeping through some parts of the Caribbean, including St. Vincent and the Grenadines.





Bacchus-Baptiste recalled that Grammar School sixth formers, like many young people then, adopted African names and sported afro hairstyles, to display pride in their heritage. "We were black conscious. He (Dennie) called me Kwasi and I called him Odinga, Bacchus-Baptiste recounted with a smile.





She could not remember all the sixth formers who adopted African names, but others she recalled were Dougal Williams who was called Chaka, and Glenroy Browne who answered to the name Tswala.





President of the Bar Association and former Minister of Culture Rene Baptiste, was also a member of that form.

Bacchus-Baptiste recalled that Dennie and herself left these shores on the same flight to pursue law studies at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, Barbados, and later pursued studies together at the Hugh Wooding Law School in Trinidad and Tobago.





"We remained close friends throughout our legal career, Bacchus-Baptiste said, adding that they were also close neighbours at Harmony Hall, Prospect, for several years.





According to her, Dennie did not disclose his health problems, not even to persons who were close to him.

"Many of us were not aware of how ill he was. We knew he was sick, but were of the impression that he had recuperated, she said.





She indicated that towards the end of July 2016, Dennie told her that he was going to the United States.

"I was concerned, because during the conversation, I noticed there was a rasp in his voice.

Bacchus-Baptiste recounted, "Olin was a person who would tell you how he feels in a very direct way, but he was warm, engaging and jovial. He was everybodys friend. He had very strong political convictions, but that did not stop him from being a friend of all.





Bacchus-Baptiste considered Dennie to be a stalwart, and described his death as a great loss to the legal fraternity.




Left:Vincentian Chocolate  The Best In The World  will soon be available at retail outlets. Right:Andrew Hadley, Managing Director of the St. Vincent Cocoa Company, is encouraged by the contribution the cocoa industry can make to the earning capacity of the agriculture sector here.

Andrew Hadley, Managing Director of the St. Vincent Cocoa Company, has no doubt about the quality chocolate bar his enterprise produces.





"Its the best in the world, Hadley assured last Tuesday. He was speaking at the Cruise Ship Berth in capital city Kingstown where the companys offices are currently located, but which will be by month end relocated to new premises on Murrays Road, obliquely opposite the Ministry of Agriculture.

The chocolate production unit will also be relocated to the new headquarters from its current operational base in North Union.





Hadley, Vincentian born, spent ten years in the British Army before returning home. A nature lover, Hadley launched his landscaping services following his return home after his military sojourn, but he found the lure of cocoa cultivation too alluring to resist.





Hadley takes a practical approach to most matters, and it is inevitable that he grows cocoa on lands owned by his family.





Vincentians will get a chance to prove if Hadleys statement has any merit, come September 23, when the St. Vincent Cocoa Company launches its 80-gram chocolate bar, with promotional displays at a number of supermarkets and at Heritage Square.





The Managing Director assured that all rules and regulations as they pertain to quality and standards have been complied with, and he is confident that the product will stand the test of time.





Hadley looks forward to the brand establishing its own credentials. He is taking a gradual approach to the venture, and will monitor how the market unfolds, and adjust accordingly.

"Theres got to be a demand, Hadley projected.





In a broader sense, the St. Vincent Cocoa Company is spearheading the revitalisation of the cocoa industry here.

The effort is encouraged by the demand for cocoa, the fact that it is fashionable and holds many health benefits, Hadley posited.





He notes that response to the reintroduction of the crop has been slow, and cites a prevailing lack of interest in farming as being the major challenge.





Notwithstanding, Hadley is confident that there is potential in the industry, and the St. Vincent Cocoa Company has embarked on measures aimed at increasing the acreage under cultivation. The effort is gaining impetus from a number of farmers whom he described as having "the courage and conviction to make the industry an integral part of a rejuvenated agricultural industry in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

Interested farmers can arrange to have their plots planted with cocoa, or take advantage of the companys Farm Service, including leasing their land or becoming contract farmers.





The Managing Director pledged his and the companys commitment to farmers from seedlings to harvesting, with a guaranteed price of $150 per pound for wet beans. "It (cocoa cultivation) takes time, effort and dedication, Hadley disclosed, but it is worth it. (WKA)




The vehicle which the deceased was driving came to a stop in a ravine off the public road. Inset: Serano Mc Kie, 25 years old, is the latest to have died by shooting in SVG.

This country has recorded its 21st homicide for the year.





Serano Mc Kie, a 25-year-old mechanic of Glen, became that statistic when, according to a police report, he was shot to death around 8:44pm last Tuesday, September 6, along the Glen-Fairhall public road.





The police report said that the deceased was driving along the referred road in motor vehicle P5901 with one passenger, 54-year-old Anthony Newbolt of Lowmans Leeward, when several gunshots were fired at the vehicle.

The motor vehicle is said to have careened off the road, coming to a stop between a coconut tree and a concrete wall.





Serano is reported to have sustained several shots, and was found dead in the vehicle. Newbolt sustained a single gunshot to his right leg.

Mother of Serano, Veronica Mc Kie is still trying to come to terms with her sons tragic death when THE VINCENTIAN visited with her on Wednesday. Serano was the youngest of her four children, which seemed to make her grief even more.





She expressed sadness at the loss of her son. She recalled seeing him earlier that fateful day.

A former Calliaqua Anglican School and St. Clair Dacon Secondary School student, Serano is said to have been a skilled welder and technician.





His mother recalled trying to rekindle his interest in Church, but to no avail, it appeared.

Veronica is a member of the Baptist denomination and suffered the loss of her husband Clinton Mckie in July of 2015. Nearly fourteen months later, Veronica is mourning another loved one.

She, however, has found comfort among members of her church, including Bishop Bonadie.

Meanwhile, some residents of the area reported having heard two separate bursts of gunshots,

leading to speculation that the perpetrators or perpetrator may have made their way to where the car had come to a stop, to finish their job.





A post mortem on Seranos body was expected to have been completed yesterday. Up to press time, Wednesday, Newbolt remained under police guard at the Milton Cato Memorial Hospital.

There were 25 recorded murders in the state in 2015.
President of the SVG Co-operative League Ltd Dwight Lewis (2nd from right) described the summit as an opportunity for industry leaders to develop a common vision for the growth and expansion of the credit union movement in the OECS. Others pictured from left Brian Alexander, Kelvin Pompey, Phyllis James and Junior Simmons.

The 14th OECS Credit Union Summit will take place under the auspices of the St. Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) Cooperative League from the 14th to 18th September at the Buccument Bay Resort, under the theme:





"Strengthening OECS Credit Union Co-operation, Integration and Innovation.





The four-day event will witness 350 credit union volunteers and practitioners from across the sub-region coming together to expand perspective, knowledge and skills on a range of issues of critical importance to the sector.

In essence, the coming together will represent some 49 credit unions throughout the OECS, that together hold EC$2.2. billion in savings and assets valued at EC2.7 billion.





On Tuesday 6th, the SVG Co-operative League Ltd, the umbrella body for credit unions in SVG and hosts of the summit, held a press conference at the leagues headquarters in Lower Kingstown Park, to update the nation on the major event.





President of the SVG Co-operative League Ltd Dwight Lewis said that since 2003, the annual gathering has provided a unique platform for the reflection, discussion, co-operation and training on current and future financial issues, as well as major socio-economic trends.





He said that the annual summits have provided the opportunity for industry leaders to develop a common vision for the growth and expansion of the credit union movement in the OECS.





The summit will be launched with an opening ceremony at 8:30 am on Thursday 15th at the Buccument Bay Resort Conference Room, where Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves will deliver the Keynote address. The opening ceremony will be broadcast live on radio and via the internet.





Lewis said that a team of facilitators comprising consultants from the SVG Credit Union sector will identify and synchronize the key issues arising out of all discussions, and co-ordinate the closing plenary session of the business segment, to arrive at the recommendations for the way forward in the post-summit period. The summit will culminate with operational and policy recommendations that will assist credit unions in the OECS to remain relevant, safe and competitive whilst advancing the social and economic circumstances of their members.

Lewis expressed appreciation to the Summit Organizing Committee, which comprises representatives from GECCU, the Kingstown Co-operative Credit Union, SVG Teachers Co-operative Credit Union, SVG Police Co-operative Credit Union, and the St. Vincent Automotive Co-operative Society.





The SVG Co-operative League president also expressed thanks to all the sponsors for their generous support, including major sponsor, the Corporate Enterprise Finance Facility Ltd (CORPEFF).





Representatives from the leading credit unions here also gave brief addresses. These included Brian Alexander from the St. Vincent Automotive Co-operative Society, President of the Police Cooperative Credit Union Junior Simmons, President of GECCU Kelvin Pompey, and Philbert John on behalf of the SVG teachers Cooperative Credit Union. (KH)
Recipients of schools supplies (with knapsacks), their parents and SwiftPac Manager Brenda Telemaque (extreme right) at the handing over ceremony last week Friday.

Caribbean freight and courier service providers SwiftPac has donated a number of school supplies to five (5) primary school children, in keeping with the companys commitment to give back to communities here.





School supplies were presented to: Destiny Sutherland - Owia Government School; Jared Jackson - New Grounds Government School; Anthony Williams - Sion Hill Government School; Kaynecia Garraway - Clare Valley Government School; and Sue- Nique Edwards - Troumaca Primary School.





A release from the company stated: "SwiftPac has traditionally provided scholarships and school supplies to under-privileged children. This year, we have chosen five less fortunate children per country, throughout our SwiftPac network, (St. Kitts and Nevis, Barbados, Grenada, St. Lucia and Dominica) and provided essential school supplies for the beginning of the new school term, as an appreciation of our youths and also to invest in the Education Revolution here in SVG.





Speaking at a handing over ceremony outside the SwiftPac office located in Bridge House, Heritage Square, Friday 2rd September, Manager Brenda Telemaque explained that the recipients of this years assistance were selected randomly from a pool of students recommended by their customers and the Social Welfare Department.

Telemaque also disclosed that last year, her company company offered a scholarship valued at $500.00 to one student.





Parent Veda Williams expressed thanks to SwiftPac for the generous donation, and another parent, Kay Ann Garraway, assured that the donation would go a long way in supporting her child. (KH)
(L-R standing): Lion Secretary Tasheka Haynes - Scholarship Chair, Lion Rosita Snagg and Lion President Dr. Jose Davy, with (seated) Joshuanna Alexander (centre), Britney Browne (right) and Alexanders mother (left).

Three Fifth Form students are this years recipients of scholarships under the Lions Club St. Vincent Souths ongoing education and youth programme, which started some 20 years ago with donations initially to visually impaired students.





The three - Joshuanna Alexander, Britney Browne and Chante Toby -each received cheques in the amount of $1500.00 to assist with their meals, uniforms, transportation and school supplies.

A release from the Lions Club St. Vincent South said that Alexander and Browne are both students of the St. Vincent Girls High School, while Toby is a student of the St. Josephs Convent, Kingstown.

The Clubs education and youth programme also provides assistance for meals and transportation to other students.

Meanwhile, the Club is looking forward to the hosting of their Annual Secondary Schools Public Speaking Competition in October. The preliminaries will commence on Tuesday 4th October, and will conclude on Friday 7th October.
Tobago boasts of offering homely and environmentally friendly accommodation that is typically Caribbean. (Photo Credit: enchantedwaterstobago.com) Inset:Vidiah Ramkhelawan, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Tourism, announced governments aim to build profitability in the tourism sector. (Photo Credit: News.govt.tt)

Whatever plans the Peoples National Movement government of Trinidad and Tobago has for boosting the tourism sector in that twin island republic, the airport in Tobago must be upgraded, as a priority .





This was made clear by Tobago tourism stakeholders at a recent stakeholders forum held in that country.

Not only must the physical capacity of the airport be upgraded, but stakeholders in Tobago have called for more agreements with airlines and an improved marketing strategy to promote Tobago in particular.





All of these concerns came as Vidiah Ramkhelawan, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Tourism, while addressing the forum, announced implementation of a structured certification programme to build profitability in the sector.





Government, she said as reported by the Trinidad Guardian, had recognized that "tourism has potential to become a major income generator for T&T and it (government) "plans to focus on visitor safety and security, environmental conservation and assistance to small tourist operators.





Ramkhelawan reiterated Governments intention to put tourism on the front burner, and admitted, according to the Guardian, that, "We are under no illusions about the highly competitive nature of the local and international tourism market, but we are convinced that T&T can become a major tourism player.





She warned, however, that, "If the quality of our service and infrastructure is not up to par with what is expected internationally, visitors will go internationally.





Several hoteliers agreed that more needed to be done to upgrade the local tourism industry, with Kenneth Patino, who owns Enchanted Waters in Tobago, saying that Government must first try to remove negative travel advisories.

"The word has to get out that it is no longer negative to travel to Tobago as a destination, he said. (Source: Trinidad Guardian)
Right: Passengers disembark from JetBlue Flight 387 at the Abel Santamaria airport in the city of Santa Clara, Cuba, August 31, 2016, marking first the commercial flight between USA and Cuba since 1961.

When JetBlue Flight 387 touched down at Abel Santamaria Airport in Santa Clara, Cuba, Wednesday 31st August, 2016, it became the first US airline to operate a commercial flight between the two countries in more than 50 years.





The flight, welcomed in Santa Clara with a water cannon salute and a celebration by Cuban officials at the airport located some 160 miles east of Havana, heralded a new era of American tourism in that Caribbean country, according to many observers.





Soon there will be six US carriers  American, Frontier, JetBlue Airways, Silver Airways, Southwest Airlines and Sun Country Airlines  offering 110 flights daily to nine Cuban cities.

As such, therefore, after years of Canadians and Europeans enjoying the delights of Cuba, Americans will gradually get to visit (Cuba) en masse too.





Interestingly, State Department figures show that some 91,000 people from the US traveled to Cuba in 2014. That figure was projected to increase to 150,000 in 2015 and to 1.5 million annually thereafter.





And while Cubans look with heightened anticipation to the windfall that this increase in tourist arrivals is expected to produce, observers worry about Cubas present capacity to accommodate the expected increase.

Figures available tell that Cuba presently has just about 60,000 hotel rooms available to stay over visitors.

Observers, though, recognize the ongoing development of the tourism plant in Cuba and that countrys new preparedness to enter into investment agreements with foreign interests, towards ensuring that this development continues unabated.





Cuba, too, has recognized the need to address its provision of ancillary services like Wi-Fi and computer terminals for credit card payments.





One view is that, given Cubas present tourism infrastructure, demand may soon exceed supply. However, the flip side view is that Cuba continuing controlled economy will allow for measures to be taken to deal directly with this possible development. (Source: Reuters and other International Media)
Cutting the ribbons tom officially open the offices of the Greiggs Multi-Farming Cooperative Society Limited (GREMCO) and the Greiggs Rastafarian Progressive Multi-Purpose Cooperative Society Limited (RASFARCO).

Tuesday September 6 saw the launch of the Greiggs Multi-Farming Cooperative Society Limited (GREMCO) and the Greiggs Rastafarian Progressive Multi-Purpose Cooperative Society Limited (RASFARCO).





These two cooperatives are part of the project to Strengthen Farmers Organizations and to improve Fruit and Vegetable Production Technology. The project was made possible through the assistance of the International Cooperative Development Fund (ICDF of the Republic of China (Taiwan).





The launching ceremony took place on the Greiggs playing field, and featured addresses from the presidents of both cooperatives - Ray Baptiste of GREMCO and Alvin Collins of RASFARCO.





Ambassador of the Republic of China (Taiwan) His Excellency Baushuan Ger also addressed the gathering along with Minister with responsibility for Cooperatives, the Hon Frederick Stevenson.





The feature address was delivered by Area Representative and Minister of Agriculture the Hon Saboto Caesar, who encouraged both Co-operatives to continue "their good work moving forward.





The offices of the two cooperatives are located on the ground floor of the Greiggs Community Centre from where they will carry out their day to day business.





GREMCO and RASFARCO are the two first cooperatives to move into fully equipped offices under the ICDF project.
It has been years since a Vincentian float participated in the gigantic, annual West Indian American Carnival Parade on Brooklyns Eastern Parkway.





So Monday, Labor Day in America, was, patently welcoming, as the Brooklyn-based Friends of Crown Heights Educational Center, whose president and chief executive officer is Calliaqua native Vaughan Toney, got Vincentians and other Caribbean nationals to participate in "Jump for Education, with full graduation attire  caps and gowns.





"I think the Friends of Crown Heights does a lot for the Vincy community, said Jacintha Ballantyne, a leading mas personality in SVG and a member of the management team of the SVG Players International Mas Band.

Nearby, one of the founders of SVG Players, Ricardo Puzzle Grant, lauded Toneys extraordinary step.

"I feel its a bold and important initiative Friends of Crown Heights took, especially to bring the Vincentian community together, because weve been absent from the Parkway for a while, he also told THE VINCENTIAN.





Grant has been in his own right a major contributor to a Vincentian presence on the parkway, having, over the years, assisted the lone Vincentian mas band in Brooklyn, Mas Productions Unlimited, in its production.

In recent years, Mas Productions Unlimited, produced by Sion Hill native Wesley Millington, has only been participating in the Junior Carnival, which precedes the Labor Day event, on Saturday, because of lack of funding.

"Im elated in all honesty, because this is a wonderful initiative to see a Vincentian band on the Parkway  to market St. Vincent and the Grenadines, said Earl Caba Bennett, president of the St. Vincent and the Grenadines Calypsonians Association.





"Its always good to see Vincentians together, he added. "This is the rebirth of Vincies on the Parkway.

With the dearth of Vincentian bands on the Parkway, nationals sought out other Caribbean bands, primarily Trinidadian, who, clearly, dominates the annual festivity.





Patrice Blugh, of Cane End in the Marriaqua Valley, played for the second year with Kaios International.

"Its a good experience, said Blugh, who earlier this year played with Nelson Bloc in Vincy Mas. "You get to be with everybody from the same culture, listen to the same music and have fun.





For at least the second successive year, revelers, masqueraders and millions of spectators enjoyed the West Indian American Day Carnival Parade in picture perfect weather, on the sprawling Eastern Parkway.

With a high of 82 degrees  with gentle breeze and no rain, as forecast  it was unequivocally the perfect weather for the explosion of the sight, sounds, pageantry, artistry and everything else West Indian.





The cornucopia of colors and the potpourri of West Indian dishes that wafted through the air brought the best out of West Indians, including over 3 million onlookers who converged for the 49th annual extravaganza.

The massive parade culminated five days of carnival that began on Thursday, as the organizers, the Brooklyn-based West Indian American Day Carnival Association (WIADCA), kicked off the annual spectacle, with Reggae Unda Di Stars, featuring world-famous reggae entertainers  including Third World, Luciano, Christopher Martin and Romain Virgo.





On Friday, WIADCAs annual Stay in School Concert and College Fair took place, at 11:00 a.m., followed by the Brass Fest Concert, with headliners KES The Band, Roy Cape All Stars, Outta Limitz, Farmer Nappy, Blaxx, Ricardo Drue, Lyrikal, Skinny Fabulous and more.





On Saturday, the Junior Carnival and Steelband Panorama competition was conducted.

Sunday nights Dimanche Gras showcased the "creative talents of dozens of costume designers, as they presented scores of breathtaking costumes competing for King and Queen of the Bands, Individuals and Characters, WIADCA said.





It said the "best in Calypso music was on hand, with performances by David Rudder, Natasha Wilson, Gryner, Boodoosingh Tassa Drummers and Something Positive traditional carnival characters.





Grand Marshals for the parade included: Melissa Mark-Viverito, NY City Council Speaker; Barbara Atherly, Consul General of Guyana; Keith H.L. Tony Marshall, UN Ambassador of Barbados; and Conrad Ifill, the Trinidadian-born president and chief executive officer of Brooklyns Conrads Bakery.
St. Vincent Electricity Services Limited (VINLEC) will join the regional discussion on Renewable Energy at the 2016 CARILEC Renewable Energy Conference and Trade-show, which will take place in St.Kitts from September 11th-15th.





CARILEC is an association of electric utilities, suppliers, manufacturers and other stakeholders operating in the electricity industry in the Caribbean.





VINLEC will be represented at the Conference by Senior Generation Engineer, Mr. Augustus Ambrose. Mr. Ambrose will meet with energy leaders and experts, representing fifteen utilities, to share experiences and exchange views on issues such as smart grid development, grid stability and renewable energy penetration rates.

The conference sessions will focus on a number of key topics including island interconnection, project financing, energy storage and grid integration. The conference will also address issues such as optimal energy mix for the region, best and most sustainable energy policies for the region, business models that will ensure energy security to fuel development and financing avenues for Small Island Developing States.





VINLEC anticipates that the information presented at the Renewable Energy Conference will be beneficial to the Company as VINLEC currently utilises renewable energy in its generation mix. Approximately 18-20% of energy produced annually is done at the Hydro Stations.





The official Opening Ceremony is scheduled for Sunday, September 11th and will have as keynote speaker, President Jose Maria Figueres Olsen- former president of the Republic of Costa Rica. In 2012, he was appointed by Sir Richard Branson as President of the Carbon War Room. President Figueres has received numerous international awards for his work in Sustainable Development including the first recipient of the Global Prize from the World Banks Global Environmental Fund for leadership and efforts for the environment.

The Conference will be hosted by CARILEC in collaboration with the St. Kitts Electricity Company (SKELEC) under the theme "RE ReadyAre we REady? It will take place at the St. Kitts Marriott Resort & The Royal Beach Casino.
The water supply to some communities will continue to be affected as CWSA works to clear and clean their intakes and return them to their usual high quality state as pictured.

The Central Water and Sewerage Authority (CWSA) is advising its customers that they can expect further disruptions in the water supply, following a landslide just above the Majorca intake, caused by recent heavy rains.

As a result, the quality of the water has been severely affected, with higher than normal silt loads and mud getting into the system.





And areas including Riley, Fairbain, Cane Hall, Kelbourney, Belmont, Dorsetshire Hill, Gomea, Fairhall, Millers Gate, Dauphine, Fountain, Upper Sion Hill, Ashburton, Whim, Murrays Village, Belair and Queens Drive are among the areas where customers can expect to see periodic interruptions in the water supply.

The interruptions are to allow for CWSA to work on improving the quality of water, a release issued by CWSA stated.





According to Joan Ryan, Public Relations Officer (PRO) and Marketing Manager at CWSA, the Majorca and Montreal intakes are the most vulnerable, especially now during the hurricane season.

She advised persons to be vigilant and seek extra storage of water.





THE VINCENTIAN was informed that CWSAs engineers met on Wednesday, and according to Ryan, constant monitoring of areas such as Majorca will take place.





This is to ensure that no further land slippage occurs, and if it does, then CWSA personnel will be in a position to turn off the water supply before it has gotten through the system and into customers homes.
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By Azernews





By Nigar Abbasova

The number of flights from Iran to Azerbaijan should be increased, given the constantly growing interest of tourists in the country, said Mohsun Pakayin, Iranian ambassador to Azerbaijan.

Pakayin, who will soon complete his diplomatic mission in the country, made the remark while addressing the meeting with Azerbaijans Minister of Culture and Tourism Abulfas Garayev.

Some 18 flights are operated from Iran to Azerbaijan on a monthly basis, while interest of Iranian tourists in the country is growing steadily.

Garayev, in turn, said that the two countries are rapidly developing relations in the sphere of tourism and culture, mentioning that the growing number of Iranian tourists visiting Azerbaijan creates good opportunities for further development of ties between Azerbaijani and Iranian tourism companies.

The sides have also exchanged views on the latest 4-year development of bilateral relations between the two countries, as well as the forthcoming culture days of Azerbaijan, which are due in Iran. As noted, a delegation of Azerbaijan is recently to visit the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Irans Foreign Ministry earlier appointed Javad Jahangirzadeh (who served as deputy head of the Parliament Research Center from June 2012 to May 2016) as the Islamic Republics new ambassador to Azerbaijan.
By Azernews





By Laman Ismayilova

Azerbaijan has joined the 29th Moscow International Book Fair, Trend Life reported.

Moscow International Book Fair is the major book forum in Russia and over the CIS. This is the easiest way to enter the book market not only of Russia but also far abroad to meet the possible readers all over the world.

Over 500 representatives from 37 countries attended the event.

The event brought together thousands of book industry professionals and representatives of dozens of countries: booksellers, publishers, translators, journalists, literary agents, TV and film producers.

Azerbaijan's stand highlighted the culture, history, country's tourism potential as well as the realities of Karabakh.

The event was attend by Azerbaijan's Ambassador to Russia, Polad Bulbuloglu who visited the stand and got acquainted with the printed editions presented here.

The exhibition also featured books in the Azerbaijani, Russian and English languages.

Moscow International Book Fair will last till September 11.




By Azertac





A delegation led by Deputy Chairman of the People's Consultative Assembly of Indonesia Oesman Sapta Odang has visited Azerbaijan`s Milli Majlis. The delegation met with Parliament Speaker Ogtay Asadov, who hailed the friendly relations and partnership between Azerbaijan and Indonesia. Praising inter-parliamentary cooperation, he underlined that the visit would give a new impetus to the development of relations between the two countries` legislative bodies.





Asadov described Azerbaijan`s political, economic and humanitarian relations with Indonesia as excellent. "Eight documents have been signed between the two countries so far," he said.





The Parliament Speaker also provided an insight into the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, particularly the Khojaly genocide. He noted that more than 10 countries as well as more than twenty U.S. states passed resolutions recognizing the massacre. "And the Azerbaijani side would like the Indonesian parliament to express its stance on this issue," Asadov added.





Deputy Chairman of the People's Consultative Assembly of Indonesia Sapta Odang hailed the development of friendly ties between the two countries.





He pointed out cooperation in the fields of trade and tourism, underlining good opportunities for building collaboration in new areas.
By Azertac





British Minister of State for Defence, Deputy Leader of the House of Lords Mr. Earl Howe has hailed Azerbaijan`s contribution to peacekeeping operations, particularly in Afghanistan as he met with Azerbaijan`s Defence Minister, Colonel General Zakir Hasanov on the sidelines of the UN Peacekeeping Defence Ministerial in London.





The sides exchanged views on the improvement of UN peacekeeping activity, and Azerbaijan`s role in this. They also discussed military cooperation between the two countries.
Korean Air Lines, the biggest shareholder in Hanjin Shipping, on Friday delayed a decision on a funding plan for the troubled company for a second time, adding to uncertainty about cargo stranded at sea following the failure of the world's seventh-largest container carrier.



Around $14 billion of cargo has been tied up globally as ports, tug boat operators and cargo handling firms refuse to work for Hanjin because they fear they will not be paid.



"We haven't reached a conclusion at today's board meeting, so we have decided to discuss the matter again tomorrow," a spokesman for Korean Air Lines said.



The collapse of Hanjin has caused havoc in global trade networks and a surge in freight rates, as more than half of Hanjin's 141 ships have been blocked from docking at ports. Four vessels have also been seized as of Thursday, according to Hanjin Shipping.



Hanjin's collapse came during the peak shipping period ahead of the year-end holiday season, stranding cargo for the likes of HP Inc and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd.



Samsung on Thursday asked a US judge to allow the South Korean company to pay cargo handlers to remove its goods from Hanjin Shipping vessels stationed near US ports.



While the US bankruptcy court has prevented Hanjin ships being seized if they enter US ports, it should also allow the ships to leave port once unloaded and for cargo holders to recover their property, Samsung argued ahead of the hearing on Friday.



Earlier this week, Samsung said goods worth $38 million, mostly televisions and appliances, were stuck aboard two Hanjin ships. The tech giant said it may have to charter at least 16 planes to move the goods if the cargo cannot be unloaded immediately, costing it at least $8.8 million.



"This lack of progress continues to result in significant damage to cargo owners, including Samsung," Samsung lawyers said in the court documents.



South Korean authorities, criticised for propping up failing companies in the past, have shown little appetite to step in to save Hanjin.



"I'm aware that some exporters are going through considerable difficulties from the Hanjin Shipping incident," Bank of Korea Governor Lee Ju-yeol said at a press conference in Seoul on Friday.



"However, the impact on the economy won't be big if measures in place from the government including deployment of alternative vessels are carried out smoothly."



Representatives of the US Department of Commerce met with the vice minister of South Korea's maritime ministry on Friday morning, a ministry spokesman said, but declined to comment on what was discussed before a planned official statement.



Banks led by state-run Korea Development Bank (KDB) withdrew backing for Hanjin last week, saying a funding plan by its parent group was inadequate to tackle debt that stood at 6.1 trillion won ($5.5 billion) at the end of June 2016.



Hanjin Group, the parent of both Hanjin Shipping and Korean Air earlier pledged to raise 100 billion won in funds to help rescue cargo.



Hanjin Group planned to raise 60 billion won by putting up as collateral stakes in overseas terminals such as Long Beach Terminal and other assets, while Hanjin Group chairman Cho Yang-ho will raise 40 billion won from private funds, the group said in a statement.



The court presiding over Hanjin's receivership asked KDB on Wednesday for fresh funds to normalise operations but met resistance.



Cho still expected to provide the 40 billion won in private funds next week, the Korean Air Lines spokesman said. - Reuters
The Dubai Metro is celebrating its seventh anniversary on Friday after having served more than 830 million commuters from September 2009 to August 2016.



"The positive growth and increasing numbers on the Dubai Metro underscore the strategic vision of Vice President and Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum," Mattar Al Tayer, director-general and chairman of the Board of Executive Directors of the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA), said in a Wam report.



"It also underlines the firm conviction of His Highness about the vitality of the metro in serving the needs of the rising urban population witnessed by the city. He had envisioned the metro as the backbone of a transportation system in Dubai that links various hotpots of the city, and offers safe and smooth mobility all around," he said.



The anniversary of the Dubai Metro coincides with the laying of the foundation stone of Route 2020 Project by HH Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and Chairman of the Executive Council, said in the report.



"Such a project provides for extending the Red Line of Dubai Metro 15km from Nakheel Harbour and Tower Station to the site of the Expo 2020. The project is part of the Dubai Plan 2021 for achieving sustainable growth and developing high-class infrastructure," he added.



The RTA is moving ahead with its ambitious plans for upgrading mass transit means and stepping up their contribution to peoples mobility to as much 30 percent by 2030, Al Tayer said. The share of public transport in peoples journeys had touched 15 percent by the end of 2015.



He commended the efforts of the strategic partners and considered them catalysts to the successful operation of the metro.
NC 67

NCHS 1967 50th Reunion Dates have been set and are July 21 to 23, 2017, at the Ramada Plaza. To register go to www.Classof1967Casper.com. If you dont do computers, call or text 267-6887, Dorothy Hunter.

Board discusses charter school application

In accordance with State Statute 16-4-404, notice is hereby given that the NCSD #1 Board of Trustees have scheduled the following meetings to discuss The Guild Charter School Application: Monday, Sept. 12, 6 p.m., Public Hearing; Monday, Sept. 26, 7:30 p.m., board vote.

These meetings will be held in the Jefferson Room, Central Service Facility, 970 N. Glenn Road, and will be open to the public.

Redstone recital

series begins

A pairing of art and music is scheduled for the Casper College RedStone Recital and Gallery Series on Friday, September 16. The event, which launches the fourth RedStone season, begins at 6:30 p.m. at the Mildred Zahradnicek Gallery in the Music Building. At 7:30 p.m. the Casper College music faculty will present a varied recital in the beautiful Wheeler Concert Hall.

Music works mostly mirror the European theme of the art exhibition. Faculty performers include Nathan Baker, trombone; Douglas Bull, trumpet; Ron Coulter, percussion, with Jay Reed, guitar; Jennifer Cowell-DePaolo, violin; Kristen Lenth, soprano; Joshua Mietz, clarinet; Alicia Roberts, soprano; Scott Schwab, piano; Veronica Turner, soprano; Zachary Vreeman, tenor, and a surprise guest. Eric Unruh and Lynn Kahler will serve as piano collaborators.

The exhibition in the Zahradnicek Gallery, titled European Visions: Art Inspired by Prague and Budapest, includes works by Rosemary Bartle, Cinda Maston, Makenna Maston, Linda Nix, Michael and Amber Olson, Elliott Ramage, and Holly Turner. The exhibitors traveled with the Casper College art history course to Prague and Budapest, Hungary, last spring. This exhibition emphasizes the value of world travel as a source of creative inspiration.

General admission tickets for the RedStone Recital can be purchased online at www.caspercollege.edu/events/redstone for $10 for adults and $5 for students. Tickets are also available on campus in the Music Building, Room 137, Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and on the evening of the performance. A reception will follow each event. The Music Building is located on the Casper College campus.

BGCCW opens new

teen site

The world is full of distractions and that can make it hard for youngsters to tackle homework. The Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Wyoming is expanding its services to teens, which will include homework help. A new Teen Club has opened at Dean Morgan Junior High, giving students a safe place to go after school to bond with friends and get homework completed. The hub of activities for the Dean Morgan site will be the cafeteria and will be open from 2:45 to 5:30 p.m. each day following the school day.

Youth ages 13 to 18 will be welcomed at the new club site. This is in addition to the Teen Club at the Main Club on East K Street in Casper. There will be no weekly charge for teens to attend or to receive club services. A $10 annual membership fee applies.

Programs offered will be similar to what is offered at the Main Clubs Teen Center including Cowboy Ethics: Be Somebody, Money Matters, SMART Program, Career Launch, Power Hour, Keystone leadership club, gym activities, and tech time. Members will have the opportunity to gain knowledge in art, college readiness, career exploration, healthy relationships and lifestyles, and financial literacy.

This expansion falls in line with the Boys & Girls Clubs of Americas Year of the Teen where the organization as a whole is working to reach more teens at a critical developmental stage in their lives. BGCCW three-year strategic plan for teens includes expansion into middle schools to provide the proven, world-class programming the club is known for.

For more information about the Dean Morgan site or teen programming, please contact Chris Stier at 473-5553.

Register for preschool

We are registering students for our fall classes beginning September 2016. We currently have openings in our Intro to Preschool (2-1/2 year-olds, meeting 2 mornings), 3-4 class (Children turning 4 during the academic school year, meeting three mornings), and our Pre-K class (For those children who will be attending kindergarten the following fall, meeting five mornings). We also have a Young 3s class (Children turning 3 over the summer, meeting three mornings a week) with a short wait list. At First Christian Church Preschool we promote positive self-growth and have a developmentally age appropriate curriculum. Our students receive music, Spanish and enrichment activities to help them develop the skills necessary to excel in school. Our preschool program provides a unique hands-on approach to learning. For a tour or additional information please call 472-0649 or 234-8964.

Campus Kitchen

to launch

The Casper College Nutrition program, under the leadership of Kelsey Phillips, Ph.D. will launch the Campus Kitchen at Casper College by November. Wyoming Food for Thought Project is a partner in the project.

The Campus Kitchens Project builds a student-run kitchen on campus whose purpose is to recover unserved food, and then repurpose it into healthy balanced meals, which are provided to local individuals who are experiencing food insecurity. Food is donated to the Campus Kitchen at Casper College from Sodexo Dining Services. Other organizations can also donate unserved food.

The college won a competitive $5,000 grant from online voting, which will be used to purchase supplies, food-safety training for volunteers, and for the eventual distribution of the meals.

Casper College students Tom Myler and Kassi McPherson, each of whom will receive stipends to continue the planning process this fall, assisted Phillips, who pushed the grant proposal effort forward.

Register for Christian academy

Mountain Road Christian Academy is accepting registrations for the 2016-2017 school year. MRCA is an accredited K-8 Christian School at 2657 Casper Mountain Road. The mission of MRCA is to educate students in the knowledge of God, the Creator, and Jesus, the Savior as revealed through the Holy Spirit in the Bible.

MRCA is operated under the direction of and is certified by the Education Department of the North American Division of Seventh-day Adventists.

Please cal 235-2859 for more information.

Mount Hope registering

Mount Hope Lutheran School is still accepting registrations for the 2016-2017 school year. Mount Hope, a private classical Lutheran school, offers preschool through eighth grade. Mount Hope believes it is vital that families have a school available where students receive an education founded upon what is true, good and beautiful. For more information, please call 234-6865.

Enrolling at Calvary Academy

Calvary Academy is accepting registrations for the 2016-2017 school year for grades K-12. Calvary Academy, a ministry of Calvary Baptist church, provides a quality education with Christ at the center and the Bible as the foundation. The A Beka curriculum is used for most subjects, focusing on foundational skills such as phonics, reading, comprehension, spelling, grammar, writing skills, math facts, and problem solving. Cursive writing and penmanship are also emphasized. For more information, please call 266-5417.

All school groups now free at trails

The National Historic Trails Interpretive Center is pleased to announce that all school groups will now be allowed free entry.

Previously, school groups were charged $2 per student. The decision to allow free entry was made in the continuing effort to increase youth visitation to the NHTIC.

Guided education programs for schools are offered year round. Teachers can schedule a class visit by contacting education specialist Stacey Moore at 307-261-7787.

Apply for Early Head Start

Early Head Start, a United Way agency, serving pregnant women and children birth to age 3, is accepting applications for the 2016-2017 program year. There are three programs: a home-based option with weekly home visits and twice a month Discovery Groups, a 2:2 center-based option with two home visits a month and two Discovery Groups a week, and a 2:2 option with wraparound childcare that accepts DFS. Please call one of our centers at 2659562 or 473-5848 for more information or an application, or visit our website at www.wyomingchild.org or a center.

Head Start applications

Head Start is currently accepting applications for the 2016-2017 school year. Head Start is a free, quality preschool program that prepares children for school. Applications are available at 301 W. B St. in Casper. Head Start is a United Way agency. Call 577-1864.
A Shoshoni man on Friday admitted to raping and impregnating a 12-year-old girl.

Gage M. Markgraf, 19, pleaded guilty in Natrona County District Court to third-degree sexual abuse of a minor. In exchange for the guilty plea, the charge was reduced from first-degree sexual abuse of a minor, but there was no agreement about what the sentence will be. Prosecutors could request the maximum penalty of 15 years in prison.

The Natrona County Sheriffs Office began investigating after the Wyoming Department of Family Services reported that the victim was pregnant and said Markgraf was the father, according to court documents.

Markgraf and the victim had a conversation about having sex on Facebook in January 2015, police said. After this conversation Markgraf raped the victim in a bedroom closet.

In court Friday, Markgrafs attorney Richard Szekely said his client was not aware that the victim was 12 at the time.

My client may have been confused, Szekely said.

Markgraf admitted that the victim was 12 after the judge noted that was a requirement in order to plead guilty.

The victim said Markgraf knew her age because he was present on her first day of sixth grade and she described herself as too young to have sex, police said.

She also said most people wear condoms when having sex, but Markgraf did not, according to court documents.

DNA evidence confirmed Markgraf as the father.
A Casper woman who suffered carbon monoxide poisoning from a faulty furnace in her apartment will receive only a fraction of the $28 million a jury awarded her in 2013.

Amber Lompe will not challenge a ruling by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, which concluded a $22.5 million punitive damage award against the company that managed her apartment was grossly excessive and violated the 14th Amendment, attorneys from both sides confirmed Thursday. The appeals court in April reduced that award to $1.95 million.

Lompe was living in the Sunridge Apartments when she suffered the carbon monoxide exposure, which she says left her with permanent injuries. She sued that apartment complex and property manager Apartment Management Consultants in 2012.

We are gratified by Ms. Lompes decision to accept the ruling of the 10th Circuit and allow the litigation to come to a close, Greg Wiseman, chief executive officer for Apartment Management Consultants, said in a written statement.

The company did not provide additional details about when and how the firm learned the case had ended.

Lompe chose not to pursue an additional appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, her lawyers said in a separate statement.

Many considerations factor into that decision, not the least of which is that now, more than five years after being poisoned in her Sunridge apartment in 2011, Ms. Lompe is ready to put the legal battles behind her and move forward with her life, the statement read. But she is not hanging her head.

Lompe was a 20-year-old Casper College student when she was poisoned by the gas via a malfunctioning furnace in her apartment. A doctor who testified at her trial told jurors Lompe would have died if shed been exposed to the gas for another 60 to 90 minutes.

The exposure resulted in a permanent brain injury that affects Lompes memory, concentration, attention and ability to multi-task, she told the Star-Tribune in a 2013 interview. She described experiencing difficulty with basic tasks, such as making a grocery list.

On Thursday, she referred questions about the case to her lawyers at the Spence Law Firm in Jackson.

Lompes lawyers argued Sunridges owner and manager ignored warnings that furnaces in the building were dangerous and needed to be repaired or replaced. A jury agreed and gave her a massive award  believed to be the largest civil judgment in Wyomings history. A year later, a federal judge upheld the jurys award, dismissing arguments that it amounted to a runaway verdict.

The apartments owner and manager appealed the case to the 10th Circuit, which agreed that the part of the award related to punitive damages was excessive. The appeals court did not dispute that Lompe was harmed by the carbon monoxide exposure. But it concluded the Apartment Management Consultants conduct resulted from indifference rather than malice and lowered the punitive award to $1.95 million.

There is no evidence that AMC intended to cause harm to Ms. Lompe or any other person, or that its conduct was the result of intention malice trickery or deceit, the court concluded.

Despite the reduced award, her attorneys hope it will bring attention to tenant safety and the dangers of carbon monoxide poisoning.

If this means that someone is helped, or a landlord somewhere takes steps to prevent a poisoning, then this case is a win for all of the people of Wyoming, her lawyers said in the statement.
CHEYENNE  Health insurance rates for Wyoming residents under the federal Affordable Care Act are set to climb an average of 7 percent next year, state and industry officials say.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Wyoming, the only company offering insurance under the program in the state, currently insures nearly 24,000 people. Company official Wendy Curran said Thursday the company will continue offering coverage next year.

The registration period to buy coverage for next year opens in November.

We think that it has worked pretty well for us as a company and the Wyoming market, Curran said Thursday. The experience of other insurers around the country has not been that positive.

Curran said her company is set to increase its rates 7 percent next year. Currently, a single person in their 40s would pay about $460 a month for coverage under the most popular plan. Tax credits to offset the cost of coverage are available to people below 400 percent of the federal poverty level and cover an average of about 80 percent of the gross premium nationwide.

WINhealth, the only other company to offer coverage in Wyoming, closed at the end of last year, forcing about 13,000 customers to find new coverage. Company officials blamed the federal program for the shutdown, saying it wasnt reimbursed for millions in cost overruns.

In 2017, I can tell you for sure that we will only have one company on the exchange, Wyoming Insurance Commissioner Tom Glause said this week.

Glause serves as court-appointed receiver for WINhealth and said medical providers have until Dec. 31 to submit any claims against the companys estate.

Seven states will only have one insurer in each of their marketplace regions next year, according to projections from Avalere Health, a consulting firm.

Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., has emerged in Congress as a leading critic of the Affordable Care Act. President Barack Obama pushed the health insurance overhaul measure through early in his first term.

In a speech in the Senate this week, Barrasso, who worked as a surgeon before going to Congress, noted that many insurance companies have dropped out of the program nationwide and said he believes the entire program is near collapse.

Millions of Americans will have fewer choices in 2017 than when they had in 2016, with a third of the country having only one option for coverage next year, Barrasso said, according to a transcript from his office. The Obama administration said that these were supposed to be competitive marketplaces. When theres only one company selling a product in an area, thats not competition  thats a monopoly.

The immediate future of the Affordable Care Act apparently hinges on the outcome of this falls presidential election. Republican nominee Donald Trump has said he would dismantle the system while Democrat Hillary Clinton has pledged to improve it.

Curran said her company doesnt sense that the entire Affordable Care Act program is going away despite the exodus of several major insurance companies.

I think its more of a business decision rather than a uniform dismissal of the overall plan itself, Curran said of the decision of some companies to pull out of the program. Its not perfect by any means, but I think the presidential election may change things or may clarify things as we go forward.
WASHINGTON (AP)  The world knows Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger as the pilot who managed to land an airliner full of people in the Hudson River without the loss of a single life after the plane lost thrust in both engines. But in the movie "Sully," about the "Miracle on the Hudson" ditching of US Airways Flight 1549, the pilot's ordeal doesn't stop there.

Accident investigators are soon grilling the airline captain and first officer Jeff Skiles.

Could the plane have made it back to LaGuardia Airport if Sullenberger, portrayed by actor Tom Hanks, had turned it around? Did the thrust in both engines quit after the plane struck a flock of geese or was there still some power in one? Was the pilot's performance affected by other factors? When was his last alcoholic drink? Was he having problems at home?

Only it didn't happen like that, say the former government accident investigators involved in the real-life investigation into the 2009 accident. The public, as well as pilots and others in the aviation industry who see the film, may get the wrong impression that investigators were trying to blame the pilots, they said.

"We're not the KGB. We're not the Gestapo," said Robert Benzon, who led the National Transportation Safety Board's investigation. "We're the guys with the white hats on."

It's true that those questions were asked, and many more, over the course of the 18-month investigation, but that's just part of NTSB's meticulous investigation process that is intended to find all possible flaws that contribute to a crash, investigators said. That way the board can make safety recommendations to the government, industry, labor unions, aircraft makers and others in an effort to prevent future accidents. Thirty-five safety recommendations were ultimately issued as a result of the Flight 1549 investigation.

The film, scheduled for release in theaters on Friday, portrays investigators as more like prosecutors looking for any excuse to fault Sullenberger for the mishap. But the real investigators recalled Sullenberger and Skiles, portrayed by actor Aaron Eckhart, as comfortable and cooperative. Pilot union officials representing them were present during all the interviews and at later public forums.

"These guys were already national heroes," said Benzon, who is now retired. "We weren't out to embarrass anybody at all."

But that's not how it comes across in the film, directed by Clint Eastwood.

"Until I read the script, I didn't know the investigative board was trying to paint the picture that he (Sullenberger) had done the wrong thing. They were kind of railroading him into 'it was his fault,'" Eastwood said in a publicity video for the Warner Bros. film.

Hanks told The Associated Press in an interview that a draft script included the names of real-life NTSB officials, but Sullenberger  who is an adviser on the film  requested they be taken out.

"He said, 'These are people who are not prosecutors. They are doing a very important job, and if, for editorial purposes, we want to make it more of a prosecutorial process, it ain't fair to them,' " said Hanks. "That's an easy thing to change."

Malcolm Brenner, a human factors expert who was among the investigators who interviewed Sullenberger the day after the ditching, said he recalls being extraordinarily impressed at the time with both pilots and how well they worked together in the midst of the crisis. He said he's also been impressed since then with how Sullenberger has used his fame to promote aviation safety.

"I think there is a real integrity there," said Brenner, now an aviation consultant. "I happen to be a big fan of the man."

Tom Haueter, who was the NTSB's head of major accident investigations at the time and is now a consultant, said he fears the movie will discourage pilots and others from fully cooperating with the board in the future.

"There is a very good chance," said Haueter, "that there is a segment of the population that will take this as proof of government incompetence and it will make things worse."

___

Associated Press writer Lindsey Bahr in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

___

Follow Joan Lowy at http://twitter.com/AP_Joan_Lowy. Her work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/joan-lowy
Metropolitan Tucsons exports continue to slowly recover from the Great Recession, but Cochise County saw a more than $80 million drop from 2014 to 2015, new numbers from the U.S. Commerce Department show.

Overall, the International Trade Administrations 2015 Metropolitan Area Export overview, released this week, shows good news for Arizona trade, which has trended upward after a 10-year low of $14 billion in 2009.

Here are some of the numbers:

$22.6 billion  Arizonas total exports continue to grow year-over-year, topping 2014s $21.2 billion.

$13.8 billion  More than half of Arizonas total exports come from the Phoenix metropolitan statistical area, which has topped its pre-recession numbers. The metro area is in the Top 10 for export growth for 2015.

$9.1 billion  The states most important export market continues to be Mexico, with steady growth over the last five years and about half a billion more export dollars reported between 2014 and 2015.

Attention statewide to strengthening the relationship with Mexico has helped move the numbers in the right direction, said Christina Parisi, director of U.S. Commercial Service-Arizona in Tucson.

Those kinds of efforts do pay off, and as companies become more aware of market opportunities, more people get involved in exporting, she said.

$2.4 billion  Exports from the Tucson metropolitan statistical area grew 9.2 percent from 2014  an improvement, but lower than the $2.5 billion in 2013. The drop in 2014 can be attributed to problems in the energy sector, Parisi said, as oil prices plummeted.

Other states are more reliant on some of the energy exports, such as Texas for example, but we are also reliant on minerals and things like that, she said.

$551 million  Transportation equipment manufacturing accounts for 22 percent of Tucsons exports, while computer and electronic product manufacturing ($335 million), fabricated metal product manufacturing ($308 million) and machinery manufacturing ($253 million) round out the top export categories.

The categories encompass many different technologies, Parisi said, but high-tech optics, medical devices, advance manufacturing, and robotics are big pieces of the local export puzzle.

Tech and manufacturing-related products we hope to continue growing for a while, and thats a good sign because those are good jobs, she said.

$340 million  Exports from the Sierra Vista-Douglas metro statistical area dropped from $425 million in 2014. Sluggishness in the mining sector and a strong dollar hurt the region overall but hit Cochise County especially hard.

Although this area has some large challenges, Parisi said she is optimistic that a focus on cybertechnology will help the region. She is also hopeful that the overall picture on exports will improve in 2016, as her clients report strong business so far.
Business constraints in Mexico offer an opportunity for Tucson to tap into cross-border startups, says the CEO of Startup Tucson, Justin Williams. He plans to develop a program with the help of a new $50,000 grant from the Small Business Administration.

The program, dubbed Thryve Latin America, is meant to attract high-potential startups seeking to launch in the United States. Its still in early stages.

Although Mexicos economy continues to grow, putting money into startups is not part of the countrys more traditional and risk-averse investment culture, Williams said.

The environment that theyre in is not at the level, certainly of Silicon Valley, but not even at the level of Tucson in many ways, he said. The goal is to recruit these kinds of startups into the U.S., into Tucson, and build a long-term partnership with them.

The program will someday encompass all of Latin America, officials said, but will focus initially on Mexico, capitalizing on Southern Arizonas cultural ties and working relationships that already exist between institutions.

Williams pointed to the strategic partnership between the University of Arizona and the National Autonomous University of Mexico, Latin Americas largest university, as a natural way to access talent.

That university is 400,000 students, so the talent pool is enormous. Theres 15,000 students in the computer engineering program alone, where theres several hundred at the U of A, he said.

Officials hope to have the initial plan for Thryve Latin America ready by the end of the year. It will be developed thanks to the grant from the SBAs Growth Accelerator Fund Competition. Startup Tucson was one of 68 winners nationwide out of 400 applicants.

Thryve Latin America launches at a time when improving economic ties to Mexico is a strong priority for Southern Arizona and the rest of the state.
Instead of tubing down the Salt River, I spent my Labor Day burrowing through the biggest city in Latin America, where burritos are nearly a myth and 18th century basilicas point sideways toward mazes of people selling charred corn.

Sounds pretty romantic, but I was actually traveling alone because I found a last-minute American Airlines flight for $380. I flew out from Tucson on Friday and had to be back to work by Tuesday. In between, I saw two museums and one of the largest murals in the world, walked the staggering Chapultepec park, took a boat through ancient Aztec canals and saw Frida Kahlo's neighborhood Coyoacan.

I ate most of my meals on the street, which was faster and I believe, tastier. I wanted to share with you some of the things I encountered, because the experience really changed how I think about Mexican food and what makes Arizona's cuisine unique. Other than chimichangas.

I apologize ahead of time for A) not being a real expert, and B) not getting names, prices and exact locations. I wasn't taking notes, because I was on vacation ...

On my first full-day, I set out from the Hostel Mundo Joven Catedral on the fringes of the city's main Zocalo square, and walked west down the bustling Avenida Cinco de Mayo. I was looking for a bank, but got a little sidetracked by the massive spinning trompo of vermilion red pork meat (pictured up top).

Health department regulations have made this porcine spectacle a rare site in Tucson, but not even in Sonora have I seen a trompo this enormous. Central Mexico is the home of al pastor. It's a fusion food inspired by the shawarmas of Lebanese immigrants. Somewhere in the city you can find tacos arabes wrapped in pita bread, but I was content with these flawlessly suave corn tortillas, at this point the best I've ever had.

Walking further west past the Palacio de Bellas Artes, I happened upon a swapmeet style market straddling the Alameda Central park. Several vendors had big plump sausages strung from their stands, so I sat down and tried one in taco form. It was longaniza, a pork sausage that's similar to chorizo but a tad drier and intensely spicy. The taquero chopped it up into tiny little crumbles and tossed them on the flattop until they had an addicting salty crunch.

I also saw these chips there. I didn't get one, but what the heck. Green Cheetos???

While I'm at it, here are some candies I saw nearby. Mexico City vendors have a flair for sweets, and the varieties were countless and inspiring. FYI, those flag colored candies are probably there because Mexican Independence Day is coming up on Sept. 16. Red, white and green is the new black around here.

Quesadillas are known far and wide (in London pubs I've seen them with tzatziki sauce), but this is new. The cook takes a huge block of white Queso Oaxaca and rips off a few strings one by one. Then he stuffs it into the tortilla along with a spoonful of huitlacoche, a springy corn fungus that we estadounidenses consider a delicacy. (Apparently it's really common in Mexico City, and cheap too.) The quesadilla tastes like melted string cheese with mushrooms.

And then there's this one, also called a "quesadilla" by my chef. The freshly-pressed corn tortilla is fried in the oil, while a man crunches under the stove and fans off the smoke from the coals. My quesadilla was stuffed with those delicate squash blossoms you see in the summertime. Before they gave it to me, they split it open lengthwise and filled the center with shredded white cheese and green salsa. I ate it next to a plant, watching a Mexican street clown sing Juan Gabriel songs.

A few feet away I spotted a guy taking wet meat out of a tub and chopping it on a big wooden block that looked like a log. I sat down at his table, and he made me up a taco with barbacoa de borrego, succulent lamb meat that he'd been steaming in sweet banana leaves. I think I started to tear up at this point, but it may have been the clown music.

I was lucky to arrive during a massive festival of indigenous cultures, where hundreds of vendors set up in stately white tents that spanned the entire Zocalo plaza. The picture above was taken in one of the food tents, which was dominated by Oaxacan people selling moles and fresh white cheeses and meat stews from silver tubs.

I ended up eating this creation, which put me out of commission for several hours. (I could still explore, just no more food.) It's a tlayuda, the famous Oaxacan cheese crisp made from a large corn tortilla baked in an oven. Even the chico size was massive, rubbed black bean paste and fatty asiento pork lard, then smothered with cheese, avocados, tomatoes, beef strips and vibrant red chorizo. This is only the second tlayuda I've had, but I wasn't aware they could fold them in half. This makes it easier to eat with the velvety puree of chile de arbol salsa.

Not everything I ate/drank was on the street. After that tlayuda, I took the blue metro line south to the last stop. Then I took a bus to its last stop. Then I walked ... through a little town to a lake of colorful trajinera boats each decorated with people's names.

Xochimilco is the last living example of the city's ancient waterway system, before Spanish settlers filled in the massive lake and built Mexico City on top of it. Xochimilco is a famous tourist stop, but while there I mostly saw Mexican families who were renting out the boats to drink and eat together, dancing to mariachis who floated by playing Vicente Fernandez tunes.
DUBUQUE, Iowa (AP)  Dubuque resident Dr. Steve Sloan never met his great-uncle Chaplain Aloysius Schmitt.

But in many ways, he feels like he knew the man.

Stories about Schmitt's life  and the heroism he displayed on the day of his death  were recounted at seemingly every family gathering Sloan attended.

Relatives beamed with pride as they told Sloan of how "Chaplain Al" saved the lives of 12 sailors on Dec. 7, 1941, and how he placed their well-being before his own during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

But Sloan always could tell something was missing from these stories.

"The idea that the remains were never identified was problematic for all of Father Al's siblings," Sloan said of Schmitt's nine older siblings. "It bothered them a lot that their youngest little brother never came home. I could always tell that was a sad point for them."

After nearly 75 years, Schmitt's family will receive the sense of closure they sought for so long.

The Telegraph Herald reports (http://bit.ly/2c1m4aD ) the remains of Schmitt  who was born in St. Lucas, Iowa, and attended what is now Loras College in Dubuque  have been discovered and identified in an effort led by the U.S. Department of Defense.

Currently being held in Hawaii, Schmitt's remains will be transported to Iowa during the first week of October.

A service will be held in Schmitt's hometown of St. Lucas on Oct. 5.

The remains then will be transported to Dubuque, where a wake will be held at Loras College on Oct. 7. A funeral service and interment will take place at Loras the following day.

___

A process that had stretched on for years culminated earlier this week.

Flanked by two military representatives, Sloan and his wife, Julie, on Monday morning arrived at the doorstep of Art Schultz in Milford, Iowa.

Their presence at Schultz's home was tied to military protocol, which dictates that a deceased soldier's primary next of kin be notified if remains are discovered.

Schultz married Schmitt's niece Dorothy in 1951. While Dorothy was present during the military notification, her struggles with Alzheimer's disease made it difficult for her to grasp the significance of the news, Art recounted.

For Art, however, who has been regaled with stories of Schmitt's bravery for decades, news of the discovery hit home.

"I think it is a great thing for the family," Schultz said Tuesday. "A lot of the family members have (died). For those who are still alive, they seem really interested and thankful (the military) has been doing something like this."

Schultz also is no stranger to the realities of war. He served among the occupying forces in Japan from 1946 through 1948 and observed the aftermath of cities that had been decimated in World War II.

He believes news of Schmitt's discovery will help to educate a new generation of Americans.

"These things wake people up a little bit. They make them aware of past history," he said.

For Sloan, the visit to Milford was years in the making.

About three years ago, Sloan was contacted by military representatives. They were seeking a family member who could provide DNA that could be used to help identify Schmitt's remains.

Sloan kept close tabs on the process. As he sat with the Schultzes, it hit him that those efforts finally came to fruition.

"There was definitely a point in that meeting where Julie and I looked at each other and thought, 'I cannot believe this is happening,'" Sloan said.

___

Schmitt was born in St. Lucas in 1909. He was raised on a farm and quickly became immersed in the local church.

He went on to attend Columbia College, now known as Loras, and graduated in 1932.

He served as an associate pastor at St. Mary's Church in Dubuque and entered the chaplain corps of the U.S. Navy in 1939. One year later, he was assigned to the USS Oklahoma.

Schmitt was aboard the battleship on Dec. 7, 1941, when the Japanese Navy launched a surprise aerial attack against the American naval base at Pearl Harbor.

Schmitt had just concluded celebrating Mass when four torpedoes slammed into the ship. The lower decks quickly filled with water, trapping sailors who desperately searched for a way to escape.

Historical records indicate that Schmitt was among a group of sailors who discovered a small porthole leading out of the ship. Schmitt had the chance to escape but refused, instead choosing to use his tall, slender frame to hoist other sailors through the porthole and out of the sinking ship.

The USS Oklahoma capsized within minutes, and Schmitt became the first chaplain killed during World War II.

His story continues to draw the admiration of military veterans such as Dick Bridges, who serves as vice president of Veterans Memorial Plaza in Dubuque.

"This is somebody who gave his life to save other people," Bridges said.

The awards and honors bestowed upon Schmitt in the years that followed underscore the extent of his bravery.

He was awarded several military medals posthumously, including the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps medal for bravery and the Purple Heart. Two years after his death, the newest destroyer escort in the Navy was named the USS Schmitt.

In 1977, a memorial to him was dedicated on a site named after the hero, Chaplain Schmitt Island. The memorial was subsequently relocated to 1851 Admiral Sheehy Drive, also on the island.

___

Schmitt was among 429 crew members on the USS Oklahoma killed in the attack.

In the years that followed, the remains of just 35 of these sailors and Marines were identified.

The rest of the bodies  often referred to as "the unknowns"  were buried in 61 caskets at National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu.

More than a half-century later, technological advancements and forensic science sparked new efforts to explore the burial location.

Two of these caskets  the first in 2003, and the second in 2007  were disinterred. The initial casket led to the identification of five crew members, while the second led to one more.

In April 2015, the U.S. Department of Defense announced all the caskets would be exhumed.

Military officials aim to complete their analysis of the remains by the end of 2016. The department must estimate at least a 60 percent identification rate in order to exhume co-mingled remains, and Bridges said an ever higher success rate is expected.

"They expect greater than an 80 percent identification success rate," Bridges said. "That is 300 or some families scattered across America, for funerals to be planned. This is a big deal."

___

The Fayette County community of St. Lucas  it has 138 residents, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates  maintains a strong attachment to Schmitt.

At age 95, resident Lee Stammeyer admits that not all memories come to him quickly, but those of Schmitt remain fresh today.

Stammeyer was about 11 years old when Schmitt was beginning his studies at Columbia College.

During Schmitt's visits to St. Lucas, the two would occasionally play checkers together.

Stammeyer remembers Schmitt as "well educated," noting that he seemed like he wanted to read a lot.

Most of all, though, Stammeyer remembers Schmitt's friendliness.

"His character was just good," he said. "You just believed in him."

Schmitt is memorialized in an exhibit on the second floor of German-American Museum, Library & Family History Center in St. Lucas.

Clair Blong, who serves as president of St. Lucas Historical Society, said Schmitt's role in the community, the military and the church remains a point of interest.

He also emphasized that Schmitt's death made an immediate impact in St. Lucas in 1941.

"I think it really helped St. Lucas realize it was going to be a part of this war effort, when you have someone die on the first day of the conflict who is from this town," he recalled.

Virginia Manderfield, also a volunteer with the historical society, said Schmitt's impact and memory still touches St. Lucas today.

"He was sort of a favorite son," she said. "For a lot of people who have gone into the service, (Schmitt's legacy) gave them pride in serving their country. He was very loved, respected and honored for what he did."

___

The motto at Loras College is pro deo et patria, a Latin phrase meaning, "For God and country."

It seems fitting that Schmitt's story is cherished among those at the college.

"I think (the motto) says it all," said Mike Gibson, archivist at Center for Dubuque History at Loras College. "The college is very proud of its religious service and its service to the military too."

Gibson credits Schmitt's family with helping to keep his memory alive at Loras. He noted that relatives have donated an abundance of artifacts and documentation that has helped maintain a connection to Schmitt.

The most visible example can be found in Christ the King Chapel, completed in 1947 as a memorial to the servicemen of World War II and, specifically, to Chaplain Schmitt.

An exhibit dedicated to Schmitt, fixed on the back wall of the chapel, includes a chalice, paperweight and pen that were aboard the USS Oklahoma when it sank.

Gibson believes it is "a miracle" that the items were recovered intact. And he speaks with pride when he recounts the actions of Schmitt on that fateful day.

"I think there is no question he is truly a military hero," said Gibson. "What really stands out is the fact that he had that compassion for his fellow sailors. He was willing to risk his life to make sure as many of them were saved as could be saved."

___

Teri Goodmann, Dubuque's assistant city manager, will help plan the arrangements for Schmitt's homecoming next month. She said she often reflects on his actions on the last day of his life.

"Whenever I think back to that day and how Chaplain Schmitt didn't try to save himself, I am struck by the incredible self-sacrifice," she said. "It gives me great reason to believe in the goodness of people, for the possibilities and potential of humankind."

Bridges believes the discovery of Schmitt's remains will usher in a new chapter in Dubuque's connection to the late hero.

"I think it will bring closure for the family, for the community and, especially, for veterans," he said.

To Sloan, his great-uncle's homecoming will provide a happy ending to a tragic tale.

He admits that he still struggling to wrap his head around the reality.

"It just doesn't seem possible to me," he said. "For my whole life, we always heard that he was never found. The opportunity to bring him home, it really is very humbling.

"I didn't think it would ever happen."

___

Information from: Telegraph Herald, http://www.thonline.com

An AP Member Exchange shared by the Telegraph Herald.
Federal officers at a Nogales port of entry shot and wounded the driver of a vehicle that attempted to hit officers while heading into Mexico on Thursday afternoon.

The incident occurred at the Mariposa crossing and required officials to shut down the southbound traffic lanes at the crossing for most of the day.

Initial reports said the driver of a vehicle attempted to evade Border Patrol agents at the port and the driver headed south through the port and swerved his vehicle in an apparent attempt to hit officers. Customs and Border Protection officers and a Border Patrol agent fired at the vehicle, according to a news release from the task force that oversees those agencies.

The driver was shot multiple times and was airlifted to a Tucson hospital. A passenger in the vehicle sustained non-life-threatening injuries and was taken into custody. No officer or agents were injured.

The condition of the driver was not available.

Authorities shut down southbound traffic through the Mariposa Port of Entry for the rest of the day while federal authorities investigated the incident. Northbound traffic is still coming through the port.
The timing is not helpful for Paul Babeus campaign for Congress.

But was it really deliberate?

News emerged Wednesday night that the FBI had delivered a subpoena from a federal grand jury to the Arizona Public Safety Foundation, a Pinal County-based charity.

It matters to Babeu and the campaign for the U.S. House in Congressional District 1 because the foundation has received much of the money that the Pinal County Sheriffs Department, under Babeu, has seized under forfeiture laws. The foundation is closely aligned with the department and Babeu and has been accused of spending money to benefit his political career.

Interviewed by host Garrett Lewis on KNST, 790-AM, Thursday morning, Babeu suggested the FBIs actions were politically motivated.

Clearly, theres a political agenda afoot, Babeu said, going on to add: Sadly, in a political environment, all these attacks all these questions come out just before an election. You dont have to be a cop to figure this out, whats going on here.

So, what Babeu seemed to be saying is that the FBI deliberately waited until after he was nominated last week in the Republican primary to deliver this grand-jury subpoena.

But of course, the subpoena itself is usually secret. It only became known because a copy was sent to the Pinal County government, which was the source of forfeited money sent to the foundation.

Pinal County Supervisor Steve Miller  a Republican like Babeu but also a longtime adversary of the sheriff  saw the subpoena, he told me. Miller said a FBI agent interviewed him for three hours in late July about the foundations spending, and he criticized what he considered unethical use of the money and property seized from suspected criminals.

In my interpretation, theyre using it simply as a laundering operation, he said. They give it to the public safety foundation, which goes and pays for what they want. Theyve used it for everything from travel to challenge coins, patches and all kinds of stuff.

Millers fellow Republican supervisor, Anthony Smith, has also complained about the spending of RICO money on activities such as youth dance clubs, and that the sheriff inevitably gets a campaign-benefiting photo op when handing the checks over. Hed rather see the money spent on overtime for deputies.

The higher priority should be to fight crime in the high-crime neighborhoods, he said.

Later Thursday, Babeus campaign issued a statement decrying the subpoena story as another smear.

The sheriffs office is not the target of an FBI investigation, period, he says in the statement. All RICO monies coming from the sheriffs office have been reviewed and approved by either the County Attorney or Arizona Attorney General and have a history of receiving bipartisan support.

Simply put, I have no ability to spend any RICO money, he went on. The money confiscated from criminals is forfeited to the county by a judge and goes towards improving our communities, in part by supporting groups like the Girl Scouts, Maricopa American Legion, Superior Substance Abuse Coalition, YMCA, Alliance Against Family Abuse, and many more.

All that said  if the FBI is not targeting the sheriffs office, and if Babeu doesnt have control over how the money is spent, how can this be a FBI-orchestrated smear of him? Maybe hes protesting too much.

Pinal turnover

Speaking of Babeu, one of the less-noted aspects of the primary election was the loss by the Babeu-aligned law and order team in the races for sheriff and county attorney.

Babeus Chief Deputy, Steve Henry, lost the Republican nomination for sheriff to Mark Lamb, by a margin of 62 percent to 37 percent. Lamb will take on Democrat Kaye Dickson in the general election.

County Attorney Lando Voyles, who unseated Democrat Jim Walsh with Babeus help in 2012, himself was defeated in the GOP primary by Kent Volkmer, by a margin of 58 to 31 percent. Volkmer will not face Democratic Party opposition in the general.

It seems to suggest a decline in Babeus political strength in Pinal County. But then again, he was the top vote-getter by a longshot in his race for the nomination in CD1. He took 43 percent of the vote in a six-candidate ballot.

Kirkpatrick protests ... again

Last week, I noted that Democrats and U.S. Senate candidate Ann Kirkpatrick were rightfully protesting a poster created by Republicans and delivered to her office. It was an Old West-style Wanted poster featuring Kirkpatricks face. The problem was that the poster also featured illustrated bullet holes.

That was in bad taste, and frankly, the Republican Party should have apologized for it.

However, this week, Kirkpatricks campaign is pushing the apology demands too far. They asked that the McCain campaign take down an ad featuring video of Kirkpatrick fleeing a town hall in Holbrook in 2009.

Specifically, they sent out a statement by Navajo County Sheriff KC Clark saying that he had asked Kirkpatrick to leave the Safeway where the event was taking place, out of concern for public safety.

The only problem, as the McCain campaign was quick to point out, is that Clark offered a different explanation to the White Mountain Independent in 2009:

She was trying to talk one-on-one and it just didnt work out. That seemed to anger people. She wanted to talk one-on-one and people werent going to let her do that. She didnt want to talk to a crowd, so whats the sense in staying? Nothing would be accomplished.

McCain en Espanol

McCain, by the way, launched a bare bones campaign website in Spanish recently. The trick? As the Washington Post first noted, it had some big differences from his English-language website on the key issue of immigration.

The English-language website noted his role in efforts to secure the border with Mexico. The Spanish-language site emphasized how he led an effort toward a more humane policy of immigration reform.

Arizona voters have seen McCain try to straddle this ravine before but never in such stark, simultaneous contrast.
Davis-Monthan Air Force Base is on the short list to become a new home base for drone pilots.

The Air Force announced Thursday that D-M is one of the five final possible locations for a new unit that will remotely pilot MQ-9 Reaper drones.

In December 2015, the Air Force announced that D-M was one of 19 potential locations for the new mission.

Today, D-M made the cut from 19 bases to the final five because (of) our robust command and control and communications infrastructure and overall high quality of life for airmen and their families, U.S. Rep. Martha McSally of Tucson said in a news release Thursday, adding that drone operations are a vital and growing part of the Air Forces mission.

Ramon Valadez, a Pima County supervisor who sits on the Governors Military Affairs Commission, said, I am very, very excited. Anything that adds to the mission of D-M is a very positive thing for our community.

I am looking forward to this, and any other possible mission in the future, Valadez said.

The Pentagon plans to retire a mainstay at D-M, the A-10 Thunderbolt II ground-attack jet, in 2022.

The Reaper conducts military missions around the world and has air-to-ground missiles, Valadez explained. If D-M is selected, the pilots will be located at D-M and control the aircraft from here. The drones would actually be in areas where there are air operations.

The Air Force said other locations it is considering to control the Reaper include Moody Air Force Base in Georgia; Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho; Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska; and Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina.

The Air Force will also select a second location that is expected to have up to 24 MQ-9 aircraft assigned. It would potentially host a full MQ-9 wing. The Air Force bases that are candidates for that mission are Eglin and Tyndall, both in Florida; Vandenberg in California; and Shaw.

The Air Force will now begin to conduct site surveys at all of the potential locations.

Survey teams will assess each location against requirements, potential impacts to existing missions, infrastructure and manpower. They will also develop cost estimates to locate the planned units.

D-M became home to its first modern unmanned aircraft unit in 2007, when the 162nd Air Guard added the 214th Reconnaissance Squadron, whose pilots and sensor operators remotely operate MQ-1 Predator drones overseas. (The base housed a unit that dropped reconnaissance drones during the Vietnam War.)

The 214th is transitioning to the larger, heavier and more capable MQ-9 Reaper, and recently received the first of six Reapers it is to operate by fiscal 2017.

Unmanned aircraft have become an important part of the Air Forces arsenal, performing nonstop intelligence gathering, surveillance and, in some cases, attack missions without endangering pilots.
PHOENIX  A Chandler firm that could lose business from legalized marijuana is now the largest contributor to a campaign to stop that from happening here.

Reports filed with the Secretary of States Office show Insys Therapeutics, whose sole product is an opiate spray to treat pain for cancer patients, gave $500,000 to Arizonans for Responsible Drug Policy. That is nearly four times more than the second largest donation of $110,000 from the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry to try to defeat Proposition 205.

J.P. Holyoak who chairs the committee pushing the initiative, said the interest of pharmaceutical companies in keeping marijuana illegal comes down to protection of profits. He said firms dont want the competition.

They want to be able to push their far more addictive, far more harmful and far more dangerous opioid drugs, Holyoak said. He said that is particularly true of a company like Insys whose business relies solely on a single product that has received federal approval: Subsys, a sublingual fentanyl spray.

Adam Deguire, campaign manager for the anti-205 effort, did not address the financial interest of firms like Insys in keeping marijuana illegal, referring that question to the company.

In its own prepared statement, Insys said it opposes the initiative because it fails to protect the safety of Arizonas citizens, and particularly its children. And the company noted that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not approved marijuana for any medical use.

We believe that all available medicines should meet the clinical standards set by the FDA, the statement says.

The statement says Insys has nothing against the cannabinoids, the ingredients in marijuana, assuming they are properly used. In fact, the companys website says it has seven such products in various stages of development.

Deguire, for his part, said theres also reason to look at who is supporting Prop. 205.

Most of the money has come from the Marijuana Policy Project, an out-of-state interest. And he noted a series of five-figure checks from donors who that stand to make millions if Prop. 205 passes, with no regards to its negative effects.

That list includes companies that operate medical marijuana dispensaries. As crafted, the initiative gives them first crack at getting one of the limited number of licenses that will be available through 2020 to sell marijuana.

Holyoak did not dispute that fact.

Proposition 205 may potentially benefit some of the existing dispensary owners, he conceded. This is still an economy and theyre going to be winners and losers.

But Holyoak defended the limit of 147 marijuana shops statewide the initiative would allow.

If approved in November, the measure would allow any adult to use marijuana for any reason, including recreational, as well as grow their own plants. It also would provide certain protections to marijuana users against losing their jobs or child visitation rights solely because of the legal use of the drug.

That is a big change from the existing 2010 voter-approved medical marijuana law that allows doctors to recommend the drug to patients with cancer as well as to treat pain. About 100,000 Arizonans already have state-issued ID cards allowing them to legally purchase up to 2 ounces of the drug every two weeks.

But Holyoak argued the availability of medical marijuana does not undermine his contention that pharmaceutical companies fear the expansion because it will make the drug much more accessible, not for recreational use but also for those who have medical needs but do not have the approximately $300 it takes to get a doctors recommendation and an annual medical marijuana card from the state.

There are great barriers to people having access to cannabis as pain treatment through the medical program, Holyoak said. Instead what we are proposing is allowing any adult to walk into a store ... and purchase an alternative to those harmful opiods that Insys is pushing.

While Holyoak argues that legal marijuana would financially harm Insys, theres another side to thar argument.

In an article earlier this year in Forbes, Todd Hagopian who manages a fund of pharmaceutical companies said he actually sees a benefit to wider legal use of marijuana for firms like Insys. That has to do with the companys cannabis drugs under development.

I anticipate a huge swing toward accessibility, and acceptability, with cannabis-based drugs, he said.

The biotech industry might be the one who is actually best-positioned to cash in on the wide acceptance of medical marijuana going forward, Hagopian said. As the medical marijuana trend becomes the norm, rather than exception, stocks like Insys will be major beneficiaries.

Hagopian said he foresees larger pharmaceutical companies swallowing up firms that have developed cannabis-linked drugs.
Local and state tribal groups are supporting the Standing Rock Sioux tribe's opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Owned by Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners, the $3.8 billion, 1,172-mile project would carry nearly a half-million barrels of crude oil daily from North Dakota's oil fields through South Dakota and Iowa to an existing pipeline in Patoka, Illinois, where shippers can access Midwest and Gulf Coast markets.

 The Tohono O'Odham Tribe sent a letter Sept. 2 to President Obama and the U.S. Army Secretary's office in opposition to the pipeline. The Army Corps of Engineers has issued a permit for the pipeline which the Standing Rock Sioux are challenging in court.

 The Pascua Yaqui Tribal Council passed a resolution on Wednesday in support of the Sioux and in opposition to the pipeline.

 The Intertribal Association of Arizona has passed a resolution opposing the pipeline. The association is the political arm of the Intertribal Council of Arizona, a non-profit group that provides programs and services for 21 Arizona tribes.

 A march in support of the Dakota Sioux is scheduled for Thursday night, Sept. 8, from 6-8 p.m. from Cardinal Park on Tucson's southwest side to the San Xavier Mission. It is sponsored by the Pascua Yaqui Festival of the Arts.
OSIRIS-REx is headed for Bennu.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket bearing the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft  and the hopes of a small army of planetary scientists led by the University of Arizona  lifted from Cape Canaveral Thursday at 4:05 p.m. Tucson time, on time and without incident.

We got everything just exactly perfect, said Dante Lauretta, the missions principal investigator and a UA professor of planetary sciences.

Lauretta gave a big thumbs-up as the NASA panel was introduced at a post-launch news conference.

This represents the hopes and dreams, hard work, blood, sweat and tears of thousands of people who have worked on this mission for over a decade, he said.

A lot of the team was on-site Thursday, joining about 300 UA students, scientists, administrators and donors who watched from Kennedy Space Center.

In Tucson, hundreds of students and space enthusiasts gathered on the University of Arizona Mall to watch the mission blast off for Bennu.

They took seats in the grass, or crowded under a tent for shade, eyes turned to a giant screen broadcasting the launch. They grew silent as launch neared.

The only sound was that of a NASA spokesman narrating the live stream. When he announced that all systems were go, spectators applauded.

When the rocket lifted off, the crowd erupted into shouts and cheers, drowning out the televised rumbling of the spacecraft.

Ed Beshore, the missions deputy principal investigator, watched the launch with colleagues from a causeway at Kennedy Space Center.

We have a beautiful, straight shot, a beautiful breeze, no mosquitoes, no clouds, it was just absolutely perfect, he said by telephone shortly after launch as he watched the rocket roar into the sky.

Beshore said the launch was so bright and so spectacular that many in the crowd were too awed to cheer. Our mouths were open, just watching it go up. Its very, very cool.

The launch was the end of a long chapter for the team. I feel great, he said. There are just so many people who have worked so hard to this point. Now things get really exciting for lots of us right now.

The spacecraft, whose scientific mission was conceived by scientists at the University of Arizonas Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, will rendezvous with Bennu after a two-year, 2-billion mile journey.

Sling-shotting by Earth for a gravity assist, it will catch up to the mountain-sized space rock and then slow to fly in formation alongside it.

It will use an array of instruments to characterize its composition  a thermal spectrometer supplied by Arizona State Universitys School of Earth and Space Exploration, a LIDAR altimeter from the Canadian Space Agency, a visual and infrared spectrometer from NASA Goddard, an X-Ray imaging spectrometer built by a student team at Harvard and MIT, and a suite of cameras built by the UAs Lunar and Planetary Lab, which also hosts the missions Science Processing and Operations Center.

Those instruments will scrutinize the surface of Bennu to help scientists select the perfect site to gather a handful of loose soil with a telescoping sampler arm. The regolith will be returned to Earth in a sealed container in 2023.

OSIRIS-REx is the third of NASAs New Frontiers missions, all led by unaffiliated principal investigators, in this case UAs Lauretta, who has spent his career studying meteorites for clues to the formation of the solar system and the origin of life.

LPL scientists chose Bennu because it was close by and had the spectral signature of carbon, the essential element in organic compounds such as amino acids.

Return of the sample  at least 2.1 ounces of pristine space dust and as much as 4.4 pounds  will mark the beginning of a scientific investigation that will last decades.

That tiny sample, 75 percent of which will be stored for future analysis with improved techniques and instruments, is a time capsule of conditions that existed 4.5 billion years ago during the formation of the solar system.

The $1 billion mission was originally proposed as a less ambitious one by the late Michael Drake, former director of the Lunar and Planetary Lab at UA, who initially worked with colleagues at Lockheed Martin Space Systems on the proposal.

It took three tries, but Drake, who brought on Lauretta as deputy principal investigator, finally won an $803 million NASA contract, the largest ever won by the UA, in May 2011. Six months later, Drake died.

Lauretta said he thought of Drake often Thursday. Today has been bittersweet. I really missed him, he said.

A plaque honoring Drake is flying with the spacecraft and the scientific part of the mission will be run from the off-campus building now named the Michael Drake Building.

It once housed the Phoenix Mars Lander team, the first NASA mission led by the UA, and was reconfigured to accommodate up to 400 scientists from across the globe who will be present for critical operations of OSIRIS-REx.

It is not the only campus construction project spawned by the mission.

The sub-basement of the Kuiper Space Sciences building, built with NASA money during the Apollo era, is being retrofitted for vibration-free, atomic-level analysis of samples.

The university has made substantial investment in cutting-edge equipment that will allow us to understand what the nature of that material is and what it means about the origin of life, said Kimberly Espy, UA senior vice president for research.

Espy watched the launch with UA President Ann Weaver Hart. Espy said by phone afterward that the spectacle was overwhelming. You see the fire, then you hear the sound, then you could really feel the shaking, she said.

Timothy Swindle, current director of LPL, was excited at the prospect for those analyses when reached by phone shortly before launch.

Personally, its just fascinating to watch something Ive seen go from an idea 12 years ago to a launch pad today. At LPL, weve done all sorts of great things, but this might be the greatest. Its a big deal, he said.

Swindles counterpart at the UAs Steward Observatory, Director Buell Jannuzi, said the mission is a boost for his department as well as the entire university.

Its a wonderful example of how the UA handles really challenging and ambitious efforts to expand our horizons and understand our universe. Im really proud, he said by telephone as he headed to the launch viewing Thursday.

He said astronomy and planetary sciences have always been linked in developing new techniques. He said that collaboration is growing as other solar systems are discovered.

Studying exoplanets and searching for life on other worlds is common to both departments and reflected by our joint appointments, he said.

Jim Green, director of NASAs Planetary Sciences Division, was exuberant at the news conference.
OSIRIS-REx is headed for Bennu.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket bearing the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft and the hopes and plans of a small army of planetary scientists led by the University of Arizona, lifted from Cape Canaveral Thursday on-time and without incident at 4:05 p.m. MST.

About 300 UA students, scientists, administrators and donors were among the estimated 8,000 spectators at Cape Canaveral, Florida, cheering the launch of NASAs first mission to sample an asteroid.

The spacecraft, whose scientific mission was conceived by scientists at the University of Arizonas Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, will rendezvous with an asteroid named Bennu after a two-year, 2-billion mile journey.

The spacecraft will catch up to the asteroid and fly in formation alongside it to characterize its composition.

It will use an array of instruments  a thermal spectrometer supplied by Arizona State Universitys School of Earth and Space Exploration, a LIDAR altimeter from the Canadian Space Agency, a visual and infrared spectrometer from NASA Goddard, an X-Ray Imaging Spectrometer built by a student team at Harvard and MIT, and a suite of cameras built by the UA Lunar and Planetary Lab, which also hosts the missions Science Processing and Operations Center.

Scientists will scrutinize the surface of Bennu to select the perfect site to gather up a handful of loose soil and return it to Earth in a sealed container seven years from now.

OSIRIS-REx is the third of NASAs New Frontiers missions, all led by unaffiliated principal investigators, in this case Dante Lauretta, a UA professor of planetary sciences, who has spent his career studying meteorites for clues to the formation of the solar system and the origin of life on Earth.

This mission is NASAs first attempt to grab a chunk of solar system history from an asteroid. LPL scientists chose Bennu because it was close-by and had the spectral signature of carbon, the essential element in organic compounds such as amino acids, the building blocks of life.

Return of the sample  at least 2.1 ounces of pristine space dust and as much as 4.4 pounds  will mark the beginning of a scientific investigation that will last decades.

The $1 billion mission was originally proposed as a less ambitious one by the late Michael Drake, former director of the Lunar and Planetary Lab at UA, who initially worked with colleagues at Lockheed Martin Space Systems on the proposal.

It took three tries, but Drake, who brought on Lauretta as deputy principal investigator, finally won an $803 million NASA contract, the largest ever won by the UA, in May 2011. Six months, Drake died.

A plaque honoring him is flying with the spacecraft and the scientific part of the mission will be run from the off-campus building now named the Michael Drake Building.

It once housed the Phoenix Mars Lander team, the first NASA mission led by the UA, and was reconfigured to accommodate up to 400 scientists from across the globe who will be present for critical operations of OSIRIS-REx.

It is not the only campus construction project spawned by the mission.

The sub-basement of the Kuiper Space Sciences building, built with NASA money during the Apollo era, is being retrofitted for vibration-free, atomic-level analysis of samples.

The Kuiper building itself was built in 1965 with money from NASA, which was promoting the new field of planetary science essential to its planned Apollo moon missions. Since then, UA planetary scientists have participated in every NASA robotic mission to a planet or moon.

Timothy Swindle, current director of LPL, was excited at the prospect for those analyses when reached by phone shortly before launch.
PHOENIX  An Arizona woman was sentenced Thursday to a total of 28 years in prison for faking a cancer diagnosis to get the state to pay for her late-term abortion and for convictions in two other cases.

Chalice Renee Zeitner, of Phoenix, was convicted in April of fraud, theft and forgery charges in the case involving the late-term abortion.

A separate jury found her guilty of fraud and theft five weeks ago after authorities said she defrauded a charity for military veterans and the leader of a second charity in 2012. She also was convicted in May of aggravated drunken driving.

In the abortion case, Zeitner was accused of presenting falsified medical records to support her claim that she had cancer in her abdomen and lower spine and telling an obstetrician that her pregnancy put her life in danger.

The Arizona health care program in which Zeitner was enrolled covers the cost of abortions in limited circumstances, such as when a mother's life is endangered.

Investigators say the scheme was discovered a year after the April 2010 abortion when a doctor who performed a C-section during Zeitner's subsequent pregnancy found no signs of cancer. Another doctor who was listed on medical records as having treated Zeitner for cancer later said he never treated her.

Zeitner's lawyer told jurors that his client genuinely believed she had cancer and didn't set out to defraud anyone.

In the case involving the charities, Zeitner was accused of persuading one charity to buy $7,700 worth of tickets for a gala with the promise of returning the money and providing a portion of the event's proceeds.
Help India!



A study of the maternity care and births in Mumbai slums

By Kashif-ul-Huda, TwoCircles.net,



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A large number of Muslims of India live in poverty and they are the majority of the poorest of the poor living in slums. This is according to a study conducted in 2006 in Mumbai. The details of the study were published earlier this month.

Mumbai is home to millions of residents and more than half of them live in congested areas with virtually no civic services of any kind. These slums provide cheaper housing alternatives for people who migrated to Mumbai in search of better lives. People of different regions, speaking multiple languages, and observing various religious practices live side by side. A study published on June 5th, 2009 in International Journal for Equity in Health suggests that Muslims are overwhelmingly represented in these slums and also they are in general poorer than Hindus living in the same area.







TCN photo



The study was jointly conducted by Society for Nutrition, Education and Health Action (SNEHA), an NGO based in Mumbai, and Centre for International Health and Development (CIHD) of University College London.

The main finding of the study is that the population living in slums is not homogeneous and there are differences if population is divided based on various socio-economic factors. The researchers interviewed over five thousand mothers in 48 slum areas of Mumbai. Based on the detailed interviews they divided the women in four groups from least poor to most poor. These divisions were made on various factors including house ownership, type of construction, possession of ration card, source of electricity, type of toilet, etc.

The four groups thus generated were not artificial creations as clear trends were visible for various factors. Mothers belonging to the most poor groups are more likely to be a teenager, having lower literacy, and access to only public and shared water as opposed to the least poor group which is older, literate, and about a quarter of them access to water in their home. Most poor mothers also chose home or a public facility as the site of delivery while mothers belonging to the least poor group prefer private facility to deliver.

About 60% of slum dwellers own their home and though majority of the houses are permanent construction only 4% had toilet facility in them. Study also found that about a quarter of the women interviewed moved in their present residence within the last year, suggesting higher mobility but it also found 13% to be born in the houses they were living in suggesting that at least these families were not able to improve their economic condition in all these years.







Photo by renu parkhi



The study also found that the sex ratio was much lower than the national average. 882 females per 1000 males ratio was consistent among all four groups which is much lower than the national average of 933 females per 1000 males according to 2001 census.

Out of 5238 women that this study covered, 2411 or 46% of them were Muslims, 2480 (46.7%) were Hindus and 347 (7%) others. Higher percentages of Muslims were in the most poor of the four groups clustered according to various socio-economic factors.

Religion Group 1 (most poor) Group 2 Group 3 Group 4 (least poor) Hindu 415 (32%) 600 (46%) 712 (54%) 753 (57%) Muslim 858 (65%) 638 (49%) 474 (36%) 441(34%) Other 36 (3%) 70 (5%) 126 (10%) 115 (9%)

Replying to queries by TwoCircles.net, David Osrin the corresponding author of the study agreed that the study is fairly representative of established slum areas of Mumbai. When asked about the data that shows that more Muslim women are in most poor groups Dr. Osirin explained that the data suggests that there are greater proportions of Muslim women in the lower socioeconomic bands than in the higher bands. One could say that, in the most general sense, Muslim women seem to be poorer in the slum areas.

As a part of this research CIHD is working with SNEHA and other womens groups and health services to improve the health of women and children.

Neena Shah More, Ujwala Bapat, Sushmita Das, and Armida Fernandez of SNEHA and Anthony Costello and David Osrin of CIHD were researchers for this study.

Links:

http://www.equityhealthj.com/

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/cihd
Help India!

By Dr. Syed Ahmed, TwoCircles.net,

Imphal: On May 3, 2013, the Muslims in Manipur offered prayers for those Muslims killed in the communal riot that took place in the valley of Manipur on May 3, 1993.

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The prayer meetings were organized by All Manipur Muslim Students Organization (AMMSO), All Manipur Muslim Girl Students Organization (AMMGSO) and Pangal (Manipur Muslim) Political Forum (PPF) in various parts of Imphal. Quran Khawani was organized in many masjids after the Friday prayers for the deceased Muslims.







One such prayer meeting was organized by AMMSO at Hafiz Hatta Masjid at Imphal as Sahidee Memorial Day. The gathering prayed for those Muslims killed in the communal riot and students leader Md. Hanif Shah, who was killed in November 17, 2007. Hanif Shah served as the President of AMMSO.

AMMGSO and PPF also held prayer meeting for those Muslims killed in 1993 riot. The bodies distributed sweets in many masjids.

Speaking to media-persons at the Babupara masjid at Imphal, Sitara Begum of PPF said that it was on this day in 1993 that the unfortunate event took place which claimed the lives of many innocent Muslims. We had prayed to the Almighty to shower blessings to them. We also pray that such ill-fated incidents do not happen again in the future, and develop understanding, tolerance, love and peace among the different sections of the Manipuri society, she added. Later financial assistance was given to the poor and aged Muslims.

The communal riot that took place between the Muslims and Meities on May 3, 1993 claimed the lives of around 100 Muslims, including women and children, and 4 Meities.
Help India!

By Amit Kumar, TwoCircles.net

Patna: Savita Ali remembers the time when she was in school, in a village called Naraina, district Panipat. She had just given her Class 10 exams, and like most of the girls in her village, that was supposed to be the end of her education. However, Savita was not ready to give up. Growing up in a family that converted to Christianity three generations ago (she converted to Islam following her marriage) Ali knew that despite her religion, she was, like the thousands of Dalit families around her, marginalised and without a voice. As we went to higher levels in education, the number of women students kept dropping drastically, she says, adding, In Class 12, less than a dozen girls went with me to study; by the time I was in graduation, the number was down to single digits. Being a women in rural Haryana, your individual identity was so immaterial to the society that even having a election card was looked down upon. What would an unmarried girl would do with an election ID we were told, she says.

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A little over a decade has passed on since then, but for Savita, who now lives in Bihar, the reality remains the same: Dalit women, whether in Haryana or Bihar, remain the most marginalised within the marginalised communities, and this is the issue that has made Ali work day and night to fight for them, first as a Dalit activist and now as an activist/lawyer.

Ali thanks her father, who worked in a bank and acknowledged her wish to do graduation. However, even there, she had to partially give in to patriarchy. I did well in Sanskrit during my school and I was considering studying Sanskrit, but my father made it clear that I had to study Maths. When I could not do well in Maths, I was moved to economics, she says. She took up admission in a girls college in Samalakha, and in 2007, completed her graduation.

Ali has not looked back since then.

Confronting the harsh reality of caste atrocities in Haryana

In 2007, she joined National Campaign for Dalit Human Rights, and remembers visiting Delhi for the first time for her interview. People said Delhi was close to Panipat, but I had never visited the city; it was an amazing experience, but it also showed the huge difference in the societies that we lived in, she says. She became a programme coordinator and was involved in training Dalit women, along with conducting various capacity building measures.

However, she took little time to realise that even in an organisation which worked for Dalit emancipation, there was strong patriarchy. Our male members would act like we knew nothing; like we had to be hand-held in all our endeavours. Yes, I was an economics graduate with little experience in the field, but I did not need anyone to tell me how caste had wrecked havoc with our (Dalit) lives, she says. Within a few months, she realised that there were almost no Dalit women leaders in Haryana, who could take up the numerous issues of assault on women. Ali talks of one of her first experiences of meeting a girl who had been raped. I was so ashamed to even narrate the story of what happened to her, to our male colleagues, that I would give it to them in writing, she says.

In 2008, irritated by the patronising attitude of her male colleagues, Ali joined All India Dalit Mahila Adhikar Manch (AIDMAM) and started focussing on developing women leaders in the community. She remembers one of her first steps were to get young women to rise up against the discriminations they faced. We would visit families of young girls, and talk to their families. I often spent a couple of weeks in their homes to convince their families, Ali adds.

The ground realities also taught her that Dalit women remained the easiest targets for harassment and assault at the hands of both the upper castes and the administration. In 2008, there was a case in Panipat, where a house was burgled. The owner simply told the police that he suspected his maid, staying in the servant quarters, of stealing. There was no FIR, but the police came to the house with sniffer dogs. They beat up the girl and one of her friends who had nothing to do with the case. Both were beaten up mercilessly, and kept in police custody for a couple of days, she says. What was their fault, apart from being Dalits? she asks.

The laws, and the way they were used almost always to attack Dalits, led her to understand that she too needed a legal degree to counter the extremely biased administration. During the next three years, she worked on a number of atrocity cases against Dalits, and thanks to her, a number of women joined AIDMAM and spoke against these cases. The other thing I learnt during my stint was that even when a Dalit woman gets some kind of power (pointing out the Dalit Sarpanches) the actual command remains in the hands of men, mostly non-Dalits. In Sonepat for example, a 72-year-old Dalit woman was arrested for swindling Rs 7,000 and kept in jail for 25 days. She was an uneducated person with bad hearing capacity. How could she have known who took the money? But since she was Dalit, she was arrested, Ali adds.

From 2010, Ali became much more active once she had acquired a law degree, but that also meant she was at the receiving end of constant threats; including her life. There were times when I was not sure if I would be mowed down by a car while crossing a road. I was constantly scared, but thanks to my family, I never thought of giving up my work. I was so harassed, that I went into depression and stayed out of Haryana for six months, in UP. However, when I came back, to my dismay I found out that many cases I were working upon had reached an agreement and the culprits had walked free. I decided that day that I will never again leave my cases, even if my life was at risk, she says.

A new state, the same old issues

In 2013, she married Safdar Ali from Bihar and moved to Patna. However, the treatment of Dalits in Bihar was no different from Haryana, and to ensure that she keeps working on Dalit upliftment, she joined Human Rights Law Network. After working for two years with the legal research team, she joined AIDMAM again last year, and has been trying to document and fight the various cases of atrocities. The biggest issue, having worked for so long in this field, is that the law remains completely in the hands of people who are looking to suppress Dalit voices and issues. I will give you an example. On September 5, there was a day-long event in Patna, where we chronicled 21 cases of atrocities against Dalit women. We found out that in certain cases, even when the culprits are booked, they are given bail in the police station itself! Cases under the SC/ST PoA Act are non-bailable and even the judiciary cannot give them bail. Then how can the police do so? she says.

Then, there is the issue of Muslim women, who Ali says fare no better, if not worse, than Dalit women. It is to look after this issue, that Dalit and Muslim women from Bihar have got together to set up Dalit Muslim Mahila Manch, and the organisation will address the issues and problems that the women in these two communities face. Although Ali has a new home, she continues to work with the same zeal. Initially, I was a little lost in Bihar, but now I believe that irrespective of what state I live in, the problems remain the same. I will continue to raise these issues. Not everyone likes them, but that does not mean we will remain quiet, she says in a defiant tone.

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With the passage of time, the institutes across the US, UK, Canada, and Asia have understood the demand of students regarding Urban Studies. Nowadays, students show much interest in urban environments. For fulfilling their desire, the institutes have started offering a variety of degree programs in urban studies combined with the socio-economic, political, and cultural problems. This list of top colleges and universities has been recently compiled by the Urban Studies Program experts. It is ideal for anyone who wants to pursue a career in the fields of community arts, politics, and human welfare, etc.

These institutes provide the best learning Environment and great opportunities of career grooming.

Wheaton College

This college is based in Illinois. By paying a tuition fee of $25,258, you can obtain an advanced degree in urban studies. Moreover, the college provides students with an opportunity of double major (in urban studies and any of its relevant disciplines). Mostly the international students opt for the four-year Bachelors degree program. After you finish your studies, there are chances that you would be offered an internship or a well-paying job. We recommend that you opt for an internship so that you can learn how to use the Ethnographic theories and methods practically in research and environmental projects.

Vassar College

Based in Poughkeepsie, New York, Vassar College is offering interdisciplinary programs in urban studies and geography. The courses are combined with a variety of other subjects including economic, arts, architecture, political sciences, and more. Students interested in pursuing a major in urban studies have to complete a few short courses.

These help to develop better understanding of the field before they could advance their career. Besides this, you can opt for majoring in regional economics, gender studies, social sciences, and other related fields. The four-year Bachelors or two-year Masters degree is awarded only upon the successful completion of a research project and a thesis.

Saint Louis University

Saint Louis University is situated in Missouri. It is one of the top universities for anyone who is interested in urban studies. The tuition fee is $33,812. Students can apply for scholarships too. These are awarded purely on the basis of merit. For international students, Saint Louis University is offering a Master in Urban Planning and Development. The institute has partnered with a few schools so that students can complete their research projects without any hurdle. This partnership has enabled the university to offer programs in different areas including real estate development, community sciences, economics, and environmental planning.

University of Connecticut

By paying a tuition fee of $19,040, you can enjoy the great learning environment at this university.

It is offering a major in urban and community studies. Apart from that, the institute has welcomed applications from local and international students in liberal arts, environmental studies, and social sciences. The lectures are delivered in the sub-fields like survey research, archival and statistical analysis, and others. All students are encouraged to be a part of paid internships after the completion of their degrees.
Speaking to Vogue about the launch of his Yeezy collection launched on 7th September, Chicago rap mogul Kanye West revealed hes been having fun in the studio with his contemporary Drake. We're just working on Music, working on a bunch of music together, just having fun going into the studio, he explained, letting slip that, We're working on an album [as well], so theres some exciting things coming up soon.

Despite having not announced a release date, the news follows a Los Angeles billboard spotted last month; teasing the duos long-speculated project, it featured both Wests GOOD Music and Drakes OVO logos, sending rumour mill into overdrive with the hint of a joint venture.

Drake & Kanye West's mystery project

Confirming fans suspicions, theres no doubt a Yeezy-Drizzy collab will be one of the most hotly-anticipated album releases on the horizon. Fulfilling an enduring desire to team up with Drake, Yeezy detailed how, The Wolves [a track on Wests 2016 album The Life of Pablo] came from a conversation that me and Drake had, when [we] was gonna do an album together, and the album was called Wolves, he told Breakfast Club in 2015 of the duos planned extended project. Its a cert that Wests polished production fused with Drakes more laid-back, dancehall sound is going to be a hit.

However, both rappers are no strangers to a collaboration, with West sharing the mic with Jay Z for 2011s Watch the Throne, and Drake  real name Aubrey Graham  joining forces with Future for US Platinum certified mixtape What a Time to Be Alive.

Exciting reports of the pairs collaboration aside, the announcement overshadows some not so good news for the rappers respectively. A jewellery robbery from the Canadian rappers tour bus in Arizona took place of Tuesday, with $3 million worth of jewels stolen. Property of his DJ Future the Prince, a bag of jewellery was later uncovered by police and a 21 year-old stagehand at the Talking Stick Arena where the hip-hop artist was performing has been arrested. On top of this, Wests Yeezy show at New York Fashion Week has been dubbed a hot mess and disastrous by critics, as it was plagued by unbearable heat, broken heels and even fainting models.
While some deals have yet to be made official and one role on the titular roster of eight has yet to be cast, seven actresses are onboard for Warner Bros. upcoming female-driven Oceans Eleven reboot, Oceans Eight, in the vein of Columbias recent female Ghostbusters reboot. Theyve found a good way to save money  instead of paying for eleven men, theyre paying for eight women, which will cost the same as about five men in our unjust society. The Actors currently cast are Sandra Bullock and Cate Blanchett, while those close to signing are Anne Hathaway, Rihanna, Helena Bonham Carter, Mindy Kaling, and Awkwafina.

The rebootis getting quite acast for itself

Im assuming the Film will centre on a new heist, entirely unrelated from the original films, with one of these women filling George Clooneys shoes as Danny Oceans female equivalent (Danielle Ocean or something equally obvious). It remains to be seen which one will be playing this Danielle Ocean, but my guess goes to either Bullock or Blanchett, as theyre the two Oscar winners (Bullock for The Blind Side, Blanchett for Blue Jasmine), as well as the high-paid A-listers. Hathaway can claim their level of Hollywood fame, but she doesnt strike me as the Clooney-esque leader type who could orchestrate a casino heist, shes more like the cute tech girl or the Don Cheadle minus the annoying accent.

Bonham Carter has been nominated twice, but won neither, and shes not a lead, shes more supporting. Shell be the Bernie Mac or the Eddie Jemison. Shes worked with a few of her co-stars before, like with Hathaway in Les Miserables and Blanchett in Cinderella, so despite her quirks, shell fit right in.

Rihannas acting credits include Battleship, the remake of Annie, and Home  its fair to say shes had more success with music than films, but maybe this will be the role that sees her respected as an actress rather than a popstar in a movie (unlikely, though, lets be honest).

Kaling is best-known for playing Kelly in the U.S. version of The Office and a thinly-veiled version of herself in The Mindy Project. As for Awkwafina  Nora Lum, as it appears on her tax returns  is another musician making the transition into acting. Earlier this year, she had a small role in Bad Neighbours 2, and her songs include Queef and My Vag. Oceans Eight will be a rare venture into slight sophistication for the comedienne of Chinese and South Korean descent.

Speaking of which, there is some impressive diversity in the cast beyond the switch to all-women, with Asian Awkwafina, Indian-American Kaling, and Barbadian Rihanna. Hopefully this isnt just a bid by the studio to be more PC and an actual recognition of the very simple fact that someone can be simultaneously talented and not white (shocking!).

Oscar-nommed Gary Ross directing

Gary Ross (The Hunger Games, Seabiscuit) is in the directors chair for Oceans Eight, which begins shooting in New York in October, marking a refreshing location change from the been-there-done-that Las Vegas setting of the original trilogy. Clooney-obsessed naysayers of this remake may need to be reminded, the original that they hold precious was actually a remake itself of a Rat Pack-starring version from the sixties. Remakes and reboots are all part of the circle of life, it seems.
I earned the Ph.D. degree in Geography from the University of South Carolina; the M.S. degree in Meteorology from North Carolina State University; and the B.S. degree in Geophysics from the University of South Carolina. I was enrolled as a student in the USC Honors College which is the number one public university honors college in the United States. I was also fortunate to participate in the National Student Exchange to Florida State University in my junior year.

I am currently a Professor of Geography/GIS and I teach three Geography courses (1102, 1111K, 1112/L) and six GIS courses (2011/L, 3011K, 3100, 4020K, 4035L, 4983) and serve as an advisor for the B.S. degree in Applied Environmental and Spatial Analysis students. Im also the co-advisor for the Geospatial Alliance Student Club, oversee GIS internships, conduct research, and serve on committees.

There are five dimensions to my field  all of which interest me.

1) Interdisciplinary  There are applications in almost every discipline from tornadoes to politics to education. Anything with a location can be mapped and analyzed using geospatial technologies such as GIS, GPS, and remote sensing.

2) Powerful - It has been said that a picture is worth a1000 words but an effective map is worth 1,000,000 words so the study of GIS is a powerful overlay in todays society.

3) Dynamic  This is a rapidly changing and growing field which keeps me excited and engaged.

4) Informative  I enjoy exploring how humans interact with our environment and studying the earth systems influence on society which is often expressed through disasters such as Hurricane Sandy or the Japanese tsunami. These events can teach and motivate us to create a harmonious and sustainable relationship.

5) Relevant  These cutting edge technologies and geospatial intelligence can be used for many purposes and provides a variety of opportunities for UNG to become an even bigger power player in the geospatial industry.

Geospatial technology is an exciting high growth industry in which UNG has a Certificate and Bachelors degree in Applied Environmental and Spatial Analysis (AESA). Even if not majoring in AESA, I would highly recommend students to take the Intro to GIS course (GISC 2011/L) since it applies to most disciplines. Geospatial technology has the power to uncover invisible boundaries in society, develop situational awareness in combat zones, provide strategic planning tools for businesses, be implemented as an additional tool for educators, and inform scientific policy. It is truly revolutionary technology!

I have been honored to serve on the Faculty Senate, American Democracy Project Committee, UNG Promotion and Tenure Committee, chair of a search committee, and two consolidation work groups. While not always celebrated, I believe committee work is very important to unite the University, provide faculty with a voice in governance, and help UNG function effectively and efficiently.

I also enjoy conducting research that exposes important current issues and addresses future challenges. From investigating social vulnerability to disasters to analyzing the reasons for the student debt crisis or income inequality to addressing the threats of climate change, GIS can address the big questions in the world.

But most of all, my teaching inspires me. One of my favorite days is when students present their projects in class and I observe their creativity, knowledge, and pride in their work. They always impress me with their quality and range of applications from mapping food bank needs to modeling dam break scenarios to analyzing transportation proposals for Atlanta. It gives me great pleasure to see students succeed in class, contribute to society through internships and service learning projects, and go on to establish productive careers in this discipline. Last week, an alumnus who is attending graduate school at NYU emailed us to thank us for giving him an educational advantage over his fellow graduate students. He is currently involved in a project with urban planning in New York City. That made my day!

Since coming to Gainesville and UNG, I received my GIS Professional (GISP) certification from the GIS Certification Institute which requires applicants to earn points based on experience, education, ethics, and contributions to the profession. There are approximately 5000 GISPs worldwide scattered over all 50 states and 25 other countries. The application and supporting documentation was over 100 pages long so it is an achievement that I am very proud to have attained.

Another honor I share with my colleagues is that IESA was selected by the USGs Academic Affairs office as one of two recipients of the Board of Regents Teaching Excellence Award for Departments or Programs in 2012. I am thrilled that my colleagues and I were recognized by Georgias educational leaders as an innovative and successful Institute.

Along with JB Sharma and Zac Miller, weve established an educational partnership with AGI. They develop commercial modeling and analysis software for the space, defense, and intelligence communities.

I have given numerous professional presentations at conferences including CDC, AMS, AAG, FEMA, and Georgia GIS Conference; have authored entries in the Encyclopedia of Disaster Relief and Encyclopedia of Crisis Management; and published an article in The Pennsylvania Geographer. I enjoy speaking to community groups such as the Columbus Museum, Elachee Nature Centers summer camps, and even a preschool at Jefferson First Baptist Church. I also mentored my cartography class students to partner with middle school students to map biomes at the Da Vinci Academy and with county agencies in Stephens County to map some of their data. Finally, I have led workshops on the applications of GIS for Emergency Management at FEMAs Higher Education Conference at the Emergency Management Institute in Emmitsburg, MD.

As I teach, advise, and interact with students, I hope they develop a love of learning, an inquisitive nature, critical thinking skills, and a respect for the value of education so they will continue to grow intellectually beyond the classroom. From a practical perspective, I hope they acquire knowledge and technological skills to make them marketable as productive employees, innovative entrepreneurs, or inspirational educators. On a personal note, I truly care about them and I want them to succeed by doing their best by being empowered with a can-do attitude, ambition, confidence, and creativity. Finally, I mentor them to have a sense of respect and awe for the world around them, recognition of the vital link between humans and our environment, and how to address challenges from local to global scales to make a better future.

A lot of people find it interesting that I used to lead storm chases in Tornado Alley.

I was also the first recipient of the National HAZUS User of the Month Award presented by FEMA. Consequently the Three Rivers HAZUS User Group has named an outstanding service award in my honor.

To learn more about GIS, Google search the Geospatial Revolution Project (Penn State) to see some outstanding videos that explain the power of geospatial technologies for a variety of purposes such as business, military, scientific research, disaster relief and access to healthy food.
About Me

I am an urban/commercial district revitalization and transportation/mobility advocate and consultant and a principal in BicyclePASS, a bicycle facilities systems integration firm, based in Washington, DC. Urban economic competitiveness is dependent on efficient transit and mixed use, compact places. Therefore, I end up writing mostly about mobility and urban design. While I am based in and write about Washington, DC issues, I try to write so that "universal lessons" are evident in the entries.

View my complete profile




Mr. Fulop, meanwhile, began to rethink the bicycle needs of his city of 254,000. He decided that Jersey City residents would be better served by the system already in place in New York.Whats most important for me is that folks in the Heights or Greenville, two of the citys neighborhoods where theres not great access to the PATH, can get to the train, get out on the other side and then get on a bike, he said. The mayor said he also viewed joining the Citi Bike system as a way of attracting New Yorkers to jobs, restaurants and cultural offerings in Jersey City. With Citi Bike, he said, the benefits go both ways.





Awhile back I wrote about how the housing market in Prince George's County continues to lag significantly compared to pre-crash values, even in the Rte. 1 Corridor immediately northeast of DC.-- " Washington Post series on "Dashed Dreams: The Plight of the Black Middle Class ," January 2015-- " The five components of housing value ," February 2016 (note that this was updated into six components as part of the omnibus piece, " Housing Roundup ," May 2016)We lived in Mt. Rainer, across the DC line in Prince George's County, for a brief period, just before the crash, and the housing prices then were in the $300,000 to $400,000 range. After the crash, real estate values cratered, and even today a fair number of houses in the Mount Rainier zip code are bank owned/in foreclosure.-- Trulia Real Estate listings, Mount Rainier, Maryland zip code But we are on the e-list for Menkiti Residential, a real estate firm, and they are the listing agent for some houses in Mount Rainier, which have been recently renovated and are on the market in the high $300s to high $400s, significantly higher than today's market even so.I figured that even though Mount Rainier is not in DC, but Prince George's County Maryland, they are aiming to make it the one-over neighborhood to Brookland and Woodridge, where housing prices range from the high $400s to the mid-$800s now.-- Trulia Real Estate listings, Brookland, DC zip code One drawback, but people might not notice is that Mount Rainier property taxes are significantly higher than DC's, because they include both the town and a county property tax.Even though PG County has a general real estate problem, the Rte. 1 Corridor has the University of Maryland and other attractive communities like Hyattsville and College Park, and an improving set of retail amenities--Arts District Hyattsville and a soon to open Whole Foods anchored shopping center in Riverdale Park, plus the Glut Food Co-op and some other local retail on 34th Street and on Rhode Island Avenue in Mount Rainier.Mount Rainier is finally moving some development projects forward on Rhode Island Avenue which will help them a lot, and they are one of the member communities of both the Gateway Arts District and the Anacostia Trails Heritage Area (" Neighborhood profile: Mount Rainier, a haven for artists, and now redevelopment ,", 2014).It occurs to me that as an economic development strategy, Mount Rainier could systematically leverage its proximity to DC to boost demand for residential property, by better integrating the community into DC's mobility system:1.. Offer the car2go carsharing service, which operates in DC and Arlington County, the opportunity to extend their service area to include Mt. Rainier at no charge for a trial period of at least two to three years.By contrast, DC and Arlington charge Car2Go a great deal of money per car for registration and parking privileges.2.. Comparable to what Takoma Park, Maryland also on the border with DC, has done, figure out how to include the town in the Capital Bikeshare bicycle sharing system irrespective of planning by Prince George's County (" Prince George's considers connecting with Capital Bikeshare ,").Another comparable example is how Jersey City decided to join up with New York City's CitiBike bike share system instead of a system with other cities in Hudson County, New Jersey (" Three Cities in New Jersey Alter Bike Sharing Plans ,"), because they see their city as more integrated with New York City.From the article:3.. Try to get the Rte. 1/Rhode Avenue Island bus service in PG County extended to DC, at a minimum to the Rhode Island Metro Station but ideally to Dupont Circle (as I suggested in the past).Currently, there is Metrobus service from Rhode Island Metro Station up Rhode Island Avenue to College Park now, and other Metrobus lines serve other parts of Mount Rainier along with DC, but on more circuitous routes.Reiterating how suburban communities may focus their transit connections with the center city, the PATH subway system, which connects riverfront cities in Hudson County, NJ to Manhattan, with service to the World Trade Center, Penn Station, and other stations, accepts the New York City Transit MetroCard fare card, but the NJ Transit system does not.4.This might not make total sense, given how few people use the Riverdale station on the MARC Camden Line, but a Mount Rainier MARC Commuter Rail station would offer a five minute trip to and from Union Station. In the very old days, there was a railroad station in the Langdon neighborhood of DC, which is about one mile west of Mount Rainier.In the past I've suggested a streetcar service along Rhode Island Avenue. It wouldn't necessarily be a DC priority, but such a service from Dupont Circle could be quite useful. To make it happen, Prince George's County would have to be committed. Many years ago Maryland MTA did a streetcar study for the Maryland side of the corridor in association with the creation of the Gateway Arts District.
The Associated Press is reporting that South Korean, American, and European monitoring stations have detected artificial seismic waves coming from the Punggye-ri test site in North Korea, indicating that the country has conducted another nuclear bomb test. North Korea has a rudimentary nuclear arsenal and is developing ballistic missiles to deliver nuclear warheads against South Korea and Japan. The United States is deploying missile defense systems to counter such a move.

Besides the threat of a nuclear strike being conducted by one of the most dangerous rogue regimes on the planet, the likely nuclear test will probably become an issue in the current presidential campaign.

In the 1990s, then-President Bill Clinton signed an agreement with the North Korean regime that was supposed to stop it from getting a nuclear arsenal. North Korea ignored the agreement and developed nuclear weapons anyway.

Fast forward a couple of decades later, and President Barack Obama signed a similar agreement with another rogue regime, the Islamic Republic of Iran, that is touted as stopping it from getting a nuclear arsenal. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton still supports the Iran nuclear weapons agreement despite the fact that most analysts believe that it does little if any to impede that countrys atomic bomb program.

Iran had made no secret of its desire to destroy the State of Israel with a nuclear strike.

An Iranian nuclear arsenal, coupled with ballistic missiles that Iran is busily developing, would also pose a threat to Europe and ultimately the United States. The thought of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of religious zealots poses a clear and present danger to the peace of the world.

Nevertheless, the fear that the agreement is a modern-day Munich has not deterred the Obama administration from making what some estimate are secret payments in cash and gold to Iran as what it calls sanctions relief measures.

The word that most outside observers use is appeasement. The administration is also ignoring provocative actions being conducted by Iran Revolutionary Guard speedboats, approaching United States Naval vessels in the Persian Gulf in what seems to be practice for attack runs.
Man records disabled girl's life Updated: 2016-09-09 08:40 By Wen Xinzheng in Changsha and Hou Liqiang in Beijing(China Daily)

Xiang Liping plays with her child at her home in Shantou, Guangdong province. Photos By Chen Yongheng / For China Daily

After chance meeting 14 years ago, pair's lives have become intertwined

More than a decade after they first met on Mount Bamianshan in western Hunan province, a photographer from Shenzhen, Guangdong province, has kept his promise of finding funding for a young woman whose arms were amputated as a child.

Chen Yongheng, 63, has taken about 5,000 photos of Xiang Liping, who he first encountered when she was age 13 in December 2002.

She appeared on the crest of a hillside as he was coming down the mountain, followed by two other skinny looking children, carrying large bundles of straw on their backs.

Intrigued by the sight, Chen raised his camera to take a picture of the three - but it was then that he noticed the sleeves of the girl in red blowing in the breeze.

He approached and touched one of the girl's sleeves, only to discover there were no arms inside. After returning home and reviewing his photo-graphs, Chen decided he had to find the girl again.

Within months he was heading back to Hunan, which at that time involved a 12-hour train journey to the provincial capital, Changsha, followed by a four-hour bus ride to Jishou city, where he stayed overnight before taking a service bus to the town of Liye and hiring a tractor to take him 20 km up the mountain.

Chen finally found the girl, whose name he then discovered was Xiang Liping. He learned that she had touched an exposed electrical wire age 4 and had to have both her arms amputated due to the severe injuries she suffered.

Paying for her treatment had left Xiang's family in debt, forcing both her parents to leave to work in Guangdong - they have only returned home once or twice since. "She never talk-ed about her parents, because she knew almost nothing about them," Chen said.

It was then that an idea occurred to him - submit his pictures of Xiang to the World Press Photo Contest, which offers a 10,000 euro ($11,080) top prize, courtesy of organizers the World Press Photo Foundation headquartered in the Netherlands.

From 2003 to 2008, Chen visited the family and took photos of Xiang up to three times a year. He entered the contest twice, but both times he failed to win the top prize.

Xiang and her family gradually became indifferent to Chen, doubting his motivation.

Chen didn't visit Xiang at all from 2009 to 2011.

Though Chen visited Xiang twice more in 2012 and tried one again to win the World Press Photo Contest in 2013, his efforts came to naught.

That was until December last year, when his pictures caught the attention of journalists at a photo exhibition.

Tencent, one of China's largest internet companies, offered to publish the photos.

To include the latest pictures of Xiang, Chen visited her in Guangdong, where she is now married with a child.

After the photos were published online in June, they were viewed more than 100 million times and attracted more than 80,000 comments. With the support of the China Social Assistance Foundation, more than 300,000 yuan ($45,000) was donated to Xiang.

It was hoped that the money could be used to make Xiang a pair of artificial arms, but doc-tors have determined that this is impracticable given her body condition.

However, she can now receive 50,000 yuan a year from the foundation. "She now has more confidence and told me over phone that she wants to open an online store," Chen said.
Carved melons prove a hit for rural fruit seller Updated: 2016-09-09 08:40 By Qi Xin in Zhengzhou and Chen Liang in Beijing(China Daily)

Gu Xinliang shows watermelons he carved with his thumbnails on a country road near his home in Jiaxian county, Henan province. Li Kongxun / For China Daily

In the summer, watermelon peddlers can be spotted along many of North China's country roads, but few sell their fruit in the same way as a teacher in Pingdingshan city's Jiaxian county, Henan province.

Gu Xinliang carves Chinese characters into the rind of his home grown watermelons before selling them to passers-by. His novel idea has helped the 56-year-old teacher from Heimiao village sell 3,000 kg of water-melons in 13 days.

"I want people to be happy while enjoying my watermelons in the summer," said Gu, as three buyers watched him carve the character for "fu" ("happiness") into a water-melon using only his thumb-nails.

Gu, a Chinese-language teacher at a primary school in the county, gets up at 6 am every summer morning to harvest watermelons, load them onto a truck and sell them by the side of the road near his home.

He hit upon the idea of carving his watermelons on July 20, when trade was poor and he needed kill some time. He never expected his creations to attract so many customers - the melons on his truck were almost sold out when he went home at 9 pm that day.

"The rind of a big water-melon looks like a black-board in a classroom to me, on which I can express my thoughts," he said.

Gu prefers to carve traditional Chinese "blessing words" into his watermelons.

The most common characters he uses are the ones for "fu" ("happiness"), "shou" ("longevity") and "long" ("dragon") and he always carves using his thumbnails.

At first, he would spend nearly 20 minutes carving a character, but several days later it took him less than 10 minutes and he could carve about a dozen watermelons in one day.

In addition to the 3,000 kg of watermelons he sold, Gu also sold out of another 1,000 kg of muskmelons, which fetch two or three times the price.

A man, surnamed Wang, said he stopped to see the carved watermelons, and liked them so much that he decided to buy one to take it home. "Many buyers have asked me to carve blessing characters they choose themselves," Gu said.

"They have also suggested that I use tools like knives because my nails were get-ting hurt by the frequent carving, but knives are too sharp for watermelons - I like to carve using the strength of my own nails."

Gu doesn't charge any more for his carved water-melons than he would for an ordinary one.

"It is just a joy to see people's smiles when they take the watermelons away," he said, adding that many people tip him for his artwork.

Calligraphy has been a passion for Gu for many years. In the past, he would offer to write couplets for villagers during the Spring Festival, he said. "I have three grandchildren," he said. "By next summer, I will have a fourth and I feel happy. I want to share this happiness with the people who pass by."
Efforts to sow 'discord' denounced Updated: 2016-09-09 06:34 By Hu Yongqi in Vientiane and An Baijie in Beijing(China Daily)

Most countries at Laos gathering had positive attitude toward maritime safety, Beijing says

China strongly opposes that some regional outsiders were "sowing discord" over the South China Sea issue during the 11th East Asia Summit, a senior Chinese diplomat said on Thursday in Laos.

Vice-Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin told reporters that, during the summit, all of the ASEAN countries supported the positive progress made by China and ASEAN on the South China Sea issue.

"Most of the countries, 16 of the total 18 nations, have mentioned the maritime safety issue in a positive manner," Liu said, adding that China's stance of solving disputes through dialogue and negotiation has been widely recognized and supported.

However, Liu said only two extraterritorial countries out of the summit's 18 countries mentioned the arbitral ruling of the South China Sea at the summit, which Liu described as an act of "self-isolation".

The diplomat made the remarks after the two-and-a-half-hour East Asia Summit, which was held in Vientiane.

The summit was attended by 18 countries: the 10 ASEAN member states, six dialogue partnersChina, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealandand the United States and Russia as newcomers.

Premier Li Keqiang attended the summit and discussed key regional issues with other leaders.

In his opening remarks, US President Barack Obama said the recent arbitration ruling on the South China Sea was "binding" and "helped to clarify maritime rights in the region". Obama said he realized the ruling raised tensions.

The Arbitral Tribunal of The Hague ruled in July on the South China Sea dispute in a case against China that was unilaterally initiated by the Philippines under the administration of former president Benigno Aquino III.

China has reiterated that the ruling was illegal and said it will not accept any proposition or action based on the decision.

Manila, under new leader-ship that took office in July, supports direct talks with China to solve the dispute.

Foreign Ministry spokes-woman Hua Chunying said on Thursday that China opposes any attempt by forces outside the region to stir up trouble on the South China Sea issue.

Zhu Feng, executive director of the China Center for Collaborative Studies of the South China Sea at Nanjing University, said that "the intervention by countries outside the region is turning the South China Sea disputes into a geopolitical confrontation".

Zhang Yunbi contributed to this story.
Culture Insider: Teachers' Day in ancient China Updated: 2016-09-09 15:07 By Bi Nan(chinadaily.com.cn)

A portrait of Confucius (551-479 BC). [Photo/IC]

Tomorrow is the 32nd Chinese Teacher's Day  a festival celebrating the 2,300-year tradition of respecting teachers and education in China.

It's similar to the birthday of Confucius or the birthday of private school tutor in ancient China.

The history of Teacher's Day traces back to the Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 220). According to record, during the Han (202 BCAD 220) and Jin (1115-1234) dynasties, on August 27 each year, the birthday of Confucius, the emperor would go to Confucius' temple and pay tribute to the ancient philosopher followed by court officials, and would also invite royal teachers to the imperial court for a banquet. Local officials followed the court, and on this day, teachers around the nation enjoyed a day's vacation and were given dried meat as gifts.

The capital, all states and counties would also stage sacrificial ceremonies to worship Confucius, with local chiefs or the emperor leading rituals. Excellent-performed teachers would be chosen from academies and learning institutions nationwide, reporting to the royal court and given 500 liang () silver coins as awards.

Until the Qing Dynasty, the sacrificial ceremony, on August 27, was of a larger scale. The teachers' salaries in schools and academies around the nation were raised, and well-performing teachers would be conferred official titles or promoted to higher positions.
Li's visit to Laos yields raft of agreements Updated: 2016-09-09 08:39 By Hu Yongqi in Vientiane(China Daily USA)

China and Laos signed 20 agreements on Thursday to promote railway, hydropower and infrastructure projects as Premier Li Keqiang concluded his four-day trip to the Southeast Asian neighbor.

Under the agreements, Chinese banks will grant loans to the Laotian government to start construction of the China-Laos Railway. A groundbreaking ceremony for the project was held last year.

The two countries will work on a development plan for areas along the line that stretches 418 km from Kunming, capital of Southwest China's Yunnan province, to Laos' capital Vientiane.

Li also said in an article published in the Laotian newspaper KPL News that China is willing to start construction of the landmark China-Laos Railway, which will probably begin by the end of this year.

Li Jiacheng, a researcher of economic transition at Liaoning University, said the China-Laos Railway will help Laos transform from a "landlocked" to "land-linked" country.

Some of the agreements were to promote cultural exchanges, improve Laotian infrastructure such as earthquake research facilities, and facilitate customs clearance process between the two countries.

Premier Li arrived on Tuesday in Laos, which chairs the Association of Southeast Asian Nations this year and hosts all ASEAN and East Asia summits. The premier began his official visit to Laos on Thurs-day after participating in ASEAN-related meetings.

Premier Li was warmly welcomed by his Laotian counterpart Thongloun Sisoulith at the Prime Minister's House in downtown Vientiane. Laotian soldiers lined up to salute to the premier while the Chinese national anthem was performed.

Thongloun said Li's official visit showcased the traditional friendship between the two countries in support and encouragement for Laos as ASEAN chairing country this year.

This year marks the 55th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between the two neighbors. China is Laos' second-largest trading partner and the biggest source of foreign investment - total investment stood at $5.84 billion by the end of last year.

China is willing to promote cooperation in production capacity and investment, and major projects such as the railway and hydropower projects, Li said when meeting with President Bounnhang Vorachitch on Thursday.

Bounnhang said China and Laos maintain close exchanges at all levels and have made smooth progress cooperating in fields such as national defense and people-to-people exchanges.

huyongqi@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily USA 09/09/2016 page3)
Island paradise becoming a getaway resort Updated: 2016-09-08 06:59 By Liang Shuang in Shengsi, Zhejiang(China Daily)

An isolated island, a limited number of tourists and elegantly decorated guesthouses sounds like a paradise for a weekend getaway from metropolitan madness, which is exactly what Huaniao Island, in Shengsi, Zhejiang province, offers, thanks to residents' efforts to restore the ecosystem.

Located at the mouth of the Yangtze River, a few hours away from the metropolises of Shanghai and Hangzhou, Huaniao and other islands in Shengsi have been a fishermen's paradise for centuries. It's the core area of the Zhoushan fishing ground, long considered the largest of its kind in China and one of the biggest worldwide.

According to local yearbooks, the annual harvest accounted for 20 percent of China's total fishery yield at its peak.

But due to overfishing, as well as pollution from the Yangtze River and the coastal shore, yields have plunged since the 1980s.

Almost all pine trees on the island were wiped out by parasites present in furniture from the mainland, with the forest coverage rate plunging by more than 20 percent at the start of the 21st century. The government has since invested 10 million yuan ($1.5 million) annually to address the issue.

"The ecosystem is always so fragile on islands like ours," said Tang Jinji, deputy head of Shengsi county.

Locals began to realize the need to take better care of their environment.

For better regulation, small wooden fishing boats have been replaced by big steel ships. Small fish have been released into the ocean and harvesting has been banned during spawning season. Thousands of hectares of mussel farms have become a major source of income, while mussels also help to clean the water.

Conservation zones and reef restoration programs have been adopted, and authorities have started monitoring poachers, who face strict fines if caught.

In addition to the transformation of the fishing industry, tourism has played a key role. Once a boat captain, Hong Yongjun is now the owner of an ocean-themed guesthouse. Visitors can enjoy the ocean view and murals made by fishermen's wives, as well as go on fishing trips.

"We've been developing this industry since 2006," said Zhang Zhiyan, head of Tian'ao village.

The "Five Fishing Villages of the East Sea", which includes Tian'ao and four neighboring villages, provide fishing experience, each with a unique style.

About 30 kilometers to the northeast lies Huaniao Island, where the Huaniao Lighthouse has been guiding ships since 1870. The island now offers tours for a limited number of guests centered at the lighthouse. The tour limits visitors to one boat - holding 280 people at most - and includes a two-night stay in guesthouses on the island.

"We're very cautious when it comes to the environmental capacity of the island, plus we don't plan to build any big, fancy hotels," Wang said. "So it's actually difficult to make a booking during the summer."

"This fits our idea of high-end tourism, as we are building China's first high-end micro-resort on an outlying island," said Cao Jiayan, head of the Huaniao Tourism Development Company.

liangshuang@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 09/08/2016 page4)
Report tracks Chinese overseas travel trends Updated: 2016-09-09 08:39 (China Daily)

Mainlanders prefer regional destinations

When choosing overseas tourism destinations, Chinese travelers prefer neighboring countries and regions, according to the annual Report of Outbound Tourism Development by the China Tourism Academy, a think tank under the national tourism administration.

Hong Kong and Macao accepted more than 63 percent of the 117 million total outbound tourists from the mainland in 2015. Despite the fact that total visits to Hong Kong in 2015 dropped by 4.3 percent, to 45.8 million, it still ranks at the top for mainland visitors.

Other popular tourism destinations include Thailand, South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, the United States, Singapore, Russia, Australia, Indonesia and Malaysia.

Several countries and regions saw huge growth - Thailand was up 88 percent (7.93 million visitors), Japan was up 82 percent (4.99 million visitors) and Vietnam was up 68 percent (1.78 million visitors).

However, visits to Africa dropped by 61.8 percent in 2015, while visits to Europe increased by 23.8 percent, the report said.

Most money spent on shopping

When asking to rank their largest expenditures on overseas trips, 85.9 percent of tourists answered shopping.

About 61 percent chose fees paid to travel agencies and local organizers. More than 58 percent chose dining.

Chinese people are not shy about spending big during overseas trips. More than 60 percent of tourists said their budget for one trip was more than 10,000 yuan ($1,500), the outbound tourist report said.

More than 30 percent said they would spend 5,000 to 10,000 yuan for one trip. Only 8 percent said their budget was below 5,000 yuan.

Eastern China provides most tourists

Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong province, Jiangsu province and Zhejiang province were the top five source markets for China's booming outbound tourism industry. In 2015, Beijing sent out 5.3 million citizens to travel overseas, a year-on-year jump of 29.7 percent. Average overseas spending was 5,000 to 15,000 yuan, the report said.

Eastern China has a mature tourism industry, and it takes the lead both in accepting tourists and sending them out. Central China also makes a big contribution, the report said. The gaps between western, central and eastern China are being narrowed as airports are built and visa centers are opened in second - and third-tier cities, it said.

- Su Zhou

A Chinese tourist takes a selfie in front of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris in May. Jacky Naegelen / Reuters

(China Daily 09/09/2016 page5)
New York City-based martial arts master has a select group of clients, from movie actors to moguls

It used to be a unique scene in New York's neighborhood parks when Chinese immigrants would gather in the morning and go through the graceful and mysterious motions of tai chi.

Nowadays practitioners of the traditional martial art in New York can be seen regularly on Times Square, the Brooklyn Bridge, Lincoln Center, virtually everywhere.

"Tai chi is like an open secret among the upper class of New York," said film director You Jun, who has been shooting a documentary of New York-based tai chi master Ren Guangyi and his US students, who include a businessman, a Broadway tycoon, a doctor, musician, painter, policeman, writer, psychologist and a photographer, among others.

"I was surprised by [the American students'] extensive knowledge and deep understanding of tai chi," said You. "It's a big part of their lives."

So devoted were those students to the martial art and their teacher that many of them, who have consistently turned down media requests, agreed to be filmed for You's documentary.

Jonathan Miller, former CEO of AOL and chief digital officer of the News Corp, welcomed You and his film crew to visit his new tai chi resort in Upstate New York, which is currently under construction.

Laurie Anderson, avant-garde artist and widow of rock legend Lou Reed, who was a student of Master Ren for 12 years before he died, performed some of her electronic music that was inspired by tai chi's concept of yin and yang.

"Tai chi has become more and more popular in the past 25 years in the US, and in the world," said Ren, who studied with Chen-style Tai Chi Grandmaster Chen Xiaowang for eight years in China's Henan province before moving to New York for his wife's education in 1991.

His weekly group class has grown from two students to more than 30, and he has become a frequent visitor to many of Manhattan's luxury apartments and brownstones, giving private lessons to the likes of actor Hugh Jackman, Leonard Lauder, chairman emeritus of Estee Lauder, and Freddie Gershon, chairman and CEO of Music Theatre International, a theatrical licensing agency.

Many of the students originally came to Ren for health reasons. One of them is Dr. Daniel Richman, a pain management specialist who often recommends that his patients try tai chi, which significantly helped his own neck pain that he was not able to cure himself.

Others came with a fondness for the Chinese martial art. A writer said tai chi helped him get in touch with the world and look people in the eye; a painter said tai chi helped her find inner peace; and a photographer said she just found tai chi to be very cool.

"Tai chi was born in China, but it's for the world," said Ren. "Now we see people around the world practicing yoga. Maybe one day they will turn to tai chi."

You's documentary will be aired on China Central Television sometime around the next Chinese New Year, the biggest annual holiday in traditional culture honoring the glory of ancestors.

"We often think Chinese immigrants in the US live in Chinatown and die in Chinatown, and they have no influence on mainstream society," said You. "It's not true. Now we see master Ren, who doesn't speak much English, but makes a huge difference in the lives of these American elites."

hezijiang@chinadailyusa.com
US launches nation's first mission to collect asteroid samples Updated: 2016-09-09 08:53 (Xinhua)

The United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket carrying NASA's Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft lifts off from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, US in this September 8, 2016 handout photo. [Photo/Agencies]

WASHINGTON -- US space agency NASA on Thursday launched the nation's first mission that will visit an asteroid and bring precious samples back to Earth.

The Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft blasted off atop an Atlas V rocket at 7:05 p.m. EDT (2305 GMT) as planned from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

"Liftoff!" a NASA TV commentator said during a live broadcast. "It's a seven-year mission to boldly go to asteroid Bennu and back."

The 800-million-US.-dollar mission's main goal is to collect a small sample of rocks and surface soil from Bennu, thought to harbor primordial material left over from the formation of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago.

"Sample return is really at the forefront of planetary exploration," said SIRIS-REx principal investigator Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona. "This is going to be a treasure trove of material for scientists yet to come."

If all goes according to plan, OSIRIS-REx will arrive in August 2018 and spend the next two years photographing and mapping the asteroid's surface to better understand its chemical and mineralogical composition, including selecting the sample site.

Then, in July 2020, the spacecraft will touch the asteroid for only three seconds to collect at least 60 grams of loose rocks and dust using a device called the Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism and store the material in a sample return capsule.

The spacecraft will depart the asteroid in March 2021 and travel for two-and-a-half years on a trajectory for Earth return in September 2023.

But OSIRIS-REx won't land. Instead, it will eject a small capsule containing the asteroid sample, which will land with the help of parachutes at the Utah Test and Training Range, southwest of Salt Lake City.
Goings On (San Francisco) Updated: 2016-09-09 11:36 (China Daily USA)

Tech talk - Menlo Park, Ca

A Chinese State Council Information Office delegation, led by deputy director general Zhang Ye (fourth from left), visits Facebook headquarters on Sept 6. The delegation, composed of executives and researchers from Chinese media outlets, hoped to learn more about how technology reshapes traditional media. Chang Jun / China Daily
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A plastic product production line of ai ong Tien Corporation at Nhon Trach 3 Industrial Park in ong Nai Province.  VNA/VNS Photo Danh Lam

HCM CITY  Representatives from member cities of the Business Partner City network shared their experiences in developing supporting industries and backing the development of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) at a roundtable in HCM City on Wednesday.

Pham Thanh Kien, director of the city Department of Industry and Trade, admitted the development of supporting industries in HCM City has met neither potential nor expectations.

He blamed it on several factors, including a dearth of funds and capable human resources, outdated technologies, and the lack of linkages between manufacturers and supporting industries.

Therefore, the city pays special attention to mechanisms and policies required to develop supporting industries.

It would continue to focus on attracting investment from SMEs to raise supporting industries production capacity to meet demand from the citys four key industries (mechanical engineering, electronics - information technology, chemicals - plastics - rubber, food processing) and two traditional industries (garment and textile and footwear), he said.

It has mapped out measures to boost supporting industries, including by assisting them with human resource training and technological reform and building a database for the industry, he said.

Kevin Louey, chairman of economic development at the Melbourne City Council, said the Australian city has adopted measures to support SMEs, including directly connecting with the worlds six largest cities to help the SMEs access other markets.

Melbourne also has in place policies to encourage innovation by SMEs and boost their exports, he said.

Masayuki Inoue, director general of Osakas Economic Strategy Bureau, said the Japanese city is home to 189,000 SMEs.

The municipal government has had favourable policies to help the SMEs penetrate foreign markets, including the setting up of representative offices in foreign countries to help take their products there.

Delegates also discussed how to better exploit co-operation opportunities when the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement comes into effect.

Nguyen Thanh Phong, Chairman of the city Peoples Committee, said with the rapid globalisation, countries need to enhance co-operation and support each other to develop.

Under the theme developing supporting industry and new business opportunities for small- and medium enterprises, the meeting offered BPC member cities a good opportunity to exchange experiences and strengthen relations, especially in the field of supporting industries.

Tran Vinh Tuyen, deputy chairman of the city Peoples Committee, said the city offers great potential for foreign companies to operate.

Its links with other BPC member cities and organisations have enabled local SMEs to expand to foreign countries, he said.

The roundtable meeting of the BPC network, an annual event, is held in rotation in member cities to discuss important economic and trade issues that have a direct impact on them.

The 2017 meeting will be held in Osaka.

The Business Partner City network helps promote business interaction within the AsiaPacific region, contributing to the economic development of each member city.  VNS
KHANH HOA  Cam Ranh International Terminal JSC began construction on an international terminal at Cam Ranh International Airport in the central province of Khanh Hoa yesterday.

The project aims to meet the recent robust increase in foreign tourists at the airport and prepare for the development of the facility by 2030.

The two-storey building, worth VN4 trillion (US$180 million), will cover a 50,000sqm.-area and construction will be carried out in three stages.

The first stage is expected to be completed by 2018, enabling the terminal to greet 2.5 million passengers annually. The number of passengers is expected to hit four million in the second phase and eight million at the end of the third phase in 2030.

At the ground-breaking ceremony, Deputy Minister of Transport Nguyen Nhat said the project would help ease the current overload facing the airport.

He also asked contractors to ensure safety, environmental hygiene, order and security in the area during the construction period.

In March, 2015, Khanh Hoa pumped over VN1.9 trillion ($85.5 million) into building the second taxiway at Cam Ranh airport, which is scheduled to be put into operation in early 2018.

Cam Ranh airport was built by the US troops to serve their military missions during wartime and was converted into a civil airport in 2004. It was upgraded to an international airport in 2009.

The airport received 3.3 million passengers in the first eight months of this year, including 1.5 million foreigners. Its designed annual capacity is 1.5 million passengers.

In 2015, the airport welcomed more than 2.7 million passengers, exceeding its design capacity by 80 percent. The number of foreign passengers was nearly 900,000.  VNS
HA NOI  Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Tran Hong Ha on Thursday ordered the Taiwanese Hung Nghiep Formosa Ha Tinh Steel Company to raise fish in its tank containing treated wastewater.

Ha made the instruction on a visit to the companys premises to check how it treated and released wastewater, two months after the Formosa committed to seriously following regulations on environmental protection to avoid disasters like the one that killed tonnes of fish in four central coastal provinces in early April.

Ha said the company must seriously address 58 violations of regulations on environmental protection.

At the meeting with Ha, the company chairman Chen Yuan Cheng once again apologised for the environmental disaster.

Chen said the company had built two tanks with a capacity of 10,000cu.m. each to treat biochemical wastewater and another two tanks of 50,000cum. each to treat industrial wastewater.

It had also installed an aquarium to raise fish in treated industrial wastewater, he added.

Formosa signed contracts with the Hoanh Son Waste Treatment Co Ltd and the Phu Ha Environment Co Ltd for transporting and treating solid hazardous waste following the current regulations on environmental protection.

The company had constructed 16 warehouses to hold solid hazardous waste before it was treated. Currently, the company discharges some 200-220 tonnes of solid hazardous waste daily, according to a vnexpress report.

To monitor the quality of fumes, nine devices had been installed, he said.

Le Ha Son, secretary of the provinces Party Committee, said the localitys view was that an economic project could only be implemented if the environment was protected.

Son asked the environment ministry to support the company to address issues dealing with waste, especially solid waste.

Minister Ha said people from all walks of life were aware of the environmental disaster. Therefore, Formosa had to fix these issues to regain the trust of the people.

Only when all the violations were successfully addressed, could the company resume operations, he said.  VNS
VIENTIANE  Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc yesterday called for more international support in resolving maritime issues, especially the East Sea (South China Sea) dispute.

At the 11th East Asia Summit (EAS) held in Laos yesterday, the Vietnamese leader emphasised the need to build and strengthen trust among countries, promote the role of multilateral institutions in the region, and build a foundation for the regions order so as to ensure peace, stability, co-operation and development.

Compliance with international law must be ensured and a code of conduct for countries should be built, he said. The regional countries need to fight shore up against unilateral actions, imposition, intimidation, or uses of force, he noted.

The EAS and other forums held by ASEAN have created a relatively firm foundation for shaping a future regional architecture, he said, underscoring the necessity to improve the EASs efficiency and consider marine co-operation as a new prioritised area.

He called on all parties to show goodwill and determination in entering a new phase of transforming the East Sea into a region of peace, stability, co-operation and development.

The current situation requires substantive trust-building measures and preventive diplomacy, especially the effective implementation of the Declaration on the Conducts of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC) and expeditious approval a Code of Conduct (COC) in 2017.

He said Viet Nam welcomes the Guidelines for Hotline Communications among ASEAN foreign ministry senior officials and China in response to maritime emergencies in the implementation of the DOC, and the Joint Statement on the Application of the Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea (CUES) in the East Sea.

Leaders attending the EAS emphasised the importance of ensuring peace, stability, maritime and aviation security, safety and freedom in the South China Sea.

The leaders argued for the peaceful settlement of disputes with respect to international law, including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), and diplomatic and legal processes, as well as self-restraint in avoiding militarisation.

EAS leaders approved the Vientiane Declaration on Promoting Infrastructure Development Co-operation in East Asia, and the EAS Declaration on Strengthening Responses to Migrants in Crisis and Trafficking in Persons.

ASEAN-India links boosted

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc also attended the ASEAN Plus One Summits with the US and India in Vientiane yesterday.

At the 14th ASEAN-India Summit, both sides agreed to continue boosting trade and investment towards a US$200 billion value by 2022, a sizeable leap from the $58.7 billion made in 2015.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi affirmed that India gives ASEAN an important position in its Act East policy and wants to become a trusted partner of the bloc to boost peace and prosperity in the region.

He also announced the additional provision of $50 million for the ASEAN-India Co-operation Fund and wanted to speed up the implementation of digital and infrastructure connectivity projects through the use of Indias $1-billion credit.

Viet Nam will play a major role as coordinator of ASEAN-India relations between 2015 and 2018. PM Phuc asked both sides to enhance co-operation to tap into their potential and political commitments.

India, a prestigious and powerful nation in the region and the world, should work with ASEAN to bring into play the role of international institutions, urge for adherence to international law, prevent conflicts, build trust, and peacefully resolve disputes, he said.

The two sides need to take concrete measures to promote trade, investment and infrastructure and digital connectivity, thereby tightening connections between ASEAN and India. They should also pay due attention to collaboration in science-technology as it is of Indias strength while the bloc has high demand for.

US co-operation key

During the fourth ASEAN-US Summit, the two sides appreciated practical developments in the ASEAN-US relationship since it was lifted to a strategic partnership level in November 2015.

The Vietnamese PM suggested ASEAN and the US boost co-operation in economics, investment, trade, environmental protection, science-technology, education-training, startup support, and climate change response. They should make more joint efforts to deal with non-traditional security challenges such as terrorism and infectious epidemics.

He suggested the US continue implementing the Lower Mekong Initiative and helping the Mekong countries improve their capacity for climate change adaptation, water resource management and sustainable use.

Laos handed over the 2017 ASEAN Chairmanship to the Philippines as the 2016 ASEAN Summits finally wrapped up yesterday.

Bilateral meetings

PM Phuc also had a meeting with his Australian counterpart Malcolm Turnbul in Vientiane yesterday during which he asked for Australias assistance in climate change response, sustainable development, and education.

He proposed that Australia widen its doors to Vietnamese farming products and speed up the risk assessment procedures concerning Vieat Nams dragon fruit.

The PM met UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on the same day, during which he lauded the UNs responses to global challenges.

As an active and responsible member of the international community, Viet Nam commits to joining the UNs efforts and initiatives, he pledged, committing that the country is implementing sustainable development goals and integrating the work into its socio-economic development plans.

Viet Nam hopes for more aid from the UN, aid that will allow them to realistically cope with climate change and secure sustainable development, he stated.  VNS
Korean language teaching course at the Marie Curie Secondary School in Ha Noi. Four secondary schools and high schools in HCM City in upcoming 2016-2017 academic year will teach Korean as part of a pilot programme, according to the citys Department of Training and Education.  Photo sejong.hcmussh.edu.vn

HCM CITY  Four secondary schools and high schools in HCM City in upcoming 2016-2017 academic year will teach Korean as part of a pilot programme, according to the citys Department of Training and Education.

A total of 500 students at Hoa Lu and Binh Tho secondary schools and Thu uc and Bui Thi Xuan high schools will be enrolled in the classes.

However, school representatives have said that a total of 40-45 students in each classroom was too large. They also said the schools did not have standard classrooms for language classes.

The representatives spoke at a conference held on Tuesday in HCM City by the management board of the 2020 National Foreign Languages Project at the Ministry of Education and Training.

English language classes beginning in the first grade are compulsory at all public schools. Students who study French, German, Japanese, Chinese or Korean must continue taking English classes until high school graduation.

The Korean language pilot programme is also being carried out in Ha Noi this school year, with a total of 500 students.

On February 4, the ministry signed an agreement with the South Korean Embassy in Viet Nam on the pilot teaching of Korean at schools from now to 2023.

At the signing ceremony, Deputy Minister of Training and Education Nguyen Vinh Hien said that Korean language instruction was necessary to provide human resources for more than 4,000 Korean enterprises in the country and for Vietnamese who work in South Korea.  VNS
HA NOI  Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has urged the whole political system and society to work together in protecting the environment after recent environmental pollution incidents that have harmed socio-economic development while affecting the living conditions of local people.

It is part of the Government leaders requirement in his newly-issued directive on environmental protection, which was produced after last months national teleconference on the work.

He said at the teleconference that many cases of environmental pollution and violations of environment protection regulations in the past had led to great public concern. The situation had worsened over many years of socio-economic development, affecting the living conditions of local people and causing social disorder.

A report at the conference revealed that the whole country recorded over 50 cases of environmental pollution that caused great public concern since early this year, particularly the recent marine environment pollution incident caused by the Taiwanese Hung Nghiep Formosa Ha Tinh Steel Corporation. The corporation had released toxic wastewater into the sea along some central provinces, causing serious pollution that killed a massive amount of fish in these localities.

In the directive, PM Phuc laid out some key measures to improve the quality of the environment, including not attracting investment by all means with a focus on environmental protection criteria while choosing investment projects, preventing the import of outdated technology and implementation of projects with high risks of environmental pollution. He said it is not acceptable to exchange the environment in return for economic growth.

He said it is necessary to define that environmental protection should be a compulsory requirement throughout the countrys development process.

The directive also urges strict following of the Party resolution and State policies and laws on environmental protection, clarifying the responsibilities of relevant agencies, particularly the management role of the natural resources and environment ministry, and of natural resources and environment departments in localities.

Chairmen of the peoples committees of localities will have to take responsibility before local people and the Government if serious environmental incidents happen in their localities, it said.

Promoting the participation of all sources in the society in investing in environmental protection is another solution. Accordingly, capital funds from the State budget will be used to deal with urgent environmental issues, build environmental monitoring stations and warning systems at key economic regions, at areas with a high density of waste discharging sources and at environmentally sensitive areas.

The PM also requires relevant ministries and agencies to review, adjust and increase quality and efficiency of environmental protection tools and measures. On that basis, the country will focus on completing the plan to tackle all establishments causing environmental protection by 2020.

Increasing State management over environmental protection, meeting demands of the new development situation, is needed, said the directive. Specifically, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment is entrusted to study and propose amendments to regulations on inspecting and examining environmental protection and co-ordinate with peoples committees of localities to increase inspection and give warnings over areas with high risks of environmental pollution.

The Ministry of Home Affairs is asked to work with the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and the Ministry of National Defence to soon establish a plan to set up a National Committee coping with emergency incidents.

The PM also asks for the speeding up of information dissemination to raise public awareness of environmental protection.

Former Deputy Director of the Pollution Control Department under the General Department of Environment, Tran The Loan, told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper that all these measures laid out by the PM were urgent.

In the current context of economic development, it was a must to not allow the importation of outdated technology in production and investment projects with high risk of environmental pollution, he said, adding that appraisement agencies needed a strong point of view and determination when choosing investment projects.

Director of the Environment General Department under the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, Nguyen Van Tai, told the newspaper that these measures were directed in detail by the Prime Minister and the ministry will soon implement these solutions to improve environment protection.

Environmental pollution risks

The Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment reported that the country is currently home to 283 industrial zones which discharge over 550,000cu.m of wastewater per day, not to mention 615 industrial clusters along with over 500,000 production facilities.

Furthermore, 787 urban areas discharge into the environment 3 million cu.m of wastewater per day, but only 40 out of the urban areas have standard waste treatment systems with a total capacity of 800,000cu.m per day.

The use of nearly 43 million motorbikes and over 2 million cars nationwide generate huge gas emissions that are polluting the air.

Over 23 million tonnes of domestic waste, 7 million tonnes of industrial waste, and 630,000 tonnes of harmful waste, together with 337 insanitary landfills and over 100 low-capacity incinerators are also the reasons for environmental pollution.

Besides, discarded packaging from around 100,000 tonnes of plant protection chemicals each year is another source of dangerous pollutants.

It also reported that although FDI businesses are contributing 70 per cent of the countrys GDP, they are tending to shift their investment into environmentally-unfriendly sectors such as metallurgy, ship repair, footwear and garments.-VNS
HA NOI  Farmers across the country will benefit from a five-year agreement signed yesterday between the Viet Nam Farmers Union and International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

Under the 2016-20 agreement, farmers would have the opportunity to learn to run sustainable-agriculture models, as well as build connections in the agricultural value chain.

Additionally, officials of the union were targeted to be trained to improve their overall farming skills.

Lai Xuan Mon, head of the union, said the agreement was expected to equip domestic farmers with more knowledge to integrate the agriculture sector into regional and global communities.

Further, Henning Pedersen, director of IFAD, said the fund would continue supporting Viet Nam to develop the agriculture sector in the near future.  VNS
Trinh Xuan Thanh.  VNA/VNS Photo

HA NOI  Former high-profile official Trinh Xuan Thanh is set to be expelled from the Communist Party of Viet Nam for serious violations causing public discontent and bring the Party and the Government into disrepute.

The recommendation to expel Thanh was made by the Partys Central Inspection Commission (CIC) yesterday.

In a statement released after its 6th Session began on Tuesday, the CIC asked its Board of Secretaries to expel the former vice chairman of the southern province of Hau Giang based on an investigation carried out early in July.

Thanh, 50, became a member of the Communist Party on July 21, 2003.

Before becoming the Peoples Committee vice chairman in the Mekong Deltas Hau Giang Province in May 2015, Thanh worked in leadership positions at the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT) and as chairman of the PetroVietnam Construction Corporation (PVC) from 2007 to 2013.

The Party Central Committees Inspection Commission in July this year accused Thanh of causing losses of more than VN3.2 trillion (US$142 million) during his tenure at PVC. His fast rise in the trade ministry and the Hau Giang Peoples Committee were also found to be incorrect.

The scandal involving Thanh broke in June this year after media reports alleged that he had used a State number plate for his private luxury car, a Lexus.

Subsequent investigations revealed he had a poor track record in top executive positions and was guilty of misconduct in appointing officials.

Only July 15 this year, the National Assembly had decided to strip Thanh of his deputy status, though he had won a seat in the general election.  VNS
by Moc Mien

800m above sea level, Bao Loc is not as hot as Sai Gon or as cold as a Lat. Instead, the little city has an average temperature of 21-23 Celsius degrees all year round. Little sunshine, much rain and a lot of fog typically color a week in Bao Loc. This combination, mixed with natural beauty, vibrant culture and famous tea, make the small town a poetic destination.

How to reach Bao Loc

Bao Loc is 180km northeast of HCMC, 110km from a Lat, and 100km from Phan Thiet City. From HCMC , the 5-6 hour ride costs VN210,000/ticket on an open bus.

Hiring motorbikes once one has arrived in Bao Loc is not so easy, however, due to its undeveloped tourism industry. Some hotels offer motorbike services, but others do not. However, tourists can travel around the city by taxi.

Many consider the dry seasonwhich lasts from December through April the prime time to visit Bao Loc. Clearer skies allow tourists to sip their tea and savor the sights in their fullest glory.

Accommodation

Most hotels in downtown Bao Loc are located in Tran Phu St., near many of the citys restaurants. An average hotel costs only VN100,000  150,000/night.

Right there, tourists can hire motorbikes at the price of VN80,000  100,000/day to zip around the city with convenience

Entertainment spots

Dam Bri Waterfall

The Dam Bri Waterfall Tourist Site boasts splendid falls, crystalline lakes, a recreation area and primeval forests taking up thousands of hectare.

With a height of 60m and a width of 30m, Dam Bri is the highest and the most majestic waterfall in Lam ong. White columns of water drop down into white foam, casting off a curtain of fog. On sunny days, rainbows shoot out of the blue pools and white mist.

Falling mist: Dam Bri is the highest and most majestic waterfall in Lam ong.  Photo news.zing.vn

At the foot of the waterfall, you can cross a small, mossy bridge. From afar, the bridge seems to come straight out of an ancient kung fu story.

In late October and early November, purple blossoms unfold everywhere, and the area becomes even more poetic.

The road leading to this site is well-maintained; tourists can easily visit by motorbike or taxi. Tourists should note that Tam Chau Tea Company employee buses can offer a lift free of fees.

Tam Chau Tea tree hill

Known as the city of tea, Bao Loc lays claim to the largest concentration of tea trees in Central or South Vietnam. Blao tea (Blao being the old name for Bao Loc) is incredibly popular among tea lovers. Less bitter than its Northern counterpart, Blao tea is more arid and fragrant.

Fields of green: Tam Chau is the most important tea tree hill in Bao Loc - the city of green tea.  Photo news.zing.vn

Tam Chau Tea tree hill cannot boast the long history that Cau at Tea tree Hill in a Lat can. However, the beauty of its sites and the taste its tea lure many travelers. Imagine an early morning when the sky is still misty. As the sun rises, the first light hits the morning dew kissing the tea leaves. You walk along the road, embracing the lake and drinking a clear, fragrant cup of tea. How does it feel? Tam Chau Tea tree hill offers moments like this. Moments like when your bus runs through the hill roads, and you open the windows and suddenly get hit by the air full of tea.

Bat Nha Monastery

Bat Nha Monastery is one of Bao Loc must-visit destinations. Its name, (Bat Nha means Heart of Perfect Wisdom), hints at its sense of ethereality. The quiet splendor offers sights to see, a Buddha to make offerings to, and even guest rooms to spend the night. The monastery is tucked away in a gorgeous pine forest, and its water comes from the forests clean streams. Follow the streams and you will find a waterfall lying behind ancient trees. Be sure to keep quiet here; the monks often come to the waterfall for meditation hours.

Linh Quy Phap An Pagoda

Unlike the quiet Bat Nha Monastery, Linh Quy Phap An Pagoda is part of a bustling scene. The pagoda has big gates, evoking the Gates to Heaven.

Quan Chieu uong (Quan Chieu Hall) is popular in part because of its architecture. Its interior boasts big wooden poles and golden lanterns, hallmarks of ancient aesthetics, inspires legions of photos. Quan Chieu Hall is often crowded, so tourists should come on weekdays to enjoy a peaceful atmosphere. The pagoda also proves itself a prime place to catch the sunrise and sunset.

Dining

Bao Loc has some feature dishes. In the morning, we recommend bun rieu (local crab noodle) by O Lan. Its a big bowl of noodle, crab, tofu and an especially crispy pig meat dipped in golden color.

From noon to night, enjoy Thuan Thanh rice pot at the crossroad of Tran Phu and Ly Tu Trong streets. The rice is cooked with sophistication and put in a clay pot that keeps everything warm throughout your meal. The warmth and flavors suit the breezy Bao Loc weather.

Once you travel from this crossroads toward Bao Loc Lake, you will find other nice dishes, especially sweetened porridge by cook Thao Uyen. Her best porridge, made of chestnut and lotus seed, will far surpass expectations.

Bao Loc is not a tourist city like a Lat, but that fact brings with it a sense of peace and green space. Slow down, sip some tea, and enjoy your stay.  VNS
The southern province of Ba Ria-Vung Tau has approved a location in Loc An Commune, at o District, for Ho Tram Project Co Ltd to build an airport for its guests.

According to the provinces portal, the build-operate-transfer airport will spread over 200 hectares.

The company said the airport would help bring more tourists from other parts of the country to its integrated resort The Grand Ho Tram Strip.

It had put forth two options for the location: Loc An and Binh Chau Commune, Xuyen Moc District, in the Binh Chau-Phuoc Buu Nature Reserve.

But province officials rejected Binh Chau as being infeasible, saying the project would affect 55 hectares of primary and replanted forests and 93 hectares of cashew and melaleuca.

Loc An was then chosen, being close to the sea and without many investment projects.

According to the province Department of Transport, there are two airports in the province: Vung Tau Airport, mainly for aircraft belonging to the oil and gas sector, and Con ao Airport for commercial flights. They were approved by the Government in a zoning plan for transport development.

Therefore, the proposed airport must first be approved and submitted to the Ministries of Defense and Transport for comment before Ho Tram can go ahead and build it.  VNS
ATHENS  Greece sent back to Turkey five failed asylum-seekers on Thursday, in line with an EU deal with Ankara aimed at stemming the flow of migrants to Europe, the Greek interior ministry said.

The five returnees -- four from Pakistan and one from Egypt -- were sent to the Turkish port of Dikeli on a ship operated by European border agency Frontex, after their asylum requests were rejected on appeal.

Under the controversial EU-Turkey deal struck in March, migrants arriving in Greece were expected to be sent back to Turkey if they did not apply for asylum, or if their asylum requests were refused.

In reality, the 500 would-be migrants who have been sent back since the deal came into force on March 20 had either refrained from requesting asylum, or withdrawn their applications, a source at the Greek ministry of migration said.

The five sent back on Thursday were the first returnees to have had their requests turned down.

In a desperate bid to avoid being sent back to Turkey, most arrivals since March 20 have applied for asylum, regardless of their status or where they came from.

The Greek teams working on refugee status determination have been overwhelmed with the sheer scale of the crisis on both the islands and the mainland.

The July 15 coup bid in Turkey has also caused additional delays to Greeces efforts to return failed asylum seekers.

Around 13,000 migrants and refugees have been stuck on the Aegean islands since March 20, many of them on Chios and Lesbos, waiting to have their cases heard.

Another 56,000 migrants who arrived in Greece before the deal came into force, but after the closure of the so-called Balkan route, are stuck on the mainland.

Around this time last year, the Greek islands became the epicentre of the worst migrant crisis in Europe since World War II, with thousands of people desperately fleeing war and poverty landing on their shores each day.

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said on Thursday it has helped secure the voluntary repatriation of 4,285 people, mainly from Afghanistan and Iraq, since the start of the year.  AFP
Virginia Tech will host a Beyond Boundaries Presidential Conversation between university President Tim Sands and Kent Fuchs, the president of the University of Florida on Sunday, Sept. 18 at 7:30 p.m. in the Donaldson-Brown Graduate Life Center (155 Otey St.).

Sands and Fuchs will discuss the opportunities and challenges each has faced at their institutions, past and present. A focus of the conversation will be on how land-grant institutions meet the evolving needs of society and prepare students to thrive in a globally connected world.

The event is free and open to the public. It will be live-streamed for remote audiences, and a video of the conversation will be posted after the event. (Watch the live video). That information will be shared through Virginia Tech News.

Fuchs became the 12th president of the University of Florida in 2015. Under his leadership, the university has developed shared goals for the decade ahead and aspires to be a premier comprehensive university that the state, nation and world look to for leadership.

Prior to his tenure at Florida, Fuchs spent six years as provost of Cornell University. He was appointed provost after serving as Cornells Joseph Silbert Dean of Engineering from 2002 to 2008. He joined Cornell from Purdue University, where he headed the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering from 1996 to 2002.

Sands became the 16th president of Virginia Tech in 2014. A scientist, educator and inventor, he has dedicated much of his career to advancing the impact of research and innovation in public education.

As president, he engaged the university community in a visionary plan to advance Virginia Techs role as a global land grant institution, confronting the commonwealths, the countrys and the worlds most challenging problems.

The initiative, called Beyond Boundaries, seeks to define Virginia Techs role a generation into the future, and align the educational experience with the needs and opportunities that will be created by changing world economies and the evolving landscape of higher education.
Unequal Budget funding for the Yes vote wont give Australians equal say If you seek to ensure not all Australians get an equal say in the debate about an enshrined voice, then dont be surprised when millions of them cry foul about the integrity of the result.

Our gas: Andrews makes national energy demand Victorias Premier has proposed solving the east coast's gas problems by creating a nationwide scheme similar to one already successful in the country's West.

Cash challenges PM to front Australians over IS families With the contentious Syrian repatriation mission in full swing, the Opposition continued to question the safety of the Islamic State linked families that have begun arriving on Sydney soil.

Andrew Clennell looks ahead to the coming week in politics 02:31 Sky News Political Editor Andrew Clennell has assessed what is set to be seen in the coming week in politics.
ELK POINT, S.D. (AP)  A college student from Iowa who is presumed drowned in the Missouri River in South Dakota was trying to help others when he went missing.

Twenty-three-year-old Tom Patterson, of Frostburg, Md., was swimming with friends Sunday afternoon southwest of Elk Point when he disappeared.

Union County Sheriff Dan Limoges says new information from a witness indicates Patterson was trying to help other swimmers back to shore when he was swept away by the current.

Authorities are continuing to search for a body.

Patterson had been attending classes at Briar Cliff University in Sioux City.
WATERLOO  A Waterloo man has been arrested for allegedly breaking into a business in August.

Clarence Lee Franklin, 55, of 2153 Lafayette St., was arrested Aug. 26 for second-degree burglary and possession of burglary tools.

The arrest stems from an Aug. 19 break-in at The Neighborhood Mart, 2100 Lafayette St. Officers noticed the glass front door was broken at about 11:50 p.m. and saw a man with a trash can full of items inside. The suspect dropped the trash can and fled.

According to court records, the stores surveillance system recorded video of Franklin entering the business alone after shattering the door with a hammer. Police allege he was also armed with a knife during the burglary.
CEDAR RAPIDS  The presidential campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump trotted out surrogates Thursday in a series of tit-for-tat appearances and conference calls to question the fitness of their respective opponents.

In Cedar Rapids, former Iowan, University of Iowa graduate and Reagan administration staffer Doug Elmets asked How can any self-respecting human being look at Donald Trump and say he should be the leader of this country?

Although he has made contributions to Democratic candidates, Elmets said he has never voted for a Democrat since casting his first vote in a presidential election in 1980 for Ronald Reagan.

In contrast to Trump, who will campaign in Clive Sept. 13, he said, Clinton is more prepared to be president than anyone in modern history.

However, Col. LaVerne Anderson, retired from the Army after nearly 43 years of service and chairman of Iowa Veterans for Trump, said revelations about Clintons mishandling of sensitive intelligence material should disqualify her as being president.

I think Hillary Clinton and the current administration have endangered our nations security, Anderson said on a conference call. Not only did Hillary expose classified information to actors on her unsecured, I would say home brew, email server and that has weakened the decision making in Iraq, Syria, Libya, and its turned those countries into a breeding ground for radical Islamic terror.

While Elmets argued there is no comparison between his former boss and Trump, who he called a an empty suit, phony and someone lacking grace and humility who offers crazy notions, Republican Party of Iowa Chairman Jeff Kaufmann said comments the GOP nominee made during a national security forum Wednesday reminded him of Reagans peace through strength approach.

I believe thats what Donald Trump represents, I believe thats what Donald Trump can deliver, he said.

Rod Boshart of the Des Moines bureau contributed to this story.
As the presidential campaign moves into its final stretch, about 7 percent of voters (depending on which poll you read) say theyre still undecided between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump  more than enough to swing the election either way.

After all the noise and drama of the last few months, what are these people waiting for?

They dont much like either of the candidates. Theyre struggling to decide which is the lesser of two evils. And theyre not finding it an easy choice.

Thats the lesson that bubbled up from a recent discussion with swing voters in Wisconsin conducted by pollster Peter D. Hart.

Hart convened a dozen swing voters, people who have voted for both Democrats and Republicans, in a Milwaukee suburb a few weeks ago. The pollster conducts these focus groups regularly as part of a project for the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

Four of the 12 said they leaned toward Trump. Four said they leaned toward Clinton. Four said they were completely undecided. Almost all said they were still open to persuasion by both candidates.

All said theyd been disappointed by the campaign; they said they wanted to hear about issues, not mudslinging. Asked to describe the contest with a smell, their answers included garbage, manure, skunk  and skunk fart. But when asked what more they wanted to learn about each candidate, their questions were mostly about character: What are they like behind closed doors? Can we trust them with life-or-death decisions?

Both candidates have serious flaws, said Sheri LaValley, a 51-year-old compliance analyst who voted for President Obama.

Hillary with her emails, I just dont trust her. Trump, the way he acts. Every day you turn on the TV, and I just shake my head, she said.

She said she was leaning toward Trump  with a condition: I think he would be an awesome candidate if he could get his personality under control.

Several said they found the prospect of Trump as commander in chief worrisome. Hes just such a wild cannon, said Barbara Kass, 62, a retired airline employee who is completely undecided.

Id like to see Trump 2.0, said David Locher, 34, a supervisor for the Milwaukee rapid transit system, also undecided. If Trump doesnt show something more coherent  I probably could go for Hillary, just for fear of things becoming a mess worldwide.

Asked to describe the Republican nominee as a member of their family, the most popular title was crazy uncle, and, in one case, drunk uncle.

Clinton has a different problem  but one that appears just as serious.

Although most of the swing voters gave the Democratic nominee high marks for experience and competence, they also described her as chilly, distant, untrustworthy and dishonest.

Shes a smart woman with a lot of experience but  you cant trust her, said Beth Gramling, 50, a payroll analyst.

What did she mean by trust? Integrity, she said. I dont think she has that. And its a shame.

Nevertheless, Gramling said, she was leaning toward Clinton.

It was clear the controversy over Clintons private email system isnt solely a media fixation; its resonated among ordinary voters too. Eight of the 12 voters said they were unhappy about Clintons insistence her emails did not contain classified material.

Its a lie, said Dara Schneider, 47, a personnel recruiter.

Asked to describe the Democratic nominee as a member of their family, the most frequent choice was stepmother  a loveless relationship.

When Hart asked how the voters would finally make up their minds, he was met with mostly blank looks. Its going to have to be the debates, said Locher.

What can Trump do to win their votes? Tone it down, said Schneider. Trumps been getting that advice from his aides, but its not clear hes taking it.

What can Clinton do? Take down the mask and show shes human, said Gramling.

Its obviously not easy to rebuild trust amid the noise of a campaign, but these voters said they were willing to give the candidate another chance if she makes an effort to be more transparent (their words) and to connect with ordinary people.

A lot of voters know they do not want Donald Trump as president, but they need to know that they can live with Hillary Clinton for the next four years, Hart wrote in a summary of the session for reporters. The hurdle they face is to find reassurance that they can trust her and that she will identify with them and their day-to-day challenges.

As the polls narrow, theres still room for Trump to win  and room, as well, for Clinton to lose.
War votes

RONALD ORF

TRIPOLI  Unlike so many of the fact-free statements from the Trump campaign, the constant refrain of Hillary voted for the war is at least an actual fact.

The problem is it leaves out the context of the time. The GOP minions, claiming to be defense experts, presented to Congress and the American people a vision of a renegade country making nuclear weapons to destroy American cities. Dick Cheney stated  the only warning we will get will be a mushroom cloud. The House lunchroom, to stick it to the cowardly French, changed the menu to freedom fries. The Dixie Chicks were booed off the stage for statements against the war, and more than 80 percent of Americans, myself included, believed the ginned-up intelligence as presented, and supported the war. Some Democrats who voted against the war were slammed in the next election for being unpatriotic.

It is appalling the very party that echoed the lies that got us into the war, and disparaged any who had doubts, now claim Clinton should be ashamed for believing their lies.

This is like the kid who killed his parents begging for mercy on the grounds he is an orphan.

Commander in chief

DAVID THOMAS

WATERLOO  After an extensive investigation, the FBI has cleared Hillary Clinton of any wrong doing concerning her email. With Russia apparently hacking into government computers, Hillarys private server may have actually been more secure than the government system. Every time Republicans mention the email issue it just shows how truly desperate they have become. Since the Republican nominee is just a reality TV star with no political experience, who seems to have little knowledge of real issues, their only hope is to create some sort of phony scandal.

If Republicans really want an excuse to attack Hillary Clinton, they should accuse her of being too much like George W. Bush. The Bush administration created ISIL by removing Saddam Hussein from power. When Hillary was in the Senate she voted for the war in Iraq and the Patriot Act, making her an accomplice to Bushs atrocities. Supporting the disastrous policies of the Bush administration is the worst thing Hillary has ever done.

Jail disparity

DAVID WEBBER

JESUP  Your lead article in the Sept. 6 Courier Racial disparity persists in Iowa prisons and jails misses the point. The racial mix of prisoners will reflect the racial mix of perpetrators of crime, not the racial mix of the population. Given 92 percent of murders in New York City are committed by blacks killing blacks and most of the murders committed in Chicago are in precincts with primarily black populations, it is not unreasonable to wonder if blacks do indeed commit a disproportionate number of crimes.

If that is so, it might explain the disproportionate number of black prisoners compared to the population mix.

The Courier would do a great service to its readers, and the nation, if it would assign a reporter to check court records and see what the racial mix of guilty verdicts and guilty pleas is in this area.

Then we can have a sensible conversation about whether or not there is racial bias in sentencing.
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DALLAS, TX, September 09, 2016 /24-7PressRelease/ -- ProPath pathologist, Rodney T. Miller, M.D. , Director of the Immunohistochemistry (IHC) Division, is the recipient of a prestigious award for his analysis of critical forensic evidence and subsequent expert testimony at the trial and re-trial of one of the most horrific murder cases in New Zealand's history.



In February 2001, Mark Edward Lundy was arrested and charged for the August 2000 brutal murders of his 38-year-old wife, Christine and 7-year-old daughter, Amber, who were bludgeoned about the face and head with a hatchet. The following year Lundy was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum non-parole period of 17 years. After receiving an appeal in 2013, Lundy was granted a re-trial in 2015 and later found guilty of the murders for a second time.



During the original trial, it was Dr. Miller's IHC expertise that led to the positive detection of brain tissue from two tiny stains found on a shirt worn by Lundy. The DNA analysis of the shirt stain demonstrated that it was conclusive evidence of Christine's DNA on Lundy's shirt. This critical piece of evidence allowed the New Zealand Police to arrest and charge Lundy with the double murders.



In appreciation of Dr. Miller's expertise and 15-year support on the case along with the ProPath's lab team's efforts, he was presented with the District Commander's Commendation award by Detective Senior Sergeant, Nigel Hughes of New Zealand Police. Detective Senior Sergeant Hughes, who was also the officer in charge of the Lundy murder scene said, "Dr. Miller's evidence was the vital component in the successful prosecution and conviction of Mark Lundy." Dr. Miller, who had been working with the New Zealand Police on the Lundy Murder trial since 2001, crafted a Focus article on the pathology procedures used in the case, entitled "Immunohistochemistry in Forensic Pathology." This article and the behind-the-scenes story of the case can be found on the ProPath website at http://www.propath.com/companies/press-clippings.



About ProPath

ProPath is a team of pathologists recruited from top-tier medical centers and academic institutions around the country. ProPath has surrounded its physicians with an unsurpassed, internationally-recognized laboratory utilizing a proprietary tracking system for every patient specimen. As with all medical specialties, the quality of a cancer diagnosis is directly related to the education, talent and experience of the rendering physician. The ProPath teams of board=certified and subspecialty-trained pathologists are the experts you want rendering your diagnosis. For more information about ProPath, please visit propath.com. Also, follow us on Facebook and Twitter.



For Press inquiries contact:

Douglas Kale

Sr. Marketing Specialist - [email protected]



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Sep 9, 2016 | By Nick

More than one-third of children dont get their recommended 60 minutes of vigorous daily exercise. That is contributing to an epidemic of childhood obesity according to the World Health Organization that could put a real strain on their health later in life.

Scientists at the Applied Sports, Technology, Exercise and Medicine (STEM) Research Center at Swansea University believe that 3D printing could provide the solution.

Simple models that illustrate a childs levels of activity, heart rate and the time they spend running around could drive them towards a healthier, happier future. Thats the theory in any case. Television, video games and the internet are largely to blame for an increasingly sedentary lifestyle, with children spending up to eight hours a week sat in front of the screen.

There is a wealth of information aimed at adults already. Smartphone apps, pedometers and other wearable tech provide a wealth of data to show us how much we have achieved during a workout or the course of the day. But these are complex concepts for young children to grasp.

So the Exertion Games Lab in Melbourne came up with a simple idea, producing 3D prints of a childs heart rate during physical exercise. Suddenly children could see how the intensity of their exercise affected their heart rate and fitness. It was a small acorn of an idea that could just grow and grow.

The team behind the concept wants to produce different models to highlight childrens weekly activity, or lack of it. That includes the time they wake up and go to bed, the amount of time they spend doing organized physical exercise and the exertion levels.

The child wears a simple physical activity monitor around their waist while theyre going for gold, or goal, and then uploads the data to an app when theyre done. An app interprets that data in a variety of ways and then creates a 3D printed model that the child can relate to.

That can be everything from a heart to an elaborate star with peaks that represent different aspects of their workout.

Images credit: Exertion Games Lab

It gives the child something they can hold in their hand. Its a simple display and a benchmark they can use to improve upon. A series of models with gradual improvements in their fitness, endurance and the time they spend on sporting activities will also motivate them.

Technology has taken a large portion of the blame for the childhood obesity problem that is threatening to turn into a serious health issue for the world at large. Numerous studies have claimed that 80% of clinically obese children will remain obese throughout their adult life. This can contribute to all manner of health problems, including heart disease, diabetes and cancer. Health authorities around the world have declared war on obesity and they all know that they have to instill good habits into children and promote healthy living from a young age.

So its good to see that modern technology can play a part in solving the problem it has helped to create. 3D printing exercise charts is just one way that we can engage and inspire children to get involved with sport.

Pokemon Go, Motion Maze, Zombies, Run! And Ibitz have brought gamification and fun to the world of physical exercise, building on the momentum of Wii Fit and other innovations.

Fit children might not have been the end goal for the likes of Pokemon Go, but the end result is the same. Rewards, bonuses and straightforward points have got the kids interested in the outside world and moving again.

Even so, many children simply dont grasp the concept of vigorous exercise and there is a world of difference between a gentle walk and intense training. So official guidelines that recommend levels of exercise can be meaningless for a child.

This simple innovation from Swansea University, then, could really be the missing link they need to monitor and improve their fitness levels. If thats the case then sitting on the computer with a 3D printer could actually be the driving force to get kids fit.

Theres a certain amount of irony in it, but anything that helps fight childhood obesity just has to be a good thing.

Posted in 3D Printing Application

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Sep 9, 2016 | By Nick

Researchers in Ireland have found a new 3D scanning method that could potentially spell the end of the X-ray. Its called long wavelength excitation and it involves pumping gold particles into your blood before taking a scan.

Dont count on X-rays disappearing for a while yet. They have been with us since 1895 and theyre still the go-to diagnostic tool for straightforward injuries to your bones. But this chemical approach by researchers from the School of Chemistry at Trinity College and the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin, Ireland, could be the start of a new technique that has a multitude of uses.

Essentially the technique relies on the fact that the body releases significant levels of calcium from any micro crack in the bone. The team at Trinity found a way to attach luminescent material to nanoscale gold structures that collectively is drawn towards the calcium deposits.

A simple scan will then reveal an accurate picture of micro cracks and more serious problems with the bone structure. At the moment doctors have to visually inspect x-rays for obvious damage and it isnt unusual for them to miss small cracks. This technique would effectively highlight any damage, no matter how small, so there would be almost no chance of overlooking a problem.

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Inevitably this involves introducing the agent in to the blood stream and it seems like taking the long way round to the same destination. But the compound is biologically safe and gold has been used in medicine for a long time thanks to its inert and stable nature.

X-rays carry an increased risk of cancer and the team argues this new method could be a much safer alternative. They are also relatively limited.

The nanoagents we have developed allow us to visualize the nature and extent of the damage in a manner that wasnt previously possible, said Professor Thorri Gunnlaugsson, who led the team along with post-doctoral researcher Dr Esther Surender. This is a major step forward in our quest to develop targeted contrast agents for bone diagnostics for use in clinical applications.

This new technique will go much further than highlighting simple cracks and breaks. It could offer an early warning for the onset of conditions such as osteoporosis, which is a major contributing factor in broken bones in elderly patients. If a doctor can spot the condition early and prescribe treatment, the patient has a better chance of a healthy and happy life in their old age.

For patients that suffer with the disease, repeated checks can also highlight weak bones and preventative care can then cut the risk of serious injury. In a lot of cases, patients require bone implants or lengthy rehabilitation that could have been avoided with an early warning sign like this.

Clive Lee, Professor of Anatomy at the Royal College of Surgeons, was heavily involved in the development of this innovative 3D scanning technique. He thinks the biggest benefit will come from identifying potential weaknesses in bones, rather than treating breaks after the event. He thinks thats just as important for Olympic athletes as it is for the elderly."Everyday activity loads our bones and causes microcracks to develop, he said. These are normally repaired by a remodeling process, but, when microcracks develop faster, they can exceed the repair rate and so accumulate and weaken our bones.

This occurs in athletes and leads to stress fractures. In elderly people with osteoporosis, microcracks accumulate because repair is compromised and lead to fragility fractures, most commonly in the hip, wrist and spine. Current X ray techniques can tell us about the quantity of bone present but they do not give much information about bone quality."

Theres no word on the potential costs, but the technique makes a little gold go a long way and it may well cost the same as an old-fashioned X-ray. The technique could also be portable, unlike X-rays, because there is no hazardous radiation to worry about.

The full paper has been published in Chem, published by Cell Press.

Posted in 3D Scanning

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Mary wrote at 9/30/2017 10:47:05 PM:Can I make a appointment to get a bone scan,I have constain pain in my bones.




Diaa Hadid in The New York Times:

It is incumbent upon every able-bodied Muslim who can afford to do so to travel to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, Islams holiest site, at least once in his or her lifetime. The annual pilgrimage is known as the hajj, and it is one of the five pillars of Islam, prescribed in the Quran:

And proclaim to mankind the hajj. They will come to you on foot, on very lean camel, they will come from every deep and distant mountain highway.

This year, 1437 according to the Islamic calendar, I am making my first hajj. I will be joining two million Muslims from around the world  though the writer Abu Muneer Ismail Davids joked that it may feel more like 10 million people. During the hajj, we must not swear, cut our hair or nails, have sex or crush a plant. I will be chronicling my journey for The New York Times and on social media. To better follow along, heres a glossary of terms, names and places that help explain the rites and rituals Muslims will participate in during the six days of the hajj, which begins Saturday.

Prophets and Forebears

Ibrahim, the prophet who, following Gods commandment, left his wife, Hajar, and their son Ismail in the Arabian desert. (I am using the Islamic spellings for these figures that also appear in the Judeo-Christian Bible as Abraham, Hagar and Ishmael.) It is with Ibrahim that one of the stories of the origin of Islam begins. For Muslims, like Jews, he is considered a patriarch of our faith. Hajar was Ibrahims second wife. After she and Ismail were left in the desert, Hajar ran seven times between two hills, Safa and Marwa, searching for water for her thirsty son. Ismail is said to have kicked his leg in the sand, causing water to trickle out. This became the spring of Zamzam, from which well drink during the hajj. Ismail is considered the ancestor of the Arabs. He was reunited with his father after many years when Ibrahim returned to the desert. Ismail is said to have helped his father build a temple, called the Kaaba, or cube, to honor his one God. To test Ibrahims faith, God commanded him to sacrifice Ismail. Three times the devil tried to tempt Ibrahim to abandon his mission, and each time Ibrahim hurled seven stones at the devil to ward him off. Well re-enact the stone throwing during the hajj.

More here.
Let's catch up.







The Ann Coulter Jokes at the Rob Lowe Roast? They Really Were That Brutal, Washington Post



After Comedy Central's "Roast of Rob Lowe" filmed 10 days ago, word got out almost immediately: The event really became a roast of Ann Coulter. While Lowe was clearly the target of many jokes, all of the comedians and roasters on stage (host David Spade, Nikki Glaser, Jeff Ross, Jewel, Peyton Manning, etc.) aimed especially vicious material at the conservative commentator and fellow roaster  so much that Coulter herself dubbed it the "Ann Coulter roast with Rob Lowe." Read more.





Apple Unveils New Watch, iOS and iPhone 7, NBC Bay Area

Apple debuted a series of new updates and enhancements for its trademark line of technology products at a packed Bill Graham Auditorium in San Francisco Wednesday. But the tech giant also took something away: The familiar 3.5 mm headphone jack. Adding features to keep up with the competition, Apple took a risk Wednesday, hoping people are ready to get rid of their wired headphones. With Sia reminding guests how important music is to our lives, Apple introduced a new way to listen to tunes. The wireless headphones, which will be available for $159 starting in October, are called Air Pods. Read more .





Via NPR Media

Dakota Access Pipeline Protests In North Dakota Turn Violent, NPR



Protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota turned violent on Saturday. Demonstrators supporting the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe faced off with private security officers from Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners. Video from the scene showed security officers threatening protesters with dogs. As All Things Considered reported, hundreds of Native Americans from tribes across the country have set up a camp near the construction site in North Dakota. The Army Corps of Engineer approved the oil pipeline in July allowing it to run under the Missouri river close to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's reservation. Read more.







Via IFL Science

NASA's Juno Spacecraft Captures The First Stunning Views Of Jupiter's Poles, IFL Science



Set faces to stunned, because NASA's Juno spacecraft has just returned the first-ever images of Jupiter's poles. We've sent spacecraft to Jupiter before, but we've never seen anything like this. The images were returned towards the end of last week, after Juno performed the first of its 36 scientific flybys of Jupiter on August 27. The spacecraft swung past Jupiter at a distance of 4,200 kilometers (2,500 miles), closer than any spacecraft has gone before. Read more.







Via Twitter

Twitter to Mull its Future as Takeover Rumors Swirl Again, East Bay Times



Speculation that Twitter could sell itself to another company has reignited, and don't expect the takeover rumors or skepticism to fizzle out anytime soon. The company's board of directors is scheduled to meet Thursday and will be discussing Twitter's fate as a stand-alone company and the possibility of more layoffs, technology blog Recode reported Tuesday, citing anonymous sources. Twitter did not respond when asked about the rumors. Read more.





Courtesy of SF Weekly

Will the Diplomat Who Drove Into the Tree on Post Street Kindly Remove Their Honda Fit?SF Weekly



An anonymous tipster writes into say that a red Honda Fit with consular plates executed a poor parking job on the 700 block of Post Street near Leavenworth last evening, leaving the car overnight with one wheel on the sidewalk and causing a sapling recently planted by Friends of the Urban Forest to lean. While driving onto the curb is the kind of oopsie that any sober person could pull off, the fact that an entitled person hiding boorishly behind diplomatic privileges would just leave the car like that suggests that alcohol may have played a role. Read more.


Her husband, Andrew, was stretched out on the bed next to her so they could pass the baby back and forth. A pair so suddenly a threesome.

Since he and Tay had come to the hospital early, I kept urging them to take a nap. They laughed and teased me  I guess it was pretty obvious that all I wanted was to hold Jordan. Have her to myself.

When it was finally my turn, I felt I was growing a whole new chamber in my heart. I nearly swooned, staring at her like a lover. I'd never seen anything so delicate and beautiful, so sweet, every feature perfect. And it's not that I didn't see her three chins.

This is what I didn't expect. I was at a time in my life where I'd assumed I had already had my best day, my tallest high. But now I was overwhelmed with euphoria. Why was she hitting with such a force? What explains this joy, this grandmother elation that is a new kind of love?

But there was something more at work here, something mysterious welling up inside me. It wasn't that I hadn't been told that becoming a grandmother was the best thing that ever happens to a woman. But what I couldn't get over was the physicality of my feelings. When I got into bed at night, I would pretend I was holding Jordan in my arms. I was infatuated.

Dare I say it? It felt like  ardor.

Aha! There it was. We grandmas literally, actually, fall in love.

Being a grandmother became my new identity. And I fast became a stereotype. Whenever I passed a store that sold anything for babies, man, was I sucked in. Dresses, little shoes, toys, books.

If you came to our apartment in New York right now, you'd see a dollhouse in the hallway, a little stove by the kitchen, a miniature baby grand piano in the living room, a huge stuffed dog, a baby rocking chair. You can walk into any room and know we're grandparents.
AARP asked its AARP Online Community users Who Was Your Favorite President of All Time and Why?

Of the 44 former and present Commander in Chiefs, more than seventy-five online community members users replied to the question, many expressing their choices with heartfelt appreciation. Here is sampling of a few posts:

Get the lastest updates on where we stand  AARP Advocacy Newsletter 

"I will add Jimmy Carter. While the Iran hostage crisis overwhelmed his presidency, his economics were excellent and since then, he has proven to be a mensch in every sense of the word" and;

John F Kennedy motivated an entire generation to public service, started the Peace Corp, challenged the US in math & science education, and set NASA on a course to not just land on the Moon, but also to create the technologies to get that done. But my response is more personal. As Congressman to the section of Boston where my Mom & Dad were raised and lived, my Mom appealed to his office to bring home my Dad from his service under Gen MacArthur during the post-War occupation of Japan - he did and I was born shortly after. Later when her monther was dying, my Mom approach JFK again to bring home her baby brother from the Korean War so he could see their Mom one last time. Kennedy was a US Senator by now and he got my Uncle a 2 week leave to come back to Boston in time for my Grandmother to see he baby son once last time. How could I choose anyone else?
Your work experience can open doors once you get the help you need. There are some concerns that many older workers share, and AARP can help. Get advice on how to build your career. Use tools to find jobs that are hiring now. Learn about the best strategies for starting a small business or fighting age discrimination.
Laws crafted by those elected should do most good for most people

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Keysbrook Moves to Positive Cashflow

Perth, Sep 9, 2016 AEST (ABN Newswire) - MZI Resources Ltd ( ASX:MZI ) is pleased to announce that its flagship Keysbrook Mineral Sands Project is expected to generate positive cashflow in the September 2016 quarter and is expected to continue to be cashflow positive based on current production performance at prevailing and forecast commodity prices and exchange rates.



- Keysbrook operations expected to achieve positive cashflow in September quarter



- Project forecast to remain cashflow positive at current production rates and pricing



- Evaluation and selection of optimum expansion pathway to be completed in first half 2017



- Land access and approvals being progressed



The current quarter performance reflects a significant improvement in operational performance since the previous quarter and includes revenue received in July from the record $9.8m leucoxene shipment in late June, zircon concentrate sales since the start of July and an L88 shipment scheduled for next week. Based on current forecast operational performance, and assuming that there is no material adverse change to mineral sands prices, product demand or USD:AUD exchange rates, as per current assumptions, the project is expected to continue to be cashflow positive on an annualised basis going forward as it continues its scheduled leucoxene and zircon shipments under existing long-term offtake contracts.



Importantly, the project is on track to achieve positive cashflow in advance of the previously announced upgrades to the Keysbrook Wet Concentrator Plant (WCP), which are scheduled to occur in late September.



Positive cashflow from operations will assist the Company to finance the installation later this month of 48 additional large capacity spirals and a new screening unit at the WCP, as well as contributing part funding for capex needed to bring forward access to new mining areas as a result of recent optimisation of the Keysbrook mine plan.



Keysbrook is already a world class orebody, rich in high value leucoxene and zircon, with the potential for a multi-decade operating life. Current Ore Reserves of 72 Million tonnes grading 2.2% Heavy Minerals are equivalent to +15 years' operation at current production rates but represent less than half the total Keysbrook Mineral Resources of 155 Mt @ 2.0% HM1. Mineralisation at Keysbrook also remains open to the north, south and west, meaning there remains strong potential to progressively grow the already world-class Keysbrook resource to extend the life of the operation.



Consequently, MZI has commenced activities to support the potential expansion of the Keysbrook Project. This includes advanced discussions with a number of farm property owners for land access within the Ore Reserve footprint, engagement with the EPA on the required environmental approvals and local shire councils and regional development bodies regarding future mine development plans.



In addition to expanding the area covered by current land access arrangements and approvals for the Keysbrook Project, the Company is moving to complete a detailed evaluation of options to expand production at Keysbrook building on a high level options study undertaken in 2015 prior to commissioning of the Keysbrook project, and before the Company significantly increased its Ore Reserves. The high-level evaluation identified over 20 alternative scenarios, ranging from a simple increase in WCP throughput and contracted dry plant processing time at Picton through to a doubling of overall mining and processing capacity.



The assessment of the most attractive options identified in the previous high-level scoping work to determine the optimum route, including targeted production capacity and detailed capital and operating estimates, is expected to be completed in the first half of calendar 2017.



Discussions with potential customers for the expanded production have been undertaken and the Company is confident of entering into additional sales contracts for the expanded production of leucoxene and zircon products.



MZI Managing Director Trevor Matthews said "It is enormously satisfying to see Keysbrook achieve sustainable positive cashflow so early in its operating life, especially as it comes before we have completed the scheduled plant upgrades which we expect will take production to targeted levels.



"We are encouraged by the steadily growing evidence of improving pricing and demand for high quality titanium dioxide feedstocks, including Keysbrook leucoxene, which is very positive for the long term outlook for Keysbrook and MZI.



"Consequently, we think the time is right to start planning for the potential future expansion of Keysbrook to consolidate MZI as one of the world's premier long life producer of premium quality mineral sands products. We look forward to fast-tracking this next phase of evaluation and development and so pave the way to unlock even more value for shareholders from the Keysbrook Project."



About MZI Resources Ltd





MZI Resources Ltd (ASX:MZI) is a mineral sands company focused on the high value minerals of zircon, rutile and leucoxene based in Perth, Western Australia. Its flagship operating asset is the Keysbrook Mineral Sands Project, located 70km south of Perth. At the Keysbrook mine, mineral sands are mined and processed to produce heavy mineral concentrate (HMC) which is processed into final products under a toll treating arrangement with Doral Mineral Sands Pty Ltd at the Picton Mineral Separation Plant (MSP) near Bunbury.

The Keysbrook mine hosts a world-class zircon / leucoxene ore body with total Ore Reserves equivalent to over 15 years of production at design output rates, and total Mineral Resources equivalent to over 30 years of production. Production commenced in late 2015, making the Keysbrook Project Australias first  and the worlds largest - primary producer of high value leucoxene.


Open Briefing - CEO Update

Melbourne, Sep 9, 2016 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Bluechiip Ltd ( ASX:BCT ) are pleased to provide an interview with Open Briefing regarding an a Company update with CEO Andrew McLellan.



In this Open Briefing(R), Andrew discusses:



- Capital raising progress



- Genea contract update



- Contract wins and pipeline execution



- Intellectual property registration for major new market



openbriefing.com



You have extended the closing date for the rights issue by a week from 5pm today to next Friday, 16 September. Can you tell us why you extended and update us on progress for the rights issue?



MD Andrew McLellan



The capital raising is progressing well. We are pleased both in terms of the rights applications already received and the commitments we have in place for any shortfall and, depending on demand, additional placement shares.



The reason we extended the rights closing by one week is to give all shareholders time to absorb our 1 September announcement regarding a major new provisional patent and our trial agreement with a US Auto ID and Data capture (AIDC) company All of the directors have taken up their full entitlement and several shareholders have also applied for additional shares. I would encourage other shareholders to consider doing the same.

I have also elected to take 1.5m shares in part payment of my FY16 performance bonus. From an accounting perspective you won't see this in the June 2016 accounts but I want investors to know of my commitment and belief in this business.



In addition to the $1.5 m rights issue we also have an additional placement capacity to raise a further $1.0m and we are confident that this will allow us to introduce new shareholders to the register. As noted, we are also seeing good demand for the rights, including applications from the directors and also from a number of existing shareholders for additional shares.



openbriefing.com



Will the capital you expect to raise from the entitlement offer fully fund BCT's ramp up to positive operating cash flow as it executes on the pipeline of potential contracts?



MD Andrew McLellan



As noted, the rights issue will raise up to $1.5m and we can increase the total capital raised to $2.5m through a placement and we are pleased with the response we've had. The expectation is that this capital will take us to the point where we have demonstrated to the market that we have a strong, sustainable business with consistent and growing revenues being generated by a validated product suite and patented technology that is going into the market through some very major partners.



The Board's view is that we are dramatically undervalued given the growing revenues from contracts we've won and the pipeline we are executing. Once we demonstrate the businesses progress we will have mitigated a lot of the capital risks in the business and this will allow the board and company to look to the future with a very sound springboard and for the company's value to be reflected in the share price. We expect to be in quite a different place by the middle of next year.



Genea Biomedx signed an agreement with you in December 2015. Can you update us on the status of that contract?



MD Andrew McLellan



The Genea Biomedx agreement is going very well.



We are currently receiving fees for engineering services and prototype parts. We expect to see a steadily growing revenue stream from early 2017 as our client launches products containing BCT's technology into the market. These products will be distributed through Genea Biomedx's global pharmaceuticals partner.



You'll note that the progression from signed agreement in December 2015 has been relatively quick. In February 2016 we moved through technology due diligence and received a license fee payment shortly thereafter. Over the last four months we have progressed with development and engineering services for which we are receiving income and in early 2017 we expect to see a growing revenue stream when the products go to market.



The revenue potential from this one market and customer is very large. There are 1.8 million IVF cycles performed globally per annum and for each of those cycles there are multiple samples in a number of different consumables that could include BCT technology that require identification and temperature tracking where Bluechiip's technology provides significant advantages.



openbriefing.com



You have a significant pipeline of potential contracts which are at various stages of negotiation. When should we expect to hear further contract wins?



MD Andrew McLellan



You've seen two contracts announced in the last two months.



Currently we have well over 15 potential contracts in the pipeline and are seeing the pipeline build every month.



Over the next six months, we expect to see a number of these pipeline opportunities progressing to supply agreements. This is based on clients we have in the pipeline and in our multi staged engagement process.



First in our engagement process, after initial contact and discussion to ascertain what the client needs we execute a confidentiality agreement where we continue to define the client's requirements; followed by trial and developer kit sales where potential clients test the product;



progressing to development and supply agreements of the type we have with Genea Biomedx and finally into product incorporating Bluechiip technology release into the market place which is the stage Genea Biomedx is moving towards for early 2017.



Most recently you'll see we announced a trial agreement in the USA with an auto ID and data capture company. Companies in this market supply identification and tracking technologies such as barcode and RFIDs to multiple markets and we are pleased to be gaining traction with companies that have the reach to penetrate into a broad range of applications including aerospace who can see the advantages Bluechiip offers for tracking and temperature sensing.



Our protein crystallography and cell therapy pipeline partnerships continue to develop while the developer kit in place with a partner in San Francisco is continuing to be used to explore end customer applications.



The Chinese CDC have brought the system as an end user rather than as an OEM and they are also a key reference site for BCT.



openbriefing.com



Your provisional patent application for an "over temperature chip" was announced last week. What's the process for converting this into a full patent and can you expand your comment that this could increase the value of BCT's chip "ten-fold"?



MD Andrew McLellan



We have had a number of requests from major OEM partners wanting the ability to have a permanent visual and electronic "over temperature" record on a sample that is being shipped, stored or transported. These OEMs have indicated they would be willing to pay ten times what they would pay for the existing BCT chip.



The problem they want us to solve and that we are confident our new technology addresses is that current technology in biological storage, say at -80 Celsius or at liquid nitrogen temperatures -196 Celsius, does not provide a mechanism whereby you can identify whether a sample has been above a critical temperature. For instance, certain genetic materials start to degrade if their temperature increase above -120 and -130 Celsius after being stored at - 196 Celsius, in these instances the sample may not be suitable for its intended use.



As part of a co-funded government research program where we are working with the Centre for Neural Engineering at Melbourne University, we have developed technology that will deliver just what these OEM customers have been asking for. We are confident in the technology and innovation that has commenced development and progressed to a filing of a patent application. It builds on the current BCT technology and allows us to grow into markets adjacent to where we are now.



While we expect the production costs of the technology to be higher than our existing chip we anticipate it will be significantly less than the 10-fold price increase our customers have said they would be willing to pay for it versus our existing chip. So from a financial perspective it stacks up extremely well.



From a market perspective, it also allows us to take a dramatic step forward. It gives us a platform not just into bio samples but also into food, cold chain logistics and pharmaceuticals.



This is the second provisional patent we've filed in the last 4 months and we continue to build our base of IP.



Importantly we now have an engineering team that is able to respond to the needs of the market and based on our expanding intellectual property portfolio we are able to very rapidly respond to the needs of our OEM partners to demonstrate Bluechiip's applicability, capability and advantages. An example of this is the Bluetray product, for tracking of ID and temperature burning transport, which we have on show in Europe next week to gain market and end customer feedback, proof of our ability to respond quickly to customer needs.



openbriefing.com



BCT's June 2016 accounts show an acceleration of revenues in the second half, albeit from a small base and a reduction in full year operating costs. How should we think about the cost base as revenues grow?



MD Andrew McLellan



We expect revenues to rapidly grow as we execute in FY17 with costs growing at a much slower rate as we approach a cash flow positive position in coming years.



Our revenue base is still small but the revenue run rate accelerated through FY16. In the last 4 months of the year we generated $150k of revenue. Looking into FY17 we expect revenues to grow dramatically especially in calendar year 2017 as we execute both on the contracts we have announced in recent months and also on contracts which are at various stages of negotiation in our pipeline.



On the cost front, we're pleased that we could reduce our cost base during FY16 and cost control will remain a focus for us. So, whilst you we will see some cost growth as revenues grow, the cost growth is expected to be much slower than revenue growth. This means we are now seeing a clear pathway to an expected cash flow positive position in the coming years.



About Bluechiip Limited





Bluechiip Ltd (ASX:BCT) understands that every sample - stem cells, blood, eggs, sperm and other biospecimens - is critical, so our objective is to manage each one with optimal quality in the most efficient way. Bluechiip's advanced management solution is the only one that provides sample temperature with ID in cryogenic environments to. Most importantly, this delivers confidence in every sample.

Bluechiip's unique patented technology is a MEMS-based wireless tracking solution that contains no electronics. It represents a generational change from current tracking methods such as labels (hand-written and pre-printed), barcodes (linear and 2D), and Radio Frequency Identification. Bluechiip tags are either embedded or manufactured into storage products such as vials or bags. Each product can be easily identified, and critical information such as sample temperature, is detected by readers and stored in the Bluechiip software. In addition to functioning in extreme temperatures, the Bluechiip(R) Advanced Sample management solution can survive autoclaving, gamma irradiation sterilization, humidification, centrifuging, cryogenic storage and frosting.

Bluechiip's technology has applications in healthcare, including in cryogenic storage facilities (biobanks and biorepositories), pathology, clinical trials and forensics. Other key markets include cold-chain logistics/supply chain, security/defence, industrial/manufacturing and aerospace/aviation.

Bluechiip: Delivering confidence in every sample.


McEwen Mining Appoints New Chief Operating Officer

Toronto, Sep 9, 2016 AEST (ABN Newswire) - McEwen Mining Inc. ( NYSE:MUX ) ( TSE:MUX ) is pleased to announce the appointment of Xavier Ochoa as Chief Operating Officer ("COO"), effective immediately and the departure of the Company's current COO, William Faust effective September 30, 2016. Mr. Ochoa is a seasoned executive, bringing more than 25 years of operational experience to the McEwen team and will be instrumental in the continued growth and development of our projects.



Rob McEwen, CEO and Chairman of McEwen Mining stated: "We would like to welcome Xavier to the team; he has an outstanding track record delivering growth and operational excellence globally. He brings to this position a strong reputation for managing underground and open pit operations in a variety of jurisdictions, and has a proven track record in enhancing production, reducing operating costs and improving capital effectiveness. We continue to strengthen our management team as we advance our assets with the primary goal of enhancing shareowner value."



Mr. Ochoa joins McEwen having previously held senior executive positions with other multi-national mining companies. Most recently, he held the position of Mine General Manager at Goldcorp's Cerro Negro operation in Santa Cruz, Argentina, where he was responsible for the successful underground mine commissioning, and leading an operating team of 1,600 people. Prior to this, he was the General Manager at the Tintaya and Antapaccay Copper Mines for Glencore and Xstrata in Peru, leading the commissioning and ramp-up of a 70,000 tonne per day processing plant. Mr. Ochoa also held the roles of General Manager and Engineering Manager at El Pachon in Argentina and Chile for Xstrata where he led the engineering efforts to advance the projects to feasibility study levels. Mr. Ochoa holds a Bachelor of Science in Mining Engineering from the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona.



We would like to thank Mr. William Faust for his valuable contribution to McEwen Mining. Mr. Faust will be pursing new opportunities following a transition period, and we wish him all the best in his future endeavours.



About McEwen Mining Inc





McEwen Mining (NYSE:MUX) (TSE:MUX) has the goal to qualify for inclusion in the S&P 500 Index by creating a profitable gold and silver producer focused in the Americas. McEwen's principal assets consist of: the San Jose mine in Santa Cruz, Argentina (49% interest); the Black Fox mine in Timmins, Canada; the Fenix Project in Mexico; the Gold Bar mine in Nevada, currently under construction; and the large Los Azules copper project in Argentina, advancing towards development.



McEwen has approximately 345 million shares outstanding. Rob McEwen, Chairman and Chief Owner, owns roughly 23% of the shares.


Annual Report 2016

Perth, Sep 9, 2016 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Venus Metals Corporation Limited ( ASX:VMC ) are pleased to provide the Company's Annual Report 2016.



REVIEW OF OPERATIONS



SUMMARY



During 2015-16, Venus Metals Corporation Ltd (VMC) carried out exploration works on its diverse portfolio of projects focusing mainly on Lithium, Gold and Base Metals.



- Lithium-Tantalum Projects (Poona, Pilgangoora, Wodgina South, Nardoo Hill and Greenbushes)



- Curara Well Gold-Base Metal-Diamond project



- Youanmi Gold-Base Metal Project (Inky South, Currans Well (Vidure) and Pincher Well)



The exploration activities include:



- Geological mapping and surface rock chip sampling at Poona Lithium Project



- Geological mapping and reconnaissance surface sampling across three identified target areas at Wodgina South of Pilgangoora region.



- Reconnaissance sampling at Nardoo Hill Lithium-Tantalum Project.



- A desktop evaluation of Greenbushes Lithium project and delineation of number of priority targets.



- Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Lithium Australia ( ASX:LIT ) to test Lithium carbonate and Lithium hydroxide potential/commercial lithium potential of Venus' Pilgangoora tenements in the Pilbara region of Western Australia.



- Initial reconnaissance survey (including helicopter aerial survey) of Pilgangoora Northeast tenements and delineation of potential target areas for soil sampling.



- Modelling of recently conducted Versatile Time-Domain Electromagnetic (VTEM) geophysical survey and 3D inversion modelling of historical regional detailed Magnetics of Curara Well Gold-Base Metals-Diamond Project at Doolgunna Region. WA Government co-funded Exploration Drilling Programme grant of $150,000 under Exploration Incentive Scheme (EIS) was awarded by Department of Mines and Petroleum (DMP).



- DMP has awarded $150,000 drilling grant under EIS Programme for Inky South Base Metals Project at Youanmi.



- A desktop historical geological data review and modelling of historic EM data (Moving Loop EM, Fixed Loop EM and Down Hole EM) of Vidure Nickel-Copper Prospect at Youanmi Currans Well Project.



- DMP has approved the conversion of Yalgoo Iron Ore Project Mining Lease (M59/742) to a Retention Licence (R59/0001).



Venus currently has 14 granted Exploration Licences, 2 Prospecting Licences and 1 Retention Licence and Pending 14 Exploration Licence Applications (ELA) and 1 Prospecting Licence (PLA) in Western Australia.



To view the report, please visit:

http://abnnewswire.net/lnk/W9A237UI





About Venus Metals Corporation Limited





Venus Metals Corporation Limited (ASX:VMC) is a West Australian based Company with a focus on gold, base metals, vanadium and lithium exploration projects. The Company aims to increase shareholder value through targeted exploration success on its projects.

The Company's major gold project is the Youanmi Gold Mine, located 500km north-east of Perth. The Youanmi Gold Mine is now jointly owned by Venus Metals (30%) and Rox Resources Limited (70%); Indicated and Inferred Resource of the mine is in excess of 3 million ounces of gold.
ACAs library of educational tools help members improve their business practices. ACA also holds the most popular industry conferences and offers credentialing for collectors, attorneys, and more. ACAs Training Zone subscription gives agencies access to almost all of our education for one low cost.
According to a new global study released this week by HR executive network/research firm Future Workplace and staffing agency Randstad US, Gen Z and Millennials both cited communication as the most important quality they seek in a leader, compared to honesty just two years ago.

Dubbed the Gen Z & Millennials Collide @ Work report, the study examines Gen Z and millennials entering the workplace for the first time. The survey was conducted by Morar Consulting across 10 global countries (US, UK, Germany, Mexico, Poland, Argentina, India, China, Canada and South Africa) this summer, polling 4,066 respondents on their workplace preferences and experiences. The study polled both Gen Z (22 years old) and Millennials (23-34 year olds).

Despite the introduction and proliferation of new technologies at work, Millennials and Gen Z value the in-person communication that comes with a traditional corporate office much like older generations do," stated Dan Schawbel, research director at Future Workplace. "At the same time, they also seek flexible hours and telecommuting that two-thirds of companies still fail to offer. Companies that want to successfully recruit, retain and grow their young talent must look to corporate culture as their competitive advantage moving forward.

One of the most pervasive themes from this years global study is Gen Zs propensity and desire for collaboration," said Jim Link, chief human resources officer at Randstad North America, per a statement. "Whether it is in a corporate office, at home or in a coffee shop, Gen Z workers prefer collaborative work environments. In fact, our study found that global Gen Z workers named co-workers who like to collaborate as the type of worker who would help them do their best work, second only to co-workers who work as hard as they do. Furthermore, more than half (54 percent) of Gen Zs said the people they work with is the top workplace attribute that enables them to do their best work. Companies seeking to be an employer of choice must leverage the collaborative revolution taking place and provide the technology, tools and processes that facilitate and encourage it.

Additional findings from the survey include:

41 percent of Generation Z says corporate offices are their preferred workplace.

Both groups want their employers to incorporate social media (41 percent); wearables (27 percent); and virtual reality (26 percent) into the workplace.

46 percent of both generations agree social media is their biggest distraction from getting work done, with text messaging (39 percent) and email (31 percent) following.

Work flexibility has become more desired over healthcare for Millennials and Gen Z, yet only one-third of companies offer it (34 percent).

Seventy-one percent of both groups have only worked in one country thus far, but 56 percent wish to work in more than one country.

Both groups receive either daily (19 percent), weekly (24 percent) or regular (23 percent) feedback, compared to annually (3 percent). In the United States, 28 percent of Gen Z and 17 percent of Millennials receive feedback regularly.

Randstad and Future Workplace will be holding a webinar on Sept. 13 to further examine their research findings. For the full report, head to Randstad's site here.
The Georgia Society of CPAs (GSCPA) and the Georgia Food Bank Association (GFBA) have announced the results of their third annual Georgia Accounting Food Fight, which took place this previous August 8-19.

The two-week friendly competition saw professionals across the state raise food and monetary donations for Georgia's eight regional food banks. Since its formation 2014, the Food Fight has seen $305,694 and 37,984 pounds of food donated.

This year 62 accounting firms across 22 cities competed, garnering 16,747 pounds of food and $108,434 for Georgias food banks.

The Georgia Accounting Food Fight is our chance to come together to help families, children, and individuals struggling with hunger," stated GSCPA CEO Boyd Search. "The results of this years Food Fight demonstrate the strength, commitment and care of the accounting profession.

"I would like to congratulate the winners of this years Georgia Accounting Food Fight and thank everyone who participated," said GSCPA board of directors chair Barbara Evans, per a statement. "As a result of your generosity and hard work, Georgias food banks can now provide more than 447,691 meals to families, seniors, and children in need.

Winners of the 2016 Georgia Accounting Food Fight include:

Grand Prize Food Fight Hero: Anna Bolen, raising food and funds for the Atlanta Community Food Bank.

Industry Award: Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA), raising food and funds for the Atlanta Community Food Bank.

Big Four category: Deloitte & Touche, raising food and funds for the Atlanta Community Food Bank.

Large Firm category: Moore Colson and Habif, Arogeti, & Wynne, both raised food and funds for the Atlanta Community Food Bank.

Medium Firm category: The Cleveland Group, raising food and funds for the Golden Harvest Food Bank in Augusta. Williams Benator & Libby, raising food and funds for the Atlanta Community Food Bank.

Small Firm category: Pennington & Berry, raising food and funds for the Golden Harvest Food Bank.

Sole Proprietor category: Laura Friend, raising food and funds for the Atlanta Community Food Bank.

For more on the Georgia Accounting Food Fight, head to the GFBA's site here.
Your kitchen table or basement office seem to be attracting enough tax prep clients to keep the cash coming in, so when does your practice need a real office? Does it need one at all?

Opinions vary, especially in this age of technology.

If the preparer is trying to establish themselves as more than a preparer of a few returns, then that is the time to think about a storefront, said Twila Midwood, an Enrolled Agent at Advanced Tax Centre in Rockledge, Fla. A personal decision for sure. But having a storefront does give the appearance of a bit more creditability.

The concept of the storefront as an essential requirement for a tax prep practice is dated, countered EA John Dundon of Taxpayer Advocacy Services in Englewood, Colo, and blogger at www.JohnRDundon.com. Smart consumers of tax services in this day want quality, reputable, efficient work at a reasonable rate and couldnt care less about showy storefronts.

Every aspect of tax prep can now be accomplished using technology in a cloud environment, Dundon added. Over 70 percent of my customers live in other cities. Aside from three assistants who come to my house, the rest of my employees live and work in their own houses. Weve been growing at a rate of 40 percent to 60 percent annually for the last eight years with no end to that trajectory in sight.

Tabletop preparers or in-home office locations have to overcome the assumption that because theyre working from home they cant afford commercial space, said Jennifer Brown, an EA at Implex Tax & Accounting in Clearfield, Utah. Having a commercial location has served to double my business over the last two years.

Barking dogs

Business growth is one of the biggest factors in deciding whether to get office space outside the home, preparers said. That, and inconvenience.

Terri Ryman, an EA at Southwest Tax & Accounting in Elkhart, Kansas, started her practice out of her home in 1988. By 1992 Id had enough of folks knocking on my door at 6 a.m. or 11 p.m., she said. We saw your lights on so we thought you wouldnt mind So we moved into a building on Main Street. Im not saying that it wasnt very convenient having my office in my house: I could squeeze in laundry, making dinner, cleaning, and so on. But with three small children  being with grownups in an official office was presenting a much more professional atmosphere.

G. Faith Owens, an EA at Grade A Business Services in Glendale, Ariz., operated a tax prep business from home for 12 years. A home office is a great solution to young families with small children, Owens said. I moved to a shared office space when my youngest started high school, and a year ago moved to my first private storefront. In truth, I could go back to my home office tomorrow, but I prefer the work-life balance of being able to leave work at the office.

So long as the home office is separate enough that family life doesn't become a distraction to the business, a person could continue to operate from home, Owens said. I left my home office because I frequently had to apologize for my dog barking while I was on the phone. Also, once my kids became teenagers it was easier to leave them unattended during the few hours after school before I came home. Lastly, I didnt have a space suitable at home for my part-time assistant once my workload required the help.

Three months of the year

We have a more formal office with a front desk, which adds legitimacy, said Michael Deininger of Deininger & Co., Kenosha, Wis. While I have remote access, I rarely work out of my home.

Deininger, in fact, sees storefronts as symptomatic of one problem of commercial tax prep services. The vast preponderance of American taxpayers can  and, in my opinion, should  have the IRS prepare their tax returns, he said, which would eliminate the H&R Block, Jackson Hewitt and others that operate out of storefronts three months of the year and are notoriously lacking in knowledge.

But, Deininger did add, some of my best clients have come in because of that lack of knowledge.

Utahs Brown has office space in a commercial office building. I do not handle walk-ins, she said, and am by-appointment-only. If youre trying to build walk-in clientele, youll want to be a storefront. This multi-faceted question comes down to, What type of clientele do you want to build?
AndBeyond.Media, the worlds leading global on-demand native marketplace serving over 1 billion MM ad experiences, today announced the appointment of former Affinity executive Dharika Merchant to serve as President of the company, effective today. In her role, Merchanta specialist in business development, product strategy and operations, will be focused on driving the execution of AndBeyond.Medias strategic plan for expanding the businesses reach globally, and scale new heights with innovation to deliver operational excellence.

With in-depth industry experience, Dharika has had a long and successful track record overseeing and executing business strategy and expansion. She joins AndBeyond.Media from her long-standing stint at Affinity, where she spearheaded business teams and handled a multitude of product portfolios ranging from SEM, PPC and standard display to real-time bidding (RTB) and programmatic media buying. A digital maven with deep seeded skills in mobile marketing and media buying, she has provided her customer acquisition and relationship management expertise to a large spectrum of clients that include Direct Advertisers, Ad Networks, Affiliate Networks and Publishers, and has successfully helped businesses achieve their ambitions.

As AndBeyond.Media forays into this new chapter of global expansion, I am confident that Dharika will effectively lead the business and help scale the companys growth to its fullest potential, said Karan Gupta, Chief Executive Officer at AndBeyond.Media. Her strongmanagement background and extensive leadership experience makes her the right person to oversee AndBeyond.Medias future growth plans. Through the various positions she has held over the years, Dharika has proven to be an accomplished and trusted leader and brings to this position a strong reputation for developing teams and inspiring businesses to go beyond the ordinary. Her wealth of experience will truly serve as an asset as we continue to accelerate growth and attain new milestones.

Talking about her new role Dharika Merchant, President, AndBeyond.Media said, Im thrilled to join AndBeyond.Media during this exciting time. AndBeyond.Medias bespoke technology and solutions, I believe, are some of the finest innovative offerings in the programmatic advertising space. I look forward to working alongside Karan, Pankil and the companys talented employees, and dedicated partners around the world to expand the reach of the business, drive greater value and challenge the limits of innovation

Dharika has built an impressive record of accomplishments through the years. Her proven ability to deliver results makes her the perfect choice to help execute our strategic ambitions and drive scalable, sustainable growth, added Pankil Mehta, Chief Business Officer, AndBeyond.Media.

Merchants appointment comes closely on the heels of the appointment of Ashley King as VP Publisher Development and the launch of the New York City office  last week. These announcements come at a period of rapid expansion for the companys business globally.
Aviva Life Insurance, today, announced the appointment of Karni. S. Arha as its Chief Financial Officer. Mr. Arha will be based out of Aviva Life Insurances head office in Gurgaon.

Speaking on the appointment, Mr. Trevor Bull, MD and CEO, Aviva India, said, We are very excited to have Karni on board. Karni is a seasoned finance professional, having wide ranging experience in both, life & health insurance, in capacities covering manufacturing, distribution and reinsurance across multiple geographies. His expertise in interfacing with Regulators and Tax Authorities on policy, regulatory issues in joint-venture management and business acquisitions as well as managing businesses of significant scale will be of great asset to us. I am sure Karni will contribute significantly towards Aviva Indias continuous endeavours of producing positive customer outcomes and in the process, play an important role in building the companys future.

Mr. Arha said, I am very excited to join Aviva India at this very exciting stage of its journey. I know the industry well and I have always seen Aviva as a leading global brand in the insurance industry. In my view, Aviva India has a strong positive reputation with high potential for future growth and success. I am very much looking forward to joining the Aviva India leadership team and playing my part in shaping the future success of the company.

Mr. Arha has an experience of 17 years of working across geographies including India and USA. Prior to Aviva, he was the Executive Vice President with Anand Rathi Insurance brokers. Earlier, he was CFO with IndiaFirst Life Insurance and has also worked with leading organisations like Reliance Life Insurance, Swiss Reinsurance and Aetna Health Insurance.
As technology brings the world closer, it can also help businesses grow. However, attracting customers is the number one reason a business will succeed or fail. Today Facebook is launching new solutions to help small businesses become large and local businesses become global.

NEW: Here are three new solutions to help businesses expand internationally:

Finding new customers, in new countries: Businesses can now use a new feature in the Lookalike Audiences tool to reach customers in new countries who are similar to their existing ones. They can do this by uploading a list of existing customers or high-potential leads. Finding new countries to grow your business: Any business who wants to increase installs of app, increase engagement in app or increase conversion on site can now target people Worldwide or in a specific region. Facebook will then deliver ads to selected regions and then optimize delivery to the countries with the greatest return. Resources to optimize campaigns: To help businesses optimize global campaign strategy we are releasing new webinars and a handbook on international marketing techniques.

NEW : More than 1 billion people on Facebook are connected to a business in another country.

NEW : Almost 50% of people on Facebook across Asia are connected to at least one business in a foreign country.

People in INDIA are connecting with SMBs in INDIA and other countries:

59% of people on Facebook in India are connected to at least one SMB in India .

are connected to at least one SMB in . NEW : 41% of people on Facebook in I ndia are connected to at least one SMB in a foreign country

: of people on Facebook in I are connected to at least one SMB NEW : People on Facebook in India are connected to businesses in other countries around the world. Here are the top five: US, UK, Pakistan, Canada, UAE

People around the world connecting with SMBs in India:

NEW : More than 175 million people from around the world are connected to a business in India. Example countries include: US, Australia, Singapore, New Zealand, Philippines, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, UAE.

LATEST FACEBOOK USER STATS:

NEW: In India there are 155 million MAU, 77 million DAU, 147 million Mobile MAU and 73 million Mobile DAU (as of Q2 2016)

SMB STATS:

3 million businesses globally are active advertisers ( up 50% in one year ) (vast majority are small businesses .

globally are active advertisers ( (vast majority are . The top three verticals building pages: Services, Local Commerce, and eCommerce

Small Businesses are International More than 70% of these 3 million active advertisers are outside of the US

Powerful engagement between people and businesses on Facebook:

o Facebook Pages are the mobile solution for many of the over 60 million businesses using the product each month around the world and people post more than 2.5 billion comments on these pages each month.

More than 43 billion connections between people and businesses on Facebook.

between people and businesses on Facebook. NEW: Over 85% of active business Pages use mobile and 40% of active advertisers have created a Facebook ad on mobile.

SME Pages In India:

INDIA: 2 million small business pages in India as of October 2015. 1.5 million small business pages were announced in August 2015.

in India as of October 2015. 1.5 million small business pages were announced in August 2015. Number of new women-owned SMB pages on Facebook in India has increased approximately six-fold in the last four years (between 2012 and 2015).

+1.99 billion interactions generated between businesses and people in India

GLOBAL: More than 45 million small businesses actively use Facebook Pages because theyre free, easy to use, and they immediately give businesses a digital (and mobile) strategy.

You can find more details in the blog here - https://www.facebook.com/ business/news

Sheryls post on the announcement -

https://www.facebook.com/ sheryl/posts/10157331525015177

BLOG POST

Expand your Business Across Borders with New Tools and Resources
Kantar today announced the launch of a new corporate identity for the parent brand and its 12-strong family of operating brands, designed to create a unified look and feel across the whole business. Operating brands not previously Kantar-branded will now take a Kantar prefix and a new, common typeface. For example: Millward Brown, IMRB, and TNS will now become Kantar Millward Brown, Kantar IMRB, and Kantar TNS.

Kantars new identity reflects and externalises an on-going change programme that started in January. The programme includes the fostering and rewarding of much greater collaboration between operating brands and the creation of a new insights group through much closer alignment of the companys custom brands. In addition, global operations capabilities have been brought together into a single entity and the company is moving towards more aligned shared services in HR, finance and IT. The company will shortly be adding to the portfolio of expert brands with the launch of Kantar Public, uniting our global expertise in governmental and public policy work; and Kantar Consulting, which will draw expertise from several of our brands to provide a full and broader range of marketing and sales consulting solutions and capabilities to our clients.

Kantar CEO Eric Salama, commented, The rebranding is a tangible, visible expression of our desire to present clients with more easily-navigable and connected solutions that bring together the best of Kantars expertise.

Salama added, We believe our clients and partners have started to experience the benefit of this approach  in more rounded, detailed and holistic research and recommendations. And it is helpful that for the first time we really look like a single family of brands serving a common purpose.

Along with the rebranding, Kantar is introducing a new tagline, Inspiration for an extraordinary world, drawn from its new corporate purpose statement, To inspire our clients, our people and society to create and flourish in an extraordinary world.

Commenting on the re-branding, Preeti Reddy, CEO, South Asia  Insights, said, Clients have consistently asked us to be more collaborative in the way we work with them; faster and more agile at a local and global level. They want the best of Kantar on a consistent basis, not just on occasions. Earlier this year we put in place a whole new way of working to remove siloed thinking and barriers between the Kantar companies to collaboration for client benefits. In South Asia, we will be able to bring together the thought leadership of three powerful brands and harness the power for our clients. This combination brings with it an ability to converge thoughts when required to solve a problem as well as an ability to diverge solutions when clients need choice. That is a unique mix and in, my view, will make Kantar an even more dominant force in South Asia.

The new identity, developed in close collaboration with WPP branding specialists The Partners, will be rolled out across all external and internal communications channels in the coming months.
Banking on the popularity of its cartoon series on Motu Patlu from the Nickelodeon channel, Viacom18 has now come out with a 3D animation movie on the two cartoon characters  titled Motu Patlu King of Kings. This is Viacom18 Motion Pictures first venture in the 3D stereoscopic animation space. Motu Patlu King of Kings is set for theatrical release on October 14, 2016.



Commenting on the Motu Patlu 3D movie, Sudhanshu Vats, Group CEO, Viacom18, said, Motu Patlu has had an interesting journey. We started with television then moved to digital while capitalising on their growing brand value and now I feel proud to announce the the movie.



Ajit Andhare, COO, Viacom18 Motion Pictures, noted that normally animated movies have to compete with big movies, but since October 14 will be a pre-Diwali period, there would be not big Bollywood releases to compete with. Moreover, kids would have their Diwali vacations during this period.

The story of Motu Patlu King of Kings revolves around the best friends Motu and Patlu, who reside in a small town in Indias heartland, called Furfuri Nagariya. Entrapped in a plot with a runaway circus lion, a lion king trying to protect his kingdom and a greedy poacher who wants to ruin the jungle life  the film features high standards of VFX and animation quality and has an interesting storyline.On what to expect from the movie, Nina Jaipuria, Business Head, Kids Cluster at Viacom18, said, There are beautiful visuals in the movie and we have worked on every single detail. Even the choreography has come out really well. And that makes a lot of difference.Viacom18 plans to leave no stone unturned to create buzz and excitement around the film. Motu Patlu King of Kings will be promoted across all channels of the Viacom18 network, including in reality shows like Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa on Colors. The movie will be released in over 700 screens across the country.Spilling more details about the promotional plans, Nina Jaipuria said, We will also be creating buzz on digital platforms as well. We also have plans for print, radio and outdoor campaigns, mall activations, retail partnerships, merchandising, etc. Merchandising plays an important role. Core insight is when kids are watching such movies, they also want the characters to come out of the screen. With this, we will also be associating with a few brands for the movie.The movie will also be aired on Nickelodeon and Viacom18s digital platform Voot post the theatrical release.Despite the immense popularity and demand, animated films form a minuscule part of the films released. Earlier animated movies such as Bal Ganesh, Jumbo, and Hanuman received tremendous response from the audiences and so did the 3D stereoscopic animation movie, Delhi Safari.Ketan Mehta, the man behind films like Manjhi, Mangal Pandey, Rang Rasiya and many more, felt that animation is still in its infancy in India. He remarked, We have a long way to go. And with the release of this film, I hope that there will be a change in the animation industry as well as this is a big step for the animation industry at large. Children love animated movies and force their parents to watch the film with them. This will drive the animation movies in India.According to Ajit Andhare, The success depends on the character, animation, ability of the distribution house to take risks. Hollywood animated movies target not just children and youth but grown-ups as well.He further said, People are already familiar with the characters of Motu and Patlu. But we had to deliver the animation experience and a storyline that will work with our audience, that is, the kids and then market it the right way.Sushant Singh Rajput, who was present for the cross promotion of his upcoming movie, MS Dhoni  The Untold Story, expressed his love for comic books as a kid. He further said, You need to be very careful while communicating with kids. I really want to see the film.Talking further about being a part of the trailer launch, he said The enigmatic MS Dhoni is an icon for the youth and has a huge fan following and I hear the awesome twosome, Motu Patlu, have an equally large fan following among the kids of the country. It is a pleasure to be a part of the announcement of the big screen debut of these much loved characters who have a significant influence on children.
RecruitIreland is amid the best job boards in Ireland and why it shouldnt be? It proffers vacancies of all fields and genres like accounting, banking, marketing , engineering, hotel management, designing, advertising SEO , development, construction and so on. Thus, with many online vacancies categories available on the portal, you can choose the one in which you want to make your career.

Along with that RecruitIreland also helps students and employees with their services of best CV templates, interview advice, and career guidance. Also with their career centre section, you can get access to useful articles and blogs which will help you to prepare better for the interviews.

Thus RecruitIreland is the best as it not only provide facilities to candidates, also provides many services to recruiters as well, like viewing, addition, deletion, and editing of openings.

Top 100 Job Posting Sites in South Africa
Three Northern Ireland companies celebrated SC21 success at a presentation by their sponsoring prime B/E Aerospace.





David Quin, Supply Chain Director and Ann Barnett, Purchasing Manager from B/E Aerospace presented the awards to Bradfor Ltd (above), IPC Mouldings and Doran Engineering.

Following the awards presentation at Farnborough this was a homecoming celebration at B/E Aerospace facilities in Kilkeel.







Bradfor Ltd in Rostrevor and IPC Mouldings in Carrickfergus (above) received Silver Awards recognising their achievement in the SC21 Supply Chain excellence programme.

Doran Engineering in Newcastle (above) received SC21 Bronze awards.



SC21 is a supplier development programme designed to accelerate the competitiveness of the aerospace and defence industry by raising the performance of its supply chains. In Northern Ireland the programme is supported by Invest Northern Ireland.





For more information see: www.sc21.org.uk


MORRILTON, Ark., Sept. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- An Arkansas jury late Thursday ordered South Korea-based Hankook Tire Co. LTD to pay $1.2 million to a severely injured dump truck driver over an accident caused by a tire tread defect.

The verdict is the latest significant win against a global tire manufacturer by the trial lawyers at Kaster Lynch Farrar & Ball LLP, which maintains offices in Ocala, Florida, and Houston. The eight-day trial followed a multiyear legal battle on behalf of 76-year-old truck driver Elmer Philpot.

Mr. Philpot was driving a load of gravel in 2010 when a defective tread on his right front tire separated, causing him to lose control of his dump truck. In the resulting crash, Mr. Philpot suffered leg fractures that required hip replacement.

After hearing evidence about how the defect originated at a Hankook plant in Daejeon, South Korea, the jury found the company 100 percent responsible for the crash and for Mr. Philpot's injuries. The jury award is the largest on record in Conway County, Arkansas. Earlier in the case, Hankook was sanctioned by the judge for discovery misconduct.

"We took an aggressive position in this lawsuit because we knew that the jury needed to see and hear all of the evidence about Hankook's manufacturing processes," says attorney Skip Lynch, who practices in Kaster Lynch's Florida office.

Trial team member Bruce Kaster agreed: "We forced this company to turn over key documents, and that made a big difference during the trial."

In addition to Mr. Lynch and Mr. Kaster, the winning trial team included Jerry Kelly of Carlisle, Arkansas-based The Kelly Law Firm PA, and Ben Caruth of Gordon, Caruth & Virden PLC in Morrilton, Arkansas.

The case is Elmer Philpot v. Hankook Tire Co. LTD, et al., No. CV-2012-114, in the Circuit Court of Conway County.

The trial lawyers at Kaster Lynch Farrar & Ball have hard-earned expertise in cases against global tire manufacturers over tire tread separation defects that can cause vehicles to lose control and roll over, often at highway speeds and without warning. The firm has secured verdicts and settlements against some of the largest tire manufacturers in the world, including Cooper, Goodyear and Hankook. To learn more about the firm, please visit http://www.thetirelawyers.com.

For more information, contact Robert Tharp at 800-559-4534 or Robert@androvett.com.

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/arkansas-jury-orders-hankook-to-pay-12m-for-tire-tread-defect-crash-300325580.html

SOURCE Kaster Lynch Farrar & Ball
OKLAHOMA CITY, Sept. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The annual filing most insurance carriers will use to develop rates for workers' compensation insurance shows a decrease for the fourth year in a row. The National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI) plans to file an overall loss cost decrease of 10.2 percent. NCCI credits Oklahoma's loss cost decrease to declines in market experience and market trend, as well as the recent reforms.

"I'm extremely encouraged to see this positive trend continue for another year," Oklahoma Insurance Commissioner John D. Doak said. "When Oklahoma business owners can pay less for workers' compensation insurance, they can spend more on their employees and on creating jobs. It is a win-win for everyone."

With this year's drop, the total impact of NCCI filings since 2013 is a 44 percent decrease. The new loss costs will go through a review process and are expected to go into effect on Jan. 1, 2017.

The NCCI is an advisory organization that studies workplace injuries, collects workers' compensation claim data, analyzes industry trends and develops loss costs to be used in the ratemaking process. Most workers' compensation carriers use the NCCI loss cost values when determining the rates charged to Oklahoma employers.

About the Oklahoma Insurance Department

The Oklahoma Insurance Department, an agency of the State of Oklahoma, is responsible for the education and protection of the insurance-buying public and for oversight of the insurance industry in the state.

For more information, contact:

Kelly Dexter

405-522-0683

Kelly.Dexter@oid.ok.gov

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/oklahoma-workers-compensation-loss-costs-fall-102-percent-300325529.html

SOURCE Oklahoma Insurance Department
PORTLAND, Ore., Sept. 8, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today, First Liberty Institute and Boyden Gray, former White House Counsel for President George H. W. Bush, filed a reply brief with the Oregon Court of Appeals on behalf of Aaron and Melissa Klein. The Oregon couple was fined $135,000 and lost their bakery for running their business according to their religious beliefs. Read the reply brief

In the brief, the attorneys challenge the Bureau of Labor and Industries argument that the government can compel citizens to create art and engage in speech that goes against their beliefs. They contend that if the court allows the final order against the Kleins to stand, the court will be putting a stamp of approval on the idea that the government can force artists to celebrate causes that violate their conscience.

"Should the government force Catholics to sculpt totems for Wiccan rituals, or feminists to photograph fraternity initiations, or pro-life videographers to film an abortion? Of course not," Kelly Shackelford, President and CEO of First Liberty Institute, says. "No one should be forced to contribute to the celebration of an idea that goes against his or her beliefs."

In 2013, a woman asked the Kleins for a custom-made cake for her same-sex wedding. Aaron and Melissa had served the women before, but as devout Christians, they believed that participating in the wedding celebration would violate their faith, so they declined to design and create the custom cake. The Oregon government responded by punishing them with a $135,000 penalty, forcing the Kleins to shut down their bakery.

The Kleins' attorneys contend that the government has violated the Kleins' constitutional freedoms.

"The First Amendment prohibits government compulsion of art and of speech," Boyden Gray, former ambassador to the European Union and founding partner of Boyden Gray and Associates, says. "We must ensure that freedom of speech and religious expression is preserved for all Americans."

Read more about the Kleins' case at FirstLiberty.org/Kleins

About First Liberty Institute

First Liberty Institute is the largest legal organization in the nation dedicated exclusively to defending religious freedom for all Americans.

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/oregon-bakers-reply-to-government-brief-dont-compel-people-to-celebrate-causes-that-violate-their-beliefs-300325334.html

SOURCE First Liberty Institute
Sabers help preserve World War II era Belgium Bunker

Staff Sgt. Jerrick Gentz and Senior Airman Justin Mickle, both assigned to the 52nd Logistics Readiness Squadron, separate and collect scrap metal and debris in Fort Aubin-Neufchateau, Belgium, Aug. 28, 2016. The removal of scrap metal and debris from the bunker rooms will help open more of the bunker for the public tours. (U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Jonathan Snyder)
The Air Force Association awards committee recently announced their selections for the 2016 National Aerospace and Specialty Award winners.The specific categories and respective winners are: presented for the most outstanding contribution to national defense made in the field of manned flight.- 336th Fighter Squadron, Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, North Carolina presented for the most outstanding performance in the field of science and engineering.- Air Force Tactical Exploitation of National Capabilities, Schriever AFB, Colorado presented for most outstanding contribution by an individual or organization to the development of aerospace power for the betterment of mankind.- 19th Space Operations Squadron, Schriever AFB- 24th Expeditionary Field Investigations Squadron, Al Udeid, Qatar- Maj. Michael C. Pochet, Air Force District of Washington, Fort Belvoir, VirginiaAFA is the sponsor for these awards and will present them to the final winners during their Air and Space Conference and Technology Exposition 2016 in mid-September.For more information about Air Force personnel programs, go to the myPers website . Individuals who do not have a myPers account can request one by following these instructions on the Air Force Retirees Services website
[dropcap]M[/dropcap]emories of NSEL scam is fading with time, the culprits are enjoying support from power-corridor and went scot-free. However, the investors are suffering with ferocious challenges day by day as they lost their hard earned money in this scam. Over the issue, government is not taking any action against the accused, police is mum, authorities are ideal and investigations are put in cold storage. No one is here to address the concerns of stockholders who had invested in this firm. Investors and individuals that lent money to trade on the now defunct National Spot Exchange (NSEL) are facing heat from tax authorities also.

Some of the 13,000 investors have received notices from the income-tax department seeking details, among others, sources of fund, bad debt claimed during assessment years 2014-15 and 2015-16 and of investments made in NSEL. Though, the investors claimed that when they purchased contracts on NSEL, they took delivery of goods in NSEL approved warehouses. The money they paid for the goods was used by defaulters and returned after 25-36 days with 14-16% return. Payouts were stopped after July 2013; the principal amount invested was stuck. Consequently, investors sought to adjust this loss against business gain in ensuing fiscal years, which was being allowed by the tax department.

[inlinetweet prefix= tweeter= suffix=]Over 200 angry investors of the stressed NSEL demanded that the Mumbai Police arrest Jignesh Shah and other key accused[/inlinetweet], besides speeding up recovery from borrowers and defaulters within a specified time period. The ED had arrested Shah on July 12 under section 19 of Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). However, soon after the arrest a special PMLA court granted bail to Shah at the surety bond of Rs. 2 lakh. The agency had filed a 20,000-page charge sheet against NSEL and 67 others in a Mumbai court in March-2015, explaining NSEL funds were laundered but nothing seriously happened against Jignesh Shah due to his political connections and other strong influences. He is one of the election fund financers to various political parties. The corridors of power are open for him. He walked out of the jail laughing at law without being made accountable for the scam.

Members of the NSEL Investors Forum even met then Crime Branch Chief of Mumbai Police, Himanshu Roy at the police headquarters in South Mumbai, who had assured them of speedy progress in the case and bankruptcy of assets, so that the investors could get their money back. Even, Roy went on news camera issuing statements that many investors were satisfied with the probe so far. And he assured more action in the next few days; however his assurance was just a media statement. Then, Roy appealed to investors to ignore any rumours and said that 80 per cent of the money in the Rs. 5,600 crore scam had been recovered after attaching properties of the accused and they are in the safe custody of the concerned court. Later, he was transferred to ATS.

Mumbai police had filed a 9,100-page chargesheet against the five accused, including the spot exchanges former CEO Anjani Sinha.

Four others named in the chargesheet are Amit Mukherjee, former NSEL Vice-President (Business Development); Jay Bahukhundi, another ex-assistant vice-president; Nilesh Patel, managing director of NK Proteins Ltd; as well as Arun Sharma, Lotus Refineries CMD, who is also a film financier.

The FIR was lodged on September 30, 2013 by the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) against NSEL directors Shah, Massey and others, charging them with cheating, forgery, breach of trust and criminal conspiracy, among other offences.

The spot commodity bourse, promoted by the Shah-led Financial Technologies (FTIL), has been facing problems in settling Rs. 5,600 crore dues of over 200 member brokers, representing 13,000 investor clients. The Enforcement Directorate had quizzed all these officers involved in scam. Among the broking firms, which had high exposure in NSEL, were: Anand Rathi (Rs. 629 crore), India Infoline Commodities (Rs. 326 crore), Motilal Oswal Commodities (Rs. 263 crore), Phillip Commodities (Rs. 140 crore) and JM Financial (Rs. 90 crore).

The police suspect that an equal role of brokers in the scam, since many of them sold NSEL commodities despite knowing about fraudulent practices in the spot exchange. The EOW has invoked the Maharashtra Protection of Interest of Depositors Act, which empowers the police to attach immovable assets of the accused. The capital and commodity markets regulator SEBI has also launched a probe into alleged mis-selling of products by some brokers with the promise of assured returns from commodities traded on the NSEL. SEBI is looking into various complaints against brokers, including false assurances, inducements and misrepresentation, trading without appropriate authority from clients, misuse or unauthorised modification of unique client code, funding by NBFCs related to the brokers and non-receipt of payout.

The ED is investigating the role of 14 defaulters, officials from NSEL, its parent FTIL and brokers under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002.

The probe is going on with its own speed, the accused and culprits are having a good time. Police department and Enforcement Directorate too are busy rendering assurances. Maharashtra CM and his government lacks willpower to address the issue. They should act intensely to deliver justice to the investors. After waiting for three years, the investors hit by the scam are asking the government to grant them permission for Euthanasia. I hope that government will act strictly against the accused and will save these heartbroken investors who are preparing to eliminate themselves.

(Any suggestions, comments or dispute with regards to this article send us on feedback@afternoonvoice.com)
Former Bollywood actress Mamta Kulkarni, named as an accused in the Rs. 2,000 crore ephedrine drug haul case being probed by the neighbouring Thane police, claimed that she was innocent.

Dont look at me as an accused but as a victim of a conspiracy, said Kulkarni, based in Kenya, in a recorded speech played by her lawyers at a press conference.

My passport copies are there with all the entries, my bank statements are there.I have nothing to hide, the cops have seen my statements, they have not found anything against me, there is no single evidence, she said.

The actress, who starred in the 1990s blockbuster Karan Arjun among other films, also said that she was now heavily influenced by spirituality and was a yogini.

Noting that she only had fixed deposits of over Rs. 25 lakh, she said, but that is my money. I have worked for ten years in Bollywood and did more than 30 to 40 concerts.

Mamta alleged that her image was being tarnished unnecessarily because of my proximity to a certain individual, she said.

Her Mumbai-based lawyer, Majeed Memon, said at the press conference that Kulkarni had written a letter to the Union Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju about her case.

Another lawyer, US-based Daniel Arshack, who was also present, said when the Indian government asked the Interpol to issue a red corner notice against her, the international agency refused, citing lack of evidence.

US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) has long time interest in bringing her long-time friend  Vicky Goswami  either to extradite him or bring him through India (to the US), Arshack said, asking why the DEA officials visited Thane and why were they interfering in the probe.
Mother Teresas selfless and untiring service to the poor of the poorest, orphaned and sick people on the streets of Kolkata will be remembered by every Indian. It is gratifying to note that Pope Francis, the Head of the Vatican has recognized her charitable services to humanity and declared her a saint on September 4. September 4, 2016 was also Mother Teresas 19th death anniversary.

With the canonisation of Mother Teresa as a saint, India now has six saints of her own. They are  St Gonsalo Garcia, St Alphonsa, St Kuriakose Elias Chavara, St Euphrasia Eluvathingal, St Joseph Vaz and St Mother Teresa.

Mother Teresa will always be remembered for what she said and what she did during her lifetime. She started her work with no money, depending only on God to help her. Mother Teresa and her followers nursed the sick and dying, taught street children, gave shelter to the homeless, cared for the unloved and the lonely and proclaimed the Word of God to one and all. The rich and the poor alike have felt explicably drawn into the mercy of Gods tender embrace by her example as a follower of Jesus Christ. Her selfless love is a powerful example of what it means to love others as Christ loved us and a sign that God still loves the world today.

Clad in a khadi sari with its three blue line border, Mother Teresa along with her sisters of the Missionaries of Charity became a symbol of love, care and compassion for the world. Mother Teresa was a ray of hope for many, including the aged, the destitute, the unemployed, the diseased, the terminally ill, and those abandoned by their families. Blessed with profound empathy, unwavering commitment and unshakable faith since young, she turned her back to the worldly pleasures and focused on serving mankind ever since she was 18. After years of service as a teacher and mentor, Mother Teresa experienced a call within her religious call, which changed her course of life completely, making her what she is known as today.

Founder of the Missionaries of Charity, with her fervent commitment and incredible organisational and managerial skills, she developed an international organization that aimed towards helping the impoverished. For her service to humanity she was honoured with the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.

Mother Teresa, even though she has been declared a saint by the Catholic Church is still a Mother to us. She will be remembered for her good deeds for years to come.

Jubel DCruz
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte told Barack Obama he never called him a son of a bitch, he said on Friday, but he maintained a defiant stance on his war on drugs, saying UN chief Ban Ki-moon was a fool for bringing up human rights.

US President Obama cancelled a planned meeting with Duterte at this weeks ASEAN summit in Laos after the Philippine leaders alleged insult in his native Tagalog, but the two met briefly later as they waited to take their seats at a banquet.

While on a visit to the Indonesian capital on Friday, Duterte told a group of Filipinos that the slur was not directed at the US president and that he had told him so.

I was ready (for Obama). I was waiting for Obama to respond. Lawyer to lawyer, we are both lawyers anyway I said I never made the statement. Check it out. I said that, but not in relation to Obama, he said. Im not fighting with America.

Obama and Duterte shook hands and had a brief chat on Wednesday, officials said, easing the standoff. Duterte had his outburst on Monday when he was defending his war on drugs that has killed at least 2,400 Filipinos.

Duterte on Friday said he thought UN Secretary-General Ban a fool for bringing up the issue of human rights violations weeks before the summit in Laos.

Even Ban Ki-moon weighed in, Duterte said. Also gave a statement before, several weeks ago, about the human rights violation. Sabi ko, isa ka pang tarantado (you are another fool).
US President Barack Obama warned North Korea of serious consequences as he consulted leaders of South Korea and Japan after Pyongyang conducted its fifth nuclear test  believed to be its most powerful ever.

The president indicated he would continue to consult our allies and partners in the days ahead to ensure provocative actions from North Korea are met with serious consequences, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said.

He said President Obama was briefed on the situation as he flew home from a visit to Asia aboard Air Force One.

Obama consulted with South Korean President Park Geun-hye and Japans Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in separate phone calls from the presidential aircraft.

The president reiterated the unbreakable US commitment to the security of our allies in Asia and around the world, Earnest said.

Earlier, National Security Council spokesman Ned Price said the US was monitoring and continuing to assess the situation in view of the seismic activity on the Korean Peninsula in the vicinity of a known nuclear site.

We are monitoring and continuing to assess the situation in close coordination with our regional partners, Price said.

His statement came after South Korean and international monitoring agencies reported an earthquake near North Koreas north-eastern nuclear test site, indicating that Pyongyang may have detonated a new atomic test to mark the 68th anniversary of the countrys founding.

Our monitoring stations picked up an unusual seismic event in the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK) today at 00:30 (UTC). So far, 25 of our stations are contributing to the analysis, CTBT Organisations executive secretary Lassina Zerbo said in a statement.
[inlinetweet prefix= tweeter= suffix=]Sanjay Desai an investor seeks PM Modis intervention for resolving the grievances of depositors who have lost money due to NSEL scam.[/inlinetweet]

When comedian Kapil Sharma had tweeted about corruption prevailing in Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation by tagging Prime Minister Narendra Modi everyone right from Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and BMC officials took a serious note of it. On the other hand, when Sanjay Desai an investor who had lost his hard earned money had posted a tweet urging the PM to grant permission for NSEL victims for euthanasia he received no response from anyone. He had tweeted that the forthcoming Diwali festival looks bleak for investors who are yet to recover their money due the NSEL scam. There are many other investors like Desai who have lost their money in the scam fighting to retrieve their money. Investors have demanded assessment of the attached assets so that they can be correctly valued, identification of unencumbered assets and their notification in the state gazette. They have also asked the government to set up a special court to hear NSEL case.

@narendramodi Sir grant NSEL VICTIMS permission for EUTHENASIA on coming 4th dark DIWALI, see no hopes. @thinkerKS  Sanjay Desai (@sanjaydesai09) September 9, 2016

BJP spokesperson Shweta Shalini has been actively taking up the cause of NSEL victims with concerned officials. Netizens have lauded her initiative for lending a helping hand to investors who have lost money on account of the NSEL scam.

Siddharth Asar tweeted, Best wishes to Shweta Shalini who is the voice of 15000 nselscam affected families. God bless always! My 70 old mother keeps asking why BJP is allowing NSEL promoters to go scot free after looting her of all savings?

Best wishes to @shweta_shalini who is the voice of 15000 #nselscam affected families, God bless always! pic.twitter.com/lsyIEB1tT6  Siddharth Asar (@AsarSiddharth) September 8, 2016

Intolerant RK tweeted, Great soul Shweta Shalini Ji thanks for all help to NSEL victims.

The forum named NSEL Fight tweeted, NSEL investors poetic gratitude to Shweta Shalini who honestly stood on the right side.

NSELs payment troubles started after it was ordered by regulator Forward Markets Commission (FMC) in July 2013 to suspend spot trade in most of its contracts due to suspected trading violations.

Gujjubhai posted, Big thanks to Shweta Shalini for protecting NSEL crusader. Without you the evil would have won.

Shweta Shalini replied, May god give us power to fight.

Anushka Agnihotri a writer posted, Lets hope some miracle will happen and investors will get justice.

#NSELJusticemuchdelayed Lets hope some miracle will happen and investors will get justice https://t.co/Oi0SYS41Qq  Anushka Agnihotri (@anushkaagnihot1) September 6, 2016

The exchange could not settle the outstanding trades, leading to investigations by the police and regulators to find out whether the exchange had defrauded traders by not enforcing rules requiring sufficient collateral to be set aside.

Ashish Chokshi tweeted, These days it seems easier to get stuck by lightning than get justice in #nsel scam.

Sadiya Zain tweeted, NSEL crook Jignesh Shah enjoying our tax paid hard earned money.
Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Friday visited Hanumangarhi temple in Ayodhya. He, thus, became the first from Nehru-Gandhi family to visit Ayodhya since 1992, when Babri mosque was demolished.

The Congress vice president drove straight to the famous Hanuman Garhi temple, where he offered prayers, before meeting the mahant. He then drove straight out of town to twin city Faizabad, where he hold a roadshow.

At one point, Gandhi asked the locals and party workers to give space to an ambulance carrying a patient that got caught up in the crowd of cheering supporters.

Friday was the fourth day of his 2,500-km Kisan Yatra that began at Deoria.

As a convoy of cars, buses and open trucks rolled into the temple town, people rushed out of their houses to have a glimpse of the Congress leader.

Much significance is being attached in political circles to Mr. Rahuls visit to Hanuman Garhi, which is about a kilometre away from the Ram temple at the disputed Ramjanmbhoomi-Babri Masjid site.

Mr. Gandhi also stayed away from the site of shilanyas, the foundation stone that was laid there in 1989 for the construction of a Ram temple.

Political observers see a soft Hindutva agenda in the Ayodhya visit at a time when Congress appears to follow a Brahmin-centric campaign in Uttar Pradesh prescribed by election strategist Prashant Kishor, who is designing every move of the Congress scion.

Kishor is of the view that Congress must win its original constituencies of Muslims, Brahmins and a section of the non-Dalit Other Backward Castes (OBCs) as it makes a serious attempt at an impact in UP, which it had last won 27 years ago.

The Congress vice president Rahul on Thursday said if his party forms government in UP it will representation from all section of society in the state.

Though Sheila Dikshit is the chief ministerial candidate of the party in the state, I can assure you that when Congress party distributes tickets for the Assembly polls, people from all religion and castes will find a place, Rahul said in a khaat sabha in Gonda on the third day of his Deoria to Dilli yatra.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Friday assured the people of Punjab that if the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is voted to power in the state, Amritsar would be given the status of a holy city.

Amritsar is a very important city. People from all over the world come to pray at the Golden Temple, said Kejriwal

He was accompanied by MP Bhagwant Mann, HS Phoolka, comedian Gurpreet Ghuggi, Inderbir Singh Nijjer.

We will accord Holy City status to Amritsar. Also, there will be total prohibition of liquor, tobacco products and meat items in the walled city area, the Delhi CM said.

Amritsar ward city and Anandpur Sahib will be declared holy places if AAP comes to power in Punjab, said Kejriwal.

Kejriwal is on a four-day tour of poll-bound Punjab. Friday was his second day in Punjab.

Kejriwal will also address a public rally in Moga on the last day of his visit before returning to Delhi. This was Kejriwals first visit to Punjab after the AAP removed its Punjab convenor Sucha Singh Chhotepur over issues of corruption.

Met with an accident

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Friday escaped unhurt when the SUV in which he was travelling rammed into an escort vehicle near PAP chowk on Jalandhar-Amritsar road.

Kejriwal, who was on his way to Amritsar on the second day of his four-day visit to Punjab, was sitting in the front seat of the Innova when it hit the escort vehicle which was moving ahead of it, police said.

No one was injured in the mishap. The bumper of Kejriwals car was damaged, they said.
Model Sofia Richie says she and pop star Justin Bieber share a special relationship.

The 18-year-old model opened up about her bond with the Sorry hitmaker, explaining how she deals with paparazzi since she started hanging out with Bieber, reported AceShowbiz.

We have a special relationship. Justin is very easy to talk to, and thats hard to find with people in Los Angeles, she said.

Richie revealed she has learnt a lot about dealing with such situations from her elder sister, Nicole .

I remember the paparazzi, people would say to Nicole, and she wouldnt respond. Im going to be real with you. It doesnt bother me as long as Im happy, she said.

Bieber and Richie were first linked up after they were pictured holding hands in Hawaii. They were also caught kissing during their trip to Tokyo.
WASHINGTON, Sept. 8, 2016  USDA is investing $26.6 million in 45 projects aimed a spurring innovative conservation initiatives on both rural and urban farms across the country.

Public and private grantees will provide matching investments, bringing the total value of support to $59 million, USDA said in a release. The investment is made through USDA's Conservation Innovation Grants (CIG) program, which fosters innovation in conservation tools and strategies to improve things like on-farm energy and fertilizer use as well as market-based strategies to improve water quality or mitigate climate change.

The 2016 projects focus on water quality, conservation finance and assistance to historically underserved USDA customers. Approximately 25 percent of the funding announced today will go to projects that benefit historically underserved producers, military veterans, and new and beginning farmers, USDA said.

"The Conservation Innovation Grant program is a highly competitive conservation grant program that helps put the very best conservation tools to work on privately held farms and forests, for maximum environmental impact," Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said. "This investment will offer farmers, ranchers and forest landowners new ways to protect their natural resources and new revenue streams to keep their operations viable, building on the record amount of conservation work that has already been done under this Administration. Demand for this type of support outpaces what USDA can provide alone, but outside partners are willing to make additional investments because they see the good it can do for the environment and for their communities."

The department said that with the latest funding, it has invested nearly $173 million to help finance 414 national CIG projects since 2009. For this round of funding, USDA received 170 applications requesting more than $100 million, which far exceeded the initial funding target of approximately $20 million.

USDA said that in 2015, CIG began supporting the burgeoning field of conservation finance and impact investing to attract more private dollars to science-based conservation solutions. Of the 45 projects receiving funding today, 13 are conservation finance awards. These new projects support the design and implementation of approaches to attract private capital to working lands conservation. The selected projects address diverse natural resource issues such as pollinators; sage-grouse conservation; forest, carbon and corporate chain sustainability; and organic farming.

Below are highlights of several new projects from the three focus areas this fiscal year. Click here to see a full listing of this fiscal year's selected projects.

--Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay, Inc., ($462,794)-proposes to establish several conservation investment mechanisms to help overcome barriers associated with participating in three existing mitigation banking programs in Maryland and Virginia.

--National Corn Growers Association, ($1 million)-proposes to develop a greenhouse gas insetting framework that can serve as a model for corporations and other entities to encourage conservation adoption and achieve greenhouse gas reductions and water quality benefits (Missouri).

--Tennessee State University, ($792,504)-This 1890 Historically Black Land-Grant university proposes to enhance the current Southern Nursery Industry "Guide for Best Management Practices," while recommending modifications to the USDA NRCS Conservation Practice Standards that specifically address natural resource and water-quality concerns relating to the nursery industry (Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and Georgia).

Read about other USDA news such as this. Sign up for a four-week free trial Agri-Pulse subscription for the latest ag and rural policy news.





--Resource Conservation District of Monterey County ($1,300,695)-proposes to establish a cooperative model for pooling resources to comply with water quality regulations, making conservation practices more widely applicable in high-value, irrigated agricultural lands, leading to a streamlined approach to compliance with water quality regulation in California and the development of a decision support tool to aid new cooperatives in identifying and implementing coordinated water quality improvement strategies.

--City of Chicago, ($1 million)-proposes to create an urban farming system or cohort-based model to assist farmers with a high potential to succeed in establishing businesses and prepare and place more land into land trusts or cooperative tenure arrangements. The project will expand upon and begin to measure impacts of farm site developments that balance environmental remediation, stormwater management and water conservation (Illinois).

--University of Hawaii, ($979,927)-proposes to develop an approach to optimize irrigation scheduling in intensive vegetable production systems across diverse climatic zones in the Pacific Islands (Hawaii, Guam and American Samoa).

CIG is funded through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP). The maximum grant is $2 million per project and the length of time for project completion is three years. The CIG projects are designed to engage EQIP-eligible producers in on-the-ground conservation activities that accelerate transfer and adoption of innovative conservation technology and approaches.

#30

For more news, go to: www.Agri-Pulse.com
What is the future of photojournalism?

This week the picture became somewhat clearer. On the one hand, we learned who won this years Visa dor awards  the top honors at the annual Visa Pour LImage photojournalism festival in Perpignan, France. The News Award went to Aris Messinis of Agence 
American Pastor Buys Weapons for Assyrian Militia Fighting ISIS in Iraq

Bronx Pastor Bill Devlin sits behind a Kurdish Peshmerga .50-caliber machine gun on the Syria-Iraq border only a half mile from the Islamic State. ( Bill Devlin) A New York City pastor has spent about $4,000 of his own money to supply much-needed weapons to a Christian militia fighting against the Islamic State terrorist organization in Iraq. William Devlin, a pastor at Infinity Bible Church in the Bronx who often travels the world to help Christians and others persecuted in the most dangerous places on Earth, has supplied the Nineveh Plain Protection Units with an assortment of rocket-propelled grenade launchers, grenades and AK-47 assault rifles to help level the playing field in the militia's fight against IS (also known as ISIS or ISIL). As the NPU is largely made up of Assyrian Christians trying to defend and reclaim their homelands from IS, the militia often finds itself outmatched by the brutal terrorist group, which has obtained quality American-made weapons through military victories against U.S.-backed rebel groups in Syria and the Iraqi Army. Devlin told The Christian Post from Kurdistan last week that he visited with NPU Gen. Behnam Aboosh at his base in Alqosh back in April. When Devlin asked the general how he could help the militia, the general simply told him that the NPU desperately needed weapons. "He said, 'Pastor Devlin, you and a hundred other people have asked me that same question -- U.S. Army generals, people from The Wall Street Journal, New York Times," Devlin recalled Aboosh telling him. "'They have all asked -- 100 people sitting in that same chair.'" "He said, 'Look, I am dealing with a major military force that has United States weapons that they got from the Iraqi Army. ISIS has all these heavy weapons, all these armored vehicles, and I am sitting here in the Nineveh Protection Unit with the equivalent of bows and arrows,'" Devlin continued. Pastor Bill Devlin poses with weapons he bought for the Nineveh Plains Protection Unit in Iraq in a photo that was taken in April 2016. ( Bill Devlin) Although the militia has received help in the form of training from United States military personnel, Devlin said the group hasn't received any weapons from the U.S. government. "He said, 'I need weapons,'" Devlin added. "And I looked at him and I said, 'General, the Holy Spirit just spoke through you. I do not want to be number 101. So, can I buy you some weapons?'" Devlin said Aboosh was taken off guard by his immediate willingness to buy weapons. However, the general went ahead and made a call to an Assyrian Christian arms dealer. The very next day, the weapons were delivered. "I was not going to go away from the general without helping him in some practical, demonstrable way because I felt embarrassed that all these other people have asked how they can help him [and did not give the help he needed]," Devlin asserted. Last week, Devlin posted two pictures on his Facebook page that were taken in April of the weapons he purchased. One photograph shows Devlin posing with one of the rocket propelled grenade launchers and another picture shows other weapons he purchased laying on the ground. New York City Pastor Bill Devlin visits with Yazidi families in August 2016 in the Kurdish town of Dohuk, where he provided assistance to over 20 Yazidi families. ( Bill Devlin) "PB grateful that, with personal money, I can purchase items that can assist and protect the Christians and their cities in the Nineveh Plain of Iraq from ISIS," Devlin wrote on Facebook. When asked how the U.S. State Department will respond to an American pastor supplying weapons to an armed militia group in the Middle East, Devlin said that he is in a wait-and-see mode. "In fact that is why I delayed posting those pictures on Facebook because I wanted to give it some time from April until August. Now, I am just going to see what is going to happen," he explained. "It's not that I'm provoking anything but I want to be fully transparent with my investors, with my government. I don't want to have them hear from somebody else, 'Hey, you know that Pastor William Devlin is purchasing weapons for the Christians to protect themselves?'" Devlin explained that he is due to meet with officials from the State Department within the next month. "They know the type of stuff I do," he assured. "As far as I know, other than the big organizations, I don't know of any other American Christian pastor that is going in the refugee camps to help the Yazidi people and help the Christian people there. I don't know of anybody else that is going in. There may be others, but not to my knowledge." Last week, it was reported that the NPU liberated the Iraqi town of Badanah, which was previously held by IS. After traveling to Iraq in mid-April, Devlin returned last month and has been there for the past few weeks providing provisions and assistance to displaced Christians in Erbil and displaced Yazidis in Dohuk. During his recent trip, he was also able to meet with generals from the Kurdish Peshmerga and traveled as close as a half-mile from where IS is located. To the naysayers who might question the methods of Devlin's international ministry and consider him to be "reckless," he contends that he is proof that it doesn't take a huge organization or government backing to get involved in helping those victimized by IS. "I am a nobody pastor from the boogie-down Bronx," Devlin said. "I don't have a huge organization. I don't take government money. I don't take foundation money. I don't take corporate money. It's all private money that I raise here in the States. I have got about 200 people that support my work financially." "When I go into the refugee camps with $10,000 and I am giving money so people can buy food, clothing and hygiene items, I can help them start a new life," Devlin added. "That is worth its weight in gold."
September 7, 2016

During the 2015 hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia, more than 2,000 Muslims lost their lives in a stampede in the city of Mina. Nearly 500 of the victims were Iranian pilgrims. One year later, Irans Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei met with the families of those who lost their lives and called for an international investigation into the stampede.

The events of Mina and the loss of life of Iranian pilgrims with parched lips under the scorching sun is a deeply sorrowful and unforgettable event, Khamenei said Sept. 7, calling the Iranians who lost their lives martyrs.

Reiterating figures presented by Iran, Khamenei asked why other governments have not raised issues with what happened in Mina. Saudi officials put the death toll in the 700s. The Pakistani government, a recipient of Saudi aid, ordered the Pakistani media not to criticize the Saudis' handling of the Mina stampede, which killed 83 Pakistanis. Mali, Nigeria, India, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Egypt all lost hundreds of citizens as well. Iran's death toll, the highest of any country, inflamed tensions between the two regional rivals.

Hammering on Irans demands for new management of the hajj, Khamenei said, If it was not intentional, this level of mismanagement and incompetence  is a crime. He added that there was no guarantee that such an incident would not happen again.

Khamenei continued, The incompetence of the Saudis and their failure to provide security for the pilgrims in the house of God in reality showed that this government is not capable of managing the two holy mosques." Al-Masjid al-Haram in Mecca and Al-Masjid an-Nabawi in Medina are the two holiest places in Islam.

According to Khamenei, a fact-finding committee comprised of Islamic countries and human rights advocates should investigate what happened in Mina. If the Saudis are certain of their claim of innocence, they should not silence people with money and they should allow a fact-finding mission to closely investigate, he said.

While the attack on the Saudi Embassy in Tehran caused the two countries to officially sever ties, relations had already deteriorated to an irreparable point with the Mina stampede and its aftermath. Iranians were livid at the Saudi management of the hajj and response to the tragedy. According to Khamenei, the Saudis have not offered any apology for what happened. Some Saudi media outlets blamed Iranian pilgrims for causing the stampede while Iranian officials called for Saudi Arabia to give up management of the hajj, a great source of revenue and clout in the Muslim world. The fallout was so severe that according to Iranian hajj officials, the Saudis placed serious obstacles in front of Iranian pilgrims this year, causing them to miss the hajj for the first time in nearly three decades.

While Khameneis comments have been the harshest, other Iranian leaders and officials have also criticized Saudi Arabia. When the Saudi grand mufti said Iranians are not Muslims because they are descendants of Zoroastrians, usually mild-mannered Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif responded in a tweet that there is no resemblance between Islam of Iranians & most Muslims & bigoted extremism that Wahabi [sic] top cleric & Saudi terror masters preach.

Even Irans President Hassan Rouhani and the rest of the political camp of Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who advocates better relations with the Saudis, has said that the Saudi government should be punished for Mina. Echoing Khameneis calls for management of the hajj to be revoked, Rouhani said that Islamic countries should cooperate to make sure an honorable hajj is conducted.
September 7, 2016

Written some 25 years ago, Tintin and Sinbad is an Iranian book by Mohammad Mirkiani that depicts the cultural invasion of the West through its main characters, Tintin, an adaption of the famous character created by the Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi, and Sinbad, a fictional sailor of Middle Eastern origin. In the story, Tintins ship heads to the East to capture the land of Eastern stories, and Sinbad and his friends go to war with them. Their battle ends with the Eastern heroes victorious.

Tintin and Sinbad's story is now being turned into an animated film series titled War of Legends. Completion of the first episode followed the Aug. 8 public reading of a note written in November 1994 by Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The message, unveiled by the Office for the Preservation and Publication of Ayatollah Khamenei's Works at a cultural event, reads, I always used to tell the same story. Its a pity that not many people believed it. Now all is good, and heres the evidence! The narrator of this story, who has witnessed everything with his own eyes, has told the story of Tintin and Sinbad. Now my job is easier! The only thing I need to do is to present a copy of the book to all children.

Ali Pourhosseini, heading the animation project at the FaraGostar Institute, told Al-Monitor, There were two major concerns about this project. One was to stand up to cultural invasion, while the second was to present a Western lifestyle. This meant that not only do Western characters invade and replace our characters, but they also interfere in our lifestyle. Our kids today dont get to be kids like they used to.

Pourhosseini said the film will consist of five episodes, and its main character is an Iranian boy from a fishing family who spends his adolescence, youth, middle age and old age with these heroes.

In the first episode, characters from the Near East go to war with those from the West, characters from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon or Palestine, for instance, Pourhosseini said. Episode two becomes more complex, as heroes from the Far East also come into play. The third and fourth episodes see the addition of characters from Europe, Australia, Africa  who have positive character developments.

In the fifth and final episode, the producers will show the end of the world according to the Shiite perspective. Pourhosseini insists that there is no favoritism shown toward either the Western or Eastern heroes in the work.

We have positive and negative figures in both worlds, he said. Therefore, we have tried to portray human society as a whole, meaning that we believe that at the end of the world, an offspring of Islams yield will come and bring about the alignment of pure and beautiful thoughts resulting in a world filled with peace. This is something that will happen at the end of the animation.

As in the book, the character Tintin symbolizes Western colonialism, while Sinbad represents Eastern resistance against colonialism. According Ali Kashefi Khansari, a journalist and critic of children's literature, their symbolism is accentuated more in the book than in the animation.

Familiarizing the kids of a country with the heroes of other countries and strengthening the sense of nationalism and belonging to ones own native culture in kids are definitely something good, Khansari told Al-Monitor. However, if this comes at the expense of creating a sense of hatred and animosity toward other nations, it is not admirable. I think this is why the author of the book decided to focus on just a few characters and not present a negative image of all Western peoples and countries. Taking this into account, one can say that this is an acceptable book, which wont trigger hatred and violence among nations, although the real Tintin, which we have come to know in the original story, is [also] not to the same degree a reflection of the Wests colonialism.

Mirkiani wrote Tintin and Sinbad in 1991 as a young adult book. It has been reprinted 11 times. This summer, it was the second highest selling book in Iran, behind the latest Harry Potter. Khansari primarily attributes the book's high sales to its current audience.

At the moment, the main audience for this book is adults, not children, he said. The book will only become popular in childrens literature when they know the characters. But the reality is that Iranian kids today are not familiar with Sinbad, Ali Baba and the magic lamp or with Tintin and Captain Haddock.

According to Pourhosseini, this is one of the main problems in making the animation series. We are living in an era where children have different tastes, he claimed. Today, Western companies and Hollywood have defined new characters for our kids. Therefore, to create a scenario in which it will have serious viewership, we had to review this book to see if there was room for updating. We spent two years working on this and began production in spring 2015. The first episode was completed about one month ago, and it is about 100 minutes long.

The FaraGostar Institute, founded 18 years ago at the seminary in Mashhad, is handling production. At first, we were just a dozen seminary students, and everything we did was a spur of the moment thing, said Pourhosseini. However, now about 60% of our colleagues are seminary students, and the other 40% have university educations. Financially, we are not linked to any organization. We have considerable productions that generate their own economic income [for the company].

Pourhosseini revealed that the decision to produce the animation was made two years ago, after members of FaraGostar met with one of the supreme leaders students at the Islamic Research Foundation of Astan Quds Razavi, the main charitable foundation in Mashhad. He gave us the book Tintin and Sinbad as a gift and said the leader had enjoyed reading it and suggested the idea of turning it into an animation, Pourhosseini said. By making this, we wanted to tell the world that we support the Guardianship of the Jurist. We were very young during the years of Irans Islamic Revolution and could not do much then, but now we have reached a point in terms of artistic taste and executive capabilities where we can say labaik [answer in the affirmative] to [Ayatollah Khameneis] invitation to [join] the fight against [Western] cultural invasion.

The cartoon will debut in Mashhad during Eid al-Ghadir, which falls on Sept. 21 this year. In Shiite tradition, the event marks the Prophet Muhammads appointment of Ali ibn Abi Talib as his successor. Production of part two will begin at the same time. Ultimately, the work is expected to be dubbed in both Arabic and English.

We want to attract a global audience and therefore see this animation as something transnational, said Pourhosseini. What is wrong with us presenting the heroes of other nations, but in our own way, so we can convey through them the meanings we want?
September 9, 2016

GAZIANTEP, Turkey  Negotiations to set up a branch of the Syrian Civil Defense (SCD) in areas recently retaken from the Islamic State (IS) have been halted, as a severe lack of trust continues to undermine relations between Kurdish and Arab populations in the north of Syria.

The informal talks were held in late August between SCD members and those involved in the temporary management of the city of Manbij after it was taken from IS earlier in the month. One of the participants told Al-Monitor the talks were heavily affected by previous arrests of SCD members in a Kurdish-majority area in the same region, equipment confiscated and a center thought to have been shut down by the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG) this spring in Afrin, the only Kurdish-dominated area where the group had previously been working.

SCD Aleppo regional chief Ammar Selmo told Al-Monitor we want guarantees that the same will not happen in Manbij, which was taken from IS on Aug. 12. Selmo had traveled to Turkey for a few days for meetings, but has since returned to Syria.

The SCD, also known as the "White Helmets," works in opposition-held areas and has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.

That Manbij was taken from IS by the YPG-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)  which reportedly gave it the Kurdish name of Mabuk  has raised concerns among those who point to recent friction between the Arab and Kurdish populations, noting that the majority of the towns inhabitants are Arab and that any sort of Kurdish-dominated administration would create tension.

We told them that our work is one, two and three  meaning that the specific, civil tasks the group is responsible for were explained in detail, to avoid potential misunderstandings  and that we do not want to be involved in the political or military situation. We want to provide aid, and we want guarantees that they will not put their hands on the [SCDs] center or on the members, Selmo said.

The Turkish army and the Free Syrian Army (FSA) groups have made gains in northern Syria against IS since Operation Euphrates Shield began on Aug. 24, while the Kurdish YPG withdrew to east of the Euphrates following an ultimatum by the United States to either do so or have their funding cut. Meanwhile, the regime has succeeded in again besieging the opposition-held areas of Aleppo. All these events have shifted priorities for the moment and the talks have been suspended.

Though best known for their search-and-rescue operations under rubble left by the Syrian regime and allied forces airstrikes  which frequently target the first responders themselves in double-tap attacks  the SCDs work extends well beyond that task. It also includes such vital services as the emergency repair of public utilities, fire fighting, first aid, emergency evacuation of civilians, road clearing and demining.

The SCD had provided equipment to the Afrin center and sent a team to train the 12 women and 10 men volunteers for 15 days late last year, according to Selmo.

Initially, he added, the group had good relations with the YPG and teams from Anadan and the western countryside [of Aleppo] came to Afrin and were not even searched at their checkpoints.

But after the regime got into it  his voice trailed off.

The YPG has often been accused of working against opposition groups in collaboration with the regime by those who cite the Syrian regimes longstanding support for the Kurdistan Workers Party and fewer regime airstrikes on Kurdish areas.

The Kurdish National Council  which is the main opposition to the Democratic Union Party, the YPGs political arm  accused the group of the same offense in mid-July 2012, when the regime withdrew the majority of its troops from areas in which the YPG is dominant.

We dont know why, but the situation turned upside down. We just heard that the center was closed and that the members were in jail, Selmo said, adding that equipment including a laptop, printer, ambulance and firefighting truck was confiscated.

A husband and wife, both from the Afrin team, spent a month in jail and after their release fled to Turkey, he said, and the contact numbers for the other members in the area no longer exist.

I used to speak to them every day, he noted, stressing that he did not know exactly what happened, but that the possibility that the armed groups had made the arrests and seizures has led to greater wariness in dealing with them.

The district of Afrin lies in a key area of northern Syria, bordering Turkey to its north and regime-held areas to its south. It divides areas held by the FSA and its allied Islamist groups that fight against both the Syrian regime and IS.

After several violent clashes between rebel groups and the YPG earlier this year  including on June 12, when a TOW missile was fired at a YPG position  fighters from a variety of armed groups backed by the international anti-IS coalition have had to travel regularly from Idlib into Turkeys Hatay province. They would then come back into Syria via another border crossing not far from the southern border town of Kilis further east to each front lines against IS while avoiding YPG territory.

An Aug. 15 attack on a bus carrying fighters from FSA factions occurred just as they were about to cross the border near the Atmeh camp for the internally displaced into Turkeys Hatay region. Dozens were killed in the attack, for which IS claimed responsibility.

Meanwhile, memories are still fresh of the parading through the city of Afrin on April 28 of the bodies of over 40 FSA fighters killed in battle over the town of Tel Rifaat against the YPG in the northern Aleppo province. Despite some SDF officials condemnation of the incident, it has frequently been cited in conversations Al-Monitor has had in recent weeks with FSA fighters and non-Kurdish residents of Aleppo. YPG supporters, meanwhile, often refer to all opposition groups as al-Qaeda/Jabhat al-Nusra.

The YPG generally allows non-Kurdish Syrian civilians to cross through Afrin but often stopped them from doing so in their own cars. A number of Syrians have told Al-Monitor that they must ask a resident of the area to drive for them if they want their car to reach the other side.

Afrin was long seen as a safer place to move to than other areas of the Aleppo province that are under daily attack from the regime's barrel bombs and airstrikes. However, after the violent clashes in recent months, few non-Kurds pass through it if they dont have to.

Selmo noted that one SCD member from Marea tried to cross through Afrin with a firefighting vehicle that he was taking to get repaired in the western countryside of Aleppo, and that the YPG had imprisoned him for 15 days without reason. I spoke to someone from the SDF to help me, Selmo said, and eventually got him out.

He added that he had asked someone from Jaish al-Thuwar, an FSA affiliate of the SDF with a large Kurdish component, whether the SCD's Afrin center could soon be reopened. He promised that they would discuss it, but over three weeks later, I still havent heard back from him.

We fear the fragmentation of Syria, Selmo said, adding that whether civil organizations are allowed to function in areas after they are retaken from IS is a sort of test.
September 8, 2016

A crisis erupted between members of the so-called 25-30 bloc  a major leftist coalition in Egypt's parliament  and parliament Speaker Ali Abdul Aal after bloc members withdrew from discussions on the value added tax (VAT) law and held a conference to announce their opposition to the legislation.

Although Abdul Aal decided to refer the deputies in question to the Ethics Committee after their withdrawal from the session in late August, this was not the beginning of the standoff between the speaker and the bloc.

The impasse began when the bloc issued a statement in July criticizing the speaker and his method of managing the parliament, writing, When he leads the parliament sessions, no one gets the chance to express their varied opinions on subjects. Sometimes he allows someone to speak and sometimes he does not.

Back then, parliament member Mohamed Abu Hamed, a member of the State Support coalition, had presented an urgent request to Abdul Aal to refer parliament members of the 25-30 bloc to the Ethics Committee for disrespecting the speaker and defaming all deputies.

The standoff between the two continued until it was time to hold the VAT session during which the bloc, which many believe opposes the governments policies, objected to the law.

The bloc held a press conference during which 25-30 bloc parliament member Haitham al-Hariri announced the blocs objection to the law, describing it as a bad law for Egyptian employees in all sectors, because it will increase the burden on citizens.

As a result, Abdul Aal attacked the 25-30 bloc parliament members, saying, The fact that the parliament members first agreed on the VAT law then withdrew from the session has terrorized the parliament. He added, They used media platforms to attack the parliament; this is unacceptable and I will take all necessary legal action against them. The only coalition in the parliament is the State Support coalition, and only parties can have parliamentary bodies, according to the [parliamentary] regulations.

In response, the bloc issued a statement criticizing the decision, saying, We were surprised by the speakers response to how we withdrew and resorted to the media to inform the people. He expressed his intention to refer us to the Ethics Committee, and he insulted us directly. He made accusations that we completely deny. We insist on investigating these accusations to clear our name. We do not understand how our commitment to transparency, which the people have the right to, terrorizes the parliament and its speaker. Since he will not take back what he said and apologize for the insults and accusations, we will hold onto our right to clear the name of our bloc and its [parliament members].

A number of 25-30 bloc parliament members, notably Khaled Youssef, expressed their willingness to resign from the parliament if the speaker can prove that his accusations are true, while a number of political parties, such as the Wafd Party, the Social Democratic Party and al-Karama, showed solidarity with the bloc.

Meanwhile, Hariri told Al-Monitor, The standoff first began when a parliament member told the speaker that a 25-30 bloc parliamentarian had insulted him personally. This is why Abdul Aal attacked the blocs parliament members before making sure the information was true, and the rest of the parliament followed his lead.

He added, We are not the only opposition bloc in the parliament. There are other opposition parliament members, but we are more expressive of the Egyptian citizens [views], and we are popular for it. This is why some [parliament members] may feel threatened and thus feel the need to ruin our image by making false accusations through certain media outlets that are always attacking us and inciting against us.

Speaking about the speaker accusing the bloc of violating the parliamentary list, Hariri noted, It is true that we are not an official coalition, because the parliamentary list to which we objected requires that a coalition be formed of 25% of the parliaments members. This is difficult to achieve, and only the State Support coalition was able to meet this requirement. However, at the same time we are not an illegal bloc like the speaker accused us of being, because we are a bloc of parliament members who agree on the same vision and on common positions, and we did not even ask for the privileges the parliament grants official coalitions.

He added, The standoff between the bloc and the speaker will affect the opposition in parliament, because what's happened is intimidating for any parliament member who wishes to express opposition, and if any parliament member wanted to join us, they will change their mind. But the truth is, the 25-30 bloc is still popular and this is pushing members of parliament to join us, despite the attempts of tightening the grip around us and ruining our image.

In an interview with Al-Monitor, State Support parliament member Abu Hamed attacked the 25-30 bloc and said that it objected to 90% of the parliaments decisions, noting that the blocs parliament members are only objecting for the sake of expressing opposition.

Abu Hamed denied that the standoff could impact the opposition within the parliament, saying, The bloc has always expressed opposition, and it was never criticized for it. But the latest developments insulted the parliament and doubted its integrity by questioning the voting process over the VAT law. This violates the parliamentary list and offends the parliament.

The standoff came to an end in favor of the 25-30 bloc members of parliament when the speaker met with them and took back what he had said about them and underlined the blocs patriotism, as 25-30 bloc parliamentarian Ahmed al-Tantawi said in a press statement that the speaker had informed [the 25-30 bloc parliamentarians] that he takes back the decision to refer them to the Ethics Committee, he does not doubt their patriotism and he truly appreciates the oppositions role.

Despite this breakthrough, the question remains: Will the parliament keep a tight grip on the 25-30 bloc?
September 9, 2016

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip  The Foreign Press Association accused in a statement on Aug. 22 Hamas and the security services in the Gaza Strip of imposing restrictions on the entry of foreign journalists to Gaza.

The statement listed some of the practices it deemed unjust, imposed by Hamas on foreign journalists in Gaza  such as the increase of the fee for armored cars used by those journalists  from 2,100 shekels a year (around $550) to 4,000 shekels a year (about $1,050).

Josef Federman, the chairman of the association whose headquarters is located in Jerusalem, told Al-Monitor that it was not easy to take this position in the statement. He said, Many alarming issues emerged in the past months: For example, a number of journalists were asked intrusive questions on entry [into Gaza], two other journalists  at least  were barred entry to Gaza and the procedures to grant entry permits to foreign journalists were changed.

Federman said that the association has been demanding for several months to amend the procedures. These demands prompted a meeting between the association and the government media office in Gaza in July. A positive atmosphere prevailed at first during the meeting. However, during the same meeting, a member of the Foreign Press Association was questioned for 45 minutes for being suspected of recording the minutes of the meeting.

A month has gone by since the meeting was held, and yet none of the issues that were discussed and agreed on were tackled. These issues included the [Gaza] government media office allowing the entry of foreign journalists who repeatedly visit Gaza and providing them with a one-year residency; ending the questioning of journalists upon entry to Gaza; expediting the issuance of entry permits, whose [current] slow process hinders the journalists work; and most importantly, reconsidering the ban imposed on the two journalists, Federman said.

He added, Nonetheless, journalists are still facing intrusive questions on the Beit Hanoun/Erez crossing, like questions about the reasons why they [journalists] were in Israel before arriving to Gaza. Meanwhile, the ban against the two journalists is still enforced. This is while the procedures when applying for an entry visa [permit] did not change. Despite all this, we remain hopeful that Hamas will honor its commitments to us.

According to the abovementioned statement of the Foreign Press Association  which operates in Gaza through Palestinian journalists working in foreign media institutions  Hamas had prevented back in June freelance photographer Heidi Levine from entering the Gaza Strip, under the pretext that her work reflects badly on Gaza. The movement also banned New York Times reporter Diaa Hadid, who is based in Jerusalem and the Palestinian territories, from entering Gaza under the pretext of writing false reports, a journalist working with the Foreign Press Association told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity.

For his part, the director general of the government media office, Salameh Maarouf, said the office had made several professional remarks to these two journalists about reports they had worked on.

Maarouf stressed that the media office informed the two journalists that in light of the current situation in Gaza, they would rather not welcome them for their own security, as these journalists have addressed sensitive issues related to the resistance.

Regarding the Foreign Press Associations statement, Maarouf told Al-Monitor, We, in the media office, sat down with the association on Aug. 12, and we agreed on several issues including facilitating and accelerating the entry process to Gaza. This is why we were particularly struck by this statement, as I also met with the associations representative in Gaza just one day before the issuance of the statement. The latter had told me that they [the association] were satisfied with the newly agreed-upon procedures.

Maarouf further stressed that Gaza is witnessing major security problems such as the recurrent wars, adding that the entry procedures are imposed on everyone  whether journalists or not. He said, There are no particular procedures applied on journalists. On the contrary, journalists enjoy special treatment.

He further considered the statement to be politicized, saying, One of the Foreign Press Associations members from Gaza decided to attend a meeting for the association in Jerusalem. Israelis prevented him from doing so. But the associations statement did not mention this incident. For our part, we did not prevent any foreign journalist [from entering Gaza]. There are even journalists who did not abide by the procedures set for the entry into Gaza under the pretext of not knowing them, but were allowed entry and completed the procedures from inside [Gaza]. This refutes the claims of restrictions [stated in the statement]  the statement is politicized.

The restrictions were not limited to foreign journalists, as local reporters were also affected. In this context, the Gaza Ministry of Health circulated to its hospitals on Aug. 18 a decision to bar the entry of myself in any hospital affiliated with the ministry in Gaza  without specifying the reasons.

Also, according to the decision, which was leaked to the media Aug. 21, hospitals are to avoid dealing with local media about a set of issues, namely suicide cases and medical errors occurring inside hospitals. The decision also stated that hospitals ought not to deal with foreign journalists, and to refer them to the General Administration for International Cooperation at the Ministry of Health.

For its part, the Public Prosecution in Gaza opened an investigation with several Palestinian journalists who had written investigative reports. On the morning of Aug. 28, the public prosecution in Gaza City issued an indictment against journalist Hajar Harb, based on five charges. This indictment came after Harb conducted a report about corruption in the health system, stating that fake medical cases needing treatment are sent abroad at the expense of the Palestinian Authority. This report was aired on Al-Araby TV network on June 26.

The Public Prosecution had previously questioned Harb: In July, the doctor who was accused in Harbs report of corruption by selling fake medical reports to people to receive money that was supposedly used for referring a medical case for treatment abroad, filed a complaint against Harb. He accused her of defamation, slander and libel.

Harb told Al-Monitor, The Public Prosecution contacted me on the morning of Aug. 28 to complete the investigation. The prosecution insisted that I make it to the prosecutions headquarters in Gaza City at 12 p.m. Indeed, I went there with my lawyer and completed the investigation into the complaint filed against me. This is when I was charged with five accusations.

She added, The charges filed against me during the last investigation session included: identity fraud, slander of the Health Ministry, publication of a false report about corruption in the Ministry [of Health], lack of precision and caution in publishing information that damage the reputation of the Health Ministry, and affiliation with a foreign body by working with a media institution that is not recognized in Gaza by the government media office  in reference to Al-Araby TV network.

The government media office in Gaza plays the role of a ministry of information; it is responsible for organizing the work of private radio and satellite TV stations, as well as the work of local and foreign journalists and reporters.

Although government parties insist that they are open to foreign and Palestinian journalists alike and that they are trying to facilitate their work, it seems the government also insists on targeting them in the framework of its oppression campaign against the media.
September 7, 2016

The number of students admitted to Iraqi law schools has soared in recent years, flooding the market with job-hungry graduates. The intense competition forces them to work for a fraction of customary charges  if they can find work at all.

According to the Student Guide for Central Admission in Iraqi Universities for the 2015-16 academic year, there are 19 public law programs. Meanwhile, the admissions guide for private universities shows 29 accredited faculties.

The legal profession has been of great importance in the modern history of Iraq, as lawyers have played many roles in politics, being the first to fill government jobs and lead political movements in the monarchy. They made up a well-regarded societal elite when their numbers were small.

But after the US-led coalition invaded Iraq in 2003, the government suffered from mismanagement and ill-considered decisions  including the expansion of universities without consideration for graduates' futures. The proliferation of graduates is becoming more obvious as the job market in Iraq is declining. The competition for government jobs is strong, so recent high school graduates hedge their bets by enrolling in fields that ostensibly could lead to jobs in the private sector, such as law. Moreover, it's relatively easy to gain admittance to a bar association. Under Iraqi law, conditions have been simple: Besides a good resume and good conduct, Iraqis just needed a law degree from a college accredited by the government.

The bar association on Sept. 5 did toughen admission conditions somewhat. Applicants now must file a form of several pages providing the names of five lawyers from the association chamber in the applicants province who endorse the applicant. However, it remains to be seen if these procedures will help slow the flow of new applicants, and the changes do nothing to address the current overcrowding.

The Utafiyah Court has been registering at least 40 new lawyers a week in recent months, unemployed lawyer Iyad al-Jomaa said he was told by a court delegate. Jomaa told Al-Monitor that because there are so many lawyers, some of them are settling for a pittance not more than 25,000 dinars ($21.15) per case for their services.

Former head of the Iraqi Lawyer Union Diaa al-Saadi cited this lack of negotiating power in his critique of the draft of the new Iraqi Bar Act. Also, he noted lawyers often face criticism and sometimes threats from all sides  law enforcement officials, judges and even clients  and are powerless to remedy the situation as they can't afford to offend anyone.

Majed Najm Abdullah, from the directorate of the bar association chamber in Najaf, said there are now 4,000 chamber lawyers, which is a large number for a province with a population of not quite 1.5 million people. The chamber has become one of the largest in Iraq.

Lawyer Mohammed Mazloum of Najaj said he has been working in law for six years and still struggles to find enough clients to support himself. The large number of senior lawyers with extensive experience and knowledge in many courts leaves little left over for the thousands of young lawyers. According to Mazloum, some retired state employees have even obtained law degrees from unaccredited private universities and are practicing law despite their old age, which increases the competition even more.

Mazloum agreed with his colleague Jomaa that lawyers are settling for very low wages, yet are working harder than ever because of the complicated legal, administrative and legislative measures in Iraq. In addition, administrative corruption hinders the legal process, Mazloum said.

The draft bill, submitted for parliamentary review in December, demands the establishment of an oversight board and bans government retirees from joining the bar association. However, the draft bill is still being debated. Moreover, according to Saadi's published article on the draft bill, the bar association is also partly to blame for the current situation of lawyers in Iraq because it has failed to protect them and act in their best interests.

The lawyers' dilemma reflects Iraqs overall development crises. The problem of Iraqs rentier economy, which is reflected in the labor market and where the economic wheel is linked to oil, has caused rampant corruption in the states institutions, where employment and posts are based on partisan connections and affiliations, according to Salim al-Wardi in his book Oil Tyranny in Contemporary Iraq, published in 2013.

The economic crisis is also weighing heavily on professions that do not require political support or string-pulling, such as the legal profession. One could also say that many have pursued the "easy" option of a law career  but they lack other options.
September 8, 2016

"Be Serok jiyan nabe!" The well-worn Kurdish adage means "no life without our leader." It was crafted for Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned founder of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which initially fought for independence then Kurdish self-rule inside Turkey, since 1984. The mantra has gained a new urgency after the botched July 15 coup. The rogue officers who were seeking to overthrow and kill Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan were also allegedly planning to kidnap Ocalan from his island prison off the coast of Istanbul and murder him as well.

They almost succeeded, according to the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP). Both PKK and HDP leaders claim that a group of helicopter-borne coup plotters succeeded in landing on Imrali and clashed with security personnel around Ocalan's prison before fleeing to Greece.

Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag has yet to either confirm or deny the allegation. But Bozdag has repeatedly denied that Ocalan came to any harm, saying he is in good health and that security measures around the prison have been reinforced. He insists the rumors about Ocalan's safety are being deliberately whipped up by the PKK and the HDP.

HDP lawmakers are among some 50 activists who launched an indefinite hunger strike on Sept. 5 to protest what they called a lack of news about Ocalan.

Bozdag has accused the group of spreading "unfounded information" about Ocalan's health and safety, so as to "mobilize the public for their own objectives."

HDP co-chair Figen Yuksekdag asserts that the best way the government can prove that Ocalan is alive and well is by granting access to him.

The PKK's top military commander in the field, Cemil Bayik, had harsher words: "Our patience has worn out  our leader Apo's [Ocalan's Kurdish nickname, which is a diminutive for Abdullah] health and safety is under threat. Therefore, everyone must rise up and do what they can."

As part of its mandate, the Committee to Prevent Torture (CPT), a monitoring arm of the Council of Europe, of which Turkey is a member, has made impromptu visits to Imrali and other Turkish prisons, and did so most recently in April. Ebru Gunay, a lawyer for Ocalan, told Al-Monitor that the government could have stifled speculation about Ocalan by granting the CPT access to him after the coup. In a Sept. 7 statement, the Council said it had visited three different prisons in Turkey between Aug. 29 and Sept. 6. Imrali was not among them.

The last time Ocalan was allowed to receive visitors was on April 5, 2015. They were a team of HDP lawmakers charged with relaying messages to and from PKK commanders in Iraqi Kurdistan, all part of the first-ever direct peace talks between Ocalan and the Turkish state. These had begun in late 2012, yet Ocalan's lawyers have been denied visits since July 2011 and his family members since October 2014. The stock excuse is that the ferries carrying passengers to the island "isn't working," Gunay said.

The talks collapsed last year when Erdogan abruptly walked away from a 10-point draft road map for peace that was unveiled by the government in February 2015.

The broad outlines of the agreement were that the PKK would disarm in Turkey and withdraw to Iraqi Kurdistan. In exchange, the government would enact constitutional reforms granting the Kurds political and cultural autonomy. Improved detention conditions for Ocalan would have been part of the deal.

A notorious micro-manager, Erdogan claimed he knew "nothing of it," even though he had publicly expressed hope that the talks would succeed.

In July 2015, a 2-year-long cease-fire crumbled amid mutual recriminations, leading to the deadliest violence and most horrific rights abuses in decades. The International Crisis Group reported that between July 20, 2015, and July 19 of this year, at least 307 civilians, 582 members of the Turkish security forces and 653 militants had died as a result of the conflict.

The government has also ratcheted up pressure on the HDP, stripping its lawmakers of their parliamentary immunity and going as far as to indict several of its members, including the party's fiery co-chair, Selahattin Demirtas. Hundreds of Kurdish activists, politicians and journalists have been jailed, and the country's sole Kurdish language newspaper, Azadiya Welat, shuttered.

The conflict took a further violent twist when Turkish troops moved into Syria on Aug. 24 to battle the Islamic State (IS) but also to check the giddying expansion of the PKK's Syrian affiliate, the People's Protection Units (YPG) along Turkey's border.

There are growing fears that the nationalist rhetoric being pumped up by both sides could thrust ordinary Turks and Kurds into the kind of full-blown civil conflict that has been averted so far. "That is the greatest risk of all," warned Hisyar Ozsoy, an HDP lawmaker, in comments to Al-Monitor, pointing to a recent spate of hate crimes against ethnic Kurds. Many Kurds cling to the belief that Ocalan alone retains the power to end the fighting. "Only one person can solve the [Kurdish] problem, and that is Abdullah Ocalan," his niece and HDP lawmaker Dilek Ocalan, who is among the hunger strikers, told Al-Monitor in an interview.

Ocalan retains a cult-like following among millions of Kurds worldwide. Portraits of the burly mustachioed PKK leader adorn the walls of all official buildings in the YPG-controlled chunk of northern Syria known as Rojava.

His influence over the rank and file remains uncontested: When Ocalan was captured in 1999, over 100 of his supporters set themselves on fire in protest. Some of them died. Ocalan's intervention ended a hunger strike among PKK inmates in November 2012. And in February 2015 his call on the PKK's youth wing to bring down barricades in the southeastern border town of Cizre had an immediate effect.

Not all Kurds are enamored of "Apo." Many religiously conservative Kurds dislike Ocalan's embrace of socialism and near obsession with women's rights. Yet, attempts by would-be rivals within the PKK to dethrone him have failed. Aliza Marcus, the author of "Blood and Belief," an authoritative expose of the PKK, told Al-Monitor that Ocalan "remains incredibly relevant and critical to any peace process. He's what's held up the Kurdish national movement in Turkey."

A recently published compilation of transcripts of the peace talks between Ocalan, government representatives and HDP lawmakers  the latter address him as "baskanim," or "my president"  reveals that the famously egomaniacal PKK leader shares Marcus' views about himself: Peace is an impossible goal without him, Ocalan repeatedly suggests. More critically, the volume reveals just how far the peace talks had advanced and just how much influence Ocalan still wields over the PKK and the YPG.

The picture that emerges from the transcripts shows the government is clearly seeking to leverage Ocalan's hold over ordinary Kurds to drive a bargain mostly on its own terms. The biggest sticking point is Syria. Erdogan is cited as calling it "a red line," saying he would not allow the YPG to replicate Iraqi Kurds' quasi-state in northern Iraq. Ocalan ripostes that Syria's Baathist government cannot be permitted to "dilute" Kurdish identity.

Another hitch is the PKK's refusal to withdraw without some initial and concrete steps by the government. Frederike Geerdink, a Dutch journalist who has embedded with the PKK in Iraqi Kurdistan since late May, told Al Monitor, "The general view here is that the [Turkish] government was never serious about the peace process anyway."

Ocalan's continued isolation by the government may be calculated to bend his will, but analysts say this is likely to backfire. Arzu Yilmaz, a political scientist at the American University of Kurdistan, agrees that the government may have believed that his "god-like status" would enable Ocalan to sell the government's conditions to the Kurdish public and the PKK alike. But Yilmaz argued in an interview with Al-Monitor that this was unrealistic on several counts.

Since his capture in 1999, Ocalan's role has become largely symbolic, Yilmaz said. Moreover, the YPG's ongoing battle against IS in Syria has created a new set of dynamics where Ocalan's long-vaunted "strategic leadership" has been "eclipsed by military leadership on the ground."

Marcus concurs, saying, "Trying to pit Ocalan against the PKK won't work. Ocalan, more than anyone else, knows what the PKK as a military force can accept." The hunger strikers may well have to continue their protest indefinitely or accept "life without our leader."
September 8, 2016

Now that control of the Turkey-Syria border has been wrested from the Islamic State (IS) between al-Rai and Jarablus, what will Ankara's next target be: IS in al-Bab or the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) in Manbij?

On Sept. 4, 12 days into Operation Euphrates Shield, Free Syrian Army (FSA) elements supported by a Turkish armored task force entered al-Rai and took over the 98-kilometer (61-mile) stretch of border. Since 2014, this area had been the main supply route for IS personnel, money, guns and logistics, and the group's main link with the outside world. The question now asked by all concerned is: What next?

Ankara has three possible courses of action:

Be content with the gains in northern Syria so far, and instead of expanding the area of operations, fortify the border stretch between al-Rai and Jarablus and take steps to prevent IS from returning. But sources in Ankara generally believe that genuine border security would require the FSA to move at least 25-30 kilometers south.

Expand the operation toward al-Bab where IS has dug in. This choice would mean Ankara is giving priority to combating IS in northern Syria.

Advance 40 kilometers south of Jarablus toward Manbij, where YPG forces are in control. Obviously this option would suggest that Ankara is giving priority to combating the YPG.

Capturing the border stretch that until now was controlled by IS serves the interests of everyone but IS  certainly the United States and Russia. All had agreed on the need to rid this area of IS. But we have also arrived at a critical juncture in Operation Euphrates Shield where joint interests are about to become conflicting interests.

The impression Al-Monitor got from sources in Ankara is that clearing IS from just the border will not be sufficient and further moves south are needed. The growing Turkish military presence near the border reinforces this line of thinking. As I emphasized in my Aug. 25 Al-Monitor column, Ankaras primary strategic goal with Euphrates Shield was to prevent the YPG, which is linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), from dominating northern Syria, and to assume full control of the Turkey-Syria border. This is why Ankara wants to capitalize on its field success so far and expand the operation toward Manbij.

In the operational environment of Syria, where field circumstances sometimes change by the hour, it is critical to maintain the operational pace and capitalize on gains. This is why Ankara wants to move toward Manbij quickly. And remember, Ankara has persistently said that to preserve the territorial integrity of Syria the operation should target all terror groups in northern Syria.

Ankaras drastic change of position from Assad must go to Syrias territorial integrity must be preserved must have pleased Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Russia so much that they have been withholding any negative reactions that could change the status on the ground. Although Washington continues to be at a loss about the future of Syria, it also finds the idea of preserving Syrias territorial integrity a positive one. The Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) is becoming politically isolated. In short, no other group with interests in Syria still backs the idea of the PYD linking its Afrin province in the west with Kobani and Jazeera in the east to form a de facto statelet that might endanger Syrias territorial integrity.

Turkish news media reported a critical detail from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogans meeting with US President Barack Obama on the sidelines of the G-20 summit, held Sept. 4-5 in Hangzhou, China. According to coverage of the meeting, when Obama said, The PYD has withdrawn from Manbij and only the Arab elements of the SDF are there, Erdogan reportedly replied, Since the PYD has withdrawn, it means FSA units will enter Manbij without fighting.

From all this, Ankaras scheme can be deciphered: Prevent at all costs the YPG from capturing al-Bab from IS and somehow persuade Washington to bring Manbij under FSA control.

This is precisely what is being negotiated at the table now, retired Col. Ali Bilgin Varlik of the Ankara-based Central Strategy Institute told Al-Monitor. In an environment when clashes with the PKK are continuing, and three to four soldiers are killed daily, the politicians in Ankara cannot expect the Turkish public to approve any operation that will allow a corridor between Kobani in the east and Afrin in the west. The priority for the Turkish public is to rule out a PYD corridor in northern Syria.

In Turkey's best-case scenario, it will move from al-Rai to Dabiq, which is of major symbolic importance for IS, to block the YPG from advancing to al-Bab. If Ankara succeeds, Washington will have no other option but to have FSA wrest al-Bab from IS. At this point, Ankara would tell Washington, Yes, the FSA will go to al-Bab, but first give us Manbij."

In short, Ankara wants to make the FSA an indispensable force to capture al-Bab and then to bargain with Washington for an assault on al-Bab in return for Manbij. The question we can't answer yet is, will Washington sacrifice Manbij to have the FSA capture al-Bab? US anti-IS coalition envoy Brett McGurk met recently with PYD and YPG officials, which is an important indicator that to preserve its alliance with the PYD, the United States will not abandon the YPG.

The worst-case scenario for Ankara is for the FSA to engage both the YPG and IS in al-Bab, and then the YPG at Manbij. The FSA could thus be forced into simultaneous clashes on two fronts. Should the FSA performance on the ground not be adequate, then the Turkish army could be drawn into these clashes. If, in such a case, Washington and Moscow leave Turkey alone, then Ankara would be forced to choose between giving military support to the FSA or withdrawing.

To avoid such a disastrous scenario, Ankara is giving its utmost attention to its diplomatic efforts. Sources in Ankara say that if clashes between the FSA and the YPG did not escalate south of Jarablus until now, it is because of the diplomatic traffic between Turkeys Foreign Ministry and the chief of general staff with their US counterparts.

But how long can Ankara sustain this diplomatic intensity with other pertinent actors in Syria? According to Varlik, this is directly related to the FSA's military performance in the field. He thinks the reasons behind continuing US cooperation with the PYD could be weakened by FSA success in the field.

Is Washingtons relationship with the PYD short-term, purely militarily indexed only to combat against IS, or does the United States have a secret agenda for a Kurdish corridor from Jazeera to the Mediterranean that it has promised to Syrian Kurds?

Is the US-PYD relationship guided by realpolitik, or a US promise for an autonomous Kurdish corridor? Looking at the swift pace of developments in northern Syria, we will get the answers soon enough.

Turkey wants to prevent the Kurds from establishing a corridor and, more importantly, it wants a major role in determining Syria's future. Strategist Ali Nihat Ozcan warns in his recent Milliyet article that Turkey might have to deploy a force of 35,000-40,000 (six to eight brigades) in northern Syria for the next 10 years to accomplish these goals, given the political and military prerequisites, topographical features, the FSA's capacity for combat and the existence of asymmetric threats such as IS and the YPG.

Is Ankara planning such a strategic engagement, or will we forget about Operation Euphrates Shield in a month or so?

Given Syria's complexity, with its long list of players and conflicting interests, I am not sure even Ankara knows the answer yet.
September 8, 2016

Recent revelations that the Barack Obama administration paid Iran $1.7 billion in cash just as four American-Iranians were released in January have caused a Republican furor in Washington. In Tehran, by contrast, all political factions seem to agree that the settlement over a decades-old unfulfilled arms deal was a great deal  for Iran.

Iranian hard-liners have long voiced Republican claims that the payments were, in effect, ransom. President Hassan Rouhani and his allies for their part have pointed to the payments as proof that engagement with the United States is paying dividends. No one in Tehran seems to share the State Department's stated view that Iran was well positioned to get a lot more if negotiations at the Iran-US Claims Tribunal in The Hague had dragged on.

At the time that the Americans were released, conservative figures in Iran added to the impression that the payment was tied to their release. The head of Irans Basij organization, Brig. Gen. Mohammad Reza Naghdi, said that the United States was so intent on infiltrating Iran that it was ready to give back $1.7 billion of the countrys money. Naghdis argument suggests that the Iranian-Americans arrested were actually agents of infiltration sent by the United States in order to influence Iranian society and decision-making centers in the country.

Mohammad-Hossein Saffar-Harandi, culture minister when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was president, also reiterated the claim that the $1.7 billion was given to Iran in exchange for the release of prisoners during a live television debate with Rouhanis media adviser, Hesam al-Din Ashna.

A video report by Tasnim News Agency titled The Exchange of Four American Spies also covered the payment of the settlement. The report claimed that negotiations over the release of prisoners were done quietly at the orders of the United States, given the bitter history of former Democratic President Jimmy Carter's failed hostage negotiations.

The video claimed that Irans conditions for the release of the Iranian-Americans were the release of Iranians held in the United States for sanctions violations, the removal of a number of individuals from the list of sanctions violators and the payment of $1.7 billion. The video claimed that the United States had asked that the details of the deal be kept quiet in consideration of the upcoming presidential election. Most striking, the video showed pallets of cash sitting on airplanes.

Members of the Rouhani administration have been keen to stress that the payment  much like the nuclear deal  was the result of productive negotiations.

In January, Mohammad Javad Zarif, Irans foreign minister, said that the release of the prisoners was the result of parallel negotiations and coincidentally was agreed to at the same time as the implementation of the nuclear deal. On the settlement over the sales of arms, Zarif said it was possible that if Iran did not use this opportunity to resolve the dispute, it could have dragged on much longer. He added that this has been an issue that has remained unresolved for 37 years.

The previous government of Iran, under the leadership of Mohammad Reza Shah, who had good relations with the United States and the West, gave $400 million to the United States for the purchase of fighter jets. However, after the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the attack on the US Embassy in Tehran, which resulted in the taking of US hostages for over a year, relations between the two countries were severed and the arms were never shipped to Iran.

Unlike in the United States, the $1.7 billion payment is basically a non-story in Iran. Instead, the bulk of recent media coverage has been about the domestic politicization of the payment in the United States.
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Visions, a Huntsville gentlemen's club, is being sued by dancers for back pay. (Facebook photo)

Here are the top stories in and affecting Alabama business for Thursday, Sept. 8, 2016. Follow all of Alabama's business news here anytime.

In federal lawsuits that provide a window into the world of Alabama strip clubs, exotic dancers are seeking back pay after the clubs failed to pay the dancers the minimum wage.

Wells Fargo has fired 5,300 employees for illegally opening accounts in order to get financial compensation for meeting sales targets without the knowledge or consent of customers, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Rock N Roll Sushi, a restaurant that was more than a year in the making, debuted today at Campus No. 805 near downtown Huntsville.

Brandon Hays co-founded Second Row Law, where he serves as an attorney. His newest venture is a far cry from the firm: Artefact Supply, a men's boutique on Second Avenue North in Birmingham.

Walgreens is looking to unload as many as 1,000 stores as part of its deal to acquire Rite Aid.

Less than a week after a SpaceX launch pad explosion, federal inspectors have questioned NASA's plan for building the Orion space capsule. Orion is part of an ambitious deep-space plan that starts with a rocket being developed in Alabama.

In past years, the square in downtown Courtland bustled with activity, but it was quiet as Sammy Foster gazed out his store's front door. He shook his head and wondered where the people were and when they might return.

The University of Alabama System is poised to receive millions of dollars in funds from BP's $1 billion oil spill settlement with the state via an agreement to help the state manage and oversee the Gulf State Park Enhancement Project.
Erin O'Flaherty knew the spotlight would be on her as she headed to the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City -- but not just because she'd be representing the Show Me state as Miss Missouri.

O'Flaherty, 23, is the first openly gay contestant in the 95-year history of the New Jersey pageant.

"It's a little hard because I think some people think I'm one-dimensional and I'm not," O'Flaherty told NJ Advance Media. She didn't court the media after she won her state title, but they came calling all summer, so she knows that if she wins the pageant on Sunday, headlines will emphasize her sexual identity.

"I have embraced it because I feel a responsibility to the LGBT community to represent them well," she says.

O'Flaherty's pageant platform is suicide prevention, a personal mission inspired by the death of a friend when she was 13. She uses her platform to support the Trevor Project, an organization that works on crisis intervention and suicide prevention for LGBTQ youth.

"I'm doing this for something that's bigger than me, but I really want to be the best ambassador for the Trevor Project that I can be and one way that I can do that is also being open and authentic about who I am," she says.

O'Flaherty grew up in South Carolina and competed in pageants before coming out as gay when she was 18. The former Miss University of Central Florida has her bachelor's degree in accounting and moved to Missouri three years ago, where she co-owns a women's boutique called Rachel's Grove with her aunt. ("I don't know if I have a better fashion sense, but I definitely know what mine is," O'Flaherty says of her pageant looks, which have included a metallic red gown with a plunging neckline and a white bikini).

The Missouri miss calls herself a lifelong entrepreneur.

"In second grade I would take candy bars to school and try to sell them," says O'Flaherty, who was a finalist for a new Women in Business scholarship at the pageant. "Business has always been my thing."

O'Flaherty says the boutique is just the beginning for her -- for starters, she'd like to expand the store and open more locations.

Erin O'Flaherty during evening gown competition at Boardwalk Hall. (Tim Hawk | For NJ.com)

The last major Miss America first came in 2013 when Nina Davuluri became the first Miss America of Indian heritage. That same year, Miss Kansas, Theresa Vail, became the first Miss America contestant to take the pageant runway showing her tattoos.

For now, O'Flaherty is having fun with the extra attention from national media.

"From the Show Me State, I've got a lot to show you, America!" she trumpeted in her "parade of states" introduction at the first night of preliminary competition at Boardwalk Hall Tuesday.

O'Flaherty has already competed in the swimsuit, evening gown and onstage question portion of preliminary competition.

On Thursday night, she'll tackle the talent category by belting out "Mad Hatter," a song from the musical "Wonderland," which starred Kate Shindle, the former Miss America from New Jersey.

And, whatever happens in Atlantic City on Sunday -- whether it be another pageant first or business as usual -- O'Flaherty's got her eye on the prize.

"I think what I want people to know is that by the end of my year, nobody will be talking about my sexuality," she says. "They'll be talking about the things I did as Miss Missouri or Miss America."

Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @AmyKup or on Facebook.
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U.S. Secret Service vehicles line up outside Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham during a visit by U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, the Democratic Party's candidate for vice president.

(Photo by Greg Garrison/AL.com)

The Rev. Arthur Price, pastor of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, stands outside the church after a visit by U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, the Democratic vice presidential candidate, on Sept. 9, 2016.

Next week on the morning of Sept. 15, Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham will have a memorial service, as it has done every year since 1963.

The church was the site of one of America's most notorious bombings on Sept. 15, 1963. Four little girls were killed.

On the day of the anniversary, the church will hold a memorial service at 10 a.m., followed by a wreath-laying ceremony, with the tolling of the bells at 10:22 a.m., the moment the bomb exploded on a Sunday morning.

U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell has proposed making the church part of a civil rights national park to help preserve its history. Sewell and a delegation from Birmingham including Mayor William Bell and several city council members were in Washington, D.C., Thursday meeting with federal officials to lobby the idea of a civil rights national park in Birmingham.

The churches, while having concerns, have warmed to the idea of a national park.

"We've been assured that it won't affect the church's autonomy," said the Rev. Arthur Price, pastor of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. "We'd just be within the footprint of the park, but remain independent. It's great for the city of Birmingham, great for advancing the city's story, educating people about what happened during the civil rights movement."

Bethel Baptist Church in Collegeville, where civil rights leader the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth was pastor from 1956-61, would also be part of the civil rights park.

The Rev. Thomas Wilder, pastor of Bethel Baptist, said he also favors the proposal. He was concerned at first that the church retain complete independence.

"That's one of the questions we asked originally," Wilder said. "Pastor Price and I both had those questions. We were assured it does not affect our autonomy."

Wilder was part of the delegation that went to Washington on Thursday to ask members of the Obama administration to have President Barack Obama consider using an executive order to establish a civil rights park in Birmingham.

If the churches became part of a national park, there would be park rangers who helped explain the historical significance of the sites, Price said. "It's still at the very early stages," Price said. "We would have a park ranger patrolling the area, talking about the narrative of the district. They would depend on us for the narrative of the church."

Price likened it to Christ church in Philadelphia, which was attended by founding fathers Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, or the Old North Church in Boston, where Paul Revere made his midnight ride. Both those churches are part of federal historic districts.

U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine greets students from Lipscomb University in Nashville on Sept. 9, 2016, outside the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, after he took a tour.

During a visit to Sixteenth Street Baptist Church on Friday, Sept. 9, U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, was informed of the effort to get a civil rights national park in Birmingham, Price said. Kaine seemed supportive, Price said.

The Rev. Thomas Wilder, pastor of Bethel Baptist Church of Collegeville, went to Washington, D.C., on Sept. 8, 2016 to lobby federal officials for a civil rights national park in Birmingham that would include Bethel.

"We've made the history a part of our story," Price said. "What happened in 1963 doesn't define us. We get to tell about the mercy and grace of God and how he preserved the church. Jesus said he would build the church and the gates of hell would not prevail against it. The gates of hell tried to stop the voice of this church, but failed. It galvanized a movement. We continue the legacy."

Beyond the issue of maintaining their autonomy, the churches also want to continue to thrive as active congregations and not be viewed as museums.

"The founders of this church didn't start out to be a museum," Price said. "They started out to share the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ. We continue to do that."
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Methodists and others will gather to drink on Sunday, Sept. 11, 2016, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at Cahaba Brewing Co., 4500 5th Ave. South in Birmingham, for "AvonFest," a fundraiser that supports Avondale Samaritan Place.

(AvonFest)

Carpenter's Hands, a ministry of Canterbury United Methodist and Avondale United Methodist churches, does home repairs for low-income residents in the Birmingham area.

Methodists once took a firm stand in favor of teetotaling - alcohol abstinence - and Methodist churches proliferated with temperance unions that helped make alcohol illegal in America from 1920-33 during Prohibition.

Even in the late 1980s, there was still an active women's temperance club at the West End United Methodist Church in Birmingham that condemned all drinking of alcohol.

Things have loosened up a little, although United Methodists still use grape juice instead of wine for communion.

Methodists and others will gather to drink beer on Sunday from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at Cahaba Brewing Co., 4500 5th Ave. South in Birmingham, for "AvonFest," a fundraiser that supports Avondale Samaritan Place outreach programs. The programs include Avondale Food Co-op, a community food pantry; Beeson Senior Services, for senior citizens, and Carpenter's Hands, a home repair ministry that serves low-income neighborhoods.

"This is to support those ministry areas," said Ralph Yeilding, a member of Canterbury United Methodist Church in Mountain Brook and chairman of the board for Avondale Samaritan Place. "We've been in operation about three years now. It's a collaboration between Avondale and Canterbury United Methodist churches."

The first AvonFest was held last year at Avondale Brewery. "We raised a few eyebrows," Yeilding said. "But I think people are taking it in the right spirit. It's a way to try to reach people. It was well received last year."

Tickets are $50 and can be purchased at the door or in advance at canterburyumc.org/avonfest.

The ticket includes food, craft beer, non-alcoholic beverages, and a special "John Wesley Barley Brew," which is just a nickname for a craft beer Cahaba already has, said Caitlin Ballard, events coordinator for Cahaba.

The AvonFest's reference to 'John Wesley Barley Brew' humorously alludes to the Methodist founder's love-hate relationship with alcohol. This is not an actual beer. The labels pictured here and above are used by AvonFest organizers purely for promotional purposes.

Methodist founder John Wesley was a drinker of malt ale who despised the use of hops in brewing, and who advised church members to "taste no spirituous (distilled) liquor ... unless prescribed by a physician."

Wesley lived during a time when water was often contaminated and beer was safer to drink, so most people drank beer for that reason, Yeilding said. It's noteworthy that Wesley preached in the church where Arthur Guinness, founder of a beer brewing dynasty, attended. Many believe Wesley influenced Guinness to devote much of his wealth to charity.

Wesley was concerned about drinking beyond moderation. "What he was fighting were a lot of hard liquors and spirits bringing people down," Yeilding said. "His whole theme on life was moderation in everything."

The United Methodist Church, in its Book of Resolutions in 2004 and 2008, stated its current position on drinking alcohol: The church "a) accepts abstinence in all situations; (b) accepts judicious consumption, with deliberate and intentional restraint, in low-risk situations; (c) actively discourages consumption for those under the age of 21; (d) actively discourages consumption in high-risk situations; and (d) actively discourages heavy consumption in all situations."
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(Julie Bennett/jbennett@al.com)

State lawmakers found a new source of dollars to help pay for the rising cost of Medicaid during the special session that ended Wednesday.

But like others they've tapped before, it's temporary.

Gov. Robert Bentley said he has ideas about where to turn next, but was not specific.

On Thursday, the governor signed into law a bill that will give Medicaid $120 million over the next two years. The money will come from a bond issue that will be backed by BP's payments to the state from a $1 billion oil spill settlement.

"We have some options that we'll be looking at," Bentley said. "So we'll deal with those over the next few months."

A state lottery is apparently not on the governor's list. His proposal for that died during the special session, which lasted a little more than three weeks.

"The lottery itself is probably not going to come back up in the near future," Bentley said.

The lottery wasn't Bentley's plan of choice, anyway. He tried it only after other proposals to address the persistent shortfalls in the General Fund failed.

Last year, he tried tax increases. Most stalled in the Legislature, although a cigarette tax increase passed.

Lawmakers moved some money from education to the General Fund last year, but have opposed moving more.

Press Secretary Yasamie August said Friday the governor has no plans to try to negotiate a compact with the Poarch Band of Creek Indians, another possible source of revenue.

Republican leaders in the Legislature say it's time to take a hard look at state budgeting, spending and earmarking.

That's not a new idea but has some fresh urgency, they say.

Medicaid, by far the largest spender of General Fund dollars, has estimated it will need $865 million in 2018 and $895 million in 2019.

That's up from the $785 million request for 2017, which lawmakers were not able to fulfill until passing the BP bill.

Medicaid, although the biggest spender, is not the only concern because the General Fund also supports prisons, mental health, state law enforcement, courts and other critical services.

Lawmakers approved a resolution by House Speaker Mac McCutcheon during the special session to set up a Joint Legislative Task Force on Budget Reform. The 14-member panel will begin meeting this month and report to the Legislature early next year.

"We have looked at taxes and have struggled through special sessions trying to deal with taxes," McCutcheon said. "And we looked at the lottery and that failed. At this point, we're ready to take a very serious look at our agencies and the way they budget, unearmarking funds. And all of these are going to be tough issues."

The task force will review tax credits, deductions and exemptions that reduce state revenues, according to the resolution.

Legislators reached a compromise on the BP bill that divided the money between paying state debts, Medicaid and road projects in Baldwin and Mobile counties.

BP will pay the state $1 billion over 18 years to compensate for economic damages for the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

The bill created the Alabama Economic Settlement Authority, which will sell bonds that will be paid off by the BP payments. The governor, state treasurer, speaker of the House, president pro tem of the Senate, secretary of labor and state finance director will make up the authority.

The bond issue is expected to be about $640 million.

Of that, $400 million will go to the Alabama Trust Fund to repay transfers made to balance the state budget in the last seven years.

Mobile County will get $65 million for the U.S. 98/Alabama 158 route to the Mississippi line. Baldwin County will get $55 million for road projects.

And Medicaid will get $15 million in 2017 and $105 million in 2018.

The money applied to debt repayment will help free another $70 million for Medicaid in 2017, closing the $85 million shortfall.

Rep. Steve Clouse, R-Ozark, chairman of the House General Fund committee and sponsor of the BP bill, said there's more work to do.

"I don't want anybody to get a false impression that we've solved the Medicaid problem," Clouse said.

The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has approved the state's plan to serve Medicaid recipients through regional organizations that will be paid a set amount to manage the care of each person they enroll.

The intent is for the regional care organizations to improve prevention and health management and slow the growth in Medicaid costs.

Under the federal waiver from CMS, the state could get up to $748 million over five years to help with the transition to managed care.

The RCOs were scheduled to begin operating Oct. 1, but that was put on hold because of the budget shortfall.

With the shortfall resolved by the BP bill, Bentley said the plan is to try to have the RCOs begin operating in April or July of next year.

Also because of the shortfall, Medicaid had cut payments to doctors for some services, including office visits and children's vaccinations, by more than 30 percent on Aug. 1.

The BP bill mandates that the payments be restored to the pre-Aug. 1 levels. Medicaid does not yet have a firm date for when that will happen.

About one million Alabamians receive Medicaid services. As of last year, 51 percent of those were 18 and younger, 22 percent were blind or disabled and 9 percent were 65 and older and in poverty, according to the agency. The other 18 percent were categories that include pregnant women, parent caretakers and people who receive birth control services.

Federal funds cover about 68 percent of the cost of Medicaid. Many of the rules are also set at the federal level.

Sen. Trip Pittman, R-Montrose, chairman of the Senate's General Fund committee, said Congress needs to reconsider some eligibility rules that have contributed to rising costs. He said that's necessary to make sure services can be provided for the truly needy.

"That's going to be part of the solution," Pittman said.

While not a long-term solution for all the strain on the General Fund, the BP bill does address two significant obligations.

It designates $162 million in proceeds from the bond issue to repay the Alabama Trust Fund for money transferred in 2010 to prop up the budget. The state Constitution requires that money to be repaid by 2020, but lawmakers had not repaid any.

The BP bill designates $238 million to repay the Alabama Trust Fund for part of the $437 million transferred from 2013-2015 to prop up the budget.

The bill requires the remainder of that transfer, about $184 million, to be repaid by 2033.
An appeals court Friday upheld a Shelby County judge's order tossing out a murder indictment against a former Marine in the 2013 shooting death of a mentally unstable woman under Alabama's stand your ground law.

Demetrius R. Watson, of Calera, had been indicted in the Dec. 3, 2013 shooting death of Lisa Langston, 40, of Clanton. Shelby County Circuit Court Judge Dan Reeves, however ruled, after a hearing in October 2015 that Watson was immune from prosecution under the state's self-defense stand your ground law.

Shelby County prosecutors claimed there wasn't enough evidence presented at the immunity hearing to establish by a preponderance of the evidence that Watson was justified in using deadly force. They also argued that although the circumstances Watson faced were disturbing, "the evidence at the pretrial immunity hearing failed to establish that his use of deadly force against Lisa Langston was justified."

Prosecutors also contended Watson was armed with a pistol when he approached Langston, therefore he was not free from fault in creating a dangerous situation "and cannot prevail on an assertion that he acted in self-defense." Also, they argued, Watson had no reason to suspect that Langston possessed a deadly weapon and therefore his use of a deadly weapon was not justified.

The appeals court, in a unanimous decision, disagreed with prosecutors' arguments.

"Contrary to the state's assertion, the record validates the trial court's finding that the preponderance of the evidence was in favor of granting Watson immunity from prosecution," the appeals court stated in its opinion.

Watson's attorneys issued this statement after the appeals court ruling:

"Richard S. Jaffe and Brett Knight of Jaffe, Hanle, Whisonant and Knight appreciate the insightful analysis by the court of appeals in this landmark stand your ground case. They also feel relieved for Demetrius Watson who had no choice but to defend himself against deadly force."

Shelby County District Attorney Jill Lee declined to comment on whether they will appeal the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals ruling.

Alabama's stand your ground law states: "A person who uses force, including deadly physical force, as justified and permitted in this section is immune from criminal prosecution and civil action for the use of such force, unless the force was determined to be unlawful."

The law allows for a hearing to determine whether a suspect should be immune from prosecution under that law.

Reeves in his order tossing out the murder charge against Watson outlined what he said were the facts in the case:

The events of Dec. 5, 2013 happened in an isolated neighborhood in rural Shelby County, in the dark of night, and after Watson received a call about an erratically behaving woman approaching his property.

Watson first saw the unknown woman when she was on all fours, rolling around the ground and acting very erratic.

Watson "calmly and repeatedly" tried unsuccessfully to get the woman to leave the property.

The woman rushed towards Watson screaming that she was going to kill him.

Watston was in possession of a gun, "which he has a license to carry, for his safety as well as his family's safety."

Watston warned the woman that he was armed and she needed to stop. She refused and instead threated to kill him and charged at him. A cousin of Watson testified at the hearing that Langston began running after him screaming "you killed my baby. You killed my baby."

The woman continued to aggressively approach Watson and threatened to kill him even after he fired a warning shot towards the ground.

Scared for his life as well as his families, Watson had to make a "split-second decision" and fired a second shot at her.

Watson testified clearly he had no choice.

Watson had no criminal history and was honorably discharged from the Marines.

Langston ,who had previously been diagnosed with a bi-polar disorder as well as depression, also had been on a number of medications and was legally drunk at the time of the shooting.

"There was no evidence that the defendant had any animosity toward Ms. Langston that he was motivated by anything other than reasonable fear of serious bodily harm to himself or others present," Reeves stated in his order
A man wounded by gunfire during an encounter with Birmingham police is recovering today at UAB Hospital today.

Willie James Burrell, 34, is listed in good condition, according to a hospital spokesman. Birmingham police today confirmed Burrell was injured by a bullet discharged from a police officer's weapon. Initially, it wasn't clear whether it was the officer's weapon, or one of Burrell's two guns, that fired.

"After speaking with investigators with the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency (ALEA) State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) It has been determined that our officer (BPD) discharged his weapon,'' Lt. Sean Edwards said in a prepared statement. "The investigation is still ongoing. Once the investigation is complete, the case will be turned over to the District Attorney's Office."

The shooting happened just after 4:30 p.m. Thursday in Birmingham's Gate City neighborhood. Police received a call about an armed man near the intersection of Joppa Court and Georgia Road. Edwards said the there was a crowd outside - including numerous young children - and the suspect was spewing vulgarities.

Officers began to chase the suspect and the officer's gun discharged, wounding Burrell. An officer was taken to the hospital with minor injuries - cuts and bruises - but is OK. Once investigators determined the bullet was fired from a police gun, the probe was handed over to ALEA. Senior Trooper Chuck Daniel today said there are no updates in the case.

Court records show Burrell was convicted last year of third-degree burglary and sentenced to 15 years in prison with one year to serve. He also has previous convictions for escape and theft of property. In addition to his criminal convictions, Burrell has had multiple arrests including discharging a gun into an occupied building and attempted murder in 2008, but those charges were dismissed.

Burrell was transported by Birmingham Fire and Rescue to UAB. "Before he left here, he was cussing, ranting and raging," Edwards said Thursday. "We are grateful and thankful that this individual didn't get an opportunity to harm any of these kids who were out here. A lot of residents were out here."
Three Columbus, Georgia residents were convicted in federal court this week of carjacking a man who was attempting to return a vehicle that was advertised for sale on Craigslist.

Stanley Jawan Hinton, 24, Jacinto Taron Robinson, 26, and Tawanda Aeiah Sears, 40, were convicted of carjacking by a federal jury, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Alabama.

Hinton and Robinson were also convicted of brandishing a firearm during the crime.

According to evidence produced at trial, in late August 2014, a victim purchased a vehicle from Hinton after seeing it advertised on Craigslist.

After buying the car, the victim discovered problems with the title, and that the rims on the car were rentals. He then demanded his money back.

On the evening of Sept. 4, 2014, Hinton, Robinson, Sears and an unidentified suspect met the victim at the Circle K gas station in Opelika, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office. The victim was going to return the car and the defendants promised to refund the money.

After arriving at the gas station, the unidentified suspect got into the purchased car, pointed a pistol at the victim and forced the victim out of the car. The gunman and Robinson then drove away in the victim's vehicle, and Sears and Hinton drove off in a separate car. The victim ran inside the gas station convenience store and called 911.

During the investigation, Opelika and Columbus, Georgia police and the FBI investigators were able to identify the suspects and learned that the Craigslist advertisement had been posted by Hinton under a false name.

"These days, you must be careful when buying from or selling to a stranger," stated U.S. Attorney Beck. "Sadly, everyone cannot be trusted, please be cautious when dealing with people you do not know. However, those that take advantage of these trusting people must be prosecuted, those that use guns to steal must be prosecuted, and we will ask the court to give these criminals a sentence that is commensurate with their threats and/or violence."

Hinton, Robinson and Sears will be sentenced this fall.

All three defendants are set for sentencing this fall. Hinton and Robinson face a potential sentence of up to 15 years for their carjacking convictions, plus a consecutive, mandatory minimum sentence of seven years for the brandishing a firearm conviction. Sears faces a sentence of up to 15 years in federal prison for her carjacking conviction.

"When transacting business via Craigslist or other similar internet sites, use your common sense," stated Robert Lasky, FBI Special Agent in Charge, Mobile Field Division. "Consider arranging the actual purchase or exchange of goods at your local police station or in other well-lit, highly visible areas during daylight hours."
Three Montgomery street gang members were recently convicted on charges related to a three armed convenience store robberies in Elmore and Autauga counties in July 2014.

Kevin Levarius Martin, 27, pleaded guilty to conspiracy, robbery of a convenience store and brandishing a firearm during the robbery following a November 2015 indictment.

Tremane Darnell Carthen, 37, and Scottie Jeroma Groce, 26, were found guilty on the charges Thursday by a federal jury, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Alabama.

All of the men are associated with the Crip street gang in Montgomery.

Evidence presented at trial also showed that Carthen and Groce pointed firearms at the cashiers while committing the robberies.

The defendants face a sentence of up to life imprisonment and are expected to be sentenced in December 2016.

"These three went into a convenience store, stuck a gun in the cashier's face, and robbed the store. They did this three times," stated U.S. Attorney George L. Beck Jr. "These illegal gun-toters need to be taken off the streets in order to keep our communities safe and I commend law enforcement for their hard work in this case."
It's a bottom-of-the-barrel ranking for Birmingham when it comes to the best places in America to raise a family.

Wallethub recently compared 36 different metrics - including things such as cost of housing, quality of local schools and healthcare systems and the availability of recreational opportunities - to rank the best places in America to raise a family. (You can see the complete methodology here.)

The results weren't good for Alabama.

Out of 150 cities analyzed in the rankings, Birmingham came in at number 150 - 122nd for family fun; 134th for health and safety; 108th for education and child care; 138th for affordability; and 146th for socioeconomic environment.

In individual categories, Birmingham was ranked among the worst places in America in terms of the number of playgrounds per capita; violent crime rate per capita; and highest divorce rate.

According to the ranking, the best place to raise a family in Alabama was Huntsville, although the Rocket City only landed at number 63 nationally. Montgomery was ranked 110th and Mobile 133rd.

Welcome to Friday's Wake Up Call. Let's see what's happening:

No one is interested in giant basket-shaped building

Who would have thought an office building built to look like a giant basket would be hard to sell?

The Longaberger Company, a basket manufacturer and distributor, is trying to unload its seven-story Ohio structure that's built to look like one of its creations. The company built the office in 1997 for $32 million and originally listed it for $7.5 million.

It's now been marked down to $5 million.

Man jailed in sex case leads race for Richmond mayor

A former Virginia lawmaker who spent time in jail in a sex scandal involving a 17-year-old girl is the current front-runner in the Richmond mayor's race.

A poll from Christopher Newport University shows Joseph Morrissey is the choice for 28 percent of the city's voters, far ahead of the other seven candidates in the race.

Last year, Morrissey spent three months in jail over misdemeanor charges related to contributing the delinquency of a minor. Morrisey later married the woman involved in the case and they have two children.

North Korea reportedly tests another bomb

North Korea appears to have tested another nuclear bomb.

The bomb caused a magnitude 5.3 earthquake near the test site. In January, the reclusive Asian country tested its fourth nuclear device at the same site, causing a 5.1 magnitude earthquake.

North Korea is banned by the United Nations from testing any nuclear devices.

Until tomorrow.
A decision by a judge in Georgia to deny a transgender man's petition for a name change is being challenged by a gay rights group, according to news reports.

Columbia County Superior Court Judge J. David Roper rejected a petition filed by a 21-year-old man to legally change his name from Delphine to Andrew Baumert, WRDW TV reported.

An appeal filed by Lambda Legal on Thursday states Roper would only approve "gender neutral" names, the report states.

"Roper would have "approved a name he could live with ... like Morgan, Shannon, Shaun and Jaimie." Those names are considered gender-neutral, which is the only thing Judge Roper would allow for both men," the report continued.

"It was humiliating and insulting to be told by the court that I would not be able to change my name legally when I'm already known as Andrew by my family, my friends, and my community," said Baumert in press release released by Lambda Legal to WXIA-TV.

"I work in labs all day, but it doesn't take a scientist to know that this judge's ruling was based on sexist opinions about 'appropriate' names."

Roper explained his position in court, another report states.

"My policy is to allow someone who claims to be transgendering--and I've had them in various stages--my policy is to permit someone to change, in your case, from an obviously--what appears to me to be a female name to something that is gender-neutral," Roper said, according to a hearing transcript that was posted on LAW.com.

"He addressed Baumert as 'ma'am' and suggested that Baumert might want to "rethink the name situation and come back to me with a name that I can live with," that report stated.

Roper said for Baumert to use a traditionally male name would "confuse or mislead the general public."

Thursday's appeal "came just months after (Lambda) filed a similar appeal against the same judge after he refused to change a transgendered man's name from Rebeccah to Rowan," WAAY TV reported.
Scott Garrett

Rep. Scott Garrett

(Facebook/Scott Garrett)

A political action committee that supports Democratic candidates is calling on a Republican New Jersey congressman to "move to Alabama" because he's in favor of allowing Confederate flags at military cemeteries and says the GOP should not give its blessing to gay candidates.

House Majority PAC has spent $320,000 and counting to attack Rep. Scott Garrett, including an ad titled "Dixie," which uses the song as background music while a disembodied voice says Garrett's views are "perfect for rural Alabama."

"Scott Garrett's views might sound fine in the Land of Cotton, but we're not singing his tune in New Jersey," the voice says.

Meanwhile, the PAC also bankrolled plane banners over Labor Day weekend to advertise an anti-Garrett website - garrettbigotry.com - while sending a message to the congressman: "Rep. Scott Garrett - Move to Alabama."

The Alabama Republican Party was sent a copy of the ad but did not immediately respond to a request for comment. House Majority PAC also didn't immediately return a message for comment while Garrett's campaign could not be reached.

The ad campaign is attempting to portray Garrett as simpatico with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. The tactic appears to be working, according to a Democratic poll that found Garrett's Democratic challenger in a dead heat with the incumbent congressman, NJ.com reported.
The now-closed ITT Technical Institute faces three lawsuits from employees that said it violated the law when it abruptly shut down earlier this week.

The lawsuits claim the for-profit college violated the federal Worker Adjustment Retraining and Notification Act - or WARN Act- that requires employees be given at least 60 days notices before a mass layoff. The law covers employers with more than 100 employees and businesses sites with more than 50 workers.

ITT announced Tuesday it was closing all locations nationwide amid a crackdown on federal student loans used at the school. The move left as many as 45,000 students without a school and 8,000 employees without a job.

The suits were filed in Indiana and Delaware, the Indianapolis Business Journal reported. The employees are seeking wages and benefits they would have received if given 60 days' notice before closing.

One of the lawsuits is seeking class-action status to cover all employees who lost their jobs.

In August, the U.S. Department of Education announced it was banning ITT from enrolling new students who depended on federal loans to pay for classes after a series of investigation into its recruiting and job placement claims. The department also required ITT to increase its financial reserves to cover costs related to a possible closure.
Bay St. Louis Police Chief Mike De Nardo

Bay St. Louis Police Chief Mike De Nardo at his office in early 2016. The Bay police chief shot himself outside the police station and later died. (John Fitzhugh/Biloxi Sun Herald/TNS)

(John Fitzhugh)

Federal investigators had received "unsubstantiated criminal intelligence" about a Mississippi police chief who killed himself but had not yet opened a formal investigation, an official said Friday.

Jason Denham, the resident agent in charge for the Gulfport field office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said the agency received the allegations only a day or two before Bay St. Louis Police Chief Mike DeNardo's death on Thursday.

"ATF had not opened a formal investigation but had received to this point unsubstantiated criminal intelligence regarding the chief's activities," Denham said.

"We had not approached him. We had not confronted him."

He said barring DeNardo's death, the agency would have moved forward to investigate and confirm or dispel the intelligence. He could not give details on what the intelligence was about.

DeNardo shot and killed himself in the parking lot of the city's police station Thursday after being suspended from his duties and relieved of his equipment, officials said. His death shocked many in the tourist-friendly beach community and raised questions about what might have sparked his actions.

Mayor Les Fillingame told The Associated Press on Thursday that DeNardo had just been suspended inside the police station when he went out to the parking lot and fatally shot himself. The mayor said DeNardo was under investigation by the Hancock County Sheriff's Office. He wouldn't give details but said he believed DeNardo would have been cleared of any wrongdoing.

"He was just a tremendous public servant, and he's going to be greatly missed," Fillingame said.

Hancock County Sheriff Ricky Adam told WWL-TV that DeNardo was involved in an ongoing personnel issue. Adam said in comments aired by WLOX-TV that sheriff's department staff members were on hand to help escort the chief from the office.

"At that time, it just kind of went bad," he said.

DeNardo also appears to have been grieving a personal loss. Doug Seal, a member of the city council, said Friday that DeNardo's mother had passed away just last week, and he had been away for her services.

During an emergency city council meeting Thursday, the council turned control of the police department over to the sheriff's department.

The Sun-Herald reported that the move was temporary, as the city goes through a tumultuous period.

An interim replacement for DeNardo has been named but will report to the sheriff's department.

According to the police department's website, DeNardo had been with the department since 2004. The mayor appointed him police chief in 2010. Before coming to Bay St. Louis, DeNardo worked for 18 years at the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff's Office in Louisiana, the website said.
The remains of an 18-year-old Cullman man, who was declared missing in action during the Korean War, have been identified and are being returned to his family for burial.

Army Cpl. Larry M. Dunn was a member of Company B, 2nd Engineer Combat Battalion, 2nd Infantry Division, when his unit was fighting through a roadblock that was heavily defended by enemy forces near Sonchu, North Korea on Dec. 1, 1950, according to the Department of Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.

Dunn went missing during the battle.

According to the Department of Defense, Dunn never appeared on any list of the captured released by North Korea or the Chinese Communist Forces, nor did any repatriated Americans report that he was a fellow prisoner in any internment camp in North Korea.

Because of lack of information, the Army declared Dunn deceased as of Dec. 31, 1953.

Dunn will lie-in-state at Cullman Heritage Funeral Home at 255 County Road 1435 in Cullman on Sept. 14-16 from 8 a.m.-5 p.m. to allow the community to pay their respects and sign the memorial register, according to the funeral home.

The family will receive friends on Sept. 17 from 10 a.m.-11 a.m. Funeral services will follow.

After the funeral service, Dunn and his family will be escorted to Mt. Carmel Cemetery by the Patriot Guard Riders. Dunn will be laid to rest with full military honors.

According to the Department of Defense, the United Nations and communist forces exchanged the remains of war dead in what came to be called "Operation Glory" in 1954.

All remains recovered in Operation Glory were turned over to the Army's Central Identification Unit for analysis. The remains they weren't able to identify were interred as unknowns at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii, known as the "Punchbowl."

In 1999, due to advances in technology, the Department of Defense began to re-examine records and attempt to identify the remains again.

The remains, later identified as Dunn, were exhumed on Aug. 20, 2015.

Scientists used anthropological, dental and chest radiograph comparison analysis as well as circumstantial and material evidence to identify the remains as Dunn.

More than 7,801 Americans remain unaccounted for from the Korean War.

According to Dunn's obituary, Dunn lost his mother, Lula Graves Dunn, at the age of 11.

Dunn was survived, at the time of his death, by his father, John Paul Dunn; six brothers, Fletcher, Bud, Paul, J.L., Bill and Ben Dunn; a nephew, Charles Dunn; and a niece, Barbara South, all of whom are now deceased.

Survivors presently include Dunn's nieces, Rhonda Dunn Courington, Margie Whitehead, Joyce Estes, Terri Gilbert, Pam Dunn, Sandy Hughey and Susie Kampis; and nephews, John L. Dunn, Jerry Dunn, Brian Dunn, Michael Dunn, Delone Dunn, Ronald Dunn and Joey Dunn.
Man.JPG

Sheffield, Alabama, police are looking for this man. (Facebook)

Authorities in Sheffield, Alabama, are looking for a man who was seen in a disturbing viral photo in which he is holding a gun to a dog's head.

Sheffield police Friday afternoon identified the man as Zachary Wade Moore, Jr., and they are asking the public's help to find him, per WHNT.

There are currently no warrants for his arrest, but is wanted for questioning.

People with information are asked to call Sheffield Police at 256-383-1771.

Sheffield Police Chief Greg Ray previously told WAFF News the name of the man was known but hadn't been released because there were no charges pending.

The photos hit Facebook on Sunday and quickly spread.

The Sheffield Police Department released a statement in response to the overwhelming support for the dog in the photo:

"Sheffield Police would again like to thank everyone again for the concern for the dog that has been posted. Once again, we are looking into it. Information can not be released at this time. A earlier post from Sheffield Police was deleted because of language in the comments . If there is any post that have unacceptable language will be deleted. If your post was deleted by accident, we apologize for the inconvenience. We are working on it."

Sheffield Police would again like to thank everyone again for the concern for the dog that has been posted. Once... Posted by Sheffield Police Department on Tuesday, September 6, 2016

Ray told WAFF the man has multiple warrants in Tuscaloosa and Florence for misdemeanors.

"Should it be a crime, yes it should be, but it might not be," Ray said. "We have to prepare ourselves that it could be a possibility. We are going to gather every fact we can and present it to a prosecutor."
Babies' blood samples spark privacy concerns

In this Thursday, May 12, 2016 photo, technician Sherron Harris collects a blood sample from newborn Ellie Bailey in a nursery. A grant from the March of Dimes will increase screening and programs for babies and moms affected by substance abuse. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)

(Rick Callahan Associated Press INDIANAPOLIS -- Two-day-old Elli)

About three years ago, a nurse at Northeast Alabama Regional Medical Center diagnosed a newborn with the hospital's first known case of neonatal abstinence syndrome - drug withdrawal caused by the mother's use of prescription painkillers.

"She just had a baby that was irritable, with diarrhea, excoriation, that was symptomatic and she said she just Googled it," said Kim Hurst, a nurse and lactation consultant. "She Googled Lortab withdrawal and it was all of those symptoms. She said she called the pediatrician and said, 'this baby is withdrawing from Lortab.'"

Since then, the number of babies born dependent on drugs has skyrocketed at the hospital.

"We were seeing a lot of drug dependent babies come through our nursery," said Shelley Birchfield, director of obstetric services for Regional Medical Center.

Since July 2015, 282 mothers with some type of drugs in their system have given birth at Regional Medical Center, according to Birchfield. Most of the women have a prescription for painkillers or methadone, but the hospital has also seen several cases involving illicit drugs.

Nurses and doctors did what they could to manage the babies' symptoms with medicine, slowly weaning them over the course of several weeks. In the case of illicit drugs, hospital workers often notified child welfare and sent the mothers home.

Because of the high number of drug-positive mothers, they began to grow concerned about the costs of care. Babies who needed treatment often languished for weeks, recovering slowly and expensively in the special care nursery. Mothers sometimes vanished into the child welfare and criminal justice systems - often charged with chemical endangerment of a child, a felony that can carry up to 10 years in prison.

"To treat one of these babies with neonatal abstinence syndrome is $60,000," said Dr. Jeff Collins, an Anniston obstetrician. "And then there are the social costs to the mother. It just gets to be overwhelming."

Hospital leaders sought guidance from East Tennessee Children's Hospital in Knoxville, which has developed a protocol to treat babies dependent on drugs. The hospital uses low lighting and volunteers to cuddle and comfort newborns in withdrawal, and they keep families together as often as possible, encouraging breastfeeding among mothers who haven't used illicit drugs.

A grant from the March of Dimes has helped Regional Medical Center train nurses to recognize the symptoms of drug withdrawal in newborns. The hospital has improved screening practices to identify drug-exposed babies, and they routinely hold them in the hospital for five days to watch for onset of withdrawal.

"We have always encouraged our moms to breastfeed, even with these prescription drugs, because we have seen how it helps with the withdrawal process," Birchfield said. "We see that baby doing much better staying with the mom, and that helps the mom too."

Babies who breastfeed and stay with their mothers require far fewer days of treatment, according to a report on drug-dependent babies commissioned by the state of Tennessee. So leaders at Regional Medical Center approached the problem from different angles - recruiting volunteer cuddlers and reaching out to county prosecutors.

Prior to last year, Calhoun County prosecutors typically treated cases where a newborn tested positive for drugs as child abuse, a charge that carries a five-year sentence.

Now, mothers who agree to drug treatment can avoid criminal prosecution. A case worker from Birmingham-based Aletheia House set up an office at Regional Medical Center for women who want to seek help. The treatment program allows babies and mothers to stay together during drug rehabilitation.

The partnership with Aletheia House and county prosecutors sets RMC's program apart from other nurseries that treat drug-dependent babies, said Jennifer Gallahar, a nurse and lactation consultant.

"Without the counseling part, we're not really doing anything any different than any other hospital," she said.

The goal is to keep families together and link mothers to treatment. Nurses also work with mothers to educate them about the symptoms of drug withdrawal, and what they should expect after the baby is released from the hospital, Hurst said.

"I want you to be able to help this baby and know what to do when you get home, and know if you have to bring the baby back," she said.

Eventually, the hospital would like to work more closely with obstetricians in the area to identify patients who use prescription and illicit drugs. If they can find and help these mothers before the baby is born, they may be able to avoid involvement with child welfare, Birchfield said.

Hospital officials want mothers to know they won't face criminal prosecution if they are honest about their drug use and willing to seek treatment. The nurses said they have heard from pregnant women who have said they are scared to talk to their doctors about drug use for fear of arrest.

"We're not here to judge, we're here to do the best thing," Birchfield said. "We want what is best for mom and baby. Even with [neonatal abstinence syndrome], the best thing is to keep that mom and baby together and help with that bond."
9-9 tropical satellite 7 pm.jpg

There were three tropical waves being watched by forecasters on Friday. The wave nearest Florida had its chances of development upgraded from 10 percent to 30 percent on Friday, and the hurricane center said winds of 30-35 mph were found east of its center earlier this afternoon. It looked less organized by Friday evening, forecasters said. (National Hurricane Center)

It's the busiest stretch of the hurricane season in the Atlantic, but there were no named storms on the board as of Friday.

The National Hurricane Center was monitoring three tropical waves, however, and one had better chances than the others of developing into something more.

Here's where forecasters think the three tropical disturbances will move over the next five days. The one in red has the best chance of becoming a depression over the next few days. (National Hurricane Center)

That wave, Invest 94L, has been watched even before it came off the coast of Africa several days ago. On Friday evening it was located in the central Atlantic, about 1,000 miles east of the Lesser Antilles.

The hurricane center said that storms increased on Friday evening, and 94L could gradually develop into a tropical depression by this weekend or early next week.

The chances of it becoming a tropical depression were raised to 90 percent over the next five days.

The hurricane center's long-range outlook keeps the storm on a northwest path that could eventually turn it more to the north, and possibly away from land.

A second tropical wave is closer to the U.S. but had lower chances of development.

That wave, Invest 93L, was located just north of the Leeward Islands and Puerto Rico on Friday evening.

The hurricane center described it as a weak and disorganized disturbance.

The wave was expected to move to the west-northwest at 15 mph, which could take it near the Bahamas over the next few days.

However, the hurricane center said the environment wasn't expected to be favorable for a storm to develop.

The chances of development were 10 percent over the next five days.

The third wave is the closest to the U.S., but the hurricane center lowered its chances of development from 40 percent to 30 percent on Friday evening.

The area of low pressure had winds of 30-35 mph east of its center earlier this afternoon, the hurricane center said.

However, the disturbance looked less organized by Friday evening, forecasters said. Strong upper-level winds pushed its heavier storms farther southeast of an area of low pressure located just south of the lower Florida Keys.

Those winds are expected to remain unfavorable for significant development, the hurricane center said, while the system moves west and into the southeastern Gulf of Mexico during the next couple of days.

The disturbance was forecast bring squalls and gusty winds to the Florida Keys tonight and Saturday.

The Atlantic hurricane season runs through Nov. 30.
Tim Kaine stepped out of an SUV and placed a white flower next to the memorial marking the side of the 16th Street Baptist Church where four black girls were killed in 1963.

Kaine, a senator from Virginia and Democratic vice presidential nominee, stopped by the historic church on Friday during a visit to Birmingham; he was scheduled to later attend a fundraiser in Mountain Brook. He also took swipes at Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump over alleged impropriety concerning Trump's foundation and the GOP candidate's affinity for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Hillary Clinton's running mate, who took a tour of the church's memorial nook and nave, said the tensions of the 1960s when the church was bombed by the Ku Klux Klan have not been entirely erased despite progress in race relations.

"When you come to a place like 16th Street Baptist Church, you see the pain of division and hatred, but you also see the resilience of a church that was bombed," Kaine said. "It reminds us that the powers of division and the powers of hatred don't do any good ... [and] we are not free from it today."

Kaine has served as Clinton's attack dog on the campaign trail, and that continued Friday, when he suggested that Trump's foundation may have donated to the Florida attorney general so the office would not pursue an investigation of Trump University. He also cited a report that Trump's charity contributed $100,000 to help an organization bring a lawsuit against New York's attorney general, who filed a lawsuit against the university.

"I think there's a very fair concern that it was done ... to silence an investigation," Kaine said of the contribution to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Kaine also took aim at Republican vice presidential nominee Mike Pence, who agreed with Trump that Putin is a "strong leader."

"[Trump's] comments Wednesday night [at a military town hall] and then Mike Pence's comments yesterday really just were shocking," Kaine said. "What is it about running your economy into the ground that's leadership? What is it about invading other nations that's leadership? When Mike Pence said that, I just had to reflect that if you don't know the difference between leadership and dictatorship, then where do I start with you?"

He said Trump's and Pence's praise for Putin was "irrational hostility," and said Trump does not have respect for President Barack Obama.

"You can disagree with him but we've got a great system. We ought to be proud of our system. You ought to respect the office and anyone who would suggest that Vladimir Putin is a better leader than the guy who got bin Laden ... to me, is just irrational hostility," Kaine said.

Meanwhile, Kaine also weighed in on Birmingham Mayor William Bell's push to have the 16th Street Baptist Church and Birmingham's civil rights district be designated a national park. He said he agreed with the effort.

"It definitely has historic merit that would suggest a national park," he said. "Sites like this are critical to who we are as a nation and are very worthy of recognition."
ALDOT says U.S. Hwy 98 is ready, visiting with officials from ALDOT to check out construction of U.S. Hwy 98.

U.S. 98 construction, shown in this June 2009 picture. The completion of the U.S. 98 project, estimated to cost $180 million, has been stalled due to a lack of funding. Lawmakers included $65 million toward the project thanks to the BP oil spill settlement legislation. (file photo)

(Bill Starling)

The U.S. 98 improvement project in Mobile County has been referred to as a road that leads to nowhere. Its extension into Mississippi, costing in the hundreds of millions of dollars, has been stalled for decades due to a lack of funding.

But the improved road is still atop the list of priorities for state transportation officials. With a penchant for dangerous and sometimes fatal car crashes, the old highway has long held the nickname "Bloody 98."

For the first time in decades, the U.S. 98 project - which would open a new connection via Alabama 158 to the highway west of Semmes - has a financial boost: $65 million included in the overall allocation of the state's $1 billion settlement with BP stemming from the 2010 oil spill.

Gov. Robert Bentley signed the allocation into law Thursday.

"Everyone is acutely aware of the problems with that dangerous two-lane road and the citizens want to see the new 98 completed," Mobile County Commissioner Connie Hudson said. "Hopefully, this is the catalyst that gets us moving forward."

Mobile County's entire $65 million of road money included in the BP bill will go to U.S. 98.

Baldwin County will get $55 million, which could advance three important widening projects: Canal Road in Orange Beach, Alabama 181 near Daphne and Fairhope, and U.S. 31 in Spanish Fort.

State lawmakers funneled $120 million to the two coastal counties in a last-minute negotiation of a settlement package that largely pays off the state's debts.

Earlier in the week, key lawmakers from elsewhere in Alabama threatened to give nothing to the coast for roads. Conference committee negotiations led to the $120 million award - the minimum that some coastal lawmakers said they would tolerate.

"This was the best we could do given the circumstances," Sen. Bill Hightower, R-Mobile, said.

Addressing 'Bloody 98'

Montgomery politics aside, even the entire $120 million wouldn't be sufficient to fully address the long-idled U.S. 98 project, where traffic is increasingly becoming more dangerous as new subdivisions and shopping areas pop up. County officials reported that during a two-year stretch from 2012-14, the road saw a 62 percent spike in crashes.

The full project costs are pegged at an estimated $180 million. Although state and local transportation officials acknowledge that the $65 million can't cover all the bills, it inspires hope.

Sen. Rusty Glover, R-Semmes, is confident that state and federal money will be available to augment the BP allocation.

"If we can get a 3-to-1 match with federal dollars, that should take care of it," Glover said.

Tony Harris, spokesman with the Alabama Department of Transportation, said that ALDOT Director John Cooper will be meeting with local officials to present proposals on how best to proceed.

Possibly, officials said, the project could be scaled down, somewhat. Among the options, according to Glover, is to make two lanes of highway, rather than four lanes, in some segments.

"The objective is to get the heavy traffic off the current 98. Right now, it's so congested because it goes through a densely populated area of Semmes with traffic lights," Glover said. "An (Alabama 158) without traffic lights will have the traffic flowing much smoother."

U.S. 98 is a widely traveled route for beach-bound tourists coming from the Mid-South and Midwest.

"We have a tremendous amount of traffic from Missouri, Iowa, Arkansas, Louisiana ... It's amazing how many people are going through that section of Highway 98 headed for Destin or Orange Beach," Glover said.

Hightower said better access along U.S. 98 is vital, too, for the regional's medical facilities.

"U.S. 98 is critical to the burn unit at the University of South Alabama (Medical Center)," he said. "The large manufacturers rely on their class of hospital to treat trauma patients."

According to a Bentley spokeswoman, the BP money will be available for use in fiscal year 2017, which begins next month.

'Highly-traveled' priorities

In Baldwin County, officials are hoping that $55 million - coupled with matching funds or alternative financing measures - will cover the costs of three widening projects labeled as a "high priority."

At Orange Beach, the estimated $17.4 million widening would establish five lanes along Canal Road from the Foley Beach Express to Alabama 161.

Along Alabama 181, the widened highway would extend from Baldwin County 64 to Baldwin County 32. And in Spanish Fort, the widening on often-congested U.S. 31 would improve access to schools and major commercial centers.

"They are basically two-lane roads that are a priority for ALDOT," Sen. Trip Pittman, R-Montrose, said. "They are some of the most highly traveled two-lane roads in the state."

"Those particular projects are state roads and absolutely need to be addressed regardless of any funding," Baldwin County Commissioner Chris Elliott said.

Pittman said he hopes that all three projects can get started with the $55 million. "With the lack of money at the state level, it's important we do all three," Pittman said. "The goal should be to get it to three."

The BP legislation, initially, specified Baldwin County's allotment going toward the construction of the Baldwin Beach Express. But the 24.5-mile extension from Interstate 10 to I-65 is estimated to cost around $200 million.

"While it's a good plan and something that needs to happen, there is not enough money to tackle that project," Pittman said.
While it remains difficult for Trump to get what he needs to secure victory, there are five reasons he may win.

From what was a fairly dominant position, the latest opinion polls will concern Hillary Clintons presidential campaign.

She is now tied with Donald Trump in Florida, down in Ohio and slightly ahead in Pennsylvania  all states anyone who wants to win the White House really has to take.

While it remains difficult for Trump to get what he needs to secure victory, there are five reasons to believe he may win.

LATEST POLL FIGURES: Clinton vs Trump National: 45.6/42.9 Florida: 44.8/44.5 Ohio: 43.7/42.7 Pennsylvania: 46.8/40.6 Source: RealClearPolitics average of national polls

1. Trump has consistently confounded expectations: Throughout the primary campaign we were told there was no way he would win the Republican nomination. He was too unlikeable, too abrasive; he had no political operation to speak of. It didnt matter. He crushed the campaigns of 16 others, many of whom had been planning their assault on the White House for years. Many people like him because he is outspoken and outrageous. Hes seen as something different from the politics and the politicians many feel have failed them. And while he may carry the tag Republican, some of his positions have appeal to disgruntled Democrats.

2. The race is tightening: The bump Clinton received from what was perceived as a successful convention was never going to last. After the Labour Day holiday, which traditionally marks the end of the summer in the US, people start paying more attention to Novembers election. Heres another thing to consider: Its just over a week since Trump really started airing TV ads in support of his campaign. The Clinton campaign has blanketed the airwaves in the crucial swing states, spending millions of dollars. And still she hasnt been able to pull away and create a gap big enough to put the election to bed.

3. Turnout: Trump doesnt have a great on-the-ground operation in important swing states, but the Republican Party does. And it has scared voters worried that a low turnout will mean Republicans losing control of both the Senate and possibly even the House of Representatives. That will inspire voters to make their way to the polls. The Democrats get-out-the vote operation is considered more advanced and more sophisticated, but fear is an incredible motivator.

OPINION: Trumps race for the White House  A conspiracy?

4. People dont trust Clinton: The Democratic candidate hoped to have put her email scandal behind her by now. So many times her campaign has reacted to the latest story on her use of a private server with Nothing new here, lets move on, but it hasnt worked. She would be the most unpopular candidate ever to run in a presidential election, if she wasnt up against Trump. She still has to convince Bernie Sanders supporters that she shares their aims and goals and will adopt at least part of his agenda if she wins the White House. She has enthusiastic supporters, of that theres no doubt, but she doesnt energise the base in the way Obama did. And that could also hit turnout.

5. Elections are about change: Every American election is about change. Clinton has been a part of the national political scene for 30 years. She is regarded as an integral part of the establishment. Trump has promised radical change in many things; a different way of thinking, a new approach to solving problems. He has presented himself as the change candidate. And people may just take the gamble to shake things up, launch the experiment of a new kind of politics with the knowledge they can change things in four years if it doesnt work out.





There are other things to consider here. The debates, the first one just over two weeks away, can change the face of the race. Trump is not prepping in the traditional way, with briefing books and mock debates. He, instead, is taking his free-range style to the debate stage, hoping a TV-savvy performance will overwhelm his Democratic opponent and send him surging in the polls.

And there is the October surprise. Pundits and campaigns always watch for something spectacular popping up in the final weeks. There is an even bigger prospect of that this year with the hacking of the Democratic Partys emails. WikiLeaks, which dumped the first batch just before the Democratic convention, says there is more to come. That could be damaging for Clinton.

A close reading of the polls still suggests Clinton is on course to win the White House.

But this is an election where all perceptions have gone out the window. And Trump has been the biggest beneficiary.
Athens, Greece  European Union leaders will convene in Bratislava next week to talk about the future of the beleaguered bloc after Britains bombshell decision to leave it. But the leaders of southern Europe stole a march on that summit on Friday, outlining their priorities in Athens.

Europe is at a crossroads. It must re-inspire its people  this requires substantial measures to improve the lot of European citizens, said Greek Premier Alexis Tsipras, who convened the group of seven EU members stretching from Portugal to Cyprus.

The Athens Declaration, also signed by France, Italy, Spain and Malta, calls on the EU to double the size of a $350bn economic stimulus package for the continent. It also calls for a substantial development package for North Africa to help stem a tide of economic refugees of which Greece, Italy and Malta have borne the brunt.

Although this years flows have so far amounted to 270,000 people, a quarter of last years, there are fears that the numbers could soon take a sharp tick upwards.

Mediterranean countries have faced difficulties on behalf of Europe on the refugee issue, said French President Francois Hollande. He spearheaded calls to strengthen internal security and Europes external border by making a new European Border and Coast Guard operational by years end.

OPINION: Three paths to European disintegration

It is the internal imbalance of Europe, however, that rankles most. Ever since the financial crisis of 2008, the high-deficit south has buckled under pressure from the north to curtail spending and improve its creditworthiness, so as not to undermine the credibility of the euro. The effects of austerity are now reflected in a political divide: The south has gone broadly left of centre, the north right.

Europe cannot go on just being technicalities, finances, rules, administration and austerity, said Italys premier, Matteo Renzi. The Europe of tomorrow must above all be based on profoundly felt values because this is what has made us great: the social Europe, the Europe of ideas, the Europe of beauty.

Greeces Tsipras was even more direct in an interview on Thursday with French newspaper Le Monde. We must decide whether we want a European Union or a German Europe, he said.





Eurozone countries have unemployment of 10.1 percent in the latest figures to be released, compared to 8.6 percent for the EU as a whole, further undermining confidence in the EUs most ambitious integration project.

Professor Loukas Tsoukalis of Athens University says the economic and political division of Europe is now very difficult to overcome.

What happened between 2010 and today is that the burden of adjustment has fallen exclusively on the deficit countries, he says. Greece had to adjust, Spain, Portugal, no doubt about it. But Germany has to adjust as well, because what is happening today is that Germany is running a current account surplus in the order of 7-8 pc of GDP.

The south cannot easily match German competitiveness, nor, believes Tsoukalis, will northern countries agree to large handouts to the south. But he does hold out hope that they can be convinced to spend some of their surplus at home.

While Greece does more and should do more in terms of domestic reform  the Germans should also do something to encourage domestic demand in Germany, to encourage public investment in Germany, that may help regenerate growth in Europe. And that will be their contribution, he says.
One year since Congress allowed nuclear deal with Iran to go ahead, Iranian Americans say life has only become harder.

New York  Last September, many Iranian Americans hoped that US President Barack Obamas nuclear accord with Iran marked the start of a diplomatic thaw that would make it easier for them to live in the US and deal with folks back home.

This week, one year after Congress allowed that deal to pass, many say they were short-changed. Visa rules are tougher now; and Washingtons unilateral embargo on Iran has barely changed, making routine money transfers a risky business.

And Donald Trump, the Republican presidential hopeful who wants to regulate entry to the US for Muslims, is not making life any easier.

The nuclear deal with Iran has benefited Europeans and loosened up sanctions there, but theres been no relief for Iranian Americans, Tina Monshipour Foster, a New York City lawyer for clients of Persian heritage, told Al Jazeera.

US officials often dont understand the embargo law and are overzealous in their prosecutions.

One of her clients, a freelance Iranian-American interpreter, received a $3,000 payment from a European publisher for working on a book. Unwittingly, they cited the reason for the payment as: Farsi translation.

The bank reported this to US officials, who froze the transfer. There was no violation of sanctions, no illegal activity. Just the use of the word Farsi caused the money to be frozen, and a whole lot of trouble in getting it back, said Foster.

The translator, who asked not to be identified, spent time and more than $3,000 to release the funds. Other clients have had bank accounts closed and been barred from opening new ones, often with little by way of explanation, added Foster.

For the banks, its not worth the risk of a big government fine, even when transactions are legitimate, said Foster.

Bank transfers impossible

Al Jazeera spoke with several Iranian Americans who said a heavy-handed approach continued long after the Iran deal was passed. Many cited cases of discrimination, but wished to remain anonymous for fear of irking sanctions officials.

There are an estimated one million Iranian Americans. Many describe themselves as victims of tensions between two nations that have derided each other as the Great Satan and part of an Axis of Evil since Irans religious revolution of 1979.

Washingtons decades-old trade embargo bars US citizens from supplying goods, services or technology to Iran or its government. Family remittances are exempt, but even these are difficult because direct US-Iran bank transfers are impossible.

This affects many Iranian Americans, including students at US colleges, who struggle to get money from back home to pay tuition fees, and others who have a hard time receiving their inheritance or settling the estates of deceased parents in Iran.

Many turn to hawala, an honour-based banking network of the Middle East. Transfers are usually above board, but the system is prey to money launderers and terrorism financiers. US police probes and prosecutions can follow.

READ MORE: Tourism on the rebound in Iran

Last years deal between Iran, the US and five other world powers, which curtailed Tehrans nuclear projects in exchange for sanctions relief, raised hopes that Irans banks would quickly join the global economy.

Major European banks were expected to start transacting with their Iranian counterparts, meaning they could act as intermediaries for money transfers between relatives in the US and Iran. This has not happened.

They are wary of being targeted by US regulators  and with good reason. In 2014, the US fined Frances top bank, BNP Paribas, an eye-watering $9bn over banned transactions involving Iran, Sudan and Cuba.

Investment top priority

In June, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said the psychological remnants of curbs on Iran were still deterring business, and that Washington should do more to encourage banks to engage with Tehran.

Many Iranian Americans agree. According to a Zogby Research Services poll in March, more than half of 400 respondents said that letting Americans invest in Iran was a top priority. More than a third said it was time to lift the embargo.

According to Tyler Cullis, a legal fellow at the National Iranian American Council, a lobby group, at least one major European bank is poised to start transacting with Iranian institutions within the next 12 months.





Despite that glimmer of light on the horizon, the nuclear deal has faced blowback from hawkish US politicians, Cullis added.

The nuclear accords detractors have really taken the scalpel and tried to tear this thing to pieces, he told Al Jazeera.

Meanwhile, Iranian-American academics say that the embargo still stops important research projects.

Narges Bajoghli, 34, an anthropologist at New York University, said college dons often nix visits to Iran because they are scared of being sued by the government.

She described archaeological digs and sociology trips being blocked this past year, even when the research doesnt come close to national security concerns. It prevents knowledge production; it goes against everything we stand for, she told Al Jazeera.

A US Treasury spokeswoman acknowledged that US citizens continue to be generally prohibited from engaging in most transactions or dealings with Iran  even after the implementation of the nuclear deal.

But, she added, some non-commercial, personal remittances continue to be allowed.

Tougher visa rules

Money is not the only issue for an Iranian-American community that keeps strong ties with relatives. Some 64 percent connect with family and friends overseas several times a month; more than a third travel back occasionally.

In January, the US imposed tougher visa rules on members of 38 nationalities  including most Europeans and some Asians  who have recently travelled to Iran, Syria, Iraq or Yemen. Extra restrictions were also imposed on dual citizens.

That law was passed by a Republican-dominated Congress after the deadly Paris attacks.

Hadi Ghaemi, an Iranian American who runs the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, said the new rules made it harder for many academics, businessmen and other Europeans with Middle Eastern connections to visit the US easily.

All these issues  from US foreign policy to fears of terrorism and Muslim migrants  have rolled into a 2016 presidential campaign that pits Trump, a raucous property mogul, against Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Ahead of the November 8 vote, Clinton speaks of maintaining Obamas nuclear accord, but Trump decries a disastrous deal and calls for restraints on Muslims coming to the US to stop more San Bernardino-style attacks.

Progress for Iranian Americans has frozen in such a bitter cycle, said Ghaemi. Theres a lot of uncertainty what will be the fate of this deal following the election of either Clinton or Trump, he added.

Trumps talk jangles nerves. Some 68 percent of Iranian Americans in the Zogby poll expressed worry that rhetoric would spur discrimination  a sharp uptick from the 39 percent of respondents the previous year.

Theres a tremendous amount of concern that their ties to Iran as well as their ethnicity could lead to discrimination, Morad Ghorban, a policy director for the Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans, a research group that commissioned the survey, told Al Jazeera.

Follow James Reinl on Twitter: @jamesreinl
Amman  Ammans first Design Week, which took place across three major locations in the Jordanian capital, was a celebration of the citys blossoming arts and design scene.

More than 100 exhibitors took part in this months show, including renowned artists and architects from across the Arab world. Organisers explored the links between contemporary and traditional Jordanian crafts, while revitalising disused spaces as creative hubs. Ordinary people who create art in their spare time were exhibited alongside international designers.

Design Week was a festival of juxtapositions, with different disciplines, backgrounds and styles joining together to create new possibilities in a place where design is still finding its feet.
The market works in N Korea as it does elsewhere in the world: It brings growth, but it also brings income inequality.

Andrei Lankov is professor of Korean Studies at Kookmin University, Seoul. He is the author of "The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia".

North Korea is a secretive country  and, like most secretive countries, it is especially susceptible to cliche-ridden descriptions. Some such cliches are basically well-founded, while others are seriously misleading or outdated.

One of the most commonly cited cliches is that North Korea is a destitute, starving country. Once upon a time, such a description was all too sadly correct: In the late 1990s, North Korea suffered a major famine that, according to the most recent research, led to between 500,000 and 600,000 deaths. However, starvation has long since ceased to be a fact of life in North Korea.

Admittedly, until quite recently, many major news outlets worldwide ran stories every autumn that cited international aid agencies saying that the country was on the brink of a massive famine once again. These perennially predicted famines never transpired, but the stories continued to be released at regular intervals, nonetheless.

In the last year or two, though, such predictions have disappeared. This year, North Korea enjoyed an exceptionally good harvest, which for the first time in more than two decades will be sufficient to feed the countrys entire population. Indeed, according to the recent documents of the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations), North Koreas harvest totaled 5.03 million tonnes of grain this year, if converted to the cereal equivalent. To put things in perspective, in the famine years of the late 1990s, the average annual harvest was estimated (by the same FAO) to be below the 3 million tonne level.

However, this does not mean that North Korea is an affluent country. The CIA fact book estimates North Koreas GDP per capita to be $1,800. Even this estimate is probably excessively optimistic. There is a good reason to believe that the actual per capita GDP of North Korea is in the region of $800-900. This means, of course, that North Korea is a seriously poor country. However, poverty does not equal starvation.





The gradual improvement in the food situation is closely related to changes in other areas of North Koreas economic life. Contrary to what a majority of lay people tend to believe, the last decade has been one of moderate economic growth north of the DMZ.

Not starving, but not well-nourished either

Since North Korea ceased publishing virtually all economic statistics more than 50 years ago, it is very difficult to estimate the true scale of this growth. The Bank of Korea  South Koreas central bank, generally considered to be the most reliable source of information on North Koreas economic situation  estimates that economic growth averaged 1.3 percent over the last 15 years in North Korea, though the rate has been known to fluctuate significantly from year to year. Ironically, it seems that North Koreas economic expansion was sped in 2006-7 even as the country was subjected to a further round of international sanctions in the wake of missile and nuclear tests.

Anecdotal evidence, as well as observations made by foreigner visitors and residents in North Korea confirm a picture of steady, if slow and uneven economic improvements in North Korea. Still, these observations also leave no room for doubt that North Korea remains by far the poorest nation in East Asia.

In recent years, one can see a proliferation of expensive boutiques in the North Korean capital. The North Korean new rich  both corrupt officials and successful black market entrepreneurs  can easily buy world-renowned luxury brands for their friends and family.

There is more traffic than ever on the once notoriously empty avenues of the capital. Pyongyang, like some other cities in the country, is also experiencing a minor construction boom. While theoretically, trade in real estate is illegal, there is a growing property market in Pyongyang and other major cities, and this market cannot be described as anything but dynamic. A good apartment in Pyongyang, which would cost less $10,000 just 10 years ago would now set you back between $70,000 and $100,000.

Another standout of North Korean economic expansion is the growing private restaurant trade. These businesses are nominally owned and operated by the state. In practice, however, wealthy private individuals set up restaurants and register them with state agencies in order to disguise the business from the potentially dangerous local and central government. A good meal at such places can cost as much as $15-20 (sometimes more)  enough for an entire family in a countryside village to live for a week or two. Nonetheless, many such restaurants are doing a roaring trade.





As already hinted above, one should not paint an excessively rosy picture of the situation. A significant part of the population is still malnourished, and the average North Korean family considers itself reasonably affluent if they can afford a new bicycle. So, North Korea is very, very poor indeed. Nonetheless, it is clearly not a starving country anymore.

Private economy expanding

Why is North Koreas economy growing? It seems that the single most important factor is the gradual and seemingly unstoppable expansion of the semi-legal private economy. According to the most recent estimates, about 75 percent of North Korean household income now comes not from the state but from assorted private economic activities  activities that are now tacitly tolerated by the government. North Koreans today tend to their very own private plots, run their own food stalls, make clothes, footwear (and even counterfeited Chinese cigarettes) in unofficial workshops, and of course, they trade.

This private economy is massive. Strictly speaking, most of these activities remain illegal under North Korean law, but the North Korean government is unable (and perhaps unwilling) to enforce many of the outdated rules and regulations. Indeed, it may have no other choice since if these laws were enforced another round of starvation (and even a massive rebellion) might ensue.

North Korean governments army of bureaucrats are not immune to the allure of the private sector either. Some are passive: They merely take bribes, leaching off the hard work of North Koreas entrepreneurs and private workers. Many, though, utilise their government positions more creatively (and less parasitically) by becoming de-facto entrepreneurs, by using the capital, land, equipment and/or people under its control to make goods and services for profit.

Many government-appointed managers at North Korean state factories have basically become private entrepreneurs, and have made themselves rich (by this countrys very modest standards). In the process they have also contributed to their countrys slow-motion economic revival.

When it comes to the economy, the market works in North Korea as well as it does in many other parts of the world. It brings growth, but it also brings a large amount of income inequality and social tensions with it too. In spite of North Koreas Stalinist rhetoric, North Korea is now a country in which there are rich and poor  and the gap between these two groups, already large, is widening quickly.

However, this does not mean that the rich are getting richer while the poor get poorer. It seems that the proverbial rising tide is lifting all boats, albeit at very different rates.

Andrei Lankov is professor of Korean Studies at Kookmin University, Seoul. He is the author of The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia.
Western democracies seeking to dominate the region have been the greatest impediment to accountability in Muslim world.

The failure of the July 15 coup attempt in Turkey once again exposed a cognitive chasm between many in the Western and Muslim worlds when it comes to upholding ostensibly universal values surrounding democracy and self-determination.

Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre who, along with Frantz Fanon, led the Western intellectual struggle against colonial mass slaughter and torture in Algeria, defined mauvaise foi or bad faith, as insincerity towards ones professed highest values which inevitably ends in self-deception and defeat.

In this vein, it was sobering to watch the leading news networks in the United States, such as CNN and Fox, when it seemed the Turkish coup might be succeeding.

A number of American politicians and network experts could scarcely suppress their glee over the thought that the elected government would be overthrown and another General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi type junta in Turkey would, according to them, serve American interests.

Even The New York Times, labelled the popular defence of democracy a counter-coup, and the millions of common citizens who repeatedly defied death as being akin to Erdogans sheep.

Further, such bad faith was shown by liberal California Democratic Congressman Brad Sherman, a stalwart of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, who jumped to cheer the Turkish coup adding in an Orwellian tweet that it would, lead to real democracy.

This of course echoed US Secretary of State John Kerrys infamous declaration, as the blood of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massacred at Egypts Rabaa Square had yet to congeal, that General Sisi was restoring democracy in Egypt.

Fearing accountable government in the Muslim world

The bitter irony here is, of course, that Western democracies seeking to dominate and exploit the region have long been the greatest external impediment to accountable and representative governments in the Muslim world.

This goes back even to the very emergence of constitutional reforms and parliamentary institutions in the late 19th and early 20th century as both the Ottoman State in 1877-78 and 1911-13, and Iran from 1905-07 were subjected to European imperial invasions intended, in part, to subvert such modernising and strengthening reforms.

Following the devastating 9/11 attacks, when the profits from such neo-imperialism in the region literally went up in smoke, both Bush and Obama seemed capable of moments of mindfulness in admitting that the US sacrificing of democracy and development in the region for the sake stability had achieved neither. by

It continued with Operation Ajax, the 1953 CIA and MI6 orchestrated coup against Irans democratically elected leader Mohammad Mosaddegh.

During the Cold War, the US pursued similar ruthless strategies against left-leaning democratic rulers in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, however, the Middle East remains an anomaly in that, as such anti-democratic policies have not been suspended here with the fall of the Berlin Wall.

In Algeria in 1991, both Washington and Paris gave the green light to the eradicateurs of the Algerian junta to cancel the elections won by the moderate Muslim democratic Islamic Salvation Front, plunging the country into a civil war taking more than 200,000 lives.

The juntas intelligence agencies even turned to the ruthless, ISIL-like Salafist Armed Islamic Group of Algeria (GIA), using it to carry out the massacres of thousands of pious pro-democracy Muslims in the Blida region, as well as terrorist attacks in France, when it looked as if Paris might slacken its support for Le Pouvoir or Algerias unelected military regime.

OPINION: The West fails the coup test in Turkey

In 2006, when Hamas swept democratic elections in Gaza against the thoroughly corrupt and compromised Fatah regime, Israel and the US reacted with punitive fury against the civilian population for daring to have made the wrong choice.

Similarly, neo-conservatives in the George W Bush and Dick Cheney administration derailed the peaceful transition in Somalia of the moderate Islamic Courts Union party only to see the country plunge back into civil war and the emergence of their own Golem in the form of the al-Shabab organisation.

What goes around comes around

Apologists for such predatory policies like to claim that there are few Jeffersonian democrats in the region and that elections lead to one person, one vote, one time.

The indulgence of the original Jeffersonian democrats in ethnic cleansing and slavery aside, this conceit overlooks the fact that democracy emerges not from some immaculate conception, but as an iterative process teaching trust, compromise, and the legitimacy of ones political opponents overtime.

OPINION: The lessons to be learned from Turkeys failed coup

A more credible explanation for why many Western governments and pro-Israel interest groups have long feared democracy in the Muslim world is that popular and accountable governments would insist on controlling their own markets and natural resource wealth, and would exact a heavy price for predatory policies in the region, including the dispossession of the native Palestinian population and the Western propping up of dictators and single family despotisms.

Following the devastating 9/11 attacks, when the profits from such ongoing neo-imperialism in the region literally went up in smoke, both George W Bush and Barack Obama seemed capable of moments of mindfulness in admitting that the US sacrificing of democracy and development in the region for the sake stability had achieved neither.

Yet, the Obama administration fecklessly acquiesced in the coup in Egypt and the broader betrayal of the Arab Spring in Syria, Bahrain and Libya.

As many in the region have noted, ISIS is Sisi spelled backwards. Brexit and the rise of neo-fascist movements in the US and Europe clearly demonstrate that continued Machiavellian Western efforts to uphold despotism and safeguard the post-Ottoman Sykes-Picot fragmentation of the region now threatens democracy and fragmentation in the West itself.

M Hakan Yavuz is a professor of political science at the University of Utah and the author of numerous academic articles and books on modern Turkey.

Mujeeb R Khan was a Fulbright researcher in the Gulf and is affiliated with the Department of Political Science at UC Berkeley.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
Abu Hajer al Homsi, a founding member of Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, is killed in suspected US strike, rebel source says.

A senior military commander and founding member of the Syrian rebel group Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, formerly known as the Nusra Front, has been killed by a US air strike that hit a meeting of the groups leaders, rebels said.

Abu Hajer al-Homsi, whose real name was Abu Omar Saraqeb, was killed in a raid on a rural part of Aleppo province on Thursday, which was most likely carried out by a US fighter jet, a rebel source told the Reuters news agency.

Another source told Reuters that the rebels were at a hideout in the village of Kafr Naha when the strike hit them.

The AFP news agency also reported Saraqebs death, citing rebels.

Few other details emerged, but a photo of another top leader known as Abu Muslim al-Shami was circulated on social media, showing him alive to refute reports he had also been killed.

The leader of the group, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, was not believed to be at the meeting.

Since a US-led coalition began launching raids on groups in Syria and Iraq in September 2014, bombing raids have frequently targeted Nusra Front figures in Syria, also resulting in the deaths of scores of civilians. But Thursdays attack marked the first time a key figure had been targeted since the group changed its name.

The Nusra Front announced in July that it was ending a relationship with al-Qaeda and changing its name to Jabhat Fatah al-Sham in an attempt to appeal to those Syrians who had misgivings about its links with al-Qaeda, and the presence of foreign fighters in its ranks.

The move was dismissed by Washington, which said it would continue to consider the group terrorists.

READ MORE: The ramifications of the Nusras split from al-Qaeda

Battle for Aleppo

US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov have been trying to reach a deal on deeper cooperation on Syria, particularly in their raids on the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS).

The two were expected to meet in the Swiss capital Geneva on Friday for face-to-face talks.

The talks will focus on reducing violence, expanding humanitarian assistance for the Syrian people, and moving toward a political solution needed to end the civil war, US State Department spokesman John Kirby said in a statement.

The meeting comes as government forces make major gains on the outskirts of the divided city of Aleppo.

Taking Aleppo would be the biggest victory for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in five years of fighting, and would demonstrate a dramatic shift of fortunes in his favour since Russia joined the war on his side last year.

The Syrian conflict began as a mostly unarmed uprising against Assad in March 2011, but quickly escalated into a full-blown civil war.

More than 280,000 Syrians have been killed during the war, 4.8 million have fled the country, and 6.6 million have become internally displaced by the violence, according to the UN.

The UN special envoy to the country, Staffan de Mistura, has estimated that more than four million people may have been killed, but that is not an official figure.
Egyptian police investigated Italian PhD student Giulio Regeni before his brutal murder, according to prosecutors.

Egyptian police investigated Italian student Giulio Regeni days before his abduction, torture and murder, but dropped the probe after assessing he posed no threat, Egyptian and Italian prosecutors said on Friday.

Regeni, a 28-year-old Cambridge University PhD student, disappeared on January 25 in central Cairo.

His body was later found by the side of a road bearing signs of brutal torture.

READ MORE: Giulio Regeni  Why Europe is bowing to Sisi

Egypt has denied that its security forces were involved, but Italy recalled its ambassador to Cairo in April in protest at what it said was a lack of progress in the investigation.





The state prosecutor met his counterpart in Rome this week to further the investigation.

In a joint statement, the two prosecutors said Regeni, who was researching Egyptian street vendor trade unions, had been under investigation for three days by Egyptian police in January.

The Egyptian state prosecutor pointed to information that the head of the street vendor union passed on specific information about the Italian student to Cairo police, the statement said.

Police probed his activities for three days that concluded that his activities were of no concern to national security, and based on that dropped the investigation.

READ MORE: Giulio Regeni and the case of media selection

This is the first official Egyptian acknowledgement that Regeni had been on the radar of security services.





Trade unions are an especially sensitive political issue in Egypt, with governments fearing strikes and labour unrest.

Police officials had at first suggested Regeni might have died in a road accident, and have since offered little information on their investigation.

An Italian autopsy showed that his body was covered with cuts and his bones were broken, indicating he was hit with fists, batons and hammers.

A letter X was carved on his forehead and hand, according to the report cited by Italian media.

His parents, Paola and Claudio Regeni, said the report suggested he had been tortured by a professional.

It seems clear to us that the torture inflicted, and the number of times our son had to endure it and the methods, can only be the perverse deed of some torture professional, they told Italian media on Wednesday.

OPINION: Egypts notorious police brutality record

In March, police linked a gang that extorted foreigners to Regenis death, saying his belongings had been found in the home of the gang leaders wife. He and four others were killed in a shootout with police.

Fridays statement said Egypts prosecution service was still investigating the gangs links to Regenis abduction.

The Egyptian and Italian prosecution would also continue trying to retrieve footage from CCTV cameras in a metro station that Regeni is believed to have entered before being abducted.

Egypt had said the programme to retrieve the deleted footage was very expensive, and had asked Italy to help.

It had also accused the Italian prosecution of unconstitutionally demanding thousands of phone records which it refused to provide.
French prosecutor says the three women arrested for planning an attack in Paris were being directed by ISIL in Syria.

French authorities have said that three women arrested for planning an attack in Paris were being directed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

Anti-terrorism prosecutor Francois Molins said on Friday that the three suspects were determined to carry out ISILs deadly ideology, and had been given direction by members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group members in Syria.

The women, aged 39, 23 and 19, were arrested on Thursday night as part of a probe into a car, loaded with six gas cylinders and three cans of diesel, that was found on Sunday parked near Notre Dame Cathedral.

During the arrest one of the women, identified as Sarah H, 23, stabbed a policeman in the shoulder who had been keeping watch on them from an unmarked car near the apartment, the investigator said.

Teams of police then swooped on the women and in the struggle, the 19-year-old Ines Madani was shot in the thigh and the ankle.

OPINION: Dont let ISIL divide France

According to Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, the women were preparing new violent  and imminent actions.

Four other suspects linked to the alleged attack plot  including two brothers and their girlfriends who are aged between 26 and 34  were arrested separately on Tuesday on Wednesday.

Plots foiled

A bar employee working near Notre Dame had first raised the alert on Sunday after noticing a gas cylinder on the back seat of the parked car, police said.

The car had no number plates and its hazard lights were flashing.

Although the cylinder on the back seat was empty, five full cylinders were discovered in the boot. Three bottles of diesel fuel were also discovered in the vehicle, but police found no detonators.

If it was an attack plot, the method was very strange, a police source said on Thursday.

OPINION: France  How to win the war against ISIL

France is on high alert following a string of attacks claimed by ISIL, including last Novembers coordinated attacks in which assailants killed 130 people in Paris.

Speaking on Thursday, President Francois Hollande referred to attack plots that have been foiled in recent days, without elaborating.

Cazeneuve on Friday told French daily La Presse that 260 people have been arrested in connection with terrorist networks or operations since the beginning of the year.
Athens says it cannot afford to take in more asylum seekers from other EU countries as stipulated by Dublin Regulation.

Greece has rejected the reactivation of the so-called Dublin Regulation, which allows other EU member states to send refugees back to the country, a government spokesman said.

Migration spokesman Giorgos Kyritsis said on Friday that his country, which hosts a bulk of the refugees in the continent, cannot afford to take in more asylum seekers from other European countries.

A country such as Greece which receives a large number of refugees from Turkey, and also hosts a large number of refugees  practically without any outside help  cannot be asked to receive refugees from other European countries, Kyritsis told The Associated Press. That would be outrageous.

The Dublin Regulation that governs Europes Schengen passport-free area stipulates that people wishing to apply for asylum must do so in the first member country they arrive in. In most cases that was Greece, whose eastern islands were overwhelmed last year by migrants packed into smugglers boats from Turkey.

But even before last years migration crisis, many of its EU partners had stopped enforcing the rule because Greeces asylum and migrant reception systems were below standard.

Unless there is an effective means of redistribution across the EU, a revised Dublin system will force refugees upon receiving states closest to the external border, above all Greece, Italy and to a lesser extent Spain, Brad Blitz, migration expert and professor of international politics at Middlesex University in Britain, told the the Associated Press news agency.

READ MORE: Refugees in Greece  We are living in a prison here

That will create an ever greater strain on (Greeces) asylum system and reception capacity.

The Greek governments decision came as Athens hosted leaders of Europes Mediterranean countries.

Greeces Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras met French President Francois Hollande, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, and leaders from Portugal, Cyprus and Malta in Athens to discuss the bloc migration and debt crises.

Regardless of our ideological backgrounds, what unites us is our common sea, and common problems, and faith in a European vision, Tsipras said at the start of the talks.

Immigration is high on the agenda. Fridays talks are in preparation for next weeks informal EU leaders summit in Bratislava, Slovakia, as the bloc remains rattled by Britains referendum vote to leave the EU and recent gains for the nationalist vote in Germany.
Gilad Paz, who has conducted most of his activism online, has not yet faced consequences, but fears official reaction.

This article has been updated with a response from Gilad Paz.

Toronto, Canada  An Israeli man has applied for asylum in Canada, citing fears of political persecution for supporting the growing movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel.

But Boycott from Within, an activist group made up of Israeli citizens who support BDS, said they did not know Gilad Paz before news reports surfaced about his asylum claim.

We do not know Paz beyond what weve read in the media, Boycott From Within told Al Jazeera in a statement.

Palestinian civil society groups launched a worldwide call for BDS in 2005.

OPINION: On its 11th birthday, BDS leads nonviolent resistance

The Palestinian-led movement has three main goals: to end Israels occupation of Palestinian territories, to guarantee equal rights for Palestinian citizens of Israel, and to enforce the right of return of Palestinian refugees.

Paz, an Israeli labour lawyer, landed in Montreal on August 11 and applied for asylum on the basis of political persecution, according to multiple media reports.

I am politically persecuted in Israel. I realised that people like me have no place in the country, so I decided to leave before its too late, Paz told Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth.

Paz, who initially declined requests for further comment, later contacted Al Jazeera to refute Boycott From Withins statement, contending that he is in contact with a member of the group who has also assisted with his asylum claim.

His hearing with Canadian immigration officials is scheduled for September 29, he said.

Paz told the Electronic Intifada website in late August that he has conducted most of his activism online. On his Facebook page, Paz has shared numerous posts in support of BDS and critical of Israels policies towards Palestinians.





Paz told Electronic Intifada that he had not yet faced any personal consequences for supporting BDS, but feared a backlash after increasingly hostile, anti-BDS rhetoric from Israeli politicians.

According to Matthew Jeffery, a Canadian immigration lawyer based in Toronto, an asylum claimant in Canada does not have to have been subject to persecution to show that [they] will be persecuted in the future.

Persecution can be in the future tense, Jeffery told Al Jazeera. It comes back to credibility and does there seem to be independent evidence in the country, conditions to establish that this person is likely to be subject to persecution?

In 2013, Israel  excluding the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip  was added to Canadas designated country of origin list, which includes countries that do not normally produce refugees.

Lindsay Wemp, a spokesperson for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, told Al Jazeera in an email that the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (IRB) hears all eligible asylum claims, regardless of country of origin.

READ MORE: BDS in the US  Boycott Israel movement gains support

Applicants from countries on the designated country of origin list have their claims expedited, and may appeal against a negative decision to the IRBs Refugee Appeal Division, Wemp explained. Decisions are based on the individual merits of the claim and are made in accordance with Canadas immigration laws, she added.

Between 2006 and 2015, Canada recognised 237 refugee claimants from Israel as either Convention Refugees  individuals who left their homes owing to well-founded fears of persecution based on factors such as religion or political opinion  or persons in need of protection, out of a total of 2,319 new applications, according to the IRB.

The rhetoric is becoming more heated. We also know for a fact that Israel is investing in political, financial and legal means to counter BDS, especially in North America. by Ofer Neiman, Israeli activist who supports BDS

The annual acceptance rate for Israeli applicants fluctuated between five and 17 percent in that same period.

Jeffery said an asylum claimant will testify in front of the IRB, which will then examine the credibility of that testimony, any documentation available to back up the claimants story, and independent reports on political persecution in his or her home country.

If they find the person to be credible and accept their testimony, then often that by itself can be sufficient to establish a persecution, Jeffery said.

Boycott from Within contends that Palestinians are the main target for Israeli government repression, citing a general assault on left-wing activism in Israel.

In June, Israels Minister of Public Security, Strategic Affairs and Information, Gilad Erdan, said that he aimed to enact legislation to make BDS supporters in Israel pay a price. He later clarified that he was not referring to causing them physical harm.

The message has to be that its not worth being a BDS activist, Erdan said. Anybody who works to delegitimise Israel, to bring an end to the Zionist enterprise, they should know that there will be a price.

READ MORE: Is the BDS movement facing new challenges in the US?

In May, the Israeli government refused to issue a travel document to Palestinian human rights activist and BDS cofounder Omar Barghouti, essentially barring him from leaving the country. That travel ban was temporarily lifted in August.

Israel has already passed a law banning calls to boycott the country or its Jewish-only settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. Israeli Minister of Transport, Intelligence and Atomic Energy Yisrael Katz also recently said that Israel should carry out targeted civil eliminations of BDS leaders.

Paz told Electronic Intifada that Erdans statements were part of what pushed him to leave Israel. I made the decision after the speech of Gilad Erdan; I concluded that I am not going to have any choice, Paz said.

Ofer Neiman, an Israeli activist who supports BDS, told Al Jazeera that Palestinians face the most severe punishment for standing up to Israeli human rights abuses  including torture and detention without trial  but Jewish-Israeli dissidents are also increasingly under pressure, facing death threats, assaults and difficulty keeping jobs.

The rhetoric is becoming more heated, he said. We also know for a fact that Israel is investing in political, financial and legal means to counter BDS, especially in North America.

Neiman said the Israeli government views the BDS movement as a threat to the countrys legitimacy and image abroad.

Israel has always depended on strong international support to carry out its violations of Palestinian human rights, and BDS is now emerging as a significant threat to this nefarious status quo.
New UN report finds Palestinian economy would double in size without Israeli occupation.

The economy of the occupied Palestinian territories would be at least twice as large if the 49-year-old Israeli occupation was lifted, a new United Nations report has found.

Occupation imposes a heavy cost on the economy of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, which might otherwise reach twice its current size, reads the report released by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) on Tuesday.

The report, which analyses the economy of the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip for 2015, underlines Israeli restrictions on the movement of people and goods; systematic erosion and destruction of the productive base; losses of land, water and other natural resources, as some of the main factors hindering the territories ability to thrive.

It adds that the separation of the Palestinian market from international markets, the blockade on Gaza, expansion of illegal Israeli settlements and the construction of the separation wall on Palestinian land, are further causes for the underdeveloped state of the Palestinian economy.

In 2015, Israel withheld Palestinian fiscal revenue for four months, donor aid declined and Israeli settlements continued to expand into the Occupied Palestinian Territory, while poverty and unemployment remained high, according to the report.

READ MORE: Ramadan Tov  How to stop funding Israels occupation

Palestinians in the occupied territories have not had full control over their economy since 1967, when Israel occupied East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Although the Palestinian Authority (PA) was established in 1994 with the hope of creating an independent state and economy for the Palestinians, expansion of illegal Israeli settlements and the building of the separation wall have made the creation of any feasible state increasingly difficult to achieve.

Today, Israel collects tax on behalf of the PA and has, in the past, used the revenue as a means of pressuring the Palestinian leadership into compliance.

Israel also has direct control over more than 60 percent of the West Bank, which renders much of the land inaccessible to Palestinian farmers, according to the report. Israeli products are also imported into the Palestinian market at subsidised prices.

Ikrema Rayyan is the director of a nonprofit organisation in the West Bank village of Beit Doqu called Beit Doqu Development Society, which aims to generate jobs and sustain the towns local economy through farming and food manufacturing.

According to Rayyan, Israeli restrictions and policies have contributed heavily to Beit Doqus economic strangulation.

The Israeli imports into the Palestinian market are much cheaper and at a much higher quality than Palestinian produce, Rayyan told Al Jazeera.

Although our products are all natural, the Israeli closures and restrictions on the Palestinian economy have brought our businesses down.

The UN report estimates that 55 percent of all Palestinian trade occurs with Israel, while the Palestinian territories account for just 3 percent of total Israeli trade, describing the situation as an asymmetric trade dependence that renders the Palestinian territories a captive market.

READ MORE: How settlement businesses sustain Israeli occupation

Hadeel Badarni, a Jerusalem-based economic researcher, says Israel is profiting from the occupation.

While these reports are crucial, they portray the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza as separate economies rather than Palestinian captive markets feeding one economic web woven by Israel, Badarni told Al Jazeera.

Israeli and international corporations continuously profit from the occupation whether they are headquartered inside or outside the green line, she continued, citing private Israeli companies in illegal settlements.

Palestinians are being stripped of their natural key resources in billions of dollars yearly. The conservative estimate is that they are losing $3.4bn as a result of the occupations exploitation, said Badarni, a fact highlighted in the report.

Israeli exploitation of key natural resources on Palestinian land, she continued, has left the Palestinian territories de-developed, besieged and drowning in poverty.

The options are very dim for Palestinians. All the choices you make under occupation and without solid economic infrastructure are merely for economic survival and not collective self-determination.
Washington says snap meeting will cover how to put an end to fighting and further humanitarian aid for Syrian people.

US Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov are meeting in the Swiss city of Geneva to discuss a ceasefire deal for Syria.

During the snap meeting, the two diplomats will hold talks on how to put an end to fighting in the wartorn country and further humanitarian aid for the Syrian people, according to the US State Department.

Their discussion follows recent conversations on Syria and will focus on reducing violence, expanding humanitarian assistance for the Syrian people, and moving towards a political solution needed to end the civil war, spokesman John Kirby said in a written statement.





The US and Russia have backed opposite sides in a war showing little sign of ending since its beginning in 2011.

Moscow is a leading supporter of the Syrian government led by President Bashar al-Assad, while Washington backs the rebels. Both powers have been fighting the common enemy the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group in Syria.

Al Jazeeras Jonah Hull, reporting from Geneva, said that the US and Russia have been trying hard in recent months to hammer out a ceasefire deal and pave the way for the UN-sponsored peace talks to start in Geneva.

On Thursday, it did not even look like Kerry was coming to Geneva at all. The State Department said that the two sides were not close enough to warrant a meeting. It is not clear what changed after that, he said.

Senior US officials said Kerry would not have flown out to the high-level face-to-face talks with Lavrov unless he thought there was a chance of progress.

However, they warned there was no guarantee of a final agreement within the narrow window available before both men return home later on Friday.

We have been taking issues off the table because weve reached an understanding on them. We continue to have some issues that remain outstanding and that we have been unable to close, an official was quoted as saying by the Reuters news agency.

We cannot guarantee at this point that we are on the cusp of finishing, he said, adding that the remaining issues were highly technical and complicated.

Rami Khoury, a syndicated journalist and senior fellow at the American University of Beirut and Harvard University, told Al Jazeera that any agreement between Kerry and Lavrov would only relate to the implementation of a humanitarian pause, and would not touch on any of the other critical issues where no progress has been made.

Even a humanitarian pause  which everyone wants, especially the Syrian people  will not allow any significant movement towards a political resolution, he said.

But both the Russians and the Americans feel obligated theyve got to do something to stop pictures of children choking on chlorine gas or being starved to death from appearing on television screens all over the world every day because it reflects directly on the super powers, as well as on the actors on the ground.

Aleppo key issue

Washington wants concrete steps from Russia to force its Syrian ally Assad to stop bombing his own people and to lift the siege of Aleppo, a key city near the Turkish border.

We need to see a situation where it is clear within whatever is being agreed with the Russians that there will not be a siege of Aleppo, a senior US official quoted by the AFP news agency told reporters.

OPINION: How the disunity among UN agencies is failing Syria

Pro-government forces have recently taken back a strategically important district on Aleppos southern outskirts, rolling back nearly every gain from a major month-long rebel offensive there, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Thursday.

The government advance further seals off Aleppos opposition-held eastern districts and government troops backed by the Russian air force have completely encircled opposition-held neighbourhoods.

The conflict has so far claimed an estimated 400,000 lives, according to the UN special envoy for the Syria crisis Staffan de Mistura. Millions of others have been displaced during the five years of war.
A federal judge is set to deliver a key ruling on the four-state Dakota Access Pipeline that has drawn thousands of protesters to a construction site in North Dakota in recent weeks.

US District Judge James Boasberg said he will rule by the end of the day on Friday on the Standing Rock Sioux tribes request to block the $3.8 billion project, which will carry oil from North Dakota to Illinois.

The tribe argues the project could contaminate local water supplies and has already disrupted sacred sites.

But he developer, Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners, argues that modern technology allows for quick detection of leaks.

Dallas Goldtooth, a spokesperson for the Indigenous Environmental Network, told Al Jazeera that spillage from the pipeline would be inevitable.

Its not a matter of if a pipeline spills, but when a pipeline spills. You have significant risk to a vast amount of drinking water supplied to North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa  all the way down.

READ MORE: Pipeline standoff at Standing Rock

The 1,172-mile project, launched in 2014, would carry nearly half a million barrels of crude oil daily from North Dakotas oilfields through South Dakota and Iowa, before reaching an existing pipeline in Patoka, Illinois, where shippers would be able to access Midwest and Gulf Coast markets.

Pipeline supporters claim the project is an opportunity to not only reach other markets, but also to reduce locomotive traffic that has been a rising concern in the region following a spate of fiery train derailments carrying crude from North Dakota.

A separate lawsuit filed on Thursday by the South Dakota-based Yankton Sioux Tribe challenged the US Army Corps of Engineers decision to grant permits for the pipelines construction.

Tribal officials fear that in addition to water contamination, the underground passage would break federal laws under the National Historic Preservation Act that protect sacred prayer and burial sites.

Theres a spirit wakening where our kids are going to find their way back to these sites. But if these sites are destroyed and gone, its all for nothing. So thats the most important thing. For future generations to connect with who we are, David Archambault II, the Standing Rock Sioux tribal chairman, told Al Jazeera.

READ MORE: US tribes angered by sale of sacred site

Several dozen protesters, including Archambault, have been arrested in recent days for chaining themselves to construction equipment or otherwise trying to block the work, and the National Guard has been called in to help maintain the peace.

Last weekend a number of tribal officials claimed that crews bulldozed several sacred sites, leading to clash between pipeline protesters and private security guards hired by Energy Transfer Partners, who swiftly denied the allegation.

But Achambault, the tribal official, is adamant that the legal battles will continue regardless of the courts ruling.

We are going to take it as far as we can. We are going to look at all our legal options. This is not over, he told Al Jazeera.
Pyongyang says it carried out nuclear warhead explosion, in latest test roundly condemned by its opponents.

North Korea said it has carried out a successful nuclear warhead explosion test to counter what it called US hostility, North Korean state TV reported, angering neighbours and the United States.

An earthquake with a magnitude of 5.3 was detected in the countrys north on Friday morning, South Koreas meteorological agency said, in what officials said was the biggest ever such blast.

A state TV presenter said: Scientists [from]  the DPRK carried out a nuclear explosion test for the judgment of the power of a nuclear warhead newly studied and manufactured by them at the northern nuclear test ground.

The Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea is the Norths official name.

The Central Committee of the [ruling] Workers Party of Korea sent warm congratulations to nuclear scientists  of the northern nuclear test ground on the successful nuclear warhead explosion test, the presenter said.

The test would also enable the North to produce as many as it wants [of] a variety of smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear warheads of higher strike power, she said.

The UN nuclear watchdog said the test was in clear violation of numerous United Nations Security Council resolutions and disregarded repeated demands from the international community.

It is a deeply troubling and regrettable act, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Yukiya Amano said in a video on the IAEAs website. He added that the IAEA is ready to resume verification activities in North Korea once a political agreement had been reached among the countries concerned.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg strongly condemned the very disturbing development, telling Pyongyang it must drop all nuclear and ballistic missile activities.

I strongly condemn these consistent provocations and violations of binding UN Security Council resolutions which undermine regional and international security, he said in a statement.

The tremor, detected by the US Geological Survey and Japans Meteorological Agencys earthquake and tsunami observations division, happened near a known nuclear test site.

In January, North Korea detonated its fourth nuclear device at the same site.

READ MORE: World leaders unite to condemn nuclear test

The USGS said the explosion was detected at 9:30am local time at the surface. Its epicentre was 18km northeast of Sungjibaegam, the USGS said.

Tariq Rauf, head of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institutes disarmament programme, told Al Jazeera: North Korea is the only country carrying out nuclear tests in the 21st century. That in and of itself is a problem issue.

On the other hand, there are also provocations from North Koreas point of view. US and South Korean military exercises are becoming larger and more aggressive.

Fanatic recklessness

South Korean President Park Geun-hye called the test an act of fanatic recklessness in clear violation of UN Security Council resolutions.

US President Barack Obama and Park spoke by telephone about the event, South Koreas presidential office said. The 15-minute conversation took place as the US leader was on Air Force One returning to the US from a regional summit in Laos, according to the South Korean presidential office.

Obama said any provocative actions by North Korea would have serious consequences, reiterating a US commitment to the security of its allies in Asia and around the world.

Japans chief government spokesman said that Tokyo would consider further unilateral sanctions against North Korea.

READ MORE: North Korea says US sanctions are an act of war

North Koreas nuclear development is a grave threat to Japans safety, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a news conference.

China firmly opposes the test, the foreign ministry of Pyongyangs main diplomatic ally said.

Today, the DPRK again conducted a nuclear test despite widespread international opposition  the Chinese government firmly opposes this, the ministry in Beijing said in a statement on its website, using the Norths official name.

Al Jazeeras Adrian Brown, reporting from Beijing, said: [The test is] a reminder of Beijings impotence to try and bring North Korea to heel. Nothing China has so far said has had any effect on the North.

There was no indication that North Koreas nuclear test resulted in higher radiation levels in Russias Far East, Russian news agencies cited Anna Popova, the head of Russias consumer safety watchdog Rospotrebnadzor, as saying on Friday.

Russias foreign ministry warned all sides against any escalation. Germany said it would likely summon the North Korean ambassador to Berlin.

Analysis from Al Jazeeras Harry Fawcett, reporting from Seoul.

In the wake of this test, there have been very strong words from South Korea but those kinds of strong words from the South or the UN Security Council or anyone else have so far done nothing to slow down what has been going on under the leadership of Kim Jong-un.

Here in Seoul, weve heard from defence sources who say this was likely to have been a 10 kiloton-test.

But two tests in the same year tells us this is an accelerated programme under the leadership of Kim Jong-un. He has written into the constitution of the country this dual-pronged economic development and the pursuit of a viable nuclear deterrent  that is clearly what he wants to do.

There has been a great deal of long-range rocket and missile testing  just this year we have seen the Musudan missile tested for the first time. At the end of August, we saw a submarine-launched ballistic missile.

Kim is getting to the point where he has what he wants, which is a diversified means of carrying a nuclear warhead.

That would be a major deterrent, in the North Korean leaderships view, of any kind of forced regime change upon them. Obviously, the North Koreans think this is critical to the survival of the regime, and they have upped the stakes and increased the pace of their nuclear development.
North Korea has said it is now capable of mounting nuclear warheads on ballistic rockets after conducting what it said was a successful nuclear test.

World leaders were quick to condemn the development.

South Korea:

South Korean President Park Geun-hye said North Korean leader Kim Jong-un showed maniacal recklessness by testing the nuclear device.

Park and US President Barack Obama talked by telephone after the test was conducted, South Koreas Blue House said.

READ MORE: North Korea hails successful nuclear test

South Koreas presidential office said Obama had indicated he would take every action under a mutual defence treaty with the South, including providing its nuclear umbrella, to protect Seoul from any North Korean threat.

The presidential office also said the two leaders agreed to use every available means to pressure the North to abandon its nuclear programme, including adopting a new UN Security Council resolution.

South Koreas vice finance minister said the government would closely monitor financial markets and guard against geopolitical risks linked to North Korean actions, and promised to take measures to stabilise markets if needed.

The government expects North Koreas nuclear test to have limited negative impact on the economy, Choi Sang-mok said, in a meeting with officials from the central bank and regulator that was urgently scheduled in Seoul.

China:

Chinas foreign ministry said on Friday that it was resolutely opposed to North Koreas latest nuclear test and strongly urged Pyongyang not to take any action that would worsen the situation.

China, the Norths main ally, would stick to its aim of de-nuclearising the Korean peninsula and uphold the six-party talks process to resolve the issue, the ministry added in a short statement.

The international community should exercise restraint after the test because it is in nobodys interest for there to be chaos or war on the Korean peninsula, Chinas official Xinhua news agency said.

North Koreas nuclear test was not wise, but South Koreas decision to deploy an advanced US anti-missile system has also seriously damaged regional strategic balance, Xinhua said in a commentary, in Chinas first official reaction to the test.

US:

Obama said any provocative actions by North Korea would have serious consequences.

The US president had been briefed on board Air Force One by National Security Adviser Susan Rice about the nuclear test, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said.

Obama reiterated an unbreakable US commitment to the security of its allies in Asia and around the world, Earnest said.

US Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Russel said he was committed to working closely with Japan, China, Russia and South Korea to put pressure on North Korea.

The fact is that there is an accelerated pattern of very serious provocation that violates international law and threatens regional stability, Russel told reporters before meeting Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida.

Japan:

Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida said that Tokyo had protested to North Korea.

A nuclear test would breach UN resolutions and pose a grave challenge to global nuclear non-proliferation efforts, Kishida told reporters.

France:

France vigorously condemns the new nuclear test that was conducted last night by North Korea and calls the United Nations security council to take up this violation of its resolutions, the French presidency said in a statement.

United Nations:

The UN atomic agency, IAEA, in a statement called the test deeply troubling.

This is in clear violation of numerous UN Security Council resolutions and in complete disregard of the repeated demands of the international community. It is a deeply troubling and regrettable act.

In Resolution 2270, the Security Council condemned in the strongest terms the DPRKs previous nuclear test conducted on January 6 this year.

The Security Council also reaffirmed its decisions that the DPRK shall not conduct any further nuclear tests and shall abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programmes in a complete, verifiable and irreversible manner, and immediately cease all related activities.

IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano said he strongly urges the DPRK to fully implement all relevant resolutions of the UN Security Council and the IAEA.

The Agency continues to closely follow the DPRK nuclear issue. We remain ready to contribute to its peaceful resolution by resuming our verification activities in the country once a political agreement is reached among countries concerned, Amano said.
Facebook Inc has reversed its decision to remove an iconic Vietnam War photograph after an attack from the Norwegian prime minister, who said the photo shaped world history.





The social media giant on Friday erased the photograph, which shows a naked girl fleeing a napalm attack, from the Facebook pages of several Norwegian authors and media outlets, but later reversed its decision after mounting public criticism.

While the company initially said the picture violated its community standards against nudity, in a short statement released late on Friday, it recognized the history and global importance of this image in documenting a particular moment in time.

Captured in 1972 by Pulitzer Prize-winner Nick Ut of the Associated Press, the image of screaming children running from a napalm attack shows a naked nine-year-old girl, Kim Phuc, at its centre.

The controversy started when Facebook deleted a post by Norwegian writer Tom Egeland that featured Nick Uts Pulitzer-winning photograph on Monday on the grounds of nudity.

Egelands post discussed seven photographs that changed the history of warfare. He was subsequently suspended from the social media site.

Facebook: Social media platform or news gatekeeper?

In protest, many Norwegians posted the photo on their own Facebook pages.

On the same day, Norways flagship national daily, Aftenposten, reported on Egelands suspension using the same photograph and shared the article on its Facebook page.

The newspaper immediately received a message from Facebook asking it to either remove or pixelate the photograph.

In response, Aftenposten splashed the photograph across the front page of its newspaper and website on Friday next to a large Facebook logo, and wrote a front-page editorial headlined Dear Mark Zuckerberg, arguing that the network was undermining democracy.

Facebook gets it wrong

Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg then posted the photograph on her own Facebook profile, writing that it had contributed to change the course of world history.





Facebook gets it wrong when they censor such pictures. It limits the freedom of speech, Solberg wrote. I say yes to healthy, open and free debate  online and wherever else we go. But I say no to this form of censorship.

Solberg, in her post, also praised Facebook for combating pictures of child abuse. Aftenposten, in its editorial, said Facebook should be able to tell the difference between child pornography and famous war photography.

The image and the accompanying post later disappeared from the prime ministers Facebook page.

Solberg responded to Facebooks decision to erase her post by sharing a censored version of the napalm girl photo and a series of other iconic news photographs.

While I was on a plane from Oslo to Trondheim, Facebook deleted a post from my Facebook page, she said.

What Facebook does by removing images of this kind, good as the intentions may be, is to edit our common history.

Speaking to Al Jazeera from Norway, Solberg said that this sort of censorship was unacceptable.

I have praised Facebook on the fact that they are very firm on the stance that pornography, child abuse and violence shouldnt be shown on the platform. But you cant let machines run everything. You cant let machines run your morality or distort your history, the prime minister said.

That means that Facebook needs to have a system that recognises that there are iconic pictures, or situations in which machines cannot decide to just take the images away, Solberg added.

Facebook said in a statement earlier in the day on Friday that its rules were more blunt than the company itself would prefer, adding that restrictions on nudity were necessary on a global platform.

While we recognise that this photo is iconic, its difficult to create a distinction between allowing a photograph of a nude child in one instance and not others, a company spokesperson wrote.

We try to find the right balance between enabling people to express themselves while maintaining a safe and respectful experience for our global community. Our solutions wont always be perfect, but we will continue to try to improve our policies and the ways in which we apply them.
Fighting that killed more than 300 people and forced opposition head to flee directed at top military level, UN says.

South Sudanese government forces have acquired two jet fighters and truckloads of small arms ammunition and were seeking to manufacture bullets, UN sanctions monitors said in a confidential report seen by Reuters news agency.

The report on arms flows and security threats to South Sudan added that opposition troops have not received any significant arms shipments from abroad.

The monitors also said that armed government actors were imposing debilitating movement restrictions on UN peacekeepers.

They warned that the economy of the worlds newest nation had effectively collapsed because of government policies that included buying weapons instead of funding social services.

Al Jazeeras Hiba Morgan, reporting from Juba, said that the report is likely to anger those who should benefit from social services, which are already underfunded.

South Sudans economy has been in freefall since it floated its currency against the dollar in December last year, she said.

Half of South Sudans population live beneath the poverty line, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. South Sudans consumer price index is up 700 percent from this time last year. It is difficult for ordinary civilians to get food from the market.

Some civil servants can earn as little as two or three dollars per month, which makes it hard for them to be be able to sustain their families.

More than 200,000 people rely on humanitarian assistance, Morgan added.

The report strengthens the case for an arms embargo, a move recommended by the monitors to the Security Council in January. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has also called for an arms embargo.

There is no evidence to suggest that more weapons are required in South Sudan for the government to achieve a stable security environment, the UN monitors said.

Rather, the continued influx of weapons  contributes to spreading instability and the continuation of the conflict.

READ MORE: One year after peace deal, South Sudan worse off

The report said that while Sudan had provided small arms, bullets and logistical support to opposition troops, they found no evidence to date that Sudan  or any other neighbouring country  has provided heavy weapons  which has limited the oppositions ability to mount large-scale operations.

However, the monitors received reports that government troops have made significant, ongoing arms procurements, including the likely recent acquisition of two L-39 fighter jets.

While the panel has received preliminary reports from two sources that the jets were serviced and painted in Uganda, the panel has not yet been able to confirm their origin or if these jets have been purchased or are on loan, the monitors said.

Two truckloads of ammunition were transferred to the capital, Juba, from Uganda in June, while late last year South Sudanese army chief Paul Malong asked a Lebanese company to begin developing a small arms ammunition manufacturing facility in Juba, the monitors said.

It is not clear from currently available information whether this project has proceeded in the intervening period, they added.

Talk of arms embargo

In the wake of deadly violence in Juba in July, the council said it would discuss an arms embargo if Ban reports this month that the government was not cooperating with the deployment of 4,000 more peacekeepers and was obstructing 12,000 UN troops already on the ground.

A UN peacekeeping mission (UNMISS) has been in South Sudan since the country gained independence from Sudan in 2011.

The UN monitors said that in rhetoric and action, government-affiliated forces have actively threatened the operations and personnel of UNMISS and other UN agencies, and both parties have continued to target humanitarian workers.

During the violence in July, between 80 and 100 uniformed soldiers overran Jubas Hotel Terrain compound, home to the staff of international organisations, and in four hours killed an ethnic Nuer journalist and raped at least five foreign aid workers and other staff working at the compound, the monitors said.

READ MORE: South Sudan community appeals to UN for extra troops

The monitors said that given the number of soldiers involved, the number of items stolen and the systematic damage inflicted, this attack was well coordinated and cannot be considered as an opportunistic act of violence and robbery.

The UN Security Council has long threatened to impose an arms embargo on South Sudan after the country spiralled into civil war in 2013, but veto powers Russia and China are wary that such a move would benefit opposition fighters because it would be harder to monitor them than to police the government.

The Security Council set up a targeted sanctions regime for South Sudan in March 2015, then in July blacklisted six generals  three from each side of the conflict  by subjecting them to an asset freeze and travel ban.

A political rivalry between President Salva Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, and opposition leader Riek Machar, a Nuer, sparked the civil war.

The pair signed a shaky peace deal a year ago, but fighting has continued. Machar fled the country after the violence between their troops erupted in July.

The monitors said in the report  which was requested by the Security Council  that the actions and policies of the two major parties pose the most severe security threats to the peace deal and the transitional government.

The focus of many of the central military and political figures on mobilising their respective tribes has continued to escalate the conflict from a primarily political to a tribal war, the monitors said.
At least 186 PKK fighters killed, military says, as thousands of teachers with alleged links to the group are suspended.

Turkey is conducting the largest military operations in its history against Kurdish fighters in the southeast of the country, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said.

His statement on Thursday came as the government suspended thousands of teachers over suspected links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the army reportedly killed scores of PKK fighters.

Erdogan said in a speech to provincial governors in Ankara that the operations targeting civil servants with links to the PKK was a key element of the fight against the armed group.

READ MORE: How could failed coup affect Kurdish peace process?

We will be removing civil servants with links to the PKK, he said.

The Turkish military said on Wednesday that 186 PKK members had been killed in the operations conducted in the southeastern district of Cukurca over the past few days.





A total of 11,285 personnel linked to a separatist-terrorist organisation have been suspended, Turkeys education ministry said on its official Twitter account on Thursday.

The teachers suspended for their alleged links to the PKK will be able to receive two thirds of their salaries until the end of a formal investigation, according to the state-run Anadolu Agency.

Turkey, the US and the EU have branded the PKK a terrorist organisation.

The autonomy-seeking group abandoned a two-year ceasefire in July, reigniting a conflict that has claimed more than 40,000 lives since 1984.

The government has accused the PKK of a series of attacks in the southeast of Turkey in recent weeks.

The teachers suspensions came as Ankara pushes ahead with a purge against tens of thousands of supporters of the US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, who is accused by Turkey of orchestrating an attempted coup in July.
Turkish army says three of its soldiers were killed in an attack by ISIL near the town of Tel el-Hawa in northern Syria.

Three Turkish soldiers have been killed and one wounded during clashes with Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) fighters in northern Syria, according to Turkeys armed forces.

In a statement on Friday, the Turkish military said one of its tanks was hit by ISIL fighters around 12:20pm local time, near the Syrian town of Tel el-Hawa.

The area is west of Jarablus near the Turkish border, which was taken from ISIL by the Ankara-backed Free Syrian Army at the start of the operation.

READ MORE: First group of refugees returns to Syrias Jarablus

Fridays attack marked the seventh Turkish casualty so far in Turkeys two-pronged, cross-border operation against ISIL and Kurdish-led forces in northern Syria.





Turkey first sent tanks across the border on August 24 as part of the operation dubbed Euphrates Shield

Four days later, the Turkish army suffered its first fatality in northern Syria, in a rocket attack blamed on Kurdish militia.

Late on Sept. 6, three more Turkish soldiers were killed and four others were wounded in an ISIL attack on two tanks near the town of al-Rai in northern Syria.

Last week, ISIL fighters were expelled from their last positions along the Turkish-Syrian border, depriving the group of a key crossing point for recruits and supplies.

Turkey wants to establish a safe zone in the 91km area stretching from Jarablus to Azaz to the west and says it will continue with the cross-border operation until all terrorist elements are eliminated from the region.

READ MORE: Kurds and refugees behind Turkeys Syria offensive

Turkeys operation, which involves tanks, fighter jets and special forces, is targeting both ISIL but also Syrian Kurdish forces that have been key to driving ISIL fighters out of other parts of the Syrian-Turkish border.

The Kurdish YPG militia is a key partner of the US-led coalition against ISIL, and has recaptured large swaths of territory in Syria from the group.

Yet, Ankara considers the YPG a terrorist group and has been alarmed by its expansion along the border, fearing the creation of a contiguous, semi-autonomous Kurdish region in northern Syria.

READ MORE: Turkey and Syrian Kurdish forces should stop fighting

Last month, The US defence secretary has called on Turkey and Kurdish forces in northern Syria to stay focused on fighting ISIL and not to target each other.





Turkey, in response, said it would continue to target the Kurdish militia if it failed to retreat east of the Euphrates River.

Meanwhile, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Friday that he welcomed Turkeys efforts against ISIL in northern Syria without mentioning its clashes with Kurdish fighters in the same region.

We welcome Turkeys increasing efforts to fight against Daesh, Stoltenberg told Turkish broadcaster NTV, using an Arabic acronym for ISIL, also known as ISIS.

Turkey has a right to defend itself, he said. There have been many terrorist attacks coming from the Syrian side.
A week after long-time leader Islam Karimov dies, elections authority announces vote to be held in early December.

Uzbekistan will elect a new president on December 4 following the death of long-time leader Islam Karimov, Reuters news agency reported.

The countrys elections authority made the announcement on Friday, just a day after the Uzbek parliament named Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyoyev as interim president.

Under the Uzbek constitution, a presidential election must be held within three months, and Mirziyoyev, who was the official mourner-in-chief at Karimovs funeral, is widely expected to be elected.





Karimov died of a stroke last week after ruling the resource-rich country for 27 years. Nearly half of the countrys 32 million citizens were born after he came to power.

Many analysts had anticipated that Karimov would be succeeded by his older daughter Gulnara, a businesswoman and pop star, but she fell from favour two years ago and there was no sign of her on Saturday among the family members in the funeral cortege.

With no obvious successor, Karimovs death has triggered an outpouring of grief, mixed with uncertainty about the future.

Unrest would have repercussions for Russia, the regional power and home to hundreds of thousands of Uzbek migrant workers, and for the US-allied government in Afghanistan.

The Kremlins top political adviser, Yuri Ushakov, said on Saturday that Moscow expected the political situation in Uzbekistan to remain stable.

The Uzbek government has long been repeatedly criticised for human rights abuses, most notoriously in 2005 in the city of Andijan, where government forces are accused of killing hundreds of demonstrators.

Former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, accused Karimovs security forces of executing two dissidents by boiling them to death.
How is todays China different from Maos communist vision?

Mao Zedong has been credited with laying the foundation for Communist China.

Forty years after his death, he remains a powerful symbol with a controversial legacy.

Some hail him as a hero, while others denounce him as a tyrant.

His policies are blamed for causing chaos, famine and mass murder.

But some of his supporters say life back then was better.

They argue that China has veered off the Communist path laid by Mao and blame capitalism for social inequalities, poverty and corruption.

How much better off are the Chinese now?

Presenter: Richelle Carey

Guests:

Einar Tangen  Political analyst and economic affairs adviser to the Chinese government.

Frank Dikotter  Professor of History at the University of Hong Kong

Michele Geraci  Head of China Economic Policy Research Programme, Nottingham University
A multimillion-dollar grant is helping UF expand a one-of-a-kind digital library of specimens.

On Tuesday, UF received a $15.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation to continue digitizing millions of specimens in collections from across the nation.

IDigBio, a project led by UF, is the first of its kind. The grant will expand the digital database of specimens from collections in 270 institutions in all 50 states, said Larry Page, the iDigBio director and the ichthyology curator at the Florida Museum of Natural History.

The database should be able to help researchers make faster and more accurate predictions of the future, including climate change, Page said.

Basically, the information and data now are readily available, he said.

IDigBio.org contains 64 million species records and 14 million images, he said.

The museum, in collaboration with UFs College of Engineering and Florida State University, will share the grant. Of the funding, $3 million will go to FSU researchers.

The program, started in 2011 by the foundation, was given to UF with an original grant of $10 million for five years, Page said.

The new grant will continue the program for another five years and double the size of its database.

Paul Ramey, a spokesman for the museum, said the program has expanded over the years.

Ideally researchers  or anyone  will be able to go online and view a specimen from a collection from anywhere, wherever it may be, he said.

Zachary Randall, an ichthyology collections technician, prepares to photograph a specimen at Florida Museum of Natural History.

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The Asian Pacific Islander Affairs office is welcoming its third director today.

From noon to 2 p.m. at the Reitz Union, Suite 2210, the department will host a meet-and-greet with Krystie Nguyen, who became the new director of APIA on Aug. 8. Students will have the chance to meet Nguyen and ask her questions along with Shalini Mirpuri, a newly hired graduate assistant for the department. This is the first time the director and graduate assistant of the department are both women.

I am excited to see the love and support that UF has for our APIA community, Nguyen said.

She said she plans on discussing her visions and goals during the event.

Nguyen worked as the Cross-Cultural Student Affairs coordinator at Louisiana State University before coming to UF. She declined to say what her salary is as director.

Mona Sayedul Huq, a former graduate assistant for the office who has worked for Multicultural and Diversity Affairs for eight years, has seen APIA go from having three student ambassadors to more than 20.

With the new space and Nguyens leadership, the 26-year-old said she saw student ambassadors becoming more enthusiastic about reaching out to students.

I think everyone is excited to see what Krystie is going to do, the UF health and human performance doctoral candidate said.
Across the street from UFs campus, a new apartment complex will tout a rooftop pool and near-doorstep dining.

About a year after construction began on The Standard, an unveiling event was held Thursday at Dough Religion Pizza  and one student was randomly selected to win free rent for a year.

As Rob Dinwiddie, the vice president of leasing and marketing for Landmark Properties, told a crowd of about 160 people about the new development, attendees watched a virtual walkthrough of the complex.

I can envision myself sitting on the edge of the infinity pool and looking out over campus, he said.

TargetExpress, Costa Vida Fresh Mexican Grill, Miami Subs Grill, Chick-fil-A and Bento Cafe have signed on to rent space beneath the complex, Dinwiddie said, and an AC Hotels by Marriott will be built within the property as well.

For Juan Valiente, a 20-year-old UF public relations junior, living at The Standard next Fall will be a step up from his current apartment at The Enclave.

Valiente smiled as Dinwiddie announced he had won the free-rent package, making him the complexs first tenant.

Im pretty shocked right now, he said.

The leasing office will open Monday, and residents can begin signing leases Thursday, Dinwiddie said.

In Gainesville there hasnt been a development that can combine this location with this kind of retail and these amenities for the perfect student living package, he said.

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As UF student Samuel Lapeyre races to St. Augustine on Saturday, his time delivering food for Jimmy Johns Sandwiches may come in handy.

Joined by students and residents, the 23-year-old electrical engineering senior will ride his bicycle about 75 miles to the historic city as a part of the Gainesville-Atlantic 75 bicycle race.

Hosted by The Freewheel Project, located at 618 S. Main St., the timed race will be divided by checkpoints, said Joe Ergle, a 27-year-old UF sociology junior and one of the events organizers.

In previous years, the race was held by the now-closed Swift Cycle, Ergle said. Registration for the race will take place from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. during a pre-race party at The Freewheel Project.

The race will begin 8 a.m. Saturday, he said.

Lapeyre, who has raced competitively before, said he feels disconnected when he rides his bicycle  even when hes racing. Sometimes, he said, hell play music and zone out for hours.

Theres nothing to think about or worry about, he said.

He said the Gainesville-Atlantic 75 will be much more casual than other races he has competed in, like a cross-Florida race that took him from Tallahassee to Daytona last January.

Lapeyre said although he is excited for the race, the post-race festivities may be just as fun.

I dont really know what to expect. Im just going to ride my bike for 75 miles and drink some beer, Lapeyre said.

Bicyclists ride along West University Avenue as part of the Gainesville-Atlantic 75 bicycle race in September 2015.

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Life is strange. The future is unpredictable. You find that scary. You seek answers everywhere, but the more you discover, the less you know. The confusion slowly dissipates, and fear starts to take its place. All hope seems lost. In the darkness, you see a flicker of light. With curiosity ablaze you chase after the glimmer, and as you grow nearer and nearer you stumble upon the Friday edition of the Independent Florida Alligator. In it, you find something that makes everything okay. That something is

Darts & Laurels

Perhaps the most absurd political argument weve heard this week is the whole Hillary Clinton had a cough thing. With all the questionable political arguments Clinton has engaged in, the fact that people have to resort to a cough is simply pathetic. It shows absolutely no interest in actually solving the problems that plague our great country. Regardless, a dart to the human respiratory system for spazzing out and giving Clintons opposition some supermarket tabloid/grandparent email crap to complain about for the whole week.

Moving away from the tabloids, a group of Italian researchers found a cluster of stars that gives clues to the universes mysterious past. These stars, according to the studys lead scientist, professor Francesco Ferraro of the University of Bologna, represent the first cosmic structure at the time when the universe was a baby, just 1 billion years old. We give a laurel to you, professor Ferraro, for giving us this amazing picture of our past.

Speaking of the past, musical genius Justin Vernon and his most popular musical project, Bon Iver, have not released a full-length album since their self-titled album, Bon Iver, Bon Iver, which debuted in 2011. In three short weeks, their newest album, 22, A Million, will be released. To tease us, Vernon has released three gorgeous singles. A laurel is therefore presented to Vernons ethereal voice for blessing us with these early album gifts.

Actually, a lot of very sweet gifts were given out this week. For us Floridians, there was an especially nice one. You may remember Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi for her decision not to join in on the infamous Trump University (the university whose own employees called it a huge fraud) Lawsuit. As a thank-you, Donald Trump held a fundraiser for her that cost him about $150,000. We gift a dart to not only everybody involved in this obnoxious political game, but also to everyone who has criticized Hillary Clinton for less but will not call out Trump.

Thats it, dear reader. We live in a world of inconsistency. We are part of a Gator generation that saw a minority party gain an electoral victory in Student Government. While the status quo was quickly restored, we could not help but notice nine parties are registered for the Fall election cycle. While there is no denying campus politics are going to be unbelievably wacky this year, the fact that the Taco Libre Party might be making a resurgence is a blessing. We give a preemptive laurel to everyone who votes in the SG elections for hopefully not wasting their vote on this comically narrow-interest party, and one to Taco Libre Party for caring so intensely for tacos rights on campus.
           2005     ..        










English News 400,000 Tunisians to benefit from AfDB water program

- 9 Septembre 2016





Abidjan, Cote dIvoire, September 9, 2016  Phase II of an African Development Bank-funded water program in Tunisia will improve water services for about 400,000 rural Tunisians. Approved by the Banks Board of Directors on September 6, 2016, this program is designed to provide clean drinking water mostly to needy rural communities in about 20 prefectures.



This program will improve the quality of life of about 400,000 people across rural Tunisia. Along with other AfDB-funded rural infrastructure projects such as electrification, roads, health and educational facilities, this program will boost economic growth and social development in Tunisia, said Mohamed El Azizi, Director of the Water and Sanitation Department of the AfDB.



Funding for the program is a combination of a loan of 123.7 million and a grant of 1 million. The grant is from the Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Initiative (RWSSI), one of the Banks flagship initiatives in this sector.



Planned improvements in water supply systems expected from the implementation of this program are also expected to improve the quality of life of beneficiaries in terms of public health, hygiene, environment and economic development. More than 1,200 schools are also projected to be connected through the program, benefitting an estimated 130,000 students.



Other expected benefits of the program include:

 Reducing the dropout rate in rural areas, particularly among girls;

 Achieving the national target of providing water to 97 percent of Tunisians by 2025;

 Reducing the incidence of waterborne diseases (in particular, Hepatitis A and typhoid fever), occurring primarily in rural areas with little or no access to clean water or adequate sanitation;

 Improving the capacity of the Tunisia Government to develop and scale up a new monitoring and evaluation system. The Tunisian Government recently adopted a new M&E tool to monitor large public projects to address common weaknesses of development projects;

 Support the Government in the implementation of its sustainability strategy for the management and operation of rural water supply systems.



This program builds on an earlier one designed to provide similar water and sanitation services to rural communities in Tunisia. Phase I started in 2012 and is about 90 percent complete. Completion is expected in 2017 and will benefit about 378,000 inhabitants, against 348,000 as originally projected.



As a first in Bank financed projects, all contracts under this program will be procured using Tunisias procurement system. The program will use national procurement system in its entirety, increasing the countrys ownership and accountability in the processes, said Vinay Sharma, Director of the Procurement and Fiduciary Services Department of the AfDB. The system has been evaluated rigorously using a globally accepted methodology and the Bank is satisfied that the processes are fair and transparent, the country has an acceptable monitoring and complaint handling mechanism and that adequate competition will be possible. The Bank will also monitor the processes through independent audits. This approach is consistent with the new procurement framework of the Bank, approved in October 2015, that encourages an increased use of country procurement systems as long as the risks have been evaluated and mitigation measures put in place.



The AfDB is a leading provider of water and sanitation in Africa. The AfDB currently maintains an active portfolio of about 105 operations in the water and sanitation sector totaling about US $3.5 billion. The Bank financed it first water sanitation operation in 1968. Since then, it has approved 360 loans and grants in the Water Supply and Sanitation (WSS) sector, with a total financing volume of approximately US $7 billion.



The Water and Sanitation Department leads and coordinates water-sector activities and promotes integrated water resource management approaches across all Bank water supply and sanitation interventions. The Bank also host three critical initiatives on water and sanitation. The Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Initiative funds water sector projects and studies; the African Water Facility (AWF), for which the Bank is a trustee, provides support to the New Partnership for Africas Development Water and Sanitation Program; and the Multi-Donor Water Partnership Program promotes effective regional and national water management policies and practices, and operationalizes the Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) Policy in the Banks regional member countries (RMCs).



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English News Water central to achieving High 5s and Sustainable Development Goals in Africa

- 9 Septembre 2016





Abidjan, Cote dIvoire, September 9, 2016  The Senior Advisor to the President of the African Development Bank for Inclusive and Green Growth, Prof. Kevin Urama, has underscored the critical role of water in achieving long-term poverty reduction and economic growth in Africa. Speaking at a gathering of world water leaders in Stockholm, Sweden, Urama outlined the new strategic priorities of the AfDB and the centrality of water to these goals.



Water is central to the achievement of all the Sustainable Development Goals, he said. As the global community pivots to the implementation of these new goals, there is an acknowledgment that without transformative action in the management of water resources in Africa, it will be considerably difficult to achieve the SDGs and the Paris Climate Change Agreement. The Stockholm event called for a Green Water Initiative for Africa to speed up action towards the delivery of these goals in Africa.



Urama told the gathering of about 3,000 water actors that, while Africa stands out as the most vulnerable of the water-scarce world regions, there are many opportunities available to manage water for sustainable economic growth and social progress in Africa. The technologies and innovations that improve rainwater use efficiency in agricultural production are available and can be quickly deployed to achieve a water-based green revolution, especially in Africa. These technologies, especially rainwater harvesting, micro-dams, terracing, and flood diversion approaches, are both cost efficient and environmentally sustainable.



The 2016 World Water Week, which took place from August 28 to September 2, 2016 on the theme Water for Sustainable Growth, enabled global water experts and leaders to explore new solutions and emerging perspectives to deliver sustainable growth through better management of water. It emerged from this years event that investment in water security continues to be a challenge, despite the existence of substantial financial resources available globally. Donors and development financial institutions, it was recognized, should play a catalytic role to bridge this gap through knowledge-generation and -sharing, identifying risks and developing mechanisms for harnessing market-based financing.



Political leadership, it emerged, is cardinal to develop resilient, sustainable, and inclusive cities. There is a range of innovative technological, institutional and policy options for the management of water resources, water service delivery, waste management, resource recovery and reuse, and disaster management in Africas urban spaces.



The key role of multilateral development institutions in delivering water services in fragile situations was highlighted. While challenging, these services are essential to cushion the effects of fragility. Here, development partners have amongst other responsibilities  strengthening the capacity of public and private entities involved in the provision of services.



Achieving the new strategic priorities of the Bank will require integrated water resource management approach. We consider water as a critical resource to realize the hydropower component of the New Deal on Energy for Africa, said Urama It is essential to the Feed Africa agenda from the perspective of rain-fed agriculture and green water harvesting. On the linkages between water and Industrializing Africa, the Senior Advisor to the President argued that the blue economy holds great potential for Africas industrialization.



Water also connects many countries and regions of Africa and is a critical resource for Integrating Africa, he said. Without effective transboundary water management, regional conflicts ensue, and development of water-based transport infrastructure will be in jeopardy. While traditional investments in the sector have mostly focused on water and sanitation intervention projects that directly improve the quality of life for Africans, enormous opportunities exist in all the High 5s for the Bank to scale up water-based structural transformation in Africa.



World Water Week was also attended by leading staff of the Banks Water and Sanitation Department. In addition to sharing emerging perspectives on how to efficiently and urgently tackle the water challenge in the world in general and Africa in particular, the team met with several development partners to further build a broad water coalition for Africa. Over 340 million people are without clean drinking water, and about 550 million people are without adequate sanitation services.



The AfDB is a leading provider of water and sanitation services in Africa, with a total financing volume of approximately US $7 billion. In 2006, the Bank created a Water and Sanitation Department to lead and coordinate water-sector activities and to promote Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) across all Bank Water Supply and Sanitation interventions.



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It's become an all too familiar story  a big bank is caught doing something bad, it pays a fine, some lower-level employees are let go while higher-level executives appear to get off scot-free and no criminal charges are assessed.

Wells Fargo became the latest example of that cycle, when it paid $190 million in fines and restitution after some 5,300 employees were caught opening more than 2 million unauthorized bank and credit card accounts.

Despite the large fine and the bank's termination of involved employees, consumer advocates, industry stakeholders and even many in the public at large were left fuming because no criminal charges were filed and higher-level executives escaped seemingly unscathed. Though Wells insisted the problems were not systemic, others were not convinced.

"We'd like to see a full investigation at the top of Wells Fargo given these systemic and illegal practices," said Paulina Gonzalez, the executive director of the California Reinvestment Coalition in San Francisco, who said the lower-level employees who were fired were being "scapegoated."

"This is something that we believe doesn't happen at the low end of the worker level; it often comes from the top and pressure from the top for sales," she said.

That was a sentiment widely shared on social media, particularly on Twitter, where consumers and others were skeptical that more than 5,000 employees  located across the country  engaged in similar behavior without higher-level executives being responsible for it.

Activist investor Gerald R. Armstrong said the situation raises serious questions about the quality of the San Francisco bank's corporate governance.

"They need a change in leadership, a change in the board of directors and a change in accounting firms," said Armstrong, who has prodded Wells for a decade to separate its chairman and CEO positions. "The acid test has been completed now and they have failed."

Wells confirmed that it fired more than 5,000 employees over a four-year period from 2011 to 2014, but a spokeswoman declined to say how many branch or regional managers have been fired. The bank also declined to comment on whether any high-level executives left the firm as a result of the settlement with the Los Angeles City Attorney, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

Federal Reserve Gov. Daniel Tarullo wouldn't speak directly to the Wells case, but gave critics of the settlement more ammunition by saying that regulators need to hold individual bankers accountable.

"There is a need, I think, for a focus on individuals as well as the fines put on the institutions," Tarullo said during an interview on CNBC, when asked about Wells. "In appropriate cases, prohibition orders [and]  obviously this is a much higher standard  but for Justice Department prosecutions are things that do need to be pursued in order to make the point that there is individual culpability as well as collective [responsibility]."

Lawmakers also pledged to look into the issue, with Rep. Maxine Waters, the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, saying the settlement with federal regulators echoed many of the same practices from the financial crisis.

"Either more must be done to continue to reform bank compensation systems to ensure that they do not encourage employees to deliberately break the law, or it may be the case that some banks are simply too big and complex to manage effectively," Waters said in a statement.

Industry representatives were also upset. Camden Fine, president and CEO of the Independent Community Bankers of America, said the Wells case will likely result in more regulation and scrutiny by examiners  something that will affect institutions of all sizes, even those that don't engage in the same kind of behavior.

"While Wells Fargo has the luxury of throwing money at the problem to make it go away without its board or senior management being held accountable, the individuals and local institutions affected by its actions will continue to suffer for years to come," Fine said.

It is unclear whether any individual Wells executives will be held accountable.

Mike Feuer, the L.A. city attorney, is not pursuing criminal charges against any Wells employees, said a spokesman.

The CFPB and the OCC do not have criminal prosecutorial authority, but can refer actions to the Department of Justice, which does not comment on ongoing investigations.

The OCC has the authority to remove officers and directors, to issue cease-and-desist orders against individuals and to bar individuals from working in the industry. The OCC's removal and prohibition orders are public enforcement actions and none have been made so far in this case.

The job of repairing the damage falls to Mary Mack, the former chief executive officer of Wells Fargo Securities who took over in July as head of retail banking, replacing Carrie Tolstedt, who abruptly retired. Tolstedt, 56, had overseen the bank's retail operations, including its vast branch network, since 2007.

Wells took out full-page ads Friday in every major daily newspaper and regional newspapers "to project a sense of ownership and commitment to ensuring that we are taking care of our customers," said Oscar Suris, a Wells spokesman.

Christy Romero, the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, said it is tough to prosecute high-level executives, an issue that led to similar outrage after the financial crisis.

"We have found in our law enforcement actions that violations of the law do not intentionally rise up, so you have a very difficult time holding people accountable at the highest levels," Romero said in an interview Friday. "When people are talking about CEOs of the largest banks and why they didn't go to jail for the financial crisis, when CEOs of midsized and smaller banks did, it has to do with knowledge and intent."

Romero said better systems and procedures need to be in place so that violations of the law are discovered and reported to the highest levels.

A company should know what is going on so if there are violations of the law happening at any level of the organization  it should rise up and be stopped, she said. Isnt it high time that violations of the law become one of the standard areas that the companys risk control officers are responsible for?

John Reosti contributed to this article.
F.N.B. Corp. in Pittsburgh has recruited an executive from the recently sold FirstMerit Bank to spearhead its data security efforts.

The $21 billion-asset F.N.B. named Scot Pflug chief information security officer on Thursday. Pflug will oversee compliance, incident-response protocols and employee awareness and training programs related to data security, the company said in a press release.

Pflug will also work with other F.N.B. departments as a consultant to manage information security risk.

Pflug had been the chief information security officer at FirstMerit Bank in Akron, Ohio, since 2013. He joined FirstMerit in 2011 as vice president and senior IT internal audit manager, according to his LinkedIn profile. Huntington Bancshares in Columbus, Ohio, bought FirstMerit for $3.4 billion in August.

F.N.B. in July agreed to buy the $7.5 billion-asset Yadkin Financial in Raleigh, N.C., for $1.4 billion. The hiring of Pflug is part of F.N.B.'s effort "to build out [its] risk management infrastructure commensurate with a larger organization," Chief Executive Vincent Delie Jr. said in the release.
The Dubai, United Arab Emirates-based port terminal operator won a 30-year concession for the development of a multi-purpose project at the Port of Berbera in the Republic of Somaliland, the company said in a statement.



DP World won a 30-year concession for the development and operation of a multi-purpose terminal at the Port of Berbera in the Republic of Somaliland, the company said in a statement.

The Dubai, United Arab Emirates-based port terminal operator said the facility will serve as a new access point for the Red Sea and an additional hub in the Horn of Africa. DP World also operates terminals at the Port of Djibouti.

Under the concession agreement, which also includes an automatic 10-year extension, DP World will enter into a 65 percent joint venture with the government of Somaliland to manage the Port of Berbera. The company expects to invest a total of $442 million in the port, spread out over three phases of development.

The first phase includes construction of a 400-meter quay, a 250,000-square-meter yard extension, and the purchase of gantry cranes and reach stackers to handle containers and other cargo. Construction of the quay extension is expected to begin 12 months after the satisfaction of the terms and conditions of the agreement and take 24 months to complete.

The remaining investment funds will be phased in over time, depending on port volumes, but the port has the potential for long-term expansion with an additional 4.25 square kilometers of available land for the potential development of a free zone, DP World said.

We are delighted to extend our African footprint with a major investment in Somaliland. Investment in this natural deepwater port will attract more shipping lines to East Africa and its modernization will act as a catalyst for the growth of the country and the regions economy, DP World Group Chairman and CEO Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem said in a statement.

Berbera will contribute to our continued growth in the developing markets of Africa in the years ahead. It is also a breakthrough in developing access to the sea for landlocked Ethiopia, the regions largest economy, he added. We look forward to bringing DP Worlds world class productivity enhancing, security, safety and environmental best practices in container terminal development and operation to Somaliland.

DP World Port of Berbera will offer East African importers and exporters a unique, additional world class deepwater port that will dramatically improve the competitiveness of their products in world markets and has the potential to transform the regions economy, added Dr. Saad Ali Shire, minister of foreign affairs and international cooperation of the Republic of Somaliland.
The air cargo markets deceleration this year had a greater impact on third-quarter cargo revenues at American Airlines than its primary rivals, Delta and United Airlines. But the best revenue quarter in company history and a $483 million profit painted a positive financial picture that could be replicated in the final quarter thanks to resilient []
It is critically important to us, as a free society, that we have police forces to protect us, our loved ones, and our property, from those who would harm us or rob us. It follows that it also is of critical importance that our police be empowered to use reasonable force, including where warranted deadly force, to protect us from the scourge of crime.

At the same time, it is vital that we weed out those police officers with a different agenda. Thus, we have every right to condemn episodes that reveal the presence of racial bigotry in our police departments -- and to investigate reported incidents in which deadly force was used by police officers, to determine whether that force was justified under our governing legal standards and the circumstances in which the officers found themselves.

However, when it comes to telling the good cops from the bad, we have even bigger problems to worry about than racial bigotry. To appreciate this, lets back up for a moment to consider two highly interrelated issues: why we have police, and who should control them.

The police exist to exert force where necessary. But to what end? Both bottom-up democratic republics and top-down dictatorial regimes have police officers. From a distance, they even look alike -- wearing similar uniforms, bearing similar ranks, and carrying similar weapons. But viewed up close, behind the facade, they are profoundly different. In bottom-up societies, the police exist to serve and protect the people and their freedoms by projecting power on the peoples behalf. In top-down societies, the police exist to protect the rulers position of authority by projecting power on the rulers behalf.

During the twentieth century, hundreds of millions of human beings were victimized by top-down regimes -- communists, socialists, and fascists -- that used their police power to subjugate the people, rendering them powerless and poor, with no prospects for improving their lots in life. So if you want to know how to recognize the really bad cops, ask what theyre using force to achieve, and whose interests theyre out to protect. If theyre motivated by racial animosity and theyre American cops, then they are acting contrary to the policies of their employers. Thats because we, the people, are their employers, and we have decreed that bigotry will not be tolerated. We even passed the Fourteenth Amendment to our Constitution to ensure that no persons will be denied the equal protection of our laws. This is binding on our police.

As to who should control the police, most Americans understand that police departments are local, but few understand how that came to be. When this nation was formed, the 13 founding states agreed to create a federal government of limited and specified powers, with all other powers to be retained by the states or the people. The overarching goal behind this was to maximize individual liberty by minimizing the threat of a top-down, central-command government. And so, while the federal government was authorized to engage military forces to protect us from de-civilizing forces from outside our borders, the states alone wielded the general police power for the health, safety, and welfare of the people inside our borders. The states police power encompassed defining what conduct is criminal, setting penalties to be imposed on criminals, establishing law enforcement agencies, and building courthouses and prisons, all aimed at punishing violators in order to deter crime and thereby protect the people.

Over the course of the last 75 years or more, the liberals and progressives within the Democratic Party have pushed to grow the size, reach, and cost of the federal government. This push has extended to the steady encroachment by the federal government into the states police power, supported by a barrage of Supreme Court rulings that corrupted our Constitution. Weve seen this in healthcare, public education, and a rash of federal laws criminalizing conduct. With each instance of this, power has been subtracted from the states, furthering our transformation from a bottom-up to a top-down nation.

To facilitate this transformation, liberals and progressives want to limit our First Amendment freedom of speech so that we cant speak out against them or use our own money to publicize our criticisms of them. And they want to repeal the Second Amendment so that we cant possess firearms to protect ourselves. And they want to neuter completely the Ninth and Tenth Amendments so as to render our states little more than geographical subdivisions of the federal government.

Add to these that the liberals and progressives want to discredit our local police forces and put them under federal oversight, with the Department of Justice scrutinizing them for any whiff of impropriety, as a precursor to federalizing the police function.

Farfetched, you say? Consider that several federal agencies now are arming themselves. So when an EPA agent knocks on your door to inquisition you over your mistreatment of a puddle in your back yard, please beware: he could be packing. Bureaucrats with Bullets may sound like a B-horror movie title, but its a harbinger of something really scary: a police state. This is what top-down regimes end up creating, as a means to control the people and force them to do the governments bidding. We as Americans are among the few peoples of the world who have yet to experience this. Lets hope we never do. For starters, lets not mistake the overwhelmingly good cops we have for the bad ones we could be facing someday.

Blaine Winship is the author of Moralnomics: The Moral Path to Prosperity (Moralnomics Press), available in hardcover from moralnomics.com and in e-books from amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com. (Moralnomics is a trademark owned by Blaine H. Winship.
WARNING: This review contains spoilers.

Declinism is in vogue. A number of books and articles have been written in recent years about the "Decline of the West." Perhaps most notable is Mark Steyn's bestselling book America Alone, which chronicles the fall of Europe, due in particular to declining birth rates and a resurgent Islam. Oriana Fallaci, Bat Ye'or, Bruce Bawer, and others have all written on this theme as well.

These are all books of nonfiction, and all of them, to varying degrees, raise alarms and offer lessons that urgently need to be heeded. Only a fool would ignore them; unfortunately, Europe and the West have far too many of those.

However, it is to the realm of fiction and poetry that one must go in order to find the pulse  indeed, the soul  of a culture and society. Think of Thomas Mann, W.B. Yeats, and T.S. Eliot.

The French novelist, poet, and literary critic Michel Houellebecq (for us non-Francophiles, his last name is pronounced "Wellbeck") has written such a book. Submission is a number-one bestseller in France and across Europe and has been translated into English by Lorin Stein. It is a masterful piece of work that will stay with you long after you finish the last page.

The novel takes place in the future: it is 2022. Francois is a middle-aged literary professor at the Sorbonne. An expert on the 19th-century French novelist J.K. Hysmans, he leads an undemanding but miserable and empty life. He is bored. He drinks too much. He sleeps with his students in an endless series of meaningless and empty relationships, watches porn on the internet, has almost no friends, and throughout the book wonders about his purpose and the meaning of his life, more than once fantasizing about suicide. In other words, Francois is the epitome of early 21st-century Western civilization "man"  indeed, the epitome of our entire civilization. Dreary, driftless, decadent and alone.

Outside of Francois's academic bubble, France is roiling  riots and violence in the streets and the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood Party on the eve of a presidential election. Their main opponent is the National Front, with a sideshow of Socialists and other center parties. The Muslim Brotherhood Party forms an alliance with the Socialists (naturally), and the Brotherhood leader becomes president. Not by force, intimidation, fear, or threats. Indeed, the Brotherhood Party leader is incredibly smooth and sophisticated, beyond reproach, very "French." The media, immersed in political correctness, leaves him untouched. He is like silk in his manner, and he charms his way to the presidency of France.

There is so much to discuss in this book, but in the interest of time and to leave one with the desire to actually want to read it in full, I will highlight two critical signposts of the novel.

As mentioned above, Francois's love life, if it can be called that, is nothing but a series of short-term relationships, primarily with students, that are void of any feeling or depth. All except for one, that is, which is one of the most critical parts of Houellebecq's novel. Myriam is Francois's one "love"; he cares for her deeply. And this is not a man prone to caring; his parents' deaths barely even prompt an emotion.

Myriam is Jewish, and one of the critical subtexts of the story is the rise of anti-Semitism in France. It is always in the background, rising but subtle, until, in the person of Myriam, we see the 1930s parallel of Nazi Germany and her flight from the impending storm. Myriam and her parents leave France and immigrate to Israel. She stays in contact with Francois, at least for a while, her letters and conversation detailing her glee, excitement, and joy at being in Israel. It is clear she has found home. But for Francois, it means only emptiness; upon her farewell, he pointedly states, "There is no Israel for me."

As an aside, I caution my fellow Americans who may possess a more puritanical background or bent: this book includes graphic sex scenes. Sex, I guess, as only the French can so elaborately describe. Certainly enough to make this reviewer blush! All of the sex scenes in the book, however, are clinical and sterile, befitting the emptiness of Francois's "affairs." Except, again, for Myriam. Myriam means something  to Francois and to the story.

A second critical signpost of the novel is the journey Francois takes to find his past, to attempt to find the soul of France. With the Brotherhood's rise and the electoral turmoil, Francois is put on permanent leave of absence; the Sorbonne closes its doors amidst shakeups in leadership and questions of its future. Francois heeds advice and gets out of Paris, driving to the South, hoping to make it to Spain, but he gets as far as Martel (yes, of Charles Martel fame) and is forced to stop. Gas stations, and almost everything else, have closed. He encounters a friend from Paris and gets the rundown on what is happening across the country. Over many drinks, they ruminate on France's history, including her classical medieval Christian past.

This leads Francois to travel to Rocamadour, a monastic commune that draws pilgrims from all over the world to its churches and to see the Black Virgin. At this point in the story, one thinks that maybe Francois, and indeed France, can still be saved. The visit stirs great emotion, the writing is beautiful, but Rocadadour, for all its beauty, doesn't sustain; it lacks meaning. It is a tourist attraction, after all. The short chapter almost reads like a poem  foreshadowed in gloom, the end has been written. Francois heads back to Paris. There will be one final attempt to salvage a Christian past, a chance to keep its ember lit when Francois visits an abbey he had visited previously in his research of Hysmans. But this chapter, perhaps the dreariest of the entire book, leaves the reader and Francois barren and alone. The greatness of the Christian era, sustained across two millennia, has closed with a mournful sorrow.

There are other encounters, other characters that deserve mention, so many other signposts that need to be explained, but one really must read the book. The author chooses a literary scholar as his protagonist in a nation where the tradition of literary studies is central to the very essence of what it means to be French. This is the elite of Republican France, stretching back for a few centuries. The lack of courage and conviction among the elites, as represented by Francois and others, cannot be ignored.

In the end, Francois submits as the title notes, it is foregone from the beginning. In order to regain his job, his stature, his prestige, and his manhood, he submits to Islam, citing the words that all must say: "I testify that there is no God but God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God." And then it is over. Francois is a Muslim. It is subtle. Throughout the entire book, his story, the movement toward Islam, is, in one word, subtle. One long inevitable and seamless slide into darkness.

Is this our future? Is it the future of France? Of the West? Michel Houellebecq has given us a warning, done in beautiful and disturbing prose, that leaves one shaken. Shaken, yet thinking. You will think about this book for a long time. That may be his point.

I close with a quote from Alexander Solzhenitsyn's talk given at Harvard University in June of 1978.

A decline in courage may be the most striking feature, which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society.

Michael Finch is the president of the David Horowitz Freedom Center in Los Angeles. He has been published widely in a number of journals and is a frequent speaker. He recently released his first book of poetry, Finding Home.
The most striking image of Europes refugee crises flashed around the world a year ago: the lifeless body of a three year old Syrian on a Turkish beach. The situation had been intensifying since late 2011 following the assassination of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, who had prevented the departure of African and Middle Eastern emigres from his shores, and the outbreak of the Syrian civil war. Thousands had already drowned in the Mediterranean Sea. This was the photo that brought the migrant crises into focus, declared the New York Times.

The image went viral under the hashtag #humanity washed ashore. One British woman tweeted: A photo instead of a million words. When will this madness stop? Where is our humanity?

An Indian journalist wrote: They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but this one demands trillions of tears.

Beyond the outpouring of grief, the photo also engendered political crises in the European Union: He had a name: Aylan Kurdi. Urgent to act. Urgent to have a European mobilization, tweeted the French Socialist PM, Manual Valls.

On the other extreme, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who insisted that Europes refugee crises was really a mass migration, outraged liberals when he came out forcefully against Europes German-backed open immigration policy:

Everything which is now taking place before our eyes threatens to have explosive consequences for the whole of Europe. Europes response is madness. If Europe does not return to the path of common sense, it will find itself laid low in a battle for its fate.

The Hungarian PM apparently still sees his country, whose defeat of the Ottomans in 1699 ended 150 years of occupation, as Europes gatekeeper against Islamic invasion:

Those arriving have been raised in another religion, and represent a radically different culture. Most of them are not Christians, but Muslims. This is an important question, because Europe and European identity is rooted in Christianity.

Yet, the Magyars, as the Hungarians call themselves, were a semi-nomadic people from the Asian steppe, who ravaged Europe as far as Burgundy before settling in what is today Hungary.

The Magyars arrived at the turn of the millennium following centuries of Viking raids. They had been preceded by the Arabs who would have conquered all of Europe had they not been stopped in Tours, France in 732. The Muslim invaders would later take possession of Sicily and other European Islands while attacking the continent from bases in Southern France.

Converting in the year 1000, the Magyars were the last immigrant people to be accepted by Fortress Europe, which coalesced around a common Christianity.

Noting that Christians no longer place value on family, children, [and] community cohesion, Orban tendered a dire prediction if Europe continues to accept Muslim immigration. There will eventually be more Muslims than Christians in Europe as the continents non-Muslim population is ill-equipped to fight the coming cultural competition.

Europes progressives rejected Orban's warning. In a refugee crisis of unprecedented proportions, Hungarys prime minister, Viktor Orban, has set himself up as a bulwark against a generous-spirited, pan-European approach, The Guardian editorialized.

Why should western Europeans listen to Viktor Orban? Not only was Hungary a late comer to Europe, but to the European Union as well (2004). Core member states, like France and Germany, fear that his influence on Eastern European members is creating a growing east-west divide in the supranational body. Meanwhile, they complain, Hungary continues to take handouts from Brussels.

Mr Orbans hateful statements about Muslims being a threat to European civilization, as well as his ludicrous references to century-old wars with the Ottomans, should be called out for what they are: a disgrace, opined the Guardian.

Was the Hungarian PM right?

Certainly, the rising number of terror incidents and sexual assaults committed by immigrants in the past year point to Orban's prescience.

During one summer week (July 18th to the 24th) Germany, which took in 1.1 million asylum seekers in 2015, suffered a mass shooting which killed nine (perpetrated by an 18 year-old son of Iranian asylum-seekers who was insecure about his German identity), fifteen injured in a suicide bombing and an ax attack on a train which injured four. In addition, on July 24th, a Syrian immigrant killed a woman and wounded two in what was reported as a "personal dispute."

The Gatestone Institute reports that in July "hundreds of German women and children were sexually assaulted by migrants."

The youngest victim was nine; the oldest, 79. Attacks occurred at beaches, bike trails, cemeteries, discotheques, grocery stores, music festivals, parking garages, playgrounds, schools, shopping malls, taxis, public transportation, public parks, public squares, public swimming pools and public restrooms. Predators are lurking everywhere; safety nowhere.

In Sweden, which has welcomed the most refugees per capita (71% of the arrivals are single males), similar attacks have been reported.

Europe is, in fact, committing demographic suicide. In 2015, the number of deaths surpassed births in European Union for the first time since 1961 when Eurostat (the statistical office of the European Union) began calculating the continent's population. The slight net increase in population (around 2 million) was "driven mainly by net migration."

If Europeans wont heed the warnings of Viktor Orban, perhaps they will listen to geopolitical expert George Friedman, a refugee from Hungarian communism who arrived in the US as a child. This is one of the oldest wars still active in the world - a long war that has lasted 1,300 years he explains, referring to the long battle between Christianity and Islam:

We are in a period when the initiative is shifting - this time away from Europe to the Muslim world. Christianity has been sapped of its evangelical zeal and no longer uses the sword to kill and convert its enemies. At least parts of Islam retain that zeal. Enough Muslims share that fervency to endanger the lives of those they despise. And there is no way to distinguish those who might kill from those who wont.

Westerners are often overwhelmed by mass information and underwhelmed by the weight of history.

Most saw the picture of Aylan Kurdi as it was captioned  "a Syrian boy." A look at his family name confirms that he was a Syrian Kurd. The Kurds are a large stateless people living in Syria, Turkey, Iraq and Iran. His family was escaping the ruins of Kobani, a city destroyed by the Islamic State.

Although most Kurds are nominally Sunni Muslims, they have created an autonomous zone in Iraq that promotes democracy and individual rights. In the fight against radical Islam, men and women fight side by side. They need more military help, humanitarian aid and asylum rights when necessary.

Western nations should give preference to immigration from the Christian communities of the Middle East, which are threatened with extinction by radical Islamists.

The death of Aylan Kurdi, his brother, and mother who drowned attempting to join a relative in Canada was tragic.

Dr. Freidman writes "of the constancy of the conflict between Christianity and Islam," reminding us that "in any conflict, understanding both yourself and the other is the key to survival." Only determination based on an historical perspective, recognizing our enemy, and helping our Middle Eastern friends will fortify us for the long battle ahead. If not, we may not only see more heartbreaking pictures like Aylan's, but child suicide bombers on the streets of Europe as well.

The author is a self-made multiculturalist who has lived and worked in Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. He blogs at The Multicultural Conservative: Conservative by Nature  Multicultural by Choice.
Joseph Patrick Tumulty is a name that every American should know; and yet so few do. He may have helped run the country for the last two years of Woodrow Wilson's Administration. This is what a Hillary Clinton presidency portends.

Joseph Tumulty was born in New Jersey in 1879. His parents were middle class ethnic Irish, and he became a lawyer, and later a state representative. However, Tumulty was an accomplished wheeler-dealer, and Woodrow Wilson called upon his services when he started his political climb from Princeton University academic to Governor of New Jersey and then President. Tumulty was Wilson's private secretary, a position that would morph in time to become the White House Chief of Staff, though in 1913, it bore a more humble title.

Wilson was a sturdy WASP, from a Southern Confederate background; yet he needed Tumulty, the ethnic Irish-American from the urban northeast to navigate his way through machine politics if he were to win a Democratic presidency.

Joseph Patrick Tumulty was secretary to President Woodrow Wilson, and no man since his time has ever held a comparable position of influence. Mr. Tumulty had no corps of "administrative assistants" such as supplied nowadays at the White House. He handled all press relations himself. He was not a member of the cabinet but had more influence than all of them combined. - Toledo Blade - 1954 (upon Tumulty's death)

As anyone knows, such a man can become a gatekeeper, and often becomes the power behind the throne.

Nor was Tumulty unscarred in his ascent. Tumulty was opposed to Wilson's second marriage to Edith Bolling Galt, another Southerner, in 1915, a year after Wilson''s first wife's death; and Edith took it personally. She wanted Tumulty removed. On top of that, there was a vicious strain of anti-Catholicism sweeping the country at that time; and Wilson, a dour Presbyterian, was susceptible to it. He was pressured to ditch Tumulty.

Tumulty appealed to Wilson for a reciprocation of the loyalty that he had shown to Wilson when Wilson was a nobody in politics. Wilson kept him.

When Wilson had his stroke in 1919, it was Tumulty and Edith who kept the news under wraps with the connivance of Dr. Grayson, the president's physician.

A lot of modern historians like to credit Mrs. Wilson with running the country. She did claim to have scrutinized all bills that came before the president, deciding what was worth passing on to him. And it does sound so gloriously feminist that a woman was in charge. But the fact is that she was not equipped for the job. Though her father was a lawyer, Edith did not have much of a formal education beyond finishing school. Historians say she cut Tumulty off from presidential access, but he was too involved for that to be fully plausible.

It must have been Tumulty, the lawyer and statehouse power broker, who guided Edith through the political process, answering questions such as What does this legal phrase mean? and How would this bill fare in light of the Constitution? He could warn,  Don't waste your time passing this one to the President as I know the Congress, and this does not stand a chance. This sort of advice must have aggravated her no end, as she despised Tumulty. But she was dependent on him.

Although Edith did not care for Joe Tumulty, he was a true-blue Wilson loyalist, and she had no compunction about enlisting him as an enabler of the cover-up that she and her co-conspirator, Grayson, were already mounting. - Wilson Quarterly

Tumulty, the one the historians ignore, might have been running the country; but he was a bit of a Wilson sycophant and gave Edith the credit; probably more than she deserved.

When Congress started to ask some embarrassing questions, Edith and Tumulty arranged for Louis Siebold of the New York World to interview the President Wilson. The whole story was a fraud.

In 1921, New York World reporter Louis Seibold won a Pulitzer Prize for an interview he conducted with President Woodrow Wilson. The problem: Wilson was incapacitated due to a stroke, and the interview was faked with the help of the presidents wife and chief of staff. - Politico

Worse yet, Tumulty would sometimes ignore some of Edith's requests concerning the interview. Just who was in charge of the country? Edith or Joseph?

Edith persuaded Siebold to lie about almost every aspect of the president's condition, from his sixty second attention span to his illegible signature, which Siebold praised as copperplate." Siebold talked about running a footrace with the invalid, whose entire left side remained paralyzed. For a final ironic touch, the newsman won a Pulitzer Prize for this travesty of objective journalism. - History News Network

While loyal to Wilson, Tumulty ignored Wilson's desire for a third term, and worked to have someone else nominated. Tumulty and the Wilsons would have a falling out after Wilson left office. No one quite knows why. Some say it was the book about the Wilson Era that Tumulty wrote, Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him, which was pretty much a hagiography, and really could not have offered offense. Others say it was over a miscommunication between Wilson and Tumulty, probably aggravated by Wilson's incoherence. They never spoke for the last two years of Wilson's life. Tumulty's friends said this seeming betrayal of Tumulty's loyalty contributed to Tumulty's later nervous breakdown.

Now, a few days ago, here on American Thinker, James Lewis opined that Hillary is so sickly that Huma Abedin could end up being acting president. While an excellent article, Mr. Lewis did not delve into the historical precedent of the Wilson presidency. Nor did he touch upon Joseph Tumulty, a man overlooked by most historians, who generally prefer the romantic vision of a loyal wife rather than admit the equally likely reality that a Northeast urban power broker was helping to run the country.

Nor is the general connivance of the press well known.

But the fact remains, Tumulty and Edith ran the country for 2 years, and the press connived to cover things up. If the same thing happens to Hillary, will it be Huma or Bill running the country?

Mike Konrad is the pen name of an American who is neither Latin, nor Arab. He runs a website, http://latinarabia.com, where he discusses the subculture of Arabs in Latin America. He wishes his Spanish were better.
While a commander in chief wannabe lies about her use of classified emails (among other vital national issues) that undoubtedly have compromised the safety of the United States but will nevertheless be rewarded professionally, financially, and personally, a Marine who sent a classified email through unclassified channels to warn a fellow Marine about danger is about to be forced from the Marines. Although during his hearing he requested to be treated the same way as Hillary R. Clinton (D), the request was denied.

Sexism?

Meanwhile, an officer in charge of the ship captured by our present commander in chief's best nation friend, Iran, has been punished:

The officer in charge of a detachment of ten sailors who were captured by Iranians in January has been issued a punitive letter of reprimand for his role in the capture of the crews of the two boats, two defense officials confirmed to USNI News on Thursday. Lt. David Nartker was accused of violating Article 92  failure to obey an order or regulation  of the Uniformed Code Military Justice and was issued a punishment by then Naval Expeditionary Combat Command commander Rear Adm. Frank Morneau last month but had appealed the decision to U.S. Pacific Fleet commander Adm. Scott Swift, one defense official told USNI News. Nartker's appeal was denied. (snip) Nartker said he was trying to prevent an international incident when he and his sailors were captured. "We might have all been dead at that point in time. I didn't want to start a war with Iran either. That was also on my mind. I didn't want to start a war that would get people killed. My thought at the end of the day was that no one had to die for a misunderstanding," Nartker told investigators.

Adm. Swift was unmoved, and as a result Nartker could be fired, or, in Navyese, "separated from the Navy," receiving an other than honorable discharge, meaning:

An OTH discharge can jeopardize valuable VA benefits, including certain disability compensation, education benefits and VA home loans[.]"

And what about the other sailors on that ill fated ship?

"[F]our Navy officers went to admiral's mast, two have been awarded a punitive letter of reprimand for violating Articles 90 (disobedience of a superior commissioned officer) and 92 (dereliction in the performance of duties) of the Uniformed Code of Military Justice; one Navy officer was found not guilty of violating Article 92 (dereliction in the performance of duties) of the Uniformed Code of Military Justice; and accountability actions for the fourth Navy officer have not yet been completed," Lt. Cmdr Jennifer Cragg told USNI News last month. "Two enlisted have been awarded a punitive letter of reprimand for violating Article 92 (dereliction in the performance of duties) of the Uniformed Code of Military Justice." In May the service relieved the riverine squadron commander, Cmdr. Eric Rasch. Capt. Kyle Moses, commander of Task Force 56, was removed from his position in June. An enlisted member of one of the two RCBs faced an administrative hearing but was not punished.

Meanwhile, our present commander in chief, President Barack Hussein Obama (D), who will leave office in several months, will receive numerous valuable government benefits plus capitalize big time, big money on his eight years in office, which have left our nation more vulnerable internationally and poorer nationally. Oh, and he also secretly transferred over $1.4 billion in untraceable cash to Iran, which, as Rick Moran notes:

... is going to kill a lot of innocent people. It's expected that Iran will spread that cash among its surrogates like the Houthi rebels in Yemen and Hezb'allah, the Lebanese terrorist group fighting with Russia in Syria to bolster the Assad regime. The Iranians, already the world's #1 supporter of terrorism, just got a financial shot in the arm that will truly make them the bankers of choice for terrorists.

Why can't Lt. Nartker receive the same fine treatment as Obama? Racism?

H/T: Eli Lake
What would happen if the government got out of the business of protecting the First Amendment rights of Americans and instead, decided to start attacking them?

The chairman of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission believes that "religious freedom" and "religious liberty" don't really exist. They are "code words for discrimination, intolerance, racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, Christian supremacy or any form of intolerance,

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Washington Times:

Religious liberty was never intended to give one religion dominion over other religions, or a veto power over the civil rights and civil liberties of others, he said in the 307-page document. At the heart of the Peaceful Coexistence report is a USCCR assertion that granting religious exemptions to nondiscrimination laws significantly infringe on the civil rights of those claiming civil rights protections on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, disability status, sexual orientation, and gender identity. Among the documents recommendations is the assertion that the 1993 federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or RFRA, protects only religious practitioners First Amendment free exercise rights, and it does not limit others freedom from government-imposed religious limitations under the Establishment Clause. Its the area of sexual orientation and gender identity where the greatest conflicts lie, and the report offered little support to those who see their work or artistic expressions  creative photography, cake decorating or flower arranging, for example  as also expressions of their religious belief about marriage being the union of one man and one woman. Individuals in each of these fields have come under fire from state and local civil rights agencies, with cases going against professionals in New Mexico and Washington state. USCCR member Gail Heriot, a former George Mason Law School associate dean who now teaches at the University of San Diego, dissented from the majority opinion of the commission, including Mr. Castros statement. Im troubled by the growing attitude that somehow anti-discrimination laws trump everything. We live in a more complex world than that, she said in a telephone interview. Others offered a harsher judgment. This commission is not only out of touch with reality, but also out of touch with our Constitution, said Mat Staver, chairman of public interest law group Liberty Counsel, based in Orlando, Florida, before going on to call the report an anti-American, anti-Constitutional, misinformed position. The emphasis on civil rights over free exercise, civil liberties experts say, could also spill over into other areas, such as religious schools and colleges seeking to hire teachers that affirm the sponsors doctrinal positions. According to religious liberty expert Douglas Laycock, a University of Virginia Law School professor, the USCCR offered no coherent reason why the federal or state versions of RFRA dont protect faith-based organizations or businesses, except to say that civil rights are of preeminent importance.

Since when did "gender identity" become a protected civil right? I recall no debate in Congress. Obama issued an executive order a couple of years ago protecting "gender identity" for federal workers, but this fanatic is talking about a broad mandate to police all workplaces and facets of living.

The impact of essentially throwing the entire concept of religious liberty under the bus is truly frightening. Won't free speech get the same treatment? After all, the left could easily graft university speech codes on to anti-discrimination rules, making it a crime to "offend" anyone. From there, it's not hard to see anyone who expresses a political opinion in opposition to "anti-discrimination" law being charged with a crime.

Orwell was about 30 years early in his predictions.
The news that North Korea has conducted a successful nuclear bomb test is worse than you think. The New York Times reports:

On Friday, North Korea reported a major advance in its efforts. The standardization of the nuclear warhead will enable the D.P.R.K. to produce at will and as many as it wants a variety of smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear warheads of higher strike power, it said in a statement on Friday, using the initials of the countrys official name, Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea. This has definitely put on a higher level the D.P.R.K.s technology of mounting nuclear warheads on ballistic missiles.

President Obamas disastrous foreign policy legacy has unleashed a whirlwind of malign forces, ranging from the creation of ISIS to the enabling (and financing) of Irans nuclear program, placing nuclear weapons in the hands of a regime officially committed to triggering Armageddon, so that the Twelfth Imam can return and lead Muslims to paradise and the end of the world.

It is hard to top that for foreign policy disaster, but Barack Obama definitely has it in him to leave an even smellier pile of trouble for his successors to deal with. Compared with Iran, which will need several years before it even has a bomb, North Korea, the equal of Iran in insanity and its superior in originality, is now openly and loudly developing a scary nuclear arsenal mounted on ballistic missiles of ever greater range and accuracy. The Iranians, after all, follow a creed with over a thousand years of history, while the NoKos follow a murky novel national dogma called Juche, loosely translated as Eff you, go away to foreigners, and Obey! to the domestic population.

North Korea is led by a ruthless (he had his uncle killed), morbidly obese, and young (early thirties  date of birth uncertain) third-generation monarch who took office in 2011.

official portrait

recent picture

President Obama had the opportunity to influence an insecure novice dictator by his actions toward the country. As usual, he taught Kim Jong-un to laugh in Americas face as a pitiful, weak giant led by a weakling.

The grotesque humiliation heaped upon Barack Obama at Hangchou airport, enacted before the worlds leaders gathered for the G-20 (none of them got the no rolling stairs treatment) was the signal to North Korea. Gordon Chang explains:

Kim, seeing how Xi treated Obama, thought he could get away with delivering his own radioactive-laced snub. Kim knows that Xi is not about to further goals, like the denuclearization of North Korea, that Washington promotes, and so Pyongyang thinks it has a big green light in its quest to possess the worlds most destructive weapons. Pyongyang will make fast progress in developing nukesuntil the U.S. and the rest of the international community realize they have a China problem as much as a North Korean one.

Ronny Gordon sums it up:

Actually, we have a global problem.
Saudi Arabian Airlines (Saudia) inaugural flight of its new A330 was less than memorable when a video revealed that the passengers trashed the aircraft in flight. AT covered the incident here, with video revealing horrifyingly filthy restrooms, appearing to have feces smeared on toilet seats and urine on the floors, and litter scattered everywhere.

In the wake of this public relations disaster, Saudia is now offering the excuse that the reason for passengers turning the plane into a pigsty is that they were deportees en route to Addis Ababa.

So, let me get this straight. The maiden voyage of its new Airbus A330 is assigned deportation duty to Ethiopia while pilgrims conducting Hajj on the other new aircraft receive no attention. Or maybe it was just as bad on those flights. Who knows?

Anyway, the anonymous source at Saudia who made the excuse was unavailable for comment. However, a Saudi citizen was asked about the incident,

Although the blame must be shared between the passengers and the airline, Saudia must get the bigger share of blame, he said. The crew must always keep the airplane clean. It is Saudias fault if the crew is understaffed, he added.

This Saudi citizen either is ignorant of flying in that part of the world or is making another excuse for typical habits of Saudis or both. As Thomas Lifson remarked, Saudis largely rely on foreigners to perform menial labor, and its not at all different on Saudia. Flight attendants are females from the other GCC countries and from Asia. Given Saudi cultural norms, the issue is not that both the passengers and the flight attendants are at fault. with the lions share of the blame falling on the airline. Its how much abuse foreign female flight attendants are willing to put up with on domestic and regional flights.

Even on international flights, where a higher class of Saudi passengers is present, one can sometimes find restrooms that would not meet the standards of other Western carriers. The simple fact is that this Saudia flight inadvertently provided a window to the behavior of its clientele, and blaming this on deportees wont make it go away.

John Smith is the pen name of a former United States intelligence officer.
A loophole in the system allowed five of the 9/11 hijackers to overstay their visas, which allowed them to conduct their attacks. Fifteen years later, that loophole remains open, a product of government inaction and a lack of will to close it.

Once the hijackers overstayed their visa, there was no system in place to inform authorities of the violation and no way to track the illegals to know where they were. This allowed the terrorists to get drivers licenses so that they could board the planes and murder 3,000 people.

Washington Times:

The Government Accountability Office says five of the 19 hijackers either overstayed their visas or lost their status by breaking the terms of their permits, making them illegal immigrants in the governments eyes. But nobody was looking for them  or even knew theyd overstayed  allowing them to blend in with millions of other illegal immigrants living and working in the U.S. at the time, carrying drivers licenses that let them board the airplanes theyd use to kill nearly 3,000 people. Earlier this year the Department of Homeland Security completed its first official estimate of overstays, calculating 1 percent of visitors on basic tourist or business visas  nearly 500,000 people  stayed beyond their deadlines in fiscal year 2015. Tracking who and where they are, however, is difficult, and its not clear how much effort the government puts into looking for them. The administration deported just 2,500 visa overstays in 2015. Homeland Security officials say they collect information, including fingerprints and photos, from visitors who arrive on a visa by airplane or boat. But U.S. ports arent set up to collect fingerprints when people leave, creating a loophole in the system that makes it difficult to be sure someone has left the way he came. And land borders are another issue altogether. While officers at the U.S.-Canada border do name checks and share the information with each other, they dont collect fingerprints. And the U.S. lacks a similar agreement with Mexico, meaning there arent even any name checks for the millions who cross the southwest border. U.S. Customs and Border Protection is trying a few solutions. CBP is running a pilot program at 10 airports, testing mobile fingerprint-collection devices on select flights, and from December through May, it did name checks and fingerprint collection at the Otay Mesa land port in California. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson has set a 2018 deadline for collecting biometrics from departing passengers at the countrys top airports. We will have this deployed and operational by fall of 2018. The secretarys committed to 2018 to be doing this, and we intend to do this, John Wagner, deputy assistant commissioner at CBP, assured Congress earlier this year.

Donald Trump has made closing this loophole a priority in his immigration plan. The Clinton campaign won't comment.

How many visa holders are we talking about?

Earlier this year the Department of Homeland Security completed its first official estimate of overstays, calculating 1 percent of visitors on basic tourist or business visas  nearly 500,000 people  stayed beyond their deadlines in fiscal year 2015. Tracking who and where they are, however, is difficult, and its not clear how much effort the government puts into looking for them. The administration deported just 2,500 visa overstays in 2015.

That's clearly unacceptable and an open invitation to terrorists to evade visa restrictions. There's no excuse for the delay, considering that the technology to track visa overstays has been around for years. This is simply a matter of government not prioritizing a task that should have been accomplished in the days following 9/11.

That DHS says the system won't be fully in place until 2018 is ridiculous. There should be more urgency, since our inability to track the terrorists after they overstayed their visa was a major factor in the success of the attacks.

You'd hate to think it would take another mass casualty attack to get government off its behind to close this loophole,
As someone who grew up watching that wonderful FBI series on TV, it is shocking to see what people are saying about Mr. Comey, the FBI director. I guess that's what happens when you say there is no evidence of intent on July 5 and then we spend the next two months learning that everything Mrs. Clinton did was intended to evade the rules.

Roger Simon is calling for Mr. Comey to resign. He won't be the last one. This is Mr. Simon's argument:

If were I an FBI agent, I would despise James Comey. He has humiliated the FBI and all its employees. The institution will never be the same, at least not for decades to come. The FBI is no longer an instrument of justice. It is the reverse. It is an obfuscater of justice and an enabler of the rich and powerful. How depressing and disgusting.God help our republic. Exaggerated? Not in the slightest. Consider this: Hillary Clinton, who had told us she had one cellphone, turned out to have had thirteen such phones and five iPads, all of which have mysteriously disappeared, two having been smashed by hammers -- this, although the information on all of them was legally government property. Was she arrested for this or even cited? Did the FBI even ask why she did this or why she had so many phones? Some wag on television said she must have been a crack dealer. More importantly, did the FBI even ask her the most obvious of questions: why in the world did she put ALL her government emails on a private home-brew server (and then have them deleted with the most advanced data eradication software available -- five stars on CNET -- two days after these emails came under subpoena)? Was that because the equally obvious answer -- to avoid any possible public scrutiny of her actions (for a variety of suspicious reasons) -- is itself felonious?

Like Mr. Simon, I reluctantly accepted Director Comey's July 5 conclusion. Sorry, but I can't anymore.

As someone familiar with corruption in Latin America, let me tell you that we are creeping slowly to the status of a banana republic  i.e., rules for you and not for me! From Mexico to Argentina, I've seen how countries and institutions are torn apart because those making the tough calls do not want to lock up the people in power.

Yes, Director Comey should resign. Best of all, an honest Democrat, someone who cares more about the country than getting a check from Planned Parenthood, should call for his resignation.

For 25 years, the Clintons have been a menace to the rule of law, from the Senate Democrats who refused to convict President Clinton in 1998 to an FBI director who is arguing what the meaning of intent is.

We've seen this movie in Latin America and the net result is capital flight and a law that nobody respects.

Sorry, Director Comey, but we are in deep trouble when the FBI is this caught up in politics.

P.S. You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter.
Even in its obituaries, the Associated Press slants against Israel. On September 1, 2016, the obituary of Israeli Benjamin (Fuad) Ben-Eliezer written by the Associated Press states innocently that "Mr. Ben-Eliezer ... was born in Basra, Iraq in 1946 and moved to Israel in 1950." Moved? According to an obituary in The Times of Israel, "[a]t age 12, with the founding of the State of Israel, Ben-Eliezer was forced to flee Iraq alone. Traveling by foot with a group of Jews, he headed toward Tehran. He described the journey in detail in 2011 on the Uvda TV program, saying he was beaten repeatedly along the way and rescued from a swamp without his shoes." In Haaretz, "[w]hen Ben-Eliezer turned 12 and the persecution of Iraqi Jews increased, Fuad's father sent him to Israel to save him."*

In other words, Ben-Eliezer fled for his life!

The sanitized story omits one of the worst periods for the Jewish people, which caused about 1 million Jews in Arab lands to flee for their lives. Countless Jews were murdered. In Iraq, the Jews went through pogroms, with the largest being the Farhud. According to the United States Holocaust Museum, "[d]uring the two days of violence, rioters murdered between 150 and 180 Jews, injured 600 others, and raped an undetermined number of women. They also looted some 1,500 stores and homes. The community leaders estimated that about 2,500 families  15 percent of the Jewish community in Baghdad  suffered directly from the pogrom." The lives of Iraqi Jews, like Jews in most Arab countries, were in peril. Saying they "moved" is inaccurate and serves to distort and minimize what really happened.
Between 1951 and 1992, the United States conducted 928 atomic tests at the Nevada Test Site about 65 miles (105 km) northwest of the city of Las Vegas. Exactly one hundred of these tests were atmospheric, whose mushroom clouds could be seen for almost 100 miles (160 km), drawing fascinated tourists to the desert city of Las Vegas. Even as far away as Los Angeles, located some 240 miles (386 km) away, as the crow files, the unearthly glow of the atomic bomb illuminated the dark sky turning night into day. These extraordinary but fairly regular events were covered in leading newspapers with photographs accompanied by nonchalant captions.

Los Angeles had two dawns yesterday, wrote the Times after one pre-dawn test in the 1950s. Los Angeles Civic Center buildings by Nevada A Bomb blast, 1955, wrote another, which writer Geoff Manaugh calls an incredible statement in any context, stranger than science fiction.

An atomic bomb lights up the night sky over Los Angeles City, on March 7, 1955. The glow lasted 20 seconds beginning at 5:20.

An interesting theme in the handwritten captions accompanying these photos, observes the Wired, is the regular reminder that the blast is much more powerful than any previous, which makes sense given that during this period the yields of nuclear tests were definitely on the rise.

There are also pictures of people enjoying the spectacle that demonstrate the morbid fascination that many Americans had with nuclear weapons at the time. One such event was broadcast live by local TV channels of Los Angles on April 22, 1952. The event got surprisingly high ratings for 5:30 in the morning.

Geoff Manaugh puts this in eloquence.

In retrospect, however, the event has an unsettling naivete, like a photo of school kids playing with mercury or a home movie of a parent renovating a babys bedroom with lead-based paint. That the terrifying and sublime effects of atomic explosions have always lent themselves well to photography takes on an especially strange irony here, in this metropolis of film and sunlight: that a city would so casually use this unnatural luminosity to take a photo of itself for the morning paper, careless of the danger as the seductive allure of these midcentury detonations drew near.

Related: How to Watch a Nuclear Explosion

Los Angeles Civic Center buildings by Nevada A Bomb blast, 1955. Photo credit: Wesselmann/USC Digital Library

View of Atom Bomb blast seen in Los Angeles, 1951. Photo credit: McCarty/USC Digital Library

"Today's atomic explosion, largest yet set off on the Nevada test range, was clearly visible in Los Angeles, as remarkable photo shows. Staff photographer Perry Folwer was ready with his camera on a tripod on the roof of the Herald-Express building when the blast occurred at 5:48 a.m. Reporter Jack Smith, who also saw yesterday's explosion, points towards the great white flash that clearly silhouetted mountains to the east." Photo credit: Perry Fowler, February 2, 1951.

From the Herald-Examiner, May 7, 1952. "Atomic blast gives Los Angeles a early 'sunrise.' It was still night in Los Angeles at 5:15 a.m. today when the 'early sunrise' flashed momentarily on the northeastern horizon. The flash came from the latest atomic blast in Nevada. Photo above was taken from top of hill at Sixth and St. Paul streets. City Hall and its beacon clearly show."

An atomic bomb from testing in Nevada lights the sky in this photograph taken on March 1, 1955 from the Los Angeles Times Mirror Building.

Atomic blast seen from the San Fernando Valley, March 7, 1955. "Atomic fire lights pre-dawn valley skies. Blazing light from biggest atomic blast in current Yucca Flats, Nev., tests illuminates Valley skies -- 275 air miles away -- at 5:20 a.m. today, 20 minutes after explosion. Photo was taken from Mulholland Drive. Cluster of lights at left is Lockheed Air Terminal. At right is Burbank residential and business district." Photo credit: Bob Steele.

From the Herald-Examiner, dated March 7, 1955. "This is another version of how the atomic bomb blast in Nevada looked over Los Angeles from the roof of the Statler Hotel. Note the sharpness of City Hall (right background), the Richfield Building (right foreground) and other buildings. Ridge of mountains is also sharply outlined."

From the Herald-Examiner, June 4, 1953. "Evidence that today's atomic bomb, detonated at Yucca Flat, Nevada, was the most powerful of all in the series is revealed in this picture taken here. The sky is as bright as day, but even more notable is the fact that downtown buildings are not only silhouetted, as in previous atomic explosions, but actually are illuminated on this side, the side farthest away from blast source."

From the Herald-Examiner, May 5, 1955. "Early risers were a bit disappointed this morning when they went to roof of a downtown Los Angeles building to see the flash from the big atomic blast in Nevada. Because of heavy layer of clouds between here and there, they saw only a faint glimmer. Blast was at 5:10 a.m."

From Herald-Examiner May 7, 1952. "Today's atomic blast on Yucca Flat proving grounds in Nevada was plainly visible to early risers at 5:15 a.m. in Los Angeles. Photo taken from the roof of the Herald-Express building, shows blast lighting up the northeastern horizon."

An un-credited, undated photo of an 'atomic dawn' taken from an unknown location.

The best views were had from Las Vegas, and the city fully capitalized on the atomic spectacle. Detonation times were advertised beforehand and so were the best spots for watching. Casinos, hotels and inns flaunted their north-facing vistas, offering special atomic cocktails and Dawn Bomb Parties. In this picture, a mushroom cloud is seen from Las Vegas city. Photo credit: Citylab/Las Vegas News Bureau

The flash of detonation. Photo credit: Citylab/Las Vegas News Bureau

Tourists watch mushroom cloud from the poolside. Photo credit: Citylab/Las Vegas News Bureau

Photo credit: Citylab/Las Vegas News Bureau

Photo credit: Citylab/Las Vegas News Bureau
When you think of mid-range Samsung-branded Android smartphones, the companys Galaxy A lineup probably comes to mind, and for a good reason. Samsung had introduced quite a few Galaxy A devices thus far, and a couple of new ones will land soon it seems. The Galaxy A3, Galaxy A5 and Galaxy A7 (2017) have been spotted a couple of times thus far, theyve been listed on Zauba, and have been leaking out ever since.

That being said, the most powerful handset out of the three, the Galaxy A7, has popped up on GFXBench. Now, according to the listing, the device will sport a 5.5-inch fullHD (1920 x 1080) display, quite probably a Super AMOLED panel, and will also pack in 3GB of RAM and 32GB of native storage. The listing does not reveal if the phone will ship with a microSD card slot, but chances are it will. Anyhow, GFXBench says that this phone will be fueled by an octa-core 64-bit SoC running at 1.8GHz, along with the Mali-T830 GPU. The 16-megapixel camera will be placed on both the back and front side of this smartphone, which basically means this device will come in handy for those of you who live to take nice selfies. The LED flash will be included here, quite probably a dual-LED flash, though we still dont know if the company plans to include flash on the front side of the device as well. Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow will come pre-installed on the Galaxy A7 (2017), and on top of it, youll be able to find Samsungs custom UI, of course.

The Samsung Galaxy A7 (2017) will, quite probably, be made out of metal, and its battery will not be removable. Chances are well get a rather familiar design, the phone will, almost certainly, resemble its predecessors, so you can expect the physical home button to make a comeback here, as well as two capacitive buttons on its sides. We still dont know when will Samsung introduce this handset, but it might arrive soon judging by the leaks that have been popping up recently. Stay tuned, as usual, well report back as soon as we stumble upon new info.
After at least three airlines in Australia banned the Galaxy Note 7 from their flights following numerous reports of the device catching fire, it is now apparently the turn of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) in India to issue a strongly-worded advisory urging airline passengers Not to turn on or charge Samsung Galaxy Note 7 mobile phone on board the aircraft. In a message strikingly similar to the warning issued by the U.S Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) earlier today, the DGCA also asked airline passengers not to put their Galaxy Note 7 phones in their checked baggage. The DGCA works with the Ministry for Civil Aviation in India to formulate safety and regulatory guidelines that govern the civil aviation sector in the country.

The circular was issued earlier today and is basically more an advisory at this point in time rather than a move to ban the device altogether from fights originating within the country. Understandably though, the DGCA is not the only aviation regulator in the world to have expressed its concerns regarding Samsungs ill-fated new phablet. The FAA, as mentioned already, also did the exact same thing citing recent incidents and concerns raised by Samsung after the company issued an unprecedented global recall for the Galaxy Note 7 last week following an internal investigation that reveled a fault with the batteries inside a large number of the smartphones. Japanese aviation authorities have also urged passengers not to turn on or charge any Galaxy Note 7 units on board an aircraft, making it one of at least three national aviation regulators to have taken this extraordinary step today.

Meanwhile, as far as the situation in India is concerned, while Samsung had launched the device in the country late last month at a price of Rs. 59,990 ($900) for the base 4GB + 64GB version, it was thankfully yet to go on sale. That was supposed to happen on September 2nd, but now that the shipments have been delayed for obvious reasons, the company is offering a free Gear VR headset and a Rs. 3,300 ($50) Oculus content voucher to customers who have already pre-ordered the device and are now waiting for the company to announce its next move. While Samsung Australia has officially announced that replacement stock of the smartphone will be available to customers from September 21st, the Indian unit of the South Korean company is yet to make any official commitment on that front.
Future Samsung GPUs that would be used within their in-house Exynos processors could come from either NVIDIA or AMD, as a new rumor states that the worlds largest Android manufacturer is having discussions with both companies on such a possibility. If Samsung were to enter into a partnership with either of them for this particular purpose, it would signify a shift from using ARMs Mali GPUs to potentially using NVIDIAs Pascal architecture or AMDs Polaris architecture. While there is no confirmation on these discussions, it might seem logical to go with NVIDIA considering that Samsung was reported early last month to have won a contract to manufacture NVIDIAs Pascal GPUs. With that partnership already in place, it would make sense for Samsung to use these GPUs inside of their future Exynos chipsets. If the Samsung reaches an agreement with either company, they would be licensing the designs.

Locking down graphics chips from either NVIDIA or AMD would mean that Samsung would likely not be producing its own GPUs in-house as had been previously thought, although its entirely possible that Samsung could be continuing to manufacture their own GPU for other chips even further down the line, and may be deciding to use a different outside source until their own graphics chips are ready.

According to previous rumors, Samsung may have their own internally-built GPUs ready for use inside of Exynos processors sometime by next year or the following year, which makes it all the more possible for them to be considering the use of NVIDIA or AMD as an interim GPU and a replacement for ARM until that time comes. While a partnership like this would certainly benefit Samsung, it would also likely mean vast benefits for whichever company would end up working with Samsung as they are the largest Android manufacturer, which would mean huge business. Should NVIDIA be the company that Samsung chooses to partner up with, it would mean a return for NVIDIA to having their GPUs inside of smartphones, as NVIDIA outspokenly retreated from producing smartphone graphics chips a while back, and there hasnt been a smartphone with an NVIDIA GPU inside since the original Blackphone which was powered by the Tegra 4i. Currently, NVIDIA has only been producing mobile GPUs for devices such as its SHIELD products like the SHIELD Tablet K1 and the SHIELD Android TV, as well as various tablets and Chromebooks.
Samsung has issued a statement for the British market explaining that it is replacing all customers current Galaxy Note 7 devices and has stopped sales of new ones because of the risk of an exploding battery. The companys statement explains that as at the start of September, it was aware of thirty-five cases around the world. The majority of these have been in South Korea or North America with one report from Taiwan. Since the 1st of September we have seen other cases, but these are not mentioned in the press release. Samsung explain that they are voluntarily replacing devices with a new one over the coming weeks and customers need to call them for more information. This, the press release states is because Samsung place customer safety as their absolute priority

Samsungs UK press release highlights some of the communications issues with being such a large business. Samsungs story is a variant of the existing story, but there is one important difference: Samsung have explained what is causing the battery to explode. Their statement explains that a very rare manufacturing process error was causing an anode-to-cathode contact. A short circuit if you will. In the context of battery manufacturing over the world this is a rare event, but not it seems for the Samsung Galaxy Note 7. In the same press release, Samsung do not confirm the battery supplier involved but state that they use a number of suppliers and they are working with all of them. Of course, during Samsungs investigation of the exploding Galaxy Note 7 devices, it will be painfully obvious to the manufacturer that had built the battery but it seems Samsung do not want to name and shame the battery supplier, at least officially to the UK market. Its also interesting that Samsung have included a number of questions and answers at the bottom of their document and when asked if this were a recall, the company explained: Although this is isolated to a battery cell issue, we are prioritizing the safety of our customers first so, we are voluntarily replacing Galaxy Note 7 devices with a new one.

Nevertheless, the document also confirms that there are no other Samsung products that is believes could explode and that it does not envisage any issues with the replacement Galaxy Note 7 devices. New customers waiting for their Galaxy Note 7 in the UK will need to wait a little longer as Samsung will be replacing existing devices first.
Its been a long time coming, but it seems as though were finally heading into the tail-end of the year with some more Android Wear smartwatches to talk about, as well as some interesting options elsewhere. Samsungs new Gear S3 isnt going to go on sale until later on in the year, which is why it wont be on this list, but with new options from Fossil and Michael Kors now on sale, September has become one of the better months to purchase an Android Wear smartwatch.

10. Fossil Q Founder

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The Q Founder was Fossils first foray into the world of Android Wear, and while they have new models available now, this is still a quality option for people that want something a little more stylish. It might not offer a heart rate sensor or the same high-quality display as other Android Wear watches, but its chunky form factor as well as traditional fit and finish will appeal to those that want a watch first and a gadget second. Available now in a range of different colors and strap options, including some stylish two-tone options, the Fossil Q Founder should certainly be one to look out for.

09. LG Watch Urbane

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What is quickly becoming one of the older Android Wear smartwatches out there, the Watch Urbane from LG still remains one of the most stylish. It features a heart rate sensor and a fully-circular OLED display, which is sharp and crisp. Despite some reports of older models getting burn-in issues, the Watch Urbane is a great jumping on point for those looking for a watch that can do a bit of everything while at the same time looking nice and stylish. Whether or not the Watch Urbane is updated to Android Wear 2.0 seems to be a big question right now, and whether it does or not will decide how much longer it lasts on shelves. As a smartwatch that ticks all of the right boxes, all the while being a little bit on the large side, this is a watch that those interested in Android Wear should give a look.

08. Fossil Q Marshall, Q Wander

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Earlier this year, Fossil announced more smartwatches running Android Wear; the Q Marshall and the Q Wander. With the Q Marshall on the right, Fossil have evolved the look and feel from the Q Founder, while the Q Wander on the left has something a little more modern about it. Available in a range of different colors and different band styles, these two new watches look pretty nice. With the new Snapdragon Wear 2100 on the inside as well the ability to make or take phone calls from your wrist, these two options are cut from the same cloth while offering users different styles. They still dont offer heart rate monitoring and anything like that, but it should be pretty clear by now that these are designed to be stylish first and foremost.

07. Motorola Moto 360  2nd Gen

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While many will still be waiting for the replacement for the ever-ageing Moto 360 to arrive, its still one of the more complete options available on the market. With a wide array of different case options  including two different sizes  the Moto 360  2nd gen is a real looker, and with the standard 22m or 18mm watch fittings it makes for one of the better-looking smartwatches of recent memory. With a heart rate monitor and a standard processor this time around, Motorola got a lot of things right here, but with the same flat tire that people have never been keen on, its still not up there with the rest of them.

06. Polar M600

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Now available, the Polar M600 is one of the only fitness-focused Android Wear smartwatches to hit the market, and while that may or may not be a good thing depending on your outlook, its an option that we sorely need. With built-in GPS, and a build that looks like a fitness tracker grew too big for its boot, the Polar M600 is a great option for those looking for a sophisticated way of tracking their activities. With some of the more accurate heart rate tracking available, as well as a modern look and feel, the Polar M600 is the Android Wear watch for those serious about getting or staying fit while also having a quality smartwatch experience.

05. Moto 360 Sport

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For those that want that sporty modern look without all the bulk and the obviousness, Motorola has you covered. The Moto 360 Sport is little more than a Moto 360  2nd Gen in a different look and feel, but its lightweight, thin and most importantly water-resistant and sporty. it features all the same features as most other Android Wear apps, as well as a decent built-in offering from Motorola to keep track of your activities. Its a good-looking watch, and one that wont break the bank either.

04. Michael Kors Access Collection

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Another pair of watches that were announced earlier in the year and are now finally going on sale, the pricey Michael Kors collection has options for both men and women. As we covered earlier this week, theres a wide array of different straps and color options available, and this is yet another option powered by the Snapdragon Wear 2100. These are watches that, like the Fossil Q line, are designed to be stylish first and foremost and with the Michael Kors name attached to them, its likely that theyll sell well. They might not have the same amount of features of other watches out there, but they look great, and will offer Android Wear fans some much-needed choice when it comes to the high-end.

03. Samsung Gear S2

While the Gear S3 was recently announced during IFA 2016, its not going to be on sale for quite some time yet, so it wont be available in this list just yet. Regardless, Samsung made it very clear that the Gear S2 would live on alongside the Gear S3, and is certainly not being replaced entirely by their new kid on the block. The Gear S2 works with the majority of Android smartphones out there, and it has some excellent features as part of its Tizen operating system. The rotating bezel and other such niceties are worth taking a look at, and these are watches that are real lookers, too.

01. Huawei Watch

Coming up for pretty much a year or more on sale by now, people are waiting for the next Huawei Watch, but so good was the Chinese names first and only Android Wear smartwatch that everyone else has been trying their best to catch up. The case is available in more color options than anything else out there, and with more watch face options than you can shake a Tag Heuer at, Huawei have made one hell of a smartwatch. They even had the foresight to add in a speaker, which now allows for the making and taking of phone calls while on the move. A great smartwatch that seems to be only getting better over time, the Huawei Watch is worth looking into.
In 1976 a Dutch couple Ed Sijmons and his partner Louise decided to visit Scotland and booked a plane, initially, to Edinburgh.

It was a nice Fokker Friendship with few passengers, but a bit (too) late. We did not book a hotel, we only had a fake voucher for a hotel to have cheap tickets (a trick in those days). BUT, a very nice lady sitting not far from us, asked us to stay with her in her apartment in the city center ! Next morning a breakfast ! So nice and friendly ! After some time in Edinburgh we made a trip through Scotland by bus, train, boat and hitchhiking. Dunbar, Berwick (ok, England), Kelso, Hawick, Galashield, Dalkeith and after a few days back to Edinburgh. Next day to Glasgow, Loch Lomond, Inversnaid, Stirling, Perth, Dundee and back to Edinburgh. In Glasgow we stayed a few days, starting at a most terrible B&B, followed by a few days with a very nice woman, in the same street! The first address had 5 rooms at least and the second only one for B&B. It was a poor neighbourhood, and so looked the whole of Glasgow. We liked it, but not too much. But after all it was a real interesting city.
Phuc Off: Zuckerberg and Facebooks thought police erase Napalm Girl and youre next

Facebook has a tricky relationship with censoring images. It recently censored a drawing of a human hand and banned Stephen Ellcock, whod posted the image. But how do we stand of pictures of naked children?

Facebooks boss Mark Zuckerberg has been accused of abusing power after Facebook deleted pictures of 9-year-old Kim Phuc, aka Napalm Girl, one subject in Terror of War, a Pulitzer prize-winning photograph by Nick Ut that showed children fleeing a napalm attack during the Vietnam war.

Norwegian Tom Egeland had posted the picture on Facebook as part of a wider debate on seven photographs that changed the history of warfare.

Espen Egil Hansen, the editor-in-chief and CEO of Norways Aftenposten, newspaper has used his organs front page to accuse Zuckerberg of abusing your power, adding:

I am worried that the worlds most important medium is limiting freedom instead of trying to extend it, and that this occasionally happens in an authoritarian way.

Egelands post earned him a one-month suspension from Facebook. Aftenposten posted the news on its Facebook page, including the offending photo. It received the warning:

Any photographs of people displaying fully nude genitalia or buttocks, or fully nude female breast, will be removed.

So what?

Facebook is a website  a very large one, but, nonetheless a website. You can post the picture on your own website if you like.

What Facebook should mind is that its dull. It thinks a startling picture of the pain and horror of war is too strong for its delicate readers. It thinks you might get sexually aroused by the image. Facebook has a pretty low view of its customers.

And what goes for pictures goes for words, too. At a 2016 event in Berlin, Zuckenberg vowed to work closer with the German police and look out for victims. Hate speech has no place on Facebook or in our community, he said, declining to explain what hate speech is and who gets to decide what is and what is not offensive. He expanded on his view of protected groups, saying that Facebook will now include hate speech against migrants as an important part of what we just now have no tolerance for Until recently in Germany I dont think we were doing a good enough job, and I think we will continue needing to do a better and better job.

Protect migrants seeking better lives in countries where they can think and speak freely by censoring people in those countries from doing just that, banning the natives from doing the very things that make those places desirable to the oppressed. Got it?

Thats the viewpoint from the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company like Facebook.

If you can be banned from Facebook for publishing a picture of a hand or a crying child, can you be banned for calling for a wall to be built between the USA and Mexico, saying White Men Cant Jump, or stating that Nickelback fans are deluded?

Facebook is founded on human-to-human communication.

If you stymie that, the site loses its way. It becomes a safe space where only big corporations that play ball (and pay Facebooks exorbitant fees to reach all of their own readers who like their pages) show up on timelines. Then people will go elsewhere to talk freely and air an opinion.

Given the amount of time and effort we and many others have spent cultivating readers on Facebook  my own Flashbak page is soaring but not everyone who liked it sees the thing  this is shaping up to be one of the biggest corporate pratfalls of all time.

UPDATE: Facebook will let this one go.

Because of its status as an iconic image of historical importance, the value of permitting sharing outweighs the value of protecting the community by removal, so we have decided to reinstate the image on Facebook where we are aware it has been removed. It will take some time to adjust these systems but the photo should be available for sharing in the coming days. We are always looking to improve our policies to make sure they both promote free expression and keep our community safe.

Protecting the community. Sheesh.

Anorak

Posted: 9th, September 2016 | In: Key Posts, Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
The status of Jerusalem: Czech government agrees with King David (not the BBC and The Guardian)

And the capital of Israel is Jerusalem! The citys mayor, Nir Barkat, thanks the Czech government for that news. The Czechs have printed all school textbooks to show that Israels capital is the ancient city of Jerusalem.

Jerusalem is where the Israeli Knesset (parliament) and government are based.

Jerusalem is on the map! says Barkat. Truth has indeed overcome lies: The Czech government has reversed its decision and Czech textbooks will correctly teach that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.

The Palestinian Embassy had complained.

Im thankful to the Czech government for making the right choice and for refusing to surrender to Palestinian incitement and lies, adds Barkat. I am pleased that my letter to Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka and the additional diplomatic efforts have positively impacted this decision, Barkat said.

The friendship between the Czech and Jewish peoples has deep and historical roots. Future generations of Czech students will continue to learn the truth: Jerusalem is Israels capital and the heart and soul of the Jewish people.

True enough. My wife is granddaughter to Jan Smudek (aka Elusive Jan). But the history of the Czechs and the Jews is long and very mixed.

As for Jerusalems status, CBC reminds its readers: King David was the first to declare Jerusalem the capital of the Jewish people 3,000 years ago.

Almost all countries, including the U.S., consider Jerusalem to be a disputed city and have their embassies in Tel Aviv. Palestinians want the eastern section of the city, commonly referred to as East Jerusalem, for the capital of a future state Jerusalem was divided from 1948 to 1967, with Jordan ruling the eastern side of the city, including the Old City, Western Wall, Temple Mount and just about every biblical site. As a result of the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel re-united the city under its sovereignty, and in 1980 officially enshrined in law that Jerusalem is the undivided capital of Israel.

It is a hot topic.

The BBC was confused. It said Israel had no capital at all in its profiles of all nations competing in the London 2012 Games.

In 2014, Collins Bartholomew, a subsidiary of HarperCollins, featured no Israel on maps distributed to English-speaking schools in the Middle East. Why? Because it matched local preferences.

The Guardian regretted the error:

The caption on a photograph featuring passengers on a tram in Jerusalem observing a two-minute silence for Yom HaShoah, a day of remembrance for the 6 million Jews who died in the Holocaust, wrongly referred to the city as the Israeli capital. The Guardian style guide states: Jerusalem is not the capital of Israel; Tel Aviv is (Eyewitness, 20 April, page 24).

But it is. Isnt it?

Anorak

Posted: 9th, September 2016 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
Transfer Balls: Real Madrid resign four Manchester United players in clickbait frenzy

The BBC says Real Madrid players Cristiano Ronaldo, 31, Gareth Bale, 27, midfielders Toni Kroos, 26, and Luka Modric, 30, are all on course to extend their contracts with Real Madrid.

The Daily Mirror agrees.

Thats the Mirror that just two days ago thundered: Manchester United have made a staggering wage offer to Real Madrid superstar Gareth Bale in a bid to lure the Welshman away from the Bernabeu.

The Mirror that reported in the summer of 2015: Cristiano Ronaldo is ready to return to Manchester United... Sunday Mirror Sport understands that Ronaldo is excited by the prospect of once again wearing Uniteds red shirt Madrid know that the world player of the year will seek a new challenge next summer.

The Mirror that reported in December 2015: Manchester United on alert as Toni Kroos seeks Real Madrid exit. Adding in April 2016: Manchester City set for transfer battle with rivals United for Real Madrid midfielder Toni Kroos.

The Mirror that reported in 2013: Luka Modric still has his heart set on a move to Old Trafford this summer, after he has struggled for first team action at Real Madrid.

Manchester United never did sign any of them.

Anorak

Posted: 9th, September 2016 | In: Back pages, manchester united, Sports Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
(By Catherine Hornby)

ROME - Italian and Egyptian investigators met in Rome on Thursday for further discussions over the brutal murder of Italian research student Giulio Regeni, whose body was found on the outskirts of Cairo in February with multiple signs of torture.



The case of the 28-year-old student, who was researching independent Egyptian trade unions for Cambridge University, has garnered headlines worldwide and spurred criticism of Egypt's authoritarian government.



Rome prosecutors Giuseppe Pignatone and Sergio Colaiocco are hosting the meeting at a police school in Rome, joined by Egypt's Prosecutor General Ahmed Nabil Sadek and his team. The summit is divided into three sessions and will wrap up on Friday afternoon.



They are set to go over the latest developments of investigations over the last few months, with a focus on cell phone traffic logs that Italian prosecutors hope to receive from their Egyptian counterparts. According to ANSA sources close to the investigations, Pignatone and his team are not satisfied with a "summary" of phone records but want to have the raw data that has not been processed by Egyptian authorities so that they can use Italian methods to examine it.



Italian prosecutors view the material sent over by Egypt in recent months as completely insufficient. It has included some cell phone use in English in the area of the city where Regeni lived and a few other parts of Cairo around the time that he went missing.



Judicial sources said on Wednesday that the University of Cambridge has responded to Italian prosecutors' requests and sent documents to Rome on Regeni. A second batch of documents is due to arrive in the coming days from Girton College where Regeni was working.



Egyptian friends of Regeni have said his work among union activists brought him into the cross-hairs of Egypt's security forces. Egypt has denied its intelligence or police had any role in the murder of Regeni, who disappeared on January 25 and whose body was found in a ditch outside Cairo on February 3.



The day Regeni went missing was the heavily policed fifth anniversary of the uprising that ousted former strongman Hosni Mubarak. Human rights groups say the Egyptian regime has 'disappeared' hundreds of opponents.



Egypt has offered up a number of explanations for the young man's condition and his death - including a gay lovers' quarrel, a car crash, and a kidnapping for ransom gone wrong - none of which Italy has found convincing.
Migrants: Save the Children launches rescue mission In central Med, specialist staff on board

(ANSAmed) - ROME, SEPTEMBER 9 - Charity Save the Children has sent the Vos Hestia ship off on its first migrant search and rescue mission in the central Mediterranean Sea. The Italian-flagged ship is 59 m long and is equipped to rescue and host about 300 people at a time.



Save the Children will supervise the humanitarian operations carried out by the ship and will supply staff including a coordinator, cultural mediators and specialists in infant protection.



On board, rescued migrants will receive medical assistance, food, water, psychological support and protection for children.



The Italian Coast Guard will direct the ship towards migrant and refugee boats that need rescuing. Save the Children will also be working closely with all other authorities and organisations operating rescue missions in the Mediterranean.



(ANSAmed).




AGRO Europe-Africa project to conclude in Ghana 10/9 For young workers in the agricultural sector

(ANSAmed) - RAGUSA, SEPTEMBER 9 - A project aiming to increase cooperation between Europe and Africa in the agricultural sector will end on September 10 in Accra, Ghana.



The project, AGRO - Sustainable Agricultural Entrepreneurship for Young Workers in Africa and Europe, began in Modica in July 2015. The initiative was financed by the European Erasmus program and Key Action 2 "Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices - Capacity Building in the field of youth". Over 100 youths from the two continents took part, which sought to increase the skills of young workers, who hold much potential for EU partner countries. The focus was on those who are finding it difficult to attain employment. The head of the project was the Svimed association from Ragusa, which coordinated with several Italian and foreign partners. Participants - from Italy, Greece, Ghana and Cameroon - attended sessions focusing on the management of agricultural enterprises, marketing and financing opportunities for young entrepreneurs. They also took part in roundtable discussions with local and international entrepreneurs and visited the offices of Ghana-based companies that are market leaders in cacao cultivation and production. (ANSAmed).




ATHENS - Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras said after a Euro-Med summit in Athens on Friday that an Athens Declaration had been adopted to strengthen the cohesion and unity of Europe ahead of the EU Council meeting in Bratislava. ''We believe in Europe,'' Tsipras said, ''and we must express our position to overcome the challenges that we are facing, fighting against isolation and the powers of xenophobia and terrorism. These initiatives are a positive contribution to the dialogue on the future of Europe'', and that ''we do not want to become another divisive initiative''. He added that the next meeting would be held in Portugal. Prime Minister Matteo Renzi stressed that ''the Athens Declaration is important because it offers a different version of Europe''.



He added that Europe needed to use its ''soft power'' in this period, skillful as it is in creating a ''cultural identity''. ''Europe,'' he said, ''cannot continue to be only rules, technicalities and austerity. It must focus on the deeply rooted values that made it great.'' He noted that not enough attention was given to what was happening of interest in the Mediterranean area, and that ''the vast majority of commentators currently believe that it is just Europe's past. This is not the case.'' He added that ''within the current European context, we need unity and cohesion to meet expectations and provide hope.



Mediterranean countries can help to bring in cooperation and dialogue with African and Middle Eastern countries that can help EU stability, security and economy.'' French president Francois Hollande focused on ''growth policies, broadening of the Juncker plan and the sending of a cultural message to the populations near us''. He added that ''it is important, in this post-Brexit moment, when populists and nationalists focus on the breaking apart of the EU'' to provide ''the contribution of united Mediterranean countries''.
ATHENS - Mediterranean leaders including Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi are attending the Euro-Med Summit in Athens on Friday, a gathering organized by Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to bring a united "southern" front against austerity to next Friday's EU Council in Bratislava.



In addition to Renzi and Tsipras at the summit to discuss pro-growth strategies for Europe are: French President Francois Hollande, Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades, Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, and Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa.



The common denominator among the leaders in attendance is that of belonging to the social-democratic or left wing of the European political front.



EU Deputy Minister Fernando Eguidazu will join the leaders to represent the Spanish government that Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has been unable to form. Rajoy would have been the only conservative politician at the table.



The summit will be held in two sessions in the neoclassical Zappeion Megaron and the delegation will conclude the summit with a visit to the brand-new Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Centre designed by Renzo Piano.



The main topics on the table will be growth and migrants, with the looming "stone guest" presence of German Chancellor Angela Merkel with whom Tsipras was scheduled to meet on Saturday unless he cancels the appointment to instead attend the Thessaloniki International Fair - a sign that relations between Germany and Greece aren't particularly harmonious at the moment.



This is the context within which Renzi and Hollande will approach Germany, with the Italian premier riding high on the success of the openings that Merkel made towards flexibility at their meeting in Maranello at the end of last month.



That flexibility, however, is still a limited one, as EU Vice President Vladia Dombrovskis reiterated at Cernobbio, and is separate from EU aid for the central Italy earthquake. Then there's the topic of migrants, in a context in which arrivals on Greek islands have experienced a new surge, and with an EU-Turkey accord that's still visibly struggling.



The three main topics of the summit - economy, security and migrants - will be tackled with the goal of finding "a Mediterranean point of view", in the words of the Greek government, whose leader Tsipras will try through this summit to increase his European visibility.


Kosovo pens letter opposing Serb Jeremic as UN chief Letter says he didn't apologise for Serbian war crimes

(ANSAmed) - BELGRADE, SEPTEMBER 9 - The Consolate General of Kosovo in New York has sent a letter to the representatives of all UN member countries expressing its strong opposition to the possible election of Serb Vuk Jeremic as new UN secretary-general.



A new round of voting in the elections for Ban Ki-Moon's successor will take place Friday at UN Headquarters in New York.



Ki-Moon's term ends at the end of this year.



Former Serbian foreign minister Jeremic has also served as president of the UN General Assembly, and is currently in third place in voting for the secretary-general post.



Belgrade online daily Blic reported the letter said Jeremic can't become UN secretary-general because he's from a "country that's responsible for war crimes during the armed conflict in Kosovo".



The letter said that to fill the post of secretary-general there must be a "person of high moral and professional skills, and that can't be Jeremic who, when he was foreign minister of Serbia, didn't apologise for crimes in Kosovo".



In recent days ethnic Albanians in Pristina staged a protest against Jeremic's possible election.(ANSAmed).




ROME - The annual rite of the pilgrimage to Mecca begins Saturday, when millions of pilgrims converge on the holy Saudi city, but this year Iranians will be absent, due to heightened tensions between Tehran and Riyadh following last year's stampede that killed thousands of pilgrims.



Taking a pilgrimage to Mecca, known as Hajj, at least once in the course of a lifetime is one of the five pillars of Islam - the five obligations that Muslims must abide by.



According to Associated Press calculations, last year's stampede killed at least 2,425 pilgrims, but Iran claims 5,000 were killed and official Saudi estimates, which only consider the first few days after the stampede, say just 769 people perished.



Iran says 461 of its citizens were killed, a death toll that caused tensions to soar between Tehran and Riyadh and resurface in recent days with heated statements from both sides.



The tensions hadn't ever really calmed down, despite repeated declarations from Iran of its attempts to reconcile, and further tensions were stoked by the fact that Iran and Saudi Arabia are rival powers on opposing sides in area conflicts, from Syria to Yemen and Iraq.



Following the 2015 stampede, Supreme Leader of Iran Ali Khamenei said that Muslims worldwide have to find a solution for managing the two holy cities of Mecca and Medina, to end problems created by the Saudis, and accused Riyadh not only of mismanaging the pilgrimage, but also of having materially killed many wounded pilgrims by grouping them with the dead.



The Saudis responded with highly charged words from the Grand Mufti Abdulaziz Al Sheikh, who was reported in the Saudi press as having said that the Iranians (the majority of whom are Shiite Muslims) aren't Muslims because they are descendants of Zoroastrianism. Iranian President Hassan Rohani joined the debate this week when he said that punitive measures should be imposed on the Saudis by other Islamic countries so that there can be "a true Hajj".



Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said "there's no resemblance between the Islam of Iranians and most Muslims, and the bigoted extremism that Wahabi top cleric and Saudi terror masters preach", according to the Iranian state news agency IRNA.
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 9, ARMENPRESS. North Korea says it has successfully carried out its fifth nuclear test, reports BBC.

The announcement on state media came hours after a seismic event was detected near its nuclear test site.

South Korea believes it is the North's biggest ever test, raising fears the state has made real nuclear advances.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye called it an act of "self-destruction" showing the "maniacal recklessness" of leader Kim Jong-un. The US warned of "serious consequences".

China's foreign ministry said Beijing was resolutely opposed to the test and urged North Korea to avoid further action that would worsen the situation.

The North said the test had been of a "newly developed nuclear warhead" and that it was now capable of mounting a nuclear device on ballistic rockets.

South Korea's military has suggested that the explosive yield of this blast could be almost twice that of the previous nuclear test. Analysts have expressed fears this could mean the North is a step closer to having a useable nuclear weapon.

Park, who is cutting short an overseas visit, said the test was a "grave challenge" to the international community that would "only earn more sanctions and isolation" for North Korea.

"Such provocation will further accelerate its path to self-destruction," she said.

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said his country "absolutely cannot condone" any such test and would "protest adamantly" to Pyongyang.

"North Korea's nuclear development is becoming a graver threat to Japan's safety and severely undermines the peace and safety of the region and the international community," he said.

The White House said President Barack Obama had spoken to both Park and Abe after the latest test.

A statement from press secretary Josh Earnest said Barack Obama had "reiterated the unbreakable US commitment to the security of our allies in Asia and around the world".

"The president indicated he would continue to consult our allies and partners in the days ahead to ensure provocative actions from North Korea are met with serious consequences."

China's foreign ministry statement read: "Today, [North Korea] again conducted a nuclear test despite widespread international opposition - the Chinese government firmly opposes the test."

The test was first detected as a 5.3 magnitude earthquake on Friday morning in north-east North Korea, close to its Punggye-ri underground nuclear test site.

As with previous nuclear tests, the waveform generated indicated it had not been naturally occurring.

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff later said the detonation had a yield of about 10 kilotonnes, making it the North's "strongest nuclear test ever".

That is almost twice the power of its last test in January, which Pyongyang said at the time had been a hydrogen bomb. Many analysts cast doubt on that claim. The bomb dropped by the US on Hiroshima in 1945 had a yield of about 15 kilotonnes.

A fifth test has long been expected. In recent weeks, satellite imagery has shown increased activity at Punggye-ri.
Morins financial adviser, Edward Mullen, said the library worker was able to accumulate so much wealth because he never spent any money. Mullen started working with Morin in the early 1970s, and said by the 2000s he had saved quite a bit of cash in his checking and savings accounts. There was almost $1 million in his retirement account alone.
An Introduction to Doing Business in Singapore 2021 is designed to introduce the fundamentals of investing in ...
Abu Omar Sarakeb was killed during an operation west of the city. So far there is no official confirmation about the author of the attack. The US and Russia meet today in Geneva to try to reach a truce. CIA chief John Brennan confirms de facto partition of Syria (and Iraq).

Damascus (AsiaNews / Agencies) - A senior leader of the rebel group (jihadist) Fateh Jabhat al-Sham, better known by the former name of the Front Nusra Front, was killed in an air strike near the town of Aleppo, in northern Syria.

It was announced by sources close to the rebels and republished on Twitter by the group. In the message it is confirmed that the commander Abu Omar Sarakeb died in an air raid in the northern province.

Al Nusra Front changed its name at the end of July, after cut ties with the al Qaeda network which had long been the local offshoot in Syria.

At present there is no official news about what military force launched the attack. In recent weeks both government Syrian air forces, those of Russia and the United States have carried out several raids in the area against the militia groups and jihadist factions.

Local witnesses have told Reuters added that Abu Omar Sarakeb and other fighters had sought refuge in a hideout in the village of Kafr Naha, west of Aleppo. Although there are no independent confirmations, filtered news related to the killing - or injury - of other prominent leaders of the extremist group.

In February, the face of the Nusra Front - Today Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, the "Front of the Conquest of Greater Syria" - had been excluded by the agreement for a cease-fire on Syria brokered by Washington and Moscow, together with the Islamic State (IS). Despite the name change, there are other reasons to consider the group differently given that it is still linked to Islamic extremist and jihadist galaxy.

In recent weeks Aleppo has become the epicenter of the Syrian conflict and for sometime now a pitched battle for the conquest of the city has been building, with the west in the hands of the government and the east controlled by rebel groups. The diplomatic efforts of the US and Russia have so far concluded in a stalemate.

Today US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov are due to meet in Geneva. The goal is to reach a nationwide truce, improve the distribution of humanitarian aid and to restart the peace talks.

Turkish Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke of the situation in Aleppo in an interview with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin; calling for a cease-fire that has to be achieved "as soon as possible."

Meanwhile the head of the CIA (the American intelligence service), also spoke of in Syria (and Iraq). He said that killings and violence have brough the country "to such a point that it will be very difficult to put back together" in the future. In an interview with the CTC Sentinel, a military magazine published in West Point, John Brennan confirmed the de facto partition of the two states, one of the objectives pursued by Washington in the Middle East.

"I question whether we will see, in my lifetime, the creation of a central government in both of those countries that's going to have the ability to govern fairly", he said. The solution is a federal structure, with autonomous regions, similar to Iraqi Kurdistan.
by Kamran Chaudhry

Sister Athens Angeles passed away suddenly from a brain haemorrhage. From the Philippines, she moved to Pakistan in 2000 where she helped create Internet sites, train students, and offer free lessons to poor children.

Lahore (AsiaNews)  Sister Athens Angeles, a Filipino nun who has lived in Pakistan since 2000, died on Monday at the age of 54 due to a brain hemorrhage.

She was nicknamed the "Sister of cyberspace" because, through her communication skills, she taught others to make the best use of social media to spread the Gospel.

Her funeral was held on Wednesday at St Mary's Church in Lahore. Archbishop Sebastian Shah celebrated the service and expressed deep sorrow at her sudden passing. "I had met her only the day before and she seemed fine, he said. We lost a great communicator."

Sister Athens had arrived in Pakistan 16 years ago, and for six years taught mass media and English to the Franciscan friars. Her students called her "the saint of youth" for her unique ability to engage them in serving the Church.

Immediately after her arrival, she launched Readers are Leaders, a project with which her congregation, the Daughters of St Paul, provided free textbooks to schools, parishes and seminaries.

She then helped her Pauline sisters to create their own website, then that of the minor seminary of Our Lady of Lourdes in Islamabad, followed by the website of the Diocese of Rawalpindi and that of the Timothians, a youth group she founded in the Cathedral of St Joseph in Rawalpindi. Finally, last May, she helped the Sisters of Charity of Jeanne Antide Thouret to open their first blog.

In 2010, she was a member of the Pakistani delegation to the Catholic Press Congress at the Vatican. In 2011, she funded a web design course for 12 young people. Sonish Akmal, one of the students, says that thanks to that course, she found work in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC).

"I am the only Christian to work in intergovernmental organisations, she said. Sister Athens helped me choose this field, and made me an independent person. Thanks to her, I developed the website of Caritas Pakistan, that of the Christian Studies Centre and those of insurance companies. "

For fr. Jamil Albert from the Franciscan training centre Dar ul Naeem, "the Church has lost an innovative educator. She was a great help for young people, whom she followed in their vocation and in how to use social media. In her convent, she also gave free lessons to children from poor families. She was also engaged in social activities. We will always miss her."
The 11th General Assembly of the Middle East Council of Churches (MECC) ended in Amman yesterday. Christian leaders call for an end to arms sales and support for Mosul refugees. Muslims are called upon to build a safe environment. Jordan is an example of religious freedom.

Amman (AsiaNews)  The Middle East Council of Churches (MECC) held its 11th General Assembly in Amman, Jordan. At the end of the three-day meeting (6-9 September), the Council released a statement.

The latter calls for an end to weapons sales to terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq, and for actions to find a peaceful resolution of the conflict. It also calls for support to the displaced, especially Christians who fled their homes and lands to escape war and persecution, with special attention for refugees from Mosul and the Nineveh plain, for whom efforts must me made to secure their return.

Participants slammed all forms of extremism, terrorism and sought cooperation of Muslims  as well as regional and international political leaders  to create a safe environment free from harassment.

This includes acknowledging the role of Jordan and the Hashemite monarchy in promoting pluralism and multiculturalism. Jordan is a model and an example for the Middle East.

Some 22 leaders and representatives from the regions main churches took part in the event, hosted by the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem. They included the Chaldean Patriarch Mar Raphael Louis Sako (a new council president for the next four years), the Archbishop Emeritus of Jerusalem of the Latins Fouad Twal, the Syrian Catholic Patriarch Ignace Youssif III, the Greek Melkite Patriarch Gregory III, Coptic Orthodox Patriarch Tawadros II, Armenian Catholicos Aram I, and Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch Yohanna X.

The General Assembly, which began on Wednesday, took its title from Psalm 118  "Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, his mercy endures forever  a warning and a call to all Christians, especially in the Middle East, to be the instrument of mercy wherever there is violence, abuse, war and despair.

The final statement also refers to the election of the Lebanese President (a position that falls to a Christian but has been vacant for more than two years), to a solution to the Palestinian crisis and a call for the liberation of Bishops Youhanna Ibrahim and Boulos to -Yaziji, abducted three years ago in Syria.

The choice of Jordan as the host country for the summit of the regions Churches confirms the leading role played by the Hashemite kingdom in protecting holy places and defending religious freedom.

King Abdullah II himself met Christian religious leaders at Al Husseiniya Palace, noting that Jordan had become a model for coexistence, fraternity and moderation.

Arabs, whether Muslims or Christians, face the same challenges in light of the current situation in the region, and share the responsibility in addressing these challenges.

"Christians in the Arab world are an integral part of the Arab social fabric and protecting their rights is a duty of all," the king said.

Coptic Pope Tawadros II said that Muslims and Christians should work together in order to spread love and peace in the Middle East. The Coptic leader added that the Church should perform its role in serving the homeland.

Orthodox Church Patriarch Theophilos III said that Christian leaders must mobilize the world opinion to protect the Christians of the Middle East in order to encourage them to remain in their homelands.

The presence of the Christians is threatened by migration and forced displacement, he noted.

Patriarch Emeritus of Jerusalem of the Latins Fouad Twal stressed the need for Christians to strive for unity in order to overcome the human threats and spread the culture of love and peace. Indeed, Joint efforts make a difficult job easier and make a huge difference, Patriarch Twal said.

Finally, Chaldean primate Mar Raphael Louis Sako suggested the creation of a commission of politicians and legal experts to investigate the events in the region and provide clear visions and solutions for the future. He also called for the appointment of a high-level delegation to interact with Muslim religious authorities.

On the final day, the assembled prelates elected the presidents of the different denominations that make up MECC. For the Catholic group, the choice fell on Mar Sako.

Established in 1974 in Nicosia, capital of Cyprus, the Middle East Council of Churches is now headquartered in Beirut, Lebanon.

Its aims are to promote convergence among the regions Christian communities on issues of common interest and encourage the overcoming of divisions and sectarian conflicts.
Proclaiming the Gospel is not proselytizing, it should not be reduced to "functionalism" nor an easy task". It is "becoming all things to all", it is "going out and sharing in the lives of others, accompanying them; accompanying their journey of faith, to grow in the journey of faith. "

Vatican City (AsiaNews) - Evangelization "is not knocking on a neighbors door and exclaiming: 'Christ is risen!'. It starts with living the faith, talking about it with meekness, with love, with no desire to convince anyone, but freely. It is freely giving what God has freely given to me: this is evangelizing, said Pope Francis at Mass this morning in Casa Santa Marta, commenting on a passage from the Letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians, where it speaks of "the need" to proclaim Jesus.



But, in the words of the Pope, evangelization should not be reduced to "functionalism" nor a simple "stroll. First of all, it cannot be reduced to a "function." Unfortunately, even today we see Christians living this service as a function. Laity and priests who boast of what they do. "This is the boast: I am proud. It reduces the Gospel to a function or even a source of pride:' I'm going out to preach the Gospel and bring many to the Church '. Proselytizing: that too is a source of pride. Evangelization is not proselytizing. That is, it is neither an easy task, nor a function nor to proselytize: this is not evangelization. This is what Paul says here: 'For me it is not a boast. For me it is a necessity 'that is laid upon me. " A Christian has an obligation, but with this power, like a necessity to bear the name of Jesus, but with his heart. "



Proclaiming the Gospel cannot be a source of pride, but - as St. Paul exhorts us - "an obligation". But what is the "style" of evangelization, "how can I be sure that I do not reduce it to an easy chore, that I do not proselytize, and do not to reduce evangelization to a functionalism?". The style "is to become all things to all", it is "to go out and share the lives of others, accompany; accompany their journey of faith, to grow in their journey of faith. "

It is putting ourselves in other's condition. "If he is sick, get close, not weigh him down with arguments", "to be close, assist, help him." He is evangelized "with this merciful attitude: be all things to everyone. This is the witness that the Word " asks of us.

Francis recalled that during lunch with young people at World Youth Day in Krakow, a boy asked him what he should say to a close friend who is an atheist. "Its a good question! We all know people who have left the Church: what should we tell them? And I said: 'Look, the last thing you need to do is say something! Begin to do things and he will see what you are doing and ask you and when he asks you, you say something ''. Evangelization is to giving this witness: "I live like that, because I believe in Jesus Christ; this arouses the curiosity of the question 'But why are you doing these things?' Because I believe in Jesus Christ and preaching Jesus Christ and not just with the Word - you must proclaim the Word - but with your life. "

This is to evangelize, "and this is done free of charge", "because we have freely received the Gospel," "you cannot or sell grace, salvation: it's free! And we have to give it for free. "

Francis then recalled the figure of St. Peter Claver, whose feast is marked today. A missionary who "went to preach the Gospel." Perhaps, "he thought his future would be on of preaching: instead the Lord asked him to be close, next to discarded of that time, the slaves, the blacks, who arrived there from Africa to be sold". "And this man did not wander around saying he evangelized; He did not reduce evangelism to a functionalism nor proselytizing: He announced Jesus Christ with gestures, speaking to the slaves, living with them, living like them! And there are many like him in the Church! Many who are destroying themselves to proclaim Jesus Christ. And all of us, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation to evangelize, that is not to knock on our neighbors door and say: 'Christ is risen!'. It is living the faith, talking about it with meekness, with love, with no desire to convince anyone, but freely. It is freely giving what God has freely given to me: this is evangelizing.
Most powerful bomb ever detonated by North Korea. An earthquake measuring 5.3 was felt at the border with China. Strong warning from the international community. The United States promises "serious consequences"; Japan, China and South Korea condemn "the self-destructive action" of leader Kim Jong-un.

Pyongyang (AsiaNews / Agencies) - North Korea has announced that it has successfully completed its fifth nuclear test. The statement came this morning, a few hours after an earthquake of magnitude 5.3 was felt in the vicinity of the Punggye-ri nuclear site (north-east of the country) on the Chinese border. This would be the most powerful nuclear test carried out so far by Pyongyang.

The North Korean government has also stated that he felt "a head recently developed" and be able to mount a nuclear weapon on a ballistic missile. Several analysts fear that this means a real step forward in the North Korean nuclear technology.

South Korean sources confirm that the detonation had a load of about 10 kilotons, nearly double the power of the last test conducted in January. The bomb dropped by the US on Hiroshima in 1945 had a charge of 15 kilotons.

Washington and countries neighboring North Korea have roundly condemned the act. The United States has promised "serious consequences". Park Geun-hye, South Korean President, called the action "self-destructive", the work of an "maniacal recklessness" of leader Kim Jong-un will bring only "more sanctions and isolation" to Pyongyang. The Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe spoke of a "serious threat to the security of Japan that seriously undermines the peace and security of the region and the international community".

The Chinese Foreign Minister has announced that "the Chinese government is firmly opposed to the test." The Environment ministry has ordered an emergency monitoring for nuclear radiation along the border connecting China to North Korea.

Today Pyongyang is celebrating "the Foundation Day", the anniversary of creation of the state in 1948. A United Nations resolution banning North Korea from developing missile and nuclear technologies, but in recent months Kim Jong-un has continued to order ballistic tests.

The last nuclear test took place on January 6, which was followed by tough sanctions from the international community. Previously, Pyongyang had carried out similar exercises in 2006, 2009 and 2013.
Parliament appointed him yesterday. In fact, the Constitution of the former Soviet Republic states that the task falls to the head of the Senate. But the latter has given way to ensure "stability." Elections within three months. Confirmed strategic ties with Russia.

Tashkent (AsiaNews) - The Uzbek Parliament has appointed the Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyaev as interim president after the death of the dictator "father of the nation" Islam Karimov, who died last week.

The appointment was voted yesterday, after Nigmatulla Yuldashev, President of the Senate, to whom the Constitution entrusts the regency of the country in case of death of the president, stepped aside.

Yuldashev also proposed the name of the prime minister, given "his long years of experience" alongside former president. This decision brings the man who already is considered the natural successor to Karimov, one step closer to the presidential throne .

Mirziyaev, 58, has headed the government since 2003. The deputies chose him given "the need to preserve stability, to maintain order and public safety and to ensure the effective resolution of major issues in the economic and social development of country".

The new interim president will lead Uzbekistan to new elections, scheduled to be held within three months. Analysts already predict that, in the event of a victory, little will change in the country, especially as regards respect for human rights. Experts report that he "is not very popular among the people."

Regarding relations with key partners, the Central Asian country continues to maintain particular friendship with Russia. Vladimir Putin was in fact the first international leader to visit the grave of Karimov, on 6 September, returning from the meeting of the G20. In bilateral talks, Mirziyaev confirmed that ties with Russia are "very strategic" and Tashkent "will continue to increase them."
The personal secretary of the leader of Tibetan Buddhism confirmed this to AsiaNews. Pope Francis is also not scheduled to meet a representative of Hinduism. Instead meetings are planned with the Ecumenical Patriarch, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Syrian Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch, a representative of the Muslim world and one of the Jewish world.

Rome (AsiaNews)  The Dalai Lama "does not plan to visit Assisi for the Thirst for peace meeting, nor has he received any invitation to the event, Tenzin Taklha, personal secretary of the Buddhist leader, told AsiaNews.

Currently, Tenzin Gyatso is in Belgium on a European lecture tour that will also take him to Lithuania, Switzerland and France. He is set to return to Dharamsala on 3 October. On the 20th of the same month, he will be in Milan for a series of religious conferences.

With the help of the Community of Sant'Egidio, the Assisi meeting seeks to renew the spirit of the 1986 initiative launched by John Paul II. At that time, the leaders of all religions prayed together, each in his own way, elevating a prayer for peace in the world. Right after the personal prayer, the various leaders gathered in front of the Sacred Convent for a moment of joint prayer for peace, the Dalai Lama next to John Paul II.

Thirty years later, the Communitys press office told AsiaNews "more than 400 religious leaders will be present in the Italian town. The panel discussion will address virtually every area of the relationship between faith, society and politics."

Pope Francis will also attend the event on 20 September and meet representatives of world religions. According to the schedule released by the Vatican Press Office on 1 September, the pontiff is set to meet the Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, a (not yet specified) representative of the Islamic world and a (also not yet specified) representative of world Jewry, and a meeting with Aphrem II, the Syrian Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch.

In addition to the leader of Tibetan Buddhism, which has about 15 million members in Tibet and the diaspora, no meeting is scheduled with a representative of Hinduism, which has about 1 billion members, mostly in the Indian subcontinent.
The Scariest Found Footage Horror Movies

These Found Footage Horror Films Will Make You Whimper In Fear

If you're not familiar with the term "found footage," imagine a movie made out of seemingly disjointed and haphazardly put together clips filmed by someone who only just recently found out you can record videos in landscape on an iPhone. But that doesn't mean that the movie has to be terrible or unenjoyable  quite the opposite, in fact. Having the camera shake around and the footage look like it came straight out of a dusty camcorder adds quite a bit to the viewing experience and can end up haunting and scaring the crap out of you.

It's a simple trick that can be very effective. But it doesn't always work out that way (see: the dozens of Paranormal Activity sequels). So in anticipation of yet another Blair Witch reboot that's about to hit theaters September 16th, I'm gonna help you pick out the good found-footage horror flicks out there. Here are nine that will really knock your socks off this fall.

The Blair Witch Project (1999)

The mother of all found-footage horror movies, The Blair Witch Project, holds up to modern standards even 17 years after its release. The psychological thriller about three film students investigating the spooky Blair Witch legend will have you hiding your face from the screen. And besides, you know it's a solid horror flick when Scary Movie decides to spoof it.

[REC] (2007)

With a 90% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, [REC] had a pretty positive reaction. Which is impressive considering the fact the found-footage horror genre has had a far-from-flawless track record. It was praised for its "quick, and to the point" horror with "brilliant directing" and "superb acting."

Paranormal Activity (2007)

When it hit theaters nine years ago, Paranormal Activity was truly a one-of-a-kind experience. It was a slow-burner, an almost two-hour crescendo that ended in a twisted and disturbing finale that made the audience's skin crawl for years after.

Cloverfield (2008)

Cloverfield was a more controversial entry in the found-footage genre. Audiences and critics alike couldn't agree on whether they liked it or not. It certainly is an acquired taste. But one thing is for sure: if you allow Cloverfield to wrap you up in its mysticism and tension, you're in for a ride.

Trollhunter (2010)

It's not every day that you get to be treated to the joys of a found-footage horror flick that doesn't take itself seriously. Don't be mistaken though, you'll still be scared out of your seat. While you simultaneously laugh your head off, that is.

V/H/S (2012)

V/H/S had a tough job ahead of itself. It had to convince audiences that found-footage horror movies were not dead after a lengthy string of unsuccessful reboots, B-level low-budget horror flicks and tired sequels. Whether it managed to do it? We'll leave it up to you to decide.

Chronicle (2012)

Michael B. Jordan stars in this teens-find-that-they-possess-superpowers found-footage flick from 2012. It might not fall under the horror heading exactly, but it's a worthy and highly entertaining contender that you shouldn't write off so quickly.

The Borderlands (2014)

Not to be confused with the super popular video game franchise Borderlands, this British found-footage horror movie will make your skin crawl. Two men are sent by the Vatican to investigate a church overrun by supernatural activity.

The Taking of Deborah Logan (2014)

If you have a grandparent with Alzheimer's, I suggest skipping this one. As you might have guessed from the title, The Taking of Deborah Logan is about a nice older lady called Deborah, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. But things don't go as planned. And it turns out she is not so nice after all.
Effects test draft bill proposed





The Australian Federal Government has today released its draft bill to change the Competition and Consumer Act and introduce the controversial effects test.

Prime Minister Malcom Turnbull announced in March 2016 that his government would be introducing the effects test, changing Section 46 of the Competition and Consumer Act which addresses misuse of market power by big businesses acting alone.

Under the current legislation, Section 46 stipulates that to be found guilty of misuse of power, a business with substantive market power must have planned and acted in a way to misuse its power in an anti-competitive manner.

Under the effects test the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission (ACCC) will only be required to prove the large business acted in an anti-competitive manner. It will not have to prove intention.

Since the effects test was first proposed, a number of organisations and individuals have spoken out against the effects test including the Productivity Commission and ex-ACCC Chairman Graeme Samuel who thinks it will limit access to cheap groceries.

ACCC responds

The ACCC has responded to the draft bill by releasing guidelines proposing how it intends to approach the legislation changes.

Chairman of the ACCC, Rod Sims, is calling for feedback on the proposed guidelines.

In particular, the ACCC is inviting feedback from consumers, businesses, and other stakeholders about the issues and topics the ACCC can provide guidance on to assist them understand how the amended misuse of market power prohibition, and the prohibition on anti-competitive concerted practices are likely to operate and how well approach those provisions, Sims said.

The proposed frameworks can be viewed on the ACCCs website. Feedback closes 3 October 2016.
Productivity Commission calls for better fishing sustainability regulation





A draft report released by the Australian Productivity Commission is calling for better management of sustainability practices within the fishing industry.

In the Marine Fisheries and Aquaculture Draft Inquiry Report, the Commission says management approaches need to better reflect that there are limits to the catch from wild capture fisheries within Australia.

Controls over commercial fishing in most fisheries are too prescriptive, said Commissioner Melinda Cilento.

We know that tradeable quotas generally work, but we apply them in only one-quarter of fisheries. Conversely, there is an attitude of almost benign neglect toward recreational fishing. This is despite there being millions of recreational fishers in Australia and that, with the help of technology such as relatively cheap locating sonars, recreational catch now rivals or exceeds commercial catch for some species, she said.

Current regulation restricts innovation

Most commercial fishing in Australia is still regulated through controls over fishing methods, such as numbers of allowable fishing days, but the Productivity Commission says this is discouraging fishers from introducing improved and innovative practices.

Reform across the sector is needed to reinvigorate the commercial fishing industry, Cilento said.

The Commission said while there are bag limits and other controls on reactional fishing, Australia does not know how the level of catch is changing in in most areas.

This lack of knowledge makes it difficult to make decisions on how access to fisheries should be shared or what additional services or facilities should be provided for recreational fishers, Commissioner Cilento said.

The Commission is now recommending that state and territory governments license all recreational fishers, with the focus being on a low-cost licence with higher reporting effort by all parties.

We recognise that recreational fishing is important to many people and coastal communities; sometimes it is more important economically than commercial fishing, Cilento said.

We have recommended licensing to ensure recreational fishing is sustainable and better recognised in fishery management decisions as a much-loved pastime for many Australians, she stated.

Key points from the Marine Fisheries and Aquaculture Draft Inquiry Report

Following overfishing in the past, Australian governments have sought to apply policies to reduce catch volumes, and thereby restore and maintain fish stocks. Generally, these have been successful in improving sustainability.

A developing issue is weak knowledge of the impact of increasingly successful but unmanaged recreational fishing on some highvalue fish stocks.

Current policy settings are sometimes overly prescriptive and outdated. In particular: Most commercial fisheries are managed primarily though controls over fishing methods, despite long recognition that this is a relatively inefficient way of meeting catch constraints,which inhibits fishers from introducing more cost effective practices. Recreational and Indigenous customary fishing activity is at best sporadically monitored and impacts on stock sustainability largely uncounted in fishery management regimes. This is despite the fact that recreational fishing is a popular pastime for millions of Australians, and that recreational catch rivals commercial catch for some species, placing pressure on some key stocks. Governments differ in the extent to which they have adopted best practice fishery management techniques, which is leading to significant costs for fishers operating in some crossjurisdictional fisheries, and risks to sustainability of stocks.

Commercial fisheries should move as a default position to apply transferrable quota systems. This would result in fewer constraints on fishing practice and provide a more efficient and effective means of adhering to harvest limits.

Recreational fishing needs greater recognition in fisheries management, and decisions on restrictions and facilities for fishers require development of a sound evidence base.

The introduction of licensing for recreational fishers where not presently used, and the better use of licensing systems to manage fishing where they are used, will provide a means for better meeting the needs of both future generations of fishers and the environment.

The value of access to fisheries is multifaceted, incorporating economic, social and cultural benefits. Allocation of access where there is competition for fisheries resources should seek to maximise this value.

Indigenous customary fishing is given special recognition consistent with native title rights more generally. However, there is limited clarity about what these rights entail for catch limits, which is an outcome of customary fishing being generally exempted from fishery management regimes. There is relatively poor input from Indigenous people into fishery management. Effective incorporation of customary fishing into management systems would help resolve these issues.

Benefits from dissolving boundaries via active cooperation in the management of critical crossjurisdictional fish stocks are often recognised but only rarely delivered.

Other improvements include making regulatory standards for protected species clearer, greater delegation of operational decision making to fishery managers and strengthening cost recovery arrangements.

Little change in the regulation of aquaculture over the past 10 years has not impeded the sectors growth. The major producing states already had several best practice regulatory features and other states have faced challenges that are predominantly nonregulatory in nature.

The Productivity Commission will be conducting public hearings across Australia and will welcome submissions before the final report is released.
Allegro acquires Pizza Hut Australia master franchise agreement





Australian private equity firm, Allegro, has acquired the master franchise licence for Pizza Hut Australia from its parent company, Yum! Brands.

The acquisition cost has not been disclosed.

Allegro acquired the franchise agreement with a local management buy-in team experienced within the fast food sector; Peter Rodwell, Lisa Ransom and Chris Leslie.

The acquisition comes at a time when Pizza Hut visitation rates have been falling. In August 2016, Roy Morgan Research reported that between 2012 and 2016, Pizza Huts average monthly visitors had fallen by 25 per cent.

Allegro founding partner, Chester Moynihan, said Allegros immediate focus for Pizza Hut Australia will be to strengthen the network across Australia through increased investment, resources and management focus.

Pizza Hut has been a household name in Australia since the early 1970s. It was one of the first pizza companies to home deliver in Australia and we want to revive this innovative legacy to enhance the experience for customers, Moynihan said.

This is a unique opportunity to leverage a recognised brand within a growing market segment. We see this is an exciting outcome for our investors as well as a growth opportunity for Pizza Hut franchisees and employees, he stated.

Outgoing Pizza Hut Australia General Manager, Graeme Houston, described the acquisition as an exciting change for how Pizza Hut operates in Australia.

This is an exciting step change in how Pizza Hut operates in this market which will accelerate growth and deliver Pizza Hut to more consumers across Australia, Houston said.

About the management buy-in team

Lisa Ransom will be Chief Executive Officer. She has worked in a variety of Quick Service Restaurant leadership roles across Australia and Asia in the past 20-years including at McDonalds Japan and Australia.

will be Chief Executive Officer. She has worked in a variety of Quick Service Restaurant leadership roles across Australia and Asia in the past 20-years including at McDonalds Japan and Australia. Peter Rodwell will take up the role of Executive Chairman. He has also worked in senior roles at McDonalds

will take up the role of Executive Chairman. He has also worked in senior roles at McDonalds Chris Leslie will be Chief Operating Officer. His background is in finance, restaurant operations and franchising.
Austrade and Alibaba strike ground-breaking agreement





Chinese consumers will find it easier to buy fresh Australian produce and goods with Austrade striking a ground-breaking deal with Chinese e-commerce giant, Alibaba.

As part of the agreement, a dedicated promotional channel for Australian companies will be created on youku.com, a Chinese video sharing site with 500 million active users.

Australian Prime Minster, Malcolm Turnbull, this week visited Alibaba headquarters in China to witness the signing of the agreement.

Austrades Senior Trade Commissioner in China, Michael Clifton, said the agreement would help introduce Australian brands to Alibabas 434 million online shoppers.

Online delivery of imported fresh food in China is becoming increasingly viable as a result of improvements in last-mile cold chain logistics, Clifton said.

Australia currently ranks fourth in sales volume on Tmall Global, Alibabas international online platform that allows direct sales to Chinese consumers, behind the United States, Japan and Korea.

The majority of Australian products sold online in China are vitamins and supplements, dairy items, breakfast cereals and beauty products.

Agreement builds on FTA

Access to online distribution channels complements the benefits granted to business by the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement (FTA), which came into force on 20 December 2015, reducing tariffs and further strengthening business cooperation between Australia and China, Clifton said.

Maggie Zhou, Managing Director, Alibaba Group in Australia and New Zealand, said the agreement would help more businesses access new markets through Alibabas platforms.

Alibaba Group plans to open an office in Melbourne later this year and the agreement signed with Austrade today represents a landmark moment for Australian companies, particularly SMEs looking to global trade for growth, Zhou said.

Alibaba will be providing a dedicated helpdesk to source Australian products, together with export development programs to be delivered in cooperation with Austrade, she stated.
Bayer increases its acquisition bid for Monsanto





Less than four months after Monsantos board unanimously voted to reject the USD $62 billion acquisition bid by Bayer, the parties are again negotiating.

Bayer earlier described its offer as a mutually compelling transaction.

Monsanto, the US-based seed producer, has confirmed that German chemical and pharmaceutical giant, Bayer, has updated its offer to USD127.50 per share in cash, totalling approximately USD $65 billion.

At this early stage, both parties emphasise that there can be no assurance an acquisition will eventuate.

Monsanto is also examining other strategic possibilities in order to determine if a transaction is in the best interests of its shareholders.

Both companies are also long-established, Bayer more than 150 years of history, and Monsanto almost 120.

Monsanto is a seed producer and one of the worlds largest producers of genetically-modified (GM) crops as well as manufacturing herbicides and other related agricultural chemicals.

It its bid is accepted, Bayer will become the worlds largest producer of farming chemicals and seeds.
by Michael MataNoel Nunan, the Brisbane magistrate who presided over the conviction of wannabe solicitor Jacob Lazar Reichman, has been criticized by the president of the Queensland Law Society (QLS) for his ill-thought out commentary.The criticism was made after Nunan made some sharp comments during Wednesdays sentencing of Reichman, a Gold Coast law graduate who illegally acted as a solicitor. According to Nunan, "There's a lot of incompetent solicitors running around the place, giving legal advice, giving criminal legal advice. I see it daily."While Nunan said that the defendant was brazen for acting as a solicitor two years after he was fined for a similar offense, he did praise Reichman for his acumen and abilities as a solicitor. "It looked like he was doing a reasonable job during all of these interviews," Nunan said.Nunans praising of Reichman and criticism of actual solicitors has drawn the ire of Bill Potts, the president of QLS. "I think it is regrettable that the magistrate has decided to make, what essentially is ill-thought out commentary when the person he was dealing with was clearly acting in breach of the legal act, said Potts.Reichman, who was in his sixth year of employment with the Gold Coast barrister Chris Rosser, was found to have acted in a legal capacity 12 times during visits to Gold Coast police stations and a watch house.The defendant was convicted of engaging in legal practice without authorisation and was fined. Reichman plans to appeal the ruling to a higher court since the conviction could prevent him from becoming a lawyer.
by Michael Mata



Blaine Alan Gibson, the American lawyer and amateur sleuth who has made headlines in the past for allegedly recovering debris from the doomed MH370 aircraft, has called on the Malaysian government to cede control of the investigation to Australia.



Gibson was in Perth recently to meet with some of the victims relatives as well as officials from the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB). Gibson said that the Malaysian government has not collected the six pieces of debris he found in Madagascar more than three months ago, and was therefore in breach of its international obligations.



Gibson also claimed that the Malaysian government rejected a request from Madagascar for funds so that the latter could continue to search its beaches for wreckage.



Gibson praised Australias contributions, as well as the role of the ATSB, in the ongoing search for the missing aircraft. Australia has done way more than its fair share [in funding the search] and is to be congratulated for that, he said. But Malaysia can do more and China can do more.



Gibson believes that Malaysia should hand the investigation over to Australia, and that all the countries that had passengers on board should contribute to the continuation of the search.



MH370 disappeared on March 8, 2014, while flying from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing, China. The aircraft vanished from radar screens as it was transitioning between Malaysian and Vietnamese airspace. The Boeing 777-200ER aircraft had 227 passengers and 12 crew on board.



Following careful analysis of satellite data, it was determined that MH370 continued to fly for over six hours after contact was lost. MH370 then entered the sea close to a long but narrow arc of the southern Indian Ocean.



Gibson brought with him several more pieces of the wreckage. The sea is slowly revealing its secrets, he stated. I have found four pieces of the interior, which proves that the plane shattered on impact and did not sink intact to the bottom as some claim.
Following raids this week by the Australian Taxation Office, wealthy Australians, their lawyers and accountants linked to the Panama Papers may soon be facing criminal charges.



The Panama Papers are 11.5 million documents, leaked by a whistle-blower, from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca.



The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists released the Papers this April which revealed details of more than 214,000 offshore entities.



All up 1000 taxpayers are under ATO investigation with up to 60 clients of six accountants contacted by authorities this week alone, a report from The Sydney Morning Herald revealed.



The Serious Financial Crime Taskforce, which is operated by the ATO, the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC), has already executed search warrants.



Revenue and Financial Services Minister Kelly O'Dwyer said on Tuesday that the taskforce had already made unannounced visits in about 15 properties in Victoria and Queensland for suspected crimes involving money laundering and criminal activity.



The taskforce involved more than 100 ATO officials and more than 100 taxpayers have already been notified that they will be subjects of compliance action, O'Dwyer revealed.



The information has revealed significant taxation evasion arrangements that promoters have put in place for their clients, the minister is quoted saying.



Some are very, very complex and have multiple layers of offshore entities, fake shareholders, and other methods to disguise the ultimate owners of these accounts and of these funds.



She also said that the taskforce has already raised $130 million in liabilities and made four prosecutions stemming from more than 300 audits.



Meanwhile, Tax Commissioner Chris Jordan gave a stern warning to taxpayers who stand to be convicted of crimes.



It's important to note that tax fraud won't just result in the outstanding tax and penalties to be repaid, but may result in criminal charges, he said.



The impact of a criminal conviction can have lasting impacts on those involved, including removal as a trustee of a self-managed super fund and becoming a director of a company, restrictions on international travel and difficulties obtaining finance and insurance, he added.



AUSTRAC has already detected $2.5b in suspicious cross-border funds movements between Australia and other countries by more than 1,000 Australian entities linked to the Panama Papers, the publication noted.



The investigations come after Project Wickenby which resulted in $2 billion in liabilities and 47 prosecutions in six years.


By Claire Bowern, Associate Professor, Yale University

Shutterstock/Pics by Nick

Ray Norris wrote recently that he thought some academic researchers were unaware of the diversity of Aboriginal ways of counting.

As part of his argument he examined a paper I wrote with a former student, Kevin Zhou, that was published last year in the Proceedings of the Royal Society (Biology). The paper studied change across time in numeral systems in Australias largest language family, Pama-Nyungan.

Norris claimed that our paper was about the largest numbers in Australian Aboriginal languages that could extend beyond ten, but still didnt extend past 20. He gave some examples of other Aboriginal counting systems with limits higher than those we talked about in the paper, leading him to ask:

As a physicist, I am fascinated by the fact that the authors of this paper didnt engage with the contrary evidence. They simply didnt mention it. Why?

The short answer to Norris question is that I had already published two papers on the full diversity of Australia numeral systems, and this paper he referred to was about a different question.

The first paper (with then student, Jason Zentz) looked at how counting word systems vary across the continent.

It included the Tjapwurrung case Norris mentioned, as well Young Peoples Tiwi and systems from the Western Desert and elsewhere, such as Kukatjas or Warlpiris, where the words for numbers above five are loans from English, or based on the shapes of Arabic numerals. For example:

6 = jika (from English six) 7 = wirlki (a boomerang with arms of uneven length, often called a number 7 boomerang) 8 = milpa (eyes) 9 = kartaku (cup, billycan  referring to the shape of the cup plus handle viewed from above)

Body-tallying

We also discussed other systems which involve counting, including body tallying, where speakers point at different parts of the body to refer to different quantities. Counting on fingers is a small example of body-tallying.

The Australian examples come from three languages in the Torres Strait, Arnhem Land and Victoria. While body-tallying is a way of counting, its not strictly a numeral system (since the term applies to words).

We showed there was a lot more variation than the stereotypical idea that Aboriginal languages only have numbers up to four, and we discussed ways of counting (such as birth order names) that do not involve numerals.

For example, the Kaurna language of the Adelaide Plains has words for first born child, second born child, up to the tenth child. The oldest child is kartammeru for a male child and kartanya for a girl, the fourth is munnaitya (male) or munato (female), the fifth is midlaitya (male) or midlato (female).

No limits

The paper Norris referred to was about how the small number systems change over time. There are systems with 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, or 7 or more numbers in languages that are related to one another.

Can languages lose numerals over time, or only gain them? When languages gain numerals, do they do so slowly, and stepwise, or do they add many numbers at a time?

We never hypothesised an upper limit. We found that languages did lose numerals over time as well as gain them, and when they gained them, the systems tended to increase rapidly.

In short, we didnt talk about larger systems in the paper because that wasnt what the paper was about. Norris comment on that paper is somewhat like criticising a number theorist who publishes a paper on prime numbers for failing to discuss the composite number 6.

I agree with Norris that a great deal of misinformation continues to circulate about Aboriginal languages and the people who speak (and spoke) them.

As a gardiya (an Aboriginal word for a white person in many languages of northern Western Australia, where I do a lot of my work) who unfortunately spends a fair amount of time with that literature, I can only imagine what it must be like as an Aboriginal person to read such material.

The portrayal of Aboriginal people in scholarship historically is, in the aggregate, horrible. Theres no way of glossing over it. But the fact that people have said uninformed things in the past about Aboriginal people does not implicate current researchers by association.

Language preservation

So lets talk about what we are actually doing to help preserve Aboriginal languages.

Since 2007, I have been compiling a database of Australian language words.

The Chirila database now contains more than 750,000 words and continues to grow. Where I have permission, I have made portions of it freely available online, and I continue to work informally with communities and Aboriginal language organisations across Australia, such as the Resource Network for Linguistic Diversity.

That archival and curatorial work is complemented by my own ethnographic and linguistic fieldwork, going back to my time as an undergraduate at the ANU.

The Chirila database is not just a research resource, its a source for Aboriginal people looking to reclaim their languages, a testament to their survival and their speakers perseverance, and a reminder of the brilliant diversity of Indigenous Australia.

As a scientist and historical linguist, my job is to figure out how languages have changed. Its about engaging with the evidence, asking questions, figuring out how to test my hypotheses and puzzling over what the results might mean. Its not that different from physics, in the end.

Claire Bowern receives funding from the USA's National Science Foundation and the Australian Research Council.

Originally published in The Conversation.
Speed and seatbelt warnings, and airbags to be made compulsory as well; all vehicles will undergo automated certification tests by October 1, 2018.

The Indian government is to soon make rearview sensors or back-up cameras mandatory on all new vehicles. This safety measure is to reduce the risk to pedestrians from accidents while reversing vehicles.

Although most cars come equipped with rearview mirrors which are adequate for detecting vehicles behind a car, but they are inadequate for detecting small children or objects close to the ground, which fall in the car's blindspot. The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) will soon issue a notification to make rearview sensors mandatory in all vehicles, said Abhay Damle, joint secretary, MoRTH, while speaking at a curtain raiser for the World Roads Meet (WRM 2017) organised by the International Road Federation (IRF) in Chennai recently.

Damle said the government is also planning to make speed warning audio beeps mandatory, on similar lines of seatbelt not on warning. The government has already made it compulsory for all two-wheelers, which account for the highest share of accidents in the country, to either have the anti-lock braking system (ABS) or the combined braking system (CBS) by April 2019. Apart from rearview sensors and speed warning, airbags will also become mandatory in all vehicles soon.

From October 1, 2018, all vehicles will have to go in for automated inspection and fitness certification tests with hardly any human intervention. Similarly, the driving license test will also become automated by that time. This will help in reducing fatal road accidents, said Damle. Over-speeding, intoxication and neglecting of traffic rules are among the primary causes of most road fatalities in the country and most highway related deaths are due to rash driving.

In The Motor Vehicles (Amendment) Bill, which will be introduced in the coming winter session of the parliament, there are provisions for the legal protection of good samaritans who help accident victims. The government has added a significant clause under which a good samaritans affidavit will have the legal force of a statement. If a statement is required, it should be recorded in a single examination. And, for further information, the judicial or law officer will have to go to his house and record the statement, said Damle. India to host World Road Meeting in November 2017.

Meanwhile, India will host, for the first time, the International Road Federations four-day World Road Meeting (WRM 2017) from November 14-17, 2017. About 3,000 road safety, infrastructure and transport experts from across the world will take part in the World Roads Meet. The major highlight of WRM 2017 will be a summit of transport ministers from various countries. The theme of the WRM, which is being organised by International Road Federation, is Safe Roads and Smart Mobility: The Engines of Economic Growth, said KK Kapila, chairman, International Road Federation.
Acquisition of Daihatsu paves the way for Toyotas small car assault; the first cars are expected in India by 2019.

Toyota, the master at playing the long game, may finally be inching closer to the production and sales of small cars in India. The Japanese giant wont take this momentous step alone but will take the help of Japanese small carmaker Daihatsu.

The plan to leverage Daihatsus small car expertise isnt a recent one. Toyota had explored a similar strategy to get competitive small cars into India as far back as 2006, but things didnt work out. The problem was that Toyota then was only part-owner of Daihatsu and the two companies, according to sources, didnt really see eye-to-eye on many things. Daihatsu, it is said, wanted to execute a very different plan to take on direct rival Suzuki in India. Also, the Indian market wasnt really a priority for Toyota at the time.

Fast forward a decade and Toyota today has it all sorted . . . well kind of. The Japanese giant has recently gone from a 52 percent share in Daihatsu to full ownership (due to a recent US$ 2.5-3 billion share swap). This means that Toyota is now free to leverage Daihatsus small cars in India as it pleases. Daihatsu, is in fact soon to get fully integrated into the Toyota Group and president Akio Toyoda has indicated that he will allow it to take the lead for small cars.



There wont be any legacy models from Daihatsu in India however. Toyota is unlikely to make the same mistake it made with the Etios and Liva. Unlike these cars which were designed to appeal for price and size (and not much else), insiders say that the Daihatsu models we will get here will only be the latest and the best-equipped versions. In addition, Daihatsu is likely to tailor its cars to our market, much in the way Suzuki does. Whats more, localisation levels are expected to be extremely high as well; not too far off from the 98 percent attained by Renault with the Kwid.

Initially, models from Daihatsu will be launched under the Toyota brand. This is to help make full use of Toyotas wide and much respected sales-and-service network. Gradually, Toyota will launch the Daihatsu brand here as well, and will position it below Toyota as it has done in markets like Indonesia and Malaysia.

The lead time for the project is expected to be in the range of two or three years. This will mean that Daihatsu will get either facelifted versions or all-new models to take on the competition when it comes here in 2018 or later. Daihatsu teams, in fact, have already made several visits to India, according to sister magazine Autocar Professional, and have even spoken to Indian vendors about volumes and commitments to other carmakers.

The first few cars are expected to include rivals to the Maruti WagonR, the Hyundai Grand i10 and the Maruti Ertiga, there will be a compact SUV as well. The compact MPV is likely to be the first car to be sold under both brands. What is certain is that the Daihatsu wont be a pushover: it outsells Suzuki in almost every market in which they compete. Yes, India is another ball game, but this still is likely to be one hell of a fight. Stay tuned.
Yeah, you read that right. Apparently, theres a new thing going on, and if you dont believe us, this feature film by the Bird Cage Theatrics Company from Wyoming is the proof you are looking for then.Titled Motorcycle Macbeth, the short video explains how and, most notably, why did this became popular in the brotherhood of the two-wheels. It looks cool, but at the end of the day, you are looking at bandana-wearing leather-wrapped tattooed bikers reciting prose on a scene.And we all know Shakespeares Macbeth isnt quite the easiest text out there. The old English makes you think youre almost illiterate, especially after gulping a couple of beers or so. One of the actors, who started acting in 1994, even said he avoided such plays like hell until now.The shows producers admit to having a rough go of it the first couple of days when bikers who just wanted a night out drinking were assaulted by Shakespearian prose, MEL Films writes in their description of the clip below.So, why is poetry going along with metal music, leather suits, and growling engines? It could be just another phase motorcyclists go in search of new things to try out over at Sturgis, but it does offer something else if you can read between the lines.If you paid attention in high-school, Macbeth is a story about brotherhood, murder, war, loyalties and, of course, about proving yourself. And who can say this doesnt sound exactly like any other biker-gang-themed Hollywood flick that landed the idea that being part of such an organization is a dangerous but cool way of living.
The rest of the credit goes to the promise that we'd see the design making its way into a future production vehicle. When the report about the automaker delivering a new RX-9 rotary-powered sportscar in 2019 recently surfaced (here's the story , in case you missed it), aficionados once again went crazy.However, it seems Mazda wants to take the magnetic legacy of the RX-Vision much further and this means a much wider public will be able to enjoy the eye candy.Talking to Carbuzz , Julien Montousse, the recently appointed Mazda North American Design Director, explained how the beauty genes would be passed on, using the next-gen Mazda3 as an example."The RX-Vision is a breakthrough in Mazda design," Montousse said. "We wanted to expand and capture more sophistication and the wow factor. This is the next evolutionary step for our Kodo design language."The designer went on to explain how the styling goal would be achieved: Reflection-based surfacing. We wanted to generate an emotional reaction from the public. This design direction will inspire the future Mazda lineup, such as the next Mazda3."However, since the current generation of the compact entered production in 2013, we still have some waiting to do until the Japanese automaker's intentions become a reality. In fact, the vehicle, which comes in hatchback and sedan form, hasn't even received it's mid-cyle revamp yet.Concepts cars' trends getting overly diluted on the path to production would be nothing new, but, given the styling success Mazda has enjoyed over the past years, we expect nothing short of a stunning-looking future line-up.
Have a look at the Roewe 360 sedan's rear end, for example. Does that seem familiar? Well, that may be because it's essentially a less expensive version of the Audi A3 Sedan. As for the Roewe 560 we have here, all that camouflage can't hide the fact it will resemble the smaller model more than a bit.But I feel I'm babbling on here about the car's design, and all this time you have a burning question to ask: "what the hell is a Roewe?" Simply put, it is a Chinese premium brand that will also expand into western territories. "With that name? Good luck," you're probably saying to yourself, and you'd be right. Only it won't sell under the Roewe monicker, but one that carries slightly more weight in the Old Continent: MG . Admittedly, it's also easier to pronounce.In fact, there's a cute story behind the Roewe name and, if you have the time for it, I'd be glad to share it. The parent company, SAIC, acquired technology belonging to British carmaker, MG Rover, after things went south for it, but BMW refused to also sell it the actual "Rover" name. Unhappy with the decision, SAIC came up with Roewe, which is a transliteration of Rover. So, if you own a Discovery or a Defender, next time somebody asks, you can tell them you drive a Land Roewe, just to sound fancy.Back to the Roewe 560 sedan caught by our spy photographers and we're afraid the information surrounding it is pretty scarce. What it's plain to see, though, is that it has a very German interior (the electronic handbrake and the buttons around it just scream Volkswagen) with leather inserts and contrasting stitches.The prototypes were testing in the Austrian mountains by well-known supplier Magna Steyr. The pictures show we're dealing with two different models, one of which is considerably more upscale. It features LED taillights and alloy wheels, as well as heavier camouflage on the front, making it harder to read. However, it appears to sport the same halogen headlamps as the other car.Word on the street is that the Roewe/MG 560 will debut sometime in 2018. No details are available, but the logo on the steering wheel is clearly that of an MG, which means it will surely sell outside of China.
Back row (L-R): Sen. Laurence Levitan, chair, Budget and Taxation Committee; Michael DeLorenzo, vice president of International Franchise Systems, assistant to chair of Budget Committee. Front row (L-R): Mike Miller, Senate president; William Donald Schaefer, governor of Maryland; and Clayton Mitchell, speaker of the House of Delegates, at the signing of Senate Bill 732, which replaced the need for rental car companies to pay titling tax with a use tax.

As the late, great, Tip ONeill said All politics is local, and by their very nature, franchise owners are the definition of local. Politicians will listen to your voice, because you represent small business in their district.

The photo was taken in 1993, and it captures a moment that was the end result of getting involved in my states legislative process.

At the time, I was a franchisee of the Budget system operating about 10 stores in the Baltimore/Washington market. I had no experience lobbying, but I was facing unsustainable costs as the result of a tax credit for car rental companies that was legislated away. This credit offset the title tax on rental cars that all Maryland car rental operators had to pay to register their rental fleet.

In those days, we had to pay 5% of the vehicle value when we registered the car. This was about $600 out of pocket before we could rent the car. Without an offsetting tax credit, it became a huge burden for my 1,200-car operation.

When I began making my case to the legislature, one staffer confided that he had been surprised that no one from our industry had shown up to fight the repeal of the tax credit. The fact was none of us in the rental industry were paying attention. I vowed to never let that happen again.

I devoted one day per week to visiting Annapolis. I knocked on doors in the House and Senate and met with aides, staffers, and an occasional legislator. My story was simple: the change in the law was going to put me out of business, and my employees would be out of jobs.

Though at first I felt they didnt understand how critical the issue was, I was surprised that people actually listened to me. It was mainly the staffers listening, but they were receptive. I learned over time how to present my case in an effective way so that people outside our industry could understand.

We formed an informal lobbying group with other franchisees and corporate representatives and together started making our case.

We won a key ally in Laurence Levitan, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. He understood that collecting title tax on rental cars was not the best approach for the industry or the state. He directed us to work with one of his top staffers to develop a fair solution that would be revenue-neutral to the state.



We built our case for a 10% tax on rental cars. At the 11th hour, as the bill was in committee and in danger of stalling, we were approached by a key state senator who pressed us for a 1.5% increase in the rental car tax, up to 11.5%.

If we gave in, wed have his support. If we didnt, wed run the risk of the bill dying and having to revive it in the next session. We decided to give in on the 11.5%. The senator kept his word and supported us. The bill was signed into law and is still in effect some 23 years later.

We promised the state that wed keep revenue neutral, which meant $20 million into the state coffers in 1993. In 2015, our industry contributed over $60 million in revenue.

This experience has taught me that if I want to make a change in government, I need to stop complaining and get involved.

Contact Sharon Faulkner, ACRAs executive director, and make a donation to support the ACRA PAC (Political Action Committee). Also, visit Legiscan.com to receive alerts about legislation in your area. I urge you to contribute and take an active role in determining our future.

Dont be afraid to tell your story. You hold the keys to the future of our industry. No one can speak for you as well as you can speak for yourself.
Green Motion opened its first California franchise location at the San Diego International Airport in July. Founder and CEO Richard Lowden (center) holds the ribbon while new franchisee Xavier Ortiz-Mena, CEO, gets ready to cut it during the opening ceremony on July 1, 2016. Photo courtesy of Green Motion.

Continuing to expand its franchise locations worldwide, Green Motion has started to make its mark in the United States. Currently, the brand with the eco-friendly focus has franchises in two states  California (San Diego) and Florida (Fort Lauderdale, Miami, and opening soon in Orlando).

Green Motion launched in 2007 in the United Kingdom. After launching a car rental brand called Eurodrive in 1993, I was continually frustrated that it didnt have anything unique about it  we were just a smaller version of the multi-national rental operations, says Richard Lowden, Green Motions founder and CEO. It was just another car rental company. I decided to look at becoming a car rental company with an environmental focus.

Lowden wanted his new brand to provide the lowest emission fleet, but it had to be done in a cost-effective manner for both the customer and the operator. I learned people are happy to go green if it doesnt cost a premium, Lowden says. We built the business around this philosophy  we would be more nimble than other competitors and have this disruptor of being green.

International Expansion

The brands international expansion started unexpectedly, when a rental operator of another franchise system in Mexico reached out to Green Motion in 2010. The operator was not able to acquire more territories with his original brand, and to expand he needed to join another system or go independent. The licensee switched to Green Motion, and Mexico became the companys first international franchise. Green Motions Mexico franchisee has since grown to 40 locations.

In 2012, Lowden decided to license existing U.K. locations as a master franchise instead of each office separately. The company then turned to developing master franchises in overseas markets. Today, Green Motion operates solely as a franchisor  with no corporate locations  in 26 countries, with six additional countries in negotiations, according to Lowden.

In the U.S., Green Motion is offering franchise licenses on a state-by-state basis; seven states are in negotiations now. Green Motion is bringing a new and fresh perspective to the U.S. rental market, says Lowden. Our environmental focus impacts the way we do business before, during, and after the customer has visited our location and rented a vehicle.

Becoming a Franchisee

Green Motions partnership with Patricio Franulic has enabled him to expand from his beginnings as a small independent in Miami. In fact, Franulics fleet has more than quadrupled with Green Motions help  from 45 cars to about 300 in less than a year.

Before signing as a Green Motion franchisee, Franulic considered several franchise and affiliate options. He chose Green Motion in part for its fee structure, which was more attractive than the others, he says.

According to Franulic, another benefit has been access to the brands booking channels. Green Motion has given us so much exposure that we didnt have, says Franulic. It has catapulted my company to a whole new level.

Franulic bought the franchise rights for the state of Florida and plans to expand further within the state.

The Right Connections

In addition to brand identity, a key benefit of joining a franchise is an additional flow of reservations.

Green Motion is connected to more than 40 booking channels. This includes car rental aggregators such as Rentalcars.com, Holiday Autos, CarTrawler, CarRentals.com; online travel agencies such as Expedia Europe; and global distribution systems (GDS) Sabre, Worldspan, and Galileo. Green Motion expects to go live with Expedia U.S. in late August, and is in negotiations to connect with Priceline, Hotwire, and others, Lowden says.

As a newer company, Green Motion has built its technology without the burden of having to integrate with a legacy system  or having to deal with layers of bureaucracy on decision-making, says Lowden. This allows for quick turnarounds when dealing with a booking channel for things like special offers.

Were able to react. Our technology can do it in minutes, he says. And with the big multinational [car rental companies] it might take a lot of sign offs.

Green Motions reservation management platform is integrated with a third-party rental system powered by Wheels Car Rental System, developed by multinational IT-provider Invensys. The company partnered with Invensys for its ability to serve multiple languages, currencies, and tax systems. We chose a new, modern system we can flex to every country we go into, Lowden says.

The connectivity to Green Motion is seamless and occurs in real time, says Franulic. We can see a booking reflected in our system immediately.

Patricio Franulic (far right) runs the master franchise for the state of Florida. After joining Green Motion, his independent rental company grew from 45 vehicles to about 300 in less than a year. Photo courtesy of Patricio Franulic.

On the location level, Franulic says the Green Motion system has been helpful and responsive to make changes promptly and adapt the system to each rental locations specific needs.

In addition to Green Motions online channels, Franulic also advertises in the Miami market to gain more local customers, including corporate rental accounts. Green Motion trains franchisees on gaining local corporate business with its USP of lowering carbon emissions, Lowden says.

Currently, about 35% of his bookings are from local business while 65% come from online channels, a healthy balance of inbound and local traffic.

Going Green

Green Motion works with franchisees on fleet acquisitions. Lowden says the company can leverage its international volume for better vehicle pricing and also affords its franchisees short-term buyback programs that would not be available to an independent. Its first U.S. buyback program is in the works, he says.

Lowden admits that the U.S. and European markets are different when it comes to fuel-efficient fleets. For this reason Green Motion doesnt force its franchises to buy only hybrid and electric vehicles. This is good news to Franulic, who has seen uncertain residual values on hybrids due to lower fuel prices. Green Motion asks that we pick the most fuel-efficient vehicles within their classes, says Franulic. Currently about 80% of our fleet is compact and economy cars.

Nonetheless, locations like San Diego are introducing some all-electric vehicles such as Tesla because it makes business sense for that market, Lowden says. Renters can also help green the environment through an optional fee that goes to replenish the rainforest in Costa Rica.



This flexibility in fleet still carries transparency. We publish once a year our average emissions per location, Lowden says. We are upfront and honest in how we buy fleet.

Regarding branding, Green Motion allows for more flexibility for startup locations. The key aspect is business first, Lowden says. We have done [branding] in a way that doesnt strangle the franchisee. As the location becomes profitable, then we can go through a re-evaluation stage that freshens it up and brings it up a level.

Ideal Candidates

The Green Motion agreement in the U.S. allows a franchisee the option to operate all of the locations in its state or sub-franchise some locations. In 2017, Franulic is looking to begin sub-franchising in other cities in Florida.

After signing the franchise agreement, each franchisee completes a training program. The amount of training depends on the franchisees experience, according to Lowden. Training on Green Motions systems takes place on-site at a brand location.

Our California franchisee was trained in our Rome location followed by London, says Lowden. They got a real-life experience of renting cars at a busy, major airport location.

Lowden recommends that franchisees first open locations near airports  or on airport if financially viable  since the majority of Green Motions bookings come from international sources. Once the booking volume is stable at the airport location, Green Motion will help the franchisee develop in the local market with the opening of neighborhood locations, says Lowden.

Locations are opened using a methodical rollout. Reservations are taken months before the location is even opened, which allows Green Motion and the franchisee to understand the makeup of business coming in and allows the fleet to be tailored to the actual bookings. This also ensures higher utilization from day one, Lowden says.

Lowden describes the ideal franchisee candidate as an entrepreneur with a desire and ability to experience rapid growth and a willingness to embrace Green Motions environmental commitment.

Moreover, The ideal franchisee, he says, is often with [car rental] experience, so you dont have to teach them the process. But its also those who have developed to the point where their independent company wont go any further.

Its a plus if candidates have experience in car rental but its not a must. For instance, the San Diego franchisee has travel and hospitality experience but no specific car rental experience. In these cases, a strong and experienced car rental management team is essential. The Green Motion Americas team assisted the San Diego franchisee in recruiting an experienced car professional who was able to assemble more than 20 staffers to launch the location in less than eight weeks, Lowden says.

Overall, Green Motion realizes its franchisee base comes from diverse backgrounds and successful businesses. We dont want to stifle the entrepreneurship of the franchisee, says Lowden.
The Right Cars service team from Jordan anchors a trade booth. Photo courtesy of Right Cars.

Car rental franchising has a new player in the U.S.  U.K.-based Right Cars will launch officially at Miami International Airport on Sept. 6, followed by Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on Oct. 18.

The company is planning franchised branch openings serving Dallas International Airport and San Antonio Airport as well as San Diego and San Francisco by the end of the year, said Rick Little, Right Cars co-founder and chairman.

Right Cars was birthed from a family-owned car rental business that operated at Londons Gatwick Airport for 18 years. My customer database grew quickly through strong customer service and word of mouth, said Karl Taylor, co-founder and managing director of Right Cars. And then we had people asking us if we rent cars in Cyprus.

But word of mouth only goes so far today. So what drove a small independent to go global through franchising? The genesis was when Little met Taylor 12 years ago.

I rented cars from Karl, said Little, who retired as an IT consultant for the banking and travel industry and then wrote software for Taylors company. He told me that his large base of regular customers was slowly diminishing. As a small car rental company, he didnt have the technology or the funds to invest in the major travel networks. We realized there must be small, family-run car rental businesses around the world in the same situation as Karl.

The brand commenced franchising in 2012. Today, the company has franchise partners running 140 locations in 23 countries, from Croatia, Iceland, and New Zealand, to Mexico, Morocco, and United Arab Emirates. India is next, and the company is talking to Chinese partners, Little said.

The Big Idea

According to Little, the idea is to bring small, family-owned car rental businesses together in one big brand.

For franchises, Right Cars is targeting smaller rental companies who dont have a high advertising budget and dont have the IT skills, Little said.

But those companies should make up for a lack of technology understanding through other attributes. The ideal franchisee will have good customer service skills, an entrepreneurial attitude, and deal well under pressure, Taylor said. Right Cars will also work with companies that may have been part of another franchise network but struggled to expand.

Right Cars brings a quick, easy solution at a reasonable price, Taylor said. These small companies can join the Right Cars brand and get access to a service where they can compete with the larger rental companies.



Right Cars connects to several online brokers such as CarTrawler and Expedia Europe, with a connection to Expedia in the U.S. launching later this year. Little claims Right Cars operates the fastest XML connectivity in the industry: We deliver price requests in less than a quarter of a second on average, he said.

Taylor is working to bring his family-oriented business principles to the franchise network. If one branch is not performing very well, then other franchisee owners will help out, he said. We even had a franchisee fly to another franchise location to try to help out the owner.

Right Cars holds an annual franchise convention; this year its in Morocco, and an Expedia representative is scheduled to speak. The Right Cars executive team will meet potential franchisees during the Miami opening on Sept. 6.

While some of the companies Right Cars seeks may start small, theyll be asked to go big as a franchise. We expect a new branch to grow to have a minimum of 200 new cars, Taylor said.

The company has partnered with an investment company that will fund fleet, as well as a multinational vehicle lessor that operates in the U.S. and will lease to U.S. franchisees using Right Cars buying power.

[These partnerships] have given us the resources to offer new vehicles at good prices to anyone who joins the Right Cars brand, Little said. We have the potential to introduce 10,000 vehicles into the state of Florida within 12 months.
The International Franchise Systems corporate team gathers annually with Rent-A-Wreck and Priceless franchisees for their convention in Las Vegas.

I washed cars for Hertz in high school, says Matthew Allen, a Rent-A-Wreck franchisee in Richmond, Va. From that experience I had always felt I wanted to have a rental car operation.

In the mid-90s, after realizing he couldnt afford a franchise with the major car rental brands, Allen detoured into owning several cellular phone store franchises. I rode that until it became not profitable, he says. Then I said, I need to reinvent myself. I went back looking for a car rental franchise and then came upon Rent-A-Wreck.

Allen started with seven cars in 2012 and is up to 86 today. His business is a local market mix of weekend renters, breakdown replacements, and long-term renters in need of a set of wheels.



Regarding the decision to franchise or operate his own car rental business, I never thought about going independent, he says. I felt I needed the support and expertise of people who had done it before.

Allens decision is one continually faced by those looking to purchase their own company across a range of business types: Will you succeed by hanging your own shingle, or should you hitch your wagon to an established brand?

Well hear from car rental franchisees regarding their decision-making process, their advice for new operators, and the benefits of joining a system. Well also share a few reasons why franchising may not suit your path.

Band of Brothers

The franchisees interviewed for this article  each and every one  credit their band of brothers and sisters as the primary benefit of franchising.

The major reason for being a franchisee, besides the brand recognition and reservations flow, which are important, is having someone to talk to and compare your operation to, says consultant Jim Tennant, a former Thrifty and Payless franchisee.

Casey Skeltons career took a left turn into car rental when, as an insurance agent doing business with a U-Save franchisee in his hometown of Starkville, Miss., the owner offered to sell the location to him.

Early on, one of the best benefits was being able to call other franchisees, says Skelton, and they were way more willing to help you than if you were just an independent.

Tom Melletts first exposure to car rental as a profession was working as a service manager at a new car dealership that had a car rental franchise on-site. The people were lined up at the rental desk all day long, he says.

Mellett signed on with U-Save in Glenside, Pa., 28 years ago. The best part going in was the camaraderie, says Mellett, remembering the warm reception he and his wife received at their first U-Save convention.

A Parents Help

In addition to the knowledge garnered from fellow franchisees, newcomers also rely on help from the brands corporate parent to get up and running. Understanding fleet  how to buy, what to buy, how long to hold, when to sell, and how to sell  is one of the main ingredients in the secret sauce.

Tom Mellet's U-Save family in Glenside, Pa., consists of actual family members and long-time employees. From left to right: John Hartman (21-year employee), Stephen Mellet (son), Carol Morwald (23 years), Tom Mellett, Kathy Mellett (wife), James Mellett (son), and Rick Eisele (17 years).

I didnt know how cars depreciated, says Allen, who was counseled by Rent-A-Wreck on how to depreciate fleet and remarket his units at the right mileage. Had I known there was a big risk of having these cars wind up in a [financial] hole, it probably would have scared me away from the business.

His fleet consists entirely of one- to two-year-old used units, and hes able to use Rent-A-Wrecks fleet program to purchase cars at closed factory sales, which is virtually impossible as an independent with a small fleet.

Rent-A-Wreck also has a leasing program, which is a good way for new operators without an established credit history in rental to fleet up, Allen says.

Skelton says his first good decision was to hire a seasoned car rental manager, and he also initially took advantage of U-Saves help in fleet buying and selling. Today, Skelton says he appreciates the freedom U-Save corporate gives him to buy the type of cars that fit his market. As a rural operator, I work with some niches that may not work in a major metropolitan market or an airport, he says.

Mellett benefits from U-Saves buying power with manufacturers by purchasing in groups with fellow franchisees. He has expanded his fleet to 150 units, with a focus on van rentals, as well as dealer and insurance replacement.

Business Basics

Other services offered by franchisors could include legal services, profit groups, fleet insurance, and rate management. For newbies, navigating these waters alone is no easy task.

For instance, I looked into creating rental contracts myself, but in terms of the legalities, you need a lawyer, says Nick Mariano, a Utica, N.Y.-based Priceless franchisee who used the legal services provided by his franchisor.

I couldnt afford to hire a lawyer to show me what I could and couldnt do and what my contract should look like.

Skelton took advantage of U-Saves rate management assistance. Looking at rates can feel like hieroglyphics if you havent been doing it for several years, he says.

Insurance markets were extremely tight when he opened his first location, Skelton says, and U-Save had one of the few physical damage and liability programs available. You tend to forget those benefits that you used early on to get you up and running, he says.

Many franchisees join profit groups, which consist of regularly scheduled meetings in which franchisees share and compare business data, expense ratios, profit and loss accounting, and other best practices.

A Flow of Customers

An essential benefit of becoming a car rental franchise is an immediate flow of customers. This comes in a variety of ways, including reservations from the corporate website, online travel agencies (OTAs), email marketing tools, and local search optimization.

The uninitiated may think that joining a franchise means turning on the reservations faucet and letting customers queue up at the counter. Its not quite that simple.

Matthew Allen, a Rent-A-Wreck franchisee in Richmond, Va., started with seven cars in 2012 and is up to 86 today serving a local market mix of weekenders, breakdown replacements, and long-term renters in need of a set of wheels.

In a franchise system, all reservations that come through the corporate website have a reservations fee, which can be a flat fee or a percentage of the booking total. There is a separate, additional fee for reservations generated through consumer-facing OTA matrixes such as Expedia, carrentals.com, Priceline, Kayak, and rentalcars.com. These reservations come with fees that vary from 10% to 25% of the booking.



While compounded fees leave less room for profit, these reservations are the lifeblood of operations serving airports. The counterbalance is volume, volume, volume.

The local-market model is different. Those operators still rely on traditional channels for business such as phone, email, and walk-up reservations through local direct marketing. Yet over the past few years, neighborhood-focused franchisors such as U-Save and Rent-A-Wreck have also established connectivity to the OTAs.

For local-market franchisees, OTA reservations represent a faucet of incremental business that can be turned on as needed, and, while the fees are high, many see those reservations as an opportunity to capture a long-term customer off the online matrix.

Mariano mentions the billboard effect, the percentage of renters who see the brand and city listed on the Expedia or Kayak matrix, but then book directly on the corporate website, resulting in a much cheaper fee to the operator.



My challenge is to get them to call me the next time they rent, says Allen, who goes the extra mile to encourage customer loyalty. They like the way theyre treated; the cars are clean and run well. Then they dont need to shop around. The idea is that well wow them with our rate and service, and theyll book directly either on our website or over the phone the next time they need a vehicle.

After U-Save upgraded its website and reservations system technology, Melletts operation realized an increase in internet reservations, yet they only account for 5% of his revenue.

For Skelton, web traffic is a greater part of the pie. Four or five years ago, I was getting two or three internet reservations a month, Skelton says. Now we start our day by looking at our manifest that came in online. We went from a handful a month to several every day.

Still, more than half of Skeltons reservations come direct to him, and a lot of business comes from direct marketing.

Mellett is the beneficiary of email marketing blasts generated by corporate every other week. He also takes advantage of U-Saves online ad creation program, where users can plug information into various template options and sizes, download the file, and send to the advertising medium.

While all web-based reservations come with a price tag, for those going the independent route, the flip side is starting a website from scratch  marketing your rentals through community outreach, organic search, and paid ads  and then understanding and managing pricing. Building this type of car rental business is certainly possible, but takes much more resources and potentially years to develop.

Of course, any car rental company  corporate, franchisee, or independent  that takes reservations from an OTA is subjected to its fees. The reality for independent car rental companies is that, with few exceptions, they do not have the ability to connect to OTAs.

Real-World Challenges

At the onset, its easy to overlook some of the finer points that make up a franchise business. Issues such as branding, handling of complaints, no-show fees, and competition with corporate stores may start as text in a franchise handbook but soon become real-world challenges.

After becoming a franchise, I was surprised by the branding requirements, says Sharon Faulkner, executive director of the American Car Rental Association (ACRA) and an operator in the corporate, independent, and franchisee arenas.

Faulkner references exacting requirements such as outside signage (in one instance the required size violated town rules), wall colors, counter dimensions, shuttle bus requirements, and uniforms, on down to the key tags. And once those requirements are satisfied, they can change  such as a painted pole that needed to be repainted to the original color three months later, Faulkner says.

Others caution about the need to keep accurate records. Thats common sense in any business, but in franchising, it mitigates the potential for disputes with the franchisor, such as taking coupons from customers that must be submitted to corporate for reimbursement for specific dollar amounts. When your accounting doesnt match their accounting, you need to be on point to find out why the numbers dont match, says Kris Tucci, a Dollar and Thrifty operator serving Syracuse, N.Y.

Tucci also recommends having a clear understanding of the process for handling complaints, and the franchisees ability to resolve them. A customer who calls the corporate 800 number to complain about a transaction at a franchised location may get a different resolution than if it could have been addressed locally, Tucci says.

Budget San Diego, a franchise location of Avis Budget Group, is part of the San Diego International Airport's consolidated rental center opened in January 2016.

Brad Meyer, a former Dollar, Thrifty, and Hertz licensee in Arkansas, Alabama, Indiana, and Michigan, counsels the need to master pricing through rate management. Small operators have to carve out time, either themselves or someone in the organization, to dedicate to rate management on a fairly constant basis, he says.

And then there are no-show fees, a fact of life for reservations taken through corporate or OTA channels. Paying a fee for a customer that doesnt show up is a hard pill to swallow for franchisees, but they can be mitigated through better utilization and rate management, Meyer says.

Franchise systems with a mix of corporate and franchisee locations  especially in the same market  have encountered competitive issues within the brand. Whereas corporate may have an incentive to lower prices to drive volume or market share, this could conflict with franchisees profit expectations. This is not a consideration with neighborhood-focused brands such as Rent-A-Wreck and U-Save, as they manage only a few corporate locations.

Like a Marriage

Franchising is a form of marriage. Marriages are never perfect, but the ones that prosper have mutual understanding, open lines of communication, trust, and respect.

They [potential franchisees] have to understand that the franchise system is a two-way street, says Bob Klyce, an Avis, Budget, and Payless franchisee serving Birmingham, Ala. You have to support your franchisor. If you think youre an independent businessman by being a franchisee, youre not. You are part of a system, and you have to accept that to be successful.

When you get involved in a franchise, make sure that your visions are similar, says Sean Cox, a U-Save franchisee serving Colorado Springs, Colo. You have to understand your own business well enough to know if youll be competitive in their marketplace.

Do your due diligence. See what programs they offer; speak to other franchisees, says Marty Mehalko, a long-time Rent-A-Wreck franchisee serving northern New Jersey. They [the corporate parent] want you to succeed. If the franchisees are successful, that sells more franchises.

A good franchise system can help an owner-operator succeed, says Steve Landrum, a Mississippi-based U-Save franchisee who made the switch from a family-owned independent car rental company. Then again, a good franchise system can help an absent franchise owner fail slower.

Landrum references the franchisees who are absentee owners, the ones who may have been successful in another business and thought they could get by without learning the rental industry. They hire a manager and are never there, and in two years theyre out of business, he says.

Certainly, there are a few good reasons to stay single, and also forgo franchising:

People who are very independent and dont take direction very well, that kind of person probably shouldnt be a franchisee, says Tennant. As a franchisee, you need to conform to their (the franchisors) requirements.

If youre someone who thinks outside the box, wants to reinvent the wheel, and disturb the current marketplace, franchising is not for you, says Rick Eddy, a Budget franchisee in San Diego. But if you want something that comes with name recognition built in, reservations, computer support, and a community of like-minded entrepreneurs, then go for it.

When couples exchange vows, they arent thinking about the possibility of divorce, though its an important consideration in business partnerships. What are the parameters of a breakup?

Gil Cygler was a Dollar franchisee in New York City before hanging his own shingle as AllCar Rent-a-Car in 2003. (Cygler sold to Enterprise in 2015.) Of his separation from Dollar, It was an amicable divorce, he says.

Cygler says potential franchisees need to understand separation terms upfront. For those continuing in car rental after separating, look for answers on issues such as who owns the locations phone number, how corporate accounts will be treated, and should the new company indemnify the previous brand, among other things.

All told, each operator in this story made the franchise relationship work for them.

Casey Skelton sums up a universal refrain: The support of the system and the relationships you build with fellow franchisees is worth the royalties to me.
Making electric cars suddenly seems to be the hip thing to do. Tesla has already done that to near perfection and Munich-based start-up Sono Motors wishes to be the next in line.

The company's first offering is going to be the Sion EV which the company plans to take to the production phase now that it has managed to raise over $200,000 via an Indiegogo campaign, Motor1 reported. Precisely, the company raised 192,000 which far exceeds the initial target of 150,000.

That should be good news for its initial backers with the production of the six-seater vehicle slated to kick off in 2017 with deliveries in North America and Europe slated for 2018.

As for the car itself, it might be a bit odd shaped but it is priced extremely competitively. To be available in two trim options, the 'Urban' trim is priced $13,000 and has a range of 75 miles on a single charge. Next up is the 'Extender' version which will last a bit longer at 155 miles before requiring a recharge.

The price apart, another positive quality of the Scion electric vehicles is that it does not need setting up of a separate charging mechanism to charge the cars. Instead, a regular domestic power outlet would be enough.

That is not all as the Sion also have solar panels all over - the roof, hood, door panels - which the company says will be able to add another 18 miles to the range.

However, if the above-mentioned price seems too good to be true, note that it does not include the cost of the vehicle's battery, either in leasing or buying terms. The company also did not reveal what the battery size will be or how long it will take to charge fully, a key buying consideration with pure electric vehicles.

On the inside, there will be enough space to seat six comfortably. Besides this, there will be a 10-inch central display panel that will also hook up with the user's smartphone via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. There will be an option for trailer hitch as well.

Test drives will begin next year with prospective buyers having the option of full day test drives as well, AutoBlog stated. Then there is also the option of paying 500 of refundable deposit or pre-order for 2,000 to avail of a special 5 percent discount.
Ford stated that it's aware of one accident and three injuries related to this issue. As such, it's going to call back 1.5 million cars, SUVS, and vans due to doors swinging open unexpectedly.

Ford announced that the total recall this year will sum up to 2.4 million vehicles in Canada, US, and Mexico. To specify, these are the cars that are being recalled:

The 2013-15 Ford C-MAX and Ford Escape.

The 2012-15 Ford Focus.

The 2015 Ford Mustang and Lincoln MKC.

The 2014-16 Ford Transit Connect.

If you are the owner of any of the vehicle mentioned on the list, bring it to your nearest dealership and they will fix the issue free of charge.

The company said that the problem stems from a pawl spring tab inside the latch that could break resulting in either the owner unable to close the door or the door could pop open any time. It also added that the recall was taken at the request of the National Highway Traffic Administration.

Ford will get quite a stinging from these call-backs. The automaker says that it'll be lowering its third quarter adjusted pre-tax profit from $10.8 billion to $10.2 billion; the overall cost being estimated at a $640 million loss of income.

On a similar note, Mazda will also recall 2.2 million cars and SUVs globally due to a corrosion issue to its rear hatch. The problem here is that the coating applied in protecting the hatch lift support from corrosion was insufficient.

Water containing road salt can seep into the support over time, which will eventually cause the breakage. Here are the models that are being recalled:

The 2016CX-3.

The 2013-2016CX-5.

The 2010-2013Mazda3.

The 2012-2016Mazda5.

Mazda will notify its customers in September or October on the exact date when they'll be able to bring their vehicles for repair. Dealers will replace both rear doors, according to a government department. The corporation did not report any accidents or injuries caused by the issue.
As car enthusiasts know, some months ago, the automotive world bid the legendary Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X goodbye with no replacement in sight. Luckily, fans of the car models will have the opportunity to own the last one at hand through Ebay auction - and for a good cause too.

The Last Quality Evo Around

The Lancer Evolution has been one of the fastest and most effective vehicles ever made thanks to its 2.0-liter MIVEC engine riding since 2007. Over 10 generations, it has proven that one doesn't need to spend a fortune on a premium brand to drive a fast, agile, fun and exciting vehicle.

Recall that Mitsubishi built a run of 1,600 Final Edition models to celebrate the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X's ten-generation run. Mitsubishi promised that the EVO nameplate will have more generations but it will be very different from the former models, making them extinct. And considering all the scandal Mitsubishi is embroiled in today, there are doubts that these new generations quality would be at par with the legendary EVO model.

Dare To Bid At Ebay

In addition to the historic nature of the auction, the brand didn't miss the opportunity to give a solidarity action so the proceeds will go to charity. The auction has been opened today at 9 a.m. and will close on Thursday, 15 September at the same time. All proceeds from the auction will go to Feeding America Riverside, San Bernardino and Second Harvest Food Bank of Orange County.

For the development of the series, the boys from Mitsubishi have used the best manufacturers of components and ensure that at least the last unit of the model was forged in style. The last unit of the model has finished with pearlescent white paint and a black roof.

In addition to this, the last Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X features mounted alloy wheels, a discrete body kit, bi-xenon headlights, sport seats in red, interior trimmed in black leather and the plate number US1600, identifying it as the end of the Final Edition.

How much would you bid for the last Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X? Recently, a dealer was selling the first of the 1,600 Lancer Evolution Final Editions for $88,888.

In a few days, we will know how much is the last one.
Another incident brought Tesla Model S into the limelight of controversy. The shocking news revealed that its battery flew out of the electric vehicle after crashing into a tree on Baarn, a town to the south-east of Amsterdam on Wednesday, Sept. 7.

Unfortunately, the 53-year old Dutch driver immediately died on the spot. Several websites have been speculating about the cause of the fatal accident.

Dana Hull of Bloomberg posted on Twitter that the Autopilot was not engaged when the crash happened, as per Tesla. The authorities are yet to dig deeper into the details and would update the public soon.

But more than that, another rumor suggest that the battery of the wrecked Tesla Model S flew out of the vehicle after the severe collision. The automaker sent a statement to AutoBlog; kindly read it below:

"We are working with the authorities to establish the facts of the incident and offer our full cooperation. Thus far, we can confirm from the car's logs that Autopilot was not engaged at any time during the drive cycle and that, consistent with the damage that was observed after the vehicle struck the tree, the vehicle was being driven more than 155 kph," Tesla stated.

Furthermore, one of Tesla's representatives said that the company is deeply saddened by what happened. They also assured the outlets that they will immediately post something when new findings come out.

This is not the first time that Tesla Model S got involved in a fatal car crash. An almost identical incident happened on May 7 in Florida, causing the life of 45-year-old Joshua Brown. His Tesla Model S vehicle crashed underneath an 18-wheeler truck.

During that May 2016 incident, the Tesla Model S' Autopilot was not able to detect the incoming truck, thus allowing the car to crash underneath the trunk. To address the incident, CEO Elon Musk tried explaining the capabilities of the Autopilot system.

But then, this new incident with another Tesla Model S is quite alarming. Musk is yet to give his personal statement regarding this.

Watch the video below:
Apple and Google are both known in the tech world. But it looks like the competition will go beyond the production of smartphones and other gadgets. These organizations are now venturing into the world of the car industry. But which of them could produce a better electric car?

Apple's 'Project Titan'

The Cupertino-based company has been making a buzz because of the so-called project. As expected, the executives are still mum about the details but several websites were able to obtain information, at least, to quench the thirst of the anticipating public.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Apple has been hiring hundreds of employees for "Project Titan." The number varies from the concentrated engineers and roboticists up to the manual and skilled laborers.

More than that, the site reported that the firm has been meeting with the Austrian contract managers like Magna Steyr for the project. However, they need to contact German automakers as well to manufacture the dreamy electric car.

On the other hand, there is another buzz that Apple is building "Project Titan" to challenge Tesla.

"Apple's latest project is too exciting to pass up. I think it will change the landscape and give Tesla a run for its money," a source previously told the Business Insider.

But it looks like Apple is yet to challenge not just Tesla, but other companies as well.

Google's 'Self-Driving Cars'

Meanwhile, another tech titan must be ready to soar in terms of producing autonomous cars. Little is known about the project but one of its core members, Chris Urmson, made the headlines after quitting the team.

He may leave the pool of geniuses who are behind the promising product, but Alphabet spokesperson Johnny Luu stated that there is no bad blood between Urmson and the rest of the members.

"Seven years ago, the idea that a car could drive itself wasn't much more than an idea. Chris has been a vital force for the project, helping the team move from a research phase to a point where this lifesaving technology will soon become a reality. He departs with our warmest wishes," Luu stated to the New York Times.

Since Apple and Google are keeping the information under wraps, it is expected that the finished product will impress the public.
Samsung has been facing a huge blow because of the subpar battery quality of the released Galaxy Note 7 units. Recently, it totaled a Jeep Grand Cherokee, leaving it completely wrecked after the phone exploded.

Florida man Nathan Dornacher was unaware that the South Korean company has issued a recall of the product. Thus, he knew little about the danger of charging his cellphone in a vehicle.

Fox 13 reported that his family went to a yard sale during Labor day. According to his wife, Lydia, they were unloading the desk they bought for their daughter when Dornacher left his phone charging in the Jeep.

The parents told their 8-year old child to get back to the car because they still need to shop for other things. The girl was accompanied by the family's service dog.

Fortunately, the dog was able to detect that something was not right. Mr. Dornacher later realized that his Jeep that was engulfed with fire. Luckily, no one was hurt during the incident.

The Galaxy Note 7 exploded while connected to the car charger. Notably, Samsung issued the recall in 10 countries after similar incidents have been confirmed. The tech company issued a statement regarding the explosion to the media outlet.

"We are aware of the incident and we are working with Mr. Dornacher to investigate his case and ensure we do everything we can for him. Consumer safety is Samsung's highest priority."

"With regard to the Galaxy Note7, we are asking owners to take advantage of the Product Exchange Program announced on Friday of last week. The program offers Note7 owners the opportunity to exchange the phone for a new one. More details on the program can be found at http://www.samsung.com/us/note7exchange/," Samsung stated.

Meanwhile, the headlines already reached the Federal Aviation Association, which, in turn, told the public to not charge their Galaxy Note 7 devices during flights. The FAA told Gizmodo that they are "working on guidance" and that it wants to make sure that everyone is safe while traveling through airplanes.

This news about the Galaxy Note 7 is still developing so stay tuned for more updates here at Auto World News.
The FAA is warning owners of Samsung Galaxy Note 7 smartphones to keep their devices turned off during flights due to the risk of battery fires. In light of recent incidents and concerns raised by Samsung about its Galaxy Note 7 devices, the Federal Aviation Administration strongly advises passengers not to turn on or charge these devices on board aircraft and not to stow them in any checked baggage, the agency said in a statement this week. Meanwhile, the Consumer Product Safety Commission is working with Samsung on an official product recall, and the company will ship out new units with improved batteries for users to exchange, according to The Wall Street Journal.

No injuries or fires in aircraft have been reported, but media outlets point to destructive garage and vehicle firesamong the incidents caused by defective lithium ion batteries installed in the Note 7 phone. Reuters reported that three Australian airlines  Qantas, Jetstar and Virgin Australia  have prohibited the phones use on board their flights. The FAA, NTSB and agencies worldwide have been concerned about lithium ion batteries on aircraft, either in bulk shipments or in electronic devices. In December, a number of airlines banned hoverboards due to reports of some batteries catching fire.
Drones hovering over fires have often been the bane of firefighters, but now special versions of the unmanned aircraft are going to be put to work on emergency response teams. The New York City Fire Department is training some of its crews to deploy bright red drones to view fires using video and infrared cameras,according to a New York Times report.Unlike the popular types of consumer drones that can sell for a few hundred or a few thousand dollars, the FDNYs first drone costs $85,000, with two more to come this year.

Theyll be used for larger fires to help assess response with one pilot and one observer for each drone, with a monitor to see fires from above. Its more situational awareness of whats going on at the scene, a firefighter told the Times. Its another view.The drones will have some physical and legal limitations for the time being, since theyre unable to fly freely through the city in response to fire calls, the Times reported. Under arrangements with the FAA, the department must get a clearance to dispatch a drone, which officials said would take about 15 minutes. The aircraft will also be tethered, so it can fly up and down within 200 feet of the ground as it feeds live video to the monitor.The department called this a big step in firefighting technology. But officials in the Times report also noted that its without a doubt the most boring drone youve ever seen in your life. All it does is goes up, and it stays there.
9 September 2016 10:24 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

Jane Buchanan, Associate Director of Europe and Central Asia Division of the international organization Human Rights Watch considers unreasonable the arrests of civil society activists after the July protests in Armenia, Russian service of radio Freedom reports.

She said the Armenian courts, in violation of international standards, did not indicate the reliable facts of violations, but resorted to general and abstract substantiations in the arrests of detainees.

Citing dozens of witnesses interviewed by the experts of the organization, as well as recorded videos, Buchanan noted that protests were mostly peaceful, with few cases of violence by protesters, and nothing remotely resembled riots.

Mass protests, which started in Armenia after an armed group Sasna Tsrer seized a police station in Yerevan on July 17, expressed the resentment of Armenians with their government.

From the first day of the seizure, Armenian people started their protest actions against authorities by gathering on Yerevans streets. Following the rally in Sari Tagh district of Yerevan, the police brutally, with use of police batons and stun grenades, dispersed the protesters and arrested 165 people. As a result, 73 citizens addressed medical institutions with injuries of varying degrees of severity.

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
9 September 2016 15:21 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

No serious result has been recorded in the fight against corruption in Armenia despite the creation of Anti-Corruption Council under the government and the declared fight against corruption.

Varuzhan Hoktanyan, Executive Director of Transparency International Anticorruption Center NGO stated that since establishment of the Council the officials claim that they initiated legislative changes in order to fight corruption and urged the public to wait. However, there are many flaws in the current legislation of Armenia and no political will to fight the corruption in the country is seen, Hoktanyan stressed.

He believes that the Anti-Corruption Council working under the leadership of the Prime Minister will not be able to work efficiently, as that issue requires an independent body.

The question of the establishment of an independent body should be raised. A special investigation service which will focus its activities on the fight against corruption can be the independent candidate for that position, he said.

Moreover, criminalization of illegal enrichment, which is the requirement of the UN Convention, and its inclusion in the agenda of the forthcoming session of Parliament, should also be done to fight the unprecedented corruption in Armenia, according to him.

Today, many companies formally belong not to a specific deputy, but their relatives, he said, adding that Armenian media constantly reveal them.

Hoktanyan stressed that it is impossible to fight corruption without political will, but if the Armenian government really starts to reduce the level of corruption in the country, it will harm the authorities personal interests.

So, if the problem of corruption is not solved in Armenia, it will lead to economic collapse. As far as I know, a summit on attracting donors will be organized in October by the Armenian government and the Asian Development Bank. But donors look at the ratio of objective figures with reality, they see the corruption, Hoktanyan said.

And it seems, donors will not rush to Armenia.

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
9 September 2016 17:38 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

Predictions widely spread in Armenia over the candidacy of future head of government turned out true. Karen Karapetyan has become the new Prime Minister of Armenia.

His candidacy was approved at the Council meeting of the ruling Republican Party of Armenia on September 8, News.am reported.

Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan called Karapetyan peculiar symbol of changes in Armenia, announcing significant changes expected in the near future.

He thanked the former Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamyan: The key for a new political culture is the ability of officials not to hold on the office if they did their utmost in the position.

Sargsya went on to speak about the successes of the Armenian economy under the leadership of Abrahamyan.

In addition to the resignation of Abrahamyan, Armenian President also accepted the resignation of the government, instructing the government members to perform their duties until the formation of a new Cabinet.

Hovik Abrahamyan announced his resignation on September 8 at a government meeting. Armenian media reported Abrahamyan will head the election headquarters of the Republican Party at the 2017 parliamentary elections.

He was appointed to the position of Prime Minister in April 2014. Just after Abrahamyans arrival, Armenia's economy, managed by corrupt, criminal and oligarchic government, started to rapidly deteriorate, coming to a dead end eventually.

GDP growth slowed to 3 percent in 2015 after 3.5 percent in 2014 and this figure still continues descending. Unemployment rate remains high, being at a 18-percent level currently, and every third of the population lives in poverty.

People should know that the government has no magic wand to solve all economic problems, Abrahamyan once said after his 100-day in the position of the head of government trying to justify his failures.

The recent seizure of a police station in Yerevan and following mass protests of population against the Armenian government also showed the wrong policy of the authorities, particularly of Hovik Abrahamyan.

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
9 September 2016 11:14 (UTC+04:00)

By Nigar Abbasova

Azerbaijans state energy giant SOCAR will issue bonds for the domestic market of the country. The company will issue USD bonds for Azerbaijani citizens from September 20, the company reported.

The nominal value of each bond is $1,000. The annual bond yield is 5 percent, while interest income is not taxable and will be paid quarterly.

The bonds will be sold till October 10, 2016.

The sale of bonds will be implemented in "Asan" services 1 and 5. Citizens of the country will be able to receive interest yield in International Bank of Azerbaijan (IBA), Kapital Bank, Rabitabank, Xalq Bank.

AzFinance, InvestAZ, PASHA Kapital and PSG Kapital will act as market makers (dealer firms that assume the risk of holding a certain number of shares of a particular security in order to facilitate its trading).

SOCAR will provide thorough information during the presentation on September 16.

One of the main objectives of placing bonds in the domestic market is diversification of financing sources as well as provision of new investment opportunities for the population, a source in the company told Interfax. The definite volume of emission has not yet been disclosed.

The company has an experience in issuance of euro bonds for the international market. SOCAR has already implemented three issues of Eurobonds in the international market.

Back in late 2012, SOCAR's head Rovnag Abdullayev voiced plans to issue bonds of the company worth 500 million manats ($ 299 million) and place them on the Azerbaijani securities market, saying that success of the companys corporate bonds in foreign markets allowed to plan the issue of bonds in the domestic market.

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Nigar Abbasova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @nigyar_abbasova

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
9 September 2016 12:29 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

The Republican Commission of Azerbaijans Agriculture Ministry made a decision on allocation of subsidies in the amount of 82.4 million manats ($49.3 million) to 385,247 agricultural producers.

The decision was taken at the regular meeting of the Commission held on September 8 under the leadership of its Chairman - Deputy Minister of Agriculture Ilham Guliyev.

Subsidies were allocated for the purchase of fuel and motor oils, as well as wheat, seedlings, cotton and tobacco for sowing in 1.25 million hectares of acreages.

Relevant documents for disbursement of funds to producers were sent to Azerbaijans Ministry of Finance, JSC Kapital Bank and relevant regional departments of agriculture and executive power.

The commission also decided to allocate subsidies in the amount of 4.3 million manats ($2.6 million) with 70-percent discount to 5,019 producers for purchase of mineral fertilizers by four organizations: Aqrolizinq JSC, Aqroline Group Ltd., MKT IK Ltd. and EKO Trade Ltd.

The Commission also decided to allocate subsidies in the amount of 347,343 manats ($207,942) with 70-percent discount for the purchase of pesticides to 2,413 producers by Aqrolizinq JSC, Aqrokimya Ltd., EMA and Aqrico.

Benefits provided for the purchase of fuel and motor oils make 50 manats ($30) per hectare, while the figure is 40 manats ($24) for planting one hectare of wheat, rice, cotton and tobacco.

Overall, benefits to agricultural producers in Azerbaijan are provided since 2007.

In accordance with the law "On granting tax benefits to agricultural producers" of November 27, 2001, farmers in Azerbaijan are exempted from all taxes (excluding land tax).

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
9 September 2016 11:48 (UTC+04:00)

By Nigar Abbasova

The number of flights from Iran to Azerbaijan should be increased, given the constantly growing interest of tourists in the country, said Mohsun Pakayin, Iranian ambassador to Azerbaijan.

Pakayin, who will soon complete his diplomatic mission in the country, made the remark while addressing the meeting with Azerbaijans Minister of Culture and Tourism Abulfas Garayev.

Some 18 flights are operated from Iran to Azerbaijan on a monthly basis, while interest of Iranian tourists in the country is growing steadily.

Garayev, in turn, said that the two countries are rapidly developing relations in the sphere of tourism and culture, mentioning that the growing number of Iranian tourists visiting Azerbaijan creates good opportunities for further development of ties between Azerbaijani and Iranian tourism companies.

The sides have also exchanged views on the latest 4-year development of bilateral relations between the two countries, as well as the forthcoming culture days of Azerbaijan, which are due in Iran. As noted, a delegation of Azerbaijan is recently to visit the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Irans Foreign Ministry earlier appointed Javad Jahangirzadeh (who served as deputy head of the Parliament Research Center from June 2012 to May 2016) as the Islamic Republics new ambassador to Azerbaijan,

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9 September 2016 13:25 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

The leadership of the Ukrainian Railways (Ukrzaliznytsia) intends to discuss with colleagues from Georgia and Azerbaijan tariffs for cargo transportation on the territory of these countries in the framework of the Silk Road project. The statement was made by Ukrainian Minister of Infrastructure Volodymyr Omelyan, RIA Novosti reported.

In connection with Russias toughening of the requirements of goods transit from Ukraine, Kiev decided to seek alternative routes of cargoes delivery to Asia. In particular, so-called Silk Road has been developed, which involves the delivery of cargo on the route UkraineGeorgiaAzerbaijanKazakhstanChina bypassing Russia through two seas. However, due to high fares, this route is not yet popular.

The conference will involve a meeting of heads of Ukrainian, Georgian and Azerbaijani Railways, which will include discussion of sectoral issues, in particular through tariff. The main purpose is to attract cargo on the southern Silk Road and in the direction of the Gulf countries, said Omelyan on September 8 during an international conference.

In January, a pilot container train of 20 wagons went from the port of Ilyichevsk on the route UkraineGeorgiaAzerbaijanKazakhstanChina through the Caspian and Black seas  a new direction of the Silk Road.

Ukraine and Azerbaijan cooperate within the framework of the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route (TITR) which is a part of the Silk Road.

The route which is designed to provide transport connections between the East and West of Eurasia, runs through China, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia and then to Europe via Turkey and Ukraine.

Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Georgia and Ukraine decided to apply the competitive feed-in tariffs for cargo transportation via the TITR in January, 2016. Single competitive rate was introduced in the framework of the route starting from June 1, 2016 with the view to reduce the costs of international cargo transportation.

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9 September 2016 13:37 (UTC+04:00)

By Amina Nazarli

Possibilities of expanding economic and business relations between Baku and Athens were discussed at a meeting between President of the Union of Hellenic Chambers (UHC) Konstantinos Mihalos and Azerbaijani Ambassador to Greece Rahman Mustafayev in Greece on September 7.

The sides touched upon different issues concerning economic and business cycles of the two countries.

They discussed recent negative developments in the final implementation of the agreement between DESFA and Azerbaijani state company SOCAR.

Mustafayev expressed strong concern as the Greek side changed the terms of the contract managing the future income of DESFA, which can lead even to the termination of the contract.

Mihalos, in turn, said that Greek business community wants to maintain good relations between the two countries, and a possible cancellation of the agreement will obviously deteriorate positive business atmosphere, formed thanks to promotion of business ties between the two countries.

SOCAR won a tender in 2013 on the purchase of a 66-percent stake in DESFA for 400 million euros ($446.3 million) but the acquisition was stalled, when SOCAR faced EUs anti-trust concerns and was ordered to sell 17 percent of DESFA to a third party, so that its stake drops to 49 percent and satisfy EU competition authorities. Greece passed a law in July which raised DESFA's gas tariffs, further complicating the sale.

SOCAR hopes it can overcome the EU obstacles, as Italys Snam SpA may purchase at least required 17 percent of shares.

Greek Minister of Environment, Energy and Climate Change Panos Skourletis previously accused the European Commission of delaying the deal on selling a share in Greece's DESFA to SOCAR.

Earlier, Director General of SOCAR Energy Greece Anar Mammadov told Turkish reporters that SOCAR expects compromise proposals from the Greek government for the successful completion of the deal on acquisition of a stake in Greece's gas transmission system operator DESFA.



We are ready to work together with the Greek government and offered them a compromise. We are currently interested in the project, but it must be also reasonable from a commercial point of view, and under the new conditions, SOCAR may not be quite ready for privatization, he said.

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Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli



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9 September 2016 14:40 (UTC+04:00)

By Nigar Abbasova

The US-based Global Cold Chain Alliance (GCCA), which represents all major industries engaged in temperature-controlled logistics, is ready to render its assistance to Azerbaijan in the sphere of expansion of agrobusiness and bringing Azerbaijani products to the domestic and international market.

GCCA Vice President on International Programs, Richard Tracy said that a number enterprises operating in Azerbaijan are in line with all international standards.

I am impressed by certain enterprises operating in the country. Nevertheless, some companies need assistance to reach the level corresponding to international standards, he said.

He mentioned that representatives of the company have already visited a number of enterprises in the country.

The level of performability is very high, but we want to make it even better, he added.

Highlighting the export possibility of Azerbaijani production to foreign countries, Tracy said that the agricultural production of the country is among the most delicious in the world.

Main question is whether the country will be able to set a competitive price for the production. The country, for instance, has an advantage in the export of pomegranates, as the production has a good price and premium quality," he said.

Azerbaijan plans to minimize its oil dependence, which requires ensuring growth of non-oil sector of economy and increasing the volume of foreign investment in this field.

Agriculture is one of the most important spheres for the economy of Azerbaijan in this regard. The fertile lands, abundance of water and climatic diversity create favorable conditions for a strong agricultural sector in the country.

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9 September 2016 16:53 (UTC+04:00)

By Nigar Abbasova

Taxpayers of Azerbaijan will soon be able to use SMS-info service for free, the Taxes Ministry reported. Moreover, subscribers of Bakcell and Nar mobile operators will also be provided with the service, while it was previously available only for Azercell Telecom subscribers.

Subscribers of the service, which was first introduced in 2012, receive messages containing different information including payments to the state budget, calculation of taxes on submitted declaration, problems with the declaration, the need to declare, and current tax payments.

The ministry expanded the range of information, provided by the service in 2014, adding information on some 11 different directions. The system currently provides informational services in 21 directions of the tax system, while the ministry is engaged in further development of the system.

Approximately 30,000 taxpayers are expected to use the system in the short run.

The system is widely used in most European countries to facilitate communication of taxpayers with authorities.

Azerbaijan has recently introduced certain changes in its tax system, which envisages improvement of tax legislation and facilitation of business doing in the country.

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9 September 2016 17:47 (UTC+04:00)

By Nigar Abbasova

Member companies of Azerbaijan Fruit and Vegetables Producers and Exporters Association (AMTIIA ) will be able to directly export their output to Russia, Azerbaijan Export and Investment Promotion Foundation (AZPROMO) reported.

The decision was taken within the framework of AMTIIA's meeting with representatives of X5 Retail Group (Russias second largest food retailer). The sides discussed the directions of mutually beneficial cooperation and took a decision on the direct export of fruit and vegetables to the Russian market.

Being headquartered in Moscow, X5 Retail Group operates such trade networks as Pyaterochka, Perekrestok, and Karusel.

The newly-established AMTIIA is responsible for boosting Azerbaijans export potential in the fruit and vegetable sector as well as increasing overall production levels.

Currency, some 14 Azerbaijani companies are allowed to export their agro-production to the Russian market.

The northern neighbor is still one of the main trade partners of Azerbaijan, which has long ago got a well-established place on the Russian market. The country currently ranks the fifth in Russia's foreign trade with the CIS countries (following Belarus, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan).

The trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Russia amounted to $1.06 billion in January to July 2016, while some $212.9 million of the figure accounted for the export to this country.

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9 September 2016 12:00 (UTC+04:00)

The EU Delegation to Azerbaijan in cooperation with the Embassies of EU member-states and in partnership with the Administration of the Baku Boulevard is pleased to announce the 2016 EuroVillage.

The event will be held on October 1 2016 in the Baku Boulevard with the organization support of Caspian Event Organizers (CEO).

This year the EU Delegation to Azerbaijan and the Embassies of the EU Member States present in Azerbaijan are celebrating 25 Years of EU-Azerbaijan Partnership through a number of activities.

One of the activities is a public event "EuroVillage", which has been organized every year since 2013 in Icherisheher.

EuroVillage is an event held in public space open to the general population. The aim of the event is to showcase varied cultures and traditions of the European Union.

The event, which will last one day, will certainly not leave anyone indifferent  Eurovillage 2016 will host numerous contests and quizzes for children and adults, virtual tours of European countries, national dances and karaoke, face-art, chess competitions and various other activities. Winners of the competitions and quizzes will be awarded with special prizes! Visitors to the fair will be able to see fabulous culinary creations featuring traditional European dishes such as gazpacho and paella, and watch a virtuoso show of pizza twirling. Prizes and surprises await both children and adults at Eurovillage 2016.

There will be a magician performance and various shows and attractions especially for children, which will be followed by music from the participants of The Voice (Azerbaijan). The event will culminate with a huge concert attended by a famous European celebrity. You can follow the event programme on our social media pages https://www.facebook.com/EUDelegationtoAzerbaijan/?fref=ts .

Anyone who wants to have fun with the whole family, make new friends and enjoy pleasant memories that will last a lifetime can visit Eurovillage 2016 on the Boulevard.

Come out and meet with your neighbors from the European Union!

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9 September 2016 14:58 (UTC+04:00)

YARAT Contemporary Art Space is delighted to invite everyone to the screening of 'His Father', directed by Zamin Mammadov (Azerbaijan).

The screening will be organized as a event of YARAT Film Club on September 13.

His Father, a psychological drama, describes the negative consequences of the war in Karabakh that broke out in the end of the 90s. The main character is a journalist who disappears without a trace in the war zone leaving his family desperate. His father shows negative aftereffects of the war on the society, emotions and the stress-filled moments of the journalists family who are trying to rescue him.

Script and production director by: Zamin Mammadov, Director of photography: Ali Sultan, Art director of the movie: Arif Niftiyev, Executive producer: Rahim Sadigov , Producer: Mushfig Hatamov , Cast: Shamil Suleymanli, Mabud Maharramov, Ulviyya Rza.

Zamin Mammadov studied filmmaking at State University of Culture and Arts, Baku, Azebaijan (2003-2007). He had worked as director for different local broadcasting companies (2003-2007).

In 2007 he has started his filmmaking career as 1st AD at the Azerbaijanfilm Studio named after Jafar Jabbarly based in Baku. Member of the Union of Cinematographers of the Republic of Azerbaijan. (Since 2013) Psychiatrist  short fiction film, Debut Studio, director, (2009) His Father  short fiction, Azerbaijanfilm Studio, director (2016) Author and director of 15 documentary films.

The film will be shown in Azerbaijani. Entrance is free.

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9 September 2016 13:06 (UTC+04:00)

By Laman Ismayilova

Arts Council Azerbaijan to present new project by travelers Rustam Huseynov and Aydin Sadiqov, Trend Life reported.

The project titled "Interesting Europe" is the opinion of the Azerbaijani tourists about the most interesting corners of Europe, sometimes very far from tourist attractions.

Mystical spirit, ancient legends, interwoven with architectural and natural beauty of the Old Continent leave a lasting impression on the visitors.

The exhibition featuring photographs of gems of Renaissance architecture as well as places associated with the very interesting legends about Dante, Faust, Dracula and Van Helsing will take place at Baku Art Villa gallery on September 22

The exhibition begins at 19:00. Admission is free.

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9 September 2016 14:22 (UTC+04:00)

By Laman Ismayilova

"Endless corridor" movie will be shown in "Al Jazeera" TV on September 10, Azertac reported.

The film will be screened as part of the "Justice for Khojaly" campaign initiated by Vice-president of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation Leyla Aliyeva.

"Endless Corridor" is the heart-rending human rights tragedy of the year 1992, when hundreds of Azerbaijanis were horribly massacred after Armenians stormed the city of Khojaly.

The storyline is about two journalists, Lithuanian Richard Lapaitis and Russian Victoria Ivleva, on their return to Azerbaijan 20 years after covering the horrific Khojaly Massacre during the ArmenianAzerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

They journey to find the survivors they had first met in the aftermath of the Armenian attack.

Based on the testimonies of the witnesses, the film tells dramatic stories that reflect all the realities in western Azerbaijan on 26 February 1992.

The film is narrated by Jeremy Irons, the Oscar-winning British actor, and the Emmy-winning American producer Gerald Rafshoon was the Executive Producer.

The first premiere of the film took place on July 1, 2014 in London at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA). Leyla Aliyeva also participated at the presentation.

Following its international premiere throughout 2015, "Endless Corridor" attracted plaudits from critics across the world. It has received the Best Documentary and Best Director for a Documentary Prizes at the Tenerife International Film Festival in Madrid; the Best Documentary Editing Prize at the Milano International Filmmakers Festival; and in the prestigious US-based Accolade Global Film Competition, it achieved two awards  Best of Show in May 2015 and in January 2016 the Outstanding Achievement Award in the Accolade Humanitarian Awards 2015.

On 10 July, the Tenerife International Film Festival in Madrid declared "Endless Corridor" to be the Best Documentary, and Aleksandras Brokas as the Best Director of a Documentary.

With further festivals to come, the film is also attracting international attention from leading TV channels.

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9 September 2016 15:44 (UTC+04:00)

By Laman Ismayilova

Azerbaijan has joined the 29th Moscow International Book Fair, Trend Life reported.

Moscow International Book Fair is the major book forum in Russia and over the CIS. This is the easiest way to enter the book market not only of Russia but also far abroad to meet the possible readers all over the world.

Over 500 representatives from 37 countries attended the event.

The event brought together thousands of book industry professionals and representatives of dozens of countries: booksellers, publishers, translators, journalists, literary agents, TV and film producers.

Azerbaijan's stand highlighted the culture, history, country's tourism potential as well as the realities of Karabakh.

The event was attend by Azerbaijan's Ambassador to Russia, Polad Bulbuloglu who visited the stand and got acquainted with the printed editions presented here.

The exhibition also featured books in the Azerbaijani, Russian and English languages.

Moscow International Book Fair will last till September 11.

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9 September 2016 16:23 (UTC+04:00)

By Laman Ismayilova

A photo exhibition dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the siege of Leningrad opened at Russian Information and Cultural Center in Baku, Trend Life reported.

One of the longest and most destructive sieges in history was undertaken by the German Army Group North against Leningrad, historically and currently known as Saint Petersburg.

The siege started on September 8, 1941, when the last road to the city was severed. The siege was only lifted on 27 January 1944, 872 days after it began.

Deputy Head of the Russian cooperation agency in Azerbaijan, Aleksey Konnov, informed visitors about the hardships of such a horrible siege.

He stressed that Azerbaijan has provided significant support to the people of Leningrad.

Many of them were treated here. Leningrad children, who escaped from the blockade, studied at Azerbaijani schools.

Among them were Irina Kadimova and Ekaterina Sadikhova, who stayed in Azerbaijan. They came to the opening of the exhibition and spoke about the bitter truth about the days they spent in the besieged city.

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9 September 2016 16:15 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

Azerbaijan and the UK discussed the military cooperation and exchanged views over the solution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

The discussions were held as part of Azerbaijan's Defense Minister, Colonel-General Zakir Hasanov visit to London to meet with his British counterpart Michael Fallon.

The first ever official meeting between the defense ministers was organized on instruction of the Azerbaijani President, Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces Ilham Aliyev, the press service of the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said.

Moreover, it was particularly emphasized that Azerbaijan takes an active part in events held both on a bilateral basis and within the framework of the NATO Program "Partnership for Peace", including peacekeeping operations.

The parties held a broad exchange of opinions on the military and military-technical cooperation between the two countries and discussed further prospects of cooperation.

Azerbaijan and Armenia fought a lengthy war that ended with the signing of a fragile ceasefire in 1994. Since the war, Armenian armed forces have occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and over 1 million were displaced as a result of the large-scale hostilities.

While the OSCE Minsk Group acted as the only mediator in resolution of the conflict, the occupation of the territory of the sovereign State with its internationally recognized boundaries has been left out of due attention of the international community for years.

Armenia ignores four UN Security Council resolutions on immediate withdrawal from the occupied territory of Azerbaijan, thus keeping tension high in the region.

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9 September 2016 09:56 (UTC+04:00)

A new print edition of the AZERNEWS online newspaper was released on September, 9

The new edition includes articles about: UAEs company to assist in creation of Alat free economic zone; Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry may expand its black list; WB, IFC ready to support economy of Azerbaijan; Azerbaijan breathes new life into Islamic Games, etc

AZERNEWS is an associate member of the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA).

The online newspaper is available at www.azernews.az.
9 September 2016 10:15 (UTC+04:00)

Azerbaijan`s Minister of Defence, Colonel General Zakir Hasanov has met Special Envoy of the Prime Minister of United Kingdom, member of the House of Lords Mrs. Baroness Emma Harriet Nicholson as part of his visit to London, Azertac reported.

The sides exchanged views on military and military-technical cooperation between the two countries, and discussed prospects for the bilateral relations.

Azerbaijan and the UK have benefited from close bilateral partnership and cooperation since 1992, in the framework of international organizations such as the UN, OSCE, Council of Europe, and NATO. The relations have covered a wide range of issues, from high-level political dialogue to growing trade and investment, as well as strengthening cultural and humanitarian ties.

The UK and Azerbaijan are cooperating in education, trade, tourism, ICT, as well as other infrastructure and transit projects. Trade turnover between Azerbaijan and the UK stood at $564 million in 2015, according to the Azerbaijani State Customs Committee. Some $553.33 million of this figure accounted for import of UK products.

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9 September 2016 11:43 (UTC+04:00)

By Laman Ismayilova

A delegation led by Deputy Chairman of the People's Consultative Assembly of Indonesia Oesman Sapta Odang visited Azerbaijan`s Parliament on September 8, Azertac reported.

The delegation met with Parliament Speaker Ogtay Asadov, who hailed the friendly relations and partnership between Azerbaijan and Indonesia. Praising inter-parliamentary cooperation, he underlined that the visit would give a new impetus to the development of relations between the two countries` legislative bodies.

Asadov described Azerbaijan`s political, economic and humanitarian relations with Indonesia as excellent. "Eight documents have been signed between the two countries so far," he said.

He also provided an insight into the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, particularly the Khojaly genocide. He noted that more than 10 countries as well as more than twenty U.S. states passed resolutions recognizing the massacre. "And the Azerbaijani side would like the Indonesian parliament to express its stance on this issue," Asadov added.

Odang, for his part, hailed the development of friendly ties between the two countries.

He pointed out cooperation in the fields of trade and tourism, underlining good opportunities for building collaboration in new areas.

Previously, the Indonesian delegations visited the Alley of Honors to lay flowers at the tomb of national leader, founder and architect of modern Azerbaijani state Heydar Aliyev.

The delegation also put flowers at the grave of prominent ophthalmologist, academician Zarifa Aliyeva.

The Indonesian delegation then visited the Alley of Martyrs to commemorate Azerbaijani heroes who gave their lives for the country`s independence and territorial integrity.

In a brief talk with journalists, Sapta Odang said: Our main goal is to strengthen relationship with Azerbaijan. Well hold some meetings and define prospects for our future relations.

We closely follow the development of Azerbaijan and support it on the international arena. Azerbaijan and Indonesia are always eager to help each other, he added.

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9 September 2016 11:28 (UTC+04:00)

The University of California, Berkeley Professor Lotfi Zadeh, who is of Azerbaijani descent, is the father of the fuzzy logic and fuzzy sets theories widely applied in many spheres of technological and economic development.



His 1965 paper on fuzzy sets is one of the most cited of the 20th century, and has given rise to over 50,000 patents just between Japan and the United States. Fuzzy logic is now an essential part of popular consumer technologies - like video cameras or washing machines - and other more sophisticated technologies used in medicine and the automobile and railway industries.

Recognizing tremendous value of Zadehs scientific work, Azerbaijans National Academy of Sciences awarded him in April 2016 the Nizami Ganjavi Gold Medal of Azerbaijan.

On September 7, 2016 the UC, Berkeley hosted an event on this occasion.

At the event, the Nizami Ganjavi Gold Medal was presented to the Professor by Azerbaijans Consul General in Los Angeles Nasimi Aghayev.

Opening the event, Professor S. Shankar Sastry, Dean of the College of Engineering of UC, Berkeley and the former student of Professor Zadeh, congratulated him on the award and expressed his gratitude to the Republic of Azerbaijan for recognizing the scientific contributions of the Professor.

Then a short video on Azerbaijan was screened. Following the screening, Azerbaijans Consul General Nasimi Aghayev was given the floor.

In his remarks, the Consul General noted that Azerbaijan has always highly appreciated Professor Zadehs tremendous academic contributions. He mentioned that the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev awarded Lotfi Zadeh in 2011 the Friendship Order of Azerbaijan for his services in the advancement of science and his efforts in strengthening the intercultural dialogue.

Aghayev also read out the special message from Professor Akif Alizadeh, President of the National Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan, addressed to Zadeh. After that, the Consul General presented the Gold Medal to the Professor.

Speaking afterwards, Professor Zadeh thanked Azerbaijan for this recognition. He said that despite many years of geographic separation, Azerbaijan has always had and continues to have a special place in my heart.

Commending Azerbaijans current development and rapid modernization, Professor Lotfi Zadeh noted that all these achievements of Azerbaijan as a free and independent nation were outcomes of the wise leadership of President Ilham Aliyev. Thanks to President Aliyevs leadership, Azerbaijan today is not only widely respected in its region, but also internationally the country enjoys much recognition and admiration, Zadeh said.

Professor of the Azerbaijan University of Technology Shahnaz Shahbazova and UC, Berkeley Professor James Demmel, both of whom have been working with Lotfi Zadeh for years, also shared their remarks, informing the audience about Zadehs theories and academic achievements.

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9 September 2016 14:06 (UTC+04:00)

Azerbaijani Ambassador to the Kingdom of Spain Anar Maharramov has attended a special ceremony which was held at the Royal Palace to present his credentials to the King of Spain Felipe VI, Azertac reported.

King Felipe VI congratulated Anar Maharramov on his appointment as ambassador to Spain, and wished him success in his future activities.

Accompanied by the King Felipe VI ambassador Maharramov then was invited to a special room for ambassadors.

The Spanish King underlined his country's interest in developing relations with Azerbaijan.

Maharramov thanked the King Felipe VI for accepting his credentials. He extended Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev's heartfelt greetings and best wishes to the King and the Royal family and on behalf of the Azerbaijani president invited him to visit the country at his convenience.

Expressing his gratitude for the greetings of President Aliyev, King Felipe VI asked the Azerbaijani ambassador to extend his greetings to the Azerbaijani leader.

The Spanish King then enquired about the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and recent escalation of violence on the line of contact.

The ambassador expressed his gratitude to the Spanish government for its fair and principled stance and for supporting Azerbaijan's territorial integrity in the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. He briefed the Spanish King on the ceasefire violations by the Armenian armed forces and its consequences.

King Felipe VI said his country's position on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict remained unchangeable, adding he supported the settlement of the conflict on the basis of this principle.

The Spanish King then offered his congratulations on Azerbaijan's achievements in the Olympic Games which were held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Maharramov further briefed the Spanish King on Azerbaijan-hosted high-profile international events and sport tournaments, including the 7th Global Forum of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations, Formula 1 European Grand Prix, as well as the 42nd Chess Olympiad which is currently being held in the country, and the 5th Baku International Humanitarian Forum to be held late September.

The envoy stressed the importance of opening the Embassy of the Spanish Kingdom in Azerbaijan in terms of further development of bilateral ties. King Felipe VI said the opening of the Embassy in Azerbaijan would be considered as the country was an important country of the South Caucasus.

Spanish Minister of Foreign Office and Cooperation Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo was also present at the meeting.

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9 September 2016 17:39 (UTC+04:00)

By Nigar Abbasova

The State Committee for Work with Religious Organizations has presented licenses to some 11 religious communities registered in the country, the committee reported.

Deputy Chairman of the committee Gunduz Ismayilov, addressing the ceremony, said that religious communities existing in Azerbaijan are of great importance for Azerbaijani society.

The constantly growing number of religious communities (the figure currently exceeds 665), belonging to different faiths, is considered to be the result of activities, carried out for preservation and strengthening of religious tolerance in the country. As many as 13 churches and seven synagogues are operating in the country.

Ismayilov called on communities to be more active, cooperate with akhunds and imams, and representatives of Caucasus Muslims Administration, as well as be more attentive to the issue of ideological security, suppressing all actions, calling for the confrontation between different religious trends.

He also emphasized the importance of ideological struggle against radicalism, as well as preservation of national traditions and spiritual values.

All religious organizations operating in the territory of the country should be registered with the Committee and obtain legal status, according to the legislation. The committee doesn't register sects, religious confessions or movements.

Azerbaijan, which supports all communities existing in the country, regardless their religious belief, has never experienced intolerance at confessional level. Despite the fact that some 98 percent of the Azerbaijani population is Muslim, the country has never had any religious conflicts.

Being a multinational state, the country provides for peaceful coexistence of members of different nations and religions in an atmosphere of peace, friendship, tranquility and mutual understanding

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9 September 2016 17:10 (UTC+04:00)

By Amina Nazarli

Apparently, scenes associated with smoking and drinking alcohol can disappear from Azerbaijani TV screens in the near future.

Although the issue has not yet been considered in the parliament, but some are concerned about propagandistic impact of such scenes.

Statistics shows that these methods of propaganda work quite effectively.

Therefore, it is necessary to enforce means widely used in world practice in this fighting. For instance, many countries ban the promotion of alcohol and smoking, while others introduce various kinds of restrictions on their demonstration in the movies and on TV or tightly regulate for certain age groups.

Advertising of cigarettes and alcoholic drinks TV series and films is unacceptable, believes MP Hadi Rajabli, Chairman of the Committee on Social Policy. Unfortunately, we do not follow these rules, he told local news portal azvision.az.

The MP proposed to ban advertising of cigarettes and alcoholic drinks in films.

Several years ago the parliamentary committee prepared a draft law in this end. This bill is on the agenda. It can be discussed once. I am against cigarettes and alcohol. Media take big responsibility on this issue, Rajabov said. Age limit must be indicated while showing these films.

Experts say that promotion of such scenes in the vast majority of cases is no coincidence. In many cases films empower alcoholic products with various mythical characteristics for instance the ability to reduce stress, or to heal, or to inspire, and so on, hereby creating the illusion that the alcohol can be something useful to a person.

Sometimes we see that the bottle with alcohol or package of cigarettes just appear in the frame. Often in these scenes one can see many familiar logos and brands. In business dictionary it's called product placement, an advertising technique used by companies to subtly promote their products through a non-traditional advertising technique, usually through appearances in film and television.

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Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli

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9 September 2016 10:47 (UTC+04:00)

By Gunay Hasanova

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin agreed on September 8 to intensify their efforts to convince the warring parties in Syria to achieve a cease-fire in the city of Aleppo, Anadolu Agency reported.

During the phone call on September 8, the two leaders discussed Turkish-Russian bilateral relations as well as the latest developments in Syria, said presidential sources, speaking on condition of anonymity due to restrictions of speaking to the media.

Erdogan stressed the importance of achieving a cease-fire as soon as possible in the northern city of Aleppo, a rebel-held city under a devastating siege.

Previously, Erdogan during the G20 summit said that Turkey and Russia are holding talks to achieve a ceasefire in Syrias Aleppo. The Turkish president added that achieving a ceasefire in Aleppo is one of the most important issues for Turkey and Russia.

On August 24 morning, the Turkish Air Force with the support of the coalition aircraft launched an operation to liberate the city of Jarabulus from the IS militants in northern Syria, near Aleppo city.

The operation was carried out under the name Shield of the Euphrates. Jarabulus is located 5 kilometers (3 miles) from the Turkish-Syrian border.

Ankara announced that this operation will continue until the PYD militants are completely liquidated.

Syria has been suffering from an armed conflict since March 2011, which, according to the UN, has so far claimed over 500,000 lives.

Militants from various armed groups are confronting the Syrian government troops. The Islamic State (IS, ISIL, ISIS or Daesh), the YPG and the PYD are the most active terrorist groups in Syria.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
9 September 2016 12:18 (UTC+04:00)

By Gunay Hasanova

NATO is with Turkey and shows all necessary assistance to support it, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on September 9, NTV television channel reported.

Stoltenberg also stressed that Turkey is an important NATO ally, especially in the Middle East region.

"Turkey is involved in various NATO operations. After the coup attempt [of July 2015] its army is probably experiencing some difficulties, however, Turkey continues to fulfill its commitments to NATO ", Stoltenberg added.

He also noted that NATO has strengthened its presence in the field of Air Force and missile defense in Turkey.

Stoltenberg arrived in Turkey on September 8.It is his first visit after the failed military coup in Turkey.

On July 15 evening, Turkish authorities said a military coup attempt took place in the country. Meanwhile, a group of servicemen announced about the transition of power to them.

However, the rebelling servicemen started to surrender July 16 and Turkish authorities said the coup attempt failed. Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that the death toll as a result of the military coup attempt stood at 246 people excluding the coup plotters and over 2,000 people were wounded.

Erdogan declared a three-month state of emergency in Turkey on July 20.

--

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
9 September 2016 14:40 (UTC+04:00)

By Nigar Abbasova

The Central Bank of Iran (CBI) offered France to take effective measures to remove existing obstacles in banking ties.

Head of CBI, Valiollah Seif made the request while addressing the meeting with the President of French National Assembly, Claude Bartolone, who arrived in Tehran on September 5 to discuss with Iranian officials the current situation in the region, as well as bilateral relations of Iran and France.

Seif called on the improvement of banking ties between the countries, mentioning that banks of Italy, Austria, and Germany have already resumed cooperation with Iranian colleagues, while banking system of France treats the issue with caution.

He further said that some three Iranian banks got permission for implementation of their activity in France emphasizing that French officials should encourage banks of the country to strengthen cooperation with Iranian credit organizations.

Iran was locked out of the global financial system for a long period of time due to sanctions, imposed on the country. Despite international sanctions were lifted after a nuclear deal signed with world powers major banks remained fearful of working in Iran.

French banks have been also reluctant to ink deals with Iran, as Paris-based BNP Paribas (one of the leading French banks) was earlier fined by some $9 billion, in connection with the violation of sanctions.

Iran's Industry Minister Mohammad Reza Nematzadeh, earlier said there were no longer obstacles to keep French banks from doing business with Iran and called the country to overcome its wariness about doing business with the country.

--

Nigar Abbasova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @nigyar_abbasova

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
9 September 2016 19:02 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

The resignation of Kazakh Prime Minister Karim Massimov became the result of the problems piled up in the country over the past year, Andrey Chebotarev, director of the Alternative research center in Kazakhstan, told Trend on September 9.



Massimov's resignation is the reaction to problems in the country, said Chebotarev. It is caused by the need to resolve topical problems that arose after the devaluation last year, which led to the deterioration of economy and social sphere.



Earlier, President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev dismissed Karim Massimov from the post of prime minister, which he held for about seven years, and appointed Massimov chairman of the countrys National Security Committee. Nazarbayev explained this appointment by the fact that Massimov is needed at this post to enhance security sphere, as there is a problem of terrorism.



Chebotarev said that a number of rallies and protests against land reform, as well as a series of terrorist attacks took place in Kazakhstan this year.



When things get worse in a particular area, it's not the systematic measures that are taken, but a person responsible for this area is dismissed instead," he said, adding that Kazakhstan has been doing this for a long time.



The expert believes that the countrys acting Prime Minister Bakytzhan Sagintayev is a suitable candidate for the post of prime minister, since he has held various key positions and proven himself quite well.



Karim Massimovs appointment as head of the National Security Committee shows that he remains on the team and enjoys great confidence, according to Chebotarev.



He pointed out that the security sphere in Kazakhstan really needs strengthening.



However, the appointment of Massimov, who hasnt served in special services and is one of the key managers in Nazarbayevs team, shows that aside from the anti-terrorism activities, such spheres as ensuring economic security, fighting corruption and shadow economy will also be strengthened, according to the expert.

---

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9 September 2016 19:45 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

Turkey's continuing military operations in Syria, in particular the expected operations in the city of Al-Raqqah may cause dissatisfaction of the US, former head of the intelligence department of the General Staff of the Turkish Armed Forces, retired colonel-general Ismail Hakki Pekin told Trend on September 9.

However, the US will support Turkey in operations to liberate the Syrian city of Al-Bab from militants of the Islamic State (IS, aka ISIS, ISIL or Daesh) terrorist group, he said.

Pekin said that the Free Syrian Army (FSA) with the support of the Turkish Armed Forces is already on the outskirts of the city of Al-Bab.

The former intelligence chief of the Turkish General Staff believes that the country carries out operations in Syria not only for the security of its borders but also to preserve the territorial integrity of Syria.

The city of Aleppo must be cleared of IS terrorists to preserve Syria's territorial integrity, Pekin said. Aleppo is also strategically important for the onset of the Turkish Armed Forces on Al-Raqqah, and both Russia and Iran supports Ankara in this move.

Pekin doesnt rule out that it will be much easier to restore stability in Aleppo with the support of Tehran and Moscow.

On Aug. 24 morning, the Turkish Air Force, with the support of the coalition aircraft, launched an operation to liberate the city of Jarabulus from the IS militants in northern Syria, near Aleppo. The operation was dubbed Shield of the Euphrates.

Syria has been suffering from an armed conflict since March 2011, which, according to the UN, has so far claimed over 500,000 lives.

Militants from various armed groups are confronting the Syrian government troops. The Islamic State (IS, ISIL, ISIS or Daesh), the YPG and the PYD are the most active terrorist groups in Syria.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
The Speciality & Fine Food Fair 2016, held this week, saw one bakery company stage a fightback against cutesy bakery.

The London and Devon-based wholesaler Exploding Bakery, founded by Tom Oxford & Oliver Coysh, offers a more masculine solution, Oxford told British Baker.

He said: Bakery has become associated with frilliness and The Great British Bake-Off. We are showing that it does not need to be, there is another way.

The traybakes specialist offers unfancy iced rectangles, handmade at its Devon bakery, near Exeter. These are sold in the Devon area as well as in London, via its premises in a railway arch in East London.

The bakery sells to customers including Monmouth Coffee, Oxford explained. As part of that partnership a big focus for the company is working out coffee blend and cake pairs that go well together, in the same way that wine can be paired with food.

The Exploding Bakery cakes range includes lemon and almond polenta, cherry and pistachio and rye brownie, which can be recommended against particular coffees.

Oxford says: Flavour is key. A particular regions coffee will bring out flavours in a particular cake and vice versa.

Among the other bakers at the Speciality & Fine Food Fair were Paul Rhodes Bakery, Stag Bakeries, Karaway Bakery and The Polish Bakery.

Flower & White launched a range of gluten free Muffinz, A Tarte exhibited its range of almond tarts, and Gorg Cakes showcased handmade Fondant Fancies

And new products being showcased included salt sourced from the Kalahari in Botswana from the company Oryx Desert Salt, protein bars made from dried insects from Jiminis and Olive leaf tea, from the leaves of the olive tree.

Crushed-fruit smoothies, speciality popcorn and coconut water products were also on display around the show.

Visitors included buyers from Waitrose and Selfridges, restaurants and hotels, as well as more than 350 delis and 250 farm shops.

The Speciality & Fine Food Fair 2017 took place at Olympia on 3-5 September.
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The Museum of the Gulf Coast will host a volunteer training session from 10 a.m.-noon Sept. 27, for those interested in helping out at the Port Arthur museum.

People of all age ranges can be volunteers, according to the museum's Become a Volunteer page, working at the front desk or in the gift shop, giving tours or helping with youth programming. No experience is necessary to attend the training.
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Installation of filters intended to resolve Bridge City's long-running water quality issues has been delayed because the city's contractor didn't secure state-required approval.

Eight months after Bridge City approved spending $1 million on new filters expected to end the city's brown-water issues, the project is on hold until the contractor can submit paperwork to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

City Manager Jerry Jones said there was confusion about whether filtration is considered water treatment, which is regulated by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

In a statement Thursday, TCEQ spokeswoman Andrea Morrow said Bridge City bypassed the submittal process and failed to comply with state requirements.

TCEQ's staff spoke with Bridge City officials Aug. 23 about requirements for the filtration system, Morrow said.

"TCEQ explained the submittal process to the engineer and notified the city that TCEQ would continue work with them once the submittal is received," Morrow said.

The filters, which are supposed to clean out excess iron and manganese found in Bridge City's water, are near completion.

Finishing touches on installation at four well sites are supposed to begin next week, but Jones said the city would not use the filters until TCEQ approves a plan.

City Council approved the million-dollar project last year as a fix to a years-long water discoloration issue that culminated in an accidental overuse of a treatment chemical in 2014. The extra chemicals turned the water the color of rust.

Residents grapple with unusual water damage to appliances, one repairman said previously.

In June, TCEQ notified the city it had violated maximum contaminant level for trihalomethanes (THL), a byproduct of chlorine used to disinfect water.

Bridge City officials sent a letter to water customers stating the substance, if consumed in excess, could cause liver and kidney problems.

THL levels are back down, and the well site where it was detected is offline, Jones said.

Rusty water, however, is an ongoing problem the filters are supposed to remedy.

In response to citizens' complaints at a City Council meeting earlier this week, Mayor David Rutledge said more discussion on water issues is coming.

City officials have said the water is still OK to drink despite rampant skepticism.

The Bridge City Independent School District announced safety actions after hearing concerns from parents and staff members.

On the district's website, Superintendent Todd Lintzen said the schools' water lines were flushed in the kitchen areas; water fountains were flushed before the first day of school last month; and ice machine filters were changed to sanitize the ice bins.

Parents and employees were encouraged to bring bottled water if they have any concerns about the district's water quality.

"The filter system is not something we were mandated to do," Jones said. "We're just trying to get rid of the rusty water."

BScott@BeaumontEnterprise.com Twitter.com/BrandonKScott
Racial representation on the Beaumont ISD board of trustees was again at issue Thursday night at a public forum on a proposed redistricting plan, though few spoke out on the plan, which was proposed in June.

More than 20 people attended the first of three public forums on the topic, but only three people commented; two of those addressed the demographics of the proposed districts.

Several other attendees signed up to speak but decided not to during the meeting.

David Mendez, an attorney for the Austin-based firm that developed the plan for five single-member and two at-large districts, listened to comment from three community members and responded to one question.

Mendez will report back to the BISD board of managers, who were not in attendance.

The map, called "Illustrative Plan 1," closely resembles a configuration that was developed before the state installed the managers but was not approved by the board of trustees.

Mendez said his firm made changes to more equally balance the African American population between districts, Mendez said. The map meets the necessary criteria for voting districts, including following recognizable boundaries and aligning with the city's demographics based on the 2010 census, he said.

The districts are so that the population in each is equal, with the population of inmates at state and federal penitentiaries excluded from what would be Trustee District 4 because they cannot vote, Mendez said.

Ward 2 City Councilman Mike Getz, who advocated for moving to the 5-2 board structure when voters approved it in 2011, commended the plan at the forum and said he believes it will fairly represent the district's demographics.

"The notion that might be advanced by some that this is somehow unfair, retrogressive or disenfranchises African Americans is contrary to the voting history of this community," he said, describing the demographics of the school board in 1983 when the Beaumont and South Park districts merged as an example. "Maybe we can now go forward toward having an election," he said.

The other two public commenters, however, opposed the plan and asked Mendez to reconsider its boundaries.

"This is a very hard map to work with politically" because some of the precincts appear to be gerrymandered, said Irmalyn Thomas.

"It's going to be impossible to effectively do a campaign because of the size and shape" of trustee districts 2 and 3, which cover the north and eastern parts of the city, she said.

District 5, which is bounded by North Major Drive, Folsom Drive, and I-10, will have an advantage because it is more compact and contiguous, Thomas said.

The plan's most critical opponent was Alice Ramsey, who said that the map divides streets in a way that seems to be "deliberately gerrymandered to reduce the voting strength of the ethnic community." She not only opposes the district configuration but also the elimination of seven single-member districts, which she says will make the board less representative.

The other meetings are scheduled for Sept. 22 and Sept. 27, Mendez said. Comments also may be submitted in writing.

LTeitz@BeaumontEnterprise.com Twitter.com/LizTeitz
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Miracle Mattress, a Northwest Side store, issued an apology via Facebook Thursday for a video advertising a "Twin Tower" sale to "remember 9/11" that has brought citywide outrage.

The now-removed video features store manager Cherise Bonanno and two employees standing in front of two towers of stacked mattresses. To "remember" the deadliest attack on U.S. soil, the company offered a promotion selling any size mattress for the price of a twin bed.

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The clip ends with the mattress towers toppling over while Bonanno and the employees screamed.

"We'll never forget," she adds.

On Thursday, the company issued an apology via Facebook.

"We are very sorry we have offended you," the post said. "Our staff is full of military and some relatives have passed away due to 9/11. We are promoters of peace and love."

This apology was updated with an official apology letter from Mike Bonanno saying that the social media video produced in San Antonio was posted on Facebook without his knowledge or approval.

"I say this unequivocally, with sincere regret: the video is tasteless and an affront to the men and women who lost their lives on 9/11. Furthermore, it disrespects the families who lost their loved ones and continue to struggle with the pain of this tragedy every day of their lives."

The letter went on to say that Bonanno accepted responsibility for the "thoughtless and crude advertisement" and that employees involved would be reviewed and held accountable.

Bonanno did not return requests two calls for comment Thursday.

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San Antonio resident Jenee Lewis captured the ad, which was originally shared on the business' Facebook page, and shared it online. The Miracle Mattress Facebook often promotes themed-videos, it's unclear whether the video aired on television or exclusive to the site.

Several community members have commented against the marketing approach they say they are "disgusted" by and are not accepting the apology or claims of military affiliation.

"I find it hard to believe you knew anyone or any of your employees knew anyone who lost their lives in 9/11," Evelyn Sainz Jauregui commented on the post. "If that were the case they would have been so disgusted with your commercial that it would have never seen the light of day."

Ozzy Santos echoed Jauregui's sentiments.

"Even your damage control is disgusting," he added to the thread.

According to the San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the store opened at 4945 Northwest Loop 410 in December 2015.

RELATED: Manager from 9/11 Memorial to operate Alamo

The local controversy joins a series of 9/11-related offenses to spark outrage recently. A couple participating in the Atlanta Dragon Con Festival over the weekend created wearable versions of the World Trade Center towers and attached dolls to the sides, representing victims who jumped from the structures. On Wednesday, a Florida Walmart was blasted for their soda display which stacked boxes of Coke beverages to form the towers.

"We have given abundantly to our community here in San Antonio and wish to remain known as a company who respects and loves others," Miracle Mattress said to conclude their Facebook apology.

mmendoza@mysa.com

Twitter: @MaddySkye
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A jury found Frances Hall guilty of murder and aggravated assault Thursday night after all-day deliberations, agreeing with prosecutors who said she wanted to kill her husband's longtime lover for ruining her marriage but ended up killing her husband instead.

The courtroom erupted in gasps and sobs as the judge said she was guilty on both counts.

When Bexar County Judge Jefferson Moore remanded her to be held without bond over the weekend, Frances Hall had to be led out of the courtroom in sobs.

Please, I want to see my babies! she said.

Hall was accused of killing Bill Hall Jr., by knocking his motorcycle off the road with her Cadillac Escalade, then hitting another SUV driven by Bonnie Contreras  all in a single highway chase on Oct. 10, 2013 on South Loop 1604.

At least 50 relatives from both sides of the family hugged and cried after Frances Hall was taken into custody and led from the courtroom.

Relatives filled each side each day for the past two weeks. Attorneys from both sides said they were all there in support of Hall.

We're very surprised by the verdict, shocked and disappointed, Brown said after the verdict was read. This is a tragedy. They lost the patriarch, and now they've lost the matriarch.

When asked if they would appeal the conviction, Brown said, Theres plenty of error that gives us grounds for appeal.

Bill Hall, 50, a San Antonio trucking tycoon, was flung from the motorcycle and died the same night at a hospital. Frances Hall, now 53, also was found guilty of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, accused of hitting the Halls Range Rover driven by Contreras, who was not in court for the verdict.

Contreras testified Frances Hall chased her and hit the back of the Range Rover up to 16 times, and when Bill Hall Jr. got between the vehicles, she rear-ended his bike. Prosecution witnesses said the physical evidence shows the Escalade struck the motorcycle from the side. Experts hired by the defense said it was the other way around  that the motorcycle hit the SUV before it left the road.

Contreras testified the affair lasted three years, with the much-older Bill Hall paying for her residence and upkeep and for cosmetic surgery. Contreras said Frances Hall never stopped after her husband fell off his bike, but continued to chase her.

As a result of her rage, a man is dead, Assistant District Attorney Stephanie Paulissen said in closing arguments earlier Thursday after five days of testimony in the murder trial that started last week. Of course the defendant hated Bonnie Contreras, any wife would. She didn't need to intend to kill Bill. But her actions caused it.

Defense attorneys had called the death an accident and Bill Hall drove beside his wifes SUV, hit it, lost control of his blue custom Harley Davidson motorcycle and crashed into a grassy field just off the highway.

In closing arguments, Paulissen attempted to discredit the defenses experts, who had criticized the Bexar County Sheriffs Office for what they called a botched investigation.

Defense attorney Leigh Cutter said in her closing arguments that the state had three years to get the one witness who said he saw the motorcycle hit the SUV.

Edward Botello was a 911 caller, and they told him to leave the scene twice, she said. They knew Bonnie was wrong. Why didn't they want him? Because what he had to say did not fit their theory.

The defense did not call Botello and prosecutors said they tried to compel him to testify but he ignored a subpoena.

The Halls, who married at 18, had owned Bill Hall Jr. Trucking Ltd., a business they started with one truck in 1989. A third-generation trucker, Bill Hall grew the business to deliver road-building materials with more than 100 trucks.

An affiliated company, Bill Hall Jr. Trucking GP LLC, which owned a fleet of trucks and trailers used by Bill Hall Jr. Trucking Ltd., filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in June after creditors threatened to repossess various assets, the companys bankruptcy lawyer said at the time.

The punishment phase is expected to begin at 9 a.m., Monday in the 186th state District Court.

Frances Hall faces five to 99 years or life in prison.

ezavala@express-news.net

Twitter: @elizabeth2863
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A group of senators sent a letter to Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini asking for an explanation as to why the payer exited many Affordable Care Act exchanges, according to The Huffington Post.

Here are six takeaways:

1. Senators seeking answers from the payer include Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Ed Markey, Sherrod Brown and Bill Nelson.

2. Aetna claimed the Department of Justice's review of its Humana merger attributed to the payer's marketplace withdrawal, yet the senators say this is not a sufficient enough reason to exit.

3. Last month, Aetna reported it was leaving 11 ACA exchanges after offering plans in 15 exchanges this year. Aetna has previously said it anticipates losses totaling $300 million on these state exchanges.

4. Following the news, The Huffington Post got access to a letter in which Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini told federal officials in July that the company would exit the ACA exchanges if officials made moves to block the million-dollar deal. Mr. Bertolini wrote the letter 16 days before the DOJ filed suits against the Aetna-Humana and Anthem-Cigna mergers.

5. In the letter to Mr. Bertolini, the senators doubted Aetna was surprised by the DOJ lawsuit as many industry experts and even the DOJ indicated the agency would challenge the merger due to its negative impact on competition.

6. To conclude the letter, the senators asked Mr. Bertolini a series of questions and demanded a response by Sept. 15.

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The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services accused Brentwood, Tenn.-based Vanguard Healthcare of providing poor patient care at some of its nursing homes, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Vanguard is a nursing home chain with 13 locations in Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee and West Virginia. Here are five things to know:

1. The lawsuit was filed Tuesday, accusing Vanguard of providing "nonexistent, grossly substandard and/or worthless" care over a five-year period  2010 to 2015  and billing state and federal programs for care.

2. The company denies wrongdoing, according to the report, and facilities recently passed inspection.

3. Court papers show health inspectors found staff didn't adhere to standard infection control and there was one instance that lead to urinary tract infections in residents; in another case, residents were administered the wrong drug or dosage. The suit also claims residents were left in soiled beds for long periods.

4. The government officials are seeking around $56.5 million in damages, according to the report. Vanguard plans to fight the bill, according to Vanguards bankruptcy lawyer.

5. Twelve of the 13 Vanguard facilities are operating profitably.
An Association of American Physicians and Surgeons survey found physicians are concerned about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's health.

Here are five insights:

1. Of the 250 responding physicians, almost 71 percent said concerns over Ms. Clinton's health are "serious  could be disqualifying for the position of President of the United States."

2. Twenty percent of physicians said while these concerns are likely exaggerated, Ms. Clinton should release medical records to address the concerns.

3. Merely 2.7 percent said the concerns were a political attack against the candidate.

4. Eighty-one percent of respondents know of Ms. Clinton's concussion history and 50 percent were aware of her cerebral sinus thrombosis. Fifty-two percent knew of her history of deep venous thrombosis.

5. Approximately 78 percent of physicians said the concerns did not receive sufficient emphasis by the media and 2.7 percent said the media has given the concerns "too much emphasis."

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The following hospitals announced in the last week plans to expand, upgrade or renovate their facilities.

1. Seton Smithville Regional Hospital, partners collaborate on medical complex

Seton Smithville (Texas) Regional Hospital is collaborating with two other partners on a new medical complex to better allocate resources and consolidate medical services into one area.

2. MedStar Georgetown University Hospital to move forward with $567M expansion project

The local city board approved Washington, D.C.-based MedStar Georgetown University Hospital's proposal to construct a new $567 million hospital.

3. McLaren to finish patient tower by 2018

Construction is underway for a patient tower at McLaren Port Huron (Mich.) hospital and expected to be completed by the end of 2018.

4. Union Health Service to open outpatient facility in Evanston

Chicago-based Union Health Service opened a new facility in Evanston, Ill., that offers primary and specialty care.

5. Atrium Medical Center to build natural birth center

In October, Middletown, Ohio-based Atrium Medical Center will begin construction on a new natural birth center.

6. Hackensack Meridian Health to open new ED Sept. 14

Edison, N.J.-based Hackensack Meridian Health held a ribbon-cutting ceremony Sept. 1 to ring in the opening of the new emergency department at Hackensack UMC-Pascack Valley in Westwood, N.J.

7. Feds approve lease for new Nebraska VA medical center

The federal government approved plans for a three-story apartment building for homeless veterans at the Lincoln Veterans Affairs hospital campus in Nebraska this fall.

8. Big Lots to gift Nationwide Children's $50M for behavioral health expansion

Columbus, Ohio-based retail home store Big Lots pledged $50 million to support the expansion of a 250,000-square-foot behavioral health treatment and research pavilion at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus.

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For a long time, tech and innovation went hand-in-hand with visions of Silicon Valley and New York City. But new hubs of health-focused startups are emerging, as digital health companies lay roots in mid-sized metro areas.

According to the Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurship, healthcare is ranked No. 4 in terms of U.S. industries with the largest share of high-growth companies in 2016. Within that sector, Nashville, Tenn., has the most high-growth company density among healthcare companies, meaning it has the most private companies that have achieved at least 20 percent annualized growth over a three-year period with at least $2 million in revenue. This can be seen in the growing amount of venture capital invested in the area, which stems from the city's reputation as a hotspot for healthcare activity in general.

Other health IT hubs like Miami are still in the early stages of maturation, but entrepreneurs and innovators are priming the city for growth. One newly launched accelerator is harnessing Miami's diversity, demographics and geographic location to test products that could eventually be scaled nationwide.

Startups and incubators are clustering in these and other mid-sized cities, forgoing the reputation afforded by Silicon Valley and other big tech cities and capitalizing instead on other factors.

Pull factors

When new companies look at where to set up shop, one of the biggest influencers is nothing more than where the founders live, according to E.J. Reedy, a senior fellow at Kauffman Foundation who helped author the Index of Entrepreneurship. While that sometimes may be in larger, more tech-focused areas like Silicon Valley  especially if a new company is spun out of an existing one  it also lends rise to places like Madison, Wis., home of Epic Systems.

Judy Faulkner had recently graduated from University of Wisconsin when she founded her company in 1979. Epic was originally headquartered in Madison before moving about 10 miles west to Verona, Wis., in 2005 when it outgrew its initial space.

Though geographically established by happenstance, Epic now serves as an economic anchor in the greater Madison area. At the Wisconsin Early Stage Symposium in 2015, a gathering of new companies, entrepreneurs, investors and business leaders, Peter Christman, an associate with seed stage tech investor Chicago Ventures, reiterated this idea, speaking of "the burgeoning, dynamic ecosystem that revolves around Epic here in town," he said, according to The Capital Times.

In fact, the Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce has harnessed this idea and launched a formalized marketing campaign to deem Madison as "the world-class leader for health technology" called the HealthTech Capitol initiative.

In Nashville, Healthcare Corporation of America is the anchor drawing talent and companies to the area. Hayley Hovious, president of the Nashville Health Care Council, says HCA's establishment in 1968 as one of the first  and now largest  hospital companies helped drive the entrepreneurial activity and spirit that persists today. HCA operates 169 hospitals and 116 surgery centers throughout the United States and the United Kingdom, so even though it's headquartered in a mid-size city, it has a global reach.

Dan Hogan, CEO of Nashville-based digital health and predictive analytics company Medalogix, also points to HCA as a pillar of Nashville's IT growth. He says companies have vaulted from hospital-focused ventures into other realms of care delivery, including billing, revenue cycle management and analytics.

As Ms. Faulkner did in Madison, Mr. Hogan founded Medalogix in Nashville in 2012 simply because that's where he lived. But he says he's benefited from the city's growing network of health technology since it results in recruiting talent from other IT companies. "Were I not in Nashville, I wouldn't have made half the progress [that I have]," Mr. Hogan says.

Growth is where the money is. Sometimes.

Even though HCA was founded close to 50 years ago, it wasn't until recently that venture capital activity in Nashville picked up speed and spurred startup growth.

In Nashville in 2014, venture capital investment in health IT companies reached $62.5 million, up from just $2 million in 2009, according to a joint report from Nashville Health Care Council and Nashville Capital Network, a network that manages several investment funds. From 2005 to 2015, close to 60 percent of Nashville's total venture capital investment dollars went to healthcare companies.

"When you have a good idea and you're starting that idea here in this town, the money isn't that hard to find," Mr. Hogan says.

Money is also partly what drew accelerator Startupbootcamp Digital Health Miami to southern Florida, according to COO Cristian Robiou. Startupbootcamp launched in 2010 in Copenhagen, Denmark, and now operates 13 accelerators in 10 global cities. The Miami branch is the latest to open after receiving a $2 million grant from the Miami-based Knight Foundation. One requirement for the grant was the accelerator had to also be based in Miami.

According to the Kauffman Index of Startup Activity (a different measure than the entrepreneurial index mentioned above), Miami is the No. 2 ranked metropolitan area for burgeoning startup activity, when factoring in the rate of new entrepreneurs, the opportunity share of new entrepreneurs and startup density. (Nashville was No. 16.)

But Miami doesn't see the scale of venture capital investment other hubs like Nashville do. Florida ranked No. 14 among states in venture funding in 2015, according to data from PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association. Using the same data, the Miami Heraldfound Florida received less than eight-tenths of 1 percent of the country's venture capital funding, even though it's the third most populous state.

While Miami is buzzing with startup potential, it is still in its early stages. What Miami may comparatively lack in venture capital, it makes up for through other characteristics and factors that uniquely position it to succeed.

In addition to settling in Miami because of the grant requirements, Mr. Robiou mentions two other pull factors that, when considering healthcare's focus today, will likely become bargaining chips for the city. First, Startupbootcamp calls Miami "America's city of 2050," as it is demographically representative of the rest of the country.

Second, Miami's geography is an asset. As medical tourism and telehealth trend, Mr. Robiou sees Miami as a link between the U.S. and entrepreneurs and ecosystems in Latin America.

The healthcare industry's larger focus on population health and minimizing care disparities falls in line with Startupbootcamp Digital Health Miami's overarching mission: "to eradicate health disparities by attracting and scaling innovative startups working on digital solutions that could democratize access to healthcare."

The intangibles

As evidenced by Miami, venture capital is only part of the formula for sustained growth. Equally important  perhaps even more so  are the informal elements of an industry's infrastructure.

Mr. Reedy from Kauffman Foundation says strong entrepreneurial systems have robust social networks, connections and activities that continually bring entrepreneurs together across and within industries. "Those things are not large dollar amount types of activities but are often very helpful for building entrepreneurs with potential to scale," he says.

Companies play off one another and build momentum, whether by moving talent, sharing ideas or partnering. Ms. Hovious points to HCA buying stake in cognitive computing company Digital Reasoning in December 2015 as an example of this. The two companies now jointly develop healthcare applications.

A booming tech and startup scene also means greater talent pools for hospitals and health systems. Established institutions in the area also help this. Mr. Hogan says the academic environment in Nashville, which has 21 colleges and universities, is a pipeline that continually produces new ideas, talent and innovation.

Universities and their health systems often work hand-in-hand with startups and entrepreneurs. At the very least, they share a common mission of innovation and progress. U Innovation at the University of Miami, the technology commercialization arm of the university, is a partner of Startupbootcamp in Miami, as is Nicklaus Children's Hospital.

Mr. Robiou is focused on mining Miami's network and creating health IT-focused talent pools. "What Miami lacks in terms of tech talent is critical mass," he says. Comparatively, he points to Silicon Valley's hordes of software engineers focused on specific types of programming.

To draw out more demand for tech talent in Miami, Mr. Robiou says accelerator leaders speak with hospital and health system leaders about their main IT problems. "What if we can get programmers [and] engineers here who can help you with those problems?" Mr. Robiou says. "Once you have that fluidity in terms of need and in terms of supply  basically that link between supply and demand  you can start building a movement of engineers."

Defining hubs: Think locally, change globally

Nashville is inarguably a health IT hub. It is anchored by one of the country's biggest hospital operators, has given rise to an entrepreneurial spirit through networks and is responsible for a significant portion of the city's economic output.

But Nashville's reach extends beyond the city itself. Ms. Hovious says if a Nashville-based healthcare company  whether a hospital operator, ambulatory surgery center management company, healthcare real estate company or otherwise  institutes changes in service delivery, it has a nationwide affect. Why? "Scale. Absolute scale between health systems," she says.

And that's the underlying hope Mr. Robiou has for Miami. He hesitates to call Miami an up-and-coming hub for health IT. ("I'm searching for a metric where I can say, 'This points to the fact that we are rising,'" he says.) But the ability to foster ideas and create a supportive, innovative environment to disrupt healthcare nationwide still is the goal for Startupbootcamp.

In a Medium post, Mr. Robiou offered an ultimately optimistic, albeit cautious, view of Miami's future: "Miami has more than its fair share of the raw inputs needed to make the city a hub for healthcare innovation," he wrote.

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Three independent physician associations based in the San Diego area are joining forces under a for-profit administrative organization called Health Excel, according to a report from NBC 7 San Diego.

The three groups  La Jolla, Calif.-based XiMED, San Diego-based MultiCultural Primary Care Medical Group and Oceanside, Calif.-based Greater Tri Cities IPA  together comprise more than 800 physicians. The group hopes to give physicians a voice, negotiate more directly with San Diego County employers, and aid physicians in lowering malpractice insurance rates and health insurance costs, according to the report.

The group also indicated it plans to grow, mentioning in a press release that the area's more than 4,000 physicians can benefit from its formation, according to the report.

Read the full story here.

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State regulators with the Office of Health Care Access gave approval for New London, Conn.-based Lawrence + Memorial Hospital to join Yale-New Haven (Conn.) Health System, reports The Connecticut Mirror.

Here are four things to know about the affiliation.

1. Regulators' approval of the affiliation comes a day after Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy (D) updated an executive order issued in February to extend the moratorium on hospital mergers in the state for five more months.

2. As part of the affiliation, Yale will provide $163 million in capital improvements at L + M, according to the article.

3. Since the deal is an affiliation, it does not involve a purchase price.

4. The L + M board will still directly manage L + M and its subsidiary, Westerly (R.I.) Hospital, "subject to certain rights...with respect to fundamental strategic, financial and governance matters," according to The Connecticut Mirror, which cites the decision by the Office of Health Care Access.
A civilian employee at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.-based Munson Army Health Center is charged with one count of assault with intent to commit murder after he allegedly poured gasoline on a female supervisor and set her on fire, according to the Department of Justice.

The alleged event took place Weds., Sept. 7.

The criminal complaint states that in addition to igniting his female supervisor, 54-year-old Clifford Currie also assaulted her with a straight-edge razor before another employee intervened and stopped the attack, according to the article.

The victim was allegedly on fire from the chest up when the second employee intervened. The supervisor was rushed to the hospital. The employee who intervened was also allegedly injured in her attempts to stop Mr. Currie.

If convicted, Mr. Currie faces a penalty of 20 years in federal prison and a fine up to $250,000.

Police closed the health center Sept. 9 for investigation.
An inmate who was taken to Mercy St. Vincent's Medical Center in Toledo, Ohio, for treatment has escaped police custody, reports 13abc.

Larry Chears was in the sheriff office's custody on charges for drug trafficking and possession. Mr. Chears told deputies he needed to see a physician because he was not feeling well, and when they took him to the hospital Thursday, the inmate escaped, according to the report.

Police reportedly pursued him through the hospital but were unsuccessful in recapturing him. Police, deputies and hospital security have searched the hospital and nearby neighborhoods, but have not yet found Mr. Chears, according to the report.

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Phoenix-based Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona will retract a previous pullback and offer its 2017 Affordable Care Act plan to Arizona's Pinal County, addressing concerns the area would have no insurer participating in the exchange.

Here are four things to know.



1. Ten thousand individuals who signed up for health insurance through the exchange last year will have access to at least one plan come open enrollment Nov. 1. When Hartford, Conn.-based Aetna announced its exchange exit last month, those individuals faced a situation in which no insurer would sell on-exchange plans. This stood in conflict with the ACA's mission, according to The Wall Street Journal.

2. BCBSAZ will be the sole insurer in 13 of Arizona's 15 counties.

3. Rich Boals, president and CEO of BCBSAZ, said the insurer "is trying hard to balance the company's financial losses from the ACA with the very real concerns of Arizonans." He said policymakers and regulators "must find a way to stabilize the market and put long-term fixes in place."

4. BCBSAZ still plans to pull out of Arizona's most populous county, Maricopa, citing $185 million in losses on individual ACA plans in two years. Approximately 34,000 members will need new plans next year. Bloomfield, Conn.-based Cigna will be the sole insurer in Maricopa County, according to The Wall Street Journal.

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Two patients treated at University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle have been infected with Legionella bacteria, and local health officials are investigating the cases, reports The Seattle Times.

Both patients were treated in UWMC's cardiac units, but the source of the infections has not been detected, according to the report. The first case was reported Aug. 26, and public health officials said the patient may have been exposed to the bacteria either at the hospital or in the community. For the second case, reported Tuesday, the patient was at the medical center for the entire exposure time period, according to the report.

One patient has been discharged from the hospital, and the other is being treated for the infection, according to the report.

Meredith Li-Vollmer, a spokesperson for Seattle and KingCounty public health, told The Seattle Times UWMC hired a specialist to examine its heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems. Legionella can be found in man-made water systems, including air-conditioning units and water tanks and heaters. In the past year, Legionella bacteria was found in the water system at Wake Forest Baptist Health Lexington (N.C.) Medical Center and water tanks at Pittsburgh-based Allegheny General Hospital.

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A Senate panel will look into Mylan's controversial price markups for the Amsterdam-based drugmakers life-saving EpiPen medication, reported NBC News.

The Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations initiated "a preliminary inquiry concerning Mylan Pharmaceuticals' pricing and competition practices with respect to the EpiPen," according to a statement released Wednesday from Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), chairman of the panel, and Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.).

"Our review of this matter will be robust, thorough and bipartisan," the statement reads. "Parents and school districts in Ohio, Missouri and across the country need affordable access to this life-saving drug, and we share their concern over Mylan's sustained price increases."

The inquiry comes two days after New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (D) launched an investigation into Mylan over antitrust concerns in the company's contracts with school systems.

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Steven Mash, MD, an orthopedic surgeon at the Illinois-based DuPage Medical Group, discusses how orthopedic surgery has changed in the past decade, and what he thinks is in store for the next.

Question: What led you to specialize in orthopedics?

Dr. Steven Mash: When I was in medical school we rotated through various disciplines, and one of the disciplines I was privileged to rotate through was orthopedic surgery. There was an attending at Mount Sinai Hospital, here in Chicago  I remember he let me put a traction pin in somebody's tibia. He really got me interested in orthopedic medicine. At the end of medical school, I did a six-month externship at Northwestern University, where I also came in contact with a couple of orthopedic surgeons who I hit it off with. It's luck of the draw; people who I found that engaged my interest.

Q: How has orthopedic surgery changed since you graduated from medical school?

SM: Medicine has changed tremendously in the time that I've been practicing. Outpatient total joint replacement was unheard of even 10 years ago, but 20 years ago? No way. Even the simplest of operations used to require an admission to the hospital the day before the operation. There was a whole ritual of being visited by the anesthesiologist, the surgeon, the nursing staff  and, if you were in an academic hospital, the resident or intern. If you were in orthopedics, they would shave the body part you would be operated on the night before the proceedure, which we now know actually caused increased infections. Patients stayed in the hospital five or ten times longer than they do today. I see this ever-shortening timeframe for when patients are really in the acute care environment as a continuing theme, which I expect is going to continue to move forward into all of medicine.

Q: What do you see as the biggest areas for growth in the orthopedic surgery field today?

SM: I think there are three particular areas for orthopedic growth. The first is the move toward short stay and ambulatory surgery for all kinds of orthopedic procedures; total joints are in the conversation today, but lots of complex shoulder surgeries and minimal incision surgeries are going to change the face of orthopedics dramatically in the next decade. The second is the changing use of biologics. All of the kinds of things we're using now to supplement bone healing has really changed throughout my career, and clearly is going to be changing tremendously into the future. For example, the ability to treat arthritis with stem cells, tissue modification and gene modification seems just around the corner. These developments are going to change the entire face of what medicine looks like for orthopedics. Lastly: further consolidation of medicine to include orthopedics. Our specialty is one of the last specialties that's experiencing the merger-and-acquisition craze. There's an aggregation of practices into larger groups, and that's going to change the opportunities for physicians  and for the patients that we serve  as the delivery model changes.

Learn more from Dr. Mash at the 15th Annual Spine, Orthopedic & Pain Management-Driven ASC Conference + The Future of Spine in June 2017! Click here for more information.

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A Protenus Breach Barometer report found hackers accessed nearly 8.8 million patient records during August, according to Health IT News.

Here are seven points:

1. In August, there were 44 reported data breaches from 42 different incidents.

2. There have been 233 healthcare data breaches spanning January through August.

3. Of the incidents in August, 49 percent were insider incidents and 29 percent entailed hacking, malware or ransomware.

4. Hackers, however, were the culprit behind August's largest data breach, which comprised 3.6 million records.

5. In 19 percent of data braches, business associates or vendors were involved.

6. Last month, 37 data breaches involved healthcare provider organizations; payers reported two incidents and two incidents involved a business associate or vendor.

7. California had the most breaches on any state last month, with six incidents.

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Dairy farmers in Northern Ireland could be paid to produce less milk under a new EU scheme.

But the chairman of national body Dairy UK said that he was sceptical of the plans.

Under a new EU scheme, farmers will be compensated if they reduce their milk production in any one of four separate three-month periods between October 2016 and March 2017 in a bid to reduce milk surplus within European countries.

The 150m (126.8m) EU aid project aims to incentivise farmers to voluntarily reduce their milk deliveries. The EU hopes that the initiative will reduce milk deliveries by just over one million tonnes, compared with the same period last year.

The Milk Production Reduction Aid is part of a 500m (423m) aid package agreed at the Agri-Fish Council in July.

The scheme is expected to start on September 11, when the legislation comes into effect.

Former Dale Farm boss and Dairy UK chairman David Dobbin said: "Anything which will give support to farmers after a difficult year is welcome.

"Many farmers are still looking to grow. We want modest growth without growing too hard and causing a surplus.

"Some farmers who are already reducing their numbers will see it as an opportunity to retire or cut back further.

"But it's unsustainable and I can't see how it will work in the long-term."

Agriculture Minister Michelle McIlveen added: "The dairy sector in Northern Ireland has been experiencing a prolonged period of severely depressed prices and our local farmers have been particularly affected.

"I am pleased that our dairy farmers can now apply for EU aid to support a reduction in their milk deliveries to processors should they choose to do so.

"I would encourage dairy farmers to consider the detail of the scheme rules carefully and to ensure that they have the necessary supporting documentation readily to hand, should they decide to submit an application."

In March, farmers here received on average of just over 18p a litre. The price of milk has long been a bone of contention, with many dairy farmers arguing they are being paid unfairly.

Many have described the current situation as a "crisis" and have said they are being paid below the cost of production.

But processors have said oversupply means they are unable to offer more money for what has become a global commodity.

Milk prices have been falling since the first quarter of 2014. In just over two years the price has almost dropped by half.

However, while prices remain low, they have recently started to stabilise.

In January 2014, the price paid to farmers for each litre was on average 34p in Northern Ireland, compared to 18p in March.

In May, Northern Ireland's largest milk processor, Lakeland Dairies, offered farmers the chance to lock in a proportion of their milk at a set price.

Meanwhile, other dairies here have found ways of making use of surplus milk.

United Dairy Farmers, for example, has upped marketing of its Fivemiletown and Dromona cheese ranges.
Mivan Marine did the fit out work for the dining car and one of the cabins on the Belmond Grand Hibernian train.

The new company formed after Antrim joinery business Mivan collapsed with the loss of almost 250 jobs has received almost 500,000 funding from Invest NI to help recruit staff.

Mivan was one of Northern Ireland's best-known companies and worked all over the world on specialist construction, joinery and fit-out contracts.

It closed in January 2014 after calling in administrators, and staff received only one week's statutory redundancy pay due to the company's insolvency.

Weeks later, Newry-based MJM Group acquired Mivan's premises, assets and trading name, and started to rebuild the business as Mivan Marine Ltd, taking on around 100 of the former Mivan employees.

Now it has added a further 65 staff, and 55 of those posts are supported by 495,000 in funding from the economic development agency Invest NI. Total employment at the firm now stands at 160.

A spokeswoman for Invest NI said: "The company, under new ownership, is rebuilding itself, winning new business and creating much-needed manufacturing jobs. This is absolutely good use of public money, providing vital new employment in the area."

First Minister Arlene Foster visited the Antrim factory yesterday and welcomed the company's growth.

"Mivan is an internationally renowned company and its resurgence to competitiveness with a healthy order book is a tremendous result for the manufacturing business and positive news for Antrim town and Northern Ireland," she said.

"Invest NI is working closely with the business to support the generation of much-needed employment opportunities.

"I welcome the recruitment (linked to) 65 new jobs, which will generate 1.8m in additional salaries and give Mivan the resources required to secure valuable new business."

Mrs Foster also met some of the company's 12 apprentices who are training in wood occupations, metal fabrication, estimating, design and more.

"Invest NI's funding is helping Mivan provide jobs for Antrim and the wider area," said chief executive Neil Ward.

"We are committed to offering secure employment that will help Mivan deliver current and future orders, alongside offering solid opportunities for career development."

Brian McConville, owner of parent company MJM Group, said the firm had achieved a 50% year-on-year growth in turnover in 2016 and had plans to continue that pace of growth over the next five years.

"Projects secured this year exceed 25m, giving us a strong order book for 2017 and beyond," he added. "We are confident that the business is in a secure and sustainable position to attract further orders from customers in line with our development plan."

Mivan has just completed a 2.5m contract to fit out the Belmond Grand Hibernian luxury train, which runs tours throughout Ireland. The company is also working in Puerto Rico, Grand Bahamas and Spain.
The high street has endured a seventh consecutive month without sales growth despite increasing consumer confidence and spending power, figures show.

August recorded a 1.5% drop in overall year-on-year sales, meaning that retailers have failed to increase figures since January, according to the BDO High Street Sales Tracker (HSST).

Sales of lifestyle goods, up 0.7% year on year on the back of tourists taking advantage of the weak pound and a flurry of sporting activity inspired by the Rio Olympics, could not compensate for a continuing poor performance by the fashion sector.

Heavy discounting failed to stem a 3.3% drop in fashion sales, which dropped by 9.6% in the last week of August as sales ended and many shoppers took a late summer holiday.

Sophie Michael, head of retail and wholesale at BDO LLP, said retailers had "failed to put last summer's woes behind them and deliver a positive story for 2016".

She said: "Footfall was up for most of August, but the majority of retailers struggled to consistently translate recent positive consumer sentiment and increased spending levels into in-stores sales. A real success story for some British retailers has been their ability to tap into shoppers' increasing desire to use non-store channels, and this will leave online savvy retailers very well positioned as shoppers' habits continue to evolve."

In July, NI's retailers enjoyed a welcome increase in shopper numbers, according to figures from the Northern Ireland Retail Consortium (NIRC).
Next is due to post its half-year profits

Two retail heavyweights will shed light on their trading next week, with Next and Morrisons updating the market on their half-year performances as the dust begins to settle following Britain's decision to quit the European Union.

Further insight into retail and consumer confidence after the Brexit vote will be given on Thursday when high street giant Next posts its half-year profits.

The chain has been gloomy on retail prospects in recent months, warning of a consumer spending shift away from clothing and last month alerting over possible price hikes to combat the falling pound.

But chief executive Lord Wolfson has so far said there has been no clear evidence of a worsening in trading directly as a result of the referendum decision.

In an update last month, Next surprised the market with a better-than-feared second quarter performance, with a robust end-of-season sale helping limit the fall in total high street store sales, including markdowns, to 0.7%.

Full-price sales at its high street stores fell 3.3%, but its Next Directory arm saw sales rise 5.7%.

This helped it to nudge up its full-year profit forecast, to a mid-point of 810 million from the 800 million previously guided.

But it cautioned over a future hit from the pound's weakness since the Brexit vote, saying it could push up costs of importing clothes from overseas suppliers by as much as 5%.

This would likely be passed on to shoppers in higher price tags, Lord Wolfson revealed.

Its half-year results will show a 5% drop in interim pre-tax profits to around 330 million, according to analysts at Numis Securities.

The market will be keen for further updates on trends in consumer spending, with mixed signals on how well confidence has held up.

Next has already said it expects sales to worsen in a ''particularly challenging'' third quarter as it also comes up against tough comparisons from a year earlier, although the all-important Christmas season may see some improvement after mild weather hit the end of 2015/2016.

Morrisons is expected to notch up its third consecutive quarter of like-for-like sales growth next week as the supermarket continues its turnaround under chief executive David Potts.

Analysts at Barclays estimate that like-for-like sales will grow 1.1% for the second quarter, with underlying pre-tax profits also set to rise from 117 million to 150 million in the first half.

James Anstead, analyst at Barclays, said: "The company has clearly outperformed sales expectations and may well be the strongest of the big four in like-for-like terms in the first half."

The firm, which is embroiled in a bitter grocery price war, last week revealed that it is slashing selected meat and poultry prices by 12%.

All of the so-called big four supermarkets - Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury's and Morrisons - have been cutting prices in a bid to better compete with German upstarts Aldi and Lidl, who have eroded their market share.

But David McCarthy, analyst at HSBC, said Morrisons' price cuts "make sense".

He said: "Morrisons can step up output relatively quickly and at a lower cost than most of its competitors so it makes sense to cut prices in areas where it has these advantages. Morrisons continues to play a very smart game."

The Bradford-based group's resurgence comes after Mr Potts took the helm last year, following the removal of former boss Dalton Philips, and embarked on a number of changes in a bid to turn around the firm's fortunes.

The chief executive has this year inked a new deal with Ocado and signed a landmark agreement with US online giant Amazon to supply fresh food to its customers.

Mr Anstead added that Morrisons has "sharpened up commercially" under Mr Potts.

Experts expect Asda to be the next major player to pull the trigger on price cuts following Morrisons' efforts.
Northern Ireland has the UK's lowest proportion of workers on controversial zero-hours contracts, official figures show.

A report from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) revealed that 1.9% of workers here - 15,500 people - were employed in this way.

Across the UK, just over 900,000 people work on a zero-hours basis in their main job - up from 747,000 a year ago. The East Midlands has the highest level of such working.

Nick Palmer from the ONS said: "The estimated number of people saying they work on a zero-hours contract has risen by over 20% since the same time last year. It is likely that some of the increase we are seeing is because public awareness of the term 'zero hours contract' has continued to grow."

Jimmy Kelly, Ireland regional secretary for Unite, added: "Unite is calling on the Northern Ireland Executive to follow the example of New Zealand and ban these exploitative contracts. Do they want to engage in an unwinnable race-to-the-bottom on workers' conditions, meaning more low-wage, part-time casual working, or will they invest in growing a high-value added economy, providing decent and secure employment for all?"

Gillian Guy, chief executive of Citizens Advice, said: "The Government has taken some important steps to make work pay, including introducing the National Living Wage. The next step is to look at how it can make people's incomes more secure."
Cillian Murphy has noticed a shift in his approach in recent years.

"I've got a bit more patient in general," he says with a short chuckle.

"The whole nonsense that surrounds the industry, which can be very trying to any sane person wanting to have a normal life. I used to find that very wearing."

Firmly an actor's actor, it's unlikely you'll catch Murphy, who turned 40 in May, ducking in for a selfie with his Dunkirk (new Christopher Nolan movie, due out in 2017) co-star Harry Styles any day soon.

"It's good to have ambition and hunger and all that, but it's not about being the best, or having the most money or the biggest trailer," he says. "It's about trying to really work hard."

Born in Cork, and originally a law student before the lure of playing in a band and ultimately acting came knocking, solid, fulfilling work has always been Murphy's professional guiding star, and not the Hollywood lifestyle that comes with it.

And since his stirring performance in Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later back in 2002, he's more than proved his mettle, immersing himself in roles as diverse as the unnerving Scarecrow in Batman Begins, a passionate IRA freedom fighter in Ken Loach's The Wind That Shakes The Barley and, of course, as intimidating Tommy Shelby in BBC hit Peaky Blinders.

After a long spell in London, he's now settled back in Ireland with his artist wife, and their two sons and black Labrador puppy.

He says he's constantly asked about career plans. "People always go, 'Tell us your strategy'. That's for economists. We don't have a clue what's happening next," says Murphy, looking stylish in a plain button-down blue shirt and jeans, his hair grown back from Tommy Shelby's brutal do.

"Genuinely, the whole thing has been chaotic, but you obviously have things you want to do and things you know you won't do - and then life gets in the way and the availability gets in the way. It's entirely random," he says of his own path. "Maybe some superstars have it all mapped out, but I've never met one that does."

Unpredictability though, is part and parcel of acting.

"It's joyous and terrifying and frustrating, but when it works, it's great," he says.

"In terms of work and the people you work with, you want to try and better that. Not knowing if you're going to be able to sustain that level, I worry about that. But you can't control it."

What you can control, he says, is the work you say yes to.

"I'm more choosy about the stuff I do," he says of getting older. "If I'm going to go away from home and leave the family, it's got to be worthwhile, so that is different than when you're a naive, hungry 20-year-old."

Anthropoid, his next film, more than ticks these boxes.

The thriller tells the little known but true story of a group of men who lived in occupied Czechoslovakia and were involved in the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, Hitler's third-in-command - and the main architect behind the final solution - whose regime of terror earned him the nickname the 'Butcher of Prague'.

Knowing Heydrich's death would be a huge blow to the Germans, the men need to act quickly, all the while knowing any show of resistance would have deadly consequences for them and their loved ones.

Alongside The Fall and Fifty Shades Of Grey star Jamie Dornan, from Holywood, who plays Jan Kubis, Murphy stars as Slovak Josef Gabcik, a fellow soldier from the Czech Army in exile, who is parachuted with Kubis into Czechoslovakia in 1941.

From the outset, the actor was intrigued.

"This film is slightly unconventional or old-fashioned in its storytelling, and that's something I'm drawn towards," he says.

"You get to spend time with the characters before the next set-piece happens. You're actually invested in them.

"War films work when you can see yourself in that position, and you say to your partner or whoever you're going to see it with, 'What would you do if you were in that situation?'

"With these guys, you go, 'They're terrified'.

"Josef tries to put on a front and make himself the most practical and determined version of himself he can be, but underneath it all, he cannot think beyond the mission, so I hope that it makes it more identifiable and relatable."

Directed by Sean Ellis, the film doesn't shy away from depicting the brutality and torture that featured in Heydrich's regime, something Murphy believes is necessary.

"I hope and I believe that this film doesn't in any way glorify or make it gratuitous in any way, but it's important to show that these people lived besides this at all times," he says.

"The country was occupied and these people went around in fear of their lives, so when you see the retributions carried out, you can really feel the guilt that these men carried around. That's why it's useful to show the dilemma these men faced before they carried out the assassination and after it."

It takes a thoughtful persona to carry a film like this, and Ellis was keen to secure Murphy from the outset, dubbing him "one of the finest actors of his generation".

"It's very kind of him to say that and, you know, it was well worth investing in dinner last night, clearly," he says with a laugh.

"You keep on working and try and do the best you can. That's really the only motivation," he adds.

"Legacy and any of the other stuff is for other people to talk about, I just want to do the work as best as I can."

Anthropoid is in cinemas now
Tthe charity single by Celtic rock band the Red Hot Chilli Pipers to mark the 15th anniversary of 9/11.

A charity single is set to raise funds in memory of the New York firefighters killed in the September 11 terror attacks.

Celtic rock band the Red Hot Chilli Pipers has composed The Fallen to mark the 15th anniversary of the atrocity.

The collapse of the Twin Towers on September 11 2001 claimed the lives of 343 members of the Fire Department of New York (FDNY), while many others have since died from health conditions linked to their role at the scene.

The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) said the Chillis and pipers from New York worked together to record the track, with all proceeds to be shared between the service's Support Trust and the FDNY Emerald Society Pipes.

Retired SFRS watch manager Willie Armstrong, who plays with the Red Hot Chilli Pipers, said: "As a band we all wanted to do something to remember the firefighters who were killed that tragic day.

"Having only retired this year from the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service I wanted to give something back. Recording a special single seemed a fitting way to remember those we've lost and support two great causes in Scotland and New York."

The single, available on iTunes, will be officially launched at the SFRS headquarters in Cambuslang on Friday.
One of the card traps discovered in Belfast

Fraudsters have installed card traps at a number of ATMs across Belfast, police have warned.

The PSNI issued a warning to the public following the discovery of four so-called 'card traps' at cash machines in recent days.

Card traps are attached to a cash machine by criminals to enable them to trap a bank card.

The victim is then unable to recover the card from the machine leaving criminals able to recover it later. The device is fitted into the card slot on the ATM and the only thing visible from the outside is the edge of a thin piece of black plastic.

Police have not disclosed the number of victims caught up in the recent scam.

In May, alleged members of a UK/Republic of Ireland-based organised travelling crime gang were arrested in relation to a series of ATM frauds.

The gang members are accused of having targeted cash machines with sophisticated skimming devices across Northern Ireland including east Belfast, Portadown, Enniskillen, Rostrevor, Magherafelt and Newry.

The skimming devices the PSNI uncovered at the time had similarities to one which was used in the north of England.

Last month a skimming device was found on a cash machine in Lisburn.

Detective Constable Stephen Crooks, from the PSNI Economic Crime Unit, said: "Card traps are devices designed to trap cards as they are inserted in the ATM. A miniature camera may be hidden, overlooking the PIN pad to capture the PIN being entered, or a suspect will be 'shoulder surfing' behind their intended victim.

"They will then wait until the intended victim leaves the area and will retrieve the debit or credit card from the ATM."

Mr Crooks added if anyone suspects a card trap is fitted to an ATM, or locates one close by, they should report it to police.

"Do not handle it or try and remove it from the ATM, as it has sharp edges and may cause injury," he said.

Police also advised cash machine users to cancel the transaction and use a different machine if someone makes you feel uncomfortable. Also, never allow yourself to be distracted, always shield the keypad, put your money and card away before leaving the machine and if the cash machine does not return your card report its loss immediately to the card company.

Business owners who have ATMs at their premises have been advised to inspect them regularly for anything suspicious fitted to them.
The PSNI has the independence required for a new investigation into the suspected military killing of a woman in west Belfast more than 40 years ago, the High Court heard yesterday.

Counsel for the Chief Constable insisted that the force was "institutionally distinct" from its predecessor amid claims that RUC officers may have colluded to prevent undercover soldiers being implicated in the shooting of Jean Smyth.

A judge was also told the allegations of potential police involvement in a cover-up were assumption and speculation.

Mrs Smyth, a 24-year-old mother-of-one, was killed by a single shot to the head as she sat in a car on the Glen Road in June 1972.

At the time, the RUC informed her family that it was probably an IRA gunman who opened fire.

But records uncovered at the National Archives in Kew, London, two years ago suggested the Army's Military Reaction Force (MRF) fired shots in the area and was allegedly involved in the killing, a judge was told.

Mrs Smyth's family have issued judicial review proceedings amid claims the PSNI lacks the necessary impartiality to carry out a fresh probe.

The family's legal team contend that new evidence links the State's own agents to the killing of an innocent citizen.

It was claimed that police and Army officers may have concealed the truth about the shooting for more than 40 years.

Responding on behalf of the Chief Constable, Tony McGleenan QC argued that the family's challenge should "fall at the first hurdle".

"There's high authority in support of our proposition that the PSNI is institutionally distinct from the RUC," he said.

"Given that the RUC were not institutionally connected to those implicated in the events, we say that the applicant faces the steepest of uphill climbs to make good the case that there's a lack of independence."

During exchanges Mr Justice Maguire questioned why previous investigations into Mrs Smyth's death did not examine possible military involvement.

He described inadequacies in the original probe and a subsequent review carried out by the now defunct Historical Enquiries Team as "troubling".

According to Mr McGleenan, that was why the Chief Constable recognised the case required analysis by the force's Legacy Investigation Branch.

He also claimed that the applicant's lawyers were attempting to show "through assumption, speculation and tracking through documents that there was RUC collusive involvement".

The hearing continues.
The incident caused the easyJet flight to be delayed

An easyJet flight from Belfast International Airport to Manchester was delayed due to an alleged air rage incident.

One man was reportedly removed from flight EZY134 following an alleged altercation between a passenger and cabin crew.

Among those onboard was UTV award winning journalist Sharon O'Neill. She tweeted about the incident.

A spokeswoman for the airline said: "easyJets cabin crew are trained to assess and evaluate all situations and to act quickly and appropriately to ensure that the safety of the flight and other passengers is not compromised at any time.

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"Whilst such incidents are rare, we take them very seriously, do not tolerate abusive or threatening behaviour on board, and always push for prosecution.

"The safety and well-being of passengers and crew is always easyJet's priority."

Last month a Belfast-bound flight from London was delayed for over an hour due to a tiff between air stewards over water bottles.
'While the boy's mother pleaded guilty, she was still considered as being at a high risk of re-offending'

A mother who broke three of her baby son's ribs has been sentenced to 15 months - half of them behind bars.

The 35-year-old south Belfast woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, admitted causing grievous bodily harm to her four-week old baby in August 2014. The child has since been taken into care.

Judge Gordon Kerr QC told the woman that in deciding an appropriate sentence, he would consider the aggravating feature in the case - the age of her vulnerable young child.

He added she had breached her position of trust and that the force needed to cause the injures was considerable.

The judge also explained that because the youngster had been taken into care, he had lost the chance of a normal upbringing.

While the boy's mother pleaded guilty, she was still considered as being at a high risk of re-offending.

However, it was found she did not pose a danger to the public, and the court was told that if she had any more children it was likely that they would be taken away from her.

The woman will serve seven-and-a-half months in custody, followed by the same period on supervised parole.

At a previous court hearing, prosecutor Simon Jenkins said police were called to the mother's house by social services on August 7, 2014, after she alerted the authorities to marks on her son's body. She told officials she was concerned she may have caused the marks and hurt her son through holding him in a particular way when he was crying the day before.

The boy was brought to hospital, where he was examined by a consultant paediatrician who found extensive bruising on the child's abdomen. The results of a subsequent X-ray also showed that the infant had three fractured ribs.

Belfast Crown Court was told the injuries were "non-accidental", and Mr Jenkins said the "level of force required to fracture the ribs of a four-week old baby is considerable".

When the child's mother was interviewed by police, she said her son had been crying and she had tried to comfort him.

She also told police she waited until the following day to alert the authorities because she knew her baby would be taken from her and she could not face the prospect of losing him.

Defence barrister Arthur Harvey QC said that while his client never denied she was responsible, she never intended to inflict hurt her baby son.

Revealing that the injuries were sustained while the baby was crying, Mr Harvey branded the incident a "one-off" and said that prior to this the mother and her son had enjoyed a "strong" relationship.

The barrister told the court there were no signs of neglect, adding: "Her remorse is enormous and continuing. She will have to live with this for the rest of her life. That child will not be granted back to her custody."
Kevin receiving his second drip infusion of the day, and doing really well. Family picture

Doctors for a Northern Ireland man diagnosed with brain cancer and given just three months to live said they are "delighted" with his progress following surgery.

More than 235,000 was raised in 13 days to help Kevin Carey in his brave battle against an aggressive brain tumour.

The 35-year-old Portglenone man's last hope is pioneering immunotherapy treatment, which costs 205,000 and is only available privately. The therapy teaches the immune system to find and attack the brain cancer cells.

In the latest update on the GoFundMe his family said: "Doctors are delighted with Kevin's recovery, just 6 weeks after surgery and only 2 weeks into treatment.

"They are so happy, that they decided to allow Kevin to move onto the next stage of his treatment.

"Today, Kevin received two important immunotherapy drugs via I.V drips, over 5 hours.

"Kevin handled them very well, he is really tired after such a big day, but so relieved treatment is moving on in the right direction. We are so grateful to all the lovely staff, that took such good care of him today."

Kevin will be returning home for the weekend and is planning to return to London in two weeks time for further treatment.

"Thank you to everyone for your part in helping us paying for this treatment. Sending you all our love, and deepest gratitude, from the bottom of our hearts," the update ended.

Kevin was on a trip to Portstewart in July last year with Natasha when he suffered a number of seizures. A brain scan identified glioblastoma, an aggressive terminal brain tumour for which Kevin has already undergone surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy.
Gerard McMahon died after police used CS spray during an arrest (Police Ombudsman/PA)

The scene on Great Victoria Street in Belfast City Centre on Thursday morning. Picture by Jonathan Porter/Press Eye

The parents of a man who died after police used CS spray during an arrest have called for a swift and thorough investigation.

Gerard McMahon, from the Short Strand area of Belfast, was taken ill during the incident in Great Victoria Street in the city at about 5am on Thursday morning.

His mother and father, Gerard and Ella, said they wanted space to grieve.

"Our family are grieving for our son and brother Gerard and are calling on the Police Ombudsman's office to carry out a thorough and swift investigation into the circumstances of his death," they said.

"We would ask that the media would respect the privacy of our family at this sad time."

The Police Service of Northern Ireland initially said officers had responded to reports of a man behaving violently on the street and that he suffered injuries while being restrained.

The case was transferred to the Police Ombudsman's office which confirmed CS spray had been used.

The incident took place near the Grand Opera House and investigators are examining reports of an altercation between Mr McMahon and taxi drivers before the police arrived on scene.

A defibrillator was left on the street following the incident and Mr McMahon received medical attention before he was taken to hospital where he died.

Sinn Fein councillor Mairead O'Donnell visited the family and expressed her sympathy following Mr McMahon's death.

"The McMahon family are understandably devastated by the loss of their son at this very difficult time," she said.

Investigators from the ombudsman's office mapped and photographed the scene and security camera footage was recovered.

A number of witnesses have been spoken to but the office has issued an appeal for anyone else who was in the area at the time and may have seen what happened to contact them.

The Police Ombudsman renewed its appeal for 36-year-old Mr McMahon.

It urged anyone who saw him in Belfast city centre in the early hours of Thursday morning, particularly in the area of Great Victoria Street, to contact it.
Ballymena Chamber of Commerce president Ronan McCann and Mid and East Antrim Borough Council Mayor Audrey Wales with First Minister Arlene Foster during a visit yesterday

First Minister Arlene Foster has dismissed concerns that withdrawal from the European Union could lead to the break-up of the UK and insisted that Northern Ireland's voice would be heard in the negotiations.

The pledge from the DUP leader comes as Welsh First Minister Carwyn Jones is today due to warn that the UK could split unless all home nations play a role in talks. He will say that the negotiations will fail if they end up being a two-way dialogue between Brussels and London.

The news came as a survey suggested that the EU referendum had not changed the vast majority of people's minds over whether or not there should be a border poll.

The research for the BBC's The View also found Brexit had very little influence on how people would vote in a referendum on a united Ireland.

Meanwhile, Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon also expressed concern about her country's voice being heard, claiming there was a "cloud of secrecy" around the Government's Brexit negotiations plan and calling for greater transparency.

But this week Prime Minister Theresa May vowed that she would not be giving a "running commentary" on her plans concerning the EU.

In June the UK voted to leave the bloc in a referendum, with 51.9% supporting leave and 48.1% voting remain.

Mrs Foster also told the Belfast Telegraph of her determination that the UK does leave the group in accordance with the wishes of the people.

She said although negotiations between London and the devolved regions have not yet commenced, she was confident they will be a "two-way conversation".

Mrs Foster said that since the result of the referendum, she has been clear that she is determined Northern Ireland's voice is heard in the negotiations.

"It was a point I raised with David Davis when he visited Northern Ireland only last week in what was a very positive engagement," she said.

"The UK devolved regions must be involved, but it is also important that we all come with a positive approach and work to secure the best possible outcome for our individual regions and for the United Kingdom as a whole.

"We must respect the Government and the authority that lies at Westminster.

"I am confident there will be a two-way conversation between London and each of the devolved administrations.

"The negotiations have not yet commenced and they will not be carried out via the media. Those of us who want to see a successful and strong United Kingdom must work to achieve that outcome.

"We must also recognise that a majority of people across the UK voted to leave the European Union and deliver upon that mandate."

Mr Jones, who is on a trade mission in the US, will speak about Britain's vote to leave the EU in a speech to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs later.

He is expected to say: "Wales and the other devolved nations must play a full and active role in the negotiations to leave the EU to ensure our interests are fully protected.

"Cardiff, Edinburgh and Belfast must also have seats at the table. Whatever deal is finally negotiated, its acceptance should be subject to the support of the four Parliaments that now legislate for the UK.

"There can be no return to the old constitutional status quo, where the United Kingdom was one of the most centralised states in the developed world.

"We have to embrace the new reality with fresh constitutional thinking if our British Union is to survive the new tensions created by EU exit.

"Unless we take this seriously, nothing - up to and including the break-up of the UK into its component parts - would be inconceivable."

However Mike Nesbitt, the leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, accused Mr Jones of causing unnecessary fear about the dissolving of the UK.

"We are focused on the opportunities for the people of Northern Ireland, not on scaremongering," he said.

"Where Carwyn Jones is right is in identifying the important role that the devolved administrations must play in negotiations, because the Government's priorities may not be Northern Ireland's.

"For example, a trade deal with Argentina for beef imports might not be in the interests of our beef farmers.

"It is imperative that the Executive gets its act together and presents a united front with clear demands as the Government leads on the negotiations not just to withdraw from the EU, but also to establish new relationships with Europe, the World Trade Organisation and other non-EU nations."

"The Executive's inability to offer a joint meeting with the Brexit Secretary, David Davis, was a disastrous start," Mr Nesbitt added.

Meanwhile Sinn Fein's spokesman on Brexit, John O'Dowd, is in Philadelphia this week lobbying for American support for the remain vote.

"The British Government's secretary of state for the North James Brokenshire is also currently in the US and no doubt he will be hearing the same message that I am hearing - that the remain vote of the people of the North must be respected," he said.

"He and his Government need to listen to that loud and clear voice from those in America who have been engaged in the Irish peace process from the beginning and realise that remain must mean remain," Mr O'Dowd added.
The mother of a killer who died after taking cocaine days following his release from prison has said that despite his crimes "he meant the world to me".

Francis McColgan's mother found her son dead and surrounded by drug paraphernalia at his apartment on Belfast's King Street on June 12 last year.

He had been released on parole from Maghaberry Prison just two days beforehand.

An inquest at Belfast's Laganside Courts yesterday heard that McColgan had an undiagnosed heart condition, and that the cocaine he had taken could have been the "tipping point" that led to his death.

In her ruling, Coroner Suzanne Anderson told the hearing: "Death was due to coronary atheroma and left ventricular hypertrophy in association with cocaine abuse."

McColgan, who died aged 41, was known to police and had been in an out of jail.

In 1991 he was a passenger in a stolen car that crashed into a taxi, killing Maureen Brammeld, a mother-of-one who was pregnant at the time of her death.

In 1997 he was charged with the murder of 23-year-old Kevin Taylor, from west Belfast, who was beaten and stabbed after a group of men forced their way into a house party.

Five people were convicted of the killing, but McColgan fled to Cork while on bail and evaded police for nine years.

During this time he worked in a shop under an assumed name before he was eventually spotted in a restaurant in 2004. A seven-year sentence was issued after he admitted to manslaughter.

Last year the family of Kevin Taylor said that they took no joy in McColgan's death, but they added: "He robbed of us of a much-loved and very special person and robbed Kevin's son of a loving dad."

At yesterday's inquest, McColgan's mother, Mary, told the court that her son had been in and out of prison his whole life. She added that she was "aware he was around" drugs, but explained and she did not know he took them and, as such, was shocked to find his body.

Speaking to the Belfast Telegraph afterwards, a tearful Mrs McColgan said: "He meant the world to me. He made mistakes, but he broke his heart with the mistakes that he made. He has cried with me about them. I would ask everybody to stay away from drugs."
A leading Democratic Unionist has accused electoral chiefs of taking a machete to Northern Ireland's Westminster seats.

Nigel Dodds, the party's North Belfast MP, lashed out at proposals to cut the number of seats in the city from four to three and warned changes will have a detrimental effect on unionist representation.

Northern Ireland is to see its number of MPs fall from 18 to 17 at the next election.

Mr Dodds is likely to be one of the high-profile politicians in a dog-fight for electoral survival if the redrawn constituency boundaries go ahead as proposed.

And he warned voters to be under no illusion about the changes.

"It will drastically affect voters and will change the political make-up in Northern Ireland significantly," the DUP deputy leader and director of elections said.

The DUP claimed the new constituency maps are the biggest electoral shake-up since 1983.

As well as carving Belfast in to three Westminster seats for the east, north-west and south-west, they include redrawing and renaming constituencies seats outside the city, provisionally called Dalriada, Glenshane, North Tyrone, Upper Bann and Blackwater, West Antrim and West Down.

Another eight would retain their names - East Antrim, Fermanagh and South Tyrone, Foyle, Newry and Armagh, North Down, South Antrim, South Down, and Strangford - but see slight changes to boundaries.

Mr Dodds said: "We need to make sure everyone is fairly represented. This is something no elected representative would disagree with.

"However, these boundary commission proposals will have a detrimental effect on unionist representation. The proposals do not take into consideration the natural hinterlands of many major cities and towns in Northern Ireland. That is something which is of particularly concern as these shape communities."

The review is part of a wider plan to reduce MP numbers from 650 to 600 by the time of the next election in May 2020.

The public will be given a chance to air their views on the changes before any revisions are published in early 2018 with the final proposals not due until October 2018.

Four public hearings are planned during October in Ballymena, Omagh, Belfast and Portadown to let voters have their say.

Mr Dodds urged voters to have their say.

" This fight is now about making sure their voice is heard and that they have strong representation when it comes to health, education and jobs - the bread and butter issues that matter to many people across the province," he said.

Commissions for England and Wales are due to report on September 13 and the proposals for Scotland are due mid-October.

A media consortium comprising the BBC, ITV News, Sky News and the Press Association has commissioned Professors Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher of the Elections Centre at Plymouth University to calculate a set of detailed "official" notional results showing how the new parliamentary constituencies might have behaved if they had been in place at the 2015 general election.

These calculations, which can only be completed once the final proposals are known, will form the baseline for reporting 2020 general election results and statistics.
A Northern Ireland principal who sparked a revolt among parents when she introduced a tough school uniform policy has backed a "Gestapo headmaster" facing a similar row in England.

Kathleen O'Hare, who caused uproar when she was accused by parents in 2012 of calling her own pupils "sluts and scruffs", admitted that she could have done things differently.

But she added that her tough line in ensuring pupils wore the correct uniform would teach them lessons that would benefit them throughout life.

Her admission came after furious parents descended on the Hartsdown Academy in Margate, Kent, this week to protest against its strict dress code.

Police had to quell the crowd outside the school, whose headmaster, Matthew Tate, has adopted a zero-tolerance policy for incorrect uniforms.

Mrs O'Hare, principal of Hazelwood Integrated College in Newtownabbey, said that uniforms were essential in helping to foster school pride and maintain discipline.

"It gives a perception of the school in the community, and 30 years of experience in education has taught me that if a child is wearing the correct uniform, they're probably keeping to the other rules as well," she added.

"You can't run a school in the same way you'd run your house with two or three children.

"Sometimes, loving and caring for your schoolchildren is about a standard of discipline that tells the children that you care about them and their actions. It's a small thing, but the longer you're in education, you realise that if a child is breaking one rule, they're probably breaking three others."

The principal also claimed that sticking to the proper uniform would help prepare students for employment and job interviews in later life.

Mrs O'Hare said: "It's hard to get work in Northern Ireland and we want the students to be able to get the very best work experience and opportunities. It's not because I want to be evil to them and tell them they're not allowed to wear skinny jeans."

Deputy principal Maurice Fitzsimons said that the rules had also led to a drop in littering and graffiti in the school.

He likened it to the famous 'Broken Windows' policing theory in New York, which helped police achieve an unheralded drop in crime through focusing on small offences such as begging.

Mrs O'Hare, who is in her fifth year as head of Hazelwood Integrated, courted controversy in 2012 when she took over as principal for the under-performing north Belfast school.

She introduced a new uniform and strict rules over hairstyles and make-up, allegedly telling pupils: "This is not a school for sluts or scruffs".

Mrs O'Hare denied the allegations, but admitted that she started off on the wrong foot with parents.

"The first year (of) being a head teacher isn't easy because coming in they'll want to bring a certain standard of their philosophy and their rules," she said.

"You don't take up the role lightly. Invariably during the first year of headship, there's always a crisis where their notion of how they should run the school fits in the school.

"It would be much easier for any principal to just turn a blind eye. It actually takes more out of teachers to correct children."

Mrs O'Hare pointed to the school's recent exam results, in which 87% of pupils achieved five or more GCSEs at grades A*-C - the highest in the school's history - as evidence that her policies had worked.

She said she believed the parents protesting at the Hartsdown Academy were a vocal minority and that the silent majority of mothers and fathers were likely supportive of the new standards.

"I wouldn't be surprised if next year the school is over-subscribed," Mrs O'Hare added.

Year 13 students at Hazelwood Integrated also spoke out to back Hartsdown Academy's uniform policy. Andrew Mullan said: "I definitely think the Margate headmaster was within his rights. It's kind of unfair to those who do make an effort to be presentable for those other students to be allowed to come in not looking as well.

"He made it quite clear - he sent a note out with uniform requirements showing what needed to be worn. The parents knew, but just didn't seem willing to make an effort to enforce it."

Emma Jackson added: "I remember I forgot my tie a while ago and was freaking out. It's important to set an example.

"You just get up and wear your uniform, it's not one of the hardest things to do."
Alan Black, the sole survivor of the Kingsmill attack, was shot 18 times.

Police believe a palm print found on a vehicle used during the 1976 Kingsmill massacre belongs to a suspect arrested last month, a coroner's court has been told.

The claim was made after a lawyer acting for the families of some of those killed called for clarity on the contentious issue during a preliminary hearing at Belfast's Laganside court complex.

Barrister Peter Coll, representing the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), said: " The person arrested is the person that police believe is the palm print."

The arrest of a 59-year-old man in Newry, Co Down, came two months after police announced the major forensic breakthrough in the long unsolved case.

Mr Coll told Belfast Coroner's Court: "I can confirm that on August 5 detectives from the PSNI's legacy investigation branch investigating Kingsmill arrested a 59-year-old man on suspicion of murder and attempted murder.

"He was arrested and questioned on the palm print that there have been some discussions about in the past.

"He was released on August 6 pending a report to the PPS (Public Prosecution Service).

"The matter rests with the PPS at the minute."

Ten Protestant workmen were gunned down when their minibus was ambushed in rural south Armagh on January 5, 1976 in an attack seen as a reprisal for loyalist killings in the same area.

Those on board were asked their religion and the only Catholic was ordered to run away.

The killers, who had been hidden in the hedges, forced the rest of the textile factory workers to line up outside the van before opening fire.

Only Alan Black survived despite being hit 18 times.

The getaway vehicle was left abandoned across the Irish border and the palm print was discovered later.

Following re-examination by forensic scientists in May, a potential match was found on the police's database - a week after a fresh inquest into the incident opened.

Details of exactly how the discovery was made are expected to be given during private briefings between police and the Kingsmill families next week, the court heard.

Judge Brian Sherrard, who is presiding over the new inquest, said he had written to Northern Ireland's director of public prosecutions regarding the recent arrest.

He said: "I would be optimistic of a relatively quick decision by the PPS but nothing has appeared as yet."

The coroner also stressed he was keen for the case to progress.

He said: "I am particularly anxious to get the evidence heard in this case."

Meanwhile, it also emerged that Judge Sherrard has been asked to consider calling author Toby Harnden as a witness.

The inquest has been adjourned until Monday when two days have been set aside to deal with sensitive material in the high-profile case.

Afterwards Colin Worton, whose brother Kenneth was among those shot dead, said he welcomed the clarification surrounding the palm print.

He said: "We got a bit more out of the hearing than we thought we would.

"Now we know who the police believe the palm print belongs to."
The scene on Great Victoria Street in Belfast City Centre on Thursday morning. Picture by Jonathan Porter/Press Eye

The scene on Great Victoria Street in Belfast City Centre on Thursday morning. Picture by Jonathan Porter/Press Eye

The scene on Great Victoria Street in Belfast City Centre on Thursday morning. Picture by Jonathan Porter/Press Eye

The scene on Great Victoria Street in Belfast City Centre on Thursday morning. Picture by Jonathan Porter/Press Eye

Police at the scene of the incident on Belfast's Great Victoria Street early yesterday. A defibrillator can be seen on the ground

Gerard McMahon, who died after CS spray was used in a bid to restrain him

The family of a man who died after police used CS spray in a bid to restrain him during a "violent" incident in Belfast city centre have called for a "thorough and swift investigation".

The man has been named locally as Gerard McMahon.

The west Belfast man was allegedly involved in an altercation with a number of taxi drivers on Great Victoria Street at around 5am yesterday morning when police attempted to arrest him.

He is not believed to have been armed and no weapons were recovered from the scene.

According to eyewitnesses, the man was dressed only in his underwear and had been behaving erratically.

CS spray was used by an officer during a struggle with the man, who then became ill.

Officers administered first aid at the scene of the incident until paramedics arrived.

A defibrillator was used as it was suspected the man had suffered a heart attack.

His mother and father, Gerard and Ella, said they wanted space to grieve.

"Our family are grieving for our son and brother Gerard and are calling on the Police Ombudsman's office to carry out a thorough and swift investigation into the circumstances of his death."

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The Police Ombudsman said: "The man who became unwell during an incident involving police officers in Belfast City Centre has died.

"The incident, during which police officers used CS spray against the man, is currently being investigated by the Police Ombudsman's office."

Among those paying tribute on social media was Terri-Lee McMahon, who wrote: "Thinking of my daddy and the McMahon family on the loss of Gerard. RIP."

Emma McMahon, wrote on Facebook: "Can't believe my cousin... never know what's round the corner."

Robert Fitzsimons wrote: "Shocking news to say the least. RIP Geraldo McMahon. One of the good guys. No one would ever deserve that!"

And Casey Sesh Travers wrote: "RIP Geraldo McMahon. May God put his arms around. You could never have met a nicer person! DJ Mako - so sad."

Sinn Fein MLA Gerry Kelly said he was shocked to learn of the death. "My thoughts are with his family at this tragic time," he added. "I have been in touch with senior police about the circumstances which led to Gerard being rushed to hospital."

"The Ombudsman has already launched an investigation into the detention of Gerard McMahon. That investigation must be thorough so that his grieving family get the full facts as quickly as possible."

Alliance councillor Emmet McDonough Brown tweeted: "Heartbreaking to hear of the death of Gerard McMahon. Such a tragic, tragic case. Thoughts with family and friends."

Chief Superintendent Chris Noble said: "Police wish to pass on our condolences to the family of the deceased.

"We will fully cooperate with the Police Ombudsman's inquiry and at this stage it would not be appropriate for the Police Service to comment further."

Officers believe that prior to the incident Mr McMahon may have taken the prescription drug Lyrica, also known as 'bud'. A police source told the Belfast Telegraph: "The detained person appeared to be high on drugs when officers arrived at the scene.

"He is believed to have taken Pregabline (Lyrica).

"CS spray was used when he kept fighting with officers. He is then suspected of taking a heart attack during the struggle."

Police Ombudsman investigators were at the scene yesterday to gather evidence and have also started to review CCTV footage of the incident.

Senior investigating officer Paul Murphy said the Ombudsman's office was informed by police at 6.30am yesterday that they had responded to a male who had been in an altercation with a number of taxi drivers outside the Grand Opera House.

Mr Murphy said a number of witnesses had come forward.

However, he also appealed for anyone else who may have been at the scene to contact the Ombudsman's office.

"This is now a Police Ombudsman investigation, so the Police Ombudsman's Office will now take primacy and we'll conduct an independent investigation into the circumstances surrounding the arrest and also the condition of the male in question," he added.

Irritant spray, also called CS spray or Pava spray, is used on a fairly frequent basis by officers and is one of the items in the standard police toolkit.

Exposure to the gas causes a burning sensation and significant tearing of the eyes to the extent that the subject cannot keep them open and is thus often incapacitated.
Carwyn Jones, right, warned Theresa May against making negotiations a two-way dialogue between Brussels and London

The UK risks breaking up unless all home nations play a hands-on role in the Brexit negotiations, Wales's First Minister Carwyn Jones has warned.

This week Prime Minister Theresa May has vowed she will not be giving a "running commentary" on her Government's plans about leaving the European Union.

Welsh Labour leader Mr Jones believes that talks will fail if they just end up being a two-way dialogue between Brussels and London.

The former barrister, who is on a trade mission in the US, will speak about Britain's vote to leave the EU at a speech in Chicago later.

He is expected to say: "Wales and the other devolved nations must play a full and active role in the negotiations to leave the EU, to ensure our interests are fully protected.

"Cardiff, Edinburgh and Belfast must also have seats at the table.

"Whatever deal is finally negotiated, its acceptance should be subject to the support of the four Parliaments that now legislate for the UK.

"There can be no return to the old constitutional status quo, where the United Kingdom was one of the most centralised states in the developed world.

"We have to embrace the new reality with fresh constitutional thinking if our British Union is to survive the new tensions created by EU exit.

"Unless we take this seriously, nothing - up to and including the break-up of the UK into its component parts - would be inconceivable."

Earlier this week, Mrs May insisted the UK could become a global leader in free trade once the country had left the EU.

But the Conservative leader said Britain should not reveal its hand prematurely about the process and any possible trade deals - including details of its preliminary discussions with Australia.

The desire to keep the country's cards close its chest has prompted criticism from political rivals - including Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon.

The SNP leader expressed concern of there being a "cloud of secrecy" around the UK Government's Brexit negotiations plans and called for greater transparency.

Now Wales's First Minister Mr Jones is to make similar calls when he addresses an audience at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

He is expected to say that his Government will not give consent to any Brexit deal unless the UK secures continued access to the European single market.

"It is absolutely vital that when we leave the EU, the United Kingdom must retain access to the single market," he will say.

"Without that guarantee, we risk inflicting needless economic harm on our country, and on our citizens."
Former Miss Northern Ireland Zoe Salmon is heartbroken after the death of her mother, Priscilla, the woman she once described as "the best" mum of all.

Mrs Salmon died on Tuesday and her funeral will be held tomorrow in Bangor.

In 2013, former BBC Blue Peter presenter Zoe (36) paid a moving compliment to the mother she was so close to.

"All mums are my heroes," Zoe said. "Everyone always says the same about their mum - but mine is the best.

"What I love about my mum is that she is the opposite of me - she is very quiet and patient.

"I'm always on the go and it is so refreshing that she is so normal. She is a real breath of fresh air. Everyone says I look like my mum - and in fact, we're sometimes taken for sisters."

Funeral notices in today's paper paid tribute to Mrs Salmon. "God saw the road was getting rough, the hills were hard to climb, He gently closed her eyes and whispered, 'peace be thine," read a heartfelt notice placed by the grieving Salmon family circle, including husband Joe, Zoe, her brother Julian and sisters Lara and Naomi.

The funeral service for the late Mrs Salmon will take place at Clarke's Funeral Church, Newtownards Road, Bangor, tomorrow at 1pm. Burial will take place afterwards in Blaris New Cemetery, Lisburn.

Zoe has also talked about how she loved spending Christmas in Bangor surrounded by family as a child. "They were special times indeed and the magic of Christmas and New Year, spent as a little Salmon are among the most precious memories I have and hold on to, with the greatest of love and affection towards my incredible parents, who made all my dreams come true."

When Zoe, who has a law degree from Queen's, got the job as a Blue Peter presenter in 2004, her mother said that although she had hoped her daughter would become a solicitor, "this is something she wanted to do from she was a little girl (and) we are all very proud of her."

Zoe hit the headlines earlier this year when she eloped without telling her parents. But she said later that her mum would be "thrilled".
Lord Brooke raised concerns as he proposed reforms designed to replace the existing register of consultant lobbyists

Attempts by big business to influence politicians and Government policy is the "scandal that still never goes away", the Lords has heard.

Labour's Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe warned the public and others are "still in the dark" about who is seeking to sway the decision-makers, with the existing register of lobbyists a "very expensive exercise that serves no-one whatsoever".

He told peers around two people a day have visited the website hosting the register of consultant lobbyists over the past six months.

Around half of the 300,000 annual cost has been recouped from the lobbying industry in registration fees, Lord Brooke said.

Peers heard 136 firms have signed up - short of the 700-plus registrants hoped for by the Government.

Lord Brooke raised his concerns as he proposed reforms designed to replace the existing register of consultant lobbyists with a new register covering a wider range of lobbying activity, including in-house lobbyists.

Under his plan, lobbying activity would be regarded as a person - including peers, MPs and their staff, plus civil servants - arranging or making possible a meeting or communication with a public official on matters relating to specific parliamentary business or government activities.

A summary of what or who was being lobbied and an estimate of spending on such lobbying activity would also be among the details required.

A code of conduct for lobbyists would be created under the law, according to Lord Brooke's Lobbying (Transparency) Bill.

He told peers: "The last time that this topic of transparency and lobbying was discussed in this House, it took a back seat to what popularly became known as the 'gagging Bill', which was a surprise and unwelcome attack on the charity sector.

"As a consequence part one of the 2014 Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Act was given neither the time nor the attention it deserved and this Bill seeks to rectify that."

Lord Brooke went on: "Far from being the next big scandal to happen, as David Cameron described lobbying in 2010, it is the scandal that still never goes away.

"No party is immune and with every lobbying scandal, public trust in politics is eroded. We must seek to bring that to an end.

"The Government was warned that the incredibly narrow lobbying register it introduced last year would make no difference to this feeling of disillusion from politics.

"When it comes to seeing who is influencing decision-makers and for what, we and I - and I include parliamentarians in this - are still in the dark.

"The current register has been in operation for 18 months. It has failed abysmally.

"Three-quarters of the industry working in-house is exempt, and of the consultant lobbyists covered just 136 firms have signed-up - which is a long way from the 700-plus registrants which the Government, when they were pushing the Bill through, anticipated."

He bemoaned the lack of detail, adding: "It's little wonder that in the past six months the register has been viewed by the public a total of 363 times - which is just an average of two people visiting the website a day.

"For this, the system has so far cost over 500,000 with an annual cost just shy of 300,000 - only half of which is currently being recouped from the industry in registration fees, which currently stand at around 1,000 per firm per year.

"There can be no doubt that the current register is a very expensive exercise that serves no-one whatsoever."

Tory Lord Lansley, who during his time as a cabinet minister brought in the previous lobbying regulations, said the new proposals sought to include too many people.

He said: "We do end up, I'm afraid, with what seems to be legislation that says on this register we should have almost everyone, whenever they talk to almost anyone else in the public sector at all about any issue in any fashion.

"Now, this is not a small register. (Lord Brooke) in his legislation is proposing to go from a minimalist position to a maximalist position.

"I think I'd just contend to the House that in the course of debate on this legislation, whether or not it succeeds on this occasion, we can do a service by debating how far we move from the minimalist position but certainly reject a maximalist position.

"Because it seems to me the legislation (proposed by Lord Brooke) goes far too far."

Lord Brooke's Bill is highly unlikely to become law without Government support.
A young employee of The Flying Enterprise pub in Cork was told to stop speaking Irish at work because "this is an English-speaking business".

Cormac O Bruic, who comes from the Kerry Gaeltacht, explained that he had been working at the bar for eight months and used to chat to fellow members of staff in Irish before the owner told him to stop.

He was shouting at me and banging on the table, because I stood up to him and told him I wasnt going to stop. He told me then to go back to work, but I told him that I couldnt, Cormac told RTE Raidio na Gaeltachta yesterday. I couldnt go back working for that man after him saying that.

Cormac said that Irish was mainly spoken among staff but that they would speak Irish to customers if they had it.

Lots of customers would tell us that it was lovely to hear the language spoken, especially to hear young people using it in Cork, he said.

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In a statement to Raidio na Gaeltachta, owner Finbarr OShea that requiring staff to speak a certain language was similar to having a dress code for the pub. He stated that English is the working language at The Flying Enterprise because its a hospitality business.

In a letter to Cormac, his employer said he had had complaints from customers who said they couldnt understand the staff, but Cormac stated that he doubted customers couldnt understand him because he spoke English in the pub as well.

Cormac never returned to work despite that, saying In my mind I have to stand up for the language, I love it and that there are still people who dont want to hear the language at all, I cant understand it.
Immigration officials are investigating reports that a 20-day-old baby was smuggled into Britain in the back of a lorry.

The girl was among a group discovered at Watford Gap services on the M1, The Sun reported.

The newspaper said they had made the journey from Calais.

A Home Office spokesman said: "This incident is of concern and is under investigation.

"Would-be migrants need to be aware that they are putting their lives, and those of their loved ones, at risk by attempting to reach the UK illegally.

"That is why we have increased security and boosted technology used at border controls and are working with law enforcement at home and abroad to target the criminal gangs who are often behind such attempts."

The Home Office confirmed Northamptonshire Police alerted Immigration Enforcement to the discovery of 10 migrants in a vehicle at Watford Gap services on Tuesday.

It said nine presented themselves as being from Iraq and a 10th from Iran, adding that all of those on board the vehicle were being interviewed by immigration officers.
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said Britain has a 'fantastic opportunity to reaffirm how important the UK-Australia relationship is'

Boris Johnson has abandoned his referendum promise to push for Australian-style immigration reforms.

Prime Minister Theresa May made clear she believed the points system was the wrong move and the Foreign Secretary has fallen into line.

After a meeting between British and Australian ministers in London, Mr Johnson said the "crucial" point was to "take back control".

He said: "The crucial utensil that needs to be applied is, of course, control and you may remember there was a campaign on which the slogan was 'take back control'.

"That was the ambition."

Mr Johnson said a "glutinous harmony" had prevailed between the two countries during the annual Australia-UK ministerial meeting.

Australia is "keen" to do a free trade deal with the UK and the Cabinet minister said he was "very confident" that an outline agreement can be reached.

Australia's prime minister Malcolm Turnbull promised an ''early... very strong, very open'' agreement with Britain after meeting Theresa May last weekend.

But trade minister Steven Ciobo has described his country's historical tie with the UK as ''a relationship of yesteryear" and dampened hopes of a swift deal, insisting formal negotiations could not begin until the UK had finally left the EU.

"I'm very confident that we will be able to at least sketch out, pencil in, the essentials of a very progressive deal that will be good for Australia, good for the UK, good for Europe and good for the world," Mr Johnson said after talks with counterpart Julie Bishop.

The Foreign Secretary said it would be a "fantastic thing" if the UK had a "more sensible system" for dealing with migration between the UK and Australia.

"This is something where I think we can make progress and I'm confident that we will."

Mr Johnson called for the Commonwealth to be "put back in the primacy" of world affairs in the coming years.
New challenge: Gareth takes a selfie as he arrives at the Ulster Temple in east Belfast for recording

It has been Christmas for the past 18 months in the Malone household in London as musical maestro Gareth prepares for his latest project. In Belfast on a whistle-stop tour of the UK working with the best of British talent including Belfast Community Gospel Choir he explains his aim to create the ultimate feel good Christmas album.

"This has been something I have had a passion for a long time. I want to bring back the real magic of Christmas which should be all about loving your neighbours, letting bygones be bygones and just doing something nice for other people and communities coming together," says the 40-year-old, who has made choirs trendy again with programmes such as The Choir and The Naked Choir.

Gareth, who is married to teacher Becky (35) and dad to Esther (6) and Gilbert (3), says the kids have loved the constant Christmas music in the house over the last few months as he has prepared to create this festive album with a difference.

"It's Christmas all year round in our household as this has been a real labour of love for me.

"Dare I say it - Christmas is starting earlier and earlier every year," he jokes and I agree (looking around at the festive fun of BCGC's rehearsal room on the Ravenhill Road).

"It is becoming more and more commercialised and we are forgetting about what is really important - people and interacting with each other - and I wanted an album which brought those feelings to the fore.

"I wanted it to be something that people could play in the background while they were putting up their tree and rediscover the magic of Christmases gone by."

He admits his childhood experience has played a key part in this project.

"When I was younger my favourite thing about Christmas was going to see the nativity play, listening to choirs sing and going to the Christmas markets. I wanted to recreate that feeling.

"Every year I look around for that type of album to play in our house but I can't find what I am looking for, so I decided to make it," he says.

Gareth's dream is to produce 'The Best British Christmas' which will feature choirs from up and down the country, bell ringers, brass bands, children's choirs and even contributions from stars such as Ricky Wilson of the Kaiser Chiefs and The Voice, Fyfe Dangerfield, who founded indie band Guillemots, and Welsh harpist Catrin Finch.

And, of course, the contribution from The BCGC - who have a very specially selected part to play.

"I am always researching and looking for new choirs to work with. When I discovered the work of the Belfast Community Gospel Choir, I was blown away by their talent and I also loved their story. I love that this choir brings together different people from different political backgrounds and they all come together in perfect harmony.

"It seemed very appropriate that the choir sing - War Is Over, the John Lennon classic and something which is a poignant nod to the troubled past here in Northern Ireland.

"I know a lot of the big players bring out Christmas albums such as Rod Stewart and Cliff Richard, but I would like to think our album will be a strong contender and we will give them a run for their money."

No stranger to the number one spot, Gareth is perhaps best known for his work with the Military Wives, whose single Wherever You Are, reached number one in the charts in 2012.

"It was a real honour to work with the Military Wives. It was emotional as these were a group of ordinary women living their lives in extraordinary circumstances.

"I had wanted to do something for some time as there was a real drive to support the troops from home and I was contacted by a lady in a base and I thought - this is it, the time is right.

"These women are highly functioning, positive people.

"Their husbands are away serving and they are back home holding the fort and just getting on with every day life. The choir was a real release for them and such a success that there is now over 75 military choirs at bases all over the UK."

Gareth attributes one of the other highlights of his career to working with Prince Harry on the Invictus Choir which travelled to the Invictus Games earlier this year.

"This group of people who have come through so much trauma in their lives came together and gave this their all. It was very humbling and a great honour to be part of it and to be asked by Prince Harry to put a choir together under his instruction," he says.

"He didn't actually sing with us but he took a keen interest in what was going on."

With various musical projects on the go all the time Gareth describes his career as his dream job.

"If someone was to ask me to write down what I would like to do for a living it would be exactly what I am doing now. I am very blessed as I love it. I get to work with professional musicians and bring them together with people who are perhaps just singing in their shower as a hobby.

"It is amazing."

And it seems there could be hope for people like me, as Gareth says with more and more choirs springing up all over the UK there are even - can't sing, won't sing choirs for people who just want to have a laugh and be part of something.

"There is no doubt that being in a choir is good for your over-all wellbeing. There is a real feel good factor that comes with meeting up with other people and opening up and singing together. A real camaraderie develops and members feel like they belong and they are part of something.

"It is also good for breathing and produces happy endorphins."

But Gareth hasn't always been living his dream. A drama school student, he says it was difficult, after leaving, to find a job.

"Everyone knows you don't walk straight into a job from drama school and I did everything from working in an ice cream parlour to being an usher at the cinema.

"That was great and I got to see Toy Story about 45 times," he laughs.

Joking aside he started to do some youth work which ignited his passion for bringing people together and helping those disadvantaged in life, attributes which remain close to his heart to this day.

"I then studied singing at the Royal Academy of Music. Growing up I was always singing and there was always music playing in our house and I knew I wanted to work in the music industry.

"It is then that I was approached to do The Choir and the rest as they say is history."

Gareth admits that balancing his career with family life isn't always easy.

On the day of this interview, Esther, his young daughter, has had her first day at school and Gareth has been anxiously waiting on a phone call all day to see how she got on.

"A lot of my work is at night as that is when choirs meet and I can be away from home for weeks at a time," he says. "I do miss them terribly but on the flip side there are times when I am not working and I get to be at home for long periods.

"After this project is over, for example I plan to take about a three-month sabbatical."

And what will he do to relax?

"Play the piano of course," he adds.

And he assures me even though it has constantly felt like Christmas in his house for year and a half he won't be cancelling the big day.

"The children are at that lovely age when they are starting to understand more about it and they are super excited about Santa," he says.

"Hopefully everyone will put their tree up this year to our album.

"It features everything from traditional carols, to modern songs and even songs I have written especially for it."

The Best British Christmas CD featuring the BCGC will be available to buy from December 2

Superfans hitting the high notes with Gareth

Teacher Sarah Rooney (34) from Ballygowan. She says:

"I am super excited about taking part in this album as I am a real fan of Gareth Malone. I have watched all his programmes and think he is fantastic and really talented. He is the only man who could get me to wear a Christmas jumper in September. I joined BCGC two years ago as I was looking for some more balance in my life. I love it."

Joyce McCullough (52), a bank worker, lives in Belfast. She says:

"I think this is a fantastic and very exciting project to be involved with. I joined the choir seven years ago when I was going through a pretty traumatic time. The choir got me out of the house and boosted my confidence and I felt better about things. It really turned my life around."

Paula Bacon (45) from Belfast is a special needs classroom assistant. She says:

"Four years ago I was offered free tickets to go and see one of the choir's shows. I cried all night it was so emotional. I went for an audition and it has completely changed my life.

I have made so many friends and there is such a wonderful feeling singing - we are always on a high after each concert. I have also been to American twice with the choir."

Jenny Russell (38) is a university lecturer from Belfast. She says:

"I have two young children and work was busy and home was busy. I was looking for something that was just about 'me' time. I find the choir so uplifting and I get a real feel good factor from it.

I have made so many strong friendships from the choir. It is fantastic."
Police said it was "a despicable attack on a very elderly lady"

An independent 101-year-old woman who was violently mugged outside her home has said she is now "afraid" and called her attacker a "wicked man".

Alexteen Roberts was followed on her way back from a prayer meeting and pushed to the ground, punched in the ribs, then had her handbag with 300 inside stolen.

The suspect pretended he was a council worker, saying he was there to fix her electrics before the assault in Tottenham, north London, on August 23.

Grandson Ashley Aitcheson, 31, who was inside the house, said he heard his grandmother shouting in "distress" at around 5pm and raced out in his boxer shorts and bare feet.

He managed to punch the robber and break his aviator sunglasses during the chase but said he "knew all the little side streets" and managed to get away.

Mrs Roberts, whose 101st birthday was on Wednesday, said: "I'm a bit shaky. When I'm coming in the house now I'm afraid because of this wicked man."

Grand-daughter Jacqueline McIntosh said she has complained to police because she feels the investigation has not progressed and was told by a detective the case had "slipped through the net".

She said the family now have to take shifts to be in the house with her grandmother as "being attacked like that changes things".

She said Mrs Roberts did her own shopping and travelled around the city herself, adding: "She's become a bit unsteady now. A lot of other old people live in this area and they have become concerned."

Mrs Roberts was taken to hospital as a precaution and escaped serious injury but suffered bruised ribs. Mr Aitcheson said the man looked like "a drunk" was white, around 35, with baggy clothes and a beard.

He added that the attacker was fiddling with his belt "like he had a weapon" and dropped a car key which was passed on to police. Mrs Roberts is a Seventh-day Adventist and had been at her church on Holloway Road, Islington.

Detective Chief Inspector Luke Marks said: "This was a despicable attack on a very elderly lady who lived independently and is now fearful to return home.

"She is naturally extremely distressed and shaken by what happened and we are appealing for help to catch his man before he targets someone else."

The attacker was last seen heading north towards Seven Sisters Road.
Dozens of tourists, including three children, have all been rescued after being trapped overnight in cable cars dangling above the slopes of Mont Blanc in the Alps.

Their return to land ended an extraordinarily complex and vertiginous rescue effort over two days amid the spectacular but dangerous landscape of Western Europe's tallest mountains.

The last passengers were brought down on Friday morning, after emergency workers managed to untangle cables that had jammed on Thursday, according to the mayor of the French town of Chamonix.

With the cables now straightened, the cable cars were able to resume their journey on Friday, at very slow speeds and under close surveillance, and delivered the passengers to the nearest ground stations, mayor Eric Fournier said. The passengers were then flown by helicopter to Chamonix and the Italian town of Courmayeur.

The ordeal began on Thursday afternoon, when cables on the Panoramic Mont Blanc cable car service got twisted, trapping 110 people in a string of cars at 3,800 metres altitude.

French and Italian helicopters flew in rescuers who dropped down on cables onto the tops of the cars, and lifted out passengers one by one.

"The extent of this rescue operation is simply unbelievable," said Colonel Frederic Labrunye, commander of the provincial gendarmerie group of Haute-Savoie.

"By the volume of people to rescue - we rarely rescue 110 people at the same time in high mountain - and by the environment in which it happens... in the heart of one of the largest glaciers in Europe, over a distance of 5km of cable with 36 cabins."

Helicopters had to carefully fly over the cables, which is risky itself, then lower a rescuer on to an area "not larger than a table", strap on passengers one by one and extract them, he said, describing it as "air surgery".

Then fog descended and darkness started to fall, and authorities called off the helicopter rescue.

So they switched to "Plan B," Mr Fournier said.

Mountain guides identified the cable cars closest to the ground, and used climbing ropes to carry passengers to the surface of the glacier below, one by one.

From there, rescuers brought the passengers by foot to the nearest mountain station.

Fournier said 65 people were rescued overall on Thursday, and another 12 were brought down overnight using "Plan B".

The remaining 33 people were in cable cars too high off the ground, so they stayed overnight. They included a seven-year-old and nine-year-old from Korea and a 10-year-old Italian child.

"They didn't get a lot of sleep, it was a strange experience, but they were warm under blankets and with their families," Mr Fournier said.

Five rescuers stayed overnight in the cable cars and provided blankets, food and water to help weather the chilly mountain night-time conditions.

Kathy Cook, a tourist from Michigan who was carried down to the ground by a rescuer after almost 10 hours aloft, called it "really quite an experience".

"The helicopter rescue failed because the fog moved in, so we had to just wait and then they decided they could belay us safely to the ground, and we walked up the glacier to the hut," she said upon arrival in Courmayeur.

The cable car, which offers spectacular up-close views of Western Europe's tallest mountains and deep valleys below, connects the Aiguille de Midi peak in France, at 12,605ft (3,842m) , to Pointe Helbronner in Italy, at 11,358ft (3,462m).

AP
Abu Omar Saraqib was the commander of the alliance leading the fight in Aleppo (AP)

Syria's rebranded al Qaida affiliate says a senior commander who led military operations in the ravaged city of Aleppo has been killed in an air strike.

A Twitter account for Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra, said the commander of the alliance leading the fight in Aleppo was killed in an air strike in the province's rural areas.

It does not say who carried out the air strike against the commander, who goes by the name Abu Omar Saraqib, or when it happened.

The US-led coalition, Russia and Syrian government planes have been conducting air strikes against militant groups.

Jabhat al-Nusra recently changed its name, saying it was delinking with al Qaida central command, but the move was seen as a way to avoid being targeted.

Moscow and Washington have been discussing co-ordinating targeting militants in Syria.

AP
President Barack Obama has condemned North Korea's latest nuclear test, saying the US would never accept the country as a nuclear power.

North Korea said it conducted a "higher level" nuclear test explosion that will allow it to finally build an array of stronger, smaller and lighter nuclear weapons. It was the North's fifth atomic test and the second in eight months.

South Korea's president said the detonation, which Seoul estimated was the North's biggest-ever in explosive yield, was an act of "fanatic recklessness" and a sign that leader Kim Jong Un "is spiralling out of control".

North Korea's boast of a technologically game-changing nuclear test defied both tough international sanctions and long-standing diplomatic pressure to curb its nuclear ambitions.

It will raise serious worries in many world capitals that North Korea has moved another step closer to its goal of a nuclear-armed missile that could one day strike the US mainland.

Seoul vowed to boost psychological warfare efforts by increasing the number of propaganda loudspeakers along the rivals' border, the world's most heavily armed, and the number of hours of anti-North Korean broadcasts.

Hours after South Korea noted unusual seismic activity near North Korea's north-eastern nuclear test site, the North said in its state-run media that a test had "finally examined and confirmed the structure and specific features of movement of... a nuclear warhead that has been standardised to be able to be mounted on strategic ballistic rockets."

"The standardisation of the nuclear warhead will enable (North Korea) to produce at will and as many as it wants a variety of smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear warheads of higher strike power," North Korea said.

"This has definitely put on a higher level (the North's) technology of mounting nuclear warheads on ballistic rockets."

North Korea, led by a third-generation dictatorship and wary of outsiders, protects its nuclear programme as a closely guarded state secret, and the claims about advancements made in its testing could not be independently verified. But they centre on a technological mystery that has long bedevilled outside experts: How far has North Korea got in efforts to consistently shrink down nuclear warheads so they can fit on long-range missiles?

South Korea's main spy agency told politicians in a closed-door briefing after the test that it does not think North Korea currently has the ability to develop nuclear weapons that can be mounted on ballistic missiles, but intelligence officials expressed worries that the North's efforts to do so are progressing more quickly than previously thought, said Mr Kim Byungkee, a politician from the opposition Minjoo Party.

South Korean president Park Geun-hye strongly condemned the test, saying in a statement that it showed the "fanatic recklessness of the Kim Jong Un government as it clings to nuclear development".

She told a meeting of top security officials on Friday night that, "We have to believe that Kim Jong Un's mental state is spiralling out of control because he is not listening to any words from the international community or neighbouring countries in his attempt to cling to power."

Mr Obama condemned the nuclear test "in the strongest possible terms as a grave threat to regional security".

"The United States does not, and never will, accept North Korea as a nuclear state," he said in a statement.

"Today's nuclear test, a flagrant violation of multiple UN Security Council resolutions, makes clear North Korea's disregard for international norms and standards for behaviour and demonstrates it has no interest in being a responsible member of the international community."

South Korea's weather agency said the explosive yield of the North Korean blast would have been 10 to 12 kilotons, or 70 to 80% of the force of the 15-kiloton atomic bomb the United States dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945. The North's fourth test was an estimated six kilotons.

North Korea said no radioactive material leaked, but the explosion put the region on edge.

Chinese state media said the nation's environmental protection agency started nuclear radiation monitoring. Japanese planes began to collect air samples from national air space to analyze possible radioactive materials. Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike said Japan's capital city is also testing water samples and monitoring radiation levels in the air.

In the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, residents were delighted.

"It's really great news," said Rim Jong Su, 42. "Now, I am full of confidence that if the enemies make any little provocations we will make a counter attack and we will surely win."

The 5.0 magnitude seismic event on Friday is the largest of the four past quakes associated with North Korean nuclear tests, according to South Korea's weather agency. Artificial seismic waves measuring 3.9 were reported after North Korea's first nuclear test in 2006; 4.8 was reported from its fourth test this January.

North Korean leader Mr Kim has overseen a robust increase in the number and kinds of missiles tested this year. Not only has the range of the weapons jumped significantly, but the country is working to perfect new platforms for launching them - submarines and mobile launchers - giving the North greater ability to threaten the tens of thousands of US troops stationed throughout Asia.

North Korea has fired a total of 33 ballistic missiles since Mr Kim took power in 2011, Seoul's Defence Ministry said. In comparison, North Korea fired 16 ballistic missiles during the 17-year rule of Kim's father, Kim Jong Il.

The seismic activity comes on the 68th anniversary of the founding of North Korea's government and just days after world leaders gathered in China for the G20 summit.

The test will lead to a strong push for new, tougher sanctions at the United Nations and further worsen already abysmal relations between North Korea and its neighbours. The North is already one of the most heavily sanctioned places on Earth, and many question whether the penalties work.

China opposed North Korea's nuclear test, a key denunciation by the North's economic lifeline and only major ally.

North Korea likely wanted to show the world that strong international sanctions following its fourth nuclear test and long-range rocket launch earlier this year have not discouraged its efforts to advance its nuclear weapon and missile programmes, according to Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea expert at Seoul's Dongguk University.

North Korea's persistent pursuit of missiles and nuclear weapons has long been one of the most intractable foreign policy problems for US administrations.

Diplomacy has so far failed. Six-nation negotiations on dismantling North Korea's nuclear programme in exchange for aid were last held in late 2008 and fell apart in early 2009.

The Korean Peninsula remains technically at war, as the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.

AP
The cover of Norway's Aftenposten as editor-in-chief Espen Egil Hansen wrote an open letter to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (Cornelius Poppe, NTB scanpix/AP)

Facebook has reversed its decision to remove postings of an iconic 1972 image of a naked, screaming girl running from a napalm attack in Vietnam, after a Norwegian revolt against the tech giant.

Protests in Norway started last month after Facebook deleted the Pulitzer Prize-winning image by Associated Press photographer Nick Ut from a Norwegian author's page, saying it violated its rules on nudity.

The revolt escalated on Friday when Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg posted the image on her profile and Facebook deleted that too.

Initially, it stood by the decision, saying it was difficult to create a distinction between allowing a photograph of a nude child in one instance and not others. But late on Friday it said it would allow sharing of the photo.

"In this case, we recognise the history and global importance of this image in documenting a particular moment in time," Facebook said in a statement.

"Because of its status as an iconic image of historical importance, the value of permitting sharing outweighs the value of protecting the community by removal, so we have decided to reinstate the image on Facebook where we are aware it has been removed."

Politicians on all sides, journalists and regular Norwegians had backed Ms Solberg's decision to share the image.

The prime minister told broadcaster NRK she was pleased with Facebook's change of heart and that it shows social media users' opinions matter.

"To speak up and say we want change, it matters and it works. And that makes me happy," she said.

The image shows screaming children running from a burning Vietnamese village. The little girl in in the centre of the frame, Kim Phuc, is naked and crying as napalm melts away layers of her skin.

"Today, pictures are such an important element in making an impression, that if you edit past events or people, you change history and you change reality," Ms Solberg said earlier, adding it was the first time one of her Facebook posts was deleted.

Ms Solberg later reposted the image with a black box covering the girl from the thighs up. She also posted other iconic photos of historic events, such as the man standing in front of a tank in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989, with black boxes covering the protagonists.

Several members of the Norwegian government followed Ms Solberg's lead and posted the photo on their Facebook pages. One of them, Education Minister Torbjorn Roe Isaksen, said it was "an iconic photo, part of our history".

Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten published the photo on its front page on Friday and also wrote an open letter to Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg in which chief editor Espen Egil Hansen accused the social media giant of abusing its power.

Mr Hansen said he was "upset, disappointed - well, in fact even afraid - of what you are about to do to a mainstay of our democratic society".

The uproar also spread outside of Norway, with the head of Denmark's journalism union urging people to share Mr Hansen's open letter.

Germany's Justice Minister Heiko Maas, who has previously clashed with Facebook over its failure to remove hate speech deemed illegal in Germany, also weighed in, saying "illegal content should vanish from the internet, not photos that move the whole world".

Facebook's statement said it will adjust its review mechanisms to permit sharing of the image going forward.

"We are always looking to improve our policies to make sure they both promote free expression and keep our community safe, and we will be engaging with publishers and other members of our global community on these important questions going forward," it said.

AP
Police officers stand guard as they take part in a raid in Boussy-Saint-Antoine, east of Paris (AP)

A cell of young women behind a thwarted attack near Notre Dame Cathedral were radicalised by the Islamic State group and guided by commanders in Syria, the Paris prosecutor said.

Francois Molins spoke during a press conference a day after three women were dramatically arrested, including a teen whose father owned a car loaded with gas canisters that was abandoned in central Paris. No detonators were in the car, discovered on Sunday morning.

The women who spearheaded the failed plot included a 19-year-old whose written pledge of allegiance to the Islamic State group was found by police, a security official said on Friday.

The teen, Ines Madani, stabbed a police officer with a knife and was shot in the leg on Thursday evening in a raid south of Paris, police said.

One of the women detained in a police raid, referred to as Sarah H and who was wearing a veil during the police raid, was betrothed separately to two French extremists who carried out deadly attacks this year, the Paris prosecutor said.

Sarah H was engaged to Larossi Abballa, who killed two police officials in Magnanville in June and filmed the aftermath on Facebook Live before dying in a police raid.

She was also betrothed to Adel Kermiche, who slit the throat of an elderly French priest during morning Mass, and died in July, Molins added.

Mr Molins did not say when she was engaged to either man.

France's interior minister described the pursuit as "a race against time" to find Madani and the two women with her before they struck. Another of the women had been engaged to the extremist who killed two French police officials earlier this year before he was shot to death, two officials said.

A man arrested on Thursday also had ties to the dead jihadi, Larossi Abballa, who filmed himself on Facebook Live pledging allegiance to IS as he sat in the home of the couple he had killed, one of the officials said.

"There's a group that has been annihilated, but there are others," French president Francois Hollande said on Friday. "Information we were able to get from our intelligence services allowed us to act before it was too late."

One of the security officials said French authorities found a note on Madani declaring allegiance to the extremist group, which has called on followers to attack France. The official said Madani was taken to hospital.

Another official, who also cannot be identified when speaking about the investigation, said Madani had pulled a knife during the raid outside a small apartment building near the Boussy-Saint-Antoine train station.

In video filmed by a neighbor, a veiled woman, her face uncovered, is seen being carried away by police as she cries out "Allahu Akbar" or "God is the Greatest" in Arabic.

Five women and two men have been arrested in the case.

The car loaded with gas cylinders belonged to Madani's father, who flagged her to police on Sunday 14 hours after the vehicle was discovered. Since then, authorities have worked frantically to untangle the relationships among the group and thwart what they increasingly feared was another plot.

More than one-third of the nearly 700 French citizens who have reached the war zones of Iraq and Syria are women, according to government figures. And officials have said for months that those being recruited by Islamic State in France are increasingly adolescent girls and young women.

Security around Paris was visibly higher on Friday as the investigation widened.

A bomb squad, sniffer dogs and a scanner were deployed when a gas canister with a timer but no detonator was found outside a police station on Friday morning in the suburb town of La Plaine Saint Denis, just north of Paris, and near the Stade de France in Saint-Denis, a local police official said.

In a sign of fraying nerves, the son of a gas delivery driver was briefly detained because he had canisters in his car. Elsewhere, police in Paris used explosives to disable an illegally parked motorcycle.

Explosive gas canisters filled with nails were the weapon used in bomb attacks by Algerian extremists on Paris in the 1990s.

AP
Talks between John Kerry and Sergey Lavrov are aiming to produce a nationwide ceasefire in Syria

The US and Russia have announced a breakthrough agreement on Syria that foresees a nationwide ceasefire starting early next week.

The ceasefire will be followed by an unlikely new military partnership between the rival governments targeting Islamic State and al Qaida.

At a joint news conference after a marathon day of negotiations, US secretary of state John Kerry said the plan can reduce violence in Syria and lead to a long-sought political transition, ending more than five years of bloodshed.

He called the deal a potential "turning point" in the conflict, if implemented by Syria's Russian-backed government and US-supported rebel groups.

The ceasefire begins at sundown Monday, Mr Kerry said, coinciding with the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday.

His negotiating partner, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, confirmed the agreement and said it could help expand the counter-terrorism fight and aid deliveries to Syrian civilians.

He said Syrian president Bashar Assad's government is prepared to comply with the arrangement.

AP
Other cultures honour the homelands of their national poets. In Northern Ireland, we build a huge road through them. It has just been announced that a 160m dual carriageway, part of the new A6 between Toomebridge and Castledawson, will slice through the townlands of Anahorish and Mossbawn.

These are the lands where Seamus Heaney, the only winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature to be born in Northern Ireland, spent his childhood. In spirit and in imagination, he never really left them.

The deep pull of the landscape around Bellaghy is intensely felt through so many of Heaney's poems, especially the early ones: Blackberry-Picking, Death of a Naturalist, and The Strand at Lough Beg, in which he described the "lowland clays and waters of Lough Beg, Church Island's spire, its soft treeline of yew".

He called Anahorish "My place of clear water, the first hill in the world", and spoke of shiny grass and darkened cobbles, the way the lamps swung through the yards on the winter evenings.

"It wasn't just a desiccated memory," said the late poet's son, Michael. "It was a living place and that is important he left there as a child, but he was writing about it 50 years later."

Now, vast expanses of Tarmac, together with the roar and fumes of fast-moving traffic - thousands of vehicles a day - will cut an ignorant, stinking swathe through those quiet boglands.

Some will say that it doesn't matter, that you can't let a few forgotten old fields get in the way of economic progress.

I say that these people are philistines, with the crude instincts of hucksters and corner-boys. We are regrettably over-endowed with them in this country, especially among the political classes.

It would matter less if Heaney's works were not so intimately connected with the landscape from which they sprung, or if Heaney himself were not our own great poet, a man of deep insight and luminous, humane vision.

But they are, and he was. Indeed, as a petition drawn up to protest against the new road scheme points out: "The argument for preservation has taken on a new resonance after the poet's death: it is imperative now, more than ever before, that we protect this site of great cultural heritage".

The campaign to re-route the road is supported by many important literary and cultural voices such as Edna and Michael Longley, Bernard O'Donoghue, Colm Toibin, Roy Foster and Stephen Rea.

Here's the thing: people travel to these lands to connect with Heaney's words in the same way that they go to Hyndford Street in east Belfast to search for the strange mysticism that spoke to Van Morrison.

So what does it say about us, as a society, that we so willingly trash what is unique and beautiful and precious, in favour of getting from one place to another a few seconds faster?

The official who made the decision to send a dirty great motorway through the Heaney homelands is Chris Hazzard, the Sinn Fein Infrastructure Minister.

This is significant because members of Sinn Fein have been noticeably keen to champion Heaney and his legacy, to claim him for their own - some with more convincing sincerity than others.

Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams called Heaney a "national treasure". Well, he would. But Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness seems to be a more genuine admirer of the man and his poetry. Can't he have a word in his junior colleague's ear and get him to find another way?

Heaney himself protested against the plans for the road back in 2007, expressing his fear that it would be "a wound on the ecology" of the place.

And the fact is that there are a number of other clearly determined alternatives for the location of the dual carriageway.

There is nothing necessary or indeed inevitable about the current plan, if enough of us raise our voices against it.

Later this month, a new 4.25m arts centre, known as HomePlace, dedicated to the life and works of Seamus Heaney, will open in Bellaghy.

Ian Milne, the Sinn Fein MLA for the area, has welcomed it, remarking that the centre will "help boost tourism in the area as people come from around the world to learn more about Seamus Heaney and his poetry".

But what will they say to those people when they ask to be taken to the places that Heaney wrote about with such rare beauty?

Sorry, there's a motorway there now?
Yemeni blind and disabled people shout slogans during a demonstration to protest after a centre for the blind was reportedly destroyed by Saudi-led airstrikes in the capital Sanaa on January 6, 2016. Nearly 6,000 people have been killed since March, according to UN figures. At least 2,795 of them are civilians. AFP/Getty Images

Yemeni blind men hold a banner during a demonstration gathering disabled people to protest after a center for the blind was reportedly destroyed by Saudi-led airstrikes in the capital Sanaa on January 6, 2016. Nearly 6,000 people have been killed since March, according to UN figures. At least 2,795 of them are civilians. AFP PHOTO / MOHAMMED HUWAISMOHAMMED HUWAIS/AFP/Getty Images

Yemeni blind men shout slogans during a demonstration gathering disabled people to protest after a center for the blind was reportedly destroyed by Saudi-led airstrikes in the capital Sanaa on January 6, 2016. AFP/Getty Images

A Yemeni worker looks at the damage at the Noor Centre for the Blind after it was reportedly destroyed by Saudi-led air strikes in the capital Sanaa on January 5, 2016. AFP/Getty Images

Almost exactly a year after Salman bin Albdulaziz Al Saud, king of Saudi Arabia, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques and head of the House of Saud, hurriedly left his millionaires mansion near Cannes with his 1,000 servants to continue his vacation in Morocco, the kingdoms cash is not flowing so smoothly for the tens of thousands of sub-continental expatriates sweating away on his great building sites.

Almost unreported outside the Kingdom, the countrys big construction magnates  including that of the Binladen group  have not been paid by the Saudi government for major construction projects and a portion of the army of Indian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan and other workers have received no wages, some of them for up to seven months.

Indian and Pakistani embassies approached the Saudi government, pleading that their workers should be paid. Economists who adopt the same lickspittle attitude towards the Saudi monarchy as the British Government, constantly point out that the authorities have been overwhelmed by the collapse of oil prices.

They usually prefer not to mention something at which the rest of the world remains aghast: deputy crown prince and defence minister Mohamed bin Salmans wasteful and hopeless war in Yemen. Since the kings favourite son launched this preposterous campaign against the Houthis last year, supporting the internationally recognised Yemeni president against Shia Muslim rebels, aircraft flown by Saudi and Emirati pilots (aided by British technical experts on the ground) have bombed even more hospitals, clinics and medical warehouses than America has destroyed in Serbia and Afghanistan combined since 1999.

The result? A country with 16 per cent of the worlds proven oil reserves, whose Aramco oil company makes more than $1bn a day and now records a budget deficit of $100bn, cannot pay its bills. At first, the Yemen fiasco was called Operation Decisive Storm, which  once it proved the longest and least decisive Arab storm in the Middle Easts recent history  was changed to Operation Restore Hope. And the bombing went on, just as it did in the pre-hope storm, along with the help of the UKs experts. No wonder the very same deputy crown prince Mohamed announced this year that state spending on salaries would be lowered, yet individual earnings would rise.

In Pakistan, whose soldiers make up a large number of the Saudi armed forces, there has been outrage, parliamentarians are asking why three Saudi companies have not paid salaries for eight months, refusing even to provide food for their employees. In some cases, the Pakistanis have paid their own nationals for food supplies.

In Saudi Arabia itself, the government seems unable to cope with the crisis. The Arab News says that 31,000 Saudi and other foreign workers have lodged complaints with the governments labour ministry over unpaid wages. On one occasion, the Indian consulate and local Indian expatriates brought food to the workers so that their people should not starve. The overall figure that the government owes the construction companies owed may be billions of dollars.

Overtly xenophobic comments have emerged in the Saudi press. Writing in the Saudi Gazette, Abdulrtahman Saad Al-Araabi said: Many expats hate us and are angry because we are a rich country. Some of them go so far as to say that we, Saudis, do not deserve these blessings and the money we have. That is the reason why some of them become violent when they do not get paid on time.

Well, I suppose some people are paying a lot of cash to the Jabhat al-Nusra (recently re-named Jabhat Fateh al-Shamal-Nusrah) or Al-Qaeda or Isis lads out there in the line of fire in Syria.

Embassy staff from the Philippines, France and many countries in the Middle East, have raised the problems with the Saudi government. Typical of their responses has been that of Saudi Oger which said it had been affected by current circumstances [sic] which resulted in some delays in delays in fulfilling our commitments to our employees.

The Saudi government insisted the company paid its employees. Many of them, it should be added, are Lebanese whose Sunni Muslims come from the Sunni areas of Lebanon who traditionally vote for the Sunni leaders son Saad.

An official of the company made the extraordinary statement that the companys situation is unstable due to the scrapping [sic] of many of its projects it was to execute, Meanwhile, workers at United Seemac construction company are complaining they have not been paid for months  or even granted permission to leave the country. Some had apparently not been paid for more than a year and a half. Unlike the big companies such as Binladen and Oger, these men  and they are indeed mostly men  are consumed into the smaller employees. All the attention is on the big companies  its easy to ignore us because we are not so many people.

All in all, a dodgy scenario in our beloved monarchy-dictatorship, whose war against the Shia Houthis  and the Shia Hezbollah, the Shia/Alawite regime in Damascus and Iran  is unending. Wasnt there an equally dodgy Al-Yamamah arms deal with the Saudis a few years ago? No cash flow problems then. And what does yamamah mean in Arabic? Dove? Let us go no further.
It is natural that some politicians opposed to the UK leaving the EU engage in sabre rattling from time to time. We have had experience of that in Northern Ireland, with some people saying that it could hasten the day of a united Ireland.

Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister in Scotland, has been until now the cheerleader for those who say Brexit could see the UK disintegrate.

But now the First Minister of Wales, Carwyn Jones, has added his voice to this clamour suggesting that his country, Scotland and possibly Northern Ireland could all secede from the UK.

Of course, this is simply hot air. He is just raising the temperature to concentrate the mind of Theresa May at Westminster to keep the regions in mind when the Brexit negotiations begin.

But such threats of breaking up the UK are dangerous taken in the context of Northern Ireland. While rational minds will accept that this is just a politician jockeying for position in an argument, here, where the border has been a bogey issue in politics for almost as long as Northern Ireland has existed, threats of leaving the UK can be taken literally by some extremists.

But even they should take heed of the poll carried on BBC last night which showed that eight out of 10 voters here in any border poll would not be influenced by the outcome of the EU referendum.

And even if such a poll was held - as Sinn Fein wants - some 63% would still vote to remain in the UK. Only 22% would support an united Ireland. With the consent principle in place, the prospect of an united Ireland appears to grow more distant by the year.

We can agree with Mr Jones that Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales must have a direct input into any forthcoming Brexit negotiations.

The regions have sad experience of Westminster putting its own interests before the outlying areas of the UK, and what will be appealing to English voters may well not suit those living in the Celtic fringes.

So it is encouraging to hear First Minister Arlene Foster, who supports Brexit even if Northern Ireland voted against it, express her confidence that the province's voice will be heard in any Brexit talks. She underlined that point to Brexit minister David Davis when he came to Stormont last week.

Mr Jones should stop scaremongering and begin discussions with his regional colleagues on the issues that matter to all of them.
Simon Hamilton's exclusive for the Belfast Telegraph (September 5) headlined "Northern Ireland was once one of the world's economic powerhouses I believe that we can be again" and coming in the wake of the 250 further redundancies from Caterpillar suggested a minister with a decidedly rose tint to his glasses.

Northern Ireland a future world economic powerhouse really? If Mr Hamilton took a school atlas map of the world, located the UK and then looked for Northern Ireland he could more than cover it with the head of a pin.

Those industries and the economic circumstances which made NI an "economic powerhouse" such as shipbuilding, textiles and the aircraft industry are either long since gone, in terminal decline or on the move.

We have a population of 1.8m and NI cannot support itself without a 10bn subvention from Westminster. There is only so much growth in the service sector and in manufacturing we can achieve and continually leaning on the success of Wrightbus, Powerscreen or Randox as an examples for the future is disingenuous.

In February 2016 the ONS reported that the productivity gap between the UK and the rest of the Western world is widening and within the UK, productivity in NI lags behind other areas, which, as PwC noted at the time, makes our productivity among the lowest in the developed world.

It also does not help when we have the two parties of government sending mixed messages on the consequences of Brexit to potential investors. Even the untested 'silver bullet' of corporation tax is coming under pressure as other areas seek to lower their CT headline rate and erode the competitive gap.

Far too many jobs created here are low paid and part time and we have a disproportionately high number of economically inactive people in our population.

Of course saying such things immediately invites scathing political criticism as damaging NI's economic prospects and talking down job and investment opportunities.

Equally, an Economy Minister who majors in hyperbole while in denial of the reality around him should not expect to be taken seriously either.

Observer

By email
For my generation it was terms like the flicks for the cinema, consumption and my father's insistence upon calling every business, pub and cinema that had been renamed, even if it had been renamed many times, by its original name that marked out the generations.

In recent years, when lecturing, the term 'gerrymandering' has fallen into the category of the near-redundant. Young students stare on wondering if you are mumbling or talking about somebody called Gerry Mandering.

In the 'good old days', the word was seared into the public consciousness. Us'uns and them'uns had been at the gerrymandering. The main allegations were directed at unionists who in places such as Derry had an over-representation because of how they drew electoral boundaries.

This was countered by the claim that nationalist Newry was under-representing the unionist vote, and that it was the first-past-the-post voting system that was the issue that caused nationalist under-representation.

It was an issue that led to the formation of the civil rights movement, the sense of an irreformable State and was one of the drips that led to the flood of horrors. The collapse of Stormont in 1972 led to the single transferable vote, and since then boundaries have been drawn and re-drawn to represent fairness in a process that can never be fair as far as perception is concerned.

In 2012, the last time that the boundaries were re-drawn so as to fall in line with levels of representation in the UK, the DUP asserted that the Boundary Commissioner had disproportionately affected the unionist voter.

A mere 38 representations were made to the commissioner, few attended the public hearings and the share of the unionist vote rose. No one was taking to the streets to claim injustice.

The people have moved on, and this week's proposed electoral boundary changes no longer led to micro-scrutiny of lines on a map conjoined with furrowed brows and indignation.

The lack of reaction to this week's boundary changes is a reminder of a history of past feverish passions. Only the anoraks, including myself, will bother to see which ward is where and discuss what it all means.

There may be some angst within the SDLP and UUP as the reduction in MLAs from six to five in each constituency, including the proposed loss of a constituency in Belfast, could lead to them losing seats.

A few politicians may ask that the ward that will elect us'uns will be moved in and out like some form of political hokey cokey - "You put your green leg in and take the orange leg out", or in being impartial, "You put your orange leg in and take the green leg out". But this will be a sham fight leaving most yawning as they mutter, "Get on with it".

One 'winner' will be the voters of the Shankill, who felt bereft about being in the former West Belfast constituency and who are to be in Belfast Northwest, meaning they will have MLAs and an MP of their own hue to represent them, or so they hope. There will be minor hums that places such as Dungannon and the areas around it being removed from Fermanagh and South Tyrone may affect Tom Elliott's re-election, but the Boundary Commissioner has got that right by placing this town within the same constituency as Portadown. That makes sense in terms of local business linkages and governance.

Foyle taking in Strabane is also rational as it makes the constituency more urban, which reflects what it actually is. South Antrim going into parts of the old Lagan Valley area also makes sense in terms of the social, economic and infrastructural needs of the new constituency.

What the Boundary Commissioner has generally achieved are configurations that would be normal in other societies and which reflect population densities, suburbanisation and rural communities.

This is a plan that further pinpoints the normalisation of politics and more practical-led design and geographically relevant representation.

The general silence over this week's proposed boundary changes is an example of another fire that drove asperity being largely extinguished, which in itself is notable.

It also provides a time to reflect upon what is happening in Northern Ireland's electoral politics.

We no longer vote in the numbers we once did. In the first Northern Ireland Assembly elections in 1998, 69.8% jumped out of their chairs to vote. By 2016, a mere 54.2% thought to get up and exercise their democratic right.

What we know from an ESRC study undertaken by myself and others is that those who are most motivated to vote are older (they remember Gerry Mandering), are inspired by the constitutional question and are socially conservative.

The young and more liberal remain rooted in their chairs while pondering their hipster beards or what selfie to take.

Despite a growth in what would be those from nationalist and republican communities joining the register, the SDLP and Sinn Fein have stalled.

In the past two Westminster elections, the combined SDLP and Sinn Fein vote grew by 0.5%. Small beer compared to the 7.1% growth in the UUP and DUP vote.

Where the challenge was once the demand for the need to reform an under-representative electoral system and to remove sectarian imbalance, the new political encounters must be to motivate people to engage in the political architecture.

That most certainly would mean recognising that there have been major democratic changes and that the errors of the past no longer motivate those people who did not experience them.

Changes that have embedded fairness have been good, and we should recognise that. If we do not we will increasingly have a modern society trapped within a political order dependent upon remembering the others' mistakes as opposed to building a shared future.

It does not matter where you draw the constituency boundary if people feel that there is little point engaging.

Professor Peter Shirlow FaCSS is the director of Irish Studies at the University of Liverpool
The cover of Norway's Aftenposten as editor-in-chief Espen Egil Hansen wrote an open letter to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (Cornelius Poppe, NTB scanpix/AP)

Facebook has backed down after a row over censorship after it deleted a post by the Norwegian prime minister that featured the iconic 1972 image of a girl running from a napalm attack in Vietnam.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning image by Associated Press photographer Nick Ut is at the centre of a heated debate about freedom of speech in Norway after Facebook deleted it from a Norwegian author's page last month.

However, following a public backlash, the social network backed down.

Facebook said it had "listened to the community" and acknowledged the "global importance" of the photo.

"Because of its status as an iconic image of historical importance, the value of permitting sharing outweighs the value of protecting the community by removal, so we have decided to reinstate the image on Facebook where we are aware it has been removed," it said in a statement.

"It will take some time to adjust these systems but the photo should be available for sharing in the coming days.

"We are always looking to improve our policies to make sure they both promote free expression and keep our community safe."

Many outraged Norwegians posted the photo on Facebook in protest over the decision, with Prime Minister Erna Solberg joining with the protest on Friday. Facebook removed her post within hours, said Sigbjorn Aanes, one of Ms Solberg's aides.

"What they do by removing images of this kind, whatever (the) good intentions, is to edit our common history," Ms Solberg told the Norwegian news agency NTB.

Facebook, in a statement from its European headquarters in London, originally said: "It's difficult to create a distinction between allowing a photograph of a nude child in one instance and not others."

The girl in the image, Kim Phuc, is naked and crying as the napalm melted away layers of her skin.

Several Norwegian government members followed Ms Solberg's lead and posted the photo on their Facebook pages. One of them, education minister Torbjorn Roe Isaksen, said it was "an iconic photo, part of our history".

Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten published an open letter to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg on its website on Friday in which chief editor Espen Egil Hansen accused the social media giant of abusing its power.

Mr Hansen said he was "upset, disappointed - well, in fact even afraid - of what you are about to do to a mainstay of our democratic society".

Paul Colford, AP vice president and director of media relations, said: "The Associated Press is proud of Nick Ut's photo and recognises its historical impact. In addition, we reserve our rights to this powerful image."
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Reposted from MWRO Blog Having family and friends in prison teaches you a lot about what things are like from "the inside." MWR...




First up, Joe Biden is thinking about dropping tariffs against China. But theres a spy in prison this morning that helps us understand why he shouldnt. Ill explain.





Your second brief, If youre looking for a good paying job, you might consider being a CEO for a health insurance company. One executive made $142M dollars last year. Let's talk about that.





And as always, Im keeping an eye out for developing stories. Put this one on your radar. Mexican cartels are grooming American kids online and paying them cash to traffic illegals or run drugs across the border. Ill share details.





If you enjoyed this episode of the President's Daily Brief, remember to subscribe and listen daily at podfollow.com/pdb.

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For Immediate Release, September 9, 2016 Contact: Nick Cady, Cascadia Wildlands, (314) 482-3746, nick@cascwild.org

Noah Greenwald, Center for Biological Diversity, (503) 484-7495, ngreenwald@biologicaldiversity.org

Bob Sallinger, Audubon Society of Portland, (503) 380-9728, bsallinger@audubonportland.org Marbled Murrelet Moves One Step Closer to State Endangered Status, Stronger Protections Oregon Wildlife Commission to Determine Whether

Imperiled Seabird Endangered Rather Than Threatened EUGENE, Ore. In response to a petition from Cascadia Wildlands and other conservation groups, the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission voted 5-2 to initiate a review of the imperiled marbled murrelet to determine if it warrants uplisting from threatened to endangered under Oregons endangered species law. The commission has until June 21, 2017 to make the decision. If the murrelet is determined to be endangered, the state will need to develop protection measures that limit logging in remaining coastal old-growth forests where the seabirds nest. The science clearly shows the marbled murrelet needs help if it is going to persist as a species into the future, said Nick Cady, legal director with Cascadia Wildlands. The vote is a huge first step in recovering this unique seabird from the brink of extinction. The murrelet was awarded state protection as threatened in 1987, followed by federal protection in 1992. But the seabird has continued to decline, primarily because of continued loss of habitat, particularly on nonfederal lands, where a recent report found that murrelet habitat has declined by 27 percent since 1993. If the marbled murrelet is to have any chance of survival, we must protect Oregons remaining old-growth forests, said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity. The state has not done enough to protect the murrelet's forested home on state and private lands, which cover substantial portions of the Coast Range. Despite the murrelet's continued decline, the state of Oregon is in the process of selling the 93,000-acre Elliott State Forest located east of Coos Bay. The Elliott contains large blocks of intact older forest habitat critical to the species survival. Even as the marbled murrelet moves closer to extinction, some of our elected officials are whistling past the graveyard, said Bob Sallinger, conservation director at the Audubon Society of Portland. At the same time that we are calling for the marbled murrelet to be uplisted, we are also calling on Gov. Kate Brown and state Treasurer Ted Wheeler to halt the sale of public lands on the Elliott State Forest which provide some of the best marbled murrelet habitat in Oregon. In addition to state lands, protecting remaining old forest on private industrial forestlands is critical to the species persistence. Overall, 41 percent of the murrelet's remaining habitat is on nonfederal lands. While the marbled murrelet spends most of the year foraging in coastal waters, it is the only seabird that nests in trees, flying inland up to 35 miles to nest and rear its young during spring and summer each year. The petition to uplist the murrelet to endangered was submitted in June by Cascadia Wildlands, Coast Range Forest Watch, the Center for Biological Diversity, Audubon Society of Portland, Oregon Wild and the Oregon Chapter of the Sierra Club.


For Immediate Release, September 8, 2016 Contact: Emily Jeffers, (408) 348-6958 or ejeffers@biologicaldiversity.org Lawsuit Filed to Protect Sea Life From Ocean Acidification, Climate Change EPA Failing to Set Water-quality Standards to Protect Shellfish,

Corals, Marine Life From Seawater Turned Corrosive by Carbon Emissions SAN FRANCISCO The Center for Biological Diversity sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today for failing to set new water-quality standards to combat ocean acidification or respond to a three-year-old Center petition demanding the agency address this growing threat to marine life. Despite scientific consensus that federal water-quality standards are outdated and inadequate to protect marine life from the corrosive effects of ocean acidification, the EPA has ignored its legal duties to update the standards. The EPA is ignoring the threat of ocean acidification, and thats very dangerous. We need to act now to protect oysters, corals and other marine animals that are already being hurt by the deadly effects of ocean acidification, said Emily Jeffers, a Center attorney. The Centers legal petition, filed in April 2013, requested that the EPA develop new water-quality standards to monitor and detect ocean acidification as required by the Clean Water Act. Such standards are the foundation of the Act and provide a basis for water-quality monitoring, identifying impaired waters and controlling water pollution. In 2010 the agency acknowledged that it has the duty and authority to address ocean acidification under the Clean Water Act. Oceans become more acidic as they absorb carbon dioxide emissions, interfering with the ability of shellfish and corals to turn calcium carbonate into protective shells, among other problems. According to a recent report published by leading scientists on the West Coast Panel on Ocean Acidification and Hypoxia, current federal water-quality standards, measured by pH, are 40 years old and are neither based on current science nor strong enough to protect marine life. Scientists are telling us we need new water-quality standards, but the federal agency charged with protecting our water is turning a blind eye to the problem, said Jeffers. If we want to save our fisheries and coastal ecosystems, we need standards that reflect the best scientific knowledge. To be wise steward of the oceans we need to be able to identify the water bodies that need our help the most. The oceans absorb 22 million tons of carbon dioxide pollution every day, which is changing ocean chemistry. Ocean acidification has already caused massive oyster die-offs in the Pacific Northwest, and off the coast of California, ocean acidification has severely eroded the shells of small plankton called pteropods, an important base of the marine food web. Corals worldwide are endangered by ocean acidification and some are already growing sluggishly, while other species, such as clownfish, suffer brain damage and behavioral problems as a result of corrosive waters. The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1.1 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.


For Immediate Release, September 8, 2016 Contact: Amy Atwood, (503) 504-5660, atwood@biologicaldiversity.org Bill Banning Body-gripping Wildlife Traps Introduced in Congress WASHINGTONU.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) introduced a bill today to ban the use of body-gripping traps by Wildlife Services, the highly-controversial arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. If passed, the bill would ban leg and foothold traps, Conibear and snare traps. The Limiting Inhumane Federal Trapping (LIFT) for Public Safety Act would forbid Wildlife Services from using the traps, which are known to cause suffering to trapped animals. Wildlife Services routinely uses such traps to eradicate wildlife considered undesirable to agribusinesses, particularly livestock ranchers. The bill also bans the use of such traps on national forests, wildlife refuges, and other federal public lands managed by the U.S. Agriculture and Interior departments. The bill includes limited exceptions for invasive species control and protection of endangered species. The Center fully supports this long-overdue ban on these cruel, inhumane killing methods, said Amy Atwood, endangered species legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity. These unforgiving traps have no place in American society, and this law will ensure that no more animals have to die an excruciating death on the taxpayers dime. Wildlife Services has come under increasing pressure to reform by scientists, members of Congress, wildlife-friendly livestock ranchers and conservation and animal welfare organizations, due to multiple incidents involving the use of body-gripping traps that have harmed people or their pets and have resulted in the trapping of non-target wildlife. At the behest of the livestock industry, the traps are typically used to target animals like wolves, coyotes, bears and mountain lions despite the fact that research has shown such species are critical to healthy ecosystem function and that eradicating them to protect livestock is ineffective. Wildlife Services killed 3.2 million animals just last year, including 68,905 coyotes, 480 black bears, 385 gray wolves, 284 mountain lions, 731 bobcats, 492 river otters, 3,437 foxes, 21,559 beavers and 20,777 prairie dogs. This bill will help stop this unnecessary killing and trigger broader use of non-lethal methods that emphasize coexistence with wildlife, not persecution, Atwood said. The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1.1 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.
Scientists from the Senckenberg and the Giraffe Conservation Foundation have analysed the genetic relationships of all major populations of giraffe in the wild. The large study on the genetic makeup of giraffe, published today in Current Biology, shows that there are four distinct giraffe species. Until now, only one giraffe species had been recognized. The unexpected results are based on analyses using several nuclear marker genes of more than 100 animals. The new insights are set to improve protection efforts of these endangered animals in Africa.

Despite their large size and iconic presence, giraffe have been incompletely explored until now, with many aspects of their biology poorly understood. Latest estimates have revealed that giraffe numbers have plummeted by >35% over the past 30 years down to approximately 100,000 individuals across their range in Africa. Traditionally giraffe are classified as one species with nine subspecies based on coat patterns, ossicone (horn) structure and geographical distribution - now, this view has to be thoroughly revised.

"We have studied the genetic relationships of all giraffe subspecies from across the continent. We found, that there are not only one, but at least four genetically highly distinct groups of giraffe, which apparently do not mate with each other in the wild. This we found looking at multiple nuclear genes considered to be representative of the entire genome" says Professor Axel Janke, researcher at the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research and Professor at the Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany. "Consequently, giraffe should be recognized as four distinct species despite their similar appearance."

The four distinct giraffe species are (1) southern giraffe (Giraffa giraffa), comprising two distinct subspecies, Angolan (G. g. angolensis) and South African giraffe (G. g. giraffa), (2) Masai giraffe (G. tippelskirchi), (3) reticulated giraffe (G. reticulata), and (4) northern giraffe (G. camelopardalis), which includes Nubian giraffe (G. c. camelopardalis), West African giraffe (G. c. peralta) and Kordofan giraffe (G. c. antiquorum) as distinct subspecies.

The study and new classification is based on more than hundred skin biopsy samples from all previously recognized giraffe subspecies, which were collected by the Giraffe Conservation Foundation (GCF) and partners over the past decade including in remote areas and civil war zones. These giraffe DNA samples were then analyzed by Janke's research group at the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre in cooperation with colleagues from the Senckenberg Natural History Collections of Dresden, Germany. The sample set included for the first time the elusive Nubian giraffe, the nominate subspecies (G. c. camelopardalis) - the "camel-leopard" - described by Linnaeus in 1758 on the basis of a 200-year-old record.

The large-scale analysis of giraffe DNA also yielded further surprising insights. The formerly recognized subspecies Rothschild's giraffe (G. c. rothschildi) turned out to be genetically identical with Nubian giraffe, and thus should be synonymized with this subspecies. Similarly, the genetic studies supported previous findings by the team that could not differentiate the formerly recognized subspecies Thornicroft's giraffe (G. c. thornicrofti) with Masai giraffe (G. c. tippelskirchi). Additionally, research into the history of the distinct species showed that their last common ancestor lived about 0.4-2.0 million years ago, which yields a rate of speciation that is typical for mammals.

"Species conservation is based on understanding the numbers, range and threats to the species. To date, the estimated total number of all giraffe has until now not been considered a particular threat for the species' survival. However, as we now recognize four distinct species as well as some genetically unique subspecies, some of their biodiversity is very much under threat," explains Janke. "In particular, GCF estimates that there are maybe as few as 400 West African giraffe remaining in the wild and restricted to a small communal area in Niger. Although it is not a distinct species, this subspecies is genetically unique and requires increased special protection along with the other distinct species."

Dr. Julian Fennessy, first author of the study and Co-Director of GCF adds, "Now that we know that there are four giraffe species, it is even more important and urgent to support governments and other partners across Africa to protect giraffe. We rightly worry about the fate of the African elephant, with an estimated 450,000 in the wild. By contrast, the numbers of three of the four giraffe species are rapidly declining, and two numbering <10,000 individuals in total. I think we should start working together to secure the future of giraffe in Africa and take action before it is too late."

Source: Goethe University Frankfurt
In research published online today in Science, a team of scientists describe a new therapeutic strategy to target a hidden Achilles' heel shared by all known types of Ebola virus. Two antibodies developed with this strategy blocked the invasion of human cells by all five ebolaviruses, and one of them protected mice exposed to lethal doses of Ebola Zaire and Sudan, the two most dangerous. The team included scientists from Albert Einstein College of Medicine, U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), Integrated Biotherapeutics, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and The Scripps Research Institute.

Ebolaviruses cause a highly fatal disease for which no approved vaccines or treatments are available. About two dozen Ebola outbreaks have been documented since 1976, when infections first occurred in villages along the Ebola River in Africa. The largest outbreak in history--the 2014-2015 Western Africa epidemic--caused more than 11,000 deaths and infected approximately 29,000 people.

Monoclonal antibodies, which bind to and neutralize specific pathogens and toxins, have emerged as the most promising treatments for Ebola patients. A critical problem, however, is that most antibody therapies target only one specific ebolavirus. For example, the most promising experimental therapy--ZMappTM, a cocktail of three monoclonal antibodies--is specific for Ebola virus Zaire, and doesn't work against the other two viruses (Sudan and Bundibugyo), which have both caused major outbreaks. The broad-spectrum antibodies developed by the research team represent an important advance against one of the world's most dangerous pathogens.

Exploiting Ebola's Achilles' Heel

In 2011, a team that included co-senior authors Kartik Chandran, Ph.D. professor of microbiology & immunology at Einstein, and John M. Dye, Ph.D., chief of viral immunology at USAMRIID, discovered that all filoviruses (the family to which ebolaviruses and the more distantly related Marburg virus belong) have an Achilles' heel: To infect and multiply in human cells, they must all bind to a host-cell protein called Niemann-Pick C1 (NPC1).

But capitalizing on that knowledge required a completely new approach to targeting viruses: exploiting the fact that Ebola and many other viruses must enter host cell compartments called lysosomes. Once safely inside the lysosomes, the viruses transform and expose key portions of their exterior that the research team successfully targeted using monoclonal antibodies.

To gain entry to cells, filoviruses bind to the host cell's outer membrane via glycoproteins (proteins to which carbohydrate chains are attached) that bristle from the virus's surface. (See illustration.) A portion of the cell membrane then surrounds the virus and pinches off, eventually developing into a lysosome--a membrane-bound, intracellular compartment filled with enzymes to digest foreign and cellular components.

Filoviruses then use the host cells' resources to break out of their lysosomal "prisons" so they can enter the host cell's cytoplasm to multiply. Enzymes in the lysosome slice a "cap" from the virus's glycoproteins, unveiling a site that binds to the NPC1 embedded in the lysosome membrane. NPC1, which normally helps transport cholesterol within the cell, offers Ebola virus its only means of escaping the lysosome and multiplying. By fitting its protein "key" into the NPC1 "lock," the virus fuses itself to the lysosome membrane. (See illustration close-up.) Now the virus can propel its RNA from the lysosome and into the cell's cytoplasm, where it can finally replicate itself.

Penetrating an Invisibility Cloak

The research team realized that monoclonal antibodies could potentially thwart all filovirus infections by neutralizing the viral protein that binds to NPC1, or by neutralizing NPC1 itself. There was just one problem: Reflecting Ebola's ingenuity, both targets reside only in lysosomes deep within cells--making them invisible to the immune system and shielded from attack by conventional antibodies.

Dr. Chandran, Dr. Dye and co-senior author Jonathan R. Lai, Ph.D., associate professor of biochemistry at Einstein and an expert in engineering antibodies, devised a clever "Trojan Horse" strategy for overcoming the virus's invisibility cloak: Just as the citizens of Troy unwittingly pulled a wooden horse filled with Greek soldiers into their walled city, they tricked the viruses into carrying the means of their own destruction along with them into host cells.

To do so, the research team synthesized two types of "bispecific" antibodies, each consisting of two monoclonal antibodies combined into one molecule. One bispecific antibody was devised to neutralize the viral protein that binds to NPC1, the other to target NPC1. Both had one monoclonal antibody in common: antibody FVM09, which binds to the surface glycoproteins of all ebolaviruses while the virus is outside cells, allowing the bispecific antibodies to hitch a ride with the virus into the lysosome. FVM09 was developed by co-senior author M. Javad Aman, Ph.D. at Integrated Biotherapeutics.

Once in the lysosome, the bispecific antibodies are released from the viral surface when enzymes in the lysosome slice off the glycoprotein caps--allowing the business ends of the bispecific antibodies to swing into action.

One bispecific antibody combined FVM09 with antibody MR72, which was isolated from a human survivor of Marburg virus infection by co-senior author James E. Crowe Jr., M.D., director of the Vanderbilt Vaccine Center. MR72 targets the NPC1-binding viral protein that is unveiled by all filoviruses in lysosomes. The second bispecific antibody links FVM09 to antibody mAb-548, developed at Einstein, which zeroes in on NPC1. With one bispecific antibody targeting the "lock" (NPC1) and the other targeting the "key" (the virus's NPC1-binding protein), both had the potential for preventing Ebola virus from interacting with NPC1 and escaping from the lysosome into the cytoplasm.

Putting Antibodies to the Test

The researchers then tested their bispecific antibodies against ebolaviruses in the lab. They initially used a harmless virus (vesicular stomatitis virus) that had been genetically engineered to display glycoproteins from all five ebolaviruses on its surface. The researchers incubated the bispecific antibodies with the Ebola-like viruses and then added the mixtures to human cells in tissue culture. Both bispecific antibodies successfully neutralized all five viruses. Work in the high-containment facilities at USAMRIID confirmed that these antibodies also blocked infection by the actual Zaire, Sudan, and Bundibugyo ebolaviruses.

Next came studies at USAMRIID to test whether the two bispecific antibodies could protect mice infected with the two most dangerous ebolaviruses, Zaire and Sudan. Researchers, led by Dr. Dye, administered the bispecific antibodies two days after mice were exposed to a lethal dose of virus.

The bispecific antibody that targeted the viral binding protein provided good protection to mice exposed to both viruses. As expected, the bispecific antibody that targeted NPC1 did not protect mice. It was designed to bind specifically to human NPC1, which differs slightly in structure from the NPC1 protein found in mice.

As a next step, both bispecific antibodies will need to be tested in nonhuman primates, the current gold standard for anti-Ebola therapeutics.

Source: Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Mewing is a TikTok trend that has blown up in the last few months. It is claimed that it can help shape your jawline as well as cure other ailments by actively pressing your tongue to the roof
While the MAC B-BBEE codes have been gazetted and the PR and advertising industry does a lot of empowerment talk, small black-owned marketing and advertising agencies feel they are still not getting a fair shot at opportunities in South Africa.

Theres a big pie at stake, and most of that pie is being gobbled up by big agencies with international holdings. The small players must resort to picking pie crumbs off the floor to survive. Government efforts to enforce transformation are frequently ignored for as long as possible, or are met with grudging token gestures that have as little impact as possible on actual operations.

In the eyes of many small, black-owned agencies, the old school tie still rules in South African marketing and advertising, and anyone from outside the circle of trust is going to face an uphill battle to crack the nod for a meeting; let alone a large contract. The township born and bred youth who speaks in township slang and doesnt yet wear the right brands is unlikely to get further than the boardroom door. The small businessman still building a resource pool will be eliminated from the bidding process because of doubts about his ability to deliver. Everyone in the industry appears to have to conform to Eurocentric trends and mannerisms to be taken seriously in client meetings.

Another perspective, presented by advertising industry veteran Chris Brewer, is that the world of advertising has always been a tough one to break into; but that once youre in, the industry doesnt care about your skin colour, background or even any quirky habits you may have  it just wants you to deliver inspired, amazing advertising. He believes that of all industry sectors, the advertising industry has always been the most liberal and open to transformation, and that forcing quotas now will be met with reluctance.

But Brewer does concede that only around 32% of client-facing staff in advertising agencies are black, and that only around 16% of client service directors are black.

These figures do not reflect South Africas true demographics. Somewhere along the way, black players are leaving or being edged out of the equation.

According to the new MAC Codes, by 2018, agencies must have 75% black middle management, 88% black junior management, and 80% of all spending has to go to empowerment suppliers.

For genuine transformation that reflects the demographic realities of South Africa today and aligns agencies with the new MAC Codes, black executives must be empowered and given decision-making power in local agencies. Clients and large agencies need to become more open to assessing partnerships with smaller agencies based on actual ability to deliver  not perceived ability to deliver.

This change is not only needed to meet the new Code requirements: hidden within the rising tide of black-owned agencies and up and coming black creatives lies the key to talking to the South African consumer of tomorrow. The big spend is emerging out of consumers who are not old school tie-wearing members of the circle of trust. Its coming from a new middle class; new money with roots in the same places the small black-owned agencies are rooted.

Transformative change has become a must, and the onus is on large agencies to find approaches to change that go beyond window dressing. They must strive to empower up-and-coming black-owned agencies by partnering with them on large contracts.

Brewer notes that there must be ways to attract more black talent into the industry, possibly by way of bursaries to advertising schools. He believes the pool of talent simply MUST be expanded before quotas are imposed, or the industry could face the risk of falling standards.

Indeed, if there is a lack of suitably skilled black advertising talent, then every effort must be made to address this shortfall as soon as possible. It is in the interests of large agencies to invest in a skills pipeline and offer more upskilling opportunities to young black creatives and business leaders. And they must move away from US and European norms and focus on becoming truly African businesses that speak effectively to the South African consumers sense of self.
A link between a single molecule from a bacterial cell wall component, which can lead to the anomalous behaviour of 100m clotting molecules, and diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and diabetes has been made by a collaboration between the University of Pretoria and the University of Manchester.

The discovery could help to explain many features of these kinds of diseases, and may lead to new methods of prevention or treatment.

A team from South Africa, lead by Professor Resia Pretorius and including student, Sthembile Mbotwe, and researcher, Dr Janette Bester, together with colleagues from University of Manchester, under leadership of Professor Douglas B Kell, tested blood and plasma for its ability to clot when the normal clotting agent thrombin was added.

Chronic inflammation

Normal, healthy blood clots have a nice spaghetti-like appearance. However, the results showed that tiny amounts of cell wall molecules such as lipopolysaccharide (LPS), which are shed by dormant bacteria, caused a highly anomalous clot to form dense deposits with very different fibres.

These can contribute to the chronic inflammation that is part of many supposedly non-infectious diseases. These include Alzheimers, Parkinsons, auto-immune conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, cardiovascular problems such as stroke, and metabolic diseases including type 2 diabetes.

Impact on treatment

The discovery could have considerable impact on the treatment of these conditions, since stopping the unusual clotting would be expected to stop its consequences. Existing treatments do not so this as the new mechanism had not previously been known.

Pretorius says: The importance of LPS in inflammatory diseases has been mostly overlooked, and has been used to induce both Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease in animal testing for many years. Inflammatory diseases are also closely linked to leaky gut syndrome. Together with our new findings regarding the involvement of a (dormant) blood microbiome, this demonstrates that dormant bacteria can play an important role in all inflammatory diseases.

The breakthrough finding that tiny amounts of bacterial cell wall material can have a massive effect on causing blood to clot in an unusual way explains much about the biology of many of these diseases. This opens up novel means  including nutritional  for their prevention and treatment, explains Kell.

The work is part of an ongoing collaboration between the University of Pretoria team and The University of Manchester team, funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council to understand unusual blood clotting, the National Research Foundation (South Africa) and the Medical Research Council (South Africa).
WASHINGTON: Global clothier Gap Inc this week became the latest apparel retailer to identify the factories which produce its garments, helping shed light on how the world's clothing is made.

The decision follows similar moves this year from fashion retailers Marks & Spencer and C&A, according to Human Rights Watch, which welcomed Gap's disclosures as a boon to transparency in an industry that has been rife with abuse.

Activists have targeted the highly profitable "fast-fashion" industry, which churns out new low-cost garments daily or weekly to maximize sales volumes, calling on retailers to improve labor and environmental conditions at supplier factories in the impoverished developing world.

"I think the increased visibility will create increased information which ultimately will lead to helping garment workers across the globe," David Hayer, Gap's vice president for sustainability, told AFP.

A million workers currently produce Gap clothing in 885 factories in about 30 countries around the globe, according to Hayer. The company has reduced the number of supplier factories from about 2,000 six years ago to be able to manage relations, he said.

Gap markets its apparel under brands including Old Navy, Athleta, and Banana Republic as well as The Gap in more than 3,700 stores around the world.

In one of the world's worst industrial accidents, more than 1,100 people died in April 2013 in the Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh, where workers reportedly produced garments for Western retailers such as Walmart, Benetton and Joe Fresh.

The United States subsequently suspended trade privileges for Bangladesh out of concern for labor rights. Gap clothing has not been traced to Rana Plaza but the company did contribute to a fund for victims of the disaster.

Retailers have in the past been reluctant to invite greater scrutiny by identifying their suppliers. Hayer told AFP that Gap had previously been concerned this could give competitors a window on the company's clothing in production. But other brands now identifying factories include H&M, Nike, Levis and Adidas.

In a 47-page document posted online on Wednesday, Gap Inc revealed the names and street addresses of suppliers in countries such as China, Bangladesh, Egypt, Cambodia, Guatemala, India and Indonesia.

Hayer said the disclosures should lead to greater accountability for vendors and for Gap.

"The growing number of apparel industry leaders disclosing factories is good news for workers, the industry, and consumers," Aruna Kashyap, senior women's rights counsel at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.

Source: AFP
WASHINGTON: Retail and commercial banking giant Wells Fargo will pay more than $185m in fines after US regulators accused the bank of secretly opening accounts without customers' knowledge, officials said Thursday.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said employees at Wells Fargo, the world's largest bank by market value, had illegally boosted sales figures by opening unauthorised deposit and credit accounts and then covertly funding them with customers' money, sometimes creating phony email addresses to enroll them.

Wells Fargo found that employees had opened more than 1.5 million bogus deposit accounts alone over 2011-2015 resulting in millions of dollars in customer fees while helping bank employees meet sales targets and receive bonuses.

Wells Fargo will pay $100m to the CFPB, the largest fine to date imposed by the bureau, which was created in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. The San Francisco-based bank will also pay $50m to the City of Los

Angeles, which had filed suit last year, accusing the bank of pressuring employees into fraudulent behavior, such as opening fictitious accounts.

The bank will also pay a $35m fine to the Treasury Department in addition to $5m to compensate all customers concerned.

"Today's action should serve notice to the entire industry that financial incentive programs, if not monitored carefully, carry serious risks that can have serious legal consequences," CFPB Director Richard Cordray said in a statement.

Wells Fargo said in a statement that it regretted and took responsibility for the unauthorized accounts.

"Wells Fargo reached these agreements consistent with our commitment to customers and in the interest of putting this matter behind us," the company said in a statement.

A bank spokesperson told AFP it had fired 5,300 employees tied the illegal conduct.

Source: AFP
Wine production consumes large amounts of energy and generates a sizeable quantity of greenhouse gases. A looming carbon tax and greater consumer awareness about reduced energy use has led to a growing interest in the energy performance of South Africa's wine industry.

The agriculture and industry sectors combined account for nearly 50% of the countrys energy consumption. It takes approximately 2,618 GJ of energy to process one tonne of grapes into the finished product. This equates to over 700,000 kWh of electricity to process a tonne of grapes. Thats the consumption of 60 middle class homes per year. In 2015 just more than 1.5 million tonnes of grapes were crushed to produce around 1 billion litres of wine.

South Africa is one of the top ten wine producing countries in the world. Of the 1 billion litres of wine produced annually, nearly half is exported. Around 95% of the wine is produced in the Western Cape province.

There is now widespread acceptance that energy use in the industry needs to be reduced. Typically, this can be achieved in two ways: behavioural change, and technical interventions.

Greater energy efficiency

A number of factors are driving the industry to look at greater energy efficiencies. These include:

The rising cost of energy. This is expected to remain well above inflation in the foreseeable future with significant implications for the sectors profitability.



The risk of high carbon footprint products in a competitive export market. The industry is now subject to the GreenHouse Gas Accounting Protocol of the International Organisation of Vine and Wine.



Concerns about the impact of climate change on the local industry given the close correlation between vintage quality and annual weather conditions.

The challenge is that farmers often dont have enough time to focus on energy efficiencies. They are also constrained by limited finances.

Farmers also tend to focus only on improving technical interventions. Theres usually only one person responsible for energy in the winery. This means that knowledge is not easily accessible to the rest of the team.

We identified the need to develop an appropriate guideline to implement an energy management system. This was based on best practice from wine producing regions such as California and Australia. We tailored these for the South African context.

The benefit of the energy management system is that it is designed to focus on sustainability in a few different ways, including saving money and placing an emphasis on a continuous improvement cycle.

The energy management system

The system builds on the energy management standard of the International Organisation for Standardisation. Its been adapted for wineries. Using case studies from South African wineries, it identifies typical energy saving opportunities. But energy efficiency and cost cutting initiatives can be expensive. So a systematic approach is needed.

Winemakers or operations manager must have a written energy efficiency plan listing the ways in which energy consumption can be reduced. The plan should include an energy consumption reduction strategy, training of staff to improve energy consumption and monitoring programmes. A dedicated energy and carbon management system has worked well at the Backsberg Estate Cellars, which has won international awards for its efforts.

The plan would document how, when, and where energy use will be monitored. It would also track how these results can be used to improve energy efficiency. Energy consumption data should then be collected and monitored to enable analyses of the winerys energy usage. Real time data will allow the winemaker or operations manager to identify peak demands and high energy usage processes that could be targeted for energy reduction.

Energy efficiency should also be made a high priority when purchasing new equipment. There are new technologies that can help drive down consumption.

At the same time, existing equipment should be optimised through regular servicing and repairs. In particular, refrigeration and cooling systems provide an opportunity for cost reduction and energy efficiency.

Space lighting is another example of low hanging fruit. Existing light bulbs can be replaced with more energy efficient ones.

Overall, there should be programmes in place for all the energy consuming equipment on any wine farm. Energy reduction and cost cutting wont happen all at once. But a combination of interventions can result in breakthrough improvements. This has been demonstrated by several wineries in South Africa.

The guidelines aim to address the industrys key concerns. These include reducing dependency on costly energy services, becoming carbon neutral in terms of product offering, and addressing climate change concerns.


The Draft Taxation Laws Amendment Bill of 2016 contains a proposal to tax dividends that would result in a punitive effective rate of tax that is neither fair nor conducive to the promotion of business in South Africa.

The proposal is in respect of services rendered, with narrow exceptions, and would affect restricted equity instruments. These are usually units in a share incentive trust or shares that are subject to a restriction  usually that the employee may not dispose of his or her units or shares for a certain period.

Employers commonly place such restrictions on shares or units in order to align the economic interests of the employee with those of the employer in that the employee should contribute to an increase in the value of the companys shares while he or she remains in employment.

Basic principle

The basic principle of income tax that applies in these circumstances is that the employee is subject to income tax on the market value of the shares or units at the point at which the restrictions fall away (which is referred to as the vesting date), with a reduction for expenditure incurred (if any) in acquiring the shares or units. For example, if on the vesting date a share has a market value of R100 and the employee paid R40 to acquire it, the gain of R60 is taxed at the employees marginal income tax rate in the tax year in which the vesting date falls.

It appears from the draft explanatory memorandum that the reason for the proposal is that there are concerns with certain arrangements in which the value of the shares or units is denuded prior to the vesting date, such that the shares or units have little value to tax at that point. This can occur by the declaration of dividends in the underlying company or, in the case of units in a share trust that are held by the employee, a share buy-back prior to the vesting date.

The proposal will hit dividends received by or accruing to the employee prior to the vesting date which will, as a result of the proposal, become taxable in the hands of the employee at marginal rates of tax. A related, but separate, proposal seeks to tax any amount other than a dividend received by or accruing to the employee prior to the vesting date at marginal rates, also with limited exceptions. Both proposals would take effect in respect of amounts received or accrued on or after 1 March 2017, if they survive the legislative process.

The general policy intent appears to be to equalise the tax treatment of employee benefits regardless of whether the benefits are in the form of cash remuneration or amounts arising from the holding of shares. However, the problem with the present proposal is that in the case of dividends, no cognisance is taken of the tax already suffered in the hands of the company.

Examples

An employee holds shares in the employer company that may not be disposed of for three years. During this period the company declares a dividend of R100, payable to the employee. Income tax at the rate of 28% would in most instances already have been suffered on the underlying profits in the company prior to the declaration of the dividend. Although dividends tax would not apply in the circumstances, the employee would, in terms of the proposal, be subject to income tax on the dividend at the marginal rate of income tax. If the marginal rate is 41%, the total effective taxes suffered by the company and the employee on the dividend would be 57,52% expressed as a percentage of the original profits that accrued to the company.

The position is even worse, relatively speaking, in the case where the employee is on the lowest marginal rate of tax of 18%. In these circumstances, the total effective taxes suffered would be approximately 41% which is more than double the effective rate of tax that would apply to cash remuneration received by the employee, which would be taxed at 18%.

The distortion arises because in a situation in which cash remuneration is paid to an employee, the employer usually obtains an income tax deduction for the cash remuneration paid, which results in the effective rate of tax being only that of the marginal rate of tax applicable to the employee. By contrast, in the case of a dividend paid, there is no income tax deduction for the employer.

If the tax treatment of employee benefits is to be equalised regardless of whether the benefits are in the form of cash remuneration or amounts arising from the holding of shares, then the proposal needs to be amended such that the company that declares a dividend may obtain an income tax deduction for the dividends declared if the amount would have been in the production of income had it been paid as a cash award to the employee concerned.

Submissions have been made regarding the above proposal and the final version of the bill will most likely be released later this year.
Dams across the country are at their lowest levels in years, the inter-ministerial task team on drought said on Thursday. While reiterating that there was not yet a need to declare the ongoing drought a disaster, ministers Des van Rooyen, Nomvula Mokonyane and Senzeni Zokwana highlighted the need for stringent measures.

Erdenebayar via pixabay

As of September 5, dam levels were at 53%, Van Rooyen said at a media conference on the drought. "The long-range forecast shows a below-normal expected rainfall and, therefore, little relief is anticipated in the coming months."

He said the drought was still persisting in most parts of South Africa and that the recovery would be delayed due to expected rainfall conditions. Current indications were that above-normal rainfall and temperatures could be expected during the early summer season, he said.

Mokonyane said that figures showed that the average person used about 280 litres of water a day, compared to the worldwide average of 175 litres per person.

Emphasising that there was no need to declare a drought, Mokonyane said South Africans could help turn the tide. Some of the solutions, she said, did not require money, but co-operation.

Plans to 'intensify' water restrictions

The need for water restrictions was emphasised, with ministers saying the restrictions in Johannesburg were not unique. "One area we think we have to look at is to intensify, more especially at a household level, the water restrictions. That's an area that we need to intensify. It is the work that is happening in all municipalities, not just Gauteng," Van Rooyen said.

The task team went through some of the interventions, including the money allocated for the alleviation of the drought. These included R173m to assist farmers with animal feed and stock, as well as funding made available by the Industrial Development Corporation through the Land Bank to assist farmers.

The Agricultural Research Council had also introduced a drought tolerant maize seed, they said.

Zokwana said they were monitoring food prices, but they hoped to get early rains around November. He said prices had, so far, gone up by 30% in terms of what a poor person could buy.

Mokonyane urged South Africans to use less water by staying out of their jacuzzis, using a glass of water when they brushed their teeth, and using wet wipes to remove their make-up, while Zokwana called on farmers to use a drip system to limit the use of water.

"And choosing the time which you irrigate, so that you reduce the impact," he said.

Source: News24

Read this report on News24Wire.com.
Speaking at the Tourism, Hotel Investment and Networking Conference (THINC Africa) in Cape Town, Philip Taylor, CEO and founder of Hospitality Plus, said three critical technologies had emerged over the past few years and enabled the business models that we know today - namely the cloud, social media and mobile capabilities.

WDnet via pixabay

M-Pesa, launched from Kenya, has reinvented financial services, along with brands like Uber, Airbnb, TripAdvisor and Booking.com who have reinvented ways of doing business in their sectors, said Taylor.

A direct correlation between digital investment and balance sheet value

Taylor told delegates most hotel groups now outsourced their digital solutions, enabled by the cloud. These services include competitive shopping, rate parity management, reviews, remarketing and upselling additional services at the time of booking, as well as website content management, including regular monthly forensic reporting.

There is a direct correlation between digital investment and balance sheet value. It works in tandem. The more you invest in digital, the more your balance sheet will be worth, said Taylor.

Being proactive on social media is crucial

According to panelist Sam Matthews, CTO at Gosh Digital in London, being proactive on social media in the hotel industry is crucial as is understanding the audience, picking the appropriate channels and creating great content. Reactive social media must include timeous response to inquiries and complaints as well as tracking responses.

Speed is king, he says when it comes to download times and recommended hosting in Europe as opposed to Africa for optimum performance and speed.

Data and relevance key when it comes to CRM

Michael Schaffner, director of sales and marketing at Serenata, said data and relevance were key when it comes to CRM. CRM is about cleaning data and building a central infrastructure. There is so much data coming into our industry and to get that one central data profile is a really big challenge. Its becoming more and more challenging with more devices and more data. Our vision for CRM is to make the most relevant offers to guests, he said.

Secure payments

The hospitality sector has very complex payment requirements and security is the biggest issue, said panelist Barry Coetzee, CEO of Ivery. Today we have many hospitality clients who only work on e-commerce. All their income comes in through a website which means internet security is the front door to all their cash flow, which is a very big deal.

According to Ivery, there is generally very low card fraud in Africa compared to the rest of the world. Were very conservative and our payment infrastructure is heavily regulated and complicated, he said.

Technology adoption a priority for the transformation of tourism

James Vos, MP, DA shadow minister of tourism, addressed delegates earlier in the day and said that technology adoption was a priority for the transformation of tourism in South Africa. We must use the many technologies available to market destinations, connect stakeholders, promote products and provide services. In fact, the recently hosted Africa World Travel Market in Cape Town selected the use of technology in tourism as its theme, he said.

Vos told delegates the DA supported the application of electronic visas as a means to streamline tourist facilitation to the country. The DA favours e-visas for visitors to South Africa for these simple reasons: They protect jobs in tourism, present significant advantages by cutting turnaround times for issuing travel documentation, and are, in fact, more secure than existing permits.

Electronic visas have proven highly effective in countries like Turkey, which is widely regarded to have the best international practice when it comes to visa applications, he said.
SAN FRANCISCO: Google on Thursday announced a deal to pay $625 million for Apigee, a firm specialising in managing the application programming interfaces, or APIs, that businesses use to connect with customers online.

Ingvar Bjork via 123RF

APIs "are vital for how business gets done today in the fast-growing digital and mobile marketplace," Google senior vice president Diane Greene said in a blog post about the acquisition.

"They're the hubs through which companies, partners and customers interact, whether it's a small business applying online for a loan or a point-of-sale system sending your warranty information to the manufacturer," she added. For example, APIs can enable a business's computer networks to communicate with apps on smartphones or tablets.

Apigee is used by hundreds of companies, including AT&T, Bechtel, Burberry, Live Nation and Walgreens, according to Google. Adding Apigee to its team promises to raise Google's game against major competitors Amazon and Microsoft in the market to provide businesses with services in the internet cloud.

Forrester, the independent market-research company, last year predicted that annual global spending on API management would top $1 billion by 2020. "The transition toward cloud, mobile and digital interaction with customers and partners via APIs is happening, and fast," Greene said.

The acquisition is subject to approval by regulators and Apigee shareholders but is expected to be completed this year. "We've entered a new era of cloud computing, where enterprises are increasingly running business-critical applications in the cloud," Apigee chief executive Chet Kapoor said in a release.

Source: AFP
Seeker Aircraft announced that it will showcase its light, fixed-wing observation aircraft at this year's Africa Aerospace and Defence ( AAD2016 ) trade show taking place 14-18 September. This is the first time that the Seeker will be available for exhibition and demonstration outside of the United States.

AAD, a decades-old trade and air show that is held in partnership with the South African government, is expected to host more than 30,000 trade visitors, 86 countries, and over 100 aircraft this year in Tshwane, South Africa.

This exhibition is the premier location for marketing air, sea, and land technologies across the African continent, said Tommy Dunn, senior vice president of Business Development and Marketing at CSI Aviation, the parent company of Seeker Aircraft. We are proud to bring the Seeker to Africa and to demonstrate its unparalleled surveillance capabilities to this discerning audience.

According to Dunn, the aircraft provides a cost-effective solution for missions requiring short take-off and landing, easy maintenance in the field, and excellent cockpit visibility. In short, its an excellent fit for coastal and border surveillance, police and security operations, oil and gas pipeline surveillance, and wildlife protection and anti-poaching programmes, he said.

The Seeker, with its newly approved CASA and FAA normal category cockpit, which is being brought to South Africa specifically for the exhibition, will be available for demonstration flights and possibly for sale.

The aircraft has already seen a lot of interest from government and commercial entities in Africa. Were very pleased to make it available for show and demo, said Dunn.
FRANKFURT: German auto giant Volkswagen and China's Anhui Jianghuai Automobile are in talks to build electric cars together, the firms announced Wednesday, the latest possible tie-up in a burgeoning Chinese market for clean-energy vehicles.

Volkswagen said the two carmakers had signed a memorandum of understanding at its Wolfsburg headquarters to explore the possibility of a joint venture focussed on the research and development, manufacturing and sales of "new energy vehicles".

In its own statement, Anhui Jianghuai Automobile (JAC) said it expected to sign an official agreement with Volkswagen within five months. JAC chairman An Jin said the firm was looking forward to "a full-scale cooperation" with Volkswagen "to provide Chinese consumers with highly cost-effective battery electric vehicle products". There were no immediate details about the scope of the planned agreement.

The mooted deal comes as Beijing is seeking to develop its nascent but growing electric car industry with incentives and other government support in a bid to boost the country's environmental credentials and tackle crippling air pollution. Some 247,000 "zero emissions cars" were sold in China last year, quadruple the number in 2014, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. Under Chinese law, foreign companies must enter into joint ventures with domestic firms to produce vehicles in what is now the world's largest auto market.

China's leading electric car manufacturer BYD has already teamed up with Germany's Daimler, while French carmaker PSA Peugeot Citroen said earlier this year it would develop electric cars with Chinese partner Dongfeng Motors from 2019.

JAC, based in Hefei in east China's Anhui province, is a state-owned car, truck and bus maker with sales outlets across China. It aims to bring the production and sales of new energy cars to more than 30% of the total by 2025, according to its website.

Like many global automakers, Volkswagen is revving up its focus on green energy vehicles with plans to launch more than 30 all-electric models within the next decade. Those efforts have become all the more urgent in the wake of Volkswagen's dieselgate emissions cheating scandal, which has hurt the firm's sales and cast a spotlight on the harmful effects of polluting engines.

Source: AFP
Kwantu Private Game Reserve announced a strategic partnership with Stenden University, an international higher learning institute headquartered in the Netherlands with campus facilities and education delivery points in Holland, South Africa, Qatar, Indonesia, and Thailand. The arrangement will see Kwantu become an experiential learning site and partner in South Africa, allowing local students to traverse hospitality management, operations and guest relations at an African wildlife game reserve as part of training, exposure, and practical learning.

The agreement will advance both local and internationally registered undergraduate students enrolled on Stendens hospitality management degree programmes, including the student body based at the hotel school in Port Alfred, and Stendens international visiting student body to South Africa from its various international campuses.

Last month, Kwantu welcomed Stenden students during an excursion at the reserve.

LEARNING LABORATORY: Students from Stenden South Africa visited Kwantu Private Game Reserve as part of their Hospitality Management training programme. Stenden lecturer Erna Velthof (centre) from Holland accompanied students Yannick Groendijk (seated left) from Schiermonnikoog an island in Holland and Siyathokoza Zuma from Durban and back left, Jessica Pfotenhauer from Botswana and Sarah Chirombe from Zimbabwe.

Stenden lecturer Erna Velthof, a visiting lecturer on a teacher exchange programme, said Africa offers a very unique opportunity for hospitality students. While we are in Africa, we need to see and visit lodges to get a better understanding of how they operate, said Velthof who is from Holland.

The aim of the student visit is to get an in-depth understanding of Africas game reserve industry and operations so that they could potentially become lodge managers in future, she said.

Kwantu Private Game Reserve CEO Shakir Jeeva said, The Stenden relationship strategically aligns with our vision of supporting and empowering future leaders and emergent professionals in hospitality management industries.

We know that Kwantu and South Africa will offer an exciting learning laboratory of practitioner-driven insight that will prepare students for the demands of global hospitality industries, he said.

The reserve, in August, has been listed as finalists in three major travel and hospitality awards this year, including the Sanlam Top Destination Awards 2016, The Haute Grandeur Global Hotel Awards and The World Luxury Hotel Awards.
It's always a big deal when a truck maker introduces a new model. It is an even bigger deal when it introduces a new flagship which spearheads a complete revision of its entire range. Mercedes did it a few years ago when it revealed its new Actros, which we hope will eventually make it to SA in 2018.

That date seems likely for the new Scania too, although the company is unable to put a time frame on the local roll-out of its new models as yet.

Scania gathered some 1,200 guests and media together under the glass roof of the Grand Palais in Paris to reveal not just its new trucks, but its new strategy.

"Scania is on an extraordinary journey," said its president and CEO, Henrik Henriksson. "Our promise is not just about business. It is about developing a sustainable future. There has been an exploding demand for the movement of goods and people, putting pressure on the environment," he said.

That view was echoed by guest speaker and former United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan. "No business can succeed in a society that fails. The transport sector will be absolutely crucial. We must make the economic case for sustainable transport. The growth of transport should not harm the people or the planet," he said.

Henriksson says that Scania is committed to smart and safe transport solutions, pointing out that since 2011 every Scania truck has been equipped with connectivity systems. These systems have provided the truck maker with valuable insight into how businesses operate and enabled it to tailor its products.

"From our connected fleet we know trucks in Europe only run at 60% capacity," he said. It is this feedback that is enabling fleet managers to make decisions on routes, capacity and other areas which not only improve efficiency but reduce costs and reduce the impact of trucks and loads on the environment.

Efficiency is a key issue at the moment. Many transport companies in Europe are operating with only a 2% margin, which Henriksson says means they only make their profit in the last week of the year. It requires trucks and fleets to become smarter.

This is the one of the major aims of the new Scania truck lineup. According to Christian Levin, Scania's head of sales and marketing, the new models have been built from the ground up to meet the needs of 21st century transport. The company has invested billions and spent 10 years developing the new trucks including putting in more than 10-million kilometres of testing.

"The new range is designed to meet more demanding standards than ever before," said Levin. It includes the latest generation of Euro 6 engines, all of which will be HVO compatible. They also feature the world's first rollover curtain airbags in a truck and, of course, a whole new suite of connected services.

These services will include a new generation of preventative maintenance systems. Levin says the new trucks will allow a "don't call us, we'll call you" approach to maintenance, with trained workshop technicians monitoring when a truck needs attention and contacting the customer in advance.

Henriksson said the company is also working on a number of future technologies for its trucks too. These include an extension of its alternative fuels strategy, as well as the possibility of fully electric vehicles which will boast wireless charging.

It is not just about changes under the skin, though. The new trucks feature an evolution of the familiar Scania design, updated with a view to remaining fresh and modern for a potential 10-year life cycle. The interior has also been extensively designed and the company has called on the expertise of fellow Volkswagen Group companies such as Audi and Porsche. An obvious example of this is the Audi style digital dashboard which can provide a vast amount of information for the driver.

Taking a look around the cab it was clear there has been a strong focus on driver requirements. There is a vast amount of space and enough storage nooks and cupboards to make one wonder if the cab is not a better place to spend the night than a room at the local truck stop.

The seats have been designed and engineered for maximum comfort and there is added safety above and beyond that new curtain airbag system.

The question now is when the new trucks will make it to SA. The local operation is already testing the new engines with a long-distance customer. This will be vital to establishing when it will be possible to bring the new trucks with the latest generation engines to this country.

It is all designed to be more comfortable and more efficient, with Scania claiming that the combination of new engines, improved aerodynamics and greater technology will deliver up to a 5% improvement in fuel economy. Chatting to some of the big customers that Scania SA took to Paris for the reveal, it is that figure that will matter the most. Today the bottom line is being watched more closely than ever and the new trucks will have to protect those very pressured margins.

Levin promised that the new trucks will be the "most sustainable, fun to drive, money-making machines in our history". If it can follow through on that claim, then Scania should have another winning formula.

Source: Business Day
Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa says the advisory panel on the national minimum wage will submit a report of their recommendations next month.

The Deputy President said this when he fielded oral questions from Members of Parliament (MPs) in the National Council of Provinces on Wednesday, 7 September 2016.

Last month, the Deputy President appointed a seven-member advisory panel to advise on an appropriate level at which to set a national minimum wage to address inequality, while ensuring that it does not lead to job losses.

To encourage progress, I have recently appointed, in consultation with the Committee of Principals, a seven-person panel to advise on an appropriate level at which the national minimum wage could be set.

This advisory panel is in the process of reviewing available research into the potential social and economic impact of a minimum wage, as well as considering international experience.

The panel is expected to report back to the Committee of Principals towards the end of next month, he said.

In his State of the Nation Address on 17 June 2014, President Jacob Zuma called on National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac) social partners, under the leadership of the Deputy President, to establish a process to address wage inequality and protracted and violent strikes.

Structured work on a national minimum wage began following the Nedlac Labour Relations Indaba of November 2014.

The summit tasked a Committee of Principals  representing government, business, labour and community  to determine the modalities of a national minimum wage and measures to stabilise labour relations.

On Wednesday, the Deputy President said negotiations on a national minimum wage have been taking place within a technical task team, where the social partners have put forward various proposals and presented relevant research.

He also said that in addition to discussions on the level at which such a wage should be set, the technical task team has been considering issues such as exclusions and exemptions and the relationship between a future national minimum wage and existing sectoral wage determinations.

While progress has been made on several principle issues, there are a number of matters on which the social partners have not reached agreement.

This is vital work because we need to ensure that the national minimum wage makes a meaningful difference in the lives of the working poor and in their communities, he said.

He also said that government would ensure that the national minimum wage does not undermine efforts to grow the economy and create jobs on a far greater scale.

The Deputy President said government is keen to have a national minimum wage in place as soon as possible, but added that for its implementation to be effective, it should be ensured that all social partners are on board.

We therefore welcome the commitment from all social partners to work with urgency to conclude this process, he said.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) calls on the Burundian authorities to launch an independent investigation into the disappearance of Jean Bigirimana, a journalist who has been missing since 22 July 2016.

Jean Bigirimana

A reporter for Iwacu and Infos Grands Lacs, he was seen for the last time at Muramvya, 40 km east of the capital, Bujumbura. Witnesses in Muramvya said he was in the custody of members of the National Intelligence Service (SNR).

An investigation by Bigirimanas colleagues at Iwacu led to the discovery of two bodies in a river near to where he was seen for the last time. Unfortunately, the local authorities quickly buried the two bodies before they could be identified. Deprived of all information, his family and colleagues live in a state of constant anxiety. Light must be shed on what happened to him, as stated in the petition by Reporters Without Borders.

Since April 2015, Burundi has been in the grips of a political crisis in which media outlets have been closed and many journalists have been physically attacked. Before the crisis, it was regarded throughout the region as a model of media pluralism and professional journalism.

Burundi is ranked 156th out of 180 countries in RSFs 2016 World Press Freedom Index, after falling 11 places in one year.

The petition can be signed here.

Source: Reporters Without Borders.
Growth and development in the communications industry continues to rise in all sectors of the market. Public Relations firms are reaping the benefits of the move towards digital and social media activity, with over 70% of consultancies reporting that these are the main drivers for growth. This is especially true for the African market where opportunities are expanding as the economy in the region continues to strengthen and grow.

Jacqueline Boulos

The World Banks Global Economic Prospects report lists six African nations in the top 13 countries around the world with the highest projected compounded annual growth rate from 2014 to 2017. This kind of growth along with the associated interest and increased investment from local and international companies will undoubtedly create a greater need for quality Public Relations and communications on the continent.

The effect of this is already being seen with global agencies moving away from just having associates in these countries to opening fully fledged offices to allow them to operate more efficiently and effectively. For example, last year well known agency Hill+Knowlton opened an office in the key West African market of Nigeria.

The success of these agencies however does not end with having a presence in Africa, it is about ensuring that they are able to understand and adapt to the needs of these markets.

Too often agencies try to mirror what they do in their home market in another market  simply changing the media list and angle but otherwise keeping everything else the same, only to find that success is limited and not lasting.

Localisation does not merely mean including some local facts, quoting local representatives and adding a bit of local flavour, but rather attempting to truly understand how the media and business landscape work in order to correctly position the brand and build a local business reputation.

To understand how the politics, geographical location, religion, cultural backgrounds and even the weather influence communication and your strategy is true localisation. Each market (broken down into various regions) has its own personality and rules of engagement and needs to be understood and adhered to if one wants to establish a credible presence in the market.

The other challenge is finding the kind of good local communications talent that is needed to create and deliver good communications strategies and campaigns. New media skills, sophisticated content development, crisis communications and effective social media strategies are all required. This kind of talent may not be immediately available and may need to be trained and nurtured.

This includes new media and social media skills which are critical nowadays as digital media continues to be the fastest driver for growth.

Ironically despite the impression that Africa lags the rest of the world when it comes to technology, mobile marketing is massive on the continent. This is due to high mobile usage and access to desktop computers is comparatively low. Further more mobile penetration is increasing all the time which presents public relations and communications companies with massive opportunities. Mobile marketing is no longer seen as an add-on but rather as an essential platform for reaching target audiences, especially the rapidly growing and digitally connected under 35 middle-class demographic.

Having said this, traditional media should not be ignored as many companies still want traditional coverage in print and broadcast as well. Agencies therefore need to be able to combine print and cutting-edge digital skills to satisfy their clients expectations.

It is also a good option to look for an agency to partner with  one that is already operating in the local market and therefore has contacts and knows the local industry, taking into consideration that it is important to create a real partnership where knowledge and experience is shared rather than one dominating the other.

Regardless of how the challenges and opportunities for Public Relations agencies are addressed, Africa represents an exciting and fresh opportunity for agencies, which are willing to adapt and approach the market strategically.
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U Oo Than Tun, a local elder, said that local elders and CSO representatives were invited to meet Kofi Annan at a meeting held at the Arakan State Government office on 6 September.

He said that the original agenda had included a question and answer session, but it did not happen because the authorities ended the meeting after U Kyaw Tint Swe from the State Counsellors Office, Arakan State Chief Minister U Nyi Pu, and Kofi Annan had finished speaking.

He said: The public already mistrust this Arakan Commission and now I believe they have insulted Sittwes local elders and social organisations. Thats why trust in this commission has totally disappeared.

When Narinjara News asked U Oo Than Tun why the authorities had not held the question and answer session he said he did not know.



Protesters outside the Arakan State Government office

He said he disapproved of Kofi Annan, a former Secretary-General of the UN, because Mr Annan had talked about ensuring fairness and a lack of bias in handling the Arakan State issue and U Oo Than Tun thought expressing such sentiments was an insult to local ethnic people.

Over 200 people protested against the Arakan State Advisory Commission while the meeting was being held at the Arakan State Government office and over 1,000 people protested against the commission at Sittwe Airport.

Translated by Thida Linn

Edited in English by Mark Inkey for BNI
Nai Hong Sar, vice-chairman of the New Mon State Party (NMSP) said: Ethnic people submitted their views openly. The Tatmadaw [Burma Army] also submitted their views openly. One good thing is that we were able to see the issues in our country and [hear the] views [held] by each group. It was all public knowledge.

He also said that solutions acceptable to the majority of people that incorporated the genuine views of ethnic people and political issues have to be found.

Col Khun Okkar, patron of the Pa-O National Liberation Organisation (PNLO) said: Everyone knew what was in our hearts because we were allowed to speak freely. There are diversities and confrontations. This was a way of informing [people about] problems and expressing them. Solutions will come up when we know what problems there are.

The Tatmadaw (Burma Army), EAOs, political parties, civil society organizations, and experts presented a total of 72 papers expressing their views at the Union Peace Conference, which was held at MICC 2 Hall in Naypyidaw from 31 August to 3 September.

The papers were not discussed at the conference. Discussions and negotiations will take place at subsequent meetings of the Union Peace Conference.

Garmani, a writer and critic of politics and the military in Burma, said: The organisers themselves have said that it will be a long process. One must take time to negotiate. Many groups and parties were not included in the conference. These four-days were only the foundation. You cant expect more.

17 EAOs, including all those who signed the nationwide ceasefire agreement (NCA) and other groups who did not sign the NCA, sent 175 representatives to the Union Peace Conference.

The Arakan Army, the Taang National Liberation Army (TNLA), and Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), who have not signed the NCA did not send any representatives to the conference.

Reporting by Saw Thein Myint for KIC News

Translated by Thida Linn

Edited in English by Mark Inkey for BNI
This Minister Was Executed For Sleeping!! Pulse oi-Syeda Farah

The word "Ministers" can in itself boil ones blood, especially if you're living in a country like India. Yup, they are the ones who seem to promise us quite a lot during elections only to later watch them sleeping carelessly at a Parliamentary meeting.

This is the scenario we usually come across in the Indian government. They are the guys who enjoy their luxuries to the maximum and also make sure they sleep during important parliamentary sessions.

What can be worse than seeing them sit clueless, sleep or even watch porn during their official working hours?

As Indian government has been quite lenient about its ministers who have been lagging in progression, we need to learn from ministers of other countries, as they actually show the world what they are working for.

Here, in this article, we are about to share the story of a North Korean minister who was shot because he was sleeping during their session. Find out more.

Who Was He? He was "Kim Yong-jin" the Vice-premier for education in North Korea. He had taken power in 2011 after the death of his father, Kim Jong-il. The 71-year-old military intelligence official is believed to be the mastermind behind the North's cyber-attacks on Seoul. Image Courtesy What He Did Kim is also blamed by the South for the sinking of a South Korean warship in 2010, near the disputed sea border with the North, in the Yellow Sea. He was banished to a farm for a month for his "arrogance" and "abuse of power." Why Was He Punished He was denounced for his bad sitting posture when he was sitting below the rostrum. He was found to be sleeping during his official hours. What They Did To Him He was arrested on site and intensively questioned by the state security ministry. Apart from this, he was publicly executed for dozing off! And sleeping during working hours is a No Joke in this country! Final Verdict The firing squad did not execute him with regular guns but they blasted him apart with a massive "ANTI-AIRCRAFT GUN"! Now, this is something really harsh. Hope other ministers can understand the criticality of this and take their work more seriously.

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Story first published: Friday, September 9, 2016, 21:50 [IST]
Top-shelf municipal bonds were weaker at midday, according to traders who said yields on some maturities were as many as five basis points higher. This is ahead of an estimated almost $11.5 billion of new issuance expected to hit screens next week.

Secondary Market

Top-rated municipal bonds were weaker at midsession on Friday. The yield on the 10-year benchmark muni general obligation was between two and four basis points higher from 1.45% on Thursday, while the yield on the 30-year rose between three and five basis points from 2.15%, according to the a read of Municipal Market Data's triple-A scale.

Treasuries were weaker on Friday around midday. The yield on the two-year Treasury rose to 0.78% from 0.77% on Thursday, the 10-year Treasury yield gained to 1.66% from 1.61% and the yield on the 30-year Treasury bond increased to 2.39% from 2.32%.

On Thursday, the 10-year muni to Treasury ratio was calculated at 90.0% compared to 93.8% on Wednesday, while the 30-year muni to Treasury ratio stood at 92.8% versus 95.4%, according to MMD.

MSRB: Previous Session's Activity

The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board reported 35,293 trades on Thursday on volume of $11.21 billion.

Week's Most Actively Traded Issues

Some of the most actively traded issues by type in the week ended Sept. 9 were from California, Ohio and Illinois issuers, according to Markit.

In the GO bond sector, the California 3s of 2046 were traded 65 times. In the revenue bond sector, the Hamilton County, Ohio 5s of 2046 were traded 33 times. And in the taxable bond sector, the Illinois 6.63s of 2035 were traded 21 times.

Week's Most Actively Quoted Issues

Puerto Rico and California issues were among the most actively quoted names in the week ended Sept. 9, according to Markit.

On the bid side, the Puerto Rico Commonwealth GO 5.5s of 2039 were quoted by 13 unique dealers. On the ask side, the California HFFA revenue 3s of 2047 were quoted by 29 unique dealers. And among two-sided quotes, the California taxable 7.55s of 2039 were quoted by 15 unique dealers.

Week's Primary Market

Estimated volume for the week of Sept. 16 is way up to $11.42 billion from a revised total of $2.59 billion in the past week, according to revised data from Thomson Reuters. The upcoming slate is composed of $9.37 billion of negotiated bond deals and $2.05 billion of competitive bond sales.

This week's holiday-shortened supply slate was cut down even more after the Texas Transportation Commission's sale of $615.26 million of Series 2016A fixed-rate state highway fund first tier revenue bonds and $90 million of Series 2016B state highway fund first tier revenue refunding put bonds was postponed until early October.

In the competitive arena, the Dormitory Authority of the State of New York sold five issues totaling $703.86 million.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch won the $295.29 million of Series 2016A Group C tax-exempt general purpose state personal income tax revenue bonds with a true interest cost of 3.49%. Citigroup won the $242.84 million of Series 2016A Group B tax-exempt general purpose state personal income tax revenue bonds with a TIC of 2.84%.

JPMorgan Securities won the $77.92 million of Series 2016A Group A tax-exempt general purpose state personal income tax revenue bonds with a TIC of 2.84%. JPMorgan also won the $65.75 million of Series 2016C taxable general purpose state personal income tax revenue bonds with a TIC of 1.51%.

And Roosevelt & Cross won the $22.07 million of Series 2016B tax-exempt general purpose state personal income tax revenue bonds with a TIC of 2.48%.

The DASNY deals are rated Aa1 by Moody's Investors Service and triple-A by S&P Global Ratings.

Also in the competitive sector, Washington state sold about $225 million of motor vehicle future tax general obligation bonds in two separate offerings. Citigroup won the $134.2 million of Series 2017B GOs with a true interest cost of 2.9969%. Citi also won the $90.37 million of Series 2017C GO SR 520 Corridor program toll revenue bonds with a TIC of 3.0055%. The deals are rated Aa1 by Moody's and AA-plus by S&P and Fitch Ratings.

In the negotiated sector, BAML priced the California's Health Facilities Financing Authority's $288.52 million of Series 2016B revenue bonds for Providence St. Joseph Health. The deal is rated Aa3 by Moody's and AA-minus by S&P and Fitch.

JPMorgan priced the Indiana Finance Authority's $234.15 million of Series 2016A first lien wastewater utility revenue green bonds and Series 2016B second lien wastewater utility revenue refunding bonds. The first-lien bonds are rated AA by S&P and A by Fitch while the second-lien bonds are rated AA-minus by S&P and A by Fitch.

Wells Fargo Securities priced Austin, Texas' $164.96 million of Series 2016 public improvement and refunding bonds, Series 2016 certificates of obligation and Series 2016 public property finance contractual obligations. The deal is rated triple-A by Moody's, S&P and Fitch and carries stable outlooks from all three agencies.

Jefferies priced the New York Counties Tobacco Trust VI's $161.54 million of Series 2016 tobacco settlement pass-through bonds. Ratings from S&P on the bonds ranged from A to BBB.

Morgan Stanley priced the Illinois Housing Development's $144.07 million of Series 2016B and C homeownership mortgage revenue bonds. The deal is rated Aa3 by Moody's and AA by S&P.

Bond Buyer Visible Supply

The Bond Buyer's 30-day visible supply calendar increased $1.57 billion to $16.34 billion on Friday. The total is comprised of $3.60 billion of competitive sales and $12.75 billion of negotiated deals.

Lipper: Muni Bond Funds See Inflows

For the 49th straight week, municipal bond funds reported inflows, according to Lipper data released on Thursday. The weekly reporters saw $985.786 million of inflows in the week ended Sept. 7, after inflows of $428.291 million in the previous week, Lipper said.

The four-week moving average remained positive at $818.423 million after being in the green at $789.730 million in the previous week. A moving average is an analytical tool used to smooth out price changes by filtering out fluctuations.

Long-term muni bond funds experienced inflows, gaining $617.231 million in the latest week after inflows of $159.510 million in the previous week. Intermediate-term funds had inflows of $182.862 million after inflows of $55.211 million in the prior week.

National funds had inflows of $912.909 million on top of inflows of $342.335 million in the previous week. High-yield muni funds reported inflows of $264.215 million in the latest reporting week, after inflows of $30.474 million the previous week.

Exchange traded funds saw outflows of $71.151 million, after inflows of $95.576 million in the previous week.
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NEW DELHI (PTI): Army will host the annual Combined Commanders Conference in October, most likely outside the national capital following a suggestion by Prime Minister Narendra Modi two years ago.



The Navy had last year organised the conference on board India's aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya at Sea, off the coast of Kochi.



While the dates and location of this year's conference are yet to be finalised, sources said it could be held under the aegis of the Eastern Army Command which is involved in anti-insurgency operations in the northeast and a major part of the borders with China.



Interestingly, Lt Gen Praveen Bakshi, who is slated to be the next Army Chief, heads the Eastern Command.



Modi had in 2014 suggested that the armed forces could organise such conferences on ships at sea, or in forward area cantonments or air-bases, instead of New Delhi.



The conference is attended by Prime Minister, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar and other senior members of the Cabinet.



The Combined Commanders' Conference, also known as the Unified Commanders' Conference, is crucial as national defence policy, doctrine and operational challenges are discussed in detail.




WZ-10 attack helicopter of China. An internet photo

BEIJING (PTI): China's military has equipped all of its ground forces with advanced WZ-10 combat helicopters which will be used to target battle tanks and air-to-air combat missions, a strategic move that could have implications for India.



Several WZ-10s have been delivered to an aviation brigade of the PLA's 13th Group Army under the Western Theatre Command, the People's Liberation Army's TV news channel reported.



This means that all of the Army's aviation units now have this advanced attack helicopter, state-run China Daily reported.



Senior Colonel Xu Guolin, deputy chief of the PLA Army's Aviation Equipment Bureau, told the news channel that all of the group armies will have at least one aviation brigade or regiment.



The helicopter was designed primarily for anti-tank missions, but now has a secondary air-to-air combat capability.



Wu Peixin, an aviation analyst in Beijing, said the PLA Army now has a strong force of dedicated combat helicopters thanks to the service of the WZ-10 and WZ-19, another attack helicopter that is less powerful than the WZ-10.



"The Army now needs more medium-lift, multipurpose helicopters such as the US Army's Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk," he said.



"This helicopter is capable of performing both combat operations and transport tasks."



Gao Zhuo, a military observer in Shanghai, said the PLA Army needs at least 3,000 helicopters, especially heavy-lift transport types and multipurpose models.



Meanwhile, the Chinese military has discounted media reports that China's stealth fighter J-20, currently undergoing trials, will be deployed in Tibet along the India-China border.



Reacting to reports that J-20 spotted at the Daocheng Yading Airport in Tibet, an article in the PLA website said that J-20 will be put into service soon but the 'China-India border is apparently not the ideal place for its deployment'.



"In addition, the world's highest airport there does not have a complete set of supporting facilities and such shortage will impede the function of J-20," it said.



"J-20 will not be deployed in Daocheng Yading airport as the airport is too close to the border, and it is vulnerable to India's first wave hit. If India is to deploy BRAHMOS missile on the China-India border, then the Daocheng Yading airport will likely to become its target," it said.



"Experts pointed out that for India, China is undoubtedly its largest opponent and therefore every move of the Chinese military will touch the nerve of Indian media," it said.



"India is not yet the biggest threat for China and though confrontation events along the border would occur from time to time, the overall situation is rather stable," it said.



"In this way, China does not put too much emphasis and focus targeting India. Chinese equipment deployment and drills along the border are mostly confirmatory, mainly to gain experience, improve high-altitude combat capability, and form deterrent ability," it said.


Ireland is expected to oppose plans for common tax laws across Europe.

EU Finance Ministers will discuss the proposal when they meet in Bratislava this weekend.

They want to stop countries luring business away from their European neighbours by lowering their tax rates.

The plans follow the European Commission's ruling that Apple "illegally" exploited Irish corporate rates, racking up a 13bn bill in back taxes.

Irish Finance Minister Michael Noonan will voice his unhappiness with the deal when it is proposed tomorrow.
A 12-year-old Irish boy, now living in Chicago, has written and directed a film that has captured the hearts of over half a million people online.

Jonah Maxwell made a film called 'The Bully' to show how the proliferation of social media has contributed to how bullying has worsened over recent years.

In the video the voices of children explain what they have experienced at the hands of bullies, but also their experiences of the people who stood by and did nothing to help.

Faceless bullies dominate the screen as children explain how bullying no longer ends when a child leaves school, but continues rather intensely online.

"My dad told me when he was a kid, bullying would stop at 3:30 every day after school. I told him its not like that anymore  they can get you 24/7."

The signature blue colour of Facebook is used to show abusive messages and how technology allows hateful comments from the classroom to transcend into a child's home life. Right to their phone in their pocket, their bedside table or in their lap as they eat dinner.

What makes this film really special, is the turn it takes at the halfway mark.

"You have to believe that good people who are willing to help you are around."

The courageous message of hope, of solidarity, that Maxwell illustrates is breathtakingly beautiful.

The fact that one child can overcome his fears in an effort to help others is one that should inspire us all.

Maxwell's film has been shown in schools across the US, Brazil, Ireland and Australia.

Watch it below or here.
Around 400,000 commuters face disruption again this morning, as the Dublin bus strike enters its second day.

The NBRU union representing drivers said they were ready to see the pay dispute "through to the bitter end".

Two more 48-hour strikes are planned for this month over calls for a 15% wage hike. Management are only prepared to offer an 8% rise.

The five drivers' unions are due to meet on Thursday to discuss their next course of action.

General Secretary of the NBRU Dermot O'Leary said: "The mood is one of strong resolve. They are determined to see this dispute through to the bitter end if that's what it takes.

"Their preferred option is to have a settlement of their dispute. They do appreciate that despite the fact the public are being discommoded unfortunately through (their action), they feel some of the public are very supportive of them."

Bus lanes

Gardai have warned motorists not to use bus lanes even though no buses are running.

They said bus lanes will continue to facilitate other bus service providers, public service vehicles, emergency services and an increased number of cyclists.

Gardai in Dublin are advising commuters to plan ahead and to expect extra volumes of traffic during morning and evening peaks times.

People have turned to private cars and taxis - who are reporting a 300% spike in trade - since buses were called back to their depots on Wednesday evening.

'Underfunding'

Unite, which represents craft workers in Dublin Bus, demanded Mr Ross intervene in the dispute.

Willie Quigley, regional officer for the union, blamed "persistent underfunding" of Dublin Bus by successive governments for the fall-out.

"Dublin Bus provides a vital public service, yet we have one of the lowest levels of state support for public transport in the EU," he said.

"In Dublin, the public subvention makes up just 20% of public transport revenue, compared with over 50% in many other European cities."

Further strikes are planned on September 15 and 16 and again on September 23 and 24, and pickets are being held in Clontarf, Conyngham Road, Harristown, Ringsend, Phibsboro, Donnybrook and Summerhill, as well as at the head office in O'Connell Street.
A former Senator appeared in court today charged with a number of offences including drink driving and dangerous driving as a music festival was taking place nearby, writes Joe Leogue.

James Heffernan (aged 36), who lost his seat in the Seanad last April, appeared before Judge Brian Sheridan at Fermoy District Court facing five charges in total, all of which allegedly took place in Mitchelstown, Co Cork on Monday, August 1 last.

He is charged with dangerous driving at Coolenave, Mitchelstown, and with the same offence again, along with drink driving, driving without insurance and driving without a licence on the Limerick Road.

The alleged offences took place near where the Indiependence Music Festival was taking place at the time at Deer Farm, Coolenave.

Giving evidence of arrest, charge, and caution, Garda Dave Delea told the court that he stopped the car Mr Heffernan was driving at approximately 8.50am on the morning in question on the Limerick Road, and conveyed him to Fermoy Garda Station.

The accused gave his name as Seamas OHeifearnain, gave his address as Baile an Lina, Cill Fhionain, Limerick (Ballinlyna, Kilfinane, Co Limerick), and made no reply to the charges, the court heard.

Today in court Mr Heffernan spoke only to inform the judge that he was representing himself, but is seeking a solicitor, and to seek disclosure of the prosecutions documents on the case.

Judge Sheridan advised Mr Heffernan to seek the services of a solicitor.

He granted Inspector Eoin Healys application to have the matter adjourned until October 7 next for either a plea or to fix a date for a hearing if Mr Heffernan is to contest the charges.

A qualified primary school teacher, Mr Heffernan was formerly a member of the Labour Party during his terms on Limerick County Council and the Seanad, where he was elected onto the Agricultural Panel in 2011.

After losing the Labour whip, Mr Heffernan contested the recent General Election for the Social Democrats, running in the Limerick constituency where he polled 3,270 votes and was eliminated on the fifth count.
Leo Varadkar has admitted the Government does have the power to allow civilians to use bus lanes during the Dublin Bus strike.

However, he said there were good safety reasons for not doing so.
The body of a man has been found close to the city centre in Cork.

The remains were found this morning on a path leading to flats at Rockgrove Terrace on the Lower Glanmire Road.
The prospect of a united Ireland must remain an option in the wake of Brexit, Taoiseach Enda Kenny has said.

In an address to the British Irish Association in Oxford University, Mr Kenny said there was no evidence to suggest a border poll would bring about a 32-county republic if held now.

But he said Ireland should be treated the same as Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall if people vote for reunification.

"The possibility of unity by consent must be maintained as a valid democratic option into the future," Mr Kenny said.

"That means that, if there were democratic consent to Irish unity at some time in the future, there must be a mechanism to ensure that a democratic decision can be implemented within the European Union, as was the case in Germany."

The Taoiseach said the Irish Government would shortly publish plans for organisations and individuals across the island of Ireland to have their say on the implications of Brexit.

He said that the upcoming Budget would not be significantly affected by the UK leaving Europe but it would take account of likely impacts.

"There is a long and difficult road ahead," he said.

"But I am confident that we can continue to manage relationships across these islands in a positive and constructive way, in the interests of all our people.

"It is a once-in-a-generation political and diplomatic challenge. Our greatest efforts must and will be dedicated to making this work."

Mr Kenny urged Britain not to look at the Brexit negotiations through a purely economic lens and warned that European leaders see matters of historic and fundamental importance at stake.

The Taoiseach also warned about the threat to the Northern Ireland peace process.

"At this time of profound change, there can be no room for old divisions to cloud the vision of the future. We must work together on all fronts to preserve and build upon what we have achieved. We must be thoughtful, pragmatic and generous," he said.

"We must look forward, and set a new horizon.

"Above all else, we must do nothing to undermine the foundation of the peace - the Good Friday Agreement, and subsequent agreements, that have transformed life on these islands."

Mr Kenny told the university audience that Ireland would seek to take opportunities from Brexit but said that the best outcome would be a close relationship between Britain and Europe.
The Taoiseach has urged his Ministers to "apply themselves to their jobs".

Waterford TD John Halligan has stopped short of quitting as a junior minister after a clinical review said a second cath lab for the local hospital was not justified.

A second review may now be carried out after Halligan claimed that this one was flawed and subjected to interference from other hospitals.

In Dublin this morning, Enda Kenny was asked if he had a message for Minister Halligan.

"I'm heading now to Oxford to talk about Brexit and all that that brings, " he said.

"I'd like that everybody would apply themselves to their jobs.

"We have a big responsibility in uncertain times. I'm looking forward to preparations for the Budget which, as we've pointed out, will be prudent, and without taking any risks with an economy that people have built up with their hard sacrifices over the last number of years.

"So everybody get down to business and apply ourselves to what we have to do as a country and as a people."
Facebook has reversed its decision to remove postings of an iconic 1972 image of a naked, screaming girl running from a napalm attack in Vietnam, after a Norwegian revolt against the tech giant.

Protests in Norway started last month after Facebook deleted the Pulitzer Prize-winning image by Associated Press photographer Nick Ut from a Norwegian author's page, saying it violated its rules on nudity.

The revolt escalated on Friday when Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg posted the image on her profile and Facebook deleted that too.

Initially, it stood by the decision, saying it was difficult to create a distinction between allowing a photograph of a nude child in one instance and not others. But late on Friday it said it would allow sharing of the photo.

"In this case, we recognise the history and global importance of this image in documenting a particular moment in time," Facebook said in a statement.

"Because of its status as an iconic image of historical importance, the value of permitting sharing outweighs the value of protecting the community by removal, so we have decided to reinstate the image on Facebook where we are aware it has been removed."

Politicians on all sides, journalists and regular Norwegians had backed Ms Solberg's decision to share the image.

The prime minister told broadcaster NRK she was pleased with Facebook's change of heart and that it shows social media users' opinions matter.

"To speak up and say we want change, it matters and it works. And that makes me happy," she said.

The image shows screaming children running from a burning Vietnamese village. The little girl in in the centre of the frame, Kim Phuc, is naked and crying as napalm melts away layers of her skin.

"Today, pictures are such an important element in making an impression, that if you edit past events or people, you change history and you change reality," Ms Solberg said earlier, adding it was the first time one of her Facebook posts was deleted.

Ms Solberg later reposted the image with a black box covering the girl from the thighs up. She also posted other iconic photos of historic events, such as the man standing in front of a tank in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989, with black boxes covering the protagonists.

Several members of the Norwegian government followed Ms Solberg's lead and posted the photo on their Facebook pages. One of them, Education Minister Torbjorn Roe Isaksen, said it was "an iconic photo, part of our history".

Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten published the photo on its front page on Friday and also wrote an open letter to Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg in which chief editor Espen Egil Hansen accused the social media giant of abusing its power.

Mr Hansen said he was "upset, disappointed - well, in fact even afraid - of what you are about to do to a mainstay of our democratic society".

The uproar also spread outside of Norway, with the head of Denmark's journalism union urging people to share Mr Hansen's open letter.

Germany's Justice Minister Heiko Maas, who has previously clashed with Facebook over its failure to remove hate speech deemed illegal in Germany, also weighed in, saying "illegal content should vanish from the internet, not photos that move the whole world".

Facebook's statement said it will adjust its review mechanisms to permit sharing of the image going forward.

"We are always looking to improve our policies to make sure they both promote free expression and keep our community safe, and we will be engaging with publishers and other members of our global community on these important questions going forward," it said.
A City trader has been jailed for six years for raping a young woman after a cocaine and champagne-fuelled office party.

Daniel Green, 26, was found guilty of attacking the woman, in her 20s, after she had curled up to sleep under a desk in the early hours of May 16, 2015.

Green insisted during the trial that the sex was consensual but he stopped when she began to cry as he thought his penis was causing her pain.

He said: "Maybe my penis was hurting her. I always have difficulty when it comes to having sex with girls. I find my penis is hard to penetrate females."

The defendant said his penis was 10in (25cm) long and around 4in (10cm) in girth, demonstrating for the jury with his hand.

The pair had met during after-work drinks in the City of London and gone back with a group of Green's colleagues to the StratX stockbrokers' offices near Monument, where he had only just started work.

While there, partygoers danced on desks to music, drank champagne and took lines of cocaine into the early hours.

Most of the StratX men went home after the mood soured as the woman's companion complained her stash of cocaine had gone missing because she was reluctant to share it.

The woman, who cannot be identified, was left in the office with Green, her friend and another StratX employee who tried to rekindle the party atmosphere.

But she told jurors she became tired and decided to take a nap under a desk, intending to catch the first train home because she did not have enough money for a taxi.

Wiping away tears, she described how she awoke to find Green "tugging" her trousers down and asked him "What the f*** are you doing?".

"At that point I remember just trying to crawl forward to get away. I knew what was going to happen. I remember being pulled back," she told the jury.

"The next thing I remember was Daniel raping me.

"I was still trying to wriggle away, doing anything I could to stop that. I guess I was in a state of shock at what was happening. I was just trying to say no and get across this is something I don't want to happen.

"I just kept saying 'No, no, no, no, no, no' but it absolutely didn't stop anything.

"He was making sexual noises, making me feel horrible, so I burst into tears.

"After realising I was not going to get away and this was actually happening, I started crying, and at that point - it seemed so bizarre as he'd said absolutely nothing before - he said 'Oh shit, she's crying'.

"He got off then. I was just distraught.

"Then he was out of the office really quickly."

The woman rang her best friend from the office and she alerted police, who arrested Green, of Walthamstow, east London.

Prosecutor Timothy Forster dismissed Green's claim that the sex was consensual, saying he had treated his victim like a "piece of meat".

He told jurors: "You perhaps do not need to know the truth of what was going through Mr Green's mind. He was a new member of the company.

"He was suddenly in this world where everyone was drinking and taking cocaine. To a certain extent he might feel he wants to impress people."

The barrister said the defendant had been jealous that the alleged victim's female friend was getting close to his co-worker and had acted because he was "frustrated and humiliated in front of his new work colleagues".

The jury took six hours to find Green guilt of rape by a majority of 11 to 1.

Green made no reaction as Mr Forster read out a statement from his victim in which she described the devastating effect on her life and her difficulties in moving on.

The senior executive, who cannot be identified, said: "The incident has been extremely traumatic for me. It has been very hard to come to terms with what happened and the effect this has had on a number of aspects of my personal life as well as my professional life.

"Despite the incident being a year ago, it feels very fresh in my mind and I still remember everything and how I felt in the ordeal.

"I desperately want to forget about what happened, but I'm not able to and fear this is something which will continue to blight my life. That event, it has left me numb and immediately afterwards I was barely about to talk."

The court heard Green had a number of previous convictions, including for Class A drugs, although no similar sex crimes.

Jailing him, Recorder Michael Wood QC told him: "I do not punish you for what seems to be City culture of excessive drink and casual use of drugs when you go out socialising."

He told Green he may have been "coming down from the cocaine" he had taken when he wandered around the office, peering at the victim sleeping before raping her.

He said the defendant had shown no remorse and behaved with "a degree of arrogance" when he gave evidence in court.

The Recorder ordered that he be put on the sexual offenders' register for an indefinite period.
An Ohio police department have shared this horrific photo to raise awareness of heroin-ravaged America.

The photo shows a 4-year-old boy sitting in the backseat of a car, wondering what is going on, while his mother and her boyfriend sit slumped-over and unconscious in the front.

Police say an officer watched the vehicle weave erratically and stop, then approached and noticed signs the driver was impaired. Paramedics revived the pair, who face child-endangering and other charges.

The boy has reportedly been placed in the custody of childrens services.

In a Facebook message, police in East Liverpool, Ohio, say they are sorry if people are offended, but they want the public to see what happens and want to be a voice for the child who witnessed the scene.
Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte has said he told President Barack Obama during their encounter in Laos that he never cursed him.

On a visit to Indonesia, Mr Duterte told the Filipino community there that he told Mr Obama: "President Obama, I'm President Duterte. I never made that statement, check it out."

He said that Mr Obama responded: "'My men will talk to you', and he replied 'OK'."

Mr Duterte blamed the media for distorting his words, saying he did utter "son of a bitch", but it was not directed at Mr Obama.

Before travelling to Laos for regional summits, Mr Duterte said on Monday that Mr Obama should not question him about the rising death toll in his war on drugs, which has been criticised abroad and by Mr Duterte's opponents in the Philippines.

More than 2,800 suspected drug dealers and users have been killed since Mr Duterte took office.

Asked how he would explain the killings to Mr Obama, he said in a long answer that the Philippines has long ceased to be a colony of the United States and he did not have a master except the Filipino people.

"I do not care about him. Who is he?" Mr Duterte said. "You must be respectful. Do not just throw questions and statements. Putang Ina, I will swear at you at that forum," he added, using the Tagalog phrase for "son of a bitch".

Mr Obama then cancelled a meeting with Mr Duterte in Laos but the two met informally on Wednesday in a holding room before attending a gala dinner.

Mr Duterte, who assumed the presidency in June, has had an uneasy relationship with the US, his country's longtime treaty ally.

He has said he is charting a foreign policy not dependent on the US, and has moved to reduce tensions with China over rival territorial claims.

He also said he showed a picture of an atrocity during the US pacification campaign in the southern Philippines at the beginning of the last century at the East Asia Summit in Laos that included Mr Obama, in order to stop criticism over human rights violations in the war on illegal drugs.

The photograph showed about 200 dead Filipino Moros stacked in a common pit, with an American soldier holding a rifle while stepping on the breasts of a naked Moro woman.

He said he told the leaders, "This is human rights, what do you intend to do?" and "Human rights violations whether committed by Moses or Abraham, is still violation of human rights."

The whole room was silent and he waited for Mr Obama to respond but he remained quiet, Mr Duterte said.
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Labor has pledged to help establish an advanced nursing masters course, use it to train 10 public health nurses a year, and offer post-graduate scholarships to 39 others.

The announcement of Labor's $2.55 million nurse training package continues the early arm-wrestle between the major parties on health policy, which is being welcomed by a sector happy that the campaign focus has swung its way.

Labor has pledged to help create a nurse practitioner course at the University of Canberra if re-elected. Credit:Gabrielle Charotte

Last month, the Liberals announced a major $395 million upgrade to Canberra Hospital, and two small satellite hospitals in Tuggeranong and Gungahlin.

Labor countered this week with its $650 million health package, which would see a new building at the Canberra Hospital, a new emergency department, and an expansion of the recently completed women and children's hospital.
North Melbourne travel to the city of churches to take on Adelaide on Saturday night and Brad Scott will have been on his knees, praying that his players can turn around the Roos' recent patch of uncompetitive form.

They have limped into the finals on the back of their early-season wins. They may be a little more match-hardened from their most recent losses, against fellow finalists the Western Bulldogs, Hawthorn, Sydney and Greater Western Sydney, but they do not look like a team with an appetite for a brutal, four-week finals campaign.

Ben Brown: key target for the Roos. Credit:AFL Media/Getty Images

Adelaide, on the other hand, have had big wins against non-finalists Brisbane Lions, Fremantle and Port Adelaide before a last round hiccup against the Eagles that will have given Don Pyke plenty of ammunition to use on his players as they seek redemption for losing the double chance.

The Crows welcome back two of their more important players in Rory Sloane, their best midfielder, and Brodie Smith, their best rebounder  whose kicking penetration helps them with their slingshot style of ball movement.
London: Two of the top stewards of Australia's economy have issued an unusually blunt warning to Parliament and voters, saying they must accept the need for "tough policy decisions" to start repairing the budget now.

In a speech in London, Treasury Secretary John Fraser said government spending must be cut, while in an interview to mark his looming retirement from the Reserve Bank, Governor Glenn Stevens urged Australians to take part in helping the political system craft a way forward to fix the budget.

Mr Fraser said Australia's debt was growing rapidly and had to be curbed, but stressed to business leaders that the economy was fundamentally strong with this week's GDP figures confirming 26 years of uninterrupted growth.

He conceded Australia's strong economic performance and relatively smooth transfer from the mining investment boom to a services-based economy had made it more difficult to convince voters of the need to pay down the debt.
A price hike of up to $500 a year for water is ridiculous. If any business needs to raise prices by 500 per cent, then the management needs sacking. Water is a human right, and, as usual, those at the bottom of the food chain will suffer most. Ian Jannaway, Monash Enjoy rebuild  for now Miracles do happen. The rebuild of the corner of London Circuit and Constitution Avenue in the city finally has been completed after many months. Surely a reason for a brass band, fireworks, a plaque and a commemorative ribbon cutting by an ACT politician. But do not get too excited. It will soon be torn up again if the decision proceeds to build a tram line to Russell. Then again, I understand the design is such that the corner is too sharp for bus drivers to safely negotiate the corner into the new hard left-hand side dedicated bus lane. T.W. Campbell, Bruce

Plan for fuel economy Adam Courtney's article on car commutes ("Drive down your costs", September 7, pp26-27) shows that car fuel economy and driver happiness significantly increase with fewer stop-starts. Just what we all thought, but, being the manager of a financial company, he has accurate figures. This means if we drive along a well-designed arterial road, such as Adelaide Avenue, our car fuel consumption and transit time is about half of what it would be driving along an arterial road, such as the recently completed John Gorton Drive with its many intersections and traffic lights. A bit of nifty town planning could have made John Gorton Drive so much better. John Skurr, Deakin

Make road upgrade a priority So, yet another fatal crash on the Monaro Highway south of Canberra. Another family dealing with tragedy, another set of motorists traumatised, another difficult situation for officers of our emergency services, and more costs for the wider society. The Monaro Highway carries a heavy traffic load, especially during the ski season, and many of the drivers are already tired when they drive this road, with a large number of them having set out from Sydney after a day at work. Isn't it time for the ACT, NSW and Commonwealth governments to get together and come up with an urgent plan for bringing the road up to dual carriageway standard all the way from Canberra to Cooma? Will Jeremy Hansen or Andrew Barr promise to make this a priority? And will John Barilaro help make it a priority for the NSW Government? Catherine Rossiter, Royalla, NSW

Word puzzles Correct you are Kate Gilbert (Letters, September 5) in the literal sense, in assuming nouns as answers. An ape is not a monkey, nor a monkey an ape. To "ape" or "monkey" is to copy. The verb form is one and the same and correct, hence the use in basic and cryptic crosswords. Those two words are often used as E and A and are the first and fourth most commonly used letters of the English alphabet, respectively. This provides greater use of words crossing over in compilation. Phil O'Mara, Macgregor Domestic violence traps What a sad situation about Bradyn Dillon, as revealed by Maree Oddy (Letters, September 7). No doubt there are complicated reasons as to why this little boy has not had a dignified farewell. Perhaps one of our local charities could co-ordinate his funeral.

I'm sure I'm not alone when I think of Bradyn and other victims of domestic violence with love and with a promise they will not be forgotten. Also with a sense of relief that part of my family survived and has got out of a dangerous situation, aided by swift police and court action. It's important to let people know that there is protection available and that the police are well trained to recognise domestic violence and provide excellent support day or night. Legal aid, the courts, housing  it's hard for everyone involved  but there are some success stories that should be told quietly to encourage anyone caught in a domestic violence trap to seek help. Name and address withheld by request Sustainability trumps growth Our politicians and economists are vigorously patting each other on the back for 25 years of "economic growth" as measured by GDP. But for so many of us, things seem to be getting worse. Could it be that they are measuring the wrong things? Could it be that the quest for an ever "bigger" economy, does not necessarily deliver "better" outcomes for the average Australian? What price are we, the ordinary people, paying for their endless growth obsession?

What costs are they inflicting on our environment? Perhaps an economically, environmentally and socially sustainable Australia would be a more worthy goal. Martin Tye, Kaleen Transparent appeal Former prime minister John Howard says limiting political donations to those on the electoral roll would require "massive increases in public funding" for political campaigns ("John Howard says donations reform would stifle people's political activity", canberratimes.com.

au, September 7), and he clearly implies the public would be against such an increase. Tony Abbott has made similar comments. Given the choice is between transparent public funding and opaque private funding, I suspect the public will choose transparent public funding. Personally, I would be delighted to pay extra tax to achieve this result. Howard and Abbott's commitment to small government may be admirable, but their indirect support for corruption is not. Christopher Budd, Turner Political shock tactics John Warhurst ("Our political system needs shock treatment", Comment, September8, p17) advocates for reform to stop the "cash for policy" merry-go-round which is disillusioning so many about modern politics. But I would be interested if he might expand on what exact set of reforms he thinks the positive shock circuit-breaker might entail.

Clearly many have been mooted. Reducing cash flows: very small donations/gifts/ in-kind from private Australian citizens only; increasing transparency: these with all details publicly disclosed in real time; increased oversight from anti-corruption commissions; reducing the need for cash: limits on election advertising or public funding of election campaigns; raising standards: a Charter of Democratic Commitments; as well as complementary electoral and voting system changes. It would be useful over the next five weeks to havea public discussion on what specifically about our political system might be improved and how. Peter Tait, O'Connor Honest mistake Len Goodman (Letters, September 8) claims Sam Dastyari "rorted the system". In fact, Dastyari was caught out as a goose because he complied with the system  he reported the payment he received in the parliamentary register of interests. The same cannot be said for the Liberal Party officials who conspired to subvert the electoral laws of NSW by channelling funds from developers through the federal party and were caught out to the tune of $4 million-plus bythe NSW Electoral Commission. Interesting how Arthur Sinodinos has not had a high profile in this latest triumph of hypocrisy  perhaps he recalls people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. Ric Innes, Weetangera

In tune with Bernardi Jenna Price ("Bernardi's in the thick of a re-education", Comment, September 7, p19) suggests that Corey Bernardi will experience a re-education at the UN. I have attended many meetings at UN agencies and beg to differ. Most delegates come from developing countries and have conservative social values. These values are very different from those of Ms Price and myself but very much in accord with those of Mr Bernardi. They live in traditional families, come from countries where homosexual acts are illegal and are deeply religious. This is particularly the case for the many who are Muslim. Bill Scott, Downer Freedom to marry

L. Barnard (Letters, September 5) knows many gay people who do not want the Marriage Act changed. Similarly, I know many straight people who did not want the Howard government to change the Marriage Act. It was changed at that time to prevent gay couples from marrying. L. Barnard also asks "what freedom will gay couples gain?". That's simple. They will have the freedom to marry if they wish, just as heterosexual couples do. The rights of heterosexuals will not be affected in the least by marriage equality, as those rights do not extend to discrimination on the basis ofreligion, race, sex or sexualorientation. John Laurie, Weston

Carbon inertia Josh Frydenberg, Minister for Energy (and much more rarely the environment), thinks that 2030 is a long way off to be worrying about whether the federal government's 2030 carbon reductions targets are achievable. He was interviewed about the dissenting report the Climate Change Authority had filed last week, yet offered no argument or evidence supporting his decision to brush it aside. Australians are not stupid. That is why a clear majority of them believe climate change is real and that Australia is not doing enough, nor fast enough to remediate the problems that climate change poses for their and their families' futures. The politicians of both major parties (state and federal ) should not imagine that the current absence of major discussion of the topic gives them a licence to continue with their policy of doing as little as possible to reduce carbon emissions in Australia while quietly continuing to support and subsidise the carbon intensive industries, accepting their electoral donations and taking careful note of their needs and submissions. While these party policy positions are technically legal, they constitute a degree of moral corruption on the part of both the Labor and Liberal parties and their elected representatives that is breath-taking and reprehensible.

When will our politicians stand up and take responsibility for the adverse consequences that will flow from their current carbon policy positions? Roger Clement, Queanbeyan, NSW TO THE POINT TORN ALLEGIANCES Poor fellow my country  one day the 51st state of the USA, the next a special administrative region of the People's Republic of China.

Matt Ford, Crookwell, NSW POLITICAL INFLUENCE Undue political influence just from China? Hardly. Just ask all the politicians who've accepted free trips to Israel, details of which are now on the record and which make interesting reading. Rex Williams, Ainslie SPOT THE DIFFERENCE

What's the difference between a political donation and a bribe? Peter Stubbs, Gungahlin ONE SUPER FOR US ALL It seems to me that our politicians have overlooked the simplest and fairest solution to the nation's superannuation difficulties. Why not let everyone have the same scheme as they have? John Clarke, Pearce

MIND-BOGGLING APPEAL If the Telstra Tower is the wrong shape and size, the mind boggles just thinking about what the Sex Party might want to replace it with ("Sex Party says tear down the tower", September 6, p10)! Frances Cornish, Spence SETTING BAD EXAMPLE Federal MPs are well rewarded for their work, part of which involves exhorting us to live within our means. So why don't they practise what they preach?

Sankar Kumar Chatterjee, Evatt NEGATIVE TACTICS It worries me that people like Senator Cory Bernardi have nothing better to do than push for the right to offend and insult people. Shouldn't we be looking to support each other? Michael McCarthy, Deakin Email: letters.editor@canberratimes.com.au. Send from the message eld, not as an attached le. Fax: 6280 2282. Mail: Letters to the Editor, The Canberra Times, PO Box 7155, Canberra Mail Centre, ACT 2610.
Consumers with private health insurance need to be given a fair go by the government. If I were the federal health minister there are three areas I would focus on immediately to take the pressure off the entire health care system.

The biggest issue is affordability. Year-on-year premium increases of around 6 per cent are having a huge impact on family budgets. Couple that with higher out-of-pocket expenses as a result of the government's freeze on the Medicare Benefit Schedule and uncontrolled medical and specialist charges, and you can see why consumers are downgrading their policies or walking away from private health insurance altogether.

Recent IPSOS research showed that the take-up for memberships has fallen for the first time in 15 years. It also found that if no action is taken to control premium rises, one in five fund members will downgrade or drop their cover within six years, adding unnecessary pressure to an already challenged public health system.

Industry analysts have cited this "affordability crisis" as the main reason why the take-up of private health insurance, as a percentage of the population, has declined over the past six months. No wonder as households are spending 20 per cent more on health insurance than they were a decade ago, with the cost increase even more for elderly couples.
If you are about to go on a long-haul flight and are thinking about having a fag in the plane toilet, it looks like the smoke alarms do actually work and you will be caught, fined, forced to make a statement to police, etc etc.

And two, a "short burst of smoke which set off a fire alarm in a nearby toilet" on a plane, differs from a "short burst of smoke which set off a fire alarm in a nearby toilet" in, say, a single-storey building, where you can just wander out a side door until the situation is sorted.

A case in point. Quite a few years ago I was sitting at work, minding my own business, when smoke started rising from the back of a computer a few metres away. There was no one working on it at the time and something like that had never happened before. Computers had made weird noises and just refused to turn on, but I'd never experienced a self-combusting one, or a computer with a smoking habit.

On the day the computer started puffing I happened to be the only person down that end of our very large office.

"There's smoke coming out of the computer," I yelled at no one in particular, with the kind of deadpan yell you reserve for unlikely events that you can't believe are happening, even if they're happening in front of you.
One Nation leader Pauline Hanson welcomed the compromise. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen It's partly an angry reaction against "the other" in the form of refugees and immigrants. Turnbull and Shorten have both understood that part. That's why the boats will continue to be turned back under either leader. But it's also a wider rage against a system too remote to reach and too corrupt to care. Remember Trump's refrain: "The system is rigged." Illustration: John Shakespeare Credit:John Shakespeare Rigged by whom? How? "Powerful interests," he said in accepting his party's nomination, "have rigged our political and economic system for their exclusive benefit.

"Big business, elite media and major donors are lining up behind the campaign of my opponent because they know she will keep our rigged system in place. "They are throwing money at her because they have total control over everything she does. She is their puppet, and they pull the strings." His nickname for Hillary Clinton, the representative of the status quo, is "Crooked Hillary". The term "political donations" is code for the corrupt exchange of favours that goes on above the heads of the ordinary voters, who can see it but feel powerless to do anything to stop it as their interests are sold out. Like satanic sulphur, the acrid stink of political funding burns the nostrils of voters across the democratic world, fuelling an angry revulsion.

Across the leadership of Australia's political parties, Malcolm Turnbull seems the least animated, the least concerned. Even though he has a history of arguing for reform of funding, now that he's prime minister he seems to be remarkably philosophical about actually acting on it. Leave it to the parliamentary committee, is his position, a committee that has yet to be convened and has no terms of inquiry before it. Turnbull has been happy to watch Dastyari burn and Labor squirm, but this issue is much bigger than the old partisan game of Labor and Liberal gleefully notching points against each other. Turnbull, his government and the Australian political system is at risk of being engulfed by the rising anger of a movement that will make no distinction between the establishment parties but will embrace any alternative bent on destruction. Australia's Trump, Pauline Hanson, did jail time for electoral fraud on a conviction that was later quashed, but it's hard to claim that she's been compromised by big donors.

One Nation's last electoral return showed that the party had raised a mere $11,487 in donations in 2014-15 while the major parties count theirs in the millions. Hanson hasn't said much on this recently but, in her persona as angry outsider, she's well positioned to. When the Liberal Party's Bronwyn Bishop resigned as speaker after abusing her parliamentary travel allowances to take a $5000 helicopter ride on party business, Hanson called for an independent inquiry into the allowances spending by all MPs and senators over the previous five years. "Surely no member would object to this if they have nothing to hide?" Hanson wrote. "As a taxpayer and mother of four, I watch each of my children struggle to own their own home, raise a family, while living a meagre life. This is common practice throughout Australia, I am not alone. "Yet we see pollies travel flights at the highest available class, daily meal allowance equivalent to that of a single pensioner's weekly entitlement."

If Hanson were to make a similar call for an investigation into party donations, moved on the floor of the Senate now, it would be incendiary. The flames would most threaten the major parties. Is Turnbull going to need a helicopter of his own? But instead of a Bronnie joyride, will he, like the last Americans escaping the onrush of destruction in the fall of Saigon, need an emergency helicopter from the roof of Parliament or is he going to snap out of his torpor? Even Tony Abbott, a reluctant donations reformer and famously criticised for his political "tin ear" as prime minister, has discovered the urgency of fixing the funding system. "I think it is time to look at donations reform again," Abbott told Fairfax Media's James Massola on Thursday. Labor is calling for an end to foreign donations and a reduction in the disclosure threshold from $13,000 to $1000. The Greens are calling for a federal anti-corruption watchdog.

Nick Xenophon wants immediate  "real time"  disclosure of all donations. He's also acting on the alarm at the ease with which the Chinese Communist Party has been using Australia's freedoms to extend its influence over Australian opinion and policy. Australia, says Xenophon, needs to look at restricting "foreign agents" as the US does: "To get rid of or at least tackle covert political interference from foreign powers," he says. "We need to include or consider at the very least what the US has been doing since before World War II." And now Abbott is putting internal Liberal pressure on his leader to act decisively: "There should be no union donations, company donations or foreign donations," says the former prime minister. "Obviously, we don't want influence buying, we don't want subversion of our system." Turnbull used to talk about agility a great deal. When he returns from his successful week of diplomacy, an agile prime minister would hold a press conference on Sunday: "I want Australia to have the cleanest political system in the world," he'd declare.

He'd announce an urgent, high-level inquiry into the best way to protect the integrity of the federal Parliament. He'd include a review of the donations system. He'd say that every state has an independent anti-corruption body and say it's time for a federal one, too. He'd name a panel of eminent Australians to recommend on the best design. An agile prime minister would have had his staff working on this for the past few days. He'd seize the initiative, take the high ground as a reformer and put some idealism back into his public persona. If he doesn't get on top of this movement, he will be overpowered by it. Australia doesn't have the objective conditions of the countries that are now gripped by the destructive populism of Trump, the Brexit movement and far-right parties in Europe like Marine Le Pen's National Front or the fast-rising Alternative for Germany.

Indeed, this week Australia achieved an extraordinary feat. While all these countries have struggled with recession in recent years, Australia has just achieved 25 years of continuous economic growth. It's a first for Australia since the GDP statistics began in the 1950s and a feat not matched by any major developed nation. As my colleague Ross Gittins put it this week: "To have avoided another severe recession for all the years since then is something for which we should be profoundly thankful." Yet rather than being thankful, the latest election results show that we are disenchanted, even angry. Objective conditions may be one thing; the subjective narrative we tell ourselves is another. It's more powerful because it's more emotional. Turnbull and Shorten are both right that Australia needs to preserve an open trading system. We have traded our way to success and to close it off would be suicidal. New Zealand's Prime Minister John Key explains simply to his people the need for an open trading system: "You won't get rich by selling to a market of four million people"  the domestic market  "but you might get rich selling to four billion." And if you want to export your way to wealth, you have to be open to imports, too.
In addition to straying from the "true path" of economy-wide emissions trading, the CCA has committed several other crimes against neo-liberalism. It proposes that good old- fashioned regulation is sometimes the most efficient way to solve a problem, it recommends that different sectors of the economy be treated differently (we used to call that "industry policy"), and that some industries be protected from unfair foreign competition (dare I say protectionism?). Significantly, the diversity of mechanisms proposed by the CCA mirrors the diversity of challenges faced by Australian industry. As those who designed Rudd's carbon pollution reduction scheme eventually discovered, the issues faced by the owners of rubbish dumps that leak methane are quite distinct from the problems faced by a chemical factory or a coal-fired power station. One of the more novel proposals from the CCA is the creation of an "emissions intensity" trading scheme for Australian electricity generators as distinct from an emissions trading scheme for the whole economy. The differences between the two are both subtle and significant. An economy-wide ETS sets an upper limit on the number of tonnes of pollution that can be released across the whole economy. In theory, companies need to buy a permit for each tonne of CO they emit, but under Rudd's CPRS, for example, big polluters were to be given 94.5 per cent of the permits they needed for free. An EI scheme that covers only the electricity sector, on the other hand, doesn't set a cap on the tonnes of pollution that can be emitted. Rather, it sets a cap on the tonnes of pollution per megawatt-hours of electricity produced. Confused? Don't be. Just think about cars.

Imagine if the government set a cap for the average fuel efficiency of the car fleet owned by big Australian companies of 10 litres a 100 kilometres and legislated that the fuel efficiency standard would decline steadily to zero by 2040. If a company's car fleet was using an average of 12 litres a 100 kilometres, the firm would either have to replace its thirstiest cars with more efficient ones or, buy "credits" from another company whose car fleet was averaging less than 10 litres a 100 kilometres. The only way for a company to meet a zero emissions target by 2040 would be to switch its whole fleet to electric cars. This week, the CCA recommended that the emission intensity of the Australian electricity sector should fall to zero "well before 2050". Put another way, the CCA recommended that all of Australia's coal-fired and gas-fired power stations need to shut down and be replaced with 100 per cent renewable energy in the next 25 years. In the meantime, the CCA plan would require coal-fired power stations (which are already well above the proposed starting level of "emission intensity") to buy credits (sound like a carbon price?) from low emission generators like solar and wind (sound like a subsidy?) So if a Climate Change Authority with a majority of members appointed by Abbott is recommending a scheme that breaks with the tenets of neo-liberalism, supports a carbon price (by another name) and says we need to shut down all coal and gas-fired power stations "well before 2050", why did some of the ALP appointees to the authority attack the integrity of both the report and their fellow commissioners? Professor David Karoly and Clive Hamilton rightly argue that that government's 26-28 per cent emission reduction target is inadequate if Australia is to pull its weight in global efforts to avoid dangerous climate change. They highlight that unless we take urgent action today, then we will use up so much of our "carbon budget" in the next few years that it will become nearly impossible to avoid blowing that budget in the future, and they are right. The uncomfortable irony of the rejection of the CCA road map forward is, however, that if the current government doesn't introduce an EI scheme in 2018, as the CCA recommends, then even more of the carbon budget will be used up in the next few years making it even harder to stay within the long-term carbon budget.
The chairman of the CSIRO has reappointed the science organisation's chief executive officer Larry Marshall for another four years even as the agency reviews the results of a staff survey that produced "uncomfortable" results.

The extension, announced on Friday, adds another six months to the original five-year contract. It now runs until June 30, 2020.

Chairman David Thodey said Dr Marshall's reappointment "underpins our commitment to CSIRO's Strategy 2020" for the organisation to act as "Australia's innovation catalyst".

Dr Marshall had been under sustained pressure as head of the federal government's science organisation during a restructure that started in 2015 that led to the loss of about 300 jobs in the latest round of cuts, according to the Community and Public Sector Union.
After eight years' reign in the White House, US President Barack and First Lady Michelle Obama will bid adieu in January, so everyone is clamouring to get some final shots of the historical POTUS and FLOTUS.

For the month of October, Michelle, 52, will appear on two magazine covers: solo for InStyle and embracing her husband, 55, for Essence.

US President Barack and First Lady Michelle Obama posing for Essence. Credit:Essence

While she kills it on both, it's an inside shot of the couple in the latter that has gone viral and has social media shouting about relationship and real body goals.
After a night of heavy drinking 10 years ago, the then 22-year-old returned to college to find police there over an incident involving the intoxication of another student. Robertson became involved, becoming "fairly confrontational" and ended up being tackled to the ground by five police officers and taken to the local station where he was put in a holding cell overnight. "The justification was 'we're doing it because we think you're a danger to yourself'" he explains. "Was I a danger to myself? Yes, 100 per cent. That was my lightbulb moment of 'sort your shit out'." Sorting his shit out involved asking for help and acknowledging the stigma he felt around his own perceived weakness. "I think there are two barriers for men," Robertson says. "One is that mentality - 'be a man', 'man-up' and the other is admitting you have a mental health issue and reaching out for support. 'I can't have a mental health issue because that is fundamentally a massive vulnerability of any individual and we don't like to be taken advantage of'.

"On top of that, as a guy, I didn't know how to talk about it because I've never discussed my emotional feelings and I was in a position where I thought I was not meant to. So overcoming the masculinity stereotype and reaching out for support at the same time is a huge hurdle to face in one hit." It is a challenge many men face. One in eight men experience depression and men account for 75 per cent of suicides. In Australian men aged between 15 and 45, suicide is the leading cause of death. Experts believe that these shocking statistics are the result of others who, like Robertson, struggle in silence and just try to 'suck it up'. "Men tend to minimise, misinterpret or dismiss their symptoms," explains Kristine Kafer, of the Black Dog Institute, who is presenting on how to engage men in managing their mental health at the 2016 Australian Psychological Society Congress 13 to 16 September in Melbourne. Add to this unhelpful beliefs about masculinity - "that being a man means being strong and stoic, having to cope on one's own and not ask for help, being strong for others and not burdening anyone, being weak if they feel strong emotions or struggle with mental health and emotional issues. This means they respond to their own distress with self blame and shame, are less likely to tell anyone or seek help, which exacerbates the symptoms and their isolation and the downward spiral".

It was understanding this that led Robertson to begin batyr, an organisation aimed at starting conversations around mental health and which focuses on preventative education of young people. In five years since inception, batyr has reached more than 46,000 young people and trained 220 young people how to share their stories, all similar in nature to Sebastian's. It is also what makes others, like Kafer, stress the importance of educating men about the early signs of a spiral that can take them into a dark place. "Men don't tend to show the traditional symptoms of depression," Kafer explains. "They might be narky or flustered and might display more physical symptoms - disengaging, low motivation, changes in sleep and eating patterns." The language men often use around depression is different too, Kafer says. "They say they're stressed or tired or 'down' not depressed or sad necessarily," says Kafer, who adds that they are more likely to use unhelpful coping mechanisms like alcohol, drugs, over working or taking sexual risks to distract from depression and often a seemingly trivial trigger tips them over the edge.

Kafer and Robertson have similar attitudes about how to address a problem that effects far too many Australians. We need to create a more open conversation, check in more without judgement and listen more to ourselves and one another. And we need to stop sucking it up and start seeing the strength required in reaching out. "You should be able to have a conversation on this topic at any point and know that there will be a spectrum of when you have good days and bad days," Robertson says. "We have no issue discussing 'yeah, I know I'm unfit at the moment and i could go and do exercise but I choose not to' and then you'll go through moments of 'yeah, I'm going to commit to going to the gym'. We don't do that with mental health at all." "We need to stop thinking that mental health is separate from our general physical health," adds Kafer, who also suggests exploring a free online program created by the Black Dog Institute, My Compass, that provides a mental health 'toolkit'. "The brain is part of the body and mental health issues are very much a physical, real issue."

Based on research by the University of NSW and the Black Dog Institute Suicidal men did not want to be told that everything would be okay, they did want someone who would genuinely listen. "Feeling isolated and ashamed men reported that at the time they were unlikely to have sought help, but would have accepted help if it came from the right person (someone they respect) in the right fashion (nonjudgmental, genuine, open)." Top 5 Management strategies Taking time out Rewarding myself with something enjoyable

Keeping busy Exercising Spending time with pet Top 5 Prevention Strategies Eating healthily

Keeping busy Exercising Humour to reframe Helping others Saturday, September 10 is World Suicide Prevention Day
Yet family experts warn that bird's nest parenting is not for every separated couple. It comes with its own unique challenges, and while it can be useful during the transition to divorce, is rarely sustainable in the long term. "It sounds good ... but you rarely see experts recommend it," says family lawyer Melinda Winning. "While it can be good for the kids, not many people can sustain it. Most people do need privacy and it provides for very little." Family therapist Bernie Brown says women who experienced divorce as children are especially inclined towards bird-nesting to minimise any damage to their kids. And many men see it as a way to maintain their relationship with their children post-separation, rather than being relegated to weekends and school holidays. Some parents try a variation, staying over at each other's houses occasionally (as Sunday Life columnist Meshel Laurie has been doing), sharing regular family meals, or even holidaying together. "The desire to do this comes from a good place," says Anne Hollonds, the director of the Australian Institute of Family Studies. "Divorce can bring with it a whole lot of issues, not only for adults, but also children, into the future.

"It's a fabulous thing that parents have cottoned on to this. They don't want to disrupt their kids' lives, their schooling - a lot of the time they don't want the kids to notice anything has changed." The Morgans didn't announce their new arrangement to their then four-year-old son and two-year-old daughter; they simply started doing it in mid-2014 and the kids barely registered the change. "To all intents and purposes nothing is really different for them," says Lara. "Their bedroom is the same, it's just that Mummy is in Mummy's bedroom and Daddy is in Daddy's bedroom. They've got their routine and they're happy - that's the biggest bonus of all of it." Two years on, the kids know about the apartment, and enjoy visiting there. Maintaining up to three separate homes (one for the kids, one for mum and one for dad) is beyond the financial reach of many. But if you've got a cheap alternate residence, or can crash at a friend's or relative's place, bird-nesting can stave off the financial burden of divorce.

Bird-nesting is relatively uncommon in Australia, and usually an arrangement separating couples come up with. Judges and therapists are reluctant to recommend it as it can complicate already messy breakups, and prevent one or both partners from moving on with their lives. It is inappropriate in cases of domestic violence or mental illness. "You can't use it in high-conflict situations," Gloria Hawke warns. "It creates more opportunities for parents to have high-level disputes, cross paths and find fault with each other." Privacy is hard to maintain, and already fragile trust can be easily shattered when you're still sharing a house with your former partner. One of Hawke's clients would go through his ex's emails and filing cabinet when it was his turn to stay at the house, and photocopy documents. Another client would keep all his sensitive paperwork locked in the boot of his car rather than risk his ex rifling through it when he wasn't there.

Even if they remain on fairly good terms with their former partners, sharing the same house can still create issues. How do you split bills? Who is responsible for doing the shopping? Do you have a cleaning roster or share the cost of a cleaner? Are there no-go zones in the house so each parent has a modicum of privacy? The Morgans keep their own bedrooms in both the family home and the flat, with an understanding these are off-limits to the other person. If they're staying at one residence and need to go to the other to pick up something, they will always call or text first as a courtesy. "We're really respectful of each other's privacy and space," says Lara. "I don't go into his bedroom at all; he doesn't come into mine as far as I'm aware. We've got a pretty good working relationship. There is no way you could do this if you didn't, there is no way it would work." But Hawke's warning that it creates opportunities for conflict also rings true for the Morgans. For example, paying bills and doing the cleaning have become bones of contention. They initially kept a joint account for groceries and kids' expenses, but Lara wasn't impressed when Harry started dipping into that for the occasional bottle of wine.

They dissolved the account and Lara stopped cooking and freezing meals for Harry and the kids. Now that they've let the cleaner go, Harry's lax housekeeping is starting to grate on Lara. "That's the thing that's got to me the most," she says. "It's no different to when we were married. He'll pull his act together and then he'll just let it slip. I came in the other day and the house was absolutely putrid. I put the kids on a bit of a working bee for two hours. I was tempted to send him an email saying, 'This is just gross', but for the sake of the kids I just sucked it up and did it." And of course there are the everyday hassles of living in two places, realising that the ripe avocado you wanted for lunch, or that pair of high heels you need for a night out, are at the other house. "Living out of a suitcase as a female is so hard - I live like a gypsy," says Lara. "If it was about me I'd love to have all my stuff in one spot. Eventually I will." At a deeper level, bird's nest parents often don't feel like they've got their own home with their own space.

"They're kind of camping," says Hollonds. "It's going to start creating problems eventually." Letting go of a failed relationship can be hard when you're still living among mementos and memories of happier times together. As Gloria Hawke points out, "Coming into the family home and seeing all the family photos still on the walls can be difficult if one parent is still really heartbroken over the marriage ending." The Morgans have deliberately kept the family home the same for their kids' sake, right down to leaving the photos taken pre-separation on the bedside tables in the master bedroom. Yet this hasn't prevented either Lara or Harry from starting new relationships. "I know my new partner has some reservations about [our arrangement]," Lara admits. "He's not jealous, but he says, 'Don't you feel like you are still tied to him?' He wants me to move on." Experts say most bird's nest arrangements tend to be temporary while people finalise their financial and custodial agreements, and to give themselves and their children time to adjust to the reality of divorce.

"Six to 12 months is sensational," Hawke says. "It minimises the disruption to kids so they're not changing everything at once. They slowly get used to the separation and new way of life." Eventually that has to include both mum and dad setting up new homes for themselves. Family experts say it is more important for kids to see that their parents can still be amicable than that they all remain under the same roof. "At some point they're going to have to adjust to two households - that's the reality of separation," lawyer Melinda Winning says. "It's more about the attachment to the parent they're spending time with you've got to worry about than the actual house they're in." While the Morgans' arrangement may seem unusual to outsiders, Lara says it has become the normal way of life for them all. "We're both reasonably happy with the houses we're in, we're accustomed to the arrangement. If I didn't have a relationship and Harry didn't have a relationship I could probably keep it going." As successful as their arrangement has been for the last two years, the Morgans are now starting to think about dismantling their bird's nest. Once they finalise their financial settlement, Lara expects to move into the apartment permanently, while Harry will keep the family home.
LinkedIn has changed the way it generates search results to remove prompts that had asked people who searched for some common female names if they meant to look for similar-sounding male names instead.

The professional social networking site rolled out a change to its search algorithm designed to recognise when a person searches for another user's full name, and doesn't try to prompt them to search for another one, spokeswoman Suzi Owens said in an email.

LinkedIn has changed its algorithm after discovering some businesses may actually want to hire women. Credit:Stocksy

The changes follow a Seattle Times report that found that, in searches for at least a dozen of the most common female names in the US, LinkedIn's results included a note asking if users had meant to look for a predominantly male name instead.

A search for "Stephanie Williams" brought up a prompt asking if the searcher meant "Stephen Williams." The site similarly suggested changing Andrea to Andrew, Danielle to Daniel, and Michaela to Michael, among others.
The managing director of TAFE NSW has said the state's only public vocational education provider should operate more like a "large supermarket chain".

Jon Black, TAFE's managing director and a former commanding officer at Duntroon, made the analogy in a memo to staff last week.

In his "Friday five" message Mr Black answered his own "hot question".

"Will the [TAFE] institutes be merging, and how will this happen?" he wrote to staff.
Labor has tried to increase the pressure on the Coalition government to settle its three years dispute with tens of thousands of its public servants.

Commonwealth officials from a number of departments walked off the job on Friday invoking the scorn of Employment Minister Michaelia Cash, who said they were in an "absurd position" and Public Service Commissioner John Lloyd who said the strikers were wasting time and money.

'Absurd': Minister for Employment Michaelia Cash blames "games" by the CPSU for the disruption. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Centrelink urged clients to stay away from its offices and phone lines during the 24-hour strike and the Immigration Department warned of possible disruption at international airports around the country, advising travellers to show up early for their flights.
A former illegal dumping investigator told a corruption inquiry he was "surprised" to learn more than 200 tonnes of asbestos-contaminated waste had been dumped at a western Sydney property he was allegedly responsible for investigating.

Craig Izzard, a former rugby league player for the Penrith Panthers and Parramatta Eels, endured a day of rigorous questioning at the Independent Commission Against Corruption on Friday over his alleged involvement in "black market" dumping operations last year.

Craig Izzard after appearing at the ICAC inquiry on Thursday. Credit:Peter Rae

Mr Izzard maintained he had done nothing improper, as counsel assisting the commission James Mack guided him point-by-point through his employment code of conduct for the Western Sydney Regional Illegal Dumping Squad (RID).

"Is it your evidence that, while employed in the Western Sydney RID, you always acted honestly?" Mr Mack inquired
A federal court judgement has determined more than $100,000 will be held in court after former police officer Louis James Mahony, accused of murdering his former partner in 2009, attempted to claim their life insurance.

Mr Mahony's partner Lainie Coldwell was found dead at the base of a tree with head injuries in Charleville, Queensland on August 25, 2009.

Former police officer charged with murder and attempting to defraud insurance companies. Credit:AFR

Just weeks before Ms Coldwell's death, Westpac Life had issued a life insurance policy to the couple, providing a payment of $150,000 to the other in the event of a death.

Days after the fatal incident, Mr Mahony's solicitors notified Westpac Life of his claim to policy money.
The former principal of a top indigenous college convicted of multi-million dollar fraud has been banned from teaching until next year.

Jean Illingworth, 69, is serving a suspended sentence for defrauding the state and commonwealth by inflating student numbers to get $3.4 million in extra funding for Djarragun College, near Cairns, between 2010 and 2011.

A former school principal was banned from teaching until October 2017. Credit:Greg Newington

All of the funds went to the school.

The Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal last month banned Ms Illingworth from re-applying for registration as a teacher until October 2017 when her sentence ends.
Brisbane City Council's Labor opposition has called on the Quirk administration to explore removing cars from the Victoria Bridge, just two months after the state Labor government knocked back its request to do just that.

Opposition leader Peter Cumming said the $15.96 million allocated towards the Brisbane Metro business case in Lord Mayor Graham Quirk's 2016-17 budget would be better spent on a study into removing general traffic from the bridge that linked the CBD to South Brisbane.

There are renewed calls for Brisbane's Victoria Bridge to become a "green" bridge. Credit:Harrison Saragossi

"Any proposal to convert the Victoria Bridge must come with careful consideration of the possibility of it causing greater traffic congestion in the city and the south side," he said.

"Instead of spending $16 million on a business plan for a project that cannot and will not go ahead, Quirk should spend some of that money on a comprehensive traffic study to determine if the bridge conversion is viable.
All is not well with democracy. Here in Australia, compulsory voting masks what most believe to be a deep popular disillusionment with the political class, reflected in the recent general election outcome.

"A pox on both your houses", is how many commentators read the mediocre performances of both major parties, and the rise of independents and mavericks such as Pauline Hanson.

Digital optimists thought the internet and social media would enhance democracy, empower citizens, and help counter the abuse of power by political elites. Credit:Bloomberg

In the UK, meanwhile, the June Brexit vote shocked the world with its implied rebuke of established politics. There, too, radical outsiders such as Nigel Farrage and his UK Independence party won out over politics-as-usual, and persuaded 20 million Brits to support leaving the European Union.

It was undemocratic, the Brexiteers said. A majority of the people agreed, and the UK political establishment was humiliated.
Queensland Police now have uninterrupted access to the 7000 cameras at train stations to help manage big crowds  as expected at this month's Riverfire  and to fight crime on trains and stations.

Police started getting access to Queensland Rail's train station cameras in May and testing of the system is complete.

Before this, police relied on advice from Queensland Rail's security staff.

Eight police have been added to the 78-person police railway squad.
But the feature that may have the most impact in the long term is one I couldn't test during the beta period, that is Apple elevating VOIP and third party messaging apps to system wide permissions. So what does that mean in english? It means allowing users to make and receive calls in WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Skype, or any other VOIP system, as if it were a native call. It has the potential to change the way we think about mobile phone calling, the same way iMessage, Whatsapp and others made SMS redundant. What makes iOS 10's implementation so clever and potentially groundbreaking is your phone will learn what apps you tend to contact certain people on, and use that by default. So if you're always texting your sister via Facebook Messenger, but sending Slack messages to your colleagues, and Skyping your mum, iOS 10 will know, and suggest the right platform for the right person. And by making the person, not the app, the most important variable in kicking off a call or text, Siri is able to control the experience. The app used almost becomes irrelevant. Siri can work with any messaging app, as well as photo search, ride booking, personal payments, and workout apps. iOS will be available on September 13 for iPhone 5 and higher, iPod touch 6th gen, iPad mini 2 and higher, iPad 4th generation, as well as all iPad Air and iPad Pro models. macOS Sierra: better connected to everything

The big news, of course, is that Siri has moved onto the desktop. And while it feels weird chatting to your Mac in an open office environment, the results are pretty impressive. Searching for files on your computer or the web is fast and easy, and supports natural language queries like "show me all my email from Bob from last week". Results can be dragged right from the search bubble into a document you're working on. For Apple Watch users, the best new feature in Sierra is the ability to unlock your Mac just by sitting in front of it. The feature works as advertised  I never had to wait for my Sierra Mac to unlock. Sierra plays well with iOS too. New universal clipboard features  copy on the iPhone, paste on the Mac  continue to blur the lines between devices. The new Apple Pay features look impressive in demos, but until the major banks embrace Apple Pay, there's little point discussing them here. I've sent another angry email to my bank. iCloud drive has had some improvements, including a price drop to make it more palatable. Now iCloud can optionally sync all files on your Desktop and in your Documents folder, the two places people tend to save their work.

Starting at $1.49 a month for 50GB, with up to 2TB for $29.99, iCloud drive is competitively priced but I think the free tier needs a bump up from 5GB to 20GB. Anyone with an iPhone will quickly fill up their allotted 5GB of storage, and I worry most users will then just ignore the constant 'out of space' pop ups on their phone, rather than ever giving iCloud a try. Which is a shame, because Desktop syncing is incredible useful. Another new feature, Optimise Storage, can automatically back up and remove files on your Mac, to free up space on your hard drive. While Apple is smart in the way it implements the feature, looking to automatically remove documents you haven't opened in a while, this feature seems more suited to a country with better internet speeds than Australia. I'd hate to have to re-download a file over my ADSL connection. Sierra will be available on September 20 for Macs produced in 2010 or newer. watchOS 3: finally faster

And that brings us to the new and improved watchOS 3. The changes to watchOS 3 have cleaned up the confused and confusing interface, making interactions on the watch much faster. It's a better experience all round, especially when dealing with third party apps, which are now kept in memory, waiting to launch. watchOS 3 can now keep up to ten apps in memory, more than enough for most watch users. Swiping between watch faces is a great addition  I'm keeping the classic watch face as my clean "home" face, and swiping to the modular face, filled with complications showing my next calendar appointment, weather, my to-dos and, when travelling, the time back home. Fitness and activity features have been given more prominence in watchOS 3. There's a great new analogue activity watch face that puts all emphasis on the activity rings. Sharing your fitness tracking and competing against other Apple Watch users is now possible. The silly little animations and stickers in messaging are here from iOS 10, and the whole messaging app has been redesigned so canned responses and emoji are now right there waiting for a single tap to reply. There's even a little scribble pad that lets you quickly type out replies, which seems like a gimmick, but I've found myself using for specific quick replies  like sending the time I'll be available.
A Perth Catholic College teacher has been accused of sexually abusing two students.

Police say the 47-year-old Maylands man indecently assaulted two girls, aged 13 and 14, between January 2014 and July 2015.

Catholic education authorities have assured parents there will be no major fee increases next year under the Turnbull government's school funding changes.

He has been charged with five counts of indecent dealing of a child over 13 years and under 16 years.

He will appear in Perth Magistrates Court on Friday.
"For thrill seekers and chill seekers"  that's the phrase the Today Tonight television program used to show areas in Bali as a freshly rebranded holiday destination, in its recent Brand New Bali series.

But beneath the glamorous surface of cocktails, swimming pools and beach holidays lies an environmental threat that may cause the island to face a water crisis in less than four years.

Canggu has grown from a small fishing village to a trendy international surf destination Credit:Rick Stevens KRS

One segment of Brand New Bali focused on the area of Canggu, hailed as the new "place to be", after Kuta, Legian and Seminyak.

Showcasing one newly opened Australian-owned beach club at Berawa beach, the segment shows Australian visitors, the Australian beach club manager and a local businessman named Ketut talk about the splendours of Canggu and its rise from a small fishing village to a trendy international surf destination.
Brussels: James Carver is a fourth-generation umbrella maker from the heart of Britain's Brexit north. He makes bookmakers umbrellas for the racecourses.

He's also a UKIP member in the European parliament  or, as he puts it, "one of the turkeys who voted for Christmas".

Australian Trade Minister Steve Ciobo and UKIP MEP James Carver. Credit:Nick Miller

UKIPpers have never been popular in Brussels, and since the Brexit referendum, he really gets up the nose of his fellow parliamentarians.

But he takes it calmly. After all, his side won.
New York: The memorial in New York City at the site where the Twin Towers fell in the September 11 attacks 15 years ago straddles two worlds: one of the living and one of the dead.

A marker for where more than 2,600 people were killed, it attracts tourists from around the world. Some are drawn there to pause and reflect, others to satisfy a morbid fascination with the site of the worst attack on US soil since Pearl Harbour was bombed in 1941.

Clutching cell phones, cameras and selfie sticks, visitors generally take their time around the National September 11 Memorial Museum. They are expected to turn out in droves on Sunday for the 9/11 anniversary.

More than 28 million people have seen the memorial and 7 million have been to the museum since they were opened five years ago, leaving some local people thinking the significance of the site is fading as it becomes just one more tourist site.
Australia's media: Can it resist an effort to manipulate the news? Credit:Dominic Lorrimer The tools for this effort are diverse: everything from Twitter bots to pump up the popularity of news, to trolls based everywhere, to slickly produced conspiracy theories blended with real analysis. Social media has, in effect, created both an alternative to the news and a back door to the mainstream media. In this climate, Professor Austin warns the Australian public's inability to determine the real from false "will in due course magnify apathy and lead to resignation". Before "mass resignation seems to be mass hysteria based on lies", he says. Grassroots or astroturfing?: The 'International Convention of German Russians' protest in Berlin under a sign that reads "protect women". Credit:Reuters He gives the examples from abroad of the misinformation surrounding the campaign for Britain to leave the EU, and for Donald Trump's presidential run. Both have been marked by extensive misinformation  some of it inspired by or even contributed by foreign-backed outside groups  to shift voters' thinking. It's something US intelligence agencies are now investigating.

Analysts worry that the same thing could happen here. The ground would be fertile in Australia, which like other advanced economies faces inequality, slow economic growth, fears of immigration and a disappointment with politics as usual  all issues that can be exploited to cause division. It can happen here: Russian media gives lots of coverage to anti-immigrant groups in Europe, while Moscow builds links to the political parties. Credit:Getty Images "I think the Russians have picked up that across the West there is a widespread apathy amongst voters and mistrust of politics and government," said Matthew Sussex of ANU's National Security College, who studies Russian foreign and security policy. "Anything you can do to increase that distrust serves Russian interests." For example, in Europe, anti-immigrant far-right parties chip away at the consensus that holds the European Union together. Accordingly, these parties, and the migrant crisis issue which agitates them, receive top billing on Russia-owned media broadcasting in those European languages. Over time, a more divided Europe allows Russia to push for its goals on the international stage . Gone are the days of only a few media outlets controlling the news agenda. Presenter James Dibble on ABC TV.

"Russia and China understand that in order to win a global information war, they must get their message across to global audiences," says Russian strategic and defence affairs expert Alexey Muraviev. That realisation followed the Russia-Georgia war in 2008, when Moscow prevailed in the conflict but felt it lost the global war for opinion, says Dr Muraviev. In 2014, Russia moved away from an ad hoc approach to information war, consisting of separate parts, and formed a consolidated strategy, he added. Propaganda has come a long way since the Cold War - yet its internal logic remains the same. Scene from a 1956 film production of George Orwell's 1984. Credit:http://cosmiccatacombs.blogspot.com.au/ China too has invested heavily in strategic communications aimed at projecting its views on matters such as the South China Sea and Tibet abroad. This comes in addition to the now notorious influence efforts with the nation's politicians. Unleashing an active disinformation or misinformation campaign in Australia would be inexpensive and require little effort. Online, every country is only a single hyperlink away from the next. The misinformation, trolling and propaganda doesn't even have to come from abroad.

Estonia has been plagued by propaganda and cyberattacks. "The power of social media in Australia is really important," says Dr Muraviev, who heads the Department of Social Sciences and Security Studies at Curtin University. "There is a loyal audience here that would be following Russian news and that would be critical of Australia's government approach toward Russia." Members of the Serbian, Syrian and Russian expatriate community might actually take the Russian side on issues online and weigh in against the positions of the Australian government in our own media, he said. The media has certain dynamics which can be subverted. Credit:Michael Fitzjames "They don't necessarily believe in Russia," Dr Muraviev says, "but their support of the Russian position online can create a sense of disbelief in what the Australian government says about Russia."

And creating doubts about legitimate leaders and institutions is a hallmark of Russia's efforts in places like Ukraine, Estonia and Finland but also Germany and the United States. US ambassador to Australia John Berry acknowledged the trend in a speech at the end of August. Former Russia Today host Abby Martin famously condemned the Russian military action in Ukraine in 2014 on the Russia-owned network. Such controversies form part of the new propaganda war. Credit:CNN "Somehow in the United States at least we're finding increasingly [that countries such as Russia, North Korea and Iran, are] getting involved in our democracy, while they do not share that core value," he told an audience in Canberra. Once it becomes difficult for voters to understand what is going on in their own country, the political risks rise. Online propaganda wins attention in a crowded information sphere. Unlikely as it may seem, this picture of Eton schoolboys in the Kremlin helps confer legitimacy on the Russian government. Credit:Sputnik/Twitter

And it's not simply false stories or skewed stories with false presumptions being fed into the global or local news stream. In much the same way people can be radicalised online, the internet allows foreign organisations to reach and even coordinate events with domestic extremists, separatists, secessionists, violent racists and other radicals. Foreign powers can then create an echo chamber for the groups, amplifying the voice of domestic extremists. Information war can rely on hacked data in novel and damaging ways, too. Professor Austin sees the risk of "internet terror" or using leaked information posted online to terrorise politicians. In the US presidential election, emails of the Democratic Party were hacked and then later distributed via WikiLeaks to online trolls and pro-Trump social media sites  echoing messages that cast Hillary Clinton in the worst possible light. Despite all of this subversive activity, democracies' defences against information war are weak. Liberal democracies aren't in the business of telling their citizens what to think. Digital disruption has made the media less able to debunk specious stories and much more likely to pass along misinformation and information produced to undermine Western institutions. Besides, the traditional media can be bypassed.

"The West has a problem because the West doesn't do information war on a grand scale because it hasn't needed to," Professor Sussex says. The internet, worldwide web and social media, especially, blossomed in the post-Cold War era, when few anticipated the technology being exploited for this purpose. Professor Sussex says part of the problem is that Western nations work under the assumption that the internet is "governed by peacetime norms" but in places like Russia and possibly China, "the internet is the place of no norms". The Russian embassy dismissed talk about propaganda in Australia as another example of an effort to undermine Russia itself. "The concept of the omnipresent 'Russian propaganda' existing in Australian media is not surprising in the light of the tendency dominating in the West to portray our country as an embodiment of the 'global evil'," the embassy said in a statement.

"What is actually happening nowadays is not Russian information war, but information war against Russia," he said. "It is absolutely obvious to any unbiased professional." With foreign powers using the openness of the internet as a tool to destabilise or discredit Western governments, the relationship between the internet and liberal democracies is fundamentally changed. Professor Austin says the more frequent such tainted uses of information become, the more likely over time that voters give up trying to understand the news and events shaping their world. "To reverse the trend toward mass resignation [of voters] in the long term, we need to open up a contest for information power like we have not seen before," he says. "We need to have a mechanism for promoting integrity and standards," he adds. The government, private sector and civil society "need to combat abuse of the media to promote hate or simply to spread lies. In Australia, the major parties don't seem to understand this.

"They are losing the battle to escalating hysteria," he said. Elsewhere, debate has turned to what to do next to fight back in a globalised information war. The BBC has mulled a satellite news service in Russian. The EU has a small, full-time misinformation debunking outlet. The US is funding researching into blocking internet trolls. Professor Sussex goes further, saying he believes Australia will eventually have to "re-nationalise" its internet, not only taking a more activist approach to warding off cyberthreats from abroad but promoting its own ideas and values in its own backyard. And that would represent a sea change to the internet as we know it. Dr Muraviev, who advises Canberra on security issues, warns that "an oversimplified approach to addressing Russia propaganda can be counterproductive". The glut of Western reporting on Russia that focuses on President Vladimir Putin signals to Russian people who "feel they are under attack" that if the "West doesn't like Putin, he must be doing something right".
Bangkok: The world's strictest lese-majeste laws prevent me writing much about Thailand's royal family.

Like the other foreign correspondents living in Bangkok I would face years in jail if I wrote or said anything deemed to insult, defame or threaten the king, queen or heir apparent.

King Bhumibol Adulyadej is not himself a great fan of the laws. On the occasion of his birthday in 2005, he cited the historical British phrase that "the king can do no wrong".

"But the king can do wrong," he said, arguing that when the monarch is not subject to criticism he is "in trouble".
Latest News Lendi Group settles $33.6 billion in FY22 Ambitious target of a deal a day for brokers

APRA announces new appointments The prudential regulator has a new chair, deputy chair, and members

New South Wales' biggest new home builder has joined forces with a full service mortgage manager and broker company to launch a broking firm that will specialise in construction finance.MyChoice Home Loans is the result of a joint business venture between McDonald Jones Homes and Mortgageport aimed at streamlining the process for those building their own home.The joint venture followed extensive consumer research by McDonald Jones Homes which found that financing issues were a major cause for concern among people who are going the process of building their home.According to the McDonald Jones research, a large proportion of people said their experience financing their new home started out straightforward, but led to unnecessary headaches during the construction phase.The move to investigate a mortgage solution followed a worrying trend that was raised where building starts were being impacted by finance delays, which was in turn impacting our customers, McDonald Jones managing director, Andrew Helmers saidWe expect to build 3,000 new homes next year and this new service will make the entire building process easier for everyone involved, as the financer, customer and builder will all be working together towards one common goal, Helmers said.Glenn Spratt, managing director of Mortgageport, said the vision was for MyChoice to allow the finance and construction side of new home building to work harmoniously by specialising in construction finance.It specialises in that construction loan area. That tends to be a little bit more complicated than a normal loan and having somebody that specialises in that area is something that will really help consumers, Spratt told Australian Broker.Theres a lot of paperwork in construction loans. The fact that MyChoice works inside McDonald Jones means that things like chasing up building contracts, variations, initialling authorities to start construction dont have two or three people chasing them, theres just one point of control, he said.Spratt said MyChoice would offer loans through Mortgageports aggregation agreement with FAST as well as Mortgageports own wholesale products and would hopefully eliminate the need to for borrowers to become de-facto project managers.What were trying to do is simplify the process and make things much easier for customers, particularly through our mortgage management arm and do away with a lot of the traditional paperwork, he told Australian Broker.What our market research showed was that customers thought their loan was going to be ok and everything would be nice and simple and then partway through the construction process they realise they have to become the finance project manager.Doing things like chasing up banks for valuations and progress payments and what seemed easy upfront became a real headache. Buyers didnt sign up for that and they want somebody to look after that for them.McDonald Jones Homes is also part of the MJH Group and Spratt said MyChoice would be rolled out to home builders in that group that operate outside of NSW.
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Opa, break open the ouzo, and dance the sirtaki to the twang of a bouzouki!

He may not be a Greek god, but billionaire grocer and Brooklyn Technical High School alum John Catsimatidis was the toast of the town when the International Foundation for Greece immortalized the local on a commemorative stamp, celebrating the entrepreneurial spirit of the bus boys son who turned captain of industry.

It was a fitting birthday gift for the man who has everything and who turned 68 on Sept. 7.

Catsimatidis  the Gristedes and Red Apple Group owner whose Brooklyn real estate developments include a 95-unit building in Fort Greene and several parcels of land in Coney Island  hesitated at first to schlep 5,000 miles to the ancestral home he left behind as an infant to attend a lavish ceremony in Athens, until memories of his ancestors kicked in.

I thought of my father and mother and grandparents, and how they would be so proud, he said.

Catsimatidis, whose beaming mug graces the sepia tone emblem, cemented his stamp on his beloved Brooklyn in May when he bought the Boardwalk-adjacent former Federation Employment and Guidance Service building on Surf Avenue and W. 35th Street in Coney Island  20 blocks from the booming Amusement District  for a cool $7.7 million, raising speculation about the construction of the blocks-long Ocean Dreams development he has planned nearby for years.

The self-made tycoon, whom the Hellenic Association of Brooklyn endorsed during his failed 2013 mayoral bid, also used his borough smarts to smooth over a conflict with a local councilwoman over his Fort Greene project.

When we sat down and discussed solutions, we grew to be friends and realized that the development would improve housing and give jobs to locals, which was important to her, he told Bisnow.com in July.

Catsimatidis began blazing business trails after dropping out of college to work in a grocery store  outraging his parents, who likely ate their words when their iconoclastic son amassed 10 stores by age 24.

I worked hard and had a knack for doing things, he told Resident.com when running for mayor.
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October 3, 2022

Dee Gambit

Hundreds  if not thousands  of new and returning TV shows and movies are released every month  your options of what to watch are endless. Variety, they say is ...
Ltd moved a division bench of the Delhi High Court against a September 6, single-judge order, restraining the sale of its NutriChoice Zero digestive biscuit in its present blue and yellow wrapper.
The central government informed the Delhi High Court on Friday that it would submit its decision on the extension of Cairn India's production sharing contract (PSC) with Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) by October 14.

In a December 2015 order, the court had given ONGC six weeks to respond to the extension sought and allowed the government another three months to make its decision on whether it would extend the PSC of the block RJ-ON-90/1, spread over 3,111 sq km to the west of Barmer.
The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), the body representing all GSM operators, was asked to leave the meeting called by the telecom regulator to resolve the issue of interconnect.
The supply of the affordable housing in the country is growing, which would boost the housing finance industry, said Ltd Managing Director and CEO Sunita Sharma. She said that the company is expecting its total borrowing to be around Rs 50,000 crore this year.

Speaking to reporters after inaugurating the company's property fair Ungal Illam 2016, she said, "We are now seeing lot of traction in the development of affordable housing. The supply of affordable housing will increase, which will be a boost to the housing finance industry".
Bengaluru, a city know as a hub of information technology that serve the world 24x7, came to a virtual halt on Friday as Karnataka was shut on the call of pro-farmer groups, protesting the recent Supreme Court order to release water from the Cauvery river to neighbouring Tamil Nadu.

Technology such as Infosys, Wipro, IBM and HCL Technologies joined the bandh on the request of Electronic City Industries Association, to show solidarity with the farmers in the state.

From start-ups such as Flipkart and InMobi to taxi-hailing apps Ola and Uber, corporate Bengaluru observed a holiday.

Many employees of large were asked to work from homes to ensure that their global clients didnt suffer.

Transport services were hit with government buses staying off the roads, while auto-rickshaw and cab unions extended their support to the bandh.

Complying with the apex courts order, the Karnataka government has been releasing 15,000 cusecs of water to Tamil Nadu since Tuesday, triggering a wave of protests, particularly in the Cauvery basin districts with Mandya being epicentre of the stir.

On Friday, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi to call a meeting of chief ministers of the two states to end the impasse. "I earnestly request you not only as Prime Minister, but as head of the entire Federal system, to call a meeting of the chief ministers of the states (forthwith on a few hours notice) to resolve the impasse," Siddaramaiah wrote to the PM. He said the daily release of 15,000 cusecs of Cauvery water "would completely deprive the drinking water not only to the residents of Bangalore City but also to farmers of Cauvery basin."



While officially all companies expressed solidarity with the protesters, some industry leaders questioned the logic of shutting down the state for a decades-old water sharing dispute between two states. Some even pointed out that Friday's was fourth such bandh in as many months in Karnataka. Earlier, the state had seen bandhs due to Karnataka's loss in the Mahadayi dispute and the all nationwide strike called by labour unions.

"People are not going to work because of fear and this is not what democracy stands for. We all are concerned about the situation. However, there should be discussions and better way to protest," said T V Mohandas Pai, chairman of Aarin Ventures. According to Pai, business worth Rs 10,000 crore suffered on Friday.

Tallam R Dwarakanath, former president of Federation of Karnataka Chamber of Commerce and Industries (FKCCI), said because of frequent bandhs, the state not only loses on revenue but also its reputation among investors, while industry suffers business because of the uncertain environment. "Three days back, we announced Invest Karnataka (a forum to woo global investors). At such a time, these bandhs show the state in bad light. We must immediately seek a permanent solution. In certain areas of the state, the work has been suffering for 15 days now. This needs to stop," said Dwarakanath.

Bengaluru alone contributes over a third of India's software exports of $108 billion. Software exports account for 61.8 per cent of Karnataka's total exports of Rs 313,570 crore.

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, chairperson of Biocon, was forced to delete her posts on Twitter where she had said that frequent bandhs were affecting productivity in the state. She later tweeted, "We are observing Bandh in solidarity with people and farmers of Karnataka who are facing water challenges. Hope two states resolve dispute amicably."
Assam-based Limited (NRL) has posted the highest ever net profit of Rs 1,222 crore for the fiscal 2015-16. The growth in net profit of NRL, which is a subsidiary of Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL), has been 70% over previous years net profit of Rs 718 crore, declared the 23rd annual general meeting (AGM) of the company.
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The Indian Army will no longer remain on the sidelines, as the Jammu & (J&K) Police and Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) struggle to manage violent public protests that have swept the Valley since the Hizbul Mujahideens commander for South Kashmir, Burhan Wani was killed in an encounter on July 8.

On Friday, army chief, General Dalbir Singh, flew to the Valley to instruct his commanders to ready for operations that would allow the J&K Police and CRPF to reassert control. He also met the J&K governor and the police chief.

In the poisoned political and security environment of the Valley, the army is the lone government entity that enjoys credibility. General Singh asked his commanders to leverage that goodwill to urge calm. According to a defence ministry release today: [H]e urged the troops to sensitise the people, especially the youth, to eschew violence [and] to usher in peace at the earliest.



Meanwhile, the army is preparing for the eventuality that violence continues. Over the last week, army units have beefed up presence in South . They will now intensify counter terrorism (CT) operations, reasserting dominance over the countryside, by locating and killing militants who have mingled unchecked with pro-azaadi (freedom) crowds for two months.

Over the preceding five years, the army had consciously reduced its footprint by vacating towns and large villages, leaving public security to the J&K Police and CRPF. Now, Business Standard learns the army will begin re-occupying company operating bases (COBs) in and around towns in South .

In 2010, after three summers of violent street protests across the Valley, the army was similarly brought in to re-impose the governments write where it had ceased to run. After that, the last six years had seen the army withdraw to their bases, vacating civilian areas. Now, the failure of politics has taken the clock back to 2010



General Singh was briefed today in Headquarters 15 Corps in Srinagar that the army was strengthening its counter-terrorism grid (CT grid) in the Valley, and its counter-infiltration grid (CI grid) along the Line of Control (LoC).

There is a three-pronged strategy for revitalising the CT grid. First, the J&K Police is being brought back to their stations and made effective again. Like at the start of insurgency in 1990, the J&K Police is currently invisible in South Kashmir, where rampaging mobs have torched more than 30 police posts in the last two months. The returning policemen will initially operate alongside the army for protection.

Simultaneously, the CRPF presence is being boosted. In July, soon after violence broke out, 71 additional CRPF companies were flown in to reinforce the existing deployment. Now, an additional 14-20 companies are being thrown into the fray, mostly consisting of units deployed for security during the Amarnath Yatra.

Boosting numbers is crucial, says the CRPF. With large numbers of troopers busy in enforcing curfew and securing the streets of large towns like Srinagar, the additional companies will protect institutions like banks and government buildings and carry out road opening, or securing highways and roads for the movement of army convoys.

Third, the army is making itself more visible, reopening posts near the population centres of South Kashmir --- including towns like Anantnag and Bijbehara. Army battalions (850 men) that had contracted into four bases will spread into six bases. This will increase operational flexibility and allow troops to quickly reach flashpoints.

Besides the CT grid, the army chief also inspected the CI grid while visiting army units on the LoC Behind the posts that guard the border fence the army is deployed in layers to block infiltration routes leading towards the towns and villages in the Valley.

Earlier this week, the Hurriyet Conference had snubbed an all-party delegation of parliament members that wanted to hold talks. Yet, back-channel offers for dialogue continue from the state and central governments to separatist leaders, with officials claiming they want to defuse the situation through dialogue rather than confrontation.

Yet, with protests showing no signs of flagging, the government is readying to include military force in its menu of options.
Delhi Chief Minister and AAP convener Arvind Kejriwal's car was involved in a minor accident on Friday near Jalandhar on the second day of his Punjab tour, police said.

The Toyota Innova multi-utility vehicle (MUV) was slightly damaged and Kejriwal was shifted to another car in his cavalcade and continued his journey towards Amritsar.

No one was injured in the accident.

A police officer said that a car in the AAP leader's cavalcade hit his vehicle while trying to avoid a three-wheeler on the highway. The cavalcade was descending from a flyover near the Punjab Armed Police (PAP) campus on the outskirts of Jalandhar.

Kejriwal was travelling from Ludhiana to Amritsar.

The AAP leader started his four-day political tour of Punjab on Thursday at a time when the party's state unit and its leadership is facing an internal crisis.
Normal life in the city and most parts of the state was affected on Friday by the dawn-to-dusk Karnataka bandh called by pro-Kannada outfits, to protest against the Supreme Court's direction to release Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu.

A few activists of pro-Kannada organisations who tried to enter the departure terminal of the Kempegowda International Airport and the railway station here were stopped and detained by the police.

Transport services have been hit with government buses staying off the roads while auto-rickshaw and cab unions have extended their support to the bandh.

Metro services in the country's IT hub have also been halted.

People who reached the city from distant places and those travelling towards the airport are facing difficulties in reaching their destination with no mode of connectivity.

Educational institutions have declared a holiday on Friday.

Attendance at government offices was comparatively less on Friday as officials had informed that it will not be "compulsory" to work on Friday.

While some private companies have declared a holiday on Friday, others are making alternate arrangements for employees to "work from home".

Petrol bunks, hotels, malls and other commercial establishments remained shut, besides banks services were also hit.

Karnataka Cable Operators Association which is supporting the strike has said Tamil TV channels will not be aired.

The bandh has evoked a positive response from various parts of the state including Mandya, Mysuru, Ballari, Koppala, Chikkaballapura, Dharwad and Kolar.

In Mandya, the epicentre of the Cauvery protests, agitators have blocked the Bengaluru-Mysuru highway at several places.

A section of farmers in the district staged a protest by venturing into the river carrying stones on their head.

In Ballari, three lorries bearing Tamil Nadu registrations were stoned by protesters.

The transgender community in the district also took part in the bandh related demonstrations.

Chief Minister Siddaramiah had appealed for peace and said no damage should be caused to public property during the bandh.

Elaborate security arrangements have been made to maintain law and order in the state.

Extra forces have been deployed with two companies each from Kerala and Andhra Pradesh, one from Maharashtra and 10 companies of central forces, police said.

This is the second bandh that the state is bracing for in a week's time and the fourth this year.

Officials said with the bandh on the emotive Cauvery issue being supported by several organisations, unions and political parties, it was likely to be "total".

Opposition parties of BJP and JD(S) have also lent support to the bandh.

The Cauvery row erupted after the Supreme Court on Monday directed Karnataka to release 15,000 cusecs to Tamil Nadu for the next 10 days to address the plight of farmers there.

Subsequently, on September 6, Karnataka released the Cauvery water amid snowballing protests by farmers.

The Karnataka government had also said it would approach the apex court seeking modification of its order because of the difficulties in implementing it, given that the live storage in four reservoirs in the Cauvery basin now was 46.7 TMC ft against their capacity of 104 TMC ft.
Karnataka is protesting the state government's release of Cauvery river water to Tamil Nadu, based on a Supreme Court directive, with a shut down on Friday.

The day-long protest is being spearheaded by as many as 500 pro-Kannada organisations, which represent sections including farmers, traders and businesses. Security has been stepped up and more forces have been deployed across the state.

Government offices will remain open, but public transport, including metro services, will not ply. Banks, shops, markets, malls, hotels, bars, pubs, eateries, restaurant, theatres and petrol bunks will also remain closed during the day, officials said.

Essential supplies, including milk and medicines, though, have been exempted from the shutdown. Ambulances will be allowed to ferry patients to hospitals.

Bowing to the apex court's Monday order, the state began releasing 15,000 cusecs of water daily from early Wednesday from its reservoirs across the river basin for 10 days amid protests and demonstrations by farmers, traders and the youth in the Mysuru region.
Comedian and actor on Friday morning hit out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi's acche din slogan, after he alleged that he had to pay a bribe to a Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) official.
If you are an owner who gets hold of a Samsung Galaxy Note 7, you cannot switch it on while flying in an Indian aircraft. India has followed the lead from USA and Australia to ban the use of the mobile device over concerns of the device's battery exploding or catching fire.
Rampant corruption and mounting cases of bribery in the Shiv Sena-BJP controlled BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) today came to light once again, after comedian Kapil Sharma tweeted on Friday morning that he was being asked for a Rs five lakh bribe by a civic engineer. Sharma, in his explosive tweets to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, alleged that he was paying Rs 15 crore income tax for the last five years and still he had to pay Rs 5 lakh bribe to engineer for making my office. ''Is this your achhe din?" he asked.
Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan begins a six-day visit to Singapore and the UK on Friday to lead India's road shows to attract foreign investors for its discovered small oil and gas fields.

The bidding round for discovered small fields had been announced in July 2016 at Houston, in the US. Following that, 67 such fields are on the block, an official statement said. The process is open till end-October.

"These fields are spread over nine sedimentary basins and will be offered in 46 contract areas. These fields are projected to yield 625 million barrels of oil and oil equivalent gas and spread over 1,500 sq km on land, shallow water and deep water areas," said the statement.

The auction is also being held under new norms, which replaces the controversial production-sharing contracts  by which oil and gas blocks are awarded to firms which show they will do maximum work on a block  that has governed the bidding under the earlier nine rounds.

Eventual operators will be issued a single licence for exploration of conventional and non-conventional hydrocarbons and will have the freedom to sell oil and gas at "arms length" market prices. There would be no cess on crude oil.
ICICI Prudential Life Insurance companys Rs 6,057-crore initial public offering (IPO) - the first by an Indian insurance company - will hit the markets on September 19. The issue is priced in the range of Rs 300-334 per share.


Review of National Rural Drinking Water Programme held in Capital

Guided by the high priority given to efficient management of the countrys water resources by the Prime Minister, the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation today organized the National Review Meeting of National Rural Drinking Water Programme with respect to water quality, sustainability, and rural water supply.

The review was attended by Principal Secretaries and Chief Engineers of State Public Health Engineering Departments. It was organized to engage officials from various State Governments, receive feedback on critical issues pertaining to the National Rural Drinking Water Programme (NRDWP) and hold discussions around efficient utilization of funds. During the review, the State government officials provided feedback on ongoing programmes. It was observed, during the review, that effective measures are required to ensure sustainable supply of contaminant-free drinking water in India in the short term, medium term and long term.

Speaking at the review, the Secretary, Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation, Shri Parameswaran Iyer, underscored the need to focus on outcomes, allocate resources strategically and prioritize water supply schemes which are at an advanced stage of completion.

He stressed the importance of providing sustainable water supply services in rural areas and shifting the focus from construction to service delivery. He also emphasized the importance of water quality and the need to eliminate contaminants like Fluoride and Arsenic which cause adverse effects on public health. He announced that a National Sub-Mission to address Fluoride and Arsenic-affected habitations with additional Central funding is being considered and the guidelines for its implementation are being developed in consultation with NITI Aayog and the States.

He particularly highlighted the need to strengthen monitoring, evaluation and start geotagging of water sources for ensuring sustainability and addressing real time issues.

Talking about the Swachh Bharat Mission at the event, Shri Iyer also urged the States to focus on achieving Open Defecation Free status and emphasized the importance of convergence of schemes relating to sanitation and drinking water.

Joint Secretary, Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation, Shri Satyabrata Sahu, gave a detailed and interactive presentation on changes in the NRDWP and details of the Sub-Mission on water quality.

Brainstorming sessions were organized at the review to strengthen monitoring and plan for piped water supply under the Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojana (SAGY) and for ODF-verified villages, as well as the progress of Solar Dual Pump schemes. The sessions were followed by a concluding presentation which showcased innovative technologies to ensure sustainable water supply to drought-affected States.

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Mumbai Port Trust needs to bring about administrative reforms to develop ability to compete with the private ports, said Minister of State for Shipping, Road Transport & Highways, Chemicals & Fertilizers, Shri Mansukh L. Mandaviya on an inspection visit to Mumbai Port Trust today. He further expressed a need for the port to have a clear vision and road map for development for next ten to twenty years and appealed to all the stakeholders to work in this direction. .

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The Minister held a meeting with the Deputy Chairman and the Heads of Departments and reviewed the functioning of the Mumbai Port in all its scope and ambit. While reviewing the existing and the future projects undertaken by the Port, the Minister assured that Government would ensure that all resources are made available to the sector to ensure maximum growth of business. .

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The Minister also visited the Cruise Terminal at BPX Mumbai Harbour and inspected the liquid cargo handling facilities at Jawahar Dweep and Pir Pau. He appreciated the facilities created at Second Chemical Berth, which provides handling capacity of 55000 DWT tankers and capacity to handle 2.5 MMTPA cargo. He was informed that the MPT facilities have provided a lot of advantages mainly to the Public Sector Oil Companies and eliminated the waiting time of oil tankers at Mumbai Port as also reduced the ship's turn round time. .

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UN chief Ban Ki-moon has appreciated commitments made by major troop contributing nations such as India at a peacekeeping defence ministerial in the UK, as he reaffirmed the world body's pledge to work with the countries to improve the performance of UN peacekeepers.

"The Secretary-General welcomes the pledges and commitments made at the UN Peacekeeping Defence Ministerial in London. The Secretary-General is particularly encouraged by the pledges related to rapid deployment, including commitments by Bangladesh, China, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka to maintain units at a high level of readiness," said a statement issued by the UN Secretary-General's spokesperson yesterday.

At the ministerial meeting in London on Thursday, India underscored its commitment to UN peacekeeping operations and to providing troops for the missions as pledged by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Speaking at the Peacekeeping Defence Ministerial summit, Minister of State for Defence Subhash Ramrao Bhamre underlined the challenges faced by UN peacekeeping, with armed groups and non-state actors playing "spoilers" to peace efforts.

The London conference was a follow-up to the Leaders' Summit held at the UN Headquarters in New York.

At the Leaders' summit, Modi had announced to contribute an additional 850 troops to the UN Peacekeeping Missions.

Ban reaffirmed the UN's commitment to work with troop and police-contributing countries in continuing to improve the performance of UN peacekeepers, including through the full implementation of the Secretary-General's zero tolerance policy regarding sexual exploitation and abuse.

Applauding the strong focus of the ministerial on women and peacekeeping, he congratulated Major Aichatou Ousmane Issaka of Niger, who received the first UN Military Gender Advocate of the Year Award.

Addressing the closing session of the meeting, UN Under- Secretary-General for Field Support Atul Khare said, "there is justified concern that changes in the types of conflicts we are seeing may be outpacing our ability respond to them."

He said spread of violent extremism, enduring local or regional conflicts and the growing impatience of populations for change, fuelled by technological advances, places ever greater pressure on governments and the system.

According to the UN Departments of Peacekeeping Operations and Field Support, the UN leads or supports 36 peace operations on four continents in thirty countries, of which 17 are pure peacekeeping missions.

Of the UN Secretariat's $12 billion budget, peace operations account for over 75 per cent, and of $3 billion in annual UN procurement spending, 85 per cent is for such operations.

In the ministerial meeting, countries contributing to UN peacekeeping missions adopted a communique that focuses ways to improve the planning of operations, implement the pledges of support made by countries, and enhance the performance of troops on the ground.
China on Friday expressed firm opposition to the nuclear test conducted by North Korea, believed to be its most powerful atomic explosion ever.

State-run Xinhua news agency briefly quoted a Chinese Foreign Ministry statement firmly opposing the test.

Earlier, North Korea's state-run television said the country has conducted a nuclear warhead explosion test.

This is the country's fifth atomic explosion and believed to be its most powerful ever.

Monitors detected a 5.3-magnitude artificial earthquake near its main nuclear site this morning.
The top military commander of the Army of Conquest, the largest Syrian rebel alliance, was killed in an airstrike during a meeting of the group's leaders, jihadist sources have said.

The former Al-Nusra Front, renamed Fateh al-Sham Front, announced on Twitter "the martyrdom" of commander Abu Omar Sarakeb during an air strike in Syria's Aleppo province.

The Syrian Observatory for Human rights confirmed that airstrikes by unknown warplanes  from the US-led coalition, Russia or the Syrian regime  hit an Army of Conquest meeting in urban Aleppo in northern and killed Omar Sarakeb and another military commander named as Abu Muslem al-Shami.

The Army of Conquest is the largest anti-regime rebel alliance in Syria, grouping Islamist factions including Ahrar al-Sham and Faylaq al-Sham with jihadists such as the Fateh al-Sham Front, previously Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front.

According to the Syrian Observatory, Abu Omar Sarakib was the rebel commander in last year's battle for control of Syria's northwestern Idlib province and a known Al-Qaeda in Iraq jihadist.

The Army of Conquest controls Idlib province, but last week suffered a major loss in southern Aleppo after a month-long rebel and jihadist offencive.
Ahead of the 15th anniversary of 9/11, former secretary of state and Democratic presidential nominee said going after al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden into Pakistan was "not an easy choice".

"I was part of the small group advising President (Barack) Obama whether or not the intelligence we had was good enough to take a chance, to go deep into Pakistan, to try to finally bring Osama bin Laden to justice.

"It was not an easy choice by any means," Clinton said at an election rally in North Carolina. "These never are."

"That's why who sits at the head of that table in the situation room has to be able to sort out fact from opinion, has to be able to ask the hard questions, pursue even the most difficult leads," she said yesterday giving an insight into the May 2, 2011 killing of Osama, the 9/11 mastermind, in a US military operation at his hideout in Abbottabad in Pakistan.

Her comments came three days before the 15th anniversary of the al-Qaeda attack on the twin towers in New York that killed more than 3,000 people, resulting in the US invading Afghanistan.

"We went through that hour after hour after hour. And then the president went around the table asking each of us what we advised. And we were split because it was not some kind of easy layup. I believed it was strong enough that we needed to take action and I supported taking action that would determine whether or not we were successful. That meant sending in special forces," said the 68-year-old former secretary of state.

"Now, you know what happened. I was in that Situation Room watching that day. The most stressful 30 minutes of my life probably. Because you remember one of the helicopters nicked  clicked on  hit its tail on the wall going into the courtyard and became disabled.

"That meant  thank goodness there were good contingency plans, but you had to get another helicopter in to take out the SEALs who would no longer be able to fly out on that one," she said, describing the event of the day.

"But here's what I want to tell you because it is a story that, to me, illustrate our values in such a clear, unambiguous way. You've heard Donald Trump say he would order our troops to torture. You've heard him say he would order our troops to kill family members of terrorists. You would know that he was advocating illegal actions against our own laws, as well as the laws of war.

"Thank goodness there's a code of honour in our military stronger than the bluster and the bullying of Donald Trump because here is what happened on that night," she said amid applause.

Meanwhile, Trump, the 70-year-old real estate tycoon, claimed Osama would have been caught long ago had he been in power.
is expected to receive a demand for more than $2.4 billion from US authorities in settlement of an investigation into past misspelling of mortgage-backed securities, a German monthly magazine reported.
The first Rhodes Conference for Security and Stability in the Mediterranean, an initiative of the Greek Foreign Ministry, opened on Thursday with the participation of high-ranking officials from 14 European and Arab states.

On the agenda of the two-day forum are current major common challenges such as terrorism and the refugee crisis, Xinhua news agency reported.

The aim of the conference is to build new bridges and pave ground for closer cross-border collaboration in the political, economic and cultural levels to resolve common problems, Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias was quoted as saying.

Collective and coordinated cooperation to end wars in Libya, Iraq and Syria and find peaceful and long-lasting solutions to the Kurdish and the Palestinian issues, is the only way forward to address terrorism and the refugee flows, Kotzias and other delegates argued, Greek national news agency AMNA reported.

In order to effectively deal with the challenges, Athens proposed deeper collaboration of intelligence services and police forces against terrorism and organised crime networks.

The conference is held a few hours before Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras welcomes the leaders of Mediterranean countries in Athens to discuss the same common challenges in addition of the economic crisis.
Democratic presidential nominee has reiterated that she will not put US ground troops into Iraq and Syria in the military campaign against the Islamic State (IS) militant group.

"I've said it on numerous occasions. I believe it. I think putting a big contingent of American ground troops in Iraq and Syria would not be in the best interest of the fight against the IS and other terrorist groups," Xinhua news agency quoted Clinton as saying on Thursday.

While she insisted that the dispatch of US ground troops "would fulfil one of their (IS) dearest wishes" of dragging the US back into a ground war in the Middle East, Clinton showcased her willingness to continue US President Barack Obama's current anti-IS strategy despite Republicans' severe criticism that the Obama administration was acting insufficiently in the campaign.

"I support the air campaign. I support special forces. I support enablers. I support surveillance, intelligence and reconnaissance. I will absolutely be prepared to do whatever is necessary to support the Arab and Kurdish fighters on the ground to take out as much of the infrastructure of the IS from the air," said Clinton.

Clinton also said she will be committed to target-killing of IS leadership.

Currently, there are about 5,000 US troops in Iraq and several hundreds more are dispatched to northern Syria.

The White House does not count them as "ground troops", arguing that those are not combat troops and are only engaged in assisting and training local forces in the fight against the IS.
US presidential candidate says that if elected she would work with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to make sure Israel's strategic military edge is preserved.

"Shortly after being inaugurated I would invite the prime minister to Washington for meetings, I would send my joint chiefs and intelligence experts to Israel to meet with their counterparts," she said in an interview with Israeli Channel Two television aired today.

"What we need to do first and foremost (is) to be sure that qualitative military edge is unmatched," she said.

The US and Israeli governments have for several months been negotiating the terms of a new 10-year defence aid pact to replace the current one, which expires in 2018 and is worth more than $3 billion (2.7 billion euros) per year.

The Netanyahu government wants the United States to increase the annual amount of military assistance it provides.

In the Channel Two interview, Clinton said the prospect of an election victory for her Republican rival Donald Trump should alarm all Israelis regardless of their political views.

She said that Trump favoured a nuclear strike on the Islamic State group, which is fighting in the devastating conflict in Syria, right next door to the Jewish state.

"His understanding of the broader dangers in the region should alarm any Israeli no matter where that person is on the political spectrum," said the Democratic Party candidate.

"Using nukes against ISIS... Not knowing the difference between Hezbollah and Hamas. How does that in any way help Israel," she asked, using an acronym for the Islamic State group.

She added that Trump, who has praised Vladimir Putin, would not seek to hamper the Russian president's actions in Syria but preferred "giving a full carte blanche to Putin to do whatever he seems to want to do, right on Israel's doorstep".
Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, who has faced criticism for being aloof, told a popular blog she is aware she can be perceived as "cold or unemotional" and is not like President Barack Obama and her husband Bill Clinton with an "appealing" naturalness.

"I know that I can be perceived as aloof or cold or unemotional. But I had to learn as a young woman to control my emotions. And that's a hard path to walk," Clinton told the immensely popular 'Humans of New York' blog on Facebook.

Clinton cited an "intense" incident of how she was heckled by men during a law school admissions test in Harvard.

She said she was among only a handful of women in the room when a group of men "began to yell things like: 'You don't need to be here.' And 'There's plenty else you can do'.

"One of them even said: 'If you take my spot, I'll get drafted, and I'll go to Vietnam, and I'll die'. Clinton said even though the insinuations became "personal", she could not respond as she couldn't afford to get distracted and mess up the test.

"So I just kept looking down, hoping that the proctor would walk in the room. Because you need to protect yourself, you need to keep steady, but at the same time you don't want to seem 'walled off'. And sometimes I think I come across more in the 'walled off' arena," the 68-year-old former secretary of state said.

Clinton said in the blog post that is she takes responsibility for creating the perception of being walled off but she is not cold or unemotional.

"I don't view myself as cold or unemotional. And neither do my friends. And neither does my family. But if that sometimes is the perception I create, then I can't blame people for thinking that," she said.

In another post, Clinton said she is not like Obama and her husband Bill Clinton.

"I'm not Barack Obama. I'm not Bill Clinton. Both of them carry themselves with a naturalness that is very appealing to audiences. But I'm married to one and I've worked for the other, so I know how hard they work at being natural. It's not something they just dial in," she said, adding that both the US presidents work and practice what they are going to say.

"It's not that they're trying to be somebody else. But it's hard work to present yourself in the best possible way. You have to communicate in a way that people say: 'OK, I get her.' And that can be more difficult for a woman," she said.

Clinton said women running for the Senate or Presidency have fewer women to look top to since most of the role models are men.

"And what works for them won't work for you. Women are seen through a different lens. It's not bad. It's just a fact," she said.

Clinton said she has learnt she cannot be as passionate in her presentation as the men.

"I love to wave my arms, but apparently that's a little bit scary to people. And I can't yell too much. It comes across as 'too loud' or 'too shrill' or 'too this' or 'too that'. Which is funny, because I'm always convinced that the people in the front row are loving it," she said.
An Indian teenager who lost an eye and whose face was brutally disfigured in an walked the New York catwalk to whoops and cheers today in what she called a life-changing experience.

Reshma Qureshi, 19, brushed off nerves to stride the runway like a pro in a stunning cream and floral floor-length gown by Indian designer Archana Kochhar on the first official day of New York Fashion Week.

"I feel really good and the experience was great," she told AFP afterwards, speaking in Hindi through a translator. "I feel as though it has definitely changed my life."

She was invited to take part by FTL Moda, a fashion production company committed to challenging industry stereotypes of beauty and which last year invited a model with Down Syndrome to take part.

Qureshi, whose ambition remains to finish the last two grades of high school and go to college, said she hoped her participation would send a powerful message to other survivors.

"Why should we not enjoy our lives? What happened to us is not our fault and we've done nothing wrong and so we should also move forward in life," she told AFP the night before the show.

Acid attacks, which overwhelmingly target women and children, are a particular scourge in Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, the West Indies and the Middle East.

In India, an estimated 500 to 1,000 attacks take place each year, and while they rarely kill they leave severe physical, psychological and social scars that can see victims ostracised and hidden away.

Show came the same day an Indian court sentenced a man to death for murdering a 24-year-old woman by throwing acid on her face after she rejected his offer of marriage, in a landmark judgement.

Since Qureshi was attacked by her brother-in-law in 2004, pinned down by his friends and her face doused in acid, she has become the face of a campaign to end the open sale of acid in India.

As slim as any professional model and with thick, luxurious hair, she appears in YouTube videos, filmed in her home base of Mumbai, and offering beauty tips and make-up advice.

Just moments before hitting the catwalk she clung to the arm of a floor assistant. But with her hair swept into a chignon with a delicate headpiece, professional make-up and her model frame flattered by the curves of the gown, she quickly turned into a natural.

"I want to tell the world  do not see us in a weak light and see that even we can go out and do things," she told AFP.

"People have a tendency to look at survivors from one perspective and I don't want them to look at them like that anymore," she said.

Backstage she was embraced by a fellow model and then lent over the balcony watching part of the rest of the show which featured evening and daywear for men and women by a handful of different designers.

As much as the audience of stylists, bloggers and members of the Indian diaspora whooped and cheered, Qureshi had come across on the eve of the show as rather overwhelmed and understandably jet lagged.
A House hearing today on the State Department's record-keeping became a pitched battle over Hillary Clinton's private email server, with Democrats accusing Republicans of using the forum to advance a partisan agenda and undermine her candidacy for president.

Rep Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, opened the hearing by condemning Clinton for intentionally making a "mess" of the system for archiving and retrieving documents at State that has frustrated legitimate requests for information from Congress, the media and the public.

"Since 2009, there have been thousands of congressional inquiries, thousands of FOIA requests, subpoenas, (and) media inquiries," said Chaffetz, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. "And if any of those required Secretary Clinton's federal records, i.E. Her emails, there was not a way for those requests to be fulfilled."



Chaffetz noted, for example, that The Associated Press had to go to court to obtain all the detailed planning schedules from Clinton's four-year tenure as the nation's top diplomat.

Patrick Kennedy, undersecretary of state for management, told the committee the department is improving its records management but continues to struggle with the heavy volume of open-records requests it receives. To fulfill them, State must dig through an ever-increasing quantity of records. An estimated one billion emails flow through the department's servers annually.

"We get very complex national security document requests," he said. Kennedy said the department is currently sorting through thousands of records it received from the FBI following its investigation of Clinton.

FBI Director James Comey in July announced the bureau's recommendation against criminal charges for Clinton and her aides following a yearlong investigation into the potential mishandling of classified information on the private email server she used.

Republicans are focusing on Clinton with a series of hearings on her email practices in the weeks leading up to the November 8 election.

Last year, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., credited the House's Benghazi, Libya, investigation with wounding Clinton's public standing. That $7 million, two-year investigation into the deadly 2012 attacks found no wrongdoing by Clinton.

Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the committee's top Democrat, argued that Clinton's actions were hardly unprecedented.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte took a thinly veiled dig at the United States, complaining that colonisers who killed many Filipinos are now raising human rights concerns with him.

President Barack Obama was among several world leaders who listened to Duterte's brief speech at the East Asia Summit in the Laotian capital of Vientiane.

Obama earlier canceled a meeting with Duterte after the Philippine leader referred to him in comments to reporters as a "son of a bitch" and warned him not to discuss the deaths of thousands of suspects in an anti-drug campaign.

Two Philippine Cabinet officials said Duterte did not criticise any country or leader by name in his speech. Other diplomats who heard the speech, however, felt he was referring to the United States, which colonised the after defeating its former ruler, Spain.

An Indonesian diplomat said Duterte held up a picture of Filipinos killed in colonial times to underscore his point. The diplomat spoke to reporters on condition that he not be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Philippine officials refused to release Duterte's remarks, which were not included in his prepared speech made yesterday. The Department of Foreign Affairs in Manila said the president provided an explanation of how human rights records should be assessed in the context of the historical record.

"In the passionate intervention of President Duterte, he underscored the need to take a long historical view of human rights, mindful of the atrocities against the ethnic people of Mindanao," the department said in a statement, referring to the southern Philippine region where American forces were involved in deadly clashes with Muslim Filipinos in the early 1900s.

Duterte, who assumed the presidency in June, has had an uneasy relationship with the U.S., his country's longtime treaty ally. He has said he is charting a foreign policy that is not dependent on the US, and has moved to reduce tensions with China over rival territorial claims.

The tough-talking president has also blasted UN-appointed human rights experts and rights watchdogs who have expressed concerns over the extrajudicial killings of more than 2,800 suspected drug dealers and users since Duterte took office. More than 600,000 others have surrendered, apparently out of fear of being killed.

After the flap over Duterte's earlier remarks, he and Obama met briefly on the sidelines of the Laos meetings and shook hands.

One Cabinet member, Jesus Dureza, said he asked Duterte how his talk with Obama went. "It was OK," Dureza quoted Duterte as saying. "He told me, 'we can talk some more at another time.'"

The summit ended with Laos turning over the chairmanship of the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations to Duterte, whose country will host the annual diplomatic gathering next year.
Turkish President and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin have agreed to continue efforts to achieve a truce in Syria's Aleppo, a statement said.

The two leaders in a phone call on Thursday discussed Turkish-Russia bilateral ties and the latest developments in Syria, Xinhua news agency reported.

Erdogan reiterated the importance of achieving ceasefire as soon as possible in Aleppo, a rebel-held city under a devastating siege.

The Operation Euphrates Shield was also one of the major topics of discussion, the Turkish presidency statement said.

"The importance of the fact that Turkey's border with Syria is now completely free of the Islamic State militants was emphasised in the call."

Meanwhile, the Kremlin also released a statement confirming the conversation between the two leaders.

The Turkish military launched the cross-border Operation Euphrates Shield on August 24 along with the US-led coalition in Syria's northern border city of Jarablus to clear the area from the IS.
More than a week after South Korea's biggest container line filed for bankruptcy protection and disrupted cargo movements worldwide, exporters such as Samsung Electronics Co and LG Electronics are finally getting some relief. Hyundai Merchant Marine Co, the nation's number 2 liner, will flag off a vessel to Los Angeles from Busan late Friday to help ease a squeeze after many Hanjin Shipping ships were left stranded, unable to unload or pick up shipments. Bookings for the ship have reached more than 90 per cent, of which the two electronics makers accounted for about 60 per cent, ...
Russia's Foreign Ministry announced today that the Israeli and the Palestinian leaders have agreed "in principle" to meet in Moscow for talks in what the Russians hope will relaunch the Mideast peace process after a more than two-year break.

But the wide gaps between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas left it uncertain if or when the meeting will take place, and raised doubts about whether they would make any progress if they do get together.

In another twist, an Israeli TV station reported that a document discovered by two Israeli researchers indicated that Abbas had worked for the Soviet intelligence agency, the KGB, while living in Syria in the early 1980s.

The professors said they were coming forward with the information to discredit Moscow as an honest broker in peace talks.

After years of taking a back seat to the US in Mideast diplomacy, has increasingly sought to take a leadership role in the region. It has developed close ties with Iran and sent fighter jets to Syria to back President Bashar Assad in his war against rebel groups.

In Washington, a spokesman said the US State Department is following the Russian efforts closely and would "be supportive" of any kind of effort to bring the parties together.

Today's announcement in Moscow indicates that is pushing forward with its attempt to become a peace broker after a setback earlier in the week. On Tuesday, Abbas said that a meeting scheduled in Moscow this week had been delayed at Israel's request.

While bringing the men together would represent an accomplishment for Moscow, a diplomatic breakthrough seems unlikely.

Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remain far apart on key issues, and their differences have prevented meaningful talks since Netanyahu took office in 2009.

The last round of peace talks broke down two and a half years ago, with no progress reported during months of US-brokered negotiations.

In Moscow, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Abbas and Netanyahu had accepted an invitation to meet in the Russian capital, but a date has not been set yet.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's campaign has raised in August $90 million  of which the real estate tycoon himself contributed more than half, but still remains short of $140 million raised by his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton's campaign.

Trump contributed $60 million to his campaign in August, which then turned out to be his best fund-raising month with $90 million as the total amount raised.

However, it is still short of $140 million raised by his rival Hillary Clinton's campaign in the same month.

The fact was acknowledged by the Trump campaign in its latest fund raising statement.

"We have broad support from across America. Hillary Clinton and her super PACs have spent over $130 million on negative political ads, and yet we are virtually tied (or better) in the most recent national polls and leading in many of the important swing states," said Steven Mnuchin, Trump for President Finance chairman.

"Hillary Clinton spent August attending 70 fundraisers; Donald Trump spent August at 34 rallies and speeches," he said.

In a statement, the Trump Campaign said the $90 million haul came mostly from small donors and includes a significant contribution from the 70-year-old  bringing his overall contributions to the campaign to almost $60 million dollars.

"Once again his contributions for the month far surpassed what the FEC legally requires in reimbursements to his related entities such as rent and airfare," it said.

As a result, the campaign and both Joint Fundraising Committees finished the month with very strong cash positions on hand, totaling approximately $97 million.

This is a significant increase from the previous month, it said.

According to the Trump Campaign, in last three months, 2.1 million people from across the nation have donated.

"On August 31, the day Trump met with the President of Mexico and delivered his 10-point plan to reform immigration laws in this country, the campaign raised more than $5 million," it said.
British Prime Minister Theresa May and European Union (EU) President Donald Tusk on Thursday held their first formal bilateral meeting on the country's exit from the bloc, with the UK leader reaffirming she will not launch talks this year.

During the meeting at Downing Street, May said the exit procedure following the June 23 referendum on EU membership would not begin before 2017.

"She said the UK would take time to prepare for the negotiations, reiterating that Article 50 will not be triggered before the end of the year," a government spokesperson said.

The timing of Britain's EU departure  which will follow a two-year negotiation period sparked by Article 50  has been a key point of tension between London and Brussels.

Speaking in the Latvian capital Riga following the meeting with May, Tusk reasserted EU rules that formal negotiations on Britain leaving the EU cannot begin until the British government formally triggers procedures.

"Article 50 of the Treaty is very clear. In fact it is there to protect the interests of the countries remaining in the EU," he said.

"I told Prime Minister May that I am convinced that it is in everyone's best interests that we start the negotiations soon to reduce and eventually end the uncertainty," said Tusk.

The EU President said he aimed to establish the "best possible relations" with the UK.

Tusk is touring European capitals ahead of a summit in Slovakia this month where the 27 EU leaders  the entire bloc, except Britain  will gather to discuss the fallout from Britain's EU referendum.

"It doesn't mean that we are going to discuss our future relations with the UK in Bratislava, because for this... We need the formal notification, I mean triggering Article 50" of the EU's Lisbon Treaty, Tusk said at the start of the Downing Street meeting.
The US has asked India and Pakistan to engage in peace talks to de-escalate tensions in the region as it appealed to both the countries to maintain strong, cordial and productive relations.

"We strongly encourage in all of our dealings with either India and or Pakistan stronger relations between the two countries. It's clearly in the security interests of the region that they work to de-escalate tensions and that they have dialogue," State Department Deputy Spokesman Mark Toner told reporters yesterday at his daily news conference.

"That's something we constantly encourage for just that  or out of just that concern, which is that we don't want to see tensions escalate, spiral out of control, and lead to some kind of incident," he said.

"It is important for the two countries, the two governments to maintain strong, cordial, and productive relations," Toner said in response to a question.

The US, he said, wants Pakistan to take more action against terrorist network.

"Our discussions continue to focus on the fact that we're urging the Government of Pakistan to take concerted action against safe havens and terrorist groups that threaten other countries in the region and we've been very clear about that," he said.

"And we have seen them attempt to address it. We want to see more action taken, but it continues to be a topic of conversation with them," he added.

Toner said America's relationship with India and Pakistan is not a zero sum game.

"As we've said many times, there's no zero-sum game here. We need to have a very strong and robust relationship with India and we do - the world's largest democracy. And we also want to have a strong relationship with Pakistan. It's in the interests of the region to do so," he said.

"The recent India and Bangladesh visit of the Secretary of State (John Kerry) and not going to Pakistan should not be treated otherwise," Toner said.

"It doesn't clearly indicate anything about our relationship with Pakistan. The Secretary has a very intense travel schedule. He's been to Pakistan recently; he speaks often to senior Pakistani leadership," he said,

"Specifically, he was in India for the Strategic and Commercial Dialogue and took the opportunity to also visit Bangladesh - I think the first time he's been there," he added.
Seeking to boost Indo-Us ties, a top Amercian industry advocacy group plans to arrange visit of about 100 American Congressmen and Senators to India in the next two years to help them meet top Indian leaders and officials.

"It is important that we convey a right story about India to the both to the House and the Senate. And the best way to convey that is for them to feel firsthand what is India all about  its culture, its politics, its food.

"... And I think, when they come back convinced that India is an important ally, its value systems are the same, the democracy, it has a press, which is as vibrant in bit countries," Mukesh Aghi, US India Business Council (USIBC) president said.

USIBC plans to start the process in the new Congress and is targeting at taking at least 100 Congressmen and Senators in the next two years, he said.

"I think, it is important that we engage these Congressmen and Senators and take them to India itself," he added.

Responding to questions about initial feedback from the Hill, he said the interest is very high to such a proposal.

As per LegiStorm  an unofficial site, which keeps track of foreign travel by lawmakers  India currently is not the popular destination for US lawmakers.

Israel is their top destination.

In 2015, US lawmakers made 159 trip to Israel, followed by 110 trips to the West Bank.

Germany came third with 62 trips, followed by Canada (38), Guatemala (23), Cuba (23), Tanzania (22), Japan (20) and Czech Republic (18).

India does not figure in its list of top 10 countries frequently visited by US lawmakers.

"We would have to work in partnership with the Government of India, because we would like them to have access to senior bureaucrats, ministers and have an open dialogue to talk to them," Aghi said.

"The engagement between the legislative side is very important, which I think is lacking at the moment. On the executive side there is a lot of engagement, but on the legislative side there is not much," Aghi said.

Meanwhile, a delegation of Indian parliamentarians are scheduled to arrive in the US next week for interacting with lawmakers, policy makers, think-tanks and officials.

The seven member delegation of Indo-US Forum of Parliamentarians (IUFP) as part of FICCI's Forum of Parliamentarians is led by Baijayant "Jay" Panda of the Biju Janata Dal.

Other members are Anurag Thakur of and Harish Chandra Meena from BJP, Neeraj Shekhar from Samajwadi Party, Jayadev Galla from Telugu Desam Party and Rajeev Satav and Sushmita Dev from Indian National Congress.

The delegation will meet with elected representatives, policy experts, and industry members for a deeper understanding of India-US relations, a FICCI statement said.
Even as the Indian Institutes of (IIMs) continue to supply with high-cost graduates meant for leadership roles, top recruiters this year turned further towards other for middle roles.
were down as profit taking emerged in rate sensitive shares after sharp gains in the previous session which lifted the benchmarks to 18-month highs. Further, IT stocks staged a recovery in noon trades after weakness in early deals.
ended lower, amid weak global cues, as investors booked profits after sharp gains in the previous session which lifted the benchmarks to 18-month highs. Further, testing of a nuclear weapon by North Korea also dampened sentiment for riskier assets.
Indian stock markets closed in the red on Friday, after investors booked profits following weakness in the regional equity markets over reports of a nuclear test in North Korea and amid uncertainty over the European Central Banks (ECB) future policy steps.


The opening ceremony of Jio MAMI with Star film festival this year will mark the re-launch of the iconic Royal Opera House in downtown Mumbai.

The opening ceremony on October 20 will also celebrate the re-opening of this iconic venue, the only surviving Opera House in India, which was once the cultural heartbeat of Mumbai.

The Royal Family of Gondal, the owners of the iconic venue, tirelessly worked towards ensuring the complete revival and restoration of this centre under the watchful eye of conservation architect Abha Narain Lambah.

The Maharaja of Gondal Shri Vikram Sinhji bought the Opera House in 1952. His son Shri Jyotendra Sinhji Jadeja commissioned its restoration in 2009, which is now nearing completion and revving up for its debut.

According to Jyotendra Sinhji Jadeja, "It gives me immense pleasure to see The Royal Opera House being revived back to its original glory. The Gondal Family has always been a great patron of art, culture and education. The Royal Opera House in this new avatar is our gift to the City of Mumbai. I thank my wife Smt. Kumud Kumari and my son Himanshisinh and our close family friend Ashish Doshi and needless to mention Abha Lambah who have worked tirelessly to ensure we can bring back this historical monument to its original glory. We are delighted to partner with MAMI festival and wish them all the luck."

The idea for the Opera House was conceived in 1908 by Maurice Bandmann, a famous entertainer from Calcutta and Jehangir Framji Karaka, who headed a coal brokers' firm.

The heritage building, inaugurated by King George V in 1911, reflects the grandness of Baroque architecture.

With domed ceiling embellished with paintings and acoustically perfect construction, it enables those seated in the gallery to hear every word uttered by the performers.

One of the last standing Baroque buildings in Mumbai, the Royal Opera House, with its long standing association with art and culture, hosted operas and live performances of artists like Bal Gandharva, Prithviraj Kapoor, Dinanath Mangeshkar and Lata Mangeshkar.

Speaking about the association, Jio MAMI with Star Festival chairperson Kiran Rao said, "We are honoured to have our opening ceremony at the Royal Opera House. We could not have asked for a better host- a host with a legacy that goes back over a hundred years. The Opera House is an iconic venue and as we get ready to roll out the red carpet, we hope to help revive its legacy as an important cultural venue for the people of Mumbai."

Adding to it, the festival's director Anupama Chopra stated, "We are excited to be associated with this historical re-opening and thankful to the Royal family of Gondal for allowing us to host our opening ceremony there.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Global Travel Association (GBTA), the voice of the global travel industry, has announced appointments to the newly formed GBTA India Advisory Board. The Advisory Board is made up of prominent senior travel buyers and suppliers who will offer strategic guidance as GBTA expands its member base, supplies industry-leading research and conducts education and networking events in the region.

"Regional advisory boards play an important role in GBTA's efforts across the globe," said Gaurav Sundaram, GBTA India's regional director.

He further stated, "As India experiences continued double digit travel spending growth, making it one of today's fastest growing business travel markets in the world, I am pleased to have a group of such experienced industry professionals offering their time and expertise to bring the association's core activities of education, research, advocacy and networking to the region."

The 2016-2017 India Advisory Board Members include:

Rakesh Bansal, CEO, Amadeus India

Neerja Bhatia, Vice President India, Etihad Airways

Rajdev Bhattacharya, General Manager, WIPRO Travel

Rajeev Goswami, CEO and Co-Founder, WWstay

Ashish Kishore, Country Head, dnata International India

Mritunjaya Chandra Mohan, APAC Travel Manager, Adobe Systems

Gaurav Nagwekar, Head of Corporate Travel, Reliance Industries Limited

Chandresh Natu, APAC Lead Procurement, AON

Arif Patel, Vice President Sales, India, Accor Hotels

Victor Pynn, COO, Amadeus

Neal Rogers, APAC - MEA Travel Head, CSC

Subrato Sarkaar, Group President Administration, Aditya Birla Group

On September 6, GBTA brought together Indian business travel buyers and suppliers for a day of education and networking at the flagship GBTA India Business Travel Symposium.

The Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) is the world's premier business travel and meetings trade organization headquartered in the Washington, D.C. area with operations on six continents.

GBTA's 8,000-plus members manage more than USD 345 billion of global business travel and meetings expenditures annually.

GBTA and the GBTA Foundation deliver world-class education, events, research, advocacy and media to a growing global network of more than 28,000 travel professionals and 125,000 active contacts.

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India emphasised on the importance of maintaining peace, security and stability, unimpeded commerce, freedom of navigation and overflight above the disputed South China Sea at the recently-concluded Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit in Laos.

A statement issued by Laos Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith, who chaired the 14th India-ASEAN Summit, said, "India also underscored the importance for the states concerned to resolve disputes through peaceful means in accordance with international law, including the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS)."

In this regard, India urged all parties to show utmost respect for the 1982 UNCLOS, which establishes the international legal order of seas and oceans, added the statement.

ASEAN and its member countries also encouraged greater maritime cooperation between ASEAN and India, including but not limited to, the enhancement of maritime connectivity, which would provide lower logistic costs and motivate increased trade in goods and services between the two parties.

At the Summit, the ASEAN leaders also appreciated India's commitment to the Initiative for ASEAN Integration (IAI) and agreed to further strengthen cooperation in other areas such as food and agriculture, trade facilitation, education, clean and renewable energy, tourism, health and well-being, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) development, and poverty alleviation.

They also welcomed India's "Act East Policy" and "Make in India" and appreciated its continued support for the ASEAN Community and ASEAN's efforts in building a region that is politically cohesive, economically integrated, socially responsible and truly rules based, people oriented and people-centred.

The ASEAN and India leaders agreed to continue enhancing the partnership that would bring about tangible benefits to both sides as well as contribute to the promotion of peace, stability, and prosperity in the region.

Recognising that terrorism remains significant threat to peace and stability in our region, the leaders present at the Summit reiterated their commitment to combat terrorism in all its forms and agreed to take concrete measures to step up cooperation and coordination among law enforcement and security agencies.

"We recognise the need to counter and prevent the spread of violent extremism and radicalism that leads to acts of terrorism. In addition, ASEAN and India support the early adoption of the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism, currently under negotiation at the United Nations," said the statement.

The countries agreed to cooperate towards addressing traditional and non-traditional security challenges, including in areas of de-radicalisation, prevention of violent extremism and cybercrime.

ASEAN leaders also welcomed Prime Minister Narendra Modi's commitment to establishing an ASEAN-India Innovation Platform and to build digital connectivity through the use of Gigabit-capable Passive Optical Network (GPON) technology.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Civil Aviation Ministry has prohibited the use and carriage of Samsung's Galaxy Note 7 smart phone on board aircraft.

The decision came in the wake of several incidents of battery of the phone getting exploded. The ministry has issued a public notice advising airlines and travelers not to turn on or charge the smart phones during flights.

Passengers have also been advised not to stow them in their checked in baggage. The Samsung has already recalled the smart phone following the complaints.

The phone has been under scrutiny since it was recalled for having batteries that are at risk of catching fire and exploding.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Even while most of his fellow people are in favour of 2016 US Presidential candidate Donald Trump, Brad Pitt apparently "can't bring myself to think that Trump will be in charge".

The 52-year-old actor, while discussing the British exit from the European Union, opened up to the New York Times' T magazine about his feelings regarding Trump, reports E! Online.

"Man, I never thought [Brexit] would happen. Same way I can't bring myself to think that Trump will be in charge," the 'Fury' actor said, "In the simplest terms, what brings us together is good, and what separates us is bad."

"We have this great line in 'The Big Short,' 'When things are going wrong and we can't find the reason for it, we just start creating enemies'," he added.

On a related note, 'The Big Short' is last year's Oscar-winning film about the global financial crisis of 2008.

The 52-year-old actor goes on to explain how he can understand why people are attracted to the media mogul and his ideas for the future of the country.

"Coming from Oklahoma, southern Missouri, which leans more toward a Trump voice, I try to understand it," he explained,

"You gotta understand that it's also in our DNA. Most Americans don't have time to watch CNN and Fox and Al Jazeera. They're trying to make the rent, get the kids fed, they're tired when they get home and they want to forget about everything. And so suddenly when this voice comes in-and it doesn't have to be a voice of substance-saying he's fed up with all of this, that's the part that hooks into the DNA," added Pitt.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Under fire post Kapil Sharma's claim that he had to pay a bribe of Rs. five lakh for getting approval for an office in spite of paying income tax regularly, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) on Friday asked the comedian to reveal the names of the erring officials while asserting that appropriate action would be taken against them.

BMC's Vigilance Department chief Manohar Pawar said the corporation has taken the complaint seriously, adding that such cases are not tolerated.

"But it is imperative for Sharma to give us the name and details. Thereafter, the corporation will take necessary actions according to the rules and regulations," said Pawar while reacting to Sharma's tweet.

Earlier today, Sharma lashed out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi on having to pay a "bribe" of Rs. five lakh to the BMC to get his office made, enquiring if that is what is meant by his "acche din".

"I am paying 15 cr income tax from last 5 year n still i have to pay 5 lacs bribe to BMC office for making my office @narendramodi. Yeh hain aapke achhe din ? (these are your achhe din?)," he said in a series of tweets.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis earlier assured the comedian that the culprit would not be spared.

"Kapilbhai pls provide all info. Have directed MC,BMC to take strictest action. We will not spare the culprit," Fadnavis tweeted.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The British Government has flatly refused charges that it is trying to protect the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) from legal charges.

"There is no pressure from any part of the British state to go soft on the MQM," said Home Office Permanent Secretary Mark Sedwill.

According to the Dawn, Sedwill was speaking before British parliament's influential Home Affairs Select Committee, responding to a question from Bradford MP Naz Shah who said the failure to use terrorism legislation in relation to the MQM had hampered previous police investigations.

"Can you confirm, that the abject failure of the Foreign Office to list the MQM as a terrorist outfit should have no bearing on the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) decision on whether or not to use terrorism legislation in relation to the MQM?" Shah asked.

To which Sedwill responded saying, "The police can use terrorism legislation whether or not someone is a member of proscribed organisation."

Several parliamentarians with Pakistani heritage have written to various British officials asking about the failure of investigations into the MQM matter.

However, Whitehall insiders admit that there are differences between the Home Office, the Foreign Office and CPS on the MQM issue.

On Aug 23, the Metropolitan Police announced that they were opening an investigation into whether Mr Hussain's speech shortly before the attacks on media houses in Karachi resulted in violence.

"I have been in touch with my Pakistani counterpart to ensure that we provide the Metropolitan Police with all the evidence they need to pursue a proper criminal investigation," Sedwill said, revealing that the UK and Pakistan were cooperating on the case,

The MQM maintains that all three cases are failing because there is no evidence against the party or its senior London-based members and the party officials insist that they are innocent of all the allegations made against them.

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Gabina VOA is designed to be an infotainment youth radio show broadcasting to Ethiopia and Eritrea in the Amharic language. The show brings varied perspectives on issues concerning young people in the Horn of Africa region. Gabina in the Amharic language is a front row taxi ridesymbolic of the shows content as a fun ride that takes audiences from point A to point B. Gabina VOAs main goal is Enlightening young people, introducing them to cutting-edge technological innovations, exposing them to new processes and ideas so they can be productive, informed and self-governing citizens.
Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has written a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi requesting him to call a meeting of the state Chief Ministers to resolve the ongoing protest in the state over the Cauvery water dispute.

"Permit me to invite your immediate attention to the stark facts already in the public arena about extreme unrest in the Cauvery basin especially in Bangalore city protesting against the interim order for the daily release of 15,000 cusecs of Cauvery water at the inter State border, Biligundulu, which, if continued, would completely deprive the drinking water not only to the residents of Bangalore City but also to the farmers of the Cauvery basin and water for the only crop they grow. However, the present storage in the Mettur reservoir in Tamil Nadu and the North-east rainfall received in Tamil Nadu would be more than sufficient to meet the requirement of water for the Samba rice crop just being or still to be sown by the farmers in Tamil Nadu," Siddaramaiah wrote in his letter.

Pointing out the problems being caused due to the release of Cauvery water, he added that the ongoing protest will cause a severe damage to the state's economy.

"At an all-party meeting held on 6th September, 2016, to elicit the views of political parties the view of the leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the State was that the order of the Supreme Court of India ought not to be implemented. However, as constitutional Chief Executive of the State I have taken it upon myself to obey the orders of the Hon'ble Supreme Court and the waters are being released as per the order which has created more unrest and disquiet in the State. The unrest if continued will not only have a serious impact on the economy of the State particularly the IT economy which brings enormous revenue and foreign exchange to the country but will also impact the livelihood of the common man adversely in the large parts of the State," he said.

Normal life in several parts of Karnataka, including state capital Bengaluru, was affected due to complete shutdown today.

The state witnessed massive rallies and protests against the Supreme Court order of releasing water from Karnataka's reservoirs.

The apex court on Monday directed the Karnataka Government to release Cauvery water for the next 10 days to ameliorate the plight of farmers.

The apex court also directed Tamil Nadu to approach the supervisory committee within three days for the release of Cauvery water as per the final order of the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal's (CWDT).

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A doctor and ward boy at the Apollo Hospital here were today arrested in connection with the rape of a dengue patient in the ICU on September 3.

The police have registered a complaint of rape under Section 376 of the IPC against the doctor identified as Dr Ramesh Bura lal Chauhan and a ward boy Chandrakant alias Chandu.

The victim's father registered the complaint on September 6, said Police Inspector K.K. Pandya.

"We have found evidence against the two accused Chandrakant alias Chandu and Dr Ramesh Chauhan and have arrested them," Pandya said.

"The FIR was lodged under IPC Section 376 and offence has been registered.

According to the guidelines, the investigations are on as we have medical evidence, forensic evidence as well as CCTV footage along with other evidences," he added.

"We have full belief in police proceedings as the FIR has been registered and the investigations are going on and we are supporting the investigation team," doctor at Apollo Hospital Sandeep Joshi said.

The complainant, a student, was admitted on August 22 with high fever. She was diagnosed with dengue.

Her condition worsened on Sunday (September 3) following which she was shifted to the ICU.

In her complaint, the girl has alleged that Dr Chauhan and the ward boy had sexually molested her and later raped her.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Former United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan, who is to head the Rakhine State Advisory Commission in Myanmar, has assured the people that he will assuage concerns over the potential partiality of the commission, saying its mandate is to take on board the concerns of both the state's Buddhist and Muslim communities, and not to police human rights.

Annan, during a press conference in Yangon yesterday, at the conclusion of a six-day trip, emphasised that the advisory body would take a consultative approach with all the stakeholders, reports the Myanmar Times.

"We don't reconcile by focusing on one side of the issue," he said.

His trip to Sittwe earlier this week was met by protests from Rakhine nationalists, who claim to reject international intervention in internal affairs.

Annan, however, said he respected their right to demonstrate and that he hopes to engage them in a constructive dialogue.

The commission, which was created at the behest of State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, figures Annan, a Ghanaian, Ghassan Salame of Lebanon and Laetitia van den Assum of Norway.

The Arakan National Party has been particularly vocal about the appointment of three foreigners to the commission.

During the conference, Annan indicated that neighbouring countries would be consulted in the course of the commission's work, saying he believed this was an international issue that went beyond borders.

Annan acknowledged that the matter of nomenclature is a controversial one. He stated that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi had not requested that he avoid use of the word "Rohingya" - something she had asked of the diplomatic community.

"The people in the camps and villages focused on issues of development, jobs, education, medical care, freedom of movement, occupation for [women] - and others spoke to us a lot about history, history of Rakhine State . That is important for us, particularly for the foreigners in the commission, to understand the background of the issue," he said.

Annan also confirmed he had met with military representatives and President U Htin Kyaw in Nay Pyi Taw.

A permanent office for the commission is currently being established in Sittwe and would operate with around five to 10 staff members, a representative of Annan's delegation confirmed.

"We intend to submit the report within one year but we will not rush. We will be very patient and submit the solid report which is helpful for the Rakhine community," he said.

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Pro-Kannada organizations on Friday called for a shutdown in Karnataka over the Cauvery water dispute.

Meanwhile, protestors continued to take to the streets, venting their ire against the Supreme Court's decision ordering the state to release the water to Tamil Nadu.

"We are protesting for the last 40, 50 years for the farmers. We will continue our protest if this is not stopped. Whatever Fali Sam Nariman is doing is doing, is in favour of Jayalalithaa that is why we have given a condition to the state government to suspend Nariman," said a protestor.

Protests continued in Bengaluru, Mysuru and Mandya yesterday and the Bengaluru-Mysuru highway was blocked by agitators in different places.

The public transport will operate depending on the prevailing situation. There is no taxi and auto rickshaw services from Bengaluru airport and railway station as cab and auto owners and drivers have supported the bundh.

Elaborate security arrangements are being made planned to avert untoward incidents.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Delhi Chief Minister on Friday assured the people of Punjab that if the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is voted to power in the state, Amritsar would be given the status of a 'holy city'.

He also said that an AAP government would ban consumption and sale of alcohol, meat and tobacco near the Golden Temple.

"I have come here to pay obeisance. The Darbar Sahib is a place where not only Sikhs but people from all other religions gather to worship. The Durgiana temple is also here in Amritsar, Jalianwala Bagh is also here; the city also has a Ram Teerath. So, if the Aam Aadmi Party forms a government here, Amritsar will be given a status of a 'holy city'," said Kejriwal.

"Anandpur Sahib which is the birth place of the Khalsa will also be declared a holy city," he added.

Kejriwal is in Punjab on a four-day visit to hear the grievances of AAP workers in the state.

Kejriwal's visit has come at a time when AAP is facing "crisis" over several issues, including the sacking of Sucha Singh Chhotepur as Punjab convener.

During his tour, the AAP chief will meet party volunteers, workers, including those who are "angry over not getting party tickets", amid "growing voices of rebel" and allegations of exploitation of women which could threaten to derail the party's prospects in high-stake 2017 Assembly polls.
The on Friday alleged that the lust for power has brought the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and People's Democratic Party (PDP) together in Jammu and Kashmir, adding the alliance is least bothered about the present state of affairs in the valley.

leader Sandeep Dixit backed senior PDP leader Muzaffar Hussain Baig's assertion that Mehbooba Mufti should step down as the Chief Minister if an agenda of alliance agreed upon with the BJP is not implemented in the state.

Highlighting that the PDP-BJP alliance has so far failed to arrive at a consensus on several issues, the leader said this proves that they do not have genuine concerns for Kashmir or its people.

"It is just greed for power that has brought them together. They are not interested in the condition of Jammu and Kashmir. I am of the opinion that they should be removed now. The situation will only deteriorate in five to six months and the people will not only ask for the resignation of the CM, but the PM as well," he said.

Appearing to be in tune with the popular perception that the PDP-BJP alliance has failed, Baig earlier said that Mehbooba should step down if she feels she can't control the situation.

The former deputy chief minister further said the PDP-BJP government has so far failed to deliver on its agenda of governance.

Baig, however, did not launch direct attack on Mehbooba.

He said that Mehbooba has no senior people in the government to advise or support her, adding she is doing a herculean job all alone.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg came under fire from Norway's largest newspaper for the company's decision to censor a historic photograph of the Vietnam War.

The newspaper, Aftenposten, has published a front-page open letter lambasting Zuckerberg and calling him to recognize and live up to his role as "the world's most powerful editor", reports the Guardian.

Espen Egil Hansen, the editor-in-chief and CEO of Aftenposten, accused Zuckerberg of thoughtlessly "abusing power" over the social media site that has become a vital platform for distribution of news and information around the .

"I am upset, disappointed, well, in fact even afraid, of what you are about to do to a mainstay of our democratic society," he wrote.

"I am worried that the world's most important medium is limiting freedom instead of trying to extend it, and that this occasionally happens in an authoritarian way," he added.

"Even though I am editor-in-chief of Norway's largest newspaper, I have to realize that you are restricting my room for exercising my editorial responsibility. I think you are abusing your power, and I find it hard to believe that you have thought it through thoroughly" he said.

Facebook decided to delete a post by Norwegian writer Tom Egeland that featured 'The Terror of War', a Pulitzer prize-winning photograph by Nick Ut that showed children, including the naked nine-year-old girl identified as Kim Phuc, running away from a napalm attack during the Vietnam War.

Egeland's post discussed "seven photographs that changed the history of warfare" - a group to which the "napalm girl" image certainly belongs.

Egeland was subsequently suspended from Facebook.

When Aftenposten reported on the suspension, using the same photograph in its article, which was then shared on the publication's Facebook page, the newspaper received a message from Facebook asking it to "either remove or pixelize" the photograph.

"Any photographs of people displaying fully nude genitalia or buttocks, or fully nude female breast, will be removed," the notice from Facebook explained.

Before Aftenposten could respond, Hansen writes, Facebook deleted the article and image from the newspaper's Facebook page.

In his open letter, Hansen points out that Facebook's decision to delete the photograph reveals a troubling inability to "distinguish between child pornography and famous war photographs", as well as an unwillingness to "allow[ing] space for good judgement".

Hansen goes on to argue that rather than fulfill its mission statement to "make the more open and connected", such editorial decisions "will simply promote stupidity and fail to bring human beings closer to each other".

In response to the controversy, Facebook said, "While we recognize that this photo is iconic, it's difficult to create a distinction between allowing a photograph of a nude child in one instance and not others. We try to find the right balance between enabling people to express themselves while maintaining a safe and respectful experience for our global community. Our solutions won't always be perfect, but we will continue to try to improve our policies and the ways in which we apply them.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Reacting to Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency's (FIA) dropping charges against an accused in the 26/11 Mumbai attack case "for want of evidence", Minister of State in Prime Minister's Office (MoS-PMO) Jitendra Singh on Friday said the Government of India, Ministry of External Affairs and the Home Ministry "would take a call appropriately depending upon the inputs" available to them.

"But as far as India is concerned, India is capable of meeting any eventuality," he added.

Talking about Kashmir unrest, Singh said there is a need to educate the Valley youth against those working with vested interests to harm the country's integrity.

"Firstly, there is no compromise on violence. In a civilised society, it has no space. Secondly, as the situation will normalise, the youth should be involved in the path to development. We have to encourage the youth that under Prime Minsiter Narendra Modi's leadership, they should not be kept away from this growth so that the Kashmiri youth are also give their contribution in development. Third is anti-India activism, and there should not be any premium on that," he added.

When asked about Balochistan, Singh said it is also a "very important security concern for India".

"Because you cannot allow your neighbourhood to be on fire, as sooner or later it is going to impact you. We cannot build a heaven inside and leave a hell outside," he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Supreme Court on Friday referred the Gujarat Government's plea of quashing of its ordinance of providing 10 percent quota for the economically backwards among the unreserved category to a five judge Constitution bench of the apex court.

The Supreme Court also said the admission of students under these quotas before August 8 wouldn't be cancelled.

The next hearing on this matter is scheduled to be held after four weeks.

Earlier, the Gujarat High Court had quashed the ordinance and stayed the operation of its order by a fortnight on the request of the state government to enable it to file an appeal in the apex court.

The high court had termed the Gujarat government ordinance issued on May 1 as 'inappropriate and unconstitutional', and rejected the state government's argument that it is a classification under the general category and not the reserved category.

The court had then maintained that such classification had the dangerous potential of breaching the 50 percent quota cap set up by the Supreme Court.

The judgment came on a set of petitions challenging the ordinance, saying the 10 percent provision is against the limit of 50 percent reservation.

The petition filed by a group, including social activists, students and parents, had challenged the ordinance, claiming that it was contrary to the precedents established by the Supreme Court in 1990.

The ordinance had declared reservation of 10 percent seats to candidates belonging to the unreserved category with family income cap of Rs. Six lakh annually in government jobs and educational institutions

However, the state defended the Gujarat Unreserved Economically Weaker Sections (Reservation of Seats in Educational Institutions in the State and of Appointments and Posts in Services under the State) Ordinance, 2016, stating that the provision of 10 percent quota was a classification of EWS and it should not be treated as reservation prescribed under the Constitution.

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The Supreme Court on Friday issues notice to the Centre on Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Government's appeals, challenging the Delhi High Court verdict that the Lieutenant Governor is the administrative head of the capital.

The apex court, which will hear the matter next on November 15, has given the Centre six weeks time to file the response.

The apex court refused to stay the High Court order even though the AAP Government said that the judgement has made officers reluctant to report to the Delhi Ministers.

The apex court also did not agree to stop Lieutenant Governor's direction to set up panel to examine the incumbent AAP Government's past decisions.

The AAP Government had earlier on September 2 informed Supreme Court that it has filed six different pleas challenging the Delhi High Court order and withdrew its civil suit on declaring the capital as a full state.

The court had allowed the AAP Government to withdraw the civil suit and given the liberty to raise the issues raised in it in the Special Leave Petitions (SLPs) it has filed.

The High Court had earlier held that Delhi would continue to remain a Union territory under the Constitution with the LG as its administrative head.

The High Court had in its August 4 verdict said that the special constitutional provision Article 239AA dealing with Delhi does not "dilute" the effect of Article 239 which relates to Union Territory and hence, concurrence of the LG in administrative issues was "mandatory".

The High Court did not accept AAP Government's contention that LG was bound to act only on the aid and advice of the Chief Minister and his Council of Ministers with regard to making of laws by the Legislative Assembly under the Article 239AA and termed it as "without substance".

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A state-wide shutdown in Karnataka over the disputed release of waters from the Cauvery River brought life to a grinding halt in the region on Friday.

The shutdown had its greatest impact in Bengaluru and Mandya.

The release of Cauvery waters to Tamil Nadu as per the orders of the Supreme Court led Kannada organisations to call for a state-wide shutdown.

Kannada film actors, directors and artists held protests seeking justice for the farmers in the state.

"A protest march was held from from 11 a.m. from Town Hall to Freedom Park. In this march, more than 5,000 people took part. To ensure that nothing untoward happens, we have made elaborate police arrangements. Armed police and central police were deployed for this march," said Deputy Commissioner of Police, Sandeep Patil.

There was one incident of disturbance reported from Bellary where Tamil Nadu registered lorries were pelted with stones.

Shops and establishments remained closed. Protesters held protests outside Central Government offices such as BSNL and Post office and asked employees to show their solidarity with the shutdown.

Professionals,technocrats, doctors, lawyers and engineers also supported the shutdown and demanded a permanent solution to the decades-long Cauvery water dispute.

Friday was the fourth day of the protest in Karnataka against the apex court's order asking the state to release 15,000 cusecs of water from the Cauvery River to Tamil Nadu for ten consecutive days.

The genesis of this conflict rests in two agreements of 1892 and 1924 between the erstwhile Madras Presidency and Princely State of Mysore.

The 802 kilometre-long Cauvery river has a 44,000 square kilomter basin area in Tamil Nadu and a 32,000 square kilomter basin area in Karnataka.

Karnataka contends that it does not receive its due share of water from the river. It claims that the agreements were skewed heavily in favour of the Madras Presidency, and has demanded a renegotiated settlement based on "equitable sharing of the waters".

Tamil Nadu, on the other hand, pleads that it has already developed almost 3,000,000 acres (12,000 square kilometer) of land and as a result has come to depend very heavily on the existing pattern of usage. Any change in this pattern, it says, will adversely affect the livelihood of millions of farmers in the state.

Decades of negotiations between the parties bore no fruit. The Centre then constituted a tribunal in 1990 to look into the matter. After hearing arguments of all the parties involved for the next 16 years, the tribunal delivered its final verdict on February 5, 2007.

In its then verdict, the tribunal allocated 419 billion ft of water annually to Tamil Nadu and 270 billion ft to Karnataka; 30 billion ft of the river water to Kerala and 7 billion ft to Puducherry.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar on Friday said that a state cannot escape or avoid responsibility for promoting terrorism by saying it is non-state.

Addressing media here, Jaishankar without referring to Pakistan directly said, "It is not only the state actors and the non-state actors, at some stage the differentiation is not borne out on the crowd. There is a connection between state actors and non-state actors which is why we use the words it's sponsored. The state cannot escape responsibility by saying it is non-state. We have always maintained the view that acting against some group is not a justification for giving a free pass leave along active support for other groups. You can't have a segmented, differentiated fight against terrorism."

On the India's policies with regard to China, Jaishankar said it is as a complicated relationship, but added that the collaborative or the convergence side of this relationship should be noted.

"From a situation of limited contacts to one where India-China relations have today transitioned out of the abnormality, there is an expectation in India that a partner like China would be appreciative of India's interests especially when they are not in conflict with those of China. Combatting terrorism is one such area and sanctioning of well known terrorist leaders and organisations shouldn't emerge as an issue of difference nor should reservations on developmental issues such as India's predictable access to International co-operations and investments in the field of civilians nuclear energy," he said.

He said that attention also should be given to India's relationship with Myanmar and Bangladesh as bilateral ties with both of these countries are strong, substantive and rapidly expanding, and India need to extend support to these two countries in the international community.

Jaishankar said that efforts are also being made to industrial relations with Japan and South Korea in terms of investments.
The education sector in Kashmir, particularly in the valley, has taken a huge hit with the unrest in the region entering its third consecutive month following the elimination of militant Burhan Wani in a security operation.

Schools and colleges have been closed since July 10.

The annual exams are just a month away and students haven't even completed 50 percent of their syllabus.

"During the ongoing war-like situation, not only the education sector but the entire society is undergoing irreparable loss. The education sector, development sector and the economic sector, all are facing irreparable loss.no doubt about that," said President of Private School Associations, Ghulam Nabi War, on Friday.

The Kashmir Valley has been grappling with its worst unrest in six years that began on July 08 when security forces killed separatist commander Burhan Wani, who was idolised especially by youths, provoking an outpouring of anger.

The Institute of Technology (NIT), a premier institute in Srinagar has delayed the commencement of its new academic session at thrice by now.

Local residents blamed the government for not taking timely steps to diffuse the crisis.

"The education sector here has been badly affected. It has been almost around two months now, since the schools have been closed due to which many students have been affected. But the government is responsible for this situation. Government should take steps to improve it," said a local resident Reyaz Ahmad.

Meanwhile, curfew was re-imposed in Kashmir ahead of the Friday prayers to avoid any untoward incidents. Armed security personnel patrolled deserted roads and markets.

An all-party delegation, led by India's Interior Minister Rajnath Singh, visited early this month but appeared to make little headway in resolving a crisis that has left 73 people dead, 71 of them civilians.

The delegation, in a statement, urged the state and federal government to ensure that school and colleges among other establishments are re-opened at the earliest but there's no sign of this happening anytime soon.

Kashmir, claimed in full but ruled in part by both India and Pakistan, has been at the heart of nearly seven decades of hostility between the neighbours.

Militant groups have taken up arms to fight for independence from Indian rule or to merge with Pakistan. India has blamed Pakistan for supporting the violence. Pakistan denies that.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Digital Education platform TopRankers announced raising Rs. 4.5 crore funding from Careernet Consulting and Ideation Initiative Pvt. Ltd. The company plans to utilize the capital to upgrade its services by investing in innovative technology, and also expand its geographical presence in India.

TopRankers is a Bengaluru-based online test preparation portal that enables students to prepare for competitive exams through an innovative platform. It offers comprehensive study materials, and elaborate tests for practice, which are carefully divided in to various chapters and topics. These can help students who are appearing for competitive exams to work on their weak areas and practice accordingly.

Founded in 2014, the dynamic venture currently has offices in Bhopal and Delhi apart from Bengaluru, and has a team of around 40 team members working across centers along with 60 freelancers.

The co-founders of the company are Gaurav Goel, Malay Sarkar, Mehbub Hussain, Harish Goswami and Himanshu Joshi.

"At TopRankers, our vision is to transform the Indian Competitive Exam preparation space with judicious utilization of Information and Communications Technology (ICT), and with such strong financial backup, we are confident of achieving the same within a short time. Since the ICT system has already begun to transform digital education in India, we are driven to provide quality education services to students from all walks of life through our comprehensive platform," said Co-founder TopRankers, Gaurav Goel.

"The competitive education segment in India is estimated to be worth USD six billion and with more exam being held online, it is likely to grow exponentially in future. As an up-and-coming venture in this space, TopRankers certainly plays a vital role in transforming the way students prepare for such exams, and also introduce new and innovative technology in this space, which can completely revolutionize the learning process. Therefore, we felt it was the right decision to invest in this promising enterprise, and hope that this company reaches its full potential, transforming the overall perception of students by introducing them to a highly productive platform that acts as their personal tutor," said CEO CareerNet, Rishi Das.

Moreover, the company also offers a SaaS product named 'TopRankers Edge', a unique software solution for educational institutions that wish to bring their content and modules online. In the next few months, TopRankers team plans to engage more than 150 clients on this product.

TopRankers has more than 35 recognized names as its B2B client from 10 Indian cities, and is planning to expand its in 50 more cities in the near future. On the B2C side, the company is planning to acquire another five lakh students within 12 to 18 months.

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A virtual exhibition, showcasing the culture of Israel, titled 'Open a Door to Israel', opened in Bengaluru, Karnataka, on Thursday.

Consul General of Israel Yael Hashavit inaugurated the exhibition.

As part of the exhibition nine 'Curiosity Doors', concealing huge LED screens, have been erected at MG Road Metro station. Each screen acts as a doorway to a different aspect of life in Israel.

Hashavit said that the exhibition would help people know Israel better.

"This is in exhibit is a great opportunity for the Indians to experience Israel. Each one of the doors represents one of Israel's values which the visitor can get a short glimpse by playing, catching and connecting with the people of Israel," said Hashavit.

Travellers at MG Road can open any of the doors and virtually experience the beaches, nightlife, family life, heritage or education system of Israel through interactive videos. Each visitor will have 30 minutes to walk through all the doors.

It is aimed at further strengthening the people-to-people contact between India and Israel.

Over 40,000 Indians visit Israel every year, government data reveals. However, they are mostly pilgrims who visit holy sites.

The 17-day exhibition will go on from September 9 to September 25 and Israeli authorities expect it to be thronged by curious visitors.

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According to a new report, the Obama administration has offered to sell USD 115 billion worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia over its eight years in office, more than any previous administration, and the move was intended to replenish arsenal after war in Yemen.

The surge in sales is in part to reassure the Saudi monarchy of US backing in the wake of last year's nuclear deal with Tehran, which raised fears in the Gulf that Washington would tilt more towards Tehran in its foreign policy, reports the Guardian.

Authored by William Hartung of the Centre for International Policy, the report says that another factor was a drive by the US arms manufacturers to boost sales to compensate declining procurement by the Pentagon.

However, the most recent deals - like the offer to sell more than 150 M1A2 Abrams battle tanks for an estimated USD 1.15 billion - were principally intended to replenish the Saudi arsenal, depleted in the war in Yemen.

"I think that though the Obama administration is not thrilled about the Yemen episode; it feels it can't stay out of it, because of the need to reassure the Saudis," Hartung said.

His report found that since taking office in January 2009, the Obama administration has offered to sell USD 115 billion in weapons to Saudi Arabia, half of which are accounted for by deals that are still in the pipeline.

The report comes as concerns about the United Kingdom's arms sales to Saudi Arabia and their implication in potential war crimes in Yemen have split the Parliament's arms control committee.

Arms sales over the eight years of the Obama administration have also included combat aircraft, attack helicopters, bombs, air-to-ground missiles, warships and military training.

The latest tank deal has drawn resistance from congressional democrats, who have called for a freeze on arms sales to Saudi Arabia, because of its bombing of civilian targets in Yemen.

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The government has not been able to make the Competition Commission of India (CCI) very effective, Union Law Secretary, Suresh Chandra said at an ASSOCHAM event held in New Delhi today.

"The original idea of having a Competition Commission of India (CCI) as a multi-member and an effective body to regulate and deal with all unfair trade practices and the cartels, mergers and acquisitions, to some extent perhaps we have not been able to make the CCI very effective," said Chandra while addressing an ASSOCHAM international conference on 'Competition Law: Opportunities and challenges in India.'

"I do not know because the quasi-judicial functions though have been but again we have the appellate tribunal which is perhaps going against the principal of minimum government and maximum governance," he said.

He said there is a need to see and understand what was the initial objective of bringing this law and as to whether we have been successful.

"Initially, it was thought that the Competition Commission which is a mechanism to regulate the free level playing field, being a multi-member body will have a specialized person from the legal field, international trade, economics and those who understand how functions," said Chandra.

"This multi-member body was supposed to provide a level playing field and bring out fair play at the same time prohibiting or taking actions against anti-competitive agreements and also prohibiting/preventing any dominant player to prevent any new entrepreneur to enter into, and also the combinations, regulations i.e. mergers and acquisitions," he added.

Apart from that it was also envisaged that the Competition Commission will also carry out the function of competition advocacy and at the same time will also give recommendations to the Central government either on their request or suo-moto to bring whatever necessary improvements in the field of competition law.

"It was also not thought of that it will also have an appellate tribunal over and above this, while we had thought at that time if there is anything that will go to the court of law," he added.

He said that in the last two decades Indian economy has undergone a huge transformation with gradual loosening controls over private sector participation and foreign investments as such it is necessary to have an effective Competition Law regime which accounts for the interest of various market players including the consumer and the government.

"However, a stronger competition law regime is needed not only to protect interests of the smaller market players and consumers but also to attract investments in a particular sector," said Chandra.

"An efficient and responsible regulator mechanism will definitely be required for prospective investors who may be planning to enter the marketplace," he said.

With new atmosphere having been created with projects like Make in India, Startup India and also opening up FDI (foreign direct investment) in various sectors, the Union Law Secretary highlighted the various steps taken by Modi Government to provide a level playing field to both domestic and foreign players, which includes - Amendment in the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, enactment of the commercial courts, commercial divisions, commercial appellate divisions in the high courts, Bankruptcy and Insolvency Acts and now the upcoming effort of GST (Goods and Services Tax).

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1. The Central Government is committed to help and assist the newly created State of Andhra Pradesh. The commitments of the Centre emanate from four basic documents, namely, the provisions of the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, 2014, the report of the Fourteenth Finance Commission, the statement of the then Prime Minister before the Parliament on 20.2.2014 and the Report dated 1.12.2015 of Vice Chairman, NITI Aayog on Developmental Support to the Successor State of Andhra Pradesh under the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act 2014.

2. The above mentioned commitments are broadly categorized as under:-

(i) The Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act:

(a) Section 46 of the Act provides for a reference to be made to the Fourteenth Finance Commission to take into account the resources available to the Successor States and make separate awards to them. It further provides for a developmental package to be given to the backward areas of the State of Andhra Pradesh. It also provides for adequate incentives in particular for Rayalaseema and north coastal regions of the State.

(b) Section 90 of the Act declares the Polavaram Irrigation Project as a National Project.

(c) Under Section 93 of the Act, the details of institutions and infrastructure to be developed in the State are outlined in the Thirteenth Schedule to the Act.

(d) Section 94 of the Act provides for appropriate fiscal measures, including offer of tax incentives, to be given to the Successor States to promote industrialization and economic growth. It further provides for support to programmes for backward areas including physical and social infrastructure. In addition, it provides for giving special financial support for creation of essential facilities in the new capital of the successor State of Andhra Pradesh, including the Raj Bhawan, High Court, Government Secretariat, Legislative Assembly, Legislative Council and such other essential infrastructure.

(ii) Statement of the then Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh on 20.2.2014:

The then Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh on 20.2.2014 stated before the Rajya Sabha that Special Category Status would be extended to the State of Andhra Pradesh for a period of five years. This would be done to put the State's finances on a firmer footing. He further stated that the resource gap for the year 2014-15 would be compensated by the Central Government.

(iii) Fourteenth Finance Commission:

The Fourteenth Finance Commission defined the financial relationship between Centre and the States for the five year period ending 2019-20. The Commission did not make a distinction between Special and General Category States. Its approach was to fill the resource gap of each State to the extent possible through tax devolution. Accordingly, the Commission recommended an enhanced devolution of 42% of the Central Government's tax revenues to States. If devolution alone could not cover the assessed gap, for certain States, a revenue deficit grant was provided. Andhra Pradesh was one of the States determined to be a revenue deficit State, and the Commission recommended that the Centre would provide revenue deficit grant for the period of the Fourteenth Finance Commission. The amount of deficit for each year was mentioned in the report itself and a total of Rs.22,113 crores is to be paid to Andhra Pradesh as revenue deficit grant for the 5 year period.

(iv) Report on Developmental Support to Andhra Pradesh dated 1.12.2015:

The Vice Chairman, NITI Aayog Dr. Arvind Panagariya studied various aspects of the support to be given to Andhra Pradesh under the Reorganisation Act and made recommendations regarding effective implementation.

The Central Government's commitments to the State of Andhra Pradesh

3. Under the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, the commitment for the resource gap for the year 2014-15 is being met on the basis of standardized expenditure for that year. The revenue gap has been tentatively quantified subject to further adjustment on account of figures relating to certain pension schemes. A part of the revenue gap compensation amounting to Rs.3,979.5 crore has already been paid and the balance is being paid in annual instalments.

An amount of Rs.2,500 crore has already been paid as support for creation of new capital of State of Andhra Pradesh and a balance of Rs.1,000 crore would be paid in due course.

An amount of Rs.1,050 crore has been disbursed as special package for backward areas and a further amount of Rs.1,050 crore would be paid in the coming years.

4. The Polavaram Project is on the river Godavari near Ramayyapeta village of Polavaram mandal, about 42 km upstream of Sir Arthur Cotton Barrage in the State of Andhra Pradesh. It envisages construction of a dam and canal system to create ultimate irrigation potential of 2,91,000 ha. (7.2 lakh acres), generation of 960 MW of hydro power, drinking water supply to a population of 28.50 lakh in 540 villages and diversion of 80 TMC of water to Krishna river basin.

The project was accorded investment clearance by the Planning Commission for Rs.10,151.04 crore (at 2005-06 price level) in 2009. Further, the Advisory Committee of Ministry of Water Resources approved the cost at 2010-11 price level as Rs.16,010.45 crore during January, 2011 including power and drinking water component of Rs.2868 crore. Prior to the passage of the AP Reorganisation Act, the Polavaram Project was being implemented by the Government of Andhra Pradesh with Central Assistance under the Accelerated Irrigation Benefits Programme (AIBP). An expenditure of Rs.5,135.87 crore had been incurred up to 31.3. 2014 including Central Assistance of Rs.562.469 crore.

The Central Government will fund the Polavaram Irrigation Project in the following manner:

(i) It will provide 100% of the remaining cost of the irrigation component only of the project for the period starting from 1.4.2014, to the extent of the cost of the irrigation component on that date.

(ii) In view of the recommendations of the Vice Chairman NITI Aayog that it will be appropriate for the State of Andhra Pradesh to execute this project (as it is an important project and the State Government is keen to complete it at the earliest), the Government of India has agreed to the State's request for the execution of the project by the State Government on behalf of the Government of India.

5. Government of India has already legislated for fiscal incentives of enhanced investment allowance and accelerated depreciation. They will come into effect once notified, after the State of Andhra Pradesh identifies the eligible backward areas.

6.

In respect of educational and other institutions:

A Petroleum University has already been established.

The IIT has already been functioning from a transit campus and the main campus is being constructed.

The National Institute of Technology has already been functioning since September 2015 in a temporary campus and its main campus is being constructed.

The Indian Institute of Information Technology, Kurnool has already started functioning from the temporary campus and would start functioning and its main campus is being constructed.

The site for the Central University in Anantapur district has already been selected.

The Indian Institute of Science Education and Research has been established in Tirupati.

The Indian Institute of Management has been established at Visakhapatnam.

An All India Institute of Medical Sciences has been approved at Guntur and the land for the same is being taken over.

A Tribal University is to be established in the State of Andhra Pradesh for which a Site Selection Committee of the State has already approved the land.

A National Institute of Disaster Management is being established in the State of Andhra Pradesh for which identification and takeover of the land is being completed.

7.(i) The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs has given in-principle approval for the establishment of a major port at Dugarajapatnam in Andhra Pradesh on PPP basis, subject to feasibility.

(ii) Proposals with regard to the Steel Authority of India, Indian Oil Corporation/HPCL to set up units in Andhra Pradesh are being examined as provided in the Reorganisation Act.

(iii) Regarding airports:

In Vishakhapatnam, international flights are already operating. For further expansion, land has been identified at Bhogapuram. The State is to acquire and hand over land for development by AAI as per the standard terms for such development or develop on its own by PPP. A techno economic feasibility report is to be undertaken by State Government.

For Vijayawada, MoU has been signed by AAI with Govt. of Andhra Pradesh to develop the existing terminal. The State is to acquire 698 acres of land required for the expansion as per the standard terms.

For Tirupati, the new terminal was inaugurated by the Prime Minister on 22.10.2015. A new apron for parking for 3 aircraft has been completed. The existing runway, apron and terminal building are adequate for commencing international flights. Expansion of new apron for parking additional 4 aircraft and isolation bay is under construction within the available land.

(iv) The National Highway Authority of India has taken several steps for establishment of the National Highways in the State of Andhra Pradesh. The Railways is considering measures for establishing a rapid rail and road connectivity between the new proposed capital of Andhra Pradesh with Hyderabad and other cities in the region. The Government of India is actively considering proposals for the establishment of the Metro Rail in Visakhapatnam and Vijayawada-Guntur-Tenali urban area.

8. The Fourteenth Finance Commission's award came into effect from 1.4.2015. The enhanced devolution amount due to Andhra Pradesh is being paid in entirety. This has resulted in an increase of Rs.7,787 crore in tax devolution in 2015-16 compared to 2014-15, a growth of 55%. The revenue deficit grants for each of the years recommended by the Fourteenth Finance Commission will also be paid by the Government of India to the State of Andhra Pradesh. The same has been done for the year 2015-16 and 2016-17. There are no issues pending on that score.

9. The Government of India is thus honouring and shall honour all commitments made under the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act.

10. The statement of the then Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh on 20.2.2014 contains six paragraphs. There are no issues with regard to five out of the six paragraphs. With regard to the first point i.e. the grant of special status, an apparent conflict has set in, between the statement and the recommendations of the Fourteenth Finance Commission which came subsequently. On page 17 (para 2.29 & 2.30) of the Report, the Commission has stated (inter alia):

We did not make a distinction between special and general category states in determining our norms and recommendations... In our assessment of State resources, we have taken into account the disabilities arising from constraints unique to each State to arrive at the expenditure requirements. In this regard, we have observed that the North-eastern and hill States have several unique features that have a bearing on their fiscal resources and expenditure needs, such as low level of economic activity, remoteness and international borders. Our objective has been to fill the resource gaps of each State to the extent possible through tax devolution. However, we have provided post-devolution revenue deficit grants for States where devolution alone could not cover the assessed gap...

We are of the view that intra-state inequality is within the policy jurisdiction of the States and provisioning of adequate resources through tax devolution should enable them to address intra-state inequalities in an effective manner.

Thus following the recommendations of the 14th Finance Commission, the class of special category states ceases to exist. However, the Central Government has agreed to give a special assistance measure for Government of Andhra Pradesh for five years, which would make up for the additional Central share the State might have received during these years, i.e. 2015-16 to 2019-20, as envisaged in the then Prime Minister's statement dated 20.2.2014. This will be in the form of Central Government funding for externally aided projects for the state for Andhra Pradesh signed and disbursed during these years.

11. Thus the Government of India has effectively addressed all commitments made to the State of Andhra Pradesh in the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, the Fourteenth Finance Commission and the statement of the then Prime Minister on 20.2.2014.

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Kaya rose 6.74% to Rs 758.90 at 14:54 IST on BSE after the company said its foreign subsidiary entered into agreement to acquire 75% stake in UAE-based companies.

The announcement was made during trading hours today, 9 September 2016.

Meanwhile, the BSE Sensex was down 228.98 points, or 0.79%, to 28,816.30.

On BSE, so far 40,000 shares were traded in the counter, compared with average daily volume of 4,543 shares in the past one quarter. The stock hit a high of Rs 777.95 and a low of Rs 692 so far during the day. The stock hit a 52-week high of Rs 1,287.50 on 21 December 2015. The stock hit a 52-week low of Rs 688.20 on 12 August 2016. The stock had underperformed the market over the past 30 days till 8 September 2016, falling 5.03% compared with 4.57% rise in the Sensex. The scrip had also underperformed the market in past one quarter, falling 12.98% as against Sensex's 9.05% rise.

The small-cap company has equity capital of Rs 12.95 crore. Face value per share is Rs 10.

Kaya said that its foreign subsidiary, Kaya Middle East, DMCC, has entered into an agreement dated 8 September 2016 for acquiring 75% beneficial interest in Minal Medical Centre, Dubai and Minal Specialized Clinic Dermatology, Sharjah. However, the agreement will become effective on fulfilling of certain conditions precedent and obtaining the requisite statutory approvals, which will take approximately 4 months.

The above said entities carry out business of skincare, body & hair services and reported revenue of 11.17 million Dirham, as per the audited financial statements for the year ended 31 December 2015.

Kaya said that this acquisition will further strengthen its network of clinics in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) region and add new set of customers to its existing base in the region. With its special expertise in body contouring, it would help Kaya in leveraging across the region. With this acquisition, the total network of the clinics in the Middle East region would increase to 23.

On a consolidated basis, Kaya reported net loss of Rs 0.31 crore in Q1 June 2016 compared with net profit of Rs 1.42 crore in Q1 June 2015. Net sales rose 16.39% to Rs 97.91 crore in Q1 June 2016 over in Q1 June 2015.

Kaya, Marico's wholly-owned subsidiary, delivers skin care solutions in India and overseas, through its range of Kaya Skin Cinics.

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Key benchmark indices edged lower in early trade on negative sentiment in Asian trading and losses for US stocks overnight. At 9:16 IST, the barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex was down 105.94 points or 0.36% at 28,939.34. The Nifty 50 index was currently down 36.90 points or 0.41% at 8,915.60. The Sensex slipped below the psychologically important 29,000 level. It had settled above that level during the previous trading session.

In overseas stock markets, Asian stocks edged lower after the European Central Bank (ECB) surprised markets by deciding not to extend the deadline of its bond-buying program after the conclusion of its monetary policy meeting yesterday, 8 September 2016. Also, reports on earthquake in North Korea possibly due to an explosion from a nuclear test in that nation weighed on sentiment. US stocks closed lower yesterday, 8 September 2016, as the outcome of ECB's latest monetary policy meeting suggested that central banks have little left to spur up demand.

Closer home, the market breadth indicating the overall health of the market was positive. On BSE, 658 shares rose and 511 shares declined. A total of 63 shares were unchanged. The BSE Mid-Cap index was currently down 0.17%. The decline in this index was lower than Sensex's decline in percentage terms. The BSE Small-Cap index was currently up 0.17%, outperforming the Sensex.

Telecom stocks edged higher. Bharti Airtel (up 0.34%), Idea Cellular (up 0.47%) and Reliance Communications (up 2.28%) edged higher.

Bharti Infratel was up 1.63%. Bharti Infratel is a telecom tower arm of Bharti Airtel.

Yes Bank was down 5.33% at Rs 1,259.75 after the bank announced after market hours yesterday, 8 September 2016 that due to extreme volatility during trading day on 8 September 2016 because of misinterpretation of new qualified institutional placement (QIP) guidelines, the bank has been advised by its appointed Merchant Bankers to defer its proposed QIP. It may be recalled that the bank had announced on 7 September 2016 opening of QIP of equity shares of face value Rs 10 each to raise up to $1 billion. The bank announced Rs 1,371.84 per share as the floor price at that time.

ICICI Bank was down 0.87% at Rs 273.95. The bank said that the proposed initial public offer (IPO) of its subsidiary, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company (ICICI Pru Life) has been approved by Registrar of Companies, Maharashtra on 8 September 2016. The offer will be open for subscription to public on 19 September 2016 and shall close on 21 September 2016. The price band has been fixed at Rs 300-334 per equity share. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 8 September 2016.

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Yes Bank announced after market hours yesterday, 8 September 2016 that due to extreme volatility during trading day on 8 September 2016 because of misinterpretation of new qualified institutional placement (QIP) guidelines, the bank has been advised by its appointed Merchant Bankers to defer its proposed QIP. It may be recalled that the bank had announced on 7 September 2016 opening of QIP of equity shares of face value Rs 10 each to raise up to $1 billion. The bank announced Rs 1,371.84 per share as the floor price at that time.

ICICI Bank after market hours yesterday, 8 September 2016 said that the proposed initial public offer (IPO) of its subsidiary, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company (ICICI Pru Life) has been approved by Registrar of Companies, Maharashtra on 8 September 2016. The offer will be open for subscription to public on 19 September 2016 and shall close on 21 September 2016. The price band has been fixed at Rs 300-334 per equity share.

Jindal Steel & Power reported consolidated net loss of Rs 1082.15 crore in Q1 June 2016 compared with consolidated net loss of Rs 542.42 crore in Q1 June 2015. Total income rose 4.34% to Rs 4686.60 crore in Q1 June 2016 over Q1 June 2015. The result was announced after market hours yesterday, 8 September 2016. Higher revenues in Jindal Power (JPL) & Oman helped consolidated turnover rise 6% to Rs 4655 crore in Q1 June 2016 over Q1 June 2015.

Zensar Technologies announced that it has secured multi-million dollar digital transformation project from Avis Fleet in South Africa. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 8 September 2016. Spread over a time-period of two years, the project involves adding scalability and agility to the company's strategic technology roadmap. Zensar will enable realization of Avis Fleet's strategic project, 'Next Generation Fleet Management System'. Zensar will leverage its digital technology skills and expertise to enable Avis Fleet in improving overall customer experience and visible enhancement in the quality of service. The key business objective is to secure and grow Avis' market leadership position in this field across Africa. The overall implementation, to be divided into two phases will focus on enhancing the varied legacy technology platforms and integration of digital technologies like Agile and DevOps in building a strategic IT framework.

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Actor Abhay Deol will be walking the ramp for a designer at Beetles Tech Fashion Tour 2016 to be held here on September 21.

The event, organised by Exhibit Technologies, will be held at St. Regis here.

Ramesh Somani, CEO and Founder, Exhibit Technologies, revealed that the "Happy Bhag Jayegi" star will walk the ramp at the launch of Tech Fashion Tour, which was announced by actress-filmmaker Divya Khosla Kumar.

"Abhay is going to be part of Tech Fashion Tour in a big way. He will be walking the ramp for one of the designers and showcasing the tech-infused fashion," Somani said in a statement.

It is an initiative of Exhibit Technologies with Beetle by Volkswagen being the title sponsor.

The list of designers who will celebrate the second edition include names like Falguni and Shane Peacock, who will open the fashion tour while designer Vikram Phadnis will close the gala.

Other names are Shravan Kumar, Nandita Mahtani, Rajat Tangri and European luxury brand Vizyon.

NGO Smile Foundation is the charity partner for the Tech Fashion Tour, where they are supporting their programme Mission Education #MYMISSIONEDUCATION of sending 25,000 children to school and gifting them a happy childhood.

--IANS

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After a gap of almost 26 years, a member of the Gandhi clan -- Rahul Gandhi -- visited Ayodhya.

As part of his ongoing 'Kisan Mahayatra', the Congress Vice-President visited the temple town on Friday and made a brief stopover at Hanumangarhi, a famous temple.

He was closeted with the priest of the temple for over five minutes after which he came out and drove off to the circuit house, where he started his road show.

Late former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was scheduled to visit the temple in 1990 when he was on his 'Sadbhavna Yatra' to Ayodhya, but the programme was called off at the last moment as he had to fly back to Lucknow and it was getting dark.

Emerging out of the meeting, priest Mahant Gyan Das said Rahul had come like any other devotee.

When asked if there was any discussion on the contentious issue of the Ram temple, the priest answered in the negative.

Gandhi is slated to go to the Kichaucha Dargah Sharif at Ambedkarnagar in the evening and would meet the farmers in Faizabad at Ramlila grounds in Poorabazaar.

He will later spend some time with Dalits in a Dalit colony.

This has been very much his routine in the last three days of the 2,500-km-long Yatra which is to take him, in a special modelled, air conditioned bus, to more than 223 assembly constituencies in the state.

Uttar Pradesh is scheduled to elect a new government early next year.

Congress has 28 legislators in the present assembly and a recent survey has predicted that the party would slip further in numbers.

The party has hired election strategist Prashant Kishore to pep up the campaign and to secure a better outcome at the hustings.

--IANS

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Veteran actor Anil Kapoor has praised Indian actress Priyanka Chopra and says her maiden Marathi production "Ventilator" will be a hit.

Anil on Friday took to Twitter, where he shared a photograph of himself with Priyanka's mother Madhu Chopra from the launch of a song from the film.

Praising the actress with whom he worked in "Dil Dhadakne Do", Anil captioned the image: "I know you will excel at this as always! I'm sure 'Ventilator' will be a super duper hit Priyanka Chopra. All the best."

"Ventilator" will reportedly have a cameo by Priyanka, who is currently shooting for her American TV series "Quantico" in New York.

The film has been directed by Rajesh Mapuskar, who previously directed "Ferrari Ki Sawaari", starring Sharman Joshi and Boman Irani.

--IANS

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Karnataka's angst and anger over a Supreme Court (SC) order to release water of the Cauvery river to neighbour Tamil Nadu is rooted in the failure of the monsoon in the state, a hidden variation of India's statistically normal monsoon.

Reservoirs in the Cauvery catchment are half as full as they should be, 42 per cent of minor irrigation tanks are dry statewide and 90 per cent of Karnataka's talukas -- subdivisions of districts -- recorded deficit rainfall in August. The water in Karnataka's reservoirs must now be shared between farmers in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu and meet Karnataka's own drinking water needs.

Overall, the state was 16 per cent short of normal rainfall between June 1, 2016, and September 5, 2016, according to data from the Karnataka State Natural Disaster Monitoring Centre (KSNDMC).

The Meteorological Department classifies this as a "normal" deficit, but rainfall was intermittent and uncertain through the monsoons.

After two consecutive droughts, India received normal rainfall -- 2 per cent less than the 100-year average -- by the end of August 2016, but within that normality, more than a third of the country is short of rain, according to India Meteorological Department (IMD) data.

Protests erupted in parts of Mysore-Mandya region on September 6 following the SC order and the government's decision to release water to Tamil Nadu. The government has sought a modification of the order.

In August, Karnataka's four zones -- south and north interior, the southern Malnad region and the coast -- recorded a 39 per cent deficit in rainfall.

The Malnad region, which is critical for the Cauvery's catchment area, received 977 mm in August, against the normal 1,369 mm, a 29 per cent deficit.

The situation worsened over the monsoon: 101 of 176 talukas in Karnataka recorded deficit rainfall (-20 to -59 per cent), while 55 talukas recorded scanty rainfall (-60 to -99 per cent) in August 2016.

The August rains are critical to the sowing of important crops, such as paddy, ragi, maize and sugarcane. With no more than four weeks left for the end of southwest monsoon, farmers are struggling.

Water levels of reservoirs in the Cauvery catchment area, including the Krishna Raja Sagara (KRS) dam in Mandya district, Kabini in Mysore, Harangi in Kodagu and Hemavathi in Hassan were less than normal (based on a 15-year average) and less than the levels in 2015, according to KSNDMC data on September 3.

Of 3,598 minor irrigation tanks in the state, 42 per cent are dry and no more than 12 per cent of tanks are more than half full, according to KSNDMC data.

The water level at KRS on September 3 was 17.96 tmcft (thousand million cubic feet), against its capacity of 49.45 tmcft, lower than last year's level over the same period (25.30 tmcft). KRS is normally full by this time.

The SC's order to release 15,000 cusecs to Tamil Nadu over 10 days would mean the state has to release 13.6 tmcft of water, 24 per cent of the water now available in the Cauvery basin reservoirs.

The situation in nine other reservoirs statewide was no better, except for Krishna Basin reservoir's Almatti dam, in northern Karnataka, which is full; Ghataprabha dam, which is at 87 per cent of its capacity; and Narayanapuram dam which is at 96 per cent of its capacity.

This could worsen Karnataka's drinking water situation in the coming days. Farmers' representatives argued that their livelihoods are at stake if Karnataka releases more water.

"We (farmers) have reduced sugarcane cultivation in 70 per cent of the area as it is water-intensive and have opted for paddy cultivation," Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha (Karnataka State Farmers' Association) leader and member of legislative assembly K.S. Puttannaiah told 101reporters.com. "If the government cannot release water even for this, what will the farmers of this region do for a living?"

For decades, the two state governments have been fighting for water based on the rains that are unpredictable. They should find a permanent solution to the problem and consult farmer leaders before taking any decision.

In Mandya, where protests against the SC order are intense, sowing has been less than 25 per cent of normal as on August 22, 2016, according to Karnataka Agriculture Department data.

"With deficit rainfall across the state in August, there will be a reduction in proportionate yield and overall production," said H. Shivanna, Vice Chancellor, University of Agricultural Sciences, Bengaluru. "In the Cauvery basin, they are transplanting paddy (into fields) now, as it requires lesser water than sugarcane. Sowing is already delayed, and if it does not rain for another 10 days, farmers in the state will be severely hit."

(09.09.2016 - In arrangement with IndiaSpend.org, a data-driven, non-profit, public interest journalism platform. Prabhu Mallikarjunan is a Bengaluru-based independent reporter and a member of 101Reporters.com, a pan-India network of grassroots reporters. The views expressed are those of IndiaSpend. Feedback at respond@indiaspend.org)

--IANS/IndiaSpend

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A woman was arrested on Friday in West Bengal's South 24 Parganas district on charge of extorting money by posing as a CBI officer, police said.

"Ichcha Sinha alias Rituparna Das was arrested from Sonarpur by the Criminal Investigation Department. Besides her photo in police uniform, a fake identity card showing her as a Central Bureau of Investigation officer was seized from her," the police said.

The accused had allegedly extorted money from several people.

--IANS

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Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Friday called for "strictest action" after comedian-actor Kapil Sharma alleged that a Mumbai municipal officer sought a bribe from him.

"I am paying Rs 15 crore income tax from last five years and still I have to pay Rs 5 lakh bribe to BMC office (every year) for making my office. Is this your 'Achhe Din'?" Sharma tweeted to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Taken aback by the comedian's serious allegations, Fadnavis immediately tweeted asking 'Kapilbhai' to provide all information regarding his bribery allegation.

"Kapilbhai pls provide all info. Have directed MC (Municipal Commissioner), BMC, to take strictest action. We will not spare the culprits," Fadnavis said.

The Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party control the BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC).

Its Vigilance Officer Manohar Pawar said it had taken a serious view of the corruption allegation and asked Sharma to lodge a formal complaint and identify the officer who demanded bribe.

BJP legislator Ram Kadam appeared to chide Sharma by saying "he should have complained right when the incident happened," but instead he took to social media to air his grievances.

"No matter what tax you pay, there should be no corruption," he added.

Apparently seeking political returns, BJP MP Kirit Somaiya said he was pained to hear Kapil Sharma's experience.

"We shall free BMC from rule of ScamMafias," Somaiya declared, referring to the upcoming BMC elections in February 2017 and the Shiv Sena's virtual control of the body.

--IANS

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Tasmania's wild deer population could soon outnumber residents of the state two-to-one, prompting calls for the animals to be culled.

A submission made to the upper house of Tasmania government this week said the wild deer population in the island state could reach one million by 2050 if the species was not managed better, Xinhua news agency reported.

The submission, led by the Director of Centre of the Environment, University of Tasmania, Ted Lefroy, said the population already covered 30 per cent of the state and had started to impact the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area.

Lefroy said that to implement an appropriate management plan, authorities would need to undertake a full population survey including at what rate the deer were being hunted.

"The numbers we don't really know are: how many there are -- we've just gone with the current estimate which is somewhere between 20,000 and 40,000 -- and the growth rate," Lefroy said on Friday.

"Based on estimates from overseas studies, the growth rate could be expected to be between 13 per cent up to as high as 60 per cent."

Lefroy said the numbers used in the submission came from a modeling study undertaken by him and two colleagues.

"The main point of the modelling study was to point out there are three vital statistics and we really don't know two of them," he said.

The submission, one of 56 made to Tasmania's inquiry into the wild deer population, said that cooperation between government agencies, land managers and hunters was key to maintaining the population.

"I think there is a very good possibility that collectively they could arrive at a target population that could satisfy all three, didn't do too much damage to environment, to agriculture, but maintained a population for hunting," Lefroy said.

"They are here, I don't think we are ever going to get rid of them so it's a case of saying how many can we live with."

--IANS

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Animal-assisted therapy can help first year university students combat homesickness and could also be a useful tool in lowering drop-out rates, finds an interesting research.

Homesick students are three times more likely than those who manage their homesickness to disengage and drop out of university, the researchers said.

"Transitioning from high school to university can prove to be a challenge for many first year students," said John Tyler Binfet, Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Okanagan, Canada.

In the study, the participants who completed eight weeks of dog therapy experienced significant reductions in homesickness and greater increase in satisfaction with life.

Participants reported that sessions "felt like they were at home chatting with friends who brought their puppies."

But the non-treatment group reported an increase in their feelings of homesickness, the study said.

Dog therapy included 45-minute weekly sessions involving small group interactions with dogs and handlers, and engagement with other first year students participating in the study.

For the study, published in the journal Anthrozoos, 44 first year university students who self-identified as homesick were given a survey to measure levels of homesickness, satisfaction with life and connectedness with campus.

Half of the students completed eight weeks of dog therapy, while the other half were informed that their sessions would begin in eight weeks' time.

A total of 29 per cent of students who dropped out cited more interactions and friendships with other students as a factor that would have influenced their decision to stay longer, according to a 2009 report conducted for B.C. Stats -- the statistics agency for British Columbia in Canada.

"Moving to a new city, I did not know anyone at the university and became very homesick and depressed. I was mainly secluded in my dorm room and did not feel like I belonged here. Coming to animal assisted therapy sessions every Friday gave me a sense of purpose and kept me enthusiastic about life," stated Varenka Kim, a student at UBC Okanagan.

--IANS

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A formal complaint has been filed here against two former Jharkhand Health Ministers and a senior IAS official for graft, an official said on Friday.

The FIR in this connection was lodged by the Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB) at the order of the ACB Ranchi court against, among others, former Health Ministers Rajendra Singh, who is a Congress leader, and Hemlal Murmu, of the BJP, and senior IAS official B.K. Tripathy, who is now heading the NCR planning board.

The complaint was lodged against 14 people, including Amul Ranjan, who was appointed Director in-charge of RINPAS in 2014.

There are allegations that Ranjan was appointed as Director in-charge of Ranchi Institute of Neuro-Psychiatry and Applied Science (RINPAS) for the second time after having first assumed the post in 2010 which was approved by then Health Minister Hemlal Murmu.

Ranjan was removed after the Comptroller and Auditor General in 2013 objected to the appointment. According to rules, an MBBS doctor should be appointed as Director of RINPAS.

According to sources in ACB, then Health Secretary Tripathy had recommended Ranjan's name for the post and then Health Minister Rajendra Singh gave his approval.

The ACB, while investigating the case, found irregularities in the appointment of Ranjan, who was also appointed as Clinical Psychologist in 1997 wrongfully, the ACB said.

There also were allegations that Ranjan was extended salary benefits and other perks by elevating his post.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
As'ad's Bio

As'ad AbuKhalil, born March 16, 1960. From Tyre, Lebanon, grew up in Beirut. Received his BA and MA from American University of Beirut in pol sc. Came to US in 1983 and received his PhD in comparative government from Georgetown University. Taught at Tufts University, Georgetown University, George Washington University, Colorado College, and Randolph-Macon Woman's College. Served as a Scholar-in-Residence at Middle East Institute in Washington DC. He served as free-lance Middle East consultant for NBC News and ABC News, an experience that only served to increase his disdain for maintream US media. He is now professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus. His favorite food is fried eggplants.
At least four police officers were injured after a police aircraft crashed in the capital Nairobi on Thursday.

Nairobi County police commander Japheth Koome confirmed the incident at Nairobi's sprawling Mathare slums after a brand new AgustaWestland 139 police helicopter crashed, Xinhua news agency reported.

Koome said the chopper was overflying Mathare slums when it crashed within the National Youth Service field at about 4:00 p.m. local time.

The chopper, which was unveiled in April, was badly damaged. Police said the four officers on board were on routine patrols in the city when the incident happened and they were rushed to hospital.

Those at the scene said the pilot tried to make a hard landing on the field when it went down headfirst before landing on its back, badly damaging it.

The chopper had a capacity of 15 passengers.

This was the second police chopper to crash within less than a month. A Bell type chopper crashed within Nairobi's Wilson Airport on August 22, injuring two.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Turkish General Staff said Islamic State (IS) terrorists assaulted a Turkish tank in Tal El-Hawa region of northern Syria on Friday, killing three soldiers and injuring one.

It also said Turkish artillery units fired 41 shots at 15 IS targets, destroying four buildings belonging to the terrorist group, Xinhua news Agency reported.

The attack marks the seventh Turkish casualty in the Euphrates Shield operation, which has lasted 17 days.

On September 6, three Turkish soldiers were killed and four others wounded in another IS attack on two tanks.

Four Turkish soldiers were injured on August 30 when a rocket fired from the west of Syria's Jarablus region hit a tank in northern Syria.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Karnataka shut down on Friday protesting release of Cauvery river water to Tamil Nadu, crippling normal life as well as disrupting work in hundreds of IT firms and back offices in India's tech hub Bengaluru while Chief Minister Siddaramaiah asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to call for an immediate meeting to resolve the inter-state row.

Global software firms and many start-ups declared a holiday in support of the shutdown and due to the absence of public/private transport across the city.

"We will work on the next weekend to make up for the loss," an Infosys spokesperson told IANS.

A Wipro spokesperson said the company was closed on Friday but would work on Saturday, which is normally an off-day.

Though the protest did not affect trains and flights, hundreds of passengers who alighted at the international airport here and at railway stations were stranded in the absence of buses and cabs.

"We were caught unaware by the shutdown and are at the railway station since morning," said a passenger who came from Pune with his family.

"It is unfortunate Bengaluru is facing many shutdowns over some or the other issue," lamented S.N. Murthy, a techie with a leading IT firm.

Drawing Modi's attention to the unrest in the Cauvery basin on releasing 15,000 cusecs daily to Tamil Nadu for 10 days from Wednesday in compliance with the Supreme Court's September 5 order, Siddaramaiah said any more release would deprive Bengaluru of drinking water and affect crops.

"The unrest, if continued, will also impact the livelihood of the common man adversely in large parts of the state," the chief minister said in a letter to Modi and urged him to urgently convene a meeting of the chief ministers on the issue.

"I request you not only as Prime Minister, but also as head of the federal system to call a meeting of the chief ministers of the states at a few hours' notice to resolve the impasse," he said.

Citing a precedent, when under similar circumstances, the Supreme Court on December 28, 1995 requested then Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao to resolve the issue of implementation, which was "then duly done to the satisfaction of all parties," the chief minister said the "unrest", if continued, would have a serious impact on the state's economy as also the IT economy, which brought enormous revenue and foreign exchange to the country.

Meanwhile, the state-run Bengaluru Metro Rail Corp, which suspended service during the shutdown, resumed operations after 6.15 p.m.

Earlier, the state government declared a holiday for all schools and colleges to avoid inconvenience to students and teachers in the absence of transport services. Similarly, factories, offices, banks, markets, shops, malls, hotels, eateries, pubs, bars, theatres and petrol bunks were closed in support of the shutdown.

"The shutdown was in protest against the Supreme Court's order and to express resentment over the state government releasing the river water when we don't have it for drinking and irrigation," said strike leader, Vatal Nagaraj.

There were also huge protests by farmers, traders and youth in the Mysuru region.

Hundreds of people staged demonstrations and took out rallies in Bengaluru, Mandya, Mysuru and other cities and towns across the state.

About 5,000 people, including Kannada film stars, producers and directors, marched in a procession from Town Hall to Freedom Park here and urged the government to stop releasing water to Tamil Nadu.

Though the shutdown was peaceful, protesters burnt tyres in the centre of roads and highways to prevent movement of even private vehicles.

Mock funerals of Siddaramaiah and his Tamil Nadu counterpart Jayalalithaa were conducted in Bengaluru, Mandya, Davangere and Tumakuru.

Posters and placards carrying pictures of Siddaramaiah and Jayalalithaa were garlanded and slapped with footwear and carried on donkeys to express anger.

"We will give our blood but not Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu. How can the government release our water to grow crops in another state when we don't have enough of it for drinking?" asked activist, Pravin Shetty.

In Mandya district, police carried out baton charges and fired teargas shells to disperse protestors and clashing with rival groups.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti said on Friday that Kashmir issue was multi-dimensional and needs sustained and serious efforts at various levels to be resolved.

"It is an complex problem and Chief Minister or Prime Minister can't overnight come up with a solution to this multi-dimensional challenge.

"A serious concerted and inclusive effort at diplomatic and political levels through an institutionalized mechanism are required to resolve it," the Chief Minister said.

The state's first woman Chief Minister appreciated the efforts of the all-party delegation to reach out to various shades of political opinion in Jammu and Kashmir and added that it depicts the true essence of India's vibrant democracy.

She said shutting doors on the All Party Delegation was not going to help anyway.

"Instead of being caught in darkness, the separatists should have met the members of the All Party Delegation and put across an implementable roadmap for the resolution of the issue.

"By shying away from talks a message has gone around that the separatists are not interested in ending the people's miseries by coming forward for peaceful resolution of the issue", she said.

The Chief Minister said violence was no solution to any problem, rather reposing faith in the dialogue process is the only way out to address the issues.

Maintaining that the relations with Pakistan strongly impacts the situation in the state, she said this was aptly understood by the former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Mufti Mohammad Sayeed who worked tirelessly to resolve the issue through confidence building measures, both on internal and external fronts.

"If anything was achieved in Jammu and Kashmir since the partition of the subcontinent, it was between 2002 and 2005 when cross-LoC roads were opened for movement of people and goods and there was peace along the borders.

"Unfortunately, after Vajpayee demitted office in 2004, there was no substantive movement forward on the peace and reconciliation initiatives taken by India and Pakistan vis-A-vis Kashmir leading, once again, to an era of cynicism and alienation in the Valley."

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The increase in deployment of troops in the troubled state of Jammu and Kashmir is only for sealing the India-Pakistan border so as to prevent infiltration and not to tackle ongoing protests, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar asserted on Friday.

"That is for border sealing. We are tightening the border position so that infiltration does not become a reality," Parrikar said, when asked why more soldiers had been deployed in the northern state, which has been facing violence ever since the July 8 killing of Hizbul Mujahideen militant Burhan Wani.

Parrikar was speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a function for the commissioning of the Indian Coast Guard offshore patrol vessel 'Sarathi'.

"Protests are the Home Ministry's concern. The ministry is taking necessary action. As you have seen, Rajnath (Singh) ji said the situation is much better than earlier. The army does not act in internal matters unless asked by the local authority. This is the basic norm of operation," Parrikar said.

"The local civil administration will have to ask (for) the army there, like it happened in Haryana, where the (Jat) agitation took place. When the local administration called the army in, we went there only then and followed the orders of the local administration. We don't operate anywhere internally on our own," he said.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Myanmar State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi will pay an official visit to the US soon, said an official announcement on Friday without specifying the date.

Expected in days, Suu Kyi's second visit to Washington at the invitation of US President Barack Obama, comes nearly four years after her first one in 2012, Xinhua news agency reported.

Myanmar-US relations started to improve in 2012 with Obama having visited the country for two times in November 2012 and November 2014 and then Myanmar President U Thein Sein made a reciprocal visit to the White House in May 2013.

The US officially began lifting some sanctions after a civilian government was formed in 2011.

In December last year, the US temporarily lifted such restrictions as general license 20 for trade transactions through airports and harbours for six months.

--IANS

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Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Friday said the nuclear test conducted by North Korea was unacceptable and would be protested.

Abe also said that Japan would liaise closely on the matter with the US and South Korea as the situation unfolds, Xinhua news agency reported.

The Japanese Prime Minister said he had instructed all relevant officials in his office and applicable ministries to gather more information about North Korea's testing of a nuclear device.

His instructions followed Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) detecting an artificial earthquake centred in North Korea close to a previous test site, which it believes may have been a nuclear test.

An artificial quake of magnitude 5 was detected around 9.30 a.m. at North Korea's main Punggye-ri nuclear test site. The US Geological Survey said the tremor was a 5.3-magnitude earthquake.

In a press conference, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said on Friday the government is currently gathering more information about the possible nuclear test.

Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida also said that Japan would convene an emergency meeting of its National Security Council (NSC) to discuss issues relevant to the incident.

Government officials here have also said that if the test is confirmed, Japan will call for an emergency UN Security Council meeting on the matter.

North Korea is banned by UN sanctions from any tests of nuclear or missile technology. It conducted a fourth nuclear test in January this year.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
At least 60 million Indians -- a number more than the population of South Africa -- suffer from mental disorders, even as the country lags the world in medical professionals and spending on mental-health issues.

Nearly 10-20 million Indians (1-2 per cent of the population) suffered from severe mental disorders such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and nearly 50 million (5 per cent of population) suffered from common mental disorders like depression and anxiety at the end of 2005, Health and Family Welfare Minister J.P. Nadda informed the Lok Sabha (lower house of Parliament) in May 2016, quoting data from the National Commission on Macroeconomics and Health, 2005, the last report available.

India spends 0.06 per cent of its health budget on mental healthcare. This is less than Bangladesh (0.44 per cent). Most developed nations spend above four per cent of their budgets on mental-health research, infrastructure, frameworks and talent pool, according to a 2011 World Health Organisation (WHO) report.

The government has commissioned a national mental health survey through the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS), Bengaluru, to estimate the number of mental patients and utilisation patterns of mental health services.

Started on June 1, 2015, the study interviewed 27,000 respondents by April 5, 2016, according to a reply in the Lok Sabha from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

India is short of health professionals to address mental issues, particularly at the district and sub-district level.

There are 3,800 psychiatrists, 898 clinical psychologists, 850 psychiatric social workers and 1,500 psychiatric nurses nationwide, according to a reply by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in the Lok Sabha in December 2015.

This means there were three psychiatrists per million people, according to data from WHO, 18 times fewer than the commonwealth norm of 5.6 psychiatrists per 100,000 people.

By this estimate, India is short of 66,200 psychiatrists. Similarly, based on the global average of 21.7 psychiatric nurses per 100,000 people, India needs 269,750 nurses.

The Mental Health Care Bill, 2013, which provides for protection and promotion of rights of persons with mental illness during the delivery of health care in institutions and in the community, was passed unanimously by a voice vote in the Rajya Sabha (upper house of Parliament) on August 8, 2016.

The new Bill has increased the funding to centres of excellence in mental health, from Rs 30 crore to Rs 33.70 crore per centre.

As many as 15 centres of excellence in mental health and 35 post-graduate training departments in mental health specialties have been funded to address the shortage of mental health professionals nationwide.

(In arrangement with IndiaSpend.org, a data-driven, non-profit, public interest journalism platform, with whom Prachi Salve is an analyst. The views expressed are those of IndiaSpend. Feedback at respond@indiaspend.org)

--IANS/IndiaSpend

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Ahead of the state visit of Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal 'Prachanda' to India, Nepal's Foreign Minister Prakash Sharan Mahat will travel to New Delhi on Sunday to lay the ground for the visit.

Prime Minister Prachanda is embarking on a four-day state visit to India from September 15 during which he will meet Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi.

The two Prime Ministers will meet in Hyderabad House on September 16 for a one-on-one meeting followed by the signing of several agreements.

Prachanda will pay a courtesy call on Indian President Pranab Mukherjee and meet other senior Indian politicians during his visit.

Mahat will hold talks with senior Indian officials, including his Indian counterpart Sushma Swaraj and others, and will discuss about the preparations and agenda of the prime ministerial visit.

This will be Mahat's first foreign visit after assuming office. Mahat will return home on Tuesday.

"I will meet some other ministers with whom I need to discuss some projects and areas of cooperation that we are working with India," Mahat said.

After apprising the PM about the Indian "tone" about the forthcoming visit, the final agenda of the visit will be finalised.

Similarly, Prime Minister Prachanda said on Friday that his India visit would focus on strengthening bilateral ties as well as making balanced and friendly relations with India.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
About 758 million adults around the world have never learned to read or write, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) has said.

Speaking at a ceremony here marking the 50th anniversary of International Literacy Day on Thursday, Unesco's regional representative Katherine Muller-Marin said most illiterate adults -- as much as two-thirds -- are women, making them more vulnerable to unemployment and low wages.

Unesco Director-General Irina Bokova has described literacy as a tool that can promote "the independence of a society", Xinhua news agency quoted Muller-Marin as saying.

The regional representative also praised Cuba for having launched one of the world's most successful literacy campaigns in the 1960s.

"Cuba is a privileged country, whose surpasses international levels," said Muller-Marin.

In 1961, the island's fledgling socialist government began a massive and innovative literacy drive that was able to eradicate illiteracy in a matter of months, making it the first Latin American nation to do so.

Cuban educators in 2001 developed a method, called "Yes, I Can", to promote literacy with minimum resources. The programme has helped more than 10 million people in 30 countries learn the crucial skills of reading and writing.

Cuban Minister Ena Elsa Velazquez said literacy was a "source of cultural development" and "banner of the irrevocable struggle to defend the poor on the Earth".

The day has been celebrated each year since 1967 to raise awareness and promote the importance of worldwide.

--IANS

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Exploring Guy Beahms Dr Disrespect Persona, Wife and Why He was Banned Permanently From Twitch Guy Beahm who is popularly known by his online alias  Dr DisRespect, is an award-winning Twitch.tv streamer. He has leveraged on the Twitch platform to become an internet personality that is quite widely known. His online success is just more proof that anyone who is good at what they do can attain celebrity status ...

Critical Facts About Lee Ann McAdoo  The Infowars Anchor Lee Ann Mcadoo is a conservative journalist and television host whose interests in conspiracies and astrology has established her as a famous American reporter. Often referred to as Wonder Woman, McAdoo is a reporter who works for InfoWars.com, a controversial right-wing website run by radio show host, Alex Jones. Who Is Lee Ann McAdoo? Lee Ann McAdoo was born on 7 ...

Millie Weaver  Age, Husband & Infowars Career Millie Weaver is an American model, journalist, political activist, and social commentator. The young and beautiful journalist rose to fame working as a reporter for a controversial right-wing website InfoWars.com. Also known as Millennial Millie, Weaver is a social media influencer with over 100,000 subscribers on her YouTube channel and over 35,000 followers on Twitter. Who Is Millie Weaver and What Is ...

Is Jessica Tarlov Married? What Are Her Height & Weight? Jessica Tarlov is an American political consultant, strategist, and analyst whose influential and regular TV presence has made a popular figure. A good example of beauty with brains, Tarlov has appeared on various TV networks, mostly the FOX News Network where she is known for her liberal views on political analysis and insights. She is also the senior director ...

Who Is Kelly Rebecca Nichols  Alex Jones Ex-Wife? Kelly Rebecca Nichols is the ex-wife of controversial American radio show host, Alex Jones. She got nationwide attention following her divorce and subsequent custody battle with her estranged husband. Nichols, who worked with PETAs public relations department, was herself no stranger to controversies as she was involved in several publicity stunts of the non-profit animal rights ...

Who Is Bree Morgan  Cole Sprouse Ex-Girlfriend And What Is She Up To Now? Although Bree Morgan became famous through the Instagram, she also sapped some dose of popularity from Disneys sweetheart, Cole Sprouse of the Sprouse brothers. She is not only an Instagram star but also a YouTube vlogger whose popularity has long exceeded the ordinary level. Bree is conspicuously prominent on the internet and has her digital savviness ...

Does Vanna White Have Husband or Children, What Is Her Net Worth / Salary? For over three decades, Vanna White has been a household name, famous as the co-host and letter turner of the iconic NBC game show Wheel of Fortune. The talented and beautiful television personality is also an actress with several TV series and films to her credit. Since making her Wheel of Fortune debut in 1982, she has become one ...

Liz Wheeler  Biography, Husband & Net Worth Liz Wheeler is the kind of girl who sets the room on fire whenever she comes around. In this situation, however, she sets our screens on fire each time she appears as the host of One America News Tipping Point. She is, therefore, a presenter, publisher, consultant and a member of the Board of Zoning ...

Betty White  Net Worth, Children & Husband The entertainment industry will remain indebted to personalities like Betty White who brought something extra to the table and kept the world entertained for donkey years. The comedienne, actress, and writer graced the big screens in the early 50s as a show host and has been a delight since then. She is the queen of ...

Is Bill Nye (The Science Guy) Dead or Alive, What Are His Net Worth & Education? Everyone will always remember Bill Nye as the Science Guy. Besides his TV show Bill Nye the Science Guy, he is well-known for his Netflix show Bill Nye Saves the World which started airing in 2017 as well as his appearances in many famous media projects as a science educator. The star studied mechanical engineering ...

Is Cesar Millan Dead, Who Is The Wife & What Is His Net Worth? Cesar Millan is the famous dog whisperer who often stirs up mixed emotions. The Mexican-American is precisely speaking, a dog behaviorist; he has been in the game for over 25 years. His Emmy-nominated television series, Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan further pushed his method and tactics into the limelight. The series was produced from 2004 ...

Is Thomas Sanders Gay and Does He Have A Boyfriend? By the time Vine was shut down in January 2017, Thomas Sanders was already popular within and beyond the internet community for his heavy involvements on the online video hosting platform. After the tragic shutdown of Vine impacted on the growing career of the multi-talented personality, he immediately switched over to YouTube where he continued to upload ...

Is Shepard Smith Gay, Who Is The Boyfriend & What Is His Net Worth? There are only a few media personalities who are as bold and confident as Shepard Smith. Apart from his impressive stint at Fox News Channel which includes but not limited to his classic news delivery, upfront stance on virtually every issue and much more; he loves his job as much as he loves his personality. Smith ...

Is Milo Yiannopoulos Gay? His Husband and Net Worth Milo Yiannopoulos is a popular writer, journalist, polemicist, public speaker, and political commentator who is also known as the founder of The Kernel, an online blog. He has been said to be among the list of 100 weird and influential people in the United Kingdom. He appeared on this list as a result of personal beliefs and ...

Does Ryan Seacrest Have A Wife Or Girlfriend, What Is His Net Worth? From radio to television, Ryan Seacrest is a household name and a force to be reckoned with in showbiz. The radio personality, television host, and producer is best recognized as the host of the popular TV talent search contest American Idol. Heres how the media personality who always knew what his lifes ambition was and diligently pursued ...

Is Anderson Cooper Gay, Who is The Boyfriend or Husband? For many, the thought of becoming a millionaire by writing and talking about other people appears unachievable but this is the reality of the prominent American journalist Anderson Cooper who gathered millions of dollars for conducting accurate political analysis and other vital reports on TV. He is the main anchor of the CNN news show Anderson ...

Is David Muir Gay or Does He Have A Wife, What Is His Salary? David Muir is an Emmy Award-winning journalist who works for the ABC broadcast-television network and anchors the ABC World News Tonight with David Muir program while also co-anchoring the magazine program 20/20. The Ithaca College graduate, whose show has become the most-watched newscast in America, has covered stories from all across America and the world; reporting ...

Joel Osteen  Divorce Rumors, Net Worth & Family Members Joel Osteen is an American Televangelist, Senior Pastor of Lakewood Church based in Houston, Texas, a husband and a father of two. He is an author of many books, seven of which are New York Times Best Sellers and his televised sermons capture more than 7 million viewers per week and 20 million every month ...

Who Is Todd Chrisley? What To Know About His Children, Gay Rumors & Net Worth Premiered on the USA network in 2014, Chrisley Knows Best is one of the most watched family reality TV shows in the U.S. The series which is currently in its sixth season is centered around U.S real estate mogul Todd Chrisley and his family. The show reveals Todd the patriarch of the Chrisley family as a strict dad who rules ...

Who Is Shannon Bream Of Fox News? Her Husband, Children & Net Worth Shannon Bream who hosts the iconic primetime program started her journalism career in the late 1990s debuting as the evening and late-night news reporter for the CBS affiliate, WBTV. The beauty from America currently works for the Fox News Channel and she is best known for anchoring the primetime program. She also hosts Americas News ...

Is Troye Sivan Gay, Who Is His Boyfriend and What Is His Net Worth? Troye Sivan is an Australian singer and songwriter best known for songs like Happy Little Pill, Youth, Heaven (with Betty Who) and The Boyfriend Tag (with Tyler Oakley) which have all garnered him different awards and ranked on the Billboard Charts. Sivan, who was born in South Africa but now resides in the United States, is ...

Did iDubbbz Have Cancer, Is He Gay and Who Is His Girlfriend Now? iDubbbz is one YouTuber who has made a career out of courting controversy. Renowned for his absurdist channels and comedy video series, the Los Angeles based personality is the owner of two channels, iDubbzTV, and iDubbzTV2, as well as the brains behind comedy video series such as Content Cop, Kickstarter Crap, Gaming News Crap, and ...

Inside Greg Gutfelds Love Story With Wife Elena Moussa and Why Fans Thought He Was Gay Greg Gutfeld is a seasoned American television producer whose career in the media industry has spanned over a decade. He is a man of many talents who makes extra income through comedy, journalism, and editorial works. Gutfeld regularly appears on Fox News Channel as a panellist and co-host of the political talk show The Five ...

Works That Made Bo Burnham A Household Name and How Much He Is Worth Now One of YouTubes first viral stars and the worlds most exciting young comedian, Bo Burnham, has always amazed critics and comedy aficionados alike. Often regarded as the Justin Bieber of comedy, thanks to his fresh looks, floppy blond hair and hoodies, he has a multi-faceted career bigger than many comedians twice his age. It wouldnt ...

Is Louie Anderson Gay And What Is His Net Worth? Louie Anderson has one of the most abstract faces in the industry and equally knows how to use it to his advantage. He is not only a stand-up comedian but also an actor and television host who is known for his distinctive comic wits. Some of his notable projects include Family Feud, where he was ...

Is Don Lemon of CNN Gay, Who is His Partner and What Is His Salary? Don Lemon has risen to become one of the most recognizable faces on CNN over the past few years. The fiery journalist, who anchors CNN Tonight with Don Lemon, is liked and somewhat disliked for his strong and candid opinions on a variety of matters that do not just include politics but also race, significantly, matters that ...

Is Rachel Maddow Gay, Who is the Wife and How Much Does She Earn in Salary? Rachel Maddow is an award-winning American journalist, political commentator, and television news anchor. She is best known for hosting the popular nightly TV show The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC. Prior to this, she hosted a talk radio program on Air America Radio from 2005 to 2010. As of now, the TV sensation co-anchors MSNBCs ...

Demystifying Pokimane  Her Real Name, Ethnicity & Boyfriend Like most social media celebrities in this digital era, Pokimane Thicc is one of those stars who took advantage of the internet to make a name for herself. Given the unlimited potentials which the social media space offers, many people have been instantly propelled to fame just by posting creative online contents. Not only has ...

A Breakdown of Kris Jenners Net Worth, Sources Of Income and Relationships Over The Years Standing outside and looking in, Kris Jenner looks like the oil that greases the wheels of the entire Kardashian/Jenner machine. She has been dubbed a momager and rightfully so because she seems to have had a part to play in the trajectory of each and every one of her daughters individually and the Kardashian brand ...

Pursuits That Brought Liza Koshys Fame To its Zenith and Her Love Life Since David Dobrik Liza Koshy is an American actress who has leveraged YouTube as a platform to promote her comedy while also serving as a television host on occasions. She is talented and funny and has gathered a lot of fans from around the world. Koshy started on Vine in high school and was able to get millions of ...

Alex Aiono Biography  Inside The Life Of The American Singer Not everyone who started from the streets has attained the heights where Alex Aiono is currently. His story could be referred to as the perfect definition of rising from Grass to Grace. He came into the limelight after he started out as a YouTuber, singer, and producer. One fascinating thing about the young YouTuber is ...

Virginia Vallejo Biography And Her Love Story With Pablo Escobar Virginia Vallejo can be referred to as one of the oldest whistleblowers in history after her involvement with Pablo Escobar which made her famous. Over the years, many questions have been raised about her relationship with the drug lord and why she endangered her life to be with him despite his notorious acts. The death ...

Princess Love Bio  Ethnicity, Real Name & Parents For many people, Princess Love is simply Ray Js wife but there is so much more to this feisty lady than meets the eye. She is a star in her own right and has many feathers on her cap. Princess Love is a reality TV star, a model, video vixen, and fashion designer. She and her ...

Who is Papa Franku Also Known As Filthy Frank or Joji, Where is He Now? The social media as we all know today has given people the opportunity to be creative and innovative and at the same time, make something of themselves. YouTube is one of the known social platforms we have today that makes it possible for people to express their God-given talents and post videos they created to ...

Who Is Molly Qerim, How Did She Become a Famous Sports Anchor and Who Is Her Husband? Molly Qerim is an American sports anchor popularly known for moderating First Take, a highly rated sports talk show, on ESPN. Prior to joining ESPN, Qerim hosted Fantasy Live and NFL AM on NFL Network. It is quite obvious that the widely acclaimed television personality is in a class of her own when it comes ...

Safiya Nygaard  Height, Parents & Net Worth Safiya Nygaard is an American YouTuber, writer, content producer, and director who is popular for posting makeup, beauty and fashion videos on YouTube. Her videos regularly top at least one million views, thanks to her lively character as well as her willingness to experiment with outrageous outfits and different beauty products. Here are the things to ...

The Rigors of Sunlen Serfatys Career Journey Until CNN and Fun Facts About Her Personal Life CNN correspondent, Sunlen Serfaty is an Emmy Award-winning journalist known for covering a broad range of breaking news stories, national news, and Washington politics. She has been able to garner widespread recognition for herself which even goes beyond the sphere of her work. Her profile also increased with the extensive work she did in covering ...

Demystifying Jazz Jennings Real Name, Boyfriend & Family Of One The Youngest Transgenders Jazz Jennings is an unusual personality who became famous as a transgender activist and was recorded as the youngest documented public figure to be seen as transgender. She is also a YouTube personality and spokesmodel for brands, her fans, and other transgenders. She fought for acceptance in her high school with her super supportive family for over ...

Inside Fred Armisens Life  Ethnicity, Romantic Relationships and Gay Rumors Fred Armisen is an award-winning American comedian, he is also a writer, an actor as well as a musician. He was a cast member of the legendary comedy show, Saturday Night Live for 13 years and also one of the brains behind the successful satirical show Portlandia. Find out more about this incredibly talented guy ...

Ed and Lorraine Warren Biography: Cases, Kids, and Family Life Have you ever woken up with fear you could not explain, or felt a strange presence that made the hair at your nape rise or even experienced strange occurrences around you? Well, these were some of the promptings that made the well-known paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren delve into trying to explain the ideas ...

Truth About Tony Romos Wife, Kids and Life Since His NFL Retirement Tony Romo grew from the field as a quarterback to the screens as an American Football Analyst. He was a quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys in the richest football league in the world (NFL) before retiring. As a junior, he was honored as an All-Ohio Conference Member, an Ohio Valley Conference Player of the Year and ...

Who is Brittany Venti, The Controversial Game Streamer and YouTuber? In recent times, many people live stream themselves playing video games. This has become a popular pastime on the internet and many highly skilled gamers have become internet celebrities through this means. However, some of them rather than becoming renowned for their gaming skills and great commentary, have become controversial and infamous. A good example ...

Rob Dyrdeks Family: His Kids And Relationship With Wife Bryiana Noelle Flores A multi-talented star and an elite pro skateboarder, Rob Dyrdeks success story began at a remarkably young age. Yet another proof that schooling doesnt always correlate with success, Rob has established himself not just as a phenomenal sportsman but also as a successful entrepreneur. Besides perfecting his skill as a natural talent on the board, ...

xChocobars  Biography and Everything You Should Know About Her Having distinguished herself and recorded massive successes in an industry notably dominated by men, it is very safe to say that Xchocobars deserves all the attention and cash she makes from her career. A household name on Twitch (a smart live streaming video platform), the online-gamer is popularly known for streaming classic games such as Stardew ...

Everything To Know About Mary Padian, Her Boyfriend and Net Worth Mary Padian is a famous American television reality personality best known for her involvements on the Reality show Storage Wars. She also has her own shop called Mary finds where she displays her antique collections. Since her childhood, Padian has been a creative learner. At the time, she used to create new items out of reusable ones and ...

Betsy Woodruffs Family Life: Is She Married or Related To Bob Woodruff? An old name in the world of journalism, Betsy Woodruff has warmed her way into the hearts of many with her impressive talents. Through hard work, Woodruff has carved a niche for herself in a very competitive field. Betsy has strong family and work values and is also an advocate for equal opportunities for everyone ...

Matpat (Matthew Patrick)  Wife, Height & Net Worth As far as internet business is concerned, Matpat remains one of the most dynamic and seasoned figures. He boasts a wealth of experience that has helped him in growing his business from one level of greatness to another. Like most successful people, MatPat started out small but today, he makes millions of dollars from his ...

Facts About Ricegum  His Girlfriend, Real Name & Net Worth Ricegum is an online gamer and YouTube sensation who ditched college; took advantage of the digital era, and made a name for himself on the internet. Though he began as a gaming YouTuber, Ricegum soon gained recognition as a controversial internet star following his many diss tracks. Here is everything you need to know about the youngster ...

Joy Taylor Once Married MLBs Richard Giannotti  Inside Look At Her Love Life and Family The erosion of the sexist idea that women have no business in sports broadcasting created a host of women celebrities who attained fame outside of modeling and acting. One of them, Joy Taylor, a radio personality and TV host for Fox Sports 1, has been in the industry since 2009, becoming one of the most ...

What To Know About Conan OBriens Wife, Kids & Family Today The name Conan OBrien is one that jumps right at you almost immediately you start talking about the most popular television hosts in the USA and this is no surprise because the man behind that name has risen to become one of the most admired men in the business. Known for hosting the late-night talk ...

David Letterman  Net Worth, Wife & Son In all of American, one man whose face has been seen frequently by late night TV talk show lovers is none but David Letterman. The comedian and TV show veteran has been hosting late night talk shows for more than three decades. His Late Night with David Letterman show began on February 1st, 1982 aired ...

Demystifying Sssniperwolfs Family Background And The Boyfriends Shes Had Since she launched her eponymously named channel in 2013, Sssniperwolf has been on the rise when it comes to video game influencers. She is one of the biggest names in the online gaming subgenre of YouTube videos. Real name Lia Shelesh, she started with Call of Duty: Black Ops II but has diversified with other ...

Lester Holt  Wife, Family & Net Worth Lester Holt is a multiple award-winning journalist, newscaster, reporter, and actor who has worked for notable media houses like WCBS TV, CBS, MSNBC and among others. His remarkable feat in journalism has endeared him to the hearts of many and earned him some awards and recognitions. Read on to get acquainted with his biography, ethnicity, ...

What Is Louis C.K. Doing Now, Where Are His Family And How Much Is His Net Worth? It is not easy to make it in comedy. It takes more than a funny bone and the ability to elicit a few giggles from a listening audience. For all the complexities that go into making a successful career in comedy, Louis C.K, the Washington D.C-born comedian, did it. For years, he was at the ...

The Progression of Hoda Kotbs Career, Her Ancestry and Family Life Hoda Kotb gained fame as a television host and news anchor for NBC. She anchors the shows signature show Today, and it has been an excellent vehicle for her skills in front of a camera. Kotb has won several awards, including Daytime Emmys and Peabody Awards. Simply put, she is one of the most successful ...

Jerry Seinfelds Family: All About The Amazing Comedians Wife and Kids Apparently one of the highly important entertainers in America, Jerry Seinfeld is a man of many talents. A very funny man, he is considered to be one of the most successful comedians in the USA who has been in the business as a professional rib-cracker for more than 40 years. As an actor, he has ...

The Rigors Of Sarah Silvermans Rise To Prominence And Rundown Of The Men She Has Dated A comedian, writer, and actress, Sarah Silvermans art and craft is as unique as you would ever find. Her poignant use of comedy to discuss social issues such as race, sexism, politics, and religion has gained her an impressive following. As unorthodox as her style is, so is her life experiences. She previously suffered from epiglottitis ...

Who Is Hannibal Buress, Does He Have A Wife or Girlfriend & Why Was He Arrested? Making people laugh when they are tense or not in the mood is a tough order and to ply the trade, it must indeed take some guts and expertise, this is what the humor maker, Hannibal Buress has been able to achieve and sustain after his inital teething process. The African-American is a screen writer, stand-up ...

The Success of John Mulaneys Career Efforts Since His Work On Saturday Night Live and Facts About His Wife John Mulaney had been working as a professional comedian for years before Saturday Night Live changed his status for life and like many who are now his fans, you probably did not know of him then. However, that changed when he joined the sketch comedy show in 2008. Since then, he has been one of ...

Jeff Dunham  Wife, Children and Net Worth Ventriloquism is a very subtle method of making an inanimate object (like a puppet, doll or dummy) appear to be saying words which are actually coming from the person (holding the inanimate object). In effect, the individual throws his/her voice to the puppet and can even appear to be having a conversation with it. Not ...

Ellen DeGeneres  Net Worth, Wife  Portia de Rossi & Parents Ellen DeGeneres is an American female standup comedian who has proven that whatever a man can do, a woman can also do. Since her journey as a standup comedian started in 1981, she has held swirl as one of the finest comedians America and the world at large has seen. She is often referred to ...

Revisiting Joan Rivers Death  The Daughter, Husband & Net Worth She Left Behind Joan Rivers was a renowned American comedian, TV host, writer, and actress. Her brand of comedy consisted of scathing one-liners and no individual or topic is spared. She hosted her own talk shows in the 80s and 90s and was a pioneer for women in stand up comedy. She was the first woman to host a late night ...

The Struggles of Margaret Chos Childhood, How It Influenced Her Career Growth and Love Life Margaret Cho is best described as a comic star who knows how to maneuver everything related to life into a rib-cracking joke. She is also known to criticize every social and political problem, especially those involving race and sexuality. Apart from her talents as a comic actress, she does amazingly well as a singer and ...

Where Is Eric Bolling Today? Who Is His Son & What Is His Net Worth? Eric Bolling who was once a notable figure on Fox News, is an American TV personality, an author, and versatile Journalist. As a political and financial analyst/commentator, he anchored discussions bothering on finance for Fox Business Channel. Here is everything there is to know about his career, family, and allegations that led to his exit ...

Who Is Chelsea Handler and Does She Have A Husband or Boyfriend? Chelsea Handler is one of Americas top female comedians. She is also an actress, writer, television host, producer, and activist. She is known to be very outspoken even with things that are very personal. In separate interviews with The New York Times, Handler revealed that she had an abortion twice when she was 16. She has authored five books ...

How Did Laura Lee Achieve Fame, How Much is She Worth and Who is Her Husband? Laura Lee is a popular American YouTuber, make-up artist and beauty blogger. From posting videos of her makeup routines on Instagram, Lee has transformed into a beauty influencer and a YouTube sensation. Today, her YouTube Channel has over 630 million views and 4.5 million subscribers. Asides having millions of followers across all social media platforms, ...

Madison Gesiotto Bio  Ethnicity, Parents & Measurements Madison Gesiotto is no ordinary woman; although she excelled in quite a number of pageants and competitions while she was in school, it is her views on politics and issues in America that has made her name known to most people. She possesses beauty and intelligence in a seemingly equal measure and has been able ...

Who Is Lil Tay? Parents, Brother, Sister, Age, Net Worth, Ethnicity Child stardom is nothing new in the entertainment world. With the advent of social media, we have seen more stars made from the internet than ever before, and Lil Tay is one of them. Her uploaded rap videos trademark is cursing, swearing, cash-throwing, and use of obscene languages. Her fame went wild after she dropped ...

What To Know About Tig Notaros Wife, Kids and Family Today Tig Notaro is an American stand-up comic star, writer, actress, and radio analyst. Since she started her career in 2001, she has become one of Americas best comedians, particularly when it comes to observational comedy. One prominent aspect of her routine involves her family, which includes a wife and two children. Interestingly, Tig Notaro is part ...

Who Is Chantel Jeffries? What To Know About Her Age, Ethnicity & Net Worth Chantel Jeffries is a lady of many talents. Beyond being celebrated as a DJ, she has fared well as a model, an actress, musician, and as an artist. She first rose to fame on Instagram where she has a large following. However, in recent times, she has hit the spotlight for her rumored relationships with some ...

Is Ellen DeGeneres Married, Who Is The Brother  Vance DeGeneres and Family Members? Ellen DeGeneres is one of a kind celebrity in todays world as she has used her wealth for the greater good for many people. She has served a host of famous awards shows like the Grammy, Primetime Emmy and Academy Awards. Moreso, she is probably one of the most decorated entertainment personalities around the world and ...

Carli Bybel Bio  Height, Boyfriend & Net Worth Video blogging is now on the rise and YouTube is the place where most of it happens. If you are a lady who cares about her looks or a guy who likes to help his woman out with her looks, then one person whose name rings a bell when it comes to giving beauty tips ...

Who Is Lexy Panterra? What To Know About Her Ethnicity, Boyfriend & Net Worth Lexy Panterra is one of the YouTube personalities whose breakout came through the Twerk dance videos she posted on her social media handles and YouTube which has so far generated over 13 million views for her. From there on, she created her LexTwerkOut workout program in 2014. She is sure very talented as she as moved ...

Who Is AnneMunition? What Is Her Ethnicity & Does She Have A Girlfriend or Boyfriend? AnneMunition is a professional gamer and content creator of American origin. She is one of the most sought-after streamers on Twitch  a popular online platform for watching and streaming videos, especially video games. AnneMunition has almost half a million followers on Twitch and her channel has accumulated at least 13 million views. Her favorite games ...

Norm MacDonald  Former Wife, Son & Net Worth Recently, 59-year-old former Saturday Night Live stand-up comic Norm MacDonald caused a not-so-funny stir when he expressed his personal opinion about the #MeToo movement speaking in defense of Louis CK and Roseanne Barr. Following the backlash of his actions, he is diligently doing damage control for his questionable opinion by posting a public apology on ...

Inside Iliza Shlesingers Life With Husband and How Much She is Worth Now Witty, spontaneous, and truly humorous, Iliza Shlesinger is an American comedian who is clearly proving that the stereotypical claim that women are not really funny is not only incredibly wrong but completely outrageous. Having been in the game for more than 10 years, Shlesinger has grown bigger with each step, stunning fans with her incredible ...

Who Is Nessa Diab? Details of her Parents, Ethnicity & Relationship With Colin Kaepernick Nessa Diab has gained more fame as the girlfriend of different footballers than in her career. She is currently with the popular National Football League (NFL) player, Colin Kaepernick, and has stood by his side during his most trying times. Also known for her mononym, Nessa, she recently engaged in a tweet battle with the ...

Samantha Bee  Inside the Life of Full Frontal Comedian and Presenter We have over the decades seen various brands of humor and personalities who have walked the ropes. One of the formidable forces in the world of comedy is no other than the iconic Samantha Bee of the Daily Show who now runs her own television show on TBS channel. She is a Canadian-American political commentator, ...

What Happened To Jessica Williamss Boyfriend And Which Are Her Best Works? Jessica Williams is a woman who has a lot of feathers in her cap  and keeps acquiring more. The former senior political correspondent of the comic Daily Show, who is also a comedian and actress whose recent movie appearance include starring as a playwright just recovering from a recent split with her boyfriend, Damon, and ...

Who is Nicole Byer? Here are 5 Facts You Need To Know About The Comedian Nicole Byer, an American comedian, actress, and writer, made a name for herself after she played supporting roles on MTVs prank show Ladylike and the reality show Girl Code. The latter was a series that featured comedians who analyzed in minute details, all the issues that young women deal with daily, from period to dating, to weird friendship dynamics and questions about sex. Currently, ...

A Closer Look At Bart Kwans Ethnicity, Height & Personal Life Bart Kwan is one of few Asians who is known for being successful in the comic industry at an international level. His fame broke out after the YouTube channel which he created with his close pal Joe Jo garnered up massive followings. The talented duo has been running the channel since 2007 and their success ...

Heres How VanossGaming Achieved Fame Online, His Worth and Other Facts About The Gamer For many years, the decision to drop out of college to pursue an online career was considered to be foolish and self-destructive by conventional wisdom. It was no different when Evan Fong, popularly known as VanossGaming, dropped out of college to pursue a YouTube career. However, that radical move paid off, and he stands shoulder to ...

Desi Perkins  Ethnicity, Net Worth & Husband YouTube is littered with videos of makeup tutorials by different people but if you are interested in learning how to do your makeup like a pro, there is just one person on that platform who you must follow. She is none other than Desi Perkins! She is a popular make-up artist, Instagram star, and vlogger. Desi, ...

The Phases of Casey Neistats Pursuits and His Love Story With Candice Pool YouTuber, vlogger, filmmaker, and creator extraordinaire; these are just a few hats that Casey Neistat wears and the story of how he got here is incredible. A native of Connecticut, Neistat started out by making refreshingly-authentic short films and videos that featured content that was based on everyday life and called attention to serious issues. He ...

Connor Franta  Inside The Life of American YouTuber YouTube has produced a lot of young celebrities in modern times and Connor Franta happens to be one of them. Apart from being a YouTuber, the young American is also an entrepreneur, entertainer, and writer. His journey to fame began almost a decade ago when he started a self-named YouTube channel where he uploads content ranging ...

Rhett and Link  Bio, Who are Their Wives, Net Worth and Family Facts Rhett and Link refer to an American comedy duo who are very popular on YouTube. They are known for their comic songs, viral commercials, skits and the daily show, Good Mythical Morning. Good Mythical Morning is the most watched daily show online, averaging 100 million views in a month. The show has featured guests such ...

A Walk Through The Maze of Ryan Higas Career Pursuits And Relationship With Arden Cho Ryan Higa is not only celebrated as a YouTube star, but he is also famed for appearing on television screens as an actor and comedian. Nigahiga, his Youtube channel, has gathered over 20 million subscribers and billions of views with his different comic acts, short films, and music videos uploads. With the rise in his career, ...

What to Know About The Shows That Made Craig Ferguson a Star and His Family Ties Rising to the top of your profession can sometimes be a hard and difficult process. It requires days and nights of working consistently hard to be better than what you were yesterday. It requires not giving up when all of your experiences seem to be pushing you to quit. It is because of these challenges ...

David Dobrik Married Liza Koshy for One Month  Inside His Family and Relationships David Dobrik is a YouTube sensation who has garnered fame not just for his vlogs but his love life too. Given his career as a YouTuber, his channel is one place where he shares his romantic escapades. With a cute boyish look like his, this Slovakian young man is definitely a good catch, and not ...

Merrell Twins Bio  Ethnicity, Parents & Boyfriend One of the beautiful things about modern life is social media. As rudimentary as it might seem, it could turn out to be the greatest thing that would be invented in the next 50 years because of its impact on human life. Very few tools have revolutionized human behavior and culture as much as social ...

Who Is Bunny Meyer, Is She Married & What Is Her Net Worth? Bunny Meyer is a YouTube celebrity who has amassed over 8.8 million subscribers with 1.5 million viewers on her channel. She is popularly known as Grav3yardgirl and is one of the highest-paid YouTubers in the world. She initially started out as a fashion designer and later chose the path of a YouTuber. Grav3yardgirl has used her knowledge on fashion, makeup, ...

Ninja  Inside The Life of The American YouTuber and Internet Personality Ninja is a talented video game player known for his mastery of Fortnite and other seemingly difficult games he plays with ease. The video gamer made a career out of what is ordinarily the hobby of many people and has since then amassed a huge online following. Find out about him here, including the controversies that ...

What Is Eva Gutowskis True Sexuality and How Did She Rise So Fast As an Influencer? Ever since Eva Gutowski joined YouTube in 2011, it has been an interesting journey for her, moving from one milestone to the other. Backed by an army of young women and teenage girl fans known as Evanators, she has risen to become one of the most-talked-about personalities in the digital stratosphere. She has also leveraged ...

Emma Chamberlain Biography  Age, Height & Net Worth Before now, people in the entertainment industry could only achieve popularity after many years of dedication and hard work but since social media came into the scene, massive success and overnight popularity became possible. That is the story of Emma Chamberlain who encountered fame as a fifteen-year-old. Emma is one of the many young people who became ...

Anna Akana  Ethnicity, Boyfriend & Net Worth There is a new crop of YouTubers known by their different contents with a very strong uniqueness that stands every one of them out, some upload video games, some fashion while some others have comedy video contents to showcase on their channels. Anna Akana has used her platform to showcase her comedy contents to the ...

Revealing Truths About Lilly Singhs Ethnic Background, Family and Her Relationship With Yousef Erakat Lilly Singh is an Indian-Canadian YouTube personality, actress, and comedian also known as Superwoman. She kicked off her YouTube career in 2010 with the launch of her channel IISuperwomanII and followed it up with a vlog channel in 2011. This paved the way for her fame and success which led to a world tour. The ...

Who Is Andrea Constand, Is She Married and What Is Her Connection With Bill Cosby? Many people got sexually molested but could not voice out due to the stigma victims suffer and what will become of them thereafter. Very few of the victims danm every consequence to seek justice and bring the perpetrator to the book, like Andrea Constand. She never got any media buzz, not until her friend cum molester; ...

Who Is Lazarbeam (Lannan Eacott)? Here Are Facts You Need To Know Lannan Eacott became a person of interest after his YouTube channel, LazarBeam pulled him to the limelight. Initially, he started with uploads of Madden Challenge videos before deciding to build his own channel in January 2015. Within the space of three years, his YouTube channel had gathered over 7 million loyal subscribers. Today, he has not ...

Puzzling Facts About Wengies YouTube Success and More About Her Fiance Among the many YouTubers who have succeeded in winning the hearts of millions of people is Wengie. She is a Chinese-Australian YouTube personality, vlogger, singer, and voice actress. Wengie is famous for a lot of things, from her simple life hacks, DIYs, craft ideas to fun experiments, tricks and pranks. Her content portfolio also includes hair tutorials, diet & fitness tips, lookbooks, ...

Is Jeffree Star A Billionaire and How Much Does He Make On YouTube? If looks can be deceptive then theres no other person who proves this maxim better than Jeffree Star. A quick look at Stars pictures would likely leave you wondering whether or not to tag him a male or female. But who says being controversial has to be a curse? For Star, his looks have caught ...

The Place of Rosanna Pansinos Career Hats In Her Rise To Fame and Facts About Her Personal Life There are a few phrases that could summarize Rosanna Pansinos rise to fame. None of them can do it better than the famous axiom, no knowledge is lost. Her popularity YouTube comes out of her foray into other professions, specifically acting. Although acting now occupies one of the major professional hats in Rosannas resume, it was ...

Muselk (Elliott Watkins) Biography  Age, Girlfriend and Net Worth The new and best in-thing in terms of career is video gaming and we have over time seen young men and women make massive income from an activity that was purportedly designed to serve as a hobby or a relaxation activity. One of such individuals is the Australian-born YouTube Celebrity and Twitch streamer, Muselk, whose ...

PopularMMOs Biography: 5 Interesting Facts You Need To Know We have over the years seen social media millionaires, especially on the YouTube social platform. These celebrities cum millionaires have made names for themselves after carving out niches on the internet, and a typical example of one of such exciting media personality on the YouTube is American Minecraft gamer and YouTube star, PopularMMOs whose channel ...

Jason Nash Once Married Marney Hochman  What To Know About His Ex-Wife and Kids The now-defunct video-sharing app Vine was the path that led Jason Nash to fame. With it, he built an audience of over two million followers, which he parlayed into a significant YouTube career. That move has seen him become one of the most popular personalities on the internet, with the cash income to go with ...

Where Does Dantdm Live? What Do We Know About His Net Worth, Wife and Brother? Most parents buy video games for their kids to occupy their time leisure, while other parents frown at their kids when they play video games. Despite the disparity, every parent would be proud of their child if he/she eventually turns a celebrity or millionaire through playing video games like Dantdm. Biography of Dantdm Dantdm was born Daniel ...

LaurDIY  Biography: 5 Facts You Need To Know About The YouTuber LaurDIY is the YouTube channel of Lauren Riihimaki which she created on December 1, 2011, when she was still a college undergrad with the sole aim of giving Do It Yourself (DIY) as well as practical fashion and beauty tips to her followers. She has used the channel to establish herself as a YouTube personality ...

Lachlan Ross Power  Bio And Family Life Of Australian The YouTube Star It is amazing the varied sources of income that the internet has made possible in this day and age. Internet fame can get its holder a whole lot of monetary and social benefits, but it must be noted that it does not come easy or cheap. For those who desire fame, content is the sacrifice ...

Alfie Deyes  Bio and Net Worth: Everything You Need To Know Alfie Deyes is one internet personality you definitely would like to know about. He boasts of over 10 million subscribers on three of his YouTube channels and has three bestseller books to his name. He is probably the most renowned young personality on YouTube today and his vlogging empire continues to grow by the day. ...

Colleen Ballingers Love Story With Husband Erik Stocklin and How Much She Is Worth Now Colleen Ballinger is an American comedian and YouTuber who is a very funny, adventurous, and highly talented woman. She is also an actress, singer, and writer. Collen is widely known for her work on YouTube where she posts content on her channel, Miranda Sings. The comedian has gained many subscribers over the years and has ...

Who Are The Dude Perfect Members and How Much Are They Worth? Entertainment in the 21st century can be digested in many forms and with platforms like YouTube, the creators and purveyors of entertainment have been democratized. Today, one of the most popular platforms to exhibit ones creative talents is YouTube, even though there are other platforms like Twitter, Facebook, who suffer in comparison to YouTube because ...

Who Is Rudy Mancuso, What Is His Earning Power and What Do We Know About His Girlfriend? Rudy Mancuso started his internet journey on Vine. He would later transition to YouTube where he solidified his place among the internets most beloved comedic creators. He is now regarded as one of the renowned internet personalities in the world, with a presence in mainstream TV and film projects like Comedy Centrals Drunk History and ...

Vsauce (Michael Stevens) Biography and Net Worth: All You Need To Know The advent of YouTube and the internet as a whole revolutionized how human beings consume information. With each passing year, the percentage of learning that is done in a traditional classroom decrease as a seismic shift to internet-based learning happens in our education industry. From open courses online to YouTube classes and videos, there are ...

How did Jake Paul Make His YouTube Big Break and Who is His Wife? One of the most interesting Social Media personalities of the 21st century is the young and popular Jake Paul whose elder brother is the famed Vine star, Logan Paul. Jake has utilized the power of the internet to bring himself to the limelight with a channel named JakePaulProductions that has amassed up to six billion ...

5 Facts You Need To Know About Reaction Time (Tal Fishman)  The American YouTuber Before 2015, the leading meaning of reaction time was the amount of time it takes to respond to a stimulus, until Tal Fishman started his channel, Reaction Time on YouTube and the dominant meaning changed. Today, a google search of Reaction Time would deliver Tal Fishmans videos and YouTube channel link with a few physics ...

Grace Helbig  Net Worth, Boyfriend and Family Life of The YouTuber Grace Helbig is an American internet personality, comedian, actress, and writer. She became popular due to her daily vlog series, DailyGrace, which ran on My Damn Channel from 2008 to 2013. Helbig is also popular for her own indie series on YouTube, ItsGrace, which she launched in 2014. Her vlogs which feature random stuff such as ...

Mark Wiens Bio  Ethnicity, Wife and Parents Food is a great way to connect with people. We all love to eat, if not for the pleasure of food, the satisfaction of quenching hunger, and the very process of providing and sharing that food is part of the strongest bonds that bind humanity together. Maybe it is our historical connection to food, where ...

Is Filthy Frank Dead, What Happened To Him and How Much Is He Worth? As George Kusunoki Miller, he was a nobody. However, as Filthy Frank, George was one of the most famous internet personalities on the planet. The Filthy Frank Show, a sketch series on his YouTube channel, TVFilthyFrank, was one of the platforms most influential creations. He is the reason a crazy dance song, Harlem Shake, made it ...

CaptainSparklez Bio  Net Worth, House and Cars of The Famous YouTuber Sometimes, what society wants from its citizens is quite different from what the citizens want for themselves. This is evident in the life and career of video blogger and American YouTube personality, Jordan Maron famous for his YouTube channel CaptainSparklez. He dropped out of school after discovering his talent in playing an online game called Minecraft. ...

Who is Simply Nailogical (Cristine Rotenberg)? Here are Facts You Must Know Canadian Youtube personality, Simply Nailogical (Cristine Rotenberg) originally started out polishing and designing nails even before it became a trendy culture in the social media. Simply Nailogica started out her showbiz career in her early days as a child actress, acting in commercials for game and toy companies. Aside from acting, she is blogger, vlogger, specializing ...

5 Interesting Facts You Need To Know About Huda Beauty In the world of entrepreneurship, it is interesting when an individual has a mentor who he/she looks up to, this yield more productivity on the part of the individual. The iconic and rich American beautician and makeup artist Huda Kattan nicknamed Heida is the founder of the Huda Beauty blog which is number one Instagram beauty blog ...

Is Dino MasterChef Gay? Details About His Ethnicity, Girlfriend, Where He Is Now Food, for the better part of the early years of human life, was nothing more than what we needed for survival. There was no artistry or curation to the method of cooking. The scarcity of food left no room for artistic expression until we figured out agriculture and we could make as much as we ...

Who Is Gabbie Hanna And How Did She Become Famous? As the world shifts to digital media and depends more and more on streaming services for its news and entertainment content, YouTubers have become one of the leading creators in the new media world. Their understanding of the online audience: how to create, maintain, and increase followers, are all handy skills that have primed them ...

Jacksepticeye  Height, Girlfriend & Net Worth Jacksepticeye is a YouTuber and actor who gained popularity with a series of gaming videos he uploads on his channel to the delight of millions of his subscribers. He is Known primarily for his comic video game series titled Lets Play and his vlogs. His channel was formerly ranked 46th in the list of most subscribed ...

Chris Heria Personal Details: About His Wife, Height & Ethnicity Background In this generation, keeping fit has become one of the major criteria for being hale and hearty. In fact, most occupations these days are majorly concerned with ones body mass, weight and looks. Unlike the past where most people have to register in a gym to keep fit, social media has made it quite easy ...

Everything You Need To Know About Game Grumps Gaming is becoming incredibly popular on YouTube these days with game vloggers make millions of dollars out of them yearly. One of the most popular up-coming gaming YouTube channels is Game Grumps. The Lets Play series was created in 2012 and celebrated its fifth anniversary on July 18th, 2017. In six years of its existence, the ...

Daithi De Nogla Biography, Girlfriend and Net Worth YouTube has created an avenue for many to make wealth and become famous from the comfort of their homes while having fun. Many have built a career out of the platform, uploading numerous videos that have earned them the admiration of viewers across the globe. For Daithi De Nogla, he is loved for his humorous commentary on ...

Does Phoebe Robinson Have A Boyfriend or Husband and What Do We Know About Her Family? Phoebe Robinson is a New York-based comedian, writer, and actress. She is best known as the co-creator and co-host of the WNYC Studios podcast 2 Dope Queens. Just like some other female comedians, she never had any original plans of becoming a stand-up comedian even though, according to her, she took a class on a whim at Carolines on Broadway. After ...

Who Are Lex and Alana from Listed Sisters? What Is Their Ethnicity & Is the Show Cancelled? America is a country built on diversity. Everywhere you look all over the country, a countless number of immigrants or children of immigrants have become an integral part of the fabric of the country. From entertainment to business, immigrants are creating a niche for themselves and climbing to the summit of their respective professions. One ...

Riveting Facts About Danielle Lombard And What She Is Best Known For The American entertainment industry is one that provides many avenues for aspiring hopefuls to express their talents and become famous. From films to television shows and game shows, there is no shortage of ways for men and women who desire fame to pursue and earn it in the United States of America. Another tested medium ...

Unearthing New Details About The YouTube Success And Personal Life of Alex Burriss of Wassabi Productions Wildly hilarious and truly audacious, Alex Wassabi is an American YouTuber who has become a very popular face on the video-sharing platform after having garnered millions of subscribers over the years by keeping people glued to his channel with his witty parody video releases. If you have always loved parody videos, there is every chance ...

Everything You Need To Know About H2O Delirious H2O Delirious whose full birth name is reported to be Jonathan Gormon Dennis has successfully kept himself mystified by hiding his face behind the masks leaving his loyal fans speculating who he really is for many years. The American YouTube star is easily identified by the Jason Mask Style with make-up which he wears on his ...

Who Is HolaSoyGerman and What Happened To Him? German Garmendia has certainly seen it all when it comes to internet success. His channels, HolaSoyGerman and JuegaGerman are in the top twenty most subscribed channel on YouTube. The Chilean YouTuber found a way to tap into one of the worlds greatest inventions and make a living from it. He has been able to build ...

Who Are Glenn Becks Family, What Is His Net Worth And What Happened To Him? The American political commentary space is filled with different personalities. A few of them, through their rhetoric, charisma, and resources have been able to build a large following of men and women who listen to them for insight and direction for various political and social issues in the United States. For Conservatives, the story is ...

Following Charissa Thompsons Rise Through The Ranks Of Sports Casting and All About Her Boyfriend Superstar TV host and sportscaster, Charissa Thompson, has been hailed as one of the highest-profile women journalists in America, and the reason is there for all to see. She has worked for popular establishments such as Versus, Yahoo! Sports, ESPN, GSN, and Big Ten Network. She currently hosts the popular pre-game show, Fox NFL Kickoff, ...

Is Chris Kattan Gay or Does He Have A Wife? What Is His Net Worth? Chris Kattan is a popular American comedian and actor. He has appeared in several comic movies and TV series such as The Middle, A Night at the Roxbury and Bunnicula. Kattan is, however, most popular for his six-year stint as a cast member of Saturday Night Live. During his time on the legendary show, he ...

Everything You Should Know About the Rise of Insta Star Claire Abbott and Why She Gave It All Up A lot of young Americans have shot into the limelight for uploading different kinds of videos on YouTube. Some of these young stars include Connor Franta, Desi Perkins, Emma Chamberlain, the Dolan Twins (Ethan and Grayson), and Claire Abbott. The latter became a social media celebrity for uploading sexy bikini pictures of herself on social media. Apart from ...

5 Facts You Need To Know About The YouTube Channel  h3h3Productions H3h3Productions is a YouTube channel that specializes on Comic responses or reactions of other contents or trendy stories. The celebrity couple that created the channel has over time racked up sizable views for their commentaries and contents. Even though they had their own fair share of copyright cases, thankfully they scored an unprecedented victory in all ...

Lilypichu Bio  Height, Brother and Love Story With Albert SleightlyMusical Chang Like most popular internet celebrities, Lilypichu is one of those Twitch streamers who spend their lives on camera. From daydreaming about the possibility of becoming a full-time professional streamer, she grew to live out her dreams on the popular live streaming platform where people play games, make crafts, and showcase their day-to-day activities. Given the rise of ...

KSI  What To Know About His Girlfriend, Brother  Deji Olatunji & Net Worth Assuredly, when Internet inventors Vint Cerf and Bob Khan created the technological masterpiece, they probably did not know how massive the creation will be harnessed by many for different purposes including as a platform for earning money through content creation. One of such person who smiles to the bank regularly today for spending time creating ...

The Interesting Progression and Highlights of Carrie Keagans Career as a Host and Actress Carrie Keagan has garnered huge fame through her various stints on television. She is not just your regular TV host but one with a difference. Keagan has hosted several high profile events and TV shows, including VH1s Big Morning Buzz Live and Fox News Channels Red Eye with Greg Gutfeld. However, not many know she ...

The Gist On Elise Jordans Marriages And Her Rise To Prominence Political commentaries tend to be boring when it is handled by someone who does not have a knack for it. However, when you see the likes of Elise Jordan run the same commentary, you will have a lot of reasons to look forward to watching her again as the journalist is well-versed in the field ...

What Is Timmy Thick Best Known For and How Successful Is The Star? Thanks to the internet, many people whose talents would have ordinarily gone unnoticed have become famous. A very good example of this modern-day internet celebrity is Timmy Thick, an American social media star. He became popular on Instagram due to his penchant for posting raunchy pictures of himself. He also often posted videos of himself ...

What Does Heather Storm Do For a Living and Who Is She Dating? Reality Television is a great way to make a name for oneself as well as amass a fortune. Heather Storm can attest to this as she is one of those who have made a name and earned a lot from reality TV. She made her name appearing on shows like Car Fanatics, Awesome Autos, and, ...

Matt Carriker Biography  Net Worth, Wife & Height Unlike your regular veterinary doctor next door, Matt Carriker chose to spice up his noble profession with the unusual. Though he is known to many as a medical practitioner, Carriker is better renowned as a YouTube star and an animal lover. Having recorded huge successes on his various YouTube channels, the vet doctors name and ...

Jillian Mele of Fox News Career Achievements, Husband & Measurements There are quite a good number of presenters on radio and television who listeners and viewers may never wish to miss any of their shows because of their sensational golden voice, beauty or the special way or artistry they anchor their shows. Jillian Mele is one of such. She has been at the top of ...

Who is Gillian Turner of Fox News? Her Fiance or Husband and Net Worth Gillian Turner is well-known as a news correspondent for Fox News Channel but before she became a TV personality, she built an intimidating resume working for different institutions, including the American government. She served in different capacities at the White House National Security Council during the administration of former US Presidents  George W. Bush and Barack Obama. ...

Gloria Govan Bio  Age, Ethnicity & Height Even as Gloria Govan is famous as an American actress, author, a TV host, and reality television star, shes more popular as the wife of the former NBA player, Matt Barnes. She became known after appearing on the Florida version of the reality television series, Basketball Wives and later, Basketball Wives: LA  after Matt was traded to the Los Angeles Lakers. Sadly, ...

Michael Fishmans Interesting Start as an Actor and Why He Divorced His Wife of Many Years When one door closes, another one opens. As silly as that axiom may seem, it is the story of the resurgence of Michael Fishman, who plays D.J Conner on the popular show, Roseanne. Having played the character for several years as a child actor into his teenage years; when the show originally ended, Michael did ...

Who Is October Gonzalez  Tony Gonzalezs Wife? All You Need To Know October Gonzalez is a popular American TV host and media personality. Additionally, she is also a model. Gonzalez has hosted several TV shows such as Beat Shazam, Entertainment Tonight, and Rachel Ray. She has also featured in several reality TV shows. Gonzalezs fame is not just due to her profession but also because of her ...

Who Is Tony Berlin  Harris Faulkners Husband: His Children and Family Facts Tony Berlin is a popular American media guru. He has variously worked as a reporter, anchor, and producer for some of the biggest TV networks in America. They include CNN, CBS, NBC, and ABC (where he hosted the popular Good Morning America). Berlin has now diversified into public relations and owns his own PR firm. ...

The Progression of Gianna Tobonis Journalism Career and Details About Her Marriage to Kyle Buckley Gianna Toboni may not be your ideal newscaster but her unusual reporting is what made her a household name. The American journalist is renowned for her hard-hitting and authentic reportage. A motivator and activist for total press freedom, Gianna loves to explore pervasive cultural issues. Not only does this unique and ambitious journalist call for all ...

Dog The Bounty Hunters Family Including Details of His Late Wife and Kids Popularly known as Dog, a name which he got from the television series, Dog The Bounty Hunter, Duane Chapman, an American bounty hunter, and one-time bail bondsman, went from being convicted for a felony to being a reality TV star. He was brought to the limelight following the capture of the convicted criminal, Andrew Luster in 2003 and this eventually made ...

Vicky Karayiannis, Chris Cornells Wifes Bio, Children and Family The world of showbiz is made up of different people who serve different roles, and function in a variety of capacities, and one of the most important people are those in the background. Publicists are undoubtedly one of these background people yet they are vital to the life and fame of most of our favorite ...

Joe Rogan Has A Step-Daughter and 2 Other Kids With Wife Jessica Ditzel  Meet His Family Joe Rogan is a popular American stand-up comedian and TV host. His journey to stardom began in the late 80s and has seen him host several shows, the most popular is the game show titled Fear Factor. The exciting show dares contestants to face some of their greatest fears and embark on challenging stunts. The ...

Josh Gates and Wife Hallie Gnatovich Have 2 Kids But Who Has the Higher Net Worth? Best known for his explorations and adventures, Josh Gates, is a television presenter with a voracious appetite for seeing the world and the beauties in it. Some of that beauty, however, is in his home, in the form of two children he shares with his wife, Hallie Gnatovich. Not excluded is their marriage which has lasted ...

Holly Sonders Wiki, Plastic Surgery & Why She Divorced Her Husband  Erik Kuselias After trying everything within her capacity to have a low key wedding, Holly Sonders was drawn to the public because of her husbands controversy at his workplace. Well, the two are rumored to be divorced but the article below will give more light on how true these rumors are. Meanwhile, Holly Sonders is yet to ...

Nadeska Alexis Bio  Age, Boyfriend & Net Worth Journalism is one diverse profession that allows the practitioners to choose their area of specialty, build a career on it by reporting the truth and facts which in the long run will distinguish them as deserving commendation and recognition among their peers. Some choose to specialize in political journalism, while to others it is sports ...

Media Platforms Charlamagne Tha God Has Explored and All The Controversies He Has Courted Charlamagne Tha God is an American on-air personality, radio presenter, and more recently, author. He is popularly known as a co-host on New York radios nationally syndicated show, The Breakfast Club, a program he has been hosting alongside DJ Envy and Angela Yee since 2010. However, his early years had no connection to his current career ...

A Look At Jimmy Fallons Net Worth and Family Including His Wife & Kids Sometimes, a childs passion for something is a pointer to what he/she would become in the future. As a child, Jimmy Fallon was literally obsessed with watching the late-night comedy program, Saturday Night Live (SNL). Then, his parents would tape the clean parts for him to watch and later, he and his sister would re-enact sketches from the ...

Kay Adams Biography  Does The Sportscaster Have A Husband or Boyfriend? When you hear the phrase sports enthusiast, women are hardly the first group that comes to mind. Well, thats changing pretty fast. Especially with the rise of female sports analysts and broadcasters like Kay Adams who is famed for knowing more about sports than most men do. And why not, shes paid handsomely for it ...

Ben Shapiros Family  Meet His Wife, Kids and Sister Who is Popular for the Wrong Reasons A multi-talented man, Ben Shapiro is a man of controversial nature, an attribute that has made him an unusual public figure. An intellectual whose career path was clearly defined even before he became a man, the Jewish conservative commentator has always had his way with words. He became popular by sharing his critical and often ...

QVC Shawn Killinger Bio  Husband, Net Worth & Facts To Know Shawn Killinger is a prominent TV personality who has worked her way to the top. Though not initially a journalist by training, she defied the odds and today has established herself as a household name, as well as, worked alongside some industry legends. More than just being a reporter, newscaster, and anchor, heres all you ...

Liv Lo  Dissecting the Ethnicity, Parents and Personal Life of Henry Goldings Wife While many are aware that Liv Lo is the better half to Crazy Rich Asians star Henry Golding, only a few understand why his beautiful wife appears increasingly endearing to fans. A former model turned TV personality, and fitness star, Liv has an impressive resume which when combined with that of her statuesque spouse is considered a perfect ...

Stpeach Age, Husband and Other Facts About The Twitch Streamer Lisa Vannatta, famously known by her online alias, STPeach is a Canadian video game streamer cum vlogger who has garnered fame through her appearances on different video-sharing/social networking platforms such as Youtube, Instagram, Twitch, Reddit, and Twitter. The beautiful lady got her career to a start in August 2015 when she joined the live streaming video platform, Twitch. She rose to ...

Insights into Seth Meyers Wife, Family and What His Net Worth Is Celebrities are mostly remembered and known for the work they do. For Seth Meyers, his career as a comedian, writer, actor, TV host, and producer is his biggest identifier. He was on Saturday Night Live SNL show as a head writer and cast member for more than ten years during which he built a reputation ...

Who Is Jessica Gadsden  Age, Net Worth & All About Charlamagne tha Gods Wife Jessica Gadsden is an American fitness coach as well as a personal trainer. She is better known as the spouse of popular American media personality, Charlamagne Tha God. Charlamange Tha God is a well-known TV and radio personality in the U.S. He has featured in several shows (both on the radio and TV) and is ...

Who Is Collins Tuohy  Michael Ohers sister ? Her Wedding, Husband & Net Worth Collins Tuohy is an American entrepreneur, philanthropist, blogger, and social media personality. She is also better known as the adoptive sister of NFL player, Michael Oher, whose life story inspired the Hollywood blockbuster The Blind Side. The Blind Side tells the true life story of Oher who grew up in an impoverished background consisting of a ...

Eye-Popping Facts About The Personal Life And Career Success Of Sportscaster Heidi Watney Heidi Watney is a media personality who has created a niche for herself as a sportscaster. Starting out as a radio presenter, the brilliant young lady has gone on to work for several prominent sports networks, and currently, she is with the MLB. The sportscaster is also known to have been an avid sports lady right ...

Marty Lagina Bio  Siblings (Martina and Rick Lagina), Net Worth and Wife Marty Lagina is an American engineer and businessman who has risen to fame as a reality TV star. This is thanks to his involvement in the adventure TV series, The Curse of Oak Island. The Curse of Oak Island is a long-running TV series which airs on the history channel. The show aims to solve ...

Is Jordan Schlansky Just A Character or a Real Life Person and What Does He Do? The world of late-night television is an interesting one. Shows during that time are geared towards giving viewers comedic relief from a long day at work through interviews and comedy sketches. The often charismatic host of this show requires the balancing talent of a producer whose primary job is to deliver great episodes. It is ...

Heres How Wealthy Jimmy Kimmel Is From All The Phases of His Career, Marriages and Sons Health Jimmy Kimmel is a renowned late-night talk show host known for his charm, wit, and the A-list guests he features on his show. As the host of Jimmy Kimmel Live! On ABC, Jimmy has been serving comedy to television viewers for years which played a pivotal role in launching him into mainstream fame and enabled ...

Natasha Bertrand Biography  Is She Married? Who Is the Husband & What Is Her Age? Natasha Bertrand is not just a young prominent journalist but a first-rate investigative reporter. With her natural beauty and smile, Natashas sharp, insightful political commentary also makes her a thorough reporter. Her sound political perspective and coverage in the country have made her a force to be reckoned with in the profession. Renowned for her ...

What Happened to Shane Kilcher? His Injury Update, Net Worth and More Shane Kilcher is well-known thanks to the Discovery Channel series Alaska: The Last Frontier. It is a show that documents the daily lives of the extended Kilcher family, people who live without plumbing or modern heating. The episodes follow their routines as they rely on hunting and farming for their nutritional needs as well as ...

Is Stephanie Gosk Gay or Lesbian, Who is the Wife or Partner  Jenna Wolfe? In August 2013, NBCs Today viewers were greeted with two shocking news. Today weekend anchor, Jenna Wolfe, announced that she was as a lesbian, introducing her partner as NBC News correspondent Stephanie Gosk, and said the two are expecting their first child. A long time has passed since then and certainly, a lot of things ...

Nikki Mudarris  Bio and Net Worth: 5 Interesting Facts You Need to Know Nikki Mudarris, also known as Miss Nikki Baby, is a reality television star, model and fashionista. Shes best known for VH1s reality TV series Love & Hip-Hop: Hollywood. Her entrepreneurial skills enable her to create and run a successful lingerie line Nude by Nikki. Not only that, but Nikki has also successfully run the Las ...

5 Interesting Things You Need To Know About Kelly Nash Ever heard of the lady who gained national prominence for taking a selfie with a dangerous ball just a few inches away from hitting her? Its no other person than Kelly Nash, an American sports broadcaster currently working as host of The Rundown show which airs on MLB Network every weekday at 2 pm ET. ...

Understanding The Height of Fame John Oliver Achieved With The Daily Show and How He Met His Wife Without knowledge of who he is and his exemplary career, John Oliver cuts an unassuming figure of a regular man but he is one of the most influential personalities in America, especially on television. Since he began his career in 1998, he has been a loud and unapologetic agent of change, using his wit and ...

Why Did Big Chief Leave Street Outlaws, Where Is He Now And Why Did He Divorce His Wife? Justin Shearer, otherwise known by his professional name Big Chief is a famous street racer and television personality. He is famously known for being one of the main characters on the racing reality television series, Street Outlaws. Justin, who had been a significant part of the show since its premiere in 2013, appeared in a ...

Who is Josina Anderson of ESPN? Her Husband and Family Facts There has been a gradual paradigm shift in the world of sports which has today produced the likes of Serena Williams, Naomi Osaka, and other female athletes that are pulling great feats in different sporting fields. Their achievements have also been followed by the emergence of female sports journalists such as Jillian Mele, Eboni Williams, ...

Is Brittany Wagner Married, Who Is The Husband, How Old Is She? Brittany Wagner has been an inspiration to a lot of sports youngster. She has won the hearts of many athletic students with her role as a life coach and an academic counselor. She is well groomed in her career and has worked over a decade for The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and The National ...

Tati Westbrook Bio  Age, Husband & Net Worth With five videos dished out every week, alongside running her own brand, beauty guru, and YouTube superstar Tati Westbrook has proved to the world that theres utterly no impossibility or limit to whatever one is passionate about. Tati is best known for being the owner and manager of the worlds most-viewed beauty and lifestyle YouTube channel, ...

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Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will raise the issue of Indias "excessive use of force" against civilians in Jammu and Kashmir during the upcoming United Nations General Assembly session, a statement from the PM House said on Friday.

"The Prime Minister has expressed grave concern during today's meeting over India's use of excessive force in occupied Kashmir," said a spokesperson from the Prime Minister House, adding that the issue will be raised during the UNGA session.

The issue of India's treatment to Kashmiris was at the forefront of discussions held during the meeting on Friday for the upcoming UNGA session.

In the worst civilian violence in years to hit the Valley, at least 76 civilians have been killed and thousands more injured in clashes with security forces after the killing of a prominent militant commander Burhan Wani, in a military operation on July 8.

Wani, a 22-year-old commander of Hizbul Mujahideen, was killed along with two other separatists during a gun battle with Indian government forces.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Trinamool Congress leader and former West Bengal minister Madan Mitra was on Friday granted bail by a court here, over 21 months after his arrest in the multi-crore rupee Saradha chit fund scam.

Durga Puja arrived early for Mitra's family and supporters as people in large numbers celebrated his bail while the ruling Trinamool Congress hailed the court's order.

Mitra was behind bars since his arrest on December 12, 2014, except for a brief period in October, 2015, when he was granted bail by a lower court. The relief was subsequently cancelled by the Calcutta High Court.

The court of Additional District Judge, Alipore Uttam Kumar Nandy granted Mitra's bail on twin bonds of Rs 15 lakh each. Besides depositing his passport with the CBI, the court has ordered Mitra to appear before the central agency on a periodic basis.

Indicted of cheating, conspiracy and criminal breach of trust, the former state Transport and Sports Minister was one of the most high profile arrests in the Saradha scam after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) took over the probe.

Describing Mitra as an "influential personality", the prosecution has been opposing his bail plea contending he might hinder investigation and tamper with evidence if not kept in custody.

The prosecution often pointed to Mitra's stay in a VVIP suite at the government-run SSKM Hospital where he spent a large part of his incarceration period, to reflect on Mitra being an "influential person".

The judiciary, including the Calcutta High Court, have denied him the relief on previous occasions.

Mitra had stepped down as minister on November 19 last year, hours before the Calcutta High Court eventually cancelled his bail granted by a lower court.

With Mitra having resigned as a minister and also lost the assembly polls, his counsels were successful in convincing the court that he was no more an "influential persona".

"He has been in custody for over 600 days but the CBI has been not been able to submit anything against him. Moreover, the "influential tag doesn't stand good anymore as Mitra is neither a minister nor a MLA.

"The CBI has filed several supplementary charge sheets but there was nothing against Mitra. The court was pleased to grant him bail on two bonds of Rs. 15 lakh each," said Mitra's counsel.

The only former Bengal minister to have contested the polls from jail, Mitra failed to retain Kamarahati constituency in North 24 Parganas district in the assembly polls. The setback came despite Trinamool retaining power in the state with a landslide margin.

Incidentally, Mitra is also the only Trinamool leader allegedly caught in the Narada sting, to have lost the polls. Five of his party colleagues, who too were purportedly shown accepting bundles of cash, won the assembly polls with big margins.

Welcoming the move, Trinamool secretary general Partha Chatterjee hit out at the CBI.

"Even a murder accused gets bail within a matter of days while Mitra had to remain in custody for 629 days. On behalf of (Chief Minister) Mamata Banerjee and the entire party we welcome the court's verdict and wish Mitra and his family a very healthy life and congratulate his family," said Chatterjee.

"Mitra has always been with the people and the party and will continue to do so. It's a very joyous day for us," said Chatterjee.

Meanwhile, the CBI is likely to move the Calcutta High Court in appeal against the bail.

"The decision will be taken after studying today's order," said a CBI counsel.

--IANS

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(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A local court on Friday acquitted a 41-year-old woman who was accused of forcing her husband to have sex with her, the first case in the country for a wife to stand trial for raping her husband.

The court found the defendant, identified only by her surname Shim, not guilty of the charges, saying it is hard to say the sexual encounter was made against the will of the husband through violence or other forms of coercion, Yonhap news agency reported.

The court said the husband, whose surname is Kim, expressed some form of consent to having sex with her before the encounter took place.

Still, the court convicted Shim of locking her husband inside their house for 29 hours and inflicting injuries on him in the process.

She was sentenced to two years in prison, suspended for three years.

The case marked the first time that a wife has ever been charged with marital rape since the country's Supreme Court recognised spousal rape as a crime in 2013.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The US has refuted reports that relation between Washington and Islamabad had hit a low point and said that the ties between the two countries were "in fact strong".

State Department spokesperson Mark Toner, while addressing the daily press briefing on Thursday, said US Secretary of State John Kerry not visiting Pakistan during his recent tour of Asia should not be tied to Pakistan-US relations.

John Kerry recently visited the Middle East and Asian countries, including India and Bangladesh.

"John Kerry's official visit to India was to accomplish strategic and business objectives," Toner said, adding that before this Kerry had visited Pakistan and continued to stay in contact with officials in Pakistan.

The spokesperson said the US was working with Pakistan to counter terrorism in the region.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The smash hit number "Thalli pogathey" from filmmaker Gautham Vasudev Menon's upcoming Tamil-Telugu bilingual romantic drama "Accham Yenbathu Madamaiyada" will be shot in Bangkok over the weekend.

Starring Simbu and Manjima Mohan in the lead, the film is gearing up for release this month-end.

"The song will be shot over Saturday and Sunday in Bangkok. Simbu already left this morning while the rest of the team leaves tonight. Contrary to reports, it won't be a dancer number. It will be shot like a love montage track," a source from the film's unit told IANS.

The same song for the Telugu version, starring Naga Chaitanya, was shot earlier this year in Turkey.

"Unfortunately, Simbu couldn't join the team in Turkey in the last minute. Hence, the makers had to only shoot the Telugu version of the song with Naga Chaitanya," he said.

With the most of the project wrapped up including post-production, the makers are planning to release both the versions of the film on September 30.

In Telugu, the film is titled "Saahasam Swasaga Sagipo".

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has denounced North Korea's nuclear test on Friday as a "clear violation" of UN Security Council resolutions and a "troubling and regrettable" action.

"I strongly urge North Korea to fully implement all relevant resolutions of the UN Security Council and the IAEA," Efe news cited Yukiya Amano, Director General of the agency as saying in a statement.

An artificial quake of magnitude 5 was detected around 9.30 a.m. at North Korea's main Punggye-ri nuclear test site indicating that Pyongyang had carried out yet another nuclear test despite UN sanctions.

The US Geological Survey said the tremor was a 5.3-magnitude earthquake.

Pyongyang has conducted a series of ballistic missile launches since top North Korean leader Kim Jong-un gave an order on March 15 to test a nuclear warhead and ballistic rockets capable of carrying the warhead "in a short time".

North Korea is banned by UN sanctions from any tests of nuclear or missile technology.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
US President Barack Obama on Friday warned that the latest nuclear test conducted by North Korea will have serious consequences.

Obama called the nuclear test a "provocation" and reiterated that the US was committed to the security of its allies in Asia and throughout the world, Efe news reported citing a White House statement.

Obama also spoke on the phone with South Korean President Park Geun-hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, after National Security Advisor Susan Rice briefed him on the seismic activity detected in North Korea.

An artificial quake of magnitude 5 was detected around 9.30 a.m. at North Korea's main Punggye-ri nuclear test site. The US Geological Survey said the tremor was a 5.3-magnitude earthquake.

Obama will continue holding discussions with US allies and partners over the next few days to address North Korea's provocative actions, the statement added.

North Korea is banned by UN sanctions from any tests of nuclear or missile technology. It conducted a fourth nuclear test in January this year.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
North Korea on Friday said it "successfully" conducted a nuclear test, its fifth and the "most powerful" so far, evoking strong condemnation from the global powers including US, China and Russia.

The North Korean Central TV Broadcasting Station said the country carried out a nuclear explosion test to check the capacity of a nuclear warhead and it will "continue to strengthen our capacity to bolster our nuclear force".

The neighbouring South Korea's Defence Ministry official quoted by Yonhap said that the military was analysing details on what type of nuclear material was used.

An artificial quake of magnitude 5.3 was detected around 9.30 a.m. at North Korea's main Punggye-ri nuclear test site.

The official said the tremor felt after the test put the yield of this test at about 10 kilotons, which is believed to be Pyongyang's most powerful nuclear detonation to date.

According to Yonhap, Pyongyang conducted the nuclear test to mark the country's 68th National Day on September 9.

The test marked the fifth nuclear detonation by North Korea following the first in October 2006, the second in May 2009, the third in February 2013 and the fourth in January this year.

South Korean Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn called an emergency meeting of the National Security Council.

President Park Geun-hye, who is cutting short her overseas trip to Laos, condemned the test, saying that its provocation would only invite stronger international sanctions, deeper isolation and hasten its self-destruction.

The US President Barack Obama warned that the latest test will have serious consequences. Terming the test as a "provocation" the President reiterated that Washington was committed to the security of its allies in Asia and the world.

China slammed it saying the country was "firmly opposed" to the test.

The International Atomic Energy Agency also denounced the test, terming it a "clear violation" of UN Security Council resolutions and a "troubling and regrettable" action.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said North Korea must be given a very strong message about complying with the resolutions.

Germany summoned the North Korean ambassador in Berlin after the test in "violation of UN resolutions".

Germany's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Steffen Seibert condemned the test and said it was an irresponsible action by North Korea to destabilise region.

Pakistan condemns the test and says "it was in violation of the United Nation Security Council Resolutions".

Islamabad calls upon Pyongyang to comply with all the relevant UN Security Council Resolutions and refrain from actions which undermine peace and stability in the region.

Indian Security analyst C. Uday Bhaskar said the choice of the day for the test was not accidental as the North Korean regime was founded on September 9, 1948.

"Authoritarian regimes tend to use such temporal symbolism and combine it with emotive nationalism," said Bhaskar, who is Director, Society for Policy Studies.

Britain termed the nuclear test a matter of "grave concern" and said it would consult with international partners on providing a "robust response".

Meanwhile, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said North Korea's nuclear test was "unacceptable" and would be protested.

"It is simply unacceptable. We must strongly protest against it," Abe said, adding that Japan would liaise closely on the matter with the US and South Korea.

The European Union also denounce the test saying that it was a "grave threat to the peace and security".

The test also comes days after the UNSC condemned the launch on Monday of three ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan.

North Korea is banned by the UN from any tests of nuclear or missile technology and has been hit by five sets of UN sanctions since its first test in 2006.

Pyongyang has conducted a series of ballistic missile launches since top North Korean leader Kim Jong-un gave an order on March 15 to test a nuclear warhead and ballistic rockets capable of carrying the warhead "in a short time".

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The editor-in-chief of Norways biggest daily newspaper has criticised Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg over his role in deleting an article from Aftenposten's Facebook page containing a historic image from the Vietnam war.

Espen Egil Hansen, who is also CEO of Aftenposten, called Zuckerberg the "world's most powerful editor", and said the decision to remove the photograph because it contained nudity (the image shows the aftermath of a napalm attack) was a serious error in judgement, The Verge reported on Friday.

"If you will not distinguish between child pornography and documentary photographs from a war, this will simply promote stupidity and fail to bring human beings closer to each other," wrote Hansen in an open letter published online and on the front page of Aftenposten's Friday print edition.

The Pulitzer prize-winning image was originally taken by Associated Press photographer Nick Ut, and shows a naked nine-year-old Kim Phuc fleeing from a napalm bombing along with other children.

"The demand that we remove the picture came in an e-mail from Facebook's office in Hamburg this Wednesday morning. Less than 24 hours after the e-mail was sent, and before I had time to give my response, you intervened yourselves and deleted the article as well as the image from Aftenposten's Facebook page," Hansen wrote in the letter addressed to the Facebook CEO.

The image, along with six more, was posted on Facebook by Norwegian writer Tom Egeland in a discussion of photographs that changed the history of warfare.

Egeland's account was suspended for the post, and when Aftenposten wrote a story on the suspension and shared it on the paper's Facebook page that too was deleted, the report said.

"Any photographs of people displaying fully nude genitalia or buttocks, or fully nude female breast, will be removed," said Facebook in a warning sent to Aftenposten prior to the deletion.

In his open letter to Zuckerberg, Hansen said that Facebook needs to "offer more liberty in order to meet the entire width of cultural expressions" instead of sticking to one uniform set of rules that often ignore the context of images.

Facebook's approach to editorial decision-making has been under scrutiny recently, especially with regards to the company's trending news list.

"I am upset, disappointed -- well, in fact even afraid -- of what you are about to do to a mainstay of our democratic society," Hansen wrote.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A 14-year old girl in Karjat, Ahmadnagar, Maharashtra, went to see her grandparents on July 14. She never returned. Anxious search parties found her bicycle, and later her mutilated body at a nearby farm. The police said the medical report stated her hair had been pulled out, her hands were dislocated from the shoulders, her teeth smashed and she was strangled to death after rape. She was a Maratha. The alleged perpetrators of the rape (three of the four involved are in custody) and murder are Dalits.
The unbearable uncertainty of bed-hopping has become the stuff of sizzling political scandal in two countries within the space of a few days. In Delhi, former Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) minister Sandeep Kumar, sacked from his job and suspended from the party, is cooling his heels in jail for the alleged rape of a woman constituent. In London, long-standing British Indian Labour MP Keith Vaz has been forced to quit as head of a key parliamentary committee for his clandestine romp with male prostitutes. In both cases smartphone clicks and clips are the main mischief maker, and a salacious, circulation-crazed, agenda-driven media is being reviled. Sex and drugs feature in both stories, as do porn sites and gay dating apps, with loyal wives putting on brave fronts.
A local court has acquitted all 18 persons in a 2006 case of rioting and attack on a police post in Bhiwandi town here.

District Judge A S Bhaisare observed that the prosecution failed to prove the charges against all the accused and gave them benefit of doubt.

The 18 were tried for offences under IPC sections 143, 147, 148, 335, 336, 395, 397, 427 read with 149, and relevant sections of the Bombay Police Act and Prevention of Destruction of Public Property Act.

Additional Public Prosecutor Dilip Bahiram told the court that on July 5, 2006, the mob pelted stones at a police station which was being constructed at Kotergate in Bhiwandi and tried to demolish it.

Some people from the mob broke the glass of the police station. They entered the post and broke luggage boxes of SRPF personnel and robbed them of cash, ATM cards, identity cards and threw away the goods lying there. They also set the goods of police post on fire.

Some policemen were also injured during the attack, the prosecution said.

An offence was then registered against some members of the mob with Bhiwandi city police.

Nearly 24 witnesses were examined by the prosecution during the trial.

Advocate Dhananjay Patil, appearing for the accused, contested the allegations and told the court that his clients were innocent and not involved in the crime. He, however, did not produce any witness in support of the defence.

Rejecting the prosecution's version, Judge Bhaisare noted that two material (key) witnesses are not examined by the prosecution, for reasons best known to them.

The material evidence against the accused is missing. None of the witnesses identified the accused in identification parade, as it was not conducted by Executive Magistrate. Identification of accused before court and police station cannot be said to be sufficient, he observed.

From the prosecution's story, it can safely be inferred that the mob of hundreds of people had attacked the police post and caused mischief by pelting stones and setting things on afire. But, there is no evidence on record that the accused persons were responsible for the same, the judge noted while acquitting them recently.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Police today arrested three persons in connection with yesterday's shootout in the Karaya Police Station area in which two persons were injured.

Three persons - Pradip Bhagat (29), Mohhammed Asfaque (25) and Mohammed Akbar alias Bocha (22) were arrested for their alleged involvement in yesterday's incident of firing, a senior officer of the Kolkata Police said.

All three have been charged under Indian Penal Code sections 307/34 IPC and 25{1B(A)}/27 Arms Act, he said.

Two persons - Sheikh Arsad and Amin Ali Gazi - were admitted to hospital after they were hit by bullets on their legs by unknown miscreants last evening at Topsia locality within the Karaya police station limits.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
At least 40 people, including security personnel, were injured in clashes at several places in Kashmir today despite curfew being reimposed in many parts of the valley where normal life remained paralysed for 63rd consecutive day due to separatist-sponsored strike.

Clashes were reported from several places in Baramulla, Bandipora, Shopian and Ganderbal districts of the valley while peaceful protests were held at many others places, a police official said.

He said at least 40 people including some security force personnel were hurt in the clashes that began soon after Friday prayers at most of the affected places.

The clashes took place even as curfew was again imposed in many parts of unrest hit valley today.

Curfew was imposed in 14 police station areas of Srinagar and towns of Anantnag, Pulwama, Kulgam, Shopian, Pampore, Awantipora, Tral, Baramulla, Pattan and Palhallan as a precautionary measure in view of apprehensions of violent protests after Friday prayers, the official said.

There were also restrictions on the movement and assembly of people in rest of the Valley, he said.

Normal life remained crippled due to curfew and the shutdown call by separatists groups against the killing of civilians in security forces' action over the past two months.

While shops, business establishments and petrol pumps continued to remain shut during the day, markets in Srinagar and other places came to life late in the evening yesterday in view of the 12-hour relaxation in the strike from 6 pm announced by separatists.

There was no relaxation in the shutdown today.

The separatists, who are spearheading the ongoing stir, have extended the shutdown programme till September 16.

Schools, colleges and other educational institutions in the Valley continued to remain closed.

The attendance in government offices and banks, which had improved significantly over the past four days, dipped today owing to curfew and apprehensions of violence.

The roads and streets, which had witnessed increased movement of private vehicles in recent days, wore a deserted look, Public transport continued to be off the roads.

The deadly violence, in the wake of killing of HIzbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani in an encounter with security forces in south Kashmir on July 8, has left 73 people, including two cops, dead and several thousand others injured.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Aam Aadmi Party in Punjab has filed criminal defamation cases against its Delhi MLA Devender Sehrawat, who had accused the party's state leaders of exploiting women in return for tickets, and former party leaders HS Kingra and Paviter Singh.

AAP's Punjab affairs in-charge Sanjay Singh and National Organisation Building Secretary Durgesh Pathak filed the cases in the court of Chief Judicial Magistrate, Chandigarh.

An AAP release said Singh and Pathak filed a joint case of criminal defamation against Sehrawat whose allegations, they said, "defame the women of Punjab".

In Delhi, AAP city Convener Dilip Pandey said he will also file a separate defamation suit against Sehrawat soon.

Responding to it, Sehrawat said he stands by "every word I've written in that letter and when the case comes in the court, we will take appropriate action".

He said filing a defamation case at this time is all "politics and posturing".

"The people will decide who should rule Punjab. Should the Punjabis rule Punjab? Should those rule Punjab who are not even able to start a minor enquiry and find out if an observation has been given and push the thing into the court," he said.

Against former AAP leader Kingra, Singh and Pathak filed separate cases of criminal defamation, as he had leveled separate "false defamatory allegations" against them in a press conference here recently.

The release said Singh and Pathak filed a joint case of criminal defamation in the court against rebel AAP leader Paviter Singh, who levelled allegations against party leaders of demanding money in return for party ticket.

In a joint statement, Singh and Pathak alleged these leaders levelled "hollow and baseless" allegations against them.

On Sehrawat's allegations, the AAP leaders said he tried to "defame the women of Punjab" by making false allegations and has failed to provide any evidence in support of his allegations.

Earlier, AAP's women wing in Punjab had filed complaints against Sehrawat with Women Commission and the Punjab SC Commission.

Meanwhile, Jat Samaj, Najafgarh, has called a 'mahapanchayat' in support of Shehrawat tomorrow near Anaj Mandi, Najafgarh.

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AAP legislators today accused the BJP-led municipal corporations in the national capital, of "stalling" or "obstructing" civic works being done in their constituencies under the MLA local area development scheme.

R K Puram MLA Parmila Tokas alleged that the civic body in her area was either "not doing work" or "had halted ongoing projects." Greater Kailash MLA Saurabh Bhardwaj too accused that South Delhi Municipal Corporation had been sitting on projects in his area, for over a year.

"Even for DJB works, the NOC (no-objection certificates) has to be taken from the MCD. Bureaucratic hurdles are being created in execution of civic projects. I therefore propose that a committee be set up to oversee why local area development projects are getting delayed," Bhardwaj said.

Alka Lamba, AAP lawmaker from Chandani Chowk, also raised civic issues including traffic woes in Rani Jhansi Road area, while MLA Sanjeev Jha alleged poor condition of municipal schools in his area.

Sarita Singh, another AAP legislator, alleged, in her area, even in narrow streets, people are being asked to pay parking fees, despite no such facilities.

"Small traders are unhappy and I request the House to take cognisance of this," she said.

Delhi Home Minister Satyendar Jain and Malviya Nagar MLA Somnath Bharti raised the issue of thana-level committees saying, "they were being closed because they are headed by area MLAs."



"The district-level committees are being still run as they are headed by area MPs," Bharti said.

MLA Som Dutt alleged that employees of civic bodies are being "threatened" by area councillors to "not address" any complaints coming from area MLAs.

The Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP government and the BJP-led three municipal corporations have been at loggerheads over civic issues for a long time.

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Laptop and PC player, Acer today announced the expansion of its retail presence in India with the inauguration of its exclusive store here.

The new store located at Computer Mall in Secunderabad would feature company's entire gamut of laptops, desktops, monitors and tablets. It is Acer's third exclusive store in the city, a statement from Acer said.

Senior director and consumer business head, Acer India Chandrahas Panigrahi inaugurated it.

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Irked by non-appointment of judicial members to the Armed Forces Tribunal leading to work there "almost coming to a standstill", the AFT Bar Association has written to Chief Justice T S Thakur demanding immediate remedy.

The association has also requested that it be brought under the Law Ministry instead of the Defence Ministry, which in most of the AFT litigations is the opposite party.

The AFT (Principal Bench) Bar Association will also observe a protest by wearing black ribbons on September 22, with their regional counterparts likely to join it.

In the letter to Thakur, copy of which has been sent to Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar and Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, Rajiv Manglik, Secretary of the AFT (PB) Bar Association, said there were only five benches functional out of a total of 17 which had resulted in a lack of access to justice to military personnel, disabled soldiers and even widows of defence personnel.

"While it is claimed that there are not enough applicants for the posts, it is learnt that appointments already approved by the Selection Committee have not yet been notified," the letter said.

It said that the reason articulated by the central government to create AFT was "speedy and less expensive dispensation of justice", but with the passing years, it emerges that perhaps the actual reason was simply to take out the jurisdiction of such matters from the inherently independent constitutional courts and bring them under a departmental tribunal which functions under the Ministry of Defence.

The biggest disappointment with the creation of AFT has come in the form of a lack of any effective remedy of judicial review over its orders thereby making it the first and the last court for litigants, it said.

"Though an appeal in 'points of law of general public importance' or in matters which the Supreme Court considers so exceptional that the highest court of the land ought to hear them, was provided in the form of Section 31 of the Act, it was expected that all other issues would be challengeable before the high courts," it said.

While the high courts continued to entertain writs against



AFT orders, the situation changed after a plea to the effect filed by the Ministry of Defence which was later allowed, and has potentially left litigants remediless, the letter said.

It is hard to imagine a disabled soldier or a widow in Kerala or West Bengal to approach the Supreme Court concerning his or her case involving a few hundred rupees and then try to prove that the case involves a 'point of law of general public importance', it said.

Hence, while civilians get a three-tier system of justice and judicial review, the military counterparts are encumbered with only AFT, which is practically the court of first instance as also the last instance, it said.

The association also sought that AFT be brought under the control of the Law Ministry rather than the Defence Ministry.

"Naturally, a tribunal cannot be expected to rely for facilities, rule-making, administration and appointments on that very ministry which is the opposite party in all litigation and against which all orders are supposed to be passed.

"The Defence Secretary also continues to be a part of the Selection Committee for Members of the AFT and also has a role to play in the same Selection Committee at the time of re-appointment of Members.

"The Defence Secretary and other bureaucrats also have a role to play in the committee for investigation of complaints against members of AFT, which again threatens the very basic thread of judicial independence and separation of powers," it said.

The communication, it said, may be treated as a 'Letter Petition' in case the Chief Justice deem appropriate.

"We would hence request you to ensure that appointments of Judicial Members are made at the earliest and also that an effective remedy to AFT orders is provided at par with similarly placed civilian employees," it said.
Two days after hoax calls were made about bomb threat at NSC Bose International Airport, another call was made to the state secretariat 'Nabanna' today, claiming that a bomb had been planted there.

The call sent the police into a tizzy but it turned out to be hoax as nothing was found by the bomb squad.

A male voice called up the state secretariat control room at around 9.30 AM claiming that a bomb has been planted there which will blow up the building at 2 PM today, a senior officer in charge of security at 'Nabanna' said.

"Following the call, security has been beefed up at the Secretariat. Generally, two to three check-ups are done on regular basis but today we have added two three more layers to it," he said.

Kolkata police bomb squad personnel and sniffer dogs combed the entire 14-storied building on the bank of Hooghly river but they did not find anything "suspicious", the officer said.

"We are trying to trace the call by locating its tower position. Hopefully the person will be nabbed soon," he said.

A few months back, a person in his mid-50s was arrested from the city's Kalighat area for making a similar call.

On Wednesday, three phone calls were made threatening to blow up the NSC Bose International Airport. While the first two calls were made to city police headquarters in Lalbazar, the third one was made to Bidhannagar Police Commissionerate, under which the airport falls.

The calls however, turned out to be hoax.

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Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal today launched a scathing attack on the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the run-up to the 2017 Assembly election in the state.

Calling AAP's National Convenor and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal an "agitationist", he said if AAP is voted to power in Punjab, it would "spell doom" for the state.

Sukhbir alleged that AAP's "morality had rotten" to such an extent that it was forging an alliance with someone like Jagmeet Singh Brar who had been "discarded by every political dispensation".

Talking to reporters on the sidelines of the Punjab Assembly session here, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) chief took a jibe at Kejriwal, saying he had nothing to do with the welfare of the state and its people. Instead, he had "hidden intentions" to become the chief minister of Punjab, he said.

He accused Kejriwal of planning to "use Punjab as a battleground" to further his ambitions of becoming the leader of the "anti-Modi platform" to emerge on the centrestage of the country's politics.

Sukhbir alleged that "agitationist" Kejriwal had failed to spell out "even a single progress-centric measure" of his government in Delhi.

Branding him as a "responsibility shirker", the deputy chief minister said if voted to power, Kejriwal would spell doom for the state's farming community as his constant feuds with the Union government would hamper the prospects of smooth procurement and payments to farmers and would ultimately result in non-lifting of wheat and paddy from the 'mandis' and godowns.

Taking the newly formed fourth front head on, Sukhbir described its main leader Navjot Singh Sidhu as a "rank opportunist" who only wanted to "grab power and even exploit the name of revolutionary martyrs for the same".

"But, the people of Punjab have seen through their devious game plan and would give them a befitting reply," he said.

Acknowledging that Congress was the "main opponent" of the ruling SAD-BJP combine in Punjab in the 2017 polls, the deputy chief minister claimed that its leader Sunil Jakhar was sidelined in his own party and had developed a habit of "talking without facts to create sensationalism and hog the limelight".

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An air strike near Syria's battleground second city Aleppo killed the military leader of the largest rebel alliance and at least one other commander, jihadist sources and a monitor said.

The strike on a meeting of commanders of the Army of Conquest alliance came hot on the heels of a major defeat for the rebels, which saw them under renewed siege inside Aleppo after an army advance this week.

Former Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front, renamed Fateh al-Sham Front when it broke ties in July, announced on Twitter "the martyrdom" of commander Abu Omar Saraqeb in an air strike.

The jihadist Fateh al-Sham is a leading member of the Army of Conquest which groups its fighters with Islamist factions like Ahrar al-Sham in the most prominent anti-regime alliance.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said unidentified aircraft hit the Army of Conquest meeting last night, killing Saraqeb and another rebel commander named as Abu Muslim al-Shami.

Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said it was not immediately clear whether the strike was carried out by the US-led coalition, the Syrian regime or its Russian ally - all of whom are conducting bombing raids in northern Syria.

According to the Observatory, Abu Omar Saraqeb was a leading member of Al-Qaeda in Iraq in its fight against the US-led occupation after 2003 before becoming a key commander of Al-Nusra Front and then Fateh al-Sham in Syria.

He reportedly also founded Al-Nusra Front's Lebanon branch which has claimed responsibility for several bombings in Syria's western neighbour.

He operates under different noms de guerre, making it difficult to know his nationality.

He led a successful offensive by the Army of Conquest in spring last year which saw it seize control of nearly all of the northwestern province of Idlib.

But the alliance has been less successful in and around Aleppo, where it was dealt a major blow by regime forces this week.

In early August, Saraqeb led an offensive against pro-government fighters besieging the rebel-held east of the divided city and opened up a new supply route from the south that broke the siege.

But this week regime loyalists recaptured nearly all of the territory taken last month and reimposed the blockade.

Jihadism expert Charles Lister said Saraqeb had helped found the the Army of Conquest last year and once served as the "emir" of Idlib province.

Amid Syria's fractious rebel movement, "he's seen widely as an Islamist unifier," Lister wrote.

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CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury today said the all-party delegation failed to "achieve more" during its Kashmir visit due to government's "inadequate homework" and delayed response in sending the contingent to the Valley.

"Due to inadequate homework and the delay in taking the delegation to the state, we did not achieve more. The homework required to be done by the government was to identify proposals from several working group recommendations and the Interlocutors report of 2010, and to have crystallised the issues," he said.

Yechury, who was part of the delegation, said the homework would have enabled a "focussed discussion" with stakeholders around specific proposals and alternatives.

"The government did not do this. Had this been done, the delegation's visit would have been much more meaningful," he wrote in an article in party mouthpiece 'People's Democracy'.

Referring to his outreach to Hurriyat leaders along with CPI national secretary D Raja, Sharad Yadav of JD(U) and RJD's JP Yadav during the visit, Yechury said the same should be followed up properly.

He also recalled former Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani's holding of talks with Hurriyat leaders during NDA-1 regime (in January 2004).

Four of the five Hurriyat leaders met the delegation, while Syed Ali Shah Geelani did not. The separatist leaders had collectively decided not to engage in any political dialogue with the delegation in view of the situation in the Valley, he wrote.

Reiterating his party's demands, Yechury also said the government should engage in dialogue with all stakeholders including Pakistan, besides taking confidence building measures to bridge trust deficit among people of the state.

Pointing towards the post-visit statement issued by the delegation, which had appealed people of the state to shun violence and resolve issues through discussion, he said it was now incumbent upon the government to implement the understanding in "right earnest".

In this context Prime Minister Narendra Modi's slogan of 'Vikas aur Vishwas' (development and trust) would sound "hollow and meaningless" if not backed by "concrete" actions, he said.

Yechury suggested it could be done on the lines of how the NDA-I government had announced unilateral ceasefire after then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee gave the slogans of 'jamhooriyat (democracy), insaniyat (humanity) and Kashmiriyat'.

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Responding to Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's call for investment, Vedanta Resources founder Anil Agarwal today said he was planning to start a minerals processing plant and a world-class university at his home state Bihar.

Vedanta will build 4,000 'Nand Ghar' replacing Aganwadis as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility initiative, a majority of which would be in Bihar, he said.

Agarwal, who was here to participate in the 90th anniversary celebrations of Bihar Chamber of Commerce and Industries, said the proposed processing plant in Bihar for minerals like zinc, silver and copper would be built at a cost of Rs 50 crore to Rs 500 crore.

He welcomed Nitish Kumar government's Industrial Promotion Policy, 2016 and said that the existing law and order situation is not a deterrent for investing in the state.

"By further tightening law and order, such minor irritants could be ended, " Agarwal said.

He, however, underlined the need for providing capital subsidy to further attract investors to Bihar.

Saying that it was his "dream" to set up a world class university in Bihar, he said, "In addition to Vedanta University in Odisha, we can have another similar world-class university akin to Oxford in Bihar."



Referring to the proposed 'Nand Ghar' plan, Agarwal said it will help in improving nutrition and education for children and economically empower the rural women and benefit 30 million children and women.

"We have asked the Union ministry of Women and Child Welfare to identify 4,000 Aganwadis, majority of which should be in Bihar that would be adopted by us under the project," he said.

'Nand Ghar' are quake proof structures constructed in Israeli style that would impart education to children with the help of TVs and internet and also provide packed food to them, he said.

Vice-president Hamid Ansari was the chief guest at the programme, which was attended by Governor Ramnath Kovind, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and Deputy Chief Minister Tejaswi Prasad Yadav.

Agarwal was born at Goria Toli in Patna and is an alumnus of Miller High School. His group was the first Indian company to be listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2003.

Vedanta's Cairn India produces 30 per cent of total oil in the country while Hindustan Zinc, the world's second largest zinc producer, makes 85 per cent of total zinc.

The group has business presence in four continents -- Australia, Africa, Europe and Asia -- with major businesses operating in India.

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Army chief General Dalbir Singh today reviewed the security situation in the unrest-hit Valley, especially in the four worst-affected districts in south Kashmir.

Gen Singh arrived here this morning and was briefed about the prevailing situation in the Valley by General Officer Commanding of Chinar Corps Lt Gen Satish Dua, defence sources said.

The sources said the army chief visited defence formations in the north and south of the Valley to get first hand account of the situation from the officers on the ground.

"The army chief was informed about the steps to be taken to help the civil administration restore normalcy, particularly in south Kashmir," the sources said.

Gen Singh also visited foward locations along the Line of Control in Kupwara district to review the preparedness of the anti-infiltration grid, they said.

He will call on Jammu and Kashmir Governor N N Vohra later before heading back to Delhi.

(REOPENS DEL23)



The army chief, accompanied by Northern Army Commander Lt Gen D S Hooda and General Officer Commanding of Srinagar-based 15 Corps Lt Gen S K Dua, met Governor N N Vohra at Raj Bhavan here, an official spokesman said.

During their hour-long meeting, the Governor and the army chief discussed the external security situation and issues relating to effective internal security management.

They also discussed varied opportunities which need to be provided to the youth for assuring stable and bright future for them, the spokesman said.
Indian Army needs agile and adaptive leaders who can make sound and ethical decisions in split second in face of conflicts ranging from high intensity combat to peace time soldering, President Pranab Mukherjee said today.

Exhorting Indian Army officers to lead by example, he said they must always 'Walk the Talk'.

"The Indian Army today is in the midst of a transformation and needs agile, adaptive leaders with a broad perspective and wide range of skills," he said in his banquet dinner address at Officers Trading Academy here.

Mukherjee, who arrived here on a two-day visit to Tamil Nadu, said it is not possible to succeed without military leaders who are equal to the challenge posed by full spectrum of conflict - ranging from high intensity combat, peace time soldering, peace keeping, humanitarian intervention, counter terrorism and insurgency.

"You will be expected to make sound and ethical decisions in operational and other difficult situations in a split second. You have to train hard to achieve this competence," he said.

Indian Army, he said, is a "throughly professional and formidable fighting machine" on all fronts and by any parameter and is held in awe both by friends and adversaries.

The President said Officer-Men relationship in the army is a crucial facet in the leadership matrix especially in todays rapidly changing socio-economic environment.

"In additional to leading them well in operations, it is your duty to look after their welfare and ensure the best possible quality of life for them," he said. "The power of leading by example continues to be pre-eminent. You must always 'Walk the Talk'."



Stating that the tenets of leadership have remained constant through the two millennia of recorded history of warfare, he said leadership in its pristine essence is the unquestioned and willing obedience to the leader under all circumstances irrespective of the costs and consequences.

"You as young and dynamic leaders of the finest soldiers in the world must always remember unquestioned leadership has to be earned by hard work and dedication. It does not only come with rank and power," he said.

The achievement of the Indian Army has been possible due to the blood, sweat and toil of illustrious predecessors, he told the officers.

"In my personal capacity of having served long on the Treasury Benches and my tenure as the Raksha Mantri and now as your Supreme Commander I have been an integral part of the Defence Services and have proudly seen our Armed Forces growth from Strength to strength," the President said.

Complimenting the Academy for transforming raw youth into competent and motivated military leaders, he said the five decade old OTA is embellished with the acts of great valour and heroism by its alumni.

"The courage and supreme sacrifices by many brave hearts like Major Ramaswamy Parmeswaran, Param Vir Chakra (Posthumous) and more recently Maj Mukund Varadharajan, Ashok Chakra (Posthumous), amongst many other heroes, should always be your guiding light in the years ahead," he said.

Mukherjee hoped that the Officers Cadets, who have trained at the Academy, will be India's ambassadors in their countries and instruments for further strengthening relations.

"I have no doubt that you will carry a piece of India in your hearts when you leave our shores," he said.

Wishing OTA many more years of service to the nation, he said he prays that the Academy grows from strength to strength in training valiant and dynamic military leaders who add to the tradition of indomitable courage, dedication and self- sacrifice in safeguarding the safety and security of the country.

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Arunachal Pradesh police today rescued son of a panchayat vice-president who was abducted by suspected Ulfa-I militants after 20 days of massive search.

Kuldeep Moran, son of Tinsukia district panchayat vice-president Ratneshwar Moran, was abducted from Nampong in Changlang district on August 1.

Highly-placed police sources from Changlang told PTI that the police team rescued Kuldeep from a cliff in a dense jungle around 10 km from Longvi village bordering Myanmar in the afternoon.

Longvi is the last village on the Indian side and several km away from Nampong, the sources said.

A day after his abduction, Kuldeep's father had received a call from someone claiming to be from Ulfa-I. The caller had asked for Rs one crore to be arranged from BJP MLA Bolin Chetia from Sadiya in upper Assam for Kuldeep's release.

The rebel group also emailed a statement to media houses seeking the ransom.

The rebels claimed that Kuldeep was indulging in extortion in the name of the Ulfa-I. Immediately after the abduction, the Assam police sought the help of Arunachal police to trace the abducted boy.

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A train derailed in northwestern Spain today, leaving at least two people dead and several injured, the rail company and regional authorities in Galicia said.

The train was travelling from the Galician town of Vigo to Portugal when the accident happened near the town of O Porrino.

Authorities in Galicia said two people were killed, but the national rail company Renfe said "several" people died in the train, which was carrying about 60 people.

Spain in 2013 saw one of its worst rail disasters ever when around 80 people were killed and another 144 injured after a train slammed into a concrete wall on the outskirts of Santiago de Compostela.

The train was approaching a curve at more than twice the speed limit on that piece of the track in Galicia.

A pre-trial investigation of the July 24, 2013 crash carried out by a court in Galicia concluded the accident was caused by a lapse in attention by the driver, who was on the telephone at the time of the crash with another rail employee.

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Calling BR Ambedkar "champion of Dalits", Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal today paid rich tributes to him on the occasion of his 125th birth anniversary.

"To call him only a champion of Dalits is to belittle the most outstanding stature of this rare genius. The country owes this very existence as a sovereign, secular, socialist and democratic republic to the Dr Ambedkar's vision and commitment, he said during the ongoing monsoon session in the Assembly.

Alleging Congress of opposing Ambedkar's presence in Constituent Assembly in a bid to avoid a Dalit voice, he said "They even foiled Baba Saheb's efforts to become a Member of the Constituent Assembly from Maharashtra".

He said Ambedkar stands in the league of Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela due to which "Baba Saheb's 125th Birth Anniversary is being observed by the UNO".

Badal said his government's schemes included 'atta daal', and 'sagun' to provide free treatment, inusrance and free quality education to the children of poor and the backward families, are BJP-SAD's way of paying homage to Ambedkar.

Meanwhile, the Chief Minister today said the SAD-BJP alliance has taken several path breaking initiatives to preserve the cultural heritage of the state.

Paying tributes to the national freedom fighters, Badal said Jang-e-Azaadi memorial will set up at Kartarpur near Jalandhar at a cost of Rs 300 crore.

Similarly, War Heroes Memorial and Bhagwan Valmiki Ji Memorial will set up in Amritsar, Guru Ravidass Ji Memorial at Khuralgarh in Hoshiarpur and Baba Jiwan Singh Memorial at Sri Anandpur Sahib also coming up to keep our people apprise about the glorious heritage of our state, he announced.

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blog of the State Geologist of Arizona
Belgium's two nuclear power plants will be guarded by a special armed anti-terrorist unit from early next year, a spokeswoman for Belgian Interior Minister Jan Jambon said today.

"We have decided to create a new police unit which will be in charge of surveillance of buildings such as embassies, courts and tribunals and nuclear plants," the spokeswoman told AFP.

The force, comprising around 1,660 armed police officers, will be deployed within the next few months.

Nuclear plants in Belgium were placed under guard by 140 military personnel as part of an anti-terrorist plan following the November 2015 attacks in Paris.

Belgium also temporarily boosted its security at nuclear plants after the March 22 attacks on Brussels's airport and metro system.

In February, investigators probing the Paris attacks found video footage of a senior Belgian nuclear official at the property of a key suspect.

The reinforced security is "not a response to a concrete threat," said a spokesperson for Engie Electrabel.

"It has been in the planning for months and is part of our continued improvement of security at our sites.

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Accusing GEAC of "serious non- governance" and undertaking an "underground process to hide its misdeed", lawyer-activist Prashant Bhushan today shot off a notice to the biotech regulator, asking it to make public the full biosafety dossier of GM mustard.

Noting that the risk assessment report put up by the Environment Ministry is of "limited value", the notice sent by Bhushan to Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) chairman Amita Prasad also asked the regulator to provide a minimum time of 120 days for feedback on the report to allow independent scientists nationally and internationally to respond.

"GEAC is required to immediately upload the full dossier with its raw data on the ministry website with a minimum time- scale for feedback of 120 days to allow independent scientists nationally and internationally to respond.

"Please also ensure that it is in printable format. It would be good if GEAC would show more respect for science and independent scientists that engage in this process," the notice sidd.

GEAC had constituted a sub-committee of scientific experts to examine the biosafety data on GM mustard.

After the committee examined it, the report was placed on the Environment Ministry's website yesterday inviting comments from stakeholders within a period of 30 days before the biotech regulator took a decision.

The report claimed that the hybrid variety did not pose any risk to biodiversity or agro-ecosystem.

"You have now much belatedly put out some data of limited value while not making public the essential biosafety dossier.

"Apparently our regulatory bodies continue to repeat their historical mistakes of serious non-governance of GMOs (genetically modified organisms) and then take recourse to an underground process of regulation to hide their misdeed that is in violation of constitutional rights of the people of this country," the notice said.

Talking to PTI, Bhushan said that CIC has ordered that the risk assessment report be put on the website.

"They are giving approvals without putting out the data. Putting out the data brings out the fudging, fabrication. The notice is about all that," he said.

The Centre for Genetic Manipulation of Crop Plants



(CGMCP) of Delhi University had applied for GEAC's approval for environmental release of hybrid DMH-11 for the development of new generation hybrids.

Bhushan said that he was sending the notice on the matter of DMH-11 and its two GMOs parental lines and in reference to contempt application filed by him against GEAC with regard to non-compliance with the orders of Supreme Court.

He said that there is a report of the Parliamentary Committee and a report of the technical experts committee that state that India's regulatory sector is in "complete shambles" and unless that system is set right, one cannot allow commercial or environmental releases of GM organisms.

"They had recommended a 10-year moratorium so that the system can be put in place. The renewed push is coming from companies like Monsanto. It is a legal notice (that I have sent)," he told
A top Donald Trump aide said the Republican nominee now believes President Barack Obama was born in the United States, seeking to shelve the "birther" controversy that hurt Trump's standing with minority voters.

"He believes President Obama was born here... He was born in Hawaii," Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway told CNN.

The remarks echoed those of Trump surrogate Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, who went on television late Thursday to assure Americans that Trump now accepts the legitimacy of Obama's citizenship.

"Donald Trump believes now that (Obama) was born in the United States," Giuliani told MSNBC.

"I believe it. He believes it. We all believe it. It took a long time to get out."

Trump was the most prominent early proponent of a theory that Obama, the nation's first black president, was not born in the United States and therefore, under the US Constitution, ineligible to be commander in chief.

Trump embraced the long-debunked "birther movement" in early 2011, eager to push the theory as a way to connect with white conservatives and catapult himself into prominence while he mulled his own run for the White House.

That year, he routinely called on Obama to produce his long-form birth certificate, a demand that African-American leaders warned was stirring up racial animosity in the middle of Obama's presidency.

Obama eventually did produce the document in 2011, which appeared at the time to put the matter to rest once and for all.

But in August 2012, just three months before that year's election, Trump revived the controversy with a stunning tweet: "An 'extremely credible source' has called my office and told me that @BarackObama's birth certificate is a fraud."

Nearly four years later, in 2016, Trump rode to primary victory thanks overwhelmingly to white support.

But with Democratic rival Hillary Clinton leading him in most polls, Trump will need to expand his base of support in order to win the White House. Distancing himself from his birther claims is seen as an important step in that effort.

Asked why Trump himself has not yet announced his belief that Obama was born in the United States, Conway said "you have to ask him."

"But the point is, what kind of president has he been?" she posed.

"He's not been a particularly successful president, and that's what this campaign is about on our side.d
A 12-hour Karnataka bandh called by pro-Kannada and farmers outfits to protest the Supreme Court's direction to release water to Tamil Nadu today brought the country's IT capital and Cauvery basin districts to a standstill and evoked a mixed response elswhere in the state. Normal life in southern Karnataka belt, known as the 'old Mysuru' region, was hit by the dawn-to-dusk bandh supported by some 800 organisations and the Opposition BJP and JDS, but it passed off peacefully across the state amid tight security.

Complying with the Supreme Court order on Monday last, the Karnataka government has been releasing 15,000 cusecs of waterto Tamil Nadu since September 6. This has triggered a wave of protests inthe state, specifically in Cauvery river belt.

The brunt of the bandh was borne by Bengaluru, Mandya, the epicentre of Cauvery agitation, Mysuru and neighboring districts where massive protest marches and demonstrations were held, but the response was tepid in coastal districts. Concerned over the "extreme unrest" over the release of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi to call forthwith "on a few hours notice" a meeting of chief ministers of the two states to end the impasse.

As the Cauvery row hotted up with the state observing the bandh, Siddaramaiah dashed off a missive to Modi, saying the "unrest", if continued, would have a serious impact on the state's economy as also the IT sector which fetches enormous revenue and foreign exchange to the country. "By this communication, I earnestly request you not only as Prime Minister, but as Head of the entire Federal system, to call a meeting of the Chief Ministers of the States (forthwith on a few hours notice) to resolve the impasse," Siddaramaiah said in the letter.

Today's bandh was the fourth lockdown in six weeks -- two relating to water sharing disputes with Tamil Nadu and Goa and the other two over wages including nationwide stir called by labour unions on September 2.

Roads were almost deserted in Bengaluru with shops, hotels and other commercial establishments, malls and cinema theaters shut and banking services hit.

Metro services were also stopped. Educational institutions declared a holiday today,and government offices were empty as attendance was not compulsory.

While some private companies had declared holiday,others had provided 'work from home' option to employees.

Karnataka Cable Operators Association did not air Tamil channels.

Some 14,000 security personnel were deployed here, bolstered by Karnataka State Reserve Police, City Armed Reserve and Rapid Action Force.

In Mandya, police lathicharged and lobbed tear-gas shells



to disperse protesters who tried to storm Krishnaraja Sagar Dam site, during which a few farmers were injured.

Police officials said the injured have been moved to a local hospital for treatment.

A few farmers jumped into the river water near the dam as a mark of protest, but they were rescued by a rescue team present at the spot.

One protester allegedly tried to commit suicide by consuming poison but was stopped by the police.

In Bengaluru, during a "massive" protest march fromTown hall to Freedom Park organised by Kannada Okkoota (federation), led by Kannada Chaluvali Vatal Paksha leader Vatal Nagaraj, a man allegedly stabbed himself with a sharp weapon.

He has been admitted to a hospital, police said. Activists of pro-Kannada organisations tried to enter the departure terminal of the Kempegowda International Airport and the railway station here but were stopped by the police.

The Kannada film industry also rallied behind with actors, directors, producers and technicians holding a protest rally in the city.

The bandh, supported bya wide spectrum of organisations, unions and political parties, was "total" in several parts of southern Karnataka.

Protests and demonstrations were held across state in places like Ballari, Koppala, Chikkaballapura, Dharwad, Kolar,Chitradurga, Hassan among others.

In Ballari, where transgender community joined protests, three lorries bearing Tamil Nadu registration were damaged.

The Karnataka government has decided to approach the Supreme Court with a modification petition explaining its difficulties in implementing its order. It will also move the Cauvery Supervisory Committee.

Water Resources Miniser M B Patil ruled out any move by the government to go against thecourt order by bringing in an ordinance, as was done by the then Chief Minister Bangarappa in 1991.

"We will do things that are in accordance with law, if we bring ordinance against the Supreme Court order, will it stand? ...We cannot take such decisions. We will take decisions that are legally tenable," he said.
CBI has arrested a Director-level officer of Indian Audit and Accounts Service (IAAS) for allegedly amassing disproportionate assets to the tune of Rs 1.67 crore.

CBI sources said A Paramasivan, Director (AMG-II) posted at Office of Director General Audit (General Expenditure) here, was arrested in Chennai where he was called by the agency team probing the matter for questioning.

The disproportionate assets case against Paramasivan is an offshoot of a 2014 case in which his relative, a doctor, was arrested while allegedly receiving a bribe of Rs five lakh on his behalf for not harrassing a nursing college in Tamil Nadu, the sources said.

During searches related to the bribery case, a recovery of nearly Rs one crore in cash was made from Shivaram Thelagar, Paramsivan's relative, CBI had claimed.

The agency had registered a separate case of amassing disproportionate assets to the tune of Rs 1.67 crore. The agency has also arrested Thelagar and another relative of Paramasivan in the case.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
CBI has carried out searches at the residence of former Health Minister of Uttar Pradesh Anant Kumar Mishra in connection with non-bailable warrants issued by a special court in National Rural Health Mission case.

CBI sources said a team had gone to the residence of the former to execute the warrants issued by the special court in Ghaziabad.

The Special Court in Ghaziabad on September 5 had issued non-bailable warrant against Mishra who did not appear before it despite summons.

The court had fixed the next date of hearing as September 19 and asked CBI to produce him before it, the sources said.

CBI had filed a charge sheet in NRHM case on July 13 this year in which it is alleged that Mishra took bribes of Rs 15-20 lakh from drug suppliers for posting Chief Medical Officers in the districts.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Central government employees, who are not entitled to air travel, can fly to Jammu and Kashmir, Northeastern states and Andaman and Nicobar Islands under Leave Travel Concession (LTC) allowance for two years till September 2018.

They are allowed to travel in any airline to Jammu and Kashmir, however, the journey should be undertaken in economy class, an order issued today by Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) said.

The DoPT had in September 2014 relaxed the LTC rules to allow government servants to travel by air to Northeast region, Jammu and Kashmir and Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

The relaxation has been extended for two more years with effect from September 26, the order said.

There are about 50 lakh central government employees.

It said that the travel by air to continue to be performed by Air India in economy class.

The condition that air tickets can be purchased either directly from the airlines (booking counters or website) or through authorised agents only viz. M/s Balmer Lawrie and Co Ltd, M/s Ashok Travels and Tours Ltd and IRCTC shall necessarily apply, thr order said.

A central government employees gets reimbursement of tickets for to and fro journey besides paid leaves when he avails the LTC allowance.

The DoPT has also warned employees against misuse of LTC rules.

"Efforts should be made by the government servants to book the air tickets at the cheapest fare possible. All the ministries or departments are advised to bring it to the notice of all their employees that any misuse of LTC will be viewed seriously and the employees will be liable for appropriate action under the rules," it said.

In order to keep a check on any kind of misuse of LTC, all departments are advised to randomly get some air tickets, submitted by the officials, verified from the airlines concerned with regard to the actual cost of air travel vis-a-vis the cost indicated on the air tickets submitted by the officials, said the DoPT order, issued to secretaries of all central government departments.

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Telugu film star and Jana Sena Party chief Pawan Kalyan today hit out at the Centre, saying it "stabbed" people of Andhra Pradesh in the belly by denying special category status to the state.

"The Congress stabbed (the people of AP) in the back (by dividing the state) and when we sought justice, BJP stabbed in the stomach," Kalyan said addressing the "Andhrula Atma Gourava Sabha" (Andhra's self-respect) rally in Kakinada town this evening.

The two national parties created instability in the two states (AP and Telangana), Kalyan alleged and demanded that they apologise to the people.

"You could not do justice either to AP or Telangana. You denied special status to AP and could not even give a High Court to Telangana," he pointed out.

AP people had been seeking special status to the state but after keeping them in hope for over two years, the Prime Minister finally thrust two stale laddus in their hands.

Recalling that BJP passed a resolution in 1996 in Kakinada favouring division of Andhra Pradesh, Kalyan said it was not honouring the commitment (to grant special status) made in Parliament.

"Doesn't the commitment made by all parties in Parliament hold any value? Is your party resolution greater than the Constitution or Parliament?" he asked BJP, adding that it should feel ashamed of itself.

This was Kalyan's second public meeting after the one in Tirupati late last month.

The 45-year-old actor, who supported the TDP-BJP combine in the 2014 elections, vowed to fight till AP was granted special status as promised.

On Wednesday, the Centre announced a financial package for Andhra Pradesh that include full funding of Pollavaram irrigation project, tax concessions and a special assistance, but stopped short of giving the state a special status.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Hardline Hurriyat Conference Chairman Syed Ali Shah Geelani today accused the Centre of starting a "farce of engagement" to divert attention from Kashmir saying it has been shaken by the resolve of Kashmiris to achieve their "goal".

Rattled by the united struggle for "freedom", India has once again started the farce of engagement that it time and again had used to divert attention from the reality on the ground here.

"They will come again to ask what do we want. They know the answer to that question. We want freedom," Geelani said in a five-page statement.

The Hurriyat hawk, who has been under house arrest for most of the time this year, issued the statement after police prevented journalists from entering his Hyderpora residence for a press a conference.

Geelani alleged that the government had a "kill list" of leaders and warned that any such "misadventure" will have serious repercussions.

He thanked Pakistan for its support and several other countries for expressing concern over the prevailing situation in Kashmir.

The Hurriyat chairman also expressed gratitude to countries like China, Norway, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, New Zealand and Iran and to the Organization of Islamic countries (OIC) for expressing concern over the "brutal repression by India in Kashmir".

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Chhattisgarh Government today inked a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Ministry of Civil Aviation to boost regional air connectivity within the state.

The MoU was signed at a function this evening at the secretariat in the presence of Union Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju and Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh, a public relations officer said.

As per the agreement made under the Centre's Regional Connectivity Scheme (RCS), small airports and airstrips will be developed in phased manner in different cities to facilitate intra-state flight services, he said.

This scheme will cover those cities where flight services have been either discontinued for a long time or could not be started, he said.

In the first phase, Jagdalpur, Ambikapur, Raigarh and Bilaspur (all district headquarters) will get connected to state capital Raipur through air services, the officer added.

Besides, the Centre will provide an opportunity to various aviation companies to start flights on subsidised rates within the state, he said.

Earlier, Raju visited Jagdalpur, headquarters of the insurgency-hit Bastar district, and inspected an airstrip.

At the function, the state government also discussed the prospects of starting flights from Raipur to Hyderabad and Visakhapatnam via Bastar, and Raipur to Varanasi through Ambikapur with the Aviation Ministry officials, he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
I don't know how many young women come to this blog or how many are parents of teenage or young adult women, but here are some safety tips from Kelsey's Army:

T

I

P

S

1. Trust your instincts - If something feels wrong then something probably is wrong.2. Know your surroundings - know who and what is around you.3. Always have a plan for where you would go and what you would do if a situation arises.4. Be willing to make a scene in order to be noticed.5. Let someone know where you are going and when you will be back.Remember the acronym TIPS:ake Chargenform others of your whereaboutsrepare for any situationurvival Mentality (role play situations so you will respond should they happen)For more information, go to Kelsey's Army
"Firm opposing" North Korea's nuclear test, China today said it will lodge diplomatic protest with the country and asked it to honour its commitment to denuclearisation.

A senior official of the ministry will lodge representation with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told a media briefing here, using the country's official name.

She was replying to questions on the nuclear test, regarded as the most powerful atomic explosion ever carried out by North Korea.

Earlier, a statement from the Ministry said: "Today, the DPRK regardless of universal opposition from the international community, conducted another nuclear test, to which the Chinese government is firmly opposed.

"We strongly urge the DPRK side to honour the commitment to denuclearisation, abide by the relevant UN security council resolutions and halt any moves that could aggravate the situation."



North Korea's state-run television reported earlier today that the country has "successfully" conducted a nuclear warhead explosion test.

Monitors detected a 5.3-magnitude "artificial earthquake" near its main nuclear site this morning.

Pyongyang's fifth nuclear test, that comes eight months after the last one, was expected to further tighten UN sanctions.

Answering questions whether China would back further sanctions against North Korea, Hua said China has implemented UN sanctions imposed in the past and as a permanent member of the Security Council would take part in the deliberations for the response by the world body.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Expressing solidarity with the Sikhs residing in Jammu Kashmir, Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal today said he would meet Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh to flag the demands of the community there.

An assurance to this regard was given by Badal to a delegation of Sikhs from Jammu and Kashmir, who called on him here this evening, an official spokesman said.

Talking to the delegation members, Badal said he would soon meet Singh in New Delhi to impress upon him for resolving the long pending issues of the Sikh community.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Congress activists burnt an effigy of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal alleging that he was misleading the people of Punjab by promising clean politics when his colleagues were mired in scandals in Delhi.

Led by Punjab Mahila Congress Vice-President Balbir Rani Sodhi, the protesters, which included a large number of women, held a demonstration against Kejriwal last evening at Rest House crossing along National Highway 1.

Kejriwal, also AAP's national convenor, arrived on a four-day visit to poll-bound Punjab yesterday to boost the party's prospects.

Addressing the protesters, Sodhi alleged that, "While Kejriwal is flaunting his certificate of honesty and clean politics to mislead public, his colleagues in Delhi were indulging in scandals and misbehaving with women."



"AAP captured power in Delhi on the slogan of being a different party, but people are now fed up with its misrule," she alleged.

Claiming that Punjabis will not be misled by Kejriwal's "flashy talks and gimmickry", Sodhi said that the people of the state will "shoo away" this outfit in the coming assembly polls as its leaders stood fully "exposed" now.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The CPI today slammed the Union government for maintaining "silence" and "closing its eyes" over the Cauvery issue even as two southern states of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka find themselves at the centre of a raging controversy.

"It is the lawful duty of the Centre to resolve the Cauvery issue between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. What is the intent in avoiding it and maintaining a silence?" CPI state secretary R Mutharasan asked.

Stating that on issues involving two sovereign countries, the United Nations may be approached, he wondered who would broker peace in the Cauvery row between two Indian states, adding that it was the Centre's duty to resolve it.

Referring to intensifying protests in Karnataka against the Supreme Court direction to release Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu and agitations in the state seeking more water, Mutharasan said in a statement that the "two states are not two different countries but are only constituent Indian states bound by the Indian Constitution".

Echoing the views of other opposition parties, including the DMK, the CPI leader said the state government should convene an all-party meeting and take further steps on the issue.

"The Tamil Nadu government should realise that it is duty bound to exert pressure on the Centre over the issue.

"Only if Tamil Nadu gets 50 TMC feet of Cauvery water, would it help cultivation of Samba crop to some extent," he said, adding that the actual realisation of 15,000 cusecs of water let out by Karnataka would only be around 13 TMC feet.

He blamed the Tamil Nadu government for attempting to resolve the issue through "unilateral action" rather than involving the political parties and the stakeholders, including farmers' associations. "This is a weakness of Tamil Nadu," he said.

Steps should be taken on a war footing by the Central and state governments to get Cauvery water from Karnataka, to save the standing crops and farming in the Cauvery delta region, he urged.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The top Palestinian court is to decide on September 21 on the fate of keenly anticipated local elections after the latest attempt to hold polls was suspended, a minister has said.

Municipal elections had been scheduled for October 8 but were suspended by the high court yesterday following disputes between the rival Fatah and Hamas movements.

It now remains to be seen if a new date will be set or if the vote will be shelved indefinitely.

"The Supreme Court will consider (the case) in a session on Wednesday 21 September and make a definitive and final decision," local government minister Hussein al-Araj told the official Palestinian agency Wafa late yesterday.

"We will implement any decision of the court in accordance with the applicable laws."



Islamist movement Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip, boycotted the last Palestinian municipal elections in 2012, but had been due to participate this year. Hamas has rejected the suspension, calling it a "political decision."



Fatah and Hamas have not contested an election since 2006 parliamentary polls, which Hamas won - sparking a conflict that led to fierce fighting in Gaza the following year that saw Fatah forces ousted.

An attempt to hold local elections in 2010 was abandoned.

This year's vote was planned with 81-year-old president and Fatah leader Mahmud Abbas under heavy political pressure as opinion polls have suggested most Palestinians would like him to step down.

There has been no Palestinian presidential election since 2005 and Abbas has remained in office despite the expiry of his term in 2009.

The high court said it had suspended the elections after an appeal by lawyer Nael al-Houh.

Houh said his appeal was based on the fact that the elections were not being held in Jerusalem and over concerns related to polling in the Gaza Strip.

In Gaza, a court run by Hamas cancelled Fatah candidate lists in several municipalities for "violating the election law", according to a judicial source and a spokesman for Fatah.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Delhi government today sought a high-level police probe into the incident of protest by a group of BJP women activists against Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal at the railway station here, while calling it a result of a "conspiracy" to attack the AAP chief.

Home Minister Satyendar Jain and other party leaders condemned yesterday's incident in which Kejriwal was "pushed and shoved", and also sought action against the people who were "instigated" to enter the railway premises.

"It is a result of a conspiracy to attack the chief minister. His entire security details and itinerary are divulged by the city police, so that people could know when and where to attack him. This was a serious breach of security," Jain alleged.

He was speaking at a session in the House of the Delhi Assembly and also said that "If Kejriwal gets attacked then BJP will pay the price."



"We will get it (railway station incident) probed by Delhi Police Commissioner and its report should be tabled in the Assembly," he said.

Jain and other AAP leaders also asked if any permission was sought before staging the protest, and why both Delhi and railway police remained "mute spectators" to the entire scene.

"The incident did not take place outside the railway station. These women entered the platform and went all the way near the chief minister. Were platform tickets bought by them? Was anyone detained or questioned by the police after this incident," the Delhi Home Minister asked.

Jain also made a reference about a past incident at Chhatarsal Stadium when a woman sprayed ink on Kejriwal in public.

"So many central ministers stay in Delhi. How many of them have had their security compromised? We never ask for security, but if there is a threat to a CM's life, then shouldn't the police respond," he said.

AAP has already dubbed the protest a "pre-planned" attack. The activists led by Delhi BJP Mahila Morcha president Kamaljeet Sehrawat and party spokesman Praveen Kapoor raised slogans and waved bangles towards Kejriwal, when he arrived yesterday at platform number 1 to board a train for Punjab at around 7 AM.

Laxmi Nagar MLA Nitin Tyagi said Kejriwal is being attacked because Opposition (BJP) is losing in Punjab, Gujarat and Goa elections.

"The kind of security details divulged about Kejriwal, I want to ask had Vijender Guptaji or Jagdish Pradhanji or any other BJP leader been the CM, would it still be divulged," he said.

Tourism Minister Kapil Mishra said the incident has dealt a severe blow to the "image of Delhi, Railways and our country at large. And it will take at least 10 year to restore that image.

(REOPENS DES18)



Jain retorted to Gupta's remark that he (Jain) should "worry about himself".

"I want to say this, and it can be put on record that I have been threatened by him. And, if tomorrow anything happens to me then Vijender Gupta would be responsible for it," Jain said.

"Ex-MLAs are getting security and but a current Chief Minister of Delhi gets manhandled at a railway station," he said.

Tyagi further said that yesterday's incidence at the railway station either proves the "incompetence" of Delhi Police or their deliberate "inaction".

AAP MLA Sarita Singh said, "The incident is clear it was clearly planned."



"Let me caution...If anything happens to Arvind Kejriwal then women of Delhi will gherao 7 RCR and police headquarters. And, then you will be able to not do anything. This was the laxity of Delhi Police, and they must be held accountable," she said.

Delhi Police had earlier turned down the request from Kejriwal's office to send security personnel to Punjab by road.

Kejriwal is at present on a four-day visit to poll-bound Punjab.
Political parties should do their "homework" instead of sticking to their demand of seeking special status for Andhra Pradesh, Union Minister Nirmala Sitharaman today said.

"Political parties are unfortunately sticking on to this label, special status, and making an issue out of it.

"I will appeal to them to please do some homework on what exactly the central government has extended to Andhra Pradesh. Whether this will be of significance for kick-starting the economy and making it vibrant or not should be debated on facts rather than just on emotions," she told reporters here.

She was speaking after meeting the BJP leadership of Andhra Pradesh.

Congress has attacked the Modi government for not keeping the promise of granting special category status to Andhra Pradesh, a commitment that was given by previous UPA regime.

Seeking to put a lid on the debate in Andhra Pradesh, the government yesterday said the system of according special category status for states has gone out of vogue following the recommendations of the 14th Finance Commission.

Sitharaman also said emotions are important and everybody sympathises with the newly created state which is in "terrible financial situation" and all are committed for the development of the state.

"I would appeal to everybody to please look at the details (of the package) and look at the facts, see what commitments have been made," she added.

In order to revive the economy of Andhra Pradesh which is in a big revenue deficit situation, the Centre has worked together with the state to ensure the holistic development, she said.

The Union Minister also said the national project at Polavaram will be completely constructed at central government's expense.

"It is critical for the well being of the state," she added.

The package includes full funding of Polavaram irrigation project, tax concessions and a special assistance.

Andhra Pradesh, which financially suffered because of creation of separate state of Telangana in June 2014, will get a railway zone as also all cost incurred on the irrigation part of Polavaram project from the date it was declared a National Project on April 1, 2014, will be funded by the Centre.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Amid escalating war of words between India and Pakistan, the US has called for Indo-Pak dialogue to reduce tensions, saying it does not want to see the situation to spiral out of control and lead to "some kind of incident".

"We strongly encourage in all of our dealings with either India and/or Pakistan stronger relations between the two countries. It's clearly in the security interests of the region that they work to de-escalate tensions and that they have dialogue," State Department Deputy Spokesperson Mark Toner told reporters yesterday at his daily conference.

"That's something we constantly encourage for just that - or out of just that concern, which is that we don't want to see tensions escalate, spiral out of control, and lead to some kind of incident," he said.

Toner's remarks came amid escalating war of words between India and Pakistan, and on a day Pakistan accused India of "destabilising" it by financing terrorism and supporting militancy, in a fresh rhetoric after Prime Minister Narendra Modi rapped Islamabad for "producing and exporting" terror.

In back-to-back remarks at international summits, the Prime Minister criticised Pakistan for sponsoring terror and sought sanctioning and isolation of the country.

"It is important for the two countries, the two governments to maintain strong, cordial, and productive relations," Toner said in response to a question seeking his reaction on American senators' remarks that the US should play the role of mediator between the Pakistan and India.

The US, he said, wants Pakistan to take more action against terrorist network.

"Our discussions continue to focus on the fact that we're urging the Government of Pakistan to take concerted action against safe havens and terrorist groups that threaten other countries in the region and we've been very clear about that," he said.

"And we have seen them attempt to address it. We want to see more action taken, but it continues to be a topic of conversation with them," he added.

Toner said America's relationship with India and Pakistan is not a zero-sum game.

"As we've said many times, there's no zero-sum game here. We need to have a very strong and robust relationship with India and we do - the world's largest democracy. And we also want to have a strong relationship with Pakistan. It's in the interests of the region to do so," he said.

"The recent India and Bangladesh visit of the Secretary of State (John Kerry) and not going to Pakistan should not be treated otherwise," Toner said.

"It doesn't clearly indicate anything about our relationship with Pakistan. The Secretary has a very intense travel schedule. He's been to Pakistan recently; he speaks often to senior Pakistani leadership," he said,



"Specifically, he was in India for the Strategic and Commercial Dialogue and took the opportunity to also visit Bangladesh - I think the first time he's been there," he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte insisted today he had not intended to insult US leader Barack Obama, but immediately took aim at another global figure by labelling UN chief Ban Ki-moon a "fool".

Duterte sparked a storm on the eve of an Asian summit this week by labelling Obama a "son of a whore", prompting the US president to cancel a planned meeting. The pair met briefly later at the gathering in Laos after Duterte expressed regret.

But acid-tongued Duterte on Friday said the Philippine expression "putangina" should not be taken at face value, and it was "an ordinary expression (used) by everyone".

"It's son of a bitch or son of a gun. It's not son of a whore," he told an audience of Filipinos during a visit to the Indonesian capital Jakarta.

He insisted his remarks were not directed at Obama but at the US State Department, which has raised concerns over potential human rights violations in Duterte's anti-crime campaign which has left almost 3,000 dead in just over two months.

"I got really angry about these threats over this human rights issue. This is the fault of the crazy people in the State Department," he said.

Duterte said he had clarified his comments to Obama when they met.

The Philippine leader has become famous for his profane outbursts, and has branded Pope Francis and the US ambassador to Manila "sons of whores".

The United Nations has also spoken out against his crime crackdown and today Duterte added UN chief Ban, who spoke at the Asian summit, to the list of those he has insulted.

"I told myself, you're just one more fool," Duterte said of Ban.

"I will continue the campaign against the criminals. I do not have any pity for them," he added.

"I don't give a shit. I am the president of the Philippines, not the republic of the international community."



Duterte was elected to office in a landslide this year after pledging to kill 100,000 people in an unprecedented war on crime. But his brutal crackdown has sparked a wave of international condemnation.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
As part of the disinvestment process, state-owned Ltd (EIL) will sell part of the government stake to its eligible employees at a discounted price of Rs 187.29 per unit, a move that will fetch about Rs 31.5 crore to the exchequer.

As per the Cabinet approval, the company has offered 16.8 lakh share of Rs 5 each for subscription, EIL said in a regulatory filing today.

"Action has been initiated by the company for sale of equity shares to the eligible employees by the government. The offer for sale shares shall remain open from September 15- 23," it said.

At the discounted price, the government will garner Rs 31.5 crore through offloading of shares.

In January, the government sold nearly 10 per cent stake in EIL through offer for sale. As a result, the government mobilised about Rs 640 crore.

The offer for sale of over 3.36 crore shares drew response from both institutional and retail investors, generating demand for over 8.56 crore shares.

"In accordance with the approval granted by CCEA on May 13, the government has offered 16,84,683 equity shares of face value of Rs 5 each to the eligible employee of EIL at discounted price of Rs 187.29 per equity share, or a 5 per cent discount to the cut off price of Rs 197.15 discovered through OFS of EIL carried out by government on January 29, 2016," it said.
European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker today ordered officials to draw up new plans for the EU's landmark free mobile phone roaming policy after it ran into fierce criticism.

The Commission announced the original "free roaming" plans with huge fanfare in early 2015, but when it unveiled the details this week, consumer groups were outraged by a limit to just 90 days of free roaming per year.

"In light of the initial feedback received, President Juncker has instructed the services to withdraw that text and to work on a new proposal," said a Commission statement.

"As we have promised, roaming charges will disappear. Nothing changes there," it said, downplaying the importance of the apparent U-turn on one of the Commission's most high profile priorities.

"The draft in question was about the modalities, and it was only a draft by the services," it said.

Consumer groups had assumed the Commission's pledge to end mobile roaming charges -- charges when people use their phone outside their home country -- meant exactly that, without conditions or caveats.

As a result, they responded angrily to the 90-day "fair use" limit, charging that Brussels had caved in to the powerful telecoms companies for whom roaming charges have long been a lucrative source of extra income.

Commission spokesman Alexander Winterstein insisted today that the decision was perfectly routine, that Juncker had not been fully aware of all the details and when he had seen them and the reaction, had asked officials to try again.

The overall roaming plan was a "major success" and the review concerned the "modalities" only, not the objective, Winterstein told a press briefing.

"It was simply not good enough for our president (Juncker) therefore he instructed us to work harder, try harder and come back with something better," he added.

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EU President Donald Tusk will urge countries at a summit in Slovakia next week to send guards and equipment to Bulgaria to protect its border with Turkey from migrant flows, European sources said today.

Leaders of 27 European Union countries are meeting without Britain in Bratislava next week to discuss plans to boost the bloc's security and defence measures in the wake of the Brexit vote.

During a visit to Estonia on Friday, Tusk is expected to say that he will "appeal to all 27 leaders next week in Bratislava to send concrete, operational support to Bulgaria to protect its border with Turkey, in the form of border guards and equipment," a European source told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Bulgaria's border with Turkey is one of the key routes for migrants and refugees fleeing the conflict in Syria to try to enter the EU, which faces the biggest migration crisis in its history.

But the EU's efforts to tackle the crisis have been hampered by a lack of solidarity for frontline states that face the biggest numbers of migrant arrivals, especially Greece and Italy.

Tusk has been touring European capitals in recent days to build a consensus on how to move on after Brexit, particularly in terms of border security and in boosting cooperation on defence.

He is expected to reveal further details on the plans for the September 16 Bratislava summit in Stockholm later today.

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Facebook was confronted today with fierce indignation in Norway as the nation's top newspaper, the prime minister and users voiced outrage over the network's decision to censor a historic Vietnam War photo.

Facebook has been deleting from users' pages, including that of Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg, the 1972 picture of a naked Vietnamese girl running from a napalm attack, one of the war's defining images.

Taken by Vietnamese photographer Nick Ut Cong Huynh for Associated Press, the picture was honoured with the Pulitzer Prize.

"Facebook is taking the wrong road when it censors photos like this. This contributes to blocking freedom of expression," the prime minister wrote on her Facebook page early today, in a comment that quickly received thousands of "likes".

The affair began several weeks ago after Norwegian author Tom Egeland published a post about war photos, illustrated by the iconic picture. It was promptly deleted by Facebook.

Egeland's fans rose to his defence and published the photo, posts which Facebook also deleted in line with its rules barring nudity.

In recent days, Facebook has continued to remove the photo and even suspended the accounts of other Norwegians who posted it.

Facebook's moves have sparked fierce reactions in Norway, an ardent defender of civil liberties.

"I appreciate the work done by Facebook and other media to stop images and content showing physical abuse and violence. It's important that we all contribute to the fight against violence and physical abuse of children," the prime minister's Facebook post said.

That post was deleted at midday, with the prime minister's office saying later Facebook had removed it.

Solberg re-posted the picture several hours later, this time with the nudity blacked out in protest and a plea to Facebook to "review its censorship policy and assume the responsibility befitting of a large company with a broad communication platform."



Norway's biggest daily Aftenposten also shot back against Facebook's censorship by publishing the photo on its print front page today, under Facebook's logo, accompanied by a two-page open letter to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

"I write you this letter because I'm concerned by the fact that the biggest media in the world is limiting freedoms instead of trying to broaden them, and because this is happening in a sometimes authoritarian fashion," editor-in- chief Espen Egil Hansen wrote under the headline "Dear Mark.

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An entire family including an ex-serviceman, his wife and daughter ended their lives in south west Delhi in an apparent suicide pact under depression over loss of a young son who was pursuing MBBS in Russia.

The medical student had ended his life last month.

Police said Bhagwan Das (50), his wife Sharda (48) and their daughter Sunita (20) consumed poison at their house at Khera Dabar in Jafarpur Kalan area this morning.

"While Das and Sunita were declared brought dead by the doctors at Rao Tula Ram hospital, Sharda died while undergoing treatment at around 1.30 pm," said Dependra Pathak, Joint Commissioner of Police (south west).

The incident was reported around 7.15 am and the three was rushed to Rao Tula Ram hospital by the neighbours who found them lying unconscious.

Police said the family had committed suicide by consuming insecticide 'salphas' used for storing food grains.

Pathak said Das' son, Kuldeep, who was first-year MBBS student in Russia had committed suicide on August 19 while he had come to India on a vacation.

The 23-year-old's body was found in bathroom with froth coming out of his mouth and his viscera has been sent for forensic test and the report is still awaited, he said.

Police have recovered a seven-page suicide note by Das.

In the suicide note, Das has accused two men - Alok Sinha and Nasim - of cheating him of Rs 35 lakh promising admission of his son in a private medical college in India which did not materialise.

He also claimed his son Kuldeep was "worried" as the duo had failed to return the money despite repeated assurances.

However, police said Kuldeep committed suicide as he was depressed over not doing well in his academics and wasting his parents hard-earned money. Besides, he was also wworried over the amount paid to the two for his admission.

"A case of abetment to suicide and cheating has been registered against Alok Sinha and Naseem and investigation is underway," Pathak said.

Das who worked as a driver with DTC, after retirement from army, said in his suicide note he had paid Rs 30 lakh in cash and a demand draft of Rs 5 lakh to the accused for Kuldeep's admission in a private medical college.

Police said the accused had returned Rs 12.5 lakh to Das and promised to return the balance by September 15.

The returned money was later used to send Kuldeep for MBBS studies in Russia.

The suicide note mentioned phone numbers and addresses of the accused whom the money was given for Kuldeep's admission.

Das also sought forgiveness for his act, from his parents and relatives.

Police said Das belonged to a rich family and had also taken Rs 20 lakh from his father for his son's studies abroad.

He had constructed a new house and his family members including his parents and brothers were shocked that he had any financial problem which prompted him to take the extreme step.

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Opposition National Conference (NC) president Farooq Abdullah today called for a dialogue between India and Pakistan to resolve the Kashmir issue and asked the central and the state governments not to repeat the mistake of using force to deal with the current unrest in the Valley.

The Centre and the state government are repeatedly making the mistake of trying to address the situation through force. The Centre should initiate dialogue with the concerned parties without wasting any time further, Abdullah said while interacting with party leaders at his residence here.

Abdullah said the key to everlasting peace in Jammu and Kashmir was in the resolution of Kashmir issue in accordance with the wishes, aspirations and sentiments of the people.

The need of the hour is that India and Pakistan should sit together along with the people of Kashmir and work out an acceptable solution to the issue. Kashmir is a political issue and only its political resolution can lead to peace in the region, he said.

Expressing concern over the tense situation in the Valley, Abdullah said the basic reason for the present unrest was the non-resolution of Kashmir issue.

He said the people were going thorough very difficult times and facing worst kind of problems and oppression.

The killings and injuries to the people in the past two months are the worst kind of human rights violations which have no place in the present scenario, he said.

Abdullah accused the Centre of widening the trust-deficit between the people of Kashmir and New Delhi by repeatedly hurting the sentiments of Kashmiris.

Whether in Opposition or in power, NC has always advocated for the political solution to the issue and in this regard, passed an autonomy resolution with two-third majority in the assembly and simultaneously took a stand that if there is any better solution than autonomy acceptable to all the three regions, the party will accept it, he said.

Unfortunately, the Centre has time and again hurt the sentiments and the aspirations of the people through different means which resulted in trust deficit (between the people and the Centre) and the prevailing situation points to it, he added.

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The FBI is taking "very seriously" the possibility a foreign country is trying to meddle with America's electoral process and even influence voting outcomes, the agency's director James Comey said.

US agencies, companies and individuals are frequently targeted by overseas hackers, and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's campaign has accused Moscow of hacking into Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails.

The recent breach of DNC data, along with other electronic intrusions, has raised concerns about cyber incidents that could affect the outcome of the US presidential race, or other contests.

FBI agents "take very seriously the notion that a state actor is messing someway in our electoral process  whether that is to disrupt, to influence, to sow discord, or to create doubt," Comey said yesterday at a Washington security summit, without specifically mentioning Russia.

The FBI is "working very hard" to understand the size and scope of any hacking attempts, he said, but tried to reassure the public that the old-fashioned way of tallying ballots in many states protects them from hackers.

"The actual vote counting in this country tends to be kind of clunky, in a way that's a blessing because it makes it more resilient," he said.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper on Wednesday said Russia hacks US computer networks all the time.
Mumbai-based filmmaker Dinesh Anant aims to higlight the issues faced by working couples in the corporate sector through his upcoming film "Mr and Mrs Unwated".

"The movie brings spotlight on issues faced by corporate working couples and is trying to convey important message to audience in such a way that everyone can connect to it,"Anant told PTI.

The Marathi film, set to release on September 23, has veteran actress Smita Gondkar and Rajendra Shisatkar in the lead roles.

The director said the bitter reality is that almost every homemaker's life is tied up to the clock.

"All her life she tries hard to maintain a healthy work-life balance. And even our female celebrities fall under the same category," he said.

"While striving hard to sail in both the boats of career and personal life, many a times we redeem our wanted into unwanted, unknowingly," Anant said.

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As there are no takers for the bumper crop of onion and prices are spiralling down, farmers in the region are now feeding the bulb to the milch animals.

This has resulted in production of 'onion-flavoured' milk!



"When several customers complained that the milk smelt of onion, we probed the matter and found that farmers were feeding their milch animals with onions which are available in plenty as there are no buyers for the crop," Indore Milk Producers Association president Bharat Mathurawala told PTI.

"We have requested farmers not to feed onions to milch animals," he said.

Because of the bumper harvest this time, onion prices plummeted and farmers could not recover even the input costs in some places.

On the other hand, Mathurawala said, the cost of kapasya-khali, the cattle feed made from cotton oil cake, had risen to Rs 3,000 per quintal, which resulted in increase in the cost of milk.

He demanded that the one per cent VAT on kapasya-khahi should be removed to give relief to milk farmers and its future trading should be banned.

Veterinarian Dr Jyotiprakash Mishra said if the milch animals are given large amount of onions in their feed, then the milk will have a smell. It also affects their digestive system, he said.

If the animals consume onion without chewing it, then it may also lead to stomach problem, he warned.

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French authorities have foiled an attack by three heavily radicalised women who were being guided by the Islamic State jihadist group from Syria, France's anti-terrorism prosecutor said today.

"A terrorist cell made up of young women totally receptive to the deadly ideology of Daesh has been dismantled," Francois Molins said in a press conference, using the Arabic name for IS.

The three women, led by 19-year-old Ines Madani, were arrested south of Paris yesterday.

They were "determined" to launch an attack, Molins said.

A car laden with gas cylinders found abandoned near Notre Dame cathedral in Paris on Sunday belonged to Madani's father and the keys were found in her possession.

Clear links also emerged on Friday between the women arrested and jihadist attacks in France this summer.

Investigators have learned that one of the women arrested was the fiancee of Larossi Abballa, who killed a senior police officer and his partner at their home in a Paris suburb in June before himself being shot dead, Molins said.

The woman, identified only as Sarah H., then became engaged to Adel Kermiche, one of two jihadists who slit the throat of an elderly priest in July near the northern city of Rouen, the prosecutor said.

The developments came after the owner of the abandoned car was identified by the insurance badge that remained on the car's windscreen even though the number plates had been removed.

Investigators tracked down Madani and her two accomplices who were hiding out in an apartment in the Paris suburb of Boussy-Saint-Antoine yesterday.

Madani was already known to intelligence services after trying several times to travel to Syria, the prosecutor said.

She had sworn allegiance to IS in a letter found in her handbag.

Today, the woman identified as Sarah H., 23, stabbed a policeman in the shoulder who had been keeping watch on them from an unmarked car near the apartment, the investigator said.

Teams of police then swooped on the women and in the struggle, Madani was shot in the thigh and the ankle.

The 15-year-old daughter of 39-year-old Amel S., the third alleged member of the cell, has also been arrested and three other people are in custody.

The prosecutor said there was evidence that attempts had been made to light the gas cylinders found in the car near Notre Dame in the heart of Paris' tourist district.

"A half-smoked cigarette" and a piece of material soaked in flammable liquid found in the boot of the car had been used to try to light one of the gas cylinders.

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YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 9, ARMENPRESS. The delegation on an official visit to Uruguay, led by the Armenian National Assembly Deputy Speaker, Head of the ArmeniaUruguay parliamentary friendship group Eduard Sharmazanov and comprised of MPs Sukias Avetisyan and Mikayel Manukyan, had a joint meeting with the representatives of International Affairs Committee and Uruguay-Armenia parliamentary friendship group in the House of Representatives of the Oriental Republic of Uruguay on September 7.

As Armenpress was informed from the press service of the parliament of Armenia, the parties highlighted the necessity to support each other within the Inter-parliamentary Union. Members of the Armenian delegation expressed willingness to boost the intensification and advancement of the two countries interparliamentary ties.

Referring to the NK conflict, Eduard Sharmazanov mentioned that Artsakh is never going to be part of Azerbaijan. He documented that Azerbaijan doesnt even tolerate the existence of thousand-year-old Armenian cultural legacy within its territory. The vivid evidence of this, as the Deputy Speaker noted, was the destruction of ten thousands of cross-stones in Jugha in once Armenian populated Nakhichevan.

Member of the House of Representatives of Uruguay Ruben Martinez Huelmo mentioned that the exercise of the right to self-determination of Artsakh people needs to be supported. Members of the Armenian delegation expressed their gratitude to the Uruguayan parliamentarians for visiting Artsakh in 2013 and today also keeping high morals.

At the meeting they also touched upon the international recognition ad condemnation of the Armenian Genocide. The Uruguayan party stressed that the entire world should condemn the Armenian Genocide.
France has urged the UN Security Council to begin work on a new resolution that would impose fresh sanctions on North Korea after its fifth nuclear test.

"We believe new sanctions are indispensable," French Ambassador Francois Delattre told reporters yesterday as he headed into an emergency meeting of the council called to discuss a response to Pyongyang.

"France calls for the adoption as soon as possible of a new resolution under chapter 7" of the UN charter, which provides for sanctions, he added.

The council was meeting at the request of Japan, South Korea and the United States to try to agree on the next steps, but it remained unclear if China, Pyongyang's ally, would support tough measures.

US President Barack Obama earlier vowed to push for new international sanctions in retaliation for the "grave threat" posed by North Korea's latest test.

North Korea's state media said the test, which came after a series of ballistic missile launches, had realised the country's goal of being able to fit a miniaturised warhead on a rocket.

The blast at the Punggye-ri nuclear site had a yield of 10 kilotons, the most powerful to date, according to experts.

The council has strongly condemned North Korea's missile launches and vowed earlier this week to take "further significant measures" against Pyongyang.

Japan and several other council members are calling for new sanctions, but China has repeatedly stressed the need to avoid an escalation of tension on the Korean peninsula.

In a clear reference to China, US Ambassador Samantha Power appealed for council unity, warning that divisions "only embolden the DPRK to further provocations."



North Korea has been hit by five sets of UN sanctions since it first tested a nuclear device in 2006.

The council in March adopted the toughest sanctions resolution to date targeting North Korea's trade in minerals and tightening banking restrictions.

Since that resolution, North Korea has carried out 21 ballistic missile launches, Power said, describing those and Pyongyang's second nuclear test this year as "more than brazen defiance.

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Israeli troops shot and killed a Gazan teenager during clashes today near the border fence, the health ministry and witnesses in the Palestinian enclave said.

Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qodra identified the teenager as 16-year-old Abdel Rahman al-Dabbagh, and said he was killed east of Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza.

Witnesses said a group of young Palestinians gathered near the security barrier between Israel and the Gaza Strip and threw stones at Israeli lookout towers, prompting soldiers to open fire.

Qodra said the teenager was hit in the head and taken to hospital where he was pronounced dead.

The border region between Israel and Gaza is the scene of near weekly Friday confrontations.

Witnesses said dozens of young Palestinians pelted the lookout tower with stones and that the soldiers repeatedly opened fire at them.

Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza have fought three wars since 2008 and there are frequent flare-ups along the border.

Israel regularly responds to rocket fire from militants in Gaza with air strikes.

Last month, it carried out dozens of strikes in Gaza in response to rocket fire, a greater response than usual.

The Gaza Strip is run by the Islamist Palestinian movement Hamas.

It has been under Israeli blockade for around a decade and its border with Egypt also remains largely closed.

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The giraffe is not one species, but four separate ones - according to the most inclusive genetic analysis that could have significant conservation implications for the world's tallest mammal.

Up until now, scientists had only recognised a single species of giraffe made up of several subspecies.

The unexpected findings highlight the urgent need for further study of the four genetically isolated species and for greater conservation efforts for the animal, researchers said.

"We were extremely surprised, because the morphological and coat pattern differences between giraffe are limited," said Axel Janke, a geneticist at Goethe University in Germany.

Giraffes are also assumed to have similar ecological requirements across their range but no one really knows, because this megafauna has been largely overlooked by science," he said.

Giraffes are in dramatic decline across their range in Africa. Their numbers have dropped substantially over the last three decades, from more than 150,000 individuals to fewer than 100,000, researchers said.

Despite that there has been relatively little research done on giraffes in comparison to other large animals, such as elephants, rhinoceroses, gorillas and lions, they said.

About five years ago, Julian Fennessy of Giraffe Conservation Foundation in Namibia approached Janke to ask for help with genetic testing of the giraffe.

Fennessy wanted to know how similar (or not) giraffes living in different parts of Africa were to each other, whether past translocations of giraffe individuals had inadvertently "mixed" different species or subspecies, and, if so, what should be done in future translocations of giraffes into parks or other protected areas.

In the new study, Janke and his research group examined the DNA evidence taken from skin biopsies of 190 giraffes collected by Fennessy and team all across Africa.

The extensive sampling includes populations from all nine previously recognised giraffe subspecies.

The genetic analysis shows that there are four highly distinct groups of giraffe, which apparently do not mate with each other in the wild. As a result, they say, giraffes should be recognised as four distinct species.

These four species include: southern giraffe, Masai giraffe, reticulated giraffe and northern giraffe, which includes the Nubian giraffe as a distinct subspecies.

The discovery has significant conservation implications, the researchers said.

"With now four distinct species, the conservation status of each of these can be better defined and in turn added to the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) Red List," Fennessy said.

The research was published in the journal Current Biology.

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Kerala Governor Justice (Retd) P Sathasivam, today greeted the people of Kerala on the occasion of Bakrid.

In a message the Governor said "I greet the people of Kerala and Malayalees the world over, on the auspicious occasion of Bakrid which is celebrated to commemorate the devotion, spirit of sacrifice and abiding faith in the Almighty."



May the celebrations add to the social harmony of the State and strengthen further the bond of brotherhood and fraternity among the people", he said.

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A grumpy looking husky dog has netted his owner a staggering 20,000 pounds that she is now using towards paying for her medical degree.

Jasmine Milton, 20, from Shropshire bought her two-year- old pup Anuko as a way of helping her battle with her bipolar disorder.

But the dog's unusual markings have since caused a sensation online after she set up an Instagram page in Anuko's name.

Appearing to have a steely stare and furrowed brow because of the pattern of his fur Anuko has amassed 11,000 followers on the social media site, the Mirror reported.

Jasmine said, "He's really affectionate, he loves people. He loves cuddles, he loves dogs. He's never been grumpy at all!



"He's always had social media since he was a puppy and he has always had this look as well," she said.

Jasmine is hoping to enrol at the Plovdiv Medical University in Bulgaria next year and said: "It's certainly going to help towards it all the money that he is making. It's not going to cover the whole thing but it's a real good start."



She added: "Before I got him I went through a really low phase, when I was in hospital someone said dogs are a really good therapy dogs, they help their owners.

"It really did [help] I had him three months after I got out of hospital and literally straight away," Jasmine said.

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Residents here have been going without newspapers for the past nine days as hawkers in the city have gone on a strike demanding a hike in their commission.

The newspaper hawkers have been on strike since September 1 to press for their demand.

"Newspaper owners have reduced our commission because of which we have been left with no option but to go on strike," president of Uttar Pradesh Hawkers Association, Raj Bihari Munna, said.

He said he met Principal Secretary (Information) Navneet Sehgal today who has appointed a deputy director-level officer to hold meeting with owners to find a way out.

Munna said the commission of hawkers has been lowered by the owners from September 1.

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The Delhi High Court today sought the response of Payal Abdullah, the estranged wife of former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, on his plea challenging a trial court order dismissing his divorce petition.

A bench of justices Pradeep Nandrajog and Pratibha Rani issued notice to Payal asking her to file a reply by November 17, the next date of hearing.

On August 30, the trial court had dismissed Omar's plea seeking divorce from Payal saying he had failed to prove irretrievable breakdown of the marriage.

The court had said that Omar could not prove his claims of "cruelty" or "desertion" which were the grounds alleged by him for grant of decree of divorce.

"The petitioner (Omar) has not been able to explain a single circumstance to show that the supervening circumstances have erupted which has made it impossible for him to continue his relationship with the respondent (Payal).

"Rather, evidence shows that they were in continuous contact till the filing of the divorce petition," the court had said in its order, adding that "there is not an iota of evidence in regard to the circumstances which have prevailed to prompt the petitioner to file the divorce plea."



It had further held that Omar "failed to prove his case for divorce on ground of cruelty."



In his plea seeking divorce, Omar had claimed that his marriage had broken down irretrievably and he has not enjoyed conjugal relationship since 2007 and that the couple, married on September 1, 1994, were living separately since 2009. The couple have two sons who are staying with their mother.

The petition before the trial court had also added that Omar was subject to "unreasonable conduct" of Payal, causing pain and harassment to the politician.

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A final decision on the much-delayed Rajasthan refinery, to be set up by Hindustan Petroleum Corporation for an estimated over Rs 37,000 crore, but has run into a political quagmire, is expected within a few months.

"A committee has been formed to look into the feasibility of the project. Our refinery director BK Namdeo is also a member of the panel, which is expected to submit the report in two to three months," HPCL Chairman and MD Mukesh Kumar Surana told reporters here last night on the sidelines of the AGM.

The UPA government had announced a 9-mmt refinery at Barmer in Rajasthan to be set by HPCL at an estimated cost of Rs 37,320 crore. From the start, the project had attracted criticism, which only increased after the Congress lost both the Central and State polls and BJP came to power in the state.

For HPCL, which has only two refineries at Mumbai and Visakhapatnam, the project would have been a big boost as its expansion projects are facing environmental issues.

The proposed refinery for which an MoU had been singed by the company and the then Ashok Gehlot government of the state, would use mostly the locally available Rajasthan crude, as well as other crude and will be designed to produce motor fuels.

Current Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje of BJP, who was not endorsing the agreement between the Gehlot government and HPCL, had been renegotiating the terms for setting up the refinery. Raje wants HPCL to bring down its internal rate of return to 12-13 per cent from 15 per cent targeted by the refiner.

The plan came after environmental issues threatened to derail HPCL's plan to set up a 9 mmt refinery in Maharashtra's Ratnagiri district.

HPCL, which plans to scale up capacity to 42 mmt per year from current 16 mmt, was to partner with Rajasthan State Refinery to set up the Barmer facility.

Surana said the company will invest around Rs 7,000 crore this year while the next five year's capex is planned at Rs 55,000 crore, most of which will be used for the expansion of its existing refineries. Out of this, Rs 20,900 crore are earmarked for the Visakhapatnam refinery expansion.

On retail expansion ahead of Reliance and Essar Oil planing a big play, Surana said being the second largest retailer with over 13,800 filling stations as of March 2015, the company has added 100 pumps in the first quarter and will be adding 500 more through the rest of the year.

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Seven persons, including a central Intelligence Bureau officer and two retired officers of the Customs, were today arrested for trying to loot gold from a courier employee at Howrah station here.

The accused IB officer and two retired Customs officers tried to loot around five kg gold from the employee while he was getting off the Kamrup Express at the Howrah Station this morning, a senior officer of Howrah Police Commissionerate said.

"The accused had somehow got the information that this person was carrying gold. They nabbed him saying that they were conducting a raid and will arrest him," the officer said.

Acting on a tip-off, a team of police personnel from Howrah Police reached the spot at the same time when the IB officer and his associates told them that a "raid was on and they would take the person and the gold with them," he said.

"On finding that the officers' statements were discrepant our officers brought them here and on questioning they admitted their crime," the officer said.

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YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 9, ARMENPRESS. The Defense Ministry of Nagorno Karabakh informs the Azerbaijani forces made over 60 ceasefire violations at the Nagorno Karabakh-Azerbaijani line of contact.

The Ministrys announcement reads: Overnight September 8-9 the Azerbaijani side violated the ceasefire regime over 60 times by firing more than 1100 shots from various caliber weapons at the Armenian positions across Nagorno Karabakh-Azerbaijani line of contact.

The Defense Army forces continue confidently fulfilling their military duties and take counter measures in case of strict necessity.
Britannia Industries Ltd, which has been restrained from using the packaging of its 'Nutri Choice Digestive Zero' biscuits in its present form, today told Delhi High Court that they were incurring "commercial loss" due to the injunction granted by a single judge.

The counsel appearing for Britannia, which has challenged the September 6 order of the single judge, told a bench of justices B D Ahmed and Ashutosh Kumar that their business was getting affected because of the order as manufacturing of this product has been stopped.

A single judge bench had restrained Britannia from using the wrapper of its 'Nutri Choice Digestive Zero' biscuits in its present form, saying it was "deceptively similar" to packaging of ITC's Sunfeast 'Farmlite Digestive All Good' biscuits.

During the hearing, senior lawyers C A Sundaram and Sudhir Chandra, who appeared for Britannia, submitted that the order was "erroneous" as the single judge had not considered the fact that their packaging was different from that of ITC.

However, senior advocates Rajiv Nayar, Sandeep Sethi and Pratibha M Singh, representing ITC, countered the submissions claiming that they have "adopted" their packaging and even lines on the packs were "replicated" by them.

Britannia, while refuting the allegations, had countered ITC's submissions, saying it did not need to adopt anyone's packaging, being the market leader.

The bench, which has fixed the matter for final disposal on September 15, said "You will win or lose on the quality of your product and not on its get-up or packaging."



At the fag end of the hearing when Sundaram urged the court to grant a stay on the operation of the single judge order, the division bench refrained itself from giving any interim order and said it would dispose of the matter on the next date of hearing.

The single judge had granted four weeks to Britannia to phase out the existing stocks of 'Nutri Choice Zero Digestive' biscuits with the present packaging.

The order had come on a plea filed by ITC Ltd seeking to restrain Britannia from violating its rights in packaging/ trade dress of 'Sunfeast Farmlite Digestive-All Good' biscuits by allegedly using a deceptively and confusingly similar trade dress for 'Nutri Choice Digestive Zero' biscuits.

Advancing the arguments today, Britannia's counsel told



the bench "this (Nutri Choice Digestive Zero biscuit) is a hot selling item and I have stopped its production. It is a commercial loss to us. I cannot be asked to stop selling this item. Yellow has been our standard colour since 2008."



"On the packing, I have clearly and boldly said that I am Britannia. The judgement passed by the single judge is erroneous. This injunction should be kept in abeyance as it is affecting our business," they said.

"For us, it is a day to day loss. Manufacturing of this product has stopped. If I am not selling the product, I cannot be able to quantify my loss," the lawyer said.

When ITC's counsel said the colour combination used by Britannia was similar to the colours used by them, the bench said, "You cannot appropriate a colour or combination of a colour."



"Both (Britannia and ITC) of you are trying to appropriate a colour which you both cannot," the bench said, adding, "Do you have a monopoly as far as colour is concerned. You cannot say you have the propriety right on any colour."



The single judge had asked Britannia to adopt a "distinctively different" packaging from the one currently used by ITC for its biscuit as such "deception" could confuse the consumers.

The single judge had said it would be open to Britannia to adopt the packaging it uses for the product internationally or, while retaining the yellow colour, it could substitute the blue colour in the packaging with any other distinctive colour other than variants of blue.
The long-stalled negotiations for a free trade agreement between India and the EFTA, a bloc of four European countries including Switzerland, are expected to resume this month.

However, the place of the meeting is yet to be decided but both the sides have agreed to resume the negotiations from end of this month, an official said.

In June, India and European Free Trade Association (EFTA) had agreed to resolve the outstanding issues for resumption of the negotiations for the proposed Trade and Economic Partnership Agreement (TEPA).

A meeting between the chief negotiators was held here to take stock of the ongoing negotiations.

Both sides have expressed willingness for early resumption of negotiations and concluding a balanced agreement in a time -bound manner, the official added.

The trade pact talks had started in October 2008. So far, 13 rounds of negotiations have been held at the level of chief negotiators. The four EFTA members are - Switzerland, Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein.

The last round of negotiations was held in November 2013 and thereafter the negotiations have remained suspended.

The proposed pact covers trade in goods and services, market access for investments, protection of intellectual property and public procurement.

Negotiations were stuck on some issues related with intellectual property rights. EFTA wants India to commit more in IPR. They were also demanding for data exclusivity, which India is completely opposed to.

Data exclusivity provides protection to the technical data generated by innovator companies to prove the usefulness of their products.

In pharmaceutical sector, drug companies generate the data through expensive global clinical trials to prove the efficacy and safety of their new medicine. Switzerland has huge interest in this sector.

By gaining exclusive rights over this data, innovator companies can prevent their competitors from obtaining marketing licence for low-cost versions during the tenure of this exclusivity.

Two-way trade between India and EFTA stood at USD 24.5 billion in 2014-15 as against USD 22.1 billion in 2013-14.

(REOPENS DCM 21)



Inviting stakeholders to partner more with the government to address issues related to trade facilitation agreement, Shah emphasised on the need for change in the mindset of all concerned parties and building trust and commitment towards addressing the bottlenecks.

He also encouraged traders to achieve AEO (authorised economic operator) status as it will assist in accelerating trade in its entirety.

Danish Hashim, Director, Economic Affairs, CII urged the government to issue directives regarding registration of shipping lines with customs at pan-India level.
Sending a powerful message of resilience and courage, an Indian teenager whose face was brutally disfigured in an acid attack walked the runway at the prestigious New York Fashion Week here, winning hearts with her message that beauty is not skin deep.

Reshma Qureshi, 19, was invited to take part in the bi-annual fashion week by fashion production company FTL Moda.

Qureshi wore a floor-length white gown with floral prints by Indian designer Archana Kochhar and was greeted with cheers and applause as she confidently walked the ramp yesterday in what she called a life-changing experience.

Backstage, as she was getting ready to walk in two shows, video cameras and photographers thronged around her.

"It feels very nice," Qureshi said, speaking in Hindi.

She stressed that it is important for people to know "the story about the survivors of acid attacks and that they too can lead normal lives."



Speaking through a translator, Qureshi said the message she wants to send across with her appearance at the fashion week is that people should not be judged based on their appearance.

"You shouldn't judge a book by its cover," said Qureshi, who lost an eye in the acid attack.

"I want to tell the world that do not see us in a weak light and even we can go out and do things," she was quoted as saying by the ABC .

The runway appearance was part of FTL Moda's #TakeBeautyBack fashion week campaign.

Qureshi was attacked by her brother-in-law in 2004 and her face was doused in acid by him and his friends.

Instead of letting that incident pull her down, Qureshi has become a strong voice for acid attack victims in India.

In India, Qureshi launched her own YouTube videos for 'Make Love Not Scars', a charity that aims "to raise awareness for acid attack survivors and empower them to live life with dignity".

In the videos, filmed in her home in Mumbai, Qureshi offers make-up advice and beauty tips and discuss crimes against women.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Amid cheers and applause, young Reshma Qureshi, an acid attack surviver, walked the ramp at the New York Fashion Week.

Brimming with pride, the 19-year-old girl opened Indian designer Archana Kochhar's collection, titled, "A tale of two travels" at the fashion week.

Reshma stunned in an ivory gown, which was offset with digitally printed motifs.

"I was very excited. This was my first time at New York. I am hoping that my participation in this runway will inspire hope and confidence in other acid attack survivors, that they can lead a normal life," Reshma said in a statement post show.

Reshma, who was attacked by her brother-in-law in 2004 and lost one eye in brutal incident, has become the face of a campaign to end the open sale of acid in India.

A court in Mumbai recently sentenced a man to death for murdering a 23-year-old woman by throwing acid on her face.

Archana, whose collection was inspired by her travel to the Taj Mahal and the village of Banjara tribe, said she was honoured to have Reshma walk the ramp for her.

"I am honoured to have Reshma Qureshi walking the ramp and showcasing different facets of beauty to the world. Beauty should not be affirmed by a certain height, colour or size, it is beyond that. It should be an all-inclusive concept," Kochhar said.

Sunny Leone was the showstopper for the collection, becoming the first Bollywood actress to walk at the New York Fashion Week.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A 31-year-old Indian man was today arrested by Sri Lankan police at the airport here for allegedly carrying heroin worth 10 million rupees, police said.

He was arrested by Colombo international airport narcotics officials early this morning after his arrival from Chennai. The accused was carrying 1.4 kg of heroine worth Rs 10 million, they said.

He has been detained for seven days and investigations are underway, police said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Indian Oil Petronas has received environment clearance for expansion of its LPG import/export terminal at Haldia at a cost of Rs 75 crore.

Indian Oil Petronas Pvt Ltd (IPPL) has proposed to expand its LPG terminal at Haldia, West Bengal, from 31,500 tonnes to 36,900 tonnes. The proposed expansion is expected to improve supply of LPG in the state.

"Based on the recommendations of the Expert Appraisal Committee (EAC), the Environment Ministry has given the environment clearance to IPPL's LPG terminal expansion project at Haldia," a senior government official said.

The clearance given to the project is subject to certain conditions, the officials added.

Among conditions specified, IPPL has been asked to keep adequate buffer zone around the storage tanks and construct garland drain all around the project site to prevent runoff of any oil containing waste into the nearby water bodies.

The total project cost for the proposed expansion is around Rs 75 crores.

IPPL is a 50:50 joint venture between state-owned Indian Oil Corporation and Malaysia's Petronas. IPPL has another LPG terminal at Ennore, Tamil Nadu.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A controversial Pakistani opposition leader has said that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's family has employed around 300 Indians in their sugar mill, a claim that has been rejected by the company.

Tahirul Qadri, Chairman of Pakistan Awami Tehreek, who once worked as prayer leader in a mosque operated by Sharif's family in Lahore is critical of Sharif and his brother Shehbaz, Chief Minister of Punjab.

He accused that 300 Indians were working in Ramazan sugar mill which is owned by Sharif's family.

He went on to say that rules were relaxed to give visa to these Indians who are also exempted from police reporting.

However, Managing Director of Ramazan sugar mills Yousaf Abbas Sharif, who is a nephew of the prime minister, rejected the charges.

"We have more than 1,100 workers and they do not include even a single foreigner," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Telugu film star and Jana Sena Party chief Pawan Kalyan today launched a vitriolic attack on the Centre for denying special category state status to Andhra Pradesh and accused it of stabbing the people in the belly.

"The Congress stabbed (the people of AP) in the back (by dividing the state) and, when we sought justice, the BJP stabbed in the stomach," Kalyan lashed out, addressing the "Andhrula Atma Gourava Sabha" (Andhra's self-respect) rally in Kakinada town, around 200km from here, this evening.

Both parties should apologise to the people, he added.

Instead of beating around the bush and citing excuses in the name of 14th Finance Commission, Constitution or something else, the Centre should clearly say "we will or we will not" give special status, he said.

"Don't speak in language that people cannot comprehend. AP people had been seeking special status to the state but after keeping them in hope for over two years, the Centre finally thrust two stale 'laddus' in their hands."



He singled out Union Minister and BJP leader M Venkaiah Naidu for the attack, saying he failed to get special status for AP despite repeated promises.

"I have nothing against you personally but I differ with your political policies. Please don't do injustice to AP. Wake up and do justice," Kalyan told Venkaiah.

"Venkaiah Naidu effectively killed the BJP in AP. It's better for that party cadre to search for alternatives," he alleged.

Training his guns on the ruling Telugu Desam Party, the actor-turned-politician said, "If you can't fight (for special status), leave it to Jana Sena. We will show how to fight and what we can do.

"I strained my relationship with my eldest brother (Chiranjeevi), mother and other family members and supported the TDP-BJP combine (in the 2014 elections). I didn't care even if my life was endangered."



"Don't mortgage the self-respect of Andhra at the feet of the Centre. Hold your head high and demand for special status that is our right," he told the TDP.

"I have the capacity to corner you and cause adequate trouble for the next two-and-a-half years. You have committed those many mistakes," the 45-year-old Jana Sena leader said.

This was Kalyan's second public meeting after the one in Tirupati on August 27.

The popular filmstar, who supported the TDP-BJP combine in the 2014 elections, vowed to fight till AP was granted special status as promised.

On Wednesday night, the Centre announced a financial package for Andhra Pradesh that includes full funding of Pollavaram irrigation project, tax concessions and a special assistance, but stopped short of giving the state a special category status.

(Reopens BOM35)



Meanwhile, the TDP reacted cautiously to Kalyan's latest attack.

"We will welcome anyone fighting for the rights of AP. Be cautious while reacting to Kalyan's remarks," TDP President and Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu told his party MLAs at a meeting here late this evening.

"Pawan Kalyan is speaking genuinely," he remarked.
With Iranians barred from the annual hajj pilgrimage, thousands protested in Tehran today and officials criticised Saudi Arabia's refusal to discuss last year's deadly stampede.

Around 64,000 Iranians allocated places for the hajj under a quota system will be absent when it starts tomorrow, after talks between the increasingly bitter rivals fell apart earlier this year.

As a war of words grows between the two regional rivals, several thousand people took to the streets of the Iranian capital after the Friday weekly prayers.

The Saudis have "blocked the path to Allah. It's a crime and they must be tried," said Javad Zolfaghari, a cleric who joined the protests.

In an interview with AFP, the head of Iran's Hajj Organisation blamed the Saudis for refusing to discuss security measures despite the stampede that killed thousands during last year's hajj.

"How are you going to invite 1.5 million pilgrims and not even allow yourself to think about the security measures?" asked Said Ohadi.

He said that during negotiations in April and May, the Saudis simply fell back on verses of the Quran holy book stating that anyone who enters Saudi Arabia has "full security".

"Last year we had those verses in the Quran too," said Ohadi.

An AFP tally found that a total of at least 2,300 people died in last year's stampede, including 464 Iranians, the highest confirmed death toll among foreigners who died in the tragedy.

But Tehran says the overall toll was much higher.

"Seven thousand people were martyred, were killed, from 39 countries," Ohadi said.

Saudi Arabia says the figure was only 769, but has refused to release the details of its investigation.

Ohadi said the last straw in the hajj talks was a demand from the Saudis that Iranian pilgrims "cannot have any contact with any Muslim from any other country".

That was despite the Quranic verses' emphasis on the importance of mingling with Muslims from around the world during the pilgrimage to Islam's holiest sites in Mecca and Medina, in western Saudi Arabia, he said.

Saudi Arabia has countered that Tehran had made "unacceptable" demands during the talks, including the right to organise demonstrations "that would cause chaos".

But right from the start, Ohadi said there was "very bad hospitality" and "weird attitudes" from the Saudis -- including a refusal to give delegates diplomatic entry, or even cars to their hotel.

Ohadi said depriving the Iranian faithful of the chance to perform the hajj was "unacceptable", especially given the 15-20 year waiting list.

The Saudis "believe they are the owners -- that Mecca and Medina are their properties," he said.

"No -- they are the properties of Islam.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Jharkhand was today awarded the 45th Skoch Merit Award and Skoch Smart Governance Gold Award, 2016.

The 45th Skoch Summit was held in Hyderabad, an official release said here.

The state clinched the 'Mukhyamantri Jan Samvad Centre' award after it came into the top hundred among many ambitious projects presented by different states, the release said.

The programme was launched by Chief Minister Raghubar Das soon after he assumed office, which helped solve hundreds of problems and speeding up of works - the main features among the Centre were toll free number 181, Jansamvad, jansamvad.Jharkhand.Gov.In, mobile application, Janata darbar and social networking site, the release added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 9, ARMENPRESS. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan held a phone talk with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Anadolu reported.

The sides discussed the bilateral relations, as well as the recent developments in Syria. Erdogan stressed the necessity of establishing a ceasefire in Aleppo as soon as possible. The two Presidents stated that they are holding talks with the US over this issue.

Economic ties between Turkey and Russia were also discussed, including energy sector cooperation, the Turkish Stream project.
Jain Irrigation Systems today said its Israeli subsidiary has bagged a Rs 140 crore contract from the Eastern African nation of Eritrea for supply and installation of solar powered drip irrigation systems.

The contract will be executed in next 18 months, the company said in a BSE filing.

"NaanDanJain Irrigation today signed a contract with Ministry of Agriculture and National Development, Eritrea for supply and installation of solar powered drip irrigation systems of value 18.7 million euros (Rs 140 crore)," Jain Irrigation said.

The project is fully funded by the European Union and will bring much needed relief for about 2,000 farmers in 14 locations spread over Eritrea, it said.

In each of the 14 project locations, water from reservoirs will be supplied to groups of farmers through the drip irrigation systems, it added.

NaanDanJain Irrigation is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Jain Irrigation.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Jaiprakash Associates today reported widening of its standalone net loss to Rs 602.95 crore for the quarter ending June 2016.

The company had posted a net loss of Rs 482.43 crore in the corresponding period of the previous fiscal.

Total income of the company on standalone basis declined 27.11 per cent to Rs 1,734.98 crore in the quarter under review from Rs 2,380.58 crore, a year ago, the infrastructure firm said in a regulatory filing to the BSE.

Its expenses too declined to Rs 1,744.75 crore during the quarter under review from Rs 2,299.95 crore.

Competition Commission in August had imposed a fine of Rs 1,323.60 crore on Jaiprakash Associates Ltd for cartelisation.

The company said, "Based on the advise of the Company's counsels as well as its own assessment, the company believes it has strong reasons for successful appeal. Accordingly, the company is taking steps to file appeal against the above order before the appropriate authorities."



Jaypee Group has on a consolidated basis failed to repay Rs 2,905.6 crore in principal amount to banks and another Rs 1,558.93 crore crore in interest payments.

Jaiprakash Associates, the group's flagship company, saw its net loss widening to Rs 3,345 crore in the last fiscal on a consolidated basis. In 2014-15, the same stood at Rs 1,735.10 crore.

Earlier this year, in one of the biggest deals in the domestic cement industry, debt-ridden Jaypee Group had announced part sale of its cement business to Kumarmangalam Birla-led Ultratech for Rs 15,900 crore.

The transaction will see Ultratech become possibly the biggest cement player in the country after gaining an overall capacity of 21.2 million tonne per annum from Jaypee's cement plants in five states and a grinding unit in Uttar Pradesh.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Popular stand-up comedian Kapil Sharma today stoked a controversy by alleging that he had been asked to pay a bribe of Rs 5 lakh by an official of the civic body BMC which, in turn, claimed that the actor had carried out "illegal construction" at his office for which a notice had been served on him two months back.

Kapil levelled the allegation in the morning in tweets in which he tagged Prime Minister Narendra Modi, questioning if this was the "achche din" (good days) he had promised.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis was quick to respond to Sharma's angst and assured him that strict action would be taken against the culprit.

Kapil, while voicing his anger, tweeted: "I am paying 15 cr income tax from last 5 year n still i have to pay 5 lacs bribe to BMC office for making my office @narendramodi (sic)."



In another tweet, he wrote, "Yeh hain aapke achhe din? @narendramodi (are these your good days)," referring to Modi's 2014 poll slogan of "good days are ahead".

The post of Sharma, who has over 6.22 million followers on Twitter, was 'retweeted' and 'liked' by thousands on the social media platform.

Fadnavis, BMC as well as Shiv Sena, which rules the civic body along with BJP, asked Kapil to give details about who demanded the bribe.

Opposition Congress used the issue to target BJP and Shiv Sena over corruption.

As controversy erupted, Sharma again tweeted later in the day, trying to downplay the matter by saying he was not singling out any political party.

"I just voiced my concern on the corruption I faced with certain individuals... It's No blame on any political party be it BJP, MNS or ShivSena," he wrote.

Earlier, taking cognisance of the matter, Fadnavis asked Kapil to provide the authorities with necessary information to punish the culprit.

"Kapilbhai pls provide all info. Have directed MC, BMC to take strictest action. We will not spare the culprit," the Chief Minister said in a tweet.

In response, Kapil thanked Fadnavis in another tweet saying, "@Dev_Fadnavis thank u so much for ur concern sir.. Would like to come n discuss this matter with u in person .."



However, a senior Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation official claimed that the actor had made some "illegal construction" at his office in Versova area of suburban Mumbai and had been served a notice regarding the same, but he did not pay heed to it.

"Kapil was then sent a notice by BMC on July 16 to stop or remove the construction, but he didn't reply to it," he said.

BMC also asked Kapil to reveal the name of the officer who allegedly demanded the bribe.

Stung by corruption allegations, Shiv Sena, which rules the BMC along with BJP, dared Kapil to name the bribe seeker.

"This is not a comedy show where he can tweet what is going on in his life. He needs to immediately name the person publicly who asked for a bribe or people would watch the whole episode like a comedy drama, laugh over it and forget about it," Sena spokesperson Manisha Kayande said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Justifying the security extended to separatist leaders of Valley, Union minister Jitendra Singh said they faced threat from Pakistan which might attack them to blame it on India.

Singh said the unrest was first such turmoil in the world in which number of the civilians injured are more or less equal to those in security forces and policemen. It clearly shows how much restraint the security personnel exercised.

He said as soon as the situation improves, there is a need to engage with the youth of the state.

"We keep blaming Mehbooba (Mufti, Chief Minister), but miss the sight of those forces engaged in it. Pakistan and separatists are threat," he said at a function organised by Sanjeevni Sharda Kendra here.

"Pakistan is not only threat to us but also to separatists as well. Separatists have no threat from us (India) but from Pakistan," he said.

Justifying their security given by the government, Union Minister said "why security has been given to them, because Pakistan backed people will kill them blame us (India)".

"What has happened to Moulvi Farooq... What has happened to Abdul Gani Lone... They have fear and threat from their own people," Singh said.

The Union Minister further said that Pakistan has a threat from Pakistan itself. "See what is happening in Peshswar...What is happening in Balochistan."

"Pakistani is trying to engineer terrorism selectively. These forces who have upped its ante fear from their own people. We have to prepare ourselves," he said.

On the situation in Kashmir, he said, "We will have to move forward on three basic ideologies (sidhant). First, there will be no compromise with violence whatever may be the aim of violence, violence is a violence and we have to put an end to circle of violence and it has no place in the society and all political parties agree to it."

"Second, as the situation will improve there is a need to engage with the youth of the state and the beginning of chain of several schemes by the government headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi for last two years. The youth of the country are taking benefit of these and we do not want that the youth of Jammu and are deprived of it. The youth of Kashmir valley also wants to become stakeholder of the journey of development but due to some reasons they are not fully coming forward," he said.

"And third, there should be no premium on anti-India activism. It should not look that if someone raises anti-India and pro-Pakistan slogans, I will get glorification", he said.
A Kuwaiti conglomerate has given up a prolonged battle for Moamer Kadhafi's luxury personal jetliner, which has been parked in France since 2012, lawyers said today.

Al-Kharafi group sought to have the opulently-furnished Airbus A340 seized over a debt related to a contract to build a beach resort in Libya.

Reviled by Libya's rebels as a symbol of Kadhafi's extravagance, the four-engined jetliner boasts a double bed, silver leather sofas, a private cinema and first-class seating for the dictator's female bodyguards and other staff.

In 2012, shortly after Kadhafi was killed in the Libyan uprising, the plane was flown to the southwestern French city of Perpignan, where it underwent three million euros' (USD 3.36 million) worth of repairs and maintenance by an Air France sub-contractor.

Al-Kharafi's move to pull out of the case was recorded in an August 25 decision by the court in Perpignan, according to a document seen by AFP.

Its withdrawal brings the battle to a close.

"We have preferred to focus on the seizure of other Libyan assets, which will be more feasible," Al-Kharafi's French lawyer, Remi Barousse, said.

In 2006 Al-Kharafi signed a contract with the Kadhafi regime to build a beach resort on Libya's Mediterranean coast, which it was to run for 90 years, but Tripoli cancelled the deal unilaterally in 2010.

A Cairo court in 2013 ruled Al-Kharafi was owed USD 937 million (835 million euros) over the broken contract and the company filed to seize the plane to recover some of the money.

Its bid was opposed by a Libyan state entity, the Executive Authority for Special Flights (EASF), the owner of the plane.

In November 2015, a Perpignan court ruled that the plane had immunity from seizure as it was state property.

Kadhafi was killed in October 2011, after which the oil-rich country slid into chaos, with the Islamic State group making inroads.

A unity government was set up in Tripoli in late March after a UN-backed agreement in Morocco in December 2015.

But it has struggled to assert its authority across the country, facing opposition from a rival government in the east.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the end of Syrian crisis talks had been delayed as US officials consulted Washington, and handed out pizza and vodka to waiting reporters.

Separately, a senior US official confirmed that Secretary of State John Kerry was in talks with his government on the results of efforts to strike a deal with Russia on a ceasefire in Syria.

Yesterday Moscow's envoy appeared briefly in a Geneva hotel ballroom room set aside for a conference to mark the end of talks with Kerry but did not mount the podium that had been prepared.

Instead, in a brief chat with reporters, he said in English: "I believe it is important for them to check with Washington. That's why I apologise for the delay. We cannot help it.

"It's going to be announced very soon I think. I hope before Washington goes to sleep, we can get some . My appeal to you is to be patient. Same as me," he added.

Later, Lavrov and his aides returned and distributed pizzas and a bag of bottles of vodka to the waiting reporters, apparently to relieve them after their long wait.

"The pizza is from the US delegation, we brought the vodka," Lavrov declared, as his aides distributed the bounty.

The United Nations envoy to the Syrian conflict also briefly entered the room to appeal for patience, but there was no sign of Kerry, who had earlier met with both Lavrov and UN envoy Staffan De Mistura.

Both Kerry and Lavrov had been expected to fly home later Friday, but all three officials said they still hoped to hold a conference to announce the results of the negotiation.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Four Republican lawmakers called for a delay in implementing a plan to cede US oversight of the internet address system, saying it could give more power to "authoritarian regimes."



The lawmakers said they have concerns over the plan to turn over to the broader online community oversight of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), set to take place October 1.

The handover represents "a serious, groundbreaking, and potentially unalterable action," said the four, each of whom chairs a key committee: Senators John Thune of South Dakota and Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Representatives Fred Upton of Michigan and Bob Goodlatte of Virginia.

In a letter to US Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, the lawmakers said they had "examined the arguments for and against the proposed transition, including concerns about whether the transition could enhance the role of authoritarian regimes in internet governance."



They said witnesses at hearings have identified "concerns that important accountability measures have yet to be fully fleshed out, tested, or proven."



Earlier this year, ICANN said it had worked out details of the plan that removes the symbolic US government oversight of the internet address system.

US officials in June gave tentative approval to the plan, which enables a broad range of internet "stakeholders" to make policy and avoids direct government management of the internet.

In August, officials said the US government contract with ICANN would expire as scheduled on September 30.

Officials have said the plan to "privatize" this system has been in the works for some 18 years and would instill greater confidence in the independence of the internet from the US government.

Some critics of the plan have argued that it would leave the internet accountable to no one and enable repressive regimes to exercise more control.

"There is a broad range of important questions on both law and policy that remain outstanding with respect to the proposed transfer," the Republican lawmakers wrote.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Congress leader and former Kerala chief minister Oommen Chandy today charged the CPI-M led LDF government with serious lapse in handling the Supreme Court case related to death of a 24-year-old woman, who was raped and pushed out of a running train in 2011.

The government should take immediate steps to ensure that the accused Govindachamy, who has filed an appeal in the apex court challenging the death sentence awarded to him, got maximum punishment, he told a press conference here.

"Government should consult with legal experts and take necessary follow up action," Chandy said while responding to the reports that apex court had asked prosecution to produce evidence to prove that the accused had pushed Soumya out of the train.

Soumya, an employee of a shopping mall in Kochi, was raped by the accused and pushed out of a running train in February 1, 2011.

A fast track court in Thrissur in 2012 had awarded death sentence to the accused, considered to be a habitual offender from Virudanagar in Tamil Nadu.

The Kerala High Court upheld the death sentence two years later, against which he has moved the Supreme Court.

The incident triggered an outrage in the state with protesters demanding justice for Soumya.

LDF government had changed the special public prosecutor A Suresan without any reason. He was appointed by the previous UDF government at the request of the mother of Soumya, Chandy said.

Criticising the government, KPCC President V M Sudheeran said it was a lapse on the part of government pleader not to give correct explanation to the questions of the apex court.

"A senior lawyer should be appointed as the public prosecutor and should handle the case properly," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Stressing the need for leveraging the limited public resources efficiently, French ambassador to India, Alexandre Ziegler, today said private sector should also be engaged in discussions on technology innovations.

"We need to leverage our limited public resources efficiently for technology innovations that are oriented towards solutions.

"Discussions on technology issues must also focus on ways to engage with the private sector as technologies are usually not owned by governments," a TERI statement quoting Ziegler said.

He was speaking at the New Delhi Regional Dialogue hosted by The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) in association with Embassy of France today.

The seminar focused on partnership for innovation and technology in order to strengthen the commitment towards achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and implementing the Paris Agreement.

"The key question is how we manage the volatility in the supply and demand of energy vis-a-vis technology change. How people and planet will progress will depend amongst other things on how we manage technological change," said Ajay Mathur, Director General, TERI while emphasising the need for a balanced approach in achieving the SDGs.

Announcing the World Sustainable Development Summit 2016, Mathur said that 'People, Planet and Progress' is the theme of the Summit which is to be held from October 5-8.

TERI said currently, there is a need to identify the gaps for facilitating the technology transfer in India.

"As the technology framework under the Paris Agreement remains to be designed, it would be useful to identify relevant options and requirements for technology partnerships, as well as the enablers and obstacles at the pre commercialisation, commercialisation and diffusion stages," it said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Germany-based group is investing Rs 500 crore in India to set up a production plant in Aurangabad to produce high-end refrigeration appliances.

The company expects the plant to start production from 2018 and is aiming to roll out 5 lakh units tailored to suit Indian markets.

Besides, the group on Friday launched its first experience centre in Mumbai to give a first-hand experience of its premium refrigerators.

"We are investing Rs 500 crore here and our first phase of production is designed to have a production of 5 lakh units. This is going to happen in next five years," Appliances Business Development head, Roman Schafer told PTI.

Liebherr, one of the largest and leading construction machine manufacturers, also known for refrigeration and cooling appliances, has a distribution pact with Hafele in India. Its range of refrigerator starts from Rs 1.8 lakh and goes up to Rs 5.5 lakh.

On sourcing, he said, "Everything would be locally produced. We have a local sourcing strategy and only those components would be imported which are not available here."

According to Liebherr Group International Head of Marketing Guenther Sproll, industry research suggests that the market for such products in India is slated to grow at 11.4 per cent by 2025.

"This, coupled with higher disposable incomes and changing consumer preferences, makes India an extremely relevant market for us," said Sproll.

The company is also planning to have more experience centres in all leading metro markets. "We would probably have experience centres in Delhi and Bengaluru in the next one year," Schafer added.

On being asked whether Liebherr is considering export from its Aurangabad unit, Schafer said, "The production capacity would be for the local demand. But slowly and gradually, we would also look into opportunity to export some products to nearby countries."

However, he added that it will be in the second phase of development.
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 9, ARMENPRESS. President of the Republic of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan accepted the Governments resignation, reports Armenpress.

According to the Presidents decree the members of the Armenian Government will continue fulfilling their duties until the formation of a new Government.

The decree enters into force from the moment of signing.
The maritime sector in the country is poised for a major growth as the NDA government has initiated steps in this direction, Union Minister of State for shipping Pon Radhakrishnan said today.

Inaugurating the Administrative-cum-Academic Building at Indian Maritime University's (IMU) Kochi campus here, he said the BJP-led government at the Centre acknowledged the significant contribution that the shipping industry can provide to the country's economy.

"The vision of government for the maritime sector includes increase India's share in global shipping to five per cent, double the capacity of Indian ports in five years, establish new ports and transshipment hub and increase cargo movement on national water ways four times in five years," he said.

The minister said the sector has the potential to increase the country's competitive advantage in the global market.

The government also acknowledges that the sector can offer on employment ability, infrastructure development and longterm sustainable growth, he said.

Radhakrishnan said the demand for skilled professionals in the maritime sector was set to grow in the coming years thanks to the steps initiated by the union government.

"IMU has to play a vital role in supplying quality man power to the industry by imparting high quality education and training to the students. The government will take steps to make IMU as centre of excellence in the maritime sector," he said.

The minister said the government had recently started ranking of the IMU campuses.

"I hope that the Kochi campus will grow from strength to strength and reach the top most position in ranking. The Kochi campus will be made as research centre from the year 2017-18," he said.

The IMU Kochi centre was established in 2009 with the first campus being set up at the training center of Cochin Port Trust.

The present campus is located in an area of 10 acre in Willingdon Island and includes newly built Administrative-cum-Academic building, a state-of-art marine workshop and a students' hostel.

K V Thomas MP, MLAs Hibi Eden and K J Maxi MLA; K Ashok Vardhan Shetty IAS (Retd), IMU Vice Chancellor and P K Nair, Director IMU Kochi campus were present at the occasion.

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Ludhiana's Bains brothers, the two Independent MLAs who are part of the 'Awaaz-e-Punjab' front of Navjot Singh Sidhu, were today "physically moved out" of the Punjab Assembly for disrupting proceedings.

Ahead of a discussion on the contribution of BR Ambedkar on the occasion of his 125th birth anniversary during the ongoing monsoon session of the Assembly here, Simarjit Singh Bains and Balwinder Singh Bains requested Speaker Charanjit Singh Atwal to bring private resolution on the issue of water.

However, the Speaker refused to give the permission to the Bains and warned them not to disrupt proceedings of the House.

After repeated warnings, the Bains brothers continued to speak. They did not even let Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal speak about the contribution of Ambedkar following which the Speaker 'named' Simarjit Singh Bains and asked watch and ward staff to take him out of the assembly.

When the brothers refused to go out, the watch and ward staff took them out of the House.

Accusing SAD-BJP government of "throwing them out" of the House, Simarjit said he was just demanding that Punjab should recover the amount of the supply of canal water to Rajasthan which was being supplied since 1965.

"Punjab is supplying 11.2 MAF of water to Rajasthan since 1965 and being a riparian state, it should recover the cost of supply from Rajasthan," he told reporters.

Bains also cited a copy of the record of the decisions arrived at the Inter-state conference on the development and utilization of the waters of Ravi and Beas rivers in a meeting held in New Delhi in January, 1955.

"What was the problem in sending the bill for the supply of water to Rajasthan," Bains asked adding that he would continue to fight for the rights of Punjab.

Meanwhile, Congress Spokesperson Sunil Jakhar has described this demand as untenable, saying if it is accepted then Himachal Pradesh will seek cost of water from Punjab.

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A Mumbai-based businessman was allegedly robbed of his watch, worth Rs 40 lakh, and Rs 1 lakh cash by a woman friend in a posh five-star hotel, police said today.

The incident happened last week when the man, who is in his late forties, had come down on a business trip to Delhi, said a senior police officer.

The man called the woman to Claridges Hotel where he was putting up, the officer said, adding that the duo stayed in the room.

While the man was asleep, the woman allegedly fled with his watch and cash, police said.

When he woke up around 7 AM, he contacted the police and a case was registered, said the officer.

The man had befriended the woman recently, he said.

Police are scanning the CCTV footage from the hotel, the officer said, adding that they are also in the process of verifying the identity of the woman.

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South Korean President Park Geun-Hye today condemned North Korea's latest nuclear test as an act of "self-destruction" that will further deepen its isolation in the international community.

The impoverished but nuclear-armed North staged its fifth nuclear test this morning, she said in a statement, describing it as a "grave challenge" to the international community.

"With the nuclear test, Kim Jong-Un's regime will only earn more sanctions and isolation... And such provocation will further accelerate its path to self-destruction," she said, referring to the North's young ruler.

The latest nuclear test -- described as the North's most powerful to date by Seoul's military -- proves Kim's "manic recklessness" and his obsession with building a nuclear arsenal despite global criticism, she added.

In Tokyo, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe today called North Korea's latest nuclear test "absolutely unacceptable".

"North Korea's carrying out of a nuclear test is absolutely unacceptable for Japan," Abe said in a statement, after Pyongyang conducted its fifth nuclear test, believed to be its most powerful to date.

"North Korea's nuclear development is becoming a graver threat to Japan's safety and severely undermines the peace and safety of the region and the international community," Abe said.

"Japan lodges a serious protest against North Korea and condemns it in the strongest language," he added.

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Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu today rejected Leader of Opposition Y S Jaganmohan Reddy's demand of resignation for "failing" to secure special category status for the state.

"If I resign, will he get money (from the Centre)," Naidu questioned while addressing a meeting in the Assembly lobby here this evening.

Minutes earlier, Jagan addressed a press conference in the Assembly committee hall where he demanded that Chandrababu quit his post for having "welcomed" the Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's assertion that Andhra Pradesh would not be granted any special status.

"Chandrababu should not only resign but also pull out from the NDA government at the Centre. He should also tender apology to the people of Andhra Pradesh for having failed them," the YSR Congress chief said.

Responding to this, Naidu said, "Why should I resign? I will resign. Will you get funds (from the Centre)?"



TDP joined the NDA government at the Centre essentially to protect the interests of the state, he said.

"We did not join the NDA government led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 1999 though we were offered seven to eight minister posts. We only accepted the Lok Sabha Speaker's post to maintain a link between the TDP and the BJP," Naidu recalled.

The Chief Minister also found fault with the YSRC and other opposition parties for the Andhra Pradesh bandh call tomorrow saying, "Do you want an already suffering state to suffer further? There is only a bad motive behind the bandh call.

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Nepal Foreign Minister Prakash Sharan Mahat will travel to New Delhi on Sunday to prepare ground for the visit of Prime Minister Prachanda to India, his first foreign trip after assuming office.

Prime Minister Prachanda is embarking on a four-day state visit to India from September 15 at the invitation of his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi.

Mahat will hold talks with senior Indian leaders, including his counterpart Sushma Swaraj and discuss about the preparations and agenda of the Prime Minister's forthcoming official visit, the first foreign trip of Prachanda after taking charge of the government last month.

This will also be the first foreign trip of Foreign Minister Mahat after assuming office.

During the visit, Mahat is likely to discuss various areas of cooperation with the Indian officials, sources said.

Nepal's relationship with India had soured after a months-long border blockade last year by ethnic minority protesters over the new Constitution which they claimed marginalised them.

Kathmandu accused India of imposing an "unofficial blockade" on the landlocked nation in support of the Madhesis, who share close cultural, linguistic and family links with Indians across the border.

Meanwhile, a senior Madhesi leader said that the Prime Minister should address the current problem facing the country before embarking on a visit to India.

"The Prime Minister should have resolved the current political problem before leaving for New Delhi," said Upendra Yadav, chairman of Madhesi Peoples Rights Forum Nepal, one of the agitating Madhesi parties.

"The prestige and dignity of the country would be in stake if the Prime Minister visits the southern neighbour without addressing the current problem," he said.

He urged the Prime Minister to initiate the process of amending the Constitution for addressing the demands raised by the Madhesi Front.

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: Vanitha Mohan, Vice-Chairman of Pricol Ltd has been unanimously elected as president of local chapter of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, for a two year term till 2018.

V Lakshminarayanasamy was elected as Vice-President (civic and public affairs, while C Balasubramanian was elected



Vice president (law and taxation) at the 82nd Annual General Body meeting held here on August 29.

Rajesh B Lund was also elected vice president (Infrastructure), a chamber release said today.

C S K Prabhu was elected as honorary secretary (administration) and S Natarajan as secretary ((Operations), it said.

C Dorairaj was elected as treasurer, the release said.

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Union Minister M Venkaiah Naidu today termed as "speculative" the media reports that a new Railway Zone may be set up with Vijayawada as its headquarter and said "no decision has been taken yet" on the issue.

Talking to mediapersons after a meeting with BJP leaders from Andhra Pradesh, led by its state unit president Hari Babu, here, Naidu described the media reports regarding establishment of a Railway Zone in the state at Vijayawada as "speculative".

"No decision has yet been taken. We are in favour of Railway Zone," he said and expressed confidence that "the efforts would succeed since Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu represents Andhra Pradesh".

reports that the Railway Zone may be headquartered in Vijayawada triggered protests in Visakhapatnam. Visakhapatnam (Waltair division) is situated in Andra Pradesh but falls under the jurisdiction of Bhubaneswar-based East Coast Railway.

The Union minister advised the state BJP leaders to go to the people and explain that the "best alternative dispensation" was provided to Andhra Pradesh "in lieu of Special Category Status".

He said such category was not possible to be granted as the 14th Finance Commission did not make any distinction between special and general category states.

He told the BJP leaders that benefits that would accrue to Andhra Pradesh would be more than what it would have got through special category state status.

He said that under the special package, the revenue deficit would be bridged by the Centre and the total deficit of Rs 22,113 crore for five-year period ending 2019-20 would be paid as revenue deficit grant.

He also said that the "government shall examine" the feasibility of creating Railway Zone and some other projects like Vizag-Chennai Industrial Corridor.

Rejecting the charge that the help extended by the NDA government was delayed, Naidu said that at the very first Cabinet meeting, an ordinance to merge seven mandals in Telangana's Khammam district with Andhra Pradesh was approved and that he had met President Pranab Mukherjee immediately to explain its importance for him to give presidential assent.

He said, "The betrayers responsible for unjust bifurcation of the state have no moral right to accuse the NDA government".

"The Congress, Left and other parties have no moral right to criticise BJP and the NDA government," he said and cautioned "the party leaders to be wary of the attempts by political opponents to create a rift between BJP and TDP in Andhra Pradesh."



Naidu also asked the state BJP leaders to "effectively counter the disinformation campaign being carried out with ulterior motives by their political opponents", according to a release.

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No street vendor should be evicted from the city roads or harassed during an ongoing drive being carried out by civic bodies here, without following the due process of law, Delhi High Court said today.

A bench of Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice Sangita Dhingra Sehgal sought replies from the Lt Governor, Delhi government, Delhi police commissioner, New Delhi Municipal Council and civic bodies here on a plea alleging "unlawful and arbitrary action" against hawkers by authorities concerned.

The court, which fixed the matter for September 28, said the authorities should not evict, disturb or harass any street vendor in the city.

The court was hearing a plea by Congress leader Ajay Maken, seeking a direction to the authorities that as per Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending Act, no street vendor in Delhi shall be disturbed or evicted till the completion of survey of the existing vendors and issuance of Certificate of Vending (COV), as per a scheme of the Delhi government.

Senior advocate Rakesh Khanna and advocate Aman Panwar, appearing for Maken, urged the court that "till the formation of the Town Vending Committee (TVC), no action shall be taken against the vendors or hawkers operating here".

The plea alleged that despite unambiguous provisions of the Act and clear directions of this court, authorities have "proceeded to illegally evict over 500 street vendors" on August 17.

"The civic bodies have neglected Section 3.3 of the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014, which states that no street vendor shall be evicted or relocated till a survey has been completed and the certificate of vending is issued to all vendors," it said.

Recently, the high court had stayed enforcement of the



AAP government's amended rules and scheme for regulating street-vending activities in Delhi and protecting the rights of urban street vendors.

"Since the Delhi government has failed to frame a legally tenable scheme as envisaged under Section 38 of the Act and the enforcement of the scheme prepared by the GNCTD has been stayed by this court on August 8, 2016, police and municipal authorities, taking advantage of the absence of the scheme, and in complete violation of the provisions of the Act, have been arbitrarily evicting street vendors...," the plea said.

In his plea, Maken said that being a former Union Cabinet Minister for Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation, he was in a position to aid and assist this court as he had engineered and piloted the Street Vendors Bill, 2012, a legislation for protection of livelihoods rights, social security of millions of street vendors in the country.

The petitioner also sought direction to the police and the civic bodies to reinstate the vendors recently "illegally evicted" from various parts of Delhi.

He urged the court to issue a direction to the LG to ensure compliance of the Street Vendors Act.
The Supreme Court today admitted for hearing an appeal by Indian Forest Service officer Sanjiv Chaturvedi against withdrawal of work allocated to him after he joined AIIMS on deputation in 2012.

A bench comprising Justices J Chelameswar and A M Sapre also sought responses from the Centre, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and the Central Vigilance Commission on the plea of the officer who has alleged that he was not given any work at the premier institution despite having an exemplary service record.

Chaturvedi has filed the appeal against the June 27 decision of the Delhi High Court.

The High Court had upheld the decision of the Central administrative Tribunal (CAT) that the government has the discretion to either allot or withdraw work from its employee.

Chaturvedi, who has now joined the Uttarakhand Forest Department, had a running feud with the authorities during his deputation in AIIMS where he was serving as the chief vigilance officer from 2012-14.

He had alleged that at AIIMS, the only work he was doing was to sign pension cheques and all other allocated assignments were withdrawn on the orders of the institute director.

He had challenged the work withdrawal order, saying "it is an attempt to humiliate him for his action against corrupt practices in the institute.

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YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 9, ARMENPRESS. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte told Barack Obama he never called him a "son of a bitch", he said on Friday, but he maintained a defiant stance on his war on drugs, saying U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon was a fool for bringing up human rights, reports Reuters.

U.S. President Obama canceled a planned meeting with Duterte at this week's ASEAN summit in Laos after the Philippine leader's alleged insult in his native Tagalog, but the two met briefly later as they waited to take their seats at a banquet.

On a visit to the Indonesian capital on Friday, Duterte told a group of Filipinos that the slur was not directed at the U.S. president and that he had told him so.

"I was ready (for Obama). I was waiting for Obama to respond. Lawyer to lawyer, we are both lawyers anyway... I said I never made the statement. Check it out.

"...I said that, but not in relation to Obama," he said. "I'm not fighting with America."

Obama and Duterte shook hands and had a brief chat on Wednesday, officials said, easing the standoff. Duterte had his outburst on Monday when he was defending his war on drugs that has killed at least 2,400 Filipinos.

Duterte on Friday said he thought U.N. Secretary-General Ban a fool for bringing up the issue of human rights violations weeks before the summit in Laos.

"Even Ban Ki-moon weighed in," Duterte said. "Also gave a statement before, several weeks ago, about the human rights violation. Sabi ko, isa ka pang tarantado (you are another fool)."

Duterte also said he would try to boost security for ships using the waters between Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia, where there have been several kidnappings and other attacks.

The Philippines would let Indonesian forces pursuing pirates enter its waters, he said.

"This time we make it clear that if the chase began in Indonesia, then crosses in international waters, and inside Philippine waters, they can go ahead and blast them off."
North Korea has successfully tested a nuclear warhead, it said today, drawing condemnation from the South which said the "maniacal recklessness" of young ruler Kim Jong-Un would lead to self-destruction.

Pyongyang's state media said the test, which comes after a series of ballistic missile launches that have drawn international condemnation and UN sanctions, had achieved its goal of being able to fit a miniaturised nuclear warhead on a rocket.

"Our nuclear scientists staged a nuclear explosion test on a newly developed nuclear warhead at the country's northern nuclear test site," a North Korean TV announcer said.

"Our... Party sent a congratulatory message to our nuclear scientists... For conducting the successful nuclear warhead explosion test," she said as the South judged it was the North's biggest test yet at 10 kilotons.

The move drew swift condemnation from US President Barack Obama who warned of "serious consequences" and said he had called the leaders of South Korea and Japan to confer over the crisis.

President Park Geun-Hye spoke out against the "maniacal recklessness" of Kim, who since taking control after the death of his father in 2011 has carried out a series of purges and weapons tests designed to show strength and consolidate power.

"Kim Jong-Un's regime will only earn more sanctions and isolation... And such provocation will further accelerate its path to self-destruction," Park said, warning his obsession with creating a nuclear arsenal posed a grave challenge.

"We will step up pressure on the North by using all possible measures, including more, stronger sanctions on the North with the international community and at the UN Security Council," she said.

of the test emerged when seismic monitors detected a 5.3-magnitude "artificial earthquake" early today near the North's Punggye-ri nuclear site, where the last test took place in January.

"The 10-kiloton blast was nearly twice the fourth nuclear test and slightly less than the Hiroshima bombing, which was measured about 15 kilotons," said Kim Nam-Wook from the South's meteorological agency.

If Pyongyang can make a nuclear device small enough to fit on a warhead, and bolster the range and accuracy of its missiles, it might achieve its oft-stated aim of hitting US targets. But its claims to that in the past have been discounted.

Scientists will now attempt to analyse the blast to try to determine what kind of a breakthrough it represents, including whether it is a standard atomic bomb or a more powerful hydrogen, or thermonuclear, bomb.

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Terming the nuclear test conducted by North Korea as a "matter of grave concern", India today deplored it and asked DPRK to refrain from such actions which adversely impact peace and stability in the region and beyond.

It also expressed concern over the proliferation of nuclear and missile technologies which has adversely impacted India's national security.

"India deplores the nuclear test conducted by the DPRK this morning. It is a matter of grave concern that DPRK has again acted in violation of its international obligations and in contravention of the objective of the de-nuclearisation of the Korean peninsula that the DPRK itself has endorsed.

"We call upon DPRK to refrain from such actions which adversely impact peace and stability in the region and beyond. India remains concerned about the proliferation of nuclear and missile technologies which has adversely impacted India's national security," External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Vikas Swarup said.

Earlier in the day, Pyongyang's state media said North Korea has successfully tested a nuclear warhead.

Today's test, which comes after a series of ballistic missile launches that have drawn international condemnation and UN sanctions, was deplored from many countries including the South Korea which said the "maniacal recklessness" of young ruler Kim Jong-Un would lead to self-destruction.

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US President Barack Obama today warned North Korea of "serious consequences" as he consulted leaders of South Korea and Japan after Pyongyang conducted its fifth nuclear test - believed to be its most powerful ever.

"The president indicated he would continue to consult our allies and partners in the days ahead to ensure provocative actions from North Korea are met with serious consequences," White House press secretary Josh Earnest said.

He said President Obama was briefed on the situation as he flew home from a visit to Asia aboard Air Force One.

Obama consulted with South Korean President Park Geun-hye and Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in separate phone calls from the presidential aircraft.

"The president reiterated the unbreakable US commitment to the security of our allies in Asia and around the world," Earnest said.

Earlier, National Security Council spokesman Ned Price said the US was monitoring and continuing to assess the situation in view of the seismic activity on the Korean Peninsula in the vicinity of a known nuclear site.

"We are monitoring and continuing to assess the situation in close coordination with our regional partners," Price said.

His statement came after South Korean and international monitoring agencies reported an earthquake near North Korea's north-eastern nuclear test site, indicating that Pyongyang may have detonated a new atomic test to mark the 68th anniversary of the country's founding.

"Our monitoring stations picked up an unusual seismic event in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) today at 00:30 (UTC). So far, 25 of our stations are contributing to the analysis," CTBT Organisation's executive secretary Lassina Zerbo said in a statement.

"The event seems to have been slightly larger than the one our system recorded on 6 January this year and the location is very similar to that event. Our initial location estimate shows that the event took place in the area of the DPRK's nuclear test site.

"If confirmed as a nuclear test, this act constitutes yet another breach of the universally accepted norm against nuclear testing; a norm that has been respected by 183 countries since 1996," she said.

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Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has invited chairman of moderate Hurriyat Conference Mirwaiz Umar Farooq for its annual 'Coordination Meeting of Foreign Ministers' as well as the 'Meeting of Contact Group on Jammu and Kashmir' in New York later this month.

Mirwaiz got the invitation through a letter from OIC Director General of Cabinet Yusuf Al-Othaimeen, which was released to media by the Hurriyat Conference here today.

"I have the honour to inform you that the annual Coordination Meeting of the OIC Foreign Ministers as well as the Meeting of the OIC Contact Group on Jammu and Kashmir will be held during the 71st session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) at the UN Headquarters in New York, on 19-22 September 2016.

"In this regard, I have the pleasure to invite you to attend the above mentioned meetings in New York, as invitee," Othaimeen said in the letter addressed to Mirwaiz.

The Hurriyat said the participation of Mirwaiz is not possible as he continues to be under arrest and his passport stands seized by the government for the last four years.

Mirwaiz, who is part of the separatist camp spearheading the ongoing agitation in the valley, was arrested on August 26 after remaining under house arrest since July 9. He is currently lodged at Cheshma Shahi sub jail here.

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One student was injured while trying to escape a fire which broke out inside the server room of Presidency University library in the city this afternoon, police said.

Thick black smoke engulfed the entire College Street campus of the University after fire broke out at around 1.30PM inside the server room of the library probablydue to an electrical botch-up in the air conditioning machine, a senior police officer said.

A student suffered minor injuries when he along with others fell down while trying to flee fearing the blaze was a massive fire, the officer said.

Five fire tenders were pressed into service and students as well as teachers were evacuated from the century-old building, he said.

In October 2010 a major fire had broken out at the Baker building of the university that houses the chemistry department where chemicals and gas cylinders were stored.

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Pakistan cabinet led by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif today decided to allow about three million Afghan refugees to stay in the country till March next year, saying adequate and concrete steps would be taken for them.

"Afghans are our brothers and very dear to us. Adequate and concrete steps will be ensured for facilitation of Afghan refugees living in Pakistan," said an official statement of the cabinet meeting held here.

The meeting approved to extend the stay of Afghan refugees in Pakistan till March 31, 2017. Previously, the government had set a deadline of December 31 this year for their return.

Of the three million refugees, about half are illegally living in Pakistan while others have legal status to stay.

Both the Afghan government and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) had been pushing Pakistan to extend the deadline of sending Afghan refugees back as war-torn Afghanistan was not still ready to absorb the influx of refugees.

These refugees came in 1980s in Pakistan during Afghan war and most of them are still staying despite repeated warnings and deadlines by Pakistan to go back.

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Pakistan today condemned the latest atomic explosion by North Korea as violation of UN Security Council resolutions and called on "all parties" to work for a nuclear weapons free Korean peninsula.

"Pakistan condemns the nuclear test conducted by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea today, which constitutes a violation of the United Nation Security Council Resolutions and is against the objective of a nuclear weapons free Korean peninsula," the Foreign Office said, using the official name of the North.

Pakistan called upon North Korea to comply with all the relevant UN Security Council Resolutions and refrain from actions which undermine peace and stability in the region.

"We urge all parties to work towards the establishment of nuclear weapons free Korean peninsula within the framework of the Six-Party talks," it said.

The North's state-run television reported that the country has "successfully" conducted a nuclear warhead explosion - its fifth and more powerful than it has earlier conducted - after monitors detected a 5.3-magnitude "artificial earthquake" near its main nuclear site this morning.

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Paramilitary Rangers could be deployed in Pakistan's Punjab province for at least two months to hunt down terrorists and their facilitators after conducting similar operations in Karachi with the provincial government making a request in this regard.

The Punjab government sought deployment of Rangers from the Interior Ministry for at least two months to assist police and the Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) in "hunting down terrorists and their facilitators and combating banned organisations" in the province.

The Punjab government had immense pressure from the army to intensify operations against terrorists and banned organisations to avoid any major act of terrorism in the province.

Former interior minister Rahman Malik had disclosed that there are more than 150 sleeper cells of militants of banned organisations in Punjab's southern part.

Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah said Rangers would assist police and the CTD in conducting intelligence-based operations and providing security during Eid-ul-Azha and Muharram.

He said the need to seek the help of Rangers was felt during meetings presided over by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in the aftermath of the Quetta tragedy in which over 70 people mostly lawyers were killed.

Sanaullah said there is a need to expand the sphere of operations against terrorists and their facilitators under the Nation Action Plan (NAP).

"We are seeking the assistance of Rangers but not giving them policing powers like they are enjoying in Karachi," he said.

The Rangers will be deployed in Punjab under sections 7 and 10 of the Pakistan Rangers Ordinance 1959 to assist police and the CTD in proceeding against the outlawed organisations and hunting down terrorists and their facilitators.

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Asserting that Balochistan is a very important security concern for India, Union Minister Jitendra Singh today said Pakistan should put an end to "operational atrocities" unleashed by Islamabad in the region.

"Balochistan is a very important security concern for India", Singh told reporters here.

Singh was replying to a question about India's reaction to the atrocities and operational terror by Pakistan on the people of Balochistan.

"You cannot allow your neighbourhood to be on fire because sooner or later it is going to impact you, you cannot build a heaven inside and leave a hell outside," the minister said.

Singh said that it is example of a boundary wall with another house and the other house being constantly in trouble and sooner or later you run a risk of being impacted by it.

He asked Pakistan to put an end to operational atrocities and bring peace in the region.

The minister further said "Therefore, it is also part of our responsibility to safeguard the security concerns of India".

"We have to ensure that Balochistan, as a situation, is peaceful, is normal and there is an end to operational atrocities unleashed by Islamabad," Singh said.

(Reopen DES17)



With regard to Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) dropping charges against an accused in the 26/11 Mumbai attack case citing a lack of evidence, Jitendra Singh said the government of India will deal with it appropriately.

"I think the Government of India and Ministry of External Affairs will take a call on it appropriately depending upon the inputs available about the sequence of events," said the MoS in PMO in response to a question on the development.

"But as far as India is concern, it is capable of meeting any eventuality and taking a call to whatever be the circumstances," Singh further said.

As per Pakistani media reports, FIA has submitted a charge-sheet before an anti-terrorism court (ATC) and placed the suspect, Sufiyan Zafar, in the second column, which means that no evidence was found against him.

Zafar was arrested last month on a charge of financing the 26/11 Mumbai attacks in November, 2008.
A woman arrested in connection with a foiled plot in Paris is believed to have helped recruit jihadists in Belgium for the war in Syria, a Belgian television station reported today.

The 19-year-old woman, Ines Madani, was shot and wounded in France on Thursday by police investigating a car found filled with gas cylinders near Notre Dame cathedral, a tourist hotspot, last weekend.

Madani is considered the main suspect in the case.

"According to our information, Ines Madani had contacts with Belgian radicals from the Charleroi region,"the RTBF station reported, without naming its sources. Charleroi is a city south of Brussels, in Belgium's former industrial heartland.

"The names of the radicals appeared on a list from (Belgium's national crisis centre) OCAM as potential candidates departing for Syria," the station said.

"Some of them have since been arrested," it added.

"There is no question here (in Belgium) of a planned attack but Ines Madani seemed to fullfil a role of recruiter and facilitator for these departures," it said.

If true, it would not be the first time jihadists in Belgium have been linked to those in France.

Several based in Belgium allegedly planned and took part in the November 13 gun and bombing attacks in Paris that left 130 people dead and wounded hundreds of others.

Jihadists linked to the Paris cell then allegedly carried out the March 22 suicide bombings in Brussels that killed 32 people at the main airport and a metro station near the EU headquarters.

Both sets of attacks were claimed by the Islamic State group headquartered in Syria.

A spokesman for the Belgian federal prosecutor's office told AFP today he would "not comment (on the report) in the interests of the investigation under way in France."



Investigating a plot linked to the discovery Sunday of a Peugeot 607 with gas cylinders in central Paris, police arrested Madani along with her alleged accomplices aged 23 and 39 in a suburb south of the French capital yesterday.

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said the three women "were apparently preparing new, violent and, what is more, imminent actions."



The women were "radicalised and fanaticised," he said.

Madani had sworn allegiance to the Islamic State group in a letter found in her possession, according to a source in the investigation.

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YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 9, ARMENPRESS. While on a working visit to Uruguay, the Armenian delegation led by Deputy Speaker of the Parliament, Head of Armenia-Uruguay parliamentary friendship group Eduard Sharmazanov, including also MPs Sukias Avestiyan and Mikayel Manukyan, held a meeting with Minister of Foreign Relations of Uruguay Rodolfo Nin Novoa on September 8, press service of the Parliament informed Armenpress.

Eduard Sharmazanov expressed satisfaction that Armenia and Uruguay are closely cooperating in the international organizations, assist each others candidacies in different elections. He highly appreciated the fact Uruguay has always showed balanced approach during the votes of resolutions referring to Armenia in the UN.

Referring to the process of the international recognition and condemnation of the Armenian Genocide, Sharmazanov said the mass condemnation of the Genocide by the international community will contribute to the prevention of new crimes against humanity.

Uruguay took the lead in the process of the Genocide recognition serving as an example to the entire world and thus, showing its commitment to universal values, Sharmazanov said.

The topic of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict was also covered at the talk. People of Nagorno Karabakh should be able to fully exercise their right to self-determination reaching to complete independence. Everyone, including the Azerbaijanis, must understand that the NKR can never be a part of Azerbaijan. Nagorno Karabakhs international recognition is just a matter of time, he said.

The Deputy Speaker of the Parliament said Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh see the conflict resolution within the framework of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairmanship.
Animal-assisted therapy, such as interactions with pet dogs, can help university students combat homesickness as well as reduce drop-out rates, a new study has found.

"Transitioning from high school to university can prove to be a challenge for many first-year students," said John Tyler Binfet, Assistant Professor at University of British Columbia in Canada.

"Given that students who experience homesickness are more likely than their non-homesick cohorts to drop out of university, universities have a vested interest in supporting students during their first-year transition," Tyler said.

In the study, 44 first-year university students who self-identified as homesick were given a survey to measure levels of homesickness, satisfaction with life and connectedness with campus.

Half of the students completed eight weeks of dog therapy, while the other half were informed that their sessions would begin in eight weeks' time.

Dog therapy included 45-minute weekly sessions involving small group interactions with the dogs and handlers, and engagement with other first-year students participating in the study.

Following the initial eight-week session, participants in both the treatment group and the non-treatment group completed the survey again.

Participants who completed the eight-week programme experienced significant reductions in homesickness and greater increase in satisfaction with life.

Participants reported that sessions "felt like they were at home chatting with friends who brought their puppies."



While the non-treatment group reported an increase in their feelings of homesickness.

A total of 29 per cent of students who dropped out cited more interactions and friendships with other students as a factor that would have influenced their decision to stay longer.

A university's ability to influence campus connections could be a useful tool in lowering drop-out rates in first-year students, said Binfet.

"Many first-year university students face the challenge of integrating into their new campus community," said Binfet.

"Homesick students are three times more likely than those who manage their homesickness to disengage and drop out of university," he said.

The research was published in the journal Anthrozoos.

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With a view to widening the social security net among unorganised sector workers, regulator PFRDA has proposed a scheme under which employers will have to automatically enrol workers under the Atal Pension Yojna.

As pension is a long-term engagement and keeping in view the income profile of the targeted group, PFRDA in a concept paper also proposed using insurance and health coverage as an incentive for long-term engagement.

India has a huge unorganised or informal sector. Around 83 per cent of the workers are in informal employment where there is no formal employer-employee relationship.

Furthermore, a number of workers are self-employed in the agriculture sector and small businesses like tea stalls, which also include street vendors, hawkers, rickshaw pullers, maids and drivers.

"A mandatory scheme for such workers is just not possible. Voluntary schemes such as the NPS Lite or Swavalamban and APY which are primarily focused on this category of workers have also not witnessed very encouraging response," the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) said.

PFRDA said international experience suggests extending pension to workers on a voluntary basis is not very successful.

"It is in this context that an auto-enrolment is being proposed to expand coverage of pension or old age income security to a larger segment of society," it said.

Enterprises which could be sole proprietorship, partnership with less than 19 employees "will be required to automatically enrol all their full-time employees into APY".

Insurance components like insurance coverage of health and life may be bundled with APY to take care of health and life contingencies of the members, the paper said.

"The automatic enrolment with health and insurance cover under APY is expected to enhance the coverage, particularly in the unorganised sector, and help in saving for their retirement while they are earning. As employer contribution is voluntary, an affirmative action, there may not be much resistance to this change," the paper stated.

Comments have been invited till October 7.

Employers, the paper said, must automatically re-enrol their eligible jobholders who choose to opt out or cease to be active member on a three-year cycle.

This will give employees opportunity to reconsider their decision to opt out at regular intervals in case their situation has changed since then, it added.

The informal sector groups proposed for auto-enrolment are micro industries and enterprises, small scale industries, Asha, anganwadi, construction sector and gram panchayat, among others.

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Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal today said the current phase of "false propaganda" targeting AAP will pass soon.

He assured his party workers that selection of candidates for the 2017 Punjab Assembly polls will be from the constituencies and nobody will be fielded from "outside the constituencies".

Kejriwal, who is staying at a farmhouse in Jhande village here, had a closed-door meeting with the party workers who had come from all over the state to meet him.

A party spokesman said due to last minute change in his schedule, the AAP supremo started meeting party workers from around 4 PM after returning from Amritsar.

On the second day of his four-day Punjab tour in the aftermath of the sex CD exposure and cash-for-ticket allegations, Kejriwal told his party workers that they were going to steer through this phase of "false propaganda" soon.

Quoting Kejriwal, the spokesman said these allegations were a part of a "deep-rooted conspiracy" of its political opponents to "defame" AAP.

He also asked for suggestions from the cadres for strengthening the party.

The party workers were not allowed to carry mobile phones during the meeting, sources said, adding that Kejriwal met them in batches.

A delegation of mid-day meal workers also met and apprised him of their demands and difficulties.

The AAP supremo assured them of "all the help".

Later, Kejriwal paid a visit to former vice chancellor of Punjabi University and noted agro-economist SS Johal at the latter's residence in Gurdev Nagar here.

However, the media was not allowed to interact with him there as well.

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American investors in the Philippines today warned that President Rodrigo Duterte's brutal drugs war and foul-mouthed tirades, including branding US leader Barack Obama a "son of a whore", could hit foreign investment.

Obama cancelled a meeting with Duterte after the firebrand leader unleashed a barrage of criticism of the US president, saying he would not be lectured about human rights over his crackdown on narcotics, which has seen police and shadowy assassins kill nearly 3,000 people.

The crackdown has seen Duterte's domestic popularity soar but has prompted widespread international condemnation from the United Nations and human rights watchdogs, and the American Chamber of Commerce in the Philippines said it was also damaging investor sentiment.

The "increased number of killings during the heightened anti-drug campaign is harming the country's image... Some investors are now asking whether this campaign reduces the rule of law," it said in a statement sent to AFP today.

The US is the Philippines' largest trading partner after China, and a key source of foreign direct investment.

The traditionally strong ties between the US and the Philippines have been "strained by language from Philippine leaders" which is also creating "investor concern," the statement said.

Relations saw a spectacular setback this week when Duterte branded Obama a "son of a whore" after being told the US president planned to raise concerns about his war on drugs.

Obama cancelled a planned meeting over the insults, but later briefly met with Duterte on the sidelines of a regional summit in Laos, urging him to conduct his crime war "the right way".

The high-profile spat "could harm the long-standing optimism of American business to invest in the Philippines," the chamber of commerce added.

Duterte was elected to office in a landslide this year after pledging to kill 100,000 people in an unprecedented war on crime.

He vowed in the campaign that so many bodies would be dumped in Manila Bay that the fish there would grow fat from feeding on them.

Duterte has also repeatedly promised to protect police from prosecution if they are charged over the deaths and insisted human rights cannot get in the way of his war.

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In fresh trouble for Kannada actress and former MP Ramya, a local court has directedthe police to file a criminal case against her for her recent reported remarks that the RSS colluded with the British.

The direction by the court at Belthangady near here comes on a private petition filed by advocate Vasanth Marakada, who moved it after the police refused toregister his complaint against Ramya, already facing a complaint in another court for alleged sedition.

The advocate said Ramya might be summoned to recordher version after he (complainant) records his statement. Ramya, who was elected to Lok Sabha from Mandya in the 2013 by-election on a Congress ticket, had reportedly stated recently that the RSS had colluded with the British during thenation's struggle for independence. The 33-year-old multi-lingual actress is already facing a complaint in a court in Kodagu district on sedition and other charges.

After a recent visit to Islamabad as part of a SAARC delegation of young lawmakers, Ramya had reportedly said at a meeting in Mandya, "Pakistan is not hell. People there are just like us. They treated us very well."



Her remarks had come as an apparent counter to comments of Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, who while lashing out at Islamabad for promoting terror, had said, "Going to Pakistan is same as going to hell."



Ramya's comments had triggered a bitter backlash but she stood her ground saying she would not apologise.

An advocate had filed a complaint in a court at Somwarpet in Kodagu district, seeking action on sedition and other charges against Ramya for "insulting Indian patriots" by her remarks.

Advocate K Vittala Gowda filed the complaint before the Somwarpet Judicial Magistrate First Class (JMFC) court, which has admitted it.

The complaint has sought a direction to police to book Ramya under IPC sections 124(a)(sedition), 344 (wrongful confinement for ten or more days) and 511 (punishment for attempting to commit offences punishable with imprisonment for life or other imprisonment).

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Sharing case studies, observations and views, experts attending a police workshop here said that financial fraud and cyber crimes can be tackled by better inter-disciplinary coordination among agencies and through mass awareness.

The two-day workshop of police officials and investigative agencies on curbing financial fraud in the country laid emphasis on better coordination among all the investigative agencies.

On the second day of the workshop, General Manager and Chief Vigilance officer of Oriental Insurance, Rakesh Kumar threw light on general insurance fraud as to how insurance companies other than governmental insurance firms lure and cheat their common clients.

He appealed to the cops and the masses to be sharp and aware of the terms and conditions of insurance companies while getting anything insured.

He gave several tips to cops as to how they can help people to avoid fraud by insurance companies, a release said.

The session on money laundering was addressed by Special Director of Enforcement Directorate, New Delhi, Yogesh Gupta whereas session on shell companies was chaired by Vivek Priyadarshi, SP, CBI, Bhopal.

Priyadarshi disclosed the fact such companies are spreading the world over and their business is around USD 1 trillion.

In India, Calcutta is the major centre of "shell companies", the release quoting him as saying.

He said that in Panama Papers leak case, 2 lakh shell companies were involved.

These companies have dummy lawyers, accountants and dummy directors on their boards. They have no phone numbers or addresses, he added.

The workshop was jointly organised by Sardar Patel Police University of Security, Criminal Justice, Jodhpur and Rajasthan Police.

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There will be a complete ban on use of polythene in all national monuments and tourist destinations from October 2.

In an initiative to carry forward the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM), the government chose the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi to impose the ban.

"We thought that we should start cleanliness from our house



first. So, the Tourism Ministry has decided to ban polythene in all the national monuments and tourist destinations from October 2," Tourism Minister Mahesh Sharma told PTI.

He said the trial phase of the initiative will be launched immediately and from October 2, it would be implemented in all the national monuments and tourist destinations.

Stating that the ministry would erect a board at the monuments or tourists place about this prohibition, he exuded confidence that it would be easier to implement this cleanliness initiative as the tourist destinations have security personnel who would check tourists at the entrance.

The minister, however, clarified that plastic bottles would not be banned but tourists would be asked to place them in the recycle container at the tourists destinations.

An official said the ban would be applicable to the protected zone or 100-m radius of the monuments.

In March, the Centre had also banned the manufacturing of plastic bags of below 50 microns as thinner bags are difficult to dispose leading to major threat to the environment.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had launched the Swachh Bharat Mission on October 2, 2014.

The mission aims at elimination of open defecation, eradication of manual scavenging, modern and scientific municipal solid waste management, among others.

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A prisoner undergoing trail in a case of honour killing has gone missing from a mental hospital here, prompting authorities to launch a search to trace him, police said today.

Mehtab Alam Molla who decapitated his younger sister with a sword in 2012 went missing from the Pavlov Hospital in the Topsia Police Station area yesterday, they said.

"The accused has been missing from the hospital since yesterday morning. He went to the toilet and after which he was not seen in the hospital. We have alerted police stations in the surrounding areas. Efforts are being made to trace him," a senior officer said.

Molla, a garment trader who had taken the severed head to the police station where he surrendered was admitted at Pavlov hospital this March.

He had decapitated his 24-year-old sister Nilofer Bibi, a mother of two, after discovering that she was staying with a rickshaw-puller following her eloping with him.

Local people had looked horrified as Alam walked down the road at Ayubnagar with the severed head in his hand, before surrendering in the Nadial police station.

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Shares of realty firm Puravankara Projects today tanked over 8 per cent after the company reported 67 per cent decline in consolidated net profit for the quarter ended June on lower sales.

The stock plunged 7.87 per cent to settle at Rs 50.35 on BSE. During the day, it plummeted 8.32 per cent to Rs 50.10.

At NSE, it dropped 8.19 per cent to close at Rs 50.40.

The company's market valuation fell by Rs 101.95 crore to Rs 1,194.05 crore.

Puravankara Projects yesterday reported 67 per cent decline in consolidated net profit at Rs 10.2 crore for the quarter ended June due to lower sales. Its net profit stood at Rs 30.7 crore in the year-ago period.

Income from operations fell 32 per cent to Rs 311.4 crore in the first quarter, from Rs 456.52 crore in the same period a year ago, the Bengaluru-based developer said in a regulatory filing yesterday.

Company's finance cost increased to Rs 62.4 crore during the period under review, from Rs 54.6 crore a year earlier.

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Around 200 entities having operations in West Bengal and have been collecting deposits in an unauthorised manner are under the scanner of the Reserve Bank of India.

The regulator is currently handling 200 cases cumulatively to follow, RBI officials said.

"Some entities are placing advertisements in newspapers offering cheap unsecured loans without proper KYC documentation. They also claim to be registered entities with the RBI. It has been observed through various market intelligence inputs that most of these companies are fraudulent," RBI Regional Director Rekha Warriar said.

"To fight against fraudulent entities, state level coordination committee meetings are organised regularly. A sub-group comprising of officials from regulators of financial markets and state level law enforcing agencies have been reviewing market intelligence inputs every month. About 200 entities are under observation," she said.

RBI Chief General Manager (Department of Non-Banking Supervision) G N Rath urged media houses to be vigilant and carry out due diligence before taking advertisements in which people get trapped.

The RBI has been able to stop an entity - DICICI Bank of India - offering jobs by taking deposits.

The regulator has launched a website - 'Sanchet' for awareness among the public, but still do not have any toll free number to lodge complaints.

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YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 9, ARMENPRESS. Parliament Speaker of Armenia Galust Sahakyan received the French delegation led by head of the Socialist Group of the French National Assembly Bruno Le Roux on September 9, press service of the Parliament informed Armenpress.

Welcoming the guests in the Armenian Parliament Galust Sahakyan said with satisfaction such visits contribute to the further deepening and development of the Armenian-French relations.

Referring to issues related to the Armenian Genocide and the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, Galust Sahakyan attached importance to the delegations visit to Nagorno Karabakh last year. In this context he said in both cases Armenia has always received the French partners assistance. Galust Sahakyan expressed hope the French Parliament will be consistent on the submission and adoption of the new bill.

The Armenian Parliament Speaker condemned the terror attacks in Paris and Nice and ensured Armenia always stands together with friendly France.

Galust Sahakyan highly appreciated the productive activity of the friendship groups.

Bruno Le Roux expressed gratitude for the warm reception and said France-Armenia relations are friendly and they are happy for being here during the days of celebrating the 25 anniversary of Armenias and Karabakhs independence. Referring to the Armenian Genocide recognition, he said everything is done in France to adopt a bill which will make the Armenian Genocide recognition complete and will criminalize the Genocide denial.

Bruno Le Roux said they are concerned over Azerbaijans policy the evidence of which was the war unleashed by Azerbaijan in early April which caused many victims and injured. He stated they have visited the line of contact last year and got acquainted with peoples issues of concern and expressed their readiness to help the youth of the NKR. He said today those projects are becoming a reality.

At the meeting the sides attached importance to the further intensification of the Armenian-French economic ties, they also discussed the Constitutional amendments held in Armenia.
Actresses Reese Witherspoon and Mindy Kaling are in negotiations to star in Disney's "A Wrinkle in Time".

If things work out they are expected to share screen with Oprah Winfrey in the film adaptation of 1962's classic children's book by Madeleine L'Engle, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Witherspoon is being considered for the role of a former celestial being named Mrs Whatsit, while Kaling will play a literature-quoting known as Mrs Who.

They will complete the trio of supernatural beings including Mrs Which, who will be portrayed by Winfrey.

Ava DuVarnay will direct the fantasy film from a screenplay provided by "Frozen (2013)" scribe and co-director Jennifer Lee.

The movie revolves around teenager Meg Murry, her genius brother Charles Wallace and classmate Calvin O'Keefe. They launch an interplanetary mission to rescue the siblings' missing scientist father. Along the way, they are counseled by the mysterious trio of Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who and Mrs Which.

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Under a blazing sun, Sukhoi jets zoomed across the sky and dropped explosives, as Russian warships sailed right up to the shore.

And beyond on a dusty steppe, paratroopers made a mass landing while ground forces ignited a wall of fire with napalm.

This display of military might took place Friday in Crimea as Russia showcased its ground, marine and air forces in the biggest exercises held on the strategic peninsula since its 2014 annexation from Ukraine.

"On such a scale and with the deployment of different force groupings, such drills are being held for the first time," defence ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov told journalists.

Watching the drills at the Opuk training range on the Black Sea coast of eastern Crimea were Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and the head of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov as well as Crimean leader Sergei Aksyonov.

"This training range is the biggest on the Crimean peninsula, which allows for such exercises to be held," said Konashenkov, adding that it had been used by Russia before the peninsula's annexation.

The Crimean drills were part of Caucasus-2016 exercises held across Russia's southern regions with some 12,500 troops, the defence ministry said.

The drills involved warships, aircraft and tanks, with Moscow firing its S-300 missile systems, while the more advanced S-400 systems were used earlier in the Caucasus-2016 exercises that began on September 5 and reached their finale today.

"Strategic drills... Are essential to military training in Russia in 2016," Konashenkov said, "with a focus on different troops working together."



In Crimea, the exercises simulated an attempted invasion by a major force.

But Konashenkov insisted to journalists: "You should not twist this into anything - there's no politics."



The drill was planned last year and is not related to the current heightened tensions with the West, he said.

Nevertheless such flexing of Russia's military muscle sent out a clear message that any real attack on Crimea will be fought off.

The drills also come about a month after President Vladimir Putin accused Kiev of sending a group of saboteurs into Crimea, saying Ukraine was "practising terror.

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South Korean President Park Geun-hye and Japanese leader Shinzo Abe agreed to cooperate closely today after North Korea claimed it had successfully tested a nuclear warhead that could be mounted on a missile.

The two leaders spoke on the phone about Pyongyang's test which they agreed was "unacceptable", South Korea's Yonhap agency reported.

The blast at the Punggye-ri nuclear site was the North's fifth and most powerful yet at 10 kilotons.

While Seoul and Tokyo regularly condemn the North's nuclear ambitions, their own relationship has been frayed at times due to territorial disputes and the legacy of Japan's harsh colonisation of the Korean peninsula from 1910-45.

At a summit in Laos this week however, the two leaders agreed to strengthen cooperation alongside the US on North Korea, Yonhap reported.

The of today's test drew swift condemnation from US President Barack Obama.

North Korea has been hit by five sets of UN sanctions since it first tested a nuclear device in 2006, but has insisted it will continue, come what may.

The nuclear programme has gone alongside a series of ballistic missile launches, the latest of which took place on Monday even as world powers gathered for a G20 meeting in China.

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Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal today said Shiromani Akali Dal will change candidates on 20-25 seats in the coming assembly polls asserting that the main criteria for selection will be the chances of winning.

"The candidates on 20-25 seats will be changed," Sukhbir told reporters here.

"Already candidates on 5-6 seats including Amloh, Patiala Rural, Sanaur, Phillaur and Banga have been changed," he said.

Asked about swapping of any seats with their alliance partner BJP, he said SAD will meet the representatives of saffron party soon to take a decision in this regard.

"Our candidates more or less are declared. Our poll manifesto will be released closer to elections," said Sukhbir.

As per alliance between SAD and BJP, saffron party contests on 23 seats out of 117 assembly constituencies.

To a question on Awaaz-e-Punjab, Sukhbir said "this Sidhu family used to praise AAP. And now it says there is no other party worse than it. They all are opportunists," he said.

Slamming Kejriwal for his promise to make Anandpur Sahib if AAP comes to power, Sukhbir said Amritsar was already a holy city and Kejriwal's comment showed that AAP was cut off from Punjab.

"Amritsar is already a holy city, they do not know even this. Basically they are cut off from Punjab. Not only Amritsar, Anandpur Sahib and Damdama Sahib are also holy cities. They (AAP) all are atheists. They do not know how to respect religion," he said.

"Kejriwal's intention is to use Punjab as battleground and he wants to be national personality to target Prime Minister. He is not development oriented, he is a agitationist," he added.

Lashing out at Congress, Deputy CM dubbed the opposition party as "confused", saying only poll strategist Prashant Kishor was running the party.

Exuding confidence in the SAD-BJP alliance, Sukhbir claimed the alliance "will rule for next 20-25 years in Punjab".

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Sanatan Sanstha, which is under scanner in the murder of CPI leader Govind Pansare, rubbished police claims that drugs were found at its ashram near here and said investigators were "deviating" from their path and making false allegations against the outfit.

The Special Investigation Team (SIT) of Maharashtra Police, probing the murder case, told a Court in Kolhapur it had found some drugs which could affect the nervous system.

Addressing a press conference here, a spokesman of the Goa-headquartered right wing outfit vehemently denied SIT had seized narcotics from its Panvel ashram.

"Many seekers in various age groups reside in the ashram that runs a free dispensary managed by qualified doctors having experience of 20-30 years. The medicines in the dispensary are purchased from the market with bills.

"But we are very sorry to say the investigating agency enacted a drama to seize these medicines and told the media they were narcotics," Abhay Vartak, spokesperson of Sanstha, said.

Legal adviser to the Sanstha, advocate Sanjeev Punalekar, questioned, "What is the connection between investigation in a murder case and medicines."

He said the police were "deviating" from their path and making false allegations against the outfit.

Punalekar claimed the Sanstha was being needlessly dragged in the case and defamed.

ENT doctor Virendra Tawde, a member of Hindu Janajagruti Samiti (HJS), an offshoot of the Sanstha  who has been chargesheeted in the Narendra Dabholkar murder case  is an accused in the Pansare case also.
A city court today granted bail to senior Trinamool Congress leader and multi-crore Saradha chit fund scam accused Madan Mitra, over 21 months after his arrest by the CBI.

Alipore Sessions Court judge Uttam Kumar Nandy granted the relief to Mitra on a bail bond and surety of Rs 15 lakh each, rejecting the CBI's opposition.

Imposing conditions on his bail, the court directed that Mitra would have to appear before the CBI investigating officer once a week, surrender his passport and would not leave Alipore sessions court's jurisdiction.

The former West Bengal Transport minister has been charged under sections 409 (criminal breach of trust by public servant), 420 (cheating) and 120B (criminal conspiracy) of IPC.

The order came a day after Mitra's counsel pleaded for bail submitting that the TMC leader was no longer an influential person since he was neither a minister or an MLA now, nor he was holding any post in the party.

Mitra's counsel also alleged that the CBI was delaying the investigation and as such Mitra should be granted bail.

The CBI counsel opposed his prayer, saying that the investigation into the Saradha scam, involving over Rs 2,500 crore of public money, was at a crucial stage and releasing Mitra now would hamper the process because the former minister is still a very influential person and has access to key witnesses in the case.

Mitra, who was arrested on December 12, 2014, for his alleged complicity in the Saradha scam, had earlier been granted bail by the additional chief judicial magistrate (ACJM) of Alipore sessions court on October 31, 2015 after several of his bail pleas were rejected by different courts.

But the breather had turned out to be brief as the Calcutta High Court cancelled his bail on November 19 on a petition by the investigating agency.

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Saradha scam accused and Trinamool Congress leader Madan Mitra was today granted bail by a special court here over 21 months after his arrest.

Judge Uttam Kumar Nandy granted the former state transport minister bail on two sureties of Rs 15 lakh each.

He was directed by the court to appear before it on November 23. The court also directed Mitra to surrender his passport to the CBI and appear before the CBI investigating officer once every week. He was further directed not to go out of Kolkata.

The order came a day after Mitra's counsel pleaded for bail submiting submitting that the TMC leader was no longer an influential person since he was neither a minister now nor was he holding any post in the party.

Mitra's counsel also claimed that the CBI was delaying the investigation and there was no reason why should not be granted bail.

The CBI counsel, however, opposed the bail saying the investigating agency was at a crucial stage of its probe into the multi-crore Saradha scam and releasing Mitra would hamper the process because the former minister was still very influential and still had access to key witnesses in the case.

Mitra, who was arrested on December 12, 2014, was granted bail by a lower court last year. The TMC leader had surrendered before the court after his bail was cancelled by the Calcutta High Court on November 20 last.

Mitra was briefly admitted to a state-run hospital after he complained of chest pain and breathlessness. He was taken back to Alipore Central Jail this June after he was discharged.

The party, had given Mitra ticket for this year's Assembly elections from Kamarhati, which he had eventually lost.

Investigation into the ponzi scam, which came to light in 2013, revealed that the Saradha Group had allegedly cheated investors of Rs 1,200 crore in mainly rural areas, as per an official estimate.

Former Union minister Matang Sinh is among those arrested in the case, while several TMC functionaries, including Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's close aide Mukul Roy, have been questioned.

The CBI had taken over the investigation in June, 2014 on following an order of the Supreme Court.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
In a setback to Arvind Kejriwal- led government, the Supreme Court today refused to grant an interim stay on the Delhi High Court verdict which has held that Lieutenant Governor is the administrative head whose prior consent is needed in all administrative decisions.

The apex court, which sought response within six weeks from the Centre on seven appeals of AAP dispensation against the August 4 verdict of the High Court, also declined to stay the recent decision of LG Najeeb Jung to set up a three-member committee to scrutinise over 400 files and past orders of the elected city government.

"Every day there would be some order, we cannot pass orders on a daily basis," a bench comprising Justices A K Sikri and N V Ramana said when the LG's recent decision to examine government files was referred to.

"No stay, we will fix the matters for final hearing on November 15," the bench said.

The bench, simultaneously, did not concur with preliminary objections of Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi that the appeals needed to be dismissed at the threshhold on several grounds including that instead of a Chief Secretary or a secretary, the pleas were supported by the affidavit of Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodoia.

"This is against the rules of the business. The affidavit in the High Court was sworn by the Secretary, but here it is sworn by the Deputy CM. Just because you are the Deputy CM, you cannot flout the Rules. How can the SLP filed by NCT be maintainable? How can a minister represent a Union Territory," Rohatgi said, adding "even assuming that he is competent to swear the affidavit, the decision to file a SLP is to be decided by the LG".

The court, however, said it was an important issue where a decision from the apex court was needed.

Rohatgi said it has been "unequivocally" held by a 9- judge bench that Delhi is a Union Territory.

Indicating that it may refer the cases to a larger bench after hearing arguments, it said, "This is in our mind, but that will be decided at later stage after hearing the parties."



Senior lawyer K K Venugopal, appearing for AAP government, said the Centre and LG Najeeb Jung, who enjoy a "master and servant" relationship, have "tied the hands of the elected government" and the refusal of public servants to sign the petition has created a situation where the Minister has to swear the affidavit.

Initiating arguments, Venugopal said "this is the whole



case that for filing the appeal, the permission of LG is needed as no official is willing to sign."



"This will affect all future governments. All future relationships will be directly affected. LG has no qualification to govern Delhi. He enjoys a master-servant relationship. He is only an employee of the Centre and can be asked to leave by the Centre at any moment," he said.

He said the consequence of the High Court verdict is that the Centre through the LG has taken over the governance, reducing an elected government into "some interim arrangement".

During the hearing, Rohatgi, who said the issue as to whether Delhi is a state or a UT has been settled by a 9-judge bench verdict, submitted that if the cases are to be referred to a larger bench, then they will have to be heard by a 11-judge Bench of the Supreme Court.

"This is because a nine-judge Bench of the court, in 1996, in the NDMC versus State of Punjab case, recognised Delhi as a Union Territory for taxation purposes, he said.

Besides Venugopal, a battery of senior lawyers including P P Rao, Rajiv Dhawan, Gopal Subramaniam and Indira Jaising appeared for the AAP government in different appeals filed against quashing of its various orders by the Delhi High Court in its historic verdict delivered on August 4.

Subramaniam, echoing the views of Venugopal, said the LG had gone ahead with appointing a three-member panel to examine the decisions of the Delhi government which were taken without Jung's prior permission.

"This is being done to fix criminal liability on an elected government," he said.

"There cannot be a committee finding fault with the previous decisions of the elected government...On the basis of the judgement of the high court, legitimacy cannot be given to a committee to look into them," he said.

"You can challenge that order. Every day some order will be passed. Everyday we cannot say that this order is bad or good," the bench said.

The committee has taken away all the files, then how will the government function without files, Subramaniam said.

The AAP government also alleged that the action of the LG has restricted its right to access to justice.

"We cannot go to court now because we need his permission. This is what we have been reduced to," Venugopal submitted.
The Supreme Court today sought response from the Centre on six appeals filed by Arvind Kejriwal-led govt, challenging the Delhi High Court judgement holding the Lieutenant Governor as the administrative head of the capital.

A bench of justices A K Sikri and N V Ramana also refused to stay the operation of August 4 verdict of the high court and said it would rather list the matter for final hearing on November 15.

The bench, which granted six weeks time to the central government for filing its response to the appeals, also did not agree with the contention that the decision of Lieutenant Governor to set up a three-member committee to look into the past decisions of the Delhi government should be stayed.

The bench said it may consider referring the petitions to a larger bench after hearing arguments.

Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for the Centre, raised various preliminary objections and sought dismissal of the appeals on various grounds, including that instead of a secretary, the deputy chief minister has sworn an affidavit in support of the petition.

"This petition deserves to be dismissed on this ground alone," Rohatgi said, adding that moreover a nine-judge Constitution bench judgement has already dealt with this issue by holding that Delhi is a Union Territory.

Senior advocate K K Venugopal, who represented Delhi government, said the minister had to swear the affidavit because of the effect of the judgement that there has to be a prior consent of LG in every decision of the government.

"No public servant is willing to sign the papers," he said.

The Delhi Government had sought an urgent hearing on the appeals after which it was fixed for today.

On September 2, the Delhi government had informed Supreme Court that it has filed six different pleas challenging the Delhi HC order and withdrawn its civil suit seeking declaration of the capital as a full State.

The court had allowed the government to withdraw the civil suit and given the liberty to raise the issues raised in it in the Special Leave Petitions (SLPs) it has filed.
The Supreme Court today asked the Centre, which has been handed over the possession of the 28- storey scam-tainted building, to respond to the plea of the Adarsh Co-operative Society on maintenance of the structure.

The housing society has sought a direction to the Military Engineering Services (MES), the custodian of the building, to ensure proper maintenance of facilities like lifts, generators and fire fighting equipments of the building as the office bearers of the society and flat owners have been barred from entering the premises by the apex court.

A bench comprising Justices J Chelameswar and A M Sapre, which had asked the housing society to consider bearing the expenses to be incurred on maintenance, today sought views of the Centre and asked it to mull over appointing an army officer for the purpose.

"They (housing society) have hope that they will succeed in near future...People have homes and they want to maintain lifts...You (Centre) should consider appointing a responsible person to look into the issue," the bench said while posting the matter after two weeks.

The apex court had earlier asked the society to consider bearing the expenses to be incurred on maintenance of the 28- storey building whose possession has been handed over to the Centre in pursuance to the apex court's order.

The apex court had on July 22 asked the Centre to secure possession of Adarsh apartments, built at Colaba in posh South Mumbai locality, for Kargil heroes and war widows, after taking its possession from the housing society by August 5.

The bench had also said that the word "secure" meant that there will be no razing of the building.

It had also issued notices on a batch of pleas, filed against the Bombay High Court decision ordering demolition, by the housing society and some allottees.

Earlier, the High Court had ordered demolition of the apartments and sought initiation of criminal proceedings against politicians and bureaucrats for "misuse" of powers, holding that the tower was illegally constructed.

Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar had said the building was



built on defence land and the Director of Military Estate or his nominee would take over its possession.

The High Court, while ordering demolition, had stayed the operation for 12 weeks of its order to pull it down to enable the society to move the apex court with the appeal.

In its order, the HC bench had asked the Ministry of Environment and Forest to carry out the demolition at the expense of petitioners (Adarsh Society).

It had also asked the Centre and Maharashtra Government to consider initiating civil and criminal proceedings against bureaucrats, ministers and politicians for misuse and abuse of power to get plots under the scheme, originally meant for Kargil war heroes and war widows.

The Adarsh scam kicked up a huge political storm after it surfaced in 2010, leading to the resignation of then Congress Chief Minister Ashok Chavan.

In 2011, the state government had set up a two-member judicial commission headed by Justice J A Patil to inquire into the scam.

After probing the issue for over two years, it submitted its report in 2013, which found that there were 25 illegal allotments including 22 purchases made by proxy.

Later, the CBI, the Income Tax Department and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) also investigated the scam.

In January 2011, the union ministry of environment and forest had issued a demolition order mainly on the ground that the society did not have CRZ clearance.

Adarsh Society had filed a petition in 2011 in the Bombay High Court challenging the demolition order issued by the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests.

The Defence Ministry had also filed a petition in the high court seeking implementation of its demolition order, besides filing a title suit in the high court claiming it was the owner of the plot on which the plush Adarsh Society building stands in South Mumbai.
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 9, ARMENPRESS. Armenia expressed deep concern over the nuclear test by North Korea on September 9 that puts the stability and peace in Korean Peninsula and the Asia-Pacific Region under risk, Armenpress reports press secretary of MFA Armenia Tigran Balayan commented.

Such activities hamper the international efforts to find a peaceful solution to the nuclear issue of the Korean Peninsula, Balayan said.

CNN reports North Korea said it has hit the button on its fifth and potentially most powerful nuclear test Friday morning, claiming to have successfully tested a nuclear warhead.

State media said the warhead could be mounted on ballistic rockets and would enable North Korea to produce "a variety of smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear warheads of higher strike power."

South Korea, Japan and China condemned the test, saying it was a clear violation of the UN Security Council resolution.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye called Kim Jong Un's regime "fanatically reckless."

"The only thing that Kim Jong Un regime can gain from the nuclear tests is stronger sanctions from the international community and its isolation. Such provocation will eventually hasten its path to self-destruction," she said in a statement.

The blast had the explosive power of 10 kilotons, almost twice as large as the previous test, said Kim Nam-wook of South Korea's Meteorological Administration.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters Friday that if North Korea had conducted another nuclear test it was "absolutely unacceptable."

"We must lodge a strong protest," he said.

Concern has been growing that North Korea is testing weapons at an unprecedented pace this year, CNN international correspondent Paula Hancocks said.

In addition to January's nuclear test, North Korea in March claimed to have miniaturized nuclear warheads and tested several ballistic missiles, including some launched from a submarine.
Mediapersons, covering the visit of President Pranab Mukherjee to Defence Service Staff College (DSSC) at Wellington near here, today staged a brief protest against restrictions imposed on carrying mobile phones and cameras to the venue.

Around 50 mediapersons from here were taken to DSSC this morning by the state government officials. But security and Defence personnel at the venue asked them to leave their mobile phones and cameras, including those of the TV crew, outside.

Protesting this, nearly 45 mediapersons walked out of the campus, saying they would boycott the President's function.

However, they gave up the protest after an officer of the college intervened and were allowed into the venue with the cameras and mobile phones.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The AAP today alleged there was a "conspiracy" behind Delhi Police's "refusal" to provide security to Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal during his stay in Punjab at a time he faces "severe threats" that are being probed.

The Chief Ministers's Office had received a letter, containing information on threat to Kejriwal's life and alleged plans to bomb his official residence and the Delhi Secretariat, which was forwarded to the Police, AAP said.

"Delhi Police is yet to track down all the suspects. Probe is on, still it announced withdrawal of security to CM, when he visits Punjab. With such serious and severe threats facing the CM, how can security be denied? Who is behind this conspiracy?" the party said in a series of tweets.

Delhi government's Special Secretary (Home) had written to the Police Commissioner on August 18 to take urgent action on a complaint letter signed by Shiv Nandan Sharma, a computer operator employed in the Delhi Police headquarters.

The letter that was forwarded to the Chief Minister's Office had alleged that two persons, Akram and Murlidhar Khare, were planning to bomb the CM's residence and Delhi Secretariat.

When police tracked down Sharma, he denied having written any such letter, saying someone had "misused" his name. However, he said that he knows the two suspects as they worked in Delhi Civil Defence together.

Police subsequently made Akram join the enquiry during the course of which he pinned the complete blame on Murlidhar, who is yet to be tracked down as his contact numbers and address available in the Civil Defence Directorate turned out to be false.

"As of now, efforts are being made to obtain the factual address of alleged Murlidhar from Civil Defence Directorate /Headquarters. Further report into the matter shall be submitted accordingly. It may be treated as interim reply," Deputy Commissioner of Police, Special Cell (MAC) PS Kushwah recently wrote to the government.

Asked about AAP's claim that Police had denied security to Kejriwal during his Punjab tour, a senior police official said the decision was as per the rule book with regard to Chief Minister's security.

"Delhi Police personnel can accompany the Chief Minister for up to 72 hours if he goes out of Delhi, afterwards it's the responsibility of the concerned state police to provide him security," the official said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Communist Party of India (CPI) today said simultaneous elections to Lok Sabha and state Assemblies, though ideal, is not practical, while the ruling TRS in Telangana favoured the idea.

Instead, states where elections are due within six months of each other should be clubbed together and polls can be held there simultaneously, CPI General Secretary S Sudhakar Reddy said.

Reddy, a former Lok Sabha member, saw "political angle from BJP" in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's statement favouring simultaneous polls and said the lead party of NDA believes that it can derive political dividends all over the country with him in the saddle.

"Our opinion is: it looks ideal but it is not practical in India," he told PTI.

"They (BJP) are raising this issue for the first time because they think that with Narendra Modi as Prime Minister they will get support for the BJP up to Panchayat level, ward level... Throughout the country and in that they can capture the entire country," Reddy said.

"How can they dissolve constitutionally elected Assemblies for five years," he asked.

Several states went to polls at different times and the term of their assemblies does not end at the same time and there are issues of no-confidence motions, mid-term polls and Presidential Rules, he noted.

"Just to satisfy the lust of the BJP, the life of the Legislative Assembly cannot be cancelled. Practically it is not possible. But what we think, there is a possibility that if there is election within six months in different states, then they can be clubbed together and one election can be held," Reddy said.

"If there is life of two-and-half years or three years (still left in the Assemblies), that cannot be curtailed," the CPI leader said.

Telangana Rashtra Samiti MP Kalvakuntla Kavitha said, "My personal opinion and my party's opinion is that if elections are conducted together, we save a lot of money to the country."



Voters being educated and literate are very intelligent, especially in the south, and they had in the past given "conflict verdicts", supporting different parties at central and state levels, the Nizamabad MP said.

"If polls are held together, it will save lot of money. But then how do we organise rest of the states which still have two-three years life left? How do we handle is the question. That's up to constitutional experts to figure out," Kavitha added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Technical snag in microphones installed in the House forced the Punjab Vidhan Sabha Speaker to adjourn the proceedings of the assembly twice today.

Immediately after the Question Hour here, when the Speaker took up the matter of no confidence motion moved by the Leader of Opposition Charanjit Singh Channi, the microphone developed some problem.

The microphone developed some snag when Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal started speaking on the issue.

Though Badal was heard saying allow the motion, Congress MLA Ajitinder Singh Mofar took a jibe saying it seems the microphone has been deliberately turned off.

After Speaker's microphone also developed problem, he adjourned the House at 11:06 AM for ten minutes.

But even after the House proceedings were resumed, the microphones continued to face technical snag, forcing the Speaker Charanjit Singh Atwal to adjourn the House till 12:30 PM.

Later when the House resumed, former Chief Minister and senior Congress leader Rajinder Kaur Bhattal said that it was for the first time that the microphone of Speaker developed some problem.

"It has been for the first time in the Vidhan Sabha said that speaker (microphone) of Speaker went off," she quipped.

Atwal said he was also feeling sorry for this.

Later, when the discussion on contribution of Baba Saheb B R Ambedkar on the occasion of his 125th birth anniversary celebrations was going on in the assembly, the electricity went off.

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Model Sofia Richie says she and pop star Justin Bieber share a special relationship.

The 18-year-old model opened up about her bond with the "Sorry" hitmaker, explaining how she deals with paparazzi since she started hanging out with Bieber, reported AceShowbiz.

"We have a special relationship. Justin is very easy to talk to, and that's hard to find with people in Los Angeles," she said.

Richie revealed she has learnt a lot about dealing with such situations from her elder sister, Nicole.

"I remember the paparazzi, people would say to Nicole, and she wouldn't respond. I'm going to be real with you. It doesn't bother me as long as I'm happy," she said.

Bieber and Richie were first linked up after they were pictured holding hands in Hawaii. They were also caught kissing during their trip to Tokyo.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
India along with 10 other member countries of WHO's South-East Asian Regional Committee has decided to set up a dedicated fund aimed at building preparedness for health emergencies in the region.

Taking part in the 69th session of WHO Regional Committee Meeting at Colombo, they also passed a resolution for promoting physical activity and expanding health workforces across the region.

"To date, post-disaster funding through South-East Asia Regional Health Emergency Fund has done an excellent job in helping countries respond to health emergencies once those have occurred, as we saw most recently in Nepal and Sri Lanka.

"The new funding stream will allow countries to invest in infrastructure and human resources that will enhance preparedness," said Poonam Khetrapal Singh, Regional Director of WHO South-East Asia.

In the recent years, earthquakes, cyclones and floods have caused health emergencies in south-east Asian region and it has also been threatened by a range of emerging diseases, including SARS, MERS CoV, pandemic influenza and Zika virus.

Establishing a joint funding stream under the South-East Asia Regional Health Emergency Fund (SEARHEF) to help countries better prepare for such events was seen by the countries as a key priority for the regional health agenda.

"Enhancing health security is a critical component of our public health mission and a core part of WHO's work in the South-East Asia Region.

"The new funding stream for emergency preparedness established by member countries is an expression of the solidarity shared within the Region, as well as recognition that preparedness is less costly than response," Singh said.

Another resolution passed by the session was promoting physical activity. Insufficient physical activity is a major contributor to rising rates of non-communicable diseases in the region, with four-fifth of adolescents not getting enough of it.

The session also passed a resolution on strengthening



health workforce which is vital for achieving universal health coverage - a key part of the Sustainable Development Goal of "leaving no one behind".

At present, the density of health care providers in the region is 12.5 per 10,000 persons, which is less than the WHO recommended minimum of 44.5 per 10,000 persons.

Union Health Minister J P Nadda, while making an intervention at the meeting, had said India is "grappling" with shortage of health workforce while high rate of tobacco use is contributing to the rise in non-communicable diseases.

He had said India is "alive" to these challenges and committed to addressing those.

"Expanding health workforces across the Region is one part of what countries in the Region are trying to achieve. But we also need to increase staff retention, particularly in rural areas, as well as provide further training to health workers to enhance their skills," Singh said.

The Regional Committee is WHO South-East Asia Region's highest decision-making body.

The region comprises 11 countries - Bangladesh, Bhutan, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, India, Indonesia, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Timor-Leste.
Budget carrier SpiceJet today said it has received 3-month extension from the Registrar of Companies (NCT of Delhi & Haryana) to hold its 32nd Annual General Meeting, which can now be held by December.

"The Company has obtained extension of three months for conducting its 32nd Annual General Meeting from the Registrar of Companies (NCT of Delhi & Haryana) under Section 96 of the Companies Act, 2013," SpiceJet said in a regulatory filing today.

The extension was sought in view of the airline adopting new accounting standards, a SpiceJet spokesperson said.

Indian Accounting Standards (Ind AS) which is converged with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), has been made mandatory for certain class of companies starting April 1, 2016.

The Gurgaon-based carrier reported a net profit of Rs 149.03 crore in the three months to June, helped by higher income and increased passenger numbers.

The carrier had a net profit of Rs 72.97 crore in the April-June quarter of 2015.

This was the sixth consecutive profitable quarter for the SpiceJet after the change in management as well as control in January 2015.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Srilankan Airlines' pilots today launched a campaign against the way they are being subjected to breathalyser tests, saying they will not strike but stay away from overtime work to register their protests.

Kicking off the 'work to rule' campaign, the pilots of the country's flag carrier Srilankan Airlines said they would stay away from overtime work and would not be available on off days.

This is not a strike action but a 'work to rule' until pilots' demands are met, Captain Renuka Senanayake, spokesman for the pilots' guild said.

"We will be doing work strictly according to our roster. We are not against breathalyser tests but proper procedure must be followed," Senanayake said.

They are at loggerheads with the management over the breathalyser tests procedure on the flight crew.

Last month, a pilot was dismissed and his license was suspended by the civil aviation authorities after he was found to be under the influence of alcohol prior to a flight from Frankfurt to Colombo.

It was reported that another pilot who was asked to undergo a breathalyser test at the Colombo airport had protested over the procedure.

The Srilankan Airlines management said refusal to cooperate with breathalyser tests was a violation of civil aviation regulations.

SriLankan Airlines operates flights to many Indian cities including Delhi, Thiruvananthapuram, Chennai and Kochi.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Tajikistan's President Emomali Rakhmon accused a jailed opposition group of attempting to build an "Islamic state" and triggering civil war in the secular country, in a speech shown on state TV today.

In the address marking the ex-Soviet country's 25th independence anniversary, Rakhmon blasted the "destructive plans" of an Islamic party recently banned as a "terrorist" group by the government.

"Malicious forces and misguided people working to the plans and instructions of their foreign masters...Planned to build an Islamic state, and dragged Tajikistan into the vortex of a fratricidal war," Rakhmon said.

The Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan which styled itself as moderate was declared a "terrorist" group following lethal political violence in the country last year.

Tajikistan in August said it had jailed 170 people over a purported mutiny led by a deputy defence minister last September that the government said the IRPT organised.

At least 26 people died in the fighting that ensued, according to the country's interior ministry.

Earlier this month Rakhmon said the civil war that raged from 1992 to 1997 and cost tens of thousands of lives "came from the mosques of that era...By the initiative of the IRPT."



Ex-collective farm boss Rakhmon, who has been impoverished Tajikistan's president since 1994, has publicly stated his dislike of Islamic dress.

Reports of police forcibly shaving believers' beards in the country of 8 million are widespread.

The US, European Union and an array of rights groups have aired concerns about the imprisonment of a dozen members of the IRPT leadership.

Rights groups have also raised concerns that party members are being tortured while behind bars.

The banned party's leader Muhiddin Kabiri escaped the country before he could be detained, but has since been placed on Interpol's wanted list.

One member of the party, female lawyer Zarafo Rahmoni, was released this month following reports she was considering suicide.

The party's emergence after the civil war was a product of the peace process to end a conflict which pitted pro-government forces led by Rakhmon against Islamic, regional and pro-democratic factions.

IRPT was represented in Tajikistan's parliament for 15 years but came under increased state pressure before disputed elections to last year that saw it fail to win a seat.

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As regulator Trai called the warring telecos to discuss contentious interconnect issue, cellular operators body COAI today said incumbent players have agreed to discuss and negotiate "reasonable" points of connectivity that can be provided to entrant Reliance Jio.

Reliance Jio and existing operators such as Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea met telecom regulator Trai today to discuss the issue of network interconnection.

COAI said the operators will now sit across the table one-on-one to negotiate the "reasonable" incremental capacity to be provided to Reliance Jio, and following an agreement will have 90 days to comply to the latter's request for interconnection ports.

These bilateral negotiations on additional requirement by RJio will start in a couple of days, COAI director general Rajan S Mathews said.

"It is definitely a progress...This is certainly breaking of the initial deadlock...Expectations have been set and we hope this will set the basis of resolution," he said.

Earlier in the day, the industry association, which on behalf of majority of its members (existing operators) has been leading the front in refusing additional interconnection points to Reliance Jio, was kept out of the meeting between telecom operators and sector regulator, purportedly at the insistence of Reliance Jio.

"What I understand from operators who attended the meeting was that there was a push by Trai that this is a bilateral discussion, both sides get together...Talk about reasonable points of interconnect and capacity demands...And then both sides, based on reasonable needs, can come to an agreement on this," Mathews said.

Mathews claimed that Trai has said that it will look into COAI's contention that RJio was unleashing asymmetric voice traffic on others' networks.

Reliance Jio has accused existing operators of not releasing sufficient number of interconnection ports to it, leading to large number of call drops on its network and creating inconvenience to its customers.

Existing operators, however, are contending that they cannot release more interconnect ports as their networks have come under stress due to surge in traffic following free voice call offer by the Mukesh Ambani-led company.

Reliance Jio Infocomm Board Member Mahendra Nahata has termed the company's fight for interconnectivity as "fight for justice and fight for customers". "...Not just Reliance Jio customers or Airtel or Vodafone but for all Indian customers," Nahata said after a meeting with TRAI.

Mathews also said, "Everyone is trying to ensure that the consumer experience is maximised...But there ought to be reasonableness in terms of companies that are providing the service to ensure that they are not taken out of their investments," he said.

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YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 9, ARMENPRESS. The resignation from the Prime Ministers post was Hovik Abrahamyans decision, head of the National Assembly RPA faction Vahram Baghdasaryan said.

He said in his speech that the expectations that he had, were not justified and hadnt been satisfactory. It is not a secret during this period Hovik Abrahamyan carried out huge works to solve the issues of the Government. Some of those issues were resolved, some of them were on their path to implementation, but he was not satisfied with the polarization of the public and the economic activity rates, and he made a decision to resign. He also said he is ready to support the new Government as much as he can, Baghdasaryan said, Armenpress reported.

He said Hovik Abrahamyan personally made such a decision. Baghdasaryan said he was surprised by Hovik Abrahamyans such decision. The MP said at this stage he sees the necessity of making changes in the steps on the implementation of the programs by the Government: the programs must be more intensive. Unfortunately, in our country the mechanisms are not so justified in order to govern individuals. The role of an individual is huge. Hovik Abrahamyan is quite a strong personality. Personality and mechanisms must always be consistent in order for us to feel the efficiency.
A staggering 3.3 million square kilometres - almost 10 per cent - of the the global wilderness has been lost since the 1990s, with Amazon and Central Africa being the hardest hit, a new study has found.

The study showed catastrophic declines in wilderness over the last 20 years.

"Globally important wilderness areas - despite being strongholds for endangered biodiversity, for buffering and regulating local climates, and for supporting many of the world's most politically and economically marginalised communities - are completely ignored in environmental policy," said James Watson of University of Queensland in Australia.

"International policy mechanisms must recognise the actions needed to maintain wilderness areas before it is too late. We probably have one to two decades to turn this around," said Watson, who is also associated the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York.

Watson said much policy attention has been paid to the loss of species, but comparatively little was known about larger-scale losses of entire ecosystems.

To fill that gap in the new study, the researchers mapped wilderness areas around the globe, with "wilderness" being defined as biologically and ecologically intact landscapes free of any significant human disturbance.

The researchers then compared their current map of wilderness to one produced by the same means in the early 1990s.

Their updated map shows that a total of 30.1 million square kilometres (more than 20 per cent of the world's land area) now remains as wilderness, with the majority being located in North America, North Asia, North Africa, and the Australian continent.

However, comparisons between the two maps show that an estimated 3.3 million square kilometres (almost 10 per cent) of wilderness area has been lost in the intervening years.

Those losses have occurred primarily in South America, which has experienced a 30 per cent wilderness loss, and Africa, which has experienced a 14 per cent loss.

"The amount of wilderness loss in just two decades is staggering and very saddening," Watson said.

"If we don't act soon, it will be all gone, and this is a disaster for conservation, for climate change, and for some of the most vulnerable human communities on the planet," he said.

The study was published in the journal Current Biology.

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India on Friday said sanctioning of well-known terrorist leaders and organisations besides developmental issues like access to cooperation and investments in the field of civil nuclear energy should not emerge as points of difference with a partner like China.

Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar said that China is expected to be appreciative of India's interests, especially when they are not in conflict with those of Beijing, and noted that it is imperative for the future of Asia and the world, that the two nations approach each other with strategic maturity.

He admitted that bilateral ties with China were complicated but stressed that one should not approach the relationship as a zero sum game.

"There is an expectation in India that a partner like China would be appreciative of India's interests, especially when they are not in conflict with those of China," he said.

"Combating terrorism is one such area and sanctioning of well-known terrorist leaders and organisations should not emerge as an issue of difference. Nor should reservations on developmental issues, such as India's predictable access to international cooperation and investments in the field of civil nuclear energy," he said speaking at a conference in New Delhi.

Jaishankar was referring to China blocking India's bid to put Pakistan-based terrorist Masood Azhar's on UN Security Council blacklist of groups linked to al-Qaeda or Islamic State and India's entry in the Nuclear Suppliers Group.

Admitting that India and China have a complicated relationship, the Foreign Secretary said one should not ignore the collaborative and convergent side of the ties as well.

Sino-Indian ties are a subject of heightened attention. Part of the reason is the weight of history that this particular relationship carries on its shoulders, he said.

Some of it also arises from the great potential that it holds and the impact that its direction could have on regional and global politics.

"The report card of our ties for the last three decades is much stronger than many assume," he said.

Noting that from a situation of limited contacts and content, relations have today transitioned out of their state of abnormalcy, Jaishankar said one must give due credit to the efforts of successive governments on both sides who have ensured peace and tranquillity on the border, even as negotiations on its settlement continue.

"Difficult problems, some of them pertaining to sovereignty, have not been side-stepped," he said.
Political parties in Tamil Nadu, including DMK, today opposed the Railways' move to introduce flexi fare system on premier trains, Rajdhani, Duronto and Shatabdi, saying it will affect the poor and the middle classes and demanded its rollback.

DMK treasurer and Opposition Leader in Tamil Nadu Assembly, M K Stalin said it was "distressing" to see the Railways coming out with such a fare system even as the Railway Budget in February this year had not levied any hike in passenger fares.

"The Indian Railways has shocked the passengers across the country with a 50 per cent raise in the ticket prices of Rajdhani, Duranto and Shatabdi," Stalin said in a Facebook post.

Airlines and private bus operators "burdened" the commuters with surge pricing during festival days, and the Railways, "which is the largest used public sector service", should not opt for it, he said.

"The first 10 per cent of the tickets in base fare will be sold out as soon as the booking opens, forcing the rest to buy the remaining 90 per cent of the tickets for higher price affecting the poor and middle class," he said.

Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) founder S Ramadoss said the flexi pricing system is "condemnable." and "affects the poor and the middle classes."



Former Union Minister and TMC leader G K Vasan also slammed the move.

DMK, PMK and TMC demanded rollback of the flexi fare system.

The Railways had put in place the flexi fare system for premier trains - Rajdhani, Duronto and Shatabdi with effect from today.

According to the new system, while 10 per cent of the seats will be sold in the normal fare in the beginning, it will go on increasing by 10 per cent with every 10 per cent of berths sold with the ceiling limit of 50 per cent.

Facing criticism, the railways yesterday said the decision to introduce dynamic surge pricing for premier train tickets has been done on an experimental basis and it will be reviewed after some time.

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Stung by allegations of COAI over keeping the lobby group out of its meet with telecom players today, regulator Trai has asked the cellular operators' body to take back its words and apologise for "malafide and patently wrong" statement, a source said.

Trai in a letter to COAI chairman Gopal Vittal has said, "The statement of Director General, COAI in the electronic media alleging that he was not allowed by Trai to participate in the said meeting at the behest of Reliance Jio is to say the least patently wrong, mischievous and perhaps with malafide intention."



"In order to set the record straight, the Director General COAI may be directed to retract his false statement made in the media and issue apologies for the same," the letter said.

Trai held a meeting with Reliance Jio, Airtel, Vodafone and Idea to resolve the ongoing dispute over inter-connecting points but COAI, which represents incumbent players as well as RJio, was kept out of the meet.

Mathews has alleged that COAI was "kept out of the TRAI meeting at the insistence of RIL Jio, and TRAI acquiesced to their demand in an unprecedented manner."



Trai said that as the issue involved bilateral arrangement between telecom service providers "naturally neither COAI nor any other association was invited for this meeting. This position was also clarified to the Mr Rajan Mathews, Director General, COAI before the meeting today."



Reliance Jio Board Member Mahendra also refuted the allegation.

"We have not said any such thing. Whosoever was invited should attend the meeting," Nahata said.

Mathews too said that COAI was not invited to the meeting but the meeting was held based on their letters and as a stakeholder they wanted to be a part of it.

COAI last month had alleged biasness in Trai's conduct but later apologised for the same.

The issue of interconnectivity between telecom networks has, in fact, become the flashpoint for one of the fiercest corporate battles in the sector.

Interconnection is required to enable mobile users to make calls to customers of other telecom networks, and is all- important for Reliance Jio which is scripting a disruptive entry into 4G market.

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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin agreed on the need for a ceasefire in "as soon as possible", state media reported.

Ankara is hoping a ceasefire will be implemented in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo for the Feast of the Sacrifice (Eid al-Adha) Islamic holiday which in Turkey begins around September 12.

Erdogan told Putin by phone on Thursday that it was essential to agree to a ceasefire in Aleppo "as soon as possible," the agency Anadolu reported.

Both leaders agreed to intensify efforts to this end, it added.

Turkey and Russia remain on the two opposite ends of the Syrian conflict, with Moscow backing Assad and Ankara supporting the opposition fighting for his ouster.

The Turkish leader had met separately with Putin and US President Barack Obama on the sidelines of the recent G-20 meeting in China, telling them both that it was essential to agree to a truce for Aleppo.

Russia and the United States were believed to have been close to an agreement at the G20 but Washington then admitted no deal could be announced for the moment.

Ibrahim Kalin, spokesman for Erdogan, said Tuesday that the ceasefire could begin with a 48-hour-truce that would then be lengthened and would see both the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and opposition fighters halt fire.
Two candidates were injured in a chaos outside INS Hamla in Malad here during a Naval recruitment drive today.

"The Indian Navy is conducting a Special Recruitment Drive for Senior Secondary Recruits at INS Hamla, Malad. Due to the overwhelming response, a very large number of candidates have reported for the said drive.

"Adequate arrangements for crowd control have also been made in liaison with Mumbai Police. However, due to some over-enthusiastic candidates desiring to enter the premises before the others, crowding resulted at the main gate of INS Hamla, which was controlled by Civil and Naval Police present at the site," a Defence official said.

"Two candidates received minor injuries in this jostling at the main gate and were treated at the Naval Hospital at INS Hamla," he said.

The examination is currently in progress in batches, and will continue till all eligible candidates with valid documents take the examination, he said.

"There has been no change in the minimum educational qualifications etc, and all the volunteers (with valid documents) will get a chance to appear for the recruitment opportunity," the official said.

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The UN Security Council will meet today to discuss North Korea's fifth and most powerful nuclear test to date.

The 15 council members will meet at 3:00 pm (1900 GMT) for urgent consultations, at the request of the United States and Japan, said the New Zealand mission.

New Zealand holds this month's presidency of the Security Council.

North Korea's state media said the test, which comes after a series of ballistic missile launches, had realized the country's goal of being able to fit a miniaturized warhead on a rocket.

The blast at the Punggye-ri nuclear site was the North's fifth and most powerful yet at 10 kilotons, according to experts.

The council has strongly condemned North Korea's missile launches and vowed earlier this week to take "further significant measures" against Pyongyang.

Japan is calling for new sanctions, but China, Pyongyang's ally, has repeatedly stressed the need to avoid an escalation of tension on the Korean peninsula.

North Korea has been hit by five sets of UN sanctions since it first tested a nuclear device in 2006.

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A man here took to begging in a bid to arrange a vehicle to carry his daughter's body back home today even as a senior district official claimed he had not intimated hospital authorities for an ambulance.

The incident came to light after a photograph showing the girl's father, Ramesh, begging went viral on social media. Following which authorities swung into action.

The 14-year-old girl, a resident of Suatali in Mitauli area, was admitted to Mitauli health centre yesterday with high fever, hospital officials said.

Due to her serious condition she was referred to the Lakhimpur Kheri district hospital, where she was declared brought dead, they added.

Ramesh pleaded several persons to help him arrange a vehicle to carry the body back home. However, no one obliged him.

Deeply perturbed, Ramesh put the body on a footpath outside the hospital and started begging from pedestrians.

Chief Development Officer Amit Singh Bansal said he has sought all documents related to the girl's admission and treatment."



Virtually giving a clean chit to hospital authorities, he said, "If the girl's father had intimated hospital staff for the ambulance, the same could have been arranged.

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US Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov condemned North Korea's latest nuclear test today and said it would be referred to the United Nations.

Appearing with Lavrov before the start of talks on the crisis in Syria, Kerry said he had also spoken to his Japanese and South Korean colleagues and had had a "serious conversation" about the incident.

Russia, the United States, China, Japan, South Korea lead the international response to North Korea's banned nuclear weapons program as parties to the stalled "Six Party Talks" process.

"We are seriously concerned and the resolutions of the Security Council must be strictly implemented and we must send this message very strongly," Lavrov said.

The Russian foreign minister said he would also speak to his Japanese counterpart later in the day.

"Obviously Japan and South Korea, particularly, are deeply concerned because of the neighborhood," Kerry said. "But I think it's fair to say China, Russia and the United States, everybody shares concerns about it.

"We're trying to monitor to precisely find out what took place... And we will certainly be discussing this in the context of the United Nations, for sure.

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YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 9, ARMENPRESS. President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan received on September 9 the delegation led by President of the socialist group at the French National Assembly Bruno Le Roux.

As Armenpress was informed from the press service of the Armenian Presidents Office, the President hailed another visit of the French parliamentarians to Armenia and stated that Armenia is proud to have unique relations and cordial friendship with France, which are significantly fostered by close inter-parliamentary partnership. In the face of Mr. Le Roux I want to spotlight the consistent work of numerous French parliamentarians in their parliament thank to which Armenian-French inter-parliamentary relations strengthen, as well as deepen inter-state relations in general, Serzh Sargsyan said.

The President expressed gratitude to friendly France for always supporting Armenia in issues of vital importance. In that context the Armenian President considered invaluable Frances contribution to international recognition and condemnation of the Armenian Genocide and expressed his deep gratitude to the French authorities and people, highlighting the works done for the adoption of the bill criminalizing the denial of the Armenian Genocide.

Bruno Le Roux conveyed the warm greetings of French President Francois Hollande to President Sargsyan after which the sides discussed the opportunities for expanding inter-parliamentary partnership and strengthening relations between the two friendly states and peoples.

The President of the socialist group at the French National Assembly recalled with warmth the meeting of the delegation led by him with President Sargsyan in 2015, during which Serzh Sargsyan introduced the process of Constitutional reforms and its aim at the request of the French parliamentarians. Bruno Le Roux mentioned he is glad to see how the President of Armenia, who a year ago vigorously supported the idea of reforms, continues to consistently progress in that direction.

The interlocutors referred to Nagorno Karabakh conflict settlement negotiations at the meeting. The President of Armenia highly appreciated Frances balanced position on Nagorno Karabakh issue and its active role in the sidelines of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairs, attaching special importance to the contribution of French President Hollande to propelling the negotiation process forward.
The House of Representatives passed legislation today that would allow victims of the 9/11 attacks and their relatives to sue foreign governments suspected of backing acts of terrorism against the US.

The Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act - approved in the House by unanimous voice vote some four months after its Senate passage - is strongly opposed by the government of Saudi Arabia, the home nation of 15 of the 19 hijackers in the September 11, 2001 attacks.

It now heads to President Barack Obama's desk, just days before the 15th anniversary of 9/11.

The White House has signaled its opposition to the measure because it would essentially waive the doctrine of sovereign immunity that protects nation states from civil suits or criminal prosecution.

"This legislation would change long-standing, international law regarding sovereign immunity. And the president of the United States continues to harbor serious concerns that this legislation would make the United States vulnerable in other court systems around the world," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said back in May, after the Senate unanimously approved the bill.

The measure would allow 9/11 families to pursue cases in federal court against foreign governments, notably Saudi Arabia, and demand compensation if such governments are proven to bear some responsibility for the attacks.

Under current law, victims of terrorism can only sue countries officially designated by the State Department as sponsors of terrorism, such as Iran and Syria.

No official Saudi complicity in the Al-Qaeda attacks has been proven, and the kingdom has never been formally implicated. It is not a designated sponsor of terrorism.

In February Zacarias Moussaoui, dubbed the 20th hijacker, told US lawyers that members of the Saudi royal family donated millions of dollars to Al-Qaeda in the 1990s.

The Saudi Embassy denied Moussaoui's claims. But his accusations revived debate over whether the Obama administration should release a still-classified 28-page section of the 9/11 Commission Report.

The documents were declassified and released in mid-July. They showed that while the United States probed links between the government of Saudi Arabia and the 9/11 attacks, it found multiple suspicions but no proven ties.

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The US is monitoring and continuing to assess the situation in view of the seismic activity on the Korean Peninsula in the vicinity of a known North Korean nuclear site, the White House said today.

"We are aware of seismic activity on the Korean Peninsula in the vicinity of a known North Korean nuclear test site," said Ned Price, spokesman of the National Security Council of the White House.

"We are monitoring and continuing to assess the situation in close coordination with our regional partners," Price said.

The White House statement came after South Korean and international monitoring agencies reported an earthquake near North Korea's north-eastern nuclear test site, indicating that Pyongyang may have detonated a new atomic test to mark the 68th anniversary of the country's founding.

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A public programme on secularism organised by an Islamic outfit here received threats following which its venue was changed, police said today.

The 'Peace and Harmony' programme organised by Jamaat-e-Islami's local unit yesterday was shifted to another venue following the threat perception, they said.

The organisers agreed to a suggestion by the police and held the programme at a school premises in the neighbourhood. It was originally slated to be held near the high court.

The programme, attended by leaders from different religions, was held amidst tight security.

Police, however, declined to disclose any further detail about the security threat including its source.

"I cannot reveal much," a senior police official said.

Jamaat-e-Islami said they did not receive any message of security threat.

"We changed the venue when the police informed us about the threat perception and asked us to hold the programme in another place," Jamaat-e-Islami leader Mujeeb Rahman told PTI.

He said the outfit has been organising the 'Peace and Humanity' campaign nationwide in the backdrop of "growing communal rift" in the society.

"In Kochi, we organised the programme in which leaders of different religions -- Hindu, Muslim and Christian--came together on one stage and called for the need for an intensive campaign for establishment of peace and humanity in the society," Rahman added.

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: Madras High Court was today informed by PWD and other connected departments that WAPCOS Limited, a Central government undertaking has been approached to furnish its quote and time schedule to get Environmental Impact Assessment study for implementation of the Athikadavu-Avinashi irrigation project in full length.

The First bench, comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice R Mahadevan before which a PIL from one V R Othisamy of Vadugu Palayam in Coimbatore district to implement the project, formulated nearly five decades ago, came up today went through a status report filed to the above effect.

WAPCOS Limited comes under the Union Ministry of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation.

The report said the company had studied the project report in detail and said a total time frame of 17 months is required to get EIA and forest clearance and preparation of land plan. It further submitted that on completion of all studies these will be submitted to the Union Government for the purpose of allotment of funds to the project.

The bench after going through thereport said that to ensure that the time periods are complied with, it would monitor the same initially and posted the matter for further hearing to December 16.

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"Friends" has fans all over the world, but actor Matt LeBlanc was surprised when people living in the caves recognized him as Joey from the series.

The 49-year-old actor, who starred as Joey Tribbiani on the series that ended 12 years back, was shooting in the Atlas Mountains in Morocco when the surprising incident happened, reported People magazine.

"I was in the Atlas Mountains in Morocco, shooting a thing for Top Gear. I mean, we were far away from civilization. And these people were wearing robes, and they live in caves and stuff.

"They called me Joey and said, 'How you doin'?' in a really butchered accent. It was like, 'Oh wow. Did not see that one coming.'... The show is everywhere. It still holds up," LeBlanc said.

The actor will next be seen in CBS' upcoming sitcom "Man with a Plan.

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A 19-year-old woman arrested in a probe into a car found laden with gas cylinders in Paris had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group and was preparing an imminent attack, officials said today.

French President Francois Hollande said a terror cell had been shut down and an attack "foiled," after Ines Madani, 19, and two other women were arrested.

Police shot and wounded Madani as they swooped on her and her accomplices aged 23 and 39 in a suburb south of Paris yesterday.

Investigators believe Madani is the main suspect in a probe into the Peugeot 607 found a few hundred metres from Notre Dame cathedral on Sunday. She is the daughter of the car's owner.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said the three women "were apparently preparing new, violent and, what is more, imminent actions".

The women were "radicalised and fanaticised", he said.

Madani had sworn allegiance to the Islamic State group in a letter found in her possession, according to a source in the investigation.

A police officer suffered a knife wound to the stomach during the arrests late yesterday in Boussy-Saint-Antoine, south of Paris.

Hollande, speaking on a visit to Athens, said: "An attack has been foiled."



"A group has been destroyed," he said, but he warned: "There are others."



A police source said security services had issued a warning yesterday about a possible attack on train stations in Paris and the area where the women lived.

Police are now convinced that the car found with five full gas cylinders in its boot was intended to be used in an attack.

The car was discovered with its hazard lights flashing and its licence plates had been removed.

Three bottles of diesel fuel were also discovered in the vehicle, but police did not find any detonators.

Police said the boyfriend of one of the three women was arrested yesterday.

The man's brother is himself in custody over suspected links to Larossi Abballa, a jihadist who killed a police officer and his girlfriend in a Paris suburb in June, a source said.

Four people -- two brothers and their girlfriends -- are already in custody over the discovery of the car.

The first couple arrested, a 34-year-old man and a 29-year-old woman, have been held since Tuesday and are known to the security services for links to radical Islam.

Police then arrested the man's brother and his girlfriend, both aged 26.

France is on high alert after Islamic State called on its followers to attack the country in revenge for air strikes on the group's bases in Syria and Iraq.

IS has claimed responsibility for a string of jihadist attacks, including last November's coordinated bloodshed in which gunmen and suicide bombers killed 130 people.

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In yet another incident of alleged negligence, a woman died for want of "medical attention" at the district hospital here two days after she gave birth to a stillborn, leading to a protest by local residents and activists of Apna Dal.

The pictures of the 20-year-old's father-in-law carrying her in arms have gone viral on social media.

Anshu Pandey was on September 4 admitted to the district hospital, where she gave birth to a stillborn the next day, Chief Medical Officer V S Rai said.

Soon after, her condition deteriorated and her father-in -law took her to a private hospital for further treatment.

However, the authorities at the private hospital denied to take her in, following which she was brought back to the district hospital, her father-in-law Hriday Narain Pandey said.

"When we returned to the district hospital, the staff asked why we went to the private hospital and misbehaved with us," Hriday alleged.

"The hospital staff refused to provide us a stretcher and I had to carry her in my arms from one place to another," he further alleged.

The woman was then taken to a hospital in Varanasi where she died on Wednesday.

Hriday alleged medical negligence on the part of the district hospital staff and said it lead to Anshu's death.

However, the CMO said: "The district hospital staff did not advise the woman's father-in-law to take her to the private hospital. He did that on his own. Also, we did not refer her to the Varanasi hospital. It was his decision."



Meanwhile, Apna Dal which led the protest of locals demanded that a case to be lodged against the hospital staff and submitted a memorandum to this effect to the administration.

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Travellers in the age group of 18-35 years are dominating the Indian travel scene with almost 66 per cent of the overall trips being undertaken by this young tech-savvy generation, a study has said.

"Young Indians are the driving force behind the changing travel landscape in the country. About 66 per cent of the total trips were made by travellers in the age group 18-35 years," according to online travel company MakeMyTrip's 'India Travel Report 2016'.

The findings are based on the bookings seen on MakeMyTrip platform during January-June 2016, compared to the same period last year.

It revealed that smartphone penetration and adoption is driving shift from offline to online in the travel industry.

Mobile is the most preferred booking platform, as 74 per cent of the bookings were made via app by travellers in the age group 18-35 years.

Compared to this, travellers' mix preferring desktop as the medium comprises of more travellers in the age bracket of over 35 years, accounting for 40 per cent of the total bookings made via the desktop, the study added.

"At a high level, mobile as a booking medium and hotels as a category has significantly evolved compared to last year. Further, travellers are increasingly becoming younger.

"Just like financial or career ambition, people now have travel ambition especially the younger generation. This has had a direct effect on the travel landscape of the country, which is now being driven by young Indians," MakeMyTrip Co-Founder and CEO-India Rajesh Magow said.

The other top trends the MakeMyTrip study observed this year include higher spending on luxury travel experience within India and abroad by travellers, rise in solo-woman travel amongst others.

The average spends by travellers have seen a rise with Rs 50,000 per person for short-haul and Rs 1 lakh per person and above for long haul destinations, it said.

With higher disposable income, people have started spending more time on their holidays (12-14 nights) by clubbing multiple destinations in their itinerary.

The average holiday frequency has also gone up due to extended weekends and average vacation time period is up by 10 per cent.

About 63 per cent of the young travellers have taken more than four trips in the first half of 2016, versus 54 per cent in the first half of 2015, it said.

In terms of international travel, it said, young Indians prefers short haul destinations. About 65 per cent of the trips made in short haul destinations were made by travellers in the 18-35 years age bracket, it said.

The study revealed that while international hotels witnessed planned bookings, domestic hotels saw a rise in last minute bookings with 50 per cent of bookings having an advance purchase window of only two weeks.

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A 21-year-old nurse died at a hospital here, more than a week after she allegedly attempted suicide upset over being stalked and assaulted by a youth, police said today.

Pusphpalatha, who was battling for life, died last night at the government medical college hospital here.

"Respiratory failure was one of the complications that occurred due to her hanging attempt. She was put on ventilator. However, it did not help and despite our best efforts she died last night," Dr P Vinoth Kumar, Assistant Resident Medical Officer, Government Medical College Hospital said.

Pusphpalatha, a resident of a village off Virudhachalam near here, attempted suicide by hanging herself in her house on August 31. She was rescued by her family and admitted to the government hospital here after initial treatment locally.

She had taken the extreme step after 22-year-old Dhanasekaran of the same locality had allegedly assaulted and shouted at her profanely as she had turned down his proposal to marry him.

The man, who had stalked her for months and allegedly pestered her to marry him, was arrested today under various IPC sections and Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Harassment of Women Act and produced before a local court which remanded him to judicial custody, a police official said.

This is the latest in a series of incidents of fallout of one-sided love such as the brutal murder of IT professional Swathi in Chennai and an engineering student in Karur district in the state.

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A youth was killed and many others were injured following a clash between two groups of students outside a private college here today, police said.

The clash took place when some students were pasting posters in favour of one group near the main gate of the college, they said.

"The clash which started with hurling of abuses among students soon became violent as other students rushed in support of their group," said Superintendent of Police Simardeep Singh.

"Few students who came later with firearms opened fire which hit Hardeep. He was rushed to local hospital where he was declared brought dead," he said.

The police could not ascertained whether the cause of the clash was the proposed student bodies election or some old enmity between the two groups.

A college representative claimed that Hardeep was not a student of their college and "most of the 25 to 30 youths involved in the clash were outsiders".

"The gate of the college was closed today due to some talent show function. Some outsiders tried to enter the college premises in spite of security guard deployed there," he said.

Police said most of 28 CCTV cameras installed in the college's campus premises, including near the site of clash, were found to be out of order.

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YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 9, ARMENPRESS. Belarus plans to export dump trucks and mining equipment to Armenia. The issue was discussed during the trip of Belarusian Ambassador Igor Nazaruk to Armenia's Syunik Province, Armenpress informs BelTA learned from the press service of the Belarusian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The Ambassador visited a number of Armenian mining enterprises, in particular, Zangezur Copper and Molybdenum Plant, Agarak Copper and Molybdenum Plant, Kapan Mining and Processing Plant. The meeting with the companies' chief executives focused on the delivery of dump trucks, tires, mining equipment, and other in-demand Belarusian products to Armenia, the press release of the press service reads.

The Belarusian diplomat also met with Syunik Province Governor Surik Khachatryan. The participants of the meeting discussed a wide range of issues of the bilateral and international cooperation, including cooperation in trade, economy, and the humanitarian field.




Controversial preacher Zakir Naik's NGO Islamic Research Foundation has been banned from receiving foreign funds directly and the Home Ministry has asked RBI to seek prior permission from it before releasing any money to the NGO.

The decision has been taken after a preliminary inquiry conducted by the Home Ministry found that the NGO was carrying out activities contrary to the Foreign Contribution Regulations Act (FCRA) under which it has to function.

Sources said with IRF being put into prior permission category, the Reserve Bank of India, henceforth, has to inform the Home Ministry about all funds coming to the NGO and permission has to be taken from the ministry before releasing them to IRF.

They said that last month the Home Ministry had renewed the FCRA licence of IRF despite several ongoing probes against the NGO and its founder Naik including one by the Home Ministry itself.

Taking strong exception to the goof-up, the Home Ministry suspended Joint Secretary G K Dwivedi, who was heading the foreigners division of the ministry looking after the FCRA-related issues, and three other officials.

Naik was accused of radicalising and attracting youths for terror acts.

Naik has come under the scanner of the security agencies after Bangladeshi newspaper 'Daily Star' had reported that one of the attackers of the July 1 terror strike in Dhaka, Rohan Imtiaz, ran a propaganda on Facebook last year quoting Naik.

He, in a lecture aired on Peace TV, an international Islamic channel, had reportedly "urged all Muslims to be terrorists".

Naik, a popular but controversial Islamic orator and founder of Mumbai-based IRF, is banned in the UK and Canada for his hate speeches aimed against other religions. He is among 16 banned Islamic scholars in Malaysia.

He is popular in Bangladesh through his Peace TV, although his preachings often demean other religions and even other Muslim sects.

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India's third biggest crude oil refiner, Hindustan Petroleum Corp (HPCL), plans to expand its refining capacity to more than 60 million tonnes annually, or about 1.2 million barrels of oil per day by 2030, according to a senior company official.

This will not only help the company fill the yawning gap between the volume it refines and the volume it markets through its retail outlets, but also help in meeting the burgeoning fuel demand in the country, said Chairman Mukesh Kumar Surana at a conference late on Thursday.

While Hindustan Petroleum, which is largely known as a marketer of fuel products, currently sells 34.20 million tonnes of fuel products every year through its retail outlets and bulk sales, its refining capacity is only about half that.

According to a 2015 report, by the International Energy Agency, India will require up to 329 million tonnes of oil products annually by 2030. As of last year, India consumed 183 million tonnes of fuel products, government data showed.

Analysts have often pointed out the heavy reliance on outside purchase of fuel products as a double-edged sword for the company. While is not directly exposed to crude oil fluctuations, it misses out on the refining margins that its peers clock.

"We would like to have 60 plus (million tonnes) refining capacity by 2030," Surana said.

Separately, a company official said the internal target is to have not more than 15 per cent reliance on outside purchase of fuel by 2030.

A major chunk of this refining capacity is expected to come from a joint-venture (JV) project for a 60-million-tonne proposed refinery in the western state of Maharashtra.

Hindustan Petroleum will own a 25 per cent stake in this JV, while India's biggest state-owned refiner Indian Oil and No 2 player Bharat Petroleum will hold 50 per cent and 25 per cent stakes, respectively.

India's Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said in June that it would also like to bring in a strategic partner in the refinery and Saudi Arabian oil giant Saudi Arabia Oil has shown interest in it.

To meet the 60-million-tonne target the company will have to set up yet another greenfield refinery, HPCL's director of refineries, B K Namdeo, said.
Is any Vogue editor worth the title these days if she doesn't have a behind-the-scenes documentary revealing her smarts and substance? Following The September Issue, R J Cutler's 2009 documentary about Anna Wintour and life at Vogue, and Franca: Chaos and Creation, Francesco Carrozzini's new film about Franca Sozzani, the editor of Italian Vogue, increasingly it seems the answer is no.

Especially given that this week a third such film hit small-screens in Britain. Absolutely Fashion: Inside British Vogue, a two-part BBC documentary about the magazine, had its debut Thursday, with the second episode to be broadcast on the eve of London Fashion Week, September 15.

Three makes a trend. But what the first two documentaries suggest, and the newest one confirms, is that these fly-on-the-wall dramas also serve a strategic purpose for glossy magazines in an increasingly digital landscape.

To maintain their authoritative positions as gatekeepers in the social media age, old-guard editors and employees must engage more (and reveal more) than they ever have before.

The fashion industry's 21st-century audience, raised in an era of oversharing and immediate gratification, cares less about a finished collection or campaign or cover than about what went on behind the scenes. And a documentary, it would appear, is an increasingly popular way of lifting the curtain.

The series was filmed and narrated by Richard Macer. He embedded himself for nine months with British Vogue in the run-up to the publications 100th anniversary celebrations earlier this year.

The BBC documentary offers the usual peek into a world of runway front rows, egos and high glamour, in an office environment dominated by women and fuelled by adrenaline and coffee. But it is also a place where, as Macer wryly observes at the outset in the slick and slyly faux naif tone he maintains throughout, "things are not always as they seem at Vogue, and appearances can be deceptive."



Case in point: British Vogue's long-term editor, Alexandra Shulman, who has been at the helm for 25 years - or a quarter of the magazine's existence.

She is known for her understated personal style, and her dual career as a novelist whose latest book, The Parrots, was published last year. Shulman, 58, clearly rules her roost as many at the top tier of the fashion world do: with an unpredictable temperament and unshakable adherence to her own editorial instincts. "Alex says she likes to hire clever women who like to challenge her," Macer says in a voice-over several months into the project. "But in all the meetings I've filmed, I haven't seen any of them do that."



That is not entirely true. One of the most memorable moments in the series features a choice between two shots of Kate Moss for the April cover. Shulman favours a conventional photograph of Moss looking to the camera in a Rolling Stones vest top, but her staff prefers a more dramatic shot of the model in her underwear and draped in a billowing Union Jack.

Macer takes brazen advantage of the moment by asking the meeting to engage in a vote. He then allows the ensuing seconds of silence to run their course, acute nerves etched on the staff members' faces as they collectively engage in a rare act of dissent.

Not that it matters: Shulman, irritated but unswayed, goes on to garner the support of the C-suite executives for her choice and wins the day.

Then there's the moment, 24 hours before that issue goes to press, that Shulman rejects the Moss cover in favour of another featuring Rihanna (originally planned as the next month's cover star) after she learns a rival magazine is putting the pop star on its April cover.

Shulman icily refuses to be drawn into talking about the details on film, largely because the rival in question is her Conde Nast stablemate Anna Wintour, editor of American Vogue.

Weeks later, as she readies herself to unveil one of the biggest scoops of her professional career (the Duchess of Cambridge as her centenary-issue cover star), Shulman reveals no qualms about lying repeatedly on camera to the BBC crew to hide her plans, deliberately misleading them into thinking she is choosing a graphic cover rather than an individual face. It is a move Macer challenges.

"I didn't feel awkward about lying to you, no," Shulman says, with the tone of casual dismissal she uses often with him throughout the series.

Lucinda Chambers, the fashion director of and a 36-year veteran of the magazine, said of Shulman: "I think she's genuinely really well behaved. So I'm pleased when she gets to behave badly, or that side of her comes out."

 2016 The New York Times
On a frosty New York afternoon in January 2009, US Airways Flight 1549 took off from the LaGuardia Airport for Charlotte Douglas International Airport in North Carolina. But fate, or rather a flock of birds, had other plans. About three minutes in, a flock of Canadian geese struck the plane andit lost powers in both its engines. The pilot, Chesley Sullenberger along with first officer Jeffrey B Skiles, were now left deciding whether to turn back to LaGuardia or go to the nearby Teterboro Airport. And 208 seconds were all they had to make a decision. Just then Sullenberger, or as he was called, took a decision that would become front page news the next day. He decided to land the aircraft on the icy Hudson river. His decision, though unconventional, helped everyone aboard leave unscathed. He became a hero and his landing came to be known as the "Miracle on the Hudson".
Last November, the town of Satara in Maharashtra witnessed the cremation of Santosh Mahadik of 41 Rashtriya Rifles (Maratha Light Infantry), a colonel who was mortally shot during during an operation in Kupwara, Kashmir. Among the hundreds who were present during the 21-gun salute were his wife and two children.
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Alarmed over fake baby milk powders circulating in the market, the Authentication Solution Providers' Association (ASPA) that works closely with global authorities such as Counterfeit Intelligence Bureau (CIB), Interpol and FICCI Committee against counterfeiting and smuggling, has written to Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) to implement forensic features on products to ensure safety.

"As the recent scandal in China has shown, counterfeiters will go to any lengths for a quick profit, including putting babies at risk. To protect the 25 million babies born every year in India, it is essential to protect baby milk powders and other nutritional products from the scourge of counterfeiting," said Nakul Pasricha, Vice President, ASPA. "This can be achieved by securing supply chains through authentication, track-and-trace and other digital solutions, as well as by applying tamper-proof or tamper-evident physical solutions onto packaging, such as security labels and holograms," he added.

Incidents of adulterated milk are very common in India. Currently, BIS has a product certification scheme that allows more than 30,000 licensees to use the ISI mark as a symbol of quality product. However, experts say, it's easier for unscrupulous manufacturers to produce fake ISI mark with the advancement in digital technology.

The increasing number of counterfeit ISI mark products has become a menace for the Government authorities and legitimate brand owners affecting consumer's health and resulting in loss of revenue. The ASPA has proposed to the BIS for usage of high security Optically Variable Devices (OVD). OVD's technology has been used by more than 100 Government authorities worldwide for banknote and high security documents. "The OVD technology fully conforms to the recommendation and guidelines stipulated by ISO Standards 12931 in curbing the menace of product counterfeiting. OVD contains various 'overt' and 'covert' high security features," said U K Gupta, President, ASPA.

It is impossible to duplicate with the Mirror effect.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday applauded the ISRO scientists for the launch of advanced weather satellite INSAT-3DR onboard GSLV-F05, terming it as an exemplary achievement which made India proud.

"Congratulations to @isro scientists for time and again demonstrating top-notch skill, unparalleled dedication & remarkable determination," Modi tweeted.

ALSO READ: Why Narendra Modi is India's Steve Jobs

"Our space programme keeps making us proud with the exemplary achievements. Successful launch of INSAT-3DR is a moment of immense joy," he added.

Today's mission, the 10th flight of GSLV, assumes significance for the Indian Space Research Organisation as it is the first operational flight of the rocket fitted with the indigenous cryogenic upper stage.

INSAT-3DR, with a designed mission life of ten years, will provide service continuity to earlier meteorological missions and further augment the capability to provide various meteorological, search and rescue services.
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Despite being an extremely weak economy, North Korea has carried out five nuclear tests in its history and raised tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

Today's test is believed to be the biggest so far and led to concerns that the country has made significant progress in its nuclear programme.

ALSO READ: Global stocks stumble after North Korea nuclear test rattles markets



The nuclear test was planned, it seems, to coincide with the country's National Day which marks the founding of the current leadership.

Pyongyang keeps details of its nuclear programme deeply hidden and the world knows very little about how much the nuclear programme costs the isolated country.

A Reuters report, earlier this year, cited a South Korean government analysis which put North Korea's nuclear spending at $1.1 billion to $3.2 billion.

This is a significant figure for an economy that's perpetually under distress.

Civilians suffer

While it is difficult to quantify the impact of nuclear tests on the North Korean economy, reports suggest the economic burden falls on the civilians.

Poverty level is very high in North Korea and currency value very low.

The leadership in North Korea follows a "military-first" policy, known as Songun, which prioritizes allocation of resources to the Korean People's Army over the civilians.

A high-on-vitriol propaganda which spells the permanent threat of war on the country is used to justify this policy.

North Korea's nuclear programme is born out of the same policy, where the urgency of bolstering the country's defence capabilities serves as an excuse.

Economically, with all its eggs in the same basket, North Korea pays a heavy price with no other sector getting a push to help create jobs.

The fallout of which has been widespread abject poverty propelling starvation deaths, malnourished children and miserable living conditions.

Economic sanctions

The US, which Pyongyang calls its enemy, has mostly responded to the nuclear test by imposing an array of sanctions on North Korea.

Some of the sanctions are specifically aimed at crippling North Korea's capacity to carry forward its nuclear programme.

The fifth nuclear test is likely to invite more such sanctions.

But with repeated nuclear tests over the years and the 'hydrogen bomb' test earlier this year, the effectiveness of these sanctions are in serious doubts.

Under a tightly-held dictatorship which has no tolerance for dissent and is big on propaganda, these sanctions are not effective in undermining the regime.

North Korean media portrays these sanctions as an aggression by foreign countries to disrupt North Korea's right to pursue a nuclear programme for the safety of the country.



China factor

China, at least on the outside, seems to be growing increasingly frustrated with Pyongyang over nuclear tests and missile launches on the Korean Peninsula.

But it provides economic aid to North Korea, and is Pyongyang's main benefactor. South Korea and the US want China to put more pressure on North Korea to give up its nuclear ambitions.

After the fourth nuclear test China supported UN-led sanctions against Pyongyang and has not shied from hiding its irritation.

But, North Korea's current leader Kim Jong-un seems not to be paying too much heed to Beijing's concern over the issue.

Therefore, at this point, a resolution to the North Korean nuclear crisis seems an improbable proposition.
The definition of the ideal workplace has changed along with how we describe a happy employee. Standards have been set, bars have been raised, and companies are focused on defining a unique culture and investing in initiatives that drive employee satisfaction. Leading companies do not want to be compared negatively to their competitors, and press articles are full of employer branding stories extolling the virtues of flexi-time, day care centres, stocked cafeterias and leave benefits. But, do these offerings end up increasing employee happiness? And why do companies care so much?

For starters, strong employer brands help companies achieve significant cost savings, whether it is through attracting the best type of people, retaining high performers and driving workplace engagement. As the Dale Carnegie Employee Engagement report states, pride in the organisation is one of the three main drivers of employee engagement (the other two being belief in senior leadership and the relationship with the immediate supervisor). This organisational pride is generated primarily through the efforts of the human resource function to create and sustain a good employer brand.

One of the key channels used to project employer branding is social media where content can range from highlighting employees' personal achievements, information on people friendly policies and pictures showcasing the human side of business along with unique engagement initiatives and amenities. Evidence of a satisfied workforce is one of the first things that impress potential candidates; plus getting showcased on a corporate forum is a key non-monetary way to motivate existing employees. Moreover, platforms like Glassdoor offer practical ways for candidates to get a holistic picture of their future employer and take informed career decisions.

Another popular method for building an employer brand is to pursue and win national and international awards for creating admirable workplaces. These are "push" methods for cultivating a meaningful employer brand. While very effective, there are very meaningful "pull" methods, where positive word of mouth does your work for you. In today's hyper-connected world, having happy employees be your brand ambassadors should be the ultimate aim of every HR department.

It is now easier than ever for people to connect on social platforms like LinkedIn where they can find out inside details on companies, corporate culture, benefits, etc. It has become much harder to hide internal scandals, bad practices or fraud. This increasing transparency is leading to progressive practices and policies with employee satisfaction at the core. Just as happy customers drive repeat business and higher margins, a happy workforce leads to lower recruitment costs for companies and higher retention. HR professionals can follow sales principles here to create employee testimonials and case studies of growth paths to inspire new joinees and attract the best talent. In the marketplace, the statement of an employee about a brand tends to hold more weight than a statement coming from the company's PR machine. While one or two employees' negative word of mouth might not be a cause for concern, it is imperative to ensure that the cause for dissatisfaction is not systemic.

Finally, companies must make sure that the employee's expectations that are set during the employer branding efforts are met or exceeded once they join the company. The employee experience must live up to the communication or brands risk facing a loss of face. Just remember, your employer brand is not what you say it is; it is what employees and candidates tell each other it is. HR professionals should leverage social listening tools along with their marketing teams to keep a tab on what is being said about the company. It serves as useful feedback to institute changes or new offerings in their employee value proposition.

The HR department might set the guidelines for the company culture, but it is the employees who bring it to life. Talent that is engaged in what they do and motivated to perform their best go above and beyond the basic deliverables to become genuine brand ambassadors and frontrunners of the company's success. The culture created by a high performing team outlives the individuals to become part of brand history. This is exactly the sort of long term externalities that happy employees lead to and that companies aspire to.



The writer is Chairperson & Managing Director, Dale Carnegie Training India
In my more than three decades of corporate experience, I ran companies and ran management of companies to understand and discuss the most relevant aspects of growth drivers. The most important truth of successful companies is how competent their boards have been and stood the times. Along with the decision-making acumen of the board of directors, their competencies and varied competencies that they bring on table is of prime significance. Their deep involvement, rapport with the teams or management and the chairman's stance on the board are the most decisive parameters of the board's success that will provide the company a distinctive competitive advantage.

Traditionally, a number of board members were either the friends or extended family of promoters who lacked competency or the problem-solving skills to seek solutions for issues critical to the company. The promoters found it effortless appointing people in the board that they had wanted to either oblige or leverage their networks for political, geographical or other gains.

Indian Companies Act 1956 underwent some changes in 2013. The New Companies Act has substantially raised the bar on governance given the backdrop of big scams and governance failures in 2009 that affected the financial and economic development of a state and damaged the outlook of the country as a whole. The new or amended Companies Act talks about transparency issues related to transactions, risk engagement and risk mitigation. Most critical issues of corporate governance that remains include are rights, roles and equitable treatment of shareholders and their key ownership responsibility ensuring appropriate disclosures and absolute transparency. It is quite apparent that government would like Independent Directors on board to act as whistleblowers but as such there is less clarity on the 'how' of it.

It is an established fact that companies today operate in highly complex and risk-bearing environments. To help navigate this increasingly challenging and dynamic climate, many boards are rethinking who should be around the boardroom table, what competency he brings along and what should be on the agenda.

Following are the critical factors leading to Board's success:

Board's role:

1. Involvement: Board must be involved in a persistent and continuous manner at strategic levels of planning roadmap for future, direction setting and strategy layout, they must not delve deep into operational or day to day issues

2. Value critique: Advice or suggestions from experts must not be thought as unreasonable criticism, the inputs may add as a valuable resource towards building competitive advantage. Hence, critiques must be encouraged.

3. Understood well: The board must also ensure that their core competencies are explained well and understood by all concerned stakeholders to optimise their talent and expertise.

4. Know-how: Their knowledge about markets, new industries and areas where companies can draw synergies will help create a considerable value and relevance. Their understanding of the competitive turf, barriers or disruption to keep competition at bay and help lead the company - will go a long way creating lasting relationships and performance goals.

5. Futuristic: The Board must also be visionary in providing a future business competence plan and profitable areas the organisation can be lead to with minimum risk factors. The members must adhere to regularities of scheduled meetings, information sharing, transparency and compliance at all times.

Parallel to this, there is a sense of responsibility expected from the promoters or the chairman of the company to ensure the board is a success:

1. Transparency: Chairman has to ensure regular flow of information about various aspects of company and industry

2. Communication: At frequent intervals CEO/Chairman should brief and communicate with the board members about developments to draw out significant value from the board.

The real challenges and opportunities lie in how the board works together. The board must lay the basis of 4 P's of corporate governance within the organisations they are associated with:

Purpose to create equity in longer run: While it the foremost and early stage prerequisite, it goes in the long running of the company. A well drafted and conceptualised Vision, Mission and Business Strategy lead a way to shaping the corporate philosophy and work ethics that form the core in corporate reputation or goodwill creation.

Enabling People and Processes to manage, forge relationships, comply and innovate: Successful boards are the ones that are able to focus on the key big picture issues through highly prioritised agendas, they are prepared to challenge management on its strategy and are capable of guiding the management teams towards excellence in performance by sharing diverse perspectives.

A critical role of the board is to review the management's efficiency and efficacy, evaluate the performance of top or core team with its CEO, both quantitative and qualitatively along. Their contribution towards overall progress or turnaround, improvement in increasing capital or labor productivity, strategic input or development towards globalisation etc. is ascertained and rewarded accordingly. Directors also guide promoters or top management factoring in stakeholder concerns and interests into account which may further improve relationships. This in return, makes it easier for a company to operate focusing vital energies in leading or to ideate for new products or services that will address stakeholder needs, and allow the company to reduce costs and maximise value. Hence, this results in a more responsible approach to risk-taking, which can deliver higher returns by pursuing competitive advantage in the most reasonable way. Boards have a fiduciary responsibility towards its stakeholders as guardians of risks and the liability that may arise failing to adhere to the financial compliance. Overall, stakeholder responsive corporate governance or ethical compliance leads to a more comprehensive understanding of corporate risks and opportunities while adding to a strong reputation over time. Further, effective stakeholder engagement promotes corporate learning and innovation.

In certain industries some risks are reviewed and assessed more frequently than the other risks to ensure they meet audit standards. Part of risk may be internal subjected to company's ability and agility to transform or adapt as per an external risk. Boards themselves per se do not necessarily have to oversee emerging trends but their governance function will require them to direct the management to be on a vigil and review the market dynamics to check competitors' disruption. Boards should therefore see their mission or relevance as catalysts and allow sensible risks for innovations.

Assessing Performance for future readiness: If the CEO is evaluated as per stock prices, then the management should focus on what will improve the stock prices in the foreseeable future. Management will have to shed the 'Fixer' mindset of only concentrating on incremental, non-risky projects in order to build market share and withstand competition, they will have to adopt discreetly the 'growers' mindset time to time to facilitate and influence resources for long term even if it means investing in less predictable projects. A well deserving CEO must be given a part in the equity of the business and while balancing the risks of innovation, his role must not be compromised or diluted, same also goes with the board or an independent director.

Along with day to day management and evaluation of performance it is imperative the board guides and helps in succession planning and in consultation with the management draw out a long-term road map for the organisation keeping in mind the market volatility and changing competitive turf.

For organizations to truly feel their board have a larger value and hold huge potential to turnaround businesses will need a mutual synergy at very deep levels of commitment, till then let us keep the blame games aside.

The author is a management thinker & philosopher, a mentor and a strategy consultant, an academician and a veteran in consumer durables and retail. He was formerly associated with LG Electronics as its COO and Director. He is also a member on Board of banks and few other business houses. He can be reached at yasho.v.verma@gmail.com
Sector regulator Trai on Friday met telecom operators Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea to discuss ongoing tussle over network interconnection, but barred officials of industry body COAI from the meeting.

"This is fight for justice, fight for customers. Not just Reliance Jio customers or Airtel or Vodafone but for all Indian customers," Reliance Jio Infocomm Board Member Mahendra Nahata told reporters after an hour-long meeting.

Jio has accused incumbent telecom operators for not providing required number of equipments to connect its mobile network with theirs.

"We have asked for right number of connect, right quantum of interconnection. We have put forth our point of view to Trai. It is for Trai to look into the matter. There is no time frame indicated by the Trai," Nahata said.

As per the rule, interconnection among networks has to be done based on mutual agreement by telecom companies and any dispute in this regard should be brought in notice of Trai, which can take decision on the matter.

Interconnection is required to enable mobile customers to make call on number or to customer of any telecom company.

Industry body Cellular Operators Association of India, which has been confronting Reliance Jio on behalf of incumbents, alleged it was kept out of the meeting on insistence of Reliance Jio.

"COAI has been kept out of the TRAI meeting at the insistence of RIL Jio, and TRAI acquiesced to their demand in an unprecedented manner," COAI Director General Rajan S Mathews said.

The Cellular Operators Association of India yesterday, wrote to Trai that the meeting scheduled for Friday, where in Airtel, Vodafone and Idea, have been called for discussing the issue, pertains to all members and not just the three telcos.

"Therefore we request Trai to invite all members of COAI for the said meeting," COAI letter to Trai said.

Nahata, however, denied the allegation.

"We have not said any such thing. Whosoever was invited should attend the meeting," Nahata said.

COAI last month had accused Trai of baseness, but later apologised for levelling such allegations.

Reliance Jio, which commercially launched its services on September 5, had earlier accused incumbent players for not releasing sufficient interconnection ports and had sought legal action against them.

Reliance Jio is also member of COAI, but has been sidelined by leading telecom operators in the association.

Incumbent operators have sought clarity on whether the services of the new entrant are now "commercial" and if it is so, the company cannot offer free service for more than 90 days.

Reliance Jio has said its services are free till December 31, following which consumers will charged as per tariff plans that include free voice calls.
Telecom regulator Trai has called a meeting with telecom operators to resolve the ongoing dispute involving Reliance Jio and incumbent telecom operators such as Airtel, Vodafone and Idea over inter-connecting points. Trai is meeting telecom operators on Friday on the inter-connection issue, an official source said.

ALSO READ: Airtel, Idea dash off another letter to PMO against RJio



Industry body COAI - the association of telecom operators - has written to the PMO stating that incumbents are not obliged to entertain inter-connect requests that are anti-competitive. It has sought PMO's intervention on the issue to restore fair competition. COAI submitted that incumbent operators are in no position by way of network or financial resources to terminate volumes of traffic that are markedly asymmetric. "Neither are they obliged to entertain inter-connect requests which are derived from abnormally induced traffic patterns that game the interconnection-usage charge (IUC) regime and are anti-competitive," COAI said in the letter to the PMO.

ALSO READ: What Mukesh Ambani did not tell you about RJio







Reliance Jio has accused incumbent players of not releasing sufficient inter-connection ports.

COAI Director-General Rajan S Mathews said before giving interconnection to Reliance Jio, the operators need clarity on whether the services of the new entrant are now commercial and if it is so, the company cannot offer free service for more than 90 days. Freebies cannot be extended beyond 90 days. Anything after 90 days becomes tariff. They will have to start charging customers after 90 days if they have started service commercially from September 5, Mathews said.
Apple Inc. announced its new generation of iPhones on September 7. The changes can be termed as incremental at best. Another thing that is not changing is the exorbitant price tag of a new iPhone in the Indian market.

Last year, a report published by CNET declared that iPhone 6s was priced highest in India.

During the launch event on Wednesday, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced the iPhone 7 at $649 which roughly translates to Rs 43,200 and the iPhone 7 Plus at $769 which is around Rs 51,200. In India, the iPhone 7 is estimated to be priced around Rs 62,000 for the 32GB variant, whereas the iPhone 7 Plus 32GB is expected to be priced around Rs 72,000. Being an American brand, is iPhone 7 cheaper just in the US?

Let's have a look at what other countries are paying for the same device:

iPhone 7 32GB

iPhone 7 Plus 32GB UK

599 british pound (Rs 53,100) 719 british pound (Rs 63,750) Australia

AUD 1079 (Rs 55,000) AUD 1269 (Rs 64,600) UAE Dh 2599 (Rs 47,100)

Dh 3099 (Rs 56,100) Canada 899 canadian dollar (Rs 46,250) 1049 canadian dollar (Rs 53,971) China 6,388 yuan (Rs 63,650) 7,188 yuan (Rs 71,630)







China's pricing is similar to India's due to the depreciating value of Yuan. Apple is not willing to negotiate with the prices in order to maintain the profit margin. iPhone consumers in China will be paying an additional $45, in comparison to last year's launch prices of the 6s and 6s Plus.

Coming back to India, since the very first iPhone, Apple has been pricing the devices higher than other countries. Though they provide various options to finance the product, Apple has failed to break into the top five smartphone companies in the country.

Let's try and understand why iPhones in India come with such exorbitant price tags:



Third party retailers

Since Apple has no manufacturing unit within the country, they cannot avail the FDI in single-brand retail. This leaves them with no option but to collaborate with Indian retail agencies. To maintain profit margins, Apple sells the device at a higher price.

Tax

The current pre-GST tax structure makes it tough for brands like Apple to maintain a low price. The custom duty is the first obstacle, which is calculated over the total price of the product, shipping charges and handling charges. Last year, the American company paid 11.43 per cent in custom duty for the iPhone 6s. According to Zauba, the accessories boxed with the iPhone have to be taxed separately and last year the taxes were more than double of the custom duty paid for the smartphone at 28.85 per cent.

After paying the custom duty, the product has to cross various state borders which charge an approximate of 12.5 per cent VAT on the total price of the smartphone.

Similar to China's current plight, India's weaker currency is also a major reason why Apple smartphones burn a hole in your pocket. The company wouldn't want to take the risk of decreased profit margins due to the drastic fall of Indian Rupee in the last decade.

Apple's future in India

The Cupertino giant, for the first time, experienced a double digit fall in year-on-year sales percentage. China, the biggest market for iPhones after USA has also showed a steep fall in purchases. On the other hand, despite the high prices in India, the company was able to show a year-on-year growth of 56 per cent. This is why Apple Inc. views India as a promising market, a market which can counter their saturation in sales.

If Apple manages to come to terms with Modi's Digital India, the scary-looking prices on the iPhones might end up being a practical buy for the practical Indian.
Mark Zuckerberg's Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative have made their first investment in Asia in a Bengaluru-based start up, Byju's.

"As part of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Priscilla and I are investing in an Indian education technology company we're excited about called BYJU's," Zuckerberg wrote on his Facebook wall on Thursday.

ALSO READ: Lessons from Tata Nano for Reliance Jio







The latest round of funding will value Byju's at around $500 million. The company is said to expand to other English-speaking countries.

But what made Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan invest in Byju's ?

Byju Raveendran started Byju's as a way to help students from different backgrounds across India learn in a way that works best for them and that isn't boring.



Zuckerberg has put his faith on Byju's 'personalized learning' platform.

"I'm optimistic about personalized learning and the difference it can make for students everywhere. That's why it's a major focus of our education efforts, and why we're looking forward to working with companies like BYJU's to get these tools into the hands of more students and teachers around the world," Zuckerberg added.

Byju's initially helped students who wanted to crack the CAT exam and later expanded into other competitive exams. It operated through physical classrooms for many years before it moved on to video classes online.

Byju's expert teacher team consists of young Indian graduates from American universities and rank holders in competitive exams.

"Learning so addictive you'll fall in love with it" is what reads when you visit their website.

The page is interactive and features teachers explaining the Pythagoras theorem and other such subjects using visual media and animation as opposed to theoretical learning.

Byju's offers these interactive classes for students from 9th grade to 12th grade including preparing for competitive exams like IIT-JEE, NEET, CAT, IAS, GRE and GMAT.

Apart from video based learning, you can also take chapter-wise tests. These tests are what Byju's call 'adaptive learning' which are personalised to every student's aptitude that come with feedback and analysis.

Byju's also features one-on-one learning option with the teachers.

It provides its students with sample papers and previous exam papers to ensure utmost preparation.

Byju's app

The company peaked popularity when the Byju's launched its mobile app in 2015. "So far, BYJU's has 250,000 subscribers who use the app for an average of 40 minutes a day -- and it's working," Zuckerberg wrote on his post.

The mobile app uses a mix of video lessons and interactive tools to help teach subjects like math and science. It extends its competitive exam courses to the app.

The learning app, like its website, is interactive and visually rich.

Byju's prep tab

Byju's has also introduced what is called a 'prep tab', a tablet for students seeking to give their GRE exam. The prep tab includes classes, videos, test, exams and more.

Byju's has won awards including Winner of the CNBC-TV 18 Crisil Emerging India Award in Education.


Other News

Read more Mind the Gap  Keep People Inspired Event in November Category: Hotels|Tourism, Posted:22 Oct 2022 | 08:50 am Keep People Inspired (KPI) is the second in a series of Mind the Gap Learning events. The focus of the event is on inclusiveness in hospitality, spanning Phukets hotels, tourism and service industries. Inclusiveness is a key element of businesses that rely heavily on human resources and is in effect all about people, whether they []

Read more Japanese Luxury Brand Hoshinoya Heads To Niseko Category: Hotels|Real estate, Posted:14 Oct 2022 | 17:42 pm Leading Japanese hotel operator Hoshino has inked a deal for a luxury resort in Niseko with developer Zekkei Properties. Located in a prime ski-in and ski-out location in Upper Hirafu Village, the 62-unit hotel and residence property will be named Hoshinoya Lodge Niseko. With one of Hirafus best locations, the site was formerly occupied by []
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry have begun talks in Geneva on Friday. The meeting is held at the President Wilson Hotel, TASS reported.

September 9, 2016, 11:51 Lavrov-Kerry talks start in Geneva

STEPANAKERT, SEPTEMBER 9, ARTSAKHPRESS: Syria as well as coordination of the efforts on the fight against terrorists should become the main subject of negotiations. In addition, the sides will focus on the expansion of humanitarian access, especially around Aleppo, the launch of the intra-Syrian political process. The two officials may also discuss the situation in Ukraine, issues of the bilateral agenda.

Yesterday Sergey Lavrov held a meeting with the UN Secretary-Generas Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura.
Why France's decision to ban prostitution is great news

Published on September 9, 2016

Story by Julie Tirard Translation by: Charlotte Walmsley

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Soliciting is now illegal in France: bad news for punters, but a huge step forward for French society. [OPINION]

On 14 April this year, a new law was passed with the aim of "strengthening the fight against the cycle of prostitution and supporting sex workers." This law marks a shift in France towards an abolitionist approach to prostitution. Much like models adopted in Sweden, Norway and Iceland, France has decided to criminalise clients rather than sex workers, instead offering them help and support to get out of prostitution, should they wish to do so.

Why is abolition the only option?

After dabbling with systems that regulated prostitution and those that banned it entirely, it became apparent that in France, the abolitionist model (laid out in 1946 and officially adopted in 1960) which criminalises the buying of sexual services, was undoubtedly the most sensible option, leading to its implementation this year.

In the prohibition model, which bans prostitution in all forms, everyone involved can be charged. It's a model that doesn't stop prostitution, but rather forces it to go off the radar. It also mainly criminalises the sex workers themselves. It's a model used in the majority of US states and, most notably, in China.

Countries that have chosen the regulatory model, or in other words, those who have "legalised prostitution", such as Germany and the Netherlands, hold the cynical view that "prostitution is inevitable" and hope to offer women a means of "empowerment." These women are therefore seen to have a legitimate job and can contribute to society and claim social security. This system is based on the idea that women have chosen sex work as a career, as they would have any other. Guy Geoffroy, who headed a governmental study into prostitution in 2011, begs to differ. "You have to close your eyes to the reality that in today's world, prostitution is imposed on more than 90% of women and men of foreign origin, who have fallen prey to one of the worst practices to have ever existed: human trafficking."

Research undertaken by the Mouvement du Nid ("the Nest Movement" in English) points to the example of Nigerian women who arrive in France, owing debts of up to 80,000 euros to their traffickers. How can we still think that prostitution is a career choice like any other when we know that in the whole of Germany only 44 women are officially registered as prostitutes?

The abolitionist model, in contrast, implies the recognition of prostitution as a form of violence. It also holds the view that by considering prostitution as a career, we deprive these women of a means of escaping the sex trade. We must be careful with our vocabulary however, as "abolition" does not mean the same thing as "prohibition" or "eradication" (slavery, for example, has been abolished but arguably still exists in France in a modern form). The abolitionist model simply means putting society on the side of victims, and offering them an escape route.

"Moving away from the romanticised image of prostitution"

The April 2016 law decriminalises the actions of sex workers and ensures the "implementation of an exit strategy from prostitution" by giving a "six-month temporary residence permit to non-French citizens engaged in programmes helping them quit the sex industry," even if they do not report the network that trafficked them. They are also able to claim a minimum wage during this transition period.

During her speech last August at the Summer Camp organised by the association Osez le Feminisme (OLF), spokesperson Marie Allibert celebrated the fact that we are "moving away from the romanticised image of prostitution promoted by politicians and the media." The reality is much darker: the world of prostitution is one of extreme violence, which starts with the first act of paid sex and continues long after. A study lead by American clinical psychologist Melissa Farley, who interviewed sex workers in nine countries such as Canada, USA and Germany, showed that 48% of German prostitutes had been assaulted or sexually abused during childhood. This study also revealed that "all sex workers interviewed claimed that they had been insulted or threatened. Thefts of money or goods by clients were equally common." Threats included "hitting, attempts at strangulation and gun violence." In Canada, 76% said they had been raped, in the USA the figure was 73%, and 63% of those interviewed in Germany said they had been raped more than five times.

At its very core, prostitution is a repetitive cycle of unwanted sex acts. A man exploits his economic power to obtain what he wouldn't have been able to obtain without it: sex with a woman who doesn't want to have sex with him, as she would otherwise not be doing it, if money were not involved. Abolishing prostitution is the only way to truly win the fight for gender equality. We must remember that 80 to 90% of sex workers are women and, as Gregoire Thery, secretary general of the Mouvement du Nid, explains: "every client of a sex-worker that we meet, whether the sex worker is male, female or trans, is a man."

An easily applicable law?

If we wanted to prosecute clients, the law would be practically impossible to implement. It is easy to find articles that criticise the difficulty of realistically applying this law and the"penalisation of punters". However, in Sweden, where solicitation has been criminalised for 15 years, the chief inspector of the anti-prostitution team in Stockholm, Simon Haggstrom recalls that "8 out of 10 clients admit to their crime immediately upon arrest, without us even having to take them to the police station."

During his speech at the OLF Summer Camp, Gregoire Thery explained that "just two months after the passing of the law in France, before any official decree demanding the law's implementation, 140 people had already been arrested for this crime." Whether they were caught in the act or caught when soliciting services, the police were immediately able to intervene. The client had the option of immediately admitting to their crime and paying a fine, or denying guilt to later receive a court summons. Strangely enough, very few chose the second option. Maybe the idea of having to explain to their boss why they needed a day's holiday at such short notice put them off...

Story by Julie Tirard

Translated from Prostitution abolie en France : la meilleure nouvelle de l'annee ?
On September 7, the delegation on an official visit to Uruguay , led by the RA National Assembly Vice President, Head of the ArmeniaUruguay parliamentary friendship group Eduard Sharmazanov and comprised of the NA MPs Sukias Avetisyan and Mikayel Manukyan, met with the Vice President and the Senate President of the Oriental Republic of Uruguay Raul Fernando Sendic Rodriguez, press service of the Parliament informed.

STEPANAKERT, SEPTEMBER 9, ARTSAKHPRESS: The parties highlighted the further expansion and development of cooperation between the two countries parliaments. It was mutually noted that in spite of the great distance, Armenia and Uruguay are friendly countries.

The Deputy Speaker noted with satisfaction that Uruguay was the first country to dispel the darkness of Turkish denial, recognizing the Armenian Genocide in 1965. We should unitedly struggle against Turkish denial. Turkey must eventually confront its own history. - Eduard Sharmazanov emphasized. Uruguayan Vice President Raul Sendic, in his turn, spotlighted the recognition and condemnation of the Armenian Genocide by the international community.

The parties touched upon the process of the NK conflict settlement. In his context the RA NA Vice President particularly noted,  Azerbaijan must respect the principle of complete exercise of the right to self-determination of the Artsakh Armenians. In the process of talks Azerbaijan is the only obstacle creator, displaying unacceptable behavior. Delegation members Sukias Avetisyan and Mikayel Manukyan emphasized that Azerbaijan is not ready to talks.
When is hurricane season? Here's what you need to know in South Texas
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By Julie Garcia of the Caller-Times

The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department officials detected a low cell density of red tide near Bob Hall Pier.

Water samples confirmed a small presence of Karenia brevis, or red tide, after an underwater image-generating cytometer picked up particles on Aug. 24. The samples were retrieved by staff at the Center for Coastal Studies at Texas A&M Corpus Christi and the Coastal Studies Lab in South Padre Island at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, according to the TPWD website.

There have been no reported fish kills or respiratory irritation near Bob Hall Pier.

On Tuesday, elevated concentrations of red tide was discovered in the coastal waters of Padre Island National Seashore. The samples were taken after staff members noticed dead fish washing up on the shore.

Regional Response Coordinator Alex Nunez said the tests suggest the bloom of red tide is localized to that area.

Though respiratory symptoms have been low, park officials do not recommend those asthma or other respiratory issues go to the beach. Some precautions should be taken for young children, elderly people and pets.

Last year, red tide was present in water samples at Horace Caldwell Pier, Bob Hall Pier and Packery Channel.

For more information on red tide, go to www.tpwd.texas.gov.

Staff writer Fares Sabawi contributed to this report.

Twitter: @Caller_Jules
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The operators of a composting site next to Cambridge Research Park have been fined 50,000 after its smell made nearby workers feel sick.

AmeyCespa, which operates the site, was also ordered to pay 13,336 in costs after a court heard an employee at the research park, which is based in Waterbeach, was suddenly sick at work in July 2014.

The firm that the employee worked for had reported an increase in sickness rates and eventually gave up its lease on the property, at a large penalty cost, and relocated.

Cambridge Magistrates Court heard an Environment Agency biowaste specialist had previously been commissioned to visit the site. The specialist wrote a report which included a list of measures AmeyCespa should take to prevent or minimise odour, which was served on the company two months before the incident.

The report said more emphasis should be placed on the management of the composting process to prevent the release of odours instead of relying on deodorising misting sprays.

Richard Banwell, prosecuting for the Environment Agency, told district judge Ken Sheraton: AmeyCespa failed to implement appropriate measures until after the incident in July and the serving of three enforcement notices.

The company had also failed to submit an adequate odour management plan to the Environment Agency before the July offence.

The court heard enforcement notices required the company to take actions to comply with their permit. By June 2015 all but one of the actions had been complied with although the final one was not completed until December that year.

Mr Banwell said AmeyCespa had been negligent in failing to prevent or minimise odours and failing to respond to advice from the Environment Agency to change its composting processes and management until after the incident.

He said: There was a history of noncompliance at the site and there was a serious effect on human senses and it was persistent enough that it led to a widespread change in behaviour of those exposed to it.

At a nearby business, staff complained of feeling sick, gagging and sore eyes and throats.

Staff could not take regular outdoor breaks and sickness rates went up.

AmeyCespa admitted breaching its permit.

Richard Matthews, mitigating for the company, said AmeyCespa takes this extremely seriously and is genuinely sorry and regretful.

District Judge Ken Sheraton said: There had been a great deal of adverse effects on human health, quality of life and air quality.

A statement from AmeyCespa said: The company is and always has been committed to ensuring high levels of environmental compliance, has an excellent record in this regard, and has worked with the Environment Agency following the incident to implement appropriate additional measures.
Senior director for human rights and democracy at the McCain Institute for International Leadership and a former assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, David J. Kramer and adjunct professor at George Mason University and former U.S. ambassador to Azerbaijan and to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Richard Kauzlarich published a joint article in The Washington Post, where they touch upon the human rights restrictions and imprisonment of opposition members in Azerbaijan, calling the President of the United States to impose sanctions against Azerbaijan.

September 9, 2016, 15:32 The Washington Post: Its time for the United States to act on Azerbaijan

STEPANAKERT, SEPTEMBER 9, ARTSAKHPRESS: Since the April summit, Aliyevs regime has intensified its crackdowns on freedoms. Azerbaijans rapid, dangerous deterioration demands more decisive action from the United States, yet the Obama administration has remained largely silent. The government in Baku has increased its arrests and detentions of another dozen opposition figures, peaceful religious believers and civil society activists. Nearly 100 political prisoners are languishing in the countrys jails, they write.

The authors also think that the situation on the ground may get even worse as Aliyevs regime plans to force a referendum which aims to enhance his powers. The result of the referendum is already known; we can be sure that the government will ensure its approval. That means that Aliyev can extend his term from five to seven years, create new positions of vice president (to which he might name a member of his family) and lower the age for members of parliament  opening the door for his son Heydar to be elected. It would not be a surprise if elections were called early under the new constitution to ratify these authoritarian steps.

David J. Kramer and Richard Kauzlarich call the U.S. President to impose sanctions against Azerbaijan. In the past, we have called for sanctions  asset freezes and visa bans  against Azerbaijani officials involved in and responsible for gross human rights abuses. President Obama doesnt need new legislation to take such measures; he can do so under existing presidential authorities. Beyond that, we should withhold U.S. support for International Monetary Fund and World Bank assistance should Azerbaijan request it amid its deteriorating economic situation and end Overseas Private Investment Corporation and Export-Import Bank lending to Azerbaijan.

They also write that the U.S. also needs to get the Europeans on board with similar measures.
| BY Ricki Green |

Harley-Davidson and Marvel have created a collection of 27 custom Harley-Davidson motorcycles in a campaign by 303 MullenLowe.

The custom motorcycles are uniquely designed to reflect the personality and traits of Marvel superheroes.

303 MullenLowe created a digital platform to showcase the collection where people can vote on their favourite motorcycles to win a trip to Las Vegas: h-dmarvelcustoms.com.

The campaign showcases some of the most popular Marvel characters and Harley-Davidson models  a Groot-inspired Street Glide Special from the Touring range, a Thor-inspired Breakout from the Softail family, and a Black Widow-inspired Iron 883 from the Sportster family to highlight just a few.

The campaign is also supported on Harleys social channels, while the collection  called Super Hero Customs  will feature at Oz Comic Con Sydney this weekend (September 10 & 11, 2016).

The launch of Super Heroes Customs coincides with the 75th anniversary of Captain Americas first appearance in a Marvel comic.

Recent campaigns for Harley-Davidson Australia & New Zealand have also relied heavily on digital and social channels to reach a broader audience. Road of Imagination rolled out on Instagram, while #NicetoBeNaughty achieved over a million views on Facebook.

Client: Harley-Davidson Australia & New Zealand
| BY Ricki Green |

Marketing professor and award winning columnist Mark Ritson will present his unique insight into digital media and radios place amongst the new players at the radio industrys annual national conference in Melbourne on 7 October.

Not afraid to comment on the big issues in marketing, nothing has been safe from Ritsons scrutiny from Pokemon Go to social media metrics.

Says Ritson: Its become the norm to suggest that traditional marketing approaches dont work and the new approach to content/purpose/inbound/digital/storytelling has disrupted everything. I look forward to presenting an alternative view.

Often provocative and always challenging, Ritson has worked globally on brand strategy, positioning, sales and marketing alignment. For thirteen years he served as in-house professor for LVMH  the worlds largest luxury group  working with senior executives from brands like Louis Vuitton, Dom Perignon, Fendi, Tag Heuer, Dior and Hennessy.

Other clients have included Baxter, Loewe, McKinsey, PepsiCo, Subaru, Eli Lilly, Donna Karan, Johnson & Johnson, De Beers, Sephora, Benefit, Amgen, Ericsson, Jurlique, Cloudy Bay and WD40.

An avid writer on branding, Ritson has written a weekly column on the topic in the UK for Marketing Week for over a decade and is also a columnist for The Australian.

His more scholarly publications include articles published in Sloan Management Review, Harvard Business Review, the Journal of Advertising, and the Journal of Consumer Research. He was the recipient of the Ferber Award in 2000, one of the most prestigious prizes in Marketing, for his doctoral thesis. In 2001. His co-authored research on pricing was cited by George Akerlof during his Nobel Prize acceptance speech.

Says Joan Warner, chief executive officer of Commercial Radio Australia: Mark is a global leader in marketing and were thrilled hes presenting at this years conference.

The National Radio Conference will be held at the Melbourne Exhibition and Convention Centre on Friday, 7 October with more than 600 people attending from across Australia. Further conference speakers will be announced in the coming weeks.
STEPANAKERT, SEPTEMBER 9, ARTSAKHPRESS-ARMENPRESS: Eduard Sharmazanov expressed satisfaction that Armenia and Uruguay are closely cooperating in the international organizations, assist each others candidacies in different elections. He highly appreciated the fact Uruguay has always showed balanced approach during the votes of resolutions referring to Armenia in the UN.

Referring to the process of the international recognition and condemnation of the Armenian Genocide, Sharmazanov said the mass condemnation of the Genocide by the international community will contribute to the prevention of new crimes against humanity.

Uruguay took the lead in the process of the Genocide recognition serving as an example to the entire world and thus, showing its commitment to universal values, Sharmazanov said.

The topic of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict was also covered at the talk. People of Nagorno Karabakh should be able to fully exercise their right to self-determination reaching to complete independence. Everyone, including the Azerbaijanis, must understand that the NKR can never be a part of Azerbaijan. Nagorno Karabakhs international recognition is just a matter of time, he said.

The Deputy Speaker of the Parliament said Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh see the conflict resolution within the framework of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairmanship.
Friday, September 9, 2016 at 6:09AM

WMBF News screenshot

The bad news just keeps rolling in for Samsung. This time the new smartphone is being suspected of having caused a fire inside the home of a firefighter from South Carolina. Wesley Hartzog plugged in his Galaxy Note7 in his garage before he left to pick up his two daughters. When they got back, he found his garage in flames. Thankfully, no one was hurt in the fire. Hartzog told Gizmodo he bought the phone around August 20, which was right when it was released in the US. He says he didnt notice anything weird with the device when he plugged it in. Investigators havent also been able to determine if the phone was the cause of the fire.
It is important to understand the full scale of the budgetary challenge. The Light Rail Network Plan, notably published after the first stage commitment, spans some 90 kilometres. Detailed or even preliminary costings of LRNP are not available, although these should have been developed before the first stage commitment. Based on the first stage costs, it can be reasonably concluded that if the government committed to the plan today, it will be committing to a whole-of-life expenditure of approximately $14 billion (in nominal terms, which represent the actual cost to be borne by the future generation, rather than present value which is relevant for comparison of costs and benefits on a consistent basis today). In reality, the costs will be higher due to timing and cost escalations. These costs will need to be funded from a combination of debt and operating revenues.
"A mural has been painted on Hillside Lane in Civic and some new artwork will soon be painted in Braddon as part of a project with Canberra artists and local young people," she said.
Several of the charges related to the man taking a girl under 10 to the workshop underneath the house and committing an act of indecency on her, of which he was found guilty. Another guilty verdict concerned him speaking about sex with one of the girls.
Caylamax was caught up in allegations of theft from a Kambah house it was demolishing earlier this year. It would presumably have completed more work by now if it was not for the two-month hiatus while the ACT government did an internal investigation of the allegations. Caylamax was cleared to resume work on July 4. Police also cleared the company.
After serving the inner Sydney seat of Grayndler in the House of Representatives, Daly moved to Braddon to live with his daughter Margaret. Daly followed the Newtown Jets until the team folded in 1983 and then shifted allegiances to the newly-formed Raiders.
"It was catastrophic from the POV (point of view) of him not being able to race again. But from the POV of him being a pet, he is not catastrophic."
A major Cayuga County business is already losing customers after Canada imposed new restrictions on high protein milk imports.

Cayuga Milk Ingredients CEO Kevin Ellis said Thursday that the Aurelius company is being affected by two new policies  Canada's National Ingredients Strategy and Ontario's Class VI pricing program. Both initiatives, according to Ellis, appear to be in place to prevent the importation of high protein milk ingredients.

"Cayuga Milk Ingredients has suffered a loss of some customers as a result of these recent changes and, without action, will most certainly lose more," Ellis said in a statement.

In 2015, Cayuga Milk Ingredients exported more than $23.6 million worth of milk protein ingredients and ultra-filtered milk to Canadian customers. Exports were expected to climb to at least $30 million this year, but Ellis said the sales may be in jeopardy because of the new regulations.

U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer sent a letter last week to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Trade Representative Michael Froman requesting an investigation into Canada's trade practices. He said Cayuga Milk Ingredients and other U.S. companies were provided duty-free access for ultra-filtered milk under the North American Free Trade Agreement.

He called the new Canadian rules "a blatant attempt to clamp down on American dairy products."

Ellis said the restrictions appear to violate NAFTA.

"Canada now desires to participate in the (Trans-Pacific Partnership), and these recent policy changes call into question whether the Canadian government can be trusted to honor their trade commitments long term," he said.

The loss of Canadian sales could affect more than Cayuga Milk Ingredients' finances.

The company, which has 70 employees, may need to make "adjustments," according to Ellis.

"We never want to lay people off, so maintaining our export markets is critical to us," he said.

Bill Morgan, a Cayuga County farmer and chairman of Cayuga Milk Ingredients, said the impact of Canada's actions could be felt throughout the state.

It comes at a bad time for dairy farmers. Morgan noted that farms are already dealing with a 60 percent decrease in milk prices compared to two years ago.

"The loss of this export business will impose greater strains on the New York dairy economy as more milk suppliers will compete regionally for limited milk demand," he said. "Without the ability to export the milk proteins, more milk will be dumped in New York."
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Our Promise: Welcome to Care2, the world's largest community for good. Here, you'll find over 45 million like-minded people working towards progress, kindness, and lasting impact.

Care2 Stands Against: bigots, racists, bullies, science deniers, misogynists, gun lobbyists, xenophobes, the willfully ignorant, animal abusers, frackers, and other mean people. If you find yourself aligning with any of those folks, you can move along, nothing to see here.

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You are our people. You Care. We Care2.
U.S. Rep. John Katko said he was eager to run on his legislative record, but Democrats are using a handful of those votes against him in the 24th Congressional District race.

Democratic challenger Colleen Deacon released a new television ad Friday that slams Katko, R-Camillus, for his votes to defund Planned Parenthood. The commercial, which was paid for by Deacon's campaign and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, is airing on Syracuse TV stations.

The ad stars Belinda Blanck, a nurse who works at Crouse Hospital in Syracuse.

"We encourage patients to get regular checkups and cancer screenings because we know they save lives. Millions of women rely on Planned Parenthood for those screenings," Blanck said in the commercial. "John Katko promised he wouldn't vote to defund Planned Parenthood but then went along with his Republican leaders and did just that."

Blanck adds, "Congressman Katko and Republicans in Washington would limit women's access to cancer screenings and birth control. Protecting women's healthy is my priority, but John Katko and Republican leaders, their priorities hurt women."

The ad is referring to comments made by Katko, R-Camillus, on the campaign trail in 2014. Democrats have repeatedly said he reneged on a promise not to support defunding Planned Parenthood.

In September, the House of Representatives passed legislation that would cut off federal funding to Planned Parenthood. The vote was held after a conservative group released videos that showed a Planned Parenthood official discussing how fetal tissue is acquired for research purposes.

That led to accusations that the group was selling fetal tissue for profit  a claim that was unfounded.

When the House voted in September to defund Planned Parenthood, Katko was one of the Republicans who supported the bill. He issued a statement explaining his position, which he says changed due to the release of the videos.

"There are several ongoing congressional investigations into this matter," Katko said in September. "Until these investigations are complete and we fully understand the depth of these troubling practices, I cannot support providing taxpayer dollars to this organization."

Katko's campaign issued a statement Friday responding to the new TV ad released by Deacon.

"John is among the most independent and bipartisan members of Congress. He has a strong record of supporting health care for women and their families, community health centers and family planning services," the statement reads.

"Unfortunately, Colleen Deacon is trying to distract central New York voters using tired, offensive and divisive rhetoric which does nothing to advance the priorities of our community. Her ad misleads voters into believing that Congressman Katko cut funding for women's health care, which is simply not true. The last thing Congress needs is another culture warrior focused on issues that divide, rather than reaching across the aisle to produce bipartisan results."

Deacon's ad follows the release of a new Katko for Congress commercial that questions whether Deacon would be independent as central New York's representative.

The 24th Congressional District race is expected to be one of the most competitive House races in the nation. Deacon, U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand's former central New York regional director, is hoping to unseat Katko in a presidential election year.

Election Day is Nov. 8.
Sometimes its good to be reminded of just how good a car is by giving it go once more. In the case of the Mitsubishi Xpander, its the smal...
Legislation signed Friday by Gov. Andrew Cuomo will help spouses of active duty military personnel obtain professional licenses faster in New York.

The state Education Department, which issues licenses for numerous professions, will be required to expedite the application process for spouses of active duty soldiers, National Guard members or reservists who are transferred to New York and hold a license from another state.

While awaiting approval of their license application, military spouses may receive a temporary license to practice their profession in New York.

The professions covered by the new law include engineers, nurses, physical therapists and physicians.

"This common sense legislation breaks down artificial barriers that caused undue burdens on military families and opens the door for more career opportunities for military spouses in New York," Cuomo said in a statement. "I'm proud to sign this measure into law and cut this unneeded red tape once and for all."

License portability is a challenge for military spouses when families are forced to move due to a change of station. Many states require individuals in certain professions to obtain a license, even if they already have a license in another state.

The process can be lengthy and it can delay when military spouses are able to work in their chosen fields.

Congress is seeking a solution at the federal level to address license portability. U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, an upstate New York representative whose district includes Fort Drum, has sponsored legislation that would expedite the license application process for military spouses.

While Stefanik's bill is working its way through the legislative process, she called the new state law "a step in the right direction."

"These dedicated spouses must be allowed to maintain their hard-earned professional licenses and certifications as they relocate and I will continue to work in Congress to move my legislation forward."

The bill signed by Cuomo was sponsored in the state Legislature by Assemblyman Felix Ortiz, a Democrat, and Republican state Sen. Patty Ritchie.

The measure passed the Assembly by a 141-0 vote. The vote in the state Senate was 59-0.
Sept. 9, 1936

The resignation of Bishop Frederick Rogers Graves of China, a native of Auburn, who has devoted his entire ministerial career to work among the Chinese, will be presented to the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church October 12 at their meeting in Chicago.

The resignation was received yesterday at church headquarters. Bishop Graves explained that he wished to resign "by reason of advancing years and because of the fact that I am no longer able to visit the various stations of my jurisdiction." Bishop Graves went to China in 1881. He was baptized in St. Peter's Episcopal Church of this city.

Sept. 9, 1961

The 1961 New York State Fair, beset by a polio outbreak and a heat wave, attracted 443,695 visitors, 63,807 below the 1960 total. A year ago, 507,462 attended the nine-day fair. Daily attendance figures this year topped last year's only twice.

A total of 48 paralytic polio cases were reported in an outbreak of the disease in three Central New York counties. During the first days of the fair, temperatures rose toward the 90s daily.

Sept. 9, 2006

While many people sat glued to the television Tuesday afternoon, Sept. 11, 2001, watching repeated images of the Twin Towers crumbling or planes crashing into them, one Auburn man left for New York City to help identify bodies of people who died that morning. Michael Nye, a volunteer for Disaster Mortuary Operation Response Team, a national non-profit organization formed in 1980 to assist in mass fatality incidents, responded to the scene. Nye volunteered there for 14 days.

Five years later, Nye will represent Cayuga County at a Sept. 11 ceremony at the World Trade Center 7 this Sunday. Nye will take part in the program, which Gov. George Pataki said will be a tribute to America's first responders. Pataki requested county officials designate a first responder to represent the county during the ceremony. Nye said he helped with the identification of the deceased.

Nye has been back to visit New York City for other anniversaries and had already planned on visiting the city again for the fifth anniversary before he was asked by Brian Dahl, the county's director of emergency services, to participate in the ceremony this weekend.

Sept. 9, 2011

The founders of the Auburn Public Theater announced a change in ownership Thursday that they hope will ensure the success and longevity of the organization for years to come.

Angela Daddabbo and Carey Eidel completed a transfer of ownership Aug. 29 gifting the theater they started together in 2005 to the 12-member board of directors that manages the nonprofit organization. With the transfer, the organization will no longer have to pay rent, but will take on a small to moderate mortgage, Daddabbo said.
A man in the U.S. claims that his faulty Samsung Galaxy Note 7 caused his Jeep Grand Cherokee to go up in flames in St Petersburg, Florida.



While speaking with Fox13, Nathan Dornacher said that while at a yard sale, he left his Note 7 to charge in the Jeeps center console. Shortly after, he looked out of the window to see the SUV ablaze. Although fire crews arrived on the scene and managed to douse the flames, it was too late to save the Jeep, so intense was the fire.

Just last week, Samsung issued a recall for the Note 7 in ten different countries after confirmation of at least 35 Note 7s catching fire or exploding while being charged.

In a statement, the tech giant said that it was working with Dornacher to investigate the incident.

We are aware of the incident and we are working with Mr. Dornacher to investigate his case and ensure we do everything we can for him. Consumer safety is Samsungs highest priority. With regard to the Galaxy Note7, we are asking owners to take advantage of the Product Exchange Program announced on Friday of last week.

Dornacher confirmed on Facebook that the Korean company had been in touch with him and is being very helpful:

Here is a update on everything @Samsung has been in contact with us since last night and is being very helpful. They are sending someone to review everything. We will not gain anything from this for the keyboard invesgators out there. Yes we had insurance but very minimum and nothing to cover any of the recent work done no ones fault but our own. We are not and have not asked for anything, we are not getting a lawyer, we will replace in time when we can afford it.

All I want out of this is for everyone to take this recall seriously and if you didnt know about it please educate yourself before its too late I had the phone for 5 days and not having tv or a notification we did not know. We are safe no one was hurt all that matters to me.

Photos courtesy of Nathan Dornacher @ Facebook

PHOTO GALLERY

Video
Two community colleges in Central New York will accept former ITT Technical Institute students after the for-profit college announced its closing earlier this week.

Both Cayuga Community College and Onondaga Community College issued press releases Friday to address the sudden closure of all ITT campuses nationwide.

At CCC, President Brian M. Durant explained that many online and late-start courses are still available for students and a team of advisers and counselors has formed to help students transfer credits and create a plan to complete their degree.

"CCC stands ready to help these students, whether they were just starting or finishing up a degree," he said, noting that the school may waive placement testing and allow credit for life experience. "With our open admissions policy and combination of work-force training and academic study, (CCC) may be the obvious choice for these students. And we're here to help them navigate their next steps."

Meanwhile, OCC has planned a special outreach event for students who were enrolled at ITT. Staff will be on hand Saturday, Sept. 17 from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the Gordon Student Center on the OCC campus to help students with academic program options, advising, placement testing and financial aid. The center is located at 4585 West Seneca Turnpike in Syracuse.

"Our message is we want them to continue their education," Durant said.
This rather problematic intersection is located in Romania Serpukhov, Russia where the Mayor purportedly wanted to tackle traffic by removing all road signs.



Sure enough, the plan didnt pan out, as a local proved after capturing all kinds of accidents by placing a camera at a nearby tree.

Whats worse is that, according to the description of the clip, the Mayor was even called out on his decision during a town hall meeting where he said that the intersection only had slight issues  which couldnt be further away from the truth, as you can see for yourself in the footage.

Youve got cars running into each other, youve got buses getting hit, vans, pretty much any type of vehicle brave enough to cross the intersection looks to be at risk.

Now, if youre thinking something like why arent drivers aware of the issue and slowing down?, well that might be because cars arent running into each other literally all the time, so once youve gone past the intersection unaware of the problem, theres no reason to think that youre in danger.

That being said, youd imagine there would still be a few close calls that would prompt at least some drivers to approach the intersection with relatively low speeds  at least thats what wed do. Or just avoid it altogether.

UPDATE: Unfortunately we too fell prey to the videos description, which stated that this intersection is situated in a Romanian town. In reality, its in Serpukhov, Russia, where we also witnessed this road rage episode a few months back. Thanks to everyone for bringing it to our attention.

VIDEO
Japans transport ministry may raid Mitsubishi Motors offices a fourth time if the evidence collected during its latest inspection wont prove sufficient.



According to Autonews, another search could also be in the works if the findings somehow point to even bigger problems than just the automakers decades-long fuel economy scandal.

You cant deny the company has a culture thats prone to malpractice, said Yuki Ebihara, on official within the regulators recall division. Compared with other makers, we have to give them a closer look.

Despite the possibility of another raid, Nissan still expects to close its $2.2 billion stake deal with Mitsubishi Motors before the end of 2016 and according to a spokesman for the company, remain convinced that the transaction is worth it.

Issues still remain, though, including the fact that three days before the latest raid, the ministry concluded that 8 of 9 Mitsubishi models fell short of the companys advertised fuel economy figures and that recalculated figures provided by Mitsubishi themselves were still inaccurate compared to tests done by the regulator.

Once Nissan finishes purchasing their stake in Mitsubishi Motors, the former will agree to hold shares for a period of 10 years. A filing by the Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group also revealed that both Nissan and Mitsubishi will have the first right of refusal to purchase shares if either of the two companies decides to sell.
With the refreshed Mokka X as the only SUV in the brands range, Opel/Vauxhall may have fallen behind the competition, but not for long.



According to AutoExpress, the manufacturers SUV lineup will soon include five different models, and the first one to hit the market will be a Corsa-sized vehicle, which will join the Mokka X in taking aim at the Nissan Juke, Renault Captur and Peugeot 2008, among others.

Rumor has it that it will show its face before the end of the year and come as a replacement to the Meriva MPV, as a mix between an MPV and an SUV, with higher seating position. The crossover will be assembled in Spain, as part of GM Europes deal with PSA Peugeot-Citroen, and it will be underpinned by the same PF1 platform as the current Citroen C4 Cactus and Peugeot 2008, while the next-gen French vehicles will ride on the new Common Modular Platform architecture, co-developed with DongFeng.

Rivaling the likes of the Nissan Qashqai and Renault Kadjar and coming as a replacement for the Zafira with a five- and seven-seat configuration as a mix between MPV and SUV, and sitting at roughly 4.5 meters (177 in) in length, will be an Astra-sized crossover, which will share PSAs EMP platform with the upcoming 3008 and 5008. Expected to debut next year at the Frankfurt Motor Show, its said to be built in Peugeots plant in Sochaux, France, and to use PSA and GM petrol and diesel engines, along with a plug-in hybrid.

Confirmed by the General Motors CEO Mary Barra a couple of years ago, a flagship SUV will provide Opel/Vauxhall with a rival for the Land Rover Discovery Sport. It will sit above the Insignia in the companys lineup and is believed to share technology with a new Buick and Cadillac SUV.

Last but not least, an Opel/Vauxhall Adam X will complete the brands SUV lineup and will take on the planned Seat Mii X-Perience. Chances are it will adopt a funky design, offer plenty of personalization options and use an electric powertrain.

Note: Opel Antara / Chevrolet Equinox prototype pictured

PHOTO GALLERY
Volkswagen AG is close to securing a joint venture with Chinas Anhui Jianghuai Automobile Co. to increase the German firms footprint in China.



On Wednesday, the two companies signed a memorandum of understanding in Wolfsburg, Germany and plan on finalizing the deal and signing a formal agreement in the coming five months, reports Bloomberg.

In a statement to the Shanghai Stock Exchange, it was revealed that the deal will see Volkswagen and Jianghuai Auto each put up 50 per cent of the capital to build a competitive portfolio of electric vehicles as fast as possible using existing mature platforms.

Volkswagen chief executive Matthias Muller revealed that his company will invest over 4 billion euros into China in 2016 alone and within the next five years, will introduce 15 new-energy vehicles there.

We believe this cooperation would not only benefit our two organizations, but would also be of great value to our customers, a sound environment and the Chinese society in general, Muller said.

Volkswagen already has joint ventures with SAIC Motor Corp. and China FAW Group in the country that which requires overseas companies to set up businesses with local partners. Cross town rivals Daimler and BMW both have joint ventures to produce electric vehicles in China as well.

PHOTO GALLERY
Photo: Facebook - Myeloma Canada - National Page

Patients, caregivers, family members and friends are coming together to raise awareness and funds for a rare form of cancer.

This month will see the first edition of the Enderby and Kelowna Multiple Myeloma Marches, part of Myeloma Canadas national signature fundraising event, the Multiple MyelomaMarch.

Multiple myeloma (commonly referred to as myeloma) is a cancer of the plasma cells, a type of cell found in the bone marrow.

It affects about 7,500 Canadians, and it's estimated that in 2015, 2,700 new cases of myeloma were diagnosed in Canada. It is most often diagnosed between 65 and 70 years of age and is slightly more common in men than in women.

Myeloma is the second most common blood cancer after non-Hodgkins lymphoma and represents 1.3 per cent of all new cancer cases in Canada and 1.9 per cent of all cancer deaths.

The marches in Enderby and Kelowna are the first Multiple Myeloma Marches in British Columbia.

Headed by Ron Surry, his family and friends, the Enderby community aims to raise $10,000 and Kelowna aims to raise $20,000.

Many myeloma patients, like me, have mobility problems. If I could manage these problems by walking five kilometres, maybe others could, too, said Surry, an eighteen-month myeloma survivor and the Enderby and Kelowna Multiple Myeloma March Co-ordinator.

Advocating for better access to new drugs is my way of encouraging multiple myeloma patients to remain hopeful and optimistic. Increased treatment options would create more stepping stones for patients to walk on and extend our lives with a better quality of life.

Kelowna will kick off its first community March on Sunday, Sept. 11, at Kerry Park, 1480 Mill Street at 10 a.m., while Enderby will host its March on Sunday, Sept. 25, at the Lions Club Gazebo at 1 p.m.

Individuals may register, donate or participate at www.myelomamarch.ca.
Photo: Deborah Pfeiffer

School District 67 is back to school as of Wednesday, with teachers and students now getting into the new provincial curriculum.

Supt. Wendy Hyer said the first day went without any incidents, but noted that teachers are still getting used to the new curriculum.

"It's not really the content that's the real challenge for them, it's just a change of looking at competency," Hyer said.

The Ministry of Education has set up workshops for instructors to get used to the shift in paradigms the new curriculum is setting up  away from teaching content memorization, and toward teaching children ways of thinking.

"They're things like critical thinking, communication skills, those sorts of things," Hyer said. "Content being more of a vehicle, whereas the end result is really that we have students who, when they leave Grade 12, have the skills that they need to be successful in the greater community."

Hyer said she views that shift as being a positive one for modern-day learning, when technology brings content to students more easily than ever before.

"It's not about standing up in front of a classroom and giving content," she said. "It's about metacognition, teaching kids how they learn and teaching kids how to learn, and how to be reflective thinkers and creative thinkers and critical thinkers, and how to communicate their learning in a variety of ways."

For that shift in teaching styles, the Ministry of Education has advised teachers in the area to take it bit by bit, so as not to overburden themselves and negatively impact the students' learning experience.

"I think overall, we've made a good start to that process," Hyer said.
You could have the missing piece of the puzzle that will help the RCMP put someone behind bars. Here are some recent crimes that Central Okanagan Crime Stoppers hope you can help solve by calling our anonymous tips line at 1-800-222-TIPS (8477), visit our website at www.crimestoppers.net or text to CRIMES (274637), keyword Ktown.

CRIME: HOME INVASION

DATE: September 1, 2016

RCMP FILE: 2016-52559

A violent break and enter overnight to a Kelowna home sent a man to hospital with serious injuries.

On September 1, 2016 at 9:01 pm, the Kelowna RCMP responded to a report of a violent break and enter which had just occurred to a home in the 600 block of Denali Court. Police have learned that as many as three masked men forced their way inside the home, which was occupied by a man and two women at the time. The suspects physically assaulted the occupants inside the home and fled with only a few electronic devices.

RCMP officers set up an area of containment and a Police Service Dog was brought in to assist with a search for the suspects. Investigators located and seized the items stolen during the break in nearby.

One of the residents, a 70-year-old man, sustained serious injuries. He was treated at the scene by BC Ambulance Service and taken to hospital for further treatment.

The suspects were each believed to be men in their twenties, of average heights, average builds, wearing dark clothing along with black masks which were pointed at the top with the eyes cut out.

If you know anything about this crime, or any other crime, call the Central Okanagan Crime Stoppers anonymous tips line at 1-800-222-TIPS or visit our website at www.crimestoppers.net. Your information will be kept confidential and could lead to a reward of up to $2000.00.

CRIME: MISCHIEF AT CEMETERY

DATE: September 5, 2016

RCMP FILE: 2016-53322

A visitor to the Kelowna Memorial Cemetery made a disturbing discovery on September 5. Sometime over the long weekend delinquents had toppled over 18 tombstones located on the southwest side of the cemetery near Glenmore Drive. If you have information on who may have done this please contact Crime Stoppers or the police.

Photo: Crime Stoppers

If you know anything about this crime, or any other crime, call the Central Okanagan Crime Stoppers anonymous tips line at 1-800-222-TIPS or visit our website at www.crimestoppers.net. Your information will be kept confidential and could lead to a reward of up to $2000.00.

CRIME: THEFT FROM VEHICLE & FRAUD

DATE: August 5, 2016

RCMP FILE: 2016-45324

Thieves will check for unlocked vehicles anywhere, any time, any neighbourhood. The owner of a vehicle parked in a driveway on the 2000 block of Stirling Place in Kelowna reported an overnight theft from her car. A wallet that held a debit card with an enabled tap function was stolen. The debit card was quickly used blocks away at a PetroCan Station and then again with a local cab company. Please report any information you may have on this woman of interest.

Photo: Crime Stoppers

You can help catch these suspects and qualify for a reward by calling Crime Stoppers anonymous tips line at 1-800-222-TIPS (8477), visit our website at www.crimestoppers.net or text to CRIMES (274637), keyword Ktown.

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.
Construction of the first wind power operation in the Okanagan has begun near the Pennask Summit off the Okanagan Connector Highway.

Five wind turbines will be built at two different locations, one near Pennask Summit and another near Shinish Creek, producing 15 megawatts each.

Once completed, the 10 turbines are expected to generate enough energy to power 9,000 homes.

The foundations of the turbines have been poured and pieces of the infrastructure will be delivered to the site over the next few weeks.

Steve Simpson, vice president of InstarAGF Asset Management, says the towers will take just days to go up once the parts arrive.

There's about three months where we'll do the software and electrical commissioning, so we should be generating clean, renewable energy onto the grid at the very end of this year or very early 2017, Simpson said.

The wind was blowing strong Thursday afternoon at the Pennask Summit site, as a ceremony was held to mark the beginning of the construction.

Given all the wind that we're seeing up here and the fact that we're a little chilly is actually a good thing that we picked this site, said Greg Smith, president and CEO of InstarAGF.

InstarAGF has partnered with the First Nations in the area on the project.

We worked out a deal with Instar ... and we're proud of the relationship we built and the deal we did, said Jonathan Kruger, chief of the Penticton Indian Band.

Kruger said the partnership involved a "small percentage" of the wind power project going towards the First Nations, as well as creating jobs for their members.

He called the project a small step in the right direction, and would like to see more renewable energy projects built in the area.

This is a project we can stand behind, Kruger said.
Photo: Dustin Godfrey

A crash stalled traffic heading south down Main Street Thursday afternoon.

Penticton Fire Department received a call to the crash at Main Street and Warren Ave. that involved a Toyota Tacoma truck and a Toyota Corolla sedan at 2:40 p.m.

Both southbound lanes were closed, while the cars were cleared from the street, causing traffic to detour around the block south of Warren Ave.

The crash was cleared at about 3:30 p.m., and one witness said resulting injuries were minor.
Photo: Western Forest Products

UPDATED at 9 p.m.

A veteran security guard testified he watched a zombie-like man walking towards another man in the parking lot of a Vancouver Island sawmill with his right arm outstretched before hearing an explosion.

Michael Lauder told a B.C. Supreme Court trial in Nanaimo that he ducked out of sight after hearing the blast, and seconds later emerged to find Michael Lunn on his back, motionless and suffering from a serious wound to his right side and the back of his head.

"I knew from looking at him that he had passed," said Lauder, a 16-year employee of the Western Forests Products mill where the shooting took place. "He was face up with his eyes open. It appeared that there had been damage to the back of his head."

Kevin Addison, 49, is on trial facing two first-degree murder charges and two charges of attempted murder.

Mill employees Fred McEachern and Lunn died in the April 30, 2014 shooting rampage, while Tony Sudar and Earl Kelly were shot but survived.

Addison, a former mill employee, was arrested at the mill office minutes after police received calls about an active shooter at the site.

Lauder told the jury that he saw a man approach Lunn from behind.

"It seemed like a fraction of a second from the time I noticed the individual from the corner of my eye," he said. "There was a bang and it was over."

Under cross-examination by defence lawyer John Gustafson, Lauder testified he didn't recognize the man but described him as "frozen. His face was frozen, expressionless. He seemed quite rigid. I said zombie from the standpoint the individual seemed quite focused."

Lauder later agreed he originally told police on the day of the shooting the man "was like a God-damned zombie."

Lauder testified he ran from his security office to the company office to warn others, but when he arrived mill manager Andrew Vanger had an individual pinned to the ground and yelled, "call 911, call 911."

The jury also heard testimony from an RCMP officer who responded to an active shooter call at the mill and found blood, bodies and an emotionless man sitting on top of a sawed-off shotgun in the company office.

Nanaimo RCMP Const. David Buchanan said it took him less than three minutes to arrive at the mill on Nanaimo's waterfront. The shooting had already stopped and shortly afterwards Addison was arrested without resistance, Buchanan said.

"He was emotionless, quiet," said Buchanan. "He was able to get up on his own accord."

He said the only emotion shown by Addison was about 30 minutes later at the Nanaimo RCMP office when he threw his head back once and made a "grimace."

Buchanan, the second officer at the scene, said he was expecting "chaos."

He said he stopped at the mill parking lot where he saw a man on the ground receiving aid. There was blood pooling on the ground, Buchanan said.

Crown prosecutors said the trial will hear evidence that Lunn was hit by a single shotgun blast to his back right arm moments after stepping out of his vehicle.

Buchanan testified he then walked into the dark company office knowing his colleague Const. Paul Minkley was already inside.

He said he helped Minkley put handcuffs on Addison and walked him to his police vehicle.

The trial has heard that McEachern and Kelly were shot in the back and Sudar in the face.

The Crown said the trial will hear that McEachern, who later died, and two other employees, Ed Good and Vanger, were able to subdue Addison in the office.

The trial is scheduled to last for about three weeks.
PORT BYRON  After years of planning, a new park has been completed in Port Byron at the site of a portion of the Erie Canal.

According to the New York State Thruway Authority and Canal Corporation, the Old Erie Canal Heritage Park opened to the public Thursday at the site of Lock 52 in Port Byron.

Located alongside the Thruway near Route 31 in the village, the park is part of New York's Path Through History initiative, which began in 2012 to support tourism and highlight historic sites across the state  sites like Lock 52.

"The Port Byron Old Erie Canal Heritage Park is the culmination of 20 years of work on behalf of the Canal Society (of New York State)," Canal Society President Kal Wysokowski said. "We are very proud to now have a place where visitors can reach out and touch history with their hand."

The $9.6 million park is the first facility to offer direct access from the state Thruway to a historic site, as visitors can enter the park from the I-90 eastbound between exits 41 and 40. Locals can also access the park through a separate entrance point from Route 31 in the village.

"The newly constructed park will attract tourists and locals alike to experience the history of the Erie Canal firsthand," Thruway Authority Board of Directors Chair and Onondaga County Executive Joanie Mahoney said in a news release.

The Canal Society will provide guided tours of the enlarged Erie Canal Lock 52 and the Erie House Complex, which dates back to 1895 and includes the Erie House Tavern and Hotel, a mule barn and a blacksmith shop. In addition, the Finger Lakes Regional Tourism Council will operate the new Visitor's Center, which features displays and educational materials including a model lock.

"This is a great new attraction for the Finger Lakes Region," tourism council Board Chair Mike Linehan said. "We are excited to welcome in an attraction that promotes and honors the historical significance of the Erie Canal."

The park, which was completed in three phases, will be open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday through Sunday.

"With the Canal system spurring hundreds of millions of dollars in tourism-based economic activity each year, it's clear that people want to experience its history and this park is the perfect way to tell those stories," New York State Canal Corporation Director Brian U. Stratton said.
Photo: Penticton RCMP

Penticton RCMP is renewing its call for help in finding a missing person.

Dan Ross was last seen on Aug. 3 in the Vancouver Hill area of Penticton, and is known to hike the Kettle Valley trails.

Ross is described as a 32-year-old caucasian male, six feet one inch (185 centimetres) in height, weighing 165 pounds (75 kilograms).

He has brown hair and brown eyes, and was last seen wearing tan shorts, a white tee shirt and white running shoes.

Police have received no new information since opening the case.
Photo: DriveBC

UPDATE: 6 p.m.

Highway 1 has partially reopened between Sicamous and Salmon Arm.

The highway is now reduced to single-lane-alternating traffic.

ORIGINAL: 5:30 p.m.

Highway 1 is closed in both directions between Sicamous and Salmon Arm following a serious collision.

DriveBC reports a detour is via Highway 97A and Highway 97B.

An estimated time of reopening is not yet available as an assessment is still in progress.

The next update is expected at 6:30 p.m.

Send news tips, photos and video to [email protected]
Photo: The Canadian Press

It's no Nobel Peace Prize, but Barack Obama has a new honour to brag about. Scientists have named a parasite after him  and there's no worming out of it.

Meet Baracktrema obamai, a tiny parasitic flatworm that lives in turtles' blood. A new study officially names the 2-inch, hair-thin creature after Obama.

Thomas Platt, the newly retired biology professor at Saint Mary's College in Indiana who chose the name, says it's an honour, not an insult. Really.

Platt, who discovered and named the flatworm to crown his career before retiring, has more than 30 new species to his credit. In the past, he's named them after his father-in-law, his doctorate adviser "and other people I have a great deal of respect for. This is clearly something in my small way done to honour our president," Platt said Thursday.

Platt, who is a distant relative of the president, says people pay thousands of dollars for the privilege of having a species named after them.

Parasites, which live in and get nutrients from host animals, get a bad rap. Platt says this one reminds him of the president: "It's long. It's thin. And it's cool as hell."

Platt says Baracktrema obamai "are phenomenally incredibly resilient organisms."

"I hold them in awe and with phenomenal respect," Platt says.

The worm is related, distantly, to a parasite that can cause a devastating disease in humans, but it causes no harm to turtles, Platt says.

Parasites are cool, crucial to life and all around us, says Rutgers biologist Michael Sukhedo, editor of the Journal of Parasitology, where the study appears. About 7 out of 10 animals on Earth are parasites, he says.

Naming a new species  especially in the final paper of a career  "is a big decision," Sukhedo says.

Obama already has a spider, a fish and even an extinct lizard named after him.

Although names are usually bestowed as an honour, Sukhedo admits once or twice parasites have been named as a tool of revenge  something Platt says isn't the case here. One time, Sukhedo says, a biologist named an entire group of parasites after her ex-husband: microphallus.
Photo: NASA

The first NASA explorer of its kind took off on a seven-year quest Thursday, chasing after a big, black, unexplored asteroid to gather a few handfuls of gravel for return to Earth.

These bite-size bits of ancient space rock from asteroid Bennu could hold clues to the origin of life, not just on our planet but potentially elsewhere in the solar system.

Thousands gathered to witness the evening launch of Osiris-Rex, a robotic hunter that looks something like a bird with its solar wings. The spacecraft took flight atop an Atlas V rocket, which soared a little before sunset on the mission, a U.S. first.

Victory was declared an hour later; launch controllers shook hands and embraced as the spacecraft shot out of Earth's orbit, bound for Bennu.

"Tonight is a night for celebration. We are on our way to an asteroid," said NASA's chief scientist, Ellen Stofan. After all, "we've just done something amazing."

"We got everything just exactly perfect," added Osiris-Rex chief scientist Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona. "It was an amazing evening for me and for this team."

It will take two years for Osiris-Rex to reach Bennu (BEHN'-oo), which is circling the sun in a slightly wider orbit than Earth's. The boxy spacecraft will actually go into orbit around the asteroid, seeking out the best spot before going in for a quick bite.

Round trip, the SUV-sized spacecraft will travel more than 4 billion miles (6 1/2 billion kilometres) by mission's end in 2023.

NASA has gone after comet dust and solar wind particles before, but never anything from an asteroid. It promises to be the biggest cosmic haul since the Apollo moon rocks.

The roundish rock  an estimated 500 metres across and taller than the Empire State Building  is believed to harbour carbon dating back 4.5 billion years, to the beginning of our solar system. That makes it a time capsule and a scientific prize.

"We will make discoveries on this mission that we have not anticipated. It's exciting!" said Bill Nye, "The Science Guy," chief executive officer of the Planetary Society.

The launch came 50 years to the day that the first "Star Trek" episode aired on TV. NASA launch commentator Mike Curie referenced the anniversary, urging the spacecraft at liftoff "to boldly go" to Bennu and back. This is yet another example of NASA "turning science fiction into science fact," Stofan noted.
Photo: Contributed

I sat on the top of the hill pretending to make phone calls as Sonya looked on; little did she know that I was making excuses to catch my breath.

A few weeks ago, I was at a party with a group of mountain bikers. In that environment, it takes about a hello my name is to get into the real conversations  what scary, epic stuff have you done this week?

At the end of the evening, my wife, Jackie, came home and said she missed participating in outdoor adventures. She wanted to be able to tell some stories as well as listen to them.

She is a self-professed bookworm, but I know another Jackie, the one that boogie boarded with me down a white-water river for our wedding anniversary, then flew off a mountain in a para-glider, or heads in to deepest Africa to live with tribal communities while she loves them and creates plans and funds to get them safe water.

The Jackie I know is truly an adventurer.

However, she took the proverbial bull by the horns last week, rented a downhill mountain bike, signed up for Ladies Night at Whistler and went whizzing down the hill at ridiculously crazy speeds. Not one, but three times.

I nearly died after seeing her come down the second time and assuming there is no way she would go back up again.

I chugged my beer sitting, ran to the hostess, paid my bill, sprinted down the stairs, almost tripping and killing myself before I arrived breathless at the lift to watch Jackie go up a third time.

Breathing heavily, I texted one of my kids: your mum has just gone up Whistler for a third time.

The response: What!!!! Mum?

My wife had a grin from ear to ear when she came down from the last run and truly enjoyed the thrill of downhill-mountain biking.

Secretly, I had contacted a friend, Sonya Looney, who is an extraordinary mountain biker and probably the most positive person you could ever want to bump into.

Sonya and I both spoke at TEDX in Kelowna last year and I asked if she could spare the time to help me figure out downhill biking.

We met up in the parking lot where I met my steed, a fantastic all mountain bike that her husband, Matt Ewonus, had lent me (thanks Matt!). My time had come.

I pressed the button on my Google fit bit thingy and started off.

Riding with Sonya was in a little like visiting the dentist. After a few hundred metres, I was already breathless and Sonya was keeping an effortless conversation going.

My responses were about as clear as the dentist gets when he has half a surgery of contraptions in my mouth. That is my sign that I am about to get into trouble.

It is so cool to see someone so proficient ride ahead and be a cautious and expert guide for you. I enjoyed the climb up the Smith Creek trails, which I had never visited before.

By comparison, my steed at home was a second-hand, rigid-frame Cascade Lava Dome, which I purchased from a mountain guide in Canmore back in 1989.

I had thrashed out of the French Robertson Glacier on that thing a few times, but the jaw-shaking, rattling bikes of the 90s are out in favour of the full suspension, big travel fully adjustable mountain bikes we see today.

We kept climbing on a cloudy and slightly damp afternoon, but the ride was already epic. Small challenges to distract you from the climb snuck up on you and unsettled your rhythm.

Sonya was always close at hand to hint at the solution to a problem on the trail.

We had climbed about 700 feet when Sonya asked if I needed a break.

Yes, I would like a drink, I politely replied.

That meant I needed to check my phone and pretend I had lots of important business to do to stall the rest of the ride.

My plan worked and I even had my phone ring for the fist time on the ride. I could finally get my pulse back to something resembling normal while I drew out a conversation as long as I possibly could.

My legs were like jelly and I knew that going down I would need my brain and my leg muscles so when Sonya asked if I wanted to carry on I wimped out and said in the next five minutes I am good to head down.

We climbed to another lookout. We had taken something close to 45 minutes to climb about 820 feet.

We arrived at another viewpoint and checked out the scenery before Sonya announced we were off.

I jumped on Matts steed, made sure I wasnt going to pass out after my bit had already had a Google fit.

Then, whoosh, we were on our way. All of a sudden I experienced Jackies grin.

The bike was so unbelievably comfortable to ride. My bone-shaking Lava Dome would have made a milk shake out of me in the first hundred feet!

I hung on to the handlebars and watched Sonya effortlessly glide through the air from jumps.

I got cocky. I can do one of those, I thought. I boldly rode up a wooden ramp with what really was a small jump and thought the bike was good enough to do it on its own without me helping out wrong.

That was nearly an epic fail. I flopped off the end and scarily regained control. I was locking up into corners, brushing trees with my shoulders, ducking under bridges and generally having an awesome time.

Sonya stopped a few minutes into it. She must have been worried about me. I rode up to her less breathless than I had been on the on the climb, but perhaps a little big-eyed and grinned.

I expected to get going again to enjoy this thrilling elevator ride down Smith Creeks trail system.

Then, she pointed out the parking lot to me. What had taken 45 minutes to get up just took less than 10 minutes to get down. It forced me to ask myself if it was all worth it.

Yes! It was!

It was epic and to add to my grin I had to eat two dinners that evening to replenish (at least that is what I told Jackie.)

Big thanks to Sonya and Matt for helping me experience my first climb and downhill on a mountain bike. If you would like to know more about Sonya and her epic adventures, check out her site.

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.
Photo: The Canadian Press

North Korea on Friday conducted its fifth atomic test, producing its biggest-ever explosive yield, South Korean officials said after monitors detected unusual seismic activity near the North's northeastern nuclear test site.

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement that "artificial seismic waves" from a quake measuring 5.0 were detected near the Punggye-ri test site.

The South's Defence Ministry said it believed the North conducted a nuclear test, while European and U.S. monitoring services also detected similar seismic activity, with the U.S. Geological Survey calling it an "explosion" on its website.

A second North Korean nuclear test this year would raise serious worries in Washington because the North's nuclear tests are part of a push for a nuclear-armed missile that could one day reach the U.S. mainland. A second nuclear test this year would be a defiant response to Western pressure on Pyongyang to halt its nuclear ambitions. The country has previously conducted tests every three to four years.

A South Korean Defence Ministry official, who refused to be named because of office rules, said that Seoul detected an estimated explosive yield of 10 kilotons and assessed that it was from a nuclear test.

After the fourth test, in January, South Korean lawmaker Lee Cheol Woo said Seoul's National Intelligence Service told him that an estimated explosive yield of six kilotons was detected.

The 5.0 magnitude earthquake Friday is the largest of the four past quakes associated with North Korean nuclear tests, according to South Korea's weather agency. Artificial seismic waves measuring 3.9 were reported after North Korea's first nuclear test in 2006; 4.8 was reported from its fourth test this January.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has overseen a robust increase in the number and kinds of missiles tested this year. Not only has the range of the weapons successfully tested jumped significantly, but the country is working to perfect new platforms for launching them  submarines and mobile launchers.

The longer ranges and mobile launchers give the North greater ability to threaten the tens of thousands of U.S. troops stationed throughout Asia.

The seismic activity comes on the 68th anniversary of the founding of North Korea's government and just days after world leaders gathered in China for the G-20 economic summit.

Any test will lead to a strong push for new, tougher sanctions at the United Nations and further worsen already abysmal relations between Pyongyang and its neighbours. North Korea is already one of the most heavily sanctioned places on earth, and many question whether the penalties work.

China, the North's economic lifeline and only major ally, has previously offered cover to Pyongyang, though Beijing has expressed growing frustration with what outsiders call provocations.

North Korea is thought to have a handful of rudimentary nuclear bombs and has spent decades trying to perfect a multistage, long-range missile to eventually carry smaller versions of those bombs. After several failures, it put its first satellite into space with a long-range rocket launched in December 2012, and has since launched another such successful launch.

Experts say that ballistic missiles and rockets in satellite launches share similar bodies, engines and other technology. The U.N. calls the North's long-range rocket launches banned tests of ballistic missile technology.

It's unclear whether North has achieved the technology needed to manufacture a miniaturized nuclear warhead that could fit on a long-range missile capable of hitting the United States. Some analysts believe that the country has the ability to arm shorter range missile with warheads.
Photo: The Canadian Press

The San Diego Zoo burned items containing rhinoceros horn with an estimated black market value of $1 million in a symbolic gesture Thursday to show the U.S. is committed to ending illegal wildlife trafficking.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service partnered with the zoo and California Department of Fish and Wildlife to hold the massive bonfire, the first of its kind in the United States.

Countries around the world have been burning and destroying illegal wildlife products to send the message that such products cannot be traded and that poaching of animals for their horns must stop. In April, 120 tons of elephant ivory and 1.3 tons of rhino horn were destroyed in Kenya.

The items  from carved horns to products falsely marketed as having medicinal qualities from the horns  were confiscated in the U.S. and outside the country, zoo spokeswoman Darla Davis said.

Officials say a rhino is poached every eight hours in Africa and they could become extinct in the wild in 15 years. In 2015, 1,175 rhinos were killed in South Africa alone, according to the San Diego zoo.

Gov. Jerry Brown recently signed a bill to close a loophole in the state's ban on importing, buying or selling elephant ivory or rhino horns. Supporters said California is a major market for ivory, and the ban would help dry up demand.

The measure by Democratic Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins of San Diego aimed to end the state's exemption for selling ivory imported before 1977. She said clamping down on the illegal ivory trade would help bring an end to the poaching of elephants and rhinos.

San Francisco and Los Angeles make up two of the country's top three hubs for ivory sales. New York, which wildlife officials call the country's biggest ivory market, banned the sale of most elephant ivory, mammoth tusks and rhinoceros horns last year.
Photo: Parks Canada

Travellers to Alberta can expect some delays next week.

Highway 1 will be closed in both directions in Yoho National Park, about 23 kilometres west of Field, Monday through Thursday, for rock blasting.

Don't bother leaving early to avoid the closure, the work will take place between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m., meaning a later start will probably work best for most Okanagan motorists.

Expect delays of 60 to 90 minutes while the blasting takes place, as traffic moves through the area sporadically.

Reduced speed zones will be in effect, DriveBC reports.
UPDATE: 12:19 p.m.

An early morning fire behind the Greater Vernon Museum and Archives has been labelled as suspicious, confirms fire investigator Lawrie Skolrood.

The RCMP are now involved in the case, said Skolrood.

Officers were at the scene Friday morning, guarding the evidence while the investigation continued.

Meanwhile, museum officials have expressed relief that no items were damaged by the blaze which raged just behind the building.

"Nothing inside has been affected at all, really, so that's really lucky, said archivist Barb Bell, who had rushed down to the scene in the dark after word of the fire to inspect the damage. "It's all related to history, Vernon's history, so it is irreplaceable."

"We're just really lucky that the valuable contents of the museum and the collections of the community are safe," said Tracy Satin, executive director.

The cause of a fire in roofing materials behind the Greater Vernon Museum and Archives is under investigation.

Vernon Fire Rescue responded to a report of a fire around 2:30 a.m. Friday, said deputy fire chief Jack Blair.

While they were sizing up the area, they found flames behind the building, said Blair. It appeared to be in a porta potty and roofing materials.

The museum is currently being re-roofed.

Firefighters wore full protective gear, including breathing apparatus, because there was thick, black smoke caused by burning plastics, Blair said.

It is under investigation, said Blair. An investigator will be there this morning to look into the cause.
Photo: Contributed

Art is invading Lake Country this weekend.

The Lake Country Art Walk runs Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Lake Country Community Complex.

This year's 23rd annual event is expected to be "off the rails" and is expected to draw more than 7,000 people.

"The exciting Rail to Trail project taking place throughout the Okanagan this year has inspired us to have a railway theme," said Sharon McCoubrey, chairwoman for the event.

Lake Country Art Walk showcases original works of art and live performances created by visual and performing artists living in the Okanagan. More than 300 artists of all media are exhibiting more than 3,000 original works of art.

It's the largest show of its kind in the B.C. Interior. There will be a paint-off competition, quick draw event, children's art activities and  keeping with the theme  model railways.

For more information on the artists, performers and events, visit the website.
The first Republican presidential debate was almost exactly 13 months ago. The first actual balloting was almost exactly seven months ago. The two presidential tickets have been fixed for about 45 days. And yet custom holds that the official start to the 2016 general election is Monday. A weary country wonders: Hasn't this been going on forever?

And yet since that first debate, mighty Republican oaks have fallen in the political forest, new extremes in campaign rhetoric have been reached, old traditions in campaign comportment have been breached  and Americans have expended more emotion arguing over this election than perhaps at any other time in our history.

However it turns out, November's election will be a historical turning point, perhaps ending the male domination of the White House that has prevailed for more than two and a quarter centuries, perhaps sweeping into office a businessman-president with no political experience but unmatched personal celebrity and wealth.

As we approach the end of summer starting line, four important gaps need to be recognized and assessed. These are essential to understanding the American passage this year, and how they play out will be essential in determining who occupies the White House next January. They are:

 The satisfaction gap. This gap is not as yawning as commentators believe. Some 60 percent of Democrats are satisfied that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is their nominee, as compared with the 45 percent of Republicans who feel that way about Manhattan businessman Donald J. Trump, according to the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.

Ordinarily such a gap might mean a disaster for the candidate lagging in party satisfaction, and it is possible that that condition will prevail, imperiling the candidacy of Trump. But this political year is different from any other, in part because of the gap that follows:

 The partisanship gap. This political season has seen the most dramatic transformation of partisanship assumptions since 1980, when Ronald Reagan drew legions of Democrats to his GOP candidacy, and perhaps since 1936, when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's landslide victory over Republican Gov. Alf Landon of Kansas sealed a vital shift in the American political profile.

The reason: Trump's appeal to blue-collar voters, who have sided with him in astonishing numbers, fracturing the Democrats' long-standing alliance with this voting group. Trump's fortunes depend in large measure on his ability to mobilize these voters and perhaps to expand their numbers without alienating traditional Republicans, 52 percent of whom preferred another candidate and who may still be cool to Trump.

 The geographical gap. Great changes in the geography of American politics are always underway, but seldom as starkly as they are today.

West Virginia provides a dramatic example. Back in 1988, Democratic nominee Gov. Michael S. Dukakis of Massachusetts easily carried the state with 52 percent of the vote. A quarter-century later, in 2012, another Massachusetts governor, this time a Republican, Mitt Romney, carried West Virginia with more than 62 percent of the vote  a higher percentage than he received in blood-red Alabama or Mississippi.

At play there: the changing fortunes of coal and strong feelings about guns, both of which are to the Republicans' advantage, especially in the wake of Barack Obama's advocacy of gun-control measures and Clinton's comments suggesting coal mining was doomed.

These kinds of transitions are underway within states as well, sometimes to the Democrats' advantage. In Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, outside Philadelphia, Vice President George H.W. Bush easily defeated Dukakis, taking 60 percent of the vote in 1988. Romney, the GOP nominee in 2012, didn't come close. Indeed, Obama took Montgomery County with nearly the same vote (about 57 percent) as Bush won 24 years earlier.

Such long-term changes are in train everywhere, and the unusual profile of Trump adds new wrinkles to the map. He could lose the GOP redoubts of Utah and Idaho (both Republican in every election since 1952 with the exception of the 1964 Barry Goldwater debacle) because of his attacks against Romney, which did not play well in the two states with the largest blocs of Mormons.

"All of a sudden," Dukakis, who now teaches politics at Northeastern University in Boston, said in an interview, "there are a bunch of states that were supposed to be red but might not be so red this time."

One leading indicator of the shifting geography of American politics: This summer, Clinton even campaigned in Nebraska, which voted Republican in 18 of the last 19 elections, the only exception since 1936 being the Goldwater debacle. So forbidding to Democrats is it that, in his first 410 weeks as president, Bill Clinton visited every state but Nebraska, touching down there only 42 days before leaving office.

Moreover, the latest polls in Georgia, which Republicans have carried seven of the last eight elections, show a dead heat. There's also a blistering race in Arizona, Goldwater's home state. It has voted Republican in 15 of the last 16 elections, and Romney carried the state by a comfortable 53-44 percent margin. Clinton is running strong there.

The two candidates are giving unusual attention to New Hampshire, which voted reliably Republican in nine of the 10 elections between 1948 and 1988 (with the 1964 Goldwater exception), but has voted Democratic in four of the last five elections. Trump visited Manchester only two weeks ago, where aides scheduled 23 events across the state  10 of them in Dunkin' Donuts stores, the favored meeting place and coffee shop of New England  for a "Weekend of Action."

That's a lot of effort for four electoral votes, but, then again, had Vice President Al Gore invested that kind of time in the Granite State he would have been the 43rd president and the phrase "hanging chads" would have the obscurity it otherwise richly deserves.

 Authenticity gap. He seems so; she doesn't.

No one doubts that Trump is an authentic character on the stump  too much so, some Republicans worry  while Clinton seldom shows the raucous sense of humor and deep humanity that her longtime associates attest she possesses and that others find difficult to believe.

He seems loose; she seems tense. He shuns the briefing books; she devours them. He has no filters; she measures every word. Overall, all of this is a Trump advantage  until it isn't.
Photo: Contributed

A hot air balloon came down right in the middle of a very busy commercial area Friday morning.

Castanet readers sent in pictures of the blue balloon sinking past businesses on Evergreen Court, near the Landmark towers.

It's not the first time a hot air balloon raised eyebrows.

Last month, a hot air balloon made an emergency landing in Okanagan Lake, prompting a rescue.

In July, a hot air balloon landed in an empty lot on Upper Canyon Drive in the Wilden area of Glenmore. One resident called it a "close call for nearby homes."

Last year, there was also a spate of landings in residential areas, which caused a number of people to wonder about regulations.
Photo: Chris Menard

Emergency crews rushed to a crash along Highway 97 in Kelowna Friday.

It happened at the intersection of Harvey Avenue and Capri Street, near the Old Spaghetti Factory, at about 11:20 a.m.

The crash involved two vehicles, a Jeep and convertible Chrysler Sebring.

It appears two people were taken to hospital by ambulance and two others were treated at the scene.

Traffic on the main artery backed up southbound as investigators determined what happened and crews cleared the wreckage.
Photo: Kate Bouey

Kal Tire Place has been given the all clear after environmental tests determined that the facility was clear of bacteria following flooding and sewer backup last weekend, according to the City of Vernon.

Swab samples collected from the arena did not identify any fecal coliform or e. coli bacteria, indicating successful remediation, said a statement.

It means the Vernon Vipers' home opener will go ahead tomorrow evening.

Other user groups are being informed of the results.

A total of 930 square meters of tile flooring had to be removed and replaced on the lower floor along with drywall below the 60 centimeter mark.

The diry water went right into the Vipers' dressing room.
Veterans for Rayburn!

I have had the opportunity to listen to the Republican candidates for the New York Senate 54th District, and as a disabled veteran, a retired Army NCO, a father, a grandfather, a homeowner and someone that loves his country. I wholeheartedly support Floyd Rayburn.

I retired from the Army as an E-7 after 20 years of distinguished service and I had the opportunity to interact with diplomats, generals, chiefs of staff, all the way down to brand new grunts. I realized long ago that doing requires listening and understanding and that is something that Floyd brings to the table. I believe that it is time for us to back someone that is not in league with the establishment, who isn't funded by Albany, and who isn't going to enter office beholden to a handful of people with deep pockets and "downstate" self-interested agendas.

After listening to and speaking with Floyd, I truly believe he understands the issues facing the common person in our district and he isn't going to further corporate interests and Albany goals at the expense of the hard-working, tough-living citizens of the 54th. Speaking of jobs, Floyd is a businessperson, and we need that experience and understanding to help foster job growth and job retention in our district.

I wrote a blank check to the government just before going to Vietnam that was payable up to and including my life. I was proud to serve and have always been proud to be an American. Unfortunately, our way of life has been on a downward path for many years now, as our taxes increase, while the condition of our roads, bridges, and other critical infrastructure continues to worsen. We have had representation that was beholden to Albany before and you have to ask yourselves, Am I doing better now than I was 10, 12, 20 years ago? Let us take back the checks we wrote and make the government accountable to we the people. I dont want to send any more of my money to Albany than is necessary and I dont want Albanys influence here in the 54th. Enough is enough.

I am a veteran, I stand with Floyd, and I hope you will as well.

SFC Andrew F. Hall (U.S. Army Ret.)

Waterloo
Zimbabwe: SZCC considers cutting shifts as downturn hits sales

ICR Newsroom By 09 September 2016

The Sino Zimbabwe Cement Company (SZCC), which operates an integrated plant in Gweru in central Zimbabwe, has said that it is considering reducing the number of shifts at the facility from three to just one in the face of declining sales.

Zimbabwes economy has suffered from a prolonged drought, while manufacturers have also had to contend with smuggled cement from South Africa.

Speaking to the Business Chronicle, SZCC managing director, Wang Yong, said: We have a significant decrease in demand in the cement industry this year and as a company we have experienced a 25 per cent fall. As a company we are exploring options because we are holding on to stock, which is not being taken up.

We are still running three shifts, but based on the demand we will consider running a day shift only in response to the market environment. At the moment our silos are full and we have enough stocks to serve the entire market.

However, Mr Yong said that despite this the company remained committed to Zimbabwe and was pushing ahead with its investment plans.

Published under
DRC cement consumption around 40kg/capita

ICR Newsroom By 09 September 2016

Cement consumption in the Democratic Republic of Congo is currently around 40kg per capita, according to Jean Bamanisa Saidi, president of the RDC Concrete Expo 2016, which is currently being held in the countrys capital Kinshasa.



He added that new companies in Kongo Central will increase cement production in 2017, enabling the supply of cement equivalent to 100kg per capita as production is expected to be stepped up from 0.4Mt to 2.5Mt.

Published under
Fraudulent scheme

A woman was conned out of an undisclosed amount of money over three days by scammers claiming to be with a computer repair company.

According to the police report, the victim sent her computer to get fixed by a company called Be Cube Sol Support, and paid $199.99 for the service. The computer was returned in working order in July.

On Aug. 30, the victim received a phone call from Be Cube stating their system had been compromised and they needed to refund her the $199.99. They asked for information about her checking account and deposited an undisclosed amount of money into the account.

Later, she received a call from a restricted number and the person asked her to refund the amount that was accidentally deposited in her checking account and requested that the money be sent via money order.

The next day, she went to Walmart and sent a money order to a Xuan Gao in China, called a number provided by the supposed Be Cube employee and spoke with an employee who said the money wasnt going through. The line was then disconnected.

The victim then received a phone call from a man identifying himself as a Be Cube employee who informed her that she had been speaking with a hacker who had scammed her out of her money and that he wanted to help her fix the situation. The caller told the victim he was going to refund her the amount she had sent via money order and pay for the laptop charge but first needed to get more money from her as a guarantee.

The caller instructed the victim to send a separate money order but she was denied because she had exceeded the amount allowed for transactions. She called the employee again and he instructed her to buy an undisclosed amount in iTunes gift cards, then provide him the numbers on the back, which she did.

The next day, the victim was again called by a Be Cube employee who told her to purchase more iTunes gift cards. Out of money herself, the victim borrowed money from her boyfriend to purchase the cards and again provided the numbers on the back of the cards. She was given a reference number by a man claiming to be a Be Cube manager and told she could pick up her money the next day.

Employees with the company called the victim the next day and said the reference number was incorrect and they needed more money to send her a check. At that point the victim said she told the caller she was going to the police and disconnected the line.

The case is still being investigated.
1. Increase Infrastructure to Support Student-Centered Learning

Internet Service Provider Goals District Size 2017-18 Targets 2020-21 Targets Small school district (less than 1,000 students) At least 1.5 Mbps per user (minimum 100 Mbps for district) At least 4.3 Mbps per user (minimum 300 Mbps for district) Medium school district (3,000 students) At least 1 Gbps per 1,000 users At least 3 Gbps per 1,000 users Large school district (more than 10,000 students) At least 0.7 Gbps per 1,000 users At least 2 Gbps per 1,000 users

2. Design Infrastructure to Meet Capacity Targets

3. Ensure Equity of Access for All Students Outside of School

4. Leverage State Resources to Increase Broadband Access

A new broadband report from the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA), which represents U.S. state and territorial education technology leaders, encourages education technology leaders and policymakers to continue moving connectivity forward, both inside and outside of school.This report, called The Broadband Imperative II: Equitable Access for Learning , is a sequel to SETDA's 2012 broadband imperative report that set broadband goals for schools to hit by the 2014-15 and the 2017-18 school years.That 2012 report spurred the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to modernize the E-rate program that provides school discounts on telecommunications and information services to schools that serve higher percentages of students from low-income families. The FCC also adopted the report's 2017-18 recommendations for schools to have an external Internet connection to the Internet Service Provider of at least 1 gigabit per second (Gbps) for 1,000 users.Since 2008, schools have expanded high-speed Internet access to 20 million more students, according to a 2015 White House report on elementary and secondary education . While many states have increased connectivity, most of them still have corners of their territory that are more remote, which makes them harder and more expensive to reach with faster fiber networks, said Jeff Mao, senior manager of Common Sense Education, which rates and reviews digital education tools, among other things.Maine, for instance, has some islands that are only accessible by sea plane or a long boat ride, so microwave towers are the best connectivity access they've been able to get so far. And Utah still has to figure out how to deal with connectivity in the more remote southeastern and eastern Utah."Connectivity is better, but by no means is it done," said Mao, who formerly headed up Maine's laptop program.Now that the 2017-18 dates are looming, the association set new broadband goals for 2020-21 in a new report that SETDA researched with the help of state CIOs, state network managers, E-rate coordinators and digital learning administrators, said SETDA Executive Director Tracy Weeks. The 2016 report, released Thursday, Sept. 8, provides four major recommendations that cover not just school broadband goals, but also state support and Internet access outside of school.This year, SETDA split out broadband capacity recommendations for external connections to Internet service providers by the size of school districts, which takes into account the real differences among small, medium and large school districts' needs. It also retroactively split out the 2017-18 goals this way.For example, the report says that small school districts tend to have a higher percentage of their bandwidth usage going to administrative functions including state reporting, student information systems and security. If they meet the current 2017-18 target of at least 1.5 megabits per second (Mbps) for each user, they don't always have enough left over for multiple high-bandwidth activities to happen simultaneously. That's why the report recommends increasing bandwidth to a minimum of 4.3 (Mbps) for each user, or at least 300 Mbps for the district.These minimum recommendations came out of research, expert opinion and data analysis of district networks in eight states.The goals for the internal wide area network connections between schools and district offices will stay the same for both targets: at least 10 Gbps per 1,000 users. As cloud computing and virtualization continue to rise in popularity, the report authors foresee that more traffic will go through external connections to Internet service providers rather than putting extra demand on internal wide area networks.In addition to the broadband targets, the report calls for states to support district efforts with statewide education networks and purchasing consortia. It stressed the importance of making broadband plans not just for administrative functions, but also to support student learning."We want that ability to truly think about how we can really leverage digital tools to change the way we teach and learn now and know that the broadband access is going to be there," Weeks said.For example, Utah has a statewide education network that supports education, libraries and health in most of its territory. That's enabled educators at local schools and other institutions to provide live video calls with International Space Station staff and start robotics academies, among other things.But along with providing the infrastructure, the state has focused on making sure educators know how to take advantage of it for learning."Professional development is so key to ensuring that the educators are prepared and they're able to effectively use this technology," said Jeff Egly, associate director of technical services at the Utah Education Network.Along with improving connectivity at school, the report recommends figuring out more ways to help students access the Internet elsewhere. This is especially important for students from low-income families that can't afford Internet access; they have to really search for places to do their homework, which increasingly requires them to go online.Often dubbed the homework gap, this problem has captured the attention of FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, who has passionately advocated for more access at home. In fact, the Lifeline program that the FCC oversees received an overhaul this year that will help low-income families with students gain access to more affordable Internet.Several times, she repeated the importance of replicating local and state ideas that are working well and enacting federal policy that will support those efforts. Specifically, Wi-Fi on school buses and in local businesses and libraries all started at the local level and are being adopted nationally."Cooperative policy-making between state and federal entities is the way forward," Rosenworcel said. "By working together, we can bridge the homework gap."The homework gap points to a major equity issue between students who have connectivity and those who don't. Students who can't access the Internet outside of school or really have to work hard to do so are at a disadvantage compared to their more well-off peers.In the report, co-authors Christine Fox and Rachel Jones suggest that states, schools and districts should work on community partnerships that will help students access the Internet, make sure students know about access options and talk to families about the importance of Internet access."Our education system will not have the equality that it needs and deserves until every student has that access at home and at school," said Joseph South, director of the Office of Educational Technology at the U.S. Department of Education.Finally, the report recommends that states provide broadband funding, create state broadband networks, take advantage of group buying power and pass policies that support broadband adoption.While New Jersey schools make their own decisions and do not have a statewide network, the state education department pulled more than 200 school districts together to drive down broadband pricing. Over the past two years, they reduced the price of Internet access by 74 percent from $26.30 to $6.80 per megabit for 200 schools that participated in the state request for proposal, said Laurence Cocco, director of the Office of Educational Technology at the New Jersey Department of Education."That is the power of cooperative purchasing," Cocco said, "and it really did give those schools simply the power to band together and take advantage of their collective buying power."
Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Diane Douglas announced Wednesday that the first draft of Arizonas state plan for the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) is available for the public to critique.

Douglas reached out to thousands of Arizonans while creating this first draft to ensure that she was putting something together that the state would support.

While I consider this draft a great first step in the ESSA implementation process, there is still much work to be done, she said in a press release. This is by no means the final state plan, and we will continue to modify this document based on the vision of all Arizonans.

The state plan will cover topics such as accountability, funding, school improvement and grant-making systems. Feedback from stakeholder organizations and education officials has already been gathered by the Arizona Department of Education.

To read the draft and submit your own comments, visit www.azed.gov/essa/draftplan
In the month since Arizonas low-income health insurance program KidsCare was reinstated, the number of enrollees in the program has surged more than fivefold. State numbers show a total of 2,291 children signed up for the program between July 25, when KidsCare began accepting new applicants, and August 25, compared with 528 children enrolled before that time.

That certainly speaks to that idea of pent-up demand, said Allen Gjersvig, director of navigator and enrollment services for the Arizona Alliance for Community Health Centers. It speaks to this state-federal partnership really filling a need for people who earn a little too much for AHCCCS but are really struggling to pay for other forms of coverage.

KidsCare offers low-cost insurance to children 18 and younger whose family incomes fall between 138 percent and 200 percent of the federal poverty level -- a range of about $27,000 to $40,000 per year for a family of three. Those with incomes below that level would qualify for the states Medicaid program, known as the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, or AHCCCS. State legislators in the spring approved the reinstatement of KidsCare, which will be covered by federal dollars through at least 2017, after contentious debate about its long-term funding prospects.

Enrollment in KidsCare has been frozen since 2010, and for the past five years the state has ranked 49th in the United States for its rate of uninsured children, according to a 2016 report from Georgetown University. The report found that in 2014, 10 percent of Arizona children remained uninsured, compared with 6 percent nationally, and it cited the lack of a KidsCare program as a major contributing factor.

Of the approximately 2,300 new KidsCare sign-ups seen so far statewide, 22 have come from North Country clinics in the Flagstaff area, said Byron Lewis, the health benefits navigator at North Country HealthCare.

"That's a pretty good month even with the number of kids already on the books" Lewis said.

Its also worth noting that the states numbers dont include people who have signed up for KidsCare since Aug. 26 because the insurance doesnt kick in for them, meaning they arent considered officially enrolled, until Oct. 1.

But looking at sign-ups alone misses other collateral benefits of the program being available to people, Lewis said. He estimated that in the 14 northern Arizona clinics where he works, 100 to 150 people came in the doors interested about KidsCare, then were signed up for AHCCCS instead because they met those lower income limits. Without the initial impetus of KidsCare, those people may not have gotten insurance, Lewis said. Thats been a trend statewide as well, Gjersvig said.

Additionally, when people come into clinics to inquire about KidsCare, that gives health officials the opportunity to educate them about and assess their eligibility for other programs like annual preventive care checkups, Head Start or domestic violence victim support services, Lewis said.

There are a lot of positive collateral effects that are coming, he said.

State officials estimated there are 30,000 uninsured children in the state who would be eligible for KidsCare. An analysis that broke down those eligibility estimates further found that more than 1,000 kids in Coconino County alone could get onto the program.

Gjersvig said he expects the rate of KidsCare sign-ups to continue to increase, especially when open enrollment for the Affordable Care Act health insurance marketplaces, as well as many other insurance plans, rolls around in November.

There are at least 400 locations across the state, including various hospitals and federally qualified health center clinics like North Country, where people can sign up for KidsCare, Gjersvig said. They can also do so over the phone at 800-377-3536 or online at coveraz.org.

Kids deserve every break they can get and its tough to overcome not being healthy, Lewis said. When a kid is healthy, every other aspect of their life gets better.
What a difference a centennial can make.

The National Park Service celebrated its 100th birthday last month, and it used the occasion to remind everyone not only how far it had come but how far it had fallen behind on maintenance and repairs.

And given the recent surge in visitation and commercial development pressures combined with flagging congressional financial support, the 200th birthday may be a much less happy one.

KEEP UP THE PRESSURE

Sitting as we do at the gateway to one of the crown jewels of the park system, much of the information that came out at the centennial was not new. The challenge is to keep the heat turned up on Congress and park managers once the spotlight has been dimmed.

One example is the submission of Grand Canyon Escalade legislation to the Navajo Nation Council as soon as the centennial celebration was over. This is a plan by wealthy investors to run a motorized gondola line from the rim down to the confluence of the Colorado and Little Colorado rivers west of Cameron. The project would include a riverwalk, food pavilion and amphitheater at the bottom and, at the top, a multimedia complex, a Navajoland Discovery Center, restaurants, an RV park, retail stores and hotels, including a five-star resort.

Such intense development, at least along the rim, is not without precedent. Grand Canyon Village attracts millions of visitors a year to a half-dozen hotels and campgrounds, and the Hualapai have built a casino (currently closed) and a glass skywalk jutting out over the rim at the western end of the Canyon. And overhead, the air tour industry can make up to 93,000 flights a year in four corridors.

MOTORIZED WILDERNESS

Down in the Canyon itself, the Park Service has allowed motorized rafts but not many other motorized or even mechanized activities  supplies still arrive by mule at Phantom Ranch. The Hualapai have asserted rights to run high-speed river trips in the Canyon launched from their land at Diamond Creek, where there is also a busy helicopter pad. There is also a private copter pad at Whitmore Wash farther up the river, and the Park Service runs medical evacuation copter flights to and from the river on a regular basis.

All of the above amounts to a not insignificant intrusion on the natural quiet and undeveloped landscape that preceded modern human settlement. Defenders say the Park Service has a mandate to accommodate a broad range of visitors, both in terms of physical ability and interests, as long as the basic values of a park are protected. There are nearly 300 miles of river corridor and more than a million acres in the park  surely, they say, there is room for a wide variety of visitor experiences in that vast expanse.

NOT MUCH WIGGLE ROOM

But when it comes to a wilderness or near-wilderness experience in the Grand Canyon, the wiggle room is not very big. It only takes one droning aircraft or motorized raft to break up the natural quiet, and the sightlines from rim to rim wouldnt be the same with a beacon atop Vishnu Temple or a campsite halfway up Wotans Throne. Multiply the points of intrusion, and pretty soon the Canyon has fewer spaces where the basic values remain undiminished.

One of those special spaces is the Confluence  there is no other spot like it in the Canyon, and at least one tribe, the Hopi, considers it sacred. The property above it on the South Rim is on the Navajo Reservation, but the Park Service contends the park includes not only the riverbank but also well up the interior wall of the rim.

That is land on which the Escalade tram would operate, along with the food pavilion and other buildings. There is currently no single spot at the bottom of the Canyon accessible to thousands of people a day by mechanized means, so the Escalade would set a precedent, both legally and operationally. As for whether the venture would justify a $65 million investment by the tribe in roads and other infrastructure, well leave it to others to judge the risk. On paper, there are an estimated 3,500 jobs; in reality, that is many times more than the number employed in all of Grand Canyon Village and Tusayan combined.

DOES ESCALADE PASS TEST?

The basic question remains, however: Does a world-class natural wonder like the Grand Canyon deserve protection of its basic attributes, with some concessions for access? And if so, how does Escalade meet that test? Could it be scaled back to a level that does? In what ways?

Whether the U.S government or the Navajo Nation ultimately establish jurisdiction, stewardship of the Canyon is temporary in geologic time but globally significant to those arriving from distant shores, and usually for their only visit in a lifetime. Its a big responsibility. Lets hope our great-grandchildren in 2116 have something truly to celebrate.
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In light of continued developments, primarily since 2008, there exists in these United States a Legal System which operates on a proved Two Tiered approach to justice rendered, which primarily benefits Democratic Elites and Woke Ideological Virtue Signalers, representing their co-dependent wards, to the expressed exclusion of normal hardworking American citizens: What is your suggestion in remedying this widespread injustice and, if not corrected, its existential outcome for our Constitutional Republic?

Complete overhaul of the Department of Justice and their enforcers - the FBI - to reflect a far more honest justice system to keep patriots remaining calm.

Disband the FBI, and request that congress investigate all unethical and non patriotic practices to partially right the wrongs of a distrusted and politically weaponized "Department of Justice."
WASHINGTON, NC Students left stranded by the sudden closing of ITT Tech can find the classes they need to continue their education at Beaufort County Community College. BCCC offers a variety of programs, and students can choose both seated and online classes.On Tuesday, September 6 the for-profit company abruptly shut down all of its schools and left its students with an unclear future. ITT Educational Services Inc. was banned by the Department of Education two weeks ago from enrolling new students who use federal financial aid, according to the LA Times. The restriction on federal aid came after the company had been investigated in multiple states for fraud and predatory lending practices. The shutdown will affect 35,000 students across the country.BCCC is offering to help students who would like to continue their education through an accredited public community college. Some of the degree programs offered by BCCC include computer information technology: information systems, information technology: network management, information technology: software and web development, criminal justice technology, general occupational technology, business administration, medical office administration and office administration. Students will find a wide variety of online classes and hybrid classes, which combine in-person education with online components.Admissions staff can help students sort out how their previous credits can transfer. Even if classes do not transfer directly, students may get credit for prior learning. While BCCC does not offer student loans, financial aid staff can help them through applying for Pell grants, scholarships and other forms of financial aid, which do not need to be paid back. BCCC also offers a payment plan through the College Fund of North Carolina, so that students do not need to pay for their entire semester up front.BCCC also offers a series of eight-week classes, called Late Start, beginning on October 12. Students who sign up for these classes can still get an entire semester. Classes include Juvenile Justice, Business Psychology, Comprehensive Keyboarding and Music Appreciation. Students would not have to wait until the spring to start classes.Beaufort County Community College is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges to award associate degrees, diplomas, and certificates. In 1967, the College was officially chartered as Beaufort County Technical Institute. In 1979, community college status was granted, and since then, BCCC has functioned as a comprehensive community college offering continuing education and awarding associate degrees, diplomas, and certificates. Our faculty and staff are committed to providing accessible and affordable quality education, effective teaching, relevant training, and lifelong learning opportunities for the people served by the College.
The following classes are available through the Continuing Education Department at BCCC. To register, call (252)940-6375 or email continuingeducation@beaufortccc.edu.This workshop builds on the previously offered workshop which teaches students how to connect to the Internet. Instructor Wesley Shelton will teach students how to setup and use different types of web mail, including Outlook Live, Yahoo Mail and Gmail. Students will need to bring their laptops or tablets with Windows 10 installed to class. The workshop takes place on September 13 from 9:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m. and costs $25.Instructor Wesley Shelton will teach students how to use Windows 10, including creating and deleting files and folders. Students will also learn how to use the Windows 10 search tool to find information on their PCs, and how to copy or move files and folders to different locations. Students will need to bring their laptops or tablets with Windows 10 installed to class. This workshop will take place on September 21 from 9:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m. and costs $25.This new online class provides the foundation to build students' skills in the medical profession by focusing on the language of medicine. It emphasizes prefixes, suffixes and word roots. Students will learn the medical vocabulary that relates to anatomy, physiology, pathological conditions, diagnostic treatment, and procedures of various body systems. They will also learn to pronounce, spell and define medical terms. Recommended prerequisites include sound keyboarding skills, access to, and understanding of, word processing software and basic file management skills. The online class runs from October 3 through January 12. It costs $185 and requires a textbook.These classes will prepare auto technicians and service personnel as safety inspectors for motor vehicles. Topics include regulations and test inspection procedures required by the Enforcement Section of the NC DMV for safety inspectors. By the end of the class, students will understand the rules, regulations and procedures for safety inspections, and be able to inspect a vehicle properly. The two-day class will take place on September 12 and 13 from 5:00-9:00 p.m. and costs $70. A second class for emissions testing will take place on September 26 and 27 from 5:00-9:00 p.m.This class is required for those who want to escort large vehicles and have an escort vehicle endorsement added to their driver's license. Students must be either 21 years of age or 18 to 21 years of age with a current Class-A license to attend. All students must have a driver's license that has been valid for at least 12 months. This $70 class takes place on October 4 and runs all day from 8:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m.This class is for persons applying for notary public commissions for the State of North Carolina. Various topics related to the duties of a notary public will be covered. Individuals should review the notary qualifications list on the Secretary of State's web site located at: http://www.secretary.state.nc.us/notary/ prior to registering for class. Per NC Secretary of State guidelines, students will have to pass an exam to complete the class requirements. Students will be required to show a state issued photo ID and their social security card at the first night of class. This class takes place on October 14 from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. and requires a textbook. The fee for the class is $70.
Proposed Golden Belt Historic District would 'gentrify' neighborhood and drive out low-income residents, mission operators say



Durham Rescue Mission founder Ernie Mills discusses how a proposed historic district would hinder his mission's charitable work in the community. (CJ photo by Barry Smith)

Saying a potential move by the City Council could make prices in the neighborhood served by the Durham Rescue Mission cost-prohibitive, the mission's leaders used an Aug. 31 press event to ask city leaders not to include a number of the mission's parcels in a proposed historic district.Ernie Mills, founder and CEO of the Durham Rescue Mission, said during a press conference located on Worth Street vacant lot that the mission hopes one day to be the site of a community center.A public hearing on a proposed Golden Belt Local Historic District and Preservation Plan was on Tuesday's agenda of the Durham City Council. Neither Mayor Bell nor Beverly Thompson, public affairs director, responded to a request to respond to the Durham Rescue Mission's plea. The Durham Rescue Mission owns two dozen lots - including 15 vacant ones - in the proposed historic district. It hopes to use the lots for affordable housing and a community center, but those plans could be derailed if the historic district goes forward.said Mills' son Ernie Mills Jr.Mills Jr. said the mission, with the help of a contractor well-versed in historic districts and home renovation, estimated how much more it would cost to build and renovate houses if they were included in the historic district.the younger Mills said. That compares to $80 outside a historic district, Mills Jr. said.Mills Jr. continued.Mills Jr. said.People entering or re-entering the work force are starting off fresh, usually with low incomes, Mills Jr. said.he said.The same goes for retirees, Mills Jr. said, referring to a retired woman he spoke with who lives on $12,000 a year.Mills Jr. said.He said family members are able to help her, but not everyone is as fortunate as she is.The younger Mills said the mission is not opposed to the entire historic district, and that the mission is asking the city to adopt "a common sense plan" that would allow the Durham Rescue Mission to continue the work it has done for 42 years.Mills Jr. said.Mills Jr. said thousands of generous donors make their mission possible.he said.Two Durham ministers spoke of the mission's work.said the Rev. Melvin Whitley.Whitley said three members of his church have come through the Durham Rescue Mission's programs. Two now are homeowners and one has finished college, Whitley said.said David Mitchell, senior pastor at Mount Gilead Baptist Church. That's what the Durham Rescue Mission does, he said.Mitchell said.The senior Mills said some members of the City Council have visited the mission to hear their plea. He was told the council members wanted to hear from people attending the public hearing before making a decision on the issue.The Durham Historic Preservation Commission voted unanimously to recommend approval of the historic district. The Durham Planning Commission approved the plan by a 7-4 vote.
Kathy Manos Penn

My husband and I received an invitation to a party in St. Louis to celebrate the marriage of a friend from his Vietnam days. Since I'm retired and no longer have to worry about using up precious vacation days, we decided we'd make a road trip of it.We broke up the nine-hour trip by stopping in Paducah, KY the first night. All we knew about Paducah was that a friend had recommended it as a good stopping point and that it had a Quilt Museum. Granted, we weren't interested in seeing the Quilt Museum, but it seemed as good a place as any to spend the night after driving six hours.Paducah turned out to be a delightful small town on the Ohio River, and its quaint downtown reminded me of a miniature Charleston. We ate dinner at Tribeca, a Mexican restaurant that had gotten rave reviews on Trip Advisor. We found it across from the Historic Market House, a building that first made Charleston come to mind, as it was a smaller version of Charleston's Straw Market.Hearing live music as we left the restaurant was another echo of Charleston. The difference was that other than restaurants, Paducah's downtown had shut down by six, so we couldn't explore the shops. Instead, we visited the flood wall, a site our hotel staff had recommended. Beyond it, a band was playing by the river, and folks had blankets and chairs set up to catch the tunes.We listened to music as we viewed the floodwall murals and the plaques explaining the city's history. Who knew Paducah was a major port at the confluence of the Tennessee and Ohio rivers and also a railway hub for Illinois Central Railroad? Today, the railway serves chemical plants, granaries, coal and lumber distributors, river ports, and one military base-Fort Knox. Restored locomotives also line a section of the riverfront.The flood wall was built in 1939 after the flood of 1937 when the Ohio River rose to 60.8 feet, 17.8 feet above flood stage, and destroyed much of the business district, though many restored historic buildings remain today. The Market House built in 1905 is one as is the River Discovery Center which dates to before the Civil War. Trivia buffs may be interested to know that the town was laid out by William Clark of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.We were astonished to read that Paducah is also the site of a uranium enrichment plant. I'm not sure why that seemed strange to me, but it did. As we drove away, I felt as though I'd encountered a hidden slice of Americana.Next up was a nostalgic dinner at Citizen Kane's Steakhouse in St. Louis plus a view of the arch on our way there. Yes, that Citizen Kane. The restaurant, located in a turn of the century Victorian home, serves mouthwatering steaks complete with a Rosebud salad.The next day, we had breakfast at Bob Evans, a restaurant we don't have in Atlanta, before touring a nearby town market where we found gooseberry jam and windchimes made from small propane tanks. One of the charms of a road trip is encountering the unexpected.We danced the night away at the party at Scott AFB and then departed for Brentwood, TN, where we stopped to spend our final night so we could have dinner with one of my former co-workers. Seeing new sights and old friends made it a five-star trip in our book.
East Ridge is preparing for the upcoming elections, but a change in the ordinance regarding placement and timing of political signs was not made early enough to notify the candidates in the current race. A revision to the ordinance that passed on first reading Thursday night defines the distance from the street where political signs can be placed so they do not block the vision of drivers. It also specifies they cannot be put up at poll locations until 24 hours prior to the election and must be removed 24 hours after the election.

Vice Mayor Marc Gravitt said the problem is that everyone has a copy of the old ordinance and has already put up signs. There is a difficulty in changing mid-stream he said. The new rules will be used in future elections. The revised ordinance also creates a lottery for sites where candidates put up tents around city hall the day of the election. The exact rules will be determined before the second and final vote at the next council meeting on Sept. 22.

Dick Cook, a resident of the city, is organizing a candidates forum and informed the council of the details. It is scheduled for 7 p.m. on Oct.17 in the commission room. Residents of the city will submit questions and political science professor Dr. Rick Wilson will moderate the debate and select which questions to ask from those accumulated.

There are also some new rules for wreckers and tow trucks that operate in East Ridge. Upon advice from City Attorney Hal North, the council voted to include any company in the citys rotation list that meets the qualifications established in the ordinance. Other towing companies are allowed, but a business must have been operating in the city for three years and be in good standing. The business must also have had a physical location in East Ridge for at least three years to be on the rotation list that police use to clear wrecks. Currently there are three companies on that list. A second reading and final vote will take place at the next council meeting.

The hours that outdoor construction will be allowed has been changed so as not to disturb people in residential neighborhoods. Outside work is restricted to 7a.m.-6 p.m. on Monday through Saturday and from 9 a.m.-6 p.m. on Sundays. A waiver can be gotten from the building inspector for certain work that would allow construction during other hours. Inside repairs are not restricted because it is recognized that the sound would not be disturbing. There are also six holidays where construction is not permitted at all.

A bid from Lee Smith CMI was approved for a new side-loaded, automated garbage truck for $173,500. The council chose this bid even though it was not the lowest because it included better warranties and local service.

East Ridge will again participate in the Tennessee Municipal League Driver Safety matching grant program for 2016-2017. Because the money will be used to do driver license checks on everyone who operates a city vehicle, the money received will not have to be matched by the city. The purpose of this grant is to reduce the liability from vehicle operations which are insured with TML.

The council also gave approval to build a cell phone tower on the grounds of East Ridge High School at 4320 Bennett Road.

Councilman Denny Manning appointed a new member to the Library Board. Frances Pope will replace a board member who resigned.

Resident John Temple came to the meeting to ask for the citys support for the East Ridge Jones Memorial Methodist annual barbeque. Profits will be set aside to buy winter coats for young people, mostly in elementary school, he said. It will be held Saturday, Sept. 24, from 10 a.m.-6 p.m. This will be the 41st year for this fundraiser. Mr. Temple said that last year $17,000 was raised with $7,000 profit, which bought 170 coats. Principals at the schools help determine children who are most in need. The council voted to purchase 40 tickets on behalf of the city.
In Chattanooga, as part of Startup Week Chattanooga, OneBeat musicians and the Miami-based Fellows of the New World Symphony will use low-latency software and ultra-high-speed connectivity in the Chattanooga Public Library to perform together while over 700 miles apart.

OneBeat will also work with the The Bridge Refugee Service, Coming to America, and Mad Priest Coffee Roasters to explore ways that music and culture can play a role in addressing refugee crises around the globe and easing the process of resettlement.



Events:



Tuesday, Oct 4: Chattanooga Public Library (at Start Up Week Chattanooga)

Tuesday, Oct 4: Granfalloon, Chattanooga (international potluck with storytelling and music)

Wednesday, Oct 5: Miller Plaza, Chattanooga (at Start Up Week, in partnership with Undaground)



"Initiated by the U.S. Department of States Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and produced by Bang on a Cans Found Sound Nation, OneBeat inverts the standard approach to music diplomacy  touring an American band overseas  and focuses instead on providing the meeting place where musicians from around the world can collectively imagine new sonic universes and social realities. This years OneBeat theme of Musical Migrations encourages fellows to explore how peoples movement across the globe has shaped music, and conversely, how music can encourage dialogue and resilience amidst displacement and upheaval," officials said.



OneBeat begins at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Fl. for a two-week residency from Sept. 10-25. The residency will be followed by a two-week, four-state tour that will trace the Great Migration and honor the global impact of African-American music by connecting with musical communities in the birthplace of jazz (New Orleans), the home of Bessie Smith (Chattanooga), and the sweet home for blues, electronic music, and hip hop (Chicago).

In each of these sites, OneBeat fellows will present audiences with a series of public performances, street studios (mobile recording studios) and educational events in collaboration with local musicians, educators, and community organizations. "These connections and collaborations during the program will be the launching pad for fellows own music-driven initiatives, as they develop project ideas for their communities that leverage the power of music for social good," officials said.



"All along the tour, people of all ages and backgrounds will have the rare opportunity to experience live what it sounds like when adventurous musicians from different parts of the world combine forces, and learn first-hand about the process of cross-cultural dialogue and creative collaboration. All OneBeat events will draw inspiration from stories of Musical Migrations, including the voices of migrant and refugee groups in each community, both currently and historically."
Northwest Georgias largest college is reaching out to thousands of displaced students who saw the doors to their college campus close forever this week. The former students of ITT Technical Institute are being offered academic and financial advisement sessions by Georgia Northwestern Technical College (GNTC).



ITT Tech, open for more than 50 years, had campuses all across the United States; including Chattanooga and Atlanta.

GNTC has scheduled special informational sessions for the local ITT Tech students now without an educational home.



The big concern for many of these former students is that they now have a large debt to pay and no college degree or diploma to show for it. We want to give them a real option, right here at home, that will allow them to continue their collegiate education, said GNTC Vice President of Student Affairs Stuart Phillips. At this time, we are thoroughly evaluating the best course of action to help these students. We just want to give each of them a chance to focus on what will be the best next step for them and their families.

Georgia Northwestern and ITT Tech offer a number of the same programs and courses. Accounting, Business Administration, Computer Support Specialist, Criminal Justice, Cybersecurity, Drafting, and Network Specialist programs at GNTC have different options. Students can enroll in classes offered at GNTC through one of its six campuses or online. Campuses are currently in operation in Catoosa, Floyd, Gordon, Polk, Walker, and Whitfield Counties in Georgia.



Georgia Northwestern Technical College is a unit of the Technical College System of Georgia. The state college plans to have many of the answers to the questions former ITT Tech students will be asking when they host informational sessions for all ITT Technical Institute students in Room A103C on the new Catoosa County Campus in Ringgold, Georgia on Sept. 15 from 5-6 p.m. and Sept. 22 from 10-11 a.m.





For more information on these sessions, students can call Georgia Northwestern Technical College Catoosa County Campus Manager Leigh Ann Pettigrew at 706.965.1120 or send an e-mail to lpettigrew@gntc.edu.
Fox News chairman Roger Ailes walks with his wife Elizabeth Tilson as they leave the News Corp building, July 19, 2016 in New York City. The parent company of Fox News said on Sept. 6, that it had settled a lawsuit with Gretchen Carlson, who said that Ailes had sexually harassed her when he was chairman of the network. In its statement, the company also issue an apology. (Drew Angerer / Getty Images)

Let's start with a simple thesis: Sexual harassment remains a serious problem in the workplace.

We don't need the high-profile harassment scandal still unfolding at Fox News to prove our case. But we can thank Gretchen Carlson and other women at the network who stepped forward, alleging truly wretched behavior by Fox News CEO Roger Ailes and others, for bringing the issue back into the light.

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And it is still an issue. A report published in June by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission looked at a wide array of different surveys of working women and found disquieting levels of sexual harassment.

Per the report: "The most widely used survey of harassment of women at work, the Sexual Experiences Questionnaire (SEQ), not only asks respondents whether they have experienced unwanted sexual attention or sexual coercion, but also asks whether they have experienced sexist or crude/offensive behavior.  When sex-based harassment at work is measured by asking about this form of gender harassment, almost 60 percent of women report having experienced harassment."

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When surveys narrowed the definition of sexual harassment to mean only unwanted sexual attention or sexual coercion, 40 percent of employees said they were victims of that behavior.

A survey of Silicon Valley workers from earlier this year found 60 percent of women in tech industries had been sexually harassed.

A survey published in May in the Journal of the American Medical Association found 30 percent of female doctors have faced sexual harassment, and 66 percent had experienced gender bias at work.

Carlson's complaint against Ailes paints a picture of Fox News as a pit of sexual harassment and innuendo, a place where harassers were protected and women's careers were stymied by powerful men.

The complaint alleges that Ailes said to Carlson: "I think you and I should have had a sexual relationship a long time ago and then you'd be good and better and I'd be good and better."

Carlson and Fox News' parent company agreed to a $20 million settlement in the case on Tuesday. That, and Ailes departure from the company, gives me 20-million-plus reasons to believe the environment Carlson described was accurate.

Former Fox News host Andrea Tantaros also has filed a lawsuit, saying in her complaint: "Fox News masquerades as a defender of traditional family values, but behind the scenes it operates like a sex-fueled, Playboy mansion-like cult, steeped in intimidation, indecency and misogyny."

Here's my question: Where are the men in all this? Carlson stepped forward. Tantaros stepped forward, along with other female Fox News employees.

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But what about the men who work there, both high-profile pundits or reporters or behind-the-scenes employees? There's no way this toxic, sexist stew went unnoticed by male workers.

And that's the point I want to drive home today: Men should be standing up against this kind of behavior, be it flat-out sexual harassment or even the more broadly defined gender harassment that comes with sexist comments or crude sexual jokes.

Women can and will stand up for themselves, and it's because of that bravery to step forward that progress has been made. But we men are valuable allies, and it's incumbent upon us to not just sit on the sidelines and wait for our workplaces to fully evolve.

I discussed this with Terry O'Neill, president of the National Organization for Women.

O'Neill described a workplace where she was "known as 'the feminist.'" She went to sit down with some people in the lunchroom and a guy known for being inappropriate said, "Well, I guess Terry's going to take offense to what I just said."

"So he told me what he said and I said, 'Yeah, that's a really inappropriate thing to say, don't say it again or I'm telling,'" O'Neill recalled. "That really had an impact, it made him think about what he's saying. That guy talk is extremely corrosive because it shuts down the women really fast. You sit there at the table and someone says, 'I'm a leg man. Are you a leg man or a breast man?' The women really freeze. But if a man steps in and calls that out, it can shut it down."

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As the resident feminist, she was able to say what she said without paying a cost. It was expected of her. That can also be true for men in the workplace.

"I don't think it's saying that women are too weak to stand up for themselves," O'Neill explained. "Women need to calculate the costs to their careers of standing up for themselves. And they are constantly doing a cost-benefit analysis. When a bystander pays the cost for them, that's all that's happening. It just changes the calculus. It doesn't mean the woman is weak. It just means the woman has some numbers on the positive side. That is something that allies can definitely do, particularly if they're male."

I tire of whining men who bemoan political correctness and write off their own bad behavior as the fault of others being too sensitive. That's insecure nonsense.

A real man has the guts to stand up to behavior that harms others. And in the case of sexual harassment, in all its forms, I think we need more real men to lend a hand.

Sexual harassment should be a thing of the past. It isn't. Fox News has given us evidence of that, writ large.

So let's work together to make things better. And not fear the wrath of small men who think women should bend to their will.

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TALK TO REX: Ask workplace questions  anonymously or by name  and share stories with Rex Huppke at IJustWorkHere@tribpub.com, like Rex on Facebook at www.facebook.com/rexworkshere and find more at www.chicagotribune.com/ijustworkhere.
Marc Bushala of Liquid Asset Brands is pcitured Sept. 1, 2016, in his office in Chicago's River North neighborhood. Bushala and his partners sold the Angel's Envy bourbon brand to Bacardi last year for about $150 million. They also have invested in a New Zealand-based rum company and are planning a West Loop brewery and distillery as the craft spirits segment enjoys explosive growth. (Abel Uribe / Chicago Tribune)

The sudden rise of Angel's Envy bourbon was a perfect storm, as co-founder Marc Bushala recalls.

The whiskey was crafted by a legendary Kentucky master distiller, the late Lincoln Henderson. The bottle, curvier and more feminine than most whiskeys, stood out on the shelf. And at around the same time of its 2010 launch, consumers started showing an increased desire to make old-school cocktails with newcomer bourbons named neither Jim nor Jack.

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"It suddenly became a thing. And the timing was just serendipitous," said Bushala, former CEO of Angel's Envy.

By the time Bushala and his partners sold Angel's Envy to Bacardi last year for about $150 million, it had become emblematic of new opportunity in a changing and increasingly fragmented spirits industry. The same trends that have shaken up food and beer companies are also stirring hard liquor. Consumers, particularly millennials, want more choices, more authentic stories, and they're willing to pay more for them.

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Marc Bushala, CEO of investment company Liquid Asset Brands, explains how the spirits industry is changing with an emphasis on craft brands. Sept. 6, 2016. (Greg Trotter / Chicago Tribune) (Chicago Tribune)

Small and independent distilleries are helping meet that demand. And increasingly, giants of the spirit industry  companies like Bacardi, Diageo Beam Suntory and Constellation Brands,  want in on the action, either through outright acquisitions, smaller strategic investments or offering new variations on familiar products. For thirsty shoppers, the result is a dizzying array of options on liquor store and supermarket shelves.

"Our dad's generation was, I'm a Beam guy or I drink Jack, and I'm not going try that other (stuff). If you talk to a self-professed whiskey drinker today, they'll tell you what their go-to is but they'll probably tell you 10 other ones they'd choose from as well," said Bushala, who's in the process of negotiating a West Loop location for a distillery and brewery through his private equity firm, Liquid Asset Brands, which launched last year.

Last year, there were 5,805 brands of spirits selling in the U.S., up from 5,149 in 2013, an increase of 13 percent, according to Dan Wandel, principal of beverage alcohol client insights for IRI, a Chicago-based market research firm.

There's just an unbelievable amount of innovation at the small distiller level. You name it, they're trying it.  Dave Pickerell, distillery consultant

That increase reflects the boom of craft distillers, as well as the surge of line extensions and flavored liquors launched by large spirits companies to appeal to millennial consumers, Wandel said. But the growth of craft spirit sales is hard to capture, primarily because there's no consistent agreed-upon definition for craft spirits, he said.

"We know there's this big movement, but we don't have the numbers to quantify it in our data," Wandel said.

Looking at the growth through another measure, there were between 25 and 50 small and independent distillers in 2000, said Frank Coleman, spokesman for the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, a trade group representing the spirits industry.

Today, there are more than 2,000 of them, said Coleman, who called the growth "stratospheric."

In contrast to the craft beer movement, these small liquor producers are not cutting drastically into Big Liquor's market share, at least not yet. Collectively, they represent less than 3 percent of spirits sales, Coleman said. But the little guys are stirring up excitement that helps the large companies too.

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"In the past, (large spirit companies) had to spend millions of dollars to develop a new brand. Now they can just go out and buy one if they feel it's good enough," Coleman said.

Strategies can vary, though. Beam Suntory has doubled down on its own whiskey-rich portfolio, investing heavily in fast-growing premium brands like Knob Creek, Basil Hayden's, Toki, Hornitos, EFFEN, Laphroaig, Bowmore and Auchentoshan, said Steve Fechheimer, senior vice president and chief strategy officer for Beam Suntory, in an email.

"These are brands that are growing rapidly with legal-purchase-age millennial consumers, especially on-premise," Fechheimer said.

Last week, Beam Suntory unveiled its new Jim Beam Double Oak, a twice-barreled whiskey that serves as an example of how Beam is rolling out more premium iterations of its familiar brands to capture the interest of consumers.

And while Fechheimer declined to discuss Beam Suntory's acquisition strategy in detail, he said the company is poised "to evaluate and explore investments of many different kinds," including venture capital investments in smaller brands.

Some companies have taken the venture capital investments a step further as a way to take a minority stake in small but promising companies. Diageo, the largest spirits producer in the world, set up an independent venture fund called Distill Ventures in 2013 that's since invested in more than 10 companies, according to the fund's website.

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And Constellation Brands, a New York-based company with its beer business headquartered in Chicago, established its own in-house venture operation last year. So far, Constellation has taken minority stakes in two companies through the venture arm: Chicago-based Crafthouse Cocktails and Nelson's Green Brier Distillery, which is headquartered in Tennessee.

Since Charles Joly, an acclaimed bartender who previously served up cocktails at The Aviary, launched Crafthouse in 2013 with his business partner Matt Lindner, the business has grown exponentially in Chicago and now sells in 11 states. The Crafthouse concept speaks directly to consumer trends: ready-to-pour cocktails mixed with high-quality ingredients. Beyond retail exposure throughout the Chicago area, Crafthouse also is served in mini-bottles aboard United Airlines flights.

But for Crafthouse to eventually go national in distribution, it will need a partner like Constellation, Joly said.

"We know cocktails and understand what people are looking for when it comes to entertaining and having a great option outside of quality beer and wine. Constellation has experience on a much larger stage," Joly said.

Mixologist Charles Joly, photographed in 2010, launched Crafthouse Cocktails in 2013 and now sells ready-to-pour cocktails in 11 states. (Alex Garcia / Chicago Tribune)

For Constellation, a company best known for its Mexican imports and wine, making such smaller bets in the burgeoning market for craft spirits is a way to augment larger investments, such as the $1 billion acquisition of Ballast Point Brewing & Spirits last year. And it provides an inside track to eventually acquiring small brands with authentic stories, said Matt Rice, director of business development for Constellation Brands.

Eventually, the venture operation also will invest in wine, beer and technology.

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"What we're seeing in craft spirits is very similar to craft beer 20 years ago," Rice said.

There's been a proliferation of brands, but I think there's always room for more.  Marc Bushala of Liquid Asset Brands

Some have migrated from large spirit companies to join the upstarts. Dave Pickerell, former master distiller for Maker's Mark bourbon, now travels the country as a consultant for small and independent distilleries. Pickerell estimates he's helped establish more than 40 distilleries since he left Maker's in 2008.

Pickerell still has plenty of respect for large whiskey producers, but enjoys the freedom of creativity of working with smaller distilleries.

"There's just an unbelievable amount of innovation at the small distiller level," Pickerell said. "You name it, they're trying it."

Similarly, Tom Flocco, former Beam CEO, has worked in recent years as an adviser to fledgling spirit companies, including Angel's Envy.

Back in 2005, Flocco, then CEO of Beam, orchestrated the joint acquisition of Allied Domecq with Pernod Ricard. The deal set up Beam  which was then part of Fortune Brands  to eventually stand as an independent, public company, fortifying its portfolio with brands like Maker's Mark bourbon, Laphroaig malt whiskey and Sauza tequila, before merging with Suntory in 2014 and becoming a private company once again.

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That was all before renewed interest in bourbon, fueled by shows like "Mad Men" and "Boardwalk Empire," coincided with the rise of small distillers, Flocco said. From 2010 to 2015, U.S. bourbon and Tennessee whiskey sales grew from $1.9 billion to almost $2.9 billion, a 52 percent increase, according to data from the Distilled Spirits Council.

"Nobody saw craft spirits coming in '05 when we made that bet," Flocco said.

With Angel's Envy now in the rearview, Bushala and his partners are working on finding the next big winner. After the launch of Liquid Asset Brands last year, Bushala said more than 180 prospectuses poured in from startups seeking partners to help them grow. His River North office is filled with colorful bottles and marketing materials extolling their promise.

So far, the firm has taken a slow and measured pace for its investments. Last year, in partnership with another Chicago-based venture capital firm, Spirits Investment Partnership, Liquid Asset Brands acquired a controlling interest in Stolen Spirits, a New Zealand-based rum company, for $14 million. Bushala said he was intrigued by the rum, which is distilled in Trinidad & Tobago, and its potential as a "disruptive" product in the "sleepy" rum category. Separately, the combination brewery and distillery that Bushala has planned for the West Loop will partner with an existing Chicago brewery, Bushala said, declining to give any more details at this point.

"There's been a proliferation of brands, but I think there's always room for more," Bushala said.

gtrotter@chicagotribune.com

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Code Platoon, a Chicago nonprofit that puts military veterans through an immersive coding boot camp, graduated its first class this year with high hopes of addressing both tech talent gaps and challenges to veteran employment.

The class of nine, most of whom went on to do internships, represents the start of what Rodrigo Levy, founder and executive director, hopes becomes a broader push to put veterans on paths to lucrative, high-demand software development jobs.

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"I'd like veterans to recognize that this is not closed to them, even if they don't have a STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) background, even if they don't have a college degree," Levy said.

Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 6 Recent Code Platoon graduate and current software engineering apprentice James Wilton works on code at Enova's downtown office, Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2016. (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune)

And even if they don't have a lot of money to spend on one of the many good but expensive coding boot camps that have sprouted in recent years to give career changers an entree into tech. One of the pioneers, DevBootcamp, charges $12,700 for a 19-week session, though it does offer a $500 scholarship for veterans and other underrepresented groups.

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At Code Platoon, students get a $10,500 scholarship, funded mostly by sponsor companies as well as some private fundraising and foundation money, so they end up paying just $2,500 of the $13,000 price tag for the 14-week course, Levy said.

The affordability was a selling point for James Wilton, one of the recent Code Platoon graduates, but not the biggest one. He was drawn by the promise of mentors, including a military veteran working in the tech industry, who helped him translate his National Guard experience to the civilian working world.

"That was extremely helpful," said Wilton, 31, who is in the midst of a six-month apprenticeship at Chicago-based online lender Enova, one of the seven corporate Code Platoon sponsors involved in the pilot program.

Though the unemployment rate of post-9/11 veterans has improved markedly since the economic downturn, a recent study found Chicago-area vets are often unprepared for the transition.

Chicago-based Code Platoon, a nonprofit startup, puts military veterans through an immersive coding boot camp to prepare them to become software developers. The 14-week course includes a scholarship that covers most of the cost, mentors who have transitioned from the military to the tech community and partnerships with veteran services organizations. (Alexia Elejalde-Ruiz/Chicago Tribune)

Nearly 7 in 10 post-9/11 veterans said they needed time to figure out what they would do after the military, and more than two-thirds said civilians don't understand their problems, according to a survey of 1,300 Chicago-area veterans released by Loyola University Chicago and the University of Southern California. Sixty-five percent leave the service without a job.

The jobs they do get may not be well-paid, with 83 percent of post-9/11 vets earning below the city's median income level, the study found.

While there are many veteran service organizations, Wilton said there are so many that it can be hard to tell the good from the bad. And after the structure of the military, it can be difficult to know which of the many possible routes to take next, he said.

Wilton, who joined the California National Guard in 2008 to help pay for college, said he spent a year and a half in Afghanistan, where he worked as a photojournalist chronicling reconstruction efforts.

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When he returned to California to finish out his eight-year contract with the Guard, he switched his major at community college from psychology to computer science, but he found the courses overly theoretical.

Drawn by the fast-paced environment of coding boot camps, Wilton searched online for a good one. Facebook pushed him an ad for Code Platoon.

Levy, who worked as a trader for much of his career, had recently completed a coding boot camp in hopes of becoming a tech entrepreneur when he got the idea for the program.

His son had asked him for the latest "Call of Duty," and when Levy cautioned the 12-year-old that the boy was too young for the combat video game, his son sent him online to learn about how game developer Activision Blizzard supports veteran-related causes. Levy read about the challenges vets face navigating the landscape of civilian employment.

Meantime, the growing tech community was in a constant search for developers, and Levy had noticed that nearly everyone from his boot camp landed jobs. The U.S. is expected to add more than 186,000 software developer jobs from 2014 to 2024, a 17 percent growth rate, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Median salary is $100,690, though junior developers in Chicago start at about $65,000.

John Higginson, Enova's chief technology officer, said the initiative fits with the company's goals to increase and diversify Chicago's tech talent pool.

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The company two years ago launched an apprenticeship program that helps candidates without traditional computer science backgrounds get trained while they work.

Veterans are particularly appealing candidates, Higginson said, because they know how to collaborate and get things done.

"Nothing happens in any software engineering organization that's an individual effort," Higginson said. "It's all teamwork, it's all working with other people to build the software, test it, talk to customers to understand the requirements and make it something real."

aelejalderuiz@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @alexiaer
The ITT Technical Institute in Arlington Heights is seen Sept. 6, 2016. The 50-year-old for-profit educational institute has four Illinois locations. It is shutting down all of its campuses. (Stacey Wescott / Chicago Tribune)

For-profit college chain ITT Technical Institute faces three employee-driven lawsuits for closing without warning in the wake of a U.S. Department of Education decision to bar the college from receiving federal student loans.

The Indiana attorney general's office also is examining ITT's closure to determine what, if any, action can be taken, spokeswoman Monica Hernandez said.

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The lawsuits allege that ITT violated the federal Worker Adjustment Retraining and Notification Act, which requires a notice of 60 days in the case of mass layoffs. The law affects employers with more than 100 employees and business sites with more than 50 workers.

ITT Tech employed about 8,000 people nationwide. It's unclear whether campuses with fewer than 50 employees would be subject to the law.

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The suits were filed in Indiana and Delaware. The employees are seeking wages and benefits they would have received if ITT had given 60 days' notice before closing.

Legal experts said it's anyone's guess whether the complaints filed against ITT would hold up in court. They said the complaints have merit, but ITT is likely to counter with the fact that the U.S. government's decision to bar it from accepting funds from federal student loans was an "unforeseeable event," one of the exceptions to the WARN Act.

"There's no doubt in my mind here that there is a plant closing or mass layoff and the employees did not get the 60 days' notice," said Ken Dau-Schmidt, the Willard and Margaret Carr professor of labor and employment law in the Maurer School of Law at Indiana University. "The lawsuit seems fine on its surface."

Jamie Prenkert, a professor of business law in the Kelley School of Business at IU, said ITT could be on the hook for more than back wages and benefits if the court rules against it.

"There can be an up to $500-a-day fine for each day they haven't filed that notice to the local government," he said. "They're not supposed to just warn the workers, they're supposed to warn the local governments as well.

"If you're going to have an influx of unemployed workers, you need to give the government notice."

The attorney general's office is directing former ITT students with questions about the school's closure to the U.S. Department of Education's website and sending former ITT employees to the Indiana Department of Labor's website.

ITT was banned Aug. 25 from enrolling new students who used federal financial aid because the company had become a risk to students and taxpayers, officials from the U.S. Department of Education said. The department also ordered ITT to come up with $152 million within 30 days to help cover student refunds and other liabilities if the chain closed.

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ITT Educational Services Chief Executive Officer Kevin Modany told reporters on a conference call Tuesday that ITT was the victim of a "regulatory assault" and never had the chance to defend itself.

Tribune News Service
Lingerie store La Senza is expected to open soon at the Orland Square mall in Orland Park. (Jim Boyce / Daily Southtown)

Lingerie brand La Senza's fourth U.S. store is expected to open at Orland Park's Orland Square mall in mid-November.

The Canadian chain is part of L Brands, the parent company of two lingerie brands already well-known in the U.S.  Victoria's Secret and PINK.

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La Senza targets a young, edgier, value-conscious shopper, Martin Waters, L Brands' international division president, said during a call with investors earlier this year.

"They appeal to different customers," he said.

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La Senza plans to open five U.S. stores this year as a test, he said at the time. One opened earlier this year in Columbus, Ohio. Another Columbus store and a third location in Southlake, Ind., are expected to open soon, L Brands said.

Two other stores will be opening in Orland Square this fall: MAC Cosmetics and jeweler Alex and Ani, mall owner Simon Property Group said in a news release Wednesday.

lzumbach@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @laurenzumbach
Portrait of Protein Bar CEO Samir Wagle at their 352 N. Clark St. location in Chicago on Thursday, September 24, 2015. Wagle has stepped down and will be replaced on an interim basis by former Paper Source CEO Sally Pofcher. (Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)

Protein Bar said its CEO Samir Wagle has stepped down after two years at the healthy fast-casual restaurant chain. Sally Pofcher, the former CEO of Chicago-based stationery and gifts retailer Paper Source, has taken the role of interim CEO.

Protein Bar didn't offer a reason for Wagle's departure other than he plans "to pursue other opportunities." Wagle, who previously served as director of operations for Chipotle and McDonald's, couldn't immediately be reached for comment.

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Pofcher is currently chairman of Paper Source, after serving as CEO from 2007 to 2015. She also serves on the boards of accessories retailer Claire's, based in Hoffman Estates, and Canada's Pet Retail Brands, a pet store operator. She previously worked as a senior vice president of strategy at Gap and spent a decade at consulting firm McKinsey & Co.

Protein Bar founder Matt Matros said in a statement that he has "known Sally for several years and have long respected her focus on consumer experience, attention to detail and drive for excellence."

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"I could not be more thrilled to have her experience and enthusiasm for our brand," he added.

Protein Bar opened its first location across from Willis Tower in 2009 and now has 20 locations across greater Chicago, Colorado and Washington, D.C. It also has two locations of its brand offshoot, Thrive360. The first opened in the Loop earlier this year and the second opened last month in Denver.

The news was first reported by Crain's Chicago Business.

sbomkamp@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @SamWillTravel
Available only in September, this apple kouign-amann (a French butter cake) is a partnership between Floriole Cafe and Nico Osteria. (Louisa Chu / Chicago Tribune)

Kouign-amann, a classic butter cake from the northwest Breton region of France, has gotten a fruit-forward makeover from a pair of Chicago's best pastry chefs.

Sandra Holl, chef and co-owner of Floriole Cafe and Bakery in Lincoln Park, and Leigh Omilinsky, pastry chef for Nico Osteria in the Gold Coast, have created an apple confit kouign-amann ($4) that envelops the fruit within caramelized, croissantlike layers. But these aren't just any apples. They're what the pair call "20-hour apples," described as "thinly sliced apples layered with butter and sugar, slowly cooked for 10 hours and then chilled and compressed for an additional 10 hours."

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The result is perhaps the most extraordinary apple hand pie you'll ever experience, outfitted with a burnished, caramelized crown and glittering with fine salt flakes. Inside, the fruit is tender and ethereal.

Their apple confit kouign-amann (pronounced something like Queen AH-mon) will be available through the end of September at both Floriole and Nico Osteria. Quantities are very limited, but you can call either restaurant to reserve.

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The dessert is part of an ongoing series of collaborations created by Holl, which kicked off in May with Cellar Door Provisions chef Ethan Pikas and langue-de-chat-inspired raspberry sandwich cookies. Hot Chocolate chef Mindy Segal partnered on strawberry rhubarb rugelach in June, Lula Cafe's Kelly Helgeson did cherry brioche in July, and in August, Boka Restaurant Group pastry chef Meg Galus came out with a chocolate bar pastry (buckwheat crunch bottom, black raspberry pate de fruit and marshmallow, enrobed in Valrhona Illanka chocolate).

In October, Holl will collaborate with chef Malika Ameen, likely with a recipe from Ameen's upcoming book, "Sweet Sugar, Sultry Spice: Exotic Flavors to Wake Up Your Baking."

Nico Osteria, 1015 N. Rush St., 312-994-7100, www.nicoosteria.com; Floriole, 1220 W. Webster Ave.,773-883-1313, www.floriole.com

lchu@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @louisachu






Mehmet Yavuz, left, and Mehmet Duzgun are co-owners of The Gundis in Lakeview, where they plan to offer Chicago's first bites of Kurdish cuisine.

Here's your guide to what just opened, what's coming soon and what's no longer.

Chicago will get its first authentic Kurdish restaurant when The Gundis opens in Lakeview in early October. The Gundis comes from a pair of Kurdish immigrants via Mardin, Turkey, who share the same first and middle names: Mehmet Besir Duzgun and Mehmet Besir Yavuz. After meeting five years ago, the Mehmets discovered they shared the dream of opening a Kurdish restaurant and have been planning one ever since.

Were really good friends, like brothers, who have similar stories and have had similar struggles, Duzgun wrote in an email. We want to serve Chicago our food, the food of our people.

That food, Duzgun wrote, comes from recipes in Kurdish homes throughout Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey, all inspired by their mothers cooking. The basics of Kurdish food are similar to other Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cuisine, but the dishes also have a Kurdish twist that distinguishes them from other regional fare.

Our food is spicier, its more citrusy, greasy in all the best ways, and involves a lot of bread, Duzgun wrote. Who doesnt like bread?

The drinks menu will feature a standard selection of beer and wine, and Duzgun hopes that list will eventually include Ava Zer, a Kurdish lager that is not yet sold in the U.S. Black tea and coffee from the Kurdish mountains will also feature prominently, as those are oft-consumed beverages among Kurds, according to Duzgun.

Duzgun and Yavuz emphasized their excitement at becoming the citys first Kurdish restaurant  different from Turkish restaurants, Duzgun noted  as well as the chance to become a part of Chicagos food scene.

Chicago is our home and its known for some of the best food in the country, Yavuz wrote. It just needs Kurdish food to be complete.

2909-11 N. Clark St., no phone number yet, www.facebook.com/chicagokurdishkitchen

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River North will welcome a 24-hour diner called Griddle 24 (get it?) this fall, from the owners of some of the citys other popular round-the-clock diners (Hollywood Grill, White Palace Grill and Plymouth Restaurant & Bar).

Owner George Liakopoulos said the restaurant will be a simple 24-hour diner, but with a slightly varied vibe for the River North crowd, from its residents to the regular walking traffic to the hopping nightlife.

Each neighborhood that we go into ... I name all the stores different because we try to fit the neighborhood, Liakopoulos said. But it will be a little bit different than the rest of our diners.

The food and drink will be typical, with a twist, such as booze-infused milkshakes, of which he expects to offer eight to 10 different types, at first. He also plans to serve local craft beer, although he hasnt decided which brews yet. Booze will be table service only  no bar.

As for the food: There are a few (different) menu items, maybe a little healthier, like a spinach goat cheese salad. Most diners have a julienne salad  we dont have a julienne salad here, Liakopoulos said. So just a few things, some of the cheeses are a little different; the sandwiches are a little different.

Griddle 24 should open by the first week of October, Liakopoulos said. He feels the diner will bring a necessary late-night, dress-down dining option to the area. The launch was first reported by Eater.

We're not high end, we're not tablecloth, but you can go at 2 a.m. or 4 a.m. to Hollywood or White Palace and get something good to eat, he said. (River North) needs that.

334 W. Chicago Ave., no phone number yet, www.griddle24.com

Other openings:

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Little Wok, the Asian fusion and sushi spot in Evanston, made its way south to Lakeview, where a second location opened in August. The new space is much like the first, with a lengthy menu of Asian cuisine and an even cleaner, more modern interior design. Diners can choose from typical Chinese and Japanese dishes, including sushi, as well as a small selection of Korean items. The restaurant also offers small dessert menu and  dont worry  a full bar.

3144 N. Broadway, 773-525-8111, www.little-wok.com

Life after Jerry's Sandwiches has already begun on Division Street, where a yet-to-be-named live-music gastropub is expected to open by the end of the year. According to DNAinfo, owner Zafer Genc and his business partner are catering to the Wicker Park scene by hosting live music, while the space will combine industrial and rustic. As the gastropub tag suggests, the menu will expand beyond burgers and wings, with drinks including beer and cocktails. Otherwise, Genc reportedly said plans are largely in conception mode.

1938 W. Division St., no phone number or website yet

In case you missed it:

At Vol. 39, on the second floor of the Loops Kimpton Grey Hotel, you might feel like a time traveler, thanks to its classic accommodations, small-batch spirits, long wine lists, tableside food-cart service and a tall, dark, and handsome type of atmosphere.

Stephanie Izards Duck Duck TaGo  the takeout window at Duck Duck Goat in the West Loop  will now be open until 10 p.m. nightly for dinner, so no more long lunch-break trips to grab this Asian street food before 2 p.m.

For 48 years, the Parthenon had been a mainstay both in Greektown and the Chicago dining scene as a whole; the restaurant announced Wednesday that it is shutting its doors for good.

DNAinfo reports Happy Village in Wicker Park has retired along with its longtime owner Cherlyn Pilch. Luckys Sandwiches is reportedly in talks to purchase the location, but an issue with the liquor moratorium on Wolcott Avenue would need to be resolved before any sale.

Theatergoers lost a prime spot to grab a bite before the show, as Rosebud Theater District confirmed late last week that it had shut down for good.
Hello. Gotta talk my way into a noon public screening (damn this Toronto festival and its egalitarian ticket policies!), so for now: Here's a brief report on two opening-day Toronto festival titles, the first a spectacularly unpredictable 162-minute German comedy, the second a pungent 158-minute road movie shot along fast-food American freeways and back roads. Both films premiered in May at Cannes; both honor the rhythms of unsteady but dramatically vital lives, unencumbered by conventional narrative beats or tidy resolutions.

A Sony Pictures Classics acquisition, "Toni Erdmann" is a bracing dark comedy from the writer-director Maren Ade, simple in outline, extremely complex in tone. A divorced German schoolteacher (Peter Simonischek) pays an unannounced visit to his management-consultant daughter (Sandra Huller) in Bucharest, where she's advising an oil company on outsourcing and downsizing options.

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Meantime she has downsized her own life, and feelings, to a small pile of resentments, many directed at her father, a compulsive practical joker (he's rarely without his fright wigs and false teeth) who uses his pranks as a way of connecting. Or alienating, depending on how the jokes come off. This is the context of "Toni Erdmann": It is an unnerving, consistently witty character study that's also about the inherent ability or inability of its German and Romanian characters to take (or leave) a joke.

MOST READ ENTERTANMENT NEWS AT THIS HOUR

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It's also extremely sharp in its portrait of a father/daughter relationship in a perpetual state of disappointment. Once director Ade (who took two full years to write the script, as she told the Toronto audience) starts investigating the depths of the daughter character's unhappiness in earnest, we get a fairly astonishing series of scenes capped by the least swinging nudists' gathering in the history of cinema and nudity. Ade allows her scenes to develop a pace and a flow one might accurately describe as lifelike, but there's hardly a wasted moment in "Toni Erdmann." I'll close with a description guaranteed to be understood by no one outside theatrical circles: If the German playwright Franz Xaver Kroetz wrote a Lifetime TV movie, it'd come out roughly like Ade's gracefully twisted picture.

Like "Toni Erdmann," Andrea Arnold's "American Honey" (an A24 acquision) runs a tick over two-and-a-half hours, and the Jury Prize winner at this year's Cannes festival may exasperate those looking for familiar plot mechanics in their road movies. It's about an 18-year-old runaway, Star, played by the soulful and arresting newcomer Sasha Lane.

Star escapes a miserable home life in Muskogee, Okla., to join a traveling gang of young men and women selling phony magazine subscriptions in one town and one state after another. Shia LaBeouf plays the hotshot Jake, who becomes her trainer, her lover and her profoundly mixed blessing.

Director Arnold, from England, can't resist some on-the-nose thesis statements about America as a hopeless, forlorn crucible of failed capitalism, as well as cruel divisions. The movie works best when it takes the time to simply hang out with Star, Jake and their cohorts, as they make their way from the Bible Belt states up north to fracking country in the Dakotas.

Much of "American Honey" lacks shape and concision, but Arnold wasn't after a leaner, straighter sort of experience. She made the movie she made. And while it's not up to Arnold's best ("Red Road"), Lane's Star becomes the audience's plaintive search engine, for an explanation of how, and why, we treat people this way.

mjphillips@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @phillipstribune

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Watch the latest movie trailers.

Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 122 Sophie Turner as Jean Grey, anger management student, in "Dark Phoenix." The film, the latest in the "X-Men" franchise, costars James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender and Jessica Chastain. Read the review. (Twentieth Century Fox)
Caleb Fullen as Dylan, son of Irenes caretaker, and Janice ONeill as Irene, who is suffering from mental deterioration, in the new play "Distance." (Tom McGrath)

The late humorist Florence King, one of the greatest in the grand tradition of genteel-but-acidic Southern curmudgeons, once observed, "Sanity holds no charm in the South." No less a personage than Julia Sugarbaker of TV's "Designing Women" declared, "This is the South, and we're proud of our crazy people. We don't hide them up in the attic. We bring them right down to the living room and show them off."

Watching playwright Jerre Dye's lovely and affecting "Distance," now in a world premiere with Strawdog Theatre Company, one wonders how much that stereotype  the loving Southern family that always makes room for an eccentric relative  haunts the consciences of his finely drawn characters.

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Dye, a native of Mississippi, knows his Southern women well, as demonstrated two years ago in "Cicada" with Route 66 Theatre Company. That play featured Lily, an anguished grieving woman in a Southern home filled with ghosts of her past.

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But while Lily has too many memories, Irene (Janice O'Neill), the Alzheimer's, or possibly dementia, patient and lifelong resident of Memphis at the heart of "Distance," is quickly shedding hers. "You lose the thread," she tells us at the beginning of the show. "Things leave so quickly now."

But she's not going gentle into that good night. Just ask her daughter, Luvie (Anita Deely), or her caregiver, Dolly (Loretta Rezos), who get their ears pinned back regularly by the angry and frightened Irene.

There are undeniable echoes of the late Scott McPherson's "Marvin's Room" in Dye's play. Like McPherson, Dye also brings in a troubled young man to the story. That would be Dylan, Dolly's son, whom we first meet as he resentfully attempts  and fails  to change a light bulb for Irene. (John Kelly's flickering light design serves as a handy, if occasionally too on-the-nose, metaphor for the shadows encroaching on Irene's mind.)

As played by the highly watchable Caleb Fullen, 26-year-old Dylan seems at times to fall along the autism spectrum. He hates changes in his routine and has a hard time communicating his feelings to others. However, like Irene, he has a habit of coming out with exactly what he's thinking at inopportune moments.

In that sense, he's the opposite of Leonard (Stephen Rader), the kind hairdresser who serves as a sounding board for all the women. (Yes, he's gay  but it's to Rader's credit, as well as Dye's, that his warmhearted sass illuminates rather than obscures Leonard's own enduring sense of isolation.)

Where Dye shows himself to be a worthy successor to McPherson is in his achingly sympathetic portrait of what it's like to be the odd woman out. One of the few memories Irene still has  and relives  involves dealing with her mother's death at far too young an age. Deely's stretched-to-the-limit Luvie tries to forgive the woman who always found fault with her growing up, while working-class divorced Dolly wonders just how much life has passed her by while she was just getting by.

Director Erica Weiss, who also staged "Cicada," has a sure handle on the rhythms of Dye's language, which goes from poetic reverie to acerbic one-liners. Even Dylan's obscenities feel carefully planted for maximum effect. He swears in part because it keeps him from talking about the absent father who haunts his own memories.

The excellent cast dives into the material with gusto and compassion. Several interludes in Dye's script include parallel scenes that illuminate Irene's inner monologue while the other characters make their own connections with each other and with past incidents. One wishes that Luvie and Dolly had a couple of more scenes together; the class conflicts between them are suggested but not fully developed. But Dye makes it clear that each of them has wounds of abandonment that need tending and tenderness.

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Much of "Distance" feels familiar  as sweet, tart and ultimately comforting as the lemon pie Dolly makes on her comically misguided dinner "date" with Leonard. (This is before she realizes he is, in her term, "a gaybird.") But Dye also reminds us that people like Irene who are losing their way don't need to be forced into old routines for the sake of our own comfort. They need sympathy and understanding and an attempt to meet them wherever the fraying thread of their consciousness may lead  from memories in the mental attic to present-day parties in the living room. In the growing canon of work about the effects of senility on family life, Dye's play goes the distance with heart and smarts.

Kerry Reid is a freelance critic.

ctc-arts@chicagotribune.com

"Distance" - 3.5 Stars

When: Through Oct. 1

Where: Factory Theater, 1623 W. Howard St.

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Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes

Tickets: $30 at 866-811-4111 or strawdog.org

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Watch the latest movie trailers.

Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 122 Sophie Turner as Jean Grey, anger management student, in "Dark Phoenix." The film, the latest in the "X-Men" franchise, costars James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender and Jessica Chastain. Read the review. (Twentieth Century Fox)
A rabbi and another member of the ultra-Orthodox Satmar community in Orange County were charged yesterday for allegedly conspiring to kidnap, torture and then kill a woman's husband after he refused to grant her a religious divorce. U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara called the plot "chilling" and said, "Over a period of months, the Complaint alleges, they met repeatedly to plan the kidnapping and to pay more than $55,000 to an individual they believed would carry it out."

On Tuesday, investigators arrested Rabbi Aharon Goldberg, 55, and Shimen Liebowitz, 25, in Central Valley, New York, where they were allegedly meeting to plan the kidnapping and murder. Goldberg is based in Israel but is prominent in the ultra-Orthodox community of Kiryas Joel, NY, which in 2011 was reported to be the most impoverished town in Americaand, earlier this year, became the focus of an FBI investigation into child abuse. Liebowitz resides in Kiryas Joel.

Prosecutors say the pair recruited a third man, also an ultra-Orthodox Jew, to help them force a husband to give his wife a divorce. The U.S. Attorney's office explains, "According to Jewish religious law as observed in certain communities, in order to effect a divorce, a husband must provide his wife with a document known as a 'get.' A woman whose husband will not consent to a divorce is known as an 'agunah.' In the absence of the husbands issuing a get, an agunah may be released from her marriage only through the husbands death."

However, the man (identified only as "the CS" by prosecutors) contacted the FBI about his early July meeting with the pair, and over the summer, the plan allegedly escalated from kidnapping to murder. From a press release:

During the meeting, which was recorded, the CS feigned interest in participating in the kidnapping. He, Goldberg, and Liebowitz discussed how such a kidnapping might be carried out, including the possibility of luring the Intended Victim to Pennsylvania in order to kidnap him, torture him, and force him to give the get. The CS, Goldberg, and Liebowitz also discussed the possibility of kidnapping the Intended Victim in Ukraine, where the Intended Victim planned to travel in late September to celebrate the Jewish New Year. Goldberg and Liebowitz agreed to advance the CS $25,000 to assist in efforts to plan the kidnapping. According to the CS, within days of this initial meeting, an envelope containing approximately $25,000 cash was delivered to the CS. On or about August 9, 2016, the CS met with Liebowitz and Goldberg in Kiryas Joel, New York. During this meeting, the CS, Goldberg, and Liebowitz discussed additional details of the kidnapping plan, including logistics and the cost associated with a plan to kidnap the Intended Victim overseas. This conversation was also recorded. On August 12, 2016, the CS again met with Liebowitz and Goldberg, at which time they provided the CS with an additional payment of over $20,000 for use in making arrangements for the kidnapping. In this meeting, which was also recorded, the CS, Goldberg and Liebowitz further discussed their plan to kidnap the Intended Victim in the United States and to obtain the get from him in this country. Subsequent to the August 12, 2016, meeting, the CS had additional conversations with Goldberg, in which Goldberg discussed his desire not merely to kidnap the Intended Victim, but also to kill him. On August 25, 2016, the CS met Liebowitz in Central Valley, New York. During the meeting, Liebowitz paid the CS an additional sum of about $12,000 to carry out the kidnapping. Also during the meeting, the CS spoke by phone with Goldberg, who was still in Israel, about the kidnapping plan, which the CS and Goldberg referred to in code as a wedding, as well as Goldbergs desire that the CS kill the Intended Victim. This conversation was also recorded.

Last week, the CS had another conversation with Liebowitz in which Liebowitz "indicated his understanding that the Intended Victim would be murdered as part of the plan.

Resorting to violence is nothing new for ultra-Orthodox rabbis who are enlisted to help women get divorces: Three years ago, the head of a Monsey yeshiva and many others were accused of beating and using cattle prods on their victims. One victim said, "he forced it (the get) on me. They busted my fingers, busted my ribs. They kept me handcuffed. These gets arent kosher. They force it. It destroyed me."

A rabbi in NJ admitted he kidnapped and tortured an ultra-Orthodox man who wouldn't give his wife a divorcehe apparently handcuffed, beat and threatened to bury the man alive if he didn't agree to the get. Newsweek looked at how divorce in the ultra-Orthodox community is "brutal, degrading and endless," with the founder of a non-profit that helps women escape arranged or forced marriages explaining, "Being an agunah is such a painful and shameful existence. You remain trapped as a single person in a community where there is nothing more shameful than being single."

Goldberg and Liebowitz were charged with one count each of conspiracy to commit kidnapping and one count each of conspiracy to commit murder for hire.
Focusing on calming your urge to smoke can be very effective in the quitting process. (Lenny Gilmore)

Getting a checklist of the do's and don'ts for quitting smoking from a doctor might not be the most effective way for a smoker to stop.

Physicians in Chicago's Cook County Health and Hospitals System recommend that the doctor sit down with the smoker to create a plan focused on how to calm urges.

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Dr. Anne Krantz, medical director of the Healthy Lungs Initiative, which started in 2008, said the program is a simple but effective way to help smokers quit.

When a patient comes in, the discussion doesn't end with a checklist. Instead, with questions such as, "Have you ever smoked?" and "When was your last cigarette?" a clinician can get the patient's detailed smoking history and categorize the smoker as willing to quit, willing to cut back but not quit, or not willing to quit.

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A health educator then meets with the patient. Those who are willing to quit and who smoke more than 10 cigarettes a day, are informed about medications, which can include nicotine and bupropion.

The trick of successfully quitting, Krantz has found, is to "master the skill of getting through the urge to smoke without actually pulling out a cigarette."

Health professionals should talk about the urge and suggest something else to substitute for smoking  maybe a walk, a few minutes of meditation or breathing exercises in a dark room. Patients trying to quit should carry gum, mints or hard candy.

"The urge to smoke only lasts about 15 minutes," Krantz said, "so if you can get through that urge successfully, then you're done.

"Pulling out a cigarette is a very well-entrenched habit," she added.

People who are trying to quit smoking also can contact the Illinois Quitline at 866-QUIT-YES.

And patients should remember that quitting is hard.

"Any time the person uses the term 'just'  'You should just quit,' or the patient says, 'I just have to quit,' there's a whole world embodied in that 'just,'" Krantz said.

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The One Simple Thing series offers specific and small ways to improve health.

abowen@tribpub.com

Twitter @byalisonbowen

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The 2016 election cycle has brought the truth and who is or isn't telling it front and center.

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have repeatedly accused each other  and in Trump's case, the mainstream media  of lying to the American public.

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"I wouldn't say it's the most negative campaign ever, but I think both candidates have chosen to emphasize dishonesty or corruption in the other," says Brian Gaines, a professor of political science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "The negative messages are dominating the positive ones, and they're pretty similar. The untrustworthy theme has been coming at the voter from both sides."

Part of the reason the candidates are using trust to attack each other is evidence suggesting that neither Clinton nor Trump is telling the truth all the time.

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Data from political fact-checking website PolitiFact shows that 22 percent of all statements attributed to Hillary Clinton have earned a rating of "true," which PolitiFact defines as "accurate and there's nothing significant missing." Two percent of all statements attributed to her are classified as "pants on fire," or wildly inaccurate. Trump, meanwhile, is credited with 4 percent of his statements being "true," and 18 percent as "pants on fire."

"Donald Trump is off the scale when it comes to lying," says John Murphy, an associate professor of communication at the University of Illinois who has studied the history of political rhetoric. "There's simply no comparison between Trump and all other candidates now or in recent history, according to nearly any fact check site that exists. And, since he is often correctly accused of lying, he figures, as most politicians do, that the best defense is a good offense, so he accuses Hillary Clinton of lying."

So does that mean politicians, in general, stretch the truth more than the rest of us?

"Politicians must communicate with multiple audiences more than most people, and these audiences may have different attitudes, beliefs and expectations," says Matt McGlone, an associate professor of communication studies at the University of Texas at Austin who has studied the role that language has on deception and persuasion. "Politicians and public figures are recorded more than most people, thus increasing the evidence base for finding their deceptive inconsistencies."

"Surely politicians have a lot of incentives to lie," adds Bella DePaulo, a visiting researcher at the University of California at Santa Barbara who has extensively studied the communication of deception. "They want to say what will please their constituencies, and sometimes, if they told the whole truth, that wouldn't do the trick."

Not only are politicians being recorded more often than ever before, they're also facing an increased amount of scrutiny from third parties, with the number of fact-checking outlets having doubled in the past year, according to the Poynter Institute.

"In the modern era, I think trust (in politicians) is at a new low," Gaines says. "Other than the reflexive I trust my own party more than the other one, people are pretty likely to tell you there's no politician you can really trust all the time."

Just because politicians are frequently caught in lies doesn't mean we're becoming less trustworthy as a society. Researchers say that when it comes to building your level of trust with politicians, the key is not to treat them in the same fashion that you would a member of your own inner circle.

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"There is a big difference between taking a politician at his or her word and taking a friend or family member at theirs," says Leonard Jason, a professor of psychology at DePaul University. "People often take politicians at their word when they have not done anything to earn that trust."

"We should always wonder about the basis on which something was said, and the identity of the speaker, and the location of the material we encounter, including the motives," adds Susan Blum, a professor of anthropology at the University of Notre Dame.

DePaulo says the proliferation of communication channels, such as social media, text messaging and the internet might make it seem that lying, in general, is becoming more common in today's society than ever before, even if that's not necessarily the case.

"With technological innovations and so much posted online, there are so many new ways to get caught lying and so many possibilities for people who have detected liars to make their discoveries known," she says.

When it comes to whether or not a person is going to tell a lie, McGlone says there are generally two motivating factors  avoiding punishment or gaining a reward of some sort.

"Judging whether to trust people or not should be based on both the truthfulness of their statements and the nature of their goals," he says.

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And while lying can lead to mistrust, in some cases, lying can actually be a good thing for both parties involved.

"In some times and places, for instance, what we might consider "white lies" are considered not only acceptable but even desirable, because they lubricate the gears of social relationships," Blum says. "Sometimes people see the effects of someone's speech as more important than whether it is true or not. If good things happen as a result of something people say  saving a life, getting people to do things that are good for them  then it is less important to evaluate the truthfulness."

So how can you tell for certain if someone is lying?

A 2011 analysis by researchers at the UCLA revealed a number of cues that people who are lying tend to exhibit, including speaking in complete sentences, altered speech patterns and "gesturing toward one's self with the hands."

"All we have to go by, in terms of judging anyone, whether political or other person, is the pattern of their behavior," Blum says. "We assess the truthfulness according to our own values and preconceptions about their virtues."

With that in mind and with a wealth of information available from the internet, researchers say the onus is on us, as individuals, to evaluate candidates running for office and determine their trustworthiness.

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"When you know more about a topic, it is harder to be caught up with the flowery words and passionate speeches given by candidates or their political parties," Jason said.

Matt Lindner is a freelancer.

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Salvador Martinez shows off the flaming cheese saganaki dish at the Parthenon restaurant in Greektown. (Alex Garcia/Chicago Tribune)

It's probably heresy for me to admit this  if this counts as a serious thought, which it isn't  but I'm not a big fan of flaming cheese.

Yes, it's true. I never quite loved the flaming cheese thing.

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It's not that I'm against flaming cheese, per se, but I never did stay awake at night, yearning for it, either.

"Aren't we going to order flaming cheese?" somebody always asks when you take them to a Greek restaurant. "Oh, the flaming cheese?!"

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It's called saganaki and the story goes that it was invented here in Chicago, at The Parthenon, a venerable Greektown restaurant on Halsted Street that has closed its doors.

I won't vouch for the legend of fried cheese set aflame  some are still fighting over who invented gyros  but that's what people say.

It's delicious, yes, but the presentation always bothered me as a bit too theatrical.

It flames. It bubbles. It's salty and good with wine or, weirdly, Pepsi.

Yet the core of the thing itself is that it's just flaming cheese.

But that doesn't stop people from demanding it, oftentimes rudely, these ravenous Americans insistent on getting their plate of flaming cheese, pronto.

Simmer down now, your flaming cheese is coming.

The waiter comes to your table, lights it afire, the flames reach to the ceiling and he shouts "Opah!" And everyone claps as if they've been given the world on a hot platter.

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Why? Why applaud for flaming cheese?

Actually, it is dang tasty when hot, if you wait so you don't burn your lips off, and I probably could eat a plateful right this minute, since I'm writing this at a Starbucks, and their bland wimpy snacks basically just suck.

Yet I prefer it not as cheese, but as metaphor.

Like the White Sox. The Sox are a ballclub of Flaming Cheese, darn it!

Or what about the bad news we received a few weeks ago about our dear Zeus the Wonderdog.

"Zeus has an ulcer," Betty said.

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An ulcer? Why? Did I aggravate him too much? Poor Zeus.

Betty, what's this bill for $500?

"That's the vet bill," Betty says.

Zeus, you've just got to stop with the whiskey and jalapenos! What a plate of Flaming Cheese!

Or that $20 trillion debt our president will leave future generations as his everlasting legacy. Opah! Mr. President. Thanks for the Flaming Cheese of debt.

Once it's ablaze, the waiter squirts lemon on it to douse the flames. What gets me is that I often get some lemon juice in my eye.

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I hate that.

Yet nobody cares much about lemon juice in my eye or yours, or about the national debt, either, because we're each only interested in our own dang cheese.

That's what America has become. Politics is all about free stuff now and free stuff eventually turns into Flaming Cheese for somebody.

It's not free exactly, but free enough, if you make sure your kids get the bill in about 30 years. By then they'll have forgotten that you ate all their cheese.

At least, that's the way it's supposed to work. If they ever smarten up, they'll probably want to kill us all.

"It all comes down to 'What did you get?'" said my brother Peter, who understands the human condition.

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"Do they ask about liberty? About freedom? No. They ask, 'What am I getting?'" Pete said. "That's politics."

Yes, we bribe ourselves with our own money and send the bill to the kids.

Impoverished millennial in 2036: "What did I get? Oh, I got some Flaming Cheese for dang sure."

And ain't that America?

My brother's words stuck in my mind where I could chew on it some, just like a line from a Robert Duvall movie.

No, not "The Godfather," but others, like "Lonesome Dove" where he played a crusty former Texas Ranger, or "Open Range" where he played the crusty owner of a cattle company.

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You watch an old Robert Duvall western and before you know it, you're fighting the impulse to talk like Robert Duvall. But you can't help it and eventually, you just give in.

Has the Robert Duvall thing ever happened to you? Of course, it has. Don't lie.

Let's say you're sitting in a Greek restaurant on Halsted, waiting for your flaming cheese order and you say something like, "Well we don't rent pigs. Because a man that does like to rent pigs is ... he's hard to stop."

Or, "Man's got a right to protect his property and his life, and we ain't lettin' no rancher or his lawman take either."

As others at the table beg you to please, please stop with the Robert Duvall bit, you grab the waiter's attention:

"What we didn't put up with back then was dawdlin' service, and as you can see, we still don't put up with it!"

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So the waiter rushes things. The flame goes poof, everyone shouts Opah! Then he squirts lemon on it.

And then it gets you right in the eye.

The cheese burbles in the plate. You can smell it, but you can't see it, on account of your lemony eye and all.

Now The Parthenon has closed. It was a good place for many years, with good people. And many mourn it, including me.

And if that's not a plate of Flaming Cheese, I don't know what is.

Listen to The Chicago Way podcast with John Kass and Jeff Carlin and guest Chicago police Superintendent Eddie Johnson, asking for tougher gun laws for felons, here: www.chicagotribune.com/kasspodcast.

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jskass@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @John_Kass
Contrary to what Darren Deon Vann's attorneys argued last month, the Lake County Prosecutor's Office say that the Indiana death penalty law is indeed constitutional, according to a court document.

Lake County prosecutors requested the death penalty for Vann, 46, last year, and Vann won't be back in court again for a couple of weeks. Until then, he's waiting in Lake County Jail on charges in connection with the deaths of seven women: Anith Jones, 35, of Merrillville; Afrikka Hardy, 19, of Chicago; Teaira Batey, 28, of Gary; Tracy Martin, 41, of Gary; Kristine Williams, 36, of Gary; Sonya Billingsley, 52, of Gary; and Tanya Gatlin, 27, of Highland. If convicted, Vann could join 13 other people on Indiana's death row.

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A gag order keeps those involved with the case from commenting outside of court, but either side's arguments on the constitutionality of the state's death penalty have played out in court documents in recent weeks.

The Lake County Prosecutor's Office holds firm that the state death penalty is constitutional. The Indiana Supreme Court has set that precedent in past cases, the prosecution argued in its response filed this week. Additionally, arguments Vann's attorneys made about the unconstitutionality of other states' death penalties don't apply to Indiana's, and saying that they should "goes squarely against our forefathers idea of federalism."

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"Simply because some, or even a majority, of sister states choose to implement a statute in a particular way, does not make it mandatory for all states. The ultimate question is whether the United States Constitution allows the state to act in a manner its citizens, through an elected legislature, saw appropriate," the prosecution argued.

Vann's attorneys argued that an Indiana Code statute outlining the death penalty is unconstitutional on a few key arguments: how a jury is supposed to weigh factors that could influence a death sentence, allowing a judge to determine a defendant's death sentence when the jury can't and that the statute violates the Eighth Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

For the prosecution to ask for the death penalty or life in prison without parole, they have to prove at least one aggravating factor  something that increases the severity of the crime  exists beyond a reasonable doubt. In Vann's case, the aggravating factor is that Vann committed more than one murder, according to the prosecution's filed argument.

A jury has to weigh the aggravating factors against the mitigating factors  or situations that don't excuse the act, but are fair to consider. If the jury can agree on these two parts, they can recommend the death penalty, and a judge imposes it. But if the jury can't agree, the judge decides the sentence.

Defendants before Vann have made similar arguments. Another man facing the death penalty in Lake County, Kevin Charles Isom, also questioned the factors a jury is supposed to weigh before sentencing someone to death. The state's Supreme Court ruled against him in 2015.

At the end of August, the defense team for Carl Blount, who is accused of shooting a Gary police Patrolman Jeffrey Westerfield, filed a motion saying the state's death penalty was unconstitutional.

Vann is scheduled to be back in Lake County Superior Court on Sept. 23.

rejacobs@post-trib.com

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Chicago police investigate the shooting on Jan. 13, 2016, on the Chicago Skyway that killed Elliot Brown and wounded his girlfriend. (Eric Clark / Chicago Tribune)

The killing was as brazen as it was brutal.

Elliott Brown was fatally shot one afternoon in January on the Chicago Skyway when a gunman in a black SUV pulled up next to his BMW coupe and began firing. The 25-year-old Brown was pronounced dead at the scene, and his girlfriend was wounded, shot four times.

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Detectives seemed to have plenty of leads. They discovered social media threats against Brown in what appeared to be an ongoing gang dispute. They collected video from the tollway operator. And they had a witness, his girlfriend.

But eight months later, the killing and the shooting of Brown's girlfriend remain open  one of hundreds of unsolved killings committed this year in Chicago.

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In a year when Chicago's homicide rate has spiked by about 50 percent, the Police Department's increasing struggle to solve its most serious crime has only exacerbated the deadly surge.

Chicago police currently solve about 30 percent of the city's homicides, said a department spokesman, Anthony Guglielmi. In Houston, a city of comparable size, that figure is 56 percent, according to a spokesman for the Houston Police Department. In Philadelphia, it's 49 percent.

Those figures  known as the clearance rate  include homicides marked as solved in the current year but committed in different years. But when old cases are stripped out, Chicago's clearance rate for 2016 homicides drops to about 21 percent. In all, Chicago police had solved just 92 of 432 homicides committed in 2016 through Aug. 16, according to police statistics.

Experts point to several reasons for the exceptionally low clearance rate in Chicago. Most killings in Chicago take place amid a street gang culture that intimidates anyone from coming forward with information.

"It's reflective of witnesses that don't want to come forward; they're afraid gang members will retaliate," said Thomas Alexander, a University of Maryland professor who researches clearance rates. "Another reason for low clearance in gang killings are people just don't trust the police."

Police scandals have further undermined trust in such communities. Compounding the problem, experts say, is a pattern of violence in which victims of crimes choose to retaliate themselves instead of cooperating with authorities.

All of this workload is falling to a dwindling number of investigators.

"Homicides have gone up and the number of shootings has gone up; and the number of detectives has gone down," said Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7 President Dean Angelo. "We're not going in the right direction."

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In January 2009, the department reported having 1,151 detectives on the force, according to records kept by the union. As of this July, the number of detectives had dwindled to 863. During the same time, the number of evidence technicians  a crucial piece of investigators' ability to build a case  had shrunk from 113 to 84, according to FOP records.

The newly appointed chief of detectives, Melissa Staples, declined to be interviewed through a department spokesman. The department also declined to discuss cases the Tribune examined for this report. Instead, Guglielmi released an email statement prepared by his office. The statement declined to address staffing levels specifically, but it touted a host of other resources offered to detectives, such as "partnerships with other law enforcement agencies," and portable gunshot residue testing kits that allow detectives to do their own testing of suspects and witnesses.

Chicago officially surpassed the homicide toll for all of last year, reaching over 500 in total. By speaking to members of the community, the Tribune will continue coverage of this grim milestone. (Chicago Tribune)

Meanwhile, detectives' caseloads continue to grow. The city has passed 500 homicides for the year and is on pace to top 600 by the end of the year  a total not seen in 15 years.

Chicago police have long had trouble solving the city's killings, but the recent decline has gone beyond a low rate that historically hovered around 30 percent.

"In the old days if you have a good rapport with people on the street, there was always a chance you could get somebody to talk to you," said Alexander, who is also a police lieutenant in Hagerstown, Md. "What we're going to see is that the mistrust with law enforcement is even greater."

Elliott Brown's killing is emblematic of the difficulty police face in solving homicides in Chicago. It happened about 1:30 p.m. on a busy highway just after the victim had passed through a toll gate loaded with cameras. Brown, a reputed Black P Stones member, had been receiving social media death threats after an ongoing retaliatory dispute with another gang, according to family members interviewed by police. And his girlfriend, Jazmyn Metcalf, who survived four gunshot wounds in the attack, saw the black SUV that pulled alongside Brown's car, but was unable to give police a detailed description of the gunmen. She told the Tribune she was not wearing her glasses when the shooting started.

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Brown and Metcalf had spent the night in a hotel near McCormick Place and were driving to the Horseshoe Casino in Hammond, Ind., to spend the day gambling. Metcalf said they had stopped for tacos earlier and Brown was bragging about his chances at the casino.

"He said, 'I feel like I'm going to win a bunch of money today,' " Metcalf said in an interview. She said they did not immediately notice the vehicle pulling alongside them. Then the calm in the cabin of Brown's BMW 650 was shattered.

"I was kind of shell-shocked. You don't realize what's happening until you feel the pain, but you're so upset," she said. In his last words to her before he lost consciousness, Brown appeared disoriented about what had just happened. "As he was pulling the car over, he said, 'You hear that? Is that the tire?' ... I said no, it's not the tire."

Brown, who had been shot in the head, back and arm, lost consciousness while his girlfriend fumbled for a phone to call 911, and then both of their mothers. She said numerous cars passed by without stopping while she waited for help to arrive.

Eventually, Metcalf was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital. She said she was interviewed by detectives who were focused on gang issues and whether there had been a previous altercation with the gunman. She said she told them she didn't know of any conflict, and she played down any gang ties Brown had.

The attack "definitely came completely out of the blue. He had people who were envious of him, but nobody wanted to kill him," she told the Tribune. "I don't know why they haven't solved this case."

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Police declined to comment on the status of the case.

Experts, though, say that cases like Brown's, involving suspicions of gang ties, are the most difficult to solve. A homicide case is considered cleared when it is closed with an arrest and charges  or when police believe they have identified the killer but prosecutors decline to bring charges for a variety of reasons. In Brown's case, none of that has happened.

By any measure, Chicago police face an increasingly daunting task in solving the city's homicides. Chicago is currently approaching 3,000 shootings for the year, a total the city did not see in all of 2015. Most of the violence is clustered in neighborhoods on the South and West sides where street-gang culture prevails amid circumstances of deep poverty, dwindling social services and struggling schools.

In such areas, many see the police as adversaries rather than protectors.

The distrust between Chicago police and communities most afflicted by crime has also been exacerbated by the fallout of the Laquan McDonald shooting by police. In that case, a Justice Department civil rights investigation was launched after video and police reports detailed the 2014 fatal shooting of the 17-year-old. Numerous officers allegedly filed false reports misrepresenting what happened.

Long before that case, though, police in Chicago have faced a lack of cooperation from the victims and witnesses to gang violence.

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"You run into the code of silence in the neighborhood. I've had brothers refuse to identify the killer of their own brother," said Darren O'Brien, a former assistant state's attorney who ran the unit that approved or denied charges in felony cases for nearly a decade ending in 2008. "It's really difficult to pull a case together when nobody is talking.

"It would be really nice to have a banker or doctor as a witness," he added, "but this didn't happen in a bank or in a doctor's office. It happened on a street corner at a dope spot. So who do you think your witnesses are going to be?"

Even when Chicago police believe they have solved a killing, they may close the case without it headed to court. If prosecutors decline to bring charges, police label the cases cleared through "exceptional" means.

That is what happened after Curtis Brown, a 39-year-old member of the Four Corner Hustlers, was gunned down in the driveway of a West Side auto repair shop in July 2012. Police had relatively decent evidence to work in the case: a witness standing a few feet away saw the killing, which also was recorded by a security camera mounted on the repair shop.

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The gunman remained unidentified for a year before police received a tip implicating a 23-year-old member of the Four Corner Hustlers as the killer who had ridden up to Brown on a bicycle, hopped off as he pulled a gun from his waistband, and shot the older man nine times as he attempted to run for his life.

With a suspect identified, detectives tracked down the witness and showed him a lineup of possible suspects. The witness picked the suspect out from among five men.

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Confident that they had enough for prosecutors to file charges, detectives called a prosecutor in the felony review unit to inform him of the developments. But the felony review prosecutor, wary of the time lag between the killing and the suspect's identification, said he would drive out to the police station at Belmont and Western avenues to interview the witness himself.

Police records note that after speaking to the witness, the prosecutor sought to interview another witness to the shooting, a woman who lived in a second-floor apartment directly above the shooting. Detectives located and interviewed the woman, who confirmed many of the details of the killing but told the detectives she had not seen the man's face. She "could not provide any further information in regards to this homicide," according to a police report.

The prosecutor declined to bring charges. A month later, the case was closed.

dheinzmann@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @davidheinzmann
DCFS director George Sheldon, seen here on March 21, 2016, took over the department last year as its ninth leader in five years. (Zbigniew Bzdak / Chicago Tribune)

Children in the state's welfare system are being warehoused in psychiatric hospitals and emergency shelters hundreds of days longer than they should be in many cases because the agency does not have a place for them, a new report found.

The highly critical review of Illinois' Department of Children and Family Services came from the state auditor general's office, even though DCFS did not track and could not provide most of the information the auditors sought, according to the report released Thursday. The data DCFS did provide were not ideal, as auditors questioned their accuracy and completeness.

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The inspectors found that the delays stemmed in large part from a lack of available placements, scheduling and wait lists. One state ward remained in an emergency shelter 357 days last year, which is a staggering 10 times longer than the court-ordered 30 days, according to the report. Last year 380 children stayed in a shelter beyond 30 days, an improvement from 451 children in 2014, the audit found.

During that same period, the number of children who languished in psychiatric hospitals beyond medical necessity more than doubled to 168 in 2015. The average length of stay for those youths went up to 40 days in 2015, though the report found that one child remained at a psychiatric hospital 184 days after being cleared for discharge.

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"Meanwhile, the children are suffering," said Benjamin Wolf, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois. "I talked to a child who was trapped in a psychiatric hospital, and he was just weeping because he felt abandoned by everybody. What can you say? He has been abandoned. Like a shelter, it's a miserable place to spend a big chunk of your childhood."

The ACLU has monitored DCFS for decades, and it went back to court last year to enforce its consent decree following the Tribune's 2014 "Harsh Treatment" investigation into the state's residential treatment centers. Wolf, who was not surprised by the audit's findings, said they are symptoms of inadequate community mental health services and a chronic shortage of appropriate placements for children in the foster care system. The lack of community alternatives is particularly troubling as the state works to move away from residential centers, he said.

"This is one of the most intractable issues we have been dealing with," DCFS Director George Sheldon said in an emailed statement. "These are very challenging categories of youth."

The agency has created emergency foster homes to reduce the number of kids in emergency shelters, he said.

"Every child being removed from their own home needs to go to a home setting in their community, not to a shelter," Sheldon said. "That's our goal."

Sheldon took over DCFS last year as its ninth leader in five years. He has made it a priority to develop therapeutic foster homes and, to that end, has launched a number of pilot programs throughout the state.

"It takes time to build this system," he said.

The agency acknowledged and responded to the concerns in the audit with a number of proposed solutions, including a psychiatric hospital tracking database and improved procedures for kids in shelters, which are planned for later this year. The department also intends to streamline its paperwork and completely revamp the database used to track youth placement.

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Some of the audit's numbers on extended placement in psychiatric hospitals were higher than the agency's number because of a difference in how the two agencies calculated the figures, DCFS spokeswoman Veronica Resa said. For example, in one case where the audit listed the number of days as 112, DCFS contends that figure was actually 71 days.

"We do recognize the children and older youth have been in the hospital too long," she said. "One day is too long."

Auditors ripped DCFS on its internal procedures and controls. In the three areas that the auditors evaluated  psychiatric hospitals, emergency shelters and detention facilities  DCFS did not have documented internal procedures for placing kids in two of them. Psychiatric hospitals were the one area where the agency had detailed procedures such as getting signed approval if a child needed to stay longer than medically needed, but those procedures were not followed, the audit found. DCFS officials told auditors that one of the forms that was tied to several of those procedures is no longer in use. Resa added that the agency plans to change that procedure this year.

Paperwork in general was another problem area, with auditors finding that workers weren't always filling out DCFS forms. The lack of procedures and patchy paperwork "can lead to inconsistent handling of cases and contribute to delays in placement," the report concluded.

Part of the challenge stems from the department's use of 38 computer systems and applications, many of which do not interact with each other, according to the report. In addition, internal forms and case files were not kept in a centralized location.

The least amount of information was known about those youths who remained in detention centers because DCFS could not provide adequate data, according to the audit.

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The barriers cited to finding children a timely and appropriate placement were numerous. Auditors noted an overall lack of available placements. In some cases, staff did not promptly hold meetings to arrange placements, and in others, a convoluted matching process that involved several parties held up plans.

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"I think the bureaucracy is broken and creates its own unnecessary delays, but I also think a lot of the reason that people are in no hurry to have the meetings to decide about placements is because they know that there aren't placements," said Wolf of the ACLU. "They simply would push the youth up to another waiting list."

Parents and youth also played a role, according to the audit. Some youths would run away and miss their placement interview, while some parents would employ what is known as a "lockout," where they don't accept their children back home. Lockouts are sometimes used by parents as a way to force the system to provide mental health services that the parents could not obtain on their own.

The audit's focus on children who remained in placements longer than necessary came out of a 2015 Senate resolution. State Sen. Julie Morrison, D-Deerfield, who co-sponsored the measure, said the Tribune's 2014 series sparked her call for a closer review of the troubled department.

The results of the audit reflect "profound dysfunction" and reveal an agency that for years was "poorly managed, poorly reported, poorly executed," Morrison said.

"I can't imagine that there is not further damage that happens to (the children) because they remain in this institutional setting simply treading water," Morrison said.

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deldeib@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @deldeib
Shenna "Murch" Murchison, 15, went missing Sept. 3, 2016, on the city's South Side. (Handout)

Chicago police are asking the public for help finding a 15-year-old South Side girl who went missing six days ago.

Sheanna "Murch" Murchison was last seen Sept. 3, and may be wearing a gray T-shirt, blue jeans with the knees cut out and maroon gym shoes, police said.

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Sheanna is known to frequent Palmer Park, in the 200 block of East 111th Street.

She is described as black with a medium complexion, brown hair and brown eyes. She is 5-foot-4 and about 125 pounds, police said.

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Anyone with information on her whereabouts should call 911 or contact the Area South Special Victims Unit at 312-747-8274.
Maryam Ahmad's plans to wage a write-in campaign against a law clerk who allegedly impersonated a Cook County judge may be over before it starts.

Hours after Ahmad declared Thursday her write-in candidacy against the law clerk, Rhonda Crawford, in the 1st Judicial Subcircuit race this fall, the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners ruled Ahmad was ineligible.

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The election board said that because Ahmad had lost in the March Democratic primary for judge, she could not run in the Nov. 8 general election as a write-in candidate  even though it was a different judicial seat than the one she had unsuccessfully sought.

In a letter Thursday to Ahmad, obtained by the Tribune under public records laws, the board wrote: "Your name will not be included on the list of persons who filed such a declaration and no write-in votes cast in your name will be counted."

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Ahmad, whom the Illinois Supreme Court temporarily appointed to the bench in 2014 to fill a vacancy, said she was unaware of the board's decision until contacted by the Tribune.

"I think I am eligible and I absolutely am going to challenge this," Ahmad said.

James Allen, spokesman for the election board, said a certified letter was sent Thursday to Ahmad. He said voters could write in Ahmad's name anyway, but that it would be a waste.

"It would have the same effect of not voting at all in that race," Allen said. "It's the same effect as writing in Charles Dickens."

Crawford, who won an upset victory in a separate primary race, was running unopposed until Ahmad declared her write-in candidacy. Crawford has not responded to messages seeking comment. She was fired last month from her job as a law clerk and staff attorney in the Office of the Chief Judge.

Cook County prosecutors have begun a criminal investigation into allegations that Judge Valarie Turner allowed Crawford to hear some of her traffic cases.
A teen from the city's Austin neighborhood was identified Thursday as the person who was killed in a Lawndale shooting.

Marqui Williams, 17, of the 4900 block of West Gladys Avenue, was shot in the chest, right arm and face, authorities said. He was standing on the sidewalk in the 3300 block of West Douglas Boulevard about 10:10 p.m. Tuesday, when an unknown man began shooting at him, police said.

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Williams was pronounced dead at 11:22 p.m. Tuesday at Mount Sinai Hospital, according to the Cook County medical examiner's office. His death was ruled a homicide.

He was one of three people who were killed in shootings that happened between Tuesday afternoon and early Wednesday.

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No one was in custody, police said.
The October opening of a controversial shelter for adult families in Maspeth, Queens will likely be delayed by a few weeks, according to a Queens assemblywoman and City Hall sources. While Assemblywoman Margaret Markey said that the delay was granted following a phone call between herself, Mayor de Blasio, and Department of Homeless Services Commissioner Steven Banks, City Hall has countered that the delay is standard procedure, and that the shelter will still likely open next month, if later than the October 1st deadline DHS had put forward.

"This postponement gives us the opportunity to continue to bring pressure on the city to change its plan for Maspeth," said Markey in a statement to the Daily News.

A senior City Hall official told Gothamist that such a delay is "not uncommon in government," adding, "We expect an October opening, and we still feel that we're on track." The official confirmed that Markey spoke with Commissioner Banks, but said that "to my knowledge the delay is not related to any conversation."

The shelter, which the city says would take over a Holiday Inn Express at 59-40 55th Road, was presented to the community in August, prompting near-nightly protests, one lawsuit threatened by locals, and another filed by elected officials, including Markey. Last week, hundreds of Maspeth residents turned their backs on DHS Commissioner Banks at the second of two raucous public hearings on the shelter, which they argue would impact their safety and quality of life.

Robert Holden, president of the Juniper Park Civic Association in Maspeth, told us on Thursday that he thinks the delay is standard procedure, and that Markey's statement was strategically timed, one week before the primary election on September 13th. "This is so political it's almost laughable," he said, adding, "She's trying to do damage control."

Markey, who took office in 1998, is facing the second primary election of her tenure next week. She was booed from the microphone at last week's public hearing on the Maspeth shelterin large part because, in Holden's opinion, she seldom comes to community meetings and has done little to earn the community's trust. "She's a party hack," he said. "In 18 years she attended two Juniper meetings, and we've had hundreds." He, like many Maspeth residents, is opposed to the shelter.

"As we announced at two community forums, we are continuing to review the [shelter] proposal, and the start date will be determined as a result of the review," said DHS spokeswoman Lauren Gray in a statement Thursday.

Also this week, Queens Senator Tony Avella sent a letter to U.S. Southern District Attorney Preet Bharara urging him to investigate the owner of the Holiday Inn Express slotted for shelter conversion, one Harshad Patel. In 2011 the Daily News reported that Patel admitted to bribing former Brooklyn Senator Carl Kruger to change a zoning restriction. Patel apparently wanted to convert one of his hotels into apartments.

"I find it shocking that Mayor Bill de Blasio and the New York City Department of Homeless Services would seek to enter into an agreement with an individual who has openly admitted to what appears to be a lengthy bribery scheme," Avella wrote.

Bharara's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but Gray, the DHS spokeswoman, said that DHS does not interact with building owners during the shelter site selection process.

The Department of Homeless Services contracts with nonprofit service providers," she said. "The nonprofit service provider either owns the building or leases it from a building owner. The Department of Homeless Services does not have a relationship with building owners or select them.

Before the shelter contract can be approved, DHS must submit it to the city comptroller. The comptroller then has 30 days to approve the contract, or send it back for amendments. We have reached out to Comptroller Scott Stringer's office to confirm whether a contract for the Maspeth shelter has been submitted, and will update with any additional information.

[UPDATE 9/8]: Stringers' office confirmed that the city has yet to submit a contract for the Maspeth shelter, or even indicate when it might.
Chicago taxpayers likely are on the hook for another $2.7 million in lawsuit costs after the City Council Finance Committee on Friday recommended paying out the cash to settle three cases.

The largest  $1.375 million  would go to the estate of Eugene Ratliff, who was hit by a car being pursued by police in 2013 in the Avalon Park neighborhood. At the time, police were trying to apprehend a 17-year-old driver who allegedly had blown through a stop sign. Ratliff had a 10-year-old daughter.

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Two others also were struck by the car driven by Dorian Williams, who later was charged with reckless homicide, aggravated DUI and leaving the scene of an accident. His case is pending.

Up to $937,000 would go to Chicago police officers who claimed the city shorted them on overtime pay because it did not provide compensation for retroactive raises related to that pay after a new contract was approved in November 2014. The Fraternal Order of Police had agreed that retroactive pay would not apply to overtime, but officers filed a class-action suit contending that was a violation of federal law.

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And $350,000 would go to the estate of Alprentiss Nash, who was freed from prison after 17 years behind bars, but then was killed during an armed robbery last year when he was shot while leaving a currency exchange on the Near West Side.

After he was released from prison in August 2012, Nash obtained a certificate of innocence and a $200,000 payout from the state. DNA evidence had proved his innocence in a 1995 home invasion and murder. Before his death, Nash had sued, contending detectives withheld and fabricated evidence.

All three settlements are expected to receive routine approval Wednesday at the full council meeting.

hdardick@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @ReporterHal
As he tries to get in front of a lawsuit, Mayor Rahm Emanuel plans to offer nearly 1.5 million people who got traffic camera tickets another chance to contest the validity of those fines.

But City Hall's top lawyer doesn't expect many of the tickets to be overturned on appeal  from the city's point of view, it's not that the tickets weren't valid, it's just that the government didn't follow a rule that required a second notice of violation to be mailed out.

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The Emanuel administration's ordinance, which will be considered by aldermen Monday, is in response to a suit calling for complete refunds of tens of millions of dollars worth of fines and late penalties from the time the red light camera ticketing program started in 2003 and May 2015.

The review period covers a shorter period of time. Under the ordinance, people hit with red light citations between March 23, 2010, and May 14, 2015, would get a notice in the mail giving them the right to request an administrative hearing to contest their ticket. The same process applies to those who got speed camera tickets since the program started in mid-2012.

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People receiving second-chance notices would be given 30 days to contest the ticket and seek a refund of the fine and any penalties. To get a refund, they would have to prove to an administrative law judge that the ticket was improperly issued, which corporation counsel Stephen Patton said was an unlikely result in the vast majority of cases.

"We always maintained and continue to maintain that these are valid tickets," Patton said. "These folks ran red lights."

The administration said the time period was determined by the statute of limitations that applies to contesting the citations in court and the date the city eliminated the second-notice requirement in response to the lawsuit.

Another provision in the ordinance would affect a much smaller group of people who received tickets, but those folks would be far more likely to get some money back.

In July 2012, city code was changed to allow late penalties to be assessed starting 25 days after a ticket payment was due, instead of the 21-day window that had been on the books. City Hall, however, in some cases still assessed $100 late fee penalties at 21 days.

Under the ordinance, fewer than 5,000 people who paid late penalties in the small window between 21 and 25 days after receiving their tickets following the code change would get a notice of their right to get their $100 penalty back, Patton said. They would be given 60 days to request that refund, according to a draft of the ordinance.

Patton said the proposed ordinance is not a settlement in the suit, which was filed in early 2015, but could form the basis of one.

"This is something we are doing because we think it further bolsters our case and is a proactive step to address claims that the individuals who received these tickets were prejudiced by the lack of a second notice," Patton said. "This would provide a fair and reasonable basis for resolving the case, but there can be no assurances of that. But this was a prudent thing to do to bolster our defense."

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Tribune reporter David Kidwell on the upcoming sentencing in Chicago's red-light cameras scandal. (Chicago Tribune)

The original 2003 city ordinance setting up the red light ticketing program required the city to send a second notice of a violation before guilt was determined. Last year, three people who got red light tickets sued, claiming the city did not issue the required second notice of violation and doubled the fine for being late too soon.

After that suit was filed, the Emanuel administration changed its ordinance in May 2015 to eliminate the requirement for a second notice. Patton said the original 2003 ordinance was partly based on parking ticket procedures, which take into account the possibility that citations placed on vehicles could get blown away or otherwise lost.

In the case of automated tickets, the citations are sent out by mail, so no second notice was needed, nor was it required by state law, Patton said. "We imposed a requirement on ourselves that was not legally required and really wasn't necessary for a red light citation," Patton said.

Earlier this year, a Cook County circuit court judge denied a city motion to dismiss the suit. In determining the case could proceed, Judge Kathleen Kennedy wrote that plaintiffs' claims of failure to provide the second notice and wait 25 days before assessing late-payment penalties could ultimately be determined to be a violation of "the fundamental principles of justice, equity and good conscience."

Chicago attorney Jacie Zolna, who filed the suit, called the Emanuel administration's effort to force people to re-litigate the city's illegal behavior a "kangaroo court" system.

"They sped up the time that people had to fight these things, they doubled the fines prematurely and they set up an entire system designed to harm people," he said. "And now they want to use this BS ordinance to suggest they have addressed the problem. ... It's a way for them to avoid paying for their illegal conduct that they have engaged in for a decade, and it's not going to work."

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Zolna said he'll continue to try to force City Hall to issue full refunds to more than a million ticketholders he says were illegally tagged for fines.

Zolna's suit was among half a dozen cases that followed a Tribune investigation of corruption and mismanagement within the city's $600 million red light program. The series exposed a $2 million City Hall bribery scheme that brought the traffic cameras to Chicago as well as tens of thousands of tickets that were issued to drivers unfairly. The investigation found malfunctioning cameras, inconsistent enforcement and millions of dollars in tickets issued purposely by City Hall even after transportation officials knew that yellow light times were dropping below the federal minimum guidelines.

Throughout the scandal, the Emanuel administration has been reluctant to issue refunds, in some cases forcing drivers to file paperwork and apply for a rehearing process some critics have called onerous.

Last month, former City Hall operative John Bills was sentenced to 10 years in prison for taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to steer tens of millions of dollars in red light camera contracts to an Arizona company, Redflex Traffic Systems Inc.

According to testimony at his federal trial, Bills took a cash bribe of up to $2,000 for each of the 384 red light cameras that were installed while he oversaw the program. The Tribune found that up to 40 percent of those cameras made intersections more dangerous by increasing injuries from rear-end crashes by 22 percent.

One of the suits that stemmed from the scandal was filed by the Emanuel administration itself, seeking more than $350 million in damages from the private company that has admitted paying the bribes, Redflex Traffic Systems Inc. The former CEO of the company has pleaded guilty and is set to be sentenced in November.

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The Redflex bagman who passed the cash to Bills is set to be sentenced Monday.

hdardick@chicagotribune.com

dkidwell@chicagotribune.com
Wisconsin's attorney general on Friday appealed the overturned conviction of a man accused of helping his uncle kill a woman in a case profiled in the popular Netflix series "Making a Murderer."

A federal magistrate judge ruled in August that investigators tricked Brendan Dassey into confessing that he helped his uncle, Steven Avery, rape and kill photographer Teresa Halbach in 2005. The judge ordered that Dassey, who was 16 at the time of the killing, be freed within 90 days unless prosecutors appealed or decided to retry him.

Republican Attorney General Brad Schimel's office filed a notice of appeal with the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, keeping the 26-year-old Dassey behind bars. Schimel didn't include any formal arguments for upholding Dassey's conviction; those will come later. Schimel issued a news release noting that two state courts have upheld Dassey's confession and Halbach's family supports the appeal.

"We believe the magistrate judge's decision that Brendan Dassey's confession was coerced by investigators, and that no reasonable court could have concluded otherwise, is wrong on the facts and wrong on the law," Schimel said in the release. He did not elaborate.

Dassey's attorney, Steve Drizin, said he was disappointed in Schimel's decision to prolong Dassey's case by appealing.

"We look forward to continuing to defend his rights in court," Drizin said. "Like Brendan, we remain grateful to his many supporters for their continued loyalty and strength."

Halbach was killed on Halloween 2005, after she visited the Avery family's salvage yard in Manitowoc County to take pictures of a minivan. Investigators allege Avery lured her to the junkyard by asking her to take the photos.

Dassey confessed to helping his uncle, but his attorneys argued that his constitutional rights were violated throughout the investigation. Court documents describe Dassey as a slow learner who had poor grades and has difficulty understanding language and speaking.

Dassey was convicted of first-degree intentional homicide, second-degree sexual assault and mutilating a corpse. He was sentenced to life in prison in 2007.

Avery was convicted in a separate trial and also sentenced to life in prison. Avery made headlines in 2003, when he was released from prison after spending 18 years behind bars for a rape he didn't commit. He had a $36 million lawsuit pending against public officials when Halbach disappeared. He is pursuing his own appeal.

Their cases gained national attention after Netflix aired "Making a Murderer" last year. The series raised questions about the legal process in the case, spawning widespread conjecture about the pair's innocence. Authorities who worked on the cases said the series was biased, but it generated a myriad of calls from the public to free both men.

State courts had rejected Dassey's appeal. However, U.S. Magistrate William Duffin said his confession to police in 2006 was clearly involuntary due to investigators' false promises, Dassey's intellectual deficits and his youth.

Associated Press
NEAR THE STANDING ROCK SIOUX RESERVATION, N.D.  The federal government stepped into the fight over the Dakota Access oil pipeline Friday, ordering work to stop on one segment of the project in North Dakota and asking the Texas-based company building it to "voluntarily pause" action on a wider span that an American Indian tribe says holds sacred artifacts.

The government's order came minutes after a judge rejected a request by the Standing Rock Sioux to halt construction of the $3.8 billion, four-state pipeline.

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The tribe, whose cause has drawn thousands to join their protest, has challenged the Army Corps of Engineers' decision to grant permits for the pipeline at more than 200 water crossings. Tribal leaders allege that the project violates several federal laws and will harm water supplies. The tribe also says ancient sites have been disturbed during construction.

The tribe's chairman, Dave Archambault II, spoke at the state Capitol in front of several hundred people, some carrying signs that read "Respect Our Water" and "Water Is Sacred." He called the federal announcement "a beautiful start" and told reporters that the dispute is a long way from over.

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"A public policy win is a lot stronger than a judicial win," he said. "Our message is heard."

A joint statement from the Army and the Departments of Justice and the Interior said construction bordering or under Lake Oahe would not go forward and asked the Texas-based pipeline builder, Energy Transfer Partners, to stop work 20 miles to the east and west of the lake while the government reconsiders "any of its previous decisions."

The statement also said the case "highlighted the need for a serious discussion" about nationwide reforms "with respect to considering tribes' views on these types of infrastructure projects."

Vicki Granado, a spokeswoman for the company, said it had no comment.

The president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council said he was disappointed with the government's decision to intervene and called it "flagrant overreach" that will result in more oil being moved by trucks and trains.

The 1,172-mile project will carry nearly a half-million barrels of crude oil daily from North Dakota's oil fields through South Dakota and Iowa to an existing pipeline in Patoka, Illinois.

In denying the tribe's request for a temporary injunction, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in Washington said that the court "does not lightly countenance any depredation of lands that hold significance" to the tribe and that, given the federal government's history with the tribe, the court scrutinized the permitting process "with particular care."

Nonetheless, the judge wrote, the tribe "has not demonstrated that an injunction is warranted here."

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Attorney Jan Hasselman with the environmental group Earthjustice, who filed the lawsuit on the tribe's behalf, said earlier this week any such decision would be challenged. "We will have to pursue our options with an appeal and hope that construction isn't completed while that (appeal) process is going forward," he said.

Tribal historian LaDonna Brave Bull Allard said Boasberg's ruling gave her "a great amount of grief. My heart is hurting, but we will continue to stand, and we will look for other legal recourses."

Earlier in the day, thousands of protesters, many from tribes around the country, gathered near the reservation that straddles the North and South Dakota border.

"There's never been a coming together of tribes like this," according to Judith LeBlanc, a member of the Caddo Nation in Oklahoma and director of the New York-based Native Organizers Alliance. People came from as far as New York and Alaska, some bringing their families and children, and hundreds of tribal flags dotted the camp, along with American flags flown upside-down in protest.

Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein comments on protesting the Dakota Access oil pipeline which lead to her arrest warrant after accusations that she spray-painted construction equipment. Sept. 8, 2016. (Jessica Reynolds) (Chicago Tribune)

The judge's order was announced over a loudspeaker there. John Nelson of Portland, Oregon, came to the camp to support his grandson, Archambault. The 82-year-old says he was not surprised by the ruling, "but it still hurts."

State authorities announced this week that law enforcement officers from across the state were being mobilized at the protest site. They said some National Guard members will work security at traffic checkpoints and another 100 would be on standby. The Great Plains Tribal Chairman's Association asked the Justice Department to send monitors to the site because it said racial profiling is occurring.

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Nearly 40 people have been arrested since the protest began in April, including Archambault.

A week ago, protesters and construction workers were injured when, according to tribal officials, workers bulldozed sites on private land that the tribe says in court documents are "of great historic and cultural significance." Energy Transfer Partners denied the allegations.

A sign welcomes visitors at the entrance to an oil pipeline protest encampment near Cannon Ball, North Dakota where members of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and their supporters have gathered to voice their opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), Sept. 3, 2016. (Robyn Beck, AFP/Getty Images)

The state's Private Investigation and Security Board received complaints about the use of dogs and will look into whether the private security teams at the site are properly registered and licensed, board attorney Monte Rogneby said Friday, adding that he would not name the firms.

On Thursday, North Dakota's archaeologist said a piece of private land that was not previously surveyed by the state would be surveyed for artifacts next week.

The company plans to complete the pipeline this year, and said in court papers that stopping the project would cost $1.4 billion the first year, mostly due to lost revenue in hauling crude.

A status conference in the tribe's lawsuit is scheduled for Sept. 16.

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Associated Press
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.  The first NASA explorer of its kind took off on a seven-year quest Thursday, chasing after a big, black, unexplored asteroid to gather a few handfuls of gravel for return to Earth.

These bite-size bits of ancient space rock from asteroid Bennu could hold clues to the origin of life, not just on our planet but potentially elsewhere in the solar system.

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Thousands gathered to witness the evening launch of Osiris-Rex, a robotic hunter that looks something like a bird with its solar wings. The spacecraft took flight atop an Atlas V rocket, which soared a little before sunset on the mission, a U.S. first.

Victory was declared an hour later; launch controllers shook hands and embraced as the spacecraft shot out of Earth's orbit, bound for Bennu.

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"Tonight is a night for celebration. We are on our way to an asteroid," said NASA's chief scientist, Ellen Stofan. After all, "we've just done something amazing."

"We got everything just exactly perfect," added Osiris-Rex chief scientist Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona. "It was an amazing evening for me and for this team.

It will take two years for Osiris-Rex to reach Bennu (BEHN'-oo), which is circling the sun in a slightly wider orbit than Earth's. The boxy spacecraft will actually go into orbit around the asteroid, seeking out the best spot before going in for a quick bite.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket carrying the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft lifts off from launch complex 41 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Thursday, Sept. 8, 2016, in Cape Canaveral, Fla. (John Raoux / Associated Press)

Round trip, the SUV-sized spacecraft will travel more than 4 billion miles by mission's end in 2023.

NASA has gone after comet dust and solar wind particles before, but never anything from an asteroid. It promises to be the biggest cosmic haul since the Apollo moon rocks.

The roundish rock  an estimated 1,600-plus feet across and taller than the Empire State Building  is believed to harbor carbon dating back 4.5 billion years, to the beginning of our solar system. That makes it a time capsule and a scientific prize.

"We will make discoveries on this mission that we have not anticipated. It's exciting!" said Bill Nye, "The Science Guy," chief executive officer of the Planetary Society.

The launch came 50 years to the day that the first "Star Trek" episode aired on TV. NASA launch commentator Mike Curie referenced the anniversary, urging the spacecraft at liftoff "to boldly go" to Bennu and back. This is yet another example of NASA "turning science fiction into science fact," Stofan noted.

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Osiris-Rex may lead to asteroid-mining missions, according to scientists, and could help protect the planet from menacing space rocks.

This May 21, 2016 photo provided by NASA shows the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft inside a servicing facility at Kennedy Space Center in Florida after arriving from Lockheed Martin's facility near Denver. (Dimitri Gerondidakis / Associated Press)

Japan already has visited an asteroid and returned some specks (the mission didn't go quite as planned), and is chasing another space rock for even more samples. Osiris-Rex's bounty, however, should surpass that; Lauretta and his team want at least 60 grams of dust and gravel, or 2 ounces' worth when the big day comes in 2020. Ground tests have yielded eight times that in a single scoop, so hopes are high for four to five handfuls.

Osiris-Rex will hover like a hummingbird over Bennu, according to Lauretta, as the spacecraft's 10-foot mechanical arm touches down like a pogo stick on the surface for three to five seconds. Thrusters will shoot out nitrogen gas to stir up the surface, and the loose particles will be sucked up into the device. Spacecraft managers call it "the gentle high five." They get just three shots at this, before the nitrogen gas runs out and the effort abandoned.

The team opted for this touch-and-go procedure instead of landing to increase the odds of success. Despite extensive observations of Bennu from ground and space telescopes, no one knows exactly what to expect there, and it could be difficult if not impossible to anchor a spacecraft on the surface, Lauretta said.

Tonight is a night for celebration. We are on our way to an asteroid. We've just done something amazing.  NASA chief scientist Ellen Stofan

Osiris-Rex's freed sample container  the same kind used for the comet-dust retrieval  will parachute down with the pristine asteroid treasure in Utah. The mother spacecraft, meanwhile, will continue its orbit of the sun.

Among the 8,000 NASA launch guests was the schoolboy who came up with the asteroid's name for a contest.

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Twelve-year-old Mike Puzio of Greensboro, North Carolina, cheered as he watched his first up-close rocket launch: "It was awesome!"

"Unbelievable," added Dr. Larry Puzio, his pediatrician dad.

The name Bennu comes from the heron of Egyptian mythology. Mike thought Osiris-Rex looked like a bird, with its twin solar wings and long arm outstretched for a sample grab. And with the spacecraft named after the Egyptian god Osiris, Bennu was an obvious choice, he said.

Osiris-Rex is also a NASA acronym for origins, spectral interpretation, resource identification, security-regolith explorer. The estimated cost of the mission is more than $800 million.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket carrying the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft lifts off from launch complex 41 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Thursday, Sept. 8, 2016, in Cape Canaveral, Fla. (John Raoux / Associated Press)

"Space exploration brings out the best in us," Nye said shortly before Osiris-Rex began its journey. "It is an extraordinary use of our intellect and treasure to elevate humankind, to help us know our place in the cosmos."

It may also one day save the home planet.

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Bennu swings by Earth every six years, and 150 years from now, could hit us. The odds are less than one-tenth of 1 percent, according to Lauretta. While this particular rock won't destroy Earth  just carve out a huge crater  other asteroids could cause more trouble.

Osiris-Rex will help scientists better understand the ever-changing paths of asteroids, and that could prove its biggest payoff.

Associated Press
SEOUL, South Korea  North Korea said it conducted a "higher level" nuclear test explosion on Friday that will allow it to finally build an array of stronger, smaller and lighter nuclear weapons, a move strongly condemned by the U.N. Security Council which promised new measures against Pyongyang.

The North's fifth atomic test and the second in eight months brought the U.N.'s most powerful body into emergency session, just three days after it strongly condemned North Korea's latest ballistic missile launches.

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South Korea's president said the detonation, which Seoul estimated was the North's biggest-ever in explosive yield, was an act of "fanatic recklessness" and a sign that leader Kim Jong Un "is spiraling out of control." President Barack Obama condemned the test and said the U.S. would never accept the country as a nuclear power.

North Korea's boast of a technologically game-changing nuclear test defied both tough international sanctions and long-standing diplomatic pressure to curb its nuclear ambitions. It will raise serious worries in many world capitals that North Korea has moved another step closer to its goal of a nuclear-armed missile that could one day strike the U.S. mainland.

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An official of the Earthquake and Volcano of the Korea Monitoring Division points at the epicenter of seismic waves in North Korea, in Seoul, South Korea, on Sept. 9, 2016. (Ahn Young-joon / AP)

The press statement agreed upon by all 15 Security Council members late Friday said diplomats will draft a new resolution in response to its earlier promise to take "further significant measures," if the North continued to defy the international community.

"In line with this commitment and the gravity of this violation, the members of the Security Council will begin to work immediately on appropriate measures" in a new U.N. resolution, the statement said. The measures will be under Article 41 of the U.N. Charter, which specifies non-military actions including sanctions, it said.

U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power said the council must use "every tool at its disposal" including new sanctions "to demonstrate to North Korea that there are consequences for its unlawful and dangerous actions."

"This is more than brazen defiance," Power told reporters at U.N. headquarters. "North Korea is seeking to perfect its nuclear weapons and their delivery vehicles so they can hold the region and the world hostage under threat of nuclear strikes."

What measures are included in a new resolution will largely depend on China, the North's major ally and neighbor which fears any instability on the Korean peninsula.

"All sides should refrain from mutual provocations and any actions that might be a threat to peace and security," China's U.N. Ambassador Liu Jieyi said after the meeting. "We believe it is more urgent than ever to work together to achieve denuclearization of the Korean peninsula (and) "to prevent proliferation and ... maintain peace and stability on the Korean peninsula."

In March, the Security Council adopted its toughest sanctions against North Korea in two decades in response to its nuclear test in January and a rocket launch. It took two months of negotiations mainly between the U.S. and China.

South Korea's U.N. Ambassador Oh Joon said he hopes agreement on a new resolution will come quickly.

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Hours after South Korea noted unusual seismic activity near North Korea's northeastern nuclear test site, the North said in its state-run media that a test had "finally examined and confirmed the structure and specific features of movement of (a) nuclear warhead that has been standardized to be able to be mounted on strategic ballistic rockets."

"The standardization of the nuclear warhead will enable (North Korea) to produce at will and as many as it wants a variety of smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear warheads of higher strike power," North Korea said. "This has definitely put on a higher level (the North's) technology of mounting nuclear warheads on ballistic rockets."

North Korea leader Kim Jong Un gives a speech in Pyongyang in late August, 2016. (Korean Central News Agency via AP)

North Korea, led by a third-generation dictatorship and wary of outsiders, protects its nuclear program as a closely guarded state secret, and the claims about advancements made in its testing could not be independently verified. But they center on a technological mystery that has long bedeviled outside experts: How far has North Korea gotten in efforts to consistently shrink down nuclear warheads so they can fit on long-range missiles?

South Korea's main spy agency told lawmakers in a closed-door briefing after the test that it does not think North Korea currently has the ability to develop nuclear weapons that can be mounted on ballistic missiles, but intelligence officials expressed worries that the North's efforts to do so are progressing more quickly than previously thought, said Kim Byungkee, a lawmaker from the opposition Minjoo Party.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye strongly condemned the test, saying in a statement that it showed the "fanatic recklessness of the Kim Jong Un government as it clings to nuclear development."

She told a meeting of top security officials Friday night that, "We have to believe that Kim Jong Un's mental state is spiraling out of control because he is not listening to any words from the international community or neighboring countries in his attempt to cling to power."

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Obama condemned the nuclear test "in the strongest possible terms as a grave threat to regional security."

"The United States does not, and never will, accept North Korea as a nuclear state," he said in a statement. "Today's nuclear test, a flagrant violation of multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions, makes clear North Korea's disregard for international norms and standards for behavior and demonstrates it has no interest in being a responsible member of the international community."

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said he and South Korean President Park talked by telephone and agreed that North Korea's nuclear test and its recent missile launches show that it now poses a "different level of threat" requiring a new response.

South Korea's weather agency said the explosive yield of the North Korean blast would have been 10 to 12 kilotons, or 70 to 80 percent of the force of the 15-kiloton atomic bomb the United States dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945. The North's fourth test was an estimated six kilotons.

North Korea said no radioactive material leaked, but the explosion put the region on edge.

In the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, residents were delighted.

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"It's really great news," said Rim Jong Su, 42. "Now, I am full of confidence that if the enemies make any little provocations we will make a counter attack and we will surely win."

The 5.0 magnitude seismic event Friday is the largest of the four past quakes associated with North Korean nuclear tests, according to South Korea's weather agency. Artificial seismic waves measuring 3.9 were reported after North Korea's first nuclear test in 2006; 4.8 was reported from its fourth test this January.

North Korean leader Kim has overseen a robust increase in the number and kinds of missiles tested this year. Not only has the range of the weapons jumped significantly, but the country is working to perfect new platforms for launching them  submarines and mobile launchers  giving the North greater ability to threaten the tens of thousands of U.S. troops stationed throughout Asia.

North Korea has fired a total of 33 ballistic missiles since Kim took power in 2011, Seoul's Defense Ministry said. In comparison, North Korea fired 16 ballistic missiles during the 17-year rule of Kim's father, Kim Jong Il.

The seismic activity comes on the 68th anniversary of the founding of North Korea's government and just days after world leaders gathered in China for the Group of Twenty economic summit.

North Korea likely wanted to show the world that strong international sanctions following its fourth nuclear test and long-range rocket launch earlier this year haven't discouraged its efforts to advance its nuclear weapon and missile programs, according to Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea expert at Seoul's Dongguk University.

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North Korea's persistent pursuit of missiles and nuclear weapons has long been one of the most intractable foreign policy problems for U.S. administrations.

Diplomacy has so far failed. Six-nation negotiations on dismantling North Korea's nuclear program in exchange for aid were last held in late 2008 and fell apart in early 2009.

The Korean Peninsula remains technically at war, as the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.

Associated Press. AP writers Kim Tong-hyung in Seoul and Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo contributed to this report
The House approved a bipartisan bill that would allow the families of 9/11 victims to sue Saudi Arabia. The legislation is now on the way to President Obama. Sept. 9, 2016. (C-SPAN) (Chicago Tribune)

WASHINGTON  Congress on Friday sent President Obama a bill that would let families of the victims of the 9/11 attacks sue Saudi Arabia over its alleged ties to terrorism, but advocates of the legislation worry it could be defeated by a presidential veto.

The House passed the legislation by voice vote with leaders calling it a "moral imperative" to allow victims' families to seek justice for the deaths of loved ones as the country marks the 15th anniversary of the attacks.

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But supporters are bracing for a veto fight with the White House. They also are warily eyeing the congressional calendar over fears the administration - which argues the bill could harm the United States' relationship with Saudi Arabia and establish a legal precedent that jeopardizes American officials overseas - may try to pocket veto the legislation if lawmakers leave Washington soon to focus on the election, depriving Congress of an opportunity to hold an override vote.

Victims' families who have long implored Congress to pass the bill are now planning to mark the 15th anniversary of the terrorist attacks that brought down the World Trade Center towers and damaged the Pentagon by pressuring lawmakers to stick around Washington until they see this bill through.

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"This is more important than campaigning," said Terry Strada, who lost her husband in the attacks, and is national chair of the victims' families' organization bringing a lawsuit against Saudi Arabia. "You can campaign after, you will never have a chance to pass [the bill] again. This is the priority."

A pocket veto could help the White House avoid some of the political fallout that could come from outright vetoing a measure aimed at helping 9/11 victims, a move that could fuel an emotional backlash and an uncomfortable debate in the weeks before Election Day.

Supporters of the 9/11 bill have long known that the White House would likely veto the legislation, which would allow courts to waive claims to foreign sovereign immunity in cases involving terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. Saudi Arabia has lobbied hard against the legislation, even threatening to start selling off U.S. assets if the measure passes. The White House has threatened a veto on the rationale that it could put U.S. diplomatic officials in a bad position if countries respond by similarly ignoring the established practice of granting immunity to foreign government representatives.

"This administration strongly continues to oppose this legislation, and, you know, we'll obviously begin conversations with the House about it," White House Spokesman Josh Earnest said in May when the Senate passed the bill.

Advocates for the legislation dispute the validity of the White House's arguments, pointing out countries that have done nothing wrong and don't support terrorists have nothing to worry about.

Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 31 A U.S. Marine pauses at one of the pools at the National September 11 Memorial following a morning commemoration ceremony for the victims of the terrorist attacks fifteen years after the day on September 11, 2016 in New York City. (Spencer Platt / Getty Images)

Since the Senate passed the legislation in May, the government released a previously classified set of pages from a 2002 congressional inquiry into the 9/11 attacks that dealt with suspected connections between Saudi Arabia and the terrorists involved. Those pages did not significantly add to the information that had already been made public through other documents and reports.

But supporters are confident they have the votes to override a veto. The Senate passed the legislation unanimously by voice vote and the House is also expected to pass the bill Friday with strong support.

Once Congress sends the bill to the president, Obama will have 10 days to veto the legislation or the bill automatically becomes law. But if Congress adjourns before the 10-day clock runs out, it could trigger a pocket veto - a constitutional quirk that allows a president to defeat a legislative proposal by holding onto it until Congress is out of session.

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While the House is scheduled to stay in session through September, the Senate could disband as early as the end of next week so that lawmakers can focus on their campaigns through Election Day, according to Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., who chairs the Senate Republicans' campaign operation.

A Senate GOP leadership aide said Friday that the Senate planned to hold pro forma sessions while Congress is out of town to prevent the White House from making a pocket veto, or staging any other surprise moves.

But there is some dispute over whether pro forma sessions are enough to prevent the administration from attempting a pocket veto.

In late 2007, President George W. Bush claimed the right to pocket veto a defense-spending bill over the protests of congressional leaders. At the time, the House had adjourned for a holiday break and the Senate was holding pro forma sessions every few days - a practice that has become standard to prevent the White House from making recess appointments.

Because the 9/11 bill started in the Senate, leaders there are confident that the pro forma sessions will prevent anyone from arguing that Congress has legally "adjourned," as defined by the Constitution.

Victims' families say they are pressuring the White House to back off its veto threat while also asking lawmakers to stay in town in case an override vote is needed.

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"I don't believe they're going to let us down," Strada said. "I don't think they would have done all this work, just to let it fall apart at the end."
Speaking in Geneva, Switzerland, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry announces a military partnership with Russia targeting Islamic State and al-Qaida-linked militants in Syria. Sept. 9, 2016. (U.S. Department of State) (Chicago Tribune)

GENEVA  The United States and Russia working in lockstep against the Islamic State group and al-Qaida's affiliate in Syria. A rejuvenated truce that will compel President Bashar Assad's air and ground forces to pull back. New flows of badly needed humanitarian aid.

Those details emerged Saturday as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov capped another marathon meeting in Geneva to present their latest ambitious push to end Syria's devastating and complex war.

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The potential breakthrough deal, which launches a nationwide cessation of hostilities by sundown Monday, will hinge on compliance by Assad's Russian-backed forces and U.S.-supported rebel groups, plus key regional powers such as Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia with hands directly or indirectly in Syria's 5-1/2 years of carnage.

"We believe the plan as it is set forth  if implemented, if followed  has the ability to provide a turning point, a moment of change," Kerry said as he and Lavrov laid out the contours, but admittedly not too much fine print, of the hard-won accord.

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U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, left, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, walk in to their meeting room in Geneva, Switzerland, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016, to discuss the crisis in Syria. (Kevin LaMarque / AP)

The ultimate hope is to silence the Syrian guns so that the long-stalled peace process under U.N. mediation can resume between Assad's envoys and representatives of the opposition, while the two world powers focus on battling jihadis.

The deal, at least publicly and for now, appears to overcome months of distrust between Russia and the United States that President Barack Obama had cited less than a week ago.

Now, the two powers are lining up in an unexpected new military partnership targeting IS and al-Qaida-linked militants, while trying to prod Assad and opposition groups to end a civil war that has killed up to 500,000 people and displaced millions.

"This is just the beginning of our new relations," Lavrov said of the U.S.

Washington must persuade Syrian rebels to break ranks with Fath al-Sham, an al-Qaida-linked group previously known as the Nusra Front, which has intermingled with U.S.-backed fighters. Moscow is to pressure Assad's government to halt all offensive operations against the armed opposition in specific areas, which were not detailed.

"The Syrian government has been informed of these arrangements and is ready to fulfill them," Lavrov said at a news conference alongside Kerry after midnight.

Kerry said the arrangement depends on "people's choices. It has the ability to stick, provided the regime and the opposition both meet their obligations, which we  and we expect other supporting countries  will strongly encourage them to do."

He also alluded to the possibility of backsliding that all but doomed a previous U.S.-Russia cease-fire initiative earlier this year, which briefly halted the fighting and paved the way for new aid convoys before a resurgence of bloodshed.

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"No one is building this based on trust," Kerry said. "It is based on a way of providing oversight, and compliance, through mutual interest and other things. If this arrangement holds, then we will see a significant reduction in violence across Syria."

The deal culminates months of frenetic diplomacy that included four meetings between Kerry and Lavrov since Aug. 26, and a lengthy face-to-face in China between Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The military deal would go into effect after both sides abide by the truce for a week and allow unimpeded humanitarian deliveries. Then, the U.S. and Russia would begin intelligence sharing and targeting coordination, while Assad's air and ground forces would no longer be permitted to target Fath al-Sham; they would be restricted to operations against the Islamic State.

The arrangement would ultimately aim to step up and concentrate the firepower of two of the world's most powerful militaries against IS and the group once known as Nusra, listed by the United Nations as terrorist groups.

Both sides have failed to deliver their ends of the bargain over several previous truces.

But the new arrangement goes further by promising a new U.S.-Russian counterterrorism alliance, only a year after Obama chastised Putin for a military intervention that U.S. officials said was mainly designed to keep Assad in power and target more moderate anti-Assad forces.

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Russia, in response, has chafed at America's financial and military assistance to groups that have intermingled with the Nusra Front on the battlefield. Kerry said it would be "wise" for opposition forces to separate completely from Nusra, a statement Lavrov hailed.

"Going after Nusra is not a concession to anybody," Kerry said. "It is profoundly in the interests of the United States."

The proposed level of U.S.-Russian interaction has upset several leading national security officials in Washington, including Defense Secretary Ash Carter and National Intelligence Director James Clapper, and Kerry only appeared at the news conference after several hours of internal U.S. discussions.

After the Geneva announcement, Pentagon secretary Peter Cook offered a guarded endorsement of the arrangement and cautioned, "We will be watching closely the implementation of this understanding in the days ahead."

At one point, Lavrov said he was considering "calling it a day" on talks, expressing frustration with what he described as an hours-long wait for a U.S. response. He then presented journalists with several boxes of pizza, saying, "This is from the U.S. delegation," and two bottles of vodka, adding, "This is from the Russian delegation."

The Geneva negotiating session, which lasted more than 13 hours, underscored the complexity of a conflict that includes myriad militant groups, shifting alliances and the rival interests of the U.S. and Russia, Saudi Arabia and Iran, and Turkey and the Kurds.

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Getting Assad's government and rebel groups to comply with the deal may now be more difficult as fighting rages around Aleppo, Syria's most populous city and the new focus of the war.

Assad's government appeared to tighten its siege of the former Syrian commercial hub in the last several days, seizing several key transit points. Forty days of fighting in Aleppo has killed nearly 700 civilians, including 160 children, according to a Syrian human rights group.

Kerry outlined several steps the government and rebels would have to take. They must now pull back from demilitarized zones, and allow civilian traffic and humanitarian deliveries  notably into Aleppo.

"If Aleppo is at peace, we believe that the prospects for a diplomatic solution will brighten," he said. "If Aleppo continues to be torn apart, the prospects for Syria and its people are grim."

But as with previous blueprints for peace, Saturday's plan appears to lack enforcement mechanisms. Russia could, in theory, threaten to act against rebel groups that break the deal. But if Assad bombs his opponents, the U.S. is unlikely to take any action against him given Obama's longstanding opposition to entering the civil war.

In the Mideast, the main Syrian opposition umbrella group said it hoped the new U.S.-Russian agreement would be enforced in order to ease the suffering of civilians. Basma Kodmani, of the High Negotiations Committee, told The Associated Press that Russia should pressure Assad to abide by the deal, adding enforcement mechanisms will be needed including the "cessation of hostilities and the grounding (of) regime air forces."

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Associated Press
CHARLOTTE, N.C.  Hillary Clinton blasted Donald Trump Thursday for his condemnation of American military generals and his praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying her Republican opponent had "failed" at proving he can be commander in chief.

"Every Republican holding or seeking office in this country should be asked if they agree with Donald Trump about these statements," Clinton said in a news conference the morning after both candidates appeared at a national security forum.

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Trump did not directly respond to Clinton's critique Thursday. At a speech in Cleveland, he tagged his Democratic opponent with a new nickname  "trigger-happy Hillary" and repeated his incorrect claim that he opposed the war in Iraq "from the beginning."

Still, Clinton indicated later in the day that she does not want the final weeks before the Election Day to be exclusively focused on Trump, unveiling plans for a series of policy speeches aimed at promoting a positive message. That effort started in Kansas City on Thursday night with an address on faith at the National Baptist Convention.

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The foreign policy discussion followed a Wednesday night national security forum. Clinton was repeatedly challenged on her controversial email use at the State Department and her vote as a senator for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. She also fleshed out several national security priorities if she is elected, including trying to take out the leader of the Islamic State and vowing to defeat the extremist group without putting U.S. troops on the ground in Iraq or Syria.

Trump did little to counter criticism that he lacks detailed policy proposals, particularly regarding the Islamic State group. He both insisted he has a private blueprint for defeating the extremist group and that he would demand a plan from military leaders within 30 days of taking office. But he was also harshly critical of the military, saying America's generals have been "reduced to rubble" under Obama.

The Republican also renewed his praise for Putin and his disdain for President Barack Obama, arguing that "it's a very different system and I don't happen to like the system, but certainly, in that system, he's been a leader, far more than our president has been a leader."

Speaking to reporters Thursday morning, Clinton suggested she agreed with Democrats who say she is being held to a different standard in the White House race.

"I find it frustrating," she said. "But it's part of the landscape we live in."

With just two months until Election Day, national security has emerged as a centerpiece issue in the White House race. Both candidates believe they have the upper hand, with Clinton contrasting her experience with Trump's unpredictability and the Republican arguing that Americans worried about their safety will be left with more of the same if they elect Obama's former secretary of state.

Clinton's argument that Trump is ill-prepared to be commander in chief has been bolstered by a flood of Republican national security experts who are backing the Democratic nominee instead of their own party's pick.

Some of those Republicans will join Clinton Friday for what she dubbed a "working session" on the threat of terrorism. Those attending include Michael Chertoff, who served as Homeland Security secretary under President George W. Bush.

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The national security debate came as Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson drew attention for a foreign policy flub. He was asked Wednesday on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" what he would do as president about Aleppo, the Syrian city at the center of the refugee crisis, Johnson replied, "And what is Aleppo?"

Wednesday's forum served as a preview of sorts for Clinton and Trump's highly anticipated debates.

Clinton reiterated that she had made mistakes in relying on a personal email account and private server as secretary of state and in voting for the 2003 invasion of Iraq as a senator. But she defended her support for U.S. military intervention to help oust a dictator in Libya, despite the chaotic aftermath.

Trump stood by a previous comment that appeared to blame military sexual assaults on men and women serving together, but added he would not seek to remove women from the military. And for the first time, he opened the door to granting legal status to people living in the U.S. illegally who join the military.

The Republican also repeated an incorrect claim that he was opposed to the war with Iraq before the invasion. That assertion is contradicted by an interview Trump did with Howard Stern in September 2002 in which he was asked whether he supported the invasion. He replied, "Yeah, I guess so."

On Thursday, Trump said he would have voted against the war if he had been serving in Congress at the time. He argued: "I opposed going in. And I opposed the reckless way Hillary Clinton took us out."

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Associated Press
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump criticized U.S. foreign policy and the American political press corps Thursday during an interview on RT America, a state-owned Russian television network.

In a wide-ranging interview that aired Thursday evening, Trump spoke with journalist Larry King about the presidential race, American intervention in Iraq and the Middle East, and the potential intrusion by Russian hackers into Democratic Party databases. RT, which airs in several countries in English and Russian, is funded by the Russian government; though it characterizes itself as independent, the network has been regularly accused of pro-Kremlin bias.

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The interview came as Trump faced sustained criticism for praising Russian President Vladimir Putin, which he has regularly done on the campaign trail -- to the discomfort of many members of his own party, who have distanced themselves from the comments.

During an NBC presidential forum Wednesday evening, Trump went farther in his praise and said that Putin has been a better leader than President Barack Obama: "Certainly, in that system, he's been a leader, far more than our president has been a leader," Trump said.

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Asked during the RT America interview what has surprised him most about the political process, Trump unloaded on the American press.

"Well, I think the dishonesty of the media. The media has been unbelievably dishonest," Trump responded. "I mean they'll take a statement that you make which is perfect and they'll cut it up and chop it up and shorten it or lengthen it or do something with it."

"And all of a sudden it doesn't look as good as it did when you actually said it. But there's tremendous dishonesty with the media. Not all of it, obviously, but tremendous dishonesty," he said.

The Trump campaign recently lifted a ban on various news outlets, including The Washington Post, which he accused of bias over negative press coverage.

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton took the same stage last night and fielded questions about their experience and judgment to be commander in chief. (Photos: Justin Sullivan / Getty (left); Evan Vucci / AP) (Video: CBS Miami)

Trump also dismissed accusations that he doesn't have a firm grasp of military issues or a plan to combat the Islamic State. He said he has a "very distinct plan" and knocked foreign policy under Obama, Hillary Clinton, and former president George W. Bush.

"Hillary Clinton with her policies and Barack Obama --you know, look, we should have never gone into Iraq. Period. We should have never gone in. But once we went in, Larry, we shouldn't have gotten out the way we got out. And the way they got out really caused ISIS, if you think about it. We got out in such a horrible, foolish fashion, instead of leaving some troops behind."

When King asked Trump if he believed reports that Russian hackers may have targeted Democratic Party databases, as part of an effort to influence the American presidential election, Trump said he did not believe that to be the case.

"I think it's probably unlikely. I think maybe the Democrats are putting that out. Who knows? But I think that it's pretty unlikely," he said. "I hope that if they are doing something I hope that somebody's going to be able to find out so they can end it, because that would not be appropriate."

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King also asked Trump about Russian President Vladimir Putin's assertion that the hack was a "public service," even as he claimed the Russian government was not involved.

"I don't have any opinion on it. I don't know anything about it. I don't know who hacked. I'm not sure. You tell me. Who hacked? Who did the hacking?" Trump said.

Trump's critics have regularly insinuated that he is overly cozy with pro-Russian interests. Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, came under fire last month after he was named in a Ukrainian corruption investigation which tied him to a pro-Kremlin political party. Manafort, who has since resigned from the campaign, denied all such connections.

Before that, Trump was widely condemned in July when, in an off-handed remark, Trump called on the Russian government to intervene in the election by releasing thousands of Clinton's private emails. "Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing," Trump said during a press conference at one of his South Florida resorts. He added later, "They probably have them. I'd like to have them released."

Trump came under fire within minutes of the interview airing. Veteran GOP strategist John Weaver, a vocal anti-Trump Republican, expressed incredulity on social media.
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Joseph Mendrick began his 35-year career with the Oak Park Police Department in the mid-1960s as a patrol officer. As he rose through the ranks, he saw how the lack of diversity within the department made policing a diverse community more difficult.

After becoming police chief in 1991, he launched community policing in the village, brought police officers into the west suburb's schools for the first time and made his force more racially diverse than ever before.

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He also increased racial diversity at the command level by promoting blacks from within the department.

"He felt strongly about diversity in command positions, and as soon as he became chief made sure that was reflected in his force," said Oak Park's recently installed police Chief Anthony Ambrose. "How bigger a statement can you make than that?"

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Mendrick, 73, who retired as chief in 2001, died Sept. 5 of an apparent heart attack in his home in Downers Grove.

"He made me a better police officer and he made me a better person," said Ambrose, who first met Mendrick after joining Oak Park police in 1984 as a rookie, and later served under him. "He was the type of guy that cared about all people and did whatever he could to make a difference."

Known for his laid-back style of leadership, Mendrick was aggressive on many policing issues, including his approach to addressing racially motivated police stops in the village. He put his force through regular rounds of diversity training, and records show that citizen complaints dropped precipitously during his time as chief.

Mendrick was born in Chicago and raised in Cicero, where he graduated from Morton High School East. He served in the Army as a military police officer in 1965-66, and a year later joined the Oak Park Police Department as a patrol officer. In the 1970s, he became a detective and earned several promotions before serving twice as acting chief in the 1980s.

"Whenever anything good happened, Joe was quick to give credit to his officers and deflect any attention toward them," Ambrose said. "But he was the one behind the scenes developing the programs and making sure his officers had everything they needed to do a good job."

Over the course of his career, Mendrick earned an associate's degree from Triton College and a bachelor's degree in criminal justice from Aurora University. He also received a diploma in traffic police administration from Northwestern University and was a graduate of the FBI law enforcement executive training session in Quantico, Va.

After retiring, Mendrick devoted his time to his family, particularly his 12-year-old grandson, Colin, who has Asperger's syndrome, a mild form of autism.

"Joe would pick Colin up from school, take him to his therapy and then they'd go out for ice cream together," said his wife of 46 years, Nanette. "It was a beautiful relationship."

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Mendrick is also survived by two sons, Bill and James Joseph; a brother, Edward; and four other grandchildren.

A memorial visitation will be held at 9 a.m. Saturday, followed by a memorial mass at 10 a.m. at St. Joseph Catholic Church, 4801 Main St., Downers Grove.

Joan Giangrasse Kates is a freelance reporter.
In a career of more than 50 years, labor lawyer Marvin Gittler used not only legal skills but humor, charm and an outsized personality to advocate effectively for working people, while at the same time earning the respect of the management lawyers he faced.

"He had a very substantial ability to relate to workers, to be able to solve problems and to put together deals that workers could live with and ratify," said Joel D'Alba, his partner at Asher, Gittler & D'Alba in Chicago. "He was able to meet with management lawyers and work out problems and walk away with a solution that both sides could live with."

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Gittler, 77, died of lung cancer and dementia early Thursday in his summer home in Union Pier, Mich., according to his daughter Dr. Michelle Gittler. He was a longtime resident of Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood.

Gittler worked out contracts for officers and command staff of the Chicago Police Department, for workers in Chicago Public Schools and for building trades workers at McCormick Place.

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"He felt that everybody deserved the chance to make a good living, to work hard and to come home at the end of the day with something to show for it," his daughter said.

Gittler was born and grew up in the Bronx, N.Y He met his wife, Carol, while both were students at Syracuse University in New York. Chicago was her hometown, and he moved to the Midwest to get his law degree from the University of Chicago Law School.

Gittler worked for the National Labor Relations Board for some time before going into private practice. He was passionate about the American labor movement, as well as his clients and their causes. It was a passion that sometimes came with a cost  both for him and for his family.

In the 1980s, he represented some workers for the Tribune Co. during an extended strike. At the end of the case, he canceled his subscription to the Chicago Tribune and refused to read the paper. That led to a long-running joke in which friends would casually ask if he had seen some interesting story in the paper.

His insistence on products made in America also led to some issues with his family.

"He was so passionate that we had a really hard time getting a TV and a VCR," his daughter said. "Finally he capitulated because nothing (in consumer electronics) was made in America."

And his daughter said he insisted his family buy and drive U.S.- built Ford automobiles. "We all drove Fords forever," his daughter said, adding that at family gatherings, "we looked like a Ford parking lot."

But while Gittler took issue with the management groups or organizations he opposed in legal cases, he could be friendly with opposing lawyers. That was particularly true with James Franczek Jr., who has represented clients including city of Chicago, Chicago Public Schools, the Chicago Police Department and McCormick Place.

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That the two men remained friends "sums up all too briefly a 40-plus-year relationship that was cemented by going through literally scores if not hundreds of labor-related controversies," Franczek said.

Franczek called Gittler a force of nature who could take over a room. "But he also did it with charm, integrity and always an incredible sense of humor," he said.

Franczek said he and Gittler were on opposite sides in so many cases they had developed the "Marv and Jim Show" in representing their respective clients. Younger lawyers often commented on how much they could learn by watching the "show," Franczek said.

"Together we did a lot of good things for our clients," said Franczek. He cited the agreements reached on work rules at McCormick Place to make exhibiting there simpler and less expensive for trade show participants.

Gittler, who often represented members of the building trades, developed some carpentry skills of his own, building dollhouses, swings and treehouses for his grandchildren.

His official retirement party took place last year.

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In addition to his wife and daughter, Gittler is survived by his other daughters, Debra and Dr. Mandy Gittler and Susie Wexler; a sister, Phyllis Robinson; brothers David and Lou; and eight grandchildren.

Another daughter, Caryn, died in 1992.

A celebration of his life is being planned.

Megan is a freelance reporter
Syrians evacuated from the embattled Syrian city of Aleppo during the ceasefire arrive at a refugee camp in Rashidin, near Idlib, Syria, on Dec. 20, 2016. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday that Russia, Iran and Turkey are ready to act as guarantors in a peace deal between the Syrian government and the opposition. He spoke on Tuesday after a meeting of the three countries' foreign ministers in Moscow. (STR / AP)

A Syrian child, this time it was 5-year-old Omran Daqneesh, finally made the front page again. It is sad that it took this long for people to pay attention to Syria once more.

We are three Chicago physicians who have volunteered inside underground field hospitals in Aleppo, Syria. The children we treated have never stopped living in hell.

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The first child we met this summer was a 5-year-old named Ahmad. Shrapnel from a barrel bomb cut his spinal cord and paralyzed him from the chest down. He was gasping for breath as doctors placed him on life support. His father asked the same question every day: "What's happening to my son?" He lasted three days and two rounds of CPR. His heart eventually gave out, and we had to let him go. He was then wrapped into a white shroud  another dead, invisible and forgotten Syrian child taken to be buried.

Pictures we have of other victims are too gruesome to show. We had to perform amputations on mutilated children. We saw them burned beyond recognition, crushed to death, their bodies ripped open. The images of mothers and fathers grieving and refusing to let go of the blood-stained shrouds of their loved ones were even harder for us to bear.

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The world expresses outrage and solidarity for these children in episodic shocks  sporadic images of bloodied kids caked in rubble or lifeless on a beach. Then the media abruptly return to celebrity divorces and political demagogues.

Armchair pundits say Syria is complicated and horrible, but it's too late to do anything. We dare them to spend one day volunteering in a Syrian field hospital, amputating children's limbs and placing the dead in body bags. Then have them tell us nothing can or should be done. Our Syrian medical colleagues endure these atrocities every day and wonder why the world has remained sidelined for the past five years.

The international community needs to look beyond Syria as just a vacuum for terrorism. The coalition bombing of Raqqa 100 times per day instead of 10 times per day will not eliminate the terrorism of the Islamic State.

The primary terror in Syria falls from Syrian government helicopters and jets  barrel bombs, cluster bombs and napalm. Allowing the Syrian government to bomb its own children, hospitals and schools on a daily basis  that is what causes terrorism and engendered this whole mess in the first place.

The world would never tolerate a terrorist group that for five years systematically burned schoolchildren alive with napalm, suffocated them with nerve gas, dismembered them at grocery markets with barrel bombs and starved families to death in their own villages. The Syrian government and its allies institute these scorched-earth measures every day as a matter of policy.

Creating a no-fly zone and grounding the Syrian air force would be a good place to start. The U.S. and its allies have the power to do this. Coalition air power is already in force over Syrian airspace. It will not solve everything, but an end to these airstrikes will save lives and limbs on a scale that hospitals can't. The airstrikes have disproportionately killed more innocent civilians and caused more destruction and displacement than any armed party in this conflict. It has to start somewhere, and no peace or cease-fire can be negotiated as long as the Syrian air force terrorizes the skies. At some point, President Barack Obama must stand up to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Syria's Bashar Assad.

Syrian children don't need tears, hugs and a day of outrage on the front page once a year. They need action. Years of silence, apathy and indifference are as responsible for their death and suffering as bombs.

Samer Attar is an orthopedic surgeon with Northwestern Medicine; John Kahler is a pediatrician with ACCESS Community Health Network; Dr Zaher Sahloul is a critical care specialist at Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn. All are volunteers with the Syrian American Medical Society.
Police investigate the scene where a man was found shot to death early Wednesday in the Albany Park neighborhood. Sept. 7, 2016. (WGN-TV) (Chicago Tribune)

This is why we left Chicago.

This is why we call our move to the suburbs one of the smartest decisions we've made.

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This is why we're encouraging all of our friends to do the same.

This is why I can't find any good reason to live in the city: Someone was shot dead Wednesday morning in my old neighborhood.

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This is the problem that should keep Chicagoans up at night: Violent crime is not only prevalent, but it is spreading and spontaneous. Like a bolt of lightning coming down from a clear, blue sky.

A neighborhood is where you are supposed to feel safe  a collection of homes, protected by familiar faces and friendly demeanors, with churches and parks as landmarks, not crime scene tape or as a red dot on a crime map.

This was why my wife and I chose six years ago to move to the Albany Park/Ravenswood area. It was the neighborhood where we began the Chicago chapter of our lives, with Bateman Elementary within sight of our apartment and Horner Park right down the road. It's where my kids learned how to trick-or-treat and how to ride their scooters.

It's warm and quirky, with new restaurants to the south along Irving Park Road and a string of Colombian diners and Mexican bakeries to the north around Montrose and Kedzie avenues.

I've been along North Albany Avenue at all hours and never felt threatened: I've parked my truck at 2 a.m. and walked home after a late shift at work, been out at 3 a.m. for medicine to cure a sick child's cough, taken the dogs out at 4 a.m. when one didn't feel well.

Wednesday morning's shooting victim on the street could have been me, finishing any one of those errands.

Now, the neighborhood is stained and is a place I don't want to go back to again. I'd rather keep alive the memory of quiet, tree-lined streets with cicadas in full voice than see it as a reminder of a lawless city quickly unraveling.

A few years ago there was an overnight shooting at a convenience store not far from Wednesday's shooting. It concerned me at first, much like the graffiti that started to crop up in alleys and on garage doors. But I was able to brush it off as days went by because it felt like an isolated incident. And no one was shot dead.

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All that changed when I heard news of the fatal shooting of the 21-year-old man in the 4400 block of North Albany Avenue, right where I used to walk with my daughter to school each morning.

As much as I enjoyed living in Chicago, and having all of the diverse riches that make it great, it's simply not safe and not worth it anymore. I'm more than happy to enjoy the city from a safe distance in the suburbs, where the threats of violence are lower and the peace of mind and quality of education are higher.

For my family, it was a choice to live in Chicago, and it was our choice to leave. It took a lot of saving and some good timing, but we found a way out and, it seems, at just the right time.

One of my biggest fears since getting married and raising children has been making all the right choices and working to ensure a bright future for my family, only to have it ripped away by something out of my control, or someone with bad intentions.

Before we moved away from the neighborhood, it was starting to feel like that was possible  being caught on the street at the wrong time. And now, in my old neighborhood, someone has been found lying dead on the sidewalk, shot in the back of the head.

This is why we left Chicago.

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Steve Zimmerman is a copy editor/designer for the Chicago Tribune who moved to the south suburbs from Chicago's Northwest Side in May.

sazimmerman@chicagotribune.com

Join the discussion on Twitter @Trib_Ed_Board and on Facebook.
Yellow roses are placed over the name of Robert Clinton Kennedy at the World Trade Center Memorial, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016, in New York. Kennedy, a senior vice president at Marsh & McLennan, was on the 100th floor of the North Tower on Sept. 11, 2001, when terrorists flew a plane into the tower. (Mark Lennihan / AP)

Children born on Sept. 11, 2001, turn 15 this year. They will not have known the world before three hijacked airliners crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing 3,000, and before brave passengers brought a fourth airliner down in a Pennsylvania field rather than let it crash into the Capitol or White House.

They and their younger brothers and sisters will not have known the long peace that existed since 1945, when a Cold War and nuclear weapons deterred the outbreak of another great power conflict, nor even the quieter decade after the fall of the Soviet Union, when the United States and its allies sought to create a liberal world order built on free trade and democracy.

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Instead, they have only known a decade and a half of war. Despite 15 years of fighting in the Middle East, increased electronic surveillance and law enforcement and greater spending on defense, terrorist attacks have surged this year. Islamic State-linked terrorists killed more than a dozen people in San Bernardino, Calif., last December, and almost 50 in Orlando, Fla., in June. Those attacks on our homeland came in the midst of the killing of 130 in Paris in November and more than 30 in the Brussels airport in March. At the end of 2015, according to a Gallup poll, Americans named terrorism the No. 1 problem facing the United States, and confidence in the government to protect us dropped to an all-time low. During the summer, according to the Pew Research Center, terrorism remained one of the top two issues for voters, after only the economy.

And it is a war that has come full circle. It began with the administration of President George W. Bush invading Afghanistan to root out the al-Qaida terrorist network and the Taliban regime that harbored it. While the United States installed a democratic government in Kabul, the Taliban fled to safety in Pakistan, bided their time and are now returning as the Obama administration draws down U.S. forces.

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War in Iraq followed. Bush overthrew Saddam Hussein's regime and installed a democratically elected government, at the cost of a long fight against a determined insurgency. But President Barack Obama's 2011 withdrawal of U.S. forces allowed the region's centrifugal forces to pull the country apart. His refusal to intervene in the Syrian civil war, which has killed more than 200,000 and driven millions more from their homes, amplified the power vacuum in the heart of the Middle East. Al-Qaida in Iraq  now transformed into the Islamic State  took advantage to seize a large swath of territory, population and resources in Iraq and Syria. It has used that safe haven to train legions of fighters in terrorist tactics and to inspire Muslim radicals to launch attacks against their adoptive Western homelands.

Rather than ground troops, Obama turned to drones and commando raids to kill terrorists, from Osama bin Laden down. Removing al-Qaida leaders may emotionally satisfy, and it sows confusion in enemy ranks, but drones alone cannot stop terrorists from holding territory and expanding their networks. Obama's kill-first policy, along with his desire to close Guantanamo Bay and reluctance to capture or interrogate terrorist leaders, has dried up the sources of human intelligence to help predict and prevent coming attacks. This no-footprint strategy has given our terrorist enemies time to recover from the U.S. surges in Iraq and Afghanistan, create the first viable terrorist state in portions of Syria and Iraq, and equip recruits to attack the West.

Perhaps the overstretch of the Iraq war inevitably provoked Obama's strategy of withdrawal. Perhaps Bush overreacted to the 9/11 attacks with wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the detention and interrogation of terrorists at Guantanamo Bay (decisions in which I participated as a Justice Department lawyer). But at least that zealousness deprived terrorists of secure bases from which to launch future attacks and forced them to worry about their own survival, rather than on reaching the U.S. homeland.

As Obama's term in office comes to a close, we can now see the wages of American passivity. The Islamic State has achieved what we should fear the most  control over territory, population and resources  and the renewed ability to attack relatively undefended Western cities. While the Islamic State may never repeat the horror of 9/11, it can match it with many more San Bernardinos, Orlandos and Parises.

Our national security demands that the United States return to an aggressive policy that takes the fight to the terrorists, rather than hoping  as Obama does  that a civil war among Middle East Muslims leaves us innocent bystanders alone. Destroying terrorist safe havens and pursuing the Islamic State and al-Qaida with the full spectrum of the American military disrupted their ability to carry out attacks here in the United States. American soldiers gave their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan, for gains all too easily given up these last seven years, but their sacrifice prevented tens of thousands of terrorists from reaching our lightly defended shores. The next president will also have to confront Iran, the foremost state sponsor of terrorism in the Middle East and the close ally of Syria's Bashar Assad, and dispel the dangerous illusion that Tehran's mullahs want a stable peace in the region.

As we mark 15 years since the 9/11 attacks, Americans confront another time of choosing. They must ask this November which candidates will likely continue the Obama strategy of withdrawal  reducing American casualties in battle but accepting them at home. They must ask which candidate may restore elements of the Bush strategy of offense  sacrificing more soldiers' lives abroad to reduce the risks of attacks here.

With Hillary Clinton, voters will get a more activist internationalism that would have intervened in Syria and remained in Iraq, but at the price of her corruption and mendacity. With Donald Trump, voters will receive a mercurial unpredictability, combined with an instinct for pulling back to our shores, discarding our alliances and leaving the Middle East to its furies.

In a season during which the two political parties have reversed their positions on major issues, it is more than just ironic that the Democratic candidate has the better strategy for protecting our national security.

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John Yoo is a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, a former Justice Department official and a co-editor of "Liberty's Nemesis: The Unchecked Expansion of the State." This was written for the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Chicago officially surpassed the homicide toll for all of last year, reaching over 500 in total. By speaking to members of the community, the Tribune will continue coverage of this grim milestone. (Chicago Tribune)

"More than 500 people have been murdered in Chicago this year," says one of my conservative friends. "I can't wait to see what you write about that."

Why? You didn't listen to me the last time. Are you really listening or just waiting for your own turn to complain?

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"Jeez, why are you so touchy?"

I'm just tired of hearing your usual one-note analysis and solution: "Black people are having too many babies out of wedlock." Do you ever ask what happened to the jobs that used to enable workers to support a family? Do you ever notice how the poverty, crime, opiate addiction and out-of-wedlock birth rates are growing among poor whites too? When are you people going to pull yourselves up by your bootstraps?

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"You don't think fathers are important?"

Of course, we're important. But where are you going to find all the marriageable black men to fulfill your dream?

"OK, I'm listening. Tell me what you would do about the killers roaring out of control in Obama's adopted hometown."

Hey, that's President Barack Obama, pal. Respect. Look, 500 murders and it's only September? There's a horrible thing. But it's not a first. Violent crime is like a Zika virus. You don't know when or where it's going to surge, but you have to deal with it when it does.

We've been through this before. I was covering Chicago cops as a young reporter in 1974 when homicides in Chicago peaked at 970  or about 29 per 100,000 residents  after rising for more than 10 years. And I remember when homicides peaked again in 1992, this time at 943, or 34 per 100,000.

You could almost hear the rejoicing in December 2004, when the Chicago Tribune headlined: "City murder toll lowest in decades." For the first time in almost four decades, there were fewer than 500 murders in Chicago. Break out the Champagne.

"So what's that got to do with this year?"

First, it tells you that we've dealt with crime waves before. One reason murders looks so high is because violent crime overall, including murder, has dropped since the 1990s. Second, everybody talks about how Chicago homicides this year outnumber those in New York and Los Angeles  combined. But a number of smaller cities like Milwaukee and Houston have had big increases this year too. So far, it's not a national trend, but it's not a uniquely Chicago problem either. There is no single, one-stop, one-size-fits-all diagnosis or prescription.

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"Yeah, but you're not talking about Black Lives Matter and kids with cellphone cameras waging war on the police. The cops are afraid to get out of their patrol cars for fear of winding up on YouTube."

Frankly, some of them should fear winding up on YouTube, considering what we've seen on YouTube already.

But I notice you're not talking about how New York Mayor Bill de Blasio pulled back on the city's aggressive stop-and-frisk profiling policy on the streets last year. Conservatives howled, but, so far, homicides have continued to decline.

"So you want to coddle the criminals and wage war on police?"

No, quite the opposite. I want to see more cops on the street, working in cooperation with local residents and community leaders. Community policing works, if you do it right.

Unfortunately Chicago police are undermanned and pulling lots of overtime. The city and state are deep in debt and, as much as Mayor Rahm Emanuel talks about hiring more cops, nobody knows where he's going to get the money except from taxpayers who are feeling pretty tapped out already.

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"Ah, so, once again Democrats are screwing up our cities."

I know you'd like to make this a partisan issue, but it's not that simple.

"Donald Trump recently said Chicago police could solve the city's crime problem 'in a week.' "

Oh, yeah? How? Is he going to give gangbangers scholarships to Trump University?

"No," he says the police only have to be 'very much tougher' than they are now."

Gimme a break. This is a guy who claims he knows "more about ISIS than the generals." Now he thinks he knows more than Chicago's police?

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"He says one of Chicago's 'very top police' told him and Trump says he believed the guy '100 percent.' "

Right. That would make Trump as gullible as he hopes the voters will be in November.

Clarence Page, a member of the Tribune Editorial Board, blogs at www.chicagotribune.com/pagespage.

cpage@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @cptime
Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks will lift fishing restrictions on the Jefferson River effective Sunday.

The entire length of the Jefferson River has been closed since Aug. 1 because of extremely low flows. However, flows have improved and criteria for reopening the river under its drought management plan will be met before Sunday.

Meanwhile, the three following sections of the Big Hole River remain closed to all fishing until further notice:

Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Maiden Rock FAS to Notch Bottom FAS;

Saginaw Bridge on Skinner Meadows Road to the confluence of the North Fork Big Hole River and Big Hole River;

Notch Bottom FAS to confluence with the Beaverhead River.

And the Yellowstone River remains under emergency closure due to the fish kill from Point of Rocks FAS south of Emigrant to Highway 89 Bridge FAS east of Livingston.

As a reminder, boaters and anglers are asked to clean, drain and dry their equipment to prevent the spread of aquatic invasive species and other harmful organisms.
Michael John Elkshoulder's convictions for battery and domestic abuse go back to 1995.

Elkshoulder appeared Thursday in Yellowstone County Justice Court to be charged with partner or family member assault, his 10th charge related to abuse of a partner.

Yellowstone County Justice of the Peace Pedro Hernandez held Elkshoulder in lieu of a $50,000 bond and ordered him placed on GPS monitoring if he is released from jail.

Elkshoulder, 43, was arrested Wednesday after attacking his wife of 25 years outside of a business at 1648 Poly Drive, court documents state.

His wife said the two of them were driving to a doctor's appointment in Billings for a broken jaw and head trauma that Elkshoulder inflicted on her last week.

On the drive, Elkshoulder told his wife she wasn't going to her appointment. His wife insisted, and Elkshoulder kicked her in the side, records state. The person giving them a ride dropped them off near Rocky Mountain College. Once the couple was out of the car, Elkshoulder took a bottle of whiskey and tried to pour it down her throat.

When Elkshoulder hit his wife again, she got the attention of an employee at a business on Poly Drive. The employee brought the woman inside and locked Elkshoulder out of the building before calling the police.

Elkshoulder has a domestic violence-related charge from 1995, three from 2003, a 2007 charge, 2010 charge, two convictions from 2016 and a pending charge out of Wyoming.
A 30-year-old convicted felon from Aurora faces a return to prison after a Kane County judge convicted him of possessing a loaded 9mm handgun during a 2015 traffic stop.

London Gray was found guilty by Judge D.J. Tegeler of possession of a weapon by a felon, possession of a weapon by a gang member and possession of a defaced firearm in connection with his September 2015 arrest which came after he tried to flee Aurora police who stopped the vehicle he and a second man, Michael Morales, had occupied.

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According to prosecutors, police attempted the traffic stop near Hill Avenue and Ohio Street when the Dodge containing Gray and Morales turned into a parking lot. Before the car came to a stop, the two men jumped out and began to run. Gray, seen holding his pants pocket closely by police, was captured two blocks away, but police located the 9mm gun near a garbage can along the route he had taken, prosecutors said.

Gray is scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 8. He previously received 15 years in prison in 2005 after being convicted of an Aurora home invasion.

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Morales, who was found with a loaded .38-caliber revolver, pleaded guilty in January to multiple weapons charges, as well as an unrelated ammunition possession case. He is currently serving a 15-year prison term with a parole date scheduled for 2023, according to the Illinois Department of Corrections.

Dan Campana is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News
Entries in a pe contest on display in the Home Arts Building at the Sandwich Fair Thursday. (Linda Girardi / The Beacon-News)

Neuqua Valley High School freshmen Shreya Patel, Maddie Van Cleave and Stephanie Patterson took in the educational side of the Sandwich Fair Thursday.

"I'm impressed with how technology has impacted farming with GPS and driverless tractors," Patel said.

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Six busloads of Neuqua Valley geography class students roamed the Sandwich Fair on the oak-shaded fairgrounds on the west edge of Sandwich.

They spoke with farmers and people in charge of various exhibits as part of their assignment.

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"The farmers we spoke to have resisted the corporate takeovers," Van Cleave said.

"These are farmers who really care that every bushel of corn they produce is quality," Patterson added.

The youngsters said the area is different from what they are accustomed to in School District 204.

"The whole spatial differences are striking from what we are used to living in Aurora and Naperville," Patel said.

Van Cleave agreed that the fair was an educational experience.

"This trip has given me a whole new perspective on where we live. There are hardly are any farms left in Naperville," Van Cleave said.

The Sandwich Fair - the oldest continuous county fair in the state - is in its 129th year. An estimated 178,000 people came to the fair last year, fair officials said. The fair runs through Sunday at the Sandwich Fairgrounds, 1401 Suydam Road in Sandwich.

For many, a trip to the local fair is a tradition. Chris Jacobs was pulling his 4-year-old daughter, Willa, in a wagon and didn't seem to mind the intermittent rain showers that came in the morning.

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"We had an unbelievably good cinnamon roll and we'll be back for the rides when the skies clear," said Jacobs, of Leland. "The sprinkles aren't anything to be concerned with."

Jacobs, 39, said he grew up in Plano and came to the Sandwich Fair in his youth.

"It's hard to sum up the fair experience. There are the aromas of fair food and friends you see from your school days. It's just fun to come," he said.

This year's official Sandwich Fair souvenirs commemorate the Main Stage Ticket Office built in 1945. Sue Hohenberger was selling the souvenirs at the fair.

"My family has been involved in the fair for many generations. We had a lot of Neuqua Valley High School students talk with us for their assignment. I told them the history and traditions are what make the fair," Hohenberger said.

Hohenberger said one year her mother entered her pies in eight divisions at the fair and won a blue ribbon for each one.

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"The Sandwich Fair is really a homecoming. It began as an agricultural homecoming before the harvest. The ladies would wear their gracious long gowns. It was really a social event and in every way it still is the event of the year for many of us," Hohenberger said.

People were flocking to get one of Robert Hiller's custard filled eclairs and cream puffs at the fair Thursday.

"We have our own custard recipe - there's a lot of butter," said Hiller, 88, of Janesville, Wisconsin.

He's been part of the Sandwich Fair for 23 years and in the bakery business for 71 years.

Cousins Alison and Kim Monkemeyer are a third generation to volunteer in the Home Arts Building at the Sandwich Fair. The building has entries for home baked cakes, pies, breads and candies, cross-stitching and knitting. Their late grandmother, Renee Monkemeyer, was a superintendent in the building for more than 50 years and now her daughters are the lead organizers for the exhibits.

"We are the junior superintendents. It's a family tradition to be here. When we were little enough to fit into the pastry cases we would go inside and clean them," Alison Monkemeyer said.

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Linda Girardi is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News
State grants for the redevelopment of Bristol Bay and Riverfront parks in Yorkville have been reinstated recently after being suspended more than a year ago.

The Yorkville City Council unanimously approved extending the timelines for both projects now that the grant funds are being released.

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The Illinois Department of Natural Resources first granted $400,000 for Riverfront Park redevelopment in May 2013 to the city's Parks and Recreation Department.

The project includes a new playground, added parking, a fishing pier, and a canoe and kayak launch.

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The city also received another grant from the state for $400,000 to redevelop Bristol Bay Park in April 2014. That project consists of added parking and a new skate park.

"That will become our main skate park area," said Tim Evans, director of parks and recreation. "We do have a couple that feature skate parks, but not with the bowl."

In March 2015, the state suspended the grants. On Aug. 10, city staff was notified by the state that the grant funding would resume.

To complete the redevelopment projects on time, city officials requested two one-year extensions. Grant funding for the Riverfront project was set to expire Dec. 31, but city action allows for a new extension that will run through Dec. 31, 2017.

The grant funding for Bristol Bay Park was scheduled to expire June 30, 2017. City approval provides the project a new timeline that will expire June 30, 2018.

Evans said the redevelopment of the two parks will benefit residents throughout the city.

"It gives people more parks and recreation opportunities," he said. "Another thing is it that it helps drive economic development."

Evans said that on Oct. 1, the city needs volunteers to assist with installation of the new playground at Riverfront Park, 201 E. Hydraulic St. The park will have 37 features, including swings, slides and a rock wall, he said.

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Evans emphasized that any help with the installation would save city money.

For more information on volunteering, contact the Parks and Recreation Department at 630-553-4357.

Megann Horstead is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.
Once he found out about it, Dr. Ron Goers, who operates Goers Dental Care in Darien, immediately knew he wanted to participate in a program that offered free dental care Thursday for veterans, active military personnel and their immediate families.

It was part of Freedom Day USA, held on annually on the second Thursday of September as a way for participating businesses to thank those who have served in the military.

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"A group of dentists I'm involved with, the Smile Source group, discussed doing something for veterans," said Goers, a Clarendon Hills resident. "I looked it up and thought Freedom Day was a great idea. I thought it was time to give back to the people who allow us to be free in this country.

"It's kind of personal for me, too, because my dad was a World War II vet, and I've had several other relatives in the service."

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Goers said he offered any type of dental work for which a return visit was not necessary. Six people  five veterans and the daughter of a Korean War vet  made appointments and came in for the free service.

"All of them got their teeth cleaned, and one guy got a couple of fillings," Goers said. "I had a great time with it. I had a chance to help and tell patients what their needs were. They were so grateful, but I was so glad to do it."

Goers said some of his staff volunteered their time to help with patients who came in for Freedom Day.

Hygienist Tanya Arnold's husband, Jeremiah, served four years as a specialist in the Army, with deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. Assistant Suzy Lisowski served in the Army for two years.

Kathy Gallagher of Willowbrook didn't serve in the military, but her father served in the Korean War. She learned about Freedom Day USA and the offer of free dental care when she visited Goers Dental Care recently for some emergency work. Gallagher returned for a cleaning, X-rays and a comprehensive exam.

"My dad passed away almost a year ago, and he would have loved that they're doing this," Gallagher said while fighting back tears. "My dad was all about America. He loved this country and doing things to help people. He would have been thrilled with this."

Goers said he was hoping more patients would take advantage of the offer for free dental care.

"We did a lot of promotion," he said. "I'll probably try again next year, and I'll probably ask some other dentists how they did and maybe get some ideas to bring more people in."

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Freedom Day began in 2013 when founder Dr. Robert Martino of West Virginia decided not enough appreciation was being shown to those making sacrifices in the military.

"Our men and women of our Armed Forces make great personal sacrifices in order to secure and protect our freedoms," Martino said in a statement issued by Freedom Day USA. "Their families have endured hardships, and some have given all they have so that we may live in peace and are free to pursue our dreams."

cfieldman@pioneerlocal.com

Twitter @chuckwriting
Starting Sept. 17, the public can tour, for a fee, a 17-acre maze that features the former World Trade Center, along with symbols for fire, police and emergency management departments, and the words "America" and "never forget" designed into the corn. Sept. 8, 2016. (Erin Gallagher for the Chicago Tribune) (Chicago Tribune)

Paul and Kaity Siegel did not want Sept. 11 , 2001, to be forgotten.

While others might hang a plaque or get a tattoo, the Siegels created a corn maze in Lockport to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the terrorist attack in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania.

"I remember where I was when I heard about the first plane," said Paul Siegel about the two airplanes that destroyed the towers at the World Trade Center in New York. "I remember where I was when I heard about the second plane."

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They own Siegel's Cottonwood Farm, 17250 Weber Road, Lockport.

Starting Sept. 17, the public can tour, for a fee, a 17-acre maze that features the former World Trade Center, along with symbols for fire, police and emergency management departments, and the words "America" and "never forget" designed into the corn.

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Paul Siegel, who is a Lockport Fire District trustee, said he got the idea in 2011 when only a handful of people attended a south suburban ceremony honoring 9/11 anniversary.

"It seemed like everybody had forgotten," he said.

Siegels Cottonwood Farm, 17250 Weber Road in Lockport, has a corn maze commemorating the 15th anniversary of 9/11. (Erin Gallagher / Daily Southtown)

The next year, the farm, which has had a maze during its annual pumpkin fest since 1990, offered a weekend of free admission to all first responders and their families. This year, they are opening a week earlier than usual, and offering a military appreciation weekend, which is free admission to all active and retired military personnel and their families. Sept. 24 and 25 will be free for first responders.

"America won't forget," he said.

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Paul Siegel said the maze was created by first double planting the seeds, north to south, followed by a second planting east to west, in order to create a dense population of 45,000 stalks. After a design was drawn on paper and a computer, the stalks were spraypainted to indicate what needed to be removed. After the stalks were removed, the Siegels tilled pathways.

Cottonwood Farm is open at different times of the year for different scheduled activities, including selling vegetables all summer. It is in the autumn when the farm turns into a mini-theme park for the annual pumpkin festival, with train rides, animals, puppet shows, forts and ladders.

The annual pumpkin fest is an attraction for families the Siegels call "agritainment" because it teaches about a farm's food and animal production. New this year is Kaden's Birdie Barracks, which are red cedar play forts built like birdhouses and named after the Siegels' grandson.

"Most of our attractions are named after our grandkids or our kids," Paul Siegel said.

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The 40-acre Cottonwood Farm was bought by Paul Siegel's grandparents, Frank and Gertrude Siegel in 1909, making it a four-generation centennial farm.

Admission is $15 on weekends and holidays, and $12 weekdays. Children age 2 and younger get in free. The fest is open daily 10 a.m.-6 p.m. from Sept. 17 to Oct. 31.

Erin Gallagher is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.
A 20-year-old annual 5k run will have a different route on Oct. 1 to avoid downtown traffic in Frankfort. (Village of Frankfort)

The Village of Frankfort is changing the route of an annual 5k race next month because of traffic concerns in its community's downtown.

Participants in the 20th Annual Old Plank Road Trail 5k Run/Walk on Oct. 1 will head east instead of west on the Old Plank Trail. The race starts east of White Street on Old Plank Trail.

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The route has been altered to increase safety for the runners and keep Nebraska Street  a main thoroughfare in the village's busy downtown section  open for businesses and residents, said to Mary Canino, community relations manager for the Village of Frankfort.

"The primary reasons for the change are convenience and safety," Canino said. "If we go east, we don't have to close any roads. It makes for a safer route and less inconvenience for residents on Nebraska. We're still in the downtown district, though."

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Typically, about 300 participate in the event.

Mayor Jim Holland, whose tenure as mayor has covered over half of the race's history, said he hopes to see a good turnout despite the new route.

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"The Old Plank Road Trail 5K Run/Walk continues to be a favorite among the many events in Frankfort and grows each year," he said in a statement. "The Village invites runners and walkers to join us during this special event and enjoy our beautiful Old Plank Road Trail and downtown area."

Canino said registration forms for the race are available on the village's website at www.villageoffrankfort.com.

They also can be picked up at the Village of Frankfort Administration Office, 432 W. Nebraska. There is a $15 registration fee per runner up until day the of the race. Participants wishing to register that day will pay $20.

The race is scheduled to begin at 9:30 a.m., with pre-race registration opening at 8 a.m. and warmups at 9:15, according to the village.

Awards will be given in separate age categories, and participants are encouraged to arrive early.

For more information, call 815-469-2177.

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Angela Denk is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.
A man arrested for robbing a Heights credit union with a semiautomatic handgun on Wednesday has been charged with armed robbery and evidence tampering.

David Lee Brown Jr., 39, is accused of using a gun to rob Valley Federal Credit Union, 1445 Main St., according to Yellowstone County Justice Court documents. He is being held at the Yellowstone County Detention Facility.

Brown appeared Thursday in Yellowstone County Justice Court in front of Yellowstone County Justice of the Peace Pedro Hernandez who ordered Brown held in lieu of $100,000 bond.

The robbery took place a little before 2:35 p.m. on Wednesday. Credit union employees told police a man walked in wearing dark clothing, gloves and a dark bandanna over his face, while holding a semiautomatic handgun, according to charging documents.

Brown pointed the gun at an employee and told her to, "Fill the bag and no bait." The employee put $2,750 in the bag and handed it back to Brown, court documents state.

Witnesses told law enforcement the suspect then ran into the Arby's parking lot and got into the passenger seat of a gray Ford Taurus while a blonde woman waited in the driver's seat.

Credit union employees said a blonde woman had been in the bank earlier that day and left abruptly. The woman had written her name on some paperwork and officers tracked the woman and Brown to their home address.

Brown and the woman, identified as Brown's wife, consented to a search of their gray Ford Taurus and their home. Officers found a $20 "bait bill" on the floor of the Taurus. A bait bill has a serial number that the bank keeps on file to track bills that may be stolen.

Brown's wife told police she had gone to pick up her child from school and that was why she had left the bank so fast. She said that after she picked up her child, Brown had told her to drive to the Arby's parking lot by the credit union and wait there.

A few minutes later, Brown came running to the car and told his wife to drive. Brown's wife told detectives she thought he might have robbed the bank, court documents state.

Brown said he stole the money because he was using meth, and he owed money for drugs. He said a co-worker gave him a handgun, and the two had tried to rob some drug dealers earlier Wednesday but it hadn't worked, court documents state.
SPRINGFIELD, Ill.  For years, I've watched Illinois lawmakers debate issues concerning gun control and just rolled my eyes.

Such debates generate far more heat than light.

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There is plenty of emotion on both sides but little in the way of new ideas.

And at the end of the day, very little changes.

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Just this past month, Gov. Bruce Rauner signed a bill to make it a felony for a person who has not been issued a state firearm owner's identification card to bring guns into Illinois with the intent to sell or deliver them.

It's a step in the right direction. Perhaps a baby step, but a step nonetheless.

The bill passed the Illinois General Assembly unanimously.

The one thing that folks on both sides of the gun debate can agree on is that criminals and seriously mentally ill people shouldn't be packing heat.

The different views on guns in Illinois are more often cultural and geographic than partisan.

I grew up on a farm near Galesburg and hunted with my father or brother. It was a good time to talk and enjoy the outdoors and occasionally bring something home for supper.

I was also taught to have a reverent respect for the lethality of guns and how to handle firearms in a courteous manner. But I have friends who grew up in Chicago whose experience with firearms were far different than mine.

When I heard gunfire through my bedroom window, I wondered if rabbit or squirrel season has begun. They'd wonder if rival gangs were at it again.

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As the parent of three young daughters, I can't imagine what it's like to live in a place where gun violence is a way of life.

Recently, I enrolled in a conceal carry class. I wanted to learn more about what is becoming a growing movement in our country.

The folks taking the class cut across the socio/economic spectrum. There was a truck driver and a dentist. There were older folks and twentysomethings. And I sat next to a young mother who could outshoot everyone in the class.

What struck me was how ordinary they were.

I didn't see any gang colors  unless you count camouflage. I found my classmates to be polite and concerned about the well being of their families.

Those who support more restrictions on guns would have you believe that folks who want to carry are Dirty Harry types ready to shove a revolver in someone's face and shout, "Go ahead, make my day."

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I've never met a gun owner like that. And I hope I never do.

According to the Congressional Research Service, there are more than 300 million guns in the United States. That means this nation has more guns than people.

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No matter what laws are passed, that is a number that is unlikely to get smaller any time soon.

In fact, every time a gun control measure is proposed, gun sales go up.

I don't drink, but I can see the foolishness that was once prohibition.

Gun ownership isn't just a pervasive custom like alcohol consumption, the U.S. Supreme Court has affirmed that it is a constitutional right.

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Guns are just a tool that can bring security or despair.

As a society, we need to focus on the underlying reasons for violence: mental illness, the lack of mentoring, particularly of boys and young men, and the need for swift, certain consequences for those who choose to do harm to others.

Scott Reeder is a veteran statehouse journalist. He works as a freelance reporter in the Springfield area and can be reached at ScottReeder1965@gmail.com.
SPOKANE, Wash.  As investigators try to piece together how a Montana woman ended up dead in her car near Spokane International Airport, they're running into more questions than answers.

An application for a search warrant says 47-year-old Rita Maze was found in her closed trunk early Wednesday with a 9 mm handgun and two spent shell casings next to her. There was blood on the ground. Her purse, containing $50, was on the passenger side floorboard in the locked car and the keys were in the ignition. An iPad was found on the rear floorboard.

Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich said they are still trying to trace how Maze ended up dead more than 320 miles away from a rest stop north of Helena, where she told her family she had been abducted.

The case is currently classified as a death investigation, not a homicide.

"We know where the body was located; we know where she started out," he told The Spokesman-Review. "What happened in between? Don't know."

Maze's daughter said her mother called Tuesday evening in a panic, saying she had been overpowered by a man at a rest stop, was in the trunk of a moving vehicle and didn't know where she was. Maze reportedly said the man had access to the gun she kept in her purse for protection. Rochelle Maze said her mother's credit card had been used to make purchases at gas stations in Kingston, Idaho, and Ritzville, Wash.

"It makes no sense," her 23-year-old daughter, Rochelle Maze, said. "They could have taken the car, could have taken money from her. And then they leave the car there, and that's because this is an evil monster of a person."

An officer who called Maze's cellphone after Maze contacted her family said someone answered the phone and the officer heard gunshots, then silence, court records said.

Law enforcement officers initially said there was a person of interest, but said on Thursday that person had been ruled out.

Rochelle Maze believes her mother met with foul play.

"I believe she was abducted," Rochelle Maze told The Spokesman-Review. "She did not hit herself, stuff herself in the trunk and drive all the way to Spokane and shoot herself."

"I believe they shot her and left the gun and keys in there to make it look like she killed herself," Rochelle Maze said. "I know she did not."

Sheriff's spokesman Deputy Mark Gregory said the case is being called a death investigation, rather than a homicide, because law enforcement officers do not know what exactly happened to Maze. They do not have a suspect.

"We do not believe there is any imminent danger to the community," Gregory said.
HELENA  A bill by U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke that would grant federal recognition to the Little Shell Band of Chippewa Cree Indians advanced Thursday.

The House Natural Resources Committee's endorsed the bill, which is attached to controversial legislation that would remove the Interior Department's ability to grant tribes federal recognition, and leave that power solely with Congress.

Zinke, joined by U.S. Sen. Steve Daines and Little Shell chairman Gerald Gray, told reporters on a conference call that it was the first time the committee had advanced a Little Shell bill in the 38 years that the tribe has been pushing for federal recognition. The tribe is already recognized by the state of Montana.

"I'm confident about bringing this to its final conclusion," Zinke said.
A bill to overturn a temporary ban on federal coal leases  while also giving state and local governments a bigger say in leasing  was approved Thursday by the House Natural Resources Committee.

Western lawmakers have been demanding for months that federal officials end the coal-leasing ban, which Department of Interior officials imposed last spring while they tried to determine whether the public is getting a fair royalty payment on federal coal.

U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-Mont., authored the bill, which added a twist to the leasing ban debate by creating a royalty policy committee from which state, tribal and energy interests consult the Department of Interior. A state would need to have $10 million in leasing royalties annually to be considered for the committee. The bill seeks to end the leasing ban in 2019.

States and tribes possess critical local knowledge that should help mitigate the impact of federal regulation, and I think their voices need to be heard, Zinke told Natural Resource Committee members Thursday.

There were opponents. Rep. Alan Lowenthal, D-Calif., cited the conclusions of the White House Council of Economic Advisors, which indicate the public is not getting a fair price for federal coal.

A review of the coal leasing program indicates that programs have been structured in a way that misaligns incentives going back decades, resulting in a distorted coal market with an artificially low price for most federal coal and unnecessarily low government revenue from the leasing program, Lowenthal said.

Coal state lawmakers bristled at the suggestion that royalties were set too low, given that mining companies have gone bankrupt and the amount of coal mined has dropped sharply. The Department of Interior has recommended a royalty increase to 18 percent from the current 12 percent.

If the royalties were so low from federal lands, we wouldnt have this massive reduction in employment, massive reduction in the amount of coal produced, massive layoffs in the railroad industry that hauls the coal out of my state, said Rep. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo.

Thursday afternoon, Zinke and Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., said the ban on new federal coal leases has added uncertainty to the Powder River Basin coal economy, and thats stifled investment. In the Senate, Daines and Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., have both attempted to put stop dates on the Department of Interiors coal leasing ban. Tester has proposed Interior take no longer than 5 years to study the royalty issue. Daines is pushing for 3 years.

My concern is that if we wait five years, were not going to have any coal jobs left, Daines said.

Getting the coal advisory committee formed should also bring some pressure on Interior to the respond to the consequences of federal coal policy on local economies, Daines said.

There was previously a coal advisory board that was allowed to expire, Zinke said. The new board will function the same way, advising Interior, but giving orders with which the department must comply.

Interior official disagree with concerns by lawmakers that the leasing ban is driving the mining industry into the ground. The department estimates theres a 20-year coal supply available now without new leases. Its expected to take several years to establish a more equitable royalty rate, Interior estimates.

Even with coal to mine, coal communities are struggling as power plants switch to cheaper natural gas and global prices for coal slump because of oversupply.

Montana's Musselshell County faces a $300,000 shortfall because of slumping coal taxes and the local school district is paying a $9.8 million construction bond as Signal Peak Mine, its largest taxpayer, falters.

The Crow Tribe has cited lost coal revenue at its southeast Montana mine for a multimillion deficit in the tribal budget. Quarterly payments from the Absaloka Mine, operated by Westmoreland Coal Co., were off $1.2 million in 2015. The tribal government furloughed a quarter of its workers in January.

Coal production in Montana is down a third from last year.

In Wyoming, the state government is bracing for a $250 million to $500 million cut in state spending because of declining coal production, expected to be off 100 million tons from 2015.
A Park County District Court judge has ordered the city of Billings to pay more than $2.7 million to police officers in back pay and wages, penalties, attorneys fees and other costs stemming from a lawsuit filed by now retired officer Ernie Watters and 26 others in 2009.

In her decision, Judge Brenda R. Gilbert ordered the city to pay about $933,000 in unpaid wages and benefits, a penalty of about $1.03 million, and attorneys fees and plaintiffs' costs totaling about $779,000.

Obviously, very disappointed, Billings Police Chief Rich St. John said in an email.

In an email, City Administrator Tina Volek said that city attorneys and staff "believe significant errors of fact and law were made in the decision."

"We disagree with the judge's conclusion on the main issue in this case: that an officer should be paid for longevity starting on his or her first day of employment."

Volek said she will ask the Billings City Council on Monday whether members want to appeal the case to the Montana Supreme Court.

The ruling would not be covered under the city's insurance policy, Volek said.

In her decision, Gilbert said that the citys omission of longevity and annual pay in determining the regular hourly rate of pay for officers resulted in the underpayment of wages, overtime and retirement contributions.

In their original complaint, filed by Billings attorneys L. Randall Bishop and Lawrence A. Anderson, the plaintiffs argue that the city's failure to calculate and pay their wages "at the correct and required hourly rate when such wages were due constitutes a willful breach of defendant's duties under Montana law," entitling them to recover penalties.

The city, the complaint alleged, "has failed to pay plaintiffs at the proper hourly rate enhanced by longevity increases."

As for the penalty, Gilbert cites Montana law that allows the imposition of a penalty of 110 percent of the wages due and unpaid in her ruling. She cited administrative rules for special circumstances that mandate the imposition of the 110 percent penalty, which include occasions when the employer has previously violated wage and hour statutes.

It is a matter of public record, she wrote, that the City of Billings failed to pay wages to its firefighters in accordance with its collective bargaining agreements and the Wage Protection Act going as far back as 1995.

That firefighter lawsuit, also over wages, was filed in 2000 and decided in 2007. It cost city taxpayers nearly $4.3 million, including a 15-percent penalty.

Gilbert also ruled that the plaintiffs incurred substantial costs because the city refused to undertake any calculations of past due wages and benefits. This required plaintiffs expert CPA, John Myers, to review wage data and perform detailed calculations for each member of the class (of affected officers).

Ernie Watters is married to U.S. District Judge Susan Watters, who was a Yellowstone County District Judge at the time the lawsuit was filed.
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Chinese Vice Premier Ma Kai has called for greater efforts to boost the country's intelligent manufacturing and improve competitiveness in the manufacturing industry.

During a tour to southern China's Guangdong Province Wednesday to Thursday, Ma visited a series of high-end manufacturers, information technology businesses, and intelligent equipment manufacturers.

He said significant progress had been made since the introduction of the "Made in China 2025" initiative last year.

The "Made in China 2025" initiative is a 10-year national plan designed to transform China from a manufacturing giant into a high-tech manufacturing power. Robots and high-end computer controlled machine tools are among 10 key fields listed in the initiative.

Ma stressed innovation and cooperation in the industry, stating that firms and universities should make breakthroughs in core technology as soon as possible.

He called for the building of a standardized intelligent manufacturing system, developing of software and hardware, and training of personnel.

Greater efforts should be made to upgrade traditional manufacturing and to establish smart factories, he said.

Ma also called for integration of the Internet and the manufacturing industry, to move the sector up the value chain.
A Roberts-area ranchers lawsuit against the Carbon County attorney and a former county sheriff can proceed after a judge denied a request to dismiss the case.

Rancher Bill Burgan and his wife, Lynette, filed the case in Billings District Court in May claiming that Carbon County Attorney Alex Nixon and former Sheriff Thomas Rieger had violated the couples constitutional rights.

In 2013 Rieger charged William Burgan with criminal trespass after he cut a lock on a gate erected by his neighbor preventing Burgans access to an irrigation headgate.

"Nixon and Rieger's first priority was to keep this from blowing up," said Ray Kuntz, a Red Lodge attorney who is representing the men. "Cutting locks and coming in without an easement, that's trespassing."

Burgan had previously shown the sheriff and county attorney that he possessed a historical easement across his neighbors land to reach the headgate, but the issue hadn't been settled in court.

The trespassing charge was later dismissed in justice court, and the Burgans asked a state court to resolve the issue. In February 2015 District Court Judge Michael Moses of Billings reaffirmed the existence of the Burgans easement based on historical use. The landowner who attempted to lock the Burgans out, James Brien, was ordered to pay the Burgans attorney fees and costs. But Kuntz said until the court had decided the issue Burgan's previous actions were trespassing.

Burgans attorney, Matthew Monforton of Bozeman, has argued that Nixons and Riegers actions violated Burgans Fourth Amendment rights of protection against unreasonable seizure of property, his Fifth Amendment rights protecting him from the taking of private property and his Fourteenth Amendment rights against deprivation of procedural due process.

The Burgans also accused the county attorney and former sheriff of taking and deprivation-of-due-process, malicious prosecution, abuse of process and violation of Montanas Anti-Intimidation Act.

Nixon and Rieger had argued they were immune from prosecution because of their roles as public officials and because the Burgans couldnt prove a violation of their rights. But U.S. District Court Judge Carolyn Ostby denied the motion for dismissal and also said the county could be held liable for any damages.

The important part of the ruling for us is that prosecutors and sheriffs are not above the law when it comes to constitutional rights, Monforton said.

Ostby did, however, dismiss Lynette Burgans separate claims that her rights were also violated. Monforton said he plans to amend his complaint as it relates to Lynette Burgan to add more information.

No trial date has been set for the lawsuit to proceed. Nixon and Rieger could also appeal Ostbys ruling.

"We're looking at that," Kuntz said. "We have a little more time to decide whether or not we will appeal."
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Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang said on Thursday that the country will open more widely to the outside world and continue to improve the investment environment to promote global trade.

Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang delivers a keynote speech at the 19th China International Fair For Investment and Trade on Thursday. [Xinhua/Jiang Kehong]

During his keynote speech at the 19th China International Fair For Investment and Trade, Wang said China is a firm advocate and positive promoter of cross-border investment cooperation.

In terms of foreign direct investment, China has ranked first among all developing nations for 24 consecutive years, and China's outbound investment ranked in the world's top three for five years running, Wang said.

He promised that China would further expand market access to create a fairer and more stable and transparent policy environment.

There will be more efforts to promote greater openness in the hinterlands, coastal regions and border areas, and China will also encourage processing trade to relocate to central and western regions, Wang added.

He also called for better use of foreign direct investment and deeper international cooperation on production capacity.

The 19th China International Fair For Investment and Trade, which runs Thursday through Sunday in the southern port city of Xiamen, is the world's largest international event promoting investment.
The G20 Hangzhou summit, chaired by Chinese President Xi Jinping, ended with broad consensus on stronger global economic governance, a clearer future course for the G20 as well as fresh impetus and new direction for the world.

The Hangzhou Consensus underpins China's shifting role as it transforms from a player in global affairs to a leader of the global agenda.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently warned of a low growth trap, lamenting that the world economy has not been so weak for so long since the early 1990s.

As developed nations' prescription to the current ills seems ineffective, China shared its solution with the world.

From its own experience, China said there is no excuse to delay structural reforms. Half-baked or half-hearted measures will not address the root cause of the economic languor.

China's resolve on structural reform was echoed by G20 members, who called for the combination of monetary easing with fiscal and structural reform, and reform based on the conditions of each individual economy.

The urgency of implementing structural reform has never been acknowledged as clearly in a G20 communique as it was at Hangzhou. Forming a consensus and designing a roadmap for structural reform is a major contribution from China to not only the G20 members but the world at large.

With China assuming a leading role in rejecting protectionism, G20 leaders reaffirmed their commitment to avoiding competitive currency devaluation and pledged to make the global economy open and inclusive.

This commitment is vital. If protectionism is left uncontrolled, a healthy and sustainable recovery will remain out of reach.

The success of the Hangzhou summit can also be measured by advances to reforming the outdated global economic governance model, as participants agreed to push forward quota reform at the IMF and World Bank.

With a record high number of representatives from developing economies invited to the summit, the voices of emerging economies were heard and their opinions translated into action.

While China is taking a more proactive role in global economic governance, it is working within the G20 framework, not creating a new system. China has no intention of challenging the existing system, but rather complementing it.

The G20 lost momentum after it revived global growth in the wake of the financial crisis. The Hangzhou summit will be remembered as defining moment -- when the world's largest developing country helped this crucial platform move forward.

Beyond that, G20 should also be remembered as a meeting with real actions, not empty talk.
Lu Hongxiang, Chairman of JUMORE. [File photo]

The proposal to create an Electronic World Trade Platform (eWTP), one of the five suggestions put forward at the Group of 20 (G20) Hangzhou summit by the Business 20 (B20) summit, has drawn widespread public attention.

Lu Hongxiang, a B2B (business to business) representative participating in the B20, told China.org.cn that once endorsed, the eWTP would become a complement to the existing rules set by the World Trade Organization (WTO), which will give a push to global economic growth.

Lu is Chairman of JUMORE, the world's first cross-border e-commerce platform for full-line bulk commodity and whole industry chain.

China.org.cn: The whole world is expecting China solutions or China prescriptions as the country hosting the G20 summit against the backdrop of a sluggish global economy. What is your expectation for the summit? In what ways can Chinese enterprises contribute to global economic governance?

Lu Hongxiang: The summit will not only show the world an open and inclusive China, but also provide an opportunity for Chinese enterprises to go to the global market. Global economic governance is the theme of the Hangzhou G20 summit. To guarantee sustainable development of enterprises, we need to ensure economic growth is achieved and that social responsibilities are fulfilled.

China.org.cn: How are enterprises like JUMORE contributing to the B20?

Lu Hongxiang: As a cross-border e-commerce platform, JUMORE cooperated with several global financial organizations to establish a unique financial service system that not only provides customized financial solutions but also guarantees the safety of online payment.

JUMORE has set up JUMORE National Pavilions for all the countries that joined the platform. These pavilions will provide quality service and support for the countries, and help them attract investments and facilitate their competitive industries' docking with the Chinese market and the global market.

China.org.cn: Do you think it will be hard to establish the eWTP? How will the platform function?

Lu Hongxiang: If the eWTP proposal was endorsed, it will be complementary to WTO rules and become an important approach for global collaboration to participate in economic governance. As a global cross-border e-commerce platform, JUMORE is cooperating with more than 80 countries and will endeavor to make its own contribution to the establishment of the eWTP. Also, the eWTP will boost the development of all cross-border e-commerce platforms, including JUMORE.

China.org.cn: Much of JUMORE's business involves countries along the "Belt and Road" routes. How will JUMORE adjust its business so as to better implement the "Belt and Road" initiative?

Lu Hongxiang: JUMORE has been actively practicing in the "Belt and Road" initiative. In July 2015, JUMORE launched cross-border cooperation with 53 countries along the "Belt and Road" routes and later visited embassies of all the countries along the routes to seek cooperation. JUMORE will further cooperate with relevant countries on resources, finance and infrastructure along the whole industry chain.

China.org.cn: How will JUMORE cope with the current sluggish economic situation?

Lu Hongxiang: To get an enterprise out of trouble, innovation must be employed. Through the novel pattern of cross-border e-commerce, JUMORE greatly improved efficiency in trading and investing. To better serve the real economy, JUMORE will focus on innovation in the industry chain while integrating the global high-end service industry and cutting-edge technologies through the platform. This will help upgrade Chinese manufacturing and create a new drive for global economic growth.
From those deceased college students to the renowned university professor, it seems nowadays almost no one in China could assure they won't fall into the traps set up by telecom fraudsters.

Although the public security departments have posted many tips about how to avoid those scams, the cautiousness of people themselves might not be enough.

A warning system targeted at such phone scams has started to provide services to all China Mobile (China's largest telecommunication service supplier) users in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, according to a press conference held by the Inner Mongolian public security bureau on Wednesday.

Over 400 million fraud-related phone numbers have been labeled by the system, and whenever users receive phone calls from those numbers or call those numbers, warnings will appear on the screens to remind people of the possible trap.

From the mainstream media to the public security authorities, Chinese society has highly prioritized telecom scams since several college students were reported to have lost their tuition fees in such cases, sometimes even resulting in their deaths.
China's capital city is set to increase maternity wards and maternity-care personnel to meet the new round of the baby boom.

A newborn is held by a nurse before taking a bath at the Gansu Provincial Maternity and Child-care Hospital in Lanzhou, capital of northwest China's Gansu Province, Feb. 17, 2016. The hospital saw a baby boom at the beginning of the Chinese Lunar New Year, with 352 babies born from Feb. 8 to 15.[Photo/Xinhua]

Chinese government's relaxation of the birth rule, which allows couples to have a second baby, along with people's preference for the Zodiac animal-monkey that is characterized by its intelligence and liveliness, are the main reasons leading to the anticipated baby boom.

According to official statistics, the number of newborns in Beijing this year is expected to surpass 300,000, with the newly registered and documented "expecting" population per month increased to 30,000 since last December.

Beijing Municipal Health and Family Planning Commission announced the transformation of VIP wards to general ones in order to ease the pressure on obstetrics units.

This will provide thousands more beds in the OB/GYN wards this month, and see 800 delivery specialists added by the end of this year.

Hospital authorities still express concerns over the gap between the growing demand for maternity services and understaffing of specialists in the OB/GYN wards.

To fill the gap, Beijing will give priority to professional obstetrics and perinatal caregivers, extending working tenures, raising salary levels and offering additional incentives, such as providing non-local practitioners with permanent residence status in the capital city.
Authorities in some parts of China are considering a holiday to allow busy people to spend more time with their parents.

In its 2016-2020 development plan, Beijing has proposed encouraging employers to grant days off to employees when their parents celebrate a birthday, need medical help, are seriously ill, or are dying.

A similar document released by east Chinas Anhui Province encourages grown-up children to live near or with their parents, and asks employers to grant paid leave to those who take care of disabled parents.

Some other provinces already allow an only child to take up to 20 days off each year to care for parents over 60 years old or who are in hospital.

Such time off is very precious to me, said Li Tingfei, an only child who works in Anhui but whose parents live in the southwest city of Chongqing.

Calls and video chats, no matter how frequent, are no match for having a meal at the same table with them, or looking after them when they are ill in bed, Li said.

You Xiaoxu, a hospital intern, is concerned about whether the holiday will ever materialize. She works in a city two hours from her hometown, but tight scheduling and a heavy workload make it impossible for her to go home much.

Doctors are so overwhelmed by work that they cannot even enjoy normal weekends or statutory holidays, You said.

Chen Kaizi, a Shanghai journalist, said: Those who love their parents will always find time to go home and fulfil their filial duties, with or without holidays. But can you make sure that everyone will spend the new time off with their parents, rather than traveling or doing something else?

According to the Ministry of Civil Affairs, there are more than 220 million people over the age of 60 in China, or more than 16 percent of the population.

Fan Hesheng, a sociologist at Anhui University, said: It is necessary for an aging China with a considerable number of one-child families to add a filial holiday, but effective execution will need the joint efforts on various parties.

He said both employees and employers should already know that taking care of the elderly is both a legal responsibility and a moral obligation.
A resident of Henan province is suing a micro-blogger for criticizing all Henan people. The lawsuit was accepted by the Zhengzhou Jinshui District People's Court in Zhengzhou, Henan province on Wednesday.

Hu Wei, the micro-blogger, who has 46,000 online fans, registered on Sina Weibo in 2012.

His posts sometimes made light of Henan people, which drew frowns from netizens, according to the local newspaper, Dahe Daily. Hu drew on current hot topics to abuse Henan people several times, including commentaries about actor Wang Baoqiang's divorce, the news report said.

A screen shot showed a posting on Aug 14, saying that "Ma Rong, Wang's wife, has no face, like all Henan people".

The lawsuit was filed by Jing Changshui, 46, who said he had lived and worked in Henan for nearly 30 years and knows the kind of people they are. He said Hu's abuse dated at least to April, and claimed the blogger had suggested there were no good Henan people, which seriously damaged Henan's reputation.

"Central China's Henan province has a long history, and such insults deeply harm the image of Henan, so I chose to deal with it using legal weapons," Jing said.

Jing submitted his lawsuit as "public interest litigation" on Aug 31. Defendants include Hu and Sina Weibo. He demanded an apology from Hu for the alleged insults. He also asked for deletion of material deemed offensive and said Hu must stop making insulting remarks about Henan people.

What's more, he wanted the defendant to make a public apology through the media, and pay 1,000 yuan ($150) as compensation for mental injury.
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China and five other countries launched a joint three-month drug crackdown along the Lancang-Mekong region on Thursday.

A coordinating command center was unveiled in Jinghong city, southwest China's Yunnan Province at a ceremony marking the start of the joint action. Chinese senior anti-drug officials and representatives from Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam attended the ceremony.

Anti-drug liaison staff from the six countries will pool information,share experiences and coordinate to ensure the action a success, said China's Ministry of Public Security.

Lancang is the Chinese name for the upper reaches of the Mekong River. The Lancang-Mekong stream stretches nearly 5,000 km through the six countries.

The drug control task in the Mekong River area remains difficult due to the resurfacing of opium poppy cultivation in the Golden Triangle region, the growth of synthetic drugs and more hidden drug trafficking in recent years.

Since the China-proposed joint drug control efforts in the region began in 2013, a series of cross-border drug cases were solved, said the ministry.

The joint drug crackdown started in 2015. Thailand hosted the first phase of the joint action in early 2016.
The government will continue to support trade and investment links across the Taiwan Straits, Wang Shouwen, vice-minister of commerce, said on Thursday.

"The economies of the mainland and Taiwan have proved to be complementary. The two sides should cooperate further in various industries to tap the growth potential," Wang said at a cross-Straits economic cooperation forum held in Xiamen, Fujian province, during the 19th China International Fair for Investment and Trade.

Business cooperation across the Straits has grown significantly during the past decades and the mainland welcomes investment from Taiwan to share in the growth opportunities, according to Wang.

In the eyes of Taiwan business people, e-commerce will be another growth engine to facilitate business ties cross the Straits.

"Taiwan, without much natural resources and population, has to rely on e-commerce as an important driving force of the economy. Taiwan's e-commerce, as it started earlier than the mainland, has quite a lot of experience that can be learned from," said Liang Kuo-Hsin, chairman of the Taiwan Trade Center.

Lai Cheng-I, chairman of the General Chamber of Commerce of Taiwan, noted that the number of tourists from the mainland has fallen sharply. But business communication in the private sector between the mainland and Tai-wan will not stop, since Taiwan's trade with the mainland accounts for 40 percent of the island's total trade volume.

Zheng Kang, deputy director of the economic bureau of the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, suggested that Taiwan should develop more products and services targeting the mainland market, as the mainland boasts a stable and rising middle class.

In addition to investment, Zheng said that the central government will draw up more policies to encourage Taiwan companies to engage in innovation and entrepreneurship in the mainland.
The double-track work permits, involving border entrance work permit and foreign experts work permit for overseas employees in China, will soon be streamlined into one system under reforms initiated by the State Council and implemented by the State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs.

Zhang Jianguo, head of the State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs, at a symposium on streamlining the application of work permits for foreigners held in Tianjin. [Photo courtesy of Tianjin Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs]

This will allow applicants to download online forms for completion and submission, triggering a lifetime individual code for the storage of personal information, such as, working experiences, services and credits. All the applications are expected to be finished through one service window within five working days, half the time of the previous application and cutting out approximately 70 of the old procedures.

"The integration of the two different work permits is designed to remove impediments, such as inconsistent administration, policies and inefficient communication related to different and often complicated issues related to the jobs, identities and social status of foreigners," said Zhang Jianguo, head of the State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs.

"It will help reduce repetitious checks and approvals, avoid administrative loopholes and improve efficiency by building a more active, open and efficient personnel introduction system as was required in the Government Work Report delivered by Premier Li Keqiang, this year," Zhang added.

Trials of the integrated mechanism will be officially launched in Beijing, Hebei, Tianjin, Anhui, Shandong, Guangdong, Sichuan and Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region on November 1. Based on their experiences, such as how to distribute duties, streamline procedures and systems and improve coordination among different departments, the system is expected to be expanded to other provinces and regions next year.

"We'll learn from the experiments in the pilot cities and regions, becoming aware of their problems and searching for pertinent solutions," Zhang said.

The administration will issue new work permit cards equipped with contactless chips of RFID technology, carrying foreigners' names, photos, visa numbers, the duration and expiry date of permitted stay, and the workplaces.

The integrated work permit, under the concerted efforts of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Public Security, will be widely recognized by the government authorities across the country where the information is expected to be shared.

Categorized into A, B and C groups, the work permits will identify the status of the holders, respectively high-end personnel, professional personnel and the temporary and seasonal personnel in service or non-technical sectors in response to market demand.

The highlights to evaluate the credits of the foreign employees contain the criteria of their salaries, educational backgrounds, length of service, working hours in China, Chinese language proficiency, workplaces (concerning regional disparities), ages and working experiences (including, teaching in prestigious universities or working for well-known multinational companies). Scores are added up to 60 minus for group C, 60 plus for B and 85 plus for A.

National personnel schemes and international standards are counted for the evaluation of the top-end foreign experts accredited to Group A.

There are various perks also emerging to facilitate the lives of foreign employees. In Tianjin, the municipality has launched an online hospital registration system on Wechat (a social networking platform in China) for the visits of foreigners who will be accompanied during their visits to doctors through easy access.

Competition in the international human resource arena is becoming increasingly ferocious, which drives China to break the shackles of fossilized personnel mechanism to attract more high-end talents for their efforts in building the innovation-driven society, Zhang said.

A symposium on streamlining the application of work permits for foreigners was held from September 8 to 9 in Tianjin, the municipality piloting reform of the administrative registration for foreigners in search of jobs in China. The double-track work permits, including the border entrance work permit and foreign experts work permit for overseas employees in China, will soon be incorporated into one application system. [Photo courtesy of Tianjin Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs]

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HELENA  A Great Falls woman who told police by cellphone she had been abducted and put in the trunk of a car north of Helena on Tuesday died of a single gunshot wound to the chest and abdomen.

Rita M. Maze's body was found in the trunk of her car outside of Spokane early Wednesday. The Spokane County Medical Examiner's Office released information about her death Thursday.

Maze's manner of death remains "pending," which means officials are "deferring the determination until the death investigation and laboratory studies are complete," according to a press release from the Medical Examiner's Office. Additional testing can include toxicology, laboratory and microscopic.

The examiner's office did not say what type of gun was used.

Though officials were pursuing a person of interest who was seen on surveillance footage, Lewis and Clark County Sheriff Leo Dutton said the individual has been ruled out.

"They had a still shot from a convenience store that they worked to find the person of interest. It was not somebody that was involved in this case," he said Thursday afternoon.

Nobody has been taken into custody in connection with Maze's death.

Maze, 47, told authorities a man had kidnapped her at a rest stop on Interstate 15 near Wolf Creek around 11 a.m. Tuesday after striking her on the head and forcing her into the trunk, Dutton said.

Maze spoke with her husband and Helena police by cellphone before she died later that night, Dutton said. Her body was found around 12:30 a.m. Wednesday.

"It makes no sense," her 23-year-old daughter, Rochelle Maze, said. "They could have taken the car, could have taken money from her. And then they leave the car there, and that's because this is an evil monster of a person."

Bob Maze reported his wife of 26 years missing Tuesday night. She had not returned to Great Falls from a trip to her hometown of Helena 90 miles to the south, and she wasn't answering phone calls from family.

Rita reportedly called him about two hours later.

"She said through my dad that she had been hit and she was in a trunk and she didn't know if it was her trunk or not," Rochelle Maze said. "She didn't know where she was and (said) that she had been driving for a really long time."

While Rita Maze was on the phone with her husband, Rochelle Maze reportedly called the police officer who had taken the missing person's report.

"Every single thing my mom was saying to my dad, my dad was saying out loud and I was telling the officer," the daughter said.

Law enforcement officers pinged Rita's cellphone to help determine her location. Her family learned her bank card had been used to make purchases of about $25 at gas stations in the towns of Kingston, Idaho, and Ritzville, Washington.

Investigators have said they were looking at surveillance video from the stations, but none was released Thursday.

Rochelle Maze said her mother told her she was overpowered by a "massive guy" who was about 6 feet, 5 inches tall and wearing a black hoodie. She said her mom was terrified because he had access to her gun  a 9 mm Ruger she kept in her purse for protection.

"The phone just cut out after about 10 minutes," Rochelle Maze said. "We don't know if she hung up or what."

"By the time we contacted (police) at 8:30, she had been gone for nine hours, and we didn't even know it," Rochelle Maze said.

Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich told The Spokesman-Review the kidnapping narrative will remain in question "until we actually find out what is going on."

We know where the body was located; we know where she started out, he told the newspaper. What happened in between? Dont know.

Rita Maze had worked as an aide, a crosswalk attendant and a cook at schools in Great Falls. She was the "lunch lady" at Morningside Elementary from 2005 to 2009. Her birthday is Sunday.

"I'm getting married in nine months," an emotional Rochelle Maze said. "She's just going to miss a lot."

Rita Maze also is survived by a son, Michael, 25, who is in the military and stationed in Germany. He is married and has two daughters.

Investigators were checking the car for fingerprints and DNA to see if they could find a match to a suspect with a criminal record, Rochelle Maze said.

"My mom had no enemies. Nobody would want to hurt her. There's an outpouring in this community that you would not believe," she said.

The FBI is leading the investigation alongside officials from the Helena area and Spokane County. An FBI spokesperson has confirmed the agency's role in the case but has not released any further information. "This remains an active investigation and no further comment will be made at this time," FBI spokesperson Sandra Yi Barker said. A candlelight vigil for Maze, a longtime cook at Morningside Elementary School in Great Falls, is slated for Saturday. It will be in the garden area of Gibson Park at 8 p.m.
China gets on the global governance stage as one of its main actors. This is the most relevant outcome of the 11th G20 Summit, which happened on September 4-5 in the historic city of Hangzhou. On the other hand, Brazil did not do more than being a supporting actor, so small that one would not be able to imagine the country used to be one of the G20's main protagonists since its creation in 1999. To be fair, this shrinking had its kickoff well before the Hangzhou Summit, reflecting on the International Politics board the political crisis that Brazil has been going through.

As it is known, until 2008 the forum was a space whose purpose rested upon discussing economic-related matters of developed and underdeveloped countries, the so-called financial G20. It consisted essentially of financial specialists such as finance ministers and presidents of central banks. When the United States endorsed its creation, it could never have believed it would evolve and become the main international forum about economic and political discussions concerning global governance. This change reshaped, gradually, the axis of world power management concentrated on the G7, whose members have been the United States, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Canada.

After the Hangzhou summit, the G20 will not be the same, like it was not the same after the Washington summit in November 2008, that being the first one to receive the major global political leaders. It was so because China decided to take a central position in the economic reshaping of the world. If in the beginning there was some talking going on about the division of tasks between the G7/8 and the G20, it became irrelevant now. After Hangzhou, the G20 will be the main forum for addressing worldwide problems, not only those concerning finance and economy as it used to be.

It is evident that, in order for it to become the world's main forum on global governance, many other adjustments will have to be made, but there is no doubt that there is no going back from this path, at least in the current stage of reshaping world power. In this perspective, China will use all its economic and diplomatic might for it. Furthermore, this intention becomes clear on the Chinese president Xi Jinping's speeches, not only in the opening but also in his statement to the international press: "the G20 should meet the international community's expectations, as well as following the path of prosperity and stability. It should also adapt to its place in time and show the way. The G20 should adapt to the necessities of the global economy and transform itself (). (Opening speech). Still according to Xi Jinping, "the G20 needs to improve its role as an engine for international cooperation. It has to change and move on from being a mechanism for answering to crisis to being a mechanism for governance in the long term () we all agree on the fact that the transformation of the G20 will affect all members' immediate interests and the future of the global economy. In order to maintain the G20's vitality, we should adopt the current changes and progresses". (Statement to the press). It is evident that, as the Chinese president himself insisted on outlining, the G20 does not have a strategic vision. May we be able to acknowledge that it is not that simple, due to the fact that it will be necessary to conciliate strategic interests that may be mostly divergent from each other, be it at the national level and of corporative economic interests, or at a deeper stage, in which there are world civilization visions.

In conclusion, we emphasize that when we talk about Brazil's shrinking, we do not mean to stay at a leafleting and accusatory level, nor do we want to relocate upon individualities of representing circumstances the responsibility for a grave internal political and economic crisis. What we mean is that, through the G20, we are before a crucial moment in the reshaping of world power and that, in light of this historic opportunity, Brazil needs to be bigger than its own pain and internal divisions. In other words, we need to look at this new G20 horizon and take, like China is doing now, our place in the world's political and economic reshaping, and look forward to witnessing the edification of a harmonious and environmentally healthier mankind. Brazil can and should contribute more to its own wellbeing and that of mankind.

Jose Medeiros da Silva is a PhD in Political Science from University of Sao Paulo, professor at Zhejiang International Studies University and a Guest Researcher at the Macau International Institute.

Rafael Goncalves de Lima is a Master in International Relations from Jilin University.
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The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) on Thursday slammed the remarks made by U.S. President Barack Obama at the 11th East Asia Summit about its ballistic missile launches and urged Washington to exercise "self-prudence."

Obama vowed on Tuesday to work with the United Nations to tighten sanctions against the DPRK when he attended the meeting of the East Asian leaders.

These remarks "are nothing but last-ditch efforts to dodge the criticism of the hostile policy toward the DPRK ... and give a further boost to the international atmosphere of pressure on the DPRK," said a statement issued by a spokesman for the DPRK foreign ministry.

"The only way of averting a war and defending peace in Korea is to increase in every way the military capabilities for self-defense with the nuclear deterrence as a pivot," said the statement, which was carried by the state media KCNA.

The statement urged the United States to exercise self-restraint and not to infringe on the sovereignty and dignity of the DPRK.

The UN Security Council on Tuesday condemned its Monday missile launches in a press statement and reiterated the importance of maintaining peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula.

On Monday, the DPRK fired three ballistic missiles into eastern waters. These launches are in grave violation of the DPRK's international obligations under relevant Security Council resolutions, said the UN press statement.

The DPRK state media described the test-firing of the missiles as "perfect" and said the missile launches have proved that the strategic force of the military is "capable of mounting a preemptive attack on the enemies any time and from any place."

The missile launches came less than two weeks after Pyongyang test-fired a ballistic missile from a submarine off its east coastal town of Sinpo, where a submarine base is known to be located, on Aug. 24.
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Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on Thursday called for promoting comprehensive strategic partnership with Laos by maintaining close high-level contact, strengthening dialogue and coordination and promoting practical cooperation in various fields.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (L) meets with Laotian President Bounnhang Vorachit in Vientiane, Laos, Sept. 8, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua]

Li made the remarks while meeting with his Laotian counterpart Thongloun Sisoulith after the East Asia leaders' meetings in the Laotian capital of Vientiane.

This year marks the 55th anniversary of bilateral relations. Li said that China and Laos enjoy a high degree of political mutual trust, comprehensive economic cooperation and extensive people-to-people exchanges, which benefit people from two sides and helps maintain regional peace, stability and development.

The Chinese premier said that China is willing to align its 13th Five-Year Plan with Laos' 8th Five-Year Plan to promote production capacity and investment cooperation and ensure the launch of the flagship project of a high-speed railway before the end of this year.

The construction of an economic cooperation zone at the Mohan-Boten border crossing point and a comprehensive development zone in Vientiane should proceed, Li said, adding that large projects should play a leading role in trade cooperation and regional inter-connectivity.

The border areas of the crossing point connect Mohan in southwest China's Yunnan Province with Boten in Laos.

China is willing to share experience with Laos in fields such as drawing development blueprints, tourism development and agricultural disaster prevention, Li said.

He also pointed out that the two countries should strengthen customs and quality control so as to increase convenience of port customs clearance, improve people-to-people exchanges in cultural, media and educational fields, and promote cooperation in defense and law enforcement in order to maintain regional security and stability.

China is willing to keep close coordination with Laos on international and regional issues, firmly support each other, strengthen close cooperation under multilateral frameworks such as East Asia cooperation and the Lancang-Mekong River Cooperation, so as to bring benefit to people of the two countries and the region, Li said.

For his part, Thongloun said that Li's visit is significant as the two countries are celebrating the 55th anniversary of the bilateral ties and Li's attendance at the East Asia leaders' meetings shows great encouragement and support for Laos' rotating presidency.

Congratulating China on the successful hosting of the G20 Hangzhou Summit, Thongloun said that the two countries have made great achievements in political, economic, trade and investment cooperation.

On people-to-people exchanges, the Laotian prime minister noted that more than 1 million Chinese tourists have visited Laos. Meanwhile, bilateral cooperation in defense, law enforcement and regional cooperation has been making steady progress, he said.

By participating in Laos' infrastructure construction and helping with personnel training, China has made great contribution to Laos' economic and social development, Thongloun said, adding that Laos will accelerate railway cooperation and continue to create sound conditions for bilateral investment and cooperation.

After the meeting, the two leaders witnessed the signing of 20 cooperation documents in such fields as trade, investment, economy, technology and education.
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An unidentified warplane struck a meeting of top rebel commanders in northern Syria on Thursday, a military source told Xinhua.

The airstrike killed a number of leaders of the Jaish al-Fateh, or Army of Conquest, including one of its founders, as well as a commander of the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, previously known as the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front, the source said on condition of anonymity.

The rebel commanders were meeting in the countryside of the northern province of Aleppo when the strike hit, the source added, stopping short of giving details about the identity of the warplane.

It wasn't clear yet who was behind the airstrike, as the Qatari-based al-Jazeera reportedly said the U.S.-led anti-terror coalition was behind the strike, while some local reports suggested the Syrian air force was behind the air raid.

Still, the airstrike comes as the Syrian army on Thursday recaptured the key town of al-Ramouseh in the southern countryside of Aleppo, further tightening the noose on the rebels in the eastern side of Aleppo city.
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A Saudi-led coalition airstrike killed nine civilians, including four children, in Yemen's northern province of Amran on Thursday, a local official said.

The nine from three families were killed when the airstrike hit their three-story residential building, the official told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

Five others were fatally wounded after pulled alive from under the rubble, he said.

Medical officials at Amran hospital confirmed the toll.

The apartment building locates near a public market in central Amran city, the province capital, about 60 km north of the country's capital Sanaa.

The military Arab coalition led by Saudi Arabia has been aerial bombing rebels, Shiite Houthi armed group backed by troops loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, since 2015 after the rebels expelled Saudi-backed internationally recognized government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi into exile.

Houthi fighters and Saleh forces stormed Sanaa, Amran and about half of the country's north in late 2014 and they still dominate despite the 18-month intensified war.

The coalition intervened with air military campaign with the aim to prevent the rebels from controlling the country and restore the government.

The UN-sponsored peace talks between Yemeni rival factions collapsed last month, but UN envoy Ismail Ould Chiekh Ahmed said this week the Yemeni parties agreed to resume negotiations to end war and share future new government.

At least 10,000 people, mostly civilians, were killed in the air strikes and battles, and about three million are displaced.
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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin held a phone call late Thursday, and agreed to continue efforts to achieve a truce in Aleppo, Syria, the Turkish Presidency said in a statement.

The two leaders discussed Turkish-Russia bilateral ties as well as the latest developments in Syria, state-run Anadolu Agency reported.

Erdogan reiterated the importance of achieving ceasefire as soon as possible in the northern city of Aleppo, a rebel-held city under a devastating siege.

The Operation Euphrates Shield was also one of the major topics of discussion, the presidency said.

"The importance of the fact that Turkey's border with Syria is now completely free of the Islamic State (IS) terrorists was emphasized in the call," the statement added.

Meanwhile, the Kremlin also released a statement to confirm the telephone conversation between the two leaders.

The Turkish military launched the cross-border Operation Euphrates Shield on Aug. 24 along with the U.S.-led coalition in Syria's northern border city of Jarablus to clear the area from the IS.
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China and Britain on Thursday pledged to enhance their exchanges and mutual trust in military to tap their huge cooperation potential.

The latest development came as visiting Chinese Defense Minister Chang Wanquan met with British Secretary of State for Defense Michael Fallon on the sideline of the ongoing UN peacekeeping defense ministerial meeting in London.

Chang, also a Chinese state councilor, said that his country is willing to deepen mutual understanding and political trust with the new British government, expand cooperation and exchanges in various areas and levels so as to make new progress in the bilateral strategy coordination and pragmatic cooperation.

Chang's remarks came as China and Britain reaffirmed their commitments to the "golden era" in the bilateral relationship when the leaders of the two countries met in Hangzhou during the G20 summit a few days ago.

The minister said that the military relations between the two nations had witnessed substantial progress.

He called on the two sides to maintain the momentum of high-level military exchanges and bring new connotation to their pragmatic cooperation.

"We should make our military relations a critical growth pole for our bilateral relations," Chang added.

On his part, Fallon said that Britain is willing to strengthen its exchanges and cooperation with China in military and defense.

The defense ministerial meeting is a follow-up event of the the Leaders'summit on Peacekeeping which was convened in the United States last year.
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China on Thursday said that UN peacekeeping should be improved with better guidance and coordination as the second largest peacekeeping funding contributor of UN peacekeeping renewed its support and commitment.

Members of China's peacekeeping infantry battalion stand in formation for inspection by representatives of the Untied Nations at their camp in South Sudan on May 26, 2015. [Photo/Xinhua]

China is devoted to improving its peacekeeping capabilities and developing international cooperation, visiting Chinese State Councilor and Defense Minister Chang Wanquan told the ongoing UN peacekeeping defense ministerial meeting.

"In support of UN's initiative of setting up a 'vanguard brigade' of 4,000 rapid deployable troops, China will make part of its 8,000 rapid deployable troops meet the Level II readiness requirement of 60 days," he told the one-day meeting.

Last September, Chinese President Xi Jinping made an array of commitments to the international community at the leaders' summit on peacekeeping.

Speaking at the one-day meeting, Chang reaffirmed the commitment of his country, the largest troop contributor among the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, to participating in and supporting UN peacekeeping operations.

But the senior officer also stressed that to meet new challenges arising in changing conditions, it is imperative that UN should provide better guidance to improve peacekeeping and all parties concerned should enhance coordination to make peacekeeping more effective.

Chang called on all parties concerned to strengthen capacity building to improve peacekeeping.

The minister stressed that in carrying out rapid deployment of peacekeeping operations, the UN and related parties "should respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity as well as the main role of host countries concerned."

He also underscored that it should be reaffirmed that protection of civilians is the primary responsibility of governments and parties to conflict of host countries, and countries refrain from conducting peacekeeping in an abusive way.

The UN should continue to pursue peacekeeping reform, streamline deployment procedures, increase efficiency, improve field and logistic support and enhance safety and security of peacekeepers, he told the meeting.

The defense ministerial meeting is a follow-up event of the the leaders' summit on peacekeeping which was convened in the United States last year.
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The African Union (AU) peacekeeping troops backed by Somali National Army (SNA) captured a key location in southern Somalia from Al-Shabaab militant group Thursday.

"Our AU forces, together with SNA, took control of Abdalla Birole location. The militants fled the area and there were no casualties during the operation from our side," AU Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) Force Spokesman Joe Kibet told Xinhua by phone.

Abdalla Birole location lies about some 60 kilometers west of Kismayo town, the administrative capital of southern Somalia's Jubaland State.
Charging documents filed Tuesday revealed new details in the case of a Sidney man shot dead at a construction site.

Raymond Hansen, 35 of Sidney, faces a deliberate homicide charge in connection to the death of 63-year-old Terry Klein on Aug. 24.

Witnesses told police they saw Hansen acting erratically at a construction site south of Sidney at about 7:40 a.m. on the day of the homicide, according to documents.

Workers said they did not recognize Hansen or know why he was at the site of a breach in the Lower Yellowstone Irrigation Project Canal. He seemed confused, wandered around the worksite and could not hold a sensible conversation.

He asked workers what he should be doing on site and acted like he wanted to run equipment. However, Hansen could not identify the company he worked for.

Just before 9 a.m. the landowner called police. The caller said the man scratched his belly at one point, pulling his shirt up and revealing a pistol in his waistband. The landowner identified the pistol as a .45 ACP with white grip panels embellished with a black design.

After the encounter, Hansen found his way onto multiple pieces of machinery operated by employees of Franz Construction. He eventually climbed onto the tracks of an excavator operated by Klein. Witnesses said he got at least one foot into the cab before jumping down.

The operator of another excavator saw the machine wasnt moving and Klein was hunched over like he might be texting. The worker decided to investigate.

Klein was bleeding, and the worker tried to find a pulse. He called 911 just after 9 a.m. and used a bulldozer to clear a path so an ambulance could reach Kleins excavator.

Another Franz employee climbed onto the excavators track and encountered Hansen, who had returned to the machine after running up an embankment and showed another Franz worker a large stiletto knife.

Klein was dead from a single gunshot to the head. Witnesses said they saw Hansen leave in a green Ford pickup.

Hansen had earlier been arrested on another matter, and a law enforcement officer recognized a description of the truck. Officers visited Hansen's home and found a green F-350 in the garage. Its hood and tailpipe were still warm. When they searched Hansen for weapons they discovered he was wearing an empty gun holster.

Hansen told investigators he was lost and there was too much alcohol that morning. He said he spoke to people working near the canal construction site and asked for employment. He didnt recall any altercations, but they didnt have any work for him and probably wouldnt hire him anyway because he was still drunk from the previous night.

Hansen told police he could not own firearms because of a previous federal conviction for a firearms violation. He said the gun holster he was wearing was for carrying money.

A search of Hansens home revealed a stiletto knife and a .45 ACP handgun with white grips and a black logo of The Punisher, a vigilante movie and comic book character.

Officers also found a rumpled pair of jeans in the house that were dusty and appeared to have a blood spot on them. The pants were sent for forensic examination.

Hansen will make an initial appearance in Richland County District Court on Wednesday.
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Syria's Jaish al-Fateh rebel coalition announced the death of its general commander in an airstrike in northern Syria on Thursday, pan-Arab al-Mayadeen TV said.

The group's general commander in the Aleppo province, known as Abu Omar Saraqeb, was killed among other rebel commanders when an airstrike targeted their gathering place in the countryside of the northern province of Aleppo.

Meanwhile, a military source told Xinhua that an unidentified warplane struck a meeting of top rebel commanders in Aleppo Thursday.

The airstrike killed a number of leaders of the Jaish al-Fateh, or Army of Conquest, including one of its founders, as well as a commander of the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, previously known as the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front, the source said on condition of anonymity.

Among those killed is also the head of the military operations of the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, known as Abu Omar al-Homsi.

The rebel commanders were meeting in the countryside of the northern province of Aleppo when the strike hit, the source added, stopping short of giving details about the identity of the warplane.

Meanwhile, the Qatari-based al-Jazeera reportedly said the U.S.-led anti-terror coalition was behind the strike, making it the first U.S.-led airstrike to target Jaish al-Fateh.

Still, the airstrike comes as the Syrian army on Thursday recaptured the key town of al-Ramouseh in the southern countryside of Aleppo, further tightening the noose on the rebels in the eastern side of Aleppo city.

Jaish al-Fateh, an alliance of several rebel factions, was formed in March 2015 under the supervision and coordination of Saudi cleric Abdullah al-Muhaysini.

Some of its factions are active in the provinces of Hama and Latakia. The group seized most of Idlib province in northwestern Syria last year and it is actively supported by Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
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Tourism between China and the United States has seen significant progress in the past decade, an official said at an ongoing tourism forum in northwest China.

The combined number of tourists from China traveling to the United States and vice versa has exceeded 30 million since the two countries launched a high-level tourism dialogue mechanism in 2007, Li Jinzao, head of the China National Tourism Administration, said at the China-U.S. Tourism Leadership Summit in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region on Friday.

Li said the mechanism has enhanced communication and mutual understanding between people of the two countries and boosted economic growth.

China and the United States are important tourism sources for each other. Since Chinese group tours to the United States began in June 2008, tourism industries in both countries have expanded. Last year, about 4.75 million trips were made between China and the United States, with more than 2 million U.S. tourists coming to China. This year's trips between the two countries are expected to exceed 5 million, a record high.

In 2014, Chinese tourists spent about 165 billion U.S. dollars on overseas tourism, ranking first in global tourism spending, according to the World Tourism Organization under the United Nations. The United States was second in the ranking, with about 111 billion dollars spent.
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Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on Friday visited a Chinese-language school in the Laotian capital of Vientiane.

The Lieutou Chinese School, founded in 1937 and financed by local Chinese, now hosts more than 2,800 students. It teaches both Chinese and Laotian and offers courses from kindergarten to high school.

The Chinese premier received a warm welcome on the campus, where students sang well-known Chinese songs and recited a poem that highlighted China-Laos friendship.

Li also watched a group of students writing Chinese calligraphy and encouraged the youngsters to make contributions to the development of their countries and to the friendship between the two countries.

While meeting with a team of over 20 volunteer teachers from China, Li praised them for sowing the seed of friendship. He expressed the hope that the teachers will promote exchanges between the two peoples.

Li told the students and faculty that China and Laos enjoy strong mutual political trust, long-standing friendship, and close people-to-people and cultural exchanges.

Li arrived in Vientiane on Tuesday for a China-ASEAN leaders' meeting, a meeting between leaders of ASEAN nations and those of China, Japan and South Korea, and an East Asia Summit. He also made an official visit to Laos.
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U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov kicked off the talks on Syria on Friday morning, the U.S. Mission in Geneva quoted a State Department source as saying.

Discussions are taking place in the same luxurious lakeside hotel as two weeks ago when the two officials reached "clarity" on the way forward in enhancing cooperation between both countries.

According to a statement attribute to U.S. State Department spokesperson John Kirby, "discussion follows recent conversations on Syria and will focus on reducing violence, expanding humanitarian assistance for the Syrian people, and moving towards a political solution needed to end the civil war."

An agreement between both countries is hoped to give impetus to the intra-Syrian peace talks which have been on hold since April.
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Three female suspects arrested on Thursday evening had planned to attack two train stations and police officials in Paris, BFMTV reported on Friday.

According to the report, the suspected militants targeted Gare de Lyon, one of Paris' main train stations and another one at Boussy-Saint-Antoine in southeastern Paris.

The "radicalized and fanatical" women armed with knives also planned to attack police officers, the report added.

The suspects, aged 19, 23 and 39, were likely preparing violent and imminent attacks, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve told reporters late Thursday.

One of the militants stabbed a police officer before being shot and wounded by anti-terrorism units.

On Sunday, a Peugeot 607 containing seven gas cylinders, including an empty one on the front passenger seat, and three cans of diesel fuel was found near the famous tourist place Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris.

Anti-terrorism units did not discover detonators in the car, which carried no registration plate, but they found documents written in Arabic language.

Before the three women were arrested, four people -- two brothers and their girlfriends -- were already in custody over the discovery.

The first couple were arrested on a motorway in southern France and are known to the security services for links to radical Islamists. The man's brother and his girlfriend were arrested late Wednesday.
For the first time, Wyoming voters will be able to cast ballots for a Green Party presidential candidate.

Party nominee Jill Stein will appear as an independent candidate after her campaign collected enough signatures to land on the November ballot.

According to the Wyoming Green Party, this is the first time the party has placed a presidential candidate on the ballot since its founding in 1996.

Evan McMullin, an establishment GOP challenger to Republican nominee Donald Trump, failed to qualify. McMullin launched his signature-gathering drive in the Cowboy State just days before the forms were required to be submitted to the Wyoming Secretary of State's office.

A representative from the Secretary of States office informed the Star-Tribune on Thursday which candidates had gathered enough valid signatures to appear on the ballot. A public announcement followed.

An impressive number of independent candidates for office submitted signature petitions to our office for validation and verification, state election director Kai Schon said in a statement.

Also on the ballot will be Trump, Democrat Hillary Clinton, Libertarian Gary Johnson, Constitution Party candidate Darrell Castle and independent Roque De La Fuente.

The Secretary of States office did not provide a breakdown of how many valid signatures each independent candidate turned in. 3,302 valid signatures were required to qualify for the ballot.
A flotilla of canoes arrived late Thursday afternoon to the banks of the muddy Cannonball River, carrying Washington state tribal members who were officially welcomed ashore with song and cheers.

The canoes left Bismarck on Wednesday on their symbolic journey down the Missouri River and up the Cannonball to the Dakota Access Pipeline protest camp, where the unifying theme is water is life and hundreds are gathered in attempt to keep the pipeline out of the river.

Members of the Nisqually, Puyallup, Westshore Canoe, Swinomish, Colville, Warm Springs, Kalispell, Kootenai and Coeur dAlene tribes of Minnesota, as well as one from Alaska, sang a greeting song as they arrived at the shoreline where hundreds of people from the camp waited to greet them, many watching from the Highway 1806 bridge for a long view of the water.

Standing Rock Sioux Chairman Dave Archambault II met them after their journey some 35 miles downriver in heavy rain Wednesday and said, We welcome you to our land.

The ceremony was held at the far edge of the camp, which continues to swell and grow daily with tribal members from all over the country arriving to join Standing Rocks stand against the pipeline.

The camp has continued to attract national and international media outlets. Professional camera crews filming the river ceremony bumped elbows with camp spectators.
Gulf News | Sep. 09, 2016

Oman Air flight from Tehran to Muscat was delayed after another plane clipped the aircraft's winglet on the runway at Tehran airport on Thursday morning, said Oman Air in a statement.

Mahan Air Airbus A310 collided with Oman Air WY 432 and clipped its winglets while taxiing. "The wings of the stationary Oman Air Aircraft were clipped by another airline as it passed. No one was hurt," said the statement.

Oman Air added that the flight will be delayed until the inspections declare the aircraft fit to fly. "Passengers have been informed and arrangements are currently being made to either provide accommodation in Tehran or to find alternative flight," said Oman Air.

Oman Air apologised for the delay and resulting inconvenience.

On August 8, Oman Air diverted its flight WY414 coming from Amman to Abu Dhabi International Airport due to technical issues.

A scheduled flight from Amman, Jordan, to Muscat was diverted to Abu Dhabi due to technical issues.

The passengers were asked to disembark to fix the technical issues, which lasted for more than three hours.

On July 28, a Chennai-bound Oman Air flight from Muscat made an emergency landing at Goa International Airport after a passenger was taken ill, the airline said in a statement.

The statement added that flight WY251 later arrived at Chennai Airport and returned to Muscat International Airport.

The woman was reported sick mid-air as she suffered a cardiac arrest and later died, according to Indian media reports
State-owned nuclear giant aims to diversify beyond its traditional sector to offshore

China General Nuclear Power Corp said on Thursday its first offshore wind power project is in the final stages of going onlineas it also unveiled its ambition to diversify to other businesses beyond nuclear power.

Located about 25 kilometers from the coast of the eastern part of Rudong in Nantong, Jiangsu province, the offshore wind project has 38 units with a combined capacity of 152 megawatts.

Chen Sui, chairman of CGN New Energy Holdings Co Ltd, said the project is expected to generate 400 million kWh per year when connected to the grid at the end of this year.

"The success of the project means that we have developed our own offshore wind project technologies following the development of those in Germany and the United Kingdom," he said, adding the project meets the "double-10" standard, which requires offshore wind turbines to be installed in areas at least 10 kilometers offshore and at a water depth of at least 10 meters.

CGN's Rudong project got final approval from the State Oceanic Administration in April 2015.

The latest move came after the consortiumled by CGN's unit in Europe and the French new-energy firm Eolfiwon a tender in July for a floating wind farm in the sea off the island of Groix in the Atlantic coast of France.

The State-owned nuclear company said that the deal enables it to gain offshore wind technology, which can be applied in almost 70 percent of the global offshore wind resources.

CGN, the country's biggest nuclear power plant operator which started to develop wind power business in 2006, has a total installed wind power capacity in operation of 8.9 gigawatts.

CGN is looking beyond its core business and plans to diversify into wind, solar and other renewables, because it will improve its overall competitiveness both at home and abroad, said Lu Jinyong, a professor at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing.

"As many countries in Europe are now having second thoughts about nuclear power, which was once their only choice to generate power, nuclear companies have to diversify their businesses and plan ahead," he said.
Financial companies in Hong Kong and Guangdong province are teaming up to embrace the opportunities brought by the opening of China's financial sector.

China's first onshore overseas majority-owned joint venture fund management company on the mainland opened for business on Thursday in Shenzhen, Guangdong province.

The Hang Seng Qianhai Fund Management Co Ltd was jointly established by Hong Kong's Hang Seng Bank and Shenzhen Qianhai Financial Holdings Co Ltd (QHFH), holding stakes of 70 percent and 30 percent respectively.

QHFH is a strategic investment platform for the Qianhai Authority, part of Guangdong Free Trade Pilot Zone, which also includes Shekou area in Shenzhen, Nansha in Guangzhou, and Hengqin in Zhuhai.

James Lau, Hong Kong's undersecretary for financial services and the treasury, said the number and categories of renminbi-related investment product will increase remarkably following the Shanghai-Hong Kong stock link and the upcoming Shenzhen-Hong Kong stock link, which will bring new business to asset management companies on both the mainland and Hong Kong.

He also expects the Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) would also be allowed to trade on the Chinese mainland and that will be "a big step" in the opening of China's financial sector.

The new company has been established in order to grasp such opportunities by providing fundraising, sales and management service targeting individual and institutional investors on the mainland, said Andrew Fung Hau Chung, executive director and head of global banking and markets at Hang Seng Bank.

He expected to sell the first funding product within six months, which will be a balanced fund mixing stocks and bond.

In the future, we will focus on index of markets in the Belt and Road area, while keeping close attention to Special Drawing Right-dominated bonds, with the renminbi used as the settlement currency, he added.

He said the new company will also launch more products in overseas markets to satisfy the growing demand from Chinese mainland investors to allocate their assets globally, but the company first needs to get the QDII in order to do this.
An employee of China National Petroleum Corp works at the company's site in Huatugou, Qinghai province. [Photo/Xinhua]

Move dovetails with possible plans to turn firm into strategic holding company

China National Petroleum Corp, the country's biggest oil and gas producer, may use a small-cap company called Daqing Huake Co as a vehicle to list its oilfield services unit and avoid an initial public offering, according to sources.

CNPC, which owns about 55 percent of Daqing Huake through two subsidiaries, is also considering using the Shenzhen-listed company for its equipment-making unit, said the people. There is no timeline for the possible listing, they said. Daqing Huake board secretary Meng Fanli and a Beijing-based spokesman at CNPC separately declined to comment.

Daqing Huake rose as much as 8.6 percent, the biggest intraday advance in three months, before paring its gain to trade up 3.7 percent at 26.44 yuan ($4.01) at 10:08 local time. The CSI 300 Index of some of China's largest companies listed in Shanghai and Shenzhen slipped 0.2 percent.

CNPC announced so-called backdoor listings earlier this year to inject its engineering unit into Xinjiang Dushanzi Tianli High & New Tech Co and financial business assets such as Kunlun Trust Co and Kunlun Financial Leasing Co into Shandong-based Jinan Diesel Engine Co.

CNPC would be the last among China's big three State-run oil companies to list its oilfield services unit. China Petrochemical Corp merged its oilfield services assets into smaller listed unit Sinopec Yizheng Chemical Fibre Co in 2014.

CNOOC Ltd, the country's biggest offshore producer, took China Oilfield Services Ltd public in 2002.

CNPC Chairman Wang Yilin said in February the company plans to spin off and list its oilfield-services business. The listing dovetails with plans to possibly transform the energy giant into a strategic holding company that won't manage day-to-day operations of its subsidiaries.

A backdoor listing is a way to take a company public without an IPO by moving assets into an already-listed stock. Waiting times in China for a traditional listing can be more than four years after a company files an application, based on the estimated number of deals per year and the size of the backlog.

The China Securities Regulatory Commission this year has approved 98 IPOs out of 844 applications it processed as of Sept 1, according to data from the commission.

Bloomberg
HONG KONG - The Belt and Road initiative is "a new step in globalization," said former French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin on Thursday.

The initiative is an emblematic example of active policy pledging for better connections between continents through infrastructure like roads, highways, ports and airports, he said.

In a very divided world, the global community is facing a lot of crisis, such as recessions and difficulties in investment and monetary policies, and thus "it's important to have positive projects," he told Xinhua at a forum, Belt and Road Summit - Financing Through Silk Road Bond, organized by the International Capital Market Association and Dagong Global Credit Rating.

The initiative, proposed by China in 2013, refers to building a Silk Road Economic Belt and a 21st Century Maritime Silk Road. It is aimed at building a trade and infrastructure network connecting Asia with Europe and Africa along ancient trade routes.

One of the main assets of the initiative is that "it gives the perspective for the world community trying to improve new growth in regions that do have the capacity in growing fast," he said.

For example, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa, they have the capacity to achieve better and stronger growth, he noted.

Meanwhile, the program will stabilize regions, which are often targeted by terrorism, he said, adding that "more stability is often the common interests of every country in the world."

"The third factor is that it will create more understanding and cooperation spirit between the countries. So that's why the culture factor is also very important for growth and stability," de Villepin stressed.

Last, the Belt and Road will be a fantastic example for the world community to encourage new initiatives in different regions, for example, for Europe in dealing with Africa, he said.

The world community can "duplicate" the concept of the Belt and Road, he said, believing that "the main change is to go from bilateral cooperation to collective and world cooperation to create more growth and encourage different actors going forward."

He calls the initiative "a game changer" in various aspects.

It can be "a game changer for trade and business" thanks to physical and digital infrastructure making economies ever closer and more interdependent, he noted.

It can be "a game changer for financial exchanges" through international mobilization of public banks, insurance companies, private investors and specific funds, he said.

Last but not least, it can be "a game changer for peace and development" given the stronger political and diplomatic ties it will help create among countries along and around the Belt and Road, he said.

Besides his political career, Dominique de Villepin is also active in writing and his books cover poetry and fiction as well as essays on history, international relations and art.
BEIJING - A senior official on Thursday called for varied funding models for urban rail infrastructure projects to ease the financial burden on local governments.

"It's an irresistible trend to diversify funding sources for these projects," Hu Zucai, deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission, said at a forum.

Until now, 43 rail infrastructure projects have been approved with a total length of 8,600 kilometers. It is estimated that investment in such projects will exceed 300 billion yuan ($45 billion) annually, which will be a heavy burden on local government budgets.

Hu noted that positive changes have taken place in recent years, as a variety of fundraising models emerged, including "rail plus property," "rail plus community" and "rail plus town" development models.

He said mainland cities should learn from Hong Kong's experience in the field, where the "rail plus property" development model has proved successful.

The "rail plus property" model means one entity develops both rail and property. Future revenues from property compensate for the construction costs of building rail.
XI'AN, Sept - Over 40 business associations from "Belt and Road" countries issued the Xi'an Declaration on Wednesday at the Xi'an Silk Road Business Summit, held in northwest China's Shaanxi province Tuesday through Wednesday.

The 2016 Xi'an Declaration was issued by the Silk Road Chamber of International Commerce (SRCIC), which was established in December 2015.

In the declaration, representatives of the SRCIC agree that implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative requires the joint forces of social sectors and NGOs, as well as government and official organs.

Joint government-society-enterprises have become an effective political structure in today's global governance system. The SRCIC will spare no efforts to take the lead in building bridges with governments, national chambers and federations, and enterprises to help members cooperate on the Belt and Road Initiative, the declaration said.

During the summit, representatives also signed a series of framework agreements such as the e-Silk Road, the Silk Road International Development Fund, and the Silk Road International Commodity Exchanges, to boost pragmatic cooperation and sustainable development among "Belt and Road" countries.

Proposed in 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative -- the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road -- works for improved cooperation between China and countries in vast parts of Asia, Europe and Africa.
BEIJING - Protectionism is not a solution for tackling global steel woes, China's Ministry of Commerce (MOC) said on Friday following a decision by the United States to impose duties on Chinese steel products.

In a preliminary ruling on September 7, the US Commerce Department set an anti-subsidy duty rate of 210.5 percent for imported carbon alloy steel products from China.

The preliminary ruling was against the commitment made during the G20 Hangzhou Summit for members to oppose trade protectionism and support multilateral trading mechanisms in pursuit of trade growth, said the MOC in a statement on its website.

China always advocates coordination and cooperation to solve the difficulties in the global steel industry, rather than frequently resorting to protectionism, the statement said.

The MOC urged the US to abide by World Trade Organization rules, observe the consensus reached during the G20 Hangzhou Summit, and shoulder the responsibility to promote the recovery of the global steel industry and improve the global trade environment.
A recent notice issued by the China Banking Regulatory Commission required banking institutions to step up creditor's rights management, to maintain financial order, and to do well the job of creditors' committees, thus guiding companies through debt restructuring and helping them out of difficulties.

The CBRC defined a creditors' committee as a temporary organization set up by at least three banking institutions, which are creditors of a company that has difficulty in repaying a large amount of debt.

Based on negotiations and self-discipline, members of the creditor's committee will form a joint credit management mechanism and make concerted action to do their best in relieving a company from debt, rather than recalling loans in advance or stop lending to the company. This will also prevent the debts of multiple banks from turning sour because one bank recalled a company's loans in advance.

The CBRC Henan Office started to establish creditor's committees for 535 companies in March. Each of the companies recorded debts of more than 300 million yuan ($45 million) and borrowed from more than three banks. Their total loan balance associated with the creditor's committees reached 905.79 billion yuan, accounting for 45 percent of the corporate loan balance of the banking sector in Henan province.

Zhang Chun, deputy director of the CBRC Henan Office, said members of a creditor's committee may have different opinions on how to deal with a company in debt trouble. Some would like to recall loans as soon as possible and stop lending to the company; some still want to help the company by extending less loans; others want to use financial instruments to hedge debt risks. The banking regulator will help them negotiate and reach a consensus.

"Previously, all the banks were eager to give financial support to a company when its business was good, but none of them was responsible for long-term development of the company. The banks granted excessive loans to a company without effective communication with each other. The company later developed subsidiary businesses and ran into trouble during an economic downturn," he said.

"We are trying to solve these problems by pushing forward the creditor's committee system. Member banks of the committee will sit together with a corporate debtor to discuss how it should carry out reforms or restructuring. With a complete understanding of the company's financial information, they will decide how to help it and to what extent."

Apart from calling for banks to jointly grant credit by setting an upper limit and to tackle financial risks together, the banking regulator also encouraged information exchange among relevant banks and companies.

Zhang said by the end of this year, the CBRC Henan Office will further expand the scope of the creditor's committee system to 770 companies, of which each recorded a loan balance of more than 100 million yuan from at least three banks.
China can meet its ambitious, sixfold 2050 economic growth target using the same amount of energy in 2050 as in 2010 with substantially more renewable energy and less coal, a report launched at a sub-forum of the G20 Summit said.

One day after the Hangzhou G20 Summit, the Chinese top energy institutethe Energy Research Institute of the National Development and Reform Commissiontogether with its US counterparts released a new China energy road map to achieve pledged goals on climate change and energy efficiency. The US counterparts are the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Rocky Mountain Institute and the Energy Foundation China, which is part of the Energy Foundation based in San Francisco, California.

"This road map not only lays out the concept and provides the method to achieve the target, but also reinforces the imperative for a Chinese and global energy revolution," said Dai Yande, director general of the ERI.

According to the report, China will reach its carbon emission peak by 2025 and gradually cut emissions to 42 percent of 2010 level by 2050.

By 2050, non-fossil and non-emitting energy sources will generate 82 percent of China's electricity, and renewable sources alone will meet 68 percent of total energy demand on an absolute basis.

Consumption of China's major energy resourcecoalwill peak by 2020, the report said.

To achieve the target, an overall new investment of 35 trillion yuan ($5.25 trillion) will be needed during the period 2010 to 2050 while it saves energy costs of 56 trillion yuan for China's economic growth. The latter figure does not include benefits to the environment, public health and energy security.

The research analyzed four pillar sectors of China's economy: industry, transportation, buildings, and electricity.

The analysis showed how demand reduction, energy efficiency, integrative design, renewable energy sources, and other options could be deployed to address China's most pressing energy challenges and support its development goals.

RMI managing director Jon Creyts said the report highlighted opportunities for the government and private sector in the energy sector.

"By including only commercially available technology that can be deployed at a net benefit to the country, the road map proves that the clean growth model can propelnot hindereconomic development," he said.

The research for the report was started in 2013 by ERI and was completed through collaboration with three international institutionsRMI, LBNL and EF China.

He Dongquan, vice president of Programs, Energy Foundation China, said it was an example of innovative international collaboration and the findings would be helpful for setting China's medium and long-term energy strategy, and also offering policy recommendations to facilitate China's transition to a low-emission, climate-resilient economy.

During G20 Summit, China and the United States formally joined the Paris agreement to fight climate change by cutting emissions.
BEIJING - China has shown strong climate leadership by incorporating green finance into the agenda of G20, and the outcome of the summit will further push the Paris Agreement to come into force, climate experts said.

China proposed the G20 Green Finance Study Group, led by the central banks of China and the UK, which developed a report on green finance for the Hangzhou summit.

The report clarifies the definition and scope of green finance and identifies challenges and options for countries to move towards a greener economy.

Ahead of the G20 Summit, Chinese authorities unveiled guidelines for establishing a green finance mechanism to facilitate the economy's transition to sustainable growth, making China the first country with a complete green finance system in the world.

"Following the G20, China will continue to lead green finance development and it will also start more international cooperation in green finance," said Wang Yao, director of the the Climate and Energy Finance Research Center of the Central University of Finance and Economics.

Before the G20 Summit, legislative authorities in China and the United States ratified the Paris Agreement.

Formally joining the agreement is in line with China's domestic aim to clean up pollution and attain green growth, Wang said.

Li Junfeng, director of the National Center for Climate Change Strategy and International Cooperation, said the ratification was a big step towards bringing the climate agreement into effect.

It will bring the contracting parties' shares of global emissions from 1.08 percent to 39.06 percent, he said.

Green finance can turn environmental burdens into assets and will mobilize the fund many countries need to cut emissions, especially in times of economic hardship, Li said.

On Dec 12, 2015, 196 parties to the UN conference on climate change in Paris reached agreement to hold the average global rise in temperatures at below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and preferably below 1.5 degrees.

Li said that besides the voluntary options of contracting parties, a further 12 billion tons of emissions needed to be cut, which requires more forceful measures around the globe.

In the first seven months of 2016, China's green bond issues hit about $18 billion, about 40 percent of the world total during the period. Analysts say the green finance sector is a promising area for global investors.

Liu Qiang, director of the strategic planning department of the climate change center said China will build a national carbon trade market in 2017, and by 2020 it plans to build 1,000 low-carbon communities.
Apple CEO Tim Cook shows an iPhone 7 to performer Maddie Ziegler during an event to announce new products on Wednesday in San Francisco. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Mega product launch, guaranteed media spotlight, but Apple's magic under scrutiny

After listening to months of rumors, finally the climax: a mega product launch event which once again caught the media spotlight for Apple Inc in September.

Moving on from initially being cheered up without a second's thought about the new features of the latest generation of iPhones, which are equipped with dual rear cameras and dust and water resistance features, a series of questions popped up: does the design look familiar? Is Apple just following the trends being set by the Huawei P9 and Samsung S7, rather than being innovative as it is used to be?

I found the answer during my chats with online subscribers, who stayed up too late to follow Apple's new business move on a live-streaming platform.

Some of them are independent IT critics who specialize in smartphone photography. Some, who asked to be anonymous, said that the technologies and algorithms behind the iPhone 7 Plus and Huawei P9 are different as the latter provides a dual camera with one capturing monochrome and the other providing color photos.

The dual camera system of the iPhone 7 Plus allows the two cameras to shoot as one, for a high resolution optical zoom at two times.

"The new iPhone carries out the design theory of Apple, which is being simple, fashion and user friendly," said James Yan, research director at Counterpoint Technology Market Research.

Yan said there was no big surprises for the new iPhones, as the rumors prior to the launch seemed to have disclosed most of the details. But he believes that the products "will do well" in the first five months in China, and afterward, the market performance will rely on whether its domestic competitors follow its footsteps and launch products with similar technologies.

Meanwhile, the most regrettable thing for me this year is Augmented Reality (AR).

As AR hardware manufacturing and investment has witnessed rapid growth from last year in Chinaand Pokemon Go, the location-based AR game, became a global hitthe market had been expecting to see Apple spread its wings.

Rumors linked to Apple's future VR strategy appeared online and drew the industry's attention as CEO Tim Cook commented on the technology publicly, which was interpreted as a sign Apple was about to extend into the AR sector.

But the "One More Thing" part of the event, described as the company's traditional disclosure of a trend or innovative ideas that will be implemented in its products, was not shown in the end.

People tend to think that Apple won't disclose any details until it's fully ready to do so.

Sound bites

"Generally speaking, I am kind of disappointed with the iPhone 7 series. The new series is not as innovative as I thought previously. Before the event, I really look forward to the news that Apple may ditch the home button. But now Apple is still keeping it. And since my iPhone 6s can meet my need for taking selfies, I won't buy the new iPhone 7 or 7 plus. I would only buy one if I made a fortune."

Liu Yujing, 20, junior at North China University of Technology

"I have used the iPhone for around 7 years. Compared to other mobile phones, iPhone is the best. So I always want to try Apple's new products. Seeing the event, I really want to buy an iPhone 7 plus. Now I have a 64GB iPhone 6, and I always need to delete stuff for new photos of my kid or news conferences. So I really need a new one with enough space. And since the iPhone 7 plus packs dual cameras, I will choose that instead of the iPhone 7."

Gao Suying, 39, chief editor at Bei-jing-based China Business Journal

"Compared with last year's iPhone 6s, I feel the new iPhone 7 series does not bring any big change. Of course, there are some bright spots, such as the waterproof feature and the final launch of the Super Mario Run for iPhone. For me, the best part of the new series is the A-10 processor. Due to my Sony Xperia Z3's small internal storage, I might consider buying an iPhone 6 plus or iPhone 6s. As you know, there definitely will be a price reduction on them."

Zhen Xiang, 26, staff member at Yiai Lake Park Administration in Huanggang, Hubei province

"In design, the iPhone 7 series has not done enough on the innovation front. The worst thing is the removal of the 3.55mm headphone jack, which will cause inconvenience for users. Now users need to buy an extra convert-er for headphones. What's more, consumers have to pay more money for more storage space. So I certain-ly would not buy a new iPhone, Actually I have more fondness for my own Huawei Honor 6 plus, which came out with dual cameras two years ago. And the price is much better."

Zhu Yi, project manager at Research & Development Center (Jiaxing, Zhejiang province) at Minth Group Ltd, a leading supplier of exterior auto parts
Uncertainties such as fluctuating currency exchange rates and fear of terrorist attacks are influencing outbound tourists' decision-making, says a new report.

The depreciation of the yuan versus the US dollar didn't have a significant impact on tourism destinations such as the United States last year, according to the annual report on China outbound tourism development, released on Thursday by the China Tourism Academy.

However, the yuan's appreciation against the Japanese yen, the Russian rouble and the Canadian dollar have boosted quickly planned overseas trips, it said.

"Travel to destinations with favorable currency exchange rates has become a phenomenon," said Yang Jinsong, a professor of international tourism at the China Tourism Academy.

"At the same time, terrorism attacks have caused significant negative impact on outbound tourism. Thailand, France, Turkey and Egypt have seen a drop in the number of Chinese tourists."

Last year, 117 million Chinese mainland tourists visited overseas countries and regions. The number is expected to hit 133 million this year, according to the China National Tourism Administration.

"Consumers are always sensitive to the currency exchange rate," said Dong Na at the Chinese online travel agency Qunar. "During the summer vacation, many tourists have consulted about whether a trip to Europe would cost more."

"Generally speaking, tourists need to spend more for their overseas trips if the RMB has depreciated against a basket of currencies. But tourists know how to choose destinations."

The United Kingdom has benefited. The cheaper pound and euro brought on by the Brexit referendum in June is an incentive for Chinese travelers going to Britain, according to Qunar. It said its travel business to the United Kingdom increased by 35 percent after July, compared with the same period last year.

Liu Simin, vice-president of the tourism branch of the China Society for Futures Studies, said that in the past, tourists tended to choose tourism destinations based on tourism resources, visa requirements, distance and cost. However, the priority has changed in recent years, Liu said.

The currency exchange rates have influenced tourists "because Chinese outbound tourists are cost-sensitive and love shopping," he said.

The report also said that nearly 60 percent of Chinese tourists said an overseas trip is a big consumption decision.

Liu also said that, in the past, not much attention was paid to security concerns.

"However, security has become the top concern," he said. "In the past, the tourism industry would consider the negative impact brought by natural disaster and political disturbances as a short-term issue. However, terrorism is totally different."
China's top health authority said on Thursday there is no sign of spread of Zika virus on the Chinese mainland and a contingency plan involving 18 central government organizations was set up to cope with the disease.

Song Shuli, spokes woman for the National Health and Family Planning Commission, said in a news briefing that 22 imported Zika virus cases were reported in China as of Sept 5 and all patients had recovered.

"Our commission is paying close attention to the development of the epidemic. A contingency plan has been launched and 10 measures have been adopted to prevent any spread of the disease, including practicing quarantine measures at customs and adopting precautionary measures," Song said.

Efforts have been made to reduce the mosquito population nation-wide, and conditions in seven provinces and regions in southern China are being monitored.

On Wednesday, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine asked travelers to countries where the virus is prevalent to be extra cautious and avoid mosquito bites.

More than 250 cases of Zika virus have been reported in Singapore this month, 30 of them involving Chinese citizens.

People entering China from countries affected by the virus should present themselves to the quarantine staff if they have any of the symptoms, such as fever, joint pain, rashes, conjunctivitis, head-aches and muscle pain, the administration said.

The administration asked people planning to travel to 58 countries and regions hit by the virus to take measures to avoid mosquito bitessuch as wearing light-colored, long-sleeve shirts and long trousers and using mosquito repellent and nets while sleeping.

Zika is mainly spread by mosquitoes. The outbreak began in Brazil and spread through the Americas. Other Southeast Asian countries, such as Malaysia and Thailand, have also reported Zika cases.

Song said the commission had organized medical experts to evaluate the risks of Zika spreading in China. The experts found that there is little risk of a large-scale spread of the illness in the country, though it faces an increased risk of imported Zika, especially from Southeast Asian countries.

According to the World Health Organization, the risks in China will depend on imported cases, the presence of mosquitoes that can transfer the virus and the country's ability to detect and respond to its spread. The mosquito is the same type that spreads dengue and chikungunya, making the risk greater in areas in southern China, such as parts of Guangdong, Yunnan and Hainan provinces.
A crowd has gathered beneath a downpour of rain for a rally at the Capitol grounds in protest of the Dakota Access Pipeline crossing under the Missouri River.

Standing Rock Sioux Chairman Dave Archambault is scheduled to speak this afternoon following a court refusal to halt construction of the pipeline.

While Bismarck resident Kirsten Kelsch, rally organizer, said she anticipated as many as 1,000 people to gather at the Capitol for the protest, scheduled for 3 to 6 p.m., there were about 200 to 300 in attendance.

Were going to keep pushing through with our agenda, Kelsch said prior to the rally. The end goal doesnt change, but its going to take us a little bit longer to get there.

She said three main groups are set to converge: participants from the United Tribes Technical College International Powwow, several Oceti Sakowin Youth Relay Runners that ran from North Dakota to Washington, D.C., in July and a number of individuals camping down near a portion of the construction site near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation.

The gathering included a group with water problems of their own: Those from Flint, Mich., stood at the rally today as a peace declaration was made.

Even if youre on the fence  come and join us. Wed love to educate you on how this all got started, Kelsch said.

Kelsch expects nothing on the Capitol grounds like Saturdays clash between opponents of the pipeline and private security personnel at a construction site. The company began work at the site Saturday morning, a day after Standing Rock Sioux Tribe leaders had filed in court seeking a halt to construction, saying that numerous cultural artifacts were found in an area near the site where hundreds are camping in protest.

The state's chief archaeologist said this week they're still planning to visit the site to verify any possible cultural artifacts.

"When push comes to shove, there's bound to be negative issues," said Kelsch, adding that she believes those committing acts of violence are in the minority.

The tribe filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers last month over the permits issued for the project. Earthjustice is representing the tribe in the suit, which claims the corps violated the National Historic Preservation Act and other laws in issuing permits for the pipeline.

Kelsch said there will be a program during the first hour of the rally with herself and other speakers. She said some of the youth runners will present a banner, containing a declaration of peace, to North Dakota Indian Affairs Commission Executive Director Scott Davis.

Kelsch said organizers reached out to Gov. Jack Dalrymples office to have him or Lt. Gov. Drew Wrigley join them to be presented with the banner but were unable to line either of them up.

A spokesman for Dalrymples office said Dalrymple and Wrigley had prior commitments on their schedules. The spokesman said the request had come in too late for either of them to change their schedules to participate. He said that, if the request had come in sooner, it would have been given serious consideration.

The project has drawn hundreds of protesters from tribal groups and activists from across the country. A section of the pipeline is planned to be bored under the Missouri River and run less than a mile from the tribes reservation boundary.

Tribal leaders and groups have been staging protests over the pipeline for more than a month, citing concerns over potential contamination of the Missouri River if the pipeline were to rupture. The cultural sites issue has also loomed large.
Patients with brittle bone disease perform at a shopping mall in Jinan, Shandong province, to raise awareness of rare diseases. Fan Changguo / Xinhua

The ninth international Rare Disease Day, initiated by the European Organization for Rare Diseases, was marked on Feb 29 this year.

The date was chosen because such "leap days" are rare, only happening once every four years.

On and around this day, medical and research institutions as well as other organizations all over the world hold activities to raise awareness of rare dis-eases.

One in every 2,000 newborns in China has a hereditary disease, such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or Pompe disease.

But according to Huang Rufang, director of the Chinese Organization for Rare Disorders, there is no system of national medical care for sufferers, especially as there is no clear definition of what constitutes a rare disease in China at present.

"Legislation for rare dis-eases faces multiple hindrances, there are barely any medical research funds in the field and the admission mechanism for orphan drugs (pharmaceutical agents developed specifically to treat rare medical conditions) is not in place," Huang said.

Sun Zhaoqi, a deputy to the National People's Congress, has brought forward a proposal regarding the prevention and treatment of rare diseases for 10 consecutive years, but this has never been adopted, as there is no government policy to refer to and therefore no medical insurance for patient reimbursement.

According to an investigation into China's small-and medium-sized pharmaceutical enterprises carried out by Yangcheng Evening News in February, most are keen to research and develop widely used medicines, but are less inclined to work on drugs for rare diseases due to the relatively small size of the market and slim profit margins on offer.

In addition, foreign drugs for rare diseases are not often introduced to China either, according to the investigation.

Even if the drugs are imported, they are rarely used in clinical treatment because patients cannot be reimbursed under existing medical insurance policies.
Children with spinal muscular atrophy visit a park in Beijing with the help of volunteers from the Meier Advocacy and Support Center for SMA. Zhang Xu / For China Daily

Feng Jiamei was once a celebrity, but she gave up her career to help children with spinal muscular atrophy. Liu Wei and Dai Ying report for China Features.

A decade ago, when she was age 19, Feng Jiamei had the world at her feet.

She traveled 250 kilometers from her hometown to Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, to appear as a contestant on a TV talent show called Super Girls.

Feng came fourth, but with her good looks and singing talent, celebrity followed.

She released three singles and starred in a couple of movies.

However, with opportunities to release an album and sign a contract with a movie studio, her destiny suddenly took a tragic - but ultimately more fulfilling-course.

Short-lived joy

On April 24, last year, Feng put a post on her Weibo microblog informing her 200,000 followers that her beloved daughter, Meier, had died from a rare genetic condition, called spinal muscular atrophy, in 2014.

The post went viral within 24 hours.

"I spent one and a half years thinking about her death and wondering how to tell the public," Feng recalled, through her tears. "I was so desperate to find a partner and have a child."

At 25, when she was pregnant, Feng daydreamed about buying clothes and dressing her baby.

When her daughter was born, she felt as though all her dreams had been fulfilled. But at just 4 months, Meier was unable to hold up her head, roll over or sit up without assistance.

"We took her to hospital and she was diagnosed with cerebral palsy," Feng recalled.

However, the symptoms did not match the diagnosis. A local hospital in Chengdu gave another misdiagnosis that resulted in painful physiotherapy - including limb-stretching and electric shock treatment - for more than half a year.

Eventually, a report on a blood test from Beijing con-firmed Meier's condition as spinal muscular atrophy, which affects the part of the nervous system that controls voluntary muscle movement. It has wide variability in age of onset, symptoms and rate of progression.

Feng later learned that the earlier the age of onset, the greater the impact on motor function. Children such as Meier, who display symptoms at birth or in infancy, typically have the lowest level of functionality and rarely live to the age of 2.

Eventually, Meier was hospitalized as a result of respiratory failure, and her family took turns to watch her around the clock until she died.

To make matters worse, Feng's marriage ended at about the same time.

Facing the future

Feng found that she was not alone in her despair. Many messages arrived, asking for help: "My child has SMA too what can I do?"

China's estimated 30,000 to 50,000 SMA patients are a drop in the ocean of the country's 1.37 billion people, and the families felt too insignificant to be heard.

Ma Bin only learned he had the illness in 1993, when he was 20.

"I often stumbled when I ran at the age of 4; nobody knew what was wrong," he said. "Even in 2002, you could find nothing about the disease on Chinese internet search engines."

He began translating research and treatment files from English and put Chinese articles on his website, fsmachina.org. By 2011, the website was an online home to more than 400 parents of SMA patients.

Earlier this year, Ma and Feng established the Meier Advocacy and Support Center for SMA.

"At the beginning, I was thinking of raising funds for more respirators, because the most common cause of SMA deaths is respiratory failure. Most families cannot afford such a device, though," Feng said.

However, respirators are highly technical medical devices, not household appliances, so she and Ma decided to focus on making SMA better known and sharing day-to-day care techniques with the patients' parents.

There is no cure, but mas-sage and helping children to eat and sleep can extend their lifespan and improve their quality of life.

China's first SMA meeting was held in Beijing on Aug 6. It was attended by experts from home and abroad as well as many Chinese families with relatives suffering from SMA.

One of the MASC's missions is to make simple wishes come true for children with SMA-a trip to the beach and playing in the sand, for instance. "These kids cannot travel long distances because a common cold could kill them, and their parents can't take risks. Butwe will provide a professional team to keep them safe," Feng said.

A choice for all

Feng is hailed as a "Super Mum" by parents of SMA patients for her dedication to helping them. They connect through Feng online or offline, and support each other, especially when a much-loved child loses their battle against the disease.

"She is brave enough to tell her own story so many more people can learn about SMA and these children's parents can also face the future," Ma said.

To Feng's delight, a drug called Nusinersen, from the United States, is now being trialed as a treatment. It could be released in the market next year, according to its creator, Profess or Kathryn Swoboda of Massachusetts General Hospital.

However, Feng understands that a drug for a rare disease is not listed in China's critical illness insurance program because it is so expensive and only serves a small group of people.

Gene screening before marriage and in pregnancy is the best way of preventing SMA. The technology is already available in major hospitals and the test only requires 2 to 3 milliliters of blood. Feng's organization is cooperating with a dozen maternity and child healthcare hospitals across China to collect data about SMA gene carriers.

"If I had known how Meier would suffer, I would have aborted the pregnancy," Feng said, adding that she once met a couple from a remote mountainous region who thought it was just bad luck when their firstborn had SMA. Unaware they carried the SMA gene, they ended up with three sick children.

If no SMA gene is found in either member of a couple, their children are safe. If it's found in both, the defective gene can be edited out before an embryo is implanted.

Feng is now looking for-ward to the rest of her life and a pain-free future for children with SMA.

"I don't know if I will remarry or bear another child," she said. "I have a dream that, one day, our care center will be gone and people won't have to fear SMA, just as we no longer fear tuberculosis."

China Features is a feature department of Xinhua News Agency, which writes in-depth stories for overseas readers.
A police sniffer dog at the G20 Leaders Summit in Hangzhou. [Photo/provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Seven police sniffer dogs and their trainers, fresh from a successful security mission at the G20 Leaders Summit in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, were welcomed at Harbin Taiping International Airport in Heilongjiang province on Wednesday afternoon.

"As early as March, we began to train and select sniffer dogs for the summit from more than 200 police dogs at our training base," said Qi Ming, director of the dog training facility of the Heilongjiang provincial border defense troops in Harbin.

After four months of training and rounds of internal selection, seven dogs passed the strict examination of the Ministry of Public Security and joined the mission to intercept explosives during the summit, Qi said.

"As soon as we arrived at Hangzhou on July 30, we dedicated ourselves to intense training even though the summit wouldn't start for another month," said Zheng Hang, the team leader. "Every day we spent more than 12 hours outside. The high temperature of the city was an enormous challenge for the dogs, which are native to the northeast."

In order to lower the temperature, they installed electric fans and automatic spray devices in kennels and placed blocks of ice outside. In addition, they decided to shave off the hair of the northern dogs.

"I chose a Mohawk style for my 4-year-old Labrador, which makes him look quite fashionable. But now another problem is coming. How will the withstand the winter cold in Harbin before its hair grows out again? Maybe I'll have to tailor a cotton waistcoat for it," Zheng said.

Wu Xu, a trainer with another Labrador, said: "The heavy tasks and uncomfortable conditions will more or less affect the dogs' mood. As their trainers, we pay attention to their daily life, but it is most important to interact with them. They like being touched, and we also often talk with them."

Wu told this story: "One day, when we patrolled around West Lake, my feet seemed to catch fire, even though I was wearing thick shoes, because of the high surface temperature. My dog kept scampering on the scalding road. Suddenly it jumped into the lake to cool itself. I really didn't have the heart to rebuke it, but I had to ask it to go ashore because we were on duty."

During the monthlong mission, the team patrolled an area of more than 2 million square meters and intercepted more than 260 prohibited items.

Contact the writers at zhouhuiying@chinadaily.com.cn
Zhang Lin's husband plays with her son at Huanghuagou, a grassland close to Beijing, on August 28, 2016. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

A couple moving from Southwest China's Chengdu to Beijing bought a second-hand apartment in the capital city at hundreds of thousands of dollars to enable their child to enroll in a better primary school, and they regretted not having done it sooner.

"We bought our apartment in June last year at 3.65 million yuan ($547,513) in Haidian district so that our child can get a spot at Haidian No. 2 Experimental Primary School," said 35-year-old Zhang Lin.

School-aged children in China are eligible for nine-year compulsory education from primary school to junior high, and in most cases are admitted to the school nearest to their residency.

Located in the northwestern part of downtown Beijing, Haidian district is home to a disproportionately large number of prestigious primary and junior high schools, which pushes the property price in the district sky-high.

"We borrowed commercial loans to buy the apartment after selling our house in Chengdu to pay the down payment," said Zhang.

Beijing requires first-time homebuyers to pay a minimum of 30 percent of the property's total price as a down payment if they buy a second-hand apartment.

"We are now living a less free life than we used to because now we need to pay the installment payment monthly for 30 years," said Zhang, "we canceled basically all recent plans of buying pricey items and we can no longer casually embark on overseas tour."

"The good thing is that we feel a lot more assured that our child finally has a school to attend and that we don't have to worry about the seemingly always increasing housing price any longer," said Zhang.

A year after Zhang's home purchase, the total price of her two-bedroom apartment of 88 square meters has surged by more than 30 percent to 5 million yuan.

"I wish we had bought an apartment earlier," said Zhang, "If we had bought one in 2014, then we could have paid 10,000 yuan less for per square meters."

Zhang's plan to buy an apartment in 2014 was stalled by her husband, who feared they could not raise enough for the down payment and was also shocked by the comparison of the housing conditions between Beijing and Chengdu.

"Beijing's land price is too high, but the environment of the residential communities and the design of the apartments are far less appealing than those in Chengdu," said Zhang, "we can buy a villa with 3.5 million yuan in Chengdu."

Though he now owns an apartment, Zhang still lives in a rented one, which is close to a kindergarten attended by her three-and-a-half-year old son.

"I feel it's nice to live in a rented apartment," said Zhang, "I wouldn't have considered buying one if it wasn't factored in getting my child into a better school."

Actually, Haidian No. 2 Experimental Primary School is not one of these first-class primary schools in Beijing, but just one of the medium-level ones.

Haidian district's Zhongguancun village area is home to several best primary schools and housing price here stands now at around 100,000 yuan per square meters, according to statistics.

"We made the decision to stay in Beijing instead of going back to Chengdu mainly for the sake of the education of our child because Beijing has better education resources and pays more attention to the all-round development of children," said Zhang, "I feel my child has better chance of being admitted to one of the best universities if attending school in Beijing."
A suspected drug trafficker was shot dead on the busy Jiahua road in Shenzhen's Longgang district at about noon on Friday, Shenzhen police said in a press release on Friday.

Zhan, 39, resisted arrest and had threatened the safety of pedestrians after police had fired a warning shot. While confronting, Zhan even drove his car to run into police officers, seriously threatening the lives of the police .

Police also seized a car and a self-made pistol, a clip and a gasoline bottle on board.

The case is still under investigation.
An exterior view of the Houchang Museum in Weng'an county in Guizhou province on Sept 8, 2016. [Photo by Faisal Kidwai/chinadaily.com.cn]

Never assume anything is always a good advice. Weng'an county in Guizhou province proved how true it is on Wednesday.

Before heading off to the county on a trip to the province, I had pictured an economically struggling place. I couldn't have been more wrong.

Guizhou located in the southwestern region of China is not connected with sea or big river nor it shares borders with any country. It has a mountainous terrain with hardly any flat land.

In the center of this province sits Weng'an. For years it faced economic hardships due to its geographical location. Access to the outside world was limited as it had few channels to carry out trade.

However, it all began to change in the past couple of decades.

Although dealt a heavy hand by nature, the county was sitting on something that was worth in gold: Minerals. It is blessed with large and easily extractable deposits of many minerals, including phosphorus, coal, iron and gypsum.

To take advantage of the golden opportunity, Weng'an began offering favorable policies to companies and started building industrial parks.

But that was just a start. Today it is taking big steps to attract investments in other industries, such as manufacturing and tourism.

The population of the whole county is 530,000 and it welcomed more than 600,000 tourists in just past nine months. For a relatively unknown place, that's an impressive number.

Huang Guilin, the head of Weng'an county, told chinadaily.com.cn that with four expressways, link to the high-speed rail network and proximity to province's capital Guiyang, just an hour drive from the county, it is easier than ever before for trade and business.

He added that to become more profitable all the companies in the county have reduced costs significantly.

As China marks the 80th anniversary of the Long March, the county expects the number to only increase. One of the sites to see the role Weng'an played in the daring expedition is Houchang Museum. Located 13 km from the county center, it houses several historical relics, has a stone forest and a lake nearby and eye-catching statues in front of it.

With its economy projected to postdouble-digit growth in 2015, the county is taking steps to boost the manufacturing sector.

MWPP, a company that produces shoes, caps and other clothing goods, now has plans to branch outside the province.

The firm with 1,500 employees already makes six lines of products and recently launched another brand.



Wanna a free Kindle? Take this Long March quiz.


Trumpeter Li Xiaochuan and his band tour Crimea for the Koktebel Jazz festival. [Photo by Chen Jie/China Daily]

For Chinese trumpeter Li Xiaochuan and his band, going to the Koktebel Jazz Party, held in Crimea over Aug 26-28, was a lot of drama. ( Video

A woman died on their flight from Beijing to Moscow, from where they were to reach Crimea for the international music festival, so the plane had to first land in Siberia.

Once at the festival in Koktebel town, an amplifier malfunctioned just as they were about to performdespite a prior sound check. Then, on a sightseeing trip, a van carrying the Li Xiaochuan Quartet broke down on a narrow mountain road around sunset.

Finally, they came very close to getting stranded in Moscow due to a delayed flight from Crimea.

"What an unforgettable experience!" Li tells China Daily. "Nevertheless, the festival was great. We enjoyed a nice weather, the beach, food and music. The audience was warm and knew jazz."

Among the highlights of the Koktebel festival, he says, watching Jimmy Cobb's performance was a treat. The 87-year-old American jazz drummer is the last surviving member from the 1959 session that recorded jazz giant Miles Davis' Kind of Blue, which is perhaps the most famous album in jazz history.

"Cobb is a legendary musician of his generation ... we had the opportunity to see his live concert," says Li.

Li's fellow band member, bassist Huang Yong, says some bands from Russia also left an impression on them, with their unique Russian elements in jazz.
Artist Cao Fei with Thomas Girst, head of BMWs Cultural Engagement. The Chinese artist will collaborate with BMW to create an art car, which will be released in 2017. [Photo provided to China Daily]

A leading young artist in China, Cao Fei, does not own a car or have a driving license, and she does not have plans to learn how to drive either.

But this has not stopped her from accepting the offer to create an art car for BMW.

The artist, in collaboration with BMW, recently announced their plan to create a BMW Art Car, which will be released in 2017.

Based on the BMW M6 GT3 performance car, the art car will showcase the future of transportation with an emphasis on going driverless, the smart internet and virtual reality.

This will be the first BMW Art Car created by a Chinese artist and 18th of its kind.

Earlier participants include luminaries, such as Alexander Calder, Frank Stella and Roy Lichtenstein.

The art car styles include pop and conceptual art.

Speaking about her work, Cao, 38, says: "The car is key to understanding the changes in Chinese society today. The speed of the car coincides with how fast Chinese society is changing, which is my inspiration."

Cao's idea echoes BMW's vision about green transportation, smart internet and going driverless, says Thomas Girst, head of BMW's Cultural Engagement.
Shu Qi, beau sport Bulgari rings

[Photo provided to China Daily]

Multiple-award-winning Chinese actress Shu Qi recently announced that she is married to actor Stephen Fung. And the couple wears Bulgari's Serpenti wedding bands for their wedding photos. Inspired by a snake, the Serpenti is a classic wedding ring from Bulgari's heritage collection. The actress also wears the Dedicata a Venizia engagement ring from Bulgari.

Rolex envoy Wang performs

[Photo provided to China Daily]

Renowned Chinese pianist Wang Yujia, who is also a spokeswoman for Swiss luxury watchmaker Rolex, recently performed at the National Center for the Performing Arts, presenting works by Alexander Scriabin, Chopin and Beethoven. Rolex has long been a patron of artists and musicians, including Placido Domingo and Cecilia Bartoli.

Chengdu's Lane Crawford store

Multi-brand fashion boutique Lane Crawford in Chengdu celebrated its second anniversary on Wednesday. The store has recently introduced more emerging and indigenous brands, highlighting the idea of "clashing colors". The 2016 autumn/winter collections are in the store, and a series of promotions and lotteries will be available through Oct 7.

Caibai unveils new collection

[Photo provided to China Daily]

Beijing Caibai Store recently launched a new collection in collaboration with diamond brand Forevermark. The collection comprises rings, earrings and necklaces highlighting the four-leaf clover. Actor Zheng Kai attended the event. The collection marks the 60th anniversary of the store, and a series of promotion are available.
A Chinese traveler shows her credit card jointly issued by the Shanghai Pudong Development Bank and Citibank. [Photo/China Daily]

A credit card user in Guangdong province, South China, found the amount he unwillingly owed a bank had soared from 9 yuan ($1.3) in 2008 to 9,350 yuan now. Beijing Youth Daily commented on Wednesday:

The increase in the amount Li owed a bank over the last nine years is dramatic, but it pales into insignificance beside the amount he will owe in another nine years if he doesn't pay back any of what he now owes.

If he delays paying off the 9,350 yuan for another nine years, he will then have to pay back 9 million yuan.

Li claims that he didn't know the bank card he applied for several years ago was a credit card and he did not realize he had overspent on it by 9 yuan nine years ago. Later he lost the card and applied for a new one. However, he received no warning from the bank that he owed money on the card he had lost.

There are two points worth reflecting on. First, although as an adult, Li should be responsible for checking the status of any bank accounts and cards he might have, he should also have received reminders from the bank about his situation.

Second,whether or not the bank is entitled to charge Li this large a penalty is debatable. Banks were granted the right to charge longstanding interest on loans according to the law on bankcard management introduced in 1999.However, on Jan 1 this right will be canceled according to the most recent notice from the central bank.
A passenger smokes before a high-speed train leaves the station in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, Feb 25, 2014. [Photo/IC]

China Railway Group updated its ban on smoking in bullet trains last month and said that those caught smoking might be banned from buying tickets for bullet trains for a certain period of time. However, there are still smoking areas on other trains. The smoking ban should apply to both, said Beijing Youth Daily on Thursday:

China Railway has said that bullet trains are air-tight and have all kinds of sensors that make it easy to detect any smoke, which will trigger the alarm and cause the train to automatically brake. That is not the case with other trains, which have to rely on the staff on the train to stop people from smoking in non-smoking areas.

The company's response is rather honest because it openly admits it does not care about the health of passengers.

The company defended its measure by saying non-bullet trains are passenger-friendly because they have both smoking and non-smoking areas. That is weak defense, because the smoking areas are located in the vestibules and gangways between carriages, only meters away from non-smoking areas; as a result, those in non-smoking areas still suffer from second-hand smoke. Only a total ban on smoking can protect non-smoking passengers on trains.

That dilemma exists not only on trains. Even though most metropolises and municipalities have issued total bans on smoking in public spaces, in practice many restaurants or business complexes have smoking areas from which the smoke easily spreads to other parts of the establishments.

A special law that came into effect in 2011 forbids this, but the law did not make it clear who should enforce the law and who is authorized to punish those violating the law.

China has also signed the World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which requires all signatories to ban smoking in public spaces. It is time for not only the railway authorities, but also other departments of the government to join hands and more strictly ban smoking in public spaces.
Police officers make a list of bank cards seized in a telecommunication fraud case in Xuchang, Henan province, in January. NIU YUAN/CHINA DAILY

Fraud, like theft, is as old as human history. But in this internet age when information, especially personal information, flows freely fraudsters have become more "skillful". The more technology advances, the easier it becomes for fraudsters to cheat people. For example, a fraudster can send a message to tens of thousands of people at the same time with a single click of the mouse.

But were it not for Xu Yuyu, a college-bound student in Linyi, Shandong province who died recently of a cardiac attack after losing her tuition fees of about $1,500 to a phone fraud, and the attention that her poor family drew, the case would have gone unnoticed like many other small cases that go unreported.

Chinese people lose hundreds of millions of yuan in telecom frauds every year. And some towns in China have become infamous for phone scam gangs.

In fact, Tsinghua University reportedly started conducting security tests on newcomers from this year to prevent potential frauds from enrolling in the institution. Students have to answer about 500 questions on telecom fraud, transportation issues and fire prevention, before they can be admitted. But ironically, while all the anti-fraud measures were being put in place, police said last week that a teacher of the university had lost millions of yuan to a phone scam.

So subjecting students to a "scam test" is not enoughwe also need legal measures to tackle telecom frauds.

China has more than 700 million internet users, the largest in the world. Yet while all countries with large populations of internet users implemented a law on personal information protection in the previous decade, China still does not have such a law, let alone legislation on self-regulation of the online industry when it comes to personal information security.
Chinese President Xi Jinping attends a press conference after the 11th summit of the Group of 20 (G20) major economies in Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang Province, Sept. 5, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua]

China, as chair of G20, made innovation a key theme for the G20 Summit, providing a new impetus to policy actions around the world to revive the global economy and achieve strong, sustainable and balanced growth. Innovation can be a powerful driver of productivity growth, the only way sustainable long-term growth can be guaranteed. And at the Hangzhou Summit, the G20 economies vowed to implement a series of ambitious structural reforms and actions to facilitate innovation, and invest in the science and technology industry, which in itself can help revive growth in many parts of the world, especially some G20 economies.

Ambitions however go much further. To foster exchange of knowledge and experience on innovation-driven growth, the G20 economies endorsed the creation of the G20 Community of Practice within the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development-World Bank Innovation Policy Platform. They also adopted the G20 2016 Innovation Action Plan that outlines guiding principles and actions, such as adoption of pro-innovation policies and measures.

A series of action plans was adopted in related areas, too, such as the digital economy and the New Industrial Revolution.

Innovation also features in the structural reform agenda to achieve strong, sustainable and balanced growth. The G20 economies have adopted the Hangzhou G20 Guiding Principles for Structural Reform that sets the priority areas for such reform.

The importance of innovation for China and other G20 economies can be best captured by the fact that China has chosen innovative development as one of the five key principles for the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20), which sets the target of becoming an innovative economy by 2020. Such a transformation presupposes the accumulation of sizeable stocks of various types of capital: physical, human, institutional and social.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and other leaders of the Group of 20 (G20) members, some guest countries and international organizations pose for a group photo ahead of the opening ceremony of the G20 summit in Hangzhou, capital of East China's Zhejiang province, Sept 4, 2016.[Photo/Xinhua]

For some Western journalists covering the G20 Summit in Hangzhou, East China's Zhejiang province, early this week, the biggest story was the US President Barack Obama's staircase episode at Hangzhou airport or about the few reporters who could not get close to Obama to get on-the-spot comments.

Although Obama told the news media not to "over-crank" the significance of the issue, for days, some mainstream US media outlets have been speculating that the Chinese must have "plotted" the episode to humiliate Obama.

It reminded one of some major US media outlets' reports in November 2009 saying Obama had not been treated well by the Chinese during his first visit there. White House officials strongly disagreed. Jeffrey Bader, then senior advisor for Asia in the White House National Security Council who had accompanied Obama on the trip, said the media outlets did not correctly characterize the visit.

Some Western media organizations' obsession with the staircase episode shows how they are easily distracted by minor events and thus fail to focus on the main issues.

In Hangzhou, some Western reporters spent far more time writing and dramatizing the staircase story than covering important global challenges such as a slowing world economy, climate change, poverty, trade protectionism and international governance, issues that world leaders had assembled to resolve and issues that journalists should have delved deep into if they were in Hangzhou to cover the G20 Summit, and not to act like paparazzi.

People watching US TV this past year got just one piece of newsthe 2016 US presidential election. The news media seem to have decided that that is the only thing Americans need to know and care about at least until the election on Nov 8.
A rider takes the lead in a horse race. [Photo/Xinhua]

It is said that since the time of Genghis Khan, festivals of strength, bravery and the warrior spirit have taken place on the wide plains of Mongolia. Wrestling, archery and horseracing would spring in to action, stirring up clouds of red dust and vibrating through the ground like claps of thunder.

In more recent times, people from a range of ethnicities, including Mongol, Kazakh and Han attend the Nadam Festival held in the Mongolian autonomous county of Subei in Gansu. The event begins each year between July and August in the solar calendar.

Thousands arrive for the annual gathering, some on horseback, some in cars, some on foot, draped in ornate traditional ethnic dress embodying the spirit of their nomadic ancestors.

Many camp for the six-week event, which this year took place from Aug 2 to Sept 15, their tents and temporary homes coating the dry sun scorched plateau.

Wrestlers get to grips with each other. [Photo/Xinhua]

During the day, excited spectators cheer for their local hero as gladiatorial battles explode into action on the plains. Mongolian wrestling is a major draw card at the festival with those taking part and winning becoming idols for the younger generation. Much in the same way, Genghis Khan would promote soldiers that performed well in similar events held some 800 years ago.

On the face of it the wrestling seems simple, touch the ground with anything other than your feet and you lose. However, the combat is much more complicated than that, with more than 300 different moves, holds and positions.

Dressed in outfits developed over the ages designed to be simple and have good mobility, the two wrestlers perform a dance before they enter the ring, symbolizing the movements of lions, falcons and tigers.

In the next field over, a starters pistol claps, sending a troop of horses whinnying into action. Dust fills the air, and over the rumble of hooves, shouts and calls can be heard as the riders push their charges towards the finish line.

Camels charge in Subei Mongolian autonomous county in Gansu province. [Photo/Xinhua]

Some 130 riders and steeds took part in this years racing, representing places such as Subei county, Akesai Kazak autonomous county and Qinghai province.

As darkness falls across the prairie, camp fires are lit and people gather under the stars to tell stories and sing songs passed down through generations.

This years festival was held to warm up for the upcoming Silk Road Dunhuang International Cultural Expo in September and publicize Mongolian culture and tourism, according to the organizers, the government of Subei Mongolian autonomous county.

Subei Mongolian autonomous county in Jiuquan city is located in the west of the Hexi Corridor at the intersection of Gansu, Xinjiang, Qinghai and Inner Mongolia. The Mongolian people account for more than 40 percent of the locals.
Pearl River Delta boomtown, Dongguan in South China's Guangdong province will host the biennial World Dongguan Entrepreneurs Convention from Sept 7 to 8.

This year's event will shine a spotlight on Dongguan's latest economic and social developments, in the hope of attracting entrepreneurs from at home and abroad to set up businesses in the city.

A summit will also be held to discuss and explore ways in which Dongguans smart manufacturers can have a greater influence in the global marketplace, a major initiative for the city.
A Chinese tourist takes a selfie in front of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris in May.[Photo/Agencies]

Mainlanders prefer regional destinations

When choosing overseas tourism destinations, Chinese travelers prefer neighboring countries and regions, according to the annual Report of Outbound Tourism Development by the China Tourism Academy, a think tank under the national tourism administration.

Hong Kong and Macao accepted more than 63 percent of the 117 million total outbound tourists from the mainland in 2015. Despite the fact that total visits to Hong Kong in 2015 dropped by 4.3 percent, to 45.8 million, it still ranks at the top for mainland visitors.

Other popular tourism destinations include Thailand, South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, the United States, Singapore, Russia, Australia, Indonesia and Malaysia.

Several countries and regions saw huge growth - Thailand was up 88 percent (7.93 million visitors), Japan was up 82 percent (4.99 million visitors) and Vietnam was up 68 percent (1.78 million visitors).

However, visits to Africa dropped by 61.8 percent in 2015, while visits to Europe increased by 23.8 percent, the report said.

Most money spent on shopping

When asking to rank their largest expenditures on overseas trips, 85.9 percent of tourists answered shopping.

About 61 percent chose fees paid to travel agencies and local organizers. More than 58 percent chose dining.

Chinese people are not shy about spending big during overseas trips. More than 60 percent of tourists said their budget for one trip was more than 10,000 yuan ($1,500), the outbound tourist report said.

More than 30 percent said they would spend 5,000 to 10,000 yuan for one trip. Only 8 percent said their budget was below 5,000 yuan.

Eastern China provides most tourists

Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong province, Jiangsu province and Zhejiang province were the top five source markets for China's booming outbound tourism industry. In 2015, Beijing sent out 5.3 million citizens to travel overseas, a year-on-year jump of 29.7 percent. Average overseas spending was 5,000 to 15,000 yuan, the report said.

Eastern China has a mature tourism industry, and it takes the lead both in accepting tourists and sending them out. Central China also makes a big contribution, the report said. The gaps between western, central and eastern China are being narrowed as airports are built and visa centers are opened in second - and third-tier cities, it said.
Coal is not king in environmentally vigilant California.

Governor Jerry Brown on Aug 26 signed into law SB-1279, which blocks the use of state funds at coal-shipping terminals.

"In California, we're divesting from thermal coal in our state pensions, shifting to renewable energy and, last year, coal exports from California ports declined by more than one-third, from 4.65 million to 2.96 million tons," the governor said in a statement on the bill's signing. "That's a positive trend we need to build on."

State Senator Loni Hancock, a Democrat from Berkeley, introduced the bill in February in response to plans to ship coal from a terminal in Oakland. Other commodities to be shipped from the site include soda ash, potash, limestone and soybeans.

SB-1279 bars the state Transportation Commission from providing funds to new bulk-coal terminals. It will take effect in January, but does not apply to existing projects.

In the US, as in China, balancing energy needs with environmental concerns has economic consequences.

In June, the Oakland City Council voted to ban the shipping and handling of coal and coke in the city, casting doubt on the future and job-creation prospects of the harbor terminal where coal would be exported.

Most of that US coal is bound for Asia, particularly China, which gets 70 percent of its energy from coal. As demand for coal falls in the United States, Western states are looking to export to Asia.

Developer Phil Tagami, a friend and supporter of the governor, is building the $250 million export terminal and logistics center called the Oakland Bulk and Oversized Terminal on 130 acres of a former Army base at the Outer Harbor.

Oakland rejected the coal plan on June 27 after a report by its environmental consultant concluded that coal dust is carcinogenic.

"California has worked hard to be a coal-free state - but while the state is setting aggressive carbon-reduction targets, this terminal would have allowed the most carbon-polluting fuel to be brought to market, with devastating consequences," the Sierra Club said after the Oakland vote.

Last month, four Utah counties withdrew an application to spend $53 million of state money to ship coal to Oakland.

Terminal Logistics Solutions, which operates the terminal, had planned to export coal to Asia until the Oakland vote.

The company argued that concerns about coal dust escaping from the terminal or by trains transporting material there were misguided, because the products would be stored in covered domes and moved in covered conveyors, according to americanshipper.com.

Across the Pacific in China, the government is trying to balance its need for coal with pollution concerns and overcapacity, as the economy resets.

China's coal sector, along with industries such as steel, has overcapacity estimated at around 2 billion tons a year, as demand growth slows and the country promotes cleaner forms of energy.

China planned to close around 1,000 collieries this year alone, many of them in residential areas such as Helin, as it reduces coal's share of energy consumption to 62 percent by 2020, Reuters reported.

But China is still the world's largest consumer and producer of coal.

"Coal-burning was the most important contributor to ambient PM2.5 (particulate matter), causing an estimated 366,000 premature deaths in 2013," said Professor Wang Shuxiao of Tsinghua University, a lead investigator for an August study: Burden of Disease Attributable to Coal-Burning and Air Pollution Sources in China. "Industrial sources and household solid fuel combustion, from both coal and non-coal emissions, were the largest sectoral contributors to disease burden attributable to ambient PM2.5 in China, responsible for 250,000 and 177,000 premature deaths, respectively."

A 2012 report by the Carnegie Endowment offered some reasons as to why China is the world's largest importer of coal when it formerly was a major exporter.

"Several factors could be contributing to China's sudden entrance into coal import markets, including transportation bottlenecks, environmental and safety considerations, economic factors, and concerns about depleting coking coal reserves."

China did report a slight drop in its coal consumption in 2015.

In April, the government increased efforts to reduce oversupply and pollution in major cities by reducing the number of working days for coal miners from 330 days a year to 276.

The government also made trimming excess capacity a priority in 2015 at the Central Economic Work Conference and put it in the 13th Five-Year Plan.

China plans to cut steel and coal capacity by about 10 percent in the next few years, with funding for displaced workers.

Coal is also a political issue on the US East Coast. West Virginia, which has 140 coal companies, has suffered economically as the country shifts toward cleaner energy.

Contact the writer at williamhennelly@chinadailyusa.com
The Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa is a coalition of US and African troops that emerged from the Operation Enduring Freedom response to the 9/11 terror attacks. Their original targets were radical extremists, but now because terror groups are reportedly crossing over into the business of wildlife poaching to raise funds, they've put themselves in the crosshairs of anti-poaching patrols as well.

The endangered African elephant could benefit.

In Tanzania alone, home of the legendary Serengeti and other wildlife edens, recent surveys have shown that elephant populations have declined by as much as 50 percent to 60 percent in just the past five years.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies now confirms that violent extremist groups are actively bartering ivory for weapons and ammunition.

The result is what US Air Force Staff Sgt Eric Summers describes as "compounding a conservation problem with an even larger security problem."

To get after that problem head-on, Tanzanian park and game reserve rangers teamed up with the US Army's 403rd Civil Affairs Battalion (part of the Combined Joint Task Force) and the North Carolina National Guard for two months of anti-poaching training at Rungwa Game Reserve.

"We are here for these two months to train Rungwa Park rangers in field craft to improve their ability to track, capture and arrest illegal poachers," said US Army Capt Michael Wilson, battilion team leader.

"Tanzania has the second-highest concentration of African elephants on the continent. Their population has been halved in the past ten years. It's a crisis that not only affects East Africa - it affects the whole world."

Rungwa Game Reserve game officer Domina Mgelwa said there had been a lot of incidents of poaching and learning from the US Army soldiers was beneficial to adapting to the criminals' methods.

US soldiers, he said, "are more experienced in the field and they have more techniques which are important for us. Time changes and techniques change, so we need some new knowledge and techniques."

Wilson said US soldiers taught rangers skills in first aid, acclimatization, tracking, intelligence, "a full spectrum of training activities."

They also learned about small unit tactics, something Wilson said they were enthusiastic about learning.

"I found the Tanzanian rangers to be extremely friendly, open-minded, hard working and willing to learn," Wilson said. "They came to class everyday ready to learn and - truth be told - we often took them outside of their comfort zone. They never complained, they did what we asked of them, and I think the benefit is that they will go away with skills and knowledge that will stay with them for their remaining time as rangers."

Mgelwa acknowledged that the training was difficult but the rangers pulled together and as a result, built their confidence in protecting the reserve's remaining 44,000 elephants.

Reserve senior game warden Moses Munya said he felt equipped now to fight the poachers, and that he could pass the skills on to other rangers who were not able to attend the training.

"I like the military tactics," he said. "They have trained us how to crawl and different formations to reach the poachers' camp, or even capture poachers."

Wilson believes the rangers will be more effective in hunting down poachers and "the statistics will eventually bear out that our actions here have had a positive impact."

"The opportunity is great," Wilson said. "It's a noble endeavor to comehere and be able to have a positive impact on such an important issue. Every kid on the planet knows what an elephant is. I hope that every kid on the planet can eventually come to a place like this as see an elephant living in the wild."

A continent-wide survey of African elephants was just released last month by Vulcan Inc. It found that the rate of decline of savanna elephant populations is 8 percent per year, primarily due to poaching. And that rate has been accelerating.

On Sept 24, the opening day of CITES CoP17, the world's biggest conference on the international wildlife trade, marches calling for an outright ban on ivory and rhino horn will be taking place in cities on six continents, including Beijing, Hong Kong, Washington, DC, New York and Los Angles, Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires, Rome, Stockholm everywhere.

Contact the writer at chrisdavis@chinadailyusa.com.
SAWYER -- A former small-town superintendent was sentenced to 35 years in prison Thursday for a series of sexual encounters with 14-year-old and 15-year-old boys he met in an online chat room.

Charles Soper, 51, a North Dakota native who had worked as an administrator in Sawyer and lived in nearby Minot, had pleaded guilty in April to a charge of gross sexual imposition -- a Class AA felony for having sex with a 15-year-old boy who told authorities.

In court Thursday, Soper disputed some of the findings of the case, arguing that his accusers misled him by claiming they were 18 years old.

Deputy State's Attorney Kelly Dillon said, however, that Soper should have known better.

He was preying on teenagers, and regardless of his position that these boys maintained that they were 18 years old, he is an administrator, and educator, whose career has been spent working with children of this age, said Dillon.

The state also brought to light findings from investigators of images and videos of children engaging in sexual acts on a laptop computer and tablet in Soper's home, said the television report.

Soper along with his attorney Eric Baumann pleaded with the court to lower his sentencing from a plea deal agreement of 35 years to 20 years, citing his lack of criminal record before the incidents.

I didn't have any intention of doing any harm to anybody. But I do recognize that I did, said Soper.

But Judge Douglas Mattson didn't agree, upholding the 35 years.

A good part of their world was shattered. I have no direct information of knowing that, other than what's in the files, but there was harm done, said Mattson, according to the television report.

Soper will also have to turn over electronic devices to the authorities, go through sex offender registration and treatment, and he must avoid contact with anyone under the age of 18 without supervision.

As part of the deal, the state agreed to drop a human trafficking charge against Soper.

None of the victims in the case were students at the school where Soper worked, and the incidents did not occur there.

In his earlier court appearance in April, Soper made a statement saying he pleaded guilty for several reasons including the desire to avoid the possibility of even longer incarceration if found guilty in a trial, and to avoid a trial he said would be exploitative and disheartening for his family and friends and the victims and their families.

Soper, according to earlier reports, had contacted one of the boys, who alert authorities, through the smartphone app Grindr. The boy was able to identify the user as Soper from the Facebook account the man provided in case the boys parents took away his phone.

The boy said Soper picked him up when he was able to sneak out of his parents home while they were sleeping and drove him to Sopers Minot apartment and had sex with Soper and another male.

Soper is a Devils Lake native, a Devils Lake High School graduate and earned his bachelors and masters degrees from the University of North Dakota.

He began his education career in the late 1980s teaching English and speech in Walhalla and also taught at Fort Totten.

After Soper earned his masters degree from UND in 1996, he became principal in Beach in far western North Dakota in 1997 and was later promoted to superintendent.

He then moved in 2002 to Colorado, where he was superintendent in the Park County and Lamar school systems.

According to the schools website, Soper had worked in Sawyer, a town of 350 people, since 2014.
A man stands in front of shipping containers at the Hanjin Shipping container terminal at Incheon New Port in South Korea on Wednesday. CFP

Hanjin Shipping's bankruptcy has sent ripples through the maritime industry, stranding cargo and jacking up rates to Asia by as much as 50 percent.

"September is typically a peak season for ocean freight carriers because importers are advancing October orders (first week of October is Golden Week in China and all factories are closed)," Nerijus Poskus told China Daily. Poskus is director of pricing and procurement for Flexport, a freight forwarder and customs broker in San Francisco.

"Now you add that plus 7 percent reduction in capacity... it creates a perfect storm, and ocean freight carriers are able to raise prices (supply-demand imbalance)," he said, adding that one in 15 containers "from Asia to USA will need to find a new home".

The price to ship a 40-foot container from China to the US rose almost 50 percent in one day, Poskus said. The cost from China to US West Coast ports increased from $1,100 per container to as much as $1,700 a week ago, while a China-East Coast trip jumped $700 to $2,400, he said.

The industry already is struggling with overcapacity resulting from a global trade slowdown, including China's economic easing, that coincided with a boom in shipbuilding.

Hanjin won an interim ruling on Tuesday protecting its US assets against creditors as it reorganizes in its home country, South Korea. A US Bankruptcy Court in New Jersey asked lawyers in the case for more information before a final hearing Friday. Hanjin filed the Chapter 15 petition on Sept 2.

"There are innumerable parties that can arrest and levy on the debtor's property in the United States," the company said in its filing. "These parties include, but are not limited to, fuel provider, ship owners (where the debtor is a charterer), terminals, port pilots, trucking companies, repair vendors, rail companies, and container lessors."

Electronics giant Samsung supported Hanjin's petition, saying it has about $38 million in merchandise on two Hanjin ships off the Port of Long Beach, California, that can't dock without a US court order protecting the company against creditors trying to seize cargo.

Hanjin applied for receivership in Seoul last week. Its parent Hanjin Group said on Tuesday that it is planning to raise a total of $90.46 million on its own to fund unloading of cargo.

Hanjin Group and major shareholder Korean Air Lines will raise 60 billion won by putting up stakes in overseas terminals such as Long Beach Terminal as collateral, while Hanjin Group chairman Cho Yang-ho will raise 40 billion won from private funds, the group said.

With the company's assets frozen, Hanjin ships are being denied permission to offload or pick up containers at ports around the world over concern that tugboat pilots or stevedores won't be paid.

"Our ships can become ghost ships," Kim Ho Kyung, a manager at Hanjin Shipping's labor union, told Bloomberg. "Food and water are running down in those ships floating in international waters."

Last week, creditors led by the Korea Development Bank rejected a plan by Hanjin Group to spend $447.2 million more to rescue the shipping firm, far short of Hanjin Shipping's $5.4 billion in debts.

Chinese ports and terminals that accepted Hanjin ships before the company announced bankruptcy proceedings are charging deposits of as much as $1,800, The Wall Street Journal reported. Seven Hanjin ships were stranded outside Chinese ports.

The Seoul central district court has given Hanjin until Nov 25 to submit a plan that will determine whether it can continue operating.

In the US, "retailers' main concern is that there is millions of dollars worth of merchandise that needs to be on store shelves that could be impacted by this", the National Retail Federation said in a Sept 1 statement.

A Sept 1 Federal Maritime Commission statement said: "The Commission will be vigilant in watching for, and quick to act on, any improper behavior by other carriers and regulated parties (such as marine terminal operators, non-vessel-operating-common-carriers, and freight forwarders) that would constitute violations of the Shipping Act."

Bloomberg, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this story.

Contact the writer at williamhennelly@chinadailyusa.com
Chinese Defense Minister Chang Wanquan (R) meets with British Secretary of State for Defense Michael Fallon on the sideline of the UN peacekeeping defense ministerial meeting in London, Britain, Sept 8, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua]

LONDON -- China and Britain on Thursday pledged to enhance their exchanges and mutual trust in military to tap their huge cooperation potential.

The latest development came as visiting Chinese Defense Minister Chang Wanquan met with British Secretary of State for Defense Michael Fallon on the sideline of the ongoing UN peacekeeping defense ministerial meeting in London.

Chang, also a Chinese state councilor, said that his country is willing to deepen mutual understanding and political trust with the new British government, expand cooperation and exchanges in various areas and levels so as to make new progress in the bilateral strategy coordination and pragmatic cooperation.

Chang's remarks came as China and Britain reaffirmed their commitments to the "golden era" in the bilateral relationship when the leaders of the two countries met in Hangzhou during the G20 summit a few days ago.

The minister said that the military relations between the two nations had witnessed substantial progress.

He called on the two sides to maintain the momentum of high-level military exchanges and bring new connotation to their pragmatic cooperation.

"We should make our military relations a critical growth pole for our bilateral relations," Chang added.

On his part, Fallon said that Britain is willing to strengthen its exchanges and cooperation with China in military and defense.

The defense ministerial meeting is a follow-up event of the the Leaders'summit on Peacekeeping which was convened in the United States last year.
The Chinese government expressed its firm opposition after the Democratic People's Republic of Korea conducted another nuclear test on Friday, saying Pyongyang totally disregarded global criticism.

China strongly urges the DPRK to keep its promise of non-proliferation, abide by the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council and to refrain from any act that will worsen the situation, the Foreign Ministry wrote in a statement on its website.

China takes a firm stand in realizing the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, preventing nuclear proliferation and safeguarding the peace and stability of Northeast Asia, it read.

China will work together with the international society to firmly promote the denuclearization of the peninsula, and insist on solving related issues through Six-Party Talks, it added.
SEOUL - Park Geun-hye, president of the Republic of Korea (ROK) denounced the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)'s fifth nuclear test during her trip to Laos, calling it as "fanatic recklessness," her office said Friday.

Park, who has stayed in the Laotian capital of Vientiane to attend the East Asia Summit (EAS), said that the DPRK conducted a second nuclear test this year following the January test, strongly criticizing it as a clear violation of UN Security Council resolutions and a grave challenge to the international society.

The ROK's president said the DPRK's nuclear test proves the "fanatic recklessness" of Pyongyang adhering to nuclear development in a thorough defiance of the international community's unified will not to accept the DPRK's nuclear program.

Her denunciation followed the DPRK's fifth nuclear test Friday morning at its main Punggye-ri test site. Seoul's military said artificial seismic waves were detected from a 5.0 magnitude quake close to Punggye-ri, where the fourth nuclear detonation was carried out in January.

South Korea regards the latest test as the most powerful as the 5.0 magnitude can put its estimated explosive yield at about 10 kilotons.

Six kilotons of explosive yield were spotted from the fourth test.

The DPRK's state media announced it has successfully carried out "nuclear warhead explosion" test, saying this test showed its capability of mounting nuclear warhead on ballistic missiles.

Pyongyang had claimed it already possessed a technology of miniaturizing nuclear warhead small enough to fit on ballistic missiles that can reach the US mainland.

Since top DPRK leader Kim Jong Un gave an order on March 15 to test a nuclear warhead and ballistic rockets capable of carrying the warhead "in a short time," the DPRK has conducted a series of ballistic missile launches including ground-based ballistic missiles and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM).

President Park decided to return to ROK some four hours earlier than scheduled, right after holding a bilateral summit with Laotian counterpart.

What Pyongyang can gain from nuclear tests, Park said, would only be the international society's tougher sanctions and isolation. She said this provocation would speed up its self-destruction.

The president said her government will push for additional harsher sanctions, both bilateral and multilateral in UN Security Council, in cooperation with the international society, vowing to strengthen pressures on Pyongyang with all available measures to make it give up its nuclear program.

President Park made a phone call with US President Barack Obama, agreeing to take all available measures including fresh tougher sanctions in UN Security Council, according to Park's office. The United States, ROK and Japan asked for an emergency meeting of UN Security Council to address the DPRK's fresh nuclear detonation.

Cheong Wa Dae announced a separate statement of the government, urging Pyongyang to immediately dismantle its nuclear and missile programs in a complete, verifiable and irreversible manner.

Chairman of ROK's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) convened an emergency video conference with field commanders to review defense readiness against possible provocations from the DPRK. The JCS head ordered a stern, strong retaliation against any DPRK provocation.
Beijing urges Pyongyang to keep promise on nonproliferation and abide by UN resolutions

The Chinese government expressed strong opposition on Friday to the nuclear test conducted by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, which also drew widespread global criticism.

"China strongly urges the DPRK to keep its promise on nonproliferation, abide by the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council and stop taking any actions that will worsen the situation," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement on its website.

At a regular news conference in Beijing, ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said, "Parties related to the Korean Peninsula should, and only, solve their security concerns in ways that are in line with all parties' interests, and any unilateral act that serves a certain party's own interest is only a dead end'."

She also said the Foreign Ministry would lodge a protest with the DPRK's embassy in Beijing for conducting the test.

The China Earthquake Network Center said a magnitude-5 quake jolted the DPRK at 8:30 am Beijing time on Friday "at a depth of 0 km".

The state-run Korean Central News Agency said later that the DPRK had successfully conducted a nuclear test aimed at checking the power of its nuclear warheads.

The Ministry of Environmental Protection started emergency radiation monitoring along regions bordering the DPRK. The radiation data in those regions were in the safe range after the test, the ministry said.

The Republic of Korea regarded the test, the fifth by the DPRK, as the most powerful yet conducted by Pyongyang, as seen by the registered magnitude, which estimated its explosive yield at about 10 kilotons. The explosive yield from a nuclear test conducted by the DPRK on Jan 4 was estimated at about six kilotons.

ROK President Park Geun-hye strongly denounced the DPRK test, vowing to strengthen pressure on Pyongyang with all measures available to make it give up its nuclear program.

US President Barack Obama said any provocative actions by the DPRK would have "serious consequences".

Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida said that Tokyo has lodged protests with Pyongyang.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, while meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry in Geneva, said a message must be sent "very strongly" on implementing UN resolutions concerning the DPRK.

Yu Shaohua, a researcher of Korean Peninsula studies at the China Institute of International Studies, said the current situation on the peninsula is more complicated than before.

However, she said related parties should not only rely on the pressure of sanctions.

"The new way of dialogue, proposed by China, should also be considered in order to solve the issue," Yu said.

China proposed a parallel approach earlier this year under which the DPRK would abandon its nuclear weapons program and the US and the ROK would agree to sign a peace treaty with the DPRK to replace the 1953 armistice agreement.

Agencies contributed to this story.
Conservation and environmental experts and Chinese officials discussed the concept of eco-civilization at the 2016 International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) World Convention Congress in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Representatives from the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the Nature Conservancy participated on Wednesday in the discussion on eco-civilization, which was proposed in 2007 by China and focuses on respecting, adapting to and conserving nature in meeting social and economic needs.

"Eco-civilization is the final solution for the existing environmental problems, which we should cooperate on," said Zhang Xiwu, manager of the Department of Wildlife Conservation and NR in State Forestry Administration, adding that China has been building a complete system to promote eco-civilization.

Zhang said that China also gives high priority to promoting and incorporating the eco-civilization concept into the economic, political, cultural and social development of the country.

"The concept of eco-civilization really fits well with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals," said Karin Krchnak, director of the Freshwater Program of WWF, adding that people can see the efforts China is making to improve the worlds environment.

Experts from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), World Wide Fund for Nature, the Nature Conservancy, and officials from China discussed the concept of eco-civilization at the 2016 IUCN World Convention Congress held in Honolulu, Hawaii.[Photo by Yan Dongjie/China Daily]

About 8,000 people from more than 180 countries gathered in Honolulu to discuss environmental protection and sustainable development challenges at the 6th IUCN World Conservation Congress from Sept 1 to 10. About 300 Chinese, including government officials, representatives from colleges, research centers, and other environment protecting organizations attended the congress, marking the biggest attendance ever, according to Guo Yufu, a division director of the International Forestry Cooperation Center of the State Forestry Administration.

Zhang Xiwu, manager of the Wildlife Conservation department and NR in State Forestry Administration, introduced the concept of eco-civilization on Wednesday.[Photo by Yan Dongjie/China Daily]

Zhang Xiwu, manager of the Wildlife Conservation department and NR in State Forestry Administration, introduced the concept of eco-civilization on Wednesday.[Photo by Yan Dongjie/China Daily]

Xinchen Wei, co-founder of Youth Lead, speaks for Youth from China at the 2016 IUCN World Conservation Congress in Hawaii.[Photo by Yan Dongjie/China Daily]

Chinese youth delegates support IUCN as volunteers, interacting with audience members through tattoo games, showing Chinese traditional calligraphy and sending special gifts.[Photo by Yan Dongjie/China Daily]
Laotian Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith holds a grand ceremony to welcome Premier Li Keqiang on September 8, 2016. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]
Premier Li Keqiang visits a shop after a trip to the Lieu-Tou Chinese School in Vientaine, Laos, on Friday. Premier Li chatted with the shopkeeper and customers during his short stay there. LIU ZHEN/CHINA NEWS SERVICE

Premier Li Keqiang told Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte that he hopes China and the Philippines will work together to bring bilateral ties back on track.

Li made the remark when talking to Duterte in the Lao capital Vientiane on Wednesday on the sidelines of a series of leaders' meetings on East Asia cooperation.

He said he hoped the bilateral ties would develop in a "healthy and stable way".

Duterte expressed his willingness to improve bilateral ties, saying Li's remarks represented his own principle, according to a news release issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Friday.

The China-Philippines relationship was jeopardized by an arbitration case unilaterally initiated by Duterte's predecessor, president Benigno Aquino III.

Just weeks after Duterte took office, he sent his special envoy Fidel Ramos, the former Philippine president, to Hong Kong last month. During Ramos' five-day ice-breaking trip, he held informal discussions with some old acquaintances, including Fu Ying, foreign affairs chief of China's top legislaturethe National People's Congress.

The talks between Li and Duterte showed the sincere attitude China has always had toward improving bilateral ties, said Luo Yongkun, an associate professor of Southeast Asian studies at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations.

"We have never shut the doors to bilateral talks," he said. "The Philippine attitude toward the South China Sea arbitration case is fundamental."

If the Philippines wants to put the arbitral ruling on the agenda for talks with China, the issue will be deadlocked, he said.

Luo suggested that in order to improve relations, China and the Philippines should first enhance pragmatic cooperation through projects such as the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, as well as strengthen people-to-people exchanges.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (2nd L, front) visits the Lieutou Chinese School in Vientiane, Laos, Sept 9, 2016.[Photo/Xinhua]

VIENTIANE - Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on Friday visited a Chinese-language school in the Laotian capital of Vientiane.

The Lieutou Chinese School, founded in 1937 and financed by local Chinese, now hosts more than 2,800 students. It teaches both Chinese and Laotian and offers courses from kindergarten to high school.

The Chinese premier received a warm welcome on the campus, where students sang well-known Chinese songs and recited a poem that highlighted China-Laos friendship.

Li also watched a group of students writing Chinese calligraphy and encouraged the youngsters to make contributions to the development of their countries and to the friendship between the two countries.

While meeting with a team of over 20 volunteer teachers from China, Li praised them for sowing the seed of friendship. He expressed the hope that the teachers will promote exchanges between the two peoples.

Li told the students and faculty that China and Laos enjoy strong mutual political trust, long-standing friendship, and close people-to-people and cultural exchanges.

Li arrived in Vientiane on Tuesday for a China-ASEAN leaders' meeting, a meeting between leaders of ASEAN nations and those of China, Japan and South Korea, and an East Asia Summit. He also made an official visit to Laos.
FARGO  By a wide margin, the Fargo area takes in more refugees than any other place in North Dakota.

Fargo, West Fargo and Moorhead, Minn., have received a total of 6,220 refugees since 1997  over three times the number who arrived in Grand Forks and Bismarck combined, according to Lutheran Social Services of North Dakota (LSS), the nonprofit group hired by the federal government to resettle refugees in North Dakota and Moorhead.

Cass County Commissioner Chad Peterson brought up this discrepancy at a meeting of refugee resettlement officials on Thursday. He told the group hed like to see refugees spread more proportionately across the state, given that Cass Countys social service system doesnt have enough money to meet their needs.

"Right now, our social services is overburdened to the nth degree," he said. "There is a substantive burden spent when we have folks in this quantity coming in that make the lower salaries."

Cass County represents 23 percent of North Dakotas population. But the county has taken in 72 percent of the states refugees in fiscal year 2016, which ends this month, according to LSS.

Shirley Dykshoorn, who oversees refugee resettlement for LSS, said one reason so many refugees land in the Fargo area is the availability of housing and support services, as well as job and education opportunities.

Another factor is that the Fargo area has the states biggest ethnic community, and a large amount of LSS resettlement work involves reuniting incoming refugees with relatives already living here. Family ties help remove or reduce isolation, and support the families, Dykshoorn said, noting that refugees without ties are mostly being sent to Bismarck.

County Commissioner Mary Scherling, who also attended Thursdays meeting, said she embraces having refugees in the community, but she believes resettlement needs to be done in a fiscally sound way.

"We want to make sure that we have the resources to support people when they come here as well, and maybe other communities could share that responsibility with us, she said. It shouldnt be a burden to Cass County taxpayers only.

Peterson said he expects oil extraction in western North Dakota to eventually ramp up again, at which point communities there could benefit from refugee workers.

Scherling agreed that western North Dakota could offer opportunities for refugees. Though, she acknowledged that finding affordable housing there is difficult and added that the same issue exists in Cass County. Affordable housing is tough everywhere," she said.

North Dakota has three refugee resettlement sites authorized by the U.S. Department of State: Fargo, Grand Forks and Bismarck. Dykshoorn said there are no plans to add other sites.

She said LSS has tried to keep the number of refugee arrivals at a manageable level. In this fiscal year, 389 refugees have been resettled in the Fargo area, 90 in Grand Forks and 37 in Bismarck. In fiscal year 2017, its projected the Fargo area will receive 313 refugees, 110 in Grand Forks and 50 in Bismarck, but those numbers could increase as much as 10 percent, according to LSS.
(Photo : Getty Images ) US President Barack Obama has discussed the South China Sea dispute with ASEAN leaders at a meeting in Laos.

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US President Barack Obama on Thursday raised the territorial dispute in the South China Sea at an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit in Laotian capital city of Vientiane.



Obama urged China to respect the ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration on the South China Sea dispute, describing it as "binding." The US President's remarks came during a meeting with leaders of ASEAN member states.



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"With respect to maritime issues, we'll continue to work to ensure that disputes are resolved peacefully including in the South China Sea," Obama said. "The landmark arbitration in July which is binding helped clarify maritime rights in the region."



Obama also assured ASEAN leaders that the US would continue to help to ensure the peaceful resolution of their territorial disputes. He urged ASEAN nations to work constructively with each other to lower tensions and promote regional stability.



Obama's remarks come a week after the Philippines claimed that China had started new construction work on the disputed Scarborough Shoal. On Wednesday, the Philippines' defense ministry released photos showing Chinese coast guard ships vessels near the disputed shoal in the South China Sea. Beijing, however, rejected Manila's claims and asked Filipino authorities to stop "hyping up" the situation in the disputed region.



In July, the UN-backed Permanent Court of Arbitration, based in the Hague, ruled against China in favor of Philippines in a long-standing territorial dispute over the South China Sea. China, which is laying claim to almost 80 percent of disputed territory, had said that it does not recognize the ruling.



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TagsBarack Obama, china, US, ASEAN, Philippines, South China Sea Dispute
(Photo : VOA) The 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2012.

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Five of the seven old men comprising the Politburo Standing Committee (PSC), China's highest ruling body, will retire at the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) to be held in Beijing in the autumn of 2017.



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All five will have exceeded the mandatory retirement age of 68. The remaining two men in the PSC, President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang, will remain members of the body. Xi is 63 and Li, 61.



Li's remaining at the PSC is uncertain, however. The current members of the PSC were appointed during the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China on Nov. 8, 2012.



The five members of the 18th Politburo Standing Committee who will step down are Zhang Dejiang (born 1946), Yu Zhengsheng (1945), Liu Yunshan (1947), Wang Qishan (1948) and Zhang Gaoli (1946).



The full title of the PSC is the Standing Committee of the Central Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China. The PSC consists of anywhere from five to nine men.



Successors to the vacant PSC posts will be selected at the 19th national congress. Xi is expected to pack the PSC with hit appointees to expand his drive for complete control of the CPC, and with it the Chinese state.



In particular, Xi will need to replace Wang Qishan, his closest ally and the second most powerful man in China, with another man who will be as equally loyal to him. The retirement of Zhang Gaoli, Li's top lieutenant in the PSC, is a golden opportunity for Xi to cement his control of the PSC.



After the 19th National Party Congress confirms the PSC's new members, these men will be assigned jobs in the party's top leadership at the 13th National People's Congress in March 2018.



Among the leading candidates for the vacant PSC positions are Vice Premier Wang Yang (who might also replace Li); Liu He, director of China's Office of the Central Leading Group on Financial and Economic Affairs; Li Zhanshu, Xi's Chief-of-Staff and the Director of the General Office who will likely play the role Wang did; Wang Huning, a policy adviser to Xi; Hu Chunhua, Party Secretary of Guangdong and Sun Zhengcai, the current Party Secretary of Chongqing.



Most of these men are allies of Xi.



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TagsPolitburo Standing Committee, PSC, 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, Xi Jinping, Li Keqiang, china
(Photo : CCTV) Shenyang FC-31 stealth fighter.

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Russian aviation experts contend combat aircraft of China's People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) are "quite competitive" compared to those of the United States except in strategic aviation.



They also expect China to rectify the PLAAF's most serious problem -- the inability of Chinese industry to manufacture high performance jet engines at par with those in the U.S. and Russia -- with the establishment this August of state-owned Aero Engine Corporation of China (AECC).



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AECC is capitalized at $7.5 billion and is being funded by China's State Council and the Beijing government. Chinese state-run media said the new firm already has 96,000 employees.



AECC's most immediate aim is to perfect the art of making fighter jet engines powerful enough to allow China's stealth fighters to live up to their promise. Analysts have long said inferior engines are holding back the development of the underpowered Shenyang J-31 and the Chengdu J-20 fifth generation stealth fighters.



The most sophisticated engines powering fourth generation fighters of the PLAAF and its most modern transport aircraft are made in Russia.



Chinese President Xi Jinping said establishing AECC was a "strategic move" to make China an aviation power and modernize the military.



Alexander Khramchikhin, deputy director of Russia's Institute of Political and Military Analysis, and Andrei Frolov, editor of Arms Export magazine, were united in their opinion China's combat aircraft will one day match the best of those in the U.S. and Russia.



"China's Air Force, like that of Russia, remains behind the US when it comes to support aircraft (including tankers, transport planes, and electronic warfare planes), but is steadily closing the gap," said Khramchikhin.



But in numbers of fourth generation fighters, "China will confidently come out first in the world, besting both the US and Russia -- and its airplanes will be physically newer."



China, however, is at a disadvantage in strike fighters or attack aircraft whose mission is to attack ground or naval targets.



Khramchikhin argued the situation as regards strike aircraft "is rapidly improving. So in terms of combat aircraft the Chinese are quite competitive, with the exception of strategic aviation."



Frolov was also impressed by the potential of Chinese air power, but noted limitations in China's engine-building capabilities have degraded China's military aviation. He said this problem needs to be solved before China can really compete with the U.S.



The problem with engines is all the more acute with China's fighters. Frolov said the WS10A Taihang engine, produced and developed in Shenyang is installed on Chinese derivatives of the Su-27 twin-engine heavy fighter, the J-11B/BS and the J-16.



"But this engine, on the one hand, faces reliability issues, and on the other, is not powerful enough for a fifth-generation fighter. Therefore, China faces a new challenge -- to make a more powerful engine on the level of our Product 117 (the AL-41F1), installed on the Su-35 fighter jet."



"As far as combat aircraft are concerned, the Chinese have the J-10A, a good fighter using the Russian-made AL-31FN engines, and the J-10B, equipped with an active phased array antenna. That's something none of our production aircraft have yet."



Frolov said competition with the US is more difficult, because the Americans have both quantity and quality on their side.



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TagsPeople's Liberation Army Air Force, PLAAF, Aero Engine Corporation of China, President Xi Jinping, Shenyang J-31, Chengdu J-20
(Photo : Getty Images) Volkswagen and JAC Motor are collaborating to delve into the research and development, manufacturing and sales of renewable energy vehicles.

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Volkswagen AG has signed a memorandum of understanding with China's Anhui Jianghuai Automobile (JAC Motor) to explore making electric vehicles in a new joint venture.



JAC Motor said that both companies would explore the feasibility of a joint venture with an aim to sign a formal agreement within five months. JAC Motor has stopped trading in its shares because it plans to sign a cooperative memorandum of understanding.



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The investment size and business model of the possible joint venture have not been finalized. The memorandum of understanding is not legally binding, and a final agreement would be subject to approvals and filing procedures from both companies, according to Fortune.



The joint venture would be focussed on the research and development, manufacturing and sales of renewable energy vehicles, providing Chinese consumers with highly cost-effective battery electric vehicle merchandise. Volkswagen said that the main goal of the exploration is to develop zero-emission mobility. A company spokesman said the partnership would most likely focus on pure battery electric cars rather than hybrids.



The deal comes as Beijing is planning to develop its growing electric car industry with incentives and other government support in a bid to enhance the country's environmental credentials and lessen air pollution, The Economic Times reported.



Global auto brands are only allowed to manufacture cars domestically in China by developing joint ventures with local partners, with automakers typically limited to two JV partners. Volkswagen has joint ventures with SAIC Motor and China FAW Group.



China's leading electric car manufacturer BYD has partnered with Germany's Daimler, while French car maker PSA Peugeot Citroen said that it would hands join with Dongfeng Motors to develop electric cars in 2019.



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Tagsvolkswagen, china, JAC Motor, Electric cars, BYD, electric car industry
(Photo : Getty Images) Japan is set to offer Vietnam two large patrol ships, a move that expected to help Hanoi to shore up its maritime security in the disputed South China Sea.

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Japan on Wednesday announced that it would offer Vietnam two large patrol ships. The move is expected to help Hanoi to shore up its maritime security against China in the disputed South China Sea.



Reuters reported that the announcement was made after Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's meeting with his Vietnamese counterpart Nguyen Xuan Phuc in Vientiane, the capital of Laos. The meeting took place on the sidelines of Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit in Laos.



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Vietnam would acquire the two patrol ships under a low-interest loan scheme granted by Japan. Tokyo has also announced that it would offer five used surveillance aircraft to the Philippines, another important claimant in the South China Sea.



Tokyo's decision to dole out military assistance to South China Sea claimant countries comes weeks after China warned Japan to stay out of the South China Sea dispute. Japan is locked in a bitter dispute with China over maritime territory in the East China Sea.



Hanoi has been looking to enhance its military and naval capabilities to counter China's increasingly aggressive actions in the disputed territory. Vietnam's military pursuit got a major boost in May after U.S President Barack Obama revoked a 41-year-old U.S. ban on arms sale to the country. India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who visited Vietnam last week, also assured the country of substantial military assistance.



Vietnam, the Philippines and other small claimants in South China Sea dispute are overtly depended on American military assistance to cope with China's increasing power.



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(Photo : Getty Images) US President Barack Obama has told Southeast Asian leaders that the US would continue its naval operations in the disputed South China Sea to protect their rights to the contested area.

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United States President Barack Obama said on Thursday that the US is not about to leave the disputed South China Sea despite warnings from China. Obama said the presence of the US military in the area is aimed at upholding the navigation rights of other nations in the disputed area, adding that they would be there for as long as international law allows.



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At the recently-concluded Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit held in Laos, Obama made it clear that the US would continue to stand with the people of the South China Sea region and ensure that their rights to the disputed sea are not violated.



"I reiterated that the United States will stand with allies and partners in upholding fundamental interests, among them the freedom of navigation and overflight, lawful commerce that is not impeded, and peaceful resolution of disputes," Obama said.



Arbitration court ruling



Obama said the organization highlighted the importance of the recent ruling of an international arbitration court rejecting China's claims to more than 80 percent of the South China Sea. He noted that the US would continue to ensure that countries laying claims to the disputed region would not militarize and occupy uninhabited islands.



The US leader also reiterated during the summit that China could no longer ignore that the United Nations-backed court's ruling is "binding" and "helped to clarify maritime rights in the region."



"The landmark arbitration ruling in July, which is binding, helped to clarify maritime rights in the region," Obama told Southeast Asian leaders.



In reaction to Obama's statements that the ruling is legally "binding," Beijing said the US is in no position to issue such a statement considering that it is not a party to the ongoing dispute.



Military confrontation



"We hope the US can take an objective and just attitude with respect to South China Sea issues," Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said in Beijing.



The dispute has raised fears of a potential military confrontation between the world's two superpowers with China determined to take control of the strategic waterway despite the arbitration court's ruling.



"I recognize this (dispute) raises tensions, but I also look forward to discussing how we can constructively move forward together to lower tensions and promote diplomacy and stability," Hua added.



The ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration on July 12 said China had no legal basis to claim a large percentage of the territories in the South China Sea. Around $5 trillion worth of ship-borne trade passes through the international waterway each year.



US defense and military officials have said that China's building of artificial islands in the disputed sea to bolster its claims is "illegal."



Besides China, Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Brunei--all part of the 10-member ASEAN bloc--have competing claims in the South China Sea.



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TagsUS President Barack OBama, ASEAN summit, South China Sea, Laos, Freedom of Navigation, china
(Photo : Getty images) About 129 Taiwanese fraud suspects have been deported to China from Armenia for prosecution.

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About 129 Chinese and Taiwanese fraud culprits who were nabbed by Armenia's Ministry of Public Security have been deported to China to face prosecution.



The group, which includes 51 Chinese and 78 Taiwanese citizens, were captured after a raid on various dens in August. Communication gadgets and electronics such as phones and computers were taken as evidence.



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Investigators have revealed that the group identified themselves as law enforcement officials and were stealing money through phone calls.



They are believed to have extorted not less than $1 million from over 50 different cases.



Investigations show that the group began in Southeast Asia, before spreading to the Middle East and East Africa and soon settled in Eastern Europe.



The Vice Inspector at China's Ministry of Public Security, Chen Shiqu, assured citizens that such cases would be dealt with using every means necessary.



"From now on, no matter where the criminal dens are, we will strengthen cooperation with local authorities, eliminate criminal gangs and prosecute their criminal liabilities according to the law," he said.



The move to deport the Taiwanese culprits to China for prosecution was not well received by Taiwan.



Officials from Taiwan have argued that the Beijing court system has no right to prosecute Taiwanese citizens.



China, on the other hand, has an advantage over the fact that not only does she enjoy a great deal of national diplomacy, but also a good number of the victims are her citizens.



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Tagschina, Taiwan, Ministry of Public Security
(Photo : Getty Images ) China has criticized North Korea for conducting another nuclear weapon test.

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North Korea's sole major ally China has criticized Pyongyang for conducting another nuclear test.



The Chinese foreign ministry on Friday issued a statement, conveying its "firm opposition" to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea over its latest nuclear test.



"Today the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, regardless of universal opposition from the international community, conducted another nuclear test, to which the Chinese government is firmly opposed," the ministry said in a statement.



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Beijing urged Pyongyang to stop any provocative actions which can further deteriorate the situation in the region. "We strongly urge the DPRK side to honor the commitment to denuclearization, abide by the relevant UN Security Council resolutions and halt any moves that could aggravate the situations."



North Korea said on Friday that it successfully conducted a nuclear test at country's northern nuclear test site. This was North Korea's second nuclear test this year and its fifth since 2006. "This is definitely a higher level of DPRK's technology of mounting nuclear warheads on ballistic rockets," an official North Korean statement said.



"The nuclear test finally examined and confirmed the structure and specific features of movement of nuclear warhead that has been standardized to be able to be mounted on strategic ballistic rocket, as well as its performance and power," North Korea's Nuclear Weapons Institute, said.



The United States, Japan, and South Korea have also denounced North Korea's latest nuclear test. South Korean President Park Geun-hye said that the test is a clear violation of United Nations Security Council's resolutions, describing it as "fanatic recklessness."



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(Photo : VNA) Senior Lt. Gen. Nguyen Chi Vinh presents a souvenir to Minister of State at the Ministry of Defense of the UK Earl Howe

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High-ranking defense delegations from Vietnam and the United Kingdom have met twice over the past two months to discuss strengthening military ties against a background of dangerous tensions in the South China Sea triggered by China's obstinate refusal to abide by international law.



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Minister of State at the Ministry of Defense of the United Kingdom Earl Howe has just finished talks with Vietnam's Deputy Defense Minister, Senior Lt. Gen. Nguyen Chi Vinh, who led a high-ranking Vietnamese defense delegation that visited the UK from Sept. 5 to 7 at Howe's invitation.



Gen. Vinh said the visit of the high-level Vietnamese delegation strengthened bilateral friendship between both nations; boosted military cooperation between their two armies and brought defense ties to a new level.



This was the second high level defense meeting between both nations in two months. In June, Vinh told British Secretary of State for Defense Michael Fallon Vietnam supports the UK taking an observer role in future conferences of defense ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Fallon promised Vietnamese troops will be allowed to train in the UK.



Following both meetings, Vietnam and the UK agreed to study the possibility of a defense cooperation agreement aimed at bolstering defense relations.



Vietnam and the UK recognized the positive outcomes of defense cooperation under the Memorandum of Understanding signed in November 2011. They did, however, note their current bilateral defense cooperation doesn't reflect the potentials of both countries and their strategic partnership.



In his September visit, Gen. Vinh expressed delight at positive developments in bilateral relations since the two countries established the strategic partnership six years ago. He said Vietnam always wants to boost bilateral relations and all-sided cooperation, including defense ties with the UK.



He affirmed Vietnam is ready to serve as a bridge connecting the UK to Asian countries, especially member states of ASEAN or the Association of Southeast Nations.



For his part, Howe said the UK always appreciates the role and position of Vietnam in Asia. He noted his country wanted to expand defense ties with Vietnam for the sake of peace, stability and development.



Gen. Vinh and Howe also exchanged views on regional and international issues of mutual concern. They agreed the current situation in Asia require countries to jointly deal with regional challenges, particularly non-traditional security ones.



They agreed that disputes between countries must be settled by peaceful means and on the basis of international law, an indirect jab at China, which has repudiated the ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague invalidating China's nine-dash line and with it China's illegal claim to own most of the South China Sea.



Gen. Vinh also invited Howe to visit Vietnam.



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TagsVietnam, United Kingdom, Senior Lt. Gen. Nguyen Chi Vinh, Earl Howe, Michael Fallon
(Photo : Getty Images ) Russian President Vladimir Putin shakes hand with China's President Xi Jinping.

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China on Thursday lauded Russian President Vladimir Putin's stance on the South China Sea dispute.



China's foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said at a regular press briefing that Putin's stance on the issue of China's disputes with littoral nations in the South China Sea represents the just voices of the international community.



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"President Putin grasped the crux of the South China Sea arbitration case initiated by the Philippines and declared Russia's objective and unbiased position on this issue which represents the just voices of the international community. China highly commends that," Hua said.



The Russian President recently backed Beijing's position of not recognizing the ruling of the Hague-based arbitration court on the South China Sea dispute. China also hit at US President Barack Obama for raising the South China Sea dispute at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit in the Laotian capital of Vientiane.



"Anyone, including the US side, one basic fact that must be made clear is that regarding issues of territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests, China will never accept any third-party settlement adopted without China's consent or any solution shoved under its nose," Hua said.



Obama on Thursday urged China to respect the ruling of the international tribunal's on the South China Sea dispute, describing it as "binding." The US leader's remarks came during a meeting with leaders of member states.



In July, the United Nations-backed Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled against China in favor of the Philippines in a long-standing territorial dispute over territories in the South China Sea. However, China has said that it does not recognize the ruling.



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The state licensing board for private security has opened investigations into whether the security officers who clashed with pipeline protesters Saturday were licensed and if their use of force was appropriate.

Monte Rogneby, counsel for the North Dakota Private Investigation and Security Board, said Friday the investigations were started in response to complaints received, including some specifically in reference to the dogs, which allegedly bit protesters.

The incident occurred at a worksite for the Dakota Access Pipeline where workers were bulldozing what the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe said was a sacred site, according to court documents filed the previous day. Protesters entered the site and clashed with private security guards. Three guards were reported injured, and several protesters said they were pepper-sprayed and bitten by dogs handled by the security personnel.

Rogneby said the board has not yet identified the private security personnel and agencies working there at the time. The board is trying to figure out who they were and whether they are authorized to work in North Dakota.

If it turns out the security personnel were not registered, the board can issue a cease-and-desist letter or pursue court action to stop their work. Those companies also could face potential fines.

Rogneby said there are no state standards governing the use of dogs or registration requirements. The board is investigating the incident with guidance from the state's laws on appropriate use of force when protecting people and property.

Pipeline developer Energy Transfer Partners LP did not respond to requests for comment by press time.

The Morton County Sheriff's Department is also investigating the incident with the North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigations.

Spokeswoman Donnell Preskey said the department is reviewing pictures and videos from that day. She said arrests and charges for protesters and security personnel could come in the future. No arrests were made Saturday.

Preskey said she was not familiar with the licensing board's investigation.

The American Civil Liberties Union of North Dakota has criticized the private security company's handling of the incident, comparing the use of dogs and pepper spray to the civil rights era.

"Such conduct is escalating an environment already filled with tension and is reminiscent of the shameful tactics used by the Birmingham (Ala.) police against non-violent protesters in the 1960s," Policy Director Jennifer Cook said in a statement.

Rogneby said he did not know how many complaints the board had received. Many have written anonymously or were encouraged to do so through social media.

He was not familiar with an online petition demanding an investigation into the private security company's use of force that has gathered more than 116,000 signatures.

The petition organizer, Matt Hildreth, said the online portal sends an email to the board each time someone joins.

"This is a good sign," Hildreth said when a reporter told him about the investigation. "We'll be waiting to see what the investigation says."

Though Hildreth lives in Ohio, he said he has stayed up to date on the protest through social media and wanted to do something about the footage he saw of Saturday's events.

"I was so mad I couldnt sleep," he said.

He had started other petitions before, but none had gathered nearly this many signatures.

"People are saying were watching and we care about this," he said.

Check back for updates to this story.
(Photo : Getty Images ) Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said the use of threat or force to resolve the South China Sea dispute would complicate matters affecting peace and stability.

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Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday disapproved the use of threat or force to resolve long-standing territorial disputes in the South China Sea.





Modi, in an apparent attack on China, said that the use of threat or force to resolve the South China Sea disputes would further complicate the peace and stability of the region. China is reportedly building new military infrastructure and constructing new islands to strengthen its territorial claims in the South China Sea.



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Modi urged all South China Sea claimants to respect the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. He added that India supports freedom of navigation in the disputed region. "As a State party to the UN Convention of the Law on the Sea (UNCLOS), India urges all parties to show the utmost respect for the UNCLOS," he said at Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit in the Laotian capital of Vientiane.



China has been engaged in a bitter dispute with the Philippines over the ownership of islands and reefs in the South China Sea. In July, an international arbitration court ruled against China in favor of Philippines in the long-standing South China Sea territorial dispute. China, however, rejected the ruling, describing it as "null and void."



India and China have been engaged in a bitter dispute over their shared Himalayan border. India's failed bid for membership in the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) has led to further deterioration of Sino-India ties in recent months. In June, Beijing blocked New Delhi's bid for membership in the NSG at a plenary meeting of the elite club in Seoul.



India recently agreed to provide four new petrol boats to Vietnam, another claimant country in the South China Sea. The four high-speed boats would boost Vietnam's military capability to counter Beijing's growing influence in the region.



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TagsIndian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, china, South China Sea, South China Sea Dispute
(Photo : CAS) Chinese Academy of Sciences announces its 13th Five-year Plan.

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The 13th Five-year Plan (2016-2020) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) announced yesterday in Beijing outlines breakthrough programs in areas such as particle physics; galactic structure; brain science; artificial intelligence; oceanology; ecology and the environment.



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Released by President Bai Chunli, the plan lays out CAS' goals and strategy for the five-year period ending 2020. CAS is China's driving force for exploring and harnessing high technology and the natural sciences.



"We will strive to achieve international prominence in strategically key fields and blaze the trail in cutting-edge and cross-disciplinary scientific areas, achieving a series of major original achievements, technologies and products," said Bai.



The plan calls for CAS to lead the China's key science and technology projects in fields like aviation, space and deep-sea exploration, quantum communication and computation, brain science and artificial intelligence, cyberspace security, the seed industry, clean energy, big data, intelligent manufacturing and robotics, new-generation materials development and applications, comprehensive environmental treatment and public health research.



CAS will heavily focus on fostering innovation as part of this effort. The five-year plan reveals 60 major science and technology breakthroughs CAS aims to achieve, as well as 80 key projects it will undertake.



Ongoing projects will also be a major focus of the Academy over the five-year period.



These include manned space exploration and lunar probe; high-resolution earth observation; nanotechnology; precision control of protein machinery and life processes; restoration and protection of fragile ecological areas; strategic advanced electronic materials; quantum control and information and deep sea research.



By the end of the five-year period, CAS plans to spend 40 percent of its research budget on basic research; 50 percent on applied research and 10 percent on R&D with the goal of making the Academy a top-ranked, globally influential and competitive research institution.



CAS hopes to attain world class levels in physics, chemistry, material science, mathematics, environment and ecology and geoscience by 2020.



The Academy will bring together resources from across China to build three to five large-scale international cooperative science projects and more national laboratories in support of China's development.



CAS aims to further develop independent intellectual property rights (IPR) and industrial technology standards, as well as practical applications for its S&T output in order to enhance social development.



During this period, CAS plans to establish about 10 overseas research institutions. In addition, it aims to set up five to 10 CAS-TWAS Centers of Excellence as part of China's Belt and Road Initiative.



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TagsChinese Academy of Sciences, CAS, 13th Five-year Plan (2016-2020), President Bai Chunli
Hatred for Jews at all-time high, Israeli official tells UN 09 September, 2016 by Gregory Tomlin , |

NEW YORK (Christian Examiner)  The rising tide of anti-Semitism in Europe may cause the second Jewish exodus from the continent in less than 100 years if European governments do not get a handle on the situation, Israel's ambassador to the United Nations said earlier this week.

"Over one-third of European Jews are afraid to wear a yarmulke or Star of David in public," Ambassador Danny Danon told a UN forum on anti-Semitism Sept. 7.

"More than half of French Jews have considered emigrating because they don't feel safe living as Jews in France. Today we hear things about Jews and the Jewish people that we thought belonged to the pages of history.... Anti-Semitism is returning to everyday life without shame."

The hatred of Jews has also gone global, Danon told the gathering. He said social media had enabled "anti-Semitism 2.0" where "the enemies of the Jewish people are using the tools of modern technology to target and harass Jews around the world."

"Make no mistake  attacks against Jews online lead directly to attacks against Jews on the street," he said.

Danon said Jews had become scapegoats in previous times when economies weakened or influxes of immigration began to change a country's culture. That danger is again present, he said.

In order to curb anti-Semitism, Danon said the countries of Europe have to take "immediate and concrete action" to tackle the problem. He called on social media companies to take preventative steps, but he also said member countries of the UN have to stop telling lies about Israel.

"There is a place where some are not ashamed to spread lies and slander about Israel and the Jewish people and you are sitting in it right now, here at the UN," Danon said.
A former government official of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation accused of accepting bribes and kickbacks from a construction contractor has pleaded guilty to federal charges in North Dakota. Randall Phelan was an elected representative of the governing body of the Three Affiliated Tribes from the end of 2012 to the middle of 2020. Investigators say Phelan used his official position to help the contractors business by awarding contracts, fabricating bids and managing fraudulent invoices. His trial had been scheduled to begin Tuesday. Phelan and two others were originally charged with receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars from the bribery scheme on the oil-rich Fort Berthold Indian Reservation. The contractor has pleaded guilty to bribery.
Russian patriarch, a few miles from Alaska, prays for peace with U.S. 09 September, 2016 by Gregory Tomlin , |

REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov

BIG DIOMEDE ISLAND (Christian Examiner)  Less than 24 hours after a Russian fighter passed within 10 feet of a U.S. P-8A Poseidon aircraft over the Black Sea, illustrating the rising tensions between the U.S. and its former Cold War adversary, the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church is praying for peace between the two countries.

Interfax Religion reports Patriarch Kirill visited Ratmanov Island  Americans call it Big Diomede  in the middle of the Bering Strait Sept. 8. It is the eastern most point of Russian territory, separated from the American-held Diomede Island  the Russians call it Krusenstern  by just 2.3 miles. Diomede, also called "Little Diomede," is only inhabited by about 170 American citizens, most of them native peoples.

Kirill reportedly held a prayer service on what Interfax Religion called "the USA frontier." The agency said the church leader prayed for peace and the protection of the environment.

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"Let's pray for peace in the whole world. Let's pray for good friendly relations between Russia and the United States; we are neighbors," Kirill said.

"It is difficult to imagine, but we are very close neighbors, we live within four kilometers of each other," the patriarch told a handful of Russian church leaders, frontier guards and journalists who arrived at the island via helicopter from the mainland.

Kirill, sounding much like Pope Francis who said recently that it was a sin to fail in caring for creation, said people should work to preserve God's creation "so that human sin should not destroy the God-granted beauty of this world."

"Certainly, you think about our people, about our country. But your thought go further, you think about the world, about people living on our planet. It is so strange to realize that on this earth, so beautiful, so diverse, so magnificent, granted by God. People live so badly," he said.

Kirill also said wars, terrorism, and environmental destruction are exhausting the world's resources.
ISIS militants are reportedly planning on using chainsaws to target Christians in Belgium in a killing spree.

The Christian Post reports that the son of radical Islamic cleric Shayh Alami from the Belgian city of Verviers admitted the plot to authorities after he was arrested for walking down the street calling for Muslims to murder all Christians.

In the video of the teen, he reportedly was shouting, "Oh Allah, annihilate the hateful Christians. Oh Allah, kill them all. Do not leave a single one of them. Oh Allah, make their weapons and ammunition booty for our brothers. Oh Allah, support Islam and the Muslims. Oh Allah, support the mujahideen everywhere."

The teen told authorities that ISIS was recruiting lone wolf jihadis to carry out chainsaw attacks against Belgians at a local shopping center.

Belgian authorities have tried to deport the radical Muslim father of the teen, but he appealed the order for his removal.

Theo Francken, the Belgian secretary of state for asylum and migration, stated, I can only hope for a quick sentence.

Clearly radicalism runs in the family, he added.

ISIS militants have reportedly used chainsaws as execution tools before. Last week, a report emerged revealing that the militants executed nine Iraqi youths with chainsaws because they joined an anti-ISIS group.

Photo courtesy: Thinkstockphotos.com

Publication date: September 9, 2016
A TV news anchor who lost both his wife and son to cancer has kept his faith in God despite the trials that have plagued his life.

According to ChristianToday.com, Jay Siltzer is the morning guy for news station WLOS-TV, the ABC affiliate in Asheville, North Carolina.

Siltzer lost his wife, Kelly, to a rare form of leukaemia in 2014. Just two years later, Siltzers eight-year-old adopted son also succumbed to cancer.

To add to the set of trials, Siltzer himself also battled cancer earlier in his life. In 1999 he was diagnosed with testicular cancer which then spread to his spine.

However, doctors were able to use chemotherapy and radiation treatments to get rid of the cancer, although these treatments left Siltzer infertile.

He married Kelly in 2000, and because they could not have children, they adopted their son Malachi from Ethiopia.

When asked how he keeps his faith and keeps going in life, Siltzer stated, "I suppose I could ask, 'Why me?' but the answer is 'Why not?' I'm a person of faith, and I trust good will come from this."

Siltzer also shared the touching words he had with his son before he passed away last week:

"You had a terrible start to life in Ethiopia. Then you were adopted. Your mom died from leukaemia. Now you're dying from brain cancer. How can you be so happy? Siltzer asked his son. And he simply looked at me with those brown eyes and he said because I know God.

Publication date: September 9, 2016
Southern Baptists are taking the lead in welcoming and ministering to the thousands of Syrian refugees who are fleeing the conflict in the Middle East.

According to an article in the New York Times, although many conservative Republican political figures are vocally against the U.S. accepting Middle East refugees, many conservative Christians have been on the frontlines helping them.

William Stocks, a member of Johnson Ferry Baptist Church in Marietta, Georgia is one such Southern Baptist who is helping a few of the 10,000 Syrian refugees the U.S. welcomed this year.

The 23-year-old Stocks takes time after work to help a Syrian family learn English. Despite having no formal teaching experience, Stocks is willing to help parents Anwar and Daleen and their two children (a third is on the way) transition to life in the U.S.

Stocks said that he does not help the refugees for political reasons, but rather because he believes his Christian faith calls him to help others.

My job is to serve these people, he said, because they need to be served.

Other prominent Southern Baptists leaders have also spoken out in favor of providing aid to refugees, even though some conservative leaders such as Donald Trump and the Rev. Franklin Graham have called for a temporary ban on Muslim refugees because of the threat of terrorism.

Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Conventions Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, stated, Its not unusual that we have politicians timid in the face of fear. But the task of the church is a different one. The church is called to see the image of God in all people and to minister Christs presence to all people. Thats what churches are doing.

Publication date: September 9, 2016
Those who saw the videos recorded by the Center for Medical Progress that exposed Planned Parenthoods baby-parts-for-cash racket will never forget them. Not knowing they were being filmed, Planned Parenthood officials matter-of-factly discussed making profit from the salvaged organs and tissue of aborted babies.

Though Planned Parenthood escaped any meaningful sanction for what the videos revealed, the efforts of the Center for Medical Progress left a mark. So in response, Planned Parenthood and its sympathizers have harassed and have tried to even punish those responsible for its embarrassment.

The latest example is Assembly Bill 1671, currently under consideration in the California legislature. This bill would, if it becomes law, make it a crime for a person who unlawfully eavesdrops upon or records a confidential communication. . . with a health care provider . . . to intentionally disclose or distribute the contents of the confidential communication without the consent of all parties. . . unless specified conditions are met.

The key words here are unlawfully, health care provider, and disclose or distribute. It is already unlawful in California to eavesdrop on or record a confidential communication without the other parties consent. Thus, if the Center for Medical Progress videos had been made in California, they could have been charged with a crime.

Thus, protecting people from non-law enforcement sting operations is clearly not this bills intention, since thats already covered in the law.

The bills true purpose is to protect Planned Parenthood from any further embarrassment, including in those instances where people are willing to go to jail to expose their wrongdoing. This was made clear in the original draft, which said that the bill would also make it a crime for any person to aid and abet any person in the commission of these offenses.

As originally written, the bill could have been applied to news organizations, or even BreakPoint. Anyone who quoted or linked to the videos could be charged with abetting in their distribution.

This was too much for even critics of the Center for Medical Progress. As the LA Times wrote, The proposal had civil libertarians, news organizations and filmmakers in an uproar, and rightly so. Even if you decry the Center for Medical Progress work, the version of AB 1671 that reached the Senate floor could have criminalized sharing or reporting on legitimate, valuable and even potentially life-saving undercover video work.

The amended bill now limits criminal penalties to those who actually make the video, but even the Times editorial board remains rightly concerned: Why a healthcare provider merits special protection, they wrote, even when discussing things that dont involve patient privacy is mystifying.

Well actually, its not so mystifying. As the Times later added: make no mistake, this measure would heap more criminal and civil penalties on  an act thats already prohibited by state law, even when done in the public interestsimply to satisfy an interest group popular among Sacramento Democrats.

Nor is this bill consistent. Planned Parenthood wants to be considered a healthcare provider in this bill, but wants none of the oversight required of the surgical healthcare providers, for example, in Texas. All of this is further evidence, as if any more were needed, that to its committed advocates, the right to an abortion trumps virtually every other freedom: of speech, of religion, of the press, and the public interest more generally.

All of which prompts a disturbing question: Even if you dont believe abortion takes a human life, does that so-called right that demands such illiberal protections have any place in a liberal democratic society?

BreakPoint is a Christian worldview ministry that seeks to build and resource a movement of Christians committed to living and defending Christian worldview in all areas of life. Begun by Chuck Colson in 1991 as a daily radio broadcast, BreakPoint provides a Christian perspective on todays news and trends via radio, interactive media, and print. Today BreakPoint commentaries, co-hosted by Eric Metaxas and John Stonestreet, air daily on more than 1,200 outlets with an estimated weekly listening audience of eight million people. Feel free to contact us at BreakPoint.org where you can read and search answers to common questions.

John Stonestreet, the host of The Point, a daily national radio program, provides thought-provoking commentaries on current events and life issues from a biblical worldview. John holds degrees from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (IL) and Bryan College (TN), and is the co-author of Making Sense of Your World: A Biblical Worldview.

Publication date: September 9, 2016
Korean American Family Services (KFAM) will be hosting a second seminar on dating violence this month on September 14, from 10 AM to 11:30 AM.

The non-profit had already hosted a seminar on Wednesday, but it has decided to host a second seminar on the same topic due to a large interest from Korean American parents, the organizers stated. Parents learned of the reality and source of dating violence, the characteristics of people who have abusive tendencies, and the harm that teens suffer when in an abusive dating relationship. The same topics will be covered in the upcoming seminar on the 14th.

"Parents must be aware of what a healthy relationship looks like in order to prevent abusive ones and intervene when necessary," said Jennifer Oh, the domestic program manager at KFAM. "A healthy relationship is one in which two people are equal and respect each others' boundaries."

The seminar to be hosted on the 14th is sponsored by the Blue Shield Foundation, and is free. The seminar will be carried out in small groups and thus requires RSVP.
The U.S. Government has threatened to revoke the tax-exempt and non-profit status of a humanitarian aid group that delivers aid to Cuba.

Pastors for Peace collects donations from cities across the U.S., and has sent medicine, computers, and school buses, and other goods to Cuba since 1992 as an act of defiance against the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba in 1960.

"We travel to Cuba without a US government license as a conscious act of civil disobedience and as an expression of resistance to the US governments cruel and immoral economic blockade of Cuba, which uses the denial of food and medicine as a political weapon," the group states on its website.

The parent organization for Pastors for Peace, Inter-religious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO), was also notified by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that it is at risk of losing its tax-exempt status because it never obtained the approval from the U.S. Treasury Department to send aid to Cuba.

IFCO, founded by pastors and community leaders in 1967, identifies itself as an interfaith organization.

The IRS claims the group has been under investigation by the U.S. Treasury Department since 2009, according to Reuters.

The Cuban Council of Churches condemned the actions of the U.S. government against Pastors for Peace.

"I do not understand how at this moment, when the Obama Administrations policy is to seek understanding, that on the other hand they are taking these types of measures against institutions that have created an understanding between our peoples," President of the Cuban Council of Churches Joel Ortega Dopico, said at a press conference in Havana, expressing frustration with the Obama administration.

The U.S. and Cuba has a history of hostile relations for nearly five decades. The Obama administration made a move to begin to normalize diplomatic relations with the country in December 2014, resulting in the relaxation of various restrictions on the country, such as those related to travel and trade.
A popular Bible translation is now literally the unchanging Word of God.

The English Standard Version (ESV) received its final update this summer, 17 years after it was first authorized by Crossway, its publisher.

The translation oversight committee changed just 52 words across 29 versesout of more than 775,000 words across more than 31,000 versesfor the final permanent text edition. The board then voted, unanimously, to make the text unchanged forever, in perpetuity.

The ESV is following the example of a much olderand surprisingly populartranslation.

The text of the ESV Bible will remain unchanged in all future editions printed and published by Crosswayin much the same way that the King James Version (KJV) has remained unchanged ever since the final KJV text was established almost 250 years ago (in 1769), Crossway stated on its website.

One difference: While the ESV copyright is held universally by Crossway, the KJV ...

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Gov. Matt Bevin to be Recognized as Distinguished Christian Statesman by D. James Kennedy Center for Christian Statesmanship, September 9



WASHINGTON, Sept. 9, 2016 /



"Gov. Bevin is a diligent servant leader who takes the responsibilities of public office with the utmost seriousness and brings an unashamedly Christian worldview to the task," said Hon. John Hostettler, Director of the Center for Christian Statesmanship, which serves legislators, staffers, and interns on Capitol Hill. "We're thrilled to recognize him as a Christian statesman and leader."



The award will be given at a banquet on Friday, Sept 9 from 5:30  7 pm at the Washington Omni Shoreham Hotel.



The Distinguished Christian Statesman Award, given annually since 1996, seeks to honor individuals who combine excellence in public service with character and faith in God.



"Our desire is to inspire more individuals to make Christians statesmanship the goal of their public service," said John Hostettler.



Founded in 1995 by the late D. James Kennedy, a minister, author, and evangelical leader, the Center for Christian Statesmanship has impacted thousands of lives by bringing a gospel witness, Christian discipleship, and a vision for Christian statesmanship to leaders in Washington.



INTERVIEWS

To interview John Hostettler, Director of the D. James Kennedy Center for Christian Statesmanship, please contact Debbie Revitzer, Evangelism Explosion Director of Communications, at

Share Tweet Contact: Debbie Revitzer, Director of Communications, Evangelism Explosion , 954-496-3738, drevitzer@eeworks.org WASHINGTON, Sept. 9, 2016 / Christian Newswire / -- The D. James Kennedy Center for Christian Statesmanship, a ministry of Evangelism Explosion International, will honor the Hon. Matt G. Bevin, Governor of the Commonwealth of Kentucky with its Distinguished Christian Statesman Award September 9 in Washington, D.C."Gov. Bevin is a diligent servant leader who takes the responsibilities of public office with the utmost seriousness and brings an unashamedly Christian worldview to the task," said Hon. John Hostettler, Director of the Center for Christian Statesmanship, which serves legislators, staffers, and interns on Capitol Hill. "We're thrilled to recognize him as a Christian statesman and leader."The award will be given at a banquet on Friday, Sept 9 from 5:30  7 pm at the Washington Omni Shoreham Hotel.The Distinguished Christian Statesman Award, given annually since 1996, seeks to honor individuals who combine excellence in public service with character and faith in God."Our desire is to inspire more individuals to make Christians statesmanship the goal of their public service," said John Hostettler.Founded in 1995 by the late D. James Kennedy, a minister, author, and evangelical leader, the Center for Christian Statesmanship has impacted thousands of lives by bringing a gospel witness, Christian discipleship, and a vision for Christian statesmanship to leaders in Washington.INTERVIEWSTo interview John Hostettler, Director of the D. James Kennedy Center for Christian Statesmanship, please contact Debbie Revitzer, Evangelism Explosion Director of Communications, at drevitzer@eeworks.org , or call 954-496-3738.
home World Catholic charity opens new building for asylum seekers in Calais

Secours Catholique will be hosting refugees in a new building in the town of Calais, France. The charity will also distribute clothing, shoes and other necessities to the refugees in the camp.

Vincent de Connick, manager of Secours Catholique in Calais, stated that the charity aims to give provisions to the refugees in a more pleasant setting.

He said, "For us, it's about having the ability to receive our migrant friends in a different setting, in town, in a more dignified way, for a distribution of clothes where they can have a choice, without needing to queue and with a different type of welcome."

The charity requested donations for the estimated 9,000 people living at the Calais camp. There will be two major distributions every month at Rue de Moscou, according to Caritas Social Action Network (CSAN).

Some of the items that the charity asked for are shoes, tents, jackets, bags, candles, men's trousers, men's jeans, blankets, sleeping bags, soap, shampoo, toothbrushes, toothpaste, hats and kitchen utensils.

In England, the Archbishop of Canterbury urged the government to allow 387 refugee children at the Calais camp to enter the U.K. 178 of those children have relatives in the U.K. and the remaining 209 are also eligible to enter the country, according to Citizens U.K.

Christian Aid and Citizens U.K. are holding a summit on Saturday to ask the government to increase its efforts in allowing the entry of refugees fleeing from conflict into the U.K.

The British government plans to build a 4-meter wall to stop the migrants from climbing into trucks headed for Britain. Another Christian charity, Seeking Sanctuary, advised against this.

"I'm far from sure it's the right answer, walls have proved pretty useless in the past, the Berlin Wall of course... People will just go around the end of it I believe," Phil Kerton, a representative of the charity, told Premier radio.
home Life Youth look for 'warmth' in their church, Christian authors say

Authors of the book "Growing Young" have found that young people seek authenticity and connection when they go to church. After researching 250 congregations and speaking to 1,300 young churchgoers, the authors concluded that young people want their church to be "warm" not "cool."

"Forget the rock-band vibe and the flashing lights. Warm is the new cool," the authors wrote.

Kara Powell, Jake Mulder and Brad Griffin recently released the book "Growing Young" to address the diminishing number of young people participating in parish activities. According to the publisher's website, the book "provides a strategy any church can use to involve and retain teenagers and young adults."

In an article they wrote for The Washington Post, they listed the words commonly used by young people, aged 15 to 29, to describe the church they attend: "welcoming, accepting, belonging, authentic, hospitable and caring." They collectively termed it as the "warmth cluster."

In their analysis, they discovered that the warmth cluster was a major factor in engaging young churchgoers. They advised against providing too many programs because it could work against the church's warmth.

"By suggesting that churches need to grow warmer, we don't mean adults should be nice to young people. Nice does not cut it. And warmth is more than superficial community. It's 'like family' a as young people told us again and again during our interviews and field visits," the authors wrote.

The authors noted that achieving warmth in churches may take a lot of time. They mentioned that a church should exhibit qualities such as stability, faithfulness and patience to a local community.

"Progress may be slow. But that's all the more reason to get started today," they concluded.

The findings of the authors echo the observations of pastors Brady Collins and Jason Powell from Greg Laurie's Harvest Christian Fellowship. They noticed that millennials are actually interested in authentic discipleship rather than light show theatrics in the church.
home World Christian refugees in Iraq putting their trust in the Church, not politicians

Displaced Christians from Nineveh Valley are looking towards the Church for leadership because they do not trust politicians to govern the region.

The Christians are becoming impatient to return to the homes they fled from but they remain divided as to whether the region should be under Iraq or Kurdistan. Kurdish authorities seek to add Nineveh Valley as a separate province of the state but Baghdad wants to retain control of the area once it is completely liberated.

Enad al-Dalakta, a teacher from the town of Bartella, wants the Kurds to take control of Nineveh Valley because he is skeptical of Iraqi politicians.

"We are already part of Kurdistan, and that's better for us than the Iraqi government," said al-Dalakta to Rudaw, a Kurdish publication. He complained that even the Christian members of the Iraqi parliament were not able to help.

"The trust in politicians is gone," he continued. They just talk, while the Church is helping. The Church will have a bigger role after we return. Now it actually already does what the government should be doing," al-Dalakta added.

Father Bashar Klthea, a Syrian Catholic priest, does not trust the Kurds and believes they want the region for their own selfish interests.

It was reported in 2010 that the Kurds opposed the establishment of a Christian enclave because they wanted to annex Nineveh Valley.

Marwan Butrus Jiji, a Syrian Catholic lawyer, wants the Nineveh Valley to become an autonomous region in coordination with Kakei and Shabak minorities as well as the Iraqi government. He believes that Kurds and Church representatives should cooperate with the U.N. in finding a solution.

"I believe the process will fail if it is not led by the church. Our only hope is the church," Jiji said to Rudaw.

While Christians disagree on who should control the region, churches continue to support displaced families. Klthea's church is looking after 6,600 families in Ainkawa and Al-Dalakta is active in helping 500 families at the Syrian Orthodox Church.
home World Hungary moves to assist persecuted Christians in the Middle East

The government of Hungary has set up a new department and prepared an initial budget of three million euros to help persecuted Christians in the Middle East. It will be working under the Hungarian Ministry for Human Capacities, which deals with matters regarding education and the Church.

TamAs TArAk, former deputy ambassador to Italy, will be serving as head of the department. The purpose of the department is to gather information and analyze situations that involve Christian persecution. The government already released an initial one million euros as part of its budget, a portion of which will be used to send official delegates to areas identified as trouble spots.

Eduard von Habsburg, the ambassador to the Holy See, stated that Hungary has been covertly helping Christians in the Middle East for years. The new department is the result of those operations. Habsburg revealed that the government aided Christians and other persecuted minorities in obtaining visas.

He also mentioned that the government helped build a Christian school in Erbil, Iraq. He added that this "follows the philosophy that the best way [for the government] to give them a chance is to help them to stay at home, in their countries and to find help there... to help them have the chance of receiving help on the spot."

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor OrbAn recently met with Pope Francis and Christian patriarchs from the Middle East. OrbAn decided to set up the new department after the meeting with the pope.

Habsburg said that the creation of the new program was publicized to set an example to other nations in Europe.

"Somehow the idea of defending Christians has acquired a bad taste in Europe, as if it means excluding other people," Habsburg told Crux.

Hungary is one of the few European countries that has a strict policy against granting asylum to refugees. Habsburg stated that dealing with the problems in the Middle East might alleviate the pressure on Hungary to accept more refugees.

"This may not be a solution in itself, but the best strategy is to deal with the situation where people are coming from, which will mean less need for fences in Europe," Habsburg said.
home World NYC pastor spends own money to buy weapons for Christian militia fighting ISIS in Iraq

Pastor William Devlin supplied a Christian militia with weapons to aid them in their fight against the IS (Islamic State). The pastor of the Infinity Bible Church in Bronx has spent about $4,000 from his own pockets to supply the group with AK-47 assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and grenades.

The militia that received the weapons, the Nineveh Plain Protection Unit (NPU), is mostly composed of Assyrian Christians. The group seeks to reclaim the Nineveh plains from the control of ISIS.

In an interview with The Christian Post, Devlin revealed that he had met with NPU's leader, Gen. Benham Aboosh, last April and learned that the NPU was in short supply of weapons.

The NPU has received training but not arms from the U.S. army. Devlin offered to buy equipment for the group after learning that many have already inquired on how they could help but never followed through.

"I was not going to go away from the general without helping him in some practical, demonstrable way because I felt embarrassed that all these other people have asked how they can help him [and did not give the help he needed]," Devlin said.

Devlin shared two photos on Facebook last week showing the items he purchased for the NPU. He said he delayed posting the pictures because he is unsure of the U.S. government's response to his actions.

"It's not that I'm provoking anything but I want to be fully transparent with my investors, with my government. I don't want to have them hear from somebody else, 'Hey, you know that Pastor William Devlin is purchasing weapons for the Christians to protect themselves?'" Devlin explained to The Christian Post.

Devlin stated that he is scheduled to meet with U.S. State Department officials sometime next month.

Aside from providing militia with weapons, Devlin also visits refugee camps to aid displaced Christians and Yazidis. He returned to Iraq last August to help refugees in Erbil and Dohuk.

Last week, the NPU announced that they have liberated Badanah, a village southeast of Mosul. The group shared photos and a video on Facebook of its fighters entering the village.
home US Obama administration admits paying $1.7 billion to Iran

The Obama administration admitted to lawmakers this week that an additional $1.3 billion was transferred to Iran apart from the initial payment of $400 million on Jan. 17. The $1.3 billion in cash was reportedly delivered via planes in two installments on Jan. 22 and Feb. 5.

The government previously said the initial payment of $400 million was part of a deal to return the amount paid by the former Shah of Iran to the Pentagon. Iran supposedly bought airplane parts from the U.S. in the 1970s but the Pentagon failed to deliver them.

Officials of the Obama administration reportedly feared that a tribunal in the Hague could rule in favor of Iran and order the U.S. to pay $4 billion or more. To avoid the ruling, the U.S. government negotiated with Iran to pay $400 million plus the interest of $1.3 billion.

Last month, Obama held a press conference denying that the payments were ransom for four American prisoners that included Pastor Saeed Abedini.

"We do not pay ransom for hostages. We've got a number of Americans being held around the world and I meet with their families and it's heartbreaking," the president said. "But those families know that we have a policy that we don't pay ransom," he added.

Later that month, State Department spokesman John Kirby admitted that they delayed the payment of $400 million until the American prisoners were freed. Kirby, however, claimed that the U.S. government was only taking advantage of the "leverage."

Rep. Ed Royce of California insisted that the payment was ransom. "We now know it was ransom. And on top of that it put more American lives at risk. And we've emboldened Iran," Royce said.

On Tuesday, Royce and Sen. Marco Rubio introduced the No Ransom Payments Act to prevent the U.S. government from making anymore similar payments and to try to recover the $1.7 billion from Iran.

"President Obama's disastrous nuclear deal with Iran was sweetened with an illicit ransom payment and billions of dollars for the world's foremost state sponsor of terrorism," Rubio said in a statement.
home Faith Perry Noble will go 'dark' on social media after rehab stint

Perry Noble, the former senior pastor of NewSpring Church, announced that he recently completed a 30-day treatment for his alcoholism. He stated that he will not be posting or responding to any comments on social media for the time being.

Noble confessed on Facebook that his time at the facility in Arizona was difficult for him. He plans to return to the ministry in the future with the help of his therapist.

"John Walker has been my therapist for around seven years now and I hold him in [the] highest regard," Noble wrote. "Together John and I will work through/develop a plan that will lead to the health and well-being of my family, and, over an extended period of time, a return to ministry is some sort of capacity," he continued.

Noble asked his followers to pray for his family and his therapist. He said that he will be posting on social media again when Walker permits it. Near the end of his post, he expressed his optimism for the future.

"I can honestly say I am excited about the future God has for me and my family. The one thing I keep hearing from Him over and over again is that He is not finished with me," he said.

The executive pastors of NewSpring cited alcoholism as one of the reasons Noble was fired as a pastor in July. They also noted Perry's behavior and his attitude towards his marriage. Noble posted a video where he apologized for his dependence on alchohol and acknowledged that the Church made the right decision to fire him.

Last month, Tyndale House Publishers decided to put Noble's book on hold. "11 1/2 Questions To Help You Date Without Regret" was scheduled for release on Tuesday, Sept. 27, but its status has been changed to "unscheduled."

Noble's other books, however, are still available at Tyndale's official website.
Bible argument leads wheelchair-bound pastor, 67, to fatally shoot fellow retired pastor, 80

This could only be the work of Satan.

An argument over the Bible between two elderly pastors took a tragic turn when one of them allegedly shot the other in the head twice, killing the victim on the spot.

The police said Allen Smith, 80, a retired Baptist minister and Yale Divinity School graduate, was shot dead by the wheelchair-bound, 67-year-old pastor Ted Merchant early Monday morning at a seniors' home in Chicago, Illinois, The Christian Post reports. Police say the shooting was caught on surveillance camera.

After the incident, Merchant fled in his motorised wheelchair but was arrested three blocks away at about 1:05 p.m., according to the Chicago Tribune. He was subsequently charged with first-degree murder.

Merchant had been living at the Senior Suites of Rainbow Beach in Chicago for about six years now and ran a ministry in the seniors' home called Straight Gate, according to residents.

They said the two men of God would frequently debate religion on the back patio where Smith died.

"They'd be out there all the time," Dorothy Hull, 76, a retired auditor for the Bank of America in Chicago, told the Tribune. "They'd talk about Bible passages and ideas about God. They always had little arguments going on about things like that."

But Hull said she had never thought that their arguments would reach such a point that either one of them would resort to violence.

"It was very surprising," she said. "I just can't get over it because he [Merchant] had a church in the community room every Sunday morning. He was retired, too, but he had this church going on. I just couldn't believe he did that."

She said Smith, the slain pastor, was a very nice man who was single and had no children.

"He was a very nice person, very outgoing, very friendly,'' Hull said. "He would do things for you, like go to the store or whatever."

Smith founded the Christian Tabernacle Baptist Church in Hamden, Connecticut in 1962 after previously serving in ministry in New York City, according to the church website.

Residents of the senior home told the Tribune that Smith was recently retired from the First Baptist Church in East Chicago and had moved into the seniors' home about a year ago.

The pastor was among at least 13 people killed in Chicago shootings over the Labor Day weekend, according to ABC 7.
Chinese bishop arrested as tension with Vatican grows

A Chinese bishop has been arrested by police and removed from his diocese in a city with a thriving Christian population.

Bishop Peter Shao Zhumin, coadjutor bishop of Wenzhou, was detained by authorities last week.

According to Asia News, which is affiliated with the Catholic Church, the bishop was set to take over from Bishop Vincent Zhu Weifang, who died from cancer on Wedneday.

The Chinese authorities do not recognise Bishop Shao's leadership because he is not part of the government's state-approved Catholic body, and was instead appointed by the Vatican.

Relations have historically been strained between the Catholic Church and China's ruling Communist party over irreconcilable claims to authority. The Vatican does not accept the validity of episcopal consecrations by the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, and an underground Catholic Church refuses to compromise with the state and is loyal only to the Pope.

Bishop Shao was reportedly taken from his diocese to northwestern China "on a trip" and another priest is being held in detention in relation to his arrest.

According to AsiaNews, police have barred members of the underground Catholic church from attending Bishop Vincent's funeral.

Wenzhou is in China's eastern Zhejiang province and is known as the 'Jerusalem of the East' for reportedly having the largest Christian community in the country.

Zhejiang has been the centre of a government campaign that has seen 1,700 churches demolished or had their crosses removed.

The Communist party is believed by human rights campaigners to be becoming progressively more worried about the influence of Christianity in the country.

President Xi Jinping has called on China to return to traditional beliefs, such as Confucianism, rather than 'western' religions, and has introduced a hard-line approach to various parts of civil society, including religion.
Christian militias help fight ISIS into retreat in Iraq

Christian militias are playing a hard-core role in the fightback against Islamic State as the Iraqi Army gears up to retake Mosul.

The militias, with some of their weaponry supplied by US pastors and other supporters, are aiding the slow but steady erosion of the territories captured by the Islamist terror group.

Already, some Christian leaders in the area are starting to discuss the post-ISIS settlement.

Christian Today reported that the Nineveh Plain Protection Units (NPU) had driven Islamic State out of Badaneh, a traditional Christian Assyrian vilage south of Mosul on 1 September.

"Liberation of Badanah village in #Khazer axis by NPU warriors with the support of international coalition by airstrikes, heavy and middle weapons" said a statement from the NPU, which posted videos and photos to its Facebook page.

Badanah fell to ISIS in 2014 along with a number of towns, cities and villages in the Nineveh Plains. The Islamist invasion has resulted in a catastrophic decline in the region's Christians with many having fled the country. Rape, murder and torture has been inflicted with savage cruelty on the region's Christian and Yazidi populations, as well as on Muslims who attempt to resist the extremists.

The conservative website Mad World News reported the NPU as "Christian crusaders".

Militia commander Bahnam Abush told media in Iraqi: "The operation is a step towards restoration of their confidence and hopes for Christians to stay in the land of their grandparents."
Christians must not be 'harsh or vilifying' in LGBT debate says Australian Archbishop

The Church "understands the desire of two people to express their commitment of love and self-sacrifice", and must accept the result should Australia vote for marriage equality, the head of the Anglican Church in Australia has said.

However, Church doctrine would not change, and would still consider marriage between a man and a woman, said Archbishop of Melbourne Philip Freier.

"Should the vote be in favour of same-sex marriage, as suggested by opinion polls, the Church must accept that this is now part of the landscape," he said in a letter to Anglican bishops.

"We can still stand for and offer holy matrimony between a man and a woman as a sacred ordinance given by God, while accepting that the state has endorsed a wider view of marriage... The doctrine of the Book of Common Prayer remains unchanged, that marriage is between a man and a woman, under God, forsaking all others until death parts them. I do not believe that the Anglican Church in Australia is likely to revise its doctrine of marriage."

Archbishop Freier added, however, that "Christians have not always shown the respect or perspective they should" regarding same-sex relationships.

"I am very concerned that the discussion does not become harsh or vilifying  on either side, for it is not only Christians who have sometimes failed on this score," he said.

"We understand that this is not a theoretical issue for many people, but one that directly impinges on their lives. We understand that sometimes gays, lesbians and others have felt judged and rejected, even ostracised, inside the Church and that we have to be much more pastorally sensitive in future.

"Whether this is the threshold event that many in our church think or whether the widening of marriage happened many years ago and further widening is inevitable remains to be seen. What does matter is that we approach this question with prayer, confidence in the Church's teaching as well as kindness in our speech towards those with whom we disagree."

It is not certain the plebiscite will go ahead as it's thought Labour may block the vote. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, attorney-general George Brandis will take a proposal to cabinet on Monday when Parliament returns.

A key figure in the pro-same-sex marriage movement has welcomed the Archbishop's letter, especially his call for Christians to "vote according to their conscience and their view of what is best for society".

"What you see in this statement is actually a real reflection of what the members of the church actually think," Tiernan Brady, head of Australians 4 Equality, said.

"It's real leadership to make this move and say clearly that it's OK to vote 'yes', and you can do in a way that's consistent with your belief."
'Civilization 6' release date: Kingdom of Kongo revealed ahead of Oct. 21

Developer Firarix Games and publisher 2K Games have announced that the kingdom of Kongo will be included in its upcoming "Civilization IV" upon its release next month. The kingdom will be led by Mvemba a Nzinga or also known as King Alfonso I.

Fans will be able to reenact Nzinga's attempts to spread Roman Catholicism across Kongo and modernize his empire. The close ties of the king with Portuguese also helped the modernization of the country.

"Debuting in Civilization VI is the Kingdom of Kongo, led by Mvemba a Nzinga. Also called King Afonso I, Nzinga is most famous for his attempts to spread Christianity across his empire, and increased activities with Portugal in a bid to modernize the empire," the announcement said.

The kingdom of Kongo has a unique unit called Ngao Mbeba, the Shield-Bearers of the Kongolese troops. These are highly trained men that carry scimitar swords and shields that cover almost their entire body. The Portuguese army had the bad-luck of encountering them back in 1577. These special troops are well adept to in forest and rainforest, can easily repel ranged attacks and do not require iron to be produced.

Mbanza is Kongo's unique district, are large town and cities spread across the kingdom and located deep in the jungle. These provides extra housing, food and gold. They are also much bigger than most cities during the era.

The kingdom of Kongo was not a playable option during "Civilation V," and is an expansion pack for "Civiliation IV," so this is the first time that it will be playable in the main game.

The studio provided a trailer to see the kingdom of Kongo in action.

"Civilization VI" is slated for a worldwide release on Oct. 21 for the Windows PC. Pre-order is now available.
Donald Trump to speak to conservative Christians at Family Values Summit

Donald Trump will this evening address thousands of social conservative grass-roots voters at the influential Values Voter Summit in Washington DC.

Vice presidential candidate Mike Pence, governor of Indiana, will address the summit, the 11th annual event of its kind.

Tomy Perkins, president of the organisers, Family Research Council Action, said in a press release: "As the 2016 presidential election approaches, there is a growing realisation among voters that the future of our freedoms and even our identity as Americans hangs in the balance.

"I am certain that Donald Trump and Mike Pence will underscore not only the importance of this election, but the important role conservative Christian voters have in influencing the outcome of the November election."

This will be the first time a GOP presidential ticket has attended since the three-day event began in 2006.

Perkins said it shows "an understanding of the importance of values voters in the general election and a desire to work with them in addressing the critical issues facing our nation."

Actors Jon Voight and Kirk Cameron are also due to speak as well as Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum.

"Those candidates coming to the summit are showing that they value social conservative voters and want to have a conversation with them. We will encourage attendees to take the candidates' presence into account as they cast their vote in the straw poll," added Perkins.

Trump's address will be live-streamed from the summit.

Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, told the Washington Times that Trump is an odd standard-bearer for the issues social conservatives care about.
Donations to Church of England hit a record high

Christian worshippers have given record amounts of money to aid the mission of the Church of England, latest figures show.

Planned giving, through schemes such as giving a regular amount each week and tithing, has increased by 6 million to 329 million. Total direct giving is also up, through the collection plate and other direct means, now amounting to 481 million.

The generosity of churchgoers also helped Church of England parishes to give to other causes, donating 46 million to supporting other charities working around the world, such as foodbanks, children's charities and disaster appeals.

Total parish income in the Church of England was 989 million, an increase of 36 million on the previous year. Expenditure levels also rose by 28 million to 948 million in 2014, leaving the 12,000 parishes with a surplus of 41 million over expenditure.

The increase is even more extraordinary given that the actual number of those giving has been in decline since 2007.

The latest stewardship figures are from 2014 and show an increase of 30 per cent over the preceding decade.

On average, churchgoers give more than 11 a week each. A 2014 report by the Charities Aid Foundation found that the typical monthly amount given by individual donors was 14 across the sector with the biggest earners being more likely to donate to "religious causes".

Cash remains the most popular method of donation, preferred by just over half of givers across the charity sector.

Research has also found that women are more likely to give to charity than men.

Dr John Preston, the Church's national stewardship adviser, said he was encouraged by the figures.

"As a result of the commitment and generosity of hundreds of thousands of churchgoers, we have seen record levels of giving, with the average weekly gift from all planned givers exceeding 11 for the first time, and the average gift from those able to give through Gift Aid exceeding 15 including the tax recovered," he said.

"Parishes were able to claim record levels of Gift Aid, with a significant part of this increase arising from use of the Gift Aid Small Donations scheme. It is also pleasing to note that legacy giving was the highest yet."
Former Pope Benedict XVI: 'I do not feel a failure.'

Former Pope Benedict XVI has insisted he does not "feel a failure" after his time as pontiff came to an end after jsut eight years.

In a new book, Ultime Conversazioni or "Last Conversations", he speaks frankly about his decision to resign in 2013.

He warns that the "de-Christianisation" of Europe is underway and that Christianity is disappearing from the fabric of society.

According to excerpts carried in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, he dispels suggestions that he was forced to resign because of blackmail threats, or that he stepped down because he could no longer cope with the pressure.

His Papacy was marked by the scandal of historic child sex abuse by priests and religious in the Catholic Church, by the "Vatileaks" conviction of his butler for leaking secrets and by the controversial decision to lift the excommunication in 2009 of a bishop, Richard Williamson, who opposed the changes of the Second Vatican Council and who was convicted of Holocaust denial by a German court. In 2012 Williamson was expelled by the traditionalist Society of St Pius X.

Benedict, now pope emeritus, says his resignation "was not a retreat under the pressure of events or an attempt to because of an inability to cope. No one tried to blackmail me. I would not have even allowed that to happen.

"If they had tried to do that, I would not have gone because you do not leave when you are under pressure.

"Nor is it true that I was disappointed."

In fact, he was at peace over the difficulties of his reign, and ready in his mind to "hand over the rudder" to his successor.

He said he had not expected Argentina's Jorge Bergoglio to be elected, and Francis had himself not wanted the job.

He was struck by the way Pope Francis immediately prayed for Benedict when his name was announced, the moment of silence, then "the friendliness with which he greeted the people so that the spark was, so to speak, struck immediately."

No one expected him to be elected, he said.

"I knew him, of course, but I had not thought it would be him. In this sense it was a big surprise."

He did not realise Bergoglio's name was on the final shortlist and was at first "unsure" about the choice.

"But when I saw how he spoke with God on the one hand, and with men on the other, I was really pleased."

He said the election of a Latin American cardinal meant that the Church was now dynamic and open to new developments.

It was not "frozen".

"What is beautiful and encouraging is that just in our time, things happen that no one expected and show that the Church is alive and brimming with new possibilities."

Pope Francis is a man of practical reform, he says, with long experience of being an Archbishop in Argentina.

On reports of a gay lobby at the heart of the Vatican, Benedict insists the Holy See is not teeming with homosexuals.

And he warns that it is especially clear that the de-Christianisation of Europe is progressing and that Christianity is disappearing more and more from the fabric of society.

"Consequently the Church must find a new form of presence, it must change its way of presenting itself. Epochal upheavals are underway."

He admits that practical government is not his strong point and that this is "certainly a weakness" but says he does not see himself as a failure. "For eight years I did my service. There were difficult moments, for example, the scandal of paedophilia, the Williamson case and even the Vatileaks scandal."

But it was also a time when many people renewed their faith.

He is now preparing himself for death, and for his "final test" before God.
Francois Hollande: Secularism is not a religion and there will be no burkini ban

France's President Francois Hollande has made a passionate plea for tolerance in the face of calls in some French seaside towns for "burkini bans" prohibiting women from wearing Islamic dress on the beach.

Mayors in around 30 town this summer sought to ban the swimsuits, which leave only the face, hands and feet uncovered, ostensibly on security grounds. Some retracted the bans after France's highest court ruled they were unconstitutional, but others are holding firm.

Speaking in Paris yesterday on "Democracy in the Face of Terrorism", Hollande said a ban on the burkini would be unconstitutional. He said Islam could "certainly" co-exist with Christianity and Judaism and that France's much-vaunted secularism was not a "state religion" to be used against other faiths.

"Can Islam accept the separation of faith and law that is the very basis of secularism? My response is yes, clearly yes," he said. "The immense majority of our Muslim compatriots today give us daily proof by practising their faith without any threat to public order."

He continued: "The question the Republic must answer is: Is it really ready to embrace a religion that it did not expect to be this big over a century ago? There too, my answer is yes, certainly."

He said: "As long as I'm president, there will be no kneejerk law that is as impossible to apply as it is unconstitutional."

He rejected calls for more repressive laws after recent terrorist outrages, saying: "The French Constitution is not a flexible text with ellipses or parentheses... We must guarantee security without giving up on living how we want to live." He continued: "I will not let [fundamentalists] test the limit of the rRepublic, and I will not give them any excuse to stigmatise Muslims, either."

Hollande was ranging himself directly against former president Nicolas Sarkozy, who has declared he will once again stand as a candidate. Sarkozy has called for a burkini ban and said suspected radicals should be interned in camps.
Government wants more faith schools because they're so successful

Many more new faith schools could be opened in England following a relaxation of selection rules for new pupils, according to a BBC report.

The proposals are expected to be in a government green paper released today.

A Downing St source told the broadcaster the cap on faith schools admissions, that restricts them to taking only half their intake on the basis of faith, had failed.

The source said: "It has failed to make minority faith schools more diverse, because parents of other religions and none do not send their children to those schools.

"But it has prevented new Catholic schools from opening, which are more successful, more popular and more ethnically diverse than other types of state school."

The source added: "We're going to change the rule, so we can allow new Catholic schools to open, while making faith schools of all kinds do more to make sure their pupils integrate with children of other backgrounds."

A spokeswoman for the Catholic Education Service said it welcomed the move.

"This will enable the Catholic Church to meet the current parental demand for thousands of new Catholic school places across the country," she said.

The proposal, which will be fiercely resisted by humanist groups, comes alongside even more controversial plans to reintroduce grammar schools providing a selective state education for bright children. No new grammar schools have been opened since the Tony Blair government banned the practice. They are widely held to be socially divisive, favouring the children of rich parents who can afford to have their children tutored to pass the 11 plus exam, though government proposals are expected to seek to address these fears.
Leading conservative Christians respond to latest 'gay' letter

Leading conservative Christians in the Church of England say gay lobbyists are right to call for more clarity from bishops over their stance towards gay Christians.

In an open letter sent to bishops before their meeting later this month, synod members call for "greater clarity and consistency" in the Church's approach to the LGBT community.

Chris Sugden, of the conservative group Anglican Mainstream, told Christian Today: "Nothing in the letter gives any reason for departing from the historic and time-tested teaching of the church on man-woman marriage. What the church and its mission needs now is an evidence-based approach to the actual pastoral care afforded to those with same-sex attraction in the church.

"Any adaptation to 'pastoral accommodation' in practice that contradicts the church's teaching on man-woman marriage will in due time lead to an abandonment of that teaching. The common good of faithful, lifelong, exclusive man-woman marriage is a very positive counter-cultural prescription for the current social malaise in providing boundaries as on a sports field for astonishing creativity.

"The church and its mission is wider than a subsection of the wider issue of man-woman marriage, family life and sexuality as the church seeks to address the growing instability and injustice of the current world order in faithfulness to the biblical Gospel of and from Jesus."

Ed Shaw, part of the editorial team at Living Out, an influential organisation for same-sex attracted people who take a traditional biblical view on the issue, and also a General Synod member from Bristol, told Christian Today that the synod members were right to call for greater clarity.

More than 130 lay and clergy members of the governing body of the Church of England appealed in the letter this week for bishops to recognise that lesbian and gay people are essential to the health and future of the Church.

The letter, organised by Jayne Ozanne, a gay member of the General Synod, says: "In particular, we are keen that the College of Bishops is unequivocal in its acknowledgement that all, including those who identify as LGBTI, are essential to the health and future of our church and mission to the wider world."

General Synod members from 40 of the 42 dioceses in the Church of England have now signed the letter. The two exceptions are Truro, and Sodor and Man.

Shaw, associate pastor at Emmanuel Bristol, said: "This letter's call for clarity and consistency in the church's teaching and pastoral care - alongside welcome of all sexual minority groups - is to be commended.

"Further ambiguity that can be interpreted in different ways by different groups might just about preserve unity but will damage LGBTI members of the church like myself and Jayne.

"It's time for the Church of England to clearly articulate where it stands on these issues. I hope and pray that will be in a way that affirms the two great gifts of heterosexual marriage and communal singleness but am also increasingly praying for a clear and final decision at the end of such a painful and costly listening process."

He was referring to two years of private "shared conversations" where people from both sides of the debate have shared their stories at diocesan and synod level.

A cautious welcome also came from theologian Ian Paul, a member of the Archbishops' Council, but he also had criticisms.

He told Christian Today it is important to take it seriously, given the support it has from a good number of those in synod. "There is clearly a feeling for the need of change of some sort."

But it was also worth looking at what the letter failed to say.

"I would agree with the need for 'greater consistency' in our approach to this issue. But up until now, the House of Bishops have been very clear on the Church's teaching and its implications. If that has been implemented inconsistently, then changing our position at this moment will hardly remedy that.

"I would heartily endorse the notion that 'all are essential to the health and future of the church and its mission'but this completely sidesteps the key issue at hand: what does it mean for all of us to live in holiness of life in accordance with the teachings of the apostolic faith?"

He said the letter sets a "low bar" on signing up. "Despite that, I could find very few names on the list who would call themselves 'evangelical'so it does not appear to have gained the breadth of support that is claimed."
Loss of both his wife and son to cancer fails to shake off this TV news anchor's faith in God

A husband, his wife and their adopted sonall three afflicted with cancer. Two succumbed to the treacherous disease, but one survived to share to the world an inspiring lesson of unyielding faith in God.

Jay Siltzer, the "morning guy" news anchor at WLOS-TV, the ABC affiliate in Asheville, North Carolina, first suffered the loss of his wife Kelly to leukaemia or cancer of the blood in 2014. Then just recently, their adopted eight-year-old son Malachi also died of brain cancer, CBN News reports.

Despite this double whammy, Siltzer, a cancer survivor himself, has remained steadfast in his faith.

In May, the 48-year-old TV journalist told People Magazine that he relies on his faith to get him through saying,

"I suppose I could ask, 'Why me?' but the answer is 'Why not?' I'm a person of faith, and I trust good will come from this."

In his job as a morning television anchor, Siltzer appears unperturbed by the back-to-back tragedies that have struck him. He still keeps things light and fun in the show, according to People.

Siltzer's friends and colleagues affectionately noted that he can even be corny at times  which they say is touching considering all that he's been through.

The TV man was himself diagnosed with testicular cancer in January 1999. He underwent surgery and radiation, but the cancer cells moved and wrapped around his spine.

He again had surgery and radiation plus chemotherapy treatments. His doctor warned him that the treatments he underwent could make him infertile for life.

The doctor's warning did not prevent him from marrying his wife Kelly in 2000. Since they could not produce a baby of their own, they adopted their son Malachi from Ethiopia five years later.

It was when Malachi reached the age of three when Siltzer's wife was diagnosed with a rare form of leukaemia. She passed away in the summer of 2014.

Years later, it was Malachi's turn. He woke up with a headache in November of 2015 and the MRI showed a grade-three brain tumor on the left side of his brain. Malachi joined his adopted mother in heaven afterward.

Last Tuesday, Siltzer said his final goodbye to his son at the Immaculate Conception Church in Hendersonville, North Carolina during his memorial service.

He recalled the last words he said to his son as he lay dying. "You had a terrible start to life in Ethiopia. Then you were adopted. Your mom died from leukaemia. Now you're dying from brain cancer. How can you be so happy? And he simply looked at me with those brown eyes and he said because I know God," Siltzer said.
Pastor shoots dead retired minister during Bible study

A pastor has shot dead a retired minister in a retirement home.

Allen Smith, an 80-year-old retired Baptist minister, was shot twice in the head by Ted Merchant, 67, during their regular late night Bible study at Senior Suites of Rainbow Beach in Chicago.

Smith died on the scene. Merchant fled but was later apprehended by Police. The incident was caught on CCTV and he now faces charges of first degree murder.

Merchant was a fellow resident, active in leading a ministry there. He and Smith were known for their discussions and "little arguments" over the Bible, the Chicago Tribune reports.

Residents expressed their shock at what had occured.

"They'd be out there [on the patio] all the time," said Dorothy Hull. "They'd talk about Bible passages and ideas about God. They always had little arguments going on about things like that.

"It was very surprising," she added. "I just can't get over it because he [Merchant] had a church in the community room every Sunday morning. He was retired too, but he had this church going on. I just couldn't believe he did that."

Merchant was reportedly "trying to get his ministry off the ground". He called himself a pastor, and held prayer gatherings. Ann Harding, another resident, said: "He was a nice man, you know, when he came to the door."
Professor Brian Cox condemns 'toxic' rows between science and religion

Prof Brian Cox has called for believers and non-believing scientists to acknowledge each others' contribution to human beings' search for meaning and to avoid "toxic" dismissals of different worldviews.

Interviewed at a Diocese of Leeds clergy conference where he shared a platform with Prof David Wikinson, principal of St John's College, Cox  a physicist with a high public profile thanks to his popular TV science documentaries  said that while he had no personal faith he rejected the label of "atheist" because he refused to be "pigeon-holed".

In his address he spoke of cutting-edge theories of multiple or even infinite universes, and the implication of these theories for the quest for meaning. He said faith and science do not have to be in opposition. Cox quoted the Belgian priest and professor of physics George Lemaitre, who proposed the theory of the expansion of the universe, who said: "There are two paths to truth and I decided to follow both of them."

In an interview for the diocese's website, Cox spoke of the multiverse theory, which postulates many different universes. He said: "If that turns out to be correct  and this is right at the edge of our current understanding, but let's say it turns out that there are an infinite number of universess, so all possibilities of the mixtures of the laws of nature exist, and in some universes there'll be stars and galaxies, in others there won't, what does that mean?

"Well, meaning is something that scientists alone are not qualified to extract from the world. This is where art and music and philosophy and theology live, and not only have a role to play but are an essential part of our discussion  what do these discoveries that we make mean? How are we to respond to them as human beings?"

He said that exploring such questions was "part of the tradition of the Church, part of the tradition of different religious beliefs across the world". Creation stories are "common across every culture and every geographical corner of the world. Where you find human beings you find creation stories, so that tells you something about what it means to be human."

He hit out at the "polarisation of debate" in today's society between people of different worldviews. "You see it in politics, you see it in the interaction between religions, and you see it in the interaction between religion and the secular world, you see it all over the place," he said. "There seems to be a driving apart of people with diffferent views and a ghettoisation of different worldviews.

"The analogy I would draw is with a multi-party democracy... That implies that you accept and celebrate the fact that there are people with whom you disagree."

He added: "This idea that there's this lot over here and this lot over here and we disagree and it gets more and more ghettoised and we get a louder argument, is toxic.

"So for me, the idea I would be able to have an entertaining and enjoyable afternoon discussing with people with whom I suppose I have to say I disagree at the most fundamental level, because I don't have a particular faith, or any faith in fact  however, I think that difference of opinion and view of the world is to be celebrated and explored."

There was, he said, "no room for dogmatic positions" in science. "I think the fundamental principle in science is that we start from a fundamental position of ignorance.

"And that means we take delight in being shown to be wrong, and furthermore we do not assume that we're right."

Cox said he rarely considered religion except when he was asked about it, but said: "I don't class myself as an atheist  I hate the label, partly because of what I've just said  I don't like the ghettoisation of thought and worldview, I think it's entirely toxic."

Asked to define the idea of "wonder", he said: "Wonder is noticing that there's something beautiful and worth exploring about nature, and that's the act of wonder, and then you go off to explore it in whatever way you choose.

"If you really want to understand how a blade of grass works the only way you're going to do it it is by doing science, you won't do it by contemplating it. But there are responses to the universe  a piece of art is a reponse, music is a response, theology and philosophy are responses, but the inital act of being interested and noticing something that's worth exploring is what I would define as wonder, and that's common."
Rev Gretta Vosper doesn't believe in God, Jesus or Bible: Church panel says enough is enough

Atheist pastor Gretta Vosper should be dismissed from ministry in the United Church of Canada, a Church committee has decided.

The saga has been going on for quite a long time. The minister of West Hill church in Toronto, she said in 2001 she didn't believe in a supernatural, interventionist, divine being". The UCC, extremely relaxed about doctrinal issues, was OK with this until in 2013 she declared herself an actual atheist.

The panel appointed to hear her case reported exhaustively on what she believed (not much) and concluded, rather drily given the drama of the situation: "Therefore, the Conference Interview Committee recommends that the sub-Executive of Toronto Conference request that the General Council conduct a formal hearing to consider whether to place the name of Rev Gretta Vosper on the Discontinued Service List (Disciplinary)."

It was, however, a majority decision and the views of the dissenting minority were recorded as well. Their argument was that doctrine develops, UCC theology should be a big tent, and that: "By presenting a faith with much of the traditional structure removed, Ms Vosper is appealing to those who are part of the 'spiritual but not religious' group who define their religion as 'none'."

To a large extent, of course, it's entirely up to the UCC who it chooses to recognise as a minister. But there are surely some basic beliefs to which anyone who aspires to that office needs to subscribe. Belief in God is the main one of these. Vosper is clear that she doesn't, and that there is "no reason to remain aligned with a doctrine that does not fit the contemporary and ever-evolving scientific understandings of the universe or ethical perspectives on human dignity and rights". Furthermore, she said that "even if she were given incontrovertible proof that a god does or gods do exist, the evidence of the cruel and capricious realities of disparity, tragedy, illness, and anguish in the world, and the truth that our world and our experience of it is wrapped not only in beauty but also in excruciating pain, would prevent her from worshipping it or pledging her allegiance to it, no matter the cost".

There is much more of the same. Moral codes are socially constructed. Jesus was "an itinerant Middle Eastern preacher who managed to engage a group of people who were looking for the same things". There's no Holy Spirit at all. Prayer at her church is called "community sharing": "For example, a person may say that they are concerned about X. The congregation will respond, "May love abound." The Bible isn't inspired (there's no one to inspire it). She said the whole disciplinary process was flawed and invited the committee to decline to participate in it; they declined to decline.

There are, perhaps, three questions that arise from all of this. First, why is she so keen to remain a minister? The answer seems to be that whatever her hostility to many elements of her faith tradition, she still values it for the sense of spiritual community it provides. That this spirituality has no anchor in any objective truth doesn't seem to matter. You can have a godless church and a faithless faith, she thinks, which cherry-picks the best of your religion while avoiding the inconvenience of thinking any of it is really true.

Second, why has it taken so long for the UCC to act? Her views have been well known for a long time. It only took action when in 2015 the Toronto Conference received letters and emails urging that it take notice of the fact that one of its ministers was an atheist. But her ecclesiastical superiors have known exactly what she thought for ages. She has an active blog and is a prolific speaker and author. The suspicion has to be that they were hoping the problem would go away.

Third, how much do you have to believe in order to be a minister  or a Christian? That, of course, is the $64,000 question. No one, if they are wise, would like to see heresy-hunts in any denomination, in which any departure from what's regarded as orthodoxy is met with punishment. But any Church  and any membership organisation  has a right to decide that someone's views have departed so far from its own that it no longer makes sense for them to identify as a member. That's what the UCC, eventually decided in the case of Gretta Vosper.
Steve Chalke slams government's grammar, faith school plans as 'counter-productive'

Government proposals to give every school in England the chance to become a grammar school "can only be counter-productive", according to Rev Steve Chalke.

The government's plan to allow schools to select by academic ability and to relax the selection rules for faith schools have caused a furore in the worlds both of education and politics.

The founder of Christian charity Oasis, which through its education trust Oasis Community Learning is responsible for 47 Academies in England and is one of the UK's biggest education providers, said none of its schools would select students by ability or by faith.

Chalke said: "I welcome the Prime Minister's goal of increasing social mobility for the poorest in society, but any attempt to sift and separate students at 11 years old can only be counter-productive to this.

"Through the pioneering of Academy groups such as Oasis, many communities now have good or outstanding local schools for the first time in history. This has not been achieved by selection by ability but by a ruthless commitment to helping every child reach their potential regardless of their starting point.

"Oasis is a large Christian Foundation which runs schools in communities around the country based on a commitment to the principle of inclusion. We do not and will never select based on either faith or ability. This would be anathema to us."

He concluded: "Rather than emphasising a return to selection, I call on the government to continue to back and fund the proven models that we know can deliver."

Many educationists are firmly opposed to the return of grammar schools, with chief inspector of schools Sir Michael Wilshaw telling the BBC this morning: "We will fail as a nation if we only get the top 15-20 per cent of our children achieving well.

"We've got to, if we're going to compete with the best in the world, get many more children to achieve well in our schools.

"My fear is that by dividing children at 11 and by creating grammars and secondary moderns  because that's what we'll do  that we won't be able to achieve that ambition."

A return to some form of selective education has long been a cherished vision of many Conservatives, but not all are in favour of the new proposals. Sarah Wollaston MP tweeted her opposition, saying she strongly opposed "100 per cent faith schools" which "can have nothing to contribute to a more integrated and cohesive society". Referring to Prime Minister Theresa May's words on assuming office, she told the BBC: "If you stand on the steps of Downing Street and talk about wanting to reduce inequality, I think you have to follow the evidence and, I'm afraid, sooner or later you have to deliver on evidence-based policies."

She added: "I think we need to be very careful that we're not ending up giving one message but introducing policies that go in the opposite direction."

Education secretary Justine Greening told ITV's Good Morning Britain programme: "We are going to be setting out some conditions around how grammar schools can expand and new grammar schools, and the fact we do want to see existing grammars do more to work with local communities, and more to make sure that disadvantaged and low-income background children can get into grammars and benefit."
Young Woman Killed in Eritrea for Refusing to Renounce Jesus Christ

Christians have been left outraged by the death of a young woman in Eritrea, allegedly tortured to death in a military facility for refusing to renounce her faith in Jesus Christ, Open Doors has reported.



Migsti Haile, 33, died 5 September, at the Weaa Military Training Centre, and is the fourth Christian known to have been killed this way in the past year.



Open Doors, a Christian persecution and human rights watchdog, said Haile was tortured for refusing to "sign a letter recanting her faith".



It is believed she spent 18 months in prison "under severe pressure" since she and nine other single Christian women were arrested at a church gathering in Keren.



The latest news of persecution will further increase international pressure for the Eritrean Government to take action to guarantee religious freedom.



At least 2,000, mostly Christian evangelicals, are detained in Eritrean prisons, police stations, military camps and other facilities, including even shipping containers, according to a number of human rights groups, however, the Eritrean Government has denied any such abuses.



The Director of the Office of the Eritrean President, Yemane Gebremeskel, said recently that reports of mass arrests are "distorted and exaggerated".



Open Doors expressed grave concerns that more prisoners, including priests and pastors, would be killed by the same method of torture.



The organisation reported that the prisoners "remain locked up and [are] subjected to severe torture for their religious beliefs in the nation's jails, police stations and military camps. All have been denied legal counsel or trial, with no written charges filed against them".



Open Doors USA President Carl Moeller has said: "We need to keep up our prayer vigil for the Christians in Eritrea. Eritrea is a small country in Africa, but that doesn't mean the persecution is less intense than in larger countries."
JIM WILSON/NYT

Houston-based Enterprise Products Partners said Thursday it withdrew an offer to buy the Williams Cos. pipeline giant after speculation reached Wall Street.

Enterprise CEO Jim Teague said the proposed acquisition offer was pulled because of a "lack of engagement" by Oklahoma-based Williams and because of the increasing rumors about a potential deal. Such rumors began spreading in mid-August, just more than a month after the $33 billion deal for Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners to buy Williams fell apart from buyer's remorse.
A Houston-based technology company wants to make it easier to plan weddings, birthday parties, corporate events and other gatherings.

CoPlannur launched this week in Houston to streamline the process of discovering, communicating and booking event vendors. It allows users to compare vendor pricing and read vendor reviews.
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Texans aren't the only fans of Texas land.

The Texas Association of Realtors recently released its 2016 Texas International Homebuyers Report. The study reports that, "Texas home sales purchased by international homebuyers added more than $10 billion to the Texas economy from April 2015 and March 2016."

>>See some of the most expensive homes for sale in San Antonio, Houston and Dallas above.

"Texas accounted for 10 percent, or 21,488 home sales and $10.26 billion, of all international home sales in the U.S. from April 2015 to March 2016," the study reports. "This is a 2 percent increase from April 2014 to March 2015."

In that period of time, Latin America (including Mexico) brought in 36 percent, and Asia/Oceania (including China and India) drew 34 percent of buyers. About 35 percent of international buyers in Texas came from Mexico.

SEE ALSO: Annual salary needed to buy a house in Texas

European buyers stood at 12 percent of international home buying, African buyers stood at 8 percent and Canadian purchases totaled 4 percent. Also in that span of time, 20 percent, or one in five, Indian homebuyers who purchased land in the U.S. chose Texas. (Story continues below.)

Where does that put Texas in comparison with the rest of the nation? The only places that topped the Lone Star State for percentage of international buyers are California and Florida. Of course, that's not surprising considering the size of this state. Arizona and New York followed Texas, with 4 percent each of international buyers from April 2015 to March 2016.

RELATED: Dallas mansion Casa Belle Vista with foyer pool headed for auction

Of all U.S. home sales in the 12 months ending in March, about 214,885 were purchased by international buyers. That's a 3 percent increase from the previous study.

As for immigration, Texas attracted 9.4 percent of the 1,016,518 people who moved to the U.S. in 2014. Among the metro areas drawing in the most immigrants is the Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown area at No. 5, Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington at No. 8, Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos at No. 26 and San Antonio-New Braunfels at No. 28.

"Texas is now home to the second-largest foreign-born population size in the nation and has the seventh-highest percentage of foreign-born residents compared to statewide population," Leslie Rouda Smith, chairman of the Texas Association of Realtors, said in a statement. "Over the last several years, Texas has become increasingly popular among international homebuyers from all parts of the globe for relocations, investment properties and vacation homes."
A woman leaving work downtown was punched in the face in broad daylight near Discovery Green Park Thursday evening, according to a news report.

The alleged assailant was arrested by constable's deputies passing by on a routine patrol who spotted the attack, KPRC reported and a constable's office tweeted. The suspect ran away from police but was cornered and detained.

Dozens of witnesses saw the attack, which police suspect was a revival of the infamous "knockout game" in which someone attacks a bystander for fun.

John Nau, a construction worker who was finishing a job nearby, told KPRC, "He was skinny but, I can't believe she doesn't have something broke."

Police told the TV station the suspect, who was wanted on an outstanding warrant, would face charges of assault and evading arrest.

The Harris County Precinct 1 Constable's office tweeted that deputies saw the man punch the woman, chased him through a parking garage and caught him with help from the Houston Police Department and Metro police. The same 23-year-old was suspected of hitting and purse-snatching on previous days, the constable's office added in another tweet.

Over the last 20 years, the "knockout game" phenomenon has hurt many victims worldwide, leaving some dead.

A 29-year-old was sentenced in October to 71 months in prison for hitting an 80-year-old man while recording a video of the attack in Katy. The man, Conrad Alvin Barrett, pleaded guilty to hate-crime charges for hitting the elderly African-American.

andrew.kragie@chron.com
GRAND FORKS -- A University of North Dakota professor was arrested Thursday after police said they found child pornography on his university-owned computer, making him the third UND staff member to face child porn charges.

Eric Hewitt Basile, 37, appeared Friday afternoon in Grand Forks District Court via video from the Grand Forks Correctional Facility on eight charges of possession of certain materials prohibited, all Class C felonies. He faces up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine for each count.

On Thursday, UND administration requested a search of Basiles computer in Ryan Hall, according to documents. UND Police learned Basile was suspected of using his work computer to facilitate inappropriate relationships with students.

He was placed on administrative leave that day.

A North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigations agent was brought in to conduct a forensic examination of the computer. That examination revealed child pornography, which led to a Grand Forks District Judge signing a search warrant, according to court documents.

Detectives from the Grand Forks Narcotics Task Force, UND Police Department, BCI and Homeland Security executed a search warrant on Basiles residence on Level Plains Circle in Grand Forks. Agents seized multiple digital devices, which were examined for criminal content by the BCI.

According to court documents:

In an interview with detectives, Basile admitted to having child porn images and videos; he said he had collected about 100 images and videos from a website and stored them in a Dropbox account. Basile also told officers he deleted the folder containing the images once he was placed on administrative leave.

Detectives said they were able to uncover eight images on Basiles computer. These images depict male and female children between 1 and 3 years old being sexually assaulted by adult males, according to the affidavit.

Basile has been an associate professor in the UND John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences since 2014. He taught basic attitude instrument flying, general aviation operations and management, aviation safety and IFR regulations and procedures.

Basile earned his masters degree in aviation from UND in 2013, according to his university staff page. He was elected to UNDs Senate in 2015. He also served on the assessment committee, scholarship committee and as a faculty adviser to the Student Aviation Management Association.

Basile is the third UND staff member to face child pornography charges in the past year.

On Friday, former UND Police Officer Paul Bradley Meagher pleaded guilty in U.S. Federal Court in Fargo to one count of receiving child porn and two counts of possessing child porn. He had been collecting more than 100,000 images and videos of child porn since early 2006, according to prosecutors.

He will be sentenced Nov. 29.

In July, Robert William Beattie, a former UND chairman of the Family and Community Medicine Department, was sentenced to 12 years in federal prison for having 3,233 images and 100 videos of child porn.

UND President Mark Kennedy shared a message with students and staff Friday regarding Basiles arrest.

I am troubled to inform you that on Thursday, September 8, Eric Basile, a faculty member in the College of Aerospace Sciences, was arrested on eight counts of certain materials prohibited, the statement said. During a search and investigation by law enforcement, child pornography was found on his work-issued computer. Both the University and I take this seriously and the University is cooperating fully with the investigation. Mr. Basile has been placed on administrative leave. The conditions of his administrative leave include a ban from campus property and a no contact order with UND students, faculty and staff.

The investigation on Basile is ongoing and anyone who has concerns or further information regarding the case should call UND Police at (701) 777-0846.
Rose Mary Salum, a Houstonian immigrant from Mexico, won the 18th Annual International Latino Book Awards with her book "El Agua que Mece el Silencio" ("The Water that Stirs the Silence"), published this year.

The book won the Best Popular Fiction award in the Spanish or Bilingual category. Previous ILBA winners include Oscar Hijuelos, Paulo Coelho, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Reyna Grande, Juan Felipe Herrera, and Mario Vargas Llosa.

"Writing is a subjective work that reflects a personal perspective," Salum says, "and, in that sense, receiving a recognition could be telling that our work has been appreciated. It makes us think that we are on a good path."

"El Agua que Mece el Silencio" (Vaso Roto 2016) is a collection of stories about the conflicts between Israel and Lebanon, told from the perspective of a group of adolescents. Salum is a descendant of Lebanese emigrants who settled in Mexico City.

"The Water that Stirs the Silence" The following is a fragment of Salum's book translated by C.M. Mayo: "Today thunderclaps woke me, although it wasn't raining. I know this because I did not hear the patter of rain, that sound that cleans the glass when the sun comes off the sea. From my room I can hear Mother's cries; I hear my father talking on the phone. His voice sounds strange. It slips through the keyhole and hits my stomach like a whirlpool. There is something I don't like; a bubbling of adrenaline rushes through my veins. I feel as if I've swallowed a whole table and the wood is in the hollows of my bones. Mother shouts at me to get away from the window but the wood won't let me bend my knees. "Have they found out already? Perhaps Ismael's mother is the one who is talking with my papa, perhaps that's why he sounds so upset. Surely he is furious, that's why his voice lights and crackles like the end of his cigarette." ... See More Collapse

She is the founder and director of Literal Publishing, the Houston company that produces Literal Magazine and Literally Short Film Festival, among other cultural projects.

The International Latino Book Award (ILBA) is organized by Latino Literacy Now, an organization founded by actor Edward James Olmos and Kirk Whisler, president of Western Publication Research, Inc.

The awards recognize Hispanic authors and publishers from the U.S and 17 other countries. A wide range of categories covers fiction and nonfiction books published in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.

This year's ceremony was held Thursday at California State University Dominguez Hills.

Whisler says the demand for books by or about Latinos is growing in the U.S., with a market estimated at$675 million this year.

Olivia.tallet@chron.com

Twitter: @oliviaptallet
NEAR THE STANDING ROCK SIOUX RESERVATION, N.D. (AP)  The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's attempt to halt construction of the four-state Dakota Access oil pipeline near their North Dakota reservation, a cause that has drawn thousands to join a protest, was denied Friday by a federal judge.

The tribe had challenged the Army Corps of Engineers' decision to grant permits at more than 200 water crossings for Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners' $3.8 billion pipeline, saying that the project violates several federal laws, including the National Historic Preservation Act, and will harm water supplies. The tribe also says ancient sacred sites have been disturbed during construction.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in Washington denied the tribe's request for a temporary injunction in a 58-page opinion. A status conference is scheduled for Sept. 16.

The ruling said that "this Court does not lightly countenance any depredation of lands that hold significance to the Standing Rock Sioux" and that, given the federal government's history with the tribe, "the Court scrutinizes the permitting process here with particular care. Having done so, the Court must nonetheless conclude that the Tribe has not demonstrated that an injunction is warranted here."

Attorney Jan Hasselman with environmental group Earthjustice, who filed the lawsuit in July on behalf of the tribe, said in the days before the ruling that it'll be challenged.

"We will have to pursue our options with an appeal and hope that construction isn't completed while that (appeal) process is going forward," he said. "We will continue to pursue vindication of the tribe's lawful rights even if the pipeline is complete."

Tribal historian LaDonna Brave Bull Allard said after the ruling that it gives her "a great amount of grief. My heart is hurting, but we will continue to stand, and we will look for other legal recourses." She also said the protest will continue.

Energy Transfer Partners officials didn't return The Associated Press' phone calls or emails seeking comment.

The 1,172-mile project will carry nearly a half-million barrels of crude oil daily from North Dakota's oil fields through South Dakota and Iowa to an existing pipeline in Patoka, Illinois.

Thousands gathered Friday at the protest over the pipeline, which will cross the Missouri River near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in southern North Dakota. Judith LeBlanc, a member of the Caddo Nation in Oklahoma and director of the New York-based Native Organizers Alliance, said before the decision that she expected the protest to remain peaceful.

"There's never been a coming together of tribes like this," she said of Friday's gathering of Native Americans, which she estimated could be the largest in a century. People came from as far as New York and Alaska, some bringing their families and children, and hundreds of tribal flags dotted the camp, along with American flags flown upside-down in protest.

A rally against the Dakota Access pipeline is scheduled for Friday afternoon at the North Dakota Capitol, and many of those gathered at the protest site are expected to make the about 45-mile trek.

State authorities announced this week that law enforcement officers from across the state were being mobilized at the protest site, some National Guard members would work security at traffic checkpoints and another 100 would be on standby. The Great Plains Tribal Chairman's Association has asked the federal Justice Department to send monitors to the site because it said racial profiling is occurring.

Nearly 40 people have been arrested since the protest began in April, including tribal chairman Dave Archambault II, though none stemmed from Saturday's confrontation between protesters and construction workers. Tribal officials said workers allegedly bulldozed sites on private land that Hasselman said in court documents was "of great historic and cultural significance." Energy Transfer Partners denied the allegations.

Four private security guards and two guard dogs were injured, officials said, while a tribal spokesman said six people  including a child  were bitten by the dogs and at least 30 people were pepper-sprayed. The state's Private Investigation and Security Board received complaints about the use of dogs and will look into whether the private security personnel at the site are properly registered and licensed, board attorney Monte Rogneby said Friday, adding that he would not name the firms.

On Thursday, North Dakota's archaeologist said that piece of private land was not previously surveyed by the state would be surveyed next week and that if artifacts are found, pipeline work still could cease.

The company plans to have the pipeline completed this year. In court papers, ETP said stopping the project would cost it $1.4 billion the first year, mostly due to lost revenue in hauling crude.

"Investor appetite for the project could shift and financing may no longer be available," the company said. "Construction of the entire project would cease and the project itself would be jeopardized."

___

This story has been corrected to show that the opinion is 58 pages long, not one page with no explanation.
Today at Public Orthodoxy, the blog of the Orthodox Christian Studies Center of Fordham University, I have an essay on the need for Orthodox theology to more seriously engage modern economic science. The argument would likely apply in some degree to other theological traditions as well.

I write,

Personal relationships and the monastic life have different norms than impersonal markets. This does not mean that markets have no norms, nor that the norms of markets should overrule any other concerns. But it does mean that if we wish for our economies to be more moral, whether we hail from the political right or left (or somewhere outside of that simplistic binary), we must first understand what they are and how they function.

In the article, I quote Peter Hill and John Lunn on this distinction, but it can be found in the work of Paul Heyne as well. For example, in his essay Are Economists Basically Immoral? citing a newspaper article about Mother Theresa (now officially recognized as a Roman Catholic saint as of this past Sunday), he wrote,

I shall conclude with two recent newspaper items. One is a short news item reporting that Mother Teresa was about to appeal to prevent the execution of a convicted California murderer. I dont know whether she did appeal or not, but the newspaper said that she was going to call the Governor and say that this man should be forgiven because that is what Jesus would have done. Now I dont want to get into the issue of capital punishment; I just want to point out that if Mother Teresa made that argument she was mixing different moralities. I choose Mother Teresa because I cant think of a person for whom I have more respect; she is a far better person than I am. But forgiveness is appropriate only in face-to-face relations or for God. The criminal-justice system of the State of California is not God nor is it running a face-to-face society. A judge who forgives a convicted criminal is not a candidate for sainthood but for impeachment. The morality of large social spheres is simply different from the morality of face-to-face systems. Arguments against capital punishment must take those differences into account, and so must our arguments for revised economic policies.

This is a crucial distinction that I have come back to again and again, and one that I explore in more detail at Public Orthodoxy today. Read my full essay here.
The finances of the Catholic Church, and more specifically of the Vatican, are quite the mess. When Pope Francis was elected, he recognized this problem and appointed Australian Cardinal George Pell as the inaugural Prefect of the Secretariat of the Economy. Cardinal Pell was given the authority and the task to clean up the finances of the Vatican, something that has been an issue since the mid-1970s. But now reports are surfacing that Pell is losing his authority to make any moves toward resolving this problem. Samuel Gregg recently wrote a piece for The Stream explaining what is at stake if the Vatican fails to fix its financial problems. Gregg starts out by making the claim that this could really hurt the Popes image:

Whatever the cause, any serious obstruction or even termination of Pells efforts to make all the Vaticans institutions fully financially transparent and subject to modern auditing requirements surely would be judged as a major failure of this papacy. Moreover, given the amount of time and words Pope Francis spends denouncing what he regards as various economic and financial injustices, that rhetoric will seem somewhat hollow if theres any perception he couldnt get his own house in order.

Its not surprising that the Vatican is dealing with such an issue given that its location is surrounded by Italy, a country that has been ranked as the most corrupt in all of Europe. Gregg explains:

Italy has a remarkable history of civilizational achievement. Its the land of Michelangelo and Dante, the home of the Renaissance, and the birthplace of modern banking and capitalism. Like all societies, however, Italy has its blind-spots. One concerns financial probity. Transparency International has consistently ranked Italy as the most corrupt country within the Eurozone  worse than Greece, which is no small achievement. Theres no reason to believe that either the Church in Italy or the Vatican are somehow immune to this general cultural problem.

In the end of Greggs article, he explains the most valuable thing at stake with this problem:

This in turn puts the souls of many others in peril since such corruption compromises Gods instrument of salvation, the Church, and repels many people from Christ. Too much is at stake here. Cardinal Pells reform effort needs the popes energetic support. Pray that news of its death has been greatly exaggerated.

You can read the full article here at stream.org.
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One of Texas' most wanted sex offenders is back in custody after the alleged gang member was caught trying to cross the U.S. border from Mexico, the state Department of Public Safety announced Friday.

John Albert Gover, 40, was convicted in 2009 of indecency with a child by sexual contact in an incident involving a 12-year-old girl in the San Antonio area. He had been wanted since December 2015 for failing to register as a sex offender after leaving prison and skipping his court date.

U.S. Customs and Border Protectioon agents caught Gover, a U.S. citizen, as he allegedly tried to cross from Mexico back into central Texas. Agents discovered the warrants for his arrest as they processed him on charges of unauthorized entry.

DPS said Gover is a member of the Hermanidad de Pistoleros Latinos gang (Brotherhood of Latino Gunfighters). He has been convicted of robbery, deadly weapon in a penal institution and burglary of a building.

The border patrol agency said it has caught 20 convicted sex offenders in the past year in the Del Rio area.

DPS offers cash rewards for tips leading to arrests of wanted sex offenders, but Gover's arrest did not come from a tip. The department encourages people to provide information on other fugitives:

So far in 2016, DPS and other agencies have arrested 14 people from the list of Texas 10 Most Wanted Fugitives and Sex Offenders, including nine sex offenders and six gang members. Tips that resulted in arrests have yielded $23,500 in rewards.

To be eligible for the cash rewards, tipsters must provide information to authorities using one of these five methods:

Call the Crime Stoppers hotline at 1-800-252-TIPS (8477).

Text the letters DPS  followed by your tip  to 274637 (CRIMES) from your cell phone.

Submit a web tip through the DPS website by selecting the fugitive you have information about, and then clicking on the link under their picture.

Submit a Facebook tip at http://www.facebook.com/texas10mostwanted by clicking the SUBMIT A TIP link (under the About section).

Submit a tip through the DPS Mobile App. The app is currently available for iPhone users on the Apple App Store: (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/texas-dps/id902092368?mt=8) and for Android users on Google Play: (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microassist.texasdps&hl=en).

All tips are anonymous  regardless of how they are submitted, and tipsters will be provided a tip number instead of using a name.

DPS investigators work with local law enforcement agencies to select fugitives for the Texas 10 Most Wanted Fugitive and Sex Offender lists. You can find the current lists  with photos  on the DPS website at http://www.dps.texas.gov/texas10mostwanted/.

Do not attempt to apprehend these fugitives; they are considered armed and dangerous.
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Some neighborhoods take on a personality and an attitude all their own. In Houston, Montrose was that kind of place.

A place defined by homes, gay clubs - including the oldest one in Houston - and a funky aura.

And, now, Montrose Mining Company is no more, the end of an era, both for Houston's gay community and the Montrose neighborhood. It's a sign the area is changing as Houston grows.

The closure of the club, which had been around for 36 years, is the latest to come to a neighborhood of homes, bars and townhouses that served as the epicenter of Houston gay life. It's sort of like New Orleans losing Cafe Lafitte in Exile - the oldest gay bar in the country and in a unique neighborhood, to boot.

READ MORE: Houston's Montrose neighborhood to get facelift

City officials announced earlier this year an effort to put up signs and take other steps to mark Montrose as a unique neighborhood and make it economically competitive. And, the changes are designed to make the area look more like the rest of Houston in advance of the 2017 Super Bowl.

The plans include esplanades with a mix of vegetation, trees, some planting and hardscape landscaping. The almost 20-year-old "Gateway Monument" in the shape of an M near Westheimer and Bagby was taken down earlier this year.

The area has seen something of a construction boom, with luxury condos started - if not finished. And, multiple new restaurants dot the area, too.

READ MORE: Meteor Lounge in Montrose shutters doors

The changes come along with the closing of the Meteor Lounge, another iconic Houston gay bar. The Meteor Lounge served as the central place where protests and memorials were held after 49 people were killed at a gay dance club in Orlando, Fla., earlier this year.

The closure is more than just the loss of a bar. For some, it marks the end of a way of life.

"77006 not a zip code but a life style," wrote Ricky Johnson on the club's Facebook page. "77006 Montrose returning to a zip code so sad we're losing our community."

READ MORE: Pride Week highlights murals outside gay bar in Montrose

The club's owner has not said what will become of the building, only that architects are working to create something new at the site on Pacific Street in about 18 months.

Whether the new venture can recreate that lost sense of community remains to be seen.
A 20-year-old man was shot and killed near an apartment complex playground in north Houston, according to Harris County Sheriff's deputies.

The incident occurred about 7:45 p.m Thursday at Aldine Bender and Lee Road.
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An openly gay reverend in Waco is planning an LGBTQ pride event after seeing a billboard in the city promoting gay aversion therapy.

On Monday, KXXV reported that a billboard reading "Ex-gays prove change is possible" was spotted in Waco. The billboard is sponsored by the group Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays (PFOX), which works as a "support group for people who are working to overcome same-sex attractions," according to the news station.

READ MORE: Navy names ship after gay rights advocate Harvey Milk

Reverand Charley Garrison of Central Texas Metropolitan Community Church in Waco told the news station that he plans to hold a pride event rather than renting out a billboard to refute the ex-gay billboard.

"Ex-gay therapy does not do any good and in fact, can harm in increasing the suicide rate in the LGBTQ community," Garrison told KXXV.

According to the PFOX website, the group "exists to educate, support and advocate for individuals and parents on the issue of same-sex attraction, and increase others' understanding and acceptance of the ex-gay community."

READ MORE: Small town fires gay police chief, citing poor performance

Licensed psychotherapist and board member of PFOX David Pickup told KXXV that most people believe homosexuality is genetic. According to the news station, Pickup believes there is "little to no scientific evidence that homosexuality is a genetic trait."

Pickup told KXXV that reparative therapy is aimed at addressing unresolved emotional issues since some people have "traumatic causes for their homoerotic feelings."

The Human Rights Campaign reports that aversion therapy that Pickup suggests does not work. Instead, it can cause a high risk in suicide, depression and drug use, according to the group.

READ MORE: Gay priest who backed gay married Catholic worker suspended

Garrison said he doesn't believe that gay people have to change their sexuality and will use the pride event to celebrate them instead.

Garrison is originally from Louisiana where he was an AIDS activist and "discovered Metropolitan Community Churches and began to integrate his spirituality, his sexuality, and his passion for justice," according to his church's website.
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Police in North Texas found millions of dollars worth of methamphetamine during a routine traffic stop on Tuesday.

According to the Greenville Police Department, officers found more than 70 pounds of meth stashed in driver Cesar Baltazar's vehicle. Baltazar, of Mexico, was arrested and released into federal custody.

The police did not give a total figure on what the meth was worth, other than millions.

Baltazar's arrest led the Greenville Police Department to contact the DEA, which led to the arrest of three more people after an investigation. Authorities seized cash, firearms and more meth. How much cash and meth or the types of firearms were details not released by police.

The investigation is ongoing, according to Greenville police.
Saturday marks the 81st anniversary of the assassination of Huey Long, influential Louisiana governor, U.S. senator and radical populist. Long died in a hospital from a gunshot wound to the torso. His last words were "God, don't let me die. I have so much to do."

Long was most famous for his motto, "Every Man a King." It was part of his Share Our Wealth program, which proposed the redistribution of wealth by taxing the rich.
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No single person has had a greater impact on my life than my Grandmother. Although she passed over ten years ago, to this day I still feel her by my side, guiding me. Protecting me.Almost every day before I turned 8, my Grandmother would peek into my room when it was time for me to wake up and quietly say, "Good morning." She would then walk into the room, sit down next to me, and repeat, "Good morning," until I became fully conscious. These words are some of the few in my memory I can still hear her say to me.My Grandmother was my third parent, who instilled in me the values and morals that still guide me today. She also mended my wounds when they appeared -- under her care, my wounds always closed, even if she had to stitch me back together.Yet my Grandmother's life story is centered around insecurity, uncertainty, and risk. No sense of security protected her -- or her family -- until her later years.This is why I know I felt so safe growing up, feeling protected by those words of "Good morning." Safety is a privilege -- a privilege endowed with a certainty of yesterday, a certainty of tomorrow, and a certainty of now that is not afforded to all of us.I didn't recognize the depth of this privilege until my own sense of safety was shattered completely for the first time, as a college student interning in DC. But this time, I had to stitch my wounds back together myself.My Grandmother was born in a nameless village in Northeastern China. In her early youth, she was sent to live with her "Sister" in Qingdao to be their house maid. Her parents sent her to Qingdao with this "Great Aunt" of mine under one condition: my Grandmother would be allowed to go to school, so long as she completed her chores and other duties.This arrangement worked well until the Chinese Civil War reached its climax. The family was forced to flee as the Communist regime took over Shandong province; retreating to Taiwan with my Grandmother in tow. She never made it back to that nameless village.They fled with as much opium as possible strapped onto my Grandmother's chest and back -- my Great Aunt was addicted and they had to find a way to smuggle a supply of the drug. The family arrived in Kaohsiung under the impression they'd stay for only three years.The three years quickly became six, and my Grandmother -- estranged from her actual family and living as a house maid -- married as soon as she came of age to escape this arrangement, only five years after arriving in Kaohsiung.Decades later, she came to the United States because of my Grandfather's employment for the U.S. Navy in Taiwan, dropping everything to come to this foreign land.In the U.S., my Grandparents -- with my Aunt and Dad in tow -- traveled from state to state working in Chinese restaurants to make a living, eventually settling down in the Greater Los Angeles area.Her life was marked by violence, displacement, and loss. Her story was an Asian American story.In my life, a mere fifteen minutes of violence stole any sense of security my Grandmother had carefully built around me when I was growing up.The worst part of the entire ordeal was what came next: sitting on the near-empty bus crawling home, trying to grasp what had happened. I managed to jump off a few blocks from my apartment and found myself aimlessly circling the block, clawing at the clothes I was wearing. The next day, I realized deeper than ever before that there arent always "Good mornings" to greet us.At that point in time, I'd already been deeply invested in advancing the issues I saw facing Asian America, as well as fighting for Asian American Studies at my alma mater. But months after those fifteen minutes, I found myself on a very different platform -- standing in front of a crowd in the student union, holding a megaphone, speaking out loudly about the epidemic of sexual violence that plagues this country [pictured above].And this time, I spoke from experience.In the pain and fear, I found myself searching for guidance from my Grandmother. She remained the only source of comfort as I processed and grappled with this unfamiliar reality as I retreated from my surroundings, searching for that sense of safety once more.Healing is a different process for every survivor. Regaining tomorrow's "Good morning" is a battle, is a burden too many have to face.This story -- my story -- is also an Asian American story.There has been a national conversation unlike anything Ive ever seen around sexual violence in recent years, and with it, a fiery debate around "safe spaces," "political correctness," and a litany of other phrases that now saturate our discourse.The disdain I see for safe spaces, in particular, deeply disturbs me. Safe spaces aren't necessary because people -- and college students in particular -- want to be sheltered by the injustices of our world. Safe spaces are necessary because the stories that we each bring into any space is variable, is unique, and marked with varying degrees of good and bad mornings unbeknownst to one another.Safe spaces exist within a framework to advance social justice, rooted in a desire to address and eradicate systemic violence in our society. They allow for difference to manifest without unmanageable conflict, and are important to produce in any environment -- a classroom, the workplace, or any other forum -- because only then can those that have histories of insecurity or peril can bring their full selves into that space.Safe spaces are important because we must recognize not only our collective and individual humanities, but also because it becomes the most fertile grounds for progress and the march towards equity.A safe space is what my Grandmother built for me in my childhood. Safe spaces are important because all spaces should be safe. Ask yourself: should any space we, or anyone around us, inhabit be unsafe?Sexual violence is an Asian American issue.There is far too little data on how sexual and domestic violence impacts Asian American communities. A 2015 report assembled by the Asian Pacific Institute on Gender-Based Violence reported that 2155% of Asian women report experiencing sexual and/or physical violence by an intimate partner during their lifetime.The 2010 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Study (NISVS) found that 19.6% of AAPI women reported rape, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime.A small sample interviewed by telephone in a study conducted by the National Asian Women's Health Organization in San Francisco and Los Angeles found that 19% of respondents reported being pressured to have sex without their consent by a partner, and just under half of these reported experiencing completed rape.The data this report shared was remarkably uneven -- because there still isn't enough data on this subject in our communities. There is a complicity in our communities with shockingly high acceptance of messages of domestic violence , intense stigma towards reporting, and a mistrust of resources currently available.The finding that more acculturated (to the US) respondents were twice as likely to report partner violence is stark -- suggesting extremely high levels of underreporting.Furthermore, there is little data on the intersection between various identities, including my own.The NISIVS Study found that lesbian, gay, and bisexual identifying individuals report elevated rates of sexual and/or physical violence. 44% of lesbian women, 61% of bisexual women, 26% of gay men, and 37% of bisexual men reported experiencing rape, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime. These statistics are even more alarming for transgender people -- more than 50% have reported experiencing sexual violence in their lifetimes.There may not always be clear numbers to show, but there will always be stories to prove that this is an epidemic afflicting all of our communities.Sexual and partner violence is an Asian American issue. It is our issue because it impacts the lives of too many Asian Americans. It is our issue because we have a responsibility to push back against the roots of this violence: toxic masculinity, damaging cultural norms, and silencing of survivors.Every morning, I think to myself, "Good morning." Because I deserve it.
Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert has never been afraid to speak his mind, even if what's on his mind isn't necessarily based in fact.

Gohmert, a Republican from Tyler, told the Values Voter Summit on Friday that Democratic presidential nominee was mentally handicapped and had special needs after a 2012 concussion.

"I do want to warn, since most people here are Christians and I'm serious about this a true believer knows what Jesus did. You don't make fun of people who are impaired, have special needs. And whether you like her or not, Hillary Clinton has made clear she is mentally impaired and this is not somebody you should be making fun of," Gohmert said.

READ MORE: How Clinton health rumors went from conspiracy to talking point

The comments were part of a short spiel by Gohmert criticizing Clinton and her answers to the FBI in an interview where she said she couldn't remember certain details of how her private email server was set up.

The audience laughed and applauded as Gohmert spoke. Gohmert then speculated on how Clinton sustained the concussion.

"They won't tell us what really is going on with her. But, if I were going to smash phones, Blackberry's, I'd use a two pound sledge," Gohmert said. "Well, who knows. Maybe somebody got to wailing around and hit her again. I don't know."

READ MORE: Louie Gohmert: People will 'suffer,' 'die' from Obamacare

Gohmert is known for throwing red meat to conservative audiences and making sometimes acidic statements when he disagrees with someone's politics, policies or judgments

In February, he declared that the U.S. Supreme Court had made itself "God" after upholding gay marriage and in November 2015 said gay people and straight people should be put on separate islands in order to determine "which one nature favors."
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Cash is the fuel that makes campaigns run and few places are better for candidates to find that gas than a large state like Texas.

That's one reason GOP nominee Donald Trump and his family are returning to the state starting Sept. 12 - to round up the money to make his campaign go in the final two months of the election.

But, if it seems like a traditionally conservative state would be prime hunting ground for Trump, that calculation would be a bit off this presidential election cycle.

READ MORE: Trump returns to Texas for fundraising swing

Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and groups supporting her have raised $13,965,121 in campaign cash from Texas since Summer 2015 - about four times what Trump has brought in from the state through the end of July. For Trump, that means he and his backers took in about $3.5 million from Texas.

It fits a pattern nationally the folks over at OpenSecrets.org documented. Clinton and her backers have outraised Trump pretty much everywhere.

The cash advantage is likely a reflection of Clinton's organization and Trump's lack of same in many places.

READ MORE: Clinton allies set to open Houston office

While Clinton's numbers are impressive, they don't hold a candle to those for U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, who ended his bid for the Republican nomination earlier this year. Cruz, the junior senator from Texas, and associated groups pulled in $36 million from Texas, almost twice the amount raised by his nearest rival, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, a Texas native.

Even Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, another failed heir to the GOP nomination crown, and his backers took in $4.4 million from Texas donors this go-round.

All that leaves Trump - who once pledged to fund his own campaign - trying to make up fundraising ground as he tries to keep the polls competitive before Nov. 8.
On page 21 of the document, the UCC PIN encourages UCC faith leaders to visit the websites of a number of well-known anti-Zionist organizations such as Friends of Sabeel North America, the US Campaign to End the Occupation and, amazingly enough, If Americans Knew,? an organization led by Alison Weir, who comments about Israel have proven so hostile that Jewish Voice for Peace has declared that it will not work with her or the organization she leads. (A screenshot of the section that promotes If Americans Knew? can be seen at the top of this blog entry.)

In a statement issued on June 15, 2015, Jewish Voice for Peace explained its decision to disaffiliate with Weir and her group as follows:

Weir has been a repeat and friendly guest of white supremacist Clay Douglas on his hate radio show, the Free American. Clay Douglas is concerned primarily with the survival of the White race and sees malign Jewish influence everywhere. His racist, anti-Jewish, and anti-gay rhetoric can be found across the front pages of his multiple websites. In the course of Weirs appearance with Clay Douglas on August 25, 2010, for example, she was silent when Douglas invoked the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and engaged in a racist diatribe against Jews. Her troubling associations and choices further include giving interviews to a range of far-right outlets including The American Free Press, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has identified as a hate group, and the anti-gay, anti-Jewish pastor Mark Dankof.

Interestingly enough, Rev. Dr, Peter Makari, a UCC staffer, has, like Alison Weir, given an interview to American Free Press, which promotes white supremacism, in 2012.

It took some work, but eventually, CAMERA was able to prompt the UCCs Global Ministries Board to distance itself from this appearance.

For more information about the antisemitic agenda of If Americans Knew and its leader, Alison Weir, go to an ADL article available here. No "peacemaker" worthy of the name would ever invoke If Americans Knew as a reasonable source of information, but that's what UCC activists have done.

Hopefully, leaders within the UCC will take a closer look at the so-called peacemaking document produced by UCC PIN (and which is promoted on the denominations Twitter feed) and respond appropriately.

(For a list of articles detailing UCCs hostility toward Israel, please go here.) The articles indicate that the denomination has had a problem with the Jewish state for a long time.

Update September 9, 2016

Just in case there's any doubt that the United Church of Christ is "promoting" the document briefly summarized above, and by extension, the work of If Americans Knew, here is a screenshot of part of an email sent out by the denomination's "Justice and Peace Action Network" (or JPAN) on September 8, 2016:

JPAN is described on the UCC's website as "the arm through Justice and Witness Ministries of the UCC carries out its mission statement. It is our denominations grassroots advocacy network composed of individual members and local UCC congregations across the country."

In other words, JPAN, which promoted UCC PIN's document, is part of the UCC and the denomination is ultimately responsible for what it promotes to its members and to the general public, including this document.
The summers final Live on the Waterfront concert was held Wednesday evening at Prince Arthurs Landing. The popular series in Thunder Bay has completed nine weekly shows that began on July 13. Wednesdays concert was unique as it was held one hour later in the evening to mesh with the 10 p.
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Enics to Make Cuts at Swiss Plant Published: 09 September 2016 by Mike Buetow by Mike Buetow

TURGI, SWITZERLAND -- Enics Schweiz will cut up to 25% of its workforce here as part of cost-cutting measures aimed at returning the EMS site to profitability.

The plant, which specializes in industrial electronics, said it would consider laying off up to 40 of its 170 employees through next April as it grapples with effects from the higher Swiss currency.

Enics reiterated its long-term support for keeping the Turgi plant open, calling it in a press statement that "one of the key locations in the global Enics network."

The Enics Group believes in the sustainable value of a Swiss business unit. The operating environment in Switzerland under the influence of a strong Swiss Franc has become more challenging in the past 18 months. As a consequence, the profitability and competitiveness of Enics operations in Switzerland have suffered."

To secure our position as an attractive and reliable electronics manufacturing services partner we are planning to adjust our cost structure to the current and future sales volume. We intend to reorganize our structures in such a way, that we will be able to fulfill our customers needs within a leaner, more flexible and agile organization, said Daniel Buser, general manager, Enics Schweiz AG.

Register now for PCB West, the Silicon Valley's largest trade show for the printed circuit industry, taking place Sept. 13-15 in Santa Clara: pcbwest.com
In early August, 33-year-old Ilhan Omar became an overnight sensation in Minnesota politics. Her primary victory over 22-term incumbent Phyllis Kahn secured the Minnesota Democratic Farmer Labor Party (DFL) endorsement of Omars candidacy to represent House District 60B in the state legislature. Minneapoliss Star Tribune trumpeted Omars victory in a huge headline on its front page, proclaiming that the Somali immigrants victory had made history. The paper followed up with two more retrospective stories admiring Omars triumph.

Omars victory shouldnt have come as a surprise. She campaigned hard in the district, which includes the heart of the Cedar Riverside area now known as Little Mogadishu. Omars third DFL primary opponent was Somali, as is her Republican challenger (who has since suspended his campaign). The Star Tribune nonetheless portrayed the win as a remarkable accomplishment, not only because Omar defeated Kahn, who is tied for the longest-serving legislator in state history, but also because of Omars background. She spent time in a Kenyan refugee camp before settling in the Twin Cities in the late 1990s.

As many candidates do, Omar has made her personal background an integral part of her campaign. But neither the candidate nor the reporters who covered her have shown much interest in exploring one aspect of her personal story that recently came to public attention: the fact that she is not legally married to the man she advertises as the husband and the father of her three children. In fact, she is legally married to another manwho may be her brother. A posting on the SomaliSpot discussion board alleged that Omar had married the man touted as her husband in 2002 before marrying her brother for fraudulent purposes in 2009. The post, which seems to have been written by someone from Minneapoliss Somali community, was quickly deleted. By the time it came to my attention, the post was only available via a Google cache (now also deleted). If the story is true, however, it suggests that Omar had engaged in some kind of dishonest activity in connection with her marriage to her brother (which by itself would be illegal).

I originally checked out the SomaliSpot story online through the Minnesota Official Marriage System. Inputting Omars name, I found that the two marriages cited in the discussion board post checked out as indicated. The site reflected Omars 2002 marriage to her advertised husband, Ahmed Aden (later Ahmed Hirsi), and her 2009 marriage to Ahmed Nur Said Elmi (identified in the SomaliSpot post as Omars brother). A few days after the primary, I submitted written questions to representatives of the Omar campaign, citing the SomaliSpot post, and asking whether Omars second marriage had been entered into with her brother for dishonest purposes. That same afternoon, I received a message from Omars press contact indicating that the campaign would get back to me later that day. I didnt hear back from campaign officials directly, but I did receive a response from Minneapolis criminal defense attorney Jean Brandl. It provided no answer to my question, and implied that the question itself evidenced bigotry against Omar and her candidacy for public office.

Dear Mr. Johnson:

I have been contacted by the Ilhan Omar campaign. Their response to your email from this morning is as follows:

There are people who do not want an East African, Muslim woman elected to office and who will follow Donald Trumps playbook to prevent it. Ilhan Omars campaign sees your superfluous contentions as one more in a series of attempts to discredit her candidacy.

Ilhan Omars campaign will not be distracted by negative forces and will continue to focus its energy on creating positive engagement with community members to make the district and state more prosperous and equitable for everyone.

If you have any further questions regarding this matter, please direct them to me in writing so we have a record of any further communications.

Sincerely,

Jean Brandl

I posted an account of all this on Power Line. The Star Tribune followed up on the story the following week, but Omar declined to be interviewed. Democratic operative Ben Goldfarb spoke to the Star Tribune on Omars behalf: Allegations that she married her brother and is legally married to two people are categorically ridiculous and false. Omars campaign explained that she had never legally married Ahmed Hirsi and flatly denied that Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, her legal husband, is her brother. Omar issued a statement that went back to the royal flush of bigotry accusations and decried the Trump-style misogyny, racism, anti-immigration rhetoric and Islamophobic division allegedly motivating questions about her marital status. When Star Tribune reporter Patrick Coolican requested a comment from me for his story that day, I asked him who Elmi is. They wont tell me, he said.

Controversy continued to mount. The following day, Omar issued a formal written statement explaining that she had requestedbut never formally executeda marriage license for her first marriage, the one her campaign has publicly touted, to her husband and the father of her children. She married him in an Islamic ceremony in 2002, but never filed an executed marriage license with the state. What I found online reflected that Omar had in fact applied for a license to marry Aden/Hirsi. (The entry on the Minnesota Official Marriage System has since been scrubbed.) The statement further explained that Omar had married her current legal husbandAhmed Nur Said Elmiin 2009. Though they split in 2011, with Elmi returning to the United Kingdom, Omar never got around to dissolving the marriage. The statement described Omars 2002 husband as the love of [her] life. Current campaign spokesman Michael Howard has declared that the statement would be Omars last word on the matter. On this point, Omar has kept her promise. She has failed to respond to questions from me, or respond to interview requests from several local reporters. Give Omar credit for consistency.

One wonders, however, whether a candidate for public office can unilaterally declare a significant matter of public interest off-limits from discussion. Its not as though Omar hasnt injected her family into the campaign. She features husband Number One and their three children on her campaign website, though she has omitted any mention of husband Number Twowho is, remember, her current legal husband. One specific question to which Omar has provided no response is: Does she have a brother named Ahmed Nur Said Elmi?

The local media have mostly let the story rest where Omar wants it. There may be good reasons for that; its certainly a difficult story to investigate. Local Somalis who have contacted me express concern for their physical safety. Covering the story is also unpleasant. Unwarranted imputations of bigotry are the stock-in-trade of the Omar campaign on this subject. I can testify to the phenomenon first hand.

One local reporter remains unimpressed and unintimidated by these tactics. Writing for the Minnesota-based site Alpha News, Preya Samsundar is untroubled by the Omar campaigns cries of racism. She comes from a family of Guyanese immigrants who trace their lineage to indentured Indian servants brought to Guyana by the British. Using social media as a primary source, Samsundar has found information suggesting that Elmi, the man Omar married in Minnesota in 2009, is indeed her brother. Omars own Instagram photos from the summer of 2015 place her in London with relatives, and with a man later identified as Ahmed Nur Said Elmi. Soon after her marital history became an issue, however, Omar closed her Instagram account to the public. When the account became public again, Samsundar found that the original photo collage of Omar and Elmi was no longer included. Samsundar also discovered that accounts once connected to Elmi have disappeared since the controversy began. Even LinkedIn pages and Elmis professional portfolio pages have gone missing. New accounts for Elmi have appeared under a different name, and without his identifying photo.

Based on her reporting, Samsundar believes that Omars siblings include Ahmed Nur Said Elmi and Mohamed Nur Said Elmi, both residents of the United Kingdom. Their social media accounts have referred to Omar as their sister. Samsundar found comments and posts by Omar and Elmi showing an intimate relationship even after their supposed 2011 marital split. Samsundar put it to me this way: I think social media prove without a doubt that there is a familial relationship that is not that of a husband and wife.

I met with a Somali source who gave me a screenshot of a 2015 Facebook post in which Mohamed Nur Said Elmi discussed Omars appearance in London and touted her prospective political career. On August 22, I accessed Mohamed Nur Said Elmis Facebook account and viewed a post celebrating Omars primary victory. When I returned to the Facebook page later that evening, the post had disappeared. Samsundar routinely found other related social media accounts had also been deleted. This is a systematic purge of online presence, Samsundar told me.

Samsundar discovered Ahmed Nur Said Elmis professional resume online and tracked him down via e-mail. As for his possible marriage to Omar, Elmi commented: [N]o way am I affiliated with anyone in your articles. Nor do I recall being married to anyone. At least, from what I remember. :) Though much of the evidence in this story has been written in disappearing ink, that quote is a keeper.

Photo: Ilhan Omar for state representative60B, via Facebook
Homelessness in New York City: Policymaking from Koch to de Blasio, by Thomas J. Main (NYU Press, 288 pp., $49.50)

New York Citys annual outlay for homeless services approaches $2 billion, a sum that has ballooned by hundreds of millions of dollars since Mayor Bill de Blasio took office in January 2014. Much to de Blasios chagrin, more spending has failed to shrink the citys homeless population or convince the public that the problem is under control. Baruch College professor Thomas Mains new book helps explain how homelessness became perhaps the most intractable policy challenge that de Blasio and other New York City mayors have faced over the last three decades.

Main stands out from most homelessness experts in having at least considered the possibility that progressive policies do more harm than good. Indeed, that was his position when he began researching the issue in the early 1980s. Over time, however, hes shifted left, to the point where he now believes that the advocates have always had it right and homelessness boils down to a housing problem to be solved by giving people a home. Mains arguments arent always persuasive. But his attention to detail and balanced judgment makes this a valuable history of social-policy research.

Making sense of homelessness in New York requires accounting for how a subpopulation with every possible disadvantage managed to secure for itself such a large share of the city budget. Main explains that this is largely due to the outsize role that courts have played in developing homeless policy in New York. Almost unique among American jurisdictions, New York recognizes a right to shelter. This dates back to a consent decree that Mayor Ed Koch signed in 1981, conferring such a right on single adults. After subsequent litigation, the right to shelter was expanded to single women and families. Kochs intent was to end a lawsuit brought by homeless advocates. The real effect was to give judges and activist lawyers extensive oversight over how city government provides temporary housing to the homeless.

Main details pitched court battles over questions such as: What toilet-per-person ratio constitutes adequate shelter? Does allowing families to sleep temporarily in a welfare office, for lack of another option, constitute a denial of their right to shelter? May the city impose conditions on the receipt of temporary housing, as it does for cash welfare? Can the city scrutinize the claims made by families that they have nowhere else to go before granting them access to shelter?

Under a traditional model of policymaking, answers to these and related questions would be provided by duly elected politicians and the expert administrators they appoint to deal with the problem. Oversight would be exercised by voters, assisted by the media and other observers, through the ultimate scrutiny of elections. But in New York, homelessness policy was deemed too important to be left to democracy.

After chronicling the decades-long struggle over the shelter system, Main explains how the concept of temporary housing itself became homeless. The mantra in the early nineties was that the city needed to invest heavily in shelter conditions and services in order to make the homeless housing-ready. But this theory gradually fell out of favor through the rise of Housing First, an approach that insists on immediate and unqualified access to permanent housing as the most effective way to combat homelessness. Housing First originated in New York City and now dominates homeless policy across the nation. That is to say, in recent years, the policy consensus over what to do about homelessness and the policy consensus over what to do about poverty have moved in opposite directions. Whereas mid-nineties welfare reform led to increased appreciation for the value of time limits and work requirements for cash assistance, the conventional wisdom on homelessness holds that permanent-housing benefits are more effective when provided with as few preconditions as possible. Those who call for prioritizing the treatment of underlying causes of homelessnesssuch as drug addictionare viewed as out of step with the times. Main is an admirer of Housing First.

Main also has high praise for de Blasio, in contrast to most New Yorkers, who polls show have a dim view of the current administrations record on homelessness. Main prefers de Blasios policies over those of prior administrations because he believes that they are better informed by social science research. But much of the research he cites in support of de Blasios policies and Housing First relies on a standard known as stably housed. This standard is only defensible to the extent that the homelessness challenge may be decoupled from that of poverty more generally. For a homeless individual in the grip of an incapacitating mental illness such as schizophrenia, keeping him housed is indeed a major victory. But if stably housed were all that mattered in anti-poverty policy, the New York City Housing Authority, where the average tenant has occupied his unit for more than two decades, would be hailed as a momentous success and spawn imitators in every city across urban America. That isnt happening.

Main himself cites findings from a 2012 study of the Section 8 rental-voucher program that concluded, Section 8 vouchers discourag[e] work. Section 8 families had six percent higher unemployment and 15 percent higher welfare receipt than similar families that did not receive the subsidy. At times, fighting poverty requires promoting greater mobility, not stability. Otherwise, we risk warehousing the poor in areas where opportunities for advancement are minimal.

Main also approves of de Blasios decision to abandon Mayor Bloombergs ambitious goal of overcom[ing] homelessness. This point is fair enough. Any honest assessment of New Yorks homelessness challenge must lead to a certain sympathy for the de Blasio administrations inability to get a handle on the problem. Not even the overachieving Giuliani and Bloomberg administrations were able to make much headway on homelessness. If de Blasio fails in his bid for reelection next year, public discontent over homelessness will probably be a factor. The truth is, however, that his successor is unlikely to do much better.

Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Stories about medical dangers often rely on anecdotes about specific patients at risk. But in a recent investigative series, reporters Karen Bouffard and Joel Kurth of The Detroit News showed another way to tell a compelling, high-impact narrative: Backed by key documents and interviews, they demonstrated persistent, systemic problems with dirty surgical instruments at a hospital network in the city. The series has prompted a joint state-federal investigation, spurred a flurry of coverage in other Detroit news outlets, and could galvanize an important discussion about public disclosure of hospital safety data.

In the first article of the series, published August 26, Bouffard and Kurth get right to the point: They have about 200 pages of emails and reports that depict years of complaints about dirty instruments from staffers and surgeons at Detroit Medical Centers Midtown campus:

The records show improperly sterilized tools complicated operations from appendectomies and brain surgeries to cleft palate repair and spinal fusions. Patients were kept under anesthesia for up to an hour as staffers replaced instruments. Dozens of operations were canceled at the last minute, some after anesthesia was administered. At least twice a childs chest or skull was open for surgery when doctors discovered dirty instruments. In January 2015, open-heart surgery for a 7-month-old girl was interrupted at Childrens Hospital of Michigan because a tube leading to a bypass machine was clogged with blood from a previous operation.

Those details grab your attention, but what the reporting drives home is how long the concerns persisted, even as doctors and other staffers repeatedly sounded the alarm. The News has Laura Cortner, a former director of the centers Central Sterilization Department, saying that huge challenges have lasted for years with no prolonged effort to fix them. In a memo from mid-2015, highlighted in a timeline accompanying the story, the chief surgeon at Childrens Hospital tells top hospital officials, We are putting patients at risk frequently and now canceling up to 10 cases this weekpromises just arent cutting it. The News even has the centers chief administrator on record, saying, This is something that has to be fixed. (The center has also said that no safety issues or surgical site infections actually resulted from unsterile instruments, and has pointed to its efforts to address the concerns. A spokesperson for the Detroit Medical Center said in a statement to CJR that the center took an important step earlier this year when we brought in an industry leading sterile processing management company, and we continue to work closely with them.)

The News investigation, which lasted about six months, took off when the reporters got hold of the email and other records. It was obvious when we looked at the documents there were system problems. There were so many emails for a long time, and there never seemed to be a resolution, Bouffard told me in an interview.

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What distinguishes this story is the strength of the emails and the strength of the records showing these systemic failures for 11 years, Kurth added. They spoke better to the situation than one anecdote could.

That first piece did feature one good anecdotethe story of Kalaya Hull-Mason, who underwent heart surgery at Childrens Hospital when she was seven months old. The operation was stopped when a suction tube needed to draw blood appeared to be clogged with blood from a previous patient. The operation was eventually successful after staff covered the babys heart, dismantled the bypass machine, and rebuilt the surgical field. One document gave the reporters a clue about Kalaya, and Kurth spent two months off and on tracking down her parents. Though hospital records indicated one of the girls parents had been informed of the complications, both told the News they had been unaware of the problems until the paper contacted them.

That gets to one of the other themes the series drives home: the patchwork standards for disclosure to patients and the public at large about risks from medical procedures.

As the News reported, the center declined to provide detailed infection data that would shed light on its overall performance, and it isnt required to. Learning about the regulatory framework for hospitals, and what information is and isnt available to the public, was the most time-consuming part of the reporting process, says Bouffard. The second main story in the series offers a good description of how oversight in the medical industry, which is largely self-policing, often isnt transparent to the wider world. State and federal agencies collect a substantial amount of data, but let hospitals supply it voluntarily on the condition that much of it will be kept confidential. Theres also no legal requirement in Michigan that doctors have to inform patients of complications, and guidelines about when to do so are subjective. Kurth says, Doctors dont have to tell patients. Patients dont know, so nobody tells the regulators.

Theres a broader discussion happening in healthcare right now about greater transparency on a number of fronts, and the News series is an important contribution to that debatein addition to providing important scrutiny that benefits the people of Detroit. Score this on a hit for accountability coverage by a local newspaper.

Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today

Trudy Lieberman is a longtime contributing editor to the Columbia Journalism Review. She is the lead writer for CJR's Covering the Health Care Fight. She also blogs for Health News Review and the Center for Health Journalism. Follow her on Twitter @Trudy_Lieberman.
The Massachusetts Appeals Court has ruled that Massachusetts law should apply in deciding whether Narragansett Electric Co. (NEC), a Rhode Island-based utilities provider, is entitled to insurance coverage for environmental contamination at several of its sites. The August 31 decision reverses previous rulings in a case where the two states have different statutes of limitations for contract claims.

The case, OneBeacon America Ins. Co. v. Narragansett Elec. Co., involves a conflict of law that arose after eight sites in Rhode Island  one shared with neighboring Massachusetts  were contaminated by NECs predecessor from the mid-1800s until the 1980s. The sites were used by NECs predecessor for manufactured gas plants, electric operations and waste disposal, and soil and groundwater contamination was eventually found.

After the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management stated that pollution at the sites needed to be resolved, NEC was denied coverage for clean up costs from its insurers, including OneBeacon America Insurance Co., citing pollution exclusions or claiming that the event did not occur during their policy periods.

OneBeacon filed a Superior Court action in 2005, arguing that it is not responsible for defending NECs environmental contamination claims under the 13 general liability insurance policies its predecessors issued to NEC between 1972 and 1985. NEC then filed for breach of contract and declaratory relief against OneBeacon.

This resulted in a conflict of law because Massachusetts applies a six-year statute of limitations for breach of contract claims, while Rhode Island provides a 10-year limitations period. An initial Superior Court judge ruled that Rhode Island substantive law would apply in interpreting the insurance policies because the sites in question were operated by a Rhode Island public utility and primarily located in the state.

However, OneBeacon appealed that Massachusetts law should apply since that is where the contracts were negotiated. In the latest ruling, the court upheld that appeal, stating it was an error to apply Rhode Island law.

At first blush, Rhode Island might seem the obvious place of the insured risk, given the location of NEC and the affected sites there, the court stated in its decision. But while an underlying tort claim might properly be resolved under the laws of the State where the injury occurred, the obligation of an insurer to defend and indemnify against that claim is more appropriately determined by reference to the insurance contract itself and the circumstances of its issuance.
Michigans workplace safety agency plans to step up unannounced inspections of demolition sites around the state to ensure workers are properly protected against hazards such as exposure to asbestos.

The Detroit Free Press reports the Michigan Occupational Health and Safety Administration says the one-year initiative was prompted in part by the newspapers investigation that concluded that the agency rarely gets tough with employers who exposed workers to asbestos.

The two-day report, published in May, found multiple cases where workers potentially inhaled dangerous levels of asbestos because they were not given proper gear, including respirators. Some workers werent told that they were handling asbestos.

MIOSHA says the initiative, launching this month, will involve unannounced inspections of 20 or more demolition sites. The agency has assigned six inspectors to the effort.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
AKRON, Ohio -- An elderly man found dead at Brandywine Falls Tuesday took his own life, according to the Summit County Medical Examiner's Office.

The office identified the man as 71-year-old August C. Voight, of Brecksville.

Voight died of multiple blunt force injuries, Gary Gunther, chief investigator with the medical examiner's office, said Thursday.

Voight was found at the base of a cliff overlooking a 65-foot waterfall on the eastern edge of the Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Sagamore Hills.

Voight's death is the third in the area since the falls became part of the national park.

In 1995, a man fell over the boardwalk fence and died. There wasn't another death there until May 2011 when a 31-year-old Canal Fulton man died after falling from the top of the falls.

If you wish to discuss or comment on this story, please visit our crime and courts comments section.

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summit_metroparks

Summit MetroParks representatives, Executive Director Lisa King, and Park District Commissioners Herb Newman and Jane Bond, announced a $3.5 million gift establishing an agency endowment fund at Akron Community Foundation.

AKRON, Ohio - Summit MetroParks announced Friday it has established a $3.5 million endowment fund at Akron Community Foundation.

The new fund will generate interest, which can be redirected to the park service for any project that supports MetroParks' mission, such as programming, trail development or habitat and wildlife research.

MetroParks' investment represents the second largest gift establishing an endowment fund in Akron Community Foundation's 61-year history. The fund is now the foundation's fifth largest endowed fund.

Akron Community Foundation President and CEO John Petures said he applauds the MetroParks' vision.

"Here is one wonderful opportunity to help the community, the environment, recreation, exercise, and all the things that relate to quality of life, grow and remain strong into perpetuity," Petures said.

MetroParks, now in its 95th year, established its own foundation in 1991. Over the years, the MetroParks Foundation didn't flourish, said Park District Commissioner Jane Bond.

"We decided that it needed to be invigorated and we thought the best way to do that was through a strategic partnership with another entity that's very important to our community," Bond said. "It's a wonderful thing for this community that two important institutions can come together with an eye toward making a future that's going to benefit both of our commitments."

MetroParks Executive Director Lisa King said the MetroParks Foundation has helped the park service with special projects. And, with about $1.2 million remaining, the MetroParks Foundation will still help in cases when funding is needed quickly.

"This relationship is going to allow us to do more in the future," King said of the new endowment fund. "It's just a great partnership.

MetroParks' move could spark other organizations to follow suit, establishing funds at the community foundation that will grow and provide income for years to come, Petures said.

Akron Community Foundation currently oversees 102 Agency Endowment Funds.
AKRON ---- The Akron Community Foundation's 2016 Bert A. Polsky Humanitarian Award dinner, honoring investment veteran and multiple sclerosis advocate Jim Oelschlager and his wife, Vanita, will take place at 6 p.m. Oct. 18 at the Hilton Akron/Fairlawn, 3180 W. Market St. in Fairlawn.

Tickets start at $150 per person and are now available online at www.regonline.com/Polsky.

The Oelschlagers will be the 49th recipients of the award, which Akron Community Foundation presents each year to the individual or couple who best exemplifies Bert Polsky's selfless dedication to humanitarian causes in Akron.

The Oelschlagers' philanthropy has benefited health care organizations throughout the region, including Akron Children's Hospital. For more than three decades, the couple has donated more than $12 million and created three charitable funds at the hospital; the Oelschlager Center for Child Advocacy Endowment Fund, the Adoption Advocacy Center Fund, and the Global Health Fund, which provides health care resources to children in disadvantaged locations throughout the world.

The Oelschlagers are also members of Summa Health System's Cornell Society of donors who have given more than $1 million.

Jim Oelschlager is the founder of of Oak Associates, Ltd., an investment firm in Bath Township, and the Oak Clinic, a nonprofit facility in Uniontown that treats patients with multiple sclerosis, regardless of their ability to pay.

Vanita Oelschlager, an author and publisher of children's books, donates a percentage of her revenue to the clinic and other related charities.

In addition to health-related causes, the Oelschlagers have donated more than $19 million to the University of Akron, primarily for scholarships. They founded the Oelschlager Leadership Awards scholarships, as well as the Oelschlager Summer Leadership Institute, a seven-day, on-campus experience for high school seniors who are recommended by their guidance counselors because they might otherwise fall through the cracks.

The Polsky Award event begins with a cocktail reception at 6 p.m. followed by dinner at 7 p.m. Dinner guests will enjoy a program led by former Akron Deputy Mayor Dave Lieberth, followed by the presentation of the Bert A. Polsky Humanitarian Award, named for the former president of Polsky's department store and founding trustee of Akron Community Foundation.

Akron Community Foundation's Polsky Award is presented this year in partnership with Oak Associates. Sponsorship opportunities are still available and start at $2,500. They include tickets to the award dinner and a private reception with the Oelschlagers before the event.

For more information, call Margaret Medzie, vice president and chief development officer, at 330-436-5610.

Event proceeds benefit Akron Community Foundation, which improves the quality of life in Greater Akron by building community philanthropy.

For more information about the event or to request a printed invitation, please contact De Shawn Pickett at 330-376-8522.
AVON, Ohio -- An Avon police sergeant arrested on drunken-driving charges told a state trooper he had one beer before the Labor Day traffic stop.

Sgt. George A. Ruple, 37, of North Olmsted, told the trooper in a conversation captured on dash cam video that he had one beer about an hour before the traffic stop . The trooper later replied, "I don't believe you had one beer," and placed Ruple under arrest.

Ruple on Wednesday pleaded not guilty to charges of operating a vehicle under the influence of alcohol and driving outside of marked lanes. Avon Municipal Court Judge Darrel Bilancini granted Ruple limited driving privileges to attend work and doctors' appointments pending the outcome of the case.

A state trooper stopped Ruple's car about 2:17 a.m. Monday on Kinzel Road near Stoney Ridge Road in Avon.

The video shows Ruple performing field sobriety tests. He walks a straight line, placing heel to toe, and holds one foot off the ground while counting to 27.

The trooper can be heard telling Ruple he pulled him over because he went left of center and he was traveling faster than the 25 mph posted speed limit.

After Ruple is handcuffed and placed in the back of the patrol car, what appears to be an Avon police SUV drives by. An unidentified officer then gets into the driver's seat of Ruple's car and drives away.

Ruple was taken to the Sheffield Police Department for testing and released to another adult, a state patrol sergeant said.

The 12-year veteran of the Avon Police Department has taken off work since the incident. It's unclear when he will return to work.

Ruple is due back in court Sept. 20.

Avon police will decide whether Ruple will face discipline once the case makes its way through court.

If you wish to discuss or comment on this story, please visit our crime and courts comments section.

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CMW Keynote Mark Hamill 5924 +[?]Wetzler Studios.JPG

Mark Hamill, a lifelong stage, film and voice-over actor still best known for his breakout role as Luke Skywalker in Star Wars, closed the Content Marketing World conference in Cleveland on Thursday with a conversation about the enduring passion for Star Wars and its universal themes of optimism and tenacity.

(Courtesy Wetzler Studios)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Thousands of people rushed into the main auditorium at Content Marketing World on Thursday afternoon, hoping for photos of, selfies with, or simply proximity to actor and entertainer Mark Hamill, best known as "Luke Skywalker" from the Star Wars films.

Mark Hamill said that when he won the role of Luke Skywalker, "i certainly never expected to be in a galaxy far, far away as I rocket toward Security," he said.

Hamill, whom attendees had heard would be the closing keynote speaker at #CMWorld 2016, instead shared the stage in an unscripted Q&A with event founder and host Joe Pulizzi.

When Pulizzi asked if he ever gets tired of the Star Wars thing, Hamill replied: "Professionally, yes. With the public, no. Because you've got to give people what they want."

"Star Wars is a part of who I am, no doubt about it," he said. "Micky Dolenz of the Monkees said, 'I went to one audition that changed my life forever.' I can relate to that."

Carrie Fisher (as Princess Lea) and Mark Hamill (as Luke Skywalker) starred in the first "Star Wars" film in 1977. The two remain friends.

Hamill's boyish looks helped him get cast as the teenaged Luke Skywalker when he was 24 years old, and the role has given him worldwide recognition and opportunities he would never have had without it.

"All around the world, everybody's your best friend," he said. "People have stories about this or that movie."

Their enduring popularity among ultra passionate fans who are now parents means they show up at his appearances gleefully pushing their five-year-olds toward him, saying: "Look who it is! Look who it is!"

Their children who've seen Star Wars more recently are horrified that he's gotten old, asking: "What happened to this guy? He looks terrible! He's really let himself go!"

Hamill said he understands the need for cosplay and the desire to be close to your favorite characters, because "I went to the [conventions] before I ever did Star Wars. The fans know that; they know I'm one of them."

"I certainly never expected to be in a galaxy far, far away as I rocket toward Social Security, that's for sure," he joked.

He said he gave all of his Star Wars toys to his children to play with, but now that they've seen how much such toys are worth, they complain: "Why did you let us give Leia a Sinead O'Connor haircut? She'd be worth $1,400 if she still had her buns!"

Mark Hamill, who has 1.24 million Twitter followers, was reluctant to embrace social media. "Who cares what I think, whether I prefer boysenberry or strawberry jam on my English muffin?" he asked. His daughter replied: "Ooh, if you tweeted that, your followers would go way up."

When Hamill was asked to return for last year's "Star Wars: The Force Awakens," he said he couldn't possibly refuse, thinking: "If I say 'No,' I'll be the most hated man in fandom. People would surround my house with light sabers instead of torches."

He worked out for the role twice a week for 50 weeks -- until he read the script. "Are you kidding me?" he asked, incredulous. "I lost 48 pounds to turn around and raise my hood? Spoiler alert." He said he felt like a hermit, saying "Get off my island."

Hamill said the reason Star Wars still resonates among its fans is because they were such optimistic films, showing "How, with the help of your friends, you could set out to do what you wanted to do." Luke was not a physically imposing kid, "he was a callow farm boy who wanted to get off his planet, and eventually became this Jedi master."

Related Plain Dealer stories:

LEGO's global director of social media shares why kids love those plastic bricks: #CMWorld 2016 (video)

#CMWorld 2016: Nine things to know about the Content Marketing World conference in Cleveland this week (photos, video)

"If you go on my Twitter page [@HamillHimself], I write: 'Believe in yourself! Work hard, never give up & anything's possible.'

"I believe in all of those things," he said. "Sometimes I think tenacity is more important than talent. You just never give up."

"Even having this unexpected career in voiceover," as the voice of The Joker, he attributes to a career spent in show business. "Because they cast with their ears; they never cast with their eyes. You can show up looking like hell, because nobody sees you."

He won the British Academy of Film and Television Arts' BAFTA Awards for his performances as DC Comic's "the Joker," a role he has reportedly portrayed more than any other actor in both animation and video games. "I love doing it," he said Thursday.

Mark Hamill, right, speaks with CMWorld founder and host Joe Pulizzi about the enduring popularity of Star Wars. "All around the world, everybody's your best friend," he said.

Hamill said when he was preparing to come to CMWorld, he actually read a story headlined, "WTF does Mark Hamill know about content marketing?"

"That's right, I'm a fraud," he said, as Pulizzi laughed. "Maybe they were trying to contact Mark Harmon."

But you don't get to work in your chosen profession every year since 1970 without knowing how to market yourself, Hamill said. As the middle child of seven children and the son of a naval officer, he went to nine schools in seven years and was constantly reinventing himself.

"I was always the new kid," he said, learning that "what's cool in San Diego is not cool in Queens, New York."

Mark Hamill said he once stumbled upon the videos of the other actors who had auditioned for Luke Skywalker, including Kurt Russell and Robby Benson. "All of these guys were really good Lukes," he said. "Why not that guy?

Hamill broke into acting on a whim, stopping in Los Angeles on his way home to Japan (his father was stationed there) to audition for a play and being seen by the right people in that role on stage. "It's recognizing that opportunity and seizing it," he said. "You've gotta grab your opportunities."

He went to Los Angeles City College, which didn't have the stature of a Juilliard or Yale School of Drama, but was grateful for the training he got there. He went to New York with dreams of starring on Broadway, but paid his dues in the meantime.

What's hard about show business is that it requires such drive, he said. "It's like roulette, where you spin 450 times before it comes up your number. But can you survive those 450 times?

"If there's anything you like as much, don't do this," he tells aspiring actors. The rejection is relentless, and he had to work two or three jobs just to break even between acting gigs.

"If I didn't get a part in a play, then I worked backstage doing props, or I was ushering or selling tickets" just to linger around the theater and learn the business. "At the very least, if I can't be a star, I'll be a caterer and serve food to the stars, because I really wanted to be a part of the show."

Previous #CMWorld speakers:

John Cleese tells Content Marketing World 2015 how to nurture creativity

Hamill joked that he has no business giving career advice about Hollywood. About a year after Star Wars opened, his agent introduced him to an aspiring actor from Austria named Arnold Schwarzenegger.

"So I went and I met him, and said: 'Can I be honest with you? Here's two things: No. 1, it would be really important for you to be able to lose that accent. If you can learn to lose it, it's just going to open up the world for you," Hamill said.

"The other thing is that name. That name. People won't be able to pronounce it. It's so long that unless you plan on working exclusively with Cher, there's no room for your name on the marquis."

"Lose the accent and drop your name," Hamill told him. Schwarzenegger did neither, and "within three years, he was the biggest star in Hollywood."

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PEPPER PIKE, Ohio -- Fraud, Ainsworth Drive: When a resident went to the Verizon store Sept. 8 to purchase a new cell phone for his wife, they were denied because of an outstanding debt of $2,762 on a separate account under the name of his business.

The fraudulent account dates back to 2005 and was set up to an unknown address. The victim suspects a former employee who may have since moved to the Philippines.

Verizon management decided he was not financially responsible for the phony account.

Theft, Old Brainard Road: A resident reported Sept. 6 that she was now unable to retrieve files and other important information from her laptop after she forgot a password and granted someone remote access to her computer.

That individual, reached by phone and known only as "Jack," told her that her files had been compromised by hackers in China and Germany. She wound up giving him her bank routing numbers when he charged her $399 to fix things.

When that didn't work, she called police, who told her to also contact her bank, credit card companies and the three major credit reporting agencies.

Car crash, I-271: A Cleveland Heights man, 21 was taken to Ahuja Medical Center on the night of Sept. 2 after he got his foot stuck on the accelerator of his northbound 2006 Dodge Stratus, then attempted to pull to the left of the roadway but lost control.

The car crossed the grass median and Express lanes, crashing into the concrete barrier. He was wearing a seatbelt and the front airbag was deployed. His injuries were initially listed as non-incapacitating and he was cited for failure to control.

If you would like to discuss the police blotter, please visit our crime and courts comments page.
U.S. Postal Service trucks sit parked outside a station in Chelsea, New York. Adam Jeffery | CNBC

On Wednesday, an alarming headline appeared on the website of USA Today atop an opinion column written by former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge. "15 years after 9/11, a gaping security gap," it said. The column was perfectly timed, coming just four days before the anniversary of the attack on the United States  a moment when the tragedy was certain to be on the minds of millions of Americans. And Ridge, a former governor of Pennsylvania, had a tough message for his readers: America is not safe. "There remains a gaping hole in our national security preparedness, coming from a largely ignored source," Ridge wrote. The threat on Ridge's mind doesn't come from ISIS-inspired killers inside the United States, as in the recent attacks in Orlando and San Bernardino. Instead, the threat Ridge wrote about comes from the post office. Parcels coming into the United States are not adequately screened for threats from overseas, Ridge argued, leaving a dangerous security gap that could be exploited by terrorists. In the column, Ridge said he was joining a new group called "Americans for Securing All Packages." What exactly is "Americans for Securing All Packages?" That's something of a mystery. But a little digging reveals a small example of the way money, power, and national security interact in Washington 15 years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Who we are

On its website, Americans for Securing All Packages features a "Who We Are" section explaining that the group is a "coalition of families, health care advocates, security experts, businesses and non-profits who believe it is time to close a dangerous security gap that leaves our nation vulnerable to foreign attacks and invites illegal and toxic drugs into our communities." The group  a nonprofit that does not have to disclose its donors  officially debuted on the same day Ridge's column appeared. The website lists two senior advisors: Ridge, who was the first assistant to the president for homeland security under President George W. Bush, and Juliette Kayyem, a former Obama administration homeland security official and current CNN analyst. Under the heading for "contact information," the group does not list a phone number or an address. District of Columbia incorporation records, however, show that the group was registered on June 23, and its address is 700 13th Street, NW, Suite 600. That just happens to be the address of a powerhouse D.C. law and lobbying firm called Perkins Coie. On the documents, the incorporator of Americans for Securing all Packages is listed as Ezra W. Reese. He is a partner at Perkins Coie whose online biography says his practice is focused on "nonprofit organizations that wish to engage in lobbying or electoral activity." Reese did not return a phone call from CNBC. Instead, a message left at his office was returned by Jill Zuckman, a managing director at the influential Washington public relations firm SKD Knickerbocker. Zuckman said: "I'm not going to be able to disclose who is funding this," citing the 501(c )(4) tax status of Americans for Securing All Packages.

Although the website's "who we are" section says the group is a "coalition of families," Zuckman said she was unable to provide the names of any families who are affiliated with Americans for Securing All Packages. The group is still lining up members, she explained, and "in the days to come we'll be rolling out other people." Several soon-to-be-announced members will be nonprofit groups interested in stopping the spread of drugs, Zuckman said. "We worked really hard to make this bipartisan."





Not volunteers

Tom Ridge, Former Secretary of Homeland Security William B. Plowman | NBC | Getty Images

How did Ridge come to be involved with the new group? "The coalition went to him and talked to him about the issue and he thought it was a really serious issue and he wanted to help," Zuckman said. Same with Kayyem. But Ridge is not a volunteer. What is not mentioned in his USA Today op-ed is that Ridge is being paid by Americans for Securing All Packages. So is Kayyem. "We're paying him and Juliette for their time  for spending their time to talk about this issue," Zuckman said. She declined to reveal how much Ridge and Kayyem have been paid. This week, Kayyem sent out a tweet to her more than 14,000 followers: "I'm leading a coalition to close a security gap that exposes families to illegal drugs and terrorist attacks." She urged followers to check out the new Twitter handle of Americans for Securing All Packages, an account that was created in July and had, on Thursday, exactly 15 followers. On Thursday, Kayyem published her own op-ed piece, this one in The Boston Globe, that like Ridge, referred to a "security gap." Analyzing just how far American security has come since 9/11, Kayyem said one major gap remains: "Small packages coming into the United States from foreign postal services are not monitored or tracked, as required by law." In an interview with WTOP radio in Washington, Kayyem underscored the point. "The gap is essentially when mail is sent to the United States from foreign countries; if it's of a certain weight, it doesn't go through normal cargo surveillance like the mail that is sent through private mailing services such as UPS and FedEx ," Kayyem said.



Where is the money coming from?

Still, the mystery remained: Where is the money coming from for all this? Another clue can be found in public records. Ridge and Kayyem both mentioned two public companies: UPS and FedEx. Ridge wrote that those companies follow strict new security procedures implemented after Sept. 11, but their government-run competitor, the U.S. Postal Service, does not  despite a law called the Trade Act of 2002 and a recommendation by Congress that agencies "be provided with the electronic security data necessary to weed out dangerous packages." Senate records reveal that this exact issue is one focus of the lobbying effort of UPS, which has spent more than $4.5 million lobbying in Washington so far in 2016. Among the various measures UPS is pushing on Capitol Hill, the documents show, is a bill that would "apply customs and security parity to posts and the private sector for all parcels imported to the U.S." A spokeswoman for UPS, Kara Gerhardt Ross, said that the parcel service company is familiar with Americans for Securing All Packages. In fact, she said, UPS contributes to a trade association that finances the new nonprofit. She would not disclose dollar amounts. "We're aware of the group and we're supportive of it," Ross said. "We were happy to see Tom Ridge out there talking about this issue, because we've been talking about it for a long time." Mail security, Ross said, is important. "It's something we believe needs to be done for all packages." A spokesperson for FedEx said the company belongs to the same trade association that has financed Americans for Securing All Packages, but was not directly involved in the campaign.

A little Washington mystery
The Chinese government will talk to Air China about the flagship carrier's offensive travel advice, a Foreign Affairs Ministry official said, after underlining the country's respect for all ethnic groups and races.

Questioned at the Foreign Affairs Ministry's regular press conference on Thursday, spokeswoman Hua Chunying said, "Relevant departments will have the necessary talks with Air China, and we believe Air China will investigate about this and properly deal with it."

Hua was responding to a furor that erupted after CNBC drew attention to a feature on London in the September edition of Wings of China, Air China's inflight magazine.

The feature warned tourists, "London is generally a safe place to travel, however precautions are needed when entering areas mainly populated by Indians, Pakistanis and black people."

The travel advice caused outrage in London, where lawmakers called for an apology from the company, which is one of China's biggest airlines.

London lawmaker Virendra Sharma wrote to the Chinese ambassador to the U.K. to demand an apology, according to the BBC. "I am shocked and appalled that even today some people would see it as acceptable to write such blatantly untrue and racist statements," Sharma told the BBC.
Cramer does not often see a stock like General Mills drop $3 like it did on Wednesday. The company cited rising competition in its yogurt business as it cut August guidance, which reminded Cramer of just how much of a battleground supermarkets are right now.

"This safety group may prove to be the most vulnerable out there at the moment, until the stocks come down to the point where their yields offer more support and the takeover chatter ends," the " Mad Money " host said.

Chills ran down Jim Cramer's spine when he learned that General Mills guided down for its first fiscal quarter. He saw that safety stocks have now become very dangerous.

The deflation in food is the black hole that investors are just waking up to.

"No names were mentioned by COO Jeff Harmening, but it looks like Danone 's in there taking share and taking no prisoners. And it could get even worse now that the French powerhouse has acquired WhiteWave ," Cramer said.

Cramer wondered when the supermarket pressure would trickle down to consumer packaged goods stocks. They have rallied so much in the past few years that their dividend yields now look unimpressive.

The decline of Campbell Soup following its last quarter startled Cramer. It was one of the best performers in the group, but has fallen nearly 16 percent in the past two months. That is a large decline for a food play.

Both Campbell Soup and General Mills moved aggressively into the natural and organic space in search of growth. However, private label companies like TreeHouse also entered the space with cheaper, store brand merchandise.

"The consumer has gotten even more frugal, while the supermarkets are trying to make as much as they can by pitting their suppliers against each other, and there has been unprecedented food price deflation," Cramer said.

Meanwhile, Amazon is beating everyone in the non-produce category, and is desperately trying to move into the same-day produce delivery business.

"The deflation in food is the black hole that investors are just waking up to," Cramer said.

For those investors that own stocks like Kellogg , ConAgra , Church & Dwight , Kimberly-Clark or Clorox , Cramer says to keep one finger on the trigger.

Only when the stocks in this group fall enough to have more support from their yields will Cramer consider it safe to circle back to what he considers the most treacherous group in the stock market.
North Korea said it tested a miniaturized nuclear warhead on Friday as protection against "threats and sanctions" from hostile elements, according to the isolated state's official news agency.



North Korea proved that the country could make "standardized" nuclear warheads and mount them on "strategic ballistic rockets."

In a rambling statement, North Korea said the successful test was a demonstration of the country's preparation for retaliation against its enemies, chiefly "U.S.-led hostile forces who have gone desperate in their moves to find fault with the sovereign state's exercise of the right to self-defense while categorically denying the DPRK's strategic position as a full-fledge nuclear weapons state."

The statement from the rogue nation came after multiple global agencies detected seismic activity in North Korea on Friday morning local time. Prior to North Korea's confirmation of the test, both Japanese and South Korean authorities said that they believed the explosion, which caused an earthquake, was the result of fifth nuclear test by their neighbor.

The blast caused by the test was bigger than the one caused by North Korea's nuclear test in January, according to the South Korean meteorological agency.

The agency said the "man-made" quake emitted energy double that emitted by the January nuclear test. The South Korean military said the magnitude 5.0 seismic wave would indicate a 10 kilotonne blast, which would be the isolated nation's largest ever, local news agency Yonhap reported.

Meanwhile, Jeffrey Lewis of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies told Reuters that the seismic activity detected in North Korea indicated a blast of 20 kilotonnes to 30 kilotonnes, which he said would make the test larger than the nuclear bomb the U.S dropped on Hiroshima in World War II and possibly even larger than the one dropped on Nagasaki soon after.
The "Fast Money" traders looked for high-dividend paying stocks that might be poised to break out.

Trader Dan Nathan said Metlife is a "reasonably priced stock that's got a nice yield."

Trader Tim Seymour said Occidental Petroleum has been "growing [its] position relative to other [companies] in the Permian Basin." He also pointed out that the company recently raised its dividend, while investors in other energy companies worry about dividends getting cut.

Trader Brian Kelly said that he believes oil prices will go higher, so Occidental makes sense as an investment.
But on the rare occasions when I unlock that box, the same memories jump out.

Most of us who were here rarely talk about what happened. I'm like most people I know: I've taken what happened and tucked it into a very small, compartmentalized part of my memory, and very rarely open the box and let it out.

For those of us  like myself  who were here that day, or those of us who lost loved ones or dear friends, it is especially difficult.

Sunday marks the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy, a horrific event we will all stop and reflect on once again.

The first is of Bill Meehan, one of a half-dozen or so friends who died that day. Bill was chief market analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald, famous for his outrageous Hawaiian shirts, quick wit, and sharp market analysis. Bill, myself, and Tony Dwyer had been out the week before at the back bar at the Four Seasons on 57th Street, then a favorite watering hole for the hedge fund set. The markets were already more than 20 percent off the April 2000 highs, and I remember getting into a heated discussion with several traders furious over the direction of the markets (they were losing money on a bad bet on several stocks and blamed CNBC, naturally). Meehan, never one to shrink from an argument, got into a spirited debate with them.

That was the last time I saw him.

And then there are the memories. The fragments:

8:46 AM: On the West Side Highway, a minute after the first plane hit the North Tower. All the cars had come to a screeching halt. A man was on the street, leaning back with his mouth wide open. I ran up to him and said, "What happened?" He said, "A plane went right into the building." He seemed confused.

On the West Side Highway, a minute after the first plane hit the North Tower. All the cars had come to a screeching halt. A man was on the street, leaning back with his mouth wide open. I ran up to him and said, "What happened?" He said, "A plane went right into the building." He seemed confused. 9:03 AM: The sound of 10,000 people gasping at once as the second plane hit.

The sound of 10,000 people gasping at once as the second plane hit. 9:04 AM: Standing near Century 21 about 20 seconds after the first plane hit. Metal debris showering down around all of us. The entire downtown turned and ran. No one stopped. People ran over each other. A man a few feet ahead of me fell down, several people went right over him, smacking him down on the street. A woman grabbed him by the collar to try to pull him up, but they were going over her too. There was gravel embedded in the side of his face.

Standing near Century 21 about 20 seconds after the first plane hit. Metal debris showering down around all of us. The entire downtown turned and ran. No one stopped. People ran over each other. A man a few feet ahead of me fell down, several people went right over him, smacking him down on the street. A woman grabbed him by the collar to try to pull him up, but they were going over her too. There was gravel embedded in the side of his face. 10:00 AM: Seeing my colleague Maria Bartiromo coming into the NYSE moments after the tower fell. She was covered in white soot. I hugged her and almost cried.

Seeing my colleague Maria Bartiromo coming into the NYSE moments after the tower fell. She was covered in white soot. I hugged her and almost cried. 11:30 AM: Maria, my producer Bianna Golodryga, and I emerging from the NYSE onto a deserted Broad Street, covered in white ash, burning papers still flying in the air.

Maria, my producer Bianna Golodryga, and I emerging from the NYSE onto a deserted Broad Street, covered in white ash, burning papers still flying in the air. 2PM: Walking onto the Trade Center site, deserted, standing on a steel girder, the buildings still burning. Phoning in a report to my colleague Bill Griffeth.

Walking onto the Trade Center site, deserted, standing on a steel girder, the buildings still burning. Phoning in a report to my colleague Bill Griffeth. 7 PM: Maria and I sitting in NYSE chief Dick Grasso's office on the sixth floor. Grasso grim but calm. When would the exchange reopen? He wasn't sure, but was in touch with everyone in Washington and the goal was to open as quickly as was safely possible.

Maria and I sitting in NYSE chief Dick Grasso's office on the sixth floor. Grasso grim but calm. When would the exchange reopen? He wasn't sure, but was in touch with everyone in Washington and the goal was to open as quickly as was safely possible. 8 PM: Walking with Maria to the subway stop at Canal Street, the streets almost empty.

Walking with Maria to the subway stop at Canal Street, the streets almost empty. Monday, Sept. 17: The NYSE reopened. Interviewing Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill as he arrived. Senators Hillary Clinton and Charles Schumer, Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Governor George Pataki, SEC head Harvey Pitt, OEM Director Richard Sheirer, NYC Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik, Deputy Mayor Joe Lhota and Fire Department Commissioner Thomas Von Essen all ringing the opening bell, with the firemen and police officers.

The NYSE reopened. Interviewing Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill as he arrived. Senators Hillary Clinton and Charles Schumer, Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Governor George Pataki, SEC head Harvey Pitt, OEM Director Richard Sheirer, NYC Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik, Deputy Mayor Joe Lhota and Fire Department Commissioner Thomas Von Essen all ringing the opening bell, with the firemen and police officers. All of next year (2002): The smell of burning material still in the air. Everyone came to work. Everyone was nervous, everyone was worried, many were depressed. But everyone came to work.

The beautiful thing about life is that it goes on. Downtown New York is completely different now. 60,000 people live below Chambers Street, many of them millennials who have filled up the buildings that formerly housed Wall Street firms. Nearly 5,000 new apartment units are under construction. The World Financial Center across the street is a success. More than a quarter-million people a day commute through Santiago Calatrava's magnificent transit hub. The Westfield World Trade Center has just opened with nearly 125 shops, and Eataly, that homage to all things Italian, is going strong.

And yesterday, the design for the new Perelman Performing Arts Center was unveiled, with a flexible design that will hold several theaters.

And the tourists. They come by the tens of thousands each day  about 14.2 million last year alone. So many that on most days they dominate the downtown.

Mostly, they come to see the Memorial. When it was first completed, I was baffled. It's a hole in the ground with water around it. How is that a memorial? But when I asked myself what I would put up, nothing seemed right. I finally came around to exactly what they had done. It draws the mind inward. It's peaceful. The visitors are respectful but not unduly somber. The names of those who died are engraved around the two Memorials. There is commercial development around the site but it is not intrusive. The tone feels right.

And Bill Meehan? I've been by the Memorial several times, and always stop by his engraving. I never did eliminate his AOL Instant Messenger handle. It still sits there, my own little memorial to my friend.

If you're by the Memorial, stop by to pay your respects to Bill. William J. Meehan, Jr. Panel N-27, North Memorial Pool.
On September 11, 2001, our country suffered the most devastating day in the living memory of most Americans. Nearly 3,000 innocent people died in a few surreal, nightmarish hours.

Fifteen years later, it is important to remember that the lessons of 9/11 were not only about terrorismthey were also about how national security leaders analyze dangers on the horizon, how they alert the public to the risk, and whether we are collectively able to act before those risks manifest in devastating fashion.

Before the 9/11 attacks, experts within the government recognized the danger that al Qaeda posed, but most Americans were unaware of the threatlargely because their leaders did not do enough to explain it to them. And despite the threat awareness inside government, few imagined that an al Qaeda attack would kill thousands of Americans, or that al Qaeda would use hijacked aircraft as suicide bombs.

The 9/11 Commissionon which we servedcalled the government's inability to foresee and prevent suicide hijackings a "failure of imagination." Unfortunately, we fear that the complacency and inaction that led to 9/11 may be repeatingnot in counterterrorism, but in the cyber realm.

Electronic networks are the lifeblood of modern commerce, government, finance, and even social life. The list of high-profile breaches seems unending. Chinese-government-backed hackers have stolen the plans to dozens of our most advanced weapons systems. Iran has hacked into banks, oil companies, and even a dam in suburban New York. North Korea hacked into Sony Pictures and released reams of private data.

China, again, was behind the hack of more than 20 million security-clearance records from the Office of Personnel Management, a counterintelligence disaster for the United States. Now it appears that Russia is attempting to subvert our elections by hacking into Democratic Party organizations and leaking internal emails.

And those are only state-sponsored hacks; cyber criminals regularly steal credit card data, social security numbers, and other sensitive data from corporate systems. Perhaps most damaging, over the years Chinese hackers have stolen intellectual property worth trillions of dollars from American companies, in what former National Security Agency (NSA) Director Keith Alexander called "the greatest transfer of wealth in history."
For my father, who was stationed in North Carolina before being sent to Vietnam, preparing to fight a war oversees was not his only problem. He was about to risk his life for his country, but even while he walked around town in his crisp U.S. Marine uniform, he could not find a bathroom open to "colored folk." In that environment, neither American culture nor American law (regardless of what was on the books) had anything to say about business owners denying him the most basic public services.

It is an alienating, dehumanizing experience that so many Black people in my generation and all those before us share. And while the tools of discrimination have changed, the experience of exclusionof not being able to count on equal accesscontinues. It's an experience that all people of color, women, immigrants, those of minority faiths and LGBT folks have faced.

In large part, the civil rights movement was started by everyday Black folks coming together to respond to widespread, racist business practices. That movement changed the rules of business: not just in the law itself, but also by building a culture of enforcement. Yet today, the threat of going backwards is painfully clear. And the role that organizing must play in setting and enforcing the rulesensuring that all businesses institutionalize standards of equality at every levelis as critical as ever. That is why Airbnb's announcement today is so important.

Recent research revealed a consistent pattern of discrimination against Black people by many Airbnb hosts. It turns out that new tech platforms are not only disrupting industries, but also disrupting the hard-won gains of racial equality. In one well-publicized lawsuit, Gregory Seldan, who is Black, was told by an Airbnb host that the place he wanted to book was no longer available. But when Seldan posted a new photo and assumed a false online identity as a white man, the same host offered to book him.

Thursday, after months of work pushing for change, Airbnb released a new policy aimed at ending these persistent racist practices. Among other changes, Airbnb will implement mandatory anti-bias training for all staff, instruct employees in how to identify and handle racist host behavior, and hire a supplier diversity expert.

They will also set a new rule: if a host claims their home is unavailable, they cannot allow another guest to book it. It remains to be seen (and monitored closely) whether hosts will take this rule to heart and change the Airbnb culture, or if they will find a runaround, requiring Airbnb to do even more.
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This start-up claims there's no excuse not to bike thanks to its bicycles that fold in half and fit practically anywhere. "Gi FlyBike is an electric, smartphone integrated, maintenance-free, folding bicycle that we created for the future of urban commuting. The Gi is the fastest folding bicycle in the world  one second and one motion," said Eric Sevillia, co-founder of Gi Flybike.



Taking Charge

Sevillia's idea came from living and working in Argentina during a transportation strike. "I noticed that commuters wanted the kind of independence that is incompatible with public transit, they also wanted agility that cars cannot offer," he told CNBC. So in February 2012 Sevillia, along with co-founders Lucas Toledo and Agustin Augustinoy, launched Gi FlyBike, an electric folding bicycle controlled via smartphone. "With Gi FlyBike we believe that thoughtful design and technology can take us into the next generation of transportation, to create more effective and eco-friendly cities with happier people," said Sevillia. The Gi Flybike offers 40 miles of pedal assistance per charge, and incorporates a custom design that enables the bike to fold in literally one second by pulling a lever on the frame. Its other features are managed through the free Flybike mobile app, which controls everything from the level of electric assistance, to the LED smart lights, and GPS navigation. Users can even lock or unlock the bike automatically when they are more than 10 feet away from it. The bike also includes anti-puncture full-sized tires, a belt drive system which eliminates rust and broken chains, and a lightweight aluminum alloy frame. Gi FlyBikes are currently available for pre-order on the company's website for $2,290. To date the company has pre-sold 321 bikes, which will deliver in March 2017.



Switching Gears

Gi Flybike Source: Gi Flybike
Britain's Serious Fraud Office has charged three senior former executives at Tesco with fraud in its investigation into an accounting scandal at the retailer, it said on Friday.

Carl Rogberg, Christopher Bush and John Scouler, who were suspended over the scandal, have been charged with fraud by abuse of position, the SFO said in a statement.

Bush was managing director of Tesco U.K., Rogberg was finance director U.K. and Scouler was U.K. food commercial director.

The three have been asked to appear in court on Sept 22, the SFO added, saying the investigation is ongoing.

Tesco said on Friday it had introduced an "extensive programme of change" following the news that the SFO had charged three senior former executives at the firm.

"We note the decision of the SFO to bring a prosecution against former colleagues in relation to historic issues and acknowledge the investigation into the company is ongoing," it said in a statement.

"Tesco continues to cooperate with the SFO's investigation. The last two years have seen an extensive programme of change at Tesco, but given this is an ongoing legal matter, we are unable to provide any further comment at this time."
China's Xinhua news agency, the mouthpiece of Beijing, quickly urged restraint after North Korea's nuclear test on Friday.

State-run Xinhua said in a commentary that the nuclear test had "shocked the world" and was in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions, as well as running counter to the goal of denuclearization on the the Korean Peninsula.

The test, which reclusive North Korea claimed was a complete success, also added uncertainty to an already delicate and complicated geopolitical security situation, Xinhua said.

"All parties including North Korea should recognize that tumult on the peninsular, war and instability in Northeast Asia will benefit nobody," the commentary added.

The nuclear test was "unwise," the news agency, which is watched closely as a proxy for the Chinese government, concluded.

China is North Korea's only ally but has become increasingly impatient with the rogue nation, going as far as supporting new U.N sanctions against North Korea earlier this year.

But China's stance is complicated by the fact that it is also concerned by South Korea's recent deal with the U.S. to host an anti-missile defense system called THAAD - something North Korea has also opposed. The Xinhua commentary noted that South Korea's deal with the U.S on THAAD had contributed to a rise in tensions in the Korean Peninsula.

In a brief statement on Friday, China's Foreign Ministry said that was firmly opposed its neighbor's latest test and strongly urged North Korea to stop taking actions that heightened tension in the region.

China would stick to its promise of denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula and taking part in talks to resolve the issue, the ministry said.

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ATHENSConcerns that a north-south divide is erupting within the euro zone mount as leaders of six south European countries meet in Athens on Friday to discuss key issues of austerity and growth plaguing the region. Besides Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, those attending are France's President Francois Hollande; Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades; Italy Prime Minister Matteo Renzi; Portugal Prime Minister Antonio Costa; Malta Prime Minister Joseph Muscat and Spain's State Secretary for the European Union, Fernando Eguidazu. According to Greek government sources, the aim of the meeting of these Mediterranean EU countries is to boost cooperation and coordination so they can leave their mark on the European agenda.

Graffiti by street artist Jupiterfab, depicting Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Athens. Giorgos Georgiou | NurPhoto | Getty Images

The meeting will focus on EU foreign policy, with an emphasis on regional security and peace; improving economic growth by stimulating employment and attracting investment; and examining European policy with regard to the migration-refugee issue. None of the leaders participating in the discussion are in a more advantageous position than the other. Rome's economy stagnated between April and June, and GDP grew 0.7 percent in annual terms, which represented a deceleration compared to the 1.0 percent rise in the first quarter. This is the lowest quarterly growth figure since emerging from a three-year recession at the beginning of last year. The French economy has ground to a halt in the second quarter of the year, reporting zero growth. Greek GDP fell by 0.9 percent in the second quarter of 2016 on an annualized basis, showing an exacerbation of the recession in the crisis-plagued country. It's the fourth consecutive quarter with a GDP contraction. Friday's meeting comes a few days after the Group of 20 (G20) Summit in Hangzhou, China, which focused on lackluster global economic growth. According to ECB estimates, euro zone GDP will grow annually by 1.7 percent in 2016, 1.6 percent in 2017 and by 1.6 percent in 2018. The G20 agreed that to jump-start a recovery, all measures should be used, including quantitative easing and skills training, international tax cooperation and focusing on innovation.

Standing against austerity

The concept of a united front of southern European countries was proposed in August by Greek Prime Minister Tsipras, seeking to enhance coordination and cooperation of Mediterranean EU member-states ahead of the informal European Council in Bratislava on Sept. 16. "Our goal is not to create a group of countries based on division, said Tsipras in an interview with the French newspaper Le Monde on Sept. 9. He added, "We would rather promote a common approach among the countries of the European periphery and the Mediterranean, which, objectively, were the most affected by the crisis." But this initiative is not new. In the 1980s the southern European countries teamed occasionally in support of a common agenda on critical European issues. Former Greek socialist Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou had close cooperation with the former France President Francois Mitterrand in the 1980s as part of a network of the southern European socialist forces that developed after the fall of dictatorships in Greece, Spain and Portugal. These links were further developed across Mediterranean nations and functioned as a coalition within the EU and a check on the interest of northern states. A Euro-Mediterranean partnership for fighting austerity in the euro zone was first attempted by the Greek leftist party Syriza before the general elections of January 2015 that brought it to power. At the time, Tsipras hoped Athens would attract the solidarity of Southern European countries against austerity and that those countries would stand by Greece in its negotiations with international creditors  expectations that turned out to be unrealistic.

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In order to tame the euro zone sovereign debt crisis over the last seven years, the richer countries of Northern Europe have called for austerity measures and budget cuts, coupled with stronger EU sanctions for countries that do not adhere to this policy. In practice, this economic recipe, led by Germany, proved economically and politically disastrous, as it fueled the recession and nourished populism. In some cases it has become increasingly difficult for political parties to pursue an economic agenda that deviates from these fiscal norms without questioning EU membership.

Tspiras and his colleagues believe the current situation in southern Europe makes this a good time to address austerity issues and its effect on long-term growth throughout the region. The stars may be aligning, considering in Italy a referendum on constitutional reform will take place between Nov. 15 and Dec. 5 and the first round of the presidential election in France next April.

This may help the Greek prime minister's cause, which is to convince its lenders that the targeted 3.5 percent primary surplus for 2018 is too high and would negatively affect crisis-stricken Greeks. Terms of the Greek bailout program assumed that tax revenues would exceed program spending, ex-interest on outstanding debt. But within the southern EU bloc, many believe this is an unrealistic target for an aching economy that for seven years has been in a recession and austerity mode. Tsipras does not want to give the impression that he does not respect the agreements with Greece's creditors. In an informal government meeting held on September 6, Tsipras asked his ministers to progress rapidly with the fiscal and structural measures that Greece's lenders set as a prerequisite last June. This effort comes ahead of a mandated second review of its current international bailout, which the Greek government is expected to start in October and which includes controversial reforms. In turn, lenders have promised that the European Stability Mechanism, the EU's bailout fund, will outline how it will offer Greece debt-relief measures.
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Concerns that Greece is not making enough progress to meet the conditions of its third international bailout is heading the agenda of a meeting of euro zone finance ministers on Friday. The Eurogroup, which is meeting in Bratislava, Slovakia, will decide whether Greece has been doing enough to meet the "the milestones agreed in its financial assistance program," the European Council said on its website. The conditions of Greece's third 86 billion euro ($96.9 billion) bailout include a number of measures and reforms that the left-wing coalition government led by Alexis Tsipras has committed to implementing in order to address its current economic challenges.



Nicolas Koutsokostas/Corbis via Getty Images

If Greece is deemed to have done enough to meet those conditions, it will open the way for a further disbursement of money from a second tranche of aid. The tranche, the European Council noted, amounted to 10.3 billion euros; 7.5 billion euros of which was disbursed on 21 June 2016. Such aid typically goes on servicing Greece's debts. So far, however, Greece has only completed two of its 15 reform "milestones" that are necessary for creditors to begin a second bailout review (the first of which was delayed and only completed in June) which could lead to debt relief measures. The meeting today is set to start around 9 a.m. London time with Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the head of the Eurogroup, expected to make comment on meeting later today. Follow our World Markets Live blog for the latest on the meeting

Uphill battle

Greece requested a third rescue program last summer when it was on the brink of bankruptcy and a potential exit from the euro zone, despite a referendum in which the majority of Greeks voted against more austerity measures.

A year on and Greece is facing an uphill struggle to meet the conditions of its latest bailout, having to implement far-reaching structural reforms of its pension and taxation system, labor market and the wider economy in order to boost its competitiveness and attract investment.

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There is uncertainty about Athens' ability to meet its bailout commitments and the souring the political atmosphere in Greece, where the ruling Syriza party is losing the public's approval. "Greece's Syriza government is once again severely behind schedule, as it procrastinates over the implementation of 15 reform "milestones" (only two have been completed so far) necessary to secure 2.8 billion euros from euro zone creditors," Mujtaba Rahman, managing director of Europe at Eurasia Group said in a note earlier this week. "Completion of the milestones, which should have happened around two months ago, is necessary to begin the bailout's second review. This contains numerous politically sensitive elements, not least reform to Greece's labor market. Germany in particular is annoyed at the lack of progress over Greece's new privatization fund  a key part of last year's deal to keep Greece in the Euro  where the supervisory board, let alone the management team, has not yet been appointed," Rahman added.

Don't mention debt relief

The issue of debt sustainability is also a hot topic with the International Monetary fund (IMF)  which participated in Greece's two earlier bailouts  saying that Greece's debt is unsustainable and lenders targets for Greece (such as achieving a primary budget surplus of 3.5 percent of GDP in 2018). The IMF has said it is still not ready to participate in the current bailout until there are significant reforms by Greece and that its debt is sustainable.

Back in May, the Eurogroup tried to appease the IMF by agreeing a set of debt relief measures for Greece, such as extending the maturities on Greece's loans and "smoothening the repayment profile" of loans. It said such debt relief would be offered in mid-2018, however, on Greece's successful implementation of its bailout conditions. In the meantime, Greek government bonds are still excluded from the European Central Bank's quantitative easing program, meaning that its borrowing costs are still far higher than its euro zone neighbors and adding to its struggle to recover. Eurasia Group's Rahman forecast that Greece would continue to struggle, especially as the governing Syriza party sees its popularity drop compared to its rival New Democracy. "Syriza's loss in popularity is causing the government to delay reform; the bailout's second review will now only be concluded late this year or more likely early next," Rahman said. "Syriza's bad behavior is convenient for creditors, postponing their need to come to an agreement over debt relief," he added.

Other talking points
A fund manager who called $30-a-barrel oil before the crude crash now likes energy stocks  at least, some of them.

In 2015, Mark Yusko, founder and CEO of Morgan Creek Capital Management, predicted crude oil would approach $30 a barrel. Now he is buying stocks of oil exploration and production companies, he told investors at the Morningstar ETF conference Thursday night. But there's one big oil stock in a lot of investor portfolios Yusko won't touch.

"This is the time for cyclicals and energy, but pure energy, not ExxonMobil ," said Yusko, who runs the Morgan Creek Tactical Allocation Fund and previously managed the endowment offices of Notre Dame University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Yusko called ExxonMobil "the most dangerous stock on the planet today," and he said part of the blame for making ExxonMobil a dangerous investment lies with ETFs. "It traded for 35 years at a 12 PE [price-to-earnings ratio]. Do you know what the PE is now? Thirty, because all the money has gone into low-volatility ETFs and cap-weighted energy indices ETFs."

ExxonMobil shares are up 14 percent this year, double the S&P 500 performance. Its price to earnings ratio is currently even higher than Yusko said, at 35.
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Two bomb threats were received at Camp Shelby, just south of Hattiesburg, Friday morning. As of early Friday afternoon, no bombs had been found and the base remained open.

(File photo/Gulflive.com)

JACKSON, Mississippi -- Two bomb threats were phoned in to the Camp Shelby Joint Forces Training Center Friday morning, according to the Adjutant General's office.

The two phone calls were received at 8:30 a.m. and 10 a.m. Friday. The soldiers receiving the calls reported the incidents to their superiors and alerted local law enforcement.

The Mississippi Highway Patrol bomb disposal unit was called in to conduct a sweep of the area as a precaution. No explosives were found.

Camp Shelby is currently open and all personnel accounted for, according to the release.

"The safety of our Mississippi National Guard Soldiers, Airmen, civilians and partner organizations is paramount," the release said. "Efforts continue to maintain and strengthen security at all Guard facilities statewide."
While most on Wall Street these days are huddling in yield plays, Jeff Ubben seems to be taking on more risk. His activist hedge fund ValueAct turned heads Friday with the disclosure of a new large stake in Seagate Technology . This follows the purchase of battered bank Morgan Stanley in mid-August . The ValueAct chief executive officer told CNBC PRO why his fund is buying these riskier names. Seagate announced the hedge fund will acquire a 9.5 million share stake in the company through a secondary transaction conditioned on regulatory approval. Historically, ValueAct is known for focusing on "good" businesses with pricing power and strong intellectual property positions, primarily with subscription or services-oriented business models. When contacted for this story Ubben elaborated on why the fund is now buying "higher-risk" stocks, saying in an email, "High recurring revenue models with pricing power type companies are priced for a 5-6% total return. We seek 15%." He went on: "We believe we can achieve this targeted return with these higher risk companies, MS, ADS, Trinity and Seagate, due to stock prices that overly discount the risks. These stock prices are down 40% plus or minus in a very benign market, and trade at 10x versus market at 20x." ValueAct has more than $16 billion of assets under management.

Jeffrey Ubben Source: BusinessWire
Elyse Oleksak nixed her husband's idea to leave their secure finance jobs to open a tater-tot truck. But when he came to her with the idea to make bagel balls that have cream cheese stuffed inside? Oh, well, she knew that was genius. How did she know? "There is something inside of your gut and you have a blind belief in yourself and your product," she said. "You cannot dive in unless you are so truly, 100 percent in belief in yourself and your product that the world needs your product." And Oleksak just knew that the world needed to have bagel balls stuffed with cream cheese. Turns out, she was right.

Source: Bantam Bagels

In just over four years, Nick and Elyse Oleksak, who met in college and are now married, have gone from inventing the bagel-ball recipe in their tiny New York apartment to an appearance on the hit show "Shark Tank" to launching their Bantam Bagels in all 7,700 corporate-owned Starbucks across the U.S. "We can't believe how far we have come, and we can't believe how much we have accomplished," Elyse said. "But you just get so deep and you believe so much and you are just so eye-on-the-prize that you don't even think twice."

Believing in the bagel ball

Nick and Elyse, 32 and 31 respectively, graduated from Columbia University in 2006 and 2007 and went into finance. Nick worked at GFI as a corporate bond broker, and Elyse worked in investment management at Morgan Stanley. But they always had an underlying desire to launch their own business. Both are originally from Massachusetts, but they were quick to adopt the classic New Yorker obsession with bagels when they moved to the Big Apple for college. Nick says when he couldn't decide whether he wanted a savory or sweet bagel with cream cheese he would often get both. And while he always promised himself he would eat only one at a time, he always ended up eating both. In May 2012, Nick woke up in the middle of the night with the idea of an individual-sized bagel bite already filled with cream cheese. It would give customers the pleasure of a bagel and cream cheese without the bloated bread belly. He wrote the idea down in his phone and then called his wife from work the next day to share his midnight ruminations. "I paused, like a hold-the-phone moment," Elyse said.

There is something inside of your gut and you have a blind belief in yourself and your product. Elyse Oleksak co-owner, Bantam Bagels

The couple was instantly obsessed with the idea. "We ran home that night and made the first batch," she recalled. "The second we lit up from the idea, there was no turning back." For the next couple of months, they came home from their corporate jobs in the evenings, aggressively Googled how to make bagels and tried out recipes. The dough would sit in the laundry closet overnight to rise properly. At the same time, they were using their finance know-how to put together a business plan.

Hitting the "Shark Tank" jackpot

Nick and Elyse raised a friends-and-family round of financing to open the first Bantam Bagels shop on Bleecker Street in New York City's West Village. Elyse left her job in June 2013 so that she could work around the clock to get the storefront open. Nick kept his corporate job until February 2015. The newly minted entrepreneurs were also newly minted parents, so they didn't want to lose the steady paycheck until they were sure Bantam Bagels would keep them afloat. Longtime "Shark Tank" fans, the couple applied to be on the reality-pitch show and were accepted. They filmed in June 2014 and made a deal with Lori Greiner, who invested $275,000 for 25 percent equity of Bantam Bagels. The episode aired in January 2015 and changed everything for the couple.

"That was really the inflection point for us as a business," Nick said. "It's like everyone says, there is the 'Shark Tank' effect." The Bantam Bagel website crashed the night of the show, a common foible for contestants, and the Saturday morning after the show aired, there was a line out the door of their downtown bakery shop starting at 6 a.m. It didn't even open until 9 a.m.

From a single storefront to 7,700 Starbucks stores

Three years ago, Bantam Bagels was making about 1,000 bagel balls a day. Today, it's making nearly 1 million bagel balls a week. Despite the massive growth, the bagel balls are still made with the exact recipe that Nick and Elyse refined in their home kitchen back in 2012. The explosive growth of Bantam Bagels is both a result of the couple's appearance on "Shark Tank" and a partnership with Starbucks, which was formally announced this week. To get the deal, Nick and Elyse reached out to a regional New York City Starbucks director who wrote back to them enthusiastically. The Starbucks manager had not only seen Bantam Bagels on "Shark Tank," but had been to the store. The manager invited them to meet the team that coordinates brand partnerships for Starbucks.

Source: Bantam Bagels

"We sat down in the meeting room, and it was almost like a setup  it was so amazingly perfect from the beginning," Elyse said. "People were rounding the corner going, 'Oh my God! Bantam bagels! I love Bantam Bagels!' People were coming in asking for selfies." After the first meeting, Starbucks agreed to test Bantam Bagels in three stores. Those three stores became 30. Now, the bagel balls are in more than 7,700 Starbucks, all of the company-owned stores in the U.S. For Nick and Elyse, the last four years have been nonstop. Elyse was sending emails from the delivery room before their son was born. "We couldn't help ourselves!" she said. But when they launched the business, it wasn't about creating a job. It was about fulfilling their dream. "Your business is an extension of yourself," Elyse said. "You are not going to turn off a part of yourself and who you are and what you care about."
CNBC's Jim Cramer called Wells Fargo's fraud case on Friday a "suboptimal situation." The bank on Thursday agreed to a multimillion-dollar settlement with California prosecutors and federal regulators.

Wells Fargo settled after customers said they were pushed into costly financial products that they didn't ask for.

Over five years, 5,300 Wells Fargo workers were fired over the practice, CNBC confirmed. Officials said Wells Fargo will pay $185 million penalties and $5 millions to customers.

"This is what I call a suboptimal situation with a lot of ill-advised decisions," Cramer said on "Squawk on the Street." He noted, however, that he wouldn't advise selling Wells Fargo shares on the news.

Bank bull Dick Bove said on Friday that investors should drop Wells Fargo.

The bank issued an apology saying it takes full responsibility. Cramer said that CEO John Stumpf should come on-air to read the formal apology.

Wells Fargo's stock was trading slightly lower Friday morning at $49.67 a share. The stock is down more than 8 percent this year.
The headquarters of Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA, the oldest surviving bank in the world and Italy's third-largest bank.

Fabrizio Viola, the chief executive of troubled Italian bank Monte dei Paschi di Siena , has agreed to quit and allow a new boss to try to convince reluctant investors to back an emergency rescue plan.



The Tuscan lender, which emerged as Europe's weakest bank in stress tests in July, said on Thursday it was working to appoint a successor quickly and that Viola would remain in place until that was done.

Marco Morelli, the head of Bank of America Merrill Lynch in Italy, was almost certain to take Viola's job, a source with knowledge of the matter said.

"It'll be him at 99.9 percent," the source said, adding the decision to replace Viola was because the bank needed "a change of gear" to persuade investors to buy into a capital increase of up to 5 billion euros ($5.6 billion) -- one of the main pillars of its bailout plan.

Another senior source said the bank had "basically" identified a successor for Viola, refusing to give more details.

A person close to Morelli, who was Monte dei Paschi's chief financial officer until 2010, said he had not been contacted for the time being.

A third source said Corrado Passera, who has served as industry minister and headed bank Intesa Sanpaolo, could also be a candidate for the job.

Passera, backed by investment bank UBS, presented a last-ditch rival bailout plan for Monte dei Paschi in July but was rebuffed by the bank's board.
North Korea has been restive this year, picking up the pace of its missile and nuclear tests, a worrying development from a country that regularly threatens to turn South Korea into a "sea of fire."

Some analysts believe the country may be capable of hitting its neighbors with nuclear-tipped missiles by as early as 2020.

On January 6 of this year, the North conducted its fourth nuclear test, spurring a magnitude 5.1 earthquake. North Korea claimed it was a successful test of a hydrogen bomb, calling it a "H-bomb of justice."

"It was confirmed that the H-bomb test conducted in a safe and perfect manner had no adverse impact on the ecological environment," the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) of DPRK said at the time.

"This test is a measure for self-defense the DPRK has taken to firmly protect the sovereignty of the country and the vital right of the nation from the ever-growing nuclear threat and blackmail by the U.S.-led hostile forces," it said, calling the U.S. a "gang of cruel robbers" that had caused North Korea "thrice-cursed and unheard-of political isolation."

Outside experts were skeptical of the North's claim to possess an H-bomb, but the nuclear test spurred tough new United Nations sanctions on the country.

On February 7, North Korea fired a long-range rocket that it claimed put a satellite into orbit. At the time, the U.S. Strategic Command said it had detected a missile entering space, while South Korea's military said an object had been placed into orbit, Reuters reported. The object was believed to have at times achieved a stable orbit, but not to have transmitted data. But concerns were primarily that North Korea was using the launch as a cover to test a long-range missile.

On July 6, the U.S. placed North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un and other officials on a sanctions blacklist for the first time, citing a laundry list of human rights abuses. That meant those officials' assets would be frozen and they were barred from undertaking transactions with U.S. citizens.
Hang on, what year is it? We seem to be back to Russia fearmongering again.

Hillary Clinton is beating the drum of public alarm over Donald Trump's kind words about Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Do you remember that 2012 debate between President Barack Obama and challenger Mitt Romney?

After Romney spoke seriously about the growing threats to the United States from Russia and its leader Vladimir Putin, Obama delivered the following withering comeback that became one of the most potent zingers in American political history: "The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because the Cold War's been over for 20 years."

That won him a lot of "oohs" and "ahhs" from the "Daily Show" crowd but more importantly it was indicative of the Obama team's canny realization that most Americans voters do not naturally focus on foreign policy and even less on foreign leaders unless they are really living in fear of them as opposed to mild disdain or fuzzy recognition of their names in the first place. Moreover, most American voters simply do want to worry about foreign countries or any possible threats from them. In that way, Obama's zinger served the dual role of reassuring the voters and belittling an opponent simultaneously. You just don't get many opportunities to score those kinds of points in any election.

Just over two weeks later, President Obama was re-elected to his second term.

2012 wasn't that long ago. Have we forgotten that turn of events already?

Clinton seems to think the American people are concerned enough about Putin to really be swayed by her renewed public alarm over Donald Trump's kind words about the Russian leader. Her doomsday-like words decrying Trump's Putin praise during her exceedingly brief news conference Thursday was about as dark a tone we've heard from either candidate in this election so far. For a campaign that's made so much hay by criticizing the "dark" tone of Trump's campaign, this is an inexcusable mistake.

And Democrat Senator Harry Reid seems to think the American taxpayers really want the government to investigate possible Russian tampering in this election. Perhaps Reid thinks he can score points for the Democratic presidential ticket simply by making the accusation just like he hurt Romney in 2012 by insisting that Romney didn't pay taxes. But he should've stuck to his 2012 playbook  American voters are much more obsessed with sweetheart deals for the rich and other pocketbook issues. That's why his baseless tax smear on Romney worked four years ago. Harder-to-understand and fuzzier accusations of foreign election tampering aren't on the voters' radar.

And Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook seems to think it was a good idea to go on the national networks last month and repeatedly question whether Trump might be a paid Putin agent. If that isn't worthy of "Daily Show"-like ridicule, nothing is.

In other words, the Clinton campaign and its top allies are running a fool's errand trying to make the American people feel worse about a threat they don't really know that much about and probably don't want to. And while the campaign's relentless scare tactics aimed directly at Trump have been generally successful, this renewed drumbeat of accusations about his connection to Putin take the focus off of their opponent an put it onto someone most voters aren't ever going to think much about. After what's been 16 years filled mostly with divisiveness over our last two presidents, terrorist fears, and severe economic downturns, it's not that the country can't take another thing to worry about, it's just that it doesn't have the attention span for it.

Instead of doubling down on the fear-inducing effects many of Trump's comments have, the Clinton campaign would be wise to ditch this Putin-centered fear mongering and copy the campaign tactics of their leader who still occupies the White House and go for a more lighthearted approach.
JACKSON, Mississippi -- A federal judge Thursday dismissed a lawsuit that sought to have the Confederate battle emblem on the Mississippi flag declared an unconstitutional relic of slavery.

U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves ruled that the attorney who filed the suit, Carlos Moore, failed to show the emblem caused a "cognizable legal injury." However, in dismissing the suit, Reeves also picked apart arguments made outside the courtroom by many flag supporters who say that Mississippi's secession from the union before the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery.

Reeves quoted the state's 1861 secession declaration, which said: "'Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery -- the greatest material interest of the world.'"

Then, the judge continued in his own words: "To put it plainly, Mississippi was so devoted to the subjugation of African-Americans that it sought to form a new nation predicated upon white supremacy."

Mississippi has used the same flag since 1894. Its upper left corner has the Confederate battle emblem -- a red field topped by a blue X dotted with 13 white stars. Voters chose to keep the banner in a 2001 referendum. It's the last state flag in the nation to prominently feature the emblem.

Like other Confederate symbols, the Mississippi flag has come under increased scrutiny since the June 2015 killings of black worshippers in South Carolina. The white man charged in that case had posed with the Confederate battle flag in photos published online. Several cities and counties and seven of Mississippi's eight public universities have stopped flying the state flag.

"Moore's arguments are phrased as constitutional claims, yet his allegations of physical injuries suggest that he is making an emotional distress tort claim," Reeves wrote. "To succeed in constitutional litigation, however, Moore needs to identify that part of the Constitution which guarantees a legal right to be free from anxiety at State displays of historical racism. There is none."

Carlos Moore

Moore, a 39-year-old African-American from Moss Point, now practicing law in Grenada, filed the suit in February, asking Reeves to declare the flag an unconstitutional relic of slavery.

In his ruling, Reeves, who is black, wrote: "The emblem offends more than just African-Americans. Mississippians of all creeds and colors regard it as 'one of the most repulsive symbols of the past.' It is difficult to imagine how a symbol borne of the South's intention to maintain slavery can unite Mississippians in the 21st century."

Moore said Thursday has not decided whether to appeal the ruling to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal in New Orleans.

He said he has mixed emotions about the lawsuit being dismissed even after receiving three death threats because he filed the case.

"I'm relieved that the death threats to me and my family should subside," Moore told The Associated Press. "I'm disappointed that my daughter, for the foreseeable future, still has to live under a regime with an offensive Confederate emblem on the Mississippi flag."

Moore had argued in the lawsuit that his daughter, who started kindergarten this year, should not have to attend a public school with a state flag featuring the Confederate battle emblem.

"It's not just my daughter," Moore said Thursday. "It's countless other African-Americans and other lovers of justice and equality."

Flag supporters and opponents are circulating petitions seeking another statewide vote on the symbol.

"The Confederate battle emblem has no place in shaping a New Mississippi, and is better left retired to history," Reeves wrote. "For that change to happen through the judiciary, however, the Confederate battle emblem must have caused a cognizable legal injury. In this case no such injury has been articulated. Whether that could be shown in a future case, or whether 'the people themselves' will act to change the state flag, remains to be seen."
A research associate at the Agency for Science Technology and Research's (A*STAR) Experimental Therapeutics Centre prepares a reaction mix to be tested with the Zika virus diagnostic test kit at their laboratory in Singapore.

Singapore said on Thursday it did not know if the Zika virus detected in the country could cause the same birth defects and other disorders linked to an outbreak in Latin America.

A DNA analysis of the mosquito-borne virus, which has infected almost 300 people in Singapore, including two pregnant women, revealed slight differences between the strains but it was not clear what that meant in terms of the severity of the disease, the health ministry said.

The World Health Organisation (WHO), which has declared Zika an international health emergency, says more research is needed to determine the effects of the different Zika strains.

"There is no evidence from existing studies and from this sequence to indicate whether the differences between these strains and the South American virus correlate with differences in severity or type of disease," the health ministry said.

"Correlation of virus strains with specific clinical manifestations will take long-term careful epidemiological studies as well as experimental studies," it added.

The WHO has said that infection with the virus in pregnant women can cause the birth defect microcephaly, in which the brain and head of the baby are undersized, and other severe brain abnormalities.


Moss Point residents.jpg

Moss Points residents met at the Rotary club building Thursday to hear Ward 5 Alderman Wayne Lennep's suggestion to consider the city changing from mayor-alderman form of government to city manager-city council form of government. Residents say it is time for change in the city of Moss Point.

(Tyler Carter)

MOSS POINT, Mississippi - What began as a simple Facebook post by Ward 6 Alderman Wayne Lennep transformed into a full-fledged meeting Thursday evening to gauge the interest of residents in potentially switching over to a city manager-city council form of government from mayor-alderman.

The meeting, held Thursday evening at the Rotary house in Moss Point, was initiated by Lennep and resident Martha Watjus. A crowd of about 20-30 people attended, eager to hear what Lennep and Watjus had to say. Many in attendance echoed the sentiment of needing to see change come to Moss Point.

"The purpose of tonight's meeting was to see what the people thought about the idea of a new form of government," Lennep said. "This meeting was not called to try to force this idea down residents' throats, it is more so about presenting this idea to them and them educating themselves about what the change could mean for the city."

Lennep said he felt the city needed to be run more so as a business. He also cited the city of Ocean Springs' recent interest in the city manager form of government as a reason for Thursday's meeting.

The required amount of votes needed for this form of government to pass is different than Pascagoula's. The prepared food tax vote required a lofty 60 percent of voters to vote yes, while voting on this particular form of government requires 50 percent plus one, according to Lennep.

Watjus assisted in presenting information to those in attendance.

"This conversation has been had among those in the community for a couple of years and what really piqued our interest is the city of Ocean Springs pushing for it," Watjus said. "When we saw that, we said, 'It's time.'"

The city manager form of government is the fastest-growing in the U.S., with more than 55 percent of municipalities in the U.S. currently under that system, according to a study by the National League of Cities.

In the city manager-council form of government, the city manager carries out day-to-day administrative operations while the city council oversees the general administration, makes policy, and sets the budget. In the current mayor-alderman form, the mayor handles day-to-day operations of the city and has the authority to veto decisions made by the aldermen.

According to Lennep, Mississippi is one of few states in opposition to the city manager form of government, with a total of just seven cities in the state that incorporate that model.

"We have been talking amongst ourselves and hearing more people who are unhappy with the way things have been operating in our city," Watjus said. "The lack of efficient, effective and open government is not working for the majority of us who live in Moss Point. We want transparency and we really felt like this was the time to start moving."

Ward 5 Alderman Linwood Grierson was also in attendance and is also in support of altering the current form of government. Grierson cited his experience serving on the Jackson County Economic Development Foundation and how the method used then could be used in hiring a City Manager.

"In my involvement, we hired a professional firm who then provided us with a list of people who had already gone through a vetting process and then we interviewed them independently and it worked very, very well," Grierson said. "As a citizen of Moss Point, one of the last things we need to do is force or make them come. We want them to want to become a citizen of Moss Point, but not by coercion."

During Thursday's meeting, petitions were passed out to those in attendance to obtain the necessary signatures needed to allow this potential change to be placed on a ballot to be voted on by the end of the year. Watjus said she hoped another meeting could be held at the end of the month to see how many signatures had been collected and to decide on the next move going forward.

While Lennep, Grierson, and Watjus and those in attendance seem to be in support of changing the form of government, Lennep made it clear that in order to have a successful city going forward, people must get out to the polls to vote.

"No matter what form of government we have, we have got to get more than 20-22 percent turnout in our elections," Lennep said. "You are not going to have a successful city and successful government no matter what form it is if you don't have voters' turnout to voice their opinion."

Currently, according to Watjus, Mayor Billy Broomfield's salary is about $75,000, but if the city changed form of government, the mayor's salary would be reduced significantly to go towards a City Manager.

If the necessary 1,100-1,200 signatures are obtained and certified by the city clerk, the board would set a date within 60 days to have an election. Citizens will then be allowed to cast their vote in favor of or against the form of government, which Lennep hopes will be by the end of the year.
"In my opinion, politicians like Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio, Tim Scott, Nikki Haley, and many others have given up their morals by supporting Trump."

Most importantly, a President Donald Trump would mark the end of the Republican Party. He's the current face of the party and if elected, Republicans would have absolutely no shot at retaining the House and Senate in 2018/2020. Additionally, Republican governors would be ousted and Democrats would have an easy path to the presidency for years to come. To make matters worse, the party would be even more divided than it is today. Minorities, women, and young people have already turned away from the current Republican nominee more than any other candidate in history. For a party that struggles to gain support from these groups (and rightfully so), a Trump victory would slaughter any chance at future outreach with minorities and youth.

Sadly, the majority of conservatives have been conned into voting for Donald Trump (who, if you listen to what he's said in the past, isn't really a conservative anyway). They are told to vote for the lesser of two evils, ignore third-party options, and focus on Fox News for positive coverage of Mr. Trump. In my opinion, politicians like Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio, Tim Scott, Nikki Haley, and many others have given up their morals by supporting Trump. A true conservative, who cared about the Republican Party and the future of America, would demand better. They wouldn't compromise their morals to put "party first." America deserves better than a candidate who constantly insults others, listens to no one, flip-flops on every issue, and has no definite plans.



America was built upon strong teamwork, shared ideals, compromise, and progressing through tough times. Mr. Trump represents the opposite of those beliefs. Young political activists have a boundless reach and a true opportunity to change the hearts and minds of Americans. I hope to be a voice in speaking out against his dangerous ideals before November's election.



If a true charismatic conservative like Evan McMullin is on the Wisconsin ballot come Nov. 8, I will vote for him/her. If not, I will be leaving the option for president blank. America cannot survive Donald Trumpand we shouldn't have to.

Commentary by Benji Backer, an 18-year-old conservative activist from Appleton, Wisconsin. He attends the University of Washington-Seattle and writes for RedState.com.Follow him on Twitter @BenjiBacker.

For more insight from CNBC contributors, follow @CNBCopinion on Twitter.


In the wake of the $190 million Wells Fargo settlement over customer fraud charges, there's an increasing need for "individual culpability" for banking infractions, Federal Reserve Governor Daniel Tarullo told CNBC on Friday.



"I don't think [bank behavior] has changed enough" since the 2008 financial crisis, Tarullo said on "Squawk on the Street," citing the Wells Fargo case, in which fee-generating accounts were allegedly opened for unsuspecting customers by employees looking to hit sales targets and bonuses. As a result, 5,300 Wells Fargo employees were fired over a five-year period.

"There is a need for a focus on individuals as well the fines on institutions. In appropriate cases, I think that fines against individuals, prohibition orders, and ... Justice Department prosecutions are things that do need to be pursued," Tarullo said.

Banking analyst Dick Bove blasted Wells Fargo, calling its behavior "beyond outrageous." Bove of Rafferty Capital Markets told CNBC on Friday he's giving Wells the only sell-rating in his entire 35-bank coverage universe.

Tarullo said he couldn't comment directly on the Wells Fargo action, which was led by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the city of Los Angeles.

But Tarullo did say in general: "Too many banks, instead of putting in place a comprehensive system for insuring that all their employees understand what is legal and ethical across the board, only respond when there's a particular problem."

"They really need to be much more proactive in stating their expectations across a range of behaviors to their employees," he added.

Tarullo said banks need to integrate their compliance functions like they did with their risk-management operations after the crisis.

The CFPB, which was created after the financial crisis, will get the bulk of the fine, $100 million, the OCC will get $35 million and Los Angeles will get $50 million. Customers who were victimized will get $5 million.
Nathan Law (C) speaks at a rally with Joshua Wong (centre L) and supporters following the former's Legislative Council election win in Hong Kong on September 5, 2016. Isaac Lawrence | AFP | Getty Images

Hong Kong's election results last week revealed big surprises, with several radical, young politicians now having a say over the city's governance. Alongside Hong Kong's traditional "pan-Democrat" and pro-Beijing political camps, non-establishment figures advocating greater autonomy for the city now have seats on the former British colony's Legislative Council. An unusually high voter turnout of 58 percent and polls open well past midnight implied an appetite for change in the politically and socially conservative Special Autonomous Region of China. These were the first major elections since the pro-democracy Umbrella Movement took over central areas of the city in 2014. As Hong Kong's now more varied Legislative Council reflects the city's increasingly diverse political scene, CNBC takes a look at some future scenarios:



'Just another Chinese city'

Pro-Beijing politicians now hold 40 of the 70 seats on the Legislative Council. Hong Kong is almost 20 years into a 50-year agreement between China and its former colonial ruler, the U.K., following its official handover in 1997. The city's capitalist system and general way of life is to be maintained under a "one country, two systems" approach until 2047. But, concern over what happens when this agreement expires is emerging early, following what some perceive as China's growing encroachment on Hong Kong. Nathan Law, a leader of 2014's Umbrella Movement and one of several newly elected "self-determination" advocates, has expressed that Hong Kong may become "just another Chinese city," according to the BBC. Roderic Wye, associate fellow of the Asia program at Chatham House, told CNBC via telephone that such an outcome perpetuates the "fear that (Hong Kong) would lose its specialness," particularly with regards to its civil liberties and rule of law.

watch now

Shenzhen tie-up?

In July this year, Hong Kong-based newspaper the South China Morning Post published an op-ed arguing for the economic viability of a merger between Hong Kong and the Chinese city just across its border, Shenzhen, which is a Special Economic Zone. Apparently, the union would result in a "gross domestic product (purchasing power parity-adjusted) of about the same size as London's." Though Wye says that "fusion with Shenzhen is not particularly likely," Chinese Premier Li Kequiang announced in August at a State Council executive meeting that preparation for a link between the two cities' stock exchanges had been "basically completed."

Independence is a 'red rag to the Beijing bull'

Several of those newly elected on to the Legislative Council openly support independence, two of whom  Sixtus "Baggio" Leung and Yau Wai-ching  are from the localist Youngspiration party. However, there is some doubt the activists will have a meaningful impact. "Even the most enthusiastic [proponents of the idea] know in their minds that independence is not an option," Wye told CNBC, instead describing the provocative topic as a "red rag to the Beijing bull." A push for independence may have arisen from unrest over a growing rich-poor divide, as well as increased immigration from the mainland. Wye also cites the "frustration felt in Hong Kong with the inability to make democratic progress" and "growing uneasiness towards Beijing" as additional factors. Chinese state news agency Xinhua have quoted the government's "resolute opposition" to Hong Kong's independence. The city's recent election was not widely covered in the mainland media. Dr. Tim Summers, senior consulting fellow at the Chatham House Asia program and academic at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, wrote on the Chatham House website: "Expect to see more protests." "Hong Kong will continue to face fundamental challenges of growing local resistance to central government and antipathy to mainland China among much of the population," he added.

Electoral officials count votes cast in the Legislative Council election at the central counting station in Hong Kong on September 5, 2016. Anthony Wallace | AFP | Getty Images

Much the same?
Facebook 's Mark Zuckerberg has been accused of "abusing" his power as the "world's most powerful editor" by Norway's largest newspaper, which slammed the social network for removing an iconic photograph from the Vietnam War.

Espen Egil Hansen, editor-in-chief and chief executive of Aftenposten, called for a change in Facebook's content rules and said the current state of affairs is stifling democratic debate.

"I am upset, disappointed  well, in fact even afraid  of what you are about to do to a mainstay of our democratic society," Hansen wrote in a front-page open letter for his newspaper.

The controversy revolves around a series of pictures posted on Facebook by Norwegian author Tom Egeland depicting scenes from the war. One image was by Associated Press photographer Nick Ut showing a naked girl running from napalm bombs. Hansen called it one of the "world's most famous war photographs."

Facebook removed the picture and prevented Egeland from posting a new photo, Hansen said.

Aftenposten also posted the photo on Facebook with an accompanying article. Hansen said he received an email demanding the removal of the picture on Wednesday, but Facebook removed the image and article before he could write a response.

In an emailed statement to CNBC, a Facebook spokesman said: "While we recognize that this photo is iconic, it's difficult to create a distinction between allowing a photograph of a nude child in one instance and not others."

"We try to find the right balance between enabling people to express themselves while maintaining a safe and respectful experience for our global community," the Facebook spokesman added. "Our solutions won't always be perfect, but we will continue to try to improve our policies and the ways in which we apply them."

The June 8, 1972, photo showing children including a naked 9-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc gained Ut a Pulitzer Prize for spot news photography.

"The image was unprecedented at the time for the Associated Press news wire, due to full frontal nudity depicted of the bombing victims," the AP says in an online post. Ut's supervisors "deemed the photograph newsworthy and its value overrode the nudity in the image and it was widely distributed on the AP newswire."

Hansen said publishers find it "hard to avoid" Facebook and he doesn't wish to do so, but Zuckerberg should take more responsibility for his role as "the world's most powerful editor."



"Even though I am editor-in-chief of Norway's largest newspaper, I have to realize that you are restricting my room for exercising my editorial responsibility," Hansen wrote.

"I think you are abusing your power, and I find it hard to believe that you have thought it through thoroughly."

It was not only Aftenposten's image that was removed. Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg posted the same image on her own page, and it was taken down by Facebook.
The Independent National Electoral Commission has agreed to shift the Edo State governorship election by two weeks.

According to The Punch, the decision to postpone the election was reached at a security meeting held in Benin, the Edo State capital this evening.

A national commissioner at the commission said the Chairman of the commission, Prof. Mahmoud Yakubu and other national officials of the commission are planning to address a press conference shortly.

It would be recalled that on Wednesday, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) was urged by the the Department of State Services (DSS) and the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) to postpone Saturdays governorship election in Edo state.
Did you ever almost wish something would go wrong?

Mint Director Donna Pope, Secretary James A. Baker III, and Treasurer Katherine D. Ortega show the American Eagle $50 coins they struck Sept. 8, 1986, at the first-strike ceremony at the West Point Bullion Depository.

Where were you Monday, Sept. 8, 1986?

Carrying my camera bag stuffed with my SLR film camera, lens, flash equipment, ID and a few personal items, I boarded the 7:10 a.m. flight that day from Columbus, Ohio, to New Yorks LaGuardia Airport. By 8:30 a.m. I was hailing a cab to David Ganzs Manhattan law office, where I met David and Harvey Stack. David drove us to West Point, N.Y., to attend the ceremonial first-strike of the United States first 1-ounce gold bullion coin, the $50 American Eagle.

We arrived shortly before 11 a.m. at the West Point Bullion Depository on the grounds of the West Point Military Academy.

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Since I had attended the Oct. 18, 1985, first-strike ceremony for the Statue of Liberty gold $5 commemorative coin at West Point, I knew I had to register and pick up my press credentials. The U.S. Mint staff greeted me and provided a press kit. Just as I was about to step away, one of the staff members beckoned me to the side.

I have something else for you. She began attaching a dime-sized gold apple lapel pin on the left lapel of my suit jacket. The apple, she explained, is to let the Secretary and the Secret Service know that you are the designated pool photographer.

She said that one press had been moved to the room where the ceremonial striking would take place. Should it fail, the Associated Press reporter and I would be summoned to go with Secretary of Treasury James A. Baker the III to the main floor of the coining room to strike several gold bullion coins. I would be responsible for sharing my photos with all other media representatives and the AP reporter would write and share his story.

She looked me straight in the eye and added: Do not tell anyone who gave you this or what it represents.

I made my way to the roped-off designated press area and staked a claim on what I perceived to be the best camera angle and waited nearly an hour for the ceremony to begin.

After about an hours worth of speeches by various dignitaries, Secretary Baker walked over to the HME press. A West Point staff member placed a gold planchet on the press and Baker pushed the button. It worked perfectly. Again. And again. A total of 28 ceremonial strikes were made by various invited guests without a hitch!

On the return flight home to Ohio that night, I kept thinking about what it would have been like had that press failed on the first strike!
This week's top post on CoinWorld.com was based on a report by KPIX in San Francisco that an 18-ounce gold nugget was discovered in central California last week.

Its time to catch up on the week that was in numismatic insights and news.

Coin World is looking back at its five most-read stories of the week.

Click the links to read the stories. Here they are, in reverse order:

5. What makes a 1971 Lincoln, Doubled Die cent submission so special?: The coin is near and dear to the heart of columnist John Wexler.

4. Did you know we almost had a 1964 Morgan silver dollar?: Researchers have found physical evidence at the Philadelphia Mint that U.S. Mint officials had considered striking a 1964 Morgan dollar.

3. A bombshell announcement: Monday Morning Brief: Managing Editor William T. Gibbs gives his take on the huge news regarding the 1964 Morgan dollar tooling.

2. Customers compete for 2016-W Standing Liberty gold quarter dollars: The issue, restricted to a one-coin-per-household ordering limit, was offered at $485 per coin.

1. Another large gold nugget has been discovered, and this time its in the U.S.: The find comes only a couple of weeks after it was reported that a 145-ounce nugget was unearthed in Australia.

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Gold bars, coins and personal effects from the SS Central America are seen scattered across the ocean floor before their recovery by Odyssey Marine Exploration.

The full fair market value of the treasure recovered in 2014 from the 1857 wreckage of the SS Central America has been awarded by a federal judge in Virginia to the salvor, Recovery Limited Partnership.

The Aug. 31 ruling by Chief Judge Rebecca Beach Smith from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in Norfolk, also awards title to Recovery Limited Partnership of all items recovered during the 2014 salvage operations by RLPs contractor, Virginia in Norfolk, also awards title to RLP of all items recovered during the 2014 salvage operations by RLPs contractor, Odyssey Marine Exploration of Tampa, Fla.

Judge Smiths ruling was announced Sept. 6 by Ira Kane, the court-appointed receiver for Recovery Limited Partnership.

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Disposition of the award will occur under the auspices of Kane as receiver, subject to the approval of Franklin County Common Pleas Court Judge Patrick Sheeran in Columbus, Ohio.

2014 expedition

RLP contracted with Odyssey Marine Exploration in 2014 to conduct the archaeological excavation and recover the remaining valuable cargo from the SS Central America shipwreck, which is located approximately 160 miles off the coast of South Carolina and 7,200 feet underwater.

Under the direction of a project archaeologist (Neil Cunningham Dobson, with Bob Evans, well-known to the numismatic community, as the chief scientist), the Odyssey team deployed a remotely operated vehicle to recover and document more than 15,500 gold and silver coins, 45 gold bars, and hundreds of other artifacts from the SS Central America shipwreck site.

Q. David Bowers: SS Central America gold discoveries electrify hobby

Operational reports and inventories of the items recovered during the 2014 expedition can be found on the Odyssey Marine website.

According to Odyssey Marine: Prior to any recovery work, a photomosaic of the site was created by digitally stitching together over 12,500 high-resolution images of the site. The 2014 SS Central America expedition was conducted over 129 days and included 83 ROV dives recording over 2,000 hours of dive time. The longest dive lasted over 125 hours. A 161,000-square-meter, high-resolution video survey of the shipwreck and surrounding seabed was also completed. During recovery operations, the Odyssey Explorer carried 17 ship crew members and a technical crew of up to 18 individuals and two highly experienced members of the Receivers oversight team.

Initial treasure location

The search for and recovery of the SS Central Americas treasure began more than 30 years ago.

In 1985, Thomas G. Tommy Thompson, an ocean engineer with the Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio, founded the Columbus-America Discovery Group. More than 160 investors, most from Columbus, provided Thompson with $10 million in funding.

Thompson proceeded to research and search for the Central America shipwreck.

Thompson and his treasure salvage team found the ships bell in 1986, some 8,500 feet below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.

It would be another year before salvors for CADG, from the vessel RV Arctic Discoverer, located the shipwreck, in July 1987. Thompson spearheaded further salvage operations between 1988 and 1991, with large quantities of gold coins and bars and other items recovered.

The salvaged treasure from the SS Central America languished for years in warehouses in Virginia while attorneys for the salvors and the insurance underwriters from the 19th century or their successors battled for ownership rights.

Disposition of much of that treasure finally occurred early in 2000.

Thompson goes missing

Thompson and his assistant, Alison Antekeier, both became fugitives in 2012 when Thompson failed to appear for various hearings for an ongoing civil case pending since 2006 involving the treasure wreck.

That suit focuses on Thompsons alleged failure to reimburse investors who financed the 1980s salvage operations. Antekeier failed to appear to disclose why Thompson did not present himself in court.

Thompson and Antekeier were arrested in January 2015 in Florida by U.S. Marshals and subsequently extradited to Ohio.

VIDEO: Watch how Tommy Thompson's hometown is covering his arrest

Thompson and Antekeier's court proceedings are still continuing.

Quick SS Central America history lesson

Managing editor William T. Gibbs wrote about the history of wreck in 2014:

The SS Central America sank Sept. 12, 1857, during a hurricane off the coast of South Carolina. Some 3 tons of gold, and maybe more, were lost, and 425 passengers and crew killed when the ship sank. The vessel was en route to New York City, having left Panama a few days earlier where passengers and cargo crossed the isthmus after disembarking from a vessel that plied the Pacific leg of the trip (from San Francisco to the Pacific coast of Panama).

The loss of the Central America was widely covered in newspapers, as the sinking of the Titanic would be nearly a half century later. The number of people killed was frightful, of course, but the loss of millions of dollars in gold coin and bullion destined for Eastern banks also had a major impact on the economy.
OSHS flagpole dedication 001.jpg

Members of the Ocean Springs High School Army ROTC unfurl an American flag as they prepare to raise it up a newly-installed flagpole in the school's courtyard. The flagpole and flag were donated by the Ocean Springs chapter of the Woodmen of the World in honor of first responders and to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

(Warren Kulo/The Mississippi Press)

OCEAN SPRINGS, Mississippi -- Ocean Springs High School principal Vickie Tiblier noted Friday the students currently at her school were either very young or not yet born when the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, occurred.

Many of those students looked on Friday morning as the Ocean Springs chapter of Woodmen of the World dedicated a new flagpole and American flag in honor of first responders and to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

Ocean Springs High School ROTC members raise the American flag up the new flagpole at the conclusion of Friday's dedication ceremony.

"This is a history lesson for our students, because this (9/11) is not something they experienced," Tiblier said during the dedication ceremony, attended by students, faculty and numerous local first responders.

"It's only through our telling of the story, our remembrance of it, they will learn about what is very important history to our nation."

Tiblier also said the flag stands for "honor, courage and pride."

"To have honor, courage and pride, you must have selflessness, sacrifice and bravery," she said. "Those are qualities we try to instill in our students at Ocean Springs High School every day."

She also thanked the first responders present, noting how quickly they respond whenever the school needs assistance.

"I'm glad to have you on our team," Tiblier said.

Bobby Styron of Woodmen of the World said he first approached school facilities director Brooks McKay about a year ago to inquire about donating a flagpole and flag for the school's massive courtyard.

Since 2002, Woodmen of the World have donated more than 5,000 flagpoles and flags across the country, Styron said. The organization first began a flag presentation program in 1946 and has since presented some 2.5 million American flags.

Styron said being a first responder is often a "thankless job," and said it was fitting to dedicate an American flag flying high in their honor.

"When you see a policeman or fireman, thank them," he said. "Tell them`Thank you for what you do.'"

Styron also quoted late President Ronald Reagan, who said during a June 1984 commemoration of the D-Day landing "We will always remember. We will always be proud. We will always be prepared, so we may always be free."

Styron closed with a reading of the inscription of the flagpole dedication plaque which will be installed from its base:

"In honor and remembrance of the heroes and victims in the fight against terrorism and to celebrate the enduring spirit of all Americans."

With that, the OSHS ROTC color guard raised the American flag, followed by a reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance and a playing of the National Anthem by an ensemble from the Blue-Grey Pride band.
PASCAGOULA, Miss. - Steamy weather, coupled with the melodic strumming of a guitar, rambunctious drumming and sultry tunes from a trumpet set the stage for what was a historic day for the city of Pascagoula as the city aligned itself with the blues by unveiling the city's first Blues Trail marker.

Phyllis Owens of the Mississippi Gulf Coast Blues Commission was smiling ear to ear at the sight of all of those who came out to celebrate the Blues Trail marker addition to Pascagoula. She said Friday's unveiling was a culmination of hard work and support from the city and its supporters.

"Today is very important and special and I feel we have really accomplished something here in Pascagoula," Owens said. "To be a part of the Mississippi Blues Trail is just fantastic and is something we have worked 25 years to accomplish. It is really a blessing and honor that one of our charter members is still alive to witnessed this accomplishment as well. My heart is simply overcome with joy."

Friday's event featured a bevy of speakers such as Pascagoula Mayor Jim Blevins, Councilwoman Brenda Simkins, Jackson County Board of Supervisors President Melton Harris Jr. and many others.

Blevins, in his own quirky and infectious way, welcomed the many visitors from Jackson, Chicago, and other cities across the country who stopped in Pascagoula to witness the occasion. According to Blevins, Pascagoula has further etched itself in the state's history book.

Back: Jackson County Board of Supervisors President, Melton Harris Jr. and Phyllis Owens of the Mississippi Gulf Coast Blues Commission unveil the newest blues marker at the Jackson County Fairgrounds in the city of Pascagoula. Front: Pascagoula Mayor Jim Blevins and Councilwoman at-large, Brenda Simkins smile after the blues marker's reveal. (Tyler Carter/Gulflive.com)

"This is an exciting day for the City of Pascagoula," Blevins said. "This blues marker will bring all kinds of new visitors into our city, county, and coastal area. This unveiling means that this part of the coastal area is being recognized for the blues and the various types of artists and musicians along the Mississippi Gulf Coast, so today is a great day for us."

Owens said that interest in adding a marker to Pascagoula arose when the commission was approached by legislators from Jackson. They hoped to erect a Blues Trail marker at the Jackson County Fairground, but Owens said she knew financial assistance would be needed to erect the marker.

Owens attended both a Jackson County Board of Supervisors meeting as well as a Pascagoula City Council meeting to lobby for both parties to split the total cost of the marker, which was $9,000.

The blues commission contributed $6,000 to that cost while the city council and supervisors split the cost of the remaining $3,066.

With Friday's unveiling, there are now 191 markers in the state of Mississippi. Owens said the state wants to have a total of 200 markers erected by the time it celebrates its bicentennial in December 2017.

The Mississippi Gulf Coast Blues Commission will celebrate its 25-year anniversary blues festival Sept. 10. Owens says she, along with the commission, plan to give this event one of the biggest and most versatile lineups of acts the Gulf Coast has witnessed.

Nikki DeMarks of 104.1WDLT of Mobile is the host for Saturday's blues festival and DeMarks is also a native of Biloxi. Acts such as Eddie Cotton Jr., Kent Burnside, Simone De, Mark "Muleman" Massey, Lil Jimmie and the Yazoo Bayou Band are the acts on tap for Saturday's festival.

Outside food will not be permitted at the fairgrounds, according to Owens. Vendors from Louisiana and others will be present cooking New Orleans-style dishes and Southern comfort dishes, according to Owens. Tickets can be purchased for $20 in advance and $25 upon arrival to the fairgrounds. The fairgrounds will open at 12 p.m. Music will begin at 1 p.m.
The Missourians Opinion section is a public forum for the discussion of ideas. The views presented in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Missourian or the University of Missouri. If you would like to contribute to the Opinion page with a response or an original topic of your own, visit our submission form
Missouri football's Brady Cook 'deserves to be praised' after upset win

Missouri quarterback Brady Cook has taken criticism all season. On Saturday night, he led the Tigers to an upset road win at South Carolina.
GULFPORT, Mississippi -- An Ocean Springs man has been indicted on federal child pornography charges after a Thursday raid on his home uncovered video of both the suspect and other men having sex with minors, according to multiple reports.

Philip Joseph Spear, 59, made his initial appearance in U.S. District Court Friday. According to federal court documents, Spear admitted to agents he had downloaded child pornography and has had a sexual interest in children since the age of 12.

Spear's arrest is the result of a special online operation by the FBI and other agencies targeting child pornography.

According to the Sun Herald, agents from state, federal and local agencies participated in the raid. Officers removed documents and computers throughout the morning and, at one point, an unidentified female was escorted from the home, with a sweatshirt hood over her head.

The Jackson County Sheriff's Department participated in the raid, according to Sheriff Mike Ezell. The Ocean Springs Police Department did not, according to Capt. Chuck Jackson.

An FBI agent said some of those in the house were victims.

Neighbors told the newspaper Spear had only lived in the neighborhood -- a cul-de-sac near East Beach -- about a year.
Duke Energy Corp.s (NYSE:DUK) environmental record has caused Norways sovereign-wealth fund to say it would no longer invest in the Charlotte, N.C.-based utility. In addition to the parent company, the fund also banned investment in subsidiaries Duke Energy Carolinas LLC, Duke Energy Progress LLC, and Energy Progress Inc. At the end of 2015, Norways fund held $304 million of Duke Energy Corp. shares, $77 million of Duke Energy corporate bonds, and $85 million of corporate bonds in subsidiary Duke Energy Carolinas LLC.

Norways sovereign-wealth fund is the worlds largest. The fund manages more than $900 billion, amassed from the countrys oil wealth. Norway enforces a set of ethical standards for its investments that were set up more than a decade ago. Norways parliament recently imposed a coal prohibition that excluded 52 coal-exposed mining companies and utilities from investments.

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The ban on Duke Energy was not part of that exclusion, although it is a heavy consumer of coal. Duke Energys exclusion came due to its conduct and causing severe damage to the environment. The companys discharges from its ash basins seem to be the catalyst for the judgement. The ash basins contain ash left over from burned coal mixed with water and are stored at coal-fired power plants in North Carolina. Duke and its subsidiaries have been repeatedly fined for leaks and pollution from the ash basins.

The ethics council has been concerned about the long-lasting and extensive breaches of U.S. environmental legislation. Several U.S. court rulings have ordered Duke to remove or seal their ash basins in North Carolina. The council believes that Dukes actions will lead to more discharges and penalties. Earlier this year, Duke Energy told the Norway funds Council on Ethics that it would take another 10 to 15 years for plans to secure the basins to be fully in place.

Duke said that Norways central bank didnt take into consideration that it has made strides in its environmental record. Duke has retired more than 40 coal units in the last five years. Duke said in a statement, We have made significant progress closing ash basins in ways that put safety first, protect the environment and minimize the impact to local communities. The company has also reduced its carbon emissions by 28 percent over the past decade.

Norway has previously made similar judgments to divest from other global giants. The wealth fund stopped investing in Wal-Mart Stores in human-rights allegations. The fund pulled its investments from Rio Tinto PLC in 2008 over accusations of environmental damage. The fund currently has a list of 33 companies whose conduct risked breaching its ethical standards.
The killing of the Profanity Peak wolf pack has deeply saddened us, as these wolves did what comes naturally to them when someone placed cattle right in the center of their range. Photo by Alamy

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Editors note: A previous version of this blog incorrectly stated that the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife asked the U.S. Forest Service to withdraw the grazing permit, but the federal agency rebuffed the request.

Washingtons Department of Fish and Wildlife last week authorized the killing of up to all 11 members of the Profanity Peak wolf pack in eastern Washington, not far from the Idaho border. Its a tragic and maddening development that reinforces the need for continued HSUS involvement in discussions surrounding human-wolf conflicts in the area.

The state permitted the killing of the wolves because some members of the pack killed cattle set out to graze in a national forest. In fact, wildlife researcher Rob Wielgus noted that the cattle had congregated around the den site of the wolves, creating something of an irresistible predation opportunity for the carnivores.

This lethal control action was a bit of a departure for Washington, which has had the strongest state-based management plan to minimize wolf-human conflicts and to resolve those conflicts by non-lethal means. At the center of this management plan is a multi-stakeholder body known as the Wolf Advisory Group (WAG). The HSUS participates as a stakeholder, given our intense interest in protecting wolves and humanely resolving conflicts between the animals and ranchers and other resource users.

It was in 2015 that the Washington legislature and the states Department of Fish and Wildlife developed the WAG as a tool to bridge the gap between wolf advocates and wolf opponents, after years of seeing dozens of anti-wolf bills brought up for consideration by rural lawmakers. The goal was to facilitate some discussion among different players in the debate and to find some areas of agreement.

With the assistance of a mediator, The HSUS and 17 other stakeholder groups and individuals ranging from hunters to cattle producers to conservationists have worked for two years to develop progressive and proactive wolf management guidelines.

Theres no public hunting or trapping of wolves in Washington, and last year, not a single wolf was killed in the state for livestock protection reasons. In comparison, 54 Idaho wolves were killed by agents and landowners and 39 were killed in Montana for livestock losses. (Additionally, trophy hunters and trappers killed another 461 wolves in Idaho and Montana in 2015.) Wolves in Washington have generally been spared this kind of multi-pronged assault.

While lethal removal for livestock protection is used in many places wolves live  but not where wolves remain listed as endangered, and with severe limits in states where wolves are otherwise federally protected under the Endangered Species Act  Washington is the only state that requires the utilization of nonlethal practices, such as employing range riders to separate wolves from cattle. Unlike in Idaho, for instance, where a single complaint can result in the slaughter of an entire pack, in Washington, four separate livestock loss events must occur and nonlethal methods must be utilized first before wolves can be killed by authorities.

Of the states 19 packs, only the Profanity Peak pack has been in conflict this year. Livestock producers in other areas have dramatically increased their use of non-lethal deterrents and range riders, and most importantly, wolf poaching has significantly decreased. Last year, Washington reported no illegal kills of wolves, while Oregon reported four, Montana reported eight, and Idaho reported 14 wolves killed by poachers.

For Washington-based wolves, the killing of the Profanity Peak wolf pack has been the worst-case scenario. It has deeply saddened us, as these wolves did what comes naturally to them when someone placed cattle right in the center of their range. The HSUS is asking that the protocol that allows full pack removal be reexamined, and we are urging that the idea of killing an entire pack be taken off the table entirely.

It would be easy for us to withdraw from the WAG and leave this process to the other parties, but we feel strongly that our voice needs to stay a part of this discussion. If we leave, we will see outcomes that result in more wolf killing. We believe its important to continue the dialogue and continue advocating for the wolves. We also believe in sitting down with adversaries and with people who see the world differently from us, and working to sort through challenges. Indeed, thats the very point of our work  to push people to exhibit a newfound focus on the well-being of animals.

While we always prefer dialogue to confrontation, we wont stand aside when wolves are menaced by special interests. The HSUS is second to no group in effectively advocating for wolf protection. We led the effort to shut down wolf hunting and trapping in the Great Lakes region  halting the killing of more than 500 wolves a year. We launched two Michigan anti-wolf-hunting referendums, demonstrating for the first time ever that a majority of people in a state with a substantial wolf population opposes trophy hunting and commercial trapping of the animals. We faced down the NRA and the Safari Club and beat them head-on. We joined with a number of groups to shut down trophy hunting and trapping of wolves in Wyoming through the courts, and we worked with the Obama Administration to adopt two rules earlier this year to restrict the killing of wolves and other predators on 95 million acres of national wildlife refuges and national preserves in Alaska. We are working year-round in Congress to block riders that would subvert the federal court rulings and administrative rulemaking actions weve been able to secure.

We are trying to get ahead of intense conflicts in Washington state, which may have as many as 160 wolves in a growing population that is expanding its footprint into areas with plenty of human activity. At this stage, passing stronger wolf protection measures in the legislature is impossible, conducting a ballot measure is impractical, and appealing to the courts is a non-starter. We have a single option, and thats to work with the key stakeholders to seek extra-legislative and extra-judicial outcomes that will protect the wolves as best as we can.
The Kattawar family is back in the logistics business with CEO Mike Kattawar (right) and COO Jerry Kattawar heading up a new logistics company at the same address as Katt Worlwide which they sold to Penske over five years ago. (Jim Weber/The Commercial Appeal)

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By Wayne Risher of The Commercial Appeal

The Kattawar family is trying to make a big comeback in the Memphis logistics business.

Mike Kattawar Jr., who founded Katt Worldwide Logistics in 1999 and left in 2011 after a buyout, recently moved his new company, KPower Global Logistics, into Katt's old location in southeast Memphis.

Hub City Insider has more.
In humility and gratitude, some 2,500 persons crowded into the gymnasium at Booker T. Washington High School on 7 Feb 1951 for ceremonies marking the posthumous presentation of the Distinguished Service Cross to the family of Pvt. Edward OL. Cleaborn. The 18-year-old African-American was killed in Korea while covering the withdrawl of his comrades. The Commercial Appeal files.

David Waters Columnist SHARE Edward Cleaborn, Korean War hero and namesake of Cleaborn Homes

Her Uncle Edward was killed in combat more than two decades before she was born.

That has never stopped her from fighting to preserve his memory and honor.

"He's not here to defend himself," said Nicole Cleaborn, a middle school science teacher.

She is.

Saturday, she and her extended family will host a memorial service for Pvt. Edward Oberon Cleaborn, killed in the Korean War in 1950.

The service is being held to remember Cleaborn's heroic sacrifice, and to reinforce his niece's campaign to get the nation to do the same.

Cleaborn, 18 when he was killed, was the first African-American soldier in Korea to be awarded a Distinguished Service Cross, the second highest award for valor in combat.

Nicole Cleaborn is trying to get the Pentagon to upgrade that to the highest award, a Medal of Honor.

"He saved his entire platoon," Cleaborn said. "Maybe it was just an oversight. Or maybe it's because he was a black soldier in a black regiment. Either way, his case deserves to be reconsidered."

President Harry S. Truman officially desegregated the armed services in 1948, but several all-black combat units remained in tact when they were deployed to Korea in June 1950.

Among them was Edward Cleaborn, who was 17 when he volunteered for the Army in February 1950.

Cleaborn and his unit saw combat as soon as they arrived. On Aug. 15, 1950, they were pinned down on a ridge.

"Despite the extreme hazard from heavy interlacing machine-gun fire, Pvt. Cleaborn gained the ridge," the Army reported.

"Disregarding burns on his hands from continuous firing when his platoon commenced a withdrawal, Pvt. Cleaborn remained on the ridge to cover their withdrawal and permit evacuation of the wounded ... and was mortally wounded."

Cleaborn was 18 when he was killed. He was awarded a Distinguished Service Cross "for extraordinary heroism in action in Korea" in November 1950.

He also was awarded the Purple Heart, the Combat Infantryman's Badge, the Korean Service Medal, the United Nations Service Medal, and the National Defense Service Medal.

His niece believes he deserves more.

More than 600,000 black soldiers served in Korea. More than 5,000 were killed in combat.

Only two were awarded the Medal of Honor: PFC William Thompson of New York and Sgt. Cornelius Charlton of West Virginia.

Like Cleaborn, they were members of the same division as Cleaborn. Like Cleaborn, they were killed while standing their ground and allowing their units to escape.

In 2002, Congress ordered the Pentagon to review the cases of hundreds of Hispanic and Jewish soldiers who were awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for their service in World War II, Korea and Vietnam.

In 2014, 24 of them were awarded the Medal of Honor  including one African-American soldier, a Vietnam veteran.

No African-Americans were awarded the Medal of Honor for service in World War II until 1997, when President Bill Clinton gave the honor to seven soldiers.

Nicole Cleaborn believes her uncle's case should be reviewed.

She has been in touch with the White House and the Pentagon. She's trying to assemble the mountain of paperwork required to get such a case reviewed.

"I didn't hear from them when I wrote the first time, so then I called the White House," she said, "My dad said, 'You did what?'"

Milton Cleaborn, Edward's younger brother and one of two of Florence and Everett Cleaborn's surviving children, wasn't really surprised.

Four years ago, Nicole fought and won a battle with City Hall to keep her uncle's name and memory attached to Cleaborn Pointe at Heritage Landing.

That's the handsome mixed-use development that replaced the Cleaborn Homes housing project near Booker T. Washington High.

Saturday's service will be held at Cleaborn Pointe.

The first memorial service for Cleaborn was held at BTW in February 1951, a year after Cleaborn joined the Army. It began with a parade on Beale Street.

More than 2,500 people packed the BTW gym, including Mayor Watkins Overton and John R. Hodge, commanding general of the U.S. Third Army in Korea.

Lt. George W. Lee, who was awarded a French Cross for valor in World War I, spoke at the service.

Four years later, the city named its brand new housing project in Pvt. Cleaborn's honor.

"His death brought this whole city together, black and white," said Nicole Cleaborn. "Maybe that can happen again."

Contact columnist David Waters at waters@commercialappeal.com.
September 8, 2016 - Bernard Williams (from left), Dr. Altha Stewart and Shelby County Juvenile Court Judge Dan Michael share a laugh during a luncheon at the University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys Law School celebrating the launch of the school's new Children's Defense Clinic which begins this fall. (Brandon Dill/Special to The Commercial Appeal)

SHARE September 8, 2016 - Lisa Geis listens to speakers during a luncheon at the University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys Law School celebrating the launch of the school's new Children's Defense Clinic which begins this fall. Geis is director of the new clinic. (Brandon Dill/Special to The Commercial Appeal)

By Kayleigh Skinner of The Commercial Appeal

Third-year law student Maggie Kelley will leave the University of Memphis next year with a wealth of courtroom experience, having represented children in juvenile court for months before she graduates.

Kelley is one of seven law school students who are participants in the university's Children's Defense Clinic, which allows supervised law students to represent youth facing charges in the juvenile justice system.

The program opened Aug. 11 under the direction of Lisa Geis, who moved from the District of Columbia to Memphis to helm the clinic.

"They handle the case," Geis said. "They're supervised by me, but really other than saying hello to the judge I have yet to say a word in court."

Almost a month in to the semester, her students are handling 10 cases, she said. Kelley, 24, said the charges in each case range from theft to vandalism to cases of aggravated assault.

Prior to setting foot in a courtroom as attorneys, the students went through an extensive orientation where they learned about the role of juvenile defenders and the juvenile justice system. They observed in juvenile court and met Judge Dan Michael. The students meet for a two-hour class every Wednesday and each student meets with a supervisor once a week to reflect on the case and how it's going, Kelley said. The students did about 40 hours of preparation work before they touched a case file and practice courtroom situations in class so they are prepared for the real thing, Geis said.

"It's definitely more of a safe zone to learn," Kelley said. "If I had to go out in the real world right now and go argue something in court I'd be terrified. But this experience is giving me the opportunity to have a supervisor."

Geis said the clinic teaches students that juvenile defense is hard, specialized work.

"They have had the opportunity to stand beside their young clients before the court," she said Thursday at a luncheon marking the clinic's opening. "They have had the privilege to be the voice for their clients, the most vulnerable members of our community."

Shelby County Public Defender Stephen Bush said in an email that the clinic will serve as "an important engine" for reform in Shelby County's juvenile defense system.

In 2012, the Department of Justice released a report stating the Juvenile Court of Memphis and Shelby County discriminated against African-American children, provided unsafe conditions, and failed to provide due process to youth during court proceedings. The court is currently under federal monitoring following the DOJ's investigation. A June report written by David Roush, the consultant monitoring the detention facility, contained allegations of youths being locked in rooms for 23 hours with handcuffing and shackling during the out-of-room hour. Detention chief Kirk Fields disputed the allegations.

"The Clinic will also drive positive system reform by dedicating resources to the litigation of complex issues and by focusing services on specific vulnerable populations that may be beyond the capacity of the public defender and private bar," Bush wrote.

Geis said the clinic essentially provides eight more lawyers (herself and the students) to take on cases in the system. The law school will begin providing monthly training to practicing juvenile defenders as well, she said.

"The law students, under school supervision, will only represent a certain number of clients, but they will be able to dig more deeply into specialized areas of practice that may be beyond the scope of what public defenders' can do," Bush said. "For example, a student in the clinic might engage in educational advocacy to secure a school solution that can make all the difference in that child's life."

For Kelley, the opportunity to engage with her young client has offered valuable insight into the complexities of representing children in court.

"I've worked at the city attorney's office and I've clerked for a judge, but I've never had a real client interaction," Kelley said. "Seeing my client as an individual kid and looking at all the circumstances surrounding and interviewing him and building a rapport with him has been an invaluable learning experience."
September 6, 2016 - The air conditioning is out at Shelby County Juvenile Court, located at 616 Adams Ave., for the second time in less than two weeks. (Yalonda M. James/The Commercial Appeal)

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By Katie Fretland and Kayleigh Skinner of The Commercial Appeal

Juveniles who were housed in a pod where air conditioning is out at Shelby County Juvenile Court have been moved to an air-conditioned area, Shelby County Sheriff's spokesman Earle Farrell said Friday.

But officials won't say where.

"They are safe, and they are cool," Farrell said. He said the youths will stay in air conditioning until the south pod of the detention facility at 616 Adams is fixed.

Sources who were not authorized to speak to the media said that some youth from Juvenile Court have spent time this week detained at 201 Poplar, the jail where adults are housed. A source who spoke on condition of anonymity said four or five boys were still spending time in the south pod at Juvenile Court where the temperature on Friday was over 80.

The National Weather Service forecast called for a high of 92 Friday in Memphis with temperatures dipping slightly to highs of 87 and 84 on Saturday and Sunday, respectively.

Juvenile courtrooms closed Thursday afternoon because of air conditioning problems that have persisted.

Asked if juveniles were relocated to 201 Poplar or Jail East, Farrell said he could not give more information because of security reasons. Shelby County Sheriff Bill Oldham took over detention operations on July 1, 2015.

When questioned about how the AC outage affected youth in the juvenile detention center, Juvenile Court Judge Dan Michael said "we've issued a statement and I'm not going to comment any further."

That statement said that juveniles housed in the building's detention area impacted by the outage "have been relocated to an area where the air-conditioning is working."

At a community meeting Thursday evening, Juvenile Court Chief Administrative Officer Pamela Skelton declined to comment when asked if any juveniles have been moved from Juvenile Court.

"I don't have any comment on that," she said. "I wouldn't know."

"I can't comment on that, because I don't have any firsthand knowledge of that," she said. "I don't have any firsthand knowledge of that."

In August 2012, the air conditioning went out inside the detention center. After temperatures climbed into the 80s at night, officials were forced to transport nearly 50 teens to the nearby adult jail on Poplar. The youths were held in a separate area.

On Tuesday, the court said the air conditioning system malfunctioned, and affected locations included part of the juvenile detention area, as well as some courtrooms and offices.

There was also a problem with the air conditioning last month that affected seven courtrooms and some judicial offices, but support staff and the court's HVAC vendor restored it.

U.S. Department of Justice Special Litigation Counsel Winsome G. Gayle referred questions about where juveniles are being held to the Office of Public Affairs.

"The department will decline to comment," said deputy press secretary David F. Jacobs.

In 2012, the DOJ entered into an agreement with the Juvenile Court of Memphis and Shelby County to address conditions of confinement at the detention center and the court's administration of justice.

The Department of Justice found failures of the court to "provide constitutionally required due process to all children appearing for delinquency proceedings, that the court's administration of juvenile justice discriminates against African-American children, and that its detention center violates the substantive due process rights of detained youth by not providing them with reasonably safe conditions of confinement."
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By Ryan Poe of The Commercial Appeal

As many as 10,000 students from around the region could attend the city of Memphis' annual Classic College & Career Fair at the Southern Heritage Classic on Friday, city officials say.

High school seniors will be wooed by about 80 colleges, universities and technical schools, including Middle Tennessee State, Alabama A&M University, and Xavier University, between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. in the Pipkin Building on Tiger Lane at the old Mid-South Fairgrounds.

All schools except the Tennessee State University are waiving their $25 application fees for seniors, who will be able to apply to schools online at the event.

The free event, which will also have vendors recruiting for various jobs in the city, will be opened to all students after 2 p.m.

Recording artist and reality show star K. Michelle, a native of Memphis and a graduate of Overton High School, will promote education to seniors at 11:30 a.m.

Ike Griffith, director of the city's Office of Youth Services, estimated the annual event will attract up to 8,000 seniors and 2,000 others this year.
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By Ryan Poe of The Commercial Appeal

The city of Memphis announced plans Friday to launch a pilot program this fall to groom 20 small, minority- and women-owned companies to win prime city contracts.

The three-month Competitive Bidder's Prep Accelerator program will let participants build relationships with city officials and other contractors while learning how to win and keep contracts, participate in the city's new lending and bonding assistance program, and more.

The Office of Business Diversity and Compliance is offering participants vouchers worth half the cost of certifying as a minority-owned business with the city, among other resources.

Apply by emailing bdcinfo@memphistn.gov by Oct. 18. More information is available online at http://www.memphistn.gov/Business.aspx.
September 8, 2016- Eric Roberts and Martha Rogers talk about the Juvenile Ceasefire Gun Safety Program at a Juvenile Court Quarterly Community Meeting Thursday night at Hickory Ridge Mall. (Nikki Boertman/The Commercial Appeal)

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By Katie Fretland of The Commercial Appeal

Juvenile Court officials encouraged community involvement Thursday evening at a forum in Hickory Ridge Mall attended by about 35 people.

Bridgette Bowman said the court is concerned about a disproportionate amount of minority youth in the juvenile justice system in Memphis and Shelby County, and she invites the public to participate in making change.

"Juvenile Court has existed in this city for over 100 years," said Bowman, the court's coordinator who addresses disproportionate minority contact. "We need the community. It's a system but it's a system made up of human beings who try to make the best decisions they can with the information they're given."

She pointed to a pamphlet that spells out what people can do to help:

 Volunteer to work on disproportionate minority contact issues

 Mentor a child in your neighborhood

 Tutor a child who needs academic help

 Support public policies to reduce disproportionate minority contact

 Support efforts to keep children in school

 Get involved with children in the community

 Become involved with local disproportionate minority contact task forces

The Juvenile Court of Memphis and Shelby County is under federal monitoring following a Department of Justice investigation that found discrimination against African-American children, unsafe conditions of confinement and failures to provide due process to youth appearing for proceedings. The justice department released its findings in 2012.

Michael Leiber, who has examined racial disparities in the Juvenile Court of Memphis and Shelby County, reported this June that being black increases a juvenile's chance of detention and decreases the chance of receiving a non-judicial outcome in comparison to white juveniles in similar circumstances.

"Juvenile Court of Shelby County is concerned about (disproportionate minority contact)," Bowman said. "I am living proof. That is why I am employed with them. They made a special effort by hiring me. But also they're working really hard. DMC is one of those issues where we can sit around all day and talk about why it is happening. The usual conversation goes like this: It's either the parents or the kids or the environment. But the reality of it is there is a systematic failure as well. And the court has not put its head in the sand. It realizes that. But here's the deal: We're working really hard."

Two families spoke at Thursday's meeting about the Juvenile Ceasefire Gun Safety program that helps divert youth from the court system who are charged with carrying a weapon. Sixty youth have gone through the program, according to the court.

"Weapons can throw your life away," a 17-year-old told the group Thursday.

He said Ceasefire gave him a second chance.

"(Ceasefire) is having such a positive effect on the community and on the juveniles who are charged with carrying a weapon," said Martha Rogers, the court's children's services bureau manager.

Youth are put on ankle monitors until they complete the program in which they learn about the impact of violence on communities, families and the person who possesses the weapon. An assistant united states attorney and law enforcement speak to the youth, and the youth write an essay about why they should not have had a weapon.

Bowman urged people to get involved.

"I extend the opportunity," she said. "Join us in this great work."
Nikki Boertman/The Commercial Appeal Craigmont High teacher Janice Hill used to ask "Where were you on Sept. 11?" to stir discussion. Current students are too young to remember.

SHARE Andrew Nelles/The Tennessean Stratford teacher Jon Stephens speaks to students during a tactical search and rescue drill at Stratford STEM Magnet High School, Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2016, in Nashville, Tenn. The drill simulated actual events during the World Trade Center attack. Academy of National Safety and Securities Technologies students line up before a tactical search and rescue drill at Stratford STEM Magnet High School, Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2016, in Nashville, Tenn. The drill simulated actual events during the World Trade Center attack. (Andrew Nelles/The Tennessean) August 24, 2016- Craigmont High School teacher Janice Hill hands out coursework to her 11th grade United States History class. (Nikki Boertman/The Commercial Appeal)

By Melanie Balakit, USA TODAY NETWORK  Tennessee

An FBI agent is trapped under the rubble of the World Trade Center. It's up to a group of Nashville high school students to find and rescue him.

Dressed from head to toe in tactical gear, they swiftly walk to the scene.

They spot Agent Lenny Hatton.

He's unconscious. He has deep lacerations on his leg.

On the count of three, six students lift him up and carry him away from the scene.

"Are you OK Agent Lenny?" the students shout, their voices competing against the sound of sirens. They know every second counts in this rescue mission.

"You're going to be just fine," they say.

The simulation of the 9/11 rescue mission feels real, a commendable feat for students with no memory of the historic tragedy.

"I'm trying to picture big rocks. I'm trying to imagine flashing lights in my eyes and people yelling," said Nicholas Akhtar, a sophomore at Stratford High in Nashville, who led the simulated mission.

"I'm just thinking in my head, 'How did it feel when the real people were there?"

Educators clearly remember what happened on that day 15 years ago when terrorists crashed airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Their students don't.

At 17, Craigmont High School senior Mikal Tyler is too young to remember where he was that day. But he remembers the stories his mother told him. Stories of her watching her son and newborn nephew as she saw the second plane hit the tower on live television.

"When she saw it across the TV, she thought the world was about to end," said Tyler.

Tyler remembers the first time he saw it, too.

"When I first watched the video it was so much to take in at once," he said. "I didn't really know how to accept it."

Shelby County Schools teacher Janice Hill used to prompt discussion in her Memphis-area classroom with the question: "Where were you on Sept. 11?"

But things changed as time wore on she has had to push the conversation in different direction: "Do you think Sept. 11 could happen again?"

"Some of the writings that I've gotten back, many of the students have said yes, they believe that it could happen again because America is so busy dealing with foreign issues that we are ignoring what's happening in our own backyard," she said.

For Mark Finchum, a high school social studies teacher in Jefferson County, Tennessee, a good lesson makes connections to a student's personal experience. But with each generation of students, it's harder, he said.

High school students today were babies when the attacks occurred. Younger students weren't even born yet.

"To them, it's history, just like Pearl Harbor," said Chris Causey, supervisor of middle grades education in Robertson County.

States around the nation require students to learn about the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. In Tennessee, for instance, it is included in the state's social studies standards. High school students are required to learn about it in U.S. history class.

But exactly how the attacks are taught to students varies and often depends on individual teachers.

Primary resources like video footage help students understand the magnitude of the event. Other commonly used resources include President George W. Bush's speech following the attacks.

Society has been confronted with disturbing images since Mathew Brady photographed the U.S. Civil War, said Sam Wineburg, Margaret Jacks Professor of Education and History at Stanford University.

"Let common sense be our guide here," Wineburg said. "If you're going to show something that is deeply disturbing but is necessary for students to confront, then to provide context is absolutely necessary.

"Nine-eleven is just the latest chapter in the long chronicle of horrible events that define an absolutely essential place in the history of the human race."

Finchum, like many social studies teachers, asks his students to talk with their parents about their experiences that day.

He also shares his personal account.

"I remember going to the office between classes," Finchum said. "I called my wife and told her that I loved her. It's one of those things where you never know what will happen next."

For Williamson County social studies teacher Kenneth Roeten, annual lessons on 9/11 are deeply personal.

Roeten was deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan about three years after the 9/11 attacks. He was 24.

"I personally cannot think of any other event in American history that has had more of an impact on how everyday Americans live their life," Roeten wrote in an email.

"It has had a profound impact on my life; therefore, I believe it to be my duty as an educator to never stop teaching the shock, horror, sadness and utter disbelief of that day," Roeten wrote.

For a special lesson, Roeten arranges the desks in his classroom like the seats of an airplane. In this formation, he asks students about their everyday morning routines and compares them to headlines just before the attacks.

He still gets emotional seeing images of 9/11. He still shows them to his students.

Staff writer Jennifer Pignolet contributed to this report.
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By Ron Maxey of The Commercial Appeal

A Memphis physician and her husband each are seeking $1 million from the city of Southaven and two of its police officers over a widely-publicized traffic stop last September that ended with the couple arrested on charges of disorderly conduct.

Dr. Marcia Bowden and her husband, Ira Marche, claim police violated their constitutional rights under several amendments when the officers stopped Marche's 2008 black Jaguar on Church Road Sept. 7, 2015, for allegedly speeding. According to the police incident report, Marche was going 63 mph in a 45 mph zone.

By the time the incident ended, according to a lawsuit filed late Thursday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi, Marche was in a holding cell at Southaven Police Department and a handcuffed Bowden  who brought the wife of then-Memphis Mayor A C Wharton into the story  was at Baptist Memorial Hospital-DeSoto with what doctors determined was a stress-induced attack.

The lawsuit says the actions of the two named officers, Sgt. Brett Loganzino and Officer Jeremy Delaney, demonstrate they needed better training, and the city is liable for not recognizing that need and providing the training.

Southaven Police Chief Steve Pirtle said Friday he was unaware of the lawsuit but could not comment on pending litigation even if he had seen it.

According to the lawsuit, Loganzino stopped Marche's Jaguar and recognized Marche and the car from another traffic stop about two months earlier. During the earlier stop, the suit alleges, Loganzino questioned the Tennessee license plate on Marche's car because Loganzino said he had seen the car on a regular basis as part of "school traffic" in DeSoto County for at least nine months. Marche provided a Tennessee driver's license and vehicle registration during that incident, which nonetheless resulted in charges eventually dismissed in Southaven City Court.

When stopped Sept. 7, the suit says Marche reminded Loganzino of the earlier encounter and that he knew who he was, but Loganzino demanded Marche provide proof of identity anyway. When Marche could not find his identification, either in the trunk or glove compartment, the suit states Marche was told he would be arrested until his ID could be officially verified even though the verbal information he provided was confirmed by a dispatcher.

According to the lawsuit, the situation escalated during the search for identification as Bowden, in the passenger seat, noticed Delaney with his finger on the trigger of his gun and the gun slightly raised out of the holster. Delaney had arrived for backup.

"Plaintiff Bowden noticed Officer Delaney's hand on his gun and began begging Officer Delaney not to 'shoot (my) husband' and that they were law abiding citizens," the suit reads. "Officer Delaney yelled, 'Shut up ma'am! Get out of the car and let me see your license!

"Plaintiff Marche, still seated in his car, then told Plaintiff Bowden, 'Honey, be quiet. This is some redneck (expletive). They will hurt you.'"

The suit says at that point officers handcuffed and arrested Marche, placing him in the back of a patrol car.

Bowden continued looking for her identification, the suit states, ultimately calling attorney Ruby Wharton, the former Memphis mayor's wife, "to confirm Plaintiff Marche's and her good character."

"After getting Attorney Wharton on her cellular phone," the suit states, "Plaintiff Bowden handed the phone to Officer Delaney. He ended the call by telling Attorney Wharton he did not care who she was."

Bowden was then also taken into custody and she and Marche transported to jail. After Bowden became ill in jail, she was transported to the hospital.

"To add insult to injury, while at the hospital, Defendant Officers entered Plaintiff Bowden's private treatment area without medical personnel or Plaintiff Bowden's permission," the suit states.

Attorney John Keith Perry Jr. of Southaven, who filed the suit, said Friday he had no additional comment.

"I think the suit says it all," Perry said.
SHARE Ronnie Hale Brandon Henley

By Ron Maxey of The Commercial Appeal

Southaven voters in the city's Ward 2 will select a new alderman Tuesday to fill the seat vacated by Shirley Kite.

The ward's former alderman, Ronnie Hale, faces political newcomer Brandon Henley in a two-way race open to about 4,000 eligible voters.

Polls are open 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. at the DeSoto County Justice Court building, 8525 U.S. 51. Voters wishing to cast an absentee ballot can do so at City Hall Saturday from 8 a.m. until noon.

Kite resigned in May because of changes in Mississippi's pension system laws. The changes would not allow her to retire from her post as DeSoto County Justice Court Clerk and continue serving in another public service role as alderwoman.

Hale held the Ward 2 seat for one term before losing to Kite, then known as Shirley Beshears, in 2013. Hale said Thursday he decided to seek re-election because he wanted to get back into public service.

"I've never stopped serving," Hale said. "I go to all the meetings, and I want to continue bringing businesses and jobs to Ward 2."

Hale said he also wants to make cleaning up the ward and enforcing code requirements a priority. Ward 2 encompasses the older part of Southaven near the state line, and blight from deteriorating properties has become a concern.

Hale, 56, was on the board during the Greg Davis era. He was among board members who asked the state to step in to investigate spending by Davis, eventually leading to an order by state Auditor Stacey Pickering that Davis repay the city $174,000. The state Supreme Court recently refused to consider an appeals court ruling upholding the repayment order, meaning Davis will have to pay.

Hale's opponent is a lifelong resident of the city's Colonial Hills neighborhood, and is making his first run at elective office.

Henley, 34, said he decided to seek office to help ensure the older part of the city isn't forgotten.

"I always tell my son he'll never get anywhere unless he stands up and tries to do something," said Henley, an employee of Smith and Nephew and an Army National Guard veteran who did a tour in Iraq. "I'm just trying to make sure spending is fair and equitable across the board. Our community deserves to be heard."

Although he's never held office, Henley said he attends board meetings or reads the minutes if he can't be there to keep up with what's going on.

Henley's wife, Ashley Henley, is a state representative for District 40.
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By Charles Krauthammer

WASHINGTON  The president of the United States lands with all the majesty of Air Force One, waiting to exit the front door and stride down the rolling staircase to the red-carpeted tarmac. Except that there is no rolling staircase. He is forced to exit, as one China expert put it rather undiplomatically, through "the ass" of the plane.

This happened Saturday at Hangzhou airport. Yes, in China. If the Chinese didn't invent diplomatic protocol, they surely are its most venerable and experienced practitioners. They've been at it for 4,000 years. They are the masters of every tributary gesture, every nuance of hierarchical ritual. In a land so exquisitely sensitive to protocol, rolling staircases don't just disappear at arrival ceremonies. Indeed, not one of the other G-20 world leaders was left stranded on his plane upon arrival.

Did President Xi Jinping directly order airport personnel and diplomatic functionaries to deny Barack Obama a proper welcome? Who knows? But the message, whether intentional or not, wasn't very subtle. The authorities expressed no regret, no remorse and certainly no apology. On the contrary, they scolded the press for even reporting the snub.

No surprise. China's ostentatious rudeness was perfectly reflective of the world's general disdain for President Obama. His high-minded lectures about global norms and demands that others live up to their "international obligations" are no longer amusing. They're irritating.

Foreign leaders have reciprocated by taking this administration down a notch, knowing they pay no price. In May 2013, Vladimir Putin reportedly kept the U.S. secretary of state cooling his heels for three hours outside his office before deigning to receive him. Even as Obama was hailing the nuclear deal with Iran as a great breakthrough, the ayatollah vowed "no change" in his policy, which remained diametrically opposed to "U.S. arrogant system." The mullahs followed by openly conducting illegal ballistic missile tests  calculating, correctly, that Obama would do nothing. And when Iran took prisoner 10 American sailors in the Persian Gulf, made them kneel and broadcast the video, what was the U.S. response? Upon their release, John Kerry publicly thanked Iran for its good conduct.

Why should Xi treat Obama with any greater deference? Beijing illegally expands into the South China Sea, meeting only the most perfunctory pushback from the U.S. Obama told CNN that he warned Xi to desist or "there will be consequences." Is there a threat less credible?

Putin annexes Crimea and Obama crows about the isolation he has imposed on Russia. Look around. Moscow has become Grand Central Station for Middle East leaders seeking outside help in their various conflicts. As for Ukraine, both the French president and the German chancellor have hastened to Moscow to plead with Putin to make peace. Some isolation.

Iran regularly harasses our vessels in the Persian Gulf. Russian fighters buzzed a U.S. destroyer in the Baltic Sea. And just Wednesday, a Russian fighter flew within 10 feet of an American military jet. The price they paid? Being admonished that such provocations are unsafe and unprofessional. An OSHA citation is more ominous.

Add to that American acquiescence not just to ransoming hostages held by Iran, but to delivering the loot by unmarked plane filled with stacks of cold (untraceable) cash, like a desert drug deal. Why the stealth? Obviously to conceal the manner of the transaction from Congress and the American public. Some humiliations are so grotesque that even the Obama team can't miss it.

Now the latest. At the G-20, Obama said he spoke to Putin about cyberwarfare, amid revelations that Russian hackers have been interfering in our political campaigns. We are more technologically advanced, both offensively and defensively, in this arena than any of our adversaries, said Obama, but we really don't want another Cold War-style arms race.

Instead, we must all adhere to norms of international behavior.

It makes you want to weep. This KGB thug adhering to norms? He invades Ukraine, annexes Crimea, bombs hospitals in Aleppo  and we expect him to observe cyber-code etiquette? Rather than exploit our technological lead  with countermeasures and deterrent threats  to ensure our own cyber safety?

We're back to 1929 when Secretary of State Henry Stimson shut down a U.S. code-breaking operation after it gave him decoded Japanese telegrams. He famously explained that "gentlemen do not read each other's mail."

Well, comrade, Putin is no gentleman. And he's reading our mail.

Charles Krauthammer's email address is letters@charleskrauthammer.com.
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By Dana Milbank

WASHINGTON  After their seven-week recess, which was the longest break since at least 1960, the people's representatives in the U.S. House are back for just four weeks before recessing again until the election, and there has been talk of cutting those four weeks of work to three or even two.

They might as well go home, because the House to-do list could end up looking something like this: Impeach the IRS commissioner. Punish the Democrats. Sue the Saudis.

This is how Donald Trump happened.

Americans are worried and angry about the big issues: stagnant wages, immigration, trade deals, health care, entitlement programs, the Zika virus. Yet the best Congress can do for the moment is to keep the government running on autopilot for a few more months, and even this isn't guaranteed.

With three weeks to go in the fiscal year, Congress has enacted not one of the 12 annual appropriations bills (the House has passed six). While leaders struggle to pass a temporary "continuing resolution," Republicans fight among themselves about how long it should last and hard-liners threaten to derail it by adding language banning Syrian refugees.

As Republicans sat down for their caucus meeting Wednesday morning, the conversation wandered  this member's new grandchild, that member's engagement, various anecdotes and talking points. GOP leaders held a news conference after the meeting, at which they voiced enthusiastic support for ... a new soapbox that had appeared over the recess to help shorter members of the caucus be seen behind the lectern.

"You could put three people on that thing," House Speaker Paul Ryan said upon entering the room and spying the new piece of furniture.

"Gee whiz!" exclaimed Rep. Lynn Jenkins, R-Kansas, trying it out.

With so little happening, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy tried to create the illusion of activity, asserting that in this Congress "a total of 219 bills have been enacted into law. That's an increase over the 25-year average."

Actually, the average number of bills enacted into law in previous Congresses going back to 1991 is 435  double the current output. McCarthy's spokesman said the claim was based on when Congress went on its long summer holiday. But as of now, McCarthy's 219 bills are well below the 25-year average of 257 enacted at this point by previous Congresses. And most have been minor "suspension" bills, such as post-office namings.

"People want a positive vision and a clear direction for solving the country's big problems," Ryan declared at his news conference.

But instead, they're getting:

An attempt to impeach the IRS commissioner. Some hard-liners, still angry about the IRS' treatment of conservative groups, are trying to force leaders to hold a vote to impeach the current commissioner, John Koskinen, who took over after the alleged wrongdoing occurred.

A bid to punish two dozen House Democrats, led by civil rights icon John Lewis, who staged a sit-in on the House floor in June to protest Republicans' refusal to bring up gun-control legislation.

Legislation allowing the families of 9/11 victims to sue Saudi Arabia in federal courts, a bill with no chance of getting enough votes.

Instead, House Republicans could spend their fleeting time at work resolving an impasse blocking funds to fight the Zika infection. The Senate reached a bipartisan deal in May to provide $1.1 billion for the effort, but the agreement fell apart when House Republicans added a provision restricting funds from going to Planned Parenthood.

At Wednesday's news conference, Ryan was asked why he wouldn't accept a "clean bill" without the poison pill.

"Look, give me a break," Ryan said, blaming the Senate.

But even some of Ryan's Republicans aren't giving him a break. Rep. Richard Hanna, R-New York, told Bloomberg's Billy House that "we become obstructionists" with the Planned Parenthood gambit.

And Rep. David Jolly, R-Florida, carried a jar full of Florida mosquitoes onto the House floor. "During the seven weeks ... we were gone, cases of Zika rose from 4,000 to by some estimates over 16,000 in the country," he said. His constituents "are demanding action and they are seeing inaction, and in that inaction they are angry."

Yes, but have they seen that new soapbox for members of Congress? Gee whiz!

Dana Milbank is a columnist for the Washington Post.
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By Jonah Goldberg

There was a time when one of the worst sins you could commit on the American right was to buy into "false moral equivalence."

During the Cold War, this usually meant saying we were no better than the Soviet Union. For example, Democratic Sen. William Fulbright  Bill Clinton's mentor  said of the Soviet Union in 1971, "Were it not for the fact that they are Communists  and therefore 'bad' people  while we are Americans  and therefore 'good' people  our policies would be nearly indistinguishable."

My old boss William F. Buckley famously had the best retort to this kind of myopic asininity. "To say that the CIA and the KGB engage in similar practices is the equivalent of saying that the man who pushes an old lady into the path of a hurtling bus is not to be distinguished from the man who pushes an old lady out of the path of a hurtling bus: on the grounds that, after all, in both cases someone is pushing old ladies around."

After the Cold War, the false moral equivalence arguments didn't stop; they simply mutated to fit the times. The isolated abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were expanded into an indictment of America itself. "Shamefully," Sen. Ted Kennedy declared in 2005, "we now learn that Saddam's torture chambers reopened under new management: U.S. management." Sen. Dick Durbin claimed American policies were indistinguishable from those of the Nazis, the Soviets and Pol Pot. Amnesty International dubbed the prison at Guantanamo Bay "the Gulag of our time."

The problem with this sort of rhetoric should be obvious; however bad Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo Bay may be in your eyes, logic and facts can't make them the moral equivalents of genocidal mass slaughter (in Saddam's Iraq, Nazi Germany, Pol Pot's Cambodia or the Soviet Union). Nor is locking up terrorists and enemy combatants anything like imprisonment  or summary execution  of dissidents, intellectuals and other civilians.

Last year, President Barack Obama went for a personal best in the worst moral equivalence Olympics. At a National Prayer Breakfast, he argued that those who condemn the tactics of the Islamic State  the beheadings, the slavery, the mass rapes, burying people alive and so forth  must understand that Christians did some very bad things 10 centuries ago during the Crusades. So let's not "get on our high horse" about all that.

Conservatives, including yours truly, ran to their respective rhetorical garages to get as many brickbats, crowbars and sledgehammers as necessary to demolish that specious nonsense.

So it's interesting to see how conservatives have been responding to the Republican nominee's own adventures in moral equivalence. Last December in an interview with MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, Donald Trump was asked about his sometimes lavish praise of Vladimir Putin.

Scarborough noted that Putin "kills journalists, political opponents, and invades countries. Obviously that would be a concern, would it not?"

"He's running his country, and at least he's a leader," Trump replied. "Unlike what we have in this country."

Scarborough persisted: "But again: He kills journalists that don't agree with him."

Trump's answer: "I think our country does plenty of killing, also, Joe, so, you know."

More than nine months later  a suitable period to rethink one's absurd and ridiculous position, one might think  Trump was asked again about his so-called bromance with the Russian autocrat. In a "Commander-in-Chief forum," NBC's Matt Lauer confronted Trump with some of his past quotes about Putin, including Trump's claim that, "in terms of leadership, he's getting an A, our president is not doing so well."

When Lauer ran through just a few of Putin's offenses, including his alleged involvement in the hacking of the Democratic Party's computers, Trump responded: "Well, nobody knows that for a fact. But do you want me to start naming some of the things that President Obama does at the same time?"

I take a backseat to no one as a critic of Barack Obama, but this is repugnant. Barack Obama has done some terrible, foolish and deplorable things as president. But all of his transgressions are measured against the standards of our constitutional system and our political culture. For instance, in 2009, the Obama Justice Department outrageously monitored the phone calls and emails of my Fox News colleague James Rosen. In order to get the warrants, they hilariously named Rosen a "criminal co-conspirator" of one of his sources. That's really bad. But it is not the moral equivalent of having Rosen gunned down in the street.

That Donald Trump cannot see such distinctions is no longer shocking. That many of his conservative supporters can't either grows less shocking by the day.

Jonah Goldberg is an editor-at-large of National Review Online and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Contact hims at JonahsColumn@aol.com.
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By Victor Davis Hanson

In most presidential elections, the two candidates spar over issues. The president campaigns for his party's nominee in hopes of continuing his legacy.

Democrats champion liberalism, Republicans conservatism. In numerous press conferences, journalists try to force newsworthy and embarrassing admissions from the two candidates.

Not this year.

Barack Obama, who less than two years ago dipped to 40 percent in approval rating, is nowhere to be seen. He seems to know that the more he is absent and quiet, the more the public likes the idea rather than the reality of him as president  and his approval rating has risen to 51 percent.

In his self-imposed retreat, Obama makes no effort to defend the Affordable Care Act, which is all but disintegrating, as major insurers pull out and costs skyrocket.

Ditto the Iran deal. Obama is learning that it is better to be quiet about Iranian violations, ransom for hostages and provocations than to explain them away.

Obama months ago gave up mentioning how the crushing national debt has almost doubled to nearly $20 trillion under his watch. No one seems to be defending the Obama administration's lax immigration and border-enforcement policies.

He is also silent on his foreign policy  "reset" with Russia, the abrupt pullout from Iraq, the intervention in Libya, the growth of the Islamic State, the disintegration of Syria, and the decision not to associate global terrorism with radical Islamism.

Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton has kept a relatively low profile for someone who's running for president. She did not held a press conference for more than nine months, counting on a compliant press to keep giving her a pass on her email scandals. She avoids large rallies, where she often grates rather than enthuses.

The Clinton strategy is to sit on her small lead in the last two months of the race, expecting that the mercurial Donald Trump will finally destroy his campaign with another outburst. She apparently assumes that nonstop fundraising, attack ads and an army of staffers will bury the amateurish Trump campaign.

Clinton doesn't talk much about the Obama record. Voters do not have any idea how  or indeed if  she would fix Obamacare.

Clinton talks tough about her future foreign policy. Does that mean she thinks Obama has been too complacent abroad?

Would she add to or reduce Obama's massive addition to the national debt?

Meanwhile, the frenetic 70-year old Trump cannot sit still. He talks to the press nonstop, anywhere, any time.

He flies to Louisiana to inspect flood damage, to Mexico to joust with the Mexican government over illegal immigration, to a black church in Detroit to woo inner-city voters. Trump likes huge crowds at rallies where he bellows and at any moment can veer off-script.

Trump's effort is mostly a loud, public, solo affair. He tries to scrounge free TV and radio exposure. He is at war not just with Clinton, but also with the Republican establishment and the so-called elites of both parties.

This weird election is coming down to just two factors:

One, the outcome on Nov. 8 is largely up to Trump.

Can he continue to widen his appeal and chip away at Clinton's lead? In other words, can a hyperactive Trump reinvent himself as "presidential" and assure voters who do not like Clinton that as a calm president he won't embarrass the country?

Two, will Clinton's scandals, which now have a life of their own, ever cease?

Seemingly every day we receive new confirmation from Clinton's communications that she did not tell the truth about either the troubling overlap between the Clinton Foundation and her tenure as secretary of state or how she put national security in jeopardy by using an unsecured private server in violation of government policy.

Unfortunately for her, there are still thousands of communications to be released under court order  and two months to air them all. Embarrassing communications will keep surfacing to both contradict her prior statements and reveal more past improprieties.

Looming in the background is the fear that foreign hackers may have stolen her huge trove of private correspondence before she deleted it  and are waiting to release even more of it in late October.

In sum, a passive Clinton hopes that scandals now beyond her control will not evaporate her once-sizable lead before Nov. 8, a date that suddenly seems to Clinton to be too far away.

A lame-duck Obama runs out the clock, too, neither defending his old policies nor offering new ones.

All the while, a madcap Trump makes nonstop news, hoping that his self-generated publicity is more helpful than harmful.

Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. Contact him at author@victorhanson.com.
Bernard Barbier, a former head of the French signals intelligence service, shared a few stories with students of CentraleSupelec, the elite engineering school from which he graduated in 1976, at a symposium this summer.

There was that time he caught the U.S. National Security Agency delving into computers at the Elysee Palace, residence of the French president, for example. And flew to Washington to tell them they'd been found out. Or when the Canadians said they -- and the Iranians, the Spaniards, the Algerians and a few others -- had all been hacked by a Frenchman, and they were totally right, although the French government denied it.

These little confessions to the members of a student association at his old school, though, have reached a somewhat larger audience than he may have planned on.

The discussion on June 2 was recorded -- from the front row, so he must surely have been aware -- and found its way onto YouTube later that month. There it lay, largely unremarked, until last weekend when a reporter for French newspaper Le Monde found it and published transcripts of large parts of it. Almost immediately, the original video was taken down. Another has appeared, although the sound has been doctored, purportedly to improve the audio quality.

Barbier's revelations can't really be called a scoop, as the Canadian and Elysee hacks had been widely reported. They have, however, never been officially confirmed.

Until he left to join IT consulting firm Sogeti in 2013, Barbier was head of the signals intelligence division of the French Directorate-General of External Security (DGSE), a post he had occupied since 2006. During that time, he was responsible for transforming the DGSE's spying activities into a tool for mass surveillance. Before that, he had alternated between roles at the French Commission for Atomic Energy and Alternative Energies (CEA) and other posts at the DGSE.

The students quizzed him about two events in particular.

The first concerned the run-up to the 2012 French presidential election, when the DGSE found malware on computers at the presidential residence, the Elysee Palace.

Two years previously, that same malware had been used in an attack on the European Commission, he told them.

By 2012, the DGSE had the means at its disposal to identify the origin of the new attack, Barbier said. He concluded that it could only have been the U.S., and using a technique that, thanks to Edward Snowden, we now know as Quantum Insert.

The following year, he said, the new president sent him to Washington to complain to the director of the NSA, Keith Alexander.

"We were sure it was them. Alexander wasn't happy. In the end, he said, 'Bernard, well done. ... You French are good,' meaning he thought we'd never catch them," Barbier told the students.

Later that year, he heard that Le Monde had obtained an NSA briefing document about him that had been prepared for that meeting and was planning to publish it.

Barbier asked an NSA contact in Paris to give him a copy of the briefing document. "He said 'I can't, it's top secret, only President Obama can declassify it.' I said 'Don't mess around, six million Frenchmen are going to see it soon, and I can't?' I finally saw it one day before Le Monde published it," he told the students.

Another 2013 story in Le Monde concerned a cyber-attack on Iran's nuclear installations, which also targeted computers in Canada, Spain, Greece, Norway, Algeria and Ivory Coast. In a note leaked by Snowden, Canadian officials said they were fairly certain that the attack had been mounted by a French intelligence agency. The French government denied any involvement.

But at his old school, Barbier said that when the Canadians reverse-engineered the malware, they found that its programmer had nicknamed it "Babar" and signed it "Titi," two clues that led them to believe he was French.

"And he was," said Barbier, without acknowledging which agency, if any, the programmer worked for.

Security researchers later were able to link Babar to other families of malware, known as Bunny, Casper, Dino, NBot and Tafacalou.

With so many of these affairs hinted at or revealed by Snowden's leaks, it was inevitable that one of the students would ask him what he thought of the former NSA contractor turned whistleblower.

"Snowden totally betrayed his country," Barbier said, but with his revelations about allies spying on one another and the hacking by the U.S. of networking equipment from the likes of Cisco Systems, "Snowden helped us, on the whole."
Technology has been responsible for some truly life-changing advancements. Electricity. The internal combustion engine. The internet.

But if you ask a hungry Virginia Tech student, she might say that all those pale in comparison to what will be happening on that campus in the coming weeks: drone-delivered burritos. That's right -- Google is teaming up with Chipotle to deliver piping hot burritos by drone. It doesn't get much better than this, folks.

In IT Blogwatch, we place an order.

Let's get right to the important stuff. Where can we get a burrito? Stephanie Condon gives us the background:

Google's Project Wing will test out delivering Chipotle burritos at Virginia Tech.

...

The temporary, experimental service will begin this month...With a human pilot standing by...the self-guided, unmanned aircrafts will take food from a Chipotle food truck to volunteer customers and lower it down with a winch.

So we just have to go to Virginia Tech and volunteer? No problem. But what is the motive behind this undertaking (besides getting tasty burritos into the hands of students)? Kurt Schlosser has the details:

The FAA-approved venture...is aimed at convincing the FAA that delivery drones can safely navigate the skies...and avoid running into each other -- dropping your pizza or burrito or future Amazon order of hair gel onto unsuspecting heads below.

...

Virginia Tech president Timothy Sands said...that the project is part of the schools efforts to become a leader in new transportation technology.

But why burritos? Google X's Astro Teller explains the reasoning behind it:

Now, you might be wondering how we decided to deliver food...our goal is to maximize learning, and food delivery poses...operating challenges that few other testing scenarios have. A lunchtime rush of burrito orders will crank up the operational pressure of multiple orders coming in during a short period...Well...test how to package sensitive cargo and how well it endures the journey...In future tests, we could add a broader range of items, like drinks, which will push us to handle more weight, keep packages carefully balanced, and manage combinations of items on a single flight.

So, what is really important with this whole burrito/drone thing? Hannah Kuchler knows it all boils down to one thing:

You can get your burrito delivered by drone. But you still have to pay extra for guac.
Republican lawmakers are making a last-ditch bid to thwart the proposed transfer by the U.S. of internet governance to a multistakeholder body, by calling on the government to reconsider its plans to put the transition into effect by month end.

Raising fears that control of the internet could pass to authoritarian regimes, the legislators wrote in a letter Thursday to Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch and Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker that there were unresolved issues, such as the ability to ensure that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers would in fact follow its own bylaws after the transfer.

ICANN, under contract with the Department of Commerce, operates the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions, which include responsibility for the coordination of the DNS (Domain Name System) root, IP addressing, and other internet protocol resources.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), an agency within the Commerce Department, said last month it will go ahead with its plan to transfer supervision of the IANA functions to a multistakeholder body on Oct. 1, in line with a plan first announced in March 2014.

ICANN set up Public Technical Identifiers, a nonprofit public benefit corporation incorporated in California, to eventually run the IANA functions under contract from ICANN after the transition.

There is no restriction in the bylaws that could prevent ICANN itself from shifting its legal jurisdiction of incorporation from California to countries abroad, U.S. Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee Chairman John Thune, Senate Committee on the Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte wrote.

The lawmakers said there is still no legal certainty about whether the termination of the IANA functions contract would amount to relinquishment of U.S. government property, despite a request in 2015 to the Government Accountability Office to do an audit report on the issue. Relinquishment of government property would require approval from Congress, the legislators wrote.

In the Senate, Ted Cruz, a Republican senator from Texas, on Thursday urged Congress to stop the proposed giveaway of internet control by the administration of President Barack Obama, warning of the risks of increasing the influence of countries like Russia, China, and Iran over the Internet.

Calling on Congress to act, Cruz said unscrambling those eggs may well not be possible, and warned that the Obama administration was planning to push through the transfer of internet control ahead of presidential elections, so that a new president will not be able to undo it.

A bill proposed in the Senate by Cruz, called the Protecting Internet Freedom Act, would prohibit any transfer of internet DNS functions unless expressly allowed under a federal statute passed after the new legislation has been enacted. Cruz also wants the government to certify to Congress that the U.S. has secured sole ownership of the .gov and .mil top-level domains and a contract for the exclusive control and use of the domains in perpetuity.

Congress should stand united to rein in this president, to protect the constitutional authority expressly given to Congress to control disposition of property of the United States, Cruz said indicating another prong of attack by the Republican legislators on the transition issue.

NTIA said recently that it and ICANN have formally affirmed that the U.S. government is the administrator of .mil and .gov and any changes made to the top-level domains can only be made with the express written approval of the U.S.

Congress has not received assurances from the Obama administration that the U.S. government will continue to have exclusive ownership and control of the .gov and .mil top-level domains in perpetuity, which are vital to national security, and are used by key U.S. agencies including defense, Cruz said.

The government appears to have kept its options open with a lot being read into a letter of Aug. 31 to ICANN from the Department of Commerce in which it states that it is serving preliminary notice of its option to extend the contract with the internet body.

An extension of the contract requires a written notice to ICANN within 15 calendar days before the expiry date of the contract, if the preliminary notice was served 30 days ahead of the date of termination. ICANN has said the letter indicates that it is still NTIAs intent to continue with the transfer on Oct. 1, barring a significant impediment such as a legal or legislative obstacle.
A decision by the University of California to lay off IT employees and send their jobs overseas is under fire from U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif) and the IEEE-USA.

The university recently informed about 80 IT workers at its San Francisco campus, including contract employees and vendor contractors, that it hired India-based HCL, under a $50 million contract, to manage infrastructure and networking-related services.

The university employees will remain on the job until the end of February, but before then they are expecting to train their foreign replacements. The number of affected employees may expand. The university's IT services agreement with HCL can be leveraged by any institution in the 10-campus system.

"How are they [the university] going to tell students to go into STEM fields when they are doing as much as they can to do a number on the engineers in their employment?" said Lofgren, in an interview.

Peter Eckstein, the president of the IEEE-USA, said what the university is doing "is just one more sad example of corporations, a major university system in this case, importing non-Americans to eliminate American IT jobs." This engineering association has some 235,000 members.

"Profit before people will continue to be their goal until Congress stops them," said Eckstein.

HCL, and other firms in the offshore industry generally, use H-1B temporary visa workers. HCL was one of the contractors at Disney, which cut around 250 workers last year. Two former Disney employees filed a lawsuit in January in federal court challenging HCL, a second contractor and Disney over the use of foreign workers.

"I think its the wrong thing to do," said Lofgren, of the universitys offshoring effort.

"The H-1B program was not devised to replace American workers with less highly paid foreign workers who are then going to take all the jobs offshore," said Lofgren, who represents part of Silicon Valley and has sought visa program reforms.

"That's not the intent of the [H-1B] law, and Congress has done nothing to reform the law to prevent this from happening," said Lofgren.

The university is "misusing the visa program, and one likes to think that the University of California would be wanting to be in conformity with the intent of the immigration laws," said Lofgren.

The H-1B visa program was intended to provide people for specific workforce needs. But over the last 20 years, the programs major users have been IT services firms that use visa workers to help outsource work overseas. U.S. IT workers have complained repeatedly about having to train workers on temporary visas as a condition of severance, and often accuse the U.S. government as being a party to their layoff.

Lofgren said she is not an opponent of the H-1B program, "run properly," nor does she fault its original goal. But she said it sounds that "what the university is doing is a misuse of the program" similar to Disney and Southern California Edison, she said, "where they are not getting the best and the brightest, they are just basically using it as a way to cut American engineers, which they shouldnt do."

Lofgren had been working with U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) on H-1B reform legislation. A key aspect of the proposal, primarily drafted by Lofgren, would distribute visas on a system based on the willingness of employers to pay.

But their joint effort didn't bear fruit and Issa introduced his own bill in July, the Protect and Grow American Jobs Act (HR 5801) with a narrow goal compared to what Lofgren sought.

Issa's bill raises the $60,000 salary threshold that creates an exemption for H-1B-dependent firms -- a designation for large visa users that are mostly IT services firms that offshore work -- from having to attest that they arent replacing U.S. workers. That salary level was set in 1998 with no provision for changing it. Issa's proposal would raise it to $100,000, and set a mechanism for hiking it over time.

Lofgren called Issa's bill outrageous and said it wouldnt do a "damn thing" to stop outsourcing because engineering salaries are already more than $100,000.

"I tried to work with Issa for months -- in all honestly dealing with him is just chaos; it would take his staff weeks or months to get back to my staff -- they didn't know what they were doing," said Lofgren.

Asked for a response, Calvin Moore, Issa's spokesperson, said that Issa approached Lofgren about introducing a bill before the August recess, but she "told us the the door was closed," he said, in an email. "So we moved ahead with the rest of our colleagues on a bill we could actually get done before the end of the year."

Moore defended the bill and said "it raises the exemption limits to be more in line with current American salaries in these positions to remove the incentive that has been abused to displace American workers."
The Federal Aviation Administration has advised passengers not to turn on or charge their Galaxy Note 7 smartphones on board aircraft, following reports of exploding batteries in the device made by Samsung Electronics.

The U.S. aviation regulator said Thursday in a statement that in the light of the incidents and concerns raised by Samsung about the devices, it also advises passengers not to stow the phones away in any checked baggage.

Samsung last week offered to replace the phones for its customers in the wake of 35 cases reported worldwide as of Sept. 1 that suggested a battery cell issue in some of the devices. The company said it was conducting an inspection with suppliers to identify possible affected batteries in the market. The company stopped meanwhile sales of the Galaxy Note 7.

A consumer group protested against the manner the recall was conducted, claiming that the phones were being sold in the U.S. on Friday by multiple retailers after Samsung's announcement that it had stopped selling the phones. Consumer Reports said the recall had to be done officially with the involvement of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), which would have made it illegal to sell the phones. CPSC is charged with protecting the public from risk of injury or death linked with consumer products under its jurisdiction.

Samsung did not immediately comment on the FAA move.

Three Australian airlines, including Qantas, its unit Jetstar and Virgin Australia, have prohibited their passengers from using or charging the Galaxy Note 7 during flights because of concerns over the phone's batteries, Reuters reported on Thursday.

In a bid to placate customers, Samsung offered to swap existing Note 7 phones for newer versions of the model to be available in the next week. The U.S. Product Exchange Program, announced Friday, for example, also offered to exchange current Galaxy Note 7 devices for a Galaxy S7 or Galaxy S7 edge and replacement of any Note 7 specific accessories, with a refund of the price difference between devices.

Samsung also offered consumers a US$25 gift card or bill credit from select carrier retail outlets when choosing a Galaxy S7 family device or the Galaxy Note 7 within the exchange program.
Iain Dale is Presenter of LBC Drive, Managing Director of Biteback Publishing, a columnist and broadcaster and a former Conservative Parliamentary candidate.

In the next few weeks well get the results of the UKIP and Labour leadership elections and the SNPs deputy leadership election. Labour and the SNP have both experienced booming membership growth, but there the similarity seems to end.

Labour is languishing at 27 per cent in the latest opinion poll, while the SNP have double that level of support at 54 per cent, which is the highest rating for any political party in Europe I am reliably informed.

Labour is tearing itself apart and debating just how left the party can go, while the main topic of conversation in the SNP deputy leadership election  which will undoubtedly be won by their Westminster leader Angus Robertson  seems to be the powers the deputy leader should have in deciding the maximum or minimum size of an SNP branch. Strange, Id have thought that was more up the LibDems street.

***

South Eastern Railway is obviously trying to compete with Southern in order to claim the title of Britains most hapless train operator.

My journey home from to Tonbridge on Wednesday was a case in point. We drew out of Charing Cross, only to remain on the bridge over the Thames for thirty minutes. And that was thirty minutes without explanation. No announcement from the guard or the train driver at all.

I tweeted my displeasure to @Se_railway who later replied that due to the delay the train would terminate at Tonbridge rather than Tunbridge Wells. It didnt affect me, but if I had been going on to Tunbridge Wells Id have been furious. Needless to say that announcement wasnt made until the train actually arrived at Tonbridge. What brilliant customer service.

Im tempted to say it should be privatised, and therein lies the problem. Train companies, like banks, display all the faults and incompetences that we used to complain about in the nationalised industries.

***

Just for the record, I havent spoken to David Davis since his supposed slapping down by Number Ten. If I were him Id be fairly phlegmatic about it. He wont have enjoyed the headlines, but in actual fact, if you look at what he said it is very similar to what Theresa May has been saying.

In many ways he was stating the bleeding obvious to say that it was improbable that wed remain in the Single Market. How could we, if the EU continues to insist on freedom of movement of labour?

The phrase Brexit means Brexit is crystal clear. It means exiting all aspects of the EU, including the Single Market. Some people try to pretend that the Single Market is a separate entity to the EU itself. Total fiction. Its an integral part of it. The countries that arent in the EU but are members of it, like Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland, are all potential members. And frankly, quite how you can compare their economies with ours is anyones guess.

Whatever trade agreement we come to with the EU it will be based on our requirements and the fact that we are the fifth largest economy in the world and our imports from the EU are rather more vital to the EU than our exports to the EU are to us. We are in a very strong bargaining position and no doubt Theresa May and David Davis will use that to our advantage.

The Prime Minister says she is not going to give a running commentary on all this but the media will no doubt demand that she does. Shes in a cleft stick because Parliament has every right to question ministers on progress in these areas but on the other hand they are going to have to play the straightest of bats for fear of giving away too much detail about our negotiating position.

***

So the Conservatives are to go back to the future on grammar schools. Opinion is split on whether they are bastions of social mobility or rather divisive institutions which condemn the less able to failure at the age of eleven.

I couldnt give a rats arse what a school is called. What I do care about though is that we shouldnt consign a whole generation of children onto an educational scrapheap at such a young age. Having said that we also need to find ways of letting the tallest poppies grown as tall as they can. If comprehensive schools arent doing that them we need to find ways of enabling them to do so. To create schools for academically clever kids, and separate schools for the less academically able is surely not the way forward. We already have an educational split in this country between private and state education. Why on earth would we try to create another one?

***

Just imagine the outcry if someone created an organisation called White Lives Matter. And its perfectly possible, given that white working class youths are now the most underprivileged in both our education system and society in general. They underperform their BME counterparts in many parts of the nation by a country mile. Its why they have forsaken the Labour Party for UKIP in many parts of the north.

I say this because I am very disturbed the creation of a group calling themselves Black Lives Matter UK. They have been formed on the back of the BLM movement in the US which seeks to highlight the disgusting number of black people shot by police or who die in police custody. The UK group seem to be saying we face a similar situation in this country. We just dont. If you look at the number of black or Asian people who die at the hands of the police in this country it is very small. Indeed, in 2016 so far 29 people have died in police custody  two of them black. The proportions are similar, or even lower, for each of the last five years.

Black Lives Matter UK are trying to create division where there is none and fuel the racial divide. And this week we saw the ludicrous spectacle of nine protesters invading the London City Airport runway to protest about how aircraft emissions disproportionately affect black people. The irony that the nine protesters were all white was clearly lost on them. The lesson here is that All Lives Matter  black, white, brown or yellow.
It goes almost without saying that opponents of grammar schools wont like the Prime Ministers education speech. They will only be able to see it through their miserabilist obsession with a tripartite system that no longer exists.

However, some better-off supporters of grammar schools wont have liked the speech either. Theresa May floated compelling the latter to take a proportion of children from lower income households. Those people will be worried that their children will lose out. Some staff and governors at these schools will be uneasy about any shake-up.

Furthermore, a slice of the independent sector  teachers and parents  will also have disliked the speech. The Prime Minister suggested that they have been able to push their fees up to exclude British children and rely instead on taking kids from abroad instead. It will be alarmed by Mays talk of a tougher test on the amount of public benefit required to maintain charitable status. This is a heartland Conservative-voting constituency.

Secularists, Muslim-haters, Catholo-phobes and anti-religious bigots generally will have disliked the speech too. ConservativeHome thinks its great that the cap on new faith school admissions is to end. All those previously named will believe the opposite.

David Cameron and George Osborne will also have little time for the speech, if any, because it poses an uncomfortable question  implicitly and, in places, almost explicity. Namely, that it these ideas are so good, why didnt Osborne and Cameron push them once there was a Tory majority in the Commons. Michael Gove put his eggs in the basket of non-selective academies, and it isnt clear what hell think of the new Prime Ministers ideas.

So lets sum up. Opponents of grammar schools, some supporters of them, a slice of the independent sector, secularists, George Osborne and David Cameron all have reason not to be best pleased with the speech. Not to mention the opposition parties, many peers and some Conservative backbenchers.

All of which highlights just how brave this package of proposals is. Her speech challenges far more vested interests even than Gove did  or Andrew Lansley did with his hazardous health bill.

The Vicars daughter who spoke today of ordinary, working class families and of creating the great meritocracy has front  or balls, if you prefer. She is turning out to be a mysterious hybrid of the cautious and the almost-reckless.

Perhaps the moral is that when shes convinced of a case she will pursue it, however many risks she may run in doing so. Im not sure that parts of it will get through Parliament, but I would tip my hat to her were I wearing one.
The Trojan Horse plot to install an Islamist ethos in schools took place in non-faith ones  primaries, academies and specialist colleges. But many of those who glanced briefly at news about it will never get this into their heads: they will persist in believing that the taxpayer is funding a legion of Muslim faith schools that are filling the heads of their pupils with ISIS propaganda.

This view is post-truth tosh. There is a tiny handful of state-funded Muslim schools  18 or so  and there is no good reason why there should not be more. Islamism, the political ideology, is objectionable; Islam, the religious faith, is not. Even those who disagree with this view may take the view that it is better to have Muslim schools in the state sector, where they can be regulated and inspected, than in the private sector, in which government monitoring is more difficult to exercise. Much same argument raged about Maynooth College in Ireland, the best part of 150 years ago, and the funding of Catholic priests by the state.

Mention of which leads neatly to the present admissions rules governing faith schools. Ministers have been terrified of the electoral consequences of allowing more or larger Muslim schools. Voter blowback against Islam has also been felt, post 9/11, by other great monotheistic faiths, including Christianity. There is probably a sense among more people than previously that religion is a problem (which makes as much or as little sense as believing that politics is a problem). In any event, the human rights-based norms of our modern culture bar discrimination against any particular faith by law. The logical consequence of all this is that if the faith schools of one particular religion cannot be treated unfairly, then all must be treated unfairly.

The injustice comes in the form of the admissions rule which requires new faith schools, when over-subscribed, to limit the number of pupils they accept on the basis of faith to fifty per cent. As an author wrote on this site, the rule fails according to its own objective: it does little to increase the diversity of Jewish, Muslim, Sikh and Hindu schools, because for now at least they are unlikely to appeal to parents of other faiths. But the rule is effectively discriminatory for Roman Catholics: it prevents them from opening new free schools because it is almost certainly against canon law for a Catholic Bishop to set up a school that turned away Catholic pupils on the basis of their Catholicism.

Given that there is growing demand for Roman Catholic schools, he continued, which are more likely to be ethnically diverse than other schools, more likely to be in poor areas, more likely to be rated Good or Outstanding by Ofsted, and more likely to provide what parents want, the rule should be replaced by a legal duty on faith schools to ensure that their pupils mix  perhaps through sport, performing arts, or school visits  with children of other backgrounds. It is reported this morning that the Government is to follow this advice. The Cameron Government resisted removing the cap. But the new Prime Minister is to scrap it. She will announce the move this morning in a speech which will also propose the end of restrictions on grammar schools.

It may well be that May has been rushed into the announcement because of the photo-leak of her intentions on selection (though its worth noting that she promised early action on education in her leadership election membership stage launch speech). Some of those Conservative MPs who claim a monopoly on modernisation, and others from the traditional Tory Left, wont care for the grammar schools announcement. Others who have a down on religion wont like the faith schools one either, although it will probably gain less attention today. It will be hard to get changes through the Commons and even harder to do so in the Lords  at least in the case of selective schools.

The detail is to come. But the faith schools admissions decision is marvellously bold and right. It reflects great credit on the Prime Ministers judgement: the cap is one of the burning injustices of which she has complained, and lifting it would be an act of social justice. However, it also demonstrates something else. It may be claimed that the most powerful element in her decision is her upbringing as a vicars daughter. This looks wide of the mark.

We quoted an author above as putting the argument against the cap. He is Nick Timothy, who wrote those words as a ConservativeHome columnist, and who is now the Prime Ministers co-Chief of Staff. It is impossible not to see his hand in this decision  just as it is impossible not to see it in the Hinkley Point one, or in the review of big takeover bids on a case-by-case basis, or in the appointment of SpAds.

Mark Wallace reported yesterday on Elizabeth Trusss apparent postponement of Michael Goves justice reforms. This cannot conceivably have happened without Timothy and other key Downing Street staff giving it the nod. We gather that some departments have been told to take a special interest in combatting modern slavery  another passion of the Prime Ministers, and also of Fiona Hills, her other chief of staff.

This mornings news shows the same pattern. That photo-leak showed that Justine Greening has concerns about the grammar schools policy at least. But like other Ministers she doesnt hold full sway in her own department. Whether such tight control by a tiny number of people is sustainable or desirable  and indeed whether they desire it themselves, or whether it is a temporary expedient  is a matter for another day. For this one, praise will do.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- The New York Wounded Vet Run, a non-profit charitable organization established to assist returning veterans residing in New York State, conducted its third annual event Aug. 27 -- and Staten Island had a hand in its great success.

Supporters from the Tri-State area and Boston met up in New Rochelle, and finished right here in Sunnyside at the Marine Corps League.

This year's honoree was US Marine Corps Veteran, Lance Cpl. Mark Beyers of East Aurora, N.Y., a reservist with the 3rd Battalion 25th Marines, based in Buffalo, N.Y.

It was Aug. 26, 2005 that Mark, while conducting a tactical operation in Iraq, was severely injured by an Improvised Explosive Devise.

Mark suffered massive injuries to his entire body and spent a year away from his family when he began medical treatment.

He was forced to undergo 39 surgeries and overcame numerous complications. And throughout it all endured painful physical therapy.

Mark lost his right arm and right leg, but never lost his positive attitude and will to survive.

Today, Mark has a beautiful wife, who is also a Marine, and two beautiful daughters who were able to accompany him on his first trip to New York City.

The New York Wounded Vet Run with the help of the city Police Department assisted the Beyer family during their visits to various sites throughout the city.

Some stops included the Freedom Tower, the World Trade Center Museum and the Statue of Liberty.

The family also enjoyed food at Katz's Deli, the Salty Dog and the fabulous pizza at Staten Island's own Lee's Tavern, in Dongan Hills.

This effort of love and support will assist Mark with his ongoing medical expenses and help ensure that he'll be able to afford home, automobile and any required modifications that will enable him to enjoy the quality of life he so richly deserves.
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The presence of Zika virus in Southeast Asia has surely created a scare among the locales.

A new report, however, has noted that the strain of the virus found in the locally transmitted cases in the Asian region, particularly in Singapore, is different from the one which was reportedly imported from Brazil last May.

According to Straits Times, the Ministry of Health's National Public Health Laboratory (NPHL) and A*Star's Bioinformatics Institute (BII) made the announcement on Thursday.

It was further revealed that the cases recently found at the Aljunied Crescent/Sims Drive cluster are said to be similar to the Zika virus strains which affected Southeast Asia since the 1960s, which was "subsequently spread to French Polynesia in 2013 and to Brazil in 2015."

Meanwhile, the reported other case is said to be similar to the strain currently affecting South America.

Amid their difference in strains, it was pointed out that there has been no study yet to prove that they cause a different type of disease at different levels of severity.

"While there was no link established between microcephaly and Zika until the Brazil outbreak, we have to assume it is possible, hence the precautions that pregnant women are advised to take," National Public Health Lab head Dr. Raymond Lin said.

The findings of NPHL and BII will be beneficial in tracking the "global spread and evolution," as these will also be part of public databases which scientists and the World Health Organization (WHO) can use.

In the meantime, Fox News reported that Malaysia is expecting more Zika virus cases, especially that it has been spreading throughout Southeast Asia recently.

"The confirmation of the second case of Zika in Kota Kinabalu suggests that the virus is already present within our communities," Health Minister Subramaniam Sathasivam shared on Facebook. "Zika is present in our country. New cases will continue to emerge."

See Now: What Republicans Don't Want You To Know About Obamacare
GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump said Thursday that, if elected, hed be the nations biggest cheerleader for school choice and offer states the chance to use $20 billion in federal money to create vouchers allowing children in poverty to attend the public, charter, or private school of their choice.

And he said hes a supporter of merit pay for teachersa signature policy of both President Barack Obama and George W. Bushs administrationsalthough he did not explain how he hopes to further the cause, other than rhetorically taking aim at tenure in this fact sheet .

There is no policy more in need of urgent change than our government-run education monopoly, the GOP presidential nominee said in a speech at a charter school in Cleveland. The Democratic Party has trapped millions of African-American and Hispanic youth in struggling schools.

We want every inner city child in America to have the freedom to attend any school, Trump said.

Trump said that the $20 billion in federal funds could be combined with more than $100 billion in state and local money to create vouchers of up to $12,000

annually for the nations poorest kids. He did not say where the $20 billion in funding would come from, but its possible he was referring to Title I money for disadvantaged students, funded at about $15.5 billion right now. His plan would depend on state and local cooperationif states and districts decided not to add their own money to the federal financing, the scholarships would pretty paltry.

Its worth pointing out that a $12,000 tuition voucher wouldnt come very close to covering the cost of the private schools attended by Trumps children , or Hillary Clintons daughter, Chelsea, for that matter.

Does Trumps school choice plan sound familiar? Its very similar to what the last GOP presidential nominee, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, proposed for K-12 in 2012.

And last year, Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Rep. Luke Messer, R-Ind., introduced amendments to what became the Every Student Succeeds Act that would have allowed federal money to follow students to the school of their choice, public or private. Those amendments failed to get enough support to pass the House or Senate.

But Messer said in an interview this summer that he thinks the policy could get new life under a potential Trump administration. (Maybe not coincidentally, one of Messers education aides is now working for the Trump campaign .)

On merit pay, Trump said only that he finds it unfair that bad ones, referring to teachers, sometimes make more than the good ones. Obama also encouraged districts to adopt performance pay, through the Race to the Top competition, and the $230 million Teacher Incentive Fund, which was started by Bush.

Trumps main rival for the White House, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, hasnt addressed the issue of merit pay head-on recently, but she has said repeatedly that shes not in favor of tying teacher evaluations to test scoresalso a signature Obama policy. And when she was running for president against Obama in 2008, she wasnt a fan of merit pay for individual teachers, even though she liked the idea for entire school staffs. (More on Clinton and Trumps education proposals here .)

Trump also hit some of the K-12 themes hes sounded throughout the campaign, attacking the Common Core State Standards and arguing that the United States spends more on education than most other developed countries for iffy results. (Andrew fact-checked similar claims last year .)

The charter school that Trump visitedand where he spoke to a group of students prior to his speechdoes not exactly have a stellar academic record, according to its most recent report card. The Cleveland Arts and Social Sciences Academy got an F for overall progress, achievement gap-closing, and received a D and an F on two achievement measures .

Before launching into his speech, Trump thanked Ron Packard, who is the CEO of Panosophic Learning, an education company that operates virtual and brick-and-mortar schools . Packard founded K12 Inc., where he also served as CEO, and left that company in 2014. K12 Inc. has been the subject of legal complaints from investors about its financial statements, and from California parents concerning the companys claims about student enrollment and schools academic records.

Early Reaction

Jeanne Allen, the founder of the Center for Education Reform, which supports school choice, called the idea pie in the sky, given the current Washington political dynamic. Congress typically doesnt write $20 billion checks for programs without a real mandate, she said.

But she also said the plan is very ambitious, and noted that Trump did not say the $20 billion for his school choice idea would have to come from the current U.S. Department of Education budget. Its dramatically more money than any other candidate has talked about for school choice, Allen said.

But the National Education Association, a 3 million member union which has endorsed Clinton, quickly denounced the plan.

Donald Trump isnt serious about doing whats best for our students, and hes clueless about what works, said Lily Eskelsen Garcia, the president of the NEA. No matter what you call it, vouchers take dollars away from our public schools to fund private schools at taxpayers expense with little to no regard for our students.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump reaches to shake hands with Egunjobi Songofunmi during a meeting with students and educators before a speech on school choice on Thursday at Cleveland Arts and Social Sciences Academy in Cleveland.

--Evan Vucci/AP

Assistant Editor Andrew Ujifusa contributed to this report.

Follow us on Twitter at @PoliticsK12 .
If this post-Labor Day week did not have enough of a back-to-school vibe, just wait a few more days. PBS next week is offering Spotlight Education, a full week of documentaries and school-themed episodes of some of its top shows.

The highlights include a documentary about the college paths for two high school graduates from a tough Chicago neighborhood, a Ted Talks show about education, and special school-related episodes of public television stalwarts such as Frontline, NOVA, and PBS NewsHour.

Ill be posting individual previews of several of next weeks offerings in the days ahead. Here is a rundown of the special programming, with PBSs scheduled airtimes. (Viewers should check local listings.)

Monday, Sept. 12

POV: All The Difference (10 p.m. Eastern time.)

The documentary series POV has this offering that follows two high school graduates from Chicagos tough Engelwood neighborhood as they pursue two very different college paths. This film is one of the highlights of the week.

Tuesday, Sept. 13

Frontline: A Subprime Education/ The Education of Omarina (9 p.m. ET)

Public televisions top documentary news show provides two education-related segments in one hourlong segment. The first examines the for-profit education industry, which is even more timely this month as another provider, ITT Technical Institutes, folds up shop. (Frontline focuses on the demise of Corinthian Colleges.) The second segment is another update about Omarina Cabrera, a New York City student that Frontline has been featuring intermittently since 2012.

Ted Talks: Education Revolution (10 p.m. ET)

The famous Ted Talks format invites several well-known educators, including Khan Academy founder Sal Khan, parenting expert Julie Lythcott-Haims, and actor/educator Anna Deveare Smith, to the stage.

Wednesday, Sept. 14

NOVA: School of the Future (9 p.m. ET)

The PBS science show provides its take on what is really the future of education, much of which is already happening, in this two-hour episode. The episode examines the new science of learning.

Thursday, Sept. 15

Craft in America: Teachers (8 p.m. ET)

This show focused on handmade crafts in America devotes an episode to the artists who pass along their knowledge to a younger generation.

Time for School (9 p.m. ET)

The latest installment of this longitudinal documentary features five children from five different countries struggling to get a basic education.The film has footage from over a decade, starting in 2003, of the students academic careers.

Saturday, Sept. 17

American Graduate Day (2 p.m. ET)

This four-hour broadcast from WNET in New York City will feature host Soledad OBrien highlighting various individuals and organizations dedicated to helping young people stay on track for high school graduation.

PBS NewsHour Weekend (Check local listings)

Hari Sreenivasan anchors a special edition of the top PBS news show focusing on ways schools are trying to improve student engagement and performance. (Note: Education Week Video contributes regularly to PBS NewsHour, but is not part of this edition.)

* * * *

PBS also has a few more educational offerings for local stations to schedule as they see fit. Class of 27: America Reframed is a documentary about how several rural communities are working to help their students graduate high school in, yes, 2027; The Address, an inspiring and relatively short documentary by Ken Burns about a private school that requires its students to memorize and recite the Gettysburg Address. (It has aired on PBS before, and I reviewed it here ); and Navajo Math Circles, about a collaboration between some of the countrys top mathematicians and math educators and children and teachers in the Navajo tribes education system.

Thats a lot of programming about education for one week. And to PBSs credit, it airs other education documentaries, and some of these shows cover education throughout the year.
Sonia Nieto agreed to answer a few questions about her book, Why We Teach Now .

Professor Emerita of Language, Literacy, and Culture, College of Education, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Sonia Nieto has devoted her professional life to issues of equity, diversity, and social justice. She has written numerous books including most recently, Finding Joy in Teaching Students of Diverse Backgrounds: Culturally Responsive and Socially Just Practices in U.S. Schools (2013), Why We Teach Now (2015), and a memoir, Brooklyn Dreams: My Life in Public Education (2015). She is the recipient of many awards for her scholarship and advocacy, including six honorary doctorates, and in 2015 she was elected to the National Academy of Education.

LF: You write that Why We Teach Now is based on a discourse of possibility. Can you explain what you mean by that and how you think it compares/contrasts with how you see more typical education policy discussions taking place?

Sonia Nieto:

For the past couple of decades, weve been mired in a discourse of hopelessness. This is due to several factors, not the least of which has been the so-called education reform movement that has focused on rigid accountability, privatization, and the corporate takeover of public education, in effect stripping students and teachers of dignity and respect, and stripping the public out of public education. These policies and practices have resulted in the blaming of poor and marginalized communities as well as teachers for all the problems in public education. Rather than excite or motivate educators about their role in changing the situation, the climate of blame and retaliation has led to a massive exodus of teachers from the profession, the further alienation of the students who need the most support, and even large-scale cheating in an attempt to game the testing system. Hope has been hard to come by.

We should have seen these things coming. We cant continue to blame teachers and the most vulnerable students for policies and practices over which they have little control. A good example is what is called the achievement gap, the difference in achievement between White students and students of color. I reject this term, preferring instead opportunity gap because many students of color and students living in poverty attend poorly resourced schools and simply havent had the kinds of opportunities and advantages that middle-class and wealthy students have had. To confirm this situation, all we need to do is visit schools in middle-class or wealthy neighborhoods and compare them with schools in poor neighborhoods. In most cases, there are enormous differences in the resources and opportunities they offer their respective students. And yet we continue to treat all students as if theyve started out on a level playing field.

Its for these reasons that I refer to the teachers featured in Why We Teach Now as engaged in a discourse of possibility. Whether they teach in cities or suburbs, large schools or small, early childhood or high school, they are filled with hope. But it is not a naive hope, but instead a hope tempered by the reality of the situation in which they work and live. Theyre realists with a sense of purpose and commitment. They know that the system is often rigged against the most vulnerable and yet they have hope in their students and themselves to resist and change the situation. Maria Rosario, a Chicago elementary school teacher, described it in this way in her essay: Because schooling has always existed to indoctrinate young people into a system where the vote might be better controlled or their minds might be better molded to serve as members of the working class, I am able to be there to help my students dream of other possibilities for themselves (p. 200).





LF: Your book is comprised of essays by educators about why they teach. Im sure it would be hard to choose, but could you pick three insights from the collection that you think are particularly important for educators to hear?

Sonia Nieto:

Youre right, it is difficult! Ive been tremendously inspired by the teachers who wrote essays for the book, and it is precisely because of their sense of hope and possibility that I continue to have hope in the future of public education, a hope that might otherwise seem displaced given the state of public education today. Im grateful to them and to so many educators like them who continue to believe in the promise of public education.

Another insight reinforced by the teachers essays is that teaching is a profession that reflects our deep-seated values and our identities. As a result, many teachers enter the profession either because they had inspiring teachers and want to be like them, or because they had negative experiences in school and want to serve students like them so that they dont have such experiences.

Sisters Jennifer Burgos-Carnes and Vanessa Burgos-Kelly, whose family moved to South Carolina from Germany when they were children, wrote about their struggles to maintain a sense of Latina identity in a place that, at the time, had little experience with Latin@ students. Alienated and alone, for years they felt marginalized by their schooling. In both of their cases, it was a sense of alienation that propelled them to become teachers so that their students of all backgrounds, and particularly their Latin@ students (now much more prevalent in South Carolina) would have more positive experiences. Vanessa, for example, mentioned one of the reasons she became a teacher, writing, I wanted to become a positive role model for Latino students who may rarely see a Latino in an educational setting. Identity came up in many of the teachers essays, but it wasnt only their own identities but the identities of their students their backgrounds of all backgrounds that matter to teachers.

Mary Jade Haney, another teacher in South Carolina, recalled her own alienation as a young student, writing, I teach to reclaim the education I received as a student of color in the public school system. Challenging this sense of alienation for her students, she wrote, I teach to ignite and inspire the passion for learning in the hearts of all children. Her statement, I teach because I am in a profession that balances the universe, is one of the most eloquent statements about teaching that Ive seen.

Change doesnt come about simply because we wish it, another insight highlighted in the teachers essays. These teachers are activists, sometimes quietly and sometimes boisterously, whether in their classrooms, schools, districts, professional organizations, or even at the state and federal levels. Not all teachers need to be involved in all of these ways, but they all recognize that passivity leads not to change but to stagnation. Nina Tepper, who recently retired after more than three decades in the classroom, wrote about what brought her to teaching: As a peace and justice activist in the 1960s and 1970s, I thought, If I could make a difference in the world, it would be as a teacher. And thats exactly what she did, in her case, through her teaching, professional writing, and continued activism in the community. In looking back on her career, she writes, As a teacher, I had the capacity to influence child development and impact the future like no other profession.

Teacher Jesse Hagopian, a social studies teacher in Seattle, Washington, took his activism far outside his classroom and school to the state and national levels. Hagopian wrote about the successful effort to eliminate the MAP test in his school and, subsequently, in the entire state. He connected this struggle to his impetus for becoming a teacher, writing, I teach because I know it is possible to organize students, parents, teachers, and administrators to fight for an education system that is democratically run by the people who make up that system, rather than the whims of philanthro-capitalists.





LF: Why do you believe people should consider entering the teaching profession now and why?

Sonia Nieto:

Its hard to make the case that people, either those fresh out of college or career-changers, should join the teaching profession now. In her essay, Mary Ginley, a former Massachusetts Teacher of the Year who spent 42 years in the classroom, wrote, Why would anyone with any brains and imagination ever want to be a teacher? After asking that poignant question, Mary described some of the profound changes shes witnessed in education since she started teaching, most to the detriment of kids and teachers. She also wrote about some of the many conversations she had with the students she taught, conversations about the challenges they face, about their families, and about such disparate themes as the Civil Rights movement and whether Columbus was a hero or not. These conversations changed her students lives as well as hers. And at the end of her essay, she wrote, But I have loved more of those minutes, hours, days, months, and years of teaching than not, laughed far more than Ive cried, and gotten out of bed nearly every school day for 42 years looking forward to my day. Yes, of course, Id do it again... Despite the misgivings I shared at the beginning of this essay, yes, I would absolutely still choose it. I am a teacher and cant imagine being anything else.

This is why now is precisely the time we need good people to enter the profession. We need talented, committed teachers, teachers who will stand up for the goals of equal and high quality education that our nation has always articulated as defining public education. These goals have never been fulfilled, of course. On the contrary, when public education began, it was based on a factory model that would produce obedient workers among the children of the masses, and managers and professionals among the children of the elite. It also was meant to assimilate immigrants and people of African, Mexican, and Asian descent and separate them from the White native-born, who were deemed more capable and deserving. In spite of this checkered history, one thats still visible in some educational policies and practices, an equal and high quality education for every child regardless of social class, race, gender, or other differences is still a worthy goal. I believe that its teachers and other educators committed to these ideals that will help us work towards this goal, not politicians or corporations or even policymakers.



LF: Based on what youve learned from the books essays and elsewhere, what do you think public officials, districts and schools need to do in order to increase the odds that teachers will remain in the profession? And what actions do you think are in the power of teachers themselves to increase those same odds?

Sonia Nieto:

The evidence is clear that were losing too many of our teachers each year, and research suggests that it is the most talented among them who are leaving. Though they became teachers to make a difference in the lives of young people, theyre frustrated by being treated as little more than test-givers, and by the lack of respect they receive from administrators, policymakers, and the public at large. In many of the essays in Why We Teach Now, teachers make it clear that thats not why they joined the profession. For example, Chuck Greanoff, a U.S. history and psychology high school teacher in Lakewood, Ohio, the high school from which both he and his parents graduated, wrote the following in his essay, Sadly, a lot of very powerful, well-organized people have a different agenda for our schools, and it doesnt include pet walls, concern for the emotional health of students, or even democratically elected school boards. But he goes on to resist this context, concluding, The greatest danger of a depressed spirit is a sense of learned helplessness, a passive acceptance of the inevitable evisceration of public education. And, in spite of the dehumanizing context in many schools today, thats exactly the spirit thats needed.

The first suggestion Id make to increase the odds that teachers will remain in the profession is to include them in the conversation. Too often, theyve been excluded from decisions affecting their work. We need only look at most commissions, research reports, white papers, and other examples of policy changes to see that teachers are invisible in most of these.

Second, Id look at what other nations are doing to keep teachers committed, learning, and happy. Look at the example of Finland, where prospective teachers are chosen carefully, put through a demanding preparation and, once they begin teaching, treated with respect and given ample time to learn and plan, individually and with their colleagues. They face few high-stakes testing situations and are given ample freedom to design the curriculum, in this way reducing a great deal of the stress our U.S. teachers face every day. Granted, you cant transplant policies wholesale from one nation to another with no regard for the many differences that exist between them. The United States is far more diverse and more complex than other nations, and what works in smaller and more homogeneous societies than ours might not work here. But there are some practices that make a great deal of sense and that should at least be tried.

Bottom line: I think the most important thing we can do is begin with respect and trust for teachers and for their professionalism, both sorely missing in many current policies for preparing, recruiting, and retaining them in the profession. Once that happens, I believe we will have come a long way in retaining more teachers in the profession.







LF: Thanks, Sonia!



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Deployment on the streets

Military shoot-to-kill

Under the pretext of war on terrorism the federal government plans to amend existing powers of arrest, detention and shoot-to-kill to openly deploy the militarys Special Forces to operate on the streets of Australian cities. This war-on-terrorism trigger revolves around the Lindt cafe siege in Sydney, riding on the post-siege investigation into NSW Police handling of the situation, by inference concluding the forces failure means the need for the deployment of elite military forces among  and by extension use against  the civilian public.

Lindt cafe siege in Sydneys Martin Place.

At the time of the cafe siege in Martin Place special forces personnel called Tactical Assault Group east (TAG East) at the Holsworthy Army Base carried out attack drills on a mock-up of the cafe. The contain and negotiate element of police strategy in siege situations is being cast as untenable and being used to reinforce the need for the use of the military on home soil.

The siege gunman, Man Haron Monis, had a police record, a history of mental illness and a relatively high public profile. He had been taken off a police watch list.

Defence Minister Marise Payne said the expansion of laws that were put in place in the lead-up to the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games, would enforce Australian Defence Force participation in domestic operations.

Australias secret police, ASIO, is also in line to be given more powers of arrest and detention, with the scrapping of the current need for the approval of a judge for the detention and interrogation of people for a week without charge. Instead that power will be handed over to the Attorney General.

In addition, the current requirement for an independent legal authority to be present during interrogations is to be scrapped, instead replaced by the Inspector General of Intelligence and Security.

The western countries that make up the coalition of the willing in the bogus war on terrorism  a war not between nations, but a tactic riveted to a religion by government and mass media spin  are uniformly in sync. In Germany, for instance, the government has formulated plans to force citizens to stockpile food and water in case of an attack.

The population will be obliged to hold an individual supply of food for ten days in the German Interior Ministrys Concept for Civil Defence. It demands that people prepare appropriately for a development that could threaten our existence and cannot be categorically ruled out in the future. In propaganda terms, it says a priority is the promotion of more support of the armed forces by civilians. The Defence Minister declared that the country is in the crosshairs of terrorism.

Dangerous police powers

The deepening crisis of capitalism on a worldwide scale is causing alarm in the ranks of the ruling class and those servile politicians who do the bidding of the big corporations.

The ruling classes know that the galloping world-wide poverty, the loss of jobs, the cuts to social welfare services, the attacks on working conditions and the rights of trade unions, the neglect of the environment and the sacrifice of the independence of their countries by politicians  all on the Turnbull governments agenda  are steadily increasing worldwide resistance of the people in all countries.

The reply of the rulers is to impose ever more restrictions on the rights of the people. This is also taking place in Australia.

The refugee centres on Manus Island and Nauru and in isolated areas in Australia and their operation by private companies are essentially concentration camps.

There should be no illusions about the claimed democratic convictions and principles of the Australian ruling class. It is just as vicious as its counterparts overseas and will disregard all laws pertaining to peoples rights whenever it feels its interests are being threatened.

Australia has already adopted legislation that permits the use of the military in domestic issues.

The Sydney Olympics were used to justify legislation giving sweeping powers to the authorities to allow the Australian military to suppress domestic unrest  protest actions, strikes, pickets  euphemistically called domestic violence. This includes shoot-to-kill powers.

What we are witnessing in Australia  and the same process is taking place in the countries of the coalition of the willing such as the US, Britain and the countries of the EU  is the piece by piece destruction of democratic rights, won over time in struggle, from the Eureka Stockaders, trade unions, peace activists: by all who are committed to the extension of democratic rights.

These rights are now being eroded at increasing speed by todays governments in league with the big corporations, who see mass actions as a challenge to what they regard as their sacred right to rule and exploit.
Editorial

Plebiscite already causing division

The Australian electorate is known to be cautious and conservative when it comes to plebiscites and referendums. Often the wording of the proposition is so restrictive or inadequate in dealing with the question that voters give a resounding thumbs down to ideas that have solid support in the community. The 1999 referendum to make Australia a republic was a classic of the type. The currently proposed plebiscite, supposedly to test support for same sex marriage, suffers from this problem including a number of others that are already causing division.

The poll, estimated to cost a hefty $160 million, wont decide the matter. The federal parliament wont be bound by the decision. It could ignore a yes vote and continue to dither on the issue despite overwhelming popular support. A no vote, arising from a rejection of the wording of the question or some other circumstance, would set back any move to change the marriage act for a long time. A plebiscite, rather than a vote of the federal parliament, is a win/win for opponents of change.

It is instructive that the marriage act was amended by a vote of the parliament as recently as 2004. It was in the period when the Howard government had a majority in both houses and was very busy advancing its reactionary agenda. It changed the act to unambiguously define marriage as the union of a man and a woman. The argument presently being advanced by these same political forces that the people, rather than the houses of parliament, should decide the question stinks to high heaven.

Clearly, there is a range of opinion among the Coalitions gang in parliament. The group that appears to be dominating policy on the question of the marriage act is gathered around former Prime Minister Tony Abbott and ultra-reactionary SA Senator Cory Bernardi. The latter is currently leading the charge to repeal section 18C of the Racial Descrimination Act. This would allow bigots to give vent to their hatred without fear of prosecution. Smearing Islam is another tool of Bernardis community-dividing trade.

For some time, the federal parliament has been riddled with members pushing a reactionary social program. On the Labor side are former proteges of the Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association  a union whose leadership is notorious for selling out its lowly-paid membership while it pursues its ultra-conservative hobbyhorses, including opposition to equal marriage. Former heavyweights of the Australian Workers Union come from a similar anti-Communist background with a deep commitment to keeping the basic pillars of capitalist society in place.

For all that, the ALP committed itself to a parliamentary vote in the lead-up to the federal election. It sniffed the political wind and noted, correctly, that the community wants this question decided quickly so that people can get on with their lives with respect and equal rights. As it stands, the debate is a distraction from the many legislative and other attacks on workers and other exploited people. This is just what the reactionary elements on the Australian political scene want.

Some have pointed to the experience of the vote in favour of same sex marriage in Ireland last year and claimed it as a success story for the holding of a nation-wide poll. In that case, the vote for change was won but the cost was high. Visiting celebrity and symbol of the poll, Panti Bliss (Rory ONeill), emphasises that a vote in parliament would be a far less destructive method. The referendum in Ireland was the cue for hate-mongers to weigh into the debate. They got major media attention for their unpopular homophobic cause due to a distorted application of the principle of journalistic balance.

There is no doubt that a plebiscite would mobilise the same forces in this country. They will rally their lobby groups and foundations to stir hatred for LGTBI Australians. A matter that could be resolved simply and in a dignified manner will become an ugly opportunity to build political careers on the extreme right. The holding of a plebiscite on equal marriage must be opposed.
CUB left flat

Sacked Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) brewery members had a huge victory last week when the labour hire firm providing non-union workers which took their jobs withdrew from the CUB Abbotsford plant due to its inability to work with the management.

Programmed Maintenance threw in the towel after 11 weeks of failure after its fill-in fitters failed to raise beer production above a third of normal, leaving it facing millions of dollars in losses and legal action from the upset management of CUB.

That leaves CUB, which hired Programmed to reduce maintenance wages by up to 65 percent, struggling to find a new contractor or with the only sensible choice  re-employ the sacked 55 maintenance experts on their previous pay and conditions.

AMWU Victorian state secretary Steve Dargavel said CUB was now isolated after being publicly exposed as the puppet master behind the whole strategy.

Programmed tendered for and won the CUB contract on the lowest labour costs but hasnt been able to perform and they leave CUB in disarray, Dargavel said.

We expect CUB to sue Programmed. Labour hire contractors should take note, they face losing millions of dollars if they put themselves in a position of undercutting the wages and conditions of workers.

Fitters and electricians will march with workers from other unions on the Victorian State Parliament this Thursday (September 8) in a massive protest against the multinational brewer.

Programmeds withdrawal came a day after the industrial agreement it used at CUB and tried to impose on the 55 AMWU and Electrical Trades Union (ETU) members was exposed as a sham by ABC radios Background Briefing.

The West Australian agreement from a few years ago was signed by only three casuals, one who said he did not understand what it was and only worked for the contractor for six days.

ETU officials said they had met with cross-benchers in Canberra this week, who would support a parliamentary inquiry into corporate gaming of the Fair Work Act.

ACTU secretary Dave Oliver, at the weekly rally outside CUB, said the 55 had the movements total support and hit out at the Turnbull government masquerading as the workers friend while introducing a raft of anti-union legislation to Parliament.

AMWU member Chris Brown said morale is high. The sacked workers deepened the embarrassment for CUB by protesting outside its corporate headquarters in Melbournes Southbank area last week.

Its hard to see CUB being able to get any other labour hire company to fight this battle for them, no contractor in their right mind would touch them, Brown said.

CUB are out of options, but we know its not the end of this dispute, just one win.
Taking Issue: Rob Gowland  Part 1

The capitalist establishment  not quite a monolith

We tend to think of the capitalist elite, the notorious one percent, as monolithic, a homogeneous whole, the ruling class, but while they share a common class interest, they are divided on precisely how that class interest is to be interpreted and applied. It has ever been thus. Just look at the differences within the ruling class of France and Britain in the 1930s over how to deal with the threat of Nazi aggression: appeasement, defence pacts, collaboration and self-interested variations all had their exponents.

US columnist and author Dr Paul Craig Roberts has written an interesting if somewhat confused (and sometimes inaccurate) article that reflects these contradictions as they impact the world today. Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy in one US administration, an associate editor of the Wall Street Journal and a columnist for Business Week so his ruling class credentials are impeccable.

And yet he can make a statement like this: The left [he is referring to the left in the USA] suffered a tremendous blow when the Soviet Union collapsed. The Soviet collapse deprived the left of its belief that there was an alternative to American democratic capitalism. [Actually, as we know, capitalism is anything but democratic, in the USA as anywhere else.] The Soviet collapse also disheartened the left because the collapse removed any constraint on Washingtons unilateralism. With China shaking off Mao and moving into the capitalist camp [the Chinese Party would dispute that], there was no one to pick up the torch ...

The West needs a strong left-wing movement with the strength to challenge the lies that are leading the world to a war of extinction of life. I would prefer a reformist left to a revolutionary one [a very revealing statement], but this is not to say that a revolutionary left is not preferable to what exists today, which is revolutionary neo-conservatism without opposition from a countervailing force.

What the devil is revolutionary neo-conservatism I wonder? It sounds like a contradiction in terms and to my mind reflects Roberts own ideological confusion.

Nevertheless, his article, distributed by Information Clearing House, and called Rethinking the Cold War  and the new one, is very interesting for the glimpse it gives us of the divisions within the capitalist ruling class, and the possibilities for united action with at least some of the establishment against the war-mongering ultra-reactionaries.

In his article, Roberts says that the Cold War began during the Truman administration and ... was ended in Reagans second term when Reagan and Gorbachev came to an agreement that the conflict was dangerous, expensive, and pointless, a curiously naive assessment that ignores the triumphalism displayed by US leaders and the determined anti-Sovietism of Gorbachev. Gorbachev might in fact have thought the Cold War was pointless, Reagan (or his advisers) I am sure had no such illusions.

We know that in fact the Cold War did not end. Its form and propaganda changed to take advantage of the changed circumstances; that was all. Even Roberts acknowledges that the lull did not last long. In the 1990s President Clinton restarted the Cold War by breaking Americas promise not to expand NATO into Eastern Europe. George W Bush heated up the renewed Cold War by pulling the US out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and Obama has made the war hotter with irresponsible rhetoric and by placing US missiles on Russias border and overthrowing the Ukrainian government.

The Cold War was a strategic expression of the class war, as the most highly developed capitalist powers sought to create tactical advantages for themselves over their Socialist rival. Roberts, however, sees it differently: for him the Cold War was the work of the Dulles brothers. Allen was the head of the CIA, and John Foster was the Secretary of State, positions that they held for a long time. The brothers had a vested interest in the Cold War ...

Whenever a reformist democratic government appeared in Latin America the Dulles brothers saw it as a threat to the holdings that their law firms clients had in that country. These holdings, sometimes acquired with bribes to non-democratic governments, diverted the countrys resources and wealth into American hands and that is the way the Dulles brothers intended to keep it. The reformist government would be declared Marxist or Communist, and the CIA and State Department would work together to overthrow it and place back in power a dictator in bed with Washington.

Well thats certainly what they would do, but surely they would do that with or without the Dulles brothers? It was in their class interest to do it. And they did it wherever progressive governments appeared or tried to operate, not just where the Dulles brothers clients did business.

Roberts, however, has a theory, a theory that flirts with the truth while failing to fully comprehend it. The Soviet government, unlike the US government today, had no world hegemonic aspirations. Stalin had declared Socialism in one country and purged the Trotskyists, the advocates of world revolution. Communism in China and Eastern Europe were not products of Soviet international communism. Mao was his own man, and the Soviet Union kept Eastern Europe from which the Red Army drove out the Nazis as a buffer against a hostile West.

He does the same with the Vietnam war. Ho Chi Minh was an anti-colonialist leading a nationalist movement. He was not an agent of international Communism, but John Foster Dulles made him one and said that Ho must be stopped or the domino theory would result in the fall of all of Southeast Asia to Communism. Vietnam won the war and did not launch the aggression that Dulles predicted against Southeast Asia.

Dulles, however, did not invent the mythical threat of Red aggression, anymore than he invented anti-Communism. They are the inevitable by-products of capitalism itself. The leaders of capitalism at the imperialist stage of its development interpret the actions of other governments in terms of what they themselves would do. In the case of US imperialism, that means in terms of aggression.

Roberts does, however, correctly identify one of the uses of anti-Communism. In those days the Red scare was used like the Muslim terrorist scare today  to force the public to go along with an agenda without debate or understanding.

Colonialisms end

On the other hand, he has some decidedly weird ideas about the way international affairs actually operate. If Washington had simply told the French government that the colonialist era was over and that France needed to vacate Indo-China, the disaster of the Vietnam war would have been avoided. French capitalism would simply have given up any ambitions it might have had to become rich (or richer) by retaining control of its colonies in Asia which supplied raw materials for its manufacturing and markets for its produce. Sure it would have.

He actually accepts the Cold War propaganda that NATO was a defensive alliance. NATO was unnecessary as there was no danger of the Red Army sweeping into Western Europe. Can anyone who takes an interest in international affairs seriously doubt that NATO is an aggressive pact?

Next week: Nuclear new war doctrine
Brazil

Coup ousts Rousseff

On August 31, after six days of sometimes raucous debate, the Brazilian Senate voted to remove President Dilma Rousseff from office. Her former vice president, Michel Temer, who has been the acting president since Rousseff was suspended in May, now will be president until the next national elections in 2018. This action essentially punishes President Rousseff for trying to protect government programs that have helped to bring 30 million Brazilians out of poverty since 2002.

Rousseff will continue to play a leading role in Brazilian electoral politics.

In the short period in which Temer has been acting, he has made clear that his full accession to power would be a victory for Brazilian elites, their right-wing political allies, and for multinational corporations. But Brazilian workers, students, minorities, women and the left intend to mount such an opposition to Temer, whom they characterise as an illegitimate president who has come to power through a coup which ignores the will of the people, that he will not be able to impose his program.

A pretext to impeach

The impeachment and, now, removal of Dilma Rousseff from the presidency was carried out with the pretext of punishing her for budgetary adjustments she made in 2014, which her enemies characterise as a crime of responsibility. Brazil at that time had entered into a bad economic recession, and Rousseff had moved budgetary items around, making temporary use of state bank funds, so as to protect social program initiated under her predecessor, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and continued under her administration.

These programs have pulled 30 million poor Brazilians out of poverty, but they are resented by the rich elites and especially by the right wing caucuses in the Brazilian Congress, who think that such things are too good for poor, largely non-white people, and that the money that goes to them should be used to pay off domestic and foreign creditors instead.

So they claim that her budgetary adjustments amount to a crime of responsibility, a legalistic formula that has to be invoked to impeach and remove an incumbent Brazilian president. Rousseff and her supporters say that the budgetary adjustments in question were not illegal and follow the precedent of similar actions by former presidents.

But many of Rousseffs supporters think that the budgetary issue was a pretext.

There is strong evidence that the real reason for removing Rousseff was to put Temer into power so that he could shut down corruption investigations being carried out under Operation Lava Jato (Jet Car Wash). This is the nickname for an investigation of a vast scheme of bribery and kickbacks involving subcontracting with Brazils immense national oil company, PETROBRAS.

It is a scandal which has ensnared a huge number of politicians, officials and businessmen and women already. Most of the people in Congress who worked for Rousseffs impeachment are implicated. Indeed, Rousseff is one of the few major Brazilian political figures who has not been accused of corruption of this type.

Temer is also credibly accused of major corruption, and may be a target for impeachment himself in the not-too-distant future. The former and present speakers of the Chamber of Deputies and the President of the Senate are also being investigated.

The struggle continues

After both Houses of Congress had moved to impeach Rousseff, her trial in the Senate began last week. The first two days were taken up with preliminary manoeuvring. On Monday, August 29, Rousseff made an impassioned speech in the Senate in which she justified the legality of her actions and denounced the plan to remove her as a coup. On Wednesday, the Senate took the vote.

To remove Rousseff from power, the vote went 61 for and 20 against; evidently all 81 Senators voted. Support for Rousseff came from her own Workers Party, from the Communist Party of Brazil and a few others. The whole of the right voted to remove her.

But a second motion, to forbid Rousseff from holding public office for eight years, fell short of the 54 votes that would have been needed; 16 senators who voted to remove the president voted no and another three abstained on this second vote. This guarantees that Rousseff will continue to play a leading role in Brazilian electoral politics.

In a post-coup speech, Rousseff indicated that she aims to do just that. [I ask my supporters] not to desist in the struggle. They think they defeated us, but they are deluded. I know that we are all going to struggle. There will be [organised] against them the firmest, inexhaustible and energetic opposition that a coup government could undergo.

The grassroots steps up

Mass organisations and movements in Brazil immediately took up the challenge. The National Students Union (UNE) issued a statement committing itself not to recognise the coup government and called for massive street protests against the reactionary program of austerity and privatisation that Temers regime was already implementing before Wednesdays vote in the Senate.

Brazilian organised labour has been organising and demonstrating against Rousseffs removal since the issue first arose. Vagner Freitas, President of the Central Workers Union (CUT), the countrys largest labour federation, announced that CUT is in mourning because of the deposing of Rousseff.

He laid out a detailed explanation as to what workers can now expect from the Temer administration in terms of revocation of workers rights, austerity, cutbacks in social welfare and massive privatisation of Brazils state enterprises, natural resources and infrastructure, including in the all-important petroleum industry; now transnational corporations will have full access to Brazils petroleum reserves. But Brazilian unions are also not going to take all this lying down. Freitas announced continued mass mobilisations and a general strike for September 22.

How will the United States government react? There has been action in this country to demand that the Obama administration not lend any aid and comfort to the people who impeached and now have deposed Rousseff.

The Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, the AFL-CIO trade union leadership and 40 members of the US House of Representatives, including the veteran representative Democrat John Conyers have all spoken out strongly against Brazils constitutional coup.

Efforts to keep our government from recognising Temer as president of Brazil will continue, though initial signs are that the State Department will recognise the change in government; a State Department spokesperson hastened to comment that the Brazilian Senates action was in conformity with the Brazilian Constitution and that the United States looked forward to working with the Temer government.

At writing, Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela have withdrawn their ambassadors. Cuba has denounced the actions that took place in Brazils Senate.

Peoples World
NASA reports that its first ever asteroid sampling mission launched into space at 7:05 p.m. EDT Thursday from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, "beginning a journey that could revolutionize our understanding of the early solar system."

OSIRIS-REx, which is short for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer, is headed to the near-Earth asteroid called Bennu.

The probe's job: Touch the asteroid (after asking consent first, and with a platonic vibe) so we can bring a small sample back to Earth for study. If all goes as planned after today's launch, the spacecraft will reach Bennu in 2018 and return a sample to Earth in 2023.

"Tonight is a night for celebration, we are on the way to an asteroid," said Ellen Stofan, NASA's chief scientist. "We're going to be answering some of the most fundamental questions that NASA works on."







"Today, we celebrate a huge milestone for this remarkable mission, and for this mission team," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. "We're very excited about what this mission can tell us about the origin of our solar system, and we celebrate the bigger picture of science that is helping us make discoveries and accomplish milestones that might have been science fiction yesterday, but are science facts today."

"This represents the hopes and dreams and blood, sweat and tears of thousands of people who have been working on this for years," said Dante Lauretta, the principal investigator for OSIRIS-REx at the University of Arizona. "I can't tell you how thrilled I was this evening, thinking of the people who played a part in this."

You can follow the mission on Twitter.

More from NASA:

The Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft is designed to rendezvous with, study, and return a sample of the asteroid Bennu to Earth. Asteroids like Bennu are remnants from the formation of our solar system more than 4.5 billion years ago. Scientists suspect that asteroids may have been a source of the water and organic molecules for the early Earth and other planetary bodies. An uncontaminated asteroid sample from a known source would enable precise analyses, providing results far beyond what can be achieved by spacecraft-based instruments or by studying meteorites. OSIRIS-REx separated from its United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket 8:04 p.m. minutes after launch. The solar arrays deployed and are now powering the spacecraft. "With today's successful launch, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft embarks on a journey of exploration to Bennu," said Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator at the University of Arizona, Tucson. "I couldn't be more proud of the team that made this mission a reality, and I can't wait to see what we will discover at Bennu." In 2018, OSIRIS-REx will approach Bennu  which is the size of a small mountain  and begin an intricate dance with the asteroid, mapping and studying Bennu in preparation for sample collection. In July 2020, the spacecraft will perform a daring maneuver in which its 11-foot arm will reach out and perform a five-second "high-five" to stir up surface material, collecting at least 2 ounces (60 grams) of small rocks and dust in a sample return container. OSIRIS-REx will return the sample to Earth in September 2023, when it will then be transported to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston for examination. The OSIRIS-REx mission will be the first U.S. mission to carry samples from an asteroid back to Earth and the largest sample returned from space since the Apollo era. "It's satisfying to see the culmination of years of effort from this outstanding team," said Mike Donnelly, OSIRIS-REx project manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "We were able to deliver OSIRIS-REx on time and under budget to the launch site, and will soon do something that no other NASA spacecraft has done  bring back a sample from an asteroid." Goddard provides overall mission management, systems engineering and the safety and mission assurance for OSIRIS-REx. The University of Arizona leads the science team and observation planning and processing. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver built the spacecraft. OSIRIS-REx is the third mission in NASA's New Frontiers Program. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the agency's New Frontiers Program for its Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Launch and countdown management is the responsibility of NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

For images, video, and more information, visit nasa.gov/osiris-rex and asteroidmission.org.

HEADER PHOTO: A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket lifts off from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station carrying NASA's Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer, or OSIRIS-REx spacecraft on the first U.S. mission to sample an asteroid, retrieve at least two ounces of surface material and return it to Earth for study.Liftoff was at 7:05 p.m. EDT. IMAGE: NASA.
Iran

Unions face state brutality

An interview by Iran Today with Maziyar Gilaninejhad, leader of the Union of the Metalworkers and Mechanics of Iran (UMMI)*, who speaks about the state of trade unionism in the country.

Iranians celebrating the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) between Iran and the 5+1 in July last year.

Q: What is the state of the trade union movement in Iran?

MG: In the current situation of the trade unions and labour movement in Iran, the attitude of the employers is not good and they generally still do not recognise independent trade unions and their activity. With the flogging of the Agh darreh miners in May, as a punishment for protesting against their conditions, we are entering a new phase where employers can easily complain about such activity and thereby condemn them.

Not only do employers see the activities and operation of trade unions as obstacles in the way of their exploitation and profiteering, government economic policies are also aimed at the deregulation of labour relations in the country. In the last week of July the government excluded more than 28 areas of the country from the application of Iranian labour law and declared them as Free Economic and Trade Zones.

Q: Is the labour law properly implemented in Iran?

MG: The issue of the enforcement of such laws anywhere in the world depends on the balance of power between the labour movement and government. In Iran, on some very basic and trivial issues, we can challenge the employers and prevent the violation of workers rights. But regarding the key macro issues I would have to say no as such provisions of labour law are pushed aside and nobody except the workers see themselves as obligated to implement them. The Ministry of Labour is still interested in promoting and imposing its own pet structures and tries hard to impose them, as the supposedly legitimate representatives of the workers.

Q: What is your opinion about the formal institutions such as the House of Labour and Islamic Labour Councils? Have these institutions ever played a positive role in changing the situation of workers in Iran?

MG: In the decades that they have been active they have been practically controlled and maintained by the Ministry of Labour and not had any independent function whatsoever. As well as being government-controlled, they cannot be considered real worker organisations as they are ideologically exclusive  believing in Islam is a fundamental pre-condition of membership.

These bodies are religious organisations that operate to promote government policies and instructions in the work place. During the 30 years of their operation, these institutions have not taken any positive step for workers as they coordinate their activities with the Ministry of Labour and the employers against the labour and the trade union movement. Recent examples of this include their connivance in the recent flogging of the mineworkers for protesting against their conditions, or their part in ratifying a minimum wage that was at least 75 percent less than the government-defined poverty line.

Q: At the beginning of his presidency, Mr Rouhani promised that he would attend to labour issues and the question of trade union freedoms. Has he or his government done anything in relation to the realisation of workers rights?

MG: His Ministry of Labour have not only avoided their responsibilities in dealing with the disputes between workers and employers, but have also failed to prevent the intervention of security forces in attacking the labour strikes. The government is dragging its feet in relation to the payment of an extra housing allowance, while senior government officers have enjoyed a 50 percent increase in their salaries and other benefits.

Imports continue unabated while domestic industries are still in recession. Unemployment and poverty is creating havoc but the ruinous prescriptions of the International Monetary Fund are being implemented nonetheless. The government seems merely concerned with providing cheap labour for foreign investors.

Q: Has the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) between Iran and the 5+1 [known commonly as the Iran nuclear deal] had any impact on the status and situation of wage-earners and salaried employees?

MG: No. Despite the promises of our countrys officials that the economy would be reenergised and improved  with the signing of the JCPOA, lifting of the sanctions and the return of billions of dollars in oil and gas revenue  unfortunately, not only have these promises not been fulfilled but also the US and European signatories to the agreement have not kept to their side of the deal in lifting the sanctions, particularly those pertaining to banking and monetary systems. In order to attract foreign investment in the country, the government has intensified its privatisation program and the lowering of labour costs.

It is trying to amend and change the labour law code by removing those articles that support the fundamental rights of workers. Not only are no new jobs created, instead there exist now concerted efforts to pave the way for the supply of cheap and unregulated labour.

This year all activists and trade unionists in the oil industry have been sacked. Everywhere in the oil industry you meet workers that have not received their wages for more than four months.

Q: How do you see the prospects for trade union activities in Iran?

MG: Over the past ten years, we have been able to raise the demands of workers stronger with every day. We have established a good relationship with the workers through the monthly publication of Trade Union Messenger which is printed and distributed widely amongst them. And, with the latest issue dated July 2016, we have now published, printed and distributed 50 issues continuously over the past seven years.

Q: The Metalworkers in Iran have been able to engage successfully with trade union federations internationally and in particular with the IndustriALL global union. What assistance could active trade union organisations in other countries provide you with in the campaign for achieving trade union rights in Iran for the workers?

MG: In recent years IndustriALL global union has been able to help us in various campaigns and reduce the pressure on the trade unions in Iran. Our representatives have had important consultative meetings with those from the leadership of IndustriALL and we hope that this solidarity is expanded and strengthened every day. One of our requests, from international trade union organisations across the world, has been that they use their influence in powerful bodies such as the ILO to press the Iranian authorities and employers to implement the terms of the ILO conventions 87 and 98.

Three years ago UMMI with the help of its labour lawyers prepared a complaint about the lack of any attention to the standard health and safety at work regulations and submitted it to the ILO. This referred to the death of two female workers.

The re-production of reports and information from our publications in the bulletins and magazines of trade unions and global trade union confederations internationally would also be very positive.

We believe that the strength, influence and success of any trade union in any corner of the world is also the strength of Iranian trade unions, including the Union of Metalworkers of Iran, and we will celebrate it.

* The Union of Metalworkers and Mechanics of Iran is an independent trade union representing industrial workers in Iran.

Peoples World
Culture & Life

Coal threat to the Coast

The main water-catchment valleys on the NSW Central Coast  the Dooralong and Yarramalong Valleys  are under threat from a government-sanctioned underground long-wall coal mine. The proposed mine, Wallarah 2, would be operated by KORES, the South Korean government-owned Korean Resources Co, and the locals have been fighting it for years.

A local protest against the Wallarah 2 coal mine proposal.

A long-wall coal mine uses a huge piece of equipment called a shearer that continuously grinds coal from the seam and dumps it into a conveyor. The conveyor takes the coal to a stockpile, from which (in the case of Wallarah 2) it would be loaded onto trains on a rail spur and trundled off to Newcastle, now the worlds largest coal-loading port.

So whats wrong with that? Well, lets see. First theres the health effects of coal dust on miners, rail workers and the community. The proposal calls for the conveyor belt and stockpile to operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for the next 30 years. Kate da Costa, spokesperson for The Greens on the Central Coast, points out that freight trains will be loading coal from an uncovered conveyor belt around the clock.

As printed notices pinned to telegraph polls across the Central Coast point out: Coal Dust Kills. Alan Hayes, long-time campaigner against attempting to extract coal or CSG from under the Central Coast valleys, told the Wyong Regional Chronicle: When you are talking about coal dust, you are talking about fine micro particles that cant be seen by the naked eye but are carried many kilometres by the wind and will get into your lungs and cause all sorts of respiratory problems.

Then theres the potential damage to the water table in valleys that carry the bulk of the Coasts natural water supply. Long-wall coal mines are highly mechanised. As the coal shearer machinery and its accompanying conveyor belt progress along the coal seam, the over-burden is allowed to collapse behind it. This may be smart economics for the coal company, but it practically guarantees subsidence. The result is cracking of roads and the walls of houses.

More insidious, but potentially more devastating, is the effect of this subsidence on rural creeks and dams. Dams can lose their entire contents, small rivers can cease to flow altogether, as their water disappears into a new aquifer or floods a disused mine.

In the manner of most government bureaucracies under capitalism, the body set up many years ago to manage this problem in the coal fields, the Mine Subsidence Board, seems less interested in facilitating claims for compensation from affected property owners than in avoiding them, especially claims for damage to dams.

Already, water is piped long distances to supplement the Central Coasts own water catchment. Any damage to the catchment and water-carrying ability of the Dooralong and Yarramalong valleys would be potentially very serious. There are already over 300,000 people living on the NSW Central Coast and the state government is keen to turn some sections of it into centres of population growth, which would dramatically increase the population and the accompanying water consumption.

If the mine was to proceed, the coal stockpile, conveyor belt and rail spur would be a scant 200 metres from the densely populated suburb of Blue Haven. Apart from coal dust, the nine storey coal loader would be clearly visible to residents there and also to residents of a new suburb being developed by the Darkinjung Local Aboriginal Land Council.

Alan Hayes community organisation, the Australian Coal Alliance, has also raised concerns about air extraction from the proposed mine and the possible dumping of contaminated water from the mine project into local lakes or the ocean.

During the 2011 NSW election, the then state Liberal leader, Barry OFarrell came up to the Central Coast, donned a Coal Alliance Water Not Coal T-shirt and declared that, if he won government, mining under the water catchment valleys would not be allowed: No ifs, no buts, a guarantee! Once elected, however, Kores mine proposal was back on the agenda, with Liberal government support.

Labor member for Wyong, and Shadow Minister for the Central Coast, David Harris, has called on the Baird Liberal Party government to buy back Kores exploration licence for the Wallarah 2 mine, the same way they have agreed to buy back from BHP the licence for the proposed Caroona mine in the Liverpool plains. That buy-back is costing the NSW government $220 million, but the opponents of the Wallarah 2 mine argue it is equally sensitive.

However, the Baird government has made it a requirement now that when the Planning Assessment Commission examines a development proposal it has to prioritise economic outcomes. In other words, if it is good for business, that takes priority over other issues like public health or the environment.

Kate da Costa, from the Central Coast Greens, pointed out in an interview with the Wyong Regional Chronicle that Kores own EIS (environmental impact statement) actually conceded that a coal mine in a populated area like that proposed for Wallarah 2 could increase mortality by one in 100,000 people per year.

There are presently some 320,000 people living on the Central Coast of NSW (the author of this article is one of them). If the mining companys figures are correct  and one would expect them to be understated if anything  then if the mine goes ahead we can expect three additional deaths every year. Over the anticipated life of the mine, that means 90 people who will die because of the mine.

Alan Hayes pointed out to the Chronicle: The NSW government wants the whole northern area of the Central Coast zoned for housing, a plan that will boost the population of the region enormously. But, as Hayes adds, if you had a young family, would you go to coal mine central to raise your children?

Not if you wanted them to grow up healthy you wouldnt.
Valentino Rossi has explained the reason why a mid-session exchange with Aleix Espargaro became so heated on Friday afternoon, with the Suzuki rider's refusal to apologise after the incident infuriating the Italian.

Fastest on Friday morning, Rossi found himself behind the Suzukis of Maverick Vi?ales and Espargaro in FP2, but found the latter particularly slow to move off the racing line.

According to Rossi, it was Espargaro's reaction that caused him to raise a middle finger in his direction. "Sincerely, I don't know his behaviour and it's not the first time.

"It happened exactly the same also in Austria," said Rossi, sixth fastest at the end of Friday and 0.6s off pace setter Pol Espargaro.

"I push and arrive behind the two Suzukis. Both rider see me: Vi?ales and Espargaro. Vi?ales go wide and Espargaro remain on the line. Sincerely I don't know why.

"After I say to him something. I say to him, 'What are you doing?' And he said to me, 'F**k you!' so for this I was angry. It's enough to say sorry. But they don't know the way to say sorry. It's better to say, 'F**k you!'"

Espargaro's actions earned him a visit from race director Mike Webb, who warned the Catalan to be more aware of the whereabouts of other riders on track.

"He came to the pits," said Espargaro of Webb's visit. "It's not normal, because he never comes to the pits. He always calls you to go there. But I imagine, since it's Valentino, he came to the pits.

However, Espargaro contended that he was not a major obstruction for Rossi, and was angered by Webb's subsequent visit.

"He told me to be more aware, but I asked him if they checked the video, and he said 'Yes, and you are not in the middle, you did not disturb him.' And he said, 'But anyway, be more aware', and I said, 'I will not be more aware if I didn't disturb him.'

"I repeated three times to him, "I disturbed him? Did you check the video?' And he told me no, I didn't disturb him. Then I say, 'Then go to talk with him, because I will not be more aware!'"

Looking ahead to Sunday's race, Rossi went on to explain how there is a need to find improvements with Michelin's medium front tyre, that is new for this race weekend.

"The day start in a good way. This morning was a good practice. We work a bit on the bike and especially at the end we put on harder tyres and I feel good and quite fast. We were quite positive for the afternoon. Then we have 15 degrees more. Unfortunately for some reason the harder rear does not work.

"The pace was a lot slower. Also we have some troubles with the front tyre. This circuit is very demanding for the front. Michelin bring a stronger front tyre but after some laps it's difficult. The tyre suffers quite a lot.

"Fortunately at the end I put the soft rear and I did quite a good run. The pace was not so bad. I finish in sixth. We have a lot of work to do, especially with the balance of the bike.

"We will try to improve the performance of the front tyre because the race will be very long, 28 laps. We need to find the way to improve the feeling with the front. Anyway we are not so far. As always everyone is very strong so we'll see if we can continue with a good thing."

Having sampled a new Yamaha chassis at the post-race test in Brno and in free practice at Silverstone, Rossi revealed that he has reverted to the standard chassis of before. The difference between the two, he said, was very small.

"We decide to use the standard because looking deeply at the data and my feeling we have some things a little bit better, some things a little bit worse. At the end of the lap it's very similar. At the end we decide to use the standard chassis which we know better and [with] which we have more experience."
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If the "man-made seismic event" reported along the North Korea/China border tonight by the USGS is confirmed to be a new nuclear test, America's next Commander-in-Chief will have complex new Pyongyang problems on their plate.

The U.S. Geological Survey measured the explosion around 930am local time in North Korea as a magnitude 5.3 event, located 19km ENE of Sungjibaegam, North Korea, at a depth of "zero."

"Possible explosion, located near the location where North Korea has detonated nuclear explosions in the past," reads the USGS notice.

"If this is indeed an explosion, the USGS National Earthquake Information Center cannot determine what type of explosion it may be, whether nuclear or any other possible type."

Putin sent Kim a congratulation message for today's holiday, the one North Korea just celebrated with a nuclear test pic.twitter.com/5DHcMOYA9z  Anna Fifield (@annafifield) September 9, 2016

But there's little doubt over what the data show, at least not among North Korea watchers.

The North has not confirmed, but as the BBC reports, "previous artificial earthquakes in that area and of that magnitude have all been nuclear tests."

From the New York Times:

South Korean officials said that they had detected an "artificial" tremor emanating from North Korea on Friday morning, indicating that the country has conducted its fifth nuclear test despite threats of more sanctions from Washington and the United Nations. The Korea Meteorological Administration detected the tremor and was analyzing data to see if it was caused by an earthquake or by an underground nuclear detonation, a spokeswoman said. The spokeswoman said that the tremor appeared to be "artificially caused," not by an earthquake.

Look at the time of the earthquake in North Korea: at exactly 9am local time (well, one second after) pic.twitter.com/MF6yXtaVoH  Anna Fifield (@annafifield) September 9, 2016

The last time North Korea is known to have tested a nuclear device was in January. South Korean President Park Guen-hye of South Korea warned in April that intelligence sources believed North Korea was preparing another underground nuclear test, in violation of United Nations sanctions.

From Reuters:

A South Korean government official said it was a suspected nuclear test, Yonhap reported, and Seoul called for an emergency National Security Council meeting. The China Earthquake Networks Center said the tremor was a suspected explosion. Japan's top government spokesman also said there was a high possibility the seismic event indicated that North Korea had conducted a nuclear test and that relevant ministries had been instructed to gather information. Two months ago, U.S.-based 38 North, a North Korea monitoring project, said satellite images showed a high level of activity at North Korea's nuclear test site, called Punggye-ri. Speculation has intensified that North Korea may conduct a fifth nuclear test after the United States blacklisted its leader, Kim Jong Un, on July 6 for human rights abuses.

NHK breaking into programming after apparent North Korean nuclear test pic.twitter.com/GMYsyDrdQq  Jon Passantino (@passantino) September 9, 2016

@annafifield The seismic data is clear. It's a zero depth event at the DPRK test site. That's an explosion unless they royally fouled up.  Jeffrey Lewis (@ArmsControlWonk) September 9, 2016

The good people at @38northNK had warned this nuclear test might be coming https://t.co/FQBE3wfNUn  Anna Fifield (@annafifield) September 9, 2016
Facebook has banned one of the most famous images of the Vietnam warthen 9-year-old Kim Phuc running naked from a napalm attack on her villagefor contravening the site's prohibition on "nudity." It even removed a posting of it by the Norwegian Prime Minister.

The editor of Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten said the entire post, which was about iconic war imagery, was later deleted and the account of the reporter behind it suspended. Espen Egil Hansen has accused Mark Zuckerberg of "an abuse of power". Facebook said it has to restrict nudity for cultural reasons. Mr Hansen said the image of Kim Phuc, then aged nine, was removed less than 24 hours after the newspaper received a request from the firm to either take down the image or pixelate it and before it had responded.

Phuc suffered horrific burns in the attack, which she described as "a blast of heat which felt like someone had opened the door of an oven." Though it was unlikely she'd survive, journalists Nick Ut (who shot the photo) and Christopher Wain took her to hospital and she pulled through. She lives in pain to this day, and the photograph is part of the world's cultural heritage, a powerful warning of the horror of war.

Facebook's won: it doesn't have to pretend to care anymore about being the "public square" it sometimes affects to be. But let's hope it can be convinced to reconsider this one.

It's time for expectations to change, though. Nobly declaring "I shall not comply with your requirement to remove this picture" only highlights to whom publishers have ceded their power, given that Facebook already removed the picture. Take this quote from Sue Llewellyn, a social media consultant:

She also disagreed with Mark Zuckerberg's comments last month that his company is a technology firm, not a media organisation.

"You can't be a distributor of news without having editorial responsibilities," she said. "They can't keep washing their hands of it and then censoring content."

Of course they can! As hypocritical and smarmy and holier-than-thou Facebook is about rights and access to Facebook, it still belongs to them.

Even if we got Facebook to agree to embody ideals of free expression, even if it believed in them to the heart of its culture, its nature and vulnerability as a private corporation forces it to act in its own perceived interests when a dilemma presents itself. If you care about being able to say what you want, your only option is not to speechcrop on Facebook. If you're not prepared to leave it for commercial reasons, because it's where the market is, that's cool. But unless it's nationalized and operated as a state-run utilityas if!Facebook will always have the last word on what you get to say on Facebook.
When Edward Snowden flew to Hong Kong with thumb-drives full of damning US government documents, he assumed his freedom was forfeit: he didn't even make an escape plan.

But after the explosive revelations of mass, illegal US spying, people around the world determined that they would save Snowden from the fate of Chelsea Manning: years of torture, decades of imprisonment. Among them was a Canadian human rights lawyer, Robert Tibbo, who had represented many of the teeming masses of refugees crammed into Hong Kong's asylum-seeker ghetto. Tibbo and his clients shuttled Snowden from shanty to shack to cramped apartment for days, hiding him in plain sight in Kowloon's Lai Chi Kok district among Vietnamese, Indonesian, Filipino, African and Sri Lankan asylum seekers who endure years of grinding poverty in their bid to make new lives away from their home countries.

Canada's National Post conducted a long, wide-ranging interview with Tibbo about Snowden's unlikely escape, filling in the blanks with information from Wikileaks volunteers, other lawyers, Laura Poitras, and Snowden himself. The tale of the vulnerable people who selflessly hid Snowden is the main meat of the story, but perhaps more salient  given the oft-repeated smear that Snowden was a Russian spy  is the story of how Snowden ended up in Moscow.



Sarah Harrison, a British Wikileaks staffer and close confidante of Assange, flew to Hong Kong from Australia and consulted with Snowden's lawyers. She purchased more than a dozen airline tickets to different destinations, including Iceland, Cuba and India, to confuse U.S., Chinese and Hong Kong officials monitoring the airport, despite having received "neutral to a green-light" from the city-state's government allowing Snowden to leave unhindered. Meanwhile, Assange, who was in self-exile at the Ecuadorean embassy in London, worked his connections with South American governments to obtain diplomatic protection for the young American. On June 23, Tibbo drove Snowden and Harrison to Hong Kong International Airport. During that journey, Snowden, who had just met his travelling companion from Wikileaks for the first time, seemed unusually nervous. The pair posed as a young couple headed on a vacation. Leaving little to chance, Man simultaneously bought a ticket to Shanghai to get access to the boarding gates in the event Snowden encountered problems before boarding the plane. Tibbo waited at the Immigration department at the airport. Unlike the early days, this escape was meticulously planned. "We tried our best to avoid surveillance," Man recalled. "Looking back, we must have been crazy. We understood the danger, but we didn't think much about it. Luckily, it turned out successfully."

How Snowden Escaped [Theresa Tedesco/National Post]





(Image: Supun and Nadeeka let Edward Snowden hide in their home in Lai Chi Kok; Jayne Russell for National Post)
Stephen Colbert looks into Florida attorney general Pam Bondi's decision not to join other states in prosecuting Trump University.

Could it be that the two large donations Trump gave Bondi influenced her decision? We also learn that Pam Bondi is a dog thief, and that Donald Trump's rear end might resemble a bumpy decorative gourd.

[via]


New research from University College London suggests that the universe is indeed "isotropic," the same in all directions. Cosmologists Daniela Saadeh and Andrew Pontzen analyzed cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation left over from the Big Bang for any patterns that would indicate "a special direction in space."

From the journal Science:



There is no spin axis or any other special direction in space. In fact, they estimate that there is only a one-in-121,000 chance of a preferred directionthe best evidence yet for an isotropic universe.



In 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus knocked Earth and humanity from the supposed center of the universe by noting that Earth goes around the sun, not the other way around. That observation gave birth to the Copernican principle, which holds that we have no special place in the infinite, centerless universe. In the early 20th century, with the advent of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity and the observation that the universe is expanding in all directions, that idea evolved into the cosmological principle, which assumes that the universe is the same everywhere and in every direction. In fancier terms, the universe is both homogeneous and isotropic.
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Report: Dell To Cut 2 Percent Of Workforce This Year In Bid To Trim Costs, Pay Down Debt

Matt Brown

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Dell Technologies plans to cut about 2 percent of its workforce by the end of the year in a drive to trim costs after taking on some $47 billion in debt to close the largest acquisition in IT industry history, according to a report.

The Round Rock, Texas, company will cut between 2,000 and 3,000 jobs, mostly in the U.S., in an effort to cut $1.7 billion in costs over the next 18 months, Bloomberg reported.

In a conference call with media and analysts Wednesday, Dell CFO Tom Sweet said the company planned to cut costs from its supply chain and general administrative operations. In total, the company has about 140,000 employees in 180 countries, Sweet said. According to Bloomberg, the marketing department is also being targeted.

[Related: The 10 Biggest Channel Challenges Facing Dell After Acquiring EMC]

Sweet said Dell plans to aggressively pay down the $47 billion in debt associated with its $58 billion acquisition of data storage giant EMC, which closed Wednesday. He said the company expects cash flow to be three times the cost of servicing the debt.

A top executive at a large reseller that works with both Dell and EMC said he isnt concerned about the cuts or the companys debt. Common sense says that you put together a company with 140,000 employees, obviously theres redundancy. Thats the reality. Theres going to be a selective editing, if you will, thats going to take place. Its the nature of the beast. I dont think it has any impact. Cisco just announced theyre laying off 5,000 and theyre not doing a merger.

As for the debt, Wall Street is smarter than any of us when it comes to managing money, and the debt was oversubscribed, the reseller executive said. I think Wall Street looked at this thing and yawned. As a partner, I dont think theres anything to worry about Theyre going to invest in new technology; theyre going to continue to acquire companies.

Still, competitors have latched on to the Dell debt load. HPE CEO Meg Whitman, whose efforts have focused on making her company smaller, told CRN this week that Dells nearly $60 billion in debt in total would compromise its ability to innovate or move quickly.

We are getting more nimble and faster and more responsive to partners, Whitman told CRN. We are doubling down on new technology  and we are de-leveraging the company. We went from $12.5 billion of net debt on the operating company to $5.3 billion of net cash. And Dell is leveraging up which gives them less degrees of freedom in terms of doubling down on new technology. Its going to be a cost take-out play.

On the conference call Wednesday, Dell Chairman and CEO Michael Dell, now the head of the largest privately held IT firm in the world, said, Our debt payments are less than our competitors pay in share buybacks and dividends.

At the end of its most recent fiscal year ended Jan. 31, Dell had about $10.7 billion in long-term debt, mostly associated with going private in a $25 billion leveraged buyout in late 2013. Since then, it has paid off about $5 billion of the debt associated with that deal, Sweet said.

Dell reported cash flow of about $2.2 billion for its most recent fiscal year. EMC reported cash flow of $3.9 billion for its most recent fiscal year.
Cloud News

Accenture Continues On Salesforce Solution Provider Acquisition Path With Deal For New Energy Group

Jimmy Sheridan

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Accenture has struck a deal to acquire a 400-person Salesforce solution provider, Italy-based New Energy Group, further expanding its Salesforce capabilities.

The acquisition, which is anticipated to close within the next two months, builds on progress the company has made through its four previous Salesforce partner acquisitions within the past two years.

I am so excited for this acquisition, said Saideep Raj, managing director of Accenture Globals Cloud First Applications team. The reason that we are doing these acquisitions is that even though we are [a leading partner] with Salesforce and have organic strength, the demand is so great that we have to make acquisitions like this to continue to extend our leadership position. Its a really great signal to show that the growth is continuing in this space.

[Related: Blockbuster Buy: Accenture Snaps Up Cloud Sherpas, Sets Its Sights On Cloud Growth ]

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

As part of the deal, Accenture will acquire all New Energy-branded organizations as well as Bit2win, New Energys Salesforce-based product suite that assists companies in transforming their front office with simple, agile and digitally enabled sales solutions.

Following the acquisition, Raj said New Energy will join the Accenture Cloud First Applications team, which delivers cloud services for Salesforce, Workday, ServiceNow, Google, Pegasystems and other pure-play cloud technologies.

New Energys leadership will be integrated into Accentures regional leadership positions within that organization, he said.

Raj said that although Accenture is currently the Salesforce partner with the most certified professionals, the New Energy acquisition will help the company keep its global lead on the competition, and will boost the number of Salesforce-certified consultants that the company has.

Currently, according to a release from Accenture, the Dublin-based company  No. 2 on the 2016 CRN Solution Provider 500 - has more than 3,700 unique certified professionals.

However, following its acquisition of New Energy, Accenture will gain 200 new certified professionals that together hold 300 Salesforce certifications.

In certain geographies, we have double, sometimes even triple the number of certified consultants of any other partner. Its a measure of the scale we have in terms of the depth of skills that we have around Salesforce, Raj said.

This acquisition, Accentures 10th in 2016, is the companys fifth Salesforce-driven acquisition since 2014.

In February 2015, Accenture acquired German solution provider ClientHouse, which was followed by the companys acquisition of U.K.-based Tquila UK in May of 2015.

However, the companys largest Salesforce acquisition was made in October 2015 when the company folded 1,100-person strong CloudSherpas into its Cloud First Applications team.
Cloud News

Google Partners: Apigee Acquisition Will Empower Us To Enhance Customer Ecosystems

Joseph Tsidulko

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By acquiring Apigee, as Google said Thursday it had agreed to do, the Internet giant will deliver to its cloud resellers and integrators a simpler means of helping their customers develop broader ecosystems around their own digital assets.

Google agreed to purchase the publicly traded company based in San Jose, Calif., a developer of tools and services for deploying and managing APIs, for $625 million.

Apigee's software enables users to offer APIs to outside developers, collect analytics on their use, and secure the connections those software interfaces establish with outside applications. Those features integrated with other Google Cloud Platform tools will broaden the scope of solutions Google's channel can deploy for digital companies, partners told CRN.

[Related: Here's Who Made Gartner's 2016 Magic Quadrant For Mobile App Development Platforms]

"The addition of Apigees API solutions to Google cloud will accelerate our customers move to supporting their businesses with high-quality digital interactions. Apigee will make it much easier for the requisite APIs to be implemented and published with excellence," wrote Diane Greene, Google's senior vice president who runs all enterprise and cloud operations, in the company's blog.

APIs are crucial to companies looking to extend the digital products they host on Google's cloud to more of their customers, according to the Mountain View, Calif.-based company's cloud chief.

"They're the hubs through which companies, partners and customers interact, whether it's a small business applying online for a loan or a point-of-sale system sending your warranty information to the manufacturer," Greene said.

Simon Margolis, director of cloud platform at SADA Systems, a Google cloud partner based in Los Angeles, told CRN that buying Apigee is an important move by Google, and a sort that partners were somewhat expecting.

"More and more customers are looking to develop and deploy their own increasingly complex APIs via Google Cloud Platform," Margolis told CRN, "and this is the perfect fit to fill the gaps they still had remaining."

With previous acquisitions, such as Firebase and Stackdriver, Google has merged those technologies with its existing tool sets in Google Cloud Platform. If that pattern holds with Apigee's features, Margolis said, "customers will be able to build custom-tailored API suites which leverage Google Cloud Platform's existing product set. "

That will enable customers to do far more in customizing solutions built atop Google services like BigQuery and Pub/Sub, he said, and therefore drive more cloud business.

Corporate giants like AT&T, Walgreens, Bechtel and eBay already use Apigee to manage the interfaces they offer to third parties that want to integrate with their digital assets.

Greene also noted that Google's container management platform, Kubernetes, will ultimately be integrated with the Apigee features "to help enterprises get better control and visibility into how their internal systems talk to one another, an additional part of deploying services."

"As always, we'll make sure that these capabilities are available in the public clouds and can also be used on-premises," she wrote. "The transition toward cloud, mobile and digital interaction with customers and partners via APIs is happening, and fast. Its happening because customers of every stripe  in the consumer realm and in the enterprise  are demanding it, and because it translates to engaging and valuable businesses."

Dan McNelis, co-founder and CEO of Dito, a Google partner based in Manassas, Va., told CRN that Google's intent to buy the API management vendor underscores the provider's commitment to its cloud business.

"Apigee's API solutions complement Googles already world-class platform to enable enterprises to build new digital experiences and seamlessly migrate on-premise workloads into the cloud," McNelis said via email.
I just got out of one of the most difficult seasons of my life. The Lord had me in the furnace for several months. Ive dealt with physical ailments, tensions within friendships, family drama, and the pressure of major life-decisions. Most days, I could barely think straight, and some days, I could scarcely lift my head.

I received encouragement from Lecraes song, Far Away. The song is about the devastating Earthquake that struck Haiti in 2010. The unapologetic premise is Gods perceived absence amid hard times. Thats how I felt. I stopped asking, How long, O LORD? And started asking, Are you even there, O LORD?

How the Bible Sustained Me

Things began to slowly change. In this season, the last thing I wanted to do was read, but I did. In Gods Providence, I had a copy of Tim Kellers book, Walking with God Through Pain and Suffering laying on my desk. Reluctantly, I opened it, and right away  in the Introduction, before I started the actual book, Psalm 34:1-2 was on the page: I will bless the LORD at all times, his praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul makes its boast in the LORD; let the afflicted hear and be glad.

And thats when, as they say, everything changed.

I must have read those verses a hundred times, and they never meant a thing to me. But this time  they did.

What changed my perspective was verse two: Let the afflicted hear and be glad.

I was quickly reminded of a John Calvin quote, There is nothing in afflictions which ought to disturb our joy. My heart changed. All I wanted was joy, and I thought I couldnt have it because of my lifes circumstances. I was wrong. Let the afflicted hear and be glad. The afflicted! Not the person in success, but in suffering. Not the one in prosperity, but in peril. And that person was me.

This one phrase changed my thinking, and reminded me that, even in afflictions, I have unspeakable joy in Christ. Indeed, afflicted people are not only allowed to have joy, but commanded to do so.

The Lord is Near to The Brokenhearted

Still, life was hard. The past few weeks have been dark and empty. I was also plagued with a serious viral infection, so I could hardly pray or read or do anything for the next 10 days. But I was desperate, so I continually went back to my Bible, again and again to Psalm 34.

This time it was verse 18: The LORD is near to the brokenhearted, and saves the crushed in Spirit.

This verse carried me through the next few weeks. My heart was broken, and my spirit, crushed. And even though at times it didnt feel this way, I knew  because the Bible says so  that Lord was near, and he would deliver me.

It didnt matter if my friends and family and job left me, God wouldnt. He is near to me, and the preciousness of this truth, for the first time, came alive to my weary soul. Though painful at the time, I dont think I would have learned the beauty of the Scriptures this way, apart from my trials.

John Pipers mother passed away when he was 28. She was hit by a bus. After the phone call of hearing of his mothers death, he told his wife, Noel, and then wept at his bedside for two hours. What came to mind as he wept was Pauls words to the Corinthians: Sorrowful, yet always rejoicing (2 Corinthians 6:10).

These two things, which seem diametrically opposed, were a living reality for Piper for the first time ever. And it was only learned through suffering.

Walking through suffering enables us to experience things the Bible talks about, which, until then, you only read about, says Piper.

There are some joys in life that you can only learn through the school of suffering.

Christian, do not despise your suffering. Instead, rejoice in it, and cling to your Bible. Ask the Holy Spirit to illuminate your heart, and the Bibles words, and then cling for dear life. Theres so much beauty and power and joy and wonder in the Bible that you can only see when youre hurting. And if you look long enough in the Scriptures, your life will change, even if your circumstances dont.

Im in a better season now. Things seem on the rise. I look back on this past season in faith, but Im still perplexed. I dont understand why I went through everything I did. I dont know why the Lord sent so many trials my way. I dont know why I experienced so many seemingly senseless difficulties. Theres a lot of things I dont know, but there is also one thing that I do know: It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statues (Psalm 119:71).

This article was originally published at gospelrelevance.com. Used with permission.

David Kaywood (MDiv, Covenant Theological Seminary) is the senior associate pastor of Eastside Community Church in Jacksonville, Florida. He blogs regularly at gospelrelevance.com. You can subscribe to his blog. David lives in Jacksonville Beach, Florida, with his wife and two children.

Publication date: September 9, 2016
An email recently released by House Democrats isn't just a political response to Hillary Clinton's usage of personal technology while Secretary of State.

The email between Clinton and General Colin Powell is a perfect example of what some call Shadow IT, and a common problem IT teams face daily with executives and senior officials.

In January of 2009, Secretary Clinton emailed General Colin Powell, one of her predecessors, with a question. What were the restrictions placed on him with regard to his usage of a BlackBerry? Did he use one in his personal office?

Clinton was frustrated, because the Defense Security Service (DSS / DS) knew he had one and used it, but no one knew how he did it. She wanted to use hers at the State Department, but she had hit some roadblocks. So how did he manage to get around DSS restrictions?

"I didn't have a BlackBerry," General Powell said in his response.

"What I did do was have a personal computer that was hooked up to a private phone line (sounds ancient.) So I could communicate with a wide range of friends directly without it going through the State Department servers. I even used it to do business with some foreign leaders and some of the senior folks in the Department on their personal email accounts."

He goes on to say that he used a PDA in spite of "all sorts of nonsense" from the CIA and NSA "about how they gave out signals and could be read by spies, etc."

General Powell's staff even went so far as to open a PDA up for inspection so the intelligence and security experts could, "try to explain to me why it was more dangerous than say, a remote control for one of the many TVs in the suite."

"They never satisfied me and NSA/CIA wouldn't back off. So, we just went about our business and stopped asking," he said, concluding his answer to Clinton's questions.

General Powell just described what some in the security industry call Shadow IT. It's more of a marketing term really, one that helps vendors sell product based on various types of monitoring, but the underlying issue itself is real. Essentially, Shadow IT is any service or technology that's used without an organization's approval.

Don't allow employees to store things outside of their shared network drive? That's okay; they'll use USB drives, email documents to themselves, or create a Dropbox account for when they need to work from home. Shadow IT can also include Excel spreadsheets, localized database installs, Skype, or any SaaS offering that someone can use on their own.

The pain of Shadow IT exists because people feel the organization's IT policies don't make sense or impede workflow. So instead of working with the policy or with the organization to change the policy, employees will simply look for ways to bypass the restrictions on their own.

Let's look at that quote again:

"So, we just went about our business and stopped asking."

Everyone who has ever worked on a helpdesk can share stories about executives who have disabled anti-Virus, requested a different OS configuration, demanded administrator rights, or demanded additional software installation and support. It's a nightmare really.

But since the early 2000's, technology has enabled all employees (not just executives or senior officials) with a power that resides outside of the IT department's control. They don't need permission from IT to register for a service; all they have to do is click a button. So, as consumer-based IT offerings appeared, employees stopped asking and demanding  they just went about their business.

The email was released for political reasons, but the lesson here isn't just about public politics  it's about corporate politics too.

General Powell wanted something; he didn't like the reasons given when his requests were denied, so he just bypassed policy and did it anyway. He used his unknown (and perhaps even unapproved) IT access to conduct business outside of normal operating channels, because it was convenient and that's how he wanted things done.

Again, the actions described in this email are commonplace; this isn't a one-time issue in government or private sector IT. It's a regular battle that's fought daily in cube farms across the globe.

Working in IT is hard enough, but the pressure is compounded when executives and senior officials feel they know better than the experts do.

Telling the CEO no is never a wise career move and the same can be said for giving such directives to a four star General. Sadly, there's very little anyone can do to stop it. Because when they ignore policy or directives  and they will  all the IT team can do is sit there and take it.

As for General Powell's issues with his PDA and the skepticism around what the CIA / NSA / DSS were saying, Lesley Carhart (@hacks4pancakes) covered that issue rather well in a recent blog post.
WASHINGTON  For the second time in two years, Rep. Jim Himes has proven himself willing to buck the majority of his House Democratic colleagues and vote with Republicans in approving changes to the 2010 Dodd-Frank law he helped to create.

Himes was one of 35 Democrats to join 226 Republicans on Friday in approving the Investment Advisers Modernization Act of 2016, which backers said would do nothing more than streamline antiquated regulatory restrictions that burden private equity funds.

A total of 142 Democrats joined three Republicans in opposition. The bill passed the House 261-145 but now faces an uncertain future in the Senate. The White House has threatened a veto, saying it would enable private fund advisers to slip back into the shadows.

Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., senior Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, called the measure a bad bill that would put Americans savings and investments at risk by opening the door to further abuses in the private equity industry.

She added: When it comes to private equity funds and hedge funds, it is clear that more regulation is needed, not less. Yet this bill takes us in the wrong direction.

Himes is a financial services member and a former Goldman Sachs vice president who arguably knows more about the mechanics of the financial services industry than virtually anyone else in Congress. In 2014, he also resisted the majority of Democrats in voting for the easing of Dodd-Frank restrictions on derivatives.

Himes was one of the authors of the derivatives provision of the 2010 Dodd-Frank law, which brought unprecedented federal regulation to Wall Street in the aftermath of the Great Recession.

While Fairfield County is home to a major concentration of hedge funds, it also hosts numerous private equity funds in Greenwich, Westport and elsewhere.

Private equity firms invest in companies that they ultimately try to resell at a profit. Such transactions, while potentially lucrative, have been heavily criticized for their tendency to result in large layoffs in the name of cost savings. Private equity investors run the gamut, including pension funds for teachers, firefighters, police officers and others.

Since Dodd-Franks passage, the financial services world has tussled with the Obama administration and congressional Democrats on revising the rules.

Himes is among the Democrats who have argued that while Dodd-Frank should remain rock solid, tweaks that ease some of the burden on the industry are appropriate.

Financial regulation, like all regulation, must be balanced, Himes said in a statement. We need our capital markets to thrive, but in a responsible way. I have been avid defender of Dodd-Frank, but in certain areas, I believe it can be more balanced.

Himes pointed out that committee Democrats got amendments approved that modified some of the GOP provisions, including ones on informational brochures and audits aimed at preventing Bernie Madoff-style Ponzi schemes.

Thats an example of how the process should work, Himes said.

dan@hearstdc.com
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BRIDGEPORT  The pressures of running Connecticuts largest city seem to be getting to some of returned Mayor Joe Ganims closest advisers.

One of Ganims first hires -Gina Malheiro  quit her job Friday following a loud argument. Ganims public safety adviser, ex-Police Chief Wilbur Chapman, similarly stormed out of City Hall in July, but returned after a few days.

Malheiro was finance director of Ganims successful comeback campaign last year.

The former paralegal went on to earn six-figures as the mayors deputy chief administrative officer. In that role Malheiro has worked on several projects, like helping to coordinate donations for dozens of displaced victims of a December fire at a Charles Street condominium complex and upgrading Bridgeports municipal parking meters.

She frequently appears at meetings with other members of Ganims staff.

Ganim spokesman Av Harris confirmed Malheiro had cleaned out much of her office following a heated disagreement. Harris declined to provide additional details about what the argument was about or who it was with.

From time to time in many workplaces, unfortunately, there are disagreements, Harris said.

And, he added, Malheiro has not submitted her formal resignation.

I cannot say for certain that she is walking out, Harris said. He said Malheiro has been a valuable member of Team Ganim with a strong work ethic.

But Malheiro has also clashed with her supervisor, Chief Administrative Officer John Gomes. The two have not been on speaking terms.

Malheiro declined a request for comment.

Though Harris observation about workplace disagreements is correct, the returned Ganim administration  he was mayor from 1991 to 2003  has not been very successful in keeping them behind closed doors.

While Malheiros status remains in question, after a few days Chapman returned to the job. He in an interview said he was angry over inefficiencies, but it was never his intention to quit.

I am a perfectionist, Chapman said. I have no tolerance for laziness or ineptitude, and I react to it very badly.
BRIDGEPORT  A convicted sex offender faces up to 20 years in prison after he pleaded guilty Friday to kidnapping a woman from her home in the middle of the night and raping her in his home.

Nelson Rivera, 50, of Chopsey Hill Road, pleaded guilty under the Alford Doctrine before Superior Court Judge Robert Devlin to home invasion, first-degree kidnapping and first-degree assault as his case was about to go to trial.

Asked by the judge what he did for a living, Rivera proclaimed, Im an auto body man.

But according to court records, Rivera has a lengthy criminal record, including a prior conviction for sex assault and failing to register as a sex offender.

The judge told Rivera he would impose a 20-year prison term when Rivera is sentenced on Nov. 18.

A plea under the Alford Doctrine means Rivera does not agree with all the allegations against him but concedes the state has enough evidence to convict him of the crime.

I do find there is a factual basis for your plea, the judge continued, finding Rivera guilty.

Rivera had previously been in a relationship with the 43-year-old victim. On Jan. 3, 2015, Assistant States Attorney Adam Mattei told the judge, Rivera showed up at the victims Beardsley Street home to wish her a happy New Year. He was immediately asked to leave.

Spurned by the victim, Rivera returned to her home in the middle of the night, two day later, Mattei said.

After breaking into the home, Rivera tied shut the bedroom door of the victims female roommate, the prosecutor continued. He then crept into the victims bedroom and placed a bleach-soaked pillow over her face as she desperately tried to fight him off.

Mattei said Rivera placed a rope noose around the womans neck and dragged her out of the house to his car, driving off with her.

A neighbor called police after she heard the commotion outside and looked out to see Rivera forcing the woman into his car, according to the prosecutor. When officers arrived they heard the roommate screaming for help from her bedroom window, police said.

Meanwhile, the prosecutor said, Rivera brought the woman to his Chopsey Hill Road house, dragged her up to his attic and raped her.

Mattei said the victim managed to crawl from the attic and ran screaming to police when they arrived. He said Rivera was arrested at the scene.
WESTPORT  Eight veterans wounded while serving in Iraq or Afghanistan will be the guests Sunday of the Westport police and the national Catch a Lift Fund (CAL).

The second Westport for Warriors Weekend includes workouts, seminars, fund-raising and social events, said Lt. David Farrell, the police spokesman.

The last stop is a challenging boot camp at the Westport Police Department on Sunday morning, to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the terrorist attacks, Farrell said.

The veterans traveling to Westport are from Colorado, Florida, Tennessee, Ohio, Maryland and New York, and were chosen by CAL, a national non-profit organization dedicated to the physical and mental recovery of Americas post-9/11 combat wounded veterans.

Founded in memory of fallen Army Cpl. Chris Coffland, CAL provides qualifying veterans with gym memberships, home gym equipment, fitness programs, and motivational peer support, Farrell said. The 2,500 veterans from around the country who are participating in the CAL program are reaping the benefits of daily health regimens and repurposing themselves into their communities through fitness.

Participants will observe the nationwide moment of silence Sunday at 8:46 a.m., to pay respect to the victims of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Following a workout led by CAL board members, participants will run to the bridge in Westport, where the 911 Ride will pass through at about 10:30 a.m. After a run back to the police department, Fairfields Colony Pizza will serve donated pizzas from their popular food truck.

For more information, to get involved or make a donation, please contact Andy Berman at andy@mentalgritfitness.com or catchaliftfund.com.
Fifteen years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the children who lost the most that morning  their mothers and fathers  have grown up. The youngest wear backpacks in high school. Others have married and maybe started families of their own.

And yet, each one is imprinted with a face, with a name, with memories  if theyre lucky  of stolen love.
No rush

Making sure we get it right is better than rushing to some sort of conclusion.

Connecticut Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff, D-Norwalk, referring to a Superior Court order that the state revamp its education funding process within 180 days.

Can be done

If our state and local leaders work collectively with educators and other interested parties, this can and should be accomplished.
Shelton Police Department

SHELTON  A Bridgeport man charged in a burglary at Ritas Italian Ice on River Road has been linked to other burglaries in the area, police say.

Steven Carloto, 48, of Bridgeport, was arrested Thursday and charged with third-degree burglary, fourth-degree larceny, second-degree criminal mischief and possession of burglar tools.
These real PA creatures could become cryptids if we don't save them
Check it out: Fun things to do this weekend in Lake County

entertainment
Living Gospel Equality Now: Loving in the Heart of God: Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests
News / Education

by APO

The British Embassy in Harare has awarded eighteen outstanding Zimbabweans the prestigious Chevening Scholarship funded by the British Government to pursue Masters Degree studies in the United Kingdom.Ambassador Catriona Laing said: "The potential rewards of being a Chevening scholar are unquantifiable. Not only do scholars receive a first-rate UK education which can open doors in their respective careers, they also join a strong global network - a network they will draw on and contribute to for the rest of their lives.Chevening scholars share the best their country has to offer with those they meet in the UK, and then share the best the UK has to offer when they return home. For this reason, Chevening scholars play an important role in building bridges between the UK and Zimbabwe.Recent scholars have taken in breath-taking views of the UK, experienced Britain's heritage and history discussed international policy at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and interacted with high profile academics, politicians, and even royals at a range of academic, cultural, and social events. So whether they're >inside a lecture theatre or not, scholars are constantly learning.The eighteen scholars who have been awarded scholarships are:Tendai Muchada - MA Governance & DevelopmentNqobani Dube - MA Development & Human RightsElizabeth Mangeje - LLM in International Human Rights LawKudakwashe Magura - MSC Engineering ManagementShamiso Fernando - MPH Public HealthMelody Kutepa - MPH Public HealthKudzai Midzi - MSC Organisational Change & DevelopmentTawanda Mashonganyika - MSC Agricultural EconomicsRudo Zimunhu - MPH Public HealthFortune Nyamande - MPH Public HealthEdward Muguza - MPP Public PolicyFrancis Rwodzi - MA Governance & DevelopmentRuvarashe Nyaruwata - MSC Aeronautical EngineeringTatenda Furusa - MSC Business & ManagementGladys Hlatywayo - MSC Public Management & GovernanceKety Choga - MSc Statistics with applications in MedicineArthurnatious Muzuva - LLM International BankingNyaradzai Tasaranarwo - MSC Applied Actuarial ScienceThe Chevening Secretariat is accepting new applications for 2017/2018 Chevening Scholarships via chevening.org/apply from 8 August until 8 November 2016.There are more than 1,500 Chevening Scholarships on offer globally for the 2017/2018 academic cycle. These scholarships represent a significant investment from the UK Government to develop the next cohort of global leaders. The scholarship also offers scholars the opportunity to become part of an influential global network of 46,000 alumni.
News / National

by Itai Mushekwe

COLOGNE - In what marks the end of President Robert Mugabe's over thirty years reign in power, China has reportedly told the veteran leader in black and white, to now pave way for Vice President, Emmerson Mnangagwa, to takeover the presidency within the coming three months, Spotlight Zimbabwe, has been told.Beijing according to an Asian diplomat in Harare, who spoke to this publication in a confidential telephone interview this week, has made it clear that it can only unlock much needed financial funding for the dislocating economy, if Mugabe steps aside for his VP, in a bid to maintain continuity of her foreign policy on Zimbabwe, while safe guarding it's cross-section of economic interests in the country.Mugabe is facing a worsening balance of payment crisis, which has triggered cash shortages, and seen his troubled administration struggling to pay civil servant salaries on time.Mnangagwa is said to also enjoy the support of Chinese President Xi Jinping, who visited the country last December on a one-day official visit, following instrumental lobbying for the trip by Mnangagwa's office.Media reports in August 2014, when Mnangagwa was defence minister, suggested that Mugabe had discussed his succession power handover with Jinping during his State visit to China that year behind closed doors, where the ruling Zanu PF first secretary was said to have laid an initial time frame for his departure, and Mnangagwa's eventual elevation to replace him."Although China claims not to interfere in the internal processes of other countries, it has just done that in Zimbabwe indirectly by giving Mugabe's exit as a condition to bail out the economy," said the diplomat. "They are not even hiding their desire to have vice president Mnangagwa moving in to succeed President Mugabe, and a time window of three months has been given, for him to sort out the succession issue, and handover power before the end of 2016, for the mutual benefit of Beijing and Harare's economic and political relationship.""On September 4 (Sunday), President Xi Jinping, met President Jacob Zuma of South Africa, alongside Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, President Michel Temer of Brazil and President Vladimir Putin of Russia, for an Informal BRICS Leaders Meeting held in Hangzhou. My colleague in Pretoria said there was a sideline Zimbabwe briefing between the Chinese leader and President Zuma, where China is said to have engaged South Africa about a workable economic package for Zimbabwe, only if President Mugabe leaves the stage in three months."The informal BRICS meeting, took place during the 2016 G20 Hangzhou summit, hosted by China for the Group of Twenty (G20). It was held from 45 September in the city of Hangzhou.The private media reported early this year, that Mugabe was reportedly angry with Mnangagwa over his trip to China last year, at the invitation of the Communist Party of China (CPC). The VP visited Beijing from July 6 to 10 2015. During his five-day visit, he met business leaders as well as a number of senior ruling party and government officials, including Chinese Vice-President Li Yuanchao. Spotlight Zimbabwe has been reliably informed, that Mugabe's offence and anger could have emanated from the "Presidential reception", which was accorded to Mnangagwa, and that there is suspicion he had telephoned with Jinping to discuss Zanu PF succession matters.Government insiders yesterday said, Mnangagwa was supposed to fly out to China this week to attend an International Investment and Trade Fair event in the coastal city of Xiamen, but his Zanu PF opponents aligned to the so-called G40 faction rallying around Grace Mugabe to become the party's 2018 presidential candidate, threw spanners into the trip, resulting in the country's second vice president, Phelekeza Mphoko, taking his place. Mphoko left Zimbabwe on Monday, accompanied by a small delegation of senior government officials.A political officer at the Chinese Embassy in Harare said they could not comment about China's mooted economic package to Zimbabwe, nor could they confirm that Mnangagwa is receiving backing from Beijing, referring all questions to the foreign office.
After parting from his so-called girlfriend Taylor Swift, 26, Etonian actor Tom Hiddleston, 35, has also fallen behind rival thespians vying for the role of James Bond. Bookies have reduced Hiddlestons prospects of succeeding the current 007, Daniel Craig, after Craig was reportedly offered more than 100million to do two more films. Might the Hiddleston-Swift romance be the creation of public relations types? I am advised that Tom can still rely on the support of Luke Windsor, 32, described to me as his friend, publicist and nanny.

Is Tom Hiddleston out of the run to be the next 007?

During a visit to Royal Mail, the Prince of Wales laments the decline in letter writing, blaming the effects of Twitter on the English language. But does he still practise what he preaches? Charless office uses Twitter but prefers to send out pre-printed postcards to correspondents. Only his fragrant consort Camilla answers correspondents personally. Even when she sends a pre-printed card she tops and tails it in her own writing, advises my source.

Re Prince Charles, his first conference of wool experts, held today, is supported by M&S, although the heir to the thrones own, 395 woollen jumpers come not from M&S but from Turnbull & Asser, of Jermyn Street. Be that as it may, he has arranged for popular male underwear model David Gandy, pictured at work, to be at the conference at Dumfries House in Ayrshire to excite the ladies  and, perhaps, some of the Caledonian laddies.

M&S model David Gandy to attend conference on wool with Prince Charles

Loose Women panellist Janet Street-Porter, 69, revisiting the Fulham flat she shared with her first husband, photographer Tim Street-Porter, says in ITV1s Celebrity Home Secrets that they bought a water bed. So I ran a hose from the kitchen all the way in here, filled up the water bed and then we thought, Great, lets have sex on a water bed! I had been out and had a couple of Bloody Marys and was violently sick! Unsurprisingly perhaps, she and Tim later drifted apart. Boom, boom!

Hilary Clinton receives the pompous backing of the Dallas Morning News, which boasts: This newspaper has not recommended a Democrat for the nations highest office since before World War Two. Indeed not. On November 22, 1963, when President John F Kennedy, a Democrat, arrived in the city for his ill-fated visit, the paper ran a prominent, anti-JFK political advertisement offensively stating that he was Wanted for Treason, and adding that he was lax on Communism, appointed anti-Christians to federal office and lied about his personal life. Kennedy remarked to his wife Jackie: Were heading into nut country today. How right he was.

Hilary Clinton receives the pompous backing of the Dallas Morning News
As the PM rightly argues, there is already a great injustice in how pupils are selected by post code, allowing the well-off to colonise good schools

It is a profound indictment of modern egalitarian Britain that social mobility today is considerably worse than 50 years ago.

One of the most significant causes is that, from the 1960s, politicians from both parties began dismantling our great grammar schools, which provided a social ladder for countless bright, working class children.

Looking back, it turned out to be an act of educational vandalism with profound consequences for a more equal society.

No Tory leader since has had the courage to take on an education establishment for whom selection by ability is a moral outrage. (David Cameron brandished his politically correct credentials by opposing new grammars even before he became PM.)

But by moving so quickly and proposing such far-reaching reforms Theresa May  herself a grammar school girl  shows every sign of being the bold Tory leader this paper hoped and believed she would be.

As the PM rightly argues, there is already a great injustice in how pupils are selected by post code, allowing the well-off to colonise good schools.

Predictably, the mere mention of new grammars sends Labour into spasms of hysteria. So many of its politicians have benefitted from grammar schools, yet they want to deny that opportunity to everyone else.

Those who stand to gain most from new grammars are the people Labour should serve, the working class children who are failed by an education system slipping down world league tables.

The Mail does not advocate a return to the rigid old 11-plus. Grammars need entry points for late developers. With better vocational and technical education every child in every school must be allowed to maximise his or her abilities.

And Mrs Mays plan to open grammars in poorer areas is welcome.

Grammars are extremely popular with parents, who should be allowed to decide what school system they want in their area. As Mrs May tries to overcome the significant political obstacles in her path, not least the objections from her own wet MPs and the House of Lords, it is them to whom she should appeal for support.

Shocking ingratitude

The case of the French migrant family who ran up a 103,000 bill in just twelve months is an insult to every taxpayer.

Arnold Mballe Sube and his wife Jeanne are almost entirely reliant on the State to keep them and their eight children housed in very comfortable circumstances.

Much of the six-figure bill resulted from appalling council incompetence which saw them put up in a 160-a-night Hilton hotel at a cost of nearly 40,000, plus another 21,000 for room service!

Arnold Mballe Sube and his wife Jeanne are almost entirely reliant on the State to keep them and their eight children housed in very comfortable circumstances

The family has, ungratefully, rejected three proposed new homes including a five-bedroom house on the grounds they were too small. No wonder the public still regards the benefits system as excessively generous.

This scandalous case is devastating proof that Mrs May is right to say that incomers to this country must have jobs to go to and provide proof they can support themselves AND their families.

Pity the Remoaners!

How sad, how sour and how cynical that having lost the EU referendum, a group of embittered Remainers are seeking to hijack that great British event, the Last Night of the Proms.

But let them wave their EU flags if they so wish.
George Orwell got it right in his wonderful essay England Your England, published during World War II at the height of the Blitz.

While no fan of John Bull jingoism, he reserved his special contempt for those he termed the Europeanised intelligentsia.

In 1941, he wrote: England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality.

In Left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution, from horse racing to suet puddings.

The latest target of the Remain campaigners is the Last Night Of The Proms, one of the few occasions when the British are allowed to celebrate their heritage and identity

It is a strange fact, but it is unquestionably true that almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during God Save The King than of stealing from a poor box.

The snobbery Orwell describes perfectly reached its nadir during the EU referendum campaign. The Remainers revelled in their soi-disant intellectual superiority and couldnt disguise their disgust at the Great Unwashed who wanted to restore Britains independence.

And theyre still at it, two months after the vote produced a convincing majority in favour of leaving the EU.

Theyve been bitching and grizzling ever since, complaining that the 17.4 million people who voted for Brexit are all knuckle-scraping racists, too stupid to know what they were doing. Their latest target is the Last Night Of The Proms, one of the few occasions when the British are allowed to celebrate their heritage and identity.

Orwell didnt have much time for boastful flag waving  what he called the Rule Britannia stuff, which he associated primarily with the ruling class.

But he would certainly have recognised the motives of those self-regarding Remainers who are trying to appropriate the Last Night for their own elitist political ends.

Take, for example, Sir Nicholas Kenyon, doyen of the arts establishment, former head of BBC Radio 3, director of the Proms from 1996 to 2007 and now director of the Barbican Centre  the stage from which Sherlock actor Benedict Cumberbatch berated theatregoers nightly about Britains failure to do enough for migrants.

Sir Nicholas Kenyon former director of the Proms has warned that the event could be 'hijacked' to celebrate 'Little England'

Writing in The Guardian (where else?), Kenyon says: There may be a sense of foreboding that this most British of occasions might be hijacked to celebrate the triumph of Little England, to reinforce the message of a land of hope and glory in which Britons never shall be slaves  to the EU or anyone else. How wrong that would be.

Calm down, dear. Its only a concert.

Kenyon goes on, and on: This would be to radically misread the forces that gave birth to the music of the Last Night celebrations, to the concept of the Proms and to the entire tradition of adventurous British music.

The inspiration our native music has derived from continental Europe and beyond has been deep and lasting.

And your point is?

The Promenade Concerts are a summer-long celebration of music from all over the world. Half the programme for the Last Night even features foreign composers.

When most people think of the Last Night, its the closing half, televised on BBC1  which features Land Of Hope And Glory, a medley of British sea shanties, Jerusalem, Rule Britannia!, Auld Lang Syne and the National Anthem.

The English, in particular, wear their patriotism lightly. The finale of the Last Night is one of the few harmless occasions in the year when we can bathe in a warm glow of nostalgia and national pride for an hour  until the shows over and is followed immediately by the BBC News coming live from the Med, where people are drowning AND ITS ALL OUR FAULT!

The Promenade Concerts are a summer-long celebration of music from all over the world

Actually, if anyone has been hijacking the Proms for years, its the Guardianistas, Orwells Europeanised intellectuals. Theyre even trying to hijack it tomorrow night.

An anti-Brexit group has been raising money on the internet and is planning to hand out 5,000 EU flags at the Albert Hall, hoping that Last-Nighters will wave them during Land Of Hope And Glory and Rule Britannia!

Theres nothing new in this. The organisers have been distributing EU flags for at least the past 15 years, part of the regulation bunting given to the Promenaders in the name of making the event more inclusive.

The politicisation of the Proms began in earnest during the Gulf War in 1990, when one Left-wing conductor threatened to drop traditional patriotic songs altogether.

Last year, I spotted a fashionable Refugees Welcome banner draped from one of the balconies.

Then, towards the end of the evening, the female conductor, Marin Alsop, used her speech to drone on about womens rights and the need to tackle gender, racial, economic and ethnic inequality.

Get over yourself, love. Its the Albert Hall, not the Labour Party conference. Funny how the heavily subsidised grandees of the arts establishment can barely contain their distaste for tradition, patriotism and royalty  or the hard-pressed taxpayers who pay their wages  yet somehow cant resist the platform the Proms provides and are more than happy to accept the baubles which come as part of the package.

Isnt that right, Sir Nicholas?

For what its worth, I love the Proms, even if I can live without some of the more avant garde offerings. The BBC presents the whole thing brilliantly. Its an essential part of what the licence fee is for. Proper public service broadcasting.

But can you imagine what this great festival of music would be like if the Guardianistas and Remainers had their way?

Cue presenter Katie Derham . . .

Welcome to the Last Night Of Remain, which comes from the chamber of the Berlaymont Building, in Brussels, headquarters of the European Commission.

Tonights programme is specially designed to send out a message to the world that Britain made a terrible mistake in voting to leave the EU. Youll have a chance to correct that tonight, by pressing the red button on your remote to trigger a second referendum.

To prevent this evenings proceedings being hijacked by Nigel Farages brownshirts and Little Englanders, all Union Jacks have been confiscated at the door and replaced with blue and gold EU flags.

In place of the usual bourgeois, fascist Promenaders, the front row is given over to Stop The City demonstrators and Black Lives Matter activists, brandishing colourful flags from around the world, including those of Isis and Hezbollah, and placards demanding Free Ram Jam Choudary.

You may also notice some changes to the traditional line-up. Handels Water Music has been dropped at the insistence of War on Want. It was considered inappropriate and insensitive at a time when millions of people in the Third World are suffering from severe drought.

Sir Edward Elgars Pomp And Circumstance March has been replaced by Sir Edward Izzards recently composed March On Downing Street, a symphony in high heels and pink beret.

There will be no Sailors Hornpipe this evening. Tonights Fantasia Of Sea Shanties comes from the Libyan port of Benghazi and will be sung by a boatload of illegal immigrants as they embark for Lesbos.

Our modern classics section features the Eighties reggae band UB40, with special guest star Jeremy Jezza Corbyn, reprising some of their most famous social commentaries, including Red, Red Wine, written as a tribute to the European wine lake made possible by the EUs Common Agricultural Policy.

They will also perform their version of the Beatles ska-influenced number Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, with its famous singalong line: Desmond has a barrow in the (EU single) marketplace.

We then cross live to Cologne railway station where Angela Merkel will lead the Syrian Migrants Male Voice Choir in a selection of songs from the popular musical comedy Lock Up Your Daughters.

Our next outside broadcast comes from the Jungle at Calais, where Pink Floyd will be performing a spectacular version of their best-selling album, The Wall, while inhabitants of the camp juggle chainsaws and light bonfires in an attempt to hijack cars and lorries bound for Britain.

Finally, the Berlaymont Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Jean-Claude Drunker  and featuring the legendary tenors Neil Welsh Windbag Kinnock and the bloke from the Go Compare! adverts  will close with a medley of Deutschland Uber Alles, The Marseillaise and our glorious European anthem Ode To Joy.
Crown Princess Mary has placed second in a sex quiz.

The Australian born royal was guest of honour at the 10th anniversary of the Parliamentary Intergroup Network for Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights.

There the mother-of-four acted as a team leader in a quiz on the subject, leading her team to second place.

Guest of honour: Crown Princess Mary attended the 10th anniversary of the Parliamentary Intergroup Network for Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights

Podium finish: There she took part in a quiz on the topic, leading her team to second place

The event was held at Christiansborg Palace in Denmark.



The Crown Princess, 44, wore an off-white long-sleeved blouse and tailored white pants.

She paired the outfit with stilettos and gold bangles on her right arm.

Stylish: The mother-of-four wore an elegant off-white blouse and tailored wide-leg pants

Tackling issues: She listened to speeches from Danish members of parliament before taking part in the quiz

Mary wore her hair loose around her shoulders.

The Parliamentary network works as a forum for the members' party affiliation to share knowledge, experience and cooperation.

According to The Royal Forums, the group 'works to "ensure a continuous and nonpartisan focus" on the issue within Denmark'.

Mary listened to speeches by Danish members of parliament before taking part in the quiz, which was led by the Foreign Minister Kristian Jensen.

Put to the test: The quiz was led by the Danish Foreign Minister Kristian Jensen

The event came after Mary honoured the Danish Military in the country's Flag Flying day ceremony on September 5.

Mary attended the event in Copenhagen alongside her husband, Crown Prince Frederik.

An emotional Mary shed a tear as the country commemorated the men and women who lost their lives fighting for their country.
Advertisement

New York Fashion Week 2016 got off to a colourful start on Wednesday, as a slew of Australian designers showcased their wares on a world stage.

The likes of Natalie Rolt, Ark Swimwear and Lil and Emm were all featured as part of the Fashion Palette catwalk, which aims to get Australia's top design talent in front of buyers, press and other industry insiders who travel to New York in order to see the new collections.

The models stormed the catwalks at the Pier 29 studios in New York, wearing an array of eye-catching swimwear, cut-out fabrics and deep V necklines.

Chokers were common in the various collections, proving they're going nowhere soon, as were silky fabrics, cut-out fabrics and exposed midriffs.

Flying the flag: New York Fashion Week 2016 got off to a colourful start on Wednesday; a slew of Australian designers showcased their wares on a world stage - this was all part of the Fashion Palette catwalk

Canberra label, Lil and Emm, was one of the first to showcase Aussie swimwear before a New York crowd.

With a collection inspired by a 'summer romance', the female design duo sent a series of one and two-piece suits down the catwalk, in fuchsia, electric blue, lavender and white.

While the occasional bikini featured a floral print, most relied on bright colours, cut-out fabrics and accessories to do the talking.

Racy swimsuits were paired with slicked-back hair, centre partings and flat sandals adorned with pom poms.

Racy: The models stormed the catwalks at the Pier 29 studios in NYC, wearing an array of brightly-coloured swimwear, cut-out fabrics and deep V necklines - Lil and Emm were one label to show (pictured), and this collection featured chokers (right)

22-year-old designer, Natalie Rolt, was another talent who got the Big Apple call-up for SS17, and she showcased 10 exquisitely designed pieces that referenced countless current trends, from high-waisted bottoms to this season's penchant for a thigh high split.

While each piece from Ms Rolt's collection was white, the talented Perth designer riffed on a theme, by offering a range of fabrics including mesh, silk and chiffon.

The label also nodded to the current trend for an exposed midriff, as many of Natalie Rolt's dresses featured toned, tanned abs alongside plunging necklines.

Daring: Natalie Rolt was another talent who got the call-up for SS17, and she showcased ten exquisitely designed pieces that referenced countless trends, from high-waisted bottoms (left) to this season's penchant for a thigh high split (centre)

Summer coming: While each piece from Ms Rolt's collection was white, the talented Perth designer riffed on a theme, by offering a range of fabrics including mesh (left), silk and chiffon

Standout: One of the highlights of the show was this silk, floor-length gown cut to the thigh - deep, plunging necklines were a theme of the collection

One of the biggest talking points of this year's Fashion Palette was the signing up of Perth designer, Jess Williamson, the 23-year-old behind Ete Swimwear.

Ms Williamson, from Southern River, was just a week into running her own label, Ete, when she was contacted by talent scouts from New York.

Smitten with the 23-year-old's girly bikinis and hand-painted prints, Ms Williamson was swiftly whisked over to Pier 59, where her collection showed off a series of bohemian, pretty swimwear.

Standout pieces included a delicate, pastel, patterned one piece, complete with mermaid-style crown, and crocheted two-piece bikini styles, designed to be mixed and matched with one another.

Newbie: One of the biggest talking points of this year's Fashion Palette was the signing up of Perth designer, Jess Williamson, the 23-year-old behind Ete Swimwear - the label's bikinis were girly and bohemian in style, with hand-painted prints

One to watch: Ms Williamson (pictured left), from Southern River, was just a week into running her own label, Ete, when she was contacted by talent scouts from New York - she walked the catwalk at the end of her collection

Luxe Australian label, AlphaBe The Label, was another hit in New York this week, thanks to a series of minimalist, unique pieces and pretty, one-shouldered dresses.

A neutral palette was the order of the day, alongside a collection that was praised for being wearable - making a day to night transition easy.

Models wore their hair loose and flowing, conveying the luxe, but relaxed vibe, and there was a hint of fashion's love affair with the Seventies, by way of high-waisted trousers.

Wearable: Luxe Australian label, AlphaBe The Label, was another hit in New York this week, thanks to a series of minimalist, unique pieces and pretty, one-shouldered dresses (right)

Girlish: A neutral palette was the order of the day, alongside a collection that was praised for being wearable - making a day to night transition easy - models wore their hair loose and flowing, conveying the luxe, but relaxed vibe

Other labels on show in New York included the likes of FRANKIE, Sara Bailes and BOSSA, who delivered a silk collection filled with visible midriffs and colour.

New York Fashion Week runs until September 15.

To find out more about Fashion Palette, click here.
At 52 years old Michelle Fisher was inspired to start pole dancing after watching an 'amazing' performance by her daughter.

Five years on, the mother-of-three from Sydney's North Shore goes to 11 pole dancing classes a week and even has a pole installed in her bedroom.

'It is a sexy sport,' Ms Fisher told Daily Mail Australia. 'It is definitely more fun than going to the gym.'

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Sexy sport: 57-year-old Michelle Fisher (pictured) has been pole dancing for five years and says it is a far better way to get in shape than going to the gym

Amazing shape: Ms Fisher said she does eleven pole dancing classes a week, which is way more than the average person

Now 57, Ms Fisher said she has never been in better shape.

'I do eleven classes a week and that is way more than the average person,' she said. 'There are conditioning classes, strength classes, contortion classes.

'There is even a booty class, which is basically based on moving your butt I guess. Kind of like twerking.'

In the blood: Ms Fisher (on bottom) took up pole dancing with the encouragement of her two daughters

Two of Ms Fisher's daughters were avid pole dancers and both encouraged their mum to take up the sport.

'My daughter was doing it and I went to see one of her performances,' she said.

'I saw how amazing she looked and I thought it was great.

'Me and another daughter started going to beginner classes together. She got too busy to continue but I ended up keeping up with it.'

Contortionist: Ms Fisher said pole dancing teaches strength, conditioning and flexibility. Pictured are her teachers Michelle Shimmy (bottom) and Maddie Sparkle (top)

Michelle said her strength has improved immensely since she started pole dancing and she would encourage other middle-aged and older women to give it a try.

'At my age you think someone is going to look down on me,' she said.

'I think this is my body, I'm liking what's happening to my body and why should I care what people think.

'I'll get it out there and show off the strength, flexibility and confidence I've gained.'

Sister act: Sisters Michelle Shimmy (left) and Maddie Sparkle (right) run the Pole Dance Academy where Michelle Fisher learns

Ms Fisher currently learns at Sydney's Pole Dance Academy run by sisters Michelle Shimmy and Maddie Sparkle.

She is so dedicated she even has a practice pole installed in her bedroom, which, as an added bonus, her husband absolutely loves.

'He loves it. He thinks it's fabulous that I am so into it.

'I think he enjoys how passionate I am about it.
Model has been seen hanging out with

She's the lofty supermodel who has apparently caught Lewis Hamilton's eye - and with her striking looks and defiant attitude, it's easy to see why the racing driver has taken a liking to Winnie Harlow.

It was claimed this week that Lewis, 31, and Winnie, 22, have been dating in secret for three months after the pair were seen partying together in New York.

Despite a spokesperson saying the pair are just good friends, Lewis has certainly taken a liking to Winnie. So who is the lady who has caught the Formula 1 ace's eye?

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Striking supermodel Winnie Harlow, who grew up with Michael Jackson's skin condition, has been spotted hanging out with Formula 1 ace, Lewis Hamilton - and she's tipped to be fashion's next big thing

From America's Next Top Model to landing a starring role in a Diesel campaign, it seems that 2016 is the year of Winnie Harlow.

Winnie, a former America's Next Top Model contestant, whose real name is Chantelle Brown-Young, was raised in Toronto by a single mother and hairdresser, Lisa Brown.

Winnie, who is 5ft 9in, was diagnosed with vitiligo around the age of four, making her among one per cent of the population who has the condition.

Michael Jackson famously had the same condition and explained his pale complexion was a result of the lack of melanin in his skin.

She was cruelly nicknamed 'zebra' and 'cow' because of the white patches covering her face and body growing up.

'I get comments that I am a leper. I control how my skin changes, I bleach my skin, my skin's burned. None of those are true. If one day I'm all black I'm still a model. If one day I'm all white I'm still a model. I am not my skin. I am a model with a skin condition,' she once said.

It was claimed this week that Lewis, 31, and Winnie, 22, have been dating in secret for three months after the pair were seen partying together in New York

Lewis Hamilton partied into the early hours with rumoured girlfriend Winnie Harlow on Wednesday evening following claims the pair have been dating in secret for three months

Winnie reveals that she was physically taunted about her skin and a group of girls 'jumped her' in a fight, which led to her being suspended because she started skipping class. She dropped out of school at the age of 17 and never looked back

Winnie, left, as a baby, was diagnosed with vitiligo around the age of four, right, making her among one per cent of the population who has the condition

Winnie Harlow, left, arriving at the GQ Men Of The Year Awards 2016 at Tate Modern and, right, on the runway for Michael Cinco during the Couturissimo Fall/Winter 2016-2017 show at Paris Fashion Week

In another interview, with Cosmopolitan magazine, she added: 'Kids called me a cow and mooed at me. I remember sitting by my window wishing upon the stars that my skin condition would go away.'

She was physically taunted later in life and reveals that a group of girls 'jumped her' in a fight, which led to her being suspended because she started skipping class. She dropped out of school at the age of 17 and never looked back.

Winnie, who was working at a call centre, was scouted on Facebook and was quickly snapped up to star in a string of campaigns and music videos. Her big break came when she starred on America's Next Top Model in 2014 and Tyra Banks said that Winnie's skin breaks down barriers of what is considered beautiful.

Now Winnie, who describes her self as a 'vitiligo spokesmodel' on Instagram, is being celebrated for her distinctive look.

She has over one million followers on social media and she was recently invited back to her high school to do a motivational talk with students touching on the discrimination she faced.

Winnie first spoke publicly about her skin condition in 2011 by posting a video to YouTube titled 'Vitiligo: A Skin Condition not a Life Changer'.

Winnie, left and right as a child, was scouted on Facebook and was quickly snapped up to star in a string of campaigns and music videos.

Winnie has a bevvy of A-list pals including Puff Daddy and Jay Z, pictured on her left

Diesel proved a point with its SS15 campaign, which aimed to promote 'tolerance, equality and unconditional love' and stars the likes of Winnie Harlow, centre

Winnie, far right, was diagnosed with vitiligo around the age of four and said growing up she was cruelly nicknamed 'zebra' and 'cow' but she's launched a hugely successful career

Conceived by creative director Nicola Formichetti and styled by Anna Trevelyan, the Diesel campaign aims to be provocative and optimistic, say the brand

Although then just 17, she eloquently told viewers: 'People have black skin, people have brown skin, I have both.

'When I got older, it got harder because when kids get older they get meaner, so I went through a lot of bullying and people calling me like zebra or cow so it was really hard growing up.'

She said at certain points she was plagued with suicidal thoughts but found the strength to pull through. Moving from California to Canada with her family also provided the opportunity for a fresh start.

After 'blossoming', Winnie said she found it strange when people started telling her how beautiful she was.

WHAT IS VITILIGO? Vitiligo occurs when the cells that produce melanin, the pigment that determines the color of skin, die or stop functioning. This causes slowly enlarging white patches of irregular shapes to appear on the skin over time. Vitiligo affects all races, but may be more noticeable in people with darker skin. The exact cause of the condition is unknown, although many experts believe that it is an autoimmune condition in which the body's immune system mistakenly attacks and destroys certain cells. There is no cure and the goal of treatment, which can include ointments and skin grafts, is to stop or slow the progression of pigment loss. Advertisement

'I'll turn pink and say "thank you so much,'" the teenager giggled.

She says that things have worked in her favour because she accepts her originality and has used it to her advantage.

'I loved myself. And with that, opportunities start to fall into my lap. And I thank God for all of them. Try loving yourself,' she concluded.

As well as starring on America's Next Top Model, she walked in Ashish's catwalk show in London and starred in a SHOWStudio campaign.

If that wasn't enough, she's pals with Mariah Carey's ex Nick Cannon, parties with Drake and was snapped up to star in Beyonce's Lemonade music video.

Speaking about working with Queen Bey, Winnie said: 'I wanted to thank her for acknowledging me as a strong black woman and continuing to empower us all.'

Winnie, a former America's Next Top Model contestant, whose real name is Chantelle Brown-Young, was raised in Toronto by a single mother and hairdresser, Lisa Brown

Winnie also does lots of charity work and travels around the world meeting young students




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Swedish royals, politicians and glamorous guests arrived in their droves to celebrate the christening of Prince Alexander in a ceremony steeped in tradition on Friday morning.

Guests gathered at Drottningholm Palace Church where Prince Alexander, wearing the same christening gown worn by Prince Gustaf Adolf in 1906, arrived carried by his glamorous mother, Princess Sofia, and his father, Carl Philip.

Resplendent in a white lace custom made Ida Sjostedt suit, pearl headband and cream satin heels, Princess Sofia, 31, beamed as she watched her firstborn christened by Archbishop Antje Jackelen, flanked by her dapper husband, 37-year-old Prince Carl Philip.

Guests gathered at Drottningholm Palace Church where Prince Alexander, wearing the same christening gown worn by Prince Gustaf Adolf in 1906, arrived carried by his glamorous mother, Princess Sofia, and his father, Carl Philip

The Prince, who was appointed kapten in the Swedish Navy and achieved the rank of major in 2014, looked handsome in his full uniform.

The service, which is being aired for the nation by SVT, was followed by a reception and lunch for VIPs at Drottningholm Palace.

The cherubic Prince, who was born in April and is fifth in line to the throne, wore a cotton and lace gown, which has been worn by generations of royal babies before him. Most recently, his cousins, Princesses Estelle and Leonore, and Princes Nicolas and Oscar, wore the smock.

His father and aunties, Crown Princess Victoria and Princess Madeleine, have also worn the family heirloom.

The young royal's new godparents were also this week announced and were, of course, on hand at the christening.

Carl Philip's older sister and the future queen of Sweden, Crown Princess Victoria, wearing an Elie Saab cotton-blend lace dress, which cost an eye-watering 3,736, as well as Sofia's sister, Lina Frejd, and her childhood friend, Wendy Larsson, are godmothers. The godfathers are Carl Philip's friend and best man, Jan-Ake Hansson, and the prince's cousin, Victor Magnuson.

At one point, Princess Sofia was seen holding her son, while Archbishop Antje Jackelen, Prince Carl Philip, god parents Jan-Ake Hansson, and Lina Frejd, and Rev. Michael Bjerkhagen gave their blessings during the christening ceremony in the Palace Chapel.

Resplendent in a white lace dress, pearl headband and cream satin heels, Princess Sofia, 31, beamed flanked by her dapper husband, 37-year-old Prince Carl Philip

The Prince gave his little son a tender squeeze as they greeted fans and wellwishers waiting outside the church

Prince Alexander was born on Tuesday, April 19 at 6:25 p.m weighing at 7lbs 9oz and measuring 19.3 inches long

Swedish Princess Sofia (C) holds her son Prince Alexander, while Archbishop Antje Jackelen (L), Prince Carl Philip (2-L), god parents Jan-Ake Hansson, (3-R) and Lina Frejd (2-R) and Rev. Michael Bjerkhagen (R) give their blessings during the christening ceremony in the Palace Chapel of Drottningholm Palace in Stockholm

Prince Carl Philip looked lovingly at Princess Sofia, who held their son, Prince Alexander, during the ceremony

Princess Sofia holds her baby son, Prince Alexander next to King Carl XVI Gustaf, during the christening ceremony in the Palace Chapel of Drottningholm Palace in Stockholm

Crown Princess Victoria (2-L) and Princess Sofia (2-R) hold their sons Princes Oscar (C-L) and Prince Alexander (C-R) during the christening ceremony in the Palace Chapel of Drottningholm Palace

Arch Bishop Antje Jackelen holds up Sweden's five month-old Prince Alexander at Palace Chapel in Drottningholm Palace during his christening

Arch Bishop Antje Jackelen, second right, holds up Sweden's Prince Alexander as Bishop Johan Dalman, second left, and Princess Sofia watch

The doting parents looked delighted to be christening their firstborn in a ceremony steeped with tradition

Hours after the birth, Carl Philip held a press conference at the hospital to announce the new arrival. 'When asked if he had cried during the birth, the prince replied, according to People magazine: 'Yes, actually. Of course. Couldn't stop'

Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden and Prince Daniel of Sweden, with their children Prince Oscar and Princess Estelle of Sweden, attended the christening of Prince Alexander of Sweden

Carl Philip's older sister and the future queen of Sweden, Crown Princess Victoria, wearing an Elie Saab cotton-blend lace dress, which cost an eye-watering 3,736, arrived with her family

The birth of the couple's baby came at an exciting time for the Swedish royal family, who have recently welcomed a new baby, Prince Oscar Carl Olof. Sofia's sister-in-law, Crown Princess Victoria, sister of Prince Carl Philip, gave birth to her second child in March

Other guests included Kjell Stefan Lofven, the Prime Minister of Sweden, and his wife, as well as Annie Marie Therese Loof, the Leader of the Centre Party.

Alexander Erik Hubertus Bertil, also known as the Duke of Sodermanland, is Carl Philip and Sofia's first child.

The world first caught a glimpse of Prince Alexander when he left hospital with his parents Prince Carl Philip and Princess Sophia in April, the day after his birth.

Less than a week later, the royal family released their son's first official portrait.

Following in the footsteps of the Duchess of Cambridge, who has got behind the camera to take official portraits of her own children in the past, the image of the sleeping Prince was taken by the proud father Prince Carl Philip himself.

It shows Prince Alexander, who was five days old at the time, dressed in a white romper suit, covered with a delicate cable knit blanket - his tiny hands clasped alongside his ears.

The new Duke of Sodermanland's title was officially announced on April 22 at a cabinet meeting by his grandfather, King Carl XVI Gustaf .

In a statement following his birth, King Carl and Queen Queen Silvia said: 'We are extremely happy for Prince Carl Philip and Princess Sofia, and are delighted to have become grandparents again'

Princess Sofia of Sweden was seen doting on her cherubic son, Prince Alexander

Queen Silvia and King Carl Gustav arrived at the christening of their grandson

The Prince, who was appointed kapten in the Swedish Navy and achieved the rank of major in 2014, looked handsome in his full uniform

Other guests included Urban Ahlin and Jennie Ahlin, left, and Kjell Stefan Lofven, the Prime Minister of Sweden, and his wife, right

First, an official document announcing the baby's name was signed at Drottningholm Palace, which traditionally takes place at a royal birth.

Speaker Urban Ahlin, Prime Minister Stefan Lofven, Marshal of the Realm Svante Lindqvist, stateswoman Anna Hamilton, Chief Sophia Brismar Wendel and midwife Anna Stahl were witnesses.

Prince Alexander was born on Tuesday, April 19 at 6:25 p.m weighing at 7lbs 9oz and measuring 19.3 inches long.

Hours after the birth, Carl Philip held a press conference at the hospital to announce the new arrival.

'When asked if he had cried during the birth, the prince replied, according to People magazine: 'Yes, actually. Of course. Couldn't stop.

'For me and my wife, this is obviously a great day with a lot of emotion. Words cannot describe.'

At the time, members of the royal family offered official messages of congratulations to the couple on the birth of their first child.

In a statement, King Carl and Queen Queen Silvia said: 'We are extremely happy for Prince Carl Philip and Princess Sofia, and are delighted to have become grandparents again.

'We hope the new parents enjoy a time of peace and quiet together with their son.'

Crown Princess Victoria and her husband Prince Daniel added: 'We hope Carl Philip and Sofia enjoy these wonderful first few days with their new-born son, and we share the new parents' joy.'

A message from Princess Madeleine and her husband Christopher O'Neill said they were 'delighted to welcome a new member of the family'.

Annie Marie Therese Loof, the Leader of the Centre Party, was also in attendance, as was Ebba Busch Thor, right

Other guests include Oscar Kylberg and Maria Nilsson, left, and Bertil Bernadotte and Countess of Wisborg, Jill Bernadotte, right

A WHO'S WHO OF THE SWEDISH ROYAL FAMILY King Carl XVI Gustaf (born in 1946) and Queen Silvia (born in 1943) are the head of the royal family. Crown Princess Victoria, Duchess of Vastergotland (born in 1977), is their eldest daughter and heir to the throne. She is married to Prince Daniel, Duke of Vastergotland, and they have Princess Estelle, Duchess of Ostergotland, born 2012, and Prince Oscar, Duke of Skane, born 2016 Their eldest son is Prince Carl Philip, Duke of Varmland (born 1979). He is married to Princess Sofia, Duchess of Varmland, and they have Prince Alexander, Duke of Sodermanland, born 2016. Their youngest daughter is Princess Madeleine, Duchess of Halsingland and Gastrikland, born 1982, who is married to Christopher O'Neill. They have Princess Leonore, Duchess of Gotland, and Prince Nicolas, Duke of Angermanland, born 2015. Princess Birgitta is also a member of the Royal House. She is the King's second sister and the widow of Prince Johann Georg of Hohenzollern. Princess Margaretha, Mrs. Ambler, the King's first sister, and his third sister, Princess Desiree, Baroness Silfverschiold, who is married to Baron Niclas Silfverschiold, and Princess Christina, Mrs. Magnuson, who is the King's fourth sister and married to Consul General Tord Magnuson, are also members of the Royal Family. The King's aunts, Marianne Bernadotte, Countess of Wisborg, and Gunnila Bernadotte, Countess of Wisborg, are also listed. A family tree of the royals (please note the dates for Sibylla are 1908-1972) Advertisement

Sofia's parents Marie and Erik Hellqvist also sent a special message to the royal couple.

'We are so pleased that Prince Carl Philip and our daughter Sofia have had their first child.

'We have longed for a grandchild for a long time, and we are both extremely proud and happy.

'We wish them great happiness together with the new member of the family, and we will provide help and support as grandparents.'

And of course the Prince's proud aunts Lina Hellqvist and Sara Hellqvist, Princess Sofia's sisters, were keen to offer their congratulations.

'We welcome this tiny new member of the family with great joy and love,' they said. 'We have been looking forward to becoming aunts, and we will enjoy getting to know our nephew.

'We wish the new family the very best of luck!'

Prince Carl Philip and Princess Sofia shared the happy news of the pregnancy last year via an official statement released on Facebook.

'We are so happy and excited to announce that we are expecting our first child. We are very much looking forward to it,' it read.

The birth of the couple's baby came at an exciting time for the Swedish royal family, who have recently welcomed a new baby, Prince Oscar Carl Olof.

Sofia's sister-in-law, Crown Princess Victoria, sister of Prince Carl Philip, gave birth to her second child in March.

A view inside the Palace Chapel of Drottningholm Palace during the christening of Swedish Prince Alexander in Stockholm, Sweden

Princess Sofia of Sweden (R) and son Prince Alexander of Sweden arrive ahead of the christening at Drottningholm Palace Chapel

Former glamour model Sofia Hellqvist married the prince last June. The elegant brunette is known for her infectious gap-toothed smile and easygoing ways.

They dated for five years before walking down the aisle and now live together in the upmarket Djurgarden district of Stockholm.

They married in the royal palace's chapel, with the bride wearing a lace wedding dress created by local designer Ida Sjostedt.

But thanks to Princess Sofia's reality TV and glamour modeling past, Carl Philip's choice of wife initially proved controversial.

The now Duchess of Varmland's first shoot aged 20 saw her posing topless in a pair of camouflage print bikini bottoms and clutching a snake to preserve her modesty.

Unsurprisingly, when news of Carl Philip's new relationship emerged in 2010, the Swedish Royal Family were initially put 'on the defensive' as sources revealed at the time.

Since then, however, Sofia has gone out of her way to tone down her image.

Meanwhile Carl Philip has hit the headlines for antics of his own - not least his infamous 'wild summer' of 2012, during which he hit the Swedish party scene wearing an alien mask, and hitchhiked to a motoring competition after losing his Gucci wallet, going on to crash his car in the first race.
News / National

by Staff reporter

FIRST Lady Grace Mugabe has reportedly moved in to rescue her Manicaland ally, Letina Undenge following her loss in the Zanu PF primaries ahead of a by-election for the Chimanimani East constituency.Letina is Energy minister and Zanu PF provincial chairperson, Samuel Undenge's wife.Sources told NewsDay Undenge wrote to Zanu PF political commissar Saviour Kasukuwere claiming the people who voted for the winning candidate and rival, Nokuthula Matsikenyere, were not in the ruling party's structures."Letina wrote to the national commissar, complaining about the people who voted. She claims Matsikenyere bussed people, who are not even in the party's structures in order to win the primary election and represent the party in the upcoming by-election," NewsDay heard.Kasukuwere confirmed receiving a complaint over the internal poll."She has raised some concerns and we are going to look at them next Sunday," he said without providing further details of the nature of Undenge's "concerns".Insiders claimed Grace had been stung by Undenge's loss to Matsikenyere, who is linked to a faction of the ruling party fronted by Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa.Mnangagwa and Grace are reportedly locked in a bitter tussle for control of the ruling party, as they look beyond 92-year old President Robert Mugabe's tenure."Tyson (Kasukuwere's nickname) is under instructions from Amai (Grace) to ensure Undenge is the candidate, as her loss was a big blow to the faction. You must also understand that the relationship between the Undenges and Grace runs deeper than just belonging to the same political faction. Letina is Grace's representative in the Cashel Valley project that was inherited from former vice-president Joice Mujuru," another source said.Undenge was not available for comment, but a confident Matsikenyere did not mince her words."I have never been in-charge of party structures. Zanu PF has a commissariat department and if anyone wants to know members of the party, it is those in charge of the province," she said yesterday."I am confident that Zanu PF members found it in them to vote for me to represent their interests. I am ready if anyone feels aggrieved and wants a re-run of the primary elections."
They are two of the most recoginsable men in Britain, so it was only right that Prince Charles and David Gandy posed for a photograph when they met at a conference dinner last night.

The heir to the throne rubbed shoulders with the Essex-born supermodel and other fashion industry insiders at a dinner he was hosting at Dumfries House.

Charles, 67, organised the meal to kick off the conference staged by the Campaign for Wool, which will take place on Friday.

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How do you do? Prince Charles rubbed shoulders with Essex-born supermodel Davd Gandy and other fashion industry insiders at a dinner he was hosting at Dumfries House last night

While Mr Gandy, 36, looked sharp in a dinner jacket and bow tie, his dining companion went for traditional Scottish clothing including a tartan kilt, sporran and green velvet jacket.

The pair looked to be getting along famously as they chatted at the lavish country pile in Cumnock, East Ayrshire, on Thursday.

Fellow guests at the star-studded dinner included Sir Paul Smith and Marks & Spencer boss Steve Rowe, who are due to speak at the conference.

M&S is supporting the campaign and Mr Gandy, the face of the high street giant's menswear line, was in his element as he posed for photos with a kilted Charles.

While Mr Gandy looked sharp in a dinner jacket and bow tie, while his dining companion went for traditional Scottish garb including a kilt, sporran and green velvet jacket

David and Charles join M&S CEO Steve Rowe (right). The pair looked to be getting along famously as they chatted at the lavish country pile in Cumnock, East Ayrshire

The Prince will address his guests as patron of the campaign, which was launched in 2010 to promote wool products in response to low prices paid to British farmers.

They will also hear from campaign chairman Nicholas Coleridge, president of Conde Nast International.

Speakers will discuss sustainability, animal welfare and future aims of the industry, and they will be invited to sign the Dumfries House Wool Declaration - a commitment to protect the environment and uphold best practice across the production and trading of wool products.

The meeting will also host the first public screening of the documentary Slowing Down Fast Fashion by Blur bassist Alex James.

Important cause: Charles organised the dinner to kick off a conference staged by the Campaign for Wool this month. He is patron of the campaign which was launched in 2010

It will be the largest and most prestigious international gathering of wool experts ever to be held in the UK.

Charles launched the Campaign for Wool in January 2010 as an initiative to expand the market for British and Commonwealth wool and to promote awareness of its environmental benefits.

Having heard about the low prices British farmers were receiving for their wool, The Prince convened a group of representatives from the fashion and interior design industries.

Olympic star Max Whitlock was on hand to show off his gymnastic talents - in a woollen suit

The double gold medal winner spun on his hands on a table wearing a woollen suit

The royal is famously passionate about natural sustainability and knows that the production of wool involves far lower carbon emissions than man-made fibres.

Carpets made from wool also reduce heating costs and provide immeasurable safety benefits compared to their synthetic counterparts. Unlike many man-made materials, wool naturally biodegrades at the end of its useful life.

At The Dumfries House conference shepherds, growers, farmers, designers from the worlds of fashion and interiors, traders, processors, manufacturers, retailers, environmentalists and politicians will debate and analyse the issues facing the wool industry today and in the future.

The suit was specially designed by fellow guest and fashion mogul Sir Paul Smith

As the conference got underway on Friday, Olympic star Max Whitlock was on hand to show off his gymnastic talents - in a woollen suit.

The double gold medal winner spun on his hands on a table wearing a woollen suit specially designed by fellow guest and fashion mogul Sir Paul Smith to cheers from delegates.

Charles later posed with supermodel David Gandy and Marks and Spencer boss Steve Rowe behind the other stars of the event - a flock of sheep.

The delegates discussed sustainability, animal welfare and future aims of the industry and were invited to sign the all-important declaration.

Designer Sir Paul Smith points to a woollen suit he created, as modelled by Max Whitlock

Charles posed with Sir Paul Smith (pictured), supermodel David Gandy and Marks and Spencer boss Steve Rowe behind the other stars of the event - a flock of sheep

Sir Paul (right) told the conference at Dumfries House in Cumnock, East Ayrshire, he fell in love with wool as a young designer

Charles poses with Max Whitlock (left) and Sir Paul (right). The royal said he was 'proud' to endorse the declaration and hoped to attract a 'tidal wave' of support

Charles (second left) also said he would continue as campaign patron for a further five years

Charles, who is known as the Duke of Rothesay when in Scotland, told how since the campaign started, wool prices have risen and there is 'generally higher morale' in the industry.

He said he was 'proud' to endorse the declaration and hoped to attract a 'tidal wave' of support, also announcing he will continue as campaign patron for a further five years.

'I could only say I would love to see many hundreds of growers, brokers, spinners, designers, fashion houses, manufacturers, retailers and others all following your lead by making and embracing the same public commitment,' Charles told the audience.

Prince Charles leads a sheep at Highrove House, his country home in Tetbury, Gloucestershire. In a recent column, he urged Brits to ditch acrylic in favour of wool

Charles helps with sheep shearing at the Leenavale Sheep Stud, Sorrell, in 2012. His Royal Highness has been involved in the Campaign for Wool for the past seven years

'In so doing, I believe they will position themselves as good citizens of the wool business, with what I hope will quickly become a public and well-recognised seal of approval.'

Sir Paul told the conference at Dumfries House in Cumnock, East Ayrshire, he fell in love with wool as a young designer.

He urged producers to create more woollen sportswear, saying it can be developed as lightweight and showerproof, which he demonstrated by having a glass of water thrown at his suit by Campaign for Wool chairman Nicholas Coleridge, president of Conde Nast International, before introducing Whitlock.
A news anchor was accused of being 'inappropriate' for wearing skinny jeans while reporting on a murder.

Jana Shortal, who co-anchors Breaking the News on Kare 11 in Minneapolis, was delivering a somber report about the tragic last moments of murdered 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling, who went missing 27 years ago.

Afterwards the broadcaster came under attack from a columnist who claimed her 'skintight pants' were 'disrespectful'.

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Criticism: News anchor Jana Shortal, pictured, was shamed for wearing skinny jeans and accused of 'being hip' during a report about the murder of an 11-year-old boy in Minneapolis

Emotional: Jana, pictured, who co-anchors Breaking the News on Kare 11, was delivering a somber report about the tragic last moments of a murdered boy

Accusations: Afterwards she came under attack from a columnist who claimed her 'skintight pants' were 'disrespectful'

Response: The broadcaster hit back at 'CJ' in an emotional Facebook post

Star Tribune columnist 'CJ' wrote in an article: 'She looked great from the waist up in a polka-dot shirt and cool blazer, but the skinny jeans did not work.

'I was among a number of media types who found them inappropriate and, given the gravity of the days subject matter, downright jarring.'

She also accused her of being concerned with 'being hip' and as a result presenting herself as 'unseemly, perhaps disrespectful'.

CJ, who has since apologized for the comments, added: 'I would think that hipness wouldnt be a priority while covering one of the biggest, saddest stories in Minnesota history.'

In an emotional Facebook post, that has been liked 45,000 times and prompted thousands of people to comment, Jana hit back at the columnist.

She said she gave the report 'every single shred of hope and love I had' but that her efforts were ruined by the columnist who 'took that away' and instead 'made it about my pants'.

'On Tuesday morning I got dressed. The light on my porch woke me up. Jacob's light, his sign, to come home. Sick to my stomach I got dressed.

'Dreading the day I got dressed. Knowing I would learn, with all of you, what really happened to Jacob Wetterling,' she wrote.

'I dressed. I prayed. I went to work. I kept my head down. I learned what happened to him. I prayed again. I went on the air. I did my best.

Sensitive: Jana, pictured right at work, said she gave the report 'every single shred of hope and love I had'

Distraction: But Jana, pictured, said her efforts were ruined by CJ who 'made it about my pants'

'Bully': Jana said CJ, whose paper has since issued an apology and removed the article from its website, should be ashamed

'I gave that newscast every single shred of hope and love I had for Jacob. For his family. And for every single one of you who was hurting. I left everything I had on that newsroom floor.'

Addressing CJ, she branded her a 'bully' and said she should be ashamed.

'Have you no dignity, person with the name I won't write? You wrote about clothes in the darkest moment of Minnesota news history.

'You wrote about jeans. You were asked to create joy. Help your neighbor. You wrote about jeans. You took the life out of what was meant to be a tribute to a life lost.'

CJ also targeted the broadcaster on Twitter, where she wrote: 'Do you wish you'd worn different jeans/pants @janashortal on Tuesday's Breaking the News which dealt mostly with Jacob Wetterling's death?'

Jana responded by tweeting: 'IDK what my clothing has to do with covering the tragedy of Jacob's death. My only 'wish' on Tuesday was for Jacob's family. [sic]'

Jana has previously written about why she refused to comply with 'lady uniform' and how she appreciated working for an employer who allowed her to dress in clothes that she felt comfortable in.

The newspaper has removed the offending article from its website, replacing it with an apology that read: 'We briefly posted a column that criticized KARE's Jana Shortal for her appearance while reporting on the Jacob Wetterling story.

'The piece was inappropriate, insensitive and did not meet the standards of the Star Tribune. We have apologized to Ms Shortal and her station. And we apologize to you.'

In her own apology, CJ wrote: 'I want you to know that Im sorry it hurt Jana Shortal and I have told her so.'
Her usual style is red carpet glamour, so onlookers would be forgiven for not recognising Princess Charlene of Monaco today in a white polo shirt and slacks.

The royal was in Geneva, Switzerland on Friday to mark the launch of a new campaign ahead of World First Aid Day on Saturday.

However, Charlene managed to keep it elegant with her famous blonde crop and added a feminine touch with a pair of oversized pearl earrings.

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Princess Charlene of Monaco wears a white polo shirt and slack in Geneva, Switzerland

Charlene, 38, is goodwill ambassador for the International Federation of Red Crosses and Red Crescents Societies (IFRC) for first aid - a cause she is passionate about as a former professional swimmer.

She was seem demonstrating how to practice first aid on a plastic dummy with children - showing them everything from mouth-to-mouth to how to listen for a heartbeat.

The elegant royal also attended a news conference at the United Nations in Geneva to mark the IFRC's new campaign, First aid for and by children - which aims to educate youngsters on vital life-saving techniques.

The glamorous royal helps to mark the launch of World First Aid Day which is on Saturday

Charlene demonstrates how to practice first aid on a plastic dummy with children

Charlene, 38, is goodwill ambassador for the International Federation of Red Crosses and Red Crescents Societies (IFRC) for first aid

Her husband Albert II, Prince of Monaco was nowhere to be seen on Friday but he is likely to be busy with royal duties following the summer break.

Charlene was last seen in public while visiting residents at a local retirement home last month.

The IFRC provides education around first aid, training some 15 million people - including children - in 2014 alone.

The elegant royal also attends a news conference at the United Nations in Geneva

The mother-of-two managed to keep it elegant with her famous blonde crop and earrings

Flying solo: Charlene's husband Albert II, Prince of Monaco was nowhere to be seen on Friday

Former Olympic swimmer Charlene married into Monegasque the royal family in 2011 after meeting Albert some 11 years earlier at the Mare Nostrum swimming meet in Monaco.

The pair officially went public at the opening ceremony of the 2006 Winter Olympics before moving in together later that year and attending a series of European royal weddings together that year.

They are parents to one-year-old twins Princess Gabriella, Countess of Carlades, and Jacques, Hereditary Prince of Monaco.

Important cause: The IFRC provides education around first aid, training some 15 million people - including children - in 2014 alone

Back to business: Charlene was last seen in public while visiting residents at a local retirement home last month

Born in Rhodesia- a previously unrecongised state in Southern Africa colonised by the British, she relocated to South Africa aged 11.

She had a successful swimming career and went on to win three gold medals and a silver medal at the 1999 All Africa Games in Johannesburg.
They may have taken the summer off but it's business as usual for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, who are busy filling their diaries with even more royal engagements.

Next Friday will see the royal couple travel to the Stewards Academy in Harlow, Essex, where they will learn about the pressures faced by young people when they are going through big changes in their lives, and learn about the support from peers and parents that can help them get through these changes.

Kate and William, both 34 and working on the Heads Together campaign, will join a lesson on big change run by a small number of students involved with the schools mentor scheme in which older students support the new joiners in their first year of school.

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The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, pictured at a Heads Together last week, will travel to the Stewards Academy in Harlow, Essex, on Friday, where they will learn about the pressures faced by young people

They will then join the schools assembly where they will hear speeches and performances from students on the topic of coping with big changes. The Duke of Cambridge will also make a short speech.

The parents of two will then be escorted by the Academys Head Girl and Head Boy as they cross the school quad, which will be filled with pupils.

They will also meet with a small number of parents of students from the school to discuss how parents and carers can encourage their children to talk about big changes in their lives.

Heads Together will be producing a Back to School guide to help parents have these conversations.

Stewards Academy is one of the schools supported by Place2Be, one of the team of charities brought together for the Heads Together campaign being spearheaded by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry to change the conversation on mental health from shame to support. Place2Be has been an integral part of the support network available to pupils at the Academy for several years.

Research shows that a fifth of children will experience a mental health problem by the time they are eleven and that half of the mental health problems suffered by adults are established by the age of 14.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, pictured during a visit to the Eden Project in Cornwall last week, will join the schools assembly where they will hear speeches and performances from students on the topic of coping with big changes

Currently less than half of parents talk to their children about mental health.

Heads Together is going back to school to show real examples of the value of support from fellow students, teachers and parents in helping young people through these changes.

Last week, the Duke and Duchess visited The Eden Project in Cornwall, after their flight to visit the Isles of Scilly was cancelled due to bad weather.

The Duchess flaunted her love of a bargain wearing a pair of 21.99 trousers from Gap for the visit.

She teamed her high street buy with a 462 navy Smythe blazer, which she previously wore to the Royal International Air Tattoo in Gloucestershire in July this year.
The young woman who wins the Miss America pageant is generally expected to have incredible grace and poise  and this year's contestant from Michigan has proven that she has those attributes in spades.

Arianna Quan, 23, is in the running for the Miss America crown after becoming Miss Michigan in June. But since then, the Beijing-born title holder has faced an onslaught of nasty criticism and comments about her looks from people on the internet who claim she's too 'ugly' for the role.

While the nasty words must be horrible to hear, though, Arianna has handled them like a total pro, using her own unfortunate experience as a teaching moment for those who'll listen.

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Going for the top! Arianna Quan, 23, is the current Miss Michigan and is now competing for the Miss America title

Haters: Since she won, however, she has faced cruel comments about her looks online

If you have nothing nice to say... People have called the Beijing-born American citizen ugly and said she is unfit to represent Chinese people

Gracious winner: Arianna has handled the whole thing with grace and hasn't fired back at her critics

The first Asian-American ever to be crowned Miss Michigan, Arianna emigrated to the US when she was six and became a naturalized citizen at 14.

Winning the highest pageant title in her state is a huge accomplishment for the student, who is currently studying transportation design at Detroit's College for Creative Studies.

Sadly, however, not everyone is happy for her. Since she won, people living mostly in Mainland China have taken to the internet to insult her and disparage her looks.

According to Shanghaiist, they've written such awful things as, 'Is this competition for picking the ugliest person?', 'She's ruining the reputation of Chinese people', and, condescendingly, 'Oh. She's probably very beautiful on the inside.'

'She's 23?! Why does she look like she's 43?' wrote another.

Feeling the sting: Miss Michigan said that the words were quite hurtful at first

The high road: However, she said she's now 'over it' and people are entitled to their opinions

Multifaceted: She does wish, though, that people would just stop focusing on her looks and listen to what she has to say

You tell 'em! She also noted that the pageants are scholarship programs and she doesn't think anyone should ever be considered too ugly to win a scholarship

In America, people attacked her for her for speaking out about immigration and the importance of embracing diversity, mocking her for her beliefs.

Many people would crumble under such cruel words  but Arianna is taking the high road, doing an impressive job of seeing the upside.

'All this negativity came out, especially about my appearance and how I'm apparently unfit to represent the Chinese population because I'm "ugly,"' she told People.

'Obviously when you see it at first, it kind of hits you in the face,' she said in another interview with M Live. 'Because, I understand what the political climate is, I understand what people are saying, but to have those things said about you directly, and to see it right in front of you, it catches you off guard a little bit.

Future car designer: Arianna is studying transportation design at Detroit's College for Creative Studies

Smart cookie: She wants people to move on and listen to her ideas about diversity and immigration reform

'But I'm OK now,' she added with a laugh. 'I got over it.'

Incredibly gracious, she went on to say: 'They just expressed their opinions, which is absolutely OK.'

In fact, the thing she found most upsetting about the discussion around her looks is not that people called her 'ugly'  but that they were focusing on her looks above all else.

'I think I have some pretty important things to talk about, like getting people to vote, about this upcoming election, about diversity and immigration reform. Those are things I want to focus on during my year of service,' she said. 'Not about my appearance.

'You can think I'm ugly, and that's fine, but I want to talk about things that are important too.'

She said: 'You can think I'm ugly, and that's fine, but I want to talk about things that are important too'

From experience: Arianna was born in China and emigrated to the US at age six. She became a citizen at 14

The final days: She's currently in Atlantic City for the Miss America pageant

She also pointed out that Miss Michigan and Miss America are, at the end of the day, scholarship programs  and she doesn't think anyone should ever be considered 'so ugly enough to ever receive scholarship money, or to have a voice in the community.'

'My goal is to just drive the conversation in an important direction, because there are so many things we have to discuss about immigration and diversity in this country right now,' she told People.

'[Winning] would mean being able to represent a population of people in this country that are underrepresented right now: the immigrant population, the first-generation American population, Asian-Americans,' she added.
Dressed in head-to-toe pink, Queen Maxima was her elegant best on Friday as she embarked on an action-packed visit to the west coast of the Netherlands.

The Dutch royal, 45, looked chic and summery in the sleeveless tweed number as temperatures reached a balmy 26 degrees in the Zeeland province.

Maxima, who is married to husband King Willem-Alexander, showed off her slender frame and toned arms, adding a pink chain bag and heels - before later changing into a pair of flats for comfort.

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Long day? Maxima ditches her heels (left) to change into a comfortable pair of flats (right)

Is this how you do it? Students school Maxima on the correct way to open an oyster at Pontes Pieter Zeeman college in Zierikzee

The mother-of-three was in the province for an official engagement where she visited Delta Farms in Colijnsplaat, before taking a mussel cutter boat to Pontes Pieter Zeeman college in Zierikzee.

The whistle-stop tour had a strong focus on learning about innovations in the aquaculture industry in the region - including the cultivation of salty vegetables like samphire and sea lavender.

The mother-of-three was in the province for an official engagement where she visited Delta Farms in Colijnsplaat, before taking a mussel cutter boat to Pontes Pieter Zeeman college

The Argentina-born queen looked to be in a jovial mood as she beamed and waved to locals

According to NL Times, Maxima, who was invited on the trip by the king's commissioner Han Polman, spoke to representatives of Zeeland's mussel and oyster industry during the boat journey.

The Argentina-born queen looked to be in a jovial mood as she beamed and waved to onlookers.

She listened to a lecture on seafood and even tried her hand at cooking at the college, where she was taught the correct way to open an oyster.

Maxima, who was invited on the trip by the king's commissioner Han Polman, spoke to representatives of Zeeland's mussel and oyster industry during the boat journey

Maxima tries her hand at opening an oyster during the second half of her action-packed day

She was spotted alongside Willem-Alexander at the Men's 100m medley relay final in the Olympic Aquatics Stadium.

The couple are parents to Catharina-Amalia, Princess of Orange, 12, Princess Alexia, 11, and Princess Ariane, nine.
However they may face difficulty getting around the strict Federal Aviation Administration rules governing drone use

The 34-year-old there 'can't be anything more American' than his concept

He said it will first launch in New York in the Spring, followed by Los Angeles

The Instagram star, rapper and comic said his wine brand White Girl Rose has

The Fat Jew claims he plans to launch a service that will deliver cans of rose directly to customers by drone.

The Instagram star, rapper and comic - whose real name is Josh Ostrovsky - said his wine brand White Girl Rose plans to launch an Uber-style app in the Spring that will enable customers to have wine delivered to them by drone at their exact location.

The 34-year-old told Daily Mail Online that the service will initially launch in New York, followed by Los Angeles, with a fleet of 12 drones that hold either two or four cans.

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New service: Josh Ostrovsky, 34, also known as The Fat Jew, claims he is creating a drone delivery service for wine

Innovation? He claims he is launching an Uber-style app early next year for ordering rose by drone

Preparing: The Instagram star, rapper and comic said his wine brand White Girl Rose has acquired a fleet of 12 drones

Josh said people 'shouldn't have to move' to order and receive a drink, adding that there 'can't be anything more American' than his concept.

He said: 'We're kind of letting people know that there are better days ahead.

'That you'll never have to talk to some guy in a wine store who's talking about nose and flavors ever again. '

He added: 'It's pure America isn't it? Rose, in a can, coming directly to you by a drone. There can't be anything more American.'

From the app, which is free to download, customers will be able to order Babe Rose as either a four-pack for approximately $13.99 or a two-pack for around $8.99.

Additionally they will be charged for drone delivery which initially will cost a maximum of $12 to $14 with price varying depending on location.

Other companies that are experimenting with drone technology include Amazon, which is still working on how to implement its service Prime Air, and food chain Chipotle recently tested delivery by drone in a partnership with Alphabet.

Incoming: He said it will first launch in New York in the Spring, followed by Los Angeles

Room service: He said there 'can't be anything more American' than his concept

Josh said his K1651 drones, which were designed in Sweden, will be directed by specialist drone operators.

However they may face difficulty getting around the strict Federal Aviation Administration rules governing drone use.

Josh said: 'These are super sheeky drones. They're fast, they land smooth, they're the best.'

Josh said the service, which he has been personally testing, 'finally feels like the future.'

He said: 'It can honestly go anywhere. When we were testing it it brought me rose to a jacuzzi...It's pretty f*****g awesome. It finally feels like the future...

'Shouldn't I have bionic arms by now? Where are we? Isn't it 2016? Shouldn't I have a computer in my eyeball? The least we can get is our booze delivered in bed.'

But he warned that there will be some restrictions.

They cannot deliver by drone onto a plane because of flight restrictions and he said bathrooms are also off limits.

He said: 'I am disappointed about this but I can't be delivered to the bathroom.

Progress: Josh said the service, which he said he has been personally testing, 'finally feels like the future'

Next step: Once they have mastered can delivery, he said they will move on to bottles

'I tried to get it delivered to me on the toilet but it couldn't, it was too narrow...If you want rose wile you're s******g, too bad.'

Once they have mastered can delivery, he said they will move on to bottles and in the future Josh said he imagines packaging different products together such as wine and DVDs.

Citing the demand for other high-speed delivery services, he said the same should exist for wine.

He said: 'You can get anything delivered with Amazon now. If I want a hammock in ten minutes I can get a hammock.

'If I want anal beads delivered to me I can get that. Why does that not apply to wine?'

A promotional video shows Josh in bed with a Teletubby toy being delivered rose by drone to his bed and people using the service from the pool, at a party and on the beach.
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A couple gave an entirely new - and far more romantic - meaning to the term 'Red Wedding' after they celebrated tying the knot by snapping a series of stunning pictures in front of a lava flow.

Childhood sweethearts Lauren and Alexander Michaels hiked four miles in the middle of the night with friend and photographer Jenna Lee for the romantic dawn shoot, which saw them posing next to the glowing red river of molten volcanic rock.

On the slopes of the Kilauea volcano in Hawaii the fiery lava provided the perfect backdrop for sizzling love snaps of the newlyweds.

Hot couple! Newlyweds Lauren and Alexander Michaels posed in front of a river of lava for their wedding photos

Quite the trek: The Honolulu-based couple had to hike for four miles in the middle of the night in order to reach the secluded spot and ensure that the lighting would be just right

Friendly support: Lauren and Alexander asked their friend, photographer Jenna Lee, to shoot the images for them

What an experience: 'The hike was insane, and I would say the scariest part was crunching across the lava fields,' Jenna said of the group's trek to reach the perfect picture spot

Jenna, the 31-year-old owner of Jenna Lee Pictures, knows the couple well from her time working on other people's weddings with Lauren.

'I'm always encouraging my couples to get as adventurous as they can dream, and when I heard the lava was flowing once again, I knew it needed to be captured,' she explained.

'The hike was absolutely insane, and I would say the scariest part was crunching across the lava fields. It's incredibly eerie, and when you look down you can actually see the molten lava below the surface through the cracks, and can feel the heat from within.

'I felt like I could break through the earth's surface at any moment and get swallowed up by the lava.'

Danger, danger! The photographer added that the group felt as though they could fall through the rock and be 'swallowed up by the lava' at any moment

Perfectly happy: Despite the risky conditions, Lauren and Alexander look completely composed in the final pictures

Stormy skies: The couple was able to pose in front of an incredible backdrop after making it to the picture spot in time to see the sun rise above them

Happy: The bride didn't hike in her wedding dress, but instead changed into it once the trio had arrived at their destination

Despite enduring a rain soaked hike in a back pack, the wedding dress still looked perfect when the bride put it on in front of the lava.

And although the conditions in which she had to prepare were perhaps not quite as glamorous as the resulting images, the blushing bride said she couldn't have been more thrilled with the photoshoot.

Lauren, the 24-year-old owner of Aloha Bridal Connections, said: 'The place we stayed didn't have electricity so I ended up doing my hair and make-up as the sun was setting the previous evening and then just crossed my fingers that it would stay that way.

'We were so excited to see the lava and it was a double bonus that we would get some pictures out of it.

Now and then: The couple have been together for ten years after first meeting in high school in 2006

The finishing touch: Jenna made sure to snap a photo of the rings with the volcanic rock serving as an interesting background

'Who wouldn't want to adventure out to see beautiful slow moving lava and dance around in wedding attire?! Although we made sure to stay safe the whole time.'

Lauren and Alexander, a 26-year-old waiter, met in high school in 2006 as they both knew sign language.

After Lauren moved to Hawaii to study and to stop her from suffering dizziness in 2010, Alexander quickly followed her.
Many stars go to extreme lengths to try to avoid ageing and appear frozen in time.

And Sadie Frost is taking that literally  as she has undergone a beauty treatment that involves being plunged into an icy -91C (-132F) chamber for three minutes.

The actress, 51, shared a photo on Instagram yesterday of her wearing a surgical mask, hat and gloves  to protect her extremities  as she prepared to enter the chamber, and wrote: Freezing my assets.

Actress Sadie Frost shared an image of her undergoing beauty treatment that involves being plunged into an icy -91C (-132F) chamber for three minutes

Th 51-year-old said she was 'freezing her assets' with the treatment to keep your skin looking youthful

Miss Frost and Kate Moss: The treatment is called cryotherapy and costs around 95

During the 95 treatment, called cryotherapy, the intense cold means blood vessels constrict, lessening blood flow to the skin. It is claimed to tighten the skin and promote the production of collagen, which keeps skin firm. It is also said the body burns up to 800 calories as it fights to stay warm.

111CRYO, the clinic in London visited by Miss Frost, claims cryotherapy also reduces inflammation and boosts the metabolism. Miss Frost, a mother of four, said she was hooked. The therapy was part of a regime she has adopted to preserve her looks after giving up her hedonistic lifestyle. The star, who was in the Primrose Hill set along with model Kate Moss, is a fan of yoga and has said she applies skin creams religiously every day. Her more bizarre rituals include swilling her mouth out with coconut oil.

And the regime seems to be paying off. Miss Frost appeared at a party in London last week with glowing, youthful skin.
Tanya Taylor's bright and cheerful spring/summer 2017 collection was inspired by her recent travels to the islands of Cuba, Barbados and Capri.

'I wanted the looks to feel super celebratory and easy, Tayna told WWD. According to her, the women who would wear her current designs are 'confident and sort of peacocking.'

The presentation, which was held at Spring Studios, featured models standing on top of multi-colored sandboxes in uber feminine looks. Dresses and separates alike were adorned with ruffled floral prints, palm leaf cut-outs and embroidered tassels.

Tanya Taylor's bright and cheerful spring/summer 2017 collection was inspired by her recent travels to the islands of Cuba, Barbados and Capri

Attention seeker: According to Tanya, the women who would wear her current designs are 'confident and sort of peacocking'

Bold baubles: The presentation, which was held at Spring Studios, featured models standing on top of multi-colored sandboxes in uber feminine looks

Fun and flirty: Dresses and separates alike were adorned with ruffled floral prints, palm leaf cut-outs and embroidered tassels

No such thing as too many tassles: Tassles down to the tooties at the show

MILLY:

'Exploring the space between purity and sensuality and where the two become entangled,' was the starting point for Michelle Smith, Co-Founder and Designer of Milly, when creating her spring/summer 2017 collection.

Ruffled skirts, bow-tie accented tops and flowy dresses were made sexy with lace-up ties, slits and unexpected cutouts. Bold green, orange and blue hues stood out against the collection's white and black pieces.

'I am no wallflower,' says Michelle. 'I'm a thrill-seeker.' And so is the courageous woman who who don this beautiful and bold collection.

No wallflower: 'Exploring the space between purity and sensuality and where the two become entangled,' was the starting point for Michelle Smith, Co-Founder and Designer of Milly, when creating her spring/summer 2017 collection

Show some skin: Ruffled skirts, bow-tie accented tops and flowy dresses were made sexy with lace-up ties, slits and unexpected cutouts

Pops of color: Bold green, orange and blue hues stood out against the collection's white and black pieces

CUSHNIE ET OCHS:

The Dock at Moynihan Station was host to fashionistas Jaime Chung, Olivia Culpo and Sophia Bush, as they sat front row at the Cushnie Et Ochs show today.

Elvira Hancock, Michelle Pfeiffer's sensual character in Scarface, was designers Carly Cushnie and Michelle Ochs inspiration for the skin baring collection.

The duo sent models down the catwalk in sultry pieces that highlighted unexpected erogenous zones in seductive colors. Tony Montana eat your heart out!

Sexy lady: Elvira Hancock, Michelle Pfeiffer's sensual character in Scarface, was designers Carly Cushnie and Michelle Ochs inspiration for the skin baring collection

Cold shoulder: The duo sent models down the catwalk in sultry pieces that highlighted unexpected erogenous zones in seductive colors

Scarface inspired: Tony Montana eat your heart out
News / National

by BBC

Zimbabwe's ruling party has been accused of deliberately withholding aid from opposition supporters in areas facing starvation because of drought.The country's human rights commission said opponents of President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party had been told they would never get any food aid.The government has not yet commented.Mr Mugabe declared a state of disaster in February, with the government estimating that four million people would need food aid by January 2017."Ruling party members were the major perpetrators in violations linked to distribution of food," Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission (ZHRC) chairman Elasto Mugwadi told media in the capital, Harare, detailing the findings of the investigation.Mr Mugwadi said huge numbers of people had been affected by the alleged tactic, without giving exact figures.The government says half the rural population faces starvation.In recent months, there have unprecedented protest against the government of the 92-year-old leader, who has now been in power for 36 years.The scathing report on the allegations of the politicisation of food aid in rural areas by senior government officials and public servants lays bare accusations that have long been denied by President Robert Mugabe.The ZHRC says its findings were a result of extensive investigations across the country.It will be difficult for Mr Mugabe to simply dismiss the allegations.The powers of the rights body are enshrined in the constitution, giving it a legal mandate to carry out investigations into human rights violations and to make recommendations to parliament.The political implications of the report are grave, especially with general elections due in 2018, although similar allegations have been made in the past.With growing popular calls for electoral reform, there will be many who fear that this investigation betrays the extreme tactics which may be employed to ensure election victory.Alleged attempts to exert pressure on rural folk by withholding food will be seized on by Mr Mugabe's critics as evidence that his government has reached a new low, especially given the food crisis the country is facing.Zimbabwe has endured two years of failed rains, with this year's problems linked to the El Nino weather pattern.Elections are due to take place in 2018.
Burger lovers have been clamouring for a golden ticket to sample a bar's Willy Wonka-inspired creations.

Sydney's Bar Luca has been serving up a 'scrumdiddlyumptious' range of burgers and shakes as its chefs let loose for its very own Wonka Week.

The event paid homage to the late Gene Wilder, the actor who made his name playing the title character in the 1971 classic Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

Colourful creation: Sydney's Bar Luca has been serving Willy Wonka-inspired burgers in homage to the late actor Gene Wilder

Golden ticket: Diners at the bar have the chance to nab a golden ticket, which gives them a year's supply of free burgers

One of the bar's creations was the Beauregarde Burger, named after the character Violet in the film.

The striking rainbow bun of the Beauregarde was coloured to look like Violet, who swells up as a giant blueberry after eating experimental 'three course dinner gum'.

Co-owner and cashier Sarah Robbins said: 'We wanted to do something for Gene Wilder of course.

'But the burger itself was inspired by the three-course bubblegum in the movie.

'We wanted to replicate that and put those elements into a burger.'

Mirroring Wonka's three-course creation, the burger featured tomato soup jelly, a beef patty, fried potatoes and blueberry onion jam.

'Scrumdiddilyumptious': The bar's chefs let loose and came up with imaginative creations such as the Beauregarde Burger and the Bloopberry Shake

Imaginative: Another one of the bar's creations was the Bloopberry shake, named after the character Augustus Bloop

Three-course meal: The Beauregarde Burger was styled after the three-course chewing gum in the film. It featured tomato soup jelly, beef, potato chips and blueberry jam

Every day the bar also gave away one golden ticket which the winner could swap for a free burger.

Of the 17 golden tickets given away, one lucky winner will be chosen to gorge on a year's supply of meals at the bar, Sarah said.

She said fans of Willy Wonka have been flocking to the bar over the past week in both homage and hunger.

'It's been insane, we've been absolutely booked out each day.
Use volume button on self-checkout screens to mute the voice command

He creates video guide showing you how to switch off annoying message

It's one of the most annoying phrases you can hear while shopping: 'Unexpected item in the bagging area'.

The irritating voice command plagues shoppers that use self-checkouts, often regardless of whether your carrier bags are in the bagging area or not.

But frugal 19-year-old blogger Jordon Cox, of Brentwood in Essex, has created a video that explains just how easy it is to silence the shaming message.

Nineteen-year-old blogger Jordon, also known as the 'Coupon Kid' for savings advice website MoneySavingExpert.com, has created a video that explains just how easy it is to silence the annoying voice command

Jordon, also known as the 'Coupon Kid' blogger for savings advice website MoneySavingExpert.com, says that if you know where to look, you can stop the irritating voice command.

He told FEMAIL: ' The self-checkout can be handy, but is often an added annoyance to an already stressful day for a lot of people.

'The button has always been there hidden in plain sight - just by pure curiosity, I pressed it one day, and it was a life changer.

'To mute the self-checkout, cast your eyes on the corner of the screen. If there is a little speaker button, keep tapping it until it's muted with a red "X" through it.

Then you can shop in peace with no unexpected items in bagging area.'

It's not the first time Jordon's frugal tips have helped consumers.

To never hear the 'unexpected items in the bagging area' message again, press the volume button at the bottom of the self-checkout screen next time you do a supermarket shop, says Jordon

Earlier this year, he posted a blog after making a journey from Sheffield (where he'd been advising members of a local WI group how to save money on their supermarket bill) to his home town, Shenfield, in Essex.

But rather than go direct, he saved 8 by taking a 1,017-mile detour via Berlin.

It meant a day's more travel  but it cost him 7.72 less than the train equivalent.

A couple of years ago, by ingeniously juggling money-off vouchers, he reduced his mum's grocery bill from 106 to just 1.62.

Click the volume button until a red X appears on the volume control sign on the bottom of the self-checkout screen to silence the annoying voice command

Just 16 at the time, he was quickly dubbed the 'Coupon Kid'.

Six months later, he trumped himself by scouring the internet and magazines to collect 470 money-off and cashback vouchers for dozens of products.

The result? He bought Christmas groceries worth 572.16 for just 4p. And then gave away all the items to charity.

Jordon is an expert in what is known as 'extreme couponing': where you combine money off-vouchers, special offers and other promotions to get the maximum discount.
Food writer Imogen Blake made her own gourmet meal with a chef's help

The experience is totally free of charge and wine is also served

Ikea is now serving flatpack dinners in new stand-alone restaurant

Ikea has become world famous for its enormous range of affordable furniture that you knock together yourself.

So it makes sense that the retail giant's first stand-alone 'restaurant' would be one where the diners have to cook their own dinner.

FEMAIL's food journalist Imogen Blake, 25, was last night given a sneak preview of the superstore's pop-up supper club The Dining Club - where diners become gourmet chefs for the night, free of charge.

FEMAIL's food journalist Imogen Blake, 25, pictured with homemade smoked salmon crispbreads, was last night given a sneak preview of Ikea's pop-up supper club The Dining Club - where diners become gourmet chefs for the night

Ikea has taken over a large exhibition space in trendy Shoreditch in central London for its new pop-up venture, which officially begins on Saturday for 13 days only

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

Ikea has taken over a large exhibition space in trendy Shoreditch in central London for its new pop-up venture, which officially begins on Saturday for 13 days only.

It's home to a mini-shop, an Ikea cafe (where the Swedish retailer's famous meatballs will be served), a workshop space where free cooking talks will be held, and a bizarre exhibition featuring Ikea chairs hung on the walls.

The main event, however, is its supper club - where from Saturday, groups of up to 20 friends can take over the venue for lunch or dinner and, under the guidance of expert chefs, cook their own flatpack gourmet meals.

It's completely free, with alcohol and food included, and despite doing dinner themselves, they will still be served by waiters and escape the washing up.

Imogen, pictured with friend Sarah, was sceptical about the concept - but found the cooking skills required are minimal as you are guided by an expert chef

But tired after a full day's work, I have to confess I wasn't much looking forward to cooking my own dinner in someone else's kitchen - especially if it was anything like the frustrated hours I've spent knocking together Ikea drawers and wardrobes in the past.

Surely the point of going to a restaurant is that all the hard work is done by someone else?

I was sceptical.

As I entered, it felt like I had walked into one of Ikea's famous showroom spaces, rather than a restaurant.

Londoner Chris Pannell, pictured holding the tray, hosted the first session at Ikea's trendy venue in Shoreditch

The room is one big homage to the retail giant and its products. Cutlery shines on immaculately presented tables in the room while three contemporary kitchen stations, kitted out with induction hobs, are ready and waiting at the back.

Everything, from the forks to the large central work station, is from Ikea, naturally.

It's sharp and modern, and - despite celebrating 'the wonderful everyday' - it's obvious that Ikea's restaurant certainly isn't your everyday eatery.

COOKING

Imogen dollops creme fraiche onto crispbreads for her salmon starter creation at Ikea's Dining Club

Writer Imogen gets to grips with her starter as she prepares her own gourmet dinner at The Dining Club

On preview night, our small group of journalists and food bloggers were told that we would be cooking three of the starter dishes set to be on the menu from Saturday.

While people paired off to make rolled beef carpaccio and mackerel and beetroot tartare, my friend and I were tasked with making hot smoked salmon with watercress and pickled cucumber on crispbread.

It's clear that dishes at the supper club - which is billed as somewhere you can host a world-class dinner party without the price tag, skills or washing up - are exclusively gourmet.

The space may not feel like a traditional restaurant, but these Scandinavian dishes would be at home in any high-end eatery.

No meatballs then?

Hot smoked salmon was prepared by Imogen and her friend Sarah to go with their gourmet creme fraiche

'While people paired off to make rolled beef carpaccio and mackerel and beetroot tartare, my friend and I were tasked with making hot smoked salmon with watercress and pickled cucumber on crispbread'

I was told these are saved for cafe customers - the only part of the pop-up venture where guests have to pay.

Unsure about whether I could really pull off hot smoked salmon, to my relief our authoritative chef immediately took the lead and talked us through how to make the meal.

Taking out two beautiful large cuts of salmon from the in-built fridge, he explained how you can smoke your own fish at home very easily just by burning a few wood chips in an old pan, while the fish rests on a small metal rack above.

But in a Blue Peter style move, he took out some cooked flaked salmon he prepared earlier for us to try.

It had a deep smoky flavour without overpowering the delicate fish, which had just been cooked.

Then, suddenly, we were on duty.

You don't usually have to serve your guests yourself but Imogen decided to dish up some of her hot smoked salmon crispbreads to her friend Sarah

Imogen and friend Sarah's homemade hot smoked salmon on crispbread with watercress, pickled cucumber and creme fraiche was the best dish of the day - if she does say so herself

He asked us to lay out 20 crispbreads on wooden boards, before tasking us with spreading creme fraiche over the base, and shredding some watercress on top from bowls laid out in front of us.

We added generous heaps of salmon in the centre, before finishing with some pickled cucumber and more watercress.

I quickly realised that 'do-it-yourself' dinner is much simpler than the flatpack furniture version.

This was cooking without the effort, boiled down to just the 'fun' showy parts, where you make the meal Instagram-worthy.

Really, our chef did all the hard work. But I still showed off my dish to the other diners, proud of the way I had dished up the dainty starter.

TASTE TEST

FEMAIL's Imogen sits down to a well deserved glass of wine and some gourmet snacks after finishing her smoked salmon starter

Our work stopped there. The group simply sauntered over to one of the tables and our homemade creations were put down in front of us by the waiters.

After being poured a refreshing glass of white wine, we tucked in.

Another pair's beef carpaccio was rich in truffle flavour and the meat was beautifully tender.

It was curled into rolls stuffed with green beans and made for a moreish mouthful.

The mackerel and beetroot tartare was fresh, though perhaps slightly under-seasoned, and served on the same crispbread that we used for our salmon dish.

But - and I'm not just saying this, honest - our hot smoked salmon on creme fraiche and watercress was the star of the table.

The salmon flakes were moist and were rightly the main event, not overwhelmed by the peppery watercress and creamy creme fraiche.

The crunchy crispbread added welcome texture, but they were quite large and certainly too big for a traditional bite-sized canape.

The three starters the group made on one plate: rolled beef carpaccio, mackerel and beetroot tartar, and hot smoked salmon with watercress and pickled cucumber on crispbread

VERDICT

Initially dubious, I was won over by the concept by the end.

You really don't need any cooking skills to take part in the experience - and if you make a mistake, it's all part of the fun. Essentially, this is cooking without any of the hard work.

Though the space is far from homely, the kitchen you use is much larger than in the average house and comes with all the mod cons you would ever need.

Abandon all pre-conceived notions of what a restaurant should be, and it's an enjoyable way to host a swish dinner party and serve gourmet food for friends without any of the effort.

The lack of a price tag just makes the taste even sweeter - and perhaps explains why Ikea are serving up their Dining Club experience for only two weeks.
A fourth American has been diagnosed with bacteria resistant to a last-resort antibiotic.

The patient, a two-year-old girl from Connecticut, was diagnosed with E. coli earlier this year.

On Friday, the CDC announced tests confirm she is one of just four US citizens found to be immune to an important medicine called colistin.

Colistin - an old, powerful drug with significant side effects - is reserved for germs that already resist other important antibiotics.

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A two-year-old girl has been confirmed as the fourth ever American to be resistant to colistin

LATEST CASE The Connecticut girl developed diarrhea during a June trip to the Caribbean. It turns out another bug caused her symptoms, one that she probably picked up from something she ate. But lab testing revealed she also was carrying E. coli that carried colistin resistance, said Maroya Walters, a CDC epidemiologist who investigated the case. She recovered, Walters said. Six family members were tested and none tested positive for bacteria carrying the colistin-resistance gene, called mcr-1 by scientists. Advertisement

Health officials have worried that the colistin-resistant bacteria will spread their special trait to bacteria already resistant to other medicines, setting the stage for true superbug infections that are impervious to all known antibiotics.

However, the revelation on Friday was offset by some good news: so far these superbug precursors have not spread to others.

Researchers reported last week a worrisome case of a 76-year-old man treated in 2014 at a New Jersey hospital.

In follow-up testing this year, he was found to have been infected by a germ that was resistant to both colistin and another class of antibiotics called carbapenems that are also reserved to treat especially tough bugs.

It was the first time this kind of double-resistance was reported in the U.S., though several other cases have been reported elsewhere in the world.

All the U.S. cases have been treatable by other antibiotics.

And, importantly, researchers report that the bacteria do not seem to have infected other people.

When bacteria spread, they encounter other bacteria and can exchange genetic traits, creating more opportunity for a superbug to emerge.

The Connecticut girl developed diarrhea during a June trip to the Caribbean. It turns out another bug caused her symptoms, one that she probably picked up from something she ate.

But lab testing revealed she also was carrying E. coli that carried colistin resistance, said Maroya Walters, a CDC epidemiologist who investigated the case.

She recovered, Walters said. Six family members were tested and none tested positive for bacteria carrying the colistin-resistance gene, called mcr-1 by scientists.

The CDC on Friday also updated an investigation into one of the four other colistin-resistant cases, a Pennsylvania woman whose case was first reported in May.

Investigators were not able to determine where she picked up her infection, but they tested more than 100 people but found no evidence it had spread to anyone else.
Despite all the fears about cell phones and radiation, most of us still put our phones in our jean pockets.

It's easy, convenient, and any bad effects are impossible to see.

But a new study warns there is conclusive evidence that men in particular need to find another storage spot.

A systemic review of 21 research papers on radiation shows phones placed close to a man's genitals for a prolonged period of time steadily drive down sperm count.

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Danger: A review of years of evidence shows men are putting themselves at risk by storing their phones in their front pockets

And among the studies, many suggest surviving sperm could be DMA-damaged.

The biological phenomenon is currently under fierce debate since scientists have no way to explain how non-ionizing radiation influences the body.

Without that link, many public health investigators are hesitant to say definitively that cell phones harm sperm.

However, a new review by a team at Australia's University of Newcastle has collated years of evidence in an attempt to both emphasize the trend, and to identify potential causes.

And since 14 per cent of the world struggle to conceive - with male infertility involved 40 per cent of the time - they warn a small detail such as where one stores their phone could be crucial.

'While this subject remains a topic of active debate, this review has considered the growing body of evidence suggesting a possible role for RF-EMR [radiofrequency electromagnetic radiation] induced damage of the male germ line,' the authors write.

'In a majority of studies, this damage has been characterized by loss of sperm motility and viability as well as the induction of ROS generation and DNA damage.'

The authors reviewed 27 studies. Twenty-one of them showed a causal link between cell phone radiation and sperm damage.

Ten studies were examined including 1,492 human sperm samples.

Exposure to mobile phones was found to be associated with a significant eight per cent reduction in sperm motility and nine per cent reduction in sperm viability.

The data are hardly surprising, the authors say, given the 'unique vulnerability of the highly specialized sperm cell'

The effects on sperm concentration were more equivocal.

The results were consistent across experimental laboratory studies and correlational observational studies.

The data are hardly surprising, the authors say, given the 'unique vulnerability of the highly specialized sperm cell'.

But by continuing to store phones in pockets, the male population is ignoring 'the future health burden that may be created if conception proceeds with defective, DNA-damaged spermatozoa'.

Dr Joel Moskowitz, of UC Berkeley's public health school, explained to Daily Mail Online that this review is a pivotal step towards broader global understanding about the dangers of our phones.

In 2011, the World Health Organization classified cell phone radiation as a possible 2B carcinogen.

It was the first major recognition that cell phones could have a detrimental effect on our bodies.

However, while studies have shown a correlation between sperm count depletion and cell phone radiation, there is a lack of research and concrete findings into the link between the two.

Regardless, Dr Moskowitz warned, the University of Newcastle review is clear evidence that 'men should not store their cellphones near their genitals'.

'In this line of research more intense cellphone radiation leads to more sperm damage,' he added.




Alarmed over fake baby milk powders circulating in the market, the Authentication Solution Providers Association (ASPA) has written to the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) to implement forensic features on products to ensure safety.

Nakul Pasricha, Vice President, ASPA told reporters:As the recent scandal in China has shown, counterfeiters will go to any lengths for a quick profit, including putting babies at risk.

"To protect the 25 million babies born in India, every year, it is essential to protect baby milk powders and other nutritional products from the scourge of counterfeiting.

India has bee facing the problem of adulterated milk sold at dairies and by the milkmen. (File photo of milk collected in French farms)

This can be achieved by securing supply chains through authentication, track-and-trace and other digital solutions, as well as by applying tamper-proof or tamper-evident physical solutions onto packaging, such as security labels and holograms, he added.

Optically Variable Devices Optically Variable Devices (OVD) is an iridescent image that exhibits various optical effects such as movement or color changes. This is used to describe both laser generated hologram images and electron beam generated images. The OVD can be used as a stand-alone feature or can be combined with printed security features to create devices that are extremely difficult to replicate using conventional photocopy or scanning technologies. Advertisement

Incidents of adulterated milk are very common in India.

Currently, BIS has a product certification scheme that allows more than 30,000 licensees to use the ISI mark as a symbol of quality product.

However, experts say its easier for unscrupulous manufacturers to produce fake ISI mark with the advancement in digital technology.

The increasing number of counterfeit ISI mark products has become a menace for the Government authorities and legitimate brand owners affecting consumers health and resulting in loss of revenue.

The ASPA has proposed to the BIS for usage of high security Optically Variable Devices (OVD).

Selling adulterated milk is a criminal offence in India, but the government now wants strict control. (Photo for representation only)

OVDs technology has been used by more than 100 Government authorities worldwide for banknote and high security documents.

The OVD technology fully conforms to the recommendation and guidelines stipulated by ISO Standards 12931 in curbing the menace of product counterfeiting. OVD contains various overt and covert high security features, said U K Gupta, President, ASPA.
The central government has drawn up a tough strategy to deal with the unrest in Kashmir after intelligence inputs suggested that the current round of trouble was motivated by ISIS-inspired elements, highly-placed official sources told India Today TV.

The new strategy was finalised after the recent visit of an all-party delegation and talks with various stakeholders in the restive state, the sources disclosed.

According to the latest plan, accessed by India Today TV, strengthening the security apparatus in Jammu and Kashmir is the top priority for the government now.

Protesters throw stones at policemen in Srinagar

The new strategy focuses on ensuring that security forces get an upper hand in the state.

Senior officials said that the government believes the situation is worse in rural Kashmir than in the Valley.

Taking a tough position is important at this time, revealed a top government official.

The idea is to send a clear message to protesters that Azadi is out of the question, he added.

Also, the government, at the highest levels, has learnt that the ongoing demonstrations are being fueled by 3,000-odd Jamiat-backed mosques that have come up in the Valley recently.

This phase of protests, according to highly-placed sources, is inspired by the ideology of ISIS with an object to topple the current government violently and create a theocratic state founded on Talibani principles.

Kashmiri protesters throw stones at Indian police during a protest against the separate townships for Kashmiri Pandits in Maisuma

Unlike the protests of the last decade, the Hurriyat is playing only a marginal role in the demonstrations this time, government sources say.

The grouping has largely been rendered leaderless, they add.

Holding talks with the Hurriyat, therefore, serves little purpose, according to government sources.

These sources said that the time is not yet ripe for discussion on the question of greater autonomy because the proponents of autonomy have been totally sidelined.

Revocation of AFSPA from Jammu and Kashmir has also been ruled out for now as the government believes that any such measure would deeply curtail the ability of the Indian state to enforce law and order.

A top officials said that the government wants the security apparatus in the state not to be weakened in any way.

At the same time, the government also wants to reach out to the aam aadmi of Kashmir and help heal the wounds of those impacted by the two-month-long upheaval.

The government, sources say, will go out of its way in providing succour to those who have been injured and to the kin of those who have lost their lives.

The government is also trying to minimise the use of pellet guns in the valley.
An Englishman's home is his castle, except sometimes, it's not his castle, it's his landlord's castle.

One in five families living in the UK now rents their home - and the number is rising. Recent estimates based on data from HM Revenue and Customs suggest that there are at least 1.75million landlords in the UK who collectively earned a net 14.2billion in rental income last year.

But who are Britain's landlords and how do they invest? We talk to some of those helping to house generation rent.

Nick Johnstone says he is getting a 9 per cent annual return from property - but through an online investment platform rather than bricks and mortar directly

The 'flow' of money (and school fees)

Nick Johnstone, 46 and an energy healer, invests in property through online investment platform LendInvest.

I find that one of the key issues people have with money is not respecting the flow of it,' he asserts.

'So if we see money fundamentally as a form of energy, like any form of energy it needs to be curated and treated with respect.'

He lends to property developers over a short period - usually up to a year - and has found that the returns so far have been up to 9 per cent.

There is one crucial thing to remember here, however. Ultimately his capital is at risk of complete loss because peer-to-peer investments are not covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme,

I feel that Im lending to a human being whos in a position where they need to get that money together to do what they need to do. I think thats worth doing, particularly in a country where there is a ridiculous amount of red tape around planning. I always feel for property entrepreneurs who want to do anything because its made very difficult in this country.'

The 'flow' of money theory to one side, Johnstone is one of many thousands of parents in the UK needing to find the money to pay for ever-increasing school fees.

'My wife and I have an 11-year old daughter who just started senior school,' he says. 'Its private education so there are school fees to pay and I wanted to find a vehicle that would support some really solid growth towards paying the fees. The returns support that in a way that everything else I see in traditional banking - Im not going to be getting anything other than a few weeks of school fees in return.'

The former royal marine who went from one property to seven

Holidays, school fees and saving for a deposit may be how it starts. How it progresses, most conventionally, is buying a property and becoming a landlord.

Richard Bowyer (pictured), 44 and a former royal marine in the British Army, is a more traditional landlord. He bought his first property in London in 2001 having saved a deposit from his salary.

He spent a summer renovating it and says it was then he realised he had an ambition to become a landlord.

'I'd made more money on that property in six weeks than I made in a year being a marine,' he says.

Richard Bowyer, 44, was a royal marine for 18 years but is now a landlord with seven properties in London and on the south coast

'I loved my job and I kept doing it until a year ago but it was back then that I decided to start building a portfolio of properties to let out.'

Bowyer now owns seven properties both in London and on the south coast of England. He is about to purchase his eighth but is circumspect about how tenable being a landlord is now.

The sector has suffered several blows in the past year, including a hike in the stamp duty payable by landlords since April this year. Next year tax relief on mortgage interest payments will be phased out as well as the removal of the wear and tear allowance.

'I've had to set up a company specifically for the purpose of buying and holding property in order to qualify for better rates of taxation,' he says.

'My existing seven properties are all in my name and not in a company and if I'm realistic, by the time we get to 2020 I'll be making a loss on those. I am hoping to find a way to transfer them into the company that won't wipe out the benefit by incurring even more tax.'

His advice for anyone thinking of becoming a landlord is to the point: 'Get yourself educated and take action.'

Josie Blanchard, 23 and a property manager from London, lends to developers to raise money to fund her holiday spending and hopes to build a deposit from the returns she makes

The step before the step onto the housing ladder

Josie Blanchard (pictured above) is 23 and a property manager from London. She's not a landlord herself - yet - but she has aspirations and is already putting her money into property.

She is one of thousands of Britons taking advantage of the returns on offer by lending their money to landlords and property developers through peer-to-peer platforms.

She also invests through platform LendInvest and may not provide the bricks and mortar directly but she is part of a growing number of landlords by proxy. While it's still early days for the sector, peer-to-peer lending - where individuals can lend directly to landlords or developers and be paid a return on that loan - is becoming increasingly popular and is funding more and more homes.

'Even though youre young, its definitely important to think about your future and what your money can become if you invest it quite early on,' she says.

'Its also a really good short-term way of topping up my holiday piggy bank to be honest. Longer term Ill be looking at wanting to buy my first property and that is something I would look at saving for by investing.

'The returns are so much better than conventional savings rates and you can actually see what your money is going into, rather than just passing it onto the banks and not knowing where its going.'

Robert Bence has been a landlord for 10 years and now teaches people thinking about becoming a landlord how to approach buy-to-let as a career

I got the property bug and started aged just 23 - then prices fell

Robert Bence (pictured below) has been a landlord for 10 years after buying his first buy-to-let property on the Wirral at the age of 23.

'I was working for a developer in Warrington and talking to lots of property investors,' he says. 'It was 2006 and the market was in full boom time. It seemed exciting and talking to all of those people who were making a success of it really gave me the bug. That's when I bought my first investment property which I still own.'

It wasn't plain sailing however. Just a year later property prices started to fall as the banks faltered and the financial crisis hit.

This should serve as a lesson to all those considering investing property - prices go down as well as up.

'That was a little bit scary and it meant I couldn't invest in another property for a good few years, which I had been planning to,' says Bence. 'But by 2009 or 2010, I was back in business and bought a second property - in Leeds this time.'

Bence's passion for property has not stopped with his own portfolio - now more than 10 properties strong.

One of the things I've learned through investing in property is that it's not easy

In 2011 he started a company, RMP Property, to provide would-be landlords and investors with help and advice on how to manage a portfolio of investment properties, where to purchase and how best to approach becoming a landlord.

That then developed into a podcast - The Property Podcast - which now has over 100,000 downloads every month.

'There are so many people interested in property investment but one of the things I've learned through investing in property is that it's not easy,' he says.

'It used to be, but the government definitely seems to want to move the sector away from casual investors who have maybe one or two properties they've bought on their doorstep.

'I've changed my model and now invest in properties through a limited company as a result of the tax changes that are coming in next year. Anyone thinking of becoming a landlord now really needs to educate themselves on what all of these things mean. It's not straightforward anymore.'

The institutional investors the Government wants

The government has been quite vocal about its desire to encourage larger institutions into the private rented sector.

Legal & General is perhaps the best example of so-called 'institutional investment' providing housing on a large scale.

'Across all of our exposure to housing, we have a pipeline of 70,000 homes and in terms of build-to-rent alone we have already committed 600million in a partnership with Dutch pension fund manager, PGGM,' says a spokesman for the firm.

'When the UK is only building half as many homes as it needs to annually, there is a huge requirement for more housing stock, so whether its homes to rent or buy, or improving the housing supply chain, L&G is committed for the long-term.

'A lot of our initial investment is funded from our own balance sheet using group capital as well alongside like-minded partners such as PGGM or the Homes and Communities Agency to deliver the right level of commitment. Over time, we also tap into other areas of L&G which need to deliver the right level of returns over a set period. And as one of the leading fund managers in the UK, we also manage investments on behalf of third party clients.'

Legal & General currently funds direct housing development for rent and for sale, including affordable homes, and has urban regeneration projects around the UK.

The firm also recently acquired around a 50 per cent stake in housebuilder CALA Homes and invests directly in student accommodation as well as funding a modular homes business to construct off-site homes from timber.

'Different investors will take different approaches but for us its all about taking a very long-term approach to building the best quality as we plan to invest in them for the long-term. Were targeting a high quality of service to residents, aiming to establish a "service-led customer focused industry" in the residential rental market.'
Amid the great and the good on Shriti Vadera's post-Brexit City task force, one name at least looks seriously conflicted.

Under normal circumstances the presence of the chief executive of the London Stock Exchange Xavier Rolet would be considered a no-brainer.

But Rolet is one of the principle architects of the 24billion 'merger of equals' between the LSE and Deutsche Boerse.

Vested interests: Xavier Rolet is one of the principle architects of the 24billion 'merger of equals' between the LSE and Deutsche Boerse

If consummated it will see Rolet displaced by the German exchange's chief executive Carsten Kengeter, Frankfurt with the larger shareholding in an exchange which intends to report its results in euros rather than sterling.

This at the moment when all noises from post-referendum Germany suggest that with Britain out of the EU, there is no reason why the Square Mile should continue to do most of the euro trading and clearing.

Rolet's stewardship of the LSE has been a success story. Shares have climbed as he has made a number of acquisitions which have taken the LSE into growth trading areas, such as index trading and financial data.

When first unveiled, before the referendum, the DB deal was heralded as creating a European powerhouse that could compete effectively with American exchanges owners such as ICE, which owns the New York Stock Exchange and the London-based International Petroleum Exchange (IPE).

The Brexit vote has changed the chemistry. Even though LSE shareholders have been enthusiastic about the deal from the outset, Frankfurt-based investors have been much more cautious. One of the really big issues is going to be clearing.

In response to some prudential concerns that a merger of clearing operations could bring the whole edifice tumbling down, the rival operations  LCH Clearnet in the UK and Eurex in Germany  would be run separately.

It is a little difficult to see how this amiable split is going to work if Britain finds itself trying to fight off EU attempts to seize euro trading and clearing back.

Chancellor Philip Hammond has his doubts, noting that 'clearing in London is a massive business which benefits from huge economies of scale'. He says that most people he has been talking to do not believe you can break off bits of the clearing business.

Aside from any other considerations, much of the risk once borne by the investment banks, through over-the-counter trading, has been shifted to recognised exchanges which now need immense liquidity and capital to operate safely.

It may well be the fearless EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager will block the DB-LSE deal amid objections being filed from bourses all over Europe, including Paris-based Euronext.

How extraordinary that with so much personally at stake in terms of legacy and a potential payout on his hard-earned shares that Rolet should be anywhere near the City negotiations with government on the EU deal for Britain.

Leaving the LSE out might have appeared odd given its pivotal role on the Square Mile. But Rolet shouldn't have put its, and London's role, in play in the first place.

Tesco charges

When the Financial Reporting Council dropped its investigation into Tesco's former finance director Laurie McIlwee last month it briefly looked as if the various probes into the 264million overstatement of the grocer's profits in 2014 might be over. Now it may prove the start of something much bigger.

The Serious Fraud Office is charging three former Tesco executives  Carl Rogberg, Christopher Bush and John Scouler  with fraud and the prosecutor says its investigations of the company are ongoing.

It is highly unusual for a company of Tesco's size and global importance to find itself in this position. Citizens might rightly marvel at how it is that Tesco is in the firing lines over hundreds of millions when Britain's banks have managed so far to avoid the dock over accounting black holes in the billions.

Under chief executive Dave Lewis, Tesco moved swiftly to put the past behind it and adopt prudential accounting practices. A cloud still hovers over its former auditors PwC who are being probed by the FRC over the accounts prepared, audited and signed off. This saga has a way to run.

Green envy

It's feast or famine with Philip Green. After a summer of near silence as his yacht the Lionheart was pursued across the Med, the King of the High Street is back to his feisty best dismissing claims that he sought to blackmail the pensions regulator, vowing that he is ready to do the most generous deal for the 20,000 pensioners in corporate history and apologising to the workforce.

He won't know whether to laugh or cry over a profile in Vanity Fair which says he is Britain's answer to Donald Trump.

But quotes from Green drip with the usual whinnying, 'I am being persecuted' tone, suggesting anti-Semitism and that England is a country filled with 'jealous, envious' people.' And they could be his customers.
Shareholders in Next and Morrisons are hoping sales will have grown again when the stores update the City on their trading next week.

The two retail heavyweights have been hit by a slowdown on the High Street, and their latest results may make grim reading.

On Thursday Next posts its half-year profits, and the chain has been gloomy on retail prospects in recent months, warning of a consumer spending shift away from clothing.

Key figures: On Thursday Next posts its half-year profits, and the chain has been gloomy on retail prospects in recent months

Last month it warned of possible price hikes to combat the falling pound.

But chief executive Lord Wolfson has so far said there has been no clear evidence of a worsening in trading directly as a result of the EU referendum decision.

Last month Next surprised the market with a better-than-expected second-quarter performance, as an end-of-season sale helped limit the fall in total High Street store sales.

Full-price sales at its stores fell 3.3 per cent, but its Next Directory arm saw sales rise 5.7 per cent.

This helped it to nudge up its full-year profit forecast to a mid-point of 810million from the 800million previously guided.

But it cautioned over a future hit from the pound's weakness since the Brexit vote.
News / National

by Staff reporter

Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa is reportedly the British government favorite candidate to take over power from the 92-year-old president Robert Mugabe.As such, the former colonisers have crafted "a grand plan to steer Zimbabwe through its turbulent political transition centred on succeeding President Robert Mugabe with a US$2 billion economic bailout underwriting the project" Zimbabwe Independent reported.However, the publication said big European powers, including Germany and France, are not supporting the British political designs in Zimbabwe."Diplomats also say the Americans, the Chinese, and South Africans  critical players on the Zimbabwe issue  have not endorsed the Mnangagwa plan,British" the publication The British ambassador to Zimbabwe Catriona Laing is said to have come to Harare in September 2014 with a mission to rebuild bridges and ensure that re-engagement succeeds to facilitate Mnangagwa's rise to power."Since her arrival, Laing has been clearly pushing for re-engagement, not the isolation of Zimbabwe," a senior Western diplomat is quoted saying."Her policy actions, moves, and pronouncements have all been calculated to achieve that. Britain wants Zimbabwe to get the US$2 billion in new funding as part of the Lima debt and arrears clearance strategy despite its insistence on three conditions: human rights, good governance and rule of law and economic reforms. London is doing all it can to meet its side of the bargain, but Harare is faltering."British embassy spokesperson Tom Oppenheim said: "Media reports suggesting we back particular candidates are not accurate. Our position is clear. We do not and will not support any particular candidate, faction or party."Whoever governs Zimbabwe is a matter for the people of the country, our support for reform is not linked to any particular individual and the urgent need for reform need to be addressed by all politicians of all parties in this country."
Britain's trade deficit fell 1.1billion in July as manufacturers cashed in on the weaker pound.

Separate figures, meanwhile, showed the construction industry unexpectedly held steady.

And Germany suffered an unexpected blow as exports dropped at their fastest rate since the financial crisis.

Better: Britain's construction industry nudged out a slight recovery in the month following the EU referendum

The UK trade figures revealed that 4.5billion more was imported than exported in July, down from a 5.6billion gap in June.

Reducing this trade deficit is a priority as it would cut the amount of money lost to our economy when it goes overseas.

Goods exports grew 3.4 per cent to 800million, and the amount imported was 300million lower than the previous month.

The improved figures are partly down to a fall in sterling, which means that British goods are cheaper abroad.

Britain imported 7.6billionn more from the rest of the European Union than the nation sold into it.

Look at the blue line: Construction output shows no growth between June and July, which is better than most forecasters had expected

This is likely to be seized on by Brexit supporters as evidence that the bloc will be reluctant to sever trading ties with such a key partner.

In stark contrast, German figures showed its exports were 10 per cent lower than a year earlier  the biggest fall since 2009.
The French boss of the London Stock Exchange is taking part in crunch Brexit talks to protect the City  despite campaigning fiercely in favour of Remain.

Before the referendum, Xavier Rolet warned that leaving the European Union would be 'devastating' for Britain.

But this week the 56-year-old was one of a handful of top business people who attended a private meeting with Chancellor Philip Hammond to discuss the negotiations ahead.

Plonker: Xavier Rolet owns a French vineyard where he runs wine courses with wife Nicole

Led by Santander chairman Baroness Shriti Vadera, the group has offered itself as a sounding board for ministers.

It comes as Rolet, who was paid 6.6million last year, forges ahead with the controversial German takeover of the 215-year-old LSE.

In City circles, Rolet has earned a reputation as a highly competent boss.

But he also holds political ambitions and is desperate to be seen as part of the establishment.

Critics have said the deal is against the national interest and could cost London dearly. And Rolet will quit as chief executive if the deal proves successful.

Tory MP Sir Bill Cash said: 'Brexit will happen, so let's everybody join in and make it work.

'There are a lot of people who still, I suppose, in their bones wish it wasn't happening. But it is happening and they know it.

'All we want is for Britain and Europe to be prosperous, stable and democratic.

Rolet is one of the main architects of a 21billion takeover of the LSE by Frankfurt-based Deutsche Boerse.

The new company will be headed by Deutsche boss Carsten Kengeter, the German firm's shareholders will have a 54.4 per cent controlling stake and profits will be reported in euros.

Both sides have promised to base its corporate headquarters in London in an effort to appease critics who fear the takeover is against the national interest.

But even this concession could be lost in the wake of the Brexit vote, with Deutsche sources claiming they will immediately seek to shift the headquarters to Germany after final approval is granted.

Before the referendum result, Rolet  who owns a French vineyard where he runs wine courses with wife Nicole, warned that Brexit would wreck the British economy and was likely to cause the 'implosion' of the EU.

For finance, he said it would badly damage London's role as a centre for clearing transactions.

But he is among a host of big CIty names who have had to eat their words.

Last month he said there was 'no immediate threat' of lucrative Euro clearing trade made in the UK being lost.

The so-called European Financial Services Chairman's Advisory Committee that Rolet sits on is led by Baroness Vadera, a former Labour minister who signed a letter backing the campaign to stay in the European Union.

The 15-strong group also includes top figures from insurance giant Aviva, plus lenders Nationwide and HSBC.

And it features executives from American banks BNY Mellon and Morgan Stanley, as well as German insurer Allianz.

Lord Blackwell, a Conservative peer who is chairman of Lloyds, is on the committee and was a rare voice from big business in favour of Brexit during the campaign.

Although many Brexit campaigners were pleased to see City figures offering advice to the Government, others voiced concerns.

UKIP MP Douglas Carswell said: 'It's good that some of the plutocrats seem to be coming to terms with the will of the people.

'But we didn't vote to leave in order to have the same vested interests who told us to remain decide the terms.
Hillary Clinton is not expected to attend her family foundation's final philanthropic summit.

The Democratic presidential nominee is not listed as a speaker at the 2016 Clinton Global Initiative conference, held annually in New York City since 2005. Her name also does not appear on the agenda.

A senior aide to Clinton said the campaign did not anticipate that she would make an appearance at the three-day event that will take place Sept. 19-21.

President Barack Obama will also skip the annual meeting of business leaders, celebrities and other philanthropists. His last appearance at the conference was in 2014, before Clinton announced her presidential bid.

The U.S. president will be in New York at the same time for the United Nations General Assembly meeting, which typically coincides with CGI conferences.

Hillary Clinton's campaign has not yet disclosed her plans for that week. Bill and Chelsea Clinton will speak at the conference's opening and closing plenary sessions.

Hillary Clinton is not expected to attend her family foundation's final philanthropic summit. The Democratic presidential nominee is not listed as a speaker at the 2016 Clinton Global Initiative conference

She's seen here sitting with daughter Chelsea at the closing plenary session of the conference in 2014

Hillary and Chelsea are pictured here at a CGI spin-off event in Miami in March of 2015. Hillary Clinton did not attend the 2015 Clinton Global Initiative Conference in New York

Hillary Clinton did not attend the the Clinton Global Initiative conference in 2015 when she was competing in the Democratic primary for president, either.

The Clinton Foundation has come under intense scrutiny for its behavior while the former first lady was serving as secretary of state, and Hillary Clinton has shared in the criticism.

Republicans allege that she abused the government post and used it to do favors for her family charity's donors.

The Democratic White House nominee says she does not think there were 'conflict of interest issues.' She takes the perception that there were conflicts 'seriously,' however, and believes it is 'appropriate' for her husband to step down if she's victorious in November.

'I feel very good about the work of the foundation. I feel very good about my service as secretary of state. No decision I ever made was influenced by anybody. What I made a decision based on was what was good for the United States,' she told ABC News this week.

Continuing, she said: 'The State Department has confirmed there's no evidence of any such influence at all.'

Republicans requested that the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Trade Commission investigate the Clinton Foundation for 'pay-to-play' schemes that appear in Peter Schweizer's book 'Clinton Cash.'

GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump has based a primary argument against Clinton  she's untrustworthy  on the allegations in the book. Her campaign has ridiculed for them as ' debunked claims.'

Emails from top Clinton aides to the head of the foundation, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by a conservative watchdog group, sent a new wave of criticism crashing down on the former top diplomat this summer.

The messages show Clinton confidante Huma Abedin acting as a go-between for the then-secretary of state and foundation executive Doug Band. Sometimes Abedin was able to fulfill his requests. Other times she was not. Band once offered her a ride on a private jet to an event, and she accepted it.

Clinton's chief of staff at State, Cheryl Mills, another longtime aide and family friend, was also reported to have helped out with the search for a new foundation executive in 2012 as Band shifted his focus to global consulting firm, Teneo Holdings.

Hillary Clinton's seen above at a the National Baptist Convention in Kansas City, Missouri, on Thursday evening. It's unclear what she'll be doing when CGI convenes in New York this year - but she's likely to be on the campaign trail

The Associated Press revealed in late August that half of Hillary Clinton's meetings with non-government actors when she was in the Obama administration were with mega-donors to the Clinton Foundation.

The Clinton campaign lashed out at AP afterward because the report was based on an incomplete list of entries in Clinton's schedule. The wire service is still waiting on the full set of calendar entries, which a court has ordered the State Department to provide.

Hillary Clinton joined the Clinton Foundation several months after she left government service in 2013. The charity officially changed its name to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation shortly after her tenure ended at State.

The former first lady resigned from her leadership role when she announced her candidacy for the Democratic nomination for president two years later.

As Democrats and editorial boards at newspapers that have backed the Clintons in the past began to insist that the Clintons disassociate themselves from the foundation that Bill founded in 2001, the former president said he, too, would step away  if his wife wins.

The foundation, that Clinton was on the board of from 2013 until she announced her candidacy for president in 2015, still retains her name. It will drop all three Clintons' first names if she wins

The foundation also plans to amend its title again if Hillary takes over the Oval Office, formally accepting its colloquial name The Clinton Foundation.

It has also pledged not to accept donations from foreign or corporate entities in the future.

The Clinton Global Initiative summits will cease even if Hillary Clinton does not win the general election. And Chelsea Clinton will be the sole member of her family to have any affiliation with the foundation at all.

The former first daughter's involvement has also become a cause for concern, and Hillary Clinton suggested Monday to reporters on her campaign plane that even that could change.
A police officer in Atlanta is accused of raping a woman while he was transporting her to jail.

Riverdale officer James Larry Robinson Jr, 36, was arrested on Tuesday and charged with sexual assault against a person in custody and rape.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation began investigating the allegations after the victim said she was assaulted last month as she was being taken from Riverdale Police Department to the Clayton County jail.

Former police officer James Larry Robinson Jr (pictured) is accused of raping a woman while he was transporting her to jail

The woman said Robinson, from Jonesboro, pulled over to an empty building and sexually assaulted her instead of taking her straight to the jail.

The married father-of-five was fired from the police force on Tuesday after handing himself in without incident.

The building where the alleged assault took place is next to a custom tire shop and workers there say the upset woman came to the shop and requested footage from their security cameras when she was released from jail, according to WSB.

Authorities began investigating the allegations after the victim said she was assaulted last month as she was being taken from Riverdale Police Department (pictured) to the Clayton County jail

Nellie Miles, a GBI spokesman, said: 'This particular inmate was in custody and en route from Riverdale Police Department on the way to Clayton County Jail.'

The retired officer appeared in court on Wednesday and bond was denied, according to the Clayton County Court clerk's office.

Robinson, wearing a red prison uniform, shook his head as the charges were read by Judge Wanda Dallas.

Riverdale police requested the GBI investigate the incident.
Newly tested DNA evidence from the home of a 92-year-old World War I veteran strangled in 1983 has led to murder charges against a woman who was a teenager when the crime was committed, prosecutors said.

Saundra Adams, 50, was charged Wednesday with two counts of second-degree murder in the slaying of Edmund Schreiber, who authorities said was strangled with several of his own neckties during a break-in at his home in Buffalo.

Schreiber was wounded during WWI and had been awarded a Purple Heart medal, authorities said.

'Mr. Schreiber survived WWI, but he did not survive those who during the night of June 23, 1983, invaded his home and took his life,' said Michael J. Flaherty Jr., acting district attorney for Erie County.

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Saundra Adams, 50, is pictured in court on Wednesday as she was charged with second-degree murder in the 1983 strangling death of 92-year-old Edmund Schreiber

Adams' DNA was found on some of the neckties used to kill Schreiber, and her fingerprints were found on a dresser in the bedroom where the widower was killed, prosecutors said.

Schreiber (pictured) was a World War I veteran. He was found strangled to death with one of his neckties inside his Buffalo, New York home on June 23, 1983

DNA evidence received from a lab two weeks ago from a necktie and a dresser tied Adams to the three-decade-old killing, prosecutors said.

Adams was 17 at the time of the killing. Prosecutors said an unknown accomplice was also involved.

Adams, who was arrested Tuesday, pleaded not guilty in court on Wednesday. She was being held Thursday in jail pending a bail hearing. She faces 25 years to life in prison if convicted.

Her attorney, Daniel Grasso, told The Associated Press that Adams worked at the library of a Buffalo college and was the mother of two adult children.

Officials at Bryant and Stratton said Adams was a student enrolled at the college's Buffalo campus, where she was employed in the library under a work-study program.

Grasso said that at the time of the slaying Adams was living in her family's home on the same street as Schreiber's house. Adams still lives there, Grasso said.

She denies any involvement in Schreiber's death, the attorney said soon after his first meeting with her Thursday.

'I'll be curious to see how the DNA report is worded,' Grasso said.

Schreiber's wife preceded him in death by five years. Friends at a local senior center grew concerned for him when he didn't show up for lunch the day after his murder.

Adams (left and right) would have been 17 years old at the time of the murder. Her DNA was found on the necktie used to strangle Schreiber

Cops who conducted a welfare check at his home found it ransacked and Schreiber dead on his bed, covered with pillows and blankets.

Police say Adams and an accomplice tied Schreiber's hands and feet and then strangled him to death in bed with a necktie.

Flaherty said his office revisited the case earlier this year at the request of the city's homicide squad.

One of the veteran's descendants, a middle-aged granddaughter living in Kentucky, profusely thanked authorities after receiving word an arrest had been made, the prosecutor said.
Tragedy: Cambridge student Giulio Regeni was murdered and mutilated in Egypt and had 'mysterious' letters carved into his body during days of torture, it emerged today

A Cambridge student murdered and mutilated in Egypt had 'mysterious' letters carved along his spine during days of torture, it was revealed today.

Giulio Regeni's mother Paola said: 'They used him as a blackboard' as his 220-page post-mortem examination report revealed the scale of the 28-year-old's horrific injuries.

The Italian PhD student vanished in Cairo in January - on the fifth anniversary of the fall of president Hosni Mubarak - while researching Egyptian trade unions.

He left his flat and was found dead in a ditch nine days later.

Italian coroners Vittorio Fineschi and Marcello Chiarotti found that the student had all of his finger and toe nails pulled out as well as broken bones, smashed teeth and burns all over his body.

It also appears he had letters running along his spine and 'it is reasonable to hypothetise that he was hit with kicks, fists, sticks and hammers', they said.

The 28-year-old, who had his neck broken, was found battered to death and his body dumped near a highway nine days after he was reported missing.

His family today spoke of their grief at the manner of his death.

PhD student Mr Regeni had been in Cairo for just a few months when he disappeared on January 25. He had left his flat with a plan to meet a friend but was found dead nine days later

Paola and Claudio Regeni told the Telegraph: 'We cannot understand how it can be doubted that poor Giulio was systematically tortured'.

They added his ordeal was 'the work of professional torturers'.

Egypt's public prosecutor left for Rome on Thursday to present his Italian counterpart with the latest findings in the investigation into the killing of Italian student Giulio Regeni, state news agency MENA said.

Regeni, who was doing postgraduate research into Egyptian trade unions, was last seen by his friends on Jan. 25. His body, which showed signs of torture, was found in a roadside ditch on the outskirts of Cairo on Feb. 3.

The prosecutors' meeting will be he third since Regeni's body was found. MENA did not give any details on what the latest findings were.

Egyptian judicial sources said there had been no new breakthrough in the probe. Egyptian prosecutor Nabil Ahmed Sadek was responding to an invitation from his Italian counterpart to discuss the latest developments in the case, they said.

Italy has repeatedly complained that Egyptian authorities have not cooperated to find those responsible for the 28-year-old student's death. In April, it withdrew its ambassador to Egypt for consultations.

The Italian Senate voted in June to halt supplies to Egypt of spare parts for F16 warplanes in protest against what some senators said was the slow pace of investigations.

On the day Mr Regeni went missing, residents took to the streets to mark the fifth anniversary of the Arab Spring. Pictured, supporters of ousted President Mohamed Morsi march in Cairo

Italy was Egypt's fourth-largest trade partner in terms of imports and exports in 2015, according to Egypt's statistics agency, CAPMAS. The Senate vote was Italy's first commercial step against Cairo over the Regeni case.

Human rights groups have said torture marks indicated Regeni died at the hands of the security forces, an allegation Cairo denies.

Three Egyptian intelligence officials and three police sources told Reuters that Regeni was detained by police and transferred to a compound run by Homeland Security on the day his friends say he disappeared.
Two hackers from a group called 'Crackas With Attitude' have been charged after allegedly targeting CIA Director John Brennan and other senior government officials.

Federal prosecutors said Andrew Otto Boggs, 22, known online as 'INCURSIO,' and Justin Gray Liverman, 24, known as 'D3F4ULT,' were part of the hacking group.

The pair - who lived at home with their parents - will make initial court appearances next week.

The FBI said they had tricked people in to giving information which enabled them to gain access to the victims' accounts, a technique known as 'social engineering'.

Two hackers from the group 'Crackas With Attitude' have been charged after allegedly targeting CIA Director John Brennan (pictured)

Beginning in October, the hackers gained access to personal online accounts of the senior US government officials.

Earlier this year, British authorities arrested a 16-year-old boy who they said used the name 'Cracka' to target Brennan and others.

Indeed, the affidavit said three British teens, ranging in age from 15 to 17, were members of the conspiracy.

The affidavit cited email exchanges in which Boggs told another individual, 'I want to carry on [Cracka's] legacy if or when he is arrested. I know he'll receive a harsh sentence because our government doesn't like being embarrassed.'

According to the affidavit, Boggs and Liverman lived in their parents' homes.

They used the hacked accounts to send harassing messages to their victims.

While Brennan is not named in the affidavit, he appears to be 'Victim 1.'

The affidavit said Victim 1's emails were released by WikiLeaks on October 21, 2015, which corresponds with a WikiLeaks disclosure relating to Brennan.

The leaked emails included a memo addressed to President Obama in 2009 which advised him to tone down rhetoric against Iran.

In one exchange, Boggs told 'Cracka' he wanted to hack Victim 1's agency because 'I've been looking for evidence of aliens,' according to the affidavit.

While Brennan (pictured) is not named in the affidavit, he appears to be 'Victim 1'

When the hackers gained control of an account, they used access to promote the Free Palestine Movement, according to the affidavit.

In another case, they pretended to be Edward Snowden when they contacted their victim.

News accounts indicated Crackas hackers targeted Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and had his phones forwarded to the Free Palestine Movement.

The affidavit included online conversations among the hackers discussing such a plan, but the victim was not identified.

In all, the affidavit referred to five victims -four who were government officials or family members, and one who was a corporate CEO.

Authorities also accused the hackers of calling in a false bomb threat to the Palm Beach County Sheriff's office in Florida earlier this year.

The hackers were also accused of publishing the names and emails of thousands of employees at the FBI and Department of Homeland Security and about 80 Miami-area law enforcement officers.

A CIA spokesman declined to comment.

In October, when WikiLeaks published the hacked emails, the CIA issued a statement describing the Brennan family as victims.
The US military has closed a maximum-security detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, an official said Thursday, as the controversial prison's population continues to dwindle.

Guantanamo's Camp 5 lockup, built in 2004 at a cost of $17 million, closed August 19 and will be converted into a medical center with a psychiatric wing for detainees, facility spokesman Navy Captain John Filostrat told AFP.

Only a 'handful' of detainees had remained at Camp 5 after 15 inmates were transferred to the United Arab Emirates last month, the biggest single release under President Barack Obama.

Since the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, about 780 inmates have been housed in the US military-run facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba  but that number is dwindling as the Obama administration tries to shut it down entirely by emptying its cells and releasing the prisoners

President Barack Obama said Thursday in Laos that he's still hoping to close Gitmo before he leaves office

The few former Camp 5 inmates are now housed in an adjacent medium-security jail, Camp 6, where they have access to communal areas and computers through which they can Skype family members, Filostrat said.

Twenty of the 40 or so detainees now at Camp 6 have been cleared for transfer and are optimistic they may be released before Obama leaves office in January.

'It's fair to say there's a sense of anticipation, maybe hope even,' Filostrat said.

Still, a small number of detainees continue to protest their indefinite detention by hunger striking.

Many have been locked up for more than a decade without any formal charges being brought, with only limited access to lawyers and amid allegations of detainee abuse.

The riskiest remaining detainees, including the five men accused of plotting the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, are incarcerated at another, secret prison camp called Camp 7 located elsewhere on the base.

Camp 5 once housed non-compliant inmates and hunger strikers. The facility had special equipment in place to protect jailors from 'splashing' -- the grim practice of prisoners hurling bodily fluids and excrement at guards.

Filostrat said a small number of men at Camp 6 are continuing their hunger strikes and are force-fed, but noted '90 percent are very compliant.'

Camp 5's closure means the overall guard and staffing force for Guantanamo Bay's entire prison operation will shrink from 1,950 to about 1,550. Most of the reductions come from military police units that no longer will be sent there.

Since the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, about 780 inmates have been housed in the US military-run facility which Obama has repeatedly tried to close.

In recent months, he has authorized a flurry of transfers of prisoners to other countries  prompting howls of outrage from Republicans each time.

Guantanamo's Camp 5, which once housed non-compliant inmates and hunger strikers, will be converted into a medical center with a psychiatric wing for detainees

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has said he wants to send terror suspects captured in the war against the Islamic State group to Guantanamo, and even supports US citizens being sent there if they are accused of terror offenses.

Because the Guantanamo Bay naval base is on Cuban and not US soil, it is not subject to the same federal laws and legal processes as the United States, which is why the administration of George W. Bush opened a prison there.

Trump's Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, has said she backs the closure of Guantanamo.

'We are planning for either contingency,' Filostrat said.
A mother bear that wandered into a restaurant with her two cubs and started knocking over products has been shot and killed by police.

Police were called to the restaurant in Terrace Bay, Ontario, on Wednesday after the animals made their way into a storage room through a back door.

Staff at the restaurant, which police say had 'a few customers at the time', managed to close a door before the bears approached them.

Police were called to the restaurant in Terrace Bay, Ontario, on Wednesday after three bears made their way into a storage room (pictured) through a back door

Cops said they had no choice but to kill the mother bear when they arrived on the scene.

Pictures taken inside the storage room show the trio of North American omnivores ripped into cardboard boxes, tipped over bins, and generally turned the storage room upside-down in the hunt for food.

The two cubs were captured by Ministry of Natural Resources officials and taken to a bear sanctuary.

They say all customers were safely evacuated from the restaurant and no one was injured.

The bears made a mess in the storeroom (pictured) as they rummaged around for food

Cardboard boxes were ripped open, along with bins, bags of flour and trash bags, in the store

Reaction to the shooting of the mother bear was mixed on social media, with some people claiming the police should not have killed the animal.

'I am a hunter and I would not even shoot a mother with babies. I'm glad everyone one is OK but why did they not use a tranquilizer on the mother and move mother and babies way out into the bush. These bears are only looking for food they are not looking to hurt anyone,' Kathy Sales wrote on Facebook.

In response to a person who said more of the animals in the area needed to be shot, Colin Woods replied: 'Move to Toronto. The bears were there first.'

Police said there were 'a few' customers inside the Station Two restaurant (pictured) when the bears came in through a back door

Cops said they had no choice but to kill the mother bear when they arrived at the restaurant (pictured)

The mother's two cubs were captured by Ministry of Natural Resources officials and taken to a bear sanctuary, but the mother was shot and killed

However, another person commented saying she was shocked police did not shoot the cubs.

'Why did those Cubs go anywhere, they should have been put down,' Cheryl Sadler wrote.

Black bears are considered to have 'opportunistic' food habits, and will use their strong sense of smell to sniff out meals.
Father Ryan Barry, 33, sentenced to up to 10 years in prison Wednesday

Will spend six to eight years behind bars with five years of probation

A couple of Massachusetts parents whose five-month-old daughter died after ingesting heroin have received prison sentences.

Mother Ashley Cyr, 29, will spend six to eight years behind bars and was also sentenced Thursday to five years of probation.

The day before, father Ryan Barry, 33, was sentenced to up to 12 years in prison in the baby girl's death.

Their daughter Mya, one of the couple's three children, was found unresponsive in their Marshfield apartment in September 2011. She was cold to the touch and wasn't breathing, rescuers said.

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Ryan Barry (pictured left in a mugshot), 33, and Ashley Cyr (pictured right in court on Thursday), 29, were both jailed for the death of their five-month-old daughter

Police found heroin and hypodermic needles in the couple's bedroom. Officers also found a baby's bottle containing opioids.

The medical examiner ruled that Mya died of opioid poisoning. Cyr and Barry's two other children, who were 3 and 4 years old according to the Patriot Ledger, were placed in custody of the state.

Cyr pleaded guilty to manslaughter and reckless child endangerment in Plymouth Superior Court. Barry also pleaded guilty to manslaughter.

'It does appear to me there wasn't any significant parenting taking place with these kids, because both you and Mr Barry were so focused on fulfilling your own selfish needs to get high,' Judge Jeffrey Locke told Cyr at her sentencing hearing.

'I mean, that's what it comes down to in the end. And in doing that, you hid from the state the true risk these children were facing.'

Cyr (pictured on Thursday) pleaded guilty to manslaughter and reckless child endangerment in Plymouth Superior Court. Barry also pleaded guilty to manslaughter

Judge Jeffrey Locke (pictured) said during Cyr's sentencing hearing that both parents put their need to get high before their parenting responsibilities

Mya was born addicted to heroin as a result of Cyr's use and had to be weaned off the drug, Cyr told authorities.

Barry told a fellow inmate in jail he had intentionally given heroin to his children to 'knock then out', according to prosecutors. Barry denied that statement.

He told authorities he had fed Mya around 7:30 am on the day of her death. Cyr said she found their daughter unresponsive several hours after.

Cyr has already served two years an nine months in jail and will now spend up to five years and three months behind bars to complete her sentence.

Barry has stayed three years in jail and will remain incarcerated for up to nine more years.

During probation, Cyr will have to complete a drug treatment program and a parenting program. She will be required to stop using drugs and authorities will give her regular screenings.
News / National

by Thobekile Zhou

Zanu PF national commissar and Local Government minister Savior Kasukuwere was reportedly picked up by the dreaded Criminal Investigations Department Serious Fraud Squad for questioning over countless allegations.On Wednesday, President Robert Mugabe cornered Kasukuwere just before a Politburo session over illegal sale of land to rape accused Walter Magaya.Kasukuwere denied Mugabe's accusations but Mugabe stood his ground.However, the source said Kasukuwere spent time at the CID today."He was picked up by members of CID Serious Fraud Section this morning around 6am and whisked to Harare Central Police Station."Kasukuwere was drilled and released at 8am. However, it's not looking good for Tyson who face arrest anytime" said a reliable source.Kasukuwere skipped today's Zanu PF Central Committee meeting addressed by Mugabe.
Naming his latest discovery after Obama was a 'small way' of honoring him

Platt retired right after naming the worm, ending his career on a high note

'It's long. It's thin. And it's cool as hell,' Platt said of the new-found parasite

An Indiana scientist has further etched Barack Obama's name in posterity - this time in biology books rather than history.

Thomas Platt, a newly retired biology professor at Saint Mary's College in Indiana, discovered a parasite and earned the right to name it.

He chose Baracktrema obamai, which now designates a tiny parasitic flatworm that lives in turtles' blood.

A new study officially names the two-inch, hair-thin creature after Obama.

Platt who ended his career in a bang by discovering and naming the flatworm, says the name is an honor, not an insult.

Thomas Platt, a newly retired biology professor at Saint Mary's College in Indiana, discovered a parasite and named it after Barack Obama (pictured on Thursday in Laos)

Platt (left) chose the name Baracktrema obamai for the tiny flatworm (right) that lives in turtles' blood. He said it was a small way to honor the president

He has discovered and named more than 30 new species in the past.

But Platt typically named them after people he knew personally - his father-in-law, his doctorate adviser and other people he had 'a great deal of respect for'.

Naming his latest discovery after Obama was a 'small way' of honoring him, Platt, who is a distant relative of the president, said Thursday.

Platt said Baracktrema obamai reminds him of the president because it's 'long, thin and cool as hell'.

Some people pay thousands of dollars for the privilege of having a species named after them, Platt added.

Parasites live in and get nutrients from host animals. Baracktrema obamai 'are phenomenally incredibly resilient organisms' according to Platt.

'I hold them in awe and with phenomenal respect,' Platt said.

The worm is related, distantly, to a parasite that can cause a devastating disease in humans, but it causes no harm to turtles.

Parasites are crucial to life and all around us, according to Rutgers biologist Michael Sukhedo, editor of the Journal of Parasitology, where the study appears.

About seven out of 10 animals on Earth are parasites.

Naming a new species - especially in the final paper of a career - 'is a big decision,' Sukhedo said.

Obama already has a spider, a fish and even an extinct lizard named after him.

Although names are usually bestowed as an honor, Sukhedo admits once or twice parasites have been named as a tool of revenge  something Platt said isn't the case here.

One time, Sukhedo said, a biologist named an entire group of parasites after her ex-husband: microphallus.
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An Indian model scarred in an acid attack challenged perceptions of beauty as she strutted down the runway at New York Fashion Week to promote a ban on the sale of corrosive substances used to maim thousands of women and children each year.

A smiling Reshma Qureshi, 19, opened the FTL Moda show on Thursday to applause in a long-sleeve, white gown with embroidered appliques by Indian designer Archana Kochhar during her first trip to the United States.

In her hair, she wore a sparkly tiara.

The buzz and glamour of the event was a world away from Allahbad, India, where she suffered severe facial burns and lost an eye two years ago after being attacked with sulfuric acid by her estranged brother-in-law and two men at the age of 17.

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Indian model and acid attack survivor Reshma Qureshi presents a creation from Indian designer Archana Kochhar's Spring/Summer 2017 collection during New York Fashion Week in New York on Thursday

Qureshi challenged perceptions of beauty as she strutted down the runway at New York Fashion Week to promote a ban on the sale of corrosive substances used to maim thousands of women and children each year

Quereshi, left, and actress Sunny Leone pose for photos backstage after modeling in the Archana Kochhar show. Qureshi also walked the runway to send a message of courage and empowerment to other victims of such attacks in her country

At the time of the attack, Qureshi was on the way to an exam center on May 19, 2014, with her sister, who had left her husband after being subjected to abuse and torture, when he attacked her and Reshma tried to save her.

They were left to suffer in agony on roadside for several hours after nobody called an ambulance.

'This walk was important to me because there are so many girls like me who are survivors of acid attacks, and this will give them courage,' Qureshi said in an interview, speaking through a translator.

'And it will also go to show people who judge people based on their appearance that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover  you should look at everyone though the same eyes.'

'I never thought in my wildest dreams that something like this would happen to me,' Qureshi said, adding 'that I would be coming to such a big place to walk on such a big stage.'

Qureshi never thought she would be going abroad, much less modeling in New York.

The model wore a long ivory dress embellished with colorful embroidery in pink, red, green and other hues, and a sparkly tiara in her hair

The teen opened the FTL Moda show on Thursday during her first trip to the United States. She said she was thrilled to participate in the runway show

'This walk was important to me because there are so many girls like me who are survivors of acid attacks, and this will give them courage,' Qureshi said in an interview, speaking through a translator

After enduring numerous skin graft surgeries and contemplating suicide, she met the founder of Make Love Not Scars, a group that helps survivors of the gender-based crimes.

Qureshi is the face of the group's online video campaign, which has been viewed by 1.3 million people and led to her appearance in New York.

'I couldn't believe it was happening to me,' Qureshi said about the trip.

'In that moment I felt extremely happy.'

The collection, called A Tale of Two Cities, was 'inspired by the breathtaking Taj Mahal and the rich, buoyant colors of magnificent India,' according to the designer.

The prints evoked not only the Taj Mahal but the lotus flower and royal elephants.

Silhouettes included bell-bottom trousers, cropped tops, capes, and jumpsuits.

To offset the colorful embroidery there was a lot of ivory  evoking the ivory marble of the Taj Mahal.

Also walking in the show was actress Sunny Leone.

Qureshi (pictured before the attack left and after, right) suffered severe burns to her face at age 17 in an acid attack in 2014 by several male assailants as she was walking with her sister. She lost her left eye, and her face was deeply scarred

'It's amazing how in one millisecond someone's life is destroyed,' Leone said of Qureshi's story, calling her 'very brave.'

'To be here, she's come so far,' Leone said.

The fashion show is part of a campaign, #IAmNYFW which aims to increase diversity in fashion.

Producer Ilaria Niccolini said they approached Qureshi to appear in the FTL MODA NYFW show at Space 404 on to draw attention to the 'devastating' impact of acid attacks.

Qureshi said she hopes her turn on the catwalk will inspire hope and confidence in other acid attack survivors and spur countries to regulate the sale of cheap and easily available acids.

'No one else understands what an acid attack is except the survivors themselves,' she said.

'I do not want this to happen to anyone else.'

About 1,500 acid attacks are reported each year, but Jaf Shah, the executive director of the London-based charity Acid Survivors Trust International (ASTI), said the real number is many times higher.

Qureshi said she hopes her turn on the catwalk will inspire hope and confidence in other acid attack survivors and spur countries to regulate the sale of cheap and easily available acids

The teen pictured in hair and make up as a team works to get her read for Thursday's runway show

Qureshi has makeup applied ahead of the show. 'I never thought in my wildest dreams that something like this would happen to me,' she said of the chance to walk the runway

'There are whole swathes of regions across the globe where acid attacks are occurring but are not being recorded,' he said in an telephone interview.

'It is not reported for fear there might be reprisals from the perpetrators due to the fact that survivors and their immediate family have no confidence in the police or the judiciary to take action.'

India has the highest number of recorded attacks, which are often a form of revenge by jilted husbands or rejected suitors.

ASTI describes it as a global phenomenon that occurs in countries ranging from Afghanistan and Iran to Nigeria and Colombia.

Shah said limiting the sale of acid, punishments for attackers, and compensation and care for survivors, are needed. People like Qureshi speaking out is also very important, he said.

Qureshi pictured far left as she has makeup applied and her hair done before Archana Kochhar's S/S 17 collection presentation

The model is pictured rehearsing before walking to present the collection on Thursday in New York

The collection, called A Tale of Two Cities, was 'inspired by the breathtaking Taj Mahal and the rich, buoyant colors of magnificent India,' according to the designer

'Victims coming forward are defying the perpetrators of the attacks,' he added.

Increasing diversity on the catwalk has been an aim of FTL Moda.

The production company has featured models with disabilities, in wheelchairs, on crutches and amputees.

Australian model Madeline Stuart, who has Down Syndrome, made her runway debut at the FTL Moda show last year.

'I think this is a powerful tool,' said FTL Moda founder Ilaria Niccolini.

'I think it can make a change for the better.'
Former 49ers star Bruce Miller has been charged after he allegedly attacked a 70-year-old man and his son in a hotel room while drunk.

The San Francisco District Attorney's office has filed seven charges of assault and battery against tight end Miller, including assault with a deadly weapon - a cane.

Police said he went to the Fisherman's Wharf Marriott on Columbus Avenue about 2.45am Monday and tried to get a room, but was told there were none available.

Football player Bruce Miller has been charged after he allegedly punched a 70-year-old hotel guest and his son. He is pictured left in a June 2015 mug shot from a domestic dispute

He then went and knocked on a random room. Inside the room was an elderly couple, who told Miller he was in the wrong room.

Miller, who was released by the 49ers on Monday, then allegedly attacked the 70-year-old man and his 29-year-old son, who was staying in the next room and ran out when he heard the commotion.

A call to Miller's attorney, Joshua Bentley, was not immediately returned.

Miller's agent, Jack Reale, said there was more to the case than meets the eye, but declined additional comment.

CCTV footage taken from the hotel across the street, where Miller stumbled following the fight, show the 248-pound player bleeding from the head. He was wearing jogging pants and a tank top.

Both the son and father were sent to a hospital for their injuries. At least one of the men hit Miller, causing an injury to his forehead.

Drunk and bloodied: CCTV has emerged showing showing former San Francisco 49er Bruce Miller stumbling from a drunken fight that had him kicked off the team at the weekend

Police were called to the Marriott but Miller had left by the time cops had arrived.

According to the owner of the hotel across the street, Miller walked around aimlessly for some time, clearly intoxicated.

'He went back there, and he was trying to throw up over there,' the owner told KRON4.

'He couldn't, and he came outside this way, and he sat down here and he started vomiting over here.'

The 49ers tight end reportedly attacked the two men at a Marriott Hotel in San Francisco, California, on Monday after he randomly knocked on their door

Hours before the hotel-room assault, a manager at a San Francisco restaurant said he had to kick him out after the player got in a fight over a sandwich.

The manager of Tommy's Joynt, Eddie Martin, said Miller had no money and wanted sandwiches from guests and started a fight at the restaurant, though no one was hurt.
Punishment: Chalice Renee Zeitner, 31, of Phoenix, was sentenced to 28 years after being convicted of fraud, theft and forgery

An Arizona woman was sentenced Thursday to 28 years in prison for faking cancer to get the state to pay for her late-term abortion.

Chalice Renee Zeitner, 31, of Phoenix, was convicted in April of fraud, theft and forgery charges in the case involving the termination of her pregnancy.

A separate jury found her guilty of fraud and theft five weeks ago after authorities said she defrauded a charity for military veterans and the leader of a second charity in 2012. She also was convicted in May of aggravated drunken driving.

In the abortion case, Zeitner was accused of presenting forged medical records to support her claim that she had state IV cancer in her abdomen and lower spine and telling an obstetrician that her pregnancy put her life in danger.

The Arizona health care program in which Zeitner was enrolled covers the cost of abortions in limited circumstances, such as when a mother's life is endangered.

Zeitner told her obstetrician she had cancer and her pregnancy put her life in further danger. The 31-year-old said there were deadly tumors all over her body putting the fetus at risk

Her abortion occurred 22 weeks into her pregnancy.

The state estimates that more than $6,000 was spent on health care related to Zeitner's abortion.

Investigators say the scheme was discovered a year after the April 2010 abortion when a doctor who performed a C-section during Zeitner's subsequent pregnancy found no signs of cancer.

Another doctor who was listed on medical records as having treated Zeitner for cancer later said he never treated her.

Zeitner's lawyer told jurors that his client genuinely believed she had cancer and didn't set out to defraud anyone.

In the case involving the charities, Zeitner was accused of persuading a veterans' charity to buy $7,700 worth of tickets for a gala with the promise of returning the money and providing a portion of the event's proceeds.

But investigators say Zeitner canceled the event and instead spent the money on personal expenses.

Zeitnrer's defense lawyer insisted that the woman, pictured being led into custody following her arrest in May 2015, genuinely believed she had cancer

In court Thursday, an emotional Zeitner told the judge she believed she deserved the maximum sentence for her crimes against the Veteran Tickets Foundation, reported The Arizona Republic.
The government probe into hack attacks on state voting systems is being expanded, according to reports.

Law enforcement officials were summoned to Captiol Hill in order to brief House and Senate leaders on the investigation, according to CBS News's Jeff Pegues.

The meeting comes as government officials are poised to send out an alert to election monitors across the country about the attacks, sources said.

Law enforcement officials were summoned to Capitol Hill and told to brief Congress on the threat of hacking to local voter systems after Arizona and Illinois were targeted

Government officials are thought to be sending a memo to state authorities on how to prevent attacks after the FBI said government-backed Russian hackers were behind the recent attack

The alert is expected to offer states specific assistance and detail preventative measures they can take to make their systems more secure.

FBI Director James Comey sought to play down the danger to voting systems at a recent press conference, while stating his agency takes the attack 'very, very seriously.'

He described local voting mechanisms as 'clunky', saying that helps to isolate them from high-tech hackers potentially looking to draw data from a fiber optic cable, only to 'find there isn't actually a fiber optic cable.'

FBI investigators have already said they believe government-affiliated Russian hackers are behind attacks on voting databases in Illinois and Arizona this summer.

That has sparked fears that Putin could be trying to interfere with the result of the upcoming general election, though agents say the motivation is far from clear.

The hackers could have simply been engaging in cyber espionage, or harvesting easy data records for their own financial gain, detectives said.

Illinois officials say they have identified 700 individuals whose data was accessed and will be informing them by mail.

FBI director James Comey has sought to downplay the risk to voting, calling local systems 'clunky' and saying that protects them from sophisticated hacking techniques

Another 3,500 voters had their records viewed by the hackers, but officials say they will not be able to identify who those people are.

An additional 86,000 people's records are 'strongly suspected' to have been viewed during the attack, which was first detected on July 12 and shut down.

It also follows on from the release of hacked DNC emails which Democrats and other cyber security experts have blamed on Russia, though the FBI has yet to make a call.

Vladimir Putin has denied that the Russian government was behind that particular attack, but questioned why the source of the information was important.

Speaking ahead of the G20 summit where he and President Obama were pictured locked in a 'death stare', he said: 'Listen, does it even matter who hacked this data?

'The important thing is the content that was given to the public.'

'There's no need to distract the public's attention from the essence of the problem by raising some minor issues connected with the search for who did it.

'But I want to tell you again, I don't know anything about it, and on a state level Russia has never done this.'

That attack revealed embarrassing emails between top Democratic officials that showed they had conspired against Bernie Sanders during the primary process.
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A circus elephant ran amok for three hours in a busy area of Pune, in India.

The elephant, called Nitya, broke away from circus staff after she was taken for a bath.

The incident took place in the suburbs of Pune on Wednesday, as around 2,000 people bolted in fear and traffic was brought to a standstill.

A circus elephant called Nitya was taken for a bath by her caretakers but broke free and ran around the busy area of Pune, in India

She was having a bath but then started to run towards crowds and more people gathered to see what was going on

It was around 10am on Wednesday when she was taken out of the boundaries of Rambo Circus

According to local media the animal was captured by municipal officials in the Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial township after they spoke to forest officials over the phone about how to calm her down.

The Indian Express reported that it was around 10am on Wednesday, when the three caretakers of Rambo Circus took Nitya, one of the four elephants in the circus, out of the Bhosari circus ground for a bath.

Speaking to the newspaper Circus Sujith Dilip said: 'Nitya is very gentle by nature. Even on the circus ground, she roams around when set free without harming anyone and anything.

According to the circus owner Nitya is 'gentle' and she was more likely to have been scared and looking for her mother

But the elephant was seen darting around as her caretakers tried to calm her down

The circus elephant could be seen with rope around her as workers tried to keep her away from the crowds with sticks

The tried feeding her to calm her down but it is believed she was spooked by all the people and the police were called to crowd manage

People could be seen running as she moved towards them in the busy area

'The caretaker would have succeeded in controlling her, but she became nervous, scared and stressed seeing so many people around her.

'Her mother too wasnt around and hence she started running here and there. The people were scared and so was she.'

Rambo Circus moved its main base to Bengaluru in July, but could not take four of its elephants including Nitya because of a pending transit permit.

Caretakers and local officers who spoke to forest officials tried to find other ways to calm her down

The run-around went on for three hours despite everyone's best efforts, but no on was injured

The traffic was brought to a standstill by police as Nitya made her way through roads and more built up areas

After eventually being calmed down and hopefully tired out too, Nitya was strapped down by circus workers

After being led away from the crowds tied up and hopefully unable to escape again she was given her bath

The circus has been warned by police that this cannot happen again

Mahesh Swami, assistant police inspector of the Bhosari Police station, commented: 'Though no untoward incident happened, we have warned the circus owner to take precautionary measures.'
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's interview on the Kremlin-backed Russia Today TV network was conducted for host Larry King's podcast, according to the Trump campaign.

'Former CNN superstar Larry King has a podcast. And Mr. Trump went on his podcast,' Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said Friday morning on CNN's 'New Day' program.

'Nobody said it was going to be on Russian TV.'

Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks rushed to defuse the potentially embarrassing interview on Thursday night, saying in a statement that 'Mr. Trump recorded a short interview with Larry King for his podcast as a favor to Mr. King.'

'What Larry King does with the interview content is up to him, we have nothing to do with it.'

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Donald Trump told 'longtime friend' Larry King on Russia Today that interference by Moscow in the November elections was 'probably unlikely'

NO ONE TOLD US: Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said on Friday that the interview was meant for King's podcast, not for Kremlin-backed TV

In the interview, Trump cast doubt on reports that Russian intelligence has a covert plan to create distrust in the upcoming American presidential elections.

'I don't know. I've been hearing about it. I've been reading about it. I think it's probably unlikely,' Trump told Larry King on Russia Today, the Russian-backed news service.

'I think maybe the Democrats are putting that out, who knows? I think that it's pretty unlikely, but who knows. I hope that if they are doing something I hope that somebody's going to be able to find out so that they can end it, because that would not be appropriate at all,' Trump said.

The Washington Post reported this week that U.S. intelligence officials are investigating a Russian covert operation to 'sow public distrust in the upcoming presidential election.'

The apparent plan is to use cyber efforts to hack into the political process and spread disinformation.

Speaking general about the election process, which he has repeatedly raised concerns about, Trump said, 'I hope it's gonna be a very fair election. I don't know that it will be. I hope it's going to be.'

.@KellyannePolls on Donald Trump interview on Russian state TV: "Nobody said it was going to be on Russian TV" https://t.co/Lj5b8FdO6Y  New Day (@NewDay) September 9, 2016

Trump said he didn't have 'any opinion' on Russian President Vladimir Putin's statement that whoever hacked the DNC was doing a public service

Trump hailed NBC host Matt Lauer's performance in a televised forum, where Trump praised Putin as 'far more' of a leader than President Obama

King, who interviewed Trump numerous times when he was at CNN, stated 'just for the record, Donald and I go back 30 years, I consider him a good friend' at the top of the call-in interview, but proceeded to raise some sensitive subjects in his individual style.

Asked about Putin's statement that hacking of Democratic National Committee emails was a public service, Trump declined to criticize it.

'I don't have any opinion on it. I don't know anything about it. I don't know who hacked. I'm not sure who. I mean  you tell me who who hacked, who did the hacking. But I have absolutely no opinion on that statement. I haven't heard that statement,' Trump said.

Putin told Bloomberg News last week, 'Listen, does it even matter who hacked this data? The important thing is the content that was given to the public.'' U.S. officials blame Russian government-backed hackers for pulling off the intrusion, which embarrassed Democrats and led to the resignation of the DNC chair.

At Wednesday night's NBC forum, Trump once again praised Putin.

'The man has very strong control over a country,' Trump said when asked about Putin's past praise for him.

'I think when he calls me brilliant I'll take the compliment, okay?' Trump said when pressed about Putin, whose regime is under U.S. and international sanctions over Russia's incursion into Ukraine. 'The fact is, look, it's not gonna get him anywhere,' he added.

'If he says great things about me, I'm going to say great things about him.'

Trump continued: 'Now It's a very different system and I don't happen to like the system, but certainly in that system, he's been a leader. Far more than our president has been a leader.'

In the King interview, Trump also commented on Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson's interview gaffe where he failed to understand a question about the Syrian city of Aleppo.

'I don't know that it will hurt him that much frankly. He didn't know that. I saw that. It maybe will hurt him a little bit,' Trump said. 'I think he'll scoot by. They're not too much of a factor. They seem to be going down, the other two,' he added, in reference to Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein.

He said they shouldn't be allowed in debates. 'No, I'd rather be Hillary and myself because we're the only two with a chance of winning,' he said.

Trump hailed Matt Lauer's interviewing Wednesday, which got panned by media critics and even some NBC execs. 'I thought he was very professional. I thought he was strong, tough, I thought he was smart. I thought his presentation was excellent. I thought he was very professional,' Trump said.

And Trump showed no desire to share more details of his plan to defeat ISIS.
Harriet Wran has been granted parole and will walk free within seven days after she was jailed over her role in the murder of a Sydney drug dealer.

The State Parole Authority made its decision the 28-year-old's parole bid during a private hearing on Friday afternoon.

Wran, the daughter of former NSW premier Neville Wran, has been eligible for early release since August 12, but a decision on her parole bid was postponed last month so that reports and documents could be prepared.

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Harriet Wran has been granted parole and will walk free within seven days after she was jailed over her role in the murder of a Sydney drug dealer

The State Parole Authority made a decision on the 28-year-old's parole bid during a private hearing on Friday afternoon

Wran will be subject to parole supervision until August 2018 as well as having standard parole conditions imposed.

She must not drink alcohol or use drugs and has been ordered to see a psychologist.

Wran has also been told she must not contact the victim's family or her co-offenders.

The former Sydney socialite has been behind bars for nearly two years after being arrested over the fatal stabbing of Daniel McNulty, 48, in a Redfern housing commission unit in 2014.

Wran was sentenced in July to four years in jail for being an accessory to the murder.

The former drug addict has admitted helping then-boyfriend Michael Lee and his friend Lloyd Edward Haines gain entry to the flat, but says she didn't know Lee had a knife and didn't see Mr McNulty being stabbed.

Daniel McNulty (pictured) was stabbed to death at his inner-Sydney Redfern housing commission apartment in August 2014

Wran has been behind bars for nearly two years after being arrested over the fatal stabbing

Wran revealed how she relapsed to drug taking after her father Neville's state funeral in 2014 (pictured above with her brother Hugo at the event)

She pleaded guilty to accessory after the fact of murder, robbery in company, and harbouring, maintaining and assisting Lee, after prosecutors dropped a murder charge.

During the July sentencing, Justice Harrison said Wran was not aware Lee had a knife, nor that Haines had donned a balaclava in the moments before she knocked on the door to Mr McNulty's home.

'Ms Wran took no part and played no role once entry had been gained - it escalated quickly and unexpectedly,' Justice Harrison said.

He said he accepted Wran was genuinely remorseful and added that he did not believe she would re-offend once released.

'The agreed facts make it clear Ms Wran did not contemplate any injury at all.'

Lee and Haines have both pleaded guilty to murder and other charges.

The former drug addict has admitted helping then-boyfriend Michael Lee and his friend Lloyd Edward Haines gain entry to Mr McNulty's flat
A vengeful wife has been sentenced for attempting to blackmail her husband's lover with naked photographs of the woman's children she had sent him.

Charmaine O'Shea, 39, threatened to send the pictures to the mistress's friends and family if she was not paid $100,000 by the woman, The Gold Coast Bulletin reported.

O'Shea had found the explicit photographs on the phone of her 49-year-old husband, Paul Woods, who was charged for possession of child exploitation material.

A wife blackmailed her husband's mistress with naked photos of her kids which she found on his phone

At Southport District Court on Thursday, Judge Leanne Clare sentenced Woods to 105 days' jail.

Woods has already served the time under the detention of the Australian Border Force and will likely be deported to New Zealand.

Judge Clare sentenced O'Shea to two years' probation for making threats, but no conviction was recorded.

The court heard O'Shea had sought revenge on her husband's lover after discovering his affair, The Gold Coast Bulletin reported.

The offending came to light after the mother-of-three told her husband about her affair with Woods.

She was handed an 18-month suspended sentence for making and distributing the material - which showed three children with their legs spread and swimming naked- to Woods in January.
An 82-year-old drink-driver led police on a chase through country villages

An 82-year-old drink-driver led police on a chase through country villages at more than double the speed limit, even reaching 80mph.

Brian Seals was captured on police dashcam footage driving at 70mph in a 30mph zone and at 80mph in a 40mph zone, before having no other choice but to come to a halt behind slow-moving traffic, a court heard.

The pensioner startled motorists who had to take evasive action as he overtook them in his silver Toyota Aygo.

The court heard that when police caught up with him, angry motorists also pulled up to vent their fury at his erratic driving.

Seals began overtaking steady-moving traffic with sudden, jerky movements in Brompton, North Yorkshire - a 40mph zone where there was a marked police car driven by a traffic sergeant.

The traffic sergeant gave chase but despite the flashing blue lights and a siren, Seals stepped on the gas as he weaved in and out of traffic at speed, a court heard.

Prosecutor Graham O'Sullivan said Seals tore through the neighbouring village of Wykeham with the speed dial at 70mph.

Mr O'Sullivan said: 'He continued to make overtaking manoeuvres, swerving at the last minute into the opposite side of the road, at speed, in the presence of oncoming traffic.'

Footage of the terrifying incident, captured on the sergeant's dashboard camera, showed the Toyota overtaking on bends, streaking through two lines of traffic in the narrowest of margins and swerving violently to avoid hitting oncoming vehicles.

York Crown Court heard Seals shot through the next village, West Ayton, at 80mph - double the local speed limit. He then sped through the 30mph part of the village at 70mph.

I think I'm having a bit of a freak in my head

He finally hit the brakes on the approach to the bridge at West Ayton, where he got stuck behind slow-moving traffic and pulled up in a layby.

When the officer asked Seals why he had driven in such a manner, the pensioner replied: 'I think I'm having a bit of a freak in my head.'

Mr O'Sullivan said it was clear that Seals had been drinking and the officer asked him to undergo a roadside breath test, which revealed an alcohol reading of 45mcg in 100ml of breath. The legal limit is 35mcg.

As police were speaking to Seals at the roadside, other motorists pulled up to vent their fury at the pensioner's kamikaze driving, which miraculously resulted in no collisions or injuries.

Brian Seals was captured on police dashcam footage driving at 70mph in a 30mph zone and at 80mph in a 40mph zone

Seals, of Scarborough, North Yorkshire, was arrested and charged with dangerous driving and drink-driving.

He admitted the offences and appeared for sentence on Thursday last week (September 1) wearing a smart grey jacket and tie.

The court heard that the octogenarian had led a blameless life until the five-mile car chase, which began at about 4.15pm on July 21.

His solicitor advocate David Camidge told the court Seals acknowledged the consequences of his driving 'could have been a lot worse', adding: 'He won't be driving again.'

Judge Neil Davey QC said Seals had shown a brazen disregard for the safety of other road users and had put their lives 'at considerable risk'.

However, the judge said Seals's lack of previous convictions, his early guilty pleas and his age had spared him an immediate jail sentence.
Opinion / Columnist

Every time President Mugabe travels to Malaysia, rumours emerge to the effect that he would have collapsed and subsequently rushed for treatment in the Middle East. Almost immediately, he would then be reported to have died. However, upon his return, President Mugabe jokes about the death rumours with a beaming appearance. Responding to a question about the recent fabrications, the President said 'Yes I died and resurrected'.However, although the President may give the impression that he does not take the fabrications seriously, somewhere in his heart, he must feel severely disheartened to know that evil can stretch that far within the borders of a country whose liberation he played a dominant role to bring about. Although the number of henchmen who wish him dead is a small fraction compared to his supporters, it is not a pleasant feeling to know that some miserable individuals are waiting to celebrate his death. The trouble with the allegations is that they are entirely based on fabrications designed to promote some bogus Internet websites desperate to find a market.It would be understandable to circulate rumours of death if the President would be indeed unwell. At all times, he would be neither unwell nor dead. All the more startling is that the President always resurfaces looking much stronger than before. In his most recent appearance, the energy he showed resembled that of a youthful soldier on parade. That he is still going strong is clear indication that indeed some divine authority is behind his life. Very few younger individuals are able to demonstrate the same kind of vigour especially under the schedule of a demanding task. It is not possible to be 92 years old, perform so many national assignments under a very tight schedule and emerge with the gusto of a lively calf. President Mugabe deserves praise and honour rather than condemnation and hostility.After all, people must understand that being 92 is not even the problem because there is no guarantee that a younger candidate would exhibit better governance or proper democratic conduct. For example, the most restless countries in Africa are led by young Presidents. Paul Kagame who has dismally failed to bring peace to Rwanda since his inauguration in 2000, is 49 years of age. Joseph Kabila who presides over one of the worst governments in the world is 45 years old. King Mswati the 3rd, who directed Swaziland towards severe immoral conduct and presides over one of the most corrupt governments, is 46 years old. Suffice to say, it is all a matter of capacity rather than age. On the other hand, President Mugabe introduced the best education system on the continent. He has also applied some of the best black empowerment policies since the era of colonialism. He is the only African President who truly addressed matters of black discrimination before and after independence. Suffice to say, his contribution sinceIndependence has been a major source of inspiration for millions of Africans.Clearly, the bogus online websites deserve no luxury of privacy. Eddie Cross, the MDC MP for Bulawayo South, first published those unfortunate fabrications on his website. 'What now happens is that the Constitutional transition to a new President begins. The Acting President will now control all the levers of State. This phase runs for 90 days until Zanu Pf holds an elective congress to choose a new leader', he wrote on his website. Well, he must dream on. Clearly, he was adamant, without evidence that the President had died. Initially, Eddie Cross's conduct has never been consistent with a true contemporary democrat with adequate consideration for human life, let alone black life.Nobody takes him seriously except a handful of supporters from his camp. Indeed, to seek his opinion on the welfare of President Mugabe is akin to asking the devil for directions to salvation.This is a man with little regard for black people as being equal citizens deserving equivalent civil-liberties and opportunities. It is apparent that he is a product of the Smith regime which brought unprecedented suffering to black Zimbabweans during colonization. Unfortunately he still exhibits the same convictions which propelled the worst oppression in Zimbabwean history.Some amateurish websites also published the falsehoods based entirely on grapevine. The individuals who are behind Africanherd.com, Zim-Eye and MyZimbabwe, exposed themselves as drunkards masquerading as qualified journalists. They would fail the most basic test of journalism.The culture of death-wishing has no semblance of our national traditions. Recently, Morgan Tsvangirai was diagnosed with cancer and underwent treatment in South Africa. In the true spirit of Zimbabwean customs, Zanu Pf leadership expressed its sorrow and wished him a speedy recovery. That sort of leadership ought to be emulated by aspiring politicians and general Zimbabweans at large. In the end, the love for our respective political parties should never supersede the values and traditions upon which our national legacy was founded.-----------------Immigration Maziwisa
A migrant family of ten who have spurned three offers of a bigger council house must accept a fourth property or be made homeless.

Cameroon-born Arnold and Jeanne Mballe Sube, who receive an estimated 44,000 a year in handouts, are demanding a larger home, claiming their three-bedroom, end-of-terrace house is too small.

But the local council says the couple have already rejected three offers of more spacious homes  two without even viewing them  all of which were snapped up by other tenants.

These included a five-bedroom property in Luton, Bedfordshire, which the family complained did not have a dining room or storage.

Arnold Mballe Sube and his wife Jeanne, both 33, currently share their three-bedroom, end-of-terrace home in Luton with their eight young children but describe it as 'terrible'

The family claim the conditions of their current home in Luton, Bedfordshire (pictured) are 'terrible', but turned down the chance to live somewhere roomier over a lack of storage space

One of the houses the family turned down was a 250,000 terraced three-storey townhouse in Luton

It comes after the French couple reportedly ran up a taxpayer-funded 38,400 hotel bill plus a 21,000 room service and restaurant charge when they were waiting for their present home.

Tory MPs last night branded the familys demands shameless and accused them of making a mockery of the benefits system.

Council chiefs have now given the Subes an ultimatum: accept a fourth and final offer of a five-bedroom home or face eviction from their current house.

The family live in a 140,000 house in Bletchley, Buckinghamshire, which costs taxpayers 15,000 a year in rent.

Mr and Mrs Sube both have smartphones and a laptop and the house is kitted out with a 60-inch flatscreen TV and Sky HD box in their front room, plus a 52-inch TV in their bedroom.

Their children  Mejane, 16, Fabian, 13, Analia, 13, Prosper, ten, Dylan, nine, six-year-old twins Sharon and Stacy, and three-month-old Mary  also have a TV and an Xbox with dozens of games.

But despite this Mr Sube, who uses one bedroom as a gym and office, describes it as the worst place they have ever lived and insists he has been neglected by the council.

He said: Its so cramped and the conditions are terrible. My children are starting school and we cant stay here any longer.

Their current home: The family complain they are living in overcrowded conditions with a lack of storage

The main bedroom Arnold Mballe Sube and his wife Jeanne, 33, share with their baby

HANDOUTS FOR FAMILY It is not clear exactly what benefits the family claim, but as EU citizens they would be entitled to up to 25,000 a year in handouts while receiving housing benefit. In their home they have flatscreen televisions, games consoles and a Sky HD box. They have received hand-outs worth more than 103,000 in the last 12 months, including: 44,000 in housing and child benefits, child tax credits and NHS course payments worth 27,000 38,400 four-month hotel stay

21,000 in room service Advertisement

The council is trying to make things hard for us... we need a five or six-bedroom house with double rooms to comfortably fit our family.

Mr Sube, who says he has enlisted solicitors over the problem, rejected a previous offer of a five-bedroom house as not good enough.

We are entitled to six bedrooms. I believe that the council has to support me in order for me to become a positive person and contribute to the tax system, he said.

The couple were born in Cameroon but later moved to France, Mr Sube when he was 18.

They moved from Paris to Luton in 2012 after Mr Sube got a place on a mental health nursing course at the University of Bedfordshire. The NHS funds the annual 9,000 cost of the three-year degree.

The family initially lived in a large five-bedroom semi-detached house on a quiet residential road in Luton worth 220,000.

But they had to move out after the landlord sold up. They were then put up for four months at the Hampton by Hilton hotel in Luton at a cost of 38,400. The council also paid 21,000 for the familys room service and restaurant bill after Mr Sube refused to pay.

He told The Sun: We couldnt cook. Children were eating on the carpet. We were ordering room service, chicken and chips, Chinese food. We had to order it twice per day for all the kids and all the family.

The family claim the conditions of their current home (pictured), are 'terrible'

Despite their current cramped conditions (pictured), the Sube's rejected the larger house due to its lack of space

The council said I had to pay a bill for living in the hotel. That was very traumatising because we didnt ask for them to put us there.

The family are also believed to have been put up in a second hotel in Brent Cross, North London, before the council found them a new house.

Councillor Tom Shaw, who is in charge of housing at Luton Borough Council, said the Subes would be offered a new home in the next few days. If they refused it, they would be categorised as intentionally homeless.

He added: If classed as intentionally homeless they would then face eviction as they are in a council-let property. Its difficult to have sympathy when there are a lot of families who would jump at the chance of moving into these properties.

In fact, families are already moving into these three properties which he rejected. They were snapped up very quickly. We offered him three suitable properties and he only agreed to view one. He rejected the others without even seeing them.

Mr Sube said there are ten people in his family and they need sufficient space to live. Pictured, one of the bedrooms in their current home

Due to the size of their family, there is very little floor space left in the Sube family home

The couple insist they require at least six double bedrooms for them to live comfortably - and their three-bed home, pictured, is not big enough

We are not going to change the system for the family. We have a five-bed and we will make a formal offer in writing. But if it is rejected theres not much more we can do.

The councils got the right to say that you are intentionally homeless, please go and look after yourself in the private sector.

A neighbour of the Subes said yesterday: They are a lovely family  they deserve a bigger house. I have five children and I struggle so I dont know how they are coping.

But Peter Bone, Conservative MP for Wellingborough, said: This is the sort of thing that drives my constituents mad.

'They work hard and scrape by and their hard-earned money and taxes get given to people who some would say dont deserve it. It just doesnt seem fair to hard-working families struggling to get by  many of whom would love to have bigger houses. Its fundamentally wrong.

Luton Borough Council said they were able to find a suitable house for the Sube family in the area within the budget, but they declined it 'without good reason'

Mr Sube said he was a student and his wife was a full time mother for their eight children

Last night Mr Sube told the Mail: Im not a greedy man, they are trying to say we are greedy but we are not. They just havent given us the property we deserve.

If they now have a five-bedroom house which is suitable then of course we would be happy to take it.

'We are not greedy  we just want a home for the kids. Mr Sube denied that the council offered him three properties and claimed he has been offered just one five-bed with tiny rooms. He described his current house as horrible.

He previously worked in a warehouse in France, where he was able to rent a home. I regretted leaving France after moving in this property, even my kids did, he added.

Mr Sube said he would challenge the councils decision via his solicitor if the council tried to evict them.

'They're absolutely shameless'

By Tom Kelly

Philip Davies, the Conservative MP for Shipley, said the Sube family are 'shameless' in the use of the welfare system

Arnold and Jeanne Mballe Subes massive benefits bill was last night accused of bringing the welfare system into disrepute.

The Cameroon-born couple, who have eight children, are reported to receive annual state handouts and grants worth 44,000.

Someone in work would have to earn 64,000 a year to take home 44,000 after tax and National Insurance are deducted.

Before arriving in Britain, they emigrated from Cameroon to France and became European Union citizens, making them eligible for a raft of benefits in the UK.

Mr Sube is studying to become a psychiatric nurse.

His three-year degree costs 27,000 and is funded by the NHS.

After being evicted from their previous home, the couple also spent four months living in a hotel at a cost of 38,400 to taxpayers, plus a 21,000 room service and restaurant bill, according to The Sun.

The familys claims have reignited the row over EU migrants right to claim benefits in the UK.

Under current rules, once EU nationals have been living in Britain for three months they can claim income-based jobseekers allowance and child tax credits up to 2,780 a year per child.

Parents can claim a weekly child benefit allowance of 20.70 for their eldest child and 13.70 a week for additional children.

Philip Davies, the Conservative MP for Shipley, said: This is making a mockery of the benefits system.

Its absolutely shameless and brings the welfare system into disrepute.

This family shouldnt keep having children if they cant afford to keep them themselves, and they shouldnt expect the taxpayer to pick up the tab for a massive family they cant afford.

They should be offered no more housing until they can look after themselves. Its a kick in the teeth to anybody who behaves responsibly and works hard.

The welfare state is there to help people who are in real need of it, not to be an alternative lifestyle choice.

The rules have been made stricter in recent years in an attempt to discourage people being drawn to the UK by generous state handouts.

While new migrants from the EU cannot claim any benefits until they have lived here for three months and have started work or are actively seeking work with a genuine chance of being hired, because the Subes arrived in the UK in 2012 they are still eligible to receive benefits under the more generous older rules.

In February, former prime minister David Cameron secured a deal with Europe which would have allowed Britain to bar EU migrants claiming in-work benefits for four years.

The scope and scale of the agreement was criticised by Eurosceptics at the time. However, the Cameron deal is now redundant after the historic Leave vote in June.

Earlier this year a manual on how to get the most out of Britains benefits system was produced for Polish migrants.

The 20-page brochure gave advice on how to bank thousands of pounds in handouts, and was produced by a UK-based newspaper for the Polish population in this country.
Blunders in the use of controversial snooping powers meant 13 people were wrongly arrested last year on suspicion of being paedophiles.

Another four individuals had their homes searched by detectives following errors in attempts to access communications data, a watchdog revealed yesterday.

Other mistakes also included people unconnected to an investigation being visited by police and delayed welfare checks on vulnerable people including children whose lives were at risk, said the Interception of Communications Commissioner.

Blunders in the use of controversial snooping powers meant 13 people were wrongly arrested last year on suspicion of being paedophiles

Sir Stanley Burnton also warned that jail staff were giving dangerous prisoners the chance to commit serious crimes by failing to listen to all their phone calls or by listening to them too late.

The wrongful arrests were among 23 serious mistakes made as the police and security services acquired 761,702 items of confidential web and phone data.

Communications data includes the who, when and where of a phone call, text or email but not the content and bank or credit card details.

A large proportion of the errors involved an internet address which was wrongly linked to an individual.

Of the 23 serious mistakes, 14 were human errors and the other nine technical system errors.

Sir Stanleys annual report said: Any police action taken erroneously in such cases, such as the search of an individuals house that is unconnected to the investigation or a delayed welfare check on an individual whose life is believed to be at risk, can have a devastating impact on the individuals concerned.

Overall, 1,199 communications data errors were reported to the watchdog in 2015 - an increase of 20 per cent on the previous year.

Nearly 94 per cent of all the requests were made by police and law enforcement organisation and just under 6 per cent by the intelligence agencies.

The Investigatory Powers Bill was introduced in the aftermath of damaging leaks about security service snooping by Edward Snowden (above), the computer specialist who worked at a US intelligence centre

The watchdog also received 62 reports of errors related to the 3,059 interception warrants, which allow the police and security services to access the content of calls, emails, and other messages.

In addition, the commissioner inspected prisons and identified some instances where not all of the calls made by inmates were being listened to, or recordings of the conversations were destroyed before they were played back.

This meant that details of crimes discussed in phone calls from cells might be missed.

Interception of communications is mandatory for high-risk Category A inmates and those on an escape list. Prisoners posing a significant risk to children, sex offenders and people convicted of harassment may also be targeted.

The report said: This is of concern because a significant piece of intelligence could be missed completely or not reacted to promptly, leading to a serious incident occurring which may have otherwise been prevented.

Sir Stanley was also concerned that calls in foreign languages were not being monitored adequately.

Farcically, prison guards were listening to a large number of calls made by some of the 10,000 foreign criminals in jails in England and Wales without them being translated.

The report said: Inspections revealed that staff were being directed to listen to a large number of calls made in foreign languages but were not being provided with any guidance as to whether the calls should be translated.

Consequently no benefit was being derived from the monitoring, which undermines the necessity and proportionality for it as the exercise cannot meet the objective for which monitoring was authorised.

Meanwhile, a separate report, also released yesterday revealed that security services made nearly double the number of mistakes using intelligence powers in 2015 than in the previous year.

Almost all of the 83 errors in 2015 led to an intrusion into privacy to some degree', the Intelligence Services Commissioner found.

The reports were published as the Government tries to push through what has been described by critics as a turbo-charged snoopers charter.

Critics have warned that there is a risk the Investigatory Powers Bill will ride roughshod over peoples privacy using recent terror attacks to justify greater surveillance powers.

The Bill was introduced in the aftermath of damaging leaks about security service snooping by Edward Snowden, the computer specialist who worked at a US intelligence centre.

Ministers insist it is an attempt to bring all new and existing spy tactics used by the intelligence agencies in the digital age under one piece of legislation.

Last night, a Government spokesman said: Although errors in acquiring communications data occur very infrequently, any error in these circumstances is deeply regrettable - especially when it has significant consequences.

The Interception of Communications Commissioner made a number of recommendations to improve processes and prevent errors from occurring. All public authorities who received recommendations will be considering very carefully how to put them into practice.
Attorney had asked him to declare flag an unconstitutional relic of slavery

But he acknowledged that it is an offensive symbol of the state's past

The Confederate battle emblem on Mississippi's state flag is 'repulsive' but not unconstitutional, a federal judge ruled Thursday.

Attorney Carlos Moore, 39-year-old African-American from Grenada, Mississippi, filed a lawsuit in February. He asked the judge to declare the symbol an unconstitutional relic of slavery.

But US District Judge Carlton Reeves dismissed the suit, saying the flag - although wildly offensive - did not violate Moore's constitutional rights.

Moore would have needed to show what part of the Constitution guarantees a legal right to be free from anxiety at displays of historical racism by the State, Reeves said.

There is no such part in the Constitution, according to Reeves.

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Attorney Carlos Moore (right), 39, filed a lawsuit in February arguing the unconstitutionality of the Confederate battle symbol on Mississippi's state flag. US District Judge Carlton Reeves (left) dismissed the suit on Thursday

Mississippi has used the same flag since 1894. Its upper left corner has the Confederate battle emblem  a red field topped by a blue X dotted with 13 white stars.

Voters chose to keep the banner in a 2001 referendum. It's the last state flag in the nation to prominently feature the emblem.

Reeves overturned arguments from flag supporters who say that Mississippi's secession from the union before the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery.

He quoted the state's 1861 secession declaration, which said: 'Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery  the greatest material interest of the world.'

Mississippi has used the flag (pictured in front of the governor's mansion in Jackson) since 1894. Its upper left corner has the Confederate battle emblem

Reeves continued in his own words: 'To put it plainly, Mississippi was so devoted to the subjugation of African-Americans that it sought to form a new nation predicated upon white supremacy.'

He ruled that Moore had failed to show the emblem caused a 'cognizable legal injury' but his ruling slammed the Confederate symbol's historical meaning.

Reeves, who is black, wrote: 'The emblem offends more than just African-Americans. Mississippians of all creeds and colors regard it as "one of the most repulsive symbols of the past."

'It is difficult to imagine how a symbol borne of the South's intention to maintain slavery can unite Mississippians in the 21st century.'

Like other Confederate symbols, the Mississippi flag has come under increased scrutiny since the June 2015 killings of black churchgoers in South Carolina.

The white man charged in that case had posed with the Confederate battle flag in photos published online. Several cities and counties and seven of Mississippi's eight public universities have stopped flying the state flag.

Moore (pictured) would have needed to show what part of the Constitution guarantees a legal right to be free from anxiety at displays of historical racism by the State, Reeves said

Reeves remained open to a potential dismissal of the Confederate battle symbol in the future, based on other legal grounds.

'The Confederate battle emblem has no place in shaping a New Mississippi, and is better left retired to history,' Reeves wrote.

'For that change to happen through the judiciary, however, the Confederate battle emblem must have caused a cognizable legal injury. In this case no such injury has been articulated.

'Whether that could be shown in a future case, or whether "the people themselves" will act to change the state flag, remains to be seen.'

Flag supporters and opponents are circulating petitions seeking another statewide vote on the symbol.

Moore has not decided whether to appeal the ruling. He has received three death threats after filing the original case.

'I'm relieved that the death threats to me and my family should subside,' Moore told The Associated Press.

'I'm disappointed that my daughter, for the foreseeable future, still has to live under a regime with an offensive Confederate emblem on the Mississippi flag.'

Moore had argued in the lawsuit that his daughter, who started kindergarten this year, should not have to attend a public school with a state flag featuring the Confederate battle emblem.
While many gay couples have turned to same-sex marriage an older generation prefers to stick to the civil partnership

Pensioners are the most likely people to form same-sex civil partnerships, according to an official breakdown yesterday.

While gay couples are increasingly turning to same-sex marriage to cement their relationships, an older generation prefers to stick to the older-established civil partnership system, it found.

Last year the average age at which a gay or lesbian couple recorded a civil partnership was nearly 50, around a decade later in life than in 2013, the last year before David Cameron's law opening marriage to same-sex partners came into operation.

People over 65 were more likely to register a partnership than those in age groups below pension age, the figures collected by the Office for National Statistics showed. More than 16 per cent of men forming a civil partnership and nearly 18 per cent of women had reached the age of 65 or older.

The figures, which cover England and Wales, come against a steep decline in partnership numbers following the introduction of same-sex marriage. The trend to stick to partnerships among older couples appears to reflect a suspicion of marriage among well-established middle-aged people, some analysts said.

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Civil partnerships were introduced in 2005 to give gay and lesbian couples legal duties and privileges that were almost exactly the same as those of married people. For many younger couples, civil partnerships were superseded when same-sex marriage became available in 2014.

The ONS said: 'Following the introduction of marriages of same-sex couples, the percentage of civil partnerships taking place at older ages has increased. Almost half of all persons entering a civil partnership in 2015 were aged 50 and over.

Some couples may be put off by the religious roots of marriage, said a partner at a law firm

'This compares with 19 per cent in 2013, prior to the introduction of marriages of same-sex couples. For the first time, the most popular age for men and women to form a civil partnership was 65 and over in 2015.'

Amanda Rimmer, a partner at law firm Stephensons, said: 'Civil partnerships can provide a more fuss-free approach, giving same sex couples the opportunity to follow a more practical, contractual route to cement their relationships.

'As such, it is no accident that the average age of those entering civil partnerships has increased year-on-year. Many of these couples might have already been in long term relationships and simply want the legal and financial security which can come with a civil partnership, whilst disposing with the connotations sometimes associated with marriage.'

She added that it was surprising that hundreds of couples still choose the unromantically contractual civil partnerships over marriage. Some couples may be put off by the religious roots of marriage, she said.

'For centuries the connotations of a marriage and a weddings have had religious undertones. We are not too detached from the time when weddings only took place in churches to be conducted by clergymen,' Miss Rimmer said.

The figures showed that 861 gay and lesbian couples took out civil partnerships last year, down from 1,683 in 2014 and 5,646 in 2014.

New partnership were outnumbered by those which were dissolved, the civil partnership equivalent of divorce. There were 1,211 dissolutions last year, up by 14 per cent on the 2014 total.

For many couples civil partnerships were superseded when same-sex marriage became available in 2014

Elizabeth McLaren of the ONS said: 'Civil partnership dissolutions have increased due to the rising number of civil partnerships that have been formed since they were introduced in December 2005. Dissolutions are likely to reduce in the future as more same-sex couples form marriages instead of civil partnerships.'

Cara Nuttall, a family lawyer with JMW Solicitors, suggested that the increase was linked to the reluctance of older same-sex couples to get married.

'Despite the introduction of same-sex marriage, there are some older individuals for whom marriage will always involve a husband and wife,' she said.

'In my experience, that opinion tends to be held by men and women who grew up when heterosexual marriage was very much the norm, long before the tremendous advances secured by those demanding equal rights. It is a fact that some of the older age group opting for civil partnership also regard marriage as having certain negative connotations, particularly those who had previously been married to a member of the opposite sex themselves.'

'They felt pressure to conform to social constraints at the time and only considered themselves able to enter into a same-sex relationship once attitudes had changed.'

Miss Nuttall added: 'One of my clients has described how they were almost trapped and very unhappy in their heterosexual marriage before they felt able to come out. Given that the institution of marriage has such unhappy memories, they have no desire to enter such a partnership again.
Three-quarters of people in the UK do not know about the link between obesity and the 10 different cancers it can cause, research shows.

Fat is as dangerous as cigarette smoking in reproductive cancers such as cancer of the womb, which less than a quarter of people know is linked to being overweight, Cancer Research UK said in a report looking at obesity and cancer nationally for the first time.

If obesity is not tackled there will be 670,000 additional cases of cancer over the next 20 years which could cost the health service around 2.5 billion, the charity warned.

Three-quarters of people in the UK do not know about the link between obesity and the 10 different cancers it can cause, research shows

The condition is the second most common cause of preventable cancer after smoking, and is probably responsible for more than 18,000 cases a year.

But 78 per cent did not know obesity is linked to ovarian or womb cancer, more than two-thirds (69 per cent) were unaware it can lead to breast cancer, and more than half (53 per cent) did not know of the link to cancer of the pancreas.

People who were less well-off were less likely to be aware of the link than those in the higher social groups, according to the online survey of 3,293 people by the Policy Research Centre for Cancer Prevention at Cancer Research UK.

Professor Peter Johnson, chief clinician for Cancer Research UK, said people should stop perceiving cancer as 'an inevitability' and ask themselves what they could do to minimise their chances - an 'under-recognised question'.

He said: 'Historically there has been a sense that there was nothing one could do about the risk of getting cancer, but as time goes on it's clear that there are more and more things we can do, and maintaining a healthy body weight and reducing obesity are clearly two very important components of that.'

While details of the link between being overweight and developing cancer are still being probed, it is thought storing excess fat can increase the level of sex hormones including oestrogen, which can make cells multiply faster in the womb and the breast.

Womb cancer ranks highest in its association with obesity, and a morbidly obese woman may have a 15 per cent to 20 per cent lifetime risk of womb cancer - equivalent to the risk of lung cancer in a lifetime heavy smoker.

Excess fat also causes insulin levels to rise, which can tell cells to divide

Post-menopausal, overweight women are particularly at risk because their bodies no longer produce the natural antagonist to oestrogen that is released during the second half of the menstrual cycle, so the womb lining can continue to thicken.

Excess fat also causes insulin levels to rise, which can tell cells to divide, and thereby increase, more rapidly, while special immune cells in fat tissue can lead to chronic inflammation which can aid the growth of cancer.

The charity admitted obesity is a 'loaded and contentious' topic that many people - including GPs - have strong opinions about. It noted doctors can be reluctant to bring up obesity concerns with patients attending an appointment for a separate matter for fear of damaging the relationship.

A lot of people did not identify themselves are obese, which could be down to obesity being widely portrayed as an extreme which does not resonate with people with a lower level of obesity.

It praised the recent sugar tax levy but warned much more needs to be done to tackle the crisis at its root, with one in three children leaving primary school overweight or obese.

The Government should restrict marketing by ensuring junk food adverts are not aired on television before the 9pm watershed, and set mandatory targets for the food and drinks industry to reduce sugar and fat in products, the charity recommended.

People should also take individual responsibility, and the charity acknowledged that the threat of cancer could be enough to kick-start obese and overweight people into taking steps to manage their problem.

A Department of Health spokesman said: 'Being overweight can increase the risk of developing cancer and this is one of the reasons why we are taking firm action to tackle the nation's obesity crisis.

'Our obesity plan is world-leading, with more far-reaching and comprehensive measures than anything pursued by any other western government.

'Nevertheless, we will measure progress carefully and do not rule out further action if results are not seen.'
Australian woman Angel Williams, 25, has been crowned Miss British Empire, the top prize in a beauty pageant that takes a slightly different approach to who can enter.

Ms Williams, from Darwin, travelled to London to take part in the beauty pageant which promises to launch you to stardom and follow in the footsteps of Liz Fuller Miss Great Britain 1997.

The women needed to send in photos of themselves in swimwear to enter the competition

It claims to launch you to stardom and follow in the footsteps of Liz Fuller Miss Great Britain 1997 (pictured)

When the Aussie beauty won the coveted Miss British Empire title at the weekend, the new-age pageant was thrust into the spotlight, along with all of its obscurities.

In the search for its next star, the pageant requires women to be 'a natural-born female' and send in a stream of photos of themselves wearing only swimwear to even be considered.

It also requires an entree fee, and offers no prize money for its winners.

Angel Williams (centre left) took out the top prize, crowned Miss British Empire at the weekend

The pageant proclaims it's designed for people 'wishing to further their career in show business', and prides itself on following through.

The pageant boasts past winners including Newcastle model Tamlyn Smith, and Lauren Jones, an aspiring TV presenter.

Ms Williams (pictured) has made finalist in Miss Hawaiian Tropics National, Miss V8 National, Miss Swimsuit USA National and finalist in Miss Cookislands

Angel Williams (pictured) thanks God for her success, as she travels across Europe following the competition

Since her win at the weekend, Ms Williams travelled across Europe, posting photos of herself in her crown and thanking God for her success.

I always thought at my age, Id be settled down, married with kids But I guess God had a different plan for me, Ms Williams said.

Launched in 2011 by Liz Fuller, the competition has morphed into the most unique of its kind

I want to thank the Lord for guiding me and allowing my dreams to become a reality.

Its never too late to chase your dreams.

Ms Williams (pictured) took photos of herself in her new crown at landmarks across Europe

Since the competition was launched in 2011 by Liz Fuller, a Television presenter, actress, model and media personality, it has morphed into one of the most obscure pageants in the world.

Darwin girl Angel Williams (pictured) was crowned Miss British Empire at the weekend

Traditionally just for women, the Miss British Empire beauty pageant broke the mold when it introduced men into the competition to vie for the title of Mr British Empire.

Good looking, intelligent, fun charismatic and ambitious men were called on to enter the competition which required them to strip down to almost nothing and model in a swimwear round.

The Darwin based woman was no stranger to beauty pageants, also competing in Miss swimsuit USA national and others across the world

While the men who enter are required to be both good looking and intelligent, the experience needed to take part was arguably more forgiving.

To enter, the competition said men needed only minimum modelling experience, a beginner starting out.

Mr British Empire winner Brett Walker (right) with Mr British Empire Scotland Calvin Davidson (left), adorned in his winning crown

And with a six-year-old boy from Cimla in Wales taking out Little Mr British Empire, the 'minimum modelling experience' requirement was true to its word.

But not all men were beginners with others clearly well adjusted to the modelling game.

Mr British Empire Scotland Calvin Davidson (pictured) shares his transformation results before the big competition

Calvin Davidson was crowned Mr Scotland and also UK Runner Up, and the competition was not the first time the Cheltenham UK man stripped down for a good cause.

Boasting streams of modelling shots on his Facebook page, the Mr British Empire competition was just another feather in the beautys hat.

Taking out top prize, Brett Walker shares his winning body with his Facebook friends

But taking out top price was Brett Walker, who was crowned Mr British Empire for the second year in a row.

Mr British Empire was just the beginning of the Dundee man's career, as he planned to travel to China to compete in his next international beauty pageant.
A Florida father has been left devastated after his brand new Samsung Galaxy Note 7 burst into flames and torched his family car.

Nathan Dornacher, from St Petersburg, Florida, said he was charging the phone inside his custom Jeep Grand Cherokee when it caught fire, burning both to a crisp.

Samsung have issued a worldwide recall for the Note7, saying problems with the battery can cause it to explode or catch fire.

Nathan Dornacher, from St Petersburg, Florida, said his Samsung Galaxy Note7 burst into flames and burned his Jeep Grand Cherokee to a crisp while charging inside

Dorancher said he left the car running in the driveway with the phone inside after a shopping trip as he went inside to get his daughter, eight, and their pet dog before going back out

While fire officials have not said whether that was the cause behind this fire, Dornacher told Fox 13 News that the blaze started around the charging phone.

The father-of-one said he had not heard about the recall, which was issued just five days before the fire broke out.

Posting pictures of the blaze on Facebook, he said: 'We went to a garage sale to grab a desk for my daughter, got back to the house and unloaded the car.

'I left it running with the AC on to keep the car cool as we were planning on grabbing the dog and heading to Petco.

'I went back out to the car to grab my phone which was on the charger (me and Lydia always fight over the house charger), went to open the door and saw flames inside.

When he returned, Dornacher said the phone, which was plugged in here, was engulfed in flames which quickly consumed the rest of the vehicle

'I opened the door and the car is engulfed. I ran inside to get extinguisher and of course it's not to be found. I yelled at Lydia to call Fire Department and here is the end result.'

While Dorancher says the basic cost of the vehicle was insured, he said that will not cover the thousands of dollars worth of upgrades he made to the car.

On top of that, the family are also missing their main means of transportation until the claim is settled.

Dornacher (pictured with partner Lydia) said he got the phone five days before the blaze and was not aware of the recall

However, Dorancher says he is grateful the incident was not worse because his eight-year daughter often uses the phone.

Samsung say they are aware of Dorancher's case, are investigating the cause of the fire, and say they are providing assistance to the family.

In a subsequent update, Dorancher said Samsung have sent a representative to investigate, and that all of his family are doing OK.

He added that the family are not seeking damages from the incident, and are trying to promote the recall to stop other from being hurt.

Samsung has suspended global sales of the Note 7, which was unveiled last month, due to a 'battery cell issue', and issued a recall notice for all handset already sold.

The company said: 'For customers who already have Galaxy Note7 devices, we will voluntarily replace their current device with a new one over the coming weeks.

Samsung say they are investigating the incident, and providing assistance to the family. The firm has recalled all Note7 handsets over the issue and suspended sales

For more information customers need to contact the customer service team on 0330 7261000.

'We acknowledge the inconvenience this may cause in the market but this is to ensure that Samsung continues to deliver the highest quality products to our customers.
The massive quake is believed to have been caused by 10 kilotonne blast

North Korea carried out its second nuclear test this year just hours after President Obama wrapped up his tour of Asia.

Pyongyang confirmed it conducted a successful explosion which triggered a 5.3-magnitude 'artificial' earthquake in the country's north east.

The reclusive country boasted about its growing nuclear arsenal on state-controlled TV and said the test was in response to the strict international sanctions imposed against it.

North Korea said it would continue to strengthen 'the quantity and quality' of its nuclear weapons.

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North Korea has carried out its second nuclear test this year (pictured, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un this week)

The explosion triggered a 5.3-magnitude 'artificial' earthquake in the country's north east (pictured, North Koreans watch a news report of a hydrogen bomb test in January)

South Korea and U.S. Marines on a boat, land on the shore during the 66th Incheon Landing Operations Commemoration ceremony in waters off Incheon, South Korea, as tensions rise

It came on the day North Korean officials gathered at a massive indoor rally in Pyongyang marking the 68th anniversary of the founding of the nation

It came just one day after Obama, speaking in Vientiane, Laos, said he will strive to reduce North Korea's nuclear threat in his final months as president.

Obama called for a further tightening of sanctions against Kim Jong Un after the dictatorial leader fired three long range ballistic missiles this week.

'We are deeply disturbed by what's happened,' he said before calling on the country's sole ally China to work with the US to eliminate the threat it poses.

Obama spoke to the leaders of Japan and South Korea and promised to ensure that 'provocative actions from North Korea are met with serious consequences', a spokesman said.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye said the test as a clear violation of security council resolutions and accused Kim of 'maniacal recklessness'.

North Korea's state TV said the test 'examined and confirmed' features of a nuclear warhead designed to be mounted on ballistic missiles.

South Korean President Park Geun-Hye called an emergency meeting with her aides in Vientiane the North tested the nuclear warhead.

The move drew condemnation from the South, which said the 'maniacal recklessness' of ruler Kim Jong-Un would lead to self-destruction.

Obama called for a further tightening of sanctions against Kim Jong Un on his tour of Asia

Speaking in the Vietnamese city of Laos (pictured), Obama said he will strive to reduce North Korea's nuclear threat

The reclusive country boasted about its growing nuclear arsenal on state-controlled TV (pictured)

North Korea said Friday it conducted a 'higher level' nuclear warhead test explosion, which it trumpeted as finally allowing it to build 'at will' an array of stronger, smaller and lighter nuclear weapons. It is Pyongyang's fifth atomic test and the second in eight months

South Korean President Park Geun-Hye (right) talking with Park's chief foreign policy secretary Kim Kyou-Hyun (centre) and Foreing Minister Yun Byung-Se (left) at her emergency meeting with her aides in Vientiane, the last leg of her three-nation trip

South Korea marines' amphibious assault vehicles sail during the 66th Incheon Landing Operations Commemoration ceremony in waters off Incheon, South Korea

North Korea has successfully tested a nuclear warhead today, drawing condemnation from the South which said the 'maniacal recklessness' of young ruler Kim Jong-Un would lead to self-destruction

It claimed there was no radioactive leakage or adverse environmental impact caused by the test.

The quake sparked by the nuclear bomb was between 5.0 and 5.3 on the Richter scale by various agencies.

The Yonhap news agency claimed that equated to a 10 kilotonne explosion - the country's biggest to date.

Hiroshima's 15 kilotonne blast obliterated five square miles of the city and killed around 100,000 people.

US, European and Chinese agencies all picked up the tremor at 12:30am GMT, at surface level.

It came on the day North Korean officials gathered at a massive indoor rally in Pyongyang marking the 68th anniversary of the founding of the nation.

The quake sparked by the nuclear bomb was between 5.0 and 5.3 on the Richter scale by various agencies, including the Korea Meteorological Administration in Seoul (pictured)

The Yonhap news agency claimed the quake equated to a 10 kilotonne explosion

Test site: The quake was detected originating at Punggye-ri, the same place where North Korea's four confirmed nuclear bomb tests have occurred

The earthquake was detected near the country's only nuclear testing site, Punggye-ri, which has hosted all four of the country's confirmed nuclear tests so far.

South Korea's Defense Ministry said Friday it could not immediately confirm the cause; the country's weather agency said it was analyzing the data.

But the US Geological Service and the China Earthquake Networks Center both reported a suspected 'explosion' in the area.

And Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said at a briefing in Tokyo: 'We believe it's possible that North Korea carried out a nuclear test.

'The meteorological agency detected seismic waves that are probably not from a natural earthquake.'

Celebration: North Koreans celebrate after hearing news of January's test. The country aims to build a nuclear missile that can reach the USA - though it's under an international ban

The quake comes ahead of Friday's National Day, which celebrates the founding of North Korea - a period in which the country usually flexes its military muscles.

And there had been increased talk of a nuclear test after the US blacklisted Kim on July 6 for human rights abuses.

In January this year, Kim Jong Un claimed to have detonated a hydrogen bomb - which can be hundreds of times more powerful than nuclear devices - at Punggye-ri.

But the resulting 5.1-magnitude quake was too small to have come from such a device, Lee Cheol Woo of South Korea's intelligence committee said at the time.

Activity: The Punggye-ri site (pictured) has seen increased activity in recent months, experts on the country say

That would suggest that whatever the origin of today's earthquake was, it wasn't a hydrogen bomb.

North Korea is under an international ban on developing and testing nuclear and missile technology - but has flouted that ban several times in the past few years.
A man has been shot near a primary school in Sydney's west, with the gunman still on the loose.

Emergency services were called to Pandora Street, near St John Vianney Primary School in Greenacre, after reports of gunshots about 9.20am on Friday.

The victim, believed to be in his early 30s, was shot in the knee.

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A man, believed to be in his early 30s, has been shot near a primary school in Sydney's west

The victim was shot in the knee just metres from St John Vianney Primary School

Video from the scene showed a topless man being loaded into the back of an ambulance

The man was treated at the scene by NSW Ambulance Paramedics before being taken to Liverpool Hospital.

Video footage showed a topless man being loaded into the back of an ambulance.

The school was locked down after the incident, but opened at 10.30am.

'The children and staff are all safe,' said Mark Rix, head of communications for Sydney Catholic Schools.

Police have cordoned off a 100m stretch of Pandora Street.

Parents have been contacted about the incident and can collect their children, but the school day will continue as usual, Mr Rix said.

Counsellors will be provided for the students.

The man was treated at the scene by NSW Ambulance Paramedics before being taken to Liverpool Hospital

A nearby resident named Hassan told the Daily Telegraph he was at home watching television when he heard four bangs.

'It's very scary ... I have two nephews (both 8) in there so that's why I came down to make sure it wasn't the school,' he told the paper.

A mother told Nine News outside the school: 'I've got three children in there. I was scared, but I know the school followed protocol and they're safe.'

Witnesses have reported people leaving the area after the incident, but no arrests have been made.

A crime scene has been established and will be examined by specialist officers.

Anyone with information can call Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000

The victim was shot near St John Vianney Primary School (pictured) in Greenacre

The school was locked down after the incident, but opened at 10.30am

Police have cordoned off a 100m stretch of Pandora Street
Footage of incident outside a school in New

and kicked in the head by young mother

A schoolgirl was left bleeding from her ear after she was allegedly kicked and punched in the head by a mother outside a school in New Zealand after a series of Facebook threats.

Disturbing footage captured of the fight appears to show a 15-year-old girl being thrown to the ground as a woman beats her outside a Waikato college, on the upper North Island of New Zealand this week.

The girl screams on the pavement and tries to cover her head as she is repeatedly punched.

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Disturbing footage captured of a fight appears to show a 15-year-old girl being thrown to the ground as a woman beats her outside a Waikato college in New Zealand

The victim's mother, who cannot be named for legal reasons, told The New Zealand Herald the assault left her daughter with cuts and grazes all over her face, arms and legs.

She said the incident occurred following a Facebook argument between her daughter's friends and another girl from town nearby.

The teenagers had planned to meet at 2.30pm outside the school. When one group of girls arrived they were allegedly confronted by a girl and a number of her adult family, including a woman believed to be a 20-year-old mother, the publication reported.

The victim's mother said the 20-year-old attacked her daughter.

'My daughter and her friends didn't know they were going to get there and there was going to be grown adults, it makes me sick' she said.

Officers were notified of the alleged assault on Monday. A police spokeswoman told The New Zealand Herald inquiries into the incident are ongoing to determine the exact cause of the incident.

The girl screams on the pavement and tries to cover her head as she is repeatedly punched
Opinion / Columnist

Zanu PF got a lot of military, diplomatic and financial support from China throughout our war of independence; there is no doubt that the nation but Zanu PF, in particular, owns the Chinese a huge debt of gratitude. A debt the nation has been paying for the last 36 years; it is no secret that China has enjoyed a favoured nation status in its economic dealings with Zimbabwe. When it comes to corrupt deals such as the supply of weapons to oppress the masses or the on-going wholesale plundering of the nation's diamonds in Marange and Chiadzwa President Mugabe knew he could count on the Chinese as the most reliable partners in crime.As a freedom fighter, I was aware of the military help Zanla was getting from China; I was aware that China was doing this to get one up on their greatest ideological rivalries but most important for mercenary reasons of exploiting independent Zimbabwe. I was not just me amongst the freedom fighters who was aware of these things but many other freedom fighters too were aware of these realities.Many of freedom fighters knew that Russia demanded the exclusive fishing rights in Mozambique waters from Frelimo government as one of the prices for Russia giving military assistants to Frelimo freedom fighters. Some of us saw the Russian fishing fleet for ourselves where locals were forbidden to fish and saw the processed fish labelled "Country of origin: USSR!"Due to the secretive way both President Mugabe has conducted the nation's affairs with China it would not have been obvious to many ordinary Zimbabweans that Zimbabwe too was paying back to China in unfavourable deals. What any politically attentive Zimbabwean could not have missed however is China's very active interest in making sure Zanu PF remain in power at all cost.President Mugabe and his Zanu PF cronies' greed for absolute power and wealth was insatiable, they were willingness to do anything, absolutely anything, to retain power including denying their own people their freedoms, the right to free vote and even the right to life and, of great interest to the Chinese, pay any economic price to anyone willing to help them secure power.The Chinese leaders had no qualms about helping anyone deny the ordinary people the vote or kill. After all as Communist Party of China (CPC), the country's sole governing party since 1949, leaders they too owed their political power to denying their own Chinese people the same freedoms and rights. Millions of Chinese have lost their lives on the altar of keeping the CPC in power and, no doubt millions more will continue to suffer and die as long as CPC remain in power. So the Chinese have helped Zanu PF get into power with arms before independence and since independence in more subtle ways such as training the CIO and assisting in vote rigging. In return, President Mugabe has granted China special economic favours.President Mugabe has found the Chinese's secretive way of doing business much to his liking allowing corruption to grow to what it is today where $15 billion is looted and no one in the regime is alarmed or care.President Mugabe has looked to China for big-brother protection especially at international forums such as the United Nations. China political muscle as one of the five UN permanent members and economic muscle, it is now the second biggest economy in the world, has made Mugabe so arrogant he has regularly publicly denounced Western leaders confident China will never allow them to punish him.Indeed it was China who stepped in when the West stopped funding the Zimbabwe government in 2000 for failure to service its already mounting foreign debts. President Mugabe like all big spenders was spending borrowed money but not paying it back. Mugabe turned to China in his "Look East!" policy.In the 2013 elections, President Mugabe was able to successful rig the national elections largely because MDC had failed to implement the democratic reforms designed to stop vote rigging and also because he had billions of dollars looked from Marange diamonds to bankroll the very expensive vote rigging scheme.However, Zimbabwe's economy was in trouble after decades of gross mismanagement and rampant corruption and President Mugabe hoped to "rig" economic recovery by overwhelming the wastefulness due to mismanagement and corruption by spending an absolute fortune of the economy. He did not have the money to finance his ZimAsset recovery plan. He thought he would win back the West's finance institutions like IMF and WB and get them to bankroll his plan. They refused!He had no choice but to turn back to his Chinese friends, they must have fallen off their chair when they saw his $27 billion ZimAsset budget; nearly three times the country's $10 billion debt which the country was failing to pay back! It is not surprising that the Chinese too refused to bankroll his plan.With no hope of foreign financial assistance, Zimbabwe's economic meltdown has spiralled out of control; unemployment has soared to 90% plus, corruption is now so rampant President Mugabe admitted $15 billion was looted and yet no one has ever been arrested, etc. It is clear that the economic situation is simply socially and politically unsustainable; the first thing to go has to be this Zanu PF government since it has clearly failed to deliver economic recovery.There have been numerous street protests already demanding regime change and there will be more violent street protests and worse until there is regime change or economic recovery!Regime change is the one thing President Mugabe and his Zanu PF cronies have vowed to resist at all cost but the economic meltdown and street protests have now pushed that cost beyond the regime's reach. Whilst President Mugabe has managed to bribe, cheat, bamboozle, intimidate, harass, rig elections and even kill his political opponents and critics (with the direct or indirect help of his Chinese friends) to stay in power; he has failed to do the same with the economy (here the Chinese's corrupt tendencies have only helped to accelerate Zimbabwe's economic collapse).Although the Chinese have refused to bankroll ZimAsset they are nonetheless saying they will assist Zanu PF financially to stop the now certainty of Zanu PF being forced out of power if there is no meaningful economic recovery on condition that President Mugabe steps down in three months."In what marks the end of President Robert Mugabe's over thirty years reign in power, China has reportedly told the veteran leader in black and white, to now pave way for Vice President, Emmerson Mnangagwa, to take over the presidency within the coming three months," reported Spotlight Zimbabwe."Beijing according to an Asian diplomat in Harare, who spoke to this publication in a confidential telephone interview this week, has made it clear that it can only unlock much needed financial funding for the dislocating economy, if Mugabe steps aside for his VP, in a bid to maintain continuity of her foreign policy on Zimbabwe, while safeguarding its cross-section of economic interests in the country."China has propped up the incompetent, corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF regime since 2000 when the regime could not borrow any more money on the open market because it continued to profit from its dodgy business dealings in Zimbabwe. As the demands from the wasteful Zanu PF regime has continued to soar China too has found the increasing demands unsustainable.The only positive thing about Zimbabwe's present economic meltdown is that it has the economic hardships have galvanised the people of Zimbabwe to demand regime change.As far as China is concerned the only positive thing about Zimbabwe's economic meltdown is that it has created a new opportunity for China to Zimbabwe's leaders into signing a new deal with China. China is hoping the increasing reality of regime change will finally force President Mugabe to accept their offer of him handing over power to their man, VP Emmerson Mnangagwa, as his successor rather than face the consequences of himself and Zanu PF being forced out of office.The Chinese will spend billions of dollars propping up a Mnangagwa regime confident they will recover whatever they spend a hundred fold as happened with all the money they spend clothing, training and arming Zanla forces before independence.There is no such thing as a free-lunch certainly not with the Chinese; China's military help before independence has been like opium  short term gains with damaging long-term consequences. China's offer to bail out the Zimbabwe economy if Mugabe steps down is yet another opium gift with the same short term gain and long term addictive consequences being offered at the time when the nation is at the brink of ending China's obnoxious influence in Zimbabwe's affairs!-----------Patrick Guramatunhu
Senior members of the Royal Family dont often dine in restaurants, but Prince Charles made an exception this week as he took his wife, the Duchess of Cornwall, to Scotts in Mayfair, in Londons West End.

Camilla, who wore a silk dress and pearl necklace, also invited food writer Tom Parker Bowles, her son by brigadier former husband Andrew, and Toms fashion stylist wife, Sara.

Prince Charles made an exception this week as he took his wife, the Duchess of Cornwall, to Scotts in Mayfair, in Londons West End

Scotts is the regular haunt of grumpy art collector Charles Saatchi, who was seated in the outdoor terrace when he was memorably pictured with his hand around the throat of his then-wife Nigella Lawson.

The heir to the throne wisely opted to be seated indoors.

Its not known if a close protection officer brought Charless favourite silk embroidered cushion, which is always taken with him to the theatre.

Bisexual MP Cat Smith is such a key player in the gay rights community that she was made a shadow equalities minister just four months after being elected to Parliament.

Now, she has got married to a man.

The 31-year-old tied the knot last Friday with Ben Soffa, 34, who works for loony Leftie Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Bisexual MP Cat Smith is such a key player in the gay rights community that she was made a shadow equalities minister just four months after being elected to Parliament

While other MPs have returned to the House of Commons, Cat has swanned off on honeymoon to Scotland, but she insists: We booked our wedding before the Government announced when Parliament would be sitting.

Corbyn was guest of honour at their Lancashire wedding. Happily, he accepted a seat, rather than sitting on the floor.

As a trusted member of Thatchers Cabinet, David Young was nicknamed Lord Suit on account of his rather stiff public image.

Clearly, Lord Young of Graffham has loosened up over the years.

The 84-year-old businessman was spotted on Wednesday at The Box, the most debauched of Sohos nightclubs.

He insisted he was there to celebrate the success of his investment in Syft, an app that helps employers to recruit staff.
A tradie has been attacked by three dogs while at a job in Sydney's west, leaving him with injuries to his legs, chest and back.

The 36-year-old had gone onto the Kenthurst property on Friday morning when he was set upon.

Witnesses said the dogs appeared to be Staffordshire bull terriers who were so ferocious that even although witnesses wanted to help they were too scared of being savaged themselves.

There are also reports that the dogs were American Staffordshire terriers.

Emergencies services treat the 36-year-old tradie after the vicious dog attack

Police officers performed first aid until Careflight paramedics arrived, and he was taken to Westmead Hospital in a stable condition.

Robert Brooks witnessed the horror show and told 2GB radio that he heard 'horrific screaming and yelling... and [the victim's] just horrific scream for help', and looked over the fence to see the shocking scene.

'These dogs are just attacking him and he's just helpless, and we're helpless as well,' Mr Brooks said.

'The first reaction is to try to jump over and get [the dogs], but mate, there's no way. We're going to sort of get mauled ourselves. It was just horrific. We couldn't help the poor guy, you know?'

He had gone onto the Kenthurst property on Friday morning when he was set upon by the dogs

One dog was caught after the attack (pictured), while police are still searching for the other two

Finally he escaped from the ferocious animals and was helped over the front fence by neighbours to safety. Luckily one of the people there was an off-duty nurse who gave the victim first aid before police, NSW Ambulance paramedics and the CareFlight helicopter arrived on the scene.

The man received a severe mauling from the dogs. Although conscious after the attack he suffered major puncture wounds to his arms, back, thigh, and calf.

'There was blood but there wasn't actually blood gushing out, it was actually torn down to his muscles,' Mr Brooks said.

One dog was caught after the attack, while police are still searching for the other two.
Dinya Farmer, 49, was killed after three man chased her down a Phoenix highway for four miles before shooting her in the head

A Phoenix mother-of-three has been tragically killed after she was chased down the highway for miles by three men and shot in the head.

Dinya Farmer, 49, was driving down State Route 51 in the middle of rush hour when she called 911 and said she was being followed by a white work-style pickup truck.

The emergency dispatcher heard three gunshots over the phone and then Farmer crashed her car along the freeway median around 7.20pm on Wednesday.

Farmer was rushed to the hospital in extremely critical condition, where she died from her injuries. She had recently been diagnosed with terminal breast cancer.

Authorities are now hunting for the truck, which was described as having ladder racks and a toolbox on it.

Police said Farmer described the suspects to be three Hispanic males.

Four other vehicles involved in two to three other minor collisions related to the shooting were also found by police, Sgt Johnathan Howard told Fox 10 Phoenix.

Howard said two of the vehicles' occupants were taken to local hospitals with minor injuries.

Police have since appealed to the public for any information, adding that they do not believe Farmer's murder was random or related to a traffic dispute.

The emergency dispatcher heard three gunshots over the phone and then Farmer crashed her car (pictured) along the freeway median of State Route 51 around 7.20pm on Wednesday

Farmer was rushed to the hospital in extremely critical condition, where she died from her injuries. She had recently been diagnosed with terminal breast cancer

Detectives determined that Farmer told the 911 operator that she was followed for about four miles of city streets before getting on Interstate 10 and then the State Route 51 freeway, Howard said.

'This increases the likelihood that the crime may be related to some pre-incident contact that has yet to be determined and lowers the likelihood that it was random violence or traffic altercation related,' he added in a statement.

Farmer was one of several people who reported the white work truck driving aggressively on the I-10.

There are many white work trucks, and police in fact found and stopped several near the shooting scene Wednesday night, but none panned out, Howard said.

The early evening shooting closed part of the State Route 51 freeway in central Phoenix overnight as police investigated.

The highway was reopened before the start of the Thursday morning commute.

Debra Beldone has been left devastated by her niece's murder.

Farmer had been living with Beldone for the last year following her cancer diagnosis.

'I can't believe it, I'm still numb, I don't know whether to cry, laugh or run into the wall,' she told KPHO.

Police have since appealed to the public for any information, adding that they do not believe Farmer's murder was random or related to a traffic dispute

Beldone said Farmer, who had three daughters aged 16, 17 and 25, was on her way home when she was killed.

'Its just sad for me, to have someone to take her life on the way home, she was by herself.'

'When she got diagnosed with this cancer and it didnt seem to get any better, we just knew shed have loved ones around her when the time came.'

'To be on the 51, by herself, afraid, and I know she was, it's just devastating.'

Beldone said Farmer was stylish and 'always smelled great', a designer who loved to decorate and 'loved her girls, loved her family'.

'She was just a good person,' Beldone said.

Beldone found out that one of Farmer's daughters was accepted into her dream college last night.
A woman who was once branded the ugliest in the world has spoken out about her battle with cyber bullying as she launches her documentary.

At 17, Lizzie Velasquez found a video online calling her the 'ugliest woman in the world', along with thousands of horrific comments telling her to kill herself.

However this week the inspirational woman, from Texas, launched her documentary which she hopes will assure others who have been bullied that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

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When she was just 17 Lizzie Lizzie Velasquez found a video online calling her the 'ugliest woman in the world'

The Texas woman was born with neonatal progeroid syndrome, a rare genetic disorder

'The documentary came about and I knew I of course wanted to do it but I didn't want it to be about just me,' Ms Velasquez told Sunrise on Friday morning.

'I wanted you to be able to see my story but my goal was for when people would watch it they would see themselves or their family members of their friends.'

Ten years ago Ms Velasquez said she was in a dark place after a video of her surfaced online, titled the 'ugliest woman in the world'.

The Texas woman was born with neonatal progeroid syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that gives her an aged appearance.

It affects her face, muscle tone, brain, heart, eyes, and bones, and also prevents her from gaining weight - meaning that at 5'2", she weighs just 30 kilograms.

She said although she had been bullied for her appearance from a young age, this was on another level.

It affects her face, muscle tone, brain, heart, eyes, and bones, and also prevents her from gaining weight

On Friday her documentary, A Brave Heart: The Lizzie Velasquez Story, is released

'It made me feel awful, I think if anyone were to put themselves in my shoes the moment I found that video, and reading all the comments, I think you'd instantly knew how I felt.

'It was horrible, I was upset, I was angry, and I didn't know how I was going to pick myself back up from it.'

She said it took her a few years, but she finally gained the strength to use her experience for good.

Ms Velasquez said for anyone going through bullying - there is a 'light at the end of the tunnel'

On Friday her documentary, A Brave Heart: The Lizzie Velasquez Story, is released.

'I wanted you to be able to see my story but my goal was for when people would watch it they would see themselves or their family members of their friends.'

Ms Velasquez also had some advice for anyone who may be going through a rough time.

'I mean I think my biggest piece of advice is number one you're not alone in what you're going through.
The St Philip's College pupil arrived at Book Week dressed as Adolf Hitler - and was awarded 'best dressed'

A Northern Territory private school named a boy in an Adolf Hitler costume as one of its 'best dressed' at Book Week - while Jewish exchange students watched on.

The St Philip's College student was picked out of a crowd during a special assembly as having one of the cohort's best costumes, ABC Radio reported.

A teacher had reportedly granted the boy permission to dress as the Third Reich leader.

A parent said the boy is a junior student at the school, which takes students from years 7 to 12.

'He is a beautiful kid! His passion lies deeply with history and politics!' she said. 'It was book week, and he read those history books.

The parent added there was 'no malice' and pointed out kids 'don't see things the way adults do'.

St Philip's College has apologised to the Jewish students visiting from Bialik College, Melbourne

Roger Herbert, the principal of the Alice Springs college, has apologised to the Jewish middle school students and their principal.

'We got them together and apologised and they were fantastic,' Mr Herbert was quoted saying. The pupils were visiting from Melbourne's Bialik College.

Mr Herbert wrote a letter to parents this week hailing students for their hard work in dressing up at the parade on Wednesday.

'Congratulations to everyone who made the effort to enhance the wonderful world of words,' he said.

In a statement, Mr Herbert said: 'I take full responsibility... It has been a very distressing lesson for all concerned and reminds our students that we can all, including adults, made mistakes'.

A spokeswoman for St Philip's said the school would issue a statement on Friday afternoon.

Bialik College principal Jeremy Stowe-Linder told Daily Mail Australia: 'It was an unfortunate incident.

What is going on with Book Week? Parents across Australia have sparked controversy for dressing their children as footballer Nic Naitanui (left, painted black) and Ben Cousins (right)

'It was an error of judgment on behalf of the school, of the student.'

However, he said he was impressed by how quickly the College had responded to the incident and said their relationship would continue.

The incident follows a series of Book Week controversies across the nation.

Parents who painted their children in blackface (as footballer Nic Naitanui) and as a drug-affected Ben Cousins have sparked uproar.
A 23 year-old woman has ended up regretting her attempt to 'unleash her power' after burning her feet on hot coals during Tony Robbins' motivational talk in Sydney.

Paramedics rushed the woman to Concord Hospital on Thursday after being called to the event at Sydney Olympic Park, according to the Daily Telegraph.

Tony Robbins is in Australia to deliver his popular 'Unleash the Power Within' show, with tickets selling for around $4000.

American Tony Robbins is in Sydney to deliver his 'Unleash the Power Within' talk (Stock Image)

A 23 year-old woman ended up in hospital after burning her feet in a hot coal walk during Tony Robbins' motivational talk in Sydney (Stock Image)

Tony Robbins is a self-made millionaire with A-list clients ranging from sports stars to CEO's

The seminar was focused on turning 'fear into power' challenging individuals to 'turn their fears and limitations into positive focused action,' according to its official website.

This session can involve volunteers running across hot coals, with temperatures reaching more than 1,000C.

In June, more than 30 people burned their feet during one of his coal walk exercises

Similar seminars have run into trouble before - more than 30 people required medical attention after they were burned during Robbins' show in Dallas in June this year.

'In hindsight, jumping off would have been a fantastic idea,' 44-year-old Paul Gold told the Associated Press at the time.

'But when you're in the spirit of the moment, you're kinda focused on one task.

'I'm not even sure I could do it again, because now I have this massive fear of fire,' he said.

At the time Robbins told ABC's Good Morning America the ambulances came as a result of a misunderstanding.

'I've done this event for 35 years. This was no different than any one I've done before,' Robbins told the ABC show.

'The only difference is somebody came by and didn't know what we were doing, didn't understand the process, saw people and called and said 'bring four ambulances.'

Anthony 'Tony' Robbins is a self-made millionaire who delivers business and life strategy speeches to some of the wealthiest figures on the planet.

It is reported that some top clients pay $1 million a year for his business and life guidance

Robbins started his motivational talks more than 30 years ago, building his brand from the ground up, starting as a janitor and moving into public speaking to help people unlock their true potential.

With A-list clients such as Oprah Winfrey, Usher and fortune 500 CEO's it is no wonder Robbins' business reports that it turns over more than $5 billion every year.
Chhay Reaksmey, 12, points to the drugs she is accused of trafficking

She looks young enough to have just stepped out of primary school class, but this small child is pointing to packets of crystal meth she is accused of trafficking.

The photo of Chhay Reaksmey was held by police in Cambodia when she was just 12 years old after she had been arrested for being a drug mule.

Despite being sent to a re-education centre, she was arrested again, this time when she was 13, and the baby-faced criminal has since been held in Prey Sar Prison for the last eight months.

And it is her age that has resulted in her drug-trafficking trial being postponed - her lawyers claiming that she has been detained in prison illegally.

They argue that the age of criminal responsibility is 14 and so she should not have to face charges.

Seng Live, Reaksmey's mother, told the court that despite telling police her daughter was 13, they recorded her arrest under the name of her sister, who was 20 years old.

'This child is under 14 and she cannot be detained,' the girl's lawyer Ouk Vandeth told the court in Phnom Penh.

'I cannot say why the police put her at 20 years of age. She is too young to be 20 - she still plays with rubber bands.'

A Cambodian prison guard stands guard at Kandal provincial prison in the southeast of the country

Injured Khmer Rouge soldiers are kept prisoner in a cell at the Military hospital in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The same area as Prey Sar Prison, where the baby-faced criminal has been held for the last eight months

Reaksmey's lawyers argued as the age of criminal responsibility is 14 she should not have faced charges (stock image)

The Phnom Penh Post reported the child's mother as saying that she was first arrested when she was 12, along with her father, on similar drug trafficking charges. After this she was sent to a re-education centre for several months.

Mr Billy Gorter, executive director at juvenile rehabilitatiion organisation This Life Cambodia, told the paper that if Reaksmey was under the age of criminal responsibility at the time of her arrest, there must have been a 'grave oversight at multiple levels'.

He added: 'Cambodian children are often held in pre-trial detention, where they wait months to have their cases heard. Once sentenced, there is no pathway for a young person to demonstrate their rehabilitation.'

A young Cambodian woman stands in one of the torture rooms of Tuol Sleng prison which is now a genocide museum
A former dentist has been charged with manslaughter over the death of a young girl who had a heart attack after being given sedatives.

Finley Boyle, three, died after suffering brain damage following a trip to the dentist.

She lapsed into a coma after receiving an array of sedatives and anesthesia in preparation for cavity fillings and root canals.

Lilly Geyer was indicted by a grand jury on 37 counts, including manslaughter, medical assistance fraud and assault.

Finley Boyle, three, died after suffering brain damage following a trip to the dentist

Lilly Geyer (center) was indicted by a grand jury on 37 counts, including manslaughter, medical assistance fraud and assault

An autopsy report concluded the heart attack was likely to have been caused by five drugs Finley was given, including Demerol, hydroxyzine and chlorohydrate.

She was also given laughing gas and an injection of a local anesthetic, lidocaine with epinephrine, the report said.

Geyer's practice, Island Dentistry for Children in Kailua, Hawaii, has since closed.

Her lawyer, Michael Green, said his client is currently traveling but he would make arrangements for her to surrender to authorities.

He said: 'She's not practicing so they can't say she remains a danger to anybody.

'I'm not unsympathetic to the family of this little girl who died, but this was not a woman who was hell bent on hurting people.'

He said Geyer had been distraught since the toddler's death and he was 'really worried' about her mental health.

Ashley Boyle with her daughter Finley, who died after being given an array of sedatives and anesthesia in preparation for cavity fillings and root canals

The Honolulu medical examiner had classified the death as an accident.

Geyer's insurance company settled a lawsuit by the Boyle family for an undisclosed amount.

Richard Fried, the attorney who represented the parents in their lawsuit, said they were pleased with the indictment.

He added: 'I think folks are much more cautious now about credentials and sedation.'

An autopsy report concluded the heart attack was likely to have been caused by five drugs Finley was given

After Finley's death, the state started investigating Geyer's use of the drugs on patients.

The indictment accused Geyer of making false statements to the medical assistance program to get higher compensation than she was entitled to receive.

She was accused of illegally administering Meperidine and Chloral-Hydrate.

One of those patients was a two-year-old child who suffered serious injury, according to the indictment.
A filmmaker and his team of 40 experts sued the FBI Thursday in an attempt to prove that a loose cannon ex-army helicopter pilot is in fact legendary hijacker DB Cooper.

Cooper's daring heist - which saw him parachuting out of a plane with the equivalent of $1.2million before vanishing - remains the only unsolved air piracy case in US history

But Thomas Colbert believes 'Cooper' is actually Robert Henry Rackstraw, a 72-year-old Vietnam vet living in San Diego - and he's suing the FBI in order to prove it, Fox News reported.

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Suspect: Could Robert Rackstraw (pictured in 1978, arrested for forgery, check-kiting and having illegal explosives) be legendary plane hijacker DB Cooper? Some believe so

Heist: Cooper (seen left in a police sketch) hijacked a plane in 1971, exchanged the passengers for $200,000, told the crew to fly to Mexico then parachuted out over Washington

Aged: Cooper was never found; right is how the FBI say he might look now. A team of investigators is now suing the FBI for its files on Cooper, hoping to prove he is Rackstraw

The complaint, filed Thursday in US District Court in Washington by filmmaker Thomas Colbert, demands access to the Bureau's 45 years of files on DB Cooper.

If he wins, Colbert his team of 40 sleuths - who include former FBI agents, criminologists, journalists and attorneys - may finally have what they need to prove their suspicions are correct.

They say it was Rackstraw who stepped onto a Portland-Seattle flight on November 24, claiming to have a bomb, eventually exchanging the passengers for $200,000 and parachutes.

And it was Rackstraw, they claim, who ordered the crew to take off towards Mexico City, sent them into the front of the plane, and then opened the rear door and leaped out, clutching the money.

'Dan Cooper' - identified in the press as 'DB Cooper,' the name that stuck for the next 45 years - was never seen again after diving into 200mph winds at 10,000 feet.

Nor was most of the money - although in 1979, $5,800 of it was found by a boy in the Washington woods that Cooper parachuted into. Whether the rest was lost to the elements is unknown.

It's an extraordinary crime to be accused of - but Rackstraw is no stranger to the extraordinary.

Vet: Rackstraw (seen in jail in 1979) fled to Iran in 1972 to avoid arrest for kiting checks; he taught the Shah's men how to fly choppers but was caught by the FBI on his return

Sleuth: Thomas Colbert, who leads 40 amateur sleuths, filed the FBI suit Thursday, determined to prove Rackstraw is Cooper

According to a History Channel documentary on the case, Rackstraw had an illustrious military career in Vietnam, being a pilot in the 1st Cavalry Division, one of the first major American air assault divisions.

It was there that Rackstraw learned to parachute, and was given two Distinguished Flying Crosses for his performance while in the air.

But he was kicked out after making Lieutenant when the army learned he was a high-school dropout, not the college graduate he'd claimed to be, and kicked him out.

That, Colbert claims, gave Rackstraw the necessary skills and the rebellious motive to hit back at authority in the most spectacular way.

But Rackstraw's story doesn't end there. Not by a long shot.

Stolen: This is the jet that Cooper hijacked. Rackstraw jumped bail in 1972 and faked his own death in a 'plane crash.' He was caught, and the FBI suspected he might be Cooper

In 1972, one year after DB Cooper's spectacular heist, Rackstraw turned up in Stockton, California, where his sister lived, Recordnet.com reported.

His mom and stepdad lived around 40 miles away in Calaveras County.

He quickly appeared on the radar of the authorities after kiting checks to the sum of $75,000, and police issued a warrant for his arrest.

So Rackstraw did the logical thing: He moved to Iran, where there were no extradition treaties with the US, and taught the Shah's soldiers how to fly helicopters.

He might have been baking in the Middle Eastern sun, but home was even hotter: Stockton cops raided Rackstraw's storage units and found 14 rifles and 150lbs of dynamite.

And Calaveras police dug up the grounds of his parent's home to find his stepdad buried in a shallow grave with a bullet hole in his head.

Rackstraw's mom had died of natural causes, leaving him next in line to inherit the property once his stepdad died.

And then Rackstraw's luck ran out: He lost his Iran job and was forced to return to the US, where the FBI picked him up.

Found: While the FBI was interviewing Rackstraw in 1979, $5,800 of the stolen money (seen here) was found by a river in Washington. They wrote him off and pursued other suspects

Acquitted for his stepdad's murder in 1979, but pending a trial for the check-kiting, forgery and possession of explosives, Rackstraw made bail and once more took to the skies.

The plane he hired from Stockton airport couldn't make it to Iran - but that's okay: it wasn't intended to make it anywhere.

Flying over Monterey Bay, Rackstraw made a distress call, saying the engine was on fire and he was going down.

The wreckage wasn't found, but he was - 360 miles south in Fullerton, where he was caught trying to copy federal pilot licenses.

Mystery: Colbert says an accomplice of Rackstraw's left the money there to take the heat off him. The FBI closed the case in July this year, making it the only unsolved air piracy case in US history

Cops saw through his dyed-red beard - and the repainted plane in a nearby hangar - and dragged him back to Stockton, where the FBI, intrigued by talk of plane heists and disguises, asked him if he was DB Cooper.

'Could have been,' Rackstraw taunted.

'I cant commit myself one way or another for something like that... like I say, primarily Im afraid of heights...

'Theres a matter there too - you say, "Well, with a story like that, should it be fiction or should it be fact?" And thats primarily up to the American people.'

But the American people never got a chance to decide: With a lack of evidence worried about messing up his other convictions, the FBI backed down from taking him to trial.

Plus, they had been distracted by the discovery of $5,800 of the stolen money by the Columbia River in Washington - money that Colbert says was planted there by an accomplice to distract the authorities.

Ultimately, Rackstraw made a plea deal and served a year in prison for some of his Stockton convictions.

He later moved to Riverside, where he went straight and worked for the city.

In fact, he went so straight that he later taught a law course in mediation at the University of California, Riverside.

And now he lives peacefully on his yacht, 'Poverty Sucks,' in San Diego.

Is Rackstraw the greatest air criminal in American history? Colbert says he is - and that the FBI files, if he can get them will prove it.

But Rackstraw's attorney is less than impressed with the theory.

It is, he says, 'the stupidest thing I ever heard.'
Donald Trump has taunted Hillary Clinton over her 'poor' NBC town hall performance on Wednesday after her campaign complained about host Matt Lauer.

Trump said Clinton's own 'dumb' and 'confused' answers over her emails doomed her night, not the amount of time Lauer spent asking her about them.

The Republican also singled out a veteran who suggested she should have been jailed for how she handled confidential information as another reason viewers picked him as the winner on the night.

Donald Trump has taunted the Clinton camp over her 'poor performance' on NBC's Commander in Chief forum last night after her camp accsued host Matt Lauer of being 'unfair'

The Republican seemed to defend Lauer, saying it was Clinton's own 'very dumb' answers over her emails that doomed her evening

Trump also attacked Clinton for being 'confused' while answering on the email scandal, saying she is 'unfit' to serve as President

Clinton's aides had lashed out at Lauer following the show for failing to challenge Trump after he claimed to have 'totally' opposed the Iraq war, despite Clinton earlier pointing out that he had supported it in 2002.

Democrats felt it was unfair to let that comment slide, while grilling Clinton for almost seven minutes out of a 30 minute segment on her emails.

In a series of tweets on Thursday afternoon, Trump wrote: 'Hillary just gave a disastrous news conference on the tarmac to make up for poor performance last night. She's being decimated by the media!

'Hillary Clinton answered email questions differently last night than she has in the past. She is totally confused. Unfit to serve as President.

'It wasn't Matt Lauer that hurt Hillary last night. It was her very dumb answer about emails & the veteran who said she should be in jail.'

Lauer was criticized from both sides of the aisle for his performance on NBC's Commander in Chief forum, who both felt he wasn't tough enough on the candidates.

As recently as Wednesday early evening, Trump was publicly questioning whether Lauer would be 'fair' to him.

Although both camps reportedly agreed to Lauer as the moderator for the debate, the Trump camp was concerned about one of Lauer's Clinton associations.

He is listed as a 'notable past member' of the Clinton Global Initiative, although the Clinton Foundation says journalist members such as Lauer weren't asked to make the $20,000 membership contribution.

THIS COULD WORK OUT FOR BOTH OF US: The Clinton campaign is now raising money off Matt Lauer's failure to 'fact-check' Trump

Trump responded Thursday to the Clinton camp's attach on his record on the issue, saying he opposed the Iraq war 'from the beginning'

And it is usually Trump who rails against the 'dishonest' media, as he did Thursday when he insisted he was against the Iraq war from the 'beginning'.

Trump spent several minutes during what was billed as an education speech running through his 2003 and 2004 Iraq war statements. 'The media is so terribly dishonest, so I had to do this,' Trump said.

'I was opposed to the war from the beginning,' he said.

Lauer has been labeled a 'morning show lightweight' by furious political pundits after he failed to grill Donald Trump on his claim he never supported the Iraq War during a Commander in Chief Forum on Wednesday night - but relentlessly questioned Hillary over her private email scandal.

The NBC Today show host was accused of going too easy on Trump when the Republican candidate repeated his claim to have always 'totally opposed the Iraq war', when in fact he supported an invasion during a 2002 Howard Stern interview.

Instead of stopping Trump in his tracks during the session at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in Manhattan, Lauer accepted his answer and immediately moved onto the next question - even though Clinton had told him during her interview beforehand that Trump had backed the war.

Lauer questioned Clinton for almost seven minutes of a 30 minute segment over her emails, many times talking over before demanding she only briefly touch on other important topics such as ISIS.

'Lauer interrupted Clinton's answers repeatedly to move on. Not once for Trump,' wrote respected Capitol Hill watcher Norman Ornstein on Twitter, adding: 'Tough to be a woman running for president.'

Indeed, the problem for many was that while Lauer seemed to aggressively question Clinton during the first segment of the forum, his questions to Trump were softer, weaker and open-ended, allowing Trump to ignore them or power through unscathed.

During her own answer on her support for the Iraq war, Clinton pointed out that Trump has not acknowledged the fact he once supported it during a 2002 interview, a fact that Lauer did not pick up later in the interview

NBC News later republished a fact-checking article on Trump's claim, pointing out that he supported the war in a 2002 interview with Howard Stern before changing his position

Lauer's insistence on pressing and interrupting Clinton on her email debacle while breezing through Trump's answers led to some accusing him of trying to prove his journalistic chops.

Democrats accused Lauer of 'wasting time' on a topic that has been discussed throughout the election, and then attempting to hurry Clinton along on later topics, insisting there was not enough time.

Matthew Gertz wrote on Twitter: 'Maybe if Matt Lauer hadn't spent 13 minutes on emails there'd be more time for ISIS.'

Commentator Guy Cecil added: 'I take no issue with asking Hillary tough questions, but with all of the global challenges, this is a waste of time.'

Tommy Vietor, a former aide to President Obama, noted: 'How in the hell does Lauer not factcheck Trump lying about Iraq? This is embarrassingly bad.'

'Seriously  everyone, and I mean everyone, knew this would happen. And Matt Lauer didn't have a followup planned?' wrote political columnist Paul Krugman.

Glenn Kessler, the chief fact checker at The Washington Post, posted a link to NBC's check of Trump's claim and wrote: 'Matt Lauer should have been prepared to do this.'

Matthew Yglesias wrote on Twitter: 'So Matt Lauer's plan is just to let Trump lie about his past statements on Iraq?'

Journalist Jonathan Chait observed: 'Trump lies about opposing Iraq war. Lauer lets it go. No follow up. Unreal.'

In an article for New York Magazine he wrote: 'Lauer's performance was not merely a failure, it was horrifying and shocking.'

Democrats felt Lauer spent too long questioning Clinton over her emails while giving Trump a free pass on his support for the war

Clinton's campaign spokesman was eager to point out that, had Clinton not mentioned Trump's support in her earlier answer about Iraq, his comment would have gone unnoticed

Commentators criticized the broadcaster's approach while interviewing both Trump and Clinton

Commentators said the interview focused too much on Clinton's emails rather than addressing global issues

During her answers, Clinton repeated claims that she did not knowingly handle confidential information on her private server.

She said: 'Classified material has a header, which says 'top secret', 'secret', 'confidential'. Nothing, and I have repeatedly said this, and this is verified in the report by the Department of Justice. None of the emails sent or received by me had such a header.'

Clinton went on to say that whenever she was sent such an email, on a separate system, she always viewed it in private, even going into tents set up for such a purpose so the messages couldn't be spied on.

She added: 'So I did exactly what I should have done. And I take it very seriously. Always have, always will.'

She also said in her defense that 'hundreds of experienced foreign policy experts, diplomats, defense officials' communicated sensitive information over an unclassified system 'because it was necessary to answer questions and to be able publicly to go as far as we could, which was not acknowledging the program.'

Even if she had used the State Department's email system, her communications may still have been compromised, she argued after Lauer asked her about the possibility of a hack on her secret server.

Trump has repeatedly stated on the campaign trail that he has always opposed the conflict in Iraq, but in fact he once told Howard Stern that he supported it, before later modifying his position

'Matt, there is no evidence of course anything is possible. But what is factual is the State Department system was hacked,' she declared.

'Most of the government's systems are way behind the curve. We've had hacking repeatedly, even in the White House. There is no evidence my system was hacked.'

Lauer's frequent interruptions of Clinton later on in the interview also drew allegations of sexism from some, who suggested he allowed Trump far more freedom to talk.

It was left to Hillary herself to point out that Trump initially said he was in favor of the conflict before modifying his position after the war had started.

She said: 'My opponent was for the war in Iraq. He says he wasn't. You can go back and look at the record. He supported it. He told Howard Stern he supported it.

'So he supported it before it happened, he supported it as it was happening, and he is on record as supporting it after it happened.'

In total Clinton spent almost 12 minutes of a 30 minute segment answering questions on her emails, a fact the Democrats later criticized as biased and said detracted from more important issues such as ISIS

Asked about her own support for military intervention in Iraq, Clinton says she now accepts that it was 'a mistake', adding that voting to give Bush the authority to take troops into the Middle East was 'my mistake'.

But, she added: 'I have taken my responsibility for my decision. He [Trump] refuses to take responsibility for his support.'

Meanwhile, during an answer on how he would combat ISIS, Trump said 'I was totally against the war in Iraq', a statement that Lauer let slide.

On the campaign trail Trump has repeatedly stated that he opposed the Iraq war from the very beginning while attacking Clinton and Obama's foreign policy which he blames for the rise of ISIS.

But asked whether he supported George Bush's decision to go to war in 2002, before the conflict started, Trump told Howard Stern: 'Yeah. I guess so. I wish the first time it was done correctly.'

It was only later the the Republican nominee modified his position, describing the conflict as a 'mess' and a failure.

NBC did reprise a fact-checking article they previously published on Trump's claim following the show, but some viewers were not appeased.

Posting a link to the fact-checking story on Twitter, Isaac Wright, director of Correct The Record, wrote: 'Too bad they didn't WHEN HE WAS BEING INTERVIEWED.'

Meanwhile Hillary's campaign press secretary Brian Fallon wrote: 'At least Hillary Clinton rebutted him on this lie, or else it would go unchecked.'

MATT LAUER QUESTIONS HILLARY CLINTON OVER HER EMAILS: IN FULL Lauer: The word judgement has been used a lot around you in the last year and a half, in particular the use of your own personal email and server to communicate while you were Secretary of State. You said it was a mistake, you said it was not the best choice. You were communicating on highly sensitive topics. Why wasn't it more than a mistake, why wasn't it disqualifying if you want to be Commander in Chief? Clinton: Well Matt, I have said repeatedly it was a mistake to have a personal account, I would certainly not do it again. I make no excuses for it. It was something that should not have been done. But the real implication is the handling of classified material, which is what I think the implication of your question was. I have a lot of experience dealing with classified material, starting when I was on the Senate Armed Services Committee going into the four years as Secretary of State. Classified material has a header, which says 'top secret', 'secret', 'confidential'. Nothing, and I have repeatedly said this, and this is verified in the report by the Department of Justice. None of the emails sent or received by me had such a header. Lauer: Were some of the emails sent or received by you referring to our drone program? Our covert drone program? Clinton: Yes, because, of course there were no discussions of the covert actions in progress, being determined, about whether or not to go forward. But every part of our government had to deal with questions and the Secretary of State's office first and foremost. So there are ways of talking about the drone program... Lauer (interrupting): You said you thought your communications on that were fairly routine? Clinton: Well let me say the FBI just released their report about their investigation, they discussed drone matters in the unconfidential section of that report. Lauer: But Director Comey also said this after reviewing all the information. He said there is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton's position should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation. Clinton: Well, Matt, I just respectfully point to the hundreds of experienced foreign policy experts, diplomats, defense officials who were communicating information on the unclassified system because it was necessary to answer questions and to be able publicly to go as far as we could, which was not acknowledging the program. But I would be in Pakistan, as I was on several occasions. There might very well have been a strike. I would be asked in a public setting, in an interview, about it. It was known to have happened. We had to have an answer that did not move into classified area. And I think we handled that appropriately. Lauer: You mentioned you're in Pakistan. Some of the e-mails you sent and received happened while you were overseas. And Director Comey also said that while they have no proof, we assessed that it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton's personal e-mail accounts. Clinton: Matt, there is no evidence. Of course anything is possible. But what is factual is the State Department system was hacked. Most of the government systems are way behind the curve. We've had hacking repeatedly, even in the White House. There is no evidence my system was hacked. Lauer: Let us bring in Hallie Jackson of NBC News who's been covering this campaign. She's getting questions from our veterans. Hallie, who are you with? Jackson: Hi, Matt. I'm with Lieutenant Jon Lester (ph), who will stand with me here. He began his military career by enlisting in the Air Force and then switched over to the Navy before he retired, where he flew P-3 Orions in Desert Storm and in Desert Shield. He's a Republican, and he has this question for you, Secretary Clinton. Clinton: Thank you. Lester: Secretary Clinton, thank you very much for coming tonight. As a naval flight officer, I held a top secret sensitive compartmentalized information clearance. And that provided me access to materials and information highly sensitive to our warfighting capabilities. Had I communicated this information not following prescribed protocols, I would have been prosecuted and imprisoned. Secretary Clinton, how can you expect those such as myself who were and are entrusted with America's most sensitive information to have any confidence in your leadership as president when you clearly corrupted our national security? Clinton: Well, I appreciate your concern and also your experience. But let me try to make the distinctions that I think are important for me to answer your question. First, as I said to Matt, you know and I know classified material is designated. It is marked. There is a header so that there is no dispute at all that what is being communicated to or from someone who has that access is marked classified. And what we have here is the use of an unclassified system by hundreds of people in our government to send information that was not marked, there were no headers, there was no statement, top secret, secret, or confidential. I communicated about classified material on a wholly separate system. I took it very seriously. When I traveled, I went into one of those little tents that I'm sure you've seen around the world because we didn't want there to be any potential for someone to have embedded a camera to try to see whatever it is that I was seeing that was designated, marked, and headed as classified. So I did exactly what I should have done and I take it very seriously, always have, always will. Advertisement
The former brother-in-law of a prominent Florida State University law professor will not be charged in the alleged murder-for-hire plot that led to his death.

Charlie Adelson and his girlfriend Katherine Magbanua have both avoided charges in the murder of Dan Markel, the Tallahassee Police Department have revealed.

Adelson is the brother of Wendi Adelson, who was in the middle of a contentious custody battle with Markel over their two young sons at the time of his death.

Authorities have previously said there may be a link between Markel's July 2014 slaying and the couple's contentious divorce.

Daniel Markel, 41, was found shot dead in his driveway two years ago in what police believe was a murder-for-hire plot concocted by his ex-wife and her family

But Markel's brother-in-law Charlie Adelson (pictured) and his girlfriend Katherine Magbanua have both avoided charges, the Tallahassee Police Department have revealed

Sigfredo Garcia and Luis Rivera have since been charged with the murder of Markel, who was shot in the head in broad daylight in his garage.

State Attorney Willie Meggs approved charges against Garcia and Rivera, but did not feel there was sufficient evidence to go forward with cases against Adelson and Magbanua.

Meggs said no additional arrests will be made in the case unless more evidence is found.

Garcia is the father of Magbanua's two children. In the three months before the murder, he called her 2,700 times, according to investigators.

There were also a number of phones calls on July 1, 2014, 17 days before Markel was killed, between Adelson, Magbanua, Garcia and a phone registered to Harvey Adelson, Markel's former father-in-law, according to a probable cause affidavit.

A number of phone calls also occured between midnight and 1am among Adelson, his mother Donna, Magbanua and Garcia on July 18, the day Markel was murdered.

Adelson is the brother of Wendi Adelson, who was in the middle of a contentious custody battle with Markel over their two young sons (pictured together) at the time of his death

Wendi and Markel's custody battle turned ugly as Wendi's parents became desperate to move her children closer to the Adelson family in South Florida

The probable cause affidavit also reveals that in the days and months after the murder Garcia purchased a new car and motorcycle, according to WCTV.

Records show Rivera also purchased a motorcycle within 10 days of the murder.

Meanwhile, Magbanua began receiving checks from Adelson and his father's dental practice, the Adelson Institute, from September 2014 to January 2016.

In the year prior to Markel's murder, Magbanua was making cash deposits that totaled $15,000.

In the months after the murder she was making deposits totaling $44,000, the affidavit states.

The affidavit also revealed that one of Wendi Adelson's ex-boyfriends told police she had revealed her brother was looking into hiring a hitman that would cost $15,000.

Wendi Adelson and several of her family members said in a statement earlier this month that speculation they had a role in Markel's murder is 'categorically false'.

Sigfredo Garcia (right) and Luis Rivera (left) have since been charged with Markel's murder

'To be clear, none of the Adelsons  Wendi, her brother Charlie, or their parents Donna and Harvey  had anything to do with Dan's murder,' said David O Markus, the attorney who represents Charlie Adelson, in a statement.

The family has been subjected to an intense investigation over the past two years  including FBI involvement  that went over phone and computer records, emails, financial documents and text messages, the Adelson statement said.

'There is a reason that the police have not arrested any of the Adelsons  they weren't involved in Dan's death,' the statement said.

A Tallahassee Police Department affidavit said Markel's death was the result of the 2013 contentious divorce from Wendi, a lawyer who now lives in Miami Beach and works for a federal judge.

Authorities say Garcia and Rivera traveled from South Florida to Tallahassee in a light green Toyota Prius to kill Markel.

Multiple surveillance videos captured the Prius following Markel as he dropped his sons off at daycare before going to the gym, according to the Miami Herald.

Markel then returned home and was sitting in his car and talking on the phone, the keys still in the ignition, when he was shot dead.

A neighbor called police after hearing a gunshot and seeing the Prius back out of the driveway.

Markel was shot and killed shortly after dropping off his two young sons at day

Since the killing, Rivera was convicted of unrelated federal racketeering charges stemming from his leadership role in the Latin Kings street gang and was sentenced to more than 12 years in prison.

Garcia has pleaded not guilty.

Markel and Adelson wed in 2006 and ended six years later.

The professor reportedly returned home from a business trip to find that his wife and children were gone, most of his house was empty, and divorce papers laying on his bed.

Wendi and Markel's custody battle turned ugly as Wendi's parents became desperate to move her children closer to the Adelson family in South Florida.

Markel asked a judge to stop Donna Adelson from having unsupervised contact with his sons, claiming she had been telling them disparaging remarks about their father.

The probable cause affidavit for Charles Adelson revealed a judge refused to allow Wendi to move her sons to South Florida in June 2013.

It states that the family then discussed paying Markel $1million to allow the children to relocate.

Wendi Adelson has since changed her children's last names, telling investigators she wanted to protect them.
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After a sunny and mild first week of spring, residents in Adelaide and western Victoria are now being smashed with torrential rain - leaving power outages, burst creek banks and lightning strikes.

Residents were evacuated in Coleraine, near Hamilton in Victoria, after at Byran Creek burst its banks on Friday after almost 50 millimetres fell overnight and Melbourne residents have also been issued a 'heads-up' for flooding.

In Adelaide, power was cut to thousands of properties as the thunderstorm swept through and one woman was rushed to hospital complaining of 'tingling' after her car was reportedly struck by lightning.

Residents in western Victoria have been evacuated after Byran Creek burst its banks and flooded the streets (pictured)

Almost 50 millimetres fell overnight in Coleraine, near Hamilton in Victoria

After the burst creek in Coleraine Victoria, people have been moved from homes and businesses to a relief centre at the nearby racecourse

After the burst creek in Coleraine Victoria, people have been moved from homes and businesses to a relief centre at the nearby racecourse.

'SES volunteers are out responding to that with sandbagging of both homes and businesses,' SES Victoria spokeswoman Susan Davie told AAP.

About 100 people have called the SES since midnight with most battling flooding and fallen trees in the Ballarat and Hamilton area.

A severe weather warning remains in place for the northeast of the state - including Shepparton, Wangaratta, Seymour and Wodonga - where up to 100mm of rain is possible.

'SES volunteers are out responding to that with sandbagging of both homes and businesses,' SES Victoria spokeswoman said

A severe weather warning remains in place for the northeast of the state - including Shepparton, Wangaratta, Seymour and Wodonga - where up to 100mm of rain is possible

'It's already pretty wet out there so any more rain will put significant pressure on the creeks and rivers,' an SES spokesperson said

Local businesses were completely flooded after the creek burst its banks following torrential rain

Greater Melbourne is forecast to receive a further 10 to 30mm on Friday after 10 to 40mm fell in some western catchments during the morning (pictured is Coleraine)

Ms Davie said SES crews are on stand-by.

'It's already pretty wet out there so any more rain will put significant pressure on the creeks and rivers,' she said.

'We really encourage motorists across Victoria to drive to the conditions, take care and be mindful of hazards on country roads such as fallen trees. Most of all, please don't enter floodwaters.'

Greater Melbourne is forecast to receive a further 10 to 30mm on Friday after 10 to 40mm fell in some western catchments during the morning.

In Adelaide, the Bureau of Meteorology said almost 28mm of rain was dumped on the CBD while suburban Burnside had 41mm.

In the Adelaide Hills, Mt Lofty had 37mm and Mt Gambier, in the southeast, 42mm.

Residents in western Victoria have been evacuated after Byran Creek burst its banks and flooded the streets (pictured)

In Adelaide, power was cut to thousands of properties (including this gym) as the thunderstorm swept through

Residents in western Victoria were evacuated after the creek burst

Almost 50 millimetres fell overnight in Coleraine, near Hamilton in Victoria and SES crews were pictured filling sand bags in a hope to save local businesses

FORECAST: WHAT THE WEATHER LOOKS LIKE AROUND AUSTRALIA SYDNEY Saturday : Min 15, Max 23. Morning showers Sunday : Min 11, Max 21. Mostly sunny Monday : Min 11, Max 21. Mostly sunny BRISBANE: Saturday : Min 16, Max 25. Possible storm Sunday : Min 14, Max 26. Partly cloudy Monday : Min 14, Max 26. Possible shower ADELAIDE Saturday : Min 8, Max 17. Possible shower Sunday: Min 7, Max 19. Possible shower Monday: Min 7, Max 16. Partly cloudy DARWIN Saturday : Min 24, Max 34. Mostly sunny Sunday: Min 24, Max 35. Mostly sunny Monday: Min 24, Max 35. Partly cloudy MELBOURNE Saturday : Min 11, Max 16. Showers Sunday : Min 9, Max 17. Showers Monday : Min 8, Max 13. Showers CANBERRA Saturday: Min 7, Max 14. Shower or two Sunday : Min 2, Max 17. Partly cloudy Monday : Min 3, Max 15. Shower or two PERTH Saturday : Min 9, Max 19. Shower or two Sunday: Min 9, Max 18. Cloudy Monday : Min 9, Max 16. Possible shower HOBART Saturday : Min 10, Max 16. Shower or two Sunday: Min 7, Max 15. Showers Monday : Min 4, Max 12. Showers Advertisement

At the height of the storms power was cut to about 10,000 properties, with most of those on the Eyre Peninsula.

About 1000 properties in the Adelaide Hills also lost electricity.

The State Emergency Service said it responded to almost 150 calls for assistance once the storms hit and at the Royal Adelaide Show, operators were forced to shut down some rides as the worst of the weather passed through.

There were no reports of serious flooding, with the bureau expecting conditions to moderate overnight and into Friday.

The rest of the country remained relatively dry on Friday, with sunny conditions for most of the day for Sydney, Brisbane and Darwin.

Light rain is expected to hit Sydney on Saturday morning and Brisbane has a high chance of thunderstorms.

The rest of the country remained relatively dry on Friday, with sunny conditions for most of the day for Sydney (pictured) , Brisbane and Darwin
The son of a former model stabbed to death in her luxury penthouse says his mother's killer was in a precarious mental state in the lead-up to her death, a court heard.

Zachary Boyce claimed his mother Maureen Boyce told him her former lover and accused killer Thomas Chris Lang was allegedly bipolar, depressed and abusing drugs and alcohol, the Courier Mail reported.

'She [said] he was suffering from depression with his bipolar disorder, that he was a chronic marijuana smoker and that he would stay up and drink two bottles of red wine on his own after she had gone to bed,' he told the court.

Zachary Boyce has revealed his mother Maureen Boyce was concerned her accused killer was depressed in the days before his death

Dr Boyce Lang said Mr Lang (pictured) had been drinking heavily and sleeping all day before his mother's death

Mr Lang was charged with Ms Boyce's murder after she was found dead with a knife lodged in her stomach in her Kangaroo Point penthouse in Brisbane in early hours of October 22 last year.

Dr Boyce, a dermatologist, told a committal hearing his mother had text messaged him saying she she wanted Mr Lang to leave her apartment, where he was staying at the time of her death.

'I'm trying to get Tom to go back to New Zealand,' he claimed one of the messages read.

Defence lawyer Terry O'Gorman asked Dr Boyce if he held a negative perception of Mr Lang, to which he replied: 'He's allegedly murdered my mother. Of course I do.'

He told the court his mother had been eagerly awaiting the birth of her first grandchild as well as attending his graduation.

'She was excited to see her first grandchild. My sister was pregnant at the time,'

It comes after the court heard on Thursday Mr Lang's fingerprints were 'nowhere' on the knife found fully embedded in her stomach.

Defence lawyer Terry O'Gorman said evidence of the post-mortem evidence suggested the wound could have been self-inflicted or the result of someone else stabbing Ms Boyce.

Dr Boyce told the court his mother had been eagerly awaiting the birth of her first grandchild as well as attending his son's graduation

Mr Lang was charged with the former socialite's murder after she was found dead with a knife lodged in her stomach

'The prosecution case is that Ms Boyce was found by Mr Lang in bed, deceased ... with a knife fully embedded in her stomach,' he said.

'The prosecution case is that Mr Lang's fingerprints are nowhere on that knife.'

The court heard a key issue would be differing opinions held about Ms Boyce's mental health around the time of her death.

The court heard a key issue would be differing opinions held about Ms Boyce's mental health around the time of her death

There was also evidence she'd had phone conversations with two friends, including high-profile businesswoman Sarina Russo, and told them she was depressed, Mr O'Gorman said.

Ms Boyce's former acquaintance Kenneth McAlpine also gave evidence he recalled getting a voicemail on October 21 in which she said she had friends visiting from New Zealand but one man wouldn't leave and she didn't know what to do about it.
A self-sufficient mother-of-nine who kept chickens and rabbits in filthy cages to feed her children has been found guilty of mistreating animals and fined $1,650.

Canberra woman Cynthia Lawrence, 37, was also given a 12-month good behaviour bond and a three-year ban on keeping chickens, rabbits and guinea pigs after she pleaded guilty to nine charges of animal cruelty, the ABC reported.

However, she was not banned from owning other animals.

Canberra woman Cynthia Lawrence (centre) has pleaded guilty to nine charges of animal cruelty

Lawrence kept chickens and rabbits in filthy cages to feed her nine kids

RSPCA inspectors found a variety of animals, including guinea pigs, at her Canberra home

ACT Magistrates Court heard that in one cage live chickens were kept with the dead birds

Tammy Ven Dange, chief executive of RSPCA ACT, said she was frustrated with the sentence, which came after almost 18 months of hard work.

'I'm disturbed to think that our inspectors could easily find other neglected animals at this home and have to go through the entire process again,' she said in a statement.

'We cannot see any reason why, if the courts think this owner cannot properly look after rabbits, guinea pigs or poultry, that she somehow has the capacity and capability to care for other species of animals.'

In February 2015, RSPCA inspectors found rats, guinea pigs, ferrets, rabbits and poultry kept in cages covered in faeces at Lawrence's property. The animals had limited access to food and water.

Inspectors also gathered evidence that in one cage chickens were trampling on decomposing carcasses.

RSPCA senior inspector Catherine Croatto described the conditions as extremely sad.

Lawrence's lawyer told the ACT Magistrates Court she kept the chickens and rabbits as food

The court heard Lawrence, a mother-of-nine, grew up in the country and believed in self-sufficiency

Lawrence was charged under the Animal Welfare Act and 156 animals were seized.

Lawrence's lawyer told the ACT Magistrates Court she kept the chickens and rabbits as food not pets, as she was country girl who believed in self-sufficiency, the Canberra Times reported.

Her lawyer also said Lawrence was sick in the weeks leading up to the inspection and unable to care for the animals.

Magistrate Glenn Theakston said the animals were in poor health.

'There is no doubt from the statement of facts and the images that the animals were neglected ... and they were neglected for some considerable time,' he was quoted as saying by the ABC.

RSPCA inspectors said the animals at the property had limited access to food and water

Lawrence has been banned from keeping chickens, rabbits and guinea pigs for three years
A Florida woman has died after going into cardiac arrest during a tummy tuck procedure.

Maria Christian, 32, underwent surgery at Vanity Cosmetic Surgery on Wednesday before going into cardiac arrest at the end of the procedure, NBC Miami reported.

She was transported to Kendall Regional Hospital after losing heart function, however doctors were unable to revive the young mother-of-two.

The center has since returned to business as usual.

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Maria Christian, 32, (pictured) died after going into cardiac arrest during a tummy tuck procedure at Vanity Cosmetic Surgery in Miami, Florida on Wednesday

At the time of the operation the clinic (pictured) said Christian was deemed in good health

At the time of the operation, which was performed by Dr Camille Chavez, the clinic said Christian was found to be in good health, according to the station.

She had previously undergone two cosmetic surgeries at the clinic, including a Brazilian butt lift in January, but this was her first time being operated on by Chavez.

'They were trying to tell her "just do it with her, she's really good, she's really good and you're going to be fine,"' Christian's sister, Carolina Flor told NBC Miami.

The cause of death remains under investigation and Christian's family continues searching for answers.

'We don't know what happened, the doctors just said that her heart stopped,' Flor told NBC Miami.

Christian's tummy tuck was performed by Dr Camille Chavez (pictured)

During an initial investigation following Christian's death, the clinic said the Miami-Dade Police Department investigated the clinic's facilities and surgical rooms.

Authorities did not find any violations and released a statement on Thursday, saying they wanted to express their deepest condolences to the family, the clinic said.

It also said during Christian's surgery, all standard preoperative procedures were administered and noted that 'all surgical procedures have inherent risks of complications and in some cases, unpredictable complications can occur.'

The clinic also described Chavez as having a reputation as a 'caring and skilled surgeon' who is 'universally recognized and admired by her patients and peers.'

'Dr. Camille D. Chavez and Vanity Cosmetic Surgery is committed to providing the highest quality care for patients and again, send our deepest condolences to the family and loved ones of Maria Christian,' the statement read.

Now, Christian's family is mourning her loss.

Her sister described her as 'amazing' and someone who was always trying to help people.

Christian leaves behind her husband and her two sons, aged two and 12.

Her sister, Carolina Flor, said the family does not know what happened and that doctors told them that Christian's heart stopped

Christian's loved ones console each other. Christian leaves behind her husband and two sons, age two and 12

On Sunday, she had celebrated her youngest son's second birthday.

'They had a great family,' Flor told NBC Miami, who added her sister was beautiful the way she was.

Vanity Cosmetic Surgery made its way into headlines in January after it came under investigation for its refund procedures, NBC Miami previously reported.

In the last year, approximately 50 complaints had been filed against Vanity Cosmetics from customers claiming they were not able to get refunds after procedures were canceled or in cases when the doctor's office canceled it.

Three other women have also died at two surgery centers operated by the same owner of Vanity Cosmetic Surgery, according to NBC Miami.

Heather Meadows, 29, a mother-of-two from West Virginia died during a liposuction and buttocks augmentation cosmetic procedure at Encore Plastic Surgery in May.

Her death was later ruled accidental.

After going into cardiac arrest, she was transported to Kendall Regional Hospital, however doctors were unable to revive the young mother-of-two

Chavez received an undergraduate degree from Cornell University and a medical degree from Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons according to the company's website.

She is described as a 'skillful plastic surgeon' who performs a wide range of surgical procedures including breast lifts and tummy tucks.

In 2001, she was previously sued by a patient for professional malpractice while working at the Florida Center for Cosmetic Surgery, according to records.

She allegedly failed to identify a cancerous lump in the woman's breast before performing breast augmentation surgery, according to WPLG.

The case was later dismissed.

VANITY COSMETIC SURGERY RELEASES STATEMENT FOLLOWING MARIA CHRISTIAN'S DEATH Dr. Camille D. Chavez, MD and Vanity Cosmetic Surgery would like to express our deepest condolences to the family and loved ones of Maria Christian, a 32-year old patient who recently underwent a highly popular procedure, a tummy tuck, at our cosmetic surgery facility yesterday afternoon with one of our surgeons, Dr. Camille D. Chavez, MD. The patient, who had previously undergone two cosmetic procedures, with the most recent one performed in January 2016, was deemed in good health when she underwent the procedure. All standard pre-op procedures were administered. However, unfortunately she developed cardiac arrest towards the end of the operation. Immediate resuscitation efforts were taken followed by a call to 911. The paramedics arrived promptly and transferred Ms. Christian to Kendall Regional Hospital, where she later passed away. The cause of Ms. Christian's death has not yet been determined until a medical forensic examiner has completed an examination. All surgical procedures have inherent risks of complications and in some cases, unpredictable complications can occur. The Miami-Dade Police Department investigated our facilities and surgical rooms during their initial investigation and they found everything to be in accordance with standard protocols. Dr. Camille D. Chavez's reputation as a caring and skilled surgeon is universally recognized and admired by her patients and peers. Dr. Chavez has built a successful career, with more than 30 years of experience specializing in microsurgery, trauma surgery, craniofacial surgery, and cosmetic surgery. Dr. Camille D. Chavez and Vanity Cosmetic Surgery is committed to providing the highest quality care for patients and again, send our deepest condolences to the family and loved ones of Maria Christian. Advertisement

In 1997, claims were also filed against Chavez for malpositioned implants as well as the need for revision surgery, the station reported.

Claims were also filed against her in 1998 when the patient was not happy with results from a breast lift and liposuction.

Vanity Cosmetic Surgery was given an F rating by the Better Business Bureau which also listed an alert for the business.

The BBB's alert said its files indicate a pattern of complaints alleging the company has 'failed to honor promised refunds when a procedure is cancelled.'

'As of January 27th 2016 BBB staff reviewed Vanity Cosmetic Surgery, Inc report and came to the conclusion that the pattern of complaints still exist,' the alert said.
A tow truck driver has captured the chilling moment a ute travelling at 90km per hour on a busy highway lost control and rolled twice before ending up in a ditch.

Clayton's Towing driver Dean Gillard was attending another accident on Sunshine Motorway in Peregian on Queensland's Sunshine Coast on Thursday morning when he captured the horrific crash on his dashcam.

He uploaded the footage to Facebook as 'a chilling reminder how quickly things can go wrong.'

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A tow truck driver has captured the chilling moment a ute travelling at 90km per hour on a busy highway lost control and rolled twice before ending up in a ditch (pictured left)

The video shows a tow truck picking up a black ute in a ditch on the side of the road as a number of cars fly past.

There is a red car parked on the other side of the road in an awkward position. As a vehicle drives past the tow truck a ute coming from the other direction swerves to miss the parked car but steers into the path of the oncoming vehicle.

The ute overcorrects to the left as the driver slams on the breaks and skids into a ditch before flying into the air, rolling twice and finally coming to a stop.

Mr Gillard then drives over to the scene of the crash before an ambulance arrives.

The driver of the ute, a teenage male, was rushed to hospital.
This is the moment a 20-day-old baby born in the Calais jungle was taken from a lorry after being smuggled into Britain.

There were fears the tiny child would not survive after the truck pulled into Watford Gap on the M1 and there was banging from inside the vehicle and shouts of no air.

The lorry's container was opened in the presence of police, a family from Iraq and Iran poured out after boarding in France.

Drama: This is the moment a 20-day-old baby born in the Calais jungle was taken from a lorry with her family after being smuggled into Britain

Shock: There were fears the tiny child would not survive after the truck pulled into Watford Gap on the M1 and there was banging from inside the vehicle and shouts of no air

The group of ten, comprising of men, women and children, were at risk of suffocation as they hid in the locked lorry during stifling heat.

Fortunately the baby, thought to be Britains youngest migrant, was checked over at a local hospital and found to be in a healthy condition, the Sun reported.

Their journey is said to have begun in the Middle East where they crossed into Turkey then paid a people-smuggler to travel by boat to Greece.

Their six-year-old son drowned crossing the Mediterranean.

They then made their way to the Jungle Camp in Calais where the baby is believed to have been born, before boarding the lorry at 3am on Tuesday to get into the UK, according to the newspaper.

The Home Office last night confirmed Northamptonshire Police alerted immigration officials to the discovery of ten migrants in a vehicle.

The group are now being interviewed by Immigration Enforcement.

A spokesperson for the Home Office said: This incident is of concern and is under investigation.

Would-be migrants need to be aware that they are putting their lives, and those of their loved ones, at risk by attempting to reach the UK illegally.

That is why we have increased security and boosted technology used at border controls and are working with law enforcement at home and abroad to target the criminal gangs who are often behind such attempts.

Journey: Their journey is said to have begun in the Middle East where they crossed into Turkey then paid a people-smuggler to travel by boat to Greece. Their six-year-old son drowned crossing the Mediterranean.

Richard Glover was at Watford Gap services when the lorry pulled in and said he immediately heard banging.

He raised the alarm with the driver who said he wouldnt open up without the presence of police, who arrived promptly and released the group.

I could see no food or water in the lorry, the 24-year-old told the Sun.

It had been a muggy night and it was a warm day, so conditions would have been stifling. They could all have suffocated in there  including the baby.

It is said the childs father told Mr Glover the family had left the Middle East four weeks earlier when his wife was in the last days of her pregnancy.

He allegedly said their six-year-old son had died while travelling separately.

Home: The baby was born in the Calais Jungle camp, shown here yesterday being peppered with tear gas

Mr Glover, a road worker from Wellingborough, Northants, added: He was saying, No air in a foreign accent and sounded desperate  but the driver made it clear he was not opening the cab without the police present

They shouldnt be here but youd need a heart of stone not to feel sorry for them. It just brought it home how desperate they are to get to the UK.

According to the newspaper, the group included the babys mother, a 16-year-old daughter, a three-year-old daughter and three men in their late teens or early 20s.
A British Airways flight from London to Orlando was forced to make an emergency landing in Boston after a 'drunken passenger' tried to get off the plane in mid-air.

Eyewitnesses claim the man began to wander around the Boeing 777 before asking cabin crew if he could get off the plane after it departed Gatwick Airport last night.

Air stewards had to keep him seated and the pilot even went down to speak to him, before deciding to divert the Florida-bound BA2039 flight to Boston, Massachusetts.

A 24-year-old man from Glasgow was arrested by U.S. officers for interfering with a flight crew after a disturbance on a Florida-bound British Airways flight that departed London Gatwick last night. Pictured: A U.S. officer is seen on the plane after it landed at Boston's main airport

Eyewitness Mark Christie took to Facebook to claim the man had been drinking on the plane

When the plane landed, the 24-year-old Glaswegian was arrested by U.S. officers.

Passenger Mark Christie, 30, from Aberdeen, told MailOnline exclusively: 'The drunk guy got on the flight and became increasingly more drunk.

'Then he started wandering around and asking if he could get off. I think that was the worry.

'Eventually he needed to be baby-sat by two cabin crew at a time.

'Then the pilot came through to try and calm him down. And he obviously decided it was better to land in Boston.

'Folk were kind of annoyed by the end of it, but more so because of the delay.

'The cabin crew were amazing and so patient.'

He later added on Facebook: 'Slight detour on the way to Orlando. Apparently BA are pretty strict about heavy drinking on their flights. Boston looks lovely from the runway though.'

British garage band Gorgon City were also on the plane when the drama unfolded yesterday

British garage band Gorgon City were also on the plane when the drama unfolded, as they tried to make their way to Orlando for a gig.

They wrote on Twitter: 'Some drunk t*** assaulted staff on @BritishAirways flight and now in Boston instead of Orlando. Be there soon tho (sic)!'

They later added: 'Quick stop in Boston so someone on the plane can get arrested, now we fly to Orlando to play tonight.'

The man was arrested at around 4.45pm local time (9.45pm BST), half an hour after the passenger plane made the unscheduled landing at Logan International Airport.

Massachusetts State Police said the man would be summonsed to appear in court accused of interfering with flight crew on the aircraft.

Air stewards had to keep the man seated and the pilot even went down to speak to him, before deciding to divert the Florida-bound BA2039 flight to Boston, Massachusetts (file picture)

A force spokesman said: 'Customs and Border Protection took custody of the 24-year-old man from Glasgow, Scotland.

'Massachusetts State Police will be summonsing the man for interfering with a flight crew.'

British Airways confirmed the flight was diverted due to an 'unruly' passenger.

A spokesman added: 'Our customers and crews deserve to enjoy their flights, and not to suffer any form of abuse.

'Disruptive behaviour will not be tolerated, and the appropriate action will always be taken.
The family said 'We think he might be taken away' and are still searching

Tiemuzhen 'Tim' Chalaer, 24, has now been missing for more than a month since his disappearance on August 7 and his family have made a desperate plea for help.

Enjoying a night out with his friends listening to music in the dense bushland of Sydney's Hawkesbury's region Tim got up early the next morning to go to the toilet on August 7 between 6.30am and 9am.

Unaware of his whereabouts, his friends didn't report Tim missing until 8pm the next night when they realised he was not with someone else.

Tiemuzhen 'Tim' Chalaer went missing more than a month ago after a music camping festival

Tiemuzhen 'Tim' Chalaer, 24, went missing in the bushland of Lower Portland, Hawkesbury

A large search with police, SES, Dog Units and PolAir all attempted to locate Tim in the vast bushland of Wheelbarrow Ridge Road Track in Lower Portland.

Tim's shoes were found around 400m from the campsite with his socks.

However, after a week of scouring the bushland with dog squads and helicopters, no new evidence was found and police scaled down their search efforts in the rugged bushland.

While the police have suspended its search for Tim, his parents ramped up there efforts and have been searching for him every day where he went missing.

Hawkesbury crime manager Detective Chief Inspector Paul McHugh said there was no evidence of foul play, but Mr Chalaer's father told Fairafx that they had a feeling he had been taken.

'From the first day, as parents, our feelings told us our son was not dead,' his father Hakki Caglar told the SMH.

Mr Chalaer attended the camp festival at Wheelbarrow Ridge Road Track with three friends (Stock Image)

A large search with police, SES, Dog Units and PolAir attempted to locate Tim in the bushland

'Parents sometimes have these feelings. The police said there was no evidence to divert them away from their search but we think he might be taken away. By who, we don't know.'

His parents have pleaded to anyone who could have taken their son to administer insulin to Tim as he has type Type 1 Diabetes and will die without medication.
Islam can co-exist with secularism, President Francois Hollande said Thursday, warning in a speech seen as preparing the ground for a re-election bid that the anti-terror fight should not undermine French values.

The deeply unpopular Hollande has yet to announce whether he will run for a second term next year, but is widely expected to be a candidate.

In a passionate plea for tolerance, he defended the country's Muslim minority following a vitriolic debate on the banning of the Islamic burkini swimsuit.

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Ill fated reign: During his presidential tenure Hollande has seen a number of terror attacks including the deadly assault in Paris last November and the Nice lorry attack in July. A survey conducted by pollster TNS Sofres said 90% of the French public disapprove of their president

'Nothing in the idea of secularism opposes the practice of Islam in France, provided it respects the law,' Hollande said.

Secularism was not a 'state religion' to be used against other religions, he said in the speech in Paris, denouncing the 'stigmatisation of Muslims'.

Mayors in around 30 towns this summer cited France's century-old secular laws in banning head-to-toe swimwear on their beaches, unleashing a furore.

Several of the towns later revoked the bans after France's highest administrative court ruled they were a 'serious' violation of basic freedoms.

Hollande rejected calls by conservatives, including his arch-rival, former president Nicolas Sarkozy, for the state to ban the burkini, saying it would be 'unconstitutional'.

A Burkini wearer on a beach in Marseille in August (far left). Bans on wearing the concealing beach wear were overturned towards the end of last month. The ensuing debate on the ban revealed raw tensions between the secular establishment and sectors of France's estimated 5 million Muslims

Asking whether Islam could co-exist with secularism, like Christianity and Judaism, he insisted: 'My answer is yes, certainly.'

'The question the Republic must answer is: Is it really ready to embrace a religion that it did not expect to be this big over a century ago? There too, my answer is yes, certainly.'

In a wide-ranging address Hollande cast himself as a guardian of democracy, resisting calls for more repressive laws following a string of jihadist attacks that have left over 230 people dead in France since January 2015.

The authorities this week launched another anti-terror investigation, following the discovery of six gas cylinders in an abandoned car near Paris' Notre Dame cathedral.

Seven people are being held over the find, which comes two months after a Tunisian radical slammed a lorry into a crowd of Bastille Day revellers in Nice, killing 86 people.

Hollande said attack plots had been foiled 'in recent days' but did not elaborate.

Protesters constructed a temporary 'beach' outside the French Embassy in London last month to vent their anger at the controversial burkini ban across the channel

The government has responded to the threat by deploying thousands of troops to patrol the streets, enacting a raft of anti-terror laws and repeatedly extending a state of emergency - measures deemed insufficient by the conservative opposition.

Sarkozy, who has announced a bid to try to win back the presidency in next year's election, has called for suspected radicals to be interned in camps.

The former president responded late Thursday to Hollande's comments, saying that 'democracy can't be weak. We are France, we cannot accept impotence.'

Sarkozy, putting himself forward as a strong contrast to Hollande, added; 'I want to be president of a Republic which will protect the French people and which will defend France.'

Hollande warned that France could not sacrifice its core values of liberty, equality and fraternity.

'The declaration of human rights is not some old scroll to be framed and hung in reception rooms,' he said.

'Did the Patriot Act and Guantanamo protect Americans from the (terrorist) threat? No,' he said, declaring: 'Democracy is our weapon.'

Polls predict a drubbing for the 62-year-old Socialist if he throws his hat in the ring again after five years marked by stubbornly high unemployment and only timid attempts at reform.

Hollande has deferred his decision on whether to run until December.

A poll published Tuesday showed he would only get between 11 and 15 percent in the first round of voting.

A separate survey for BFMTV Wednesday showed 88 percent of the French opposed to Hollande standing again.

Three of Hollande's former ministers have already announced their own presidential bids.

They could soon be joined by ambitious former economy minister Emmanuel Macron, who resigned from government last week.

Despite his own camp being in disarray Hollande has cast himself as a unifying force at the helm of the state.

'When there is danger we must come together,' he said.
A giant inflatable baby hanging from the ceiling of one of Australia's most iconic buildings is grabbing the attention of visitors and tourists.

The art installation piece called Human Mobile, also known as 'Ping Pong', by Australian artist Felipe Reynolds hangs from the ceiling inside the Atrium of Federation Square in Melbourne.

He designed 'Ping Pong' to be gender neutral and culturally diverse, so that all people could relate to it.

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Australian artist Felipe Reynolds is behind the giant inflatable baby hanging from the ceiling of the Atrium of Federation Square in Melbourne

'I wanted it to not be white, not be black, not be female, not be male - just be as inclusive as possible, so everybody can relate to it,' Mr Reynolds told SBS.

He drew inspiration from Michelangelo's 'Creation of Adam' in the Sistine Chapel for the 50 kilograms and 11-and-a-half metres long sculpture.

'I've used the same pose as Adam, in the sculpture. So when you come up to it, you play the part of God,' he said.

The sculpture, also known as Ping Pong, was designed to be culturally diverse and gender neutral to 'be as inclusive as possible, so everybody can relate to it'

Mr Reynolds (pictured) has previously worked as a set and costume designer for King Kong the Musical and Walking with Dinosaurs

The set and costume designer, who has worked on King Kong the musical and Walking with Dinosaurs, made the installation from using his computer and printed it on to polyester.

He added: 'turning the world on its head, the baby is actually on the ground, and people just become active players for the baby's amusement.'

And night, the sculpture lights up like a lantern.
Australian fans of Apple's new iPhones can expect to pay more for their gadgets than their American counterparts thanks to the 'Australia Tax'.

Even the cheapest of the six new iPhones announced on Thursday is still $132 more expensive in Australia with a price tag of $1079. The most pricey is will set Australian customers back an eye-watering $1569, $159 more expensive.

Even without GST included and a weak Aussie dollar, the staggering price gap shows that tech lovers Down Under are paying 12 and 15 per cent more than Americans, The Sydney Morning Herald reports.

Even the cheapest of the six new iPhones announced on Thursday is still $132 more expensive in Australia and the most pricey is will set Australian customers back $159

Even without GST included and a weak Aussie dollar, the staggering price gap shows that tech lovers Down Under are paying 12 and 15 per cent more than Americans for products, like the Apple watch promoted by Apple Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams (pictured)

Australians can take comfort that Apple's new wireless headphones, the AirPods are on sale for $229, the same price when GST and exchange rates are considered.

There are also two new Apple Watches, the cheaper version is $529, $50 more expensive in Australia while the pricer version is on sale for $1029, $22 more than in the US.

Technology commentator Stephen Fenech told the Sydney Morning Herald that the new iPhone prices were fair.

'It's to be expected that we pay a little bit more, because apart from GST there's other tariffs we pay and they've got to ship them from different places,' the Tech Guide editor said.

He added that in comparison the mark-ups on software and digital downloads, were much more significant.

Australian pricing has often been attributed to the cost of doing business in the country, with federal and state taxes, wages, tariffs, importation and transport costs.

AUSTRALIAN PRICES FOR NEW APPLE PRODUCTS Products Australian Price Price without GST US price in $AU Difference iPhone 7 Plus

(128GB) $1569 $1426 $1267 12.5% iPhone 7 Plus

(256GB) $1419 $1290 $1136 13.5% iPhone 7 Plus

(32GB) $1269 $1153 $1005 14.7% iPhone 7

(256GB) $1379 $1253 $1109 12.9% iPhone 7

(128GB) $1229 $1117 $979 14% iPhone 7

(32GB) $1079 $980 $848 15.5% 42mm Apple Watch $1029 $935 $913 2.4% 38mm Apple Watch $529 $480 $430 11.6% AirPods $229 $208 $208 0%

The cheapest of the six new phones, the iPhone 7 with 32GB, will be on sale in Australia for $1079

Apple COO Jeff Williams speaks on stage during a launch event of the new iPhones, which Australians can expect to pay more for thanks to the 'Australia Tax'
A woman who embarked upon an affair with her husband's best friend is accused along with her lover of murdering him while he slept, it has been reported.

Devout Sikh Sukhjit Singh, 34, a father-of-two from Derby, Derbyshire, was found in bed with his throat slit last Thursday while he was on holiday at his mother's house in India.

Now, his wife Ramandeep Kaur Mann is accused of plotting the lorry driver's murder, along with Mr Singh's childhood friend Gurpreet Singh.

Pictures have emerged of the pair being paraded on India TV with police officials.

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Devout Sikh Sukhjit Singh, 34, (pictured) a father-of-two from Derby, Derbyshire, was found in bed with his throat slit last Thursday while he was on holiday at his mother's house in India

His wife Ramandeep Kaur Mann is accused of plotting his murder, along with Mr Singh's childhood friend Gurpreet Singh (both pictured wearing head covers)

The pair accused have been paraded on India TV with police officials

According to police Ramandeep Kaur Mann (left) let her lover into her mother-in-laws house before her husband was murdered in bed (right)

Mr Singh, his wife and their two children travelled to his mother's house in Banda, south east of Delhi, last month to see relatives and meet up with Gurpreet Singh, who had attended school with Mr Singh.

The Times reports Banda police officer Rajesh Kumar Singh as saying: Gurpreet reached her house at 10pm and they both went upstairs where Gurpreet hit Sukhjit Singh on the head with a hammer. Ramandeep, meanwhile, smothered him using a pillow.

Banda police officer Rajesh Kumar Singh has spoken to the media about what he thinks happened

Father-of-two Mr Singh is believed to have been given sleeping pills, hit with a hammer and had his throat slit whilst lying with his sons

In older pictures Mr Singh has short hair, but in more recent family photographs - including one of the family riding camels in the desert (left) , he sported a full beard and a turban.

'They suspected he was still alive so Gurpreet then slit his throat using a butcher's knife which he had brought with him.'

Sukhjit was reportedly sleeping next to his sons, aged six and nine, when he was murdered.

Ms Mann reportedly told police that her husband refused to give her a divorce. The couple had been married since 2005.

In older pictures Mr Singh has short hair, but in more recent family photographs - including one of the family riding camels in the desert, he sported a full beard and a turban.

Left: Sukhjit Singh (L), Ramandeep Kaur Mann (C) and Gurpreet Singh (in the back) Right: Gurpreet 'Miththu' Singh

The Times reports Mann (pictured), a manager at Argos in Derby, wanted a divorce

Mr Singh regularly attended his local Sikh temple and was described as a 'devout' man.

Ravindra Singh, 34, who volunteers at the National Sikh Heritage Centre and Holocaust museum in Derby, said: 'Sukhjit had been coming to the temple every Sunday for the past eight months.

'The community is of course very sad to hear of someone close to us being murdered in such a way.

'Sukhjit was an active member of the community and volunteered with us at times.'
He was flown from Keira High School to hospital in a serious condition

A fight erupted before the 16-year-old was stabbed with a kitchen knife

A 14-year-old has handed himself in to police over the stabbing

A 16-year-old student has been stabbed in the stomach after a school fight

A high school student is flown to hospital in a serious condition after being stabbed in the stomach with a kitchen knife after a fight began on school grounds.

The 16-year-old from Keira High School, in Wollongong, south of Sydney, was treated by paramedics as a helicopter landed on the school oval on Friday at 1.40pm.

A 14-year-old student has since handed himself in to police and is assisting police with their inquiries.

The 16-year-old from Keira High School, in Wollongong, north of Sydney was stabbed in the stomach with a kitchen knife

The altercation is believed to have occurred between the men after fists were thrown.

'I believe there was a fist thrown and as a result of that the patient was stabbed in the left lower abdomen, with what appears to be like a kitchen paring knife,' NSW Ambulance Inspector Norm Rees.

'It appears that the blade may have broken off into his abdomen, so we've opted to stabilise the patient at scene and fly him up to St George for specialised care.'

The student is also believed to have broken his hand during the altercation.

Other students reportedly administered first aid until paramedics arrived on the scene, reported The Sydney Morning Herald.

A crime scene has been established and investigations are continuing as police attempt to catch the culprit who is still on the run.

The school was initially sent into lockdown after the incident occurred as the school alarm was heard ringing.

Students texted their parents who lined the streets eagerly waiting for news.

The 16-year-old is being treated at St George Hospital in Sydney's south.

The 16-year-old was flown to hospital in a serious condition. A 14-year-old has since handed himself to police




Fuming parents have slammed a school after it introduced a compulsory new uniform bearing its logo, but made it only available from its own shop at an 'extortionate' price.

Pupils at the Teignmouth Community School, Devon are now required to have the school logo on their jumpers, cardigans, PE kit tops, hoodies and skirts.

The school has its own uniform shop and will not provide separate logo badges that can be sown on cheaper supermarket clothes.

Skirts, jumpers and cardigans cost 15, while a PE polo shirt will set parents back 10- more than twice the price of the plain white M&S version.

The Teignmouth Community School in Devon (pictured) has enforced a policy that means parents must buy all uniform items from the school shop because they need to have the logo on them

One parent, who did wish to be named for fear her child might suffer bullying as a result of speaking out, said: 'It is getting ridiculous as I've got to pay out for new skirts just because it has to have a logo on.

'They won't provide a logo for us to sew onto a skirt so instead we have to buy a skirt with it on from the school's shop onsite for 15.

'In Marks & Spencer you can two for 8.

'The school says it's not making any money on the sale of uniforms but they've got to be.

'It's school policy so that's it - we have to buy it.

'In today's economy people don't have spare money.

Skirts, jumpers and cardigans that pupils at the Teignmouth Community School in Devon must wear cost 15 (pictured) and are only available from the school shop. The school logo badge is not sold separately for parents to sew onto supermarket-bought clothes

'I'm not against having school uniform because I think it makes them look really smart but parents today don't have the money to fork out for the extortionate amount they are charging.

'They don't need to have logos on everything they wear. Does it really matter if they have a logo on their skirt or trousers? Is it really necessary?'

The parent said that since complaining to the school it has offered to provide her with a skirt she won't have to pay for.

She added: 'It's not the point. So many parents are not happy about it but as it's now school policy they've got us by the short and curlies.

'The boys don't have to wear logos on trousers, it's only for skirts.'

The academy, for pupils aged three to 18-years-old, confirmed the policy has been in place for the last 18 months but it is only being enforced from this term.

Parents were made aware of the policy so long ago so students had a chance to grow out or their old uniform.

Headteacher Jason Beardmore said: 'Teignmouth Community School has a strict uniform policy which remains unchanged.

'The policy was originally put together following a parent forum meeting in response to parental requests.

'At the time, parents overwhelmingly requested a logo'd skirt and trousers, to eliminate the student-led pressure for particular fashion items, which may not always comply with the policy.

'Although we sell logo'd trousers and we specify them on our policy, we do not check or enforce those, as long as the students are wearing proper uniform trousers.

'It's only when they appear in denim or chinos that we remind parents of the policy.

Two girls' blouses (pictured left) from the school shop cost 22 while boys shirts (pictured right) cost 16 for a twin pack. They are the only piece of the uniform that does not need to contain the school logo

'The skirts are a different matter because they are so open to interpretation.'

Responding to criticisms over the cost of the uniform, Mr Beardmore added: 'The supplier provides the same or similar uniform to many UK schools and we sell items on a competitive and non-profit making basis.

'We are able to keep costs low by selling uniform on site, unlike other schools, therefore there is no additional third party.

'We continue to be very mindful of maintaining costs and this is why our overall uniform is consistently cheaper than that of many local schools.

Headteacher of the Devon school (pictured) Jason Beardmore said the uniform policy was put in place at the request of parents and it is 'always willing to help' pupils in financial difficulty

'That said, if parents with specific financial difficulties contact us, we are always willing to help where appropriate, and this will not change.'

The school also confirmed what its policy is regarding pupils who come to school not dressed in the correct uniform according to its rules.

Mr Beardmore said: 'If students turn up in the wrong uniform, they are sent to our intervention department and are leant the correct uniform to wear.

'We then make a phone call home to the parent and allow them to keep the borrowed item until they are able to purchase the correct one.
MPs are to review Britain's murder laws in a debate that could eventually mean the end of automatic life sentences for murderers.

Backbench politicians will examine whether American-style first or second degree classifications could be introduced to UK courts.

The intent would be to draw a distinction between the worst planned murders and other killings, such as resulting from a fight.

Tory MP and barrister Alex Chalk has called for reforms to murder laws that would end automatic life sentences in some cases

British law has mandated a life sentence for murderers since 1957 when the Homicide Act was passed as part of the deal to end the death penalty in the UK.

The Law Commission has already recommended reforms.

The Justice Select Committee will hold an evidence session on the debate next week, The Times revealed today.

Alex Chalk, a Conservative MP, barrister and member of the committee, raised the issue in Parliament.

He told a Westminster Hall debate: 'We need an offence of first-degree murder that would encompass intentional killing only.

'An offence of first degree murder would simply and coherently communicate to the public the particularly heinous nature of the crime of taking life and would attract the special condemnation and opprobrium that that deserves.'

He added: 'Under my proposal, second degree murder would encompass killing through an intention to do injury that is more than merely transient or trifling. In plain English: it would encompass killing through unacceptable violence and thuggery.

'That would include the colonel and the pub queue thugpeople who committed a significant assault on others but who did not intend to kill.

'That category of offence would not require a mandatory life sentence. Instead, judges would be free to do justice, weighing in the balance all of the aggravating and mitigating factors.'

Many murders committed in England and Wales are tried at the Central Criminal Court of the Old Bailey in London (file picture)

Another Tory MP and barrister Victoria Prentis told the same debate: 'I am in no way belittling the crushing effect of murder on the families of the victims.

'However, those sort of crimes... are very different from the pre-meditated, sadistic murders carried out by psychopaths which passed my desk.

'It is important that the law recognises that.'

Justice Minister Oliver Heald will give evidence to the justice committee on murder laws when it meets next week.
A Mississippi police chief killed himself in the parking lot of his department just moments after he was suspended from the force.

Bay St Louis Police Chief Mike DeNardo shot himself in the chest, Hancock County Sheriff's Office Chief Deputy Don Bass said.

'Our initial finding is a self-inflicted gunshot,' he said.

Hancock County Sheriff Ricky Adam said DeNardo was involved in an ongoing personnel issue.

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A Mississippi police chief, Mike DeNardo, killed himself in the parking lot of his department just moments after he was suspended from the force

Bass said DeNardo was standing outside a vehicle when he shot himself.

'It's just a bad day - a bad day for law enforcement,' he added.

The mayor of the tourist-friendly beach community along the Mississippi Gulf Coast said DeNardo had just been suspended inside the police station when he went out to the parking lot and shot himself.

Video courtesy of WLOX.com

Mayor Les Fillingame said DeNardo was under investigation by the Hancock County Sheriff's Office.

Authorities have so far refused to explain why DeNardo had been suspended from the department he had overseen for the last six years or divulge any specifics about the investigation.

'He was just a tremendous public servant, and he's going to be greatly missed,' Fillingame said.

City administrators told the sheriff's office that DeNardo had earlier turned in some of his equipment.

Mayor Les Fillingame said DeNardo was under investigation by the Hancock County Sheriff's Office. Pictured, law enforcement officers comfort each other outside Memorial Hospital at Gulfport

The police chief was still believed to be in uniform when the shooting happened.

Sheriff Adam said his staff were on hand to help escort the chief from the office.

'At that time, it just kind of went bad,' he said.

DeNardo had been with the department since 2004 and the mayor appointed him police chief in 2010.

Before coming to Bay St. Louis, DeNardo worked for 18 years at the St Tammany Parish Sheriff's Office in Louisiana.

The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation sent forensic technicians to the scene to assist the sheriff's office in the investigation.
A stalker who was fixated with a spiritual healer has been jailed for eight months after breaching an order to stay away from her.

Elizabeth Murray was obsessed with Monika Thomson and even tried to take her own life when the medium made it clear they could be no more than friends.

In March Murray, of Easterhouse, Glasgow, received an indefinite non-harassment order but she was returned to Hamilton Sheriff Court after admitting breaching it.

She repeatedly contacted Miss Thomson, of Bellshill, Lanarkshire, between July 8 and 13 by email and other social media with lengthy and alarming content.

Jailing her for breaching her order, Sheriff Allan McKay told her the sentence would have been 12 months but for her early guilty plea.

Jail sentence: In March Murray received an indefinite non-harassment order but she was returned to Hamilton Sheriff Court (pictured) after admitting breaching it

Murray, 45, spent two months in custody earlier this year after admitting stalking and breach of bail charges in relation to Miss Thomson, who leads services at Bellshill Christian Spiritualist Church and similar churches throughout Scotland.

During an earlier court hearing Laura Knox, prosecuting, said the women had known each other for years and attended the same church.

She said: Murray became fixated with Miss Thomson and said she was in love with her but Miss Thomson said the relationship could proceed only on a friendship basis.

'She was then bombarded with calls to her landline and mobile numbers and couldnt change these numbers because of her business.

Miss Knox said there were numerous abusive calls, texts and social media messages last year.

Miss Thomson was even forced to post messages on Facebook telling friends and members of her spiritualist group that Murray was stalking her and to be on the alert for fake messages from her.

She even told police Murray had threatened to kill herself. Officers forced entry to her home and discovered she had taken an overdose before taking her to hospital.

On Facebook, Miss Thomson said: Dear friends, my stalker is active once again  unfortunately. If you were sent a friendship request from Monika Foolish, please dont accept it. It is not mine  we are already friends with each other.

She later added: Im so sorry for you all to be affected in this way by my stalker. Her name is Elizabeth (Liz) Guyan (the photo on her profile is not herself  stolen photo) and she has started to send messages to people.

If she sends you such or other messages, please screenshot them for me for the police.

Miss Thomson was unavailable for comment.

At one stage, Miss Thomson reported 191 voicemail messages in two days from Murray as well as numerous abusive calls, texts and social media messages.

Miss Thomson helps private clients communicate with loved ones in the spirit world.
The daughter of a man who killed his wife before committing suicide has claimed she begged mental health workers to intervene and help her father.

Stephen Arnold, 55, murdered his wife Karen Arnold, 46, before killing himself on Tuesday. They were found inside their property in a quiet cul-de-sac in Grimsby at around 4am.

Daughter Leanne Arnold paid an emotional tribute to her father on Facebook.

Stephen, 55, and Karen Arnold, 46 (pictured together), were found inside their modest red-brick home in a quiet cul-de-sac in Grimsby at around 4am on Monday

Mr Arnold's two daughters (pictured with him above) and granddaughter changed their Facebook profile pictures to them with their father - with one describing him as 'my world'

Forensic officers are seen entering the modest red-brick home in a quiet cul-de-sac in Grimsby, Lincolnshire following the discovery of two bodies

Commenting on an article about the tragedy on social media, she wrote: 'I get comfort out of knowing that everyone that knew my dad, which is a lot of people because he was a well-liked guy, knows he didn't have a bad bone in his body.

'He would go the extra length to help anyone.'

Leanne explained he had been in need of mental health treatment.

Of her father's difficulties, Leanne wrote: 'He suffered in silence because he was too proud to show any weakness.'

She claimed she 'begged' a mental health crisis team on the phone to help her father 'only hours before this happened'.

However, Leanne believed no action was taken.

Neighbours in Grimsby described Karen and Stephen Arnold, pictured as a 'quiet couple'

Police confirmed they are not looking for anyone else in connection with the Arnolds' deaths

The bodies of the couple were removed from their home in Grimsby

Forensic officers are continuing their investigation into the cause of the couple's deaths

Leanne added a loving tribute at the end of her post and wrote: 'Two very lovely people that are so close to my heart have gone.

'Dad, Karen, I love you.'

A spokeswoman for Navigo, the organisation responsible for mental health care in North East Lincolnshire said: 'As this is under police investigation it is not appropriate for us to comment further.'

A post-mortem examination took place into the deaths yesterday and led police to believe Mr Arnold had killed his wife before taking his own life.

A Humberside Police spokesman said: 'Following the completion of the Home Office Post Mortems, police believe that Stephen Arnold murdered his wife before committing suicide.

'Detectives would like to reiterate that they are not looking for anyone else in connection with the deaths.'

Senior Investigating Officer, Detective Chief Inspector Bob Clark who has led the investigation said: 'It is clear from the investigation that Stephen Arnold murdered his wife before taking his own life.

'These are tragic circumstances and specially trained family liaison officers are supporting the family of the couple. Their family have been kept informed of enquiries throughout the investigation.

'Detectives are continuing to gather evidence and preparing a file for the coroner.'

A cordon has been put in place at the scene and a forensic examination will now be undertaken. Relatives of the deceased have been informed and are being offered support

Police said they were called at around 4am and found the bodies inside the house

Neighbours yesterday described the couple as 'lovely people' and the 'perfect couple'.

Many arrived at the property to lay flowers in memory of the couple, who are understood to have lived at their home alone with their dog since 2000.

A shop owner described how Mrs Arnold came into the shop, on the quiet residential estate, as normal on Monday morning. He said she was 'lovely' and 'appeared her normal self'.

Neighbour Lucy Constable also described the Arnolds as 'nice, quiet people' who she often said hello to as she walked her dogs.

She said: 'I am very shocked because you just wouldn't expect it to happen down here. It's such a quiet street and they were a really nice couple.

'It's very sad. It's only a small community and we never have any trouble down here.'

Another Bude Close resident, who went to school with the woman who died, added: 'I'm really upset because I knew them both quite well.

'I went to school with the lady. It's terrible news.'

Owner of the nearby Premier Convenience Store, Arul Kulasegaram, said he had helped police with access to his CCTV images.

I am very shocked because you just wouldn't expect it Lucy Constable, neighbour

He said: 'It's devastating news. I've been here 18 months and have never seen anything like it. I feel upset because it is horrible news in a nice village.'

Chris Ridall paid tribute to the 'perfect couple', and told how he left work early yesterday, after becoming so upset by the news.

He said: 'They were dog walkers and a lovely couple. I never thought anything like this would happen.

'I've lived here since 2000 and I am really saddened by it.

'I've come home from work early because I can't get my head around it. I just can't believe it.'

Councillor Stan Streeve visited the close this week to offer shaken residents his support following the 'appalling news'.

He said: 'It's awful news for the poor couple involved and for the whole community.

'I hope that it's nothing sinister. You really wouldn't expect it to happen in this area.

'They are good citizens who look after their neighbours.'

Meanwhile, another neighbour, Jack Linford, added: 'It's really sad because they were a similar age to my parents.

'I'm just really sorry to hear the news.'
ISIS fanatics are hatching a plot to butcher Christians in a shopping centre using chainsaws, according to the son of a radical Imam.

The teenager, from the eastern Belgian city of Verviers, was arrested after a video emerged of him walking down a street and calling in Arabic for the murder of Christians.

In a police interview, he is said to have revealed that the terror group is recruiting extremists with the aim of carrying out a massacre in a shopping mall - possibly using a chainsaw.

ISIS fanatics are hatching a plot to butcher Christians in a shopping centre using chainsaws, according to the son of a radical Imam. The teenager (pictured), from the eastern Belgian city of Verviers, was arrested after a video emerged of him walking down a street and calling in Arabic for the murder of Christians

Belgian newspaper 'La Derniere Heure' reported that over the summer the young man, the son of radical imam Shayh Alami, confessed to investigators that ISIS are recruiting lone wolves in Belgium.

He allegedly said that jihadists who went to Syria were trying to convince those who stayed at home to perpetrate terror attacks.

The Imam's son said that two of those planned attacks involved a chainsaw massacre at a shopping centre, while in another terror plot an Imam was targeted because he was 'not radical enough'.

His father, Shayh Alami has been a thorn in the side of Belgian authorities for years, and they have unsuccessfully tried to deport him from the country.

Theo Francken, the Belgian Secretary of State for Asylum and Migration, is trying to deport the Imam and has started to look at possibilities to deport his son as well.

Francken said the 'hate Imam' is well-known in Verviers and the surrounding area.

He said: 'I already signed the order to remove the Imam from Belgian soil. But he appealed the decision, so I can only hope for a quick sentence. Clearly radicalism runs in the family.'

Theo Francken (pictured), the Belgian Secretary of State for Asylum and Migration, is trying to deport the Imam and has started to look at possibilities to deport his son as well

The city of Verviers where the Imam and his son live has been described as one of the centres of Belgian radical Islam together with the infamous Brussels suburb of Molenbeek.

The once well-off industrial city, in the Walloon region of Belgium, has been in sharp decline over the last few decades and is currently one of the poorest cities in the country.

It has been described by Belgian media as 'one of the most important breeding grounds for Islamists in Belgium' and has been the setting for a number of recent anti-terror operations.

The lawyer of the youngster noted that the man himself is not a suspect in those terror plots.

In the short video he appeared in, which was published by Arabic-language media watchdog MEMRI, the young man can be seen walking in the streets of the city of Verviers in Eastern Belgium. He curses Christians and prays for their annihilation.
A mattress company has been forced to apologize after issuing a tasteless 9/11 promotional video offering a 'Twin Tower sale'.

Miracle Mattress, based in San Antonio, Texas, produced the video showing two employees collapsing into a stack of mattresses pretending to be terror victims and it was later posted on Facebook.

Cherise Bonanno, manager of the store, says in the clip: 'What better way to remember 9/11 than with a Twin Tower sale?'

A mattress company has been forced to apologize after issuing a tasteless 9/11 promotional video offering a 'Twin Tower sale'

Miracle Mattress, based in San Antonio, Texas, posted the video showing two employees collapsing into a stack of mattresses pretending to be terror victims on Facebook

After shouting: 'Store-wide sale all day long,' two men behind the woman collapse onto a stack of mattresses in simulation of the Twin Towers terrorist attack.

Bonanno shouts: 'Oh my God!' before looking into the camera and saying: 'We'll never forget.'

The owner of the business Mike Bonanno apologized in a letter posted to social media.

He said: 'The video is tasteless and an affront to the men and women who lost their lives on 9/11.

'Furthermore, it disrespects the families who lost their loved ones and continue to struggle with the pain of this tragedy every day of their lives.

'All I can say is I am deeply sorry and on behalf of the entire Miracle Mattress family, I accept responsibility for this thoughtless and crude advertisement and will immediately hold my employees accountable for this serious lapse of decency.'

Cherise Bonanno (centre), manager of the store, says in the clip: 'What better way to remember 9/11 than with a Twin Tower sale?'

After shouting: 'Store-wide sale all day long,' two men behind the woman collapse onto a stack of mattresses in simulation of the Twin Towers terrorist attack

Reacting to the video John Lazar, a volunteer firefighter in New York, said: 'I am truly horrified. Your actions have proven to me that you have forgotten'

The businessman added: 'Effective immediately, Miracle Mattress will review our entire marketing strategy to ensure a stringent approval process will be in place to stop this from every happening again.

'We will also engage a personnel review to hold these employees accountable for their actions.'

The video has drawn widespread outrage from viewers online.

John Lazar, a volunteer firefighter in New York, said: 'I am truly horrified. Your actions have proven to me that you have forgotten.

'The terror of that day was never felt by you or anyone who worked on that commercial or even came up with the idea of a sale gimmick on that day.'

The video has drawn widespread outrage from viewers online

The owner of the business (pictured) Mike Bonanno apologized in a letter posted to social media

Joe Rios said: 'This makes me and countless other Americans sick.'

Twitter user Random Things said: 'What a disgusting way to try to make money' while TrueAmerican said: 'This is so disrespectful! Shame on you!'

The offensive clip comes just days after a Walmart in Florida came faced criticism for also using 9/11 as a promotional stunt.

A display in the store saw boxes of Coca-Cola stacked into an American flag behind a representation of the Twin Towers.

A Walmart spokesman said Coca-Cola had approached the retailer with the idea. Walmart bosses decided to take down the display after the social media backlash.

In 2014 an Alabama clothing company requested 2,296 retweets, one for each person who had lost their life in the attack.
An Italian social worker accused of strangling a policeman and chopping him up after meeting him on gay dating app Grindr denied murder today.

Stefano Brizzi, 50, is accused of killing 59-year-old PC Gordon Semple before dismembering his body and dumping the pieces in the communal bins of his block of flats in south London.

Police were alerted after neighbours complained of a smell of death a week after the officer disappeared, having been last seen walking past the Shard skyscraper.

In the dock: Stefano Brizzi, 50, left, is accused of killing 59-year-old PC Gordon Semple, right, before dismembering his body and dumping the pieces in the communal bins of his block of flats

PC Semple, from Greenhithe, Dartford, was reported missing by his partner Gary Meeks on Friday April 1 after he failed to come home from work.

Balding and clean-shaven Brizzi, appeared at the Old Bailey today by videolink from Belmarsh prison wearing spectacles, a pink shirt over a white T-shirt and dark jeans.

He spoke to confirm his name with an Italian accent and sat with his hands clasped throughout the brief hearing.

When the charge of murdering PC Semple between April 1 and 7 this year was put to him by the court clerk, Brizzi shook his head and replied: Not guilty.

Brizzi faces trial next month, which which is expected to last between seven and ten days.

The defendant is charged with the murder of a police officer who he met, it would seem, through Grindr, prosecutor Crispin Aylett QC said at an earlier hearing.

The Crown allege the defendant strangled the victim then dismembered his body and disposed of some of the remains in the communal waste bins and in other ways.

Shocking: Police were alerted after neighbours complained of a smell of death a week after the officer disappeared, having been last seen walking past the Shard skyscraper

The officer, originally from Inverness, Scotland, had worked in the banking industry before joining the Metropolitan Police.

He was attached to a Westminster Council anti-social behaviour unit.

After the family announced his death on Facebook, his brother, Ronnie Semple, said: I would like to thank everyone for their kind thoughts during the past dreadful week.

It has been a terrible time for us all, especially Gary.

Gordon will be sadly missed by all of his immediate family, his colleagues in the Met Police, former Bank of Scotland colleagues in Inverness and London, friends from his Tartan Army Days, but most of all the hardest loss is for Gary at this time.
His $120m fortune comes from property near St Lucia in

A property tycoon once worth $120million is under investigation after he claimed food stamps for two years.

Ali Pascal Mahvi, 65, lives in an $800,000 mansion in Russell Township, Ohio with an outdoor swimming pool, stables and a BMW and a Lexus in the garage.

But for the last two years he's shamelessly claimed $300 a month in food stamps and used Medicaid to help fund a stay in hospital after he suffered a heart attack.

Under investigation: Ali Pascal Mahvi, 65, is worth $120million but is under investigation after he claimed food stamps for two years

Luxury: He lives in an $800,000 mansion in Russell Township, Ohio with an outdoor swimming pool, stables and a BMW and a Lexus in the garage

His fortune comes from property in a Caribbean resort near St Lucia that his Iranian prince father developed years ago.

But he says he's run out of cash and, unable to sell the property, has been forced to claim welfare for his wife and three adult children.

'From the outside, it looks like I'm living like a king. But I assure you, I am not. I had to feed my family,' he told WKYC.

Mahvi is under investigation by police who believe he concealed his assets, as well as thousands of dollars of loans from his friends, to claim food stamps.

Heritage: His father is Abolfath Mirza Mahvi, a Prince Royal of Iran, pictured here in a painting

Mahvi is under investigation by police who believe he concealed his assets, as well as thousands of dollars of loans from his friends, to claim benefits. Pictured: His living room

His bank records during the time he was claiming - from March 2014 to February 2016 - show he spent $4,600 on a mortgage payment, $567 on cell phones, $200 for meals at local restaurants and $350 for cable TV.

But he maintains his innocence, claiming that he's sold all of his wife's jewelry, equity in his home is maxed out, and he has only $800 left in the bank after falling into debt following failed business ventures.

Police, who are yet to charge Mahvi, say he did not disclose $4.2million held by his family in 14 different bank accounts, according to an affidavit compiled by Geauga County investigators.

Wealth: Mahvi's fortune comes from property (pictured) in a Caribbean resort near St. Lucia that his Iranian prince father developed years ago

Smooth wheels: Mahvi has a four-car garage complete with a BMW and a Lexus

Police claim that Mahvi's father Abolfath Mirza Mahvi, a Prince Royal of Iran and founder of development company M. Group Resorts, holds more than $4million in a Swiss account.

But Mahvi denied that, saying: 'Show me the account. I will kiss your feet.'

Geauga County Prosecutor James Flaiz said Mahvi is a con man whose claiming of food stamps was 'outrageous.'
West Midlands Police will discuss allowing the burka (stock photo) - which covers the entirety of a woman's face and body - to become part of the uniform

One of the largest police forces in the UK was today mocked after saying it would consider letting Muslim officers wear burkas in an attempt to boost diversity.

West Midlands Police said it will discuss allowing the traditional Islamic dress - which covers the entirety of a woman's face and body - to become part of Muslim female officers' uniform.

At a recent meeting, Chief Constable David Thompson, said he would consider employing staff who wear a burka as he looks to increase black and minority ethnic (BME) officers in the region to 30 per cent.

But today, even the Muslim Council of Britain said they would be against female officers wearing full-face burkas or niqabs.

The organisation said they would find it 'very surprising' if the force allowed full-face coverings to be used.

A spokesman said: 'In the media the term burka is used to describe the full face covering but the veil with the slit for the eyes is actually the niqab.

'The burka is actually the full gown which goes from shoulder to ankle with the face remaining clear.

'It would be very surprising if West Midlands Police were in favour of full-face coverings.

'The actual percentage of women wearing a niqab is very, very small and the women who do would probably not want to be in the police.'

And a source at West Midlands Police even criticised the idea of female officers wearing full-face veils, adding it would be 'mad'.

At a recent meeting, Chief Constable David Thompson (pictured), said he would consider making the burka part of the uniform

They said: 'Apart from anything else there is the health and safety issue.

'How could you possibly have an officer pursuing a suspect down the street while wearing a burka over their face? It is frankly a mad idea.

'I think the Chief Constable was probably trying to be politically correct because if he'd said outright no to burkas then he would have come in for some stick as well.'

West Midlands Police has already approved hijab-wearing officers and currently allows Sikhs to replace their helmet with a turban.

The hijab - a headscarf covering the head and neck but leaving the face clear - was approved after being requested by a number of Muslim women.

The Metropolitan Police introduced it a decade ago and the hijab is now successfully integrated into several forces across the UK - most recently in Scotland.

Currently no serving officers wear the burka - which leaves the eyes barely visible - but it is hoped the move would encourage more BME recruits.

Speaking after a meeting last Thursday, Chief Constable Thompson said: 'We would need to consider our own rules and cultural sensitivity.

'Clearly we don't have any barriers relating to the burka.

'As it stands we have not had any approaches from potential recruits asking to wear the burka, but if such an approach was made it is something we would have to consider.'

The Metropolitan Police began letting police officers wear hijabs a decade ago and it is now successfully integrated into several forces across the UK

West Midlands Police is currently trying to increase BME staff from just nine per cent to 30 per cent.

The force announced its latest recruitment drive last week, and so far more than 6,000 people have applied for just 1,100 positions.

Sales manager Neil Dixon, 34, from Edgbaston, Birmingham, said the move would be 'political correctness gone way too far'.

He said: 'The idea of police officers walking around in burkas is so wrong, it would be political correctness gone way too far.

'Good policing is all about building trust and facial expressions forms a huge part of that.'

FROM THE HIJAB TO BURKA: A GUIDE TO MUSLIM HEADWEAR Hijab - A hijab is a veil traditionally worn by Muslim women in the presence of adult males outside of their immediate family. Their face is visible and it typically covers a woman's head and chest. Niqab - A niqab is a veil which covers almost the whole face, showing only the eyes. Burka - A burka is a full body cloak worn by some Muslim women. A piece of semi-transparent cloth in front of the eyes allows the woman to see. Advertisement

Meanwhile, opinion was split between politicians and the Police Federation over whether the burka or niqab was suitable for female officers to wear.

Labour councillor Diane Donaldson, who represents the Hodge Hill ward in Birmingham, said: 'I am in favour of allowing women to wear their burkas during service.

'It's not going to stop them carrying out their job properly.'

Labour councillor Sybil Spence, who represents the Soho ward, said: 'When it comes to dressing, it's about feeling comfortable.

'It won't hinder women from doing their proper job.

'As long as they are well-trained and they're doing their job and you can see their faces, then that's all that matters. '

Che Donald, diversity spokesman for the Police Federation of England and Wales, said: 'Forces need to be representative of the communities they serve, so there is flexibility in making adjustments to reflect officers' beliefs..

'For example, women in some forces can wear a hijab, and male Sikhs can also wear a turban.

'That said practical considerations also need to be taken into account.

'Any piece of uniform must be fit for purpose and not obstruct or hinder an officer in carrying out their normal duties and any changes need to also be examined for Health and Safety considerations.

'However, ultimately the decision about uniform choices is up to individual forces.'

Last year, a burka-clad gang, who carried out a 1.5million heist at Selfridges in London (pictured) was jailed for a total of 64 years

In 2015, a burka-clad gang, who carried out a 1.5million heist at Selfridges in London along with nine other high-profile raids, was jailed for a total of 64 years.

The gang was responsible for a total of 10 raids, including a high-profile break-in at the world famous Oxford Street store in June 2013.

They forced their way into the store while wearing burkas and threatened terrified staff and customers while they smashed display cabinets.

A niqab (pictured) is a veil which covers almost the whole face, showing only the eyes

The gang was led by the nephew of Birds of A Feather star Linda Robson.

Reece Dunford, 31, whose aunt is most famous for playing Tracey Stubbs in the hit TV sitcom, orchestrated 3m worth of daring heists across plush London stores.

In 2010, the government released information which provided an insight into the training which was given on how women wearing face-covering clothing should be treated at the border.

The government said it is a 'requirement that Border Force Officers' establish the nationality of all passengers who enter the UK.

It added that officers are requested to ask passengers to remove veils or other face-coverings so they can be identified as the 'rightful holder of their passport or travel document'.

Female passengers, who are uncomfortable removing a face covering in public or in the presence of males, can be checked in private by a female officer.

Detention Services provided written guidance, and wrote: 'Some female visitors, particularly those of the Muslim faith, will wear veils or other face coverings for religious reasons.

'They must not be made to uncover their faces or hair in public or in front of a man as this could cause serious offence and distress.

'When required for security or identification purposes, the removal of the veil or face covering must be done in private with only female staff present.

'Following the removal of headwear, the person must be given the opportunity to use a mirror, and to have privacy and time to put it back on.'

In France, laws banning the wearing of burkas in public have led to ugly clashes in the streets, protests and a high-profile legal challenge.

Earlier this month a YouGov poll found 57 per cent of Britons would support a similar ban.

BOSS BEHIND THE SUNSHINE SQUAD Dave Thompson raised eyebrows with his comments on the burka  but it isnt the first time the Chief Constables force has landed in hot water. In August last year, when he was deputy chief, West Midlands Police faced questions over a decision to send a sunshine squad of officers to Magaluf and Ibiza. The trip, derided by some as a jolly, was aimed at helping their Spanish counterparts tackle the boozy antics of British tourists. Selfie time: An officer from the West Midlands Police takes a selfie in Magaluf Weeks earlier Mr Thompson admitted a decision to refuse to identify a string of on-the-run criminals left his force looking silly. Bureaucrats had turned down a request by the Daily Mail under freedom of information laws to name the ten suspects who had spent longest on the run. And his force was also slammed for selling tickets to a public misconduct hearing for an officer caught smoking cannabis. It employed events firm Eventbrite to allocate seats at the hearing. According to his online biography, Liverpool University graduate Mr Thompson is committed to delivering a modern policing service. He was made deputy chief of West Midlands Police in 2010, awarded the Queens Police Medal in 2014 and he took the top job in January. Advertisement

Last night, the Home Office sidestepped the row, saying uniforms were a 'matter for individual forces'. Tim Loughton, acting chairman of Parliament's home affairs select committee, said he has grave doubts. 'Of course police forces must work to be as inclusive as possible but an important feature of police work is face-to-face contact,' he said.

'With someone wearing a burka this is obviously simply not possible. And how would they pursue a suspect down the street? This is not about discriminating against somebody, it is about ensuring we have police officers practically and physically capable of doing the job.'

Douglas Murray, of think-tank The Henry Jackson Society, said: 'Burkas cover the entire face and there are obvious security risks with that. Also, the burka itself is a fundamental statement of opposition to what we would regard as the law of the land.

'It is a symbol of the most fundamental form of Islam in which women are so tempting to men every single inch of them must be hidden.'
Six in 10 Britons think they are better off as citizens of the UK than anywhere else on earth - despite British vices of excessive drinking and complaining.

An exclusive survey by Ipsos Mori found Brits are generally proud of their country with only 13 per cent actively thinking it would be better to be a citizen of another state.

Just two months after the Brexit vote, Britons are much more likely to identify as either British or their home nation of England, Scotland or Wales than they are to describe themselves as European.

In an exclusive poll, 60 per cent of people said being British was the best citizenship available on earth - with just 13 per cent disagreeing

When asked whether they identify with being British, European, or English/Scottish/Welsh, on average respondents tend to align mostly with their home nation or Britain, and are very unlikely to identify as European.

The survey asked people to distribute ten points according to how much they associate with each identity and found on average 4.6 points were allocated for the home country, 4.5 for British and just 0.9 points were given to identify with being European.

Tory MP Michael Fabricant backed the findings of the survey.

He told MailOnline: 'I would rather be British than any other citizenship.

'Our tolerance and decency exceed all other.

'I am really looking forward to eventually having a new passport that doesn't say I am a citizen of the European Union, which my present one does.'

Jacob Rees-Mogg, the North East Somerset MP, added: 'John of Gaunt was right: Our country is the ''demi-paradise... this precious stone set in the silver sea''.

'To be British in the reign of Elizabeth II is the greatest good fortune anyone could hope for in the history of civilisation.'

Britons are proud of their country and more than a third rank the Royal Family in the top ten things Britain has to celebrate

The NHS was the British institution most commonly named in the survey with half of people naming it in the top ten things best about Britain

The survey revealed stereotypically British characteristics are alive and well.

Brits see themselves as having a good sense of humour and being polite, by 47 per cent cent and 40 per cent respectively.

But 42 per cent of people think British people drink too much, 37 per cent that they are ignorant of other cultures and 27 per cent don't like the excessive complaining.

Exactly half of Britons in the survey rate the NHS among the things that make them most proud of their country, followed by 43 per cent saying the nation's history and and 31 per cent say the Royal Family.

Britain's history also scored highly in the poll, as did Britain's sports teams, the Army and the nation's free press

Harry Evans, Senior Researcher, Ipsos MORI, said: 'Pride in typically British institutions has always been widespread, and post-Brexit this is not something that has changed.

'These figures show that there is still significant positivity attached with Britishness, and as a label we are far more comfortable to identify ourselves as Britons than Europeans.'

Ipsos Mori surveyed 1,099 adults in the poll, which was carried out from July 26 to 29 to study the aftermath of the referendum.

Britain's history - such as that recounted at the landmark Tower of London - is another major point of pride for the British
A young girl screamed as she was allegedly snatched by a man with autism from her family in a busy shopping centre.

The four-year-old was sitting with her family in the food court of the Northland Shopping Centre in Preston, north of Melbourne, when the man grabbed her and ran about 50 metres, according to the witness who spoke to the Herald Sun.

A witness has described a little girl's screams as 'blood-curdling'.

'He was running extremely fast, dodging the tables, going towards the exit,' she said.

A four-year-old girl was allegedly snatched by a man with autism in the food court of the Northland shopping centre

'The mother was beside herself,' she added.

A member of the public chased the man, and after a small scuffle the young child was returned to her father.

The witness said she was told the man had autism, which was why the shopping centre security did not call the police.

Northland Shopping Centre spokesman said they will assist Victoria police in the matter and provide the necessary CCTV to them

Another woman who was at the scene and with the alleged snatcher said that he would not have known what he was doing.

Victoria police are investigating the incident and a spokeswoman confirmed that a 26-year-old man from Reservior with an intellectual disability was spoken to by police at a police station and was released without charge.
Senior Tory MP Nicky Morgan slammed the Prime Minister's schools revolution as 'wrong' today within hours of the plans being unveiled.

The former education secretary - who was sacked from her post by Mrs May in July - said there was no need to extend academic selection through a new wave of grammar schools.

Mrs May placed an end to the ban on new grammar schools - imposed by Tony Blair in 1998 - at the heart of the mission for her new government today as she vowed to make Britain the 'world's greatest meritocracy'.

Mrs Morgan's brutal intervention came amid a growing backlash within hours of Mrs May's first major speech. Labour peers have warned the plans could be 'dead on arrival' in the House of Lords because of entrenched opposition.

Ofsted chief Sir Michael Wilshaw led criticism of today's speech, warning new grammar schools could threaten a 'turnaround' in state education.

Theresa May today vowed to bring about a revolution in Britain's education system that would allow selection in schools but not leave anybody behind

As well as new and reformed grammar schools, Mrs May unveiled looser rules for faith schools to select based on religion, new rules on universities charging high fees and demands on private schools in return for their charitable status.

Mrs May today insisted 'fear is unfounded' as she unveiled her plans, including a policy to allow children would be able to change in or out of grammars at 14 and 16 and not just at 11.

The Prime Minister said: 'People get lost in the argument about whether the grammars schools of the 1950s and 60s improved social mobility or not.

'But I want to focus on the new grammars of the future: those that will be just one element of a truly diverse system which taken as a whole can give every child the support they need to go as far as their talents can take them.

NEW FREE SCHOOLS CAN PICK ALL PUPILS BASED ON BELIEF The Catholic Church and other religions will be free to open new schools which select entirely on the basis of faith. Theresa May has decided to sweep away an admissions cap which requires new free schools or academies to select just half of their pupils on the basis of belief. The cap was designed to promote integration and stop schools falling into extremists' hands. But the Catholic Church said it had stopped it opening new schools. A Downing Street source said the cap had 'failed to make minority faith schools more diverse, because parents of other religions and none do not send their children to those schools'. And it had 'prevented new Catholic schools from opening, which are more successful, more popular and more ethnically diverse'. Andrew Copson, chief executive of the British Humanist Association, warned the plan would 'catastrophically' set back a 'more inclusive education system'. Advertisement

'And give every parent access to a good school place for their child.

'This is the true test of schools that work for everyone. And the true test of a meritocratic society.'

But Mrs Morgan warned extending selection would undermine six years of reform carried out by herself and her predecessor, Michael Gove.

Mrs Morgan said: 'I believe that an increase in pupil segregation on the basis of academic selection would be at best a distraction from crucial reforms to raise standards and narrow the attainment gap and at worse risk actively undermining six years of progressive education reform.'

Under the plans announced in Westminster today, Mrs May will:

Allow the opening of new grammar schools provided they take a quota of pupils from poor backgrounds  or open a non-selective school to run alongside;

Pave the wave for children to change school at 14 or 16 depending on their ability to ensure there is no 'cliff edge' at age 11 .

Scrap a rule which bans the Catholic Church and other faiths from opening new free schools or academies which can select children entirely on the basis of faith;

Force any university which wants to charge fees of 6,000 or more to open and run a school locally or take over an existing school which is under-performing.

Launch a tough new crackdown on private schools to ensure they help their community and run state schools in return for their charitable status

Former education secretary Nicky Morgan - who was sacked by Mrs May in July - outlined her opposition to the new reforms in a Facebook post today

Mrs May said there would be no 'cliff edge' in selection and said her reforms would allow children to move in or our of selective schools or classes at 14 and 16 as well as 11.

She said: 'The truth is that it doesn't have to be a cliff-edge at all. This is back in the old mindset of the grammar schools of the past.

'A modern, meritocratic education system needs to be much more flexible and agile to respond to the needs of every child.

'This means that children who are at a non-selective school sponsored by a grammar might join the grammar for specific subjects or specialisms where they themselves are outstanding  or they might move to the grammar full-time later than aged 11, based on their performance at their current school.'

In a shock move, Prime Minister May will also allow existing state comprehensives and academies to convert to grammars  if there is local demand

Mrs May said approvals for schools would be used to ensure new selective schools open where they are needed and not just in wealthy areas.

'PRIVATE SCHOOLS MUST DO MORE', MAY WARNS Private schools have become 'divorced from normal life' and must do more to justify their charitable status, Theresa May has warned. As part of her overhaul of the education system, the Prime Minister demanded schools such as Eton sponsor or set up their own state schools. And she said they would have to do more to fund places for children from poor backgrounds. Mrs May said: 'These are great schools with a lot to offer and I certainly dont believe you solve the divide between the rich and the rest by abolishing or demolishing them. 'You do it by extending their reach and asking them to do more as a condition of their privileged position to help all children.' She added: 'I want all independent schools with the appropriate capacity and capability to take these kinds of steps.' Advertisement

The Premier declared: 'It is not a proposal to go back to the 1950s but to look to the future, and that future I believe is an exciting one.

'It is a future in which every child should have access to a good school place. And a future in which Britain's education system shifts decisively to support ordinary working class families.'

Mrs May used her speech to promise extra help for poor families who miss the Free School Meals threshold.

And she said she would go further in building links between the best state schools, independent schools and universities with struggling schools.

Under the reforms, every school in England will be free to convert to a grammar or selective school under the biggest education revolution in decades.

Mrs May promised to allow the opening of new grammar schools for the first time since 1998 in a bonfire of 'ideology and dogma'.

Officials believe it could lead to hundreds of grammars and selective schools springing up across the country, but the plans are sure to trigger a huge political row.

Theresa May was herself a grammar in the 1970s when she attended Holton Park Girls' Grammar School in Oxfordshire

Mrs May, pictured right at school in 1974, has long wanted to end the ban on new grammar schools and campaigned against the Labour government policy when she was shadow education secretary

Theresa May today vowed to bring about a revolution in Britain's education system that would allow selection in schools but not leave anybody behind

The Prime Minister praised both Michael Gove and Labour's Andrew Adonis for pioneering a 'revolution' in schools that means she starts from a 'position of strength'.

And she said: 'If you're earning nineteen, twenty, twenty one thousand pounds a year, you're not rich. You're not well off. And you should know you have our support too.

'At the moment there is no way to differentiate between the school experience of children from these families and those from the wealthiest ten per cent.

'Policy has been skewed by the focus only on those in receipt of Free School Meals, when the reality is that there are thousands of children from ordinary working class families who are being let down by the lack of available good school places.'

Mrs May also vowed to crack down on private schools, which she warned were 'divorced from normal life'.

She said: 'Through their charitable status, private schools collectively reduce their tax bills by millions every year.

'And I want to consult on how we can amend Charity Commission guidance for independent schools to enact a tougher test on the amount of public benefit required to maintain charitable status.'

Labour vowed to bitterly contest the reforms  despite leader Jeremy Corbyn and his most senior allies attending grammars

Mrs May's revolution goes far further than expected, by also allowing existing State schools  from comprehensives to academies  to apply to become grammars. To do so, there must be a demand for good places locally and they must meet one of four strict rules.

UNIVERSITIES HAVE TO SET UP SCHOOLS IF THEY RAISE FEES Universities will be forced to set up new schools or take over ones which are failing to help drive up standards. The new requirement will be imposed on any university which wants to charge annual tuition fees of 6,000 or more. With most establishments now charging 9,000 per student, almost every university in the country will be dragged into the net. It will mean some of the world's most successful universities being directly involved in teaching local children. Number Ten said that 'prior attainment' is one of the biggest factors determining access to university. One official said: 'Under the new arrangements, universities would be expected to use their educational expertise to do more to raise standards in schools.' The universities would run the schools, but would not pay for their establishment or annual costs. Universities can either open a new school or sponsor an existing one which Ofsted considers to be 'underperforming'. The regime will be enforced via the the independent Director for Fair Access, which polices university admissions. Advertisement

The same rules apply to new grammars and existing schools wishing to expand.

One option is that they must take a fixed quota of poorer pupils, such as those receiving free school meals.

All pupils would have to pass the selection test  then, of those who did so, a proportion would have to be from lower-income backgrounds.

Officials said this would ensure that selective education was 'not reserved for those with the means to move into a catchment area or pay for tuition to pass the test'.

The three alternatives are to establish a new, high-quality, non-selective free school nearby for those who do not pass; set up or sponsor a primary feeder school in an area with a 'high density of lower-income households'; or sponsor a currently under-performing non-selective academy.

Mrs May is braced for a ferocious backlash from the Left-wing teaching establishment.

She will also face a battle to get the legislation through the Commons and the Lords  where peers have vowed to kill it stone dead.

Oftsed chief Sir Michael Wilshaw led criticism today, telling the Standard: 'If grammar schools are the answer to social mobility, why aren't there more in London which is the stand-out performer in our nation?

'There's been a turnaround in state education ... we don't want to put that at risk.'

Shadow Labour minister Jonathan Ashworth said: 'It's utterly ludicrous for Theresa May to stand up and talk about creating a 'great meritocracy' and then in the next breathe announce a return to grammar schools.

'The Prime Minister can talk all she wants about delivering for everyone but what matters is what she does, and her actions reveal the Tories' true colours: working in the interests of the few while everyone else is left behind.

'Grammar schools won't improve the lives of the many; they offer nothing to help hundreds of thousands of our children who deserve the best start in life.

'In returning to this failed project Theresa May is shifting the Tories even further from the interests of ordinary people, further that even David Cameron who said that rejecting the stale old grammars debate was a ''key test'' of whether the Tories were fit for government.'

Oftsed chief Sir Michael Wilshaw led criticism of the new policies today, warning they would risk a turnaround which had been achieved in state education

Yesterday, several senior Tories voiced concern.

Desmond Swayne, a minister under David Cameron, said: 'I would not relish the prospect of telling parents that their child  having not been able to get into the grammar school  would have to be bussed elsewhere.'

The Government's social mobility tsar, Alan Milburn, warned that a return to grammars could be 'a social mobility disaster', telling The Guardian: 'This is not selection educationally, it is selection socially.'

This is not selection educationally, it is selection socially. Government's social mobility tsar, Alan Milburn, on return to grammars

Labour vowed to bitterly contest the reforms  despite leader Jeremy Corbyn and his most senior allies attending grammars.

The Association of School and College Leaders, which represents secondary heads, said increased selection was 'education policy by nostalgia' that would not help social mobility.

The National Union of Teachers described it as a 'regressive move' and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers said it would be a 'massive distraction'.

Andrew Copson, chief executive of the British Humanist Association, said: 'If the Government moves to scrap the requirement that religious-free schools must keep at least half their places open to local children, regardless of the religion or beliefs of their parents, they will be sending a very damaging message: that an integrated society is not worth striving for, and that the will of the religious lobby trumps the best interests of our and children and our country.

'Religious selection in schools  the process by which children as young as four are defined and divided by their parents' religious beliefs  has been and continues to be a significant barrier to fostering that mutual understanding and respect.

'If the proposals are as reported, we will do everything we can to oppose them and ensure the progress we have made towards a move inclusive education system is not so catastrophically set back.'

Senior Tory blasts Theresa May's 'regressive' plans to let faith schools select more pupils based on religion

Dr Sarah Wollaston, chair of the health select committee, said the plans to relax admission rules for faith schools are 'regressive' and 'can have nothing to contribute to a more integrated and cohesive society'

Theresa May's plans to relax admission rules for faith schools have been branded 'regressive' by a senior Tory MP.

Conservative MP Dr Sarah Wollaston, chair of the health select committee, said the Government should be removing barriers in communities, not putting them up.

She said allowing schools to select 100 per cent of their pupils based on faith 'can have nothing to contribute to a more integrated and cohesive society'.

It signals the scale of the challenge Mrs May faces to get the legislation through Parliament.

Current rules, which put a 50 per cent cap on the proportion of pupils selected by faith, have been blamed for preventing new Catholic schools from opening .

The cap was designed to promote integration and stop schools falling into extremists' hands. But the Catholic Church said it had stopped it opening new schools.

Mrs May's reforms to faith school admission rules are part of major reforms to the schools system. Controversially, her schools revolution will allow new selective grammar schools to open but she promised there would be 'no cliff edge' in selection as children would be able to change in or out of grammars at 14 and 16 and not just at 11.
Four paedophiles who abused children over five decades were branded 'monsters of the deepest, darkest depths' by a judge as he jailed them for a combined 63 years.

Joseph Foster, 74, Logan Morris, 71, Stephen Amos, 62, and Martin Belgium, 55, were convicted of 27 offences against nine victims.

The predators raped and molested seven girls and two boys - some as young as five - in a 'morass' of offending spanning from the late 1970s to 2012 that often went unreported, and one victim claimed was as regular as 'washing up.'

Logan Morris (left) and Martin Belgium (right) were jailed for 15 and 12 years respectively for their horrific crimes

Stephen Amos (left) and Joseph Foster (right) were both handed 18 years for the abuse spanning five decades

Jailing the gang for 63 years, Judge Julian Lambert said: 'The sump of depravity in which you wallowed and the extent of the damage which you did is utterly staggering.

'You generated a choking fog of misery which may never lift.

'Only time and compassion may make it thinner and hopefully memories may fade; there is no assurance they will.

'You are truly monsters in the deepest, darkest depths of corruption.'

David Scutt, prosecuting at the six-week Bristol Crown Court trial, told the jury: 'At first sight the scale and subject matter of this case must seem rather daunting.

'Ultimately this squalid case is about four men sexually abusing boys and girls.

'It became a way of life. They abused children together. They abused them apart.

Judge Julian Lambert (pictured) jailed the gang for 63 years

'They got away with it for many years.'

One of the offenders, Martin Belgium, was accused of giving a girl 'secret privileged tutorials', which she went along with as she felt she was being educated.

Other children went along with the abuse in exchange for 'fags, sweets and money' and thought it was normal, with one girl adding it was as regular as 'washing up'.

She told police: 'It wasn't something that was lovely and it wasn't something that you wanted to do but it was just one of those kind of things that happened.'

Another said: 'It was a public thing so it must have been acceptable to everybody. I just assumed everybody knew - the way it was done, it was so public.'

The court heard that though the abuse was obvious and in the open, much of it went unreported at the time.

When it was reported it was dismissed, ignored or not pursued by authorities such as police and social services.

One complainant revealed she had been abused in a police interview in 1986.

Her mother, who was with her, reacted by moving her chair away and saying: 'I can't believe you, you dirty slag.'

Amos, of Taunton, Somerset, was convicted of four rapes, one indecent assault and one count of indecency with a child

In the sentencing hearing, Jennifer Tallentire, prosecuting, read Judge Lambert moving impact statements penned by the victims.

One wrote: 'The abuse planted a seed in me that paved the way for self-destruction.

'I've felt lost most of my life. It made me trust the wrong people. It made me lack self-esteem. I felt ashamed. I felt what happened to me as a child was my fault.'

Another wrote: 'It's like a nightmare I never wake up from. I've got their nasty paw prints over me.'

Many of the men's victims attended court to see their abusers jailed, along with eight members of the jury which convicted them.

Foster, of Southmead, Bristol, was found guilty of two rapes, two indecent assaults, one attempted rape and three counts of indecency with a child.

The pensioner was jailed for 18 years and will serve a further four years on licence.

Belgium was accused of giving a girl 'secret privileged tutorials', which she went along with as she felt she was being educated

Morris, formerly of Hartcliffe, Bristol, was found guilty of six indecent assaults and three attempted rapes and was locked up for 15 years.

Belgium, of Easton, Bristol, was jailed for 12 years after after being convicted of two indecent assaults and two attempted rapes.

Amos, of Taunton, Somerset, was convicted of four rapes, one indecent assault and one count of indecency with a child.

He was jailed for 18 years and will serve a further four years on licence.

After the hearing on Thursday, Detective Constable Julie Bryan-Young of Avon and Somerset Constabulary paid tribute to the bravery of the victims.

She said the predators who abused them 'gave no thought to the long-term pain and torment' they were inflicting.

'They have displayed the utmost bravery and courage throughout our investigation and the proceeding trial,' she said.

Morris, formerly of Hartcliffe, Bristol, was found guilty of six indecent assaults and three attempted rapes

DC Bryan-Young added that the men 'abused their position of trust with the victims for their own sexual gratification'.

'These men have refused to take any responsibility for these truly despicable crimes, forcing some of their victims to relive their ordeal by giving evidence at the trial.

'The crimes committed by these men are abhorrent and I have no doubt will have a lasting effect on all the victims and their families,' she said.

An NSPCC spokesman for South West England said: 'The victims were extremely brave in speaking out.
Sara Connor and her British boyfriend David Taylor could face murder charges over the death of a Balinese officer, police have recommended .

Mugshots of the Byron Bay mother-of-two and her toyboy lover were handed over to prosecutors on Friday from police as part of evidence over the death of officer Wayan Sudarsa, whose bloodied body was found on Kuta Beach on August 17.

Ms Connor's brother, David Pistadda, visited her for an hour on Friday before the 45-year-old returned to her police cell which has no sunlight or fresh air.

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Mugshots of Sara Connor and her toyboy lover were handed over to prosecutors on Friday

Sara Connor and her British boyfriend David Taylor (pictured) could face murder charges over the death of a Balinese officer

'She's a beautiful woman, Mr Pistadda told 7News.

'She's always been good to her family, to the people around her.'

It's likely the reunion will be their last before Ms Connor goes to court, after police recommended charges of murder against both suspects.

The pair are also facing charges of assault causing death and group assault, and will have separate trials.

It's up to prosecutors which charges will be taken to the court, the ABC reports that four prosecutors have been appointed to the case, all with murder trial experience.

'We have seven days from today to study and if the files didn't meet with the formal and material requirements we would send them directives,' head of the crime division at the Denpasar District Attorney Office, Ketut Maha Agung, told the ABC.

'The prosecutors are studying the files.'

Police have recommended charges of murder against both suspects. The body of Mr Sudarsa (pictured) was found on Kuta Beach in the early hours of August 17

Ms Connor's brother, David Pistadda,(pictured) visited her for an hour on Friday before the 45-year-old returned to her police cell which has no sunlight or fresh air

Sara Connor (left) and her British boyfriend David Taylor (right) will have separate trials

Sara Connor (left) and her British boyfriend David Taylor (right) also took part in a re-enactment of what happened the night a policeman was killed on Kuta Beach in Bali

Ms Connor's lawyer, Erwin Siregar, says his client is innocent and has requested that she be allowed to leave her cell and go outdoors for an hour everyday.

'We say that Sara is not guilty and we ask for her to be freed,' Mr Siregar said.

'I hope police can give her a chance, at least one hour every day, to see the sunlight.

The body of police officer Mr Sudarsa's was found on Kuta Beach, in the south of the island of Bali, in the early hours of August 17.

Four prosecutors have been appointed to Ms Connor and Mr Taylor's case, all with murder trial experience. The couple pictured taking part in a reenactment of the alleged crime

Police files of Sara Connor and David Taylor were passed to the prosecutor on Friday

Police say he suffered 42 wounds to the body.

Mr Taylor's lawyers say their client has told police that he and Ms Connor were under the influence of alcohol when they went down to the beach on the night of August 16 and became embroiled in a fight with Mr Sudarsa - believing he knew something about the purse the mother of two had lost.

Ms Connor allegedly intervened in a bid to separate the two, sparking Mr Sudarsa to bite her.
Almost all the babies cried

A publicity stunt for a baby swimwear company has ended with almost all of the babies participating in the event in tears.

Brisbane-based company Rashoodz Swimwear staged a flash mob with 120 babies in their swimming clothes on a beach in the South Bank Parklands, Brisbane.

Footage of the event, from Seven News, shows the baby boys and girls sitting on the beach wearing little blue and pink sun-safe rash suits and hats.

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More than 100 babies attended the Rashoodz Swimwear flash mob to celebrate the label's eighth anniversary

The parents gathered around the babies can be seen trying to calm and entertain them with beach balls and brightly coloured buckets and spades.

However, many of the infants were not having, crying from beginning to end at the top of their little lungs.

The event stunt was arranged by the infant swimwear line who celebrated their eighth anniversary and a recent deal with department store David Jones.

Parents at the swimwear event can be seen trying to entertain and calm down the babies

Baby boys and girls wore adorable blue and pink rash suits and hats from the Brisbane label

Parents at the event have taken to social media to share their experience.

One woman joked: 'Never work with children or animals....still very cute.'
Rudy Giuliani Says Trump Has Given Up On Birther Movement

Trending News: Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani Claims Trump Is No Longer A Birther

Why Is This Important?

Because if its true, this marks the end of one of the dumber conspiracy theories in recent memory.

Long Story Short

According to Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump has finally accepted that Barack Obama was indeed born in the United States.

Long Story

In an interview with MSNBCs Hardball with Chris Matthews, Donald Trump adviser Rudy Giuliani said that the highest profile birther has given up on birtherism.

Donald Trump believes now that [Obama] was born in the United States, Giuliani told Matthews. I believe it, he believes it, we all believe it. But it took a long time to get it out.

Birtherism, youll remember, is the theory that Obama was not in fact born in the United States, and is therefore ineligible to be president. It ranks right alongside the theories that hes a Kenyan-born Muslim who hates America on the stupidity meter, and belief in the birther theory has been linked to racial prejudice. Obama released his long-form birth certificate in 2011, confirming to all but the most skeptical that he was indeed born in Hawaii in 1961.

The exchange quickly became heated. When Giuliani said Trump confirms that Obama is in fact US-born, Matthews repeatedly asked him, When did he do that? (Trump has yet to publicly make a statement renouncing birtherism.)

An 'extremely credible source' has called my office and told me that @BarackObama's birth certificate is a fraud.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 6, 2012

Giuliani then tried a different tack, saying Hillary Clinton was to blame for the whole birther nonsense in the first place, and that it was her 2008 primary campaign that created the issue up in 2008. That claim that has been repeatedly proved to be false, and Matthews wasnt having any of it.

After several minutes of sparring, Matthews told Giuliani that prior to the interview they checked whether Clinton had in fact brought up the issue of Obamas place of birth as a negative.

Theres absolutely no record ever if Hillary Clinton or anyone in her campaign ever saying that President Obama is not legitimate, he said, after scolding Giuliani for laughing about the issue. I think when you accuse the president of the United States of being someone who snuck in the country and assumed an identity, because thats what Trump has been doing for years now.

How amazing, the State Health Director who verified copies of Obamas birth certificate died in plane crash today. All others lived  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 12, 2013

The birther issue hasnt been raised much this year as an offensive weapon against either Obama or Clinton, but it has been used against Trump by his critics, who see his championing it as an example of both his innate racial animus and general detachment from reality.

Own The Conversation

Ask The Big Question

Is Trumps birther past going to hurt him this year?

Disrupt Your Feed

Trump says so many crazy things in any given week that birtherism is kind of quaint now, in a gross, ugly way.

Drop This Fact

In May 2011, a Gallup poll showed that 23 percent of self-identified Republican believed Obama was definitely or probably born in another country.
Alexteen Roberts was targeted on her doorstep in Tottenham, north London

A mugger tackled a 101-year-old grandmother to the floor before robbing her in a 'disgusting and mindless' attack.

Alexteen Roberts was followed on her way back from a prayer meeting and pushed to the ground, punched in the ribs, then had her handbag with 300 inside stolen.

The suspect pretended he was a council worker, saying he was there to fix her electrics before the assault in Tottenham, north London, on August 23.

Speaking after the attack, Mrs Roberts said she was now 'afraid' and called her attacker a 'wicked man'.

Mrs Roberts' family today described the attack as 'disgusting and mindless'.

Grandson Ashley Aitcheson, 31, who was inside the house, said he heard his grandmother shouting in 'distress' at around 5pm and raced out in his boxer shorts and bare feet.

He managed to punch the robber and break his aviator sunglasses during the chase but said he 'knew all the little side streets' and managed to get away.

Mrs Roberts, whose 101st birthday was on Wednesday, said: 'I'm a bit shaky. When I'm coming in the house now I'm afraid because of this wicked man.'

Grand-daughter Jacqueline McIntosh said she has complained to police because she feels the investigation has not progressed and was told by a detective the case had 'slipped through the net'.

She said the family now have to take shifts to be in the house with her grandmother as 'being attacked like that changes things'.

The man approached Mrs Roberts claiming he was there 'to do the electrics' before pushing her to the ground outside her home in Tottenham (pictured)

Maisie McIntosh (left) with her mother Alexteen Roberts. The frail centenarian was pushed to the ground and her handbag, containing between 250 and 300, was stolen

Mrs Roberts' granddaughter Natasha Angol told the Evening Standard: 'I don't know how somebody could do this to an elderly woman. It's a disgusting, mindless and insensitive.'

'She's the sweetest, kindest, nicest old lady and so fiercely independent. For somebody to take advantage of that is horrendous.'

A police spokesman said the suspect was last seen in Sherboro Road before he escaped north onto the High Road (A10), towards Seven Sisters Road.

Police say the suspect is described as a white man, around 5ft 8incs, slim built, in his 30s, with dark spikey hair and a greying inch long beard.

Mrs Roberts' handbag was stolen along with some personal items.

Mrs Roberts was mugged on her doorstep in Tottenham, north London (pictured)

Detective Chief Inspector Luke Marks, from Wood Green CID, added: 'This was a despicable attack on a very elderly lady who lived independently and is now fearful to return home.

'At 100 years old she had the sense and foresight to dismiss the suspect when he tried to con her into unnecessary electrical work but he then decided to mug her instead.

'She is naturally extremely distressed and shaken by what happened and we are appealing for help to catch his man before he targets someone else.

'Did you see him running from the area on 23 August, pursued by another man, and making off along the A10? Please come forward with any information.'
A callous thief has been caught on camera stealing a $600 from 94-year-old's bra while she was out shopping.

Maria Vasquez, who uses a wheelchair after suffering a stroke, was targeted in a clothes store in East Harlem, New York on Wednesday.

CCTV footage shows her looking at some clothes when the thief, clad in chinos and a T-shirt with his hair in a man-bun, approached.

Cruel: After looking over his shoulder to check if anyone is around, the thief suddenly thrust his hand down Maria Vasquez's bra and grabbed an envelope containing her cash

After looking over his shoulder to check if anyone was around, he suddenly thrust his hand down her bra and grabbed an envelope containing $600, her social security check for the month that she had just cashed.

As Ms Vasquez let out a startled shriek, the thief ran from the store, leaving caretaker Felicia Reyes to comfort her.

'He reached over and startled me, yanking the envelope from my bra,' she told The New York Post.

'He scratched me and took off running. I just screamed, "Run, run, he stole my money!" '

The thief, 26, has now been arrested and is being held pending charges.

Callous: Maria Vasquez, who uses a wheelchair after suffering a stroke, was targeted in a clothes store in East Harlem, New York on Wednesday. Pictured: The thief running away

The store in East Harlem where the shocking robbery took place on Wednesday at 12pm

Ms Vazquez, originally from the Dominican Republic, is convinced the thief must have followed her from the bank.

She said she worried about how to pay her bills this month without her pension money. 'I use it to pay for everything. Everything I have to pay for,' she told Daily News.

'I need it... because my husband died seven years ago, and I'm alone.'
A handgun with two spent casings were found in the trunk with the body

The keys of the car were found in the ignition and blood was on the floor

- around 325 miles away from where she was allegedly taken

Cops traced Rita's cell and found her body with a single gunshot wound in the trunk

Investigators are questioning the story of a kidnapped woman who called her family from the trunk of her car before she was found murdered.

Rita Maze, 47, of Great Falls, allegedly made frantic calls to her husband Bob and daughter Rochelle on Tuesday evening, telling them she had been abducted at a Montana Interstate 15 rest stop and thrown in the trunk.

Her body, which had a single gunshot wound to the torso, was recovered from the car along with a handgun, at just after midnight across state lines in Washington.

But when asked if news outlets should be skeptical of Maze's kidnapping story, Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich replied that people should, according to Spokesman.

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Investigators are questioning the story of Rita Maze, 47, (left and right with daughter Rochelle) who told her family she had been kidnapped before her dead body was found

The sheriff's office say they are not ruling out the theory that Maze may have committed suicide after Spokane County Medical Examiner's Office refused to rule her death a homicide.

A preliminary report found the cause of death a 'single gunshot involving the chest and abdomen' but stated that her manner of death was still 'pending an investigation'.

Cops had found Rita Maze's body in the trunk, with the keys still in the ignition, a purse was lying in the front seat and a $20 bill lay nearby. They also found blood on the ground.

'We know where the body was located; we know where she started out,' Knezovich said. 'What happened in between? Don't know.'

Rochelle Maze, who spoke to her mother while she was trapped in the trunk of the car, refutes any suggestion Rita would have taken her own life.

Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich says people should be skeptical of Rita Maze's kidnapping story

Rita Maze says she was kidnapped at a rest stop near Wolf Creek and was found 325 miles away in the trunk of her car in Washington

Police were able to put an alert out on her car license plate which was seen driving near Spokane (pictured, her car is towed away after police traced it to the neighboring state)

'I believe she was abducted,' she said Thursday. 'She did not hit herself, stuff herself in the truck and drive all the way to Spokane and shoot herself.

'They shot her and left the gun and keys in there to make it look like she killed herself,' she added. 'I know she did not (kill herself).

Rochelle said that her mother had been hysterical with fear when they spoke.

'Help me, help me,' Rita allegedly told her husband and daughter.

'She traveled with a gun, and she knew he had her gun, and she was terrified,' Rochelle said. 'He kept her in the trunk for 12 hours.'

Their conversation only lasted 10 minutes before the phone went dead - but not before Rochelle was able to tell her that she loved her.

'That's the last thing she heard,' she told the Great Falls Tribune.

Police note that Maze's car, a 2005 Pontiac grand prix, has an interior trunk release button, that allows anyone in the closed trunk to open it from the inside.

Earlier that day, Maze had been in Helena visiting her relatives, her family say. Bob Maze said he had last spoken with his wife at 11.25am on Tuesday and believes she was taken soon after.

After becoming increasingly concerned he hadn't heard from his wife and couldn't get hold of her, he and his daughter filed a missing person's report at 8.20pm.

Two hours later, he received the chilling phone call from his wife, saying she'd been kidnapped at the Interstate 15 rest stop by a 'large man in a black hoodie' who 'struck her in the head and forced her into the trunk'.

Helena police had put out an alert to locate the vehicle after Rita was reported as missing.

Maze (pictured with husband Bob and daughter Rochelle) spoke to her husband several times on her cell and had a conversation with Rochelle before she was killed

Rochelle (left, showing off her new engagement ring and right) who spoke to her mother while she was trapped in the trunk of the car, insists Rita was telling the truth

Her license plate was later spotted in Post Falls, Idaho, east of Spokane while police were also able track her cellphone to her car at a parking lot in an industrial area in West Geiger Boulevard, near Spokane Airport - more than 300 miles away from where she was abducted.

The police and the FBI - who are involved because the car crossed state lines - said Wednesday that it had identified a 'person of interest' in the case.

But yesterday, the agency said it was no longer seeking a suspect.

Police have been reviewing surveillance footage from a convenience store, while a law enforcement official says they have reports that Maze's credit card was used at two separate stores in the hours before her death.

The first purchase was made at 4.16pm in Kingston, Idaho, the next in Ritzville at 9.55pm.

TIMELINE OF RITA MAZE'S MYSTERIOUS 'KIDNAPPING' 11am Tuesday: Rita Maze fills up with gas at a Holiday Station in Helena, Montana after visiting relatives and begins the 1.5 hour-long drive home to Great Falls. 11.25am: Maze calls her husband Bob to say she may pop in to visit her mom before leaving Helena. Between 11.25am - 3.40pm: Maze visits a rest stop on the Interstate 15 where she says she was abducted by a 'large man in a black hoodie' who 'struck her in the head and forced her into the trunk'. 3.40pm: Bob Maze tries to call his wife but gets no reply. 4.16pm: Rita Maze's bank card is used at a convenience store in Kingston, Idaho. 8.20pm: Her concerned family file a missing person's report after they don't hear from her. 9pm: Police begin tracking her cell and a license-plate reader picks up Maze's car in Post Falls, Idaho. 9.55pm: Maze's bank card is used at a second convenience store, this time in Ritzville, Washington. 10.25pm: Bob Maze gets a call from his terrified wife saying she has been kidnapped by a man who has her gun. Between 10.25pm and 12.30am Wednesday: Bob Maze says he receives several calls from his wife and daughter Rochelle has a ten minute conversation with Rita until the phone goes dead. Rita also speaks to a Helena police officer. 12.30am Wednesday: Rita Maze's body was discovered in the trunk of her car in an industrial car park near Spokane Airport, Washington after police traced her cellphone. Advertisement

The family insist that Rita Maze has no enemies and couldn't think of anyone who would want to hurt her.

'My mom does not make enemies. No one would have any reason to do this to her at all,' Rochelle told Fox Spokane.

Knezovich has declined to discuss details of the case although admitted it would not be straightforward.

However, he did say people should refrain from calling it murder 'until we actually find out what is going on.'

The Spokane County Sheriff's Office said the manner of death was pending further investigation and laboratory studies which could include toxicology tests.

Maze leaves behind her husband Bob, son Michael, a sergeant in the Air Force stationed in Germany, and daughter Rochelle.

The Maze family will hold a candlelight vigil at 8pm on Saturday at Gibson Park in Gret Falls, Montana.

Tributes have poured in for the popular former cook at Morningside Elementary School in Great Falls.

'She, one, had such a positive presence,' said Bill Salonen, former principal at Morningside.

Mother-of-two Rita, pictured with her daughter Rochelle (center) and husband Bob was allegedly hysterical with fear when she spoke to her family

Maze leaves behind her husband Bob (pictured with her), son Michael and daughter Rochelle

'My mom touched every person she made contact with,' said Rochelle. 'She loved her grandkids so much,' Rochelle said, adding that Rita had been 'an amazing mom.'

Rita has recently decided to take time off work to spend with her beloved grandchildren Addyson, four, and Carly, one, the kids of son Michael and his wife Brianne.

Facebook has seen an outpouring of love and support from friends and family devastated by the loss.

Matt Cable wrote on Facebook: 'RIP to this beautiful soul. This woman was like a second mother to me. I still can't believe the news I heard this morning.

'I will always love you Rita Maze! Michael and Rochelle I'm so so sorry for your loss... 'Words can't even begin to describe.'

Madalyn Marie Stucker wrote to her daughter Rochelle: 'I love you both. you're in my prayers. she was such an amazing woman. so loving. truly an angel.'

Aprill Vickers added: 'Your mom was such a wonderful person. We grew up together, she was the maid of honor in my wedding 25 yrs ago. I am so heart broken for all of you. You and Michael and your dad was her world.'

Rita Maze says she was taken from a rustic Interstate 15 rest stop (pictured) near Wolf Creek, north of Helena in Montana
A gay man died after collapsing while wearing a gas mask in a purpose-built 'sex-shed' at his home in Dublin, an inquest was told.

Graham Egan, of Rathmines, in the Irish capital, told his partner of 11 years that he was going outside to 'chill out' shortly after midnight.

But when he failed to return, his partner, Alan Bigley found him unresponsive in a shed at the back of their house.

A gay man died after collapsing while wearing a gas mask in a purpose-built 'sex-shed' at his home, Dublin Coroners Court (pictured) was told

An inquest heard that Mr Egan, 41, was rushed to hospital on January 23 last year - but died shortly after arrival.

Mr Bigley told the coroner that the pair were watching television when Mr Egan said he was going outside, the Irish Independent reports.

'Graham said he was going out to the shed to chill out. We use it as a discreet playroom,' he is quoted as saying.

But when he went outside to check on his partner in the early hours of the morning, he found him unresponsive and wearing a gas mask. There was also evidence of sex toys, the inquest heard.

Police said he was in a concrete structure that appeared to be purpose built for sexual activity.

The coroner was told that Mr Egan had suffered from an acid reflux problem a month before his death while an autopsy revealed he had inhaled gastric contents after a recent meal.

Graham Egan, of Kenilworth Road (pictured) in Dublin told his partner of 11 years that he was going outside to 'chill out' shortly after midnight

A pathologist found evidence of 'medication in the therapeutic range' capable of causing drowsiness, the newspaper reports. There was also a 'very moderate' level of alcohol present.

State Pathologist Prof Marie Cassidy told the hearing: 'The mask was used to produce a hypoxic state to produce a heightened sexual response, but if anything goes wrong it can be lethal.'

Coroner Dr Myra Cullinane said that Mr Egan's behaviour on the night was not unusual but that it was the 'last thing he expected to occur' and that he had been unable to save himself because of the inhalation of gastric contents brought on by acid reflux.
Roger and Me

The man we knew as the blustering genius who invented our mighty Fox News Channel is a deceitful, selfish misogynist, if the charges against him are true. And if they are true, then his shame and banishment are well earned.

Like virtually all my colleagues at Fox News, I was totally blindsided by his sexual harassment scandal, which is why I responded to Gretchen Carlson's initial filing of her lawsuit with extreme skepticism. The man she described in her pleadings was unknown even to those of us who thought we knew him well.

Roger and I have known each other for decades. I always pictured him as a hail-fellow well met, a corporate barroom brawler, more likely to tear your throat out than engage in sweet talk, as my first Tweet on the matter indicates.

Geraldo Rivera @GeraldoRivera Jul 12Manhattan, NY

I've known him 40 years. He's about as flirty as the grizzly in #TheRevenant. I stand with Roger Ailes

He hired me in 1994 when he ran CNBC, and I was looking for respectability after a decade in the daytime talk show business. Roger gave me a nightly public affairs show, but not before expressing his piercing skepticism. During our first meeting, he warned against my trying too hard to be legitimate. 'I don't want shows about crocheting,' he said peering as only he can, laser-like into my eyes, adding sharply, 'If I want to watch ice melting I'll tune in Sunday Morning on CBS.'

Putting it in direct competition with CNN's Larry King Live, the dominant cable talk show of that era, Roger gave the CNBC show its name, Rivera Live, told me it was OK to wear my reading glasses on camera, and gave me free rein to chase O.J. Simpson's white Bronco. When Larry later joked how we had ripped his show off, stealing his title, I countered that what we ripped off was his ratings.

Roger and I never really hung out or traveled together, but were close enough that even though he had gone on to create Fox News, and I was still at CNBC, Roger and Beth invited me to their intimate 1998 Valentine's Day City Hall wedding, presided over by Mayor Rudy Giuliani. My wife Erica and I ache thinking about how she must be suffering.

Three years later, we reunited professionally in the awful aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks. I left the comfortable confines of CNBC to rejoin him at Fox News as senior war correspondent assigned 22 times to cover the bloody battlefields of Afghanistan and later Iraq. Through that period, he had my back through thick and thin, and I knew he would be there for my family if anything befell me in the field.

His personal and professional loyalty over the years impelled me to Tweet again on Roger's behalf, even as his scandal deepened.

Geraldo Rivera @GeraldoRivera Jul 19Cleveland, OH Don't believe the crap about #RogerAiles. Only ones talking dirt are those who hate #FoxNews & want to hurt network that's kicking their ass

Roger resigned two days later when it became apparent that Gretchen was not alone in alleging abhorrent behavior behind his closed doors. Now I am filled with regret for stubbornly discounting their various allegations. The Murdochs would not have turned the world upside down but for good cause. Moreover, I apologize for my skepticism. Like victims of sexual assault, those alleging harassment deserve the presumption of credibility.

Even Ailes' personal Inspector Javert, Gabriel Sherman, the New York Magazine writer I have called a 'nerd with a grudge' deserves my apology. He is on the right side of history. Might does not mean right. I was wrong, and am paying the price.

I learned Tuesday September 6th that after being enthusiastically received, because of my uninformed support of Mr. Ailes, and the relatively flattering portrayal of him in an early manuscript of my war memoir, 'Geraldo of Arabia, From Tora Bora to Trump, ' as a direct result, HarperCollins has chosen not to publish.

So what happens now? For one thing, the Ailes scandal will continue to percolate at least in part because of the fear and loathing by competitors for Fox News, the ratings leader. Because it suits their perceived competitive advantage, CNN and other news networks will continue to report, repeat and regurgitate every detail in this melancholy saga. Now that Mr. Sherman has been hired by MSNBC, he will most assuredly be encouraged to stay obsessively focused.

Although that is understandable, it is not fair. Having worked at all the networks over the last 47 years I can say definitively that the social culture is industry wide. Our rivals would all be better served to clean their own houses.

For a lot of reasons, news is a flirty business. With its pressure cooker environment and long hours, it is sometimes the only place young professionals can meet. Just add up all the newsroom romances that have resulted in marriage over the years.

Management's role is to keep the playing field level, professional and fair. As society evolved from the 'Mad Men' era of the 1950-60's, giant steps have been taken to protect subordinate employees from harassment and unwelcome advances, particularly by superiors. Sure, there is far to go, but as the seismic response to Gretchen and the other purported victims makes clear, the news business will no longer tolerate boorish conduct by anyone, however powerful. Strict policies including sensitivity training are in place. Perpetrators do so at tremendous peril to their careers and families.
But after appeals and retrials they were acquitted by Italy's highest court

Knox and her then boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were initially found guilty of murder and sentenced to 26 years in jail in 2009

The British student was found half naked and with her throat slit at the house she shared with Knox in Perugia in November 2007

Knox was pictured at the airport with boyfriend Christopher Robinson

Amanda Knox touched down in Toronto with her author boyfriend ahead of the release of the Netflix documentary about the Meredith Kercher murder trial.

The film - entitled 'Amanda Knox' - will premiere at the Toronto Film Festival today after the first trailers were released.

Knox was pictured at the airport along with new boyfriend Christopher Robinson, who wore a bright blue jacket with her name on with a pair of garish trousers.

British student Miss Kercher, 21, was found half naked and with her throat slit in the house she shared in Perugia with Knox in November 2007.

The US student and Raffaele Sollecito were initially found guilty of murder and sentenced to 26 years in jail in 2009, but after appeals and retrials they were acquitted last year by Italy's highest court.

Amanda Knox and her author boyfriend Christopher Robinson touched down in Toronto today

A Netflix documentary entitled 'Amanda Knox' will premiere at the Toronto Film Festival today

The first trailers have been released for Netflix's highly-anticipated documentary have been released and the film is set to come out later this month

In the documentary Knox breaks down in tears as she discusses the case that made headlines around the world.

She is asked 'did you kill Meredith Kercher?' and she replies' no' before giving the same reply to two further questions: 'Were you there that night?' and 'Do you know anything you have not told police?'

Knox, now 29, says anyone could have been in her shoes.

Looking at the camera, she states: 'That's everyone's nightmare. Either I'm a psychopath in sheep's clothing or I am you.'

'Amanda Knox' delves into the life of the 29-year-old American student whose world was turned upside down when she was accused of brutally killing Kercher in 2007 (above in 2007)

The Netflix documentary promises 'unprecedented access to key people involved and never-before-seen archival material.'

There are also interviews with Knox's ex-boyfriend and fellow co-defendant Raffaele Sollecito, as well as Italian prosecutor Giuliano Mignini.

Discussing her former house mate Miss Kercher, she says: 'We weren't best friends but I was so shocked by what happened to her. Suddenly I found myself tossed into this dark place.'

Breaking down in tears, she states: 'I was so scared. I don't know what else I can say.'

She tells the camera: 'Before Italy I had a happy life. It was very important to get out of my comfort zone and see if that made me turn into an adult.'

But after the events in Italy 'the whole world knew who I had ever had sex with. I felt like a child again and I know I was a kid'.

Tragedy: It has been almost a decade since Knox and then boyfriend Raffaelle Sollecito (left) were accused of murdering Meredith Kercher (right)

Knox and Sollecito were first acquitted in 2011 after evidence used against them was found to be flawed.

Knox immediately returned to the United States protesting her innocence, but in January 2014, the Italian courts overturned that acquittal and reinstated the guilty verdict.

However, the case ultimately went to the Supreme Court and their conviction was definitively overturned in March last year.

Knox, now a journalist in her hometown of Seattle, has since taken her case against Italian police to the European Court of Human Rights, claiming she was mistreated during their murder investigation.

Sollecito finished his undergraduate degree in computer science at the University of Perugia in 2008 while in prison.

He has since become an 'expert' for Italian crime show 'Mystery of the Week' and offers a perspective on the 'faults of the justice system'.

Sollecito (left) also appears in the trailer, speaking of happier times with Knox (right)

Knox appeared to be overcome with emotion at one point in the trailer and breaks down in tears

The brutality of the attack on 21-year-old Miss Kercher, the alleged sex games, and multiple trials provided fodder for tabloids on both sides of the Atlantic and inspired books and films.

It has previously been the subject of the documentary A Long Way From Home and TV movie Amanda Knox: Murder On Trial In Italy, with Hayden Panettiere in the title role.

Rudy Guede, from the Ivory Coast, is halfway through a 16-year sentence for his involvement in Miss Kercher's death after a separate trial.

He has always denied killing her.

The documentary, directed by Rod Blackhurst and Brian McGinn, will premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival today, before a global launch on September 30.

Knox described her carefree life before Italy, before she was accused of murder, before she was locked up in an Italian jail (pictured before she was accused in 2007)

The documentary explores the turmoil Knox faced as she she battled with the courts for almost a decade
A killer has been sentenced to 70 years in prison after his paralyzed victim identified him from his hospital bed by blinking before he died.

Jermaine Hailes was found guilty in June of murdering Melvin Pate, 29, in a drug-related robbery shooting in Prince George County, Maryland.

Mr Pate was left as a quadriplegic for two years after the shooting in November 2010.

Jermaine Hailes has been sentenced to 70 years in prison for murdering Melvin Pate (pictured), 29, in a drug-related robbery shooting in Prince George County, Maryland

His wounds left him paralyzed from the chest down with the inability to speak, but police said he remained conscious enough to blink when he was shown his attacker's mugshot

His wounds left him paralyzed from the chest down with the inability to speak, but police said he remained conscious enough to blink when he was shown his attacker's mugshot.

'He was able to make an identification... by blinking during a photo lineup that police showed him while he was in the hospital,' John Erzen, spokesman for the Prince George County State's Attorney's Office said at the time.

'They told the victim to blink once hard if he recognized someone in the photos he was shown. So, it wasn't the involuntary blink that we all do,' said prosecutor Christine Murphy according to NBC Washington.

She added: 'It was truly a closing of his eyes and opening them and you could see the tears coming from the side of his eyes as he identified the man who was his killer.'

'He was able to make an identification... by blinking during a photo lineup that police showed him while he was in the hospital,' John Erzen, spokesman for the Prince George County State's Attorney's Office said at the time

Over the past six years, Hailes' trial has been held up as the court determined whether it was possible to use Pate's identification in court.

Lawyers for the defendant claimed that showing the video during the trial would not allow their client to confront his accuser in court, as outlined in the Sixth Amendment.

Prosecutors said the victim's blink should be considered a 'dying declaration,' which is exempt from the confrontation clause.

Pate remained conscious enough to identify Hailes (pictured) by blinking when he saw his mugshot

Eventually, a judge decided to let the prosecution use Pate's identification in their case, and a jury was shown video of the moment Pate blinked in his hospital bed to identify Hailes.

'The judge ruled that Pate was competent when he gave the photo ID, and the manner it was done was legal and would be admissible,' Erzen said.

Hailes was also found guilty of second-degree murder, robbery, assault and other related charges, prosecutors said at the earlier hearing.

The trial marked the first time that a homicide victim's identification of their attacker was made admissible in Maryland court.

Additionally, a man who said he helped plan the robbery with Hailes identified him as the shooter.

However, the conspirator did not appear in court because he was afraid of the consequences.

'What are you afraid of?' a prosecutor asked.
Jailed: Daniel Green was sentenced to six years for raping a woman after a late night party in the City fuelled by drink and drugs

Grinning arrogantly as he puffs on a fat cigar and raises a drink, this is the cocaine-obsessed stockbroker jailed for rape yesterday.

The judge condemned the Citys culture of excess as he sentenced Daniel Green to six years imprisonment for attacking a woman after a drugs-fuelled office party.

The trader, who has been pictured with the far-Right group the English Defence League, ignored the 27-year-olds pleas to stop after he pounced on her beneath a desk, and only did so when she burst into tears.

Green, who had been working for finance firm StratX for only a week, said: Oh f***, shes crying.

During the trial, he claimed the sex was consensual and that she was only crying because of the size of his manhood.

But the Old Bailey jury rejected his story and took six hours to find him guilty of rape.

Jailing him, Recorder Michael Wood QC said Green had shown no remorse and displayed a certain degree of arrogance when giving evidence.

The trial also laid bare what the judge described as a City culture of excessive drinking and casual use of drugs.

After the case it emerged Greens Twitter page is littered with posts about drug taking, drinking and graphic sexual references.

In one post, the 26-year-old boasted that his blood type was cocaine, and in another said he would continue to buy cannabis and pay for prostitutes in Holland despite the Brexit vote.

Images from the film Wolf of Wall Street, in which actor Leonardo DiCaprio plays a corrupt trader who is obsessed with drugs and prostitutes, also appear.

Green also posted a picture of a group of men holding a St Georges flag emblazoned with the letters EDL and the slogan No Surrender.

The trader, circled, pictured with members of the English Defence League. The group said Green was not a member but 'imposed himself on the group to set up a photo opportunity'

Green asked EDL members if he could pose with them behind their flag at a demo in Newcastle upon Tyne four years ago, the group said last night.

The EDL said Green, who used the name Pablo, was not a member and had imposed himself on the group to set up a photo-opportunity for his own purposes.

The stockbroker, who has previous convictions for dishonesty and cocaine use, had expressed his support for the group elsewhere on social media.

Green claimed the only reason the woman cried was because of the size of his penis

As he was jailed, Green, whose Facebook features smirking selfies of him posing with brandy and cigars, showed no emotion.

Passing sentence, Judge Wood described the attack as 'persistent' and his comment - 'oh f*** she's crying' - as 'totally impersonal'.

He said: 'Having been out drinking and all of you taking cocaine, in the early hours of the morning you were wandering around the office, you had been told to go home and did not, and were behaving in a strange fashion.

'It may be you were coming down from the cocaine you were taking. But I don't accept you were waiting for the first train home, as the first Central line train leaves at 5.35am and you were still in the office well after 6am.'

The court was told how the victim had been out with a friend drinking in the City in May last year when they met Green and his work colleagues from business software firm StratX.

The group had drinks in a Pitcher & Piano bar, before heading back to StratX's offices, in Abchurch Lane, near Monument tube station, for an after hours drinking session.

At the office, they drank champagne and listed to music, until the victim realised she was tired and had taken enough drugs and alcohol, the Old Bailey was told.

Green, who claimed it was consensual sex, has photos of himself smoking cigars and drinking on social media

As she did not have enough money for a taxi, she curled up under a desk to wait for the first morning train back home.

Green then entered the office and raped her on the floor. He stopped when she started crying and quickly dressed and left the building.

During his defence Green, from Walthamstow, had claimed the sex was consensual and she only cried because of his 'large penis' - even offering to demonstrate to the court how well endowed he was.

JUDGE BLASTS CITY CULTURE OF 'EXCESSIVE DRINKING AND CASUAL DRUGS' Judge Wood said Green would not be punished for 'what seems to be a City cultural of excessive drinking and casual use of drugs when you go out socialising'. But he told him: 'Having been out drinking and all of you taking cocaine, in the early hours of the morning you were wandering around the office, you had been told to go home and did not, and were behaving in a strange fashion. 'It may you were coming down from the cocaine you were taking. But I don't accept you were waiting for the first train home, as the first Central line train leaves at 5.35am and you were still in the office well after 6am.' He said the attack was 'persistent' and his comment - oh f*** she's crying' - when he saw tears rolling down her face, was 'totally impersonal'. The judge added: 'You displayed a certain degree of arrogance when you gave your evidence.' Advertisement

He also suggested she had accused him of rape as she did not like stockbrokers, or because she was coming down from cocaine and felt 'weird.'

He said: 'She was touching me, she unbuttoned my shirt and she was touching me, also we were still kissing.

'I'm kissing her neck, she's putting her arm around me and at which point I tried to penetrate her with my penis.

'At which stage she rolled back, and at that point I saw a tear on her face so I jumped back and I said 'Oh f***. Are you're crying?'.

'I thought my penis was hurting her.'

When asked how large his penis was he claimed it was 10 inches long and four inches in circumference.

He asked an usher to demonstrate to the jury how long it was, but was stopped by the judge.

But the jury took just six hours to find him guilty of rape.

In a statement read to the court yesterday, the victim, who is now a consultant, said the attack was extremely traumatic.

It is very hard to come to terms with what happened and the effect this has had on a number of aspects of my personal and professional life, she said.

Despite the incident being a year ago, it feels very fresh in my mind. I desperately want to forget about what happened but I am not able to.

The event itself left me numb and immediately afterwards I was barely able to talk. Its desperately hard to explain how being raped has made me feel. Its such a destructive act.

Green's victim had been out with a friend drinking in the City of London when they met Green and his work colleagues from StratX (Green pictured outside court today, left, and at a previous appearance, right)

The woman was raped after she went to an office block in Abchurch Lane in the City

The woman said she broke down in tears when she told her mother what had happened.

My fear is that because I seem normal now, people wont realise the extent to which I was affected and the horrendous time and terrible journey I have been through to get to court, she said.

'ATTACK BLIGHTS MY LIFE': VICTIM REACTS TO GREEN'S SIX YEAR PRISON SENTENCE Green made no reaction as Mr Forster, prosecuting, read out a statement from his victim in which she described the devastating effect on her life and her difficulties in moving on. She said: 'The incident has been extremely traumatic for me. It has been very hard to come to terms with what happened and the effect this has had on a number of aspects of my personal life as well as my professional life. 'Despite the incident being a year ago, it feels very fresh in my mind and I still remember everything and how I felt in the ordeal. 'I desperately want to forget about what happened, but I'm not able to and fear this is something which will continue to blight my life. [The] event... has left me numb and immediately afterwards I was barely about to talk.' Advertisement

She admitted she had been drinking and taking drugs, but insisted: I am a decent person.

The woman, who knew Green and his friends socially, told the court it had been a 'normal evening'.

'We were having a good time being out on a Friday night,' she told jurors.

'There were various points on the dance floor where Daniel was dancing around me and I just remember kind of moving away and being with my friend because it was our night out.'

The victim said she and her friend were suspicious Green and his colleague fancied them, but asked if she reciprocated in any way, she said: '100 percent, no.'

During the trial, Timothy Forster, prosecuting, said: 'At some point - it appears to be well into the following morning, we are now into Saturday morning - somebody in the StratX group suggested to the group as a whole they go back to the offices and carry on the party, drinking and listening to music.'

Eight people including the victim, her friend and Green ended up back at the offices, jurors were told.

But by 4am, just the victim, her friend, Green and another man were left.

While they were there, they drank a bottle of champagne, occasionally popping downstairs to smoke outside.

Green, 26, was convicted of the rape at the Old Bailey in London earlier today

Mr Forster said: 'What was going on upstairs was good natured, and people were just drinking and listening to music and having a good time there.'

After a few hours, the victim became tired, so 'she crawled under a desk and fell asleep', the court heard.

Mr Forster added: 'And she did that also because she didn't have enough money to pay for a cab home, so decided to sleep it out and wait for the first train in the morning.

'NO REMORSE': RAPIST GREEN CARRIED OUT A 'PREDATORY ATTACK' Detective Inspector Anne Medlycott from the City of London Police said: 'This was a predatory attack on a vulnerable young woman, who will have to live with what has happened to her for the rest of her life. 'Green has shown no remorse for his actions, putting the victim through the trauma of a trial, and we hope this verdict will bring some comfort to the brave survivor of this life-changing crime. 'We praise her courage in reporting it to us and we encourage other victims to do the same.' Advertisement

'That's where she said she fell asleep, and she appears to be asleep for some considerable time.'

Some two hours later around 6am, Green entered the office.

Mr Forster told the court: 'She was lying under the desk in the gloom of the office fast asleep, and suddenly she feels somebody pulling at her lower clothing.

'She can see its Mr Green because there's enough light to do that.

'And he pulls off her trousers and her knickers.

'As she realises what he is doing, she starts saying to him, 'no', and she repeats that, but he carries on.

'All the time, she is saying no. It is only, it appears when she actually bursts into tears that he stops.

'He then got up and left her in the room quietly sobbing in the gloom of the office.'

Mr Forster told jurors Green raped his victim because he was 'jealous, 'frustrated and humiliated' in front of his new work colleagues after a friend became close with one of her group.

Green left the building, and the victim called another friend on her mobile, who contacted the police.

Police arrived at the scene, and the victim told them what had happened and Green was arrested later that day at his home. He was later told traces of the victim's DNA had been found on his boxer shorts.

Green will also be placed on the sex offenders' register indefinitely.

Speaking after the case, Detective Inspector Anne Medlycott from the City of London Police said: 'This was a predatory attack on a vulnerable young woman, who will have to live with what has happened to her for the rest of her life.

'Green has shown no remorse for his actions, putting the victim through the trauma of a trial, and we hope this verdict will bring some comfort to the brave survivor of this life-changing crime.
A plumber has been attacked by three dogs while on a job in Sydney's west, leaving him with serious injuries to his legs, chest and back.

David, 36, had gone onto the rural Kenthurst property on Pitt Town Road on Friday morning to check its septic tank when he was set upon.

The three Staffordshire bull terriers were owned by Torren Burakowski, 24, who fled media in his car following the attack without saying a word, according to Nine News.

Three dogs that mauled a plumber while he was on a job in Sydney's west were owned by Torren Burakowski, 24 (pictured)

Mr Burakowski at his house on Pitt Town Road in Kenthurst on Friday

His girlfriend reportedly witnessed the attack and tried to stop it.

The father one young child was rescued by neighbours and dragged through a front gate to safety, where Sarah, an off-duty student nurse, applied pressure to his many wounds until help arrived.

Witnesses said the dogs were so ferocious they were too scared to help the man in case they were savaged themselves.

The attack by the three vicious dogs (one of them pictured) left him with serious injuries to his legs, chest and back

The dogs (pictured) were believed to be American Staffordshire bull terriers and neighbours said they were not secured

The dogs were reportedly American Staffordshire bull terriers, but commenters on Channel 7 Sydney's Facebook page claim they are at best mutts with only a little of the breed in them.

Police officers performed first aid until Careflight paramedics arrived, and he was taken to Westmead Hospital in a stable condition.

Neighbours said they had complained to Hills Shire Council many times over the past 2.5 years that the dogs were roaming into their yards and feared an attack like this would happen.

David, 36, had gone onto the rural Kenthurst property on Pitt Town Road on Friday morning to check its septic tank when he was set upon. He was taken to Westmead Hospital (pictured)

The plumber is the father of a young child (left)

Emergencies services treat the 36-year-old tradie after the vicious dog attack

'We've asked them several times over two years. We send them text messages with photos of the dogs in our yard,' Michelle Gil told Nine News.

'It was just always going to come to this.'

Another neighbour told Nine News: 'It's too late now, everyone was predicting something like this would happen.'

David's colleague Darren told Seven News: 'We ring first if we know there are dogs on site, they are supposed to be restrained before we enter.'

The council said one of the dogs was subject to a previous nuisance order to prevent it from wandering.

Mr Burakowski's dogs attacked David when he was checking a septic tank

He fled the media in his car after the incident without saying a word

Robert Brooks witnessed the horror show and told 2GB radio that he heard 'horrific screaming and yelling... and [the victim's] just horrific scream for help', and looked over the fence to see the shocking scene.

'These dogs are just attacking him and he's just helpless, and we're helpless as well,' Mr Brooks said.

'The first reaction is to try to jump over and get [the dogs], but mate, there's no way. We're going to sort of get mauled ourselves. It was just horrific. We couldn't help the poor guy, you know?'

David was given first aid at the scene by NSW Ambulance paramedics and a CareFlight helicopter.

One dog was caught after the attack and the other two were hunted down by police and council workers in nearby bushland

The council said all three dogs had been put down

Although conscious after the attack, he suffered major puncture wounds to his arms, back, thigh, and calf from his severe mauling by the dogs.

'There was blood but there wasn't actually blood gushing out, it was actually torn down to his muscles,' Mr Brooks said.

One dog was caught after the attack and the other two were hunted down by police and council workers in nearby bushland.

The council said all three dogs had been put down.

David was rescued by neighbours and dragged through a front gate to safety, where Sarah (pictured), an off-duty student nurse, applied pressure to his many wounds until help arrived

Neighbours like Michelle Gil (pictured) said they had complained to Hills Shire Council many times over the past 2.5 years that the dogs were roaming into their yards

A flyer handed out by neighbours warning about Burakowski's dogs

It came after an 81-year-old woman was attacked by two American Staffordshire terrier crosses on Monday that left her with serious cuts to her face and body.

She remains in hospital. Two men and two women who came to her aid were also bitten.

Nine News said more than 400 children and 2,000 adults were attacked by pets in Sydney over the past year, with Staffordshire terriers the biggest culprits.

The biggest dog attack hot spots were Blacktown with 116, 85 in Sutherland Shire, 37 in Hornsby, and 35 in Fairfield.

Police officers performed first aid until Careflight paramedics arrived, and he was taken to Westmead Hospital in a stable condition

He had gone onto the Kenthurst property on Friday morning when he was set upon by the dogs
Theresa May's plans to relax admission rules for faith schools have been branded 'regressive' by a senior Tory MP.

In sweeping education reforms announced today, the Prime Minister said faith schools will be able to select more pupils based on religion by removing the 50 per cent limit.

But Conservative MP Dr Sarah Wollaston, chair of the health select committee, said the Government should be removing barriers in communities, not putting them up.

She said allowing schools to select 100 per cent of their pupils based on faith 'can have nothing to contribute to a more integrated and cohesive society'.

Dr Sarah Wollaston, chair of the health select committee, said the plans to relax admission rules for faith schools are 'regressive' and 'can have nothing to contribute to a more integrated and cohesive society'

It signals the scale of the challenge Mrs May faces to get the legislation through Parliament.

Current rules, which put a 50 per cent cap on the proportion of pupils selected by faith, have been blamed for preventing new Catholic schools from opening .

The cap was designed to promote integration and stop schools falling into extremists' hands. But the Catholic Church said it had stopped it opening new schools.

Mrs May's reforms to faith school admission rules are part of major reforms to the schools system. Controversially, her schools revolution will allow new selective grammar schools to open but she promised there would be 'no cliff edge' in selection as children would be able to change in or out of grammars at 14 and 16 and not just at 11.

Criticising proposals to allow faith schools to select up to 100 per cent of their pupils on the basis of religion, Dr Wollaston told the Today programme: 'We have a percentage of 50 per cent now, anything that moves that towards allowing greater segregation at a time when we want to have more community cohesion in my view is a very regressive step.'

She added: 'I'm opposed to 100 per cent selection by faith and this happening in more schools at a time when we should be moving to greater community cohesion and taking down the barriers.

'This in my view is completely wrong, to be going in a direction of actually putting those barriers back up and bringing in segregation by religion of children's parents.

'Even Catholic schools would accept that they should be reaching out to other faiths - and actually including other faiths in their school would have great benefits for their pupils.'

Tory MP Dr Sarah Wollaston, chair of the health select committee, took to Twitter to voice her opposition to the shake-up of faith schools and vowed to vote against the legislation when it is introduced in the Commons

Defending her plans for a radical change to faith school admission rules today, Mrs May said Catholic schools are more ethnically diverse than other faith schools and are more likely to be located in deprived communities.

'I want to remove the obstacles that stop more good faith schools from opening,' she said in her speech in central London.

'We will remove this 50 per cent rule to allow the growth in capacity that Catholic schools can offer,' she said in her speech in central London.

'Instead we will consult on a new set of much more effective requirements to ensure that faith schools are properly inclusive and make sure their pupils mix with children of other faiths and backgrounds.'

Mrs May added: 'We will encourage the grouping together of mono-racial and mono-religious schools within wider multi-racial and multi-religious trusts.

'This will make it easier for children from different backgrounds in more divided communities to mix between schools, while respecting religious differences.'
Michael B. Jordan's Fall Style

$tyleJacker Proves A Throwback Jersey Is All You Need This Season

The AskMen editorial team thoroughly researches & reviews the best gear, services and staples for life. AskMen may get paid if you click a link in this article and buy a product or service.

Michael B. Jordan is looking chill as hell with his boys in this photo posted on his Instagram. Yall f*ck with MBJ? I like this dude. Wallace from The Wire will always hold a place in my heart.

A photo posted by michaelbjordan (@michaelbjordan) on Sep 6, 2016 at 2:08pm PDT

Late summer is a difficult time for us jawn stars. You get excited that its, like, 60 degrees in the morning and put on 10 layers, but then its 90 degrees by noon and you realize you f*cked up. These are transitional times, my guys. You need to blend the looks.

Thats why MBJs look here is perfect. Hes got a breezy-ass jersey on top, light-wash jeans on bottom and Js on feet. This is the kinda 'fit that can run through 30 degrees on the Fahrenheit scale without having you break a sweat (or freeze your ass off).

Lets get it:

1. A Throwback Jersey

For those of us who came of age around the late '90s/early 2000s, nothing needs to be said about the throwback jersey. We come from a time of Juelz Santanas and Soulja Boys and we know the importance of a white tee under a throwback. For you young ones, this was the look for most of our teenage years and IMO its still an amazing 'fit.

MBJ rocks an updated fit on his jersey, meaning it actually fits him. Even the nostalgic among us need to recognize that proportions have changed and you shouldn't wear XXXXXL jerseys anymore. I know this seems weird, but get a jersey that actually fits you.

High Life

Mitchell & Ness Chicago Bulls Michael Jordan 1984-1985 Hardwood Classics Authentic Rookie Road Jersey

$249.99 at NBA.com

My Life

Thrift stores always have a grip of jerseys. Youll be hard-pressed to find a new throwback for less than $150, but you can find an equivalent almost anywhere.

2. Lightly Distressed Light-Wash Denim

MBJ knows the distressed ting is almost over. Thats why hes not wearing some destroyed SLPs or Yeezy SZN joints.

This is the elegant way to play with trends. A little nod to the mainstream while still doing your own thing. Seriously, take notes here folks. I know this kit looks understated, but subtlety is everything in fashion. His boys have flashy Balmains on but they dont look half as clean as MBJ does.

High Life

John Elliott Blue The Cast 2 Jeans

$470 at Ssense.com

My Life

Levi's Blue Slim Straight 505C Jeans

$110 at Ssense.com

3. Jordan 1 Shadows

Good luck with these ones. A size 10.5 is going for around $650 right now.

That being said, the Jordan 1 is the most perfect, most beautiful, most untouchably amazing sneaker ever created and you should have at least one colorway in your rotation. It doesnt have to be an unattainably expensive style. You wont regret bringing a Jordan 1 into your sneaker lineup.

High Life

Air Jordan 1 Retro High OG "Shadow"

$550 at FlightClub.com

My Life

Jordan Retro 1 High OG

$159.99 at Footlocker.com

Keep it simple this fall, boys. Throwbacks and Js are your friend. Just dont wear em to a September wedding and youll be straight.

AskMen may get paid if you click a link in this article and buy a product or service. To find out more, please read our complete terms of use.
A mammoth, partially blind alligator was captured on a bike trail between two South Florida schools Wednesday morning.

According to the Davie Police Department, the giant reptile measured 11 feet in length and tipped the scales at a whopping 450lbs.

Officers were called to remove the hulking gator after it was discovered at around 10am near the canal along Bonaventure Boulevard, just a couple of blocks away from a popular bike trail and two schools, Cypress Bay High School and Falcon cove Middle School.

'Big Boy' caught: This 11-foot, 450-pound alligator nicknamed 'Big Boy' by police in Florida was captured in Davie Wednesday

Scaly intruder: The hulking reptile was spotted near a bike trail along a canal, just blocks away from two schools

Busted: Police and a licensed trapper used a straw hat to distract the animal and a noose to wrangle it

Ariel Gonzalez, who was the first person to spot the animal and call 911, tells CBS Miami he was shocked when he saw it.

A wildlife trapper who was summoned to the scene was able to wrangle the scaly intruder. The grumpy gator, however, did not go quietly, having had his breakfast consisting of another live critter so rudely interrupted.

'The alligator had a turtle in its mouth when we actually noosed it, and once we got it up it opened its mouth and the turtle actually made it safely back into the canal,' said officer Anthony Berardo, according to a Sun-Sentinel report.

Berardo added that it was likely the largest alligator he has encountered in his 19 years with the road patrol in Florida.

Cypress High School student Richard Leon, who caught a glimpse of the animal, described it as 'prehistoric' looking.

'Colossal, that's the first thing that came to my mind was colossal,' the teen said of the beast, adding that he was relieved that alligator was captured.

On its Facebook page, the Davie Police Department shared a dramatic video showing the barefoot trapper struggling to subdue the primeval-looking animal using a noose.

In the course of the operation, the trapper realized that the gator was blind in one eye and tossed a straw hat on its head to distract it.

The footage shows the wildlife expert straddling the beast and using black electrical tape to secure the gator's massive maw with razor-sharp teeth before flipping it over on its back and dragging it away.

Open wide: the colossal beast did not go quietly, having had its breakfast consisting of a live turtle so rudely interrupted

Signed, sealed, delivered: The barefoot wildlife trapper straddled the subdued animal and taped its gaping maw shut with electrical tape

Captured alligators are usually put down, but because of its large size the animal will likely be taken to a preserve

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission will make the determination whether the massive creature will be euthanized or relocated.

Officer Berardo says captured alligators are usually put down, but because of its large size the animal  nicknamed Big Boy by police - will likely be taken to a preserve.

According to the cop, the gator did not seem to be afraid of humans, meaning it had likely been getting fed by them, which is a misdemeanor in Florida.

On its Facebook page, Davie Police said the Statewide Nuisance Alligator Program had been looking to trap the oversize gator for quite some time.
A Hollywood film industry couple's birthday party ended in a violent brawl with 'blood everywhere' as they fought in front of shocked guests, a court heard.

Gregory Browne, 49, and Catherine Quantschnigg, 42, allegedly went for each other in front of 30 guests at their 2.6million home in Barnes, South West London.

One invitee was pushed down the stairs by Browne, receiving a cut to his ear, when the host found him wandering around the first floor, the court was told.

Chaotic evening: Gregory Browne (left), 49, and Catherine Quantschnigg (right), 42, allegedly fought in front of 30 shocked guests at their 2.6million home in South West London

Police arrested the couple, who have a daughter aged four, in the early hours at the six-bedroom Edwardian home with each accusing the other of assault.

Film executive Quantschnigg was earlier cleared of assault over the incident on October 11 last year when movie financier Browne did not appear for her trial.

And yesterday Browne - who helped finance John Travoltas 2013 film Killing Season - was found not guilty at Wimbledon Magistrates Court of assault.

Quantschnigg is sales chief for Cornerstone Films, makers of 2015 Amy Winehouse biography Amy, and the upcoming drama Denial starring Rachel Weisz.

She is also the former vice-president of international sales for Goldcrest Films and the former vice president of Hollywood film distributor IM Global.

The incident brought an end to their turbulent five-year on-off relationship, which they had tried to save when moving into the 6,000-a-month home weeks before.

Exterior: Police arrested the couple, who have a daughter aged four, at their six-bedroom home (file picture) in Barnes, South West London, with each accusing the other of assault

Quantschnigg said: It was my birthday and house-warming party for around 30 guests and my parents flew over from Austria.

I was outside saying goodbye to some guests when I heard a really loud noise from inside. The sound of someone being thrown down the stairs and screaming.

My friend Ramin was bleeding from the ear, he broke a finger and went to hospital. There was blood everywhere.

Ramin said: Your boyfriend is insane. I dont know whats wrong with him. He was very aggressive and very drunk and I believe also on drugs, it was very scary.

Browne did not deny his push caused the guests fall, but insisted he was not bleeding heavily and that Quantschnigg exaggerated the injuries.

She told the court Browne violently blocked her from returning inside, adding: He held my wrists, grabbed me and threw me out.

Inside the home: One invitee was pushed down the stairs by Browne, receiving a cut to his ear, when the host found him wandering around the first floor, the court was told

Lounge: Browne, who had bought 2,000 worth of alcohol for the party, is said to have told two men in the home: 'Enjoy my house, enjoy my party and it looks like my girlfriend as well'

He pushed me and kicked me and I fell down the steps at the front of the house. My arm was black and blue and my knee was bruised.

Browne told the court Quantschnigg bit a chunk out of his left hand, bit his arm and kicked him in the back with her heel, causing a fracture to one of his vertebrae.

He claimed that she had been knocking back strong cocktails and was speaking intimately with Ramin and a hedge fund manager for most of the evening.

Browne, who had bought 2,000 worth of alcohol for the party, is said to have told the men: Enjoy my house, enjoy my party and it looks like my girlfriend as well.

He said this sent her into a violent rage and she followed him outside. I heard Catherine screaming abuse and she launched into me with punches and kicks.

I pushed her away with my foot and turned and then felt a thud to my back. When I grabbed hold of her she bit a chunk out of my arm.

Browne went upstairs and found Ramin emerge from his daughters empty bedroom. I said: What the f*** are you doing? and he started mouthing off.

Comparison: A guest described Quantschnigg as 'Kung Fu Panda' after the character in the DreamWorks films, saying her arms were 'flailing' and she was 'kicking and punching' Browne

I said: "Get the f*** out" and pushed him and he slipped and went down the stairs.

He then tried to block Quantscnigg entering the house. I grabbed her and pushed her. She was standing on the steps in high heels and fell backwards. Shes not a small girl. She packs a punch and takes a big bite.

Shes not a small girl. She packs a punch and takes a big bite Gregory Browne, speaking about his former partner Catherine Quantscnigg

Guest Maxine Henshilwood, 48, backed-up Brownes account of being attacked by Quantschnigg. She said: Kung Fu Panda comes past, arms flailing. Shes kicking and punching him. Then she went to hit me and attacked him again.

Browne called 999 to complain he had been assaulted and when police arrived he flagged down their car, saying: Im the victim here. Dont judge me yet.

Tony Wyatt, defending, told the court: This is a woman that will do anything and say anything to get herself out of trouble and see Mr Browne convicted.
Jessica M. Harper, 28, has been charged in the death of her infant son

A mother whose two-month-old baby suffocated in her bed showed a 'reckless indifference' to the dangers of co-sleeping, a district attorney said on Thursday.

Jessica M. Harper, 28, has been charged with criminal homicide, involuntary manslaughter and child endangerment after her son, known only as H.K., died from asphyxiation on July 12 in Peach Bottom, Pennsylvania.

Harper had another two-month-old son who died from asphyxiation in 2011, but she brushed off warnings from a pediatrician about sleeping in the same bed as her infant just six days before H.K.'s death, according to a criminal complaint.

Harper was arraigned on Thursday and remains in custody at Lancaster County Prison without bail.

Pennsylvania State Troopers were called to the 2600 block of Robert Fulton Highway after the child, who slept between Harper and her three-year-old daughter, was no longer breathing, according to court documents cited by FOX.

The baby was pronounced dead on the scene and his death was ruled a homicide after an autopsy found he died from asphyxiation.

After another child died from asphyxiation under her care in 2011, she was repeatedly warned by doctors and child services workers about safe sleeping.

When she gave birth in May, Harper had to watch a video on safe sleeping before before she was discharged from Lancaster General Hospital, court documents state.

Her pediatrician also warned her about co-sleeping just six days before H.K's death, but Harper told him she was 'going to do it anyway', according to a criminal complaint.

Her son known has H.K died while sleeping in bed with Harper and her daughter. She was repeatedly warned by about safe sleeping (left, Harper in 2011 after another baby died from asphyxiation, and right, in an undated photo)

District Attorney Craig Stedman accused her of 'sleeping on top of a child' and said on Thursday that her 'reckless indifference' was 'unbelievably selfish and lazy at best', Lancaster Online reported.

In January 2011, her two-month-old son known has N.H. died on her living room couch from asphyxiation, according to medical examiners cited by the Cecil Whig.

Investigators believed the baby turned and suffocated on the couch after Harper left him unattended for more than three hours while she was upstairs texting her friends.

But his death was ruled an accident and she served 85 days in jail after a plea deal dropped more serious charges like involuntary manslaughter.

Harper has five other children, who are now in the custody of local social services.

Video courtesy of ABC 27
'He sounded so genuine, it really suckered me in,' Mr Harrison said

Mr Harrison drove out to met but could not find him or the police

a text from Williams saying that he was pulled over by police

A man has fallen victim to a scam that saw his Ducati motorbike, worth $22,000, stolen during a test drive.

Warren Harrison posted an advertisement on classifieds website Gumtree to sell his 2015 Ducati 899 Panigale in August and met with a potential buyer named Steve Williams at his Glen Waverly home, east of Melbourne on Wednesday.

'He sounded so genuine, it really suckered me in,' the 39-year-old man said in a report by Nine News.

Warren Harrison advertised his 2015 Ducati 899 Panigale on classifieds website Gumtree

Mr Harrison (pictured) said the potential buyer, named Steve Williams, 'sounded so genuine, it really suckered me in'

The scammer, a young male who appeared of Indian heritage and spoke with an Australian accent, arrived at his home in a stolen Nissan Pajero to test drive the motorbike and told Mr Harrison he left his I.D at home.

After both parties signed a waiver form, Mr Harrison handed the keys over to Williams, who took it for a test drive.

Within 20 minutes, he received a text message from scammer saying that he had been pulled over by the police at a nearby petrol station for speeding and that he needed help from him.

Mr Harrison drove out to the petrol station, but could not find Williams or the police, he tried to call him back but the phone had been switched off.

CCTV footage from Mr Harrison's home shows the maroon Nissan Pajero pulling up to the Glen Waverly home

'It was just a ploy to get me out of the house so an accomplice could come and get the car and they could leave,' he said.

'The amount of detail that has gone into this is amazing,' he said in a report by The Age.

Unfortunately, Mr Harrison's insurance company won't give him the pay out because they do not cover vehicles 'stolen whilst being tested by a prospective purchaser'.

He hopes his motorbike will be returned.

Mr Harrison's insurance company pay him out because they do not cover vehicles 'stolen whilst being tested by a prospective purchaser'

'There's no use beating myself up about it. He sounded so genuine,' Mr Harrison added.

Police are looking for a man of Indian appearance, aged in his early twenties, 180 cm tall and with short dreadlocks.
A Spitfire Ace who was given a German Iron Cross by a vanquished pilot returned it to his old foe after the war, newly discovered letters have revealed.

Group Captain Norman Ryder - one of The Few - shot down Wilhelm Erdniss' Messerschmitt 109 plane during the height of the Battle of Britain in 1940.

The Luftwaffe pilot crash landed in Kent and was seen burying something in the ground.

Thinking it might be secret papers, several civilians unearthed the item to find it was Mr Erdniss' own Iron Cross medal.

Group Captain Norman Ryder (left) was given Wilhelm Erdniss' (right) Iron Cross after he shot the German down during the Battle of Britain. In 1960 Gp Capt Ryder visited Germany to return the medal to its rightful owner (pictured)

A senior RAF officer offered to give it back to the captured airman but the German insisted it should go to the man who got him.

Gp Capt Ryder was identified as the man who shot down the plane - one of 11 German planes he destroyed or damaged during the Second World War.

The prolific flyer added the German decoration to his two Distinguished Flying Crosses.

Spitfire pilot Ryder shot down or damaged 11 German planes during WW2. He is pictured (centre) celebrating his squadrons 100th victory

Gp Capt Ryder twice escaped being shot down in his career. In April 1940 he became the first RAF pilot to ditch a Spitfire in the sea and five months later he baled out of one as it crashed in Kent.

But the third time he was shot down proved unlucky and he was captured by the Germans after crashing in northern France in 1941.

It wasn't until after the war in 1960 and while he was still a senior RAF officer, that he returned to Germany and met up with Mr Erdniss to give him back his Iron Cross.

The chivalrous act has come to light 56 years later after Gp Capt Ryder's magnificent medal group was put up for sale for 30,000.

Alongside the medals are his three RAF wartime logbooks as well as the original portrait drawing of him by the artist Cuthbert Orde who famously depicted many members of 'The Few', including Douglas Bader and Johnnie Johnson.

And the stunning archive also includes a typed letter written by the RAF officer informing Gp Capt Ryder of the wishes of Feldwebel Erdniss for him to have the Iron Cross.

It has been put up for sale by descendants of Gp Capt Ryder, who died in 1995 aged 81.

It is being sold by Laidlaw Auctioneers of Carlisle, Cumbria.

A letter was sent to the fighter pilot (pictured) explaining Wilhelm Erdniss' decision to award his Iron Cross to the man who shot him down

The chivalrous act came to light 56 years later after Gp Capt Ryder's magnificent medal group, (pictured) was put up for sale for 30,000

Auctioneer Paul Laidlaw said: 'It is a privilege to be able to handle such a wonderful collection.

'Norman Ryder was one of The Few and is featured in Aces High, the book that was a tribute to the most notable fighter pilots of the war.

'He flew Hurricanes, was one of the first pilots to fly a Spitfire pre-Dunkirk, achieved Ace status during the Battle of Britain, was shot down three times and won the DFC twice.

'The wonderful story of the Iron Cross shows the chivalry that existed between Allied and German airman, much like the First World War.

'This is the first time his medal group has been sold and we are expecting a lot of interest in it.'

Gp Capt Ryder had been a mathematics master at Tredennick School, Worcester but joined the RAF in 1936 when it looked like war was looming and he didn't want to be in the army.

He joined 41 Squadron based in Catterick, North Yorks, which was one of the first to fly the Spitfire.

On April 3, 1940, he shot down a Heinkel 111 bomber looking to attack an Allied convoy in the North Sea. His Spitfire was also shot up in the exchange and he had no choice but to ditch in the sea.

Gp Capt Ryder was a member of the the Caterpillar Club -an informal association of people who have successfully used a parachute to bail out of a disabled aircraft. His Caterpillar Club pin (pictured right) is up for auction along with his portrait by the artist Cuthbert Orde who famously depicted many members of 'The Few' (left)

He sank with the plane as his parachute pack became wedged in the canopy but managed to wriggle free and reached the surface in the nick of time to be rescued by a fishing trawler.

The four German crew of the Heinkel survived and were taken prisoner. Gp Capt Ryder received his first DFC for the feat.

During six days in September 1940 he accounted for five German planes and damaged two more, leaving them limping home.

Then on November 27 he shot up Mr Erdniss' Messerschmitt, forcing it the crash land at Horton Park, near Hawkinge, Kent.

Gp Capt Ryder thought little of it until he received a letter a few days later from a Commanding Officer at Hawkinge Aerodrome.

It read: 'An Me 109 pilot, Feldwebel Wilhelm Erdniss made a forced landing....when he got out of his machine he was seen to be treading something into the ground.

Gp Capt Ryder's pilot log book (pictured) is also up for auction along with his extensive medal collection

'It was thought at first that this was secret papers but it turned out to be his Iron Cross. When I interrogated him...he insisted it should be given to whoever had shot him down but if he could not be identified then he would like it back himself.

'I understand that it is almost certainly you who shot him down so I am enclosing the Iron Cross herewith.

'He had six years service with the German Airforce and he seemed to me a very good type, indeed rather a fine fellow. May I send you my congratulations on having got him down.'

News of the unusual award led Gp Capt Ryder to be given drinks on the house at his local pub in Upminster, Essex. He also received a Bar to his DFC.

After he was taken prisoner in October 1941, Gp Capt Ryder was sent to the infamous Stalag Luft III where the Great Escape was staged three years later.

He was moved to Oflag XX1B in Poland from where he managed to escape by hiding in a heavy box on the back of a truck but was recaptured two days later.

He was Mentioned in Despatches for his distinguished service whilst a PoW.

After the war he was made a CBE and in 1959 he came third in the London to Paris Bleriot Air Race

He retired from the RAF in 1960 and ended up living in Arizona, US.

His medals are being sold on September 30.
Oregon has had history of racism, including last month's killing of 19-year-old Larnell Malik Bruce at the hands of white supremacists

Last year it was discovered that he was an 'exalted cyclops' of the notoriously racist organization

Frederic Dunn was a well-known classics professor who taught at the school 90 years ago

Frederic Dunn was a highly regarded classics professor from Eugene, Oregon, in the 1920s and 30s. He died in 1937

The University of Oregon has bowed to pressure from students and voted to remove the name of a former professor from a campus dormitory after it was revealed he was a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

According to the Eugene, Oregon-based Register Guard, the dormitory, Dunn Hall, was named after Frederic Dunn, a classics professor who taught at the school in the 1920s and 30s.

By a unanimous vote taken on Thursday, the university's board of trustees moved to remove his name after it was brought to the public's attention that Dunn was once known as 'an exalted cyclops' in the KKK.

The organization's rule book states that an 'exalted cyclops' is a chief officer of a single Klan unit.

'It would be inconsistent with our values to have a building named after an exalted cyclops of the Ku Klux Klan,' university president Michael Schill said.

'I don't believe that we are changing history,' Andrew Colas, a member of the board, is quoted as saying by KVAL television. 'I think we're no longer honoring people that did egregious actions.'

The campus dormitory formerly known as Dunn Hall is being renamed after Black Student Task Force, an activist group, lobbied the administration to remove the name in light of Dunn's past

The decision by the board came in response to demands from Black Student Task Force, which has also sought to rename another campus facility, Deady Hall, after it has emerged that Matthew Deady, the university's founder, supported slavery.

A report commissioned by the board found that Dunn 'made no secret of his dual role as college professor and Klansman.'

'As the leader of the Klan in Lane County, he would have presided over initiation ceremonies for new Klansmen and participated in numerous Klan parades and rallies in the area,' the report found.

The issue of college buildings named after controversial figures is a contentious one on campuses across the country.

There is now renewed focus on the University of Oregon's founder, Matthew Deady, who once supported slavery. A building is named after Deady, and students want the name removed

Yale Universitys Calhoun College has been the target of student protests because it is named for former Yale Vice President John C. Calhoun, an ardent 19th century defender of slavery.

Yale President Peter Salovey in April announced the college would continue to carry Calhoun's name but that two new residential colleges would be named for Benjamin Franklin and Pauli Murray, the co-founder of the National Organization for Women and a civil rights leader.

Black student activists say that the painful history of racism in Oregon as well as recent events highlight the need for more forceful action in renouncing bigotry.

'The state of Oregon has a very ugly racist history that was deeply ingrained in our policies and laws,' student body president Quinn Haaga told the board.

Larnell Malik Bruce (pictured) was run over outside the convenience store on the corner of East Burnside and 188th Street in Gresham, Oregon, on the night of August 10

Russell Courtier (right) and his girlfriend Colleen Hunt (left) have been charged with murder and are facing an additional felony charge of failing to perform the duties of a driver

Last month, a white supremacist mowed down a black teenager with his Jeep after a fight outside a 7-Eleven  while his girlfriend allegedly encouraged him, saying: 'Get him baby, get him.'

Larnell Malik Bruce, 19, had been charging his phone outside the convenience store on the corner of East Burnside and 188th Street in Gresham, Oregon, on the night of August 10.

Shortly before midnight, Russell Courtier, 38, and his girlfriend Colleen Hunt, 35, pulled up in their 1991 Jeep Wrangler.

A fight allegedly broke out between Courtier, a long-time member of a white supremacist prison gang called European Kindred (EK), and the teenager.

According to local press reports, Bruce had gotten hold of a machete after Courtier allegedly smashed his head into a storefront window.

At that point, Courtier retreated to his vehicle and began to pursue Bruce.

According to prosecutors, Courtier said he was angry Bruce produced a knife and thought about driving away from the scene.

'However he made a conscious decision to drive his vehicle towards and chase the black male,' prosecutors allege. 'Mr. Courtier said he chased the black male across oncoming lanes of traffic and then intentionally struck him with the front of his vehicle.'
Shocked aunt laments loss of the 'loveliest baby you could ever want'

Pair had no possessions apart from the clothes worn when they died

Lillian Oluk and two-year-old Lynne Mutumba found in flat with no food

A mother and her toddler daughter may not have eaten for days before they died, an inquest heard.

Lillian Oluk, 36, and her two-year-old daughter Lynne Mutumba were found dead in their one-bedroom flat.

An inquest was told there was no medical reason for their deaths but various examinations suggested Lillian was suffering from malnutrition and starvation and little Lynne had been dehydrated.

Their flat in Gillingham, Kent, was empty of food and possessions - leaving them with only the clothes they were wearing when they died

Mother and daughter, Lillian Oluk and Lynne Mutumba, were both found dead in their one-bedroom flat. The property was empty of food and personal possessions. Mrs Oluk was suffering from starvation and her daughter was found to have been dehydrated

Mrs Oluk was also not taking her medication for HIV and sickle cell anaemia when they were found.

Coroner Kate Thomas recorded open verdicts into their deaths following the inquest at Old Gravesend Town Hall. She said there was not enough evidence to say for certain how they had died.

The coroner had been told that Lillian and Lynne had moved to Gillingham on December 10.

Until the middle of February, Lillian was buying healthy food for the pair of them using a money pass from social services, but seemed to have stopped by February 14.

After that, she did not buy groceries and for two weeks they appear to have existed on takeaways, visiting McDonalds or KFC twice a day.

The inquest was told there was no evidence of the mother having bought any food at all after February 28.

CCTV footage shows Lillian leaving the flat and going to the communal bins but there were no sightings of her after March 7.

Lillian was last seen with Lynne on February 28 coming back from a local church and she was last seen on her own on March 7 when she met her key worker.

When the bodies were discovered on March 14, Lynne was in bed and her mother was on the floor of the bedroom.

Mrs Oluk with 'loveliest baby' Lynne. There was no evidence that the mother, originally from Uganda, had bought any food for days prior to the two deaths

Lillian originally came from Uganda and used to work for LSG Sky Chefs, a company that supplies catering and supplies for airlines, based near Gatwick Airport.

The inquest was told that in mid-February she received a letter telling her she was no longer entitled to stay in this country.

TIMELINE OF THE TRAGEDY

December 10 - the pair moved to Gillingham, Kent. February 14 - the mother stopped purchasing her usual healthy food around, instead relying on McDonalds and KFC February 28 - no evidence of Mrs Oluk buying any food at all after this date. Mother and daughter last seen together March 7 - Lillian Oluk last seen on her own March 14 - pair found dead in flat, toddler in bed and her mother on the bedroom floor Advertisement

She came to the attention of social services in Croydon when she and Lynne were camping out at the local hospital for two weeks.

A home was found for her in Wolverhampton but the flat was unsuitable and she was moved to Gillingham in December.

At the end of the inquest, Ms Thomas said it was a 'tragic set of circumstances whatever they were'.

She recorded open verdicts and said it was not possible for her to ascertain any cause of death for either Lillian or her daughter.

After the inquest, Lillian's sister Pamela Angole said: 'She was lovely, beautiful, bubbly and very cheeky.

'She could make anyone laugh anytime.
Pair had sex in multiple places including on school grounds and field trips

Authorities say relationship with the victim began when he was just 14

having sex with a student was posted on social media, police say

A married teacher has been arrested after a sex tape allegedly showing her having sex with a 15-year-old high school student was passed around the school.

Charlaina Lee Wilson, 33, of Knoxville, Alabama, is charged with rape, sodomy, transmitting obscene material to a child by computer and distributing material harmful to minors, according to Selma police.

Authorities say Wilson had sex with the student multiple times at different locations - including school grounds and on field trips. The relationship is thought to have been going on for a year.

Charlaina Lee Wilson (left and right, on her arrest) is charged with rape, sodomy, transmitting obscene material to a child by computer and distributing material harmful to minors,

Detectives say Wilson (pictured with her husband) was caught after a parent spotted her sex tape on her child's social media and contacted the principal

The 33-year-old agricultural teacher quit her job at Selma High School in Alabama, just eight months after she began when the offences came to light, according to WALB.

Police say that the obscene footage featured Wilson performing a solo sexual act and had been sent to the student she was having sex with.

It only came to light after it was posted on social media - racking up thousands of views as kids at the high school passed it around.

The video was reported to the principal by a concerned parent who saw the video on their child's social media account.

Two students had also come forward to alert the school administrators.

Selma High School principal alerted the police on Thursday who obtained the sex tape and interviewed Wilson and several students.

The former teacher was arrested last Friday and is now being held on a bond of more than $1 million.

Authorities say Wilson had sex with the student multiple times at different locations and believe their relationship continued for a year

The 33-year-old agricultural teacher (pictured with her husband James) quit her job at Selma High School in Alabama, just eight months after she began when the offences came to light

Detectives say the video was made several months ago but had only surfaced in the past few days.

'If it wasn't for this video, it wouldn't have come to light. I'm told the video has been circulated by a large amount of students over at Selma High School on Facebook and other social media sites,' Police Chief Brock told WSFA.

'Last I heard, there was over 10,000 hits on one of the sites. She sent it to the student she was involved with.

'She had a sexual relationship with one student. We know of one student over there. He's now 15 but this relationship sounds like it's been going on since he was 14.'

Selma investigators indicated Wilson had sex with the student multiple times and at different locations.

Brock says Wilson could face charges in other jurisdictions because her alleged sexual encounters with the teenager took place on school grounds, as well as on field trips.

Wilson was arrested last Friday (pictured) and is currently being held on more than $1million bail

She previously taught near Knoxville, Alabama, where she lives, according to police.

Wilson's husband James refused to speak to DailyMail.com.

Dr. Angela Mangum, superintendent of Selma City Schools, released a statement on Friday saying Wilson's behavior 'is not aligned with the values, core beliefs, and mission of our district.'

'Once the incident was reported, swift and immediate action was taken to remove the teacher from the school to ensure the safety of students. As the superintendent, it is my responsibility to protect all students from harm. I will not tolerate any misconduct towards students, and I will promptly act in their defense.

Dallas County District Attorney Michael Jackson confirmed that Wilson could be facing a lengthy prison term if convicted.

The investigation is ongoing and detectives will be interviewing several more students.

Authorities say Wilson had sex with the student on the school grounds of Selma High School (pictured)

Chief Brock called the case 'disturbing.'

'Every couple of weeks, you see where a teacher is involved with a student somewhere in the state or even across the southeast. It's getting out of hand in some places,' he said.

Only last week, in Houston, Drew Dillon Watson, 30, was arrested after he allegedly traveled across state lines to have sex with a 15-year-old boy he had been talking with via text message and video chat.
Theresa May's plans for new grammar schools has sent critics into a frenzy - but it appears many of them cannot spell the word

Theresa May's plans for new grammar schools have sent critics into a frenzy - but it appears many of them cannot spell.

Today the hashtag #grammerschools was trending on Twitter even though it should have been #grammarschools.

The error has led to supporters of selective schooling suggesting Mrs May might have a point about raising educational standards.

Today Theresa May set out plans for a new generation of selective grammar schools, as part of a drive to make Britain 'the great meritocracy of the world'.

But the Prime Minister was accused of 'putting the clock back' by chief schools inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw, who warned that a return to grammars would halt momentum towards better results in the state system.

Using the misspelled #grammerschools Ian Craddock wrote: 'It's just an attempt by the #establishment to get the state to pay for the privileged to educate their children - #beware'.

Error: Today the hashtag #grammerschools was trending on Twitter even though it should have been #grammarschools

Upset: People opposed to grammar schools say it is a policy for the privileged, using the same incorrect hashtag

laura @_jockkers said: 'Putting class and wealth before meritocracy is a terrible way to help ANY child achieve their goals #grammerschools'.

Lisa Mckenzie joked that Mrs May's plans were 'giving the middle class a break from those ever expanding school fees #grammerschools'.

Because of the spelling error hashtag soon was flooded with people saying this is why the country needs more grammar schools.

@mtmconsultinguk tweeted: Perhaps if there were more Grammar schools, twitter wouldn't be trending #grammerschools #justsaying'.

Sam Wonnacott said: 'If ever there was a reason to need grammar schools, this hashtag would be it. #grammerschools'.

Backlash: Supporters of selective schooling suggested Mrs May might have a point about raising educational standards

Aidan Kelly wrote: 'If only the person who started the hashtag #grammerschools had gone to grammar school they might have spelt it gooder'.

Senior Tory MP Nicky Morgan slammed the Prime Minister's schools revolution 'wrong' today within hours of the plans being unveiled.

The former education secretary - who was sacked from her post by Mrs May in July - said there was no need to extend academic selection through a new wave of grammar schools.

Mrs May placed an end to the ban on new grammar schools - imposed by Tony Blair in 1998 - at the heart of the mission for her new government today as she vowed to make Britain the 'world's greatest meritocracy'.

Mrs Morgan's brutal intervention came amid a growing backlash within hours of Mrs May's first major speech. Labour peers have warned the plans could be 'dead on arrival' in the House of Lords because of entrenched opposition.
Two Michigan teenagers have been sentenced to at least 40 years behind bars for the brutal murder of a 16-year-old boy.

Quentin Schafer and Carlos Delgado, both 15, will be in mid-50s before they're eligible for parole in the slaying of Michael White, who was found beaten and stabbed to death at Lions Park in Wyoming, Michigan, in March.

At the sentencing hearing Wednesday, Michael's distraught mother took an urn of her son's ashes to the courtroom and faced the killers.

Mother Kelly Ann Hogan (left) held up the ashes of her son, Michael White (right), as she asked a judge in Michigan to sentence the boy's killers to the maximum allowed by law

Killers Carlos Delgado (left) and Quentin Schafer (right), both 15, were sentenced to at least 40 years in prison for the beating and stabbing Michael at Lions Park in Wyoming, Michigan

'This is what I'm left with,' mother Kelly Ann Hogan told the killers, according to the Detroit Free Press. 'I miss him every day.

'Our family will never be the same.'

The two pleaded guilty last month to brutally beating Michael, a junior at Wyoming Park High School, with brass knuckles and his own skateboard.

They stabbed the boy as he pleaded for his life.

'Just stop, just leave me, just leave me here to die,' Michael told them, according to details revealed by the Free Press.

Prosecutors said Quentin and Carlos had planned to kill Michael for a week.

'This was a savage, brutal, premeditated murder and we are asking for the full 40 years,' Ken County Assistant Prosecutor Gerard Faber told the court, as reported by the Free Press.

Carlos Delgado (left) and Quentin Schafer (right) used brass knuckles and the victim's own skateboard, then stabbed him to death on March 18

Attorneys for Quentin and Carlos said the boys were remorseful and asked for a maximum prison sentence of 30 years.

Judge George Buth disagreed.

Michael White (pictured), pleaded for his life as the killers beat him to death at a park in Wyoming, Michigan

'This is a brutal, senseless murder,' he told the killers, as he sentenced them to the maximum prison time allowed, the Free Press reported.

'I think we all realize that, especially you two defendants. This is a tragedy all the way around  especially for the victim here and his family.'

Michael had been out with friends the night before his disappearance  probably out on his skateboard or playing video games, his family said.

But the next morning, on March 19, he still hadn't come home.

His parents discovered why just hours later, when police called their home: Michael had been found bludgeoned to death at Lions Park in Wyoming.
Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blog spot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

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..National Review..07 September '16..The United Nations was founded as a global pact among states, but over the decades in the name of transparency and to further the aim of globalization, it has opened its doors to more than 6,150 non-governmental organizations (NGOs). While governments wring their hands over incitement to terror and dangerous uses of social media, they ignore the alarming focal point within arms reach: the United Nations. An examination of U.N. NGOs reveals that the U.N. has handed a global megaphone to groups spreading hatred and inciting terror from the world stage. In short, the so-called representatives of civil society arent so civil after all.In theory, the U.N. has processes for accreditation that share a common requirement: respect for the purposes and principles of the organization. In order to qualify for accreditation, NGOs must operate in conformity with, or promote, the U.N Charter. They must affirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small.In practice, NGOs have been welcomed into the world of international diplomacy and have gained access to international media platforms while they are simultaneously betraying the core U.N mission by advocating terror and intolerance.
Ozzy Osbourne's ex-mistress, Michelle Pugh, attempted to serve Kelly Osbourne with legal documents last month while she was on set in New York filming for her new reality spin-off, Project Runway: Junior, with Tim Gunn and Christian Siriano.

Pugh filed a defamation suit against Kelly, accusing her of ruining her reputation as a celebrity hair stylist and causing emotional distress.

An affair between Pugh and Ozzy made headlines earlier this year, after Pugh admitting that it had begun in 2012, and later calling him the 'greatest love' of her life.

Shortly after news of the affair broke, Kelly fired off a series of tweets about Pugh and in one post even included the hair stylist's phone number.

Ozzy Osbourne's former mistress, Michelle Pugh, filed a defamation suit against Kelly Osbourne last month

Kelly was filming for the upcoming season of Project Runway: Junior (pictured above during the show's first season) in Long Island on August 8 when Pugh tried to serve her legal papers

Kelly Tweeted: 'Anyone looking for cheap chunky LOW-lights a blow out and a b***job call [phone number].'

In another tweet, she said: 'My father is almost 70 ever heard of elder abuse?'

Pugh filed a defamation lawsuit last month, saying that the tweets caused her to be slut-shamed, cyber bullied and harassed.

Kelly was filming for the upcoming season of Project Runway: Junior, the spin-off of the Heidi Klum fashion reality show, at Gum Studios in Long Island on August 8 when Pugh tried to serve her legal papers.

Pugh appeared to be aware of the shoot and sent a server to find Ozzy's daughter during the filming.

But the server explained in his declaration that he was denied access to Kelly due to her celebrity status.

On the day she was served, Kelly Osbourne posted a series of goofy Instagram videos with host Christian Siriano (in left photo) and fellow judges Aya Kanai and Hannah Davis (in right photo)

The server said in court documents that Kelly's personal assistant, Jacob Thompson, came out and informed him he was authorized to accept service on Kelly's behalf, and he handed him the legal documents.

In her lawsuit, Pugh said that Kelly's claims caused her to lose business as a celebrity hair stylist.

She added that her relationship with Ozzy wasn't a one-off thing, and that he made advances to turn their acquaintanceship into friendship and later into romance.

She said that the rock star never supported her financially, and their relationship ended in May 2016.

After news broke of the affair, Ozzy (pictured with Sharon) released a statement saying Pugh 'took our sexual relationship out of context'

Pugh said that Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne's breakup was not due to the affair, but rather issues involving control over their finances.

She also called Kelly's elder abuse allegation an outright lie, saying she never abused Ozzy.

Kelly's tweets remained active on her twitter account, which has more than 4million followers, for more than a month.

Pugh said her legal team sent a cease and desist to Kelly to remove the tweets, including the one with her phone number.

After news broke of the affair, Ozzy released a statement saying Pugh 'took our sexual relationship out of context', and he also apologized to her and other mistresses.

A representative for Ozzy said that the rock star has started intense therapy.
Stuart Medhurst (pictured) used the money to lavish himself with luxury and designer electronic items

A former manager at the Royal Horticultural Society who masterminded a 700,000 fraud against the charity has been jailed for four years.

Operations manager Stuart Medhurst, 56, used the money from the decade-long scam to help lavish himself with luxury and designer electrical items, London's Southwark Crown Court heard.

He got Elaine Summers, 54, and Shaheen Kadri, 44, to send him false invoices for cleaning work over a 10-year period.

Faced with 100,000 of personal debt which was largely loaded on to credit cards, Westminster resident Medhurst, who had worked for the RHS for 20 years, decided to plunder the charity's funds to help pay for a luxury lifestyle of champagne and nightclubs.

Medhurst showed no emotion as his sentence was read out, with Summers and Kadri - from Notting Hill and Camden respectively - being jailed for 18 months and two and a half years respectively.

The judge, Mr Recorder Gopal Hooper, said: 'In 2004 when you started upon this scam you were in good health, you were having a whale of a time living in luxury - no doubt beyond your means.

'This was done for greed not need - you wanted to continue to lead a lavish lifestyle.

'It was no doubt continuing your lavish lifestyle that you embarked with your two co-defendants in this scheme.

'You, Stuart Medhurst, were the leading light and that is something you admit.'

Prosecutor John Traversi told the court that Medhurst spent more than 40,000 on a haul of high-priced electronics and household items.

These include 10,244 on a Bang and Olufsen sound system, two Siemens Porsche designer kettles, a toaster, along with a high-end steam iron, washing machine, dishwasher, digital camera, hair trimmer, fitness bicycle and microwave.

Mr Traversi said the items amounted to 'a very considerable value' and that Medhurst ensured that invoices for them were disguised 'so that the exact nature of the items would not immediately become apparent'.

Medhurst had previously pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy to steal - for sums amounting to 360,850.51 with Summers and 317,110 with Kadri.

Medhurst, the charity's head of operations, had already admitted fraud in abusing his position at the RHS by withdrawing 43,895 for his own 'personal use'.

Summers and Kadri were each found guilty by a jury at the same court in July of one count of theft.

The scam ran from January 2004 and January 2014 but fell apart when questions were raised about RHS in late 2013.

Mr Traversi said: 'In short the prosecution case is that Stuart Medhurst in collusion with Elaine Summers on the one hand and Shaheen Kadri on the other submitted false invoices prepared by Ms Summers and Mr Kadri for cleaning work that was never done.'

These were made to match 'false purchase orders' prepared and issued by Medhurst.

'He arranged for payments by RHS to be made to bank accounts held by Elaine Summers at Barclays and by Shaheen Kadri at HSBC.

'When the money was received in those accounts, as far as Elaine Summers is concerned, it was then transferred to a NatWest account held by Stuart Medhurst with the deduction of the money that she earned by participating in this venture.

'As far as Shaheen Kadri is concerned the position as to what happened to the money when it entered his account is not so clear.'

Anna Mackenzie, defending Medhurst, said that: 'Bluntly, he needed that money to fund that lifestyle'.

She said he suffers from alcohol problems, Parkinson's disease and has mental health problems.

Elaine Summers (left) and Shaheen Kadri (right) was found guilty by a jury at the Southwark Crown Court in July of one count of theft

Turning to Summers at setencing, the judge said: 'I exceed to some extent your counsel's submission that your position is different from that of Shaheen Kadri - that in fact you were somebody who were much influenced, more influenced, by Stuart Medhurst than Kadri was.

'In your case your gain from the outset was going to be much less.

'A clear indication that you were being used by Stuart Medhurst.

'Indeed, he does say that you were ripped off.'

Addressing Kadri, he added: 'You knew exactly what was going on - indeed it beggars belief that somebody of his intelligence could have believed the supplying invoices for a year in advance could be for any work that is actually being done.

'I was not surprised when the jury saw through that and convicted you.

'The fact that you received half of what was stolen speaks for itself.'

After sentencing, director general Sue Biggs said: 'The RHS uses donations and funds from its supporters to enrich lives and improve horticulture and the environment across the UK.

'For someone to commit fraud and take money from a charity is deplorable.'

More robust anti-fraud measures and in-depth internal audits have been introduced.
Daniel Morcombe's killer Brett Cowan will not make it out of prison alive if his fellow inmates have anything to say about it.

The paedophile is Wolston Correctional Centre's most hated man, with prisoners told they must 'kill him or be killed'.

'There's no way he gets out of there alive  every time another bloke gets a chance, they have a crack at him. I hope the public knows that he's not getting an easy ride in there  it is a living hell for him,' a former inmate told the Courier Mail.

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Brett Cowan, Daniel Morcombe's murderer, is his jail's most hated man, with prisoners told they must 'kill him or be killed' and that he is not to make it out alive

He said 'prison rules' forced prisoners to inflict pain on Cowan whenever they got the chance. 'It's kill him or be killed in there  that's how it works,' he said.

Adam Paul Davidson was last month the first to have a good crack at completing the mission, allegedly pouring a mop bucket of boiling water over Cowan before beating him.

Cowan was left permanently disfigured by the attack that happened soon after he was moved out of the Brisbane maximum security jail's protective wing into general population.

Daniel was murdered by the paedophile in 2003 on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland

A former inmate said 'prison rules' forced prisoners to inflict pain on Cowan whenever they got the chance. 'It's kill him or be killed in there  that's how it works,' he said

The ex-prisoner said Davidson would be treated as a hero and that 'every bloke in there is chomping at the bit' to have their own go.

'As soon as he was moved out of protection it was on for all money. Whoever it is that knocks him off will be treated like a national hero in there,' he said.

A Queensland Corrective Services spokesman told the newspaper privacy provisions meant no official comment could be made about Cowan's situation, but added that each prisoner's safety was a priority.

Cowan is serving a life sentence for murdering Sunshine Coast schoolboy Daniel Morcombe in 2003.

The ex-prisoner said Davidson would be treated as a hero and that 'every bloke in there is chomping at the bit' to have their own go
Schoolgirl swimmer Ellie Robinson continued a stunning night for Team GB's paralympians tonight in Rio, claiming gold and setting a new Games record.

She picked up gold and set a new Paralympic Record of 35.58 seconds the S6 50M butterfly.

She told Channel 4 after her victory: 'I keep looking around to check that I actually won, it's so weird. I gave it everything and max-ed it.

Northampton schoolgirl Ellie Robinson set a new Paralympic record to claim gold in Rio

'I put everything I have done in training into that race. It's going to be weird to go back to school as a Paralympic champion.

'Thanks to everyone who has been watching me at school, it's so sweet.'

Ellie Robinson, 15, powered to victory in the S6 50 metre butterfly final in Rio tonight

After the heat, Ellie looked calmly at the board to see she had won with a time of 36.62

She came first in her heats, perhaps rallied along knowing her classmates at home in Northampton were watching and cheering along.

Pupils from Northampton High School, where Ellie goes to school, posted videos before the heat as they took their seats to watch on the big screen, doing Mexican waves and cheering Ellie's name, led by one of their PE teachers.

Give us a wave! The school took part in a Mexican wave to start supporting Ellie Robinson in her race

The school allowed pupils to watch her race live and showed their support on Twitter

Ellie, who is just 15, completed the heat in 36.62 seconds and will compete in the final in Rio

Ellie completed the 50m butterfly in 36.62 seconds and will be in the final this evening, at 10.18pm, UK time.

On Twitter, the school posted: 'Fastest qualifier - we cheered you on the whole race Ellie! Good luck tonight.'

The video shows the whole senior school sat in the school's hall, as one teacher starts off a Mexican wave before they chant and clap Ellie's name.

After a second Mexican wave they all cheer in support of their teenage classmate.

As the pupils watched the race, they cheered the whole way through, clapping as Ellie secured the fastest time in the qualifying heat.

Teenager Ellie Robinson achieved the Rio qualification standard in April. Her fast progress means she will be competing in four Rio events having been talent spotted with Tokyo in mind

Some of the school's pupils will be featured on CBBC's Newsround tonight as they chat about their classmate Ellie.

Ellie has a form of Dwarfism and was diagnosed with Perthes hip disease in 2012 and requires daily physiotherapy to manage her condition. She has been swimming since she was four-years-old, although her diagnosis forced her to take a two year break before she returned in 2014.

She was talent spotted with the Tokyo 2020 games in mind but her quick progression means she was selected for the Rio games and will compete in the S6 50m freestyle, 100m freestyle and 400m freestyle as well as the 50m butterfly.

Ellie qualified for Rio in April, when she clocked 36.70 seconds in Glasgow.
The former New York mayor and Trump advisor says Trump 'confirms' Obama was born in the U.S.

Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani says Donald Trump 'confirms' that President Obama was born in the U.S.  five years after Trump raised doubts about the issue.

'I confirm that and Donald Trump now confirms that,' Giuliani said in a feisty interview with MSNBC host Chris Matthews. 'Donald Trump believes now that he was born in the United States.'

A gob-smacked Chris Mathews asked, 'When did he do that?'

He 'has never said that  I've been waiting for him to do it,' Matthews interjected.

'He did that two years ago, three three years ago,' Giuliani responded.

Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, who campaigned with Donald Trump in North Carolina this week, says Trump 'confirms' Obama was born in the U.S.

After pressure from Trump and rumors from other 'birthers' who questioned whether Obama was born in Kenya, where is father was from, the White House released Obama's long-form birth certificate in 2011.

It showed Barack Hussein Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii on Aug. 4, 1961.

'He has told me that he is proud of the fact that he finally got Obama to produce his birth certificate,' Giuliani said.

'I believe it. He believes it. We all believe it. But it took a long time to get it out,' Giuliani said.

The Obama campaign put Obama's certificate of live birth on the Internet in 2008, and state officials in Hawaii subsequently confirmed the information.

Giuliani tried to peg the issue on Hillary Clinton, saying she was 'the first one to do it because all she does is engage in negative campaigning against Barack Obama and against Donald Trump.'

Fact checkers who have looked into that charge have found no evidence of direct Clinton campaign involvement, although some Clinton supporters raised the charge in emails during the prolonged 2008 campaign.

Appearing on CNN's 'New Day' Friday, Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway didn't directly say why Trump wouldn't say himself that Obama was born here.

'So he believes President Obama was born here,' said Trump campaign chief Kellyanne Conway

Trump, stands with former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani during a campaign rally, Tuesday, Sept. 6 in Greenville, N.C. Giuliani says Trump 'confirms' Obama was born here, but Trump has yet to say so publicly

'You have to ask him. But I find the entire topic really amazing. I guess it's because the new CNN polls shows us beating [Clinton] by three points and winning by 20 points among independents,' she responded.

Host Chris Cuomo responded: 'And why would you want to jeopardize that lead by going at the exact issue that you used against Clinton, which is transparency and honesty ... Why won't he come out and just own that position? That yes, President Obama was born here. I was wrong to go with the birthers.'

'So he believes President Obama was born here,' Conway responded. 'I was born in Camden, by the way, New Jersey. He was born in Hawaii. Point is, what kind of president has he been. So he is born in the United States. No question to me, he was born in the United States,' she said.

'But he has not been a particularly successful president.'
Nicodemo Coria-Gonzales allegedly sexually abused a string of women

A man accused of serial rape has been deported from the US five times, authorities revealed today.

Nicodemo Coria-Gonzales admitted picking up prostitutes in Austin, Texas before beating them in a fit of rage.

The Mexican allegedly sexually abused a string of women after illegally entering the US and was arrested in August after a woman told police he tried to set her on fire.

Currently being held with no bond on an immigration detainer, he faces six charges including aggravated sexual assault and kidnapping.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Coria-Gonzales was previously convicted of three charges of driving while intoxicated and was deported to Mexico each time but kept returning.

'He's a determined son of a gun, but at some point the dance is over and so, unfortunately, the dance is going to be over for him and he's going to be in jail,' Esparza said.

Coria-Gonzalez has admitted taking six different women to a place he called his 'garden.'

There he would have sex with them and beat them, his arrest affidavit says.

The woman who claims he tried to set her on fire told police she asked him to let her out of the car because she had an 'uneasy feeling'.

But he refused to let her out and poured gasoline on her feet, she said, before she managed to escape.
A man who was arrested on Thursday for the brutal murder of an 18-year-old had been deported to El Salvador twice in five months, authorities said.

Oscar Ernesto Delgado-Perez, 28, is one of four MS-13 gang associates involved in the death of Cristian Antonio Villagran-Morales, who was lured to a park in Gaitherburg, Maryland before he was stabbed more than 40 times, police said.

Delgado-Perez was deported in October 2014 and February 2015, the Washington Post reported, although the details of how he returned to the US remain unclear.

Oscar Ernesto Delgado-Perez, 28, (left) was arrested Thursday for the death of Cristian Antonio Villagran-Morales, (right) who was stabbed more than 40 times in a Maryland park

Vanesa Alvarado, 19, (pictured) lured the victim with sex and was arrested along with 16-year-old Juan Gutierrez-Vasquez (his mugshot has not been released because he is a minor)

The fourth suspect, Jose Coreas Ventura, is still wanted on first-degree murder. All four suspects in the murder were associated with the notorious MS-13 gang

On Thursday, Police arrested Delgado-Perez for first-degree murder at a Red Roof Inn less than four miles away from the scene of the crime.

If he is convicted in Maryland, he will serve his full sentence before his third deportation, Sarah Rodriguez of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement told the Washington Post.

Vanesa Alvarado, 19, had been texting Villagran-Morales, who appeared in Martin King Park on June 16 anticipating a sexual encounter, police said.

Police said she was in on the murder plot as a 'known associate of MS-13', an international gang founded in Los Angeles, California, with factions throughout the US as well as Central America.

MS-13 members approached the two in the park and asked Villagran-Morales if he wanted to smoke marijuana before he was stabbed more than 40 times, the Washington Post reported.

Two of the suspects told police Villagran-Morales (pictured left and right) was a rival gang member, but police disputed their claims

After they were both arrested on July 1, Alvarado and 16-year-old Juan Gutierrez-Vasquez admitted their involvement to the Montgomery County Police, saying the victim was a rival gang member.

But police said Villagran-Morales was a 'hardworking guy' who picked up landscaping jobs and was likely targeted by the MS-13 to boost their reputation.

His friends to the Washington Post he worked hard to send money back to his father in Guatemala.

The fourth suspect, 20-year-old Jose Coreas Ventura, is still wanted on first-degree murder. Police said he should be considered armed and dangerous.

Anyone with information on his whereabouts should call 301-279-8000 or 1-866-411-TIPS.
Acord, 47, has a history of arrests in West Virginia, Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, including on DUI charges

The pair of them have both subsequently been charged

Acord allegedly tried to drive away, but the officer took his car keys away

Officer pulled over Acord after he was seen driving

A police department in Ohio has shared on Facebook disturbing photos of a man and woman passed out in a car with a toddler in the backseat after the pair had allegedly overdosed on heroin.

The unsettling images appeared on the City of East Liverpool's social media page on Thursday.

Officials say they decided to make the photos public to raise awareness of the heroin epidemic in the state, and also to try and deter people from using drugs while having children in their care.

Addiction to opioids such as heroin, morphine, fentanyl and codeine in the US has reached the proportions of a full-scale epidemic in recent years.

In Ohio, which has been among the states hardest hit by the opioid scourge, there were 3,000 unintentional drug overdoses last year, at an average of eight per day.

'We are well aware that some may be offended by these images and for that we are truly sorry, but it is time that the non drug using public sees what we are now dealing with on a daily basis,' it says in the caption accompanying the photos.

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Shamed: Police in East Liverpool, Ohio, shared on Facebook this shocking image showing Rhonda Pasek and James Acord passed out in their car with the woman's child in the backseat after a suspected heroin overdose

Officials say they decided to make the photos of the unconscious man and woman public to raise awareness of the heroin epidemic in the state

'The poison known as heroin has taken a strong grip on many communities not just ours, the difference is we are willing to fight this problem until its gone and if that means we offend a few people along the way we are prepared to deal with that.'

An East Liverpool police officer was driving along St Clair Avenue at around 3.11pm Thursday when he spotted a dark Ford Explorer with West Virginia plates that was driving erratically before screeching to a stop near a school bus that was dropping off children, according to an arrest report that was also shared on Facebook.

When the officer approached the vehicle, he noticed that the driver, identified as 47-year-old James Acord, appeared intoxicated, with his head bobbing back and forth and his speech almost unintelligible.

Acord told the officer that he was driving 50-year-old Rhonda Pasek to a hospital. The woman was slumped over in the front passenger seat.

According to police, Acord then made an attempt to drive away, but at that moment the officer reached into the car and pulled the keys out of the ignition.

Couple arrested: James Acord, 47 (left), was charged with operating a vehicle while intoxicated, endangering children. Rhonda Pasek, 50 (right), was charged with endangering children, public intoxication and not wearing a seatbelt

OPIOID OVERDOSES IN US REACH EPIDEMIC LEVELS FORCING FEDERAL AND STATE GOVENRMENTS TO TAKE ACTION Addiction to opioids such as heroin, morphine, fentanyl and codeine in the US has reached the proportions of a full-blown epidemic in recent years, with states like Ohio reporting a dramatic spike in drug-related deaths. Prescription opioid painkillers can have effects similar to heroin, and research suggests that abuse of these drugs may be a gateway to heroin addiction. For decades, heroin was considered the drug of choice of low-income youths living in inner-city neighborhoods because it was readily available and cheap. Now, it is affecting suburban middle-class white adults. A study published in JAMA Psychiatry in 2014 found that the dramatic shift in demographics is likely linked to the growing availability of and demand for prescription opioids. Nearly half of young people who inject heroin surveyed in three other recent studies reported abusing prescription opioids before starting to use heroin. Some individuals reported taking up heroin because it is cheaper and easier to obtain than prescription opioids. A record 47,055 people died from drug overdoses in the US in 2014, according to the latest figures from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The number was up 7 per cent from 2013, spurred by large increases in heroin and opioid painkiller deaths. In Ohio, which has been among the states hardest hit by the overdose epidemic, there were 3,000 unintentional drug overdoses last year, at an average of eight per day, according to information from the American Society of Addiction Medicine. Over one-third of those accidental deaths were caused by the powerful opioid fentanyl, which more than doubled from the previous year and increased from just 75 in 2012. Ohio Lieutenant Governor Mary Taylor this week called on the state House of Representatives to pass a package of reforms aimed at curbing the opioid abuse, which passed in the state Senate. One provision increases access to the drug naloxone, known by the brand name Narcan, which can reverse the effects of an opioid overdose within minutes. Paramedics working in the state last year administered nearly 19,800 doses of naloxone, which can be sold by pharmacists without a prescription under changes made in 2015. Last month, the Obama administration announced that it will spend $17million to help law enforcement agencies deal with the increase in heroin and opioid abuse. The administration said the spending will support an array of projects to disrupt drug trafficking, increase the use of the drug naloxone to reverse overdoses and train medical providers on safe prescribing practices. Congress has approved legislation aimed at curbing heroin and opioid drugs. Obama signed the bill into law in July, but the president said he was deeply disappointed about funding levels. Advertisement

That is when the officer noticed Pasek's 4-year-old in the backseat.

Paramedics who were summoned to the scene administered Narcan - a drug used to counteract the effects of a heroin overdose - to Pasek and Acord, who by that point had passed out as well. The couple were then taken to East Liverpool City Hospital to be evaluated.

Acord was later charged with operating a vehicle while intoxicated, endangering children, and slowing or stopping in a road.

He pleaded no contest and was sentenced to 180 days in jail for each of the first two charges, according to The Weirton Daily Times. The last count of impeding traffic was dropped.

Jailed: Pasek, pictured in this Facebook photo from 2012, has pleaded not guilty and was ordered held on $150,000 bond

Acord's punishment also includes a three-year license suspension and a $475 fine, reported the station WTOV.

Pasek was charged with endangering children, public intoxication and not wearing a seatbelt. She pleaded not guilty and was ordered held on $150,000 bond pending her next court appearance scheduled for September 15.

Her young son has been placed in the custody of Columbiana County Childrens Services.

The City of Weirton, West Virginia, also shared the images of the couple on its Facebook page and revealed additional information about their background.

According to the post, Acord has a history with substance abuse and run-ins with the law in West Virginia. His history includes multiple arrests on DUI charges, most recently in March of this year.

Public records indicate that Acord's laundry-list rap sheet includes a slew of arrests dating back to at least 1990 in Florida, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, West Virginia and Ohio on charges ranging from drinking in public to robbery.
The relationship ended after an argument during a business trip to China

Barnett's brief relationship with Samantha Barnett ended with an AVO

Sam Barnett has avoided a legal battle by issuing promise to ex-girlfriend

The Western Australian Premier's son, Sam Barnett, has avoided a legal battle with his ex bikini-model girlfriend Samantha Shvetsova after an unpleasant trip to China.

Mr Barnett, 29, and Ms Shvetsova, 27, traveled to China in July for business where they allegedly argued in the back of a taxi.

The alleged argument led to Barnett being slapped with a temporary restraining order, but he has managed to avoid further legal action by making a written promise.

The former couple were supposed to meet in court in Perth on Friday but the matter was settled independently, Ms Shvetsova's lawyer said, according to WA Today.

Sam Barnett and Samantha Shvetsova have put aside their differences without the help of the courts following a relationship-ending holiday

'He (Sam Barnett) gave a written promise to both the court and to her that states he would refrain from engaging in certain conduct,' Ms Shvetsova's lawyer said

'He (Sam Barnett) gave a written promise to both the court and to her that states he would refrain from engaging in certain conduct,' Mr Klimek said.

'It is very similar to the terms you would find in a Violence Restraining Order. This is a very reasonable resolution for both parties.'

The lawyer said the promise meant both parties could move forward without wasting time and resources on a trial.

He also declined to comment on the exact nature of the disagreement which saw the pair break company.

The temporary 72-hour order which was served to Barnett as he arrived back to Australia said he must stay 20 metres away from Ms Shvetsova and refrain from contacting her.

Mr Barnett sent his ex-girlfriend an email after the order had expired, labelling the situation 'tacky,' according to The Sunday Times.

'Im writing this email for my own protection and to mitigate damage in the media for myself,' it said.

Barnett, pictured, made a promise to Shvetsova in writing to avoid the court

Ms Shvetsova, pictured, did not speak to media, but her lawyer said both parties wanted to avoid court and move on

In July, shortly after they came out publicly, the couple spoke to Daily Mail Australia about their new relationship.

'No one believed me, everyone knows who Samantha is and thought I wasn't being serious,' Barnett said.

Barnett even joked at the time that his friends told him not to ruin the relationship.

'My best mate messaged me this morning and said ''whatever you do don't mess this one up''.'

The couple dated briefly from April and only made their public debut in July
Scotland Yard has announced it will 'assess' whether any criminal offences were committed by Keith Vaz after allegations he paid for rent boys.

The Labour MP was forced to resign from his high profile job as chair of the Home Affairs Committee this week after a Sunday newspaper published footage of Mr Vaz allegedly paying boys for sex and offering to buy drugs.

He now faces a battle to cling on to his position on Labour's ruling National Executive Committee, while some have called on him to quit as MP for Leicester East.

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In his resignation statement Mr Vaz said that 'those who hold others to account must themselves be accountable'.

Mr Vaz was filmed at his flat with two Eastern European rent boys last month. He told the young men he was a washing machine salesman called 'Jim'.

The married father of two casually discussed drugs, unprotected sex and money with the male escorts, unaware that their conversation was being secretly recorded.

It put him in an impossible position to carry on as chair of the powerful home affairs committee, which is due to publish a long-awaited report into prostitution.

Mr Vaz himself has deplored the dangerous cocaine trade, but allegedly offered to buy some for an Eastern European prostitute in the footage published by the Sunday Mirror earlier this week.

Later he was heard exhorting: We need to get this party started.

Tory MP Andrew Bridgen lodged a complaint about Mr Vaz with the parliamentary sleaze watchdog, police and charity commission and said he was 'not fit to be an MP'.

Scotland Yard said in a statement this afternoon: 'Following allegations in the Sunday Mirror on Sunday, 4 September concerning a Member of Parliament, the Metropolitan Police Service can confirm a letter was received on Wednesday, 7 September requesting police consider the matter.

Keith Vaz was forced to resign from his high profile job as chair of the Home Affairs Committee this week after a Sunday newspaper published footage of Mr Vaz allegedly paying boys for sex and offering to buy drugs. Pictured, Mr Vaz with one of the Eastern European escorts

Relaxed: Mr Vaz is covertly filmed on his sofa during the encounter

'The letter has been forwarded to the Met's Special Inquiry Team, part of Specialist Crime and Operations, to assess and identify what criminal offences - if any - may have been committed.

'At this stage a police investigation has not been launched.'

Mr Bridgen's letter, to Met Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, said: 'I write to you following the recent allegations in the Sunday Mirror dated 4th September 2016 that Keith Vaz paid escorts for sex in his flat in Edgware.

'The report and associated video suggests a conspiracy to supply a controlled substance.

'I would also question whether Mr Vaz has breached Misconduct in Public Office laws with what has been reported.

'I would urge you to consider examining the report and requesting a transcript from the Sunday Mirror of the incident to establish if there has been any breach of the law.

'I also believe that Mr Vaz is or has been under investigation recently by Leicestershire Police and would urge you to contact the Chief Constable Simon Cole to assess whether there is any link between any of the potential offences.'

Mr Vaz is now facing a battle to keep his place on Labour's ruling NEC, with party leader Jeremy Corbyn saying his future would be discussed at the next meeting.

He was thought to be trying to cling on to his prestigious committee role by standing aside temporarily.

But he eventually bowed to days of pressure on Tuesday afternoon.

THE LETTER TO THE MET THAT TRIGGERED TODAY'S ANNOUNCEMENT Tory MP Andrew Bridgen demanded a police investigation into his neighbouring MP Keith Vaz in a letter to the Met. He said: Dear Sir Bernard, I write to you following the recent allegations in the Sunday Mirror dated 4th September 2016 that Keith Vaz paid escorts for sex in his flat in Edgware. The report and associated video suggests a conspiracy to supply a controlled substance. I would also question whether Mr Vaz has breached Misconduct in Public Office laws with what has been reported. I would urge you to consider examining the report and requesting a transcript from the Sunday Mirror of the incident to establish if there has been any breach of the law. I also believe that Mr Vaz is or has been under investigation recently by Leicestershire Police and would urge you to contact the Chief Constable Simon Cole to assess whether there is any link between any of the potential offences. Yours sincerely Andrew Bridgen MP Advertisement

Almost the only political figure to speak in support of Mr Vaz was Ken Livingstone - who took to the airwaves to insist there would be no problem with him chairing an inquiry into prostitution.

Mr Vaz has faced a series of controversies during his career, but managed to cling on to his seat.

He was one of a handful of MPs to publicly defend Greville Janner against allegations of sex abuse, and in 2009 he was criticised over expenses spent on his Westminster flat when his family home was just 12 miles away.

He has also been investigated by the parliamentary commissioner for standards, though the inquiry ran into a wall when Mr Vaz  who denied wrongdoing  refused to co-operate, and most complaints were not upheld.

And in 2012 Scotland Yard revealed that funds believed to have been 'of a suspicious nature' were paid into accounts either in Mr Vaz's name or linked to him. He denied wrongdoing and said any money passing through his accounts was the proceeds of property deals.

On Monday - the day after the rent boy allegations were first published about him - Mr Vaz was clearly trying to give the impression that, far from losing his grip as committee chairman, it was business as usual.

He brazenly returned to work in the Commons little more than a day after becoming embroiled in the sex and drugs scandal, appearing in the chamber to ask Home Secretary Amber Rudd a question about terrorism.
Schools have become very dependent on the cloud to improve learning and teaching environments, as well as peer collaboration.
The Spanish founder of the Zara fashion chain has overtaken Bill Gates to become the world's richest man.

Amancio Ortega's personal fortune leapt by $1.7billion this week to $79.5billion - taking the Inditex owner past the Microsoft co-founder's estimated $78.5billion.

Already Europe's richest man, the 80-year-old - whose glamorous daughter Marta is expected to take over management of the business - now tops the global list.

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Amancio Ortega, the Spanish founder of the Zara fashion chain, has overtaken Bill Gates to become the world's richest man. He is pictured with his daughter, Marta

Ortega's personal fortune leapt by $1.7billion this week to $79.5billion - taking the entrepreneur past the Microsoft co-founder's estimated $78.5billion

Marta Ortega has undergone training at the firm, including stacking shelves when she was younger

Ortega - whose firm Inditex is the parent company to Zara, Massimo Dutti and Pull&Bear - is seen relaxing on his yacht

Ortega, pictured at a horse riding competition in Casas Novas, now has as a larger net worth than US investor Warren Buffet

Marta, 31, has undergone training at the firm, including stacking shelves when she was younger.

Despite rumours that she is due to succeed her father, Inditex - parent company to Zara, Massimo Dutti and Pull&Bear - will not confirm her as successor.

Forbes reported that Ortega became the world's richest man on Wednesday when Inditex shares went up 2.5 per cent.

He now has a larger net worth than US investor Warren Buffett and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

It is not the first time Ortega has topped the list. He was briefly ahead of Bill Gates in October before a surge in Microsoft shares put him back in second place.

The son of a railway worker from La Coruna in Spain, Ortega transformed clothing group Inditex from a tiny family dressmaker into Spain's biggest company.

He has turned Zara into a byword in chic for the money-conscious, transforming the apparel business with its'fast fashion' model.

Affordable imitations of catwalk designscan move from drawing board to store within two weeks, and poor sellers are pulled off the shop floor even quicker.

Marta Ortega, a keen horse-rider, is pictured with her father at an equestrian festival in Spain

Marta rides her horse Zigali at the 30th Edition of the CSI Casas Novas Horse Jumping Contest in La Coruna, Galicia

Ortega became the world's richest man on Wednesday when shares of Inditex went up 2.5 per cent

The Ortegas pictured at a horse-riding event in Monte Carlo, Monaco, as part of the Global Champion Tour 2012

Ortega never gives interviews and is rarely photographed. He did not even attend the inaugural ringing of the stock market bell at the Madrid exchange when Inditex floated in 2001

Ortega holds a 59.3 percent stake in what is now the world's biggest fashion retailer, ahead of Gap and Hennes & Mauritz

The Spanish company owned by Ortega, which alongside Zara also owns the brands Bershka, Pull & Bear, and Massimo Dutti, has quietly become the worlds largest fashion retailer

It is not the first time Ortega has topped the list. He was briefly ahead of Bill Gates in October before a surge in Microsoft shares put him back in second place

Last year, his sales blossomed asInditex shares rose nearly 40 per cent.

He holds a 59.3 percent stake in what is now the world'sbiggest fashion retailer, ahead of Gap and Hennes & Mauritz.

It grew from humble beginnings in the rainynorthern region of Galicia to more than 6,000 stores in some 90countries with a stable of brands from high-end label MassimoDutti to homewear chain Zara Home.

The group is only the third Spanish firm ever to be valued above100 billion euros, after bank Santander and telecomsgiant Telefonica, both of which now lag well behind.

In a country recently emerged from a recession thatdestroyed businesses and jobs, Ortega is a rare self-made mogul.

The son of a railway worker started his professional life at14 as a delivery boy with a shirtmaker in the wind-sweptnorthern city of Coruna.

Ortega has turned Zara (file picture) into a byword in chic for the money-conscious, transforming the apparel business with its 'fast fashion' model

Ortega founded fast-fashion giant Zara with his then-wife Rosalia in 1975

Zara was founded in 1975 and has become one of the most popular clothing and accessories retailers in the world

Within a few years he had set up aworkshop making nightgowns, lingerie and babywear, and the firstZara opened in Spain in 1975.

Ortega never gives interviews and is rarely photographed. Hedid not even attend the inaugural ringing of the stock marketbell at the Madrid exchange when Inditex floated in 2001.

In person, Ortega is a persuasive and enthusiastic businessman, who despite progressively handing over the day-to-day management of the company over the last decade continues as an active part of it, people familiar with Inditex say.

He is known for selecting designs based on feedback fromshop assistants who zero in on shoppers' reactions.

'If he speaks to a shop assistant and he likes what they hadto say, he will pay more attention to that than to any of hismanagers,' a former Inditex director told Reuters.

Since his ex-wife and Inditex co-founder Rosalia Mera diedsuddenly in August 2013, there has been intense speculation overthe succession.

His second wife Flora Perez, 61, sits on the board.

Ortega's real estate empire, worth as much as $10 billion. His first big real estate purchase was Torre Picasso, an office building in Madrid, bought in 2011

This was around the time he handed the daily running of the world's biggest clothing retailer to chief executive officer Pablo Isla

Pazo de Dodro, a farm and estate owned by Ortega, which was the venue for the wedding of his daughter, Marta

Ortega's majority stake in Inditex is held through another company, Pontegadea Inversiones, which Ortega has also used to channel the steady flow of dividends and build up a real estate portfolio with assets worth 8 billion euros at end-2014.

This, as well as favourable inheritance laws in the Galicianregion, means that his heirs are likely to keep a tight controlover the fashion empire.

In July it was reported that Ortega's real estate assets in 2015 topped 6billion euros alone.

Using massive dividend payouts from Inditex, which have nearly doubled over the last five years, Ortega has made largely debt-free purchases of prime buildings from London to New York, becoming a major commercial real estate player over that period.

'All the buildings he buys are in prime districts. It's a steady, reliable income stream, almost like a sovereign bond,' said Carles Vergara, finance professor at IESE Business School.

Ortega's first big real estate purchase was Torre Picasso, an office building in Madrid, bought in 2011 around the time he handed the daily running of the world's biggest clothing retailer to chief executive officer Pablo Isla.

Amancio Ortega's personal fortune leapt by $1.7billion this week to $79.5billion - taking the entrepreneur past Bill Gates' estimated $78.5billion

The Spanish founder of the Zara fashion chain is also ahead of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos

Since then he has bought properties including an office block in London's Mayfair; a stretch of London's prime shopping drag Oxford Street; and the historic cast-iron clad E.V. Haughwout Building in SoHo, New York, which housed a world- famous cut glass and porcelain store in the 19th century and featured the world's first passenger elevator.

Ortega not only rents out his commercial property to Inditex stores like Zara and upmarket label Massimo Dutti at market rates, but also to rivals such as H&M of Sweden and Gap of the United States.

In Madrid, he owns No. 32 on the Spanish capital's main shopping drag Gran Via. The Art Deco building, built as one of the city's first grand-scale department stores in the 1920s, now houses biggest store in Spain for arch-rival Primark.

In February, Ortega made his first foray into Asia, buying a 22-storey plaza in Myeongdong, Seoul's trendy shopping district.
He said his friend was distracted changing a song before he drove up on it

One of his Facebook friends knew the man who drove into the roundabout

A man has parked his car on top of a roundabout of a busy intersection

A motorist has gone to extreme lengths to ensure they have a good parking spot.

Jiah Minifie, a resident from Mandurah, south of Perth, photographed someone's silver Holden Commodore parked in the middle of a roundabout.

Mr Minifie shared the photos his Facebook with the caption: 'Now available, parking across from the church, conveniently located close to the Post Office.'

Jiah Minifie shared pictures of a silver Holden Commodore parked in the middle of a roundabout

Mr Minifie said: 'I have no idea what what this guy was on when he drove home last night, I was half expecting someone to wake up in the car and realise what had happened.' [sic]

The pictures show the silver car in the middle of the roundabout, which appears to be in a busy part of town.

In another photo the car looks bogged in the dirt, leaving trails of dirt showing that the driver had made attempts to reverse out of the roundabout before leaving.

Friends of Mr Minifie on Facebook commented and liked the hilarious post, however, one man was able to explain who parked the car and how it got there.

Iain Simpson wrote that it was one of his chefs who drove the car up onto the roundabout.

A friend of Mr Minifie's said that it was one of his friend's did it saying that he was changing a song when he drove up on the roundabout

Mr Simpson said: 'His claims he was changing a song next minute he's up there lol I reckon to many beers after Murphys.' [sic]

'Must have been Bohemian rhapsody,' Mr Minifie joked.
Willhite, who fought in the Vietnam War, died peacefully on August 29

At that moment 'the cancer and everything else went away' staff said

Connie Willhite, an avid fisherman and Vietnam veteran, knew he didn't have long left in this world after his battle with cancer took a turn for the worst.

But he had just two simple requests before he died, to be baptized and to take one final fishing trip.

The 68-year-old, who served in the Navy during the Vietnam War, had told staff: 'There's nothing like fishing. Even when they're not biting, it's still a good day to be outside', according to a hospital spokesman.

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Connie Willhite had just two simple requests before he died, to be baptized and to take one final fishing trip (pictured on his final fishing trip)

'I know I'm dying and the cancer is going to get me, but as long as I can go, I want to fish,' the Telegraph reports.

The first request was easy.

Chaplain Sam Scaggs was brought in to the Hospice Care Unit at Dublin's Carl Vinson VA Medical Center where he performed Willhite's baptism in front of family and hospital workers.

'He immediately felt better because he felt like he could cross over now,' Greg Senters, a hospice social worker, told KomoNews.

His second wish was a bit more tricky. But staff say they were dedicated to making 'those last precious days precious.'

Lisa Kittrill, Willhite's cousin (left) and Greg Senters, a hospice social worker (right) said that in the short moments when Willhite caught those fish, he was back to his old self again

Senters, and fellow hospice staff, helped prepare their patient for his final fishing trip, bringing bait and gear.

Too ill to stand or even sit, Willhite was wheeled out on his hospital bed to a lake behind the VA Medical Center and handed his old trusty fishing pole.

The grandfather, from Dalton, Georgia, had been warned not to get his hopes up as it was unlikely he would catch anything in the newly filled lake.

But Willhite defied all expectations by catching not one - but four fish.

'I'll never forget the look on his face. After all the preparation, we had no idea if he would actually catch anything,' Senters said.

'All of a sudden, the cancer and everything else went away, and what you see is that precious few moments of someone really enjoying life.'

Staff wheeled out the veteran on his hospital bed to a nearby lake (pictured) behind the hospital

Lisa Kittrill, Willhite's cousin, said that in those short moments, 'when he was smiling and glad, when he wasn't in pain, that made that difficult situation better.'

She described her cousin as a 'great guy, always joking' and said he never failed to bring his family joy.

'He talked and talked when I came in that day, and said he went fishing and got baptized, and for that I'm so glad,' Kittrill said.

Willhite left the navy after the war and was employed at Shaw Carpet Industries in Dalton and attended Rosemont Baptist Church, Treutlen County, according to his obituary.

He is survived by children, Jeremy Willhite of Cleveland, Tennessee and Tammy Jones of Cartersville, five grandchildren and his brother Donnie Willhite of Soperton.
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We might be more than a week into autumn, but Britain is set for a summery blast of 30C weather next week as parts of the country prepare for a three-day heatwave.

The country has already enjoyed a warm start to the month with temperatures hitting 29.3C this week  and, after a fresher weekend, the mercury will rise again on Monday and stay high until Wednesday before falling again.

Forecasters said that London and East Anglia are most likely to see 30C early next week, which would be more a dozen degrees above the 1971-2000 average for mid-September of 18C to 19C in southern England.

A warm and calm spell of weather in autumn is often referred to as an 'Indian summer', which is believed to have once referred to warm conditions after summer that allowed Native American Indians to continue hunting.

Bookmakers are offering just 5/4 that we will get to 90F (32C) this month, but the country will have to contend with some wet and windy weather first with 60mph gusts and 1.6 inches of rain set to hit in six hours tonight.

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Autumn leaves: A man walks his dog in a park in North London on another warm and humid day today, ahead of rain tomorrow

Pleasant in London: The country has already enjoyed a warm start to the month with temperatures hitting 29.3C this week

Changing colours: Forecasters said that London (pictured) and East Anglia are most likely to see 30C early next week

New season: Britain is set for a blast of 30C weather next week as London (above, today) prepares for a three-day heatwave

The Met Office has issued a warning for parts of the North West tonight over concerns that an active weather front will bring the heavy rain, coinciding with rush hour and creating dangerous surface water and spray.

Overnight, rain will spread east and there is some flash flooding possible in the North and Wales, before rain affects the South East tomorrow then clears later on.

Elsewhere it will be cool and bright with sunny spells and some showers, although there could be lightning in North West Scotland, before Sunday is expected to be dry and fine across most of England and Wales.

The very warm weather will then arrive on Monday, although the Met Office pointed out that Britain has seen September temperatures of 30C in recent years, including in 2013 when 30.2C was observed in Essex.

Yesterday, forecasters said a 30C reading next week was a possibility, but today Met Office meteorologist Emma Sharples said confidence has grown a little a bit that this will be achieved in the South East next week.

What to expect: Fresher temperatures are expected this weekend (above) before the mercury rises to 30C next week

Next Tuesday: Temperatures are expected to reach the mid-20s in the North, high 20s in the Midlands and 30C in the South

She added: We'll see fairly widespread mid to high twenties, so with that in mind we're a little bit more confident that we'll get close to 30C in London and East Anglia.

However there will be fairly heavy rain and very strong winds on Sunday night into Monday, with the Met Office saying it is watching what could happen in terms of issuing any weather warnings.

Ms Sharples said that an active weather front is moving up the western side of the country on Sunday into Monday, and where that lies will determine temperatures for many areas.

On Monday, the North is expected to see temperatures in the low-20s, but these will rise to the mid-20s by Tuesday  and it is a similar story in the Midlands, where it will be 24C on Monday then 27C on Tuesday.

On the grass: Autumn according to the meteorological calendar begins in September. A scene in North London is pictured

On the hunt: A man uses a metal detector on Tynemouth Beach in Tyne and Wear this morning as dawn breaks

Stunning: A fishing boat in the North Sea is picture sailing as the sun rises near Tynemouth Beach in the North East today

Mr Sharples said: Some areas in Spain have seen the mid-40s, and that air will reach us by Monday. As the direction of the winds change, that continental air will be much warmer and brings us those high temperatures.

But, asked whether this warm spell is likely to last, Ms Sharples said it would be fairly short, adding: 'We're dragging in the warm air from the continent ahead of this weather front to the West.

As we go through Wednesday we start to see those showery bursts of rain encroaching eastwards. By Thursday we'll start to see this breakdown happening.

Ms Sharpes added that it 'won't be quite as muggy this week' because the air is coming from the continent rather than the South West. Thundery showers are possible on Thursday before cooler and fresher conditions follow.
India's magnet man is becoming more attractive by the day, graduating from spoons and nails to irons weighing more than 10kg.

Earlier this year, Arun Raikar, from Sagar district of Madhya Pradesh in India discovered he could attract spoons and nails to his skin with what he believes are 'special waves'.

Now he's shown how much more he can handle, by walking with two irons on his chest, both weighing more than five kilos.

Mr Raikar walks with the irons on his chest in front of a large crowd, who applaud as he gets to one end of the walkway

In the video, Mr Raikar walks with the irons on his chest in front of a large crowd, who applaud as he gets to one end of the walkway.

One of the irons is said to weigh 5.25kg while the other weighs 5.266kg.

The video also show the other objects Mr Raikar has managed to hold to himself with magnet force, including plenty of spoons and nails.

Authorities at the Limca Book of Records, the Indian version of Guiness Book of World Record, have asked Raikar to submit video footage of the event to consider his case.

His attraction is so much among spoons, nails and small iron articles that whenever he passes by they cling onto his body.

In the latest video, Mr Raikar's attraction or magnetic field appears to have grown, with large 5kg irons sticking to his chest

Mr Raikar has been able to hold many spoons to his chest by magnetic force for some time

He claims he discovered he had magnetic powers when he was a child

Mr Raikar holds the 'magnetic powers' in particular sections of his body, including his chest, stomach and back.

He claims he discovered his magnetic properties when children were playing around and one of them flung a spoon that clung onto the electrician's back.

Initially,he thought it has stuck there by sweat, but when his family members got curious and stuck more spoons on him, the spoons would just cling onto his body.

The family says no doctor has been able to give him an answer on why this happens to him.

Mr Raikar first spotted the unusual talent in April, and is seen here at that time with several spoons attached to him

It seems the 'magnetic field' in Mr Raikar's body has become stronger, as this video shows with two irons appearing to hold to his chest by 'magnetic force'.

'Earlier, I thought it was a curse of the god. But now I know it a gift of the almighty,' said Raikar, who hopes to make it to Limca Book of Records soon.
Robert Napolitan is accused of stealing $3,000 from his workplace in Pennsylvania

A Pennsylvania man is accused of stealing $3,000 in pennies from his workplace.

Robert Napolitan loaded a 1,600-pound steel drum filled with 30,000 pennies in his Jeep, leaving behind track marks and a trail of pennies, police told the Times Tribune.

Police also found 89 pennies in his car, and the 34-year-old admitted to taking the drum from Pyne Freight Lines in Taylor, Pennsylvania.

Napolitan, who had a key to the company's headquarters, said he would be working late on Labor Day.

He arrived at 2.30am on Monday and wheeled the steel drum on a hand truck to his SUV, according to a police affidavit cited by the Times Tribune.

He admitted to stealing the pennies after police found a trail of coins.

Napolitan was arrested and charged with burglary, criminal trespass, theft by unlawful taking, and receiving stolen property.

He remains in custody at Lackawanna County Prison on $50,000 bail ahead of his court appearance on Wednesday.

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The small town South Carolina police chief who lost her job two years ago because she was gay has been fired again  this time by the man who once saved her job.

Latta Town administrator Jarrett Taylor said Crystal Moore's firing had nothing to do with her sexual orientation  after all, he pushed to have her rehired in 2014.

Instead, he was angry and saddened that Moore couldn't solve growing problems with bad morale, poor decisions and administrative tasks that weren't done on time, Taylor said one day after firing Moore.

Moore was suspended for five days last month after she failed to communicate to superiors a sexual harassment claim between two of her employees as soon as it happened

Moore (right, pictured with wife Kristi Isgett and daughter) was reinstated a year ago after being fired because she is gay

Moore, who is running for sheriff of Dillon County, said she was shocked and angered by the town's decision

'It's aggravating. I defended her so strongly a couple of years ago,' said Taylor, who also serves on the town council.

'I still stand by my actions then. But things have changed.'

Moore posted on her Facebook page she was shocked and angered, especially because she was recently diagnosed with a cancerous tumor on her thumb.

'This won't stop me from serving the people of Latta or Dillon County,' wrote Moore, who also is running for sheriff in Dillon County. 'This is a tough time for all of us, but I know justice will prevail,'

Moore and her lawyer did not immediately reply to requests for comment.

Taylor promised to provide the paperwork specifying why Moore was fired as soon as he could gather it.

'I'm seriously sorry this came at an inopportune time in her life. But at some point, the job has to be done right,' Taylor said.

Town Administrator Jarrett Taylor (pictured), who once fought to keep Moore as police chief, says she couldn't address growing problems in her police department

Taylor says the Latta PD has morale issues and Moore (pictured) showed poor decisions-making and failed to accomplish administrative tasks

Latta suspended Moore for five days last month, reprimanding her for failing to inform supervisors of a sexual harassment claim between two other employees as soon as it was reported.

Officials said she also revealed an officer's salary at a public meeting, did not fill out the required weekly reports on the condition of her department's vehicles and checked another employee's disciplinary records without permission, according documents released to the Associated Press.

In 2014, Latta Mayor Earl Bullard (pictured) issued seven reprimands against Moore and fired her. He was later stripped of his power and Moore was reinstated

On one of her reprimands, which said the salary mistake was the latest action to deflate the force of about eight officers, Moore wrote she knew morale was down, but she thought it was getting better.

In her handwritten response, Moore said she wasn't trying to destroy employee morale.

'I have been trying to fix it,' she wrote.

Taylor came to Moore's rescue in 2014 when Latta Mayor Earl Bullard issued seven reprimands and fired her.

At the time, Taylor thought the disciplinary actions were bogus and released a tape he made of a conversation with the mayor of the old tobacco hub of about 1,400 people just off Interstate 95.

'I'd much rather have somebody who drank and drank too much taking care of my child than I had somebody whose lifestyle is questionable around children, because that ain't the damn way it's supposed to be,' Bullard said on tape.

The town voted to strip the mayor of his power and the Town Council then hired Moore back.

Taylor said he wanted Moore to succeed and is still glad he helped her out.

'This has nothing to do with what she does in her life. I don't care as long as things get done right,' Taylor said.
Angelina Jolie has called upon the international community to end the Syrian civil war and increase aid for refugees.

The actress visited a refugee camp in Azraq, Northern Jordan, in her role as special envoy of UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and met Syrian children displaced by the conflict.

Five years into the Syrian conflict, she said brutal violence rages while the UN Security Council remains divided on a political solution.

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Angelia Jolie met with Syrian refugees displaced by the country's conflict crisis in a visit to the war-torn Middle East

The actress visited a refugee camp in Azraq, Northern Jordan, in her role as special envoy of UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)

During the trip, following on from her surprise visit as a guest at the UN summit in London yesterday, the Hollywood A-lister mingled with laughing children and delivered a speech

In her role, she focuses on major crises resulting in mass population displacements and engaging with decision-makers on global displacement issues

During the trip, following on from her surprise visit as a guest at the UN summit in London yesterday, the Hollywood A-lister mingled with laughing children and delivered a speech.

In her role, she focuses on major crises resulting in mass population displacements and engaging with decision-makers on global displacement issues.

Yesterday, she stunned delegates from 80 countries with a speech at the major peacekeeping summit, saying the organisation's reputation had been undermined by cases of sexual abuse.

Angelina Jolie made a surprise appearance at a major UN peacekeeping summit, where she told delegates from 80 countries that the organisation's reputation had been undermined by intolerable cases of sexual abuse by peacekeepers.

She movingly described her desire for justice and accountability of the women she had met in refugee camps who had been abused by international troops.

Jolie said: 'We all know that the credibility of UN peacekeeping has been sadly undermined by the actions of a few intolerable cases of women and children being sexually exploited by the very people in charge of protecting them.'

Yesterday, she stunned delegates from 80 countries with a speech at the major peacekeeping summit, saying the organisation's reputation had been undermined by cases of sexual abuse

Angelina Jolie made a surprise appearance at a major UN peacekeeping summit, where she told delegates from 80 countries that the organisation's reputation had been undermined by intolerable cases of sexual abuse by peacekeepers

She told a summit of ministers from around the world in London's Lancaster House that countries had to meet their commitments to peacekeeping missions and aid appeals.

The summit communique called for the UN to double the number of women in military and police contingents involved in peacekeeping operations by 2020 and promised a 'zero tolerance' approach to sexual exploitation and abuse by troops.

Jolie-Pitt told ministers and dignitaries at the meeting: 'The fact is that increasing the number of UN peacekeepers alone will not be enough to resolve the conflicts that we are experiencing.

'It has to be accompanied by a new way of conducting peacekeeping, one that has the rights and protection and involvement of women at its heart.'

She added: 'The signing of an agreement is actually the easy part.

'What is harder and what is much more important is implementation.

'We are living through a time of public disillusionment with commitments on paper that are not met in reality; with UN Security Council resolutions that are ignored, aid appeals that are only partially met and fail to address root causes and allegations of sexual misconduct that are not investigated or prosecuted.
Police have released new details in the grisly murder of a Florida woman whose boyfriend admitted to killing her and ripping out her intestines in a fit of rage after she screamed out her estranged husband's name during sex.

Fidel Lopez, 24, at first told cops that he and victim Maria Nemeth, 31, were drunk on tequila last September when she fell ill while they were having rough sex.

He said Nemeth went to the bathroom and he called 911 for help because she was having trouble breathing.

But police video released Wednesday showing the scene of a grisly crime: blood on the walls inside a closet and in the bathroom, a closet door knocked down, a shattered sliding window, NBC Miami reported.

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Fidel Lopez (left), 24, has admitted to police that he killed 31-year-old Maria Nemeth (right) and mutilated her body while she was passed out from drinking tequila

New evidence released Wednesday shows the blood-stained walls of a closet where Lopez allegedly killed Nemeth

Crime scene investigators found blood on the floor inside a closet, near doors sand in the bathroom and damage to the walls and doors  suggesting a struggle and foul play

Under intense interrogation (pictured), Lopez eventually admitted that he became a 'monster' when Nemeth twice said her ex-husband's name during sex

'Fidel, this was not a case of rough sex,' one detective told Lopez, as seen in video of the interrogation.

'You have to do the right thing and tell the truth.'

Lopez denied the crime for hours.

'I'm doing the right thing,' he told detectives.

'She's a good girl,' Lopez added . 'She's a perfect girl, man  she's my love.'

But eventually, he admitted that he became a 'monster' when Nemeth twice said her ex-husband's name during sex.

'She changed my name,' he told detectives. 'She called me the name of the other f**king guy  and she said it twice and she was wrong and she was confusing me with him.'

Lopez has pleaded not guilty to charges of first-degree murder and sexual battery. He has been held without bond since September 2015.

Lopez, 24 of Sunrise, Florida, has pleaded not guilty to murdering his girlfriend in a fit of rage

One crime scene photo showed a completely shattered sliding glass window

Law-enforcement officials say the large amount of blood inside a closet suggests a struggle and foul play

During an interview with investigators, Lopez said he and Nemeth had been drinking tequila (left) in their apartment and at some point began to have rough sex

Lopez, of Sunrise, was arrested September 2015 after he called 911 saying his girlfriend was having trouble breathing.

Officers responding to the apartment said they found Lopez crying in the bathroom next to Nemeth's body.

Lopez initially told investigators that the couple had been having rough sex when Nemeth went into the bathroom, vomited and collapsed.

Brutalized: Lopez has admitted to inserting several foreign objects into the woman's body cavities

Officers took notice of a large amount of blood on the floor inside a closet, more blood spatter in the bathroom and damage to the walls and doors suggesting a struggle and foul play, the document obtained by the station Local10 stated.

'There were also what appeared to be several chunks of bloody tissue on the floor inside the closet,' Officer Christopher Piper noted in his report.

Nemeth was pronounced dead at the scene less than 30 minutes after Lopez's initial call to police.

The couple's neighbors said Lopez and Nemeth had moved into the building at 11630 NW 128th Terrace, in Sunrise, Sunrise only a week before the woman's murder on the morning of September 20.

Nemeth, a native of Peru, had worked as a leasing agent at the Colonnade Residences on NW 128th Terrace for the past five years, and that is where she met Lopez.

'She was a very very soft-spoken, very private, very pleasant, lovely young lady,' said resident Dan Carter of Nemeth.

Records cited by Sun Sentinel state that Nemeth married a man by the name of Norbert Nemeth in April 2007, but according to a relative, the couple later separated.

During an interview with investigators, Lopez, a native of Havana, Cuba, said he and Nemeth had been drinking tequila in their apartment the night before and at some point began to have rough sex.

According to the boyfriend, the woman asked him to insert a beer bottle and his fist inside her vagina because 'she enjoyed it,' which he did.

After the sex act, the 24-year-old initially claimed that Nemeth went to the bathroom to throw up. He later found her having trouble breathing and called 911.

When pressed by the questioning officer, Lopez reportedly changed his story, revealing that Nemeth was very drunk, and that at some point the two of them ended up inside a closet and began having sex.

Nemeth (right) had worked as a leasing agent at the Colonnade Residences on NW 128th Terrace in Sunrise for the past five years, and that is where she met Lopez (left)

Police and paramedics who responded to the couple's apartment at 11630 NW 128th Terrace discovered Lopez weeping over Nemeth's lifeless body lying naked in a pool of blood

During intercourse, the woman reportedly called out her estranged husband's name twice, which made her boyfriend upset and 'enraged', by his own admission.

Leaving the inebriated woman in the closet, the 24-year-old began smashing things around the apartment, including a sliding glass door, and punching holes in the walls, according to an extremely graphic complaint affidavit.

After his outburst, Lopez returned to the closet where his girlfriend was lying unconscious and proceeded to insert several foreign objects into the woman's vagina and anus  including a beer bottle, a flatiron for the hair and both his fists and arms up to his elbows.

The Sunrise man also admitted to pulling 'internal tissue' from Nemeth's body while she was passed out.

Afterward, he carried her naked body into the bathroom and attempted to revive her by splashing water in her face, but the woman did not wake up, stated the affidavit.

He then washed the blood off his hands and went out onto the porch outside their apartment to smoke a cigarette.

When Lopez went back inside to try to clean up the crime scene and hide Nemeth's ripped out intestines, he realized she was no longer breathing and called 911.

First responders who arrived at the scene about 3:40am and discovered Lopez weeping over Nemeth's body, lying naked in a pool of blood.
to the Greek island of Mykonos

It follows her guilty plea to cocaine

One socialite is no stranger to beaches, bikinis and cocktails, but Sophia Tilley's high-flying lifestyle came crashing down after she attempted to enter the U.S.

The 27-year-old and fixture on Sydney's social scene was planning on attending desert festival Burning Man two weeks ago, but didn't even make it past U.S. customs.

Ms Tilley's lawyer has denied that the socialite's guilty plea to cocaine possession in Sydney last month played a role in her botched travel plans, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.

Sydney socialite Sophia Tilley's high-flying lifestyle came crashing down after she was denied entry to the US, so she quickly had to rearrange her travel plans and fly to Greece (pictured)

The 27-year-old hot tub fan was planning on partying at Burning Man two weeks ago, but didn't even make it past US customs

The Sydney socialite is no stranger to tropical beaches, but the desert festival Burning Man is one sandy destination she couldn't visit

According to the Sydney socialites solicitor, the 27-year-old was denied entry due to return ticket mix-up.

All visitors to America must have a return ticket as a condition of entry.

Ms Tilley, ex-girlfriend of Prosecutor Margaret Cunneen's son Stephen Wyllie, was quick to rearrange her travel plans, filling up her social media feed with coastal views from the Greek island of Mykonos.

Ms Tilley was placed on a 12-month good behaviour bond in August after pleading guilty for possession of 0.3 of a gram of cocaine.

She was arrested in April in Bellevue Hill in Sydneys east after police in an unmarked car found a white powder, confirmed to be cocaine, in her handbag, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.

The 27-year-old featured heavily in the ICAC scandal after Cunneen was accused by the corruption watchdog of telling the socialite she could avoid a breathalyzer test after a 2014 car crash by faking chest pains.

According to the socialites solicitor, the 27-year-old was denied entry due to return ticket mix-up, so she was forced to take her bikinis and pals and jet off to Greece

Ms Tilley is a solid fixture in Sydney's social scene and is often pictured surrounded by her friends
For the second year in a row, an amateur photographer in New York City has captured an almost-otherworldly photograph of the Freedom Tower, around the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

Ben Sturner tells ABC 7 that he was looking out the window of his Queens apartment on Thursday, when he saw a 'weird, reflective light' beam off One World Trade Center around 7:11am for about 10 minutes.

The marketing agency owner says he has never seen anything like it since he has been living at the Long Island City apartment.

As the 15th anniversary of #9/11 approaches, an incredible ray of sunlight beams off Freedom Tower this AM. pic.twitter.com/5x3ECXjosE  Ben Sturner (@leverageagency) September 8, 2016

'I am out every day and haven't seen anything touch the World Trade Center for a year and I look everyday and same day as last year saw this ray of sunshine coming out,' he said, according to USA Today.

So he took out his iPhone and captured the heavenly image and posted it online. He adds that he did not Photoshop the images in any way.

Sturner is no stranger to online fame. Last year, on the day before September 11, he took a picture of a rainbow that appeared above the tower.

The photo quickly went viral online, with more than a million people sharing the picture.

'That photo brought so much light and hope,' Sturner said.

Sunday marks the 15th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Sturner also took this photo of One World Trade Center one day before the 14th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks last year




A British man accused of trying to kill Donald Trump has finally seen his family while he awaits trial in a Las Vegas jail.

Michael Sandford, 20, allegedly tried to snatch a police officer's gun during a rally at a Las Vegas casino in June.

He later told officials that his plan was 'to shoot and kill Donald Trump'.

Michael Sandford, accused of trying to kill Donald Trump, has finally seen his family while he awaits trial in a Vegas jail. He is pictured with his mother Lynne

Until Thursday his mother Lynne Sandford had not been able to visit him in jail.

Speaking before the meeting, she told ITV News London that recent telephone calls with him suggested he was both physically and mentally unwell.

She added: 'It's going to be emotional. I don't really know what to expect. I don't know what he will look like. It's not going to be nice going into the courthouse and being separated from him by wire mesh.

'To have travelled all this way and still not allowed that last few centimetres to be able to hug him or anything like that, to wrap my arms around him.'

Charged: Michael Sandford (center), 20, was arrested June 18 after allegedly trying to take a cop's gun to shoot Donald Trump at a rally in Las Vegas. Sandford pleaded not guilty to all counts

Until Thursday his mother Lynne Sandford (pictured) had not been able to visit her son in jail

Ms Sandford and her son, from Dorking, Surrey, lost contact when he left their home to travel around America.

The next time she saw him, he was on TV being frogmarched out of the Trump rally.

On Thursday she was allowed her first visit to Mr Sandford in Las Vegas.

She said: 'We spent the entire visit hand to hand and I could feel the warmth of his hand through the mesh.

'We were allowed a few moments together privately at the end and we just hugged the screen. I was crying.

'Admission': Although he pleaded not guilty, cops say the British citizen already admitted to driving to Nevada from California with the intention of killing the presumptive presidential candidate

'I was quite tearful for a lot of it. My teardrops actually went through the screen and he was able to actually feel those which was heart-wrenching.

'He clearly feels very defeated by everything that's happening to him. He just restated that he loves us and misses us and just wants to come home more than anything in the world.'

Ms Sandford, who travelled to the US with her mother Christine and four-year-old daughter Jessica, said her son had described the incident as a 'blur' and could not remember much about it.

'Obviously he wishes it never had happened,' she added.

Ms Sandford continued that her son had a number of mental health conditions - including autism, anxiety, depression and anorexia - and she is calling for him be transferred to the UK to serve any jail sentence.

His British lawyer, Saimo Chahal QC said: 'Michael has two options. The first is to go for a jury trial, the second is to consider the plea bargain that has been offered to him.'

Mr Sandford has been charged with being in the country illegally and disrupting government business. He faces up to 10 years in US prison if found guilty.

His trial starts on October 3.
Shocking images have emerged of a malnourished child reduced to little more than skin and bone at a hospital in war-torn Yemen.

The helpless boy is pictured lying on a hospital bed in the Red Sea port city of Houdieda.

The weakened toddler is seen chewing on his spindly forearm, his rib bones protruding from his chest.

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Shocking images have emerged of a helpless child reduced to little more than skin and bone at a hospital in the Red Sea port city of Houdieda in Yemen

In one image the child is shown sitting next to his mother wearing nothing but a nappy and a bandage on his elbow, as a syringe lies in front of them

In another image the child is shown sitting next to his mother wearing nothing but a nappy and a bandage on his elbow, as a syringe lies in front of them.

The disturbing pictures come as the United Nations renewed pleas for an end to the conflict.

The UN Security Council called on all parties in the Yemen civil war to halt all military activity and abide by the terms of a Cessation of Hostilities agreed upon in April.

The council said in a statement issued on Thursday that the humanitarian situation will continue to deteriorate in the absence of a durable peace agreement and urged all parties to resume talks with Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed.

The disturbing pictures come as the United Nations renewed pleas for an end to the conflict. Pictured,Yemeni onlookers inspect a car after two bombs went off inside a car in Sanaa

The UN Security Council called on all parties in the Yemen civil war to halt all military activity and abide by the terms of a Cessation of Hostilities agreed upon in April. Pictured, further destruction in beleaguered Amran

Houthi rebels and forces allied with ousted President Ali Abdullah Saleh seized the capital Sanaa in September 2014, forcing the internationally recognized government to flee the country.

A Saudi-led coalition has conducted an extensive air campaign against the Houthis since March 2015, pushing them out of southern Yemen, but failing to dislodge them from Sanaa.

Another tragedy struck the country on Thursday when at least eight civilians were killed after a house north of Yemen's capital was hit in a Saudi-led coalition air strike.

Al-Massirah television said five others were wounded in the strike on Amran, a city around 40 kilometres (25 miles) from Sanaa.

A Saudi-led coalition has conducted an extensive air campaign against the Houthis since March 2015, pushing them out of southern Yemen. Above, civilians assess the damage in Amran

Pictured, a man walks amidst the rubble of a school hit by strikes in Amran

According to tribal sources, coalition warplanes carried out 12 air strikes targeting an army base controlled by rebel forces during which the house was also hit.

In the capital itself on Thursday, a car bomb exploded at a checkpoint controlled by Huthi militants, killing at least one person.

Saudi Arabia has faced repeated criticism from rights groups over civilian casualties in the coalition's military campaign against rebels in Yemen.

It insists the raids do not target civilians.

The coalition intervened after rebels closed in on President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi in his southern refuge in the port city of Aden, forcing him into exile.

More than 6,600 people, mostly civilians, have been killed since the intervention of the Saudi-led Arab coalition, according to UN figures.

More than 6,600 people, mostly civilians, have been killed since the intervention of the Saudi-led Arab coalition. Pictured, the devastation in Amran
Firebrand Eric Zemmour has been criticised for his comments and compared to the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels

The French army has a secret plan to ethnically cleanse Muslims from France with the help of Israeli military 'specialists', according to a controversial political commentator.

Eric Zemmour said that the onslaught against an Islamic community of some five million people already has a name - Operation Brambles - and will be based on recent campaigns against Palestinian Arabs in Gaza.

Critics meanwhile branded Zemmour a 'racist cretin' producing Nazi-style propaganda aimed at dehumanising his enemies and spreading racism.

Zemmour, 58, told RTL radio: 'The General Staff of the army knows that a day will come when it will have to regain what has become alien land on our own soil.'

'The plan is already in the pipeline, it is called Operation Brambles. It was developed with the help of Israeli army specialists who have passed on to their French colleagues their experience of Gaza. Everybody is talking about the comparison'.

Zemmour claimed he had heard about the plan thought his contacts in the French Army hierarchy.

A woman in a burkini (concealing Islamic bathing suit) in southern France. A number of states across the country have repealed the ban against it amid much fanfare although some chose to uphold the law

But Tariq Ramadan, professor of contemporary Islamic Studies at Oxford University, said Zemmour had a produced a 'key text for the cretinisation of spirits and a victory for the worst in France'.

Others took to Twitter to compare Zemmour to the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.

Neither the French nor the Israeli army was immediately in a position to offer a reaction to Mr Zemmour's claims.

More than 500 children were among some 2300 Palestinians killed, and a further 10,000 mainly civilians were wounded when the Israeli last launched a major offensive in Gaza in the summer of 2014.

Tensions running high: a fight in a housing estate in Bastia on the French Mediterranean island of Corsica broke out in August after a group of youngsters of Maghreb origin insulted tourists who were photographing women bathing in burkinis. The island voted to uphold its burkini ban this week

In turn, Israel lost 66 soldiers and six civilians, and suffered some 500 wounded during the so-called Operation Protective Edge.

It led to allegations of crimes against humanity by both Israel and the military wing of Hamas, the governing authority of the Gaza Strip.

Israel continues to launch bombing raids on Gaza, in response to the firing of Hamas rockets, and to launch ground operations on the occupied West Bank.

Zemmour, who has convictions for inciting racist hate, said that such tactics would be vital if France was to 'reconquer' its cities and towns.

'French people have become foreigners in their own land,' he said, claiming there were places where 'there are no French people, only Muslims'.

Zemmour expands on his thoughts about the military operation in a newly published essay, 'A Five Year Term for Nothing', even comparing the situations to the Algerian War in reverse.

It saw mainly Algerian Muslims win their independence from France in 1962, following one of the bloodiest wars in colonial history.

Many French forced to return home after independence were bitterly angry, and helped form the National Front party, which has frequently expressed support for Zemmour's views.

Zemmour himself comes from a Jewish family who fled Algeria during the war, settling in the Paris suburbs.
Boris Johnson gave his Australian counterpart the red carpet treatment today as he hailed 'terrific' progress on plans for a post-Brexit trade deal between the nations.

He said a 'glutinous harmony' had prevailed between the two countries during the annual Australia-UK ministerial meeting, held at London's famous Chelsea Barracks - home to veteran soldiers.

After inviting his Australian counterpart Julie Bishop to a reception with the Chelsea Pensioners, the Foreign Secretary reported that Australia was 'keen' to agree a free trade deal with the UK following Britain's vote to leave the EU.

He said he was 'very confident' that an outline agreement could be reached. Any deal would have to wait for Britain to officially cut ties with Brussels before it could come into affect.

Boris Johnson (right) gave his Australian counterpart Julie Bishop (left) the red carpet treatment today as he hailed 'terrific' progress on plans for a post-Brexit trade deal between the nations

Boris Johnson (third left) welcomed Australian foreign minister Julie Bishop (second left) for vital trade and defence talks in London - but they found time to meet London's famous Chelsea pensions (dressed in the red uniforms) along with UK Defence Secretary Michael Fallon (third right) and his Australian counterpart Marise Payne (second right)

Mr Johnson, who along with UK Defence Secretary Michael Fallon hosted their Australian counterparts Ms Bishop and Marise Payne for talks in London today, also called for the Commonwealth to be 'put back in the primacy' of world affairs in the coming years.

Securing an agreement with the country is a top priority for the UK but the Australian government has sent out mixed messages in recent days.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull promised an 'early... very strong, very open' agreement with Britain after meeting Theresa May last weekend.

But trade minister Steven Ciobo has described his country's historical tie with the UK as 'a relationship of yesteryear' and dampened hopes of a swift deal, insisting formal negotiations could not begin until the UK had finally left the EU.

Speaking today, Mr Johnson struck a very different tone, telling a press conference alongside the Australian delegation: 'I'm very confident that we will be able to at least sketch out, pencil in, the essentials of a very progressive deal that will be good for Australia, good for the UK, good for Europe and good for the world.

Boris Johnson hailed 'terrific' progress on plans for a post-Brexit trade deal between the nations as he gave a joint press conference with Australian foreign minister Julie Bishop (far left), UK Defence Secretary Michael Fallon (second right) and his Australian counterpart Marise Payne (far right)

Boris Johnson (pictured second left) took his Australian counterpart Julie Bishop (first right) to meet the Chelsea Pensioners at the Royal Hospital Chelsea in London today after holding bilateral talks as he continued his efforts towards agreeing post-Brexit trade deals

As he met Australian foreign minister Julie Bishop (middle) in London today, Boris Johnson was forced to admit to admit defeat on his promise of an Australia-style points-based immigration system - one of the central arguments in the Vote Leave campaign that he led - after Prime Minister Theresa May made clear she believed the points system was the wrong move

He said it would be a 'fantastic thing' if the UK had a 'more sensible system' for dealing with migration between the UK and Australia.

'This is something where I think we can make progress and I'm confident that we will.'

Ahead of today's meeting, Mr Johnson said: 'Australia is a long-standing and true friend of the UK, and I look forward to productive talks on how we tackle some of the challenges facing both of our great nations.

'This is a fantastic opportunity to reaffirm how important the UK-Australia relationship is to us and to celebrate our shared history, values and the strong links between our people.'

The meeting, which was held at the Royal Hospital in Chelsea, home to veteran soldiers, also includes talks between Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon and opposite number Marise Payne.

They discussed the terror threat, including tackling Islamic State, also known as Daesh, and the humanitarian crisis in Syria.

The meeting, which was held at the Royal Hospital in Chelsea, home to veteran soldiers, also includes talks between Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon (second row, right) and opposite number Marise Payne (left)

Boris Johnson (pictured with Australian foreign minister Julie Bishop on her visit to London today) was forced to admit defeat on his promise of an Australia-style points-based immigration system - one of the central arguments in the Vote Leave campaign that he led.

Sir Michael said: 'Britain and Australia have a rich history of close military partnership and our defence alliance is as strong as ever. From vital intelligence sharing to the fight against Daesh, we're working together to keep our people safe.'

But the press conference risked being overshadowed as Mr Johnson was forced to admit defeat on his promise of an Australia-style points-based immigration system - one of the central arguments in the Vote Leave campaign that he led.

Prime Minister Theresa May made clear she believed the points system was the wrong move earlier this week.

Today Mr Johnson insisted the important point was to regain control of immigration and attempted to play down the significance of the Vote Leave manifesto pledge.

He said: 'The crucial utensil that needs to be applied is, of course, control and you may remember there was a campaign on which the slogan was 'take back control'.

'That was the ambition.' Mr Johnson welcomed Australian foreign minister Julie Bishop for vital trade and defence talks in London - but they found time to visit London's famous Chelsea pensions.

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson (third left) and UK Defence Secretary (third right) showed their Australian counterparts Julie Bishop (second left) and Marise Payne (second right) the Chelsea Barracks in London today

Who wore it best? Julie Bishop and Boris Johnson sport the SAME haircut - as they meet for post-Brexit talks

Foreign ministers Julie Bishop and Boris Johnson appeared to be on the same page when they met in London on Friday, with both politicians sporting the same hair cut.

Photographs of the ministers speaking on Friday show they both chose the same short-cropped, bowl-style, fringed hair do.

Julie Bishop traveled to London with defence minister Marise Payne to discuss how the two countries plan to move forward following the UK's exit from Europe.

UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson with Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop

The two foreign ministers appeared to be sporting a very similar haircut at their recent meeting in London

The meeting is the eighth Australia-United Kingdom Ministerial Consultations and was hosted by Johnson and the UK's defence secretary Michael Fallon.

The ministers were expected to speak about the continuing campaign against Islamic State in the Middle East as well as operations in Afghanistan.

Other important dealing include defence issues, including the South China Sea.

Last year's AUKMIN in Sydney focused on the threat posed by IS and its ability to attract foreign fighters.

Both Australia and the UK maintain modest military contingents in Afghanistan, supporting Afghan security forces.

Australia's principal activity is mentoring at the UK-run Afghan National Army Officer Academy.

Australian Foreign Minister Julia Bishop (right) and Defence Minister Payne (centre), with UK Prime Minister Theresa May

Earlier, Senator Payne attended the United Nations peacekeeping meeting in London, discussing how peacekeeping operations can be improved and how to lift participation of women.

She pledged an additional $1.2 million over five years to enhance regional UN peace operations online training plus $90,000 to support dissemination of UN Protection of Civilians guidelines and policy.

Last year, Australia pledged to provide strategic airlift support for UN peacekeeping operations in crisis situations.
The mystery of a body in a suitcase found dumped in a Perth river has deepened as it is revealed the tiles used to weigh the bag down are identical to those in the bathroom of a home the murder victim once owned.

Police do not know who killed Annabelle Chen, 57, but have matched the artwork on the tiles in the suitcase she was dumped in to that of the tiles in a Mosman home.

The home was owned by the wealth artist 11 years ago and have changed hands twice since she sold it, according to Perth Now.

Annabelle Chen, 57, was murdered and dumped in a suitcase in a Perth river

Police released photos of the tiles found in the suitcase used to discard of her body, pictured

Some of the tiles in the bag matched those in a home Ms Chen owned in Mosman 11 years ago, pictured, the property has changed hands twice since she sold it

Police have not suggested the people who now live in the home knew the artist.

Photographs of the tiles were released by police in an attempt to figure out what happened to Ms Chen before her death.

The distinctive blue-green edging tile has what appears to be a daffodil painted on the front and is identical to tiling in Ms Chen's old bathroom.

Earlier this month, police released images of a Blade brand scooter which had a wooden chopping board attached.

They believe it may have been used to transport the suitcase.

It was found in 18 metres of water near Freemantle Traffic Bridge, along with more tiles, The Australian reported.

A fisherman found the Perth artist's body in the Swan River at North Fremantle when he pulled it aboard his boat on July 2.

Western Australia police have said detectives are following many lines of inquiry as part of the investigation into Ms Chens death.

The distinctive tiles feature a green-blue background and a bright yellow flower resembling a daffodil
The fifteenth anniversary of the nation's deadliest terror attack two days away, Hillary Clinton convened a meeting with her national security advisers today in New York City.

Attendees of the private gathering included John Allen, the retired four-star general who was President Barack Obama's ISIS czar until the end of last year, and former CIA head David Petraeus, who resigned from his post after he was caught leaking classified information to his mistress.

Petraeus beamed in via satellite video, the Clinton campaign says. So did retired Admiral James Stavridis, the former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, and Janet Napolitano, a secretary of homeland security to Obama.

Former Homeland Security Chief to President George W. Bush Michael Chertoff also participated, as did Mike Morell, a two-time acting director of the CIA. Morell ran the agency before and after Petraeus' tenure.

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The fifteenth anniversary of the nation's deadliest terror attack two days away, Hillary Clinton convened a meeting with her national security advisers today in New York City

Clinton, center, is accompanied by Former National Counterterrorism Center Director Matt Olson, right, and Former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, left

Clinton is seen here beginning the working session with national security advisers and experts at the New York Historical Society this afternoon

The 'working session' at the New York Historical Society will cover threats at home and abroad such as lone wolf attacks.

Clinton's remarks are closed to press.

'Hillary Clinton knows the best way to defeat ISIS and keep the homeland safe is to bring together some of the best minds in the world on the topic to develop solutions,' senior policy adviser Jake Sullivan said.

A poll this week found that a slim nine percent of Americans were worried that a terror attack could take the life of a loved one. Overall, 43 percent of those polled said for the George Washington University survey expressed concern. The majority of respondents, 57 percent, they were not particularly frightened.

However, half of Americans told pollsters for CNN they believed terrorists could strike on September 11th this year. Two percent said they had no opinion. The other 48 percent said they didn't think an attack was imminent.

Clinton wouldn't guarantee on Wednesday evening during a national security forum that aired on NBC News that the country would be safer from lone wolf attacks like the ones in San Bernardino, California, and Boston, Massachusetts, with her as commander in chief.

'Im going to do everything in my power to make sure that thats the result,' she told interviewer Matt Lauer. 'Im not going to, you know, promise something that I think most thinking Americans know is going to be a huge challenge.'

The former secretary of state restated her belief that there must be an 'intelligence surge' between the United States and its allies abroad in order to keep Americans safe. And more must be done to identify radicals online before before they strike, she stated.

Participants in the gathering included former CIA head David Petraeus (pictured, in June) who resigned from his post after he was caught leaking classified information to his mistress. He joined via video conference

A flash poll conducted by NBC after its 'Commander-in-Chief' forum Wednesday had Trump winning the night, 63-37. Clinton's performance received negative reviews

'We have got to disrupt, we have got to take them on in the arena of ideas that, unfortunately, pollute and capture the minds of vulnerable people,' she said.

Clinton also favors passage of a law that would prevent persons on the government's terror watch list from purchasing firearms.

The former U.S. Senator represented New York at the time of the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center more than a decade ago. She reminded audiences this week that she was in the Situation Room when Obama greenlighted a special ops unit to take out 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden.

She has nearly as many former generals and admirals publicly backing her candidacy than Republican Donald Trump - 110 as of today to his 120 - a turnabout from past elections when GOP candidates have traditionally earned significantly more support in that arena their Democratic counterparts.

However, Trump leads Clinton by 19 points among members of the military and veterans, an NBC/SurveyMonkey poll published Wednesday asserted. The findings were part of the news networks weekly tracking poll that ran Monday through Sunday. Trump had 55 percent military support and Clinton had 36 percent.

A flash poll conducted by the network after its 'Commander-in-Chief' forum Wednesday had Trump winning the night, 63-37.

Clinton was forced to go first after Trump's camp won a coin toss and selected the second slot. She delivered a statement and held a news conference the next morning at which she critiqued her opponent as 'totally unqualified' and defended her appearance at the forum, which received many negative reviews.

Trump said on Twitter she's the one who's 'unfit' to serve and panned the presser, on the tarmac of her hometown airport, as a 'disastrous' attempt 'to make up for poor performance.'
Ayllah-Beau Foley, 22, contracted a rare condition which paralysed her stomach

A fraught mother and father are desperately trying to find a cure for their daughter who was been unable to eat for six years.

Ayllah-Beau Foley contracted a rare condition which paralysed her stomach when she was just 16.

The 22-year-old, from Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, was fed nutrients through a tiny feeding tube directly into her heart until a near-fatal bout of septicaemia in April.

Doctors said they couldn't risk another bout of septicaemia so fitted Ayllah-Beau with a tube which goes down her nose directly into her bowels to keep her alive.

But the tube leaves her in a lot of pain, meaning she has to take strong medicines which often leave her unable to get out of bed.

Food-lover Ayllah-Beau was planning to go to chef college when she was struck down with a 'tummy bug' following a trip to India.

Her family initially thought it was 'Delhi belly' but when she continued to vomit doctors diagnosed acid reflux and then appendicitis.

Her weight dropped to less than 6st and she was able to fit into clothes for ten-year-olds before doctors diagnosed her with a rare ailment.

After 18 months of tests - and an operation to remove her appendix - they finally diagnosed gastroparesis, a rare condition which paralyses the stomach muscles.

Food-lover Ayllah-Beau was planning to go to chef college when she was struck down with a 'tummy bug' following a trip to India. She is pictured here before she contracted the condition

After 18 months of tests - and an operation to remove her appendix - doctors finally diagnosed gastroparesis, but they have been left baffled as to how and why she developed it

If Ayllah-Beau eats her stomach cannot process the food, leaving it sitting undigested until she vomits.

Doctors have been left baffled as to how and why she developed the condition.

She tried various treatments including a gastric pace maker, but nothing worked.

'The hardest thing for her at the time was not being able to eat the foods she liked,' said her mother, Chris.

'She really loves food and watching her friends, Christmas dinner, her 18th birthday - it was all tough. She knew if she ate, she's have to pay for it later.'

But her parents say the potential for a cure in the future keeps her going.

Doctors said they couldn't risk another bout of septicaemia so fitted Ayllah-Beau (pictured here aged 14) with a tube which goes down her nose directly into her bowels to keep her alive

Mum-of-seven Chris added: 'There was a 30 per cent chance of survival.

Ayllah-Beau and her mother Chris

'It takes a lot of planning if she wants to go anywhere, because she has to go without pain relief so that she can wake up and get out of bed. It is not ideal.'

Ayllah-Beau's mother and father Neil have so far helped raised some 46,000 for research at St Mark's Hospital where she is being treated.

Doctors there are working on a ground-breaking project to use stem cells to grow new bowel tissue, which could provide her with a cure in the future.

Chris said: 'It is not just for my daughter - it's for people with bowel cancer. It is such a taboo subject, and the work that they do is outstanding.

'It keeps us all going. She has got so used to it now and she is always smiling and laughing and being upbeat.'

Ayllah-Beau and her father Neil, who is fundraising to help fund research into finding a cure for his daughter

Ayllah-Beau said: 'St Marks have been part of my family for several years now.

'They work tirelessly to support me and my family so I'm really pleased that as a family we are able to give something back.

'My doctor Dr Gabe is amazing and always lifts my spirits with his positive outlook.

'This year has been very tough but it has given me a new found appreciation of life.'

Neil, a property maintenance worker, will be taking part in the Great North Run to raise money for the hospital project.

He is currently in the running to win 10,000 more for the charity after he made it through to the final ten of the Mountain Warehouse Charity Challenge.

The competition sees people vote for the charity fundraiser that they would most like to see receive the money.
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Close to two million pilgrims have arrived in western Saudi Arabia for the annual Hajj - where new measures have been brought in to prevent a repeat of last year's stampede which killed around 2,300.

This year is the first time in nearly three decades that Iran has not sent pilgrims to the six-day religious gathering, with the stampede legacy heightening tensions between the two countries.

While the main rites of the six-day event begin on Saturday, pilgrims have already converged on the holy Kaaba at the Grand Mosque in Mecca, a procession that continues day and night.

Muslim pilgrims circle around the Kaaba at the Masjidil Haram, Islam's holiest site, ahead of Hajj at the Holy City Of Mecca

A Muslim prays inside the Masjidil Haram ahead of the Hajj in Mecca

Chechen pilgrims pray at the top of Noor Mountain, where Prophet Muhammad received his first revelation from God to preach Islam, on the outskirts of Mecca

WHAT IS THE HAJJ PILGRIMAGE? Millions of Muslims from across the globe travel to Saudi Arabia to complete the Hajj pilgrimage in the holy city of Mecca each year. The journey is seen as one of the five pillars of Islam. Worshippers spend five days praying both in Mecca and the surrounding desert. Every Muslim who can afford to do the pilgrimage and is physically able is expected to do it at least once in their lifetime. The ritual is designed to promote the bonds of Islamic brotherhood and sisterhood by showing that everyone is equal in the eyes of Allah. Advertisement

It is one of the first rites of the pilgrimage, which is among the largest religious gatherings in the world.

The hajj is one of the five pillars of Islam, which capable Muslims must perform at least once in their lifetime, marking the spiritual peak of their lives.

Rich and poor alike come dressed in the same white garments.

'We don't come here with fear in our hearts,' said Naouri Abdelkarim, 50, of Casablanca, Morocco.

Pilgrim Lawan Nasir, 45, who lost a cousin in last year's stampede, said: 'The pains have not dulled a bit.'

But Nasir, from Nigeria, said it would be 'silly' to stay away.

In one of several safety measures implemented after the stampede, access to the Kaaba is suspended during prayers, and the walk around it is stopped to avoid overcrowding.

The Kaaba is a black cubic structure that Muslims across the globe face while they pray.

Security has also been reinforced around Islam's holiest site, where officers in red berets and camouflage uniforms man green plastic barricades to control the crowd.

Muslims perform Friday prayer near Masjidil Haram, Islam's holiest site, in Saudi Arabia today

Muslim pilgrims touch the golden door of the Kaaba, Islam's holiest shrine at the Masjidil Haram, Islam's holiest site, today

Worshippers at the main weekly Friday prayers overflowed into surrounding streets, which have been cleared to allow access for hundreds of thousands of people.

Pilgrims were told they need to follow a strict set of rules to prevent another tragedy.

'They said not to stray from our group, not to linger when buses arrive and depart, and to properly respect the designated routes,' said Rasha Mohammed, 36, from Alexandria in Egypt.

Worshippers praying near the Kaaba in Mecca, where nearly two million pilgrims are expected to join the Hajj at the holiest site in Islam

Muslim pilgrims circle around the Kaaba today. The Hajj attracts more than a million worshippers from around the globe

A disabled man performs friday prayer near Masjidil Haram, Islam's holiest site, today

Temperatures reached 43 Celsius as they marched, with many pilgrims seemed faint.

They carried water and tried to help each other in the hot sun.

Pilgrims are this year being issued with identification bracelets, following difficulties identifying the dead last year.

Each bracelet carries a bar code which is readable by smartphone.

A Saudi official holds an electronic identification bracelet that authorities are giving to worshippers ahead of the annual Hajj pilgrimage

It holds data including the pilgrim's identity, nationality, and place of lodging in Mecca, the vice secretary of the ministry of hajj and umrah, Issa Rawas revealed.

As well as 1.4 million worshippers from across the world, around 300,000 Muslims from Saudi Arabia are expected to attend.

Muslim pilgrims from around the world circle around the Kaaba at the Grand Mosque in the Saudi city of Meeca

Pilgrims from all over the world have been circling the Kaaba at the Grand Mosque in Mecca, the Islam's holiest city

Turkish men visit Hiraa cave on Noor Mountain, where Prophet Muhammad received his first revelation from God to preach Islam, on the outskirts of Mecca

Zakou Bakar, 50, a pilgrim from Niger, said he was reassured by the bracelet.

'If I die or if there are problems - of course we hope not - but if it does happen I know I will be identified,' he said.

But the kingdom has come in for huge criticism from Iran, where the head of Iran's Hajj Organisation, Said Ohadi, asked today how Saudi Arabia could invite the world's Muslims and not allow questions to be raised about the security measures.

Iranians holding banners and portraits of Bahraini Shiite cleric Sheikh Isa Qassim participate in an anti-Saudi demonstration in the capital Tehran today

Tens of thousands of Iranians are absent this year after talks between Tehran and Riyadh about logistics and security broke down in May.

Thousands of people protested their country's absence from the pilgrimage in Tehran today.

Iran said 464 of its nationals died in last year's crush, the largest number of deaths reported by any country.

A pilgrim is treated following last year's stampede, which claimed 2,300 lives. Serious concerns were raised in the aftermath about difficulties identifying the dead

Medics battle to save the life of a wounded pilgrim following the huge crush at last year's Hajj. The Saudi kingdom has been accused of serious organisational failings

Jane Kinninmont, deputy head of the Middle East and North Africa programme at Chatham House, a London think tank, said the stampede exposed 'clearly some big organisational failings, to say the least'.

There was also 'an absence of real transparency' about what went wrong, she said.

Saudi Arabia has an economic stake in ensuring pilgrims' comfort and safety.

As part of efforts to diversify its oil-dependent economy, the kingdom wants to foster a year-round religious tourism sector relying on millions who perform the umrah, or lesser pilgrimage.
The Israeli army is bracing itself for an imminent ISIS attack which it expects within six months.

Preparations are underway to counter the threat along Israel's southern border with Egypt, a senior military officer has said.

The terror group has been amassing an arsenal in the Sinai desert in Egypt, just a shade more than 50 miles from the Israeli border, which the army believes will be used against them.

Israeli soldiers, who are expecting an ISIS onslaught, listen as they receive their orders to launch a ground offensive into the southern Gaza Strip from an entry point near the Israeli community of Kerem Shalom - where the last jihadi attack in 2012 was launched

The Israeli officer told The Telegraph that Wilayat Sinai, ISIS' group affiliate in Egypt, had stolen at least one Egyptian M60 battle tank as well as a supply of Russian-made Kornet missiles with a range of three miles.

He said: 'It could happen today, tomorrow, in a month but within the next six months we will come into an engagement with Wilayat Sinai.

'In the next six months they will try to carry out an attack and try to do something against Israel.'

Should the prediction come true, it would be the first jihadi attack on the country since 2012.

Zack Gold, non-resident fellow with the Atlantic Council's Hariri Centre, told The Telegraph the worst case scenario could result in ISIS breaching the border, which is guarded by both Israel and Egypt's armies, and capturing hostages.

It would squeeze Israel into launching their own attack or rescue missions into the Sinai, causing more bad relations for the already war-torn country.

Wilayat Sinai, who have been stealing weapons in Egypt and are primed to attack Israel, claimed responsibility for bombing the Russian Metrojet plane (pictured) in October 2015, killing all 224 people aboard shortly after it took off from the resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh

Although the attack four years ago were carried out by ISIS, the group was known as Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, the Supporters of Jerusalem, in 2012 and had links with al-Qaeda.

The jihadis stormed an Egyptian base, killed 16 police officers and stole two armoured vehicles as they broke through the Kerem Shalom border.

It was widely accepted the vehicles were heading to a civilian area to carry out an attack, but the Israeli air force was able to carry out an airstrike to take them out.

Two years later, the group latched onto Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and Islamic State.

Having taken up the name Wilayat Sinai, meaning the Sinai province of the Islamic State, the group has been prominent.
Millions stashed away by a defunct doomsday cult have been uncovered - and everyone from its fugitive founder, to duped ex-members to the taxman wants a piece of the action.

More than six years after Agape Ministries collapsed, the three parties are clamouring to get their hands on a bank account holding $6.7 million in the name of its offshoot Universal Holdings Australia.

The Australian Tax Office has demanded the untouched millions go towards paying the Adelaide cult's unpaid debt, according to The Advertiser.

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Three parties are clamouring to get their hands on a hidden bank account of defunct Adelaide doomsday cult Agape Ministires, led by Rocco Leo (pictured), holding $6.7 million

It claimed in the SA Supreme Court on Friday that the tax bill had ballooned from $3 million to $10 million.

Meanwhile, seven former members want to $2.2 million they were hoodwinked out of by Agape founder Rocco Leo's apocalyptic claims.

But Leo's lawyers insist neither of them can touch the frozen cash because it is held by a third party with no proof it belongs to their client.

His counsel Steven Mitchell said the money should instead fund Leo's ongoing appeals against payouts awarded to the ATO and his former followers.

The Australian Tax Office has demanded the untouched millions go towards paying the Adelaide cult's unpaid debt

Meanwhile, seven former members want to $2.2 million they were hoodwinked out of by Leo's apocalyptic claims

'Its not directly connected, thats the root of our criticism... if there was proof this was (solely) our clients money, it should have been brought forward a long time ago,' he said.

The cult leader fled to Fiji after Agape's compound was raided by police in 2010 and shut down when a cache of weapons, ammunition and explosives.

But Leo's lawyers insist neither of them can touch the frozen cash because it is held by a third party with no proof it belongs to their client

All of his assets were frozen after the raid, including eight properties and a fleet of 13 vehicles spanning two states, with funds in 10 different bank accounts.

Accounts were appointed to liquidate everything to pay its debts, but the ATO said it would support unfreezing and sale of Agapes two remaining properties, worth $2.6 million, to cover Leo's legal expenses.

One of the properties, the sprawling 15.3 hectare Kuipto Colony Retreat one hour south of Adelaide, went to auction in 2014 but failed to attract a single bidder.

The mess has gotten so complicated with so many ongoing disputes, appeals and parties that all cases will be consolidated into the Supreme Court under the oversight of a single Justice.

Agape warned followers of a 2010 apocalypse, claiming that everyone on Earth would be implanted with microchips and those who refused would be killed by the government.

Leo allegedly promised to save cult members by taking them a place called 'The Island' in the South Pacific if they handed over their life savings.

All of his assets were frozen after a 2010 raid, including eight properties and a fleet of 13 vehicles spanning two states, with funds in 10 different bank accounts

Family of Agave members said Leo told his followers he had bought an island in Vanuatu and convinced them to hand over money  in some cases as much as $1 million  to fund their new life.

In 2010 Leslie Baligod, whose son and two granddaughters were members of the cult, said the young girls aged six and eight had been promised in marriage to adult cult members and issued a public plea for their safety.

She said the group was stockpiling weapons and all cult members had been given firearms training.
Democrat vows: 'We are not going to let North Korea pursue a nuclear weapon with the ballistic missile capacity to deliver it to the United States territory'

Clinton says the nuke test points to the need for a president with 'steadiness and strength'

'He would make sure that they would never use it'

Conway got pressed repeatedly on how Trump would respond if North Korea had capability to deliver nukes to the continental U.S., but gave no specifics

Says entire world would be put on notice if Trump took office

Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway says hermetic state would know Trump isn't 'messing around'

Donald Trump's campaign says the program 'has only grown in strength and sophistication' despite Clinton's pledges to work to end it

Donald Trump's presidential campaign is laying the latest North Korea nuclear test squarely in Hillary Clinton's lap, calling it a 'calamitous diplomatic failure.'

'It's just one more massive failure from a failed secretary of state,' Trump said in a speech in Washington at the Values Voter summit.

'Just today, it was announced that North Korea performed its fifth nuclear test  its fourth since Hillary Clinton became Secretary of State,' Trump said.

He echoed the remarks his campaign spokesman Jason Miller put out earlier in the day, calling the nuclear test 'yet one more example of Hillary Clinton's catastrophic failures as Secretary of State.'

'Clinton promised to work to end North Koreas nuclear program as Secretary of State, yet the program has only grown in strength and sophistication. Hillary Clintons North Korean policy is just one more calamitous diplomatic failure from a failed Secretary of State,' he said.

The Obama administration, under Clinton and successor John Kerry, has relied on a policy of gradually tightening already tight sanctions on North Korea, while trying to avoid open escalation  in an effort to break the cycle of bad actions by North Korea followed by talks, followed by more bad actions.

The administration has refused to engage in direct talks, a perennial goal of the country, unless the North Koreans agree to negotiate toward a nuclear-free Korean peninsula.

Donald Trump's presidential campaign said North Korea's nuclear test was evidence of the 'catastrophic' failures of Hillary Clinton's actions as secretary of state

Clinton's campaign put out a statement that didn't mention Trump  but said the nation needed a president with 'steadiness and strength'  a reminder that she and her campaign have gone at Trump as unfit to serve as president.

'North Koreas decision to conduct another nuclear test is outrageous and unacceptable,' Clinton said. 'I strongly condemn this reckless action, which  coupled with its recent series of missile launches  makes clear Pyongyangs determination to develop a deliverable nuclear weapon. This constitutes a direct threat to the United States, and we cannot and will never accept this.'

'This is another reminder that America must elect a President who can confront the threats we face with steadiness and strength. We need a Commander-in-Chief committed to a bipartisan foreign policy, who can bring together top experts with deep experience to solve the toughest challenges,' she said in the statement.

In comments to reporters, the candidate backed President Obama's call for additional sanctions, and called for continued cooperation with allies, but failed to articulate how her strategy would differ from President Obama's.

'We are not going to let anyone who is a treaty ally or a partner of ours be threatened. And we are not going to let North Korea pursue a nuclear weapon with the ballistic missile capacity to deliver it to the United States territory,' Clinton said.

She said the U.S. would equip allies in the region with missile defense capabilities. 'That is not something either the North Koreans or the Chinese or the Russians in the region are particularly pleased about. But what is the alternative?' she said.

She wasn't asked directly about the Trump camp's charge that the tests represented failed diplomacy on her part.

'This is another reminder that America must elect a President who can confront the threats we face with steadiness and strength,' said Clinton

Trump's campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, said Trump would put forward a new policy based on strength, but failed to outline what the strategy would be.

Trump would 'make sure' that North Korea would 'never use' a nuclear weapon if the outlaw regime got the means to deliver a nuke to the continental U.S., his campaign manager said Friday, without explain how he would respond to the state's increasing capabilities.

'He would make sure that they would never use it,' Trump campaign manager Conway said on 'CBS This Morning.'

Conway got pressed repeatedly by host Charlie Rose on how Trump would respond to North Korea after the isolated regime conducted its fifth nuclear test.

The state has developed long-range ballistic missiles, and continues to pursue a goal of being able to mount a nuclear warhead on a ballistic missile that can travel great distances, despite reports of famine and depredation of its people.

Donald Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway says the GOP candidate would 'make sure' North Korea would never use a nuclear weapon, but wouldn't say how

'North Korea and the rest of the word would know Charlie that President Trump and Vice President Pence aren't messing around with anybody who is trying to threaten our lives,' Conway said, when asked about Trump's policy.

'The generals that I hear and the national security experts that I hear talk about nuclear capability being nothing short of devastating,' she said.

Pressed by cohost Norah O'Donnell whether he would push a diplomatic or military response, Conway said, 'He would make sure that they would never use it,' without sharing details.

'He's not going to reveal all of his plans and he's made that very clear and maybe someone can ask him in a debate. But the fact is that this entire world would be put on notice that there's a strong leader in The White House,' she said.

'There would be no failures in Syria, in Libya, in Benghazi. There would be no Russia reset. There would be no advance of ISIS, who our own President called the JV team,' she continued.

DISTURBING: People watch a TV news program showing North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, on a day North Korea conducted its fifth nuclear test

A South Korean official points to a map showing the epicenter seismic waves in North Korea, at the Korea Meteorological Administration in Seoul

CBS This Morning cohost Charlie Rose and other hosts grilled Conway on what Trump would actually do to counter North Korea's nuclear program

Asked by host Gale King how people could decide on voting without knowing his pans, Conway said, ' The informed decision Gayle is we already know what [Clinton] would do.'

Then she changed the subject to ISIS. 'I mean President Obama called Isis the JV team and said they are being contained. Right on the eve of them exacting, executing another awful attack on innocent people in Europe and so the birth and growth of ISIS happened in the last three years alone,' she said.

'So people will say who was there when that happened and can we do something different with stronger leadership,' she concluded.

U.S. policymakers have alternatively tried softer and harder approaches to dealing with North Korea, including sanctions, incentives, harsh condemnations, and entreaties to its benefactor, China. None of the options have succeeded in preventing the country from forging ahead with its arms programs.

North Korea said it conducted its fifth nuclear test Friday. The blast was detected at 10 kilotons, about two-thirds of the size of the bomb dropped by the U.S. on Hiroshima during World War II.

State media said North Korea would be able to produce 'a variety of smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear warheads of higher strike power,' CNN reported.

President Obama has said U.S. and allies would take additional steps, including sanctions, on the already heavily-sanctioned regime.

'To be clear, the United States does not, and never will, accept North Korea as a nuclear state, 'the president said in a White House statement.
The mother of a two-year-old girl who allegedly died after an incident with her 10-year-old cousin has blamed a lack of supervision for her daughter's death.

Journee Blyden was injured in a home on Hemlock Course Run in Ocala - about 80 miles northwest of Orlando - on June 21. She later died of severe head trauma.

The two-year-old's cousin has been held for aggravated manslaughter in the death.

Nicole Davis (right), mother of two-year-old Journee Blyden (left), who allegedly died after an incident with her 10-year-old cousin, has blamed a lack of supervision for her daughter's death

But little Journee's mother, Nicole Davis, said she feels sorry for the 10-year-old, and blamed 'poor supervision' for her daughter's death.

'Something needs to be done... it's neglect,' Davis told the Ocala Star-Banner.

But the mother said she did not know what the boy would do to his other siblings if he was released, and suggested he may need counselling for anger issues.

The 10-year-old made his first appearance in court on Thursday, wearing a yellow jumpsuit and flip-flops, while standing at a podium taller than he was, according to the newspaper.

Two-year-old Journee Blyden (pictured) was injured in her home on June 21 and later died in hospital from severe head trauma

Journee's father, Kendall Corey Dustin Blyden (pictured), is on trial this week for the beating death of his then-girlfriend's one-year-old son almost two years ago

His mother refused to comment as she left court.

Meanwhile, Journee's father, Kendall Corey Dustin Blyden, is on trial this week in Ocala, represented by the same public defender's office, in the beating death of his then-girlfriend's one-year-old son, Jayden Green, nearly two years ago.

It comes after it was revealed the 10-year-old boy lied when giving his original account to police about how his cousin died.

Journee Blyden was injured in her home on Hemlock Course Run in Ocala (pictured) - about 80 miles northwest of Orlando

He had first told officers Journee fell out of a playpen and then stopped breathing.

After the medical examiner found multiple fractures and bruises and ruled that the two-year-old's death a homicide, the boy told investigators a different story.

He said he accidentally fell on top of her on the kitchen floor, lifted her to the counter to examine her, and then accidentally knocked her to the floor again.
Police believe a palm print found on a vehicle used during the 1976 Kingsmill massacre belongs to a suspect arrested last month, a coroner's court has been told.

The claim was made after a lawyer acting for the families of some of those killed called for clarity on the contentious issue during a preliminary hearing at Belfast's Laganside court complex.

Barrister Peter Coll, representing the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), said: 'The person arrested is the person that police believe is the palm print.'

Ten Protestant textile workers were murdered when IRA gunmen riddled their minibus with bullets at a bogus army checkpoint in Kingsmill, County Armagh on January 7, 1976

Alan Black survived the massacre which claimed the lives of ten of his workmates, pictured

The arrest of a 59-year-old man in Newry, Co Down, came two months after police announced the major forensic breakthrough in the long unsolved case.

Mr Coll told Belfast Coroner's Court: 'I can confirm that on August 5 detectives from the PSNI's legacy investigation branch investigating Kingsmill arrested a 59-year-old man on suspicion of murder and attempted murder.

'He was arrested and questioned on the palm print that there have been some discussions about in the past.

'He was released on August 6 pending a report to the PPS (Public Prosecution Service).

'The matter rests with the PPS at the minute.'

Ten Protestant workmen were gunned down when their minibus was ambushed in rural south Armagh on January 5, 1976 in an attack seen as a reprisal for loyalist killings in the same area.

Those on board were asked their religion and the only Catholic was ordered to run away.

The killers, who had been hidden in the hedges, forced the rest of the textile factory workers to line up outside the van before opening fire.

Only Alan Black survived despite being hit 18 times.

The getaway vehicle was left abandoned across the Irish border and the palm print was discovered later.

Following re-examination by forensic scientists in May, a potential match was found on the police's database - a week after a fresh inquest into the incident opened.

Details of exactly how the discovery was made are expected to be given during private briefings between police and the Kingsmill families next week, the court heard.

'I KNEW MY MATES WERE DEAD': SURVIVOR RECALLS ATTACK Sole survivor Alan Black recalled the chilling moment that his colleague Robert Chambers cried for his mother as he was gunned down Speaking at an inquest into the massacre in May, sole survivor Alan Black recalled the chilling moment that his 19-year-old colleague Robert Chambers cried for his mother as he was gunned down. He said: said: 'Robert Chambers - my last memory was him lying on the ground calling for his mother. 'He was only wounded at that time. The gunman came over and shot him in the face... His head was blown off.' Mr Black told the hearing at Belfast Coroner's Court that the water from the rain running down the road splashed in his face as he lay badly injured. He said: 'I felt the most unbelievable level of pain, as if someone was sticking hot needles into my whole body.' He said people were 'screaming in pain'. 'They shot John McConville through the head. 'I knew my mates were dead because there was no more moaning.' Advertisement

Judge Brian Sherrard, who is presiding over the new inquest, said he had written to Northern Ireland's director of public prosecutions regarding the recent arrest.

He said: 'I would be optimistic of a relatively quick decision by the PPS but nothing has appeared as yet.'

The coroner also stressed he was keen for the case to progress.

He said: 'I am particularly anxious to get the evidence heard in this case.'

Meanwhile, it also emerged that Judge Sherrard has been asked to consider calling author Toby Harnden as a witness.

The inquest has been adjourned until Monday when two days have been set aside to deal with sensitive material in the high-profile case.

Afterwards Colin Worton, whose brother Kenneth was among those shot dead, said he welcomed the clarification surrounding the palm print.

He said: 'We got a bit more out of the hearing than we thought we would.

'Now we know who the police believe the palm print belongs to.'
Two teenage girls charged with trying to sacrifice a 12-year-old classmate to please the mythical 'Slender Man' have pleaded insanity.

Anissa Weier and Morgan Geyser, both 14, are charged with attempted murder after they lured their friend Payton Leutner to an isolated park in Milwaukee in 2014 where they stabbed her multiple times.

Today, Weier pleaded not-guilty by reason of insanity to the charges during a 15-minute proceeding in Waukesha County Circuit Court.

Judge Michael Bohren appointed two doctors to examine her, and report back on her mental status by October 6.

Anissa Weier, 14, pleaded not-guilty by reason of insanity to attempted murder charges today (pictured last year in court)

Her insanity plea follows that of co-defendant Geyser's last month.

Experts have testified already that Geyser suffers from schizophrenia and oppositional defiant disorder and maintains relationships with imaginary characters.

Bohren said he will look to schedule a trial in March or as soon as prosecutors and Cotton are ready for both girls.

The teens are being tried as adults in the case and face up 40 years in prison and 20 years on extended supervision if convicted.

Morgan Geyser (pictured last month), pleaded not guilty Friday by reason of insanity. She is accused of trying to kill a classmate two years ago to please horror character Slender Man

Geyser (above) entered her plea to one count of attempted first-degree intentional homicide during a status conference

But if found to be suffering from a mental illness, they would be committed to a mental hospital indefinitely, Weier's attorney, Maura McMahon said.

A hearing will likely be scheduled for a jury to decide to uphold the insanity plea or reject it.

The girls' lawyers are also attempting to move them into juvenile court, where they could be incarcerated for three years and supervised until they turn 18 but have been unsuccessful so far.

Anyone 10 or older charged with attempted first-degree intentional homicide is automatically considered an adult under state law.

Weier's attorney, Maura McMahon, didn't immediately return voicemail and email messages after court adjourned Friday asking if she planned to ask the Supreme Court to step in.

The other girl in the case, Anissa Weier (above), 14, pleaded not guilty last year to one count of attempted first-degree intentional homicide. She has now changed her plea to insanity

Geyser (pictured left at 12) and Weier (pictured right at 12) allegedly stabbed Payton Leutner 19 times as they tried to appease Slender Man, a fictional Internet figure they claim told them to murder Leutner

Prosecutors say the girls planned for months to kill Leutner, either to gain favor with Slender Man and earn positions as his servants or to avoid his wrath.

According to court documents, the girls invited their classmate, Payton Leutner, to a birthday sleepover in May 2014. All three girls were 12 years old at the time.

The next day they lured Leutner into some woods at a Waukesha park, stabbed her repeatedly and then fled.

Leutner suffered 19 stab wounds, including one that doctors said narrowly missed a major artery near her heart. Leutner crawled to a road where a bicyclist found her.

Police captured Geyser and the other girl on Waukesha's outskirts later that day.

They told investigators they had hoped killing Leutner would gain them favor with Slender Man, a demon-like character featured in online horror stories.

Leutner (above) was also 12 years old at the time of the incident. She crawled to a road where a bicyclist found her. She recovered from her wounds and returned to school that fall

They said they were planning to walk 300 miles to the Nicolet National Forest, where they hoped to live as Slender Man's servants in his mansion.

Leutner recovered from her wounds and returned to school that fall.

The two girls' attorneys have never denied they attacked and stabbed Payton, but claim they were so disturbed they truly believed the Slender Man would kill their own families in three seconds if they did not do his bidding.

Geyser's mother Angie said her daughter was traumatized for 19 months after the attack. Once in custody, she was diagnosed with early onset schizophrenia and began treatment.

During that time, according to doctors, she was talking to hallucinations of Harry Potter characters and Slender Man.

'When the medication finally worked, it was like a switch went on, like, ''There you are! Where have you been?''
Defendant: Elliot Rivera, 20, is the fourth of nine people to admit being part of the December abduction of two male University of Rochester students

A man has accepted a plea deal that will send him to prison for 35 years in the kidnapping and torture of two New York college students.

Prosecutors in Rochester say 20-year-old Elliot Rivera is the fourth of nine people charged to admit being part of the December abduction of the University of Rochester students. Rivera pleaded guilty Friday to kidnapping charges.

Authorities say the victims, both from Illinois, were lured to a house in Rochester under the belief there would be a party.

Instead, they were beaten and sexually assaulted, and one was shot in the leg over a 40-hour period before the pair were rescued by a SWAT team.

An indictment says the male students, both 21-year-old business majors, were 'terrorized repeatedly' as they were tied up, beaten with clubs and punched as the gang demanded they handed over cash and the pin numbers to the credit and debit cards.

Investigators believe the students were kidnapped as payback for a drug robbery in which neither man was involved, suggesting that they were mistaken for someone else by their attackers.

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Leah Gigliotti, 21 (left) and Samantha Hughes (right), 20, both pleaded guilty to second-degree kidnapping on September 7

Inalia Rolldan (left) and Lydell Strickland (right) have rejected plea deals

On Tuesday, Rivera's co-defendant Leah Gigliotti, 21, pleaded guilty to one count of second-degree kidnapping and was sentenced to 13 years behind bars.

Ruth Lora, charged with second-degree kidnapping, is headed for trial next month

She was indicted in January on kidnapping, assault and gang assault charges. In court this week, Gigliotti admitted to driving to meet the two victims and lure their to the off-campus party.

Also on Tuesday, Samantha Hughes, 20, pleaded guilty to second-degree kidnapping for her part in the abduction. She is expected to be sentenced to 15 years.

In August, suspect Jesus Castro-Ubiles, 27, pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree kidnapping along with a criminal use of a firearms charge. He will be sentenced on October 5.

Senior Assistant District Attorney Christine Callanan said all nine defendants in the case were offered plea deals, according to The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle.

Inalia Rolldan and Ruth Lora, both 19, rejected the prosecutor's offers, as did Lydell Strickland and David Alcaraz-Ubiles. All four are set to go to a joint trial on October 31.

The last suspect, Dennis Perez, is scheduled to appear in court next Wednesday to announce his decision regarding a plea deal.

David Alcaraz-Ubiles (left) also has rejected the prosecutor's offer, while Dennis Perez (right) is scheduled to appear in court next Wednesday to announce his decision regarding a plea deal




The computer technician who deleted Hillary Clinton's emails after she was ordered by Congress to preserve the records was reportedly offered immunity by federal officials.

The New York Times has identified the whiz as Paul Combetta, an employee of Platte River Networks, the firm Clinton hired to maintain her server. It was also the first outlet to report the immunity deal.

He is the second, known IT specialist who handled Clinton's emails to have been granted legal protection by the Justice Department in exchange for his testimony.

The former campaign staffer and State Department employee who set up Clinton's server, Bryan Pagliano, was the first.

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The computer technician who deleted Hillary Clinton's emails after she was ordered by Congress to preserve the records was also offered immunity by federal officials. Clinton is pictured at a meeting today in New York

House Republicans want the Obama administration to launch an obstruction of justice investigation over the matter, but the legal agreement protecting the computer guru presents an obstacle.

The Justice Department did not respond to the Times' request for comment on its report naming Combetta.

Combetta was not named in the FBI report detailing the incident with Clinton's emails last Friday, described as an 'oh s***' moment in the redacted text.

The Times says that multiple sources confirmed that Combetta was the employee who made the error, however.

After the news outlet reported in 2012 that Clinton had a secret server in the basement of her New York home that contained work-related emails from the time she served as secretary of state, the House's Benghazi committee subpoenaed the pertinent messages.

Around the same time, an redacted individual realized that he had not, as he was instructed several months before, deleted an archive of Clinton's emails.

A summary of the FBI's findings says he the individual, whom the Times says is Combetta, 'indicated he believed he had an "oh s***' moment and sometime between March 25-31, 2015 deleted the Clinton archive mailbox from the PRN server and used BleachBit to delete the exported .PST files he had created on the server system containing Clintons e-mails.'

PRN stands for Platte River Networks, Comebetta's employer.

Combetta first told the Justice Department that he didn't remember deleting the emails but changed his story several months later.

He also said, 'he was aware of the existence of the preservation request and the fact that it meant he should not disturb Clintons email data.'

Two IT specialists who handled Clinton's emails have received immunity - Bryan Pagliano (pictured) and Paul Combetta (not pictured)

The Republican-run House Oversight and Government reform committee is moving forward with its own investigation into the 'circumstances leading to the failure to preserve federal records during Hillary Clintons tenure as Secretary of State,' it said said Friday.

It has requested the presence of Pagliano, Combetta, longtime Clinton hand Justin Cooper, Platte River's Bill Thornton, and Datto, Inc. founder and CEO Austin McChord at a hearing next Tuesday.

Cooper monitored the server. Datto provided back-ups to Clinton's emails.

Clinton's presidential campaign says additional investigations into the way Clinton's records were preserved are unnecessary. The matter was 'thoroughly examined by the FBI prior to its decision to close out this case.'

'As the FBI report notes, neither Hillary Clinton nor her attorneys had knowledge of the Platte River Network employees actions. It appears he acted on his own and against guidance given by both Clintons and Platte Rivers attorneys to retain all data in compliance with a congressional preservation request,' Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon told the Times.

The Oversight committee will also hold a hearing next week on the FBI report.

An advisory said the committee is seeking answers on classified sections and redactions within the material, as well as pages it says were omitted entirely.

Benghazi committee chairman Trey Gowdy, a former prosecutor, told Fox News today it was 'stunning' that DOJ would have given Combetta a get-out-of-jail free card.

'This is prosecutor 101. You don't give immunity to the person who actually robbed the bank,' he exclaimed. 'You may want to give it to the getaway driver. You may want to give it to the person who helped count the money afterwards, but you don't give immunity to the person who walked in and robbed the bank.'

Gowdy said the FBI 'blew it.'
Bill Nojay committed suicide Friday, as he was supposed to turn himself into the FBI for a fraud case

A New York State Assemblyman committed suicide this morning, just as he was scheduled to turn himself into the FBI on a fraud charge.

Officials say Bill Nojay, a Republican representing the 133rd Assembly seat in Upstate New York, shot himself near his brother's grave in the family burial plot at Riverside Cemetery in Rochester, around 9:22am.

Nojay's brother Robert was severely disabled and died in 1999.

The 59-year-old politician reportedly called his lawyer this morning, saying he planned to take his life.

A police officer tracked Nojay down to the cemetery but he pulled the trigger before the cop could stop him.

Nojay is survived by a wife , Debra, and three children. They live in Pittsford, New York.

Nojay was up for re-election this Tuesday in the GOP primary, and Bill Reilich, the Republican chair for Monroe County, told the Democrat and Chronicle that he appeared 'upbeat' ahead of the election and 'always anticipated he would do well'.

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Investigator Frank Camp, with the Rochester Police, gives a press conference outside the cemetery where Nojay shot himself Friday morning

Nojay had served in the New York State Assembly since 2012. He was up for re-election in the GOP primary on Tuesday

Nojay was reportedly due in court on Friday to discuss a case regarding a woman in Cambodia, who claims that he and two other men scammed her.

The wealthy dentist in Phnom Penh recently claimed that the three men got her to invest $1million in a rice exporting company. She says she learned that the company was bankrupt eight months after investing.

In a statement in July, Nojay played the case off like it wasn't a big deal, saying the company was something he helped start years ago and that he hoped the issue would be resolved.

Above, a view of Riverside Cemetery where Nojay killed himself on Friday. An officer apparently witnessed the suicide

A source told the New York Daily News that Nojay was to turn himself into the FBI this morning and then appear in court for the case.

Nojay was first elected to the New York State Assembly in 2012. He was an ardent Trump supporter who was part of a group who tried to get the businessman to run for governor in 2014. He was also a fierce critic of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and the governor's gun control law, known as the SAFE Act.

Nojay's name will remain on the primary ballet on Tuesday, and if he wins, then the party has 10 days to nominate a replacement for the November ballot.

Nojay, right, pictured being sworn in after winning the election for the 133rd State Assembly seat in 2012

He was also a small business owner and the host of a daily radio show. In his political career, he helped serve as an election monitor with the International Republican Institute in Ukraine and Afghanistan and was the director/treasurer of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran.

Nojay was also the host of a daily radio show in Upstate New York

Nojay's opponent in Tuesday's GOP primary is Honeoye Falls Mayor Richard Milne, who said in a statement that he is 'devastated' by the news. Milne says he was on the phone with Nojay just that morning.

'This is just a terrible, terrible day,' he said.

In response to Nojay's suicide, Barbara Baer, the Democratic candidate running for Nojay's seat, said that she was temporarily suspending her campaign.

She called Nojay 'a passionate advocate for Upstate' and 'a kind and smart man who was a pleasure to see on the campaign trail'.

Politicians from across the state released statement's on Nojay's death, including Gov. Cuomo.

'On behalf of all New Yorkers, I extend our deepest condolences to Assemblyman Nojay's family, friends and constituents during this trying time,' Cuomo tweeted on Friday.

 For confidential help, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 or click here
It looks like a scene from the Walking Dead.

Two crazed zombies slumped across a car in Ohio, mouths open and eyes sunken.

Behind them is a young four-year-old boy, sitting patiently in his seat, wondering what the hell is going on.

But this is not a movie set.

This is the full, horrifying reality of heroin-ravaged America.

This is the full, horrifying reality of heroin-ravaged America - like a scene from the Walking Dead, with a child sitting in the back seat

It would be shocking enough if this were a one-off incident. But its not. It happens every single day all over America in myriad manifestations. The majority of users get their start with prescription drugs as the gateway

The zombies are Rhonda Pasek  the boys mother - and her boyfriend James Acord, both so out of their heads on smack they cant even stay conscious let alone operate a car.

It was 3.11pm when their Ford Explorer was stopped for driving erratically before screeching to a halt near a school bus that was dropping off children.

When the officer approached the vehicle, he noticed Pasek was unconscious and the driver, Acord, appeared intoxicated with his head bobbing back and forth and his speech almost unintelligible.

He then passed out like Pasek.

Theyve both now been charged with various offences and the boy placed in the custody of childrens services.

Wed have known nothing about this if the local police department hadnt decided enough was enough and made public the photos they took at the scene.

Im glad they did, for it may jolt us out of our collective blinkered apathy and ignorance.

Its hard to imagine a more unsettling, disturbing and frankly despicable set of images.

One which will cause every parent who sees it to scream DISGRACE!

And one which will cause every U.S. police officer to slowly shake their head and mutter: No surprise.

It would be shocking enough if this were a one-off incident.

But its not. It happens every single day all over America in myriad manifestations.

The zombies are Rhonda Pasek  the boys mother - and her boyfriend James Acord, but they are hardly unique. Heroin addiction is rampant in the United States

We are well aware that some may be offended by these images and for that we are truly sorry, said the City of East Liverpools police department, but it is time the non drug using public sees what we are now dealing with on a daily basis. The poison known as heroin has taken a strong grip on many communities not just ours, the difference is we are willing to fight this problem until its gone and if that means we offend a few people along the way we are prepared to deal with that.

How big is this problem?

Well, two days ago, just 260 miles down the road in Hamilton County, Ohio, an unprecedented immunity deal was launched permitting anyone to turn in a stash of drugs without facing criminal charges.

There is an emergency in this community and weve got to do something to get it off the streets, explained Hamilton County District Attorney Joe Deters.

Anyone can now drop off narcotics, no questions asked.

We realize were not going to be able to arrest ourselves out of this, said Sheriff Jim Neil.

Think about those words for a moment.

A police force admitting that heroin addiction is now so prevalent they cannot stem it through the normal process of law.

The statistics are mind-boggling: authorities said that nearly 300 heroin overdoses were reported in the Cincinnati area since August 19 alone, 174 of them in a six-day period.

Thats more than one an hour.

In Hamilton County, the number of accidental drug overdose deaths doubled to 414 last year from 204 in 2012.

This year so far there have been 92 overdoses reported a month, more than double the monthly average for the first six months of 2015.

These horrifying numbers are being replicated right across America, a country where 435,000 people now admit taking heroin every month and where heroin-related deaths have quadrupled this century.

Even more worryingly, the strength of the heroin is accelerating at an even deadlier rate.

The New York Times recently reported that many of those deaths are being caused by the growing use of super-powerful synthetic opiates like fentanyl and carfentanil.

Fentanyl can be 50 times stronger than heroin, and carfentanil  an animal tranquilizer used on elephants - can be 100 times stronger than fentanyl.

This hideous hybrid heroin is now so potent that authorities wont even field test it: one sniff could KILL a drug dog, an amount smaller than a snowflake could kill a human being.

The people taking it are from every walk of life; all ages, all colours, all creeds, all sections of the wealth and work status divide.

In fact, many of the new breed of heroin addicts are prosperous white women with families and good jobs.

The only common denominator is that once youre hooked, youre on a fast track to hell that often results in death.

So who is to blame for this devastating epidemic?

The U.S. Government and U.S. medics, thats who.

Three out of four heroin addicts in America start out using, and becoming addicted to, prescription drugs. Fentanyl, seen here, can be 50 times stronger than heroin

They have conspired to make America the most pill-popping nation on earth  marketing, promoting and selling a mountainous array of prescription drugs to anyone they can cynically snare into the multi-billion-dollar business.

Theres now a clear gateway emerging from this unedifying alliance: three out of four heroin addicts in America start out using, and becoming addicted to, prescription drugs.

How did this happen?

Take just one example: in 1995, the Food and Drug Administration approved the opioid analgesic OxyContin, made predominantly from the opium-derivative oxycodone.

It grew rapidly to represent a third of Americas entire painkiller market, actively prescribed by doctors being paid large sums of cash by drugs companies to promote it.

By 2010, America, with 5% of the worlds population, was consuming 80% of the oxycodone market.

The volume of opioid-analgesic overdoses and deaths increased almost as fast as the sales of the drug.

Understandably, given this surge in demand, the worlds opium producers are clapping their filthy hands in glee.

Mexicos opium output rose 50% in 2014 thanks, it was reported, to a voracious American appetite for heroin.

Afghanistans poppy fields expanded by 36% from 2012 to 2013 alone, and are now at their all-time record levels of cultivation  the majority of its end product heroin ending up in America.

So todays appalling photographs of Rhonda Pasek and James Acord are not some weird anomaly.

They are the norm for many parts of America and the situation is worsening dramatically.

So by all means recoil in horror when you look at these pictures because they are indeed truly horrifying.

But to sit back and glibly mock and scorn these two feckless addicts for their appalling negligence is to miss the point about what caused it.

America has a terrible problem with illegal drugs, and heroin especially.

It has a far worse problem, however, with legal drugs.

The lawful pharmaceutical industry in the United States is the most insidious, vile and addiction-provoking monster of its type on the planet.

Until it is properly confronted and curtailed, the migration of addicts from legal highs to heroin hell will continue at its fast and furious rate.

So my real wrath isnt reserved for this wretched couple collapsed at the wheel of their car.

Its aimed squarely at every politician and doctor who has enabled this horrendous scourge on society by encouraging Americans to medicate themselves in such a disastrously excessive and unnecessary manner.
Two ISIS sympathisers who sold a BMW and jewellery to raise 10,000 to fund their brother fighting for the terror group in Syria have been jailed.

Mohammed Hussain, 26, and Mohammed Rohaman, 33, sent the cash to Musadikur Rohaman, 27, who travelled to the war-torn country in December 2014 with his 27-year-old wife Zohura Siddeka.

The brothers recruited family friend Mohammed Khan, 27, who worked in a Tesco warehouse, to help.

Mohammed Hussain, left, and Mohammed Rohaman, right, were both jailed at the Old Bailey for their part in trying to raise funds of Musadikur Rohaman who ran away to join ISIS in Syria

The gang, two of whom who worked at this dry cleaners in Walsall in the West Midlands, raised funds which they sent by Western Union to the Middle East in order to fund Musadikur's jihad

The court heard the cash was sent to Rohaman, who is believed to be in Raqqa, out of 'misguided loyalty'.

They sent funds to the couple in Syria from a Western Union bank next door to the family launderette in Walsall in the West Midlands.

To raise money, they sold Musadikur's BMW for 4,000 and made 1,500 from selling gold that belonged to the couple.

The trio, all from Walsall, also tried to sell a wedding dress and watch on eBay, but were unsuccessful.

The gang enlisted Mohammed Khan, pictured, who attempted to take out credit cards on behalf of Musadikur Rohaman

Last month, all three were found guilty of funding terrorism.

Khan, the court heard, applied for credit cards to provide money for Musadikur.

A fourth man, Maruf Uddin, 26, was acquitted of entering into a funding arrangement.

The court heard Musadikur had worked at the family laundrette in Walsall, Birmingham, before heading off for a week's holiday to Turkey with his wife in December 2014.

The couple's son had died at just a few months old the previous September, and they told their relatives they needed a holiday to get over their grief.

But the family did not hear from him again until late January 2015 when he got in touch via Whatsapp.

Older sister Nargis Ali, 42, told him: 'Please, please don't do anything stupid and go fighting'.

When he replied 'Lol Mez, at least use code words', she responded: 'Don't 'lol' me young man, there's nowhere to hide from us [the family] no point using codes.'

Hussain, who became the boss of the family dry cleaning business after his father's death, supported ISIS and had even considered travelling to Syria himself, the court heard.

He asked his fiance if she would go with him to Syria once they were married, telling her that travelling to the caliphate would be rewarded with 'the wiping of all sins'.

Musadikur Rohaman, 27,travelled to Syria in December 2014 with his 27-year-old wife Zohura Siddeka, right, after claiming they were going on a short holiday to Turkey

Nigel Lambert QC, for Hussain, said he only sent money on one occasion, and did not send any of his own cash, only that of his brother.

'His plans to become a solicitor have been dashed, I expect for ever, and any plans to marry have to be put on hold.

'This all came about because of a misguided loyalty to and under the instruction of his older brother at a time when his brother was in a state of emotional turmoil after the loss of his father and the loss of his baby son.

'Coupled with that there's the string cultural element within the family to the effect that if your brother asks you to do something, with in reason, you do it.

'Now that brother recognises, as all the family knew he would, the appalling decision he's made and has made efforts to return home with his wife and his new baby.'

Hussain was jailed for four years, Rohaman was imprisoned for two years and nine months, and Khan was handed an 18-month sentence at the Old Bailey.

In March last year, a total of 10,000 was sent via Lebanon, including maternity payments Siddeka was still receiving from her job as a teaching assistant.

The sum also consisted of proceeds from the sale of the BMW, and money from the couple's bank accounts after they sent across their details.

Musadikur Rohaman and his wife had travelled to Syria via Turkey with Abul Hasan, also from Walsall, who is believed to have been killed.

While they were in the Middle East, Rohaman kept in touch with his family in the UK online, including through Skype.

In one message he said: 'Unlikely you will see me again, hope you are all praying for us. It's amazing over on this side of the world.'

And in another he warned them, 'at least use code words', after a sister pleaded with him not to fight in Syria.

Sentencing the trio, Judge Mark Lucraft QC said: 'In my view, it would have been obvious to each of you that Musadikur and Siddeka were in Syria, and they were there in support of the so-called Islamic State.

'We are all only too well aware of the many terrorist atrocities carried out by those said to be fighting for the so-called Islamic State.

'Whilst the trial was ongoing, there were a number of incidents going on around the world.

'Any form of support, financial or otherwise, fuels that fight and encourages those engaged to carry out atrocities.'

An investigation was launched into the trio following a probe into another terror cell in Walsall.

The gang used a Western Union agent near their dry cleaners to send over the illicit cash

Police searched Hussain and Rohaman's home last June, following the disappearance of their brother and sister-in-law.

They found he was fighting in Syria, and that his two brothers knew what he was doing.

Hussain was found guilty last month of five counts of funding terrorism under the Terrorism Act 2000, and Rohaman was convicted of one count.

Khan was convicted of two counts of funding terrorism.

Hussain was jailed for four years, while his brother Rohaman was jailed for two years and nine months.

Khan was handed 18 months for his role in helping the brothers apply for credit cards for Musadikur

In mitigation, Nigel Lambert QC, defending Hussain, said: 'This is a decent, hard working and very close family, now fractured, ruptured and devastated by all that has happened.

'Thy spoke of his commitment to, and his love for, his friends, family and community - the community here in the UK, and nothing about this trial has changed that.

'When his brother left on holiday for Istanbul, Mr Hussain, like the rest of his family, had no idea that his plan was then to go to Syria.

'Mr Hussain himself had no time for, or any interest in, terrorism. And this has wholly come about because of his brother.'

Richard Thomas, defending Khan, said: 'Certainly he has been reckless. He has also been extremely fortunate, fortunate because on this occasion his recklessness did not cause any harm.

'This arose because of a request from someone he had grown up with, a family he had grown up with.
A tea party Texas Republican congressman said Friday that it's un-Christian to 'make fun of people who are impaired' or 'have special needs'  like Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

Speaking at the Value Voters Summit in Washington, an annual gathering of evangelical political activists, Rep. Louie Gohmert said that 'whether you like her or not, Hillary Clinton has made clear she is mentally impaired.'

'This is not somebody you should be making fun of.'

While a hotel ballroom full of conservatives laughed along, Gohmert leveled new questions at Clinton about her health and mental fitness to be president.

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'SHE IS MENTALLY IMPAIRED': Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert, a tea party Republican, said Friday at the Value Voters Summit in Washington that it's mean to mock Hillary Clinton because she's not all there in the brains department

'DERANGED CONSPIRACY THEORIES': The Clinton campaign has worked overtime to swat down claims that a 2012 concussion, which left her unable to recall some national security briefings, has impaired her cognitive function enough to disqualify her from being president

'I get the impression that in law school and along the way she's been very, very smart,' he said, 'but I don't know  maybe it was the concussion, the fall, back when she did.'

'Or maybe, who knows? They won't tell us what really is going on with her.'

Gohmert even joked that revelations about Clinton aides smashing her Blackberry email devices with hammers might explain some of what she suggested to the FBI were memory lapses related to a 2012 concussion.

'If I were going to smash cellphones, Blackberrys, I'd use a two-pound sledge. I think that's the most  well, who knows? Maybe somebody got to wailing around, and hit her again.'

'I don't know. But we need to be praying for Hillary Clinton. There's special needs there. There's mental impairment.'

Gohmert raised eyebrows last week during an appearance on 'Fox & Friends' when he said Clinton's 'brain is in a blender.'

On Friday he explained the odd choice of words, which came from a line in a parody song that once played on conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh's program.

'It was to the tune "Try to remember"  and it's Hillary Clinton saying: "I don't remember, my brain's in a blender",' Gohmert recalled.

'I said Hillary's brain is in a blender. But anyway, that was not a proper thing to say, because again I'm making fun of the mentally impaired and that's not right.'

The short parody tune was a send-up of Clinton's five hours of testimony in 1996 before a Senate committee investigating the Whitewater land-deal scandal.

She drew howls from Republicans for telling the lawmakers over and over: 'I can't recall' or 'I don't remember' in response to their questions.

The Clinton campaign this year has tried to shoot down what it calls 'deranged conspiracy theories' related to the former secretary of state's health, accusing Republicans of 'parroting lies' about her mental fitness to be commander-in-chief.

The Texas tea partier played it to the hilt, however, complaining that nuclear negotiations with Iran 'were going on under Secretary Clinton.'

'And she probably doesn't remember. And I give her that.'

Gohmert, a staunch conservative, opened his morning speech at the summit by observing that taking a hard line on policy when Republicans control both houses of Congress is 'a no-brainer.'
Saturday Night Live have unveiled their brand new line-up after a surprise cast shakeup at the end of last season.

Veteran players Jay Pharoah and Taran Killam, both known for their impressions, made a shock departure last month after being given the boot by producer Lorne Michaels.

Now Chris Redd, who appeared in Lonely Island's movie Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, and SNL writer Mikey Day, 36, have been announced as the new cast members.

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Chris Redd (left) who appeared in Lonely Island's movie Popstar: Never Stop Stopping, and SNL writer Mikey Day (right) have been announced as the new cast members

Redd, who came to fame through the Chicago improv scene is known for his President Obama impression - taking over from the departing Pharoah who has played Obama in the past six seasons, Decider reports.

The comedian, who trained at The Second City and iO Theater, has also worked with the likes of Tina Fey and improv guru Mick Napier. But his biggest role to date was as Hungry the Hunter opposite former SNL star Andy Sandberg.

Day, an alumni of LA's celebrated Groundlings Theater, joined SNL as a writer in 2013 and frequently collaborated with Killam. He even co-wrote Killams new film Brother Nature.

Redd's biggest role was as Hungry the Hunter in the Lonely Islands Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping

Day, an alumni of LA's celebrated Groundlings Theater, who joined SNL as a writer in 2013 appears in NBC's Maya and Marty

Day then took his turn on the other side of the camera this summer when he appeared on Maya & Marty (here playing James Van Der Beek with Maya Rudolph as Suzanna and John Cena)

Day, who previously dated actress Selma Blair, then took his turn on the other side of the camera this summer when he appeared on Maya & Marty.

The pair will be kept on their toes as producer Michaels is known to be ruthless in firing new cast members if they don't produce enough work for the show,.

But it's quite unusual for veterans like Killam and Pharoah to be ousted.

Both actors had been on the show for six seasons and were known for their impressions.

Pharoah has played President Obama on the show and Killam has played Republican nominee Donald Trump. However, in the last season former SNL star Darrel Hammond was brought in to portray The Donald.

Their departure seemed to come as something of a shock to the comedians.

The new players replace veteran cast members Jay Pharoah (left) and Taran Killam (right)

Rookie Jon Rudnitsky (with Killam in SNL) was also dumped last summer after just one season on the show

Killam told Uproxx that he wasn't even given a reason why his contract wasn't renewed this year.

'I dont know the other side of it,' Killam said. 'I was never given a reason why, really. I can assume until the cows come home. But I do know Im directing this movie [Why Were Killing Gunther with Arnold Schwarzenegger] and Ill have two months of post-production that would have bled into the SNL production schedule, so we kind of communicated that.  I wasnt going to have to take any time off to do it, but it was a thing that they would have had to okay.'

Rookie Jon Rudnitsky was also dumped last summer after just one season on the show.

'SNL' is known for its revolving-door cast, with Tina Fey, Jimmy Fallon and Eddie Murphy among its successful alumni.
One social media user compared dictator to Ron Burgundy of Anchorman

But internet users were quick to mock tubby tyrant with a series of memes

For North Korean propagandists, the news the country had carried out its fifth nuclear test was a glorious confirmation of Kim Jong-Un's might.

But internet users were quick to mock the tubby tyrant with a series of memes mocking his bombastic power posturing.

The dictator was compared to everyone from Super Mario and the cast of Team America to Ron Burgundy, the star of Anchorman.

Internet users were quick to mock the tubby tyrant with a series of memes that mocked his bombastic power posturing, including one comparing him to Ron Burgundy from Anchorman

Titus Frost mocked the dictator's delusions of grandeur, showing him waving a floppy disk with the caption, 'We will bring the United States to its knees'

The dictator's hefty weight, said to stem from his love of cheese, was also the subject of ridicule

Internet users might want to be careful - it recently emerged that Kim has banned his citizens from using sarcasm in their everyday conversations

And social media users made plenty of comparisons between the supreme leader and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

Kim, whose love of cheese is thought to be one of the main causes of his hefty weight, was also mocked for his delusions of grandeur.

One photo shows him with his arms outstretched in front of a giant American army boot, while another has him waving a floppy disk with the caption, 'With this technology, we will bring down the United States'.

But internet users might want to be careful - it recently emerged that Kim has banned his citizens from using sarcasm in their everyday conversations.

Inevitably, there were many comparisons between Kim Jong-Un and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump

'Hopeless Surfer' tweeted this image with the caption: 'The real reason for the nuclear explosion in North Korea...'

'CAMELOT' showed a stroppy Donald Trump behind a desk with two buttons reading 'Tweet' and 'Nuke'

'DarthVader1' compared the North Korean's nuclear weapon to a toy missile

Satire directed towards the regime and even indirect criticisms of leadership will not be forgiven, sources in the North have said.

North Korea carried out its second nuclear test this year just hours after President Obama wrapped up his tour of Asia.

Pyongyang confirmed it conducted a successful explosion which triggered a 5.3-magnitude 'artificial' earthquake in the country's north east.

The reclusive country boasted about its growing nuclear arsenal on state-controlled TV and said the test was in response to the strict international sanctions imposed against it.

North Korea carried out its second nuclear test this year just hours after President Obama wrapped up his tour of Asia

Pyongyang confirmed it conducted a successful explosion which triggered a 5.3-magnitude 'artificial' earthquake in the country's north east

The reclusive country boasted about its growing nuclear arsenal on state-controlled TV and said the test was in response to the strict international sanctions imposed against it

North Korea said it would continue to strengthen 'the quantity and quality' of its nuclear weapons.

The test was widely condemned by world leaders, including North Korea's sole ally, China.

Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters Friday that the test, North Korea's fifth, was the latest act to destabilize relations on the Korean Peninsula.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye said the test as a clear violation of security council resolutions and accused Kim of 'maniacal recklessness'.

North Korea said it would continue to strengthen 'the quantity and quality' of its nuclear weapons

The test was widely condemned by world leaders, including North Korea's sole ally, China
Received cash and sexual favors in exchange, according to prosecution

Cota let them smuggle people at San Ysidro Port of Entry, authorities said

FBI agents also detained two people accused of smuggling immigrants

A US customs and border protection officer let undocumented immigrants enter the United States in exchange for sexual favors and cash bribes, authorities said.

Customs officer Jose Luis Cota, 50, works at the San Ysidro Port Of Entry in San Diego, California. He was arrested Wednesday along with two co-defendants.

Cota let Miriam Juarez-Herrera and Gilberto Aguilar-Martinez, both 31, smuggle people four times since November 2015, according to the prosecution.

The most recent occurrence was this Wednesday, the FBI said Thursday in a statement.

Customs officer Jose Luis Cota, 50, works at the San Ysidro Port of Entry (file picture) in San Diego, California. He was arrested Wednesday along with two co-defendants

Records showed that 'large sums of cash' appeared into Cota's bank accounts after each time, according to the FBI.

Payments between November and March came to $9,200, $9,500 and $5,740 according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Juarez-Herrera, who is charged with smuggling people into the country illegally, told FBI agents she had bribed Cota with cash and sexual favors in exchange for his turning a blind eye, authorities said.

Cota admitted that he received sexual favors from Juarez-Herrera in exchange for unlawfully admitting her and other immigrants into the United States, the complaint reads.

He has been placed on unpaid leave, a spokesman told the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Aguilar-Martinez is accused of assisting the smuggling operation.

FBI agents arrested all three Wednesday in San Diego. They are now part of a six-count federal complaint.

Cota, Juarez-Herrera and Aguilar-Martinez appeared before a judge on Wednesday. They will remain held until their detention hearings next week.
The father of a four-year-old girl who 'beat her so many times with a belt he lost count' has appeared in court charged with her murder.

Darrell A. Reynolds, 29, appeared on Thursday in the Macon County Circuit Court in Decatur, Illinois, over the death of his daughter, Amarrah, on August 31.

The 29-year-old is facing life in prison, longer than the usual maximum of 60 years, because his alleged victim was under 12 and 'the death resulted from exceptionally brutal or heinous behavior indicative of wanton cruelty',' the Decatur Herald and Review reports.

Darrell A. Reynolds (pictured), father of a four-year-old girl who 'beat her so many times with a belt he lost count', has appeared in court charged with her murder

The father confessed to the crime while the unresponsive four-year-old was being rushed to Decatur Memorial Hospital, telling police, 'I just killed my daughter', according to a affidavit signed by one of the officers.

When she arrived at the emergency room, the young girl had scabs and bruises covering most of her body.

He went on to say he lost count of how many times he hit his daughter with the belt, according to the newspaper.

Amarrah's mother, Dalvon Taylor, 26, is due to be arraigned on one count of endangering the life or health of a child on Friday.

If found guilty, she could be sentenced to between two and 10 years in prison.

The mother told police Reynolds had abused their daughter regularly over the past two years.

Four-year-old Amarrah (pictured) died on August 31 after being rushed to hospital in an unresponsive condition

Reynolds (pictured) confessed to the crime while the unresponsive four-year-old was being rushed to Decatur Memorial Hospital, telling police: 'I just killed my daughter'

Amarrah's mother, Dalvon Taylor (pictured), 26, is due to be arraigned on one count of endangering the life or health of a child

Taylor said the abuse: 'typically consisted of Darrell hitting Amarrah in the face and torso, hitting her forcefully with a belt numerous times, which caused welts to her arms, back, legs, and torso, severe pinching, and grabbing the back of her neck and lifting her off the ground', according to the Herald and Review.

Reynolds is due to return to court for a preliminary hearing on September 28.

He is being held in jail on a $2 million bond.
her son Jody Spann in 2008 but it was annulled in 2010

The other son of an Oklahoma woman who married both her son and daughter claims she also tried it on with him.

Patricia Spann, 43, married her own daughter Misty Spann, 25, in March 2016.

A few years earlier, in 2008, she had wed her son Jody Calvin Spann - a marriage that was later annulled in 2010 for reasons of 'incest', according to reports.

Now Patricia's other son, Cody, has said that his mother also tried to start an inappropriate relationship with him - but he turned her down.

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Cody Spann (pictured) the other son of Patricia Spann - who married both her son and daughter - claims she also tried it on with him

Mother and daughter Patricia Spann, 43, and Misty Spann, 25, have been arrested after it was revealed they had an incestuous marriage in Okahoma

'She only tried it once and I told her to get lost, I would never be with my biological mom. That is disgusting. I came from that woman,' he told KFOR.

Patricia Spann, also known as Patricia Clayton, told investigators she had lost custody of her three kids when they were young, who were then adopted and raised by their paternal grandmother.

But when she and Misty were reunited two years ago 'they hit it off,' an arrest affidavit states.

She told police she didn't believe she was breaking any laws by marrying her daughter because her name is no longer listed on Misty's birth certificate.

But both were arrested and charged with incest - a felony in Oklahoma which carried up to 10 year jail term.

Patricia and Misty's relationship was discovered by the Department of Human Services in August during a child welfare investigation inside their home in Duncan

Patricia and Misty's relationship was discovered by the Department of Human Services in August during a child welfare investigation inside their home in Duncan, according to KFOR.

On Wednesday, the two women appeared before Judge Ken Graham, according to the Duncan Banner.

Both pleaded not guilty.

Patricia told investigators her relationship with her son was not sexual and she married him to prevent him being deployed to the military, according to KSWO.

But Cody says his mother is a predator who deliberately manipulated her children.

'I think she's worthless she put my sister into this. She forced my sister into this, there's a lot of people that know it,' Cody said

'For you to want to put your own daughter through this, what kind of person are you?

'If that's what you want that's on you, but none of us kids want that, and now you got my sister behind bars because of your choices, why don't you let that sit on you as a mom.'

Patricia Spann also married her son Jody (right) in 2008 although the marriage was annulled in 2010

He said he was bitterly disappointed after being reunited with his biological mother to find out who she really was.

'We got told we actually had a real mom, so we wanted to know what she was about, the first thing she showed us she was about was trying to get in my brother's pants,' he said.

'Did she take advantage of the fact that we found her and actually wanted to be a part of her life? Yeah she did. She took big advantage of it.

'It could have been 'look we reunited you with your kids, be in your kids' lives,' but no, she wants to be with one of her kids. That is sick.'

Duncan investigators agree that it is likely that Patricia's children were both manipulated but say they were both legally adults at the time 'so they had a choice whether to pursue this or not and they chose to get married.'

Authorities said Patricia Spann told investigators she had lost custody of her daughter and two sons, who were adopted and raised by their paternal grandmother

That marriage was annulled by Jody Spann in March 2010 for reasons of 'incest', according to reports.

Under Oklahoma law, marrying a close relative is considered incest whether or not a sexual relationship exists. Those found guilty can face up to ten years in jail.

A warrant was issued for the arrest of mother and daughter on Friday and they were both charged with incest and booked into the Stephens County Jail.
An up-and-coming Brooklyn rapper arrested on conspiracy and weapons charges will serve seven years after reaching a plea deal on Friday.

Bobby Shmurda, whose real name is Ackquille Pollard, pleaded guilty before his trial on Monday in the Manhattan Supreme Court, where he faced the possibility of serving up to 25 years if convicted.

The 22-year-old Shmoney Dance hit-maker was arrested in December 2014 on conspiracy, reckless endangerment and gun possession charges and remained behind bars for nearly two years on $2million bond.

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Bobby Shmurda (left) whose real name is Ackquille Pollard, pleaded guilty on Friday rather than risk a trial on Monday in Manhattan's Supreme Court

He agreed to serve seven years in prison with five years of probation afterwards. He faced up to 25 years if found guilty at trial (pictured left and right, Shmurda in court today)

The Brooklyn-born rapper is best known for the hit song 'Hot Boy'. Pictured above performing in New York City on December 12, 2014 just days before his arrest

Shmurda appeared in court on Friday along with his friends Chad Marshall and Nicholas McCoy, who accepted the same deal.

After a fixed seven year sentence, Shmurda will be on probation for another five years, the New York Daily News reported.

Shmurda was arrested after leaving a recording studio near Radio City Music Hall on December 17, 2014.

Police found two handguns and a small amount of crack cocaine in a car the three friends were riding in, authorities said.

A 15-person indictment named Shmurda as the leader of the G Stone Crips, also known as GS9, whose members were charged with 69-counts including murder, attempted murder, assault and drug dealing.

The gang left one rival dead outside a Brooklyn bodega, and injured an innocent bystander sitting on a folding chair outside a home, according to the police.

The GS9 members were cited in various shootings in New York City as well as a Miami, Florida nightclub, authorities said.

Police also seized 21 guns during the investigation.

The 22-year-old has also been hit with charges of conspiracy to commit murder in a separate case after he allegedly tried to sneak a knife into Rikers Island with the help of a woman believed to be his girlfriend.

Shmurda has also filed a false-arrest lawsuit in response to a separate incident in June, after police knocked on the door of his friend's home.

The suit claims the cops didn't have a search warrant and mocked him by singing his lyrics during the arrest.

Shmurda's criminal history included two arrests for gun and drug possession, authorities said.

The Brooklyn-born rapper is best known for the hit song 'Hot Boy.' He also put out a music video that popularized a dance craze called the 'Shmoney dance,' and reportedly signed a lucrative record deal with Epic Records.
A sheriff's deputy fired for tossing a student across a South Carolina classroom after she refused to put away her cellphone should get his job back, his attorney says.

But Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott says he won't rehire controversial cop Ben Fields.

Fields' lawyer says he should be rehired because a state prosecutor dropped the charges against the former deputy last month.

Attorney Scott Hayes' letter to media outlets Friday says the Spring Valley High School student hit Fields in the face so he was justified using some force to arrest her.

This disturbing video - which surfaced in December 2015 - showed high school officer Ben Fields flipping a female student over and dragging her across the classroom

Flipped out: The resource officer tips the chair over, with the girl still in it, throwing her down

Once the student is down, Fields grabbed her by the arms and leg and dragged her across the classroom floor . However charges will not be brought against him

But witness accounts of the incident vary quite a bit.

Lott said last year after seeing the video he wanted to throw up.

In an email, Lott's spokesman says Fields may still face a federal charge.

Lott announced last year that Fields had been relieved of duty for failing to follow proper procedures during the classroom arrest.

Fields, 34, a school resource officer at Spring Valley High School in Columbia, had been suspended without pay as a result of the incident, which was captured on at least three videos and went viral.

Fields, 34, is seen here exchanging a handshake with an unnamed man following the incident in October last year. It was recently announced that he faces no criminal charges

The attorney for the 16-year-old girl who was body-slammed by Fields in math class saidhis client - described as an orphan living in foster care -suffered multiple injuries during her arrest.

She was very disruptive, she was very disrespectful, and she started this whole incident. Sheriff Leon Lott on student's conduct

He also said Deputy Fields should have been fired as soon as Sheriff Lott saw the video of the classroom takedown.

Lott had said earlier that the girl was uninjured in the confrontation but 'may have had a rug burn.'

He made no excuses for either fields or the student, who he said was known for not 'letting teachers teach and students learn.'

'She was very disruptive, she was very disrespectful, and she started this whole incident,' Lott said.

But he added that Deputy Fields was in the wrong when he threw the young woman across the room, which he said was not based on training and ran counter to approved departmental procedures.

Ousted: Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott fired Fields, and said this week he will not give him his job back. He is pictured here in October 2015

'That is not a proper technique and should not be used by law enforcement,' Lott said.

When asked if Fields was remorseful, Lott replied: 'He's sorry that this whole thing occurred. It was not his intent... he tried to do his job.'

Lott also pointed out that teachers and administrators wholly supported Fields' actions, including the physical altercation, but he said he is the one who 'had a problem' with his deputy's conduct.

The videos of the confrontation between the white deputy and black teenage girl stirred such immediate outrage across the country that Lott called the FBI and Justice Department for help. A criminal investigation was then conducted.

However, in a 12-page report released, Solicitor Dan Johnson said he found no probable cause to charge Fields.

The school resource officer was recorded by students at Spring Valley High School flipping a female student to the floor and dragging her across a classroom after she refused to surrender her cellphone last October.

The student videos posted online showed Fields telling the girl to leave her seat or he would forcibly remove her. The officer then wraps his forearm around her neck, flips her and the desk backward onto the floor, tosses her toward the front of the room and handcuffs her.

Johnson's report includes statements from a slew of witnesses, one of whom said 'the incident looked worse in the video than it did in the classroom.' Another said Fields didn't intentionally throw the student across the room but lost his grip in trying to remove her from her desk after she refused to leave.

Niya Kenny, who recorded the confrontation and was arrested along with the girl after verbally challenging the deputy, told authorities that she didn't think the incident would have happened if the student had listened to their teacher.

The officer, senior deputy Ben Fields, reportedly has a history of acting roughly with students

Kenny also acknowledged that she made false statements to reporters that Fields was known around the school as 'Officer Slam.'

Both girls have faced 'disturbing schools' charges for nearly a year. Johnson said Friday they would be dropped.

In a statement included in the report, Fields gave his own account.

'I realized that I was going to have to physically remove the student from her seat to effectuate her arrest' after she repeatedly refused to come with him, Fields said.

He said the desk flipped over only because the student had locked her leg inside it, and claimed she punched him in the chest while he was subduing her.

Johnson a former chief deputy under Lott  said the sheriff had the right to fire Fields, but said such swift action, coupled with administrative changes at the school district, undoubtedly affected the ensuing criminal investigation.

A U.S. Justice Department review was settled in August, when Richland County agreed to provide intensive training for deputies working in 60 schools on how to de-escalate situations, avoid bias and interact properly with disabled students.

'The reality, from a prosecutorial standpoint, is that these administrative actions, taken prior to the completion of the investigation, have been injurious to the prosecution of the case,' Johnson said.

An attorney hired by Fields after his firing didn't immediately return an email seeking comment late Friday afternoon.
A 20-year-old Brooklyn man accused of fatally shooting a young woman during Brooklyn's J'Ouvert festival says he has no recollection of what happened because he was too drunk.

Reginald Moise has been charged with second-degree murder in the killing of 22-year-old college student Tiarah Poyau, who was shot through the eye at close range on Monday after reportedly telling a man to get away from her.

Moise, who is alleged to have made a statement implicating himself in the killing to other people, was arraigned on Wednesday on the murder charge and on counts of criminal possession of a weapon and reckless endangerment.

Reginald Moise (left), 20, says he was drinking and dancing at the J'Ouvert festival in Brooklyn, and that if he did shoot Tiarah Poyau (right), 22, 'it wasn't intentional'

Perp walk: Moise is pictured here being walked to his arraignment at Brooklyn Central Booking on Wednesday in connection with the fatal shooting

Speaking to the New York Daily News from Rikers Island on Friday, a tearful Moise insisted that if he did shoot the St Johns University graduate student, 'it wasn't intentional.'

The jailed suspect said the only thing he remembers from the annual Caribbean celebration is 'drinking and dancing,' and then firing two rounds inside a cousin's apartment in Crown Heights.

The 20-year-old claimed it was the first time he's ever fired a gun - a 9-mm. Glock he said he was carrying with him for protection.'

I think of that night, and I just dont see me shooting her, Moise said of Poyau, adding that he wishes he could meet her when she was alive.

Moise told the paper that he now fears for his own safety behind bars, and he is concerned that the victim's male relatives will seek retribution by going after his family.

Poyau, 22, was shot in the face after she told the man 'Get off me,' police sources said

Tiarah Poyau had been walking with three friends early Monday morning when she was shot in the eye 'at close range' around 4.15am, according to the New York Post.

Authorities said Moise was driving drunk and had a Caribbean flag wrapped around a bloodied hand when he was arrested on Tuesday morning.

Moise, who has five prior sealed arrests, allegedly called a friend after the shooting and told them: 'Would you mind if I put my gun into your apartment?'

He then told another friend: 'I think I shot somebody on the parade route. I didn't know the gun was loaded,' according to police sources.

Moise allegedly fled to his girlfriend's apartment following the shooting.

It was there he drunkenly fired two shots into a mirror, which caused the injury to his hand.

One of the bullets entered the home of a neighbor, who then notified authorities.

That neighbor, 30-year-old Nadir Bryan, 30, told the New York Post on Thursday that the bullet allegedly fired by Moise came within a few inches of her sleeping son's crib.

'I just picked up my son and held him,' she told the paper. 'God forbid what could have happened to my baby that night.'

Moise then fled into his car and crashed into several parked vehicles, losing one of his tires, before he was stopped by police around 8am on Tuesday.

Police said they discovered the gun that killed Poyau at Moise's girlfriend's apartment, with tests confirming it matched to a shell found at the murder site.

Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce said Moise told investigators he thought he shot somebody, saying: 'The gun went off, I'm not sure.'

Reginald Moise, 20 of Brooklyn, was arrested in connection with the Labor Day fatal shooting of Poyau. Bronx teenager Tyreke Borel, 17, (right) was also killed on that violent morning

Meanwhile, no arrests have been made in the murder of 17-year-old Tyreke Borel.

Borel, of the Bronx, was shot in the chest about 3:50am near Empire Boulevard and Flatbush Avenue during the festival.

He was taken to the hospital, where he died.

Poyau was shot just a block away 30 minutes after Borel was shot, police said. She died at the hospital.

The aspiring accountant and was interning at top-five firm PwC in New York and getting her Master's of Science at St John's University, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Online, Poyau talked about her drive to become an accomplished professional  as well as her passion for traveling.

'This young lady is just a stellar person,' Boyce said. 'No issues in her life whatsoever, and none before either.'

Moise, who has five prior sealed arrests, apparently made statements that implicated himself in the shooting (crime scene pictured) to two people

The bloodshed happened during a a carnival celebrating Caribbean culture held before dawn each Labor Day

This year, the JOuvert parade cemented its reputation for violence and bloodshed.

The shootings came amid unprecedented precautions taken by police to ensure safety a year after Governor Andrew Cuomo's aide was killed by a stray bullet at the early-morning celebration.

In a news conference on Monday, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said that 'all options are on the table' when answering questions concerning the future of J'Ouvert and if it might be canceled following the two tragic deaths, the New York Post reported.

'Im not going to go into detail until we do a full review,' he said.

'Were going to look at the whole situation with the NYPD and community,' de Blasio added.

City Councilman Brad Lander said that it's 'pretty clear that big changes are needed'.

'Im open to canceling it next year,' he added.

Police say they're investigating whether the shootings are related. No arrests have been made on Borel's shooting.

A 23-year-old woman was also stabbed in the area, but police said she refused medical attention.

A 72-year-old woman was shot in the hand and the arm at the same location and was taken to a hospital in stable condition, police said.

The NYPD had planned to double the number of officers patrolling the neighborhood where a procession of steel drums and costumed revelers was set to kick off at 4am for J'Ouvert.

Police arrived at the scene where Poyau and Borel were gunned down Monday celebrating Caribbean culture in the hours before the city's annual West Indian Day Parade

The department also added 42 new security cameras to watch over an estimated 250,000 revelers and illuminated this year's celebration with 200 light towers.

For the first time, organizers of the parade were required to get a permit.

Police, in conjunction with community groups, also distributed fliers with a blunt message.

'This community will no longer tolerate this violence. Do not shoot anyone. Do not stab anyone,' the leaflets said.

The changes come a year after Cuomo's aide Carey Gabay, 43, was shot in the head as two street gangs exchanged gunshots during J'Ouvert festivities.
With a personal fortune of nearly 4 billion, Sir Philip Green was never likely to settle for two weeks on the Costa Del Sol for his summer holiday.

But even by the disgraced tycoons lavish standards, this years break has been staggeringly extravagant.

The 64-year-old has just returned from an eight-week trip around the Mediterranean on his 100 million yacht, accompanied by his wife, Tina, the nominal owner of his Arcadia retail group.

Sir Philip Green, pictured with his wife Tina, on his way to La Fontanella restaurant in Capri, as the tycoon and his family enjoy their luxury break around the Mediterranean

The 100 million Lionheart costs 250,000 to staff

In his two months on the Lionheart, Sir and Lady Shifty took in various sun-soaked parts of the Med, from Greece to the millionaires paradises of Capri and Sardinia.

The billionaires holiday lasted from July to September  months which saw the final remaining BHS shops close their doors and 11,000 staff made redundant. Sir Philip sold the department store chain to former bankrupt Dominic Chappell for 1, after the Green family had taken out millions from the firm in the preceding years.

While Green cruised around the glitziest ports, two Commons select committees published a report into his actions surrounding BHS, which accused him of fantastically enriching his family by weakening BHS until it was on life support.

The store was left with a massive hole in its pension fund  that could be as much as 770 million  which the pensions regulator is now investigating.

But perhaps the most mind-boggling thing about the holiday was not the unfortunate timing, but the cost . . .

ALISON BOSHOFF investigates the story of Sir Shiftys Summer.

WHAT AN ITINERARY!

The massive jolly began on July 9 in Livorno, Italy, when Greens new superyacht  built to his familys exact specifications  left port.

His wife Lady Green, who likes to dabble in design, took care of the boats interiors, which, as you might expect, are very expensive, and very flashy. The yacht sailed first to Malta, where the vessel is registered, and after its arrival on July 10, spent more than a week in port, being prepared for the holiday under the watchful eye of Lady Shifty. It also did several day trips around the island.

The Greens then set off to Kalamata, on the Peloponnesian peninsula, arriving in the beautiful Greek coastal resort on July 21.

Continuing their cruise around the rugged southern peninsula, they sailed on to the relatively undiscovered and affluent island of Spetses, popular with high-society Athenians, on the 24th.

Sailing past the tiny coastal town of Karystos on the Greek island of Euboea, the Greens arrived in the popular tourist island of Skiathos on July 30.

Perhaps feeling out of place, Lord and Lady Shifty soon turned around, sailing back down past the island of Euboea days later.

The catalogue of classical haunts continued as July became August, with visits to Mykonos and Athens, before Sir Philips yacht finally cruised through the Corinth Canal. Sailing up the coast past Delphi  where futures were told in ancient times  it reached Albania on August 26, where the Lionheart refuelled.

Of course, no Grand Tour would be complete without Italy, too, so the couple set sail again to the southern tip of the country the next day, past Sicily and up to Capri  the spectacular Italian island dotted with Roman ruins and designer boutiques.

Next stop for the Green machine was Corsica  fashionable, mountainous and French  then on to the billionaires playground of Sardinia before they finally dropped anchor back in Monaco on September 4. All in all, the Shiftys notched up 5,377 nautical miles and spent at least 1,224 hours sailing.

HUGE DIESEL BILLS

WHY do billionaires have such bad tempers? Maybe theyve realised their mega yachts really do drink diesel.

A boat measuring more than 71m (Lionheart is 78.5m) consumes 500 litres of diesel an hour  when the engine is on but the boat isnt moving. Based on cruising speeds of between 15 and 22 knots, a yacht of Lionhearts size will consume 1,690 worth of fuel per hour. Since Sir Philip spent 1,224 hours at sea, the cost of filling Lionhearts tankIS VAST.

250,000 ON STAFF

Another major expense is staff. A yacht the size of Lionheart could expect to have about 40 crew. That includes those who man the interiors (stewardesses and stewards), the exteriors (deckhands, first mate, bosun) and the engine room (engineers).

Then there is the galley crew (chef and sous chefs), plus the captain and chiefs of each section reporting back to him.

Staff on the luxury yacht are paid from 2,500 a month tax free for deckhands with 6,700 for the more senior crew such as the chef and chief engineer with the captain on even more

The entire crew is on tax-free wages starting at 2,500 per month for deckhands, including board/food. The salary goes up to 6,700 per month for more senior crew such as the chef and chief engineer. The captain is on even more.

The full cost of staff on a yacht this size, including medical costs and insurance, could amount to 1.5 million a year, meaning Sir Philip could have shelled out 250,000 on wages for his two-month jaunt.

THE COSTLY ESSENTIALS

The spending does not end there. Yachting experts estimate that docking costs reaching a staggering 250,000 will have been paid over Greens summer jaunt. Green visited the most exclusive marinas in the world where even billionaires jostle to get a spot.

Prices are worked out with the port manager and are usually charged on a per night basis depending on the yachts length.

Spaces at these super-yacht hotels are in such high demand many billionaires drop anchor at sea as close to the port as they can without an allocated space.

Other costs include around 18,000 a month on insurance, to cover any eventuality  including calling in a crack team to rescue them if the vessel was captured by pirates, stolen or destroyed.

According to yachting experts, owners can expect to pay 10 per cent of the purchase value in running costs each year meaning Sir Philip will hand over 10m a year to operate Lionheart

Maintenance and repairs typically cost 750,000 per year. It might be a new yacht, but its still a work in progress with a team of engineers and electricians working around the clock to ensure no malfunctions. That means Sir Philip would have needed to set aside 125,000 for any holiday hitches.

Sir Philip can expect to pay 10 million or so a year to own Lionheart

Hed also have to shell out 11,000 for a satellite data link (66,000 per annum), which operates the yachts navigation system, 121,000 on food (up to 50 people eating three good meals a day for two months soon adds up) and 21,000 on entertaining.

And thats not counting the requisite billionaire boys toys to maintain, such as jet skis and high-powered inflatables.

So aside from the 250,000 on wages and huge fuel costs, these added extras over eight weeks run to more than half a million pounds.

Sounds steep? According to yachting experts, the cost of operating a yacht of this size are approximately 10 per cent of the initial value of the boat every year.

That means Sir Philip can expect to pay 10 million or so a year to own Lionheart.

FLIGHTS IN HIS 50m PRIVATE JET

Sir Philip, 64, owns a Gulfstream G650ER worth 50.5 million. There are only 181 in the world.

This jet was picked up in the spring and is an upgrade from his old Gulfstream G550. It can carry up to eight passengers at a time.

Its reputed to be the best private jet money can buy  faster and more comfortable than any other.

Over the summer, Sir Shifty has used the jet to dip in and out of his long hot summer cruise, at a cost of at least 88,000 in fuel.

Sir Philip recently upgraded his old Gulfstream G550, pictured, to the G650ER in the spring

This is calculated according to a pilots rule of thumb based on the five, four, three formula (5,000 for the first hour, 4,000 for the second and 3,000 thereafter) and the fact that jet fuel costs 6.79 per gallon.

The jet flew from Nice to Malta, then back to London, on July 11, which apparently dropped Tina off on the Lionheart.

It then went from London to Malta and back again on July 15 to drop Sir Philip on the island to board the yacht.

Not that he stayed onboard for long. The jet then flew back from London to Malta and back with Sir Philip and, on August 8, a round trip from London to Athens and back with Sir Philip again.

On August 19 the jet flew from London to Nice, and on August 20 it went from Nice to Athens, then on to London.

It is thought that these trips may have been to bring Sir Philips daughter Chloe out to see him.

In all, the fuel costs would rack up to 88,520. Add in the fixed costs of owning a jet, which are estimated to amount to 333,000 a year.

These include pilot fees of 172,000 a year, crew fees of 52,000 a year, and hangar charges of 60,000 a year  it is kept mostly at Farnborough airport in the UK.

Sir Philip and Lady Green also have the use of a helicopter for short hops if needed.

...AND A MODEST PARTY (for once)

At least Sir Shifty didnt have to splurge much of his 3.7 billion fortune on a birthday party this year. Due to the bad publicity following the BHS debacle, he didnt mark his 64th birthday with his customary lavish bash.

(Unlike a year ago when he was happy to splash the champagne at a party in Mykonos  as our pictures on the previous page show).

It is said he had a small party on-board the yacht in August while the family were in Greece. But aside from the Greens Monaco friends, few of his big-name pals seem to have attended.

Interestingly, his old friend Kate Moss was in Greece at the same time, but chose to stay with restaurateur Sir David Tang on his yacht instead, as did Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York.
Migrant-smuggling gangs are one of the biggest threats to Britains national security, a report warned last night.

Soaring numbers of organised criminals are preying on migrants desperate to evade border controls, the National Crime Agency (NCA) said.

Officials said the danger will spread across the country at smaller ports and airstrips as security at Dover is improved.

The National Crime Agency has warned migrant-smuggling gangs are now one of the biggest threats to British national security with criminals using yachts, small boats and light aircraft

The NCA warned criminal networks were involved in 'systematic abuse' of the UK's visa system

They revealed investigators from a range of agencies are stepping in to disrupt threats to our borders almost every day. The warning was in the NCAs national strategic threat assessment, which looks to prepare police for threats. It put organised immigration crime in the top five threats, along with child abuse, cybercrime, firearms and top-level money laundering.

Officials said they face an unprecedented scale of irregular migration largely sparked by the conflict in Syria and Iraq. They said improvements to security at Dover and Calais, where UK taxpayers are funding a 2million wall, will force gangs to change smuggling routes.

The report said: As security around borders increases, the growth in organised people-smuggling and trafficking targeting the UK will grow through clandestine activity and use of false documents.

Criminals already use yachts, small boats and light aircraft to smuggle people, drugs and weapons.

And the NCA said the flood of migrants is attracting ruthless individuals who want to prey on the desperate. In the majority of cases, crime gangs serve people from their home country or who share their language. Once here, criminal networks are involved in systematic abuse of the UK visa system, using false documents to secure legitimate means to remain.

Figures in the report showed 74 organised immigration crime cases were tackled in the third quarter of the 2015/16 financial year  up from 21 in the final quarter of 2014/15.

The NCA said the rise was partly driven by increased reporting and also because the impact of people-smuggling is now better understood. The agency said clandestine activity on roll-on, roll-off passenger and freight ferry services remains one of its highest priorities.

This is because a series of tragedies have highlighted the danger of concealing people in lorries and containers, which are often airless.

In July, the Mail revealed the number of migrants caught sneaking into Britain hidden in trucks, cars and trains had almost trebled in a year. Soaring cases of so-called lorry drops  where migrants entered the UK concealed in lorries or trains then jumped off at the first stopping point  were highlighted in a report by the borders watchdog.

Between April and September last year, 6,429 migrants were found by police or immigration officials, compared with 2,411 in the same period in 2014  a rise of 166 per cent.
A flabbergasted Hillary Clinton said Friday that Donald Trump is not running a 'serious presidential campaign' and his flattery of Russian President Vladimir Putin is 'beyond one's imagination.'

Clinton said she wasn't exactly 'surprised' that Trump appeared on state-sponsored television channel Russia Today on Thursday evening.

'I'm not sure anything surprises us anymore,' she said, responding to a shouted question about the appearance after a meeting with her national security advisers. 'But I was certainly disappointed that someone running for president would continue this unseemly identification with and praise of the Russian president including on Russian television.'

A flabbergasted Hillary Clinton said Friday that Donald Trump is not running a 'serious presidential campaign' and his embrace of Russian President Vladimir Putin is 'beyond one's imagination'

Trump's interview on the Kremlin-backed Russia Today TV was conducted for host Larry King's podcast, according to the Trump campaign. It ran on the network's airwaves without their knowledge.

'Former CNN superstar Larry King has a podcast. And Mr. Trump went on his podcast,' Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said Friday morning on CNN's 'New Day' program.

'Nobody said it was going to be on Russian TV.'

Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks rushed to defuse the potentially embarrassing interview on Thursday night, saying in a statement that 'Mr. Trump recorded a short interview with Larry King for his podcast as a favor to Mr. King.'

'What Larry King does with the interview content is up to him, we have nothing to do with it.'

In the interview, Trump cast doubt on reports that Russian intelligence has a covert plan to create distrust in the upcoming American presidential elections.

'I don't know. I've been hearing about it. I've been reading about it. I think it's probably unlikely,' Trump told Larry King on Russia Today, the Russian-backed news service.

Donald Trump told 'longtime friend' Larry King on Russia Today that interference by Moscow in the November elections was 'probably unlikely'

'I think maybe the Democrats are putting that out, who knows? I think that it's pretty unlikely, but who knows. I hope that if they are doing something I hope that somebody's going to be able to find out so that they can end it, because that would not be appropriate at all,' Trump said.

As Clinton was leaving an impromptu news conference on Friday afternoon, a reporter asked her to comment on Trump's interview with King.

The Democratic presidential candidate, who had minutes before delivered a somber statement on her discussion with a bipartisan group of terrorism experts, wheeled around and marched back to the podium.

'Every day that goes by, this just becomes more and more of a reality television show. It's not a serious presidential campaign,' she said, 'and it is beyond one's imagination to have a candidate for president praising a Russian autocrat like Vladimir Putin and throwing his lot in with him in the way that he has approved of his wish list.'

Clinton said Trump was ignorant of Putin's provocative behavior in the region. '

No one who wants to assume the responsibility of being president and commander-in-chief should be making the kind of reckless and dangerous statements and identifying with a regime that has some aggressive tendencies toward our interests, our values, our friends and allies,' she said.

NO ONE TOLD US: Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said on Friday that the interview was meant for King's podcast, not for Kremlin-backed TV

Trump said he didn't have 'any opinion' on Russian President Vladimir Putin's statement that whoever hacked the DNC was doing a public service

The Washington Post reported this week that U.S. intelligence officials are investigating a Russian covert operation to 'sow public distrust in the upcoming presidential election.'

The apparent plan is to use cyber efforts to hack into the political process and spread disinformation.

King, who interviewed Trump numerous times when he was at CNN, stated 'just for the record, Donald and I go back 30 years, I consider him a good friend' at the top of the call-in interview, but proceeded to raise some sensitive subjects in his individual style.

Asked about Putin's statement that hacking of Democratic National Committee emails was a public service, Trump declined to criticize it.

'I don't have any opinion on it. I don't know anything about it. I don't know who hacked. I'm not sure who. I mean  you tell me who who hacked, who did the hacking. But I have absolutely no opinion on that statement. I haven't heard that statement,' Trump said.

.@KellyannePolls on Donald Trump interview on Russian state TV: "Nobody said it was going to be on Russian TV" https://t.co/Lj5b8FdO6Y  New Day (@NewDay) September 9, 2016

Trump hailed NBC host Matt Lauer's performance in a televised forum, where Trump praised Putin as 'far more' of a leader than President Obama

Putin told Bloomberg News last week, 'Listen, does it even matter who hacked this data? The important thing is the content that was given to the public.'' U.S. officials blame Russian government-backed hackers for pulling off the intrusion, which embarrassed Democrats and led to the resignation of the DNC chair.

At Wednesday night's NBC forum, Trump once again praised Putin.

'The man has very strong control over a country,' Trump said when asked about Putin's past praise for him.

'I think when he calls me brilliant I'll take the compliment, okay?' Trump said when pressed about Putin, whose regime is under U.S. and international sanctions over Russia's incursion into Ukraine. 'The fact is, look, it's not gonna get him anywhere,' he added.

'If he says great things about me, I'm going to say great things about him.'
It's unclear if that amount is included in the larger $20 billion

A conservative foreign policy hawk warned Congress on Thursday that Iran may have scooped up as much as $33.6 billion as a result of inking a controversial nuclear weapons pact with the Obama administration.

That number is at the extreme high end of what may have flowed into Tehran, said Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

It includes $20 billion in foreign assets that Iran's central bank reportedly brought back inside the country after the White House approved the unfreezing of those assets.

Also part of that number is $11.9 billion  the current value of Iranian assets that were frozen by the United States at the time of the Iranian hostage crisis 35 years ago.

Iranian state television broadcast this image of a shipping pallet stacked with cash in February, a month after a January 17 payment left the U.S. bound for Tehran

Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies made the stunning claims in congressional testimony on Thursday

Rounding out the total is $1.7 billion in cash that the Obama administration has confirmed it sent to Tehran on cargo planes in the form of foreign banknotes stacked on shipping pallets.

HIGH STAKES: The U.S. negotiated a deal with Iran to stop developing nuclear weapons at sites like the Lavizan-Shiyan Technical Research Center in Tehran (shown), but funneled enough cash into the country to allow plenty of covert nuke work

The money was delivered as part of a separate negotiation for the release of American hostages including a Christian pastor.

That transfer method was made necessary by a U.S. law that prohibits using America's bakning system to move money to Iran.

The $11.9 billion was released to the Islamic nation in $700 million monthly increments beginning in January 2004, at the beginning of negotiations for what would become a politically polarizing nuclear agreement.

It's unclear how those funds were moved.

Massive amounts of cash sent to terror-sponsoring nations like Iran raise eyebrows because of the ease with which hard currency can cross borders to fund illicit and deadly activity.

The Washington Free Beacon reported that another expert testifying before Congress on Thursday, Treasury Department Assistant General Counsel For Enforcement And Intelligence Paul Ahern, said the $1.7 billion in cash couldn't be sent any other way.

'Iran had to have it in cash,' Ahern testified

'Iran was very aware of the difficulties it would face in accessing and using the funds if they were in any other form than cash, even after the lifting of sanctions.'

Cash payments were 'the most reliable way that they received the funds in a timely manner, and it was the manner preferred by the relative foreign banks.'

The hearing was conducted by the Oversight And Investigations subcommittee of the House Committee on Financial Services.
Theresa May yesterday attacked private schools who have become divorced from normal life

Theresa May yesterday attacked private schools who have become divorced from normal life.

She ordered them to help run state schools for the less privileged or lose tax breaks worth 700million.

The Prime Minister said she planned to enact a tougher test on the amount of public benefit an independent school must provide in order to keep its charity status.

The Independent Schools Council hit back by saying they were already working hard to promote social mobility and they were part of the solution not the problem.

To satisfy the new Charity Commission rules proposed by Mrs May, big public schools would have to sponsor or set up a new government-funded school in the state sector.

They will also have to take responsibility for running it and ensuring its success.

Smaller independent schools will have to provide local state schools with support teaching in minority subjects such as further maths or classics and give greater access to their facilities.

They will also be expected to provide sixth-form scholarships to a proportion of pupils from local schools.

Failure to comply could see some of the countrys 1,000 private schools stripped of tax breaks worth a total of 700million over a five-year parliament.

Mrs May announced the new regime  which is likely to cause unease among some Tory MPs  in a speech that promised to tackle vested interests.

She vowed to make the Governments priorities those of ordinary working class people. The PM said: Most of the major public schools started out as the route by which poor boys could reach the professions.

To satisfy the new Charity Commission rules proposed by Mrs May, big public schools would have to sponsor or set up a new government-funded school in the state sector. Pictured is Eton College, which sponsors a state boarding school

The nature of their intake may have changed today  indeed these schools have become more and more divorced from normal life.

Between 2010 and 2015 their fees rose four times faster than average earnings growth, while the percentage of their pupils who come from overseas has gone up by 33 per cent since 2008.

But I know that their commitment to giving something back to the wider community remains.

These are great schools with a lot to offer and I certainly dont believe you solve the divide between the rich and the rest by abolishing or demolishing them.

You do it by extending their reach and asking them to do more as a condition of their privileged position to help all children.

Private schools gave a frosty response. Julie Robinson, of the Independent Schools Council, said: The reality of charitable status is complex, but we can prove our schools put into society far more than they take out by saving the taxpayer, boosting local economies and supporting choice and innovation.

'Our schools are grateful for the financial benefits of charitable status, but this is not what motivates them to work hard in their communities. The UK benefits as a result.

Like all charities, schools with charitable status are held to account by the Charities Commission and they must show how they fulfil their charitable obligations through public benefit in the context of their own particular circumstances.

She added: The Prime Minister said she was unapologetic in her belief in social mobility. We share the same sentiment.

And in the drive towards greater and meaningful social mobility in the UK, we believe that independent schools are part of the solution, not the problem.

Were very happy to play our part in this.

Earlier this year, an attempt by Labour MPs to insert a clause in the Charities Bill forcing independent schools to provide more support for local state schools in return for charitable status drew a ferocious response.
Study warned Britains schools had widest achievement gaps in research covering more than 60 countries

Chances of poorer child enjoying higher wages than parents is lower in UK

Evidence shows level of mobility in UK is low by international standards

Social mobility has declined in Britain in recent decades, a series of studies has suggested.

The UK trails badly behind other developed countries as top jobs are increasingly dominated by those from wealthy families.

A recent research paper published in the Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics said: Over the last decade or so, there has been a major resurgence in research exploring the extent of intergenerational persistence in inequalities.

Social mobility has declined in Britain in recent decades, a series of studies has suggested. Pictured are Fifties grammar school pupils

In the UK in particular, intergenerational economic mobility has become a focus of extensive policy debates and government initiatives. This renewed focus has been strongly influenced by emerging research findings, with evidence suggesting that the level of mobility in the UK is low by international standards.

In 2005, a study from the London School of Economics found that of eight countries, including Canada, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland, social mobility was lowest in Britain and the US.

The gap in opportunities between rich and poor was getting wider in Britain, while staying static in the US due to a growing link between family income and educational attainment, according to the study sponsored by the Sutton Trust education charity.

Then a 2010 report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development found that the chances of a poorer child enjoying higher wages and better education than their parents was still lower in Britain than other western countries.

Figures showed sons earnings in the UK were more likely to reflect their fathers, with other bad performers including Italy, the US and France.

The think tank said the chances of a young person from a poorer family enjoying higher wages or getting a higher level of education than their parents in the UK was relatively low.

The UK trails badly behind other developed countries as top jobs are increasingly dominated by those from wealthy families

Its 2013 study also warned that Britains schools suffered the widest achievement gaps between advantaged and disadvantaged pupils in research covering more than 60 countries.

In 2012, The All-Party Group on Social Mobility report said that the countrys failure to tackle the issue meant a poor child born in 1970 was less likely to have gone to university than one born in 1958.

Then in 2014 the Elitist Britain report found that the majority of senior judges, military officers, Whitehall mandarins and senior diplomats were privately educated.

Last May, Alan Milburn, who chairs the governments social mobility commission, warned that only one in five low-paid workers in 2002 had escaped low pay by 2012.
Police said his death appears to be a tragic accident, but are investigating

Staff believe Leo was under the chair for 15 minutes before he was found

Just days before his second birthday, a Utah boy was tragically killed at his daycare center after crawling underneath a bean bag chair.

Leonardo 'Leo' Sanchez became trapped under the chair at the West Jordan Child Center after a member of the staff sat on top of it, accidentally suffocating him.

Danielle Sanchez said her son was playing with other children when he went underneath the chair to hide.

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Leonardo 'Leo' Sanchez was just days away from his second birthday when he was killed in a tragic accident in his Utah daycare center after crawling underneath a bean bag chair

Leo became trapped under the chair at the West Jordan Child Center after a member of the staff sat on top of it, accidentally suffocating him

The daycare worker then sat on the child-sized chair to read a story to the other children, according to Desert News.

Police said the adult woman was unaware that Leo was underneath the chair and that the child's tragic death appears to be an accident.

Leo was unconscious and wasn't breathing when he was discovered.

Staff believe Leo was underneath the chair for 10 to 15 minutes before they found him, according to Gephardt Daily News.

Authorities said the investigation is ongoing. The West Jordan Child Center has not yet commented on the incident.

Leo's death has devastated his family, where he was the third out of four children.

'I'm supposed to be planning his birthday party for next week and now I'm planning his funeral,' Sanchez told Desert News.

Sanchez said she still doesn't understand how Leo went unnoticed for so long.

'I'm just confused,' she said. 'I'm so confused on how you don't know where my kid is.'

Danielle Sanchez said her son (pictured together) was playing with other children when he went underneath the chair to hide. A staff member then sat on it to read the kids a story

Staff believe Leo was underneath the chair for 10 to 15 minutes before they found him unconscious and no longer breathing

'How do you not feel him? How do you not hear him scream?'

Sanchez revealed there was a previous incident in which Leo fell at the daycare and had to get stitches on his lip, but said it was determined to be an accident.

A GoFundMe page has since been set up to help the family with funeral expenses.

Sanchez revealed Leo's heart was harvested for donation, and advised other parents to hold their children tight.

'You just don't know when the last time will be when you see your baby,' she said.

'I dropped him off at day care not knowing I'll ever hear his laugh again, hold him again.'
The judge accepted his legal team's claim that he is blind, and offered whatever

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Disgraced comedian Bill Cosby is seen here walking unaided down the steep steps of a private jet - the same day a court heard he was blind.

Cosby was caught on film after landing in Massachusetts - where he is holed up in a 21-acre private compound - on Tuesday, the same day he appeared in a Pennsylvania court for a pre-trial hearing on a rape charge.

And despite the judge in that hearing acknowledging that Cosby, 79, is blind, he seemed to require little help - not even his cane - stepping down from the aircraft.

Laughing: Bill Cosby was seen laughing as he exited his private jet after arriving home in Massachusetts Tuesday. Earlier he had appeared in court for a pre-trial appearance on a rape charge. The judge there accepted his legal team's claim he is blind

Unaided: Cosby, 79, was seen walking down the steep stairs unaided by the two crew members - looking much less vulnerable than when he arrived in a Pennsylvania court earlier that day on the arm of his spokesman

Eyes down: Cosby seemed to be looking down at his feet as he descended. It was not clear whether he was completely blind or 'merely' legally blind, but capable of some sight. The team claim he has been blind for months

Cosby had arrived in the Montgomery County Courthouse earlier that day looking considerably more vulnerable, walking arm-in-arm with spokesman Andrew Wyatt.

He was there for a hearing ahead of his June 2017 trial, which sees him accused of drugging and raping Temple University employee Andrea Constand in 2004.

He also had his brown wooden cane stretched out in front of him, seemingly to detect objects in his path.

But his attitude in these pictures seems a world away: He can be seen laughing with his cane and coat hooked over his arm as he descends the steep metal steps.

Two air crew are on hand - one at the bottom of the steps and the other at the top - but Cosby seems to need neither man's help.

Instead, one carries a bag while the other waits for the comedian to reach the asphalt.

Cosby himself can be seen looking down at his feet as he makes the precarious-looking journey down the stairs.

That same day, Montgomery County Judge Steven O'Neill accepted the claim made by Cosby's legal team that he had been blind for months.

He offered the comedian and actor whatever special accommodations he may need.

It wasn't clear whether the team meant that he was fully blind or legally blind but capable of some sight.

Cosby denies the charge against him.

Almost there: Cosby exited the plane looking confident. He denies the 2004 rape charge, which was made against him by Temple University worker Andrea Constand. His trial begins in June next year

Holding on: During his appearance in court, Cosby had held this cane ahead of him, as if to identify objects in the way. But he was seen holding it high as he walked down the plane's steps
A British mother has been jailed in Iran for five years in what has been described as a 'complete travesty of justice'.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 37, has been held by Iranian authorities since April when she was arrested on her way back to Britain with daughter Gabriella, two.

It has never been clear why Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who has dual Iranian British nationality and lives in Hampstead, London, is being held.

'Travesty': Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 37, with daughter Gabriella, two

But on one occasion she was accused of running a 'foreign-linked hostile network' and has also been suspected of a bid to topple the Iranian regime.

Yesterday it emerged that she had been jailed in the country.

The mother of one, a charity worker for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, has been separated from her daughter, who has been stripped of her passport and left with family in Iran. She now speaks to her father only in Farsi, with relatives translating.

Last night Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe's accountant husband Richard Ratcliffe, 41, revealed that his wife was 'angry with the charges' and angry with him and the British government for not securing her release.

She had reportedly called from prison to say: 'Do you understand what it is like to be a mother kept away from her child for this long? I have missed over a fifth of her life.'

According to Mr Ratcliffe, his wife's hair has started to fall out and she has suffered dangerous weight loss.

Last night, charity Amnesty International, which has fought for Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe's release, called for the British government to intervene at 'the highest level'. Spokesman Kathy Voss said: 'From all the reports we've seen, Nazanin's case has been a complete travesty of justice.'
It was the first chance the BBCs flagship radio programme had to question the Government over its school revolution.

So, perhaps naturally, Radio 4s Today chose a presenter educated at an elite, fee-paying public school to do the job.

Cambridge graduate Mishal Husain, one of the BBCs fastest rising stars, took Education Secretary Justine Greening to task over Tory proposals to improve childrens chances of excelling in the school system.

Cambridge graduate Mishal Husain, one of the BBCs fastest rising stars, took Education Secretary Justine Greening to task over Tory grammar school proposals. The presenter went to the fee-paying Cobham Hall School in Kent

Ms Husain suggested the Prime Minister did not have a mandate for her plan to open new grammar schools because it was not in the Conservative election manifesto.

Miss Greening denied the claim, insisting: Well, thats not true actually. We did say how we wanted to see more places in expanded grammar schools.

'Fundamentally this is part of the broader reforms that we have brought forward.

Miss Greening attended Oakwood Comprehensive School in Rotherham

Ms Husain, a 43-year-old mother-of-three, benefited from selective education as she went to fee-paying Cobham Hall School in Kent.

At the age of 12, she was sent to the independent school in a picturesque Tudor manor, which currently charges nearly 17,000 a year for day pupils.

She went on to read law at Cambridge University before taking a masters degree at the European University Institute in Italy.
A 92-year-old grandmother in China has been tragically killed after a demolition team knocked down her house while she was in bed.

Builders said they were sent to pull down a house in Xuzhou city yesterday, however they accidentally destroyed the wrong one, reports the People's Daily Online.

The woman was buried alive as her house was bulldozed.

The 92-year-old grandmother was in the house when it was demolished in Xuzhou, China

Police and the woman's family search through the rubble to try to find the victim

The incident occurred as a development project was underway.

The project involved the construction of 1,600 houses over a space of 220,000 square metres (more than 2.3 million square feet), according to reports.

The builders claimed they were meant to demolish the next door neighbour's house.

The woman's family members told reports that they were not warned before the demolition took place.

Heartbreaking: The woman was bed bound and had been cared for by her sons for years

Horrifying moment: The woman's family members were left to search for the woman

The grandmother broke her leg resulting in her becoming bed bound and was under the care of her sons.

According to reports, the Zhao County Housing Authority signed an agreement to purchase the land and relocate those living on it.

The woman had agreed to relocate however her family had applied for a delay due to her health.

An official from the demolition company said that due to operational errors, they knocked over the woman's home causing the incident.

The case has been handed over to police for investigation.
A Chinese SWAT officer has been hailed as a hero after he carried an 80-year-old woman for some 3,300 feet to make sure she could catch her train on time.

The pensioner, who was disabled in the legs, had less than half an hour to produce a temporary ID card before she could be allowed to board her train in Haining city this week, according to People's Daily Online.

Realising the elderly passenger could miss her train, the officer who witnessed the scene immediately picked her up and carried her to make the new document, before taking her to the train.

Heroic: A Chinese SWAT officer is hailed as a hero after helping a pensioner to catch her train

Kind: The man carried the 80-year-old passenger for some 3,300 feet around Haining Station

We made it: The pair made it to the platform minutes before the train was set to depart

The woman, surnamed Liu, had only realised she had forgotten to bring her ID card when she and her family reach the security control at Haining Station on Monday morning.

All train passengers must present their ID cards in order to travel in China.

Elderly Liu, who could not walk on her own, had 27 minutes to produce a temporary ID card before her train was set to leave at 8:37am.

SWAT officer, named Song Jie, saw Liu stuck by the security gate.

He told the Liu's son and her daughter-in-law, who were travelling with her, to board the train first.

Then the officer hoisted the woman up and ran out of the station.

Song carried the pensioner to a nearby photo booth to have her picture taken before dashing to the Railway Security Bureau - still with her in arms.

It took the officer 20 minutes to carry Liu back to the security gate with her document.

Song told a reporter from Haining News: 'If she had been able to walk, the process would take her around 30 minutes.

'However, she is not a local and did not know where the photo booth or security bureau was.'

Selfless: The grandma forgot to bring her ID card and had 27 minutes to produce a new one

What a lift! She is disabled in the legs and could not walk on her own, so the officer helped her

Song said he carried Liu to pass the security check at 8:32am. One of his colleagues was holding the luggage for Liu.

The pair reached the platform at around 8:35am and the officer was able to carry the pensioner onto the train at the last minute.

The SWAT officer's kindness and dedication have moved many people in China, with people praising the policeman online.

'Lan' is one of the 19,363 users who have commented under the story on QQ.com. The user wrote: 'This is such a moving scene.'

Another QQ.com user 'Jun Qin' wrote: 'I found the video funny, but at the same time I was moved to tears.'
You can't buy your children academic brilliance - but you can, at least, get them into the best possible school, where they might end up top of the class.

But it will require a hefty premium because securing a home in a sought-after catchment area is a costly affair.

Figures produced this week by Santander show that no fewer than 26 per cent of parents with school-age children have deliberately bought or rented in a target catchment area. This is what Theresa May means by 'selection by house prices'.

School premium: Parents are willing to pay a vast premium in order for their children to go to a top school

In London, a 71,500 premium is added to the asking price of a home near a good secondary school - equivalent to 15 per cent over the average price.

Outside London, the premium is 11 per cent or just under 24,000 for the right home near the right school.

'Parents are making financial and liftstyle sacrifices to be in a catchment area of a desirable school,' says Miguel Sard, Santander's director of mortgages.

To prove the point, his bank's survey reveals that a fifth of parents downsize when they buy because a home in a catchment area is so expensive, while one in six of these moves ends up with at least one of the parents having to change jobs to cut down on commuting.

The bank's findings have been backed up by research from Savills, which says that the average price of a home close to one of the country's best-performing 10 per cent of state schools is 348,000.

Meanwhile, typical homes in the postcodes of the best performing private schools are 414,000.

'Parents opting for private education face the double whammy of high house prices and school fees,' says Lucian Cook, of Savills.

PROPERTY PREMIUMS IN CERTAIN AREAS ACCORDING TO SANTANDER Region Average premium paid (% of total property price) Average property price for that region Average premium paid () North East 9% 124,466 11,058 North West 8% 145,730 11,633 Yorks & Humber 12% 147,044 17,785 East Midlands 11% 170,120 18,373 West Midlands 11% 173,566 19,884 East of England 8% 265,156 22,290 London 15% 472,163 71,539 South East 8% 306,037 23,477 South West 7% 231,469 15,238 Wales 9% 142,568 12,296 Scotland 8% 141,142 11,506 UK 11% 211,230 23,707

The problem of getting a home near a top-rated state school has worsened  and the premium has risen - because, in recent years, many have scored increasingly well in Ofsted inspections and have secured more university places at Oxford and Cambridge.

At the same time, the cost of private education has risen despite a call by the chairman of the Independent Schools Council, former Harrow School head Barnaby Lenon, for fees to be cut.

Yet more research, this time by Lloyds Bank, reveals that the average cost of a private school education in London, for a child from age five to 18, is 179,145.

Then comes the South-East at 175,068 and the South-West at 160,350. Parents sending children to private schools in the North of England pay the least - but it's still 126,609.

Compared with that, a premium of 25,000 to 70,000 for a home in a successful state catchment area may appear cheap.

One consequence of expensive private schooling, better state education and a soaring population has been that catchment areas have been reduced.

Websites such as FindASchool, available through the gov.uk website, show that, in extreme cases, catchment areas have been cut to only 300 metres from the school gates.

That explains the increasingly feverish housing markets in streets near top state schools. And, as a result, buying agents - who advise people what to purchase - say parents need to plan such a move with precision.

Many advise parents to investigate key streets a year or even two before a child would start at a school and to alert estate agents to the plan. This will mean they are top of the queue when a property in a target road goes on sale.

Many estate agents operating near schools say competition is so tight that the best tactic is to sell the old home and rent in the catchment area.

This puts parents in pole position and the family has peace of mind that they are living locally to the school.

With many commentators predicting a flat sales market in the next 12 months - estate agency Countrywide even forecasts some small price falls in the first half of 2017 - renting for a year would not necessarily make it tougher to buy in a year's time.

For sale... in top catchment areas

Kingston-upon-Thames

This four-bedroom home is near St Paul's Church of England Junior, rated outstanding by Ofsted, and is less than a mile from the selective grammar Tiffin School. Price: 715,000

- Dexters.co.uk, 020 8546 3555.

Northampton

A new estate, Buckton Fields is in the catchment area for Whitehills Primary, rated outstanding by Ofsted. Price: 259,950 to 335,950

- Martingranthomes.co.uk, 01604 438231.

Cambridgeshire

This six-bedroom house needs refurbishment but it's a stone's throw from the co-ed independent Wisbech grammar school. Price: 300,000
They can occasionally be spotted scampering across the countryside in search of food, but numbers of the common dormouse are dwindling.

Since the turn of the century, numbers of dormice have decreased by more than a third.

Experts believe the tiny mammal is under threat as a result of a loss of habitat, changes to how woodland and countryside are managed, and climate change.

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Since the turn of the century, numbers of dormice have decreased by more than a third. Experts believe that the tiny mammal is under threat as a result of a loss of habitat, changes to how woodland and countryside are managed, and climate change

THE HAZEL DORMOUSE The hazel dormouse is otherwise known as the common dormouse. Agile climbers and mainly nocturnal, dormice are very rarely seen. They live in woodland, hedgerows and dense shrub and can spend their entire lives up in the branches without ever touching the ground. The dormouse eats buds, hazelnuts, berries and insects. It builds summer nests of stripped honeysuckle bark in which the female will give birth to up to seven young. They hibernate during the winter months, in a dense nest built in a tree cavity or similar, sheltered place. Advertisement

Hazel dormice were once widespread in England and Wales, but have disappeared from 17 counties since Victorian times.

Now they are only commonly found in the South of England and areas of the English-Welsh border.

There are thought to be just 45,000 hazel dormice left in the country, down from about 60,000 16 years ago.

Each year, various sites across the UK are monitored for dormice populations in May or June.

Numbers have fallen by 38 per cent since 2000, according to the State Of Britain's Dormice report from the People's Trust for Endangered Species (PTES).

The current rate of decline is equivalent to a fall of 55 per cent over 25 years, the report said.

Dormice thrive in in shrubby habitat and brambles, and use hedgerows to move about the countryside.

Dormice thrive in the early growth of woodlands, in shrubby habitat and brambles, and use hedgerows to move about the countryside.

HOW DOES CLIMATE CHANGE AFFECT DORMICE? As well as a loss of habitat, climate change is also having an impact on hazel dormice. In more variable, warmer winter, dormice are likely to go in and out of hibernation as the temperature changes. This uses up precious energy, and puts the mice at risk of dying. Unfortunately, climate change is not something that conservationists can do something about on a local level. Advertisement

One of the biggest threats to the tiny animals is a lack of management of woods, which is leaving trees unruly and isolated.

They have also been hit by more intensive agriculture, which has led to the loss of hedgerows and 'flail cutting' which reduces suitable habitat.

Ian White, dormouse officer at PTES said: 'Woodlands in the landscape are becoming increasingly isolated. Dormice need the hedgerows to get around.

'The problem within our fragmented landscape is where dormice have become locally extinct within a woodland, without a hedgerow network it is difficult for them to get back there.'

Mr White added that climate change was also having an impact on the mammals, which hibernate in winter.

In more variable, warmer winters, dormice are likely to go in and out of hibernation as the temperature changes.

This uses up more energy and puts the mice at increased risk of dying.

Unfortunately, climate change is not something conservationists can do something about on a local level.

But Mr White said: 'What we can do something about is improving woodland management and landscape linkage.

In more variable, warmer winters, dormice are likely to go in and out of hibernation as the temperature changes. This uses up more energy and puts the mice at an increased risk of dying

'You don't have to manage a whole woodland for dormice, they are a woodland-edge animal.'

Mr White suggested there were simple things that could be done, with large amounts of land on the edge of motorways and railways which could be managed sensitively to provide habitat for dormice and connect up woodlands.

Developing markets for locally-consumed products such as charcoal and biofuel, if done sensitively, could help ensure woodlands were managed in a way that benefits wildlife.

PTES has a reintroduction scheme which has involved 26 releases since 1993 of a total of 864 dormice at 22 sites in 12 counties.

Some 21 re-introductions have shown signs of success with breeding or dispersal to new areas beyond the site, the wildlife charity said.

The tiny rodents are one of nature's least photographed creatures in the wild because they are nocturnal, incredibly fast and spend most of their lives in high trees.
It is enough to make you wake up in a cold sweat: that nightmare that just scared the living daylights out of you is likely to recur in a weeks time.

Scientists say we suffer from something called dream lag - in which a dream, or nightmare, is repeated five or seven days after we initially have it.

Mark Blagrove, a sleep scientist at Swansea University, said: We often tend to dream about what happened yesterday.

Nightmares can be recurring, with scientists saying a 'dream lag' means you could dream the same thing a week later

You then stop dreaming so much of whats happened but after about five days you start dreaming of it again.

The phenomenon is more likely to occur after an important or emotive event, suggesting it takes the brain up to a week to process the information and store it away.

Happy events may trigger such dream repeats  but so may horror movies, the British Science Festival in Swansea heard.

Watching horror movies does give you nightmares, scientists found

Those who are bothered by nightmares may be wise to talk about them.

Other research by Professor Blagrove shows we find discussing our dreams strangely satisfying.

Men and women who spent an hour teasing apart a dream felt they gained more insight into their lives than those who chatted about a daydream or a day out.

The professor said: Over the hour you can start to make connections between the dream and recent waking life.

You tend to get aha experiences in which you say ah, thats where that came from.

You can make a lot of connections and people rate the dreams very highly as being relevant to their waking life issues and even giving them information about those issues.

This means, he said, that far from being on a par with reading tea leaves, discussing a dream may help people acknowledge problems they were trying to avoid.

Other work from the Swansea University sleep research lab has shown that sleeping does help boost recall, with English speakers recalling Welsh words better after a nap.

Sleep proved particularly beneficial to those volunteers who believed learning Welsh to be important.

Finally, our dreams are packed with metaphors.

Professor Blagrove said: For example, if a person and their partner say weve gone through a bumpy patch, or we must go our separate ways or lets take this relationship to a higher level, all of that is dependent on a metaphorical mapping of love as a journey.

The claim is that when you dream, you are rather than saying the metaphor we ve gone through a bumpy patch, you have a dream of being in a car, shaking around, going up a hill and it splits into two going in different directions.
He hopes his efforts will change laws to prevent countries from sending

While space agencies are setting their sights on travel to Mars, one doctor from Hampshire claims they soon many have to ask permission from him.

Dr Philip Davies is trying to claim ownership of the red planet, having spent six years propelling light particles towards the Martian surface.

And he believes he has a good chance in gaining the deeds to the planet, due to a strange international law.

Dr Philip Davies is trying to claim ownership of Mars, having spent six years propelling light particles towards the Martian surface

HOW THE LASER WORKS For six years, Dr Davies has been tracking Mars across the sky, and sending quadrillion light particles towards the planet's surface. He uses a telescope with a laser attached to fix and track his target on Mars. Over the 33.9 million miles (54.6 million kilometers) to the red planet, the laser spreads out to about the width of the planet. When the laser reaches Mars it heats the surface very slightly. The tiny amount of energy delivered to the red planet could cause a few extra molecules of carbon dioxide to be freed from the soil and enter the atmosphere. Advertisement

For six years, Dr Davies has been tracking Mars across the sky, and sending quadrillion light particles towards the planet's surface.

He thinks that so many of the light particles have landed on Mars that he technically owns it.

But Dr Davies does not want the planet for himself.

Instead, he hopes his efforts will highlight that something is very wrong with the law which could mean he is granted the rights to Mars.

He told The Times: 'It is preposterous to try to own Mars but that's the point.

'The preposterous bit is the space treaty.'

The treaty in reference is the Outer Space Treaty, which has been governing global conduct outside our atmosphere since 1967.

For six years, Dr Philip Davies has been tracking Mars across the sky, and sending quadrillion light particles towards the planet's surface. He thinks that so many of the light particles have landed on Mars that he technically owns it

The doctor uses this telescope with a laser attached to fix and track his target on Mars. Over the 33.9 million miles (54.6 million kilometers) to the red planet, the laser spreads out to about the width of the planet

The main aim of the treaty was to prevent weapons being used in space, ensuring governments could not claim land on celestial bodies.

PRINCIPLES OF THE OUTER SPACE TREATY - The exploration and use of outer space shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries and shall be the province of all mankind - Outer space shall be free for exploration and use by all States - Outer space is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means - States shall not place nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in orbit or on celestial bodies or station them in outer space in any other manner - The moon and other celestial bodies shall be used exclusively for peaceful purposes - Astronauts shall be regarded as the envoys of mankind - States shall be responsible for national space activities whether carried out by governmental or non-governmental entities - States shall be liable for damage caused by their space objects - States shall avoid harmful contamination of space and celestial bodies Advertisement

But Dr Davies says that the law has not been updated to cope with modern demands in space.

He said: 'The space treaty is looking increasingly weak, fragmented and ignored'.

While the obvious solution would be to update the law, Dr Davies says that there is evidence that nations are choosing to abandon it completely.

Last year, the US government introduced its own law to facilitate asteroid mining, and there is a chance that other countries may soon follow suit.

Dr Davies fears that abandoning the space treaty could lead to the loss of our only international consensus on space behaviour, and could lead to nuclear weapons in space.

Instead, he has exploited a loophole in the Outer Space Treaty, which means that ownership claims can only be prevented when made from space itself, and not Earth.

The treaty also states that people can claim ownership of barren and difficult to settle land without setting foot on it, as long as they can prove they can improve it.

Dr Davies said: 'By sending laser light from Earth to Mars, we are able to impart a very small but statistically non-zero benefit to the landscape.'

He argues that the tiny amount of energy delivered to the red planet could cause a few extra molecules of carbon dioxide to be freed from the soil and enter the atmosphere.

Essentially this is a small step to making Mars more habitable, and could give Dr Davies the right to claim the planet as his own.

Dr Philip Davies is now asking for support from the public on his website, Mars Sale, in order to build a case to bring to court

While lawyers are sceptical of his case, they do support his cause.

Sa'id Mostehar, director of the London Institute of Space Policy, told The Times: 'There is a general perception that the treaty is getting a bit out of date because there is so much commercial activity in space not occurring before.

But Mr Mostehar warned that reopening the treaty could cause new problems.

He added: 'It's not perfect by any means, and that's the nature of all international treaties.

'If we were to scrap what we have and start again we'd never get anything as good.'

Dr Davies is asking for support on his website called Mars Sale, in order to build a case to bring to court.
'The vertical looking hill is more likely to be caused by shadows from a hill that has a steep bank,' UFO expert Nigel Watson told MailOnline

He speculates that aliens are mining for minerals on the lunar surface

UFO spotter Mark Sawalha saus that NASA is hiding the truth about aliens

An alien hunter claims he has discovered yet another mystery object on the moon.

Mark Sawalha, a UFO hunter based in Finland, spotted a 'strange spike' in a Nasa photo of the lunar surface.

He claims is an alien antenna that could be located on the roof of an alien base.

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Zooming in on the image appear to show a small spike that Mark Sawalha believes is a sign of alien life on the lunar surface

WHY WE SEE STRANGE THINGS ON THE MOON Pareidolia is the psychological response to seeing faces and other significant and everyday items in random stimulus. It is a form of apophenia, when people see patterns in random, unconnected data. There have been multiple occasions when people have claimed to see religious images and themes in unexpected places. In space, one of the most famous is the 'face on Mars' spotted by one of the Viking orbiters in 1976. This was later proven to just be a chance alignment of shifting sand dunes. Advertisement

'Aliens are using moon minerals and they have bases there too. Many other findings support this theory,' Mr Sawalha he told the Sun.

While he does not spell out what these findings are, the UFO spotter claims that Nasa knows about them and has chosen not to publish them.

He also speculates that the presence of aliens on the lunar surface may be the reason that Nasa hasn't sent any manned spacecraft to Earth's satellite since the Apollo missions.

The images, captured by the space agency's Lunar Orbiter, appear to show a small dark 'spike' that casts a shadow.

Along with a mysterious antenna-like spike, zooming in on the photo also appears to reveal a 'clear plateau' under the antenna.

'Finding Alien anomalies (mechanical structures, buildings, etc) on our solar system is quite [a] new matter for me' says Mr Sawalha on his website.

'I got interested about this topic after I found these strange structures on Nasa images myself. I am sure that these findings are real. We have still a lot to learn from our neighbour planets and whats happening there.'

However, one experts claims that the so-called 'alien antenna' is nothing more than an optical illusion.

'In this case the vertical looking hill is more likely to be caused by shadows from a hill that has a steep bank or cliff face on the right-hand-side,' Nigel Watson, author of the UFO Investigations Manual, told MailOnline.

'There are plenty of alternative explanations that don't involve the intervention of aliens, but enthusiasts are always eager to leap on anything unusual and build them into their extraterrestrial fantasies'.

The original image of the moon's surface was taken by Nasa's Lunar Orbiter. The red box shows the area where the 'alien antenna' is located

The spike could be an antenna on the roof of an alien moon base, says Mark Sawalha

The UFO hunter believes that the 'antenna' is located above a distinct plateau

Earlier this year, an expert came up with a rational theory to explain a previous 'alien spire' spotted on the moon.

The 3.5-mile (5.6km) high structure was spotted in images from Google Moon, with some believing it to be a 'launch pad' that was constructed by aliens.

However, a researcher working with Nasa's LROC moon-mapping mission claims that the strange mark is nothing more than a crater within a crater.

A researcher working with Nasa's LROC moon-mapping mission has debunked images claiming to capture a 3.5-mile (5.6km) spire for vehicle landings on the moon's surface.

According to UFO Sightings Daily, the discovery of the 'spire' was made by YouTube user MexicoGeek.

MexicoGeek used Google Moon to zoom in on an area of the lunar surface between the Rupes Liebig and Rimae Marsenius craters.

LUNAR LANDING SITE IN THE SKY? The 3.5-mile (5.6km) high structure was spotted in images from Google Moon, with some believing it to be a 'launch pad' that was constructed by aliens. Now, however, a researcher working with Nasa's LROC moon-mapping mission claims the strange mark is nothing more than a crater within a crater. A conspiracy website claimed the spire was 'probably built to accommodate a very large vessel so that it could dock safely without landing.' Speaking to Huffington Post, the scientist explained the appearance of a tower is an artefact generated from the process of putting the mosaic of images together 'In the high sun images, the bright craters are more easily seen, but there's nothing there that is unusual compared to any other areas on the moon.' Advertisement

The conspiracy website explained: 'The spire looks to be coming out of the centre of a crater, but these are not craters, but many small white shiny structures.

'The spire was probably built to accommodate a very large vessel so that it could dock safely without landing.'

However, expert opinion has since emerged that disputes these suggestions.

'That's no spire! What is going on is that there is a small crater that formed on the rim, after the larger crater, Mersenius E,' explained Noah Petro, a project scientist for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) mission.

LROC is a Nasa craft currently orbiting the moon to map its surface.

Speaking to Huffington Post, the scientist explained the appearance of a tower is an artefact generated from the process of putting the mosaic of images together

'In the high sun images, the bright craters are more easily seen, but there's nothing there that is unusual compared to any other areas on the moon,' explained Petro.

The sun is so low on the horizon that the dimple in the crater wall creates a shadow on along the east.

The 3.5-mile (5.6km) high structure (pictured) was spotted in images from Google Moon, with some believing it to be a 'launch pad' that was constructed by aliens. Now, however, a researcher working with Nasa's LROC moon-mapping mission claims the strange mark is nothing more than a crater within a crater (right).

He added that the sun is so low on the horizon that the dimple in the crater wall creates a shadow on along the east.

While the dark 'cascade of material' falling down into the larger crater is likely caused by material falling into the crater floor.

The moon spire is the latest in a long line of alien conspiracies based on freely available images released by space agencies.

MexicoGeek used Google Moon to zoom in on an area of the lunar surface between the Rupes Liebig and Rimae Marsenius craters.

Images from the Nasa's Curiosity rover, currently surveying the surface of Mars, have previously been believed to have captured gorillas and camels.

Recently, the Chinese space agency released some of the highest quality images to date of the lunar surface, which shows the moon's rocks and fine grey dust in detail.
Samsung was also widely mocked after the launch of its Galaxy Note 7

'Seven' and a slang word for penis are only differentiated by tone

Apple's 'This is 7' slogan for its new iPhone 7 has a rather unfortunate translation in Hong Kong.

Smartphone users have been mocking the technology firm's latest marketing line because it sounds just like 'This is penis' in Cantonese.

China is one of Apple's biggest markets, but the translations for its new slogan differ drastically across mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

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Apple boss Tim Cook introduces the iPhone 7 during an Apple special event in San Francisco

While mainlanders and Taiwanese people predominantly speak Mandarin, Hong Kong dwellers typically converse in Cantonese, which is why the comical translation only affects them.

Many Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong took to social media to mock the x-rated gaffe, reports Quartz.

'The slogan "7, is here" in China is the best. They got so many "7"s,' said one Facebook user.

Why didnt people say anything during the launch of Windows 7? queried another.

How about iPhone 7 Plus? More "7"s?' suggested another user on the social network.

The iPhone 7 slogan as it appears on Apple's site in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong (l-r)

WHY SEVEN SOUNDS LIKE PENIS IN CANTONESE The Cantonese language uses subtly different tones to differentiate between words. The Cantonese pronunciation of 'seven' () uses a 'cat1' tone, according to the Chinese Character Database of Chinese University of Hong Kong. The number seven is a common euphemism of a Cantonese profanity word referring to penis, which only differs slightly in the tone. Number seven is widely deployed in local politics. A common example is the Hong Kongs Chief Executive CY Leung who is nicknamed as 689 after being elected to his post with just 689 votes from an election committee - regrettably missing a seven. Advertisement

The two spoken dialects are vastly different, and also make use of different characters.

While the translated slogans are inoffensive in Mandarin, in Cantonese, 'seven' is pronounced as 'chat' which also happens to be a slang word for penis.

The Cantonese language uses subtly different tones to differentiate between words.

The Cantonese pronunciation of seven() uses a 'cat1' tone, according to the Chinese Character Database of Chinese University of Hong Kong.

The number 'seven' is a common euphemism for 'penis', which only differs slightly in the tone.

The number seven is widely used in local politics to make fun of politicians.

Apple marleting chief Phil Schiller talks through the new iPhone 7 at Apple's launch event

A common example is the Hong Kongs Chief Executive CY Leung who is nicknamed as 689 after being elected to his post with just 689 votes from an election committee - regrettably missing a seven.

Earlier this year, Korean technoloy firm Samsung faced similar mockery in Hong Kong following the launch of its Galaxy Note 7.

Cantonese speakers joked that 'Note 7' sounds like 'a stick of penis', reports Quartz.
The moon is surrounded by a mysterious eerie glow created by tiny dust particles in its atmosphere.

Until now, it has been unknown where this 'nanodust' comes from.

But new research suggests the dust is kicked up by cosmic impacts from meteoroids or solar storms.

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From 2013  2014, Nasa's Lunar Atmoshpere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) spacecraft has collected data from the moon's exosphere (artist's impression pictured). The results are helping explain how the moon got its eerie glow

NASA'S LADEE PROBE Launch: September 6, 2013 Launch site: Wallops Flight Facility, Virginia Launch vehicle: Minotaur V Planned mission duration: 100 days Actual mission duration: 128 days Mass: 844 lbs (383 kg) Power: 295 watts Cost: 167 million ($280 million) Mission legacy: Ladee identified various components of the thin lunar atmosphere - now, including neon. It also studied the dusty veil surrounding the moon, created by all the surface particles kicked up by impacting micrometeorites. Scientists hope to use the data to address a long-standing question: was lunar dust, electrically charged by sunlight, responsible for the pre-sunrise glow seen above the lunar horizon during several Apollo missions? Advertisement

The moon is surrounded by an exosphere  a weak layer of particles which are gravitationally-bound to the moon.

Unlike Earth, which has a thicker atmosphere, the particles in the exosphere rarely collide with one another.

Researchers from the Nasa Ames Research Centre in Silicon Valley, California, think the particles in the exosphere originate from the way the moon is worn down by its environment  for example by meteoroid impacts or solar storms.

From 2013  2014, Nasa's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) spacecraft collected data from the moon's exosphere.

A paper describing the results has now been published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

The readings reveal the particles in the exosphere were not permanently aloft, and instead, forces from the moon's surface intermittently kicked up dust from the surface.

Based on those findings, scientists think the dust comes and goes with meteoroid streams.

Amanda Cook, a lunar scientists at Nasa who worked on the study, told Space.com: 'We weren't actually looking for a fluctuating exosphere. It's just something that came out of the data.'

Pictured is an artist's conception of the thin dust cloud surrounding the moon and the LADEE mission orbit. The colors represent the amount of material ejected from the lunar surface, with red representing the highest density of dust and blue representing the lowest density

The researchers looked at two sets of data  one taken at the peak of a meteoroid stream, and the other taken when activity was relatively weak.

The results showed at the peak of the stream, there was scattered sunlight, suggesting the dust particles were less than 60 nanometres wide.

Conversely, little light was detected when the meteoroid activity was weak.

The researchers suggest that over time, the nanodust cloud may envelop the moon entirely, depending on meteoroid impact rates.

Diane Wooden, lead author of the study told Space.com: 'This result is exciting because if the detected signal is indeed originating from nanodust, then there seems to be much more of it than we expected to see.'

As well as the moon, other airless bodies in the solar system, including Mercury, also appear to have small particles in their exospheres.

The researchers hope further studies could reveal details about meteor showers and solar flares, as well as details about planetary surfaces.

Scientists think the dust that gives the moon its eerie glow comes and goes with meteoroid streams.
It has been over a week since SpaceXs Falcon 9 rocket exploded on the Cape Canaveral launchpad, destroying Facebooks $200 million satellite in a massive fireball that rattled windows miles away.

Now, Elon Musk is asking the people of the internet for help in finding answers on what hes called the most difficult and complex failure the firm has ever experienced.

The billionaire SpaceX CEO took to Twitter on Friday seeking support and advice as the investigation continues  and addressing claims that a mysterious object may have hit the rocket, Musk says they have not ruled that out.

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The AMOS-6 communications satellite was aboard a Falcon 9 rocket which exploded during a test fire in Florida last week, destroying the rocket and its cargo (pictured left to right)

SATELLITE FIRM CLAIMING DAMAGES FROM SPACEX The Israeli owners of the destroyed AMOS-6 satellite have reportedly been hard hit by the loss. In a press conference on Sunday, Spacecom said it could seek $50m from SpaceX following the explosion on the launch pad last week. AMOS-6 was supposed to provide home internet for Africa and the Middle East. In addition, Facebook had signed a deal with Eutelsat to lease broadband capacity from the satellite as part of its efforts to increase internet connectivity across the African continent. Advertisement

In a series of tweets early this morning, Musk revealed new details on the conditions of the rocket at the time of the blast, and asked users to send in any footage of the incident.

According to Musk, the engines were off and there was no known heat source present to trigger the explosion.

Still working on the Falcon fireball investigation. Turning out to be the most difficult and complex failure we have ever had in 14 years, Musk tweeted on Sept 9.

He continued, Important to note that this happened during a routine filling operation. Engines were not on and there was no apparent heat source.

Support & advice from @Nasa, @FAA, @AFPAA & others much appreciated. Please email any recordings of the event to report@spacex.com.

Alien hunters have developed their own theory of what caused SpaceX Falcon 9 to explode yesterday. Footage from the blast shows an anomaly pass over at the same time as the blast and some believe it was an alien air strike that sabotaged the mission

The SpaceX CEO also noted that they are investigating a sound that occurred just before the blast.

So far, the origin of this sound remains a mystery.

Particularly trying to understand the quieter bang sound a few seconds before the fireball goes off.

'May come from rocket or something else, Musk tweeted.

In a series of tweets early this morning, Musk revealed new details on the conditions of the rocket at the time of the blast, and asked users to send in any footage of the incident

According to Musk, the engines were off and there was no known heat source present to trigger the explosion

Elon Musk is asking the people of the internet for help in finding answers on what hes called the most difficult and complex failure the firm has ever experienced

As the cause of the fireball continues to elude investigators, conspiracy theorists have proposed numerous explanations on what may have happened  including sabotage from a rival company, a drone collision, and of course, aliens.

And while some of these suggestions may be far off, the investigators are still considering the possibility that a third-party interference could have triggered the explosion.

The billionaire SpaceX CEO took to Twitter on Friday seeking support and advice as the investigation continues. SpaceX wrote a similar message on its Twitter account as well

Videos of the event shared on YouTube appear to show a mysterious object passing over the site just as the rocket bursts into flames. In regards to these claims, Musk says the team has 'not ruled that out'

Elon Musk's private space venture could face a bill of 37m following the explosion, however, the private firm has said it will not disclose terms of its contracts or insurance

Videos of the event shared on YouTube appear to show a mysterious object passing over the site just as the rocket bursts into flames.

In response to one user who asked if theres any reality in the claims that something hit the rocket, Musk wrote: We have not ruled that out.
If youve ever felt as though your life has no direction, you might want to blame it on the universe.

In the most stringent analysis yet, researchers have put an age-old assumption to the test, analyzing some of the oldest radiation in existence to reveal that the universe is expanding isotropically.

On a large scale, this means that the universe has no special direction, and essentially is the same no matter which way you look.

Researchers have put an age-old assumption to the test, analyzing some of the oldest radiation in existence to reveal that the universe is expanding isotropically. The relic ratiation, called cosmic microwave background, is indicated in yellow in the image above

WHAT THE STUDY FOUND Based on the Copernican principle, the standard model of cosmology assumes the universe is isotropic and homogenous on large scales. This means there are no special directions, and space is the same no matter which way you look. In the study, the researchers found overwhelming evidence to support this assumption, with odds of just one in 121,000 that a preferred direction could exist. Advertisement

In a new study published to the online journal arXiv, cosmologists from University College London and Imperial College studied the cosmic microwave background (CMB) to test a fundamental assumption in the standard model of cosmology, the Copernican principle.

The principle states that the universe is both isotropic and homogenous on large scales.

The researchers used measurements of the CMB  relic radiation from the Big Bang  taken with the European Space Agencys Planck spacecraft.

But rather than looking for imbalances within this radiation, the team considered the different ways in which preferred directions would leave their impact on the CMB, using a supercomputer to detect any hidden patterns, according to Science.

This could include rotation about a particular axis, or expansion at different speeds on different axes.

Along with this, the early universe could have been stretched and compressed in particular directions as a result of gravitational waves.

The team identified five 'modes' that would indicate a special direction.

For the first time, we searched for signatures of the most general departure from isotropy that preserves homogeneity in an open or flat universe, without restricting to specific degrees of freedom, the authors wrote in paper.

If the universe was anisotropic, there would be distinct patterns in the CMB, as shown on the bottom half of the image. The CMB, however, shows no such patterns, as pictured on top

We have remodelled existing frameworks to analyze CMB polarization data in addition to temperature, allowing us to play the tightest constraints possible with the current CMB data.

Across the board, the researchers found overwhelming odds against the argument of expansion in a particular direction  121,000:1.

The findings suggest that the universe is indeed isotropic, supporting the assumptions that cosmologists have long relied on.

While there are limits to the principle and matter does distribute unevenly, space - one the largest scale - is the same in all directions.
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The south-west of America has been immortalised in many Hollywood films and when confronted with it in person, MailOnline Travel's Robert Lang can see why lenses often linger on its intense beauty.

The photogenic region comprises rugged landscapes, alien-like terrains and majestic national parks. Lang took a week-long road trip beginning in Los Angeles, en-route to Sedona on a six-and-a-half-hour drive through California's Palm Desert, straying into Utah and on to the harsh desert heat of Arizona to capture the area's highlights on camera.

From its raw, vibrant beauty to its cinematic scale, MailOnline Travel has travelled through the heart of the spiritual south-west on a whirlwind photographic road trip.

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Sedona - the most spiritual destination in America offers mesmerising views of a new and different rock formations at every turn. Beneath the breath-taking panoramas in the desert town you are never far from crystal stores, psychics and healers

There are also many hikes such as Cathedral Rock and Bell Rock trail. On these you can experience the Sedona energy vortexes, which have enthralled the spiritual community for thousands of years. The pink Jeep tours are the easiest option to discover this aspect of the town and provide a guided tour around the ancient Native American rock paintings

Amara Resort and Spa boutique hotel offers rustic yet chic rooms overlooking a saltwater infinity pool and views across the Snoopy Rock formation and Oak Creek. Guests can enjoy Sedona-centric treatments utilising Native American rattles, sage smudging, healing crystals, chakra balancers, custom oil blends and the detoxifying properties of local Sedona mud. The spa's experiences are rich in native ingredients and to coincide with monsoon season, it offers a unique seasonal monsoon guided meditation and 90-minute massage

Airport Mesa is also an easy climb for potentially the best 360-degree views of the Sedona and Verde Valley

Travellers from all over the world head to Sedona to reconnect spiritually with the local environment, explore the fabled vortexes and harness the metaphysical energy for which Sedona has become famous. Vortexes are believed by some to be energy sites that enhance meditation, healing and creativity. Decades ago, during 'the Harmonic Convergence', Sedona's new age reputation became more widely known. Even before then, the area attracted artists and spiritual seekers who were inspired by the natural beauty of the landscape. Red Rock country has a long history of human appeal. American Indian tribes, including the Yavapai and Apache, have been living in the area for centuries

After a day of chasing around vortexes and hiking, Lang headed to the four-star Hotel L'Auberge de Sedona. On offer is the Desert Sage Sugar Scrub which restores balance to your skin while acting as a natural exfoliator. Blended with hints of juniper, sage and cypress, this treatment culminates with a head, neck and scalp massage while skin is re-hydrated with luxurious white tea body butter. He also sampled a signature dining spot (above) right on the banks of Oak Creek. Its restaurants, Cress on Oak Creek and Etch Kitchen & Bar, were designed to infuse and fill every culinary experience with the sights and sounds of Oak Creek

Oak Creek Canyon is a river gorge located in northern Arizona between the cities of Flagstaff and Sedona. The canyon is often described as a smaller cousin of the Grand Canyon because of its scenic beauty

Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park looks like a classic Western landscape. To immerse himself in the immensity and true panoramic beauty of the valley, cliffs, and monuments of the Navajo Nation, Lang took a jeep tour

Arriving in monsoon season and greeted with thunder and lightning, Lang meandered through Red Rock country to Sedona - the most spiritual destination in America.

Standing out from the red rock monoliths he stayed at the four-star Amara Resort and Spa boutique hotel, which provides an ideal base for exploring the spiritual side of Sedona, where you are never far from crystal stores, psychics and healers.

There are also many hikes such as Cathedral Rock and Bell Rock trail. On these you can experience the Sedona energy vortexes, which have enthralled the spiritual community for thousands of years.

The area's first inhabitants are thought to be 'Paleo Indians'.

Heading towards Monument Valley on the border of Utah and Arizona, Lang travelled up Oak Creek Canyon, six miles from Sedona, where he paid $20 to slide down 80 feet of slick natural river water chutes at Slide Rock State park.

Lang stayed at Monument Valley Tipi Village where you can try the Navajo experience of sleeping in a traditional Tipi or a contemporary Hogan. If you are on a budget they offer a primitive tent location where you can camp as well. The Tipi Village also offers a 2.5 hour excursion in the afternoon, which comes highly recommended as their guides are knowledgeable in the ancient legends of spirits and they can drive around locations only available to them rather than tourist cars

Cinematic brilliance: Like something straight out of a movie, Monument Valley, Utah, is a shutterbug's paradise

A traditional American Indian Hogan in the Monument Valley located near Hunts Mesa

After a three-hour-drive through the vast awe-inspiring beauty of Monument Valley he entered Wild West country, where he was met by cinematic landscapes of red sandstone formations erupting skywards from the endless desert floor, at Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park.

Following a night under canvas in a traditional Navajo Tipi, he drove two hours to the popular tourism hotspots Antelope Slot Canyon and the breath-taking Horseshoe Bend, where the Colorado River meanders in the Grand Canyon.

Both destinations are ideal for shutterbugs, with the iconic view at Horseshoe Bend not for the faint-hearted as there are no railings to separate you and the 1,000ft drop.

Morning glory: Sunrise over Monument Valley at dawn is worth waking up for, found Lang

Antelope Canyon is called Tse bighanilini, meaning 'the place where water runs through rocks' by the Navajo. Carved from the red sandstone for millennia by wind and rain, the canyons are narrow passageways that lead several hundred feet away from the mouth. Be warned to pre-book Antelope Canyon well in advance, as you don't want to be disappointed on arrival. Entry is restricted to guided tours led by authorised tour guides

The gorgeous sloping angles of the rocks are illuminated by shifts of light that make their way down from the rim of the canyon. If you arrive early in the morning when they first open you will have a chance to book an afternoon tour. The best time to see the slot canyon is round midday when the sun beams shine directly into the shafts

Horseshoe Bend, one of the most photographed areas on the Colorado River, located just north of Grand Canyon and outside Page Arizona (above). Either arrive in the morning or the late afternoon, as the 15-minute hike can be hazardous in the heat.

A thrillseeker on the edge of the cliff looking over the Horseshoe bend (above). The view is not for the faint-hearted as there are no railings to separate you and the 1,000ft drop. The town Page, Arizona, on Lake Powell, seems to be built around tourism in these areas. Lang stayed at the Courtyard Page at Lake Powell perched on the hill. It offers sweeping views of the area and a swimming pool to cool off from the desert heat

On the fifth day of his photographic odyssey Lang travelled from Page to Zion National Park in Kanab, Utah, to tour the surreal Wahweap Hoodoos where deformed white columns tower and twist in the shapes of ghoulish creatures.

Lang then visited the incredible sandstone formation called The Wave, at Coyote Buttes in the Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness, in the Colorado Plateau.

Heading towards Nevada he entered and double-backed out of Utah where the epic scenery illustrated why the Mormon's have settled there and named it 'God's country'.

Road trippers can then snake through The Valley of Fire State Park - a Mars-like terrain of 150 million year-old jagged and eroded rock formations.

Lang travelled from Page to Zion National Park in Kanab, Utah, to tour the surreal Wahweap Hoodoos, where deformed white columns tower and twist in the shapes of ghoulish creatures (left). Just a stone's throw away, in Arizona, near its border with Utah, is also the well-known sandstone formation, The Wave (right)

Before you hit Las Vegas you can drive through The Valley of Fire State Park where you are transported to a destination that resembles Mars. Named after the red shifting sand dunes, the park is prehistoric. The rough floor and jagged walls of the park contain brilliant formations of eroded rocks with some more than 150 million years old

Due to its otherworldly surroundings many Hollywood movies have been filmed here including Total Recall, Transformers and Star Trek. However despite all the hiking opportunities available, in the summer when temperatures peak to 42C (109F), exploring the area on a trek is not advised

In a bid to escape the busy strip in Las Vegas, Lang bedded down at Green Valley Ranch Resort and Spa in Henderson which is a suburb of Las Vegas (left). It has all the trimmings of a Vegas hotel at a fraction of the cost and boasts restaurants Bottiglia Cucina & Enoteca (right), an Italian restaurant, and Borracha, a Mexican restaurant that pays homage to the Day of the Dead

The striking setting has featured in Hollywood movies including Total Recall, Transformers and Star Trek.

For the final day of the whirlwind tour, Lang left Henderson, Nevada, to head to Pioneertown in California opting for the scenic route through the National Parks of the Mojave Desert and Joshua Tree.

Sprawled across 1.6million acres, there are sweeping canyons, wild flowers, rugged forests, 'singing' sanddunes and lofty mountains in Mojave.

Mesmerised by its vibrance and the stirring spirituality this south-west heartland offered, Lang lastly stumbled into Pioneertown, which was an Old West motion picture set in the 1940s. He had found the Wild West of the movies and finally immortalised it for himself, on film.

Sprawled across 1.6million acres, Mojave has canyons, wild flowers, forests, sanddunes and mountains to snap

The road is bumpy as you leave the Mojave desert and enter through the Joshua Tree National Park

The town started as a live-in Old West motion-picture set, built in the 1940s. The set was designed to provide a place for the actors to stay while they filmed the movies

The quirky and rustic reception of the Pioneertown Motel is very welcoming as are their cool friendly staff. The desert lodge style accommodations aim to provide a comfortable guest experience in the heart of the desert. Next door is the infamous Pappy & Harriet's bar and restaurant

The Pioneertown Motel is set against vast desert landscape, mysterious rock formations and ample Joshua trees. Couple that with its rich Hollywood history, proximity to one of the country's best National Parks and you have all the ingredients for a special desert getaway

The Integratron is a structure designed by Ufologist and Contactee George Van Tassel. Tassel claimed the Integratron was capable of rejuvenation, anti-gravity and time travel. You can also visit it in Joshua Tree for a sound bath
This is the dramatic moment a service van crashed into the engine of a passenger plane as it taxied out to the runway.

Incredible footage shows the van driving towards the Dragonair A330 at Hong Kong airport then making a sudden turn, straight into the engine of the aircraft.

Those on board the flight were unharmed but the driver reportedly suffered head injuries as a result of the collision.

The service van was seen driving towards the plane across the tarmac (left). At first, it appeared to be driving towards the body of the aircraft (right)

Suddenly, the service van is seen swerving right and straight into the engine (left). The vehicle was then dragged along the tarmac (right)

In the footage, which has just emerged following the crash on September 8, the van (circled) is seen weaving its way across the tarmac.

For a brief moment, it disappears from view, hidden by a passenger boarding bridge.

When it re-emerges on screen, it's seen driving directly towards the belly of the plane, which is slowly taxiing forwards.

Suddenly, the service van is seen swerving right and straight into the engine.

The aircraft continues to move forwards several feet, dragging the vehicle along with it.

Footage after the crash showed the van completely lodged into the engine with part of its roof ripped off.

A passenger plane collided with a service van at Hong Kong International Airport

Flight KA691, with 295 on board, had begun its journey to Penang in Malaysia when the accident happened.

Dragonair told MailOnline Travel in a statement on the day of the incident: 'Dragonair confirms that one of its A330 aircraft operating KA691 to Penang was involved in an incident on the taxiway at Hong Kong International Airport this afternoon.

'While the aircraft was taxiing away from the departure bay, one of the engines was hit by a maintenance vehicle operated by another company. The aircraft is now being inspected by our engineers and our maintenance service provider.

'There were no reports of any injuries to the 295 passengers or crew. All passengers have disembarked and another aircraft has been arranged to operate the flight.'

Dramatic footage filmed by a passenger shows firefighters rescuing the van driver

Police told the South China Morning Post: The driver who was trapped on board the light goods vehicle was rescued. He was injured in the head and shoulder and taken conscious to North Lantau Hospital for treatment.

Five fire engines and two ambulances attended the incident, which took place at 4.19pm.

Footage filmed by a passenger shows five fire fighters battling to free the driver, with paramedics waiting nearby with a stretcher.

Dragonair added: 'We are concerned by reports that the driver of the vehicle has been injured. We are in contact with his employer for updates of his wellbeing.
Passengers with bulges in their body may be

Travelers suffering from a bulge in their body, be it a cyst or a hernia, could find themselves submitted to invasive airport security screening to look for explosives, a case report suggests.

In many larger airports, X-rays have been replaced in recent years by machines that use radio frequencies to detect suspicious items on passengers.

This led to one female jet-setter with a common type of skin cyst being flagged for a hidden explosive search at a US airport - her physician, Dr. Warren Heymann, records in a report by an American Medical Association publication.

In many larger airports, X-rays have been replaced in recent years by machines that use radio frequencies to detect suspicious items on passengers (file photo)

'Until my patient told me her story, I had never encountered this situation,' Heymann, a researcher at Cooper Medical School of Rowan University in New Jersey, said.

'To the best of my knowledge, there has only been one similar case in the medical literature, as noted in my article - a man with a hernia,' Heymann added.

On future trips, the woman traveled with a doctor's note explaining her condition that she could show airport security agents.

Similarly the man with the hernia had a protrusion in his groin area that alarmed airport screeners and he was interrogated and subjected to a genital exam.

'I would suggest that people be aware that this could happen to them if they have prominent lesions on their skin,' Heymann said.

'Having a letter from a physician noting the presence of a cyst, hernia, or other lesion might help, but understandably, the TSA agent may still wish to perform a pat down and a swipe for contraband,' Heymann added.

'Mutual understanding and respect should allow the screening process to go smoothly.'

Airport scanners generally show solid masses on the surface area of a person's body and/or in their clothing.

'If a large cyst or mass appears to stick up above the skin or body outline around it, or looks like a solid mass compared to the area around it, the scanner may reflect that', said Dr. Mahadevappa Mahesh, a radiology and public health researcher at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore who wasn't involved in the case report.

Travelers with prominent lesions on their skin should be aware that they may get searched for explosives due to 'suspicious' nature of such bulges

'There's no data on how many travelers may experience incidents like the woman with the cyst or the man with the hernia', Mahesh, a member of the American College of Radiology's medical physics commission, said.

'We suspect that it is a rare situation,' Mahesh added.

'It's more common for patients that have been injected with or ingested a radioactive material for nuclear medicine exams to be flagged for airport screening because radiation may be detected if they travel shortly after their procedures.'

Dr David Brenner, a radiology researcher at Columbia University Medical Center in New York, explained: 'While smaller cysts shouldn't confuse airport scanners, it's more likely that travelers would be flagged when they have larger ones.'
government supervised foundation has set up the crowdfunding page

China has turned to crowdfunding to pay for the restoration of the Great Wall, which has suffered from the effects of weather - and locals stealing bricks.

A donation campaign, set up by a government supervised charitable foundation, is hoping to raise 23million Yuan (2.59million) for the project.

The money will be used to restore just 1,050m (3,445ft) of the 13,170 mile long monument.

A charitable foundation is using crowdfunding to pay for the restoration of the Great Wall of China (file photo)

The China Foundation for Cultural Heritage Conservation (CFCHC) set up the crowdfunding page on August 29 and the campaign will run until December 1.

It is said to be the first time fundraising has been used for the preservation of a heritage site.

According to the blurb on the donations page, the Great Wall is slowly disappearing.

The effects of weather has caused erosion in the structure and the collapse of part of the wall.

Bricks from the wall have also been stolen by people living in the area for building work or sold as souvenirs.

There are even portions of the wall that are now submerged under water.

The wall, built over the course of 1,000 years, has been crumbling and slowly eroding away due to weather and human damage

THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA It is currently the world's largest man-made structure.

Length of the wall is thought to be around 13,170 miles long.

However, the wall is actually made up of several different sections, built over the space of about 1,000 years.

Building of the wall started during the Qin dynasty (259BC to 210BC).

It was built as a line of defense against enemies from the north.

Large sections of the wall were built during the Ming dynasty (1368 to 1644), which is what most tourists see today. Source: MailOnline, History magazine Advertisement

The CFCHC, which operates under the supervision of the Chinese State Administration of Cultural Heritage, is hoping to use the funds raised to target the Xifengkou area of the wall.

It's located in an area just east of Beijing, in the north east province of Hebei.

So far, more than 32,000 people have donated to the initiative and raised a total of 640,839 Yuan (72,156).

Dong Yaohui, a Great wall expert who's in charge of the crowdfunding campaign, told state news agency Xinhua that the work is expected to start in the spring of 2017.

He said: 'The project will mainly reinforce the wall to ensure the safety of the section, rather than try to build a new wall.'

The CFCHC has a target of 11million Yuan (1.24million) for the first part of the project - a section that's 460m (1,509ft) long.

It's not the first time that a country has used crowdfunding to help preserve its heritage sites.

Earlier this year, MailOnline Travel reported that Italy was calling for sponsors to help restore and protect 100 of its monuments.

The total for the 100 different projects comes to more than 248 million (188 million).
Some travellers really don't like being tens of thousands of feet up in the air in a fast-moving metal cylinder.

But there's now hope for nervous fliers thanks to a new app which aims to calm uneasy travelers by making them feel like they are sitting next to the pilot.

Sky Guru, released this week, will explain to passengers what is happening during their flight in real time and what they can expect by using professional aviation data.

There's now hope for nervous fliers thanks to a new app which aims to calm uneasy travelers by making them feel like they are sitting next to the pilot

Sky Guru, released this week, will explain to passengers what is happening during their flight in real time and what they can expect by using professional aviation data

Founder Alex Gervash said: 'People need support during turbulence,' adding that when humans are stressed they require more information and support to cope with the situation

The app is the brainchild of Israeli pilot and psychologist Alex Gervash, who is the director of Flying without Fear  a centre for studying and treatment of aerophobia.

'Having over eight years of experience with fear of flying treatment I've recognized the value of real-time assistance,' Gervash said.

'People need support during turbulence or with understanding a strange sound.'

He added that when humans are stressed they require more information and support to cope with the situation.

During the stressful moments of a flight such as take-off and landing or during turbulence the app will send reassuring messages such as, 'control yourself rather than the airplane'.

It uses a phone's built-in sensors - a microphone, gyroscope, compass, accelerometer, barometer - and professional aviation weather forecasts to help explain to anxious fliers reasons behind the plane dipping or certain noises.

During the stressful moments of a flight such as take-off and landing or during turbulence the app will send reassuring messages such as, 'control yourself rather than the airplane'

It uses a phone's built-in sensors - a microphone, gyroscope, compass, accelerometer, barometer - and professional aviation weather forecasts to help explain concerns

It will also answer questions about goings-on within the plane such as why window blinds need to be open or why lights blink.

The app works by downloading all the available aeronautic information regarding a selected flight pre-departure. Then, when the phone is put into flight mode on board, it provides travelers with information until they land.

Sky Guru also works on the ground by advising about possible delays or telling passengers which seats to pick on the plane.

Users so far have been pleased with their experience, praising its exact explanations - 'nothing wishy-washy' - and how it's psychologically on point.

'At every stage of the flight I got very detailed explanations of everything. It worked like a tranquilizer,' one reviewer enthused.

However it's currently only available on iOS, where it can be purchased for 4.99 at a 65 per cent discount during its pre-launch sale. From September 15 its price increases to 16.99.
A young man who looked after a pregnant woman's distressed child during a busy flight has been hailed a hero on social media.

A picture surfaced online earlier this week of a passenger walking along a plane cabin holding a young baby.

The image was taken by an onlooker called Angela Byrd, who revealed that the man has been babysitting for a female passenger on the trip from Minneapolis to Atlanta in order to give her some rest.

This picture surfaced online earlier this week of a passenger looking after a pregnant woman's distressed child

The photo was shared on a Facebook group called 'GAFollowers - Everything Georgia' and it has since attracted more than 6,000 likes.

It was captioned: 'On a flight back to Georgia, this man, who was a stranger to this woman, offered to help her because she was pregnant and alone on the flight and her son was upset and fussy.

'He told her that he was a dad and wanted to help her so she could rest.

'He walked the aisle most of the flight from Minneapolis to Atlanta comforting this woman's son as if he was his own.'

The plane was flying from Minneapolis to the city of Atlanta in Georgia (pictured)

She added: 'I was in tears because it showed me today... not because he was white and she was black... that there are still GOOD people out there in a world full of turmoil.'

Social media users have been quick to praise the man, with many saying that he has restored their faith in humanity.
The 30ft long piece of ancient hemlock tree is known as The Old Man of the Lake

For over 100 years a tree trunk has been mysteriously floating upright in Oregon's Crater Lake - and it's baffling everybody.

The 30ft long piece of ancient hemlock tree has become so much of a celebrity in the area over the decades it's known as The Old Man of the Lake.

The log was first reported on in 1902, the year Crater Lake was named a national park.

Geologist Joseph S. Diller recalled having spotted the wood six years previously.

Splintered and sun-bleached the Old Man, which is 2ft wide in diameter, floats 4ft above the water of the lake.

The log was first reported on in 1902, the year Crater Lake was named a national park. Splintered and sun-bleached it is 2ft wide in diameter and floats 4ft above the water

It's believed the tree was initially dislodged during a landslide on the crater wall. It was pulled down into the lake and rocks wedged in an expansive root structure stabilized its base

Crater Lake is the ninth deepest lake in the world and is so deep the Eiffel Tower, Statue of Liberty and Washington Monument could be stacked underneath the Old Man and they still wouldn't touch the bottom.

Dated at 450 years, the barkless stump miraculously seems to defy the laws of physics - seemingly rooted but yet constantly moving.

In fact the tree has travelled thousands of miles since it was first seen.

Park naturalist John Doerr spent three months tracking its travel patterns in 1938, noting 'the Old Man travels extensively and, at times, surprisingly fast'.

Between July 1 and Sept 30, the Old Man journeyed more than 62 miles and, on one particularly gusty day alone, traveled 3.8 miles.

Dated at 450 years the barkless stump miraculously seems to defy the laws of physics, seemingly rooted but yet constantly moving

Park naturalist John Doerr spent three months tracking its travel patterns, in 1938, noting 'the Old Man travels extensively and, at times, surprisingly fast.' Pictured: A 1938 sketch of the log

So impressed were locals with the log's majesty that legend grew up around it that it controlled the weather.

In 1988, scientists who helicoptered a small submarine into the lake to study the geothermal activity decided the Old Man was a navigational hazard and tied it up near the uninhabited Wizard Island.

But the sky instantly grew black and a storm blew in, frightening the scientists who immediately released the Old Man.

And - as if by magic - the clouds cleared.

It's believed the tree was initially dislodged during a landslide on the crater wall.

It was pulled down into the lake and rocks wedged in an expansive root structure that stabilized its base.

This version of events rings true for trees at Spirit Lake near Mount St. Helens after the 1980 volcanic eruption.

However, such pieces of timber would normally float for a number of years and then sink - a pattern the Old Man has not followed yet no one knows why. Nor has it eroded or disintegrated.

Ranger Dave Grimes believes the lake's clean, cold water has helped preserve the tree while the higher density of the the submerged section of the wood has kept it balanced.

Tourists to Oregon now flock to see the unique phenomenon, with tour boats specially driving out to catch a glimpse of the Old Man.

'He has character, a story, and history that is part of the park,' Scott Girdner, an aquatic biologist with the park, told the National Parks Conservation Association.

'For me, the Old Man is a calming presence. He is blown by the wind, but he's not rocked by the waves.'
She's the former soap starlet who was trying to plan her wedding for three years.

And after giving birth to two sons and a foiled elopement attempt, Christie Hayes finally got to celebrate her big day among family and friends last month.

Pictures of the stunning ceremony have surfaced, which show blushing bride Christie and husband Daniel White looking like the epitome of marital bliss.

Picture perfect: Photos of Christie Hayes' wedding to Daniel White show the couple looking like the epitome of marital bliss

The 29-year-old brunette looked breathtaking in her bridal gown, which featured semi-sheer lace sleeves and a busty bodice.

The loved-up couple married on August 27 at Lilyvale - a picturesque property in the Royal National Park about an hour south of Sydney, reported TV Week.

The twosome had planned a wedding twice before, only to have their dreams disrupted by the birth of a child.

Emotion: The former Home and Away star wiped a tear as Daniel read her his vows

So happy! The 29-year-old and her partner couldn't hide their joy

Their most recent plan was to elope in the Maldives with their sons, Hendrix and Harley.

Afterwards they would return home and celebrate a reception with family and friends at the Lilydale venue.

However, just six days before the family were due to fly out, Christie and Daniel discovered their elopement would not provide them with a legally binding marriage, and decided to get married during their reception party instead.

Peek-a-boo: Christie looked stunning in a semi-sheer lace wedding gown

You may now kiss the bride: The couple showed their passion with a kiss

Whoa there buddy! Daniel couldn't keep his paws off his beautiful bride

Shh: The couple stood in silence as the celebrant addressed the guests

And we're off! The newly-married couple headed inside to enjoy the reception

It was a decision Christie said paid off immensely.

'It was still intimate, but our loved ones were there to celebrate with us - it felt complete.'

Christie and Daniel developed their relationship over email, and it was only three months after their first proper date that the wine broker popped the question to his soap star sweetheart.

Delicious: The overjoyed couple smiled as they cut their scrumptious wedding cake

Merry bride: Daniel and Christie enjoyed some white wine at the reception

Say cheese: The brunette's beaming smile was plastered to her face all night

Despite the whirlwind romance, Christie told TV Week both she and her husband were always sure they'd met their perfect match.

'We have said all along we're the same souls just split down the middle,' she said.

The excitement isn't over for the actress, who is about to make a leap to the silver screen.

All together: The couple celebrated with close friends and family

Letting loose! After a few drinks the gorgeous bride seemed to be in a merry spirit

The stage stunner snagged a role in the action flick Ciao Ciao Bang Bang, which will be filmed in Italy later this year.

Earlier this year, Christie told Daily Mail Australia she was excited to head to Italy to film the 'big budget Hollywood movie' that promoted 'girl power'.

'It's not one of those film where women look sexy for no reason,' she said.

'I'm a bad girl with a brain and I love that. Who wants to see a film with stupid girls looking hot that have no purpose. I don't want to watch movie like that. I don't want to be in movies like that.'

Lovely: The tables were decorated with vibrant floral centerpieces

Organized: Dan and Christie's chairs were marked 'groom' and 'bride' to ensure nobody else would sit in their seats

Come on in! Guests were welcomed to the wedding with a quaint sign
Minka Kelly thinks Wilmer Valderrama is a 'really, really good person.'

The 36-year-old actress has recently been romantically linked with the NCIS star - four years after they were first reported to be dating - following the end of his relationship with Demi Lovato, but she insists they have only ever been friends.

Speaking to Power 106's J Cruz and Krystal Bee on Thursday, she said: 'He's a good friend to me. And it's funny--he's not my ex. We are good friends, and we always have been. We're not exes!'

'We're not exes!' Minka Kelly addressed the rumors to Power 106 about her friendship with Wilmer Valderrama on Thursday

'Wilmer's a really, really good person, and any woman would be lucky to have him,' she added.

The Friday Night Lights star admits having her personal life speculated about is frustrating, but she thinks it's all part of her job.

She said: 'I think it comes with the territory. It's a small price to pay for the extraordinary life that I live...I think if they're paying attention, that must mean there's something [I'm doing right].'

'He's a good friend to me:' The 36-year-old told the radio station they've only ever been really good friends, in spite of their getaway to Mexico last weekend

Back to normal: The pretty brunette was out and about Thursday in Los Angeles for a quick shopping trip

'You just have to find the comedy in all of it:' The 500 Days of Summer star said she looks for the funny side in all the gossip instead of getting upset

And instead of getting upset by the gossip, she just looks for the funny side.

She said: 'Look, if it's true and it's out, then it's true and it's out. When it's not true and it's out, it's really frustrating. You just have to find the comedy in all of it.'

Despite Minka's insistence she and Wilmer, also 36, are not together, the pair enjoyed a vacation to Mexico over Labor Day weekend.

'Any woman would be lucky to have him:' she admitted to Power 106. The two reportedly dated in 2012 and went to Cabo, Mexico over Labor Day weekend as just friends

They previously enjoyed a Mexican trip with close friends, but this time around they have gone alone to spend quality time together and were seen relaxing by a beautiful pool.

The break came a few days after they were seen enjoying dinner at the Palms Thai restaurant in Hollywood.

A source said: '[Minka and Wilmer] did have a late dinner at Palms Thai together last night. They sat across from each other and it was just the two of them.'

Adding: 'I didn't personally see if they were holding hands or if they were being affectionate, but it looked like a date. They looked casual and relaxed. Yes, Wilmer was a gentleman and picked up the tab to pay for their food.'
As a fashion maven, she has an outfit for every occasion.

And Kourtney Kardashian proved that sentiment again on Thursday, when she was spotted out and about in a small boat in Monte Carlo.

The 37-year-old reality show star was joined by her children Mason and Penelope, as well as momager Kris and her beau Corey Gamble.

Merry-time: Kourtney Kardashian flaunted a nautical ensemble for a short boat ride in Monte Carlo

Kourtney looked right at home on the water in a tight white bodysuit which showed off her admirable figure.

On the bottom she opted for an asymmetrical hem skirt which emphasized her wonderfully sculpted gams.

A blue and white striped pattern which included brass buttons and grommets ensured the beauty looked ready for her nautical outing.

Black leather loafers, a small black clutch and some large mirrored shades rounded out her casual ensemble.

Fabulous figure: Kourtney looked right at home on the water in a tight white bodysuit which showed off her admirable figure

Exposure: Upon closer inspection, it seemed that her bodysuit may have been somewhat translucent, revealing her white bra

Leggy: On the bottom she opted for an asymmetrical hem skirt which emphasized her wonderfully sculpted gams

Flexible outfit: Black leather loafers, a small black clutch and some large mirrored shades rounded out her casual ensemble

Functional: Her raven black tresses were pulled back into a nonchalant pony tail for her excursion

Her raven black tresses were pulled back into a nonchalant pony tail for her excursion.

It looked as though son Mason, age seven, took some style cues from his mom, and donned a red and white striped tank top and navy shorts, while daughter Penelope, age four, kept things simple in a blue cinched dress and matching sandals.

Kris Jenner, 60, apparently wanted to shield herself from the sun, as she covered up in a large, billowy white caftan dress, which she teamed with a classic Panama hat and her own pair of large mirrored sunglasses.

Cooling off: Later, Kourtney, Penelope and Mason looked relaxed as they enjoyed some frozen treats

Conservative: Kris Jenner, 60, apparently wanted to shield herself from the sun, as she covered up in a large, billowy white caftan dress, which she teamed with a classic Panama hat and her own pair of large mirrored sunglasses

Boyfriend Corey, 35, kept things laid-back in a white button down, navy shorts and aviator style shades.

The family seemed to enjoy their time on the high seas, with Mason bounding to the bow of the craft to get a better look during the short trip.

Later, Kourtney, Penelope and Mason looked relaxed as they enjoyed some frozen treats.
She quit Twitter after her account was hacked and she was subjected to vile abuse.

But Leslie Jones had the last laugh as she took to the social media platform to tell fans she had the time of her life celebrating her 49th birthday in New York on Wednesday.

The Ghostbusters star said she 'had so much fun' as she partied the night away surrounded by a cadre of her closest companions, including her Saturday Night Live 'brother' Kenan Thompson.

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A happy birthday indeed: Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones celebrated turning 49 in New York on Wednesday

In a Twitter video she said: ' I had so much fun on my bday I did so much stuff. At first I was like, I'm old, I'm just having a nice dinner with my friends and stuff.'

After some fine dining at the upmarket Ocean Prime eatery, Leslie, who had dressed in a racy denim playsuit she left unbuttoned to show off her ample assets, ended up Marquee nightspot.

Teetotal Leslie said 'The DJ was so cute he was like so chocolate, OMG and he was spinning the hits.

'Everyone in the club was drinking... I was cool and dancing and still having fun and everyone was drunk.

'Love him like a brother': She was joined for dinner by her SNL costar Kenan Thompson

And sparks flew: Her top hat birthday cake was decorated with sparklers

Having her cake and eating it: She was delighted with her specially decorated treat

'I wanted someone to stagger up and be like, it's your bday b**** and it happened so that's awesome '

The thrilled star seemed to have got over her recent social media troubles, as she signed off with, 'Just trying to make it through the crazy life of Leslie Jones.'

After an 11-day stretch that saw the actress quit Twitter following an attack at the hands of hackers, the resilient Ghostbusters star took to the social media site and lauded those who provided her with support in the wake of the humiliating security breach.

'Thanks to my fans and friends!' she wrote Sunday. 'I'm soooooo ok really. And I will always be funny been through a lot in my life and I ALWAYS GET BACK UP!'

How does it feel? Leslie is certainly not a complete unknown after appearing on the cover of Rolling Stone

Wine, women and song: Leslie had a great time with Kenan and co before heading to a club

Teetotal: Even though she slurped back cocktails they were of the non-alcoholic variety

Putting a ring on it: She was gifted with a heart-shaped piece of jewellery

Among the friends that publicly supported the Trainwreck actress following the hack included her Ghostbusters director, Paul Feig; SNL castmates Aidy Bryant and Taran Killam; and Girls star Lena Dunham.

The Saturday Night Live beauty's website was taken down on August 24 after hackers breached security measures and posted a number of personal images to the page, including nude photos, the star's driver's license and passport, and shots of Jones with fellow celebs such as Rihanna and Kim Kardashian.

The hackers also took their attack to a racist level, presumably after Jones in July outed a number of bigots by sharing their awful messages on her Twitter page, and even quit the social media site for a short time, citing the unending hate.

The hackers posted on Leslie's site an image of Harambe, the Cincinnati Zoo gorilla who was killed in May after a boy fell into his zoo enclosure.

The many faces of Leslie Jones: She was effusive as she described her night in a special video she uploaded on Twitter

Ready to play: She was dressed in a racy playsuit she left unbuttoned at the chest

Just popping out: She was given a bunch of balloons as she got into her transport

She said in a July 21 appearance on Seth Myers that she was fed-up with the unending stream of abuse she faced from the cyber bigots, leading her to speak up.

'Whats scary about the whole thing is the insults didnt hurt me - unfortunately, Im used to the insults - what scared me was the injustice of a gang of people jumping against you for such a sick cause,' Jones said.

'Everybody has an opinion, and it all comes at you at one time. They really believe in what they believe in, and its so mean. Its so gross and mean.

'So it was one of those things where, OK, so, if I hadnt said anything, nobody wouldve ever known about this. All those people would still have an account.'

Dressed to impress: She showcased her legs and ample assets in her eye-catching ensemble
Timothy Spall acknowledges that the late Northern Ireland firebrand politician Ian Paisley was not everyones cup of tea.

But he couldnt resist portraying him in a new film that imagines how one-time enemies Paisley and Sinn Feins Martin McGuinness were reconciled.

The movie, The Journey, fictionalises the real-life efforts by Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair to bring peace to Northern Ireland.

Making peace: Timothy Spall as Ian Paisley, left, and Colm Meaney as Martin McGuinness

Spall said he wasnt out to impersonate the Protestant from Ballymena. I try to start to feel and get a sense of the man, he explained.

The 59-year-old actor joked: Think about it: I was so right for this part  Im a foot too short; Im 20 years too young. And Im too English.

Luckily for him, though, the make-up people gave me a brilliant chin and fabulous false choppers  and lifts in my shoes.

That aside, Spall captures a vital essence of Paisley. There are many who repudiated everything he represented, but Spalls portrait of the Ulsterman shows us someone who stood for what he believed in.

The star, who was sublime as the artist J.M.W. Turner in Mike Leighs masterful film Turner, said he found what he was looking for in his character when he viewed footage and listened to tapes of Paisley as a young man, and discovered a vulnerability that his famous powers of oratory  and belligerent personality  disguised.

Spall gives another extraordinary performance in Denial, pictured, in which he portrays the controversial  and divisive  historian David Irving, opposite Rachel Weisz

The best scenes in Nick Hamms film are when Spalls Paisley quietly regards Colm Meaneys McGuinness, his eyes telling us what he really thinks of the Sinn Fein man.

Spall gives another extraordinary performance in Denial, in which he portrays the controversial  and divisive  historian David Irving, opposite Rachel Weisz.

Its like the 77 bus, he told me. Nothing comes along for three hours; and then two come along at the same time.

Both films are being shown at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Leanne Cope and Robert Fairchild, stars of the Broadway musical An American In Paris, will bring the show to the Dominion Theatre from March 4  as this page revealed a while back. They will be joined by Jane Asher, Zoe Rainey, David Seadon-Young and Ashley Day, who will be Fairchilds alternate two days a week, and take over the part completely from June 19, when Fairchild departs.

Play that's still Dead Funny after a 20-year break

Revival: Katherine Parkinson, left, with co-star Emily Berrington

Dead Funny, the award-winning show by Terry Johnson  and what I would call a proper comedy  is heading back to the West End, 20 years after it was launched at the Hampstead Theatre before being transferred to the Vaudeville.

In fact, the Vaudeville is where Dead Funny will run, with previews starting on October 27.

Johnson, who will direct his own show, has cast Katherine Parkinson as Ellie, wife of Richard, a leading light in the fictional Dead Funny Society, a group in deepest suburbia that lauds dead comedians after two  Benny Hill and Frankie Howerd  die in the same year.

I remember seeing it at the Hampstead and when I chatted over the phone with theatre owner and producer Nica Burns, I was reminded of what a sublimely crafted piece it is. Part of the gag is that Ellie is actually far funnier than her husband (wholl be played by Rufus Jones) and his fellow Society members.

The revival, which is being produced by Burns, Paula Marie Black and Emma Brunjes, will also star Ralf Little, Emily Berrington and League Of Gentlemen star Steve Pemberton.

Ms Burns described the play as a love letter to comedians of a genre long gone now, featuring everything from custard pie fights to one-liners.

She made an interesting point about Benny Hill and his routines involving pretty, scantily clad girls, suggesting that women today, who own their bodies, might react differently to such gags.
She's a familiar face, fronting A Current Affair five nights a week.

But TV host Tracy Grimshaw looked unrecognisable makeup free as she strolled through Sydney airport in baggy clothing on Wednesday.

The sighting comes after New Idea Magazine reported that the 56-year-old 'has battled shyness her entire career'.

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Flying under the radar: A Current Affair host Tracy Grimshaw, 56, looked unrecognisable makeup free as she was spotted strolling through Sydney Airport on Wednesday

Making her way through the terminal, Tracy wore a pair of dark trousers, an embellished round-neck shirt and grey kimono-style jacket.

Teaming the casual look with a pair of studded boots, brown shoulder bag and delicate silver jewellery, the journalist was seen scrolling through her iPhone intermittently.

Drawing attention to her lighter locks, Tracy appeared to be mostly makeup free.

Low-key: Making her way through the airport, the journalist opted for a pair of dark trousers, an embellished round-neck shirt and grey kimono-style jacket

Despite her welcoming demeanour on TV, New Idea reported recently that Tracy has been facing a 'secret battle'.

A source claimed in the glossy publication: 'Tracy has battled shyness her entire career...she is so introverted it actually affects her daily life'.

'The person you see on TV is not the same person you would meet on the street,' they said in a story published on Monday, insinuating the star doesn't like meeting new people.

The source revealed Tracy, who lives on acreage, finds the 'solitude' is 'less daunting'.

Focused: Tracy was seen checking her phone intermittently as she made her way through the terminal

Off-duty: Tracy teamed the casual look with a pair of studded boots, a brown shoulder bag and delicate silver jewellery

Meanwhile, Tracy's airport ensemble is in contrast to the tailored ensembles worn by the television personality on-air.

Preened to perfection, Tracy has been seen over the years in a number of smart suit jackets and form-fitting blouses.

Also noticably different is her choice of hairstyles and hues.

Smart: The off-duty look is in contrast to the tailored ensembles worn by the television personality on-air

Polished: Preened to perfection, Tracy has been seen over the years in a number of smart suit jackets and form-fitting blouses

Glamorous: Tracy has also switched up her style on the red carpet, seen in frocks of various textures and colours

Tracy has certainly been through some difficult times of late, after being knocked unconscious last year in a horse riding accident.

The popular host was flown by the CareFlight rescue helicopter after being hurt when the horse she was on suddenly reared as she rode near her rural home.

It's believed Tracy was wearing a helmet at the time, the crew which treated her at the scene suggesting that the animal was spooked by the sound of a lawnmower.

They also reported that she may have been unconscious for up to 15 minutes.

Challenges: Tracy has certainly been through some difficult times of late, after being knocked unconscious last year in a horse riding accident

Dramatic scene: The popular host was flown by the CareFlight rescue helicopter after being hurt when the horse she was on suddenly reared as she rode near her rural home

On a professional level, reports surfaced late last year that her position on A Current Affair could be up for grabs.

According to The Daily Telegraph, host of Channel Nine's Today show, Karl Stefanovic, had his sights set on the role after having filled in for Tracy in the past.

The newspaper claimed that the 42-year-old Today veteran saw himself as fit for the role, and relished the notion of an evening show after reportedly growing tired of the early starts attached to his breakfast slot.

However, a Channel Nine spokesman dismissed the claims, insisting Tracy was safe in her role on the news program.

'Tracy isnt going anywhere. A Current Affair has had an amazing year and Tracy is doing a brilliant job,' they said.

Lighter hue: A past press shot for A Current Affair saw the media veteran sporting a much lighter choice of hair colour

Bold: The familiar face has often taken to the airwaves in fashions of a vibrant hue
Nikki Gogan dropped the 'L-word' while pouring her emotions to Richie Strahan on Thursday night's episode of The Bachelor.

But the attention was on the 28-year-old's brother-in-law, Snowy, who won the hearts of fans on Twitter with his sage advice directed at the Perth hunk.

'Snowy! What a dead set legend!!' wrote a viewer during Snowy's conversation with the bachelor at the home visit.

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Fan favourite: Snowy, the brother-in-law of Nikki Gogan, won fans' hearts on Twitter after pulling Richie Strahan aside for a man-to-man chat during home visits on Thursday night's episode of The Bachelor

Praise: Fans applauded Snowy's tact, with one calling him a 'dead set legend' on social media

Another fan tweeted: 'Snowy is a legend! Everyone needs a Snowy in their life.'

During Richie's visit to meet Nikki's family, Snowy wasted no time in pulling the rope access technician aside for a beer and a man-to-man chat by the barbecue.

Cutting straight to the chase, he asked: 'So is Nikki your number one choice or what?'

Wise: Snowy's real-life advice came after he straight up asked Richie: 'So is Nikki your number one choice or what?'

Vague: The 31-year-old hunk was reluctant to give away too much and tried his best to avoid answering Snowy's question

Reluctant to give away too much, the Chadwick model chuckled nervously and answered: 'Look, it's really tough, sorry, to be honest mate.'

'I've built some incredible relationships with four beautiful women. There's differences with all of them. But mate, you can't fault them.

'And I can't fault Nikki, she's incredible.'

The protective relative chimed in and gave Richie something to think about, saying: 'You've gotta think of your worst day. Your worst day. And where they'll be.'

'Snowy is a legend!' Another viewer praised the protective brother-in-law and said 'everyone needs a Snowy in their life'

Wise words: Another fan suggested Snowy deserves his own advice column

Massive hit: Snowy's appearance on the show won the hearts of many across Australia, with one simply writing: 'I LOVE YOU SNOWY'

'Don't worry about their fancy s*** and what they look like and all that. Just, where you are at the worst point in your life... imagine them.'

Snowy's wise words hit home with many viewers, with one fan writing on Twitter: 'Alright, can someone please give Snowy an advice column!'

Another simply wrote: 'I LOVE YOU SNOWY'

Introductions: Richie met Nikki's entire family at the home visit, during which she opened up about her true feelings for the bachelor

There was also call for Snowy to star in his own reality show.

'Pretty sure Snowy deserves his own reality show. "Snowy keeps it real,"' wrote one fan.

Nikki also used Snowy's relationship with her sister Dani as inspiration for her own love life.

The Perth socialite told Richie she admires their love and wants what they have for herself.

Setting an example: Nikki used her sister Dani's (pictured) relationship with Snowy as an example of the kind of love she'd like to find for herself

Inspiration: The Perth socialite told Richie she admires their love and wants what they have for herself

After introducing Richie to her family, Nikki didn't hold back her feelings, bluntly telling the chisel-jawed hunk she'd fallen in love.

'Um... The way that you make me feel, Rich, is something that I've never felt before and, no matter what, I'm going to remember this night, this day, this moment for forever. Um... Um...I guess I've known for a while... I'm totally in love with you,' she said.

Richie was a little more reserved with his feelings, responding: 'You just tell me exactly how you feel, and that's beautiful and I love that about you. You're incredible.'
They appear to have taken their romance to the next level.

Lauren Brant and Barry Hall are understood to have attended Sydney Swans Chairman Andrew Pridham's wedding together last weekend.

The I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here! Australia duo looked 'completely loved up' and 'barely left each other's side all night' according to The Daily Telegraph on Friday.

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Trophy wife: Lauren Brant and Barry Hall are understood to have attended a wedding together last weekend with Lauren later taking to Instagram to share a photo holding the Premiership Cup won in 2005, when Barry captained the team to victory

While neither posted photos of the Palm Beach nuptials on their social media pages, Lauren took to Instagram on Tuesday to share a shot as she held the AFL team's 2005 Premiership trophy in hand.

'Here's an interesting fact you may not know about me... I won a premiership. For the Swans actually. Back in 2005,' the 27-year-old captioned the photo.

In fact, that year, Barry was the one who captained the team to victory.

In the shot, the former Hi-5 starlet can be seen posing against an elegant backdrop filled with floral arrangements, suggesting the image was taken at the weekend wedding.

Blossoming romance: Lauren (left) and Barry (right) were first spotted kissing at a Brisbane nightclub back in June, with the brunette later sharing a photo on Instagram sandwiched between Barry and their reality TV co-star Joel Creasey (left)

Dressed in a black spaghetti strap slip-style dress with a thigh-high split, the former Maxim Magazine covergirl looked elegant as well as healthy and happy.

The glowing image comes just days after a cryptic post on social media, revealing how she's learnt to put herself first in the 12 months since her alleged affair with retired rugby league star Beau Ryan.

The scandal, splashed across the tabloids, ended her engagement to trainer Warren Riley.

It's understood the couple got together during their time working together on the pantomime Aladdin and his Wonderous Lamp.

Big year: The glowing image from the wedding comes just days after a cryptic post about putting herself first in the 12 months since her alleged affair with retired rugby league star Beau Ryan during their time working on the pantomime Aladdin and his Wonderous Lamp

Lauren and Barry were first spotted kissing at a Brisbane nightclub back in June, with an insider telling The Daily Telegraph at the time: 'They were very cuddly, touchy feely and kissing'.

Lauren later shared an image sandwiched in between Barry and their reality TV co-star Joel Creasey.

'This is me in a very happy place!!! With these two beauties @barryh01 @joelcreasey - SO great to catch up X,' she captioned the image.

Not love at first sight: The couple (Barry, far right and Laurent fourth right) showed no signs of any impending romance during their time on the reality TV show I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here! Australia

While the brunette's hands were on both boys chins, noticeably, the retired AFL player's hand was firmly on Lauren's knee.

Barry went into the South African jungle shortly after the end of his three-and-a-half-year marriage to Sophie Raadschelder.

However on the show, the couple showed no signs of any impending romance with the Kleenex tissue ambassador talking about reconciling with his ex-wife at the time.
She recently revealed her surgically enhanced boobs caused her to be slammed by online trolls.

But former TOWIE star Abigail Clarke showed off her cleavage in all its glory when she stepped out at a charity event on Thursday night.

The 24-year-old wore an extreme plunging jumpsuit which showed off her eye-popping assets on the night.

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Eye-popping display: Former TOWIE star Abi Clarke pulled out all the stops in an incredibly racy jumpsuit at a charity event in London on Thursday evening

Rocking it: The 24-year-old wore an extreme plunging jumpsuit which she had to go braless in due to the backless nature of the piece

The backless design meant she couldn't wear a bra with it but she seemed pretty happy with the results.

During the summer, Abi revealed her breasts were called 'grotesque' and compared to 'a pair of grapefruits stuck on her chest' by social media users.

Abigail told Closer magazine: 'It was horrible to hear and really hard to take criticism about your looks - it's hurtful.'

Working it: She showed off her sideboob in her outfit as she posed with her hand on her hip

Girl talk: She posed up a storm with singer Lydia Lucy on the night

Sad: During the summer, Abi revealed her breasts were called 'grotesque' and compared to 'a pair of grapefruits stuck on her chest' by social media users

The former reality star insisted she didn't realise her chest looked 'bigger than normal' or 'gappy', but doesn't understand why everyone attacked her for it.

The Essex beauty added: 'Looking back it was the wrong top for me, but everyone is allowed to make mistakes.'

Meanwhile, another reality star who was putting on a busty display on the night was Love Island star Olivia Buckland.

The 23-year-old girlfriend of Alex Bowen pulled out all the stops in an extreme plunging mini dress, as she went braless, revealing her ample assets.

The neckline had a tie which she had left undone and the black dress, which was layered over nude fabric, had ruching going down the front.

Making headlines: Love Island's Olivia Buckland went braless and displayed her ample assets in an extreme plunging mini dress as she attended the event

Tatt's nice: The neckline had a tie which she had left undone and the black dress, which was layered over nude fabric, had ruching going down the front and showed off her inkings

She teamed the ensemble with a pair of perspex shoes with an ankle strap, showing off a variety of inkings.

Olivia was doing her bit on the night to support her pal Philip Christopher Baldwin at the dinner which aimed to raise awareness of HIV.

She was in good company on the night was Irish model Vogue Williams.

Caring: Olivia was doing her bit on the night to support her pal Philip Christopher Baldwin at the dinner which aimed to raise awareness of HIV

Say cheese: She was more than happy to pose for a few snaps at the event

Imogen Thomas was also present wearing a very pretty red lace dress and opting for the same hue was Lizzie Cundy.

Philip's close friend Anthea Turner also showed up to show her support, wearing a baby pink top and a pair of leather trousers.

Meanwhile, a ny doubts that Olivia and Alex's relationship has not recovered from a recent rocky patch were swiftly dispelled at the end of last month.

Catwalk ready: Irish model Vogue Williams was also in attendance on the night

The loved up pair had their hands full as they carried a number of cardboard boxes containing Alexs belongings into Olivias Essex home.

Despite being weighed down they paused to share a lingering kiss while making their way inside the property, their first home as a couple.

Speaking to The Sun shortly after completing the move, Olivia revealed her boyfriend had already made himself at home.

'Hes in the flat now, taking up some room,' she said. 'Hes nearly got more clothes than me!'

Girls, girls, girls! Former TOWIE star Lauren Pope opted for a black crop top and wide leg trousers (left) while Imogen Thomas shone in red (right)
It's been a hectic week in New York City with NYFW taking place.

And the celebrity guests proved they'd taken as much care with their outfit choices as the designers, with Petra Nemcova slipping into not one but two stylish ensembles to enjoy the festivities on Thursday.

Ensuring all eyes would be on her, the 37-year-old model wore her first risque garment to Michael Costello's Desigual fashion show at The Dock, Skylight at Moynihan Station.

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Stunner: Petra Nemcova slipped into not one but two stylish ensembles to enjoy the events of New York Fashion Week on Thursday, changing from an elegant gown to chic co-ord

The Czech-born beauty turned heads in her exquisite black ensemble.

The model showed off a lot of leg with the dress featuring a slit through the middle and she also flaunted some cleavage in the designer gown.

The stunning dress was completely backless and the sleeves were adorned with lace, as was the side of her gown.

Simply stunning: The model showed off a lot of leg with the dress featuring a slit through the middle and she also flaunted some cleavage in the designer gown

Beautiful: The Czech-born beauty turned heads in an exquisite black ensemble

Work it: The stunning dress was completely backless and the sleeves were adorned with lace, as was the side of her gown

Posing up a storm: Petra left her long blonde locks to fall in small natural looking curls as she swept it all to one side

Flaunting it: The in demand model showed off her perfectly applied make-up and smokey eyes as she posed up a storm on the red carpet

Petra left her long blonde locks to fall in small natural looking curls as she swept it all to one side.

The in demand model showed off her perfectly applied make-up and smokey eyes as she posed up a storm on the red carpet.

Once inside the venue Petra sat on the front row with Danielle Moinet, Dorothy Wang, Barron Hilton II and Paris Hilton.

Best seats in the house: The incredible show featured some extraordinary dresses and outfits

Front row: Once inside the venue Petra sat with Danielle Moinet, Dorothy Wang, Barron Hilton II and Paris Hilton

Racy in lace: Models took the runway in revealing outfits

Gorgeous: Up close you could the see the elaborate detail of the stunning gown

Another famous face: Actress Paz Vega also attended the Desigual fashion show

The incredible show featured some extraordinary dresses and outfits.

The majority of the clothes being modeled were black, with one very elaborate dress featuring extended sequinned sleeves that fell all the way to the floor.

Crimson and purple proved to be popular colours too.

A lot of the models were seen with elaborate head pieces on also - from hats to flower crowns and even veils.

No slowing down: The Desigual fashion show wasn't the only glamorous stop on the night for Petra, as she then headed off to no less than three more elegant gatherings

On the move: Making pit stops at the Language Of Fashion presentation and Carine Roitfeld Girls Exhibit, the model ensured she dressed to impress in another all-black ensemble

Fantastic figure: Flaunting her impeccably toned abs, the pretty blonde paired a satin crop top with dramatic shoulder pads with a figure-hugging pencil skirt

Two of a kind: Petra seemed in great spirits as she cosied up to Linda Fargo

Monochrome magic: Petra's outfit was in direct contrast to Ayanat Ksenbai's white gown

But that wasn't the only glamorous stop on the night for Petra, as she then headed off to two more elegant gatherings.

Making pit stops at the Language Of Fashion presentation and Carine Roitfeld Girls Exhibit, the model ensured she'd be dressed to impress.

Flaunting her impeccably toned abs, the pretty blonde paired a satin crop top with dramatic shoulder pads with a figure-hugging pencil skirt.
Ingenious Animals

Rating:

Inside Scotland Yard

Rating:

For 40 million years the herds of magnificent northern white rhino on the African plains had no real predators, and armour-plating like a Challenger tank. They were practically indestructible.

But in 100 years of hunting and poaching with guns, weve wiped them out. There are no northern whites left in the wild. Thousands upon thousands were killed for trophies, especially their horns, which in the Far East are believed to have magical medical properties.

Ingenious Animals on BBC1 has been praised as a wildlife show to make you gasp with rhino's and their poachers, wild cats, monkeys and more

Just three captive animals remain, the very last of their species  a male called Sudan and two females, Najin and Fatu. But the average lifespan of a zoo rhino, even with the best care, is 35 to 40 years. And Sudan is 42.

The saddest piece of television all week came at the end of Ingenious Animals (BBC1), as conservationist Giles Clark visited the Ol Pejeta sanctuary in Kenya to meet Sudan.

Like an elderly pet, the placid old fellow is almost deaf and blind, and spends his days standing contentedly in his enclosure while his keeper, Zacharia Mutai, holds handfuls of hay up to his mouth.

Presenter Giles Clark with clouded leapord Khao Kheow at Open Zoo in Thailand

Zacharia adores that animal. He pats his neck and strokes his ears, and tells him defiantly through tears that they have many years left together yet. I feel very close to him, Zacharia says.

Hes my closest friend. We take care of him like an elderly person, we really love him very much.

Treat of the week: I first read the script of The New Neighbour, a lost episode of Hancocks Half Hour (BBC4), in 2009, when writers Galton and Simpson opened their archives to me. I thought then it was genius  and the remake with Kevin McNally and Robin Sebastian did it proud.

Sudan just blinks, and chews. And round the perimeter of the field, guards armed with automatic rifles watch for attacks by poachers. Sudan is the last male of his kind on earth, but incredibly there are gangs of organised criminals who are desperate to see him dead. Ounce for ounce, rhino horn sells for more than diamonds.

Giles reported all this in a tone of stunned disbelief. He was bewildered that conservation could have failed this species so badly, and worried about the implications for other animals: his own work focuses on tigers  already there are said to be more tigers in American zoos than remain in the wild.

Presenter Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall with a capuchin monkey in Costa Rica, Central America

His instinctive rapport with big cats shone through in another segment, about clouded leopards. These beautiful creatures, also on the brink of extinction, are as agile as monkeys and, when Giles tried chuffing (a tiger noise, between a cough and a purr), they leapt out of the branches to perch on his head and shoulders.

It must be tricky to talk to camera with two cats the size of labradors licking your scalp, but Giles looked thrilled. This London-born adventurer with an Australian accent makes an engaging presenter  so it is bizarre that the show is anchored by celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.

Hugh has wanted to be the next David Attenborough since he was six years old, apparently, and of course an Old Etonian like him should always get everything he wants.

But it is a little strange, to have him talking earnestly to camera about the plight of animals in the wild, when for years his River Cottage menu featured grey squirrel stew. They call him Hugh Fearlessly Eats-It-All for a reason.

Sire Trevor McDonald in ITV 1's documentary Inside Scotland Yard

Sir Trevor McDonald was also fronting a documentary series that didnt really suit his skills, on Inside Scotland Yard (ITV1).

Hes at his best, as weve seen in his outstanding shows on the American mafia and high-security prisons, when hes coaxing criminals to talk about their dangerous lives. Here he was simply running through the history of the Metropolitan Police, chatting to retired detectives and digging over some of the best-known cases.

Calling these landmark investigations didnt change the fact that the story of how mass murderer Dennis Nilsen was betrayed by the smell from his drains  or that DNA has transformed policing methods  is old news.

Probably the most interesting snippet came in a five-second snatch of Pathe newsreel from the late Forties, introducing the most murdered woman in the world  Mary of Hendon, a dummy used in training exercises for detectives.
Anthropoid (15)

Verdict: Terrific wartime thriller

Rating:

Like another of this weeks releases, Captain Fantastic, the title of this film suggests something its not. Anthropoid sounds suspiciously sci-fi, but in fact it was the actual name of the wartime operation to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich, the third-most important man in the Third Reich after Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler.

Cillian Murphy as Josef Gabcik, one of those sent to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich

Jamie Dornan, Toby Jones and Cillian Murphy in a scene from wartime thriller Anthropoid

The writer, director and cinematographer is Englishman Sean Ellis, and his two leads are Irishmen Jamie Dornan and Cillian Murphy (both excellent), but this is a Czech story, set and filmed in Prague, with a mostly Czech crew. The English-speaking cast affect mittel-European accents, a device I dont usually care for, but here it works.

The story begins with Josef Gabcik (Murphy) and Jan Kubis (Dornan) parachuting back into their native Czechoslovakia, after being given the perilous task of killing Heydrich by their government-in-exile in London.

But they cant do it on their own. In Prague, they make contact with the resistance, led by the diminutive Uncle Hajsky, played by Toby Jones, who invests his character with an intensity and nobility rather lacking in his last big-screen wartime role, as Captain Mainwaring in Dads Army. For that matter, its best not to dwell on Dornans last movie part, either: Christian in Fifty Shades Of Grey.

Heightened emotions: Jamie Dornan and Charlotte Le Bon take a stroll in Anthropoid

At first, the resistance are horrified by the scale of the mission. Kill Heidrich and Hitler will tear Prague apart, says another leading partisan, Ladislav Vanek (Marcin Dorocinski). They are prescient words, but Heidrichs nickname is already the Butcher of Prague. Assassinating him could have an incalculable effect on Allied morale, and be commensurately damaging to the Nazis.

This is really a film of three parts; the preparation for the assassination attempt, the attempt itself, and its violent aftermath, when Gabcik, Kubis and their brethren hid in a church. I saw it with my friend Derek, who was rather bored by the first part, and then couldnt watch a subsequent torture scene. But I thought the build-up was necessarily slow and splendidly done. And what comes next is genuinely gripping.

Besides, its a true story that needs telling. I dont know how much dramatic licence was taken with the romances that blossom for both men with the women they use as cover (nicely played by Charlotte Le Bon and Anna Geislerova), but it all rings entirely true at a time of such heightened emotions.
She recently enjoyed a romantic vacation to Mexico with her new beau, French Montana.

But now her holiday is over, Iggy Azalea has slipped back into her usual routine.

The 26-year-old was spotted at Hidden Hills Horse Farm on Thursday, practicing showjumping with Defender - one of her two horses.

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Hot to trot: Iggy Azalea was spotted at the Hidden Hills Horse Farm in California on Thursday, practicing showjumping with Defender - one of her two horses

The blonde bombshell showed off her famous curves in tight black riding pants and knee-high riding boots.

She also donned a dark green collared shirt emblazoned with the letters M and C, and slipped on a pair of black riding gloves.

Going makeup free for her daily activity, her blonde locks were tucked under her riding helmet.

Dangerous curves: The blonde bombshell showed off her famous curves in tight black riding pants and knee-high riding boots

Iggy just recently returned from Los Cabos, Mexico with 31-year-old rapper French.

The loved-up pair have been dating since September - just two months after she split with her fiance, Nick Young.

Iggy commented on the former couple's split publicly at the time, Tweeting, 'I broke up with Nick because I found out he had brought other women into our home while I was away and caught them on the security footage.'

Back in the saddle: Iggy practiced her showjumping during her leisure time

Time out: The rapper has just returned to California after a romantic holiday with new beau French Montana

Step up: Defender broke into a canter as the duo made their way around the arena

Meanwhile, Iggy's love of horses is widely publicised.

Not only is she often spotted at the stables, she frequently posts pictures of her prized horses on Instagram.

In early August, she even got a tattoo on her forearm - a picture of a horse's head with its eyes covered by a blindfold.

Hobby: Iggy started horse riding when she decided she needed a hobby

Iggy, who has been announced as a judge on the upcoming X Factor, has said that horse riding has been the greatest therapeutic release.

'Sometimes I say they really saved my life and gave me my confidence back,' the rapper revealed to People.

The rapper started horse riding when she decided she needed a hobby.

Fan: Not only is Iggy often spotted at the stables, she frequently posts pictures of her prized horses on Instagram

'I just really wanted to have a hobby while I was recording my album and taking some time off,' she explained in April this year.

'When you're going over jumps or riding a horse, there's nothing else that your brain can think about. You don't have the time to think about those other things - you just have to think about staying on the horse.

'It helps to be able to mentally have the space where you can go for an hour or two and really switch your brain off.'

Horsing around: Iggy has two horses, Defender and Strictly Business
She's made no secret of her battle with postnatal depression in a bid to help other women.

And now Australian Survivor contestant El Rowland has opened up about the extent of her struggle and how appearing on the reality show is part of her recovery.

The 33-year-old army corporal and charity worker explained how she 'felt like a failure being a mum' after the birth of her son Darcy back in 2012.

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Helping others: Australian Survivor contestant El, 33, is opening up about her postnatal depression in a bid to help other women

'I got posted to Brisbane, I didn't know anyone, I had a difficult birth, I couldn't breastfeed, a lot of circumstances happened that I felt were failures,' El told News.com.au.

'I went to a really bad place. I've never experienced depression and anxiety in my life and it was such a big hole, I didn't see the light.

'I felt my mind failed me. I felt like a failure being a Mum. I didn't bond with my baby, I couldn't give birth naturally, all these things go on top of me.'

Supermum: El overcame her struggle and is entering a new chapter in her life with four-year-old son Darcy

El now hopes that competing on Australian Survivor will inspire others in a similar situation and reassure them that they can recover and come out the other side.

Since splitting from her husband she has dedicated her life to helping others, having founded two charities and been nominated for Australian of the Year.

The brunette beauty has also represented the armed forces to meet the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.

She was recently romantically linked to her fellow Australian Survivor contestant Lee Carseldine after the pair were said to have hooked up off camera.

Both single parents, the couple are reportedly still seeing each other now that filming of the Channel Ten show has ended.

In the army: The charity worker says being posted to Brisbane where she didn't know anyone added to her anxieties
He's Hollywood's man of the moment after receiving tremendous applause for his film Loving at the Cannes premiere in May.

And Joel Edgerton proved he also knows a thing or two about fashion as he attended Tom Ford's show at New York Fashion Week on Wednesday night.

But before slipping into his dapper tux, the 42-year-old actor was spotted running errands in the city cutting a much more casual figure.

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Transformation: Joel Edgerton went from cutting a casual figure during the day to looking dapper at night as he attended Tom Ford's New York Fashion Week show on Wednesday

For his daytime look, the Great Gatsby star layered a white T-shirt underneath a denim shirt, which he teamed with a pair of light chinos and brown suede boots.

Joel finished his look with a taupe page boy hat and dark sunglasses.

The Australian hunk slung a black messenger bag across his shoulder and was also seen carrying a jacket in one hand.

Casual: The 42-year-old actor showed off his staunch physique in a denim shirt and light khaki pants

Stylish: The Great Gatsby star accessorised with brown suede boots as well as a page boy hat and dark sunglasses

Later that day, the AACTA-winner was spotted at the front row at Tom Ford's Autumn/Winner presentation.

Looking smart in a black suit and tie, the Blacktown-born heartthrob posed for photographers at the star-studded event.

He completed the ensemble with black dress shoes and also sported his signature black frames.

Dapper: The AACTA-winner changed into a black suit and tie as he attended Tom Ford's show

Last month, Joel was reported to be in 'early talks' to appear in the spy thriller Red Sparrow alongside Oscar-winner Jennifer Lawrence, according to Deadline.

It comes after Joel received almost unanimous praise from critics for his latest film Loving.

The Australian star plays lead character Richard Loving, who is sentenced to prison in Virginia in 1958 for entering into an interracial marriage with partner Mildred, played by Ruth Negga.

Sought-after: The heartthrob is in talks of starring alongside Jennifer Lawrence in the spy thriller Red Sparrow next year

Late last year, the Hollywood actor revealed that he wasn't deemed attractive enough to star in the heavily beach-centric Australian soaps at the beginning of his career in the late '90s.

He told the UK's Telegraph: 'I just wasn't that pretty, to be honest! They didn't want me on a surfboard.'

'And back then I was a little bit judgmental about the soapy stuff. I was working happily in the theatre,' he explained.
They've remained good friends despite her dumping him on national TV on The Bachelorette last year.

And Sam Frost has continued to stick up for Richie Strahan after her co-host Rove McManus voiced his concerns about the Bachelor.

Speaking on their 2DayFM Rove & Sam show on Friday during a debrief of Thursday night's episode, the 27-year-old starlet said: 'Richie's not coming across very well because he's stumbling over his words. But I promise you he's a good guy.'

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Skeptical: Sam Frost jumped to Richie Strahan's defense on Friday after her 2DayFM co-host Rove McManus questioned the Bachelor's intentions

Sam's remarks came after her colleague Rove admitted he's skeptical about the Perth hunk's real intentions.

The 42-year-old funnyman questioned how Richie has yet to make a decision about which girl he has stronger feelings for at this late stage in the show, despite 'meeting their families,' and 'kissing everybody'.

Sam quickly added that 'he's just a puppet in all this,' referring to the producers' influence.

'Good guy': The 27-year-old beauty was quick to say Richie's 'a good guy' despite coming across terribly on Thursday's episode

Close: Despite coming close to choosing him as her boyfriend on last year's Bachelorette, Sam and Richie have remained close friends since (pictured here with the show's Dave Billsborrow)

Flashback: Sam formed a strong bond with the 31-year-old rope technician during The Bachelorette

'It's like he doesn't have the back bone to say "no, no I'm not doing this,"' the former reality star said.

Sam knows very well herself what it's like to be in Richie's position, having gone through the whole process in 2015.

Before declaring her love for Sasha Mielczarek atop the picturesque mountains of New Zealand during the finale, the blonde beauty said a tearful goodbye to Richie, who was the second runner-up behind Michael Turnbull.

Undecided: Despite meeting the final four girls' families, Richie was reluctant to reveal whether he has strong feelings for any of them

Intimate: Richie locked lips with Alex once again after meeting her family during the home visits

On last night's episode, Richie was introduced to the families of his four favourite Bachelor contestants, Nikki, 28, Olena, 23, Rachael, 31, and Alex, 24.

Despite sharing very intimate kisses with all of them, Richie was reluctant to give away too much and remained tight-lipped even while Alex and Nikki were pouring their hearts out to him.

Perth blonde Nikki even admitted she's 'fallen in love,' to which Richie responded: 'You just tell me exactly how you feel, and that's beautiful and I love that about you. You're incredible.'
Katie Holmes looked sensational as she posed for the Avra Madison grand opening party for Manhattan's newest Greek Eatery in New York on Thursday.

The Kennedys actress exuded confidence and elegance as she posed outside the venue wearing a pair of flared high waisted white trousers and a fluffy white off the shoulder crop top.

The brunette beauty showed off her glowing skin and perfectly applied make-up as she posed and pouted for the camera.

Beauty: Katie Holmes looked sensational as she posed for the Avra Madison grand opening party for Manhattan's newest Greek Eatery in New York on Thursday

She wore lashings of mascara and just a slick of red lippy for the evenings festivities.

The 37-year-old actress flaunted her very impressive physique and rock hard abs whilst posing outside the venue.

Avra Madison is an authentic greek restaurant located right by central park.

She's got some front: The Kennedys actress exuded confidence and elegance as she posed outside the venue

Big year: Meanwhile, Holmes has several projects coming up over the next year including two comedies

Looking good: Holmes stunned in a pair of flared high waisted white trousers and a fluffy white off the shoulder crop top

The exquisite eatery offers traditional greek cuisine with a special emphasis on fresh seafood.

Meanwhile, Holmes has been a busy lady. The in demand actress has several projects coming up over the next year.

In 2017 she is set to star in A Happening of Monumental Proportions.

Say cheese: The brunette beauty showed off her glowing skin and perfectly applied make-up as she posed and pouted for the camera

Dash of glamour: She wore lashings of mascara and just a slick of red lippy for the evenings festivities

During the course of one day, a group of students at a school in Los Angeles find themselves caught up in a plot of sex, lies and dead bodies.

Allison Janney and Rob Riggle will co-star in this upcoming comedy.

Holmes is also due to star in another comedy called Coup D'etat.

She works out! The 37-year-old actress flaunted her very impressive physique and rock hard abs whilst posing outside the venue

Big night: Holmes was there to celebrate the opening of Avra Madison, an authentic greek restaurant located right by central park

A young rebellious girl writes a dictator in another country for a homework assignment. The dictator gets the letter while getting overthrown by his country and he ends up on her door step in America.

The talented cast also includes British legend Michael Caine, American Pie star Jason Biggs and Austin Powers star Seth Green.
Sofia Richie left little to the imagination while arriving to Refinery29's second annual New York Fashion Week event on Thursday.

The 18-year-old hit the red carpet for 29Rooms in Brooklyn while rocking a see-through red bralette with an equally sheer T-shirt on top.

The model, who showed off her svelte physique, paired the barely there pieces with skintight ripped denim and combat boots.

Stunning: Sofia Richie left little to the imagination while arriving to Refinery29's second annual New York fashion week event on Thursday

The teenager - who is rumored to be dating Justin Bieber - chose a spiderweb style bralette that proved to be very revealing.

The daughter of Lionel Richie slipped on a see-through oversized black blouse that had '1952' written on the front.

Sofia, who highlighted her toned midriff in the risque look, added distressed skinny jeans.

She arrived wearing combat boots as well as two Cartier bracelets, a sparkling watch and ring.

Not shy: The 18-year-old hit the red carpet for 29Rooms in Brooklyn while rocking a see-through red bralette with an equally sheer T-shirt on top

Sheer delight! The teenager - who is rumored to be dating Justin Bieber - chose a spiderweb style bralette beneath a see-through oversized black blouse emblazoned with '1952'

Sofia wore her shoulder-length blonde tresses loose, opting for a slight wave and a center part.

The beautiful star kept her makeup simple; she rocked nude gloss, bronze eye shadow and dewy skin.

Jessica Alba arrived to the party wearing a pinstripe jumpsuit with sky-high gold heels and a matching hued purse.

The 35-year-old stunning actress wore her brunette tresses half up with waves while rocking minimal makeup.

Kate Mara stepped out in an orange and white striped top with a floral mini skirt and a structured blue purse.

Absolute beauty: Jessica Alba arrived to the party wearing a pinstripe jumpsuit with sky-high gold heels and a matching hued purse

Looking good: Kate Mara stepped out in an orange and white striped top with a floral mini skirt and a structured blue purse

Rashida Jones kept it chic in a black blouse with a gingham blazer and matching trousers.

The actress, 40, added red lipstick and heels to give the ensemble a pop of color.

Adrian Grenier looked handsome in a grey button up shirt with dark wash denim and sneakers.

She's got star quality: Rashida Jones kept it chic in a black blouse with a gingham blazer and matching trousers

Looking dapper: Adrian Grenier looked handsome in a grey button up shirt with dark wash denim and sneakers

Edgy: Jackie Cruz showed off a hint of her midriff in a white crop top with a mesh skirt, a textured jacket, choker and peep-toe thigh-high boots

Jackie Cruz showed off a hint of her midriff in a white crop top with a mesh skirt, a textured jacket, choker and peep-toe thigh-high boots.

Singer Tinashe, 23, wore a sheer top with matching bottoms, revealing her bra and underwear.

Australian actress Yael Stone paired a shiny pink dress with black shoes and red lips, finishing off her bold look with a top knot.

Revealing look: Singer Tinashe, 23, wore a sheer top with matching bottoms, revealing her bra and underwear

Bright: Australian actress Yael Stone paired a shiny pink dress with black shoes and red lips, finishing off her bold look with a top knot
Fresh off her success in Netflix's Stranger Things, Winona Ryder helped pay tribute to her Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands director Tim Burton on Thursday.

Burton, 58, was honored with a hand and footprint ceremony on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame in front of the historic Chinese Theatre.

Ryder, 44, introduced the filmmaker to the crowd gathered to catch a glimpse of him, and thanked him for kickstarting her career.

Honored: Winona Ryder joined Tim Burton as he placed his hand and foot prints in cement in front of Hollywood's Chinese Theatre on Thursday

The actress, according to ABC7, said: 'Tim understands the human heart in a way I have never seen certainly on screen.'

She went on: 'He knows the pain of the misunderstood, of the odd and even of the mad. He celebrates them in a way that is both totally unique, so very, very tender, sometimes terrifying and very often hilarious.'

Ryder is slated to team up with Burton and Michael Keaton again for a long in the works sequel to 1988's Beetlejuice.

The actress, 44, worked with Burton on 1988's Beetlejuice and 1990's Edward Scissorhands and said the filmmaker 'knows the pain of the misunderstood, of the odd and even of the mad'

Good friends: Following her touching tribute, Burton, 58, gave Ryder a warm hug

Joined elite group: The director, whose film credits include Batman and Batman Returns, Sleepy Hollow and Alice in Wonderland, placed his hands in cement

In the spotlight: The director also put his feet in the wet cement and waved to the crowd

During his 28-year career, the filmmaker has made multiple films with Keaton, including Batman and Batman Returns, and frequent collaborator Johnny Depp, such as Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow, Mars Attacks! and Alice In Wonderland.

He has also worked frequently with British actress and former romantic partner Helena Bonham-Carter, with whom he shares two children.

Veteran actor Martin Landau, who appeared in Ed Wood, also attended the handprint ceremony.

Burton's next film Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children is set to open on September 30 and stars Eva Green, Samuel L. Jackson, Asa Butterfield and Judi Dench.

Has his muses: Burton is a frequent collaborator with stars Michael Keaton and Johnny Depp, and also with British actress and former romantic partner Helena Bonham-Carter

Looked great: Ryder, who is back in the headlines with her star turn in the Netflix series Stranger Things, wore a stylish polka dot dress paired with stilettos for the ceremony

Nice to see you: The Edward Scissorhands star also warmly greeted veteran actor Martin Landau who also showed up to support Burton
He's famous for his role as Podrick Payne on HBO's Game Of Thrones.

But Daniel Portman said he'd love to take the role of James Bond if it was offered to him, while also appearing to throw shade at Tom Hiddleston, 35, who's rumoured to be in the running as the next 007.

Speaking ahead of his Oz Comic-Con appearance this weekend, the 24-year-old bachelor said: 'I like Tom Hiddleston as an actor but he's... I'd like to see a more macho Bond.'

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Hard to please: Game Of Thrones actor Daniel Portman (L) said he'd like to see someone more 'macho' as James Bond (R) rather than Tom Hiddleston, who's rumoured to be the next star

The hunk made the remark during an appearance on KIIS FM's Kyle & Jackie O show, when Jackie 'O' Henderson broached the topic of male actors pegged to play the international man of mystery following Daniel Craig's resignation.

After saying that he'd like to see Idris Elba in the role, Daniel added that he thinks Bond should be 'a proper bloke'.

Host Kyle Sandilands jumped in and took a jibe at Tom himself, saying: 'He couldn't even handle Taylor Swift as a girlfriend. He can't be James Bond. He should be scrapped out of the discussions.'

Popular: The 24-year-old hunk is most famous for his role as Podrick Payne in HBO's Game Of Thrones

During his chat with the radio shock jocks, Kyle asked the HBO star: 'Are you married? Or are you single?'

He replied: 'I'm in Australia and I'm single.'

Game Of Throne fans will be able to ask the star all their burning questions at the Sydney convention this weekend and in Brisbane next weekend.

Replacement: Daniel said he'd love to take on the role of James Bond himself following the resignation of Daniel Craig (pictured)

Daniel - who hails from Scotland - was only 19 when he made his debut in the popular show's second season.

The Scotsman says he's grown up with his character, telling The Daily Telegraph: 'Starting at such a young age I feel like I've grown with Pod, he's really come into his own, although there are some differences, I'm a lot more confident than he is, but there are a lot of similarities between us.'

Daniel appeared in his first role as an actor on the supernatural thriller Outcast when he was 16.
He rose to fame as the horribly disfigured Nightmare on Elm Street villain Freddy Krueger.

But without the heavy makeup and layers of painted latex, horror film legend Robert Englund cuts a decidedly different figure and is quite a different character offscreen.

Freddy Krueger was made famous by the 69-year-old, who played the Springwood Slasher in all seven Nightmare films.

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Thirty years on: Horror film legend Robert Englund cuts a decidedly different figure from his character Freddy Krueger in Nightmare On Elm Street

Behind the mask: Robert Englund appeared on Today Extra on Friday and spoke about his legendary role as Freddy Krueger

The son of a nun who was raped by 100 maniacs, Freddy preyed on young people during their nightmares, killing them in their sleep.

He was instantly recognisable by his melted face, his brown fedora and red and green striped sweater - along with his deadly razored glove.

Robert, who is in Sydney ahead of Oz Comic-Con on Saturday, spoke with Channel Nine's Today Extra on Friday.

Feeling tongue tied? Robert revealed he improvised some of his character's most memorable lines

Softly spoken and casually dressed in a black T-shirt and olive green jacket, the Californian actor discussed his favourite Krueger catchphrases, including Come to Freddy, What's wrong, Joey? and Feeling tongue tied?

'The last one was improvised, because the line was so awkward, it was something like, 'now you've achieved success in the big time,' he told the program.

'I thought it didn't sound like Freddy. I made it a little nastier... that's one of the ones that the fans really love.'

Robert admitted he never planned to star in horror movies and thought he would cruise along in conventional roles.

'I did Freddy then it all took off,' he said.
She's one of the world's top models.

And Chanel Iman proved why she's held in such high regard, as she turned heads in a stunning barely-there dress at the Jimmy Choo 20th Anniversary event at NYFW on Thursday night.

The lithe 25-year-old looked fabulous in the asymmetrical August Getty garment, which featured a sleeve and shoulder pad element on her left side.

Show-stopper: Chanel Iman turned heads in a stunning barely-there dress at the Jimmy Choo 20th Anniversary event at NYFW on Thursday night

The plunging neckline provided a glimpse of her chest, while a split up her right leg made her legs appear almost endless.

A pair of very delicate, matching tan stilettos and a matching small structural clutch rounded out the elegant but sensual ensemble.

Her raven tresses were parted on the right and allowed to cascade just past her shoulders, while pale rose lipstick and subtle make-up ensured her model features were not obscured.

Fellow model Olivia Culpo, 24, succeeded in making her own fashion statement at the tony event, showing off her svelte frame in a sheer patterned frock.

Interesting contrast: The lithe 25-year-old looked fabulous in the asymmetrical garment, which featured a sleeve and shoulder pad element on her left side

Not shy: Fellow model Olivia Culpo, 24, succeeded in making her own fashion statement at the tony event, showing off her svelte frame in a sheer patterned frock

Leggy lady: Hitch star Amber Valetta, 42, also opted to get playful with sheer elements, as her short dress incorporated some of the revealing panels along the hem, as well as some very long tassels

The partially transparent garment featured a halter top and a short, strategically located pleated skirt.

Hitch star Amber Valetta, 42, also opted to get playful with sheer elements, as her short dress incorporated some of the revealing panels along the hem, as well as some very long tassels.

Actress Diane Kruger, 40, decided to go in a slightly more demure direction, covering up in a black jumpsuit decorated with sequins.

Material girl: Actress Diane Kruger, 40, decided to go in a slightly more demure direction, covering up in a black jumpsuit decorated with sequins.

Baudy in brown: Cindy Crawford's daughter Kaia, 15, also made an appearance at the event in a somewhat fashion-forward ensemble

Ready for the stage: Mary J. Blige was set to perform at the event in a black and white geometric print combo

While the interesting piece of clothing did provide a glimpse of her cleavage, she might have been a tad chilly, as she also layered a long black blazer over top.

Some fun strappy heels and a leopard print clutch added a bit of flare as well.

Cindy Crawford's daughter Kaia, 15, also made an appearance at the event in a somewhat fashion-forward ensemble.

She donned a brown satin double-breasted blazer which she wore as a dress.

A pair of velvet booties and a wide velvet choker finished off the unique look.

Their favorite feature? Socialite Laura Remington Platt (left) and Victoria's Secret Angel Taylor Hill also put their gorgeous gams on display

Friends? Actor Alan Cumming, who was looking sharp in a pinstripe suit, took a photo with Jimmy Choo creative director Sandra Choi
She's the controversial TV host that's hit headlines of late for potentially being axed from Channel Nine's show The Voice.

But on Friday, 51-year-old looked to be in fine form as she stepped out to lunch in Sydney's Woolloomooloo to meet fellow TV presenter Richard Wilkins looking radiant and carefree.

The Today show host cut a casual figure as she donned a flattering nude-coloured long-sleeved shirt, which had large cut-outs on the upper arm.'

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Sunshine and smiles: Sonia Kruger, 51, enjoyed a day out in Woolloomooloo on Friday, having lunch with fellow presenter Richard Wilkins

The flowing top accentuated the mother-of-one's slender frame.

She accessorised her look with white trousers and taupe suede stilettos and a statement silver bracelet and simple silver earrings.

Smiling happily as she strolled through the streets, the Today show host carried an oversized cream-coloured handbag with silver metal chain and donned dark sunglasses.

Strutting her stuff: Sonia oozed casual chic as she made Sydney streets her runway

That smile! Sonia had a permanent grin on her face throughout her outing in Woolloomooloo as she stepped out with a friend to meet Richard Wilkins

Sonia kept her blonde locks out, flowing naturally over her shoulders, and her makeup natural for the lunch date.

She met Richard, 62, at a local fine dining restaurant and the two looked happy and relaxed in each other's company - despite rumours within the production team that Sonia may not return as the host of The Voice.

According to The Sydney Morning Herald, the publication was told by Channel Nine that the outspoken Today Extra host was on annual leave, which was arranged well before her controversial comments.

Her contract with Nine is 'ongoing,' according to the spokesperson.

Kruger set off a social media firestorm in July when she argued on Today Extra that there is a correlation between the number of Muslims in a country and the number of terrorist attacks.

Good friends: Richard and Sonia greet each other with a kiss when they meet for lunch at a fine-dining restaurant for lunch

The former Strictly Ballroom star said she had 'a lot of very good friends' who were Muslims and peace-loving, beautiful people.

'But there are fanatics,' she said.

'Personally, I would like to see it stop now for Australia because I want to feel safe as all of our citizens do when we go out to celebrate Australia Day,' Sonia added.
Natalie Roser is no stranger to wowing fans with her incredible physique.

And the Australian model has set temperatures soaring once again with her raciest shoot yet for White Fox Boutique.

The former Face Australia contestant displayed her toned body after stripping down to a skimpy purple bikini for the raunchy photos.

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Hot stuff: Natalie Roser looked sexier than ever as she was unveiled as the new face of White Fox Boutique in a shoot by Amy Hibbard Photography

Cheeky! Natalie gave fans a full glimpse of her incredible physique as she was photographed from all angles during the shoot

She showed off her flawless complexion and flowing blonde locks as the new face of the fashion brand.

In other photographs from the set, Natalie is seen posing beside a pool in a striking white bathing suit.

She also modelled lingerie for the sexy shoot and bared her behind with some strategically placed knitwear to cover her modesty.

Spring awakening: The model looked sensational and displayed her trim pins and toned abs to show off the new season of swimwear

Natalie recently revealed the secrets to achieving her enviable physique after confessing she was unhappy with how thin she was.

'Getting toned and getting healthy has completely changed my career,' she told The Daily Telegraph.

Lounging around: The former Face contestant flaunted her curves and she stared seductively into the camera to promote the swimwear range

Mermaid model: Natalie struck a stunning pose by the pool

Making a splash: Natalie proved why she is such a successful model by posing up a storm next to a swimming pool in a tight-fitting white swimsuit

She's not shy! Natalie's revealing swimsuit left little to the imagination

'I'm modelling pretty much every day, which never happened before I started training and healthy eating and taking care of myself.'

And it certainly doesn't hurt that she is engaged to Sydney-based personal trainer to the stars Dan Adair.

Blonde beauty: Natalie slipped out of her knitwear to show off her white lingerie

Thirsty? The blonde beauty cradled a cup of tea as she smiled brightly

Why so happy? Natalie couldn't wipe the beaming smile from her face

Sultry: After playing the innocent card, the bikini model struck a more sultry pose

Vision in white: The Sydney-born bombshell recently revealed she's never been happier since eating healthier and working out more

Pure: The beauty pageant princess looked innocent in her white ensemble

Natalie has been modelling since the age of 13 and once acted as a body double for Jennifer Hawkins in a Mount Franklin commercial.

And she's also amassed over 600,000 Instagram followers with beautiful shots of her seemingly perfect lifestyle.

Last month, GQ magazine called Natalie, ' The happiest model on Instagram.'

Point the toes: The aspiring fashion designer pointed her toes to elongate her legs

Racy in white: The angelic stunner flashed some flesh in more lingerie

Careful! Natalie's lingerie was so racy that she looked in danger of suffering a wardrobe malfunction

Hungry? The flirty social media star stroked a bowl of raspberries

Have a drink: Natalie clutched a mug as she pranced around the kitchen in lingerie

The busty babe is currently expanding beyond modelling, and is set to enter the fashion industry soon.

'I've been creating the line, Roser, for over a year now, and it is launching in September,' she confessed to GQ in August.

She added: 'It's going to be a range of jumpsuits, rompers, and bikinis! Cant wait for you all to see it!'

Not such an innocent girl: The star showed off her raunchy side by posing in lacy black lingerie

Where to look? It was hard to avert the eyes from the sun-kissed stunner's busty chest

She's waiting: The model patted the bed, indicating that she expecting company

Bad girl: Natalie flaunted her enviable chest in a kinky black bra underneath a crisp white 'boyfriend shirt'

Wild: The statuesque star relaxed on the bed in her racy bra

Finally! After flaunting her enviable assets, Natalie decided to cover up in jeans and a T-shirt
The supermodel had a fashion disaster on Thursday night, hitting the red carpet in an unflattering ivory top and pleated white culotte pants.

But on Friday morning Nicole Trunfio was back on point, cutting a chic figure as she stepped out in New York.

Photographed exiting the Bowery Hotel, the 30-year-old looked cool and casual in a black slip dress worn over a white T-shirt.

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Stepping out in style: Nicole Trunfio cut a chic figure as she left the Bowery Hotel in New York on Friday

The slip clung in all the right places, accentuating the model's slender frame.

Her lithe arms were on display, and pictures show the small bird tattoo which sits under her right elbow.

Nicole, who is married to musician Gary Clark Jr, added a glamorous touch, covering her feet with black Givenchy slides.

Meow: The 30-year-old accessorised with a pair of neutral coloured cat-eye sunglasses

A little birdy: Nicole's small bird-shaped tattoo was visible under her right elbow

She accessorised with a pair of cat-eye sunglasses, and carried her belongings in the same Furla clutch she took to the Daily Front Row's 4th Annual Fashion Media Awards on Thursday.

Keeping with her casual laid back theme, the Australian beauty appeared to go bra-free as she walked the New York streets.

Her brown balayaged hair was secured loosely at the nape of her neck and flyaway strands shaped her face.

From day to night: The Australian beauty wore the same embroidered Furla mini-clutch on Friday as she did on Thursday night

Flashing the bling: Nicole flashed her sizeable wedding rings, given to her by husband Gary Clark Jr, as she walked down the street

Nicole caused quite a stir on Tuesday when she flashed a cheeky glimpse of her black lingerie when she stepped out in a sheer boho-inspired dress at a New York Fashion Week launch party.

The Australian model posed up a storm of the red carpet for the Target and IMG kick-off event in the pale pink see-through dress.

Her black lace bra and high-waisted pants were visible through the long-sleeved, ruffled dress which featured two layers of fringing at the hem.

Sliding into glamour: Nicole added a stylish finish to her look with a pair of Givenchy slides




She's shared intimate moments with Ex On The Beach co-stars Gaz Beadle and Stephen Bear in front of the entire nation.

But Charlotte Dawson only had eyes for her gal pal as the pair arrived at Neighbourhood Bar and Restaurant in Manchester on Thursday night.

The 23-year-old reality star was in high spirits as she grabbed Steph Ledigo's chest while the pair walked hand in hand into the venue.

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Copping a feel: Charlotte Dawson only had eyes for her gal pal as the pair arrived at Neighbourhood Bar and Restaurant in Manchester on Thursday night

Dressed in a tiny black leather skirt, which made up for its lack of length with plenty of tassels, Charlotte flaunted her impressively tanned legs as she strutted her stuff.

Over the knee grey suede boots gave her rocky outfit a luxurious edge, while a Kenzo grey marl tiger sweater kept the evening chill at bay.

Charlotte's pal's canary yellow dress was plunging at the neckline and split almost to the waist and clearly bought out the silly side in Charlotte.

The giddy pair couldn't help fooling around for the cameras as they made their dramatic entrance at the central Manchester venue.

Girls just wanna have fun! The 23-year-old reality star was in high spirits as she grabbed Steph Ledigo's chest while the pair walked hand in hand into the venue

Leggy lady: Dressed in a tiny black leather skirt, which made up for its lack of length with plenty of tassels, Charlotte flaunted her impressively tanned legs as she strutted her stuff

Thigh's the limit: Over the knee grey suede boots gave her rocky outfit a luxurious edge, while a Kenzo grey marl tiger sweater kept the evening chill at bay

With her waist-length locks worn in a centre parting, Charlotte worked smokey-eyes and contoured cheeks with her rock chick look.

Statement silver-hoop earrings were the focus of her jewellery, with a black leather choker adding an edge to her accessories.

In the last episode of Ex On The Beach Charlotte, who came onto the show as Gaz's former fling, was seen in tears after new flame Bear began to transfer his attentions to Lillie Lexie Gregg.

Not so mellow yellow: Charlotte's pal's canary yellow dress was plunging at the neckline and split almost to the waist and clearly bought out the silly side in Charlotte

Party time: The giddy pair couldn't help fooling around for the cameras as they made their dramatic entrance at the central Manchester venue

Hands on: With her waist length locks worn in a centre parting, the reality star worked smokey-eyes and contoured cheeks with her rock chick look

And it seems she is still looking back in anger regarding her former relationship with Celebrity Big Brother winner Stephen Bear.

The reality star has come forward with new scathing comments about her former flame, telling the Daily Star that she 'massively regrets getting with him'.

Talking of Stephen, who she enjoyed a sexual dalliance with while on Ex On The Beach, said: 'He takes things too far and it just makes him unattractive. I don't rate him  he's just s**t.'

Charlotte is the youngest daughter of comic legend Les Dawson, who passed away in 1993 when she was just a baby.

Dark edge: Statement large silver-hoop earrings were the focus of her jewellery, with a black leather choker adding an edge to her accessories

Frolics: Charlotte came onto Ex On The Beach as Geordie Shore star Gaz Beadle's former fling, and quickly got involved with Stephen Bear
Having enjoyed a romp live on TV during her time on Big Brother, it is fair to say she does not lack confidence.

So it is no surprise that Laura Carter was happy to show off her killer body - and all its assets - on Thursday, as she headed home from a night out in London.

The 30-year-old put on a seriously eye-popping display in the plunging jumpsuit as she left Mahiki in the early hours of the morning.

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What a pair! Laura Carter, 30, was not afraid to show off her killer body - and all its assets - on Thursday night, as she headed home from a night out at Mahiki in London

Clearly unafraid to flaunt all, the model stepped out in the pastel blue one-piece, which tightly clung to every inch of her body.

Plunging deep down her front, the former Big Brother star displayed her plentiful bust for all to see, before alluring to it further with a necklace between her cleavage.

The outfit emphasised her petite waist by tying at the middle, before showing off her slender legs as she strutted home from the elite Mayfair club.

Fit to bust! Plunging deep down her front, the former Big Brother star displayed her plentiful bust for all to see, before alluring to it further with a necklace

She completed her look with a pair of nude Christian Louboutin heels and a luxurious leather hand bag on a gold strap, to add a hint of glamour.

Sporting glowing, bronzed makeup and a bold set of false lashes, Laura looked more than ready for her night out on the town.

Her skin-tight ensemble is not the first time the confident model has shown off her figure, also regularly posting raunchy snaps on her Instagram page.

Earlier this week she uploaded a bikini selfie, baring all in the snap to once again show off her tiny waist and lithe legs.

Bikini babe: Her skin-tight ensemble is not the first time the confident model has shown off her figure, also regularly posting raunchy snaps on her Instagram page

Heading and leaving the club with a group of gal pals, no romantic companions were to be seen - despite Laura's boasts in the past of numerous flings with high-profile men.

Laura recently claimed to The Sun that she kissed the latest Celebrity Big Brother champion Stephen Bear on a night out in November, after which Bear arrived at her house asking for sex.

'We met on a night out, spent the night kissing and were all over each other and then carried on messaging each other for a while', she told the newspaper of Bear, who was seen romancing Chloe Khan on the series.

She continued: 'He kept telling everybody in the club I was a 10/10 and he had to get with me.'

Touch of glamour: She completed her look with a pair of nude Christian Louboutin heels and a luxurious leather hand bag on a gold strap

Stephen, 26, then reportedly arrived at Laura's house at 6am alongside Joey Essex and Jon Clarke, after she had gone to bed.

She revealed: 'Id just woke up and he was on his knees begging to come in for a booty call.'

Laura however was not interested for long, having been spotted in Ibiza last month cosying up and passionately smooching her former flame Bernardo Belmar.

Having fallen for him two years ago in Miami, she was briefly reunited with the handsome Mexican on Big Brother in January - and quickly insisted she wanted to have children with him.

Peachy! Laura was not afraid to show off all her assets in the jumpsuit, enhancing her derriere as it clung to every inch of her body

Speaking of her excitement in the Diary Room, Laura, said: 'I want to thank you so much. This guy, I met in Miami two years ago, I was still engaged.

'We met in a club and it was pretty much love at first sight. He walked towards me - it was the strongest connection I've ever felt in my whole life.

Laura has previously boasted about enjoying a threesome with Justin Bieber after meeting him in a night club.

She also famously caused a stir on this year's series of the Channel Five show, after she enjoyed an on-screen dalliance with bad boy Marco Pierre White Jr.

One scene, which saw her whip him with a belt, caused over 600 complaints to be made to Ofcom.
She's known for bringing the sexual exploits of Anastasia Steele to life on the silver screen.

But Dakota Johnson, 26, showed off her more demure side as she enjoyed a low-key day out in New York City on Thursday.

The Fifty Shades of Grey actress exuded effortless chic while shopping with a friend in the Big Apple's SoHo district.

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Fifty Shades of Demure: Dakota Johnson, 26, showed off her more demure side as she enjoyed a low-key day out in New York on Thursday

The screen star - the daughter of actors Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson - sported a loose-fitting black dress, cropped just above the ankle and belted at the waist to accentuate her slim figure.

Black leather brogues artfully matched her buckled over-the-shoulder bag, as Dakota clung to a 'best day ever' shopping bag.

The How To Be Single actress added a touch of glamour to the understated ensemble with large bedazzled earrings and a simple gold chain necklace.

Effortlessly chic: The daughter of Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson sported a loose-fitting black dress, belted at the waist to accentuate her slim figure

'Best day ever': Black leather brogues artfully matched her buckled over-the-shoulder bag

Sun bun: Dakota wore her long chestnut tresses in a stylish up-do, while shielding her eyes from the beaming New York sun with large-rimmed tinted shades

Dakota and her pal, who dressed in an oversized white t-shirt and shorts, looked to be enjoying the sunny weather as they chatted joyfully during their stroll.

The actress wore her long chestnut tresses in a stylish up-do, while shielding her eyes from the beaming New York sun with large-rimmed tinted shades.

Dakota has been hard at work on the back-to-back filming of Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed, the sequels to her breakthrough film Fifty Shades Of Grey.

Gal pal: Dakota and her pal, who dressed in an oversized white t-shirt and shorts, looked to be enjoying the sunny weather as they chatted joyfully during their stroll

Break time: The star has been hard at work on the back-to-back filming of Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed

The trio of infamously raunchy movies have given the actors an abundance of sex scenes to perform.

In April, the Texan actress explained the process alongside her hunky co-star Jamie Dornan was 'not ... comfortable. It's pretty tedious'.

At the time, she was filming the sequels in Vancouver, Canada, and explained: 'I've been simulating sex for seven hours straight right now, and I'm over it.'

Fifty Shades Darker is set for release in 2017, while Fifty Shades Freed will hit cinemas in 2018.
He welcomed his second daughter, Phoebe, with wife Amelia Warner in February.

And Jamie Dornan has revealed that he's loving spending time with his little brood, describing fatherhood as 'magical'.

Appearing on Friday's episode of This Morning, the 34-year-old actor made a rare admission about his personal life, as he revealed he was looking forward to spending more time with his children now that he has a break between his many acting jobs.

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Doting daddy: He welcomed his second child in February. And Jamie Dornan has revealed that he's loving spending time with his little brood, describing fatherhood as 'magical'

Asked by Eamonn Holmes and Ruth Langsford if he was looking forward to taking a break, he scoffed: 'It's a break with two kids under two!'

But he explained that he loved being around his children and told the duo, 'it's brilliant, it's the most magical thing in the world.'

The Fifty Shades Of Grey star also revealed that his eldest child Dulcie, two, 'loves' being a big sister, adding 'she wakes up and wants to see the baby instantly'.

Proud parents: Jamie and wife Amelia Warner - who wed in 2013 - welcomed Dulcie in November 2013 and their second child, Phoebe, in February

Jamie and Amelia - who wed in 2013 - welcomed Dulcie in November 2013 and their second daughter, Phoebe, in February.

Since becoming a father, Jamie has been kept busy with his hectic career, but when asked whether he wanted to take more of a break and slow down, he admitted that he enjoys always being on the go.

'I love it,' he explained. 'I want to be busy but I'm also aware I'm a young father and I want to spend time with my kids, so they come everywhere with me, which we can afford to do at the moment before they start school.'

Opening up: Appearing on Friday's episode of This Morning, the 34-year-old actor made a rare omission, as he revealed he was looking forward to spending more time with his children

No rest for the wicked! Whilst Jamie has a break from his acting work, he'll be spending his summer helping to look after his two young children with Amelia

Sibling support: Jamie revealed that his eldest daughter Dulcie, two, wants to spend all her time with her little sister and is loving having a sibling around

The Northern Irish star, who donned a Scalpers blazer for the interview, also revealed that he found his worldwide fame from starring in the Fifty Shades series a 'burden', but insisted he found it easy to move on.

He explained: 'It can be, but thats just one job

'Granted, the majority of people know me solely for that, but to me - or any actor that is involved in any franchise - it is just another job and you move on to the next thing.'

Making the most of it: Jamie explained that he liked to take his children away with him when is working as he won't be able to in the future when they've started school

Keep moving: Since becoming a father, Jamie has been kept busy with his hectic career, but admitted that he enjoys always being on the go and wouldn't want to slow down

Keep moving: Since becoming a father, Jamie has been kept busy with his hectic career, but admitted that he enjoys always being on the go and wouldn't want to slow down

Bottom of the class: Whilst he's enjoyed a surge in his career of late, Jamie admitted that he didn't always want to be an actor, and wasn't a model pupil at school

Chirpy: Jamie seemed in great spirits as he chatted with Eamonn Holmes and Ruth Langsford

Whilst he's enjoyed a surge in his career of late, Jamie admitted that he didn't always want to be an actor, and wasn't a model pupil at school.

'I wasnt a good student,' he confessed. 'My thing at school was being lazy  I felt like I was there for different reasons.I got to 18 and wasnt sure if I wanted to be an actor I was working in a pub.'

But acting came naturally to the star, who revealed he's had no formal training.

'If I was ever in LA I'd take lessons,' he explained. 'But I do think it's an instinctual art.'
She's been celebrating her birthday in Mykonos, Greece with friends and family posting pictures of her gorgeous and glamorous adventures in the Mediterranean.

But Sam Armytage's time on the exotic island appears to have come to an end with the Sunrise host posting her goodbyes to the island in a snap on Instagram.

In the snap, Sam can be seen in a magnificent blue pool backdropped with the view of the ocean captioning the photo: '#Greece (Efharisto for having me)'.

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Thank you! Sam Armytage posts goodbye snap to Instagram after an exotic holiday in Mykonos. She is seen in a magnificent blue pool with the view of the ocean behind her

In Greek the term Efharisto means thank you, and Sam couldn't wait to show flashbacks of her incredible 40th birthday from the spectacular island - posting a follow up picture just hours after the poolside snap.

Seen with her sister and friends the follow up picture was captioned: ' #fbf My sistas from another mista @ my b'day [sic] (oh, & my sista from the SAME mista in the middle..).'

Sam's 149,000 fans followed her decadent birthday with shots posted regularly including a glamorous shot alongside two of her elegantly dressed friends.

Sam had her blonde locks combed back revealing her natural beauty and a pair of leopard print sunglasses appearing to be in happy spirits.

Flashback: She followed the snap with a flashback of her 40th birthday celebrations in a picture with her sister (centre) and friends just hours later

'Birthday shenanigans': In other birthday photos the luxurious pool made an earlier appearance on the breakfast host's Instagram showing someone diving into it

She wore gold hoop earrings with a pearl detail and carried her phone in the photo alongside her friends.

She captioned the happy snap: 'That's what friends are for. Helping you turn 40.

'Love you two to the other side of the world... and back!'

Birthday bonanza: Sam has been travelling to tropical locations to celebrate her 40th birthday and recently posted a glamorous photo from Mykonos

Exotic: Her Instagram account has been canvased with pictures of exotic pools, local hanging baskets, icy cold mojitos and fresh fish to mark her adventures

In other birthday photos the luxurious pool made an earlier appearance on the breakfast host's Instagram marking her 'birthday shenanigans'.

A person diving into the dimly lit pool can be seen causing a tidal wave of water to erupt from the luxurious pool while a person sits floating beside it.

Starting on September 4 the birthday celebrations have extended over a week and began with a three tier cake in the Channel Seven office.

Birthday beginnings: Sam began to celebrate her birthday a few days before the actual date with a giant cake brought in by her colleagues on Sunrise (pictured)

Double trouble: Sam was spoilt by friends after receiving two cakes on her birthday on September 4

Sam then headed out to lunch in Rose Bay with her colleagues, before taking a few weeks off for her holiday.

Her Instagram account has been canvased with pictures of exotic pools, local hanging baskets, icy cold mojitos and fresh fish to mark her adventures.

She started her trip in Mexico and continued to Greece before returning back to sunny Sydney.
On Thursday she turned heads in a glamorous gown as she attended the premiere of her latest flick Planetarium at the Venice Film Festival.

And on Friday Lily Rose Depp dressed down as she enjoyed some time out.

The 17-year-old daughter of Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis cut a casual figure as she hopped onto a boat in the picturesque Italian city.

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Casual teen: On Friday Lily Rose Depp dressed down as she enjoyed some time out in Venice

The model turned actress sported black shorts, a v-neck T-shirt over a bikini, and white trainers.

Carry a black cardigan the pretty teenager scraped her hair into a casual bun.

And shielding her face from the sun she wore large sunglasses.

Playing tourist: The 17-year-old daughter of Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis cut a casual figure in the picturesque Italian city

Laidback: Continuing her casual display she accessorised with a simple chain necklace, carrying a red bag

Continuing her casual display she accessorised with a simple chain necklace, carrying a red bag.

Surrounded by her minders she put on a low-key appearance as she took in the city's sights.

The only trace of the previous day's glamour were her red manicured nails.

And relax: The young star took some time to relax in the midst of a busy schedule in Venice

Typical teen: She might be the daughter of Hollywood royalty but Lily looked like any other bored teenager as she played on her phone

Enjoying Venice: Surrounded by her minders she put on a low-key appearance as she took in the city's sights

Groomed: The only trace of the previous day's glamour were her red manicured nails

On Thursday she attended the red carpet in a vintage-inspired gown.

Lily-Rose exuded elegance in the black velvet number, featuring a halterneck style and white pom pom detailing at the bust.

The talented teen looked older than her years in the sophisticated dress, which she paired with chic Chanel heels. A similar style last season retailed for a whopping $1,200.

Making a splash! She made a low-key appearance as she hopped onto a boat in the City on the water

The best way to travel: Lily took a taxi boat to her next destination at the Venice Film Festival

Centre stage: Lily-Rose looked every inch the Hollywood starlet as she graced the red carpet at the Planetarium premiere during the 73rd Venice Film Festival on Thursday evening

The Venice Film Festival sees the premiere of Lily's new film Planetarium outside of competition.

Starring alongside Oscar-winner Natalie Portman, the film follows two sisters who tour 1930s France as mediums.

They cross paths with a visionary French producer while performing in Paris, who is keen to caputure them on film - but trouble ensues.

Statement: The striking stilettos boasted a pearl emblazoned with the luxury French fashion house's logo, with a silver serpent coiling along the spike

Striking: Natalie Portman opted for a white Grecian gown for the big premiere, looking beautiful as ever

Rebecca Zlotowski (Grand Central, Belle Epine) helmed Planetarium, which has no US/UK release date.

The glamorous flick premieres September 8 at the Venice Film Festival, and then screens September 10 at the Toronto Film Festival.

Despite attracting attention in the fashion world, Lily Rose appears to be carving out a successful path as an actress, with the project marking her fourth major movie in two years.

Smoking: Earlier in the day, Lily Rose shared this sultry picture of herself on Instagram

The Chanel muse also featured in French musical drama The Dancer, which premiered at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival in May.

She also starred Kevin Smith's comedy-horror films Tusk and Yoga Hosers, alongside her acting father.

She's also a huge hit on Instagram and earlier on in the day, shared a black and white image of herself smoking a cigarette on the social media site.

Meanwhile, her famous father Johnny is will reportedly be playing the late detective Russell Poole in a thriller about the unsolved murders of Tupac Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G..

According to Screen Daily, Good Films producer Miriam Segal will introduce an adaptation of Randall Sullivan's 2003 book LAbyrinth to buyers at this week's Toronto Film Festival.

The who-done-it flick is the 53-year-old Oscar nominee's first casting since his abuse allegations and divorce from Amber Heard.

Drama: Rebecca Zlotowski (Grand Central, Belle Epine) helmed Planetarium, which has no US/UK release date
She recently revealed that she enjoyed the anonymity that came with her six-year hiatus from acting.

But Renee Zellweger looked more than happy to be back in the spotlight on Friday, as she headed to the Madrid photocall for her new comeback blockbuster Bridget Jones's Baby.

The actress, 47, looked gorgeous in a classy floral dress as she posed at the event in the Spanish capital alongside her dapper co-stars Patrick Dempsey and Colin Firth.

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Picture of class: Renee Zellweger, 47, looked gorgeous in a classy floral dress as she posed at the Madrid photocall for Bridget Jones's Baby on Friday

Power trio: The star looked happy to be back in the spotlight as she posed alongside her handsome co-stars Patrick Dempsey (L) and Colin Firth (R)

Renee looked a far cry from her Bridget Jones counterpart in the elegant floral dress, which featured a stylish ruffled drop hem.

Printed with purple, blue and red flowers all over, the Chicago star stood out on the carpet in the vibrant dress as she smiled for the cameras.

Falling to just above the knee, the dress gave a glimpse of her slender pins but still remained incredibly classy.

Regal: Falling to just above the knee, the dress gave a glimpse of her slender pins but still remained incredibly classy

No Bridget here! Renee looked a far cry from her British alter-ego in the elegant floral dress, which featured a stylish ruffled drop hem

She paired the frock with a pair of classic nude heeled sandals and left her hair loose and natural, adding to the effortless style of the look.

Meanwhile her co-stars posed by her side in their usual dapper fashion.

Beloved British actor Colin, 55, looked particularly debonair in a traditional grey suit, layered on top of a crisp white shirt, and his trademark retro glasses.

His suave style was matched by Patrick, 50, who opted for the trendy combo of a shirt jacket and tie with faded jeans and white trainers.

Leading lady: Printed with purple, blue and red flowers all over, the Chicago star stood out on the carpet in the vibrant dress

Oh Mr Darcy! Colin, who reprises his role as Mark Darcy in the flick, looked suave and stylish as ever in his trademark retro glasses

McDreamy! Grey's Anatomy's Patrick Dempsey joined the crew as the newbie to the cast, playing rival American hunk Jack Qwant

The trio looked fresh-faced and healthier than ever as they posed for the cameras, considering Madrid marks their fourth European city in one busy week of promotion.

The third installment of the beloved Bridget Jones's Baby held its premiere in London's Leicester Square on Monday, and has since been met with rave reviews.

The Daily Mail's Brian Viner described the movie as 'a worthy completion of the trilogy' while the Daily Mirror's critic penned the flick 'a laughathon'.

The movie catches up with Bridget who is now working a news producer, with awards under her belt and a more balanced approach to life than in the previous two movies.

Just acting: The funny trio, who make up the movie's love triangle, looked happy and comfortable together as they posed for the cameras

Gentlemen: Beloved British actor Colin, 55, looked particularly debonair in a traditional grey suit, while Patrick opted for the trendy combo of a shirt jacket and white trainers

Success! The third installment of the beloved Bridget Jones's Baby held its premiere in London's Leicester Square on Monday, and has since been met with rave reviews

However, her life is about to be turned upside down once again, as she discovers she's pregnant.

And Bridget is unsure whether the father of the child is the faithful Mark Darcy, (Firth), or the dashing American Jack Qwant, played by Greys Anatomys Doctor McDreamy (Dempsey).

The iconic role of Bridget herself marks one of Renee's first after a six year break from acting, alongside her upcoming thriller The Whole Truth, with Keanu Reeves.

Yet, talking on the Jonathan Ross Show this week, the star admitted that she actually quite liked being out of the public eye.

Comeback kid: Renee's reprised role marks her first acting venture since 2010

Private: Talking on the Jonathan Ross Show this week, the star admitted that she actually quite liked being out of the public eye

She explained: 'When you go away and youre out of peoples consciousness, they stop noticing you. Its fantastic, you order your coffee and you get a coffee and leave.

'Its really nice because Id meet people authentically, youd have authentic conversations on the street and I enjoyed that, thats something that I had missed.'

However, she reveals she is just as happy to be making her comeback - especially considering she gets to reprise her favourite character Bridget.

She confessed to the Telegraph of why she wanted to return with the role that scored her an Oscar nomination back in 2001: 'So many people feel they can relate to her because theyve shared her awkwardness and theyve shared her humiliation.

'She makes it OK to be imperfect and we are all kind of looking for that.'
She is no stranger to showing off her bikini body, having jetted off to endless beach destinations this summer.

But Kimberley Garner flashed more than she bargained for on Wednesday as she embarked on a shopping trip in the sunny South of France.

The 26-year-old blonde beauty suffered a wardrobe malfunction as she indulged in some retail therapy in St. Tropez, when her silk playsuit blew up in the wind to reveal her derriere to all.

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Whoopsy daisy! Kimberley Garner, 26, suffered a minor wardrobe malfunction in St Tropez on Wednesday when her silk playsuit blew up in the wind to reveal her derriere

The former Made in Chelsea star looked chic in the thigh-skimming silk playsuit, showing off her famously long and lean pins which she is often seen flaunting on the beach.

The one-piece was almost Grecian in style, formed of flowing white material and draping across her slender frame.

However the outfit's soft design ended up being the reality star's downfall - as it whipped up in the wind to reveal her posterior as she went about her business.

Grecian chic: The thigh-skimming playsuit was formed of flowing white material, draping across her slender frame

Despite the hiccup Kimberley still managed to look stylish and put together, pairing the outfit with similarly Grecian-themed gladiator sandals, which extended to lace at the back of her knee.

Adding a simple pearl necklace, the Kensington-based beauty looked effortless as she explored the luxurious French holiday hotspot.

The designer has been topping up her tan on the idyllic French coast with her friend Liv, documenting their trip on Instagram for fans as they make the most of dwindling summer.

Angelic: Adding a simple pearl necklace to the flowing white ensemble, Kimberley looked effortless as she explored the luxurious French hotspot

Kimberly first rose to prominence as a cast member of E4 reality show Made in Chelsea, but left after only one season.

The beauty, who caught the eye of Spencer Matthews and Richard Dinan during her time on the show, admitted recently that she was unhappy with the way she was edited in the show, and accused producers of persuading her to say certain things.

She explained: 'They definitely edit a lot - I was shocked when I watched it back. They get you to say certain phrases, and suddenly create scenes that happened completely differently to reality.

We're all going on a summer holiday! The designer has been topping up her tan in the idyllic location with her friend Liv, documenting their trip on Instagram for fans

'You'd watch it back thinking, "That didn't even happen!" and the storyline would be completely different. That was one of the reasons why I left.'

Having quit the show in 2012, the one-time reality star has been focusing on her swimsuit line of late, aptly named Kimberly London.

Kimberley launched her brand in 2013 and is extremely passionate about keeping her designs British.

She said: 'It's always been important to me that we support the incredible talent here in the UK.

'I've built such strong relationships with teams here and our pieces truly are the Best of British.'
She's been reflecting on how things have changed since becoming an expectant mother - keeping her social media followers up to date with her pregnancy.

And Married At First Sight star, Zoe Hendrix, continued the trend posting a belly shot of her growing baby bump to Instagram talking about her 'wild Friday night' in.

The 27-year-old appeared to be glowing while she sat on the couch holding her belly captioning the post 'messy hair, no bra, no makeup. How life has changed!'

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Relaxed: Married At First Sight Zoe Hendrix reflected on her new life as an expectant mother sitting on the couch holding her growing baby bump describing her 'wild Friday night' in

'Instead of my beloved red wine, I'm sipping warm milk and feeling baby kick!,' the soon to be mother added.

Wearing her hair out loose and pushed to one side, the reality television star coupled her relaxed demeanour with a pair of comfortable pyjamas - her long sleeved top pulled up to reveal her growing bump.

The picture comes just days after Zoe posted another snap gushing about husband, Alex Garner, who treated her to a special bath to soak her aching feet.

She captioned the snap: 'Bath time bliss was exactly what i needed as this third trimester takes its toll.

'Trouble sleeping, swollen feet and constant heartburn ... some days are a freaking struggle!

'My beautiful man ran me a bath and I had scented candles and strawberries ... it was heaven.'

'Bath time bliss': The picture comes just days after Zoe posted another snap gushing about husband, Alex Garner, who treated her to a special bath to soak her aching feet

Loved up! The former reality star also recently revealed that her growing chest was a perk of being pregnant - with husband Alex saying it's his favourite part of the pregnancy too

The intimate snap comes just weeks after the former reality star revealed on an episode of the new series of Married At First Sight, one of the perks of being pregnant.

'Initially I thought the best thing about pregnancy was when my boobs got huge because I always wanted huge boobs,' Zoe joked.

Alex chimed in, saying: 'That was my favourite part too'. Zoe then added: 'But then my nipples caught up'.

Meanwhile last month the 26-year-old Ethiopian-born star looked a picture of contentment as she reclined on a plush bed at Sydney's QT Hotel.

Luxury! last month the 26-year-old Ethiopian-born star looked a picture of contentment as she reclined on a plush bed at Sydney's QT Hotel

'Do you know how much we love you already?' Zoe suffered a traumatic miscarriage in 2015, but discovered she was pregnant with her second child (pictured) earlier this year

Captioned: 'Hello Sydney! I'm all yours just for one night' she posted the picture to her 49,000+ Instagram followers.

Beaming for the camera, the bubbly personality playfully rested her arms behind her head as she relaxed on a luxurious looking bed.

Zoe suffered a traumatic miscarriage in 2015, having been diagnosed with hyperemesis gravidarum, a condition that brings on intense morning sickness.

But discovered she was pregnant for the second time earlier this year.
She's been enjoying a picture perfect holiday in the Maldives all week.

And on Friday, model Nikki Phillips was back to flaunting the luxury getaway on Instagram with another sun-soaked image.

The 31-year-old looked stunning as she stretched out in the sand by the shore in nothing but a skimpy blue bikini.

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'Best seat in the house,' wrote Nikki Phillips as she shared another image from her Maldives vacation on Friday

'Best seat in the house,' wrote the blonde babe.

Earlier this week, Nikki showed off her toned physique while surrounded by the stunning Indian Ocean and the water bungalows at the Club Med Kani resort.

'When eat, swim, drink and bask is on repeat. It seriously doesn't get better then this!' she told her followers.

Pretty in paradise: Nikki showed off her toned torso as she holidayed in the beautiful Maldives earlier this week

Leading the way: Nikki led husband and musician Dane Rumble for cocktails as she posed for a classic Instagram shot at her luxury resort

'We filmed some awesome drone footage today, can't wait to share it with you all.'

In another image, Nikki was seen leading her husband Dane Rumble along the pier in a classic Instagram shot.

'Taking bae to cocktail hour on the beach followed by a movie under a 128 year old banyan tree... Now that's a good date night!' she said.

Ahead of the couple's vacation to the Maldives they stopped off in Singapore to soak up the city vibes.

Lounging around: Nikki gave fans a glimpse of her behind as she soaked up the sun on an orange sun lounger, which coincidentally matched her bikini

It's no surprise Nikki is keen to show off her beach body on holiday as she certainly puts in hard work at the gym.

She regularly shares her workouts on social media and juggles staying on top of her fitness with her thriving career.

Nikki has had a busy schedule so far this year.

Top of the world: The couple looked like they couldn't be happier as they enjoyed a date night at a rooftop bar in Singapore

Apart from being a regular on the Sydney social scene, she also has commitments on the runway with Myer.

Just recently she was named as Puma's Oceania talent alongside Jodi Anasta.

Nikki and Jodi join Rihanna and Kylie Jenner as faces of the sportswear giant.
Australian actress Melissa George was reportedly admitted to hospital on Wednesday morning following an alleged assault by her partner of four years, Jean David Blanc.

And on Friday, the actress was spotted looking downcast outside a Paris police station.

Melissa, 40, appeared sombre as she left the building with a friend.

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Downcast: Melissa George was spotted looking sombre as she left a Paris police station on Friday, amid reports she was assaulted by her partner Jean David Blanc

Shocking: Melissa was allegedly hospitalised earlier this week following a domestic incident concerning her French partner of four years, Jean David Blanc (pictured in May 2016)

According to French website Purepeople, Melissa was taken to Cochin hospital in Paris after turning up at the police station at around 3am on Wednesday morning.

The star - who shares two sons with 48-year-old Jean David - was allegedly suffering from bruising to her face and complaining of pain and feeling faint.

M6info reported the next day: ' According to statements by the actress ... she was assaulted by her companion.

Shocking: Melissa was taken to Cochin hospital in Paris after turning up at the police station at around 3am on Wednesday morning and was seen back at the police station on Friday

Reports M6info the next day: ' According to statements by the actress ... she was assaulted by her companion.

Fragile: Melissa's pal understandably looked concerned for the star following recent events

'The police were called last night to intervene in the centre of Paris.

'In shock, Melissa George, had a swelling of the face and complained of pain, nausea and dizziness.'

The site claimed there were no reports of the French businessman being arrested or charged over the alleged incident.

A hug for mummy: Melissa was seen getting a snuggle from one of her young sons after her trying morning

MailOnline contacted a Paris police spokesperson, who confirmed reports the actress has been hospitalised.

Melissa's representatives have yet to respond to a request for comment.

Jean David is a businessman, writer and film producer, famed for founding cinema service organization AlloCine.

Support: Melissa turned to some friends for support in the wake of her personal turmoil this week

The couple first met in 2011 at a BAFTA after-party, before entering into a relationship in 2012.

They welcomed their first child, a son named Raphael, in February 2014 and a second son, Solal, in November last year.

Melissa was previously married to Chilean film director Caludio Dabed.

Surprising: Melissa and Jean David, who first met in 2011 before entering into a relationship in 2012, had always appeared blissfully happy together until this shocking incident

Young fanily: The couple welcomed their first child, a son named Raphael, in February 2014 and a second son, Solal, in November last year

When announcing Solal's birth on social media, Melissa publicly gushed over her longtime de facto.

'Thank you to my love, Jean David, for giving me the best gift in my life. I love you,' she wrote at the time.

Melissa most recently starred as Dr. Alexandra Panttiere in the NBC medical drama, Heartbeat.

Unwell: The star was allegedly suffering from bruising to her face and complaining of pain and feeling faint when she arrived at the police station on Wednesday

Unfortunately, the show flatlined and was canceled by the network back in May following poor ratings and a negative critical reception.

She rose to fame in Home And Away in the 90s, before landing recurring roles in Alias and Grey's Anatomy.
She's had an action-packed few days at New York Fashion Week so far.

And Jourdan Dunn was leading the parade of models on the runway at the Misha Spring/Summer 2017 show on Friday, looking incredible in two standout looks from the new collection.

The 26-year-old beauty first dazzled in a silver dress with a dangerously high side split, the train billowing behind her as she sashayed along the catwalk.

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Leading the fashion pack: Jourdan Dunn was leading the parade of models on the runway at the Misha Spring/Summer 2017 show on Friday

Lovely in leather: The model changed into an even sexier leather blazer, showing off some cleavage in the plunging number

Jourdan's high fashion ensemble was completed by a pair of simple strappy heels that highlighted her endless legs.

The model then changed into an even sexier leather blazer, showing off some cleavage in the plunging number.

The sexy wrap style dress was given a biker chic edge thanks to a pair of quirky slashed gloves.

Strurtting her stuff: Jourdan's high fashion ensemble was completed by a pair of simple strappy heels that highlighted her endless legs

Glam: The 26-year-old beauty first dazzled in a silver dress with a dangerously high side split, the train billowing behind her as she sashayed along the catwalk

Leggy display: Jourdan also modelled sexy white coords, looking ladylike as ever

That's how it's Dunn: Jourdan put her best foot forward in her plunging leather dress

Towering: The statuesque beauty was heads above the rest as she hit the runway

Jourdan was joined by a host of famous faces at the show, including actress Olivia Culpo.

The previous evening, the British beauty attended the Daily Front Row's 4th Annual Fashion Media Awards before heading to the Cartier Fifth Avenue Mansion Reopening Party.

Jourdan juggles her high-flying modelling career with looking after her son Riley, six, who is her number one fan.

Backstage: Jourdan seemed in great spirits as she hung out with the models before the show

Beautiful in black: Jourdan wowed in her leather plunging dress

Model of the moment: Jourdan wowed as she posed with Michelle Aznavorian and Ginta Lapina

FROW fashionistas: Jasmine Sanders, Alana Hadid, Olivia Culpo, Whitney Port and Kaya Stewart led the glamour on the red carpet

Pretty as a petal: Jourdan showed off her never-ending legs in another chic gown later that evening as she headed to the Harper's Bazaar Icons party after the show

The statuesque star recently revealed in an interview with The Telegraph that the youngster has started giving her advice on dressing more modestly.

'Hes quite a little charmer; he knows the right things to say. But whenever my boobs are out, he definitely covers them. He says, Mummy, why are you being sexy?

'I remember he once said, Mummies are not supposed to be sexy.

Suited and booted: The Hills favourite Whitney Port was rocking a masculine, tailored look

Upping the glamour: Chantel Jeffries (L) and Nicole Williams (R) put in a stylish appearance

Gorgeous: Olivia Culpo set off her elegant jumpsuit with eye-catching silver accessories

Red hot: Models showcased Misha's upcoming Spring/Summer 2017 collection

Sheer delight: One racy look on the runway left little to the imagination

Fashion forward: Low necklines and metallic hues peppered the collection

Walk on the wild side: Animal print and short hemlines were also rife
Rosie Huntington-Whiteley showcased her flawless model figure during a beach shoot in Malibu this week.

The English rose is the face of UGG and showed just why she's perfect for the Australian brand as she posed up a storm in the great outdoors.

The blonde beauty, 29, wore a white high-cut bathing suit with a plunging neckline and cut-out panels for some of the the photos before changing into an equally revealing white bikini.

Brand ambassador: Rosie Huntington-Whiteley put her model figure on display during a photo shoot for UGG on the beach in Malibu on Thursday

As she stood on the sand, Rosie gathered a cotton shawl with tassels around her as she put her long lean limbs on display.

In another session, she was spotted frolicking in the surf carrying a boogie board and running a hand through her tousled hair.

She was also seen posing on a swing wearing white strappy sandals with her long legs glistening in the sun.

Riding high: The leggy model also took to a swing to showcase a pair of white strappy sandals during the photo shoot

Toned: The English rose showed off her tan as she posed on the swing in the white bathing suit and cardigan

Play time: The rope swing was specially constructed above the sand just for Rosie

Consummate professional: She seemed to have a good time as she swung back and forth stretching out her body for full effect

Earlier this year Rosie, who is engaged to British movie star Jason Statham, was hand picked to front the UGG brand's biggest relaunch in 37 years.

She will be the face of the company's Northern Hemisphere Autumn season.

The model revealed she was thrilled with the opportunity, telling told Women's Wear Daily: 'Its a way to showcase a different side to my personality.'

Making waves: The English model, 29, wore a white bathing suit with plunging neckline and cut-out panels and a chunky knit cardigan as she posed in the surf

Ready for anything: She showed just how hardy a pair of UGG's can be as she kicked her way through the water in the high-cut one-piece

Surf's up! Rosie ran a hand through her tousled blonde hair as the waves broke around her ankles

Personalised accessory: She also carried a boogie board with the words UGG and Rosie etched on it

'When I started modeling one of the first things I ever purchased was a pair of Classic boots as comfort to me is everything,' she explained.

'Theyre part of my active and adventurous lifestyle. Ill wear a pair on the beach when Im walking the dogs in the winter,' she said.

'I put my feet in a pair literally every morning. They are snuggle shoes that I wear around the house.'

Spoken for: The pretty blonde is engaged to British movie star Jason Statham whom she's been dating since 2010

Fun shoot: The model shared a joke with a crew member in between takes

Top model: Rosie's natural beauty shone through

Crew: Of course, she had a team of people to help make her look fabulous

Believes in the product: Rosie has revealed that she's a big fan of UGG boots and wears them every day

Just last month it was announced that Rosie had made the Forbes Top 20 List of the highest paid models.

She placed joint fifth in the rankings alongside Gigi Hadid.

In addition to being the face of UGG, Rosie, who is reputed to be worth $9 million, also has a lucrative lingerie collaboration with British retailer Marks and Spencer, which launched in 2012.

Rising profile: Rosie, who is reputed to be worth $9 million, ranked number five on the Forbes Top 20 List of highest-paid models released last month, tied with Gigi Hadid
They both breathed life into beloved Pixar characters.

Now Tom Hanks as Toy Story cowboy Woody and Ellen DeGeneres's amnesiac fish Dory from Finding Nemo have finally met - on Ellen's talk show.

On Friday, the 60-year-old appeared as Ellen's guest to talk about his new film, Sully, in which he stars as Captain Chesley 'Sully' Sullenberger, who glided his disabled plane onto the Hudson River after the engines were disabled by a flock of geese, saving all 155 aboard.

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Guest star: Tom Hanks appeared on the Ellen DeGeneres Show on Friday to talk about his movie, Sully, released on the same day

But the subject changed from the movie, due out the same day, to their careers as the voices for Pixar animation characters with Tom working on Toy Story 4 and Ellen as Dory in Finding Nemo sequel Finding Dory.

He asked the host: 'Have you even been in an elevator and a bunch of kids get in and (a parent) says "Dory, this is Dory! Say hello to Dory!" and the kid sees a lady with gray hair and blue eyes and that's not Dory.

'Do you make them close their eyes and then speak to them like you're Dory? Go ahead, do it.' he said with his hands over his eyes.

Getting animated: The subject changed to their careers as voices for Pixar characters with Tom working on Toy Story 4 and Ellen as Dory in Finding Nemo sequel Finding Dory

When she replied, in character: 'Hi Tom, how are you?' he joked, 'It's Dory' as the audience roared with laughter.

'We could actually have a Pixar-off right now,' Tom added as he told the audience to close their eyes and and 'imagine youre in Pixar land.'

The couple then chatted in character although Dory had trouble remembering anything Woody said, of course.

Being Dory: The Oscar winner asked Ellen: 'Have you even been in an elevator and kids get in and (a parent) says, "Say hello to Dory!" and the kids see a lady with gray hair and blue eyes and that's not Dory'

Being Woody: Tom, in character as the Toy Story cowboy, chatted to Ellen as Dory

He also joined Ellen in surprising young wannabe script writer Hilary that an assistant found in a Starbucks near the show's Burbank studios having coffee with her twin Katie and their sister Maggie.

Ellen insisted they come in straight away so that 'an Oscars host, me, and an Oscar winner' Tom could perform a scene from her movie, Time Travel Earthquake.

Both donning moustaches and with Katie and Rose as cops they joked their way through a scene to the delight of the audience.

Good sport: The pair also surprised young wannabe script writer Hilary, whom an assistant found in a nearby Starbucks, by performing a scene from her Time Travel Earthquake

Ellen also shared a video of herself with Britney Spears, a fellow native of Louisiana, hard hit by recent flooding that has impacted 60,000 homes and caused $30 million in damage according to the Red Cross.

Britney explained that shes donating a $125,000 emergency response vehicle to the cause.

And Ellen is matching the 34-year-old's gift with a donation that she giving directly to a middle school to help it rebuild.
She's carved out a successful career as a model and presenter since leaving Made In Chelsea.

And Ashley James couldn't have been further from her posh West London haunts when she attended a trendy fashion show in Shoreditch on Friday.

The 29-year-old blonde beauty donned a casual, sportswear inspired look for the Models Of Diversity event at Old Spitalfields Market, where she was also joined by Jo Wood.

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Hipster chic: Ashley James couldn't have been further from her posh West London haunts when she attended a trendy fashion show in Shoreditch on Friday

The glamorous star made the most of the delicious street food on offer, chowing down on a tasty looking flatbread.

Ashley appeared to be enjoying an array of gourmet treats, while keeping it classy by sipping on a glass of bubbly.

The reality star showed off her shapely legs in an Adidas sportswear top, worn as a dress.

Delicious: The glamorous star made the most of the delicious street food on offer, chowing down on a tasty looking flatbread

Tucking in: Ashley appeared to be enjoying an array of gourmet treats, while keeping it classy by sipping on a glass of bubbly

Cosy chat: The blonde beauty was joined by a male pal for her evening of style

She jazzed up her outfit with a pair of bright red Converse and a slick of pillar box red lipstick to match.

Ashley styled her luscious blonde locks in loose waves and highlighted her cheekbones with liberal amounts of bronzer.

These days the model is a poster girl for body confidence, but she recently revealed she didn't always love her hourglass figure, and as a teenager she was so unhappy that she wanted to have a breast reduction.

Red hot: Ashley styled her luscious blonde locks in loose waves and highlighted her cheekbones with liberal amounts of bronzer

Glamorous: She jazzed up her outfit with a pair of bright red Converse and a slick of pillar box red lipstick to match

Show of support: Jo Wood was also putting in an appearance at the Models Of Diversity event

Speaking exclusively to MailOnline, Ashley admitted that she got as far as having a consultation after finding her ample bust was being sexualised by her peers and even her teachers.

'When I was 15 me and my mum went for a consultation about a breast reduction just because I hated [my breasts],' she revealed.

'But at the moment I don't think I would have cosmetic surgery... but I totally understand why people would. Each to their own.'

Ashley, who previously suffered from body dysmorphia, explained that she thinks the condition stemmed from the constant attention her chest received, as she explained: 'I think a lot of it comes from having big boobs.'

'I think there's a lot of judgement and sexualisation around boobs - but it's not like I've bought them - they're part of my body!' she continued.

Making a difference: Models of Diversity is the campaign for more diversity in the models we see every day




Fighting climate change is a cause close to his heart.

And actor Leonardo DiCaprio proudly debuted his new environmental documentary Before The Flood at the Toronto International Film Festival on Friday.

The 41-year-old looked sharp in a classic blue suit as he signed autographs for fans and posed on the red carpet.

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Big debut: Leonardo DiCaprio proudly premiered his new climate change documentary Before The Flood at the Toronto Film Festival on Friday

The actor was all smiles as he attended the screening of the film, which will air on National Geographic next month.

Before The Flood follows the Oscar-winner and environmental activist as he travels around the world to study the impact of climate change.

Along the way, Leo meets with scientists, experts and US President Barack Obama to learn more about the issue in the documentary, which was helmed by The Cove director Fisher Stevens.

Starring role: The 41-year-old was all smiles before screening the film, which follows him as he travels around the world to study climate change

Activist: Leonardo caught up with the documentary's director Fisher Stevens on the red carpet

The Wolf Of Wall Street star recently pulled out of hosting a Hillary Clinton fundraiser in Los Angeles because he was busy trying to get the film ready in time for its Toronto premiere. Justin Timberlake and wife Jessica Biel instead stepped in to host the Clinton bash at the last minute.

But there were suggestions Leo pulled out of the hosting gig as questions were raised over his Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation's links to a multi-billion-dollar embezzlement scandal in Malaysia.

Leonardo took to social media on Friday to share his excitement at finally unveiling the finished film.

'Looking forward to sharing this documentary with everyone as we continue to act on #climatechangetogether,' he tweeted.

All smiles: The actor looked excited as he prepared to unveil his new film

Activist: The Oscar-winner told fans he was looking forward to getting the word out

Bromance: Actor Mark Ruffalo congratulated Leo on the film, which he called a 'huge and historical production'

When actor and fellow activist Mark Ruffalo tweeted his congrats on what he called a 'huge and historic production,' the Titanic star replied: 'Appreciate the support. Looking forward to sharing the documentary with everyone.'

Leo also posted a behind-the-scenes photo from filming with marine ecologist and National Geographic explorer-in-residence Enric Sala on Instagram Friday.

' Filming 'Before the Flood' was an incredible experience & today's screening of the documentary at #TIFF16 is an honor,' the Los Angeles native wrote.

'This photo was taken during our filming in the #Arctic with @EnricSala.'

Fan favorite: The former child star signed a copy of his classic What's Eating Gilbert Grape?

Learning: The Revenent star shared a behind-the-scenes photo on Instagram on Friday, calling making the film 'an incredible experience'

The Revenent star also shared a clip from the film, which shows him observing and listening to a pod of Arctic narwhals, a whale known for its unicorn-like horn.

'I can't believe what they sound like, it's amazing,' the actor marvels in the clip. 'They're like purring.'

'I don't want to be in a planet without these animals,' his companion adds.

Looking sharp: Leo looked stylish in a navy suit and light shirt

The actor sported an extremely bushy beard and a puffy North Face jacket, beanie and sunglasses while filming in the freezing Arctic.

But the handsome star went for a far more polished look as he arrived at the festival Friday, beaming and chatting with fans as he headed to the premiere.

Not by his side for the film's debut was his model girlfriend Nina Agdal, 24, who has been busy in New York for Fashion Week.

Star power The actor stopped to sign autographs for fans on his way into the venue

Leo has long been an environmental activist, even urging action to save the planet in his Oscars speech after winning Best Actor last year.

'Climate change is real. It is happening right now. It's the most urgent threat facing our entire species and we need to work collectively together and stop procrastinating,' he said from the Academy Awards stage in February.

The actor - who was named a UN Messenger of Peace with a focus on climate change in 2014 - also addressed the United Nations in April, where he urged world leaders to act.

He has also donated millions to environmental and scientific causes including protecting tigers and studying the oceans through his Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation over the years.

However, his foundation has recently come under scrutiny for a lack of transparency after being linked to a Malaysian financial scandal.

The Department of Justice believes multiple donations to Leonardo DiCaprio's foundation came from a money laundering scandal by Malaysian playboy and businessman Jho Low, 35, who was a friend of the recent Oscar winner, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Low is alleged to have used stolen money from a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund called 1MDB to spend at DiCaprio's lavish charity auctions. There is no suggestion the actor was aware of the source of the funds.

And Leo has also been criticized as hypocritical by some fans because of his fondness for private airplane travel and luxury yachts while preaching against fossil fuels.
Calls mount for new UN sanctions against North Korea

The UN Security Council met behind closed doors Friday for urgent talks on North Korea's fifth nuclear test as calls mounted for new sanctions against Pyongyang.

South Korea, the United States, Japan, Russia and China all condemned the blast at the Punggye-ri nuclear site, the North's most powerful yet at 10 kilotons.

US President Barack Obama called the test "a grave threat to regional security and to international peace and stability" and vowed to push for new international sanctions.

North Korea said the fifth nuclear test, which comes after a series of ballistic missile launches had realised the country's goal of being able to fit a miniaturised warhead on a rocket

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged the council to take "appropriate action" after what he called a "brazen breach" of UN resolutions.

"The patience on our side and that of the international community has already reached its limit," South Korean President Park Geun-Hye said, slamming the North's leader Kim Jong-Un for his "maniacal recklessness."

Japan condemned the test as "absolutely unacceptable" and Russia expressed "extreme concern."

France urged the council to begin work on a resolution that would impose a new raft of sanctions -- the sixth set of UN punitive measures to hit Pyongyang since it first tested a nuclear device in 2006.

"We believe new sanctions are indispensable," French Ambassador Francois Delattre told reporters as he headed into the emergency meeting.

The council met at the request of Japan, South Korea and the United States to try to agree on a response, but it remained unclear if China, Pyongyang's ally, would support tougher measures.

US Ambassador Samantha Power appealed for council unity, warning in a clear reference to China that divisions "only embolden the DPRK to further provocations."

After Pyongyang carried out its fourth nuclear test, the council in March adopted the toughest sanctions resolution to date targeting North Korea's trade in minerals and tightening banking restrictions.

North Korea has carried out 21 ballistic missile launches since that resolution, Power said, describing those tests and Pyongyang's second nuclear detonation this year as "more than brazen defiance."

- Announcement on North Korean TV -

Pyongyang's state media said the nuclear test had realized the country's goal of being able to fit a miniaturized warhead on a rocket.

"Our nuclear scientists staged a nuclear explosion test on a newly developed nuclear warhead at the country's northern nuclear test site," a North Korean TV presenter said.

The first indications of an underground explosion came when seismic monitors detected a 5.3-magnitude "artificial earthquake" near the Punggye-ri nuclear site.

"The 10-kiloton blast was nearly twice the (power of the) fourth nuclear test and slightly less than the Hiroshima bombing, which was measured about 15 kilotons," said Kim Nam-Wook of the South's meteorological agency.

But attention soon shifted from the blast's power to Pyongyang's claim that it was a miniaturized warhead.

If Pyongyang can make a nuclear device small enough to fit on a rocket -- and bolster the range and accuracy of its missiles -- it might achieve its oft-stated aim of hitting US targets. But its past claims to have achieved that have been discounted.

North Koreans gathered around public screens to watch the official announcement of the test -- which came on the 68th anniversary of the country's founding.

The test came as American and South Korean forces staged a re-enactment of the Incheon landing, 66 years after the start of Operation Chromite, the battle that turned the tide in the Korean War.

Outside experts said authenticating North Korea's claim to have mastered miniaturization would be difficult using seismic data alone.

"We would need to see it tested on a missile, like China did in the 1960s," said Melissa Hanham, a North Korea expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.

"Nobody wants to see that. There is no way they could do that test in a safe way, and it could easily start a war."

- Another challenge for China -

North Korea's nuclear program has accompanied a series of ballistic missile launches, the latest of which took place on Monday as world powers gathered for a G20 meeting in China.

This week's events pose yet another challenge for China, which has been under pressure to rein in its increasingly aggressive neighbor.

Beijing said Friday it "firmly opposes" the test, but it has limited room to maneuver. Its priority is to avoid the regime's collapse, which would create a crisis on its border and shift the balance of power on the Korean peninsula toward the United States.

US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter called for further pressure on North Korea, but said China bore "responsibility" for tackling the problem.

"China shares important responsibility for this development and has an important responsibility to reverse it," he said.

"It's important that it use its location, its history and its influence to further the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula and not the direction things have been going."

North Korea AFP (AFP)

Monitoring nuclear explosions Adrian LEUNG (AFP)

North Korean soldiers look at the South side at the truce village of Panmunjom in the Demilitarized zone (DMZ) dividing the two Koreas on July 27, 2013 Jung Yeon-Je (AFP/File)
'Heat' at 21: Pacino and De Niro in rare reunion

Twenty-one years ago Michael Mann's iconic crime opus "Heat" paired Hollywood legends Al Pacino and Robert De Niro for the first time, delighting moviegoers and inspiring a generation of filmmakers.

The sprawling 1995 epic, which pits the actors against one another as kindred spirits on opposite sides of the law, has become a benchmark in neo-noir cinema, lauded for its melancholic but visually stunning depictions of Los Angeles.

The stars and their director reunited this week for the first time to share memories of an intense 107-day shoot, debunk myths and reveal an aspect of Pacino's acclaimed performance kept secret for two decades.

Al Pacino revealed for the first time he deliberately played his famously brash detective in iconic crime opus "Heat" as a drug addict who regularly "chips cocaine" Chance Yeh (Getty/AFP/File)

"I knew it would be special when I read the script so I'm happy that it got the attention it did," De Niro, 73, told a panel at the Academy in Beverly Hills, moderated by Oscar-nominated British filmmaker Christopher Nolan.

"Heat" follows Pacino's LAPD detective Vincent Hanna over almost three hours as he and his team chase a gang of robbers led by De Niro across Los Angeles.

It is lauded for its striking cinematography, taut action and a meeting in a diner between the two leads that marked their first scene together after appearing separately in "The Godfather: Part II" 21 years earlier.

Pacino, 76, revealed for the first time that he deliberately played his famously brash detective -- a role which has come to define his later career -- as a drug addict who regularly "chips cocaine."

Mann never filmed the character taking drugs but Pacino said much of his motivation for the over-the-top, erratic detective came from thinking of him as constantly strung out on coke.

- Conspiracy theory -

"I've always wanted to say it, just so you know where some of the behavior comes from," Pacino said.

Nolan, who drew inspiration in his portrayal of Gotham City in the "Dark Knight" films from "Heat," rebuffed a long-held conspiracy theory about the movie -- that Pacino and De Niro didn't actually act opposite one another.

Their paths cross on several occasions but they appear separately in close up shots, and an urban legend asserting that they were never together at the same time has grown popular over the years.

Nolan pointed out, however, that after moving to LA he had seen a picture of the acting legends on set together, hung for years above a door at the now closed Kate Mantilini diner in Beverly Hills, where the scene was filmed.

The famous exchange, mostly taken from the 11th take, revealed something of De Niro's meticulous acting method, Pacino said, recalling that his co-star didn't want to rehearse.

Pacino said the dynamic between the two actors was helped in part by the fact that De Niro was in a bad mood when the cameras rolled due to a production delay.

"I loved the scene, and I really wanted it to be the best it could be. I was a little unhappy that we started so late, in the middle of the night, but anyway we did it," De Niro shrugged sheepishly.

Mann was inspired to write the script by the experiences of his friend, a real-life detective in Chicago called Charlie Adamson, who shot dead criminal Neil McCauley in 1963 after the pair had enjoyed an amiable dinner.

Mann said the real-life pair shared "the kind of intimacy only strangers can have," even though Adamson didn't hesitate for a second when he had to kill McCauley.

"It was one of those things where the contrapuntal nature of it really fascinated me, that both are true, it wasn't a contradiction. That's the real germ of the film."

Al Pacino said the dynamic between him and Robert De Niro in the iconic crime opus "Heat" when their two characters come together, was helped in part by the fact that De Niro, pictured, was in a bad mood Elvis Barukcic (AFP/File)
US warns against using Samsung Galaxy Note 7 on planes

The US Federal Aviation Administration strongly urged passengers not to turn on or charge Samsung Galaxy Note 7 smartphones on aircraft following recent reports of explosions from faulty batteries.

The South Korean smartphone maker last week suspended sales of the "phablet" and recalled 2.5 million units following the reports.

"In light of recent incidents and concerns raised by Samsung about its Galaxy Note 7 devices, the Federal Aviation Administration strongly advises passengers not to turn on or charge these devices on board aircraft and not to stow them in any checked baggage," the FAA said in a statement.

The US Federal Aviation Administration said passengers on planes should not turn on or charge Samsung Galaxy Note 7 smartphones or stow them in checked baggage Tobias Schwarz (AFP/File)

Qantas and Virgin Australia also told customers Thursday not to use or charge the devices on their planes.
North Korea claims 'successful' nuclear warhead test

North Korea claimed Friday it has successfully tested a nuclear warhead that could be mounted on a missile, drawing condemnation from the South over the "maniacal recklessness" of young ruler Kim Jong-Un.

The blast at the Punggye-ri nuclear site was the North's fifth and most powerful yet at 10 kilotons -- approaching the might of the bomb that devastated Hiroshima in 1945, experts in Seoul said.

Pyongyang's state media said the test, which comes after a series of ballistic missile launches that have drawn international condemnation and UN sanctions, had achieved its goal of being able to fit a miniaturised nuclear warhead on a rocket.

North Koreans watch a big screen TV in front of a Pyongyang railway station during an announcement that the country has successfully tested a nuclear warhead on September 9, 2016 Kim Won-Jin (AFP)

"Our nuclear scientists staged a nuclear explosion test on a newly developed nuclear warhead at the country's northern nuclear test site," a North Korean TV presenter said.

"Our... party sent a congratulatory message to our nuclear scientists... for conducting the successful nuclear warhead explosion test," said Ri Chun-Hee, a veteran who has delivered all the North's biggest announcements.

The news drew swift condemnation from US President Barack Obama who warned of "serious consequences" and said he had called the leaders of South Korea and Japan to confer over the crisis.

The South's President Park Geun-Hye spoke out against the "maniacal recklessness" of Kim, who since taking control after the death of his father in 2011 has carried out a series of purges and weapons tests designed to show strength and consolidate power.

"Kim Jong-Un's regime will only earn more sanctions and isolation... and such provocation will further accelerate its path to self-destruction," Park said, warning his obsession with creating a nuclear arsenal posed a grave challenge.

"We will step up pressure on the North by using all possible measures, including more, stronger sanctions on the North with the international community and at the UN Security Council," she said.

- Search for clues -

News of the test emerged when seismic monitors detected a 5.3-magnitude "artificial earthquake" early Friday near the Punggye-ri nuclear site, where the last test took place in January.

"The 10-kiloton blast was nearly twice the fourth nuclear test and slightly less than the Hiroshima bombing, which was measured about 15 kilotons," said Kim Nam-Wook from the South's meteorological agency.

If Pyongyang can make a nuclear device small enough to fit on a warhead, and bolster the range and accuracy of its missiles, it might achieve its oft-stated aim of hitting US targets. But its claims to that in the past have been discounted.

Scientists will now attempt to analyse the blast to try to determine what kind of a breakthrough it represents, including whether it is a standard atomic bomb or a more powerful hydrogen, or thermonuclear, bomb.

But verifying the claim to have created a weapon-tipped missile will be difficult, said Melissa Hanham, a North Korea expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.

"It's not really possible for us to verify that the test was of a compact warhead from the seismic data," she told AFP.

"We would need to see it tested on a missile like China did in the 1960s. Nobody wants to see that. There is no way they could do that test in a safe way, and it could easily start a war."

- 'Caught off guard' -

Japan condemned the move as "absolutely unacceptable" while the head of the UN atomic watchdog said it was a "clear violation" of numerous Security Council resolutions.

North Korea has been hit by five sets of United Nations sanctions since it first tested a nuclear device in 2006, but has insisted it will continue, arguing it faces an existential threat from US aggression.

A series of ballistic missile launches has also drawn intense criticism, with another three fired on Monday even as world powers gathered for a G20 meeting in China.

Nuclear tests are usually heralded by chatter among analysts about preparations at Punggye-ri, but this time observers were largely caught off guard, said Kim Jin-Moo from the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses.

"The test has been carefully planned out for months by the North to maximise the impact of the show of force to the international community," he told AFP.

The nuclear test is another slap in the face to the North's chief ally China which has been under pressure to rein in its increasingly embarrassing behaviour.

China said Friday it "firmly opposes" the test but it has limited room to manoeuvre, given its priority is to avoid a collapse of the regime that would create a crisis on its border and shift the balance of power on the Korean peninsula towards the US.

The US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University, which had warned Thursday of "new activity" at Punggye-ri, said the latest development made plain that the US and South Korean strategy on restraining North Korea "has clearly failed".

"No one should be surprised that North Korea continues to conduct nuclear tests to enhance the capabilities of its growing arsenal. Nor should they expect China to solve this problem for the United States," said the institute's Joel Wit.

North Korea claimed its January test was of a miniaturised hydrogen bomb, which can be far more powerful than other nuclear devices.

But scientists say the estimated yield of around six kilotons was similar to the North's previous nuclear test in 2013, and far too low for a thermonuclear device. Initial indications from Monday's blast pointed in the same direction.

"What we can tell from the seismic waves so far is that this is likely not a thermonuclear test," said 38 North managing director Jenny Town.

"We are still in the preliminary stages but our analysts believe they tested a basic nuclear device not an advanced device," she said. "If we were looking at a thermonuclear test, we would see very different seismic waves."

North Korea AFP (AFP)

Chinese paramilitary policemen stand outside the entrance to the North Korean embassy in Beijing on September 9, 2016 Greg Baker (AFP)

Japan's meteorological agency officer Gen Aoki speaks during a press conference following news of a possible fifth nuclear test by North Korea Kazuhiro Nogi (AFP)

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (L) speaks to journalists upon his arrival at his office in Tokyo on September 9, 2016 following news of North Korea's fifth nuclear test Toru Yamanaka (AFP)
Key dates in North Korean history and weapons development

North Korea carried out its fifth and most powerful nuclear test on Friday, sparking condemnation from regional leaders.

Here are some key dates in North Korean history and in its development of long-range missiles and nuclear weapons:

1945: Japan's colonial rule over Korea ends with its World War II surrender.

A South Korean official points to a map showing the epicenter seismic waves in North Korea, at the Korea Meteorological Administration in Seoul on September 9, 2016

1948: Korea is formally divided at the 38th parallel between the North, backed by the Soviet Union, and the South, supported by the United States.

1950-53: The North invades the South and war breaks out. The US intervenes on behalf of the South as part of a United Nations force, while China sides with the North. Some four million are killed. War ends with an armistice, not a formal peace treaty.

Late 1970s: North Korea starts working on a version of the Soviet Scud-B (range 300 kilometres or 190 miles). Test-fired in 1984.

1987-92: North begins developing variant of Scud-C (500 km), Rodong-1 (1,300 km), Taepodong-1 (2,500 km), Musudan-1 (3,000 km) and Taepodong-2 (6,700 km).

1989: US satellite pictures reveal a nuclear reprocessing plant at North Korea's Yongbyon complex.

1994: The US comes close to war with North Korea over its removal of spent fuel rods from the Yongbyon reactor.

1994, July 8: Founding president Kim Il-Sung dies aged 82. He is succeeded by his son Kim Jong-Il.

1998: North Korea test-fires its first long-range ballistic missile, a Taepodong-1, over Japan as part of failed satellite launch.

2000: North and South Korea hold their first-ever summit. A second is held in 2007.

2003: North Korea withdraws from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

2005: For the first time, North Korea states that it has nuclear weapons.

2006, July 5: North test-fires seven missiles, including a long-range Taepodong-2 which explodes after 40 seconds, triggering UN condemnation and sanctions.

2006, October: first nuclear test

2007: North Korea agrees in February to scrap its nuclear facilities in return for economic aid and diplomatic benefits, claims site is closed in July.

2009, April 5: the North launches a long-range rocket and announces it will restart its Yongbyon complex.

2009, May 25: second nuclear test

2011, December 19: North Korean state media say Kim Jong-Il has died at 69 of a heart attack and urges people to support his son and successor Kim Jong-Un.

2012: North Korea test fires rockets, including a long-range one in December which the international community condemns as a disguised ballistic missile test.

2013, February 12: third nuclear test

2013, December 13: North Korea announces the execution of Kim Jong-Un's uncle and political mentor, in a move seen by some as a sign of internal dissent.

2015, May: North Korea test-fires a submarine-launched ballistic missile, but experts say it was short of a full flight test.

-- December 3: Satellite images indicate North Korea is excavating a new tunnel at its main nuclear test site at Punggye-ri, US think tank says.

-- December 11: Kim Jong-Un claims North Korea has developed a hydrogen bomb, but Washington says it doubts Pyongyang has a thermonuclear device.

2016, January 6: fourth nuclear test, which North Korea claims was a hydrogen bomb

2016 February 7: North Korea launches a satellite-bearing rocket, an operation widely seen as a covert ballistic missile test

-- March 9: North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un claims his country has successfully miniaturised a thermo-nuclear warhead.

-- April 15: North Korea tries but fails to test-fire what appears to be a medium-range missile on the birthday of founding leader Kim Il-Sung.

-- April 23: North Korea test fires a submarine-launched ballistic missile.

-- July 6: The United States places North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un on its sanctions blacklist.

-- July 8: US and South Korea announce plans to deploy an advanced missile defence system -- the US THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defence).

-- August 3: North Korea fires a ballistic missile directly into Japanese-controlled waters for the first time.

-- August 24: Successfully test-fires a submarinelaunched ballistic missile, in what it says is retaliation for large-scale South Korea-US military exercises.

-- September 5: North Korea fires three ballistic missiles off its east coast in a new show of force that comes as top world leaders meet at the G20 summit in China.

2016, September 9: Fifth nuclear test.
Loyalists pine for Mao 40 years after death

Throngs of pilgrims lined up at Mao Zedong's mausoleum Friday to pay tribute on the 40th anniversary of his death, but state media were notably quiet on the founder of Communist China.

Mao's corpse lies preserved in state at the centre of Beijing, watched over by a giant portrait hanging on the walls of the Forbidden City overlooking Tiananmen Square.

Friday, which marks 40 years since Mao's death in 1976, saw thousands of tourists in neon hats and parasols waiting two hours or more to shuffle silently past the Great Helmsman's body, garbed in an eponymous grey suit.

A man takes a selfie in front of a giant portrait of Mao Zedong at the gate of the Forbidden City in Beijing on September 9, 2016 Nicolas Asfouri (AFP)

"I felt like the whole world was collapsing" when he died, said a woman surnamed Huang, who timed her trip from Shenzhen -- far in southern China -- to coincide with the anniversary.

While many ordinary people revere Mao as the creator of "New China", his legacy is shadowed by the failed policies of the Great Leap Forward, which saw tens of millions of deaths, and the orgy of violence in the Cultural Revolution that deeply scarred the national psyche.

Official media barely touched on the anniversary, with no articles or editorials on the subject in Friday's flagship party newspaper People's Daily or in the nationalistic Chinese-language Global Times.

Those outlets that did address it were largely in English, with the Global Times' English edition declaring: "Despite popular foreign depictions of Mao as a ruthless strongman who brought China into chaos, the Chinese government still upholds his positive legacy and his indelible role in the history of the Communist Party of China."

It also warned against "extreme views" about the leader, calling out those who "still worship him as a god and try to right all his wrongs".

The English service of the official news agency Xinhua said: "Forty years after his death, the country he founded has gone through some dramatic changes, but he remains an influential figure."

- 'Still a great man' -

As visitors pushed forward at the mausoleum, two Beijing men talked fondly of Mao's era, saying people then were less obsessed with money, and urged a foreigner to study Mao Zedong Thought.

They paused when Mao's portly grandson Mao Xinyu, a major general in the People's Liberation Army, climbed the stairs to the mausoleum to pay his respects while tourists clamoured to take his photo.

Many said they were nostalgic for a simpler time, and recalled with poignance how their country was transformed after Mao's death by the market reform brought in under Deng Xiaoping.

"Though in the past 40 years our material lives have changed for the better, the honesty and humanity of Mao's era are nowhere to be found," said Huang, the visitor from Shenzhen, adding that "everyone now is self-centred."

A middle-aged man surnamed Wang said that if Mao were still alive, "our lives would absolutely be better", adding that while he did not view Mao as a god, "he is still a great man".

As a young factory worker, he recalled, he could visit a doctor for free, families did not lock their doors, and corruption cases were small-scale and punished harshly -- sometimes with execution.

"But now, everyone's humanity has become twisted because of money. Look how many people come of their own will to see Chairman Mao, but Deng Xiaoping also has a memorial hall, and you don't see nearly so many ordinary people come."

Crowds line up to view the embalmed body of late Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong in Beijing's Tiananmen Square on September 9, 2016 Greg Baker (AFP)

A group of Chinese Red Guards shout slogans while parading with portraits of Mao Zedong, in 1967 in downtown Beijing, during the "great proletarian cultural revolution" Jean Vincent (AFP/File)

A man and his son look at Mao Zedong statues in a memorabilia shop in Shaoshan, in central China's province of Hunan, the hometown of the former communist leader Johannes Eisele (AFP)
North Korea's latest nuclear test: Five things to know

North Korea conducted a fifth nuclear test on Friday, an underground blast it claimed was of a miniaturised warhead.

Here are some key questions around the blast and the isolated state's nuclear programme.

What do we know so far?

People watch a television news report, showing file footage of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, at a railway station in Seoul on September 9, 2016 Jung Yeon-Je (AFP)

Seismologists detected a powerful artificial earthquake at 0030 GMT Friday, which they said was centred around Punggye-ri, North Korea's nuclear test site.

South Korea said the quake was caused by a nuclear device, with a yield of 10 kilotons -- the most powerful of Pyongyang's five nuclear tests to date.

Pyongyang hailed the "successful" test of a home-grown nuclear warhead -- a miniaturised device -- and claimed it represented a major step forward in its ability to launch missile-mounted nuclear strikes.

Why have they carried out another test?

The North Korean leadership says a credible nuclear deterrent is critical to the nation's survival, claiming it is under constant threat from an aggressive United States.

Although it has regularly threatened neighbouring South Korea, its main priority is developing a effective strike threat against the US mainland.

It has always insisted it will continue testing, ignoring global condemnation and toughened UN sanctions.

Its first nuclear test was in 2006. That was followed by one in 2009 and another in 2013. The most recent test was in January this year.

Experts say the tests are likely aimed at refining designs and reliability as well as increasing yield.

Outside monitors will analyse the yield from Friday's test to try and determine whether it signals any breakthrough.

How advanced is North Korea's weapons programme?

The four previous confirmed tests resulted in artificial quakes of increasing size. Friday's quake followed that pattern, registering at 5.3 magnitude.

Seoul said the 10-kiloton yield was the "most powerful to date".

The bomb that destroyed Hiroshima had a yield of 15 kilotons, and the most powerful nuclear test ever was a Russian blast in 1961 with an estimated yield of 50,000 kilotons.

Pyongyang claims its January test was of a miniaturised hydrogen bomb, which has the potential to be far more powerful than other nuclear devices.

However, scientists say the six-kiloton yield was far too low for a thermonuclear device.

There was similar scepticism from experts this time around.

"What we can tell from the seismic waves so far is that this is likely not a thermonuclear test," said Jenny Town, managing editor of 38 North, a website focusing North Korea.

"We are still in the preliminary stages but our analysts believe they tested a basic nuclear device not an advanced device."

Was it a miniaturised warhead?

The claim of miniaturisation is a significant worry for the international community, especially in the light of an apparently stepped-up missile testing programme over recent months and years.

If Pyongyang can make a nuclear device small enough to fit on a warhead, and can bolster the range and accuracy of its missiles, it might one day achieve its oft-stated aim of hitting US targets.

Melissa Hanham, a North Korea expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, said it was not possible from seismic data to tell if it was a warhead.

"We would need to see it tested on a missile like China did in the 1960s. Nobody wants to see that. There is no way they could do that test in a safe way, and it could easily start a war."

But, she warned, if the claim turns out to be true "they can threaten not just their neighbours but the US as well. There is no upside to this scenario. No way to sugarcoat it."

How will the international community react?

The test drew swift condemnation from the US and its regional allies South Korea and Japan, as well as calls for yet more sanctions from the United Nations Security Council.

Beijing also condemned the test and called for a resumption of the long-stalled six-party talks aimed at ending Pyongyang's nuclear programme.

Beijing has been North Korea's main diplomatic supporter and protector for decades, shielding its errant ally from harsh international action.

But its patience is running thin. It strongly opposes Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions, which it sees as a source of instability.

China's seeming inability to rein in Kim Jong-Un is increasingly embarrassing for Beijing: the North's latest missile tests this week came as China was hosting a G20 summit.

However, Beijing's problem is that while it wants Pyongyang to stop causing trouble, it is desperate to avoid anything that might imperil the stability of the regime.
US and Russia to refer North Korea nuke test to UN

US Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov condemned North Korea's latest nuclear test Friday and said it would be referred to the United Nations.

Appearing with Lavrov before the start of talks on the crisis in Syria, Kerry said he had also spoken to his Japanese and South Korean colleagues and had had a "serious conversation" about the incident.

Russia, the United States, China, Japan, South Korea lead the international response to North Korea's banned nuclear weapons program as parties to the stalled "Six Party Talks" process.

US Secretary of State John Kerry (left) and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov speak in Geneva on September 9, 2016 Kevin Lamarque (Pool/AFP)

"We are seriously concerned and the resolutions of the Security Council must be strictly implemented and we must send this message very strongly," Lavrov said.

The Russian foreign minister said he would also speak to his Japanese counterpart later in the day.

"Obviously Japan and South Korea, particularly, are deeply concerned because of the neighborhood," Kerry said. "But I think it's fair to say China, Russia and the United States, everybody shares concerns about it.
US and Russia tussle over Syria deal as regime strikes

The United States and Russia on Friday grappled over plans to halt the fighting in Syria, as resurgent Moscow-backed regime forces tightened the noose around the beleaguered city of Aleppo.

In Geneva, Secretary of State John Kerry spent hours in talks with Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, but US officials warned negotiations could not go on forever without a breakthrough.

And, more than eight hours after talks began, senior US official said: "We are not in a position right now to say whether or not a final deal can be reached."

Wounded Syrian boys rest after receiving medical treatment at a makeshift hospital following reported government air strikes on the rebel-held town of Douma on September 9, 2016 Abd Doumany (AFP)

Washington wants Moscow to help clinch a ceasefire, get humanitarian aid to civilians and -- eventually -- set the stage for political talks to end a five-year war that has killed nearly 300,000 people.

Both men were scheduled to leave later Friday but, as dusk descended on the shores of Lake Geneva, the US official said "discussions continue into the early evening, as technical issues are worked out".

The two powers back opposite sides in the civil war, with Moscow supporting Bashar al-Assad's Syrian regime and Washington behind a coalition of rebel groups it regards as moderate.

Senior officials travelling with Kerry said he would not have flown out once again to new face-to-face talks with Lavrov unless he thought there was a chance of progress.

Another US official who attended the dialogue described the atmosphere as "crisp and businesslike", focused on technical details of how the ceasefire would be observed and monitored.

The US delegation broke proceedings to update Washington on progress, before Kerry headed back in, cheerfully waving to reporters and declaring that he and Lavrov were "working away".

In Berlin, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said he had heard the deal could initially be for an interim seven to 10-day period in parallel with more talks.

UN envoy on Syria Staffan de Mistura, who joined the ministers at their hotel late in the day, said a successful outcome from the talks could provide a significant boost towards resolving the conflict.

A successful deal, he said, "would have a major impact on humanitarian access, and in turn would have a positive impact on the way the political process would be relaunched".

- 'Back to square one' -

Washington wants concrete steps from Russia to force Assad to stop bombing Syrian citizens, respect a ceasefire and lift the siege of the northern city of Aleppo.

"We need to see a situation where it's clear within whatever is being agreed with the Russians that there won't be a siege of Aleppo," a third senior US official told reporters.

Pro-regime forces have taken back a strategically important district on Aleppo's southern outskirts, rolling back nearly every gain from a month-long rebel offensive there.

The government advance further sealed off Aleppo's opposition-held eastern districts, and regime troops backed by the Russian air force have completely encircled opposition-held neighbourhoods.

And in another major blow to the rebels, the military commander of the Army of Conquest, the largest rebel alliance, was killed in an air strike, Islamist sources said Thursday.

The former Al-Nusra Front, an Al-Qaeda affiliate recently renamed Fateh al-Sham Front, announced "the martyrdom" of Abu Omar Sarakeb, the biggest setback to the group since it formed early last year.

"Rebels are now back to square one, under an even more ruthless siege," Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the observatory, told AFP.

In Aleppo, desperate civilians described a battle for survival.

"This siege is much harder than the first one. During the first one, there were at least some products still in the market -- now there's nothing at all," said one shopper, Omar al-Beik.

"No products, no vegetables, no sugar. Nothing. We came to buy a few things to cook and we couldn't find a thing," he told AFP.

- 'Starving in two weeks' -

In the nearby Al-Sakhur district, Abu Omar said he was bracing himself for more shortages.

He and his three children are surviving on rice, bulghur wheat and lentils, and had not had bread in three days.

"There's a risk that we'll be starving in two weeks," he said.

The Syrian war began as a pro-democracy revolt in 2011 but morphed into a multi-front conflict after the regime unleashed a crackdown.

It has killed more than 290,000 people and forced more than half the population to flee their homes.

US Secretary of State John Kerry (L) and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (R) in Geneva on September 9, 2016 Kevin Lamarque (POOL/AFP)

Syrians run for cover during reported government air strikes in the rebel-held town of Douma on September 9, 2016 Abd Doumany (AFP)
North Korea star newsreader back to announce nuclear test

North Korea deployed its most trusted newsreader to herald its fifth nuclear test on Friday, as the citizens of Pyongyang gathered to watch the announcement on state television.

The special broadcast was aired at around 1:00 pm Pyongyang time (0430 GMT), just a few hours after South Korea said its neighbour had conducted another nuclear test.

Wearing her trademark pink and black traditional Korean dress, veteran announcer Ri Chun-Hee beamed as she told viewers of KCTV -- and the world -- that the latest test had put the North's nuclear programme on a "higher level".

North Koreans watch on a giant screen in front of Pyongyang railway station as presenter Ri Chun-Hee announces a nuclear test on September 9, 2016 Kim Won-Jin (AFP)

Using North Korea's full, formal name -- the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) -- Ri said the test confirmed the country was capable of producing a nuclear warhead that could be mounted on strategic ballistic missiles.

"The standardisation of the nuclear warhead will enable the DPRK to produce at will... a variety of smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear warheads of higher strike power," she intoned.

The star announcer -- believed to be in her early 70s -- has appeared whenever North Korea wants to boast of its latest achievements or needs to make an important announcement.

Ri was chosen to announce the deaths of the country's founder Kim Il-Sung and his son Kim Jong-Il.

In Friday's three-minute broadcast, which followed a propaganda film on the life of Kim Il-Sung, Ri said the North stood ready to "retaliate against the enemies".

"We will take further measures to bolster the state's nuclear force in quality and quantity for safeguarding the dignity and the right to existence of the DPRK, and genuine peace from the US's increasing threats of a nuclear war," Ri thundered, according to an official English translation.

The broadcast, which was aired on public screens in Pyongyang, was North Korea's first official confirmation of its fifth nuclear test.

Residents who had gathered on concrete benches in the tightly-controlled city to watch the broadcast expressed their delight at the test, which they said would make them safer.

"We don't worry about any kind of provocation by the enemies," said one man, who did not give his name.

"And our country is prepared in every way to make it possible to use the nukes."

Ordinary North Koreans usually express only officially-sanctioned views when questioned by foreign news organisations.

Another woman said it would improve North Korea's ability to stand up for itself against Washington.

"US bastards may be saying this and that, but we fear nothing as our military power has strengthened further," she said.
Philippine leader's insults, drug war worry US investors

American investors in the Philippines on Friday warned that President Rodrigo Duterte's brutal drugs war and foul-mouthed tirades, including branding US leader Barack Obama a "son of a whore", could hit foreign investment.

Obama cancelled a meeting with Duterte after the firebrand leader unleashed a barrage of criticism of the US president, saying he would not be lectured about human rights over his crackdown on narcotics, which has seen police and shadowy assassins kill nearly 3,000 people.

The crackdown has seen Duterte's domestic popularity soar but has prompted widespread international condemnation from the United Nations and human rights watchdogs, and the American Chamber of Commerce in the Philippines said it was also damaging investor sentiment.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte was elected to office in a landslide this year after pledging to kill 100,000 people in an unprecedented war on crime Roslan Rahman (AFP/File)

The "increased number of killings during the heightened anti-drug campaign is harming the country's image... some investors are now asking whether this campaign reduces the rule of law," it said in a statement sent to AFP Friday.

The US is the Philippines' largest trading partner after China, and a key source of foreign direct investment.

The traditionally strong ties between the US and the Philippines have been "strained by language from Philippine leaders" which is also creating "investor concern," the statement said.

Relations saw a spectacular setback this week when Duterte branded Obama a "son of a whore" after being told the US president planned to raise concerns about his war on drugs.

Obama cancelled a planned meeting over the insults, but later briefly met with Duterte on the sidelines of a regional summit in Laos, urging him to conduct his crime war "the right way".

The high-profile spat "could harm the long-standing optimism of American business to invest in the Philippines," the chamber of commerce added.

Duterte was elected to office in a landslide this year after pledging to kill 100,000 people in an unprecedented war on crime.

He vowed in the campaign that so many bodies would be dumped in Manila Bay that the fish there would grow fat from feeding on them.

Duterte has also repeatedly promised to protect police from prosecution if they are charged over the deaths and insisted human rights cannot get in the way of his war.
Duterte says did not insult Obama, calls UN chief 'fool'

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte insisted Friday he had not intended to insult US leader Barack Obama, but immediately took aim at another global figure by labelling UN chief Ban Ki-moon a "fool".

Duterte sparked a storm on the eve of an Asian summit this week by labelling Obama a "son of a whore", prompting the US president to cancel a planned meeting. The pair met briefly later at the gathering in Laos after Duterte expressed regret.

But acid-tongued Duterte on Friday said the Philippine expression "putangina" should not be taken at face value, and it was "an ordinary expression (used) by everyone".

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte speaks during the closing ceremony of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Vientiane on September 8, 2016 Ye Aung Thu (AFP)

"It's son of a bitch or son of a gun. It's not son of a whore," he told an audience of Filipinos during a visit to the Indonesian capital Jakarta.

He insisted his remarks were not directed at Obama but at the US State Department, which has raised concerns over potential human rights violations in Duterte's anti-crime campaign which has left almost 3,000 dead in just over two months.

"I got really angry about these threats over this human rights issue. This is the fault of the crazy people in the State Department," he said.

Duterte said he had clarified his comments to Obama when they met.

The Philippine leader has become famous for his profane outbursts, and has branded Pope Francis and the US ambassador to Manila "sons of whores".

The United Nations has also spoken out against his crime crackdown and on Friday Duterte added UN chief Ban, who spoke at the Asian summit, to the list of those he has insulted.

"I told myself, you're just one more fool," Duterte said of Ban.

"I will continue the campaign against the criminals. I do not have any pity for them," he added.

"I don't give a shit. I am the president of the Philippines, not the republic of the international community."

Duterte was elected to office in a landslide this year after pledging to kill 100,000 people in an unprecedented war on crime. But his brutal crackdown has sparked a wave of international condemnation.
Cambodian opposition leader convicted as political pressure rises

A leading Cambodian opposition politician was convicted Friday in a trial criticised by rights groups as long-ruling Prime Minister Hun Sen's latest effort to hobble rivals ahead of 2018 elections.

Acting opposition leader Kem Sokha was sentenced to five months in prison for refusing to appear in court for a case related to an alleged sex scandal.

"The (court) decided to convict Kem Sokha, age 63, to five months in jail," said judge Keo Mony.

Acting opposition leader Kem Sokha makes a speech at the Cambodia National Rescue Party headquarters in Phnom Penh on September 9, 2016 Tang Chhin Sothy (AFP)

The politician has spent the past few months holed up in the headquarters of his Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) to avoid arrest, amid threats from Hun Sen that he could be jailed at any time.

But he made a rare appearance Friday morning to speak to hundreds of supporters gathered outside the party's office.

He condemned the one-day trial, which he boycotted, and accused the government of trying to "end my political career".

"Using the court to violate my political and election rights is not only making the upcoming election illegitimate, but it also threatens Cambodia's democracy," he told a crowd as police looked on.

Human Rights Watch has lambasted the case as the latest move in "an increasingly violent Cambodian government campaign to prevent free and fair elections in 2018".

According to the watchdog, two opposition MPS are currently in prison, at least 10 more are facing charges, and more than 20 political activists and rights workers have faced legal action over the past year.

The opposition party's top leader and Hun Sen's chief rival, Sam Rainsy, has spent nearly one year in self-imposed exile to avoid arrest warrants he claims are politically-motivated.

"Prime Minister Hun Sen is using every trick in the book to neutralise the opposition," HRW's Asia Director Brad Adams said in a statement ahead of Friday's trial.

The wily premier has loomed over Cambodian politics for three decades, steering the impoverished nation out of the ashes of civil war.

But opposition groups have gained ground amid growing disillusionment with endemic corruption, rights abuses and political repression.
US, Japan warn against using Samsung Galaxy Note 7 on planes

Japanese aviation authorities on Friday followed their US counterparts by urging passengers not to turn on or charge Samsung Galaxy Note 7 smartphones on aircraft following reports of explosions from faulty batteries.

The South Korean smartphone maker last week suspended sales of the "phablet" and recalled 2.5 million units following the reports.

"In light of recent incidents and concerns raised by Samsung about its Galaxy Note 7 devices, the Federal Aviation Administration strongly advises passengers not to turn on or charge these devices on board aircraft and not to stow them in any checked baggage," the US watchdog said in a statement Thursday.

Samsung says it will recall 2.5 million units of the Galaxy Note 7 which has been exported around the world Jung Yeon-Je (AFP/File)

Qantas and Virgin Australia also told customers Thursday not to use or charge the devices on their planes.

Japan's transport ministry followed suit on Friday.

The phone is not yet on sale in Japan, but the ministry cited accidents overseas for its warning, which also cautioned against using or charging them onboard, or stowing them in checked bags.

"Until such time that safety measures are taken by Samsung, the ministry has requested that Japanese airlines strongly communicate instructions to passengers regarding bringing Galaxy Note 7 on board planes," the ministry said in a statement.
Iran hajj chief accuses Saudis of ignoring security risks

The head of Iran's Hajj Organisation accused Saudi Arabia on Friday of deliberately barring Iranians from the pilgrimage and refusing to discuss security measures despite last year's deadly stampede.

Tens of thousands of Iranians who usually attend will be absent from the annual pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia when it starts on Saturday, after talks between the increasingly bitter rivals fell apart in May.

"How are you going to invite 1.5 million pilgrims and not even allow yourself to think about the security measures?" Said Ohadi, head of Iran's Hajj Organisation, told AFP.

Muslim pilgrims circle the Kaaba, Islam's holiest shrine, at the Grand Mosque in Saudi Arabia's holy city of Mecca, on September 8, 2016 Ahmad Gharabli (AFP)

Iran had the highest confirmed death toll among foreign nationalities in last year's stampede with hundreds of its citizens killed.

An AFP tally found that a total of at least 2,300 people died, but Tehran says the overall toll was much higher.

"Seven thousand people were martyred, were killed, from 39 countries," Ohadi said.

Saudi Arabia says the figure was only 769, but has refused to release the details of its investigation.

Ohadi said that during this year's negotiations the Saudis simply fell back on verses of the Koran stating that anyone who enters Saudi Arabia has "full security".

"Last year we had those verses in the Koran too."

Ohadi said the last straw in the hajj talks was a demand from the Saudis that Iranian pilgrims "cannot have any contact with any Muslim from any other country", despite the Koranic verses' emphasis on the importance of mingling with Muslims from around the world during the pilgrimage.

His Saudi counterpart Mohammed Bentin told him there were concerns that Iranians would try to "convert" Sunnis to their Shiite branch of Islam, Ohadi said.

"I said, minister, this is really funny. If you are not ready to accept the Iranians, please very frankly and transparently say that you are not going to allow Iranians. Why? Because you are afraid they will expose what happened last year."

Saudi Arabia has countered that Tehran made "unacceptable" demands during the talks, including the right to organise demonstrations "that would cause chaos".

But right from the start, Ohadi said there was "very bad hospitality" and "weird attitudes" from the Saudis -- including a refusal to give delegates diplomatic entry, or even cars to their hotel.

Ohadi said depriving the Iranian faithful of the chance to perform the hajj was "unacceptable", especially given the 15-20 year waiting list.

The Saudis "believe they are the owners -- that Mecca and Medina are their properties," he said.

"No -- they are the properties of Islam."
Asia eyes pivot from Obama presidency

After eight years of dealing with America's self-styled "Pacific president", Asian leaders will soon have to work with a new administration.

Barack Obama's last trip to Asia was always going to have a sense of nostalgia and finality.

He received a farewell round of applause from G20 leaders in China and South East Asian leaders paid tribute to him Laos. Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi thanked him for nudging her country towards democracy.

Outgoing US President Barack Obama's last trip to Asia was always going to have a sense of nostalgia and finality Noel Celis (AFP)

From White House staff to Obama himself, his regional swansong capped the "pivot to Asia" policy of his eight-year term and was thick with a sense of an administration winding down.

"My hope and expectation is my successor will in fact sustain this kind of engagement," Obama said as he rounded off his trip in Laos.

During his two terms in the White House, Obama has tried to shift America's focus away from Middle East quagmires and toward rapidly growing Asia.

He has mended relations with Myanmar, Vietnam and Laos, while bolstering regional blocs and providing a counterbalance to China's regional ambitions.

But questions hang over whether Obama's pro-Asia stance will be sustained.

Donald Trump has called into question the mutual defence treaties with Japan and South Korea, which have been the cornerstones of US policy in Asia since World War II.

But overall the Republican nominee's strategic thinking on foreign policy has been hard to gauge, and Asian diplomats readily admit they have struggled to find interlocutors in his campaign team.

- China relations -

Trump's rival Hillary Clinton, as Obama's former top envoy, was intimately involved in creating and implementing the "Asian pivot", which has bound Washington tighter to the region and provided a counterpoint to China's dominance.

As secretary of state, Clinton regularly courted Beijing's ire on the South China Sea -- which she described as part of the US's "national interest" -- as well as its human rights record.

Clinton, however, opposes the ratification of the 12-member Trans-Pacific Partnership, which notably omits China.

As Obama's potential successor, Clinton's opposition to the so-called TPP pact "is going to push (US-allies in Asia) to be even more cautious about upsetting China", said China expert Bill Bishop, author of the Sinocism newsletter.

"Without a very significant economic element of the rebalance, it's isn't clear that the rebalance is going to work," he added.

"For allies in the region, security in Asia is very important, but so are the economics. If they are not delivering economically then they could lose power."

- Troubled waters -

The South China Sea will likely represent one of the biggest foreign policy challenges to the next US president.

During Obama's time in the White House, China has aggressively asserted its territorial claims over the vital waterway.

Obama has insisted on America's right to fly or sail where it likes, but he has also indicated that the US will not go to war over a remote islet, shoal or reef.

Under this world view, territorial integrity, the rule of law and upholding treaty obligations are desirable, but not necessarily worth risking a great power conflagration or the blood of US sailors.

He has also been wary of escalating disputes with actors who have a more immediate interest at stake.

The region is watching closely to see whether Beijing uses the time between now and the next administration to irreversibly change facts on the ground.

The declaration of an air identification zone or positioning of anti-aircraft batteries, would also virtually oblige the next president to react strongly from day one.

Disputed claims in the South China Sea Adrian LEUNG, Gal ROMA (AFP)

During his two terms, US President Barack Obama (centre) has tried to shift America's focus away from Middle East quagmires and toward rapidly growing Asia Ye Aung Thu (AFP)

US presidential nominee Donald Trump has called into question the mutual defence treaties with Japan and South Korea Yuri Cortez (AFP/File)
How do you solve a problem like North Korea?

North Koreas fifth nuclear test is yet more evidence of how ineffective sanctions are in deterring Pyongyang while China is unwilling or unable to intervene, analysts say, with some arguing a new approach might be necessary -- engagement.

Since Pyongyang's first nuclear test sent tremors worldwide, it has been hit by five sets of United Nations sanctions over its atomic and missile programmes.

The carrot has been tried as well as the stick, with offers of food aid if Pyongyang abandons its weapons.

People watch file footage of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un at a railway station in Seoul on September 9, 2016 Jung Yeon-Je (AFP)

It has pursued them regardless, even as its own people have regularly suffered crippling food shortages over the years, under both Kim Jong-Il and his son and successor Kim Jong-Un.

His rule -- the third reign of the Kim dynasty -- has seen former top officials executed, including his own uncle, and blood-curdling threats of war against the South and the US, interspersed with appeals for peace.

At the same time he has yet to visit Beijing to pay his respects to China's rulers, his country's key diplomatic protector and provider of trade and aid.

Even so, and despite Friday's new test, Beijing is unlikely "to opt for significantly greater pressure on the DPRK", said Bonnie Glaser, senior adviser for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington.

China prefers "diplomatic engagement with Pyongyang that results in a peace treaty and an eventual decision by the DPRK to give up its nuclear weapons in exchange for economic assistance and US diplomatic recognition," she said.

Each successive test has been met with greater outrage and hand-wringing from the international community, to no avail.

Washington has long pushed the Asian giant to up the pressure on its unruly neighbour, but it is not clear how rigorously Beijing has enforced sanctions and tensions between the world's top two economies have risen.

Without Beijing's help, analysts agree, sanctions are a lost cause.

Friday's test "shows that our approach to North Korea has failed, we haven't managed to deter their nuclear ambitions," said Jenny Town, managing editor of 38 North, a website focusing on North Korea analysis.

"Without China, this is a losing battle, we need cooperation and collaboration to find solutions," she said.

John Carlson of the Lowy Institute in Sydney took a similar stance.

"The only way to change the DPRK's behaviour is to engage with it and see if there are incentives that can persuade it to freeze its nuclear and missile programmes," he said.

But prospects for engagement look dim. US President Barack Obama has his hands full with conflict in Syria, and South Korean president Park Geun-hye has held a hard line against the North.

- Driving a wedge -

While China has been increasingly frustrated by the North's defiance, Beijing fears both a flood of refugees if its neighbour is plunged into turmoil, and the presence of US troops on its border in a unified Korea.

Relations have improved recently, with top North Korean party official and former foreign minister Ri Su Yong making a rare visit to China and meeting Xi in May -- just months after Pyongyang's fourth nuclear test.

The North may have even informed China of its intention to stage Friday's blast, said Adam Cathcart an expert on Sino-North Korean relations at the University of Leed in the UK.

"North Korean diplomat Choe Son-hui went to Beijing on Tuesday, and slipped out sometime thereafter -- it is quite possible that the purpose of that visit was to privately inform Chinese comrades of the planned test," he said.

A recent agreement between Washington and Seoul to station a missile defence system known as THAAD in the South has infuriated Beijing, which says the hardware poses a significant threat to regional security.

"THAAD brought China and North Korea closer by driving a wedge between China and South Korea," said John Delury, a historian at Yonsei University in Seoul.

Beijing's foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said Friday that "unilateral" actions taken by "relevant parties" had made the situation "more tense and complicated", in remarks apparently directed at South Korea and the US.

"To some degree, North Korea is using its nuclear plan to manipulate Chinas relationship with South Korea and the US," said Zhang Liangui, a professor at the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee school.

Without Chinese action, Cathcart said, "there is very little that can be done to retaliate or otherwise make the North Korean leadership feel more pain as a result of the test".

"North Korea has done very thorough work in insulating itself from intrusive global systems generally, and the people are well accustomed to outside sanctions."

North Korea AFP (AFP)

North Korea said the fifth nuclear test, which comes after a series of ballistic missile launches had realised the country's goal of being able to fit a miniaturised warhead on a rocket
Hajj in realtime: the spiritual goes virtual

Hajj has gone high-tech. A religious ritual performed 1,400 years ago by Prophet Mohammed and which drew believers arriving on foot and on camels for centuries is today broadcast live through cyberspace.

"Technology is now part of hajj," the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina in present-day Saudi Arabia, said Kamel Badawi, an engineer from Mecca who invented an "intelligent umbrella" with Palestinian colleague Manal Dandis.

Among its features, the umbrella uses solar energy to cool the user.

The Grand Mosque, Islam's holiest site draws close to two million faithful for the hajj, which this year starts formally on Saturday Ahmad Gharabli (AFP)

Pilgrims are also walking around with arms outstretched to broadcast their hajj live to family and friends by mobile phone.

Others have their eyes fixed on prayers they have downloaded.

It's a change that seems irreversible and dramatic.

Until recently, cameras were not even allowed into the Grand Mosque, Islam's holiest site which draws close to two million faithful for the hajj, which this year starts formally on Saturday.

The annual rite is one of the five pillars of Islam, which capable Muslims must perform at least once, marking the spiritual peak of their lives.

If they need clothing advice, or even diabetic information, that and all sorts of other support is available on Internet sites and applications.

The spiritual is also the virtual, affecting all aspects of hajj.

Air tickets can be bought online. Souvenir photos are uploaded, and imams, or prayer leaders, dispense guidance via the Internet.

As soon as Abdelhadi Zuraan, 27, and his wife had set foot in Saudi Arabia, home of Islam's holiest sites, they downloaded an official Saudi hajj application.

The Jordanian couple, based in South Korea, have been regularly using the app during the initial steps of their pilgrimage.

They spoke to AFP after photographing themselves near the Grand Mosque, Zuraan wearing all-white and his wife covered in a black veil.

They sent the pictures directly to their families.

Hazem Hamdi, 39, of Cairo, never lets his cellphone leave his hand.

"We learned the rituals before leaving home but, at any time, we can retrieve them with different applications," he said.

- A cacophony, distractions -

For researcher Shahed Amanullah, "the hajj is often likened to a personal conversation with God."

Technology has allowed pilgrims "to share this conversation with family and friends in realtime", he said.

Modern conveniences, however, could be seen to have their drawbacks.

"Pilgrims of the past were exhorted to exhibit patience in response to the hajj's physical ordeals," including long marches under an overwhelming sun, Amanullah wrote in an essay.

Today, the interior of the Grand Mosque is air conditioned. Giant fans with water sprays cool the exterior.

Pilgrimage routes through steep mountains are now eased with escalators. There is even a train to move hajjis from site to site.

Amanullah said a modern pilgrim's patience is now tested by "a constant cacophony of ringing mobile phones and visual distractions with familiar signage for Western brands".

It can prove difficult to pass through the groups of pilgrims as they pose for photos on their mobile phones.

At each sacred stop, uncountable photos, videos and hashtags are shared on social media.

Technology, for its part, can also have clear benefits, such as the umbrella developed by Badawi and Dandis.

To the simple parasol they added buttons, USB ports and solar cells.

The result is what they call the first umbrella to turn the sun into fresh air.

Solar energy powers a fan to refresh the pilgrims, while the umbrella handle can also serve to charge a telephone and provide GPS data.

Identifying their location is one of the pilgrims' main concerns, said Badawi.

He has spent decades volunteering to accompany Muslims from the four corners of the world around the city of his birth.

To help them find themselves in the crowds, the maze of streets and the alleys of temporary barricades designed to direct the flow of pilgrims, the two engineers also developed a mobile application.

"Wussul", or "arrival" in Arabic, is an interactive application that lists roads that traditional GPS does not recognise, Badawi explained.

"It will also permit, when we have finalised it, for groups to find their members if they ever get lost in the crowd," he said.

It's a tool the two engineers hope will prevent another tragedy like last year's stampede which killed around 2,300 pilgrims during the "Stoning of the Devil" ritual of the hajj.

Muslims pilgrims at the Grand Mosque in the Saudi holy city of Mecca broadcasted their hajj live to family and friends by mobile phone Ahmad Gharabli (AFP)

Saudi engineer Kamel Badawi (left) shows his invention, the smart umbrella, which among its features uses solar energy to cool the user, in the Saudi holy city of Mecca, on September 8, 2016 Ahmad Gharabli (AFP/File)

Saudi authorities gave electronic bracelets to pilgrims ahead of the annual Hajj Muslim pilgrimage in the holy city of Mecca on September 8, 2016 Ahmad Gharabli (AFP)
Iranians protest exclusion from hajj

With Iranians barred from the annual hajj pilgrimage, thousands protested in Tehran on Friday and officials criticised Saudi Arabia's refusal to discuss last year's deadly stampede.

Around 64,000 Iranians allocated places for the hajj under a quota system will be absent when it starts on Saturday, after talks between the increasingly bitter rivals fell apart earlier this year.

As a war of words grows between the two regional rivals, several thousand people took to the streets of the Iranian capital after the Friday weekly prayers.

Iranians participate in an anti-Saudi demonstration in Tehran on September 9, 2016

The Saudis have "blocked the path to Allah. It's a crime and they must be tried," said Javad Zolfaghari, a cleric who joined the protests.

In an interview with AFP, the head of Iran's Hajj Organisation blamed the Saudis for refusing to discuss security measures despite the stampede that killed thousands during last year's hajj.

"How are you going to invite 1.5 million pilgrims and not even allow yourself to think about the security measures?" asked Said Ohadi.

He said that during negotiations in April and May, the Saudis simply fell back on verses of the Koran holy book stating that anyone who enters Saudi Arabia has "full security".

"Last year we had those verses in the Koran too," said Ohadi.

An AFP tally found that a total of at least 2,300 people died in last year's stampede, including 464 Iranians, the highest confirmed death toll among foreigners who died in the tragedy.

But Tehran says the overall toll was much higher.

"Seven thousand people were martyred, were killed, from 39 countries," Ohadi said.

Saudi Arabia says the figure was only 769, but has refused to release the details of its investigation.

Ohadi said the last straw in the hajj talks was a demand from the Saudis that Iranian pilgrims "cannot have any contact with any Muslim from any other country".

That was despite the Koranic verses' emphasis on the importance of mingling with Muslims from around the world during the pilgrimage to Islam's holiest sites in Mecca and Medina, in western Saudi Arabia, he said.

- 'Biased support' -

Saudi Arabia has countered that Tehran had made "unacceptable" demands during the talks, including the right to organise demonstrations "that would cause chaos".

But right from the start, Ohadi said there was "very bad hospitality" and "weird attitudes" from the Saudis -- including a refusal to give delegates diplomatic entry, or even cars to their hotel.

Ohadi said depriving the Iranian faithful of the chance to perform the hajj was "unacceptable", especially given the 15-20 year waiting list.

The Saudis "believe they are the owners -- that Mecca and Medina are their properties," he said.

"No -- they are the properties of Islam."

Also on Friday, foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi on called on Arab foreign ministers to end their "unilateral, biased and unjust support" for Saudi Arabia and instead ask Riyadh to stop "supporting terrorism in the region".

His comments come after the council of Arab foreign ministers Thursday weighed in on the bitter dispute between Iran and Saudi Arabia over the hajj pilgrimage.

On Monday, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei questioned Riyadh's management of Islam's holy sites, saying the "cursed, evil" Saudi ruling family did not deserve to be the custodian of the shrines in Mecca and Medina.

Around 64,000 Iranians allocated places for the hajj under a quota system will be absent when it starts on Saturday
UN Security Council to meet Friday on North Korea nuclear test

The UN Security Council will meet on Friday to discuss North Korea's fifth and most powerful nuclear test to date.

The 15 council members will meet at 3:00 pm (1900 GMT) for urgent consultations, at the request of the United States and Japan, said the New Zealand mission.

New Zealand holds this month's presidency of the Security Council.

UN Security Council has approved five sets of sanctions since it first tested a nuclear device in 2006 Kena Betancur (AFP/File)

North Korea's state media said the test, which comes after a series of ballistic missile launches, had realized the country's goal of being able to fit a miniaturized warhead on a rocket.

The blast at the Punggye-ri nuclear site was the North's fifth and most powerful yet at 10 kilotons, according to experts.

The council has strongly condemned North Korea's missile launches and vowed earlier this week to take "further significant measures" against Pyongyang.

Japan is calling for new sanctions, but China, Pyongyang's ally, has repeatedly stressed the need to avoid an escalation of tension on the Korean peninsula.
Nearly 1.5 million in Saudi for first post-stampede hajj

Nearly 1.5 million pilgrims have converged on western Saudi Arabia for the annual hajj where new measures aim to prevent a recurrence of last year's stampede which killed around 2,300.

The stampede legacy has contributed to renewed tensions between Saudi Arabia and its regional rival Iran, which is not sending pilgrims for the first time in nearly three decades.

While the main rites of the six-day event begin on Saturday, pilgrims have already been swirling around the holy Kaaba at the Grand Mosque in Mecca, a procession that continues day and night.

Muslim pilgrims circle the Kaaba in the Saudi city of Mecca on September 9, 2016 Ahmad Gharabli (AFP)

It is one of the first rites of the pilgrimage, which is among the largest religious gatherings in the world.

The hajj is one of the five pillars of Islam, which capable Muslims must perform at least once, marking the spiritual peak of their lives.

Rich and poor alike come dressed in the same white garments.

"We don't come here with fear in our hearts," said Naouri Abdelkarim, 50, of Casablanca, Morocco.

Death can come at any time, pilgrims say, and for Lawan Nasir, 45, that meant there was no reason to avoid the hajj even though he lost a cousin in last year's stampede.

"The pains have not dulled a bit," but it would be "silly" to stay away, the Nigerian told AFP.

In one of several safety measures implemented after the stampede, access to the Kaaba is suspended during prayers, and the walk around it is stopped to avoid overcrowding.

The Kaaba is a black cubic structure that Muslims across the globe face while they pray.

Security has also been reinforced around Islam's holiest site, where officers in red berets and camouflage uniforms man green plastic barricades to control the crowd.

During the main weekly Friday prayers, the white-clad throng made the area around the Kaaba resemble a snow-dusted field from above.

Worshippers overflowed into surrounding streets shut to allow access for hundreds of thousands of people as a helicopter monitored the scene.

Pilgrims have also been told to follow the rules.

"They said not to stray from our group, not to linger when buses arrive and depart, and to properly respect the designated routes," said Rasha Mohammed, 36, of Alexandria, Egypt.

With temperatures of 43 Celsius (109 Fahrenheit) as they marched, some pilgrims seemed faint. They carried water and tried to help each other under the unyielding sun.

- 'Absence of transparency' -

The kingdom has begun issuing pilgrims with identification bracelets, after some foreign officials expressed concern about difficulties in identifying the stampede dead.

Each bracelet carries a bar code readable by smartphone. It holds data including the pilgrim's identity, nationality, and place of lodging in Mecca, the vice secretary of the ministry of hajj and umrah, Issa Rawas, told AFP.

He said: "The aim is to equip all pilgrims" from abroad, who are expected to number more than 1.4 million, according to the latest official figures.

The rest of the numbers will be made up of people from inside Saudi Arabia.

Zakou Bakar, 50, a pilgrim from Niger, said the bracelet was reassuring.

"If I die or if there are problems -- of course we hope not -- but if it does happen I know I will be identified," he told AFP.

Despite the Saudi steps, the head of Iran's Hajj Organisation, Said Ohadi, on Friday asked how the kingdom could invite the world's Muslims and not allow questions about the security measures to be raised.

Absent from this year's hajj are tens of thousands of Iranians after talks between Tehran and Riyadh on logistics and security fell apart in May.

Thousands of people in Tehran on Friday protested their country's absence from the pilgrimage.

Iran said 464 nationals died in last year's crush, the highest number of fatalities reported by any country.

Jane Kinninmont, deputy head of the Middle East and North Africa programme at Chatham House, a London think tank, said the stampede exposed "clearly some big organisational failings, to say the least".

There was also "an absence of real transparency" about what went wrong, she said.

Saudi Arabia has an economic stake in ensuring pilgrims' comfort and safety.

As part of efforts to diversify its oil-dependent economy, the kingdom wants to foster a year-round religious tourism sector relying on millions who perform the umrah, or lesser pilgrimage.

The hajj Laurence Chu, Gal Roma (AFP)

Muslim pilgrims circle around the Kaaba at the Grand Mosque, in the Saudi city of Mecca, on September 9, 2016 Ahmad Gharabli (AFP)
Campaign manager: Trump believes Obama was born in US

A top Donald Trump aide said Friday the Republican nominee now believes President Barack Obama was born in the United States, seeking to shelve the "birther" controversy that hurt Trump's standing with minority voters.

"He believes President Obama was born here... He was born in Hawaii," Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway told CNN.

The remarks echoed those of Trump surrogate Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, who went on television late Thursday to assure Americans that Trump now accepts the legitimacy of Obama's citizenship.

A reporter holds a copy of President Barack Obama's long form birth certificate in 2011 Brendan Smialowski (Getty/AFP/File)

"Donald Trump believes now that (Obama) was born in the United States," Giuliani told MSNBC.

"I believe it. He believes it. We all believe it. It took a long time to get out."

Trump was the most prominent early proponent of a theory that Obama, the nation's first black president, was not born in the United States and therefore, under the US Constitution, ineligible to be commander in chief.

Trump embraced the long-debunked "birther movement" in early 2011, eager to push the theory as a way to connect with white conservatives and catapult himself into prominence while he mulled his own run for the White House.

That year, he routinely called on Obama to produce his long-form birth certificate, a demand that African-American leaders warned was stirring up racial animosity in the middle of Obama's presidency.

Obama eventually did produce the document in 2011, which appeared at the time to put the matter to rest once and for all.

But in August 2012, just three months before that year's election, Trump revived the controversy with a stunning tweet: "An 'extremely credible source' has called my office and told me that @BarackObama's birth certificate is a fraud."

Nearly four years later, in 2016, Trump rode to primary victory thanks overwhelmingly to white support.

But with Democratic rival Hillary Clinton leading him in most polls, Trump will need to expand his base of support in order to win the White House. Distancing himself from his birther claims is seen as an important step in that effort.

Asked why Trump himself has not yet announced his belief that Obama was born in the United States, Conway said "you have to ask him."
Ping warns of 'instability' if Gabon court fails to order vote recount

Gabon's opposition leader Jean Ping warned Friday that the country faced "long-lasting instability" if the top court rejects his appeal for a recount after his narrow loss in the presidential election to Ali Bongo.

"Yes, I greatly fear that another false step by the Constitutional Court will be the cause of deep and long-lasting instability in Gabon," Ping told hundreds of supporters in Libreville.

"There is no doubt that if the Constitutional Court ignores the reality of the Gabonese vote, the people, who would have nothing left to lose... will take the future into their own hands," said Ping, who continues to refer to himself as "president-elect".

Gabon's opposition leader Jean Ping delivers a speech at his headquarters in Libreville Steve Jordan (AFP)

He insists he was the winner of the August 27 poll, which, according to provisional results, saw Bongo re-elected by fewer than 6,000 votes, and prompted several days of rioting in the capital.

On Thursday Ping turned to the court charging there were anomalies in the vote count. The court has 15 days to hand down its ruling.

In particular, Ping is asking for a recount in Haut-Ogooue province, a Bongo family stronghold where the incumbent won more than 95 percent of the vote on an official turnout of more than 99 percent.

An EU election observer mission has also stated that there was a "clear anomaly in the final result in Haut-Ogooue".

- 'Apprehensive' -

Ping admitted that he was "apprehensive" about getting a fair hearing at the court, "which the Gabonese call the Tower of Pisa because it always leans to the side of the ruling power".

But he added to supporters: "2016 is not 2009," referring to the last presidential election when the Constitutional Court upheld Bongo's victory.

The central African nation has been ruled by the Bongo family since 1967.

The rancour sparked by the poll dispute was in further evidence at Ping's headquarters Friday as supporters escorted a television journalist from the premises amid accusations state broadcasters Gabon Television and Gabon24 had been deliberately under-reporting the death toll from recent unrest.

Reporter Jean-Raoul Mbadinga was frogmarched out amid a barrage of insults hurled by hundreds of people who had gathered to hear Ping's address.

"I came as I do for (covering) Bongo. I am a journalist," Mbadinga protested.

Ping supporters say state broadcasters have understated the scale of post-poll violence and add that interior ministry figures of just three deaths are highly inaccurate.

- Bodies in 'common grave' -

"Credible sources tell us there is a freezer box at Oloumi (a Libreville suburb) where bodies have been hidden," Ping stated.

He also alluded to "a common grave" in the city and claimed that the Gasepga undertakers firm had been refusing to take delivery of any more bodies.

Members of one Libreville family meanwhile told AFP they had discovered the body of a relative taken by emergency services to the Gasepga morgue.

They said Prosper Mesmain Nang Alongo, a 42-year-old married father of six, had been taken to the morgue in the early hours of September 1, hours after the electoral commission had declared Bongo the election winner.

Alongo's head showed the impact of a bullet, the family said, while indicating they did not know the exact circumstances in which he died.

Supporters of Gabon's opposition leader Jean Ping gestures as they listen to a speech of Ping on September 9, 2016 at his headquarters in Libreville steve Jordan (AFP)
Turkey says Raqa operation could work with air support

Turkey said on Friday a ground operation could force out Islamic State (IS) extremists from their de facto capital of Raqa in Syria if it was supported by coalition air forces.

Speculation has grown of a possible joint Turkey-US operation to seize Raqa and possibly IS-held Mosul in northern Iraq after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan revealed he had discussed the issue with US counterpart Barack Obama at the G20 in China.

"If coalition forces give air support and our special forces take part, it is possible to be successful in clearing Daesh (IS) from Raqa and Mosul," Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said at a joint press conference with NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg.

The Islamic State group took control of the Syrian city of Raqa after pushing out government troops in 2013 - (Welayat Raqa/AFP/File)

The NATO secretary general was one of the top Western officials to visit Turkey in the wake of the July 15 attempted coup aimed at bringing down the Turkish government.

Cavusoglu referred to the capture of the border town of Jarabulus in northern Syria last month as an example of how a ground operation could remove jihadists.

Pro-Ankara Syrian opposition fighters -- referred to by Turkey as the Free Syrian Army (FSA) -- captured the town in just a day with Turkish support and are now pushing deeper into Syria.

"After the successful operation in Jarabulus, it was an example of how the Free Syrian Army could do certain things" with international support, he added.

The minister did not say from where the air support could come for a Raqa operation but Turkey hosts US warplanes at its Incirlik base.

Ankara launched its most ambitious military operation in Syria on August 24 against IS as well as a Syrian Kurdish militia linked to its own separatist rebels who launch attacks in Turkey.

The spokesperson of the US-led coalition against IS, John Dorrian, tweeted on Thursday that Turkey, the United States and Syrian opposition fighters were working "to come up with a game plan" for Raqa.

Cavusoglu repeated Ankara's call for a secure zone in northern Syria supported by a no-fly zone to protect hundreds of Syrian refugees who have voluntarily returned to Jarabulus this week.

But Stoltenberg said he believed that the bulk of the work on the ground inside Syria should be done by trained local forces rather than NATO troops.
New parasite species is named after Obama

US scientists have discovered a new species of a parasitic flatworm that infects turtles in Malaysia, and named it after Barack Obama as a way of honoring the US president.

The flatworm, coined Baracktrema obamai, is so unusual that it merits not only a new species designation, but its own genus, too.

"This is the first time such an action has been taken for this group of turtle parasites in 21 years," said the report in the Journal of Parasitology on September 8.

A US scientist said he was inspired to name a parasite after Obama in part because the worms "face incredible obstacles to complete their journey and must contend with the immune system of the host in order to mature and reproduce" Saul Loeb (AFP)

The new species was discovered by Thomas Platt, an expert on turtle parasites who recently retired from Saint Mary's College in the state of Indiana.

He said he was inspired to name the creature after Obama, in part because the worms "face incredible obstacles to complete their journey and must contend with the immune system of the host in order to mature and reproduce."

He was also influenced by doing genealogy research that traced his family and the US president's family back to a common ancestor.

"I have named a number of species after people I admire, from my father-in-law, my Ph.D. adviser, and good friends who are academics and/or amateur naturalists," Platt said in a statement.

"Baracktrema obamai will endure as long as there are systematists studying these remarkable organisms."

Scientists hope the discovery will improve public health by adding to research on a related flatworm that causes schistosomiasis, a disease that infects tens of millions of people per year around the world and can be deadly.
Bill allowing 9/11 victims to sue Saudi heads to Obama

The US House of Representatives passed legislation Friday that would allow relatives of victims of the 9/11 attacks to sue Saudi Arabia for compensation -- a move the White House has threatened to veto.

The Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act was approved in the House by unanimous voice vote some four months after its Senate passage -- and only two days before the 15th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

The government of Saudi Arabia, a US ally but also the home nation to 15 of the 19 September 11 hijackers, has worked hard to see the bill defeated.

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi join members of the House of Representatives on the steps of the US Capitol for a ceremony marking the anniversary of the September 11th attacks Win McNamee (Getty/AFP)

But it now heads to President Barack Obama's desk, where it faces an uncertain future.

The White House again signaled Friday it would veto the measure, because it would essentially waive the doctrine of sovereign immunity that protects nation states from civil suits or criminal prosecution.

But its easy passage in both chambers of Congress raises the specter of a veto override, which requires a two-thirds vote in the House and Senate. It would be the first time Obama would be dealt such a blow during his presidency.

"This legislation would change long-standing, international law regarding sovereign immunity," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said back in May, after the Senate unanimously approved the bill.

"The president of the United States continues to harbor serious concerns that this legislation would make the United States vulnerable in other court systems around the world," Earnest said.

The measure, known as JASTA, would allow attack survivors and relatives of terror victims to pursue cases in federal court against foreign governments and demand compensation if such governments are proven to bear some responsibility for attacks on US soil.

Senator John Cornyn, a sponsor of the original legislation, said he hopes Obama signs JASTA into law.

"Today's vote sends an unmistakable message that we should combat terrorism with every tool we have, and that the families of those lost in attacks like that on September 11th should have every means at their disposal to seek justice," Cornyn said.

- 'Blood on its hands?' -

Under current law, victims of terror attacks can only sue countries officially designated by the State Department as sponsors of terrorism, such as Iran and Syria.

No official Saudi complicity in the Al-Qaeda attacks of 9/11 has been proven, and the kingdom has never been formally implicated. It is not a designated sponsor of terrorism.

In February, Zacarias Moussaoui, dubbed the 20th hijacker, told US lawyers that members of the Saudi royal family donated millions of dollars to Al-Qaeda in the 1990s.

The Saudi embassy denied Moussaoui's claims. But his accusations revived debate over whether the Obama administration should release a still-classified 28-page section of the 9/11 Commission Report.

The documents were finally declassified and released in mid-July. They showed that while the United States probed links between the government of Saudi Arabia and the 9/11 attacks, it found multiple suspicions but no proven ties.

Texas Democrat Lloyd Doggett took to the House floor and pointed a finger squarely at Saudi Arabia.

"Wherever you see evidence of radical Islam, that extremism can usually be traced to preachers of hate from Saudi Arabia," he told the chamber.

"The kingdom has blood on its hands. Is it the blood of victims from 9/11? Possibly," he added.

"For our government to obstruct the 9/11 victims, their families, from seeking the truth about Saudi Arabia and its involvement is just flat wrong."
Egypt investigated Italian Regeni before kidnap, killing

Egyptian police investigated Italian student Giulio Regeni days before his abduction, torture and murder but dropped the probe after assessing he posed no threat, Egyptian and Italian prosecutors said Friday.

Regeni, a 28-year-old Cambridge University PhD student, disappeared on January 25 in central Cairo.

His body was later found by the side of a road bearing signs of brutal torture.

People hold an Italian flag with photos of student Giulio Regeni Filippo Monteforte (AFP/File)

Egypt has denied that its security forces were involved, but Italy recalled its ambassador to Cairo in April in protest at what it said was a lack of progress in the investigation.

The state prosecutor met his counterpart in Rome this week to further the investigation.

In a joint statement, the two prosecutors said Regeni, who was researching Egyptian street vendor trade unions, had been under investigation for three days by Egyptian police in January.

"The Egyptian state prosecutor pointed to information that the head of the street vendor union passed on specific information about the Italian student to Cairo police," the statement said.

"Police probed his activities for three days that concluded that his activities were of no concern to national security, and based on that dropped the investigation."

This is the first official Egyptian acknowledgement that Regeni had been on the radar of security services.

Trade unions are an especially sensitive political issue in Egypt, with successive governments fearing strikes and labour unrest.

Police officials had at first suggested Regeni might have died in a road accident, and have since offered little information on their investigation.

An Italian autopsy showed that his body was covered with cuts and his bones were broken, indicating he was hit with "fists, batons and hammers".

A letter "X" was carved on his forehead and hand, according to the report cited by Italian media.

His parents, Paola and Claudio Regeni, said the report suggested he had been tortured by a "professional".

"It seems clear to us that the torture inflicted, and the number of times our son had to endure it and the methods, can only be the perverse deed of some torture professional," they told Italian media on Wednesday.

In March, police linked a gang that it said extorted foreigners to Regeni's death, saying his belongings had been found in the home of the gang leader's wife.

He and four others were killed in a shootout with police.

Friday's statement said Egypt's prosecution service was still investigating the gang's links to Regeni's abduction.

The Egyptian and Rome prosecution would also continue trying to retrieve footage from CCTV cameras in a metro station that Regeni is believed to have entered before being abducted.

Egypt had said the programme to retrieve the deleted footage was very expensive, and had asked Italy to help.

It had also accused the Italian prosecution of "unconstitutionally" demanding thousands of phone records which it refused to provide.
Kuwaitis abandon battle for Kadhafi's 'Air Force One'

A Kuwaiti conglomerate has given up a prolonged battle for Moamer Kadhafi's luxury personal jetliner, which has been parked in France since 2012, lawyers said Friday.

Al-Kharafi group sought to have the opulently-furnished Airbus A340 seized over a debt related to a contract to build a beach resort in Libya.

Reviled by Libya's rebels as a symbol of Kadhafi's extravagance, the four-engined jetliner boasts a double bed, silver leather sofas, a private cinema and first-class seating for the dictator's female bodyguards and other staff.

Al-Kharafi group sought to have the opulently-furnished Airbus A340 seized over a debt related to a contract to build a beach resort in Libya Raymond Roig (AFP/File)

In 2012, shortly after Kadhafi was killed in the Libyan uprising, the plane was flown to the southwestern French city of Perpignan, where it underwent three million euros' ($3.36 million) worth of repairs and maintenance by an Air France sub-contractor.

Al-Kharafi's move to pull out of the case was recorded in an August 25 decision by the court in Perpignan, according to a document seen by AFP.

Its withdrawal brings the battle to a close.

"We have preferred to focus on the seizure of other Libyan assets, which will be more feasible," Al-Kharafi's French lawyer, Remi Barousse, said.

In 2006 Al-Kharafi signed a contract with the Kadhafi regime to build a beach resort on Libya's Mediterranean coast, which it was to run for 90 years, but Tripoli cancelled the deal unilaterally in 2010.

A Cairo court in 2013 ruled Al-Kharafi was owed $937 million (835 million euros) over the broken contract and the company filed to seize the plane to recover some of the money.

Its bid was opposed by a Libyan state entity, the Executive Authority for Special Flights (EASF), the owner of the plane.

In November 2015, a Perpignan court ruled that the plane had immunity from seizure as it was state property.

Kadhafi was killed in October 2011, after which the oil-rich country slid into chaos, with the Islamic State group making inroads.

A unity government was set up in Tripoli in late March after a UN-backed agreement in Morocco in December 2015.
Zimbabweans in fresh protests after ban lifted

Riot police in Zimbabwe fired tear gas Friday to break up the first anti-government protest in Harare since a court overturned a ban on street marches, an organiser said.

Hardlife Mudzingwa, spokesman for Tajamuka, a youth protest movement, said police blocked about 30 demonstrators marching towards parliament in the capital.

"We were singing and marching peacefully and the police blocked us," Mudzingwa told AFP.

A march against police brutality, similar to this rally on August 24, 2016, was broken up with tear gas on September 9, 2016 Wilfred Kajese (AFP/File)

"We refused to back down and when they realised we were not stopping, they fired tear gas."

Several protesters suffered minor injuries, he said.

Authorities had banned rallies in the capital following a wave of violent clashes between police and protesters.

President Robert Mugabe has vowed to crack down on the protests, which have erupted in recent months as Zimbabwe has been pitched into a deepening economic crisis.

The high court overturned the ban on Wednesday, despite Mugabe earlier blasting judges for "reckless" rulings allowing previous demonstrations.

Mudzingwa said Friday's march was against "police brutality and the threat by President Robert Mugabe to judges".

On Wednesday, the government announced plans to slash 25,000 jobs after it revealed that nearly 97 percent of its revenue goes towards public workers' salaries.
Obama warns of new sanctions after N. Korea nuclear test

President Barack Obama vowed Friday to push for new international sanctions in retaliation for the "grave threat" posed by North Korea's latest nuclear test.

The US leader consulted by telephone with South Korean President Park Geun-Hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe following news of the reclusive country's fifth and most powerful test.

"We agreed to work with the UN Security Council, our other Six-Party partners, and the international community to vigorously implement existing measures imposed in previous resolutions, and to take additional significant steps, including new sanctions," Obama said in a statement.

US President Barack Obama recently attended the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Vientiane, Laos Saul Loeb (AFP)

"The United States condemns North Korea's September 9 nuclear test in the strongest possible terms as a grave threat to regional security and to international peace and stability," he said.

Obama, who has pleaded since first taking office in 2009 for a world without nuclear weapons, denounced North Korea's actions as "unlawful and dangerous."

"To be clear, the United States does not, and never will, accept North Korea as a nuclear state," the president declared.

"As Commander in Chief, I have a responsibility to safeguard the American people and ensure that the United States is leading the international community in responding to this threat and North Korea's other provocations with commensurate resolve and condemnation," Obama said.

North Korea has been hit by five sets of UN sanctions since it first tested a nuclear device in 2006.

The Security Council will meet Friday at 3 pm (1900 GMT) at the request of the United States and Japan to discuss Pyongyang's latest test.

Obama reaffirmed, as he has done repeatedly following North Korean ballistic missile launches, the US commitment to "take necessary steps to defend our allies in the region," namely South Korea and Japan.

North Korea claimed Friday it had successfully tested a nuclear warhead that could be mounted on a missile, drawing condemnation from South Korea's government over the "maniacal recklessness" of young ruler Kim Jong-Un.
'Fragile' peace in Liberia as mission deadline looms: UN

Peace in Liberia remains "fragile" 13 years after the end of civil war, a top UN peacekeeping official has said, as the world body considers whether to withdraw its longstanding mission in the country.

UN peacekeepers largely ensured the country's security until June when they handed over to retrained domestic forces, ahead of a Security Council decision in December on whether to pull out its remaining personnel.

Government forces and rebel groups raped, maimed and massacred hundreds of thousands of people during two conflicts between 1989 and 2003, and the highly politicised police and army were disbanded after committing some of the worse abuses.

UN Security Council will soon seal the fate of the mission, known as UNMIL, which at its height counted 15,000 peacekeepers compared with just over 1,800 in 2016 Issouf Sanogo (AFP/File)

After completing a two-week assessment of the country's security capabilities and political institutions, UN Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, El Ghassim Wane, said Thursday the west African nation had come a long way but remained vulnerable.

"Liberians should be proud of their country's assumption of full responsibility for its own security on 30 June, which is a major milestone in consolidating peace," he said in a statement released by the UN.

"But building peace is a long-term endeavour, and while Liberia is on the right track, all of our interlocutors recognised that peace remains fragile."

Wane's recommendations will be used by the Security Council to seal the fate of the mission, known as UNMIL, which at its height counted 15,000 peacekeepers compared with just over 1,800 today.

A key flashpoint could be a presidential election due next year, which will represent the first time Liberia's own security forces have overseen an event of such national importance, Wane added.

The broadly unifying figure of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf will be absent from the 2017 vote, which is likely to be contested by several former warlords.

Despite being revamped, Liberia's police force is chronically underfunded, with basic equipment in short supply, salaries paltry and the number of armed officers in the low hundreds of a 5,170-strong corps.
Gazan killed by Israel troops on border: Palestinian ministry

Israeli troops shot and killed a Gazan teenager during clashes on Friday near the border fence, Palestinian sources said, with the Israeli military denying having used live fire.

Gaza health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra identified the teenager as 16-year-old Abdel Rahman al-Dabbagh, and said he was killed east of Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza.

Witnesses said a group of young Palestinians gathered near the security barrier between Israel and the Gaza Strip and threw stones at Israeli lookout towers, prompting soldiers to open fire.

Witnesses said a group of young Palestinians gathered near the security barrier between Israel and the Gaza Strip and threw stones at Israeli lookout towers Said Khatib (AFP/File)

Qudra said the teenager was hit in the head and taken to hospital where he was pronounced dead.

The Israeli army, however, stressed that forces only used tear gas to disperse the youths.

"Dozens of rioters breached the buffer zone and attempted to damage the security fence," a military statement read.

"Attempting to prevent an escalation of violence, the forces stationed at the border used tear gas that led to the dispersal of the riot."

"Following a preliminary review, the IDF (Israel defence forces) did not conduct the reported shooting," the statement read.

The border region between Israel and Gaza is the scene of near weekly Friday confrontations.

Witnesses said dozens of young Palestinians pelted the lookout tower with stones and that the soldiers repeatedly opened fire at them.

Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza have fought three wars since 2008 and there are frequent flare-ups along the border.

Israel regularly responds to rocket fire from militants in Gaza with air strikes.

Last month, it carried out dozens of strikes in Gaza in response to rocket fire, a greater response than usual.

The Gaza Strip is run by the Islamist Palestinian movement Hamas.
Qaeda chief threatens 'thousands' of 9/11 attacks

Al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri threatened the US that the September 11, 2001 attacks will be repeated "thousands of times", in a video marking the 15th anniversary of the deadly assault.

Addressing the United States in a video message posted Thursday on YouTube, Zawahiri blamed 9/11 on "your crimes against us".

He said that if these continue, 9/11 "will be repeated thousands of times".

Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri used to illustrate his latest audio message in which he calls on jihadists fighting in Syria's civil war to unite and fight for the establishment of an anti-US government in Damascus in 2013 - (SITE Intelligence Group/AFP/File)

On September 11, 2001, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were struck by hijacked aircraft, claiming 2,753 lives.

Further deadly attacks that day were carried out against the Pentagon and on a third commercial aircraft that crashed in rural Pennsylvania.

In the video, Zawahiri cited Washington's policies towards Arab and Muslim countries, its "occupation" of lands in their countries, and support for their "criminal and corrupt" governments.

His threats come as American officials say the United States has become hardened against such well-developed plots as 9/11 but remains vulnerable to small and home-grown attacks.

The 9/11 attacks spawned Washington's so-called war on terror, which initially focused on Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, before later targeting the Islamic State group which has seized territory in Syria, Iraq and Libya.
British-Iranian accused of Iran sedition jailed for 5 years: husband

A British-Iranian woman accused of taking part in anti-regime protests in 2009 has been sentenced to five years in prison, her husband said Friday, but added that the specific charges had not been revealed.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who works for the Thomson Reuters Foundation and was arrested on April 3, called her husband Richard on Tuesday to inform him of her sentence, he said in a statement.

"Nazanin has been sentenced for five years' imprisonment. The charges justifying this sentence remain secret," Richard Ratcliffe said.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe (L) works for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, a charity organisation coordinating training programmes for journalists around the world

He said the sentence was handed down on Tuesday, the day after Britain and Iran announced they were appointing new ambassadors to each other's countries as part of an easing of strained diplomatic ties following the Iran nuclear accord last year.

Britain's Foreign Office said it was "deeply concerned" by the reports and offered to help bring the couple's daughter back to Britain.

Thomson Reuters Foundation CEO Monique Villa said she was "outraged" by the sentence and stressed that her organisation had no involvement in Iran.

"This is a very serious condemnation that comes without any charges or evidence being made public... I am convinced of her innocence," she wrote.

The foundation is a charity organisation coordinating training programmes for journalists around the world.

Ratcliffe said that in her phone-call from prison Zaghari-Ratcliffe had told him: "I can't bear to be in this place any longer.

"It has been horrendous. I do not want to wake up each morning and remember where I am. I want to stay in my dreams," he quoted her as saying.

"It remains extraordinary that Nazanin's interrogators clarify the sentence but not the crime -- because there is none," he said, adding that the case was "shrouded in shadows and internal politics".

"Nazanin's detention and charges have always felt like she and Gabriella are being held as a political bargaining chip for internal and international politics," he said, referring to their daughter.

Britain's foreign ministry said Prime Minister Theresa May and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson had both raised the case with their counterparts in Iran.

"We continue to press the Iranians for consular access and for due process to be followed," it said.

Iran does not recognise dual citizenship.

- Daughter stranded in Iran -

Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards earlier accused Zaghari-Ratcliffe of having taken part in the "sedition movement" of widespread protests that followed the 2009 re-election of former hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

According to a Guards statement in June, Zaghari-Ratcliffe was "identified and arrested after massive intelligence operations" as one of "the heads of foreign-linked hostile networks".

At a rally outside the Iranian embassy in London in June, Ratcliffe told AFP his wife was arrested as she prepared to return to Britain with Gabriella after visiting family in Iran.

Gabriella was born in Britain and has a British passport, which was confiscated by the Iranian authorities, leaving her stranded with her grandparents in Iran, he said.

Iran and Britain on Monday appointed new ambassadors for the first time since a mob ransacked the British embassy in Tehran in 2011, as part of a series of measures to boost relations after last year's nuclear deal.

British Airways also this month became the first British airline in four years to fly directly to Iran following the lifting of some sanctions after the deal between Iran and Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States.

Iran maintains a deep historical distrust of Britain, dating back to the early 20th century when London meddled frequently in Iranian politics in order to secure cheap access to oil for the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, which later became BP.

Britain played a key role in prodding the Central Intelligence Agency into carrying out a coup in 1953, toppling the hugely popular prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh who had called for Iran's oil to be nationalised.
Far from Rio, a paralympic race in besieged Syrian town

Thousands of miles from the Rio Paralympics, a small group of wheelchair-bound Syrians lined up at the start of a race in the besieged town of Douma.

The unusual event was organised Thursday by the local Wafa Association, an NGO that assists handicapped people living in the rebel-held town, an opposition stronghold near the capital Damascus.

Surrounded by government troops since 2013, and subject to relentless regime shelling, Douma is not the likeliest spot for a makeshift wheelchair race.

Disabled Syrian men, who sustained injuries in shelling and bombardment, compete in a makeshift wheelchair race in the rebel-held town of Douma, on September 8, 2016 Sameer Al-Doumy (AFP)

But that did not stop around a dozen handicapped men, young and old, lining up outside Wafa's building in wheelchairs to participate.

Some had feet or legs amputated, while others were paralysed in parts of their lower body, injuries sustained in the shelling and bombardment that regularly rocks the rebel stronghold.

They waited impatiently for the signal to begin, before propelling themselves forward, pushing their wheels furiously as they raced along a tree-lined street, passing shops and food stalls and some partially-destroyed buildings.

Alongside the race stood curious bystanders, including children, who gawped as the racers went by.

The event was the first of its kind in Douma, and comes as Rio de Janeiro hosts the Paralympic Games, which includes for the first time a team of refugee competitors, among them Syrian swimmer Ibrahim al-Hussein.

The Douma race took place Thursday during an almost miraculous respite in the bombing -- which resumed again Friday killing at least two people and wounding dozens more.

The goal is "to search for meaning in our lives and boost our morale," said participant Mohamed al-Sheikh, in his 20s, who suffers from paralysis in his lower body.

"We hope there will be more activities like these. So long as we can use our brains, we can overcome our physical handicaps," added Abu Ahmad, in his 30s and similarly paralysed.

The participants sported white T-shirts emblazoned with the Wafa Association logo.

"We helped rehabilitate those who suffered spinal cord injuries so they were able to use wheelchairs," said Abu Ali, a supervisor from the NGO.

The association says it has provided psychological support to 200 disabled people in Douma.

"We hope to organise other activities for them so that they could feel useful," Abu Ali added.

At the end of the race, participants received medals as a child waved the flag of the Syrian uprising.

According to Douma's medical centre, there were at least 126 amputations between August 2015 and July 2016.

The cluster bombs that have been dropped on the town and elsewhere in Syria are among the deadliest of the armaments, tending to damage the lower part of the body.

More than 290,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began with anti-government protests in March 2011.

By some estimates, one million people have been injured, with many suffering wounds that have left them permanently handicapped.

Douma has been among the most targeted opposition-held areas in Syria, with its residents also suffering shortages of basic goods caused by a lengthy government siege.

According to the UN, some 600,000 people in Syria are living under sieges, most imposed by government forces, though rebels and the Islamic State group also use the tactic.

Rebel fighters raise pre-Baath Syrian flags to give the start of a makeshift wheelchair race attended by disabled Syrian men Sameer Al-Doumy (AFP)
US has North Korea missile threat covered: Pentagon

The Pentagon on Friday repeated reassurances that the United States and its regional allies are well protected against any threat from North Korean missiles, after Pyongyang conducted a new nuclear test.

The renegade country has now conducted five nuclear tests and dozens of missile launches, and says it has realized its goal of being able to fit a miniaturized warhead on a rocket.

"This is a threat we recognize as very real and we are always ensuring that we are outpacing it," Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said.

North Korea says it has realized its goal of being able to fit a miniaturized warhead on a rocket KCNA (KCNA via KNS/AFP/File)

"We take them at their word and have built a defensive architecture that assumes that they have the capability -- but we have never actually seen it demonstrated."

The United States has a range of missile-defense technologies at its disposal, including the Aegis Combat System, Patriot missiles and sophisticated radars.

Washington is also working with Seoul to install a missile defense system known as THAAD in South Korea, though the move has infuriated Beijing, which says the hardware poses a significant threat to regional security.

Davis said the THAAD system would be up and ready in 2017, though it could be installed quicker in an emergency.

"There is a lengthy process we are working through with (Seoul) but of course... we can always move it much more quickly," he said.

The US Air Force will fly a specially equipped WC-135 jet that can detect radiation and other particles in the sky to determine what happened in North Korea.
Two more bodies found after Israel construction site collapse

Israeli military rescuers pulled two bodies from a collapsed Tel Aviv construction site Friday, four days after the accident, bringing the death toll to five, an army spokeswoman told AFP.

Over a hundred Home Front Command soldiers were conducting searches for one last body believed to be buried at the site of the accident, which happened on Monday in the upscale Tel Aviv Ramat Hahayal neighbourhood.

The circumstances of the accident remain unclear, with media reporting it occurred when a floor collapsed during the construction of a four-storey underground parking, which was eventually due to have a a shopping centre built on top.

Israeli members of the Magen David Adom rescue service wait next to stretchers after an underground car park collapsed at a construction site on September 5, 2016 Gil Cohen-Magen (AFP/File)

Israel has seen a high number of construction accidents in comparison to the developed world.

Haaretz newspaper reported in May that 480 people were killed in construction accidents between 2000 and 2015, citing a survey placing Israel third from the bottom in a list that included the United States and 20 European nations.
WikiLeaks source Manning begins hunger strike

Imprisoned transgender soldier Chelsea Manning started a hunger strike Friday to protest what she says is the military's refusal to treat her gender dysphoria, her representatives said.

Originally called Bradley, Manning was convicted in August 2013 of espionage and other offenses after admitting to handing classified documents to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks.

She attempted suicide in July and has repeatedly decried her treatment in a men's military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where she is appealing her 35-year sentence.

Chelsea Manning has repeatedly decried her treatment in a men's military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where she is appealing her 35-year sentence Josh Edelson (AFP/File)

"I need help," Manning wrote in a statement published by her media team.

"I have asked for help time and time again for six years and through five separate confinement locations. My request has only been ignored, delayed, mocked, given trinkets and lip service by the prison, the military and this administration."

Fort Leavenworth did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

After she was first sentenced, Manning announced that she identified as a woman, and she later obtained legal authorization to change names and receive hormone therapy.

But she is still required to wear her hair short in accordance with male military grooming standards and is suing the government over the issue.

"In response to virtually every request, I have been granted limited, if any, dignity and respect. Just more pain and anguish," the 28-year-old private wrote.

She said the strike could last until she is permanently incapacitated or dead.

In June, the Pentagon said it would begin allowing openly transgender people to serve in the military and would cover related medical expenses, including gender reassignment surgeries when these are deemed "medically necessary."
US agency says pull the plug on Samsung Galaxy Note 7

The US Consumer Product Safety Commission on Friday urged anyone owning a Samsung Galaxy Note 7 to stop using the large-screen "phablet" smartphone.

The warning by the independent government agency came a day after the US Federal Aviation Administration told passengers not to turn on or charge Galaxy Note 7 smartphones on aircraft due to the risk of batteries exploding.

The FAA also advised passengers not to stow Galaxy Note 7 devices in checked baggage, evidently to avoid the risk of fires in cargo holds of aircraft.

Samsung suspended sales of the Galaxy Note 7 and recalled 2.5 million units following problems with batteries exploding or burning while charging Jung Yeon-Je (AFP/File)

Qantas and Virgin Australia also told customers not to use or charge the devices on their planes.

The South Korean smartphone maker last week suspended sales of the phablet and recalled 2.5 million units following of problems with batteries exploding or burning while charging.

"When these batteries overheat and burst, the results can be serious," the commission said in a statement, calling on "all consumers who own a Samsung Galaxy Note 7 to power them down and stop charging or using the device."

It is the first large-scale recall of one of Samsung's top of the range phones.

Along with the recall, Samsung has been forced to delay the handset's planned release this month in several European countries including France.

The battery trouble comes as Samsung's archrival Apple launches new iPhone 7 models, with the California company predicting brisk sales as it began taking orders Friday.

The mobile division accounts for the lion's share of Samsung's business, but has been increasingly squeezed by competition both from Apple's iPhone and by lower-end devices from Chinese rivals such as Huawei.
UN calls Yemen fighters to abide by cease fire

UNITED NATIONS (AP)  The U.N. Security Council is calling on all parties in Yemen civil war to halt all military activity and abide by the terms of a Cessation of Hostilities agreed upon in April.

The council said in statement issued Thursday that the humanitarian situation will continue to deteriorate in the absence of a durable peace agreement and urged all parties to resume talks with Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed.
Rights group: Refugee children still in Greek police cells

ATHENS, Greece (AP)  Refugee and migrant children in Greece are being held in police cells, often in "poor and degrading conditions" due to a lack of appropriate shelter space, Human Rights Watch said in a report published Friday.

The U.S.-based rights group said it urged the Greek government to stop using police buildings as protection sites for unaccompanied minors.

"Human Rights Watch found that many children face degrading conditions in police station cells and in coast guard facilities, and unsanitary conditions in pre-removal detention centers," the 17-page report said.

Children play at the top of a tent at Ritsona refugee camp north of Athens, which hosts about 600 refugees and migrants on Thursday, Sept. 8, 2016. The refugee crisis is expected to be a central issue in discussions Friday at a meeting in Athens of leaders from Mediterranean countries in the European Union. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

"Children were made to live and sleep in dirty, bug- and vermin-infested cells, sometimes without mattresses, and were deprived of appropriate sanitation, hygiene and privacy."

The revelations were published as leaders from Mediterranean countries in the European Union were due in Athens for talks largely focused on Europe's refugee crisis.

More than a million refugees and migrants have traveled through Greece since the start of 2015. And some 60,000 have been stranded here since European border controls were toughened in March.

While most children travel with relatives, 3,300 unaccompanied minors arrived here in the first seven months of 2016, according to Greek authorities. Several hundred of them are in police stations and detention camps.

"Clearly a police station is no place to house children ... (but in some cases) there was no other way to guarantee that the children would be safe," Giorgos Kyritsis, a spokesman for a government crisis committee on migration, told The Associated Press.

He said plans to build additional shelter places should see the problem resolved in the next two months.

HRW interviewed 42 children from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and four other countries  all males aged between 14 and 17  at four sites in northern Greece and outside Athens.

Rebecca Riddell, Europe and central Asia fellow at HRW and the report's lead researcher, said rights groups have been raising the issue with Athens for years.

"This is not a new problem, though the problem has been made more acute by significant migration to Greece and callous inaction by EU countries," she told the AP.

"The children we interviewed had been detailed for an average of 40 days. That's a far cry from keeping a child at a police station overnight and transferring him to a shelter in the morning."

___

Follow Gatopoulos at http://www.twitter.com/dgatopoulos

HRW Report: https://www.hrw.org/node/293673/

A child play in front of a UNHCR plastic sheet at Ritsona refugee camp, north of Athens, which hosts about 600 refugees and migrants on Thursday, Sept. 8, 2016. The refugee crisis is expected to be a central issue in discussions Friday at a meeting in Athens of leaders from Mediterranean countries in the European Union. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)
Twins to honor slain Minnesota boy with jersey patch

MINNEAPOLIS (AP)  The Minnesota Twins will honor the family of Jacob Wetterling with red jerseys and a No. 11 patch on their uniforms Friday night when the team plays Cleveland.

The Twins announced they'll hold an online auction for 11 of the jerseys, with proceeds going to the Jacob Wetterling Resource Center. The center was founded to educate and assist families and communities with the goal of addressing and preventing exploitation of children.

The remains of 11-year-old Jacob were found in central Minnesota last week, nearly 27 years after he went missing. Danny Heinrich has confessed to abducting and killing him.
Trump grants interview to Russia-backed TV network

WASHINGTON (AP)  Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump told a Russia-funded television network Thursday that "it's probably unlikely" that Russia is trying to influence the U.S. election.

Trump, who has faced backlash from both parties in recent days for praising Russian President Vladimir Putin, was interviewed by Larry King, a veteran American journalist whose show airs Thursday evenings on RT America, the U.S. partner of a network originally called "Russia Today."

When King asked about reports that U.S. intelligence agencies are investigating whether Russia is trying to disrupt the election, Trump said that he's skeptical.

"I think it's probably unlikely. I think maybe the Democrats are putting that out," Trump said. He added, "I hope that if they are doing something, I hope that somebody's going to be able to find out, so they can end it, because that would not be appropriate at all."

Private cybersecurity analysts have blamed Russian intelligence agencies for electronic break-ins into Democratic Party computers, including a breach of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the House Democrats' campaign arm.

Trump's interview with King was promoted by RT America as an exclusive.

A Trump spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, suggested that Trump was not aware that King's program was linked to the Russian-backed network.

"Mr. Trump recorded a short interview with Larry King for his podcast as a favor to Mr. King," Hicks said. "What Larry King does with the interview content is up to him. We have nothing to do with it."

During a televised forum Wednesday on national security, Trump complimented Putin for having "great control over his country." Putin has offered kind words for Trump in the past as well.

"He's been a leader far more that our president has been a leader," Trump said of the Russian president.

The Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Bob Corker, offered Trump a warning when asked about the relationship on Thursday.

"One has to be a little careful to let flattery affect one's judgment," Corker told CNN.
Man gets 60 years in prison for sexually abusing children

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP)  Authorities say a 47-year-old man living near Portland has been sentenced to 60 years in prison for sexually abusing or exploiting children in the Philippines and in Oregon.

The U.S. Justice Department said Steven Rockett was sentenced Thursday for producing child pornography outside the United States, engaging in illicit sexual conduct in foreign places, producing and attempting to produce child pornography and possession of child pornography.

A federal jury in Portland convicted him of the charges after a May trial.

Prosecutors say Rockett sexually abused children, solicited children to take and send him sexually explicit photos of themselves and also secretly recorded children undressing and showering at his residences in Forest Grove and Aloha and in Philippine hotel rooms.
U.S. aviation safety officials took the extraordinary step late Thursday of warning airline passengers not to turn on or charge a new-model Samsung smartphone during flights following numerous reports of the devices catching fire.

The Federal Aviation Administration also warned passengers not to put the Galaxy Note 7 phones in their checked bags, citing 'recent incidents and concerns raised by Samsung' about the devices.

It is extremely unusual for the FAA to warn passengers about a specific product.

Last week, Samsung ordered a global recall of the jumbo phones after its investigation of explosion reports found the rechargeable lithium batteries were at fault.

U.S. aviation safety officials took the extraordinary step late Thursday of warning airline passengers not to turn on or charge Samsung Galaxy Note 7 smartphones (pictured) during flights following numerous reports of the devices catching fire

In one case, a family in St. Petersburg, Florida, reported a Galaxy Note 7 phone left charging in their Jeep caught fire, destroying the vehicle.

Delta Air Lines Inc, the No.2 U.S. airline by passenger traffic, said it is still studying the issue.

'Delta is in constant contact with the FAA and other bodies in its run of business as a global airline,' spokesman Morgan Durrant said in a statement.

'We will comply with any directive and are studying this matter. Safety and security is always Delta's top priority.'

United Continental Holdings Inc and American Airlines Group Inc did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the FAA advisory.

Vaughn Jennings, a spokesman for Washington-based trade group Airlines for America, said the organization was 'closely monitoring any developments as this issue evolves.'

A family in St. Petersburg, Florida, reported a Galaxy Note 7 phone left charging in their Jeep caught fire, destroying the vehicle (scenes from that incident pictured)

The family said the phone, which was plugged in here, was engulfed in flames which quickly consumed the rest of the vehicle

Samsung say they are investigating the incident, and providing assistance to the family

'Each individual carrier makes determinations, in compliance with FAA safety rules and regulations, as to what is permitted to be carried on board and in the cargo hold,' Jennings said in a statement.

The FAA statement does not order U.S. airlines to take action.

The International Air Transportation Association said airlines have conducted risk assessments and noted that other phones have been recalled for battery issues.

'Although Samsung is the most recent company advising of faulty devices, others have issued similar recalls and warnings regarding lithium batteries in laptops over the last 12 months, so the industry is familiar with and equipped to manage such situations,' the IATA said.

Australian airlines Qantas, Jetstar and Virgin Australia have banned passengers from using or charging the Galaxy Note 7 during flights over fire concerns.

Although customers will still be able to bring the phones on flights on the Australian carriers, the ban extends to the phones being plugged into flight entertainment systems where USB ports are available.

Samsung launched the latest version of the Note series in August.

The Note series is one of the most expensive lineups released by Samsung, and the devices usually inherit designs and features of the Galaxy S phones that debut in the spring.

Delta Air Lines Inc, the No.2 U.S. airline by passenger traffic, said it is still studying the issue. The FAA statement does not order U.S. airlines to take action (stock photo)

Samsung also added an iris scanner to the Note 7, which detects patterns in users' eyes to unlock the phone.

Before the issue of battery explosions emerged, supplies were not keeping up with higher-than-expected demand for the smartphone.

The Note 7 is not the only gadget to catch fire thanks to lithium-battery problems, which have afflicted everything from laptops to Tesla cars to Boeing's 787 jetliner.

Rechargeable lithium batteries are more susceptible to overheating than other types of batteries if they are exposed to high temperatures, are damaged or have manufacturing flaws.

Once the overheating starts, it can lead to 'thermal runaway' in which temperatures continue escalating to very high levels.

Water can put out the flames, but does not always halt the thermal runaway.

Samsung launched the latest version of the Note series in August. The Note series is one of the most expensive lineups released by Samsung

Flames will often reappear after initially being quenched.

Lithium batteries have become ubiquitous in consumer electronic devices.

Manufacturers like them because they weigh less and pack considerably more energy into the same space than other types of batteries.
Sotomayor calls job on high court blessing and curse

MADISON, Wis. (AP)  Serving on the U.S. Supreme Court has been both a blessing and a curse and reaching decisions is harder than she ever expected, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said Thursday during a visit to the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The court's first Hispanic justice told a packed campus theater that said she still marvels that she holds her position, noting she sits so close to the president at State of the Union addresses she can almost touch him. But the job comes with a heavy burden because every decision the court makes affects so many people and each ruling creates losers, she said, recalling moments in court where losing litigants have wept.

"I never forget that in every case, someone wins, and there's an opposite. Someone loses. And that burden feels very heavy to me," Sotomayor said. "I have not anticipated how hard decision-making is on the court. Because of that big win and lose on the court and we are affecting lives across the country and sometimes across the world, I'm conscious that what I do will always affect someone."

Sonia Sotomayor, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, takes the stage for an appearance at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Memorial Union in Madison, Wis., Thursday, Sept. 8, 2016. Her appearance in the question-and-answer session was presented by the University of Wisconsin Law School as part of their Robert W. Kastenmeier Lecture Series. (John Hart/Wisconsin State Journal via AP)

Sotomayor spoke for about an hour and a half, wandering up and down the theater's aisles and shaking hands with people as she answered questions from a pair of her former law clerks sitting on stage. She warned the audience that she couldn't talk about pending cases and the clerks never asked her about the Senate refusing to hold a hearing or vote on Judge Merrick Garland's nomination to replace the late Antonin Scalia as the court's ninth justice. The clerks instead gave her general questions about her experiences and thought processes. She kept her answers just as general.

She said her experiences as a Hispanic and a woman are only pieces of her thinking when she considers cases. She said she considers herself a human being first and "there isn't one piece of me that takes control in judicial decision-making."

She lamented that people see the court as a mystery, saying that if they understood that the justices are human beings with experiences and backgrounds and a passion for the law it would help change the perception of the court as a "distant and unknowable institution."

She complained that it's difficult to persuade five justices to agree on a ruling, but that's to be expected since the justices take cases that have divided federal appellate courts.

"It's more surprising when we agree than when we disagree," she said. "It shouldn't be an expectation that the Supreme Court is more reasonable than lower courts."

Sotomayor said the hardest moment after Scalia's death in February was walking in to hear oral arguments and seeing his seat draped in black.

"There's a big hole," she said. "The court's quieter."

___
Another suspect arrested in killing of Honduran activist

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP)  Honduran authorities announced Thursday that they have arrested a sixth suspect in the March killing of environmental activist Berta Caceres.

Ricardo Castro, head of the Central American country's criminal investigation unit, identified the suspect as 21-year-old Elvin Heriberto Rapalo Orellana, also known as "El Comanche." He alleged that Orellana shot and wounded a Mexican activist who survived the attack.

Castro said that Orellana was the last of the suspects sought for allegedly carrying out the killing, but that investigators are still working to determine who ordered the attack.

FILE - In this March 16, 2016, file photo, a woman holds up a poster with a photo of slain environmental leader Berta Caceres, during a protest march in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Authorities said that unidentified gunmen killed Nelson Garcia, a colleague of Caceres, who was slain almost two weeks ago in similar circumstances. Honduran authorities announced Thursday, Sept. 8, that they have arrested a sixth suspect in the March killing of environmental activist Berta Caceres. (AP Photo/Fernando Antonio, File)

The other arrested suspects include an active duty army officer and at least one man who worked for a hydroelectric project opposed by Caceres.

The public prosecutor's office has said three suspects arrested in May worked for or were direct employees of Desarrollos Energeticos SA, also known as DESA, which was developing the dam project that Caceres' organization successfully stopped.

Hidroelectrica Agua Zarca Co., which is managed by DESA, said that only one of the men was employed by the firm and denied it had anything to do with Caceres' killing.

Caceres, who had been awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize for her work, was shot to death March 3 by gunmen who invaded her home. She had reported that she was the target of death threats from security personnel for DESA.
Report cites growing evidence of extremists reviving slavery

UNITED NATIONS (AP)  There is growing evidence that extremist groups including the Islamic State and Boko Haram are reviving slavery and organizing slave markets, according to a report launched Thursday.

James Cockayne, head of the United Nations University office in New York and lead author of the report, said "we're seeing horrifying new twists" on the ancient problem of human trafficking in conflict.

Social media apps and websites have made it possible to engage and recruit potential human trafficking victims, and trade them "in a way that wasn't possible before," he said.

Islamic State extremists, for example, "have published a 'How To' manual" that says enslavement is legally justified in some cases, despite international law banning all slavery, Cockayne said.

According to the report, Islamic State militants in Iraq are thought to have enslaved over 5,000 women, children and men from the Yazidi religious minority in Iraq.

"There is strong evidence that social media is being used to both recruit and trade enslaved Yazidi and other peoples," Cockayne said.

In the past year, the report said, IS fighters have used encrypted communications app Telegram and others including WhatsApp, Twitter and Threema to auction enslaved Yazidi women and launder the profits.

"The reported numbers are small but the suspicion is a lot is going unreported in part because some of these apps are highly encrypted," Cockayne told the Associated Press.

WhatsApp was recently used in a case of trading displaced Syrian women in Lebanon, he said. And an Islamic State member recently tried to trade enslaved women, but the information and offer were taken down by the website within hours.

"There is clearly more that the technology sector could do if they were given appropriate regulatory guidance by member states, and clearly the Security Council has a potential role here," Cockayne said.

The report proposes ideas for action by the council, including implementation of sanctions against human trafficking and strengthening international denunciation of slavery, as well as stepped up efforts to tackle the financing, technology and recruitment that is spurring trafficking.

Britain's U.N. Ambassador Matthew Rycroft said that "with an estimated 45.8 million slaves alive today, modern slavery is one of the most significant human rights tragedies of our time"  and conflict makes people especially vulnerable to enslavement.

Liechtenstein's U.N. Ambassador Christian Wenaweser said human trafficking is also "one of the big illegal business models that exist in the world  (and) this is something that we believe certainly needs to be addressed and has a very, very direct link on conflict situations."

In certain instances, he said, this can amount "to crimes against humanity" that could be referred to the International Criminal Court. And he said options are actively being explored with the ICC prosecutor.
Nigeria facing 'a famine unlike any we have ever seen'

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (AP)  The whimpers from skeletally thin babies too weak to cry are a harbinger of worse things to come: A quarter of the children lucky enough to make it to this emergency feeding center are dying. They are the latest victims of Boko Haram's Islamic insurgency.

No one knows how many more children are dying of starvation in refugee camps and areas too dangerous to access because of the extremists' presence, according to Doctors Without Borders, which runs the emergency feeding center. The aid group first sounded the alarm of a humanitarian crisis of "catastrophic" proportion in northeast Nigeria as Boko Haram lost its grip on some areas and its victims began to emerge.

"These are kids that basically have been hungry all their lives, and some are so far gone that they die here in the first 24 hours," said Jean Stowell, an American midwife in charge of the center in Maiduguri, the biggest city in this largely Muslim region. The 110-bed center has quadrupled in size in recent weeks, but each time it expands it rapidly fills.

In this photo taken Monday Aug. 29, 2016, a doctor feeds a malnourished child at a feeding centre run by Doctors Without Borders in Maiduguri, Nigeria. The whimpers from skeletally thin babies too weak to cry are a harbinger of worse things to come: A quarter of the children lucky enough to make it to this emergency feeding center are dying. They are the latest victims of Boko Harams Islamic insurgency. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)

Nearly a quarter of a million children are severely malnourished because Boko Haram has disrupted trade and farming, U.N. Assistant Secretary-General Toby Lanzer warned at a meeting in Brussels on Thursday. About 2 million people in the region have not been reached, "and we can't assess their situation. We can estimate that it's awful."

With Nigeria in a recession and without speedy outside help, "we will see, I think, a famine unlike any we have ever seen anywhere," he said.

One million refugees from Boko Haram are crowded into camps in Maiduguri. Outside the camps, fresh produce is cruelly bountiful. Markets are filled with pineapples, oranges, cabbage, green beans, tomatoes and carrots. But most refugees cannot afford them, and Nigeria's government is investigating reports of officials stealing food aid.

Elsewhere, 1 million children are trapped in areas too dangerous to reach because of Boko Haram, the U.N. children's agency estimates. Its effort to reach some of them was put on hold in July when the extremists attacked a military-escorted humanitarian convoy on a major highway and a rocket hit the windshield of an armored car. A UNICEF worker was among three civilians wounded.

Boko Haram has been hostile to Western medicine. A Doctors Without Borders vehicle exploded a land mine on the same road in July; no one was seriously hurt. The organization had just brought the first aid to Bama, the region's second largest city, where they discovered that six people a day were dying of malnutrition and diarrhea.

Some children who make it out of such areas remain in danger.

In the steamy heat inside the feeding center, Hassana Mohammed tried to breastfeed a baby while comforting 18-month-old Yakubu, who was too weak to swallow and was irritated by the intravenous drip that fed him through his nose.

Mohammed's five children have known little but hunger and fear since Boko Haram killed her first husband when her eldest, 7-year-old Aisha, was just a month old.

"We've been on the run ever since, but Boko Haram was never far away," Mohammed said. "You will see some women dying in the bush during childbirth, and some dying on the way while running because of hunger. Some will run and leave their children for their safety, now many children were left in the bush to die."

The hardest thing now is finding food, she said. When aid workers made it to her refugee camp in Maiduguri, an informal collection of huts made of plastic sheeting and palm leaves, she received four handfuls of rice.

"It's supposed to last a week, but we run out after just a day or two," she said.

___

This report has been corrected to show that Jean Stowell is a midwife, not a doctor.

___

Associated Press reporter Andrea Rosa contributed to this report from Brussels.

In this photo taken Monday Aug. 29, 2016, a woman with her malnourished children sit at a feeding centre run by Doctors Without Borders in Maiduguri, Nigeria. The whimpers from skeletally thin babies too weak to cry out are a harbinger of worse things to come: A quarter of the kids lucky enough to make it to this emergency feeding center are dying _ the latest victims of Boko Haram's Islamic insurgency. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)

In this photo taken Monday Aug. 29, 2016. Jean Stowell, an American doctor from Loconia, New Hampshire, running the emergency operation, carries 18 month old Yakubu a malnourished child at a feeding centre run by Doctors Without Borders in Maiduguri, Nigeria. The whimpers from skeletally thin babies too weak to cry out are a harbinger of worse things to come: A quarter of the kids lucky enough to make it to this emergency feeding center are dying, the latest victims of Boko Haram's Islamic insurgency. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)

In this photo taken Monday Aug. 29, 2016, Hassana Mohammed, tries to breast feed her baby while comforting her malnourished son 18- Month Yakubu, at a feeding centre run by Doctors Without Borders in Maiduguri, Nigeria. The whimpers from skeletally thin babies too weak to cry out are a harbinger of worse things to come: A quarter of the kids lucky enough to make it to this emergency feeding center are dying _ the latest victims of Boko Haram's Islamic insurgency. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)

In this photo taken Monday Aug. 29, 2016. Women feed their malnourished children at a feeding centre run by Doctors Without Borders in Maiduguri, Nigeria. The whimpers from skeletally thin babies too weak to cry out are a harbinger of worse things to come: A quarter of the kids lucky enough to make it to this emergency feeding center are dying _ the latest victims of Boko Haram's Islamic insurgency. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)
Gentrification focus of new public art in Boston's Chinatown

BOSTON (AP)  A public art project in Boston's Chinatown highlights the effect of development on the lively, historic downtown neighborhood.

Life-size portraits of residents through the neighborhood's long history are going up in plazas and on street corners for about a week starting Sept. 10.

Among the dozen sets of cutouts are a laundry owner and his family posing in front of their shop in the 1930s, a young brother and sister in a Chinatown tenement in the 1940s, and two shopkeepers at a Chinese grocery in the 1950s.

In this Monday, Aug. 29, 2016 photo a child pushes a stroller under a gate to Boston's Chinatown neighborhood. Artist Wen-ti Tsen, who plans to install life-sized portraits on the street around the neighborhood beginning Sept. 10, says they're meant to underscore how the city's building boom is displacing longtime residents and businesses in the historic downtown enclave. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

Artist Wen-ti Tsen will also set up photo stations to take portraits of current residents, workers and passers-by in front of historic backdrops of the neighborhood. He'll eventually turn those into life-size cutouts, too.

Tsen said the project, called "Home Town," is meant to underscore how development continues to affect the community, which was founded in the late 1800s and has over 12,800 residents.

"This has been a Chinatown for a long, long time," he said. "This is to make it known to the city, to the community and to casual visitors of the long history of Chinatown as a continuing place where generations of people lived and worked."

Susan Chinsen, managing director of the Chinese Historical Society of New England, which provided the historical images Tsen used to develop his figures, suggests the exhibit provides a somewhat "neutral" view of the often contentious gentrification debate.

"There's a connection between what happened in the past and what's happening in the present, and we have to be mindful of that," she said.

Located between the city's financial and theater districts, Chinatown has faced development pressure since the 1950s, when row houses were razed for an interstate highway that cuts through the city.

The growth of Tufts University's medical school and health sciences campus became a point of conflict in later decades.

The city's more recent economic resurgence has only added to that pressure. New luxury high-rises have sprouted up along Chinatown's edges, and a handful of boutique hotels are proposed on its borders.

"Boston is a city steeped in history, with many sides to each story," said Kim Szeto, a program manager at the New England Foundation for the Arts, which provided a $10,000 grant for the project. "It's important to not lose sight of these stories in the midst of what sometimes feels like rapid changes."

Giles Li, head of the Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center, a social service agency, said the exhibit is a reminder that Chinatown is "first and foremost" a residential neighborhood.

"As the region develops and more people come through the neighborhood to shop or eat, we must also hold on to our heritage as a site where people actually live," he said.

Tsen's project is not the only public display in Chinatown highlighting the neighborhood's rich past.

The Chinese Historical Society and Tufts have also launched an exhibit of archival photos and images showcasing the importance of the written word in Chinatown, from its newspapers to community bulletin boards and recent efforts to bring a public library branch back to the neighborhood.

___

Follow Philip Marcelo at twitter.com/philmarcelo. His work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/journalist/philip-marcelo

In this Monday, Aug. 29, 2016 photo passers-by walk past a neon sign in the window of a restaurant in Boston's Chinatown neighborhood. Artist Wen-ti Tsen, who plans to install life-sized portraits on the street around the neighborhood beginning Sept. 10, says they're meant to underscore how the city's building boom is displacing longtime residents and businesses in the historic downtown enclave. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

In this Monday, Aug. 29, 2016 photo a couple waits outside a restaurant in Boston's Chinatown neighborhood. Artist Wen-ti Tsen, who plans to install life-sized portraits on the street around the neighborhood beginning Sept. 10, says they're meant to underscore how the city's building boom is displacing longtime residents and businesses in the historic downtown enclave. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

In this Monday, Aug. 29, 2016 photo women walk along a street in late afternoon light in Boston's Chinatown neighborhood. Artist Wen-ti Tsen, who plans to install life-sized portraits on the street around the neighborhood beginning Sept. 10, says they're meant to underscore how the city's building boom is displacing longtime residents and businesses in the historic downtown enclave. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

In this Monday, Aug. 29, 2016 photo a man walks past a grocery store in Boston's Chinatown neighborhood. Artist Wen-ti Tsen, who plans to install life-sized portraits on the street around the neighborhood beginning Sept. 10, says they're meant to underscore how the city's building boom is displacing longtime residents and businesses in the historic downtown enclave. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

In this Monday, Aug. 29, 2016 photo passers-by walk past a window filled with posters in Boston's Chinatown neighborhood. Artist Wen-ti Tsen, who plans to install life-sized portraits on the street around the neighborhood beginning Sept. 10, says they're meant to underscore how the city's building boom is displacing longtime residents and businesses in the historic downtown enclave. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

In this Monday, Aug. 29, 2016 photo artist Wen-ti Tsen paints life-sized portraits in his studio in Cambridge, Mass. Wen-ti Tsen, who plans to install the portraits on the street around Boston's Chinatown neighborhood beginning Sept. 10, says they're meant to underscore how the city's building boom is displacing longtime residents and businesses in the historic downtown enclave. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
Seoul: North Korea's 5th nuke test 'fanatic recklessness'

SEOUL, South Korea (AP)  North Korea said it conducted a "higher level" nuclear test explosion on Friday that will allow it to finally build an array of stronger, smaller and lighter nuclear weapons, a move strongly condemned by the U.N. Security Council which promised new measures against Pyongyang.

The North's fifth atomic test and the second in eight months brought the U.N.'s most powerful body into emergency session, just three days after it strongly condemned North Korea's latest ballistic missile launches.

South Korea's president said the detonation, which Seoul estimated was the North's biggest-ever in explosive yield, was an act of "fanatic recklessness" and a sign that leader Kim Jong Un "is spiraling out of control." President Barack Obama condemned the test and said the U.S. would never accept the country as a nuclear power.

FILE - In this Oct. 10, 2015, file photo, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un salutes at a parade in Pyongyang, North Korea. South Korean and international monitoring agencies reported Friday, Sept. 9, 2016 an earthquake near North Korea's northeastern nuclear test site, a strong indication that Pyongyang had detonated its fifth atomic test explosion. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E, File)

North Korea's boast of a technologically game-changing nuclear test defied both tough international sanctions and long-standing diplomatic pressure to curb its nuclear ambitions. It will raise serious worries in many world capitals that North Korea has moved another step closer to its goal of a nuclear-armed missile that could one day strike the U.S. mainland.

The press statement agreed upon by all 15 Security Council members late Friday said diplomats will draft a new resolution in response to its earlier promise to take "further significant measures," if the North continued to defy the international community.

"In line with this commitment and the gravity of this violation, the members of the Security Council will begin to work immediately on appropriate measures" in a new U.N. resolution, the statement said. The measures will be under Article 41 of the U.N. Charter, which specifies non-military actions including sanctions, it said.

U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power said the council must use "every tool at its disposal" including new sanctions "to demonstrate to North Korea that there are consequences for its unlawful and dangerous actions."

"This is more than brazen defiance," Power told reporters at U.N. headquarters. "North Korea is seeking to perfect its nuclear weapons and their delivery vehicles so they can hold the region and the world hostage under threat of nuclear strikes."

What measures are included in a new resolution will largely depend on China, the North's major ally and neighbor which fears any instability on the Korean peninsula.

"All sides should refrain from mutual provocations and any actions that might be a threat to peace and security," China's U.N. Ambassador Liu Jieyi said after the meeting. "We believe it is more urgent than ever to work together to achieve denuclearization of the Korean peninsula (and) "to prevent proliferation and ... maintain peace and stability on the Korean peninsula."

In March, the Security Council adopted its toughest sanctions against North Korea in two decades in response to its nuclear test in January and a rocket launch. It took two months of negotiations mainly between the U.S. and China.

South Korea's U.N. Ambassador Oh Joon said he hopes agreement on a new resolution will come quickly.

Hours after South Korea noted unusual seismic activity near North Korea's northeastern nuclear test site, the North said in its state-run media that a test had "finally examined and confirmed the structure and specific features of movement of (a) nuclear warhead that has been standardized to be able to be mounted on strategic ballistic rockets."

"The standardization of the nuclear warhead will enable (North Korea) to produce at will and as many as it wants a variety of smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear warheads of higher strike power," North Korea said. "This has definitely put on a higher level (the North's) technology of mounting nuclear warheads on ballistic rockets."

North Korea, led by a third-generation dictatorship and wary of outsiders, protects its nuclear program as a closely guarded state secret, and the claims about advancements made in its testing could not be independently verified. But they center on a technological mystery that has long bedeviled outside experts: How far has North Korea gotten in efforts to consistently shrink down nuclear warheads so they can fit on long-range missiles?

South Korea's main spy agency told lawmakers in a closed-door briefing after the test that it does not think North Korea currently has the ability to develop nuclear weapons that can be mounted on ballistic missiles, but intelligence officials expressed worries that the North's efforts to do so are progressing more quickly than previously thought, said Kim Byungkee, a lawmaker from the opposition Minjoo Party.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye strongly condemned the test, saying in a statement that it showed the "fanatic recklessness of the Kim Jong Un government as it clings to nuclear development."

She told a meeting of top security officials Friday night that, "We have to believe that Kim Jong Un's mental state is spiraling out of control because he is not listening to any words from the international community or neighboring countries in his attempt to cling to power."

Obama condemned the nuclear test "in the strongest possible terms as a grave threat to regional security."

"The United States does not, and never will, accept North Korea as a nuclear state," he said in a statement. "Today's nuclear test, a flagrant violation of multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions, makes clear North Korea's disregard for international norms and standards for behavior and demonstrates it has no interest in being a responsible member of the international community."

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said he and South Korean President Park talked by telephone and agreed that North Korea's nuclear test and its recent missile launches show that it now poses a "different level of threat" requiring a new response.

South Korea's weather agency said the explosive yield of the North Korean blast would have been 10 to 12 kilotons, or 70 to 80 percent of the force of the 15-kiloton atomic bomb the United States dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945. The North's fourth test was an estimated six kilotons.

North Korea said no radioactive material leaked, but the explosion put the region on edge.

In the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, residents were delighted.

"It's really great news," said Rim Jong Su, 42. "Now, I am full of confidence that if the enemies make any little provocations we will make a counter attack and we will surely win."

The 5.0 magnitude seismic event Friday is the largest of the four past quakes associated with North Korean nuclear tests, according to South Korea's weather agency. Artificial seismic waves measuring 3.9 were reported after North Korea's first nuclear test in 2006; 4.8 was reported from its fourth test this January.

North Korean leader Kim has overseen a robust increase in the number and kinds of missiles tested this year. Not only has the range of the weapons jumped significantly, but the country is working to perfect new platforms for launching them  submarines and mobile launchers  giving the North greater ability to threaten the tens of thousands of U.S. troops stationed throughout Asia.

North Korea has fired a total of 33 ballistic missiles since Kim took power in 2011, Seoul's Defense Ministry said. In comparison, North Korea fired 16 ballistic missiles during the 17-year rule of Kim's father, Kim Jong Il.

The seismic activity comes on the 68th anniversary of the founding of North Korea's government and just days after world leaders gathered in China for the Group of Twenty economic summit.

North Korea likely wanted to show the world that strong international sanctions following its fourth nuclear test and long-range rocket launch earlier this year haven't discouraged its efforts to advance its nuclear weapon and missile programs, according to Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea expert at Seoul's Dongguk University.

North Korea's persistent pursuit of missiles and nuclear weapons has long been one of the most intractable foreign policy problems for U.S. administrations.

Diplomacy has so far failed. Six-nation negotiations on dismantling North Korea's nuclear program in exchange for aid were last held in late 2008 and fell apart in early 2009.

The Korean Peninsula remains technically at war, as the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.

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Lederer reported from the United Nations. Associated Press writers Hyung-Jin Kim and Kim Tong-hyung in Seoul, Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo, Robert Burns in Norway, Joseph Krauss in Cairo and Darlene Superville in Washington, D.C. contributed to this report.

North Koreans watch a news report regarding a nuclear test on a large screen outside the Pyongyang Station in Pyongyang, North Korea, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. North Korea said Friday it conducted a "higher level" nuclear warhead test explosion, which it trumpeted as finally allowing it to build "at will" an array of stronger, smaller and lighter nuclear weapons. (AP Photo/Jon Chol Jin)

TV screens show a North Korean newscaster reading a statement from the North's Nuclear Weapons Institute during a news program at the Yongsan Electronic Market in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. North Korea said Friday it conducted a "higher level" nuclear warhead test explosion that will allow it to finally build "at will" an array of stronger, smaller and lighter nuclear weapons. It is Pyongyang's fifth atomic test and the second in eight months. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

An official of the Earthquake and Volcano of the Korea Monitoring Division points at the epicenter of seismic waves in North Korea, in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. South Korea's Yonhap news agency says Seoul believes North Korea has conducted its fifth nuclear test explosion. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

South Korean President Park Geun-hye speaks during an emergency meeting to discuss follow-up measures to respond to North Korea's nuclear test at the presidential house in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. North Korea said it conducted a "higher level" nuclear test explosion on Friday that will allow it to finally build "at will" an array of stronger, smaller and lighter nuclear weapons. It was the North's fifth atomic test and the second in eight months. (Baek Seung-ryul/Yonhap via AP)

People pass by a TV screen showing a North Korean newscaster reads a statement from the North's Nuclear Weapons Institute, at Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. North Korea said Friday it conducted a "higher level" nuclear warhead test explosion, which it trumpeted as finally allowing it to build "at will" an array of stronger, smaller and lighter nuclear weapons. It is Pyongyang's fifth atomic test and the second in eight months. The letters on the screen read: "Nuclear test." (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

A South Korean marine watches a TV screen reporting about North Korea's possible nuclear test at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Sep. 9, 2016. South Korea's Yonhap news agency said Seoul believes North Korea conducted its fifth nuclear test explosion on Friday. The letters on the screen read: "Explosion suspect." (Kim Ju-sung/Yonhap via AP)

A Chinese paramilitary policeman holds his hand up outside the North Korean embassy in Beijing, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. North Korea on Friday conducted its fifth atomic test, producing its biggest-ever explosive yield, South Korean officials said after monitors detected unusual seismic activity near the North's northeastern nuclear test site. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

South Korean and U.S. Marines hold their guns as they participate in the 66th Incheon Landing Operations Commemoration ceremony in waters off Incheon, South Korea, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. Incheon is the coastal city where the United Nations Forces led by U.S. Gen. Douglas MacArthur landed in September, 1950 just months after North Korea invaded the South. North Korea on Friday conducted its fifth atomic test, producing its biggest-ever explosive yield, South Korean officials said after monitors detected unusual seismic activity near the North's northeastern nuclear test site. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

South Korean soldiers wear North Korean flags on their helmets, playing a role of North Korean soldiers after the 66th Incheon Landing Operations Commemoration ceremony in Incheon, South Korea, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. Incheon is the coastal city where the United Nations Forces led by U.S. Gen. Douglas MacArthur landed in September, 1950 just months after North Korea invaded the South. North Korea on Friday conducted its fifth atomic test, producing its biggest-ever explosive yield, South Korean officials said after monitors detected unusual seismic activity near the North's northeastern nuclear test site. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

South Korean soldiers parachute down at the 66th Incheon Landing Operations Commemoration ceremony in waters off Incheon, South Korea, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. Incheon is the coastal city where the United Nations Forces led by U.S. General Douglas MacArthur landed in September, 1950 just months after North Korea invaded the South. North Korea on Friday conducted its fifth atomic test, producing its biggest-ever explosive yield, South Korean officials said after monitors detected unusual seismic activity near the North's northeastern nuclear test site. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

South Korean Marines and U.S. Marine hold their guns as they participate in the 66th Incheon Landing Operations Commemoration ceremony in Incheon, South Korea, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. Incheon is the coastal city where the United Nations Forces led by U.S. Gen. Douglas MacArthur landed in September, 1950 just months after North Korea invaded the South. North Korea on Friday conducted its fifth atomic test, producing its biggest-ever explosive yield, South Korean officials said after monitors detected unusual seismic activity near the North's northeastern nuclear test site. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
40 years after death, Mao's mixed legacy looms over China

BEIJING (AP)  Friday marks the 40th anniversary of the death of Mao Zedong, who founded the People's Republic of China in 1949 and ran it virtually uncontested until his death on Sept. 9, 1976.

While his reputation was deeply tarnished by the chaos and destruction of the ultra-radical 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution, subsequent generations have generally accepted the ruling Communist Party's official verdict that he was on balance 70 percent right and 30 percent wrong.

Here are some ways Mao's influence lingers in today's very-different China:

FILE - In this Sept 10, 1977, file photo, from left to right; Hua Guofeng, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) chairman and Mao Zedong's immediate successor; Ye Jianying, CCP vice chairman and future ceremonial head of state; Deng Xiaoping, no formal titles at the time but soon to emerge as paramount leader during the reform era; Li Xiannian, CCP vice chairman and future president; Wang Dongxing, head of the leadership bodyguard unit who helped topple the Gang of Four, view the body of later Chinese leader Mao Zedong in Beijing. Friday, Sept 9, 2016 marks the 40th anniversary of the death of Mao Zedong, who founded the People's Republic in 1949 and ran it virtually uncontested until his death on Sept. 9, 1976. (Photo via AP, File)

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STILL REVERED

Mao remains a revered figure. His birthplace in the village of Shaoshan in Hunan province receives millions of visitors a year, and his embalmed corpse lies within a hulking mausoleum in the center of sprawling Tiananmen Square in the heart of Beijing. His portrait still hangs from iconic Tiananmen Gate, from which he proclaimed the establishment of the new communist state on Oct. 1, 1949, and his visage peers from every denomination of Chinese currency.

All are signs of how he has become a virtual symbol of state, even while in a modern industrial and increasingly capitalistic China that has veered greatly from his ideal of a radical communist state steeped in peasant virtues and egalitarian ideals.

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LEGACY OF NATIONAL UNITY

Among Mao's key achievements was the welding of a fractious China into a unitary state by overthrowing Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist government, defeating warlord factions and cementing control over the peripheral western regions of Tibet and Xinjiang. Mao's state has actually grown with the reabsorption in recent decades of the former British colony of Hong Kong and Portuguese colony of Macau. China has also moved aggressively to assert its claim to virtually the entire South China Sea, sparking frictions with its southern neighbors. One territory remains outside Beijing's control, however: the self-governing island of Taiwan to which Chiang's defeated forces retreated in 1949.

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PARTY OVER ALL

Mao advocated strict Communist Party control over all aspects of life, and while his totalitarian state is a thing of the past, the party maintains an iron grip over political power. The last major challenge it faced, the 1989 pro-democracy protests centered on Tiananmen Square, were brutally suppressed and remain a taboo subject. China continues to imprison Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo for co-authoring a call for ending the communist monopoly on power, and civic and legal groups outside party control face constant harassment and persecution. A roundup of activist lawyers in June 2015 has sent a chill through the activist community, and the prospects for a movement arising to oppose the party seem next to nil.

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A POWERFUL MILITARY

One of Mao's most famous dictums was that political power came from the barrel of a gun, and the People's Liberation Army remains the party's house guard despite calls for it to shift loyalty to the government instead. In addition to retaining a monopoly on force at home, the PLA has become a growing force in regional and even global military affairs. With 2.3 million members, it is the world's largest standing military, although plans call for it to shrink by 300,000. Years of double-digit percentage increases in China's military budget  now the world's second-largest  have transformed the army into an increasingly high-tech and battle-proficient force, despite not having engaged in any major conflict since 1979.

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SYSTEMATIC WEAKNESSES

Not all is smooth sailing. The party Mao bequeathed to his successors remains brittle and intolerant, opaque and exclusive, placing hundreds of millions of Chinese outside the decision-making process. Pent-up frustrations occasionally burst into episodes of unrest, although the massive security state has shown its ability to suppress them. In addition, the nationalism unleashed by Mao may force the government to take hard-line positions that imperil its goal of being viewed as a responsible player in global society. Economic tensions deriving from Mao's command economy also linger. In a move that might have pleased the revolutionary Mao, if not the later authoritarian leader, workers in China's bloated state industries are growing restive over layoffs and cutbacks at a time when overall economic growth, while still robust, is slowing.

FILE - In this undated photo, members of the Chinese People's Liberation Army pay their respects to the body Mao Zedong in China. Friday, Sept 9, 2016 marks the 40th anniversary of the death of Mao Zedong, who founded the People's Republic in 1949 and ran it virtually uncontested until his death on Sept. 9, 1976. (Photo via AP, File)

File - In the 1962, file photo released by China's Xinhua News Agency, Mao Anqing, first from left, the second son of the late founder of China's communist government, Mao Zedong, third left, and Mao Anqing's wife Shao Hua, right, pose for a family photo. Friday, Sept 9, 2016 marks the 40th anniversary of the death of Mao Zedong, who founded the People's Republic in 1949 and ran it virtually uncontested until his death on Sept. 9, 1976. (Xinhua via AP, File)

FILE - In this file photo taken Monday, May 2, 2011, performers take to the stage near a picture of Mao Zedong at the Red Classic restaurant that capitalizes on nostalgia for China's past in Beijing, China. Friday, Sept 9, 2016 marks the 40th anniversary of the death of Mao Zedong, who founded the People's Republic in 1949 and ran it virtually uncontested until his death on Sept. 9, 1976. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, File)

FILE - In this file photo taken Tuesday, Sept. 18, 2012, anti-Japan protesters hold portraits of the late Communist leader Mao Zedong, Chinese national flags, and posters that read: "Give me back Diaoyu Islands, Boycott Japanese products,"as they march on a street outside the Japanese Embassy in Beijing. Friday, Sept 9, 2016 marks the 40th anniversary of the death of Mao Zedong, who founded the People's Republic in 1949 and ran it virtually uncontested until his death on Sept. 9, 1976. Nationalism unleashed by Mao may force the government to take hardline positions imperiling its goal of obtaining status as a responsible player in global society. (AP Photo/Alexander F. Yuan, File)
6th suspect arrested in slaying of activist in Honduras

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP)  Honduran authorities say they have arrested the sixth, and last, suspect among those sought for allegedly carrying out the killing of environmental activist Berta Caceres last March.

Caceres led the defense of the Gualcarque River in western Honduras, which is considered sacred by the Lenca people, and her fight succeeded in blocking the proposed Agua Zarca hydroelectric dam.

The activist, who had been awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize for her work to preserve land, had reported receiving death threats from security personnel for the company that was developing the project. She was shot to death March 3 by gunmen who invaded her home.

FILE - In this March 16, 2016, file photo, a woman holds up a poster with a photo of slain environmental leader Berta Caceres, during a protest march in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Authorities said that unidentified gunmen killed Nelson Garcia, a colleague of Caceres, who was slain almost two weeks ago in similar circumstances. Honduran authorities announced Thursday, Sept. 8, that they have arrested a sixth suspect in the March killing of environmental activist Berta Caceres. (AP Photo/Fernando Antonio, File)

Announcing the latest arrest, Ricardo Castro, head of Honduras' criminal investigation unit, identified the suspect as 21-year-old Elvin Heriberto Rapalo Orellana, also known as "El Comanche." He alleged that Orellana shot and wounded a Mexican activist who survived the attack on Caceres.

Castro said that Orellana was the last person sought in the shooting itself, but that investigators were still working to determine who ordered the killing of Caceres.

The other arrested suspects include an active duty army officer and at least one man who worked for the hydroelectric project that Caceres opposed.

The public prosecutor's office has said that three suspects arrested in May worked for or were direct employees of Desarrollos Energeticos SA, also known as DESA, which was developing the dam project.
Childhood home of Donald Trump to be sold at auction

NEW YORK (AP)  The childhood home in New York City of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is set to be auctioned and the opening bid is $849,000.

Newsday reports (http://nwsdy.li/2c2J4ZF ) the Queens home, which is listed on Trump's birth certificate, will be auctioned on Oct. 19 at the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan.

The 3,600-square-foot Tudor has five bedrooms, a fully furnished basement and a two-car garage. It had been listed in July for $1.65 million.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump smiles as he meets with students and educators before speaking about school choice, Thursday, Sept. 8, 2016, at Cleveland Arts and Social Sciences Academy in Cleveland. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

The owners say they put it up for auction because they want to see what it's worth.

Open house events are planned for Sept. 25, Oct. 6 and Oct. 16.

Auction participants must bring a bank or certified check for $90,000 to the auction.
For the first time, Bill Cosby's lawyers claim racism

PHILADELPHIA (AP)  Bill Cosby has long preached the gospel of personal responsibility to fellow blacks, irritating those who fault racism for holding the community back.

But now lawyers for the 79-year-old comedian have suggested for the first time that racial bias is to blame as Cosby faces the prospect of 13 women testifying in court that he drugged and molested them. Twelve of them are white.

Cosby's legal team raised the issue on the courthouse steps Tuesday after a hearing in his criminal sex assault case in suburban Philadelphia. Whether they intend to bring up race in the courtroom remains to be seen. At a minimum, some legal experts said the defense is trying to influence potential jurors.

Bill Cosby departs after a pretrial hearing in his sexual assault case at the Montgomery County Courthouse in Norristown, Pa., Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2016. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

"I think that you've always got to have in mind who's your jury pool," said Los Angeles lawyer Mark Geragos, whose clients have included Michael Jackson. "That's probably the end game."

Or the lawyers may have been dutifully carrying out Cosby's instructions: "It could well be they are expressing the concerns of the client," said Carl Douglas, who was on O.J. Simpson's legal Dream Team.

Cosby is set to go on trial next June on charges he drugged and sexually violated Temple University employee Andrea Constand at his home in 2004. He could get 10 years in prison if convicted.

In bringing up race, his legal team took aim at celebrity lawyer Gloria Allred, who represents about half the women who have agreed to testify against Cosby.

Allred "calls herself a civil rights attorney, but her campaign against Mr. Cosby builds on racial bias and prejudice that can pollute the court of public opinion," the lawyers said in a statement.

"Mr. Cosby is no stranger to discrimination and racial hatred. When the media repeats her accusations  with no evidence, no trial and no jury  we are moved backwards as a country and away from the America that our civil rights leaders sacrificed so much to create."

Allred called the tactic "desperate."

"It is ironic that a man who has chastised the black poor for making race an excuse would now have to lean upon that as part of his defense strategy," said Georgetown University sociology professor Michael Eric Dyson, a black scholar and author of the book "Is Bill Cosby Right? Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind?"

"If you're more cynical, you might say, 'What manipulation of racial rhetoric in defense of the indefensible,'" Dyson said Thursday.

Cosby's lawyers have not raised any bias claims in court during their myriad efforts to get the case thrown out. The focus for now is on keeping out the most damning evidence, including Cosby's 2005 deposition in which he admitted using drugs and alcohol to seduce women. The defense will also fight strenuously to keep the 13 other accusers off the stand.

His lawyers asked on Tuesday to have the trial moved out of suburban Montgomery County, where the case was a major topic in the election campaign for district attorney last fall. Lead defense attorney Brian McMonagle suggested that the jury be drawn instead from Philadelphia.

Though McMonagle did not say so, Montgomery County is 80 percent white and 10 percent black. In Philadelphia, the racial split is nearly even.

That's not to say Cosby enjoys the unquestioned support of the black community.

The trailblazing TV star and one-time role model has chided activists who call the criminal justice system racist.

"These are people going around stealing Coca-Cola. People getting shot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake," Cosby said in an often-quoted 2004 speech before the NAACP. "Then we all run out and are outraged: 'The cops shouldn't have shot him.' What the hell was he doing with the pound cake in his hand?"

His scolding remarks to the black community about baggy pants, fatherless homes and rap music have rankled younger blacks and scholars like Dyson. But they may still resonate with older blacks who share his focus on family life, education and personal morality.

"Those that grew up in the shadows of his 'Cosby' show don't want to believe the stench of the allegations," Douglas said. But "I would think that millennials, if they think of the word 'Cosby,' would think of the word 'date rape' before you think of 'The Cosby Show' or Cliff Huxtable."

Still, when it's time for the defense to pick a jury in this case, Geragos suggested race will trump all: "Ultimately, at the end of the day, they're not going to take a white juror over an African-American juror."

Bill Cosby departs after a pretrial hearing in his sexual assault case at the Montgomery County Courthouse in Norristown, Pa., Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2016. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
The Latest: UN Security Council condemns North Korea test

SEOUL, South Korea (AP)  The Latest on North Korea's nuclear test (all times local):

7:30 a.m.

The U.N. Security Council is strongly condemning North Korea's latest nuclear test and says it will start discussions on "significant measures" against Pyongyang including new sanctions.

A woman watches a large TV screen showing Korea Central Television's news program on the North Korea's nuclear test, in Tokyo, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. North Korea conducted its fifth nuclear test on Friday, just eight months after it claimed it successfully detonated a small hydrogen bomb. Japanese letters at the bottom read: "North Korea has successfully conducted a nuclear explosion test aimed at examining the power of its nuclear warheads." (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)

The council quickly agreed to a press statement after an emergency closed-door meeting late Friday afternoon called by the United States, Japan and South Korea. Just three days ago, the council condemned the North's latest ballistic missile test.

In Friday's statement, the Security Council recalled its previous pledge to take "further significant measures" in response to new nuclear tests by North Korea.

"In line with this commitment and the gravity of this violation, the members of the Security Council will begin to work immediately on appropriate measures" under Article 41 of the U.N. Charter which specifies non-military actions including sanctions, the statement said.

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6:30 a.m.

The United States, France and Britain are calling for new sanctions against North Korea for again defying U.N. Security Council resolutions and carrying out a fifth nuclear test.

U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power said the council must impose new sanctions and vigorously promote implementation of four previous sanctions resolutions "to demonstrate to North Korea that there are consequences for its unlawful and dangerous actions."

"This is more than brazen defiance," Power told reporters as she headed into an emergency council meeting Friday afternoon. "North Korea is seeking to perfect its nuclear weapons and their delivery vehicles so they can hold the region and the world hostage under threat of nuclear strikes."

France's U.N. Ambassador Francois Delattre said "North Korea will have to bear the consequences of its act and provocation." That's why France believes "new sanctions are indispensable," he said.

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1:33 a.m.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has condemned North Korea's fifth nuclear test as a "brazen breach" of U.N. resolutions and is urging the Security Council "to unite and take urgent actions."

Ban, a former South Korean foreign minister, told reporters Friday that "we must urgently break this accelerating spiral of escalation."

"This unacceptable act endangers peace and security in the region and is another vivid reminder of the urgent need to strengthen the global nuclear test ban regime," Ban said.

He stressed that North Korea is the only country to break the norms against nuclear testing and reiterated the international community's calls upon the North to reverse course and commit to denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.

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12:30 a.m.

The U.N. Security Council has scheduled an emergency meeting on North Korea's latest nuclear test, and several members are expecting an immediate condemnation and discussions on further measures including sanctions.

The 15 members are expected to meet behind closed doors late Friday afternoon.

The council on Tuesday strongly condemned North Korea's latest ballistic missile launches and threatened "further significant measures" if it refuses to stop its nuclear and missile tests.

British U.N. Ambassador Matthew Rycroft said "the U.K. will be pushing for as robust and speedy a response as possible."

He said three things would count as "further significant measures" and Britain will pursue a combination of all three  strong implementation of existing sanctions, additional names added to the sanctions blacklist, and a strengthening of sanctions.

Japan's U.N. Ambassador Koro Bessho said "we would like the Security Council to be united and coming up with a very strong message that shows the way forward."

Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin told reporters: "I think we should condemn it first of all" and then discuss possible further measures.

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12:15 a.m.

U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter says the international community must "redouble the pressure" on North Korea to halt its nuclear program.

Asked whether U.S. military action against North Korea is now on the table, he did not answer directly. He said the test "and other provocations" strengthen U.S. resolve to defend itself and its allies. He noted U.S. plans to deploy new, more capable missile defenses in South Korea.

He called the North Korean test destabilizing and provocative.

Carter said China "shares important responsibility for this development," referring to Friday's nuclear test. He said China needs to help reverse North Korea's nuclear progress.

Carter said he had just consulted by phone with his South Korean counterpart and reaffirmed an "ironclad" U.S. commitment to the defense of South Korea, including its inclusion under a U.S. "nuclear umbrella."

Carter spoke at a news conference with his Norwegian counterpart after a four-day trip to England and Norway.

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11:45 p.m.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe says he and South Korean President Park Geun-hye have agreed that North Korea's latest nuclear test and its recent missile launches demonstrate that it now poses a "different level of threat."

Abe told reporters that the two leaders talked by telephone and agreed to cooperate closely in response to the nuclear test, including seeking tougher U.N. Security Council sanctions.

"We also agreed that we must take a different approach in responding to the new level of threat," Abe said. "In response to this reckless act, international society must work together resolutely."

North Korea said it conducted a "higher level" nuclear test explosion on Friday, its fifth atomic test and the second in eight months.

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11:30 p.m.

Pakistan has condemned the nuclear test carried out by North Korea and called on it to comply with U.N. Security Council resolutions against its nuclear program.

The Pakistani government urged all parties to work toward the establishment of a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula.

North Korea said it conducted a "higher level" nuclear test explosion on Friday, its fifth atomic test and the second in eight months.

Pakistan conducted its first nuclear test in 1998, and has been accused of sharing nuclear weapons technology with North Korea.

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11 p.m.

President Barack Obama is condemning North Korea's latest nuclear test and says the U.S. "does not and never will" accept the country as a nuclear state.

Obama says he consulted by telephone with the leaders of South Korea and Japan after being informed of North Korea's claim to have conducted a "higher level" nuclear test explosion on Friday.

Obama says the leaders agreed to work with the U.N. Security Council and the international community to implement existing punitive measures imposed on North Korea for prior instances of unlawful nuclear activity. He says additional "significant" steps, including new sanctions, are being considered.

North Korea said its test will allow it to finally build, "at will," stronger, smaller and lighter nuclear weapons.

It was the country's fifth atomic test and second in eight months.

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6 p.m.

China's Foreign Ministry will formally protest North Korea's nuclear test with Pyongyang's ambassador in Beijing.

Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters Friday that the test, North Korea's fifth, was the latest act to destabilize relations on the Korean Peninsula. China strongly opposes the United States' deployment of an advanced missile defense system in South Korea, and state news media on Friday called on "all sides" to stop "adding oil to the flames."

China is North Korea's strongest political ally and economic lifeline.

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5:45 p.m.

The Pentagon is calling North Korea's nuclear test "yet another flagrant violation" of U.N. Security Council resolutions as well as a "serious provocation."

Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook is traveling Friday in Norway with U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter. In a statement, Cook says Carter has been briefed on reports of seismic activity near a North Korea nuclear site. Cook says Carter will remain in close contact with America's South Korean allies as well as other friends and allies in the region.

Cook says a nuclear test would pose "a significant threat to the peace and security of the Korean peninsula and the stability of the Asia-Pacific region."

North Korea confirmed Friday it had tested a nuclear warhead designed to be mounted on ballistic missiles.

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5:25 p.m.

Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga called North Korea an "outlaw nation in the neighborhood" following Pyongyang's fifth nuclear test on Friday.

Suga says Japan will consider stepping up its own sanctions in addition to what it already has in place, along with those imposed by the U.N. Security Council.

Japan currently bans entry of North Korean nationals and re-entry of senior members of North Korean permanent residents' association in Japan. It also has a ban on port entry of all North Korean vessels.

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5 p.m.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry says he is deeply concerned about North Korea after the communist government announced that it had conducted its fifth nuclear test.

In Geneva for meetings about Syria, Kerry says he spoke Friday with the foreign ministers of Japan and South Korea. He says "everybody shares concerns" about the situation on the Korean peninsula right now.

Kerry says the U.S. is still trying to determine precisely what happened. He didn't refer to Friday's event as a nuclear test.

He spoke as he started a day of Syria negotiations with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

Lavrov says he will talk to Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida soon. He says U.N. Security Council resolutions on North Korea must be respected "and we must send this message very strongly."

Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga says Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and President Barack Obama held telephone talks and agreed to cooperate in seeking an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting to discuss a possibility of effectively imposing sanctions on North Korea over the nuclear test.

The Security Council in March imposed the toughest sanctions on North Korea in two decades, reflecting growing anger at Pyongyang's nuclear test and rocket launch earlier this year in defiance of a ban on all nuclear-related activity.

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4:35 p.m.

France has strongly condemned North Korea's fifth nuclear test and calls on the United Nations Security Council to quickly face the issue.

The French presidency says "the international community must unite against this new provocation."

France's Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault says Friday's test is a "serious act which infringes the world's peace and security."

He says "this escalation is unacceptable."

Norwegian Foreign Minister Borge Brende also condemned Pyongyang's nuclear test, saying in a tweet that "this unacceptable action causes deep concern & threatens peace."

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4:15 p.m.

In the streets of Pyongyang and Seoul, residents offered opposite views of North Korea's latest nuclear test.

Rim Jong Su, the 42-year-old Pyongyang resident, said, "Now, I am full of confidence that if the enemies make any little provocations we will make a counter attack and we will surely win."

Across the border, Jeong Jong-kook said that South Koreans are nervous about North Korea's nuclear experiment.

He says: "Nuclear weapons must be prohibited in order to pursue stability and peace in East Asia."

Another resident of Seoul, Kim Moon-kyeong, says "North Korea's nuclear provocation is such a silly act. Everyone is against North Korea's nuclear threat. As a South Korean citizen, I deplore this."

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3:40 p.m.

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency says North Korea's fifth nuclear test, if confirmed, is in clear violation of numerous U.N. Security Council resolutions and in complete disregard of the repeated demands of the international community.

Yukiya Amano says in a statement that the test is a "deeply troubling and regrettable act."

The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization also says that the test, if confirmed, "constitutes yet another breach of the universally accepted norm against nuclear testing; a norm that has been respected by 183 countries since 1996."

The agency's executive secretary, Lassina Zerbo, says in a statement that Friday's detonation seems to have been slightly larger than the one recorded on Jan. 6.

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2:40 p.m.

China has condemned North Korea's fifth nuclear test, a key denunciation for Pyongyang by its economic lifeline and only major ally.

The Foreign Ministry issued a statement Friday criticizing North Korea for carrying out a test with "disregard" for international objections. The statement said China "resolutely opposes" the test and called on North Korea to stop any behavior that "worsens the situation."

North Korea said Friday that it had detonated a warhead, hours after South Korean officials said they had detected seismic activity near a known nuclear test site.

China has provided cover to North Korea from worldwide denunciations of its nuclear program. But it toughened its line after Pyongyang carried out long-range missile tests earlier this year, restricting exports of jet fuel into the country and banning some mineral imports.

The statement did not indicate whether China would take any immediate action or support new sanctions.

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2:15 p.m.

President Barack Obama has been briefed about the report of seismic activity near a nuclear facility in North Korea.

South Korean officials say it was indeed a nuclear test, the fifth by the North.

Obama returned to Washington from a trip to Asia just before 1 a.m. EDT Friday. His press secretary, Josh Earnest, says Obama received the briefing aboard Air Force One from his national security adviser, Susan Rice.

Earnest says Obama also consulted with South Korean President Park Geun-hye and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan in separate phone calls.

Earnest says Obama reiterated the unbreakable U.S. commitment to the security of America's allies in Asia and around the world. The spokesman says Obama indicated he would continue to consult America's allies and partners in the days ahead "to ensure provocative actions from North Korea are met with serious consequences."

The spokesman for the State Department, John Kirby, says Secretary of State John Kerry has been briefed on the matter and that officials are monitoring and assessing the situation.

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2 p.m.

North Korea's state TV says Friday's nuclear test "examined and confirmed" specific features of a nuclear warhead designed to be mounted on ballistic missiles. It says there was no radioactive leakage or adverse environmental impact caused by the test.

North Korea says the test shows the country is ready to hit back if provoked by enemies including the United States, and that it will continue its efforts to strengthen the quantity and quality of its nuclear weapons.

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1:50 p.m.

North Korea says it has successfully conducted a nuclear explosion test aimed at examining the power of its nuclear warheads.

North Korea's state TV said Friday that the test elevated the country's nuclear arsenal and is part of its response to the international sanctions following its earlier nuclear test and long-range rocket launch in January and February.

North Korea says it will continue to take efforts to strengthen the quantity and quality of its nuclear weapons.

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12:55 p.m.

China says the Ministry of Environmental Protection has activated a contingency plan to begin monitoring radiation levels in provinces bordering North Korea, but says radiation levels are normal.

In Japan, meanwhile, two T-4 trainer aircraft took off from Hyakuri Air Base northeast of Tokyo, carrying a special container to collect air samples for analysis of possible radioactive materials.

Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike says Japan's capital city is also testing water samples and monitoring radiation levels in the air to examine possible impact from the North Korean nuclear test.

She told reporters: "I will protect the safety of Tokyo residents."

South Korea says North Korea on Friday conducted its fifth atomic test, producing its biggest-ever explosive yield, after monitors detected artificial seismic waves from a quake measuring a magnitude 5.

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12:50 p.m.

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters Friday that "there is a possibility that North Korea has forced a nuclear test," citing the temblor showing wave patterns from a non-seismic source.

He says: "If North Korea did conduct a nuclear test, it is absolutely not acceptable, and we must lodge a strong protest."

Japan's Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida also confirmed that Japan Meteorological Agency has detected shaking patterns that are not from a naturally occurred earthquake.

The meteorological agency detected a magnitude 5.3 shaking in North Korea, near the country's nulear test facility.

NHK says Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority is now analyzing radiation levels at monitoring stations nationwide to see if there is any change.

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12:45 p.m.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye has strongly condemned North Korea's nuclear test, saying in a statement that it showed the "fanatic recklessness of the Kim Jong Un government as it clings to a nuclear development."

Kim is the North Korean leader.

Park's office says she spoke in Laos with President Barack Obama about the test Friday morning, but didn't immediately reveal more details.

Park says South Korea will employ all available measures to put more pressure on North Korea.

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12:35 p.m.

A spokesman for the U.S. National Security Council, Ned Price, says Washington is aware of seismic activity on the Korean Peninsula in the vicinity of a known North Korean nuclear test site.

He says: "We are monitoring and continuing to assess the situation in close coordination with our regional partners."

South Korea says North Korea on Friday conducted its fifth atomic test, producing its biggest-ever explosive yield, after monitors detected artificial seismic waves from a quake measuring a magnitude 5.

The U.S. Geological Survey called the seismic activity an "explosion" on its website.

A North Korean man watches a news report regarding a nuclear test on a large screen outside the Pyongyang Station in Pyongyang, North Korea, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. North Korea said Friday it conducted a "higher level" nuclear warhead test explosion, which it trumpeted as finally allowing it to build "at will" an array of stronger, smaller and lighter nuclear weapons. (AP Photo/Jon Chol Jin)

An official of the Earthquake and Volcano of the Korea Monitoring Division points at the epicenter of seismic waves in North Korea, in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. South Korea's Yonhap news agency says Seoul believes North Korea has conducted its fifth nuclear test explosion. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

Earthquake and Volcano of the Korea Monitoring Division Director Ryoo Yong-gyu points at the epicenter of seismic waves in North Korea, in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. South Korea's Yonhap news agency says Seoul believes North Korea has conducted its fifth nuclear test explosion. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
A look at N. Korea's nuclear, missile developments in 2016

SEOUL, South Korea (AP)  North Korea has conducted its fifth nuclear test on Friday, just eight months after it claimed it successfully detonated a small hydrogen bomb. Analysts say that the North's newest test, which South Korea says produced its biggest-ever explosive yield, shows Pyongyang's stubborn determination in face of sanctions to create smaller and lighter nuclear weapons that could be fit on future missiles capable of striking the U.S. mainland.

Some of the notable developments in North Korea's nuclear weapons and missile programs in 2016:

 Jan. 6: North Korea conducts its fourth nuclear test and says it successfully tested a "miniaturized" hydrogen bomb. Outsiders are skeptical about the H-bomb claim.

South Korean soldiers wear North Korean flags on their helmets, playing a role of North Korean soldiers after the 66th Incheon Landing Operations Commemoration ceremony in Incheon, South Korea, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. Incheon is the coastal city where the United Nations Forces led by U.S. Gen. Douglas MacArthur landed in September, 1950 just months after North Korea invaded the South. North Korea on Friday conducted its fifth atomic test, producing its biggest-ever explosive yield, South Korean officials said after monitors detected unusual seismic activity near the North's northeastern nuclear test site. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

Feb. 2: North Korea informs international organizations that it will attempt a satellite launch between Feb. 8 and 25. It later moves launch window to Feb. 7-14.

 Feb. 7: North Korea launches a long-range rocket.

March 9: North Korean state media publicizes photos of a purported mock-up of a key nuclear warhead part. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un says the country has developed miniaturized atomic bombs that can be placed on missiles.

 March 18: North Korea for the first time since 2014 fires a medium-range Rodong missile, which flies about 800 kilometers (500 miles) before crashing into its eastern waters.

 April 23: North Korea fires a ballistic missile from a submarine. South Korean defense officials say it traveled about 30 kilometers (19 miles). North Korea says the launch was aimed at advancing nuclear warhead technologies.

 June 22: The U.S. and South Korea say North Korea fires two suspected "Musudan" missiles, which could one day be capable of reaching far-off U.S. military bases in Asia. North Korea later claims a successful test of a powerful new midrange missile, which it says reached a maximum height of 1,400 kilometers (870 miles) before landing 400 kilometers (248 miles) away in targeted waters.

 July 19: North Korea fires three ballistic missiles, with two of them flying between 500 to 600 kilometers (310 to 375 miles). North Korea says the test-firings are part of a simulated pre-emptive attack on ports and airfields in South Korea.

 Aug. 3: South Korean and Japanese officials say North Korea fired a medium-range ballistic missile, likely a Rodong, that flew about 1,000 kilometers (620) miles and landed near Japan's territorial waters.

 Aug. 24: North Korea fires a ballistic missile from a submarine that flew 500 kilometers (310 miles) before crashing into waters near Japan. Leader Kim says the country has acquired a fully-equipped nuclear attack capability and also put the U.S. mainland within striking distance.

 Sept. 5: North Korea fires three suspected medium-range missiles that travel about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) before landing in waters near Japan.
As hajj nears, questions about deadly 2015 stampede remain

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP)  Marching with thousands of other pilgrims at last year's hajj in Saudi Arabia, 23-year-old Sobia Noor of Pakistan felt the crowd get tighter and the air grow thicker in the scorching heat. Suddenly, there was shouting and crying along the narrow street bordered by tall metal barriers.

She was holding hands tightly with her mother and aunt, but her grip was broken as a push of people struck her like a giant wave. She lost sight of her father. Thrown to the ground with others on top of her, she couldn't breathe.

The next thing she remembers was being sprinkled with water and pulled from the pile. Then she saw a scene that still haunts her: "There were heaps of bodies all around, and some injured were crying for help," she said.

FILE - In this Thursday, Sept. 24, 2015 file photo posted on the official Twitter account of the directorate of the Saudi Civil Defense agency, a pilgrim is treated by a medic after a stampede that killed and injured pilgrims in the holy city of Mina during the annual hajj pilgrimage. With this year's hajj set to start on Saturday, Saudi authorities say have done all they can to prepare. They are decreasing the density of crowds where the crush of pilgrims took place, widening narrow streets in Mina and introducing higher-tech methods to manage the hajj, but survivors, angry and bewildered, warn it won't be enough to prevent another catastrophe. (Directorate of the Saudi Civil Defense agency via AP, File) MANDATORY CREDIT

The stampede and crush on Sept. 24, 2015, along Road 204 in Mina, a pilgrimage route on the outskirts of Mecca, killed at least 2,400 people  a disaster that the kingdom has yet to fully acknowledge or explain.

More than 2 million Muslims are expected at this year's hajj that begins Saturday, and Saudi authorities say they have done all they can to prepare for the five-day pilgrimage. They are reducing the density of crowds where the crush took place, widening narrow streets in Mina, and introducing some high-tech measures.

But survivors and relatives of the dead, still angered by the tragedy and bewildered by what they perceive as a lack of an adequate response by the Saudi authorities, fear the plans won't be enough to prevent another catastrophe.

Saudi Arabia's official death toll from the crush is 769, a figure that has not been updated since Sept. 26.

But an Associated Press count, based on media reports and officials' comments from 36 of the more than 180 countries that sent citizens to the hajj, found that at least 2,426 people had been killed.

Saudi authorities have yet to offer families of victims any financial compensation. No officials have been held accountable and no findings from their investigation have been issued.

Asked about the status of the Saudi inquiry, Saudi Interior Ministry spokesman Mansour al-Turki told the AP that a committee including engineers and security and health officials "is still working and didn't release any statement yet."

Initial statements by Saudi police said it appeared that two large crowds heading in opposite directions intersected on Road 204. Crowds in the back, unaware of the congestion ahead, kept pressing forward.

An Egyptian survivor told the AP that poorly trained Saudi troops refused to open one of the gates along Road 204 to help those who were suffocating. The man, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he lives in Saudi Arabia and feared repercussions, said the troops did not know what to do and appeared to be waiting for orders as the bodies piled up.

Saudi Arabia's regional foe, Iran, has said that almost 500 of those killed were Iranian pilgrims  the most of any country  and blamed the disaster on Saudi negligence.

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, this week accused Saudi authorities of killing pilgrims who were injured in the crush by putting them in containers with the dead.

Iran is not sending its citizens to hajj this year and has called on Saudi Arabia to share its prestigious custodianship and management of the hajj with other Muslim nations. That notion is rejected by the kingdom's Sunni rulers who accuse Shiite-led Iran of playing politics with the pilgrimage.

In recent decades, Saudi Arabia has spent billions of dollars to improve hajj safety and accommodate more people. It built the massive, multistory Jamarat Complex with large pedestrian paths in Mina, where pilgrims throw pebbles at columns in a ritual stoning of the devil. Many of the pedestrian roads leading to the complex are narrow, however.

The government also is working to create a National Center for Joint Security Operations to centralize oversight of the video feed from more than 5,000 cameras along hajj routes.

Despite media reports that pilgrims would be given electronic ID bracelets this year, al-Turki said the project is still being developed and won't be used.

One significant change is the expansion of Road 204 to ensure it's at least 12 meters wide (39 feet) in all areas.

Hisham Al-Falih, head of the Hajj Preparatory Committee, told AP that 12 projects costing about $53.3 million were implemented to improve the hajj this year. Some tents in Mina on streets that were previously blocked have been relocated to open roads, and some paths were widened, he said.

But al-Falih added that there is only so much his committee and others can do to prepare for dealing with crowds of up to 3 million people.

"We are humans at the end of the day. We are doing all that we can do, and the rest is with God," he said.

The hajj has always been risky, requiring long travel, physical stamina and patience. A 1990 stampede killed more than 1,400 people. Days before last year's disaster, a crane collapse killed 111 people inside Mecca's Grand Mosque housing the Kaaba, Islam's holiest site.

For Noor, the pilgrimage from her home in Multan, Pakistan, was a wedding present from her uncle. Accompanied by her father, mother and aunt, she made the trip that Muslims are to perform once in their lives as a spiritual rebirth.

On the third day of the hajj, she and her family had completed most of the rites. The stampede occurred as they were heading toward an area in the valley of Mina for the ritual stoning.

Noor spent six days in a hospital before finding her aunt, who had injured a leg and shoulder. She searched hospitals for her parents until being told they had died.

"I can't understand how my aunt and I survived that horrible incident," Noor said. "No doubt, that was a miracle."

She said the Saudis were unable to manage the crowds and the only solution is to reduce the number of visitors. The kingdom instead plans to allow more pilgrims in the coming years.

Nasser Fayad, an Egyptian newspaper editor, lost three relatives, including his 57-year-old brother who had three sons in high school and college.

"For all those who died in Mina, we are asking Saudi Arabia to financially compensate the victims, and that this compensation is for their kids," Fayad said. "The Saudi government hasn't even asked about us or even given condolences."

The Saudi Embassy should have sent an emissary to meet with the relatives of the at least 190 Egyptians killed, he said, but "there has not been a single response to what happened. As if nothing happened."

Some families tried to organize to seek reparations, but many are poor and cannot afford a lawyer, Fayad said.

At least 320 pilgrims died from Mali, and relatives there formed a group to press Saudi Arabia for answers, saying that some have not been given death certificates, while others are seeking compensation. They meet with a lawyer every Saturday.

Iranian teacher Masoud Taghiyani cited Saudi "incompetency" for the death of his 76-year-old father, saying his parents had saved for 30 years to perform the hajj.

"Saudi Arabia should accept that they were responsible for the safety of pilgrims," he said. "Then, they should pay blood money to the families of victims."

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Associated Press writers Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran; Baba Ahmed in Bamako, Mali; Asim Tanveer in Multan, Pakistan; and Zarar Khan in Islamabad contributed to this report.

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Follow Aya Batrawy on Twitter at https://twitter.com/ayaelb

FILE - In this Thursday, Sept. 24, 2015 file photo, a muslim pilgrim walks through the site where dead bodies are gathered in Mina, Saudi Arabia during the annual hajj pilgrimage. With this year's hajj set to start on Saturday, Saudi authorities say have done all they can to prepare. They are decreasing the density of crowds where the crush of pilgrims took place, widening narrow streets in Mina and introducing higher-tech methods to manage the hajj, but survivors, angry and bewildered, warn it won't be enough to prevent another catastrophe.(AP Photo, File)

FILE- In this Friday, Sept. 25 2015 file photo, tents for pilgrims attending the annual hajj pilgrimage are seen from a helicopter over Mina, Saudi Arabia a day after a stampede killed more than 700 people. With this year's hajj set to start on Saturday, Saudi authorities say have done all they can to prepare. They are decreasing the density of crowds where the crush of pilgrims took place, widening narrow streets in Mina and introducing higher-tech methods to manage the hajj, but survivors, angry and bewildered, warn it won't be enough to prevent another catastrophe.(AP Photo/Mosa'ab Elshamy, File)

FILE - In this Friday, Sept. 25 2015 file photo, a security officer monitors Muslim pilgrims attending the annual hajj pilgrimage on CCTV screens at a security command center in Mina, Saudi Arabia, a day after a stampede killed hundreds of people. With this year's hajj set to start on Saturday, Saudi authorities say have done all they can to prepare. They are decreasing the density of crowds where the crush of pilgrims took place, widening narrow streets in Mina and introducing higher-tech methods to manage the hajj, but survivors, angry and bewildered, warn it won't be enough to prevent another catastrophe.(AP Photo/Mosa'ab Elshamy, File)

FILE- In this Friday, Sept. 18, 2015 file photo, Muslim Pilgrims attend Friday afternoon prayers outside the Grand Mosque in the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia. With this year's hajj set to start on Saturday, Saudi authorities say have done all they can to prepare. They are decreasing the density of crowds where the crush of pilgrims took place, widening narrow streets in Mina and introducing higher-tech methods to manage the hajj, but survivors, angry and bewildered, warn it won't be enough to prevent another catastrophe.(AP Photo/Mosa'ab Elshamy, File)

FILE - In this Thursday, Sept. 24, 2015 file photo, bodies of people who died in a crush in Mina, Saudi Arabia during the annual hajj pilgrimage lie in a street. With this year's hajj set to start on Saturday, Saudi authorities say have done all they can to prepare. They are decreasing the density of crowds where the crush of pilgrims took place, widening narrow streets in Mina and introducing higher-tech methods to manage the hajj, but survivors, angry and bewildered, warn it won't be enough to prevent another catastrophe.(AP Photo/File)

In this photo taken on Sunday, Sept. 4, 2016, Pakistan's Kauser Parveen, 40, right, who survived last year's hajj stampede and lost her brother, sits with her sister-in-law Abida Shaheen within the picture of her brother Mohammad Sajid, 45, in Abbottabad, Pakistan. "We as a group were heading toward the Rami site. All of a sudden police officers asked us to change the lane and we saw a mob was heading toward us from opposite direction," she said(AP Photo/B.K. Bangash)

In this photo taken on Monday, Sept. 5, 2016, Haji Dawood, 51, who survived last year's stampede during the hajj pilgrimage talks in Peshawar, Pakistan. With this year's hajj set to start on Saturday, Saudi authorities say have done all they can to prepare. They are decreasing the density of crowds where the crush of pilgrims took place, widening narrow streets in Mina and introducing higher-tech methods to manage the hajj, but survivors, angry and bewildered, warn it won't be enough to prevent another catastrophe.(AP Photo/B.K. Bangash)

In this photo taken on Sunday, Sept. 4, 2016, Pakistan's Kauser Parveen, 40, who survived last year's stampede during the hajj pilgrimage and lost her brother, recalls her ordeal in Abbottabad, Pakistan. With this year's hajj set to start on Saturday, Saudi authorities say have done all they can to prepare. They are decreasing the density of crowds where the crush of pilgrims took place, widening narrow streets in Mina and introducing higher-tech methods to manage the hajj, but survivors, angry and bewildered, warn it won't be enough to prevent another catastrophe.(AP Photo/B.K. Bangash)

In this photo taken on Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2016, Rabia Noor, left, who survived last year's hajj pilgrimage stampede and lost her parents hold their photographs with sisters, Sobia Noor center, and Yasmin Noor in Multan, Pakistan. With this year's hajj set to start on Saturday, Saudi authorities say have done all they can to prepare. They are decreasing the density of crowds where the crush of pilgrims took place, widening narrow streets in Mina and introducing higher-tech methods to manage the hajj, but survivors, angry and bewildered, warn it won't be enough to prevent another catastrophe.(AP Photo/Asim Tanveer)

FILE - In this Oct. 4, 2015 file photo, members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard carry flag draped coffins as thousands attend funeral services for pilgrims killed in a stampede during last month's hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia, at Tehran University. With this year's hajj set to start on Saturday, Saudi authorities say have done all they can to prepare. They are decreasing the density of crowds where the crush of pilgrims took place, widening narrow streets in Mina and introducing higher-tech methods to manage the hajj, but survivors, angry and bewildered, warn it won't be enough to prevent another catastrophe.(AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)
Search suspended for overboard cruise ship passenger

MIAMI (AP)  The U.S. Coast Guard has suspended its search in the Bahamas for a New York woman who went overboard from a cruise ship.

According to the Miami Herald (http://hrld.us/2cKbPun ), Capt. Todd Coggeshall with the Coast Guard's 7th District said in a statement Thursday night that the "difficult decision" had been made to halt the search pending any further developments.

Rina Patel, 32, of Interlaken, New York, was reported missing Wednesday. The Coast Guard said she had been on the 11th deck of the Carnival Ecstasy as the ship passed near the island of Grand Bahama. Carnival Cruise Line reported she apparently jumped overboard.

Coast Guard aircraft and two ships assisted in the search.

The cruise ship had left Nassau, Bahamas, and was en route to Charleston, South Carolina.

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Survivors recall the stampede and crush at last year's hajj

A stampede and crush killed more than 2,400 pilgrims at the annual hajj in Saudi Arabia last year. Some of the survivors recount their experience:

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Kauser Parveen of Abbottabad, Pakistan, who said her brother, Mohammad Sajid, fell nearby, but she could not help him:

In this photo taken on Sunday, Sept. 4, 2016, Pakistan's Kauser Parveen, 40, right, who survived last year's hajj stampede and lost her brother, sits with her sister-in-law Abida Shaheen within the picture of her brother Mohammad Sajid, 45, in Abbottabad, Pakistan. "We as a group were heading toward the Rami site. All of a sudden police officers asked us to change the lane and we saw a mob was heading toward us from opposite direction," she said(AP Photo/B.K. Bangash)

"I was feeling extreme suffocation and, in a moment, fainted. While I was collapsing, I saw my brother from a distance on the ground screaming for help and water. People in the crowd were snatching bottles of water from each other. I saw people piling up on people already collapsed."

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Assigue Ouologuem, a 74-year-old retired postal worker from Mali, who lost consciousness in the crowd and found himself by the side of the road:

"The younger ones were lucky enough to escape quickly, but the elderly and the women had trouble getting out of the crush of people."

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Dawood Raza, a 51-year-old businessman from Peshawar, Pakistan, who said he pushed himself toward a wall after he began suffocating:

"The scene was much like a slaughterhouse where sacrificed animals are dumped on one another. People were screaming for help, but there was no one to listen. Police officers seemed confused and looked like they were not trained to handle this kind of situation."

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Mohamed Nasim, a civil servant from Quetta, Pakistan, who was walking with his wife, 44-year-old Zar Bibi:

"Somehow, I lost my wife's hand and, in an attempt to catch her back, I was pushed hard toward the concrete barrier and my arm and hand were injured. I fell near the concrete block and passed out."

"I still avoid looking into eyes of my four children, though they always console me. I feel guilty that I could not bring back their mother after the hajj."

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Yusuf Shettima, a lawyer from Nigeria, who blamed the tragedy on "people's unruly behavior" and also Iranian pilgrims:

"Times were given for every country to move to the Jamarat (the point in the hajj where the stampede occurred). But sadly, the pilgrims from Iran ... insisted on taking the closer route used by those returning. ... That was the beginning of the confusion."

In this photo taken on Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2016, Rabia Noor, left, who survived last year's hajj pilgrimage stampede and lost her parents hold their photographs with sisters, Sobia Noor center, and Yasmin Noor in Multan, Pakistan. With this year's hajj set to start on Saturday, Saudi authorities say have done all they can to prepare. They are decreasing the density of crowds where the crush of pilgrims took place, widening narrow streets in Mina and introducing higher-tech methods to manage the hajj, but survivors, angry and bewildered, warn it won't be enough to prevent another catastrophe.(AP Photo/Asim Tanveer)

In this photo taken on Sunday, Sept. 4, 2016, Pakistan's Kauser Parveen, 40, who survived last year's stampede during the hajj pilgrimage and lost her brother, recalls her ordeal in Abbottabad, Pakistan. With this year's hajj set to start on Saturday, Saudi authorities say have done all they can to prepare. They are decreasing the density of crowds where the crush of pilgrims took place, widening narrow streets in Mina and introducing higher-tech methods to manage the hajj, but survivors, angry and bewildered, warn it won't be enough to prevent another catastrophe.(AP Photo/B.K. Bangash)
Embattled Nebraska senator may survive cybersex scandal

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP)  Nebraska state Sen. Bill Kintner is the kind of unabashed conservative whose comments on immigration, gay rights and fellow legislators have made even supporters cringe.

If colleagues needed a reason to boot the married, family-values lawmaker out of office, they got one when he admitted last month to having cybersex on a state laptop computer with a woman who later tried to blackmail him.

Despite bipartisan calls for his resignation  even from Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts  Kintner appears to be surviving the kind of scandal that has toppled lawmakers in other states. Conservative groups, worried about losing one of their strongest allies, are rallying behind the senator, even as they condemn his behavior as disgraceful.

FILE - In this March 29, 2016 file photo, Nebraska state Sen. Bill Kintner of Papillion, Neb., speaks during debate in Lincoln, Neb. Kintner is refusing to resign despite pressure to do so, including from his own partys governor. Its the kind of scandal that has toppled lawmakers in other states. And Kintners past comments on immigration, gay rights and fellow legislators have made even supporters cringe. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik, File)

The push to remove Kintner "is a political witch hunt designed to remove an obstacle to growing government in Nebraska," said Joe Herring, a conservative activist from Omaha who organized a rally to defend the lawmaker from Papillion, an Omaha suburb.

Herring and other activists in the state say removing Kintner from office is a step too far, despite his indiscretions and long history of inflammatory remarks. Since taking office in 2013, Kintner has worked aggressively to organize conservative Republican senators in a Legislature that takes pride in shunning formal party leadership.

"If we were to lose him as a state senator, it would cause major problems for conservatives," said Doug Kagan, president of Nebraska Taxpayers for Freedom, a tea party-backed organization based in Omaha.

Kagan called Kintner's behavior "disgraceful" but said the overwhelming majority of his group's members voiced support for keeping him in office.

Sen. Galen Hadley, speaker of the GOP-dominated unicameral Legislature, said he doesn't believe Kintner's critics have enough votes to oust him. The effort would require a special session at an estimated cost of $62,000.

"I just have the feeling that expulsion is a very drastic step," said Hadley, a Republican who has asked Kintner to leave office.

Kintner has said little about the scandal but noted he no longer uses a state laptop. He said he decided not to quit after extensive prayer and consultation with pastors and his wife, who works as a senior policy adviser for Ricketts. He said he apologized to his wife and God.

"Any time I make a major decision in my life, I pray about it," he said in an interview. "That's how we do it in my family."

Kintner's apology rang hollow to Sen. Bob Krist of Omaha, who chairs the Legislature's 10-member, bipartisan Executive Board that sent Kintner a letter urging him to resign. Krist noted the lawmaker didn't initially express remorse to his constituents or lawmakers.

"I'm not at all surprised. It goes to his character," said Krist, a Republican. "Most sensible people would not have put their wife or family through this kind of thing, but Mr. Kintner has decided that's what he wants to do."

Sen. Ernie Chambers of Omaha, a left-leaning independent who frequently clashes with Kintner, blasted his rival for having "no sense of shame" and "no common decency." The longtime maverick senator has already produced a series of long poems on state letterhead, dubbed Kintner-grams.

Kintner was fined $1,000 last month after admitting he engaged in mutual masturbation in July 2015 with a woman using Skype, an online video-chatting service. The woman, who the Nebraska State Patrol believes to have ties to an Ivory Coast crime syndicate, threatened to expose the encounter unless Kintner paid her $4,500.

Kintner reported the threat to the Nebraska State Patrol. The attorney general's office declined to take action, but a review panel levied the fine against Kintner for misuse of state property.

Last year, the state Latino American Commission condemned Kintner for repeatedly using an ethnic slur during a debate over allowing driver's licenses for certain youths brought to the country illegally.

In 2013, he criticized legislation that would allow same-sex couples to adopt, calling such measures "homosexual bills." He referred to "men in dresses" when defending his vote against a bill that would have outlawed anti-gay discrimination and assailed social programs as "government cocaine" during debate on a Medicaid expansion proposal.

Some were bemused and others offended by his 2013 comment to a newspaper, which asked him what he considered the biggest mystery. Kintner responded, "Women. No one understands them. They don't even understand themselves. Books and books and books have been written about it, and no one understands it."

Some of his most pointed criticism is aimed at fellow lawmakers. In one column he wrote for a weekly newspaper, Kintner claimed senators are like monkeys who attack those who try to disrupt the status quo.

In June 2015, he briefly posted a photo of a beheaded woman on his Facebook page to show his opposition to the Legislature's vote to abolish the death penalty.

Kintner's latest problems follow a spate of cases in which elected officials found themselves in trouble for online interactions.

Anthony Weiner resigned his congressional seat in 2011 after acknowledging he had texted sexually explicit photos of himself to several women, and his campaign for New York City mayor was torpedoed in 2013 when it was revealed he was still sexting with other women.

An Indiana lawmaker apologized after a website reported he'd been sexting with a woman who also had exchanged explicit emails with Weiner. A Missouri legislator resigned in 2015 after a newspaper reported he'd sent sexually charged text messages to a Capitol intern, and a New Hampshire state representative was indicted earlier this year on charges of using a computer to solicit what he thought was a teenage girl for sex.

Herring said it is a "hideous double standard" for lawmakers to attempt to expel Kintner. He noted that Nebraska's Legislature has no formal ethics code and that even senators convicted of drunken driving haven't faced expulsion threats.

Sen. Mike Groene, a conservative Republican from western Nebraska, said Kintner's constituents should decide his future when he faces re-election in 2018.

"What he did was wrong, but it's not my responsibility or my fellow senators' responsibility to decide who represents that district," he said.
Trump supporters court Jewish settlers in the West Bank

JERUSALEM (AP)  Republican activists are trying to "make America great again"  from inside a Jewish settlement deep in the West Bank.

This week, supporters of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump have set up a campaign office in the Karnei Shomron settlement in the northern West Bank, hoping to tap into the large numbers of American immigrants in the area for support.

The office is in addition to several Republican outposts set up across Israel to get American expatriates to register to vote. A new location in Gush Etzion, a bloc of settlements near Jerusalem, is expected to open next week. It's believed to be the first time either Republican or the Democrat activists have placed a campaign office in the West Bank.

File - In this Monday, Aug. 15, 2016 file photo, Marc Zell, co-chairman of Republicans Overseas Israel speaks as the Republican Party launches its first ever election campaign in Israel in Modiin. Supporters of Republican candidate Donald Trump have set up a campaign office in a Jewish settlement in the northern West Bank, hoping to tap into the large numbers of American immigrants in the area for support. The operation, launched this week in the Karnei Shomron settlement, is one of several Republican outposts set up across Israel to get American expatriates to register to vote. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit, File)

Marc Zell, co-chair of Republicans Overseas Israel, said the get-out-the-vote effort is not just for show.

His group estimates there are about 300,000 American citizens living in Israel, including some 50,000 West Bank settlers. Zell hopes as many as 200,000 of them will register to vote. With the vast majority believed to be Republicans, he said there could be enough votes to influence results in swing states like Ohio, Pennsylvania or Florida.

"The total Israeli vote could make a difference, as it has in the past," he said. In 2000, for instance, he said about 1,500 Americans here cast ballots in Florida for George W. Bush  enough to provide the razor-thin margin that propelled him to victory.

"Had they not been counted, he would not have been president," Zell said. "It's not academic speculation."

Zell said the decision to locate outreach offices in the West Bank was not meant to make a "specific" political statement.

"But we're not oblivious to the fact that having a campaign office there is going to attract attention. We're comfortable about doing it," he said.

Although the offices are not formal branches of the Trump campaign, he said they are "closely coordinated" with Republican officials in the U.S.

In Washington, Trump's campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks welcomed the effort.

"We have a lot of grassroots support  no official offices, but so many supporters there that know Mr. Trump will be great for Israel," she said.

While American Jews tend to vote for the Democrats, many living in Israel, particularly in the West Bank settlements, tend to be religious and socially conservative, with much more hawkish views toward the Palestinians.

Zell, who during the primaries opposed Trump, said he came to embrace the Republican nominee in large part because of his views on Israel.

Early in the campaign, Trump upset a gathering of Republican Jews by refusing to endorse Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel  a key Israeli position. Some of his other comments were seen by some as promoting Jewish stereotypes.

But since then, Trump has described himself as "very pro-Israel" and has taken up a host of positions endorsed by Israel's hard-line government.

Trump has vowed to "dismantle" the U.S.-led nuclear deal with Iran, which was bitterly opposed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The Republican platform also says there should be "no daylight" between Israel and America.

In an about-face for Trump, the platform now calls for recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital, a position that puts the campaign at odds with the international community and ignores the Palestinians' claim to east Jerusalem as their capital.

The Trump campaign also appears to distance itself from the position of recent administrations  both Republican and Democrat  that opposed Israeli settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.

While Trump's platform makes no direct reference to the settlements, it rejects "the false notion that Israel is an occupier" and opposes any attempt to "impose an agreement or to dictate borders."

The Palestinians seek both areas, captured by Israel in 1967, as parts of a future independent state alongside Israel  a position with U.S. and wide international backing. Trump has given no vision on what a future Israeli-Palestinian peace deal should look like, saying the two sides need to work it out themselves.

"He's not coming here with preconceived notions about what to do," Zell said. "This could be a real watershed in changing policy-thinking in Washington toward our region."

Trump's opponent, Hillary Clinton, has also reached out to Israelis, giving an interview to the country's largest TV station broadcast Thursday. In the interview, Clinton said that Trump's hostile rhetoric toward Muslims has strengthened jihadis. She also tried to assure Israelis that the U.S.-led nuclear deal with Iran is good for Israel. Many Israelis share Netanyahu's skepticism about the deal.

Neither the Trump nor the Hillary Clinton campaign has appeared to reach out to the much smaller number of Palestinian-American voters in the region.

Sam Bahour, a prominent Palestinian-American businessman in the West Bank, said he had not heard of any outreach from either side. "Guess the incentive of the selection of candidates is a non-starter," he said in an email.

The U.S. Embassy in Israel said it does not keep track of the number of Americans living in the region. But Sheldon Schorer, a prominent Democratic activist in Israel, agreed with Zell's estimates of roughly 200,000 potential voters.

However, he said he expects most to support Clinton. Although local Democrats are less organized than the Republicans, he said party activists are also hosting registration drives and educational events.

"I know the Republicans are investing very heavily in this ... but I don't think they are going to get the results they want," he said. "I think they will be disappointed today, partially because of the unattractiveness of their candidate."

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Officials: Ohio man received food stamps by hiding $4M

NOVELTY, Ohio (AP)  Police say an Ohio man who claims he's worth $120 million and is the son of a late former Iranian prince hid his wealth in order to collect food stamp payments and Medicaid.

WKYC-TV reports (http://on.wkyc.com/2cytPTL ) authorities last week raided the sprawling, 8,000-square-foot suburban Cleveland home of Ali Pascal Mahvi.

For two years Mahvi's family collected about $300 a month in food stamps. They also received Medicaid.

But officials say the family has numerous bank accounts with a combined value of more than $4 million that weren't disclosed when he applied for benefits.

Mahvi denies any wrongdoing and maintains he's eligible for aid since his home  worth more than $800,000  and personal belongings don't prevent him from receiving government assistance.

No charges have been filed.

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Federal government halts work on part of pipeline project

NEAR THE STANDING ROCK SIOUX RESERVATION, N.D. (AP)  The federal government stepped into the fight over the Dakota Access oil pipeline Friday, ordering work to stop on one segment of the project in North Dakota and asking the Texas-based company building it to "voluntarily pause" action on a wider span that an American Indian tribe says holds sacred artifacts.

The government's order came minutes after a judge rejected a request by the Standing Rock Sioux to halt construction of the $3.8 billion, four-state pipeline.

The tribe, whose cause has drawn thousands to join their protest, has challenged the Army Corps of Engineers' decision to grant permits for the pipeline at more than 200 water crossings. Tribal leaders allege that the project violates several federal laws and will harm water supplies. The tribe also says ancient sites have been disturbed during construction.

JR American Horse, left, raises his fist with others while leading a march to the Dakota Access Pipeline site in southern Morton County North Dakota. Several hundred protesters marched about a mile up Hwy 1806, Friday Sept. 9, 2016, from the protest camp to the area of the pipeline site where some archeological artifacts have been discovered. (Will Kincaid/The Bismarck Tribune via AP)

The tribe's chairman, Dave Archambault II, spoke at the state Capitol in front of several hundred people, some carrying signs that read "Respect Our Water" and "Water Is Sacred." He called the federal announcement "a beautiful start" and told reporters that the dispute is a long way from over.

"A public policy win is a lot stronger than a judicial win," he said. "Our message is heard."

A joint statement from the Army and the Departments of Justice and the Interior said construction bordering or under Lake Oahe would not go forward and asked the Texas-based pipeline builder, Energy Transfer Partners, to stop work 20 miles to the east and west of the lake while the government reconsiders "any of its previous decisions."

The statement also said the case "highlighted the need for a serious discussion" about nationwide reforms "with respect to considering tribes' views on these types of infrastructure projects."

Vicki Granado, a spokeswoman for the company, said it had no comment.

The president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council said he was disappointed with the government's decision to intervene and called it "flagrant overreach" that will result in more oil being moved by trucks and trains.

The 1,172-mile project will carry nearly a half-million barrels of crude oil daily from North Dakota's oil fields through South Dakota and Iowa to an existing pipeline in Patoka, Illinois.

In denying the tribe's request for a temporary injunction, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in Washington said that the court "does not lightly countenance any depredation of lands that hold significance" to the tribe and that, given the federal government's history with the tribe, the court scrutinized the permitting process "with particular care."

Nonetheless, the judge wrote, the tribe "has not demonstrated that an injunction is warranted here."

Attorney Jan Hasselman with the environmental group Earthjustice, who filed the lawsuit on the tribe's behalf, said earlier this week any such decision would be challenged. "We will have to pursue our options with an appeal and hope that construction isn't completed while that (appeal) process is going forward," he said.

Tribal historian LaDonna Brave Bull Allard said Boasberg's ruling gave her "a great amount of grief. My heart is hurting, but we will continue to stand, and we will look for other legal recourses."

Earlier in the day, thousands of protesters, many from tribes around the country, gathered near the reservation that straddles the North and South Dakota border.

"There's never been a coming together of tribes like this," according to Judith LeBlanc, a member of the Caddo Nation in Oklahoma and director of the New York-based Native Organizers Alliance. People came from as far as New York and Alaska, some bringing their families and children, and hundreds of tribal flags dotted the camp, along with American flags flown upside-down in protest.

The judge's order was announced over a loudspeaker there. John Nelson of Portland, Oregon, came to the camp to support his grandson, Archambault. The 82-year-old says he was not surprised by the ruling, "but it still hurts."

State authorities announced this week that law enforcement officers from across the state were being mobilized at the protest site. They said some National Guard members will work security at traffic checkpoints and another 100 would be on standby. The Great Plains Tribal Chairman's Association asked the Justice Department to send monitors to the site because it said racial profiling is occurring.

Nearly 40 people have been arrested since the protest began in April, including Archambault.

A week ago, protesters and construction workers were injured when, according to tribal officials, workers bulldozed sites on private land that the tribe says in court documents are "of great historic and cultural significance." Energy Transfer Partners denied the allegations.

The state's Private Investigation and Security Board received complaints about the use of dogs and will look into whether the private security teams at the site are properly registered and licensed, board attorney Monte Rogneby said Friday, adding that he would not name the firms.

On Thursday, North Dakota's archaeologist said a piece of private land that was not previously surveyed by the state would be surveyed for artifacts next week.

The company plans to complete the pipeline this year, and said in court papers that stopping the project would cost $1.4 billion the first year, mostly due to lost revenue in hauling crude.

A status conference in the tribe's lawsuit is scheduled for Sept. 16.

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Kolpack reported from Fargo, North Dakota. Associated Press writers Blake Nicholson in Bismarck, North Dakota, and Doug Glass in Minneapolis contributed to this report.

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This story has been corrected to show that the opinion is 58 pages long, not one page with no explanation. This story also clarifies that the federal government stopped construction near Lake Oahe and requested the company do so on a wider stretch.

People rally on the grounds of the state Capitol in Bismarck, N.D., Friday, Sept. 9, 2016, following a federal judge's ruling in Washington denying a request by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe to halt construction on the Dakota Access pipeline, a thousand-mile pipeline being built to carry North Dakota crude oil across four states to Illinois. (AP Photo/Blake Nicholson)

People rally on the grounds of the state Capitol in Bismarck, N.D., Friday, Sept. 9, 2016, following a federal judge's ruling in Washington denying a request by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe to halt construction on the Dakota Access pipeline, a thousand-mile pipeline being built to carry North Dakota crude oil across four states to Illinois. (AP Photo/Blake Nicholson)

The Sacred Stones Overflow Camp is growing in size and number as more people arrive at the site along North Dakota Highway 1806 and across the Cannonball River from the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation, Monday, Sept. 5, 2016 in Morton County, N.D. (Tom Stromme/The Bismarck Tribune via AP)

A line of protesters against the construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota head to a unity rally on the west steps of the State Capitol late Thursday, Sept. 8, 2016, in Denver. Several hundred marchers walked from the four directions to the Capitol to take part in the rally against the oil pipeline. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Sam Grant of the Omaha tribe addresses members of the Ponca, Santee, Winnebago and Omaha Tribes in Nebraska and Iowa along with others during a rally on Thursday, Sept. 8, 2016, in front of the Army Corps of Engineers offices in Omaha, Neb., to protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline in the Dakotas and Iowa. A judge is expected to rule Friday on whether to block construction of the pipeline that is supposed to pass close to the tribal reservation near the North Dakota-South Dakota border. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik)

Darlene Pipeboy, right, from the Lake Traverse Reservation in South Dakota, burns sage grass during a rally of Dakota Access pipeline protesters at the North Dakota Capitol grounds Friday, Sept. 9, 2016, in Bismarck. Pipeboy says the Native American custom "restores balance in all things." Pipeboy was among hundreds of protesters at the Capitol who cheered wildly when it was announced that federal officials are asking that construction on part of the pipeline be temporarily shut down. Protesters carried signs that read "Respect Our Water" and "Water Is Sacred." (AP Photo/Blake Nicholson)

Protestors gather in downtown Portland, Ore., Friday, Sept. 9, 2016, as a show of solidarity with protesters in other states trying to halt the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline that will move oil from North Dakota to Illinois. A federal judge in Washington on Friday, Sept. 9, 2016, denied an attempt by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe to halt construction of a disputed oil pipeline that passes near its reservation in North Dakota. (AP Photo/Gillian Flaccus)
AP Explains: What's the Dakota Access oil pipeline?

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP)  The federal government quickly followed a federal judge's ruling denying the Standing Rock Sioux tribe's request to stop construction of the four-state, $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline by stopping work on one section and asking the pipeline company to do the same on a larger 40-mile swath.

Here's a look at the planned pipeline and the tribe's ongoing protest:

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The Sacred Stones Overflow Camp is growing in size and number as more people arrive at the site along North Dakota Highway 1806 and across the Cannonball River from the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation, Monday, Sept. 5, 2016 in Morton County, N.D. (Tom Stromme/The Bismarck Tribune via AP)

AFTER FIERY TRAIN DERAILMENTS, A MASSIVE PIPELINE PLANNED

Owned by Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners, the $3.8 billion, 1,172-mile project would carry nearly a half-million barrels of crude oil daily from North Dakota's oil fields through South Dakota and Iowa to an existing pipeline in Patoka, Illinois, where shippers can access Midwest and Gulf Coast markets. Announced in 2014, supporters said the pipeline would create more markets and reduce truck and oil train traffic  the latter of which has been a growing concern after a spate of fiery derailments of trains carrying North Dakota crude.

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TRIBES SUE OVER WATER, SACRED SITES

The Standing Rock Sioux's lawsuit challenged the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' decision to grant permits at more than 200 water crossings. Filed on behalf of the tribe by environmental group Earthjustice, the suit says the project violates several federal laws, including the National Historic Preservation Act, and will disturb sacred sites outside of the 2.3-million acre reservation.

The lawsuit alleged that the pipeline, which would be placed less than a mile upstream of the reservation, could impact drinking water for more than 8,000 tribal members and millions who rely on it downstream.

A separate lawsuit filed Thursday by the Yankton Sioux tribe in South Dakota challenges the same thing.

ETP says the pipeline includes safeguards such as leak detection equipment, and workers monitoring the pipeline remotely in Texas could close block valves on it within three minutes if a breach is detected.

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PROTESTERS SET UP CAMP, A MOVEMENT GROWS

Since April, there's been a tribal protest  held mostly by members of the Standing Rock Sioux at the confluence of the Cannonball and Missouri rivers. It's grown considerably, as they've been joined by other American Indians and other, non-Native Americans from across the country, including celebrities such as "Divergent" actress Shailene Woodley.

Nearly 40 have been arrested as the protest has grown size, including Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Chairman David Archambault II. None of the arrests stemmed from Saturday's confrontation between protesters and construction workers.

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POLITICIANS ENTER THE FRAY, OFFICIALS PREPARE

Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and running mate Ajamu Baraka have been charged with misdemeanor counts of criminal trespass and criminal mischief stemming from their time at the protest. Stein's campaign spokeswoman acknowledged Stein spray-painted construction equipment Tuesday.

Gov. Jack Dalrymple has activated the North Dakota National Guard, with a handful of soldiers providing security at traffic checkpoints, and another 100 on standby to respond to any incidents. Meanwhile, the Great Plains Tribal Chairman's Association has asked U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch to send federal monitors to the protest, alleging racial profiling.

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CULTURE CLASH

Last weekend, tribal officials said crews bulldozed several sites of "significant cultural and historic value" on private land, which Energy Transfer Partners denies. It led to Saturday's clash between protesters and private security guards; law enforcement officials said four security guards and two guard dogs were injured, while a tribal spokesman said six people were bitten by the dogs and at least 30 people were pepper-sprayed.

Earlier this week, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg partially granted the tribe's request to temporarily stop work near Lake Oahe to prevent the destruction of more sacred sites, but not on the private land that sparked the protest.

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This story has been corrected for style to make "pipeline" lowercase in all instances.

A line of protesters against the construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota head to a unity rally on the west steps of the State Capitol late Thursday, Sept. 8, 2016, in Denver. Several hundred marchers walked from the four directions to the Capitol to take part in the rally against the oil pipeline. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

A line of protesters against the construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota head to a unity rally on the west steps of the State Capitol late Thursday, Sept. 8, 2016, in Denver. Several hundred marchers walked from the four directions to the Capitol to take part in the rally against the oil pipeline. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

A line of protesters against the construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota head to a unity rally on the west steps of the State Capitol late Thursday, Sept. 8, 2016, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Members of the Ponca, Santee, Winnebago and Omaha Tribes in Nebraska and Iowa along with others participate in a rally on Thursday, Sept. 8, 2016, in front of the Army Corps of Engineers offices in Omaha, Neb., to protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline in the Dakotas and Iowa. A judge is expected to rule Friday on whether to block construction of the pipeline that is supposed to pass close to the tribal reservation near the North Dakota-South Dakota border. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik)
Official: Afghan forces take back city threatened by Taliban

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP)  Afghan forces have retaken most of a southern provincial capital, a day after it was nearly overrun by the Taliban in fighting that claimed at least eight Afghan troops, officials said Friday.

After day-long heavy battles, the army and the police regained control of all strategic locations in Tirin Kot, the capital of Uruzgan province, said Mohammad Radmanish, the deputy spokesman for the Ministry of Defense,

Sporadic fighting was only underway Friday in the city's northeastern neighborhood, he added.

The Taliban pushed deep into Tirin Kot on Thursday, setting off fierce fighting. After hours of the onslaught, Kabul sent Afghan commandos and reinforcements to Tirin Kot, backed by U.S. airstrikes.

Radmanish said that more than 80 Taliban fighters were killed in the past 24 hours as Afghan forces repelled the insurgent attack. He did not provide a casualty toll for Afghan forces or civilians.

The Uruzgan provincial spokesman, Doost Mohammad Nayab, told the Associated Press on Friday that the Taliban have been pushed back and were now at a 5 kilometer- (3.1 mile-) distance from the city, thanks to the reinforcements from Kabul and the U.S. air support.

Nayab said that according to their figures, "around 100 Taliban fighters were killed" while the Afghans lost eight troops and had 10 wounded.

A spokesman for the Taliban, Qari Yousaf Ahmadi, insisted that the government claims of a Taliban retreat were inaccurate.

"We are still holding our positions," Ahmadi said, denying reports of high insurgent casualties. He said Taliban fighters had captured several Afghan policemen.

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What's on board Arctic cruise ship? Lots of ice gear, parkas

NOME, Alaska (AP)  It took years of planning and several million dollars to ensure a city-sized luxury liner could become the largest to ever sail through the Northwest Passage north of Alaska and Canada.

The Crystal Serenity left the town of Seward on Aug. 16, sailing up the Bering Strait and then east across the Arctic Ocean. It will complete its voyage Sept. 16 in New York.

Several million dollars were spent outfitting the ship with equipment and personnel to navigate through Arctic waters, said the vessel's captain, Birger Vorland. And everyone on board was outfitted with their own parka.

This Aug. 21, 2016, photo shows a man standing on the Bering Sea shore looking at the luxury cruise ship Crystal Serenity anchored just outside Nome, Alaska. The ship made a port call as it became the largest cruise ship to ever go through the Northwest Passage, en route to New York City. (AP Photo/Mark Thiessen)

The special equipment includes a dedicated ice radar, an ice navigation system that combines electronic charts with satellite imagery and thermal imaging, and two large ice searchlights on each bridge wing.

In addition, two Canadian ice pilots are on board. And the ship has an escort vessel carrying oil spill response equipment and two helicopters in case people need to evacuate.

"Ice is a concern," Vorland said while the ship was docked in Nome for a port call. "Luckily, 2016 is turning out to be a reasonably good ice year."

Not many vegetables are grown in the Arctic, so chartered flights have delivered fresh perishables to be served in the cruise liner's five-star restaurants.

One of the first documented voyages through the Northwest Passage was Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen's 1903-06 expedition on his ship, the Gja (pronounced "Yur").

So it's a sense of excitement for Vorland, a Norway native living in Los Angeles, to follow in Amundsen's footsteps, as it were.

"They spent three years, and we're going to do this in 32 days and in a lot more comfort," Vorland said.
California prosecutor to charge 7 officers in sex scandal

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP)  Seven current and former San Francisco Bay Area police officers will be charged in a sexual misconduct scandal involving a teenager who was later arrested in Florida in an unrelated assault case, a prosecutor said Friday.

The wide-ranging scandal surfaced in June when the teenager, who described herself as a prostitute, said she had sex with about 30 law enforcement officials in Oakland and elsewhere in the region.

Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O'Malley said Friday she was waiting until she's certain the teen can be returned to California before filing charges against the officers.

File-This July 8, 2010, file photo shows Alameda County district attorney Nancy O'Malley speaking at a news conference at an Oakland, Calif., courthouse. Prosecutors in the San Francisco Bay Area are planning a news conference to discuss the results of an investigation into sexual misconduct involving officers from the Oakland Police Department and other law enforcement agencies. O'Malley said in a statement Thursday, Sept. 8, 2016, that at 12 p.m. Friday she will announce decisions on charges in the criminal investigation. The wide-ranging scandal was brought on by officers who were implicated by a teenage prostitute. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File)

The teen was jailed in Florida on suspicion of assaulting a guard at a drug treatment center where she was living.

O'Malley criticized the Richmond Police Department for helping arrange for the teen, now 19, to stay at the center on the other side of the country, saying her unavailability could hurt the prosecution if she is unable to testify.

The teen has said she had sexual encounters with six Richmond police officers and two dozen other law enforcement officials, including some from Oakland, during the past two years.

Richmond Police Chief Allwyn Brown and department spokesman Lt. Felix Tan didn't return phone calls and emails seeking comment.

The teen said she had sex with four officers before she turned 18 and sometimes traded sex for protection from arrest or tips about planned prostitution stings.

O'Malley identified the officers to be charged as former Contra Costa sheriff's Deputy Ricardo Perez; former Livermore police Officer Dan Black; Oakland police Officers Brian Bunton, Giovani LoVerde and Warit Utappa; and former Oakland police Officers Tyrell Smith and Leroy Johnson.

The prosecutor said Perez and LoVerde will be charged with oral copulation with a minor, a felony, and Bunton will be charged with felony obstruction of justice and misdemeanor engaging in an act of prostitution.

The other four suspects will face misdemeanor counts of engaging in prostitution and unauthorized access of a confidential criminal justice database, O'Malley said.

Efforts to reach the officers were not immediately successful, and it's unclear if any of them are represented by attorneys.

Barry Donelan, president of the union representing Oakland officers, didn't return a call or respond to an email seeking comment.

The union said in a prepared statement that it was disappointed by the scandal and assured residents the majority of officers are hardworking and upstanding.

The ever-deepening scandal has thrown the Oakland Police Department into crisis and put dozens of officers under suspicion.

The saga began in September when Oakland officer Brendan O'Brien killed himself, leaving behind a suicide note discussing the relationships that he and other officers had with the teen.

In March, a federal judge with oversight of the troubled department said he was dissatisfied with the internal affairs investigation and ordered a re-examination of O'Brien's suicide.

In June, the teen told The Associated Press and other media outlets that she had sex with four officers when she was younger than 18.

O'Malley said her investigation was limited to Alameda County but authorities had found evidence that the teen had sex with police officers in other jurisdictions in San Francisco, Contra Costa and San Joaquin counties.

O'Malley also said the teen had friended "many, many" officers on social media and a large number of them engaged in sexually charged exchanges online.

O'Malley said those exchanges were "morally reprehensible" but not crimes.

The Associated Press generally doesn't identify people who say they are victims of sex crimes.

Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf previously said disciplinary action has begun against a dozen officers in the city, including dismissal proceedings against four.

Seven will serve a range of unpaid suspensions before being allowed to return to duty and another will be required to attend training classes.

The Oakland department previously said two officers implicated in the scandal have resigned in addition to O'Brien's suicide.

The department cycled through three chiefs in 10 days in June after the allegations were first reported in the media.

A Livermore officer who had been on administrative leave resigned Thursday after seeing the results of the investigation by his department.

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AP writers Janie Har and Kristen Bender contributed to this story.

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A landmark agreement will see the US and Russia teaming up to tackle the twin threats of ISIS and Al-Qaida, it has been announced.

Both countries announced a ceasefire after a day-long meeting between secretary of state John Kerry and his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, concluded early Saturday morning in Geneva, Switzerland.

If the ceasefire, which begins Monday, holds for a week, the two countries will then begin an unlikely military partnership to target Islamic extremists in the region.

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US Secretary of State John Kerry (left) and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov agreed to a Syria ceasefire in Geneva, Switzerland, on Friday in order to tackle ISIS and Al-Qaida

The ceasefire will be followed by an unlikely alliance between the two nations, who will strive to get their partners - Syria's Russia-backed government and US-backed rebels - on side

It's hoped the ceasefire, which begins at sundown Monday, will reduce bloodshed in the region, where 500,000 people have been killed. Pictured: The rebel-held city of Aleppo

At a joint news conference, Kerry said the plan could reduce violence in Syria and may lead to a long-sought-after political transition.

It could also, he says, end more than five years of bloodshed that has claimed the lives of 500,000 people.

Kerry called the deal a potential 'turning point' in the conflict - although it will require support from both Syria's Russian-backed government, led by President Bashar Assad, and US-supported anti-Assad rebels.

The ceasefire must allow civilian traffic and humanitarian aid to pass unhindred, while both pro- and anti-Syrian government forces must withdraw from demilitarized zones

If the ceasefire holds for a week, US forces (pictured) and Russian military will start to co-ordinate intelligence and co-coordinating ISIS and Al-Qaida targets

Around 500,000 people have died in Syria due to the war to date. Pictured: An explosion caused by a reported ISIS car bombing in the Syrian city of Kobani

The arrangement hinges on Moscow pressuring Assad's government to halt all offensive operations against Syria's armed opposition and civilian areas.

Meanwhile, Washington must persuade 'moderate' rebels to break ranks with the Nusra Front, Al-Qaida's Syria affiliate, and other extremist groups.

And both sides would have to pull back from demilitarized zones and allow civilian traffic and humanitarian deliveries.

That ceasefire and traffic must hold for a week before collaboration between the countries begins.

The US and Russia will then begin intelligence sharing and targeting coordination, while Assad's forces, no longer permitted to target Nusra, will focus their fire on ISIS.

Under the new deal, the US must persuade moderate allies - who fight Syrian President Bashar al-Assad - to split from the Nusra Front, a Syrian Al-Qaida affiliate. Pictured: a Nusra fighter

For its part, Russia says it has persuaded Assad (pictured) to agree to the ceasefire and stop bombing rebel-held cities

Kerry's negotiating partner, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, said the deal could help expand the counter-terrorism fight and aid deliveries to Syrian civilians.

'This is just the beginning of our new relations,' he promised.

He also said Assad's government was prepared to comply with the arrangement.

And for his part, Kerry said it would be 'wise' for opposition forces to separate completely from Nusra - a statement Lavrov hailed.

'Going after Nusra is not a concession to anybody,' Kerry said. 'It is profoundly in the interests of the United States.'

Both sides have failed to live up to previous bargains - but the promise of a united military effort means there is more at stake this time around.

An ISIS jihadist stands on the rubble of houses in the Euphrates Valley. The new deal will, it is hoped, allow both countries and their allies to focus on defeating Islamic extremist forces

The deal comes after months of diplomacy that included four meetings between Kerry and Lavrov since August 26 and a lengthy face-to-face between Presidents Obama and Putin in China.

It also comes a year after Obama chided Putin for Russia's military intervention in Syria.

That intervention, US officials said, was more about keeping Assad in power by attacking rebel forces than dealing with ISIS in the region.

But the level of US-Russian interaction has upset several leading national security officials in Washington, including defense secretary Ash Carter and national intelligence director James Clapper.

The anti-Assad Damascus Front fires rockets on ISIS combatants in Syria

Though the deal has been heralded as a breakthrough, it still needs to be implemented.

Given that Aleppo has spent the last 40 days is a vicious firefight between government and rebel fighters, enforcing the ceasefire could prove very difficult.

And as with previous blueprints for peace, Saturday's plan appears to lack enforcement mechanisms.

Russia could, in theory, threaten to act against rebel groups that break the deal.

But if Assad bombs his opponents, the US is unlikely to take any action against him, given Obama's longstanding opposition to entering the civil war.

Kerry called the deal a potential 'turning point' in the conflict. The ceasefire begins Monday

Kerry only appeared at the news conference after several hours of internal US discussions.

At one point, Lavrov said he was considering 'calling it a day' on talks, expressing frustration with what he described as an hours-long wait for a U.S. response.

He then presented journalists with several boxes of pizza, saying, 'This is from the U.S. delegation,' and two bottles of vodka, adding, 'This is from the Russian delegation

The ceasefire begins at sundown Monday, Kerry said, coinciding with the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha.
On Russia-backed TV network, Trump doubts Russian influence

WASHINGTON (AP)  Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump told a Russia-funded television network that "it's probably unlikely" that Russia is trying to influence the U.S. election.

Trump, who has faced backlash from both parties in recent days for praising Russian President Vladimir Putin, was interviewed by Larry King, a veteran American journalist whose show airs Thursday evenings on RT America, the U.S. partner of a network originally called Russia Today.

When King asked about reports that U.S. intelligence agencies are investigating whether Russia is trying to disrupt the election, Trump said that he's skeptical.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a small group roundtable held at the Cleveland Arts and Social Sciences Academy on Thursday, Sept. 8, 2016.(Thomas Ondrey/The Plain Dealer via AP)

"I think it's probably unlikely. I think maybe the Democrats are putting that out," Trump said. He added, "I hope that if they are doing something, I hope that somebody's going to be able to find out, so they can end it, because that would not be appropriate at all."

Private cybersecurity analysts have blamed Russian intelligence agencies for electronic break-ins into Democratic Party computers, including a breach of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the House Democrats' campaign arm.

Trump's interview with King was promoted by RT America as an exclusive.

A Trump spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, suggested that Trump was not aware that King's program was linked to the Russian-backed network.

"Mr. Trump recorded a short interview with Larry King for his podcast as a favor to Mr. King," Hicks said. "What Larry King does with the interview content is up to him. We have nothing to do with it."

During a televised forum Wednesday on national security, Trump complimented Putin for having "great control over his country." Putin has offered kind words for Trump in the past as well.

"He's been a leader far more that our president has been a leader," Trump said of the Russian president.

The Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Bob Corker, offered Trump a warning when asked about the relationship on Thursday.

"One has to be a little careful to let flattery affect one's judgment," Corker told CNN.
Turkey eases EU fears on migrant deal

ANKARA, Turkey (AP)  Turkey's foreign minister has suggested that a landmark deal to stop migrants reaching the European Union can be salvaged despite disagreement on conditions for relaxing visa restrictions for Turkish citizens traveling to the bloc.

Easing concern across Europe, Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters during a joint news conference with top EU officials Friday that a "common understanding" had emerged and that a consensus could be reached. He said, however, that a "concrete road map" should be worked out to lift travel restrictions.

"I believe that with this understanding we will overcome the problem," Cavusoglu said after talks with EU's foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, and EU Enlargement Commissioner Johannes Hahn.

A Syrian man feeds his child behind a UNHCR plastic sheet at Ritsona refugee camp, north of Athens, which hosts about 600 refugees and migrants on Thursday, Sept. 8, 2016. The refugee crisis is expected to be a central issue in discussions Friday at a meeting in Athens of leaders from Mediterranean countries in the European Union. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

Europe's migration crisis will be a central issue at next week's EU leaders' summit in Bratislava, Slovakia, as the member states remain rattled by Britain's referendum vote to leave the EU and recent gains for the nationalist vote in Germany.

In Athens, the leaders of France, Italy and five other EU Mediterranean countries gathered Friday to discuss immigration and the continent's debt crisis.

"It's important to issue a message of cooperation at this important time, following the Brexit vote and with populists and extremists trying to block Europe," French President Francois Hollande said.

"In the name of Europe, its southern members are facing difficulties on the migration issue ... So they must be helped, reinforced, so that we can allow for asylum seekers, but so there can also be an efficient control of immigration."

More than a million refugees and migrants traveled from Turkey to Greece and on to other EU countries. But numbers have declined dramatically since Balkan nations fenced off their borders and the EU-Turkey deal took effect in March. Border closures have left some 60,000 migrants and refugees stranded in Greece, most in hastily built camps.

Turkey had threatened to scrap the deal  which also promises 3 billion euros ($3.4 billion) to help support refugees in Turkey  if the EU failed to fulfill by October a promise to grant Turkish citizens the right to visa-free travel.

Plans to loosen visa rules came to a standstill after Turkey balked at the EU's demand that it relax its anti-terrorism laws, over concerns they could be used to target academics and journalists.

With the EU-Turkey deal still largely holding, Athens is pressing EU members to abide by commitments under a relocation program which has covered less that 10 percent of the 33,000 placements promised to migrants in Greece so far.

Greece was also angered by suggestions it should return to EU immigration rules that existed before last year's crisis.

A government spokesman on immigration said Athens rejected calls to reactivate the so-called Dublin Regulation, which requires migrants to apply for asylum in the first EU country they reach and would allow other EU members to send asylum-seekers back to Greece.

"A country such as Greece which receives a large number of refugees from Turkey, and also hosts a large number of refugees  practically without any outside help  cannot be asked to receive refugees from other European countries," Giorgos Kyritsis told The Associated Press. "That would be outrageous."

Malta's prime minister, speaking at the end of the Athens conference, also criticized EU migration policy.

"The current system of tackling migration in Europe is simply not working," Joseph Muscat said. "The Dublin system is out of synch with reality, and here are six countries which are saying 'we need to fix that for Europe to remain and to be relevant.'"

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Paphitis reported from Athens. Sylvie Corbet in Paris, Menelaos Hadjicostis in Istanbul, and Derek Gatopoulos in Athens contributed.

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Online:

Joint Declaration of Athens meeting: http://ow.ly/efl63043X8H

A Syrian man hammers a nail on woods as he prepares his family tent for winter at Ritsona refugee camp north of Athens, which hosts about 600 refugees and migrants on Thursday, Sept. 8, 2016. The refugee crisis is expected to be a central issue in discussions Friday at a meeting in Athens of leaders from Mediterranean countries in the European Union. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

A Syrian woman carries a plastic bag with garbage at Ritsona refugee camp north of Athens, which hosts about 600 refugees and migrants on Thursday, Sept. 8, 2016. The refugee crisis is expected to be a central issue in discussions Friday at a meeting in Athens of leaders from Mediterranean countries in the European Union. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

European Union's Foreign Policy Chief Federica Mogherini listens to Turkey's EU Minister Omer Celik during a joint news conference after talks with Turkish officials in Ankara, Turkey, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. Mogherini says the 28-member bloc and Turkey agree that there can be no military solution to the Syrian conflict and that only a political solution can bring peace to the war-torn country. (AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilici)

Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu speaks to the media during a joint news conference with EU Foreign Policy Chief Federica Mogherini, European Union's Enlargement Commissioner Johannes Hahn and Turkey's EU Minister Omer Celik in Ankara, Turkey, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. Mogherini says the 28-member bloc and Turkey agree that there can be no military solution to the Syrian conflict and that only a political solution can bring peace to the war-torn country. (AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilici)

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras , right, welcomes French President Francois Hollande during a Mediterranean Leaders summit in Athens, on Friday, Sept, 9, 2016. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, left, welcomes his Italian counterpart Matteo Renzi during a Mediterranean Leaders' summit in Athens, on Friday, Sept, 9, 2016. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

Greece's Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, second left, shakes hands with French President Francois Hollande during a Mediterranean Leader's Summit in Athens, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. (AP Photo/Yorgos Karahalis)

Greece's Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, center right, welcomes France's President Francois Hollande during a Mediterranean Leader Summit in Athens, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. (AP Photo/Yorgos Karahalis)

Greece's Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, right, shakes hands with Italian counterpart Matteo Renzi during a Mediterranean Leader's Summit in Athens, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. (AP Photo/Yorgos Karahalis)

Siha, a 35-year-old Syrian mother tends to her month-old daughter Mona inside their tent at Ritsona refugee camp, north of Athens, which hosts about 600 refugees and migrants on Thursday, Sept. 8, 2016. The refugee crisis is expected to be a central issue in discussions Friday at a meeting in Athens of leaders from Mediterranean countries in the European Union. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras , right, welcomes French President Francois Hollande during a Mediterranean Leaders summit in Athens, on Friday, Sept, 9, 2016. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)
School officials, EPA trade blame on school mercury response

LAS VEGAS (AP)  Las Vegas officials insist they followed federal guidance when they quarantined more than a thousand middle school students overnight over the discovery of several drops of mercury, but the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Friday that no such standards exist.

EPA workers help during spills of the neurotoxin, a fairly frequent occurrence at schools, but there is no set response that the agency enforces, spokesman Rusty Harris-Bishop said.

"We do not have a protocol on quarantine for mercury spills. We don't have that authority," he said.

A parent hugs his child after being released from Walter Johnson Junior High School Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2016, in Las Vegas. Hundreds of anxious parents staked out a Las Vegas middle school after mercury was found and federal officials kept more than a thousand students for up to 17 hours to screen them for exposure to the neurotoxin.. (David Becker/Las Vegas Review-Journal via AP)

Five to 10 drops of the element were found Wednesday at Walter Johnson Junior High School, leading authorities to keep 1,200 students and others for up to 17 hours to screen them for exposure. No illnesses were reported, but at least 50 children were contaminated. Everyone was eventually cleared of mercury residue.

Harris-Bishop said the Clark County School District made the decision about the response, which some parents criticized as over the top as they waited outside for hours for word on their children.

"We're not the responding authority here. We're brought in as a technical assist. We're not in charge. We're here to provide expertise," Harris-Bishop said.

Local officials maintain that the response aimed to ensure no students went home contaminated. High levels of exposure can cause mercury poisoning, which has symptoms including muscle weakness and speech, hearing and walking impairment, the EPA's website says.

There was no way to know the severity or reach of the contamination without the full-blown screening process, school officials say.

"We go by the recommendations by the EPA because they're the professionals in this situation," said Melinda Malone, a school district spokeswoman.

It was the largest decontamination effort the district and fire department has handled, officials said.

Mercury is a naturally occurring element and it's very likely traces already exist in schools, particularly in old science labs, said Dr. Fermin Leguen of the Southern Nevada Health District.

Even the small amount of mercury found in the school gym is considered low-level exposure and generally won't cause any lasting health effects, he said. Such quantities can be dangerous if it vaporizes, but it would not be life-threatening.

The response stirred anger in many parents, who said they did not get enough information and that the screenings took too long for the amount of mercury that spilled. It roughly equaled what can be found in an old thermometer.

Hundreds of anxious parents staked out the school, waiting as their children slowly trickled out until 5 a.m. Thursday. Students were quarantined in their classrooms until they were screened, which took about five minutes per person. They received food and water.

Kathleen Wardeh said her son Joseph was allowed to leave school at 3 a.m. Thursday. She called the process unnecessary and alarming and said she has lost confidence in the school's ability to handle a crisis.

"God forbid this was a really serious situation. How would they have handled it?" she asked. "They obviously are not prepared to handle any kind of crisis. I don't feel like my kid is safe in the public school."

The level of exposure among the contaminated students was minimal because no one is believed to have ingested it, Clark County School District police Capt. Ken Young has said.

A teacher initially reported the substance after seeing a group of boys and girls playing with it during a school assembly. The fire department confirmed the silvery liquid was mercury.

Officials were investigating reports from parents who said their children played with the substance at the school as far back as a week ago. They are also looking into whether a student brought it school.

The EPA said its testing so far confirms that the mercury was on campus before Wednesday's initial discovery.

The school is expected to reopen Monday.

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Associated Press writer Alina Hartounian contributed to this story.

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Follow Sally Ho at twitter.com/_sallyho. Her work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/journalist/sally-ho .

Parents wait behind a police line for their children to be released from Walter Johnson Junior High School, Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2016, in Las Vegas. Hundreds of anxious parents staked out a Las Vegas middle school after mercury was found and federal officials kept more than a thousand students for up to 17 hours to screen them for exposure to the neurotoxin. (David Becker/Las Vegas Review-Journal via AP)

A shoeless student stands with school administrators waiting to be picked up after being released from Walter Johnson Junior High School Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2016, in Las Vegas. Hundreds of anxious parents staked out a Las Vegas middle school after mercury was found and federal officials kept more than a thousand students for up to 17 hours to screen them for exposure to the neurotoxin.. (David Becker/Las Vegas Review-Journal via AP)
Cambodian opposition leader gets 5-month jail sentence

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP)  A Cambodian opposition leader was sentenced to five months in jail Friday in the latest faceoff between the government and opposition as political tensions over challenges to Prime Minister Hun Sen's longstanding autocratic rule show no signs of easing.

Sam Sokong, a defense lawyer for Kem Sokha, deputy leader of the Cambodia National Rescue Party, said they will appeal the verdict, which followed a trial that lasted only several hours.

"The trial conducted today did not comply with procedures," he said.

Supporters of Cambodia's main opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party listen to the party's deputy leader Kem Sokha during his speech at the party's headquarters in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. Cambodia's government and its opposition faced off in court and on the streets Friday as political tensions around challenges to Prime Minister Hun Sen's long-standing autocratic rule show no signs of easing. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)

Kem Sokha, who was not in court, was convicted of twice ignoring a summons to answer questions related to a case involving his alleged mistress. He refused, saying the legal moves were part of the ruling party's attempt to cripple the opposition.

Riot police were outside the court, and nearly 1,000 opposition supporters gathered in front of their party headquarters, with riot police watching them from about 500 meters (yards) away. There were no reports of violence.

Opposition lawmaker Ou Chanrith said the party was not surprised by the verdict, and urged supporters to continue challenging government suppression.

The case is one of several hanging over opposition leaders in what is generally seen as an attempt to disrupt their organizing efforts ahead of local elections next June. The next general election is not until the middle of 2018, but holding power at the local level is an advantage when national polls are held.

Before the verdict, Kem Sokha appeared before his supporters and accused the government of using the courts to stop him from speaking out and prevent him from taking part in the elections.

A statement issued this week by the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights expressed concern "about the escalating atmosphere of intimidation of opposition politicians, their supporters, civil society, and peaceful demonstrators in Cambodia."

It noted "a host of legal charges" faced by Kem Sokha and 29 other opposition supporters.

It said 14 of them had been given heavy prison sentences despite raise serious concerns about the fairness of the proceedings. "We urge the authorities to adhere strictly to international fair trial standards during the criminal proceedings," it said.

One victim of the legal moves has been opposition leader Sam Rainsy, who did not return from a trip abroad last November when an old conviction for defamation was restored and his parliamentary immunity was stripped by the government's legislative majority. It had been generally assumed that the conviction, carrying a two-year prison sentence, had been lifted by a 2013 pardon which allowed Sam Rainsy to return from a previous period of self-exile. He also faces a stack of separate charges that could put him away for 17 years.

Activists and non-governmental organizations, which are generally critical of the government, have come in for similar kinds of legal pressures. Physical force has also been applied. Two opposition lawmakers were beaten up by a pro-government mob last year, and the murder in July of a prominent social critic, Kem Ley, allegedly by a man to whom he owed money, is widely regarded with suspicion.

The opposition has called on its followers to turn out to protest. It has strong support in the capital, and street demonstrations have traditionally been an effective form of push-back. But recent efforts to take to the streets have been thwarted by a government show of force.

Hun Sen has been Cambodia's leader for three decades. But in a general election in 2013, it seemed his grip on power was shaken when the Cambodia National Rescue Party mounted a strong challenge, winning 55 seats in the National Assembly and leaving Hun Sen's Cambodian People's Party with 68. The opposition claimed they had been cheated and staged a boycott of parliament. Seeking to shore up his legitimacy, Hun Sen reached a political truce with them in 2014, making some minor concessions over electoral and parliamentary procedures.

But relations between the government and the opposition deteriorated last year after the opposition tried to exploit a volatile issue by accusing neighboring Vietnam, with which Hun Sen's government maintains good relations, of land encroachment. The move proved politically popular, and the government reacted by stepping up intimidation of the opposition party in the courts, which are seen as being under its influence.

Hun Sen's party has often been accused in the past of using violence or the threat of violence against opponents, but in recent years has stalked its foes mostly in the courts.

Supporters of Cambodia's main opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party listen to the party's deputy leader Kem Sokha during his speech at the party's headquarters in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. Cambodia's government and its opposition faced off in court and on the streets Friday as political tensions around challenges to Prime Minister Hun Sen's long-standing autocratic rule show no signs of easing. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)

Cambodia's main opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party Deputy President Kem Sokha greets party supporters as he delivers a speech at the party headquarters in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. Cambodia's government and its opposition faced off in court and on the streets Friday as political tensions around challenges to Prime Minister Hun Sen's long-standing autocratic rule show no signs of easing. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)

Kem Sokha, center, deputy leader of the Cambodia National Rescue Party, gestures as he speaks at the party's headquarters in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. Cambodia's government and its opposition faced off in court and on the streets Friday as political tensions around challenges to Prime Minister Hun Sen's long-standing autocratic rule show no signs of easing. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)

Cambodia's main opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party Deputy President Kem Sokha waves as he delivers a speech at the party headquarters in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. Cambodia's government and its opposition faced off in court and on the streets Friday as political tensions around challenges to Prime Minister Hun Sen's long-standing autocratic rule show no signs of easing. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)
Volunteer firefighters in Russia attacked with guns, knives

MOSCOW (AP)  Masked men armed with guns, knives and stun grenades early on Friday attacked a camp of volunteer firefighters who came to southern Russia to help to put out forest fires.

The environmental group Greenpeace, whose members were at the camp, said the men attacked their camp at night, beating up people and damaging their tents and cars parked nearby. Several people have been taken to the hospital, one of them with a broken nose, another with broken ribs.

The government has been cutting funding for firefighting brigades so much that volunteers in recent years have been traveling to forest fires to help out.

In this handout photo released by Greenpeace, Michael Kreindlin, a Greenpeace Russia staff member, poses for a photo after being beaten by attackers in Mogukorovka village, the Kuban region, 1120 kilometers (700 miles) south from Moscow, Russia, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. Masked men armed with guns, knives and stun grenades have attacked a camp of volunteer firefighters who came to southern Russia to help to put out forest fires. (Maria Vasileva/Greenpeace Photo via AP)

The attackers wielded the batons, knives and guns, Greenpeace Russia on Friday quoted firefighting volunteers coordinator Grigory Kuksin as saying: "They said if we don't get out of here till the morning, no one will ever find us, (they said) we should get the hell out of here to 'our America. "'
A look at Croatia's snap election on Sunday

ZAGREB, Croatia (AP)  The European Union's newest member state, Croatia, is holding a snap election this weekend that pits the dominant parties on the left and right against each other but is unlikely to produce a clear winner. The uncertainty is fueling fears of prolonged instability that could hamper reform.

Here is a brief look at Sunday's vote.

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In this photo taken late Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2016, supporters of center-left coalition wave flags at a rally in Zagreb, Croatia. Croats go to the polls this weekend in a snap election that, despite the country's many problems, has been more about past divisions than future challenges facing the European Union's newest member state. (AP Photo/Darko Bandic)

WHY THE SNAP VOTE?

Croatia's previous, right-wing government collapsed last spring after only six months in power, paralyzed by internal bickering among the coalition members. That government, led by a nonpartisan businessman from Canada, was formed after an inconclusive election last November.

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THE MAIN CONTENDERS

The main parties in Croatia are the left-wing Social Democrats and the right-wing Croatian Democratic Union, commonly known as HDZ. The parties have dominated Croatia's political scene since it split from Yugoslavia in the 1990s, but they will likely depend on smaller, kingmaker groups such as pro-reform Most.

The Croatian Democratic Union led Croatia during the 1991-95 war for independence and is viewed as nationalist.

The Social Democrats  running in a People's Coalition with some smaller groups  are considered successors to Croatia's Communists, who fought against Nazis during World War II and later ruled Croatia while it was part of the Yugoslav federation.

Most, a little-known group formed before last November's elections, came out of the last vote as a kingmaker. It formed a government with HDZ, but it didn't work well and the coalition government collapsed.

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WHAT'S AT STAKE

Although part of the campaign centered on past ideological divisions, whoever forms the next government will face some hard work on reforming Croatia's economy so it can catch up with the rest of the EU nations. Croatia has one of the weakest economies in the EU partly because of the war and delayed transition.

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ELECTION DAY

Croatia has 3.7 million voters. Polls open on Sunday at 0500GMT and close 12 hours later. Preliminary results and projections will start coming in an hour or two after the polls close. Official results are unlikely before Monday.

In this photo taken late Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2016, leader of the center-left coalition Zoran Milanovic talks to supporters at a rally in Zagreb, Croatia. Croats go to the polls this weekend in a snap election that, despite the country's many problems, has been more about past divisions than future challenges facing the European Union's newest member state. (AP Photo/Darko Bandic)

In this photo taken late Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2016, leader of the center-left coalition Zoran Milanovic talks to supporters at a rally in Zagreb, Croatia. Croats go to the polls this weekend in a snap election that, despite the country's many problems, has been more about past divisions than future challenges facing the European Union's newest member state. (AP Photo/Darko Bandic)

In this photo taken late Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2016, leader of the center-left coalition Zoran Milanovic greets supporters at a rally in Zagreb, Croatia. Croats go to the polls this weekend in a snap election that, despite the country's many problems, has been more about past divisions than future challenges facing the European Union's newest member state. (AP Photo/Darko Bandic)

In this photo taken late Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2016, supporters of the center-left coalition gather at a rally in Zagreb, Croatia. Croats go to the polls this weekend in a snap election that, despite the country's many problems, has been more about past divisions than future challenges facing the European Union's newest member state. (AP Photo/Darko Bandic)

In this photo taken late Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2016, Vesna Pusic, center in white, former foreign minister and one of leaders of the center-left coalition talks to supporters at a rally in Zagreb, Croatia. Croats go to the polls this weekend in a snap election that, despite the country's many problems, has been more about past divisions than future challenges facing the European Union's newest member state. (AP Photo/Darko Bandic)

In this photo taken late Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2016, leader of the center-left coalition Zoran Milanovic arrives at a rally in Zagreb, Croatia. Croats go to the polls this weekend in a snap election that, despite the country's many problems, has been more about past divisions than future challenges facing the European Union's newest member state. (AP Photo/Darko Bandic)
Uzbekistan's new leader pledges better ties with Russia, US

MOSCOW (AP)  The acting president of Uzbekistan, chosen following the death of the country's authoritarian leader, says he wants closer ties with Russia, the United States and China.

Islam Karimov, who crushed opposition throughout his nearly 27-year rule, died last week without leaving an apparent successor. The country's Senate on Thursday elected Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyoyev as acting president. Uzbekistan will still have to hold a presidential election.

In remarks to the parliament released on Friday, the 59-year old Mirziyoyev sought to strike a reconciliatory note, pledging to improve ties with Russia, the United States, China and other countries.

Uzbekistan's Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyayev, left, speaks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2016. Putin arrived to express his condolences and visit a grave of Uzbekistan's President Islam Karimov in Samarkand. (Alexei Druzhinin/Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
The Latest: Romanian police find 8 migrants hidden under bus

ATHENS, Greece (AP)  The Latest on the flow of migrants into Europe (all times local):

5:10 p.m.

Romanian border police have detained two Romanians for alleged trafficking after they found eight people, including two children, hidden under a bus that was entering the country.

A young refugee looks at his phone in Ritsona refugee camp, north of Athens, which hosts about 600 refugees and migrants on Thursday, Sept. 8, 2016. The refugee crisis is expected to be a central issue in discussions Friday at a meeting in Athens of leaders from Mediterranean countries in the European Union. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

Police said they carefully checked a small bus on Friday after a carpet and bits of cardboard fell from the bottom of the vehicle as it was crossing a bridge over the Danube river from Bulgaria into Romania.

Border police discovered two Syrians and six Iraqis hidden under the bus in an improvised compartment made from cardboard and wood. Five had requested asylum in Bulgaria. The group was handed over to Bulgarian authorities.

Police said the eight had risked their lives. Authorities detained the man who was driving the bus and a woman.

Romania has largely been bypassed by the wave of migrants traveling to Western Europe.

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3:05 p.m.

The European Union's enlargement commissioner says the bloc will sign a 300 million euros ($338 million) deal with Turkey's education ministry later this month to help with the schooling of some 3 million refugees the country is now hosting.

Johannes Hahn said after talks with Turkey's foreign and EU affairs ministers Friday the 3 billion euros the EU has pledged to help refugees inside Turkey until the end of next year is starting to flow.

He said of that total, 2.2 billion euros euros have been committed to projects and that contracts to be signed by September's end will total 1 billion euros

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan last week accused the EU of failing to deliver funds promised under a deal to stop migrants crossing the Aegean Sea.

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12:55 p.m.

Authorities say 18,143 migrants arrived in Germany last month seeking asylum, a sharp drop compared with the same month in 2015.

Some 104,460 asylum-seekers entered the country in August last year, marking the start of a wave of migration that would roll through the Balkans into Germany over the following months.

Figures released Friday by the interior ministry show that authorities received 91,331 formal applications for asylum in August.

Formal applications are usually submitted several months after a person enters Germany.

The greatest number of formal asylum requests came from Syrians, followed by citizens of Afghanistan and Iraq.

The largest number of new arrivals in August came from Syria, followed by Afghanistan and Eritrea.

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10:30 a.m.

The Greek government is adamantly opposing the revival of a European Union rule that would allow the forcible return to its territory of asylum-seekers who entered the bloc via Greece  a path followed by more than a million people in the past two years.

Immigration is high on the agenda of a meeting Friday in Athens of southern European leaders. The group includes Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, whose country, with Greece, is Europe's main immigration gateway.

Ahead of the talks, a government spokesman on immigration said Athens rejects reactivation of the so-called Dublin Regulation, which would allow other EU members to send asylum-seekers back to Greece.

"A country such as Greece which receives a large number of refugees from Turkey, and also hosts a large number of refugees  practically without any outside help  cannot be asked to receive refugees from other European countries," Giorgos Kyritsis told The Associated Press. "That would be outrageous."

The Dublin Regulation that governs the Schengen passport-free area stipulates that people wishing to apply for asylum must do so in the first member country they arrive in. In most cases that was Greece, whose eastern islands were overwhelmed last year by migrants packed into smugglers boats from Turkey. But even before last year's migration crisis, many of its EU partners had stopped enforcing the rule because Greece's asylum and migrant reception systems were below standard.

Now, however, both Germany and the EU executive are pressing for the rule to be restored, with EU officials saying that Greece must meet the Dublin standards by the end of this year.

Brad Blitz, migration expert and professor of international politics at Middlesex University in Britain, said sending large numbers of asylum-seekers back to Greece would apply an ever greater strain on the country's asylum system and reception capacity.

"Unless there is an effective means of redistribution across the EU, a revised Dublin system will force refugees upon receiving states closest to the external border, above all Greece, Italy and to a lesser extent Spain," he said.

"It will do so by insisting they apply for asylum in Greece, and potentially by returning them from other EU states to Greece. In sum, this will enable returns and discourage EU states from accepting more refugees, including Greece," Blitz said.

Kyritsis, the government official, said Greece considers the Dublin rule to be "practically dead" because it does not address current migratory pressures and should be drastically overhauled. He added that calls for its reintroduction are to a degree linked with domestic political concerns in Germany, and he argued that EU members are lagging in implementing commitments to take in refugees from Greece  part of an EU-Turkey deal this year to stem the migratory flow.

Kyritsis said the migrant relocation deal ought to have seen 33,000 people transferred to other EU countries from Greece so far. Instead, only 3,000 have made the journey.

"There are 7,000 people ready and waiting to be relocated, so in this field other European countries and the European Union do not appear to ... have done what they ought to have done," he said.

About 60,000 refugees and other migrants remain trapped in Greece since a series of Balkan border closures in March, which were closely followed by a March EU-Turkey deal that provides for the return to Turkey of all migrants who get across to Greece.

Human rights groups have criticized the agreement, saying it condemns refugees to an uncertain future in Turkey, and implementation has proved problematic as Greek authorities struggle to process asylum bids by people arguing that they shouldn't be sent back.

The agreement is also looking increasingly shaky following disagreements over visa-free entry to the EU for Turks and simmering tensions between individual bloc members and Turkey.

Kyritsis, however, said Athens has no indication that the deal will not hold.

"There are problems, a negotiation is under way ... we hope for the best," he said.

Friday's talks are in preparation for next week's informal EU summit in Bratislava, although Greek organizers insist it's not an attempt to heighten division between Europe's prosperous north and financially beleaguered south.

Greece's left-wing Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, together with Italy's Renzi, French President Francois Hollande and the leaders of Portugal, Cyprus and Malta, will also be discussing investment and job creation, as well as security. Spain's prime minister was unable to attend.

A Syrian man hammers a nail on woods as he prepares his family tent for winter at Ritsona refugee camp north of Athens, which hosts about 600 refugees and migrants on Thursday, Sept. 8, 2016. The refugee crisis is expected to be a central issue in discussions Friday at a meeting in Athens of leaders from Mediterranean countries in the European Union. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

A Syrian woman carries a plastic bag with garbage at Ritsona refugee camp north of Athens, which hosts about 600 refugees and migrants on Thursday, Sept. 8, 2016. The refugee crisis is expected to be a central issue in discussions Friday at a meeting in Athens of leaders from Mediterranean countries in the European Union. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

A Syrian man feeds his child behind a UNHCR plastic sheet at Ritsona refugee camp, north of Athens, which hosts about 600 refugees and migrants on Thursday, Sept. 8, 2016. The refugee crisis is expected to be a central issue in discussions Friday at a meeting in Athens of leaders from Mediterranean countries in the European Union. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)
Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz has given $20million to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign

Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz has given $20million to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign  despite saying that rich people shouldn't 'influence elections.'

The billionaire says he is donating to help defeat Donald Trump, calling the Republican presidential candidate divisive and dangerous.

He also slammed Trump's appeals to Americans who feel left behind as 'quite possibly a deliberate con.'

By contrast, he believes that the Democrats and their nominee, Hillary Clinton, are 'running on a vision of optimism, pragmatism, inclusiveness and mutual benefit.'

Moskovitz wrote about the contributions in a Thursday night posting on the website Medium.

'As a nation, we need to figure out how to bring everyone with us, and we believe the Democratic platform currently is more aligned with ensuring that happens,' he wrote.

The billionaire says he is donating to help defeat Donald Trump (pictured) calling the Republican presidential candidate divisive and dangerous

'In comparison, Donald Trump's promises to this group are quite possibly a deliberate con, an attempt to rally energy and support without the ability or intention to deliver.

'His proposals are so implausible that the nation is forced to worry that his interest in the presidency might not even extend beyond winning a contest and promoting his personal brand.'

'If Donald Trump wins, the country will fall backward, and become more isolated from the global community,' he continued.

'This decision was not easy, particularly because we have reservations about anyone using large amounts of money to influence elections,' Moskovitz added.

'That said, we believe in trying to do as much good as we can, which in this case means using the tools available to us (as they are also available to the opposition).'

Moskovitz believes the Democrats and their nominee, Hillary Clinton, are 'running on a vision of optimism, pragmatism, inclusiveness and mutual benefit'

Moskovitz said he and his wife, Cari Tuna, are giving half of their $20 million to the League of Conservation Voters and to the For Our Future political action committee.

The latter group is a get-out-the-vote effort in battleground states that is paid for primarily by labor unions and hedge fund billionaire Tom Steyer.

Moskovitz and Tuna also are giving directly to Clinton's campaign and to party committees helping Senate and congressional Democrats, he said.

Moskovitz's political giving makes him the second-largest Democratic contributor of the election, after Steyer.

Mark Zucherberg founded fwd.us, a group that advocates immigration reform

But he is not the only Facebook founder to get involved in politics.

Mark Zucherberg founded fwd.us, a group that advocates immigration reform, changes to the US education system to improve science and technology education.

On its website, it slams Trump's 'inhumane and enormously expensive' plan to deport 11million undocumented migrants.
UK-Australian officials meet as Britain seeks trade deal

LONDON (AP)  Senior British and Australian ministers are meeting to reaffirm the countries' close bonds  a day after another Australian official said the relationship with the U.K. belonged to "yesteryear."

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and Defense Secretary Michael Fallon are holding talks Friday with counterparts Julie Bishop and Marise Payne.

Britain wants to make the case for a strong bilateral trade deal after the U.K. leaves the European Union.

Supporters of a U.K. exit hope to strike lucrative arrangements with other countries once Britain leaves the 28-nation bloc.
Virginia officer charged in shooting fired into car 7 times

HENRICO, Va. (AP)  New details have emerged in the case of a Virginia police officer who's been charged after shooting a passenger in a car he was checking on.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch (http://bit.ly/2cyRP9v ) reports prosecutor Shannon Taylor revealed during a hearing Thursday that Henrico County police officer Joel Greenway shot into the vehicle seven times as driver Robert Davis attempted to flee Dec. 15. Passenger Kimberly McNeil is recuperating from being shot multiple times.

Greenway was indicted in February on charges of malicious wounding, shooting into an occupied vehicle and use of a firearm in the commission of a felony. He's set to go on trial next month.

Greenway's defense attorney Peter Baruch says a violation of police department policies is not synonymous with a violation of law.

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Estonia's foreign minister steps down to run for president

TALLINN, Estonia (AP)  Estonian Foreign Minister Marina Kaljurand is stepping down to run as an independent in the Baltic country's presidential election later this month.

Kaljurand said Friday her resignation was necessary when running against former prime minister and EU Commissioner Siim Kallas, who is the candidate of the ruling Reform Party.

Seasoned diplomat Kaljurand, 54, has no party affiliation but is known to hold close ties to the Reform Party, the key pillar in Estonia's center-right, three-party coalition government.

An electoral college consisting of lawmakers and local representatives will gather to pick new head of state, a mostly ceremonial position, on Sept. 24 as the Parliament failed to elect a replacement to President Toomas Hendrik Ilves in August.
Stein to return to North Dakota for protest-related charges

CHICAGO (AP)  Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein says she'll return to North Dakota to face charges for spray-painting construction equipment in protest of the Dakota Access pipeline.

Stein said Friday in Chicago that scheduling is the issue.

Stein and running mate Ajamu Baraka were charged Wednesday with misdemeanor counts of criminal trespass and criminal mischief. Authorities issued arrest warrants.

In this Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2016 photo, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein prepares to spray-paint "I approve this message" in red paint on the blade of a bulldozer at a protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline in the area of Morton County, N.D. Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier said Tuesday that authorities plan to pursue charges against Stein. (Alicia Ewen/KX News via AP)

The Chicago Sun-Times (http://bit.ly/2cwO2dZ ) reports that Stein says the warrants are "misdirected" and should be aimed at "real criminals" violating water supplies.

Stein has said she was doing her part to support the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, which says the pipeline threatens sacred sites and drinking water.

A federal judge denied the tribe's request to temporarily stop construction on the $3.8 billion pipeline designed to carry oil from North Dakota to Illinois.
Zimbabwe, Malawi welcome anti-poaching drones

JOHANNESBURG (AP)  Zimbabwe and Malawi are allowing flights by anti-poaching drones as part of an initiative supported by Google and the WWF conservation group.

The drones, which resemble large model airplanes, have flown in South African wildlife areas and are part of the Air Shepherd program of the U.S.-based Lindbergh Foundation. They can act as a highly visible deterrent to poachers fearing capture, though vast and rugged terrain as well as legal and bureaucratic obstacles have hampered some anti-poaching drone projects in Africa.

Officials in Zimbabwe acknowledge their anti-poaching efforts are in "desperate trouble" and view drones as a potentially effective tool to protect elephants and other species that are a pillar of the country's faltering tourism industry, Otto Werdmuller Von Elgg, operator of the Air Shepherd drones, said Friday.

FILE -- In this file photo taken Monday, Feb. 15, 2016 a drone is launched in the Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Game Reserve in the KwaZulu Natal province. Conservationists say Zimbabwe and Malawi are allowing flights by anti-poaching drones as part of an initiative supported by Google and the WWF conservation group. (AP Photo/Denis Farrell, File)

One drone team plans to start operations next week in Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe's biggest reserve, said Von Elgg, director of the South African drone company UDS.

Some poachers in Hwange have used cyanide to poison elephants in large numbers before cutting off their tusks. Wildlife officials in Zimbabwe lack sufficient funding and say they need more rangers to patrol the nation's parks.

Von Elgg's drones started flying this month in Malawi's Liwonde National Park, which is surrounded by densely populated settlements. African Parks, the Johannesburg-based group that runs Liwonde, has been relocating some Liwonde elephants to a more secure reserve in Malawi.

The drones in Malawi can be used to chase straying elephants back into the park, as well as monitor illegal loggers who infiltrate Liwonde by riverboat at night, according to Von Elgg.

The drone project is backed by WWF, which is using a $5 million grant from Google to support the use of technology in countering wildlife crime.

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Russia holds large-scale military drills in Crimea

FEODOSIYA, Crimea (AP)  Russia on Friday deployed cruise missiles, multiple rocket launchers, tanks and its latest anti-aircraft system at massive military drills in Crimea.

Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine in April 2014 and since then has sent thousands of troops and heavy weaponry there.

The defense ministry invited dozens of journalists Friday to a remote firing range at the Black Sea coast to display elaborate war games which involved paratroopers, tanks, cruise missiles launched from a submarine and the S-400 anti-aircraft missile system.

Russian navy ships and military paratroopers take a part in a landing operation during military drills at the Black Sea coast, Crimea, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. Russia has deployed cruise missiles, multiple rocket launchers, tanks and its latest anti-aircraft system at massive military drills in Crimea. The drills which began across southern Russia and Crimea earlier this week and involve over 120,000 troops are some of the largest exercises Russia has held for years. (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin)

The drills, which began across southern Russia and Crimea earlier this week and have involved a total of over 120,000 troops, are some of the largest exercises Russia has held for years.

The chief of the Russian General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, insisted in emailed comments that there have never been more than 12,500 troops involved in the drills at a given moment, which means that Russia did not violate any international treaties.

Russian navy ships during military drills at the Black Sea coast, Crimea, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. Russia has deployed cruise missiles, multiple rocket launchers, tanks and its latest anti-aircraft system at massive military drills in Crimea. The drills which began across southern Russia and Crimea earlier this week and involve over 120,000 troops are some of the largest exercises Russia has held for years. (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin)

Russian military jets fire flares during military drills at the Black Sea coast, Crimea, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. Russia has deployed cruise missiles, multiple rocket launchers, tanks and its latest anti-aircraft system at massive military drills in Crimea. The drills which began across southern Russia and Crimea earlier this week and involve over 120,000 troops are some of the largest exercises Russia has held for years. (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin)

Russian navy ships are viewed through a military helicopter's window during military drills at the Black Sea coast, Crimea, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. Russia has deployed cruise missiles, multiple rocket launchers, tanks and its latest anti-aircraft system at massive military drills in Crimea. The drills which began across southern Russia and Crimea earlier this week and involve over 120,000 troops are some of the largest exercises Russia has held for years. (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin)

Russian military helicopters and troops take a part in a landing operation during military drills at the Black Sea coast, Crimea, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. Russia has deployed cruise missiles, multiple rocket launchers, tanks and its latest anti-aircraft system at massive military drills in Crimea. The drills which began across southern Russia and Crimea earlier this week and involve over 120,000 troops are some of the largest exercises Russia has held for years. (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin)

Russian navy ships and a helicopter take a part in a landing operation during military drills at the Black Sea coast, Crimea, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. Russia has deployed cruise missiles, multiple rocket launchers, tanks and its latest anti-aircraft system at massive military drills in Crimea. The drills which began across southern Russia and Crimea earlier this week and involve over 120,000 troops are some of the largest exercises Russia has held for years. (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin)

Russian navy ships and helicopters take a part in a landing operation during military drills at the Black Sea coast, Crimea, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. Russia has deployed cruise missiles, multiple rocket launchers, tanks and its latest anti-aircraft system at massive military drills in Crimea. The drills which began across southern Russia and Crimea earlier this week and involve over 120,000 troops are some of the largest exercises Russia has held for years. (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin)
The Latest: Trump campaign objects to 'deplorable' language

WASHINGTON (AP)  The Latest on the 2016 presidential campaign (all times EDT):

12:30 a.m.

Donald Trump's campaign manager is objecting to Hillary Clinton's depiction of half of his supporters as a "basket of deplorables."

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, left, is welcomed to the stage by Laverne Cox, right, at a LBGT For Hillary Gala at the Cipriani Club, in New York, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Clinton was speaking at an LGBT fundraiser in New York City Friday night when she described those supporters as "racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic  you name it." But she stressed that the rest of the Republican nominee's supporters are people who feel let down by the government and the economy and are "just desperate for change," and said those people need sympathy.

Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway quickly responded on Twitter, writing, "One day after promising to be aspirational & uplifting, Hillary insults millions of Americans."

Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill tweeted that Clinton was referring to "alt-right" voters who "appear to make up half his crowd."

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10:50 p.m.

Barbra Streisand is putting her feelings about Donald Trump into song.

At an LGBT fundraiser Friday for Hillary Clinton, the singer performed a parody of the Stephen Sondheim song "Send in the Clowns" with lyrics about the Republican nominee.

"Is he that rich, maybe he's poor, 'til he reveals his returns, who can be sure?" Streisand sang to an applauding crowd. "Something's amiss, I don't approve, if he were running the free world, where would we move?"

Streisand continued: "And if by chance he gets to heaven, even up there, he'll declare chapter 11. This sad, vulgar clown. You're fired, you clown."

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9:35 p.m.

Hillary Clinton is encouraging supporters at an LGBT fundraiser to "stage an intervention" if they have friends considering Donald Trump.

She says, "That may be one conversion therapy I'd endorse," referring to a type of counseling designed to urge gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender children to change their sexual orientation. Clinton stressed during the New York City event Friday night that she wants to end the practice.

Clinton says, "Friends don't let friends vote Trump." She says that while some Trump's supporters are "deplorables," others are frustrated by hard times and merit sympathy.

She is pledging to "fight alongside the LGBT community," and says Trump will not support them.

Friday's fundraiser featured a performance from Barbra Streisand.

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9:15 p.m.

Donald Trump says he'd order an attack on Iranian boats if they harassed the U.S. Navy.

The tough-talking Republican made the charge Friday night at a crowded rally in Pensacola, Florida. He was referring to a recent incident in which Iranian boats harassed a Navy destroyer near the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump says the boats were "taunting us" and "toying with us." He says if Iran's "little boats" circle our "beautiful destroyers" when he's president, "They will be shot out of the water."

Trump and Hillary Clinton have clashed over national security for much of the week. Each says the other doesn't have the temperament to be commander in chief.

The New York billionaire added another accusation Friday night, saying, "Personally, I think she's an unstable person."

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6:35 p.m.

Donald Trump hasn't publicity released his tax returns. The same can no longer be said of his running mate, Mike Pence.

The Republican vice presidential nominee and Indiana governor on Friday released a decade worth of returns, roughly a month after promising to do so.

The campaign says Pence paid a state and federal tax rate that ranged between 10 percent and 16 percent over the past decade.

His income topped out at $187,000 while he was still a member of Congress, but dropped to $113,000 last year.

Spokesman Marc Lotter says the returns demonstrate Pence has not enriched himself during his years of public service.

Major party presidential nominees have publicly released their taxes since 1976, but Trump is the exception. He says he is waiting for the conclusion of an audit.

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5:20 p.m.

Hillary Clinton says she is "disappointed" that Donald Trump would continue to praise Russian President Vladimir Putin on a Russia-funded television network.

Speaking after a meeting she convened with security experts in New York, Clinton said: "Every day that goes by this just becomes more and more of a reality television show. It's not a serious presidential campaign."

The Republican nominee has faced backlash from both parties in recent days for praising the Russian leader.

Trump was interviewed Thursday by Larry King, a veteran American journalist whose current show airs on RT America. That network is funded by the Russian government.

Clinton said it was "beyond one's imagination to have a candidate for president praising a Russian autocrat like Vladimir Putin."

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5:15 p.m.

Hillary Clinton says North Korea's latest nuclear test should prompt a "rethinking" of America's strategy to deal with the rogue nation.

The Democratic presidential candidate promised Friday to impose tougher sanctions on the country. She also said that the latest test provides an opening to pressure China, which sees the country as an important.

Clinton said she will protect allies and treaty partners in the region including equipping them with missile defense systems.

It was the country's fifth atomic test and second in eight months.

She spoke after meeting with a bipartisan group of national security experts in New York City.

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3:50 p.m.

Donald Trump is promising religious activists that he will cherish, protect and defend Christian values like they've "never seen before."

The thrice-married New York billionaire delivered a speech Friday afternoon at the Values Voter Summit in Washington. It's among the largest gatherings of conservative Christians ahead of the November election.

Trump declared that political leaders have "abandoned" people of faith in America. And he said that today's "media culture often mocks and demeans people of faith."

He made the religious conservatives a promise: In "a Trump administration, our Christian heritage will be cherished, protected, defended like you've never seen before."

Trump also promised to repeal the so-called "Johnson amendment." The law prevents religious institutions and other tax-exempt groups from endorsing political candidates.

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2:15 p.m.

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are sparring over which of them is better fit to respond to North Korea's nuclear ambitions.

Clinton condemned Friday's test explosion, saying it shows the need for America to elect a president who confronts threats "with steadiness and strength."

Clinton said in a statement that the U.S. needs a commander-in-chief committed to reducing, not increasing, the number of nuclear weapons and nuclear states in the world.

Trump has previously suggested that he would be open to U.S. allies Japan and South Korea obtaining their own nuclear weapons.

Trump senior communications adviser Jason Miller said the North's nuclear test was another example of Clinton's "catastrophic" failures when she was the top U.S. diplomat.

He said Clinton had promised to work to end the North's nuclear program but it has "only grown in strength and sophistication."

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1:50 p.m.

Tim Kaine says Donald Trump was using his charitable foundation as a front to suppress fraud investigations into Trump University.

Kaine raised ethical questions about the foundation's donations to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi and a new report from Yahoo News that the foundation helped fund a lawsuit against New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who sued Trump for fraud over Trump University. Kaine made his remarks to reporters Friday in Birmingham, Alabama.

Charities cannot legally donate to political activities.

Kaine said Trump was used the foundation to promote "a money-making fraudulent venture of Donald Trump's, which is not what charities are supposed to do."

Kaine suggested there could be more questionable donations form the foundation and argued people need to keep investigating.

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1:00 p.m.

Mike Pence has received his first national security briefing since becoming Donald Trump's running mate.

Pence's briefing Friday lasted about two hours and was held at an Indiana National Guard base in Indianapolis.

The Republican Indiana governor said afterward that he was "grateful" for the "thorough and informative" briefing.

Pence said he couldn't discuss specifics due to classified nature, but vowed that he and Trump would be "ready on day one" should they be elected in November.

He did not take questions afterward, but said he was honored to take part in the tradition, which he says extends back to the time of Harry Truman.

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11:35 a.m.

The Republican Party is storming into what it sees as 11 presidential battleground states on Saturday.

About 1,000 employees and 4,000 volunteers will be knocking on doors to speak with voters in states including Ohio, Wisconsin and Virginia. The Republican National Committee expects to hit roughly 330,000 doors in a single day.

The party will promote its presidential nominee Donald Trump and other Republican candidates for office. Door knockers will focus on voter registration and in places such as Florida and Iowa, will urge voters to request absentee ballots as a way to ensure more votes.

The all-day event follows what the RNC dubbed its "month of action" in August. Party leaders say they knocked on 2 million doors, more than in July and June combined.

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10:20 a.m.

Minnesota Democrats are asking the state's Supreme Court to remove Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump from the ballot.

The state party filed a petition Thursday seeking to have Minnesota's secretary of state strip Trump and running mate Mike Pence from the ballot for the general election.

They argued that the Republican Party of Minnesota erred in how it sent in Trump's name for a spot on the ballot.

State law requires political parties to select alternate electors at conventions as part of putting a nominee on the ballot, and the clock is ticking for a resolution. Early voting in Minnesota begins Sept. 23.

But Democrats contend those GOP alternates were chosen last-minute by party leaders to meet a looming deadline last month. The state's Democratic party says that invalidates the GOP's ballot submission and that Secretary of State Steve Simon should have rejected it.

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10:10 a.m.

The number of retired generals and admirals endorsing Hillary Clinton for president has grown to 110.

The Democratic presidential nominee announced her newest supporters Friday. Clinton stressed that she has more military backing than rival Donald Trump, who touted endorsements from 88 retired U.S. generals and admirals earlier in the week.

The new endorsements include former Democratic Pennsylvania congressman Joe Sestak, a retired Navy admiral.

Clinton is continuing to promote herself as the best choice for commander-in-chief, questioning Trump credentials and judgment. On Friday afternoon, she plans to meet with foreign policy and national security experts in New York City to discuss ways to combat terrorism.

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9:55 a.m.

Hillary Clinton is now opting to mark the fifteenth anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks with a visit to ground zero.

A spokeswoman for Clinton confirmed the visit to The Associated Press on Friday.

Clinton, who was a U.S. senator from New York in 2001, was not initially scheduled to visit the memorial site on the anniversary. But her campaign notified officials at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum late Thursday that she would attend the morning's events.

Her Republican rival, Donald Trump, is currently not slated to attend.

Clinton is not expected to make any public remarks but wanted to honor the attacks' victims.

Both candidates previously pledged to avoid campaigning on the somber anniversary.

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8:30 a.m.

Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine is doing his share of fundraising to help fuel the final push toward Election Day.

Hillary Clinton's campaign said five people paid up to $500,000 each to attend a fundraiser with Kaine in New York on Thursday night. That's one of four fundraisers Kaine attended in New York that day. He did not do any public events.

He met with approximately 120 people who paid either $5,000, $10,000 or $50,000.

Kaine on Wednesday met with donors twice in Washington, D.C., and once in Potomac, Maryland. On Tuesday he raised money in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Kaine will raise money and campaign Friday in Birmingham, Alabama and attend a public event in Norfolk, Virginia.

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8:20 a.m.

Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine says Donald Trump "demonstrates an irrational hostility" toward President Barack Obama.

In an interview with CBS "This Morning" Friday, the Virginia senator said Trump's comments favoring Russian President Vladimir Putin over Obama are "unpatriotic."

He said that Putin has invaded other countries, run the Russian economy "into the ground," and persecuted Russian journalists and members of the gay and lesbian community.

He said, "you wouldn't get out of a fifth grade civics exam if you don't understand the difference between dictatorship and leadership," referring to the Republican nominee.

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7:15 a.m.

Donald Trump's campaign manager says if he's president and North Korea fired ballistic rockets, Trump "wouldn't do what's done now."

Kellyanne Conway told CBS's Charlie Rose Friday that Trump's position is to put America first, but she offered no details for how the Republican nominee would handle North Korea's growing nuclear threat.

North Korea conducted its fifth nuclear test on Friday, just eight months after it claimed it successfully detonated a small hydrogen bomb. It was the first time the Asian nation conducted two nuclear tests in one year.

Conway said that if Trump is president, North Korea will know that the Americans "aren't messin' around."

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7 a.m.

Voting in the 2016 election is getting underway.

Advance voting is beginning Friday in North Carolina  the first of 37 states that will allow balloting by mail for any reason or in person before Election Day, which is Nov. 8.

It's part of a nearly nine-week campaign frenzy during which millions of voters will have the ability to fill out a ballot for the 2016 presidential race.

Data compiled by The Associated Press shows that people who vote in advance are expected to make up between 50 percent to 75 percent or more of all ballots in some of the race's most pivotal states  North Carolina, Colorado, Florida, Nevada, Arizona and Georgia.

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6:50 a.m.

A billionaire Facebook co-founder says he's giving $20 million to help defeat Donald Trump.

Dustin Moskovitz says the Republican presidential nominee is divisive and dangerous. And he says Trump's appeals to people who feel left behind are, in Moskovitz's words, "quite possibly a deliberate con."

By contrast, he says Democrats and nominee Hillary Clinton are running on what he says is "a vision of optimism, pragmatism, inclusiveness and mutual benefit."

Moskovitz wrote about the contributions in a Thursday night posting on the website Medium.

He and his wife, Cari Tuna, are giving half of the $20 million to the League of Conservation Voters and to the For Our Future political action committee.

That second latter group is a get-out-the-vote effort in battleground states. It's paid for primarily by labor unions and hedge fund billionaire Tom Steyer.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, seen through candles, pauses while speaking at a LBGT For Hillary Gala at the Cipriani Club, in New York, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a rally, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016, in Pensacola, Fla. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton winks at a man as she greets members of the audience after speaking at the 136th Annual National Baptist Convention held at the Kansas City Convention Center, in Kansas City, Mo., Thursday, Sept. 8, 2016. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a small group roundtable held at the Cleveland Arts and Social Sciences Academy on Thursday, Sept. 8, 2016.(Thomas Ondrey/The Plain Dealer via AP)

A visitor reaches to touch a name engraved at the Sept. 11 memorial site to remember the victims of the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, Thursday Sept. 8, 2016, in New York. Sunday marks the 15th anniversary of the terror attacks. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

Republican vice presidential candidate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence comments after receiving a national security briefing in Indianapolis, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)
Crowds rally in Iran against Saudi Arabia ahead of hajj

TEHRAN, Iran (AP)  Thousands of Iranians marched through the streets Friday to protest Saudi Arabia ahead of the hajj, a sign of soured relations between the two countries following last year's crush and stampede during the annual pilgrimage.

Iranians won't be taking part in this year's hajj, required of all able-bodied Muslims once in their life, over tensions between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran, regional rivals divided over a host of issues.

Demonstrators waved signs after Friday prayers depicting Saudi King Salman holding a bloody sword, his head wrapped in an American flag and his shirt bearing a blue Star of David similar to that on the Israeli flag.

Iranian protesters chant slogans as one of them holds a placard reading "oh Islam! we will sacrifice our lives for you", after weekly Friday prayer in Tehran, Iran, Sept. 9, 2016. Thousands of Iranians marched through the streets Friday to protest Saudi Arabia ahead of the hajj, a sign of soured relations between the two countries following last year's crush and stampede during the annual pilgrimage. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

"Death to Al Saud and the traitors!" protesters in Tehran shouted. State media reported similar protests across the country.

"We don't have any problems with the people of Saudi Arabia. They are Sunnis and are our brothers," protester Habibullah Abulfazli said. "But the Al Saud family are puppets of Britain and America. They are fighting proxy wars against Shiites and against all Muslims."

Tensions soared in January after the kingdom executed a prominent Saudi Shiite cleric. Angry demonstrators later attacked two Saudi diplomatic posts in Iran and Saudi Arabia cut diplomatic ties to the Islamic Republic. The two countries also support opposing sides in the civil wars in Syria and Yemen.

In their recent criticisms, Iranian officials have focused on the Sept. 24, 2015, stampede and crush of pilgrims at last year's hajj that killed at least 2,426 people, according to an Associated Press count. Tehran has said the disaster killed 464 Iranians.

The official Saudi toll of 769 people killed and 934 injured has not changed since Sept. 26. The kingdom has never addressed the discrepancy, nor has it released any results of an investigation authorities promised to conduct over the disaster.

On Monday, Khamenei raised the stakes in the dispute by saying Saudi officials had "murdered" hajj pilgrims who were injured in the stampede. Saudi's grand mufti countered by claiming that Iranians are "not Muslims."

A member of Lebanon's Hezbollah meanwhile said the Iran-backed Shiite militant group has asked its members to refrain from going on the hajj this year because of tensions with Saudi Arabia.

The member, who spoke to The Associated Press this week, said the decision came after Saudi Arabia named Hezbollah a terrorist organization. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

He said the "organizational measures" would only affect Hezbollah members and not their families or the group's supporters.

Tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran periodically have simmered and cooled since Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution installed its Shiite cleric-ruled democracy. The hajj, which begins Saturday this year, hasn't been spared.

In 1987, demonstrating Iranian pilgrims on hajj battled Saudi riot police in clashes that killed at least 402 people. Iran claimed 600 of its pilgrims were killed and said police fired machine guns at the crowd. Iran did not send pilgrims to the hajj in 1988 and 1989, while Saudi Arabia severed diplomatic ties over the violence and Iranian attacks on shipping in the Persian Gulf during the Iran-Iraq war.

Iran has called for an independent body to take over administering the five-day hajj, something the Al Saud family has refused. Its overseeing of Islamic holy sites, along with Saudi Arabia's oil wealth, gives the kingdom major influence in the Muslim world.

During Friday's protests, demonstrators also shouted slogans against the U.S. and Britain, long targets of suspicion among Iranian hard-liners. But protesters offered their harshest criticism for Saudi Arabia.

"They have stabbed Muslims in the heart," protester Zabihullah Pirhayati said.

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Associated Press writers Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Bassem Mroue in Beirut contributed to this report.

Iranian protesters chant slogans against the ruling Al Saud family of Saudi Arabia, America and Israel during a rally after weekly Friday prayer in Tehran, Iran, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. Thousands of Iranians marched through the streets Friday to protest Saudi Arabia ahead of the hajj, a sign of soured relations between the two countries following last year's crush and stampede during the annual pilgrimage. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

Iranian protesters hold placards with pictures of Ayatollah Sheik Isa Qassim, Bahrain's top Shiite Muslim cleric during an anti-Saudi rally after weekly Friday prayer in Tehran, Iran, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. Thousands of Iranians marched through the streets Friday to protest Saudi Arabia ahead of the hajj, a sign of soured relations between the two countries following last year's crush and stampede during the annual pilgrimage. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

Iranian protesters chant slogans as one of them holds a placard reading "oh Islam! we will sacrifice our lives for you", after weekly Friday prayer in Tehran, Iran, Sept. 9, 2016. Thousands of Iranians marched through the streets Friday to protest Saudi Arabia ahead of the hajj, a sign of soured relations between the two countries following last year's crush and stampede during the annual pilgrimage. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

Iranian protesters chant slogans against the ruling Al Saud family of Saudi Arabia, America and Israel during a rally after weekly Friday prayer in Tehran, Iran, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. Thousands of Iranians marched through the streets Friday to protest Saudi Arabia ahead of the hajj, a sign of soured relations between the two countries following last year's crush and stampede during the annual pilgrimage. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
South Sudan's fighting directed at highest levels: UN report

JUBA, South Sudan (AP)  A confidential U.N. report says South Sudan's deadly fighting in July was directed by the highest levels of government, and that leaders are intent on a military solution that has escalated the conflict from a "primarily political to tribal war."

The U.N. panel of experts report obtained by The Associated Press says President Salva Kiir and army chief of staff Paul Malong directed the fighting in the capital, Juba, that killed hundreds, using MI-24 helicopters that only they had the authority to deploy. It cites "numerous reports" from South Sudanese senior military personnel and politicians.

The report also says Kiir and Malong have focused on procuring new weapons and ammunition, including the apparent acquisition of two fighter jets. Two truckloads of ammunition were transferred from neighboring Uganda in June. There is no sign of significant arms procurement by the opposition in recent months, the report says.

FILE - In this Thursday, July 9, 2015 file photo, South Sudan's President Salva Kiir, left, accompanied by army chief of staff Paul Malong, right, waves during an independence day ceremony in the capital Juba, South Sudan. A confidential U.N. report obtained by The Associated Press on Friday, Sept. 9, 2016 says South Sudan's deadly fighting in July was directed by the highest levels of government, and that leaders are intent on a military solution that worsens ethnic tensions. (AP Photo/Jason Patinkin, File)

South Sudan's civilians are "bearing the brunt of the resulting harm" as weapons continue to be procured, the report says. "By the government's own account, the vast majority of government revenue ... has funded security expenses and the war effort, including the procurement of weapons, rather than social services."

The U.N. Security Council has threatened to impose an arms embargo if South Sudan's government doesn't comply with a plan to deploy an extra 4,000 peacekeepers to protect civilians.

"The findings of the South Sudan panel of experts show the absurdity of waiting even one more day to impose an arms embargo on South Sudan," said Louis Charbonneau, U.N. director at Human Rights Watch.

The report also says officials have focused on "mobilizing their respective tribes," which has worsened ethnic tensions. South Sudan's civil war began in December 2013 between supporters of Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, and former Vice President Riek Machar, an ethnic Nuer.

Tens of thousands of Nuer have taken shelter in U.N. camps in South Sudan under often dire conditions as a peace deal signed a year ago threatens to fall apart amid continued fighting. During the July violence, "house-to-house searches were conducted in at least five neighborhoods in Juba, targeting mainly Nuer men and women, but also individuals perceived as 'anti-government,'" the report says.

The government and rebels' "arming of communities based on tribal affiliation continues to fuel widespread violence," it says.

The report comes just days after the Security Council visited South Sudan to pressure the government to allow in the 4,000 additional peacekeepers. A joint statement by the council and the government said South Sudan accepted their deployment, but just after the diplomats left, government officials announced conditions including prior approval of troop contributors and what weapons they carry.

The visiting diplomats also pressed South Sudan's government to hold accountable soldiers who have been accused of rampaging through a hotel compound popular with foreigners in the July chaos.

The new report says 80 to 100 soldiers overran the Terrain compound and "raped and gang-raped at least five international aid workers and an unknown number of staff working at the compound, and executed John Gatluak, a Nuer employee of the NGO Internews in front of his colleagues in an ethnically targeted killing."

The report adds: "This attack was well coordinated and cannot be considered as an opportunistic act of violence and robbery."

FILE - In this Monday, Dec. 30, 2013 file photo, military helicopter gunships sit parked at the airport in Juba, South Sudan. A confidential U.N. report obtained by The Associated Press on Friday, Sept. 9, 2016 says South Sudan's deadly fighting in July was directed by the highest levels of government, and that leaders are intent on a military solution that worsens ethnic tensions. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis, File)

FILE - In this Monday, May 16, 2016 file photo, a group of government soldiers wait in line during a military parade celebrating the national army in Juba, South Sudan. A confidential U.N. report obtained by The Associated Press on Friday, Sept. 9, 2016 says South Sudan's deadly fighting in July was directed by the highest levels of government, and that leaders are intent on a military solution that worsens ethnic tensions. (AP Photo/Justin Lynch, File)

FILE - In this Sunday, Sept. 4, 2016 file photo, South Sudan's President Salva Kiir, left, takes members of the UN Security Council, including U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, right, on a tour outside the presidential compound in the capital Juba, South Sudan. A confidential U.N. report obtained by The Associated Press on Friday, Sept. 9, 2016 says South Sudan's deadly fighting in July was directed by the highest levels of government, and that leaders are intent on a military solution that worsens ethnic tensions. (AP Photo/Justin Lynch, File)
ITT Technical Institute faces more lawsuits over shutdown

CARMEL, Ind. (AP)  The for-profit college chain ITT Technical Institute is facing more lawsuits from employees following its decision to shut down.

The Indianapolis Star reports (http://indy.st/2bWfpLB ) that two new lawsuits say the company violated federal law by not providing 60 days' notice.

Another lawsuit earlier this week sought class-action status on behalf of the 8,000 employees who are losing their jobs as a result of ITT's decision to shut down more than 130 ITT Technical Institute campuses in 38 states.

ITT Educational Services headquarters in Carmel, Ind., is shown Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2016. The company, which operates vocational schools, announced "with profound regret" in a statement Tuesday that it is ending academic operations at all of its more than 130 campuses across 38 states. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)

The three lawsuits were filed in Indiana and Delaware.

"There's no doubt in my mind here that there is a plant closing or mass layoff and the employees did not get the 60 days' notice," said Ken Dau-Schmidt, the Willard and Margaret Carr professor of labor and employment law in the Maurer School of Law at Indiana University. "The lawsuit seems fine on its surface."

But legal experts say ITT could counter by claiming it was the victim of an "unforeseeable" regulatory assault and never had the chance to defend itself. An "unforeseeable event" would be an exception to th e60 day notice rule.

ITT announced this week it's closing all 130 of its U.S. campuses, saying it can't survive recent sanctions by the U.S. Department of Education banning the school from enrolling new students paying tuition with federal financial aid.

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Information from: The Indianapolis Star, http://www.indystar.com

ITT Educational Services headquarters in Carmel, Ind., is shown Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2016. The company, which operates vocational schools, announced "with profound regret" in a statement Tuesday that it is ending academic operations at all of its more than 130 campuses across 38 states. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)

ITT Educational Services headquarters in Carmel, Ind., is shown Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2016. The company, which operates vocational schools, announced "with profound regret" in a statement Tuesday that it is ending academic operations at all of its more than 130 campuses across 38 states. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)
UK education reforms spark debate on class and the classroom

LONDON (AP)  In Britain, the class system and the classroom are intertwined, and education reforms inevitably cause political controversy.

Prime Minister Theresa May made a bold move Friday by announcing plans to let more schools select children based on academic results.

In her first major domestic policy speech since taking office in July, May said she would ease restrictions on new selective schools  and give existing ones 50 million pounds ($67 million) to expand  to help make Britain "a place where advantage is based on merit not privilege."

Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May delivers a speech at the British Academy in London, where she said that a new wave of grammar schools will end "selection by house price" and give every child the chance to go to a good school, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. (Nick Ansell/PA via AP)

The issue of academic selection is highly controversial, and May's plan is sure to face strong opposition. For decades British children were tested at age 11, with those who did best going to academically focused grammar schools, and the rest to "secondary moderns" which gave them little chance of getting to university.

The two streams were largely merged by the 1970s, and nowadays most children attend state secondary institutions known as comprehensive schools. Many educators say creating new grammar schools will lower standards in comprehensives by siphoning off the brightest and most ambitious pupils.

They also say well-off parents can pay for private tutors before selection exams.

Chief schools inspector Michael Wilshaw said Britain "will fail as a nation if we only get the top 15 to 20 percent of our children achieving well."

Others argue that comprehensives fail the brightest children, and say grammar schools improve social mobility because they select pupils on academic ability rather than parental income, as private schools do.

May said that "the debate over selective schools has raged for years."

"But the only place it has got us to is a place where selection exists if you're wealthy  if you can afford to go private  but doesn't exist if you're not," she said.

She said new grammar schools would have to take a portion of children from lower-income households.

May's plans face a fight from opposition parties in Parliament, as well as some members of her own Conservative Party. May's Conservative predecessor, David Cameron, opposed expanding grammar schools, saying parents "don't want children divided into successes and failures at 11."

Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May arrives to deliver a speech at the British Academy in London, where she said that a new wave of grammar schools will end "selection by house price" and give every child the chance to go to a good school, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. (Nick Ansell/PA via AP)
Official: Police chief investigated for illegal gun sales

BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss. (AP)  A Mississippi police chief killed himself soon after learning that authorities were investigating allegations he illegally sold city-owned firearms, including an assault rifle, a sheriff's official said Friday.

Hancock County Chief Deputy Don Bass told The Associated Press that Bay St. Louis police chief Mike DeNardo illegally sold one city-owned assault rifle, and that authorities were looking into allegations that other city-owned weapons were sold as well.

Sheriff Ricky Adam said a "multipoint investigation" had been going on for four months and included payroll fraud, the Sun Herald reported. The police chief left three apology letters  to the sheriff, the mayor and one other unspecified person  for the payroll fraud, Adam said. Those were turned over to the FBI.

In this Oct. 20, 2015 photo, Bay St. Louis Chief of Police Michael DeNardo listens during a city council meeting in Bay St. Louis, Miss. Hancock County Coroner Jim Faulk said Chief DeNardo died Thursday, Sept. 8, 2016. (John Fitzhugh/The Sun Herald via AP)

These are the latest developments in a case that has shocked many in this small, tourist-friendly beach community.

On Thursday, hours after DeNardo killed himself in the police station's parking lot, the mayor had said the chief was under investigation. A federal official also had said investigators received "unsubstantiated criminal intelligence" about DeNardo. But until now, there were no details of what the investigation concerned.

Bass said the investigation started from an anonymous tip and was in its early stages. He lamented the death of a man who he said was well-regarded around town.

"We can't get his side of the story," Bass said. "It's terribly upsetting. We're in shock."

It wasn't clear if the buyer knew the sale was illegal, and Bass said he could not discuss whether the weapon was evidence from a case or had been purchased for the department's use.

DeNardo was informed of the investigation Thursday at city police headquarters, where he was suspended from his duties by city officials who were confiscating his equipment. He then went to the parking lot, retrieved a shotgun from his trunk and shot himself, Bass said.

Earlier Friday, Jason Denham, the resident agent in charge for the Gulfport field office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said the agency received "unsubstantiated criminal intelligence" about DeNardo only a day or two before his death. They had not yet opened a formal investigation and had not approached him or confronted him about the allegations.

He said barring DeNardo's death, the agency would have moved forward to confirm or dispel the intelligence. He could not give details on what the intelligence was about.

Mayor Les Fillingame told The Associated Press on Thursday that he believed DeNardo would have been cleared of any wrongdoing.

DeNardo also appears to have been grieving a personal loss. Doug Seal, a member of the city council, said Friday that DeNardo's mother had passed away last week, and he had been away for her services.

As the beachside bars and restaurants prepared for the weekend influx of tourists, no one could fathom why DeNardo would take his own life. They knew little of the events before he killed himself  his suspension without pay pending an investigation by the Hancock County Sheriff's Office or his recent family loss.

Cafe owner Alicein Schwabacher knew him as a strong but soft-spoken man, a lover of veggie burgers, who ran a good police department and was "loved by the community."

At the Mockingbird Cafe, executive chef Julie Ragusa spent the morning preparing freshly baked muffins for delivery, along with fresh coffee, to the grieving police department.

"It's tragic and it's sad and this is such a small, tight-knit community it affects a lot of people," Ragusa said.

Ragusa was gassing up her car near the police station Thursday when a sudden onslaught of police cars and other emergency vehicles rushed by.

"I honestly thought they were running some kind of drill," she said.

During an emergency city council meeting Thursday, the council turned control of the police department over to the sheriff's department. The Sun-Herald reported that the move was temporary, as the city goes through a tumultuous period.

An interim replacement for DeNardo has been named but will report to the sheriff's department.

DeNardo had been with the department since 2004, according to the department's website. The mayor appointed him police chief in 2010. Before coming to Bay St. Louis, DeNardo worked for 18 years at the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff's Office in Louisiana, the website said.

DeNardo's death hit especially hard in this city, which bounced back from bleak devastation 11 years ago when Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast.

"So much healing has taken place here. I don't know what he was dealing with, that he felt he had no one to reach out to," Schwabacher said. "He was loved by the community."

___

Santana reported from New Orleans. Jeff Amy in Columbus, Mississippi, contributed to this report.

Law enforcement officers comfort each other outside Memorial Hospital at Gulfport in Gulfport, Miss., on Thursday, Sept. 8, 2016, after Bay St. Louis Police Chief Mike De Nardo died. Hancock County Coroner Jim Faulk said Chief DeNardo died Thursday. (Amanda McCoy/The Sun Herald via AP)

Bay St. Louis, Miss., Mayor Les Fillingame stands outside the city's police department as he talks about the department's police chief's suicide the day before Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. Bay St. Louis Police Chief Mike De Nardo killed himself soon after learning that authorities were investigating allegations he illegally sold city-owned firearms, including an assault rifle, a sheriffs official said Friday. (Karen Nelson/The Sun Herald via AP)
Turkey calls EU 'weak', can't unblock stalled entry talks

ISTANBUL (AP)  Turkey's foreign minister on Friday accused the European Union of "weakness" for not being able to get ethnically divided Cyprus to stop blocking key parts of Turkey's membership negotiations with the 28-member bloc.

Mevlut Cavusoglu said a deal reunifying Cyprus isn't a criterion for starting talks on policy areas  or chapters  that EU-member Cyprus continues to obstruct.

"The EU's inability to prevent a country from blocking the opening of chapters is another show of the EU's weakness in overcoming problems," Cavusoglu said after talks with the EU's foreign policy chief and enlargement commissioner.

Cavusoglu said Turkey is helping ongoing Cyprus peace talks and expects the EU to do more as well. EU Foreign Policy chief Federica Mogherini spoke of a "window of more than hope" that a Cyprus accord can be achieved.

"We both can contribute enormously to a (Cyprus) solution," said Mogherini. "We both want this to happen and I believe we both believe that this could happen now, in the near future."

EU Enlargement Commissioner Johannes Hahn said he shares Turkey's view that chapters 23 and 24  that deal with justice, the judiciary, fundamental rights and freedoms and security  should be opened, and that a Cyprus peace deal would make that happen.

Cyprus is divided between a Greek-speaking south and a Turkish-speaking north. Turkey doesn't recognize Cyprus as a state and only recognizes a Turkish Cypriot declaration of independence.

Cyprus joined the EU in 2004, but only the south enjoys full membership benefits.

All EU members must consent to EU entry talks with candidate countries. Cyprus has blocked six of 35 EU-Turkey negotiation chapters since 2009 because of Ankara's refusal to recognize it and to allow Cypriot ships and airplanes to use its ports and airports.

The Cyprus government says it won't allow negotiations to start on the chapters unless Turkey does more to help the reunification talks that are now in an intensified phase.

A key stumbling block remains a Turkish Cypriot insistence on granting Turkey military intervention rights, something that Greek Cypriots strongly oppose.

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Nearly 1,500 foreigners in the country under the age of 18 are married

German officials are said to be discussing voiding underage marriage law

German authorities say that at least 361 migrants aged under 14 are registered as married.

The usual minimum age for marriage in Germany is 18, but an exception is made for children aged 16 or over who have their parents' permission to marry.

Marriages undertaken abroad can be recognized even if the person is aged under 16.

An Indian groom puts vermilion, the holy mark belived the as sign of hindu marriage, on the forehead of his child bride during a mass marriage programme in the village of Malda, as the problem of underage marriages spreads into Europe

German officials are discussing whether to nix the exception for under-age marriage and refuse to recognize minors' foreign marriages.

A government response to Green Party lawmakers, stated that a total of 1,475 foreigners under 18 in Germany are officially registered as married  mostly girls.

They include 664 Syrians, 157 Afghans and 100 Iraqis.
Louisiana governor asks Congress for $2B for flood recovery

WASHINGTON (AP)  Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards on Friday appealed to Congress to approve $2 billion in aid for his state, part of a two-day trip to Washington to ask for federal help after catastrophic flooding.

At a House subcommittee hearing reviewing the federal response, Edwards said the money is needed for housing, economic development and public works after August flooding that caused more than $8.7 billion in damage.

"Simply put, we cannot recover without it," Edwards told lawmakers.

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards testifies in on Capitol Hill in Washington, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016, before the House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee on Transportation and Public Assets hearing on FEMA's response to the flooding in Baton Rouge, La. (AP Photo/Molly Riley)

Edwards met with members of Congress and administration officials, and he and Louisiana lawmakers hope flood aid can be part of spending legislation that Congress must soon pass to keep the government operating past month's end.

The Democratic governor praised the federal response so far but urged the Federal Emergency Management Agency to speed up delivery of manufactured housing units for thousands of displaced residents.

"While the response with manufactured housing units has been quicker than any other Louisiana disaster, it has not been fast enough for the families in Louisiana who have lost their homes and have no place to go," Edwards said.

FEMA officials have said the mobile homes are larger and require more preparation than the heavily-maligned FEMA trailers moved into Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Those were derided as cramped and toxic with formaldehyde.

House Republicans criticized FEMA.

Rep. John Mica, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee that held the hearing, said he only saw one functioning mobile housing unit on a trip to the area two weeks after the flood. Under questioning from Mica, R-Fla., FEMA regional administrator Tony Robinson was not able to say how many units are built and functioning.

"I'll have to get back with you on that," Robinson said.

A storm that started Aug. 12 dumped as much as 2 feet of rain in some parts of Louisiana over two days, and the flooding has been described as the worst disaster in the U.S. since Superstorm Sandy struck the East Coast in 2012. Flood damage has been documented to more than 55,000 houses in Louisiana, and that could double as aid applications and inspections continue.

Mayors from the flooded region testified and asked for more help from the federal government. They said federal assistance has been inadequate in many cases, and they cited a lack of communication with federal officials and arcane rules for a slow recovery. Mayor Jr. Shelton of Central, Louisiana, said he had no direct point of contact with FEMA for three weeks after the disaster.

"That debris that's out there? That's not debris, it's people's lives," Shelton said. "We have suicides, we have mental breakdowns, we have families being torn apart."

Edwards said the state's housing need is projected to exceed $1.2 billion. He is also asking for Congress to help the state rebuild its transportation network after many roads were washed out, and money for mental health and support services for families, among other requests.

He said the longer it takes to get federal money, more people will decide to leave their homes and communities.

"We will see a much longer harder road to recovery," he said.

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Follow Mary Clare Jalonick on Twitter: http://twitter.com/MCJalonick

FEMA Regional Administrator Tony Robinson testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016, before the House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee on Transportation and Public Assets hearing on FEMA's response to the flooding in Baton Rouge, La. (AP Photo/Molly Riley)

Central City, La. Mayor Jr. Shelton testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016, before the House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee on Transportation and Public Assets hearing on FEMA's response to the flooding in Baton Rouge, La. (AP Photo/Molly Riley)

Walker, La. Mayor Rick Ramsey testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016, before the House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee on Transportation and Public Assets hearing on FEMA's response to the flooding in Baton Rouge, La. (AP Photo/Molly Riley)

From left, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, FEMA Regional Administrator Tony Robinson, Central City, La. Mayor Jr. Shelton, Denham Springs, La. Mayor Gerard Landry, and Walker, La. Mayor Rick Ramsey, are sworn in on Capitol Hill in Washington, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016, prior to testifying before the House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee on Transportation and Public Assets hearing on FEMA's response to the flooding in Baton Rouge, La. (AP Photo/Molly Riley)

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards testifies in on Capitol Hill in Washington, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016, before the House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee on Transportation and Public Assets hearing on FEMA's response to the flooding in Baton Rouge, La. (AP Photo/Molly Riley)
Dutch government extends military training mission in Iraq

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP)  The Dutch government says it is extending its involvement in a military training mission in Iraq until the end of 2017.

The Netherlands has been part of the international coalition fighting the so-called Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria since October 2014.

Prime Minister Mark Rutte said Friday that Dutch troops will continue to train Iraqi and Kurdish Peshmerga forces. The Dutch air force will also keep a refueling aircraft in the region and a unit providing security for Belgian fighter jets.

Rutte says the Dutch forces "are doing very important and highly regarded work there training people to fight ISIS."
2nd girl in Slender Man stabbing enters insanity plea

WAUKESHA, Wis. (AP)  The second of two young Wisconsin girls accused of trying to kill a classmate to please horror character Slender Man entered a plea Friday of not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect to an attempted homicide charge.

Fourteen-year-old Anissa Weier entered the plea during a 15-minute hearing in Waukesha County Circuit Court. Judge Michael Bohren appointed two doctors to examine the girl, who sat silently during the proceedings. The judge ordered the doctors to turn in a report on her mental status by Oct. 6.

Weier and 14-year-old Morgan Geyser each face one count of first-degree attempted intentional homicide as adults for allegedly luring classmate Payton Leutner into a wooded area and repeatedly stabbing her in May 2014. All three girls were 12 years old at the time.

Anissa Weier, accused of trying to kill a classmate to please horror character Slender Man, is led out of Waukesha County Circuit Court in Waukesha, Wis., Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. Weier entered a plea on Friday of not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect to the attempted homicide charge. (Michael Sears/Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel via AP, Pool) MICHAEL SEARS/MSEARS@JOURNALSENTINEL.COM

Anyone age 10 or older who faces that charge in Wisconsin is automatically considered an adult. If convicted, each girl would face up to 40 years in prison and 20 years on extended supervision. Geyser pleaded not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect last month.

Weier's attorney, Maura McMahon, said after the hearing that she was no longer trying to get the case moved to juvenile court, a fight that had been ongoing since Weier and Geyser were taken into custody. Geyser's attorney said last month he'd given up on moving her case after exhausting nearly all legal avenues.

The Associated Press initially chose not to name the girls in case they were tried in juvenile court, where proceedings are secret and penalties aren't nearly as harsh. In juvenile court, the girls could have been incarcerated for three years and supervised until they turned 18, and their records would have been sealed.

Moving forward in adult court, the girls would be committed to a mental hospital indefinitely if defense attorneys and prosecutors agree they suffer from a mental disease, McMahon said. If a dispute arises over their mental states, a hearing would ensue and a jury would ultimately make the decision.

Prosecutors allege that the girls planned for months to kill Leutner, either to gain favor with Slender Man and earn positions as his servants or to avoid his wrath. The girls lured Leutner to a park in Waukesha, a town west of Milwaukee, following a sleepover. Investigators say the girls stabbed Leutner 19 times before fleeing, and Leutner crawled to a road where a bicyclist found her.

Weier and Geyser were captured on the outskirts of Waukesha. They said they were walking to a national forest in northern Wisconsin where they planned to join Slender Man at his mansion, investigators allege.

Both girls have asked Bohren for a jury from outside Waukesha County if the cases go to trial, citing heavy media coverage. They are due back in court Oct. 13 for a hearing on those requests.

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Follow Todd Richmond on Twitter at https://twitter.com/trichmond1
UN special envoy Jolie blasts funding gap for Syrians

AZRAQ REFUGEE CAMP, Jordan (AP)  Actress Angelina Jolie Pitt, a special envoy for the U.N. refugee agency, has called on the international community to end the protracted Syrian civil war and increase support for refugees across the region.

Jolie Pitt spoke at the Azraq camp for Syrian refugees on Friday while on a tour of humanitarian projects in Jordan. Jolie Pitt says the violence rages while the U.N. Security Council remains divided on a political resolution.

She decried the funding shortfalls for humanitarian agencies, saying the U.N. was operating with less than half of the budget required to support Syrian refugees.

Actress and UN refugee agency envoy special envoy Angelina Jolie smiles at children during a visit to a Syrian refugee camp in Azraq in northern Jordan on Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. She is calling on the international community to end the protracted Syrian civil war and increase support for refugees across the region. Five years into the Syrian conflict, she said brutal violence rages while the UN Security Council remains divided on a political solution. (AP Photo/Ahmad Alameen)

She says that "the gulf between our responsibilities and our actions has never been so wide."

Close to 5 million Syrians have fled their homeland since 2011, most settling in neighboring countries.

Actress and UN refugee agency envoy special envoy Angelina Jolie talks during a visit to a Syrian refugee camp in Azraq in northern Jordan on Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. She is calling on the international community to end the protracted Syrian civil war and increase support for refugees across the region. Five years into the Syrian conflict, she said brutal violence rages while the UN Security Council remains divided on a political solution. (AP Photo/Ahmad Alameen)

Actress and UN refugee agency envoy special envoy Angelina Jolie talks during a visit to a Syrian refugee camp in Azraq in northern Jordan on Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. She is calling on the international community to end the protracted Syrian civil war and increase support for refugees across the region. Five years into the Syrian conflict, she said brutal violence rages while the UN Security Council remains divided on a political solution. (AP Photo/Ahmad Alameen)

Actress and UN refugee agency envoy special envoy Angelina Jolie talks to children during a visit to a Syrian refugee camp in Azraq in northern Jordan on Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. She is calling on the international community to end the protracted Syrian civil war and increase support for refugees across the region. Five years into the Syrian conflict, she said brutal violence rages while the UN Security Council remains divided on a political solution. (AP Photo/Ahmad Alameen)

Actress and UN refugee agency envoy special envoy Angelina Jolie waves during a visit to a Syrian refugee camp in Azraq in northern Jordan on Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. She is calling on the international community to end the protracted Syrian civil war and increase support for refugees across the region. Five years into the Syrian conflict, she said brutal violence rages while the UN Security Council remains divided on a political solution. (AP Photo/Ahmad Alameen)

Actress and UN refugee agency envoy special envoy Angelina Jolie talks to a child during a visit to a Syrian refugee camp in Azraq in northern Jordan on Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. She is calling on the international community to end the protracted Syrian civil war and increase support for refugees across the region. Five years into the Syrian conflict, she said brutal violence rages while the UN Security Council remains divided on a political solution. (AP Photo/Ahmad Alameen)

Actress and UN refugee agency envoy special envoy Angelina Jolie shakes hands with a young bot during a visit to a Syrian refugee camp in Azraq in northern Jordan on Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. She is calling on the international community to end the protracted Syrian civil war and increase support for refugees across the region. Five years into the Syrian conflict, she said brutal violence rages while the UN Security Council remains divided on a political solution. (AP Photo/Ahmad Alameen)

Actress and UN refugee agency envoy special envoy Angelina Jolie talks during a visit to a Syrian refugee camp in Azraq in northern Jordan on Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. She is calling on the international community to end the protracted Syrian civil war and increase support for refugees across the region. Five years into the Syrian conflict, she said brutal violence rages while the UN Security Council remains divided on a political solution. (AP Photo/Ahmad Alameen)
Brazilian Fabinho signs new contract with Monaco until 2021

MONACO (AP)  Brazilian defender Fabinho has signed a two-year contract extension with Monaco until 2021, the club said Friday.

The 22-year-old right back joined the French-league team in 2013 and signed a four-year deal in May 2015.

Fabinho scored eight goals last season, all from the penalty spot, and has scored four goals this season.
Turkey insists on no-fly zone in Syria, NATO non-committal

ISTANBUL (AP)  Turkey's foreign minister on Friday repeated a call for a no-fly zone over northern Syria to boost security and allow more refugees to return home while enabling more local troops to be trained in their fight against Islamic State group fighters.

Mevlut Cavusoglu said newly trained local troops would be essential to retake territory from IS troops in places such as Raqqa and Mosul. He said a no-fly zone could be set up once an expanse of Syrian territory bordering Turkey  known as the Manbij pocket  is cleared of IS fighters. But he conceded that establishing a no-fly zone would require U.N. Security Council authorization.

"In order for the people to return home, ensuring ground safety alone would not be sufficient, it would need to be supported by a no-fly zone so that there are no attacks from the air," Cavusoglu told reporters after talks with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, left, and Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu speak to the media after their talks in Ankara, Turkey, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. Cavusoglu repeated a call for a no-fly zone over northern Syria that would boost security and allow more refugees to return home while enabling more local troops to be trained in their fight against Islamic State group fighters. (AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilici)

Stoltenberg skirted a question whether NATO supports a no-fly zone. But he underscored that training local troops to take the fight to IS would be critical instead of the alliance having to deploy any large military contingent.

"I believe the key is to train local forces," Stoltenberg said, calling it the better long-run option. He said NATO supports the international coalition against IS through air surveillance, augmenting Turkey's air defense missile systems, and a naval presence.

Cavusoglu added that success in retaking the northern Syrian city of Jarablus has lifted morale among locals and emboldened fighters in Raqqa and Mosul.

However, he said newly trained local forces would not be permitted to furtively support Syrian Kurdish forces that Turkey believes are allied with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party  or PKK  that's waging an insurgency inside the country.

Turkey launched an incursion into Syria last month to back Syrian rebels in their fight to push IS out of the town of Jarablus and to limit the Syrian Kurdish forces' advance west of the Euphrates River.

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Associated Press writer Suzan Fraser contributed.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg speaks to the media during a joint news conference with Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu after their talks in Ankara, Turkey, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. Cavusoglu repeated a call for a no-fly zone over northern Syria that would boost security and allow more refugees to return home while enabling more local troops to be trained in their fight against Islamic State group fighters. (AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilici)

Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu smiles as he listens to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg during a news conference in Ankara, Turkey, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. Cavusoglu repeated a call for a no-fly zone over northern Syria that would boost security and allow more refugees to return home while enabling more local troops to be trained in their fight against Islamic State group fighters. (AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilici)
CDC Director: 'Essentially out of money' to fight Zika

WASHINGTON (AP)  The head of the government's fight against the Zika virus said that "we are now essentially out of money" and warned that the country is "about to see a bunch of kids born with microcephaly" in the coming months.

Friday's warning from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Thomas Frieden came as lawmakers start to sort out a stopgap government funding bill that is being targeted to also carry long-delayed money to battle Zika.

Zika is spreading more widely in the U.S. and can not only cause microcephaly  in which babies are born with grave brain defects  but other problems that the country will face for decades. And 671 pregnant women in the states and Washington, D.C., have the virus, leading to the birth of 17 babies with microcephaly so far.

In this photo taken July 13, 2016, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Tom Frieden testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Frieden, the head of the government's fight against the Zika virus said that "we are now essentially out of money" and warned that the country is "about to see a bunch of kids born with microcephaly" in the coming months. The warning came as lawmakers start to sort out a stopgap government funding bill that is being targeted to also carry long-delayed money to battle Zika. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Frieden said funding delays have slowed long-term studies of the disease and production of new tests for it. "We haven't been able to get a running start" on a long-term battle against Zika, he said.

Frieden added that "we don't like to see" the use of pesticides such as Friday morning's spraying of naled, in Miami Beach. But, he said, new technologies for the application of such toxic chemicals are safe for humans. The two localized mosquito-borne outbreaks in Miami are "quite difficult to control," Frieden said, adding that the type of mosquitoes that spread Zika "are the cockroach of mosquitoes."

President Barack Obama in February requested $1.9 billion to fight Zika, but Republicans controlling Congress acted slowly on the request. A Capitol Hill fight this summer stalled the Zika aid. Republicans attached restrictions on any of the money going to affiliates of Planned Parenthood in Puerto Rico. Democrats objected and blocked the $1.1 billion measure.

In the interim, the administration has shifted about $650 million from other accounts to battle Zika, most of it unused money approved two years ago to fight Ebola. That money is almost gone.

Now, negotiations are underway to break the impasse over Zika and add it to the only piece of legislation that has to pass Congress before the election: A stopgap funding bill to avert a government shutdown on Oct. 1.

Democrats and the White House have greater leverage now since their approval is needed for the stopgap spending bill, and Republicans are signaling they'll likely lift the restrictions on delivering contraception, treatment and care through Planned Parenthood, an organization that many Republicans loathe since it is a major provider of abortion.

A bipartisan consensus is emerging to fund the government through mid-December, though some House tea party conservatives are opposed and want a longer duration for the measure to avert a lame duck session of Congress.

Since the summertime impasse, Zika has spread even more widely, and frustration is mounting from lawmakers representing affected areas. Almost 3,000 people in the continental U.S. have been found to have Zika, and the total is far higher since most people don't display symptoms. The figures including Puerto Rico and the other territories are much worse.

"Look if we don't, then fire all of us," said Florida GOP Rep. David Jolly, whose state is bearing the brunt of the disease in the continental U.S. "If we can't get Zika funding by the end of September then we're nothing but a bunch of idiots up here."

"I think we'll look at this delay in time and say, 'How could they have waited so long?' This was so urgent. It was the very definition of an emergency," Frieden said. "Not only is this unanticipated, it's unprecedented. It's potentially catastrophic, and it's certainly that for the kind of brain damage we're seeing."

Frieden noted that it is extremely unusual to have a new cause for a severe birth defect and that the health care system will be grappling with the effects of Zika for years. While microcephaly is the most immediate result of the outbreak, Frieden noted that infants are having problems swallowing and with their vision and hearing.
Owner files formal petition to close Trump Taj Mahal casino

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP)  Billionaire Carl Icahn's management team is asking state gambling regulators for permission to shut down the Trump Taj Mahal casino next month.

His team has filed a formal petition asking the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement for permission to close the casino and to approve plans to wind down table games, disconnect slot machines, store unused liquor and destroy cards, dice and gambling chips.

The petition indicates the billionaire is serious about closing the Taj Mahal. He says it's losing millions of dollars a month while the city's main casino workers union carries out a strike against it.

FILE - This April 24, 2015, file photo, shows the exterior of the Trump Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, N.J. Billionaire Carl Icahn's management team is asking New Jersey gambling regulators for permission to shut down the Trump Taj Mahal casino in October 2016. Icahn's team has filed a formal petition asking the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement for permission to close the casino and to approve plans to wind down table games, disconnect slot machines, store unused liquor and destroy cards, dice and gambling chips. (AP Photo/Wayne Parry, File)

But because he announced on Aug. 4 his plan to close the casino and went nearly a month without formally asking regulators for permission to do it, some strikers began questioning whether Icahn truly planned to close it or whether the shutdown threat was a bluff to get the striking union to accept the casino's final offer.

The petition was filed Sept. 2 but wasn't made public by the state until Friday.

The state's approval of shutdown plans is required before a casino can close. Similar petitions for the four casinos that shut down in 2014 all were approved.

The Taj Mahal plans to close at 6 a.m. on Oct. 10. But it will begin winding down some table games on Sept. 26.

The main issue in the strike is a demand by Local 54 of the Unite-HERE union to restore health insurance and pension benefits that a bankruptcy judge terminated in 2014 before Icahn officially owned the Taj Mahal. During the bankruptcy, Icahn had been keeping the casino afloat financially as its lender.

Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, opened the Taj Mahal in 1990, one of three casinos he once owned here. But he cut most ties with Atlantic City in 2009 aside from a 10 percent ownership stake in the Taj Mahal's parent company in return for the use of his name.

That stake was wiped out in March when Icahn acquired the casino from bankruptcy court.

The closure of the Taj Mahal will leave Atlantic City with seven casinos; as recently as 2014, it had 12.

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Follow Wayne Parry at http://twitter.com/WayneParryAC
Arkansas ballot will offer a new test for medical marijuana

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP)  Republicans control all of Arkansas' statewide offices, hold a majority in both chambers of the Legislature and are nearly assured of winning the state's six electoral votes in the presidential election.

But this deeply red state could be on the verge of an unusually liberal move: legalizing marijuana for people who suffer from a host of medical ailments. The fall ballot will feature two marijuana measures, and pro-pot advocates view them as an important opportunity to show that there is broad support for legalization even in conservative parts of the country, particularly the South.

The referendums also offer a chance at a symbolically powerful victory in a state with a Republican governor who once led the federal Drug Enforcement Administration.

FILE - In this Sept. 15, 2015 file photo, lead grower Dave Wilson cares for marijuana plants in the "Flower Room" at the Ataraxia medical marijuana cultivation center in Albion, Ill. The deeply red state of Arkansas could be on the verge of an unusually liberal move: legalizing marijuana for people who suffer from a host of medical ailments. The fall ballot will feature two marijuana measures, and pro-pot advocates view them as an important opportunity to show that there is broad support for legalization even in conservative parts of the country, particularly the South. (AP Photo/Seth Perlman, File)

"If a red conservative state like Arkansas in the Bible Belt can pass medical cannabis, then anybody can," said Melissa Fults, who leads the campaign for one of the medical marijuana proposals going before voters. "People are depending on us. We can't let them down."

Arkansas voters narrowly rejected a medical marijuana proposal four years ago, despite national groups spending big in favor of legalization. Meanwhile, national support for medical marijuana has grown, and half of the states and the District of Columbia have legalized the drug in some fashion.

But pot remains mostly illegal across the South.

The fall campaign is "going to be a little tougher battle, but I think everyone's views on medical marijuana are like their views on gay marriage," said David Couch, the sponsor of a competing medical marijuana measure. "They've softened over the past couple years."

Attitudes about marijuana have eased in Arkansas, where voters in two cities approved ballot initiatives that encouraged police to regard arrests for small amounts as a low priority.

Advocates hope the support for medical cannabis will cross party lines, and they are counting on voters like Barb Soell, a 77-year-old retiree who expects to support Republican Donald Trump for president.

Soell, who backed the legalization measure four years ago, said she doesn't see any need to deny the drug to people suffering from cancer and other medical problems.

"I don't think that medical marijuana is going to lead someone to use heroin or other drugs," Soell said. "That's nonsense."

Both measures on the ballot would allow patients with certain conditions to buy from dispensaries, but the proposals have different restrictions and enforcement provisions. For example, Fults' plan would allow patients who don't live near a dispensary to grow their own marijuana. Couch's initiative would not.

So far, support for medical marijuana among the states has not translated into much progress at the federal level. The Obama administration in August decided to keep marijuana on the list of most dangerous drugs but also planned to allow more research into its medical uses. Winning approval for medical cannabis in a state such as Arkansas could help elevate the drug to a federal issue.

"At some point, there's going to have to be change on the federal level to ensure that federal law and state law work together," said Tamar Todd, director of legal affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance, which is backing Fults' proposal. "Certainly adding Southern states and Southern constituencies to the push to change laws at the federal level will be very significant."

The path to legalization still faces plenty of obstacles in Arkansas. Advocates fear having two measures on the ballot will doom legalization efforts, with the campaigns battling each other as much as opponents. If voters approve both proposals, whichever one gets the most votes becomes law.

A coalition of the state's most powerful lobbying forces, including the Arkansas Farm Bureau, the state Chamber of Commerce and social conservative groups have united to campaign against the measures and have sued to block votes for both of them.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who ran the DEA during President George W. Bush's first term, has stepped up his criticism, warning that legalization would be a burden on resources.

"I do not see any tax boon to the state. I see more of a tax drain to the state," Hutchinson told county officials from around the state at a recent meeting.

Hutchinson and other opponents are trying to focus the debate on specific parts of the proposals that could carry unintended consequences, rather than framing it as a general fight over medical marijuana. Business groups, for example, argue that the proposals would affect efforts to enforce drug-free workplace policies.

"You might have the best intentions in the world, but what's happening is there's going to be a lot of people who suffer because of these not well thought-out policies nationally," said state Surgeon General Greg Bledsoe, a spokesman for the group campaigning against the measures.

The state Democratic Party's platform includes general support for legalizing medical marijuana, but the platform is silent on the two ballot measures.

The state's Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate, a former federal prosecutor, has likewise said he supports developing a "responsible" medical marijuana program nationally and in Arkansas but isn't weighing in on the specific proposals.

The pro-marijuana campaigns say even general endorsements help. But they are relying more on testimonials from sick people who have used cannabis, such as Raven Thompson of Little Rock, who battled a rare sarcoma.

Thompson, who has been in remission for the past two years, said marijuana helped restore her appetite during chemotherapy and after surgery.

"I wasn't blatantly breaking the law," Thompson said. "I had to do what I had to do."

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Follow Andrew DeMillo on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ademillo .

In ths Aug. 5, 2016, photo, Ed Sigler, of Van Buren, Ark., speaks in support of medical marijuana at a news conference in the state Capitol rotunda in Little Rock, Ark. Sigler told reporters he was recently diagnosed with chronic myelogenous leukemia. In the foreground is Tamara Higdon-Langley of El Dorado, Ark. While Republicans control Arkansas state government, the state could be on the verge of a very liberal move: legalizing marijuana for use by people who suffer from a number of medical ailments. (AP Photo/Kelly P. Kissel)

In this Aug. 5, 2016, photo, LaRee Treece of Little Rock, Ark., holds a sign after a news conference at the Capitol in Little Rock where others spoke in support of an effort to legalize medical marijuana While Republicans control Arkansas state government, the state could be on the verge of a very liberal move: legalizing marijuana for use by people who suffer from a number of medical ailments. (AP Photo/Kelly P. Kissel)
British-Iranian woman sentenced to 5 years in Iran prison

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP)  A British-Iranian woman detained for months in Iran on suspicion of planning the "soft toppling" of the country's government while traveling with her young daughter has been sentenced to five years in prison, her husband said Friday.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was convicted on "secret charges" in a Revolutionary Court, Richard Ratcliffe said, making her the first dual national known to be convicted as part of a string of detentions following Iran's nuclear deal with world powers.

While Iranian authorities haven't offered a motive for the detentions, analysts and families of those held have suggested hard-liners within the country's security services want concessions from the West in exchange for releasing them.

"It does seem strange you'd have a sentence without any charges," Ratcliffe told The Associated Press. "You can't defend yourself against a secret."

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who works for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of the news agency, was sentenced Tuesday by Judge Abolghassem Salavati in Tehran's Revolutionary Court, her husband said. Salavati is known for his tough sentences and has heard other politically charged cases, including that of Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian.

There was no immediate mention of Zaghari-Ratcliffe's hearing in Iranian state media. Iran's mission to the United Nations did not respond to a request for comment. Officials in Tehran could not be reached for comment on Friday, the start of the Eid al-Adha holiday.

She was detained in April while trying to fly out of the country with her toddler daughter, Gabriella, who remains in Iran with family after authorities seized her passport. Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard has said Zaghari-Ratcliffe participated in the "design and implementation of cyber and media projects to cause the soft toppling of the Islamic Republic," without elaborating.

Since Iran struck a deal with world powers to limit its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief, hard-line security forces have increasingly targeted dual nationals. Iranian law does not recognize dual nationality, meaning those detained cannot receive consular assistance.

The British Embassy in Tehran reopened in August 2015 after being closed for four years and this week the countries appointed ambassadors for the first time since 2011. British Airways recently resumed its flights to Tehran. But while diplomatic relations have normalized, hard-liners in Iran still view Britain with deep suspicion over its role with the United States in the 1953 coup that installed the shah.

The British Foreign Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The prisoner swap in January between Iran and the U.S. that freed Rezaian and three other Iranian-Americans was in exchange for pardons or charges dropped against seven Iranians  six of whom hold dual U.S. citizenship  serving time for or accused of sanctions violations in the U.S.

U.S. President Barack Obama's administration also made a $400 million cash delivery to Iran  repaying money from a 1970s Iranian account to buy U.S. military equipment  contingent on their release. That's garnered criticism from Republicans in an election year.

The U.S. and other countries are believed to be holding other Iranians who Tehran wants released.

Dual nationals known to be held by Iran also include:

 Homa Hoodfar , an Iranian-Canadian woman who is a retired professor at Montreal's Concordia University;

 Siamak Namazi , an Iranian-American businessman who has advocated for closer ties between the two countries;

 Baquer Namazi , a former Iranian and U.N. official in his 80s who is the father of Siamak;

 Robin Shahini , an Iranian-American detained while visiting family who previously had made online comments criticizing Iran's human rights record;

 Nizar Zakka, a U.S. permanent resident from Lebanon who has done work for the American government .

Still missing is former FBI agent Robert Levinson, who vanished in Iran in 2007 while on an unauthorized CIA mission.

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Clinton: Time for 'rethinking' of US approach to North Korea

PENSCACOLA, Fla. (AP)  Hillary Clinton said Friday it was time for a "rethinking" of America's strategy for North Korea following the regime's latest test of a nuclear weapon. Donald Trump and his campaign chief, meanwhile, refused to outline the Republican presidential candidate's plans for defusing tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

The New York billionaire, however, vowed to deploy military muscle to attack America's enemies if provoked.

Largely ignoring North Korea, he noted a recent incident in which he said Iranian ships were "toying with" an American destroyer near the Strait of Hormuz. During a Trump presidency, he promised at a Friday night rally in Pensacola, Florida, ships trying to provoke the U.S. "will be shot out of the water."

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at a LBGT For Hillary Gala at the Cipriani Club, in New York, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

In New York, Clinton was focused on the North Korean threat after meeting with a bipartisan group of national security experts.

The former secretary of state said she would seek to impose tougher sanctions on the communist nation, arguing the latest test provides an opening to pressure China, which has been tepid in its response to North Korea's nuclear ambitions.

"I think we have an opening here that we haven't had for the last several years that I intend to do everything I can to take advantage of," Clinton said.

Clinton spoke hours after Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, pressed repeatedly on Trump's plans for the region, said only, "He wouldn't do what's being done now."

"He's not going to reveal all of his plans and he's made that very clear. And maybe someone can ask him in a debate," Conway told "CBS This Morning." ''But the fact is that this entire world would be put on notice that there's a strong leader in the White House."

North Korea's latest atomic test was its fifth, and the second in eight months. South Korean President Park Geun-hye said the detonation, which Seoul estimated was the North's biggest ever in explosive yield, was an act of "fanatic recklessness" and a sign that leader Kim Jong Un "is spiraling out of control."

President Barack Obama condemned the test and said the U.S. would never accept the country as a nuclear power.

In appearances in Florida and Washington, Trump used the North Korean development to attack Clinton. "North Korea, like so many other things, is one more Hillary Clinton failure," he said in Pensacola.

He did not say whether he had a plan to address North Korea's claim the test will allow it to build an array of stronger, smaller and lighter nuclear weapons.

He focused instead on attacking Clinton's credibility. He said Clinton was being "protected" during the Justice Department's investigation into her use of a private email server while secretary of state.

"She could walk right into this arena right now and shoot somebody with 20,000 people watching, right smack in the middle of the heart, and she wouldn't be prosecuted," Trump said.

Meanwhile, Clinton said the United States would not let North Korea pursue a nuclear weapon and said that as president, she would seek new sanctions and work closely with allies in the region, such as South Korea and Japan.

But she also said she would consider discussions similar to recent negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, because sanctions "aren't enough."

The development in North Korea comes at the end of a week in which Trump and Clinton clashed repeatedly over national security.

The New York billionaire attacked Clinton's record as the nation's chief diplomat, yet he faced criticism from within his own party for refusing to outline his plans for combating foreign policy challenges, including threats posed by the Islamic State group. Trump said this week that he does indeed have a plan, but would convene military leaders in his first 30 days in office to craft another plan.

Trump has also faced criticism for praising Russian President Vladimir Putin during a high-profile national security forum earlier in the week, and appearing on a Russian-backed television network Thursday evening.

On Friday, Clinton said she was "disappointed" by Trump's decision to appear on RT America, saying that "every day that goes by this just becomes more and more of a reality television show. It's not a serious presidential campaign."

With several prominent Republican national security officials already concerned about Trump's national security acumen, Clinton has tried to cast herself as the better potential commander in chief. She has aggressively promoted her growing list of military endorsements from both parties.

On Friday, her campaign said the number of retired generals and admirals endorsing Clinton for president has grown to 110. Trump quickly countered by saying his list had ballooned to 120 former U.S. generals and admirals earlier in the week.

Trump's running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, received his first intelligence briefing Friday. The vice presidential nominee declined to offer any specifics since the information was classified.

Continuing her aggressive fundraising push, Clinton appeared at two fundraisers in New York. One of them was an LGBT event featuring Barbra Streisand.

Clinton is getting some help from another wealthy backer as well. Billionaire Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz said Friday he's giving $20 million to help defeat Trump.

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Lucey reported from New York. Associated Press writer Julie Bykowicz contributed to this report.

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What political news is the world searching for on Google and talking about on Twitter? Find out via AP's Election Buzz interactive. http://elections.ap.org/buzz

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks to the Value Voters Summit, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Republican vice presidential candidate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence comments after receiving a national security briefing in Indianapolis, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, third from left, attends a National Security working session at the Historical Society Library in New York, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

North Koreans watch a news report regarding a nuclear test on a large screen outside the Pyongyang Station in Pyongyang, North Korea, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. North Korea said Friday it conducted a "higher level" nuclear warhead test explosion, which it trumpeted as finally allowing it to build "at will" an array of stronger, smaller and lighter nuclear weapons. (AP Photo/Jon Chol Jin)

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton attends a National Security working session at the Historical Society Library in New York, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Republican vice presidential candidate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence comments after receiving a national security briefing in Indianapolis, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, center, accompanied by former National Counterterrorism Center Director Matt Olson, right, and former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, left, attends a National Security working session at the Historical Society Library in New York, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks to the Value Voters Summit, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks to the Value Voters Summit, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

People watch as Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks to the Value Voters Summit, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, center, accompanied by former National Counterterrorism Center Director Matt Olson, right, and former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, left, attends a National Security working session at the Historical Society Library in New York, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
Former Mississippi officer pleads not guilty to manslaughter

COLUMBUS, Miss. (AP)  A white former Mississippi police officer pleaded not guilty to manslaughter Friday in the shooting of a black man nearly a year ago that sparked community protests.

Canyon Boykin waived his arraignment behind closed doors after Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood secured a grand jury indictment against him on Wednesday.

Lowndes County Circuit Judge Jim Kitchens set his bail at $20,000 pending a Nov. 28 trial, and an interracial crowd of Boykin supporters applauded as he left the courthouse in handcuffs.

Former Columbus Police officer Canyon Boykin, left, is led from the Lowndes County Courthouse Friday, Sept. 9, 2016, in handcuffs while people applaud. Boykin on Friday pleaded not guilty to manslaughter in an October shooting of a black man that sparked community protests. (Luisa Porter /The Commercial Dispatch via AP)

Boykin said he fired his weapon while chasing after Ricky Ball last October because the 26-year-old suspect appeared to point a gun at him.

Ball's family disputed whether Boykin had cause to shoot, and as with many other police killings of African-Americans, protests arose in Columbus, a mostly black city of 23,000 in northeast Mississippi.

District Attorney Scott Colom transferred the case to the attorney general's office in July to prevent the appearance of bias. The manslaughter charge carries a possible prison term of 20 years.

"Our police officers put their lives on the line for us every day," Hood said in a Friday statement. "We owe it to them and to our citizens to see that the highest standards of conduct are always met."

One of Boykin's attorneys, Jeff Reynolds, said he's "flabbergasted" Boykin wasn't cleared.

"I can say in my 30-plus years of law practice that I have never seen a bigger travesty of justice than this indictment of this police officer," Fletcher said. "It is an absolute travesty and he will be found not guilty. He's innocent of these charges."

The city fired Boykin as he was trying to resign after the shooting, saying he had broken department policy by not turning on his body camera, by inviting his then-fiancee to ride along without permission and by making derogatory social media posts about African-Americans, women and disabled people.

Boykin then sued, claiming the city violated his First Amendment rights by firing him over social media posts, and violated his due process rights by subjecting him to a biased hearing and knuckling under to "uninformed public pressure."

Ball's father also intends to sue the city. His lawyer, Mose Lee Sudduth, said Ball's relatives are pleased to see action against the fired officer. "This is something that goes toward healing some of the suffering he's had to go through," Sudduth said.

City officials have denied wrongdoing.

In his lawsuit, Boykin said he shocked Ball with a stun gun, and then saw him with a handgun as he lay on the ground. Boykin said Ball recovered from the shock, began to run again and turned as if to shoot the officer. Boykin said that's when he fired. Hit twice, Ball died from blood loss.

Authorities said a pistol, reported stolen from a Columbus police officer's home, was found near Ball's body, as was a substance believed to be marijuana. Boykin said Ball also threw away some cocaine he was carrying during the chase.

Investigators have released no findings on Boykin's claims.

"There's something in there that made the grand jury say the indictment was justified," said State Rep. Kabir Karriem, D-Columbus.

A city council member at the time of the shooting, Karriem said the indictment is progress for Mississippi, and a tribute to the people who marched and signed petitions demanding the grand jury investigation.

Some out-of-uniform police officers joined about two dozen supporters of Boykin outside the courthouse. Some of them shouted "Not guilty!" and "We love you, Canyon!" as he left.

"I think we're so quick to throw the baby out with the bathwater," said Jake Reeves, who said was a childhood friend of Boykin. "You've got all the evidence piled up that shows he did nothing wrong. It's popular right now to persecute police officers."

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Follow Jeff Amy at: http://twitter.com/jeffamy. Read his work at http://bigstory.ap.org/author/jeff-amy
Diplomats: Portugal's Guterres tops poll for next UN chief

UNITED NATIONS (AP)  Portugal's former prime minister Antonio Guterres has maintained his spot as first choice to succeed Ban Ki-moon as the next U.N. secretary-general, topping the fourth successive informal poll in the Security Council, diplomats said Friday.

The diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity because voting is supposed to be kept secret, said Slovakia's Foreign Minister Miroslav Lajcak remained in second place followed by Serbia's former foreign minister Vuk Jeremic.

Former Macedonian foreign minister Srgjan Kerim moved up from sixth to fourth place, followed by Irina Bokova of Bulgaria, who heads UNESCO, the diplomats said.

There has never been a woman secretary-general and more than 50 nations are campaigning to elect the first female U.N. chief, along with many organizations.

Five women are in the race, but the fact that Bokova was the highest-ranked and only came in fifth place among the 10 candidates left many diplomats disappointed. That's because it all but rules out a female secretary-general  unless a woman makes a late bid for the world's top diplomatic post.

Ban, whose second five-year term ends on Dec. 31, said last month that after eight men "it's high time now" for a woman to head the United Nations.

By tradition, the job of secretary-general has rotated among regions. Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe have all held the post. East European nations, including Russia, argue that they have never had a secretary-general and it is their turn.

In the latest poll, diplomats said former Slovenian President Danilo Turk came in sixth, Argentina's Foreign Minister Susana Malcorra seventh, and former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark, who heads the U.N. Development Program, eighth, the diplomats said.

Two other women received the fewest positive votes. Christiana Figueres of Costa Rica, the U.N. official who played a key role in shaping last December's historic agreement to fight climate change, was in ninth place and Moldovan Foreign Minister Natalia Gherman in 10th, according to the diplomats.

The secretary-general is chosen by the 193-member General Assembly on the recommendation of the 15-member Security Council. In practice, this has meant that the council's five permanent members  the U.S., Russia, China, Britain and France  have veto power over the candidates.

In Friday's informal poll, council members voted whether to "encourage," ''discourage," or express "no opinion" about the 10 candidates  five men and five women.

Another poll is scheduled in late September and will use the same ballot. But a "straw" poll in the first week of October will for the first time distinguish the color of the ballots of the five permanent members so candidates will know if they would face a veto.

Guterres, who was Portugal's center-left Socialist prime minister from 1995-2002 and U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees until the end of 2015, got 12 "encourage" votes, two "discourage" and one "no opinion" on Friday.

For him, the big question mark remains whether any of the "discourages" are from Russia or another veto-wielding permanent member.
Netanyahu says Palestinians want a state without Jews

JERUSALEM (AP)  Israel's prime minister rejected international criticism of West Bank settlement construction on Friday, equating it to "ethnic cleansing" of Jews and insisting the settlements are not an obstacle to peace, in a video that drew a rare rebuke from the United States.

Israel has been widely criticized, including by its close ally the U.S., for building settlements in territories captured in the 1967 Mideast war, land the Palestinians want as part of their future state.

Benjamin Netanyahu said in a video posted online that he has "always been perplexed" by claims that Israeli settlement building is "an obstacle to peace."

He pointed to Israel's Arab minority, which enjoys citizenship and voting rights but often faces discrimination in housing and employment.

"No one would seriously claim that the nearly 2 million Arabs living inside Israel, that they're an obstacle to peace," Netanyahu said. "Yet the Palestinian leadership actually demands a Palestinian state with one precondition: No Jews. There's a phrase for that: It's called ethnic cleansing."

"It's even more outrageous that the world doesn't find this outrageous," he added. "Since when is bigotry a foundation for peace?"

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau told reporters in Washington the administration is "engaging in direct conversations with the Israeli government" about the video.

"We obviously strongly disagree with the characterization that those who oppose settlement activity or view it as an obstacle to peace are somehow calling for ethnic cleansing of Jews from the West Bank. We believe that using that type of terminology is inappropriate and unhelpful," Trudeau said.

She said Israel expansion of settlements raises "real questions about Israel's long-term intentions in the West Bank."

Ahmed Majdalani, an adviser to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, dismissed Netanyahu's remarks as "lies."

"These are silly claims," he said. "It's Netanyahu who conducts ethnic cleansing every day in Jerusalem and the Palestinian territories by announcing (new) settlement units... The settlements are an ongoing war."

Israel captured the West Bank and east Jerusalem, home to holy sites sacred to Jews, Muslims and Christians, in the 1967 war. The Palestinians want the territory for their future state, along with the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem as their capital.

Israel says Jews have been living in those areas for centuries, and that their presence does not undermine prospects for peace. It also blames failed peace efforts on Arab denials of Jews' historical connections to the land.

Israel annexed east Jerusalem  a move that is not recognized internationally  and maintains a nearly 50-year military occupation of the West Bank. The West Bank is not sovereign Israeli territory and its Palestinian inhabitants, unlike Israeli Arabs, do not have Israeli citizenship.

Some 120 settlements have been built in the West Bank, now home to about 400,000 people. Some 200,000 Israeli Jews live in east Jerusalem, which Israel annexed and considers part of its "eternal, undivided" capital.

The Palestinians, along with most of the international community, view Israel's settlements in the West Bank as illegal or illegitimate. They say the growing number of settlers makes it increasingly difficult to establish their own state in these territories.

The Palestinians have demanded a halt to settlement construction ahead of any new peace talks.

Russia and other countries have been trying to restart peace talks that collapsed over two years ago, in part because of the settlements issue.

"I think what makes peace impossible is intolerance of others. Societies that respect all people are the ones that pursue peace. Societies that demand ethnic cleansing don't pursue peace. I envision a Middle East where young Arabs and young Jews learn together, work together, live together side by side in peace," Netanyahu said in the video on Friday.

The Palestinians have long accused Israel of ethnic cleansing during the 1948 war, when hundreds of thousands of Arabs fled or were expelled in the fighting.

Later Friday, the Palestinian Health Ministry said Israeli troops killed a Palestinian teenager in clashes along the border with Gaza, territory ruled by the Islamic militant group Hamas. It said that after Muslim prayers a group of Palestinians went to the border and threw rocks at soldiers, who responded with live fire.
House Democrat slams GOP chairman over Clinton email inquiry

WASHINGTON (AP)  The top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee lashed out at the panel's Republican chairman Friday, accusing him of abusing his authority by unfairly targeting former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to damage her presidential bid.

Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland charged that the oversight chairman, Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah, is using the committee's resources and taxpayer dollars "to engage in an astonishing onslaught of political attacks" against Clinton.

Cummings said he was incensed that Chaffetz and Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte of Virginia have asked the Justice Department to investigate whether Clinton lied to Congress, calling the accusation "ludicrous" and part of a Republican pattern involving Clinton: "accuse, investigate, fail, repeat."

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Sept. 8, 2016, during the committee's hearing on 'Examining FOIA Compliance at the Department of State.' (AP Photo/Molly Riley)

FBI Director James Comey announced in July that he had recommended against criminal charges for Clinton and her aides following a yearlong investigation into the potential mishandling of classified information on the private email server she used.

This week, Comey told FBI employees that the decision to forgo criminal charges was not a close call.

"At the end of the day, the case itself was not a cliff-hanger; despite all the chest-beating by people no longer in government, there really wasn't a prosecutable case," Comey wrote in an internal memo to FBI employees.

Republicans have criticized Comey's decision and have asked the Justice Department to investigate whether Clinton lied last year when she testified before the House Benghazi committee. Chaffetz also has asked Justice to review whether emails were illegally deleted from Clinton's private server.

In a letter to Chaffetz, Cummings criticized the GOP chairman for issuing "a flurry of desperate subpoenas" in recent days without any debate or vote by the committee.

Chaffetz has demanded that employees of a Colorado technology firm that oversaw Clinton's private email server appear at a hearing next week to review claims that Clinton or her aides ordered the destruction of emails or other documents to hide them from investigators. Paul Combetta and Bill Thornton, who work for Denver-based Platte River Networks, have been ordered to appear at a committee hearing on Tuesday.

"By taking these actions, you are staging a set-up," Cummings told Chaffetz. "First, you accuse them of criminal activity without evidence and refer them for criminal investigation. Then you rush to subpoena them to testify without any debate or vote, virtually guaranteeing that some will invoke the Fifth Amendment when their attorneys advise them to steer far clear of our committee."

A spokeswoman for Chaffetz declined to comment Friday.

The letter by Cummings comes a day after a committee hearing Thursday on the State Department's record-keeping devolved into a partisan battle over Clinton's private email server.

Republicans on the panel plan back-to-back hearings early next week as they focus on Clinton two months before the election.
Wiesberger takes 1-stroke lead after 2nd round of KLM Open

SPIJK, Netherlands (AP)  Bernd Wiesberger of Austria shot his second straight 5-under 66 to take the lead Friday in the KLM Open, one shot ahead of playing partner Joost Luiten, who was one of three players tied for second.

Wiesberger opened his round bogey, par, bogey, before recovering with four birdies on the front nine and three more coming home on The Dutch, which is hosting the tournament for the first time.

Luiten, the 2013 KLM Open champion, had the lowest round of the day with a 7-under 64. That included a birdie on the par-3 16th thanks to a long, curling putt and also a birdie on the last hole.
Ex-Dallas-area officer indicted in fatal shooting of teen

FARMERS BRANCH, Texas (AP)  A grand jury has indicted a former suburban Dallas police officer in the shooting death of a teenage burglary suspect and the wounding of another boy.

The Dallas County jury this week indicted 36-year-old Ken Johnson on counts of murder and aggravated assault stemming from the March 13 incident that led to the death of 16-year-old Jose Cruz.

Johnson was employed as a Farmers Branch officer but was off-duty when authorities say he witnessed the teens stealing a vehicle. He chased them in his own vehicle. Surveillance video appears to show him ramming the one containing the teens, bringing them to a stop. Johnson fired into that car, striking the duo.

Johnson's attorneys have said he feared for his life.
Q&A: Police officers face charges in Oakland sex scandal

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP)  Prosecutors in the San Francisco Bay Area say they will charge seven current and former officers in a sexual misconduct case. Here's a look at some key details around the case:

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WHO IS THE WOMAN AT THE CENTER OF CASE?

File-This July 8, 2010, file photo shows Alameda County district attorney Nancy O'Malley speaking at a news conference at an Oakland, Calif., courthouse. Prosecutors in the San Francisco Bay Area are planning a news conference to discuss the results of an investigation into sexual misconduct involving officers from the Oakland Police Department and other law enforcement agencies. O'Malley said in a statement Thursday, Sept. 8, 2016, that at 12 p.m. Friday she will announce decisions on charges in the criminal investigation. The wide-ranging scandal was brought on by officers who were implicated by a teenage prostitute. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File)

The 19-year-old woman, who says she worked as a prostitute, says she informed internal affairs investigators months ago that she had sex with three Oakland police officers and a Contra Costa County deputy before her 18th birthday. In all, she said she has had sex with about 30 law enforcement officials, mostly during the past year. She said she received money during a few encounters and often traded sex for protection from arrest and tips on prostitution stings

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HOW DID IT COME TO LIGHT?

One of the three Oakland officers accused by the teen committed suicide in October, leaving behind a note discussing having sex with the woman. The two other Oakland officers and the Contra Costa County deputy have resigned.

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WHAT CONSEQUENCES DO OFFICERS FACE?

Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf said dismissal proceedings have begun for four Oakland officers, seven will serve a range of unpaid suspensions before being allowed to return to duty and another will be required to attend training classes. Two officers implicated in the scandal previously resigned. A third killed himself last year. Six Richmond police officers and several others working for other law enforcement agencies have also been implicated. On Thursday, a Livermore police officer who had been on administrative leave resigned after seeing the results of his department's investigation.

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WHO ARE THE OFFICERS?

The officers who will be charged are: former Contra Costa Sheriff's Deputy Ricardo Perez; former Livermore Police Officer Dan Black; Oakland Police Officers Brian Bunton, Giovani LoVerde and Warit Utappa; and former Oakland Police Officers Tyrell Smith and Leroy Johnson.

The officers face charges of felony oral copulation with a minor, felony obstruction of justice, engaging in a lewd act in a public place, engaging in an act of prostitution, and other lesser misdemeanors.

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WHAT'S NEXT?
Senator tries to relax medical rules for private pilots

WASHINGTON (AP)  A Republican senator is trying to relax the medical requirements for private pilots who fly small planes, drawing complaints from Democrats who say is he is going back on a compromise that became law only two months ago.

Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, an avid, 81-year-old pilot who has had a quadruple heart bypass, is trying to eliminate a requirement that pilots have a statement from their doctor saying that they don't have a medical condition that would interfere with their ability to safely operate a plane.

Inhofe, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has proposed the change as part of House and Senate negotiations on a major defense bill, according to congressional aides familiar with the discussions. The aides spoke on condition they not be named because they weren't authorized to speak publicly.

FILE - In this Jan. 7, 2015 file photo, Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla. is surrounded by reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington. Inhofe is trying to relax the medical requirements for private pilots who fly small planes, drawing complaints from Democrats who say is he is going back on a compromise that became law only two months ago. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

The defense bill already includes a "pilots' bill of rights" sponsored by Inhofe  a series of provisions aimed at simplifying the medical approval process and helping pilots who contest enforcement actions by the Federal Aviation Administration.

But a compromise was reached earlier this year on the medical provisions, which were ultimately added to a bill extending the FAA's policies and programs that was passed by Congress and signed into law in July.

That compromise means nearly 200,000 pilots who fly planes weighing less than 6,000 pounds and with up to six seats no longer have to be certified every two years as medically fit to fly by an FAA-approved medical examiner.

Under the compromise system, which the FAA is still implementing, pilots can get a physical from any doctor  not just an FAA-approved medical examiner  and the doctor can simply attest that no prohibitive medical concerns were found.

The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association and other groups whose members include recreational pilots had sought the changes, saying the previous system was overly bureaucratic and expensive, and discouraged pilots from flying.

The U.S. recreational flying industry has shrunk significantly. The number of general aviation pilots declined from 827,000 1984 to 593,000 in 2014. Industry officials say they are trying to encourage interest in flying.

But eliminating even the "moderate safety precaution" of having the doctor sign a statement that the pilot is fit to fly "would leave pilots with the exclusive responsibility for coming to a medical judgment about their own fitness to fly, which we believe would represent an unacceptable risk to the safety of our airspace," Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein of California and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut said in a letter this week to defense bill negotiators.

The letter urges them to reject the proposal. "Changes to civil aviation policy have no place in a military policy bill, recently negotiated compromises should not be re-litigated mere weeks after passage into law, and the safety of our airspace is too important to put at risk," the senators wrote.

Donelle Harder, a spokeswoman for Inhofe, declined to comment on the specifics of the pilot medical changes the senator is seeking. "Things change by the hour, and Inhofe has a strong record of trying to find a middle ground that benefits all stakeholders," she said.

Jim Coon, the pilots association's top lobbyist, said his group isn't aware of what proposals have been discussed but supports the medical provisions already in the law.

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No longer on the run, Colombian rebels get issued ID cards

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP)  Leaders of Colombia's largest rebel army are taking the first step toward being reintegrated back into society after decades on the run: signing up for official ID cards.

Negotiators for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia proudly displayed their national identification cards on social media Friday after government officials traveled to Cuba to issue the documents.

An ex-guerrilla known by his alias Gabriel Angel described on social media the rush he felt stepping legally onto Colombian soil for the first time in 30 years when he entered his country's embassy in Havana to undergo the time-consuming bureaucratic errand most of his countrymen dread.
AP FACT CHECK: Trump's false claim of opposing the Iraq War

NEW YORK (AP)  Over and over again, Donald Trump says he opposed the Iraq War before it started. But no matter how many times the Republican candidate for president says it, the facts are clear: He did not.

There is no evidence Trump expressed public opposition to the war before the U.S. invaded. Rather, he offered lukewarm support. The billionaire businessman only began to voice doubts about the conflict well after it began in March 2003.

That hasn't kept Trump from making his opposition a centerpiece of his criticism of Democratic rival Hillary Clinton's approach to foreign policy.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump smiles as he meets with students and educators before speaking about school choice, Thursday, Sept. 8, 2016, at Cleveland Arts and Social Sciences Academy in Cleveland. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Clinton voted in favor of the invasion in 2002 while she was a New York senator. It's a vote she has said was a mistake.

Trump pushes his claim of early disapproval as "one of the biggest differences in this race."

"I was against the war in Iraq, because I said it's gonna totally destabilize the Middle East, which it has," Trump said at Wednesday's nationally televised forum on national security. The next day, he spent several minutes at an education event in Cleveland reiterating his opposition and citing a series of interviews as proof.

"I was opposed to war from the beginning," Trump said. "I just wanted to set the record straight. There is so much lying going on."

But those interviews offer no such evidence.

When asked for additional proof, Trump's campaign referred to material from a fact check published by The Washington Post that concluded "there's no sign that Trump opposed the invasion or was vocal about it prior to the invasion."

Trump's first known public comment on the topic came on Sept. 11, 2002, when he was asked whether he supported a potential Iraq invasion in an interview with radio host Howard Stern.

"Yeah, I guess so," Trump responded after a brief hesitation, according to a recording of the interview unearthed by BuzzFeed News. Trump then alluded to the first Gulf War in 1991, which ended with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein still in power. "You know, I wish it was, I wish the first time it was done correctly."

His next comment came in January 2003, during a Fox News Channel interview with Neil Cavuto. Trump suggested the economy and threats from North Korea posed greater problems for then-President George W. Bush than Iraq, but he did not say he opposed a possible invasion.

Trump also suggested that the American people were looking for an answer one way or another from Bush.

"Either you attack or you don't attack," Trump said.

On March 21, 2003, just days after the invasion began, Trump told Cavuto on his show that the invasion "looks like a tremendous success from a military standpoint."

As 2003 went on, Trump's opinions started to shift slightly. That September, he said on MSNBC that he "would have fought terrorism, but not necessarily Iraq." In December, he told Fox News that "a lot of people (are) questioning the whole concept of going in in the first place." But he stopped short of saying that he was among those opponents.

In fact, Trump had voiced support for a hypothetical invasion of Iraq before Bush took office. In his 2000 book, "The America We Deserve," he suggested that he would be in favor of a pre-emptive strike if Iraq was viewed as a threat to national security.

"I'm no warmonger," Trump wrote. "But the fact is, if we decide a strike against Iraq is necessary, it is madness not to carry the mission to its conclusion." He went on to compare a decision to invade with the "quick, secret, decisive moves in order to gain a negotiating advantage" in a business deal.

During the GOP presidential primaries, Trump repeatedly promoted what he said was his opposition to the war as an advantage over fellow Republicans. At his education event in Cleveland on Thursday, he went further, saying that "had I been in Congress at the time of the invasion, I would have cast a vote in opposition."

In those remarks, and in notes provided by his campaign, Trump pointed to a pair of interviews as evidence to back up his claim he was against the war from the start.

He cites comments he made to The Post on March 25, 2003, at a post-Oscars party in which he called the war "a mess." But those remarks, which came four days after he called the invasion a "tremendous success," appeared to be a reference to a friendly fire incident in which a U.S. missile downed a British fighter jet and led to a 300-point fall in the stock market.

Second, Trump points to the August 2004 issue of Esquire, in which he made his first strong comments opposing the war, saying he "would never have handled it that way."

"Very early in the conflict, extremely early in the conflict, right at the beginning, I made a detailed statement in an interview to Esquire Magazine," Trump said in Cleveland. "So, right at the beginning."

That statement did not come at the beginning. Trump's interview with Esquire was printed 16 months after the invasion began, long after U.S. forces became engaged against a violent Iraqi insurgency. This week, Esquire added an editor's note to the story that highlights Trump's falsehood.

"The Iraq War began in March 2003, more than a year before this story ran, thus nullifying Trump's timeline," the note reads.

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Colvin reported from Washington. Steve Peoples contributed reporting from Cleveland.

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Follow Jonathan Lemire and Jill Colvin on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/JonLemire and http://twitter.com/@colvinj

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Legality of Yosemite park expansion disputed

FRESNO, Calif. (AP)  A U.S. lawmaker accused Yosemite National Park of breaking federal law by adding 400 acres for a wildlife preserve without clearing it through Congress, but federal park officials said Friday that he's misinterpreting the law.

The addition of wetlands, grassy meadows and forest on Yosemite's western boundary marks its largest expansion in nearly 70 years. Any significant amount of land added to a national park needs congressional approval, U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop said in a statement to The Associated Press.

"The Park Service acted outside of its authority, and we will require them to account for their actions," said the Utah Republican, who chairs the House Natural Resources Committee, which has oversight of public land.

This undated photo provided by The Trust for Public Land shows Ackerson Meadow in Yosemite National Park, Calif. Visitors to the park now have more room to explore nature with the announcement on Wed. Sept. 7, 2016 that the park's western boundary has expanded to include Ackerson Meadow, 400 acres of tree-covered Sierra Nevada foothills, grassland and a creek that flows into the Tuolumne River. This is the park's biggest expansion in nearly 70 years, and will serve as wildlife habitat. (Robb Hirsch/The Trust for Public Land via AP)

Bishop's staff says inquiries have just begun into how Yosemite acquired the land without oversight and what steps Congress will take next.

National Park Service spokesman Jeffrey Olson said the congressman is misreading the law. The land was donated, so it doesn't require congressional approval like acquisitions using federal funding, Olson said in a statement.

Yosemite announced this week that the Trust for Public Land, a nonprofit conservation group, bought the land from a private owner for $2.3 million and donated it to the park.

Officials said they will preserve the land as habitat for wildlife such as the great grey owl, the largest owl in North America and listed as endangered by California wildlife officials.

Bishop said he does not want Yosemite to give back the land but wants answers. He said federal law requires approval of additions to a national park that are more than 200 acres and worth over $750,000.

The Park Service pointed to Land and Water Conservation Fund documents, saying the requirement only applies to acquisitions using that funding.

Bishop maintains that whenever the agency changes its boundaries on this scale, Congress must sign off, even if the land is donated, said Parish Braden, a spokesman for the Natural Resources Committee.

Bishop has long sparred with environmentalists and criticized limits on energy development and grazing in favor of wildlife protections.

He's condemned Obama administration bans on new uranium mining near the Grand Canyon and fought national monument declarations or proposals in at least half a dozen states.

Local cattle ranchers, loggers and the Tuolumne County Board of Supervisors late last year objected to adding the area, called Ackerson Meadow, to Yosemite. They said it took away land used for more than a century to graze cattle and harvest timber, among complaints.

"When you take land and put it into the National Park Service, they don't do anything with it," said Randy Hanvelt, a Tuolumne County supervisor. "It'll be fenced off from grazing."

The expansion brings Yosemite to a total of nearly 750,000 acres. The park's boundary has seen some minor changes over the years, but the addition is the largest since 1949.

More than 4.5 million people are expected to visit Yosemite this year, which officials said would set a record for the park that celebrated its 125th anniversary last year.

Draws to the park include the massive Half Dome rock and the sheer, granite face of El Capitan  both admired by visitors from the floor of Yosemite Valley. Elsewhere in the park stand groves of giant sequoia, some of the oldest and largest living things on Earth.

Visitors pass Ackerson Meadow on their way to Hetch Hetchy reservoir, which provides drinking water to San Francisco.

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Associated Press reporters Michelle L. Price in Salt Lake City and Matthew Daly in Washington contributed to this story.
An elementary school music teacher who has lived under a cloud of suspicion since 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling was kidnapped from central Minnesota in 1989 can breathe easier now that another man has confessed to the boy's abduction and killing.

Dan Rassier was questioned about Jacob's abduction several times over the years and was subjected to lie detector tests and hypnosis.

In 2010, authorities got search warrants to dig up his farm after they said he made suspicious statements to investigators and to Jacob's mother. He was then named a person of interest.

'I became toxic,' Rassier said.

Scroll down for video

Dan Rassier was questioned about Jacob's abduction several times over the years and was subjected to lie detector tests and hypnosis. In this September 3 frame grab provided by KSTP-TV, Dan Rassier talks with a reporter at his farm near St. Joseph, Minnesota

Danny Heinrich, 53, of Annandale, pictured left, confessed in federal court this week that he abducted, sexually assaulted and killed Jacob Wetterling, pictured right

In this June 1, 2010 file photo, investigators use a tractor-mounted backhoe to dig for evidence just southeast of the Rassier farm in St. Joseph, Minnesota, near the site where 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling was abducted in 1989

On Tuesday, Danny Heinrich, 53, of Annandale, confessed in federal court that he abducted, sexually assaulted and killed Jacob in St. Joseph, which is 80 miles northwest of Minneapolis.

The confession 'essentially cleared Dan Rassier as a person of interest in the Jacob Wetterling case,' Stearns County Sheriff John Sanner said in an email to The Associated Press.

The case has impacted Rassier's life in ways that he says are hard to explain.

'It's impossible to fix what they broke,' he said.

Rassier, pictured, was at one time named a person of interest in Wetterling's murder

He said the stress in recent years impacted his health, leaving him with headaches and causing him to miss work. As his relationships changed, he had to adapt and do more things on his own.

And while Heinrich's confession cleared Rassier, he's still troubled by the case. He feels for the Wetterlings, and now the truth has him wondering whether he could have done anything to stop the abduction.

'Would there have been anything that could've been done that could've saved him  if I would've done something differently?' he paused. 'The only thing that could've saved him would've been me chasing the car.'

Heinrich said he buried the boy's body in a field in Paynesville, where Jacob's remains were recovered last week.

Rassier, now 60, was just days shy of his 34th birthday and home alone at his family's farm when Jacob was abducted from the road at the end of Rassier's driveway on the night of October 22, 1989.

He said the next day he told authorities about a car that had turned around in his driveway, and later said he might have seen Jacob inside.

Court documents made public Friday show why authorities had Rassier on their list of potential suspects.

Although he was highly detailed in describing his day, he couldn't provide details about the timeframe during Jacob's abduction.

He acted strangely under hypnosis, crying when Jacob's abduction was mentioned.

He also made comments that authorities found unusual - for example, pointing out that there were many places on his property where someone could hide a body.

In 2009, authorities asked Jacob's mother, Patty Wetterling, to talk to Rassier while wearing a recording device. Patty and her husband Jerry are seen above in this August 2009 photo

In this file photo Jacob's parents Jerry & Patty Wetterling stand together where their son was kidnapped

In 2009, authorities asked Jacob's mother, Patty Wetterling, to talk to Rassier while wearing a recording device.

According to the documents, Rassier told Wetterling he didn't know what happened to Jacob and insisted that the driver of the car he saw was the abductor.

He also expressed a fear that if someone buried Jacob on his property, he'd be blamed.

Those statements and others were enough for the search warrant, a judge found.

After his name came out in 2010, parents at one school where he teaches got nervous, and an aide was put in his classroom.

People stopped asking him to play the trumpet at weddings. His private music lessons virtually dried up. He lost some friends. All the while, Rassier, whom students call 'Mr. BeBop,' maintained he had nothing to do with Jacob's abduction.

Jacob Wetterling, 11, was kidnapped from central Minnesota in 1989. Jacob was abducted from the road at the end of Rassier's driveway on the night of October 22, 1989

This November 3, 2015 photo shows the area where 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling was abducted in 1989

Heinrich, pictured right, admitted to killing Jacob, pictured left. Heinrich's confession 'essentially cleared Dan Rassier as a person of interest in the Jacob Wetterling case,' Stearns County Sheriff John Sanner said in an email to The Associated Press

Ann Reischl, a lifelong resident of St. Joseph Township and the town clerk, said she always knew Rassier couldn't have harmed Jacob, but she knows some people wondered about him.

'I just don't think any apology (from law enforcement) is going to be big enough,' she said. 'The continual interrogation, and asking Dan to admit it ... and he kept saying, 'No, I didn't do it.' It's got to be frustrating.'

Rassier said he thought he was helping and because of the experience he no longer trusts law enforcement.

And he says he's trying to look for the silver lining: Because of the scrutiny, he started helping his ailing father more. His dad died last year, two days after authorities announced Heinrich was a person of interest.
Bill Wolf, father of Pennsylvania's governor, dies at age 95

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP)  Bill Wolf, the father of Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, died Friday afternoon at age 95.

The governor's office said arrangements were pending and did not immediately disclose where the death occurred.

Because of his father's death, Wolf canceled his participation in the 9/11 observance Sunday at the site of the crash of United Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

In this Oct. 23, 2013 photo, John Zimmerman, left, and Bill Wolf, two pillars of the Mt. Wolf and York communities, pose for a photo in Mt. Wolf, Pa. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf's father, Bill Wolf has died at age 95. A spokesman for the Democratic governor says Bill Wolf died Friday, Sept. 9, 2016 and arrangements are pending. The governor's office hasn't disclosed where the death occurred. (Chris Dunn/York Daily Record via AP)

Bill Wolf was a businessman in a family with deep roots in Pennsylvania's York County, where the town of Mount Wolf is named after a family ancestor.

The governor has continued to live in Mount Wolf since taking office, with his parents' home just a few blocks away.

The York Daily Record/Sunday News said Bill Wolf attended Dartmouth College and served with the military in World War II.

He was a leader in the business that Tom Wolf and his cousins eventually purchased, the Wolf Organization, which sold kitchen cabinets and building products. Tom Wolf's shares were sold last year, when a private equity firm became majority owner, the paper said.

Bill Wolf had also been the longest-serving member of the Rotary Club in York, having joined in 1948.
Kentucky inmate files lawsuit against county over beating

SHELBYVILLE, Ky. (AP)  A Shelby County inmate alleges in a lawsuit that a deputy jailer ordered inmates to beat him because he had dated the deputy's wife.

The Courier-Journal (http://cjky.it/2bZpvR4) reports that Joshua Reece filed the lawsuit against the county and several Shelby County Detention Center employees Thursday.

The lawsuit alleges that deputy jailer William Anthony Carey directed inmates to beat him for hours. It also says Reece wasn't immediately taken for medical treatment after the attack and that the nurses at the jail generally ignored his pleas for treatment.

Reece says he suffered multiple fractures to the head and eventually underwent corrective surgery.

Carey's lawyer, Nathan Riggs, did not respond to a request for comment from the newspaper.

Shelby County Attorney Hart Megibben says he didn't know about the case.

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Hunger-striking Gitmo ex-detainee's health said to worsen

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay (AP)  The health of a former Guantanamo detainee who resettled in Uruguay is deteriorating as he continues a hunger strike to demand he be allowed to leave the South American nation, activists and officials said Friday.

Syrian native Abu Wa'el Dhiab, who was taken in by Uruguay in 2014 along with five other former Guantanamo prisoners, lay on a bed in his small apartment as he used a laptop to speak softly in Arabic with his wife, Yusra Dhiab, who is in Ankara, Turkey.

"My health situation is dire and ... if I die it will be the responsibility of the United States and Uruguay," Dhiab said in a message that was read afterward outside the apartment by human rights activist Andres Conteris.

Syrian native Abu Wa'el Dhiab, a former Guantanamo detainee, rests in bed as he speaks to his family via a laptop, in his apartment in Montevideo, Uruguay,Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. Activists and Uruguayan officials say the health of the former Guantanamo detainee resettled in the South American country is deteriorating as he continues a hunger strike at his home. Dhiab is demanding to leave Uruguay, which took him in with five other former Guantanamo prisoners in 2014. (AP Photo/Matilde Campodonico)

He added that his daughter is set to be married in a week and blamed the United States for the fact that he will not be there.

Christian Mirza, Dhiab's government liaison, characterized his health as "delicate" and said he could be hospitalized in the coming hours. A doctor visited Dhiab on Friday but did not comment on his situation.

Uruguay's government said this week that it was searching for another country to take Dhiab. He has threatened to die on his hunger strike unless he is allowed to reunite with his family abroad.

"I have two options: to reunite with my family in a place we choose, or die here in Uruguay," he said in the message read by Conteris.

Syrian native Abu Wa'el Dhiab, a former Guantanamo detainee, lies in bed as he speaks to his family via a laptop, in his apartment in Montevideo, Uruguay,Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. Activists and Uruguayan officials say the health of the former Guantanamo detainee resettled in the South American country is deteriorating as he continues a hunger strike at his home. Dhiab is demanding to leave Uruguay, which took him in with five other former Guantanamo prisoners in 2014. (AP Photo/Matilde Campodonico)

Syrian native Abu Wa'el Dhiab, a former Guantanamo detainee, rests in bed while conversing with his family via a laptop, in his apartment in Montevideo, Uruguay,Friday, Sept. 9, 2016. Activists and Uruguayan officials say the health of the former Guantanamo detainee resettled in the South American country is deteriorating as he continues a hunger strike at his home. Dhiab is demanding to leave Uruguay, which took him in with five other former Guantanamo prisoners in 2014. (AP Photo/Matilde Campodonico)
BLM drops plan to surgically sterilize wild horses

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP)  The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has dropped a research effort that would have led to the surgical sterilization of more than 200 wild mares at a facility in Oregon.

The agency said Friday the decision was made in response to litigation from groups that assert the procedures to be researched were unnecessary and barbaric. Advocates for wild horses sought to halt the study or, at the very least, allow the media and the public to observe and record it.

"This decision, though not made lightly, is in response to litigation that could have put the wild horses, BLM staff and our research partners at risk by requiring unnecessary persons or equipment be placed within the small confines of the space where the procedures would take place," the BLM said in a statement released through its Portland office.

FILE - In this Oct. 17, 2007, file photo, wild mustangs from the Kiger Management Area near Diamond, Ore., are shown. The BLM announced Friday, Sept. 9, 2016, that it has withdrawn its decision to conduct mare sterilization research on 225 wild mares, including at least 100 pregnant mares, at their wild horse corral facility in Oregon after Friends of Animals filed a lawsuit on Aug. 3, 2016. (Jamie Francis/The Oregonian via AP, File) /

BLM spokesman Greg Shine said the agency had no comment beyond the statement.

The BLM wanted to study three methods to determine whether they are safe, effective options for controlling the wild horse population.

Of the three methods, the advocates were most concerned about a procedure that involves removing ovaries from sedated, pregnant mares in various gestational stages. The veterinarian reaches into the mare's abdomen through the vagina to sever and remove the ovaries.

The Cloud Foundation and American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign filed a lawsuit last month seeking the presence of outside observers. Two other groups, Front Range Equine Rescue and Friends of Animals, sued to stop the research that would have been done at the Wild Horse Corral Facility in Hines, Oregon.

"The Bureau of Land Management is obligated to protect wild horses under the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971 and has absolutely no authority whatsoever to experiment on wild horses with new and risky surgeries," said Jennifer Best, assistant director of Friends of Animals' wildlife law program. "Congress has expressly prohibited the use of funds for activities that would kill wild horses as this experiment may have done."

The Bureau of Land Management planned the research on the heels of a population estimate that shows about 67,000 wild horses and burros roaming public lands in 10 Western states. The agency said that's more than double what it considers healthy for the animals and the rangeland.

____

Follow Steven DuBois at twitter.com/pdxdub
Mexican tycoon convicted for giving to US campaigns

SAN DIEGO (AP)  A wealthy Mexican businessman was convicted Friday of illegally funneling more than half a million dollars to support two former San Diego mayoral candidates  marking one of the federal government's largest cases against a foreigner secretly donating to U.S. political campaigns.

The jury in federal court in San Diego returned guilty verdicts against Jose Susumo Azano, his son, Edward Susumo Azano Hester, and Washington political consultant, Ravneet Singh.

The scheme gave more than $500,000 to the 2012 campaigns of San Diego mayoral candidates Bonnie Dumanis and Bob Filner, according to court documents. Azano wanted to develop San Diego's waterfront with a marina for yachts, a five-star high-rise hotel and mixed-use residential development and wanted to ensure he had a mayor who would support those plans, according to prosecutors.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Schopler quoted Azano as saying the city's "trailer park losers" and "a small town mentality" were impeding its waterfront development.

Lawyers for the defendants could not be reached for comment. Azano's attorney, Michael J. Wynne, said during the six-week-long trial that his client never had plans for such a development. He told the San Diego Union-Tribune that he plans to appeal. Singh's lawyer had told jurors his client had worked in Mexico with Azano and was unaware of Azano's plans in San Diego.

Dumanis, a Republican San Diego County District Attorney, lost the race. Former congressman Filner, a Democrat, won but resigned after serving less than nine months as mayor amid sexual harassment allegations.

Dumanis testified that she thought Azano  who lives in the nearby city of Coronado  was a legal resident but she said she had little memory of their interaction.

Azano arranged with his son and others to hide the contributions by having straw donors send the money to the campaigns, according to court documents. Azano and Singh also arranged for Azano to secretly pay for hundreds of thousands of dollars of services from Singh's campaign consulting company, and to use those services to benefit the campaigns. In addition, Azano secretly funneled $30,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee through a conduit straw donor, prosecutors said.

No charges were filed against Dumanis or Filner in the case.

The three are scheduled to be sentenced in December.

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Was gay chief fired for poor performance or retaliation?

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP)  Two years after a small South Carolina police chief was fired because she was gay, the same chief said her hometown fired her again in retaliation for having an outside agency investigate a sexual harassment complaint.

Latta Town Administrator Jarrett Taylor saved Crystal Moore's job the first time. But he said he fired her Friday not to get revenge, but because she couldn't solve growing problems with bad morale, poor decisions and administrative tasks that weren't done on time.

When Moore was first fired in 2014, Latta rallied around her, stripped power from the mayor and cheered when Taylor and other Town Council members hired her back. This time, the dispute seems destined for a courtroom, even as Moore runs for a different job  Dillon County sheriff.

In this Aug. 5, 2016 file photo, Latta police chief Crystal Moore poses for a portrait, in Latta, S.C. Moore has set her sights on becoming the state's first elected female and openly gay sheriff. The same man who helped save the job of the openly gay police chief in a small South Carolina town now says he had to fire her because she wasn't doing her job right. Latta Town Administrator Jarrett Taylor said Friday, Sept. 9, 2016, he had worked with Chief Crystal Moore seven months to improve morale and have administrative tasks done properly. (AP Photo/Rainier Ehrhardt, File)

Moore's lawyer said the problems only started Aug. 12, when a woman reported she was being sexually harassed by a male Latta employee.

Moore tried to call Taylor first as per town policy, but his voicemail was full so she decided to ask a sheriff's deputy to come talk to the woman in part because she was related by marriage to the male employee, Moore's lawyer Malissa Burnette told The Associated Press in an email.

Taylor then demanded Moore sign a statement saying the town employee meant no harm against the woman making the accusations. Moore refused because the woman told her she had reported the harassment to Taylor first and he did nothing. The town then issued four reprimands against her as retaliation, Burnette said.

Latta suspended Moore for five days last month, reprimanding her for failing to inform supervisors of a sexual harassment claim as soon as it was reported; revealing an officer's salary at a public meeting; not filling out the required weekly reports on the condition of her department's vehicles; and checking another employee's disciplinary records without permission, according to the documents the town released to the AP.

Taylor, whose taping of Latta's mayor saying he would rather have his grandchildren watched by a drunk than a gay person helped Moore get her job back in 2014, said Moore's poor job performance was the only reason for her firing.

"It's aggravating. I defended her so strongly a couple of years ago. I still stand by my actions then. But things have changed," said Taylor, who also serves on the Town Council.

Burnette said Taylor is trying to cover up his own problems with the employee who no longer works for the town by firing Moore.

"Taylor did not conduct an immediate investigation or take appropriate action as required by law and policy, but instead protected the man, and the sexual harassment continued," Burnette said.

Moore was fired Thursday, a day after Burnette told the town Moore was considering suing the town for forcing her to go through undue stress just as she was diagnosed and undergoing treatment for a cancerous tumor on her thumb.

"I'm seriously sorry this came at an inopportune time in her life," Taylor said. "But at some point, the job has to be done right."

The State Law Enforcement Division confirmed it is investigating a Latta employee, but under the agency's policy, it could not confirm why, spokesman Thom Berry said. Burdette said it is the employee accused of harassment.

Moore posted on her Facebook page that she was shocked and angered by what happened in her hometown, an old tobacco hub of about 1,400 people just off Interstate 95.

"This won't stop me from serving the people of Latta or Dillon County. This is a tough time for all of us, but I know justice will prevail," Moore wrote.

___




There are certain milestones a writer never forgets. "The call." That first contract. The first time you hold your beautiful book in your hands... Yeah, it never gets old.Each book is special in its own way. Sometimes a fabulous review will never leave you. One of the best feelings is when your editor says, "You nailed it!" Yup. That happened with this book. Book 1 got fabulous reviews too, but "you nailed it" from a Sourcebooks editor... Well, that memory will be treasured forever.But something else--something very special--happened because of this series. My trip to Ireland. Have you ever pictured a place in your mind--if you're a writer, maybe you've even described it in a book, never having been there. And then you go, and--gasp--there it is!Yes. That happened. I described a castle on the western cliffs of Ireland. In book one, only a caretakers cottage and the broken shell of the ancient structure remained. But the caves...No one talks about the caves. This is how the dragons survived St. Patrick's purging in the fourth century. As they fell over the cliffs a few managed to grab onto the rocks and hide in the caves.I had heard about the Cliffs of Moher, but had never seen them, not even a photo, until I went there. Oh, my! There it was. The "castle" is only an observation tower, but that satisfied my writer's imagination. I had to rebuild the castle. And Chloe was just the dragon to do it.It's true that Boston Dragons is the name of the series, and yes...most of it takes place in Boston. But my characters travel back and forth, to and from their homeland. I'm glad I had a chance to see it. I experienced a smattering of how deep my characters' Irish roots go and their reluctance to leave. We have a large Irish population here in Boston, but those who still sport the accent speak lovingly of their home.Speaking of accents and nailing it... Felicity, the narrator for My Wild Irish Dragon did a fabulous job! You'll have to check out the sample at audible.Even though Chloe is trying to be more "American" her accent slips through, especially when she's upset.I have fun because of writing romance novels. Lots of it! I especially love readers and writers coming together to celebrate books, the genre, and each other. But none of those conferences ever come to New England. I asked a conference organizer if she would consider us for a future date. She said, "We'llgo there. Boston is too expensive, and itto be near an airport."New England is small. People don't realize that Manchester NH is only an hour from Boston. Also close are Providence R.I. and Portland Maine. Hmmm... The Manchester/Boston regional airport is right down the street from the Best Western Executive Plus Conference Center in Manchester NH. I gave them a call about a year ago, and discovered their prices were ridiculously cheap right after Columbus Day weekend. And guess what, the foliage is even better the following weekend. If I needed a sign, that was it! The Fall in Love with New England Reader/Author Conference became more than just a dream that day.Now, the conference is getting close. Excitement is building. The registered authors and readers are looking forward to it as much or more than I am! And before it's too late, I want everyone to know about it! Registration ends Sept 30th!It's only $75 for readers. Our author spots filled up in a week, despite costing a little more ($99) but we still have room for a few more readers, and we'd love to have you! That $75 covers all activities, tons of free books (thanks to SOURCEBOOKS, Harlequin, and a few others... Friday brunch, a sit-down Friday night dinner, free breakfast each morning, and a luncheon on Sat. We're having a big booksigning after that, which will be open to the public.Since Boston is only an hour away, people may chose to enjoy our 'big' beautiful city. My old agent called Boston a 'small town'. Cough *New Yorker* Cough. We love it here in New England... And we'd love to show you why. Have you ever been here in peak foliage season?Oh, yeah...I almost forgot. Of course there's a contest! I'm looking for a comment with a specific word in it. It's nothing weird or eleven letters long. It's a word you might use any ol' day of the week. (Or try not to use. ;)) In fact, I used that word in this post! Good luck! The prize in addition to one of my books? One of each of these charms...all having to do with My Wild Irish Dragon.
Chelsea Manning starts hunger strike to protest treatment

LEAVENWORTH, Kan. (AP)  A transgender soldier imprisoned in Kansas for leaking classified information to the WikiLeaks website says she is on a hunger strike until her treatment improves.

Chelsea Manning says she began the hunger strike Friday because her pleas for better treatment at Fort Leavenworth have been ignored. She says she will not voluntarily consume anything except water and prescription medication.

In the statement supplied by her ACLU attorney, Manning says the hunger strike will continue until she receives the "minimum standards of dignity, respect and humanity" and she is prepared for the possibility of dying.

Manning, arrested as Bradley Manning, was convicted in 2013 in military court of leaking more than 700,000 secret military and State Department documents.
UK man held after flight to Florida diverted over 'unruly' behaviour

A British Airways flight has been forced to divert to Boston en route from London to Florida because of an "unruly" UK passenger.

A 24-year-old Glaswegian was removed from the flight between the UK capital and Orlando at 4.45pm local time (9.45pm BST) on Thursday, half an hour after it made the unscheduled landing at Logan International Airport.

Massachusetts State Police said the man would be summonsed to appear in court accused of interfering with flight crew on the Boeing 777, which took off from Gatwick on Thursday afternoon.

The 24-year-old Scotsman was removed from a British Airways Boeing 777

A force spokesman said: "Customs and Border Protection took custody of the 24-year-old man from Glasgow, Scotland.

"Massachusetts State Police will be summonsing the man for interfering with a flight crew."

A British Airways spokeswoman said: "Our customers and crews deserve to enjoy their flights, and not to suffer any form of abuse.

"Disruptive behaviour will not be tolerated, and the appropriate action will always be taken.
Theresa May vows to push through 'meritocracy' measures in schooling

Theresa May insisted she will defy opposition to push through her plans for a new generation of selective grammar schools in the state system.

The proposals have come under fire from experts, opposition MPs and some of her Tory colleagues - including former education secretary Nicky Morgan - but the Prime Minister insisted she would build a school system that works for all.

But Mrs May recognised that she would face a battle to get her plans through a potentially hostile Parliament, saying "no doubt there will be opposition to overcome".

Prime Minister Theresa May delivers a speech about a new wave of grammar schools

The Prime Minister unveiled proposals on Friday to lift the long-standing ban on new grammars - with a 50 million annual Government subsidy to support new places - in a speech outlining her ambition to make Britain "the great meritocracy of the world".

But her ideas for England's schools were attacked by educationalists including the Ofsted chief inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw, who accused her of trying to "put the clock back" in a way which would halt momentum towards better results in the state system.

And Ms Morgan - who was sacked from the education brief in July - warned that increased selection by ability would be "at best a distraction from crucial reforms to raise standards and narrow the attainment gap and at worst risk actively undermining six years of progressive education reform".

Mrs May should instead build on the academy and free school reforms pursued under David Cameron, which were creating "a truly comprehensive school system in which every child is able to achieve excellence", the former education secretary said.

Ms Morgan's comments follow expressions of concern from other influential members of Mrs May's own Conservative Party, including Commons Education Committee chair Neil Carmichael and Health Committee chair Sarah Wollaston, in an indication of the difficulty the PM may face forcing her radical reforms through Parliament.

Backbench Tory MP Karen Lumley said: "I am very sceptical about the idea that poor children will benefit from a return to grammar schools. This could lead to a divisive system and put the clock back on education, negating much of the great progress we have made over the last few years."

Labour have pledged to fight the grammar school plans "every step of the way", while Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron predicted the "out-of-date, ineffective approach" would be defeated in the House of Lords, where Mrs May does not enjoy a majority.

The plans are particularly vulnerable in the upper chamber because they were not included in the 2015 Tory manifesto, denying Mrs May powers to overrule peers.

Writing in the Daily Mail, Mrs May insisted her plans would give parents the chance to send their children to a "great school".

"I was incredibly lucky when I was a young girl growing up," she said. "My education was varied: I went to a grammar school that became a comprehensive - and for a short time I attended a private school.

"I know too that my teachers made me the woman I am today. I want every child to have the kind of opportunities that I enjoyed.

"I want every parent to have the peace of mind that comes with knowing their children will get the chance to go to a great school.

"And I want every teacher and every school to have the resources and the capacity to deliver on those promises.

"I know these things will not happen overnight. They require bold decisions and a lot of hard work, and no doubt there will be opposition to overcome.

"But I am determined that we will build a school system that works for everyone. That is a hallmark of a truly meritocratic Britain."

The reforms outlined by Mrs May include:

:: Requirements for grammars to promote social mobility, by taking a proportion of pupils from lower-income backgrounds or opening "feeder" primaries in disadvantaged areas;

:: Lifting the cap on faith schools taking pupils from their own religious community;

:: Tougher public benefit tests for independent schools to retain their charitable status;

:: Demands on universities to sponsor state schools or set up free schools.

New-style "smart" exams would identify pupils with "true potential", rather than allowing middle-class parents to ensure their children a grammar school place through expensive tutoring, she said.
City stockbroker jailed for six years for raping woman after drug-fuelled party

A City trader has been jailed for six years for raping a young woman after a cocaine and champagne-fuelled office party.

Daniel Green, 26, was found guilty of attacking the woman, in her 20s, after she had curled up to sleep under a desk in the early hours of May 16 2015.

The pair had met during after-work drinks in the City of London and gone back with a group of Green's colleagues to the StratX stockbrokers' offices near Monument, where he had only just started work.

City trader Daniel Green was found guilty by a jury at the Old Bailey

While there, partygoers danced on desks to music, drank champagne and took lines of cocaine into the early hours.

Most of the StratX men went home after the mood soured as the woman's companion complained her stash of cocaine had gone missing because she was reluctant to share it.

The woman, who cannot be identified, was left in the office with Green, her friend and another StratX employee who tried to rekindle the party atmosphere.

But she told jurors she became tired and decided to take a nap under a desk, intending to catch the first train home because she did not have enough money for a taxi.

Wiping away tears, she described how she awoke to find Green "tugging" her trousers down and asked him "What the f*** are you doing?".

"At that point I remember just trying to crawl forward to get away. I knew what was going to happen. I remember being pulled back," she told the jury.

"The next thing I remember was Daniel raping me.

"I was still trying to wriggle away, doing anything I could to stop that. I guess I was in a state of shock at what was happening. I was just trying to say no and get across this is something I don't want to happen.

"I just kept saying 'No, no, no, no, no, no' but it absolutely didn't stop anything.

"He was making sexual noises, making me feel horrible, so I burst into tears. After realising I was not going to get away and this was actually happening, I started crying, and at that point - it seemed so bizarre as he'd said absolutely nothing before - he said 'Oh shit, she's crying'.

"He got off then. I was just distraught. Then he was out of the office really quickly."

The woman rang her best friend from the office and she alerted police, who arrested Green, of Walthamstow, east London.

Green insisted the sex was consensual but he stopped when she began to cry as he thought his 10in (25cm) penis was causing pain.

He said: "Maybe my penis was hurting her. I always have difficulty when it comes to having sex with girls. I find my penis is hard to penetrate females."

The defendant said his penis was 10in (25cm) long and around 4in (10cm) in girth, demonstrating for the jury with his hand.

Prosecutor Timothy Forster dismissed Green's account, saying he had treated his victim like a "piece of meat".

He told jurors: "You perhaps do not need to know the truth of what was going through Mr Green's mind. He was a new member of the company.

"He was suddenly in this world where everyone was drinking and taking cocaine. To a certain extent he might feel he wants to impress people."

The barrister said the defendant had been jealous that the alleged victim's female friend was getting close to his co-worker and had acted because he was "frustrated and humiliated in front of his new work colleagues".

The jury took six hours to find Green guilt of rape by a majority of 11 to 1.

Green made no reaction as Mr Forster read out a statement from his victim in which she described the devastating effect on her life and her difficulties in moving on.

The senior executive, who cannot be identified, said: "The incident has been extremely traumatic for me. It has been very hard to come to terms with what happened and the effect this has had on a number of aspects of my personal life as well as my professional life.

"Despite the incident being a year ago, it feels very fresh in my mind and I still remember everything and how I felt in the ordeal.

"I desperately want to forget about what happened, but I'm not able to and fear this is something which will continue to blight my life. That event, it has left me numb and immediately afterwards I was barely about to talk."

The court heard Green had a number of previous convictions, including for Class A drugs, although no similar sex crimes.

Jailing him, Recorder Michael Wood QC told him: "I do not punish you for what seems to be City culture of excessive drink and casual use of drugs when you go out socialising."

He told Green he may have been "coming down from the cocaine" he had taken when he wandered around the office, peering at the victim sleeping before raping her.

He said the defendant had shown no remorse and behaved with "a degree of arrogance" when he gave evidence in court.

The Recorder ordered that he be put on the sexual offenders' register for an indefinite period.

Detective Inspector Anne Medlycott from the City of London Police said: "This was a predatory attack on a vulnerable young woman, who will have to live with what has happened to her for the rest of her life.

"Green has shown no remorse for his actions, putting the victim through the trauma of a trial, and we hope this verdict will bring some comfort to the brave survivor of this life-changing crime.
Ronald Koeman has high hopes for Everton star Romelu Lukaku

Everton boss Ronald Koeman expects "a lot" this season from Romelu Lukaku, who he feels is nearing a return to top form.

Striker Lukaku, the Toffees' highest scorer in each of the last three campaigns, has not netted in 13 matches in all competitions for the club but scored two for Belgium on Tuesday.

Koeman around three weeks ago revealed the 23-year-old reported Chelsea target had told him he had decided to stay "at least one more season" at Everton.

Romelu Lukaku has gone 13 games without a goal for Everton but netted twice for Belgium on Tuesday.

And when asked ahead of Monday's Premier League trip to Sunderland what he expects from Lukaku this term, the Dutchman said: "I expect a lot.

"He is a very good player and knows that he can improve.

"Of course, he is an important player because he is normally the top scorer of the team - he showed that with Belgium on Tuesday.

"And I hope he will score next on Monday."

Koeman added of Lukaku: "Always strikers need goals for their confidence.

"But don't forget he had a difficult pre-season - he was coming (back to Everton) late (after Euro 2016).

"I think now he is close to his best performance level and we will see that."

While managing to keep hold of Lukaku - who earlier this week was quoted by Belgian newspaper Het Nieuwsblad as claiming Juventus had been an option for him - during the summer transfer window, Everton also boosted their attack.

Winger Yannick Bolasie joined from Crystal Palace on August 15, and Everton also brought in forward Enner Valencia on loan from West Ham on deadline day.

Although the Valencia deal came very late in the window, Koeman says a potential move for the 26-year-old Ecuador international had been on the agenda for some time.

"Valencia was interested in coming to Everton, we were interested in him and already, earlier on, he was one of the options to get in a new front player," Koeman said.

"We know he can play like a nine, or behind a striker. We have different options with Enner, and that is good to have.

"He will bring that competition that all players need. Now, including Valencia, we have seven players for the three front positions in the team, and you need that - it is a long and difficult season.

"They need to give competition and the best ones in my opinion will start. They need to accept that and fight for the best chance to play."

Valencia could make his Everton debut in Monday's clash, while defender Seamus Coleman is ready for his Toffees comeback having recovered from an ankle problem and featured for the Republic of Ireland during the international break.
Woolly jumper Max Whitlock shows off skills to royal audience

Olympic star Max Whitlock showed off his gymnastic talents in a woollen suit for the Prince of Wales and fashion industry figures at a conference staged by the Campaign for Wool.

The double gold medal winner spun on his hands on a table wearing a woollen suit specially designed by Sir Paul Smith to cheers from delegates.

Charles later posed with supermodel David Gandy and Marks and Spencer boss Steve Rowe behind the other stars of the event - a flock of sheep.

Max Whitlock shows off his gymnastics prowess for Prince Charles

The delegates discussed sustainability, animal welfare and future aims of the industry and were invited to sign the Dumfries House Wool Declaration - a commitment to protect the environment and uphold best practice across the production and trading of wool products.

Charles, who is known as the Duke of Rothesay when in Scotland, addressed the gathering as patron of the campaign, launched in 2010 to promote wool products in response to low prices paid to British farmers.

He called for hundreds of people involved in the production, fashion and retail of wool to sign up to the declaration.

Since the campaign started, wool prices have risen and there is "generally higher morale" in the industry, the prince added.

He said he was "proud" to endorse the declaration and hoped to attract a "tidal wave" of support, also announcing he will continue as campaign patron for a further five years.

"I could only say I would love to see many hundreds of growers, brokers, spinners, designers, fashion houses, manufacturers, retailers and others all following your lead by making and embracing the same public commitment," Charles told the audience.

"In so doing, I believe they will position themselves as good citizens of the wool business, with what I hope will quickly become a public and well-recognised seal of approval."

Sir Paul told the conference at Dumfries House in Cumnock, East Ayrshire, he "fell in love with wool" as a young designer.

He urged producers to create more woollen sportswear, saying it can be developed as lightweight and showerproof, which he demonstrated by having a glass of water thrown at his suit by Campaign for Wool chairman Nicholas Coleridge, president of Conde Nast International, before introducing Whitlock.

The conference also held the first public screening of the documentary Slowing Down Fast Fashion by Blur bassist Alex James.

A kilted Charles hosted a dinner with fashion industry figures on Thursday and posed for photos with Gandy, the face of M&S, which is supporting the campaign.

The Prince of Wales watches gymnast Max Whitlock perform in a Paul Smith woollen suit at Dumfries House in Ayrshire

The Prince of Wales meets model David Gandy

The Prince of Wales speaks to model David Gandy and M&S chief executive Steve Rowe at Dumfries House in Ayrshire

The Prince of Wales, M&S chief executive Steve Rowe and supermodel David Gandy attend a private dinner ahead of the inaugural Dumfries House Wool Conference in Dumfries

The Prince of Wales watches gymnast Max Whitlock perform in a Paul Smith woollen suit at Dumfries House in Ayrshire

Model David Gandy at Dumfries House in Ayrshire, where the Prince of Wales addressed a wool conference

The Prince of Wales watches gymnast Max Whitlock perform in a Paul Smith woollen suit at Dumfries House in Ayrshire
Chris Froome wins time trial to stay in Vuelta contention

Britain's Chris Froome produced a superb display to win the stage 19 time trial of the Vuelta a Espana and cut the overall lead of Nairo Quintana down to one minute and 21 seconds heading into the penultimate stage.

Team Sky rider Froome had gone into the 37-kilometre course from Javea to Calpe trailing Colombian Quintana by three minutes and 37 seconds.

However, the Tour de France champion and 2016 Olympic time trial bronze medallist was the only rider to clock under 47 minutes, finishing with a time of 46 minutes and 33 seconds to beat Jonathan Castroviejo's mark, the Movistar rider coming in 44 seconds adrift.

Chris Froome produced a brilliant ride to claim the 19th stage time trial at the Vuelta a Espana

Swede Tobias Ludvigsson was third, the Team Giant Alpecin rider posting a time of 47mins and 57secs.

Quintana, meanwhile, could only manage 48:49 to finish two minutes and 16 seconds behind Froome, who is aiming to become the first winner of the Tour de France and Vuelta in the same season for 38 years.

Saturday's stage will be over 193.2kms, starting from Benidorm to include mountain passes of Rates, Ebo, Tollos and Tudons before finishing on the special category climb of Alto de Aitana, with the processional finale set for Sunday into Madrid.

Froome dominated the split times, taking the 12.5km mark at 17mins 32secs, and then clocked 31mins 08secs at the second intermediate point after 24.3kms.

Quintana the last man to start as race leader in the red jersey, but the Movistar rider could not eat into the Briton's fast pace.

It was Froome's second stage win of the Vuelta, but the Tour de France champion accepts he still faces a tough ask to overhaul Quintana.

"Time trials are painful, but I get a lot of satisfaction when I'm told I finished first," Froome said to Spanish broadcaster TVE.

"Nairo has a good team around him. It's going to be tough to beat him.

"He has more than one minute, but we are going to keep on fighting, so we will see what happens tomorrow."

Alberto Contador, who has won the Vuelta three times, moved up into third place in the overall standings after finishing eighth, now above Esteban Chaves of Orica-Bike Exchange, who lost over three minutes.
Theresa May tells Polish PM 'hate crime has no place in UK' in wake of attacks

Theresa May has expressed her "deep regret" over attacks on Polish citizens living in the UK in a phone call to her counterpart in Warsaw.

The Prime Minister told Beata Szydlo that "hate crime has no place in UK society", Downing Street said.

The discussions between the two leaders came after Home Secretary Amber Rudd and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson held talks with their counterparts on Monday.

Theresa May phoned her counterpart in Warsaw

Poles have been victims in a series of incidents since the UK voted to leave the European Union in June, including the killing of Arkadiusz Jozwik in Harlow, Essex, and the assault of two Polish men within hours of a vigil following his death.

The Polish Embassy in London said its consuls have intervened 15 times in recent weeks over reports of xenophobic incidents.

A Downing Street spokesman said: " The prime minister called Prime Minister Szydo this afternoon to express her deep regret at recent attacks on Polish citizens in the UK.

"Prime Minister Szydlo thanked her for the continuing support of the British authorities and expressed her gratitude that the home secretary and foreign secretary had received their Polish counterparts in London this week to discuss the incidents.

"The prime minister reiterated that hate crime has no place in UK society, highlighting the action that both the Government and the police are taking.
McDonnell hails sister party for sticking with Labour

John McDonnell will praise the Co-operative Party for sticking with Labour through "thick and thin" just weeks after rumours circulated that it could be used as a method for opposing Jeremy Corbyn.

The shadow chancellor, Mr Corbyn's most senior ally, will say "our unity as a movement" has been a source of strength in a speech to the Co-operative Party's conference.

Over the summer reports suggested that critics of the leader had considered using membership of the Co-operative, Labour's sister party, to present themselves as an alternative to the Corbyn-led Opposition in the Commons.

John McDonnell is Jeremy Corbyn's most senior ally

The Co-op party was forced to issue a statement in August saying it was "not a vehicle to be used by one political faction or another to advance their own agenda" and remained neutral in the leadership contest between Mr Corbyn and Owen Smith.

Mr McDonnell will tell the Co-op party conference in Cardiff on Saturday: "It is refreshing to be addressing the Co-operative Party who have partnered with the Labour Party through thick and thin since our electoral pact in 1927. It's our unity as a movement that has always been our strength.

"But let's be clear: the whole labour movement is at a turning point."

One indication for that was the Leave vote in the European Union referendum, which indicated the "despair" people felt at the political and economy system.

The shadow chancellor will promise fresh plans later this year aimed at increasing the amount of worker-owned co-operative firms, arguing that they offer a "clear productivity advantage".

Mr McDonnell will repeat Mr Corbyn's promise of a 500 billion investment programme and hit out at the Chancellor, saying it "beggars belief that Philip Hammond has not already turned his back on former chancellor George Osborne's failed austerity strategy".

Setting out his views on worker-owned enterprises, Mr McDonnell will highlight his proposals for a "right to own" for employees if their company is up for sale and argue that the co-operative sector should double in size.

He will say: " The evidence that co-operative enterprises and worker-owned companies can produce far better results is compelling.

"Twice as many co-operatives survive the crucial first five years as other businesses. And worker-owned enterprises offer a clear productivity advantage.

"So that is why after this conference season is over, we will begin a major piece of work on developing the co-operative economy."

He will add: "It's a disgrace that zero-hour contracts have risen by 20% in the last year alone.

"But by giving people a stake in the companies they work for and spreading the ownership of those companies, we can start to transform corporate Britain.

"That's why I've argued for a right-to-own for employees. If a company is facing a change of ownership or closure, they should have first refusal on forming an a lternative employee-owned business plan."

He will add: "I want to see the next Labour government put in place measures that will at least double the size of our co-operative sector, giving a nearly 40 billion boost to the whole economy."
Turkey appoints administrators to run two southeast municipalities - officials

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey, Sept 8 (Reuters) - Turkey appointed administrators to take over two municipalities in the southeastern province of Diyarbakir, taking control of councils which had been run by a pro-Kurdish party because of its alleged support for Kurdish militants, security officials said.

The government has accused the party of being an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), deemed a terrorist organisation by Ankara and its Western allies which has fought a three-decades-old conflict with the state in the mainly Kurdish southeast.
Italy govt expects Monte dei Paschi to name new CEO soon -source

ROME, Sept 8 (Reuters) - Italy's government, the single largest shareholder in Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena , expects the Tuscan bank to name a new chief executive soon and is confident the situation is "under control", a Treasury source said on Thursday.

Italy's third-biggest bank announced CEO Fabrizio Viola had agreed to step down as it prepares to tap investors for the third time in as many years, raising as much as 5 billion euros ($5.6 billion) in a share sale. ($1 = 0.8890 euros)
Monte dei Paschi CEO to be replaced as cash call looms

By Paola Arosio and Silvia Aloisi

MILAN, Sept 8 (Reuters) - Fabrizio Viola, the chief executive of troubled Italian bank Monte dei Paschi di Siena , has agreed to quit and allow a new boss to try to convince reluctant investors to back an emergency rescue plan.

The Tuscan lender, which emerged as Europe's weakest bank in stress tests in July, said on Thursday it was working to appoint a successor quickly and that Viola would remain in place until that was done.

Marco Morelli, the head of Bank of America Merrill Lynch in Italy, was almost certain to take Viola's job, a source with knowledge of the matter said.

"It'll be him at 99.9 percent," the source said, adding the decision to replace Viola was because the bank needed "a change of gear" to persuade investors to buy into a capital increase of up to 5 billion euros ($5.6 billion) -- one of the main pillars of its bailout plan.

Another senior source said the bank had "basically" identified a successor for Viola, refusing to give more details.

A person close to Morelli, who was Monte dei Paschi's chief financial officer until 2010, said he had not been contacted for the time being.

A third source said Corrado Passera, who has served as industry minister and headed bank Intesa Sanpaolo, could also be a candidate for the job.

Passera, backed by investment bank UBS, presented a last-ditch rival bailout plan for Monte dei Paschi in July but was rebuffed by the bank's board.

CASH CALL DELAYED?

Time is tight as the lender has committed to launch the capital increase -- its third in as many years -- before the end of the year as part of the privately-funded rescue blueprint agreed with the European Central Bank.

However, one of the sources said the fund raising was now more likely to be launched in January or February of 2017, a delay that should allow Italy's political situation to become clearer.

The health of the country's third-largest lender poses a threat to the wider banking system, the savings of thousands of small investors and also to the weakening political authority of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who faces a make-or-break constitutional referendum this autumn.

A source at Italy's Treasury, which is the top shareholder in Monte dei Paschi with a 4 percent stake, said the situation was under control and a new CEO would be appointed soon.

The bank gave no reason for the departure of Viola, who took charge of Monte dei Paschi in 2012 just as the lender was on the brink of collapse because of the euro zone debt crisis.

Several bankers had said it would be difficult for Viola, who has already tapped the market for cash in 2014 and 2015, to lead another fundraising.

POLITICAL UNCERTAINTY

Further complicating the picture is the constitutional referendum on which Renzi has staked his job, expected to be held in late November or early December.

According to a banker close to the situation investors want to see the outcome of the vote before deciding whether to buy into Monte dei Paschi's capital increase. A defeat for Renzi would increase political uncertainty and dampen sentiment towards Italian assets.

With larger Italian bank UniCredit also expected to launch a multi-billion euro capital increase in coming months, the two banks could find themselves courting investors at the same time.

Wary of the risks, JP Morgan and Mediobanca , global coordinators for the Monte dei Paschi's cash call, are working on a possible conversion of the bank's subordinated bonds into shares to reduce to size of the capital increase by around 2 billion euros, sources have said. ($1 = 0.8889 euros)
Nigeria postpones elections in Edo state over security threats

ABUJA, Sept 8 (Reuters) - Nigeria's Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has postponed elections in the southern state of Edo to Sept. 28 from Sept. 10 because of security threats, a government official said on Thursday.

Soyebi Solomon, the national commissioner in charge of voters, education and publicity, said after a meeting with police and security agents that a delay "is necessary in view of threats of terrorists activities in Edo State and other states of the federation during the election."
Germany's Merkel says EU should keep negotiating with US on free trade deal

BERLIN, Sept 9 (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the European Union should keep negotiating with the United States on a new free trade deal known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).

The EU and the US are officially aiming to sign the deal before U.S. President Barack Obama leaves office in January, but there are now major doubts about it.

Merkel's deputy, Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel - a member of the Social Democrats, junior coalition partner in Germany's ruling coalition - unleashed a firestorm last month when he said the free trade talks are "de facto dead". France and Belgium have cast doubt on the prospect of the new trade deal and scepticism is growing among Americans.

"I advocate negotiations continuing now," Merkel told the Funke Mediengruppe, a German newspaper chain.

She said that many EU member states were suffering from high unemployment, adding: "That's why we should support everything that can create jobs and that includes the free trade deal."

Merkel said she had told U.S. President Barack Obama that during the G20 summit held in China earlier this week.
Britain to miss its 2020 renewable energy targets - lawmakers

LONDON, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Britain is set to miss its 2020 European renewable energy targets, a parliamentary committee report said on Friday, setting a poor example for less wealthy countries as the world tries to rein in global warming.

Britain has a target to meet 15 percent of its energy needs from renewable sources by 2020, but had achieved just over 8 percent by the end of 2015.

"The UK will miss its 2020 renewable energy targets without major policy improvements," said Angus MacNeil, chair of the cross-party Energy and Climate Change Committee.

Britain's electricity sector is on course to meet its expected contribution to the target but energy used in transport and for heating homes and buildings is well behind what is needed, the committee report said.

The renewable target is a legally binding commitment set by the European Commission.

Britain could be fined by the Commission if it misses the target, although Britain's decision earlier this year to leave the European Union means the status of such targets is unclear.

However, the lawmakers said a lack of clarity should not deter the country from trying to meet the goal.

"We agreed our 2020 renewable energy targets as part of the EU but they still have many merits, even as the UK Government prepares for Brexit," MacNeil said.

"If the UK reneges on these targets, it will undermine confidence in the Government's commitment to clean energy and the climate targets agreed in Paris," he said.

Last year, more than 190 countries agreed at climate talks in Paris to limit increases in global temperatures to well below 2 degrees.
ULA chief says recovery from space launch accident typically 9-12 months

By Irene Klotz

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., Sept 8 (Reuters) - If history is any guide, Elon Musk's SpaceX could be grounded for nine to 12 months while it investigates the cause of last week's launch pad accident and makes any repairs, according to the chief executive of SpaceX's primary U.S. competitor on Thursday.

"It typically takes nine to 12 months for people to return to flight. That's what the history is," Tory Bruno, chief executive of United Launch Alliance, told Reuters. Bruno did not mention SpaceX by name.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster exploded on the launch pad on Sept. 1 as it was being fueled for a routine pre-launch test. A $200 million Israeli communications satellite was destroyed in the blast, the second failed mission for technology entrepreneur Elon Musk's privately owned SpaceX in 14 months.

The cause of the accident is under investigation. SpaceX has not publicly disclosed the extent of damage to its launch pad.

Bruno said the main issue after accidents involving space launches has "always been figuring out what went wrong on the rocket, being confident that you know ... how to fix it and then actually getting that fix in place."

Repairing damage to the launch pad is usually not a significant issue, he said. "Historically, it had never been the pad that's taken the longest time," he said.

Bruno spoke with Reuters a few hours before ULA, a partnership of Lockheed-Martin Corp and Boeing Co , was preparing to launch its 111th rocket, so far all successfully.

The Atlas 5 rocket, carrying a NASA asteroid sample-return spacecraft, blasted off at 7:05 p.m. EDT (2305 GMT) on Thursday from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, about 1.2 miles (2 km) away from the SpaceX launch site.

Bruno also said he had called SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell shortly after the accident to extend his sympathies and offer help.

"It's a small community and issues especially around safety - but even mission success - kind of transcend the competitive piece of this," Bruno added.

ULA and SpaceX are rivals for private space missions and launches by U.S. government agencies. Musk's company in May broke ULA's monopoly on flying U.S. military and national security satellites, winning an $83 million Air Force contract to launch a Global Positioning System satellite in 2018.

The two firms are expected to square off over a second satellite launch services bid, which closes on Sept. 19.

Bruno declined to say specifically if ULA would submit a proposal. Bruno said factors that prevented ULA from competing for an earlier military launch, including a trade ban that stymied imports of Russian rocket engines, are no longer obstacles.

But ULA will still have to compete with SpaceX on price.
Japan says possible that North Korea conducted nuclear test

TOKYO, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Japan's top government spokesman said on Friday there is a high possibility that North Korea conducted a nuclear test.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has instructed the relevant ministries to collect and analyse information regarding North Korea, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a news conference.
Japan to consider more sanctions on North Korea after nuclear test

TOKYO, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Japan's chief government spokesman said on Friday Tokyo will consider further unilateral sanctions against North Korea after the reclusive North conducted what South Korea said was a nuclear test.

"North Korea's nuclear development is a grave threat to Japan's safety," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a news conference.
Japan military jets checking for radiation from suspected Nth Korean nuke test

TOKYO, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Japan has dispatched military jets to check for possible radiation from a suspected North Korean nuclear test on Friday, two sources from the nations Self Defence Forces told Reuters.

So far three, three T-4 aircraft, which are usually used to train fighter pilots, have been deployed, the sources said.
Seoul: Obama says will use all means to protect South Korea from N.Korea threat

SEOUL, Sept 9 (Reuters) - South Korea's presidential office said on Friday U.S. President Barack Obama had indicated he would take every action under a mutual defence treaty with the South, including providing its nuclear umbrella, to protect Seoul from any North Korean threat.

Obama and South Korean President Park Geun-hye talked by telephone, South Korea's Blue House said, after a seismic event was recorded in North Korea that Seoul and Tokyo described as a nuclear test.
Poland - Factors to Watch Sept. 9

Following are news stories, press reports and events to watch that may affect Poland's financial markets on Friday. ALL TIMES GMT (Poland: GMT + 2 hours):

RATING

Rating agency Moody's is expected to review Poland's ratings on Sept. 9.

RAIFFEISEN, PKO, ALIOR

Poland's biggest bank PKO BP and its smaller rival Alior have teamed up in their bid to buy Raiffeisen's local unit, Puls Biznesu daily said quoting unnamed sources.

PKO wants to buy Raiffeisen's leasing business while Alior bids for the bank. The Polish lenders are most likely the only bidders, the paper said.

DIPLOMACY

Delegates from the Venice Commission, the advisory panel of the Council of Europe rights body, will visit Poland on Monday to assess the new regulations regarding the constitutional court, Gazeta Wyborcza daily said on Friday.

LOT

Poland's state airline LOT wants to more than double the number of its passengers to about 10 million per year by 2020, gaining 25 percent of the market, the company said in its strategy released on Thursday.

BANK POCZTOWY

Poland's No. 20 lender by assets, Bank Pocztowy, does not rule out initial public offering (IPO), Parkiet daily quoted the company's chief executive officer as saying.

ASSECO Poland, COMARCH

Poland's social insurance institution ZUS has delayed a 700-million zlotys IT tender by a few months, Rzeczpospolita daily said, quoting ZUS spokesman. Warsaw-listed IT firms Asseco Poland and Comarch as well as Atos and Capgemini are competing to become ZUS supplier.

****Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.****
Iraq gears up for late-year push to retake Mosul from Islamic State

By Stephen Kalin

QAYYARA AIRBASE, Iraq, Sept 9 (Reuters) - The U.S.-led war on Islamic State has depleted the group's funds, leadership and foreign fighters, but the biggest battle yet is expected later this year in Iraq's northern city of Mosul, where Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared his "caliphate" two years ago.

The jihadist insurgents have lost more than half the territory they seized in Iraq and nearly as much in neighbouring Syria, but still manage to control their twin capitals of Mosul and Raqqa, symbols of the state they sought to build at the heart of the Middle East.

Military and humanitarian preparations are now in full swing to retake Mosul, the largest city under the ultra-hardline group's control. American troops are establishing a logistics hub to the south, while the United Nations warns of the world's most complex humanitarian operation this year.

Iraq's recapture over the summer of Qayyara airbase and surrounding areas along the Tigris river 60 km (nearly 40 miles) south of Mosul have set the stage for a big push on the city, which commanders say could start by late October.

Whether Islamic State makes a final stand in Mosul or slips away to fight another day remains in question, but Baghdad expects a fierce battle and the international coalition backing it is preparing for one.

The densely populated river valley may hold obstacles for the military, though Islamic State appears to be putting up relatively little resistance, possibly to conserve fighters for a showdown in Mosul where their forces are estimated at between 3,000 and 9,000.

Hardcore fighters have likely slipped out already through the desert and into Syria, while many top leaders and foreign fighters have been killed in targeted air strikes, according to Major General Najm al-Jabouri, the Mosul operation's commander.

He told Reuters that victory by year's end would be easy, in keeping with pledges by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.

"We will go to Mosul, they will go to Tel Afar. We will go to Tel Afar, they will go to Baaj," said Jabouri, referring to IS-controlled districts 70 km (44 miles) and 140 km (87 miles)west of Mosul, respectively, which can be used to reach Syria.

"We will go to Baaj, maybe. It depends on the situation in Syria. They can get to Syria but the situation there is not like before. It is not a safe haven for them now."

TURNING TIDE

Lieutenant General Vincent Stewart, Director of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, said on Thursday he expected the Mosul operation could unfold in the next two or three months but that it would be long and difficult.

"Urban warfighting is not easy and this is a large city that has had at least two years to prepare to defend its position ... It's going to be a multi-dimensional fight," Stewart said at a national security summit in Washington.

The war against jihadist insurgents in the Middle East has ebbed and flowed but there is a palpable sense in the region that the tide has turned against Islamic State.

In the past year and a half, the group has lost swathes of territory and strategic outposts. In Iraq it was driven out of Tikrit and Sinjar in the north, the oil refinery town of Baiji, and finally Ramadi and Falluja in western Anbar province, the heart of the insurgency following the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 that toppled Saddam Hussein.

In northern Syria, U.S.-allied Kurdish militia of the People's Protection Units (YPG) have taken vital territory and border crossings below the frontier with Turkey after capturing Kobani and later taking Tel Abyad, a key supply line for the jihadist capital Raqqa further south. The YPG has expanded its territory west of the Euphrates, seizing Manbij last month.

Meanwhile Turkey, backing Syrian rebels, this month cleared Islamic State from its southern border by seizing some 20 villages while Libyan government forces are close to flushing IS insurgents from holdouts in Sirte.

Amid those territorial losses, Islamic State has claimed credit for a surge in global attacks this year beyond its main Middle East theatre. European countries remain on alert for additional strikes based on undisclosed information.

Nonetheless, the U.S. military has said Iraq is on track to retake Mosul later this year. Over the past two weeks, convoys of sophisticated engineering vehicles have been seen approaching Qayyara airbase, which Islamic State wrecked before withdrawing in July.

Repairing it to help supply the 20,000 to 30,000 Iraqi troops expected to be used in the campaign could take another two months. Until then, forces trained by the U.S.-led coalition are amassing further afield.

Mosul fell to Islamic State in June 2014 when Iraqi security forces, riddled with corruption and sectarianism despite billions of dollars in U.S. aid, dropped their weapons and fled from the insurgents.

KURDISH AND SHI'ITE FORCES

Kurdish peshmerga forces, entrenched east, north and northwest of Mosul since 2014, will help tighten the noose around the city but might not enter central districts to avoid aggravating political sensitivities.

After retaking 11 villages southeast of Mosul last month, they are now eyeing eastern Christian and Shabak villages long abandoned by minority communities the group seeks to eliminate.

The peshmerga's role is complicated by tensions with the central government, which claims territory the Kurds have taken from IS and effectively annexed to their autonomous region. The Kurds say Baghdad is not forthcoming about its military strategy for Mosul or its plans to manage it after the battle.

"If we do not prepare the politics of it, we may not succeed in the military plan or we may succeed in the military plan but lose the political plan and that would be disastrous," Falah Mustafa Bakir, the head of Kurdistan's Foreign Relations Department, told Reuters last week.

The participation of the Hashid Shaabi, a government umbrella for mostly Shi'ite militias, is also unresolved. Powerful commanders have pledged to take part, despite fears among Mosul's Sunni leaders and residents of rights abuses.

Prime Minister Abadi said this week the demands of the battle would dictate the disposition of forces but that no decision had been made to bar the Hashid.

Confrontation that inflames sectarian tensions between Shi'ite-led government forces and the Sunni jihadists of Islamic State risks turning Mosul into a "bloodbath", according to a Western diplomat in Baghdad.

HUMANITARIAN CRISIS

The Mosul operation has also triggered large-scale humanitarian planning, with the U.N. predicting up to one million people could flee the city in all directions.

The Kurds expect half of those leaving will head towards their territory, which already struggles to accommodate more than one million displaced people.

Regional authorities, fearing a new wave will exacerbate demographic and security concerns, aim to settle new arrivals in camps outside of main cities.

In the best-case scenario, though, there is only enough land and funding for about 450,000 people, according to a senior U.N. official, raising the prospect of housing others in unused buildings or abandoned villages.

"If there is mass displacement, there could be shantytowns in the disputed border areas because the plan for camps doesn't accommodate them all," said Tom Robinson, director of Rise Foundation, which analyses Iraq's humanitarian crisis.

Aid workers say the authorities are limiting the construction of new camps to discourage displacement. In fact, the military is urging residents to shelter in place as it advances, but that will only be feasible if fighting doesn't lay waste to homes and infrastructure as it has before.

Jabouri, the top Iraqi commander, dismissed concerns that such a scheme jeopardises civilians' safety, saying: "What does it mean if some areas receive mortars? That's not the end of the world. We are in Iraq, not in Switzerland."
Austria's interior ministry weighing postponement of presidential election

VIENNA, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Austria's Interior Ministry said on Friday it was considering a postponement of the presidential election scheduled for October 2 on technical grounds after ballot papers for postal voting turned out to be damaged.

"If an apparent failure in production makes it impossible to properly conduct the election, then it is my duty as the highest-ranking executive of the electoral authority to immediately consider a postponement," Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka said in an emailed statement.

Over the past days several cities and eligible voters have been complaining about damaged ballot papers.
Euro zone ministers expect Spain, Portugal to cut deficits

By Tatiana Jancarikova and Shadia Nasralla

BRATISLAVA, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Spain and Portugal must still tackle their excessive budget gaps even though they escaped being fined in July for breaking European Union deficit limits, euro zone finance ministers said on Friday.

"I expect a very brief discussion and especially effective action from our Portuguese and Spanish colleagues," Slovak Finance Minister Peter Kazimir, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, told reporters on entering a meeting of finance ministers.

At the recommendation of the European Commission, the EU decided not to penalise Madrid and Lisbon for not reducing the deficits to below the EU limit of 3 percent of gross domestic product.

The decision, however, coming after similar leniency for serial deficit-limits offender France last year, has raised fresh doubts whether EU budget rules, sharpened during the recent sovereign debt crisis, can ever be enforced.

But with populist and euro sceptic movements gaining support across Europe and elections in Germany, France, the Netherlands and a referendum in Italy all scheduled for the next 12 months, some officials would like to see the rules relaxed further, rather than enforced more strictly.

The leaders of Greece, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Malta and Cyprus meet later in Athens and are expected to push for tight budget rules to be eased.

One of the arguments for scrapping fines was that Spain has been effectively without a government since last December because of two inconclusive parliamentary elections.

Mediocre growth, which could be further damaged by cuts in public spending, was another and the sentiment seemed to be shared by many ministers.

"At a time when we have weak growth one should not throttle that growth through economic sanctions," Austrian Finance Minister Joerg Schelling said.

Under EU rules, Spain and Portugal must take effective action to reduce their excessive budget deficits by October 15, which is also a deadline for presenting to the Commission draft budget plans for 2017 for all euro zone countries.

But since Spain is still run by a caretaker government, which is in no position to make binding budget proposals, the ministers will discuss how the rules could accommodate that.

"We'll discuss the procedural side of things, what should the government do when it's really a caretaker government," the chairman of euro zone finance ministers Jeroen Dijsselbloem told reporters before the meeting.

But he noted Madrid would have to deal with the deficit sooner or later.
Greece calls for pro-growth policies as "Club Med" gathers

By Michele Kambas

ATHENS, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras called for policies to foster growth as he prepared to host a summit of southern European states on Friday, saying they needed to have a bigger say in the future of Europe.

Tsipras was due to host the leaders of France, Italy, Portugal, Malta and Cyprus to discuss the future of the European Union, against the backdrop of faltering growth in the bloc, a deepening migrant crisis and British plans to quit the union.

The group is often referred to as "Club Med", even though Portugal is not on the Mediterranean.

Economic stagnation, the rise of euroscepticism and a strengthening of the far-right were issues which needed to be addressed, Tsipras told the EurActiv news website in an interview.

"In such a debate, Europe's Mediterranean countries can and must raise their voice. The way to have a bigger say is to seek a common approach and common positions," Tsipras said.

He said there was a need to 'give new impetus to growth and productive reconstruction', and denied the meeting was an attempt to drive a wedge within the bloc.

"Its a huge mistake to see growth as a process that creates deficits," he said in response to an observation that a pro-growth agenda would likely deepen public deficits.

The EU announced in July a waiver of fines against Spain and Portugal for failing to bring their budget deficits below the EU's ceiling, underscoring the EU executive's reluctance to impose penalties while economic growth remains slow and anti-EU sentiment is rising.

Finance ministers meeting in Bratislava on Friday warned against letting deficits grow in the two countries.

Similarly, senior German EU insiders on Thursday cautioned southern European states against pushing for the bloc's fiscal rules to be eased, saying a strong and stable union was more essential than ever following the Brexit vote.

German EU lawmaker Markus Ferber, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives' Bavarian sister party, told newspaper Die Welt he was concerned the southern countries could form a "coalition of redistributors" that would threaten Europe's financial stability.
Islamist militants pose challenge for next Uzbek leader

By Dmitry Solovyov

OSH, Kyrgyzstan, Sept 8 (Reuters) - Whoever takes over the Central Asian state of Uzbekistan after its president's death faces a challenge to keep a lid on Islamist militants who have become foot soldiers in global jihadist groups.

Uzbek fighters are deeply embedded in Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, fight alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan, have secret outposts in the biggest Russian cities and have ties with Muslim militants from China who reject Beijing's rule.

Veteran Uzbek leader Islam Karimov, who died last week from a stroke, used brutal methods and a vast security apparatus to keep tabs on a militant movement born in the 1990s out of an insurgency in Uzbekistan, a former Soviet republic.

With Karimov dead and a lack of clarity on who will succeed him, despite Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyoyev being named interim president by parliament, the security forces' ability to contain the Islamist network is unclear.

Uzbek militants have not had as high a profile as other groups in the global jihadi movement. While fighters from Iraq, Tunisia, Russia and western Europe command units and lead suicide attacks, Uzbeks tend to form the rank-and-file.

But Reuters interviews with security officials, militant fighters and their families indicate that the Uzbek fighters number in the thousands, are battle-hardened and skilled at networking with other jihadist groups.

These fighters view the Uzbek authorities as "Taghut", a Koranic term for tyrants who set themselves up as false Gods, and most now focus on waging jihad abroad.

But in a report last year, the International Crisis Group wrote: "Should a significant portion of these radicalised migrants return, they risk challenging security and stability throughout Central Asia."

MILITANTS BRED IN VALLEY

The heart of Islamist militancy in Central Asia is the Ferghana Valley, a fertile and densely populated strip of land that straddles Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.

Sitting in the yard of his home in Osh, a Kyrgyz city in the Ferghana valley where a large part of the population are ethnic Uzbeks, 57-year-old ethnic Uzbek Abdurasul Yuldashev described how his estranged wife went to Syria with their son and two daughters while he was away working in Russia.

In Syria, the son, 19-year-old Mukhammadislam, joined an Islamist group.

"One day I received a call from an unidentified number and someone said: 'Congratulations, your son has become a shahid'," Yuldashev said, using the Arabic term for a martyr. He said he shouted at them, and they called him a "kafir", or infidel.

Malokhat Mamatadzhiyeva, a 41-year-old ethic Uzbek who lives in Osh, received a similar call on July 9 last year informing her about the death of her son, Nurmukhammad.

She said he had gone to the Russian city of Vladimir to work on a construction site but told her in November 2014 that he was going to a remote location in Russia for work. The next time she heard from him, in March 2015, he was calling from Syria.

"I started weeping. I said: 'Do not leave me.' But the call got cut off," Mamatadzhiyeva said. She later learned that he had been killed in the fighting in Syria.

SYRIA BATTLEFIELD

Ethnic Uzbeks are active in militant groups in Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan, according to a wanted list of militants published by the United Nations.

Security officials say the militants also have ties to militants from the Chinese Uighur ethnic group, who reject Beijing's rule. A suicide bomb attack on China's embassy in Kyrgyzstan last month was ordered by Uighur groups, and several ethnic Uzbeks helped organise it, Kyrgyz state security say.

Ethnic Uzbeks operate in their own fighting units in Syria, according a Russian who fought there.

"There was a decent number of them," said the fighter, who has now left Syria and asked not to be identified.

Last year state security officials in Osh detained several people on allegations they fought alongside militants in Syria.

In a videotaped interrogation shown to Reuters at the time in Osh, one of them said he went to Syria in October 2013 and for three months was a fighter with the Nusra front, then an affiliate of al Qaeda.

The man, an ethnic Uzbek, said he was ordered to return to Central Asia to carry out attacks. Reuters was unable to establish whether he had made his statement under duress.

There is no evidence Uzbek fighters plan to leave Syria and Afghanistan en masse to launch attacks in Uzbekistan. But they could return home if Islamic State is squeezed out of the territory it controls in northern Syria and Iraq. This could be a concern for the government and foreign states.
Arrested militants planned attack on Paris railway station, France says

By Gerard Bon

PARIS, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Three women arrested in connection with a car loaded with gas cylinders found in a side road near Notre Dame cathedral had been planning an attack on a Paris railway station, the French interior ministry said.

"An alert has been issued to all stations but they had planned to attack the Gare de Lyon on Thursday," a ministry official said on Friday after the arrests overnight.

The Gare de Lyon station is in the southeast of the capital, less than 3 kilometres from the cathedral which marks the centre.

The official also said the youngest of the three women, a 19 year-old whose father was the owner of the car and who was already suspected by police of wanting to go and fight for Islamic State in Syria, had written a letter pledging allegiance to the militant Islamist group.

The discovery on Saturday night of the Peugeot 607 laden with seven gas cylinders, six of them full, triggered a terrorism investigation and revived fears about further attacks in a country where Islamist militants have killed more than 230 people since January, 2015.

Scores of religiously radicalised people of French and other nationalities are in Syria and Iraq fighting for Islamic State. Many of those involved in recent attacks in France have either taken part in the fighting or had plans to.

France is among the countries bombing Islamic State strongholds, and the group has urged supporters to launch more attacks on French soil.

One of the women stabbed a police officer during her arrest before being shot and wounded, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said late on Thursday. Other officials said it was the teenager who attacked the officer.

TV footage showed a policeman leaving the scene of the arrests on the outskirst of Paris carrying a large knife.

Police sources said no detonator had been found in the car, though the vehicle also contained three jerry cans of diesel fuel.

When it was found in the early hours of Sunday morning the car had no registration plates and was left with its hazard lights flashing.

"These three women aged 39, 23 and 19 had been radicalised, were fanatics and were in all likelihood preparing an imminent, violent act," Cazeneuve said in a televised statement. They bring to seven the number of people detained since Tuesday.

The arrests took place in Boussy-Saint-Antoine, some 30 km (20 miles) south-east of Paris.

The car's owner was taken into custody earlier this week but later released. He had gone to police on Sunday to report that his daughter had disappeared with his car, officials said.
Train crash in northern Spain leaves at least four dead

MADRID, Sept 9 (Reuters) - At least four people died and close to 50 people were injured on Friday after a train derailed in Galicia in north-western Spain, local authorities said.

The train driver, a Portuguese national, was among those killed, according to authorities in the Galician town of O Porrino, the nearest to the accident.

Another crew member and 63 passengers were on board the train, which crashed close to a station around 20 minutes into its journey between the Spanish city of Vigo and the Portuguese city of Porto.

Regional authorities said 47 people were taken to hospital.

Television footage from the accident, which happened just before 9.30 am (0730 GMT), showed the train's front carriage flipped onto its side and rammed up against an electricity pylon next to the track.

Spain's state rail manager Adif said it had launched an investigation into the causes of the accident, which remained unclear. Spanish media said the train had hit a bridge after coming out of a curve.

The passenger train belonged to Portuguese state rail company Comboios, Spanish authorities said.
Germany likely to summon North Korean ambassador after nuclear test

BERLIN, Sept 9 (Reuters) - North Korea's ambassador to Germany will probably be summoned for talks after Pyongyang conducted its fifth and biggest nuclear test on Friday, a spokesman for the German foreign ministry said.

Asked if the ambassador would be summoned, Martin Schaefer told a regular government news conference: "You can expect that."
Ivory Coast re-opens western borders closed during Ebola epidemic

ABIDJAN, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Ivory Coast has re-opened its western borders with Liberia and Guinea two years after they were closed to prevent the spread of an Ebola epidemic that killed thousands across West Africa, an Ivorian government spokesman said on Friday.
Crimea cannot be returned to Ukraine, Czech president says

PRAGUE, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Ukraine cannot get back the Crimea peninsula, although Russia took it by annexation, Czech President Milos Zeman was quoted as saying.

Russia annexed Crimea, which includes the strategic port of Sevastopol where its Black Sea Fleet has been based, in 2014, prompting the European Union and United States to impose economic and political sanctions on various Russian companies and officials.

Zeman has spoken out against the EU sanctions and has regularly expressed pro-Russian views. He was the only Western leader to attend the May 2015 celebrations in Moscow to mark the end of World War Two.

"An annexation means breaching international agreements and it is doubtless that agreements guaranteeing Ukraine's territorial integrity were breached," Zeman said in a response to a reader's question published by www.parlamentnilisty.cz.

"On the other hand, I agree with you that (Soviet leader Nikita) Khrushchev made an unforgivable silly thing and world's politicians acknowledge today that Crimea cannot be given back to Ukraine," Zeman said. He did not specify who those politicians were.

Khrushchev gave Crimea to Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union, in 1954.

The Czech government, which has the main say in the foreign policy of the EU country, has followed the common stance of the bloc regarding the sanctions on Russia.

The United States expanded its sanctions over the Crimea annexation on September 1, adding dozens of people and companies, some of them involved in building a multi-billion dollar bridge to link the Russian mainland with the peninsula.
Ivory Coast re-opens western borders closed during Ebola epidemic

ABIDJAN, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Ivory Coast has re-opened its western borders with Liberia and Guinea two years after they were closed to prevent the spread of an Ebola epidemic that killed thousands across West Africa, an Ivorian government spokesman said on Friday.

Around 29,000 people contracted the haemorrhagic fever during the more than two-year long outbreak, the worst on record. Over 11,000 died before it finally ended in June, nearly all of them in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

"We had to take these measures to protect our country. And the fact we didn't have a single case must be considered a real success," Bruno Kone said, referring to the border closure measure.

Ivory Coast, French-speaking West Africa's largest economy, shut its borders in August 2014.

It came under criticism at the time from some health organisations that argued the closure risked aggravating the epidemic and would worsen hardship in countries already struggling with the economic fallout from Ebola.
Meteorite whizzes past Cyprus and explodes, lighting up night sky

ATHENS, Sept 9 (Reuters) - A suspected meteorite did a close fly-by over Cyprus early on Friday, sending people into consternation over a blitz of bright lights which appeared in the night sky coupled with large bangs.

"It had a 45 degree tilt and a bang was heard as it passed over Cyprus," said Ioannis Fakas, the honorary chairman of the Cyprus astronomical society.

People living in the mountainous Troodos range reported green-white glows in the sky at around one in the morning, then large blasts, police said. Some reported the ground shook.

Parts of the meteorite were thought to have fallen into the sea north of Cyprus, Fakas told state TV.
China tourists noticeable by their absence in Taiwan as ties wilt

By Faith Hung

TAIPEI, Sept 9 (Reuters) - An hour after the shopping mall in the Taipei 101 tower opened its doors on Friday, fewer than 10 customers were wandering its marble floors which just a few months ago had been mobbed with Chinese tourists all day long.

The fall in Chinese tourists is being felt throughout self-ruled Taiwan, triggering a drop in business for hotels and travel agents and prompting the first major protest by the tourism sector at the deteriorating relations with Communist Party rulers in Beijing since President Tsai Ing-wen took office in May.

China has claimed sovereignty over Taiwan since 1949, when Mao Zedong's forces won the Chinese civil war and Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists fled to the island. Beijing has never renounced the use of force to bring the island under its rule.

Tsai has got off to a rocky start in maintaining stable relations with China, among Taiwan's two biggest export markets with the United States.

Organisers of the planned protest on Monday link the falling number of tourists to her refusal to recognise the "1992 consensus", which states that there is only "one China", with each side having its own interpretation of what that means.

"We don't want to get into the political issues, but we're suffering and we'll suffer even more in the next three to six months," said Ringo Lee, spokesman for the Travel Agent Association.

"The government has to help us through this tough time," said Lee, a co-organiser of the protest expected to draw as many as 15,000 people.

China is suspicious that Tsai and her ruling Democratic Progressive Party will push for independence for Taiwan, an idea that is anathema to Beijing.

"Taiwan and China have been on a cold war footing since May," said Andrew Yang, secretary general of the Chinese Council of Advanced Policy Studies.

"There is no solution in sight... Neither side is willing to blink," said Yang of the Taipei-based think tank.

Government data showed tourist numbers from China fell 15 percent year on year in July and fell further in August. The sector was also hit by a bus crash in July which killed 26 Chinese tourists on the way to the airport.

The government on Thursday pledged T$30 billion ($960 million) in preferred loans to the tourism industry but that won't help end the political conflict.

"In our hearts, Taiwan will always be part of China," said a Chinese tourist surnamed Lin at the 101 tower, once the tallest building in the world.
Outside Havana, Cubans are still waiting for American visitors

By Sarah Marsh and Jeffrey Dastin

HOLGUIN/SANTA CLARA, Cuba, Sept 9 (Reuters) - U.S. visitors and their dollars are flooding into Havana as airlines and hotels take advantage of the thaw in relations between the Cold War antagonists, but in the provinces outside the Cuban capital, the promised tourism boom is more rumor than fact.

"We see little results here," said Ubaldo Diaz, who runs a bed and breakfast in the eastern Cuban city of Holguin. Diaz said he used all his savings to spruce up his house so he could rent out two rooms to tourists visiting Cuba's fourth-largest city.

"I've had guests from all over the world but none from the United States so far. If we did have more U.S. tourists, I could probably rent rooms easier," Diaz said in a recent interview.

The numbers of U.S. travelers to Cuba are growing, but from a low level compared to other Caribbean destinations.

U.S. law still bans Americans from going to Cuba as ordinary tourists, although for years there have been exceptions for Cuban-Americans visiting family, or for people on educational or cultural visits, for example. U.S. President Barack Obama has made it easier for travelers in those categories to visit since he and Cuban President Raul Castro agreed to start restoring relations in December 2014.

The number of U.S. tourists to the Communist-ruled island shot up 77 percent to 161,233 in 2015 from the previous year, with visitors rising again this year, the Cuban government has said. New scheduled flights from the United States to Cuba that started on Aug. 31 are expected to help. Before those services, air travel between the United States and Cuba was by chartered flights.

Still, the numbers of U.S. visitors to Cuba pale in comparison with travel to the Dominican Republic and Jamaica, which received 2.0 million and 1.3 million U.S. tourists, respectively, last year, according to the Caribbean Tourism Organization.

LITTLE CHANGE

So far, much of the increase has been centered on Havana, mainly because Americans are still banned from beach vacations, boosting the capital's economy.

Other than Cuban-Americans visiting family, few U.S. citizens have set foot recently in distant provinces.

"If a tourist visa for Americans were legal, of course it would be better," said Tamara Morales Sierra, director of the office of tourist information in Villa Clara, a central province where JetBlue Airways Corp re-started U.S.-Cuba scheduled service last week.

The provincial capital, Santa Clara, is known for a mausoleum to Ernesto "Che" Guevara, one of the leaders of the 1959 Cuban Revolution that heralded long years of hostile ties with Washington.

An American Airlines Group Inc flight landed in Holguin from Miami on Wednesday.

"The new flights don't change that situation," she said.

Miriam Trimino Velasco, who works at hotel and restaurant La Casona Jover in Santa Clara, said the new air service "gives us more possibilities. More people come, and we have a better business."

Ten Americans ate at the restaurant the day of the first commercial flight, she said.

And in the picturesque seaside town of Gibara, north of Holguin, authorities advised local businesses to prepare for an influx of U.S travelers, said Yanelis Morales Marino, who runs a bed and breakfast there.

New hotels and guesthouses were opening up with this expectation, she said, so much so that there was an overcapacity of rooms, and business had been weak in recent months.

Sitting in one of the wooden rocking chairs typical of the region, in the shaded courtyard of her colonial house, she said, "We are all waiting for the arrival of the Americans."
Britain condemns N.Korean nuclear test, says threat to peace

LONDON, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Britain condemned North Korea's latest nuclear test on Friday and said it would consult with international partners on a robust response.

"These reports are of grave concern," Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said in a statement after North Korea conducted its fifth and biggest nuclear test.
Uzbekistan presidential election set for Dec.4

ALMATY, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Uzbekistan will elect a new president on Dec. 4 following the death of veteran leader Islam Karimov last week, the elections authority said on Friday, as Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyoyev looked set to take over.

Karimov died of a stroke on Sept.2 aged 78 after ruling the resource-rich Central Asian country of 32 million people for 27 years in an authoritarian manner, brooking no dissent.

Political parties will be able to nominate candidates between Sept. 30 and Oct. 20, Central Election Commission Chairman Mirza-Ulugbek Abdusalomov told reporters.

On Thursday, Uzbekistan's parliament named Mirziyoyev, 59, as interim president when the man who should have become transitional leader under the constitution bowed out in his favour, saying he had long experience in office and enjoyed the respect of people.

Mirziyoyev was also the official mourner-in-chief at Karimov's funeral and met Russian President Vladimir Putin this week, strong signs that he is likely to succeed Karimov.

Uzbekistan has never held a vote judged free and fair by Western observers. Karimov was routinely reelected with more than 90 percent of the vote.

In a speech delivered in parliament on Thursday and published on Friday, Mirziyoyev pledged to continue Karimov's policies, focusing on stability and security and sticking to the "Uzbek model" in economic matters.

Uzbekistan has been deliberately slow to introduce market reforms under Karimov and the economy remains dominated by the state.
Magnitude of N.Korea seismic event greater than last one - CTBTO agency

VIENNA, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Preliminary data collected by the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) in Vienna indicates that the magnitude of the seismic event detected in North Korea on Friday was greater than a previous one in January, the agency's chief said.

CTBTO Executive Secretary Lassina Zerbo told reporters in Vienna that early information indicated a magnitude on Friday of around 5 compared to 4.8 to 4.9 in January.
Turkey development minister sees 2016 growth between 3.5-4 pct - statement

ANKARA, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Turkey's annual economic growth is seen at between 3.5-4 percent in 2016, Development Minister Lutfi Elvan said in a statement on Friday, after data showed the economy grew at a less-than-expected 3.1 percent in the second quarter.
Kidnap, rape and looting on the rise, South Sudanese refugees say

By Katy Migiro

NAIROBI, Sept 9 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Looting, kidnapping and sexual violence are increasing in South Sudan, refugees arriving in Uganda have told the United Nations, while hunger and disease are worsening as conflict continues.

Over 103,000 South Sudanese have fled to Uganda since fierce fighting in the capital between troops loyal to President Salva Kiir and his former deputy Riek Machar in July raised fears that the five-year-old nation could slide back into civil war.

Fighting and insecurity in the Equatoria states bordering Uganda continue to drive thousands from their homes, the U.N. said in its latest update late on Thursday.

Most of the new arrivals -- totalling nearly 14,000 in one week up to Sept. 2 -- are fleeing Central Equatoria State, home to the capital Juba, it said.

"New arrivals to Uganda from Central Equatoria report having been harassed by armed actors and increasing violence across the area," the U.N. update said.

Refugees from neighbouring Eastern Equatoria reported widespread looting and killing of civilians by armed men, it said.

"Activities by armed actors are reportedly increasing, including looting, kidnapping, and sexual violence," it said.

"The eruption of violence in July 2016 has heightened food insecurity and been accompanied by... checkpoints, road ambushes, looting and theft of properties," it said, citing a recent humanitarian assessment in Eastern Equatoria.

One in five of South Sudan's 12 million people have fled their homes since war broke out almost three years ago, triggering widespread hunger as farmers and markets have been unable to function.

Staple food prices spiked to more than 10 times the five-year average in parts of the northwest in late August, the U.N. said, ahead of the autumn harvest.

The Famine Early Warning Systems Network last month predicted localised famine -- or IPC Phase 5 -- in parts of northern South Sudan.

"It is likely an increasing number of households in these areas are exhausting their capacity to cope and may be moving to Catastrophe (IPC Phase 5) and experiencing an extreme lack of food," it said, calling for aid agencies and traders to be given increased access to hungry people.

Disease is further weakening populations, with 1.3 million cases of malaria reported since the start of 2016 and cholera spreading to new locations, the U.N. said.
Ailing Italian bank Monte dei Paschi to name new boss in coming days

By Paola Arosio

MILAN, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Italian bank Monte dei Paschi plans to appoint a new chief executive in the next few days to lead a 5 billion-euro ($5.6 billion) capital raising which is needed to stave off the risk of the world's oldest bank being wound down.

The bank could hold a board meeting to name a replacement as early as Sunday, a source close to the matter said on Friday, after the current chief executive Fabrizio Viola agreed to make way for a new boss to come in to persuade investors to back the latest cash call.

The Tuscan bank may need one or two more days to get informal approval for the new CEO from the European Central Bank, the source added. A second source said it may take until next weekend for the appointment to be announced.

Marco Morelli, the head of Bank of America Merrill Lynch in Italy, was almost certain to be given the job, another source told Reuters late on Thursday.

Viola, who joined Monte dei Paschi in 2012 to turn the bank around, has presided over two successive share issues since 2014 that raised 8 billion euros and investors were reluctant to back him a third time, bankers said.

The latest plan aims to clean up and strengthen the bank's balance sheet once and for all, restoring to health a lender whose frailty threatens the wider Italian banking system, the savings of thousands of retail investors and the political standing of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi.

"No, I am not concerned," Renzi was quoted as saying by Italian newswire AGI after Viola's resignation.

Speaking at a meeting of southern European government heads in Athens, Renzi said he was more confident than two months ago that Italy's banks would be put on a sound footing.

A financial crisis in the euro zone's third-biggest economy would also risk creating contagion across Europe.

"This is a key transaction for Monte dei Paschi, it has to succeed," said a source close to the matter.

"The consortium of banks sounded out hundreds of investors around the world and what emerged was that many wanted a new management to implement a business plan and put the bank back on a sound footing," the source added.

CAPITAL INCREASE DELAYED?

Shares in Monte dei Paschi closed down 2.2 percent at 0.2391 euros on Friday, valuing the bank at less than 700 million euros. It was ranked as Europe's weakest bank in stress tests conducted by Europe's banking regulators at the end of July.

Morelli was chief financial officer at Monte dei Paschi before he left in 2010. He worked for the bank when it bought regional lender Antonveneta in 2007 in a costly deal that backfired and when it entered complex derivative trades to conceal losses stemming from that acquisition.

Three former top managers at Monte dei Paschi have been sentenced to jail for misleading regulators over those trades, but Siena prosecutors dropped the case against Morelli saying he had opposed the derivative contracts and asked for an internal audit.

Monte dei Paschi has committed to launch the capital increase and sell 9.2 billion euros of bad loans before the end of the year as part of the privately-funded rescue blueprint agreed with the European Central Bank.

However, the fund raising could now be delayed until January or February, a pause that should allow Italy's political situation to become clearer after a referendum on constitutional reform on which Renzi has staked his job.

Analysts say higher risks over the cash call could make a debt conversion to reduce the size of the share sale more likely to succeed.

"It's going to be very difficult to get the 5 billion call away," said Stefano Fabiani, fund manager at Zenit Sgr. "No one has a magic wand." ($1 = 0.8874 euros)
Thailand, Malaysia consider border wall to boost security

BANGKOK, Sept 9 (Reuters) - The leaders of Thailand and Malaysia agreed on Friday to increase intelligence sharing on security and to move forward in possibly building a border wall to combat transnational terrorism and smuggling.

People-trafficking and the smuggling of contraband, including drugs and petrol, have flourished along the Thai-Malay border for years until a crackdown by Thai officials on human traffickers caused some of the routes to shut down last year.

Analysts say that separatist insurgents operating in Thailand's deep south use Malaysia as a base to launch and plan their attacks.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak told reporters that security remained "a very important matter" for both countries and that there was an agreement to increase intelligence gathering and sharing to apprehend cross-border terrorism.

"We both face security issues including the fight against terrorism, human trafficking and illegal smuggling, that is why we need to address these issues seriously," said Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha.

Najib said that both sides had discussed the construction and extension of a border wall with details to be worked out.

"The matter is under consideration but we need to determine the physical dimensions of the wall or fence as well as the sharing of the costs," he said.

Najib's visit follows three deadly bomb attacks in southern Thailand over the past month, including a wave of bombings in tourist towns in August which Thai police have linked to Muslim separatists.

Analysts say the attacks were carried out by a separatist insurgent group known as Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN) after having been left out of peace talks between the Thai government and a separate separatist umbrella group in Malaysia.

Thailand's three southernmost provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat were once part of an independent Malay Muslim sultanate until they were annexed by Thailand in 1909.
Benin burning waste explosion kills many, injures hundreds

COTONOU, Sept 9 (Reuters) - An explosion at a waste burning site in Benin killed several people and injured hundreds more, the district chief of the town where it happened said on Friday.

The blast struck late on Thursday as a crowd of people sifted through piles of expired food that had been dumped in Tori, a town about 40 kms (25 miles) northwest of the capital Cotonou, district chief Bruno Houssou told Reuters by telephone.

"There were hundreds of wounded, some deaths also," he said.

In much of West Africa safety standards on industrial and waste management sites is poor. Ordinary rubbish is dumped alongside electronic and toxic waste or flammable materials.
EU risks trade impotency as critics target Canada deal

By Philip Blenkinsop

BRUSSELS, Sept 9 (Reuters) - A deal that would allow Canada to sell maple syrup duty free in the EU and Europeans to ship more cheese to Canadian shops has become the focus of a battle with anti-globalisation groups that is key to the future of Europe's free trade agreements.

Supporters of the huge deal say it would increase trade between the EU and Canada on a range of products, from cars to investment and farm products, by nearly a quarter, boosting the EU economy by 12 billion euros.

But anti-globalisation and other groups emboldened by France's call to suspend EU trade talks with the United States, have turned their attention to the deal already reached with Canada which has not yet been approved.

There is a growing public backlash in the West against free trade and globalisation, which critics blame for factory closures, depressed wages and a widening gap between rich and poor. Britain's decision to leave the European Union was partly seen as a protest by some voters against globalisation.

"CETA (EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement) is the little brother of TTIP (EU-U.S. Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) and needs to be buried alongside it," said Fabio De Masi, a German member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the leftist Die Linke party.

Canada is not impressed.

"If the EU cannot do a deal with Canada, I think it is legitimate to say who the heck can it do a deal with," Canadian Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland said in June.

Other supporters say CETA is the most modern trade deal ever made and that the new Canadian government bent over backwards to accept EU demands for a new way of settling investor claims.

"There are no deals that are comparable in their quality with CETA," said Artis Pabriks, a member of the European Parliament. "I would say it is a gold standard."

The deal would eliminate tariffs on almost 99 percent of goods. The beneficiaries would include, for example, carmakers or the EU textile sector, for which Canadian duties can be up to 18 percent.

Service companies could also benefit and EU companies would be able to tender for public contracts at Canadian provincial and municipal level, the first time Canada has offered this.

VOTERS IN MIND

The deal, agreed by negotiators two years ago after five years of talks, should get the green light from EU member states next month before it is signed during Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's visit to Brussels on Oct. 27.

However, there are risks it will not. Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern said last week he would start a "conflict" over CETA, while toning down his opposition a day later.

Observers say Kern and others are responding to public mistrust of the planned TTIP in particular what critics call a "race to the bottom" in environmental and food standards. CETA, say opponents, is just a mini-TTIP and indeed more advanced, given TTIP is simply under negotiation and not yet a deal.

France and Germany hold elections next year and politicians are curbing their enthusiasm for trade deals. Germany's Social Democrats will vote on CETA at a party meeting on Sept 19, a year before Germans chose a chancellor.

"I am confident that the closer to election days we come, more politicians will think twice whether to pass these agreements or not," said De Masi.

Trade is unusual in the EU because it is one of the few policy areas where the European Commission negotiates on behalf of national governments, rather than each country doing it individually.

The deal will still need backing from the European Parliament, with a vote possible in December, as well as ratification from up to 30 national and regional parliaments, which could take up to five years or more.

The Belgian regional parliament of Wallonia has already voted to reject CETA.

"There is the sense that globalisation is the thing that's at fault," said Jeffrey Bergstrand, finance professor at Notre Dame University in Indiana. "There is clearly this momentum towards a protectionist attitude, back to what we had in the Great Depression."

UNRELIABLE PARTNER

Even if CETA is not blocked it could face a crippling delay.

Luisa Santos, international relations director at business federation BusinessEurope, says waiting for final ratification could mean CETA taking almost 15 years from start to finish.

"You are jeopardising the positive effects that might come from a free trade agreement," she said.

Hosuk Lee-Makiyama says the drawn-out TTIP and CETA experiences demonstrate to would-be trade partners that the EU is a less reliable counterpart in negotiations, less able to agree a deal and less likely to implement a deal when agreed.

"If you are Australia, New Zealand or Japan why make concessions when you're not really sure what you'll get in return?" he said.

The EU will also be smaller when Britain leaves, taking with it strong ties to the United States and Commonwealth countries.

"Imagine if the United States said, for instance, 'Well maybe TTIP will not apply to California'," the U.S. chief TTIP negotiator said, adding a "certain reflection" was now required.
Gabon's Ping urges international probe into election violence

LIBREVILLE, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Gabon opposition leader Jean Ping on Friday urged an international inquiry into violence that followed the announcement of presidential election results in which at least six people were killed.
Finland's Rehn: EU should stick to deficit rules

HELSINKI, Sept 9 (Reuters) - The European Union should stick to the deficit rules in its Stability and Growth Pact, the EU's former top economic official Olli Rehn said when asked about the bloc's July decision to not penalise Spain and Portugal for breaking deficit limits.

Amid fears of growing euro scepticism in the bloc, Madrid and Lisbon escaped being fined for not reducing their budget gaps to below 3 percent of gross domestic product.

Asked about that decision, Rehn - currently Finland's minister of economic affairs - told Reuters that the bloc should obey its rules.

"(When assessing a member state's fiscal policy) it is good to take into account such structural reforms that truly support sustainable growth and employment," said Rehn, who stepped down from the commission in 2014.

"But once we have agreed on these rules, they should also be obeyed," he said. "But I'm not aware of all the details behind the decisions on Spain and Portugal."

One of the arguments for scrapping fines was that Spain has been effectively without a government since last December. Mediocre growth, which could be further damaged by cuts in public spending, was another.

Euro zone finance ministers discussed budget gaps in Bratislava on Friday, and the leaders of southern European states, due to meet later in Athens, are expected to push for budget rules to be eased.
World Vision lays off contractors in Gaza after Israel allegations

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Christian aid group World Vision has laid off about 120 contractors in the Gaza Strip following allegations by Israel that the agency's operations manager in the territory had diverted funds to the Islamist group Hamas.

In an Aug. 29 letter handed to contractors at a meeting in Gaza, the NGO said its bank accounts in Jerusalem had been frozen by Israeli authorities and it was no longer able to transfer money to Gaza, making it impossible to pay them.

The letter said World Vision was living through a big crisis and its sources of funding had been affected. It was written in Arabic and a copy was sent to Reuters.

"Because of the crisis, we have frozen all our activities in Gaza. Our bank accounts in Jerusalem were frozen by the (Israeli) authorities, which also prevented us from making any transfers to Gaza.

"Because of these conditions that are beyond the control of World Vision, we will not be able to keep your job at the present stage because we will not be able to transfer any salaries or any other payments."

A spokesman for World Vision spokesman would not confirm that the contractors had been laid off, saying only that the agency's operations in Gaza had been suspended following the accusations against the operations manager, Mohammad El Halabi.

"Due to the seriousnes of the allegations laid against Mohammad El Halabi, World Vision has suspended operations in Gaza," the organisation said. "We are conducting a full review, including an externally conducted forensic audit."

Israel arrested El Halabi in June and last month accused him of funnelling tens of millions of dollars to Hamas, the Islamist militant group that has controlled the territory since 2007.

Halabi has denied any wrongdoing via his lawyer. He has been charged and has appeared at a pre-trial hearing held in secret. World Vision and Amnesty International have called on Israel to ensure he receives a fair and transparent trial.

Israeli officials accuse Halabi of siphoning off more than $7 million a year since 2010 to pay Hamas fighters, buy arms, pay for the group's activities and build fortifications.

World Vision has disputed the allegations, saying in a statement on Aug. 8 that its total operating budget in Gaza over the past 10 years was around $22.5 million, making the alleged diversion of nearly $50 million "hard to reconcile".

Some foreign diplomats have expressed concern at Israel's presentation of the case and sought clearer evidence for the numbers. Since the allegations emerged, however, Australia has suspended funding to the aid group.

One of the contractors laid off told Reuters World Vision had emphasised the situation was out of its control.

"They said it was about the freezing of transfers and nothing else, when we asked them if that had to do with Halabi's case," he said, asking not to be named because he did not want to jeopardise the payment of funds he is still awaiting.

The termination letter informed contractors World Vision was looking at ways to pay all amounts owed to them through legal channels and "we hope this happens in the near future".
Gabon faces "sustained instability" if no presidential vote recount -Ping

By Gerauds Wilfied Obangome

LIBREVILLE, Sept 9 (Reuters) - If there is no recount of votes in Gabon's presidential election, the country will face "profound and sustained instability", the man who lost by less than 6,000 votes said on Friday.

Jean Ping has applied to the Constitutional Court to authorise a recount in a province where President Ali Bongo won 95 percent of the votes on a 99.9 percent turnout.

But he has already said he has no faith in the judicial body he thinks is too close to the government, and suggested on Friday that people would take to the streets if it does not order a recount.

"I strongly fear that a new false step by the Constitutional Court would be the cause of profound and sustained instability in Gabon," Ping told a news conference where he also called for an international inquiry into the killing of several of his supporters during post-election riots.

"If ... the Gabonese people don't accept the constitutional court's decision (if it rules against a recount), the people will assume their responsibility, and I will stand by their side," Ping said, hinting at a return to street protests.

Ping says between 50 and 100 people were killed in the riots after the election results were announced, much more than the government's death toll of six.

Ali Bongo, first elected in 2009 after the death of his father Omar who ruled the former French colony for 42 years, has accused Ping - a close ally of then-president Omar Bongo - of cheating in the August election.

EU observers said they found anomalies in the vote in Haut-Ogooue province where Ping is demanding a recount. France has called for a recount and the United States and European Union have urged the government to release polling station results.

France said on Friday it was closely following the case in the oil-rich Central African country which is home to 14,000 of its citizens and a permanent military base.

"(The court) must examine (the results) with transparency and impartiality and all means must be put in place to ensure the respect of its principles and establishment of the integrity of the vote," Jean-Marc Ayrault said in a statement.
France says Gabon's constitutional court must be transparent, impartial over election results

PARIS, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Gabon's constitutional court must examine the opposition's challenge to the presidential election with transparency and impartiality, France's foreign minister said on Friday.

"France continues to follow carefully developments in Gabon," Jean-Marc Ayrault said in a statement. "The constitutional court has been asked to examine the provisional presidential results.
Dozens held as teachers protest suspensions in Turkey's southeast, union says

By Umit Ozdal

DIYARBAKIR, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Turkish police detained dozens of people and used water cannon on Friday to disperse several hundred teachers demonstrating against their suspension from classrooms in the largely Kurdish city of Diyarbakir, union sources said and TV footage showed.

Brawls erupted and police pushed back crowds chanting "shoulder to shoulder against fascism" after Turkish authorities suspended more than 11,000 teachers on Thursday over alleged links with the Kurdish militants.

A further 418 teachers were also suspended from duty in the predominantly Kurdish eastern province of Tunceli on Friday. Several hundred teachers gathered in front of the education ministry's provincial building to protest.

"This is an attack on our unionised struggle," Suleyman Guler, the provincial head of the education union, Egitim-Sen, told Reuters. Guler was also suspended from work.

"It is not possible to accept this decision. There is neither a crime here nor a criminal. We call for the immediate halt of this move," he said.

The suspensions were part of the government's campaign against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in the mainly Kurdish southeast. It comes as Ankara also pushes ahead with a purge of tens of thousands of supporters of U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, who Turkey accuses of orchestrating an attempted coup in July. Gulen denies any involvement.

The scope of that crackdown has raised concern among rights groups and Turkey's Western allies, who fear President Tayyip Erdogan is using the failed coup as pretext to curtail dissent.

The anti-PKK campaign is Turkey's largest ever against the group, and the removal of civil servants linked to the PKK is a key part of the fight, Erdogan said on Thursday.

Demonstrations have been banned across Diyarbakir province since mid-August during the state of emergency declared after the failed coup. On Friday, the Diyarbakir governor's office also imposed a curfew in more than a dozen neighbourhoods across three districts, as security operations were planned against Kurdish militants in the region.
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Thailand names new army chief from outside dominant faction

BANGKOK, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej on Friday endorsed a new army chief in an annual reshuffle, an appointment from outside the faction that has dominated the army for several years, surprising some experts.

The military has always been powerful in Thailand, and a 2014 coup established it as the country's pre-eminent institution - arguably more so than the monarchy, which faces uncertain times as the health of the revered 88-year-old king fades.

The implications of the new appointment were not immediately clear but it may signal a willingness to compromise with other factions in the army and prevent any discord.

General Chalermchai Sitthisart, who is now assistant army chief, was appointed head of the army, while General Pisit Sitthisarn, the army chief of staff, and a top contender for the post, was made deputy army chief.

Chalermchai's appointment marks a departure from the Burapha Payak royalist military faction - known as the "Eastern Tigers" - that propelled junta chief Prayut Chan-ocha to power.

Chalermchai does not belong to the Eastern Tigers faction which has dominated the army for more than a decade and includes Prayuth and his allies.

As army chief Prayuth launched a coup in May 2014 that overthrew the civilian government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, a move he said was aimed at ending years of political turmoil in the Southeast Asian nation.

"Burapha Phayak has dominated the army for the last ten years. Many people thought General Pisit would get it," Wanwichit Boonprong, assistant professor of political science at Rangsit University, told Reuters.

"But Chalermchai became a major first, before Pisit, so in a way it follows the natural order," he said.

Approval of the appointments by King Bhumibol Adulyadej was a formality. The appointments take effect from October 1.
Germany's Steinmeier sees Turkey decision on air base as signal for dialogue

BERLIN, Sept 9 (Reuters) - German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Friday said he viewed Ankara's decision to allow German lawmakers to visit a Turkish air base as "political signal" of its willingness to resume dialogue with Berlin after significant strains.

Steinmeier underscored that Turkey remained an important partner for Germany and the European Union in tackling the migrant crisis, but said Turkey also had a central role in helping to resolve various crises in the Middle East.

Turkey on Thursday agreed to let a small group of German lawmakers visit 250 German soldiers at Incirlik Air Base near the Syrian border on Oct. 4. It had banned the visit in response to a parliamentary resolution declaring the 1915 massacre of Armenians by Ottoman forces a "genocide."

Steinmeier said he hoped that the phase of "talking past each other" would now be replaced by more direct dialogue between Ankara and Berlin and the rest of the EU.
Facebook reinstates Vietnam photo after outcry over censorship

By Terje Solsvik and Yasmeen Abutaleb

OSLO/SAN FRANCISCO, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Facebook Inc on Friday reinstated a Vietnam War-era photo of a naked girl fleeing a napalm attack, after a public outcry over its removal of the image including harsh criticism from Norway's prime minister.

In a clash between a democratically elected leader and the social media giant over how to patrol the Internet, Norway Prime Minister Erna Solberg said Facebook was editing history by erasing images of the iconic 1972 "Napalm Girl" photograph, which showed children running from a bombed village.

The company initially said the photo violated its Community Standards barring child nudity on the site.

"After hearing from our community, we looked again at how our Community Standards were applied in this case," Facebook said in a later statement, adding it recognized "the history and global importance of this image in documenting a particular moment in time."

Solberg posted the iconic "Napalm Girl" news photograph on her Facebook page after the company had deleted it from sites of Norwegian authors and the daily Aftenposten. Facebook had also removed the photo from the page of the woman who had been photographed as a girl.

Captured by Pulitzer Prize-winner Nick Ut of the Associated Press, the image of screaming children running from a napalm attack shows a naked nine-year-old girl at its center.

Solberg said Facebook's ban put unacceptable limits on freedom of speech. "They must see the difference between editing out child pornography and editing out history," she told Reuters.

"It's perfectly possible for a company like Facebook to sort this out. Otherwise we risk more censorship," she said.

Protesting Facebook's move, Solberg re-posted the photo with a black square covering the naked girl, and published a range of other historic images blacking over faces of people such as Ronald Reagan or Winston Churchill.

She also posted a version of the "Tank Man" image from the 1989 protests in China's Tiananmen Square, with a black square covering a man standing in front of a row of army tanks.

Solberg wrote on her Facebook account: "I want my children and other children to grow up in a society where history is taught as it was."

Aftenposten splashed the Vietnam photograph across its front page on Friday, next to a large Facebook logo, and wrote a front-page editorial headlined "Dear Mark Zuckerberg", saying the social network was undermining democracy.

Earlier, Facebook said in a statement its rules were more blunt than the company itself would prefer, adding that restrictions on nudity were necessary on a global platform.

Norway is a big investor in Facebook. Its $891 billion sovereign wealth fund, the world's biggest, had a stake of 0.52 percent in Facebook worth $1.54 billion at the start of 2016.

Solberg told Reuters she intended to maintain her Facebook account.
U.S., France, Britain urge new U.N. sanctions on North Korea

By Michelle Nichols

UNITED NATIONS, Sept 9 (Reuters) - The United States, Britain and France pushed the United Nations Security Council on Friday to impose new sanctions on North Korea over its fifth and biggest nuclear test as the 15-member council condemned the move by Pyongyang.

North Korea conducted the nuclear test on Friday and said it had mastered the ability to mount a warhead on a ballistic missile, ratcheting up a threat that its rivals and the United Nations have been powerless to contain.

"North Korea is seeking to perfect its nuclear weapons and their delivery vehicles so they can hold the region and the world hostage under threat of nuclear strike," U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power told reporters ahead of the council meeting.

"We will take additional significant steps, including new sanctions to demonstrate to North Korea that there are consequences to its unlawful and dangerous actions," Power said.

The Chinese government did not address further sanctions, but also condemned the test.

"We're opposed to the testing and we believe that it is more urgent than ever to work together to achieve denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula," China's U.N. Ambassador Liu Jieyi told reporters.

"All sides should refrain from mutual provocation and any action that might exacerbate the situation," he said.

Beijing has said Washington's decision to deploy a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system would only worsen tensions on the Korean peninsula.

Power has rejected suggestions that the decision to deploy the anti-missile defense system in South Korea had provoked Pyongyang.

North Korea has been under U.N. sanctions since 2006. In March, the Security Council tightened sanctions to further isolate the impoverished country after its fourth nuclear test in January and a long-range rocket launch in February.

The Security Council condemned Friday's test, calling it "a clear violation and in flagrant disregard" of previous resolutions and of the Nonproliferation regime.

In the unanimously adopted March resolution, the council expressed "its determination to take further significant measures in the event of a further DPRK (North Korea) nuclear test or launch."

The 15-member council said it will begin to work immediately on appropriate measures, without adding details.

"Weakness is simply not an option, North Korea will have to bear the consequences of its actions and provocations," French U.N. Ambassador Francois Delattre told reporters. "France calls for the adoption as soon as possible of a new resolution."

Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin told reporters: "I think we should condemn it first of all and then we will see what we can do."

Pyongyang has also carried out a string of ballistic missile tests this year in defiance of U.N. sanctions, which have all been condemned by the Security Council.

British U.N. Ambassador Matthew Rycroft said there were a series of steps the Security Council could take to respond to Friday's nuclear test and that Britain would like to see a combination of those steps imposed.

"First of all there must be full implementation of the existing sanctions, secondly there could be additional names added to the existing sanctions regime ... and thirdly there could be a tightening up and a strengthening of the sanctions regime," Rycroft told reporters ahead of the council meeting.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned North Korea's nuclear test as a "brazen breach" of U.N. Security Council resolutions.

"I count on the Security Council to remain united and take appropriate action. We must urgently break this accelerating spiral of escalation," he told reporters.
Turkey to recruit 20,000 new police in the coming period - minister

ANKARA, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Turkey will recruit 20,000 new police officers in the coming period and will deploy half of them to special forces units, Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu told state-run broadcaster TRT on Friday.

Turkish authorities had announced they would strengthen the police force following a failed coup on July 15 in which rogue soldiers commandeered fighter jets and tanks in an attempt to overthrow the government.

He also said administrators would be appointed to 28 municipalities. Security officials and the state-run Anadolu agency on Thursday said the government was appointing administrators to replace member pro-Kurdish HDP opposition party because of alleged support for Kurdish militants.
German court rules 92-year-old Auschwitz radio operator unfit for trial

BERLIN, Sept 9 (Reuters) - A 92-year-old woman who worked as a radio operator at Auschwitz has been ruled as unfit to stand trial on charges that she was an accessory to the murder of 260,000 at the Nazi death camp.

The court in Kiel said on Friday the woman identified only as Helma M. was almost blind and deaf, and that a serious illness she suffered this year had left her physically, mentally and emotionally unfit to be put on trial.

A spokeswoman for the court said in a statement that judges had ruled that the woman "did not fulfil the basic conditions to take part in an enduring trial".

Germany has been holding trials of suspects of Nazi crimes, using accessory to murder charges to convict Sobibor death camp guard John Demjanjuk in 2011 and 94-year-old former Auschwitz guard Reinhold Hanning earlier this year.

A German court in June sentenced Auschwitz guard Hanning to five years in prison after it branded him a "willing and efficient henchman" in the Holocaust and convicted him of being an accessory to the murder of at least 170,000 people.
Portugal's Guterres still leads race for UN chief after fourth ballot

By Michelle Nichols

UNITED NATIONS, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Former Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Guterres still leads the race to become the next United Nations Secretary-General after a fourth U.N. Security Council secret ballot on Friday, diplomats said.

The 15-member council cast a ballot for each of the remaining 10 candidates, and the choices are: encourage, discourage or no opinion. Guterres received 12 encourage, two discourage and one no opinion, diplomats said.

This is a slight improvement on his third round result of 11 encourage, three discourage and one no opinion.

Slovakia's Foreign Minister Miroslav Lajcak hung on to second spot with 10 encourage, four discourage and one no opinion, diplomats said. This was also a slight improvement on his last result of nine encourage, five discourage and one no opinion.

The Security Council will hold secret ballots until a consensus is reached on a candidate to replace U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon of South Korea who steps down at the end of 2016 after serving two five-year terms.
Egyptian union head reported Italian student to police before murder

By Steve Scherer

ROME, Sept 9 (Reuters) - The head of Egypt's independent union of street vendors reported Italian graduate student Giulio Regeni to police a few weeks before he disappeared and was murdered, an Egyptian prosecutor said in Rome.

The body of Regeni, 28, was found on the side of a roadway on the outskirts of Cairo on Feb. 3, more than a week after he vanished. The body showed signs of torture, including cigarette burns, cuts and contusions.

Government and security services deny ever taking Regeni into custody. But security and intelligence sources told Reuters in April he had been arrested by police outside a Cairo metro station on Jan. 25 and was taken to a Homeland Security compound.

Rome's chief prosecutor Giuseppe Pignatone and Egyptian general prosecutor Nabeel Sadek met for the third time this year on Thursday and Friday to exchange information collected during their respective investigations.

Sadek "said that he confirmed that Cairo police, on Jan. 7, 2016, received a report from the head of the independent union of street vendors on Giulio Regeni," according to a joint statement by prosecutors released on Friday.

"Afterward the police carried out checks on (Regeni's) activity. After the checks, which lasted three days, no activity of interest to national security was discovered and, as a consequence, the checks were stopped," the statement said.

Regeni had been researching independent labour unions in Egypt for his doctorate studies at Cambridge University, and had been in contact with the leaders of the street vendors' union.

COMMITMENT TO "THE TRUTH"

In April, Italy recalled its ambassador to Egypt for consultations in protest against Egypt's failure to hand over evidence related to Regeni's death after the first meeting between Rome and Cairo prosecutors.

On Friday, Sadek "illustrated and delivered an ample, complete and in-depth report on the cell phone traffic in the area where Giulio Regeni disappeared and where his body was found," the statement said.

The cell phone traffic data had been sought by Rome investigators for months. But another piece of evidence requested by the Italians - CCTV footage from the metro station where Regeni was last seen - was still not provided.

The statement said there was a "common commitment" to overcome "technical obstacles" in recovering the video, without elaborating.

The two prosecutors also said they renewed their commitment to exchange information and find the truth about Regeni's death. Sadek also said he was willing to meet Regeni's parents to reassure them he was trying to get to the bottom of "such a serious crime".

Italy has significant economic interests in Egypt, including the giant offshore Zohr gas field, which is being developed by Italy's state energy producer Eni.
U.S. tells consumers to stop using fire-prone Samsung phones

By Se Young Lee and Jeffrey Dastin

SEOUL/NEW YORK, Sept 10 (Reuters) - A U.S. government safety agency on Friday urged all consumers to stop using Samsung Galaxy Note 7 phones, which are prone to catch fire, and top airlines globally banned their use during flights.

Following reports that the phones' batteries have combusted during charging and normal use, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said it was working on an official recall of the devices and that users should turn them off in the meantime.

Samsung Electronics Co Ltd said it was working with the agency and asked customers to immediately turn in their Note 7 phones. It voluntarily issued a recall last week for 10 markets, including South Korea and the United States, and it said it was expediting shipments of replacement phones to customers in the United States.

The U.S. government action heralds more fallout for the South Korean manufacturer, which may take a financial hit from the recall and lose customers who are concerned about the quality of its flagship phones.

Some analysts say the recall could cost Samsung nearly $5 billion in revenue, after accounting for expenses from the recall process.

For Samsung, which prides itself on manufacturing prowess, the scale of the recall is expected to be unprecedented. Some 2.5 million of the premium devices have been sold worldwide, the company has said. Its shares closed down 3.9 percent on Friday.

Samsung said users in the United States can exchange their phones for one of several models and receive a $25 gift card.

In a separate statement on Saturday, Samsung asked consumers in South Korea to discontinue the use of their Galaxy Note 7 phones and visit one of the company's service centers for the recall process.

"The cost of the recall is going to be astronomical," said product liability expert and chief executive officer of Real-World Forensic Engineering, Jahan Rasty.

"They have to compensate people, fix the problem and give them a revised version of the product that doesn't have the same manufacturing or design defect.

"The longer this story lingers, the more it will etch itself in people's minds," he said.

AIRLINE BANS

One pain point is that the devices are now off limits in a typically high-use setting: aboard planes.

Aviation authorities and airlines from North America to Europe and Asia have issued bans or guidance on the phones. On Thursday, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said travelers should not use or charge them while in the air, or stow them in checked luggage.

South Korea made similar recommendations on Saturday.

The FAA's action prompted the world's three largest airlines by passenger traffic - American, Delta and United - to start telling passengers at the gate and on board aircraft to keep the phones switched off until they deplane.

While experts say the bans may be tough for airlines to enforce, they nonetheless may deter would-be customers of the Note 7 in addition to annoying existing customers.

That's because airlines have increasingly made movies and TV shows available free for streaming on smart devices in flight, to avoid the cost of installing new screens on seat-backs. For now, Note 7 customers are cut off from this entertainment.

This is "a huge black eye for Samsung", TECHnalysis Research President Bob O'Donnell said.

Companies ranging from Singapore Airlines Ltd and Qantas Airways Ltd to Air France KLM SA have instituted similar bans on the device.

They are the latest in ongoing efforts in the airline industry to manage the use of lithium-ion batteries, which are known to combust and are used in many devices, from phones and laptops to toys.

Top airlines banned hoverboards during the Christmas holiday season in 2015. Earlier this year, the U.N.'s aviation agency prohibited shipments of lithium-ion batteries as cargo on passenger planes.

A January report from the FAA said at least 171 incidents of smoke, fire, extreme heat or explosion involving batteries have occurred since 1991.
U.S. wholesale inventories flat, boost to Q3 growth seen modest

By Lucia Mutikani

WASHINGTON, Sept 9 (Reuters) - U.S. wholesale inventories were unchanged in July as previously reported and sales recorded their biggest drop in six months, suggesting a modest boost to third-quarter economic growth from inventory investment.

An outright drop in inventory investment weighed heavily on economic growth in the second quarter and some economists believe the inventory correction is close to running its course.

The Commerce Department said on Friday that the flat reading followed an upwardly revised 0.3 percent increase in June. Wholesale inventories were previously reported to have gained 0.2 percent in June.

"The trend towards an increase of inventories at the wholesale level gives us greater confidence that GDP growth will be well above 2 percent in the third quarter as factories restart their engines and start to produce the goods to replenish the store shelves," said Chris Rupkey, chief economist at MUFG Union Bank in New York.

The department in its recently introduced monthly advance economic indicators report published last month had estimated that wholesale inventories would be unchanged in July.

The component of wholesale inventories that goes into the calculation of GDP -- wholesale stocks excluding autos -- was also unchanged in July.

Following the report, the Atlanta Federal Reserve trimmed its third-quarter GDP estimate by two-tenths of a percentage point to a 3.3 percent annual rate.

"The forecast of the contribution of inventory investment to third-quarter real GDP growth decreased from 0.62 percentage points to 0.57 percentage points after this morning's wholesale trade report," it said.

Inventories subtracted almost 1.3 percentage points from GDP growth in the second quarter, the largest drag in more than two years, restricting the rise in output to an anemic 1.1 percent pace. They have weighed on GDP growth since the second quarter of 2015 as businesses sold stockpiles of unwanted goods, helping to undercut manufacturing activity.

In July, wholesale stocks of farm products fell 2.0 percent after increasing 2.8 percent in June. Wholesale inventories of petroleum declined 1.2 percent, while stocks of automobiles rose 0.4 percent.

Sales at wholesalers fell 0.4 percent in July, the biggest drop since January, after jumping 1.7 percent in June. Sales were weighed down by a 3.5 percent drop at petroleum wholesalers, as well as a 0.3 percent fall in auto sales.

At July's sales pace it would take wholesalers 1.34 months to clear shelves, up from 1.33 months in June. While the ratio has declined from 1.37 months touched in January, which was the highest since March 2009, it remains relatively high.

As a result, some economists caution that inventories could still be a drag on output in the third quarter.

"The inventory headwind for GDP continues, as inventory-to-sales ratios remain stubbornly high," said Michael Englund, chief economist at Action Economics in Boulder, Colorado.
Compass Auctions & Real Estate is expanding its footprint in the Chattanooga area.



The auction and real estate firm has added a 31,000-square-foot warehouse and two-acre secured yard to the operation. The facility, located at 3114 Freeman St. in Chattanooga, will be the new warehouse and transportation center for the Chattanooga-based company.

It will almost triple the available warehouse space and allow the company to more easily accept large transport vehicles for both shipping and receiving. The corporate office location at 901 Cherokee Blvd. will not change. Compass currently operates additional auction and real estate offices in Nashville and Lebanon, Tn., Atlanta and western Kentucky.



"When we first started out we literally were using a spare room in our office to store items for sale, to go from that to 31,000 square feet is a great feeling," said Steven W. Holt, vice-president and head auctioneer. "Also, it's humbling to know that we have faith and put that faith out there and have it rewarded with great people, partners, clients and opportunities over the past three years."



Compass Auctions & Real Estate currently works with a diverse number of clients in the Southeast. From large government agencies like TVA, to municipalities like the City of Chattanooga and Hamilton County.

"Our company is becoming widely recognized for our success in the industrial and government auction segment," said Scott Steele, marketing director. "And we will continue to expand our marketing efforts to bring new and better auctions of all kinds to our consignors and buyers. It's a new world for auctions and Compass intends to be on the forefront of technology for how we market and conduct an auction; and communicate with our clients and customers."



Further questions should be directed to info@soldoncompass.com or call the corporate office at 423-702-6180. Additional information about Compass Auctions & Real Estate can be found at http://www.SoldonCompass.com.
Iranian opposition group in Iraq resettled to Albania

BAGHDAD, Sept 9 (Reuters) - The remaining members of an exiled Iranian opposition group based in Iraq for decades left on Friday for resettlement in Albania following several attacks on their camps in recent years.

More than 280 members of the People's Mujahideen Organisation of Iran (PMOI) living at Camp Liberty, next to Baghdad International Airport, departed from Iraq, the group said in a statement.

Under a deal brokered by the United States and the United Nations refugee agency, almost 2,000 dissident Iranians have been resettled in nearly a dozen European countries since the start of 2016.

Until a few years ago, PMOI, also known by its Farsi name Mujahideen-e-Khalq Organisation (MKO), was listed as a terrorist organisation by the United States and the European Union.

The group sided with Saddam Hussein during Iraq's war with Iran in the 1980s but fell out of favour with Baghdad after he was toppled by a U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

A rocket attack claimed by a Shi'ite Muslim militia in October killed 23 PMOI members.

The group has offices in the United States and Europe.
Iranian court jails British-Iranian aid worker for five years - family

Sept 9 (Reuters) - An Iranian Revolutionary court has sentenced Iranian-British aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe to five years in prison on charges that remain secret, her family said on Friday.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe was detained in early April as she tried to leave Iran after a visit with her two-year-old daughter.

Iran's hardline Revolutionary Guards have accused her of trying to overthrow Iran's clerical establishment. The official charges against her have not been made public and the Iranian authorities were not immediately available for comment.

"On 6 September Nazanin was sentenced to five years imprisonment by Judge Salavati of the Revolutionary Court," her family said in a statement.

"Nazanin confirmed this sentence to her husband in a phone call today (9 September). She is expected to serve her sentence in Evin prison," the statement added.

Her husband Richard Ratcliffe said in the family's statement: "A sentence with secret charges still seems crazy. Literally it is a punishment without a crime."

Iranian officials were not immediately available for comment.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe works for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, a London-based charity that is independent of Thomson Reuters and operates independently of Reuters News. The Foundation and her husband have dismissed the Revolutionary Guards' accusation.

The 37-year-old, who appeared in court for the first time in August, according to Iranian media and her family, was arrested at Tehran's Imam Khomeini International Airport as she tried to leave Iran after visiting her parents.

She was separated from her two-year-old daughter, Gabriella, who has remained in the care of her grandparents.

Several Iranian dual nationals from the United States, Britain, Canada and France have been detained in the past few months on various charges, including espionage or collaborating with a hostile government.

Thomson Reuters Foundation CEO Monique Villa sharply criticised the sentence against Zaghari-Ratcliffe and called for her release.

"I have instructed the Thomson Reuters Foundation's lawyers to find out what these charges are and I know that Nazanin's family has asked the same of their lawyer in Iran," she said in a statement.

"We continue to work very closely with Richard, the UK Foreign Office and the British authorities to find a resolution to this terrible situation," she added.

In a statement, Britain's Foreign Office said: "We are deeply concerned by reports that Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been sentenced without confirmation of the charges made against her."
Asian nations plan fund to better prepare for health emergencies, says WHO

By Nita Bhalla

NEW DELHI, Sept 9 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Eleven countries in South and East Asia on Friday agreed to establish an emergency fund to strengthen their health services to better respond to outbreaks of diseases, including emerging viruses such as Zika, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Friday.

Made up of India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, South Korea, Indonesia, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Timor-Leste, the South East Asia region is highly susceptible to disasters such as floods which can result in disease outbreaks.

The region is also threatened by a range of emerging diseases such as SARS, MERS CoV, pandemic influenza and Zika, say experts, adding that countries remain ill-prepared to effectively contain an outbreak should it occur.

The WHO said while nations already contributed to a fund to tackle health emergencies such as outbreaks of cholera or diarrhea in the aftermath of disasters, it was crucial to have finance available to help countries prepare beforehand.

"To date, post-disaster funding through South-East Asia Regional Health Emergency Fund has done an excellent job of helping countries respond to health emergencies once they've occurred, as we saw most recently in Nepal and Sri Lanka," said Poonam Khetrapal Singh, WHO's South East Asia director.

"The new funding stream will allow countries to invest in infrastructure and human resources that will enhance preparedness," she added in a statement.

In a resolution passed by the 11 countries at a WHO meeting in the Sri Lankan capital Colombo, governments also agreed to increase the number of health workers, provide them with training and better conditions in order to retain them.

The ratio of health care providers in the region currently stands at 12.5 workers for every 10,000 people, just a quarter of the WHO recommended minimum of 44.5.

Aid workers welcomed the move, citing the Ebola crisis in West Africa in 2013-15, as an example of why it was necessary to build local capacity and prevent an outbreak becoming a crisis.

"To deal with an outbreak, we need to work before, during and after. A strong public health system is the best shock absorber in such settings," said Unni Krishnan, Save the Children's emergency health director in Asia and Pacific.
Germany's Merkel under fire from coalition allies over refugee policy

By Erik Kirschbaum

BERLIN, Sept 9 (Reuters) - The leader of Germany's Christian Social Union told Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday that he would not join forces with her Christian Democrats - the CSU's coalition allies - at a key party congress unless she changed her open-door refugee policy.

In a fresh attack on the chancellor's pro-refugee policies that have cost the sister parties support, Bavaria state premier Horst Seehofer said her refusal to change course was only helping the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).

He threatened to skip the CDU's annual party congress in December - an unprecedented blow to the usual unity of the conservative bloc nine months before next September's election.

"It doesn't do any good for people to keep saying 'We've done everything right, you just don't understand it'," Seehofer said, a direct rebuttal of Merkel's fiery defence of her pro-refugee policies in parliament on Thursday.

"That's only going to make the AfD stronger," he told Der Spiegel magazine ahead of a two-day meeting of CSU leaders to Saturday. Nerves in the CDU/CSU are on edge after the CDU suffered a historic defeat last Sunday, falling to third place behind even the AfD in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.

Even though Merkel's CDU and Seehofer's CSU are sister parties linked as a single conservative bloc in parliament, the CSU has firmly demanded that Merkel introduce upper limits on the number of refugees after more than one million arrived last year. Merkel has repeatedly refused any such limits.

"There can't be any compromise about that," Seehofer said, adding he would not make the customary guest visit for a speech to Merkel's CDU party congress in December if the two parties do not find common ground - tantamount to an insult to Merkel.

"Without reaching a consensus on that, my appearance (at the CDU congress) would be nothing more than a media spectacle," he said. But he added: "The CDU is not our political opponent."

Even though the CDU and CSU traditionally agree on a joint candidate for chancellor, Seehofer has not yet endorsed Merkel and Sunday's regional election defeat prompted speculation she may not stand for a fourth term. Her popularity has waned in the last year due to her handling of the migrant crisis.

The AfD has fed on fears about the influx of around a million migrants to Germany last year and siphoned voters from all parties. It is now represented in nine of Germany's 16 states and looks poised to enter the Bundestag next year.

Earlier on Friday, Seehofer's party ally Joachim Herrmann called for deportation of migrants denied asylum in Germany to crisis zones like Afghanistan and other measures, a further illustration of the widening rift between Merkel and the CSU.

Herrmann told Bild newspaper he advocated the repatriation of people from northern areas of Afghanistan and other crisis areas who had been denied asylum, something that Merkel's government has previously declined to do.

An opinion poll by the TNS institute for Der Spiegel found that 82 percent are opposed to Merkel's policies on refugees while 15 percent said she should stick to her guns.
SOFTS-NY cocoa plunges to 7-month low on risk of Ivory Coast resales

By Luc Cohen and Maytaal Angel

NEW YORK/LONDON, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Cocoa prices plunged to their lowest in several months on Friday on news that top producer Ivory Coast may cancel and resell 200,000 to 250,000 tonnes of exports, which would prompt exporters to hedge, weighing on futures prices.

Arabica and robusta coffee on ICE Futures U.S. fell after strong rallies in recent days sent prices into overbought territory, while a stronger dollar weighed on raw sugar prices.

December London cocoa settled down by 80 pounds, or 3.5 percent, at 2,183 pounds a tonne, after falling as low as 2,180 pounds per tonne, its weakest since late May.

The equivalent New York contract lost $123, or 4.3 percent, to settle at $2,762 a tonne, having touched its lowest since early February at $2,747.

Ivory Coast's cocoa marketing board has given exporters six days to furnish documentation for exports, including proof of a counterparty, or contracts will be canceled and resold, the Coffee and Cocoa Council (CCC) wrote in a memorandum.

One dealer said the news was hitting cocoa hard because it will force local exporters to hedge, weighing further on the already bearish price outlook.

The measure is aimed at stamping out speculation in the forward sales system of the nation that produces 40 percent of the world's cocoa.

"You'll probably see some cocoa that had been held back coming to the market," said Jack Scoville, vice president with PRICE Futures Group in Chicago.

The sharp drops capped off cocoa's third consecutive week of losses, as recent rains in West Africa have improved the outlook for next season's crop.

In coffee, ICE November robusta fell $18, or 1 percent, to settle at $1,909 a tonne, ending seven consecutive sessions of gains. The contract earlier hit an 18-month peak of $1,932.

Robusta prices have surged in the past month due to poor crops in Brazil and Indonesia and the prospect of a drop in production in top producer Vietnam.

"(Robusta) moved into overbought territory after the strong rally, so we're seeing gains pared back a bit," said Ole Hanson, head of commodity research at Saxo Bank.

December arabica coffee settled down 3.75 cents, or 2.4 percent, at $1.5115 per lb.
Austria says wrong if Germany, Italy, France dominate Brexit debate

BRATISLAVA, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Germany, France and Italy should not be allowed to dictate the European Union's response to Britain's planned exit from the bloc, Austria's finance minister said, adding he was surprised how relaxed the EU response to the vote has been.

Hans Joerg Schelling said it was the "wrong way" for German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, the leaders of the euro zones biggest economies, to dominate the Brexit discussion.

"Small countries should not be overruled," he said.

The three heads of government met separately from their European peers last month in the aftermath of Britain's June 23 referendum in which a majority voted in favour of leaving the European Union.

Schelling told reporters on the sidelines of a European finance minister meeting in Bratislava that he was lobbying for a special meeting of European finance and economy ministers - or Ecofin - on Brexit without his British counterpart.

He added many of his peers had responded positively to such an idea, adding that he was surprised at how relaxed preparations for Brexit negotiations in Europe have been so far.
Zambia's High Court refuses to block Lungu's inauguration

LUSAKA, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Zambia's High Court has rejected an application by the main opposition party to block President Edgar Lungu's inauguration set for next week after last month's contested election, his lawyers said on Friday.

Opposition United Party for National Development (UPND) leader Hakainde Hichilema had petitioned the court to overturn a Constitutional Court decision not to give him more time to legally challenge Lungu's re-election.

He says the Aug. 11 vote was rigged, a charge Lungu denies.

"The court has refused to block the inauguration. The High Court has no power to block a decision of a higher court," Lungu's lawyer Tutwa Ngulube told reporters.

Hichilema's lawyer Keith Mweemba said the UPND would pursue the case in the Supreme Court.

Lungu has led the ruling Patriotic Front since his predecessor Michael Sata died in 2014. He won the presidency in January 2015, defeating Hichilema in their first election confrontation.
Cholera blamed on UN peacekeepers surges in Haiti as funding vanishes

By Makini Brice

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Sept 9 (Reuters) - U.N.-led foreign funding has dried up for Haiti's fight against cholera, thought to have been introduced by Nepali peacekeepers, triggering a surge of deaths this year even as the global body vowed to help overcome the epidemic.

The lack of support is notable because Haiti was free of cholera until 2010, when U.N. peacekeepers dumped infected sewage into a river, according to investigators.

Since then, more than 9,000 people have died of the disease that causes uncontrollable diarrhoea and 800,000 people have fallen ill, mostly in the first two years of the outbreak.

The United Nations has not legally accepted responsibility for the outbreak. An independent panel appointed by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued a 2011 report that did not determine conclusively how the cholera was introduced to Haiti.

However, a new report by the independent U.N. Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights that will be presented to the U.N. General Assembly later this year concluded that scientific evidence "now points overwhelmingly to the responsibility of the peacekeeping mission as the source of the outbreak."

In August, Ban said the United Nations has a "moral responsibility" to help Haiti's cholera victims and their families.

The outbreak and subsequent failure by the United Nations to help Haiti stamp out the disease will be a stain on the legacy of Ban, who steps down at the end of 2016 after serving two five-year terms that have been blighted by accusations of sexual abuse and exploitation by U.N. peacekeepers in the Central African Republic and elsewhere.

Ban, whose successor will be elected by the General Assembly, launched a major appeal aimed at eradicating cholera in Haiti four years ago.

But foreign governments largely ignored the plea and funding has almost halved to $7.9 million in 2016 from a year ago.

That has led to a reduction in prevention and treatment services, and 227 deaths in the first seven months of the year, a third more than a year earlier.

"These results are due to the reduction of funding available for cholera response projects," the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a curt statement last week.

Even OCHA's Central Emergency Relief Fund, which channels funds from other U.N. agencies to humanitarian crises, stopped funding cholera relief in Haiti this year, public documents show.

Because of the funding crunch, many charity teams that do street work to trace the source of local outbreaks wound down activities from April, treatment centres have been shuttered, and those still active complain of shortages of antibiotics.

GRIMY POND

In Carrefour, a working class district in the hills above Port-au-Prince, cholera is resurfacing at an alarming rate, aid group Solidarite International said, with 1,100 cases detected this year, and 220 of those in August alone.

An open cistern of grayish water serves as a spot for bathing, washing clothes and bottling drinking water in one square near Carrefour. Known as the Boyer Source, aid workers say the surrounding streets were high risk for cholera, with 16 cases in August.

"Every time it rains, this source becomes contaminated," said Wangcos Laurore, head of the cholera response program at Solidarite International, looking over the grimy pond on a sweltering day last week.

Carrefour only has one cholera treatment center, after one shut last year. Here, four patients, all children, lay on camping beds. Zamar Marie Magdalah, a nurse, said capacity had been reduced from treating 60 cases at one time in previous years to 40 in June.

Now the limit is 15 patients. Those with conditions like high blood pressure and diabetes as well as cholera are turned away, because of the center lacks medicines to treat them.

"These are basic materials that we are supposed to have," said Magdalah.

Nearby, Clerette Morenvil, the mother of a 10-year-old girl being treated at the center, showed members of a Solidarite International rapid response team a corner store whose owner sold her water from a spigot, where customers filled bottles for 1 Haitian gourde ($0.015) apiece.

"The water comes from a well," said store owner Frantz Terin, to questions posed by the team.

"We don't treat the water. We don't have the authority to do so ... we use it to wash our clothes. Me, I drink it. Everyone drinks it."

Such emergency rapid-response teams, who visit the homes of cholera victims and their neighbors and trace the source of outbreaks, were scaled back by about 40 percent in April, according to UNICEF. Monthly support for the teams was cut by up to 50 percent in the first half of 2016, a government source said.

From January to July, nearly 25,000 cholera cases were registered, a 22 percent rise over the same period last year.

FADING APPEAL

The world's sympathy was with Haiti in the wake of the 2010 earthquake that killed more than 300,000 people and the response to the cholera epidemic was initially massive, helping rapidly reduce the number of deaths and infections.

But interest faded fast, with humanitarian crises such as Syria, Iraq, Yemen and South Sudan all competing for resources. Haiti's lack of stable government and multiple failed elections may also have dulled donors' funding appetite.

In 2012, Ban launched a $2.2 billion funding drive aimed at eradicating the disease from Haiti within a decade.

So far, the campaign has only raised 18 percent of the target from international donors, according to documents from the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

"Despite repeated appeals, these efforts have been seriously underfunded and severe and persistent funding shortfalls remain," Ban's office said in August.

Of the top six donors who have contributed to the cholera response since the outbreak in 2010, only the EU's European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations and Canada have contributed significant funds this year. The United States, Sweden, the U.N's CERF and OCHA's emergency fund have not.

Ban has vowed a new approach, due to be unveiled in October. Given the lack of funds available for his first plan, it is not clear how he intends to finance a package that his spokesman said "would provide material assistance and support to those Haitians most directly affected by cholera" and address issues of water, sanitation and health systems in Haiti.

In 2011, rights group the Institute for Justice and Democracy filed a class action case against the United Nations over the epidemic, demanding it install a water and sanitation system in Haiti, compensation for victims and an apology.

The group, which recently lost a bid in a U.S. court to strip the U.N. of immunity from victims' claims, said it would wait for Ban's new plan before launching a Supreme Court appeal.

"If the U.N. does present a robust response that responds to victims' rights, it would make further litigation unnecessary," said Beatrice Lindstrom, a lawyer for the group.
U.S. urges Serbia, Slovenia to diversify their energy sources

By Benet Koleka

TIRANA, Sept 9 (Reuters) - The United States has encouraged Serbia and EU-member Slovenia to diversify their energy sources away from Russian gas to make sure any potential disruptions will not hurt their economies, a senior U.S. official said on Friday.

Wrapping a tour of Slovenia, Serbia, Kosovo and Albania, Mary Burce Warlick, the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Energy Resources, said she urged them to look at ways to strengthen their energy security by diversifying its sources.

Warlick said the United States believes energy security issues in Europe are very important and "really fundamental to national security issues more broadly".

Serbia, a candidate to join the European Union, relies almost exclusively on Russian gas supplies while Slovenia imports less than half of its gas from Russia while Albania and Kosovo, both staunch U.S. allies, import no gas from Russia.

"I sensed a real openness on the part of really all countries with whom we engaged to try to identify those solutions, partnering with Europe and us and many others to try to find a way to achieve some of those solutions," Warlick said.

Warlick, a former ambassador to Serbia, said the United States had been discussing energy diversification with a number of European countries that rely on Russian gas.

The cutoff of Russian gas from Ukraine in 2009 drove home the importance of diversification in European capitals.

"Our approach has been not to say that Russian gas shouldn't remain as it does an important part of the energy equation in Europe but simply for all countries to think a little bit again on how they position themselves to better diversify their energy mix," she told Reuters in an interview in Tirana.

The United States has suggested either new investment or connections with neighbouring countries that will enable them to consider "developing a more diversified mix of gas on the one hand but also look to develop other resources", Warlick said.

They could tap into additional volumes of gas that might come online in 2020 when the TAP pipeline brings Azeri gas to Europe as well as from increasing volumes of LNG thanks to a LNG terminal projects in and around Europe, she said.
Cuba launches new international campaign against U.S. embargo

By Nelson Acosta

HAVANA, Sept 9 (Reuters) - U.S. sanctions cost Cuba $4.6 billion last financial year, the government said on Friday, and called on U.S. President Barack Obama to do more to ease the pressure in the spirit of improved relations between the two countries.

Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez made the comments at the launch of an annual campaign for a United Nations resolution condemning the U.S. trade embargo put in place after Cuba's 1959 revolution, but which has softened a little under Obama.

"The blockade imposed by the United States on Cuba persists," Rodriguez told reporters at a news conference. "The blockade is the main cause of the economy's problems and obstacle to development."

Rodriguez said damages from April 2015 through March 2016 amounted to $4.6 billion and to $125.9 billion since the embargo's inception.

This year's U.N. General Assembly vote, set for Oct. 26, will be the 25th time Cuba has marshaled international support against the embargo. Cuba usually wins overwhelming support for a resolution which is non-binding.

Since Presidents Obama and Raul Castro stunned the world in December 2014 by announcing they would work to normalize relations, the Cold War foes have opened embassies, restored commercial flights, opened travel options and negotiated agreements on issues affecting the environment, law enforcement, the postal service and communications.

Obama, who visited Cuba earlier this year, has also gradually poked holes in the embargo through executive orders.

Rodriguez said the advances so far were positive but "limited and superficial" in the economic sphere.

"President Obama reserves broad executive latitude that he can use up to his last minute in the White House," he said.

More than 100 U.S. business delegations have visited Cuba since 2014 and around 300,000 Americans are expected to arrive this year under looser travel restrictions. U.S. telecommunications companies have signed roaming agreements, a Carnival cruise ship makes regular stops and a Havana hotel is under U.S. management.

But many U.S. companies say the embargo makes business nearly impossible.

Obama has insisted he opposes the embargo but can do little more because only the Republican-controlled Congress can lift it.

Many experts beg to differ and are urging him to act before leaving office in January.
Bellwether Investment Group, LLC, (Bellwether), is expanding its advisory team in the Southeast by adding Lance R. Ray, CFP in Holly Springs, NC. He has over 17 years of experience advising clients on financial matters and earned the Certified Financial Planner designation in 2001. He comes to Bellwether Investment Group, LLC from Cantella & Co, Inc. He focuses on asset management as well as general financial planning for business and individuals.

Martin Summitt, Bellwether partner, said, "Lance is an excellent addition to our team of fee-based portfolio managers and has the experience and passion to give clients exceptional service. We believe Lance will thrive at Bellwether.

"Having lived most of his life in Michigan, he is a graduate of Hope College with a degree in Political Science and Economics. Married to his wife Katrina, they have two daughters."

Mr. Ray said, "Bellwether was an obvious choice. Bellwethers fee-based platform aligns my clients best interests with my own so that is a win-win scenario. The firms commitment to providing the environment and tools to excel in managing my client relationships and achieve my growth goals was also clear. Bellwether has given me a warm welcome, and it is a distinct pleasure to be a part of the firm."

Mr. Ray is located in Holly Springs, N.C. He can be reached at 919-805-3225 or at LanceRay@BellwetherINV.com .

Bellwether, a registered investment advisor based in Chattanooga, has offices in Gainesville, Ga., Little Rock, Waco, and Holly Springs, N.C. with future plans to grow throughout the Southeast and nationally. Firm clients live throughout the country and come from all backgrounds.
Gaza man shot dead in protest near border with Israel -Palestinian official

GAZA, Sept 9 (Reuters) - An 18-year-old Palestinian was killed during a rock-throwing protest near the Gaza-Israel border on Friday and a Palestinian health official said Israeli soldiers shot him, but the Israeli army said troops were not responsible.

Gaza health ministry spokesman Ashraf Al-Qidra said Abdel-Rahman Al-Dabbagh was killed by an Israeli bullet to the head during the border clash in the central Gaza Strip.

The Israeli military said troops had sought to contain the violence on the other side of the border fence and had used only tear gas.

"Dozens of rioters breached the buffer zone and attempted to damage the security (border) fence. ... Forces stationed at the border used tear gas that led to the dispersal of the riot. Following a preliminary review, the Israel Defence Forces did not conduct the reported shooting," a military statement said.

In violence since October in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, at least 210 Palestinians have been killed, 141 of whom Israel said were assailants. Others died during clashes and protests.

Palestinians, many of them acting alone and with rudimentary weapons, have killed at least 33 Israelis and two visiting Americans.

Palestinian leaders say assailants have acted out of desperation over the collapse of peace talks in 2014 and Israeli settlement expansion in Israeli-occupied territory that Palestinians seek for an independent state.
Lee Universitys Department of Language and Literature will offer free adult ESL (English as a Second Language) classes to the community through its English Language Center from Sept. 15 through Nov. 17.



There will be five levels of classes offered ranging from Novice, for those who speak no English, to Advanced, for those who are more proficient in English.

"This wide range of levels allows students to focus their learning on the level needed," officials said.



The program is led by Dr.

Chris Blake, associate professor of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) and Linguistics at Lee and director of Lees English Learning Center. The courses are taught by student-instructors, all of whom are professionally trained in the TESOL program."Small class sizes allow tailored experiences for students, letting the teachers address the unique learning style of each individual so students can achieve their personal goals. This model helps to develop the conversational skills of students," officials said.We are very excited about offering these classes to the public for the sixth year in a row, said Dr. Blake. Our numbers have grown steadily from 20 to over 80 students regularly attending last spring. I believe the reason for this growth is the curriculum which is customized to the needs of students and encourages authentic communication in English.The classes will be held Thursday evenings from 6:30-8:30 p.m. in the Walker Memorial Building, and there will be signs directing students to the building and rooms. Free childcare will be provided for children ages 6-12.For more information about the classes, contact Dr. Blake at cblake@leeuniversity.edu or 423-614-8223.
Cleveland State Community College hosted the Cleveland/Bradley Chamber of Commerce 8th Grade Exploration event on its campus on Friday. All 8th grade students in Bradley County were invited to attend this important event that allows them the opportunity to explore career pathways prior to entering the 9th grade where they are asked to select a career path. Students could take advantage of a Career Fair as well as a College 101 session.
The Chattanooga Fire Department, in partnership with the Chattanooga Area Food Bank, will be conducting its 10th annual "Firefighters Against Hunger" food drive next week. There will be several events associated with this food drive. The kick-off event is Monday, Sept. 12 , at the Food City at 7804 E. Brainerd Road. Firefighters will be there from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. , accepting donations of non-perishable food as well as monetary contributions. For the rest of the week, area residents can drop off their donations at any of the department's 19 fire stations located throughout the city.





New this year is the addition of "Wash Away Hunger" events at three public schools. Each school will be conducting its own food drive. On a specific date next week, students will draw chalk art and messages about hunger. Then Chattanooga firefighters will arrive and provide water hoses for the students to "wash away hunger." Once that is done, firefighters and food bank personnel will take away the food the students have collected. Here are details on when and where those events will take place:





Sept. 14th  Chattanooga School for the Arts and Sciences (CSAS)

Location: 865 E. 3rd Street

Time: 10:00 a.m.
MAU Workforce Solutions, a staffing agency in the fields of temporary staffing, professional recruiting, outsourcing, and human resources consulting have announced that they are now hiring Automotive Assemblers in Chattanooga, TN. Focused on helping companies worldwide, find the right people for their job openings, MAU Workforce Solutions will be concentrating their efforts on providing new job opportunities to candidates in the Chattanooga area by hosting a 4-day hiring event.

The Automotive Assemblers are entry-level positions with multiple shift availability.

Sept. 12-15

7 a.m.-7 p.m.

Interested applicants are encouraged to attend the MAU hiring eventfromeach day! The Hiring Extravaganza is located at 6150 Shallowford Rd. Suit 104 Chattanooga, TN 37421.
Cleveland State Community College will be hosting its second annual celebrity roast on Thursday, Sept. 22 at 6:30 p.m. at the Cleveland Country Club. The featured guest to be roasted is Mayor Tom Rowland. He is the longest serving mayor in the history of Cleveland.



Dr. Bill Seymour, CSCC President, said, Following our inaugural Celebrity Roast, I polled several people in the community about who would be the next best honoree. Without a question, Tom Rowland was the most enthusiastically recommended. Given his length of service, significant relationships, and deep involvement in our community, I am sure there is much to roast him about. I am very pleased to have assembled an outstanding dais for the event. Roasters include Larry Wallace, Dale Hughes, Kevin Brooks, Janice Casteel, Brian Graves and Tim Poteet. Steve Hartline will be our MC again this year, so its sure to be a fun evening!

Mayor Rowland is currently serving his sixth term as mayor, having served in this role since 1991. He is listed in the Congressional Records of the 110th Congress, making history as Clevelands longest serving mayor. While serving as mayor, Rowland has served in many leadership positions throughout the community, including President of the Tennessee Municipal League, Past President of the East Tennessee Mayors Association and Vice Chairman of the Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (TACIR), the highest position one can hold and not be on the state legislature. He is a Board member of the Tennessee Risk Management Pool and Vice Chairman of the Tennessee Municipal Bond Fund. He is a member of many organizations including Keep America Beautiful Board, Emergency Shelter Board, 911 Board, United Way Board, Greenway Board and the Volkswagen Task Force. He is co-founder of Cleveland 100, an organization that assists surviving family members of officers, firemen and emergency personnel killed in the line of duty.

Prior to becoming mayor in 1991, Rowland owned and operated three radio stations in Tennessee and Georgia. During his career in broadcasting, he won numerous state and national awards including the title as Tennessee Broadcaster of the Year. He and his wife, Sandra, are members of Wesley Memorial United Methodist Church. They have two children and six grandchildren.

For more information and to purchase tickets for the second annual roast, visit the website at mycs.cc/roast or call (423) 614-8750. Dinner will be served, and there will be a cash bar available. Ticket prices are $75 per person and $800 for a table with sponsorship recognition. However, all laughs are free! The event is sponsored by the Bank of Cleveland, and all proceeds will go to support the Cleveland State Annual Fund. Checks should be made payable to the Cleveland State Foundation with Roast on the memo line.




United Parcel Service, Inc. provides letter and package delivery, transportation, logistics, and related services. It operates through two segments, U.S. Domestic Package and International Package. The U.S. Domestic Package segment offers time-definite delivery of letters, documents, small packages, and palletized freight through air and ground services in the United States. The International Package segment provides guaranteed day and time-definite international shipping services in Europe, the Asia Pacific, Canada and Latin America, the Indian sub-continent, the Middle East, and Africa. This segment offers guaranteed time-definite express options. The company also provides international air and ocean freight forwarding, customs brokerage, distribution and post-sales, and mail and consulting services in approximately 200 countries and territories. In addition, it offers truckload brokerage services; supply chain solutions to the healthcare and life sciences industry; shipping, visibility, and billing technologies; and financial and insurance services. The company operates a fleet of approximately 121,000 package cars, vans, tractors, and motorcycles; and owns 59,000 containers that are used to transport cargo in its aircraft. United Parcel Service, Inc. was founded in 1907 and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia.
Darling Ingredients Inc. develops, produces, and sells natural ingredients from edible and inedible bio-nutrients. The company operates through three segments: Feed Ingredients, Food Ingredients, and Fuel Ingredients. It offers ingredients and customized specialty solutions for customers in the pharmaceutical, food, pet food, feed, industrial, fuel, bioenergy, and fertilizer industries. The company also collects and transforms various animal by-product streams into useable and specialty ingredients, such as collagen, edible fats, feed-grade fats, animal proteins and meals, plasma, pet food ingredients, organic fertilizers, yellow grease, fuel feedstock, green energy, natural casings, and hides. In addition, it recovers and converts used cooking oil and animal fats, and residual bakery products into valuable feed and fuel ingredients. Further, the company provides environmental services, including grease trap collection and disposal services to food service establishments. It primarily operates under the Sonac, Dar Pro, Rothsay, Rousselot, Nature Safe, CleanStar, Peptan, Cookie Meal, Bakery Feeds, Ecoson, and Rendac brand names in North America, Europe, China, South America, Australia, and internationally. The company was formerly known as Darling International Inc. and changed its name to Darling Ingredients Inc. in May 2014. Darling Ingredients Inc. was founded in 1882 and is headquartered in Irving, Texas.
Chicago Police Officer Caught On Video Striking A Man At A 2014 Block Party

By Austin Brown in News on Sep 8, 2016 7:34PM



Chicago Police Department Officer Brett Kahn was charged with aggravated battery on Thursday, in the culmination of a police incident at a block party in North Lawndale that happened more than two years ago, and the Independent Police Review Authority's (IPRA) June 2016 release of a video documenting the event.

Kahn turned himself in Thursday morning to the Cook County state's attorney's office.

The video, which showed heated altercations and Officer Kahn striking Jeremiah Smith with his baton between the police and residents following the arrest of Lisa Simmons for public consumption of alcohol, became a case of interest during the national coverage of IPRA's mass video releases. News outlets like the Washington Post and New York Times included the video as one of the "stand out" examples of questionable behavior from Chicago police. It also followed a 2015 lawsuit from Simmons and Smith for wrongful arrest and police brutality.

The man can be seen punching Smith while holding his baton about 1:10 seconds into the video, which was taken by a bystander on a cell phone.

In July 2014, police pulled up to the block party, described in the lawsuit as a celebration of the signing of two local young artists to a major Atlanta label, as depicted in the IPRA-released video. The video then seems to show police slamming Simmons onto the hood of the police car and arresting her, followed by some chaos and eventually, a shot of Kahn appearing to struggle with Smith and eventually hit him.

The charges come alongside a wave of recent IPRA activity and turmoil, with Mayor Rahm Emanuel less than two weeks ago announcing plans to replace IPRA with a "civilian office of police accountability" and "citizen oversight board." It is not immediately clear how this will affect the Kahn case.

[H/T Tribune]
The following companies are subsidiares of UnitedHealth Group: 1070715 B.C. Unlimited Liability Company, 1st Avenue Pharmacy Inc., 310 Canyon Medical LLC, 4C MSO LLC, 4C Medical Group PLC, 5995 Minnetonka LLC, ABCO International Holdings LLC, ACN Group IPA of New York Inc., ACN Group of California Inc., AHN Accountable Care Organization LLC, AHN Central Services LLC, AHN Target Holdings LLC, AMIL International S.a.r.l., APS  Assistencia Personalizada a Saude Ltda., ASC Holdings of New Jersey LLC, ASC Network LLC, ASC Operators-East Bay LLC, ASC Operators-San Francisco LLC, ASC Operators-San Luis Obispo LLC, ASC Operators-Santa Rosa LLC, ASC Operators-South Bay LLC, ASV-HOPCo-SCA Cornerstone LLC, ASV-HOPCo-SCA Florida LLC, AbleTo Behavioral Health Services P.C., AbleTo Inc., Accurate Rx Pharmacy Consulting LLC, Administradora Clinica La Colina S.A.S., Administradora Country S.A.S., Administradora Medica Centromed S.A., Advanced Surgery Center of Clifton LLC, Advanced Surgical Center LLC, Advanced Surgical Hospital LLC, Advocate Condell Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, Advocate Southwest Ambulatory Surgery Center L.L.C., Advocate-SCA Partners LLC, Aliansalud Entidad Promotora de Salud S.A., All Savers Insurance Company, All Savers Life Insurance Company of California, Alliance Surgical Center LLC, Allina Health Heart and Vascular Surgery Center LLC, Allina Health Surgery Center-Brooklyn Park LLC, Aloha Surgical Center LLC, Ambient Healthcare Inc., Ambient Holdings Inc., AmeriChoice, AmeriChoice Corporation, AmeriChoice of New Jersey Inc., American Health Network of Indiana Care Organization LLC, American Health Network of Indiana II LLC, American Health Network of Indiana LLC, American Health Network of Kentucky LLC, American Health Network of Ohio Care Organization LLC, American Health Network of Ohio II LLC, American Health Network of Ohio LLC, American Physicians Inc., Amico Saude Ltda., Amil, Amil Assistencia Medica Internacional S.A., Angiografia e Hemodinamica Madre Theodora Ltda., Anne Arundel-SCA Holdings LLC, Anne Arundel-SCA Surgicenter LLC, Antelope Valley Surgery Center L.P., Analisis Clinicos ML S.A.C., Apothecary Holdings Inc., AppleCare Medical Management LLC, Aquitania Chilean Holding SpA, Arcadia JV Holdings LLC, Arcadia Outpatient Surgery Center L.P., ArchWell Health LLC, ArchWell Health MSO LLC, ArchWell Health Professional Services Holding Co., ArchWell Health Professional Services of Alabama LLC, ArchWell Health Professional Services of North Carolina P.C., ArchWell Health Professional Services of Oklahoma LLC, Archwell Health Professional Services of Arizona LLC, Archwell Health Professional Services of Nebraska LLC, Arise Physician Group, Arizona Physicians IPA Inc., Arlington Surgery Center LLC, Aspectus Inc., Associacao Lusiadas Knowledge Center  Health Education and Research, Audax Health Solutions LLC, Aurora Hospitalist P.C., Austin Center for Outpatient Surgery L.P., Avella Specialty Pharmacy, Aventura Medical Tower Surgery Center LLC, Avery Parent Holdings Inc., Aveta Inc., AxelaCare Intermediate Holdings LLC, AxelaCare LLC, B.R.A.S.S. Partnership in Commendam, BOSC Holdings LLC, BSC Holdings LLC, Ball Outpatient Surgery Center LLC, Banmedica Colombia S.A.S., Banmedica Internacional SpA, Banmedica S.A., Barranca Surgery Center LLC, Beach Surgical Holdings II LLC, Beach Surgical Holdings III LLC, Beach Surgical Holdings LLC, Beaver Medical Group P.C., Bedford Physicians Risk Retention Group Inc., Behavioral Healthcare Options Inc., Beltway Surgery Centers L.L.C., Benefit Administration for the Self Employed L.L.C., Benefitter Insurance Solutions Inc., Bergan Mercy Surgery Center LLC, Bergen-Passaic Cataract Laser and Surgery Center LLC, Bessler MD PLLC, Bind Benefits Inc., Bind LH Holdings Inc., Bind Re Inc., Birmingham Outpatient Surgery Center Ltd., Birmingham Outpatient Surgical Center LLC, Bloomfield ASC LLC, Blue Ridge Day Surgery Center L.P., Blue Ridge GP LLC, Blue Ridge Properties LLC, Boca Raton Outpatient Surgery & Laser Center LTD., Bordeaux Barbados Holdings I SRL, Bordeaux Barbados Holdings II SRL, Bordeaux Barbados Holdings III S.r.l., Bordeaux Holding SpA, Bordeaux International Holdings Inc., Bordeaux UK Holdings I Limited, Bordeaux UK Holdings II Limited, Bordeaux UK Holdings III Limited, Bosque Medical Center Ltda., Brandon Ambulatory Surgery Center LC, BriovaRx Infusion Services 102 LLC, BriovaRx of Florida Inc., BriovaRx of Maine Inc., BriovaRx of Massachusetts LLC, CCEC Anesthesia Management LLC, CDC Holdings Colombia S.A.S., CLISA  Clinica de Santo Antonio S.A., CMO  Centro Medico de Oftalmologia S/S Ltda., CMS  Central de Manipulacao e Servicos Farmaceuticos Ltda., COI  Clinicas Oncologicas Integradas S.A., Cabin Enterprises LLC, Cabin Holdings LLC, California Medical Group Insurance Company Risk Retention Group, Camp Hill Ambulatory Centers, Camp Hill-SCA Centers LLC, Capital City Medical Group L.L.C., Cardinal Holding Company LLC, Care Improvement Plus Group Management LLC, Care Improvement Plus South Central Insurance Company, Care Improvement Plus Wisconsin Insurance Company, Care Improvement Plus of Texas Insurance Company, Care Logistics LLC, CareMount Dental Member LLC, CareMount Health Solutions ACO LLC, CareMount Health Solutions Employer LLC, CareMount Health Solutions LLC, CareMount Holding LLC, CareMount Medical Foundation Inc., CareMount Value Partners IPA LLC, Carr PLLC, Casa de Saude Santa Therezinha Ltda., Castle Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, Castle Rock SurgiCenter LLC, Catalyst360 LLC, Catamaran 2 Unlimited Company, Catamaran Finance Ireland Unlimited Company, Catamaran S.a.r.l., Cedar Park JV Partners LLC, Cedar Park Surgery Center LLC, Cemed Care  Empresa de Atendimento Clinico Geral Ltda., Center for Quality Improvement LLC, Center for Restorative Surgery at Maple Grove LLC, Center for Surgery of North Coast L.P., Central Indiana Care Organization LLC, Central Ohio Care Organization LLC, CentriHealth Corporation, CentrifyHealth LLC, Centro Medico Hospitalar Pitangueiras Ltda., Centro Odontologico Americano S.A.C., Centro de Entrenamiento Capacitacion en Reanimacion y Prevencion Limitada, Centro de Servicios Compartidos Banmedica SpA, Centromed Quilpue S.A., Centros Medicos y Dentales Multimed Ltda., Centura-SCA Holdings LLC, Centurion Casualty Company, Channel Islands Surgicenter L.P., Channel Islands Surgicenter Properties LLC, Charleston Surgery Center Limited Partnership, Charleston Surgery Properties LLC, Charlotte Surgery Center LLC, Charlotte Surgery Properties LTD., Charlotte-SC LLC, Chatham Orthopaedic ASC LLC, Childrens Surgery Center LLC, Citrus Regional Surgery Center L.P., Claims Management Systems Inc., Cleburne Surgical Center LLC, Clinical Partners of Colorado Springs LLC, Clinton Partners LLC, Clinica Alameda SpA, Clinica Bio Bio SpA, Clinica Ciudad del Mar S.A., Clinica Davila y Servicios Medicos S.p.A., Clinica Iquique S.A., Clinica Medico Cirurgica de Santa Tecla S.A., Clinica Portoazul S.A., Clinica San Felipe S.A., Clinica Santa Maria S.p.A., Clinica Sanchez Ferrer S.A., Clinica Vespucio S.A., Clinica del Country S.A.S., Coachella Valley Physicians of PrimeCare Inc., Coalition for Advanced Pharmacy Services Inc., Cobranzas Banmedica SpA, Cogent Healthcare IPA of New York Inc., Cogent Healthcare Inc., Cogent Healthcare Management of New York Inc., Cogent Healthcare of Arizona P.C., Cogent Healthcare of California Prof. Corp., Cogent Healthcare of Georgia P.C., Cogent Healthcare of Illinois LLC, Cogent Healthcare of Iowa P.C., Cogent Healthcare of Jackson MS LLC, Cogent Healthcare of Jacksonville LLC, Cogent Healthcare of Mississippi Inc., Cogent Healthcare of Missouri Inc., Cogent Healthcare of Montana P.C., Cogent Healthcare of New Jersey P.C., Cogent Healthcare of North Carolina P.C., Cogent Healthcare of Oregon P.C., Cogent Healthcare of Pennsylvania Inc., Cogent Healthcare of Pensacola L.L.C., Cogent Healthcare of Tennessee P.C., Cogent Healthcare of Virginia Inc., Cogent Healthcare of Washington P.C., Cogent Medical Care P.C., Cogent Patient Safety Organization Inc., Cogent/Endion Medical Care of New York P.C., Collaborative Care Holdings LLC, Collaborative Care Services Inc., Collaborative Realty LLC, Colmedica Medicina Prepagada S.A., Colonial Outpatient Surgery Center LLC, Colorado Innovative Physician Solutions Inc., Colorado Springs Surgery Center Ltd., Comfort Care Transportation LLC, Comprehensive Hospital Physicians of Florida Inc., ConnectYourCare Inc., ConnectYourCare LLC, Connecticut Surgery Center Limited Partnership, Connecticut Surgery Properties LLC, Connecticut Surgical Center LLC, Consorcio Regenero S.A., Constructora Inmobiliaria Magapoq S.A., Consumer Wellness Solutions Inc., Continuum Physicians Group Inc., Continuum Physicians Group of Washington PLLC, Cornell Surgicenter LLC, Cornerstone Surgery Center LLC, Cornerstone Surgicare LLC, Corpus Christi Endoscopy Center L.L.P., Country Scan Ltda., Critical Care Physician of New York P.C., Critical Care Physicians of Illinois LLC, Critical Care Physicians of New Jersey PC, Critical Care Physicians of Pennsylvania P.C., Cross Timbers Surgery Center LLC, Cypress Care Inc., DBP Services of New York IPA Inc., DSP Flint Real Estate LLC, DSP-Building C LLC, DTC Surgery Center LLC, DWIC of Tampa Bay Inc., Dallas Inpatient Specialist PLLC, Danbury Surgical Center L.P., Day-Op Surgery Consulting Company LLC, Definity Health, Dental Benefit Providers Inc., Dental Benefit Providers of California Inc., Dental Benefit Providers of Illinois Inc., Denton Endoscopy Surgery Center LLC, Denton Surgery Center LLC, Derry Surgical Center LLC, Diagnostico Ecotomografico Centromed Ltda., Diasnostico por Imagenes Centromed Ltda., Digestive Disease Center L.P., Dilab Medicina Nuclear Ltda., Diplomat Blocker LLC, Diplomat Corporate Properties LLC, Diplomat Pharmacy, Diplomat Pharmacy Inc., Diplomat Specialty Pharmacy Great Lakes Distribution Center LLC, Diplomat Specialty Pharmacy of Chicago LLC, Diplomat Specialty Pharmacy of Ft. Lauderdale LLC, Diplomat Specialty Pharmacy of Los Angeles County LLC, Distance Learning Network Inc., Divisadero Holdings LLC, DocASAP Inc., DocASAP India Technologies Private Limited, DocASAP US LLC, Doctor + S.A.C., Dry Creek Surgery Center LLC, Dublin Surgery Center LLC, Duluth Surgical Suites LLC, Durable Medical Equipment Inc., E Street Endoscopy LLC, EM Orange Tree LLC, EP Campus I LLC, EPIC Health Plan, EPIC Management Services LLC, East Bay Endoscopy Center L.P., East Brunswick Surgery Center LLC, Echo Locum Tenens Inc., Electronic Network Systems Inc., Elual Participacoes S.A., Emerald Coast Surgery Center L.P., Emisar Pharma Services LLC, Emmaus Holdings LLC, Emmaus Surgical Center LLC, Empire Physician Management Company LLC, Empremedica S. A., Endion Hospitalist North P.C., Endion Hospitalist of Western New York P.C., Endion Medical Healthcare P.C., Endion Medical Services P.C., Endoscopy Center Affiliates Inc., Enterprise Life Insurance Company, Equian, Equian LLC, Equian Parent Corp., Esho  Empresa de Servicos Hospitalares S.A., Everett MSO Inc., Excelsior Insurance Brokerage Inc., Executive Health Resources Inc., Executive Surgery Center L.L.C., Eye Clinic Oftalmologia Clinico Cirurgica e Diagnostico Ltda., Eye Specialists Surgery Centers LLC, FMG Holdings LLC, Family Health Care Services, Family Home Hospice Inc., Ferrell Physician Services P.C., Fideicomiso Clinica Barranquilla Portoazul FA-517, First Coast Orthopedic Center LLC, First Family Insurance LLC, Florence Surgery Center L.P., For Health Inc., For Health of Arizona Inc., Fort Sutter Medical Building a California Limited Partnership, Fort Worth Endoscopy Centers LLC, Fortified Provider Network Inc., Foundation Surgery Affiliate General of Huntingdon Valley LLC, Foundation Surgery Affiliate of Huntingdon Valley L.P., Franklin Surgical Center LLC, Freedom Life Insurance Company of America, Freeway Surgicenter of Houston LLC, Frontier Medex Tanzania Limited, FrontierMEDEX Inc., FrontierMEDEX Kenya Limited, FrontierMEDEX US Inc., Fundacion Banmedica, GLBESC LLC, GRANTS PASS SURGERY CENTER LLC, Gadsden Surgery Center LLC, Gainesville Surgery Center L.P., Gainesville Surgery Properties LLC, Genoa, Genoa Healthcare Inc., Genoa QoL Wholesale LLC, Genoa Technology Canada Inc., Genoa Technology Inc., Genoa Telepsychiatry Inc., Genoa of Arkansas LLC, Gladiolus Surgery Center L.L.C., Glenwood Surgical Center L.P., Glenwood-SC Inc., Global One Ventures LLC, Golden Gate Endoscopy Center LLC, Golden Outlook Inc., Golden Rule Financial Corporation, Golden Rule Insurance Company, Golden Triangle Surgicenter L.P., Grandview Surgery Center LTD., Greater New Haven ASC LLC, Greensboro Specialty Surgery Center LLC, Greenville Surgery Center LLC, Greenway Surgical Suites LLC, Grossmont Surgery Center L.P., Grove Place Surgery Center L.L.C., H&W Indemnity SPC Ltd., H.I. Investments Holding Company LLC, HCP ACO California LLC, HCentive Technology India Private Limited, HFHS-SCA Holdings LLC, HMG Holding Corporation, HMG Holdings LLC, HMP of Baltimore  USH P.C., Harken Health Insurance Company, Harrison Endo Surgical Center LLC, Hawthorn Place Outpatient Surgery Center L.P., Hays JV Partners LLC, Hays Surgery Center LLC, Health Care-ONE Insurance Agency Inc., Health Inventures Employment Solutions LLC, Health Inventures LLC, Health Plan of Nevada Inc., HealthCare Partners ASC-LB LLC, HealthCare Partners Affiliates Medical Group, HealthCare Partners Management Services California LLC, HealthCare Partners RE LLC, HealthEast Surgery Center-Maplewood LLC, HealthFirst IPA Inc., HealthMarkets Group Inc., HealthMarkets Inc., HealthMarkets Insurance Agency Inc., HealthMarkets LLC, HealthMarkets Services Inc., HealthSCOPE Holdings Inc., HealthScope Benefits Inc., Healthcare Solutions Inc., Healthplex America LLC, Healthplex Dental Services Inc., Healthplex I.P.A. Inc., Healthplex Inc., Healthplex Insurance Company, Healthplex of CT Inc., Healthplex of DC Inc., Healthplex of MD Inc., Healthplex of ME Inc., Healthplex of NC Inc., Healthplex of NJ Inc., Healthplex of TX Inc., Heartland Heart and Vascular LLC, Help Seguros de Vida S.A., Help Service S.A., Help SpA, Hemonefro  Hemodialise e Nefrologia Ltda, Highlands Ranch Healthcare LLC, Home Medical S.A., Honodav SpA, Hospice Inspiris Holdings Inc., Hospitais Associados de Pernambuco Ltda., Hospital Alvorada Taguatinga Ltda., Hospital Ana Costa S.A., Hospital Santa Helena S.A., Hospital de Clinicas de Jacarepagua Ltda., Hospitalist Medicine Physician of Broome County PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physician of New York - Binghamton P.C., Hospitalist Medicine Physician of New York - Buffalo P.C., Hospitalist Medicine Physician of New York - Newburgh P.C., Hospitalist Medicine Physician of New York - Nyack P.C., Hospitalist Medicine Physician of New York - Patchogue P.C., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Alabama  TCG Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Alabama  TCS Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Alaska  TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Alaska  TCS LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Arizona - Goodyear Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Arizona - Nogales Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Arizona - Phoenix II Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Arizona - Phoenix Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Arizona - Sierra Vista Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Arizona - Tucson II Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Arizona - Tucson Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Arizona  TCG Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Arizona  TCS Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Arkansas  TCG PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Arkansas  TCS PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Buncombe County PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - Apple Valley PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - Bakersfield PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - Camarillo PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - Crescent City PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - Fairfield PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - Fremont PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - Grass Valley PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - Jackson PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - Oceanside PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - Oxnard PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - Salinas PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - San Bernardino II PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - San Bernardino PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - San Leandro PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - Sonoma PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - Stockton II PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - Stockton PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - Thousand Oaks PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - Vacaville PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California  TCG PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California  TCS PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Colorado - Brighton PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Colorado - Denver PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Colorado  TCG PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Colorado  TCS PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Connecticut - Manchester LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Connecticut - Rockville LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Connecticut - Wallingford LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Connecticut LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Connecticut  TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Connecticut  TCS LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of DC PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of DC  TCG PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of DC  TCS PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Delaware  TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Delaware  TCS LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Florida - Ft. Lauderdale LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Florida - Jacksonville II LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Florida - Jacksonville LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Florida - Palm Coast LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Florida  TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Florida  TCS LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Fredericksburg LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Georgia - Atlanta PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Georgia - East Point PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Georgia - Lavonia PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Georgia - Savannah PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Georgia  TCG PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Georgia  TCS PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Hawaii - Kealakekua Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Hawaii  TCG Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Hawaii  TCS Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Idaho - Nampa PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Idaho  TCG PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Idaho  TCS PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Illinois - Downers Grove LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Illinois - Elmhurst LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Illinois - Rockford LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Illinois - Winfield LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Illinois  TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Illinois  TCS LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Indiana - Clinton LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Indiana - Mishawaka LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Indiana - Terre Haute LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Indiana LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Indiana  TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Indiana  TCS LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Iowa - Cedar Rapids PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Iowa - Mason City PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Iowa PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Iowa  TCG PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Iowa  TCS PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Kansas - Topeka LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Kansas - Wichita II LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Kansas - Wichita LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Kansas  TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Kansas  TCS LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Louisiana - Alexandria Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Louisiana - Bossier City Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Louisiana - Lake Charles Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Louisiana - Shreveport Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Louisiana  TCG Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Louisiana  TCS Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Maine - Bangor PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Maine - Lewiston PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Maine  TCG PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Maine  TCS PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Maryland - Cheverly PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Maryland - Cumberland PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Maryland - Frederick PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Maryland - Laurel PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Maryland - Rockville PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Maryland P.C., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Maryland  TCG PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Maryland  TCS PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Massachusetts - Brockton PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Massachusetts - Dorchester PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Massachusetts - Framingham PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Massachusetts - Holyoke PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Massachusetts - Natick PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Massachusetts - Norwood PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Massachusetts - Springfield PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Massachusetts - Stoughton PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Massachusetts - Taunton PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Massachusetts - Worcester PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Massachusetts  TCG PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Massachusetts  TCS PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Michigan - Alpena PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Michigan - Dowagiac PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Michigan - Escanaba PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Michigan - Grand Blanc PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Michigan - Grayling PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Michigan - Kalamazoo PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Michigan - Plainwell PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Michigan - Port Huron PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Michigan - Saginaw PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Michigan - Tawas City PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Michigan PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Michigan  TCG PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Michigan  TCS PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Minnesota  TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Minnesota  TCS LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Mississippi LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Mississippi  TCG Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Mississippi  TCS Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Missouri - Bridgeton Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Missouri - Richmond Heights Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Missouri  TCG Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Missouri  TCS Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Montana - Billings PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Montana - Butte PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Montana - Miles City PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Montana - Missoula PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Montana  TCG PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Montana  TCS PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Multiple Practice Sites LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Nebraska  TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Nebraska  TCS LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Nevada - Henderson Bessler PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Nevada - Henderson II Bessler PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Nevada - Las Vegas Bessler PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Nevada - Las Vegas II Bessler PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Nevada  TCG Bessler PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Nevada  TCS Bessler PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of New Hampshire  TCG PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of New Hampshire  TCS PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of New Jersey - Hackensack PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of New Jersey - Paterson PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of New Jersey - TCG PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of New Jersey  TCS PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of New Mexico - Clovis LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of New Mexico - Rio Rancho LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of New Mexico - TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of New Mexico - TCS LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of New York PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of North Carolina - Burlington PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of North Carolina - Clyde PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of North Carolina - Elizabeth City PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of North Carolina - Jacksonville PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of North Carolina - New Bern PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of North Carolina - Rocky Mount PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of North Carolina PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of North Carolina  TCG PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of North Carolina  TCS PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of North Dakota  TCG PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of North Dakota  TCS PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio - Akron Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio - Batavia Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio - Canton Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio - Cincinnati II Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio - Cincinnati III Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio - Cincinnati Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio - Circleville Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio - Columbus II Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio - Columbus Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio - Dover Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio - East Liverpool Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio - Fairfield Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio - Martins Ferry Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio - Westerville Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio - Youngstown Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio  TCG Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio  TCS Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Oklahoma - Oklahoma City LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Oklahoma  TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Oklahoma  TCS LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Oregon - Portland PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Oregon  TCG PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Oregon  TCS PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Pennsylvania P.C., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Pennsylvania  TCG PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Pennsylvania  TCS PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Rhode Island  TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Rhode Island  TCS LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Richland County Ltd., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of San Luis Obispo County Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of South Carolina - Aiken LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of South Carolina - Rock Hill LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of South Carolina  TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of South Carolina  TCS LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of South Dakota  TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of South Dakota  TCS LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Tennessee  Columbia PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Tennessee  Franklin PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Tennessee  TCG PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Tennessee  TCS PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Amarillo PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Atlanta PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Austin II PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Austin PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Bryan PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Burnet PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Corpus Christi II PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Corpus Christi PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Cypress PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Dallas PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - El Paso II PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - El Paso III PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - El Paso PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Fort Worth II PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Fort Worth PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Fredericksburg PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Houston PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Humble PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Kerrville PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Kyle PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Livingston PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Lubbock PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Lufkin PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Mount Pleasant PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Plainview PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Rockwall PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Round Rock PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - San Antonio II PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - San Antonio III PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - San Antonio IV PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - San Antonio PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - San Antonio V PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - San Antonio VI PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - San Antonio VII PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - San Marcos PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Texarkana PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Tyler PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas  TCG PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas  TCS PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Utah  TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Utah  TCS LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Vermont  TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Vermont  TCS LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Virginia - Alexandria LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Virginia - Front Royal II LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Virginia - Front Royal LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Virginia - Mechanicsville LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Virginia - Midlothian LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Virginia - Richmond II LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Virginia - Richmond LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Virginia - Winchester LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Virginia LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Virginia  TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Virginia  TCS LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington - Arlington PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington - Auburn PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington - Bellingham PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington - Bremerton PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington - Burien PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington - Coupeville PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington - Enumclaw PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington - Federal Way PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington - Gig Harbor PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington - Lakewood PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington - Mount Vernon PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington - Puyallup PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington - Tacoma II PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington - Tacoma III PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington - Tacoma PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington - Vancouver PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington County LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington  TCG PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington  TCS PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of West Virginia PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of West Virginia  Martinsburg PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of West Virginia  South Charleston PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of West Virginia  TCG PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of West Virginia  TCS PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of West Virginia  Wheeling PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Wisconsin Ltd., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Wyoming - Casper LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Wyoming  TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Wyoming  TCS LLC, Hospitalists Management Group LLC, Humedica, Humedica Inc., Hygeia Corporation, Hygeia Corporation Ontario, IEC Holdings LLC, IHD Holdings LLC, INOV8 Surgical at Memorial City LLC, INSPIRIS of Texas Physician Group, Illinois Independent Care Network LLC, Imagen Technologies Inc., Impel Consulting Experts L.L.C., Impel Management Services L.L.C., InTouch Pharmacy LLC, Indiana Care Organization LLC, Indiana Endoscopy Centers LLC, Inland Surgery Center L.P., Inmobiliaria Apoquindo 3001 S.A., Inmobiliaria Apoquindo 3600 Ltda., Inmobiliaria Apoquindo S.A., Inmobiliaria Clinica Santa Maria S.A., Inmobiliaria Vinamed Ltda., Inmobiliaria e Inversiones Alameda S.A., Inpatient Services P.C., Inpatient Specialists of California P.C., Inspiris, Inspiris Inc., Instituto Radium de Cammpinas Ltda, Inter-Hospital Physicians Association Inc., International Healthcare Services Inc., Inversiones Clinicas Santa Maria SpA, Ironman Holdco Inc., Ironman Intermediate Holdco LLC, Isapre Banmedica S.A., JPM Healthcare LLC, Johnston Surgicare L.P., Joliet Surgery Center Limited Partnership, Jordan Ridge Family Medicine LLC, Joyable Inc., Kansal Inc. A Professional Corporation, Knox Diagnostic Imaging Center LLC, Kokomo Outpatient Surgery Center LLC, LDI Holding Company LLC, LDI Management Services LLC, LGH-A/Golf ASTC L.L.C., LHC Group, La Esperanza del Peru S.A., Laboratorio ROE S.A., Laboratorios Medicos Amed Quilpue S.A., Landmark Group Holdings LLC, Landmark Health Holdings LLC, Landmark Health LLC, Landmark Health NY IPA LLC, Landmark Health NY PO LLC, Landmark Health Technologies Private Limited, Landmark Health of California LLC, Landmark Health of Massachusetts LLC, Landmark Health of North Carolina LLC, Landmark Health of Oregon LLC, Landmark Health of Pennsylvania LLC, Landmark Health of Washington LLC, Landmark India LLC, Landmark Intermediate Holdings LLC, Landmark MSO LLC, Landmark Medical of Idaho PC, Landmark Medical of Massachusetts PLLC, Landmark Medical of Tennessee PC, Landmark Primary Care LLC, Laser Acquisition Holdings III LLC, Leehar Distributors LLC, Lemhi Ventures Fund I LP, Lemhi Ventures Fund II LP, Level2 Medical Services P.C. Alaska, Lexington Surgery Center Ltd., Liberty Anesthesia Services LLC, LifePrint Health Inc., LifeWell. Ltd. Co., Lifeprint Accountable Care Organization LLC, Limestone Medical Center LLC, Litomedica S.A., Logan Surgical Suites LLC, Lotten-Eyes Oftalmologia Clinica e Cirurgica Ltda., Louisville S.C. Ltd., Louisville-SC Properties Inc., Loyola Ambulatory Surgery Center at Oakbrook Inc., Loyola Ambulatory Surgery Center at Oakbrook L.P., Lusiadas - Parcerias Cascais S.A., Lusiadas A.C.E., Lusiadas Algarve S.A., Lusiadas S.A., Lusiadas SGPS S.A., Lutheran Campus ASC LLC, MAMSI Life and Health Insurance Company, MCNA Health Care Holdings LLC, MCNA Insurance Company, MCNA Systems Corp., MD Ops Inc., MD-Individual Practice Association Inc., ME AHS UC LLC, MGH/SCA LLC, MHC Real Estate Holdings LLC, MIAMI SURGERY CENTER LLC, MSLA Management LLC, Main Line Spine Surgery Center LLC, Managed Care of North America Inc., Managed Physical Network Inc., Mansfield Endoscopy Center LLC, March Holdings Inc., March Vision Care IPA Inc., March Vision Care Inc., March Vision Care of Texas Inc., Marin Health Ventures LLC, Marin Specialty Surgery Center LLC, Marin Surgery Holdings Inc., Marlin Holding Company LLC, Maryland Ambulatory Centers LLC, Maryland-SCA Centers LLC, Massachusetts Assurance Company Ltd. PIC, Massachusetts Avenue Surgery Center LLC, McKenzie Surgery Center L.P., MedExpress Primary Care West Virginia Inc., MedExpress Urgent Care Alabama LLC, MedExpress Urgent Care Inc. - Ohio, MedExpress Urgent Care Maine Inc., MedExpress Urgent Care New Hampshire Inc., MedExpress Urgent Care of Boynton Beach LLC, MedSynergies, MedSynergies LLC, Medical Clinic of North Texas PLLC, Medical Hilfe S.A., Medical Support Los Angeles Inc., Medical Surgical Centers of America Inc., Medical Transportation Services LLC, Melbourne Surgery Center LLC, Memorial City Holdings LLC, Memorial City Partners LLC, Memorial Houston Surgery Center LLC, MemorialCare Surgical Center at Orange Coast LLC, MemorialCare Surgical Center at Saddleback LLC, Mesquite Liberty LLC, Metro I Stone Management Ltd., Mid Atlantic Medical Services, Mid-West National Life Insurance Company of Tennessee, Midlands Orthopaedics Surgery Center LLC, Midwest Center for Day Surgery LLC, Mile High SurgiCenter LLC, Mississippi Medical Plaza L.C., Mobile Medical Services of New Jersey PC, Mobile-SC LTD., Modality Accountable Care Organisation Limited, Moen M.D. P.C., Mohawk Surgery Center LLC, Monarch Management Services Inc., Montgomery Surgery Center Limited Partnership, Monument Health LLC, Moore Orthopaedic Clinic Outpatient Surgery Center LLC, Morris County Surgical Center LLC, Mt. Pleasant Surgery Center L.P., Multiangio Ltda., Murrells Inlet ASC LLC, Muskogee Surgical Investors LLC, Mustang Razorback Holdings Inc., My Wellness Solutions LLC, NAMM Holdings Inc., NPN IPA Washington PLLC, NSC Channel Islands LLC, NSC Greensboro LLC, NSC Greensboro West LLC, NSC Lancaster LLC, NSC Seattle Inc., NSC Upland LLC, Naperville Surgical Centre LLC, National Foundation Life Insurance Company, National Pacific Dental Inc., National Surgery Centers LLC, Navigator Health Inc., Nebraska Spine Hospital LLC, Neighborhood Health Partnership Inc., Netwerkes LLC, Nevada Pacific Dental, New Orleans Regional Physician Hospital Organization L.L.C., New West Physicians Inc., New York Proton Management LLC, Newton Holdings LLC, Niagara Hospitalist P.C., Nomad Buyer Inc., North American Medical Management California Inc., North Coast Surgery Center Ltd. a California Limited Partnership, North Dallas Surgical Center LLC, North Kitsap Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, North Puget Sound Oncology Equipment Leasing Company LLC, Northern Nevada Health Network Inc., Northern Rockies Surgery Center L.P., Northern Rockies Surgicenter Inc., Northern Utah Surgery Center LLC, Northwest Hills JV Partners LLC, Northwest Medical Group Alliance LLC, Northwest Spine and Laser Surgery Center LLC, Northwest Surgicare LLC, Northwest Surgicare Ltd. an Illinois Limited Partnership, OC Cardiology Practice Partners LLC, OCC MSO LLC, OSB  Tecnologia e Servicos de Suporte Lda., Omesa SpA, OmniClaim LLC, Oncocare S.A.C., One World Surgery, Ophthalmology Surgery Center of Dallas LLC, Optimum Choice Inc., Optum Bank Inc., Optum Biometrics Inc., Optum Care Inc., Optum Care Networks Inc., Optum Care Services Company, Optum Care of New York Management Inc., Optum Clinics Holdings Inc., Optum Clinics Intermediate Holdings Inc., Optum Compounding Services LLC, Optum Digital Health Holdings LLC, Optum Direct To Consumer Inc., Optum Financial Inc., Optum Frontier Therapies Holdings LLC, Optum Frontier Therapies II LLC, Optum Frontier Therapies LLC, Optum Genomics Inc., Optum Global Solutions Colombia S.A.S., Optum Global Solutions India Private Limited, Optum Global Solutions International B.V., Optum Global Solutions Philippines Inc., Optum Government Solutions Inc., Optum Growth Partners Holdings Inc., Optum Growth Partners LLC, Optum Health & Technology Holdings US Inc., Optum Health & Technology Hong Kong Limited, Optum Health & Technology India Private Limited, Optum Health & Technology Servicos do Brasil Ltda., Optum Health & Technology Singapore Pte. Ltd., Optum Health & Technology US LLC, Optum Health Plan of California, Optum Health Services Canada Ltd., Optum Health Solutions Australia Pty Ltd, Optum Health Solutions UK Limited, Optum Health and Technology FZ-LLC, Optum Healthcare of Illinois Inc., Optum Hospice Pharmacy Services LLC, Optum Inc., Optum Infusion Services 100 Inc., Optum Infusion Services 101 Inc., Optum Infusion Services 103 LLC, Optum Infusion Services 200 Inc., Optum Infusion Services 201 Inc., Optum Infusion Services 202 Inc., Optum Infusion Services 203 Inc., Optum Infusion Services 204 Inc., Optum Infusion Services 205 Inc., Optum Infusion Services 206 Inc., Optum Infusion Services 207 Inc., Optum Infusion Services 208 Inc., Optum Infusion Services 209 Inc., Optum Infusion Services 301 LP, Optum Infusion Services 302 LLC, Optum Infusion Services 305 LLC, Optum Infusion Services 308 LLC, Optum Infusion Services 401 LLC, Optum Infusion Services 402 LLC, Optum Infusion Services 403 LLC, Optum Infusion Services 404 LLC, Optum Infusion Services 500 Inc., Optum Infusion Services 501 Inc., Optum Infusion Services 550 LLC, Optum Infusion Services 551 LLC, Optum Infusion Services 553 LLC, Optum Infusion Services 554 Inc., Optum Insurance of Ohio Inc., Optum Labs Inc., Optum Labs LLC, Optum Life Sciences Canada Inc., Optum Management Consulting Shanghai Co. Ltd., Optum Networks of New Jersey Inc., Optum Operations Ireland Unlimited Company, Optum Oregon MSO LLC, Optum Palliative and Hospice Care of Pennsylvania Inc., Optum Palliative and Hospice Care of Texas Inc., Optum Perks LLC, Optum Pharma Services Holdings Inc., Optum Pharmacy 601 LLC, Optum Pharmacy 700 LLC, Optum Pharmacy 701 LLC, Optum Pharmacy 702 LLC, Optum Pharmacy 704 Inc., Optum Pharmacy 705 LLC, Optum Pharmacy 706 Inc., Optum Pharmacy 707 Inc., Optum Pharmacy 800 Inc., Optum Pharmacy 803 Inc., Optum Pharmacy 805 Inc., Optum Pharmacy 806 Inc., Optum Public Sector Solutions Inc., Optum Rocket LLC, Optum SCA CS JV Holdings LLC, Optum Senior Services LLC, Optum Services Inc., Optum Services Ireland Limited, Optum Services Puerto Rico LLC, Optum Solutions UK Holdings Limited, Optum Technology LLC, Optum UK Solutions Group Limited, Optum Venture Global Partners II LP, Optum Venture Global Partners LP, Optum Venture Partners II LP, Optum Venture Partners III LP, Optum Venture Partners LP, Optum Washington Network LLC, Optum Women's and Children's Health LLC, Optum of New York Inc., Optum360 LLC, Optum360 Services Inc., Optum360 Solutions LLC, OptumCare ACO New Mexico LLC, OptumCare ACO West LLC, OptumCare Clinical Trials LLC, OptumCare Colorado ASC LLC, OptumCare Colorado LLC, OptumCare Colorado Springs LLC, OptumCare Endoscopy Center New Mexico LLC, OptumCare Florida CI LLC, OptumCare Florida LLC, OptumCare Holdings Colorado LLC, OptumCare Holdings LLC, OptumCare Management LLC, OptumCare New Mexico LLC, OptumCare New York IPA Inc., OptumCare Portland LLC, OptumCare South Florida LLC, OptumCare Specialty Practices LLC, OptumHealth Care Solutions LLC, OptumHealth Holdings LLC, OptumHealth International B.V., OptumInsight Holdings LLC, OptumInsight Inc., OptumInsight India Private Limited, OptumInsight Life Sciences Inc., OptumRx Administrative Services LLC, OptumRx Discount Card Services LLC, OptumRx Group Holdings Inc., OptumRx Health Solutions LLC, OptumRx Holdings I LLC, OptumRx Holdings LLC, OptumRx Home Delivery of Ohio LLC, OptumRx IPA III Inc., OptumRx Inc., OptumRx NY IPA Inc., OptumRx PBM of Illinois Inc., OptumRx PBM of Maryland LLC, OptumRx PBM of Pennsylvania LLC, OptumRx PBM of Wisconsin LLC, OptumRx PD of Pennsylvania LLC, OptumRx Pharmacy Inc., OptumRx Pharmacy of Nevada Inc., OptumRx of Pennsylvania LLC, OptumServe Technology Services Inc., Oregon Healthcare Resources LLC, Oregon Outpatient Surgery Center LLC, Orlando Center for Outpatient Surgery L.P., OrthoNet Holdings Inc., OrthoNet LLC, OrthoNet New York IPA Inc., OrthoNet West Inc., OrthoNet of the South Inc., OrthoWest MSO LLC, Orthology Inc., Orthopedic Center of Palm Beach County LLC, Orthopedic Surgery Center of Palm Beach County LLC, Orthopro Management LLC, Ovations Inc., Owensboro Ambulatory Surgical Facility Ltd., Oxford Benefit Management Inc., Oxford Health Insurance Inc., Oxford Health Plans CT Inc., Oxford Health Plans LLC, Oxford Health Plans NJ Inc., Oxford Health Plans NY Inc., P2P Link LLC, PCCCV Inc., PHC Subsidiary Holdings LLC, PHYSICIANS DAY SURGERY CENTER LLC, PMI Acquisition LLC, PMSI Holdings LLC, PMSI Settlement Solutions LLC, POMCO Inc., POMCO Network Inc., PPH Holdings LLC, PPH Management Company L.L.C., PPH-Columbia Inc., PPH-Gardendale Inc., PS Center LLC, PacifiCare Health Systems, PacifiCare Life Assurance Company, PacifiCare Life and Health Insurance Company, PacifiCare of Arizona Inc., PacifiCare of Colorado Inc., Pacific Cardiovascular Associates Medical Group Inc., Pacific Casualty Company Inc., Pacifico S.A. Entidad Prestadora de Salud, Panama City Surgery Center LLC, Park Hill Surgery Center LLC, Parkway Surgery Center LLC, Patient Care Associates L.L.C., PatientsLikeMe, Patrimonio Autonomo Nueva Clinica, Payment Resolution Services LLC, Peninsula Eye Surgery Center LLC, Penzo Enterprises LLC, Peoples Health, Peoples Health Inc., Perham Physical Therapy LTD, Perimeter Center for Outpatient Surgery L.P., Pharmaceutical Technologies LLC, Physician Alliance of the Rockies LLC, Physicians Health Choice of Texas LLC, Physicians Health Plan of Maryland Inc., Physicians' Surgery Center of Downey LLC, Pinnacle III LLC, Plano de Saude Ana Costa Ltda., Plus One Health Management Puerto Rico Inc., Plus One Holdings Inc., Pocono Ambulatory Surgery Center Limited, Polar II Fundo de Investimento em Participacoes Multiestrategia, Polo Holdco LLC, Pomerado Outpatient Surgical Center Inc., Pomerado Outpatient Surgical Center L.P., Post-Acute Care Center for Research LLC, Practice Partners in Healthcare LLC, Preferred Care Network Inc., Preferred Care Network of Florida Inc., Preferred Care Partners Holding Corp., Preferred Care Partners Inc., Preferred Care Partners Medical Group Inc., PreferredOne, PreferredOne Administrative Services Inc., PreferredOne Insurance Company, Premier Choice ACO Inc., Premier Surgery Center of Louisville L.P., Premiere Medical Resources LLC, Presidio Surgery Center LLC, Prime Health Inc., PrimeCare Medical Network Inc., PrimeCare of Citrus Valley Inc., PrimeCare of Corona Inc., PrimeCare of Hemet Valley Inc., PrimeCare of Inland Valley Inc., PrimeCare of Moreno Valley Inc., PrimeCare of Redlands Inc., PrimeCare of Riverside Inc., PrimeCare of San Bernardino Inc., PrimeCare of Sun City Inc., PrimeCare of Temecula Inc., PrimeDoc St. Francis P.C., PrimeDoc of Richmond P.C., ProHEALTH Care Associates L.L.P., ProHEALTH Care Associates of New Jersey LLP, ProHEALTH Medical Management LLC, ProHealth Physicians ACO LLC, ProHealth Physicians Inc., ProHealth Proton Center Management LLC, ProHealth/CareMount Dental Management LLC, Procura Management Inc., Professional Coverage Services PLLC, Progressive Enterprises Holdings Inc., Progressive Medical LLC, Promotora Country S.A., Pronounced Health Solutions Inc., Prosemedic S.A.C., Prospero Benefits Management LLC, Prospero Care Management LLC, Prospero Management Services LLC, Providence & SCA Development LLC, Providence & SCA Off-Campus Holdings LLC, Providence & SCA On-Campus Holdings LLC, Providence & SCA Outreach Markets Holdings LLC, Pulse Platform LLC, QoL Acquisition Holdings Corp., R Cubed Inc., RABessler M.D. P.C., ROC Surgery LLC, ROCS Holdings LLC, RX Ricardo Campos Ltda., Rally Health Inc., ReMedics LLC, Real Appeal Inc., Redding Surgery Center LLC, Redlands Ambulatory Surgery Center, Redlands-SCA Surgery Centers Inc., Reliant MSO LLC, Reliant Medical Group Inc., Reliant Medical Group The Endoscopy Center LLC, Research Surgical Center LLC, Resonancia Magnetica de Colombia Ltda., Resonancia Magnetica del Country S.A., RightCare Solutions Inc., River Valley ASC LLC, Riverside Corporate Wellness LLC, Riverside Electronic Healthcare Resources Inc., Riverside Medical Management LLC, Riverside Surgical Center of Meadowlands LLC, Riverside Surgical Center of Newark LLC, Robert A. Bessler MD PLLC, Rockville Eye Surgery Center LLC, Rocky Mountain Health Maintenance Organization Incorporated, Rush Oak Brook Surgery Center LLC, SC Affiliates LLC, SCA AHN JV Holdings LLC, SCA Alaska Surgery Center inc., SCA Athens LLC, SCA Austin Holdings LLC, SCA Austin Medical Center Holdings LLC, SCA Aventura Holdings LLC, SCA BOSC Holdings LLC, SCA Bloomfield Holdings LLC, SCA Cedar Park Holdings LLC, SCA Clifton LLC, SCA Colorado Springs Holdings LLC, SCA Community Service Foundation, SCA Cottonwood Holdings LLC, SCA Danbury Surgical Center LLC, SCA Denver Holdings LLC, SCA Development LLC, SCA Duluth Holdings LLC, SCA Duncanville Holdings LLC, SCA Duncanville MSO LLC, SCA ESSC Holdings LLC, SCA Englewood Holdings LLC, SCA Global One Holdings LLC, SCA Greenway Holdings LLC, SCA Grove Creek Holdings LLC, SCA Guilford Holdings LLC, SCA Hays Holdings LLC, SCA Health Value Enterprise LLC, SCA Heartland Holdings LLC, SCA High Point Holdings LLC, SCA HoldCo Inc., SCA Holding Company Inc., SCA Holdings Inc., SCA IEC Holdings LLC, SCA Indiana Holdings LLC, SCA Lutheran Holdings LLC, SCA Maple Grove Holdings LLC, SCA Mohawk Holdings LLC, SCA Murrells Inlet LLC, SCA Northern Utah Holdings LLC, SCA Northwest Holdings LLC, SCA Outside New Jersey LLC, SCA Pacific Holdings Inc., SCA Pacific Surgery Holdings LLC, SCA Palisades Holdings LLC, SCA Pennsylvania Holdings LLC, SCA Pinnacle Holdings LLC, SCA Premier Surgery Center of Louisville LLC, SCA Providence Holdings LLC, SCA ROCS Holdings LLC, SCA Rockledge JV LLC, SCA Rush Oak Brook Holdings LLC, SCA SSSC Holdings LLC, SCA Sage Medical LLC, SCA Sage Medical MSO LLC, SCA San Diego Holdings LLC, SCA Skyway Holdings LLC, SCA South Ogden Holdings LLC, SCA Southwestern PA LLC, SCA Specialists of Florida LLC, SCA Specialty Holdings of Connecticut LLC, SCA Stonegate Holdings LLC, SCA Surgery Holdings LLC, SCA Surgicare of Laguna Hills LLC, SCA Teammate Support Network, SCA West Health Holdings LLC, SCA Westgreen Holdings LLC, SCA Woodbury Holdings LLC, SCA eCode Solutions Private Limited, SCA of Clarksville Inc., SCA-Albuquerque Surgery Properties Inc., SCA-Alliance LLC, SCA-Anne Arundel LLC, SCA-Applecare Partners LLC, SCA-Bethesda LLC, SCA-Blue Ridge LLC, SCA-Bonita Springs LLC, SCA-Brandon LLC, SCA-Castle Rock LLC, SCA-Central Florida LLC, SCA-Charleston LLC, SCA-Chatham LLC, SCA-Chevy Chase LLC, SCA-Citrus Inc., SCA-Colonial Partners LLC, SCA-Colorado Springs LLC, SCA-Connecticut Partners LLC, SCA-DRY CREEK LLC, SCA-Davenport LLC, SCA-Denver LLC, SCA-Denver Physicians Holdings LLC, SCA-Derry LLC, SCA-Doral LLC, SCA-Downey LLC, SCA-Dublin LLC, SCA-Encinitas Inc., SCA-Eugene Inc., SCA-First Coast LLC, SCA-Florence LLC, SCA-Fort Collins Inc., SCA-Fort Walton Inc., SCA-Franklin LLC, SCA-Frederick LLC, SCA-Freeway Holdings LLC, SCA-Ft. Myers LLC, SCA-GRANTS PASS LLC, SCA-Gainesville LLC, SCA-Gladiolus LLC, SCA-Glenwood Holdings LLC, SCA-Grove Place LLC, SCA-Hagerstown LLC, SCA-Hamden LLC, SCA-Hilton Head LLC, SCA-Honolulu LLC, SCA-Houston Executive LLC, SCA-IT Holdings LLC, SCA-Illinois LLC, SCA-JPM Holdings LLC, SCA-Kissing Camels Holdings LLC, SCA-MC VBP Inc., SCA-Main Street LLC, SCA-Marina del Rey LLC, SCA-Mecklenburg Development Corp., SCA-Memorial City LLC, SCA-Memorial LLC, SCA-Merritt LLC, SCA-Midlands LLC, SCA-Midway Management LLC, SCA-Mobile LLC, SCA-Mokena LLC, SCA-Morris Avenue LLC, SCA-Morris County LLC, SCA-Mt. Pleasant LLC, SCA-Naperville LLC, SCA-Naples LLC, SCA-New Jersey LLC, SCA-Newport Beach LLC, SCA-Northeast Georgia Health LLC, SCA-PORTLAND LLC, SCA-Palm Beach LLC, SCA-Palm Beach MSO Holdings LLC, SCA-Panama City Holdings LLC, SCA-Paoli LLC, SCA-Phoenix LLC, SCA-Pocono LLC, SCA-Practice Partners Holdings LLC, SCA-River Valley LLC, SCA-Riverside LLC, SCA-Riverside Partners LLC, SCA-Rockville LLC, SCA-Sacred Heart Holdings LLC, SCA-San Diego Inc., SCA-San Luis Obispo LLC, SCA-Sand Lake LLC, SCA-Santa Rosa Inc., SCA-Somerset LLC, SCA-South Jersey LLC, SCA-Sparta LLC, SCA-Spartanburg Holdings LLC, SCA-St. Louis Holdings LLC, SCA-St. Louis LLC, SCA-St. Lucie LLC, SCA-SurgiCare LLC, SCA-Swiftpath LLC, SCA-VERTA LLC, SCA-VLR Holdings Company LLC, SCA-Wake Forest LLC, SCA-Western Connecticut LLC, SCA-Westover Hills LLC, SCA-Winchester LLC, SCA-Winter Park Inc., SCA-Woodlands Holdings LLC, SCAI Holdings LLC, SCLHS-SCA Holdings LLC, SCP Specialty Infusion LLC, SHC Atlanta LLC, SHC Austin Inc., SHC Hawthorn Inc., SHC Melbourne Inc., SJ East Campus ASC LLC, SRPS LLC, SSSC Holdings LLC, SVHS-SCA Florida JV LLC, Sacred Heart ASC LLC, Saden S.A., Sage Medical Prof. LLC, Salem JV Holdings LLC, Salem Surgery Center LLC, Salveo Specialty Pharmacy Inc., San Diego Endoscopy Center, San Diego Sports and Minimally Invasive Surgery Center LLC, San Francisco Endoscopy Center LLC, San Luis Obispo Surgery Center a California Limited Partnership, Sand Lake SurgiCenter LLC, Santa Barbara Endoscopy Center LLC, Santa Cruz Endoscopy Center LLC, Santa Helena Assistencia Medica S.A., Santa Rosa Surgery Center L.P., Santos Administracao e Participacoes S.A., Sanvello Health Holdings LLC, Sanvello Health Inc., Sanvello Health Limited, Scanner Centromed S.A., Seashore Surgical Institute L.L.C., Seisa Servicos Integrados de Saude Ltda., Senate Street Surgery Center LLC, Senior Benefits L.L.C., Serquinox Holdings LLC, Servicios Integrados de Salud Ltda., Servicios Medicos Amed Quilpue S.A., Servicios Medicos Bio Bio Ltda., Servicios Medicos Ciudad del Mar Ltda., Servicios Medicos Santa Maria Ltda., Servicios Medicos Vespucio Ltda., Servicios de Entrenamiento en Competencias Clinicas Ltda., Serviclinica Inmobiliaria S.A., Serviclinica S.A. Ex Los Leones La Calera, Servisalud Inmobiliaria S.A., Servisalud S.A. Ex Los Carrera Quilpue, Shark Holdings P.C., Sierra Dental Plan Inc., Sierra Health Services Inc, Sierra Health Services Inc., Sierra Health and Life Insurance Company Inc., Sierra Health-Care Options Inc., Sierra Home Medical Products Inc., Sierra Nevada Administrators Inc., Sistema de Administracion Hospitalaria S.A.C., Small Business Insurance Advisors Inc., Sobam  Centro Medico Hospitalar S.A., Sociedad de Inversiones Santa Maria SpA, Solstice Administration Services Inc., Solstice Administrators Inc., Solstice Administrators of Alabama Inc., Solstice Administrators of Arizona Inc., Solstice Administrators of Missouri Inc., Solstice Administrators of North Carolina Inc., Solstice Administrators of Texas Inc., Solstice Benefit Services Inc., Solstice Benefits Inc., Solstice Health Insurance Company, Solstice Healthplans Inc., Solstice Healthplans of Arizona Inc., Solstice Healthplans of Colorado Inc., Solstice Healthplans of New Jersey Inc., Solstice Healthplans of Ohio Inc., Solstice Healthplans of Tennessee Inc., Solstice Healthplans of Texas Inc., Solstice of Illinois Inc., Solstice of Minnesota Inc., Solstice of New York Inc., Solutran LLC, Somerset Outpatient Surgery L.L.C., Sound Inpatient Physicians Inc., Sound Inpatient Physicians Medical Group Inc., Sound Inpatient Physicians of Ohio LLC, Sound Inpatient Physicians of Texas I Inc., Sound Inpatient Physicians  Michigan PLLC, Sound Intensivists of Nevada RBessler M.D. PLLC, Sound Kenwood Hospitalists of Cincinnati Inc., Sound Kenwood Hospitalists of Cincinnati LLC, Sound Physicians Advisory Services Inc., Sound Physicians Alaska Hospitalist Group LLC, Sound Physicians Anesthesiology of Texas PLLC, Sound Physicians Emergency Medicine of Arizona Inc., Sound Physicians Emergency Medicine of Georgia P.C., Sound Physicians Emergency Medicine of Illinois LLC, Sound Physicians Emergency Medicine of Kansas LLC, Sound Physicians Emergency Medicine of Kentucky PLLC, Sound Physicians Emergency Medicine of Louisiana Inc., Sound Physicians Emergency Medicine of Michigan PLLC, Sound Physicians Emergency Medicine of Nevada Bessler PLLC, Sound Physicians Emergency Medicine of South Carolina LLC, Sound Physicians Emergency Medicine of Southern California P.C., Sound Physicians Emergency Medicine of Texas PLLC, Sound Physicians Emergency Medicine of Washington PLLC, Sound Physicians Emergency Medicine of West Virginia PLLC, Sound Physicians Holdings LLC, Sound Physicians Intensivists of Arizona Inc., Sound Physicians Intensivists of Georgia PC, Sound Physicians Intensivists of South Carolina LLC, Sound Physicians Intensivists of Virginia LLC, Sound Physicians Intensivists of Washington PLLC, Sound Physicians Palliative Care of Maryland P.C., Sound Physicians Telemedicine Inc., Sound Physicians of Florida IV LLC, Sound Physicians of Georgia III P.C., Sound Physicians of Hawaii Inc., Sound Physicians of Idaho PLLC, Sound Physicians of Illinois LLC, Sound Physicians of Indiana LLC, Sound Physicians of Iowa PLLC, Sound Physicians of Kankakee Illinois LLC, Sound Physicians of Massachusetts II P.C., Sound Physicians of Massachusetts Inc., Sound Physicians of New Jersey LLC, Sound Physicians of New York PLLC, Sound Physicians of North Carolina PLLC, Sound Physicians of South Carolina LLC, Sound Physicians of Wyoming LLC, South Arlington Surgical Providers LLC, South County Surgical Center LLC, South Sound Inpatient Physicians PLLC, Southern California Medical Practice Concepts LLC, Southland Hospitalists P.C., Southwest Medical Associates Inc., Southwest Michigan Health Network Inc., Southwest Surgery Center LLC, Southwest Surgical Center LLC, Space Coast Surgical Center Ltd., Spartanburg Surgery Center LLC, Specialists in Urology Surgery Center LLC, Specialized Pharmaceuticals Inc., Specialty Benefits LLC, Specialty Billing Solutions LLC, Specialty Surgical Center LLC, Spectera Inc., Spectera of New York IPA Inc., Sports and Spinal Physical Therapy Inc., St. Cloud Outpatient Surgery Ltd. a Minnesota Limited Partnership, St. Cloud Surgical Center LLC, St. Louis Cardiovascular Institute LLC, St. Louis Specialty Surgical Center LLC, Stonegate JV Partners LLC, Stonegate Surgery Center L.P., Summer Street ASC LLC, SunSurgery LLC, Surgery Center Holding LLC, Surgery Center at Cherry Creek LLC, Surgery Center at Cottonwood LLC, Surgery Center at Grove Creek LLC, Surgery Center at Kissing Camels LLC, Surgery Center at South Ogden LLC, Surgery Center at St. Vincent LLC, Surgery Center of Boca Raton Inc., Surgery Center of Colorado Springs LLC, Surgery Center of Des Moines LLC, Surgery Center of Easton LLC, Surgery Center of Ellicott City Inc., Surgery Center of Fairfield County LLC, Surgery Center of Fort Collins LLC, Surgery Center of Lexington LLC, Surgery Center of Louisville LLC, Surgery Center of Maui LLC, Surgery Center of Mt. Scott LLC, Surgery Center of Muskogee LLC, Surgery Center of Rockville L.L.C., Surgery Center of Southern Pines LLC, Surgery Center of The Woodlands LLC, Surgery Centers of Des Moines Ltd. an Iowa Limited Partnership, Surgery Centers-West Holdings LLC, Surgical Care Affiliates, Surgical Care Affiliates LLC, Surgical Care Affiliates Political Action Committee, Surgical Care Partners of Melbourne LLC, Surgical Caregivers of Fort Worth LLC, Surgical Center of Greensboro LLC, Surgical Center of San Diego LLC, Surgical Center of South Jersey Limited Partnership, Surgical Center of Tuscaloosa Holdings LLC, Surgical Eye Experts LLC, Surgical Health LLC, Surgical Health of Orlando LLC, Surgical Hospital Holdings of Oklahoma LLC, Surgical Management Solutions LLC, Surgicare LLC, Surgicare of Central Jersey LLC, Surgicare of Jackson LLC, Surgicare of Jackson Ltd. a Mississippi Limited Partnership, Surgicare of Joliet Inc., Surgicare of La Veta Inc., Surgicare of La Veta Ltd. a California Limited Partnership, Surgicare of Minneapolis LLC, Surgicare of Minneapolis Ltd. a Minnesota Limited Partnership, Surgicare of Mobile LLC, Surgicare of Mobile Ltd., Surgicare of Oceanside Inc., Surgicare of Owensboro LLC, Surgicare of Salem LLC, Surgicenters of Southern California Inc., Symphonix Health Holdings LLC, T.M. Carr M.D. P.C., THE SURGICAL CENTER OF THE TREASURE COAST L.L.C., THR-SCA Holdings LLC, TeamMD Holdings Inc., TeamMD Iowa Inc., TeamMD Physicians of Texas Inc., TeamUP Insurance Services Inc., Tecnologia de Informacion en Salud S.A., Texas Health Craig Ranch Surgery Center LLC, Texas Health Flower Mound Orthopedic Surgery Center LLC, Texas Health Orthopedic Surgery Center Alliance LLC, Texas Health Surgery Center Alliance LLC, Texas Health Surgery Center Bedford LLC, Texas Health Surgery Center Chisholm Trail LLC, Texas Health Surgery Center Irving LLC, Texas Health Surgery Center Las Colinas LLC, Texas Health Surgery Center Preston Plaza LLC, Texas Health Surgery Center Rockwall LLC, Texas Health Surgery Center Southwest Fort Worth LLC, Texas Health Surgery Center Waxahachie LLC, Texas Health Surgery Center Willow Park LLC, The Advisory Board Company, The Alaska Hospitalist Group LLC, The Chesapeake Life Insurance Company, The Eye Surgery Center of the Carolinas L.P., The Intensivist Group of Langhorne LLC, The Lewin Group Inc., The Outpatient Surgery Center of Hilton Head LLC, The Polyclinic MSO LLC, The Surgery Center of Easton L.P., The Surgical Center of Connecticut LLC, Thomas Johnson Surgery Center LLC, Three Rivers Holdings Inc., Three Rivers Surgical Care L.P., Tmesys LLC, Topimagem Diagnostico por Imagem Ltda., Touchpoint Health Plan, Trails Edge Surgery Center LLC, Trauma Surgery Affiliates LLC, Travel Express Incorporated, Treasure Valley Emerald Properties LLC, Treasure Valley Hospital Limited Partnership, Tri-City Medical Center ASC Operators LLC, Tri-County Surgery Center LLC, Trinity Cardiovascular Care PLLC, Tufts Health Freedom Insurance Company, Tufts Health Freedom Plans Inc., Tuscaloosa Surgical Center L.P., U.S. Behavioral Health Plan California, UCSD Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, UCSD Center for Surgery of Encinitas L.P., UCSD Surgical Center of San Diego LLC, UCSD-SCA Holdings I LLC, UCSD-SCA Holdings II LLC, UHC Finance Ireland Unlimited Company, UHC International Services Inc., UHC of California, UHCG Holdings Ireland Limited, UHCG Services Ireland Limited, UHCG  FZE, UHG Brasil Participacoes S.A., UHG Holdings UK IV Limited, UHG Holdings UK V Limited, UHG Holdings UK VI Limited, UHIC Holdings Inc., UMR Inc., UPHT-SCA Holdings LLC, USHEALTH Academy Inc., USHEALTH Administrators LLC, USHEALTH Advisors LLC, USHEALTH Career Agency Inc., USHEALTH Funding Inc., USHEALTH Group Inc., USMD ASC IV1 LLC, USMD ASC IV2 LLC, USMD Administrative Services L.L.C., USMD Affiliated Services, USMD Holdings Inc., USMD Hospital at Arlington L.P., USMD Hospital at Fort Worth L.P., USMD Inc., USMD PPM LLC, Unidad Medica Diagnostico S.A., Unimerica Insurance Company, Unimerica Life Insurance Company of New York, Unison Health Plan of Delaware Inc., United Behavioral Health, United Behavioral Health of New York I.P.A. Inc., United Group Reinsurance Inc., United Health Foundation, United HealthCare Services Inc., United Medical Park ASC LLC, United Resource Networks IPA of New York Inc., United in Advancing Health Equity Foundation, UnitedHealth Advisors LLC, UnitedHealth Group Employee Assistance Fund, UnitedHealth Group Incorporated, UnitedHealth Group International Finance Ireland Unlimited Company, UnitedHealth International Inc., UnitedHealth Military & Veterans Services LLC, UnitedHealthcare Benefits Plan of California, UnitedHealthcare Benefits of Texas Inc., UnitedHealthcare Children's Foundation Inc., UnitedHealthcare Community Plan Inc., UnitedHealthcare Community Plan of California Inc., UnitedHealthcare Community Plan of Georgia Inc., UnitedHealthcare Community Plan of Ohio Inc., UnitedHealthcare Community Plan of Texas L.L.C., UnitedHealthcare Consulting & Assistance Service Beijing Co. Ltd., UnitedHealthcare Europe S.a r.l., UnitedHealthcare Global Medical UK Limited, UnitedHealthcare Inc., UnitedHealthcare Insurance Company, UnitedHealthcare Insurance Company of America, UnitedHealthcare Insurance Company of Illinois, UnitedHealthcare Insurance Company of New York, UnitedHealthcare Insurance Company of the River Valley, UnitedHealthcare Insurance Designated Activity Company, UnitedHealthcare Integrated Services Inc., UnitedHealthcare International Asia LLC, UnitedHealthcare International I B.V., UnitedHealthcare International II S.a r.l., UnitedHealthcare International III B.V., UnitedHealthcare International III S.a r.l., UnitedHealthcare International IV S.a r.l., UnitedHealthcare International VII S.a r.l., UnitedHealthcare International VIII S.a r.l., UnitedHealthcare International X S.a r.l., UnitedHealthcare Life Insurance Company, UnitedHealthcare Parekh Insurance TPA Private Limited, UnitedHealthcare Plan of the River Valley Inc., UnitedHealthcare Service LLC, UnitedHealthcare Specialty Benefits LLC, UnitedHealthcare of Alabama Inc., UnitedHealthcare of Arizona Inc., UnitedHealthcare of Arkansas Inc., UnitedHealthcare of Colorado Inc., UnitedHealthcare of Florida Inc., UnitedHealthcare of Georgia Inc., UnitedHealthcare of Illinois Inc., UnitedHealthcare of Kentucky Ltd., UnitedHealthcare of Louisiana Inc., UnitedHealthcare of Mississippi Inc., UnitedHealthcare of New England Inc., UnitedHealthcare of New Mexico Inc., UnitedHealthcare of New York Inc., UnitedHealthcare of North Carolina Inc., UnitedHealthcare of Ohio Inc., UnitedHealthcare of Oklahoma Inc., UnitedHealthcare of Oregon Inc., UnitedHealthcare of Pennsylvania Inc., UnitedHealthcare of South Carolina Inc., UnitedHealthcare of Texas Inc., UnitedHealthcare of Utah Inc., UnitedHealthcare of Washington Inc., UnitedHealthcare of Wisconsin Inc., UnitedHealthcare of the Mid-Atlantic Inc., UnitedHealthcare of the Midlands Inc., UnitedHealthcare of the Midwest Inc., UnitedHealthcare of the Rockies Inc., Unity Health Network LLC, Upland Holdings LLC, Upland Outpatient Surgical Center L.P., Urgent Care Holdings Inc., Urgent Care MSO LLC, Urology Associates of North Texas P.L.L.C., VERTA MANAGEMENT SERVICES LLC, VPay Benefits Corporation, VPay Inc., VPay Intermediate Holdings LLC, Valley Hospital L.L.C., Valley Physicians Network Inc., Vascular Labs of the Rockies ASC LLC, Vascular Labs of the Rockies PLLC, Via Vitae MSO LLC, Vida Integra S.p.A., Vida Tres S.A., Virtua-SCA Holdings II LLC, Virtua-SCA Holdings LLC, Vivify Health Canada Inc., Vivify Health Inc., WESTMED Practice Partners LLC, Wake Forest Ambulatory Ventures LLC, Walnut Creek Endoscopy Center LLC, Walnut Hill Surgery Center LLC, Wauwatosa Outpatient Surgery Center LLC, Wauwatosa Surgery Center LLC, Wayland Square Surgicare Acquisition L.P., Wayland Square Surgicare GP Inc., Waypoint Minnesota PC, WellMed Medical Management Inc., WellMed Medical Management of Florida Inc., West Coast Endoscopy Holdings LLC, WestHealth JV Holdings LLC, WestHealth Surgery Center LLC, Western Connecticut Orthopedic Surgical Center LLC, Westgreen Surgical Center LLC, Wilson Creek Surgical Center LLC, Winchester Endoscopy LLC, Winter Park LLC, Winter Park Surgery Center L.P., Woodbury Surgery Center LLC, XAS Infusion Suites Inc., XLHealth Corporation, XLHealth Corporation India Private Limited, divvyDOSE, divvyMED LLC, eCode Solutions LLC, gethealthinsurance.com Agency Inc., hCentive Inc., inPharmative Inc., naviHealth Care at Home LLC, naviHealth Coordinated Care LLC, naviHealth Coordinated Care SC P.C., naviHealth Holdings LLC, naviHealth Inc., naviHealth Michigan HBPC P.C., and naviHealth SM Holdings Inc..

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NextEra Energy, Inc. is the largest electric utility holding company in the US. It operates a network of power generation and distribution facilities that include fossil-fuel-generated and green energy. As of mid-2022, the company was capable of generating 58 GW of electricity with nearly 60% of the load produced by green sources including wind and solar. In their view, going green isnt an option, its the solution. NextEra Energy has been recognized multiple times as a leader in clean energy and ESG practices and was ranked the #1 electric and gas utility on the Forbes list of Most Admired Companies.

The company is the result of several mergers that begin with FPL Group. FPL Group is now a subsidiary of NextEra Energy and the third-largest provider of electricity in the US servicing nearly half of Florida. FPL and its affiliates are the single largest provider of renewable energy generated from wind and sun. The group changed its name in 2010 following a decision to shift focus onto renewable energy sources.

Today, NextEra Energy, Inc through its subsidiary FPL serves about 12 million people in eastern and southwestern Florida. The company employs nearly 14,900 people who service 5.8 million accounts. The company is in business to generate, transmit, and distribute electricity to retail and wholesale clients. Electricity is generated through wind, solar, nuclear, natural gas, and coal-fired facilities.

The company is also engaged in the construction and operation of new facilities, specifically renewable power generation, storage, and delivery facilities, and can offer custom solutions tailored to any need. Offerings include tailored services to assist businesses with their transition to clean energy.

NextEra Energy also owns and operates 7 nuclear power stations in Florida, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin generating power for the wholesale market.

Unlike other companies that are targeting net-zero emissions, NextEra Energy has a plan to reach real zero and is investing heavily to reach that goal by 2045. The company had invested nearly $50 billion in green energy infrastructure and initiatives by mid-2022. The plan is to first work on reducing its own emissions and then take its knowledge and expertise to the world.
MSCI Inc., together with its subsidiaries, provides investment decision support tools for the clients to manage their investment processes worldwide. It operates through four segments: Index, Analytics, ESG and Climate, and All Other - Private Assets. The Index segment provides indexes for use in various areas of the investment process, including indexed product creation, such as ETFs, mutual funds, annuities, futures, options, structured products, over-the-counter derivatives; performance benchmarking; portfolio construction and rebalancing; and asset allocation, as well as licenses GICS and GICS Direct. The Analytics segment offers risk management, performance attribution and portfolio management content, application, and service that provides an integrated view of risk and return, and an analysis of market, credit, liquidity, and counterparty risk across asset classes; managed services, including consolidation of client portfolio data from various sources, review and reconciliation of input data and results, and customized reporting; and HedgePlatform to measure, evaluate, and monitor the risk of hedge fund investments. The ESG and Climate segment provides products and services that help institutional investors understand how ESG factors impact the long-term risk and return of their portfolio and individual security-level investments; and data, ratings, research, and tools to help investors navigate increasing regulation. The All Other - Private Assets segment includes real estate market and transaction data, benchmarks, return-analytics, climate assessments and market insights for funds, investors, and managers; business intelligence to real estate owners, managers, developers, and brokers; and offers investment decision support tools for private capital. It serves asset owners and managers, financial intermediaries, wealth managers, real estate professionals, and corporates. MSCI Inc. was incorporated in 1998 and is headquartered in New York, New York.
John Kass' Column About 'Feral Boys' Is A New Nadir... Even For Him

By Stephen Gossett in News on Sep 8, 2016 9:37PM



John Kass / Facebook

John Kass' lodestar is provocationand that has taken the Tribune columnist into some pretty ugly, even quasi-racist territory. But his latest incitement represents a new low.

First off, here's how Kass chose to introduce the column, titled "Murder numbers don't tell the story in Chicago. Shootings do," and published Thursday morning:

The feral boys of #Chicago with their death sticks, a direct product of the #Democratic welfare state. My column: https://t.co/48i3MhO5k0  John Kass (@John_Kass) September 8, 2016

"The feral boys of #Chicago with their death sticks, a direct product of the #Democratic welfare state." Just let that rattle around for a second, then try to compose yourself.

As former Chicagoist editor Marcus Gilmer pointed out, "feral" has become a preferred epithet for the alt-right, along the lines of "thug." And "boy," well, that sad, racist history precedes itself. This is, of course, the Trump-ian mode of public communication, borrowing "nationalistic" language and turning the dog whistle into a megaphone. But its familiarity makes it no less virulent.

The piece itself begins right away with more reprehensible language, particularly after mentioning Chicago's undoubtedly awful murder statistics:





"Chicago hit 500 homicides the other day, with more killings this year than in New York and Los Angeles combined. So the magic number made national and international news. Even the BBC dropped in to tell the tale of Chicago violence, of nihilistic feral boys, brandishing their guns in cars, waving their death sticks in rap videos, young African-American men who believe they have no future, waiting to die."

The documentary referenced by Kass can be seen here. It's quite good. The fact that it left Kass reaching for phrases like "nihilistic feral boys" and "waving their death sticks in rap videos" says more about its author than it does the video.

He goes on, arguing the importance of not differentiating homicides from all shootings and making note of a gruesome video in which an elderly man was shot (which we did too; it's terrible). As Wonkette pointed out in a sharp critique, things then get really bad again toward the end. Kass writes, again using the F word:

"The shooters, these feral young men, aren't an accident. They are the direct product of the Democratic welfare state that helped destroy families. The government became the father, the fathers became irrelevant or were driven off, and black families that had withstood decades of Jim Crow segregation began to collapse. And that was generations ago."

Then, no statistics, no actual policy consideration, nothing but empty-calorie torment.

Wonkette's full-throated rebuttal is worth a full read, but here's another apt section:



"The problem isnt systemic racism, decades of redlining and job loss, or poverty in general: The real problem is that those terrible Democrats tried to do something about it. Shame on them for destroying the black family. And for making cops afraid of shooting black kids 16 times. Now apparently all we need to do is eliminate the few remaining shreds of the social safety net, tell people to get jobs, dammit, and let police Git Tough. And round up those feral boys, of course."

Not surprisingly, Kass was roundly condemned. Also, not surprisingly, Kass lashed out when he should have listened.

Wherein John Kass blames Murphy Brown for gun violence https://t.co/ZD0scIHzbU  Matthew Herek (@mherek) September 8, 2016

.@evanFmoore that's cheap and unworthy, even from a troll.  John Kass (@John_Kass) September 8, 2016

The contrast between the nuanced, wide-angle reporting done by Moore, a journalist with DNAinfo, in Englewood and the demonstrated fear-mongering of Kass speaks for itself.

Post-factual race-baiting has been made the new normal in 2016; and now Kass seems all too content to join the worst of the fray. That's the true feral nihilism. And it's especially loathsome when its delivered by a messenger parachuting from the outer suburbs. Notice the location stamp on his tweet: the hard front lines of Berwyn.
Argyle's Plaza-Like Shared Street Is Feeling The 'Learning Curve'

By Stephen Gossett in News on Sep 9, 2016 5:50PM



Argyle Shared Street / Courtesy Office of Ald. Harry Osterman

When the city formalized plans for Chicagos very first shared street, a spokesman for the Chicago Department of Transportation told Chicagoist he anticipated there will be a learning curve. In the roughly two weeks since the Argyle Shared Street has opened, his suspicion has proven correct.

The three-million-dollar plaza-style project opens up a five-block stretch of Argyle Street, located between Broadway and Sheridan in Uptown, to cars, pedestrians and bicycles. Only the center strip is accessible to vehicles; there are no curbs; and the key component is pedestrian right-of-way. To fend off potential confusion, CDOT and Ald. Harry Osterman (48th Ward) released a diagram and clarification of how exactly the concept is intended to work last month, prior to the opening. But public misunderstandingparticularly about where cars are allowed to park and what areas are open to drivershas proven strong enough that CDOT and Ostermans office again passed along the handout to Uptown Update, after readers voiced uncertainty.

Parking is allowed along designated sandstone pavers. Cars should be parked along, but not over, a strip of grey-brick pavers that appear to act as de-facto curbs. (A photo taken of the street shows several mis-parked vehicles.) As the diagram illustrates, several chicane buffers cause traffic to slow down with the intention of making the street more pedestrian-friendly.

Our own initial experience did not feel more outwardly pedestrian-friendly than most other streets, as car traffic created familiar barriers and some motorists were hostile to pedestrian traffic in the shared commons. Perhaps with more education and experience, things may change.

Osterman told Chicagoist he thinks much of the confusion stems from residual constructionincluding parking pay-box installation and tree plantingwhich is expected to be completed within the next few weeks. His office is also reaching out to residents and business owners to clarify the layout, he said. "People are going to get used to it in a functional way," he said. "We're not quite there, but things will improve." He said temporary signs are also on the way.

"I'm very confident that when all said and done it will be a phenomenal amenity," he added.

"It was anticipated that an education campaign would be needed since this is an entirely new concept in Chicago," Michael Claffey, Director of Public Affairs for CDOT, told Chicagoist. "There will be additional signage and street markings that will be installed in the coming weeks as work wraps up on the project."

[H/T Curbed]
Open House Chicago Is Back With 200 Free Architecture Tours You Shouldn't Miss

By Jessica Mlinaric in Arts & Entertainment on Sep 9, 2016 5:00AM

The Chicago Architecture Foundation is opening doors this fall for the sixth annual Open House Chicago. The free public festival will offer access to more than 200 architectural sites in and around Chicago on Oct. 15 and 16with new stops in Englewood and Oak Park.

Open House Chicago invites attendees into spaces that most of the public will never see to discover the history and culture behind the citys world-renowned architecture and offbeat structures. This list of architectural marvels, announced Thursday, includes a rooftop 1960 Airstream trailer, an alleyway distillery, and a yacht clubs 7,000-ton ship headquarters. For the first time, Englewood will be featured among the more than 20 diverse neighborhoods to explore. Oak Park, home to several treasured spaces by Frank Lloyd Wright is also new this year. It joins Evanston in highlighting design in Chicagos suburbs.



Credit: Chicago Architecture Foundation

Open House Chicago gives everyone the opportunity to access hidden gems and learn about the incredible places and spaces that define our City, Mayor Rahm Emanuel said in a press release. The City of Chicago is synonymous with architectural innovation, and the Chicago Architecture Foundation's plans for this year prove our rich architectural history aZextends to every neighborhood."

One such hidden gem is Englewoods Yale Building (6565 S. Yale Ave.). The 1892 Richardsonian-Romanesque apartment building was originally built as luxury accommodations for the Worlds Columbian Exposition. Featuring a bright atrium and indoor balconies decked with hanging vines, the landmark building was saved and restored in 2003. CAF bills the Yale as one of Chicagos best-kept secrets.



Credit: Open House Chicago

No reservations are required to attend Open House Chicago. Guests can plan their self-guided experiences using a printed event guide or an interactive online planner. Whether you embark on a discovery of your own neighborhood or across town, the breathtaking views and fascinating stories of Chicagos structures are your keys to the city.

Open House Chicago runs October 15 to 16 from 9 a.m to 5 p.m. daily. For a complete list of participating sites, visit www.openhousechicago.org.


A Major Skycraper Could Pop Up Soon Next To Union Station

By Stephen Gossett in News on Sep 9, 2016 3:08PM



Rendering via Crain's

The skylines are a-changin. Mega-developers Sterling Bay are making plans to build a huge, 958-foot skyscraper adjacent to Union Station in the West Loop, according to a Crains report. The report arrives just one day after a ceremonial groundbreaking for what will become Chicagos third largest building, and news of a potentially massive development at the former Chicago Spire site.

So far, things are very preliminary, but heres what we know. The skyscraper as proposed would cover some two million square feet, and its nearly 960-feet height would make it the ninth-tallest building in Chicago (which includes the under-construction Vista Tower). Sterling Bay has tapped towering-architecture superstars Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (John Hancock Center, Willis Tower, Burj Khalifa) for the project's design. And the real-estate developers are reportedly in talks with potential anchor tenants for the proposed office space. (Crains identifies Bank of America as a potential match.)

Curbed reported in May that Amtrak had issued a request for qualifications to potential developers in its bid to overhaul Union Stationone that included the possibility of a high-rise venture. Details surrounding any further redevelopment of the train hub are still unclear. A federally funded Transit Centerwhich connects Amtrak riders at Union Station to CTA buses via underground pedwaywas opened to the public on Sunday.
Matthew Sean Farrell, 53, was the only child of a social worker and an Army commando turned French professor. He grew up near Farmville, spent several years after college in the U.S. Marines Corps and settled into a life of provoking the arts in Charlottesville.
U.S. Secretary of Education John B. King Jr. and several senior Department of Education officials will be in Charlottesville on Monday afternoon to recognize a locally developed middle-school engineering curriculum thats currently being tested in Fluvanna County Public Schools.

The officials will visit Buford Middle School as part of the education departments Back-to-School Bus Tour. They will visit about a dozen other cities and regions throughout the South next week, as well.

The tours stop in Charlottesville will focus on a highly interactive and hands-on curriculum that was developed by local public-school and university officials in partnership with the Smithsonian Institute. Through it, students learn how to re-create key inventions that shaped U.S. history, such as the electric motor or the telephone.
 Antioch Baptist Church (Scottsville) holds Tent Revival services with guest speakers and special music at 7 p.m. Sept. 22-25 on the Hardware River. (434) 286-6315.

 Buck Mountain Episcopal Church (Earlysville) hosts a free Mental Health First Aid workshop from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday. 4133 Earlysville Road. Advance registration required. (434) 973-2054.

 Divine Women of Destiny International Conference will be held Sept. 23-24 at Covenant Church of God, 1025 E. Rio Road. Details and registration available at divinewomenofdestiny.com. (434) 249-2280.

 Ebenezer Baptist Church celebrates Revival with the Rev. Harlie Wilson of Baltimore preaching at 7 p.m. Sept. 19-21. The church returns to its regular worship time of 11 a.m. Sunday. 113 Sixth St. (434) 296-7032.

 Faith, Hope and Love Church holds a Spiritual Warriors Workshop from 8:30 a.m. to noon Sept. 17 at Best Western Cavalier Inn, 105 N. Emmet St. $20. The church will celebrate its pastors 20th anniversary with Apostle William Nowell of New Covenant Pentecostal Churches preaching at 3 p.m. Sept. 18. 515 12th St. (434) 296-1995.

 Galilee Baptist Church (Kents Store) celebrates the 67th anniversary of the Senior Choir with the Rev. Bruce Jones of First Baptist Church in Louisa preaching at 3 p.m. Sunday. 3598 Three Notchd Road. (434) 589-8817.

 Hayden Chapel United Methodist Church (Palmyra) celebrates Homecoming with Pastor Gorman preaching at 12:30 p.m. and Apostle William Coleman preaching at 3 p.m. Sunday. Route 53. (434) 293-7191.

 Hillsong-Let Hope Rise, a new movie based on the Hillsong United worship experience, opens Friday at Stonefield Regal Cinema. hillsongmovie.com. (844) 462-7342.

 Islamic Society of Central Virginia holds an open house that includes tours of the mosque and presentations on the basics of Islam, noon to 5 p.m. Sept. 24. 708 Pine St. charlottesvillemasjid.com. (434) 260-1253.

 James River Brewery (Scottsville) hosts Hops & Hymns from 7 to 8 p.m. Sept. 18. 561 Valley St. (434) 286-7837.

 Journey Home (Mineral), holds a fundraising event to build transitional housing for individuals and families in need of a temporary place to live. The event will feature live music, family activities, food, a silent auction and more, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sept. 24. Louisa Baptist Church, 305 E. Main St. journeyhomemineral.org. (540) 967-1364.

 Laurel Hill Baptist Church hosts a free live simulcast of the Revive Our Hearts Prayer Event, Cry Out Friday, 7 p.m. Sept. 23. Airport Road. cryout16.com, visitlaurelhill.org. (434) 973-6125.

 Mt. Zion Baptist Church (Advance Mills) celebrates its 140th anniversary with the Rev. Steven Miller preaching at 11 a.m., and the Rev. Chauncey Brown of Evergreen Ministries preaching at 3 p.m. Sept. 18. 6045 Advance Mills Road. (434) 293-9887.

 Mt. Zion Baptist Church (Greenwood) celebrates Homecoming with Pastor Stephone Coleman of Pleasant Grove Baptist Church in Goochland preaching at 3 p.m. Sunday. 619 Newtown Road. (540) 456-8801.

 Newsboys concert scheduled for Sept. 18 at the John Paul Jones Arena has been postponed. A new date has not been announced. johnpauljonesarena.com. (888) 575-8497.

 Overseas Students Mission holds a brown bag lunch to provide information on volunteering with the organization, 11:55 a.m. to 1 p.m. Thursday. 3045 Ivy Road. (434) 227-0811.

 Peace Lutheran Church holds a Welcome to Peace brunch from 10 a.m. to noon Sept. 17 and a Stewardship-When it Isnt Working workshop from 6 to 8 p.m. Sept. 18. 1510 Broad Crossing Drive. (434) 978-4357.

 Pleasant Grove Baptist Church (Earlysville) celebrates Homecoming with Pastor Shirley Chapman preaching at 11 a.m. and Pastor Donald King Sr. of Mt. Gilliam-New Site Baptist Church in Louisa preaching at 3 p.m. Sunday. 3417 Earlysville Road. (434) 978-1090.

 Rock Springs United Methodist Church (Faber) hosts a spaghetti dinner from 5 to 6:30 p.m. Saturday. A hymn sing will follow the dinner at 7 p.m. 1655 Rock Springs Road. (434) 263-8516.

 Sand Road Baptist Church (Esmont) celebrates Homecoming with Pastor Benjamin Paige Jr. preaching at 11:30 a.m. and the Rev. Henry Truzy Jr. of Thessalonia Baptist Church of Mineral preaching at 3 p.m. Sept. 18. Revival services will be held at 7:30 p.m. Sept. 20-22. 5393 Secretarys Sand Road. (434) 293-4213.

 Scottsville Presbyterian Church hosts performances by Ethan Hamburg, Ruth Dillon and Four Hits and a Miss as part of the Concerts Across America event, raising awareness of gun violence, 7 p.m. Sept. 25. 148 Bird St. (434) 286-4062.

 University Baptist Church begins a three-week series Reconnect, with Connect with Christ at 11 a.m. Sunday, Connect with Community at 11 a.m. Sept. 18 and Connect with Confidence at 11 a.m. Sept. 25. A free playgroup for children younger than 6 and their parents will be held from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. each Thursday. 1223 W. Main St. (434) 293-5106.

 Wildon Grove Baptist Church (Gordonsville) celebrates Homecoming at 11:30 a.m. Sunday. Minister Penny Hawkins of St. John Baptist Church in Cobham will preach at 3 p.m. Sunday. 6820 Wildon Grove Road. (540) 406-2193.

This calendar, published every Saturday, lists special events of a religious nature. Because of space constraints, notices about regular worship services cannot be included. Items intended for publication should be faxed to (434) 978-7252; mailed to Worship Calendar, The Daily Progress, P.O. Box 9030, Charlottesville, VA 22906; or emailed to ewood@dailyprogress.com. Material must be received by 4 p.m. the Wednesday prior to publication.
The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) will have actress Zhang Ziyi on the jury panel for Platform, a program that champions directors from around the world.

Zhang Ziyi arrives for the opening ceremony of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) on Sept. 8, 2016. [VCG]

For the program's second year, its three-person international jury will be composed of legendary directors Brian De Palma, Mahamat-Saleh Haroun and acclaimed actor Zhang Ziyi. Together, they will award a prize of CAD $25,000 to the best Platform selection, to be announced at the Festival Awards Ceremony on Sept. 18.

"We are honoured to have De Palma, Haroun and Zhang on the Platform Jury for the program's second year. Each one of them brings a breadth of expertise and experience in visionary filmmaking, artistic direction and unprecedented, bold narratives," said Piers Handling, director and CEO of TIFF.

"Platform's vision is championing aesthetic magnificence, and De Palma, Zhang and Haroun have all either created or been a part of films that have inspired, revolutionized and transformed the filmmaking industry," said Cameron Bailey, artistic director of the festival.

Inspired by Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke's film of the same name, Platform shines the spotlight on 12 films of high artistic merit that demonstrate a strong directorial vision. The lineup was announced on Aug. 11 and includes "Daguerrotype," "Goldstone," "Jackie," "Hema Hema: Sing Me a Song While I Wait" and eight other films.

Zhang Ziyi arrives for the opening ceremony of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) on Sept. 8, 2016. [VCG]

Zhang is an international superstar who brought strong, multi-dimensional female characters to the screen. She first came to prominence in Ang Lee's Academy Award-winning "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" (2000) and then mesmerized audiences in the martial arts films "Hero" (2002) and "House of Flying Daggers" (2004), directed by Zhang Yimou. She successfully crossed over into the North American film industry, starring in the film adaptation of "Memoirs of a Geisha" (2005). Zhang has demonstrated a wide range of talent in Wong Kar-Wai's "2046" (2005) and in the director's latest film, "The Grandmaster" (2013).

She will also be participating in the festival's "In Conversation With" event on Sept. 15 at TIFF Bell Lightbox.

The 41st Toronto International Film Festival runs from Sept. 8 to 18.
Alibaba founder and chairman Jack Ma proposed the establishment of an Electronic World Trade Platform (eWTP) at the Boao Forum for Asia in March 2016. [Xinhua]

The proposal to create an Electronic World Trade Platform (eWTP) -- which was submitted by Jack Ma, executive chairman of Alibaba and chairman of the B20 SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) Development Taskforce -- has drawn widespread public attention following the B20 summit, which was a part of the G20 summit held on Sept 4 and 5 in Hangzhou.

Initiated and strongly advocated by Ma, the eWTP aims at providing worldwide SMEs with a barrier-free online platform, helping them bypass complex regulations and protectionist trade policies and gain more benefits from global economic development.

"It's the perfect time to make the proposal," said He Jun, one of the drafters of the B20 2016 Policy Recommendations to the G20 and an associate researcher of the Institute of Economics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

With global economic growth slowing down after 2008, trade barriers have been put up in some countries and made it difficult for SMEs to exploit market potentials.

"As an online platform for international trade, the eWTP will be more open and transparent, providing cross-border e-commerce with more efficient solutions and a better environment," he said.

His view was echoed by Zhao Yue, a researcher at the China Institute of Open Economy.

Zhao believed protectionism is gaining ground due to sluggish world trade growth.

The eWTP will inject more energy into SMEs, help remove trade barriers and restore normal international trade order, he said.

The proposal was also welcomed in business circles. "We hope the proposal on eWTP can come true," said Dr. Jonathan Choi Koon-shum, chairman of the Hong Kong-based Sunwah Group.

"The cross-border trade platform will make information more open and transparent and make resources effectively connected. It will be extremely helpful to SMEs in developing countries," he said.

The eWTP is the brainchild of China's e-commerce guru Jack Ma, who urged governments worldwide to provide preferential policies to SMEs in the e-commerce field, including 24-hour custom service and tax incentives. Ma advocated the idea at the Boao Forum in March and proposed it to G20 member countries at the recently concluded Hangzhou G20 summit.
Summer weekends in September offer a continuation of indoor and outdoor special events for the whole family around the Virginia Piedmont. Here's a look at what's happening:

FRIDAY

Family Feud & ice cream

The Culpeper County Library presents a special night, starting at 6:30 p.m., for teens and their families with ice cream sundaes and a game of Family Feud. Teams will be assigned on arrival. Sign up in advance by calling 540/825-8691 or write lbostian@cclva.org.

Photography exhibit

The Eyes of History, featuring award-winning photographs, will be on display for public view from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Friday at Germanna Community College Daniel Center in Culpeper. Free.

Somerset Steam & Gas Show

An annual celebration of steam engines, tractors and agricultural heritage, the 40th annual Orange County event starts at 8 a.m. Friday and runs through Sunday. Gate donation $7/day or $10 for all three days. Children 12 and younger are free. Proceeds support local charities and volunteer fire & rescue. somersetsteamandgas.org

Wilderness Weekend

A Wilderness Weekend kicks off at Shenandoah National Park Friday and runs through Sunday. Enjoy a range of special events in one of the largest wilderness areas in the Eastern U.S. Schedule is at nps.gov/shen/planyourvisit/wilderness_weekend.htm

Gordonsville Fireman's Carnival

Rides and concessions at the fairgrounds on Baker Street Friday night and Saturday with a Saturday matinee with proceeds to benefit the Gordonsville Volunteer Fire Dept.

SATURDAY

Poetry to art

Kindergartners and up are invited to participate in this self-guided program at the Culpeper County Library on Saturday. Drop in between 10:30 a.m. to noon. Parents will work with their children to interpret the poem of the month. Children will use the librarys craft materials to translate their interpretation into art.

Jefferson Ruritan breakfast

The Jefferson Ruritan Club, together with the Jeffersonton Community Center, will hold its monthly all-you-can-eat country breakfast 8 to 11 a.m. on Saturday, Sept. 10. at the Jeffersonton Community Center, 5073 Jeffersonton Rd., Jeffersonton (Rts. 802 & 621 off Rt. 229).

The menu will include eggs, pancakes, sausage, bacon, fried apples, biscuits and gravy, pastries, orange juice and coffee. $8 for adults, $5 for children 6-12 and 5 and younger free. Carry-outs available. All proceeds go to scholarships, local public service organizations and charities and maintaining the Community Center.

Farmers Market

Every Saturday from 7:30 a.m. to noon in the parking lot at East Davis and Commerce streets in downtown Culpeper through Nov. 19.

A Bugs Life

The Library of Congress Packard Theater presents the animated Pixar movie A Bugs Life at 2 p.m. at 19053 Mt. Pony Road in Culpeper. No reservations required. Free. 202/707-9994.

Wilderness Weekend

At Shenandoah National Park runs through Sunday, Sept. 11.

Enjoy a range of special events in one of the largest wilderness areas in the Eastern U.S. Schedule is at nps.gov/shen/planyourvisit/wilderness_weekend.htm

Poker Run

To benefit the Culpeper Food Closet leaves at 10 a.m. from Peppers Grill in Culpeper. Approximate 100 mile scenic ride, $20 per hand, cash prizes sponsored by Culpeper ABATE. 540/937-3924

Bake sale

To benefit suicide prevention efforts will be held from noon to 3 p.m. Saturday at the Culpeper Volunteer Rescue Squad Co. 11, 1121 N. Main St.

Steak dinner

Mitchells Presbyterian Church will hold a steak dinner from 5 to 7 p.m. Adults are $12, children ages 6 through 12 are $5. Proceeds will go to restoring the exterior of the church. Call 540/825-1079 for more information.

Photography exhibit

The Eyes of History, featuring award-winning photographs, will be on display for public view from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday at Germanna Community College Daniel Center in Culpeper. Free.

Puppet story time

At 11 a.m. at Lollipop Station, 179 E. Davis St., Culpeper. Free.

Somerset Steam & Gas Show

An annual celebration of steam engines, tractors and agricultural heritage, the 40th annual Orange County event starts at 8 a.m. Children 12 and younger are free. somersetsteamandgas.org

Safety Last

The Library of Congress Packard Theater presents Harold Lloyd in this silent comedy at 7:30 p.m. at at 19053 Mt. Pony Road in Culpeper. No reservations required. Free. 202/707-9994.

Gordonsville Fireman's Carnival

Rides and concessions at the fairgrounds on Baker Street Saturday night and Saturday matinee with proceeds to benefit the Gordonsville Volunteer Fire Dept.

Talent Show

There will be a talent show at Prince Michel Vineyards on U.S. 29 in Leon to raise money for supplies for the Madison County Animal Shelter. The show, which features music and other acts from around central Virginia, will begin at 3 p.m. Admission is $3.

SUNDAY

CCHS A Cappella Choir

Performance from 9:30 to 11:15 a.m. at St. Lukes Church.

Remembering 9/11

Culpeper United Methodist Church will commemorate the 15th anniversary Sunday at its 8 a.m., 9:29 a.m. and 11 a.m. services. All first responder agencies have received an invitation for their members to attend in uniform.

The 8 a.m. and 11 a.m. services will have special music, prayers for firefighters, EMS, police, and 911 dispatchers. There will be receptions for all after the two early services and a lunch after the 11 a.m. service.

The Rev. Arthur Fellows, chaplain of the Culpeper County Rescue Company Co. 11, will be delivering the message. 540/229-6693 or jdpastorart@comcast.net.

9/11 Remembrance Ceremony

Sponsored by the Sumerduck Ruritan Club will be at 2:00 pm on Sunday, Sept. 11 at the Sumerduck Post Office with refreshments will follow at the Sumerduck Ruritan Building.

Special speaker Del. Mark Cole with community participation from the Morrisville VFW Post 7728, Remington American Legion Post 247, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, first responders, dignataries and JROTC Color Guard among others. 540/845-1170

Wilderness Weekend

At Shenandoah National Park runs through Sunday. Enjoy a range of special events in one of the largest wilderness areas in the Eastern U.S. Schedule is at nps.gov/shen/planyourvisit/wilderness_weekend.htm

Culpeper 9/11 tribute

Bugles Across America players will sound taps for the 15th anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001, at 8:46 a.m. in front of the Culpeper Volunteer Fire Dept. on West Davis Street; 9:03 a.m. in front of the sheriffs office on West Davis Street; 9:37 a.m. in the Wine Street Memorial Park and 10:03 a.m. at the corner of Main and Davis streets downtown.

Somerset Steam & Gas Show

An annual celebration of steam engines, tractors and agricultural heritage, the 40th annual Orange County event starts at 8 a.m. Children 12 and younger are free. somersetsteamandgas.org

Mid-Day Lions Bingo

Doors open at 5 p.m., early bird games begin at 6:30 p.m. at Peppers Grill, 791 Madison Rd. in Culpeper. $1,000 jackpot and three Progressives at bingo that raises money for community charities.

Homecoming

At Beulah Baptist Church features a 10 a.m. message followed by dinner and guest preacher the Rev. Douglas Green at 3 p.m. 540/937-5563.

Photography exhibit

The Eyes of History, featuring award-winning photographs, will be on display for public view from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday at Germanna Community College Daniel Center in Culpeper. Free.
Unisplendour Corp. and Western Digital Corp. form a joint venture on Thursday in Nanjing. [Photo by Chen Boyuan / China.org.cn]

Unisplendour Corp. (Unis) of China's Tsinghua University formed a joint venture with Western Digital Corp. (WDC) on Thursday, hoping that new alliance can expand the American company's market share in China while facilitating technological advancement in the Chinese university-based enterprise.

The JV, Unis WDC Storage Co., involves a 51-49 percent share allocation. The new company will be based in Nanjing, while maintaining a sales and marketing office in Beijing. Unis WDC's line of products includes WDC's data storage systems such as HGST Active Archive System, according to the company's statement.

Unis WDC will provide big data storage solutions to a range of industries in China, including financial services, media, astronomy and meteorology, telecommunications and genetic science forming an industry coverage 'from chip to cloud,'" said CEO Miao Gang at the JV's launch ceremony.

"Unis WDC aims to become the leader in comprehensive, secure and controllable core big data storage technologies. We will practice the 'ingenious R&D concept, focusing on data reliability and maximizing data security for our customers," Miao said.

WDC also expressed high hopes for the alliance. CEO Steve Milligan said partnerships with such growth-oriented companies as Unisplendour were important for its expansion of high-growth market in China.

WDC acquired Hitachi Global Storage Technologies in March 2002 and SanDisk Corp last May to establish itself as the world's largest company both for hard disk drive and storage solutions.

The Unis and WDC alliance is yet another technology-for-market agreement between a Chinese company and a leading international player. Unis had already established a JV with HP for server products last year. Lenovo bought out IBM's line of X86 servers in 2014, nine years after taking over its global PC supplier in 2005.

Insiders said such alliances were also meant to bypass the Chinese governments' requirements for information security that calls for more home-made products in strategic sectors such as government agencies, finance, science, and media, especially in the wake of the Edward Snowden incident in 2013. Snowden leaked massive amounts of information from the U.S. National Security Agency.

IT products-based JVs such as Unis WDC will be labelled as Chinese, thus meeting the tight requirement for government procurements. As for those who still fancy an original name brand, such JVs can deliver OEM products accordingly labeled.
In a ward measuring some 10 square meters, an elderly woman wearing a hospital gown looked in some pain, her two hands pressing her stomach. A young doctor arrived and began asking about the symptoms.

Luan Xiaoying, 82, tells her unusual story about being a simulated patient (SP) after retirement.

Astonishingly, the patient immediately recovered after the examination, and began to seriously correct the doctor's way of inquiry and his examination technique.

This woman was not a hypochondriac, nor was she mentally ill. In fact, she was performing her duty as a "simulated patient" (SP).

In health care, an SP, also known as a standardized patient, sample patient, or patient instructor, is an individual trained to play the role of a real patient by simulating a set of symptoms or problems. The technique is seen as a good way to educate and evaluate health care professionals that can also translate into a means of medical research.

The woman involved in the above case is Luan Xiaoying, who acted as a patient suffering acute pancreatitis from 1992 to 2004.

According to the Western China Metropolitan Daily, Luan was one of the first batch of SPs in Asia trained by the Western China School of Medicine of Sichuan University.

Luan originally was a Beijing native who settled in Chengdu, southwest China's Sichuan Province. She was an actress in the army's art troupe before her retirement at the age of 55.

One morning in 1992, three years after retirement, Luan noticed a recruitment advertisement when she passed by the Western China School of Medicine. She had just finished singing practice with her friends.

"It was looking for a patient instructor. Anyone speaking mandarin and with a college degree or above could apply," recalled Luan.

She had been thinking doing something more meaningful than singing after retirement, and this seemed the perfect chance.

When Luan arrived for an interview, she learnt it was a program jointly conducted by the school and China Medical Board.

More than 100 people applied, but only 39 qualified after a period of training and evaluation. Luckily, Luan was one of them and was assigned to play an acute pancreatitis patient.

To make her performance more realistic, Luan asked friends who once suffered acute pancreatitis and doctors treating the condition for help. She wrote down every detail and asked them to instruct her how to perform.

She was thought mad because she asked almost every acquaintance if they had suffered from the disease. Sometimes, she went to hospitals to observe real patients' movements and expressions.

The performance was not exactly the same because every patient might show different symptoms. Luan often got a case one week before the "lesson" and had to memorize all the symptoms listed.

She also had to remember all the exchanges between her and the doctor-to-be during the performance and later provide an evaluation.

From Monday to Friday, she played an acute pancreatitis patient twice a day that made her tired, but glad.

Luan shared her understandings about the profession of SP with the paper: "The job is to turn a student who has mastered basic knowledge into a qualified doctor who knows how to communicate with patients and correctly collect information.

"I think my job is quite meaningful when I see so many students graduate from medical schools and save lives in hospitals."

She had to quit the job in 2004 for various reasons; however, the 12 years' SP experience still influences her life. Luan, now 82, has decided to donate her body to medical science when she passes away.

"I want to do more for the cause of health careVery few people can do something earthshaking. But it is not a life in vain if we do something meaningful within our power and prove our value," Luan said slowly, and gently while adjusting her glasses.
By Chi Ying

Much has, and still can, be written about China's development journey since the late 1970s, but drastic changes could be said to have occurred in the last two years in shouldering international responsibility.

From APEC Beijing summit in 2014 to G20 Hangzhou summit in 2016, China has used the international stage to champion a holistic approach to development and global governance, which acknowledges that domestic wellbeing relies on a nation's regional neighbors and the international community at large.

As the host of this year's G20 summit, China set the theme as "Toward an Innovative, Invigorated, Interconnected and Inclusive World Economy."

Although China's economy has entered a "new normal," with economic growth shifting to a slower and more sustainable rate, it continues to be an engine driving the world economy. In the past five years, China has contributed 35 percent of global economic growth, and it will continue to contribute 30 percent of world economic growth before 2020.

Pang Zhongying, with Renmin University of China, said China had taken advantage of multilateral venues to further the agenda of inclusiveness. At the APEC summit in Beijing in 2014 and at the G20 Brisbane summit, Chinese President Xi Jinping reached consensus with US President Barack Obama and other world leaders to take necessary actions to help those African countries struggling to contain the Ebola outbreak.

Liang Xiaofeng, deputy head of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, spent three months in Sierra Leone at the height of the Ebola outbreak. In November 2014, he led a public health training panel to help the African country control the outbreak. His team helped establish a laboratory, trained more than 6,000 local medical workers, and designed reporting and quarantine systems. It has been China's largest foreign aid project in the health sector to date, and it shows China's preference to share its knowledge and experience beyond its own borders  the focus is cooperation, not instruction.

At the APEC Beijing summit, China was a vocal advocate of connectivity and cross-border collaboration. China's work on the Paris Agreement in 2015, which was ratified by the national legislature Saturday, offers an example of China practicing what it preaches. Obama said the decision by the United States and China to formally join the landmark climate agreement may be seen as "the moment that we finally decided to save our planet." After all, a united world is a stronger world.

The international economy and globalization face myriad challenges, which must be addressed. As Brexit and the presidential election in the United States show, anti-globalization, isolation and trade protectionism are on the rise. Despite this unfavorable environment for cooperation, China has shown it is committed to this course of action.

The current economic climate is the result of an outdated, defective global economic governance model. To explore the alternatives to the current order, in October 2015, the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee held its first ever study on global governance. At the seminar, it was agreed that cooperation was the only way to successfully address global challenges and that China would promote the reform of the existing global governance system.

In terms of trade, the Beijing Roadmap for APEC's Contribution to the Realization of the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP) has been hailed as a milestone document. With the aim of facilitating trade and cutting tariffs in the region, the FTAAP has evolved from a concept to a practical goal, and the process continues to advance smoothly.

A Chinese remedy

At the G20 Hangzhou summit, Xi championed a Chinese remedy for the world economy  strengthened coordination of macroeconomic policies and joint efforts to boost world economic growth and maintain financial stability.

In his book "China's Historical Choice in Global Governance," former Chinese Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei said China's own development practices  opening up and reform, promoting balanced development, providing the poor with the tools needed to lift themselves out of poverty, and focusing on improving people's livelihood  had influenced its foreign aid policies.

China has created ample opportunity for cooperation programs that will lead to win-win results, for example the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which was founded at the end of 2015, with its 57 founding members from Asia, Europe, South America, Oceania and Africa. In August, work began on the 64 km M4 motorway linking Shorkot and Khanewal in Punjab Province, Pakistan. It is the first project financed by the AIIB, together with the Asian Development Bank and Britain's Department for International Development. The US$273 million project will not only improve the nation's transportation network, it will also help with poverty alleviation efforts.

The AIIB and other initiatives that have made progress since APEC Beijing summit, such as the BRICS New Development Bank and the Silk Road Fund, will help meet Asia's enormous infrastructure needs. "These are substantial contributions to complementing the post-war Bretton Woods system by meeting the needs of the developing world," Douglas Paal, vice president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told Xinhua.

The G20 Hangzhou summit saw the initiation of a proposal supporting the industrialization of Africa and the least developed countries. China will push G20 members to cooperate in helping those countries realize industrialization and achieve the goals in poverty relief and sustainable development by building capability, increasing investment and improving their infrastructure, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang poses for a group photo with other leaders at a ceremony to issue the Joint Leaders' Statement on the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership after the 11th East Asia Summit in Vientiane, Laos, Sept. 8, 2016. [Xinhua/Wang Ye]

It is said that a country's foreign policy starts from its borders. It means relations with bordering countries should be given the highest priority. However, with the advancement in the technology, even extended neighborhoods and regional groups of nations have become important for policymakers.

China apparently understands this well, as reflected in its policy to improve ties with all neighbors, especially those forming the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). It was also witnessed by the attendance of Premier Li Keqiang at the 19th ASEAN-China summit in the Laotian capital of Vientiane.

The event coincided with the 25th anniversary of dialogue relations between the 10-member block with their giant neighbor. Top ASEAN leaders were present in Laos to join Premier Li in the conference. The meeting was part of an institutional mechanism to forge better understanding.

The relations between China and ASEAN are complex. While the ties are defined by strong economic and commercial links, there are also strategic (security and territorial) differences involving conflicting claims.

The South China Sea has been mentioned so often that sometimes one feels it might engulf all the positive efforts being made by the two sides to improve relations. Hence, while recognizing that there are differences needing close attention, it is better to deal with the thorny issue through quiet diplomacy and sustained talks between the various parties.

The real strength of relations between China and ASEAN are the growing economic ties involving so many different ideas, interests, policies and projects. China, being the second biggest economy, with vast resources and capital, is best placed for leveraging its geographical proximity with the extended neighborhood. It is already heavily involved commercially in ASEAN and its abiding interest in the region offer further economic opportunities for the two sides.

Trade, investment and communication are the three planks defining the new relationship. As for the first, it is easier to trade with neighbors than countries located far off. Efforts should be made to remove bottlenecks and hurdles that make trading difficult. Newer institutions should be set up to facilitate trade.

Two-way trade is expected to reach the trillion dollar mark by 2020. It has been multiplying since the ASEAN-China Free Trade Area agreement went into force in 2010. China is ASEAN's largest trade partner, while ASEAN as a whole is China's third largest partner.

Investment is one of the best ways to help weaker countries develop their infrastructure, create employment and reduce poverty. It initiates and propels greater economic activities and prosperity. China can lead the way in this sector and the ASEAN nation should think of giving preference to a close neighbor. Already, two way investment has exceeded US$130 billion (2014).

Better physical means of communication are considered key to economic development. China's "Belt and Road" initiative is a flagship project to increase connectivity at the regional and global level. ASEAN could be the main beneficiary if government leaders adopt the right policies to gain dividends.

Premier Li Keqiang issued the future roadmap of ties when he said in a written speech on airport on arrival in Laos that bilateral ties were at an historical starting point.

"I would like to join leaders of ASEAN to review and draw on our past experiences and look to the future so as to create a new blueprint for future China-ASEAN cooperation and to promote development under the 10+3 and the East Asia summit mechanisms for regional peace, stability and prosperity," he said.

One way of doing business with neighbors is simultaneous interaction in bilateral and multilateral settings. China is following this policy and, while engaging ASEAN, it is also pushing close relations with the individual countries. That is why Li had also close interaction with Laotian leader aimed at promoting the two neighbors' comprehensive strategic partnership.

Despite political and security issues, the relations between ASEAN and China have entered a new phase after 25 years of development. There are great expectations that the next decade will further cement ties. The strategic partnership for peace and prosperity forged in 2003 will also blossom for the benefit of the people.

The five-point proposal by Premier Li at the summit with ASEAN will help to further crystalize the future relationship. It will also provide fresh impetus to address political, economic and strategic issues, which often sour the ties.

Sajjad Malik is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit:

http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/SajjadMalik.htm

Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.
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[File photo]

A decision by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to grant visas on arrival for Chinese visitors makes it the 58th country to offer visa-free or visa-on-arrival access to Chinese citizens. Experts anticipate that the policy change will boost the country's tourism industry.

The decision was adopted by the UAE cabinet in Abu Dhabi on Sept. 4, though the Dubai Media Office did not reveal the exact date the change would be implemented, Xinhua reported.

The favorable policy has been met with great enthusiasm by Chinese citizens. Online discussions hashtagged "UAEVisaonArrivalforChinese" have garnered more than 35,000 views as of press time, while online searches for travel plans in the UAE have skyrocketed on Ctrip, one of China's biggest online travel companies, thepaper.cn reported.

"The UAE's tourism projects, such as luxury shopping, hotels and cruises on private yachts have found favor with wealthy Chinese tourists. Meanwhile, safety has become a major concern for Chinese travelers, making Dubai a perfect destination as the country's public security is good," an employee at Ctrip told thepaper.cn.

"The peak tourism season in the UAE is from November to March. If the policy can be implemented before that, more Chinese tourists are expected to visit the country," said Ni Jiali, a tourism manager from Lumama, a Shanghai-based tourism booking site, in an interview with thepaper.cn.

In 2015, 450,000 Chinese visitors traveled to the UAE, up 29 percent from the previous year. This growth represented the highest increase among all nationalities visiting the Gulf Arab state, Xinhua reported.

As of press time, ordinary Chinese passport-holders are permitted to visit 58 countries and territories without first having to apply for a visa, putting the PRC passport in 87th place according to the Henley & Partners Visa Restrictions Index.
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U.S. space agency NASA is slated to launch its first mission Thursday to visit an asteroid and bring precious samples back to Earth for analysis that could provide more insight into the evolution of the solar system as well as life on Earth.

The Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft is seen in an undated NASA artist rendering. [Photo/Xinhua]

The Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft is scheduled to lift off atop an Atlas V rocket at 7:05 p.m. EDT (2305 GMT) from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

The main mission goal is to collect a small sample of rocks and surface soil from a near-Earth asteroid named Bennu, thought to harbor primordial material left over from the formation of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago.

"Sample return is really at the forefront of planetary exploration," SIRIS-REx principal investigator Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona, said at a prelaunch conference. "This is going to be a treasure trove of material for scientists yet to come."

If all goes according to plan, OSIRIS-REx will arrive in August 2018 and spend the next two years photographing and mapping the asteroid's surface to better understand its chemical and mineralogical composition, including selecting the sample site.

Then, in July 2020, the spacecraft will touch the asteroid for only three seconds to collect loose rocks and dust using a device called the Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism and store the material in a sample return capsule.

The spacecraft will depart the asteroid in March 2021 and travel for two-and-a-half years on a trajectory for Earth return in September 2023.

But OSIRIS-REx won't land. Instead, it will eject a small capsule containing the asteroid sample, which will land with the help of parachutes at the Utah Test and Training Range, southwest of Salt Lake City.

Scientists have previously studied pieces of asteroids for decades in the form of meteorites, but all of them were quickly contaminated when they fell to Earth, Lauretta said, noting the sample returned from a primitive asteroid would enable precise analyses that can't be duplicated on the ground.

"We expect these samples will contain organic molecules from the early solar system that may give us information and clues to the origin of life," he said.

The seven-year journey will also help explore how Bennu's orbit is affected by the so-called Yarkovsky effect, the slight push created when the asteroid absorbs sunlight and re-emits that heat as infrared radiation, in the hope of better understanding the hazards of near-Earth space rocks to Earth.

Bennu, with a diameter of 492 meters, is classified as a potentially hazardous object, with a 1 in 2700 chance of impacting Earth in the 22nd century. Lauretta said its orbit has changed by over 160 kilometers due to the Yarkovsky effect since it was discovered in 1999.

"We really want to understand this phenomenon, so that we can better understand asteroid Bennu and apply that understanding to all asteroids not only in near-earth space but throughout our solar system," he said.

The world's first asteroid sample-return spacecraft was Japan's Hayabusa 1, which successfully brought back thousands of dust grains from the asteroid 25143 Itokawa after a seven-year space trip. Its successor, Hayabusa-2, which blasted off in 2014, is now on its way to rendezvous with the asteroid 1993 JU3 in June 2018.
The Honda City is one of the preferred cars of many premium sedan car buyers in India. The car is being offered in both petrol and diesel variants, along with an optional CVT automatic gearbox in petrol. The popularity of the sedan has grown rapidly, which helped it reach the two-lakh sales mark in just 36 months. According to Honda, the City is the fastest-selling mid-size sedan in India. The City has been Honda's highest-selling car since October 2015 and the only competition it faces is from the Maruti Ciaz.

The current generation Honda City has registered sales of 2,00,098 units since its launch, back in January 2014. Also, since January 1998, when the City was first introduced in India, Honda has sold over 6.3 lakh units in the country. Talking about the success of the car in India, Yoichiro Ueno, president & CEO, Honda Cars India Ltd., said, The Honda City is a much-loved brand in India and has been the most crucial part of Hondas success in the country by cumulatively bringing in more than 6.3 lakh customers to the Honda family. Continuously re-inventing itself, each generation of the Honda City has brought in new technologies and offered new value to enthral the customers, becoming a benchmark for quality and trust. We are extremely proud of reaching the new milestone of 2 lakh sales of the current generation of City and are confident that it will continue to put up a strong performance in future too. We would like to thank our customers for their love and faith in the Honda City as we celebrate this success.

The Honda City comes with a 119PS, 1.5-litre petrol or a 100PS, 1.5-litre diesel engine. The petrol motor is mated to a five-speed manual or a CVT automatic gearbox. These combinations return a mileage of 17.8 and 18kmpl, respectively. The diesel motor is mated to a six-speed manual transmission and returns a mileage of 26kmpl. The City also comes with a host of Hondas active and passive safety technologies, including ABS with EBD, SRS airbags and Advanced Compatibility Engineering (ACE) body shell.

With the festive season approaching, these sales figures are expected to rise even further. And with Honda selling 4,255 units of the City and Maruti selling 6,214 units of the Ciaz in August 2016, the rivalry between these two seems all set to continue through the rest of the year.

Source: CarDekho.com
Reliance Jio has said its services are free till December 31, following which consumers will charged as per tariff plans that include free voice calls.

New Delhi: Sector regulator TRAI on September 9 met telecom operators Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea to discuss ongoing tussle over network interconnection, but barred officials of industry body COAI from the meeting.

"This is fight for justice, fight for customers. Not just Reliance Jio customers or Airtel or Vodafone but for all Indian customers," Reliance Jio Infocomm Board Member Mahendra Nahata told reporters after an hour-long meeting. Jio has accused incumbent telecom operators for not providing required number of equipments to connect its mobile network with theirs.

"We have asked for right number of connect, right quantum of interconnection. We have put forth our point of view to TRAI. It is for TRAI to look into the matter. There is no time frame indicated by the TRAI," Nahata said.

As per the rule, interconnection among networks has to be done based on mutual agreement by telecom companies and any dispute in this regard should be brought in notice of TRAI, which can take decision on the matter. Interconnection is required to enable mobile customers to make call on number or to customer of any telecom company.

Industry body Cellular Operators Association of India, which has been confronting Reliance Jio on behalf of incumbents, alleged it was kept out of the meeting on insistence of Reliance Jio.

"COAI has been kept out of the TRAI meeting at the insistence of RIL Jio, and TRAI acquiesced to their demand in an unprecedented manner," COAI Director General Rajan S Mathews said.

The Cellular Operators Association of India yesterday, wrote to TRAI that the meeting scheduled for Friday, where in Airtel, Vodafone and Idea, have been called for discussing the issue, pertains to all members and not just the three telcos.

"Therefore we request TRAI to invite all members of COAI for the said meeting," COAI letter to TRAI said. Nahata, however, denied the allegation.

"We have not said any such thing. Whosoever was invited should attend the meeting," Nahata said.

COAI last month had accused TRAI of baseness, but later apologised for levelling such allegations. Reliance Jio, which commercially launched its services on September 5, had earlier accused incumbent players for not releasing sufficient interconnection ports and had sought legal action against them.

Reliance Jio is also member of COAI, but has been sidelined by leading telecom operators in the association. Incumbent operators have sought clarity on whether the services of the new entrant are now "commercial" and if it is so, the company cannot offer free service for more than 90 days.

Reliance Jio has said its services are free till December 31, following which consumers will charged as per tariff plans that include free voice calls.
The centre will be dedicated to electronics-embedded software and mechanical engineering and will support ZF's global development teams.

Hyderabad: Giving a further boost to Hyderabads image as a technology hub, German car parts maker ZF Friedrichshafen AG has decided to set up a new technical centre in the city. The centre will be dedicated to electronics-embedded software and mechanical engineering and will support ZF's global development teams.

The company has signed a letter of intent with the Telan-gana government on Thursday. It will be fully operational by 2017, and is expected to employ 2,500 engineers by 2020, the company said.
Mumbai: You dont have to be Shah Rukh Khans huge fan to know how much the actor loves his children. Time and again, the actor keeps expressing his love for his kids by posting adorable pictures on social media.

Now not only SRK but even his fans are in complete awe with his kids Aryan, Suhana and AbRam. Fans have practically seen Aryan and Suhana grow up. Fans were also around when a new member, AbRam was added to the Khan family.

So whenever Shah Rukhs fans come across an old photograph of his kids, they cant help but smile as old memories flash in front of their eyes. Now we came across an old video of SRK and Aryan, where we see the latter almost playfully choking Shah Rukh.

In the video we also see the actor expressing his desire to be around and see his kids grow up. "I just hope that I can be the part of the world till they are atleast 21-22. So thatll be nice," we hear SRK say.

Watch the video below:
Recently, actor Ranbir Kapoor had to shoot a scene in Ae Dil Hai Mushkil, where he gets slapped by television actor, Kaushal Kapoor.

Says Kaushal, I play Anushkas (Sharma) father in the film. In one scene, when Ranbir tries to fix Anushka and Fawads (Khan) marriage, I lose my temper and throw them out of the house. As Ranbir is persistent that I agree to the marriage, I slap him.

Kaushal is all praise for the actor. Ranbir is a wonderful actor, he had no hassles being slapped by me. Only the assistant director cautioned me to be careful while slapping Ranbir! After the shot was canned, everyone congratulated me for not letting the slap go amiss, but it still made a thunderous noise! he says.
Manal Kayiru, the mega hit Tamil film directed by Visu released in 1982, is being remade after 35 years. The speciality is that the same cast, including S. Ve. Shekar, Visu, and Kuriyakose Ranga, are a part of the remake as well. Yaaruda Mahesh fame Madan Kumar wields the megaphone for the new, tweaked version of Manal Kayiru, stepping into the shoes of Visu.

Speaking about his part, S. Ve. Shekar says, In the original, the hero would list eight conditions about how his prospective wife should be. In todays scenario, where women have equal rights, the girls too have many expectations from prospective grooms. I tweaked it deliberately and instead of the boy, the girl here lays her eight conditions, says Shekar, who has also taken the onus of penning the story, screenplay, and supervised dialogues besides being the executive producer of Manal Kayiru 2.

While his son Ashwin Shekar reprises his role as the hero, Poorna will be seen as the female lead. A leading lady of yesteryear, Jayashree is back to donning the greasepaint. Dharan composes the music and late Na Muthukumar has written all the songs in MK 2, which is bankrolled by Sri Thenandal Films.
A traveler with a bulge in their body from a cyst or hernia might get flagged for an invasive airport security screening to look for explosives, a case report suggests.

In many larger airports, X-rays have been replaced in recent years by machines that use radio frequencies to detect suspicious items on travelers, researchers note in JAMA Dermatology.

One female traveler with a common type of skin cyst was flagged for a hidden explosive search at a U.S. airport, her physician, Dr. Warren Heymann, notes in the report. Until my patient told me her story, I had never encountered this situation, Heymann, a researcher at Cooper Medical School of Rowan University in Camden, New Jersey, said by email.

To the best of my knowledge, there has only been one similar case in the medical literature, as noted in my article - a man with a hernia, Heymann added. On future trips, this woman traveled with a doctors note explaining her condition that she could show airport security agents, Heymann said in the case report.

The man with the hernia had a protrusion in his groin area that alarmed airport screeners. This traveler was interrogated and subjected to a genital exam, Heymann reported. I would suggest that people be aware that this could happen to them if they have prominent lesions on their skin, Heymann said by email.

Having a letter from a physician noting the presence of a cyst, hernia, or other lesion might help, but understandably, the TSA agent may still wish to perform a pat down and a swipe for contraband, Heymann added. Mutual understanding and respect should allow the screening process to go smoothly.

Airport scanners generally show solid masses on the surface area of a persons body and/or in their clothing. If a large cyst or mass appears to stick up above the skin or body outline around it, or looks like a solid mass compared to the area around it, the scanner may reflect that, said Dr. Mahadevappa Mahesh, a radiology and public health researcher at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore who wasnt involved in the case report.

Theres no data on how many travelers may experience incidents like the woman with the cyst or the man with the hernia, Mahesh, a member of the American College of Radiologys medical physics commission, said by email. We suspect that it is a rare situation, Mahesh said.

Its more common for patients that have been injected with or ingested a radioactive material for nuclear medicine exams to be flagged for airport screening because radiation may be detected if they travel shortly after their procedures, Mahesh added.

While smaller cysts shouldnt confuse airport scanners, its more likely that travelers would be flagged when they have larger ones, said Dr. David Brenner, a radiology researcher at Columbia University Medical Center in New York who wasnt involved in the case report.

If you do have a large (greater than 2 inch) external skin lesion which is located under your clothes, you would be prudent to get a doctors note before traveling  but you still might expect a patdown, Brenner said by email.
If we don't act soon, it will be all gone, and this is a disaster for conservation, for climate change, and for some of the most vulnerable human communities on the planet. (Photo: Pixabay)

Melbourne: A staggering 3.3 million square kilometres - almost 10 per cent - of the the global wilderness has been lost since the 1990s, with Amazon and Central Africa being the hardest hit, a new study has found.

The study showed catastrophic declines in wilderness over the last 20 years.

"Globally important wilderness areas - despite being strongholds for endangered biodiversity, for buffering and regulating local climates, and for supporting many of the world's most politically and economically marginalised communities - are completely ignored in environmental policy," said James Watson of University of Queensland in Australia.

"International policy mechanisms must recognise the actions needed to maintain wilderness areas before it is too late. We probably have one to two decades to turn this around," said Watson, who is also associated the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York.

Watson said much policy attention has been paid to the loss of species, but comparatively little was known about larger-scale losses of entire ecosystems.

To fill that gap in the new study, the researchers mapped wilderness areas around the globe, with "wilderness" being defined as biologically and ecologically intact landscapes free of any significant human disturbance.

The researchers then compared their current map of wilderness to one produced by the same means in the early 1990s. Their updated map shows that a total of 30.1 million square kilometres (more than 20 per cent of the world's land area) now remains as wilderness, with the majority being located in North America, North Asia, North Africa, and the Australian continent.

However, comparisons between the two maps show that an estimated 3.3 million square kilometres (almost 10 per cent) of wilderness area has been lost in the intervening years. Those losses have occurred primarily in South America,

which has experienced a 30 per cent wilderness loss, and Africa, which has experienced a 14 per cent loss.

"The amount of wilderness loss in just two decades is staggering and very saddening," Watson said. "If we don't act soon, it will be all gone, and this is a

disaster for conservation, for climate change, and for some of the most vulnerable human communities on the planet," he said. The study was published in the journal Current Biology.
Toronto: Animal-assisted therapy, such as interactions with pet dogs, can help university students combat homesickness as well as reduce drop-out rates, a new study has found.

"Transitioning from high school to university can prove to be a challenge for many first-year students," said John Tyler Binfet, Assistant Professor at University of British Columbia in Canada. "Given that students who experience homesickness are more likely than their non-homesick cohorts to drop out of

university, universities have a vested interest in supporting students during their first-year transition," Tyler said.

In the study, 44 first-year university students who self-identified as homesick were given a survey to measure levels of homesickness, satisfaction with life and

connectedness with campus. Half of the students completed eight weeks of dog therapy, while the other half were informed that their sessions would

begin in eight weeks' time.

Dog therapy included 45-minute weekly sessions involving small group interactions with the dogs and handlers, and engagement with other first-year students participating in the study. Following the initial eight-week session, participants in both the treatment group and the non-treatment group completed

the survey again.

Participants who completed the eight-week programme experienced significant reductions in homesickness and greater increase in satisfaction with life.

Participants reported that sessions "felt like they were at home chatting with friends who brought their puppies." While the non-treatment group reported an increase in their feelings of homesickness.

A total of 29 per cent of students who dropped out cited more interactions and friendships with other students as a factor that would have influenced their decision to stay longer. A university's ability to influence campus connections

could be a useful tool in lowering drop-out rates in first-year students, said Binfet.

"Many first-year university students face the challenge of integrating into their new campus community," said Binfet. "Homesick students are three times more likely than those who manage their homesickness to disengage and drop out of

university," he said. The research was published in the journal Anthrozoos.
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U.S. Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton on Thursday reiterated that she would not put U.S. ground troops into Iraq and Syria in the military campaign against the extremist group Islamic State (IS).

"I've said it on numerous occasions. I believe it. I think putting a big contingent of American ground troops on the ground in Iraq and Syria would not be in the best interest of the fight against ISIS and other terrorist groups," said Clinton in a news conference in New York, referring to another acronym of the group.

While she insisted that the dispatch of U.S. ground troops "would fulfil one of their (IS) dearest wishes" of dragging the United States back into a ground war in the Middle East, Clinton on Thursday showcased her willingness to continue U.S. President Barack Obama's current anti-IS strategy despite Republicans' severe criticism that the Obama administration was acting insufficiently in the campaign.

"I support the air campaign. I support Special Forces. I support enablers. I support surveillance, intelligence and reconnaissance. I will absolutely be prepared to do whatever is necessary to support the Arab and Kurdish fighters on the ground to take out as much of the infrastructure of ISIS from the air," said Clinton, adding that she would also be committed to target-killing of IS leadership.

Currently, there are about 5,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and several hundreds more are dispatched to northern Syria. The White House does not count them as "ground troops," arguing that those are not combat troops and are only engaged in assisting and training local forces in the fight against IS.
Travelling is all about exploring and going for new experiences in different places, but some times people can have memories ranging from surprising to bizarre when they venture into the unknown.

Condom vending machines at tourist spots are known to be a major step in raising sexual awareness, but what a British family travelling through Spain stumbled upon is something they didnt imagine in their wildest dreams.

When the couple Stuart and Debbie Noris, along with their two daughters aged 9 and 15, approached a vending machine at the seaside resort of LEstartit, they were shocked to see that it was also selling sex toys along with the usual snacks and cold drink.

The family though it was only selling snacks (Photo: Facebook/Spectrum FM Costa Almeria)

Stuart told Daily Mail that, It is quite shocking, we had to hide the girls' eyes when we realised what it is. Its right on the main street so anyone can go over to it. Its next to another machine selling snacks. We'd only gone over to get a Wagon Wheel.

Costa Brava is a popular tourist destination in Spain, but it seems that tourists should always look forward to surprises which might not be so pleasant always.
Bengaluru: A business partner of a private firm in the IT capital allegedly raped an employee in front of her one-year-old son during a field trip to Kodagu. The incident took place in April and the accused has been on the run since then.

According to reports, the woman had joined the firm as a customer care executive in January. She alleged the accused, T. Vivekananda, started harassing her for sexual favours and he continued to do so despite several warnings from her.

The incident is said to have taken place in April when Vivekananda planned a field trip to Kodagu, also the victims native place, and made it a compulsion for her to be there. Vivekananda, the woman and her son were accompanied by his business partner to Kodagu and the accused allegedly forced the victim to stay with them in a single room at a hotel.

The victim had taken her son to Kodagu thinking she would meet her mother and leave him with her till the end of the trip. She, however, had to keep her son at the hotel room because her mother asked her not to come home as some wild animals were sighted nearby.

The victim and her son were left alone with accused in the hotel room after the other business partner left for Bengaluru the next morning due to an emergency, said an officer privy to the investigation.

While they were still in Kodagu, Vivekananda allegedly filmed the woman while she was bathing and used the video to blackmail her, threatening to show it to her husband and upload it online.

He allegedly raped her for next few days and the victim did not protest fearing he would upload the video online.

The incident came to light when her husband found about the ordeal she was going through, following which they filed a complaint against her boss.

"Her husband learnt about the incident, the victim claims to have narrated her ordeal to him. The couple then decided to file a complaint. The North East division police have registered a complaint in this regard a few days back. Knowing that a complaint was being registered against him, the accused fled to Andhra Pradesh and is still on the run. He is also trying to obtain bail from a lower court," an officer said.

Meanwhile, the police are investigating if the other partner, who accompanied them to Kodagu, knew about the intentions of the accused.
Bengaluru: When a 37-year-old IT professional became a victim of online fraud and went to file a police complaint, little did she expect that many similar cases were already registered at the station.

When Ruchitha (name changed) approached JC Nagar police station on Wednesday, she realised that the station in-charge was well aware of the modus operandi of the cyber criminals and narrated the chain of sequence even before she could explain.

Hers was the eleventh complainant registered in a span of just one week. A resident of Benson Town, Ruchitha believed that it was an inside job. They managed to retrieve all her account details and laid the trap and duped her of Rs 4,760.

The fraud took place on Wednesday noon while Ruchitha was at work. She told DC, I received a call from a HDFC bank representative who said the rewards point on my old HDFC credit card have expired and the same will be transferred to my new account. Since my new HDFC credit card has not been activated yet the reward points may go waste. Hence the representative asked me if I have any other account and I provided them with the details of my HDFC debit card.

She further said, Once I shared the OTP number along with the card details, expiry date and CVV numbers with the representative, who was online, immediately

Rs 4,760 was debited from my account and credited to - Airtel wallet. I grew suspicious and immediately called the bank asking them to block my card. The representative who had initiated another transaction of Rs 2,500 failed to debit as the card got blocked.

When Ruchitha tried getting in touch with the representatives, who allegedly claimed to be calling from HDFC bank, there was no response. She immediately approached the jurisdictional police station to register a complaint. But she was shocked to learn that the police had their hands full and was dealing with over a dozen of similar cases in just one week.

A police officer told this newspaper, We have received over nine to 11 cases in this connection. We suspect a gang behind credit card fraud who are targeting gullible people and on the name of bank doing online transactions. J.C. Nagar police have over 11 cases registered in their police station and are probing in this connection.

IT city tops in cyber crimes

As per the recently released statistics by the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB), Bengaluru has registered 1,041 highest number of cases under the IT Act and none of the metro cities are even close to it. Jaipur is the distant second with 459 cases.
Pansare and his wife were shot by unidentified persons in Kolhapur during their morning walk on February 16, last year. (Photo: PTI)

Kolhapur: The special investigation team (SIT) of Maharashtra police probing CPI leader Govind Pansare murder case, on Thursday told a court here that it has during a search at the ashram of Panvel-based Sanatan Sanstha found some drugs which could affect the nervous system.

It also said that Vinay Pawar, an absconding accused who the CBI has said was the shooter in Narendra Dabholkar murder case, was a suspect in this case too.

The SIT produced ENT doctor Virendra Tawde, earlier arrested by the CBI in the Dabholkar case, before Kolhapur magistrate V B Kalpagar who extended his custody till September 16.

The CBI had on Wednesday filed a chargesheet in a Pune court against Tawde, alleging that he was a main conspirator in the 2013 murder of rationalist Narendra Dabholkar.

It has already arrested Sameer Gaikwad, a Sanatan Sanstha disciple, in the case. Seeking Tawdes further custody in Pansare case, the SIT said that Pawar is a third suspect.

Pansare, a rationalist, and his wife were shot while on morning walk in Kolhapur on February 16, 2015. Pansare died four days later while his wife survived.

Pawar conducted a recce in Kolhapur, and he used to be with Tawde. A witness who was shown Pawars picture, confirmed that it was Pawar who used to conduct recce prior to Pansares murder, said Special Public prosecutor Shivajirao Rane.

The prosecution told the court that during a raid at Panvel ashram of Sanatan Sanstha (of which Tawde was a member), police found some drugs which can affect the nervous system. The SIT wanted to probe why these drugs were stored there, he said.

The SIT also wanted to recover a four-wheeler used by Tawde, he said. Advocate Virendra Ichalkaranjikar, Tawdes lawyer, questioned the genuineness of the witness who allegedly identified Pawar, and opposed extension of Tawdes custody.

Ichalkaranjikar later said the recovery of medicinal drugs from Sansthas ashram was not surprising, because some doctors lived on the premises.
Visakhapatnam: Andhra Pradesh is in serious conflict with regard to protection of children and their rights as crimes, including rape, abduction and burglaries by juveniles are on the rise. Despite the rising juvenile crimes, AP does not have a Borstal school to provide training to the juvenile criminals in various trades, which could help them settle in life. Last year (2015), there was 15 per cent increase in the number of minors committing crime in Andhra Pradesh. In 2014, 871 cases were registered against juveniles and in 2015, the number went up to 1,002 as per the NCRB-2015 data.

The report also revealed that AP has 47 minors booked for rape, 25 minors booked for murder, 49 minors booked for assault on women with intent to outrage her modesty and over 300 minors booked for robbery, theft and burglary in the state. DCP (Crimes) T. Ravi Kumar Murthy said a majority of the juveniles were school and college dropouts while a few others were students and they indulged in crimes for easy money to meet their expenses on drugs, alcohol and to satisfy their girlfriends by hosting parties.

In some cases, the minors from rich families were booked for committing cyber crimes such as defaming their friends and neighbours with morphed images on social networking sites. A senior advocate and President of Forum of Legal Professionals, Kuppili Muralidhar says counselling, guidance and motivation are required to change the mindset of the juveniles to not commit crimes again. He pointed out behaviour modification is key to children to transform their lives and future.

Sources said six more government juvenile observation homes will come up in the state. The government has already notified about 25 acres of land at Kondavelagada village in Nellimarla mandal of Vizianagaram district for construction of a new district jail and a Borstal School will also be set up along with it.
After allegedly killing her daughter, the culprit had raised an alarm stating that the girl was missing. (Representational image)

Jaipur: The Rajasthan police have solved one of the two mysterious deaths of girls, and it turned out to be a case of female infanticide. The four-month-old girl was killed by none other than her mother who reportedly confessed to her crime after 13 days. She used a sharp object to kill the girl who had 16 injury marks on her body.

The police have arrested 35-year-old Neha Goyal for the murder of four-month-old who was found with the throat slit in an air conditioner box on the second floor of a three-storey building at Subash Nagar. After allegedly killing her daughter, the culprit had raised an alarm stating that the girl was missing.

After the murder on August 26, preliminary investigations showed that nobody had tried to enter the house. Since it was a family with 35 members living together, we suspected that someone from inside the house could be behind the act, said Anshuman Bhomia, deputy commissioner of police (north). The police got suspicious after FSL report confirmed that blood found on Nehas nails matched with the girl because she had not touched the body after killing her.

The police also took cyber cells help to check mothers phone records that revealed that she used to search for techniques and medicines for having baby boy but after killing her daughter she had deleted search history.

The accused reportedly told the police that she wanted a boy for which the couple had tried various things. Last year, she also performed a yajna to have a baby boy. The girl she killed was her fourth child. She has an eight-year-old girl while two children had died during pregnancy.

Neha Goyal is well-educated and hails from an affluent family. The police also suspect murder in the case of a six-months-old disabled girl whose body was found in the bathroom last month.
New Delhi: Accusing the Delhi Police of leaking sensitive information about Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's whereabouts after he was manhandled by protesters, the AAP on Thursday termed the development as a "security breach".



Activists led by Delhi BJP women's wing president Kamaljeet Sehrawat and party spokesman Praveen Kapoor raised slogans and waved bangles towards Kejriwal, who arrived at the New Delhi railway station to board a train for Punjab.



The party alleged the Delhi Police officials present at the venue watched the incident as it unfolded without making any attempts to prevent it.



"The Delhi Police had planted news across sections of the media that it was not going to provide security to the CM during his 5-day visit to Punjab.



"The events of today morning must be seen in the context of the Delhi Police's open declaration that the CM would be unprotected. Is the Delhi Police leaking out sensitive information regarding the whereabouts of the CM to mischievous and potentially dangerous elements?" the party said.



Senior AAP leader Sanjay Singh alleged that the police first informed the BJP that Kejriwal would not be given any security cover and then got the Chief Minister attacked.



"Is Modi ji conspiring with the Delhi Police and the BJP to attack Arvind Kejriwal? Was the morning episode (manhandling of the CM) a rehearsal to it," Sisodia tweeted.



The Delhi Police had yesterday turned down the request from Kejriwal's office to send security personnel to Punjab by road, a day before his visit to the state.



"Modi ji's Police first told the BJP (about its inability) to provide security cover and then got Arvind Kejriwal attacked. Is any conspiracy brewing against the Chief Minister," Singh tweeted.



The party also questioned how did BJP activists know minute details of Kejriwal's itinerary and why did the Delhi Police officials behave like mute spectators?



"The most shocking part in this episode has been that the Delhi Police did not act to protect the CM despite express concerns conveyed by the CM's office and the Chief Secretary's office to the Delhi Police after the word was out that the CM would not have protection," the party alleged.



The AAP said the incident also exposed the systematic coordination between BJP and the Police and shows a shocking misuse of Police forces by the BJP for their political ends.
Chandigarh: The Aam Aadmi Party in Punjab has filed criminal defamation cases against its Delhi MLA Devender Sehrawat, who had accused the party's state leaders of exploiting women in return for tickets, and former party leaders HS Kingra and Paviter Singh.

AAP's Punjab affairs in-charge Sanjay Singh and National Organisation Building Secretary Durgesh Pathak filed the cases in the court of Chief Judicial Magistrate, Chandigarh.

An AAP release said Singh and Pathak filed a joint case of criminal defamation against Sehrawat whose allegations, they said, "defame the women of Punjab".

In Delhi, AAP city Convener Dilip Pandey said he will alsofile a separate defamation suit against Sehrawat soon.

Responding to it, Sehrawat said he stands by "every word I've written in that letter and when the case comes in the court, we will take appropriate action".

He said filing a defamation case at this time is all "politics and posturing".

"The people will decide who should rule Punjab. Should the Punjabis rule Punjab? Should those rule Punjab who are not even able to start a minor enquiry and find out if an observation has been given and push the thing into the court," he said.

Against former AAP leader Kingra, Singh and Pathak filed separate cases of criminal defamation, as he had levelled separate "false defamatory allegations" against them in a press conference here recently.

The release said Singh and Pathak filed a joint case of criminal defamation in the court against rebel AAP leader Paviter Singh, who levelled allegations against party leaders of demanding money in return for party ticket.

In a joint statement, Singh and Pathak alleged these leaders levelled "hollow and baseless" allegations against them.

On Sehrawat's allegations, the AAP leaders said he tried to "defame the women of Punjab" by making false allegations and has failed to provide any evidence in support of his allegations.

Earlier, AAP's women wing in Punjab had filed complaints against Sehrawat with Women Commission and the Punjab SC Commission.

Meanwhile, Jat Samaj, Najafgarh, has called a 'mahapanchayat' in support of Shehrawat tomorrow near Anaj Mandi, Najafgarh.
Kuldeep Moran, son of Tinsukia district panchayat vice-president Ratneshwar Moran, was abducted from Nampong in Changlang district on August 1. (Photo: Videograb)

Itanagar: Arunachal Pradesh police on Friday rescued son of a panchayat vice-president who was abducted by suspected Ulfa-I militants after 20 days of massive search.

Kuldeep Moran, son of Tinsukia district panchayat vice-president Ratneshwar Moran, was abducted from Nampong in Changlang district on August 1.

Highly-placed police sources from Changlang told PTI that the police team rescued Kuldeep from a cliff in a dense jungle around 10 km from Longvi village bordering Myanmar in the afternoon.

Longvi is the last village on the Indian side and several km away from Nampong, the sources said.

A day after his abduction, Kuldeep's father had received a call from someone claiming to be from Ulfa-I. The caller had asked for Rs one crore to be arranged from BJP MLA Bolin Chetia from Sadiya in upper Assam for Kuldeep's release.

The rebel group also emailed a statement to media houses seeking the ransom. The rebels claimed that Kuldeep was indulging in extortion in the name of the Ulfa-I. Immediately after the abduction, the Assam police sought the help of Arunachal police to trace the abducted boy.
Pro-Kannada organisation activist burn posters of Tamil Nadu CM Jayalalithaa and Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah in protest against the Supreme Court verdict on Cauvery water, in Bengaluru. (Photo: PTI)

Bengaluru: Normal life in the city and most parts of the state was affected on Friday by the dawn-to-dusk Karnataka bandh called by pro-Kannada outfits, to protest against the Supreme Court's direction to release Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu.

A few activists of pro-Kannada organisations who tried to enter the departure terminal of the Kempegowda International Airport and the railway station here were stopped and detained by the police.

Transport services have been hit with government buses staying off the roads while auto-rickshaw and cab unions have extended their support to the bandh. Metro services in the country's IT hub have also been halted.

People who reached the city from distant places and those travelling towards the airport are facing difficulties in reaching their destination with no mode of connectivity.

Educational institutions have declared a holiday today. Attendance at government offices was comparatively less today as officials had informed that it will not be "compulsory" to work today.

While some private companies have declared a holiday today, others are making alternate arrangements for employees to "work from home".

Petrol bunks, hotels, malls and other commercial establishments remained shut, besides banks services were also hit. Karnataka Cable Operators Association which is supporting the strike has said Tamil TV channels will not be aired.

The bandh has evoked a positive response from various parts of the state including Mandya, Mysuru, Ballari, Koppala, Chikkaballapura, Dharwad and Kolar.

In Mandya, the epicenter of the Cauvery protests, agitators have blocked the Bengaluru-Mysuru highway at several places.

A section of farmers in the district staged a protest by venturing into the river carrying stones on their head. In Ballari, three lorries bearing Tamil Nadu registrations were stoned by protesters. The transgender community in the district also took part in the bandh related demonstrations.

Chief Minister Siddaramiah had appealed for peace and said no damage should be caused to public property during the bandh.

Elaborate security arrangements have been made to maintain law and order in the state.

Extra forces have been deployed with two companies each from Kerala and Andhra Pradesh, one from Maharashtra and 10 companies of central forces, police said.

This is the second bandh that the state is bracing for in a week's time and the fourth this year.

Officials said with the bandh on the emotive Cauvery issue being supported by several organisations, unions and political parties, it was likely to be "total". Opposition parties of BJP and JD(S) have also lent support to the bandh.

The Cauvery row erupted after the Supreme Court on Monday directed Karnataka to release 15,000 cusecs to Tamil Nadu for the next 10 days to address the plight of farmers there.

Subsequently, on September 6, Karnataka released the Cauvery water amid snowballing protests by farmers.

The Karnataka government had also said it would approach the apex court seeking modification of its order because of the difficulties in implementing it, given that the live storage in four reservoirs in the Cauvery basin now was 46.7 TMC ft against their capacity of 104 TMC ft.
 Flash

China's Foreign Ministry issued a statement on Friday expressing firm opposition to the nuclear test by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).

"Today the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, despite universal opposition from the international community, conducted another nuclear test, to which the Chinese government is firmly opposed," said the statement.

DPRK state-run television reported earlier Friday that the country has conducted a nuclear warhead explosion test. It was Pyongyang's fifth nuclear test and followed the previous one by eight months.

"We strongly urge the DPRK side to honor the commitment to denuclearization, abide by the relevant UN Security Council resolutions and halt any moves that could aggravate the situation," according to the statement.

The statement said China's stance has always been to achieve denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula, prevent nuclear proliferation and maintain peace and stability in Northeast Asia.

"China will, along with the international community, keep working toward the goal of denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula and commit to settling problems through the six-party talks," said the statement.
Actor Darshan and Mandya MP C.S. Puttaraju join farmers who staged a protest against release of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu, in Mandya on Thursday (Photo: KPN)

Bengaluru: The one-day Karnataka shutdown called by pro-Kannada outfits on Friday to protest against the Supreme Court's direction to release Cauvery river water to Tamil Nadu threw normal life out of gear and brought the state to a halt.

Schools, colleges and many offices were closed in Bengaluru and public transport remained off the roads.

Authorities made a series of preventive arrests through the night of Thursday-Friday in the city and other districts in the state.

The city of Bengaluru turned into a fortress with an unprecedented deployment of local, state and central police forces across the IT capital as it braces for mob violence.

Among the central police forces, who were deployed included four companies of Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), two companies of Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) and two companies of Rapid Action Force (RAF).

Besides the police deployment made in Mysore, KRS Dam, Mandya, Kabini, a similar number of police personnel were deployed on Friday in the city as officials said they anticipated trouble from anti-social elements in the Tamil speaking areas of West Bengaluru. The DG stated that his force will step up protection for the Tamil dominated areas in the city as well as the state.

In view of this, the DG has requested two KSRP platoons from Kerala, which will be deployed in the Tamil Nadu-Karnataka border and also one state reserve police force from Andhra which will be deployed in north Karnataka district because they are anticipating that those who have taken part in the Mahadayi protests will join hands with the Cauvery activists on Friday.

Can this modified plea win water case?

Stung by widespread uproar and violent protests against the state governments decision to release Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah announced a two-pronged strategy which includes moving the Supreme Court on Monday through a modification application against the apex courts order to ensure flow of 15,000 cusecs for ten days to the neighbouring state.

The other strategy would be to hand in a reply to the Cauvery Supervisory Committee at a time when it is contemplating to send an experts team to assess the ground situation, Mr Siddaramaiah told the media on Thursday after reviewing security measures for the state-wide bandh on Friday.

We are going explain our plight and shortage of water to the Supreme Court. We will request the court to reconsider its order to release 15, 000 cusecs of water for a period of 15 days, he added.

Asked whether senior counsel Fali Nariman had agreed on release of water, Mr Siddaramaiah said the state had not made a commitment. In view of the tribunal order, and distress in our state, our legal team submitted that we will release 10,000 cusecs of water for 10 days. But there is a big difference between what we offered, and what the court ordered, he added.

Send expert team

Chief Secretary Arvind Jadhav has urged chairman of the Supervisory Committee, Union Ministry of Water Resources, to dispatch an expert team to study the ground realities in the Cauvery basin following directions from the SC to release 15,000 cusecs of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu.

In a letter to the Union water resources secretary, Mr Jadhav said the apex court has also called for an immediate supervisory meeting on the subject. The state government had held an all-party meeting presided over by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah recently and consulted various stake holders.

Opinions were expressed that the SC's order would have been different if the report of experts on ground realities in the Cauvery basin was available to the Supreme Court.
A central government employees gets reimbursement of tickets for to and fro journey besides paid leaves when he avails the LTC allowance. (Photo: Representational Image)

New Delhi: Central government employees, who are not entitled to air travel, can fly to Jammu and Kashmir, Northeastern states and Andaman and Nicobar Islands under Leave Travel Concession (LTC) allowance for two years till September 2018.

They are allowed to travel in any airline to Jammu and Kashmir, however, the journey should be undertaken in economy class, an order issued today by Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) said.

The DoPT had in September 2014 relaxed the LTC rules to allow government servants to travel by air to Northeast region, Jammu and Kashmir and Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

The relaxation has been extended for two more years with effect from September 26, the order said. There are about 50 lakh central government employees. It said that the travel by air to continue to be performed by Air India in economy class.

The condition that air tickets can be purchased either directly from the airlines (booking counters or website) or through authorised agents only viz. M/s Balmer Lawrie and Co Ltd, M/s Ashok Travels and Tours Ltd and IRCTC shall necessarily apply, the order said.

A central government employees gets reimbursement of tickets for to and fro journey besides paid leaves when he avails the LTC allowance. The DoPT has also warned employees against misuse of LTC rules.

"Efforts should be made by the government servants to book the air tickets at the cheapest fare possible. All the ministries or departments are advised to bring it to the notice of all their employees that any misuse of LTC will be viewed seriously and the employees will be liable for appropriate action under the rules," it said.

In order to keep a check on any kind of misuse of LTC, all departments are advised to randomly get some air tickets, submitted by the officials, verified from the airlines concerned with regard to the actual cost of air travel vis-a-vis the cost indicated on the air tickets submitted by the officials, said the DoPT order, issued to secretaries of all central government departments.
New Delhi: Congress on Thursday night attacked the Modi government for not keeping the promise of granting special category status to Andhra Pradesh, a commitment it said was given by the UPA regime.

"Special Category Status is the Right of People of Andhra Pradesh and the commitment made by UPA Govt Prime Minister is not being kept," senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh who is also the in charge of party affairs in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana tweeted.

The Centre on Wednesday announced a financial package for Andhra Pradesh that includes full funding of Pollavaram irrigation project, tax concessions and a special assistance, but stopped short of giving the state a special category status.

Mr Singh said that there is nothing new to what Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has promised to Andhra Pradesh.

"Nothing new in what Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has promised to AP. The excuse of Finance Commission by FM is not correct as Finance Commission has not made any such recommendation," he tweeted.

Citing constraints placed by the 14th Finance Commission in grant of special category status to Andhra Pradesh, Mr Jaitley had said an amount equivalent to what that categorization would have fetched, would be given to the state in form of a Special Assistance Measure for five years.

Congress has been pitching for a special category status for Andhra Pradesh for long and party vice president Rahul Gandhi had also written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the same.

Andhra Pradesh, which financially suffered because of creation of separate state of Telengana in June 2014, will get a railway zone as also all cost incurred on the irrigation part of Pollavaram project from the date it was declared a National Project on April 1, 2014 will be funded by the Centre.
New Delhi: Supreme Court on Friday directed the Gujarat government not to disturb the admissions already granted in educational institutions under the controversial ordinance providing a quota for the economically backward among the unreserved category including the agitating Patel community, which has been quashed by the High Court.

The apex court also made it clear to the state government that since Gujarat High Court has quashed the notification pertaining to the implementation of the ordinance, no further action can be taken for implementing the quota policy aimed at providing 10 per cent seats in educational institutions and services to economically weaker sections from the general category, during the pendency of the matter before it.

A bench, comprising Chief Justice T S Thakur and Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud, admitted the appeal filed by the Gujarat government against the August 4 order of the High Court quashing the May 1 ordinance providing 10 per cent quota, terming it as "inappropriate and unconstitutional".

The bench, which sought the response of the parties which had contested the ordinance, said the matter would be first listed before a three-judge bench, and if required, that bench can refer it to a larger bench of five-judges.

"Pending further order, we direct that the admissions made prior to the judgement of the High Court will not be disturbed during the pendency of the matter here.

"Since the High Court has quashed the notification, we make it clear that no further action would be taken towards implementation of the said notification, qua education and services," the bench said after a brief hearing.

Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for Gujarat government, submitted that the ordinance was effectively challenged with regard to medical colleges and the state has decided not to give effect to the implementation of the ordinance for admissions in medical colleges.

He said the real objective was to give opportunities to economically backward sections from the general category in services and medical colleges but since the ordinance has been quashed, it is non-operational.

The Attorney General said the 10 per cent quota policy would have been beneficial in engineering colleges as even now 5,000 seats are vacant.

The apex court had on September 2 agreed to advance the date of hearing on Gujarat's plea challenging quashing of its ordinance on the ground that counselling for MBBS admission would end soon.
The woman said she was drugged and raped in the hospital. (Representational Image)

Gandhinagar: The Gujarat police have arrested a doctor and a sweeper for allegedly raping a dengue patient in the ICU of Apollo hospital in Gandhinagar last month.

The victim had lodged a police complaint alleging that the two men had drugged and raped her twice when she was admitted to the hospital on August 22 with high fever.

"We have arrested Chauhan and Vankar on the charges of rape. The girl alleged that both of them took turns to rape her on the night of Saturday and Sunday at the hospital where she was undergoing treatment for dengue," said Adalaj police inspector A K Pandya.

The duo has been remanded to police custody by a local court till tomorrow.

The girl was raped in the ICU unit of the hospital, where authorities do not allow relatives of the patient to stay back in the night.

On September 7, the girl had lodged a complaint with Adalaj police alleging that she was raped by the hospital sweeper, whom she identified as Chandu, besides a doctor, whom she could recognise by his face.

Based on the complaint, police had lodged a case under section 376 (C)(D) of the Indian Penal Code for rape and subsequently arrested Vankar and Chauhan, said Pandya. Apollo Hospital said that they are cooperating fully with the police in investigation.

"The ward where the incident took place has 14 staff working round-the-clock, and is equipped with CCTV cameras. We are co-operating fully with the police which is examining CCTV footages and carrying out the investigations," said a statement issued by the hospital.

Following the complaint, the woman was sent for a medial examination to confirm her claims and the test revealed that she was indeed raped.
Kashmiri separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani has alleged that the government has devised a kill-list to eliminate people who have not succumbed to their machinations. (Photo: PTI)

Srinagar: Kashmiri separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani has alleged that the government has devised a kill-list to eliminate pro-freedom leaders, activists and like-minded civil society members, traders, government employees and journalists of Jammu and Kashmir.

"Weve learnt that they have formulated a kill-list, whereby they have identified pro-freedom leaders and activists and those civil society members, business leaders, government employees and journalists, who have not succumbed to their machinations," he said in a signed statement after the police prevented him from holding a press conference at his besieged residence in Srinagar on Friday.

"This is a very serious issue and we warn the occupier (Indian government) and their local stooges that any such misadventure will have serious repercussions, he said.

Earlier, large contingents of J&K police and CRPF deployed at Geelanis house in Srinagars Hyderpora locality turned away media persons who had arrived there to attend the press conference. "He is under house arrest and, therefore, cant address a press conference. You people should have known that before coming here, said a police officer to this correspondent after stopping him about fifty yards from the separatist leaders house.

Geelani later mailed the statement, which he had planned to read at the presser, to media persons. In the statement, he alleged the current phase of what he says is a "freedom struggle" has so unnerved the occupier and its local stooges that they have resorted to vilest means to suppress the struggle.

He sought to assure the people involved in the nine-week-old unrest in the valley or supporting it that the freedom is round the corner now. The frustration of our occupier is understandable because between us and our freedom stand half a million Indian guns. Never before have we been so close to freedom with such clarity as we are now, he said.

Geelani asserted that the unrest is an extension of the separatist campaign spreading over seven decades and that it only thrived after the killing of Hizb-ul-Mujahedin commander Burhan Muzaffar Wani by the security forces.

There is no village and no town where, during the past two months, people have not made it abundantly clear again that the only relationship between India and Kashmir is that of the occupier and the occupied, and between the two the smokescreen that India had created in J&K in the form of Abdullahs, Muftis, Lones and the sundry has fallen, he said.

The defeat of our enemy and the fact of our imminent victory are very much evident in the frustrated talk in their Parliament, institutions of power and in the news studios of their fascist media, he said, adding, For the past 70 years, India has created a massive infrastructure of military occupation and other instruments of control but the last two months have shown that our will to fight for freedom is stronger than all their evil machinations."

He acknowledged that apart from nearly eighty people getting killed and thousands injured in the security forces actions against protesters over the past two months, the shutdowns have cost the labourers, masons, transporters, shikarawallas, ponywallas, carpenters, weavers and others their livelihoods.

Geelani, however, said that people are at the forefront of the struggle even after suffering physically and economically. "Also, this is the struggle of every soul  farmers, doctors, teachers, school children and government employees. These sacrifices are the building blocks of the free nation we are destined to become," he claimed.

The separatist leader was all praise for Pakistan and said it has once again proved itself to be our friends and well-wishers."

Pakistan and its people shared our pain and raised their voice in our support. We are happy that at a time when the people of Jammu and Kashmir have once again risen for their freedom, Pakistan and its people have taken an ethical stand to support our struggle morally, politically and diplomatically.

Geelani went ahead to thank the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and other countries like China, Norway, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, New Zealand and Iran for expressing their concern over the brutal repression by India in Kashmir.

The separatist leader criticised sections of the Indian media for presenting a distorted picture of the Kashmir unrest.

There was a time when the Kashmiri people would need someone else to read and write their letters. Our stories of pain and longing for freedom would almost always be distorted by the journalists and writers who came from India to take note of our lives and struggles against the Indian occupation, he said.

"While there are a few honourable exceptions, the dominant discourse created by the Indian media and writers continues to be based on falsehoods aimed at dehumanizing us and labelling our struggle as terrorism," he added.

He alleged that the Indian media, by and large, is an extension of the Indian state and performs well the role that has been assigned to it to help keep in place the Indian occupation in Kashmir.
The Enforcement Directorate has registered a money laundering case against former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda and others in a case of alleged financial irregularities in acquisition of land in Gurgaon's Manesar. (Photo: AFP)

New Delhi: In a fresh trouble for former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) has registered a money laundering case against him and others in a case of alleged financial irregularities in acquisition of land in Gurgaon's Manesar in which farmers were cheated to the tune of Rs. 1,500 crore.

The ED has filed a criminal complaint against the Congress leader based on a FIR filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), under which the probe agency conducted searches in Haryana and the national capital last week.

Officials said the ED case has been made under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) and the agency has begun identifying the "proceeds of crime" allegedly created illegally as a fallout of the corruption done in the case.

"Summons would be issued to the accused soon. The agency is also looking for assets created out of tainted funds to attach them under PMLA as part of the investigations," they said.

The case pertains to CBI registering a case in this regard last year in September on allegations that private builders in conspiracy with unknown public servants of the Haryana government had purchased around 400 acres of land from farmers and land owners of village Manesar, Naurangpur and Lakhnoula in Gurgaon district at throw away prices, showing the threat of acquisition by the government, during August 27, 2004-August 24, 2007.

It was alleged that a loss of Rs. 1,500 crore was caused to the land owners of village Manesar, Naurangpur and Lakhnoula of Gurgaon.

During last week's searches at Hooda's residence, CBI had claimed to have found "fund transaction details worth crores of rupees" which are now being scrutinised by the agency.

The ED is expected to seek a copy of these documents from the CBI soon, in order to take its probe forward.

CBI alleged that initially the Haryana government had issued a notification under the Land Acquisition Act for acquiring land measuring about 912 acres for setting up an Industrial Model Township at villages Manesar, Naurangpur and Lakhnoula in Gurgaon.

After that, all the land had allegedly been grabbed from the land owners by private builders at meagre rates showing the threat of Government acquisition, CBI had said after registering the case.

It is also alleged that an order was then passed by the competent authority i.e. the Director of Industries on August 24, 2007, releasing this land from the acquisition process in violation of the government policy, in favour of the builders, their companies and agents, instead of the original land owners.

The CBI has alleged in its FIR that in the said manner, land measuring about 400 acres whose market value at that time was above Rs. 4 crore per acre approximately totalling about Rs. 1,600 crore approximately was allegedly purchased by the private builders and others from the innocent land owners for only about Rs. 100 crore.
Mewat: After it received complaint that beef was being added to biryani, police and cow vigilantes in Mundaka village here are keeping close vigil to avoid any such incident in view of Eid al-Adha to be celebrated next week.

Police had received a complaint on August 24 on beef being added to biryani in Mundaka village following which seven samples were collected and sent to laboratory in Hisar for testing, Mewat SP Kuldeep Singh said here on Thursday.

Deputy Director of Mewat Animal Husbandry Department Narender Kumar said more samples will be collected if such complaints were received. "We collected the samples and handed them over to the police. More samples will be collected in the coming days only if complaint pours in," said Kumar.

The polices Cow Protection Task Force (CPTF) has spruced up its network of informers in areas where beef consumption is suspected to be high, official sources said.

According to Hindustan Times report, all seven samples of biryani collected by the Mewat police have been found positive for beef.

The samples were sent to Lala Lajpat Rai University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences (LLRU) and a spokesperson said, We have received seven samples from the Mewat administration and after tests we found the samples positive. Reports of the samples have been sent to the concerned department and to the government.

Bharti Arora, CPTFs nodal officer and the deputy inspector general of police, who was appointed the nodal officer on July 5, said that checking biryanis is a part of other measures taken by the task force to curb beef consumption.

Arora held a meeting with Mewat superintendent of police Kuldeep Singh and chairperson of Haryana Gau Seva Aayog Bhani Ram Mangla at Nuh on Tuesday and directed officials to be on their toes in the wake of complaints about the usage of beef in biryani.

"There have been complaints of beef consumption and it cannot not be detected easily. Religious leaders in the area will urged to stop usage of beef," said Mangla.

Meanwhile, Haryana Congress vice-president Aftab Ahmed said the measures were a "humiliation to the minority community and the particular area".

Earlier in March, the Haryana government enforced Haryana Gauvansh Sanrakshan and Gau Samvardhan Act 2015 making cow slaughter punishable with rigorous imprisonment up to 10 years and a fine of Rs 1 lakh.
Vientiane: Stepping up his attack on Pakistan, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday said there is one country in our neighbourhood which produces and exports terror as he pressed the international community to isolate and sanction this instigator.

Theres one country in our neighbourhood whose competitive advantage rests solely in producing and exporting terrorism, he said in his address at the East Asia Summit, without naming Pakistan.

While addressing the 14th Asean-India Summit here, Mr Modi expressed deep concern at the rising export of terror, in an apparent reference to Pakistan. Export of terror and growing radicalisation are common security threats to our societies, he said amid escalating war of words between New Delhi and Islamabad.
Mumbai: Not every youth in Kashmir wants to pick up a gun and only a minuscule number is in favour of secession from India, a group of students from the Valley said here.

The students, who are studying outside their home state, shared their views about the ongoing unrest in Kashmir following the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani in an encounter on July 8.

Since then, the Valley has witnessed worst of unrest with violent clashes erupting between protesters and security forces.

A group of six students, who are currently studying in Pune for the last 13 years were invited by the Mumbai Press Club in association with organisation Sarhad.

"Not every Kashmiri is Burhan Wani. May be only 10 per cent of them want to get 'Aazadi'. Rest 90 per cent people are concerned about development, employment, education for their children, industrialisation. Unfortunately, nothing of that sort has happened which has resulted in the unrest," said Javed Ahmad, who is pursuing Masters.

Zahid Bhatt, a resident of Badgam district in Kashmir, said that it was the students who bear the burnt of the violence.

"Since last 20 to 30 years, we have lost our near and dear ones at the hands of either militants or security forces or some other agencies. And the most sad part is that no serious efforts have been made to resolve the issue amicably," said Bhatt, who is also general secretary of initiative Jago Bharat.

"In our childhood, as a Kashmiri, we had an impression that India is only about Army. But when we came to Pune and received affection from people, our viewpoint about India changed," he said.

Bhatt said that people of the country also needed to change their perception towards Kashmiris and that Kashmir did not only mean the land of militancy.

"One of the root causes of unrest persistent in the Valley is unemployment. If the youth get job, they would get engaged in routine affairs. They would not take to streets and pelt stones at the army," said Mushtaque Ahmad, a student who hails from Kupwara district.
Lucknow: Deflecting the opposition's charges that his free smartphone scheme was a poll sop, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav on Thursday termed it is an effort to bridge the gap between government and people with the help of technology.

The BJP on Wednesday had moved the Election Commission against Yadav's announcement of free smart phones for the poor, claiming it violates the Model Code of Conduct. It claimed the scheme was an attempt to "be-fool" people by offering allurements before the elections.

"We are not bribing people through the smartphone scheme. I have heard, they (the Opposition) are going to the Election Commission over it. Some even say we have a slogan 'We will give you mobile, you give us votes'," Yadav said at an official function.

His remarks come days after he announced the Samajwadi Smartphone scheme aimed at helping communication between the government and people, and eliciting direct feedback on government schemes.

Yadav clarified, "The intention is to give as much facilities as possible. The biggest challenge before the government is how to take schemes to masses. Even they want to know what the government is doing for them. We are trying to bridge this gap with the help of smart phone technology."

An app on the smartphone will provide people information about the state government's schemes through audio-visual and text.

Registration for smartphones will begin in a month's time and distribution will start in the latter half of 2017, if the Samajwadi Party wins the elections due early next year.

"Some said laptops (distributed as part of SP's poll promise in 2012) have not benefited anyone. I am going to hold a function and invite children who were the first to get it. I will ask them how it has benefitted them," he said.
New Delhi: Terming the nuclear test conducted by North Korea as a 'matter of grave concern', India on Friday deplored it and asked DPRK to refrain from such actions which adversely impact peace and stability in the region and beyond.

It also expressed concern over the proliferation of nuclear and missile technologies which has adversely impacted India's national security.

"India deplores the nuclear test conducted by the DPRK this morning. It is a matter of grave concern that DPRK has again acted in violation of its international obligations and in contravention of the objective of the de-nuclearisation of the Korean peninsula that the DPRK itself has endorsed.

"We call upon DPRK to refrain from such actions which adversely impact peace and stability in the region and beyond. India remains concerned about the proliferation of nuclear and missile technologies which has adversely impacted India's national security," External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Vikas Swarup said.

Earlier in the day, Pyongyang's state media said North Korea has successfully tested a nuclear warhead.

Today's test, which comes after a series of ballistic missile launches that have drawn international condemnation and UN sanctions, was deplored from many countries including the South Korea which said the "maniacal recklessness" of young ruler Kim Jong-Un would lead to self-destruction.
Srinagar: Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has invited chairman of moderate Hurriyat Conference Mirwaiz Umar Farooq for its annual 'Coordination Meeting of Foreign Ministers' as well as the 'Meeting of Contact Group on Jammu and Kashmir' in New York later this month.

Mirwaiz got the invitation through a letter from OIC Director General of Cabinet Yusuf Al-Othaimeen, which was released to media by the Hurriyat Conference in Srinagar on Friday.

"I have the honour to inform you that the annual Coordination Meeting of the OIC Foreign Ministers as well as the Meeting of the OIC Contact Group on Jammu and Kashmir will be held during the 71st session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) at the UN Headquarters in New York, on 19-22 September 2016.

"In this regard, I have the pleasure to invite you to attend the above mentioned meetings in New York, as invitee," Othaimeen said in the letter addressed to Mirwaiz.

The Hurriyat said the participation of Mirwaiz is not possible as he continues to be under arrest and his passport stands seized by the government for the last four years.

Mirwaiz, who is part of the separatist camp spearheading the ongoing agitation in the valley, was arrested on August 26 after remaining under house arrest since July 9. He is currently lodged at Cheshma Shahi sub jail in Srinagar.
New Delhi: The one-day special session of Delhi Assembly starting Friday is likely to be stormy as AAP legislators will target the Centre and Lt Governor Najeeb Jung over numbers of issues while the Opposition will seek to corner the Kejriwal government over objectionable CD involving its former minister Sandeep Kumar.



Opposition will also target the AAP government over the High Court order quashing the appointment 21 AAP lawmakers as parliamentary secretaries.



The government is likely to get sanction of the Assembly on the revised estimates even as Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and two other ministers including Gopal Rai and Imran Hussain, will not attend the proceedings as all three are away from the national capital.



Sources in the Aam Aadmi Party alleged that party legislators will raise the issue of "breach of security" of CM at New Delhi Railway Station in the morning.



The ruling party MLAs are expected to draw the attention of the House on a numbers of issues including breach of CM's security, interference of the Lt Governor in the functioning of government and infringement on independence of the legislature, party sources said.



The issue of repatriation order of Assembly Secretary Prasanna Kumar by LG will also be raised on floor of the House on Friday.



All three BJP legislators including suspended party MLA Om Prakash Sharma today met and made a strategy to corner the government.



Opposition leader in Delhi Assembly Vijender Gupta said that he will expose how the AAP Government, Speaker and the secretary have a "hidden agenda" to defend "unconstitutional and illegal activities" of the government.



Gupta said he will also raise the issue of Chief Minister s absence from the Vidhan Sabha session.



"CM does not seem to be interested in functioning of the assembly. During the last session, out of four days, he was present only for few hours on the last day during which he did not speak at all," the BJP leader said.
New Delhi: There will be a complete ban on use of polythene in all national monuments and tourist destinations from October 2.

In an initiative to carry forward the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM), the government chose the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi to impose the ban.

"We thought that we should start cleanliness from our house first. So, the Tourism Ministry has decided to ban polythene in all the national monuments and tourist destinations from October 2," Tourism Minister Mahesh Sharma said.

He said the trial phase of the initiative will be launched immediately and from October 2, it would be implemented in all the national monuments and tourist destinations.

Stating that the ministry would erect a board at the monuments or tourists place about this prohibition, he exuded confidence that it would be easier to implement this cleanliness initiative as the tourist destinations have security personnel who would check tourists at the entrance.

The minister, however, clarified that plastic bottles would not be banned but tourists would be asked to place them in the recycle container at the tourists destinations.

An official said the ban would be applicable to the protected zone or 100-m radius of the monuments.

In March, the Centre had also banned the manufacturing of plastic bags of below 50 microns as thinner bags are difficult to dispose leading to major threat to the environment.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had launched the Swachh Bharat Mission on October 2, 2014.

The mission aims at elimination of open defecation, eradication of manual scavenging, modern and scientific municipal solid waste management, among others.
Kolkata: Saradha scam accused and Trinamool Congress leader Madan Mitra was on Friday granted bail by a special court here over 21 months after his arrest. Judge Uttam Kumar Nandy granted the former state transport minister bail on two sureties of Rs 15 lakh each.

He was directed by the court to appear before it on November 23. The court also directed Mitra to surrender his passport to the CBI and appear before the CBI investigating officer once every week. He was further directed not to go outof Kolkata.

The order came a day after Mitra's counsel pleaded for bail submiting submitting that the TMC leader was no longer an influential person since he was neither a minister now nor was he holding any post in the party.

Mitra's counsel also claimed that the CBI was delaying the investigation and there was no reason why should not be granted bail.

The CBI counsel, however, opposed the bail saying the investigating agency was at a crucial stage of its probe into the multi-crore Saradha scam and releasing Mitra would hamper the process because the former minister was still very influential and still had access to key witnesses in the case.

Mitra, who was arrested on December 12, 2014, was granted bail by a lower court last year. The TMC leader had surrendered before the court after his bail was cancelled by the Calcutta High Court on November 20 last.

Mitra was briefly admitted to a state-run hospital after he complained of chest pain and breathlessness. He was taken back to Alipore Central Jail this June after he was discharged.

The party, had given Mitra ticket for this year's Assembly elections from Kamarhati, which he had eventually lost.

Investigation into the ponzi scam, which came to light in 2013, revealed that the Saradha Group had allegedly cheated investors of Rs 1,200 crore in mainly rural areas, as per an official estimate.

Former Union minister Matang Sinh is among those arrested in the case, while several TMC functionaries, including Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's close aide Mukul Roy, have been questioned. The CBI had taken over the investigation in June, 2014 on following an order of the Supreme Court.
New Delhi: Sacked Delhi Minister and AAP MLA Sandeep Kumar, arrested on rape charges on the complaint of a woman, was on Friday sent to 14-day judicial custody by a court in New Delhi.

Special Judge Poonam Chaudhry remanded 36-year-old Kumar to judicial custody till September 23 after the Delhi Police submitted he was not required for custodial interrogation.

Police sought judicial custody of the MLA, who was produced before the court on expiry of his one-day police remand, to conduct fair investigation and prevent the accused from tampering with evidence.

The police, which had on Thursday got extended Kumar's police custody by a day to recover the original electronic device used for making the alleged objectionable video, said it could not be recovered.

Meanwhile, advocate Pradeep Rana, appearing for Kumar, claimed there was a threat to the MLA's life in jail and he should be provided special armed guards and a separate cell during judicial custody.

To this, the court forwarded the application to the jail superintendent directing him to consider it as per the prison manual.

During the hearing, the police responded to another plea moved by the defence counsel alleging that he was illegally arrested and the probe agency had not given any ground for doing so.

The police said Kumar was arrested on the basis of incriminating evidence collected against him. The prosecution had earlier argued that Kumar was not cooperating in the probe.

Kumar was arrested on September 3 after a woman had approached Sultanpuri police station in North Delhi complaining of sexual harassment against the former Social

Welfare and Women and Child Development minister, following which a case was filed. The woman had figured in an objectionable video with him.

Kumar has been booked under sections 376 (rape), 328 (causing hurt by means of poison with intent to commit an offence) of IPC, under section 67A (punishment for publishing or transmitting of material containing sexually explicit act) of IT Act and Section 7 (public servant taking gratification for an official act) of Prevention of Corruption Act.

In her complaint, the woman has alleged that about 11 months ago, she was raped by Kumar when she had gone to his office in Outer Delhi's Sultanpuri area seeking help to obtain a ration card.

Kumar was removed from AAP government on August 31 by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal after the CD surfaced. The MLA from Sultanpur Majra had surrendered before the investigators at the office of DCP (Outer) in Pitampura, where his statement was recorded.

Soon after the controversy, the MLA had defended himself, saying he has been targeted. Kumar's wife has also come out in support of her husband, claiming that he was "falsely implicated" in the scandal.
The committee would conduct campaign throughout the districts to mobilise people's support for the agitations.

Chennai: Farmer bodies in the state announced a bandh on September 16 in delta districts, besides picketing before the Central government offices. The decision was taken after a meeting of farmers outfits belonging to Thanjavur, Tiruvarur and Nagapattinam districts. The farmers have formed a body called Cauvery Struggle Committee, which will jointly take part in the September 16 protests that will include road blockade agitations.

The president of the co-ordination committee of Thamizhaga All Farmers Associations P.R. Pandian said the farmers had to conduct agitations every year to get release of water from Cauvery and this causes economic losses as the agricultural works are affected. Tamil Nadu had to move the Supreme Court to get water from Cauvery, he said.

Tamil Nadu government should exert pressure on the Centre to get more water and the Centre should break its silence and form the Cauvery Management Board and Cauvery Water Regulation Committee, he said.

Already several farmers associations and political parties had gathered under the Cauvery Rights Retrieval Committee and holding protests for Cauvery water. It also took part in the discussions and decided to take part in the bandh on September 16.

Its co-ordinator P. Maniarasan said farmers would picket before central government offices and block roads on that day. The committee would conduct campaign throughout the districts to mobilise people's support for the agitations.

He felt that Karnataka's modification petition would not reverse the Supreme Court verdict ordering release of water to Tamil Nadu. If there is any reduction in the quantum of water to be released to Tamil Nadu , the farmers would resort to immediate agitations. He also stressed that Tamils in Karnataka should be protected and the farmers in Tamil Nadu would hold protests for their safety

Though, the final verdict of the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal was delivered in 2007, it was notified by the centre after six years in 2013, that too after TN government got an order from the SC to gazette the verdict. But, the Centre had not constituted the Cauvery Management Board and Cauvery Water Regulation Committee, the mechanism required to implement the tribunal's verdict.

The SC had formed a supervisory committee as an interim arrangement following a suggestion from Karnataka government.
Allahabad: The Allahabad High Court has directed CBI to investigate the "loss" of trial court records reported by the office of the Government Advocate which has resulted in turning down of a number of appeals by the UP government against lower court orders.

A division bench comprising justices Shashi Kant Gupta and Shashi Kant remarked "no one is coming forward to take responsibility for the loss of the records.

"The office of the Government Advocate has failed to fix responsibility on any officer or employee, entire episode is a serious blot on the administration of justice," the bench said.

Lamenting that "a large number of government appeals have been dismissed for want of lower court records", the court said in its recent order, "We cannot turn a blind eye to such a situation nor can decline to give adequate response to the necessities arising there from", and directed CBI to "investigate the matter regarding the loss of original lower court records of Government Appeals relating to years 1981 to 1992" and "submit its report within four months from the date of receipt of this order".

The court passed the order in course of hearing on a Government Appeal challenging a 26-year-old order of Sessions Court, Etawah, whereby the accused - Phool Singh and others - had been acquitted in a murder case.

The appeal was admitted by the court in 1992 and since then "despite several opportunities given to the state, it failed to produce the lower court record before this court".

The court also noted that in 2013, following an order of another bench faced with a similar situation, an FIR was lodged at Civil Lines Police Station, Allahabad, "in the matter of missing of trial court records from the office of Government Advocate and to get the matter investigated through a responsible officer after due consultation with SSP, Allahabad".

"Since the complicity and functioning of the Office of Government Advocate is involved in the present matter, we do not expect any effective investigation in the matter by the police. Thus, this court in larger public interest transfers the investigation of the entire matter that has been so carried out by the police", the court said.

"Office of Government Advocate is directed to facilitate, assist and cooperate with the Central Bureau of Investigation during the probe and make available all necessary papers as required by the said agency", the court added.

"List this matter on 16.12.2016 showing the name of the learned counsel of the CBI", the court ordered.
The Hemavathi overflows in the wake of heavy discharge from the Gorur Dam near Hassan on Thursday with the water set to reach KRS for release to Tamil Nadu (Photo: KP)N

Mysuru: Amidst the intensified agitation in Mandya and Mysuru, authorities at KRS and Kabini reservoirs released 17,410 cusecs, for the second day on Thursday to TN. Hemavathi and Harangi reservoirs too released 10,500 cusecs to KRS, from where water will be released to TN.

As promised, the authorities released water into canals to help farmers, around 9 am on Thursday. The state has 43.30 tmcft of live storage in four dams and, 36.539 tmcft has reached Biligundlu reservoir in Tamil Nadu this water year from June 1.

While KRS has released 3500 cusecs into the canal leading to Tamil Nadu, Kabini has released 1500 cusecs, Harangi has released 1900 cusecs and Hemavathi, 4380 cusecs. Water level at KRS on Thursday was 91.88 feet as against its capacity of 124.80 feet, the inflow was 2645 cusecs and outflow, 12,682 cusecs.

At Kabini, the water level was 2275.34 feet as against its capacity of 2284 feet. The inflow was 1350 cusecs and outflow, 4000 cusecs. At Hemavathi, the water level was 2892.22 feet as against its capacity of 2922 feet. While the inflow was 1,790 cusecs, outflow was 8,500 cusecs. At Harangi, the water level was 2852.50 feet as against its capacity of 2859 feet, while the inflow was 1,286 cusecs, outflow was 2,000 cusecs.

Mandya shut for third day

Despite releasing water into canals to save the paddy crop in the Cauvery basin, the entire Mandya district observed a total bandh for the third consecutive day on Thursday. While road transport remained affected, trains ran as usual helping thousands of daily commuters between Bengaluru and Mysuru.

The CM's reported move to calm farmers of Mandya by releasing water, seems to have had no effect as thousands of farmers continued to hold protests in the city. Farmers were still pouring into the city in their bullock carts to express their discontent over the release of water to Tamil Nadu.

The city remained cut off from the rest of the state for the third consecutive day with no movement of state transport buses and private vehicles. Even private vehicles were stopped at the entry points of the district by agitators.

Two days after protesters vent their anger against Kannada film stars by pulling down their cut-outs, two leading stars, Darshan Tugudeepa and Prem participated in the agitation. Another star, Sudeep, has tweeted extending his support to the ongoing farmers agitation.
Pro Kannada organisation activists shout slogans during Karnataka Bandh against the Supreme court verdict on Cauvery water to Tamilnadu, in Bengaluru on Friday. (Photo: PTI)

Bengaluru: With the "extreme unrest" in Karnataka over release of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Friday requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi to call forthwith "on a few hours notice" a meeting of chief ministers of the two states to end the impasse.

As the Cauvery row hotted up with the state observing a 12-hour bandh on Friday, Siddaramaiah dashed off a missive to Modi saying that the "unrest", if continued, would have a serious impact on the state's economy as also the IT economy which brings enormous revenue and foreign exchange to the country.

"By this communication, I earnestly request you not only as Prime Minister, but as Head of the entire Federal system, to call a meeting of the Chief Ministers of the States (forthwith on a few hours notice) to resolve the impasse," Siddaramaiah said in the letter released to the media in Bengaluru.

Read: Water release continues amid widespread protests in Karnataka

He pointed to a precedent of December 1995, where under similar circumstances of deficit flows, the Supreme Court had requested the Prime Minister to resolve the issue.

"The Supreme Court by order dated 28 December, 1995 requested the Prime Minister to resolve the issue of implementation of its order, which was then duly done to the satisfaction of all parties," he said.

Read: Cauvery tangle: Bandh brings Ktaka to halt, public transport off roads

Complying with the apex court's order, Karnataka government has been releasing 15,000 cusecs of water to Tamil Nadu since Tuesday, triggering a wave of protests particularly in the Cauvery basin districts with Mandya being the epicentre of the stir.

While maintaining that the release was "inevitable", Karnataka government has said it would seek modification of the apex court's September five order to spare water for 10 days because of the difficulties in implementing it given that the live storage in four reservoirs in the Cauvery basin now was 46.7 TMCFT against their capacity of 104 TMCFT.

The present live storage is 45 per cent against the live storage of 104 TMCFT in the Krishnaraja Sagar, Harangi, Hemavathi and Kabini reservoirs, the government has said.

Siddaramaiah, in his letter, has invited the Prime Minister's "immediate attention to the stark facts already in the public arena about extreme unrest in the Cauvery basin, especially in Bengaluru" against the court's interim order on release of water.

He said the daily release of 15,000 cusecs of Cauvery water at the-inter state border, Biligundulu, which, if continued, "would completely deprive the drinking water not only to the residents of Bangalore City but also to farmers of Cauvery basin and water for the only crop they grow."

Siddaramaiah said, "The present storage in the Mettur reservoir and the North-east rainfall received in Tamil Nadu would be more than sufficient to meet the requirement of water for the Samba rice crop just being or still to be sown by the farmers in the state."

The Supreme Court's direction was based on Tamil Nadu's plea, seeking a direction to Karnataka to release 50.52 TMCFT of Cauvery water to save 40,000 acres of samba crops this season.

Siddaramaih pointed out that at an all-party meeting held on Tuesday last, the views of the political parties including BJP in the state, was that the order of the Supreme Court ought not to be implemented.

"However, as constitutional Chief Executive of the State, I have taken it upon myself to obey the orders of the Supreme Court and the water is being released as per the order which has created more unrest and disquiet in the state."

"Awaiting your favourable response urgently, by telephone, fax or email," said Siddaramaiah, as he faced the increasing Cauvery heat.
Srinagar: People Democratic Party (PDP) leader Muzaffar Baig on Thursday said Prime Minister Narendra Modi has started building pressure on Pakistan at international platforms, and hoped that Islamabad might also come on board for talks.

Baig said though the government had formed a committee for commencing dialogue with the Hurriyat, Pakistan holds the key to talks between them.

"Prime Minister Modi has started building pressure on Pakistan on international platforms, so I believe that Islamabad might also come on board for a dialogue. Moreover, I have a belief that it might take five, 10 or even 20 years, but things will get sorted out between India and Pakistan," said Baig.

"The all-party delegation had a mix bag. One of the stakeholders of the all-party delegation is talking about the Hurriyat. A committee is being formed by the government that will try to hold dialogues with the Hurriyat leaders, and will explain them that gone are the days when borders used to change and wars used to take place. But I believe that the key to these talks lie with Pakistan, so it is to be seen whether Pakistan will allow this conversation to happen or not," he added.

The all-party delegation that visited violence-hit Jammu and Kashmir earlier this week, issued a joint statement, urging the Central and State governments to take steps for a dialogue with "all stakeholders." It, however, asserted National sovereignty would not be compromised.

Prime Minister Modi's in his Independence Day speech brought back the focus on Balochistan and attacked Pakistan for suppressing human rights and backing terrorism.
BENGALURU: It was the fourth lockdown in six weeks, but Fridays bandh was absolute as the IT hub, all the districts in the Cauvery basin and Malnad region turned into ghost towns on Friday - barring the protesters who owned the streets and the cities.

ReadCauvery water dispute: A deserted Bengaluru, a day to stay stress-free

As some 14,000 security personnel were deployed to maintain peace and order during the lockdown, and protesters burnt tyres as the police watched to ensure the situation did not escalate, the bandh by Kannada Okkuta, an umbrella of about 800 organisations, to protest against the Supreme Courts order for release of 15,000 cusecs of water for the next ten days to Tamil Nadu, remained largely free of violence.

ReadSiddaramaiah SOS to PM: Its high time you intervened

Bengaluru was owned by motorbike-borne pro-Kannada activists whizzing around to make sure that none dare defy the bandh-call till dusk. More than 10,000 agitators zeroed in on the Town Hall while those from the tinsel world, led by Shivarajkumar, staged a demonstration in front of the office of the Karnataka Film Chamber of Commerce, demanding justice for the state.

Boys play cricket on a prominent road in Mysuru as the city observed a bandh on Friday against release of water to Tamil Nadu. (Photo: DC)

At least four distraught farmers near KRS dam in Mandya district, attempted to commit suicide. Two of them jumped into the river and raised slogans against the government but swam to safety. Another farmer, Ramegowda (58) from Chadregrama village in Pandavapura taluk, too jumped into the river and was caught in the weeds. The fire department rescued him and shifted him to hospital. Yet another farmer attempted to consume pesticide but was prevented by policemen. In Bengaluru, too, Prabhu, 30, stabbed himself and collapsed during a protest rally but was rushed to a hospital nearby. In coastal and some districts in north-Karnataka, life was normal as people did not respond to the call for a dawn-to-dusk shutdown.

Talisman in the city of fear

Guess what the hottest selling item was in the run up to the pro-Cauvery bandh? Karnataka maps and flags sold like hot cakes across the city. Scores of buildings with glass facades, malls, buildings housing IT industries, tech parks sported Karnataka map or flags to get immunity from stone pelting by activists and protesters.

A worker takes a nap at KR Market. (Photo: Satish B)

Large number of people, auto drivers and motor bike riders bought flags that were tied to their vehicles. And yes, Kannada film icon Rajkumars posters were the other talisman of protection invoked in the city of fear!

Experts: We have enough grounds to move Supreme Court

Several legal experts have opinioned that Karnataka has enough grounds to knock on the doors of the Supreme Court, seeking modification of its order on release of 15,000 cusecs of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu for ten days. Former Advocate General and senior counsel, B.V. Acharaya, told DC the Supreme Court has no jurisdiction to direct the state to release water to Tamil Nadu. Instead, it could direct Tamil Nadu to approach Cauvery Supervisory Committee for implementation of the final award of Cauvery River Disputes Tribunal, he said adding that Karnataka could approach the apex court to modify its order.

ReadCauvery water dispute: Will stir cast its shadow on famed Dasara festivities?

Mr. Acharaya said TN would approach the supervisory committee seeking implementation of the award. In these circumstances, the apex court could modify its order by reducing the number of days stipulated for flow of water from 10 to 6. With sufficient grounds, Karnataka must seek modification of the original order. First, the north-east monsoon has entered TN. Second, water storage in four reservoirs Cauvery basin has dipped to its lowest level. While filing modification petition, the state government should once again submit its distress situation in the state, Mr. Achraya added. Mr R.S. Ravi, advocate representing the state legal team in the SC, said after consulting Fali S. Nariman, the government would file a modification petition. Karnataka would again submit its distress situation to the SC. If, TN receives enough rain from north-east monsoon, there would be no worry for Karnataka.

ReadCauvery water dispute: Farmers go berserk at KRS Dam, caned

Mr. Ravi defended the submission by state legal team in the apex court. If Mr Nariman had not submitted that Karnataka could release 10,000 cusecs of water for ten days as good gesture, there was every possibility of SC passing unscientific order directing Karnataka to release nearly 25 tmcft of water to TN, considering the courts observation the previous day, he added.
Bhopal: Madhya Pradesh is set to join select states in the country which have launched subsidised meal schemes for the poor. Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan is giving final shape to his plan to launch thali (meals) at Rs 10, to be christened Deendayal Sarkari Aahar, after the name of philosopher and RSS ideologue Pt. Deendayal Upadhyaya.

The cheap meal scheme, mooted at the MP BJPs recent convention at Pachmarhi, is most likely to be announced on the birth anniversary of Pt. Deendayal Upadhyaya on September 25, a BJP spokesman told this newspaper here on Friday.

The Rs 10 thali menu comprises roti, dal, sabzi (vegetable curry), rice and pickle. The scheme is mulled apparently keeping an eye on the 2018 assembly elections when BJP will try for fourth successive term in power in the state.
A man in a village in the NCT consumed poison along with his wife and daughter as part of their suicide pact over the death of his son. (Representational image)

New Delhi: A man and his daughter died while his wife was in serious condition after the family allegedly entered into a suicide pact following the death of his young son who was pursuing MBBS in Russia.

Bhagwan Das, 48, his daughter Sarita, 20, and wife Sharda, 48, consumed poison at their house at Khera Dabar in Jaffarpur Kalan area of the National Capital Territory.

Police reached the spot after getting a PCR call around 7.15 am, said Surender Kumar, DCP (south West).

The neighbours and relatives, who discovered the three lying unconscious, rushed them to Rao Tula Ram Hospital.

Doctors declared Bhagwan Das and Sarita dead while Sharda is undergoing treatment and is stated to be in a serious condition.

The family was depressed after the death of Bhagwan Das' son due to heart attack a fortnight ago. He was a first year student of MBBS in Russia, police said.
New Delhi: The Centre, on Friday, found itself in deep waters, after the Twitter page of Digital India, a flagship program of the Modi government, praised a poem calling for the killing of Kashmiris by the Indian Army.

The tweet read a poem urging high-handedness by the Army, with the caption Heights of #Patriotism. It was soon deleted, but managed to kick up a storm online.

Issued in public interest; all who love their lives; should quietly come to the city square; sing the national anthem; and not throw any tantrums here, one of the lines of the poem read.

The bullets have just started, dont say later you didnt get a warning, you will have to say Vande Mantaram every morning, one of the lines read, while another read, Thrash them all you want, army; break their bones; If Mehbooba calls the police; Modi will handle it.

Thrown into crisis management, authorities asserted that the tweet did not reflect the views of the government, and that the social media accounts of Digital India project is outsourced to private firm, Veritone.

Regretting the incident, IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad told The Indian Express, The contents of the tweet dont represent the views of the IT ministry, Digital India or the government of India. He added that an immediate enquiry has been ordered into the incident, and the concerned employee has been suspended.

S Radha Chauhan, CEO of National e-Governance Division, which heads the Digital India project, said that the employee concerned had posted the poem on the Digital India page by mistake instead of his personal page.

The tweet came into focus after AAP leader Ankit Lal pointed it out in Twitter.

He wrote Govt verified handle @_DigitalIndia finds poem calling fr mass murder of Kashmiris "Height of Patriotism"#Shame!

Digital India tweet

In a similar incident, All India Radio was caught in a raging row last week after one of its employees posted comments critical of Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on its official Twitter page.
One of the two 104 m Bronto skylifts parked on Rukmani Lakshmipathi Road in Egmore.(Photo: DC)

Chennai: The state took delivery of two of the tallest aerial rescue ladders that can reach up to 104 m (341 ft), earning the distinction of being the first in the country besides entering into the club of the metropolises across the world having the 104 m HLA (High Level Articulated).

Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa will hand it over to the fire brigade in a ceremony, which is likely to be held soon. The vehicles will be pressed into fire and rescue services on augmentation into the force.

The vehicles were shipped from Port of Turku and reached the city earlier this month, and were taken delivery on Wednesday from Kamarajar Port Trust. The worlds tallest aerial ladders (112 m) are being manufactured by Bronto Skylift, and the 104 m vehicles delivered here are the second tallest aerial ladder in the world.

These truck-mounted ladders were purchased at a cost of Rs 39.74 crore each from Finland-based firm.The purchased 104 m HLA can reach a maximum rescue height of 104 m, and the maximum working outreach will be 30 m.

The platforms safe working load is 500 kg while it can pump as much as 3,800 litres per minute, and requires 4 m height clearance for transportation. The state had already purchased a skylift of 54 m recently for Rs 5.97 crore recently.

The addition will help the fire brigade keep up with the city in which the residential high rises are on the upward swing, and the numbers keep growing.

All three will be stationed in the Greater Chennai City. With the addition of these three skylifts, the total tally of skylifts in the state is taken to seven.

The fleet of the skylifts already has two 54 m, and two hydraulic platforms, one that can operate up to 37 m and the other can reach up to 42m.
KOTTAYAM: The rubber farmers in the district are passing through trying times during Onam as they are yet to get the money due to them as per the price stability scheme for June. As per the scheme, farmers will be reimbursed the difference in the support price which was fixed at Rs 150 per kilogram and the market price if they submitted receipts and other details of the rubber sold after registering at the rubber societies concerned.

Many farmers said they had given the bills but had not been paid. Though we have given the bills, we are yet to get the reimbursement amount. This has put our preparations for Onam in jeopardy, said K.J. Varkey, Kochuparampil, a smallscale farmer from Aruvikuzhy. Raju Mathew, a farmer from Pallikathodu, complained that he had not received reimbursements for the last three months.

Interestingly, rubber production societies complained that they failed to register the bills on the online portal.

The bills for July are not getting uploaded due to some technical reasons. And as a result many applications were pending, E.P. Mathew, secretary of the Aruvikuzhy rubber production society told DC. Meanwhile, Rubber Board authorities claimed there was a technical delay in the state government granting the Rs 300 crores allocated in the state budget. However, it has been rectified and the money will be given shortly, Jayadev Anand, who is coordinating the allocation of the funds at the Board, told DC.
KOCHI: Its an irony but true nevertheless. Although the district is all set to get the tag of Rs 100 per cent open defecation free by this month end, the condition of public toilets in the city leaves much to be desired. Major tourist spots in Mattancherry and nearby areas have no clean public toilets and foreigners are having a tough time. Though a big toilet complex has been constructed recently near the bus stand at Mattancherry, it remains closed. Likewise with the toilet that has been set up near the boat jetty.

Representatives of the Traders Association of Jew Town told DC that it was a disgrace that civic authorities had failed to provide basic amenities for the visitors at an internationally acclaimed heritage zone. We see foreigners, especially women, struggling because there are no clean toilets in the area. They often depend on the toilets in the shops in Jew Street. But, shops are reluctant to provide the facility as they cannot keep it clean, said a trader. However, T.K Ashraf, division councilor, said that the new toilet complex with 16 bathrooms near the bus stand would be opened next week.

The opening of the facility has been delayed due to the slowdown in getting power and water connections. The electricity connection finally came through but the water supply is expected in a couple of days, he said. Meanwhile, sources at the district Suchitwa Mission said that it was ready to construct more toilets in the area if the Corporation health committee submitted a proposal. We are now focusing on individual toilet construction in rural areas whereas urban local bodies have been told to submit projects to set up public toilet facilities, the official said.
New Delhi: In a setback to Arvind Kejriwal-led government, the Supreme Court on Friday refused to grant an interim stay on the Delhi High Court verdict which has held that Lieutenant Governor is the administrative head whose prior consent is needed in all administrative decisions.

The apex court, which sought response within six weeks from the Centre on seven appeals of AAP dispensation against the August 4 verdict of the High Court, also declined to stay the recent decision of LG Najeeb Jung to set up a three-member committee to scrutinise over 400 files and past orders of the elected city government.

"Every day there would be some order, we cannot pass orders on a daily basis," a bench comprising Justices A K Sikri and N V Ramana said when the LG's recent decision to examine government files was referred to.

"No stay, we will fix the matters for final hearing on November 15," the bench said.

Read: Not a setback, says AAP on SC's refusal to stay order on LG

The bench, simultaneously, did not concur with preliminary objections of Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi that the appeals needed to be dismissed at the threshold on several grounds including that instead of a Chief Secretary or a secretary, the pleas were supported by the affidavit of Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodoia.

"This is against the rules of the business. The affidavit in the High Court was sworn by the Secretary, but here it is sworn by the Deputy CM. Just because you are the Deputy CM, you cannot flout the Rules. How can the SLP filed by NCT be maintainable? How can a minister represent a Union Territory," Rohatgi said, adding "even assuming that he is competent to swear the affidavit, the decision to file a SLP is to be decided by the LG".

The court, however, said it was an important issue where a decision from the apex court was needed.

Rohatgi said it has been "unequivocally" held by a 9- judge bench that Delhi is a Union Territory.

Indicating that it may refer the cases to a larger bench after hearing arguments, it said, "This is in our mind, but that will be decided at later stage after hearing the parties."

Senior lawyer K K Venugopal, appearing for AAP government, said the Centre and LG Najeeb Jung, who enjoy a "master and servant" relationship, have "tied the hands of the elected government" and the refusal of public servants to sign the petition has created a situation where the Minister has to swear the affidavit. Initiating arguments, Venugopal said "this is the whole case that for filing the appeal, the permission of LG is needed as no official is willing to sign."

"This will affect all future governments. All future relationships will be directly affected. LG has no qualification to govern Delhi. He enjoys a master-servant relationship. He is only an employee of the Centre and can be asked to leave by the Centre at any moment," he said.

He said the consequence of the High Court verdict is that the Centre through the LG has taken over the governance, reducing an elected government into "some interim arrangement".

During the hearing, Rohatgi, who said the issue as to whether Delhi is a state or a UT has been settled by a 9-judge bench verdict, submitted that if the cases are to be referred to a larger bench, then they will have to be heard by a 11-judge Bench of the Supreme Court.

"This is because a nine-judge Bench of the court, in 1996, in the NDMC versus State of Punjab case, recognised Delhi as a Union Territory for taxation purposes," he said.

Besides Venugopal, a battery of senior lawyers including P P Rao, Rajiv Dhawan, Gopal Subramaniam and Indira Jaising appeared for the AAP government in different appeals filed against quashing of its various orders by the Delhi High Court in its historic verdict delivered on August 4.

Subramaniam, echoing the views of Venugopal, said the LG had gone ahead with appointing a three-member panel to examine the decisions of the Delhi government which were taken without Jung's prior permission.

"This is being done to fix criminal liability on an elected government," he said.

"There cannot be a committee finding fault with the previous decisions of the elected government...on the basis of the judgement of the high court, legitimacy cannot be given to a committee to look into them," he said.

"You can challenge that order. Every day some order will be passed. Everyday we cannot say that this order is bad or good," the bench said.

The committee has taken away all the files, then how will the government function without files, Subramaniam said.

The AAP government also alleged that the action of the LG has restricted its right to access to justice.

"We cannot go to court now because we need his permission. This is what we have been reduced to," Venugopal submitted.
New Delhi: CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury on Friday said the all-party delegation failed to "achieve more" during its Kashmir visit due to government's "inadequate homework" and delayed response in sending the contingent to the Valley.

"Due to inadequate homework and the delay in taking the delegation to the state, we did not achieve more. The homework required to be done by the government was to identify proposals from several working group recommendations and the Interlocutors report of 2010, and to have crystallised the issues," he said.

Yechury, who was part of the delegation, said the homework would have enabled a "focussed discussion" with stakeholders around specific proposals and alternatives.

"The government did not do this. Had this been done, the delegation's visit would have been much more meaningful," he wrote in an article in party mouthpiece 'People's Democracy'.

Referring to his outreach to Hurriyat leaders along with CPI national secretary D Raja, Sharad Yadav of JD(U) and RJD's JP Yadav during the visit, Yechury said the same should be followed up properly.

He also recalled former Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani's holding of talks with Hurriyat leaders during NDA-1 regime (in January 2004).

Four of the five Hurriyat leaders met the delegation, while Syed Ali Shah Geelani did not. The separatist leaders had collectively decided not to engage in any political dialogue with the delegation in view of the situation in the Valley, he wrote.

Reiterating his party's demands, Yechury also said the government should engage in dialogue with all stakeholders including Pakistan, besides taking confidence building measures to bridge trust deficit among people of the state.

Pointing towards the post-visit statement issued by the delegation, which had appealed people of the state to shun violence and resolve issues through discussion, he said it was now incumbent upon the government to implement the understanding in 'right earnest'.

In this context Prime Minister Narendra Modi's slogan of 'Vikas aur Vishwas' (development and trust) would sound "hollow and meaningless" if not backed by "concrete" actions, he said.

Yechury suggested it could be done on the lines of how the NDA-I government had announced unilateral ceasefire after then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee gave the slogans of 'jamhooriyat (democracy), insaniyat (humanity) and Kashmiriyat'.
Sitharaman also said emotions are important and everybody sympathises with the newly created state which is in 'terrible financial situation'. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: Political parties should do their "homework" instead of sticking to their demand of seeking special status for Andhra Pradesh, Union Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Friday.

"Political parties are unfortunately sticking on to this label, special status, and making an issue out of it.

"I will appeal to them to please do some homework on what exactly the central government has extended to Andhra Pradesh. Whether this will be of significance for kick-starting the economy and making it vibrant or not should be debated on facts rather than just on emotions," she told reporters here.

She was speaking after meeting the BJP leadership of Andhra Pradesh.

Congress has attacked the Modi government for not keeping the promise of granting special category status to Andhra Pradesh, a commitment that was given by previous UPA regime.

Seeking to put a lid on the debate in Andhra Pradesh, the government yesterday said the system of according special category status for states has gone out of vogue following the recommendations of the 14th Finance Commission.

Sitharaman also said emotions are important and everybody sympathises with the newly created state which is in "terrible financial situation" and all are committed for the development of the state.

"I would appeal to everybody to please look at the details (of the package) and look at the facts, see what commitments have been made," she added.

In order to revive the economy of Andhra Pradesh which is in a big revenue deficit situation, the Centre has worked together with the state to ensure the holistic development, she said.

The Union Minister also said the national project at Polavaram will be completely constructed at central government's expense.

"It is critical for the well being of the state," she added.

The package includes full funding of Polavaram irrigation project, tax concessions and a special assistance.

Andhra Pradesh, which financially suffered because of creation of separate state of Telangana in June 2014, will get a railway zone as also all cost incurred on the irrigation part of Polavaram project from the date it was declared a National Project on April 1, 2014, will be funded by the Centre.
Chennai: The Enforcement Diretorate (ED) had issued summons in connection with 2G scam recently to Karti Chidambaram, son of former Union minister and MP P. Chidambaram.

When a petition filed by him to quash the summons issued to him came up for hearing before the Madras high court on Thursday, Additional Solicitor General G Rajagopalan informed Justice B. Rajendran, who heard the matter, that the summons dated August 19 has been issued by ED requiring him to appear before the ED on August 31 in connection with 2-G scam.

Rajagopalan also informed the court that as Supreme Court had seized the matter relating to 2G scam, the high court had no jurisdiction to decide relating to issue.Later, the judge directed ASG to file an affidavit to that effect.

Former Union telecom minister and DMK leader A Raja and DMK MP, Kanimozhi were arrayed as prime accused in the 2G scam. On behalf of Karti, his power of attorney N.R.R Arun Natarajan of Periyar Nagar filed the petition before high court to quash the summons issued to Karti.

In the petition, Karti said the summons was motivated by malice in law. He has reason to believe that there has been determined campaign to bring discredit and harm to the reputation of his father Chidambaram, who is now a leading member of the Opposition in the centre.

The summons is a part of the attempt to embarrass, humiliate and harass petitioners father and members of his family. In the first summons issued dated June 21, ED required Karti or his representative to appear before it on July 5 along with a schedule of information. Kartis sent a reply on July 2. In the second summons issued on July 5 the ED asked Karti to appear on July 18.

Again, he sent a reply. Meanwhile, he received third summon dated August 19, requiring him alone to appear before the EC on August 31. Again he replied on August 29.

Karti submited that ED was conducting a fishing and roving enquiry and not an investigation under Section 50(2) read with Section. 3 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).



Karti had not been named either as an accused, suspect or witness in any case. To the best of his information, no investigating agency of the Union government had registered any case relating to a scheduled offence under the PMLA in which he has been named as an accused, suspect or witness.

The ED had not registered any case relating to proceeds of crime arising out of a scheduled offence, Karti contended. He had apprehensions that ED may arrest him for failure to appear before it. Hence, he wanted the court to quash the summons and to forbear the authorities from taking any steps or action or proceedings against him pursuant to the August 19 summons.

Taking note of the ASG submission, the judge adjourned matter till September 29.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had arrived on the scene in a thundering chariot with anti-corruption and pro-poor slogans, and caught the worlds attention in no time. Indias capital took him to its bosom with such fervour that his party walked away with 67 of 70 Assembly seats in the Delhi Assembly in February 2015. But now its time the CM pauses to make a self-evaluation of how well his government has served Delhi, how well he himself has delivered on the spirit of his pro-people and anti-establishment rhetoric, and the degree to which his personal ambitions have soared. Mr Kejriwal has effectively abandoned the state of which he is CM, leaving his job to the second string.

From Punjab he loftily announced Thursday that he would camp in the state till the Assembly polls (next year) and wouldnt rest until his party won the Punjab polls and had sent the Badals to jail. This is not without irony. As Delhis problems pile up under his stewardship, and some of his MLAs attract opprobrium due to their escapades, Mr Kejriwal is girding his loins to leave the city-state in the lurch to chance his arm elsewhere in true adventurer fashion. His constituents cant be too pleased about this. Is this quixotic behaviour or power addiction? The rudderless individuals who make up the AAP leadership may surprise themselves if they win Delhi again while their chief does cliche politics in Punjab. Elected representatives need to be a lot more accountable.
As the towers of the World Trade Centre in New York collapsed in a conflagration of flame, dust and death, they have left a legacy of fear, hate and destruction that refuses to wither away. The origins of the attacks lie in the battlefields of Afghanistan, when three nations  the United States, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan  mobilised the forces of radical Islam against godless Communism. They thus unwittingly created a cadre of indoctrinated and trained veterans from across the Muslim world, and provided them with an organisation, Al Qaeda, and the charismatic leadership of Osama bin Laden. This jihad was also the first Muslim victory over a Western power in a few hundred years, assuring the faithful that Allah was once again by their side.

The Afghan jihad would now truly become a global jihad, but in ways its progenitors had not anticipated. For, it turned its wrath upon the three nations that had spawned it, by capturing Afghanistan and then spreading its tentacles to targets in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. It also attacked US targets in East Africa and Yemen, before assaulting the homeland itself 15 years ago. The US response to 9/11 has left a bitter legacy. First, the US attacked Afghanistan to destroy the Taliban administration and its ideological mentor, Al Qaeda, that had led the assault on the US. This was done through indiscriminate carpet-bombing that killed thousands of innocent Afghans, even as Americas Pakistani ally carried away to sanctuaries at home the top leaders of these jihadi groups.

Frustrated at being unable to declare victory, the US now turned its weaponry on Iraq. It destroyed the countrys leadership, institutions and armed forces, and attempted to shape, on a time-honoured divide-and-rule basis, a new power structure that would be defined of communal and sectarian basis. As expected, the leaders of the disempowered Sunni community, themselves veterans of the Afghan battlefields, mobilised themselves for jihad against their American and sectarian foes. Ten years later, this movement of anger and vengeance evolved into the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The sectarian political structures, constructed by the US in Iraq that privileged the Shias, aggravated Saudi fears on Irans increasing regional influence, so that Saudi Arabia and Iran are now confronting each other across the Gulf.

They have mobilised sectarian alliances that are preparing for blood feuds, recalling events of a millennium and a half ago which have been imbued with a contemporary freshness. Their mutual animosity has led to proxy wars in Syria and Yemen, which lie devastated through civil conflict fanned by external players.

This breakdown of state order has provided the space for ISIS to proliferate across the Levant, replacing the century-old Iraq-Syria border with a transnational Islamic State, described as a caliphate, thus laying claim to be the legatee of one of Islams oldest political and religious institutions. ISIS, with its slick use of social media, has attracted Muslim youth from across the globe, most of them allured by the promise of adventure and camaraderie and the prospect of participation in a historic enterprise that will create a new Muslim utopia, far removed from the squalid, marginalised and shiftless lives they have led so far. This has led to a proliferation of lone-wolf attacks in Arab, Asian, African and European cities.

For India, the encounter with jihad started 10 years before the Americans experienced it on 9/11. Pakistan used US and Saudi largesse for the Afghan jihad to mobilise a parallel movement for jihad in India to spread mayhem in the Kashmir Valley and disenchantment with India among its disgruntled population. But the US strategic partnership was not shaken by its allys association with this destructive force; in fact, it remained resilient even after 9/11, when Pakistan obtained a free hand to continue jihadi violence in India in return for its temporary abandoning of the Taliban administration in Kandahar. Thus, ironically, India after 9/11 witnessed an expansion of jihadi violence, mainly by Pakistani nationals, against the symbols of Indias democratic and secular order, culminating in the assault on iconic institutions in its commercial capital of Mumbai in November 2008.

India today has grave concerns, both about the regional security scenario and the implications of jihad for its domestic politics. The prospect of expanding conflict in the Gulf threatens Indias energy and economic interests and the welfare of its eight million-strong community that resides in the region. At home, there are concerns that Indias own Muslim youth might be seduced by jihad, get indoctrinated and trained by ISIS, and, on return, perpetrate acts of violence and terror, possibly in association with agencies and allies in Pakistan. The record so far suggests these apprehensions might be baseless. Though the Afghan jihad allured over a hundred thousand Muslims from across the world, no Indian Muslim joined their ranks. In our own time, when several thousand recruits have joined ISIS in Syria from West Asia and Europe, only a handful of Indians are amongst them.

This affirms that Indian Muslims continue to accept that their interests are best safeguarded in a democratic and secular India, and, whatever concerns they might have about their rights and aspirations due to militant Hindutva, they know those will be best addressed within the framework of the Indian Union and its Constitution. This understanding distances Indian Muslims from the doctrinal rigidities and disputes and the divisive politics of West Asia; it also ensures that Pakistan is not viewed as a model for political, economic or cultural emulation. US opportunism spawned the jihad that led to 9/11; its depredations in West Asia after the September attacks tore the fabric of the regional state order and unleashed subterranean anxieties, faultlines and animosities; they also made jihad, the ideology, its organisations and following, stronger and more resolute than ever before. Fifteen years later, 9/11 haunts the world and threatens not just the interests but even the values of the West and the East.
Isro hoisted its heaviest-ever satellite from Indian soil, the 2,211-kg Insat-3DR, using an indigeno-us cryogenic engine  a complicated stage that uses hydrogen and oxyg-en as fuel. (Representational image)

Sriharikota: Isro hoisted its heaviest-ever satellite from Indian soil, the 2,211-kg Insat-3DR, using an indigeno-us cryogenic engine  a complicated stage that uses hydrogen and oxyg-en as fuel  for the first time in its operational mode. The launch from the second launch pad of Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Shar, Sriharikota in Nellore district, was rescheduled by 40 minutes to 4.50 pm owing to a technical anomaly while filling the fuel in the cryogenic engine.

Minutes later, Isro chairman A.S. Kiranku-mar announced that the mission was successful. So far, Isro has had five successful launches, one partial success and three failures. This is the tenth flight of GSLV. The previous missions with the indigenous cryogenic engine were treated as test flights, making this the first operational mission for Isro. The 2,211-kg Insat-3DR carries 1,255 kg of propellant. The Master Control Facility at Hasan will use this fuel to boost the satellite to it space home 36,000 km above the earth, and to keep it in place subsequently.

Its main payloads include an imager and a sounder that will provide the meteorological data. The satellite will pick up meteorological, hydrological and oceanographic data from remote uninhabited locations over the coverage area. The search and rescue payload picks up and relays the alert signals originating from the distress beacons of maritime, aviation and land-based users to the Indian Mission Control Centre located in Bengaluru.

n The mission life of Insat-3DR is 10 years and it is expected to join the operational search and rescue service provided by Insat-3D. It will also provide a variety of meteorological services to the country and continue the mission of INSAT-3D Satellite. The Indian service region includes a large part of the Indian Ocean region covering India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, Seychelles, Sri Lanka and Tanzania for rendering distress alert services.

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Apigee is used by hundreds of companies, including AT&T, Bechtel, Burberry, Live Nation and Walgreens, according to Google.

San Francisco: Google announced a deal to pay $625 million for Apigee, a firm specializing in managing the application programming interfaces, or APIs, that businesses use to connect with customers online.

APIs "are vital for how business gets done today in the fast-growing digital and mobile marketplace," Google senior vice president Diane Greene said in a blog post about the acquisition. "They're the hubs through which companies, partners and customers interact, whether it's a small business applying online for a loan or a point-of-sale system sending your warranty information to the manufacturer," she added.

For example, APIs can enable a business's computer networks to communicate with apps on smartphones or tablets. Apigee is used by hundreds of companies, including AT&T, Bechtel, Burberry, Live Nation and Walgreens, according to Google.

Adding Apigee to its team promises to raise Google's game against major competitors Amazon and Microsoft in the market to provide businesses with services in the internet cloud. Forrester, the independent market-research company, last year predicted that annual global spending on API management would top $1 billion by 2020.

"The transition toward cloud, mobile and digital interaction with customers and partners via APIs is happening, and fast," Greene said. The acquisition is subject to approval by regulators and Apigee shareholders but is expected to be completed this year.

"We've entered a new era of cloud computing, where enterprises are increasingly running business-critical applications in the cloud," Apigee chief executive Chet Kapoor said in a release.

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Washington: US President Barack Obama, warning of "serious consequences", called the leaders of South Korea and Japan to consult after seismic activity was detected near a North Korean nuclear test site, a White House spokesman said Friday.

"The president indicated he would continue to consult our allies and partners in the days ahead to ensure provocative actions from North Korea are met with serious consequences," White House press secretary Josh Earnest said.
US President Barack Obama on Friday condemned the fifth nuclear test conducted by North Korea and said he would push for new international sanctions against the country. (Photo: AP)

Washington: United States President Barack Obama vowed on Friday to push for new international sanctions in retaliation for the "grave threat" posed by North Korea's latest nuclear test.

The US leader consulted by telephone with South Korean President Geun-Hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe following news of the reclusive country's fifth and most powerful test.

"We agreed to work with the UN Security Council, our other Six-Party partners, and the international community to vigorously implement existing measures imposed in previous resolutions, and to take additional significant steps, including new sanctions," Obama said in a statement.

"The United States condemns North Korea's September 9 nuclear test in the strongest possible terms as a grave threat to regional security and to international peace and stability," he said.

Obama, who has pleaded since first taking office in 2009 for a world without nuclear weapons, denounced North Korea's actions as "unlawful and dangerous."

"To be clear, the United States does not, and never will, accept North Korea as a nuclear state," the president declared.

"As Commander in Chief, I have a responsibility to safeguard the American people and ensure that the United States is leading the international community in responding to this threat and North Korea's other provocations with commensurate resolve and condemnation," Obama said.

North Korea has been hit by five sets of UN sanctions since it first tested a nuclear device in 2006.

The Security Council will meet Friday at 3 pm (1900 GMT) at the request of the United States and Japan to discuss Pyongyang's latest test.

Obama reaffirmed, as he has done repeatedly following North Korean ballistic missile launches, the US commitment to "take necessary steps to defend our allies in the region," namely South Korea and Japan.

North Korea claimed Friday it had successfully tested a nuclear warhead that could be mounted on a missile, drawing condemnation from South Korea's government over the "maniacal recklessness" of young ruler Kim Jong-Un.

At 10 kilotons the blast approached the might of the bomb that devastated Hiroshima in 1945, experts in Seoul said.
Washington: A former CIA official has said that Pakistan was "nearly placed" on the list of state sponsored terrorism during 1993 to 1994.

"At the start of the (Bill) Clinton administration, in 1993 and 1994, I was a special assistant to the Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, on loan from CIA, deeply involved in an annual terrorism review which nearly resulted in Pakistan's being placed on the formal list of state sponsors of terrorism," Robert L Grenier, a former CIA official told members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during a Congressional hearing on Pakistan.

Grenier said that over the past five decades, the US has been willing, episodically to overlook its concerns with aspects of Pakistani behaviour and to subordinate those concerns in the face of what have appeared, at the time, to be overriding national security priorities only to revert to a more contentious relationship when those interests no longer pertained.

"Thus, in the 1980's, the US was willing not only to overlook growing evidence of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program in deference to joint US-Pak support to the anti-Soviet Afghan Mujahiddin, but also to provide Pakistan with generous economic and military rewards in the bargain," he said.

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11 attacks, needing a platform for operations in Afghanistan and a partner to intercept Al-Qaeda militants fleeing that country, the US was again willing to subordinate its broader concerns with Pakistani-based militancy in Kashmir and with Pakistan's ambivalent attitude toward the Afghan Taliban, he said.

Pakistan has clung stubbornly to its own perceptions of national interest, and refused to compromise them even when it seemed irrational or self-defeating to US eyes, he said.

He also said the same has happened in the context of nuclear weapons doctrine, in its assessment of the threat from India, or in its calculus regarding both foreign and domestic militant groups.

Pakistani adherence to its perceived interests, in fact, has persisted, irrespective of US-administered punishments or inducements, Greiner said.

However, the former CIA station chief in Islamabad, warned the lawmakers against taking any punitive action or sanctions against Pakistan. In fact he encouraged that the US should help Pakistan maintain a large conventional armed forces.

"Pakistan's conventional military forces will need to be maintained if we are to avoid quick recourse to nuclear weapons at a time when Kashmir remains a social and political tinderbox, and the threat of Indo-Pak war still hangs like an incubus across the region," he said.

"The US dares not turn its back on Pakistan as it seeks to protect its serious national security interests in South-Central Asia," Grenier said.
Following the incident, she went into labour at the MedStar Washington Hospital Centre. (Photo: AFP)

Washington: A 21-year-old pregnant woman was fatally shot at by an unidentified assailant as she left a shop in the US capital. The entire incident was captured on a CCTV camera.

According to a report in The Sun, the victim, Lakira Renee Johnson, who was pregnant with twins, was shot in the stomach when she was buying food from the takeaway shop.

Following the incident, Johnson went into labour at the MedStar Washington Hospital Centre. Although she survived the attack, her unborn twins tragically died.

While investigating the matter, police officials said that Johnson was just a bystander and was not the actual target of the attacker, who fled the scene after the shooting.

Police also added that another man was also shot at and severely injured in the attack.

Hospital authorities confirmed the death of the twins, but did not comment further. Johnson's mother, Cassandra, said that her daughter's twin girls lived long enough only to be named -- Heaven and Nevaeh.

Police are trying to establish the motive behind the attack. No arrests have been made so far.
Brothers Robert, second left, and Michael Bever, third left, are escorted into a courtroom. (Photo: AP)

Tulsa: The older of two Oklahoma brothers accused of fatally stabbing their parents and three younger siblings last year has been sentenced to life without parole after pleading guilty in the killings.

The 19-year-old Robert Bever was sentenced in Tulsa County District Court after pleading guilty at his scheduled arraignment in the July 2015 killings.

Bever's brother, 17-year-old Michael Bever, remained silent during his arraignment and a judge entered a not guilty plea on his behalf. Michael Bever's trial is scheduled to begin next year.

According to reports, the brothers admitted to killing their family members because they wanted to be famous killers and were also planning going on a murdering spree across the nation.

The Bevers were accused of killing their parents, David Bever, 52, and April Bever, 44, and their siblings Daniel, 12, Christopher, 7, and Victoria, 5, in a middle-of-the-night rampage in suburban Tulsa. Two siblings, both sisters, survived the bloodbath at their home.
Kabul: President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani has threatened to close transit route for Pakistan to Central Asian countries as the Wagah port has been closed for the Afghan traders for import and export.

President Ghani made the remarks during a meeting with the United Kingdom's special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan Owen Jenkins in Kabul, reports the Khaama Press.

He said Afghanistan is no more a landlocked country as several other options and transit routes are available for the import and export of commodities of the Afghan traders.

President Ghani further added that Pakistan usually closes transit routes during the fruits season which incurs loss of millions of dollars to the Afghan traders.

According to him, India has agreed to exempt Afghanistan from financial tariff for the export of fruits to the country.

The duo also discussed Afghan peace talks, fight against terrorism, and the issue of the Afghan refugees' repatriation from Pakistan.

President Ghani said the Afghan refugees are tired of pressures and the ongoing situation in Pakistan as they are willing to repatriate to Afghanistan, emphasizing that the Afghan refugees have invested millions in the country and the government is committed to support them to shift their investments to Afghanistan.

He urged the international community to support Afghanistan in this process as the Afghan Government has taken necessary steps to assist the returnees.
Duterte sparked a storm on the eve of an Asian summit this week by labelling Obama a "son of a whore". (Photo: AP)

Jakarta: Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte insisted on Friday he had not intended to insult US leader Barack Obama, but immediately took aim at another global figure by labelling UN chief Ban Ki-moon a "fool".

Duterte sparked a storm on the eve of an Asian summit this week by labelling Obama a "son of a whore", prompting the US president to cancel a planned meeting. The pair met briefly later at the gathering in Laos after Duterte expressed regret.

But acid-tongued Duterte on Friday said the Philippine expression "putangina" should not be taken at face value, and it was "an ordinary expression (used) by everyone".

"It's son of a bitch or son of a gun. It's not son of a whore," he told an audience of Filipinos during a visit to the Indonesian capital Jakarta.

He insisted his remarks were not directed at Obama but at the US State Department, which has raised concerns over potential human rights violations in Duterte's anti-crime campaign which has left almost 3,000 dead in just over two months.

"I got really angry about these threats over this human rights issue. This is the fault of the crazy people in the State Department," he said.

Duterte said he had clarified his comments to Obama when they met.

The Philippine leader has become famous for his profane outbursts, and has branded Pope Francis and the US ambassador to Manila "sons of whores".

The United Nations has also spoken out against his crime crackdown and on Friday Duterte added UN chief Ban, who spoke at the Asian summit, to the list of those he has insulted.

"I told myself, you're just one more fool," Duterte said of Ban.

"I will continue the campaign against the criminals. I do not have any pity for them," he added.

"I don't give a shit. I am the president of the Philippines, not the republic of the international community."

Duterte was elected to office in a landslide this year after pledging to kill 100,000 people in an unprecedented war on crime. But his brutal crackdown has sparked a wave of international condemnation.
The United Nations said Myanmars military has discharged 55 child soldiers from its ranks on Friday, but warned that new underage recruits are continuing to enter the armed forces. (Photo: AFP)

Yangon: Myanmars military discharged 55 child soldiers from its ranks on Friday, the United Nations said while warning that new underage recruits continue to enter the armed forces.

There are no verifiable figures on how many children still serve in Myanmars huge military, which ruled over the country for 50 years before allowing November polls that swept democracy heroine Aung San Suu Kyi to power.

The army is accused of a long history of rights abuses, including the forced recruitment of children to work as porters and even human mine detectors.

It has released a total of 800 former child soldiers since it signed a pact with the United Nations in 2012.

We welcome this discharge while stressing the need for the government to continue making every effort to end the recruitment and use of children in its armed forces, said Renata Dessallien, the UNs Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Myanmar.

The former child soldiers discharged on Friday, who were all under the age of 18 when recruited, come from around the country and were picked up by their families in Yangon, said Mariana Palavra from UNICEF Myanmar.

We will have someone follow up with them to decide what they want to do, if they want to go back to school or if they want to get some other type of training, she told AFP.

At least seven of the ethnic rebel militias who have been fighting the military in the countrys borderlands for decades also use underage fighters, according to the UN.

Until now we dont have an action plan with ethnic groups, but we are working with a few of them, said UNICEFs Palavra.

Suu Kyi has devoted her first few months in power to laying the groundwork for peace talks between the patchwork of ethnic minority insurgents and the military.

Last month she held a landmark summit that brought many key rebel leaders to the table for initial talks.

But the long-running conflicts are complex and meeting the demands of each group, including the still-powerful military, are not expected to be easy.
Pyongyang: North Korea has conducted a "successful" fifth nuclear test, state-run TV said Friday, in an explosion described by the South as Pyongyang's largest-ever such blast.

"Scientists (from)... the DPRK carried out a nuclear explosion test for the judgment of the power of a nuclear warhead newly studied and manufactured by them at the northern nuclear test ground," a TV announcer said, using the North's official name.

"The Central Committee of the (ruling) Workers' Party of Korea sent warm congratulations to nuclear scientists... of the northern nuclear test ground on the successful nuclear warhead explosion test," she said.

The test will also enable the North to produce "as many as it wants (of) a variety of smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear warheads of higher strike power", she said.

The North did not say exactly when and where the test took place. But the announcement came hours after Seoul said Pyongyang had staged another atomic test in its Punggye-ri nuclear test site near the border with China.

The latest test, with an estimated yield of 10 kilotons, is the largest-ever staged by Pyongyang, Seoul's military said.
Tajikistans President Emomali Rahmon said a jailed opposition group attempted to build an Islamic state and trigger a civil war in the secular country. (Photo: AFP)

Dushanbe: In a speech shown on state TV on Friday, Tajikistans President Emomali Rahmon accused a jailed opposition group of attempting to build an Islamic state and triggering civil war in the secular country.

In the address marking the ex-Soviet countrys 25th independence anniversary, Rahmon blasted the destructive plans of an Islamic party recently banned as a terrorist group by the government.

Malicious forces and misguided people working to the plans and instructions of their foreign mastersplanned to build an Islamic state, and dragged Tajikistan into the vortex of a fratricidal war, Rakhmon said.

The Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan, which styled itself as moderate, was declared a terrorist group following lethal political violence in the country last year.

Tajikistan in August said it had jailed 170 people over a purported mutiny led by a deputy defence minister last September that the government said the IRPT organised. At least 26 people died in the fighting that ensued, according to the countrys interior ministry.

Earlier this month Rakhmon said the civil war that raged from 1992 to 1997 and cost tens of thousands of lives came from the mosques of that eraby the initiative of the IRPT.

Ex-collective farm boss Rakhmon, who has been impoverished Tajikistans president since 1994, has publicly stated his dislike of Islamic dress. Reports of police forcibly shaving believers beards in the country of 8 million are widespread.

The US, European Union and an array of rights groups have aired concerns about the imprisonment of a dozen members of the IRPT leadership. Rights groups have also raised concerns that party members are being tortured while behind bars.

The banned partys leader Muhiddin Kabiri escaped the country before he could be detained, but has since been placed on Interpols wanted list. One member of the party, female lawyer Zarafo Rahmoni, was released this month following reports she was considering suicide.

The partys emergence after the civil war was a product of the peace process to end a conflict which pitted pro-government forces led by Rakhmon against Islamic, regional and pro-democratic factions.

IRPT was represented in Tajikistans parliament for 15 years but came under increased state pressure before disputed elections to last year that saw it fail to win a seat.
Seoul: North Korea has successfully tested a nuclear warhead, it said on Friday, drawing condemnation from the South which said the maniacal recklessness of young ruler Kim Jong-Un would lead to self-destruction.

Pyongyangs state media said the test, which comes after a series of ballistic missile launches that have drawn international condemnation and UN sanctions, had achieved its goal of being able to fit a miniaturised nuclear warhead on a rocket.

Our nuclear scientists staged a nuclear explosion test on a newly developed nuclear warhead at the countrys northern nuclear test site, a North Korean TV announcer said.

Our... party sent a congratulatory message to our nuclear scientists... for conducting the successful nuclear warhead explosion test, she said as the South judged it was the Norths biggest test yet at 10 kilotons. The move drew swift condemnation from US President Barack Obama who warned of serious consequences and said he had called the leaders of South Korea and Japan to confer over the crisis.

President Park Geun-Hye spoke out against the maniacal recklessness of Kim, who since taking control after the death of his father in 2011 has carried out a series of purges and weapons tests designed to show strength and consolidate power.

Kim Jong-Uns regime will only earn more sanctions and isolation... and such provocation will further accelerate its path to self-destruction, Park said, warning his obsession with creating a nuclear arsenal posed a grave challenge.

We will step up pressure on the North by using all possible measures, including more, stronger sanctions on the North with the international community and at the UN Security Council, she said. The news emerged when seismic monitors detected a 5.3-magnitude artificial earthquake on Friday.

Yen up, won hit as north korea test jolts markets

Traders bought the yen and dumped the South Korean won on Friday as financial markets were jolted by news that North Korea conducted another nuclear test, reigniting geopolitical tensions.

Pyongyang later said the test had confirmed that it could mount a nuclear warhead on a rocket, hours after it carried out its fifth atomic explosion. The news aggravated geopolitical tensions in the region.

China asks North korea to Halt Nuclear activities

Firmly opposing North Koreas fifth nuclear test, close ally China on Friday lodged a diplomatic protest with the reclusive state and asked it to honour its commitment to denuclearisation and halt any move that could aggravate the situation. We strongly urge the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea to honour the commitment to denuclearisation, an officail said.
Duesseldorf district court spokesperson Marcel Due said a judge dropped the charges on Thursday on condition that he do 20 hours community work and hand in the three-page, handwritten essay. (Photo: Pixabay)

Berlin: A German court has ordered a 15-year-old boy to do community work and write an essay titled Why you shouldnt make jokes with toy weapons after he threw a fake hand grenade in front of a teacher and shouted Allahu akbar.

The teenager, a Moroccan citizen, had been charged with disturbing the peace by threatening crimes. Duesseldorf district court spokesperson Marcel Due said a judge dropped the charges on Thursday on condition that he do 20 hours community work and hand in the three-page, handwritten essay.

Due says the boy, whose name wasnt released in keeping with German privacy rules, said the incident in May was meant as a prank and denied having any Islamic extremist motivation. He told the court he found the fake grenade lying in the schoolyard.
A court in Bradford, United Kingdom, convicted two men on rape charges and observed that they acted like animals when they sexually assaulted the minor victim. (Representational image)

Bradford: A court in the United Kingdom has sent two men to jail for 14 years for 'violently' raping a 13-year-old girl in a hotel room. The judge, who delivered the verdict, observed that the convicts acted like animals when they raped her.

According to a report in Mirror, the men, identified as Ismail Ali and Naheem Uddin, picked up the girl from the streets on April 18 and took her to the hotel room, where they raped her in a "vile and degrading" attack.

The prosecutor, David McGonigal, had told the court that the girl tried to harm herself after the incident by cutting her arms and legs.

"You took it in turns to abuse her and each of you behaved like an animal, Bradford Crown Court , West Yorkshire, Judge David Hatton QC told the convicts, adding that though the girl willingly came with them to the hotel room "she did not volunteer for the vile abuse and degradation that followed at your hands."

The jury found Uddin guilty of raping the girl, attempting to rape her and taking indecent photos of the minor. Ali was found guilty of two offences of rape and a charge of possession of indecent photos, sent on phone by Naheem.
Police officers stand guard as they take part in a raid in Boussy-Saint-Antoine, east of Paris. (Photo: AP)

Paris: French police investigating a car containing six gas cylinders in Paris have arrested three female suspects said to have been planning fresh attacks, shooting one of them in the process.

A police officer also suffered a knife wound during the arrest late on Thursday of the three women -- aged 39, 23 and 19 -- who were preparing "new violent and imminent actions", according to Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve.

The woman shot, a daughter of the car's owner, had sworn allegiance to the Islamic State group, according to a source close to the investigation.

A local resident who saw the women just before their arrest in Boussy-Saint-Antoine, south of Paris, said they "seemed anxious, looking around them all the time".

When confronted, "one young women pulled out a knife and stabbed a police officer at stomach level", Joachim Fortes Sanchez, 21, told AFP. "It all happened very fast".

Four people -- two brothers and their girlfriends  were already in custody over the car, found just a few hundred metres from the Notre Dame cathedral in central Paris, an area always thronged with tourists.

The first couple arrested a 34-year-old man and a 29-year-old woman, have been held since Tuesday and are known to the security services for links to radical Islamists. Police arrested the man's brother and his girlfriend, both aged 26, late on Wednesday.

Authorities had said earlier they were searching for the two daughters of the owner of the grey Peugeot 607 abandoned on Sunday near Notre Dame, which draws millions of visitors every year.

A bar employee working near Notre Dame had first raised the alert on Sunday after noticing a gas cylinder on the back seat of the parked car, police said.

The car had no number plates and its hazard lights were flashing. Although the cylinder on the back seat was empty, five full cylinders were discovered in the boot.

Three bottles of diesel fuel were also discovered in the vehicle, but police found no detonators.

"If it was an attack plot, the method was very strange," a police source said Thursday.

France is on high alert following a string of jihadist attacks, including last November's coordinated bloodshed in which Islamic State extremists killed 130 people.

Speaking on Thursday, President Francois Hollande referred to attack plots that have been foiled "in recent days", without elaborating.
The deeply unpopular Hollande has yet to announce whether he will run for a second term next year, but is widely expected to be a candidate. (Photo: AP)

Paris: President Francois Hollande said that Islam could co-exist with secularism, warning in a key speech seen as preparing the ground for a re-election bid that the anti-terror fight should not undermine French values.

The deeply unpopular Hollande has yet to announce whether he will run for a second term next year, but is widely expected to be a candidate.

In a speech on terrorism and democracy in Paris he defended the country's Muslim minority following a vitriolic debate on the banning of the Islamic burkini swimsuit.

"Nothing in the idea of secularism opposes the practice of Islam in France, provided it respects the law," Hollande said.

Secularism was not a "state religion" to be used against other religions, he said, denouncing the "stigmatisation of Muslims."

Mayors in around 30 French towns this summer cited the country's century-old secular laws in banning head-to-toe swimwear on their beaches, unleashing a furore.

Several of the towns later revoked the bans after France's highest administrative court ruled they were a "serious" violation of basic freedoms.

Hollande rejected calls by conservatives, including his arch-rival, former president Nicolas Sarkozy, for a ban on the burkini, saying it would be "unconstitutional".

As to whether Islam can co-exist with a secular French state, like Christianity and Judaism do, he insisted: "My answer is yes, certainly."

"The question the Republic must answer is: Is it really ready to embrace a religion that it did not expect to be this big over a century ago. There too, my answer is yes, certainly."

'Democracy Is Our Weapon'

In a wide-ranging speech Hollande cast himself as the defender of democracy in the face of a string of terror attacks that have left over 230 people dead since January 2015.

The government has responded by deploying thousands of troops to patrol the streets, enacting a raft of anti-terror laws and repeatedly extending a state of emergency -- measures deemed insufficient by the conservative opposition.

Hollande warned that France could not sacrifice its core values of liberty, equality and fraternity.

"Did the Patriot Act and Guantanamo protect Americans from the (terrorist) threat? No," he said, alluding to calls by Sarkozy for terror suspects to be interned in camps.

"Democracy is our weapon" Hollande insisted.

Polls predict the Socialist leader would suffer a humiliating defeat if he threw his hat in the ring again after five years marked by stubbornly high unemployment and only timid attempts at reform.

Three of his former ministers have already announced their own presidential bids.

They could soon be joined by ambitious former economy minister Emmanuel Macron, who resigned from government last week and has hinted he too could run for the Elysee Palace.

Hollande cast himself as the only man who could hold the fractured country together.

"When there is danger we must come together," he said.
The woman sold her daughter for a bottle of vodka and a petty sum of money. (Representational Image)

Khabarovsk: A Russian woman allegedly sold her 10-year-old daughter to a suspected rapist for a bottle of vodka, who sexually assaulted the child in Russia's Khabarovsk region.

According to a report in Mirror, the woman bartered her young child for alcohol and 100 roubles (around Rs 104).

The woman also allegedly watched mutely as the 23-year-old man attacked the little girl and raped her.

A passerby had found the victim near a building where the attack took place and alerted the police about it. The girls legs were covered in blood and she was crying profusely when the shocked witness called the emergency services at the spot.

The victim was rushed to a hospital and medical tests confirmed that she was raped. Police said that the girl gave them a detailed account of what had happened, which helped them in nabbing the man who committed the horrific crime.

The man told the police that he had bought the child from her mother who gave him permission to do whatever he wanted to do with the child.

The girls mother tried to visit her at the hospital, but the traumatised child told the staff she did not want to see her. Fearing arrest, the woman fled to her village where she was beaten up by locals when they came to know that she sold her daughter.

While the rape accused is being held by the police, the woman is yet to be detained.
These radicalised individuals, who have often received weapons and explosives training, are a "time bomb" as they flee the Islamic State and Syria and return home, France's top prosecutor has said. (Representational Image)

London: With the Islamic State group on the back foot after a string of military defeats, foreign volunteers for the jihadist group are returning home and creating a massive security challenge, experts say.

These radicalised individuals, who have often received weapons and explosives training, are a "time bomb" as they flee the Islamic State and Syria and return home, France's top prosecutor has said.

The risk is especially acute for France, which has been attacked in the past year by jihadists hardened from time spent with ISIS in Syria and Iraq.

"At some time or another we will be faced with the return of a large number of French fighters and their families," Francois Molins, France's anti-terrorism prosecutor, told the daily Le Monde.

"Nearly 700 jihadists who are either French or live in France are in Iraq and Syria at the moment," Prime Minister Manuel Valls said last week.

"Their return represents an additional threat to our national security... We have to be prepared to fight back. It's going to be a long fight."

Like many countries, France has tightened its legislation surrounding returning extremists.

Suspects identified after being tracked by security services on their journey to Syria - in the vast majority of cases by passing through Turkey - are now systematically arrested when they try to re-enter France.

Many face trial and are given prison sentences.

Molins, the prosecutor, said nearly 1,000 individuals "are currently, or have been, investigated for Islamist terrorism". Around 280 have been charged and 167 of those prosecutions have led to jail terms.

But the limits to placing dangerously radicalised individuals under surveillance were shown in July, when two young extremists, including one wearing an electronic tag after twice attempting to go to Syria, killed an elderly priest near Rouen in northern France.

"Straight away there are questions about them being held in custody," Yves Trotignon, a former anti-terrorist analyst at France's foreign intelligence agency (DGSE), said.

"Will they be radicalised in prison? These are dangerous individuals and if they are tried on the facts set out by the prosecution, they will get two or three years. What happens to them after that?"

Trotignon said that of greater concern to security services were the hardcore jihadists who had years of experience staying under the radar.

"There won't be too many of them, but the real danger is those who are going to come back and are still convinced of the righteousness of their cause and who are going to plan attacks.

"We have known for a few months that IS(IS) are preparing for defeat militarily, so it is going to once again become an underground movement."

Foreign fighters returning home to Europe who still intend to carry out attacks will bide their time, Trotignon believes.

"They are not going to take a direct flight to western Europe. They are going to go on a winding route and make stops on the way and it could take several months. They might go to countries where they will change identity - we've already seen that happen.

"They will disappear into gaps, only to re-appear later."

Turkey's role is crucial. The Turkish army has seized control of several kilometres of the border with Syria that ISIS formerly used to pass fighters and equipment.

"The border is now very much sealed," a diplomat told French journalists.

"The Turks have done a huge amount of work, they have filled in holes and built walls. If you try to get into or out of Turkey illegally, you will be shot at."

More than 50,000 people are now barred from entering Turkey, the diplomat said, and 150 French nationals have been arrested in the country and returned to France in handcuffs.
It would not be the first time jihadists in Belgium have been linked to those in France. (Photo: AP)

Brussels: A woman arrested in connection with a foiled plot in Paris is believed to have helped recruit jihadists in Belgium for the war in Syria, a Belgian television station reported on Friday.

The 19-year-old woman, Ines Madani, was shot and wounded in France on Thursday by police investigating a car found filled with gas cylinders near Notre Dame cathedral, a tourist hotspot, last weekend. Madani is considered the main suspect in the case.

"According to our information, Ines Madani had contacts with Belgian radicals from the Charleroi region," the RTBF station reported, without naming its sources. Charleroi is a city south of Brussels, in Belgium's former industrial heartland.

Read: Teenage girl held after 'foiled' Paris attack was ISIS follower

"The names of the radicals appeared on a list from (Belgium's national crisis centre) OCAM as potential candidates departing for Syria," the station said.

"Some of them have since been arrested," it added.

"There is no question here (in Belgium) of a planned attack but Ines Madani seemed to fullfil a role of recruiter and facilitator for these departures," it said.

If true, it would not be the first time jihadists in Belgium have been linked to those in France.

Several based in Belgium allegedly planned and took part in the November 13 gun and bombing attacks in Paris that left 130 people dead and wounded hundreds of others.

Jihadists linked to the Paris cell then allegedly carried out the March 22 suicide bombings in Brussels that killed 32 people at the main airport and a metro station near the EU headquarters.

Both sets of attacks were claimed by the Islamic State group headquartered in Syria.

A spokesman for the Belgian federal prosecutor's office said that he would "not comment (on the report) in the interests of the investigation under way in France."

Investigating a plot linked to the discovery Sunday of a Peugeot 607 with gas cylinders in central Paris, police arrested Madani along with her alleged accomplices aged 23 and 39 in a suburb south of the French capital yesterday.

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said the three women "were apparently preparing new, violent and, what is more, imminent actions."

The women were "radicalised and fanaticised," he said.

Madani had sworn allegiance to the Islamic State group in a letter found in her possession, according to a source in the investigation.
Thirty people in cable cars closest to the ground managed to climb down with the help of rescuers. (Photo: AP)

Courmayer, Italy: More than 30 tourists who spent a terrifying night in cable cars in the French Alps were set to be brought to the ground on Friday, operators said.

A total of 110 people became trapped when the cable cars ground to a halt shortly before 4:00 pm (1400 GMT) on Thursday at an altitude of 3,800 metres (12,500 feet) in the Mont Blanc region.

Seventy-seven people were rescued, including 48 airlifted out by helicopter in a delicate operation as darkness fell. Thirty people in cable cars closest to the ground managed to climb down with the help of rescuers.

"The last hour seemed very, very long. We called the operators who explained that three cables got snarled up and they had to be untangled but they didn't manage to do it," an unnamed man who was one of the first tourists to be rescued told French radio.

But with darkness falling and the weather deteriorating, the rescue operation was suspended, leaving 33 tourists, one of them a 10-year-old child, forced to spend the night dangling in mid-air.

Shortly before 8:00 am (0600 GMT), news came that the cable cars had restarted.

"They resumed five minutes ago, the last cable (which was blocking the system) was untangled," Mathieu Dechavanne, CEO of the Mont-Blanc Company that manages the system, told AFP.

He said the remaining passengers could now be rescued without the use of helicopters.

People were cold

Police said all the remaining passengers seemed in good health.

"We were in contact with them throughout the night, the people were cold" but there did not appear to be any health emergencies, the local police chief, Stephane Bozon, told AFP.

The prefect of the Haute-Savoie region, Georges Fran?ois Leclerc, said late Thursday that rescuers were forced to halt their operation at 8:45pm as they could not "guarantee the safety of the pilots, rescuers and the people stuck in the cars".

During the night, a team of five rescuers, three French and two Italian police officers also attempted to reach the trapped tourists.

One of the officers managed to get into a car which contained a 10-year-old child.

Those still stuck had access to emergency blankets, energy bars and bottles of water in the cars.

Each cable car holds just four passengers. They connect Aiguille du Midi on the French side of the mountains with Pointe Helbronner on the Italian border.

The incident was caused by cables that got crossed for "unknown reasons", but a gust of wind is thought to have played a part, Dechavanne said on Thursday.

The employees of the company were not able to repair the cars, forcing an evacuation operation to begin around 5:00 pm. The cable cars offer panoramic views of Mont Blanc, which straddles the French-Italian border.

The incident comes five years after around 40 people were stuck for nearly seven hours on the Grande-Motte cable car in the southeastern French Alps after it broke down.

They were evacuated through trap doors in the floor of the cars, using ropes to reach the ground 40 metres (130 feet) below.
The strike on a meeting of commanders of the Army of Conquest alliance came hot on the heels of a major defeat for the rebels, which saw them under renewed siege inside Aleppo after an army advance this week. (Photo: Representational Image)

Beirut: An air strike near Syria's battleground second city Aleppo killed the military leader of the largest rebel alliance and at least one other commander, jihadist sources and a monitor said Thursday.

The strike on a meeting of commanders of the Army of Conquest alliance came hot on the heels of a major defeat for the rebels, which saw them under renewed siege inside Aleppo after an army advance this week.

Former Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front, renamed Fateh al-Sham Front when it broke ties in July, announced on Twitter "the martyrdom" of commander Abu Omar Saraqeb in an air strike.

The jihadist Fateh al-Sham is a leading member of the Army of Conquest which groups its fighters with Islamist factions like Ahrar al-Sham in the most prominent anti-regime alliance.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said unidentified aircraft hit the Army of Conquest meeting on Thursday night, killing Saraqeb and another rebel commander named as Abu Muslim al-Shami.

Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said it was not immediately clear whether the strike was carried out by the US-led coalition, the Syrian regime or its Russian ally -- all of whom are conducting bombing raids in northern Syria.

According to the Observatory, Abu Omar Saraqeb was a leading member of Al-Qaeda in Iraq in its fight against the US-led occupation after 2003 before becoming a key commander of Al-Nusra Front and then Fateh al-Sham in Syria.

He reportedly also founded Al-Nusra Front's Lebanon branch which has claimed responsibility for several bombings in Syria's western neighbour. He operates under different noms de guerre, making it difficult to know his nationality.

He led a successful offensive by the Army of Conquest in spring last year which saw it seize control of nearly all of the northwestern province of Idlib. But the alliance has been less successful in and around Aleppo, where it was dealt a major blow by regime forces this week.

In early August, Saraqeb led an offensive against pro-government fighters besieging the rebel-held east of the divided city and opened up a new supply route from the south that broke the siege. But this week regime loyalists recaptured nearly all of the territory taken last month and reimposed the blockade.

Jihadism expert Charles Lister said Saraqeb had helped found the the Army of Conquest last year and once served as the "emir" of Idlib province. Amid Syria's fractious rebel movement, "he's seen widely as an Islamist unifier," Lister wrote.
Actress and UN refugee agency envoy special envoy Angelina Jolie talks during a visit to a Syrian refugee camp in Azraq in northern Jordan. (Photo: AP)

Azraq refugee camp, Jordan: Actress Angelina Jolie Pitt, a special envoy for the UN refugee agency, has called on the international community to end the protracted Syrian civil war and increase support for refugees across the region.

Jolie Pitt spoke at the Azraq camp for Syrian refugees on Friday while on a tour of humanitarian projects in Jordan. Jolie Pitt says the violence rages while the U.N. Security Council remains divided on a political resolution.

She decried the funding shortfalls for humanitarian agencies, saying the U.N. was operating with less than half of the budget required to support Syrian refugees.

She says that "the gulf between our responsibilities and our actions has never been so wide."

Close to 5 million Syrians have fled their homeland since 2011, most settling in neighboring countries.
Islamabad: Pakistan on Thursday said Karachi Chambers of Commerce and Industries, which cancelled Indian High Commissioner Gautam Bambawale's public engagement at the last minute, is an independent body, a day after India summoned Pakistani envoy to lodge a strong protest over the incident.

Asked about Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit being summoned by Ministry of External Affairs, Foreign Office spokesman Nafees Zakaria said, "Yes, he was called in by the Indian Foreign Office and given a demarche. We are gathering more information related to this episode. However, let me point out that Karachi Chambers of Commerce and Industries (KCCI) is an independent body."

Basit was called to the South Block by MEA Secretary Sujata Mehta, who conveyed government's concern over discourtesy shown to Bambawale, whose address at the Karachi Chamber of Commerce was called off without any reason being given. Bambawale was told about the cancellation just half an hour before the event, invite for which was received and accepted by him a couple of weeks ago.

India and Pakistan are engaged in a fierce verbal battle over terrorism and the situation in Kashmir. While India has accused Pakistan of supporting cross border terrorism, Pakistan, on its part, has been trying to internationalise Kashmir, alleging New Delhi of human rights violations.
Some 166 people were killed in the Mumbai attacks carried out by 10 LeT men from Pakistan. (Photo: AFP)

Lahore: A former LeT militant, arrested last month for his involvement in the 2008 Mumbai terror attack, has been absolved by Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency which says "no allegation has been proved against him."

Sufayan Zafar was accused of financing Rs 14,800 for Mumbai attack and providing Rs 3.98 million to co-accused Shahid Jameel Riaz prior to the attack.

"The FIA has found no evidence against Zafar during investigation," an official of FIA said.

Read: Want to see accountability and justice in Mumbai terror attacks: US

He said the allegation that he had financed one of the arrested suspects in Mumbai case could not be proved after thorough investigation.

The official said, "Zafar's role in providing finances to a Mumbai attacks suspect(s) has not been established." He said Zafar would not be charge-sheeted in the court for alleged allegations. "FIA will submit a challan in the trial court in this regard?on next hearing on September 22 but will not frame charges against him," the official said.

Read: 26/11 attack case: Pak court issues notice to Zakiur Rehman Lahvi, 6 others

Zafar was hiding after being declared proclaimed offender in the Mumbai case. He was arrested early last month from his hideout in Kyber-Pakhtaunkhawa province.

A resident of Gujrawala district of Punjab, some 80 km from Lahore, Zafar is among 21 other (absconding) suspects wanted in this high-profile case.

Six other suspects - Abdul Wajid, Mazhar Iqbal, Hammad Amin Sadiq, Shahid Jameel Riaz, Jamil Ahmed and Younus Anjum have been lodged in the Adiyala Jail Rrawalpindi since 2009 for abetment to murder, attempted murder, planning and executing the Mumbai attacks.

Prime suspect LeT operations commander Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, believed to be the mastermind of the Mumbai attacks, has been in hiding after getting bail over a year ago.

Some 166 people were killed in the attack carried out by 10 LeT men. Nine terrorists were killed while lone survivor Ajmal Kasab was captured and later executed.
A beauty therapist from Bradford, Samia had previously been married to her first cousin Shakil but the couple parted ways after divorce in May 2014. (Photo: You Tube Screengrab)

Islamabad: In a recent development in the Samia Shahid murder case, it has emerged that the victim, before her murder, had sent a text message to her friend asking her to pray that 'she came back alive' from her native place in Pakistan.

According to a report in the Independent, Samia Shahid, 28, who hailed from Bradford, had texted her friend hours before boarding a flight to Pakistan.

Samia, a resident of Dhok Pandori village, some 230 km from Lahore, had come to Pakistan from Dubai in mid July to see her ailing father and was found dead on July 20. Her father claimed that she died due to cardiac arrest.

Initially her family played innocent, but autopsy reports revealed that Samia was raped and murdered.

The murder would have gone unnoticed but British MP Naz Shah in a letter alerted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif that it could be a case of honour killing.

A high-level inquiry headed by Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Abu Bakar Khuda Bakhsh concluded that she was murdered.

Police sources said that Shakil, who is also Samia's cousin, confessed strangling her to death as she married another man of her choice.

Syed Mukhtar Kazim, second husband of Samia, had told police that his wife had been killed by her family members for marrying against the will of her parents.

Kazim and Samia, both British-Pakistani dual citizens, had been married for two years and were living in Dubai. A beauty therapist from Bradford, Samia had previously been married to her first cousin Shakil but the couple parted ways after divorce in May 2014. She then married Kazim.
The government's announcement comes amid reports that Pakistani authorities have been forcing Afghans to go back home even before the expiration of the previous, December 31 deadline. (Photo: AFP)

Islamabad: Pakistani government statement says Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has extended the stay for Afghan refugees, pushing back a previously announced deadline by three months.

The statement says Sharif approved this decision at a Cabinet meeting on Friday in Islamabad.

Pakistan is currently hosting at least 1.5 million refugees. An additional 1 million unregistered Afghans have been staying in many parts of Pakistan since 1980s, when they escaped the violence at home.

The government's announcement comes amid reports that Pakistani authorities have been forcing Afghans to go back home even before the expiration of the previous, December 31 deadline.

The statement quotes Sharif as saying that Afghan refugees are "guests" of Pakistan and that steps will be taken to ensure their safety.
Pakistan could deploy Paramilitary Rangers in Pakistan's Punjab province for at least two months to hunt down terrorists and their facilitators. (Photo: AP/File)

Lahore: Paramilitary Rangers could be deployed in Pakistan's Punjab province for at least two months to hunt down terrorists and their facilitators after conducting similar operations in Karachi with the provincial government making a request in this regard.

The Punjab government sought deployment of Rangers from the Interior Ministry for at least two months to assist police and the Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) in "hunting down terrorists and their facilitators and combating banned organisations" in the province.

The Punjab government had immense pressure from the army to intensify operations against terrorists and banned organisations to avoid any major act of terrorism in the province.

Former interior minister Rahman Malik had disclosed that there are more than 150 sleeper cells of militants of banned organisations in Punjab's southern part.

Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah said Rangers would assist police and the CTD in conducting intelligence-based operations and providing security during Eid-ul-Azha and Muharram.

He said the need to seek the help of Rangers was felt during meetings presided over by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in the aftermath of the Quetta tragedy in which over 70 people mostly lawyers were killed.

Sanaullah said there is a need to expand the sphere of operations against terrorists and their facilitators under the Nation Action Plan (NAP).

"We are seeking the assistance of Rangers but not giving them policing powers like they are enjoying in Karachi," he said.

The Rangers will be deployed in Punjab under sections 7 and 10 of the Pakistan Rangers Ordinance 1959 to assist police and the CTD in proceeding against the outlawed organisations and hunting down terrorists and their facilitators.
The statewide bandh call given by various pro-Kannada organisations crippled life in Bengaluru on Friday shutting down public transport, establishments and educational institutions.



The bandh has been called to protest the Supreme Courts direction to release Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu. Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said government offices may not be able to function on Friday. Employees may not be able to reach their offices as there will be no public transport, he said, hinting that no action would be taken against those who fail to turn up for work. The chief minister also said that a holiday has been declared for schools and colleges.



The commissioner for public instruction declared a holiday in 13 educational districts, while deputy commissioners of the remaining 21 districts have been asked to take a decision based on the situation.



The state transport utilities have extended support to the bandh. Private bus and truck operators in the Old Mysuru region are supporting the bandh, while taxis, including app-based cabs Ola and Uber, will suspend services. The Bangalore Tourist Taxi Owners Association has also announced support for the cause.



Metro operations may be suspended depending on the situation. Station controllers have been directed to observe the situation and resume services if conducive. Besides transport services, business establishments, including hotels, malls and theatres, will remain closed. Cable operators and DTH associations will terminate services during the bandh hours.



The bandh is likely to receive a moderate to lukewarm response in the Mumbai-Karnataka, Hyderabad-Karnataka and coastal regions.



The home department has made security arrangements across the state to ensure there are no untoward incidents. As many as 60,000 policemen along with Central Paramilitary Force personnel will be deployed. Two companies each of the Central police force from Kerala, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh have arrived in Karnataka.

Siddaramaiah said security measures have been stepped up in the Cauvery basin districts, besides Hubballi.



We are not preventing the bandh, but it should be peaceful. Those who indulge in stone-pelting and violence will be dealt with sternly, Siddaramaiah said.






A 12-hour Karnataka bandh called by pro-Kannada and farmers outfits to protest the Supreme Court's direction to release water to Tamil Nadu today brought the country's IT capital and Cauvery basin districts to a standstill and evoked a mixed response elswhere in the state.Normal life in southern Karnataka belt, known as the 'old Mysuru' region, was hit by the dawn-to-dusk bandh supported by some 800 organisations and the Opposition BJP and JDS, but it passed off peacefully across the state amid tight security.Complying with the Supreme Court order on Monday last, the Karnataka government has been releasing 15,000 cusecs of water to Tamil Nadu since September 6. This has triggered a wave of protests in the state, specifically in Cauvery river belt. The brunt of the bandh was borne by Bengaluru, Mandya, the epicentre of Cauvery agitation, Mysuru and neighboring districts where massive protest marches and demonstrations were held, but the response was tepid in coastal districts.Concerned over the "extreme unrest" over the release of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi to call forthwith "on a few hours notice" a meeting of chief ministers of the two states to end the impasse.As the Cauvery row hotted up with the state observing the bandh, Siddaramaiah dashed off a missive to Modi, saying the "unrest", if continued, would have a serious impact on the state's economy as also the IT sector which fetches enormous revenue and foreign exchange to the country."By this communication, I earnestly request you not only as Prime Minister, but as Head of the entire Federal system, to call a meeting of the Chief Ministers of the States (forthwith on a few hours notice) to resolve the impasse," Siddaramaiah said in the letter.Today's bandh was the fourth lockdown in six weeks -- two relating to water sharing disputes with Tamil Nadu and Goa and the other two over wages including nationwide stir called by labour unions on September 2.Roads were almost deserted in Bengaluru with shops, hotels and other commercial establishments, malls and cinema theaters shut and banking services hit. Metro services were also stopped. Educational institutions declared a holiday today, and government offices were empty as attendance was not compulsory. While some private companies had declared holiday, others had provided 'work from home' option to employees.Karnataka Cable Operators Association did not air Tamil channels. Some 14,000 security personnel were deployed here, bolstered by Karnataka State Reserve Police, City Armed Reserve and Rapid Action Force.In Mandya, police lathicharged and lobbed tear-gas shells to disperse protesters who tried to storm Krishnaraja Sagar Dam site, during which a few farmers were injured. Police officials said the injured have been moved to a local hospital for treatment.A few farmers jumped into the river water near the dam as a mark of protest, but they were rescued by a rescue team present at the spot. One protester allegedly tried to commit suicide by consuming poison but was stopped by the police.In Bengaluru, during a "massive" protest march from Town hall to Freedom Park organised by Kannada Okkoota (federation), led by Kannada Chaluvali Vatal Paksha leader Vatal Nagaraj, a man allegedly stabbed himself with a sharp weapon.He has been admitted to a hospital, police said. Activists of pro-Kannada organisations tried to enter the departure terminal of the Kempegowda International Airport and the railway station here but were stopped by the police.The Kannada film industry also rallied behind with actors, directors, producers and technicians holding a protest rally in the city. The bandh, supported by a wide spectrum of organisations, unions and political parties, was "total" in several parts of southern Karnataka. Protests and demonstrations were held across state in places like Ballari, Koppala, Chikkaballapura, Dharwad, Kolar, Chitradurga, Hassan among others.In Ballari, where transgender community joined protests, three lorries bearing Tamil Nadu registration were damaged. The Karnataka government has decided to approach the Supreme Court with a modification petition explaining its difficulties in implementing its order. It will also move the Cauvery Supervisory Committee.Water Resources Miniser M B Patil ruled out any move by the government to go against the court order by bringing in an ordinance, as was done by the then Chief Minister Bangarappa in 1991."We will do things that are in accordance with law, if we bring ordinance against the Supreme Court order, will it stand? ...We cannot take such decisions. We will take decisions that are legally tenable," he said.
A controversy erupted today after popular stand-up comedian Kapil Sharma alleged that he had been asked to pay a bribe of Rs 5 lakh by an official of the civic body BMC which, in turn, claimed that the actor had carried out "illegal construction" at his office for which a notice had been served on him.



Kapil levelled the bribe allegation in tweets in which he tagged Prime Minister Narendra Modi, asking if this was the "achche din" (good days) he had promised.



Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis was quick to respond to Sharma's angst and assured him that strict action would be taken against the culprit.



Expressing his anguish and raising the issue of corruption, Kapil tweeted this morning, "I am paying 15 cr income tax from last 5 year n still i have to pay 5 lacs bribe to BMC office for making my office @narendramodi (sic)."



In another tweet, he wrote, "Yeh hain aapke achhe din? @narendramodi (are these your good days)," referring to Modi's 2014 poll slogan of "good days are ahead".



The post of Sharma, who has over 6.22 million followers on Twitter, was 'retweeted' and 'liked' by thousands on the social media platform.



Taking cognisance of the matter, Fadnavis requested Sharma to provide the authorities with necessary information to punish the culprit.



"Kapilbhai pls provide all info. Have directed MC, BMC to take strictest action. We will not spare the culprit," the Chief Minister said in a tweet.



Later, Sharma thanked Fadnavis in another tweet saying, "@Dev_Fadnavis thank u so much for ur concern sir.. Would like to come n discuss this matter with u in person .."



However, a senior Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation official claimed that the actor had made some "illegal construction" at his office in Versova area of suburban Mumbai and had been served a notice regarding the same, but he did not pay heed to it.



"Kapil was then sent a notice by BMC on July 16 to stop or remove the construction, but he didn't reply to it," he said.



BMC also asked Kapil to reveal the name of the officer who allegedly demanded the bribe.

Stung by corruption allegations, Shiv Sena, which rules the BMC along with BJP, dared Kapil to name the bribe seeker.



"This is not a comedy show where he can tweet what is going on in his life. He needs to immediately name the person publicly who asked for a bribe or people would watch the whole episode like a comedy drama, laugh over it and forget about it," Sena spokesperson Manisha Kayande said.



"Kapil Sharma is a very famous person and thus the moot question he needs to answer is that why would he give the bribe when somebody asked for it. Giving bribe makes him as much of a culprit as the one who asked for it," she added.



Manohar Pawar, chief engineer of vigilance department in BMC, said, "I have requested Kapil Sharma to reveal the name of the officer who demanded bribe so that we can initiate inquiry and appropriate action against him or her."



"Let me assure you that if you desire to keep any disclosure made by you in this matter confidential, the same shall also be ensured," he said in a statement.



Meanwhile, BJP MLA Ram Kadam filed a complaint with the cyber cell of Mumbai police alleging that Kapil, by keeping mum on the "bribe" demand, did not "discharge his duty as a citizen", and demanded a free and fair inquiry into the entire issue.



Confirming the complaint, Mumbai police spokesperson Ashok Dudhe said, "Yes, we have received an application and since the allegations are related to the anti-corruption department, the application is going to be forwarded to anti-corruption department for further inquiry.



The Congress, meanwhile, said Chief Minister Fadnavis, who took immediate cognisance of the comedian's complaint should lend ears to common man as well.



"It is surprising to see how the government machinery gave a quick response to Kapil Sharma. Just like him, common Mumbaikars raise issues of corruption every day against the BMC but nobody listens to them. It has come to a situation where every Mumbaikar has to now say 'Hum bhi hai Kapil Sharma' for the CM and BMC to listen to them," Congress MLA Nitesh Rane said.



The NCP too sought to milk the issue by alleging corruption in the civic body since years and said Sharma too should demolish the alleged illegal structure if he is a law abiding citizen.



"Undoubtedly there is corruption in BMC ruled by the BJP and the Shiv Sena since decades. Also, Kapil Sharma was issued a notice by the civic body over illegal construction. If he is a law abiding citizen, he should immediately demolish it," NCP spokesperson Nawab Malik said.



"If he (Sharma) is using the corruption angle to save his illegal structure, the Municipal Commissioner should come forward and raze it," he said.


In fresh trouble for former Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, the ED has registered a money laundering case against him and others in a case of alleged financial irregularities in acquisition of land in Gurgaon's Manesar in which farmers were cheated to the tune of Rs 1,500 crore.





The ED has filed a criminal complaint against the Congress leader based on a CBI FIR, under which the probe agency conducted searches in Haryana and the national capital last week.



Officials said the Enforcement Directorate (ED) case has been made under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) and the agency has begun identifying the "proceeds of crime" allegedly created illegally as a fallout of the corruption done in the case.



"Summons would be issued to the accused soon. The agency is also looking for assets created out of tainted funds to attach them under PMLA as part of the investigations," they said.



The case pertains to CBI registering a case in this regard last year in September on allegations that private builders in conspiracy with unknown public servants of the Haryana government had purchased around 400 acres of land from farmers and land owners of village Manesar, Naurangpur and Lakhnoula in Gurgaon district at throw away prices, showing the threat of acquisition by the government, during August 27, 2004-August 24, 2007.



It was alleged that a loss of Rs 1,500 crore was caused to the land owners of village Manesar, Naurangpur and Lakhnoula of Gurgaon.



During last week's searches at Hooda's residence, CBI had claimed to have found "fund transaction details worth crores of rupees" which are now being scrutinised by the agency.

The ED is expected to seek a copy of these documents from the CBI soon, in order to take its probe forward.
Terming maritime terrorism as a major threat, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh today said the government has started the process of security audit to identify vulnerable areas in the seas and along the coastline.





After commissioning Coast Guard ship 'Sarathi', Singh said the government has been successful in addressing the issues pertaining to maritime security post Mumbai terror attack in November 2008 which was carried out by terrorists who came through the sea.



"Maritime terrorism continues to be a security threat as we have a long coastline with many big cities and security installations.



"We have started the process of security audit to identify vulnerable areas in our seas and coastal areas," he said in presence of Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar here.



The Home Minister said the central government has adopted a comprehensive and integrated coastal security scheme to strengthen India's coastal network.



"For better coordination among the agencies responsible for coastal security, the Director General of Coast Guard has been designated as commander of coastal security," he said, adding the coast guarding force should also work towards the safety and conservation of India's maritime ecosystem.



"Oceans and seas act as natural security shields and also bring new opportunities for eco prosperity," he said.



Highlighting the role of Coast Guard, the Home Minister hailed it as the central pillar of India's security architecture with two other important pillars of Navy and Marine Police.



The Coast Guard ship 'Sarathi' is the third in the series of six 105 meters offshore patrol vessels.



'Sarathi' meaning 'charioteer' is a projection of Indian Coast Guard's will and commitment to serve and protect the maritime interests of the nation.



The ship has been designed and built indigenously by Goa Shipyard Ltd and fitted with advanced navigation and communication equipment and sensors.



The features include an integrated bridge system, integrated machinery control system, power management system and high power external fire fighting system.



ICGS 'Sarathi' is designed to carry one twin engine light helicopter and five high-speed boats, including two for fast boarding operations, search and rescue, law enforcement and maritime patrol at sea.



The ship is also capable of carrying pollution response equipment to combat any oil spill contamination at sea.



The ship draws 2,350 tonnes and is propelled by two 9,100 KW diesel engine to attain a maximum speed of 23 knots and has an endurance of 6,000 nautical miles at economical speed.



The ship has a complement of 14 officers and 98 men.
Hours after the High Court quashed the appointment of 21 AAP MLAs as parliamentary secretaries, the Delhi Congress sets up a war room to prepare for bypolls to the constituencies represented by these legislators.





The High Court has quashed the appointment of the parliamentary secretaries on Thursday.

The Congress is now expecting a similar decision by the Election Commission, which is also hearing a plea to disqualify these legislators for holding an "office of profit". If that happens, these 21 Assembly constituencies will fall vacant, setting a stage for bypolls.



The Congress has set up a war room at Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee office on Deen Dayal Upadhyay Marg.



We are hoping that there will be bypolls to the 21 Assembly seats, and the party will bag most number of seats, said a Congress leader.



Congress sources said that the party has conducted an internal survey. As per the survey, while the party will win 12 to 15 seats, the BJP will manage to get 5 seats, said a Congress leader. The Aam Aadmi Party will be reduced to one seats out of the 21 Assembly constituency seats, he added.



Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee President Ajay Maken has been claiming that the party will make a come back in any of the upcoming elections.



The Congress won four seats in the municipal bypolls that took place in May. The Aam Aadmi Party bagged five seats. "We are also eyeing the 2017 municipal elections. We are preparing a full fledged agenda on issues like healthcare, eduction and sanitation," said the Congress leader. "But we are looking forward to the bypolls to the 21 Assembly constituencies," he added.



Earlier, the Election Commission had rejected the petitions of the Delhi government, BJP and Congress to be made party to the ongoing case against 21 Parliamentary Secretaries of the Arvind Kejriwal government.



The case was filed on a plea seeking their disqualification from Delhi Assembly for holding an "office of profit".



The 21 legislators have been claiming that they did not enjoy any pecuniary benefit while holding the post of parliamentary secretaries, and the post did not carry any remuneration or power.


With the "extreme unrest" in Karnataka over release of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah today requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi to call forthwith "on a few hours notice" a meeting of chief ministers of the two states to end the impasse.



As the Cauvery row hotted up with the state observing a 12-hour bandh today, Siddaramaiah dashed off a missive to Modi saying that the "unrest", if continued, would have a serious impact on the state's economy as also the IT economy which brings enormous revenue and foreign exchange to the country.



"By this communication, I earnestly request you not only as Prime Minister, but as Head of the entire Federal system, to call a meeting of the Chief Ministers of the States (forthwith on a few hours notice) to resolve the impasse," Siddaramaiah said in the letter released to the media here.



He pointed to a precedent of December 1995, where under similar circumstances of deficit flows, the Supreme Court had requested the Prime Minister to resolve the issue.



"The Supreme Court by order dated 28 December, 1995 requested the Prime Minister to resolve the issue of implementation of its order, which was then duly done to the satisfaction of all parties," he said.



Complying with the apex court's order, Karnataka government has been releasing 15,000 cusecs of water to Tamil Nadu since Tuesday, triggering a wave of protests particularly in the Cauvery basin districts with Mandya being the epicentre of the stir.



While maintaining that the release was "inevitable", Karnataka government has said it would seek modification of the apex court's September five order to spare water for 10 days because of the difficulties in implementing it given that the live storage in four reservoirs in the Cauvery basin now was 46.7 TMCFT against their capacity of 104 TMCFT.



The present live storage is 45 per cent against the live storage of 104 TMCFT in the Krishnaraja Sagar, Harangi, Hemavathi and Kabini reservoirs, the government has said.



Siddaramaiah, in his letter, has invited the Prime Minister's "immediate attention to the stark facts already in the public arena about extreme unrest in the Cauvery basin, especially in Bengaluru..." against the court's interim order on release of water.



He said the daily release of 15,000 cusecs of Cauvery water at the inter state border, Biligundulu, which, if continued, "would completely deprive the drinking water not only to the residents of Bangalore City but also to farmers of Cauvery basin and water for the only crop they grow."



Siddaramaiah said "the present storage in the Mettur reservoir and the North-east rainfall received in Tamil Nadu would be more than sufficient to meet the requirement of water for the Samba rice crop just being or still to be sown by the farmers in the state."



The Supreme Court's direction was based on Tamil Nadu's plea, seeking a direction to Karnataka to release 50.52 TMCFT of Cauvery water to save 40,000 acres of samba crops this season.



Siddaramaih pointed out that at an all-party meeting held on Tuesday last, the views of the political parties including BJP in the state, was that the order of the Supreme Court ought not to be implemented.



"However, as constitutional Chief Executive of the State, I have taken it upon myself to obey the orders of the Supreme Court and the water is being released as per the order which has created more unrest and disquiet in the state."



"Awaiting your favourable response urgently, by telephone, fax or email," said Siddaramaiah, as he faced the increasing Cauvery heat.
The NDA governments large-scale toilet building exercise is unlikely to clean up the country unless the government spends more money to educate people on the importance of using these latrines, health researchers have found.



Since Prime Minister Narendra Modis Independence Day address two years ago, the Central government spent large sums to construct toilets aiming to stop the common practice of open defecation. The corporate sector and the state governments have also been encouraged to pitch in.

A group of public health researchers have estimated that without adequate spending to inform and educate the masses, the clean-up objective is unlikely to bear the fruits.



Without stronger and more frequent educational campaigns, it is difficult to bridge the gap between the number of people having access to toilets and the ones using them. It is estimated that a universal coverage of latrines will not make any difference in large states such as Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan. Due to lack of knowledge about the benefits of use of toilets, most people in these states will continue to defecate in the open, said Ramanan Laxminarayan, director at the Centre for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy at Washington DC.



The estimate is part of a fresh study on how better access to toilet, piped water and sanitation can help reduce diarrhoeal deaths of children and out of pocket expenditure on health in India. Access to toilets may not necessarily imply that the households are using them. Lack of knowledge and hard-to-change behavioural patterns could hinder the use of toilet facilities.



In a recent UNICEF study in Tamil Nadu, almost 90% of respondents reported they were habituated to open defecation, and 50% considered it a cleaner practice than using toilets. Another survey in Bihar, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh has found, among households which have access to a latrine, 40% reported at least one member to be defecating in the open.



Two other studies pointed out that access to sanitation may have a lower-than expected effect on childhood diarrhoea rates due to lack of use. In the 2015-16 Budget, more than Rs 3,500 crore was allocated for Swachh Bharat mission but only 8% of the money is meant for communication.



Construction of toilets is not enough. People need to be convinced to use it. There is a social aspect to this problem that needs to be addressed, Laxminarayan told DH. India accounts for a fifth of the global deaths of children under the age of five years and more than 3,00,000 children under five in the country die from diarrhoeal diseases each year.


Ahmedabad Police on Friday arrested a doctor and a ward boy working at the Apollo Hospital in Gandhinagar for reportedly raping a dengue patient in the ICU earlier this week. The accused have been sent on a two-day judicial custody. According to the complaint filed before the police at Adalaj Police Station, a 22-year-old woman admitted to the hospital a few days ago for dengue treatment was raped reportedly by the doctor and a ward boy for two days.



The patient charged that she was first assaulted by doctor Ramesh Chauhan (28) on Sunday night in a section of the hospital where the visitors have restricted entry. Ward boy Chandrakant, stated to be doctors accomplice in the crime, too was arrested. The police had registered the complaint under Section 376 of the IPC.



The victim charged that she had been diagnosed with dengue and was shifted to ICU where her condition had worsened. As she was almost unconscious due to medication, she could not fight back when the doctor and the ward boy took advantage of her situation and raped her. A medical examination later confirmed that the young woman was raped. The hospital also provided the CCTV footage to aid the police in their investigation and suspended both the accused.



The police said the victim was drugged and could manage to reveal her plight much later by writing on a piece of paper before her uncle. The police also took her statement before the judicial magistrate. Later in their interrogation, it came to light that Dr Chauhan was a Pakistani citizen, with a medical degree from Karachi. He was working at the hospital since 2014 on the basis of a work permit obtained from the Medical Council of India.


Controversial tele-evangelist Zakir Naiks NGO, Islamic Research Foundation (IRF), has been barred from receiving foreign funds without prior government approval. The action comes two weeks after the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) goofed and renewed the Foundations licence for receiving foreign funds, amid ongoing investigation into its affairs.



The decision to bring the NGO under prior permission category came after an MHA preliminary inquiry, which revealed the NGOs activities in violation of the Foreign Contributions Regulation Act (FCRA) and irregularities in its account books. Sources said examination of account books showed that the NGO had not revealed certain donations it had received.



Hence forth, the IRF cannot accept any foreign donation. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) would have to first inform the Home Ministry about the funds coming to the NGO and permission obtained from the Ministry before releasing the funds.



Dhaka terror attack

Naik had hit headlines after it emerged that one of the five terrorists who stormed a Dhaka restaurant in July was inspired by the Mumbai-based preacher, who trained as a doctor. Following this, government agencies started investigating if he had any links with terror outfits. The Ministry of Home Affairs also began probing the activities of IRF following allegations that foreign funds were misused for political activities and to induce people towards Islam. IRF is said to have received around Rs 15 crore between 2006 and 2011.




The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has registered a money laundering case against former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda in connection with irregularities in the acquisition of land. The case deals with financial irregularities in the acquisition of land in Gurgaons Manesar, in which farmers were cheated to the tune of Rs 1,500 crore.



The ED has filed the case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act on the basis of an FIR filed by the CBI against Hooda and others. Following this, the CBI conducted searches in Haryana and Delhi last week.



Official sources said the ED would soon issue summons to those named in the case. Investigators have begun identifying the proceeds of crime, created illegally as a fallout of corruption in the case.



The CBI, had in last September, registered a case charging that private builders had hatched a conspiracy with Haryana government officials to purchase around 400 acres from farmers and land owners in Manesar, Naurangpur and Lakhnoula in Gurgaon district at throwaway prices after showing the threat of acquisition by the government.



According to the FIR, the state government had initially issued notifications for acquisition of land measuring about 912 acres for setting up an industrial model township. Following this, a large number of land owners sold their land in haste at throwaway prices, the FIR stated.



An order was passed by the government on August 24, 2007, releasing this land from the acquisition process in violation of the government policy and licences were issued to private builders.






Is the said laboratory accredited by an accreditation body or recognised by the state government as provided in Section 12 (1) of Haryana Gauvansh Sanrakshan and Gausamvardhan Act 2015, asked Shabnam Hashmi of Left-leaning NGO, Anhad.



Mission Biryani, an initiative by the Haryana Police to probe use of beef in the preparation of the delicacy has triggered a political war. Trouble broke out when the Haryana Gau Seva Aayog asked the state police to check whether street vendors in Muslim-dominated Mewat district were using beef in the preparation of biryani. The state police collected samples from restaurants and food vendors and sent it to Lala Lajpat Rai University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, Hisar, for examination.As reports of Mission Biryani trickled in, Congress functionary Shehzad Poonawala petitioned the National Commission for Minorities and accused the Haryana government of targeting Muslims ahead of the Eid festivities next week. Poonawala also shot off a letter to Home Minister Rajnath Singh to direct the Haryana government to call off the unconstitutional act of biryani policing aimed at terrorising minorities.CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury also demanded that the obnoxious campaign with government patronage be stopped forthwith. It is amply clear that the RSS/BJP actually has no concern for the protection of the cow and its progeny. In Goa, the party (BJP) defends the right of the people to consume beef. In Northeast, it is in favour of beef consumption, Yechury stated.But, in Haryana, clearly, this is being used to terrorise and sharpen communal polarisation with clear political and electoral considerations, he said. Meanwhile, reports had it that Lala Lajpat Rai University had found some samples of biryani indeed containing beef. However, the police were quick to clarify it had not received any report from the university.We have not received any report yet. The police had collected seven samples, Superintendent of Police Kuldeep Singh was quoted as saying by ANI. Human rights activists have also questioned the findings of the university.
India on Friday said the Government of Pakistan cannot escape from the responsibility of curbing terrorism emanating from the territory under its control.



At some stage, the differentiation (between state and non-state actors) is not gone out on the ground. There is a connect between state actors and non-state actors, which is why we use the word sponsored, Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar said on Friday. The state cannot escape responsibility (of cross-border terror attacks) by saying it is (the) non-state, (which is responsible). That is a false dichotomy, he added.



The foreign secretary made the remark in response to a query at a conference on South Asia Looking East held in New Delhi by the East West Centre, a think-tank based in the United States.
Scores of people were injured in unabated violence across Kashmir on Friday as authorities re-imposed curfew and restrictions to prevent protests and maintain law and order. However, reports said despite curfew, violent clashes between protesters and security forces broke out throughout the Valley after the Friday congregation prayers.



Reports said at least 30 people were injured in the protests across south Kashmir despite stringent curfew. As many as 15 people sustained pellet injuries in various areas of Shopian district. At least 10 people sustained injuries in various areas of Pulwama district while six people sustained injuries in the clashes that erupted in Kulgam town, reports said.



Scores of people were also injured after security forces vandalised the venue of a protest rally and set on fire, several tents erected to host the rally in north Kashmirs Baramulla district. Several people were also injured during daylong clashes in Srinagar city where authorities had imposed strict curfew in old city areas. The authorities for the ninth consecutive week disallowed Friday prayers at the historic Jama Masjid in Nowhatta area of Srinagar.
Former chief minister H D Kumaraswamy on Friday opined that Tamil Nadus strong influence at the level of the Union government and various Constitutional institutions is mainly responsible for repeated setbacks suffered by Karnataka in the Cauvery issue, rather than errors by the state government or its legal team.





The AIADMK, which runs the government in Tamil Nadu, has no high command like the BJP or the Congress. Therefore it is successful in presenting influencing arguments before the Constitutional institutions. But national parties in Karnataka, either in power or not, need their high commands permission for everything. Therefore, we need a strong regional party in the state to protect peoples interests, he told reporters here.



The JD(S) leader said changing the state legal team headed by senior consul Fali S Nariman would not be a solution to the issue.


A group of youths from Karnataka staged a protest here on Friday against the Supreme Court's direction to release Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu.





The protestors, under the aegis of Mandya Youth Group, gathered at Jantar Mantar and demanded that the Centre intervene in the matter.



Following the release of water to Tamil Nadu, several cities in Karnataka, including Bengaluru and Mysuru, will face drinking water crises, said Anil Anand, president Mandya Youth Group. Guru Raj Kumar, grandson of Kannada matinee idol the late Raj Kumar, also participated in the protest. With the water in reservoirs in Karnataka is depleting due to shortfall in monsoon, the Centre should send a team to study the ground situation in the state, Guru Rajkumar said.


Amid the statewide bandh in Karnataka over the Cauvery issue, Tamil Nadu farmers continued to cheer after the water, which was released by the neighbouring state, reached Mettur dam, the lifeline of delta farmers, on Friday.





With the water flow at Biligundlu, the entry point to Tamil Nadu, already touching 16,000 cusecs, the Mettur reservoir got about 9,000 cusecs of water and its level rose to more than 76 feet.



A senior official of the Public Water Resources department, a wing of PWD department, told DH that the inflow at Biligundlu was just 10,000 cusecs on Thursday. However, the inflow touched 16,500 cusecs as on Friday morning, the official said. The official said the information about the inflow was also communicated to the Supervisory Committee, which was appointed by the Supreme Court, on the quantity of Cauvery water to be released to Tamil Nadu and Puducherry.



According to him, the inflow into Mettur dam also increased from 6,000 cusecs to 9,905 cusecs on Friday afternoon. The water level in Mettur dam also increased to 76.74 feet, he said. At present, the outflow of 1,250 cusecs from Mettur, is only for drinking purpose. The Mettur dam will be opened for irrigation only if the water level touches about 90 feet, the official pointed out.



Farmers in Kariyapatinam in Nagapattinam and Dharmapuri and Trichy district welcomed the Cauvery water with flowers and started sowing activities.


The police resorted to lathicharge and lobbed tear gas shells to disperse protesters who broke the barricades and tried to enter the KRS dam area at Srirangapatna in Mandya district on Friday during the Karnataka bandh.





Three farmers jumped into the Cauvery and another farmer tried to consume pesticide near the KRS dam during the bandh which was total in the Cauvery basin districts of Mysuru, Mandya, Hassan and Chamarajanagar. The protests were largely peaceful except for a few incidents of altercation between protesters and security personnel.



Thousands of farmers reached the KRS dam and staged a protest near the downstream. When they tried to enter the dam area, the police stopped them. When the farmers broke the barricades, the police caned the protesters and also lobbed tear gas shells to disperse them.



A couple of farmers jumped into the canal to escape the police caning and swam safely to the other bank. Several persons injured in the melee were treated at a local hospital. Some of them were shifted to KR Hospital in Mysuru. The police took hundreds of protesters into custody and released them later. The farmers who jumped into the river during the protest have been identified as Ramesh of Kyathanahalli, Ningegowda of Chandre and Abhi of Hiremarali. They were rescued by the Fire and Emergency Services personnel. When Kumar of M Bettahalli tried to consume pesticide, the police snatched the bottle from him.



Protests continue



Women protesters blocked Inspector General of Police (Southern Range) B K Singhs car and gheraoed him near Maddur. Protests continued in different parts of Mandya district. Farmers blocked roads, cooked and consumed food on roads, took out rallies, formed human chains and set tyres on fire. Protesters burnt effigies of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa, tonsured their heads and held her mock funeral. Protesters stopped the Tirupati-Chamarajanagar train for sometime near the Kukkarahalli Lake.



Actor Ninasam Sathish participated in a road blockade in Maddur. Nirmalanandanatha Swami, the seer of Adichunchanagiri mutt took part in a protest at Nagamangala.



Bebi mutt seer Trinetra Mahantha Swami participated in a demonstration in Srirangapatna. Former prime minister H D Deve Gowdas daughter-in-law Bhavani Revanna met the JD(S) party workers, who have been staging an indefinite protest in Mandya since Wednesday. A Kannada activist slit his wrist as a mark of protest in Mandya. Protesters torched a motorcycle at Holenarsipur in Hassan district. The protests will continue in Mandya district on Saturday.



Chief minister defends police action



Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Friday defended police lathicharge on protesters near the KRS dam saying it was necessary to disperse farmers who tried to barge into the reservoir, reports DHNS from Bengaluru.



The police had no intention to cane the protesters. They (the police) had no option but to resort to mild caning in order to disperse farmers who tried to barge into the KRS reservoir, he told reporters when his reaction was sought on the police action that drew criticism from various quarters. Siddaramaiah thanked the people of the state for observing a peaceful bandh. People have cooperated in ensuring a peaceful bandh. They have expressed their feeling for the injustice meted out to the state. The government will continue its efforts to protect the interests of the state, he added.



On the demand for removing Fali Nariman as head of the legal team representing the state in the Supreme Court, Siddaramaiah said the question of removing Nariman did not arise. Nariman has been representing Karnataka on the river water sharing issues in the Supreme Court for the past 32 years. On the Mahadayi river water sharing issue, he said he has already spoken to his Maharashtra counterpart over phone and urged him to extend his cooperation in holding negotiations for resolving the issue. He said he will soon speak to his Goa counterpart in this regard.




Just three months into the academic year and already, seven days have been lost due to strikes and bandhs.





The state government is contemplating cutting short Dasara holidays for its schools, while private institutions have already begun or are gearing up to work full days on Saturdays to make up for the lost class hours.



Four working days were lost in July this year due to the strike by the state transport corporation employees. Besides, the government had declared holidays for schools on July 30 (bandh call on the Mahadayi issue), September 2 (trade union strike) and September 9 (bandh call on the Cauvery issue).



Primary and Secondary Education Minister Tanveer Sait said a final decision on cutting short Dasara holidays for government schools will be taken at a meeting of Karnataka State Advisory Council, an apex body to decide on educational policies and programmes, scheduled to be held later this month.



Government schools were to go on Dasara vacation from October 9 to 27. It looks like we have no option but to cut short the 20-day Dasara vacation by a few days. The Council will decide on the number of days to be cut by September-end, Sait said.



Karnataka Associated Managements of English Medium Schools (KAMS) general secretary D Shashikumar said the organisation has already directed its member institutions to hold full day classes on Saturdays to compensate the loss of school hours. KAMS has more than 1,900 schools under its belt.



Shashikumar pointed out while schools across the state lost seven working days due to strikes and bandhs, institutions in Mysuru, Mandya, Dharwad, Gadag and Belagavi had lost more than one week due to the Cauvery and Mahadayi agitations. KAMS will plan a separate schedule for schools in these districts.



Higher Education Minister Basavaraj Rayaraddi said colleges can conduct special classes to make up for the lost days.



Academic Councils of various universities can decide whether to effect any changes in the calendar of events, he said.


The Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly witnessed acrimonious scenes for the second consecutive day on Friday over the Centres refusal to grant a special category status to the state.



YSR Congress Party (YSRC) legislators stormed Speaker Kodela Sivaprasada Raos podium and got into a brawl with the marshals trying to protect the speaker. While some MLAs tried to remove the cameras in the House, Mangalagiri legislator Alla Ramakrishna Reddy pulled out the speakers microphone and flung it at the Assembly staff. Others stood on a table in front of the speaker and raised slogans.



The Opposition MLAs were in no mood to listen to the governments explanation on the issue, forcing Rao to adjourn the Assembly twice in 30 minutes. We want the House to put the Question Hour on hold and take up our adjournment motion on the special status. However, the treasury benches are adamant on giving a statement, Reddy said.



Legislative Affairs Minister Yanamala Ramakrishnudu said the Opposition did not allow the chief minister to make a statement on Thursday. This is not the Lotus Pond (referring to the YSRC headquarters) to behave as you wish. The Assembly has certain rules and we have to follow (it), he said. The speaker tried to maintain his composure and urged the MLAs to maintain decorum.
Russian President Vladimir Putin gave Chinese leader a box of Russian ice cream, as a host gift, as he arrived in Hangzhou for the G20 summit.

Chinese President Xi Jinping was truly pleased and has said that he had been craving some of the Russian delicacy.

"Every time that I come to Russia, I ask them to buy me Russian ice cream," Xi said, according to NDTV. "The fresh cream you have is the best[;] that's why your ice cream is particularly delicious. I like it a lot," he explained.

"I promised to bring it for you," said Putin, "and I've brought you a whole box of ice cream."

Putin added that in his future visits to China, he will always "bring ice cream as a gift for Xi [Jinping]."

However, China's warm welcome to Putin is in contrast with US delegation.

US President Barack Obama was forced to use an emergency exit from Air Force One while other world leaders exited their plane through red-carpeted staircases as they arrived in Hangzhou for China's first G20 meeting.

Chinese officials claimed that their treatment for Obama is a mistake.

"This clearly plays very much into the [idea]: 'Look, we can make the American president go out of the ass of the plane," Bill Bishop said as he was not sure that Chinese officials are being truthful.
Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Friday visited Ayodhya, the first by a member of the Nehru-Gandhi family in the past 26 years. He paid obeisance at the famous Hanumangarhi temple, but avoided visiting the makeshift Ram temple, barely a kilometre away. Rahuls father and former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi had visited Ayodhya in 1990, though he had not visited the Hanumangarhi temple.



The Congress vice-president, who was currently on a Kisan yatra in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh, offered puja at the temple in accordance with vedic rituals and also held a closed-door meeting with its mahant (chief priest) and influential seer Gyan Das, who is known for his anti-Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), stance.



Though the content of the discussion was not revealed, Gyan Das later told reporters that Rahul was a good person and a patient listener. I blessed him to become prime minister and resolve the Ram temple-Babri Masjid issue, the seer added.



Rahuls visit to Ayodhya was being perceived by the political analysts here as an attempt to woo the upper caste brahmin community. The Congress has already declared former Delhi chief minister Sheila Dixit, a brahmin, as its chief ministerial nominee in the forthcoming UP Assembly elections, due early next year.



Brahmins, who constitute around 12% of the electorate in UP, play a crucial role in around 40 to 50 Assembly constituencies. Congress president Sonia Gandhi had also planned to pay obeisance at the famous Kashi Vishwanath temple during her recent roadshow in Varanasi, but her programme was cancelled at the eleventh hour owing to ill health.



Rahul also held a roadshow in Faizabad town, about 125 kilometres from here, after visiting the temple. During the roadshow, he shook hands with people and accepted their greetings. The Congress leader continued his tirade against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, accusing the latter of not fulfilling the promises made during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Rahul would also be visiting the famous dargah (tomb) of Kichaucha Sharif in the neighbouring Ambedkar Nagar.
The members of the Kannada film fraternity too joined the protest bandwagon. The whos who of Kannada film industry expressed their support to the statewide bandh called by the pro-Kannada bodies over Cauvery water issue by staging a sit-in in front of the office of Karnataka Film Chamber of Commerce on Friday.



Miffed at the fans cheering the actors, actor Shivarajkumar told them that the actors and technicians are there for a serious issue and that they should extend their support for the cause rather than cheering their heroes.



Actor-director Upendra said that he has been witnessing the Cauvery river water dispute since his childhood days. A solution for the Cauvery river water sharing dispute has been highlighted in my film H2O. We can get justice only if we protest in front of the houses of the elected representatives. Leelavathi, Devaraj, Jaggesh, Puneeth Rajkumar, Ganesh, Sharan, Vinod Raj, Bharathi Vishnuvardhan, Tara, Sudharani among others took part.



A cultural jatha from Ravindra Kalakshetra here to KRS dam in Srirangapatna was held on Friday by city-based artistes. A streetplay highlighting the Cauvery dispute and sufferings of farmers was staged at various places between Bengaluru and Mysuru. About 50 artistes from Hashmi Theatre Forum took part.


Biocon chief Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw faced a backlash after her comment terming the city as Bandhaluru on the social networking site Twitter. Yes we shd rename our city as Bandhaluru, she commented on the microblogging network sacastically referring to the frequent bandhs. In her tweet, Shaw said that frequent bandhs were affecting productivity. In another, she said: I am in Delhi working. No day off for me. One of the twitterati responded: enjoy a day off madam. Its a small gesture to support our poor farmers! while others trolled with nasty comments forcing her to delete the tweets. Kannada Chaluvali Vatal Paksha and other pro-Kannada organisations have decided to hold a protest on September 16 against the Biocon chief.



Shaw later tried to remodify what she had written. She wrote: Karnataka's needs come first from Cauvery. Another tweet said: Karnataka's needs must be addressed first from Cauvery n hope both state Govts can resolve this long dispute amicably. and another one: We r observing Bandh in solidarity with people n farmers of Karnataka who r facing water challenges. Hope 2 states resolve dispute amicably She later tried to defend herself saying that her post had been misinterpreted. She wrote Pls read my message don't listen to media twist. I hv always stood by farmers n people of Karnataka.



Whether it be on Twitter, Facebook or WhatsApp, the Karnataka bandh was the most discussed topic on Friday. Infact, this was one of the top trending topics on Twitter and Facebook throughout the day.



Some people voiced their opinions on the bandh, others sparred on the need for a bandh and the long-standing Cauvery water dispute between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. While the streets were off people throughout most of the day, the internet, however, seemed jammed with people and their opinions on the issue.



The most affected seemed to be people looking to travel on the day. A number of queries were posted on any possible ways to find any means of transport. One Mahesh Jagga tweeted: Stuck in Bangalore, no transport and a flight to catch. Wish there was a Sushma Swaraj for emergency evacuation within India #KarnatakaBandh



One Deepak S tweeted: The bylanes of Bangalore look scary today...no shops open, no vehicles, no people moving around. #KarnatakaBandh. A 25-minute video was posted on Facebook in which pro-Kannada activists were asking employees of Accenture in Koramangala to leave their work and go home.


IT and ITeS companies in Indias Silicon Valley came to a standstill due to the dawn-to-dusk bandh against the release of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu. The main hubs for these companies  Whitefield, Koramangala, HSR Layout and Hebbal  saw a majority of companies closing their doors.



Many of these companies, however, are working on Saturday to compensate the loss. Speaking to DH, a representative of L&T Technology Services said the company had declared a holiday. We have decided to work on Saturday to compensate for this leave, said the communication head.



City-based IT companies like Infosys and Wipro closed shutters. While Wipro had already decided to work on Saturday, Infosys stated the company will work on the coming Saturday. Quikr, a cross-category classifieds platform too remained shut. A few of our employees who are critical for our service came in and other employees worked from home. We will work next Saturday, said a company official. UTC Aerospace Systems vice president Chris Rao said the company had declared a holiday and will work on Saturday. Philips Innovation Centre spokesperson, however, said the company remains closed on Saturday. A few of our employees worked from home. We are not compensating for todays closure and it will be closed on Saturday as usual, said the spokesperson.



Manyata Technology Park witnessed untoward incidents in the morning as members of Karnataka Rakshana Vedike forced many offices to close down. According to an employee, Some protesters barged in, but they didnt damage anything. But, later the companies evacuated their employees.



A few of the critical financial services companies instructed their staff to stay close to the campus in hotels. Those who stayed near the campus came walking and it helped us run our operations, said an official from a Europe-based financial service company. Bengaluru has around 20 lakh IT and ITeS workers.
Members of the Tamil Sangam in Bengaluru, expressed support for the agitation in Karnataka over the Cauvery crisis. But they were against the protesters vandalising properties in the city and state.



G Damodar, president of Tamil Sangam, said that all Tamilians residing in the city and state, support the bandh, expressing solidarity with farmers, but not vandalising properties. Targeting Tamil Nadu registered vehicles is not fair, they said.



We have been living in Karnataka for many years. We are with Karnataka farmers. We are also familiar with the problems faced by our brother and sister farmers in Tamil Nadu because of lack of water. Some immediate solution is needed, he said.



There are 25 lakh Tamilians residing in Bengaluru and 80 lakh in Karnataka. For the safety of Tamilians, the Sangam members had a meeting with Home Minister G Parameshwara on September 7, who had assured them that they will face no problems. Police security was deployed at the sangam head office in Ulsoor on Friday, to prevent untoward incidents.


The enquiry into the missing records of gomala land in survey number 47 at Adigarakallahalli in Anekal taluk of Bengaluru Urban district has resulted in the suspension of two surveyors for creating podi in favour of private persons without original documents.



In February 2016, DH had reported about sites being allotted by BHEL Employees House Building Co-operative Society (HBCS) in survey number 47, which has 103.32 acres of gomala land. BHEL Employees HBCS, through its contract with Lion Estates and Properties owned by JD(S) MLC, C R Manohar, had acquired 67.08 acres in survey number 47 in Adigarakallahalli. Many sites were formed in survey number 47 by creating new survey numbers.



Based on a complaint that surveyors had allowed creation of podi to private persons without an original grant certificate or akarband, the Department of Survey, Settlement and Land Records had initiated an enquiry.



The enquiry revealed that two surveyors, Girish and R Arun, were responsible for causing the loss of government land worth over Rs 50 crore. The order of suspension issued by the Commissioner of Survey, Settlement and Land Records stated that both the officials had shown dereliction of duty as per the Karnataka Government Employees (conduct) Rules.



The surveyors have created podi in favour of private persons by mentioning fictitious document numbers. The private persons have made huge money by selling this land to various people, the order stated.



A few members of the society had noticed that an extract of RTC of survey number 47, obtained on December 8, 2015, showed the extent of gomala land as 103.32 acres. However, within a span of two weeks, on December 22, 2015 the pahani of survey number 47 showed the total extent of government gomala land as just 24.23 acres.



Anxious members of the society had filed a writ petition before the High Court, and the Deputy Commissioner, Bengaluru Urban V Shankar formed a committee to look into the irregularities in the entire land in survey number 47. Shankar said the committee was expected to submit its report soon.



The podi was not done in a single day pertaining to the land in this survey number, but over a period of time since 1978. However, it is also found that there are no records available for the remaining 24.23 acres of government land. Once the committee report is ready, the same will be submitted to the government, he said.






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Tuneful scam

A Menomonie woman believes she was a victim of a scam after receiving a suspicious phone call on the morning of Aug. 9. The call was from a man who identified himself as David Wilson from the IRS.

The man said that the woman owed back taxes for 2009-2014, because she had paid a rate of 10 percent instead of 12 percent. He told her she owed $4,987.33 to the IRS. The woman believed the man, because he knew her income, past employers and other personal information.

After several conversations, the woman was instructed to make payments through Apple iTunes cards. She bought $5,000 in iTunes cards and provided the activation information to the man on the phone. While she was doing so, she realized it was a scam and hung up the phone after providing $2,600 worth of iTunes cards.

She used a credit card to purchase the cards, so she immediately contacted her financial institution to cancel the card. She also called Apple to start the process of cancelling the iTunes cards.

Cat bite

A Menomonie man brought a stray kitten to the Dunn County Humane Society after it had bitten him in the 1500 block of N. Broadway St. on Aug. 13.

A humane society employee contacted the Menomonie Police Department, who issued a quarantine order for the kitten. The kitten isnt old enough to be given a rabies vaccination.

When an officer contacted the man, he said he was attempting to catch the kitten when he accidentally touched a sore on its neck, causing the kitten to bite him in the right index finger. He cleaned the wound himself and denied further medical treatment.

Boxed out

A money box containing up to $250 in cash was stolen from the corn stand in the parking lot of the Pioneer Grill and Saloon on the N5600 block of County Highway D in Tainter Township.

The white, metal box went missing sometime between noon on Aug. 12 and 10 a.m. on Aug. 13. There was no damage to the corn stand, but the money box is valued at $250.

Stolen goods

The manager of Cenex in Menomonie contacted the Menomonie Police Department to report a theft at the gas station in the N2300 block of Highway 25.

The manager said that a black Chrysler parked at a gas pump at about 8:37 a.m. on Aug. 6. The driver didnt pump any gas, but a female passenger wearing a purple shirt got out and entered the store.

The woman grabbed a can of Red Bull and removed one pack of cigarettes from the dispenser above the counter while the cashier wasnt looking. The woman, who appeared to be in her 20s, left the store without paying for the items. The total value lost is about $8.74.

Taking it back

An employee of local real estate and rental company contacted the Menomonie Police Department to say the company was having trouble with past renters.

The tenants had been evicted from their rental in the 1100 block of Sixth Avenue in Menomonie on May 25 but had left some property behind. The rental company later changed the locks to the apartment, which has remained vacant since. On Aug. 4, the employee went to inspect the apartment and found an entry door had been forced open.

The employee believes the former tenants may have broken in, since some of their property was no longer in the apartment. No other property was taken.
Samsung has simultaneously issued a statement saying faulty units are being recalled, and new units will be shipped to buyers soon.

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation has declared a ban on flyers from using Samsung Galaxy Note 7 smartphones while in flight. Users of the flagship Samsung smartphone are being banned from carrying the devices in check-in baggages, and even from using and/or charging the devices in flight mode, when in flight. The move follows United States Federal Aviation Authority imposing a similar ban on the smartphone.

Samsung has recently issued a global recall of 2.5 million Galaxy Note 7 units following reports of units exploding while in charge or in usage. Further investigation led to discovery of a flaw in majority of the devices batteries. In response to this recent ban imposed by the DGCA, Samsung India has issued a statement that reads, We are aware of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) notice. Consumer safety and peace of mind are our top priority. Galaxy Note 7 sales have not started in India, and we have delayed sales to alleviate any safety concerns. We plan to expedite new shipments of Galaxy Note 7 soon to reduce any inconvenience for our customers.

It remains to be seen whether the ban is interim, or is sustained over prolonged periods. Samsung will possibly take some duration to supply the units to customers who have already paid for it, and may have considerable ground to make up in terms of sales, with Apple having launched the iPhone 7 earlier this week. The in-flight ban aims to ensure safety of consumers, until the exploding battery issue is completely resolved.
Our space explorations are reaching farther boundaries every day. We have sent probes to the extreme corners of our solar system and beyond in our quest to explore the universe, escalating the romance and unpredictability of what lies beyond the trodden frontier. In this comparison, asteroids are relatively nearby - forming a belt of relatively small celestial bodies strewn into orbit, somewhere between Mars and Jupiter. It is here that NASAs latest mission - the Origins-Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security Regolith Explorer, or OSIRIS-REx, is aimed at.

At 4:35am IST today (7:05pm EDT, Thursday), OSIRIS-REx embarked on its two-year journey to Bennu, an asteroid that actually swings by relatively close to Earth in its orbit. Bennu is a Carbon-rich asteroid that measures about 1600 feet in diameter. It is rather accessible from Earth, but in an alarming estimate, the University of Arizona (UA) also states that the asteroid has a 1-in-2000 chance of colliding with us in about a century or so when its flies by 186,000 miles of Earth. Heading the mission along with NASA, scientists from UA identified Bennu as the asteroid to study based on its staggering Carbon content and relatively large size, which will give OSIRIS-REx reasonable space to study and collect.

The mission for OSIRIS-REx is to fly about 200 million miles to meet Bennu, and stay there for about two years before making its way back. During this time, OSIRIS-REx will study the effect that the Suns heat has on Bennu, and how this heat affects its trajectory. As mentioned above, Bennus most alarming aspect is its proximity to our planet, and in terms of space, the probability of its collision with Earth can be quite disconcerting. NASA scientists will look to study all of this, and maybe figure a way to utilise solar energy to deflect Bennu off a possible collision course with our planet.

There is also a greater element at play here: OSIRIS-REx will bring back an uncontaminated piece of the asteroid to be studied and researched on Earth. Scientists now believe that this is a great opportunity to answer the mysterious questions surrounding the point of origin. In a statement, NASA says, Asteroids like Bennu are remnants from the formation of our solar system more than 4.5 billion years ago. Scientists suspect that asteroids may have been a source of the water and organic molecules for the early Earth and other planetary bodies. An uncontaminated asteroid sample from a known source would enable precise analyses, providing results far beyond what can be achieved by spacecraft-based instruments or by studying meteorites.

The date of OSIRIS-RExs historic collection of asteroid material from Bennu has been scheduled in July 2020. The probe, as NASA states, will perform a high five - in this case an impactful, concentrated force - with a robotic arm named TAGSAM, or Touch and Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism. It will stir up surface material and collect small rocks and dust particles from the asteroid in volume that will range between 60 grams and two kilograms. There is a lot at stake here, and scientists believe that these particles will hold multiple answer to the formation of life-supporting molecules that assembled into the life-sustaining atmosphere of Earth.

OSIRIS-REx is now on its way to Bennu, and will only embark on its return journey in 2021, facing a one-year delay based on orbital positions. While everything is calm now, this particular mission can be more defining than many other far-flung missions that we have undertaken recently. Project Manager Mike Donnelly states in this very powerful statement, (We) will soon do something that no other NASA spacecraft has done  bring back a sample from an asteroid.

A potentially killer asteroid with possibilities of holding answers to the origin of life. Ironic? Sure, but that is how space has shocked us over time.
Independent mining and mineral processing company Tri-Star Resources announced on Friday that Strategic & Precious Metals Processing has made significant progress as it moves further into the procurement phase of the Oman Antimony Roaster (OAR).

The AIM-traded firm has a 40% equity interest in SPMP.

Further to the recent ordering of furnaces, as announced on 9 August 2016, SPMP has awarded further key contracts to deliver the main antimony roasting equipment including the rotary kiln and dry and wet gas handling circuitry, representing the core operational equipment packages for the OAR, Tri-Star said in a statement.

The key milestones ahead for the project include combining the delivery and assembly of the core roasting and gas handling process equipment; site and utility readiness; staffing build-up and training, and commissioning material feed test-work.

Tri-Star said the OAR was continuing its emphasis on strong environmental credentials combined with an increasing focus on the provenance of supply sources.

In addition, the OAR's design capability to treat gold in feed concentrates is expected to prove a significant differentiator.
A Norwegian newspaper has lambasted Facebook over its censorship policies following a disagreement surrounding an iconic image from the Vietnam War.

Aftenposten, the biggest selling newspaper in the Scandinavian country, published an open letter to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg on its front page, following the social network's decision to remove the image of a young girl during a napalm attack, from one of its articles.

Editor-in-chief and chief executive of the paper Espen Egil Hansen accused the company of having too much influence over what is published through its platform by media outlets.

Hansen said that he received an email from an editorial office of Facebook based in Germany, asking to remove the photo from author Tom Egeland's article, before deleting it without a reply from Aftenposten.

"This right and duty, which all editors in the world have, should not be undermined by algorithms encoded in your office in California. Editors cannot live with you, Mark, as a master editor," the editor said.

"The media have a responsibility to consider publication in every single case. This may be a heavy responsibility. Each editor must weigh the pros and cons."

Facebook recently received criticism from conservatives in the US that it was suppressing right-wing views. In response, Zuckerberg replaced human editors with algorithms to decide trending topics and headlines in its news feed.
Derwent London has sold its long leasehold interest in 75 Wells Street, London W1, to a private investor for 40.9m before costs.

The company said the sale price was in line with December 2015 and June 2016 valuations.

Chief executive officer John Burns said: This disposal, which has been negotiated since 23 June 2016, demonstrates the ongoing interest in central London property and our continued ability to recycle capital."

The property provides 34,800 sq ft of office and retail accommodation. The multi-let building produces a net annual rent of 1.28m with a further 6,460 sq ft of vacant offices across three part floors.
Private healthcare company Mediclinic said significant progress was made integrating the Al Noor Hospital business, but revenues from its Abu Dhabi operations will be lower than anticipated.

The FTSE 100 company said progress was being made since the Mediclinic International and Al Noor Hospitals combination, in April, with a new management team and strategic operational review completed in June.

An estimate of cost synergies from the integration was revised to AE$75m per year, ahead of the AE$50m previously anticipated, which will be realised in the second half of the financial year and in the following years.

Nonetheless, those cost savings were expected to result in a one-off charge of AE$20m.

Mediclinic also announced it expected to receive AE$50m from the disposal of two units, with further small non-core disposals envisaged.

However, revenue growth in the Abu Dhabi operations was now expected to be lower than previously expected due to increasing competition for clinical personnel and a six month delay in the ramp-up of new units, including at the Al Jowhara hospital.

Those delays were seen subtracting AED75m from the group's 2016/17 revenues.

Mediclinic said it would also be affected by health insurer Damans 20% co-payment for Thiqa members using private healthcare facilities from 1 July which is likely to impact patient mix and volume.

Chief executive Danie Meintjes, said: "The combination of Mediclinic Middle East and Al Noor has created a leading private healthcare platform with exposure to a region with highly attractive long-term sustainable growth opportunities.

Despite the short term challenges we are currently facing in Abu Dhabi, Mediclinic is well acquainted with the process of business integration along with operational and business alignment. We remain confident in the successful integration and growth of the business. Trading in Mediclinic Southern Africa and Hirslanden remains in line with management's expectations."

Trading in Dubai remains in line with expectations.

Management reiterated its expectations for the business in the medium-term but for the year ending 31 March 2017 Mediclinic Middle East was now expected to achieve only low to mid-single digit revenue growth and underlying EBITDA margins of mid to high teens, with performance being "materially" weighted towards the second-half of the year.
A fifth nuclear test by North Korea drew immediate condemnation from the international community and raised concerns the country might have made significant progress in its nuclear programme due to its potency.

According to South Korea's Meteorological Administration, the blast had an explosive force of 10 kilotons, twice that of the previous test and the secretive nation's most powerful detonation to date.

The blast triggered an earthquake of magnitude 5.3 near the test-site.

North Korea confirmed the test on its state TV channel, in an act which signals the country's lack of regard for UN sanctions imposed on it in January this year, and will put the United States and South Korea on high alert.

The KCNA news report said its "scientists and technicians carried out a nuclear explosion test for the judgement of the power of a nuclear warhead".

The blast coincided with the anniversary of the country's foundation as a Republic in 1948.

Previously on Thursday, US president Barack Obama had raised concerns surrounding the nuclear power of the Kim Jong-un led government.

"We are going to make sure that we put our defensive measures in place so that America is protected, our allies are protected," Obama said during an ASEAN summit in Laos.

"We will continue to put some of the toughest pressure that North Korea has ever been under as a consequence of this behavior."

Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe said the test was "absolutely unacceptable", while South Korea's president Park Geun-hye described it as an act of "self-destruction".
Prime Minister Theresa May on Friday announced that she has lifted the ban on selective schools in the UK and is working towards their expansion.

The ban on grammar schools was initially introduced by the Labour government under Tony Blair in 1998.

The controversial move is the Prime Ministers first big policy announcement since she came to power.

According to May this shake up in the school system is aimed towards allowing academically gifted children to excel to their full potential even if they come from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Existing non-selective or comprehensive schools are also going to be given the right to become a grammar as long as they abide by quotas for children from low-income homes.

"The truth is that we already have selection in our school system - and it's selection by house price, selection by wealth. That is simply unfair. We are effectively saying to poorer and some of the most disadvantaged children in our country that they can't have the kind of education their richer counterparts can enjoy," May said in a speech in London.

Critics however argue that this meritocratic system would achieve the opposite by leading to further inequality.

Chair of the governments social mobility commission Alan Milburn said the reintroduction of grammar schools would be a "disaster", arguing that pupils in existing grammar schools were four or five times more likely to have come from a private prep school than from the most disadvantaged backgrounds.

Labour's shadow education secretary Angela Rayner said: "By enshrining selection into our education system the prime minister is wilfully ignoring the overwhelming evidence that selection at 11 leads to a more unequal country."

The Economist argued that children from wealthier families also have an unfair advantage as they have the means to pay for extra tuition to prep for the entrance exams required to get into these schools.

This focus on creating more good schools can also lead to a drain on the best teachers from other types of schools. Researcher from Education Datalab Rebecca Allen attributes this as the reason for GCSE results being much higher at grammar schools.

Ofsted's chief inspector of schools, Sir Michael Wilshaw, said the idea that poor children would benefit from a return of grammar schools was "nonsense". He went on to say that the move will turn back the clock and slow down the progress made over the past 10 to 15 years.

Kevin Courtney, leader of the National Union of Teachers, said opening new grammars was a "regressive move and a distraction from the real problems" of funding pressures and teacher shortages.

Tim Farron, leader of the Liberal Democrats, said: "If the Conservatives care about our children's education they should reverse their cuts to school budgets. We need to improve all schools, not just let some become grammars.
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From Alaska to Argentina - Veteran's Motorcycle Ride for PTSD Awareness

Published: 2016-09-09

Author: The Soldiers Project | Contact: thesoldiersproject.org

Peer-Reviewed Publication: N/A

Jump to: Main Digest | Publications

Synopsis: Iraq war veteran Zachary Sherman will be riding his Honda CB500X to raise awareness about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and raise money for The Soldiers Project. Iraq war veteran Zachary Sherman will be riding his Honda CB500X from Deadhorse, Alaska to Ushuaia Terro Del Fuego, Argentina to raise public awareness about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and raise money for The Soldiers Project, a nonprofit organization that provides free mental health services to Post 9/11 veterans.

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Main Digest

Iraq war veteran Zachary Sherman will be riding his Honda CB500X from Deadhorse, Alaska to Ushuaia Terro Del Fuego, Argentina to raise public awareness about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and raise money for The Soldiers Project, a nonprofit organization that provides free mental health services to Post 9/11 veterans.

Sherman's route winds 9,484 miles through North, Central and South America. He will be participating in awareness raising events while in Seattle from September 13 - 14th, in Sacramento from September 23rd - 26th, and Los Angeles from September 29th - 30th. In each city he will meet with Soldiers Project Regional Chapter Directors and local therapists, who provide the free counseling services pro bono. Some of them may even hop on their own bikes and accompany him for part of his journey.

After serving with the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team in Iraq, Sherman was diagnosed with PTSD and TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury). After nearly losing his life due to mismanaged medications distributed through the Veterans Administration, he swore off care and entered a career in law enforcement. However, his career was cut short by the effects of his untreated PTSD. While nearly suicidal, he overcame his depression with community support; only to see 6 men from his former unit take their own lives.

Wanting to make a difference, Sherman researched veteran service providers until he came across The Soldiers Project.

"The Soldiers Project provides free of charge counseling to post 9/11 service members, veterans, and their families. There isn't a higher calling that I can think of," writes Sherman on his Crowdrise page. "I wish that I had been aware of them before it cost me my career." Sherman embarked on his journey on September 6th, and was interviewed by local news.

According to the latest research from the Department of Veterans Affairs, more than 20 military veterans take their own lives every day in the US. Awareness of the issue is growing thanks to viral campaigns like the #22pushupchallenge, highlighting the need for improved access to mental health treatment.

"When a veteran suffers from PTSD or any other mental health consequence after separating from military service, it has a ripple effect," says Soldiers Project Interim Executive Director Andrea Schmitt. "Spouses, partners and even children and friends can be affected. That's why The Soldiers Project provides care not only to veterans but to their family members as well. This issue affects entire communities."

The Soldiers Project provides free, confidential and unlimited mental health services to Post 9/11 military veterans and their families. Chapters are located across the U.S., including Seattle, Sacramento, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Houston. For more information or to get services, call Toll-Free: (877) 576-5343 or visit www.thesoldiersproject.org

To support Expedition Recovery, visit https://www.crowdrise.com/expedition-recovery

Disabled World is an independent disability community established in 2004 to provide disability news and information to people with disabilities, seniors, their family and/or carers. See our homepage for informative news, reviews, sports, stories and how-tos. You can also connect with us on Twitter and Facebook or learn more about Disabled World on our about us page.

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 Cite This Page (APA): The Soldiers Project. (2016, September 9). From Alaska to Argentina - Veteran's Motorcycle Ride for PTSD Awareness. Disabled World. Retrieved October 29, 2022 from www.disabled-world.com/news/veterans/army.php



 Permalink: <a href="https://www.disabled-world.com/news/veterans/army.php">From Alaska to Argentina - Veteran's Motorcycle Ride for PTSD Awareness</a>
Bottom line: How did the Buckeyes grade vs. Penn State?

Grading Ryan Day and the rest of the Buckeyes after Ohio State's win over Penn State.
home World A record number of Danes are leaving the church amid atheist campaign

About 10,360 people have reportedly filed their applications to leave the Church of Denmark in the second quarter of 2016. A campaign by the Danish Atheist Society has been credited for the withdrawals.

The atheist group has been displaying large banners on buses asking questions such as "Why believe in a god?" and "Why should faith cost something?" The banners also direct people to visit the group's official website which provides instructions on how to leave the Church. Those who want to withdraw their membership must submit a written application to their respective parishes.

Anders Stjernholm, the chairman of the society, stated that he is happy with the results of the campaign.

"We have long seen in surveys that there aren't that many Danes who are devout Christians. So I view [the withdrawals] as an expression of the fact that people can't really see why we should have an institution like the Church of Denmark that has such incredible influence and that takes one's money," Stjernholm said to Politiken, a local Danish publication.

Anders Gadegaard, the dean of Church of Our Lady in Copenhagen, acknowledged that the atheist campaign might have led to the large number of withdrawals. However, Gadegaard doubts whether the effects of the campaign will last.

In an interview with Politiken, Gadegaard said, "I think the number is a reflection of a very special situation created by the atheists' campaign. We're not talking about a whole new trend that will continue."

He noted further that the number of baptisms are rising despite the withdrawals.

The Norwegian Church also reported a record number of withdrawals in August. About 25,000 have left the Lutheran Church in Norway in less than a month when it introduced a website that makes it easier for members to withdraw their membership. Only 1,177 people used the website to register as members.
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SPOKANE (AP)  A California man is blaming his arrogant enthusiasm for promising pie-in-the-sky profits to investors, part of a Spokane wire fraud scheme that will land him in federal prison for five years.

Erick Hansen was sentenced in federal court on Wednesday.





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The spiritual retreat in the Sonoran Desert is a place to hike, meditate, pray or just take time out from life.



By MARK MITTELSTADT

Associated Press

Mark Mittelstadt via AP [enlarge] Two visitors walk a circular labyrinth at Sanctuary Cove in Marana, Ariz. A sign at the entrance reads: Absorb the beauty that surrounds you. Take time to clear your mind. Become aware of your breath.

MARANA, Ariz.  The distinct, bell-shaped mountain rising above the Sonoran Desert northwest of Tucson holds a special power, say those who've spent time here  a magnetism that draws you in, sets you apart, even if only momentarily, from a difficult world, and perhaps even heals.





. . .
North Korea conducted its fifth nuclear test today, setting off a blast that was more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, and said it had mastered the ability to mount a warhead on a ballistic missile. Its most powerful explosion to date follows a test in January that prompted the UN Security Council to impose tightened sanctions that increased North Korea's isolation but failed to prevent it from accelerating weapons development. South Korean President Park Geun-hye, in Laos after a summit of Asian leaders ended there on Thursday, said North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was showing "maniacal recklessness" in completely ignoring the world's call to abandon his pursuit of nuclear weapons. US President Barack Obama, aboard Air Force One on his way home from Laos, said the test would be met with "serious consequences" and held talks with Park and with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the White House said. China, North Korea's only major diplomatic ally, said it was resolutely opposed to the test and urged Pyongyang to stop taking any actions that would worsen the situation. North Korea, which labels the South and the United States as its main enemies, said its "scientists and technicians carried out a nuclear explosion test for the judgment of the power of a nuclear warhead," according to a report from its official KCNA news agency. North Korea said the test proved it is capable of mounting a nuclear warhead on a medium-range ballistic missile, which it last tested on Monday when Obama and other world leaders were gathered in China for a G20 summit. Its claims of being able to miniaturise a nuclear warhead have never been independently verified. North Korea has been testing missiles at an unprecedented rate this year, and the capability to mount a nuclear warhead on a missile is especially worrisome for its neighbours South Korea and Japan. "The standardisation of the nuclear warhead will enable the DPRK to produce at will and as many as it wants a variety of smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear warheads of higher strike power," KCNA said, referring to the country's formal name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Japan defence minister Tomomi Inada said the Pyongyang regime's advances in mobile ballistic missile technology posed a grave threat to Japan. Explosion greets anniversary

North Korea's nuclear test coincided with the anniversary of its 1948 foundation as a republic. Its continued testing despite sanctions presents a severe challenge to Obama in the final months of his presidency and could become a factor in the US presidential election in November. "Sanctions have already been imposed on almost everything possible, so the policy is at an impasse," Tadashi Kimiya, a University of Tokyo professor specialising in Korean issues, told Reuters. "In reality, the means by which the United States, South Korea and Japan can put pressure on North Korea have reached their limits," he said. Japan's Abe said such a nuclear test could not be tolerated. Japan's foreign minister lodged a protest and Tokyo also sent two military jets to begin measuring for radiation. China's environment ministry began emergency radiation monitoring along its borders with North Korea in northeast China, state television reported. Jeffrey Lewis of the California-based Middlebury Institute of International Studies said the highest estimates of seismic magnitude suggested this was the most powerful nuclear test conducted by North Korea so far. He said the seismic magnitude and surface level indicated a blast with a 20- to 30-kilotonne yield. Such a yield would make this test larger than the nuclear bomb dropped by the United States on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in World War II and potentially bigger than that dropped on Nagasaki soon after. "That's the largest DPRK test to date, 20-30kt, at least. Not a happy day," Lewis told Reuters. "The important thing is that five tests in, they now have a lot of nuclear test experience. They aren't a backwards state anymore," he said.








Orthodonic services for patients in Donegal have been described as "totally shambolic" by Sinn Fein Finance Spokesperson, Deputy Pearse Doherty.

Deputy Doherty's comments come after recent figures from the HSE reveal that there are currently 39 people in the county waiting for more than four years to receive necessary dental treatment.

The figures, which were provided to Deputy Doherty through a Parliamentary Question, reveal that there are currently 428 patients in the county on waiting lists for orthodontic treatment in both the Grade 4 and Grade 5 wait categories.

Deputy Doherty said:

Orthodontic services for patients here in Donegal who are experiencing some of the most severe orthodontic problems are totally shambolic.

According to data on waiting times from the HSE, there are currently 428 patients here on waiting lists for treatment and each of these are classified as being either in Grade 4 or Grade 5, depending on the severity of their condition.The system is made up of 5 grades which start from Grade 1 for almost perfect teeth, through to Grade 5 for severe orthodontic problems which require treatment on health grounds.

Of the 232 patients in the Grade 5 wait band, 116 have been waiting for more than thirteen months to receive an appointment.

In Grade 4, the figures are even worse as of the 196 patients in this category, 78 have been waiting for more than one year; 35 have been waiting between 2  3 years; while 39 patients have been waiting for more than 4 years for orthodontic treatment.

And this is not just isolated to Donegal. The pressures on orthodontic services and waiting lists across this State are so great that, since April 2016, the HSE has had to procure additional orthodontic services from a number of private service providers.

At the end of July, 590 patients have had to be outsourced to provide care providers, while recently released figures on the EU Cross-border healthcare directive reveal that orthodontics has been the second most common service and treatment availed of by Irish citizens under the scheme.

This crisis in orthodontics is not surprising however when we look at the drastic cuts made during the economic downturn to state funded dental services, including the Dental Treatment Benefit Scheme (DTBS), the Dental Treatment Service Scheme (DTSS) and the Public Dental Service.

These cuts across the dental schemes have inflicted unnecessary pain and suffering to patients and their families in an area where quite often early intervention is crucial in order to avoid complicated and expensive emergency treatments further down the line.

It is important that the Minister now looks to ensure that there are sufficient personnel in our dental and orthodontic services, and that the orthodontic departments in our public hospitals are adequately resourced to meet both current demand and the needs of patients.
With the death of Fr. Paschal (Seamus) Tiernan O.P., Ballyshannon has lost another of its distinguished churchmen. Fr. Paschal died in Tallaght hospital on Sunday, 21 August and was buried in the Community Cemetery in St. Marys Dominican Priory, Tallaght, in Dublin. He was aged 87.

Although born in Glenties in 1929, Seamus spent most of his formative years in Ballyshannon. His parents, Edward (Ted) and Catherine moved to Castle Street in the town in 1934 and in 1966 re-located to Upper Main Street.

Seamus received his secondary education in St Eunans College, Letterkenny, where one of his classmates was his fellow townie, the late John Ward, the last owner/editor of the Ballyshannon-based Vindicator newspaper.

On completion of his secondary education in 1947, Seamus entered the Dominican Novitiate in Cork and was ordained to the priesthood in Tallaght on 11 July, 1954 by the Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid. He spent the next two years in Rome undertaking further study. Then, in 1956, he was assigned to Trinidad where he ministered for the next 55 years until ill-health forced him to return to Ireland, to St. Marys Priory in Tallaght.

While in Trinidad he was involved in numerous and varied types of work to which he gave his unbounded energy and unfailing enthusiasm. In addition to doing parish work, he was National Director of the Apostle for the Laity and Director of Catholic Radio and TV for many years. He managed a Catholic Publishing House for 22 years and was full-time Editor/Manager of the weekly Catholic Diocesan newspaper for five years. He was also chaplain to the General Hospital in Port of Spain and spent 15 years as chaplain to two maximum security prisons. He spent six years as Secretary of the Antilles Episcopal Conference, travelling widely in the Caribbean and was a frequent visitor to Rome. He was also in great demand as a preacher at retreats and spent 25 years as such. The last nine years of his work in Trinidad was in the service of the Holy See as an Attache in the Apostolic Nunciature there.

He was awarded the Ecclesia et Pontifice medal by Pope John Paul 11 for his service to the Church and to the Holy Father.

While in Tallaght, despite his health continuing to fail and with an increasing number of admissions to hospital, Seamus continued with his writings. Weekly, he circulated widely the Gospel readings for the following Sunday with a commentary written by him.

He is survived by his sisters, Kathleen (London), Anne (Dublin), brothers, Sean (Wexford), Patrick (Dublin) and by many nieces, nephews, other relatives and a wide circle of friends. His brothers Michael, Gerry and Ted predeceased him.

He is survived by his sisters Kathleen (London), Anne (Dublin), brothers Sean (Wexford), Patrick (Dublin) and by many nieces, nephews, other relatives and a wide circle of friends. His brothers Michael, Gerry and Ted predeceased him.
A Donegal reunion is on the cards for former regulars of famous west London pub, the Hop Poles.

The charity event aims to bring back both fond and hazy memories of the Hammersmith bar, and will take place on Saturday 15th October at the Tara Hotel, Killybegs.

The Hop Poles was taken over by Dungloe couple Jackie and Mary Greene in July 1968 and became a focal point for Irish men and women in London over the next 20 years.

Jackie was heavily involved with Tir Chonaill Gaels GFC at the time, becoming chairman in 1970, and Donegal Gaels were to hold many meetings at the venue, from club AGMs to much less formal occasions.

Alongside the Gaels, all classes of tradesmen and women, especially tunnellers, carpenters, groundworkers and gas workers, converged on the Hop Poles around this time.

This continued after Jackies sister Elle and her Galway husband Gerry Corley took over the running of the pub in 1975, and up until the pub changed hands in 1985.

Anyone who was about London around that time are invited to come to the Tara Hotel and share memories of drinking with friends on the Hammersmith Broadway.

There will be a buffet on the night and music by Eunan McIntyre, commencing at 7.30pm.

There will be a cover charge of 20 on the night, and also a raffle, with all proceeds going to the Donegal Cancer Bus and Solace Cancer Support Group, Donegal Town.

Accommodation is available at various hotels and guest houses.

For further information please follow @hoppolesreunion on Facebook.

Please spread the word and let the Hop Poles regulars know!
Donegal people returning to the county from Dublin this evening will be among the 400,000 people hit hardest by the two day Dublin Bus industrial action.

Students, workers and day trippers from the county can add an hour to their journey if the experience enjoyed by one Donegal motorist who had to come across the city after 4.30pm on Thursday is anything to go by.

It was like being struck in the aftermath of an All Ireland final, Ive never seen so many cars heading for the N3, I was just glad I had just put a litre of oil in the car engine!, one told the Democrat.

Many Donegal families attending graduations at UCD for their sons or daughters on Thursday the journey out of the city was equally testing.

This Friday evening will probably be worse as more people join the traditional Friday exodus from the city.

Garadi advise extra care

Meanwhile, gardai in Dublin are again appealing to all road users to take extra care on their journeys.

In a statement they pointed out that bus lanes will continue to operate as normal to facilitate other bus service providers, public service vehicles, emergency service vehicles and increased cyclist numbers.

An Garda Siochana recognise the challenges facing the travelling public and are advising commuters to plan ahead and identify alternative forms of (public) transport.

Traffic is again expected to be extremely heavy on commuter routes, especially during morning and evening peaks.

**If you are from Donegal and travelling home, share your pictures and tell us how you are coping with the strike. Has it added to your journey time?
October is National Bullying Prevention month. We have all heard the phrase bullying, but what does it actually mean? Bullying is defined as unwanted aggressive behavior; observed or perceived power imbalance; repetition of behaviors or high likelihood of repetition.

Bullying is unfortunately a reality for far too many in our communities both young and old. Much like any other form of violence, bullying is not isolated to any particular age group, gender or demography. Just about everyone of us can look back in our lives and recall a time where either we were personally bullied or witnessed one of our friends or schoolmates being bullied. Its hard to believe that with all of the advancements and awareness, this type of behavior still exists, but it does and with the advent of social media, it had actually gotten much worse. This is because unlike in the past, the bully not only impacts your life on the playground or classroom; they now are able to follow you into your personal life due to the constant presence of social media.

There is good news in that we have learned a great deal about what creates these bullies and how to neutralize their ability to isolate and intimidate. The key is for those in authority to respond to reports of bullying immediately to show without question that bullying will not be acceptable. That message needs to follow to our homes with the messages we send our children not only by what we say but by our own actions in how we treat fellow adults. Bullying is without question a learned behavior. It is learned on the playground, in the classroom and follows through to the workplace and social interactions as adults. We need to send a strong message to our own children, a message of empathy and compassion not of ridicule and rumor.

Who are at risk of bullying the most? Typically those who are bullied have one or more of the following risks:

Are perceived as different from their peers, such as being overweight or underweight, wearing glasses or different clothing, being new to a school, or being unable to afford what kids consider cool

Are perceived as weak or unable to defend themselves

Are depressed, anxious, or have low self esteem

Are less popular than others and have few friends

Do not get along well with others, seen as annoying or provoking, or antagonize others for attention

However, even if a child has these risk factors, it doesnt mean that they will be bullied. The important lesson is that we as adults set the tone for how the next generation will interact with each other. Chances are if we show acceptance of others, our children will show acceptance of others. If we engage in demeaning others or spreading rumors, our children will follow suit. So often we as adults underestimate the influence, we have not only on our own children but even those who dont know us but witness our behavior.

While school or workplace policies are an important component, the only way to truly decrease bullying is by denying the bully their victim. We do this by raising strong, confident, resilient children, and speaking out and supporting those who find themselves on the receiving end of this type of behavior. We are all teachers in life lessons and we teach by our actions. Lets all be aware of what we teach.




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A disaster occurs when extreme natural events hit a vulnerable population. A country may be highly exposed to natural hazards, but that doesn't necessarily make it highly vulnerable to humanitarian disasters. The below interactive map shows how countries perform when they are judged on five parameters: Exposure, Vulnerability, Susceptibility, Lack of coping capacities and Lack of adapting capacities.



How to use map: Select a parameter and move mouse over particular country to know more



Data Source: World Risk Report 2016 published by the United Nations University (UNU) Institute for Environment and Human Security

(UNU-EHS) and Bundnis Entwicklung Hilft



Floods dominating cases of natural disasters since 1980



More than 480 people in India have died in flood-related incidents since the beginning of monsoon in June. Of the top 15 countries that are most at risk worldwide, eight are island nations. Their high disaster risk is due to their exposure to flooding, cyclones and sea level rise. Apart from lack of technologies for prognosis on tsunamis and floods, the living conditions of the people in the affected regions and options available to respond quickly are equally significant for survival in extreme natural events.



Correlation between Exposure, Vulnerability and Lack of coping capacities



The severity of natural disasters is not the only factor that decides vulnerability of a country, but the level of development is also important. A risk analysis of 171 countries around the world based on their vulnerabilities and coping capabilities reveals global hotspots for a high disaster risk and also the countries that have robust capabilities for both material flow and information exchange, ensuring last-mile access to people in need.



Mouse move over bubble to explore more

Data Source: World Risk Report 2016 published by the United Nations University (UNU) Institute for Environment and Human Security

(UNU-EHS) and Bundnis Entwicklung Hilft



Japan is the only developed country with a disaster risk of more than 10 per cent, due to its extreme exposure to natural disasters, which is the fourth highest in the world. Japan's high level of development and recent investments in risk reduction reduce its likelihood of being badly affected by its frequent disasters, moving its overall risk down to 17th in the world.



If you want to be safe from natural disasters, move to Qatar

Countries from Middle East and northern Europe dominate the list



Qatar has the lowest disaster risk of any country with no reported disasters since 1900. It enjoys this status owing to its location away from the disaster hotspots in Oceania, south-east Asia and Central America. Qatar is joined by highly developed countries that also have a low level of exposure. Apart from three countries in the Middle East like Saudi Arabia, UAE and Bahrain, the list of the ten safest countries includes three north European nations: Norway, Sweden and Iceland.





Data Source: World Risk Report 2016 published by the United Nations University (UNU) Institute for Environment and Human Security

(UNU-EHS) and Bundnis Entwicklung Hilft



Africa is most vulnerable, especially to droughts



Parts of eastern and southern Africa are gripped by one of the strongest El Nino events ever recorded, causing widespread drought and food shortages that have left more than 36 million people facing hunger.



Data Source: World Risk Report 2016 published by the United Nations University (UNU) Institute for Environment and Human Security

(UNU-EHS) and Bundnis Entwicklung Hilft



Questions that need to be answered



The risk of disasters remains high and the Nepal earthquake of 2015 or the floods in South Asia are a stark reminder of what can happen to a country that hasn't built enough capacity to tackle extreme weather events. It is time the countries asked these questions as a first step to preparedness: How vulnerable are they to natural hazards? To what extent can they cope with acute disasters?



 Data Courtesy: World Risk Report 2016 published by the United Nations University (UNU) Institute for Environment and Human

Security (UNU-EHS) and Bundnis Entwicklung Hilft



 Text and Analysis: Lalit Maurya and Subhojit Goswami


Peugeot has whipped the covers off its new 5008 seven-seat SUV ahead of its official debut at the upcoming 2016 Paris motor show.

The 5008's styling has been given a complete work over with the previous model's people-mover-like looked scrapped for a more traditional SUV style square profile and wider, more masculine stance while also growing in stature compared to the previous model.

While the French brand has been late to the SUV party it looks to have a strong 2017 with the arrival of the new 5008 slated for mid-2017 and the brand's more compact 3008 SUV set to hit local showrooms in the first quarter of next year.

The new seven-seater joins a growing list of family sized SUV targeting the suburban crowd with the launch of the popular new Mazda CX-9 locally earlier in 2016 and the unveiling of the Skoda Kodiaq, the Czech brand's first seven-seat SUV, last week.

The new SUV will feature the brand's impressive i-Cockpit digital display which replaces the previous analogue dials with a 12.3-inch high-res screen.

Its third row of seats will be removable allowing for larger boot space and the second row can fold to create extra room in the cargo area. It also has the option for a folding front passenger seat and auto hands-free tailgate.

Overseas models will feature an array of petrol and diesel engines with the option for a six- and five-speed manual or six-speed automatic transmission. It will also be available in five model variants; Access, Active, Allure, GT Line and GT.

Full prices and specification for the new Peugeot 5008 will be revealed closer to the car's launch date mid-2017.
Nissan will persevere with its all-electric Leaf despite selling only 42 examples so far in 2016.

The Japanese brand cut the under-performing Micra, Pulsar hatch and diesel-powered Patrol models earlier this year but believes it is worth continuing to invest in electric cars.

Despite being the most affordable electric car in Australia at $39,990 drive-away, Leaf sales have taken a major hit in 2016, dropping by over 58 per cent on 2015, according to the latest VFacts figures.

Nissan Australia boss Richard Emery admitted the Leaf has struggled for buyers but the company remains committed to it in the long-term.

"Electric cars have struggled in Australia and Leaf, I suppose, as the pioneer found it difficult to sustain the volumes that we would have all liked," Emery said.

"I think from our perspective we're going to stay in the Leaf business because I think there will be a point in time where it becomes a mainstream decision; it's not a mainstream decision at the moment, for reasons of costs, for reasons around concerns around range and a whole raft of things. I think there will be a tipping point, but I don't know when that will be."

Tesla, by contrast, recorded over 200 sales of its Model S in New South Wales alone in 2015 despite a starting price over $100,000. The brand has attracted plenty of interested for its Model 3, which will reportedly have a starting price in the region of $50,000.

But Emery isn't frustrated by the American brand's ability to take the lion's share of electric car attention and insists Nissan is well placed for the long-term.

"Not frustrating," he said. "There's no doubt we need to keep telling the Leaf story and the electric car story. Ultimately the economics are very different in terms of the R&D and the work Nissan is putting into electric cars and intelligent mobility going forward.

"Tesla still don't make any money. So from that perspective it is a bit unfair to compare the two vehicles. But in terms of impetus of people making electric cars a mainstream decision Tesla is going to help the cause, no doubt."

In fact, Emery believes the success of Tesla can have a positive impact on the Leaf. Especially with an updated model on the way in the near future.

"I think for people who have made the initial decision that they're going to look at an electric car, Leaf comes into their investigation quite quickly," Emery explained.

"If that means 'oh look, there's a Tesla, an electric car, I'll go and do some homework' then Leaf comes into the conversation.

"We haven't been spending a lot of marketing money on Leaf in the last couple of years because that car is going through a lifecycle change in the next two years. So from our perspective there will be a time and a place to reignite Leaf sometime in the next couple of years."

Emery also dismissed the suggestion that electric cars are becoming a premium fight, with new EVs coming from the likes of Mercedes-Benz, Audi and Porsche.

"I think if you ask our product guys they would say an electric mainstream product is what we're chasing, in terms of the economics," he said. "Rather than pushing a car upmarket in terms of pricing or specification of whatever else. I think they see a volume electric car is what Nissan's offering is going to be."
Porsche has wasted little time building upon its initial three model strong second-generation Panamera line-up.



Just two months after the unveiling of the 4S, 4S Diesel and Turbo, the German car maker has now unveiled the 4 E-Hybrid  the fourth and most technically advanced of the new 2017 Panamera models to date.



One of two petrol-electric hybrid models planned to join the new Panamera line-up, the four-wheel drive Panamera 4 E-Hybrid is set to make its public premiere at the 2016 Paris motor show later this month prior to the start of Australian deliveries in 2017.



Priced at $242,600 (plus on-road costs), it succeeds the earlier 4 S E-Hybrid with a claimed 50km electric range, combined consumption of just 2.5L/100km on the European test cycle along with an official 0-100km time of 4.6sec and 278km/h top speed.



At the heart of the Panamera 4 E-Hybrid is a newly developed petrol-electric drivetrain also set to appear in next year's Cayenne E-Hybrid. It uses Porsche's recently unveiled twin-turbocharged 2.9-litre V6 petrol engine tuned to 243kW and 450Nm of torque in combination with an electric motor mounted in the front of the gearbox capable of delivering up to 100kW and 400Nm of torque.



Together, the combustion engine and electric motor provide a combined system output of 340kW and sturdy 700Nm. This provides the Panamera 4 E-Hybrid with 34kW and 110Nm more than the first-generation Panamera S E-Hybrid it replaces in the Porsche line-up.



It is also 16kW and 150Nm up on the second-generation Panamera 4S, which is powered by a more heavily tuned version of Porsche's twin-turbocharged 2.9-litre V6 engine, albeit without the assistance of an electric motor.



Significantly, Porsche has altered the programming of the electric motor to provide greater emphasis on performance. It now kicks in the moment the throttle is depressed. Previously, the throttle needed to be 80 per cent engaged before the reserves of the electric motor were combined with those of the combustion engine in an earlier strategy aimed at optimizing economy.



According to Porsche, the new programming is based on that originally developed for the 918 Spyder. It allows the driver to call up additional power from the electric motor at all times.



The result is a 0.9sec reduction in the 0-100km/h time along with a 8km/h increase in top speed over the superseded Panamera S E-Hybrid at 4.6sec and 278km/h respectively. The official fuel economy figure of 2.5L/100km on the European test cycle also makes it more economical than its predecessor, which was rated at 3.1L/100km.



As on other second-generation Panamera models revealed to date, drive is channelled through a new eight-speed dual clutch gearbox and multi-plate clutch four-wheel drive system. The earlier Panamera S E-Hybrid, on the other hand, used an eight-speed torque converter-equipped automatic gearbox.



Altogether, there are six different driving modes. They include the Sport and Sport Plus modes of other new Panamera models equipped with the Sport Chrono package, along with the E-Hybrid specific modes of E-power, Hybrid Auto, E-Hold and E-Charge.



As with its predecessor, Porsche's latest hybrid model is programmed to start in E-power mode. With a fully charged battery, it is claimed to provide a pure electric range of up to 50km at speeds limited to 140km/h.



Power for the Panamera E-Hybrid's electric motor is provided by a liquid cooled lithium ion battery. Despite boasting a 4.7kWh increase in energy storage at 14.1kWh, it is claimed to weigh no less than unit used by the older Panamera S E-Hybrid.



Porsche says the battery can be charged in 5.8 hours using a standard 3.6kW charger, while an optional 7.2kW charger is claimed to reduce the charging time to 3.6 hours. Charging can be started via the Porsche Communication Management infotainment system or remotely via the Porsche Car Connect app. An auxiliary air conditioner also now allows the cabin to be cooled during charging.



A so-called power meter allows the driver to keep tabs of the operation of the hybrid driveline via a standard 12.3 inch touch screen display. Similar to that found on the 918 Spyder, it provides detailed data on energy storage, including the amount of electrical energy being used in real time as well as that recovered through recuperation. There is also a boost assistant that displays the energy available for boosting performance via the electric motor as well as a hybrid assistant that provides information on how to regulate the electric drive for maximum economy.



The Panamera 4 E-Hybrid rides on a standard air suspension. The newly developed underpinnings use a three chamber design in combination with electronic damper control and dynamic chassis control that supports torque vectoring and active roll stabilisation.

Read all the latest Porsche news and reviews here


New blood test developed to tackle major livestock disease in Africa

Published On Fri 9 Sep 2016 by Roddy Isles

The University of Dundee and the Global Alliance for Livestock Veterinary Medicines (GALVmed) have partnered to develop a simple and effective device that tests for a cattle disease that is endemic in 40 African countries and accounts for up to a 50 percent loss in milk and meat production in the continent.

The device, less than 3 inches long and similar in format to a pregnancy test, can identify within 30 minutes whether or not an animal is infected with the parasite Trypanosoma vivax from a single drop of blood. The simple device does not require electricity or any additional equipment, factors that are essential for deployment in resource-limited settings.

The cattle disease nagana, also called African animal trypanosomosis, is caused mainly by two parasite species, Trypanosoma vivax and Trypanosoma congolense, and affects huge swathes of sub-Saharan Africa. The T. vivax form of nagana has also spread to South America. With around 60 million cattle at risk from the disease, which causes muscle wasting and death, the socio-economic impacts of nagana are profound. It has an impact on the lives of millions of smallholder farmers and the economy.

Nagana is difficult to diagnose because early symptoms can be easily confused with a myriad of other endemic diseases, said Professor Mike Ferguson, Regius Professor of Life Sciences at the University of Dundee, who led the research team.

There is an urgent need for new, inexpensive and simple, diagnostics that can be used by vets and farmers to test animals prior to deploying expensive medicines.

With this in mind GALVmed asked the University of Dundee to help develop a new diagnostic for nagana.

GALVmed is an NGO which makes livestock vaccines, medicines and diagnostics accessible and affordable to the millions of smallholder farmers in developing world, headquartered in Edinburgh.

Taking a hi-tech approach, the research team identified the components of Trypanosoma vivax that cattle make antibodies to.

One of these components was developed into a prototype diagnostic device in collaboration with Dr Steven Wall (Product Support Manager) at BBI Solutions OEM Limited, who specialise in the development and manufacturing of lateral flow assays in the Dundee MediPark.

The prototype diagnostic device was evaluated with over a hundred serum samples from uninfected and T. vivax-infected cattle. The promising results, just published in the journal PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, have inspired GALVmed to further investigate this innovative diagnostic test for use in Africa.

Dr Jeremy Salt, Senior Director of Research and Development at GALVmed, said, We are delighted with the progress on an effective and simple diagnostic test for T. vivax infection through our partnership with The University of Dundee and BBI Solutions OEM Limited.

Such a test could allow millions of smallholder farmers an efficient way to test their cattle for this debilitating disease and give peace of mind that any subsequent treatment for T. vivax infection will be done with the certainty that the patient is infected, which saves the farmer money. This will give more control to the smallholder farmers whose quality of life has been affected by this disease that covers over 10 million square kilometres of Africa.

To ensure that the final test is widely used throughout the regions where it's endemic, GALVmed will be working with scientists, manufacturers and distributors in the 40 countries where AAT is rife to create a sustainable supply chain for the final product.

Professor Ferguson added, I am very proud of the talented scientists, Jennifer Fleming, Lalitha Sastry, Lauren Sullivan and Steven Wall, who did this work, and of the synergistic relationship between the University of Dundee and BBI Solutions OEM Limited. Hopefully, with further development by GALVmed, the device will prove sufficiently useful to be adopted for the detection of nagana caused by T. vivax in the developing world.

The paper in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases can be viewed here:

http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0004977

Notes to Editors

The University of Dundee is the top ranked University in the United Kingdom for biological sciences, according to the 2014 Research Excellence Framework, the main test of research quality across all of the UKs universities. Medical research at Dundee was ranked best in the UK for impact.

Dundee is the Scottish University of the Year 2016 (The Times & Sunday Times) and is internationally recognised for the quality of its teaching and research.

The University is the central hub for a multi-million pound biotechnology sector in the east of Scotland, which now accounts for 16% of the local economy. www.dundee.ac.uk

GALVmed, through its partners, makes livestock vaccines, medicines and diagnostics accessible and available to the millions of smallholder livestock and poultry keepers in developing countries for whom livestock is a lifeline.

The international NGO harnesses the best available expertise and capabilities to develop vaccines, medicines and diagnostics for neglected livestock diseases impacting smallholders in Africa and South Asia. For more information, please visit www.galvmed.org.

BBI Solutions is a leading manufacturer of raw materials and finished test platforms for the in-vitro diagnostics market. BBI is a global business with manufacturing sites spanning three countries.

Our range of raw materials includes human antigens, antibodies, serum and plasma products and clinical chemistry enzymes. We manufacture world renowned labels for lateral flow, ELISA assay and biosensors, including our gold nanoparticles and glucose oxidase.

BBI Solutions offer contract development and manufacturing services with a core focus on gold conjugation and lateral flow test manufacture.

BBI Solutions is part of the BBI Group.

For media enquiries contact:

Roddy Isles

Head of Corporate Communications

University of Dundee

Nethergate, Dundee, DD1 4HN

Tel: +44 (0)1382 384910

Mobile: 07800 581902

Email: r.isles@dundee.ac.uk
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Throughout the month of August, various units within the 91st Security Forces Group completed combat capability assurance training at the Camp Grafton Training Center in Devils Lake, North Dakota.

This training event was held to implement CCAT strategies to ensure a force capable of tactically deterring, denying and retaining government control of assigned nuclear capable resources in the face of all threats.

After September 12th, we will have trained over 700 cops, said Staff Sgt. Matthew Cinciripini, 91st Security Support Squadron security forces instructor.

The annual training event prepares Airmen for real life scenarios and improve combat capabilities. Airmen completed different training objectives to comply with annual home station training.

The first day includes Humvee roll-over training, a leadership reaction course and a firearms training simulator, Cinciripini said.

The Humvee egress assistance training, or HEAT, teaches concepts and procedures and increases survivability percentages for members involved in a roll-over accident, according to the 91st SFG operation order 16-003.

After completing the leadership reaction course to learn team-building and increase leadership skills, the Airmen completed a virtual M4 live fire proficiency through the use of the U.S. Armys Engagement Skills Trainer 2000, which is a fire arms training simulator.

The simulator allows us to focus on the fundamentals of firing without worrying about other factors like wind and distance, said Senior Airman Nicholas Maxwell, 791st Missile Security Forces Squadron convoy response force member. We are able to concentrate on breathing, trigger squeeze, sight alignment and shooting position in a more relaxed environment.

During day two of the training event, Airmen completed a course to practice individual movement techniques and squad unit techniques by doing tactical maneuvers from one position to the next.

This course helped us improve our distance determination between objectives, Maxwell said.

After the convoy course, they further developed their Humvee driver skills by completing an off-road driving course and reaction drills.

We endure different weather conditions and driving conditions here at Minot, so anytime we can take an opportunity to get Airmen some advanced driving training, we do, Cinciripini said.

The final day of training is full distance M4 firing on a U.S. Army range. With set courses of fire, Airmen are able to utilize their weapons from 50 to 300 meters.

The live-fire training was the best part, Maxwell said. At the [Combat Arms Training and Maintenance] range here we can only shoot at 25 meter targets, so being able to shoot on a full range of 300 meters was very beneficial.
Joint FAO/EBRD Instagram contest shows the variety of national and regional foods

And the winner of the FAO/EBRD run #ATasteofYourWorld photo competition is@abwazulaiqbal Nuzulah Iqbal with her photo of Sego Lembut Iwak Asin or Soft Rice Salt Fish, a national Indonesian dish made of corn and salted Sambal fish. The picture was shortlisted with nine other great pictures by the communications teams at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN.

The final decision was put to public voting to all our followers and @abwazulaiqbal received an impressive 940 likes from Instagram users, beating the other two finalists - Basket of tomatoes from Italy, by Sarah May Grunwals (@sarah_may_g) with 482 likes and Tumpeng from Indonesia by Mashita Fajri M (@mashitaf_) with 403 likes.

Congratulations to Nuzulah Iqbal who wins the very special prize of a smartphone. The EBRD will showcase all 10 shortlisted photos in a slideshow during its 2017 Annual Meeting in Cyprus.

Nuzulah Iqbal explained why Sego Lembut Iwak Asin dish was so special to Indonesia:  This food is traditional food from my hometown. Traditional culture is always special, and food is a part of it. We have to take care of it and preserve it, said Nuzulah.

#ATasteofYourWorld received more than 500 photos of heritage food products, unique dishes and dining traditions from Albania, Armenia, Belarus, France, Georgia, Indonesia, Spain, Uzbekistan and many others.

Visit our @ebrd_official Instagram feed for the full list of finalists and their appetising pictures.
There are three things that should never be privatized and profitized. You dont have to be an expert in public policy to know that when profits are on the line, the needs of those being served will be trumped by the desire to increase profits. The first of these things is healthcare. Weve seen the tragic outcome of that in our country with millions of people who live without quality healthcare for the simple reason that they are too poor to afford it. This is despite the passage of the Affordable Care Act which was a huge step toward resolving the problem but doesnt remove the profit-motive from healthcare in our country.

The second thing that should never be privatized/profitized is education. Michigan is the poster child for what happens when private, for-profit charter schools are allowed to operate with little oversight. Public schools are harmed and the outcomes for children are, more often than not, either no better or actually worse.

The third thing that should never be privatized and profitized is prison services. Prisoners are a group of citizens with almost no political voice and very few advocates. Even the most hardcore progressives rarely include prisoner rights in the list of issues they care about or work to improve. When prison services are given over to for-profit corporations, remarkably few people raise their voices when things go awry. Here in Michigan, Republicans have privatized prison food services and awarded the contracts to for-profit corporations. The result was predictable and predicted. The years-long scandal of Aramark, the first such company to be awarded a state prison food service contract, provides ample evidence of this.

After political pressure and public outcry drove Gov. Snyder and his administration fire Aramark, they didnt chose to abandon what was clearly a terrible and failed policy. Instead they doubled down by replacing them with Trinity Services Group, Inc., yet another for-profit corporation. Their contention was that it wasnt the policy or concept of privatizing prison services that was at fault, it was Aramark. Then the reports began to come in that this was, in fact, not the case. Trinity had the same sorts of problems as Aramark.

This week, we have even more evidence of this. TWO pieces of evidence in just two days, in fact.

First we learned that a Trinity employee was busted bringing drugs into a Jackson prison:

A food service worker at Cotton Correctional Facility near Jackson was fired and turned over to the Michigan State Police on Thursday after a search as he reported to work that day turned up suspected drugs, a Corrections Department spokesman confirmed Tuesday. [] The discovery of suspected drugs on a Trinity Food Services worker is the latest in a series of such incidents since the state privatized its prison food service in December 2013.

Two days later, a Trinity employee was caught sharing photos and emails and then making out with a prisoner in another Jackson-area prison:

A food worker has been fired and banned from state prison properties after she was caught making out with an inmate inside a kitchen cooler on Tuesday, a Corrections Department spokesman confirmed Thursday. After a corrections officer discovered the pair, prison officials determined the Trinity Services Group worker had also sent photographs to the inmate and had communicated with him using the JPay prison e-mail system, in violation of department rules, spokesman Chris Gautz said. An officer discovered the two in the cooler kissing, Gautz told the Free Press. The photos and JPay discussions were discovered after that.

Snyder administration officials tried to put a happy smiley face on the whole affair:

Officials say such incidents of over-familiarity with kitchen workers and inmates  which are seen as major security risks  have declined since August 2015, when Florida-based Trinity replaced Aramark Correctional Services, which is based in Philadelphia, as the states prison food contractor. But they havent stopped.

Better isnt enough. Trinity is having the same sorts of issues that Aramark did and the fact that there are fewer does nothing to refute the fact that privatizing and profitizing prison services leads to shoddy hiring practices that allows the wrong people to be working in our prisons and endangering the lives of other prisoners and prison staff.

The experiment has been conducted. We now have two sets of data by which to judge the results and it is now clear that the preponderance of evidence shows privatizing and profitizing prison services is an abject failure. Gov. Rick Data Data Data Snyder along with our Republican-dominated legislature need to face that fact and end the experiment once and for all.
A new report out by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) shows how Big Energy corporations paid huge sums of money in the form of political donations for up-close-and-personal access to Americas Republican Attorneys General. These AGs, whose job is to advocate for and protect the citizens of their state from crime and corruption, are prime targets of lobbyists from a wide array of special corporate interests. And targeted they are. A New York Times article in 2014 detailed just how cozy that relationship has become:

Attorneys general are now the object of aggressive pursuit by lobbyists and lawyers who use campaign contributions, personal appeals at lavish corporate-sponsored conferences and other means to push them to drop investigations, change policies, negotiate favorable settlements or pressure federal regulators, an investigation by The New York Times has found. A robust industry of lobbyists and lawyers has blossomed as attorneys general have joined to conduct multistate investigations and pushed into areas as diverse as securities fraud and Internet crimes. But unlike the lobbying rules covering other elected officials, there are few revolving-door restrictions or disclosure requirements governing state attorneys general, who serve as the peoples lawyers by protecting consumers and individual citizens.

The article details, for example, how Florida AG Pam Bondi was the recipient of corporate largesse. In a number of cases, potential lawsuits against the lobbyists clients were dropped.

The issue of AGs being essentially bought off by corporate interests in return for not pursuing legal action against them has come to the forefront in recent weeks when it was revealed that Bondi dropped legal action against Donald Trump and his Trump University in 2013 shortly after receiving an illegal $25,000 donation from the billionaire tycoon. He subsequently threw a lavish $3,000-per-person fundraiser for Bondi, as well.

At the time this was all going down, Bondi was the Chair of the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA). In 2014, Trump also made a substantial donation to that group as well.

The following year, our own AG Bill Schuette took the helm of RAGA, replacing Bondi as its Chair. This has led to questions regarding how much money Schuette has received from Trump. Progressive watchdog group Progress Michigan has a few questions for AG Schuette:

As chair of the Republican Attorneys General Association, Bill Schuette needs to come clean on the following questions: 1. Did Donald Trumps contribution to RAGA grant him preferential treatment from any of the 27 Attorneys General who are members of the group? 2. Did Bill Schuette play a role in soliciting the contribution from Trump? 3. Did Trumps money play a role in Bill Schuettes early and robust cheerleading for Trump? 4. Is Bill Schuette running a pay-to-play operation at RAGA? 5. Will RAGA release any and all communications between RAGA officials and Donald Trump related to his contribution? Bill Schuette has already admitted to using personal email to conduct state business but he has refused to come clean about his work at RAGA, [Progress Michigan Executive Director Lonnie] Scott continued. Michiganders and all Americans deserve answers to the questions raised by this contribution.

Schuette has also benefitted from corporate money funneled through RAGA calling into question his aggressive crusade to thwart the Obama administrations efforts to curb pollution through their Clean Power Plan which aimed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from electrical power generation by 32 percent within twenty-five years relative to 2005 levels:

RAGA, which operates a 527 political organization at the national level, also set up a independent political action committee this year in Michigan that indirectly contributed to Schuettes re-election. The RAGA Michigan PAC reported $142,000 in contributions through October 20, including a $5,000 donation from business magnate Donald Trump. The RAGA PAC gave $72,000 to Decider PAC of Ann Arbor on September 8. Decider PAC then gave $68,000 to the Schuette campaign on September 19.

The CMD report shows just how far Big Energy corporations are willing to go to get Republican AGs to support their efforts to defeat further regulation of their industries:

According to materials reviewed by CMD, since 2015 RAGA has received at least $100,000 from ExxonMobil, $350,000 from Koch Industries, $85,000 from Southern Company, $378,250 from the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), and $250,000 from Murray Energy. In total, fossil fuel interests, utilities and their trade groups have given more than $2.25 million to RAGA since 2015.

This immense amount of spending gave Big Energy lobbyists intimate access to the RAGA AGs:

Fossil fuel giants Murray Energy and Southern Company paid for meetings with Republican attorneys general to discuss their opposition to the Clean Power Plan less than two weeks before the same GOP officials petitioned federal courts to block the Obama administrations signature climate proposal, according to private emails from state attorneys general obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy. The meetings took place at an August 2015 summit hosted by the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA) in West Virginia, where attendees were offered the opportunity to meet with GOP attorneys general in exchange for financial donations to help reelect the Republican state prosecutors. Confidential documents also reveal that some of the GOP attorneys general again discussed the future of the fight to stop the Clean Power Plan at a meeting of the Republican Attorneys General Associations 501(c)(4) organization, the Rule of Law Defense Fund, this past April. The previously unknown meetings and financial donations  revealed in copies of conference materials, most stamped confidential, that were emailed to state attorneys general who attended the summit and obtained by CMD through public records requests  offer the first look at the behind-the-scenes coordination between GOP attorneys general and the fossil fuel industry to undermine the implementation of the Clean Power Plan.

State attorneys general are supposed to enforce the law and serve the public interest, but instead these Republican officials have hung a For Sale sale on their door, and the fossil fuel industry proved to be the highest bidder, said Nick Surgey, Research Director at the Center for Media and Democracy, a national watchdog group. Its no coincidence that GOP attorneys general have mounted an aggressive fight alongside the fossil fuel industry to block the Clean Power Plan  that appears to be exactly what the industry paid for. Together, these documents reveal a sustained pattern of collusion between the fossil fuel industry and the Republican attorneys general on climate change obstructionism.

Attorneys general are a captive audience at the conferences, Surgey told Bloomberg News. The corporations are paying a premium to RAGA for the benefit of being able to hold the AGs in a room and tell them what they want, tell them about their expectations, and at the same time  literally the same day  those AGs are asking the corporate representatives for money.

Given that the federal lawsuit was filed by Republican AGs from 15 states (including Michigan) less than two weeks after these substantial donations were made to RAGA, the pay-to-play, quid pro quo accusations are hard to refute.

And sitting in the middle of it all is Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette, the Chair of RAGA.
Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette, shown here sweeping up horse manure, has led an effort to suppress Democratic turnout in Michigan elections by fighting to uphold a ban on the option to vote a straight-ticket in our elections. The legislation, passed by our GOP-dominated state legislature, was a blatant attempt to harm Democrats chances given that one-half of all voters use the option and the vast majority of these are Democrats. Schuette was so determined to undermine Democrats that he took the appeal all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

This morning, the SCOTUS joined the 6th District Court in telling Schuette to go Cheney himself:

The straight-party voting option will still be available in Michigan in the Nov. 8 general election after the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday rejected a last-ditch appeal on the issue from Attorney General Bill Schuette. The court, which currently has eight members, rejected Schuettes request for a stay of a preliminary injunction issued against a recent Michigan law banning straight-party voting. Two justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, would have granted the application, the court said.

Schuette wrote a ludicrous op-ed in the Detroit News earlier this week, saying, Critics of Michigans law have urged me, acting on behalf of the state, to roll over and walk away from a defense of the law. But that would be a dereliction of duty. As the Michigan Manual states, The attorney general is the lawyer for the state of Michigan. In other words, defending state law is the job of the AG.

In that statement, Schuette left out two crucial points. First, if a law is unconstitutional as was ruled by the Sixth District Court, he is not only not compelled to defend it, hes compelled NOT to defend it. He did that anyway.

Second, I call his op-ed ludicrous because Michigan voters have voted AGAINST banning straight-ticket voting not once, but TWICE. The voters of Michigan have spoken and their so-called representatives ignored them and put their own partisan greed ahead of the wishes of Michigan citizens.

You have to wonder just how many times Bill Schuette will use our tax dollars to advance his own extremist worldview and craven partisan efforts to shore up his 2018 gubernatorial bid before he comes to the realization that he is harming himself along with the rest of the state.

My guess: Never.

UPDATE: Ive said it before but it bears repeating, this win is largely thanks to former Michigan Democratic Party Chair Mark Brewer. His legal skills ensured this victory on behalf of Michigan voters. Which makes this meme by Progress Michigan so absolutely spot-on:

UPDATE 2: Heres a hoot: Schuette says hell respect that [SCOTUS] decision. Like he had a choice? Was he going to take it to the International Supreme Court? Maybe the Galactic Supreme Court? Good lord, what a maroon.
The disruption of the IT and software industry by the rapid rise of cloud and Software as a Service continues to take a toll on the biggest players in the business. In their latest round of desperate moves to reposition themselves in the radically changing marketplace, the major companies of the past have been willing to relinquish many of their software assets to refocus their efforts on new market opportunities.

Unfortunately, the divestiture of these software businesses is a classic, shortsighted throwing the baby out with the bathwater tactic that is likely to have a detrimental long-term impact on their competitive position as strategic sources in the enterprise market.

HPEs Corrections

Hewlett Packard Enterprise is planning to spin off and merge its non-core software assets with Micro Focus in a deal estimated to be worth US$8.8 billion. The potential deal would include a variety of software components the old HP accumulated over the years through a series of acquisitions, most notably the ill-fated purchase of Autonomy Corporation in 2011 for $11 billion.

Although the arrangement with Micro Focus will enable HPE to retain a 50.1 percent equity stake in the joint business, it also frees the company to invest elsewhere, CEO Meg Whitman acknowledged. Its recent acquisition of Silicon Graphics Inc. is one example of its branching out.

HP spent approximately $20 billion on software company acquisitions and has watched its software revenues decline  including nearly 12 percent over the first six months of 2016 compared to the same period a year ago, Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi recently estimated.

Given HPs ongoing challenges selling its software solutions and establishing itself as a software leader, it makes sense that it would use its recent restructuring as an opportunity to rid itself of this unsuccessful business.

It made a similar move in the IT services sector in May, offloading its 100,000-employee service business, which included the old EDS outsourcing unit, to CSC Corp for $8.5 billion. That was another admission of HPs past M&A mistakes, as the sale price was well below the original EDS acquisition purchase value of $13.9 billion back in 2008.

Dells Refocusing

HPE isnt alone among the major players in shedding its software assets. Dell has been selling off various components of its accumulated software portfolio to finance its acquisition of EMC. In June, it sold its software business unit to the private equity firm Francisco Partners Management and a new private equity arm of hedge fund Elliott Management Corp.

A variety of PE firms also are expected to be the likely buyers of HPEs software assets.

Both companies are rationalizing their software divestitures as a means of refocusing their operations on their core competencies of systems and servers. Although both claim theyre retaining the specific software capabilities that relate to the emerging software-defined segment of the market, they are making these moves as software is eating the world, as Marc Andreessen proclaimed five years ago.

Dell and HPE, in essence, are throwing in the towel regarding their past software ambitions in hopes that they can convince their customers to continue to rely on the more narrowly focused software that supports the vendors systems and servers.

This is a treacherous strategy in a shrinking market that has seen almost every enterprise reduce its data center operations and shift its workloads to third-party cloud service providers, led by Amazon Web Services.

Dell and HPE also are giving up on the idea of following IBMs lead in offering a mix of hardware, software and services to satisfy the complex, multidimensional needs of their enterprise customers. Although IBM still faces its own struggles selling servers and systems, it has been successful selling software, and views its services as a critical component in its strategic success.

Swinging Pendulum

Dell and HPE arent alone in trying to reinvent themselves in a rapidly changing software marketplace. The PE firms have been accumulating a number of publicly traded independent software vendors seeking to go private so they can restructure their applications and operations to better compete in the SaaS marketplace.

However, those ISVs arent giving up on their software businesses. Instead, theyre seeking a refuge where they can realign their software resources and go-to-market capabilities.

Dell and HPE may not be forfeiting their software businesses entirely. In fact, both companies will continue to reposition themselves in the software market with a new round of ISV acquisitions as their customers and M&A advisors convince them that the pendulum has swung back in a direction that dictates a renewed software focus.

In the meantime, it is understandable that Dell and HPE would like to shed their underperforming business units and start fresh in the software arena. However, both companies are going to face even greater challenges demonstrating their market relevance as they appear to be heading in the opposite direction of their corporate customers immediate software needs.
Apple on Thursday issued a patch that addresses three recently discovered critical iOS zero-day vulnerabilities, and advised users to update their systems immediately.

State-sponsored actors exploited the flaws to target United Arab Emirates human rights defender Ahmed Mansoor, and a Mexican journalist who reported on government corruption.

Researchers at the University of Torontos Citizen Lab and security firmLookout discovered the vulnerabilities, which they dubbed Trident, after investigating suspicious text messages sent to Mansoor.

The messages included links to an exploit infrastructure connected with NSO Group, an Israel-based cyberwar company that sells the spyware product Pegasus exclusively to governments, according to Citizen Lab.

The NSO Group, which developed Pegasus, is owned by private investment firm Francisco Partners, Citizen Lab said. It reportedly has offered to sell the NSO Group, which it has valued at US$1 billion. The firm previously invested in Blue Coat Systems, which sold products to repressive regimes to aid their mass surveillance and Internet censorship efforts.

Apples response cements in my mind that it takes security seriously, said Bobby Kuzma, systems engineer at Core Security.

These are very complex exploits  and Apple has a patch out fixing them 10 days after it was notified, he told TechNewsWorld. Thats nothing short of miraculous.

Grade A Scary

The Trident vulnerabilities consist of the following:

CVE-2016-4657  an exploit targeting a previously undocumented corruption vulnerability in WebKit that allows execution of the initial shellcode;

CVE-2016-4655  a Kernel Address Space Layout Randomization bypass exploit to find the kernels base address; and

CVE-2016-4656  32- and 64-bit iOS kernel exploits targeting a memory corruption vulnerability that allows execution of code in the kernel. They are used to jailbreak an iPhone and allow software installation.

The jailbreak is the key here, Core Securitys Kuzma noted. Once youve broken out of the tightly compartmented application space in iOS, you can effectively and easily bypass all the security controls built into the device and the operating system. This is grade A scary stuff.

Pegasus on the Loose

The spyware Trident implanted appears to be NSOs Pegasus product, a highly advanced tool that makes use of zero-day flaws, obfuscation, encryption and kernel-level exploitation, Lookout noted.

Pegasus can use an iPhones camera and microphone to eavesdrop on activity. It can record the users calls over WhatsApp and Viber, logging messages sent in mobile chat apps, and track the users movements.

It includes a renamed copy of Cydia Substrate, a third-party app developer framework that facilitates recording of messages and phone calls from targeted apps, Citizen Lab said.

Pegasus clearly shows the dangers of mobile devices [that] can be transformed into ideal tracking devices, said Yair Amit, CTO of Skycure.

While Pegasus is a sophisticated tool thats likely to be used against specific victims, there are tools that allow attackers with minimal technical background to easily penetrate iOS and Android, he told TechNewsWorld.

News of the zero-day exploits led Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., who has a degree in computer science, to call for a congressional hearing on the issue of mobile security.
Officials in France and India have launched investigations of a massive data breach involving thousands of documents belonging to defense industry contractor DCNS, which was scheduled to deliver six Scorpene-class submarines to the Indian navy later this year.

Hackers stole more than 22,000 pages of documents that included detailed technical information on the vessels. They turned them over en masse to The Australian, which published some of the leaked information.

DCNS acknowledged it was aware of the press coverage of the leak about the Indian Scorpene submarine project, and said French authorities were investigating the case.

The investigation will determine the exact nature of the leaked documents, potential damages to DCNS customers, and responsibility for the leak, the company said.

Indian government officials took up the incident with the director general of armament of the French government. They asked for an investigation and for the findings to be shared with the Indian government.

The Indian government also is conducting an internal investigation to rule out any security compromise. However, the leak appears to have taken place outside of India, according to defense officials.

Possible Links

The evidence so far has led some to suspect a link to state-sponsored activity or even organized crime, noted Pierluigi Paganini, chief information security officer at Bit4id.

A government could be interested in leaking online such precious data only to interfere with commercial relationships between the DCNS and other governments, he told TechNewsWorld. It could be interested, for example, to benefit a company linked to it.

The Kalvari, the first submarine built in India, reflects a deal between DCNS and Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders to build six vessels in Mumbai.

DCNS also won the largest-ever contract awarded in Australian history, for an advanced fleet of vessels. Australia selected DCNS as the preferred international partner for the design of 12 future submarines for the Royal Australian Navy, the company announced this spring. The leakage of the India Scorpene data has created some unease over whether Australia should take delivery of those vessels.

The Australian government chose DCNS for its ability to meet all of its requirements  among them, superior sensors and stealth characteristics, as well as range and endurance similar to Collins class vessels.

NATOs main cyber-responsibility is to defend its own networks, noted Press Officer Daniele Riggio. Individual allies are responsible for protecting their own networks.

Sponsored Espionage?

The Scorpene cyberattacks follow a series of attacks launched late last year against several contractors who were in the running for the Australian submarine contract. Several reports linked China and possibly Russian hackers to those incidents, which targeted contractors in Germany and Japan, as well as Frances DCNS.

Torben Beckmann, spokesman for Thyssenkrupp Industrial Solutions, confirmed to TechNewsWorld that the company was one of three contractors in contention for the submarine contract, but he declined to comment on the reported data hack.
Snapchat and Instagram, look out. Apple has you in its sights. The company is working on a video-sharing app with features similar to those found in Snapchat and Instagram, Bloomberg reported last week.

The app, possibly slated for release in 2017, will allow users of Apple devices to record a video, apply filters and draw on it, then share it with others on a variety of social networks.

Ease of use and quickness are paramount in the softwares design. Users can perform most of its functions with one hand  shooting, editing and uploading videos in less than a minute, noted Bloomberg. One version of the app allows users to shoot square video footage, as Instagram does.

Although current plans reportedly call for a standalone app, Apple may decide to bundle the functions with a future version of its camera app.

Apple has hired Joe Weil, who codeveloped the KnowMe video-blogging app, to lead the team on the project, which is being forged in the same department that created Apples iMovie and Final Cut Pro video-editing apps, according to the Bloomberg report.

Revenue Hunting

If Apple is developing a Snapchat-like app, it could be a sign the company is concerned about future growth in iPhone sales.

In a time when iPhone revenues are growing at a more earthly rate, Apple is looking for incremental revenue elsewhere, said Andreas Scherer, managing partner at Salto Partners.

Because social media is hot right now, it may seem sensible to embed those capabilities in new or existing applications and services, but such thinking ignores the current market reality, he suggested.

Between SnapChat and Instagram, the young generation has made up its mind where to chat, exchange personal pictures or videos, and tell life stories as they occur, Scherer told TechNewsWorld.

For the same reason that Google+ had a tough time breaking into Facebooks turf, it will be very difficult for Apple to compete with the two incumbents, he maintained.

Overblown Reports

Its questionable whether Apple actually is gunning for Snapchat and Instagram.

I think the stories are mostly a little overblown in calling this a Snapchat competitor, said Jan Dawson, chief analyst at Jackdaw Research.

Apple only wants to give people more ways to edit videos and share them over other social networks  the Bloomberg report suggests no more than that, he maintained.

Apple doesnt seem to be trying to compete with Facebook or Snapchat directly here, Dawson told TechNewsWorld.

Apple just wants to capture more of the time users spend on Apple devices in its own apps rather than third-party apps, and this is one way to do this, he explained. Its the same strategy thats seen Apple launch News and Music in recent years too.

Past Stumbles

If Apple were to take on Snapchat and Instagram head to head, CEO Tim Cook might find himself on the losing side.

Tim Cook doesnt have a history of doing social media right, and it is incredibly difficult to do right, so I think the odds are against Apple with this effort, said Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group.

Like Microsoft found with search, once people are happy with another platform it is really hard to get them to switch, even if you are the OS owner, he told TechNewsWorld.

Apple painfully discovered the pitfalls of social media when it tried to launch a music-focused social network called Ping in 2010  the company pulled the plug on it in 2012.

Apples cautious approach with this app likely can be attributed to the difficulty theyve had in the past with these kinds of platforms, said John Carroll, a mass communications professor at Boston University.

Theyre taking extra care in developing this, he told TechNewsWorld, to try and ensure that they have the most effective application possible.
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Two days after Monsanto rejected Bayer AGs takeover attempt because $62 billion wasnt enough money, the German drug and crop chemical giant says its confident it can still strike a deal.

The historic, all-cash deal would have formed the largest seed and pesticide company in the world, but Monsantos board unanimously spurned Bayers unsolicited bid for being incomplete and financially inadequate.

We believe in the substantial benefits an integrated strategy could provide to growers and broader society, and we have long respected Bayers business, Hugh Grant, Monsanto chairman and CEO, said in a statement. However, the current proposal significantly undervalues our company and also does not adequately address or provide reassurance for some of the potential financing and regulatory execution risks related to the acquisition.

Despite the snub, Bayer is looking forward to further talks with Monsanto, Bloomberg reported.

Bayer says it's confident it can meet Monsanto's demands after $62 billion bid is rejected https://t.co/LqcDr60xgz pic.twitter.com/HjaF8zFtju  Bloomberg (@business) May 25, 2016

We are pleased that Monsantos board shares our belief in the substantial benefits an integrated strategy could provide to growers and broader society, Bayer CEO Werner Baumann said in a statement. We are confident that we can address any potential financing or regulatory matters related to the transaction. Bayer remains committed to working together to complete this mutually compelling transaction.

The St. Louis-based company also added that it is open to continued and constructive conversations with the aspirin maker on whether a transaction in the best interest of Monsanto shareowners can be achieved.

This means that the already eye-popping $62 billion sum could blossom even higher since both parties are open to further negotiations. As Bloomberg noted, the conciliatory tone from both sides sets the stage for an improved offer from Bayer, and further pointed out:

While Monsanto has consistently traded at less than the $122-a-share offer price since the companies started discussing a deal, the stock rallied Tuesday, gaining 2.7 percent to $122.21 at 9:38 a.m. in New York.

Bayers comments were very positive, Brett Wong, an analyst at Piper Jaffray Cos. in Minneapolis, said in an interview. Bayer can afford to pay as much as $140 a share and still add to double-digit growth in earnings in the mid-term, Jeffrey Holford, an analyst at Jefferies LLC, said in a note.

But Bayer reiterated in its press release that its $122 per share all-cash proposal provides full and certain value for Monsanto shareholders.

Monsanto, the worlds largest producer of genetically modified (GMO) crops and maker of the herbicide Roundup, has faced mounting controversy in recent years, from global disputes to numerous lawsuits over its cancer-linked flagship product. Sales have been slumping and thousands of jobs have been cut.

MarketWatch reported that the Monsantos poor image did factor into consideration of the deal, Baumann acknowledged in a media call on Monday.

Monsanto rejects Bayers $62 billion takeover bid as "too low." Recently, the seed giant faced global protests:https://t.co/ZmORQ9qP0e  AJ+ (@ajplus) May 25, 2016

A Sum Of Us petition signed by more than 21,000 people has already been launched to stop the potential merger from hell since the news surfaced last week. The NGOs petition states:

Almost everything you eat could be controlled by a single mega-corporation, if Bayer gets its way and buys Monsanto.

Once the deal goes ahead it could spell disaster for our food supply and farmers, ushering in a new era of sterile crops soaked in dangerous pesticides. If the deal is successful, itll make the new corporation the biggest seed maker and pesticide company in the worldand it will have almost total control of the most important aspects of our food supply.

The pharmaceutical giant itself has been subject to criticism over its widely used insecticide, imidacloprid, which belongs to a controversial class of chemicals called neonicotinoids, and is linked to deaths of bees.

At the center of Bayer and Monsantos corporate agribusiness model is the indiscriminate, widespread use of pesticides linked to the massive global bee die-off, the petition reads. Monsanto rejected the first offer from Bayer, but the negotiations are far from over. Once a merger like this goes through, Bayer and Monsanto will be even harder to stopwe need to act now to block the creation of this massive corporate bee-killer.

Experts also warned that the possible merger of Bayer and Monsantowhich would claim 30 percent of the global crop-inputs business if successfully executedcould significantly and negatively impact farmers and food production. Monsanto controls 80 percent of the U.S. corn market and 93 percent of the U.S. soy market.

The consolidation and driving out of smaller competitors, and controlling the marketplace and raising prices of seeds and pesticides for farmers worldwide is going to be a real shock to the food system, Robert Lawrence, a Johns Hopkins School of Medicine professor and the founding director of the Center for a Livable Future, told MarketWatch.

I dont know if that will in the end give farmers more choice in the seeds and traits in those seeds or less choice, Greg Jaffe, biotechnology project director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, told the publication. It might allow Bayer to put more of Monsantos seeds in their variety  or they might choose to produce less varieties.

Bayer, which is also involved in the GMO-seed market, responded in a statement that it has a role in feeding the growing global population.

GMO is all about scienceand it is a relevant tool in the toolbox to fight hunger in the world, the company said.

CBSs MoneyWatch noted that antitrust issues could kill a potential merger. Given the market power of the businesses, the transaction will face significant regulatory scrutiny. How that will play out is hard to predict, but one fact that could help the deal is that Bayer and Monsanto dont overlap much either geographically or in its agrochemical businesses, the report stated.

Patty Lovera, the assistant director of the nonprofit Food & Water Watch, told MarketWatch that the Justice Department should examine the deal.

Anytime companies, already giant companies, merge, they get more market share. Theres political power that comes with that economic power, she added. The players already in that room are going to get bigger.

Organic Consumers Associations Ronnie Cummins and Martha Rosenberg shared this perspective in a blog post: While a Bayer-Monsanto deal (like a DuPont-Dow deal or ChemChina-Syngenta deal) certainly threatens the world food supply with domination by GMOs and destructive agrochemicals, there may be an underreported bright side: Industries that are doing well generally spin off; industries that are performing poorly generally merge and consolidate.

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[Editors note: Watch live today, Sept. 13, at 3 p.m. ET, the press event immediately following the ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Ann Aiken on EcoWatchs Facebook page.]

A critical hearing in the

landmark climate lawsuit brought by 21 youth plaintiffs across the U.S. will take place in just four days at a federal courthouse in Eugene, Oregon.

On Sept. 13, U.S. District Court Judge Ann Aiken will hear oral arguments representing all of the parties on

Juliana, et al. v. United States, et al, which was first filed in 2015 by the young plaintiffs, ages 8-19, and climate scientist Dr. James Hansen.

According to the nonprofit Our Childrens Trust, the plaintiffs are suing the federal government for violating their constitutional rights to life, liberty and property and their right to essential public trust resources, by permitting, encouraging and otherwise enabling continued exploitation, production and combustion of fossil fuels.

Judge Aiken will review an earlier decision from U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Coffin of the same federal court. In April, Judge Coffin surprisingly ruled in favor of the young plaintiffs despite motions from the government and the fossil fuel industry to dismiss the case. The fate of the historic lawsuit is now in Judge Aikens hands, who will determine whether the case will either proceed toward trial or to appeal.

Kids Get Their Day in Court: 21 Youth Sue U.S. Government in Landmark Climate Lawsuit https://t.co/VHpQwKE6Mn via @EcoWatch #ActOnClimate  The YEARS Project (@YEARSofLIVING) June 12, 2016

One of the plaintiffs, Jayden, is a 13-year-old resident from Rayne, Louisiana. The hearing is particularly significant especially after last months

climate change-fueled flooding destroyed most of Jaydens home.

They called it a thousand-year flood, meaning it should only happen every thousand years or so, Jayden said. But in my stateLouisianawe have had that thousand-year flood and eight 500-year floods in less than two years. A few weeks ago, I literally stepped out of bed and was up to my ankles in climate change. Soon I will leave my home, which is still a messno walls, no carpet, even my little brothers toys were destroyed! But I feel like I have to go to court, because my little brother cant speak for himself, hes too little. But I can speak for him, and for everyone in my generation. Its time we were heard. Its time President Obama protects our future, and my little brothers future.

Representing the plaintiffs are attorneys Julia A. Olson of Wild Earth Advocates, Philip L. Gregory of Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, LLP and Daniel M. Galpern.

My client Jayden, who is 13 years old, just survived a thousand-year flood event that devastated her home with sewage-contaminated rivers running through her bedroom and her community, said Olson, who is also the executive director and chief legal counsel of Our Childrens Trust.

This is the ninth flood event that is supposed to happen once every 500 years or more to hit her region in two years, floods that would not happen but for climate change. Yet, the national energy policy of the U.S. is drill baby, drill. And by 2040, fossil fuel consumption will still make up more than 75 percent of our energy supply compared to 80 percent today. According to these federal defendants, by 2040 our carbon dioxide emissions will at best be flatlining at dangerous levels. Make no mistake, the U.S. government has caused climate change and continues to promote a fossil fuel system that is violating the rights of these 21 young plaintiffs.

In his April decision, Judge Coffin indicated that since young people will face the brunt of global warming, they have the right to sue the government for climate justice. He wrote:

The debate about climate change and its impact has been before various political bodies for some time now. Plaintiffs give this debate justiciability by asserting harms that befall or will befall them personally and to a greater extent than older segments of society. It may be that eventually the alleged harms, assuming the correctness of plaintiffs analysis of the impacts of global climate change, will befall all of us. But the intractability of the debates before Congress and state legislatures and the alleged valuing of short-term economic interest despite the cost to human life, necessitates a need for the courts to evaluate the constitutional parameters of the action or inaction taken by the government. This is especially true when such harms have an alleged disparate impact on a discrete class of society.

Jayden and her fellow plaintiffs will be entering the hearing Tuesday with momentum from legal victories from their peers, Our Childrens Trust stated. Aside from their own victory before Judge Coffin, they are emboldened by other youth plaintiff wins in state courts in Washington, Massachusetts and New Mexico. Not to mention other state and international legal actions underway, all with support from Our Childrens Trust.

In June, plaintiff Xiuhtezcatl Martinez stopped by Real Time with Bill Maher to talk about the lawsuit and the importance of government action on climate.

We have a right to a healthy atmosphere and [the government] is directly in violation of our public trust and of our constitutional right to a healthy atmosphere, the teenage environmental activist said. [My generation] is calling out our leaders and reminding them they are not doing the job they are put here to do.
A number of Hollywood stars have joined a growing national movement opposing the construction of the contentious



Dakota Access Pipeline.

On Tuesday, Ben Affleck, Ray Fisher, Gal Gadot, Jason Momoa and Ezra Millerstars of the upcoming superhero movie Justice Leaguefilmed an endorsement for Rezpect Our Water, a campaign launched by young members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.

As a gang of Earth defenders, we want to send a big shoutout to the Oceti Sakowin and those who stand with them in opposing the Dakota Access Pipeline, Miller says in the video. Oceti Sakowin is the proper name for the people commonly known as the Sioux.

Join us in supporting the youth of Standing Rock as they fight the Dakota Access Pipeline, which will leak into their drinking water! Momoa wrote on his

Instagram, adding that Aquaman is pissed.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has approved construction of a 1,170-mile, $3.7 billion pipeline that would transfer up to 570,00 barrels of crude oil per day from the North Dakota Bakken region through South Dakota and Iowa into Illinois. The pipeline would cross the Missouri River, a mile north of the Standing Rock Reservation. A potential oil spill could destroy sacred land or pollute the tribes main source of drinking water as well as more than 200 smaller rivers and creeks.

Protests came to an intense boil over the weekend, but the battle against the Dakota Access Pipeline, a project of Texas company Energy Transfer Partners, has been simmering since this spring.

In May, Oscar-winning actor and clean energy advocate Leonardo Dicaprio tweeted that he was standing with the Great Sioux Nation to protect their water and lands.

Standing w/ the Great Sioux Nation to protect their water & lands. Take a stand: https://t.co/nKKMIe4csA #RezpectOurWater #KeepItInTheGround  Leonardo DiCaprio (@LeoDiCaprio) May 10, 2016

https://twitter.com/UvKLvr47/statuses/774017653467783169

Since then, many other environmentally-minded celebrities have joined the chorus. On Aug. 25, actors Shailene Woodley, Riley Keough and Susan Sarandon joined tribe members at a courthouse in Washington, DC to protest the pipelines construction.

Im here as a mother and a grandmother to thank the people of the Standing Rock community for bringing our attention to this horrible thing that is happening to their land, which in turn will endanger all of us  because all of our waters are connected, Sarandon

said.

On Facebook, musician Pharrell Williams praised an extraordinary 2,200-mile relay accomplished by young tribe members protesting the pipeline.

We have so much we can learn from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and other Native American tribes, he said. The children of Standing Rock ran 2,200 miles on foot to Washington, D.C. to save their sacred land from the oil industry. Lets help protect them so they can continue to live in peace #rezpectourwater.

Pharrell Williams Facebook

Actor and environmental activist Mark Ruffalo has also been a prominent voice against construction of the pipeline. He appealed to President Obama and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to respond to the project.

.@POTUS @HillaryClinton As Dakota Access Pipeline Fight Grows, Where Are Obama and Clinton? | Common Dreams https://t.co/Q2xlsaMIzx  Mark Ruffalo (@MarkRuffalo) September 8, 2016

Native Americans around the country have been galvanized by the plight of the Standing Rock Sioux against Big Oil.

As The Washington Post reports:

Over the past few weeks, thousands of Native Americans representing tribes from all over the country have traveled to this central North Dakota reservation to camp in a nearby meadow and show solidarity with a tribe they think is once again receiving a raw deal at the hands of commercial interests and the U.S. government.

More than 200 Native American tribes have declared their support, and many have sent food and supplies, the Post wrote.

Environmental advocates such as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Waterkeeper Alliance and 93 Waterkeeper organizations are standing in solidarity with the Standing Rock Sioux.

Politicians have also joined the fray. Morton County officials issued a warrant for Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein on Wednesday after video surfaced of her spray-painting a bulldozer at a construction site.

I hope ND presses charges against the real vandals who bulldoze sacred burial sites. #NoDAPL https://t.co/34e6stP5wQ pic.twitter.com/6Hn3LT1500  Dr. Jill Stein? (@DrJillStein) September 7, 2016

Meanwhile, President Obama has not specifically addressed the pipeline but during a news conference in Laos, he briefly spoke about Native American land rights.

As many of you know, the way that Native Americans were treated was tragic, he said. One of the priorities that Ive had as President is restoring an honest and generous and respectful relationship with Native American tribes. And this issue of ancestral lands and helping them preserve their way of life is something that we have worked very hard on.

A federal judge will rule Friday on the legality of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Stay tuned.
Leonardo DiCaprio blasted the corporate greed of the coal, oil and gas industries in a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland Tuesday.

DiCaprio was honored along with will.i.am, Yao Chen and Olafur Eliasson for making important contributions to improving the state of the world. He was recognized for his work in tackling climate change through his Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation and his position as an UN Messenger of Peace.

Enough is enough! Leonardo DiCaprio rips into Big Oil at #Davos2016: https://t.co/EXcQjdl3zg pic.twitter.com/3VoosM7DVC  Al Arabiya English (@AlArabiya_Eng) January 20, 2016

During his acceptance speech, DiCaprio urged world leaders to do more. Last month in Paris, world leaders reached a historic agreement that provides a concrete framework to reduce carbon emissions, he said. This was an important first step, but we are a long way off from claiming victory in this fight for our future and for the survival of our planet.

While traveling recently to film a documentary on the impacts of climate change, DiCaprio said he was astonished to see that ancient glaciers in Greenland and the Arctic are rapidly disappearing well ahead of scientific models. In India, he saw farmers fields devastated by unprecedented flooding. He said we need to keep fossil fuels in the ground, urged business leaders to divest from fossil fuels and pushed for a rapid transition to renewables.

We simply cannot afford to allow the corporate greed of the coal, oil and gas industries to determine the future of humanity. Those entities with a financial interest in preserving this destructive system have denied and even covered-up the evidence of our changing climate, he said. Enough is enough. You know better. The world knows better. History will place the blame for this devastation squarely at their feet.

Our planet cannot be saved unless we leave fossil fuels in the ground where they belong, he told the audience. Twenty years ago, we described this problem as an addiction. Today, we possess the means to end this reliance.

The challenge before us requires each and every one of us to take action. We owe this to ourselves, but more importantly to the future generations who are counting on us.

DiCaprio also announced that his foundation is pledging a new commitment of $15 million to environmental projects, including one that protects 6.5 million acres of rainforest on Sumatra in Indonesia from what DiCaprio described as the invasive and destructive practices of the palm oil industry.

Last week, DiCaprio won the Golden Globe for Best Actor for his role in The Revenant. In an interview with Charlie Rose prior to the Golden Globe awards ceremony, DiCaprio said the film was a turning point in his life and really drove home for him the need to take action on climate change. DiCaprio is nominated for an Oscar for The Revenant, which has 12 Oscar nominations in allmore than any other film this year.

Watch Leonardo DiCaprios full speech here:

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Oceana released a new report Wednesday detailing the global scale of seafood fraud, finding that on average, one in five of more than 25,000 samples of seafood tested worldwide was mislabeled.

In the report, Oceana reviewed more than 200 published studies from 55 countries, on every continent except for Antarctica. The studies found seafood fraud present in each investigation with only one exception.

The studies reviewed also found seafood mislabeling in every sector of the seafood supply chain: retail, wholesale, distribution, import/export, packaging/processing and landing.

Heres an interactive map of global seafood fraud by Oceana:

The report comes as ocean leaders from all over the world prepare to gather in Washington, DC for the Our Ocean Conference next week.

Earlier this year, the Presidents Task Force on Combating Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) Fishing and Seafood Fraud released a proposed rule to address these issues that would require traceability for 13 at-risk types of seafood from the fishing boat or farm to the U.S. border. Oceana contends that while this is a good step forward, the government needs to expand the final rule to include all seafood species sold in the U.S. and extend it throughout the entire supply chain, from boat or farm to plate.

Without tracking all seafood throughout the entire supply chain, consumers will continue to be cheated, hardworking, honest fishermen will be undercut and the long-term productivity of our oceans will continue to be in jeopardy. Its clear that seafood fraud respects no borders, said Oceana senior campaign director Beth Lowell.

The path seafood travels from the fishing boat or farm to our dinner plates is long, complex and non-transparent, rife with opportunities for fraud and mislabeling. American consumers deserve to know more about their seafood, including what kind of fish it is, how and where it was caught or farmed, and they should be able to trust the information is accurate. The fight against seafood fraud must include all seafood and extend from boat to plate.

The report also highlights recent developments in the European Union (EU) to crack down on illegal fishing and improve transparency and accountability in the seafood supply chain. Following numerous seafood fraud investigations for more than 12 years, as well as public attention to the problem, overall fraud rates in the EU appear to have decreased from 23 percent in 2011 to a low of 8 percent in 2015. According to Oceanas analysis, preliminary data out of the EU suggests that catch documentation, traceability and consumer labeling are feasible and effective at reducing seafood fraud.

A few of the report highlights include:

In the U.S., studies released since 2014 found an average fraud rate of 28 percent, weighted by sample size.

More than half (58 percent) of the samples substituted for other seafood were a species that pose a health risk to consumers, meaning that consumers could be unwittingly eating fish that could make them sick.

The majority of the studies (65 percent) include clear evidence of an economic motivation for the seafood mislabeling.

Asian catfish, hake and escolar were the three types of fish most commonly substituted worldwide. Specifically, Asian catfish was sold as 18 different types of higher-value fish.

A few of the most egregious examples that Oceana has collected include:

Eighty-two percent of the 200 grouper, perch and swordfish samples tested in Italy were mislabeled and almost half of the substituted fish were species that are considered threatened with extinction by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

In Brazil, 55 percent of shark samples were actually largetooth sawfish, a species considered by the IUCN to be critically endangered and for which trade is prohibited in Brazil.

Ninety-eight percent of the 69 bluefin tuna dishes tested in Brussels restaurants were another species.

A 2015 German study found about half of the samples sold as sole to be lower-value fish upon testing.

In 2015, a Santa Monica restaurant and two sushi chefs were charged for selling whale meat, including meat from the endangered sei whale. The restaurant, which has since closed, had labeled the whale as fatty tuna to hide its true identity when it was shipped to the restaurant in order to sell whale sushi.

Because illegally caught seafood, some caught or processed with slave labor, could be making its way onto our dinner plates disguised as legal catch, it is doubly important to improve transparency and accountability in the global seafood supply chain, said Dr. Kimberly Warner, report author and senior scientist at Oceana.

The increased traceability and consumer labeling efforts in the EU point us to solutions that really do work to decrease seafood fraud, particularly in sectors and products covered by these legal provisions. The U.S. government should take note and issue the strongest possible final traceability rule. Only full-chain traceability for all species will ensure our seafood is safe, legally caught and honestly labeled.
By Tony Long, The Pew Charitable Trusts

The Port State Measures Agreement (PSMA), an international treaty intended to help stop illegal fishing, will enter into force now that it has been ratified by more than the 25 governments needed.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) announced May 16 that six countriesDominica, Guinea-Bissau, Sudan, Thailand, Tonga and Vanuatuhad ratified the binding agreement, bringing the total to 30. They join other governments large and small around the world, including the U.S. and the European Union and demonstrate the broad range of support for the PSMA.

This is a critical step in the global fight to end illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing and should lead to more governments signing on to the treaty. That would strengthen the PSMA and extend its reach to new regions. We know that more countries are in the process of ratifying the pact and we expect the numbers to grow.

Regional collaboration will help the PSMAs implementation. Efforts such as those being undertaken by members of the Central America Fisheries and Aquaculture Organization and FISH-i Africa demonstrate the importance of cooperation among neighboring nationsand its critical role in the treatys success.

IUU fishing is a major problem around the world and poses serious threats to the effective conservation and management of fish stocks. Estimated to account for up to $23.5 billion each year or 1 in every 5 wild-caught marine fish, illegal fishing can cause the total collapse of a fishery or seriously impair the condition of fish populations. It also can harm efforts to rebuild stocks that have been overfished. In addition, IUU fishing causes economic painin lost revenue and employment opportunitiesfor many coastal communities.

The PSMA, if used in conjunction with catch documentation policies, could be one of the most cost-effective and efficient means of combating illicit fishing. By mandating that captains provide advance notice of their arrival in port and by empowering port officials to turn away suspect catch, the treaty could keep many tons of illegally caught seafood from entering national or international markets each year. Officials would be able to detain and sanction IUU vessels and their captains.

The pact also gives port officials the discretion to deny port services, such as fueling, to vessels believed to have engaged in maritime crimes. Effective implementation of these port state measures will reduce the economic incentives to engage in black-market fishing.

Ports will have to determine whether vessels are carrying illegal catch and whether this seafood is being improperly landed, transshipped, processed or sold. Doing so should reduce the number of ports of noncompliance.

The PSMA can help with enforcement of national laws as well as conservation measures adopted by the regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs). Port states can focus on port inspections and controls than on costly efforts to monitor, pursue and inspect vessels at sea. The agreement also requires more effective cooperation and information-sharing among coastal nations, the flag states of fishing vessels and the RFMOs.

Although its important to pause to acknowledge the results of hard work and collaboration among governments all around the world, 30 ratifications are not nearly enough. Countries can do much more in this critical fight. To ensure effective implementation and enforcement on a national level, states should incorporate the PSMA requirements in domestic legislation.

Tony Long directs the ending illegal fishing project for The Pew Charitable Trusts.

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(Photo: Kim Cain)Hands raised at the September Pentecostal World Fellowship conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in 2013.

Pope Francis met with a group of Italian Pentecostal pastors Sept. 8, telling them that unity is achieved by walking patiently together.

In Sao Paulo, Brazil, on Sept. 7, Rev. Olav Fykse Tveit, general secretary of the World Council of Churches spoke about climate change during the opening day of the 24th Pentecostal World Conference.

"We all sin against the Holy Spirit if we ignore climate change," said Rev. Tveit.

The encounters between the head of the Catholic Church and the leader of the WCC which represents mainly Anglican, Orthodox and traditional Protestant churches comes at time of greater ecumenical contact across the board.

In Rome, the seven Pentecostal pastors, led by Evangelical Church of Reconciliation in Caserta, Italy, the Pope's friend from his days in Buenos Aires, Evangelical Pastor Giovanni Traettino had a private audience in Francis' digs in Casa Santa Marta.

It continues the dialogue begun by the pontiff's visit to their community in Caserta two years ago, Vatican Radio reported.

During the informal encounter Pastor Traettino thanked Francis for his role "as a brother and an ally" in accelerating the dialogue between Catholics and Pentecostals.

Pope Francis replied that he "felt in his heart" the need to undertake steps towards reconciliation, citing the examples of his meeting with the Waldensian community or with the Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill.

Unity, he said, is achieved step by step, through a patient and continuous journey together. Full unity, he said, will be achieved after "the Son of Man returns" but in the meantime, he stressed, Christians must pray, repent of their sins and walk together.

Tveit said in his Buenos Aires message, "We have to remind ourselves that the Holy Spirit is the life-giver, active in creation from the very beginning till today. The Holy Spirit sustain us and all creatures every day."

"The world desperately needs people like you who believe in the transformative power of the Holy Spirit to invest in the future of the world for our children", he noted, said the WCC in a statement.

"As Pentecostals believing in the power of the Holy Spirit, I will invite you to receive the invitation issued by the Ecumenical Patriarch, Pope Francis, the general secretary of the WCC and other ecumenical leaders to pray and care for God's creation", said Tveit.

PENTECOSTAL WORLD FELLOWSHIP DINNER

Tveit was at the Pentecostal World Fellowship dinner, where he was invited by Rev. Prince Guneratnam, chairman of the PWF, to bring greetings.

Representatives of the Global Christian Forum, the World Evangelical Alliance, Pontifical Council to Promote Christian Unity and the Lutheran World Federation also addressed the global Pentecostal gathering.

"You have as Pentecostals been brave in your preaching that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is a transformative message. You have been strongly emphasizing that our faith is also to hope for more than what we can see just now," said Tveit.

Like the PWF, the WCC was founded after World War II. For the past 15 years the WCC has maintained a platform for dialogue with Pentecostals.

"The joint consultative group has helped nurture our growing together in Christ. It will continue in the years ahead, examining how the Holy Spirit is working in the church to form disciples that transform the world," said Tveit.
(Photo: REUTERS / Max Rossi) Pope Francis waves as he arrives at the palace of Caserta, former residences of the Royal House of Bourbon, before leading a mass, in Caserta, southern Italy July 26, 2014. A banner behind the Pope reads "Against Camorra and Racism."

Pope Francis has apologized in front of a group of Evangelic Christians for persecution inflicted on Pentecostals under Italy's fascist regime during the mid-20th century and in which Catholics were involved.

Around 200 and 300 evangelicals from the United States, Argentine, and Italy attended the July 28 meeting in Caserta, in the southern part of Italy on Saturday.

There were some 200,000 people gathered in a place said to be a stronghold of the Naples Mafia known as Camorra.

Matteo Calisi, former president of the Catholic Charismatic movement, and Jorge Himitian, an Argentinian Protestant attended.

"With men like you, there is hope for us, as Christians," saidItalian Evangelical Pentecostal pastor, Giovanni Traettino, a friend of Pope Francis, the Vatican News Service reported.

The Pope also rallied for Christian unity calling for a "church that is one in its diversity."

Francis spoke about the relationship of Catholics with Pentecostals in Italy saying "Many times we have done the same thing as the brothers of Joseph, when jealous and envy have divided us.

"That sad history, in which the same things that Joseph's brother did are repeated: denouncements, the laws of these people who 'are against the purity of the race.'

"And these laws were ratified by baptized persons! Some of those who enacted these laws, and some of those who persecuted, denounced their Pentecostal brothers because they were 'enthusiastic', almost 'crazy', who spoiled the race.

"I am a Catholic pastor, and I beg forgiveness for this. I ask your forgiveness on behalf of those Catholic brothers and sisters who did not understand and who were tempted by the devil; and who did the same thing that Joseph's brothers did.

"I ask the Lord for the grace to recognize and to forgive," said Francis.

The Pope had a three-hour meeting with televangelists Kenneth Copeland and James Robison on June, just weeks after he met with U.S. Pastor Joel Osteen and other religious leaders.
June 4 marked the 25th anniversary of Minnesotas charter school law, the nations first. In 1990, charter pioneer Ted Kolderie foresaw that chartering would introduce the dynamics of choice, competition, and innovation into Americas public school system, while at the same time ensuring that new schools serve broad public purposes.

A quarter-century later, 43 states and the District of Columbia have such laws, and 6,800 charter schools educate almost 3 million children. Remarkably, charters account for the entire enrollment growth in American public education since 2006. District schools actually lost students during this time, as did some private schools .

Thus far, the mission that chartering has carried out with greatest success and acclaim has been to place tens of thousands of disadvantaged children on a path to college and upward mobility. In fact, charters today primarily serve low-income children of colorthe kids who typically fare worst in big-district systems. For reasons of both equity and politics, many state charter laws give priority to schools that focus on such students, while some confine chartering to core cities.

University of Michigan economist Susan Dynarski put it this way: In urban areas, where students are overwhelmingly low-achieving, poor, and nonwhite, charter schools tend to do better than other public schools in improving student achievement.

One type of charter school, the so-called no excuses model, has had the most visible success at producing these results. Such schools are typically characterized by high behavioral and academic expectations, much more learning time, curricula geared toward college entry, and robust school cultures. Many of themincluding such well-known brands as KIPP, Achievement First, and Success Academyhave worked wonders with their youthful charges. In no small part because of their successas well as the compelling needs of the children they seek to servephilanthropists, policymakers, a growing school reform movement, and aligned ventures such as Teach For America have striven to expand them across the country. Theyve made great progressKIPP alone is up to 200 schools yet plenty of needy kids still lack access to such options. Hence, as we look toward the future of chartering, one rational strategy is to continue scaling and perfecting the no-excuses model.

Yet theres a downside, too. The focus on this one model, laudable as it is, has narrowed the broad promise originally envisioned by Kolderie and other founders of the charter movement. In fact, in the eyes of many educators, policymakers, and philanthropistsand probably in the eyes of the broader publicchartering has come to be viewed principally as a mechanism for liberating poor kids from bad urban schools and relocating them to better schools. The No Child Left Behind Act, and similar reforms at the state and local levels, equated progress with boosting reading and math test scores for low-achieving and minority youngsters. Philanthropy, too, has contributed to this narrowing of focus asfor legitimate reasonsit channeled most of its K-12 dollars into strategies and schools that promised to boost achievement for those students.

Poor kids need those options, too, but they're not the only pupil population that can benefit from charters."

But is this important mission all that the charter sector should undertake? Charterings founders didnt think so, nor do we. We know that no-excuses schools dont suit every child or family seeking alternatives to woeful neighborhood options. Some balk at this models rigid practices, which can yield great test scores but dont necessarily cultivate qualities of character, creativity, and deep understanding. Critics also fret that no-excuses schools dont do a great job of preparing young people for the independence and self-management theyll need to thrive in college and beyond. Its also a fact that, because they provide additional services and all those extra hours, no-excuses schools typically need more money than is generally supplied by regular charter funding streams. This adds a special fundraising burden to a sector that already receives nearly 30 percent less per pupil in operating dollars than do nearby district schools and that, in many places, also gets no help with the cost of facilities.

The focus of no-excuses schools on minority kids also plays into the hands of critics who assert that charters are resegregating public education. Analysts affiliated with the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles, for example, assert that charter schools are more racially isolated than traditional public schools in virtually every state and large metropolitan area in the nation. We find no merit in those allegationsindeed, University of Arkansas researchers reached opposite conclusions from the same databut chartering faces strong political headwinds even without this additional tempest.

Charter insiders know that this sector is already more diverse than the hype around no-excuses schools suggests. Indeed, a recent American Enterprise Institute study of charters in 17 cities found roughly equal numbers of more progressive models and no-excuses schools. (Plenty of other charters fit neither category.)

Poor kids need those options, too, but theyre not the only pupil population that can benefit from charters. In the years ahead, we believe chartering should plant many seeds and cultivate many crops. Its a flexible instrument that can address all manner of needs and opportunities. What about more high-quality career-and-technical-education charters, or charters for gifted and talented students? (More than 100 charter schools now focus on children with disabilities.) Charters for art enthusiasts? Personalized-learning charters that take advantage of digital options to let kids proceed through the curriculum at their own pace? More charters for youthful offenders and former offenders? Schools just for girls and just for boys? For athletes or classicists? Character-and-civics-centric charters? Schools for rural residents? For kids whose posh but rigid suburban districts dont meet their needs? More teacher-led schools?

Since it was first conceived, chartering has held the capacity to develop new structures for delivering and governing public education. We look to the next decade or two for chartering to pilot new delivery systems, structures, and governance arrangements, as have already begun to emerge via networks like KIPP and Aspire and in cities like Washington, Denver, Indianapolis, and New Orleans. We also look to chartering to continue innovating at the system level with respect to staffing, technology, governance, and curriculum.

Enabling such a future will call for imagination and flexibility on many fronts, including changes in charterings statutory and regulatory environment, as well as new approaches to accountability and parent information. Theres also a need for more careful attention to sensitive issues of community engagement, human capital, and race. Its a tall order but one that, if properly filled, will benefit millions more youngsters. As we observe the present anniversary, let us celebrate charterings past but not be confined by it. Bona fide school choice means plenty of different options, and chartering is the surest mechanism in America today to make these options available. Lets use it to the max.
Unlike older students, kindergartners often start the school year as cute little blank slates to their teachers.

In many cases, those teachers have no more to go on when assigning children to classes than the limited information they were able to glean from kindergarten-orientation sessions. That lack of deeper knowledge about their new pupils can lead to classroom imbalances in terms of readiness and social skills that are hard to fix as the school year progresses.

But at a handful of elementary schools in suburban Washington, kindergarten teams have developed a way to address the issue, borrowing a technique more commonly seen in middle and high schools.

Instead of assigning kindergarten pupils to permanent classrooms at the beginning of the year, some schools in Montgomery County, Md., set up a system that initially rotates children through all the kindergarten classrooms.

By the end of the first week of school, teachers say they have enough information to make class assignments based on more than obvious traits, such as gender and race. During the kindergarten switcheroo, the child-friendly name the schools have given the process, teachers see which children are reserved, as opposed to those raising their hands at each question; which ones get along well with one other, compared with friction-filled groupings; and which pupils are more independent, as opposed to those needing more adult support.

Intangible Elements

Those intangible elements are routinely considered when it comes to making class assignments in other elementary grades, because the childrens skills and personalities are better known.

Kindergarten is the only grade where teachers dont already have that deep knowledge of most of their charges, say the teachers who have invested time in this process.

The first day of kindergarten is probably the hardest day for any teacher in any grade, and we do it five times, said Heidi Grant, a kindergarten teacher at Fallsmead Elementary School here. We wouldnt do it if we didnt think it worked.

Creating a thriving classroom community is particularly important for kindergartners, who are building the foundation for future learning, said Kristen Johnson, the senior director for early-childhood-program accreditation for the National Association for the Education of Young Children.

Johnson said she could not address the switcheroo concept specifically because she was not familiar with it.

But the reasons teachers have stated for using ittaking time at the beginning the year to lay the groundwork for intentional community buildingmatches what teachers should be making a priority for young children, Johnson said.

Learning for young children really comes in the form of relationships, Johnson said. Its important for children at that age to have that positive experience where they feel safe and secure and can share and can learn.

In Montgomery County, the kindergarten-rotation concept started at Fallsmead Elementary, now in its fifth year of the process. Other teachers and administrators in the 156,000-student district heard about the idea from Fallsmead, and a handful have implemented similar programs in their own schools.

Members of the Fallsmead kindergarten team say they were given the seeds of the idea from a former principal at the school.

The orientation process didnt provide enough time to get to know pupils, they said. Generally, elementary schools in the county have a kindergarten orientation in the spring, where children are brought in groups of eight to 10 and given some brief assessments while their parents fill out enrollment forms.

But not all of a schools kindergartners attend orientation; many register later or just cant make those dates. Plus, some children are too shy to do much in that atmosphere, said Grant, the kindergarten teacher at Fallsmead.

And the orientation, even for the youngsters who attend, cant always capture the sometimes-dramatic changes that occur during the handful of months before school starts.

In six months, you can be a different child educationally, said Roni Silverstein, the principal at Fallsmead.

But the rotation process involves more than just moving the children around from class to class.

The schools that have adopted the process generally use a very scripted routine at the beginning of the year. All pupils, for example, will start the day in the cafeteria, divided into groups that they will stay with during the first week. All of them learn that theyre supposed to enter the classroom and sit on a rug. Pupils will learn the same process for hanging up their backpacks, stashing their lunchboxes, and handing in their work folders.

Kindergarten Homeroom

Also, each grouping of children spends the beginning of each day with the same homeroom kindergarten teacher, and paraprofessionals and other school staff members are assigned to each group and transfer with them wherever they go.

Those elements are intended to introduce some stability and familiarity for the children, the teachers say.

The kindergarten rotation was not an instant hit with all parents, Silverstein said.

Parents were convinced this was going to psychologically harm their children, she said. And the school does take into account if there are young children who seem very reluctant to separate from a teacher.

But most children adjust to the program because they dont know that kindergarten is supposed to be any different. They end up knowing all the teachers and many more of their peers than they might otherwise, Silverstein said.

Rebekah Jacobs, the president of the Fallsmead PTA, has two children who went through the kindergarten rotation. What they explained is that this is an opportunity to think about kids in the best way. To me, it sounded like a really smart way of doing things, Jacobs said. Is it possibly a little confusing? Yes. But for the long-term benefit, I think its great.

The idea is starting to spread to other schools in the county; representatives from dozens of schools visited Fallsmead earlier this year to find out how the rotation works.

Beall Elementary, also in Montgomery County, has been conducting its own switcheroo for three years after learning about the process from Fallsmead.

Honestly, I dont think everyone bought into it initially, said Elliot Alter, the principal at Beall. Some teachers were concerned that they would lose an emotional connection with their pupils. And they were also concerned that the process would cut into instructional time.

I dont think were losing a week of instruction, Alter said. Its giving us back hours that we might have been regrouping kids for reading, for example. Under the old process of class creation, children might not have that many academic peers in the classroom, requiring shifting groups of children around for instruction.

Other than a few tears, the process seems deceptively smooth.

But it takes a lot of planning, said Allison Nelson, a kindergarten teacher at Beall.

We have literally designed flip charts with times at the top for exactly what we should be doing at exactly the same time on the same day, she said. We have spent so much time on this, but weve seen the true benefits.
Ely, Cambridgeshire is best known for its majestic cathedral dubbed the 'Ship of the Fens' because it dominates the flat landscape. The city, which is the second smallest in England, is about 14 miles north-northeast of Cambridge and about 80 miles by road from London.

14:55, 28 OCT 2022
Chief Minister discusses Brexit with MPs



Allan Bell is interviewed by Financial Times reporter Andy Bounds during his London visit

The Chief Minister has been using his final weeks in office to discuss the Island's future with the British Government.

Allan Bell, who is retiring after the upcoming election, has been meeting with MPs in London this week, including Justice Minister Sir Oliver Heald, who is responsible for relations with the Crown Dependencies.

The talks focused on the result of the recent EU referendum and how leaving the European Union will affect the Island.

Bell also met with the Chief Secretary of the Treasury and the Policy Director of 10 Downing Street during his visit.
Government admits Sellafield concerns

The Isle of Man Government admits there are concerns about safety at the Sellafield nuclear site in Cumbria.

A BBC documentary broadcast earlier this week revealed issues over staffing and waste storage at the facility, which is just 34 miles from the Manx coast.

The Government says ageing waste storage ponds and silos are a concern for the Island, but that Sellafield is working to improve safety.

The episode of 'Panorama' included evidence from a former Sellafield manager, who believes there is a risk of fire in the silos or processing plants.

The Mannin Branch of the Celtic League has called for the Island to carry out an independent investigation.
Cinnamon Bone

Eliza Rickman - O, You Sinners

This one's on the house

Scott Cook - This one's on the house - This one's on the house

A body needs

Naviger - Barn Raising - Barn Raising

Lorsque Django Jouet

Django Libre - n/a - n/a

Sweet Little Bird

Carmen Townsend - Waitin' and Seein' - Waitin' and Seein'
RISING CITY  Dillon Krueger understands the sacrifices soldiers make while serving overseas.

He spent three years away from the United States, including a year in Afghanistan, after enlisting in the Army.

So it wasnt hard for Jeff Martens to convince the Columbus High graduate to get on board with his plan to honor veterans and active military members through a mural at his Rising City storage units.

Dillon is a person who you give an idea to and he knows how to make it happen, said Martens, a Bellwood resident who comes from a military family. His brother and father are both veterans, as are some of his close friends, cousins and uncles.

I felt it was a way to honor them, he said.

Martens told Krueger he wanted a patriotic design for the mural, then let the 25-year-old artist go to work.

The result is a 12-by-10-feet image of one soldier carrying another with an American flag flying in the background and the phrase: All gave some, some gave all.

Theres really not a whole lot of paintings or murals from Afghanistan, so thats what I wanted to go with, said Krueger, who added patches from his former unit to the design.

The mural, a tribute to those serving in the ongoing fight against terrorism and all other veterans, took about 2 1/2 months to complete. Krueger didnt finish the project until last week, but hes already receiving positive feedback.

The Columbus resident said motorists passing through Rising City along Highway 92 would pull off the road to check out the painting, locals often honked in support as they drove by and military veterans have stopped to talk with him.

That was a great feeling, he said. Thats really why I wanted to use the design I did.

Krueger has created other murals for Miceks Shangri-la, Regs 7 Mile Steakhouse, where he works as a bartender, and American Legion Hartman Post 84, but this was the first project that required him to paint outside.

That added some challenges and weather delays, but the final product will reach a whole new audience. Several layers of oil paint and two cans of clear coat will ensure the mural remains a symbol of sacrifice and patriotism for years to come.

It will easily outlive my lifetime, thats for sure, Krueger said.

Martens couldnt be happier with the end result.

I think he did a wonderful job, Martens said. Weve gotten a lot of compliments on it.

But Krueger doesnt have much time to sit back and admire his work. The local artist is in the process of designing a mural for the old grocery store building in Genoa he hopes to begin painting next spring.

That piece, which will cover an entire side of the building, also has a military theme.

That will be a huge one, said Krueger, who is working with the Genoa American Legion on the project.

He also has smaller side projects in the works and plans to launch a website for his Krueger Art business this month.

Then theres the growing family.

Krueger and his longtime girlfriend Allie have a 1-year-old son Liam and are expecting their second child in late October.

He has two years left on his GI Bill and wants to enroll at the University of Nebraska at Omaha to pursue a bachelors degree in fine arts in the near future.

Until then, hell continue leaving his mark across the Columbus area.

Im kind of already doing what I want to be doing, Krueger said.
If you thought the coolest thing to come out of Starbucks's fall lineup was the PSL, you're so wrong.

The coffee chain is testing out an exclusive brunch menu at various locations in Portland and Seattle. The menu is served weekends between 8am and 2pm, and is shown alongside the other bakery items.

What can you expect from a coffee chain brunch? Belgian waffles, for one. Also, quiche and baked French toast, which sounds absolutely divine.

How does this differ from the existing menu options at Starbucks, which includes breakfast sandwiches and various baked goods? The brunch menu is far less portable, so chances are, you'll enjoy your quiche in-store as opposed to walking out and attempting to nosh on it in the car.

Unfortunately, Starbucks hasn't unveiled any plans to spread their brunch offerings to other locations from coast to coast. That's OK, as long as bottomless brunches are the next thing on the Starbucks itinerary, we're solid.
Growthpoint Properties industrial portfolio delivered the highest returns to investors in its sector for the three years ending December 2015, as recorded in the MSCI database.

It was named the top-performing industrial portfolio at the recent MSCI South African Real Estate Investment Conference.

The portfolio of industrial properties owned by Growthpoint achieved total returns of 18.9% for the three-year period, significantly outclassing the MSCI benchmark return of 15.5%.

As a leading provider of research-based indexes and analytics, MSCIs total return calculations are entirely numeric and based on validated property and financial results in its database  no subjective judgements are made, no qualitative criteria are considered.

With its sector-leading returns, Growthpoint won the South African Real Estate Investment Award for the industrial sector.

Engelbert Binedell, Growthpoint Industrial Division Director, comments: Growthpoint has assembled a well-diversified portfolio of industrial properties, making it highly defensive. Its performance is driven by a great team that works hard to develop solid relationships with our clients and the broking community, and collaborate with developers to grow value from the portfolio. In this tough market, our relationships, flexibility and creative deal making are all strategic advantages.

Growthpoint is invested in a portfolio of 227 industrial properties in South Africa, valued at R11,bn and covering a whopping 2.3m square metres of gross lettable area. The portfolio offers exposure in every significant industrial node in the country.

Binedell adds: We are driven to create value for all our stakeholders through innovative and sustainable property solutions. However, it is also pleasing to be acknowledged for our performance by a respected organisation like MSCI.

Stan Garrun, Executive Director of MSCI, comments: This recognition comes down to pure performance and quality of management extracting value through investing in real estate. We congratulate Growthpoint. MSCI is proud to recognise consistent top performance of the property funds  listed and unlisted  in our database. In this way, we showcase superior returns and illustrate the fundamental value of investing in commercial property.

MSCIs database covers 67% of all institutional and professionally managed property in South Africa and about 72% of market capitalisation of the listed property funds on the JSE.

Growthpoint is the largest South African primary listed REIT with the vision to be a leading international property company providing space to thrive. It creates value for all its stakeholders through innovative and sustainable property solutions.

The 35th largest company on the JSE, Growthpoint is a Top 5 constituent of the FTSE EPRA/NAREIT Emerging Index and has been included in the FTSE/JSE Responsible Investment Index for seven years running. It is the most liquid and tradable way to own commercial property in South Africa.

It owns and manages a diversified portfolio of 526 property assets spanning 6.8 million square metres. This includes 467 properties in South Africa, 58 properties in Australia through its investment in Growthpoint Properties Australia (GOZ) and a 50% interest in the properties at V&A Waterfront, Cape Town.
MAS Real Estate Inc. (MAS), a commercial property investor, developer and operator listed on the JSE and Bourse de Luxembourg, today reported exceptional results for the year ended 30 June 2016, marked by a 63% increase in rental income and a 34% increase in final distribution to 4,50 euro cents per share.

We have made substantial progress during the financial year and the portfolio is coming of age, with substantial developments delivered on time and on budget. We have now begun to roll out our updated strategy for the group which focuses on delivering a high quality and growing income distribution per share, including through expansion into the Central and Eastern European (CEE) regions, commented Lukas Nakos, CEO of MAS.

The updated strategy will see the company expand its target markets to include the growing economies of CEE through a joint venture with the experienced developers and investors, Prime Kapital. MAS intends to invest a further 200 million in the joint venture over the next four years, as it rebalances its portfolio across the wider European market.

We are very excited about the joint venture with Prime Kapital. The team brings exceptional development, investment and financing experience in CEE to the table. There are attractive opportunities in the region backed by a combination of relatively high initial acquisition yields, substantial growth prospects and attractive debt terms that will deliver strong returns on equity.

The development market is very attractive; supported by rapidly expanding purchasing power and, in some cases, sub-optimally designed or undersized existing assets ripe for re-development or displacement. We have already made good progress with land acquired and a pipeline secured on an exclusive basis with Prime Kapital, said Nakos.

MAS currently has a very low portfolio LTV of 12.4%. This provides substantial opportunity for growth as the company implements its gearing programme and moves the LTV towards its longer term target of 40% - 50%. Developments are currently funded through equity and refinanced at completion.

Malcolm Levy, CFO of MAS commented, Our current LTV remained very low as we invested the cash we had. Our focus has now moved to optimising the balance sheet and driving the gearing towards the LTV targets we have set. This will position the group to enter a long period of high earnings per share growth, benefiting from accretive acquisitions and developments.

The companys income-generating property has grown by EUR78,2 million to EUR242,6 million, supported by the acquisition of the Lehrte property in Germany in late 2015 and Edeka portfolio 1 at the end of the current financial year as well as the completion of the Edinburgh based Whitbread hotels and associated retail at New Waverley in February 2016.

Says Nakos, After year-end, we completed the acquisition of the Munich property and the second Edeka portfolio, in North East Germany, both providing strong income returns. The Munich property is let to Volkswagen, providing an excellent covenant, and has the potential to be an exciting redevelopment play in the years to come.

It is expected that the development portfolio will increase substantially in the coming months as the CEE developments come on stream.

The board is confident that the group is well positioned for strong distribution per share growth in the reporting periods to follow. Whilst remaining vigilant towards movements in our investment markets, we are excited at the prospect of our expansion strategy, and the performance that this will generate in the years to come, concluded Nakos.
Photo credit: Gyatso Lepcha

Landslides in Sikkim do not make news. It is a routine affair, especially during the monsoon season. But the recent massive landslide occurred near Mantam village, Passingdong division of the Dzongu region in Sikkim on 13 August 2016 cannot be ignored. The ecological damages are yet to be ascertained. Fortunately this region is sparingly populated, and hence, no human loss was reported.

According to the report on the website of National Remote Sensing Centre,[1] five houses were damaged, 300 metres of road was washed away and nine villages were completely cut off from other villages. It has caused irreversible damage to the agricultural land in the area. The intensity of the landslide was so high that, the report continues, the debris from the landslide had blocked the flow of the Kanka river (locally known as Rangyoung), which is one of the main tributaries of Teesta river. The water impoundment has resulted in the formation of an artificial lake, north of the Mantam village. And a dam was created on the Rangyoung river. The Mantam village which bore the brunt of the disaster is no more; hence, in situ rehabilitation is out of question.

People in Singtam and Teesta Bazar had to be evicted owing to the threat of breakdown of the newly-built dam.. The amount of water collected in the dam had the capacity to submerge the whole area. In addition, it would have increased the pressure on the 96 MW Dikchu hydroelectric dam in North Sikkim. The implications of this disaster are huge, considering the topography of this region. Fortunately, the water receded and thus a huge tragedy was averted.

The Dzongu disaster cannot be treated in isolation; it should be taken in the larger context of the unwarranted human meddling with nature. In other words, it is politically incorrect to prefix these catastrophes natural. Gyatso Lepcha, one of the leaders of the movement called Affected Citizens of Teesta (ACT),[2] wrote on Facebook:

Our Mountains are slowly giving up to our greed  the biggest worry is that the upstream Rongyoung river has been blocked and a natural reservoir has been formed, similar to a dam reservoir and it looks so huge hopefully it will not burstWe had been telling for ages that do not bulldoze our nature that we worship as God; should not bulldoze it with unnecessary development activities. Our deities have started responding now.[3]

Dzongu, the Abode of Gods

Dzongu is perhaps one of the most peaceful areas on earth, a region without a police station. This biosphere reserve is a protected area, exclusively reserved for the Lepcha community since a royal proclamation of Chogyal (the king) declared it as Lepcha Reserve in 1958; it continued to be so after the merger of Sikkim with Indian Union in 1975. The entry to Dzongu is restricted  one needs a permit, issued from the district headquarter, Mangan. The Lepchas are an indigenous community of Sikkim who are shamanistic (though some of them converted to Christianity or Buddhism and practice shamanism along with the new faith) and they regard land and nature sacrosanct. The Kanchenjunga mountain range, overlooking Dzongu, is the presiding deity of the Lepchas; they believe that it connects them from birth to death. They still maintain a strong community bond and urge to protect their shared culture and tradition from the onslaught of modernity.

Photo credit: Gyatso Lepcha

Dzongu was in the news for the first time when the government decided to construct seven dams across the Kanchenjunga national park and its peripheries as a part of a plan to build 26 hydroelectric projects across this tiny state. The educatedmostly first generation learnersfrom the region began a peaceful protest against this move in 2004. When the government refused to retract from its commitment towards the so-called development agenda, these young leaders formed a platform for resistance, that is, ACT in 2005 in Dzongu and Dawa Lepcha was elevated to its leadership soon.

Anti-dam Movement in Sikkim

ACTs anti-dam movement was not the first of its kind in Sikkim. It began in 1994 in Yuksom, West Sikkim, the first capital of Sikkim, when the government proposed to construct three dams (99 MW Ting Ting, 96 MW Lethang and 97 MW Tashiding) on the Rathong Chu. Then the actors were monks (Lamas) from the monasteries and the Bhutia community, who have a better social and economic say than the Lepchas. The primary reason for Lamas protest was on religious ground, but there were ecological concerns too. The age-old winter ceremony known as Bhumchu [4] conducted in the Tashiding monastery every year, attracts Buddhist pilgrims from all over Sikkim and neighbouring countries such as Bhutan and Nepal. The most important part of the ceremony is the distribution of holy water, taken from the Rathong Chu river, to the devotees. Hence, the Lamas demanded for the preservation of the sanctity of the river. Around 500 monks and commoners marched to Gangtok to protest against the proposal of the government in 1995. After a year-long wait, the Association of Buddhist Monks in Sikkim submitted a memorandum to the government. Subsequently, a joint writ petition by the Bhutia- Lepcha Association, the Tribal Womens Association and the Association of Buddhist Monks of Sikkim was filed against the project in the Supreme Court[5]which was later transferred to the Sikkim High Court.[6] This was perhapsthe first time since the pro-democratic movement of 1970s, which resulted in the merger of Sikkim with Indian union in May 1975, that the state had witnessed a protest of this scale. This was also the time when Pawan Chamling, representing the Sikkim Democratic Front (SDF), had become chief minister of the state.

However, the governments inaction led to the formation of a new association  Concerned Citizens of Sikkim (CCS)  to make it an organised movement in May 1995. The protest movement of the CCS gained momentum with a hunger strike of a Lama for about a month and finally the government gave in. The proposal was suspended for the time being and a one-man commission was appointed under P S Ramakrishnan, a well-known ecologist by the government to look into the matter. In 1997, on the recommendations of the committee, the government scrapped two projects  Ting Ting and Lethang on the Rathong Chu. And the next controversy related to hydroelectric projects began in 2004 and this time it was the turn of ACT.

ACTs Resistance

The ACT opposed the hydroelectric projects in Dzongu region mainly for two reasons  cultural and ecological. Ecologically, they argued that, huge hydroelectric projects were not viable in regions like Dzongu (as is the case in entire Sikkim), which is prone to landslides and earthquakes. There are well-recorded incidences of high seismic activities in the region.

The second argument was that dam construction activities would lead to a huge influx of labourers from outside Sikkim for several years and this will have cultural implications on the lives of the Lepchas. Naturally, this movement was taking place exclusively in the region ofLepchas, and hence, was hardly getting any support from outside their community. When the movement was not going anywhere, the leaders of ACT decided to broaden their campaign beyond Dzongu. Eventually, they shifted its venue to Gangtok in May 2006, to popularise the movement as well as gather support from the other two prominent communities  Bhutia and Nepali  and a wider canvas was sought. This became a movement against major hydroelectric projects in Sikkim.

After ACT shifted its venue to the capital, Gangtok was swamped with political activities. It organised a relay hunger strike in Gangtok, and the protracted resistance that began in Dzongu in 2004 gained momentum with the hunger strike of Dawa Lepcha in the capital in 2006.[7] From the beginning itself, the state government was too antagonistic to the Lepcha anti-dam movement and it projected it as anti-development. Pro-dam protests were organised to counter it. The government used all devices, from persuasion to coercion: denying government jobs to the activists (in Sikkim, the government is the biggest employer), house visits by local politicians to persuade the elders to influence the youth to refrain from the movement, and arbitrarily transferring family members of the activists who were in government services, etc.

The government also went public, condemning these activists as anti-nationals. However, the movement gained momentum since March 2007 with hunger strikes and relay hunger strikes against the plunder of nature. The ACT managed to get some media attention, which is rare in the North East. All these brought the government to the negotiation table. ACT called off the hunger strike in September 2009 on the assurance of the government to scrap four projects  Rangyoung 141 MW, Lingzya 120 MW, Ringpi 90 MW and Rukel 33 MWout of the seven projects proposed on Teesta in Dzongu; four dams outside Dzongu were also scrapped.

The movement slowed down considerably since then. Some of the projects are in full swing, like the one in Chuntang, a small town in North Sikkim situated at the confluence of the Lachen and Lachung rivers. The whole Chuntang Bazar will be submerged once the dam became operative. The threat continues. But the resistance is waning. On closer look, a number of reasons surface.

Waning Resistance

Dawa Lepcha, the leader of the movement, had decided to expand the movement into electoral politics with the support he garnered over these years as an activist. He contested assembly elections from Dzongu, the very region where he began his activism, from the opposition platform, Sikkim Krantikari Morcha (SKM). The SKM was officially formed on 4 February 2013 by Prem Singh Golay, once a close aide of Chief Minister Chamling. He resigned from the Sikkim Democratic Front (SDF), the ruling party in Sikkim since 1994 in 2013 and floated SKM. The SKM gained immensely in its first election in 2014, securing 10 seats in the 32-member assembly. Dawa Lepcha lost the election from Dzongu to SDF. That was a huge disappointment, personally as well as organisationally.

The democratic culture in the state is very parochial. Democracy is still in a developing stage, and protests or movements are practically unheard of in Sikkim. There were hardly any opposition parties in the state. Pawan Chamling has beaten the record of Jyoti Basu, the ex-chief minister of West Bengal in number of years in power. In the 2009 election, the SDF won all the 32 seats. But the 2014 elections brought some hope for an effective opposition, when the SKM won 10 out of 32 seats. However, soon the hope vanished, when seven out of the 10 legislators went back to the parent party, SDF. An element of political democracy is thus missing in Sikkim.

An important weakness of ACT was that it could not gather large mass support in the state. The first and foremost reason for this was that in the beginning, the movement was projected as a Lepcha exclusive movement and other communities thought that they have nothing to do with it. Dzongu, being Lepcha reserve area, where the movement began, also contributed to this misconception. The initial slogans of the leaders to protect the culture and tradition of the Lepchas were also misguided. The larger ecological concern did not get adequate attention.

In several occasions, ACT honestly attempted to build a pan-Sikkim identity, rather than confine itself to an exclusive Lepcha movement, focusing on all the dams in the state. However, the Dzongu region always remained in centre stage. This gave an opportunity to the pro-dam lobby, (including the government) to project it as the movement of the Lepchas, only for the protection of Dzongu. This is not to say that the people from outside Dzongu did not sympathise with or participate in the movement, rather the point is that because of such an image, the movement could not take a mass character. It was restricted to the north of Sikkim, and to some extent, to the east as the capital is situated there. The south and west Sikkim largely remained out of its reach. In addition, the alienation was complete when ACT tried to garner support from the Lepchas residing outside Sikkim, especially in the Darjeeling district of West Bengal. Lepchas of Darjeeling even conducted a march to their magistrates office in Darjeeling to express their solidarity with ACT on 30 July 2007. But these cost ACT dearly. However, ACT did not vanish altogether; activities suffered greatly.

Here the most important matter is not about a particular movement. The larger issue is the protection of these young Himalayan ranges, which are highly seismic and vulnerable as well as fragile in various ways. For the ordinary people of Sikkim, nobody has to explain the meaning of these scientific terms; they have learned to live with occasional tremors. It does not make national news unless there is a big quake like the one that occurred on 18 September 2011. When the peoples representatives fail to understand the implications of the larger projects in this region, when they fail to act, then the people are the answer. Street is the metaphor! This aspect is missing from the political discourse of Sikkim now. The impact of these massive landslips, deforestation and destruction of the river banks will not be restricted to this region alone. This is not rhetoric.
Osteoporosis affects millions of patients around the world and is characterised by a reduction of bone strength that results in increased rates of fractures. The irreversible mechanical behaviour of bone is currently well characterised at the organ level. The behaviour of mineralised collagen fibres, bones fundamental building block, remains a challenge for researchers. This weekend, scientists from Heriot-Watt University (United Kingdom), University of Bern, Empa (both in Switzerland), the CNRS and University Grenoble Alpes (France) and the ESRF will try to unveil those properties.

I arrive at the beamline to find five scientists glued to the screens, in a passionate discussion in three different languages, French, English and German. One of the screens shows the beam, while another one shows the in situ microindentation instrument developed by the team and the ESRF to study the samples, in this case mineralised collagen fibrils (which make up fibre in bones). It is Friday morning and there is a long weekend ahead of a hopefully successful experiment. This is only the beginning.

The team. First row next to the desk, from bottom up: Jakob Schwiedrzik, Michael Sztucki, Aurelien Gourrier. Back row, from bottom up, Alexander Groetsch, Uwe Wolfram.

It is the very first time we use this indenter in a diffraction beamline, so we need some time to set it all up and the samples are quite costly, explains Uwe Wolfram, leader of the group, from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh (UK). Each specimen, originating from tendon and 6 times 12 m in size, is priceless due to the expensive preparation techniques and the long preparation time. No one has previously managed to provide insight into the irreversible mechanical properties of mineralised collagen fibrils with such a unique experimental setup because there was no way of studying them without having interference on to the results due to porosity, cracks, and other existing heterogenities in bones structure-mechanics hierarchy.

The indenter.

The indenter combined with the unique capabilities of ID13 overcomes this difficulty and allows the study of fibrils of 100 nanometres diametre. It applies load to the samples to study the stiffness and strength of an individual fibre. Combining this with Small Angle X-ray Scattering (SAXS) and Wide Angle X-ray Diffraction (WAXD) measurements on ID13 should show the deformations in the collagen network (SAXS) and in the mineral platelets (SAXS/WAXD). The indenter has been specifically developed through a European collaboration of the four institutes in the UK, Switzerland and France, as well as the ESRF. It would not have been possible to be here today if we hadnt worked all together in the last year, it has been a very important joint effort, explains Wolfram.

The team intends to study the fibrils with the indenter. Ultimately, the researchers expect to be able to contribute to the development of personalised treatment and diagnoses strategies for bone-related illnesses or even engineering of bones artificially.

Text by Montserrat Capellas Espuny
LEIGH  Eugene Goering brought a couple of 3- to 4-feet-tall soybean plants to his presentation Thursday at Leigh High School.

One student in the ag mechanics and leadership class said the soybeans seemed taller than what's grown on his family's farm. But other than that, they looked like any other beans.

The plants were actually high-oleic soybeans that can produce more soybean oil than the standard bean. This is the first year these beans were available in Nebraska and Goering, a member of the Nebraska Soybean Board, decided to give them a try.

I jumped in because Im on the soybean board and it wouldnt hurt to do it, the Platte Center-area farmer said.

DuPont Pioneer is the only seed provider for high-oleic beans in Nebraska and most of the 45,000 acres dedicated to the crop are centered around Hastings, which has the only processing plant that will take the new variety.

But representatives of DuPont Pioneer and the soybean board are hoping to see that acreage number grow.

Stephen Hoff, an account manager at DuPont Pioneer, said 450,000 acres nationwide are dedicated to growing high-oleic soybeans, but he hopes to see that figure double next year.

The selling point is that while the high-oleic seeds cost the same as standard soybeans, producers receive a 45-cent premium per bushel on the selling price. With commodity prices as low as they are, that could make the difference between losing money and breaking even.

The benefit for the food industry is that the oil has zero grams of trans fat and less saturated fat than conventional soybean oil. Anecdotally, Goerings wife, Sheila, a cook at Traditions Inn, said its a lighter oil that handles high temperatures well.

Goering said hes also heard from a Chick-fil-A manager who switched to high-oleic oil and saw less of a mess in the fryer, and less staff turnover, because of it.

He said every time they have to clean the fry cooker, they lose someone, Goering said.

When asked about contamination precautions, Goering said as long as the combine and trailer are empty to start out, the beans should be within the percentage of accepted contamination.

Don Tyser, an ag instructor and FFA adviser, also asked if the soybeans are considered a genetically modified organism, or GMO, and how that might affect exports.

On GMOs, Hoff said, Its touchy.

Laura Wolf, an associate at the public relations firm Osborn Barr, which manages communications for the United Soybean Board, said neither DuPont Pioneer's nor Monsantos high-oleic beans have full export approval. Both companies have submitted applications, but approval in China and the European Union is pending.

And that is all politics, Wolf said.

For now, high-oleic soybeans are only being grown on a contractual basis. Wolf said once the product is cleared for export or picked up by a large chain restaurant, acreage should expand. In the meantime, enough oil needs to be produced to meet that demand, should it arise.

Its a chicken-or-egg situation, Wolf said.

Proponents are still trying to spread the word.

Goody bags given to the Leigh students included a bag of chips fried in high-oleic soybean oil.

"Pretty good," one student commented.
LINCOLN  Embattled state Sen. Bill Kintner is accusing Omaha Sen. Ernie Chambers of targeting his wife in a rhyming memo circulated around the Capitol this week.

Chambers has authored a dozen such "Kintner-grams" in the weeks since Kintner admitted using his state-owned laptop to have cybersex with a stranger during a trip to Boston last year.

But the latest memo, dated Tuesday, "is a new low," Kintner said in a news release.

The three-page memo includes a vivid dramatization of Kintner's encounter and a blurred-out photo of his wife, Lauren, and questions whether the Papillion senator engaged with the stranger because he was dissatisfied with his "wifey." It also appears to allude to Lauren Kintner's struggle with ovarian cancer.

Bill Kintner accused Chambers of attacking and making fun of his wife and her medical condition.

"This is beyond two politicians arguing over policy or personal differences," Kintner told the Lincoln Journal Star on Thursday. "This is a politician going after another politician's wife."

"I expect Chambers to be a man and apologize to my wife," he said in the news release.

Chambers could not immediately be reached for comment, although he has said his goal with the memo was to portray Lauren Kintner as a victim of her husband's behavior and his refusal to resign from office.

In the memo, Chambers compared Lauren Kintner to other political spouses who "play the role of 'Forgiving Wife.'"

Lauren Kintner is chief policy adviser to Gov. Pete Ricketts, who joined leaders in the Legislature calling for Bill Kintner to step down after the cybersex scandal was made public.

Kintner has refused, saying he apologized to God and his wife, and later to his fellow senators and constituents.

His decision to remain in office has vexed many fellow lawmakers. The Legislature's Executive Board has held two public hearings to weigh responses ranging from punishment to impeachment, and last week issued a letter telling Kintner to resign by Sept. 2 or face consequences.

He again refused to step down before the deadline, but the Executive Board hasn't responded, and canceled a meeting set for this week to discuss the issue.

Chambers, a member of the Executive Board, has said he would be unsatisfied with any action short of removing Kintner from the Legislature.

Kintner and Chambers, outspoken personalities from opposite ends of the political spectrum, have sparred for years. And even before the cybersex scandal, Kintner was a regular target of Chambers' writings.

"I don't particularly read these things," Kintner said Thursday.

Now, he said, "I'm being a man and standing up for my wife, and that's the right thing to do."
A study led by Loyola Medicine researchers found that female triathletes are at higher risk for pelvic floor disorders, among other health issues.

The study, published in Female Pelvic Medicine and Reconstructive Surgery, found that female triathletes suffered from a high rate of stress urinary and anal incontinence.

"We expected the high rates of urinary incontinence, but did not expect to find such high rates of anal incontinence," said senior author, Colleen Fitzgerald, MD, MS. Dr. Fitzgerald is the medical director of the Chronic Pelvic Pain program and an associate professor in the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine.

"These findings generate a new question as to address the mechanism of injury for why this is occurring, whether it is metabolic or digestive, or due to prolonged impact on the pelvic floor from biking or other unexplained causes," Dr. Fitzgerald said.

Researchers conducted an internet survey of 311 self-identified female triathletes. Results showed a significant prevalence of pelvic floor disorders, with urinary incontinences (37.4 percent) and anal incontinence (28.0 percent) being the most common.

Urgency urinary incontinence (16.0 percent) and pelvic organ prolapse (5.0 percent) were less common. Pelvic girdle pain was noted in 18 percent of these triathletes, but was not indicated as disabling or preventing exercise.

Nearly a quarter of respondents also screened positive for at least one arm of the female athlete triad, a condition characterized by decreased energy, menstrual irregularities and abnormal bone density from excessive exercise and inadequate nutrition.

Loyola researchers conducted a similar study on female athletes in 2014, focusing on runners. In that study, researchers found a similarly high percentage of women complained of urinary incontinence symptoms. The goal of this study was to expand on previous results, incorporating the low impact sport of swimming.

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Along with Fitzgerald, co-authors on the study were Johnny Yi, MD, FACOG, then a urogynecology fellow at Loyola and now with Mayo Clinic Arizona, Sandi Tenfelde, PhD, RN, APN, Dina Tell, PhD, and Cynthia Brincat, MD, PhD, FACOG.

"Our goal of this study was not to deter triathletes from participating in their training," Dr. Fitzgerald said. "Exercise in all forms can be healthy and should be encouraged. However, we would recommend that if women are bothered by these symptoms, they should seek medical care from a urogynecologist or female pelvic reconstructive surgery specialist."
Picture a little boy imitating his father shaving in the mirror or a little girl wobbling proudly in her mother's high heels.

From infancy, we learn by watching other people, then use those memories to help us predict outcomes and make decisions in the future. Now a UCLA-Caltech study has pinpointed the individual neurons in the brain that support observational learning.

Published this week in Nature Communications, the findings could provide scientists with a better understanding of how the brain goes awry in conditions like learning disorders and social anxiety disorder.

In a secondary finding, the research team also discovered that neurons in the same region fire in response to schadenfreude -- the pleasure of seeing someone else make a blunder or lose a game.

"Observational learning is the cornerstone for our ability to change behavior," said senior author Dr. Itzhak Fried, a professor of neurosurgery and psychiatry at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. "It's human nature to want to learn from other people's mistakes rather than commit your own."

Said lead author Michael Hill, a former UCLA and California Institute of Technology scientist now based at the Swiss National Science Foundation: "The ability to quickly learn from others can give humans a critical edge over other species. The skill also contributes to someone feeling he or she is a member of one culture versus another."

Prior to the study, Fried implanted electrodes deep inside the brains of people with epilepsy being treated at UCLA -- a standard medical procedure used to identify the origins of epileptic seizures prior to surgery. The researchers used the electrodes to record the activity of individual neurons in the brains of 10 people playing a card game.

Players were instructed to draw a card from one of two decks. One deck included 70 percent of the winning cards, while the other deck contained only 30 percent of the winning cards. Each person took turns choosing cards on his or her own and then watched two other players draw cards from the same decks. By learning from the results of their own and the other players' choices, the participants quickly zeroed in on the deck containing better cards.

The research team was surprised to discover that individual neurons deep in the frontal lobe reacted as the patient considered whether they or their opponents would pick a winning card. Called the anterior cingulate cortex, the region plays an important role in high-level functions like decision making, reward anticipation, social interaction and emotion.

"The firing rate of individual neurons altered according to what the patient expected to happen," Hill said. "For example, would their opponents win or lose? The same cells also changed their response after the patient discovered whether their prediction was on target, reflecting their learning process."

The findings suggest that individual nerve cells in the person's brain used the details gleaned by observing the other players to calculate which deck to choose a card from next.

"The anterior cingulate cortex acts as the central executive of human decision-making, yet we know little about the neuronal machinery at this level," said Fried, who is also a professor of neurosurgery at the Sackler Faculty of Medicine at Tel Aviv University.

According to the authors, the findings will help scientists better understand the organization of neurons in the anterior cingulate cortex and exactly what they do.

Fried and Hill propose that active stimulation of the neurons in the anterior cingulate cortex could influence human behavior and have possible benefits for people struggling with learning disabilities or difficulty reading social cues.

The researchers observed that the cells in the same region fired vigorously each time a person won or the other players lost, and decreased their activity whenever the person lost or the other players won.

"While obviously we don't know precisely what it is that these neurons encode, it's fascinating to see something like schadenfreude reflected in the activity of individual neurons in the human brain," Hill said.

Coauthor Erie Boorman, who contributed to the research while at the California Institute of Technology and the University of Oxford, is now an assistant professor at UC Davis.

The research was supported by grants from the Swiss National Science Foundation, the G. Harold & Leila Y. Mathers Foundation and the Wellcome Trust.

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With three new detectors coming online in the next several years, scientists are confident they will collect enough geoneutrino data to measure Earth's fuel level

Earth requires fuel to drive plate tectonics, volcanoes and its magnetic field. Like a hybrid car, Earth taps two sources of energy to run its engine: primordial energy from assembling the planet and nuclear energy from the heat produced during natural radioactive decay. Scientists have developed numerous models to predict how much fuel remains inside Earth to drive its engines -- and estimates vary widely -- but the true amount remains unknown.

In a new paper, a team of geologists and neutrino physicists boldly claims it will be able to determine by 2025 how much nuclear fuel and radioactive power remain in the Earth's tank. The study, authored by scientists from the University of Maryland, Charles University in Prague and the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, was published on September 9, 2016, in the journal Nature Scientific Reports.

"I am one of those scientists who has created a compositional model of the Earth and predicted the amount of fuel inside Earth today," said one of the study's authors William McDonough, a professor of geology at the University of Maryland. "We're in a field of guesses. At this point in my career, I don't care if I'm right or wrong, I just want to know the answer."

To calculate the amount of fuel inside Earth by 2025, the researchers will rely on detecting some of the tiniest subatomic particles known to science -- geoneutrinos. These antineutrino particles are byproducts of nuclear reactions within stars (including our sun), supernovae, black holes and human-made nuclear reactors. They also result from radioactive decay processes deep within the Earth.

Detecting antineutrinos requires a huge detector the size of a small office building, housed about a mile underground to shield it from cosmic rays that could yield false positive results. Inside the detector, scientists detect antineutrinos when they crash into a hydrogen atom. The collision produces two characteristic light flashes that unequivocally announce the event. The number of events scientists detect relates directly to the number of atoms of uranium and thorium inside the Earth. And the decay of these elements, along with potassium, fuels the vast majority of the heat in the Earth's interior.

To date, detecting antineutrinos has been painfully slow, with scientists recording only about 16 events per year from the underground detectors KamLAND in Japan and Borexino in Italy. However, researchers predict that three new detectors expected to come online by 2022--the SNO+ detector in Canada and the Jinping and JUNO detectors in China--will add 520 more events per year to the data stream.

"Once we collect three years of antineutrino data from all five detectors, we are confident that we will have developed an accurate fuel gauge for the Earth and be able to calculate the amount of remaining fuel inside Earth," said McDonough.

The new Jinping detector, which will be buried under the slopes of the Himalayas, will be four times bigger than existing detectors. The underground JUNO detector near the coast of southern China will be 20 times bigger than existing detectors.

"Knowing exactly how much radioactive power there is in the Earth will tell us about Earth's consumption rate in the past and its future fuel budget," said McDonough. "By showing how fast the planet has cooled down since its birth, we can estimate how long this fuel will last."

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In addition to McDonough, UMD geology graduate student Scott Wipperfurth also contributed to this study.

This research was supported by the National Science Foundation (Award Nos. EAR 1068097 and EAR 1067983), and by Fundamental Research Grants for Central Public Research Organizations, Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences (Award No. YYWF201623). The content of this article does not necessarily reflect the views of these organizations.

The research paper, "Revealing the Earth's mantle from the tallest mountains using the Jinping Neutrino Experiment," Ond?ej Sramek, Bed?ich Roskovec, Scott A. Wipperfurth, Yufei Xi, and William McDonough, was published online September 9, 2016 in the journal Nature Scientific Reports.
The world's best-selling insecticide may impair the ability of a queen honey bee and her subjects to maintain a healthy colony, says new research led by a University of Nebraska-Lincoln entomologist.

The research examined the effects of imidacloprid, which belongs to a popular class of nicotine-based insecticides known as neonicotinoids. Honey bees often become exposed to neonicotinoids in the process of pollinating crops and ornamental plants while foraging for the nectar and pollen that feed their colonies.

Queen bees in colonies that were fed imidacloprid-laced syrup laid substantially fewer eggs -- between one-third and two-thirds as many, depending on the dose of imidacloprid -- than queens in unexposed colonies, the study reported.

"The queens are of particular importance because they're the only reproductive individual laying eggs in the colony," said lead author Judy Wu-Smart, assistant professor of entomology. "One queen can lay up to 1,000 eggs a day. If her ability to lay eggs is reduced, that is a subtle effect that isn't (immediately) noticeable but translates to really dramatic consequences for the colony."

Wu-Smart and her colleague, the University of Minnesota's Marla Spivak, assessed colonies populated by 1,500, 3,000 and 7,000 honey bees. Some colonies received normal syrup, with others given syrup that contained imidacloprid in doses of 10, 20, 50 and 100 parts per billion, or PPB.

Colonies that consumed the imidacloprid also featured larger proportions of empty cells, the signature hexagonal hollows that serve as cribs for honey bee broods. About 10 percent of cells in the unexposed colonies were vacant, compared with 24, 31, and 48 percent of the 20, 50 and 100 PPB colonies, respectively. The finding suggests poor brood health in the exposed colonies, Wu-Smart said.

The researchers further found that exposed colonies collected and stored far less pollen, which they convert into a "bee bread" that provides crucial protein for recently hatched larvae. While more than four percent of the cells in unexposed hives contained pollen, less than one percent of cells in even the 10 PPB colonies did.

And the honey bee equivalent of biohazard containment - the removal of mite-infested or diseased pupae before they can infect the hive - also suffered. An unexposed colony of 7,000 bees removed more than 95 percent of the ailing brood, but a 100 PPB colony eliminated only 74 percent and a 50 PPB colony just 63 percent. Wu-Smart said this reduction in hygienic behavior indicates that the exposed colonies could be more susceptible to pests and pathogens.

Yet Wu-Smart and Spivak also discovered that some of the insecticide's apparent effects, such as decreasing the amount of time a queen spent moving through the hive or the number of worker bees foraging for food, dissipated as the size of a colony increased.

"What we can say is that smaller colonies tend to be more vulnerable, because the queens are more likely to become exposed," Wu-Smart said. "When we look at our general beekeeping practices, the early spring is when colonies are at their smallest size. They're coming out of winter, and a lot of them are naturally smaller."

Unfortunately, Wu-Smart said, growers typically apply insecticides or sow insecticide-treated seeds at that same time. Even imidacloprid-treated crops that bees typically do not pollinate, such as corn, can contribute to exposure when winds sweep up the dust stirred by planting machines and carry it across miles of landscape. That dust can settle in willow trees, dandelions, clovers and other flowering plants that represent food sources for honey bees.

Though Wu-Smart said she doesn't consider banning neonicotinoids a practical step in protecting honey bee colonies, she did advocate for regulating insecticide-treated seeds the same way the industry does with sprays and other application techniques.

"When you spray a pesticide, you have to consider things like wind and temperature to reduce drift," she said. "You can't aerial-spray on a windy day. With seed-treated products, there is no label telling (growers) that it's been treated with an insecticide. There is no restriction as to when you can plant.

"When we do a lot of the extension outreach and talking to growers, many of them are unaware that this is even a problem. So just having that label on the bag saying that planting these seed treatments on a windy day could potentially cause some effects on bees could be useful."

The new study represents another step toward understanding the complex, often intertwined ways that neonicotinoids and other insecticides affect honey bee colonies, Wu-Smart said.

"What we're seeing now is that beekeepers will ... check their hives, say that the hives look good, come back a few weeks later, and (see) the colony start to look really weak," she said. "They'll come back (again), and the colony is dead or dying. So it's a slow decline of their colony health.

"In many of these cases, we want to figure out why these colonies are dwindling when they should be at their peak production. This is providing some of that insight. It's not answering all the questions, but it's definitely something to consider."

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Wu-Smart and Spivak published their findings in the journal Scientific Reports. The research was supported in part by a fellowship Wu-Smart received from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Have you heard of Pythagoras's idea regarding the main components of mathematics? According to Pythagoras, mathematics consists of four main components called MATEMs, namely arithmetic, geometry, harmonics and spherics. Unfortunately, the MATEM of harmonics was lost in the process of historical development of mathematics.

The question arises: how was the MATEM of harmonics reflected in Euclid's Elements? This question is answered by the Proclus hypothesis, which was formulated in the 5th Century (A.D.) by outstanding Greek philosopher, Proclus, who was also one of the best commentators of Euclid's Elements. By analysing the Euclidean Elements, Proclus drew attention to the fact that Euclidean Elements began with the "golden section" (Proposition II.11) and ended with Platonic solids, which were associated with the "Harmony of Universe" in Plato's cosmology. This observation led him to the conclusion that Euclid wrote his Elements with the goal to create the geometric theory of Platonic solids. This means that the basis idea of Euclid's Elements is the mathematical simulation of the Harmony of the Universe, based on Platonic solids. Thus Euclidean Elements can be regarded, historically, the first mathematical theory of the Harmony of the Universe.

The "Golden" Non-Euclidean Geometry: Hilbert's Fourth Problem, "Golden" Dynamical Systems, and the Fine-Structure Constant along with its prequel The Mathematics of Harmony: From Euclid to Contemporary Mathematics and Computer Science seek to restore the MATEM of harmonics in modern mathematics. They go back to ancient mathematics and affect our idea of the development of the history of mathematics, starting from Pythagoras, Plato and Euclid, in unexpected ways.

Famous German scientist Professor Volkmar Weiss commented that the prequel was 'a breakthrough' and that it 'may well change not only the way we view the history of mathematics, but the future development of mathematics in its application to the natural sciences and computer design'.

For those interested in the development of modern science and mathematics, this sequel to the highly praised The Mathematics of Harmony is not to be missed.

The "Golden" Non-Euclidean Geometry outputs the initial concept on the level of scientific Millennium Problems. In essence, it opens a new stage in the development of non-Euclidean geometry. In contrast to classical non-Euclidean geometry, the principle of self-similarity, which is used by Nature in the development of natural structures, is embodied in the "Golden" non-Euclidean geometry.

This book retails at US$118 / 98 (hardback). More information can be found at http://www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/9603.

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About the Authors

Alexey Stakhov is a Ukrainian mathematician who has lived in Canada since 2004. Stakhov obtained his Doctorate in Computer Science in 1972 and his Professorship in 1974. He is the author of over 500 publications and 14 books. He is also the creator of many original theories in mathematics and computer science including algorithmic measurement theory, the mathematics of harmony, and codes of the golden p-proportions; and holds 65 international patents. In 2009, Stakhov was awarded the Certificate of Honour and the medal of "Knight of Science and Art" by the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences. Together with Aranson, they were the first awardees of the Commemorative Medal of Leonardo Fibonacci.

Samuil Aranson is a prominent Russian mathematician who lives in the USA. He is a Doctor of Physical-Mathematical Sciences (in differential equations, geometry and topology), Professor, Honored Worker of Science of Russia, and Academician of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences. He has authored more than 200 scientific works, including monographs that were published in Russia, USA, Germany and other countries. In 2016, the Euro Chamber awarded Aranson the Golden Medal for outstanding achievements in science. Together with Stakhov, they were the first awardees of the Commemorative Medal of Leonardo Fibonacci.

About World Scientific Publishing Co.

World Scientific Publishing is a leading independent publisher of books and journals for the scholarly, research, professional and educational communities. The company publishes about 600 books annually and about 130 journals in various fields. World Scientific collaborates with prestigious organizations like the Nobel Foundation, US National Academies Press, as well as its subsidiary, the Imperial College Press, amongst others, to bring high quality academic and professional content to researchers and academics worldwide. To find out more about World Scientific, please visit http://www.worldscientific.com. For more information, contact Amanda Yun at heyun@wspc.com
Since the last two months, journalists in Kashmir have faced numerous problems. Besides being gagged by the state and charged with certain accusations by separatists, journalists have faced physical harassment at the hands of security personnel and enraged mobs.

The valley of Kashmir has been in a state of constant turmoil ever since the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen militant Burhan Wani on July 8. While the use of pellet guns by security forces has led to children, women and men being blinded, stone pelting by protesters has resulted in serious casualties on the side of security personnel.

The media has not been spared either. In July, the government raided and seized the printing press of several newspapers. Printed copies of several newspapers including Kashmir Uzma were confiscated. There were also reports of television cable connections being snapped.

At that time, J&K Education Minister Naeem Akhtar justified the gagging of the press by citing extraordinary circumstances. It is a temporary measure to address an extraordinary situation. In our opinion, there is an emotional lot, very young, out in the field, who get surcharged due to certain projections in the media, which results in multiplication of tragedies, Akhtar had told The Indian Express.

Problems persisted once the ban subsided. Weeks later, the separatists accused the local media of being scared of publishing poster advertisements issued by them. We had issued a paid poster appeal requesting MLAs, MLCs and other pro-India politicians to introspect their conscience and stop acting as a local mask to the Indian brutalities. Everyone agreed to publish it as (poster advertisement) but none of them except Kashmir Reader and Tameel Irshad had dared to publish it, said Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Chairman, Hurriyat Conference.

Meanwhile, the mainstream media also faced troubling accusations. On one hand, channels like Times Now and Zee News were criticized for taking an ultra-nationalist position on the episode, while other news organisations including NDTV were targeted by some for allegedly portraying Burhani Wani as a fallen hero.

If this was not enough, journalists have routinely faced physical intimidation and harassment at the hands of both the security forces and locals. The journalists in Kashmir walk on the razors edge. On one hand the people label us agents for siding with the state and not telling the truth and showing the real picture, while on the other hand the government forces rough up and harass us, labelling us Pakistan or Hurriyat sympathisers who are adding fuel to the deteriorating situation, wrote Daanish bin Nabi of Rising Kashmir for The Wire.

While his female colleague Sumaiya Yosouf was beaten-up by an IPS officer, he along with two photojournalists faced the ire of a local mob at a city hospital in Srinagar. When exchange4media asked Muzamil Jaleel about the precautions that journalists were taking in the heated atmosphere, he replied that there are no precautions at such a place.

It depends on situation to situation. If you are in the middle of a protest then you cant do anything. Two of our local press photographers in Kashmir were hit by pellet guns, said Jaleel, Deputy Editor & Kashmir Bureau Chief at The Indian Express.

Author and journalist David Devadas felt that Kashmir was in a war-like situation heading towards further dangerous times. I really dont know what precautions journalists can take except be cautious, he said.

He highlighted the need for journalists to come together as a community to support and express solidarity with fellow journalists operating in the valley. In places like New Delhi, pressure should be put on the government to allow journalists to visit places in Kashmir and write what they want to because in situations like these there is a subtle intimidation, he added.

But an imminent solution is not likely. Both the Press Council of India and Editors Guild of India had told the government that what is happening is not apt, said Prakash Dubey, Group Editor, Dainik Bhaskar & Member, Press Council of India.

I am hopeful that in the next meeting of PCI, we will have a discussion on this subject, he emphasized. However, what remains to be seen is how constructively dialogue will translate into substantial actions on the ground so as to safeguard the lives of people in Kashmir including journalists.

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Expat parents seeking the best university choice for their offspring should look to the United States and the UK, with institutions from both countries dominating the latest international rankings.For the fifth year in the row MIT in Boston is ranked top in the annual QS World University Rankings report, followed by Stanford in second place and Harvard in third. It is the first time that the US has held the top three places since 2004.  In fourth place is Cambridge, one of the UKs top universities and the country also has Oxford in sixth place, University College London in seventh place and Imperial College London in ninth. California Institute of Technology is in fifth and University of Chicago in 10th. The only other country in the top 10 is Switzerland with ETH Zurich in eighth place.Overall the winners this year in terms of moving up the rankings are South Korea, Russian, the United States and China, while the fallers include Western and Southern Europe, South Africa and Latin America.According to the report it is investment in higher education that makes the difference. Indeed, South Korea now has 16 universities in the top 500 compared to just 13 last year and China continues to progress with Tsinghua at 24 rising to its highest ever position.National University of Singapore in 12th remains the leading Asian university and Australia and Canada have increased their representation in the top 200, with nine universities apiece, one more than last year.Latin America has struggled but gets its first top 100 place with the Universidad de Buenos Aires at 85, the highest rank ever achieved by a university from the region.This years rankings imply that levels of investment are determining who progresses and who regresses. Institutions in countries that provide high levels of targeted funding, whether from endowments or from the public purse, are rising, said Ben Sowter, head of research at QS.On the other hand, some Western European nations making or proposing cuts to public research spending are losing ground to their US and Asian counterparts, he added.Some 74,651 academics and 37,781 employers contributed to the rankings through the QS global surveys, the largest of their kind. QS analysed 10.3 million research papers and 66.3 million citations and over 3,800 institutions were considered for inclusion and 916 were ranked for 81 countries.There are 33 countries featured in the top 200. The United States dominates with 48 institutions, ahead of the UK with 30, the Netherlands 12, Germany 11, Canada and Australia both have nine, Japan eight, China seven and France, Sweden and Hong Kong all have five.
gzstudio said: How many payslips do you usually provide as proof of employment?

Is 3-4 payslips per year enough? Click to expand...

The more you provide, the more good for you. However, give each per Q1,Q2,Q3,Q4.Like Mar,June,Sep,Dec. This will give them an idea that your are employed through out the year.




1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.

2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.

3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.

4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.

5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.

6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.

7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.

8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.

9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.

10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.

11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)

12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.

13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.

14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.

15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.

16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.

17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.

18. Gain control of all student newspapers.

19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.

20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.

21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.

22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."

23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."

24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.

25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.

26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."

27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."

28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."

29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.

30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."

31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.

32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.

33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.

34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.

36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.

37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.

38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.

39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.

40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.

41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.

42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.

43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.

44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.

45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
Unable to determine why my application in ineligible



Hello,



I posted my data after creating account on the Canadian immigration website for Express Entry program and it says that I am not eligible. It further states that I do not meet the minimum entry criteria.



These are my stats:

10 years of full time work experience in IT sector as Support engineer and manager.

I put in my work experience under code 0213 and 2171, and in the primary occupation I selected 0213.

I have Masters degree in computers (which isn't assessed yet). I checked on the WES site and it says that my degree is equivalent to Canada's master's degree.

Overall 8 score in IELTS: S-7.5, R-9, L-7.5, W-7.5.

I do not have any canadian job offer.

I am below 35 years.



I calculated my score manually and it comes out to 70, so I am unable to understand why the ineligible message. On the application status page it gives no clue as to which sub-area may have marked my profile as ineligible. Is there a way to find out so I can then rectify if possible?



Thanks.
Yes, although my case was somewhat unusual initially due to my pluri-nationality and had no carte de sejour. You will need to get a record of your driving history from the relevant authority for your State (get this for as long as possible because it will be used as the basis of how long you've been a licensed driver, given the year of gaining your original licence does not appear on Aussie licences). I had to get both the history and my licence translated, but check with your Prefecture re the actual documentation you require - no point paying for translations if they are not required. And, of course, a copy of your passport and IIRC proof of address and evidence of the date you arrived.
An "internship" in French is a "stage" - and to do a stage in France, you need to be a student in an academic program that requires a stage as part of the program.



A convention de stage is basically a contract between three parties - the employer, the student (or the "stagiere") and the school in which the student is registered. The contract outlines what the school requires from the stage so that it will count toward the student's academic program.

Cheers,

Bev
Good morning, I'm looking for someone near L'Aquila, Italy...my son is in the hospital there and has no phone. I need help getting someone to physically go there with a phone, IPad, Kindle...something so he can communicate with us. He borrowed a phone long enough to let us know he is in the hospital and they are not letting him make calls...

Can anyone help?
Looking for info if anyone has experience form student visa to marriage visa or permeant visa.



I have been on a student visa for over a year. I am starting to wonder if there is a conversation for student to marriage? If there is does anyone have any knowledge on this?



I am aware of the student visa requirements same with the PR visa though I am unaware or cannot find into about switching between. Do the requirements act as if I was doing the same as PR? I am also wondering if the visa will have to be shown fresh? I get money monthly from vet affairs. I am as well 27 if that plays any part in the mix. I would as well like to know if I should be saving up for credit reasons. My credit is not the best (USMC what did you expect? I as well was wondering if anyone has done something similar to this at any time? If anyone has experience or could guide me a bit? I am the do it yourself kind of guy though a bit of help once and awhile is always good. Is there anything you think I should check with her or ask around about?



Currently in Bataan 70% with IU 100% with P&T going to school to hold current visa. Let me know guys <3
Thursday, September 8, 2016

Attract the Right Job or Clientele: Break this Bad Habit to produce Improved Results

Have you ever been so busy with your own work that your mind shut out new ideas? Being in the present moment holds much merit for most occasions. This is especially true for sales and the job hunt.

An open frame of mind will open more doors.

My Story

This week I worked with another company to provide insight on the latest social media strategies. Algorithms and services are continually changing for the varied platforms. Coursework was developed to provide the most current information. It proved to be very thorough.

One student arrived with very different ideas in mind. She shut out the newer concepts.

Perspective

When disappointment hits, an improved approach is to stop and take a deep breath. Next, prepare to develop understanding of an entirely different perspective. There are lessons to be learned from unexpected situations.

By possessing an open mindset to listen and learn, new possibilities open up. Added emphasis is to listen and learn from those who think differently from you. It widens perspective and your ability to produce even more.

Possibility

For salespeople, its the full pipeline of possibility that allows sales to flow naturally. The person who owns an open mind to listen, observe, and ask questions is the one who will advance further and more quickly. Job candidates who apply this principle to interviews will be more likely to get the job.

[embedded content]

Your Story

Can you recall a time when you expected one outcome but it turned out to be very different? Think back to how you responded. Did you accept circumstances to move forward or did you mentally fight the situation? In either case, how did those around you react?

When events do not turn out as expected, and you feel disappointment, its best to ask questions. The first step is to figure out where the initial disconnect occurred, and then:

Come to an understanding with the people involved why this was the case.

Consider whether a new improved outcome may potentially be seen.

Come to agreement for an acceptable solution.

Moral of the Story

By taking the high road in trying to work with the people involved, you maintain a highly professional image. Whether or not you are able to turn the situation to a good conclusion, your demeanor precedes future business. You are your brand. Those witnessing your actions will take note and proceed accordingly.

Sales Tips:

Maintain a calm demeanor in public. Stop for a moment when the unexpected occurs. Allow the unexpected situation to unfold Ask questions as to how events developed Determine if there is room to learn something new Listen to those involved with the activity to learn more Hear out novel ideas to gain a wider scope Add to the conversation where you may Seek out unexpected opportunities Build up your sales pipeline

Smooth Sale! Following these guidelines will lead you to the

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Welcome to the News Release Wire Selection Control Panel.

Instant News Wire
San Antonio manufacturing leaders met with U.S. Commerce Department officials Thursday as part of a federal grant program that doles out money for regional labor training.

San Antonio stands out as among the best of 24 designated U.S. regions involved in a three-year federal program promoting collaboration between private corporations, local governments and universities to help bridge the labor shortage by training area workers, said Jay Williams, Commerce assistant secretary, who led the Commerce Department team.

San Antonio was among 12 areas designated last year for the departments Investing in Manufacturing Communities Partnership program after failing to make the first round in 2014.

San Antonio won its designation through efforts organized by the Alamo Manufacturing Partnership, comprised of more than 20 organizations, mainly economic development groups.

A pool of about $1.3 billion in federal job-training grants was set aside for the Commerce Department program, which gives the two dozen areas chances to gain grant preference and priorities based on their level of collaboration to best leverage regional resources, said Julie Wenah, a Commerce Department counselor and policy adviser.

No grant announcements were made Thursday.

Williams said the Obama administration has only a few months left to encourage regional collaborations to boost U.S. manufacturing.

Its inspiring to come here and to see how productive the engagement has been, he said. We want to leave communities in better shape than when we came in. We still have work to do.

Presentations to Williams and his team were made by representatives of the Alamo Manufacturing Partnership, Alamo Colleges, the Workforce Solutions Alamo, SA Works, Toyota Motor Manufacturing Texas, the Center for Applied Science and Technology and other organizations.

Some of the Alamo Manufacturing Partnerships programs include:

The Alamo Colleges Alamo Academies, which are five high-school-to-career programs driven by five industries to create employee pipelines; one of the academies is devoted to advanced manufacturing

Toyotas and Alamo Colleges Advance Manufacturing Technician Program lasting five semesters that gives students training in Toyotas assembly processes at its San Antonio plant through paid internships

Alamo Colleges Technical Institutes Advanced Manufacturing Training Program, which trains incumbent workers at area manufacturing companies to update and upgrade their skills

Voter Guide: What to know for the midterm election Your guide to the Texas and San Antonio races and candidates on the Nov. 8 ballot.

Just in Time, an Alamo Colleges joint project with the San Antonio Manufacturers Association that trains adult workers, including military veterans, for skills certificates leading to manufacturing jobs

SA Works, an H-E-B-led program now housed at the San Antonio Economic Development Foundation that organizes internships and job-shadow events with the help of employers.

Williams, a former Youngstown, Ohio, mayor, said collaboration between these programs and their sponsors has never been higher in the eight-county Alamo Manufacturing Partnership area.

John Dewey, AMP industry liaison, told Williams that retiring workers and a general lack of knowledge of opportunities in manufacturing are hindering the industrys efforts to find skilled workers at a time when manufacturing is becoming more automated and requires more advanced skills.

The Commerce Department team toured the Alamo Academies training sites and the manufacturing site at Pressure Systems International in San Antonio.

dhendricks@express-news.net
San Antonio financial services and insurance company USAA plans to shutter 17 of its 21 financial centers in 10 states and Washington, D.C. next year.

USAA attributed the closings to more of its members using its mobile app and website to conduct financial transactions. More than 1 billion digital transactions were completed by USAA members last year, the company reported.

Only about 2.5 percent of USAAs 11.7 million members, or less than 300,000, use the financial centers, company spokesman Matt Hartwig noted. About 85 percent of the membership lives outside a financial center footprint, he added.

This is really about how do we best serve our members today and in the future when theyre telling us that digital channels are increasingly how they they like to interact with us, Hartwig said. Ninety-nine percent of what you can do in a financial center you can do on the mobile app.

The center closings are expected to occur between April and June. About 140 USAA employees will be affected, but Hartwig said the companys goal is to retain as many as possible for other positions.

This isnt a financial decision, Hartwig said, adding that USAA would not disclose what it cost to open the centers and what it will cost to close them.

Two local offices are among the closings: the centers at the Alamo Ranch Shopping Center at 5619 Loop 1604 and at the Market Forum at 14975 Interstate 35 in Selma. Two other Texas locations, in El Paso and Killeen, also are slated to close.

Hartwig said USAA will be doubling the number of ATMs in the markets where the centers will be closing.

The financial center in the USAA Federal Savings Bank lobby on the companys main San Antonio campus will remain open, along with the three centers operating near the military academies in Annapolis, Maryland; West Point, New York; and Colorado Springs, Colorado, Hartwig said.

USAA launched the financial centers with the opening of the Alamo Ranch location in 2009. At the time, it was considered a pilot program to measure how much USAA customers wanted to talk directly to a service representative about financial products. The 21st center opened earlier this year in Atlanta.

Hartwig said USAAs customers needs have shifted in recent years.

Voter Guide: What to know for the midterm election Your guide to the Texas and San Antonio races and candidates on the Nov. 8 ballot.

In 2009, we were being told by our members that they wanted the face-to-face and brick-and-mortar locations, Hartwig. What they are telling us today is increasingly they prefer the digital channels.

As part of the shift, USAA is providing faster funds availability and access through its mobile app, which allows them to make deposits using their smartphone, the company said in a letter to be sent to members. Hartwig said more improvements are coming to its website.

James Bexley, the Smith-Hutson chair of banking at Sam Houston State University, didnt see USAAs decision to open the centers as a mistake.

I think when they rolled out those centers that was probably the thing to do, and things have changed so much since the financial crisis, Bexley said. There have been so many millennials (who have) come on board. And most of the millennials  really like the electronic stuff.

USAA provides insurance, banking, investments and retirement products to current and former members of the military and their families.

pdanner@express-news.net

Twitter: @AlamoPD
Speaking emotionally about the contributions of Mexican-Americans to the United States, about a dozen professors and activists gathered Thursday at the San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce to oppose a Mexican-American studies high school textbook that the State Board of Education will vote on in November.

Marisa B. Perez, a Democratic board member whose district runs from the San Antonio area to the upper Rio Grande Valley, co-sponsored the forum. Perez said she is one of three board members, out of 15, to publicly oppose the textbook so far, although she hopes a majority of at least eight members will succeed in rejecting the book.

Perez and others objected to the textbook for a number of reasons, including a section on Spanish colonialism that entirely omits the Texas borderlands and a statement that Mexican-Americans were seen as lazy compared to European-American workers.

Industrialists were very driven, competitive men who were always on the clock and continually concerned about efficiency, Perez read, quoting page 248 of the textbook. They were used to their workers putting in a full days work, quietly and obediently, and respecting rules, authority and property. In contrast, Mexican laborers were not reared to put in a full days work so vigorously. There was a cultural attitude of manana, or tomorrow, when it came to high-gear production.

More than half of Texas public school students are Latino, Perez said.

This has no place in the classroom and no place in the hands of our students, she said.

Titled Mexican-American Heritage, the text is the only Mexican-American studies book to come before the board since it approved an elective high school ethnic studies course. The textbook was published by Momentum Instruction, a company run by a former board member, Cynthia Dunbar.

If the book is approved, school districts are not required to use it and can instead buy other materials that cover at least 50 percent of the states curricular requirements, Perez said. The process of approving another Mexican-American studies textbook will take at least five years, she said.

To reach the public comment period, Mexican-American Heritage won approval from a committee that reviews textbooks for alignment with state curriculum standards.

Were going to have a fight, Perez said. Weve seen form letters come across our desk as well in support of the textbook.

Opponents are gearing up for a rally against the textbook Tuesday in Austin. The board will likely hold hearings on the book next week and in November before a vote on adoption.

Ramiro Cavazos, president and CEO of the Hispanic Chamber, said Ricardo Romo, outgoing president of the University of Texas at San Antonio, was his Mexican-American studies professor in 1980 at the UT-Austin.

Never would I have thought that in 2016, I would have to go to a rally ... to reject a textbook that clearly is an insult to our heritage and to our Mexican-American community, Cavazos said.

amalik@express-news.net
Midwest spinach production explained in detail

Learn how spinach performs in the Midwest and seasonal considerations in a new publication from ISU.
Grove Cottage, the home to Bishops Stortford Mencap, is proud to be celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.

As part of the celebrations, it is hosting a prestigious art exhibition, Animal Magic from 24 September  8 October at the Rhodes Centre, Bishops Stortford, Hertfordshire, with donations from two leading international artists Robert Dowling and Gerry Jones.

The range of photographs and paintings of rare breeds and exotic animals will then go under the hammer via an online public auction (that runs from 24 Sept -25 October).

Robert Dowling is the award-winning film director and photographer whose iconic images such as the Esso tiger, Lloyds Bank black horse and Jaguars jaguar have captured the publics attention for years.

Girgentana goat

His brother-in-law Gerry Jones striking paintings are inspired by his lifelong interest in the natural world and the stunning scenery, wildlife and vibrant colours of his travels.

Gerry Jones, said: Grove Cottage is a special charity which Robert and I are delighted to support; it is very well respected locally for its tremendous work supporting people with learning disabilities and their families."

"We hope that people will dig deep to bid online and help this fantastic little organisation  we wish it every success.

Art competition aimed at children

Linked to the exhibition, Grove Cottage is holding an art competition during the summer inviting members of the public, particularly children to submit a painting, drawing or photograph of an animal.

Winners will see their pieces hang alongside the professional work in the Animal Magic exhibition and artists signed prints of their art will also be auctioned by Sworders.

Natalie Trapmore, fundraising at Grove Cottage, said: We are thrilled to be able to host this exhibition and most grateful that Robert and Gerry, artists of such repute are so generously donating their exceptional art.

"We are really looking forward to seeing the works entered in the competition and adding to the already inspiring collection to auction."

"Our thanks go to the Rhodes Centre for hosting the Animal Magic exhibition, sponsors Mullucks Wells, Art House International, Hippo Screen Printers and were also indebted to Sworders for hosting the online timed auction, such an effective online fundraising platform."

"All the proceeds will make a real difference to the families we support.
Beekeepers have been warned to notice the signs and symptoms of detrimental bee diseases, in order to protect their hives.

Much of the food on our plates is there thanks, in one way or another, to the humble honey bee.

Tom Williamson, Senior Bee Health Inspector for the Northern Ireland government, explains how to inspect a frame of brood for signs of brood disease

As well as playing a vital role in pollinating crops they also help sustain the countryside, and provide useful wax and honey.

"Beekeepers play a key role in keeping their bees healthy and in the early identification of diseases," explained Northern Ireland's DAERAs Senior Bee Inspector Tom Williamson.

American foulbrood disease

"However they should also ensure that their management practices do not risk the health of their bees.

"Disease can be spread from hive to hive by swapping frames, using hive tools and gloves soiled with propolis and wax, which can contain bacteria and spores the human eye cannot detect.

"As autumn approaches we are urging beekeepers to check their colonies for any abnormalities and be vigilant for the symptoms of two bacterial diseases, in particular American foulbrood (AFB) and European foulbrood (EFB), which we have found in an increasing number of colonies recently.

European foulbrood disease

"These diseases, which kill the bee larvae within the hive, can result in colonies being compulsorily destroyed. Good management practices should be adopted to stop or reduce the spread of infection and ensure hives and apiaries are protected."

Helping to identify diseases

The government has been hosting practical bee disease identification workshops to help beekeepers develop their skills in identifying brood diseases.

Commenting on the workshops, Christina Bradley of the Northern Ireland Beekeepers said: "The aim is to train the participants in recognising brood disease so that they then can be called upon to help other beekeepers identify problems.

"The hope is that beekeepers who are more knowledgeable in recognising brood disease can then aid others in detecting brood disease in their colonies."

American foulbrood is caused by a spore forming bacterium called Paenibacillus larvae.

These spores are the infective stage of the disease and infection begins when food contaminated with spores are fed to larvae by the nurse bees.

Once in the gut of the larva the spores germinate, bacteria move into the larval tissues, where they multiply enormously.

Infected larvae normally die after the cell is sealed and millions of infective spores form in their remains. P. larvae spores remain viable for many years.

They are very resistant to extremes of hot and cold, and to many disinfectants.

European foulbrood is caused by the bacterium Melissococcus plutonius.

Larvae become infected by consuming contaminated food fed by the nurse bees. The bacteria multiply within the larval gut, competing with it for food.

They remain in the gut and do not invade larval tissue; larvae that die from the disease do so because they have been starved of food. This normally occurs shortly before the cells are capped.
Crops in the field are engaged in constant battle with disease-causing soil microbes, according to scientists looking at ways to tackle problem diseases.

When plant pathogens mount a successful attack, harvests are smaller.

A recent study revealed that decreased biodiversity of Pseudomonas, a genus of soil bacteria, is associated with a reduced severity of the fungal disease take-all in second year wheat.

The work revealed that disease incidence was linked to the wheat variety grown in the first year, and that this also had a profound effect on Pseudomonas species community structure.

Now researchers have found that the useful activity of Pseudomonas strains that suppress take-all disease is severely reduced when additional Pseudomonas strains are present.

Scientists at the University of Oxford and Rothamsted Research carried out the work.

In a series of experiments, the scientists probed the interaction between the beneficial strains of Pseudomonas and other Pseudomonas bacteria isolated from the same field

In a series of experiments, the scientists probed the interaction between the beneficial strains of Pseudomonas and other Pseudomonas bacteria isolated from the same field.

They compared soil from plots on which wheat was grown for two consecutive years.

It was found that if the first years wheat variety resulted in lower take-all disease in the second year, then the Pseudomonas strains present in these plots had lower biodiversity.

By contrast, where the wheat variety in the first year resulted in more serious take-all disease in year two with reduced grain yields, Pseudomonas strains were more diverse.

To explore this further, the researchers looked at various strains of Pseudomonas grown either separately or together in the lab.

Particular strains of Pseudomonas when grown in isolation, could prevent the spread of the take-all pathogen in a Petri dish.

But when multiple strains of Pseudomonas were tested together, the ability to inhibit the pathogen was lost.

Fighting amongst the strains of soil bacteria may reduce their useful properties when biodiversity is high.

In this situation, a high biodiversity of soil microbes can be bad for crop yields.

Dr Zia Mehrabi, lead author of the report, said: "For millennia humans have made our crops less and less resilient to pests and pathogens.

"How we re-engineer agriculture to combat these pests and pathogens remains a major challenge.

"Our study shows how getting a better handle on soil biology is a key piece of that pie."

Dr Tim Mauchline, senior scientist in the Microbial Ecology group at Rothamsted Research, said: "In nature, we normally associate increased biodiversity with microbial plant disease suppression.

"And so it is fascinating to report the opposite here, as Pseudomonas biodiversity was negatively associated with take-all suppression.

"We can postulate that as arable agriculture is a highly managed system it perhaps does not follow the normal rules of natural ecosystems," concluded Dr Mauchline.
The UK farming industry is uniting to support Red Tractor Week this September as an autumn campaign dedicated to promoting Great British food gets underway.

Now in its fifth year, Red Tractor Week (12 to 18 September) includes a huge programme of activity designed to promote the provenance of Red Tractor food to shoppers and remind them of the stringent standards that are used to produce them.

Farmers will be taking part in events at major supermarkets up and down the country to talk to the public about how British food is produced, backed up by a huge on-pack sticker promotion.

This year the event kick starts the Celebrate Great British Food campaign which runs throughout the autumn.

Announced in April  and backed by UK Government  the programme of activity sees a whole range of farming organisations coming together with a clear message to consumers to look for the Red Tractor logo when they buy their food.

Events include the NFUs Back British Farming Day on Wednesday 14 September, and British Food Fortnight, which starts on 17 September.

British food - world renowned

The campaign sees the farming industry uniting in a concerted effort to educate consumers

Defra Secretary of State, Andrea Leadsom MP, said: "Whether its beef from the hills and pastures of the West Country or Yorkshires famed Wensleydale cheese, British food is renowned around the globe for its quality, innovation and tradition.

"The Red Tractor logo is an iconic symbol of this  assuring shoppers that their food is traceable, safe to eat and produced responsibly.

"It is wonderful to see our world-leading food and farming industry joining forces to encourage everyone to shop smart and support British farmers."

The campaign sees the farming industry uniting in a concerted effort to educate consumers and raise the profile of British food.

Minette Batters, Deputy President of the NFU added: "With the help of our members well be flying the flag for the British farmers and growers.

"They produce the raw ingredients that are the bedrock of the food and drink industry  the UKs largest manufacturing sector  worth 108 billion and employing 1 in 8 people across the country, in cities and villages alike.

"Well be inviting MPs to show their support by signing our post-EU referendum pledge and wearing a special edition Back British Farming pin when they take part in that days Prime Ministers Questions (PMQs)."

Mobilisation of farming organisations

The NFU and Ladies in Pigs have mobilised their members to ensure a strong presence at in-store retailer events up and down the country during Red Tractor Week.

While the AHDB will feature the on-pack sticker promotion in television advertising during its four-week beef and lamb mini-roast campaign, starting in mid-October.

Further support is being provided by the National Federation of Young Farmers Clubs, National Pig Association, Ladies in Beef and the National Sheep Association.

Andrew Blenkiron, Suffolk farmer and vice-chairman of Assured Food Standards, said: "Everyone has played their part to make sure that the farming industry is united behind a single, simple message to consumer which is to support Red Tractor food.

"This autumns coordinated campaign of consumer activity gives the farming and food industry a huge opportunity to communicate the values of British food.

"People will be able to get an even better understanding of the great standards that British farming adheres to, further increasing consumer loyalty and purchasing of Red Tractor labelled products."

Farmers are encouraged to get involved in events running throughout the week at major supermarket stores across the UK, where farmers will be talking to shoppers about Red Tractor and what it means.
The latest figures show a reduction in the numbers of horses fly-grazed across England and Wales.

It has been over a year since the Control of Horses Act came into force, and many case studies have proved its effectiveness at tackling a problem which has been a cause of significant horse welfare problems, and blighted local communities, for years.

The most recent statistics show that there are estimated to be 3,000  3,500 horses currently fly-grazed across England and Wales, the same number as were estimated to be fly-grazed in England alone in 2014.

This is strong evidence that the Act is having a real impact, says rural organisation CLA, providing another "vital tool" in tackling the welfare problems facing the UKs horses.

However, the coalition of welfare and rural organisations which campaigned for the Act (including the CLA, World Horse Welfare, Blue Cross, British Horse Society, Countryside Alliance, HorseWorld, NFU, Redwings Horse Sanctuary and RSPCA) want to highlight the important role that awareness plays in ensuring the Act is used to its full potential.

CLA President Ross Murray said the introduction of the new law was an "important change" for the countryside.

"Now the challenge is to ensure it is widely and consistently enforced," Mr Murray said.

"Fly-grazed horses can damage land, crops and fencing, restrict space for livestock and cost money to provide for their welfare and safety.

"Thanks to the Control of Horses Act farmers and landowners can act for swift resolution by, for example, rehoming the horses to charities or privately.

"In areas where fly-grazing continues to be a problem, local authorities and police forces must now begin working together to enforce the Act and support the local community in eradicating the problem."
The farming sector are calling on every MP to show support for local farmers by wearing a specially made lapel pin for Back British Farming Day on Wednesday 14 September 2016.

Made by hand with British wheat and wool, the pins have been sent directly to 649 MPs to wear on the day and during Prime Ministers Questions.

Over 2km of British wool was dyed and spun to wrap around 3,000 ears of British wheat in the production of the bespoke Back British Farming lapel pins1.

NFU Deputy President Minette Batters said: British farming has a remarkable story to tell; it provides the raw ingredients for a food and drink industry worth 108 billion to the UK economy and also employs one in eight of the nations work force.

"British farmings production was valued at 25.8 billion with much of it feeding the nation and playing a part in feeding the world.

"Our farmers and growers are proud to produce quality, tasty and affordable food, while looking after the environment and adhering to world-class welfare standards.

"Home-grown food is also something the British public is proud of too  77% agree that its important to support British farming according to government statistics.

"Back British Farming Day, coinciding with the second PMQs of the autumn parliamentary calendar, is the opportunity for MPs to publicly show their support for the nations ability to grow its own food and the farmers and rural communities that enable this to happen.

The British public are encouraged to show their support on Twitter using #backbritishfarming
Northern Powergrid is set to meet Penistones agricultural community to spread harvest safety messages and give customers an insight into how the electricity distributor powers their local community.

The company, which is responsible for the network that delivers electricity to 3.9 million homes and businesses across the North East, Yorkshire and northern Lincolnshire, will host a stand at this years Penistone Agricultural Show on Saturday 10 September 2016.

The company will help deliver the harvest safety message to farmers.

This will include handing out specially designed key rings and pens, containing scrolls with safety advice, and in-cab air fresheners and stickers aimed at reminding farmers and farm workers to look up and be aware of any power lines where theyre working.

Landowners or farmers are free to ask about times when the company needs to go onto their land to carry out repairs, essential maintenance or investment work to improve or repair the region's power network.

Large sections of Northern Powergrids network crosses farmland with some overhead cables on wood poles carrying anything up to 132,000 volts.

Judging heights and distances, especially when tired or operating in reduced light at dusk or dawn, can be particularly challenging for farm workers.

Northern Powergrid is recommending that farmers always carry out risk assessments on land before starting work, especially prior to harvesting crops or if they have contracted in new staff who may not be familiar with the land.

'Vital safety messages'

Geoff Earl, Northern Powergrids Director of Safety, Health and Environment, said: "Attending shows like the Penistone Agricultural show provides us with a valuable opportunity to meet our customers, share vital safety messages and give the farming community a real insight into what we do every day to keep the lights on in their community.

"Wed urge farmers to come and visit us at the show and pick up one of our special key rings or pens so they can keep the safety information they need with them - and their workers - at all times during this harvest season."

Northern Powergrids attendance at the Penistone Agricultural Show is part of a wider harvest safety campaign by the company which included a six-week social media campaign targeting the growing digital savvy agricultural community and attendance at eight key agricultural shows.

After the Penistone Agricultural Show, the last show in the programme to support and spread safety messages to the farming community is the Stokesley Show (17 September).
Oilseed rape has had a difficult year, with yields down across the board  but there are still advantages to growing it, as one grower in Cambridgeshire reveals.

Philip Hart grew 4ha of Advance oilseed rape this year, and was pleased to get an early start to harvest, with the combine getting into the crop at Hart Bros Elm Farm, Peterborough, on 18 July.

We swath about 70% of our oilseed rape as it gives us a nice early start to harvest while everyone else is waiting for their crops to die off, he says.

The Advance is also that bit earlier than other varieties, which is a bonus.

The key attraction of the variety was its high oil content, although Mr Hart is not going to get the seed tested until he sells it in September.

Field of OSR

We chose Advance as a variety to try as Anglia Grain Services had it in its trials last year and it came out as the top variety for oil content, he explains.

The crop was planted in the third week of August 2015, drilled with a subsoiler at about 6kg/ha. It got off to a good start and looked a lovely crop of rapeseed.

Flea beetle wasnt really a problem  the key seems to getting the rape in early to grow away from the pest, says Mr Hart.

The Advance was probably slightly in front of the other variety we grew: It grew nice and steadily in the spring and then podded up evenly.

An application of fertiliser went on a day before the crop was drilled at a rate of 240kg/ha, then in February it had 247kg/ha of DoubleTop, with 247kg/ha of Nitram applied midway through March.

The spray programme included applications of Frelizon, Kerb, Monkey and Recital throughout the year. Pigeons would not leave the crop alone but did not cause any real long term damage.

Having grown it on heavy clay, Mr Hart was reasonably happy with a yield of 2.4t/ha, given the difficult growing season for oilseed rape.

The seeds appeared to be smaller across the board this year as did the yield, he says. It has not been a good year for rapeseed.

"I am thinking of cutting down on the acreage but will probably go with Advance this year.

One of the benefits of growing conventional varieties is the ability to home-save the seed.

Thats one of the reasons why we swath it, he adds.

We buy a couple of new bags a year and then when harvested we get the seed cleaned and dressed by Anglia  its a lot more cost effective than buying all new seed outright.
A new report has been released that suggests 'rewilding' the UK's natural landscape is the best option for coping with flooding.

Rewilding Britain, the organisation behind the report, says a growing body of evidence suggests that managing flood risk naturally, by restoring natural processes, can be cheaper and more sustainable.

Flooding costs the UK economy more than 1 billion annually, a figure which can rise to nearer 5 billion in a bad year.

Traditional approaches to flood defence have focused on managing flood risk using hard defences such as flood walls and river revetments.

The organisation said that while traditional methods mitigate some of the worst consequences of flooding, these solutions do "little to challenge underlying causes and when they fail, the consequences can be devastating."

The report comes as MPs on the Environmental Audit Committee gather to find better ways to manage the UKs environment post-EU referendum, with many calling for an approach which places nature centre stage.

'Vibrant' natural landscapes

Rewilding Britain says rewilding can be cost effective, and has 'additional benefit'.

Some farming organisations are against the idea, calling it 'idealtistic'

"It can create vibrant natural landscapes which stimulate tourism and ecological awareness, while also soaking up greater quantities of CO2, helping bring the economy towards carbon neutrality," Helen Meech, director at Rewilding Britain said.

"With one in six properties in the UK currently at risk of flooding, a situation likely to be exacerbated by climate change over coming decades, it is time to rethink our approach to managing flood risk.

"Flooding is a natural part of a rivers annual cycle but problems occur when land is overgrazed, rivers are straightened and trees and wildlife removed.

"Such measures reduce the capacity of the landscape to absorb excess water and slow floodwater flows.

"Our report highlights the ways in which rewilding can substantially reduce flood risk downstream, protecting communities at a fraction of the cost of traditional flood defences.

"Rewilding also has benefit of improving water quality and stimulating the revival of vibrant ecosystems rich in wildlife.

"With MPs currently consulting on new approaches to management of Britains natural environment post-Brexit, we feel it is high-time we allowed landscapes the space they need to rewild, creating natural wetlands and bringing back the wildlife that was once common to Britain," Miss Meech said.

'Idealistic' thinking

However, many rural organisations disagree with this approach, with the NFU saying it is "idealistic", and that rewilding and farming need to work together in order for it to work.

"You have to go back hundreds, if not thousands, of years to find a Welsh hillside or Lake District uplands where sheep werent present and integral to the communities that live there," said Phil Bicknell, writing on the National Farmers' Union website.

"More importantly in my view, they ignore the economic impact. Without our uplands, we wouldnt have a UK sheep industry.

"The raw materials that leave the farmgate are the source material for the largest manufacturing sector in the UK - our food processors - and that equates to jobs and economic growth," Mr Bicknell concluded.
The UK farming union counterparts have called on the whole supply chain to maximise the return to dairy farmers who continue to lose money daily.

Despite a slight turn in the market, with AMPE/MCVE indicators up 24 per cent this month, dairy farmers continue to suffer a loss with recent milk price increases from processors not going far enough to assist them.

Last week, dairy officials from the National Farmers Union, NFU Cymru, NFU Scotland and the Ulster Farmers Union, met to discuss the key issues currently facing dairy farmers across the country.

Whilst the unions accepted the commercial competitive challenges of milk processors, retailers and other end users are intense, they are asking them to seriously and genuinely reflect on the pressures primary producers are under.

The officials also agreed to work together to achieve more effective price transmission, margin insurance, future and fixed pricing, more effective professional farmer representation, and a much stronger assurance that contracts between producers and processors are fair.

'Producers plight'

Processors need to move away from "current destructive short-term culture"

Aled Jones, NFU Cymru Milk Board Chairman, said: "We hear platitudes that processors and end users have sympathy for producers plight.

"Some will be genuine, but the speed in reflecting positive market increase in value is not quick enough, particularly in the current exceptional circumstances.

"Actions speak much louder than words and all the UK farming unions ask of the supply chain is to seriously and genuinely consider the long term damage and consequences of a not delivering much more back to primary producers.

Mr Jones said farmers do not want to hear individual processors, their farmer representatives or retailers, "defending or justifying" the pace of price movement.

"What they want to hear is a genuine and collective assurance," Mr Jones said, "backed by price increases, from all in the supply chain, that primary production is a fundamental requirement to their business and to consider the impact and consequences on the primary sector.

"We ask the supply chain to reflect on the need to raise the bar and to consider the impact on their business if their income did not match costs for long periods.

Supply chain valuing farmers

Mr Jones said many dairy farmers are asking themselves and their families if the supply chain values them.

"We are putting pressure on responsible processors, retailers and other end users to consider how they can collectively, and without any compromise on legal requirements, move away from the current destructive short-term culture towards a position where all efficient, progressive businesses can prosper.

"It is essential the supply chain reflects on whether it is sustainable to be competitive based on the ability to drive the primary sector into the ground and effectively reducing the supply base in the UK to a dangerously low level.

"The crisis is not over, and all in the dairy supply chain have a reason to take collective action now and for the future," concluded Mr Jones.
This was followed by discussions with experts on the merits of each machine, deep placement of lime to alleviate sub soil acidity, compaction and the benefits of ripping and tramline farming.
"The evening also meant we all got to share ideas and it was a great way to stimulate discussion and encourage people to really research issues beyond what they would see on social media."
According to Kubota, it delivers 20 per cent more throughput, an increase that has been made feasible by three major modifications - the addition of a power-driven feed roller to the cam-less, pick-up; an increase in throughput capacity of the Variable Fill System (VFS) packer system and an increase in plunger strokes.
"After my idyllic childhood on our family farm and thinking that I would never live more than 200km from home, relocating to Papua New Guinea helped me define how my diverse skillset and passion for feeding the world in a sustainable way could create my dream job,'' Elizabeth said.
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That faint gobble, gobble youre hearing in the distance can only mean one thing: Thanksgiving is near! Both ACTS and SERVE are gearing up for their holiday programs, and your help is needed.
What was it like to be an Oath Keeper? John Zimmerman can tell you

John Zimmerman said he was active with the Oath Keepers from September to November 2020, then left after a falling out with founder Stewart Rhodes.
More than 30 of Chinas 100 most wanted corruption suspects who fled overseas have been brought back to the country, the main anti-graft agency said this week.

The 100 most wanted list was made public in 2014. China requested Interpol Red Notices for the suspects, making them the target of arrest in most countries.

China dubbed its chase of overseas graft suspects Operation Fox Hunt.

Interpol members (all countries except North Korea) have the right to request a Red Notice, asking other members to detain and extradite a wanted individual. Interpol grants most Red Notice requests within hours.

Since China requested the Red Notices for its top 100 graft suspects two years ago, 33 have returned, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection said.

The agency didnt say how may were extradited or came back voluntarily.

Some Western countries including the United States and Canada are reluctant to extradite suspects to China because the country imposes the death penalty for some economic crimes.

The United States and China dont have an extradition treaty.

But last year during President Xi Jinpings state visit to Washington, the U.S. government agreed to recognize and enforce property confiscation judgments rendered by Chinese courts in anti-corruption cases.

Overall during the past two years, 1,915 graft suspects have returned to China from more than 70 countries.

The Central Commission has also recovered about $1 billion during Operation Fox Hunt, it said.

The G20 countries at their summit in Hangzhou this month agreed to set up a research center in China to study the issue of returning corrupt officials and their assets, the South China Morning Post reported.

China currently has 160 active Red Notices listed with Interpol. Not all are related to corruption.

____

Richard L. Cassin is the publisher and editor of the FCPA Blog. Hell be the keynote speaker at the FCPA Blog NYC Conference 2016.
As a mystery writer, I'm inclined to think everyone would benefit from reading an occasional crime novel or short story. Here's my list of reasons to visit your favorite brick-and-mortar or online bookseller, or to stop by the library and browse the shelves.

Frankie Y Bailey

Escape into another world

Note I did not say "escape from the real world." When it comes to crime fiction, this is a matter of personal choice. Readers vary as to how much they want to be reminded of the realities (and anxieties) of daily life. There are subgenres of crime fiction -- traditional/classic whodunits, PI novels, police procedurals, historical mysteries, medical thrillers, legal thrillers, forensic thrillers, paranormal, and romantic suspense - to suit every reader's mood and preference regarding sex and/or violence.

Complex Characters

When Edgar Allan Poe, the "father of the mystery short story," created a brilliant, eccentric sleuth in the 1840s, he introduced the first of the character archetypes in mystery/detective fiction. These archetypes include tough guy private eyes, femme fatales, criminal masterminds, and sidekicks. In the modern era, writers use these archetypes as a starting point, but strive to create three dimensional characters. They know that their characters must hold the attention of readers who are sophisticated consumers of popular culture.

Interesting Settings

Setting has always been one of the reasons to read crime fiction. From Paris to London, Los Angeles to New York City, isolated islands to cozy villages, where the story is set has always been essential to the plot. In modern mysteries, writers have tried to get one up on the competition by finding a setting that has not been used before or a setting that can be explored from a different perspective. The reader can become an armchair traveler to the locale of his or her choice.

Social Issues

Although this aspect of crime fiction has always been present, in the late 20th century, crime writers began to openly tackle issues ranging from racial bigotry, sexism, and homophobia to climate change and corporate crimes. This has been especially true of the women writers and writers of color who emerged during this era. However, most crime writers are aware that soap boxes are not welcomed by readers and take care not to let the issues that they feel passionate about overwhelm their stories. Books dealing with social issues allow readers to think about the pros and cons - and offer substance for reading group discussions.

Mental Challenge

Mystery/detective fiction offers readers an opportunity to match wits with the protagonist as he or she attempts to solve the crime. This puzzling solving aspect of mystery/detective fiction is important - good exercise for the brain. But aside from figuring out whodunit, the reader of any subgenre of crime fiction may also has the opportunity to consider ethical dilemmas and the nature of justice.

Learning Stuff

In crime fiction, the characters' occupations and hobbies are generally relevant to the plot. One can pick up a mystery and learn about subjects from bell ringing to autopsies, from life on the home front during World War II to what happens behind the scenes when catering an event. Crime writers do their research because readers expect them to get it right. Readers can select books that deal with topics that they are interested in and would like to learn more about.

Finding the right crime novel is as simple as searching online databases such as Stop, You're Killing Me! or consulting a librarian or bookseller. Reviews are helpful, too. Or, ask a mystery reading friend for a recommendation.

Bio:

Criminologist Frankie Bailey has five books and two published short stories in a mystery series featuring crime historian Lizzie Stuart. The Red Queen Dies, the first book in a near-future police procedural series featuring Detective Hannah McCabe, came out in September, 2013. The second book in the series, What the Fly Saw came out in March 2015. Frankie is a former executive vice president of Mystery Writers of America and a past president of Sisters in Crime.

Website URL: www.frankieybailey.com

Twitter: @FrankieYBailey

Amazon: What the Fly Saw
Eva Mendes' mother complains about the prices of her clothing line.

Eva Mendes

The 'Place Beyond the Pines' actress uses her sisters as "guinea pigs" for her eponymous clothing line with New York & Company, while she knows she can always rely on her mom to keep things grounded.

She told People magazine: "My sisters are definitely my guinea pigs and then my mom always keeps me grounded.

"I will be like, 'Mom what do you think about this jacket for $79?' And she's like, 'Too much!' I'm like, mom it's $79 for a beautiful coat!' Sometimes we adjust it according to my mom's opinion."

But it isn't just the opinion of her mother that is important to the 42-year-old actress - who has daughters Amada, four months, and Esmeralda, two, with partner Ryan Gosling - as she knows the value of listening to her customers.

She said: "We average a collection every six weeks so we're just constantly making adjustments and really paying attention to what the customer wants...

"It's so important to read all the comments and really listen to the customer."

Eva's long-time stylist Erin Walsh helped her craft her runway looks for her New York Fashion Week show and she was thrilled with the "unique and modern" outfits she came up with.

She said ""Erin is so talented and I love how she makes everything feel very unique and very modern.

"And the combinations she comes up with are very fun."

But the headscarves the models donned were all the actress' idea - though she was willing to be flexible if they didn't feel comfortable with sporting her own signature look.

She said: "For the scarves I just wanted something that was specifically me,but I also didn't want the girls to feel uncomfortable.

"I talked to the models beforehand and I just said if you prefer your hair a different way that's fine. I want you guys to feel super comfortable, because not everyone feels comfortable with a head wrap."
Emma Stone rehearsed for "months" to get her dance steps spot on for 'La La Land'.

Emma Stone

The 27-year-old actress underwent gruelling sessions to get her moves right for the musical film, but admitted if she or co-star Ryan Gosling made mistakes they were able to stay in the motion picture because they were playing "real" people.

She said: "We rehearsed for months. Mandy Moore, the choreographer, took us through all the moves; and I had much to learn, even though I did song and dance as a kid in Arizona.

"Mia and Sebastian are two very real people, so the great thing about Damien [Chazelle, director] was that if we missed a step, or a beat, it wasn't cut. I'm not Idina Menzel."

Stone portrays aspiring actress Mia in the movie, opposite Gosling's alter-ego, jazz pianist Sebastian, who fall for each other in Los Angeles.

The 'Amazing Spider-Man' star took inspiration from her character's idol, late actress Ingrid Bergman.

Speaking about the Swedish star, she told the Daily Mail newspaper: "She was so focused and so professional in spite of everything that was going on in her private life.

"She was given a hard time by a Hollywood that wanted her to be a saint."

While the movie is likely to pick up many a fan along the way, one big supporter of the film is Hollywood legend Tom Hanks.

After watching a screening of the motion picture at the Telluride Film Festival, he declared: "Man, that was the most fun I've had in a thousand years!"

This comes after he interrupted a press conference for his own movie 'Sully' to say he thinks Hollywood is "doomed" if people don't like 'La La Land'.

He said: "This is not a movie that falls into some sort of trend. I think it is going to be a test of the broader national audience, because it has none of the things that major studios want.

"Pre-awareness is a big thing they want, which is why a lot of remakes are going on. ['La La Land'] is not a sequel, nobody knows who the characters are ... But if the audience doesn't go and embrace something as wonderful as this then we are all doomed."
A new RWF 10 billion ($12.44 million) garment and footwear factory will come up in Kigali, capital of East African nation of Rwanda, as two African companies have signed an agreement for the purpose. Albert Supply Ltd and Prime Economic Zone Ltd have entered into a renewable 5-year land lease agreement with Rwanda's ministry of trade and industry (Minicom).

As per the deal, the two companies will obtain 2.5 hectares of land to set up the factory, for which operation is expected to begin by July 2017, Rwandan media reports said.

The deal was signed between textile investors and the ministry after the former complained about the costs of land in the area being too high. The land being provided to the companies is part of 5 hectares of land secured by the ministry in the Kigali Special Economic Zone.

A new RWF 10 billion ($12.44 million) garment and footwear factory will come up in Kigali, capital of East African nation of Rwanda, as two African companies have signed an agreement for the purpose. Albert Supply Ltd and Prime Economic Zone Ltd have entered into a renewable 5-year land lease agreement with Rwanda's ministry of trade and industry (Minicom).#

Albert Supply will manufacture garments from cotton, leather and other raw materials, whereas Prime Economic Zone will produce belts, bags and shoes from leather.

Albert Supply is a competent investor which can bring about a change to influence others, said Francois Kanimba, Minicom minister of Rwanda.

The government of Rwanda is promoting domestic production and consumption through the 'made-in-Rwanda' campaign. Additionally, more than 400 tailors under the Kigali Garment Centre (KGC) are raising RWF 3 billion ($3.73 million) for a clothing factory. (KD)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
The governor of North Carolina Pat Mccrory inaugurated the expanded facilities of yarn producer Unifi in Reidsville and Yadkinville, which will add 87 new jobs. The governor had earlier approved grants to both the Unifi plants to undertake expansions, so while the Reidsville plant received $500,000, the Yadkinville facility bagged $190,000 in grants.Founded in 1971, Unifi is a diversified manufacturer of synthetic filament yarns. The company is also a producer of recycled yarn, which it produces from polyester fibres recycled from PET bottles.

The governor of North Carolina Pat Mccrory inaugurated the expanded facilities of yarn producer Unifi in Reidsville and Yadkinville, which will add 87 new jobs. The governor had earlier approved grants to both the Unifi plants to undertake expansions, so while the Reidsville plant received $500,000, the Yadkinville facility bagged $190,000 in grants.#

Its product portfolio includes partially-oriented yarn, the texturing, air-jet texturing, twisting, and beaming of polyester and the texturing and covering of nylon filament yarns.Additionally, the company also has a package dyeing operation, where it is able to dye a wide range of substrates. (AR)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
The Minister for Industry, Trade and Tourism, Hon. Faiyaz Siddiq Koya has welcomed the commitment of his Papua New Guinea counterpart - the Minister for Trade, Commerce and Industry, Hon. Richard Maru - to resolve the current trade impasse between the two countries. In a letter on 5 September 2016, Minister Maru acknowledged the commitment by Fiji to do the same and assured Minister Koya that his technical team will cooperate with their Fijian counterparts to resolve any outstanding issues.



Minister Maru has positively responded to my letter to undertake a technical assessment and discuss the issues being raised by PNG. And PNG has assured me of the highest level of cooperation with Fijian authorities so that the issue can be resolved amicably, the Minister said.



Fiji values its relations with PNG and all its trading partners and takes a measured and concerted approach to swiftly address any issues, impediments or misunderstandings that may arise. This is done through proper and official channels, added Minister Koya.



I am seriously concerned that certain Opposition members are making statements to the media without verifying the facts and the steps being taken by the Fijian Government to allay the situation. And to ensure that the bilateral trade between Fiji and PNG flows without any impediment and with the relevant biosecurity concerns addressed. These statements are in no way helping the efforts of both the countries to resolve the matter and are spreading misinformation in the business community. Had they checked with the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Tourism, they would have been given the facts. I therefore urge people who are interested in this issue to please contact the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Tourism and to refrain from making incorrect and uninformed statements,

Minister Koya said.=
Fijis Foreign Minister, Hon. Ratu Inoke Kubuabola is heading Fijis delegation to the 47th Pacific Islands Forum currently underway in Pohnpei in the Federated States of Micronesia.



During this weeks formal welcome ceremony, the incoming Chair and President of Federated States of Micronesia H.E. President M. Christian welcomed the leaders and participants to Pohnpei. President Christian stated that the theme for this years Forum Small and Far: Challenge for Growth was a reminder of the challenges and constraints that Pacific Islanders faced as small and isolated countries in the vast Pacific Ocean.



President Christian also thanked the outgoing Chair of the 46th Forum and Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea Hon. Peter ONeill for his leadership during his tenure.



Amongst others, this years Forum will see important discussions and proposed modalities for action in the region including climate change and disaster risk management, oceans and fisheries, 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, trade, cyber security and membership issues. Minister Kubuabola will be addressing the forum on these key areas.



Todays programme largely involves the Plenary Formal session. The afternoon session will see the Private Sector being given the opportunity to address the Leaders prior to the Retreat tomorrow.



Minister Kubuabola will also hold bilateral talks with senior Japanese Government officials and senior officials from the Commonwealth Secretariat.
Midway through our current Parliamentary term, the FijiFirst Government has decided to reinvigorate our Cabinet with a reshuffle of Ministerial responsibilities. This reshuffle will enhance our ability to continue to provide the high level of service that the Fijian people have come to expect.



I will be assuming the role of Foreign Minister in addition to my current duties as Prime Minister, Minister for iTaukei Affairs and Minister for Sugar. The current Foreign Minister, the Honourable Ratu Inoke Kubuabola, will move to the Defence, National Security and Immigration portfolio.



The other changes are as follows:



The Honourable Rosy Akbar is appointed the new Minister for Health and Medical Services, replacing the Honourable Jone Usamate, who moves to the position of Minister for Employment, Productivity and Industrial Relations.



The current Employment Minister, the Honourable Semi Koroilavesau, becomes Minister for Fisheries. The Honourable Osea Naiqamu, the current Minister for Fisheries and Forestry, retains the portfolio of Minister for Forestry.



The current Minister for Industry, Trade and Tourism, the Honourable Faiyaz Koya, retains those responsibilities but is given the additional portfolio of Lands and Mineral Resources. An assistant minister will be appointed in due course.



The current Minister for Lands and Mineral Resources, the Honourable Mereseini Vuniwaqa, will assume the position of Minister for Women, Children and Poverty Alleviation, currently held by the Honourable Rosy Akbar.



In addition to these full members of the Cabinet, I have decided to appoint the current Assistant Minister for Health and Medical Services, the Honourable Veena Bhatnagar to the position of Assistant Minister for Women, Children and Poverty Alleviation, reporting to Minister Vuniwaqa and focussing on enhancing the rights of disabled people.



She will be replaced at Health by the Honourable Alex OConnor, who will become the new Assistant Minister for Health and Medical Services, focussing on public health and reporting to Minister Akbar.



I thank our Ministers and Assistant Ministers for their service over the past two years and look forward to working closely with them in their reassigned portfolios for the remainder of the Governments term as we serve the Fijian people and take our nation forward.



J.V Bainimarama

Prime Minister
Aspera FASPStream, winner of the prestigious HPA Engineering Excellence Award for 2016, helps Betradar and INNOVATIVEi stream live sports, Ballet Royalty Gala and Mecum Auto Auction LiveAMSTERDAM, Netherlands, 2016-09-09 01:18 CEST (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- IBC Hall 7 Stand G20 -- At IBC 2016, Aspera, an IBM company will demonstrate the innovative FASPStream software, selected by Betradar to power their Live Channel service to stream live sporting events from remote locations over commodity Internet, and INNOVATIVEi, a creative agency specializing in branding and communication, to stream live broadcast-quality video globally for the Ballet Royalty Gala and the Mecum Auto Auction. At 17:00 on Saturday 10 September at the IBM Aspera booth, Hall 7 G20, Aspera CEO Michelle Munson will be joined by customers and partners to showcase 4 live camera feeds delivered by FASPStream over commodity Internet, including a full end-to-end workflow through Elemental Live with in-line transcoding and packaging, with final delivery and playout.Live Channel Betradar's Live Channel is a dedicated live streaming product for online and retail bookmakers, covering over 30,000 live events per year with exclusive live content all day long with a special focus on off-peak hours. Betradar, a brand of Sportradar, receives live streams from the events, in a master quality, and ingests the video signal into their datacenter for multi-bitrate and multi-format encoding and streaming out to their international customer online platforms. Network congestion and interruptions when receiving content over global wide area networks with high latency and packet loss would make streaming from distant locations challenging and in many cases impractical. Additionally, it would also not meet their high quality standards.To support their rapid growth, expanding global footprint, and need to deliver the live stream as close to real time as possible to their clients' betting platforms, Betradar selected FASPStream to deliver the stream contribution from events at various venues around the world to their datacenters, reducing the delay to under 5 seconds and improving the quality of the stream."FASPStream will give us a shorter testing and evaluation phase for new media rights and stream contributions, and give us a higher reliability for our premium high quality content received from other continents," said Lukas Seiler - Managing Director of the Audiovisual Department at Sportradar. "We will be able to use our connectivity more efficiently to receive more streams in parallel from more locations while reducing the probability of stream interruptions," he added.Early Success with Broadway Video Broadway Video, an innovator of new technologies and workflows for digital video production, post-production, digital distribution and delivery services, was an early adopter of FASPStream. In both contribution and distribution scenarios of live event streaming, Broadway Video was instrumental in shaping the technology and measuring the tremendous potential savings and efficiencies. Broadway Video considered several use cases for live event streaming to validate their work in live digital production environments, including the Ballet Royalty Gala.First Field Tests at Mecum Auto Auction Working with Terry Lingner, co-owner of INNOVATIVEi and current Producer for the Verizon IndyCar Series for NBCSN, they identified the Mecum Collector Car Auctions as the ideal testing ground for replacing traditional transmission methods with FASPStream. Two proof of concept live tests were selected, one in Indianapolis and the other in Portland.In both tests, FASPStream delivered the standard satellite transmission feed that would normally carry the show back to the NBCSN broadcast center, and then returned the stream back to the venue as a confidence feed to be viewed alongside the satellite confidence feed. In both trials, FASPStream performed as expected and with less delay than the satellite feed that was run in parallel. Configuration and setup of the FASPStream software was simple, taking less than one hour from arrival at the venue to live.Live Ballet Royalty Gala Buoyed by the success with the live auto auction, the team turned their attention to the Ballet Royalty Gala, taking place at the newly renovated Gran Teatro de la Habana Alicia Alonso in Havana, Cuba. The full program included classes, rehearsals, interviews and a final dance performance attended by dignitaries and streamed live worldwide. Similar events in the US would require either a full satellite truck, which was not available, or a proprietary fiber circuit, which was prohibitively expensive. The team had to rely on the less than ideal Wide Area Network conditions available locally, with limited bandwidth, high latency and packet loss, and FASPStream delivered.The configuration consisted of HD-SDI switched audio and video feeds provided by the production truck connected to a professional grade MPEG4 encoder and encoded at 4.5Mbps. The IP (multicast) output of the encoder was then consumed by the FASPStream software running on a micro server and transferred using the FASP protocol from Cuba to Utah, where it was pushed into a CDN for packaging and final distribution. Network latency was 175ms with packet loss as high as 12%, and network speeds from the theater topped out at 8Mbps."The success of these events marks a real shift in transmission across the media industry," said Terry Linger, co-owner of INNOVATIVEi and producer for NBCSN. "Everything needed to recreate a 'satellite quality' transmission live from Cuba using standard Internet connectivity fit into a single carry-on. Plus, the FASPStream technology can easily be integrated into production trucks, venues and broadcast centers, perhaps even into talents' homes. Overall, this is a real game changer."IBC 2016 Demos At IBC 2016, Aspera will demonstrate the FASPStream solution with the transport of four live camera streams from South Africa, China, New York and Utah to the Aspera booth on the IBC floor for live decode and broadcast playout, as well as IP-based playout through local desktop media players. In addition, Aspera and Elemental have partnered to demonstrate a full end-to-end FASPStream workflow through Elemental Live with in-line transcoding and packaging.Key Features to be demonstrated include:-- Exceptional Video Delivery Quality Over Commodity Internet - Glitch free play out with negligible start up delay at "any" Internet distance, i.e. less than 2 seconds of delay from live for 50 Mbps video sources over global Internet networks. -- Interoperability with Common Stream Providers and Stream Receivers - Will transport any live video source available on local multicast, unicast UDP, unicast TCP, or as growing file. Provides a uniform lossless, in-order byte stream transport that equally supports constant bit rate and adaptive bit rate formats. -- Reliability and Multi-endpoint Capability - One stream source can be sent to multiple destinations concurrently and provides built-in path redundancy. -- Security - FASPStreams are encrypted in transit and security authenticated. Built-in access control policies can be used to restrict stream providers and consumers by stream protocol, IP address, and ports for maximum security. -- Interoperability and Management with File Based Workflows Including On Cloud - Designed to interoperate with the Aspera Files transfer stack, FASPStream sessions support stream-to-file workflows including writing to cloud "object" storage. Stream sources and providers can include cloud transcoders/encoders that read from stream and file."Demand for Internet content delivery is exploding as are viewer expectations around immediacy of access and quality of the experience. We are excited about the new possibilities FASPStream opens up for event organizers, producers and content owners that want to share their creations with connected worldwide audiences in new and innovative ways," said Michelle Munson, CEO and co-founder, Aspera.About the HPA 2016 Engineering Excellence Awards The Hollywood Professional Association (HPA) Engineering Excellence Awards were created to spotlight and reward companies and individuals providing services to the professional media content industry for their outstanding technical and creative ingenuity in media, content production, finishing, distribution and/or archiving. FASPStream was recognized for its ability to enable live streaming of broadcast-quality video globally over commodity Internet networks with glitch-free playout and negligible start-up time, reducing the need for expensive satellite-based backhaul, transport and distribution.About Aspera Aspera, an IBM company, is the creator of next-generation transport technologies that move the world's data at maximum speed regardless of file size, transfer distance and network conditions. For more information about IBM Aspera visit http://www.asperasoft.com and follow us on Twitter @asperasoft.About IBM Cloud For more information about IBM Cloud visit www.ibm.com/cloud-computing.Media Contacts:Louise Wells Red Lorry Yellow Lorry Public Relations +44 (0)20 7403 8878 louisew@rlyl.comKim Willsher Red Lorry Yellow Lorry (+1) 310 569 2603 kimw@rlyl.com
SINGAPORE -- (Marketwired) -- 09/08/16 -- Konica Minolta Business Solutions Asia (BSA), a leader in print and enterprise content management, recently signed a $50,000 sponsorship agreement with Print & Media Association, Singapore (PMAS) -- the republic's national representative body for the printing industry.

The agreement covers a sponsorship of $50,000 by Konica Minolta BSA for two years to PMAS. Konica Minolta BSA will collaborate with PMAS and run technical, soft skills and ideation workshops for print providers through the PMAS Training Academy. Additionally, PMAS's equipment room will showcase the Konica Minolta C70hc Digital Printing Press and print samples. The equipment room provides induction training for new staff to facilitate transition from other sectors and schools to the print media industry.

Technical, Soft Skills and Ideation Workshops

Provided by the PMAS Training Academy, the workshops will cover technical, soft skills and ideation disciplines. NITEC-level courses that are targeted at fresh school-leavers and mid-career workers who are interested in pursuing a career in the print industry will commence in 2017. It also serves to help existing print industry workers improve productivity, and equip retrenched staff with new skillsets. Upon completion, trainees will be awarded the NITEC certificate. Courses include Computerised Pre-press, Offset Printing and Mechanised Book-Binding.

Other Agreements

The PMAS premises will also host display areas for Konica Minolta Production Printers, a large feature wall which details the brief history of Konica Minolta in Singapore, sample displays of the print capabilities of its production printers such as C71hc print on textured paper and MGI iFoil print samples, web to print software, and several of the company's latest certifications.

Mr. Jonathan Yeo, General Manager for Konica Minolta BSA, said: "At Konica Minolta, we are always looking for meaningful ways to collaborate to improve the quality and competitive edge of the industry."

Mr Lim Geok Khoon, President of PMAS, said: "The sponsorship agreement with Konica Minolta BSA enables the body to raise the competitiveness of the industry, by tapping on the Konica Minolta's innovate digital print systems and solutions. Through our planned workshops and seminars, we are able to equip printers with the necessary skills to enhance their productivity and capabilities through skills upgrading and resource-sharing."

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Press Contacts:

Konica Minolta Business Solutions Asia Pte. Ltd.

Celine Long

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PR Contact:

Huntington Communications

Eugene Chuang

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Candice Lee

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Geoswift, a leading provider of cross-border payment solutions between China and the rest of the world, announced today that its UK entity, Geoswift UK, has received authorisation as a Payment Institution from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to conduct a more efficient end to end cross-border collection and settlement services to and from China. Geoswift presently partners with major global banks, financial service providers, payment solutions providers and merchants. The FCA is the conduct regulator for 56,000 financial services firms in the UK.

Geoswift is the leading China cross-border collection and settlement service to have received FCA approval. In addition to providing business to business cross border collection and settlement services across the education, eCommerce and travel sectors, Geoswift UK using the approval will be able to deepen its direct relationship with partners across the tax return, banking, education and travel sectors. Geoswift remains committed to being a market leader in enhancing the accessibility, efficiency, transparency and security of cross-border transactions between UK and China.

Robert Miskin, Managing Director of Geoswift Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) said, "We are delighted to receive the FCA approval for our operations in the United Kingdom. In a market landscape that is vastly robust and continually evolving, it is important to ensure our operations are fully-regulated, transparent and secure to meet international standards and to provide assurance to our partners and merchants. The FCA regulatory approval will enable us to meet the growing demands of our global partners and clients who require accessibility to efficient fund flows and secure cross-border payments between the UK and China. We are also preparing to futureproof our European expansion plans in due course and embrace the growing demand for China, throughout Europe. We hold a positive outlook for the B2B cross-border potential between Europe and China in 2017 and look forward to establishing deeper partnerships with the FCA license."

Geoswift is headquartered in Hong Kong with operating offices in Shanghai, London, Vancouver, Seattle and San Francisco for strategic and regulatory functions.

About Geoswift

Geoswift is an innovative payment technology company connecting China and the rest of the world. The company comprises the world's leading payment technology experts that have a deep understanding of the industry, technology, and global and China monetary policy. Geoswift provides clients with customised one-stop cross-border payment solutions to and from China. Geoswift is relied upon by the world's leading e-commerce companies, most prestigious universities and the largest brands in the travel industry to grow their businesses.

Geoswift is an acquirer of UnionPay International in North America, and a long-term partner of many other leading financial institutions. It also maintains 19 currency exchange outlets throughout China. Geoswift is headquartered in Hong Kong with operating offices in Shanghai, London, Vancouver, Seattle and San Francisco for strategic and regulatory functions. For more information visit, please visit www.geoswift.com or send in your queries to info@geoswift.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170118005488/en/

Contacts:

Cognito

Prisita Menon Liz Asri

geoswift.asia@cognitomedia.com
CANBERA (dpa-AFX) - The Australian dollar weakened against the other major currencies in the Asian session on Friday. The Australian dollar fell to a 1-week low of 1.4761 against the euro, a 3-day low of 0.7635 against the U.S. dollar and a 2-day low of 0.9866 against the Canadian dollar, from yesterday's closing quotes of 1.4725, 0.7642 and 0.9883, respectively. Against the yen and the NZ dollar, the aussie dropped to 77.95 and 1.0319 from yesterday's closing quotes of 77.95 and 1.0319 from yesterday's closing quotes of 78.31 and 1.0327, respectively. If the aussie extends its downtrend, it is likely to find support around 1.48 against the euro, 0.75 against the greenback, 0.96 against the loonie, 76.00 against the yen and 1.02 against the kiwi. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
SEOUL (dpa-AFX) - The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration warned airline passengers not to switch on or charge their Samsung Galaxy Note 7 phones when on board the plane. It also advised against packing the phones into any checked-in luggage. 'In light of recent incidents and concerns raised by Samsung about its Galaxy Note 7 devices, the Federal Aviation Administration strongly advises passengers not to turn on or charge these devices on board aircraft and not to stow them in any checked baggage,' the FAA said on Thursday. Last week, Smartphone producer Samsung confirmed that it stopped the sales of Galaxy Note 7 due to a battery cell issue. It planned to replace the devices with faulty batteries with new one over the coming weeks. The phone-maker said it conducted a thorough investigation on the issue and there were 35 reported cases globally as on September 1. There have been reports that Samsung's flagship Galaxy Note 7 phone exploding during or after charging. Lithium-Ion battery was suspected to be the culprit. The company has reportedly sold 2.5 million Note 7s. With a price tag of $850 in U.S., the phone has unique features such as Iris scanner to unlock. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
AMSTERDAM and BARCELONA, Spain, September 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Optimi z ed to support minimally invasive treatment of liver cancer - the second most deadly cancer, accounting for 745,000 annual deaths worldwide [ 1 ]

Features world ' s first optimized imaging for radiopaque beads (LC Bead LUMI TM )** for tumor treatment , minimizing damage to surrounding healthy tissue and organs

OncoSuite enables a unique complete coverage of the liver to visualize peripheral hepatic tumors

Royal Philips (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHIA) today announced that it will unveil its latest innovation in interventional oncology at the 2016 Cardiovascular and Interventional Radiological Society of Europe annual meeting (CIRSE 2016), which will be held in Barcelona (Spain) from September 10 until 14. Philips' next generation interventional oncology solution OncoSuite will enable physicians to provide analysis and minimally invasive, targeted treatment of tumor lesions reducing the impact to healthy tissue. It offers clinicians a better view of the treatment targets for informed decision making, while performing the procedure.

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160908/405684 )

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160908/405685 )

"While OncoSuite can be used for a number of different cancers including bone, kidney and lung, the solution and its specific tools have been optimized for the treatment of patients with liver cancer," said Dr Jeff Geschwind, Chairman and Chief of the Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging at the Yale School of Medicine. "Given the steady increase in the prevalence of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and liver cancer, [2] the development and availability of new technology is much needed to provide interventional oncologists with a breakthrough that allows best possible treatment for these patients."

Dr. Geschwind continued: "What matters most in these cases, is the ability to visualize the liver tumors, even small ones, during the procedure and to approach them in a very targeted way to maximize the therapeutic outcome, while avoiding the destruction of healthy liver tissue. OncoSuite is designed to help us see, reach and treat liver cancer in a better way."[3]-[5]

OncoSuite is Philips' integrated solution to enhance tumor embolization and ablation procedures with Philips' interventional X-ray systems. It is the only platform in the industry that supports both procedures enabling physicians to target multiple tumor lesions simultaneously. OncoSuite comprises Philips' innovative product offerings for enhanced imaging (XperCT Dual), live 3D image guidance for tumor embolization (EmboGuide) and live 3D image guidance for tumor ablation (XperGuide). It is yet another example of Philips' Image Guided Therapy solutions that advances minimally invasive procedures by helping physicians decide, guide, treat and confirm the right therapy for each patient.

"Minimally invasive, image-guided interventional oncology procedures are a highly effective option for patients who cannot be treated through conventional techniques such as surgery, chemotherapy or radiation therapy," said Ronald Tabaksblat, Business Leader Image Guided Therapy Systems at Philips. "Interventional oncology procedures are rapidly increasing and OncoSuite provides the first complete interventional oncology portfolio for interventional radiologists, enabling physicians to see the entire tumor and its feeder vessels to directly target treatment avoiding healthy tissue."

The next generation OncoSuite allows targeted treatment of an entire tumor and its feeder vessels, sparing surrounding tissue or organs. The innovative Open Trajectory function within XperCT Dual enables better centering of the liver with significantly improved visualization during the procedure of peripheral hepatic tumors in a single sweep.[6] This feature provides a more targeted field of view making it possible to effectively scan larger patients. Previously, with the traditional geometric movement of the C-arm of the interventional X-ray system, part of the liver image was truncated and larger patients required multiple scans to visualize tumors in the periphery of the liver.

Embolization procedures involve blocking the arteries feeding a tumor with beads to deprive it of nutrients and oxygen. They require the insertion of a catheter, which must be guided to the tumor site with the aid of live image-guidance. BTG and Philips have been working in close collaboration on the visualization benefits of radio-opaque beads in combination with image-guided therapy. Together the companies have calibrated LC Bead LUMITMand Philips Live Image Guidance Software to help interventional radiologists and multi-disciplinary teams to visualize better treatment options for patients with liver cancer. As a result, the next generation OncoSuite also features the world's first optimized imaging for LC Bead LUMITM that provides real-time visible confirmation of bead location during embolization procedures.[7] In addition, the new Wiper Movement functionality improves workflow with automatic Dual Phase imaging, helping physicians to acquire two 3D cone beam CT datasets at different times of the procedure in a single step.

The next generation OncoSuite reflects Philips' commitment to deliver better, more personalized care to patients, while reducing healthcare costs. For more information on Philips presence at the CIRSE Congress 2016, please visit here and follow the CIRSE2016 conversation @PhilipsLiveFrom throughout the event. OncoSuite and Philips' full suite of integrated radiology solutions will also be featured at the upcoming 2016 RSNA annual meeting in Chicago (US) later this year. For continuous updates on Philips' presence at RSNA 2016, please visit here.

References and notes:

* OncoSuite is the combination of Philips' innovative product offerings XperCT Dual, EmboGuide and XperGuide. XperCT Dual rel3.3 with Open Trajectory and XperCT for LUMI optimized imaging is not yet CE marked, and not yet available for delivery.

** LC Bead LUMITMis the official trademark of BTG (Biocompatibles UK Ltd.) and is not available as part of Philips' OncoSuite.

[1] Stewart, BW, Wild CW. World Cancer Report. 2014. Available at: https://shop.iarc.fr/products/wcr2014 Accessed August 2016

[2] Tucker, ME. Fatty Liver Disease Surging as Liver Cancer Cause. 2015. Available at: http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/843733 Accessed August 2016

[3] Loffroy R, et al. Intraprocedural C-arm dual-phase cone-beam CT: can it be used to predict short-term response to TACE with drug-eluting beads in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma? Radiol. 2013 Feb;266(2):636-48

[4] Miyayama S, et al. Efficacy of automated tumor-feeder detection software using cone-beam computed tomography technology in transarterial embolization through extrahepatic collateral vessels for malignant hepatic tumors. Hepatol Res. 2016 Feb;46(2):166-73

[5] Schernthaner RE, et al. Improved Visibility of Metastatic Disease in the Liver During Intra-Arterial Therapy Using Delayed Arterial Phase Cone-Beam CT. Cardiovasc Intervent Radiol. 2016 Jul 5. [Epub ahead of print]

[6] Schernthaner RE, et al. Feasibility of a modified cone-beam CT rotation trajectory to improve liver periphery visualization during transarterial chemoembolization. Radiology. 2015;277(3):833-41

[7] Levy EB, et al. First Human Experience with Directly Image-able Iodinated Embolization Microbeads. Cardiovasc Intervent Radiol. 2016 Aug;39(8):1177-86

This material is not meant for distribution in the USA.

About Royal Philips

Royal Philips (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHIA) is a leading health technology company focused on improving people's health and enabling better outcomes across the health continuum from healthy living and prevention, to diagnosis, treatment and home care. Philips leverages advanced technology and deep clinical and consumer insights to deliver integrated solutions. Headquartered in the Netherlands, the company is a leader in diagnostic imaging, image-guided therapy, patient monitoring and health informatics, as well as in consumer health and home care. Philips' health technology portfolio generated 2015 sales of EUR 16.8 billion and employs approximately 69,000 employees with sales and services in more than 100 countries. News about Philips can be found athttp://www.philips.com/newscenter.

For further information, please contact:



Steve Klink

Philips Group Communications

Tel.: +31-6-10888824

E-mail: steve.klink@philips.com



Fabienne van der Feer

Philips Image Guided Therapy

Tel: +31-6-22698001

E-mail: fabienne.van.der.feer@philips.com


SHANGHAI, Sept. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- On April 26, 2016, under the guidance of the National Leading Group against Intellectual Property Infringement and Producing & Selling Counterfeits (NLGO) and with the support of relevant state departments and the China Industry-University-Research Institute Cooperation Association, the "2016 China Anti-infringement and Anti-counterfeiting Experience Exchanging Meeting & the Membership Meeting of the Beijing Innovation Technique Alliance for Testing and Identifying Infringing and Counterfeiting Goods" was held in Beijing. Sinofaith was invited to attend the meeting and was delighted to receive a "2015 Top 10 Advanced Legal Services for Protecting IP Rights and Fighting Counterfeiting" award.

More than 200 attendees, including representatives of the government, academic circles, and business enterprises joined the meeting. They all shared their successful experiences in protecting intellectual property rights and fighting against fake, shoddy goods.

The meeting called for: "Using big data, cloud computing, the Internet of Things and other information technologies to enhance the protection of online creativity and R&D findings, and improve our early-warning and prevention capabilities." As one of China's largest IP protection agencies, Sinofaith independently developed IPRSEE, an online trademark monitoring and protection platform, using the SaaS model. The platform, through the analysis of big data from the Internet, provides comprehensive Internet IP protection solutions for famous domestic and foreign enterprises and government regulators. The platform, which covers monitoring, early warning, authorization, rapid response, legal remedies, effect assessment, and more, is aimed at integrating online and offline monitoring, strengthening the tracking of indicators for infringement and counterfeiting activity leading to the provision of long term eradication solutions.

The meeting also emphasized the role of social co-governance and regional cooperation in fighting against infringement and counterfeiting and advocated that

measures must be taken to give full play to the self-regulatory role of industry associations,

to clarify the corporate responsibilities of enterprises in affected industries,

social complaint channels should be transparent and open,

the sharing and analysis of network data should be strengthened,

and thata new pattern of social co-governance for fighting infringement and counterfeiting should be built.

As one of the leading IPR service agencies in China, Sinofaith offers the full spectrum of IP protection services, from acquisition to the application of IPR. The Top Ten Award recognizes Sinofaith's considerable contribution and commitment to the fight against infringement and counterfeiting.

Contact:

Cassie

Office Number: +86-755-8359-9993

Email: cassie@proexpo.cc







To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sinofaith-ip-group-honoured-again-at-the-2016-china-anti-infringement-and-anti-counterfeiting-experience-exchanging-meeting-beld-in-beijing-300325388.html
Silkeborg, 2016-09-09 08:15 CEST (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The share buy-back programme runs from 01 July 2016 to 31 December 2016. In this period Jyske Bank will acquire shares with a value of up to DKK 1.0 billion, cf. company announcement No. 48/2016 of 18 August 2016, where the original share buy-back programme of DKK 500 million got increased with a total amount of DKK 500 million. The share buy-back programme is initiated and structured in compliance with the EU Commission Regulation No. 2273/2003 of 22 December 2003 (the so-called Safe Harbour Regulative for share buy-back programmes), and from 03 July 2016 in accordance with the EU Commission Regulation No. 596/2014 of 16 April 2014 on market abuse (Market Abuse Regulation), which ensures that Jyske Bank is protected against violation of insider legislation in relation to the share buy-back programme.Since the announcement as of 01 July 2016, the following transactions have been made under the program:Number of Average Transaction value in shares purchase DKK price -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Accumulated, last 825,000 283.02 233,490,172 announcement -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 02 September 2016 30,000 323.53 9,706,035 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 05 September 2016 30,000 325.23 9,756,759 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 06 September 2016 30,000 319.29 9,578,670 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 07 September 2016 30,000 316.41 9,492,213 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 08 September 2016 30,000 317.25 9,517,530 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Accumulated under the 975,000 288.76 281,541,379 programme --------------------------------------------------------------------------------With the transactions stated above, Jyske Bank now owns a total of 3,617,740 of treasury shares, excluding investments made on behalf of customers and shares held for trading purposes, corresponding to 3.81% of the share capital.In accordance with the EU Commission Regulation No. 596/2014, transactions related to the share buy-back programme are presented in detailed form in the spread sheet attached to this company announcement.Yours faithfully,Jyske BankAny questions in regards to this announcement may be addressed to Trine Lysholt Nrgaard, Director, Head of Investor Relations, on tel. +45 89 89 64 29.Attachment:https://cns.omxgroup.com/cds/DisclosureAttachmentServlet?messageAttachmentId=585756
Three demonstrations will be transmitted via SES's prime orbital slot of 19.2 degrees East

SES S.A. (Euronext Paris:SESG) (LuxX:SESG) announced today that it will broadcast three demonstrations of Ultra HD (UHD) with High Dynamic Range (HDR) at IBC 2016 in Amsterdam.

This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160908006822/en/

SES Showcases Ultra HD High Dynamic Range with Leading Industry Players (Photo: Business Wire)

One demonstration will broadcast the UHD HDR test channel with content produced by LG Electronics that was launched in May during SES's annual Industry Days. This channel will be showcased on a 65 inch LGE OLED flat screen and will be encoded in the Hybrid Log Gamma (HLG) format, a backwards compatible HDR technology developed by BBC and NHK.

The second demonstration will showcase two sets of UHD content in HDR, produced by Samsung and SES respectively. The content will be displayed on a 75 inch Samsung Quantum dot SUHD TV and will also use the HLG format.

A third UHD demonstration will show the Technicolor/Philips backwards compatible HDR technology on a 65 inch LGE OLED flat screen, and will be connected to a Technicolor set-top-box.

Thomas Wrede, VP Reception Systems at SES, commented, "By offering a wider range of brightness and darkness on the screen, HDR is the next step for Ultra HD. Working with major industry players is crucial to continue refining new TV developments and bringing a higher level of viewing experience to consumer homes."

In addition, SES has produced a new demo reel which portrays the stunning picture quality of Ultra HD delivered via satellite and showcases how this new technology makes the viewing experience even more immersive. The video content will be added to SES's Ultra HD demonstration channels, available at 19.2 degrees East, 28.2 degrees East, 23.5 degrees East, 31.5 degrees East and 5 degrees East.

More information on how to receive the demo channels is available here: http://www.ses.com/ultra-hd

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About SES

SES (Euronext Paris:SESG) (LuxX:SESG) is the world-leading satellite operator with a fleet of more than 50 geostationary satellites. Focusing on value-added, end-to-end solutions in four key market verticals (video, enterprise, mobility and government), SES provides satellite communications services to broadcasters, content and internet service providers, and mobile and fixed network operators, as well as business and governmental organisations worldwide. SES stands for long-lasting business relationships, high-quality service and excellence in the satellite industry. The culturally diverse regional teams of SES are located around the globe and work closely with customers to meet their specific satellite bandwidth and service requirements.

SES's subsidiary, MX1, is one of the leading media service providers and offers a full suite of innovative digital video and media services.

Through its ownership of O3b Networks, a next generation satellite network combining the reach of satellite with the speed of fibre, SES significantly enhanced existing video and data capabilities. SES is the first satellite provider in the world to deliver a differentiated and entirely scalable GEO-MEO offer with powerful technical capabilities across numerous market segments and geographies.

At SES we are shaping new ecosystems and laying the groundwork for new foundations.

Further information available at: www.ses.com

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160908006822/en/

Contacts:

SES

Markus Payer

Corporate Communications

Tel. +352 710 725 500

Markus.Payer@ses.com
MaidSafe, a start-up developing a fully decentralised, secure approach to the Internet, has announced it will be launching an equity fund-raising round with BnkToTheFuture, a leading global online investment platform. BnkToTheFuture enables qualifying investors to invest in the future of finance and technology. The pitch will go live on BnkToTheFuture.com on September 12th and it will be open for 30 days.

This is the next major development in the company's long-term strategy following the successful launch of the alpha version of its network, called the SAFE (Secure Access for Everyone) Network. This round of funding will enable MaidSafe to continue recruitment of top developer talent to build out the features and functionality of the network, and to grow awareness amongst application developers and strategic partners.

"We are incredibly excited to be launching this investment round with BnkToTheFuture, as it gives us the ability to secure funding without ceding control of our strategy and roadmap," explained David Irvine, founder and CEO, MaidSafe. "Given all of the frustrations with current Internet services we believe MaidSafe, together with the SAFE Network community, is ideally positioned to offer a secure and more efficient alternative, which will create compelling opportunities for investors interested in this global opportunity."

The security and privacy of users lies at the heart of MaidSafe's proposition, because data is encrypted and obfuscated and algorithms scatter these unrecognisable chunks randomly across the decentralised platform. Combined with a novel authentication mechanism where users are unknown to anyone and require no permission to join, MaidSafe's approach removes the need for the centralised servers inherent in the Worldwide Web today, giving everyone the Internet that has always been promised free, safe and secure. The company has also sought to address the imbalance in the current shared economy. MaidSafe is also developing a crypto-currency, Safecoin, which will be used as a mechanism to reward users and application developers in a much fairer manner.

Further Information:

MaidSafe website: http://maidsafe.net/

MaidSafe SAFE Network Alpha Launch: http://maidsafe.net/alpha.html

BnkToTheFuture: https://bnktothefuture.com/

About MaidSafe

Started in 2006 by Scottish engineer David Irvine, MaidSafe is a team, comprised of thinkers, inventors, tinkerers, PHDs, engineers and designers, who share a mission to provide security and privacy for everyone. MaidSafe has developed The SAFE (Secure Access For Everyone) Network, which is made up of the unused hard drive space, processing power and data connection of its users. It offers a level of security and privacy not currently available on the existing Internet and turns the tables on companies, putting users in control of their data, rather than trusting it to organisations.

About BnkToTheFuture

BnkToTheFuture is a global online investment platform that allows qualifying investors to invest in the future of finance and technology by offering financial innovation and technology investment opportunities online.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160909005039/en/

Contacts:

MaidSafe

Nick Lambert, +44 1292 317 311

Chief Operating Officer

pr@maidsafe.net
PUNE, India, September 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

The global lithium iron phosphate battery market 2016-2020 report says a large portion of its consumption is attributed to China and the reason for this high demand is the significant increase in the usage of battery-operated vehicles in China. The growth in the usage of lithium iron phosphate batteries is due to the expected long-term developments in the EV and HEV sectors to reduce carbon emissions and support alternative fuel sources. Also, China accounts for nearly 40% of the global lithium iron phosphate battery market. The country has nearly 95% of the rare earth lithium metals that could increase the lithium iron phosphate production in the coming years. The increased demand from China is expected to be the major prevailing trend in the global lithium iron phosphate battery market during the forecast period.

Complete report on lithium iron phosphate battery market spread across 77 pages, analyzing 5 major companies and providing 53 data exhibits now available at http://www.sandlerresearch.org/global-lithium-iron-phosphate-battery-market-2016-2020.html .

The analysts forecast global lithium iron phosphate battery market to grow at a CAGR of 20.5% during the period 2016-2020. According to the lithium iron phosphate battery market report, strong focus on renewable power generation will be a key driver for market growth. The growing population and the depletion of fossil fuel reserves have raised concerns about and focus on renewable power generation. Also, the integration of renewable energy resources with power grid networks has increased worldwide. In micro grids and hybrid power systems, LFP batteries are used as a backup. For instance, San Nicolas Island wind-diesel micro grid in the US uses a 1,000-kWh LFP battery for backup.

The strong focus on renewable power generation has boosted the adoption of lithium iron phosphate batteries across the globe. Wind and solar power are the two widely used energy sources for renewable power generation. Because of its intermittent nature, the generated power is stored in the battery for later use. During 2015, the APAC region accounted for around 58% of the overall market revenue to become the dominant shareholder in the global lithium iron phosphate battery market. The thriving EV, HEV, and consumer electronics sectors in the region is expected fuel further growth of the market in this region during the forecast period.

Accounting for a total market share of about 62%, the EVs, and HEVs segment dominated the lithium iron phosphate battery market during 2015. EV manufacturers are constantly on the lookout for unconventional energy storage systems that offer increased vehicle efficiency and performance. Due to their high energy density and long cycle time, lithium iron phosphate batteries come as the most preferred choice of alternative energy storage systems.

The following companies are the key players in the global lithium iron phosphate battery market: A123 Systems, BYD, Electrical Vehicle Power System Technology, Hi Power, and OptimumNano Energy. Other prominent vendors in the market are: GAIA, K2Energy LiFeBATT, Phostech, Pihsiang Energy Technology, Pulead Technology Industry, and Victory Battery Technology. Order a copy of Global Lithium Iron Phosphate Battery Market 2016-2020 report @ http://www.sandlerresearch.org/purchase?rname=59399.

Global Lithium Iron Phosphate Battery Market 2016-2020, has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts. To calculate the market size, the report presents the vendor landscape and a corresponding detailed analysis of the top five vendors operating in the market.

Another related report is Global Battery Market for E-scooters 2016-2020 that says increase in renewable power generation will be a key driver for market growth. The growing population and depletion of fossil fuel reserves have raised concern about the focus on renewable energy production. Also, the integration of renewable energy resources with power grid networks has increased worldwide. Browse complete report @ http://www.sandlerresearch.org/global-battery-market-for-e-scooters-2016-2020.html.

Explore other new reports on Energy & Power Market @ http://www.sandlerresearch.org/market-research/energy-power .

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Company announcement 17 2016/17Allerd, 2016-09-09 10:12 CEST (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Board of Directors of Matas have resolved to initiate a share buyback programme in accordance with the provisions of Article 5 of Regulation No. 596/2014 of the European Parliament and Council of 16 April 2014 (MAR) and Regulation 2016/1052, also referred to as the "Safe Harbor" rules. Please refer to company announcement no. 15 dated 30 August 2016.The programme, which was initiated with a view to cancelling the shares bought back, amounts to DKK 150 million and runs from and including 1 September 2016 through 31 March 2017 at the latest.Under the share buyback programme, the following transactions have been made during the period 1 September 2016 - 8 September 2016:Trading day Number of Average purchase Transaction shares price, DKK value, DKK --------------------------------------------------------------------------------1 September 2016 12,000 124.35 1,492,200 2 September 2016 12,000 124.93 1,499,160 5 September 2016 12,000 124.57 1,494,840 6 September 2016 11,000 124.70 1,371,700 7 September 2016 11,000 124.24 1,366,640 8 September 2016 10,879 124.48 1,354,218Accumulated the last 6 68,879 124.55 8,578,758 trading days Accumulated under the 68,879 124.55 8,578,758 program --------------------------------------------------------------------------------Following the transactions, Matas has purchased a total number of 68,879 shares since 1 September 2016 and holds 330,827 treasury shares, equivalent to 0.84% of the company's total share capital.We enclose share buy-back transactions data in detailed form provided in accordance with the Commissions delegated regulation (EU) 2016/1052 of 8 March 2016.Please address any questions to Sren Mlbak, Head of Investor Relations, at tel +45 48 1655 48.Matas A/SAttachment:https://cns.omxgroup.com/cds/DisclosureAttachmentServlet?messageAttachmentId=585796

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
David Yeung, CEO at Chuang's Innovation Industries Ltd.

HKTDC Communication and Public Affairs Department Joe Kainz Tel: +852 2584 4216 Email: joe.kainz@hktdc.org

HONG KONG, HONG KONG, HONG KONG, Sept 9, 2016 - (ACN Newswire) - Apple has just released the long awaited next generation iPhone, together with the second generation Apple Watch, with waterproof and built-in GPS function. And experts predict that smart wearable devices combining different functions will continue to shape timepiece industry trends for years to come. Three industry professionals shared their insights on the theme of "The Next Wave of Movement in Time" at The Asian Watch Conference held on 7 September during the HKTDC Hong Kong Watch & Clock Fair.New breakthroughs in smart watch technologyDavid Yeung, CEO at Chuang's Innovation Industries Ltd, is upbeat about the market prospects for smart watches. "A smart watch makes all the functions of phones available on the user's wrist instead of in the pocket. Its market growth will be overwhelming," says Mr Yeung.Yet, some issues are slowing down the development of smart devices, according to Mr Yeung. He shared two news stories about Apple Watch, one about adding GPS function to the device and the other addressing the limited capacity of its battery. "Smart watches have high growth potential but the growth has been limited by the lack of killer applications," he added.The fundamental problem, according to Mr Yeung, is the limited physical size of smart watches. In other words, how can a small watch case embody all the functions and features such as a super-high capacity battery, Wi-Fi connection and larger screen for text, among other things? Mr Yeung proposed enhancing the functionality of the strap and clasp of the watch to help solve the problem.With extensive experience in manufacturing traditional watch straps, Mr Yeung started to design, develop and manufacture straps for smart watches three years ago.Innovative technology incorporated into straps and claspsMr Yeung noted that the watch strap launched by the smart watch brand Pebble Time, has an in-built battery with a capacity of 600mAh, which is on par with some older models of smart phones, and an independent GPS function. In addition, Near Field Communication payment functions can be applied to smart watches by integrating a sensor into the strap. Only 3.5 mm thick and made with soft silicon materials, the smart watch strap is just as comfortable and attractive as traditional ones, he said.Mr Yeung believed that smart watches will embrace huge market opportunities in the next 20 years and that traditional watch and strap manufacturers could consider investing in the research and development of relevant products. He expects Apple Watch to unveil hidden port configuration in the future, which will allow manufacturers to develop different additional functions on the device.Application of financial technologyWith its increasingly common payment function, smart watches can be infused with Fintech (Financial technology) and set a new trend for the timepiece industry, according to Emil Chan, Chairman of The Association of Cloud and Mobile Computing Professionals, who has rich experience in the finance industry.Mr Chan said that the incorporation of payment functions in smart phones is a great success and a typical example of combining innovative technology with the financial world. Fintech is increasingly popular around the world, according to Mr Chan. "Sweden is a cash-free country now. Even if you want to donate money to a church, they don't use cash anymore. When you buy a sausage at a temporary food stall in Australia, you pay by scanning a QR code. In China, you can pay with WeChat payment; even at a car park, no meter is required for cash payment now," he noted.Mr Chan believes that all functions of a smart phone can be introduced into wearable devices with health-related functions having particularly good market potential. "For instance, wearable technology installed in underwear of elderly people or children can transmit data to the cloud system that allows carers to monitor their health condition," he said, adding that, instead of pursuing breakthroughs in terms of function, manufacturers should also incorporate elements of fashion in their smart watch products.Gaining popularity through online campaignsLaurent Le Pen, Founder and CEO of Omate Ltd, who raised about one million US dollars through crowdfunding website Kickstarter.com, shared his experience in online crowdfunding. Omate started as a mobile phone designer, before transforming into an OEM in Shenzhen focussing on smart phones since 2013.Mr Le Pen recalled that when the company was preparing its first project True Smart, it needed US$100,000 additional funding. That was about the time when Kickstarter first came into the market. "We spent US$5,000 shooting a promotion video and drew more than 4,000 supporters. We ended up raising over a million US dollars, which was 10 times as much as we first expected. And we gained wide media attention afterwards."Mr Le Pen noted that crowdfunding websites can help a company raise funds and raise their profile at the same time. Citing the company's motto "Technology is what we carry and fashion is what we wear", Mr Le Pen said that Omate's smart watch projects have achieved crossover with many different brands, such as the luxury jewellery brands under Richline Group. They have also developed functions that are useful for elderly people and children.The 35th edition of HKTDC Hong Kong Watch & Clock Fair is co-organised by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council, Hong Kong Watch Manufacturers Association Ltd and The Federation of Hong Kong Watch Trades and Industries Ltd. The five-day fair (6-10 September) is being held at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre.Fair Websites:HKTDC Hong Kong Watch & Clock Fair: www.hktdc.com/fair/hkwatchfair-tcSalon de TE: http://www.hktdc.com/fair/te-tc/TE.htmlHKTDC Photo Link: http://bit.ly/2cELSLyNote:6-10 September: Open to traders aged 18 or above (free admission)10 September: Salon de TE open to the public aged 12 or above (free admission)Media Registration:Media representatives wishing to cover the events may register on-site with their business cards and/or media identification.Press releases in Chinese at http://mediaroom.hktdc.com/tc.About HKTDCThe Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC) celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. The HKTDC is the international marketing arm for Hong Kong-based traders, manufacturers and services providers. With more than 40 offices globally, including 13 on the Chinese mainland, the HKTDC promotes Hong Kong as a platform for doing business with China and throughout Asia. The HKTDC also organises international exhibitions, conferences and business missions to provide companies, particularly SMEs, with business opportunities on the mainland and in overseas markets, while providing information via trade publications, research reports and digital channels including the media room. For more information, please visit: www.hktdc.com/aboutus. Follow us on Google+, Twitter @hktdc, LinkedIn.Google+: https://plus.google.com/+hktdcTwitter: http://www.twitter.com/hktdcLinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/hong-kong-trade-development-councilSource: HKTDCContact:Copyright 2016 ACN Newswire . All rights reserved.
The Hitachi Automotive Systems Group will be introducing a wide range of aftermarket products and technologies at the event.

Hitachi Ltd Corporate Communications Tel: +81-3-3258-1111

TOKYO, TOKYO, TOKYO, Sept 9, 2016 - (JCN Newswire) - Hitachi Automotive Systems Espelkamp GmbH, a member of the Hitachi Automotive Systems Group that is responsible for the company's automotive repair and aftermarket parts business in Europe, today announced that the company will be participating in Automechanika Frankfurt 2016, to be held at the Messe Frankfurt in Frankfurt, Germany, from Tuesday, September 13th, to Saturday, September 17th. The Hitachi Automotive Systems Group will be introducing a wide range of aftermarket products and technologies at the event. This will mark Hitachi Automotive Systems Espelkamp's 19th participation in the event, which is held every other year.Europe is the birthplace of the automotive industry, and demand for cars remains strong in Central and Eastern Europe. Automotive aftermarket demand for replacement parts and repairs is also expected to grow. Hitachi Automotive Systems is utilizing the technological capabilities honed in its 90-year history in the automotive equipment business to strengthen its aftermarket products business. Further, it is using its wide range of aftermarket parts, which include engine parts such as airflow sensors and high-pressure fuel pumps, as well as safety system parts such as shock absorbers and brake pads to expand its global business.Hitachi Automotive Systems will be exhibiting at Stand E-60 in Hall 3. The company will be exhibiting its power steering pumps for the first time in Europe, which are expected to be in high demand in the global aftermarket. Other products on display carrying Hitachi Automotive Systems Espelkamp's HUCO brand will include camshafts that control engine ignition timing and camshaft sensors.Products on display (Product brand name)(Hitachi)Power steering pumpElectropneumatic valvesAir suspensionsTurbochargersIgnition coilsRelaysSensorsAirflow sensors(TOKICO)Shock absorbers(HUCO)RegulatorsPower steering pumpsElectropneumatic valvesDifferential pressure sensorsValvesAir suspensionsIgnition coilsRelaysSensorsHigh-pressure fuel pumpsAirflow sensorsAbout Hitachi Automotive Systems Eskelkamp GmbHHitachi Automotive Systems Eskelkamp GmbH is a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi Automotive Systems Europe GmbH, headquartered in Eskelkamp, Germany. The company is engaged in offering world class range of replacement parts to cater the needs of international automotive electronics market. For more information, please visit the company's website at http://www.hueco.com/.About Hitachi Automotive Systems, Ltd.Hitachi Automotive Systems, Ltd. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd., headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. The company is engaged in the development, manufacture, sales and services of automotive components, transportation related components, industrial machines and systems, and offers a wide range of automotive systems including engine management systems, electric power train systems, drive control systems and car information systems. For more information, please visit the company's website at www.hitachi-automotive.co.jp/en/.Source: Hitachi Automotive Systems, Ltd.Contact:Copyright 2016 JCN Newswire . All rights reserved.


CANBERA (dpa-AFX) - The Australian dollar weakened against the other major currencies in the Asian session on Friday, with investor sentiment dampened by the European Central Bank's decision to not extend its quantitative easing program and following news that North Korea may have conducted a nuclear test earlier in the day.



In other economic news, data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed that the total number of home loans in Australia was down a seasonally adjusted 4.2 percent on month in July, standing at 55,010. That missed forecasts for a decline of 1.5 percent following the 1.2 percent increase in June.



Investment lending added 0.5 percent to A$11.842 billion, slowing from 3.2 percent in the previous month. While, the value of loans slipped 3.1 percent to A$19.946 billion after rising 1.8 percent a month earlier.



Data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed that the Consumer prices in China were up just 1.3 percent on year in August. That was beneath expectations for 1.7 percent and down from 1.8 percent in July.



On a monthly basis, consumer prices were up 0.1 percent after gaining 0.2 percent a month earlier.



Producer prices were down an annual 0.8 percent versus expectations for a fall of 0.9 percent after sliding 1.7 percent in the previous month.



Thursday, the Australian dollar showed mixed trading against its major rivals. While the aussie rose against the U.S dollar, the yen, the euro and the loonie, it fell against the NZ dollar.



In the Asian trading, the Australian dollar fell to a 1-week low of 1.4805 against the euro, a 3-day low of 0.7615 against the U.S. dollar and a 2-day low of 0.9857 against the Canadian dollar, from early highs of 1.4723, 0.7657 and 0.9894, respectively. If the aussie extends its downtrend, it is likely to find support around 1.48 against the euro, 0.75 against the greenback and 0.96 against the loonie.



Against the yen, the aussie dropped to a 2-day low of 77.76, from its early high of 78.33. On the downside, 76.00 is seen as the next support level for the aussie.



The aussie dropped to 1.0319 against the NZ dollar, from an early high of 1.0349. The aussie may test support near the 1.02 area.



Looking ahead, U.K. trade data and construction output for July are slated for release shortly.



At 7:45 am ET, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston President Eric Rosengren is expected to speak before the South Shore Chamber Breakfast in Quincy, U.S.



In the New York session, Canada housing starts and jobs data for August, U.S. wholesale trade sales data for July and U.S. Baker Hughes rig count data are set to be published.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

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CRIF, the global credit information company with head office in Bologna, Italy, has announced today the acquisition of CCIS, the Taiwanese-based credit information agency, from the previous shareholders, to carry forward its business growth and expansion path in the Asian market.

This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160909005227/en/

CCIS, founded in 1961, is Taiwan's largest and leading credit information agency, operating an established island-wide network which offers a full spectrum of information and consulting services. CCIS also operates in Mainland China through its branches in Beijing and Shanghai, and it is one of the most important credit information company in the Far East.

Thanks to a comprehensive information service system encompassing both Taiwan and China, which integrates credit and information on companies and individuals, CCIS supports financial and business organizations in performing risk assessment, preventing outstanding debts, reducing transaction costs and investments, and speeding up market exploration.

Considering the economic and financial system in Asia, the CCIS credit information system, combined with the advanced solutions already offered by CRIF in the region, will help organizations streamline credit and decision-making processes based on credit references, facilitate access to credit to wider segments of the economy, promoting responsible lending and business development.

"We are happy to welcome a new solid company like CCIS and its outstanding team of professionals under the CRIF umbrella", said Carlo Gherardi, President and CEO of CRIF. "Many new growth opportunities and future prospects will open up to CCIS to further develop services for its Taiwanese and global clients. In addition to this, the integration of CCIS into CRIF will ensure greater added-value services and efficient support for business development and success for our clients in Greater China and Asia".

"As a 55 year old company, at CCIS we are keen to innovate to keep pace with the remarkable progress being made in the outside world. Technically, we have put in place updated IT facilities to provide our service, and mentally we see ourselves as a B Corp pursuing balance among our stakeholders. This is a great opportunity to work under the CRIF umbrella to develop synergies and create win-win solutions for our valued customers," said David Ta-Wei Chang, President and CEO of CCIS.

CRIF at a glance https://youtu.be/R0osxojjPR8

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160909005227/en/

Contacts:

Maurizio Liuti

CRIF Communication, PR Corporate Relations Director

pressoffice@crif.com
VIENNA (dpa-AFX) - German stocks fell on Friday, with the ECB's policy inaction, disappointing German trade figures and concerns over geopolitical risks linked to North Korean actions weighing on markets. While the European Central Bank left markets in the dark on what future easing steps it may take, North Korea's confirmation of its most powerful nuclear test to date provoked strong reactions from several countries, including the US, China, Russia and Japan. German exports posted their steepest drop in nearly a year in July, falling 2.6 per cent from June when it rose 0.2 percent, official data showed today. Imports fell 0.7 percent, reversing a 1.1 percent increase a month ago in another sign of weakness from Europe's largest economy. On a yearly basis, exports fell 10 percent and imports slid 6.5 percent in July. The benchmark DAX was down 8 points or 0.07 percent at 10,666 in late opening deals after hitting as low as 10,614 earlier in the session. Adidas, Bayer and Heidelberg Cement were among top losers. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
MANILA, PHILIPPINES -- (Marketwired) -- 09/09/16 -- Mindoro Resources Ltd. (TSX VENTURE: MIO) (FRANKFURT: WKN 906167) ("Mindoro" or the "Company") announces that it has received notification from the TSX Venture Exchange (the "TSX-V") of the Company's reclassification from a Tier 1 Issuer to a Tier 2 Issuer of the TSX-V. This reclassification took effect on September 2, 2016.

The Company's securities remain suspended from trading on the TSX-V as a result of the Company's failure to pay its 2016 Annual Sustaining Fees. The delay in payment of these fees is due to the pending submission of required documents to the TSX-V pertaining to compliance with TSX-V Policy 3.1, Directors, Officers, Other Insiders & Personnel and Corporate Governance. The Company is currently working on said compliance documentation as well as the other requirements to enable the Company's securities to resume trading on the TSX-V.

Despite such suspension, the Company is still compliant with the timely filing of its Financial Statements and other continuous disclosure requirements, including the holding of its Annual & Special Meeting of Shareholders scheduled for September 12, 2016.

About Mindoro

Mindoro is a Tier 2 issuer trading on the TSX Venture Exchange (MIO) and Frankfurt Stock Exchange (WKN 906167). Mindoro has a direct and beneficial 40% interest in the Agata Mining Joint Venture and direct and beneficial 75% interest in the Agata Processing Joint Venture with an option to acquire an additional 25% interest in the Agata Processing Joint Venture. Mindoro also holds 75% interest in the Pan de Azucar Sulphur-Copper-Gold Project, Iloilo City. TVIRD has the option to earn up to 60% interest in the Agata Processing and Pan de Azucar projects by meeting the earn-in requirements outlined in the June 24, 2013 press release, which include producing a definitive feasibility study for a nickel processing facility. As of October 16, 2015, a PMRC compliant DFS was completed by Agata Processing Inc., which would result in TVIRD earning a total of 60% interest in API shares. Mindoro also holds 75% interest and an option to acquire additional 25% interest in the Tapian San Francisco Copper-Gold Project, Mindanao.

Reader Advisory

Certain information set out in this News Release constitutes forward-looking information. Forward-looking statements are often, but not always, identified by the use of words such as "seek", "anticipate", "plan", "continue", "estimate", "expect", "may", "will", "intent", "could", "might", "should", "believe", "scheduled", "to be", "will be" and similar expressions. Forward-looking statements in this News Release are based upon the opinions and expectations of management of the Company as at the effective date of such statements. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are based upon reasonable assumptions, it can give no assurance that those expectations will prove to have been correct. Forward-looking statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties (known and unknown) that could cause actual outcomes to differ materially from those anticipated or implied by such forward-looking statements. These factors include, but are not limited to, such things as inherent risks associated with the exploration and development of mining properties, ultimate recoverability of mineral reserves, timing, results and costs of exploration and development activities, availability of financial resources or third-party financing, new laws (domestic or foreign), changes in administrative practices, changes in exploration plans or budgets, and availability of equipment and personnel.

Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance upon the forward-looking statements contained in this News Release and such forward-looking statements should not be interpreted or regarded as guarantees of future outcomes. Forward-looking information respecting cash flows anticipated from future production of high-iron/low nickel DSO at the Agata Mining Project, is based upon high-iron/low nickel DSO prices in effect as at the date of this News Release, management's forecasts of trends in prices of high-iron/low nickel DSO, current mining rates of high-iron/low-nickel DSO from the Agata Mining Project, estimates of the size of the high-iron/low nickel DSO reserves at Agata Mining Project, the current development plan for Agata Mining Project, AMVI's current budget and overall strategy for Agata Mining Project, which plans, budget and strategy are all subject to change. Forward-looking information respecting the anticipated timing of future shipments of high-iron/low nickel DSO from the Agata Mining Project, is based upon current mining rates of high-iron/low nickel DSO from the Agata Mining Project, the terms of the third party offtake agreement for the purchase of high-iron/low nickel DSO produced at the Agata Mining Project, estimates of the size of the high-iron/low nickel DSO reserves at the Agata Mining Project, the current development plan for the Agata Mining Project, AMVI's current budget and overall strategy for the Agata Mining Project, which plans, budget and strategy are all subject to change. The forward-looking statements of the Company contained in this News Release are expressly qualified, in their entirety, by this cautionary statement. Various risks to which the Company is exposed in the conduct of its business (including mining activities) are described in detail in the Company's Management's Discussion and Analysis for the year ended December 31, 2015, which was filed on SEDAR on April 29, 2016 and is available under the Company's profile at www.sedar.com. Subject to applicable securities laws, the Company does not undertake any obligation to publicly revise the forward-looking statements included in this News Release to reflect subsequent events or circumstances.

NEITHER THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE NOR ITS REGULATION SERVICES (AS THAT TERM IS DEFINED IN THE POLICIES OF THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE) ACCEPTS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE.

Contacts:

Mindoro Resources Ltd.

Mary Anne B. Antazo

Interim CEO

+63 917.322.6975

mbantazo@mrlnickel.com



Mindoro Resources Ltd.

Jeannette V. Gutierrez

CFO

+632 728.8491 loc 441

jvgutierrez@mrlnickel.com




VIENNA (dpa-AFX) - French shares fell slightly on Friday, with disappointment over the lack of action by the European Central Bank, weak German and French data as well as concerns over geopolitical risks linked to North Korean actions weighing on markets. While the European Central Bank left markets in the dark on what future easing steps it may take, North Korea's confirmation of its most powerful nuclear test to date provoked strong reactions from several countries, including the US, China, Russia and Japan. German exports posted their steepest drop in nearly a year in July, falling 2.6 per cent from June when it rose 0.2 percent, official data showed today. Imports fell 0.7 percent, reversing a 1.1 percent increase a month ago in another sign of weakness from Europe's largest economy. On a yearly basis, exports fell 10 percent and imports slid 6.5 percent in July. Closer home, official data showed that French industrial output unexpectedly fell 0.6 percent in July from the previous month, confounding expectations for an increase of 0.3 percent. This was the third consecutive decrease in production. The benchmark CAC 40 was down 6 points or 0.14 percent at 4,535 in late opening deals after hitting as low as 4,520 earlier in the session. Total SA shares fell almost 1 percent. The oil major said it is exercising its preemption right to acquire Chesapeake's 75 percent share in the jointly held Barnett Shale in Texas. Financials traded mostly higher, with BNP Paribas, Credit Agricole and Societe Generale Group climbing 1-2 percent. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
OtherLevels 2 utilises big data and statistical models to maximise audience reach and message delivery, making it the most sophisticated marketing automation platform available today

BRISBANE, Australia, Sept. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- OtherLevels Holdings Limited (ASX: OLV, "OtherLevels" or the "Company"), a leader in cross-channel marketing and engagement, today announced the release of OtherLevels 2 - the next generation of the OtherLevels marketing automation platform. OtherLevels 2 completely redefines how marketers create messages and campaigns, enabling them to leverage 8 different messaging formats, and reach their audience across mobile, tablet and PC devices.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160908/405912LOGO

OtherLevels is already used by brands and publishers to deliver rich, relevant and personalised message experiences. OtherLevels 2 enables marketers to spend more time on their campaigns and content, and reduces the time spent on maximising audience reach. It leverages big data to greatly enhance its intelligent messaging capability, and optimise the delivery of content to end users' preferred channel, thus increasing the likelihood of engagement. With OtherLevels 2, marketers have the ability to automatically and precisely target their audience with the optimum message format including app push, web push and local push notifications, interstitials, in-app rich messaging, SMS and email.

"OtherLevels furthers its position as a leader in digital omni-channel marketing technology with the launch of OtherLevels 2," said Brendan O'Kane, CEO of OtherLevels. "Intelligent data driven marketing automation is the critical element in enabling marketers to focus on campaign content and maximise outcomes, rather than how to reach their audience. OtherLevels 2 delivers on this promise."

"OtherLevels 2 allows us to reach our customers wherever they are - across mobile or the web - and increase engagement through very targeted messaging, driving new levels of retention, engagement, and loyalty across our existing customer base," said James Shaw, Chief Marketing Officer.

About OtherLevels

OtherLevels is a leading second-generation digital marketing platform with offices in San Francisco, London, Brisbane and Melbourne. OtherLevels is at the forefront of the enterprise marketing transformation being driven by the massive shift to mobile.

The OtherLevels digital marketing platform enables marketers to engage and retain their audience across desktop, mobile web and apps. OtherLevels' capabilities in these areas were recognised via inclusion in the prominent industry report Vendor Landscape: Mobile Engagement Automation Solutions developed by Forrester, one of the most influential research and advisory firms in the world. OtherLevels is used by leading global and Australian brands including InterContinental Hotels, Ladbrokes, Camelot (the UK National Lottery), Tatts and Yarra Trams. For further information, visit: www.otherlevels.com

Media Contact:

Brendan O'Kane

Managing Director and CEO

OtherLevels

brendan.okane@otherlevels.com

Peter Harding-Smith

CFO and Company Secretary

OtherLevels

peter.harding-smith@otherlevels.com

ThinkInk PR

Nikkia Griffin

1-305-749-5342 ext. 239
Alytus, Lithuania, 2016-09-09 13:33 CEST (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- On 30 September 2016 the extraordinary General Meeting of Shareholders of Snaige AB, the address of head office Pramones str. 6, Alytus, the company code 249664610 (hereinafter, the "Company") is convened the ordinary General Meeting of Shareholders (hereinafter, the "Meeting").The place of the meeting -at AB "Snaige" office, at the address Kareiviu str. 6, Vilnius, Lithuania.The Meeting commences - at 10 a.m. (registration starts at 9.45 a.m.).The Meeting's accounting day - 23 September 2016 (the persons who are shareholders of the Company at the end of accounting day of the General Meeting of Shareholders or authorized persons by them, or the persons with whom shareholders concluded the agreements on the disposal of voting right, shall have the right to attend and vote at the General Meeting of Shareholders).The Board of directors of the Company initiates and convenes the meeting.Agenda of the Meeting:1. Regarding formation the revaluation reserveThe Company shall not provide the possibility to participate and vote in the Meeting through electronic communication channels.Draft resolutions on agenda issues, documents be submitted to the General Meeting of Shareholders and other information related with the exercising of the shareholders' rights are available on the website of the Company www.snaige.lt on menu item "For investors". This information will be also available for the shareholders at the head office of the Company (Pramones street 6, Alytus) on business days from 9:00 am. till 16:00 pm. (on Fridays till 14:00), tel. +370 315 56206, +370 5 2361970.Shareholders holding shares that grant at least 1/20 of all votes shall have the right of proposing to supplement the agenda of the Meeting by providing the Meeting draft resolution on each additionally proposed issue or in case no resolution is required - the explanation. The proposals to supplement the agenda shall be submitted in writing or by e-mail. The proposals shall be presented in writing to the Company on business days or by sending it by registered mail at the address Snaige AB, Pramones street 6, LT-62175 Alytus, Lithuania. The proposals submitted via the e-mail shall be sent on vilniaus.biuras@snaige.lt. The proposals to supplement the agenda with the additional issues shall be submitted till the 15 September 2016, 4:00 p.m. In case the agenda of the Meeting is supplemented the Company will report on it no later than 10 days before the Meeting in the same ways as on convening of the Meeting.Shareholders holding shares that grant at least 1/20 of all votes shall have the right of proposing new draft resolutions on the issues already included or to be included in the agenda of the Meeting, audit firms for auditing purposes of financial statements. The proposals shall be submitted in writing or by e-mail. The proposals shall be presented in writing to the Company on business days till 29 September 2016, 2 p.m. or by sending it by registered mail at the address Snaige AB, Pramones street 6, LT-62175 Alytus, Lithuania. During the Meeting the proposals shall be submitted to the Chairman of the Meeting after he announces the Meeting agenda and no later than the Meeting starts working on the issues of agenda. The proposals submitted via the electronic mail shall be sent on vilniaus.biuras@snaige.lt. The proposals submitted on this e-mail till 29 September 2016, 2:00 p.m. will be discussed during the Meeting.The shareholders shall have the right to present questions related to the General Meeting of Shareholders' agenda issues to the Company in advance in writing. The shareholders shall present the questions not later than 3 business days before the Meeting via the electronic mail on vilniaus.biuras@snaige.lt. The Company undertakes to respond to the submitted questions via the electronic mail till the Meeting day, except the questions related to the Company's commercial secret and confidential information.During the registration to attend the Meeting the shareholders or the persons authorized by them shall submit a document which is a proof of his identity. The shareholders' authorized persons shall submit the power of attorney confirmed by the established order. The power of attorney issued by the natural person shall be notarized. A power of attorney issued in a foreign state must be translated into Lithuanian and legalized in the manner prescribed by law. Representative can be authorized by more than one shareholder and shall have a right to vote differently under the orders of each shareholder. The shareholder holding shares of the Bank, where the shares have been acquired on his own behalf, but for the benefit of other persons, must disclose before voting at the General Meeting of Shareholders to the Company the identity of the final customer, the number of shares that are put to the vote and the content of the voting instructions submitted to him or any other explanation regarding the participation agreed upon with the customer and voting at the General Meeting of Shareholders.Shareholder shall also have the right to authorize through electronic communication channels another person (natural or legal) to participate and vote in the Meeting on shareholder's behalf. Such authorization shall not be confirmed by the notary officer. The power of attorney issued through electronic communication channels must be confirmed by the shareholder with a safe electronic signature developed by safe signature equipment and approved by a qualified certificate effective in the Republic of Lithuania. The shareholder shall inform the Company on the power of attorney issued through electronic communication channels by e-mail vilniaus.biuras@snaige.lt no later than the last business day before the meeting at 2:00 p.m. The power of attorney and notification shall be issued in writing. The power of attorney and notification to the Company shall be signed with the Electronic Signature but not the letters sent via the e-mail. By submitting the notification to the Company the shareholder shall include the Internet address from which it would be possible to download free of charge software to verify an Electronic Signature of the shareholder.Each shareholder or representative thereof shall have the right to cast his/her vote in advance in writing by filling in a general ballot paper. The general ballot paper form is on the Company's website www.snaige.lt on menu item "For Investors". Upon the written shareholder's request, the Company no later than 10 days before the Meeting shall send a general ballot paper by registered mail or hand it in person against signature. The general ballot paper filled shall be signed by the shareholder or his/her representative. In case the ballot paper is signed by the shareholder's authorized representative, such person along with the filled ballot paper shall submit the document to confirm the voting right. The ballot paper filled and the document confirming the voting right (if required) shall be submitted in a written form to the Company by registered mail at the address Snaige AB, Pramones street 6, LT-62175, Alytus, Lithuania, or by submitting it to the Company. Validated will be dully filled-in ballot papers, received until the meeting.The following information and documents are available on the website of the Company www.snaige.lt on menu item "For Investors":- report on the convening of the Meeting; - the total number of the Company's shares and the number of shares with voting rights on the convening day of the Meeting; - draft resolutions on each agenda issue (in general ballot paper) and other documents to be submitted to the Meeting; - general ballot paper form.Additional information on the stock event is provided by telephone: +370 5 2361970.Draft resolutions of the General Meeting of Shareholders are attached.Managing Director Gediminas Ceika +370 315 56206Attachment:https://cns.omxgroup.com/cds/DisclosureAttachmentServlet?messageAttachmentId=585832
TURKU, Finland, September 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

The Wroclaw University of Science and Technology in Poland has deployed Teleste's headend solution to construct its Multimedia Laboratory for research and development in future multimedia services

Teleste Corporation, a leading provider of video and broadband technologies and related services, announced today that the company has provided a complete, integrated headend infrastructure for the use of research and development at the Wroclaw University of Science and Technology in Poland. The deployment has taken place in 2016 and the devices were delivered by Satlan Sp. z o.o., Teleste's subsidiary in Poland.

Including the Luminato headend platform and the Ubique software framework, Teleste's deployment is an elemental part for the Wroclaw University of Science and Technology's new Multimedia Laboratory, opened just this year. The Laboratory's aim is to research versatile phenomena related to advanced streaming services such as OTT and VOD in broadband networks, and the way these services are used by consumers. One of the key focus areas of the laboratory is finding out new approaches on to how to measure quality of service and how to transfer service quality to higher levels of customer satisfaction.

"Today, delivery of video streaming services is strongly driven by the growing consumer demand for high-quality video across multiple devices. To successfully engage and win over customers in the tightening competition, businesses must deliver a consistent, high quality experience on all devices. However, defining and measuring the level of quality is not a straightforward task", says Julius Tikkanen, Vice President of Video Service Platforms for Teleste. "We are pleased that the Wroclaw University of Science and Technology is putting emphasis on research and development of headend technologies and on how to measure quality of experience. We are looking forward to learn about the findings and innovations of their Multimedia Laboratory in the future."

Teleste's video headend portfolio is designed to offer operators and service providers innovative and flexible ways to build their services and deliver interactive content from all types of available sources to all consumer screens. Our solutions include such innovations as the Ubique software framework for building complete, interactive video platforms and an application module to our Luminato headend, enabling operators to invent their own tailored headend applications. For Teleste, the Wroclaw University of Science and Technology project continues our active cooperation in transforming future headend services and technologies with several European research projects and institutes, such as the Virtuose and H2B2VS projects under Celtic-Plus of EUREKA.

We will showcase our portfolio at IBC2016, stand 5.C72, 9 - 13 September at the Amsterdam RAI. Please visit http://www.teleste.com/ibc2016 for more information about our event offering.



About Teleste

Teleste is an international technology company that develops and offers video and broadband technologies and related services. Our supply of technology contributes to the convenience and safety of daily living. Our core business is video - video and data processing, transfer and management. Our customer base consists of cable and telecom operators, as well as public sector organizations. Our business is divided into two divisions, which are Video and Broadband Solutions and Network Services. In both areas, we rank among the world's leading companies and technological forerunners. Video and Broadband Solutions focuses on access networks and video security and information solutions. Network Services offers comprehensive services for network design, construction and maintenance. In 2015, Teleste's net sales totaled EUR 247 million, and the company employed about 1,500 people. Teleste runs a worldwide network of offices and more than 95% of its sales are generated outside Finland. The company is listed on Nasdaq Helsinki. For more information see http://www.teleste.com and follow @telestecorp on Twitter.
TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 09/09/16 --

-- Combined company assets under management: $3.1 billion -- Joe Canavan to be appointed CEO to oversee transformation of the combined company -- Highly synergistic transaction expected to produce meaningful cost savings -- Strengthened balance sheet with proposed amendment to existing convertible debentures -- Strong support from existing shareholders -- Front Street partners to own 46% and Aston Hill shareholders to own 41% of the combined company

Aston Hill Financial Inc. ("Aston Hill" or the "Company") (TSX: AHF) and Front Street Capital 2004 ("Front Street") are pleased to announce that they have entered into an agreement to combine their respective companies, creating a new, leading independent asset management firm (the "Transaction").

Front Street Capital

Founded in 2001, Front Street is a leading investment management company which offers a diverse range of investments, including growth, income and tax-minded portfolios offered as mutual funds, hedge funds, and flow-through limited partnerships. Front Street has assets under management ("AUM") of approximately $879 million as of August 31, 2016.

"The two firms are an ideal fit for each other," said Eldon Smith, Chairman of the board of directors of Aston Hill. "Front Street has proven itself to be a trusted investment manager across a diverse range of investment alternatives. This Transaction leverages the strengths of both companies to create a significant independent investment management firm."

"This Transaction enhances the ability of the combined company to deliver investment performance and client service," said Nevin Markwart, President and CEO of Front Street. "This combination brings together best-in-class portfolio management expertise with each firm's commitment to foster intimate relationships with investors and advisors. Our new corporate profile, highlighted by the proven leadership of Joe Canavan, strengthens our ability to meet client goals."

Highlights of the Combined Firm

-- Increases Size and Scale: Combined company to have approximately $3.1 billion in AUM as of August 31, 2016 -- AUM Diversification: Enhanced product offering to benefit existing and future clients -- Best Practices: Ability to leverage the strengths and talent of both companies to create a formidable independent asset manager -- Synergies: Significant cost savings available to drive future cash flow growth -- Strong Distribution: Combining established distribution networks will provide cross-selling opportunities -- Platform for Future Growth: Combined company has the ability to grow organically and through acquisitions

Board of Directors and Management Team

Following completion of the Transaction, the Company's interim CEO James Werry will step down and Aston Hill will be led by a new Chief Executive Officer, Joe Canavan. Mr. Canavan is the former Chairman and CEO of Assante Wealth Management and United Financial Corporation and prior to that was CEO of Synergy Asset Management, a company he founded in 1997. Since that time, Mr. Canavan has been an active venture capitalist and most recently was the interim CEO of the Children's Aid Foundation. Stepping in at a time of crisis in the Foundation, Mr. Canavan led the re-structuring and rebirth of one of Canada's best known and impactful youth support agencies. Mr. Canavan is currently the Vice Chair of the Foundation. The board of directors of both companies are thrilled that Joe Canavan has agreed to lead the combined entity going forward.

"The combination of Aston Hill and Front Street creates an asset management platform with an attractive product mix and a talented team known for delivering exceptional client service. This Transaction positions the combined company for future growth as a leading intermediate independent asset management company and strong alternative to bank owned asset managers," Mr. Canavan stated. "I am excited to work with Nevin Markwart, Frank Mersch, Norm Lamarche and the combined group of operational, sales and investment professionals. It promises to be an exceptional team." added Mr. Canavan.

Chief Investment Officer Ben Cheng will take a leave of absence effective today and during such time will cease to be involved in investment management activities for Aston Hill funds. Aston Hill investment managers Sandy Liang CFA and Barry Morrison CFA will jointly assume direct management of the portfolio of funds previously managed by Mr. Cheng. Mr. Liang brings 25 years' experience in credit and equity investments to the funds. He joined Aston Hill in 2011 following senior roles at BMO Capital, Scotia Capital and New York based hedge fund Cobalt Capital. Mr. Morrison joined Aston Hill when it acquired his investment management firm Morrison Williams in 2011. Prior to the formation of Morrison Williams, Mr. Morrison held senior positions with BGH Investment Management and Dominion Life Assurance.

Following completion of the Transaction, Aston Hill will have a board of directors to be comprised of a majority of independent directors. In addition, Mr. Canavan will be appointed to the board together with at least one nominee appointed by each of Aston Hill and Front Street.

Transaction Terms

Under the terms of the Transaction, current Front Street partners will receive 120 million Aston Hill common shares (the "Transaction Consideration"). The current Front Street partners will own approximately 46% and the current Aston Hill shareholders will own approximately 41% in the combined company (41% and 37%, respectively, on a fully diluted basis) after giving effect to the Debenture Consideration (defined below).

Mr. Canavan has been granted options to purchase 24 million common shares and will make a $500,000 investment in additional common shares conditional on the closing of the Transaction.

As a condition of closing of the Transaction, holders of Aston Hill's outstanding 6.50% extendible convertible unsecured subordinated debentures due January 31, 2019 (the "Debentures") will be asked to approve amendments to the terms of such Debentures that will result in such holders receiving for each $1,000 principal amount of Debentures (i) 1,000 common shares of Aston Hill and (ii) an amended Debenture having a principal amount of $600 which will pay interest at the rate of 7.00% per annum, will mature on the fifth anniversary of the closing date of the Transaction and which will not be convertible ("Debenture Consideration"). Following completion of the Transaction, current holders of Debentures will collectively own approximately 33.7 million common shares representing an approximate 13% ownership in the combined company (approximately 11.5% on a fully diluted basis) and amended Debentures with an aggregate principal amount of $20.2 million.

The rationale for the Transaction to holders of the Debentures includes: (i) a significantly improved corporate balance sheet and debt maturity profile; (ii) enhanced cash flow which will provide further support to operations; (iii) flexibility to realize synergies which will provide further coverage to the debentureholders; and (iv) a repositioning of Aston Hill as a stronger company in both the short and long-term.

In conjunction with the Transaction, the Company will consider undertaking a private placement of common shares to address capital needs going forward. There can be no assurance that such private placement if undertaken will be successfully completed. Without taking the private placement into account, the Company will have approximately 260 million common shares outstanding following completion of closing of the Transaction (approximately 290 million common shares on a fully diluted basis).

Board Recommendation

The board of directors of Aston Hill, after consultation with its financial and legal advisors, and based on the unanimous recommendation of a Special Committee of the Aston Hill board of directors (the "Special Committee") established to review the Transaction, has unanimously recommended that holders of Aston Hill common shares and Debentures vote in favour of the Transaction at a special meeting of shareholders and debentureholders (collectively, the "Meetings") to consider the Transaction. Aston Hill's Special Committee has received a fairness opinion from Scotiabank that, as of the date of such opinion, and subject to the assumptions, limitations and qualifications set forth therein, the Transaction Consideration is fair from a financial point of view to Aston Hill shareholders. Aston Hill's Special Committee has also received a fairness opinion from MPA Morrison Park Advisors Inc. to the effect that, as of the date of such opinion, and subject to the assumptions, limitations and qualifications set forth therein, the Debenture Consideration is fair from a financial point of view to holders of Aston Hill's Debentures.

The closing of the Transaction, which is expected to occur by the end of 2016, is subject to a number of conditions precedent including the approval of Aston Hill shareholders and debentureholders, securities regulatory approval and satisfaction of other customary closing conditions. Further details of the Transaction are set out in the transaction agreement and will also be set out in the joint management information circular to be prepared in connection with the Meetings, both of which will be filed by Aston Hill with SEDAR and will be available under Aston Hill's profile at www.sedar.com.

Support and Lock-up Agreements

The directors and senior officers of Aston Hill (including Mr. Cheng) and other key shareholders, representing an aggregate of 33% of Aston Hill common shares have entered into customary voting support agreements to, among other things, vote in favour of the Transaction. In addition, the principals of Front Street have agreed to hold common shares issuable to them under the Transaction for a period of 180 days and to keep their assets currently forming part of the Front Street AUM until at least February 2018.

Financial Advisors and Legal Counsel

Scotiabank is acting as financial advisor to the Special Committee of the board of directors of Aston Hill. Aston Hill's legal counsel is Stikeman Elliott LLP. Front Street's legal counsel is Borden Ladner Gervais LLP.

FS Group Holdings Ltd.

FS Group Holdings Ltd., 40 King Street West, Toronto, ON M5H 3Y4, the majority controlling partner of Front Street, will acquire approximately 87 million common shares of Aston Hill upon completion of the Transaction, representing 33.5% of the outstanding common shares of the Company after giving effect to the Transaction (basic). FS Group Holdings Ltd. does not at present own any securities of the Company and does not have any intention to acquire securities of the Company other than pursuant to the Transaction or to dispose of any such securities.

About Aston Hill

Aston Hill Financial Inc. is a diversified asset management company with a suite of retail mutual funds, closed end funds, hedge funds and segregated institutional funds.

About Front Street

Front Street has been providing Canadians with innovative mutual funds for over 10 years, including growth, income and tax-minded portfolios offered as mutual funds, hedge funds, and flow-through limited partnerships. Front Street is focused on providing Canadian investors and advisors with access to a broad range of investments which can fill core and strategic roles in an investor's portfolio.

The TSX has neither approved nor disapproved the information contained herein.

Cautionary Statement

This news release contains certain "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of such statements under applicable securities law. Forward-looking statements are frequently characterized by words such as "plan", "continue", "expect", "project", "intend", "believe", "anticipate", "estimate", "may", "will", "potential", "proposed" and other similar words, or statements that certain events or conditions "may" or "will" occur. These statements are only predictions. Various assumptions were used in drawing the conclusions or making the projections contained in the forward-looking statements throughout this news release. Forward-looking statements are based on the opinions and estimates of management at the date the statements are made, and are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements including: future operating results and funding requirements; the ability to achieve synergies; future general economic and market conditions; and changes in laws and regulations. There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such information. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. Aston Hill does not undertake to update any forward-looking information contained herein, except as required by applicable securities laws. There are a number of conditions precedent to the completion of the Transaction and there can be no assurance that such conditions precedent will be satisfied and that the Transaction will be completed.

Contacts:

James Werry

President & Chief Executive Officer

Aston Hill Financial Inc.

(416) 583-2300

james@astonhill.ca



Derek Slemko

Chief Financial Officer & Chief Operating Officer

Aston Hill Financial Inc.

(416) 583-2300

derek@astonhill.ca



Nevin Markwart

President & Chief Executive Officer

Front Street Capital

(416) 915-2424

nmarkwart@frontstreetcapital.com




Johansson Model 5400 SAT>IP Server and Model 5500 ProFlex headend module both based on MaxLinear's MxL584 quad-input satellite receiver

MaxLinear Inc. (NYSE: MXL), a leading provider of radio frequency (RF) and mixed-signal integrated circuits for cable and satellite broadband communications, the connected home, data center, metro, long-haul fiber networks, and wireless infrastructure, today announced that Unitron Group is using its MxL584 Full-Spectrum Capture (FSC) receiver in two new products now available in the market.

The Johansson Model 5400 SAT>IP SMATV Server is a rack-mountable server that can receive signals from up to four satellite bands and multicast up to 32 channels on an IP network. The satellite reception is made possible by the MxL584 FSC receiver, which supports up to four Quattro or Quad LNB inputs and demodulates up to eight DVB-S2/S satellite channels in a single, highly integrated chip. The Model 5400 was recently certified by the SAT>IP Alliance.

The Johansson Model 5500 ProFlex headend module is also based on MxL584. The 5500 integrates a multiswitch, which enables reception of up to eight different transponders from any of the four input satellite bands. The output is programmable via the integrated web server or optional universal USB installer (UUI) software and supports DVB-T, DVB-C, DVB-IP, and DVB-IPTV. Multicast output of up to 64 single program transport streams (SPTS) to IPTV client devices is supported.

"These products from Unitron make satellite TV service much more appealing to multi dwelling unit owners, opening a new market for satellite TV service providers," said Will Torgerson, MaxLinear Vice President General Manager of its Broadband Group. "The MxL584 is ideal for all multi-channel satellite applications, because it brings great signal performance, a highly integrated feature set and low power consumption."

Technical Highlights MxL584

The MxL584 device features four FSC tuners and eight DVB-S2/2 demodulators in a single chip, 10mm x 10mm QFN package. The device integrates all active front-end components, including the low-noise amplifiers (LNA), to minimize the external bill of material (BOM) in end products.

The built-in LTE and Wi-Fi immunity of MxL584 ensures robust performance, even in the presence of strong interference signals. The ultra-low power consumption of the MxL584 makes it ideal for applications with small form factors or thermal design constraints. The MxL584 is compliant with the requirements of Energy Star and the European Code of Conduct for Digital TV Services and Broadband Equipment in both standby and operating modes.

About MaxLinear, Inc.

MaxLinear, Inc. (NYSE: MXL) is a leading provider of radio frequency (RF) and mixed-signal integrated circuits for cable and satellite broadband communications, the connected home, data center, metro, long-haul fiber networks, and wireless infrastructure markets. MaxLinear is headquartered in Carlsbad, California. For more information, please visit www.maxlinear.com.

MxL and the MaxLinear logo are trademarks of MaxLinear, Inc. Other trademarks appearing herein are the property of their respective owners.

About Unitron Group

Unitron Group is an international group of companies, offering state-of-the-art headend technologies and digital TV accessories, for providing TV distribution to multi-dwelling and residential buildings. Unitron's solutions are available to many original equipment manufacturer (OEM) customers and TV-operators, under their own brand names. Installers and customers have access to the company's 'Johansson' branded products via a worldwide network of distributors.

For more information visit www.UnitronGroup.com or meet with them during IBC 2016, September 9th through 14th in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Hall 10, Booth 10.F34.

Cautionary Note About Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements include, among others, statements concerning or implying future financial performance or trends and growth opportunities affecting MaxLinear, including statements related to the performance of MaxLinear's MxL584 Full-Spectrum Capture (FSC). These forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from any future results expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on management's current, preliminary expectations and are subject to various risks and uncertainties, including (among others) risks relating to integration of our recently announced acquisitions of assets from Microsemi Corporation and from Broadcom; intense competition in our industry; the ability of our customers to cancel or reduce orders; uncertainties concerning how end user markets for our products will develop; our lack of long-term supply contracts and dependence on limited sources of supply; potential decreases in average selling prices for our products; currently pending intellectual property litigation; and the potential for additional intellectual property litigation, which is prevalent in our industry. In addition to these risks and uncertainties, investors should review the risks and uncertainties contained in MaxLinear's filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, including our most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2015 as amended by Amendment No. 1 filed with the SEC on April 28, 2016; our subsequent Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q for the quarters ended March 31, 2016 and June 30, 2016; and our Current Reports on Form 8-K. All forward-looking statements are qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement. MaxLinear is providing this information as of the date of this release and does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in this release as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160909005169/en/

Contacts:

MaxLinear Inc. Press Contact:

The David James Agency LLC

David Rodewald

+1 805-494-9508

david@davidjamesagency.com

or

MaxLinear Inc. Corporate Contact:

Will Torgerson

Vice President General Manager Of Broadband Group

+1 760-692-0711

wtorgerson@maxlinear.com
Schroder Real Estate Investment Trust Limited

("the Company")

RESULT OF ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

9 SEPTEMBER 2016

At the Annual General Meeting ("AGM") of the Company held today all Ordinary Resolutions as set out in the AGM Notice dated 10 June 2016 (the "Notice") and sent to shareholders of the Company, were duly passed.

Details of the proxy voting results which should be read alongside the Notice are noted below:

Ordinary

Resolution For Discretion Against Abstain 1 171,827,123 110,927 118,048 0 2 169,971,813 110,927 1,939,371 33,987 3 171,630,790 110,927 307,806 0 4 169,397,072 110,927 2,548,099 0 5 167,340,529 110,927 4,604,642 0 6 167,290,529 110,927 4,654,642 0 7 171,637,365 110,927 307,806 0 8 169,396,291 110,927 2,287,230 261,650 9 171,686,584 110,927 257,806 781 10 171,933,255 110,927 11,916 0

Note - A vote withheld is not a vote in law and has not been counted in the votes for and against a resolution.

At the same AGM noted above, the following Special Resolutions were also passed as detailed below:

SPECIAL RESOLUTION 11:

That the Company be authorised, in accordance with section 315 of The Companies (Guernsey) Law, 2008, as amended (the "Companies Law"), to make market acquisitions (within the meaning of section 316 of the Companies Law) of ordinary shares in the capital of the Company ("ordinary shares"), provided that:

(a) the maximum number of ordinary shares hereby authorised to be purchased shall be 14.99% of the issued ordinary shares on the date on which this resolution is passed;

(b) the minimum price which may be paid for an ordinary share shall be 0.01p;

(c) the maximum price (exclusive of expenses) which may be paid for an ordinary share shall be 105% of the average of the middle market quotations on the relevant market where the repurchase is carried out for the ordinary shares for the five business days immediately preceding the date of a purchase;

(d) such authority shall expire at the Annual General Meeting of the Company in 2017 unless such authority is varied, revoked or renewed prior to such date by ordinary resolution of the Company in general meeting; and

(e) the Company may make a contract to purchase ordinary shares under such authority prior to its expiry which will or may be executed wholly or partly after its expiration and the Company may make a purchase of ordinary shares pursuant to any such contract.

SPECIAL RESOLUTION 12:

That the Directors of the Company be and are hereby empowered to allot ordinary shares of the Company for cash as if the pre-emption provisions contained under Article 13 of the Articles of Incorporation did not apply to any such allotments and to sell ordinary shares which are held by the Company in treasury for cash on a non-pre-emptive basis provided that this power shall be limited to the allotment and sales of ordinary shares:

(a) up to such number of ordinary shares as is equal to 10% of the ordinary shares in issue on the date on which this resolution is passed;

(b) at a price of not less than the net asset value per share as close as practicable to the allotment or sale;

provided that such power shall expire on the earlier of the Annual General Meeting of the Company in 2017 or on the expiry of 15 months from the passing of this Special Resolution, except that the Company may before such expiry make offers or agreements which would or might require ordinary shares to be allotted or sold after such expiry and notwithstanding such expiry the Directors may allot or sell ordinary shares in pursuance of such offers or agreements as if the power conferred hereby had not expired.

EXTRAORDINARY RESOLUTION 13:

That the Articles of Incorporation produced to the meeting and initialed by the chairman of the meeting for the purpose of identification be adopted as the Company's Articles of Incorporation in substitution for and to the exclusion of the existing Articles of Incorporation.

Details of the proxy voting results which should be read alongside the Notice are noted below:

Special

Resolution For Discretion Against Abstain 11 171,887,283 110,927 57,888 0 12 167,771,962 110,927 438,209 3,735,000 13 171,927,255 122,843 6,000 0

Note - A vote withheld is not a vote in law and has not been counted in the votes for and against a resolution.

Enquiries:

Company website: www.srei.co.uk

Samuel Walden

Northern Trust International Fund Administration Services (Guernsey) Limited
MONTREAL, QUEBEC -- (Marketwired) -- 09/09/16 -- Note to Editors: There is a photo associated with this press release.

LE CHATEAU OF MONTREAL (TSX: CTU.A) is pleased to announce that it will be opening a new e-commerce warehouse and distribution facility in Montreal. This new facility will bring all on-line related functions under one roof and will ensure faster and better customer service, as e-commerce continues to grow at an accelerated pace, both in dollars and as a percentage of total Company sales.

For this project, the Company committed to an initial investment of $1.1 million, of which $750,000 was dedicated to state-of-the-art IT systems. Additional investments are planned for 2017. Currently, more than 40 full-time employees engage exclusively in e-commerce business. The new facility offers the potential to significantly expand the e-commerce team, and additional positions are expected to be created shortly.

'We were among the first retailers in Canada to recognize the immense potential of on-line branding and sales. Once again with this initiative we are investing to enhance our leadership position, while taking an innovative path to create sustained growth," Franco Rocchi, Executive Vice President, Sales and Operations. "We are at the forefront of technological innovation and proud to bring the latest global e-commerce systems to Montreal."

This opening completes the centralization of LE CHATEAU OF MONTREAL's entire e-commerce business. All capabilities, from photo studio, hair and make-up, to merchandising, warehousing, fulfillments and distribution, are now integrated in a single location. This new space of 25,000 square feet has the ability to expand as demand increases. Upon opening it will house approximately 200,000 products.

Profile

Le Chateau is a leading Canadian brand in specialty retailing, offering a broad array of contemporary fashion apparel, accessories and footwear for style-conscious women and men. The Le Chateau brand is sold exclusively through the Company's 197 retail stores located in Canada. The Company's retail locations are primarily found in major urban shopping malls, as well as street-front locations with high pedestrian traffic. In addition, Le Chateau's web-based marketing is further broadening the Company's customer base among internet shoppers in both Canada and the United States. With its 57-year tradition of vertical integration, emphasizing a design and manufacturing approach to retailing, Le Chateau is unique among Canadian fashion merchants.

To view the photo associated with this press release, please visit the following link: http://www.marketwire.com/library/20160908-1068707_800.jpg

Contacts:

Marlene Robillard

Director of Public Relations and Communications

514.738.7000

Marlene.robillard@lechateau.com



MaisonBrison

Pierre Boucher

(514) 731-0000






WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - The world became slightly less peaceful in 2016 compared with the prior year and there are now just ten countries that can be considered completely free from conflict, according to the authors of the 10th annual Global Peace Index.



Only Botswana, Chile, Costa Rica, Japan, Mauritius, Panama, Qatar, Switzerland, Uruguay and Vietnam are now completely free from conflict.



The index, produced by the Institute for Economics and Peace or IEP, ranks 163 independent states and territories according to their level of peacefulness, and covers 99.7 percent of the world's population.



The Global Peace Index or GPI is composed of 23 qualitative and quantitative indicators that takes into account factors including terrorism, perception of crime, political security and safety.



All scores for each indicator are normalised on a scale of 1-5, whereby qualitative indicators are banded into five groupings and quantitative ones are scored from 1-5, to the third decimal point.



An increase in terrorism, higher levels of conflict in the Middle East and North Africa, and increases in the number of refugees as well as internally displaced people have all contributed to the world being less peaceful in 2016 than it was in 2015.



Syria remains the most turbulent nation. In fact, the world would be more peaceful on the whole if not for worsening conflicts in the Middle East, the study found.



The U.S., which has never featured in the top 20 of the list, is ranked 103rd this year.



Europe retains its position as the most peaceful region in the world and accounts for six of the first seven places in the global rankings. In contrast, the Middle East and North Africa saw its levels of peace deteriorate the most.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de
IRVINE, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 09/09/16 -- Cannabis Science, Inc. (OTC PINK: CBIS), a U.S. company specializing in the development of cannabis-based medicines, is excited to announce that its President & CEO, Co-Founder, Mr. Raymond C. Dabney is one of the Co-Chairs of the 2016 Ronald H. Brown African Affairs Series forum, from September 12 to the 17th in Washington D.C. Mr. Dabney enjoys several responsibilities within CFA, including sitting on the Board of Directors, Vice-Chairman of the African Healthcare Infrastructure Committee, and now one of the Co-Chairs of the 2016 Ronald H. Brown African Affairs Series.

The 2016 Ronald H. Brown African Affairs Series: http://ronaldbrownseries.org

This year's event is about Setting the US-Africa Agenda for the Next Administration and will host many discussions regarding Healthcare Infrastructure, Trade & Investment, Capacity Building, Democracy & Governance, Africa's Young Leaders, Nutrition Security, and Mobilizing the Diaspora.

CFA's strategy for this year's event is to take the first three days of the Series (September 12-14th) to organize discussions/caucuses around a range of critical issues that we expect to be part of the agenda of the next U.S. Presidential Administration. On Thursday, September 15th, CFA will convene a high-level, bipartisan policy forum to hear the outcome of the various caucuses, and then to debate and agree on specific recommendations that CFA will make on Trade & Investment, Capacity Building, Next Generation Leadership, Healthcare Infrastructure, Democracy & Governance, Agriculture, and Diaspora Engagement.

Mr. Dabney will be presenting the company's successful experience with cannabinoid drug development, his recent trip to Africa with the CBIS delegation, and will be debriefing and brainstorming with key political and industry leaders from Africa and the USA. Mr. Dabney will share his knowledge and expertise with the 2016 Ronald H. Brown African Affairs Series forum, regarding the launch of the University and the international opportunities presented, the experience gained with his projects involving cannabinoids, and other plant-based pharmaceuticals in the USA and worldwide. Mr. Dabney assembled a delegation to visit Africa aiming to assess and assist the healthcare infrastructure development on the continent with the delegation involved in CBIS projects and studies. The group visited Cape Town and Johannesburg, South Africa and Windhoek, Namibia. The CBIS delegation had meetings with key government personal, the private sector groups, civil societies, and key academics. Mr. Dabney will conclude with assessments and recommended actions.

Key CBIS participants will be speaking, attending, and sponsoring the event such as Dr. Julius Garvey, SAB, IGAB, an accomplished board certified surgeon specializing in the diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular disease, the son of the legendary pan-Africanist Marcus Garvey Jr.; Melvin Foote, President & CEO of Constituency for Africa, IGAB; Dr. Allen Herman, Chief Medical Officer of Cannabis Science, SAB, IGAB; Jacques Walker, IGAB; the Honorable Ronald V. Dellums, President IGAB; Roscoe Moore, former US Assistant Surgeon General, President SAB, IGAB; and Mr. Raymond C. Dabney, Chairman.

About CFA

Over the past 25 years, CFA has established itself as one of the leading organizations committed to educating and mobilizing the U.S. public on matters pertaining to Africa and the African Diaspora. As a result, CFA has done much to increase the level of cooperation and coordination among a broad-based coalition of international organizations, businesses and individuals committed to the progress, development and empowerment of Africa and African people. CFA's major annual activity is the Ronald H. Brown African Affairs Series. Over the years, the Ronald H. Brown Series has convened more than 200 workshops and forums that have focused on advocacy, analysis of government policy initiatives, knowledge transfer, and the mobilization of public and private sector groups. CFA is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization.

About the Event, theme and expected outcome

CFA's major annual event is the Ronald H. Brown African Affairs Series. Over the years, the Ronald H. Brown African Affairs Series has convened hundreds of workshops and forums that have focused on advocacy, analysis of government policy initiatives, knowledge transfer, and the mobilization of public and private sector groups. The Ronald H. Brown African Affairs Series is named after the late U.S. Commerce Secretary, Ronald H. Brown, who was the first African-American appointed to that post. Tragically, Secretary Brown was killed in 1996 in an airplane crash that claimed his life and the members of a trade delegation that he was leading in war-torn Eastern Europe. The theme of this year's Ronald H. Brown African Affairs Series is, "Setting the US - Africa Agenda for the Next Administration."

At the conclusion of this Forum, CFA will produce a formal document that will be shared with the two U.S. political parties, as well as with opinion-makers and stakeholders across the spectrum.

A few of the notable persons who have committed to participate in the Africa Policy Forum on September 15th include, Ambassador Andrew J. Young, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and Mayor of Atlanta, GA; the Honorable Ronald V. Dellums, former Member of the U.S. House of Representatives and Mayor of Oakland, CA; Ambassador Jendayi E. Frazer, Adjunct Senior Fellow for Africa Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs; His Excellency Hage Geingob, President of Namibia; His Imperial Majesty Ooni Adeyeye Enitan Babatunde Ogunwusi, Ojaja II, the Ooni of Ile Ife, Nigeria; and others.

Primary Sponsors:

Directorate of Technical Cooperation in Africa

Foundation Perspectives d'Avenir

Chevron

Cannabis Science Foundation

The program for the 2016 Ronald H. Brown African Affairs Series will include the following events:

Roundtable I: Promoting Democracy & Governance in Africa

Roundtable II: Nutrition Security in Africa

Roundtable III: Strengthening African Healthcare Infrastructure

Roundtable IV: Empowering Africa's Young Leaders

Roundtable V: Increasing U.S.-Africa Trade & Investment

Roundtable VI: Building Capacity in Africa

U.S.-Africa Policy Forum

CFA's 25-year Anniversary Reception

African Diaspora Reconciliation and Unity Forum and Celebration

Schedule of Events

http://ronaldbrownseries.org

The Ronald H. Brown African Affairs Series, scheduled for September 12-17th, is being held the week before the United Nations General Assembly (September 20-26, 2016) and the 2nd U.S. Africa Business Forum, scheduled for September 21st in New York.

About the Company

The Company works with leading experts in drug development, medicinal characterization, and clinical research to develop, produce, and commercialize novel therapeutic approaches for the treatment for illnesses caused by infections as well as for age-related illness. Our initial focus is on skin cancers, HIV/AIDS, and neurological conditions. The Company has also been working on testing the initial batch of a new medicine for asthma and other respiratory ailments in California with great success.

Cannabis Science, Inc.

Dr. Allen Herman

Chief Medical Officer (CMO)

allen.herman@cannabisscience.com

Tel: 1-888-263-0832



Investor Relations

Teresa Misenheimer

teresa@cannabisscience.com

Tel: 1-888-263-0832



Cannabis Science, Inc.

Mr. Raymond C. Dabney

President & CEO, Co-Founder

raymond.dabney@cannabisscience.com

Tel: 1-888-263-0832




BRAMPTON, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 09/09/16 -- The First Annual Neville-Lake Walkathon will take place on September 10th from 10am to 2pm at Chinguacousy Park in Brampton Ontario, hosted by Kevin Frankish and Presented by Investors Group and David Gulko. The event honours the memories of Gary Neville and the Neville-Lake children, Daniel (9), Harrison (5) and Milagros (2) who were tragically taken on September 27, 2015, and benefits causes that support activities they loved.

The event is organized by the families of the children's friends with the blessing of Jennifer and Ed Neville-Lake, parents of the children. Those who can't participate in person can still donate via the website: www.neville-lakewalkathon.ca

What: The 1st Annual Neville-Lake Walkathon When: September 10, 2016, 10am to 2pm with family activities to follow Where: Chinguacousy Park, Brampton Ontario Registrations and pledges happening now online, including for those who would like to donate but can't come be part of the event and/or don't know anyone with a walk team. Please visit: www.neville- lakewalkathon.ca Who: Presented by Investors Group and David Gulko Produced by the Neville-Lake children's friends The event benefits Many Hands, Doing Good Hosted by Citytv's Kevin Frankish, host of Breakfast Television Why: Honouring the memories of Gary Neville and the Neville-Lake children, Daniel (9), Harrison (5) and Milagros (2).

Many Hands, Doing Good was born from the community response to an unspeakable tragedy. The strength and support that the community came forward with ignited the desire to give back to that same community in a way that would reinforce the passions of Milagros, Harrison, Daniel and Gary. Many Hands, Doing Good (named for Milagros Harrison, Daniel and Gary) is a not-for-profit organization set up to support activities treasured by the children and their grandfather. Please visit www.manyhandsdoinggood.ca for more details.

To register for the Walkathon, please visit www.neville-lakewalkathon.ca.

Contacts:

For additional information or to interview organizers,

please contact: Julia Woodward

Event organizer

(905) 818-2692

love2inspireminds@gmail.com



Susan McLennan

Reimagine PR (pro bono PR counsel)

(416) 568-5974

susan@reimaginepr.com




Germany's Gesellschaft fur Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) has announced that on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), it supports the Moroccan partners in the implementation of a 2014 agreement on developing 'green' mosques in Morocco. The program, titled Energy Efficiency in Mosques, started last year, runs up to March 2019 and bears a financial volume of 5 million ($5.62 million). It aims to modernize the energy use of Morocco's mosques, and in its first phase running up to 2019 at least 600 mosques will be equipped with LED lighting, PV systems, and solar water heaters. This will result in significant savings for the Moroccan Ministry of Religious Affairs, which pays the electricity bills of 15,000 mosques nationwide. However, the main objective of the program is "to raise public awareness of renewable energies and energy efficiency in Morocco and to create jobs," said the GIZ. "The idea is to use mosques as a starting point for the diffusion of these technologies, hereby creating a market for private services in the field of energy efficiency that could afterwards be enlarged towards other public buildings in sectors such as education or health." The creation of a market for renewable ...

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OTTAWA, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 09/09/16 -- The Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, will attend the 2016 Toronto Global Forum and deliver remarks on the topic of innovation and competitiveness. He will highlight the importance of innovation to growth and shared prosperity. Media availability will follow.

Date: Monday, September 12, 2016 Time: 3:00 p.m. Location: Fairmont Royal York Hotel 100 Front St. West Toronto, Ontario

Follow Minister Bains on social media.

Twitter: @MinisterISED

Contacts:

Philip Proulx

Press Secretary

Office of the Minister of Innovation,

Science and Economic Development

343-291-2500



Media Relations

Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada

343-291-1777

ic.mediarelations-mediasrelations.ic@canada.ca




OTTAWA, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 09/09/16 -- You may be one of the many Canadians who enjoy relaxing over a meal at a restaurant with friends. But while you're out having fun, you could be unintentionally supporting tax cheats.

Most Canadian businesses report the money they earn and pay their taxes, but there are some that cheat and do not declare all of their income. If your restaurant server doesn't give you a receipt, or gives you change from an open cash register without keying in your order, you might be supporting a dishonest business. Some businesses even go as far as using "zapper" software that deletes some customer transactions in order to hide their income from the government.

When you support businesses that cheat on their taxes, you are contributing to the underground economy and hurting honest businesses in your community that play by the rules.

As a consumer, how can you help prevent tax cheating?

Create a paper trail-when you eat out, get a receipt! If you ask for a receipt and don't get one, or are encouraged to pay cash to save you the cost of the GST/HST, you can help all other honest businesses to stay in business by reporting it to the Canada Revenue Agency anonymously.

For more information on what details you need to provide, and how the Informant Leads Program works, go to cra.gc.ca/leads.

Stay connected

To receive updates when information is added to our website:

Follow the CRA on Twitter @CanRevAgency.

Subscribe to a CRA electronic mailing list.

Add our RSS feeds to your feed reader.

Also, visit our YouTube Channel for tax-related videos.

Contacts:

Jelica Zdero

Media Relations

Canada Revenue Agency

613-952-9184

Jelica.Zdero@cra-arc.gc.ca




LONDON, September 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Network of professionals who treat liver cancer to extend across the United Kingdom, Belgium, Spain and Italy

The success of the SIRT Users' Network, called SUN, in its first 2 years has created a strong desire for other countries to join. It has been announced today that SUN will expand to include health professionals from the United Kingdom, Belgium, Spain and Italy.

SUN was established by academics and clinical experts in the UK in 2014 in response to Selective Internal Radiation Therapy (SIRT) with radioactive yttrium-90 microspheres becoming available to patients with cancer via national health service commissioning.



The cooperation amongst cancer specialists, radiologists, medical physicists and other professionals involved in delivering this highly specialist service has been valuable in improving the treatment of patients with cancer. It is hoped that the expansion of The Network to include professionals from Belgium, Spain and Italy will further enhance that cooperation and mutual sharing of best practice.



Members of the network work in a variety of clinical disciplines, such as oncology, interventional radiology, imaging, nuclear medicine, medical physics, pathology and surgery.SUN is unique in bringing together these diverse specialists in a meaningful way to share best practice, clinical experiences, patient information and to organise training masterclasses and workshops.

The Network is open to all clinicians and scientists involved with delivering SIRT treatment to patients.



Speaking at the Launch Event for the expansion of the Network today, Professor Ricky Sharma, Professor of Radiation Oncology at University College London, said:



"This is a very exciting time for SUN. As a web-based network, we have been delighted at how much interest SUN has generated amongst professionals from a variety of disciplines in Europe, who are now motivated to come together to share best practice for their patients. Our common purpose is to improve treatment for patients with cancer, with SIRT and other interventional oncology therapies.

I am very excited about being able to share working knowledge, best practice and clinical outcomes with my colleagues from the UK, Belgium, Spain and Italy. We will all learn from each other.



If this expansion is successful in our ability to improve treatment for patients with cancer, SUN is likely to expand to other countries in which interest has been expressed to join this international network."



About SIRT

SIRT, also called "Radioembolisation", is a method of treating malignant liver tumours, whether those tumours originate from the liver itself, or have spread to the liver from elsewhere in the body (e.g. bowel cancer).



Millions of little resin or glass "beads" are injected into the arteries inside the liver. The microspheres are tiny and too small to see with the naked eye. Each microsphere is much smaller than the width of a human hair.



These microspheres contain a radioactive isotope which emits radiation that travels only a very short distance within the liver. Once injected, the microspheres lodge in the vessels that supply the tumour and emit radiation, which kills the tumour cells.



The microspheres also help to cut off the blood supply to the tumours, thus starving them of oxygen and essential nutrients. Although the radiation lasts for a period of days, the treatment effect on the tumour can last much longer.



About the SIRT Users' Network (SUN)

SUN has an academic focus, and is independent of commissioning and service considerations. The SUN website has a secure "members' only" discussion forum to allow clinicians to hold private and secure exchanges of views on all aspects of the SIRT procedure and clinical issues. The site also provides freely available resources for clinicians and patients.



All the members of The SUN Users' Network are involved in the treatment of cancer patients with SIRT.

The remit of the Network is to:

Share and establish best treatment practice for SIRT across and within all clinical disciplines

Better inform and optimise referral practices and outcomes

Share research and treatment protocols to improve patient outcomes

Discuss and share knowledge on academic issues, research and treatment delivery

Share information about upcoming events, conferences and data milestones

SIRFLOX is the first study assessing the results of adding SIR-Spheres Y-90 resin microspheres to first-line chemotherapy in the treatment of mCRC. The other studies are FOXFIRE, a UK clinical trial that completed enrolment in November 2014, and FOXFIRE Global, an international study that completed enrolment in January 2015. The results of the three studies, which together enrolled more than 1,100 patients with mCRC, will be combined in a pre-planned assessment of the OS benefit of adding SIR-Spheres Y-90 resin microspheres to first-line chemotherapy for mCRC. The combined results are expected in 2017.

Newly published European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) clinical guidelines for the treatment of metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) endorse radioembolisation, specifically with Yttrium-90 resin microspheres, as a clinically proven technology to "prolong time to liver tumour progression" in mCRC patients who have failed to respond to available chemotherapy options.

The SIRT Users' Network can be accessed at: http://www.sirt.org.uk

Further Information

For further information please contact:



Hugh McKinney,

Denovo Strategy,

Email: hmckinney@denovostrategy.co.uk

Tel: +44(0)7961323810


WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Doubling down on comments by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, the real estate tycoon's running mate Mike Pence agreed with the claim that Russian President Vladimir Putin is a stronger leader than U.S. President Barack Obama. In an interview with CNN's Dana Bash at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on Thursday, Pence compared Trump's bold comments to those made by the former president. 'I think it's inarguable that Vladimir Putin has been a stronger leader in his country than Barack Obama has been in this country,' Pence said. 'And that's going to change the day that Donald Trump becomes president.' Putin is frequently labeled as an authoritarian who maintains his dominance over Russia through control of the media and the judiciary. With Bash highlighting the differences between the two nation's governments, Pence claimed Trump doesn't particularly like the Russian system. The comments from Pence come after Trump praised Putin's leadership ability at the NBC News 'Commander in Chief Forum' on Wednesday. 'It's a very different system, and I don't happen to like the system,' Trump said. 'But certainly, in that system, [Putin's] been a leader, far more than our president has been a leader.' Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton described Trump's remarks about the Russian President as bizarre and scary. 'That is not just unpatriotic and insulting for the people of our country as well as to our commander in chief, it is scary,' Clinton told reporters on Thursday. 'Because it suggests he will let Putin do whatever Putin wants to do. And then make excuses for him.' Clinton also bashed Trump for seeming to 'trash talk' the nation's top military commanders, although Pence argued that the billionaire-turned-politician was referring to Obama reducing the generals' influence. (Photo: Gage Skidmore) Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - The Hillary Clinton Campaign has said that an additional 15 retired generals and admirals are endorsing the Democratic presidential candidate. Earlier in the week, 95 retired generals and admirals endorsed Clinton. According to recent media reports, Trump has received more than 400 fewer endorsements than Mitt Romney received - 88 to Romney's 500. Major General (retd.) Peter Cooke, one of the military leaders who support Clinton, said Donald Trump has a lack of knowledge on everything from force structure to NATO to US alliances and partnerships. Major General (retd.) John Phillips, who is endorsing Clinton, said she has demonstrated the ability to conduct foreign affairs and achieve the objectives and goals of the United States. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
AMSTERDAM, September 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Professor Ben L. Feringa, University of Groningen, the Netherlands, Receives the 2016 Tetrahedron Prize for his Outstanding Contributions to Organic Chemistry

Elsevier, a world-leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, and the Board of Executive Editors of Elsevier's Tetrahedron journal series today announced that the 2016 Tetrahedron Prize for Creativity in Organic Chemistry has been awarded to Professor Ben L. Feringa of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. He receives the award for his outstanding contributions to organic chemistry.

Professor Stephen Martin, Chairman of the Editorial Board of the Tetrahedron journals, said on announcing this year's winner: "Professor Feringa has performed truly ground-breaking research in the diverse fields of dynamic molecular systems, catalysis, and stereochemistry. His contributions to molecular nanotechnology, including molecular switches and rotors, have played a major role in shaping the field of nanomachines. Similarly, his discoveries in catalysis, particularly of enantioselective transformations, have had a profound influence in synthetic organic chemistry and its applications to natural product chemistry."

"Winning the Tetrahedron Prize is not only a great honor for me personally, but also for my team of excellent young students and coworkers whom I have worked alongside over the years and are responsible for many discoveries in our labs," Professor Feringa commented. "This is a very prestigious prize and I am extremely grateful to the giants in our field who have acted as a source of inspiration throughout my career and whose shoulders I stand on to continue the tradition of excellence in organic chemistry."

In a recent interview, Professor Feringa speaks about winning the award and provides some personal and scientific insights about some of his contributions to organic chemistry.

The Tetrahedron Prize was established in 1980 and is intended to honor the memory of the founding co-Chairmen of the Tetrahedron publications, Professor Sir Robert Robinson and Professor Robert Burns Woodward. It is awarded annually and consists of a gold medal, a certificate, and a monetary amount of $10,000, which will be presented during the 2017 Fall National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Washington, DC, USA (August 20-24, 2017).

Notes for editors

Reporters wanting to attend the award ceremony at the 2017 Fall National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Washington, DC, USA, on August 20-24, 2017 can contact Annis Moreira at a.moreira@elsevier.com or +31 20 4852770.

About Elsevier

Elsevier is a world-leading provider of information solutions that enhance the performance of science, health, and technology professionals, empowering them to make better decisions, deliver better care, and sometimes make groundbreaking discoveries that advance the boundaries of knowledge and human progress. Elsevier provides web-based, digital solutions - among them ScienceDirect, Scopus, Elsevier Research Intelligenceand ClinicalKey - and publishes over 2,500 journals, including The Lancet and Cell, and more than 35,000 book titles, including a number of iconic reference works. Elsevier is part of RELX Group, a world-leading provider of information and analytics for professional and business customers across industries.http://www.elsevier.com

Media contact

Annis Moreira

Elsevier

+31 20 4852770

a.moreira@elsevier.com


DALLAS, TX -- (Marketwired) -- 09/09/16 -- Masergy Communications Inc. today announced that University of Washington student April Opsvig is the company's 2016 STEM College Scholarship Fund winner. The School of Electrical Engineering student was selected for the $5,000 science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) award from approximately 500 applications, based on her outstanding academic record, as well as accomplishments in the field of engineering.

"Thank you for choosing me as the winner of the inaugural Masergy STEM Scholarship," Opsvig said. "I've been dreaming of being an engineer since I was a child and this scholarship grant from Masergy will lessen my financial burden to achieve my goal."

The company's annual STEM College Scholarship fund recognizes the increasing importance and impact that science and technology disciplines have on the prosperity of future generations.

"Masergy is proud to recognize and financially support students who demonstrate and apply exceptional technology skills to help develop future innovations poised to change our lives," said Chris MacFarland, CEO, Masergy. "We congratulate April for being a testament to the intelligence of a younger generation and we celebrate her academic achievements."

Masergy's STEM scholarship award is an annual event, with 2017 applications to be available on January 1st. Students interested in applying may visit: www.masergy.com/stem-scholarship.

About Masergy

Masergy owns and operates the largest independent Software Defined Platform in the world, delivering hybrid networking, managed security and cloud communication solutions to global enterprises. Our patented technology, customizable solutions and unmatched customer experience are why a growing number of leading organizations rely on Masergy to deliver performance beyond expectations. Learn more about Masergy and follow us on our blog Transforming Enterprise IT, Twitter @Masergy, LinkedIn and Facebook.

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For more information, contact:

Betsey Rogers

Public Relations

BridgeView Marketing

603-886-7087

betsey@bridgeviewmarketing.com




HARRISON (dpa-AFX) - MasterCard Inc. (MA) is facing a damages claim of 14 billion pounds on behalf of U.K. consumers who were allegedly charged higher prices because of the card giant's high swipe fees. The claim, filed Thursday in the Competition Appeal Tribunal, was described as the biggest in U.K. legal history by former Chief Financial Services Ombudsman Walter Merricks, who is bringing the claim. In 2014, the European Court of Justice ruled that regulators were right to condemn the cost of its interchange fees - the fees retailers pay banks to process card payments. Mastercard lowered its fees but now faces a claim for damages for 16 years of charging from 1992 to 2008. 'Now that the claim has been filed, we will take time to review it in detail. However we continue to firmly disagree with the basis of this claim and we intend to oppose it vigorously,' Mastercard said. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
By J. Keeler Johnson ("Keelerman") Twitter: @J_Keelerman

The Del Mar and Saratoga meets might be behind us, but the great racing action of the summer continues on Saturday with a variety of intriguing stakes races, including the $400,000 Super Derby (gr. III) at Louisiana Downs, a race that has been won in the past by such famous horses as Alysheba, Sunday Silence, and Tiznow.

# Horse (Odds)

Jockey Trainer Last race 1 Whateverybodywants (6-1) Jose Valdivia, Jr. Kellyn Gorder 2nd West Virginia Derby (gr. II) (VIDEO) 2 Mo Tom (7-5) Joe Bravo Tom Amoss 1st Ohio Derby (VIDEO) 3 Mending Fences (15-1)

David Cabrera Danny Pish 3rd Super Derby Prelude Stakes (VIDEO) 4 Classy Bird (20-1)

John Jacinto Lonnie Briley 5th Super Derby Prelude Stakes (VIDEO) 5 Texas Chrome (7-2)

C. J. McMahon J. R. Caldwell 1st Super Derby Prelude Stakes (VIDEO) 6 Dalmore (2-1)

Kent Desormeaux Keith Desormeaux 5th Pacific Classic (gr. I) (VIDEO) 7 Fort Pulaski (20-1)

Diego Saenz Danny Pish 7th Super Derby Prelude Stakes (VIDEO)

The heavy favorite on the morning line at 7-5 is Mo Tom, a son of Uncle Mo that has stamped himself as among the better three-year-old colts in the country. After troubled trips contributed to him finishing third in the Risen Star Stakes (gr. II) and fourth in the Louisiana Derby (gr. II), he finished a solid eighth in the Kentucky Derby (gr. I) despite yet another tough trip, then finally got a clean run in the Ohio Derby and unleashed a big late rally to win by three decisive lengths.

You have to admire a colt that just keeps rallying under any circumstances, but I think Mo Tom could be vulnerable to an upset in the Super Derby. Since the Ohio Derby, he's targeted a couple of major stakes races and was even entered in the West Virginia Derby (gr. II), but scratched because he wasn't training very well at Saratoga. Mo Tom has been based at Churchill Downs for his last two workouts, which have been sharper, but I wonder if he might need to get a race under his belt before returning to peak form.

In addition, the field that Mo Tom beat in the Ohio Derby wasn't the toughest-runner-up Adventist returned to finish seventh in the West Virginia Derby, third-place finisher Discreet Lover finished eighth in the Indiana Derby (gr. II) and Smarty Jones Stakes (gr. III), and fourth-place finisher Cocked and Loaded finished seventh in the Indiana Derby and fifth in the Smarty Jones. Of course, the Super Derby field doesn't appear to be the toughest either, and it would be a major surprise if Mo Tom doesn't finish in the trifecta, but at anywhere near his 7-5 morning line odds, I think he's a horse to play against.

With all that said, my selection to win is Dalmore. Although he lost his first six starts before breaking his maiden at Santa Anita, Dalmore has since stamped himself as a very talented colt, winning an allowance race and the Affirmed Stakes (gr. III) at Santa Anita before finishing fifth in the Pacific Classic (gr. I) behind-get ready!-2014 Horse of the Year and all-time leading North American money winner California Chrome, three-time Eclipse champion and two-time Breeders' Cup winner Beholder, and the grade I winners Dortmund and Hoppertunity. Never mind Dalmore's 16 -length defeat-he was facing four of the very best older horses in the country and performed admirably under the circumstances. He even finished ahead of the talented graded stakes winners Imperative and Hard Aces.

Basically, Dalmore is taking a tremendous class drop from the Pacific Classic to the Super Derby, a drop that doesn't even begin to be reflected by the grades of the races. I was impressed that Dalmore ran as well as he did in the Pacific Classic, and I think he's ready for a winning effort while cutting back in distance to nine furlongs and facing his own age group in the Super Derby. He also has more tactical speed than Mo Tom and could be forwardly placed in a race that lacks speed on paper, and as a result, I view Dalmore as the horse to beat.

Respect must also be given to Texas Chrome, winner of the Super Derby Prelude Stakes at Louisiana Downs on August 6th. The Prelude has enjoyed solid success producing Super Derby contenders, and Texas Chrome previously demonstrated his talent by finishing second in the Iowa Derby (gr. III) behind American Freedom and third in the Matt Winn Stakes (gr. III) behind Gun Runner, talented colts that returned to finish second and third in the Travers Stakes (gr. I). Texas Chrome is unlikely to receive anywhere near as much wagering support as Dalmore and Mo Tom, but I think he's a solid contender in this race and has a big chance to split the favorites and finish in the exacta.

For a live longshot, I would consider Classy Bird, who is 20-1 on the morning line after finishing fifth in the Prelude Stakes. At first glance, his performance doesn't look very good, but Classy Bird really had no chance of winning while trailing the field through fractions of :25.15 and :48.86, a slow pace that strongly favored the early leaders and allowed them to fly home the final five-sixteenths of a mile in a quick :30.85 seconds. Prior to the Prelude Stakes, Classy Bird had never finished out of the trifecta on dirt and had won the Crescent City Derby when a much more favorable pace flow aided his late run. Classy Bird might be in a little deep against Dalmore and Mo Tom, but he will be ridden by John Jacinto-by far the leading rider at the current Louisiana Downs meet-and might have a shot to finish in the exotics if the pace ends up more contested than expected.

Now it's your turn! Who do you like in the Super Derby?

Other Races to Watch

Racing returns to Belmont Park on Friday with a competitive nine-race card that includes the $100,000 Christiecat Stakes for three-year-old fillies. One race I'm particularly excited to see is a one-mile allowance optional claiming event that is the third race on the card; four of the five horses entered are stakes winners, including 2015 Sam F. Davis Stakes (gr. III) winner Ocean Knight, who makes his second start off a layoff following an encouraging second-place finish at Saratoga on August 8th.

The Saturday card is also solid and includes the Seattle Slew Stakes, an 8.5-furlong prep for the October 1st Jockey Club Gold Cup (gr. I). Once again, there are only five starters, but one of them is Comfort, runner-up to Frosted in the Whitney Stakes (gr. I) despite a slow start that left him farther off the pace than expected. I believe Comfort is a talented colt that will be a major player in the Jockey Club Gold Cup, and I'm looking forward to seeing how he runs in the Seattle Slew.

Lastly, I'm excited to see Da Big Hoss in the $600,000 Kentucky Turf Cup (gr. III) on Saturday at Kentucky Downs. Da Big Hoss is one of my favorite horses in training and has rapidly risen from a former claimer to one of the best long-distance turf horses in the United States. He won the Kentucky Turf Cup last year and has won four of his five starts this year, all of them stakes races. A repeat win in the Kentucky Turf Cup could potentially propel him to a start in Australia's legendary Melbourne Cup (Aus-I) in November, so I'll certainly be cheering for Da Big Hoss, who looks like a clear-cut favorite to win on Saturday.

*****

To help simplify the process of choosing and keeping track of everyone's prime horse selections in our 2016 Road to the Breeders' Cup Classic Handicapping Challenge, I would like to ask everyone to please submit their prime choice each week by leaving a special comment on the official blog page for the contest. This will greatly reduce the chances of any prime horse selections getting overlooked, and will also make it simpler to double-check the standings. Thanks, and enjoy the racing!

*****

J. Keeler Johnson (also known as "Keelerman") is a writer, blogger, videographer, handicapper, and all-around horse racing enthusiast. A great fan of racing history, he considers Dr. Fager to be the greatest racehorse ever produced in America, but counts Zenyatta as his all-time favorite. He is the founder of the horse racing website www.theturfboard.com.


WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - A mattress store in San Antonio has come under heavy criticism for positing a video promoting a 'Twin Tower sale' to remember the deadly 9/11 terrorist attacks.



The offensive video by Miracle Mattress, which was posted on Facebook, features store manager Cherise Bonanno and two employees standing in front of two towers of stacked mattresses.



Saying that there was no better way to remember the deadliest attack on U.S. soil, the company offered a promotion selling any size mattress for the price of a twin mattress.



The ad ends with the two mattress towers toppling over, while Bonanno and the employees screamed. Bonanno also says, 'We will never forget.'



Several people lashed out at the company for the video, terming it 'disgusting' and offensive.



In response to the intense outrage on social media, Miracle Mattress posted an apology via Facebook, saying 'We are very sorry we have offended you. Our staff is full of military and some relatives have passed away due to 9/11.'



The apology was later updated with an official apology letter from Mike Bonanno, the owner of Miracle Mattress. Bonanno said that the social media video produced by his San Antonio team was posted on Facebook without his knowledge or approval.



'I say this unequivocally, with sincere regret: the video is tasteless and an affront to the men and women who lost their lives on 9/11. Furthermore, it disrespects the families who lost their loved ones and continue to struggle with the pain of this tragedy every day of their lives,' Bonanno said.



He added that over the next several days, the company will determine an appropriate response to express its regret and support for the 9/11 victims and their families.



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BANKERS PETROLEUM ANNOUNCES SAFE APPROVAL FOR PROPOSED ARRANGEMENT

CALGARY, September 9, 2016 - Bankers Petroleum Ltd. ("Bankers" or the "Company") (TSX: BNK, AIM: BNK) is pleased to announce that the proposed plan of arrangement (the "Arrangement") with affiliates of Geo-Jade Petroleum Corporation ("Geo-Jade") has received Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange(SAFE) approval. At this time the required regulatory approvals for the completion of the Arrangement have been received. Bankers anticipates completion of the Arrangement to occur in the coming weeks, and prior to September 30, 2016. A further announcement will be made once exact timing of the ?completion has been established.

Pursuant to the Arrangement, Geo-Jade will acquire all the issued and outstanding common shares of Bankers ("Bankers Shares") through its affiliates at a cash price ofC$2.20per Bankers Share.Following a successful completion of the Arrangement the Bankers Shares will be delisted from the Toronto Stock Exchange ("TSX") and the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange.

------------

About Bankers Petroleum Ltd.

Bankers Petroleum Ltd. is a Canadian-based oil and gas exploration and production company focused on developing large oil and gas reserves in Albania and Eastern Europe. In Albania, Bankers operates and has the full rights to develop the Patos-Marinza heavy oilfield, has a 100% interest in the Kucova oilfield, and a 100% interest in Exploration Block "F". In 2015 Bankers acquired an 85% interest in the rights to explore the Puspokladany Block concession within the Pannonian Basin located in north eastern Hungary. The Bankers Shares are traded on the TSX and the AIM Market in London, England under the stock symbol BNK.

For further information, contact:

David French President and Chief Executive Officer (403) 513-6930 Doug Urch Executive VP, Finance and Chief Financial Officer (403) 513-2691 Laura Bechtel Investor Relations and Corporate Communications Specialis (403) 513-3428

Email: investorrelations@bankerspetroleum.com

Website: http://www.bankerspetroleum.com/

AIM NOMAD:

Canaccord Genuity Limited

Henry Fitzgerald-O'Connor

+44 0 207 523 8000

AIM BROKER AND FINANCIAL ADVISOR:

FirstEnergy Capital LLP

Hugh Sanderson / David van Erp

+44 0 207 448 0200

The information communicated in this announcement is inside information for the purposes of Article 7 of Market Abuse Regulation 596/2014 ("MAR").

Caution Regarding Forward-looking Information

Certain information set forth in this press release, including information and statements which may contain words such as "could", "plans", "intends" "should", "anticipate", "expects", "will", "propose", "opportunity", "future", "continue", and similar expressions and statements relating to matters that are not historical facts, contain forward-looking statements, including but not limited to statements regarding: the proposed Arrangement, the anticipated timing of closing and the delisting of the Bankers Shares following completion of the Arrangement. By their nature, forward-looking statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, some of which are beyond Bankers' control. Completion of the Arrangement is subject to a number of conditions which are typical for transactions of this nature. Failure to satisfy any of these conditions or the emergence of a superior proposal may result in the termination of the arrangement agreement dated March 19, 2016 providing for the Arrangement. The foregoing list is not exhaustive. Additional information on these and other risks that could affect completion of the Arrangement is set forth in the management information circular of Bankers dated April 19, 2016 in respect of a special meeting of the shareholders of Bankers held on May 31, 2016 to approve the Arrangement, which is available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Readers are cautioned that the assumptions used in the preparation of such information, although considered reasonable at the time of preparation, may prove to be imprecise and, as such, undue reliance should not be placed on forward-looking statements. The actual results, performance or achievement of Bankers could differ materially from those expressed in, or implied by, these forward-looking statements and, accordingly, no assurance can be given that any of the events anticipated by the forward-looking statements will transpire or occur, or if any of them do so, what benefits that Bankers will derive therefrom. Bankers disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable securities laws.
TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 09/09/16 -- The government of Canada values the role of all of the sciences, from the natural and health sciences to the social sciences and humanities, in providing the evidence needed to make decisions that will impact our health, environment, climate, economy and society. The government is committed to advancing research in all disciplines and in encouraging partnerships among researchers, along with those in the public, private and not-for-profit sectors, to develop innovative approaches that will improve the well-being of Canadians and strengthen the middle class.

This is why the Honourable Kirsty Duncan, Minister of Science, today announced $163 million for nearly 1,150 social sciences and humanities research projects to build knowledge and foster collaboration in a wide range of disciplines. The Minister made the announcement at York University.

The funding is being awarded through the Partnership Grants, Partnership Development Grants, Insight Grants and Insight Development Grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

The investment in these research initiatives will help examine a diversity of issues that touch the everyday lives of Canadians, including employment, an aging population and immigration. For example, through her Partnership Grant project, York University's Dr. Valerie Preston has teamed up with academic, government and social services partners to look at how social organizations can improve the settlement and well-being services they deliver to migrants. This research will benefit Canada's newest citizens and migrants who are often faced with cultural, political, social and economic challenges. This partnership will provide important research results and information for policy-makers and migrant service providers.

Quotes

"Social sciences and humanities researchers help us to understand issues affecting our daily lives and provide evidence for sound policy-making. The Government of Canada believes that only this broad and holistic approach can lead to true discoveries, innovation and solutions that will help all Canadians, including those who now call Canada home."

-The Honourable Kirsty Duncan, Minister of Science

"SSHRC's support of these projects helps ensure the continued and unique contribution of humanities and social sciences research to guide informed decision-making at all levels within Canadian society. This research informs our thinking about critical social, cultural, economic, technological and environmental issues and contributes to building a better future for Canada and the world."

-Ted Hewitt, President, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council

Quick fact

-- SSHRC is the federal research funding agency that promotes and supports postsecondary-based research and training in the humanities and social sciences. It supports about 8,300 research projects annually.

Related products

- Partnership Grants recipient list

- Partnership Development Grants recipient list

- Insight Grants recipient list

- Insight Development Grants recipient list

Associated links

- Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council

- Partnership Grants funding opportunity

- Partnership Development Grants funding opportunity

- Insight Grants funding opportunity

- Insight Development Grants funding opportunity

Follow the Minister on social media:

Twitter: @ScienceMin

Instagram: sciencemin

Follow SSHRC on Twitter: @SSHRC_CRSH

Contacts:

Veronique Perron

Press Secretary

Office of the Minister of Science

343-291-2600



Media Relations

Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada

343-291-1777

ic.mediarelations-mediasrelations.ic@canada.ca



Julia Gualtieri

Media Relations Advisor

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council

613-944-4347

julia.gualtieri@sshrc-crsh.gc.ca




DALLAS, TX -- (Marketwired) -- 09/09/16 -- The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) has received an award from Consulting magazine, the industry's leading trade publication, for the firm's efforts to expand the reach of early childhood education programs in the greater Dallas area and improve their effectiveness.

BCG won an Excellence in Social & Community Investment Award for its work with three nonprofit organizations -- the Dallas Independent School District (DISD), the Commit! Partnership, and Early Matters Dallas. BCG was one of 18 consultancies honored, along with their clients, at a gala awards dinner last night at the University Club in midtown Manhattan.

The awards -- now in their third year -- recognize "outstanding client service, either on a pro bono, heavily discounted, or volunteer basis in either local communities or globally," said Joe Kornik, publisher and editor in chief of Consulting. "We're honored to shine a spotlight on these firms' altruistic efforts."

BCG's collaboration with the DISD and Commit! -- a coalition of stakeholders focused on improving educational outcomes for Dallas County students "from cradle to career" -- began three years ago as a pro bono project to help the nonprofits develop early childhood education strategies to improve school readiness.

Educators knew at the outset that six out of every ten kids in the district were deemed not ready for kindergarten. They also knew that 90% of a child's brain development happens by the time he or she is five years old and that any educational intervention after age five, particularly in the case of at-risk kids, is more difficult, more expensive, and less effective than earlier interventions.

BCG helped DISD develop a strategy to maximize the number of kindergarten-ready children. The strategy called for a four-pronged approach: increasing access to pre-K for three- and four-year-olds; boosting parental interest in pre-K; improving pre-K quality; and extending the continuum of care from birth to third grade.

The early results have been promising, with substantial progress on both access rates and quality:

DISD students deemed kindergarten-ready climbed from 38% in 2013 to 51% in 2015 -- a 13 percentage point increase in less than two years.

Student enrollment in pre-K rose from around 9,500 children in 2013 to 10,600 in 2015, a more than 10% increase.

Such gains bode well for the future, as kindergarten-ready children are three times more literate by third grade than those who are not, according to DISD research.

"I couldn't be more appreciative of the work that BCG did to help support our kids," Alan Cohen, who recently joined Commit! and is the DISD's former assistant superintendent of early childhood education, told the dinner audience Thursday. "What BCG brought was the capacity to build an unbelievably robust fact base and then use that fact base to help us craft a strategy. That strategy has led to unbelievable results for our kids."

"And our work continues," he added, "thanks not only to BCG's commitment to being a great partner for the school district and for the community, but also quite frankly because they are of shared mind and shared values."

BCG is now in the middle of a new, multiyear collaboration with the DISD to support the implementation of the strategy. Early Matters Dallas, a coalition of business, civic, and other nonprofit organizations, is helping to coordinate and fund efforts to ensure that the strategy is executed successfully.

BCG's current work, a deeply discounted engagement, involves providing analysis and advice to DISD leadership on key infrastructure and systems changes to ensure sustainable, long-term success. The team is focused on pinpointing important drivers of success and improving operational processes, helping the district concentrate on its highest-impact activities.

What's more, BCG is continuing its partnership with the broader Dallas community to improve early learning for all children. In early November, BCG will join forces with The Dallas Foundation and Early Matters Dallas to cohost a two-day event in Dallas on early childhood education. Districts and city teams from across the country will come together with thought leaders and philanthropists to share success stories for driving impact at each stage of development from birth to third grade.

"This collaborative effort has been a true highlight of my 27-year career at BCG," said J. Puckett, a Dallas-based senior partner who serves as global leader of the firm's Education practice. "The Dallas community has rallied behind the importance of giving our youngest children the strong start they deserve. I look forward to many years of continued partnership that will drive even more impact over time."

This is the third consecutive year that BCG has been honored by Consulting for its social-impact efforts. In 2014, the firm won for its pro bono work with Save the Children, and last year, the magazine recognized its pro bono support of the United Nations in fighting the Ebola outbreak.

Coverage of the winning firms, their clients, and the gala dinner will appear in the magazine's October issue (www.consultingmag.com). Consulting is published by ALM, a global leader in specialized industry news and information.

To arrange an interview, please contact Dave Fondiller at +1 212 446 3257 or fondiller.david@bcg.com.

About The Boston Consulting Group

The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) is a global management consulting firm and the world's leading advisor on business strategy. We partner with clients from the private, public, and not-for-profit sectors in all regions to identify their highest-value opportunities, address their most critical challenges, and transform their enterprises. Our customized approach combines deep insight into the dynamics of companies and markets with close collaboration at all levels of the client organization. This ensures that our clients achieve sustainable competitive advantage, build more capable organizations, and secure lasting results. Founded in 1963, BCG is a private company with 85 offices in 48 countries. For more information, please visit bcg.com.

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WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - With the fifteenth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks just two days away, the House approved a bill Friday to allow families of the victims of the attacks to sue Saudi Arabia for damages.



The legislation was approved by the House on a voice vote after it unanimously cleared the Senate on a voice vote in May.



However, the bill faces a potential veto by President Barack Obama amid concerns that it could harm U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia.



Families of the victims of the 9/11 attacks have been pushing for passage of the bill, as fifteen of the nineteen hijackers who perpetrated the attacks were Saudi citizens.



Obama could subsequently find it difficult to follow through on the veto threat, particularly with the elections looming.



The Saudi government has denied any involvement in the attacks, and the New York Times reported the kingdom has warned it might liquidate its U.S. Treasury debt and other American assets if the bill becomes law.



Even if Obama decides to veto the legislation, the bipartisan support for the bill suggests Congress could override him for the first time in his presidency.



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WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Republican incumbent Senators are leading among likely voters in races in the critical swing states of Florida, North Carolina and Ohio, according to the results of a Quinnipiac University Swing State Poll released on Friday.



The poll showed Senator Marco Rubio, R-Fla., leading Congressman Patrick Murphy, D-Fla., by 50 percent to 43 percent in Florida, while Senator Richard Burr, R-N.C., leads Democratic challenger Deborah Ross by 49 percent to 43 percent in North Carolina.



Ohio Senator Rob Portman, R-Ohio, has an even more substantial advantage over former Governor Ted Strickland, leading by 51 percent to 40 percent.



Meanwhile, Quinnipiac found that Pennsylvania's see-saw race between Senator Pat Toomey, R-Penn., and Democratic challenger Katie McGinty remains too close to call.



The poll showed that 46 percent of likely Pennsylvania voters support Toomey, while 45 percent favor McGinty. The one-point gap is well within the margin of error.



'The U.S. Senate races in Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and perhaps Pennsylvania show Democrats face an uphill climb,' said Peter A. Brown, assistant Director of the Quinnipiac Poll.



He added, 'All four GOP candidates are running ahead of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, some by just a bit, but some substantially.'



The outcomes of the races in these closely watched swing states could play a big role in Democrats' efforts to retake control of the Senate.



The survey of 601 likely Florida voters was conducted August 31st through September 7th and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.



Quinnipiac also surveyed 751 likely North Carolina voters, 775 likely Ohio voters and 778 likely Pennsylvania voters between August 29th and September 7th.



The North Carolina results have a margin of error of plus or minus 3.6 percentage points, while the Ohio and Pennsylvania results have a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.



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VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 09/09/16 -- Orca Gold Inc. (TSX VENTURE: ORG) ("Orca" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that further to the Company's July 26th news release disclosing the results of the Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA) of the Block 14 Gold Project in the Republic of the Sudan, the supporting NI43-101 Technical Report has now been filed and is available on the Company's website and at www.SEDAR.com.

Highlights of the Block 14 PEA on a 100% Basis

The PEA is based on contract mining with ore treated at Galat Sufar South ("GSS") through a 1.8Mtpa standard carbon-in-leach ("CIL") processing plant. Process water will be supplied from a bore-field 55km north of GSS where the Company has discovered water in a Nubian Sandstone Aquifer system (News Release July 5, 2016). Using a gold price of US$ 1,100/oz for mine design, and US$ 1,200/oz for economic analysis, highlights of the PEA include:

-- After-tax NPV7% of US$ 128 million and an IRR of 22%; -- In-pit mineral resources comprising 25.07Mt grading 1.52g/t for 1.22Moz in the indicated category and 2.80Mt grading 1.51g/t for 0.14Moz inferred resources. -- Mine life of 16 years with average annual LOM production of 73,000 ounces of gold; -- Average annual production in years 1-5 of 82,400 ounces of gold; -- Average gold recoveries of 86%; -- Cash costs of US$ 778/oz for LOM; -- All-in Cash costs of US$ 805/oz for LOM; -- Initial capital costs of US$ 123 million (including a 19% contingency); -- Sustaining capital costs of US$ 31 million; and -- Payback period of approximately 4 years, after-tax, from commencement of production.

Sensitivities:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Gold Price (US$/oz) 1,100 1,150 1,200 1,250 1,300 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Pre-tax NPV7% (US$ millions) 91 123 156 189 222 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- After-tax NPV7% (US$ millions) 72 100 128 156 184 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Pre-tax IRR (%) 18 22 25 29 32 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- After-tax IRR (%) 16 19 22 25 28 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

About Orca Gold Inc.

Orca Gold Inc. (TSX VENTURE: ORG) is a Canadian resource company focused on exploration and development opportunities in Africa, where it is currently focused on the development of its 70%-owned Block 14 project in the Republic of the Sudan. The Company has an experienced board of directors and management team and a strong balance sheet, with a treasury of $15 million at June 30, 2016.

The technical contents of this release have been approved by Hugh Stuart, BSc, MSc, a Qualified Person pursuant to NI 43-101. Mr. Stuart is President of the Company and a Chartered Geologist and Fellow of the Geological Society of London.

On behalf of the Board of Directors:

Richard P. Clark, CEO and Director

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Information

This press release contains forward-looking information and forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities laws, including statements regarding Orca's (the "Company", the "Corporation", "we" or "our") plans and expectations relating to the Block 14 project ("Block 14") in northern Sudan and the Pre-Feasibility Study ("PFS") currently being conducted by the Corporation. These statements relate to analyses and other information that are based on forecasts of future results, estimates of amounts not yet determinable and assumptions of management. Statements concerning mineral resource estimates may also be deemed to constitute "forward-looking statements" to the extent that they involve estimates of the mineralization that will be encountered if the property is developed. The assumptions, risk and uncertainties outlined below are non-exhaustive. Should one or more of these risks and uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results, performance or achievements of the Corporation, or industry results, may vary materially from those described in this presentation.

Any statements that express or involve discussions with respect to predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions or future events or performance (often, but not always, identified by words or phrases such as "expects", "anticipates", "believes", "plans", "projects", "estimates", "assumes", "intends", "strategy", "goals", "objectives", "potential", "possible" or variations thereof or stating that certain actions, events, conditions or results "may", "could", "would", "should", "might" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved, or the negative of any of these terms and similar expressions) are not statements of historical fact and may be forward-looking statements.

Forward-looking statements and forward-looking information are not guarantees of future performance and are based upon a number of estimates and assumptions of management at the date the statements are made including without limitation, assumptions about the following (the "Forward-Looking Factors"): future prices of gold and other metals; successful exploration, development, and production of Block 14; the timing and completion of the PFS; performance of contractual obligations by counterparties; operating conditions; political stability; obtaining governmental approvals and financing on time; financial projections and budgets; obtaining licenses and permits; government regulation of the Corporation's mining activities; environmental risks and expenses; market conditions; the securities market; price volatility of the Corporation's securities; currency exchange rates; foreign mining tax regimes; insurance and uninsured risks; financial projections and results; competition; availability of sufficient capital, infrastructure, equipment and labour; dependence on key personnel; dependence on outside parties; conflicts of interest; litigation; land title issues; local community issues; estimation of mineral resources; realization of mineral resources; timing and amount of estimated future production; the life of Block 14; reclamation obligations; changes in project parameters as plans continue to be evaluated; and anticipated costs and expenditures and our ability to achieve the Corporation's goals. While we consider these assumptions to be reasonable, the assumptions are inherently subject to significant business, social, economic, political, regulatory, competitive and other risks and uncertainties, contingencies, many of which are based on factors and events that are not within the control of the Corporation and there is no assurance they will prove to be correct.

Forward-looking statements are subject to a variety of known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ from those reflected in the forward-looking statements, including, without limitation known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors relating to the Forward-Looking Factors above, and those factors disclosed under the heading "Risk Factors" in the Corporation's documents filed from time to time with the securities regulators in the provinces of Canada.

In addition, a number of other factors could cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Corporation to differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking information, and there is no assurance that the actual results, performance or achievements of the Corporation will be consistent with them. For further details, reference is made to the risk factors discussed or referred to in the Corporation's annual and interim management's discussion and analyses on file with the Canadian securities regulatory authorities and available electronically on the SEDAR website at www.sedar.com. Although the Corporation has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events, results, performance or achievements to differ materially from those described in forward-looking statements and forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause actions, events, results, performance or achievements not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements or information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Such forward-looking statements and information are made or given as at the date of this presentation and the Corporation disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required under applicable securities law. The reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements or forward-looking information.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Contacts:

Orca Gold Inc.

Richard P. Clark

+1 604 689 7842




NEW YORK, NEW YORK -- (Marketwired) -- 09/09/16 -- Brookfield Global Listed Infrastructure Income Fund Inc. (NYSE: INF), Brookfield High Income Fund Inc. (NYSE: HHY), Brookfield Mortgage Opportunity Income Fund Inc. (NYSE: BOI) and Brookfield Total Return Fund Inc. (NYSE: HTR) (each, a "Fund," and collectively, the "Funds") today announced that their Boards of Directors declared their monthly distributions.

Brookfield Global Listed Infrastructure Income Fund Inc. declared a monthly distribution of $0.1167 per share, payable on September 29, 2016 to stockholders of record on September 22, 2016. The ex-distribution date is September 20, 2016. Based on the NYSE closing price of $13.92 on September 8, 2016, the Fund's annualized distribution rate was 10.06%.

Brookfield High Income Fund Inc. declared a monthly distribution of $0.060 per share, payable on September 29, 2016, to stockholders of record on September 22, 2016. The ex-distribution date is September 20, 2016. Based on the NYSE closing price of $7.49 on September 8, 2016, the Fund's annualized distribution rate was 9.61%.

Brookfield Mortgage Opportunity Income Fund Inc. declared a monthly distribution of $0.1271 per share, payable on September 29, 2016 to stockholders of record on September 22, 2016. The ex-distribution date is September 20, 2016. Based on the NYSE closing price of $15.28 on September 8, 2016, the Fund's annualized distribution rate was 9.98%.

Brookfield Total Return Fund Inc. declared a monthly distribution of $0.19 per share, payable on September 29, 2016 to stockholders of record on September 22, 2016. The ex-distribution date is September 20, 2016. Based on the NYSE closing price of $22.80 on September 8, 2016, the Fund's annualized distribution rate was 10.00%.

Shares purchased on or after the ex-distribution date will not receive the distribution discussed above. Please contact your financial advisor with any questions. Distributions may include net investment income, capital gains and/or return of capital. The distribution rate referenced above is calculated as the annualized amount of the most recent monthly distribution declared divided by the stated stock price. Any portion of the Fund's distributions that is a return of capital does not necessarily reflect the Fund's investment performance and should not be confused with "yield" or "income." The tax status of distributions will be determined at the end of the taxable year.

Brookfield Investment Management (the "Firm") is an SEC-registered investment adviser providing listed real assets strategies including real estate equities, infrastructure equities, real asset debt and diversified real assets. With over $16 billion of assets under management as of June 30, 2016, the Firm manages separate accounts, registered funds and opportunistic strategies for institutional and individual clients, including financial institutions, public and private pension plans, insurance companies, endowments and foundations, sovereign wealth funds and high net worth investors. Headquartered in New York, the Firm and its affiliates also maintain offices in Boston, Chicago, Hong Kong, London and Toronto. Further information is available at www.brookfieldim.com. Brookfield Investment Management Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Brookfield Asset Management, a leading global alternative asset manager with approximately $250 billion of assets under management as of June 30, 2016. For more information, go to www.brookfield.com.

Brookfield Global Listed Infrastructure Income Fund Inc., Brookfield High Income Fund Inc., Brookfield Mortgage Opportunity Income Fund Inc. and Brookfield Total Return Fund Inc. are managed by Brookfield Investment Management. The Funds use their websites as a channel of distribution of material company information. Financial and other material information regarding the Funds are routinely posted on and accessible at www.brookfieldim.com.

Contacts:

Brookfield Global Listed Infrastructure Income Fund Inc.

Brookfield High Income Fund Inc.

Brookfield Mortgage Opportunity Income Fund Inc.

Brookfield Total Return Fund Inc.



Brookfield Place

250 Vesey Street, 15th Floor

New York, NY 10281-1023

(855) 777-8001

funds@brookfield.com

www.brookfieldim.com




VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 09/09/16 -- Skeena Resources Limited ("Skeena") (TSX VENTURE: SKE) and Sona Resources Corp. ("Sona") (TSX VENTURE: SYS) are pleased to announce that Sona received the overwhelming approval of its shareholders at the annual general and special meeting (the "Meeting") held today to consider, among other matters, the previously announced acquisition of Sona by Skeena by way of a plan of arrangement (the "Arrangement") under the Business Corporations Act (British Columbia).

Sona will be seeking a final order of the British Columbia Supreme Court to approve the Arrangement. The final order is expected to be granted on or about Tuesday, September 13, 2016 (or such later date as may be agreed upon by Sona and Skeena) with the Arrangement anticipated to become effective shortly thereafter. Completion of the Arrangement is subject to the satisfaction of certain other closing conditions customary of a transaction of this nature. Under the terms of the Arrangement, Skeena will acquire all of the issued and outstanding common shares of Sona in exchange for 0.5111 of a Skeena common share for each Sona share that is outstanding. It is further anticipated that shortly after the completion of the Arrangement, Sona's common shares will be delisted from the TSX Venture Exchange and that applications will be filed for Sona to cease to be a reporting issuer under Canadian securities laws.

Of the votes cast by Sona shareholders and Sona optionholders at the Meeting, 99.98% voted in favour of the special resolution approving the Arrangement. A total of 43.90% of the issued and outstanding shares of Sona and 97.38% of the issued and outstanding options were voted at the meeting.

Details of the Arrangement and certain other matters are set out in the management information circular of Sona dated August 9, 2016 (the "Information Circular"). A copy of the Information Circular and other meeting materials can be found on the SEDAR website at www.sedar.com.

About Skeena

Skeena Resources Limited is a junior Canadian mining exploration company focused on developing prospective base and precious metal properties in the Golden Triangle region of northern British Columbia, Canada. The Company's primary activities are the evaluation and development of the Spectrum gold project and adjacent GJ copper-gold project as well as exploration on the recently optioned past-producing Snip gold mine, acquired from Barrick Gold Corp. Skeena's management includes a highly experienced team of mine-finders, including Ron Netolitzky, Chairman of the Board.

About Sona Resources Corp.

Sona's primary asset is the past-producing underground Blackdome gold mine, located in the Clinton Mining District in southwestern British Columbia. From 1986 to 1989 Blackdome produced 225,000 ounces of gold from a low-sulphidation, gold-and-silver-rich epithermal vein system at a head grade of 20 grams per tonne Au. Blackdome includes a permitted 300 tonne-per-day conventional gravity separation and flotation mill and tailings facility, a large land package, in addition to a series of known mineralized veins with excellent year-round exploration potential. Additionally, Sona has an option to acquire a 100% interest in the adjacent Elizabeth gold prospect. In 2010, Micon International Limited completed a Preliminary Economic Assessment on behalf of Sona (available on SEDAR under Sona's profile) based on the combined resources from both Elizabeth and Blackdome, under a proposal to truck ore to the Blackdome mill for processing.

The technical information contained in this news release has been reviewed and approved by Rupert Allan, P.Geol., Skeena's Vice President of Exploration, and a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101.

On behalf of Skeena Resources Limited,

Walt Coles Jr., President and CEO

On behalf of Sona Resources Corp.

Nick Ferris, Managing Director

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Information

This news release contains forward looking statements relating to the timing and anticipated receipt of required regulatory and court approvals for the Arrangement; the ability of Skeena and Sona to satisfy the other conditions to, and to complete, the Arrangement; and the anticipated timing of the closing of the Arrangement. Forward looking statements are often identified by terms such as "will", "may", "should", "intends", "anticipates", "expects", "plans" and similar expressions. All statements other than statements of historical fact, included in this release are forward looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. These risks and uncertainties include, without limitation, the risk that the transaction may not close when planned or at all or on the terms and conditions set forth in the arrangement agreement entered into by Sona and Skeena; the failure to obtain the necessary court, regulatory and other third party approvals required in order to proceed with the transaction. There can be no assurance that any forward looking statements will prove to be accurate and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements.

Neither Skeena nor Sona can guarantee that any forward looking statement will materialize and the reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on any forward looking information. Such information, although considered reasonable by management at the time of preparation, may prove to be incorrect and actual results may differ materially from those anticipated. Forward looking statements contained in this news release are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. The forward looking statements contained in this news release are made as of the date of this news release and the Company will only update or revise publicly any of the included forward looking statements as expressly required by Canadian securities laws.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Contacts:

Skeena Resources Limited

Tony Perri

Investor Relations Manager

(604) 684-8725

tperri@skeenaresources.com



Sona Resources Corp.

Nick Ferris

Executive Chairman

(604) 684-6677

info@sonaresources.com




CALGARY, ALBERTA -- (Marketwired) -- 09/09/16 -- Lightstream Resources Ltd. (the "Company" or "Lightstream") (TSX: LTS) has filed our meeting materials on SEDAR and on our website, including our Management Information Circular (the "Circular") and related voting materials. Meeting materials have been mailed out to registered shareholders and noteholders in connection with our previously announced proposed recapitalization plan by way of Plan of Arrangement under the Canada Business Corporation Act (the "Arrangement" or the "Recapitalization").

On August 29, 2016, Lightstream was granted an amended interim order of the Court of Queen's Bench of Alberta (the "Court") which authorized the holding of special meetings (the "Special Meetings") of the holders of our common shares (the "Shareholders"), the holders of our 9.87% second lien secured notes due 2019 (the "Secured Noteholders") and the holders of our 8.625% unsecured notes due 2020 (the "Unsecured Noteholders") to consider and vote on the Recapitalization and other matters. The meetings will be held on September 30, 2016 in the conference facilities located on the fourth floor of the east tower of the Eighth Avenue Place building at 825 - 8th Ave S.W., Calgary, Alberta. The meeting of Shareholders will commence at 9:00 a.m. (Calgary time), the meeting of Secured Noteholders will commence at 10:00 a.m. (Calgary time) and the meeting of Unsecured Noteholders will commence at 10:30 a.m. (Calgary time). The record date for each of the Special Meetings was September 6, 2016.

After an extensive review of the Company's strategic options, management of Lightstream and Lightstream's Board of Directors believe that the Recapitalization represents the best alternative available to address the Company's capital structure and liquidity needs, and will have the following benefits:

-- Shareholders, Secured Noteholders and Unsecured Noteholders will have an opportunity to continue to participate in the development of Lightstream's properties through their ongoing ownership of equity; -- The Recapitalization will improve our financial strength and reduce financial risk by retiring approximately $1.175 billion in debt and reducing annual interest expense by approximately $108 million and will improve liquidity by virtue of proceeds raised from the establishment of the new revolving credit facility and offering of the new secured notes; and -- The Company will be positioned to pursue a modest capital expenditure program to preserve substantial value in the Company's resources and assets, provide flexibility to raise additional capital in the future, and pursue a growth-focussed plan in the event that the commodity price environment justifies investment.

The Board of Directors unanimously recommends that all Shareholders, Secured Noteholders and Unsecured Noteholders vote in favour of the proposed Recapitalization.

As previously announced, under certain circumstances, including if the Unsecured Noteholder litigation is not settled in a manner satisfactory to both the Company and the ad hoc committee of certain Secured Noteholders ("the Ad Hoc Committee") on or before September 16, 2016, or if the Company's lenders decide to exercise enforcement rights in respect of the Company's existing credit facility or if the Recapitalization does not receive the requisite approval of each class of securityholders at their respective meetings, the Company will discontinue the Recapitalization and commence proceedings under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act ("CCAA").

On July 13, 2016 we began a robust sale and investment solicitation process (the "SISP"). If the Company commences proceedings under the CCAA, we will seek an initial order for the purposes of implementing a sale transaction by way of a credit bid by the Secured Noteholders or other form of transaction within the CCAA proceedings acceptable to both the Company and the Ad Hoc Committee of Secured Noteholders. The bid deadline for the SISP has been extended to October 7, 2016. Proceedings through either the CBCA or CCAA process are not expected to affect normal course business operations. We continue to have cash on-hand and are continuing to pay all service providers, suppliers and contractors as we pursue our Recapitalization plan.

Securityholder approval is important; vote your securities today.

Readers are urged to consult the Company's press releases issued July 12, 2016, July 13, 2016, July 28, 2016, August 5, 2016, August 10, 2016 and August 26, 2016 for further details respecting the proposed Recapitalization and the Arrangement.

Lightstream Resources Ltd. is an oil and gas exploration and production company focused on light oil in the Bakken and Cardium resource plays. We are committed to delivering industry leading operating netbacks, strong cash flows and consistent operating results through leading edge technology applied to a multi-year inventory of existing and emerging resource play opportunities. Our long-term strategy is to efficiently develop our assets and deliver an attractive dividend yield.

Forward Looking Information. Certain information provided in this press release constitutes forward-looking information (within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities laws). Specifically, this press release contains forward-looking information in respect of the Company's proposed Arrangement or CCAA proceedings and the matters related thereto, including the anticipated timing of certain events, the anticipated effects of the Recapitalization on the Company and its securityholders and the circumstances under which CCAA proceedings would be commenced,. The forward-looking statements are based on information currently available as well as certain expectations and assumptions. Although Lightstream believes that the expectations and assumptions on which the forward-looking statements are based are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on the forward-looking statements because Lightstream can give no assurance that they will prove to be correct. Since forward-looking statements address future events and conditions, by their very nature they involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially from those currently anticipated due to a number of factors and risks, which risks include, without limitation that the Company may not be able to complete the Recapitalization, including the Arrangement or a CCAA transaction, on the timeline or on the terms currently contemplated or at all, that the Company's lenders may undertake actions to enforce their security, the Recapitalization may have an effect on the Company other than what is currently anticipated, the pursuit of the Recapitalization, Arrangement and related activities may divert management time and attention away from other business matters, and that the Company's business is exposed to commodity price and exchange rate fluctuations and changes in the general conditions in the oil and gas industry and in general economic conditions. In addition, the Company is exposed to each of the risks set forth in the AIF which has been filed on SEDAR and can be accessed at www.sedar.com. Except as may be required by applicable securities laws, Lightstream assumes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking information provided herein or otherwise, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Contacts:

Lightstream Resources Ltd.

John D. Wright

President and Chief Executive Officer



Lightstream Resources Ltd.

Peter D. Scott

Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer



Lightstream Resources Ltd.

Annie C. Belecki

General Counsel



Lightstream Resources Ltd.

403.268.7800

403.218.6075 (FAX)

ir@lightstreamres.com

www.lightstreamresources.com




MONTREAL, QUEBEC -- (Marketwired) -- 09/09/16 -- TECSYS Inc. (TSX: TCS), (the "Corporation"), announces the results of the matters voted upon at the annual meeting (the "Meeting") of shareholders of the Corporation (the "Shareholders") held on September 8, 2016.

According to the scrutineers' report, shareholders holding 9,018,787 common shares (the "Common Shares") were represented at the Meeting in person or by proxy, representing 73.23% of the issued and outstanding Common Shares as of the record date on July 25, 2016.

The following matters were put to a vote by a show of hands:

Election of Directors

The Shareholders elected the eight nominees listed in the management information circular dated July 26, 2016 (the "Circular") to be the directors of the Corporation (the "Directors"). Each nominee (including every incumbent Director) was elected by a majority of the votes cast. Each Director will hold office until the next annual meeting of Shareholders or until the election of his successor, unless the Director resigns or the Director's office becomes vacant. The report on proxies provided by the scrutineers at the Meeting was as follows:

Percentage Number of Number of Percentage of of Total Director Nominee Votes FOR Votes WITHHELD Total Votes FOR Votes WITHHELD ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Frank J. Bergandi 8,692,503 120,108 98.64% 1.36% David Brereton 8,693,903 118,708 98.65% 1.35% Peter Brereton 8,693,903 118,708 98.65% 1.35% Vernon Lobo 8,697,503 115,108 98.69% 1.31% Steve Sasser 8,692,503 120,108 98.64% 1.36% David Wayland 8,363,900 448,711 94.91% 5.09% John Ensign 8,804,611 8,000 99.91% 0.09% David Booth 8,805,611 7,000 99.92% 0.08%

Additional information concerning the Directors is available in the Circular, which was mailed to Shareholders in connection with the Meeting and is available on SEDAR (www.sedar.com).

Appointment of Auditors

KPMG LLP, Chartered Accountants, were appointed auditors of the Corporation to hold office until the next annual meeting of Shareholders or until their successors are appointed. The Directors were authorized to fix their remuneration. The report on proxies provided by the scrutineers at the Meeting was as follows:

Percentage Percentage Number of of Total of Total Number of Votes FOR VotesWITHHELD Votes FOR Votes WITHHELD ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 8,901,679 113,108 98.75% 1.25%

About TECSYS

TECSYS provides transformative supply chain solutions that equip our customers to succeed in a rapidly-changing omni-channel world. TECSYS solutions are built on a true enterprise supply chain platform, and include warehouse management, distribution and transportation management, as well as complete financial management and analytics. Customers running on TECSYS' Supply Chain Platform are confident knowing they can execute, day in and day out, regardless of business fluctuations or changes in technology, they can adapt and scale to any business needs or size, and they can expand and collaborate with customers, suppliers and partners as one borderless enterprise. From demand planning to demand fulfillment, TECSYS puts power into the hands of both front line workers and back office planners, and unshackles business leaders so they can see and manage their supply chains like never before.

TECSYS is the market leader in supply chain solutions for health systems and hospitals. Over 600 mid-size and Fortune 1000 customers trust their supply chains to TECSYS in the healthcare, service parts, third-party logistics, and general wholesale high-volume distribution industries. TECSYS' shares are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol TCS.

The statements in this news release relating to matters that are not historical fact are forward looking statements that are based on management's beliefs and assumptions. Such statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to a number of uncertainties, including but not limited to future economic conditions, the markets that TECSYS Inc. serves, the actions of competitors, major new technological trends, and other factors beyond the control of TECSYS Inc., which could cause actual results to differ materially from such statements. More information about the risks and uncertainties associated with TECSYS Inc.'s business can be found in the MD&A section of the Company's annual report and annual information form for the fiscal year ended April 30th, 2016. These documents have been filed with the Canadian securities commissions and are available on our website (www.tecsys.com) and on SEDAR (www.sedar.com).

Copyright  TECSYS Inc. 2016. All names, trademarks, products, and services mentioned are registered or unregistered trademarks of their respective owners.

Contacts:

Solutions and general info

info@tecsys.com



Investor relations

steve.li@tecsys.com

(514) 866-5800 ext. 4120



Media relations

media@tecsys.com

(514) 866-0001 or (800) 922-8649




CULVER CITY, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 10/17/16 -- Cataca Resources, Inc. ("Cataca Resources" or the "Company") (OTC PINK: CATQ) is pleased to announce it has completed the acquisition of FlitWays Technology, Inc. ("FlitWays"), a Los Angeles-based ground travel booking and scheduling company. As a result of the acquisition, FlitWays has become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Cataca Resources.

"With the formal acquisition of FlitWays successfully completed, we can now move forward with the next phases of our planned expansion strategy," commented Tobi Mac Aro, CEO/founder of FlitWays. "Over the next the several weeks, we expect to launch several new initiatives that should expand our pre-booked ground travel network and dramatically increase market awareness of Flitways and it services. We anticipate this will have a very positive impact on our overall revenue potential and bottom line."

In addition, Cataca Resources will immediately take the necessary corporate and regulatory actions to change the Company's name to FlitWays Technology, Inc. and secure a new trading symbol to better reflect its new corporate name and business focus.

For additional information regarding FlitWays Technology, Inc., visit www.FlitWays.com.

Additional information regarding Cataca Resources and FlitWays Technology, Inc. can also be found in the Company's most recent filings with SEC at www.sec.gov and further Company press releases.

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Information

This press release may contain certain "forward-looking statements" relating to the business of Cataca Resources. All statements, other than statements of historical fact included herein are "forward-looking statements," including, but not limited to; the proposed acquisition of FlitWays Technology; and proposed corporate name change; and any other statements of non-historical information. These forward-looking statements are often identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "believes," "expects" or similar expressions, involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in these forward-looking statements are reasonable, they do involve assumptions, risks and uncertainties, and these expectations may prove to be incorrect. Investors should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this press release. The Company's actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements as a result of a variety of factors, including those discussed in the Company's periodic reports that are filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and available on its website (www.sec.gov). All forward-looking statements attributable to the Company or persons acting on its behalf are expressly qualified in their entirety by these factors. Other than as required under the securities laws, the Company does not assume a duty to update these forward-looking statements.

Contact:

Hermosa Capital Management Inc.

(310) 546-4600

ir@FlitWays.com




SCOTTSDALE, AZ--(Marketwired - October 03, 2016) - Meritage Homes Corporation (NYSE: MTH), a leading U.S. homebuilder, plans to release the Company's third quarter 2016 results on Thursday, October 27, 2016 before the market opens. Following the release, management will host a conference call to discuss their results at 7:30 a.m. Arizona Time (10:30 a.m. Eastern Time).

The call will be webcast with an accompanying slideshow available on the "Investor Relations" page of the Company's web site at http://investors.meritagehomes.com. Telephone participants may avoid any delays by pre-registering for the call using the following link to receive a special dial-in number and PIN.

Conference Call registration link: http://dpregister.com/10092994.

Telephone participants who are unable to pre-register may dial in to 866-226-4948 on the day of the call. International dial-in number is 1-412-902-4125 or 1-855-669-9657 for Canada.

A replay of the call will be available beginning at approximately 12:30 p.m. ET on October 27 and extending through November 10, 2016, on the website noted above or by dialing 877-344-7529, 1-412-317-0088 for international or 1-855-669-9658 for Canada, and referencing conference number 10092994.

About Meritage

Meritage Homes is the seventh-largest public homebuilder in the United States, based on homes closed in 2015. Meritage Homes builds and sells single-family homes for first-time, move-up, luxury and active adult buyers across the Western, Southern and Southeastern United States. Meritage Homes builds in markets including Sacramento, San Francisco's East Bay, the Central Valley and Orange County, California; Houston, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Austin and San Antonio, Texas; Phoenix/Scottsdale, Green Valley and Tucson, Arizona; Denver and Fort Collins, Colorado; Orlando and Tampa, Florida; Raleigh and Charlotte, North Carolina; Greenville-Spartanburg and York County, South Carolina; Nashville, Tennessee; and Atlanta, Georgia.

Meritage Homes has designed and built more than 95,000 homes in its 31-year history, and has a reputation for its distinctive style, quality construction, and positive customer experience. Meritage Homes is the industry leader in energy-efficient homebuilding and has received the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's ENERGY STAR Partner of the Year for Sustained Excellence Award every year since 2013 for innovation and industry leadership in energy efficient homebuilding. For more information, visit meritagehomes.com.

For more information, visit www.meritagehomes.com.

Contact:

Brent Anderson

VP Investor Relations

(972) 580-6360

investors@meritagehomes.com
He's known more for his sharp witticisms for the celebrity guests who frequent his show.

But on Thursday evening, 8 September, popular comedian Kapil Sharma showed that he has a serious side a well.

Sharma caused quite the controversy on Twitter when he questioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his promise of bringing acche din, in the background of ubiquitous corruption still troubling the common man.

On Thursday evening, Sharma tweeted:

I am paying 15 cr income tax from last 5 year n still i have to pay 5 lacs bribe to BMC office for making my office @narendramodi  KAPIL (@KapilSharmaK9) September 9, 2016

Yeh hain aapke achhe din ? @narendramodi  KAPIL (@KapilSharmaK9) September 9, 2016

Sharma's tweet was reportedly prompted by demands for a bribe by officials of the municipal corporation in Mumbai, in exchange for permission to build his office space.

While Sharma's direct challenge to Modi met with the criticism of other twitterati, those in positions of authority seemed to take note of his plaint.

Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis tweeted back to Sharma saying the allegations of corruption on the part of BMC officials would be looked into.

Kapilbhai pls provide all info.

Have directed MC,BMC to take strictest action.

We will not spare the culprit.@KapilSharmaK9 @narendramodi  Devendra Fadnavis (@Dev_Fadnavis) September 9, 2016

There was no tweet from the PM's handle in response to Sharma's at the time of publishing this article.

Read: Kapil Sharma tweet  Civic body says his construction was illegal; BJP claims AAP influence
The Man Trap, the pilot episode for Star Trek aired on 8 September 1966.

The show's cultural impact since then is nothing less than extraordinary. The franchise has had five different television spin-offs and more than a dozen feature films, and a new television series in the works with Bryan Fuller (who is the force behind Hannibal and American Gods) serving as a co-creator and executive producer.

Also, it has been confirmed that before Star Trek Beyond debuts on TV, plans are already underway for a fourth film in the reboot series that will somehow bring back Chris Hemsworth as George Kirk.

But in the cinematic world and Star Trek franchise, much has changed. There have been different captains, crews and enterprises; with a completely different look and technology. But throughout, Star Trek has remained beloved  and now theres an official video marking the shows birthday.

Paramount Pictures has released a short video compilation on the official Star Trek film Facebook page to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the franchises birth.

The one and a half minute video features the most memorable images and quotes from the Star Trek series, with everything from 'Live long and prosper' to 'KHAAAAAAAN'. Theres a lot our favourites like Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Uhura in it.

Have a look here:

Meanwhile on Twitter, celebrities are celebrating the revolutionary series' 50th anniversary with the hashtag #StarTrek50 and #LLAP50 (Live Long And Prosper).

Star Trek has inspired many, from astronauts to science geeks to space organisations to pursue their passion of space exploration, as made obvious by these tweets:

Scott Kelly, the famous American astronaut who is a veteran of four space flights tweeted this:

Mike Massimino, former NASA astronaut who is now a professor of mechanical engineering at Columbia University tweeted this:

Samantha Cristoforetti, one of the very few women in space, who is a part of the Italian European Space Agency astronaut, tweet this,

Honoring #StarTrek50 today. 'cause if we want to build the future, we first need to have the boldness to imagine it! https://t.co/GWkfNgaOjr  Sam Cristoforetti (@AstroSamantha) September 8, 2016

NASA seems to be a fan of Star Trek too:

It's written in the stars... or a star forming region. For #StarTrek50, we present the 'Enterprise' Nebulae. pic.twitter.com/Bd4IbVfgep  NASA (@NASA) September 8, 2016

Nichelle Nichols who played officer Lieutenant Uhura aboard the USS Enterprise in Star Trek television series (19661969) tells us to live long and prosper.

William Shatner also sent his regards. If you don't know who Shatner played on Star Trek, then you are not a fan:

George Takei who played Hikaru Sulu, helmsman of the USS Enterprise in the television series Star Trek, tweeted this:

I'm on the Colbert show tonight. Here's a little teaser... #StarTrek50https://t.co/6up6pGT2pL  George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) September 9, 2016

Dr. Mae Jemison, the first black female astronaut and NASA pioneer also had a small part in Star Trek and is a huge fan of the series. She tweeted this:

Star Trek- long lived and prospering! #StarTrek50  Dr. Mae Jemison (@maejemison) September 8, 2016

Einstein, who passed away in 1955, almost a decade before the series premiered, was clearly a visionary in more than one ways because he tweeted this:

And the most ardent fan of them all, Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory, has not said anything yet, but we can maybe expect an episode dedicated to it with all the Star Trek references it has?

Till then:
Srinagar: Army chief General Dalbir Singh on Friday reviewed the security situation in the unrest-hit Valley, especially in the four worst-affected districts in south Kashmir.

Gen Singh arrived here on Friday morning and was briefed about the prevailing situation in the Valley by General Officer Commanding of Chinar Corps Lt Gen Satish Dua, defence sources said.

The sources said the army chief visited defence formations in the north and south of the Valley to get first hand account of the situation from the officers on the ground.

"The army chief was informed about the steps to be taken to help the civil administration restore normalcy, particularly in south Kashmir," the sources said.

Gen Singh also visited foward locations along the Line of Control in Kupwara district to review the preparedness of the anti-infiltration grid, they said.

He will call on Jammu and Kashmir Governor NN Vohra later before heading back to Delhi.
Hyderabad: Telangana government on Thursday sought Rs 50 crore financial assistance from Union Finance Ministry per year for five years for each of the backward districts in the State.

Minister for IT and Industries KT Rama Rao put forth the demand during his meeting with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in New Delhi, according to an official statement here.

The State, which came into existence in June 2014, has 10 districts, but the statement did not say how many of them fall under the backward category.

Rao also requested Jaitley to release Rs 24,500 crore for Mission Bhagiratha and Mission Kakatiya projects (related to irrigation and rural development) as they had been already cleared by Niti Aayog, it said.

"The Minister requested Arun Jaitley to help Telangana on lines with Andhra Pradesh. Not doing so would otherwise send wrong signals to public (that the Centre is helping only AP)," it said.

He requested the Centre to implement all promises made in the AP Reorganisation Act in letter and spirit, the statement added.

The Rao-Jaitley meeting came a day after the Centre announced a financial package for Andhra Pradesh that includes full funding of Polavaram irrigation project, tax concessions and a special assistance, but stopped short of giving the state a special category status.
A burn ban has been ordered in South Middleton Township.

Open burning of any kind inside the township is prohibited until further notice, according to a news release issued by the township Friday.

Anyone caught violating the burn ban can be charged with a summary offense punishable up to 30 days in jail and a fine up to $1,000, according to the township.

Costs to extinguish the fire may also be levied against the person caught violating the ban.

Declining groundwater and stream levels because of below normal precipitation has resulted in a drought watch being issued for more than half of the counties in Pennsylvania, including Cumberland County, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.

A drought watch is an alert to government officials to prepare for future problems that could arise from drought conditions, according to the United States Geological Survey.

Very little precipitation is expected in the near future to help remedy the drought watch conditions.

Numerous municipalities across Cumberland County have instituted burn bans throughout the summer, including Southampton and North Newton townships.
New Delhi: Delhi government on Friday sought a high-level police probe into the incident of protest by a group of BJP women activists against Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal at the railway station, while calling it a result of a "conspiracy" to attack the AAP chief.

Home Minister Satyendar Jain and other party leaders condemned Thursday's incident in which Kejriwal was "pushed and shoved", and also sought action against the people who were "instigated" to enter the railway premises.

"It is a result of a conspiracy to attack the chief minister. His entire security details and itinerary are divulged by the city police, so that people could know when and where to attack him. This was a serious breach of security," Jain alleged.

He was speaking at a session in the House of the Delhi Assembly and also said that "If Kejriwal gets attacked then BJP will pay the price."

"We will get it (railway station incident) probed by Delhi Police Commissioner and its report should be tabled in the Assembly," he said. Jain and other AAP leaders also asked if any permission was sought before staging the protest, and why both Delhi and railway police remained "mute spectators" to the entire scene.

"The incident did not take place outside the railway station. These women entered the platform and went all the way near the chief minister. Were platform tickets bought by them? Was anyone detained or questioned by the police after this incident," the Delhi Home Minister asked.

Jain also made a reference about a past incident at Chhatarsal Stadium when a woman sprayed ink on Kejriwal in public. "So many central ministers stay in Delhi. How many of them have had their security compromised? We never ask for security, but if there is a threat to a CM's life, then shouldn't the police respond," he said.

AAP has already dubbed the protest a "pre-planned" attack. The activists led by Delhi BJP Mahila Morcha president Kamaljeet Sehrawat and party spokesman Praveen Kapoor raised slogans and waved bangles towards Kejriwal, when he arrived on Thursday at platform number 1 to board a train for Punjab at around 7 am.

Laxmi Nagar MLA Nitin Tyagi said Kejriwal is being attacked because Opposition (BJP) is losing in Punjab, Gujarat and Goa elections. "The kind of security details divulged about Kejriwal, I want to ask had Vijender Guptaji or Jagdish Pradhanji or any other BJP leader been the CM, would it still be divulged," he said.

Tourism Minister Kapil Mishra said the incident has dealt a severe blow to the "image of Delhi, Railways and our country at large. And it will take at least 10 year to restore that image."
Some years back the oldest think-tank located in the National Capital took upon itself to run a capsule on strategy for Members of Parliament. The government in power was contacted and 40 vacancies were allotted to MPs from across political parties in power by the Centre. On the first day, 40 MPs attended. On the second day, attendance came down to 20. On the third day, only one MP turned up and after an hour said, General sahib, jo aap bolte ho woh hamein to samajh nahin aata, is liye hum jaa rahe hain (General, I cannot understand what you are saying, so I am leaving).

That was the end of it.

Another interesing episode was the 19-kilometre-deep intrusion by Chinas PLA at Raki Nala in the Depsang plains of eastern Ladakh in May 2013, coinciding with Chinese premier Li Keqiangs visit to India. The paralysis in the hierarchy was obvious with the then home minister Sushil Shinde blurting out, We have no jurisdiction in the area. The cake was taken by an MP, who was jokingly referred to as the pole tortoise during a TV discussion on the intrusion. When a veteran general commented that the area of PLA intrusion being plain, we could simply go and sit behind the intruders or make a quid pro quo move, this venerable MP was visibly upset. His response was, General sahib, aap toh ladaai karwa ke chhodoge (General, you will only settle for war).

Apparently he foresaw a Chinese cyber attack followed by nuclear war. Such a creamy layer is the bane of India and why we are generally considered a soft state.

The fact of the matter is that neither did the Army call for Afspa, nor did it draft this Act.

Consider the current volatility in the Kashmir Valley, the flurry of delegations, the blatant obduracy of Hurriyat separatists despite pockets bulging with funds from both sides of the LoC, the write ups, debates on national TV, and besides the calls for autonomy, the rooting for removal of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (Afspa) particularly by Jammu and Kashmir politicians and national Opposition MPs. Of course, intelligence pundits over the past several years simply dismissed Hurriyat separatists as irrelevant, giving them free rein to spill anti-India venom and radicalise the youth.

So, why lavish crores of exchequer money on them if they were irrelevant  or is it that snakes must be fed milk? Most significantly, even after the ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Pundits (KPs), every government has remained mum. How many politicos visited the camps of KPs  rendered refugees in their own country  over the past decades? Has this atrocity even been covered in the national and international media? Can India let the world know what happened in Jammu and Kammu then and why? And why an inquiry shouldnt be ordered for it even now, because the same political dynasties and cliques are present in Jammu and Kashmir? Some of whom are mighty vocal about the handling of the current situation. Of course, instituting such an inquiry will need guts, which observers like Tarek Fatah doubt, but then it just might be ordered if political pundits see some benefit in the forthcoming state elections next year and beyond.

One wonders if those calling for the removal of Afspa have ever gone into why, how and by whom Afspa was introduced. Sure, the Act provides extraordinary powers of force to soldiers deployed in disturbed areas  which has long been a bone of contention between human rights activists and those favouring adequate state response to terror and insurgency. Ironically, every time there are protests for the removal of Afspa, fingers are pointed at the Indian Army and it is asked why it needs Afspa. Army veterans are summoned for TV debates, there are calls to 'tone down' Afspa and the like. All this shows that the very background and basis of Afspa are not understood in the first place.

The fact of the matter is that neither did the Army call for Afspa, nor did it draft this Act.

Instead, this was discussed and debated by various Parliaments and passed to ensure that the army can function effectively in the designated disturbed area, when deployed. It must be noted that the deployment of army in the hinterland and the application of Afspa comes only after said area is declared disturbed under the Disturbed Area Act. An area is declared disturbed when the state machinery is unable to function and calls in the army for support. Therefore, any dilution of Afspa then would mean diluted effectiveness of the army in counter-insurgency or counter-terrorism, with personnel being consistently involved in litigation.

A Disturbed Area Act passed on 11 September, 1958 was applied to the seven North East states. A similar act passed in 1983 was applied to Punjab and Chandigarh, which was withdrawn in 1997. A similar act was applied to Jammu and Kashmir in 1990 and has been in force since. Neither does the army ask for deployment in the hinterland, nor does it enjoy being forced to act against its own Indian brethren when deployed in disturbed areas  its primary task being against the enemy and defending the borders.

As importantly in an insurgency environment, the army can only keep violence levels at manageable levels whereas the remainder must be taken on by the state administration; given that the problems are of a more politico-socio-economic nature. The failure of the state to provide adequate governance has been the bane of continuing insurgencies. This has been the major reason for the Kashmir Valley remaining volatile  aside from Pakistani support to terror, politico-terror links, lack of worthwhile de-radicalisation programmes and terror having become an industry by itself. The politico blame game will continue  Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti protested against pellet guns introduced during Omar Abdullahs reign, today she thinks differently.

When in Opposition, Mehbooba protested vehemently for the removal of Afspa. Today she is the chief minister of the state. She is welcome to have the Jammu and Kashmir Disturbed Area Act of 1990 withdrawn. Should she do so, the army will automatically withdraw from the hinterland and there will be no need for Afspa. But you cannot continue with Disturbed Area Act and simultaneously remove or dilute Afspa, which would amount to tying the hands of the army behind its back. This implies that the state administration merrily continues to take refuge behind the army.

At the same time, to withdraw the Disturbed Area Act, The state administration has to first create the environment to facilitate the withdrawal of the Act. Simply removing the Disturbed Area Act without creating conditions for it would be disastrous. It's time those Opposition politicos and protesters hooting for the removal of Afspa simply to earn brownie points, make some effort to understand these nuances.

The author is a veteran Lieutenant-General of the Indian Army
Washington: Ahead of the 15th anniversary of 9/11, former secretary of state and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton said going after al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden into Pakistan was "not an easy choice".

"I was part of the small group advising President (Barack) Obama whether or not the intelligence we had was good enough to take a chance, to go deep into Pakistan, to try to finally bring Osama bin Laden to justice.

"It was not an easy choice by any means," Clinton said at an election rally in North Carolina. "These never are."

"That's why who sits at the head of that table in the situation room has to be able to sort out fact from opinion, has to be able to ask the hard questions, pursue even the most difficult leads," she said yesterday giving an insight into the 2 May, 2011 killing of Osama, the 9/11 mastermind, in a US military operation at his hideout in Abbottabad in Pakistan.

Her comments came three days before the 15th anniversary of the al- Qaeda attack on the twin towers in New York that killed more than 3,000 people, resulting in the US invading Afghanistan.

"We went through that hour after hour after hour. And then the president went around the table asking each of us what we advised. And we were split because it was not some kind of easy layup. I believed it was strong enough that we needed to take action and I supported taking action that would determine whether or not we were successful. That meant sending in special forces," said the 68-year-old former secretary of state.

"Now, you know what happened. I was in that Situation Room watching that day. The most stressful 30 minutes of my life probably. Because you remember one of the helicopters nicked - clicked on - hit its tail on the wall going into the courtyard and became disabled.

"That meant  thank goodness there were good contingency plans, but you had to get another helicopter in to take out the SEALs who would no longer be able to fly out on that one," she said, describing the event of the day.

"But here's what I want to tell you because it is a story that, to me, illustrate our values in such a clear, unambiguous way. You've heard Donald Trump say he would order our troops to torture. You've heard him say he would order our troops to kill family members of terrorists. You would know that he was advocating illegal actions against our own laws, as well as the laws of war.

"Thank goodness there's a code of honour in our military stronger than the bluster and the bullying of Donald Trump because here is what happened on that night," she said amid applause.

Meanwhile, Trump, the 70-year-old real estate tycoon, claimed Osama would have been caught long ago had he been in power.

"I would have been tougher on terrorism. Bin Laden would have been caught long ago before he was ultimately caught, prior to the downing of the World Trade Center," Trump said at a charter school in Cleveland, Ohio.

On Wednesday, Clinton said the US will go after ISIS terror group and its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi the same way America had focussed on defeating al-Qaeda and Osama if she is elected as the next president.

In her remarks yesterday, she said during the US raid on Osama's hideout, "every second counted".

"Every single second counted. That helicopter had to be blown up, but before it was  and, remember, the SEALs had gone in. They had taken out the two Kuwaitis, the bodyguards. They had taken out bin Laden's son, who was there. They took out bin Laden. They had to get his body out. They had to get themselves out," she said.

"But here's what they did first. They rounded up all the women and children, members of terrorists' families. They took them outside as far from the helicopter as they could get them in order that they would not be hurt. That, Donald Trump, is what American honour looks like and that is what we're going to stand up and defend in the face of your outrageous, disgraceful attacks on the men and women of our armed forces!" she alleged.

In his address, Trump reiterated he was against going into Iraq from the very beginning.

Iraq is one of the biggest differences in this race, he said, alleging that his Democratic rival Clinton supported the move.

Trump alleged that Clinton's policies produced ruin in Libya, Iraq, and Syria.

"She failed in Russia, in China, in North Korea. Her policies unleashed ISIS, spread terrorism, and put Iran on the path to nuclear weapons  not to mention the ransom payments," he said.

"On top of it all, Hillary Clinton is trigger-happy. She's raced to invade, intervene, and topple regimes. She believes in globalism, not Americanism. Last night, she even falsely said no American died in Libya. Then she also falsely said there's no ground troops in Iraq, even though we have 5,000 military personnel there right now," he said.

Trump alleged that Clinton emailing about the drone programme  among many other extremely sensitive matters - is yet more evidence that she is unfit to be commander-in-chief.

"By the way, the whole country saw how unfit she was at the Townhall last night, where she refused to take accountability for her failed policies in the Middle East that have produced millions of refugees, unleashed the horror of radical Islamic terrorism, and made us less safe than ever before," he charged.

"Throughout it all, she put the entire country at risk in order to cover-up her pay-for-play scandals as Secretary of State. These include scandals like giving up our uranium to Russia, doing favours for UBS bank, and selling contracts to friends and family in Haiti.

"It's all about hiding her criminal enterprise at the Clinton Foundation," Trump said.
Washington: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's campaign has raised in August $90 million  of which the real estate tycoon himself contributed more than half, but still remains short of $140 million raised by his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton's campaign.

Trump contributed $60 million to his campaign in August, which then turned out to be his best fund-raising month with $90 million as the total amount raised.

However, it is still short of $140 million raised by his rival Hillary Clinton's campaign in the same month.

The fact was acknowledged by the Trump campaign in its latest fund raising statement.

"We have broad support from across America. Hillary Clinton and her super PACs have spent over $130 million on negative political ads, and yet we are virtually tied (or better) in the most recent national polls and leading in many of the important swing states," said Steven Mnuchin, Trump for President Finance chairman.

"Hillary Clinton spent August attending 70 fundraisers; Donald Trump spent August at 34 rallies and speeches," he said.

In a statement, the Trump Campaign said the $90 million haul came mostly from small donors and includes a significant contribution from the 70-year-old  bringing his overall contributions to the campaign to almost $60 million dollars.

"Once again his contributions for the month far surpassed what the FEC legally requires in reimbursements to his related entities such as rent and airfare," it said.

As a result, the campaign and both Joint Fundraising Committees finished the month with very strong cash positions on hand, totaling approximately $97 million.

This is a significant increase from the previous month, it said.

According to the Trump Campaign, in last three months, 2.1 million people from across the nation have donated.

"On 31 August, the day Trump met with the President of Mexico and delivered his 10-point plan to reform immigration laws in this country, the campaign raised more than $5 million," it said.
Carlisle Police made an arrest in connection to an apartment fire in downtown Carlisle Wednesday.

Michael Joseph Curran Jr., 28, of Chambersburg, was charged Friday with felony arson, risking catastrophe and reckless endangerment.

Police said he intentionally set a fire that displaced four people in an apartment building on East Louther Street at the intersection of North Hanover Street around 5:30 a.m. Wednesday.

Curran leaned a mattress against the exterior side of a stairwell access on the roof and set it on fire, according to an affidavit of probable cause filed by the Carlisle Police Department.

Video surveillance showed Curran leaving the scene, and he later admitted to police that he had lit the mattress on fire with a lighter, according to police.

Curran is being held in Cumberland County Prison in lieu of $250,000 bail.

A preliminary hearing is scheduled for 10 a.m. Wednesday in front of Magisterial District Judge Paul Fegley.
Vientiane: Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte took a thinly veiled dig at the United States, complaining that colonizers who killed many Filipinos are now raising human rights concerns with him.

President Barack Obama was among several world leaders who listened to Duterte's brief speech at the East Asia Summit in the Laotian capital of Vientiane. Obama earlier canceled a meeting with Duterte after the Philippine leader referred to him in comments to reporters as a "son of a bitch" and warned him not to discuss the deaths of thousands of suspects in an anti-drug campaign.

Two Philippine Cabinet officials said Duterte did not criticize any country or leader by name in his speech. Other diplomats who heard the speech, however, felt he was referring to the United States, which colonized the Philippines after defeating its former ruler, Spain.

An Indonesian diplomat said Duterte held up a picture of Filipinos killed in colonial times to underscore his point. The diplomat spoke to reporters on condition that he not be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Philippine officials refused to release Duterte's remarks, which were not included in his prepared speech made yesterday. The Department of Foreign Affairs in Manila said the president provided an explanation of how human rights records should be assessed in the context of the historical record.

"In the passionate intervention of President Duterte, he underscored the need to take a long historical view of human rights, mindful of the atrocities against the ethnic people of Mindanao," the department said in a statement, referring to the southern Philippine region where American forces were involved in deadly clashes with Muslim Filipinos in the early 1900s.

Duterte, who assumed the presidency in June, has had an uneasy relationship with the U.S., his country's longtime treaty ally. He has said he is charting a foreign policy that is not dependent on the U.S., and has moved to reduce tensions with China over rival territorial claims.

The tough-talking president has also blasted U.N.-appointed human rights experts and rights watchdogs who have expressed concerns over the extrajudicial killings of more than 2,800 suspected drug dealers and users since Duterte took office. More than 600,000 others have surrendered, apparently out of fear of being killed.

After the flap over Duterte's earlier remarks, he and Obama met briefly on the sidelines of the Laos meetings and

shook hands.

One Cabinet member, Jesus Dureza, said he asked Duterte how his talk with Obama went. "It was OK," Dureza quoted Duterte as saying. "He told me, 'we can talk some more at another time.'"

The summit ended with Laos turning over the chairmanship of the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations to Duterte, whose country will host the annual diplomatic gathering next year.
Tehran: With Iranians barred from the annual hajj pilgrimage, thousands protested in Tehran on Friday and officials criticised Saudi Arabia's refusal to discuss last year's deadly stampede.

Around 64,000 Iranians allocated places for the hajj under a quota system will be absent when it starts tomorrow, after talks between the increasingly bitter rivals fell apart earlier this year. As a war of words grows between the two regional rivals, several thousand people took to the streets of the Iranian capital after the Friday weekly prayers. The Saudis have "blocked the path to Allah. It's a crime and they must be tried," said Javad Zolfaghari, a cleric who joined the protests.

In an interview with AFP, the head of Iran's Hajj Organisation blamed the Saudis for refusing to discuss security measures despite the stampede that killed thousands during last year's hajj. "How are you going to invite 1.5 million pilgrims and not even allow yourself to think about the security measures?" asked Said Ohadi.

He said that during negotiations in April and May, the Saudis simply fell back on verses of the Quran holy book stating that anyone who enters Saudi Arabia has "full security". "Last year we had those verses in the Quran too," said Ohadi.

An AFP tally found that a total of at least 2,300 people died in last year's stampede, including 464 Iranians, the highest confirmed death toll among foreigners who died in the tragedy.

But Tehran says the overall toll was much higher. "Seven thousand people were martyred, were killed, from 39 countries," Ohadi said. Saudi Arabia says the figure was only 769, but has refused to release the details of its investigation. Ohadi said the last straw in the hajj talks was a demand from the Saudis that Iranian pilgrims "cannot have any contact with any Muslim from any other country".

That was despite the Quranic verses' emphasis on the importance of mingling with Muslims from around the world during the pilgrimage to Islam's holiest sites in Mecca and Medina, in western Saudi Arabia, he said. Saudi Arabia has countered that Tehran had made "unacceptable" demands during the talks, including the right to organise demonstrations "that would cause chaos".

But right from the start, Ohadi said there was "very bad hospitality" and "weird attitudes" from the Saudis  including a refusal to give delegates diplomatic entry, or even cars to their hotel. Ohadi said depriving the Iranian faithful of the chance to perform the hajj was "unacceptable", especially given the 15-20 year waiting list.

The Saudis "believe they are the owners  that Mecca and Medina are their properties," he said. "No  they are the properties of Islam."
Maj. Alexander Parker

THE HISTORY: Alexander Parker was born in Cumberland County in 1753 and had a long and active career in the Pennsylvania Line during the Revolutionary War. There he fought under Gen. George Washington in the Battle of Monmouth.

According to findagrave.com, Parker purchased 1,350 acres of land in Virginia (now West Virginia) after the war for $50. He never settled on the land before his death and a large portion of the land was taken from his daughter Mary by John Stokley. In 1810, a successful counter-suit put the land back in possession of the Parkers. On Dec. 11, 1810, a new town was laid out and called Parkersburg in honor of Alexander Parker. Parkersburg is now the third largest city in West Virginia, and a city Parker never set foot in.
As Australian Army Col. Susan Coyle spoke Friday to military members, family members and civilians at the U.S. Army War College, she proclaimed Sept. 11, 2001, as a day that not only transformed America, but the rest of the world as well.

This time it was not one nation attacking another nations military on the battlefield, Coyle said. It would be a network of terrorists, not acting under the flag of one nation, but as an ideology attack the fabric or our society, the world society.

Coyle, an international fellow at the War College and member of the class of 2017, was the keynote speaker during the annual 9/11 memorial ceremony hosted by the War College. Dickinson College also hosted a Patriot Day ceremony Friday morning.

There are moments in history that become ingrained in memory, the point and time in which individuals hear the news of what has unfolded become permanently affixed to long-term memory. The terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, is one of those moments.

Like everyone here today, I can vividly recall that time when we turned on our televisions to see those images of the first aircraft flying directly into the World Trade Center, Coyle said. You can never unsee those images.

I certainly remember where I was on 9/11, Maj. Gen. William Rapp, commandant for the Army War College, recalled during the ceremony. ... We listened to the attacks. We watched on the little crackly black-and-white TV we had in that cantonment area. I remember Col. Jim Yarbrough, commander of the 173rd at the time, called all of us battalion commanders together and said were here now, but this is going to be a long fight.

Nearly 3,000 people lost their lives in the attacks, including three War College graduates.

As the narrator unfolded each tragic event of that day, a bell rung out in memory of those lives lost.

Thousands more have died in the global fight against terrorism since that day, including four War College graduates and 10 Cumberland County soldiers, sailors and Marines, the narrator stated.

Many more have returned home from battle wounded.

We must win this fight, so this will become a distant memory for grandchildren and not something they will inherit, Coyle said.
TAYLOR, Pa.  Talk about penny pinching: A Pennsylvania man is accused of stealing about 300,000 pennies from his employer.

Police in Taylor, just outside Scranton, have charged 34-year-old Robert Napolitan with burglary for taking a steel drum filled with $3,000 worth of pennies.

According to a criminal complaint, police say Napolitan loaded the drum weighing 1,600 pounds onto a hand truck at Pyne Freight Lines on Monday and rolled it to his Jeep.

The (Scranton) Times-Tribune reports (http://bit.ly/2cj9Xq5 ) tracks through the dust and a trail of pennies marked his path.

Police searched his Jeep and found pennies underneath the seats and floor mats.

Police say he admitted to taking the drum. No lawyer information is listed in court documents.

Napolitan is in Lackawanna County Prison in lieu of $50,000 bail.
A few days ago, it was rumoured that the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) may ban passengers from carrying the Samsung Galaxy Note7 on board flights. However, while a ban didnt happen, they have released a few guidelines for the passengers carrying the Note7 on board a flight.

FAA has asked passengers to not use the Galaxy Note7 nor charge it while they are on-board a flight for safety reasons. It makes sense too considering the fact that almost every case concerning the combustion of the Note7 has happened while the device was charging.

That means that the issue is related to the Note7 not being able to cut off or restrict the amount of power entering the smartphone and battery. Similarly, they have also asked passengers to not put the handset in any checked in baggage since there is a chance that friction or physical damage can lead to combustion as well. Here is the official statement:

In light of recent incidents and concerns raised by Samsung about its Galaxy Note 7 devices, the Federal Aviation Administration strongly advises passengers not to turn on or charge these devices on board aircraft and not to stow them in any checked baggage.

I personally carried the Note7 too along with other phones on my way from Berlin to Bangalore and I followed similar guidelines too that were self imposed.

Also do check out our post on how to make sure whether your Samsung Galaxy Note7 is safe or not.

Source | Via
From 2011 to 2015, thousands of Wells Fargo (WFC 1.53%) employees decided to take matters into their own hands -- ethics and legality be damned.

Hounded by managers and beholden to the most outwardly aggressive sales culture in the bank industry, they were instructed and incentivized to use customer interactions in their "stores" (not branches) to cross-sell additional financial products.

Need to cash a check? Why not open a credit card as well, a Wells Fargo teller would ask if you walked into one of its locations. Or how about a savings account to supplement your checking account?

Anyone who's worked retail (as I have) knows how this goes. Once in a while, an unwitting customer will say "yes," but more often than not, they just want to cash their check and get on with their day.

And yet...

For Wells Fargo's employees, though, it wasn't that simple. According to the Los Angeles City Attorney:

Wells Fargo has strict quotas regulating the number of daily "solutions" that its bankers must reach; these "solutions" include the opening of all new banking and credit card accounts. Managers constantly hound, berate, demean and threaten employees to meet these unreachable quotas. Managers often tell employees to do whatever it takes to reach their quotas. Employees who do not reach their quotas are often required to work hours beyond their typical work schedule without being compensated for that extra work time, and/or are threatened with termination. The quotas imposed by Wells Fargo on its employees are often not attainable because there simply are not enough customers who enter a branch on a daily basis for employees to meet their quotas through traditional means.

So, what did Wells Fargo's employees do? They signed customers up for additional financial products whether the customers wanted them (or knew about them) or not. This allowed the tellers to keep their jobs (temporarily, as things came to pass) and get on with their own days.

Wells Fargo admits that as many as 2 million checking and credit card accounts may have been fraudulently opened for customers without their consent. And the bank's employees didn't just stop at that. They also surreptitiously transferred customer money into these accounts, sometimes causing overdrafts in the customer's existing, authorized accounts.

Wells Fargo chalks all of this up to rogue employees. "We never want products, including credit lines, to be opened without a customer's consent and understanding," said Wells Fargo spokeswoman Ms. Eshet to The Wall Street Journal. "In rare situations when a customer tells us they did not request a product they have, our practice is to close it and refund any associated fees."

Chairman and CEO John Stumpf doubled down on this in a memo to employees after the bank agreed to pay $185 million in fines to federal regulators as wells as to the City and County of Los Angeles. "As you know, every Wells Fargo team member is expected to adhere to the highest possible standards of ethics and business conduct, which are spelled out in our Code of Ethics," he wrote. "If you ever see activity that is inconsistent with our Code of Ethics, please report it immediately to your manager, HR Advisor, or our anonymous EthicsLine."

Moreover, says Wells Fargo, these violations represent an exception to its standard operating procedure, not the general rule. The accounts that were refunded for illegal overdraft and insufficient funds fees represented a fraction of 1% of the accounts that a third-party consultant reviewed for the bank, and refunds averaged only $25, Wells Fargo asserts in its defense. And while the bank fired 5,300 people, that too is only a drop in the bucket, it notes, when you consider that it employs more than a quarter million "team members."

Bigger than it seems?

The problem, of course, is that the scale of the problem belies Wells Fargo's rationale. We are, after all, talking about 2 million unauthorized accounts. And while 5,300 employees may account for less than 2% of its total headcount, it equates to more than 5% of the roughly 100,000 team members who work in its stores. That's a significant amount, and too large to be the work of rogue employees scheming in isolation. "You'd have a tough time organizing 5,300 people into a conspiracy, which makes me think that this was less a conspiracy and more a spontaneous revolt," writes Matt Levine for BloombergView.

The problem, so it seems, goes deeper. One could even argue that it goes to the heart of Wells Fargo's competitive advantage -- its, until now, largely unchallenged ability to ply customers with more products than any of its competitors. Insofar as I'm aware, it's the only major bank that routinely publishes its cross-sell ratio, the number of products its average retail customer uses.

In the most recent quarter, the average Wells Fargo retail customer used 6.27 of the bank's products -- be it a checking or savings account, credit card, car loan, mortgage, or whatever. This gives Wells Fargo a powerful advantage, as each of these products, in one way shape or form, produces revenue. It's one reason the California-based bank generates more revenue from each dollar of assets than all but two major lenders: U.S. Bancorp and Capital One Financial (Capital One is an anomaly in this regard in light of its heavy concentration in credit card loans, which yield more interest income than your standard commercial or consumer loan).

Given this, there's no getting around the fact that Wells Fargo's settlement with regulators is bad news -- as is, of course, the underlying behavior that led to the deal. It strikes at the heart of the bank's sales-oriented business model. It hurts Wells Fargo's reputation. And it cost a lot of money.

At the same time, though, if you're a Wells Fargo shareholders, as I am, there's ironically little reason to be worried about the impact all of this will have on your investment. In an interview yesterday, I was asked to guess how many of its customers were likely to leave as a result of the allegations. "Very little," I answered.

Par for the course

The fact of the matter is that this type of behavior is standard operating procedure for all of America's biggest banks. Their CEOs talk a big game when it comes to treating customers honestly and fairly, but the banks' actions over the last few decades contradict this.

For years, they quietly reordered their customers' daily debt card transactions to maximize overdraft fees. Let's say, for instance, that you made five transactions one day. The first four were for small purchases like coffee or to pay for parking downtown, while the last one was your mortgage payment. By processing the mortgage payment first, as opposed to last, which is when it landed in the actual chronology, banks increased the likelihood that you would overdraft on all five of these transactions as opposed to just, say, the last one.

"I used to sit in bank boardrooms and hear their executives refer to customers as deadbeats," the now-retired general counsel of a major bank told me last year when I asked him how bankers rationalize doing this.

And overdraft fees are just one example. The entire bank industry was also recently sanctioned for selling credit card add-on products, such as payment protection that would purportedly kick in if you were injured or lost your job. The problem was that the services didn't provide any actual benefits. If you were injured, it was almost certain your claim for payment protection would be denied. It's the oldest trick in the book. It reminded me of the people who peddled fake cures for the plagues that struck Europe in the 1600s. For all intents and purposes, the payment protection services were the modern financial equivalent of snake oil.

One could go on and on with examples like these. My point is that Wells Fargo is in good company when it comes to the alleged mistreatment of customers. So, while it's tempting to think Wells Fargo's customers will flee in droves, there's no safe harbor for them to set off toward, as every other major bank acts similarly. It was JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup, after all, that were pretty clearly complicit in something as egregious as the Bernie Madoff scandal. Both of these banks also acted as enablers for Enron. And, again, these are just a small handful out of many, many other similar examples of questionable conduct at the nation's largest lenders.

Why don't customers just abandon the big banks? This is, unfortunately, harder than it sounds, as high switching costs impede customers' ability to respond to mistreatment by leaving one bank for another. If you've ever wondered why banks will often wave account fees if you set up direct deposit and automatic bill pay, this is why. It's a nightmare to unwind all of these things, and particularly if you're living paycheck to paycheck, which accounts for a meaningful share of customers at large banks. This reduces the incentive for banks such as Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase to worry themselves sick over whether certain of their products defraud customers.

The net result is that Wells Fargo isn't likely to lose many of its customers over this, despite the horrible optics. In addition, while the $185 million fine levied against the bank was large, it represents a fraction of Wells Fargo's quarterly earnings, which typically come in around $5.5 billion, and has already been provisioned for, meaning the fine has already made its way through the bank's income statement. Shareholders will therefore be hard-pressed to see any impact from the deal on Wells Fargo's bottom line going forward.

If there is to be any impact, in turn, it's likely to be intangible. Assuming Wells Fargo substantively addresses the shortcomings in its business model, which incentivized employees to open accounts for customers without authorization, then it could affect the aggressive sales culture that has been one of the keys to Wells Fargo's success.

Still a great stock?

All of this being said, I'm still bullish on Wells Fargo. Yes, it has shortcomings, but it has fewer than many of its competitors. More importantly, it remains one of the most prudent banks in the industry when it comes to credit risk, which serves as the most potent threat to a bank's solvency. And, though all banks are struggling right now to generate respectable earnings in the most inhospitable environment for banks in three decades, Wells Fargo comfortably earns its cost of capital -- and thereby creates value for shareholders.

In short, despite the egregious nature of Wells Fargo's behavior in this instance, I continue to think its stock offers investors a lot of opportunity going forward.
Phyllis Schlafly died this week at the age of 92.

I had my disagreements with the legendary conservative activist, particularly of late. She died the day before publication of her last book: The Conservative Case for Trump. The title alone should offer the reader a hint of at least one of those disagreements.

Indeed, the deep family squabble among conservatives over the question of Donald Trump gives Schlaflys death added poignancy because it played itself out in her own family. When Schlafly endorsed Trump last spring, six members of the board of directors of Schlaflys Eagle Forum, including her own daughter, tried to have her removed from the organization.

But the poignancy is broader than that. One common claim from Trump supporters is that the conservative movement has failed to conserve anything, so why not take a flier on Trump?

Trump himself has played into this argument. At the California state Republican convention, he said, Im a conservative, but at this point, who cares? Weve got to straighten out the country.

Im sympathetic to some charges that the conservative movement has failed, though I put the blame more squarely on conservatives whove tried to monetize outrage and purity rather than fight for meaningful reforms. Many of these same conservatives today champion Trump, even though he has held positions that they would have denounced as liberal or Republican in name only if theyd passed the lips of any establishment politician. But thats a column for another day.

The notion that conservatives havent conserved anything suffers from a number of confusions. Exhibit A: Phyllis Schlafly herself.

Even her harshest left-wing detractors concede that Schlafly almost single-handedly stopped the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. When she launched her effort, the ERAs adoption was seen as a foregone conclusion. Most historians agree she was indispensable in defeating it. The battle over the ERA highlights a contradiction in the term conservative. Generally speaking, a conservative is someone who resists unnecessary change. As Viscount Falkland said four centuries ago, When it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change. In this formulation, the conservative is the brake pedal and the progressive is the gas.

Theres often much to recommend slowing revolutionary change to the pace of incrementalism. Still, politically, this has always put traditional conservatives at a disadvantage, because it implies they dont change the direction, just the speed. That is why the philosopher Friedrich Hayek rejected the conservative label, saying the fate of conservatism [is] to be dragged along a path not of its own choosing.

There are two problems with this argument. First, conservatisms critics are often guilty of Parmenides Fallacy, named after the ancient Greek philosopher. We judge conservatives by the results of choices made, not by choices thwarted. Its easy to second-guess when someone decides to enter door No. 2 if we dont like what lies beyond it. But that criticism has no bite unless we know what would have happened if hed chosen door No. 1. If conservatism is futile, Schlafly should never have bothered.

The second problem highlights the contradiction in the term conservative. American conservatives, unlike the ones Hayek had in mind, arent merely opponents of change; theyre champions of liberty. This is why Hayek also said that America was the one country where you could call yourself a conservative and still be on the side of freedom: We are trying to conserve the classical liberal tenets of the American founding.

And on that score, conservatism has had quite a few successes. Without conservatives, the statism of Woodrow Wilsons war socialism and FDRs New Deal would never have been beaten back or kept at bay. Without Ronald Reagan and groups like the Federalist Society, constitutionalism would be a dead letter or footnote to the cult of the living Constitution. The Heller decision affirming gun rights would have been unimaginable, as would be the Citizens United and Hobby Lobby rulings. Without conservatives, Bill Clinton would never have signed welfare reform, and Obamacare would certainly have had the public option the White House wanted. One can only wonder how the Cold War would have ended  if at all  if liberals had the run of the field since World War II.

A world where William F. Buckley, Robert Taft, Russell Kirk, Barry Goldwater, Robert Bork, Antonin Scalia, Jean Kirkpatrick and, not least, Phyllis Schlafly never bothered to make the effort would certainly look quite different, but as a conservative, I find it hard to imagine it would look better.
A Texas mattress company promoting a "Twin Tower sale" just days away from the 15th anniversary of the deadliest attack on U.S. soil has stirred outrage over its 9/11 ad.

In the ad, Miracle Mattress of San Antonio displayed two mattresses vertically side-by-side to resemble the World Trade Center towers. A woman announces the twin price sale on all mattresses while two men standing behind her stumble backwards into the mattresses, knocking them down.

In an interview with the FOX Business Networks The Intelligence Report, branding expert Bruce Turkel discussed whether this is the beginning of the commercialization of 9/11.

I think we better hope that is not. More importantly, unless your customer is Islamic Jihadist, you better hope that its not as well because upsetting your consumer and your potential consumers is about the dumbest thing a company can do, Turkel said.

Some fear theres a generation that simply does not recall the horrific actions on that 2001 fall day, and lack a sense of respect toward such tragedies.

I dont think it is [generational] at all, Turkel told host Cheryl Casone. It never works to dance on peoples graves and I dont care what generation you are from, I dont care what you remember when, dancing on the grave of innocent victims is always a mistake. 

Miracle Mattress owner Mike Bonanno issued an apology after receiving backlash for the commercial and called the ad "tasteless."

"I say this unequivocally, with sincere regret, the video is tasteless and an affront to the men and women who lost their lives on 9/11," Bonanno wrote. I am disgusted such a video would have been conceived as a promotional tool. And even more incensed it was created and posted on any social media site that represents Miracle Mattress."

Turkel also discussed the offensive nature behind a Walmart (NYSE:WMT) in Panama City Beach, Florida that assembled cases of Coca-Cola (NYSE:KO) products to resemble the towers with a banner above that read, We Will Never Forget.

Memorial day is now generic enough that people dont know what it means. But you put those towers up what are you saying? Three-thousand innocent Americans die, buy our sugar water. Of course its offensive, Turkel said.

The All About Them author suggests both companies donate $911 to the 9/11 first responders from every sale they make in the wake of the controversy surrounding their displays.
Government agencies looking to improve the lives of working-class Americans are passing more employer regulations now than at any other time in the past decade. This is putting pressure on companies to make sure the people management technology they use can help them comply with these new regulations. I'll get to the technology part in a minute. First, let's look at three of the new regulations:

1. Nationwide, employers are gearing up for federal regulations on workplace injuries reporting requirements and overtime pay that take effect between now and the end of the year.

2. In states such as California, employers are absorbing state laws passed in the last 14 months requiring paid sick leave and equal pay for equal jobs (the latter an attempt to close the gender wage gap).

3. In the past year, 14 cities, counties, and states approved raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour, a move that supporters say could benefit an estimated 1 million workers.

In addition, cities such as San Francisco and Seattle have passed (or are considering passing) so-called "predictable schedule regulations" that require employers to give shift workers schedules two weeks in advance and extra pay for last-minute changes.

The new rules come on the heels of the Affordable Care Act, which some companies are still digesting a full six years after it was enacted. "It's a gathering storm of regulation and it's coming at every level of government," said Matt Straz, CEO of HR management software startup Namely.

Governments are passing workplace reforms to help level the playing field for hourly and middle-income workersand it's a needed course of action. A study of employer scheduling practices the city of Seattle commissioned earlier this year found that, while the majority of employees polled were satisfied with their hours and the amount of advanced notice they received, 30 percent indicated their work schedules created a series of problems with their family, budget, or other life priorities. One in 10 said their work schedule made it "very difficult" to pay bills, while 31 percent reported being required to take "clopening" shifts where they worked late one night and were back again the following morning. Nearly half of employees surveyed said they would take a 20-percent pay cut if it would guarantee them one week's advance notice of their schedule.

Other regulations bring much-needed updates to wage rules that hadn't changed in years. In the Labor Department's overtime pay rule (which takes effect Dec. 1), full-time salaried employees can earn overtime if they make up to $47,476 a yearmore than twice the $23,600 annual salary threshold under the existing law.

The overtime pay rule is expected to affect about 4.2 million Americans along with a range of organizationsfrom small businesses to universitiesthat will need to monitor hours worked for employees they have not needed to track before.

New Rules, Fewer ResourcesThe new rules come at a time when many companies operate with a barebones human resources (HR) staff because they can't afford anything else, or they chose not to staff up again after cutting HR personnel during the recession.

At the same time, many companies have opted to allot whatever HR resources they have on more strategic people management issues, such as figuring out how to find the best job applicants; motivate, evaluate, and reward existing employees; and what their future labor needs will be. The combination of the twofewer resources and a focus on strategy over run-of-the-mill HR processesmeans companies are leaning on HR tech platforms more than ever to make sure they're complying with new workplace rules.

It shouldn't come as a surprise that, as companies adjust to the worker-friendly regulations, suppliers of employee scheduling software and other HR tech report an uptick in interest in their products.

"Companies are starting to call and ask questions [about software for tracking overtime]," confirmed Kevin Bray, Business Development Manager at Deputy when I demoed the company's software a few months ago. "The last thing they want is to get sued because the employee has been working 80 hours a week and only getting paid for 40. They're going to lose that lawsuit and have to pay them back pay."

Namely's Straz says new regulations could be a boon for HR platforms with open application program interfaces (APIs) since companies may need to use more than one software to pull together the data regulators require. "California passed legislation on paid time off (PTO); employers need a system that tracks it and it has to be printed on paystubs so those different systems have to talk to each other," Straz said.

Find Out MoreIf you aren't sure what new regulations apply to you or whether your current HR software has what you need, try the following three things:

1. Educate yourself. Your city or state labor department or the local chapter of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) are good places to get updates on workplace regulations. Use SHRM's chapter look-up page to find a chapter near you.

2. Look at additional software options. Sounds obvious but, if you're only using a handful of functions in a large HR management software suite or just one product from a supplier that sells several, it could be worth investing a couple of hours to investigate what else is available. This is especially true if other software covers time and attendance, paid leave, or other functions that factor into new regulations in your city or state. Some HR tech vendors use blogs, newsletters, or customer support pages to share how they're updating platforms or features to comply with new regulations. Be warned: You might have to share your email address to get this information.

3. If you're upgrading, then quiz potential vendors about what they offer. Regulations may differ based on the size of a company's workforce; generally, companies with more people have more regulations. HR tech vendors sell to small, midsize, or enterprise-level customers but rarely sell to more than two of the three. If a supplier targets companies of your size, then they should be up to speed on relevant regulations and have updated their platforms accordingly. Likewise, most vendors focus on a handful of industries so it pays to ask, especially if you're in food service or retail, two industries that worker regulations target. Read my previous column on six factors to consider when upgrading your HR tech.

This article originally appeared on PCMag.com.
A growing number of venture capitalists are flocking to the Midwest as the region becomes a rival of Silicon Valley as the startup capital. Drive Capital Founding Partner Mark Kvamme weighs in on the factors driving entrepreneurs and venture capitalists to the region.

One key factor according to Kvamme is the prohibitive costs of Silicon Valley.

Well, I mean, if you think about it, a big chunk of startups are started by folks in their garage and they have no money and its very, very difficult to begin in a company. And, its all about money, I mean, when I grew up in Silicon Valley you could buy a house for $50,000. You know, I bought my first house I bought in Mountain View, California for $140,000, today that house is $1.5 million, Kvamme continued, And so, I think the cost of living is so high in the Valley people are now looking at what the other opportunities are.

Technology has also made it easier for startups to be near the consumer rather than restricted to where the technology experts are.

Simultaneously, in the past, you had to be near the technologists, you had to be, thats where all the technologists were. With cloud computing and the fact that were carrying you know, mini computers, everything is on your phone, you need to be close to the customer, not close to the technologist, Kvamme told the FOX Business Networks Maria Bartiromo.

When asked if the Midwest is where the customers are, Kvamme responded, Absolutely, 150 of the Fortune 500 are in the Midwest. You know, why Columbus, Ohio, [where Kvamme is based]? If you drive your car one day from Columbus, Ohio, you hit 60% of the nations population. So its a center for a big chunk of the GDP of the U.S.

According to Kvamme, technology education is a key draw to the region as well.

The number one computer science school in America is where? Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, its Carnegie Mellon, you know. And so you see a lot of innovation happening around the schools. 25% of the nations computer scientists come from the Midwest.

On whether a tech boom in the Midwest could take the place of jobs that were lost due to the demise of manufacturing, Kvamme said:

I really, truly believe that you are going to see a big growth in the Midwest and I think manufacturing is coming back as well because of automation. You look at what Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) is doing, Kvamme continued, Amazon just invested $2 billion in Columbus, Ohio. Theyre building big distribution centers, big data centers there because they need to be in the center of where all the activity is.
Image source: Restoration Hardware.

Home furnishings can be a lucrative niche in the retail business, but as Restoration Hardware (NYSE: RH) has found recently, it can be highly dependent on overall economic conditions. Over the past year, Restoration Hardware has seen its stock plunge on concerns that its customer base has lost its ability to help drive the company's future growth.

Coming into Thursday's fiscal second-quarter financial report, Restoration Hardware investors were prepared for another steep drop in earnings, but they hoped that sales would hold up relatively well. The retailer actually did better than most had expected on its top line, and although it has more work to do before it can claim victory, many shareholders believe that Restoration Hardware is on track. Let's take a closer look at the latest from Restoration Hardware, and what it means about its future.

Restoration Hardware builds some momentum

Restoration Hardware's second-quarter results were more inspiring than investors have seen in recent quarters. Revenue climbed 7%, to $543.4 million, which was far better than the roughly 1% growth rate that most of those following the stock had expected to see from the home-furnishings retailer. The company posted net income of $6.9 million, and although that was down almost 80% from the year-ago quarter, the resulting adjusted earnings of $0.44 per share were $0.15 better than the consensus forecast among investors.

Looking more closely at Restoration Hardware's numbers, you can see several crosscurrents that the company is going through. Comparable-brand revenue fell 3%, but the retailer argued that the 16% increase in the prior year made comparisons difficult. Once again, Restoration Hardware's retail locations did well, posting 15% sales gains. However, direct revenues continued their downward trend, falling 2%, and weighing on the entire company's growth.

Nevertheless, in the company's eyes, Restoration Hardware's temporary sluggishness is setting the stage for future growth. By using fiscal 2016 essentially as a turnaround year, Restoration Hardware is sacrificing its near-term financial results in exchange for longer-term opportunities. In particular, early shipping of certain products helped pull revenue into the fiscal second quarter that the retailer would otherwise have recognized in the fiscal third quarter.

CEO Gary Friedman was pleased with the results and the progress they reflect. "While the degree and pace of innovation at RH might seem ambitious comparatively," Friedman said, "it is the result of years building a culture engineered to be, as Charles Darwin believed, the one most responsive to change." By instilling a culture of innovation at Restoration Hardware, the company hopes to keep up with changing times to deliver what its customers want.

How Restoration Hardware expects to move forward

In particular, Restoration Hardware will work even harder to build momentum. Between its redesigned Source Books that will go out in the fall, the introduction of the RH Modern concept across the store network, and a new investment in the RH Interior Design business, Restoration Hardware thinks that it can capitalize on lucrative opportunities, and find new avenues for growth. Those moves will take time to develop, but the company has high hopes that it will pay off.

Investors will also like the fact that Restoration Hardware kept its guidance intact. The retailer still expects adjusted earnings of $1.60 to $1.80 per share, with sales growth of 1% to 3%. Fiscal third-quarter revenue of $520 million to $530 million and quarterly earnings of $0.13 to $0.18 per share might be less than investors had wanted to see, but they reflect the near-term challenges that the company set forth.

As a result, Restoration Hardware shares climbed dramatically in response to the news, posting gains of more than 10% in after-hours trading following the announcement. With many investors setting their expectations so low for the retailer, Restoration Hardware's progress thus far has put it ahead of schedule in many people's eyes. That could bode well for its prospects going forward into the holiday shopping season.

A secret billion-dollar stock opportunity The world's biggest tech company forgot to show you something, but a few Wall Street analysts and the Fool didn't miss a beat: There's a small company that's powering their brand-new gadgets and the coming revolution in technology. And we think its stock price has nearly unlimited room to run for early in-the-know investors! To be one of them, just click here.

Dan Caplinger has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Restoration Hardware. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
CAI International Inc. said Friday it expects its overall exposure to the bankruptcy of South Korean shipping company Hanjin Shipping Co. Ltd will be limited to $2.6 million of accounts receivable related to income recognized before the third quarter. The transportation and logistics company said it has about 15,000 containers on lease to Hanjin, equal to $40 million of equipment exposure based on net book value. That's equal to about 2% of the company's rental revenue assets. "Based on our prior experience, we believe that most of our containers will be recovered," CAI said in a statement. "Our units on lease to Hanjin were manufactured for CAI in our color, with our logo and markings, which should assist with recovery and re-leasing efforts." The company said its insolvency insurance, which has a $2 million deductible, covers the value of unreturned containers, damage, recovery costs, and other expenses. Shares were not yet active in premarket trade, but are down 14% in the year so far, while the S&P 500 has gained about 7%.

Copyright  2016 MarketWatch, Inc.
The largest cruise ship to ever sail the Northwest Passage is en route to New York City from Alaska.

The Crystal Serenity left Seward, Alaska, in mid-August and plans to dock in New York on Sept. 16.

The ship sailed up the Bering Strait, and made a port call in Nome where guests got a chance to see a herd of wild musk oxen that had taken up residence just outside town. The ship then continued north until reaching the Arctic Ocean, and then east toward Greenland.

The melting Arctic is making this type of trip possible. The irony isn't lost on Michael Byers, a professor in the political science department at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. He calls it "extinction tourism."

The 900 or so passengers on the luxury liner are going through the Arctic to seen an ecosystem before it disappears. But Byers say they are actually adding to the problem because of the ship's large carbon footprint.
Marijuana policy advocates were dealt a disappointing blow by the Drug Enforcement Administrationthis month when the enforcement agency decided to keep marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug. The decision conflicts with advocates' claims of marijuana's health benefits. Does this mean that marijuana medical use will remain limited?

Analyst Kristine Harjes is joined by contributor Todd Campbell in this clip of The Motley Fool's Industry Focus: Healthcare podcastto dig into the decision and what it may mean for marijuana research and use.

A full transcript follows the video.

A secret billion-dollar stock opportunity The world's biggest tech company forgot to show you something, but a few Wall Street analysts and the Fool didn't miss a beat: There's a small company that's powering their brand-new gadgets and the coming revolution in technology. And we think its stock price has nearly unlimited room to run for early in-the-know investors! To be one of them, just click here.

This podcast was recorded on Aug. 17, 2016.

Kristine Harjes: Wewant to talk a little bit about marijuana and itsfederal scheduling, meaning how the federal government classifies the drug. Last Thursday,there was some news that came out that the Drug Enforcement Agency [sic] will keep marijuana as a Schedule 1 substance, meaning that there are no accepted medical uses and a high potential for abuse. This comes on the heels of a push to get marijuana rescheduled to Schedule 2, which would mean thatit still has a high potential for abuse, but it does have accepted medical uses. In the press release, the DEA cited that the drug's chemistryis not necessarily known,it's not reproducible,there aren't enough studies out there on its safety, there aren't enoughstudies proving its efficacy, and essentially, theevidence just isn't there to support reclassification. What do you think, Todd?

Todd Campbell:This issomething that you and I have talked about a lot. People who listen to our showunderstand the value of highly controlled scientific trials. I mean, the ability to provebeyond a shadow of a doubt that the reason someone is getting animproved outcome is because of whatever they're taking. Absent that kind of proof -- and, unfortunately, the FDA'sreview of the information that they have available to it,was unable to find that proof -- absent that proof, the HHS could not go to the DEA and say, "Yeah, we think there's truly a medicalbenefit associated with takingmarijuana that's scientifically provable."

That really put the DEA in a box, because marijuana is listed in theSingle Convention on Narcotic Drugs, an international treaty. It has to be either Schedule 1 or Schedule 2 and the only difference between Schedule 1 and Schedule 2 is having a medical use component of it. So, the DEA kept it at Schedule 1, and unfortunately, that dealsa little bit of a blow to marijuana policy advocates who really have been doing a very good job of moving forwardas far as decriminalizing marijuana and increasing the ability to use it nationwide.

Harjes:And I'd like to point out a bit of acatch-22going on here, which actually wasmade clear to me by one of our other Motley Fool healthcare writers, Cory Renauer. He noted that the DEA based this decision ona recommendation from the HHS, which based itsrecommendation on an FDA review that cited the lack of available evidence to determine that marijuana, in its natural state, has an accepted medical use. And this lack of available evidence cited by the FDA is a direct result of marijuana's Schedule 1 status, which is enforced by the DEA.

It's like, you have this cycle here where, until you can getbetter evidence on marijuana, you can't loosen the restrictions on it, butit's really, really hard to study it, particularly in its natural form,because of its scheduling.

Campbell:Right. It's Schedule 1, which means that you have to get it from one grow facility, a grow facility down,I think it's in Mississippi. You have to comply withall sorts of regulations on the storage of it, you get recording of it, how you use it, everything -- all of these road blocks that are put upagainst the scientific research into its benefit. That means that nonprofit researchers -- those atuniversities and such -- areless likely to embrace that kind of research than, say, for-profit companies that maybe have deeper pockets and access to capital via stock offerings and the like.

Harjes:Right. Andinteresting like, they are actually expanding the number of DEA-registeredmarijuana manufacturers. Previously, there was just one, as you had mentioned. But now, hopefully,there should be a couple more coming on board. That is a slight relaxing of the restrictions, but...

Campbell:Right. It's like the DEA said, "Look,we can't give you what you want,but maybe we can meet you halfway,and if we can provide more supply, then maybe that tears down or breaks downsome of these barriers to research." Although,looking around and talking to people who are doing the research,it doesn't necessarily seem to be that the supply is the biggest issue that's preventing that. So,I don't know, we'll see how that plays out.

We also haveanotherentirely different dynamic at play here, becauseafter the announcement came out of the DEA,spokespeople for Hillary Clinton -- who, as everyone knows, is running for president --have come out and said that if she's elected, she would make it a Schedule 2 drug. So, thatopens a whole other can of worms.

Harjes:Right. Clinton has also referred to thelaboratories of democracy states rights argument, saying basically, "We should let states figure it out for themselves, the states where it's currently legal. And after we have a little bit more evidence onwhat actually happens within a state when you have eithermedical, recreational or both, legalized, then, where do we go from there?"

Campbell:Right. And the other thing the FDA did on this --I don't want to forget about this -- the other thing the DEA did is,when they were talking to the FDA, the FDA came out and said, "OK, well,we can't show you that there's proof that marijuana is helpful, but what we can do isprovide a little bit of guidance toward researchers and how they should design their future studies." And they offered up some different insight, including making sure thatany studies that get down from hereare not dosing marijuana via smoking, they're using either tinctures orsome other way of being able to evaluate it. It seems like the ball moved slightly forward, but you certainly didn't get a first down.

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Image source: Getty Images.

What

Shares of Swiss agrochemical company Syngenta (NYSE: SYT) rose 11.5% last month after the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (or CFIUS) cleared the way for its previously agreed-to $43 billion acquisition by ChemChina.

So what

It may seem odd that a merger-acquisition between a Chinese company and a Swiss company needs to get any approval whatsoever from a panel in the United States, but Syngenta's presence in the lower 48 allows CFIUS to reject takeovers -- or erect serious obstacles to them -- in the name of national security. Investors were nervous over the decision, especially considering CFIUS had recently rejected much smaller deals involving Chinese electronics companies. As such, prior to the announcement, Syngenta was trading at a market cap of just $37 billion -- 16% lower than the acquisition price. Its market cap shot up to about $41 billion after the announcement.

SYT data by YCharts.

It's worth noting that CFIUS has never raised objections to a deal in the food or agricultural sector, apparently taking the stance that America has an ample supply of food. While nothing ominous stands out about the Syngenta-ChemChina deal, investors shouldn't get comfortable with the panel's historical voting record within the industry: Natural security is in fact an integral part of national security. For current investors, however, the United States no longer poses a threat to the acquisition.

The same cannot be said for Europe, which is still mulling over the implications of the proposed acquisition. The good news is that ChemChina remains patient, and has once again extended its deadline for the offer. It expects to close the acquisition by the end of 2016.

Now what

Investors have to be happy about recent events. Now, regulators in the European Union pose the last remaining obstacle before the acquisition can be completed -- and they may be a little more unpredictable than you think.

Luckily for investors, this is pretty simple. If you own shares, then you should take no action and patiently wait for the acquisition to close, whether that occurs as planned at the end of this year or after other potential conditions are met. But if you're an investor without a position in Syngenta, then you should stay on the sidelines. Nearly all of the upside -- which is capped at $43 billion -- is already factored into shares.

A secret billion-dollar stock opportunity The world's biggest tech company forgot to show you something, but a few Wall Street analysts and the Fool didn't miss a beat: There's a small company that's powering their brand-new gadgets and the coming revolution in technology. And we think its stock price has nearly unlimited room to run for early in-the-know investors! To be one of them, just click here.

Maxx Chatsko has no position in any stocks mentioned. Follow him on Twitterto keep up with developments in the engineered biology field.

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The U.S. government moved on Friday to halt a controversial oil pipeline project in North Dakota that has angered Native Americans, blocking construction on federal land and asking the company behind the project to suspend work nearby.

The move came after U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in Washington rejected a request from Native Americans for a court order to block the project.

Boasberg said he could not concur with claims by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe that the government erred in approving the Dakota Access pipeline.

Protesters decried the ruling and vowed to appeal. Native Americans say the pipeline would pollute nearby rivers and desecrate their sacred land.

Opposition to the pipeline has drawn support from 200 Native American tribes, along with celebrities and activists from across the globe.

Last weekend, protests at the site turned violent.

The $3.7 billion, 1,100-mile (1,770 km) Dakota Access pipeline would be the first to allow movement of crude oil from the Bakken shale, a vast oil formation in North Dakota, Montana and parts of Canada. The group of companies building the pipeline is led by Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners LP through its Dakota Access subsidiary.

It would carry oil from just north of land owned by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe to Illinois, where it would connect with an existing pipeline and route crude directly to refineries in the U.S. Gulf Coast.

(Additional reporting by Julia Harte in Washington and Ben Klayman in Detroit; Writing by Sharon Bernstein; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Matthew Lewis)
Actress Melissa George reportedly called the police and was taken to hospital with bruises on her face after allegedly being assaulted by her long-term partner.

French website Purepeople reports that the Australian actress, who lives in Paris with her French partner of four years Jean-David Blanc and their two sons, turned up at the police station at around 3 AM on Wednesday morning with facial injuries.

The 40-year-old star was reportedly also complaining of pain and feeling faint and was taken to Cochin Hospital in Paris.

According to statements by the actress ... she was assaulted by her companion, also father of their two children, French news site M6info reports.

The police were called last night to intervene in the center of Paris. In shock, Melissa George, had a swelling of the face and complained of pain, nausea and dizziness, the local news site reads.

Purepeople also reported that the "Greys Anatomy" actress said she had been physically abused by Blanc, 38, an entrepreneur and businessman who founded AlloCine.

However, there are no reports of the French businessman being arrested or charged over the alleged incident.

The pair have two sons, Raphael, two, and Solal, who was born in November last year.

Blanc and George met at a BAFTA after-party in 2011 and started dating in 2012. She was previously married to Chilean film director Caludio Dabed whom she divorced in 2011.

George has been in Australia recently filming the movie "The Butterfly Tree" which also stars Ewen Leslie, Ed Oxenbould and Sophie Lowe and is slated to premiere at the Melbourne International Film Festival in 2017.

Perth-born, George rose to prominence as a teenager on Channel Sevens long-running soap "Home and Away." She has also played Lauren Reed in the TV series "Alias," Dr. Sadie Harris in "Greys Anatomy" and starred in the short-lived drama "Heartbeat," where she played Dr. Alexandra Panttiere.

George returned to Australia in 2011 to play Rosie in the acclaimed ABC drama "The Slap" before playing the same part in the US version last year.

This article originally appeared on News.com.au.
India, South-east Asian countries to set up fund for health emergencies in region

Published: September 9, 2016

India along with 10 other member countries of World Health Organisations (WHOs) South-East Asian Regional Committee has decided to set up a dedicated fund aimed at building preparedness for health emergencies in the region.

Decision in this regard was taken at the 69th session of WHO Regional Committee Meeting held at Colombo, capital of Sri Lanka.

Key Facts

The joint funding stream will be established under the South-East Asia Regional Health Emergency Fund (SEARHEF).

The new funding stream will allow these countries to invest in infrastructure and human resources that will enhance preparedness.

It will help member countries better prepare for such events was seen by the countries as a key priority for the regional health agenda.

Besides, these countries also passed a resolution for promoting physical activity and expanding health workforces across the region.

The Regional Committee is WHO South-East Asia Regions highest decision-making body. It comprises 11 countries  Bangladesh, South Korea, Bhutan, India, Indonesia, Maldives, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Thailand and Timor-Leste.

Background

In the recent years, earthquakes, cyclones and floods have caused health emergencies in south-east Asian region.

It has also been threatened by a range of emerging diseases, including SARS, MERS CoV, pandemic influenza and Zika virus.

Insufficient physical activity is also a major contributor to rising rates of non-communicable diseases in the region, with four-fifth of adolescents not getting enough of it.

Month: Current Affairs - September, 2016

Topics: India  International  National  Public health  South-East Asia  Sri lanka  WHO

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Asking patients in the emergency room to rate their pain on a visual scale or to rank it from zero to 10 doesn't really convey what the patient is feeling, suggests a study from Sweden.

Pain scales currently used in the ER focus on pain intensity, and miss other important aspects like the type of pain or whether it changes with body position, and many patients don't really understand what the extremes of the pain scales would feel like, researchers found.

"Some say that painkillers should be given on patients' request rather than based on a pain score," said senior author Dr. Therese Djarv of Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. "Likewise, up-triaging based on a pain score might be less relevant than based on the patient's whole experience of pain," she said by email.

In the fall of 2012, two researchers interviewed patients waiting in the emergency department of Karolinska University Hospital with complaints of chest, abdominal or orthopedic pain. Participants were asked to rate their pain on a visual scale and a numeric scale.

The visual scale asks respondents to mark their pain level on a 10-centimeter (about 4 inches) horizontal line, and the numeric scale asks respondents to rate their pain from zero to 10 scale, with 10 being the most intense possible pain.

Then researchers interviewed the patients about how sufficient or insufficient the scales had been at rating their pain.

Some patients expressed that rating their pain at one time on one scale was insufficient because their pain levels changed over time.

One patient said, "When you have pain the scales are good, but not when the pain varies or comes and goes."

Some patients with chest pain complained that what they felt was pressure rather than pain. Others feared that rating their pain lower would mean their condition wouldn't be taken seriously, according to the report in the American Journal of Emergency Medicine.

"Pain is one of the few things physicians can't objectively measure," said Dr. John G. DeVine of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at Augusta University in Georgia, who was not part of the new study.

"Each patient's perception of pain is influenced by several variables (anxiety, depression, cultural upbringing, acute vs chronic symptoms, etc)," DeVine told Reuters Health by email. "As physicians, the actual number used to describe the pain is probably less important than the location, pattern, onset, and the ability of the patient to change these (position, medications, etc)."

"The scales used are well validated and used on postoperative and chronic pain, however, the pain in the (emergency department) differs from such pain because it is of unknown origin and severity," Djarv said. The scales may need to be retested and validated in the emergency department, she said.

Patients should be honest with their ratings, she added. "If the rating does not make sense to you, speak up and ask the personnel," Djarv said. "Do not guess how to do it."
Protesters in Miami Beach were able to delay mosquito crews from spraying chemicals to combat the Zika virus Thursday after expressing some concerns.

CBS Miami reported that dozens of demonstrators lined up in front of city hall as local leaders and residents debated about spraying the chemical Naled around town to kill mosquitoes which may carry the virus.

Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez said in a statement that Thursdays meeting led to the delay of the spray by at least one day.

We will begin spraying on Friday around 5:00 a.m., weather permitting, and will spray this Sunday, and the following two weekends. This schedule will minimize disruption to our school children and families, he added.

Residents and local leaders initially met Wednesday to debate to discuss the spraying. However, the debate got heated as residents sought independent experts to weigh in on the chemical use.

The city of Miami Beach offered a reasonable solution to spray natural pesticide and it was overridden by the state, Miami Beach resident Michael Capponi told CBS Miami.

Chad Allison, a local business owner, noted that the chemical had been forced out of Puerto Rico and was banned in 22 European countries. Many still believe Naled could pose health risks despite expert advice that the amount of the chemical is too low to be harmful.

Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine said he wasnt happy about the decision for the chemical spraying, but said experts have convinced him that it must be done. He added that the amount of mosquitoes caught in traps increasing, signaling an increasing mosquito population.

It came from the strong recommendation, from what weve been told, by the CDC, as well as the surgeon general, the Department of Agriculture and that decision, truly is solely made by the governor of the state of Florida, Levine said Tuesday.

The recommendation for Naled to be sprayed in the tourist city came after mosquitoes tested positive for the virus last week along with the increase in mosquito population.

The Zika virus has been linked to severe birth defects in children.

Click for more from CBS Miami.
This year on September 11th, Americans will again show solemn remembrance in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania at sites that are hallowed ground, consecrated by the loss of thousands of innocent souls and the bravery of those who tried to save their lives.

We will never forget them.

But fifteen years after that fateful day, there is something we are starting to forget: what was learned from the attacks.

Although we vowed never to let it happen again, we are now witnessing the viral spread of Islamist terrorism around the world, and our enemies are bringing the war back to our doorsteps.

Although we vowed never to let it happen again, we are now witnessing the viral spread of Islamist terrorism around the world, and our enemies are bringing the war back to our doorsteps.

Make no mistakeweve come a long way since 2001. Our first responders are better prepared. Our intelligence professionals are connecting the dots. And our military and law enforcement agencies have made counterterrorism their highest priority.

However, terrorists have come a long way, too. Gone are the days of Usama bin Laden, who relied on couriers and caves to hatch plots. Today in an age of franchised terror, jihadists are recruiting online and across borders at lightning speed, and were not keeping up.

Radicalism is on the rise partly because we lost sight of the key lessons identified after 9/11.

First, we learned that you must define the enemy to defeat it.

The 9/11 Commission put it best: [T]he enemy is not just terrorism, some generic evil. This vagueness blurs the strategy. The catastrophic threat at this moment in history is more specific. It is the threat posed by Islamist terrorism

Sadly, many in Washington still refuse call the threat what it is, and parts of our government have become blind to the root of this evil.

The truth is that we are engaged in a generational, ideological struggle. Islamist terrorists have perverted a major religion into a hateful worldview, and while their beliefs are not shared by most Muslims, their influence is spreading like wildfire.

The lack of moral clarity has also left us without a coherent plan to counter terrorist recruitment in our own communities.

Second, we learned that in order to stop attacks you must take the fight to the enemy as soon as they rear their head.

Unfortunately, from the start the administrations counterterrorism strategy was too narrow. It focused almost exclusively on Al Qaeda, and after claiming the group was on the run, President Obama effectively declared the global war on terror to be over.

As a result, emerging groups like ISIS were ignored for far too long, morphing from terrorist cells into jihadist armies before we responded.

Weve been reminded that delay can be deadly and that this is not a struggle against a single group, but rather a global movement seeking to undermine our way of life.

Third, we learned that if you dont keep terrorists behind bars, theyll go back to war against you.

In fact, we built a prison and created military commissions after 9/11 for exactly this purposeto keep hardened terrorists where they belong.

Yet the current administration remains dead set on closing Guantanamo Bay, despite intelligence that at least one-third of released detainees have already returned to the fight or are suspected of having done so.

Some of these individuals have since killed Americans, while others continue to target the United States and our allies.

Fourth and finally, we learned that you cannot let power vacuums become terrorist safe havens.

Al Qaeda plotted from Afghanistan with impunity, which is why the 9/11 Commissions top recommendation was to use all elements of national power to deny terrorists sanctuary.

Once again, though, we have lost our way. In recent years, the White House has stood on the sidelines as radical Islamists fanned out across the Middle East and North Africa, allowing new terrorist hotbeds to emerge and old ones to be reestablished.

Now as a consequence we are seeing an unprecedented pace of terror.

But even though our adversaries have evolved, the battle-tested principles we embraced after 9/11 are still relevant:

- We must be clear-eyed about the danger if we are going to overcome it, much as we were with communism and fascism.

- We must go after Islamist terrorists wherever they emerge and regardless of their brand name.

- We must focus on capturing terrorists instead of giving them one-way tickets back to the battlefield.

- And we must make it a top national security priority to prevent the emergence of safe havens so they cannot become incubators for a new generation of terrorists.

Fifteen years ago, I watched the television with my five-year-old daughter as the second of the Twin Towers was hit, realizing that it was not an accident but an act of war against our country.

The world has changed, and today my daughter is 20. But we cannot let the passage of time dull our memories. Those who dont learn historys lessons are doomed to repeat them.

Thats why this month I will release a national counterterrorism strategy to highlight the principles we must stick to in the fight. We cannot afford for our next president or future administrations to forget them.

To honor the memory of those we lost, it is time to get back to basics and rededicate ourselves to victory in this long war.
I will begin by saying what everybody would like to ignore or forget but which must nevertheless be stated, namely, that we have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat. -- That was Winston Churchills description of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's surrender to Hitler in the Munich Agreement of 1938.

Yet Churchill's words also apply to where the United States is today.

Our men and women in uniform have been heroic.

Many have signed up to serve again even after being wounded.

Our tactical units remain the best in the world.

Our intelligence officers and diplomats have risked their lives in service to the country.

The problem is not with the sincerity, the courage, the energy or the effort of individual Americans.

The problem has been the approach of a bipartisan Washington political elite that has squandered 15 years, thousands of lives, many thousands wounded, and trillions of dollars with no coherent strategy, no honest assessment of the challenge, and no willingness to learn from failure and develop new strategies and new institutions.

Since September 11, 2001, we have moved from righteous anger and clarity of purpose against the forces of terrorism in the immediate aftermath of the attacks to now sending $1,700,000,000 in cash to the worlds leading state sponsor of terrorism.

We have watched our efforts in Iraq collapse while our efforts in Afghanistan decay.

We have seen the Middle East grow more violent, more chaotic, and more ungovernable despite 15 years of American and allied effort.

Fifteen years ago this week, terrorists killed 2,977 Americans in the worst surprise attack on our homeland since Pearl Harbor, 70 years earlier. In fact, 574 more Americans were killed on 9/11 than on December 7, 1941.

It was a huge, tragic, and deeply emotional shock. And yet the 9/11 attack was not the beginning of our war with Islamic supremacism.

By 2001, we had been at war with the Iranian dictatorship (still to this day listed by the State Department as the leading state sponsor of terrorism) for 32 years, when Iranians seized the American embassy in Tehran. Mark Bowden described the event appropriately in the title of his book, " Guests of the Ayatollah: The First Battle in America's War with Militant Islam ."

From an American perspective, that war had continued in Lebanon in the 1980s and in Saudi Arabia, East Africa and Yemen in the 1990s.

In 2001, the terrorist war came to American soil with shocking results.

American anger was vivid and deep. President Bush reacted with powerful, clear, morally defining words.

In his address to the Joint Session of Congress, just nine days after the 9/11 attack, President Bush asserted "on September 11th, enemies of freedom committed an act of war against our country."

President Bush described a huge goal. Our war on terror begins with Al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated, he said.

President Bush described the scale of the challenge, saying, Americans are asking: How will we fight and win this war? We will direct every resource at our command--every means of diplomacy, every tool of intelligence, every instrument of law enforcement, every financial influence, and every necessary weapon of war-- to the disruption and to the defeat of the global terror network."

Bush went on to warn that Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have seen. ...Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.

President Bush wisely warned that the only way to defeat terrorism as a threat to our way of life is to stop it, eliminate it, and destroy it where it grows.

Four months later, in his 2002 State of the Union Address, President Bush described North Korea, Iran and Iraq as an "Axis of Evil".

Bush warned that "the United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons." The Congress applauded.

And that was the high water mark of the response to 9/11.

Just this week, North Korea had its fifth nuclear test. Last week North Korea launched three missiles in direct violation of United Nations Resolutions.

We now know that while deceiving the Congress and the American people, the Obama Administration has sent $1,700,000,000 to what even the State Department says is the world's leading sponsor of terrorism, the Iranian dictatorship.

Iraq, at great cost in American lives, wounds and money, has degenerated into a mess dominated by Iran and by ISIS.

How did we go from brave words to defeat, dishonesty, and humiliation?

Tragically, after heroic leadership in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 (who can forget President Bush in New York standing next to the fireman and promising that the people who attacked New York would hear from all of us?) and after delivering exactly the right words to Congress, the Bush administration failed to plan for how big, how hard, and how long the fight with Islamic supremacists would be.

Almost immediately, the lawyers began imposing rules and regulations.

It was decided not to declare war even though President Bush had described 9/11 as an act of war in his congressional address.

The State Department began pushing back against an honest, clear statement of who was attacking us.

The Defense Department was very cautious about distorting the military establishment with an aggressive focus on learning how to defeat Islamic supremacists.

The initial Afghanistan campaign was brilliant, lean, decisive, and gave us an exaggerated sense of how powerful we were and how weak our enemies were. However, the campaign was understaffed and under resourced. We did not invest the military power to completely destroy the Taliban.

President Bush had warned that you are with us or you are against us, but the State Department rapidly began to offer an alternative in which you could be a little with us and a little against us.

Pakistan was with us in providing a logistics system to sustain our forces in Afghanistan. However, Pakistan was against us in providing an enormous sanctuary for the Taliban in the northwest region. Instead of thinking through the cost of a campaign to wipe out the Taliban sanctuary, we limped along in exactly the kind of indecisive guerrilla war we had waged in Vietnam. Today the Taliban has regained momentum and, the minute we leave, Afghanistan is likely to fall back into Islamist dictatorship.

Our efforts to create a modern Afghanistan were crippled by a State Department bureaucracy that was clearly unwilling to cut through red tape and learn to be effective. This pattern of systemic incompetence would be repeated in Iraq because the Bush Administration was simply unwilling to reform the State Department. Failure abroad was more acceptable than a bitter bureaucratic fight in Washington.

Once the Iraq campaign began, resources were drained from Afghanistan and the military was stretched almost to the breaking point. The unwillingness to build a genuine wartime military began to cost us lives and wounded warriors as we found ourselves unable to field and sustain the combat power that was needed. Jake Tapper's book "The Outpost " details the tragic costs of an American military which is overextended and tries to accomplish more than it is resourced to achieve.

The Iraq campaign might have been a brilliant success if Ambassador Bremer had not changed the mission in mid-war.

The American military knew it could defeat Saddam Hussein very rapidly but it also knew that it then had to rebuild the Iraqi system and let Iraqis run their own country. It would have taken four times as many troops to actually occupy and police Iraq.

Bremer seemed to think he was supposed to profoundly change Iraq and he set about to do so with little coordination with the American military and little understanding of how deep the internal hatred and potential violence among Iraqis was.

Instead of a brief campaign Americans have been sucked into endless conflict.

As an example of the dishonesty in the title of this paper, it is simply a lie to say we don't have boots on the ground in Iraq. At last count there were more than 4,400 American troops in Iraq, not counting temporary forces rotating in and out.

Both the Bush and Obama administrations have failed to define the scale of the threat, the determination of our enemies, and the very real dangers we face.

Since the bipartisan establishment can't even define the threat, it certainly can't define a strategy for success.

As our enemies grow stronger and smarter, we slide from defeat to humiliation.

As our enemies watch us accept humiliation, they grow bolder and more daring.

There is a remarkable parallelism to Iranian ships crowding our navy and Russian planes crowding our air force.

None of this is a surprise.

I have posted here a paper from 2002 and 2003 warning that we had lost our way.

We have eight weeks before an historic election.

We need a robust, courageous, and honest debate about where we are and what we need to do -- 15 years after 9/11.
EXCLUSIVE: New details about the emails on Hillary Clinton's personal server that contained classified markings call into question her claim to the FBI that she didn't know what the markings meant -- and even believed they represented an alphabetical listing of paragraphs.

A government source told Fox News that virtually every paragraph in one mail contained so-called portion markings used exclusively for classification purposes. These classified codes are found on the left-hand side and reflect the classification of the intelligence contained in each paragraph.

The Clinton email has one paragraph marked "C" for "confidential," which is the lowest level of classification. And the source said "multiple paragraphs (on the same email) are marked, SBU," which means "sensitive but unclassified."

Both codes are there so the reader knows what is classified intelligence.

"It's not possible, not even plausible, it's an alphabetical listing. The explanation makes no sense," the government source said, referring to Clinton's statement to the FBI in her July 2 interview.

In FBI investigation notes released Friday, agents wrote that Clinton, when asked what the C marking meant, stated she did not know and could only speculate it was referencing paragraphs marked in alphabetical order."

But the source said the appearance of other classified codes on the email further undercut that claim.

A second government source who has also reviewed the FBI file said none of the handful of emails with classified markings contain "A, B or other letters" to support Clintons alphabetical answer, adding the "A, B, C..SBU does not fly."

Fox News first reported in June that at least one of the Clinton emails was marked classified, conflicting with her public statements.

In an interview with Fox's Sean Hannity, the head of Wikileaks Julian Assange also challenged Clinton's statement to the FBI.

"Hillary Clinton says she can't remember what a C in brackets stands for. Everyone in positions of government and in Wikileaks knows it stands for classified, confidential, Assange said. He said Wikileaks has already released thousands of cables showing Clintons signature with (C) next to it.

Clinton has said in the past that many of the cables carry an electronic signature and that she did not personally write or review all of them.

The FBI file also reveals that from the beginning of Hillary Clinton's term in 2009 as secretary of state, the department installed secure rooms, known as "SCIFs" for her official use at both of her residences in Washington, D.C., and in Chappaqua, N.Y.

These Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities contain secure communications equipment authorized to be used to conduct official government business including the reading of sensitive and classified materials.

Instead, Clinton chose to use a variety of 13 mobile devices like Blackberrys as well as iPads for checking emails sent to her clintonemail.com address. The FBI said none of the mobile devices could be accounted for by Clinton's attorneys.

According to the highly redacted FBI documents released Friday, Clinton told the agents "that she did not have a computer of any kind in the SCIFs in her residences." However, Clinton's statement conflicts directly with accounts from three close aides, including Huma Abedin and Justin Cooper, who told the FBI there were "personally owned desktop computers in the SCIFs in Whitehaven and Chappaqua." The third name in the released documents is redacted

Howard Krongard, former State Department inspector general, told Fox News in email that, "If Abedin, Cooper and (Redacted) are correct, I do not know how you can have personally-owned non-approved desktop computers in a SCIF. That would be like inviting the outside world into your SCIF."

In addition, Abedin told the bureau "the SCIF door at the Whiteaven residence (DC) was not always locked." nor the SCIF in Chappaqa always "secured."

Cooper, who was in charge of the upgraded server installation in Chappaqua and Whitehaven, was identified as the staffer tasked to destroy Clinton's Blackberrys with a hammer.

Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills also requested an Internet-connected, stand-alone computer that she could access from her desk at the State Department. No such computer was ever set up. But what was inside her home SCIFs is under new scrutiny.

The FBI director said in July, three days after agents interviewed Clinton, the evidence showed potential violations of criminal statutes, but he did not recommend pursuing charges.

"In looking back at our investigations into mishandling or removal of classified information, we cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts," he said.
National Review columnist Tom Rogan told "Special Report with Bret Baier" Thursday that both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton should be "disappointed" with their performances during Wednesday's televised national security forum.

I think both candidates, both campaigns quite frankly have quite a lot to be disappointed about last night," Rogan said.

Rogan noted that both candidates had to explain statements they made in the forum the following day. Clinton had to set the record straight about having ground troops in Iraq and Syria, while Trump insisted that he really wasn't for the war in Iraq, despite making statements he made to the contrary on the Howard Stern radio show in 2002.

Rather than touting their own credetials, Rogan said Trump and Clinton each used the forum to show how the other candidate was not fit to be Commander-in-Chief.

"Clearly Hillary Clinton is trying to make that her pivot, that you can't trust Donald Trump in any sense of sitting in that situation room. On the flip side, Donald Trump [is] saying you can't trust Hillary Clinton because of the decisions she has made."

Rogan predicted that the candidates will be "increasingly unrestrained" as the election heats up in the coming days and weeks.


Former President Bill Clinton might want to keep the racism accusations to himself from now on -- after ripping Donald Trump for a slogan he's used repeatedly since his 'Comeback Kid' days.

The 42nd president on Wednesday, while stumping in Orlando for Hillary Clinton, suggested Trumps campaign rallying cry, Make America Great Again, is racist code.

Im actually old enough to remember the good old days, and they werent all that good in many ways, Clinton said. That message where Ill give you America great again is if youre a white Southerner, you know exactly what it means, dont you?

The crowd roared as Clinton continued. What it means is Ill give you an economy you had 50 years ago, and Ill move you back up on the social totem pole and other people down, he said.

The problem is, Clinton himself has used the same phrase several times in the past.

He used it repeatedly while running for president in 1991 and 1992, declaring at one Little Rock, Ark., event, "Together, we can make America great again."

And in a campaign ad for his wife in 2008, Bill Clinton said, "It's time for another comeback, time to make America great again."

Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway pointed to the inconvenient footage in calling the former president's allegations about Trump's slogan a "disgrace."



That performance is really something, she said Friday on Fox & Friends. Bill Clinton is known as a very strong campaigner, a great voice in politics -- but not this cycle.
A watchdog group is demanding answers, and a name, after a new inspector general report called out a high ranking Commerce Department official for spending taxpayer dollars on luxury hotels and cars -- and even lavish office renovations that allegedly may have broken the law.

The report, published Thursday, found that the official, identified only as a high-ranking Political Appointee, received unjustified reimbursements for luxury hotels, in violation of government policy, while a member of his staff received questionable reimbursements for premium car services.

The report said the officials hotel choices were based on personal preference and not what was best for work.

The report cited in particular one trip to Geneva, Switzerland, in which the appointee was reimbursed at 150 percent of the standard rate after staying at a luxury hotel -- and even though some of those days were spent on personal travel. While the reimbursement rate was $340 a night, the appointee stayed at a hotel costing around $1,150 a night, and was reimbursed for just over $500 of that.

The IG also found the official had his office renovated at a cost 10 times the amount allowed by regulations. After telling a senior member of the department his office was a[n] [expletive] dump, and [y]ouve got to fix it, the agency spent more than $50,000, calling it routine maintenance despite there only being a $5,000 stipend for renovations.

While the report concluded there was no evidence to suggest the appointee specifically sought to spend that much, it said, more care should have been taken to ensure compliance with that restriction. Another official who spoke to the IG said the work to the office was over the top and unnecessary.

It also cited instances where the appointee used luxury cars when less expensive options were available. It cited one instance in which the appointee and his staff used an SUV during a two-day trip to Boston that cost almost $1,800.

Cause of Action Institute, a conservative nonprofit advocacy group, wrote to the office Friday, demanding answers on the "slush fund" spending and that the official be named.

Reports of taxpayer-funded lavish foreign travel, luxury car service, and over the top office renovations raise serious concerns. Such misconduct is beyond inappropriate and could even be criminal, Cause of Actions Institute President and CEO Alfred J. Lechner, Jr., said in a statement.

American taxpayers have the right to know the name and title of this high-ranking political appointee and whether such wasteful spending could be a more widespread problem at the agency, he said.

A spokeswoman for the Commerce Department told FoxNews.com that it appreciated the findings of the report, and expects employees to conduct business in accordance with federal regulations.

"The IGs report noted that the Political Appointee indicated he was willing to pay for any portion of his travel expenses that was not legitimately reimbursable under government regulations, policy, and the rules. The Department is reviewing the IGs findings to determine if additional reimbursements are required, and will seek any reimbursements owed," the spokeswoman said.

"The Department believes this to be an isolated incident, and has already taken steps to strengthen internal controls related to the travel approval process. We are studying all of the recommendations made in the IG report to determine what further action may be warranted," she said.
Congress on Friday approved a bill that would allow the victims of 9/11 to sue the government of Saudi Arabia  putting lawmakers on a collision course with the White House.

The House passed the legislation by voice vote on Friday, months after the Senate OK'd the measure back in May. The bill heads soon to President Obama's desk, testing whether the White House will follow through on warnings that the president could veto.

The administration for months has argued the legislation could harm the countrys relationship with Saudi Arabia and put U.S. officials stationed overseas in jeopardy.

But Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, said the U.S. government should be more concerned about the families of the victims than "diplomatic niceties."

The bill would give victims families the right to sue in U.S. court for any role that elements of the Saudi government may have played in the 2001 attacks that killed thousands of Americans in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

Poe said he doesn't know if the Saudi government had a role in the attacks.

"That's for a jury of Americans to decide," he said.

The vote was held ahead of the 15th anniversary of the terror attacks. Following Fridays vote, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., one of the authors of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, said he was pleased the House had taken this huge step forward towards justice and said he hoped the Obama administration would not veto the bill.

There are always diplomatic considerations that get in the way of justice, but if a court proves the Saudis were complicit in 9/11, they should be held accountable, Schumer said in a written statement. If theyve done nothing wrong, they have nothing to worry about.

Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. ally, has voiced strong objections to the legislation.

The White House also has cautioned that if the door is opened for U.S. citizens to take the Saudis to court, then a foreign country could in turn sue the United States.

Votes from two-thirds of the members in the House and Senate would be needed to override a veto.

Fridays House vote comes two months after Congress released 28 declassified pages from a congressional report into 9/11 that reignited speculation over links at least a few of the attackers had to Saudis, including government officials. The allegations were never substantiated by later U.S. investigations into the terrorist attacks.

Fifteen of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers were Saudi nationals.

The Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act had triggered a threat from Riyadh to pull billions of dollars from the U.S. economy if the legislation is enacted. But Saudi Foreign Minister Adel bin Ahmed Al-Jubeir denied in May that the kingdom made any threats over the bill. He said Riyadh had warned that investor confidence in the U.S. would shrink if the bill became law.

"In fact what they (Congress) are doing is stripping the principle of sovereign immunities, which would turn the world for international law into the law of the jungle," Al-Jubeir said.

Right before Fridays vote, House members from both parties briefly adjourned to commemorate the anniversary of the attacks. House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., led a moment of silence on the Capitol steps, and lawmakers sang "God Bless America" in remembrance of 9/11, when lawmakers gathered in the same location to sing the song immediately after the attacks on New York and Washington.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The Department of Justice reportedly gave immunity to a computer expert who deleted Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clintons emails during its investigation into her private email server despite being ordered by Congress to keep them.

The New York Times reported Thursday that the Justice Departments immunity deal with Paul Combetta likely means that Republican lawmakers calls for federal authorities to investigate his deletions will go unheard.

The top Republican on the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, had asked the Justice Department to investigate whether Clinton, her lawyers or Combetta obstructed justice when the emails were deleted in March 2015.

The FBI said when Clintons team called Platte River Networks  the Denver-based IT company where Combetta worked  in March 2015, Combetta said he realized he didnt follow a December 2014 directive from Clintons lawyers to have the emails deleted. He then used BleachBit to delete the messages in the days after the meeting with her lawyers.

The Times, citing the FBIs notes, reported that Combetta initially told the agency in February that he didnt recall deleting the emails, but changed his story in May.

In February, he told federal investigators he didnt remember seeing an order from the Benghazi investigation committee, which Cheryl Mills had sent to Platte River Networks, to keep the emails.

However, in the May interview, he said at the time he deleted the emails he was aware of the existence of the preservation request and the fact that it meant he should not disturb Clintons email data on the Platte River network.

Combetta is the second person to be given immunity in the investigation into Clintons private email server. IT specialist Bryan Pagliano, who was a staff member on Clintons 2008 presidential campaign, was given immunity in exchange for answers into how he was able to setup Clintons homebrew server that was setup at her Chappaqua, N.Y. residence around the time she started working at the State Department.

The FBI described the deletions in its notes of its investigation into Clintons account that was released last week. Though Combettas name has been redacted, law enforcement sources familiar with the investigation identified him as the person who received immunity and deleted Clintons emails to The New York Times.

Brian Fallon, a Clinton campaign spokesman, told The Times that the deleted emails had already been investigated by the FBI before its decision to close the case.

As the FBI report notes, neither Hillary Clinton nor her attorneys had knowledge of the Platte River Network employees actions. It appears he acted on his own and against guidance given by both Clintons and Platte Rivers attorneys to retain all data in compliance with a congressional preservation request, Fallon told the newspaper.

The House Oversight Committee had badgered the Justice Department to investigate whether Clinton had lied to Congress about her email account testimony given last October.

Lawmakers have also asked Platte River Networks officials and Combetta to appear at a hearing before the committee on Tuesday about how the email was setup and how exactly the messages were deleted.

Click for more from The New York Times.
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As Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton fight to win Florida hearts and minds with promises to combat Zika and jolt the economy, residents in the vital battleground say the candidates need to focus on another pressing problem  one thats flown under the national radar  to earn their votes: Algae.

A slimy, blue-green algae bloom -- described as watery guacamole by some Floridians -- emerged this spring in Lake Okeechobee and within weeks had seeped into lagoons, rivers and other coastal waterways.

The bloom has grown to pose a major health and economic problem. And for presidential candidates courting Florida voters, its a curveball forcing them to come up with a response plan.

I think the candidates need to do more. Its all about the economy, said Bonnie Creber, owner of the Coral Reef Motel in Jensen Beach, Fla., one of many locales affected.

Clinton and Trump have addressed the politically charged issue on the campaign trail and this week pledged their interest in finding a solution.

Mr. Trump has spoken about this on recent campaign stops in Florida and remains very supportive of Governor Rick Scott and all he is doing to combat the issue, spokeswoman Hope Hicks said Wednesday.

Clinton informed local officials earlier this week that former EPA Administrator Carol Browner will visit the region Monday on her behalf, according to a letter the campaign provided to FoxNews.com.

Following her trip  she and I will connect to discuss what next steps we can take to best serve the Treasure Coast, Clinton wrote. Like you, I believe that clean water is not a luxury -- its a fundamental right. I am committed to finding a long-term solution to this problem.

The candidates have some catching up to do. Florida Republican Gov. Rick Scott in June declared a regional state of emergency to allow the state and local governments in south Florida to take swift action to mitigate the spread. In July, he asked President Obama for emergency funding.

But the thick, smelly bloom by then already had moved into the Atlantic Ocean, killing plants and marine life while threatening the state's vital tourism and fishing industries. It also has been associated with respiratory and skin problems.

They had to close the beaches on Fourth of July weekend. And on the Treasure Coast, its all about the water, sailing, fishing and swimming, Creber told FoxNews.com.

Trump addressed the issue at a Florida stop in late July but so far has not announced whether hes accepted an offer from the Martin County commissioners to see the bloom, as Clintons campaign has.

Mahen Gunaratna, a spokesman for Clinton's Florida campaign, told FoxNews.com on Thursday: "Hillary Clinton understands that clean water is a basic right of all Americans, and that's why she's been vocal on the need for a long-term solution to the toxic algae bloom."

Clinton also wrote an Aug. 17 column for Treasure Coast Newspapers addressing the outbreak as part of Floridas larger environmental problems, putting some of the blame on Scott. She argued the state lately has pursued far fewer enforcement cases.

Florida officials are still assessing the economic impact of the algae on Indian River, Martin and Saint Lucie counties, whose annual economy is roughly $1.96 billion, according to the Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council.

Scientists do not appear to have a consensus about what triggered the bloom. But they generally point to Floridas extreme heat and nutrient-polluted runoff -- including septic waste and manure from the suburbs and farms surrounding Lake Okeechobee.

Some residents and environmental groups say Scott should set tighter limits on such pollution.

The governor in part blames the federal government, arguing the Army Corps of Engineers is protecting the decades-old Herbert Hoover Dike nearby by releasing lake water.

Florida Department of Environmental Protection spokeswoman Dee Ann Miller said Thursday that test results for the algae show low or undetectable levels of toxins. She said such blooms are most common during the summer and early fall, with high temperatures and abundant sunlight.

"The algal bloom response team takes all algal blooms seriously and all federal, state and local agencies will continue to respond as quickly and efficiently as possible to both observed and reported algal blooms to ensure the health and safety of Floridians, visitors and our natural resources," Miller said.

The long-term solution, say many residents, is to redirect the water to the south. But that is fraught with politics, considering the U.S. Sugar Corp.  which owns land south of the lake  is a major donor to Democratic and Republican politicians, including Scott.

His Lets Get to Work PAC received $100,000 from the company as recently as June, according to the PAC website. In 2010, U.S. Sugar, the countrys largest sugar manufacturer, struck a deal with the state that included the sale of roughly 27,000 acres of company property. But a local board last year voted down an option to buy more.
Donald Trump paused from another day of sparring with Hillary Clinton over national security issues Friday to reach out to faith voters, telling an audience at the Values Voters Summit that he will defend Christian values like youve never seen before.

Speaking at the gathering of conservative Christians in Washington, the Republican nominee said that political leaders have abandoned Christians, while the media mocks Christianity.

Your values of love, charity and faith built this nation, he told the audience. How can it be that our media treats people of faith so poorly? One of the reasons is that our politicians have abandoned you to a large extent, and Hillary Clinton? You can forget about her.

He promised that a Trump administration would buck that.

A Trump administration, our Christian heritage will be cherished, protected, defended like youve never seen before, he said. Believe me.

He also reiterated his call to repeal the so-called Johnson amendment, which prevents tax-exempt groups, such as Christian organizations and churches, from endorsing political candidates. Striking a unifying tone, Trump promised to unite America if he were elected to the White House in November.

Imagine what our country could achieve if we worked together as one people, under one God, saluting one flag, he said.

Trumps remarks come after a week of back-and-forth between the campaigns on foreign policy, with just 60 days to go until the election.

Clinton called for new sanctions Friday on North Korea after it conducted its fifth nuclear test, something she called a direct threat to the United States. Trump meanwhile cast blame on Clinton for the North Korean situation.

Clintons failed policies allowed threats to us and our allies to thrive around the world, including emboldening Iran and North Korea to accelerate their development of nuclear capabilities with impunity, he said in a statement late Friday.

When pushed on what he would do in response to aggression from the North Koreans, the campaign said it would not reveal its plan to Americas enemies. Trump has been criticized for not outlining his plans for dealing with foreign policy challenges, especially in regard to ISIS.

"He's not going to reveal all of his plans, and he's made that very clear. And maybe someone can ask him in a debate," campaign manager Kellyanne Conway told CBS "This Morning." `

Trump also came under fire for praising Russian President Vladimir Putin in an NBC town hall Wednesday this week, and for granting an interview to Russian government-backed Russia Today on Thursday.

Clinton took aim at Trump in a short press conference Friday after meeting with national security advisers. When asked about Trumps relationship with Putin, Clinton said it was proof that Trump was not running a serious campaign.

Its not a serious presidential campaign, and it is beyond ones imagination to have a candidate for president praising a Russian autocrat like Vladimir Putin and throwing his lot in with him, she said.

Clintons campaign has been using her experience and sober outlook as a key part of the campaign, and announced Friday that the number of retired generals and admirals endorsing her has grown to 110. Trump, meanwhile, has said he has the endorsement of 88 retired generals and admirals.

Trumps running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, received his first intelligence briefing on Friday. While he did not offer specifics on what he was told, he said he and Trump would be ready on day one.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Get ready: Voting in the 2016 election is now underway.

Advance voting begins Friday in North Carolina, the first of 37 states that will allow balloting by mail for any reason or in person before the actual Election Day of Nov. 8.

It's part of a nearly nine-week campaign frenzy in which millions of voters will have the ability to fill out a ballot and be done with the 2016 presidential race.

North Carolina residents are first, and they can now submit absentee ballots by mail without an excuse. They also will be able to vote early at polling booths beginning Oct. 20.

In a possible sign of increased interest, 34,788 voters as of Friday had requested absentee ballots, according to the North Carolina State Board of Elections, up from about 25,600 from a similar timeframe in 2012. Broken down by party, the requests were somewhat evenly divided -- 37 percent Democrat to 35 percent Republican and 28 percent who were unaffiliated with a party. Ballots were being mailed Friday with votes likely to start arriving in the coming days.

"North Carolina's voters are among the first in the nation to make their voices heard in this election," said State Board of Elections Executive Director Kim Westbrook Strach. "With high turnout expected, we encourage voters to consider all their voting options."

While no votes will be counted until Nov. 8, many states such as North Carolina report the party affiliation of people who have cast ballots, offering solid clues.

Ballots from all 50 states will be sent to members of the armed services and voters living abroad the week of Sept. 19. And Georgia residents may also begin mailing in ballots that week, followed by battlegrounds Wisconsin and Virginia.

Iowa will accept early ballots starting Sept. 29, three days after the first presidential debate.

"If one campaign does significantly better in harvesting early votes, that campaign will have a substantial advantage as election day approaches," said Paul Gronke, a Reed College professor and director of the Early Voting Information Center in Portland, Oregon.

The stakes are high: Voters who cast ballots in advance are expected to make up between 50 to 75 percent or more of all ballots in the battlegrounds of North Carolina, Colorado, Florida, Nevada, Arizona and Georgia, according to data compiled by The Associated Press.

Nationwide, about 45.6 million people or roughly 35 percent of the electorate attracted by its convenience voted prior to Election Day in 2012, and that number is expected to increase in 2016.

The campaigns know it, too.

Hillary Clinton appeared in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Thursday and applauded a recent federal appeals court decision invalidating restrictions that the judges determined made it harder for non-whites to vote. "Get out and vote and make it clear we're not putting up with that," she said.

The Clinton campaign said Friday it was planning a series of events this month aimed at boosting turnout, including a nationwide "weekend of action" on Sept. 17 and 18 focused on voter registration and mobilization. Clinton hosted a call with campus organizers and supporters Thursday to help mobilize efforts. Next week, President Barack Obama will visit Philadelphia and First Lady Michelle Obama will be in northern Virginia to drum up support.

The Trump campaign, working with the Republican National Committee to boost absentee mail balloting in Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and Iowa, described its early efforts as key to a "path to victory." The campaign has made it clear it will work hard for every vote but also stressed the billionaire's appeal to a "silent majority that's had enough." Its total number of field offices is fewer than half what Clinton has, though it's been expanding.

"We must reach every voter before early voting and Election Day," wrote campaign manager Kellyanne Conway in a Sept. 5 memo.
A flatworm that infects freshwater turtles in Malaysia has been given a presidential name: Baracktrema obamai.

The newly-discovered worm, or blood fluke, inhabits the lungs of turtles that live in three Malaysian states, according a study describing the new species that was published in the Journal of Parasitology in August. (Flukes are part of the flatworms phylum, in terms of taxonomy.)

The study explains that the flukes name was inspired by a distant relative of one of the scientists.

The new genus and species is named in honor of Barack Obama, 44th president of the United States of America, and 5th cousin, twice removed, of [Thomas R. Platt], the study states.

Platt is of the coauthors of the journal article.

The researchers made the discovery by purchasing the turtles from trappers in 2008, according to the study. Then, after killing them, Platt necropsied the turtles and preserved the blood flukes.

Stephen Bullard, an associate professor of parasitology at Auburn University, and one of the coauthors of the study, said in an email to FoxNews.com that it is an honor to have an organism named after you.

Bullard said that since scientific names are permanent and part of the record, and also because of common decency, it isnt recommended that scientists name new species in an insulting or mocking way.

Because the worm represents both a new genus and a new species, Bullard said that it is a double honor to have both taxonomic levels named for the president.

Baracktrema refers to a new genus, and obamai is the species name.

As species similar to B. obamai are discovered and described, they too will be classified under the genus Baracktrema, he added.
U.S. aviation safety officials took the extraordinary step late Thursday of warning airline passengers not to turn on or charge a new-model Samsung smartphone during flights following numerous reports of the devices catching fire.

The Federal Aviation Administration also warned passengers not to put the Galaxy Note 7 phones in their checked bags, citing "recent incidents and concerns raised by Samsung" about the devices. It is extremely unusual for the FAA to warn passengers about a specific product.

Last week, Samsung ordered a global recall of the jumbo phones after its investigation of explosion reports found the rechargeable lithium batteries were at fault. In one case, a family in St. Petersburg, Florida, reported a Galaxy Note 7 phone left charging in their Jeep caught fire, destroying the vehicle.

Samsung launched the latest version of the Note series in August. The Note series is one of the most expensive lineups released by Samsung, and the devices usually inherit designs and features of the Galaxy S phones that debut in the spring. Samsung also added an iris scanner to the Note 7, which detects patterns in users' eyes to unlock the phone.

Before the issue of battery explosions emerged, supplies were not keeping up with higher-than-expected demand for the smartphone.

The Note 7 isn't the only gadget to catch fire thanks to lithium-battery problems, which have afflicted everything from laptops to Tesla cars to Boeing's 787 jetliner.

Rechargeable lithium batteries are more susceptible to overheating than other types of batteries if they are exposed to high temperatures, are damaged or have manufacturing flaws. Once the overheating starts, it can lead to "thermal runaway" in which temperatures continue escalating to very high levels. Water can put out the flames, but doesn't always halt the thermal runaway. Flames will often reappear after initially being quenched.

Lithium batteries have become ubiquitous in consumer electronic devices. Manufacturers like them because they weigh less and pack considerably more energy into the same space than other types of batteries.

Earlier this year, the International Civil Aviation Organization, a U.N. agency that sets global aviation safety standards, banned bulk shipments of rechargeable lithium-ion batteries as cargo on passenger planes until better packaging can be developed to prevent a fire from spreading and potentially destroying the plane.


The iPhone 7 has elicited mostly a collective yawn from the media and analysts, but is it really such a disappointment?



Announced on Wednesday, the newest phone brings some much-needed improvements like better battery life (about two hours more than the iPhone 6s, Apple claims), better camera (with 2X optical zoom on the iPhone 7 Plus), a faster processor, and water resistance.

However welcome those improvements are, the physical design remains largely unchanged, leaving the impression that the iPhone 7 is an interim upgrade to the iPhone 6s rather than the makeover that typically comes every two years.

In your palm, Apples iPhone 7 looks like the long-lost twin of the two-year-old iPhone 6. said The Wall Street Journal in its first look review, adding that Apple is only catching up to the competition, not flying past it.

The iPhone 7 keeps ... the same exterior design as the 6 and 6S. This is a risky strategy, said Ian Fogg, an analyst at market researcher IHS Technology, in a research note.

Other analysts agree with that assessment. The new phone is a solid upgrade but it is just that, an upgrade, rather than a major overhaul," Neil Saunders, managing director of research firm Conlumino, told FoxNews.com in an email. And in a research note provided to clients he said that "it still falls someway short of the magical launches Apple used to announce."

Other media reports, such as one from Reuters, said the iPhone 7 was not a game changer, citing a Wall Street analyst in that report.

A writer for 9to5Mac.com said in an opinion piece that the updates Apple gave us this year are solid but nothing extraordinary. Nothing that compels me to preorder.

Not all the sentiment is negative

The iPhone 7 and 7 Plus ... have two and one hour battery life gains [respectively] over the 6s and 6s Plus, said Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty in an upbeat research note sent to clients. Battery life is the biggest complaint from respondents in our global smartphone survey this past June, and any improvement could drive more users to refresh their iPhones, Huberty wrote.

And IHS Technology's Fogg had good things to say about the iPhone 7 in the same research note cited above. We expect the new iPhone 7 camera design will successfully convince consumers to upgrade their older iPhones, he wrote.

Also, there is a truism being put forward by some in the media that the iPhone 7 is good enough and that having a good overall experience -- both hardware and software -- on a smartphone is more important than flashy new hardware. And Apple seems on track to maintain that advantage with iPhone 7.

Stacking it up against the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge and Galaxy Note7

Despite the battery woes -- and recall -- of Samsungs Galaxy Note7, both that phone and the Galaxy S7 Edge still sport some hardware advancements that Apple has yet to adopt. That includes, most importantly, a curved organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display, considered superior to Apple's liquid crystal display (LCD) tech. OLED tech is critical because it not only delivers better image quality but will allow Samsung to bring out novel new phones down the road, like foldable devices that the company has been teasing for a few years now.

And Samsung introduced water resistance way back in 2014 on the Galaxy series and has it on the Galaxy Note7, which is a notch above the iPhones 7 water resistance rating. Samsung also offers new tech like an iris scanner, stylus input, and virtual reality gear with the Note7.

Well have to wait for reviews to find out more about the strengths and weaknesses of the iPhone 7. But stacking it up against the newest high-end Galaxy series, it does appear that Apple did make some strides with the camera, including the optical zoom on the iPhone 7 Plus and optical image stabilization on both models as well as improved low-light photo taking.

The new phones will start shipping in major markets including the U.S. and China on Sept.16.
A 14-year-old freshman girl shot and injured another female student and then killed herself inside a Texas high school bathroom on Thursday morning, Brewster County Sheriff Ronny Dodson said.

Dodson said the injured student ran outside seeking help and was taken to a hospital with injuries that weren't considered life threatening.

A police officer was accidentally shot in the leg by a marshal responding to the episode, Dodson said.



Five shots were fired during the incident at Alpine High School, leading to the lockdown of all district schools. A woman who answered the phone at the Alpine Independent School District described the situation as "contained."

None of those shot were immediately identified.

"I am currently monitoring the active shooter situation in Alpine," Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement. "I have directed my office to offer any measure of support needed to assist the law enforcement officials currently working this case. I wish to extend prayers and sympathy to any victims' families and their loved ones who have been affected by this senseless act of violence."

Brewster County is in southwestern Texas near the Mexican border.

Alpine is a small public high school. It reported 277 students were enrolled at the school last year.

Fox News' Casey Stegall and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
We all have that friend who was wild in their younger days. The one who would show up to the party, do some crazy things, then disappear without a trace -- and without the memory of the craziness they had wrought. Amazingly, that friend grew up, matured, started realizing their potential and understanding their purpose. Theyre still fun, but in a more attractive way, and suddenly theyre more popular than ever.

That friend, of course, is Snapchat.

In successful marketing, story is king. And Snapchat is great at telling stories quickly to an engaged audience. So why are so many B2B marketers scared of using Snapchat? It could have something to do with the fact that 71 percent of the apps users are 25 or younger. It could also be that just as marketers got comfortable with Instagram filters, they now fear an unknown interface with features such as facial mapping technology that turns selfie-takers into dogs, superhero characters and monsters -- nor do they see the relevance.

Related: 5 Steps to Get Started on Snapchat

Or could the reluctance to hop on the Snapchat bandwagon come from a general fatigue over new trends? For the twentysomething segment of the population, Snapchat is something that goes all the way back to their high school days. But it hasnt been a viable platform for businesses until much more recently, and even the earliest-adopting of marketers are just now able to gauge the success of their snap strategies.

If your B2B brand isnt on Snapchat yet, there are a few stats that should motivate you:

22 percent of ad execs plan to advertise on Snapchat in 2016.

Snapchat ads are viewed up to a million times per day.

60 percent of all smartphone users are now on Snapchat.

60 percent of Snapchat users are between the ages of 18 and 34.

However, like any proper execution, it takes planning and strategy. If youre wondering what one might look like, consider these starting points:

Storytelling.

This is a broad category, granted. But its where the app really shines. Whether its a behind the scenes look at your company, an employee you want to highlight or a trade show you want to document in an interesting way, Snapchat allows you to build a story using 10-second video clips and stills that your followers can consume at once. So instead of taking to Facebook to write several paragraphs about your next product launch, capture the moment quicker and more intimately with a story snap.

Remember, though, that the majority of your audience as a B2B marketer isnt using the platform, so you should take advantage of Snapchats location-specific functionality. This means if youre in town for an event, you can drive attendees to your Snapchat account via your other social channels, then use geofilters to further contextualize your stories in an interactive way.

Related: Snapchat: How Geofilters Can Increase Brand Awareness

Incentives.

Instead of tweeting an offer code for product discounts, snap it instead. Then use your existing channels to promote your Snapchat account by making a screenshot snap the only way to redeem the discount. This is an especially useful idea for limited time offers. After all, snaps disappear forever after 24 hours.

Excitement.

Lets be honest -- the marriage of B2B marketing and Snapchat seems an unlikely one because, quite frankly, Snapchat is associated with fun. But thats a good thing for B2B companies. After all, youre still trying to connect with real people. A good Snapchat strategy shouldnt live alone -- it should be just one part of a smart, multi-channel messaging matrix. So let the space it occupies within that matrix be a looser, more experimental and more fun one. Snapchat is impermanent, and so will be your social media misses on the platform.

One B2B company you can look to for inspiration is Cisco. The company allowed individual employees to take over the corporate account and post stories from across the country. It was a successful effort to add humanity to the overall messaging strategy.

Relationship building.

Snapchat has demonstrated the staying power that makes it worthy of adding to your B2B social outreach efforts. As the workforce grows younger and younger, your audience increasingly lives on non-conventional channels -- and theyre probably savvier than you are when it comes to using them. Making headway on Snapchat as a B2B marketer can be a challenge, but like any other platform, the goal is to build relationships with your audience.

Follow Us: Add 'entmagazine' as a friend on Snapchat

If you want to test the waters before committing all-in with a branded channel, consider using one of the literally thousands of social media influencers who use Snapchat to help businesses sell product. Or create micro-campaigns featuring your younger employees representing your brand on their personal accounts.

In a world of come-and-go social fads, Snapchat has grabbed ahold of a captive audience and grown its usefulness for marketers. For B2B companies looking to break the mold, the time is right for a storytelling strategy centered around Snapchat. Dont worry, we wont be telling you to abandon it for Pokemon Go just yet.
Newly tested DNA evidence from the home of a 92-year-old World War I veteran strangled in 1983 has led to murder charges against a woman who was a teenager when the crime was committed, prosecutors said.

Saundra Adams, 50, was charged Wednesday with second-degree murder in the slaying of Edmund Schreiber, who authorities said was strangled with several of his own neckties during a break-in at his home in Buffalo. Schreiber was wounded during WWI and had been awarded a Purple Heart medal, authorities said.

"Mr. Schreiber survived WWI, but he did not survive those who during the night of June 23, 1983, invaded his home and took his life," said Michael J. Flaherty Jr., acting district attorney for Erie County.

Adams' DNA was found on some of the neckties used to kill Schreiber, and her fingerprints were found on a dresser in the bedroom where the widower was killed, prosecutors said. DNA evidence received from a lab two weeks ago from a necktie and a dresser tied Adams to the three-decade-old killing, prosecutors said.

Adams was 17 at the time of the killing. Prosecutors said an unknown accomplice was also involved.

Adams, who was arrested Tuesday, pleaded not guilty. She was being held Thursday in jail pending a bail hearing.

Her attorney, Daniel Grasso, told The Associated Press that Adams worked at the library of a Buffalo college and was the mother of two adult children. Officials at Bryant and Stratton said Adams was a student enrolled at the college's Buffalo campus, where she was employed in the library under a work-study program.

Grasso said that at the time of the slaying Adams was living in her family's home on the same street as Schreiber's house. Adams still lives there, Grasso said.

She denies any involvement in Schreiber's death, the attorney said soon after his first meeting with her Thursday.

"I'll be curious to see how the DNA report is worded," Grasso said.

Flaherty said his office revisited the case earlier this year at the request of the city's homicide squad. One of the veteran's descendants, a middle-aged granddaughter living in Kentucky, profusely thanked authorities after receiving word an arrest had been made, the prosecutor said.

"She asked me to thank all the investigators for their hard work," Flaherty said.
At 28 years old, Im the author of two books and an international speaker, and I work closely with some of the biggest names in my industry. None of that was an accident. I attribute my accomplishments to a skillful combination of entrepreneurship and artistry.

Let me begin by noting that I never intended to become an artist, or more specifically, a photographer. My ambitions were more geared to climbing the ranks of corporate America. By the age of 22, I was regional sales manager for an educational firm based in New York City. Two years later, our firm's primary source of income plummeted. I was now 24 and unemployed.

Around that same time, I met a great mentor, also a photographer who introduced me to what I call creative entrepreneurship.

Creativity re-imagined.

I work in a very saturated and competitive market. Just like any other industry, as new technologies and platforms emerge, staying profitable becomes increasingly difficult, as potential clients are swayed by what is new and shiny. Learning how to consistently remain up-to-date and innovative therefore becomes less an option and more about survival. As an artist, you still have to adapt to emerging markets.

I believe that innovation and a creative process that leads you there isnt just an inherited trait, its an acquirable skill set. By definition creativity is a broad term used to describe the use of your imagination. People assume that creativity is limited to artistic work, but its grander than that. Your creativity allows you to form new ideas, methods, and alternatives in any aspect of your life, including business. Just because youre an amazing artist, doesnt mean that youre entitled to success. In fact, the most financially successful artists that I know arent what most of society would define as creative, theyre better entrepreneurs.

Related: It's Crucial to Keep Up With These 6 Digital Trends in 2016

Learning how to be creative.

I will admit that I envy and admire those unique individuals who are inherently creative, and who can pull ideas from what I presume to be a bottomless well of ingenuity. I am not one of those individuals. If youre like me, you may quickly deduce problems, but coming up with solutions speedily isnt as easy. This is why adopting a creative process is invaluable. Regardless of the situation, be it innovating a new product, competing with a competitor or resolving unforeseen events promptly, having a solid creative process will mean that you have the necessary means to adapt to any situation.

1. Define your target and focus on what must change.

Most individuals would assume that having unlimited options is a great thing. I would argue that is not always the case. Having unlimited options means that you have unlimited solutions, and therefore determining which one of those solutions is the best option can quickly become overwhelming. As Austin Kleon points out in his book Steal Like an Artist, The way to get over a creative block is to simply place some constraints on yourself. It seems contradictory, but when it comes to creative work, limitations mean freedom.

Focus on defining your target outcome and what variables you can directly influence to guarantee that outcome. For instance, if your goal is to change quality, focus on the variables that directly influence the quality of your product or service. If your outcome is speed, focus on variables that you can influence that directly impact speed.

For example, producing video content is time consuming. Between producing content, filming content and editing content, a four-minute video can take hours, if not days to produce. If my goal was to shorten the amount of time that it takes to create video content so that I can produce more, Id focus on the elements that are the most time consuming and find what I can do to shorten that workflow. Its counterproductive to start thinking about how I can improve the quality of the video content if my goal is to shorten my workflow. While that may sound obvious in my example, there are plenty of times when you should have that same targeted rationality when coming up with new ideas.

Related: A Secret to Creative Problem Solving

2. Lay out all the tools you have at your disposal.

Sometimes things dont always go as planned, and youll have to think quickly on your feet to get the job done. That basically sums up my career as a photographer. Every day, Im introduced to new unforeseen events that Ill have to focus on resolving on the fly. There are times when I wont have the opportunity to see a set Ill be working on until the day of a photo shoot, and while Id like to say that Im prepared for any situation, theres always the risk that I dont have the equipment necessary to get the job done and have to improvise a creative solution to do it.

Great artists are always fluid in their execution. Theyre able to adapt to a situation by instantly assessing a situation and the tools that they have available. After youve defined your desired outcome, you need to think about the tools that you have to do it. Are the tools you have enough to achieve the outcome that you defined in step one? If not, can the tools you have at your disposal be repurposed to achieve that outcome?

Related: 5 Steps to Building a Career That Aligns With Your Passions

3. Build on solutions that already exist.

You dont need to reinvent the wheel every single time. In the same manner that Henry Ford didnt invent the car or the assembly line but improved upon both, artists draw inspiration from other artists all the time. Thats true in acting, directing, photography, and all visual media. For example, youll find that many of todays horror films can be traced back to Alfred Hitchcock, as a source of inspiration.

Every artist has progressively borrowed and built upon the work of others. As Salvador Dali said Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing. The same can be said of todays most recognizable businesses.
Lucy McGuire said after writing and illustrating three books, its time to put her writing career to an end.

At the age of 96, McGuire said its becoming harder for her to see due to macular degeneration.

This is the last one, I think, she said. My eyes are not all that great anymore.

Her latest book, titled Nosey Nellie Finds a Best Friend, tells the story of how the youngster from the previous books finds that knowing about Jesus is not the same as knowing Him.

Her first book published in the spring of 2014, Nosey Nellie Visits the Farm, tells the story of a girl named Nellie, whose curiosity about who provides the food for her breakfast leads to a visit to the farm.

The story is much more than a youngsters field trip  it teaches children of Gods provisions for them every day  something McGuire feels is important for the younger generation to know.

I think (if) you start teaching a child when they are very young, it goes with them for the rest of their life, McGuire said in 2014 after writing the book. God loves them and provides for them. Even though they cant see Him. The nosier they get, the more things theyll find out what God does for them.

McGuire wrote and illustrated a second book in 2015, titled, Nosey Nellie Finds the Real Christmas, and telling of the important lesson learned by the inquisitive young lady.

I thought (Nellie) might need to know about why we celebrate Christmas, she said in 2015. God inspired me. At my age, I would have never thought of doing such a thing. But He gave me what to say.

McGuire felt it was important to finish her set of books about Nellie with the story of the real Easter.

While her eyes may not be the best, McGuire acknowledges it is God who holds my hand as she puts together each story.

Like her first two books, McGuire creates all the artwork for the story using oils. Once finished, it is sent to her niece, Elizabeth Peters, who works for Printstar Publishing in Florida and created the graphic design for the final publication.

She sold more than 200 copies each of her first two books to residents and employees at Ashbrook Manor, where she resides, along with a book signing at Farmington Public Library.

These books have been going out fast, she said. I know (the books) are going to do what God wants them to do, wherever they are going to go.

She shared the story of a mailing mix-up for copies of the first two books to a friend who lives in the Smokey Mountains in Tennessee  an area McGuire lived in for a number of years.

I messed up the last number on the address, she said. I called my friend a week later and she said she didnt get the books.

The local friend who took the package to UPS for McGuire contacted the company in hopes of tracking down the books.

They remembered where they had delivered it, she said. When they went there, the lady had thrown away the envelope the books were in, but still had the books.

God works out things for you. When He wants something somewhere its going to get there somehow.
The shocking abduction story surrounding the death of a 47-year-old Montana woman appears to be unraveling after a sheriff said reporters "should" question the kidnapping narrative.

Authorities say they haven't determined whether Rita Maze was abducted in broad daylight near Wolf Creek, Mont., Tuesday morning. Her body was found early Wednesday 350 miles away near Spokane, Wash. Her family told police she called them from the trunk of her car to say she had been kidnapped by a large man in a black hoodie and that she loved them.

But authorities have not ruled her death a homicide, the Spokesman Review in Spokane reported Thursday.

Kidnapped Montana woman called husband from car trunk before death https://t.co/DvcLnsDeGo pic.twitter.com/2EVfMIzRtL  KTLA (@KTLA) September 8, 2016

Newly filed court document are also raising questions.

The paper reported that, according to the documents, Maze, a school cook from Great Falls, was in the trunk with a single gunshot wound to the torso. Next to her body authorities found a handgun and two spent casings.

Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich was asked by the paper if news outlets should question Mazes kidnapping narrative.

Yes, you should, he told the paper. We know where the body was located. We know where she started out. What happened in between? Dont know.

The court documents also show that an officer said she called Mazes cell phone number about 10 p.m. Tuesday night, according to KHQ-TV. Someone answered and the officer heard gunshots, then silence, the station reported.

Knezovich said the case wont be easy to solve.

He told the Review people should hesitate to call Mazes death a homicide until we actually find out what is going on.

The Spokane Medical Examiners Office on Thursday determined Maze died of the bullet wound to her chest but said further investigation was needed to determine whether the death was a homicide.

The FBI said Thursday they do not have a suspect, a day after saying they did.

Maze had gone to Helena, Montana, Monday to visit her ailing mother.

Her daughter insisted her mother was killed after being kidnapped.

I believe she was abducted,  Rochelle Maze told the Review. She did not hit herself, stuff herself in the truck and drive all the way to Spokane and shoot herself.

She said her mother was hysterical when she spoke to her on the phone.

Deputies found the keys in the ignition and her purse in the front seat. They also found blood on the ground near a $20 bill, the paper reported.

I believe they shot her and left the gun and keys in there to make it look like she killed herself, Rochelle Maze told the paper. I know she did not.
Students at a southern California community college say campus leaders canceled a Sept. 11 memorial and a professor tore down "Never Forget" remembrance posters.

A conservative group of students at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo released video footage Thursday of a history professor ripping down posters with images showing various terrorists acts and the words Never Forget," according to the College Fix.

The video shows history professor Margot Lovett telling the students -- who are members of the Young Americans for Freedom group -- that they did not have permission to hang the posters.

Lovett, who is chairwoman of the history department, reportedly endorsed a statement in 2001 blaming U.S. imperialism for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Lovett moved to remove the posters after campus leaders tried to shut down the student group's previously approved 9/11 memorial, the website reported.

Kyle Chiu, a 21-year-old junior and the Young Americans for Freedom chapters vice chair, told The College Fix that school officials would not grant the club active status because they wanted to change some parts of the groups bylaws.

On Friday, the school released a statement that read in part: "Saddleback College supports student clubs and their right to organize and exercise their freedom of speech. At the beginning of each academic year, in order to organize meetings and hold events, student clubs must go through an activation process that includes an orientation, the establishment of a club constitution and by-laws, and the appointment of a faculty adviser.

"As of today the students have not completed the requirements to form a club," the statement said.

Click for more from the College Fix
Sorry, worker bee. Mean bosses are a fact of life. Youd be hard-pressed to find an office or organization completely free of soul-crushers and tyrants in charge.

You know the toxic type. The vindictive, belittling Miranda Priestlys and Michael Scotts of the world. Controlling micromanagers who are rude, inconsiderate and practically impossible to work with and for, no matter how much you grit your teeth and follow their orders.

While bosses do get to boss you around in some respects -- after all, they are your superiors on the org chart -- Deepak Chopra says they dont get to pull rank in a manner that is offensive or abusive. He told Entrepreneur during a recent phone interview that if this happens to you or a colleague, youre well within your rights to put your higher ups in check, calmly and professionally.

Related: Deepak Chopra's 7 Tips for Business Success

We asked the renowned spiritual advisor, medical doctor and entrepreneur for tips on how to deal with toxic bosses while talking with him about his new Wevr virtual reality (VR) meditation experience.

Heres his step-by-step advice, lightly edited for clarity and length:

1. Set up a meeting to hash things out.

Victims of toxic leaders must practice what is called nonviolent communication. This means you request a sit-down meeting at the office with the person you are experiencing conflict with to work things out peacefully and respectfully.

2. Demand respect.

You tell them, This is my observation of your behavior. This is how you make me feel. I dont want to feel like this, so may I please request that you treat me with respect, politeness, courtesy and deference, or, at the very least, good manners. And, if you do that, I will reciprocate and if you dont, I will ignore you, which will not be a good experience for you.

If things get worse after you express your feelings, then this is not the right job for you. For a lot of people this type of talk will shift their behavior for the better, but if it doesnt, this job is going to be toxic for you and youre going to feel sick staying in that environment.

Related: The 6 Most Familiar 'Bad Boss' Types and What to Do About Them

3. Advocate for positive change.

People who compliment you genuinely about your strengths actually have a great effect on your well-being and also on your productivity. So, you may want to mention that the ideal situation in an office would be having a team where people have a shared vision, where they are emotionally bonded and where they compliment each others strengths.

The organizations that I work with, I advise them to put energy into creating a good, healthy work culture, rather than ending up with human resources cases and lawsuits. Start healthy and youll stay healthy.
Over the past decade, many small businesses and startups have relied on LinkedIns groups as places where they could build community among their customers. And they were smart to do that. These groups, and the engagement they created with customers, were key to keeping and growing their customer base. These groups grew as critical venues where business owners and executives could solicit feedback from and be responsive to customers, share news and gather data important for improving products, communication and more. In fact, there are tens of thousands of these groups among LinkedIn's 400 million users.

But when Microsoft acquired LinkedIn last month, signs quickly pointed to the fact that LinkedIn's focus would no longer be on helping their communities thrive. In fact, even before the acquisition, LinkedIn groups had a terrible track record for attracting return visitors. So what is a business to do?

First of all, look at this as a positive.

Having your business community live on rented land is actually not such a great idea in the first place. When you host your own community, you can control the experience and you can leverage the data, SEO and inbound traffic. Most of all, youre doing more than just signing up new members -- youre actively nourishing a happy, active and productive community for everyone, which LinkedIn never accomplished consistently.

Related: 4 Easy Steps to Increase Sales Through LinkedIn

The Wall Street Journal said it best: LinkedIn has so far done a poor job of getting [users] to come back to the site regularly to connect with and expand their professional networks. Only about one quarter of LinkedIns 400 million cumulative users return to the site every month. So with that being said, here are the five most important things businesses need to launch their own online communities.

Dedicated community platform and a dedicated manager.

It doesnt matter if you want a tricked-out system with great features or a simple forum for regular discussions, heres the bottom line: you and your community members should own the data, the SEO, the traffic and the content. But dont let the mention of data let your community become a sterile, emotionless face of your organization. Make sure you have a dedicated person to manage your community -- together you will think through the environment you want to create and the personality with which theyll want to run the community. Will they be fun, or thoughtful, folksy or professional? Whatever the case may be, make sure the face of your community is a face and not a robotic presence -- the most successful communities have a clear personality and culture.

Data!

Remember, you cant pay the rent with engagement. When youre building community, think about what youre looking for in terms of numbers. Take some time to drill down into your companys most popular search terms to figure out what people are looking for most often. That will help guide your content, and it will directly inform your content strategy, ultimately helping drive your business goals.

Related: 10 Questions to Ask When Collecting Customer Data

Clean user experience.

A public platform will be riddled with advertising and promotions that arent targeted to what your members are looking for. A dedicated platform and a better user experience can go hand-in-hand, if you have the right features. Design can also help drive results. When youre designing the layout of your community site, think about the number one action you want your users to take and design the community to push them toward that action. Dont be tempted to add too many bells and whistles. They can overwhelm and distract first time visitors. Simplicity is a good thing, and you can attain effective simplicity when you keep the user in mind. If necessary, survey customers to get specific feedback. Chances are youll learn a lot.

Focus on members, not marketing.

LinkedIn has been shifting towards a B2B marketing and sales platform for a while (remember when they bought Bizo in early 2015?). A true community will focus on helping members, not upselling. Understand who the community should benefit most, and why. Maybe even come up with personas for potential future members to really hone in on your audience. This piece is important and will help you create effective user design and experience. And as the community grows, look beyond just the number of new users. Engaging current members is key to sustainability and creating value, and that is really what you want. Keep current members active, since they are most likely to recruit new members.

On-target content (and an engaging personality).

Before you launch, come up with a few key ideas youd like to introduce to the community. Test a few out on your existing social media platforms to see how people respond. Were your ideas sticky i.e. did they create some interesting discussions around which people could engage or did they hang out there with no comments? Get this organized early so when you launch your hosted community, its with some surefire, crowd-pleasing content.

Related: A 5-Step Framework for Selling on Social Media

This acquisition may have been just what LinkedIn and Microsoft needed to improve the professional networking and productivity experience. But take it as a sign -- its not what you need to build your own community.
A federal judge Thursday dismissed a lawsuit that sought to have the Confederate battle emblem on the Mississippi flag declared an unconstitutional relic of slavery.

U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves ruled that the attorney who filed the suit, Carlos Moore, failed to show the emblem caused a "cognizable legal injury." However, in dismissing the suit, Reeves also picked apart arguments made outside the courtroom by many flag supporters who say that Mississippi's secession from the union before the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery.

Reeves quoted the state's 1861 secession declaration, which said: "'Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery  the greatest material interest of the world.'"

Then, the judge continued in his own words: "To put it plainly, Mississippi was so devoted to the subjugation of African-Americans that it sought to form a new nation predicated upon white supremacy."

Mississippi has used the same flag since 1894. Its upper left corner has the Confederate battle emblem  a red field topped by a blue X dotted with 13 white stars. Voters chose to keep the banner in a 2001 referendum. It's the last state flag in the nation to prominently feature the emblem.

Like other Confederate symbols, the Mississippi flag has come under increased scrutiny since the June 2015 killings of black worshippers in South Carolina. The white man charged in that case had posed with the Confederate battle flag in photos published online. Several cities and counties and seven of Mississippi's eight public universities have stopped flying the state flag.

"Moore's arguments are phrased as constitutional claims, yet his allegations of physical injuries suggest that he is making an emotional distress tort claim," Reeves wrote. "To succeed in constitutional litigation, however, Moore needs to identify that part of the Constitution which guarantees a legal right to be free from anxiety at State displays of historical racism. There is none."

Moore, a 39-year-old African-American from Grenada, Mississippi, filed the suit in February, asking Reeves to declare the flag an unconstitutional relic of slavery.

In his ruling, Reeves, who is black, wrote: "The emblem offends more than just African-Americans. Mississippians of all creeds and colors regard it as 'one of the most repulsive symbols of the past.' It is difficult to imagine how a symbol borne of the South's intention to maintain slavery can unite Mississippians in the 21st century."

Moore said Thursday has not decided whether to appeal the ruling to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal in New Orleans.

He said he has mixed emotions about the lawsuit being dismissed even after receiving three death threats because he filed the case.

"I'm relieved that the death threats to me and my family should subside," Moore told The Associated Press. "I'm disappointed that my daughter, for the foreseeable future, still has to live under a regime with an offensive Confederate emblem on the Mississippi flag."

Moore had argued in the lawsuit that his daughter, who started kindergarten this year, should not have to attend a public school with a state flag featuring the Confederate battle emblem.

"It's not just my daughter," Moore said Thursday. "It's countless other African-Americans and other lovers of justice and equality."

Flag supporters and opponents are circulating petitions seeking another statewide vote on the symbol.

"The Confederate battle emblem has no place in shaping a New Mississippi, and is better left retired to history," Reeves wrote. "For that change to happen through the judiciary, however, the Confederate battle emblem must have caused a cognizable legal injury. In this case no such injury has been articulated. Whether that could be shown in a future case, or whether 'the people themselves' will act to change the state flag, remains to be seen."
Imagine: You wake up to the sound of the ocean crashing on the beach just below your condo. You enjoy a fresh mango smoothie for breakfast while checking email and completing a quick work project. By midday, youre down on the beach surfing.

Related: 4 Insanely Awesome Opportunities to Work Remotely from Abroad

Tomorrow, youll meet friends for a hike in the jungle before hopping on a late afternoon conference call. No, this isnt a working vacation: Its your real, day-to-day life in Costa Rica.

An estimated six million Americans have chosen the expat life overseas, either working remotely for American companies or finding jobs locally. One of the hottest destinations for expat Americans is Costa Rica, a tropical paradise. With a stable government, a low cost of living, friendly locals and easy access to sand, surf and sun, Costa Rica is a life in paradise dream come true for many. Plus, a move there is appealing, given the country's multitude of services in place to help expats through the relocation process.

According to Expat Insider, other popular destinations include Ecuador, Mexico, Malta, Singapore, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Thailand, Panama, Canada and Australia. Many of these countries offer affordable costs of living compared with the United States, making them attractive destinations for both retirees on fixed incomes as well as entrepreneurs or small business owners looking to work remotely and still enjoy a high quality of life.

Still other Americans head overseas to cut their living expenses and pay down debt while still enjoying a high quality of life. (Case in point: this American writer, who moved to Bali and paid off $52,000 in student loan debt in a year.)

Thinking about making the move overseas? While most expats will tell you life abroad is pretty incredible, there can be drawbacks, too. Keep the following in mind before making the big move:

1. Culture shock is real, even if youve visited the country before.

Visiting a country as a tourist is a lot different than living there as an expat. As a tourist, minor inconveniences can be charming and part of the travel experience. Day-to-day life, however, is different. This is especially true if youre dealing with a language barrier. Just because you took a few years of Spanish in college doesnt mean youll be able to bargain for goods at the local market or discuss the intricacies of a health concern with a local doctor.

2. Connect with the local expat community.

Dont try to go it alone! Even if youre hoping to become fluent in Spanish or connect with locals, it doesnt hurt to have expat allies. They can tell you how to navigate local government bureaucracies, let you in on where to find your favorite American foods when the cravings kick in and commiserate about the frustrations of living abroad.

Most of all, when culture shock really kicks in and you want to head home, they can provide a valuable perspective on life in your newly adopted home.

Related: How to Build a Culture Across Your Virtual Workforce

3. Set clear telecommuting expectations in advance.

If youll be staying with your current company, establish clear expectations in advance around remote work. While wi-fi is widespread overseas, connection speeds can vary, especially once you get outside of tourist hubs. Because of this, it may not be practical for you to have video Skype calls with your team every day or even every week.

If you plan on traveling during your time abroad, you may also have limited email access at times. In order to stay in the loop, consider setting up a recurring weekly call to discuss project priorities and ensure everyone is on the same page. Cloud-based project management platforms, like Wrike, Zoho Projects, and Trello are all great options for managing workflow with remote employees. Finally, keep in mind potential time-zone challenges. Costa Rica to New York isnt much of a leap, but New Zealand to New York certainly is.

4. Be realistic about working abroad.

Planning to get a job once you arrive and work locally? Be realistic about your options and visa requirements. While many countries are happy to extend long tourist visas to Americans who are working abroad, fewer are willing to let Americans move there for work without a job lined up in advance. Jobs that are readily available, like teaching English or working with a tourist company, may have a much lower salary than what youre used to. With creative budgeting, however, plenty of expats enjoy a high quality of life on a lower salary. Just dont expect to be bringing down the same six figures you made before.

Related: 5 Tips for Starting a Business Abroad

Bottom line:
An Ohio city says it posted shocking photos of two passed out adults in a car with a little boy to illustrate heroins scourge on the community.

The City of East Liverpool shared the photos on its Facebook page Thursday, along with the arrest affidavit. The boy is 4; his mother was the female passed out in the passenger seat.



We feel it necessary to show the other side of this horrible drug," the post said, according to Fox8 Cleveland.

We are well aware that some may be offended by these images and for that we are truly sorry, but it is time that the non- drug-using public sees what we are now dealing with on a daily basis, the post added.

The station reported that an East Liverpool officer stopped the vehicle Wednesday after it almost hit a school bus.

Police said the driver told the officer he was taking his unconscious female passenger to a hospital and then became unresponsive himself.

They were revived by paramedics. The driver, James Acord, 47, and the passenger Rhonda Pasek, 50, were arrested. Cops said they were both from East Liverpool.

The East Liverpool Review reported that on Thursday Acord was sentenced to six months in jail after pleading no contest to charges of driving under the influence and endangering a child.

Pasek pleaded not guilty to charges of endangering a child and disorderly conduct, the paper reported.

Both were still in custody and the boy was turned over to a family friend, according to the paper.

Click here to read more from Fox8 Cleveland.
Did Goldman Sachs really ban their partners and other senior employees from donating to Donald Trumps campaign as the headlines cried out this week? Yes. Was this wrong? No. The investment firm was just complying with new federal regulations issued for the financial services industry that forbids restricted persons from contributing to political campaigns where the candidate running also holds a state or local office, as Trumps running mate Mike Pence does. So everyone: calm down. The firm did nothing wrong.

Almost.

In the same article mentioned above, it was reported that Goldmans CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, is known to be a long time Clinton supporter. In fact, back in June Hillary Clinton released a list of 56 CEOs who support her. The list includes leaders of General Motors, AirBnB and Netflix. Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks recently slammed Trump in a speech as did the leader of MGM Resorts. Warren Buffett and Apples Tim Cook are also not fans of the Republican candidate. Dont feel sorry for Trump (not that you are). Hes got plenty of industry leaders and billionaires that publicly support him too -- from PayPal founder Peter Thiel to investor Carl Icahn to New York Jets owner Woody Johnson.

Whats wrong is not who these people are supporting in this years election. Its that we know who theyre supporting.

Related: Hillary Clinton Conquered These 3 Psychological Traits to Take the Lead

Think about how wrong this is. How does an employee at Apple, General Motors or Netflix who supports Donald Trump feel right now? Maybe shes extremely talented and hard working. Maybe shes a real asset to the company. But her political views are in complete contradiction to the publicly stated views of the CEO she works for. Is she treated fairly at work? Do others raise an eyebrow at her when she walks by and say Oh, theres that Trump supporter, Gawd...what a idiot. Does the fact that she supports a political candidate make it more difficult for her to get a promotion or better compensation?

Im sure that these companies have lots of rules and policies against this kind of discrimination. But thats just stuff on paper. Real life is always different.

Now look at yourself and your business. Are you on the Trump Train? The Clinton Camp? Whatevergood for you. But are you public with these beliefs? Do you have a political banner hanging in your storefront or a campaign sign planted on the front lawn Are you quoted in the paper? Are you active in your political partys activities? Do you host political events? If you do any of this then clearly your employees know. So do your customers, your partners and your suppliers. And thats not a good thing. People can be pretty crazy when it comes to politics.

Related: The Real Reason You Should Never Talk Politics at Work

How crazy? Theres a guy I know who told me that he and his wife stopped going to a popular diner a few months ago because they found that the owner is a big local contributor to Trumps campaign. There are others who refuse to Chic-fil-A because of the CEOs controversial stands. We have friends who love Barbara Streisands music but have told me they would never go to one of her concerts because she talks a lot of politics during the show.

I get it. If I pay $500 for a Barbara Streisand ticket (shoot me in the head if this ever happens) then Im going because I want to hear her sing, not to hear an hour of her political views. When I buy a Starbucks coffee I dont want to be reminded how much the firms CEO detests Hillary Clinton. When I go to a New York Jets game (shoot me in the head if this ever happens too) then I dont want to know about how the Jets owner loves Trump. And Im just a customer. Sure, there are other customers. But when youre a small business you battle for your customers. Uou certainly dont want to alienate potential customers because of your politics.

Related: Businesses Must Make a Stand on Important Social Issues

Consider how much worse even than losing a customer is losing good people? Imagine if those same CEOs publicly declared their opposition to LGBT rights, racial justice and equal pay for women? Im sure their employees would feel pretty awkward coming to work at their companies. Many would be inclined to look for jobs elsewhere. So whats the difference when those same CEOs publicly support or oppose a political candidate? There isnt. They should stop. And so should you.

Do you support Clinton or Trump? WaitI dont want to know.
Test scores and acceptance rates are only one measure of a schools prestige. What students do achieve once they have their diplomas in hand is another way to think about what makes a university education worth the investments of time and tuition.

The schools that are worth investing in are the ones whose alumni get invested in -- by venture capitalists, that is. Thats the thinking behind a recent report from investment data provider PitchBook. It consists of various university rankings based on the amount of VC funding its entrepreneurial alumni receive, the number of companies they found, the number of wildly successful unicorn ventures they produce and other metrics.

Related: Top 50 Universities for VC-Backed Entrepreneurs

While the rankings predictably feature several Ivy League and elite private schools, they also highlight a number of public institutions. Pitchbook tracked founders whose companies received their first round of venture funding between Jan. 1, 2006, and Aug. 15, 2016.

Taking into account the number of entrepreneurs and companies a school has produced, as well as the amount of venture capital its undergraduate alumni have raised, PitchBooks primary ranking puts Stanford University at number one. The Silicon Valley university has produced 1,006 entrepreneurs who have raised more than $18.1 billion.

Here are PitchBooks top 10 universities (undergrad):

1. Stanford University (private)

2. University of California (UC), Berkeley (public)

3. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (private)

4. Harvard University (private)

5. University of Pennsylvania (private)

6. Cornell University (private)

7. University of Michigan (public)

8. University of Texas (public)

9. Tel Aviv University (public)

10. University of Illinois (public)

These schools have produced the founders of some of the most prominent startups of the past 10 years, including Groupon, 23andMe, Houzz and CRISPR Therapeutics. Harvard, Stanford and UPenn take the top three slots for MBA programs.

Harvard, specifically, has yielded the greatest number of unicorn companies (in both undergrad and MBA categories) and serial entrepreneurs (MBA only). UC Berkeley, a public school, has seen more of its undergrad alumni become serial entrepreneurs than any other school, with 157 founders, 153 companies and $4.2 billion in capital raised.

Proximity to Silicon Valley, with its high concentration of venture capitalists, of course gives Stanford and Berkeley students an advantage, as do the connections available to Ivy League students. But the fact that alumni of Big Ten schools in the Midwest are some of those raising the most capital, for instance, is promising. Not everyone can get accepted to Stanford, let alone afford to attend.

According to PitchBook, the mean tuition for a top-10 PitchBook University is $30,293. Thats 29 percent lower than the average top-10 U.S. News & World Report university, which costs $42,548 per year. If you or someone you know is an aspiring entrepreneur trying to decide which school to attend, keep in mind that a higher price wont necessarily translate to more money for your future company.

Related: 9 Low-Cost Business Ideas for College Students

PitchBooks rankings arent confined to the U.S., either. The analysts note that Israeli universities produce the most venture-backed entrepreneurs per capita than any other country. Entrepreneurs who graduated from the three Israeli universities on PitchBooks top 50 list -- Tel Aviv University (ranked number 9), Technion (16) and Hebrew University (tied for 33) -- have raised a total of $12.4 billion in VC funding.

discourage

doesnt matter
World leaders on Friday condemned North Korea's fifth and biggest nuclear warhead test that the country claims will allow it to finally build "at will" an array of stronger, smaller and lighter nuclear weapons.

President Obama called the test a "grave threat to regional security and to international peace and stability." South Korea's president called the detonation, which Seoul estimated as the North's biggest-ever explosive yield, an act of "fanatic recklessness."

The North's boast of a technologically game-changing nuclear test defies both tough international sanctions and long-standing diplomatic pressure to curb its nuclear ambitions. It will raise serious worries in many world capitals that Pyongyang has moved another step closer to its goal of a nuclear-armed missile that could one day strike the U.S. mainland.

Hours after Seoul noted unusual seismic activity near the North's northeastern nuclear test site, Pyongyang said in its state-run media that a test had "finally examined and confirmed the structure and specific features of movement of (a) nuclear warhead that has been standardized to be able to be mounted on strategic ballistic rockets."

"The standardization of the nuclear warhead will enable (North Korea) to produce at will and as many as it wants a variety of smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear warheads of higher strike power," the North said. "This has definitely put on a higher level (the North's) technology of mounting nuclear warheads on ballistic rockets."

Such tests are prohibited by the United Nations but this is North Korea's second this year. The UN Security Council is expected to meet later Friday behind closed doors to debate how to address Pyongyang's fifth nuclear test. The US, Japan and South Korea requested the meeting.

"If confirmed as a nuclear test, this act constitutes yet another breach of the universally accepted norm against nuclear testing; a norm that has been respected by 183 countries since 1996," Lassina Zerbo, Executive Secretary of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), said Friday.

"It also underlines yet again the urgent need for the international community to act on putting in place a legally binding ban on nuclear testing once and for all," said Zerbo.

In a statement Friday, U.S. House leader Paul Ryan also condemned the test, saying the country "continues to threaten our allies and defy the international community with its belligerent behavior."

Ryan also critizied the White House, claiming the "destabilizing activity is also a consequence of the administrations failed policy of strategic patience and its hollow pivot to Asia."

North Korea, led by a third-generation dictatorship and wary of outsiders, protects its nuclear program as a closely guarded state secret, and the claims about advancements made in its testing could not be independently verified. But they center on a technological mystery that has long bedeviled outside experts: How far has North Korea gotten in efforts to consistently shrink down nuclear warheads so they can fit on long-range missiles?

South Korea's main spy agency told lawmakers in a closed-door briefing after the test that it does not think Pyongyang currently has the ability to develop miniaturized nuclear weapons that can be mounted on ballistic missiles, but intelligence officials expressed worries that the North's efforts to do so are progressing quicker than previously thought, said Kim Byungkee, a lawmaker from the opposition Minjoo Party.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye strongly condemned the test, saying in a statement that it showed the "fanatic recklessness of the Kim Jong Un government as it clings to nuclear development." Kim is the North Korean leader.

Park's office said she spoke with U.S. President Barack Obama about the test Friday morning, during a regional summit in Laos. Park said South Korea will employ all available measures to put more pressure on North Korea, which has previously conducted nuclear tests every three to four years.

China, which wields veto power and has historically been an ally of North Korea, is not pleased with Pyongyangs nuclear test. However, Beijing is angered by moves by the U.S. and South Korea to install a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system (THAAAD) in South Korea. Chinas geopolitical concerns make it their policy to avoid a collapse of the North Korean regime because it could create a massive refugee crisis at its border and set in motion unification of the Korean Peninsula into one country that may be pro-Western rather than a puppet regime of Beijing.

South Korea's weather agency said the explosive yield of the North Korean blast would have been 10 to 12 kilotons, or 70 to 80 percent of the force of the 15-kiloton atomic bomb the United States dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945. The North's fourth test was an estimated six kilotons.

North Korea said there was no radioactive material leaked, but the explosion put the region on edge.

Chinese state media reported that the nation's environmental protection agency started nuclear radiation monitoring. Japanese planes began to collect air samples from national air space to analyze possible radioactive materials. Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike said Japan's capital city is also testing water samples and monitoring radiation levels in the air.

In the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, residents were delighted.

"It's really great news," said Rim Jong Su, 42. "Now, I am full of confidence that if the enemies make any little provocations we will make a counter attack and we will surely win."

The 5.0 magnitude earthquake Friday is the largest of the four past quakes associated with North Korean nuclear tests, according to South Korea's weather agency. Artificial seismic waves measuring 3.9 were reported after North Korea's first nuclear test in 2006; 4.8 was reported from its fourth test this January.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has overseen a robust increase in the number and kinds of missiles tested this year. Not only has the range of the weapons successfully tested jumped significantly, but the country is working to perfect new platforms for launching them  submarines and mobile launchers  giving the North greater ability to threaten the tens of thousands of U.S. troops stationed throughout Asia.

North Korea has fired a total of 33 ballistic missiles since Kim Jong Un took power in 2011, Seoul's Defense Ministry said. In comparison, North Korea fired 16 ballistic missiles during the 17-year rule of Kim's father, Kim Jong Il.

The seismic activity comes on the 68th anniversary of the founding of North Korea's government and just days after world leaders gathered in China for the G-20 economic summit.

Any test will lead to a strong push for new, tougher sanctions at the United Nations and further worsen already abysmal relations between Pyongyang and its neighbors. North Korea is already one of the most heavily sanctioned places on earth, and many question whether the penalties work.

China has come out in strong opposition of North Korea's fifth nuclear test, a key denunciation for Pyongyang by its economic lifeline and only major ally. The Foreign Ministry issued a statement Friday criticizing North Korea for a test that disregards international objections.

Pyongyang likely wanted to show the world that strong international sanctions following its fourth nuclear test and long-range rocket launch earlier this year haven't discouraged its efforts to advance its nuclear weapons and missiles programs, according to Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea expert at Seoul's Dongguk University.

North Korea is thought to have a handful of rudimentary nuclear bombs and has spent decades trying to perfect a multistage, long-range missile to eventually carry smaller versions of those bombs. But its miniaturization abilities are a mystery.

After several failures, North Korea put its first satellite into space with a long-range rocket launched in December 2012, and has since launched another satellite on a similar rocket. Experts say that ballistic missiles and rockets in satellite launches share similar bodies, engines and other technology.

In January, North Korea claimed to have conducted a hydrogen bomb test, but many foreign governments and experts were skeptical about the claim. After that test, some analysts said the country likely needed only a couple more test explosions before acquiring a miniaturized warhead that could be mounted on a long-range missile.

North Korea's persistent pursuit of missiles and nuclear weapons has long been one of the most intractable foreign policy problems for U.S. administrations.

Diplomacy has so far failed. Six-nation negotiations on dismantling North Korea's nuclear program in exchange for aid were last held in late 2008 and fell apart in early 2009.

The Korean Peninsula remains technically at war, as the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.

Fox News' James Rosen, Jonathan Wachtel, Chad Pergram and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
In a special runoff election that was held on Thursday, Incumbent Gay Wilkinson won the majority of votes to keep his District 1 county commissioner seat.

Wilkinson received 1,561 votes (nearly 55 percent) while his opponent Linda Black received 1,280 votes. He will not have an opponent in the November election.

The special election was scheduled after a court-ordered recount of the ballots in District 1 was set in motion after the August Primary vote was determined to be a less than 1 percent difference. After the recount, the votes resulted in a tie in the first race because three ballots were not properly filled in and the machine rejected them.

Due to it being a tie, both Republican candidates decided to settle the matter with a special election rather than a coin toss.

On Thursday night, Wilkinson felt a lot of emotions including relief. Wilkinson said he is so thankful the election is finally over and he is so happy he has the chance to serve another term as a county commissioner.

There have been ups and downs with this whole thing, said Wilkinson. My wife is really sensitive and has been having a rough time through all this, but she has gotten better and its fine. No matter the outcome we would have been fine and I would have just had to find something else to do to keep busy.

Wilkinson said he is thankful the constituents voted him in again to do another term.

We have worked hard and we have accomplished a lot of stuff, said Wilkinson. I know not everyone was going to vote for me and I know there are things that people dont always like. Everyone has been civil and the problems that we have had have been minor problems. Im just one of the commissioners, there are three commissioners that have decisions to make and I look forward to working with them again.

Black congratulated Wilkinson on his win before the last precinct came in because she believed there wouldnt be enough votes from Libertyville to sway the totals at the time.

It was nice of her to do that and it was the right thing to do. I would have done the same thing had it been reversed, said Wilkinson. It was a long and expensive race and I am thankful to have wound up winning.

Black said she wanted to thank the citizens who supported her and the people who took the time to come out and vote.

I enjoyed meeting a lot of new people the last three weeks on their doorsteps, said Black. My family and I have worked very hard to get our message out there about bringing St. Francois County forward. The voters have made their decision tonight and respectfully I have congratulated my opponent and I wish the county well.

St. Francois County Clerk Mark Hedrick said the voter turnout for the day was 16.15 percent and considering it was a runoff election and the rain, it was a good voter turnout for an election like this. There were a total of 2,723 voters who participated in this election out of the 17,596 registered voters in the district.

Everything went well and we got up and running with no problems, said Hedrick. All the poll workers were there and the polls were open from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. and the voters had a chance to vote. We had no problems during the day and it all worked out.

Hedrick said the only thing they ran into was they had people calling from District 2 who wanted to vote in this election. He added of course they cant because they have to be in District 1. He said people were interested in voting, which is a good thing going into the November election.

We will certify the election (today) and then I can get the November election ready to go, so I can have absentee ballots ready to go by Sept. 27, said Hedrick. The results came in really quick, we had 10 of them in right away and the last one a while later, but overall it was still really fast.

Hedrick stressed they had never had a runoff election before in St. Francois County. He added it was ironic that there were two Missouri counties with a tied vote for the same type of race.

Ripley County was the other one and they had theirs last Thursday and we had ours this Thursday, explained Hedrick. By statute you cant run it any sooner than 14 days and no later than 30 days, so its a short timeframe to get everything done. We have to do the same amount of work for this type of election as we would for the November election.
The U.N. Security Council is calling on all parties in Yemen civil war to halt all military activity and abide by the terms of a Cessation of Hostilities agreed upon in April.

The council said in statement issued Thursday that the humanitarian situation will continue to deteriorate in the absence of a durable peace agreement and urged all parties to resume talks with Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed.

Houthi rebels and forces allied with ousted President Ali Abdullah Saleh seized the capital Sanaa in September 2014, forcing the internationally recognized government to flee the country. A Saudi-led coalition has conducted an extensive air campaign against the Houthis since March 2015, pushing them out of southern Yemen, but failing to dislodge them from Sanaa.
A British-Iranian woman detained for months in Iran on suspicion of planning the "soft toppling" of the country's government while traveling with her young daughter has been sentenced to five years in prison, her husband said Friday.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was convicted on "secret charges" in a Revolutionary Court, Richard Ratcliffe said, making her the first dual national known to be convicted as part of a string of detentions following Iran's nuclear deal with world powers.

While Iranian authorities haven't offered a motive for the detentions, analysts and families of those held have suggested hard-liners within the country's security services want concessions from the West in exchange for releasing them.

"It does seem strange you'd have a sentence without any charges," Ratcliffe told The Associated Press. "You can't defend yourself against a secret."

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who works for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of the news agency, was sentenced Tuesday by Judge Abolghassem Salavati in Tehran's Revolutionary Court, her husband said. Salavati is known for his tough sentences and has heard other politically charged cases, including that of Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian.

There was no immediate mention of Zaghari-Ratcliffe's hearing in Iranian state media. Iran's mission to the United Nations did not respond to a request for comment. Officials in Tehran could not be reached for comment on Friday, the start of the Eid al-Adha holiday.

She was detained in April while trying to fly out of the country with her toddler daughter, Gabriella, who remains in Iran with family after authorities seized her passport. Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard has said Zaghari-Ratcliffe participated in the "design and implementation of cyber and media projects to cause the soft toppling of the Islamic Republic," without elaborating.

Since Iran struck a deal with world powers to limit its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief, hard-line security forces have increasingly targeted dual nationals. Iranian law does not recognize dual nationality, meaning those detained cannot receive consular assistance.

The British Embassy in Tehran reopened in August 2015 after being closed for four years and just recently, British Airways resumed its flights to Tehran. But while diplomatic relations have normalized, hard-liners in Iran still view Britain with deep suspicion over its role with the United States in the 1953 coup that installed the shah.

The British Foreign Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The prisoner swap in January between Iran and the U.S. that freed Rezaian and three other Iranian-Americans was in exchange for pardons or charges dropped against seven Iranians -- six of whom hold dual U.S. citizenship -- serving time for or accused of sanctions violations in the U.S.

U.S. President Barack Obama's administration also made a $400 million cash delivery to Iran -- repaying money from a 1970s Iranian account to buy U.S. military equipment -- contingent on their release. That's garnered criticism from Republicans in an election year. The U.S. and other countries are believed to be holding other Iranians who Tehran wants released.

Dual nationals known to be held by Iran also include:

-- Homa Hoodfar , an Iranian-Canadian woman who is a retired professor at Montreal's Concordia University;

-- Siamak Namazi , an Iranian-American businessman who has advocated for closer ties between the two countries;

-- Baquer Namazi , a former Iranian and U.N. official in his 80s who is the father of Siamak;

-- Robin Shahini , an Iranian-American detained while visiting family who previously had made online comments criticizing Iran's human rights record;

-- Nizar Zakka, a U.S. permanent resident from Lebanon who has done work for the American government .

Still missing is former FBI agent Robert Levinson, who vanished in Iran in 2007 while on an unauthorized CIA mission.
Rome prosecutors investigating the torture death of an Italian researcher in Cairo have been pressing their Egyptian counterparts for detailed records of the man's cell phone use before he disappeared on Jan. 25.

Egyptian prosecutors were in Rome Friday for a second day of meetings with Italian investigators. The Italians have been seeking more information, including on their requests for Giulio Regeni's cell-phone traffic. The doctoral student's body, bearing torture marks, was found Feb. 3 along a Cairo highway. Regeni, who was researching labor movements, disappeared on the anniversary of the 2011 Egyptian popular protests.

An autopsy in Italy found signs of torture including cut marks on his body resembling letters. The Corriere della Sera newspaper this week quoted his mother, Paola, as saying "'They used him like a blackboard.'"
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Russia has deployed cruise missiles, multiple rocket launchers, tanks and its latest anti-aircraft system at massive military drills in Crimea.

Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine in April 2014 and since then has sent thousands of troops and heavy weaponry there.

The defense ministry invited dozens of journalists Friday to a remote firing range at the Black Sea coast to display elaborate war games which involved paratroopers, tanks, cruise missiles launched from a submarine and the S-400 anti-aircraft missile system.

The drills, which began across southern Russia and Crimea earlier this week and involve over 120,000 troops, are some of the largest exercises Russia has held for years.
Conservationists say Zimbabwe and Malawi are allowing flights by anti-poaching drones as part of an initiative supported by Google and the WWF conservation group.

The drones, which look like large model airplanes, also have flown in South African wildlife areas. They are part of the Air Shepherd program of the U.S.-based Lindbergh Foundation.

The drones, which can act as a highly visible deterrent to poachers fearing capture, have already started flying in Malawi's Liwonde National Park.

Drone operator Otto Werdmuller Von Elgg, who is based in South Africa, said Friday that one of his teams plans to start operations next week in Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe's biggest reserve.

Some poachers in Hwange have used cyanide to poison elephants in large numbers before cutting off their tusks.
Bach to Rock Music School Opens First Connecticut Location in Ridgefield

Community Invited to Free Grand Opening on September 24

September 09, 2016 // Franchising.com // RIDGEFIELD, CT - To celebrate Bach to Rocks grand opening, the school will host an open house onSaturday, September 24 from 11 a.m.  2 p.m. at 15 Danbury Road, Suite 5 (Girolametti Plaza), Ridgefield, Connecticut, 06877. The community is invited to tour the school, enjoy a free music lesson, learn about individual lessons and group classes, try out free toddler Mommy and Me classes, enter into prize drawings and giveaways, check out the recording studio, meet the teachers, and more.

The new Bach to Rock in Ridgefield is certain to become a community hub not only in Ridgefield, Danbury, Wilton and Redding, but also in nearby North and South Salem, Lewisboro and Pound Ridge. Carl Giangrasso, our new franchisee heading the school, is very dedicated. His enthusiasm is certain to resonate with customers, said President of Bach to Rock, Brian Gross. The new teaching team is very talented, and covers all music genres. And that synchs up with the B2R method, which encourages students to explore the kinds of music they love, and then play that music with other students in a band and perform in a public space, Gross said.

We jumped right into launch mode before construction on the school even started. We have been out in the community participating in events such as the Ridgefield Kids Fest, SummerFest and other local activities, said franchisee Carl Giangrasso. Its very gratifying to know we will be helping musicians and aspiring musicians of all ages to express their musical creativity, Giangrasso said.

Bach to Rock Ridgefield will offer a variety of programs for students of all ages, including individual lessons, group classes such as DJ lessons, Rock Band, early childhood programs for children as young as toddler and preschool age, summer camps and birthday parties. Studies have shown that learning to play music in a group helps students learn teamwork, develop social skills and build self-esteem, among other benefits. The school will also feature Bach to Rocks new Touch Screen Tablet Technology, which allows teachers to customize lessons; gives parents the ability to view their childrens progress and homework; and provides administrators with the necessary tools to ensure students are receiving a well-balanced music education.

Bach to Rock is expanding at a robust and steady pace. The franchise has repeatedly been named to EntrepreneursFranchise 500 and was listed in the Top Ten Trending Categories for 2016. Most recently, Bach to Rock won Best ofBethesda Magazine 2016 with first place in the Best Kids' Art or Music Classes category as the readers' pick. In 2014, Inc.Magazine named Bach to Rock one of the fastest-growing private companies in America for the third consecutive year. Franchise Times has ranked it as one of the 500 Powerhouse Brands and on its Next 300 Franchise System list. In addition, Washington Family Magazine named Bach to Rock to its Best Music Instruction list and readers of Northern Virginia Magazine voted the company as Best Piano Instruction. Bach to Rock also was named the number one company to watch by the Washington Business Journal.

Bach to Rock is currently seeking qualified candidates to open franchise locations in major metropolitan markets throughout the country. Bach to Rock is an opportunity for entrepreneurs to build a business that is dedicated to helping children and adults learn to play the music they love. While music experience or ability is not necessary, candidates should bring strong business acumen and the ability to build teams to ensure the schools success.

To learn more about music school franchise ownership opportunities with Bach to Rock, as well as its veteran and franchise referral programs, contact Ralph Rillon, vice president of franchise development, at 1-855-227-7570 orfranchise@bachtorock.com, or visit www.bachtorockfranchise.com.

For more information or to register for classes at B2R Ridgefield:

Visit: 15 Danbury Road, Ridgefield, CT 06877 (Girolametti Plaza)

Call: 475-215-0011 or Toll Free: 877-B2R-8558

Email: ridgefield@bachtorock.com

Web: https://ridgefield.b2rmusic.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/B2RRidgefieldCT/

About Bach to Rock

Bach to Rock (B2R) is a music education school for students of all ages from early childhood through high school and beyond. B2R knows learning music should be fun and students learn best when they play music they enjoy. Weekly ensemble instruction and band formations lead to public concerts, Battle of the Bands and recording sessions in B2Rs professional recording studios. B2R builds technique, fosters teamwork and enhances self-esteem through private lessons, band instruction, and public performances. Bach to Rock opened its first corporate-owned location in 2007 in Bethesda, Maryland. With the latest opening in Ridgefield, B2R has now grown to 16 with schools in California, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Texas. Eight franchised schools are scheduled to open in Arizona, California, Connecticut, Georgia, New York, North Carolina, Texas and Virginia, with an additional 30 schools in development nationwide. Follow B2R on Facebook at www.facebook.com/BachtoRock and on Twitter at www.twitter.com/BachtoRock. For more information, visit www.bachtorock.com or call 1-877-227-8558.

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The Goddard Schools Dynamic Learning Through Play Curriculum Opens New Houston Location

Play Based Preschool Now Open For Enrollment

September 09, 2016 // Franchising.com // HOUSTON - Goddard Systems, Inc. (GSI), the franchisor of The Goddard School preschool system, announces its newest school in Houston, TX is open. Located at 3655 Barker Cypress Rd. Houston, TX 77084, the new school is owned by franchisees Mohammed, Maha and Sarah Sultan.

Prior to joining The Goddard School, Mohammed served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War before retiring to lead successful careers in auto part sales and commercial real estate. He and his wife Maha first discovered The Goddard School through Wally and Sally Deifallah, close family friends and franchisees of The Goddard School located in Cypress (Rock Creek), TX. Maha and Mohammeds daughter, Sarah, will join her parents new venture, bringing with her years of business success from owning and operating an out-of-home bakery. The Sultans chose to expand The Goddard School preschools reach in the Houston market in order to provide a high-quality and convenient preschool program for families in Rolling Green and surrounding neighborhoods.

The Goddard School preschool system prides itself on its unique dual-management system, a distinguisher in the early childhood education industry. Franchise owners are onsite at each location and work alongside an educational director, whose focus is to communicate and work with teachers, as well as to implement The Goddard School curriculum. This dual-management system ensures a hands-on, community-focused approach when it comes to early childhood education. With each school opening, The Goddard School also has a local economic impact, creating an average of 20 to 25 jobs within the community.

The Goddard Schools play-based approach, called Fun, Learning Experience (or F.L.EX.), is grounded in research on how children learn best: children experience the deepest, most genuine learning when they are having fun.

At The Goddard School, the focus is on building each childs emotional, academic, social, creative and physical skills to provide a well-rounded experience and ensure each one becomes confident, joyful and fully prepared in school and in life.

With nearly 30 years of experience in early childhood education, The Goddard Schools unique dual-management system creates lasting community bonds as owners are on-site at the Schools to provide support to the communities they serve, said Joe Schumacher, Chief Executive Officer of Goddard Systems, Inc. One area that truly sets us apart from other childcare systems is our philosophy based on learning through play, designed to teach and reinforce 21st century skills, including social behaviors such as communication, critical thinking, creativity and collaboration. This philosophy fosters a lifelong love of learning and creates meaningful connections at an early age.

Jobs relating to STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics) are currently the fastest growing segment of the U.S. economy, and a focus on developing 21st century skills such as creativity and innovation as well as the abilities to collaborate, communicate and think critically, is expected to increase over time. By introducing 21st century skill concepts early on, children develop a strong foundation and a passion for STEAM at the very beginning of their education.

We chose to open The Goddard School as a family to pursue our collective dream of playing an integral role in developing the next generation, said on-site owner, Sarah Sultan. Through The Goddard Schools trusted, play-based approach to learning, we will be able to share our passion with Houston families, and, as a result, make a profound impact on the lives of children in our community.

The Goddard School located in Houston, TX is located at 3655 Barker Cypress Rd. Houston, TX 77084. To reach this location, please call (281) 819-6750 or email Houston3TX@goddardschools.com. For general information and franchising opportunities, please visit www.goddardschoolfranchise.com.

About The Goddard School Franchise

The Goddard School Franchise, franchisor of The Goddard School preschools, was named the No. 1 Childcare Franchise in the United States by Entrepreneur magazine for the fifteenth consecutive year (January 2016) and one of the Top 200 Franchise Systems (in worldwide sales) by Franchise Times for the ninth consecutive year (October 2015). Headquartered in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, The Goddard School Franchise currently licenses more than 450 franchised Schools with more than 50,000 students in 36 states. The Goddard School's AdvancED- and Middle States-accredited F.L.EX. Learning Program (Fun Learning Experience), a comprehensive play-based curriculum developed with early childhood education experts, provides the best childhood preparation for social and academic success. With a proven system in place and a strong network of dedicated franchisees, The Goddard School Franchise is the acknowledged leader in franchised childcare and a premier educational childcare provider. For more information, visit www.goddardschoolfranchise.com.

SOURCE The Goddard School Franchise

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ON A beautiful day in late August, we were at the Outer Banks, enjoying the sand and sun, wind and waves.

The Atlantic Ocean was inviting and exhilarating, and I splashed around happily. During past visits, there have been times I had an eerie sense I wasnt alone in the water. I regularly looked over my shoulder, searching for a shadow.

Earlier in the week, my companion, Lou, and I mentioned there hadnt been much talk about shark attacks along the North Carolina beaches this year. Plus, the locals told us that the schools of big fish hadnt moved along the coast yet, and that the fishing, at least for the big stuff, hadnt been so hot.

As I toweled off, I decided sharks hadnt come inland this summer because there were no fish for them to pursue.

Of course, you know what happened next.

Within two hours, Lou and I had a close encounter of the dorsal-fin kind. Thankfully, it took place at the end of a fishing line.

Usually when we fish, I stand in the surf and catch the small stuff, which Lou cuts up to use as bait on three larger poles. He casts these lines into the water and waits for something to hit.

Not much was happening on this particular afternoon. Lou was messing with another line, and I was under the umbrella, eating lunch.

All of a sudden, the big red pole lurched forward with such force, it almost jumped out of the pole holder. I tossed my salad, grabbed the pole and tried to hang on.

Whatever was on the other end was pulling so hard and taking out so much line, the reel made a screeching sound. I tried to reel in it, but wasnt making much progress.

Lou took over, and we guessed there must be a sting ray on the other end. Weve caught those before, and they typically eat and runthen flop around for a long time.

Lou patiently walked up and down, reeling every now and then and letting the fish tire itself. I went back to my lunch.

After 15 or 20 minutes, I looked up, expecting to see the wings of a string ray. Instead I saw a triangular fin, and my heart started beating a little faster.

Long story short, Lou caught a shark on a fishing pole that never should have been able to handle something that big. It really was amazing that the line didnt snap and the shark didnt break away.

For those who know about rods and reels, we used a 20-pound test Sufix line and 4/0 hooks (which arent all that large). We used two hooks on a bottom rig with an 8-ounce sinker, and the bait was either spot fish or sea mullet caught earlier in the day.

Believe it or not, Lou had brought a wooden walking stick to use in case a big fish got too close when I was in the water. He never said the s word.

I used the pole to push the shark closer to shore for photos. Then, we used the same pole to push it back into the ocean, where it rolled a couple times, then seemed to be revived.

Before we released the shark, I laid the pole in front of it to gauge its length. The shark was about 5-1/2 feet long.

Its hard to guess its weight. Lou tied a string to its tail fin, and it took both of us to drag it, so Im assuming it was close to 100 pounds.

People at the nearby tackle shop told us it was a dusky shark, a typically non-aggressive fish thats a favorite catch of recreational fishermen. Its often used in shark fin soup.

As weve shared our story, people have been a littlewell, a lotfreaked out by seeing a shark so close to shore. Theyve asked if I got back in the water.

I did.

I look at it this way: If we had any idea of the furry and scaly, creepy and crawling things in the water, the woods or even right outside our front door, we probably would never leave the house. So, while its good to be cautious and careful, you cant stop living for fear of what might be out there.
Stafford County recently became the second Fredericksburg-area locality to publicly consider reducing the fee for concealed handgun permits.

On Tuesday, supervisors once again took up the topic, though they didn't take a formal vote. Supervisors can only suggest that the Sheriff's Office lower a portion of the fee.

Supervisor Paul Milde, who initially floated the idea in an August meeting, felt he didn't receive enough information from officials Tuesday to determine whether the county was profiting, breaking even, or losing money with Stafford's $50 fee, the maximum allowed by the state.

Milde pitched the fee reduction after receiving a letter from local attorney Jason Pelt, who thinks the fee should be reduced from $50 to $15.

But other supervisors and staff members were satisfied with Stafford's fee.

"If you can afford ammunition, then you can afford this," Supervisor Gary Snellings said, holding up his permit. "I think we are set where we are."

Spotsylvania County and the city of Fredericksburg also charge $50 for concealed handgun permits. The Spotsylvania Board of Supervisors discussed cutting the fee in March, but never took any action on the proposal by Supervisor Chris Yakabouski.

Localities can reduce or eliminate the local portion of the fee$35 in Staffordwhich goes toward the cost of mandatory background checks on applicants by sheriffs offices. State law doesnt require a charge for the background checks, though it caps the amount at $35 per application.

Stafford's $50 fee includes $10 collected by the circuit court, and $5 for the Virginia State Police to process an application. The $10 court fee is required by Virginia law; a state senators proposal to make it optional died in a committee this year.

"I understand that there is a cost associated with the background check," Pelt said Thursday. "I want to ensure that the Sheriff is only charging the actual cost."

In a letter to Milde requesting the fee reduction, Pelt mentioned that Prince William County had cut the charge from $50 to $15. He mentioned that Prince William Board of Supervisors Chairman Corey Stewartwho also chairs Republican presidential nominee Donald Trumps Virginia campaignpushed for the reduced fee.

In passing this measure, Chairman Stewart stated that residents should not be charged for exercising their right to bear arms as guaranteed by the Second Amendment, wrote Pelt, a candidate in last years Stafford Commonwealths Attorney race.

But some elected leaders and staff members involved in the permit processing argued that the fee should stay the same.

"I just have a little dog in this fight. It says $10 in the code," Clerk of Court Kathy Sterne told supervisors Tuesday. "My concern is that if they lower the cost and the Sheriff's Office doesn't have the personnel to work on this, I don't want it to get to the point that they don't have the help to help me process these permits."

She said that since she first took office in January, her office has reduced the permit turnaround from six weeks to two weeks. She said her office rarely receives any complaints about the fee.

Her office has processed 1,800 permits since January, she said. The county took in $95,000 from the fee last fiscal year and $67,000 during the fiscal year before that.

When Milde asked Captain John McAlister with the Sheriff's Office Tuesday whether the permits cost nearly $100,000 a year, McAlister said it fluctuates depending on the number and complexity of the applications received each year.

He said applications can take anywhere from 20 minutes to three hours and involve multiple departments. Two people routinely process the applications, he said, and another two help out when volume is high.

Milde said he would continue waiting for more information. Pelt said he submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the Sheriff's Office Thursday asking for expenses related to processing the permits.
Sen. Mark Warner said that when he graduated from college in the 1980s, he had the freedom to fail.

He had the opportunity to pay back $15,000 in school loans while using savings to invest in an energy company that failed. He also failed at real estate for six months, before making it big in the technology sphere as an early investor in Nextel. That success eventually helped him break into politics.

He told a class of 100 students at the University of Mary Washington on Friday afternoon that you guys, as you graduate, will go into a radically different economy than weve ever seen, than when I graduated.  The fundamental idea that someone can get a job and work for that company for 40 years is disappearing.

Warner lectured on his public policy priorities and took questions from students in sociology professor Eric Bonds Social Issues class, which was combined with students from political science professor Stephen Farnsworths classes.

Its a great opportunity for students to learn about policy issues and talk about their concerns with elected officials, Farnsworth said.

Warners appearance also gave students an idea of the job market they will soon graduate into. New businesses and technologies that change the typical 40-hour workweek pose new challenges to employees.

Paramount among those challenges, Warner said, is the retraction of social insurance such as Medicare and Social Security.

He said 35 percent of workers are already free agents, working on a freelance or part-time basis for multiple employers. He estimates that half of American workers will have that status in 20 years, and said the changing nature of work requires rethinking benefits.

Its more future-versus-past than Democrat-versus-Republican, he said about approaching the issue. I lived the American dream.  Im a big believer in capitalism, but I have to say I dont believe the current form of American capitalism is working for enough people.

Warner said he believes businesses focusing too heavily on short-term results hurt long-term economic vitality. In that vein, he said Capitalism 2.0 should feature incentives for businesses to be responsible and invest in workforce development.

It depends on you guys, he said to the students. I have faith in your generation. You are not political in a classic sense, but want to work for and buy from companies that are responsible.

John Bownik, a senior political science and economics major, asked Warner how to grow the economy when students graduate with such large debts that they cant take entrepreneurial risks.

Warner said while he would love to offer free college for everyone, free money is not the solution. He said short-term answers include more financial literacy training for aspiring students, helping companies pay for workers to go to college the same way they are incentivized to pay for graduate education, and guaranteeing continuing education via community college or trade certification.

A student with a chronic illness asked Warner about drug costs and her fears that the next administration will undo the Affordable Care Act.

He said the act, like most big laws, is imperfect, but is a step in the right direction that should be refined rather than overturned. The biggest issue is its inability to keep drug costs under control, he said.

Warner said government should be able to negotiate drug prices and the pipeline from research to the shelf should be shortened to increase competition.

Another question was about U.S.Russia relations and Russian President Valdimir Putin.

Do we need relations with Russia? Absolutely, he said. But Ive never seen a time when kissing up to a bully had a good result.

He said Putins fearmongering places blame on the West and the LGBT community, even as he invades other countries to distract from real issues. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has said he admires Putin and has praised him for his leadership.

It would not stand in any other election that a candidate would praise a dictator, Warner said.

Other questions ranged from immigration reform to Edward Snowden.

You can fix this, he said, urging students to vote. Get out of your political foxholes and reward good behavior.

The general public has the chance to see a political debate at the college in October.

U.S. Rep. Rob Wittman, R1st District, will debate his Democratic challenger, Matt Rowe, Oct. 24 at 7:30 p.m. at UMWs Dodd Auditorium in Fredericksburg.
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JUST AS our nation accepts its 10,000th Syrian refugee, calls to ban future Muslims from entering the country have reached a fevered pitch.

In recent weeks, the patriotism of an American Muslim soldier has been called into question without cause; a New York-based imam and his associate were slain; and a county commissioner in Georgia temporarily blocked the construction of a mosque.

Thankfully, Americans of all political and religious backgrounds are pushing back, which is good news as we mark 15 years since a group of Muslim terrorists attacked the nation on Sept. 11, 2001.

Many Americans understand that hatred of Muslims is an assault on American ideals. Weve spent our lives working in different spheresone of us is an evangelical Christian pastor, the other a retired U.S. Marine generalbut weve both seen firsthand how Islamophobia diminishes us all and weakens our country.

Of course, Muslims are the primary victims of Islamophobia, which prevents them from exercising their basic rights, including their right to religious freedom. It also threatens their lives. Violence against Muslims spikes after high-profile incidents of terrorism, and a recent Georgetown University report found that an upsurge has coincided with the presidential race. Between March 2015 and March 2016, 12 American Muslims were murdered in bias-motivated attacks.

Yet Islamophobia isnt a Muslim issue. It is an issue for anyone who cares about the United States and the values that undergird it.

This shouldnt need to be said, but lies have gained so much traction that we feel we need to: Terrorist groups represent a miniscule fraction of Muslims worldwide, who are, after all, both the primary victims and primary opponents of the Islamic State and al-Qaida. According to the FBI, the vast majority of terrorist attacks in the United States are committed by non-Muslims. Terrorists speak for Muslims no more than the Ku Klux Klan speaks for Christians.

Nearly all Muslims are part of the American mainstream. More than 5,000 Muslims are in the U.S. military, and thousands more serve their country in other ways, as teachers, doctors, lawyers, social workers and public officials.

Muslims stand ready to combat extremism, but the bigoted rhetoric of public officials could make them reluctant to cooperate with law enforcement. A similar dynamic takes place overseas, where American hostility toward Muslims alienates communities whose cooperation the United States needs to wage an effective battle against terrorism.

Calls for a blanket ban on Muslims refugees appear to validate the clash-of-civilization propaganda of the Islamic State, which uses such rhetoric to recruit followers. Conversely, openness to Muslim refugees shines a light on Islamic State propaganda. Make no mistake: Islamophobia weakens U.S. national security.

Its also important to remember that while Christians are a majority in the United States, they are a minority when they travel or move to many other countries. Treating Muslims with respect here improves Americas standing to defend the religious freedom of Christians and other religious minorities around the world. In this way, and in many others, hostility toward Muslims cuts against our own best interests.

These debates are understandably emotional and intense, but emotion should never lead us to turn our backs on the values that have made us strong as a people and have made us a light for the world. Millions of Americans share a passionate commitment to our founding ideals, and no ideal is more foundational than freedom of religion.

It is this freedom that allows us to practice our faith without government interference and that has formed a society of astonishing religious pluralism. Thats America, a place where people are free to worship according to the dictates of their own conscience.

Bob Roberts is the pastor of Northwood Church near Dallas. Charles C. Krulak is a retired commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps. They wrote this for The Dallas Morning News.
VIRGINIAS retirement system for public employees has more than $68 billion in long-term pension liabilities. Thats a lot of money. And the state doesnt have that much in the pension fund. In fact, it is about $22 billion short of what is needed to pay pensions in the decades ahead.

The commonwealths retirement program covers more than 600,000 current and retired public workers. They represent law-enforcement officers, schoolteachers, local government workers and the state employees who fix roads, issue drivers licenses, teach at our universities and make sure that our restaurants are regularly inspected. There are slight variations in the plans for public-school educators, state troopers or those who work in other fields.

But regardless, the Virginia Retirement System is the agency that issues those pension checks when you finally clock out at the end of a career.

That the VRS is underfunded is not new. For years, legislators and investment experts have looked for ways to eliminate that liability. Each year, more money goes into the fund, but it never seems to catch up to where it should be. The General Assembly has tinkered with changes in the system several times, and even added some options during the 2012 legislative session.

Thats why House Speaker Bill Howell, a Stafford County Republican, pushed through legislation earlier this year that established a commission that will do an in-depth study of the states workforce, the pension program and its future. The Commission on Employee Retirement Security & Pension Reform doesnt have a catchy acronym, but Howell foresees the commissioners taking a hard look at it and recommending possible changes. Clearly, he anticipates changes, because the commissions name calls for reform.

Howell wants the commission to consider offering a new type of retirement program for new public employees. Current employees and retirees will likely see no major changes. Now, state employees have a defined-benefits pension plan, which uses a formula based on the employees age, length of service and average final compensation.

A change made by the legislature in 2012 for new employees took effect in 2014. Its a hybrid plan that calls for employees to pay 4 percent of their salary toward the pension benefits and 1 percent into a 401(k)-style contribution plan. The government also will make a mandatory 1 percent contribution.

As traditional defined-benefit plans have been pushed aside by many employers, 401(k) plans have become popular with the private sector. There is a cost savings for businesses or government with such a change. With a retirement plan that has unfunded liabilities in the billions, Virginia legislators are smart to consider it.

Employees gain some leeway in deciding how much to invest in their retirement. Most employers offer a percentage match to the employee contribution, and taxes are deferred on the investment. Such plans are also portable. An employee can take the money and roll it into another tax-deferred account if he or she leaves state employment.

In addition, the commission is looking into the return the state receives on its investments of retirement funds. Howell has expressed concerns about the fees the VRS pays to outside investment managers$350 million a yearand some disappointment in the return it is getting. In the most recent fiscal year, the VRS produced a 1.9 percent return on its investments, far below the assumed 7 percent, 30-year rate of return on which the contributions and funding are based.

Of course, the legislature could always make huge contributions to VRS for several years to bring down the unfunded liabilities. But with the state now facing a $233 million budget shortfall, thats not being considered.

The commission has 19 members and includes leaders of the House and Senate money committees, several other legislators and citizens, named with input from local government organizations and the teachers association. Representatives from law enforcement organizations also will be included.

Disagreements are inevitable among the groups represented. And recommendations from the commission would have to make it through the General Assembly. Though the study is barely under way, some factions are already digging in against changeand thats natural.

But Virginia has an aging workforce; 35 percent of the state employees are eligible to retire in the next five years. If changes arent made, the unfunded pension numbers will continue to soar.

Here are a few things lawmakers should keep in mind as reforms are rolled out. Promises made to state employees and teachers must be kept. State workers enter careers in public service not expecting to get rich, but they shouldnt be left to fend for themselves when their working days are through. Retirement programs can be important in attracting and retaining dedicated public workers. Too often, thats overlooked these days.

Taxpayers shouldnt be forgotten, either. Legislators have an opportunity to fix the problem now. It will only become more difficult if its left for the next generation.
Gainesville GA Roofing Contractor Launches New Website

As the world becomes more tech savvy, one Gainesville GA -based roofing contractor, Division Kangaroof, took it upon itself to provide the online roofing resources every homeowner needs.

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With storms becoming more severe, roof repairing services have become a necessity rather than a luxury. Unbeknownst to many, roof damage is not always visible. What began as creases and fractures from high winds can easily leave a home vulnerable to water damage and leaks. To halt these major damages to both the interior and exterior of a home is the roofing repair services of Gainesville, Georgia, Division Kangaroof. This team of contractors provides services to Gainesville, Alto, Cornelia, Clarkesville and other Georgia areas. They specialize in an arsenal of solutions including major roof repairs, roof replacements, gutters, and other related services for any local homeowner. Today, their services and advice have become available online via their new website complete with a blog and service details.

By increasing their accessibility, the staff at Division Kangaroof aims to help homeowners avoid disaster. With online service details, users are now able to self-diagnose issues and request needed repairs. If this capability is not enough, then there are plenty of methods on the new website to request aid, including a built-in email messaging system. And with this always-handy expertise in all things roofing, including everything from roof installation to inspection, Division Kangaroof is able to act as the one stop shop for every roofing need. This practice allows clients to rest assured that every option in the industry is available on the new site, yielding the best solution every time.

The new website also helps to extend Division Kangaroof's value of community. Finally, the divisions' roofing experts are able to inform and advise the public, free of charge, through a professional blog. Posts include helpful topics such as when to repair, what roofing type fits readers best, and a guide to self inspecting roof health. In this way Division Kangaroof is committed to helping the average homeowner become a knowledgeable expert. But this dedication is a two-way communication. Customers love Division Kangaroof as much as Division Kangaroof loves them. This trait is perhaps best shown by Division Kangaroof's exclusively positive reviews, averaging a 4.93 star rating on Homeadvisor and Angie's List. These values of breadth, quality, and community serve to make Division Kangaroof the ultimate in roofing services.

About Division Kangaroof

Division Kangaroof was started over fifteen years ago in Georgia. They are proud to boast an A+ rating by the Better Business Bureau and are based in Gainesville, Georgia. Through free quotes and a money-back guarantee alongside high-quality service, Division Kangaroof has become one of the most trusted names around.

For more information visit www.divisionkangaroof.com,

For more information, please visit http://divisionkangaroof.com/

Contact Info:

Name: Keith Miller

Organization: Division Kangaroof

Address: 4541 Poplar Springs Rd Gainesville, GA 30507

Phone: 678-780-4682

Release ID: 131896

For more information visit r



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Creative Diagnostics Introduces Biotin Beads for Researchers

Creative Diagnostics announced the release of its biotin beads for researchers all over the world.

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Creative Diagnostics, a global leader in biological development and manufacturing, announced today the release of its biotin beads for researchers all over the world. These newly released particles can be used in nucleic acid isolation, protein purification, immunology, and cell separations.

Creative Diagnostics now continues to grow its affinity beads portfolio by introducing the biotin beads. Affinity beads can be used for affinity purification and separation of antibody, antigen, proteins and DNA/RNA, etc. etc. They have high selectivity and capacity which make them ideal tools for the separation of various biomolecules. These ligands include but not limited to antibody, streptavidin, lectin, oligo(dT) and protein A/G.

Biotin magnetic particles are magnetic beads covalently coupled with biotin. The beads have strong affinities for avidin, streptavidin, and neutravidin tagged proteins. Therefore, they can be used when avidin, streptavidin or neutravidin is bound to proteins or oligonucleotides.

"Scientists from Creative Diagnostics are proficient in conjugating various bioaffinity ligands to magnetic beads to meet our customer's needs, " said Dr. Jessica Waldorf, chief scientific officer of R&D department of Creative Diagnostics. "The new product allows scientists to achieve their desired results, and can particularly benefit those working with immunoassay or molecular diagnostics, etc. "

"For many years, Creative Diagnostics has contributed to scientific breakthroughs through the provision of high-quality biological products and services to researchers all around the world, " said Dr. Randy S. Vaughn, director of marketing, Creative Diagnostics. "These biotin beads will enable researchers to advance their understanding of their research and to identify new discoveries. We will ensure that it continues to meet the needs of researchers."

Further information of available biotin beads, please contact Creative Diagnostics at 1-631-624-4882 or email to info@creative-diagnostics.com.

About Creative Diagnostics

Creative Diagnostics is a leading manufacturer of magnetic particles and related products for immunoassay development. It provides a comprehensive list of immunomagnetic bead products conjugated with different coating materials and functional groups in multiple sizes to meet your need for research and industrial prospect development.

For more information, please visit http://www.cd-bioparticles.com/

Contact Info:

Name: Thomas Schmitt

Organization: Creative Diagnostics

Address: 45-1 Ramsey Road, Shirley, NY 11967, USA

Phone: 16316244882

Source: http://marketersmedia.com/creative-diagnostics-introduces-biotin-beads-for-researchers/131909

Release ID: 131909

For more information visit r



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"African American" History and Culture Book By Silis Muhammad Launches

Silis Muhammad has launched his brand new book, "In My Next Life", available online and at Lost-Found Nation of Islam mosque locations targeted at fans of African American history and culture. More information is available at the website: http://lfnoihouston.org/h279

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Silis Muhammad, Black/"African American/Afrodescendant Leader, is launching his new book, "In My Next Life". The book is available online, and at Lost-Found Nation of Islam mosque locations, and is expected to become a big hit with fans of African American history and culture.

More information on his book can be found here: http://lfnoihouston.org/h279

"In My Next Life" is the third book Muhammad has authored. The book was written with the aim to educate Black/"African American"/Afrodescendant milennials and the community at-large on decades-long, global spiritual warfare, and its culmination in the present day, as the world has entered the profound and long-awaited Time of Judgement. There's also particular excitement about this launch, because it will put an end to misunderstandings about spiritual events surrounding the author's life and other Muslim leaders that continue to influence Black thought today.

"In My Next Life" sets its main focus on the question, 'What does the future hold for Blacks/"African Americans"/Afrodescendants in America?' Readers will likely find particular interest in information about why Blacks/"African Americans"/Afrodescendants fell from such a lofty culture as ancient Egypt [and before the Ancient Egyptian culture]. The cover art was created by Designonomy and the book is being released by the Lost-Found Nation of Islam.

Silis Muhammad has an academic background in mathematics, history, law, the teachings of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, and Black leadership. This background helped shaped the creation of the book by inspiring Muhammad to help all who choose to understand where the world is on the spiritual continuum as spoken of in Scriptures.

To provide an answer about why he wrote the book, the back cover explains: "If this is the time of fulfillment, what is the Truth of it? Why, across cultures and religions, has the story of death and resurrection been told? Who has died, who is experiencing resurrection, and why was this necessary for humanity?" The book will answer many of these questions for the serious seeker of Truth.

Muhammad has expressed hopes that Blacks/"African Americans"/Afrodescendants would gain knowledge that helps them to rejoin the human families of the earth. This positive outlook from the author is certainly testament to his passion, considering some of the mishaps in communicating topics related to the books focus over the years. For example, Muhammad expresses in the book, "The only leader of nations, in my opinion, who recognizes the "Truth" of the prophecies in the Bible and Holy Qur'an is Dr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, former president of the Islamic Republic of Iran. He also recognizes that we, Afrodescendants, are owed reparations from the U.S. and Great Britain, et al."

The author acknowledged those that helped in the creation of the book, saying: "A small army of people helped with this book."

Those interested in learning more about the book can visit here: http://lfnoihouston.org/h279

For more information, please visit http://lfnoihouston.org/h279

Contact Info:

Name: Zaqqiyah Haamidah

Email: info@LFNOIHouston.org

Organization: Lost-Found Nation of Islam-Houston

Address: 3815 Live Oak (inside Shape Center), Houston, Texas 77004

Phone: 2816604602

Release ID: 132032

For more information visit r



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By Stef Gijssels We love solo bass albums, and it seems that they keep coming in great numbers. The overview below is indeed nothing more t...
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Surprise at the outcome of the European Union referendum a tendency to over-react was behind the problems with open-ended property funds immediately post-Brexit vote, says Russell Chaplin, chief investment officer for Aberdeen Asset Managements property division.

Speaking to Emma Ann Hughes, editor of FTAdviser and Financial Adviser, Mr Chaplin said it was understandable that Property fund investors panicked in the aftermath of the Brexit vote.

He said: People were considering what the effect would be on business services, the impact on central London, the office market in central London especially, and a realisation that within their Property funds, they might be holding those kind of assets.

Actually most funds dont hold highly concentrated holdings in any of those areas, so I think there was a tendency to over-react to that short term news, even though it was obviously a surprise for many people.

Although the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has been keeping an eye on open-ended property funds as a result of the mass suspensions in dealing in the weeks following the referendum vote, Mr Chaplin does not believe there will be big rule changes as a result of what happened to property funds.

Speaking in August, he said: The question for the FCA is what it is trying to resolve. There are nine funds which closed immediately after the vote. Four remain open and five are suspended, and it is important to look at what has worked well and what has worked less well over that period.

Certainly what would be the worst thing to do is to end up putting in recommendations that bring the standard of things down to the lowest common denominator across the industry.

This is an opportunity to take a look at what works and try to enhance that.

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MyExperience

Some funds do remain suspended, as a result of a lack of liquidity within the funds, and this suspension can take some time, although he said it was difficult to tell how long this would last for.

Mr Chaplin also said advisers should tell clients to remind themselves why they invested in the property funds in the first place.

Typically the answer would be to get some income, because the income on these funds is relatively good compared with the yield on bonds.

They will also be seeking some long-term capital growth, which is typically linked to economic growth and that will continue, and some diversification in the portfolio outside of equities other asset classes.

These features still exist - and if clients still want those features, then it is worth sticking with the funds.
Staff at Prudential in Reading are to strike twice for 24 hours over plans to offshore an estimated 82 jobs which deal with annuities to India.

One strike will take place for 24 hours from 00.01 on Friday (16 September) over the proposal to offshore back office annuity work to Mumbai, while a second 24 hour strike is currently set to go-ahead from 00.01 on Friday (23 September).

According to Unite, the two days of strike action are major shots across Prudentials bows in a bid to make it reconsider the decision to offshore the staff.

Members will also be continuing their indefinite work-to-rule which started on 31 August.

In August last year, staff at UK life insurer Prudential who are based in Reading voted to take industrial action following the announcement the company will be offshoring skilled jobs to India.

The Unite members voted 97 per cent in favour of industrial action over plans to offshore 81 jobs dealing with annuities to the city of Mumbai.

At the end of last month, Prudential staff commenced this industrial action in protest against a plan to move 76 annuities-related jobs from Reading to Mumbai, India - known as Project Jupiter.

Unite has also asked Prudentials management to disclose the numbers of staff that are earmarked to lose their jobs.

Although the redundancy notices say 82 jobs are at risk, according to Unite, Prudential has told the media the number is 51.

A spokesman for Prudential said the provider was not in a position to provide a comment on the industrial action at the time this article was published.

ruth.gillbe@ft.com
Agrochemicals giant BASF is set to launch a new blockbuster azole cereal fungicide as early as 2019 and then a blackgrass herbicide with a new mode of action early next decade.

The fungicide, called Revysol, is likely to be used as a partner to help slow down fungicide resistance, while the blackgrass killer could be the biggest breakthrough in grassweed control for more than 10 years.

Markus Heldt, president of BASF Crop Protection, said the fungicide is the German groups most exciting near-term launch and is needed to counter increased disease problems.

This is our largest-ever launch and will be in more than 50 countries and in more than 60 crops in a difficult environment, he said at a group briefing in Germany this week.

This azole fungicide is claimed to have a high level of efficacy and is likely to be partnered with SDHI fungicides to control troublesome wheat diseases such as septoria and yellow rust.

Blackgrass killer

The new grassweed killer under development is a residual pre-emergence product and will be aimed at the core cereal herbicide market in Europe.

See also: Dormant blackgrass means growers must play waiting game

This herbicide has a new mode of action in cereals in the UK and we are confident it has a good regulatory profile, Mr Heldt told Farmers Weekly at the groups headquarters in Ludwigshafen, on the River Rhine about 50 miles south of Frankfurt.

He said it would be a big product for BASF and a very important one for UK farmers.

The fastest it may be available would be autumn 2020, but it is more likely to be available in 2021 or 2022, he added. Mr Heldt clarified that the herbicide will not offer a completely new mode of action, but a different mode of action to those currently seen in UK cereal production.

New azole fungicide

Looking at the fungicide, independent expert Bill Clark said Revysol has the eradicant properties of the older azoles seen some 10-15 years ago before their efficacy started to decline, especially against septoria.

This is important for the whole industry, and will be a partner for all SDHIs, and SDHIs which are coming, added Mr Clark, who is technical director at crop consultant Niab.

Older azoles such as prothioconazole and epoxiconazole have declined in efficacy against septoria in wheat over the past decade, but it is hoped this new azole could be used with the new generation of SDHIs launched in the past five years and could delay fungicide resistance.

Revysol is better than prothioconazole and epoxiconazole as septoria has not adapted to it, he said.

Azoles have been the backbone of fungicide programmes since the mid-1970s due to their broad spectrum of disease control against septoria, rusts and fusarium, and their systemic action give good eradicant and protective properties.

Good efficacy

Rolf Reinecke, head of BASFs global marketing for fungicides, said the new product showed better efficacy compared with older azoles and showed no side-effects.

We have a highly active fungicide with a favourable profile from a regulatory point of view, he added.

Mr Reinecke said the first launch of the new azole is set for the 2018-19 season, which for the UK would mean spring 2019, and it could be the first new azole to be launched since prothioconazole more than 10 years ago.

The development comes at a time when the use of azoles is coming under pressure due to fears they could be classed as endocrine disruptors, meaning they could interfere with human hormone levels.

This could mean older azoles might be restricted or even banned in the future, so Mr Reinecke is keen to stress the new azole has a good regulatory profile.

Fungicide resistance

Most widely used azoles such as prothioconazole, epoxiconazole, tebuconazole and metconazole are of the triazole sub-group, as is Revysol.

However, Rosie Bryson, team lead for BASFs arable fungicide development, says Revysol is a isopropanol type of triazole  different from the other four  and this may help to slow down the build-up of fungicide resistance.

Revysol has so far given good control of shifted isolates of septoria, and this could be useful in reducing the mutation of the disease, she said.

Although there are only low levels of mutations of septoria from the use of new SDHIs, growers are urged to continue using three modes of action against septoria as part of a resistance-management strategy.

This means using SDHIs in conjunction with azoles and also a multi-site fungicide such as chlorothalonil.
Germany is Europes largest pork and milk producer and the second-largest beef and veal producer.

Its farmers grew more than 47m tonnes of grain in 2015, and with about half the countrys land under agricultural production, farmings contribution to the economy is about 46bn (38bn) a year.

It is also the third-largest exporter of food and agricultural products in the world, with the value of exports from the sector reaching 65.4bn (55bn) in 2015, according to the German government. In contrast, UK food and drink exports totalled 18bn in 2015.

German giant struggles

But while the headline figures suggest there are reasons to be cheerful, German farmers have come under the same price pressures seen across the whole of Europe.

Pig numbers are at their lowest for five years, dairy exports were down by more than 10% last year and retailers have applied significant downward pressure on prices.

See also: Farmland worldwide  whats up, whats down and why

According to figures from the German farmers association Deutscher Bauernverband (DBV), dairy farmers earned only half as much in 2015 as the previous year, while meat, grain and vegetable producers saw their incomes fall by about 25%.

And its not just a short-term problem. European Commission figures show Germanys real agricultural income per worker has dropped by a hefty 28% over the past five years.

Joachim Rukwied, DBV president, says the situation for many farmers in the country is drastic.

The drop in income is reminiscent of the crisis year in 2008 and 2009, he says. German farmers have lost 35% of their incomes in the past year and we fear there could be a decline this year of another 35%.

Unless we see policies introduced to help farmers, we are facing a massive structural break in the industry.

Consolidation and diversification

The situation has led to a considerable amount of consolidation in farming. Over the past decade, the number of farms has fallen by about one-quarter to 285,000, while average farm size has increased to 58.6ha (145 acres).

Of those who remained in the industry, many have turned to alternative income streams in an effort to bolster their profits.

According to EU data, almost one-third of farmers (92,000) have diversified  one of the highest percentages across the Continent.

More than 40% of those are producing renewable energy, a move that has reshaped crop production and changed the way the country generates its power.

Other popular alternative income streams include forests and contract work (which each account for 25% of diversified businesses), on-farm processing and tourism.

Organic more profitable, but not yet sustainable

Meanwhile, other farmers have chosen to find ways to add value to their produce to boost incomes, with organic conversion being one popular approach.

According to EU figures, Germany is home to one of the highest number of organic farms in Europe, with 5% of the countrys agricultural land  852,670ha  farmed organically.

Organic is a growing market here, says dairy farmer Markus Legge. Many farmers see it as a way to add value.

Mr Legge, who farms 120 cattle on his 80ha unit in Monschau, west Germany, converted to organic 12 years ago when input costs began to rise.

There are lots of farmers switching to organic, particularly in the milk sector, he says.

Moving to organic lowered my production by 30%, but I receive 30c/litre [25p/litre], whereas conventional milk is only 22-25c/litre [18-21p/litre].

Despite the premium organic offers, Mr Legge says it is still not enough for German producers to be sustainable.

If we want to encourage investment in the industry, the organic farmers really need 50c/litre and conventional producers need to be paid 40c/litre.

Plus with the number of producers switching to organic, I think we will have a lot of organic milk in two years.

We need to start thinking again about what to do next to make ourselves different.

Case study: Ralf Hickman, Koblenz, west Germany As the first farmer in Germany to install his own biogas unit, Ralf Hickman admits the first five years were difficult. No one really knew how to run them, he says. The systems were designed for limited operation of about 100 hours/year, but we were using it for 24 hours/day seven days/week. After a month I was having to replace parts and get it fixed, but things are better now that fittings are being built to be more robust. When Mr Hickman took over his familys potato farm eight years ago, he knew he was going to have to try something different if the business was to survive. Spiralling input costs coupled with poor commodity prices meant the 60ha farm in Koblenz, west Germany, was  like many of the countrys family farms  struggling to make a profit. We needed to diversify, so I started to think about how we could make the best use of the land we had and limit our exposure to price volatility at the same time. The solution for Mr Hickman was to take advantage of the farms location in one of the most prolific pig-producing regions in Europe by investing in a 1,000-head fattening unit. To give his investment the best chance of being profitable, he decided to create a closed system to limit the risk the business would face. He bought a neighbouring 364ha farm so he could produce maize and grain to feed the pigs, which he buys as piglets and fattens for 105 days before selling to a local abattoir. He then decided to invest in a biogas unit so he could protect himself from crippling energy prices. The 1.2m 550kW and 900kW systems run mostly on farm-produced corn and manure, but Mr Hickman also has a contract with a local herbal medicine factory, where he is paid to dispose of its excess herbs and garlic. Electricity produced on farm is either used to run the pig sheds  which he has since expanded to house 2,000 pigs across the two farm sites  or sold for 10-20c/kWh, depending on the level of subsidies. We sell about 4m/kWh hours a year, so we expect to get a payback on investment over 10 years, Mr Hickman says. It also gives us a way of getting rid of pig manure, which is a major problem for pig farmers in this region who dont have the space to put it on their own fields. Mr Hickmans closed-system approach means if pig prices fall, the business can still be profitable. Each part  the biogas, arable and pigs  is designed to be economical by itself, but they can help each other and help remove volatility, he says. For me, closed systems like this are the future if farmers are going to be able to manage their costs more effectively and make a profit. This is the best way I can think of to create a sustainable business I can hand over to my children.

Case study: Elmar and Iris Victor, Monschau-Konzen, west Germany Diversifying into agritourism following low milk prices gave Elmar and Iris Victor an unexpected opportunity to invest in a robotic milking system  something they would never have achieved otherwise. The couple, who farm 40 cows on their 32ha unit in Monschau-Konzen, on the German-Belgian border, were struggling to make ends meet after their milk price dropped in a year to 20c/litre (17.5p)  a loss of 19c/litre (16p). With their farm located in the North Eifel region  an area that attracts thousands of tourists every year  they decided to open a holiday apartment within their existing farmhouse, promoting it as a farm stay where families could learn about agriculture. The apartment proved so popular that they added more properties to the farmhouse, opening their fifth apartment in 2004. It has been a huge success for us, with an average of 280 days occupancy  about 80%  every year, Iris says. Were able to manage everything ourselves, so we dont have any additional staff costs, but it has provided the income we need to keep the farm running. Having previously used a tandem parlour milking system, Mr Victor realised he was spending a long time in the loss-making dairy when he could be helping out with the profitable holiday lets, but he needed the cows to encourage people to visit the farm. I wanted more flexibility and to be able to have more time for our guests, he says. I realised that a robotic milker could help me do that, plus its an added attraction for our guests. In November 2015, the couple invested 120,000 (100,000) in a Lely Astronaut robotic milker, which they financed over 15 years. To keep costs as low as possible, they installed the system into their existing barn. You dont get more milk from a new barn, so if the cows can manage in the old one, it made sense to keep it, Mr Victor says. I havent had to change the cubicles or the slat flooring; it just slipped straight into the existing shed. So far, it has been a success. The robot costs us about 6c/litre to run, but its worth it for the flexibility. While some people might buy a robot to grow their herds, for me its about using one to improve my opportunities. It gives me the time to focus on other challenges on the farm and ensure we are making a profit.

Caroline Stocks trip to Germany was made possible by the British Guild of Agricultural Journalists and the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists. About 180 journalists from 36 countries met in Bonn to learn about German agriculture.
Three former directors of Tesco have been charged with fraud relating to the supermarkets multimillion pound overstatement of half-year profits in 2014.

Carl Rogberg, former finance director, Christopher Bush, former UK managing director and John Scouler, former UK food commercial director, have been charged by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO).

The three men are charged with one count of fraud for abuse of position and one count of false accounting for activity between February 2014 and September 2014.

See also: Tesco profit overestimate raised to 326m

The accounting scandal was brought to light in September 2014, when Tesco announced a whistleblower had come forward.

The retailer estimated it had overstated its half-year profits by 263m. Later, financial results for 2014-15 showed this figure was closer to 326m.

Both the SFO and the Groceries Code Adjudicator launched investigations as a result and Tesco launched its own internal investigation.

The three men and a number of other Tesco employees were suspended pending the outcome of the investigation.

Tesco response

In a statement, Tesco said: We note the decision of the SFO to bring a prosecution against former colleagues in relation to historic issues and acknowledge the investigation into the company is ongoing.

Tesco continues to co-operate with the SFOs investigation.

The last two years have seen an extensive programme of change at Tesco, but given this is an ongoing legal matter, we are unable to provide any further comment at this time.

The three individuals will appear at Westminster Magistrates Court on 22 September.
Turkey growers are expected to increase prices by between 2.5%-4% at the farmgate this year to reflect rising feed costs.

Addressing the Anglian Turkey Associations annual meeting in Essex this week, the NFU said the cost of producing a 5.5kg turkey was up 3.49% this year  from 29.67 in 2015 to 30.70 in 2016.

The increase was almost entirely caused by the price of poultry feed.

See also: The science of successful turkey production

Aimee Mahony, NFU poultry adviser, said feed costs in 2015-2016 had risen by 12.92% (7.20 to 8.13) compared with last year.

Farming costs, which include labour, gas, litter and shavings and other inputs had increased slightly by 0.59%.

Ms Mahony added poult, brood and waste removal costs had stayed the same, while packaging costs  based on the NFUs turkey box shop costs  were also on a par with last year.

She added that poult quality, based on reports from across the country, had been very good, with some mortality rates reported at less than 1%.

Soya costs, in particular, have risen.

But producers are also suffering from the weakness of sterling post-Brexit.

The higher costs are dependent on when people bought their feed. If producers bought early they may be in a better position than those who bought later.

Tom Copas, director of Berkshire-based Copas Turkeys, agreed margins this year were being affected by timing of feed contracts but he was also concerned about escalating wage bills.

We are facing the introduction of the living wage, which will have implications for growers up and down the country.

We have yet to finalise our prices, but the general feedback is that growers will put up prices a little bit  between 2.5%-4% this year.

Mr Copas agreed poult quality was looking good this year.

He said: Our first batch was not quite as we would have liked but we had ideal conditions in the early summer with a very cool early June which has really helped the birds develop.

Challenges

William Grove-Smith, of Essex-based Grove Smith Turkeys, said he believed this Christmas could be challenging because of the pressures placed on butchers by low-cost retailers.

Mr Grove-Smith said he had put in substantial investment in quality assurance and gas stunning facilities over the past year but believed the traditional whole bird market through the independent butcher at Christmas was declining.

We have seen continuing demand from consumers for turkey rolls and turkey joints. Family sizes are changing and people are looking for an easier way to present the bird at the Christmas table.

Len Goodman, who organised the meeting at Prested Hall, Feering, said about 30 of the regions key growers had attended.

I think what was interesting was seeing that turkey placements are a little bit up and that feed costs have driven up overall costs this year, he added.
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Story Highlights Confidence in accurate vote counting was higher from 2004-2007

About three in four Democrats confident, compared with just half of GOP

Americans more confident in accuracy of count at their voting facility

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- About six in 10 Americans are confident that votes will be accurately cast and counted in the coming election. This is similar to their confidence level in 2008, but down from levels from 2004 to 2007 when confidence ranged between 71% and 75%.

Despite the controversy over ballot accuracy in the 2000 election, Gallup's trend shows that the highest level of voting confidence was in 2004 -- the first time Gallup polled on this question -- four months before that year's presidential election. Confidence remained similarly high in the 2006 midterm and in December 2007, shortly before the 2008 presidential primaries and caucuses started. Before the 2008 election, confidence in the accuracy of vote counting had dropped sharply, perhaps as an indirectly related response to the global financial crisis that sent Americans' satisfaction with the way things were going in the U.S. into the single digits. Eight years later, the confidence level in voting accuracy is not much higher.

Prominent political figures and former federal security officials raised concerns about a compromised vote count leading up to Gallup's latest measurement, taken in an Aug. 15-16 poll.

In April, supporters of Democratic primary candidate Bernie Sanders raised questions after more than 100,000 voters were purged from the New York City Board of Elections. More recently, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump suggested that the election is going to be rigged, saying courts that have thrown out state voter ID laws have left voting systems vulnerable to fraud.

Though these examples of doubts about the election's accuracy could be politically motivated, there are real threats. Due to the patchwork of state voting systems, some of which have electronic vulnerabilities, many security officials warn of the prospect of foreign hacking, especially in the wake of Russia's suspected involvement in the successful infiltration of the Democratic National Committee's email system. Just after Gallup's August poll, the FBI alerted that one state's Board of Election site was compromised and that another state's election system had an attempted intrusion.

Dems Much More Confident Than Republicans in Vote Count Accuracy

Perhaps related to their party nominee's view, only half of Republicans say they are "very confident" or "somewhat confident" that votes will be accurately cast and counted in this year's election. This is the lowest Gallup has recorded for the GOP in five measures, and much lower than current confidence among independents (59%) and Democrats (77%).

Americans have expressed more confidence when a president of their same party occupies the White House, helping to explain why Republicans were much more confident in the vote count during George W. Bush's presidency and why Democrats are much more confident under President Barack Obama. However, both parties expressed equally slim confidence in the accuracy of vote counting in 2008, at 57%.





Americans More Confident in Their Own Voting Facilities

While many Americans have doubts about the integrity of the vote count in the nation at large, they are much more likely to express confidence in the facilities where they vote.

About four in five Americans (81%) say they are very or somewhat confident in the accuracy of vote casting and counting at their local polling station, though this is down from 91% in 2006 and 88% in 2007.

Confidence in Accurate Vote Counting at Americans' Own Voting Facilities How confident are you that, at the voting facility where you vote, the votes will be accurately cast and counted in this year's election -- very confident, somewhat confident, not too confident or not at all confident? % Very/Somewhat confident % Not at all/Not very confident 2016 81 16 2007* 88 12 2006 91 8 * 2007 wording: "... in next year's election" Gallup

The current measures are consistent with Americans' tendency to rate local conditions and their own personal situation better than the situation in the country as a whole, including on crime, healthcare and economic matters.

Bottom Line

Though a majority of Americans still say they have faith in the accuracy of U.S. elections, the level of confidence isn't what it once was. And with legitimate threats to state voting systems, Americans have reason to have some doubt about their accuracy, while some may subscribe to a more politically motivated idea of it being rigged.

There is a political element to views of the integrity of the vote count, however. Americans have been more likely to feel confident when a member of their party occupies the White House. And these political bents are reflected in Republicans' and Democrats' respective level of support for voter ID laws and early voting.

A strong majority of U.S. adults have faith in their local polling facility's accuracy, suggesting that they are less concerned about their own vote not being cast and counted properly as they are about fraud elsewhere in the country. Their lower confidence about voting accuracy nationally could have ramifications for a new president whose constituents have doubts about the legitimacy of the win.

Historical data are available in Gallup Analytics.

Survey Methods

Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted Aug. 15-16, 2016, on the Gallup U.S. Daily survey, with a random sample of 1,013 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. Each question was asked of a randomly selected half-sample of approximately 500 adults. For results based on each half-sample of national adults, the margin of sampling error is 6 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. All reported margins of sampling error include computed design effects for weighting.

Each sample of national adults includes a minimum quota of 60% cellphone respondents and 40% landline respondents, with additional minimum quotas by time zone within region. Landline and cellular telephone numbers are selected using random-digit-dial methods.

View survey methodology, complete question responses and trends.

Learn more about how the Gallup Poll Social Series works.
Story Highlights 38% favor major government role to help minorities

Up from 32% in 2013 and 27% in 2011

64% of blacks, 28% of whites favor major government role

PRINCETON, N.J. -- As both major party presidential candidates tout ways their policies will benefit blacks and other minority groups, Americans are now, more so than in recent years, open to a prominent government role to help racial minorities. Currently, 38% say the government should have "a major role" in trying to improve the social and economic position of minorities, up from 32% in 2013 and 27% in 2011, but similar to what Gallup measured in 2004 and 2005.

The June 7-July 1 Gallup Minority Rights and Relations survey also finds that 40% of Americans want the government to play "a minor role" in helping minorities, while 22% do not want the government to have any role in this area. The latter figure is down slightly from 26% in 2011 but remains up significantly from 14% in 2004.

Gallup's 2011 and 2013 polls were conducted at a time of historically low trust in government and subdued concern about matters relating to race. While Americans' trust in government remains low, they have grown increasingly concerned about race relations since 2013 following a series of highly publicized incidents in which black men were killed in confrontations with white police officers.

Blacks have consistently been much more likely than whites to prefer a major role for the government in improving the position of minorities in the U.S. In the latest poll, 64% of blacks and 28% of whites hold this view.

Both blacks' and whites' opinions have shown similar changes over the last 12 years. Support for a major government role was relatively high in 2004 and 2005, fell sharply in 2011 and stayed relatively low in 2013 before increasing significantly this year.

At 63%, Hispanics are just as likely as blacks to favor a major government role to help minority groups. Hispanics' preferences have varied less than blacks' and whites' over time, ranging from a low of 60% favoring a major role in 2013 to a high of 67% in 2004.

Democrats Favor Larger Government Role Than Republicans Do

Beyond race, there is a major political divide on this question that reflects the political parties' long-standing views of the appropriate role of government. Sixty-three percent of Democrats, but only 15% of Republicans, say the government should have a major role in assisting minority groups. More than twice as many Republicans, 33%, favor no government role as favor a major one. Independents' views are closer to those of Republicans than Democrats, as 33% of independents believe the federal government should have a major role.

Support for a major government role was lower among all party groups in 2011 and 2013 than in the mid-2000s, and all have shown an increase since 2013. But Democrats are more likely today than in 2004 and 2005 to favor a major government role, while Republicans are less likely to do so. That shift could be an example of increasing party polarization on key issues, but it may also reflect the way partisans' attitudes are influenced by the party of the president, with a Republican president in 2004 and 2005 and a Democratic president today.

Women are significantly more likely than men to say the government should have a major role in improving the position of minorities. Notably, this gender difference holds across racial and political groups. Women may have more empathy than men, and that may influence the degree to which they support government action to assist disadvantaged groups.

Gender Differences in Preference for a Major Government Role to Improve the Social/Economic Position of Racial Minorities Women Men Difference % % pct. pts. National adults 44 32 12 Whites 33 24 9 Blacks 72 54 18 Hispanics 73 53 20 Democrats 68 57 11 Independents 37 30 7 Republicans 18 12 6 June 7-July 1, 2016

Implications

Race has been a major factor in the presidential campaign. Hillary Clinton won the Democratic nomination over Bernie Sanders in large part because of her greater support among blacks and other minority voters. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has recently made overt appeals to black voters, undaunted by their historically overwhelming support for Democratic presidential candidates.

Clinton and Trump have both argued that their policies -- in particular, their economic plans -- would benefit blacks and other minority voters. Beyond that, the Clinton campaign has outlined a number of specific policy proposals to directly address racial inequality and injustice. Trump's argument has mainly focused on the failures of Democratic policies to improve the situation for many blacks, but he recently called for a new civil rights agenda in a highly publicized visit to a Detroit church.

Americans' greater openness to a major government role to improve the position of minorities means such policy proposals could make more of a difference for voters in this year's presidential election than in the last presidential election.

Historical data are available in Gallup Analytics.

Survey Methods

Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted June 7-July 1, 2016, with a sample of 3,270 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, who had previously been interviewed in the Gallup Daily tracking poll and agreed to be re-interviewed for a later study. The sample is weighted to be representative of U.S. adults.

For results based on the total sample of national adults, the margin of sampling error is 3 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. For results based on the sample of 1,320 non-Hispanic whites, the margin of sampling error is 4 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. For results based on the sample of 912 non-Hispanic blacks, the margin of sampling error is 5 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. For results based on the sample of 906 Hispanics, the margin of sampling error is 6 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.

All reported margins of sampling error include computed design effects for weighting.

Learn more about how the Gallup Poll Social Series works.

View complete question responses and trends.
Orange Is The New Black Season 5 Air Date, Spoilers, News & Update: Bennet To Return Next Season?

"Orange Is The New Black" season 5 fans should rejoice! Spoilers reveal that familiar and particularly favorite characters will return next season. Latest spoilers hint that officer Bennet and Lolly might just make a comeback.

"Orange Is The New Black" season 5 latest spoilers hint the return of fan-favorite officer Bennet (Matt McGorry), who broke the hearts of many when he left season 3. Many fans were expecting that he'd comeback in season 4 but unfortunately, he didn't make any appearance. However, season 5 latest spoilers suggest that Bennet may return in "Orange Is The New Black" season 5. In an Instagram post, he showed a picture of himself and his fellow "Orange Is The New Black" star Laverne Cox, Digital Spy reported.

Introducing @lavernecox to the full LA lifestyle experience #hiking A photo posted by Matt McGorry (@mattmcgorry) on Sep 4, 2016 at 11:13am PDT

The picture of Matt McGorry and Laverne Cox sparked speculations that the actor may redeem the unjust disappearance of his character in season 3. Admittedly, the two could just be innocently hanging out, however, fans can't help but hope that he'd come back in "Orange Is The New Black" season 5. Cox's character marked her return in the latter episodes of season 5 and fans hope Bennet could do the same. "Orange Is The New Black" season 5 spoilers suggest that the pair could be working together next season. Although his return may push Dayanara (Dascha Polanco) over the edge, the report suggests.

However, "Orange Is The New Black" season 5 showrunners haven't issued any statement regarding Bennet's return next season. It is best to take this news with a grain of salt. Aside from officer Bennet, Lori Petty is also rumored to make a comeback in "Orange Is The New Black" season 5. GamenGuide previously hinted that Lolly Whitehill may make her comeback after Lori Petty talked with The Hollywood Reporter.

The actress felt positive her character may return in the upcoming season. "I certainly hope so. I do think I will," she told the website. "I can't say for sure, but I absolutely think I will." "Orange Is The New Black" season 5 is slated to air on June 2017 on Netflix. Do you think Bennet and Lolly will return next season? Share us your thoughts in the comment box below.
GoPro Hero 5 Release Date, News & Update: New Action Camera Disappoints Fans? Lousy Upgrade From GoPro Hero 4?

While waiting for the actual GoPro hero 5 product, there's quite a few speculations regarding the much-awaited action camera. But instead of getting some exciting GoPro Hero 5 updates, a new report now suggests that the GoPro Hero 5 is just a lousy version of the GoPro Hero 4. it's not like the GoPro Hero 5 is not worth the wait at all, but many people may be expecting more from the new action camera.

READ: GoPro Hero 5 Release Date, News & Update: New Action Camera Is Less Impressive Than GoPro Hero 4?

To be dubbed as the "most connected and convenient" action camera, many consumers are hoping that the GoPro Hero 5 will be something spectacular. As it turns out, there is not much of a difference between the GoPro Hero 4 and the GoPro Hero 5, as reported by Christian Post. This new report left GoPro fans disappointed as they were expecting to see more high-tech capabilities from the GoPro Hero 5. The anticipation for the action camera has been on the rise for quite a while that it is understandable that people are expecting a lot from the GoPro Hero 5.

READ: GoPro Hero 5 Release Date, News & Update: Action Camera Adds Live Streaming Capabilities?

Even with the disappointing new update, WAC magazine previously reported that the GoPro Hero 5 will be the best action camera out there. "One of the biggest upgrades will be its ability to record up to 8K resolution at 30 fps, and it will also record in 4K at 60fps and 1080p at 240fps," WAC magazine reported. "The camera will be equipped with a more advanced processor and will have an A10 chip." Earlier reports revealed that the GoPro Hero 5 will be launched after the GoPro Drone Karma will be released. And now it is rumored that the GoPro Hero 5 and the GoPro Karma Drone will debut as a bundle.

READ: GoPro Hero 5 Release Date, News & Update: Action Camera Will Have Live Streaming Capabilities?

Although the GoPro company has not commented on this speculation, Christian Times suggested that this could very well be the case. Ecumenical News also reported that GoPro fans will finally get their hands on the GoPro Hero 5 and the GoPro Karma Drone bundle around Christmas time 2016. The GoPro founder and CEO Nicholas Woodman explained back in May the delay of GoPro Karma Drone is to benefit from the holidays. Are you going to purchase the GoPro Hero 5? Let us know in the comments section below!
'Jeepers Creepers 3' Release Date, Plot, News & Update: Next Installment Will Finally Reveal The Creeper?

After all the trials that "Jeepers Creepers 3" has encountered, an official "Jeepers Creepers 3" poster has finally gave face to the "Cathedral" sequel confirming its existence. Not only that, "Jeepers Creepers 3" director himself has revealed some new interesting updates about the highly-anticipated film. What is in store for all of us in "Jeepers Creepers 3"? Will we finally learn more about The Creeper?

READ: 'Jeepers Creepers 3' Release Date, Plot, News & Update: Why Is There No Update On Third Installment? Facing Another Delay?

According to "Jeepers Creepers 3" director Victor Salva, the curiosity regarding The Creeper will finally be answered in "Jeepers Creepers 3," Movie Pilot reported. "We are bringing back the Creeper's truck, and will be addressing the big questions about The Creeper: what it is, where it came from and why it does what it does," the "Jeepers Creepers 3" director said.

READ: 'Jeepers Creepers 3' Release Date, Plot, News & Update: Next Installment Will Give Face To The Creeper?

Before the "Jeepers Creepers 3" director Victor Salva has shared some movie plots, many were not happy about the lack of updates, speculating that "Jeepers creepers 3" may have once again face another setback. After "Jeepers Creepers 3" director Victor Salva's pedophilia conviction resurfaced, the movie production was left with no choice but to cancel the casting calls for "Jeepers Creepers 3." This issue has caused the delay for the scheduled filming of "Jeepers Creepers 3" in British Columbia, Canada.

READ: 'Jeepers Creepers 3' Release Date, Plot, News & Update: Here's What To Expect in Next Installment!

Despite the controversy, sequel producer Stan Spry, assured fans that "Jeepers Creepers 3" is still going to push through. When asked by a fan on Twitter if "Jeepers Creepers 3" is ever going to happen, Stan Spry replied, "it is not cancelled. Producers are working on the domestic distribution deal." With that confirmation, the hype for "Jeepers Creepers 3" is back and fans are excited to learn more about the movie and most especially The Creeper.

What are you most excited about "Jeepers Creepers 3"? Let us know in the comments section below! "Jeepers Creepers 3" release date has yet to be announced.
Katie Holmes & Jamie Foxx News: Divorce Settlement With Tom Cruise Prohibits Holmes From Dating Publicly; Cruise Still In Love With Holmes?

It is rumored that Jaime Foxx and Katie Holmes are dating and has kept their relationship for quite some time. This may have to do with the divorce contract agreement with ex-husband Tom Cruise. It is reported that the contract states Katie Holmes cannot date publicly until 2017.

According to Inquisitr, Katie Holmes agreed with the terms since she wanted out of marriage. It is to protect Tom in many ways. Katie is not allowed to talk about him in public or talk about the Church of Scientology or even dating another man publicly for five years.

The terms also include that even if Katie dates secretly, her love interest cannot have a relationship with their daughter, Suri. After the divorce settlement, Katie got $4.8 million for child support and $5 million for herself. This is the reason why Foxx and Holmes have kept their relationship all along.

In another report by Hollywood Life, Scientology expert Tony Ortega shared that Holmes did not agree to the agreement. He added that other relationships that Cruise had did not talk about him after five years. This agreement, he says is more than just five years.

The agreement is a valid reason why Foxx and Holmes are not open about their relationship. It also means that Holmes has another year to expose whatever she has with Foxx.

Cruise and Holmes started dating in April of 2005. Seven months after Suri was born, they got married in November 2006.In June 2012, Holmes filed for a divorce. This was after more than five years of being together. It was speculated that Holmes was not comfortable about the Church of Scientology moving into their LA home. She feared that Suri will eventually turn against her.

Foxx and Holmes are dating for several years now. Close friends confirm the relationship but the couple has been silent about it. The real status of their relationship may probably be confirmed by July 2017 when the agreement expires.
Motorola's Moto G Play Latest News & Update: Price, Specs & Review

The Moto X Play is getting the upgrade in the form of the new, Motorola Moto G Play device. Amazon launched the device on September 6, 2016. The device is not impressive, if you compare it to others, but for the Moto X Play to get an upgrade, this has been by far the best option.

The Moto G Play is an Amazon prime exclusive, so for fans who wish to get a cheap, but rather fairly serviceable device, this may come handy. Interestingly, the device is compatible to at least major network providers in the US mainly, Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T and Sprint.

The modest specifications of the Moto G Play device has not been a setback on how it perform in terms of 4G wireless. It is an unlocked phone and is priced at $100, 50 percent cheaper because of its discount tag from Amazon.

The Moto G Play device's specifications include a 5-inch display with a 720x1280 pixels resolution. It is equipped with 2800mAh battery and runs on 1.2GHz processor, 2GB of RAM and 16GB storage. It runs on Android 6.0.1 operating system and has an 8-megapixel primary camera and a 5-megapixel secondary camera.

Amazon takes in this latest device from Motorola as their third Prime exclusive. The other two devices include, the Motorola Moto G and the Blu R1 HD. The Moto G Play is dual SIM, both nano and micro SIM and it will come in two color variants mainly, black and white. Tech 2 released its own review of the Moto G Play and they rated it as 7/10 on Design and build, 7/10 on Features, 8/10 on Display, 7.5/10 on Software, 7/10 on Performance, 7.5/10 on Camera and 6.5/10 on Battery.

For more information on the Moto G Play device, you can check us here on GameNGuide.com.
'Jessica Jones' Season 2 Air Date, Spoilers, News & Update: Will 'The Defenders' Daredevil, Luke Cage And Iron Fist Cameo Alongside Krysten Ritter?

There are huge expectations for "Jessica Jones" Season 2, but it may have little to do with the Marvel show's stellar first season. The series will be the first show following the highly anticipated superhero teamup "The Defenders", which will unite Jessica with Daredevil, Luke Cage and Iron Fist. But is there any hope that the other heroes will appear alongside Krysten Ritter's private investigator when she returns in her solo series?

'Jessica Jones' Season 2 To Feature Multiple Villains, Will Krysten Ritter Need Help?

It has already been confirmed that "Jessica Jones" Season 2 will have more than just one major villain. GamenGuide has previously reported that Jessica might end up facing members of IGH, the organization responsible for providing Will Simpson with his power pills. There are also speculations that the IGH characters will first be introduced in "The Defenders" due to the organization's possible ties to Luke Cage. But will the Defenders also show up to help Krysten Ritter defeat the baddies in the second season of "Jessica Jones"?

Fans have been hoping that there would be more crossovers between the major characters of "The Defenders" in their own solo shows. Luke Cage had initially played a large role in the first season of "Jessica Jones" before he moves on to his own series. There is also hope that Iron Fist or Daredevil might appear in "Luke Cage". So is it possible that all the Defenders will cameo in "Jessica Jones" Season 2?

Although it is still uncertain whether the Defenders will pop up in "Jessica Jones" Season 2, fans continue to hope for more crossovers between the Netflix shows. In the meantime, viewers better keep their eyes peeled for cameos in "Luke Cage", which premieres on September 30. "Iron Fist" and "The Defenders" are scheduled to air in 2017 while the second season of "Jessica Jones" is expected to debut in 2018.
Google Nexus 7 Release Date, News & Update: New Google Tablet will be Huawei-Built; Brings Pixel Brand? Impressive Specs & Features Revealed!

Search engine giant Google has recently revealed their latest Android 7.0 Nougat OS with tablet supporting features, but the Google smartphones and tablets is not well accepted in the market. Because of this some things might likely change, there are reports that Google is preparing to launch the next model of Nexus tablet with the help of Huawei. Could it be the Google Nexus 7?



There are also reports that say Google will launch their latest device under using the brand Pixel. According to a report from University Herald, the Pixel brand also includes the purported Google Nexus 7 (2016) tablet.

Rumors and speculation spreading online about the Google Nexus 7 started since last year. And there is one detail that seems to be repeated over and over again: the Google Nexus 7 tablet will be built by Huawei. This information surprised a lot of fans.

The Google Nexus 7 tablet is expected to bring new and improved features with the help of Huawei. Google has remained tight-lipped and has neither confirmed nor denied these speculations.

According to a report from PhoneArena, the upcoming Google Nexus 7 tablet will have a 7-inch display with a 4GB of RAM. The Google Nexus 7 is expected to be released before the end of the year.

The Google Nexus 7 tablet might also sport an AMOLED Quad HD (2560 x 1440 pixels) display. It is said that the device will be powered by a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor and it will be paired with a robust Adreno 530 graphics processing unit

These specs are only based on a pre-production model; so, small changes in the final device are possible. The only thing that is left for us to know is the price of this powerful tablet, which will be probably released under the Pixel brand. GamenGuide will share more details and updates for the upcoming Google Nexus 7 tablet soon. Stay tuned!
Bloodline Season 3 Air Date, Cast, News & Update: Two Secrets That Nolan, John Would Rather Bring To Their Graves

While "Bloodline" Season 3 air date is still a long way off, fans of the hit Netflix series are already excited to know what the next season could bring to the Rayburns. For fans who might have missed the recent updates, here are some of the things known so far, with some spoilers and speculations thrown into the mix to spice things up a bit.

Bloodline' Season 3 Cast - Owen Teague Gets Spotlight

One member of the "Bloodline" cast will get the spotlight next season. As earlier reported by GamenGuide, actor Owen Teague will get some serious air time with the arrival of "Bloodline" Season 3 air date.

Teague rejoins the "Bloodline" Season 3 cast as Nolan, the troubled teenage son of Danny. In fact, the Rayburns will start to see Danny in him, in his mannerisms such as in the way he smokes and glares. But more than outward appearance, Nolan could be even more alike to his father inside, with a barely concealed anger that never seems to go away that can be best described as just "simmering below the surface."

It was already revealed that Nolan had a hand in the fire that burned Danny's restaurant which, in turn, caused Danny to return back to his hometown. While Nolan told only Diana of the incident, it is not certain if she would be able to keep Nolan's secret to herself when "Bloodline" Season 3 release date arrives on Netflix.

'Bloodline' Season 3 Cast - Kyle Chandler Hints What Next Season Could Be About

Another member of the "Bloodline" Season 3 cast gave hints on what the plot could be next season. While fans may see that unraveling of the Rayburns family in the series, actor Kyle Chandler explains that the series is all about family.

As such, fans could expect the build up of conflict between family members when "Bloodline" Season 3 release date arrives. Specifically, the next season could tackle on the issue of trust between family members, on how it could build or destroy those ties.

But should audiences even trust a man with secrets of his own? It can be recalled that in the previous season, the "Bloodline" Season 3 cast's character in the series John killed his own brother Danny. And he is bent on keeping it a secret and even planned to relocated just to bury that nasty incident.

But of course he is coming back to Florida Keys with the arrival of the "Bloodline" Season 3 air date. It is not yet revealed what would make him change his mind but it does reopen the issue of murdering Danny. Like a timebomb slowing ticking to its inevitable conclusion, it would be one roller coaster ride for audiences as the guessing game begins next season as to when and who would discover John's bloody little secret. And how will even Nolan react if he finds out?

'Bloodline' Season 3 Release Date

The good news is that the series has already been renewed by Netflix for a third season. The not-so-good news is that the network is yet to announce on a definite "Bloodline" Season 3 air date. Be sure to stay tuned to GamenGuide for updates.
Health officials said the local coronavirus outlook remained stable this week, though they continued to warn against a potential winter surge.
A 21-year-old former Oregon State University student was convicted Thursday of sexually abusing a minor in 2015 while both were students at the university.

Cody Matthew Gotchall, of Corvallis, pleaded guilty Thursday in Benton County Circuit Court of felony second-degree sexual abuse and misdemeanor third-degree sexual abuse.

The conviction stems from an incident that took place on Feb. 14, 2015 at the female victims house in Benton County. Under the terms of a plea deal and at the victims request, Judge Locke Williams sentenced Gotchall to serve no time in jail, with five years of supervised probation. Gotchall also will be required to register as a sex offender.

Assistant district attorney Amie Matusko told the court that the states offer of no jail time and five years of probation in the plea agreement was not typical.

(The female victim) was not interested in (Gotchall) receiving any jail time, Matusko said. Were in line with that zero days in jail."

But she added: "He needs someone watching over him.

Matusko noted that the five years of probation was the maximum and that second-degree sex abuse convictions typically carry a three-year probationary period.

According to statements from both the defense and prosecution, Gotchall and the female victim had been in a relationship in 2014 and that Gotchalls parents and the victims parents both were aware of the relationship.

But, according to statements made in court by Matusko, the female victim informed Gotchall that she was no longer a willing participant in a sexual relationship, but Gotchall was not listening to her.

Matusko read a written statement Thursday in court from the victim.

I just want the court to know that this is not a statutory rape case, where the only reason he is being charged is because of our age difference, the female victim wrote in her statement. He knew he was engaging in sexual activity with me against my will and without my consent.

Defense attorney Daniel Armstrong said Thursday in court that Gotchall and the female victim were in a consensual relationship.

Judge Williams told Armstrong in court that it was an unfortunate situation but the difference in age makes it impossible for the victim to consent.

Gotchall had been out on bail after posting 10 percent of a $475,000 security set in the case.

As part of the sentencing, Gotchall will be required to receive sex offender treatment. Gotchall will not be able to seek early termination of his probation. If his probation is not successful, Gotchall will be required to serve 21 to 24 months in prison.
Rodrigo Duterte, left, and Joko Widodo, right.

Jakarta. Vice President Jusuf Kalla is convinced that Philippine President Rodrigo Roa Duterte's state visit to Indonesia on Friday (09/09) was not related to drug convict Mary Jane Fiesta Veloso.





Veloso, who is a Philippine citizen, was sentenced to death after she was caught with 2.6 kilograms of heroin at Adisucipto International Airport in Yogyakarta in April 2010.





Kalla believes Duterte's shoot-on-site policy against drug dealers indicates he would not defend Veloso.





"He [Duterte] has openly stated that he would shoot thousands of people involved in narcotics. To defend one person proven guilty [of drug crimes] is surely against his character," Kalla said in Jakarta on Friday.





However, it was earlier reported that Duterte would discuss amnesty for Veloso with President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo. Veloso's lawyer Agus Salim said he would provide Duterte with the legal files for the discussion.





Veloso's execution was put on hold last year because her testimony against alleged human trafficker Maria Christina Sergio was needed by the Philippine authorities.





During her trial, Veloso claimed that Sergio duped her into taking a suitcase to Indonesia after she lost her job in Malaysia. The suitcase was later found to have had drugs sewn into the lining.

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Source: Jakarta Globe, September 9, 2016
Rodrigo Duterte, left, and Joko Widodo, right.

President Rodrigo Duterte took up convicted drug mule Mary Jane Velosos case during his tete-a-tete with Indonesia President Joko Widodo at the Istana Merdeka in Jakarta on Friday.





But he refused to give details of their conversation on the fate of Veloso who remained on death row in Indonesias prison after being saved a by a last-minute reprieve from her scheduled death by firing squad in May 2015 from an appeal by then President Benigno Aquino III.





Not for public consumption, said the President in a short talk with media after concluding his meeting with Widodo.





Pressed on to comment on whether he exchanged notes with Widodo on antidrug measures, the President said: No, I said that we will continue to respect each others judicial processes. The rule of law is what matters, gives order to the community.





Foreign Affairs Secretary Perfecto Yasay Jr. said both governments felt no urgency to take action in the case as she had been taken off the execution schedule indefinitely at the moment.





This is not an urgent issue as of now, lets finish the process. Her scheduled execution has been deferred because she would be testifying in the deposition case against her illegal recruiter. After prosecuting the illegal recruiter who are the main principals here and if it turns out in the trial in the Philippines that Mary Jane is a victim then at the point we can ask for clemency soon, said Yasay.





Yasay is hopeful that the case against the illegal recruiter of Veloso, who was caught with 2.5 kilograms of cocaine inside the lining of her bag at the Indonesian airport in 2010, will be resolved in a years time.





In the meantime, Yasay said Veloso had been allowed to give her deposition in the case pending with the Nueva Ecija Regional Trial court.

Jokowi, Duterte tight-lipped on Veloso

Rodrigo Duterte in Jakarta's State Palace on September 9, 2016

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said on Friday that the topic of death row inmate Mary Jane Veloso, who was detained by Indonesia for drug trafficking, was not among the subjects being discussed with President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo during his state visit to the country.





After a joint press statement at the State Palace, Duterte told reporters that Veloso's issue was not for public consumption.





"We agree to respect each other's judicial processes. The rule of law is what matters," Duterte told reporters after a joint press statement at the State Palace.





Philippine national Mary Jane Fiesta Veloso had been excluded from the list of the third round of executions prepared by the Attorney General's Office (AGO) in April, as legal procedures continued in a separate but related case in her country.





Veloso was on the execution list last year but was granted a stay of execution because her alleged boss had been arrested in the Philippines. The authorities there requested Indonesian assistance in pursuing the case.





Jokowi held a welcome ceremony in the afternoon, after taking Duterte on his famous blusukan (impromptu visit) to Tanah Abang textile market in Central Jakarta to give an example of how Indonesia manages social issues directly from the field, which was followed by a bilateral meeting.

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Source: inquirer.net , September 9, 2016Source: Jakarta Post , September 9, 2016
Yesterday we made some Google Earth tours of various US parks. We recorded the tours using Google Earths built in Record a tour button on the tool bar and then navigating with a SpaceNavigator 3D mouse. Everything seemed fine until we played back the tours and found that some of them have bumps in them and occasionally some have quite severe up and down jitter. We found that these effects were actually part of the tours as they would occur in the same place when played again.

Our first thought was that not all the terrain had loaded properly when the tour was recorded. Thus Google Earth recorded the wrong altitudes when recording the tour, and when playing it back new altitude data is available, so it looks wrong. After much investigation, we do believe that is the main cause of the problem, but that there are other issues as well.

We thought it would be interesting to try and fix the tours by using some maths to smooth out the altitudes. However, we found that because of the way the altitudes are stored in the tours, smoothing them out may be difficult or impossible. Google Earth can store altitudes in two basic ways: relative to the ground (or sea floor) or an absolute measurement (from sea level). A third option is to leave out the altitudes and have objects automatically clamp to the ground level. The difference between relative altitudes and absolute altitudes is not always obvious, but in some cases it is important to get it right. We had a problem with this in the past when we created a script to draw arcs. If we used absolute altitudes the ends of the arcs ended up all at a fixed altitude instead of ground level, and if we used relative altitudes then the arcs were not smooth but included all the bumps from the ground below them. The eventual solution that we came up with was to use absolute altitudes and read the end point altitudes from Googles Elevation API.

In the case of the tours, we found that they are being stored as relative altitudes, which is a problem, because we cannot smooth them out without knowing what the ground altitude is at each point. Oddly enough, this contradicts what it says on this page, which states that Google Earth uses absolute altitudes for tours precisely because of the problems we are experiencing.

As we noted in this post, when viewing areas with 3D, Google Earth shows the altitudes from the 3D imagery in the status bar. So the first thing we wanted to do was determine whether or not relative altitudes in Google Earth are treated as relative to the default terrain at all times, or whether it uses the 3D imagery where available. What we found was surprising.

Google Earth does use the default terrain at all times, but in some cases, it modifies the default terrain when you turn on 3D imagery  and this modification includes the altitudes being used in the relative altitude calculation. Typically, 3D imagery is above the default terrain, so intuitively one would expect relative altitudes to move upwards when you turn on 3D imagery. What happens is the opposite. They move downwards. This is because Google Earth adjusts the default terrain downwards to stop it from being seen in the 3D imagery.

The two scenes below illustrate what happens. In both cases we have some lines set to a fixed height relative to the ground:

Left: 3D buildings layer turned on. Right: 3D buildings layer turned off.

Left: 3D buildings layer turned on. Right: 3D buildings layer turned off.

In the second scene above, we are looking at a corner of an area with 3D imagery and you can see how the area with 3D imagery actually has a lower ground level than the surrounding areas. An extreme case of such altitude adjustments can be seen in this post.

In addition to all this we encountered one or two places where Google Earth couldnt decide what the correct altitude was. If we had a line with a relative altitude set, it would jump between two different heights, depending on which direction we looked at it. We believe this is the cause of the worst of the jitter we experienced in the tours.

We still dont have an actual solution to our problem.
Planned mosque in Bad Godesberg : Mayor and businesses have reservations about new mosque in industrial area

Bad Godesberg Plans to build a mosque and cultural center in an industrial area in Bad Godesberg have run up against resistance by business owners. Mayor Sridharan seems to also have reservations.

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It doesnt look good for the planned Moroccan cultural center and mosque in a commercial area in the northern part of Bad Godesberg - at least if it was up to the 30 business owners who met with Mayor Ashok Sridharan on Wednesday evening in the Stadthalle. The media was not invited to the information session but General Anzeiger spoke with business owners who attended.

The Moroccan Cultural Association, located on Bonner Strae, had planned a move to Weststrae on the grounds of the old city public works complex. There were plans to build a mosque with prayer rooms for men downstairs and for women upstairs, along with other rooms used for schooling, language classes, a library and intercultural events.

Businesses in the commercial and industrial area had expressed concern that the planned 21 parking spaces for the center would not be enough to accommodate visitors, especially when the prognosis was for more than 350 guests every Friday. The already tight parking situation would be exacerbated, blocking parking spaces that are now used by the businesses. For these reasons, the Mayor called for an information session with business owners in the area. The city released a statement on Thursday, saying We discussed various aspects of the project with the businesses. The city said it would examine the arguments of business owners and inform about its findings.

According to some of those present at Thursdays session, the Mayor expressed the opinion that the industrial park should stay just that - a commercial area. The move was initiated at a time when he was not yet in office. It was Sridharan who said the city would consider whether there were alternative locations.

One business owner suggested considering that the Moroccan association move into the King Fahd Academy, which will be vacated in 2017. The Moroccan association had already expressed to GA some time ago, however, that they found this idea absurd. They have plans from an architect to use the area and buildings in Weststrae. Their reaction, We are very surprised by the way, that up until now the Mayor has not allowed us to present him our plans. They also expressed disappointment that they were not invited to speak at the information session.

Stadtwerke Bonn (SWB) is the city public utilities company and owner of the property. They told GA, The decision on selling the property was made in the summer of 2015 based on purely financial criteria. Back then, the SWB Board of Directors took the highest bid. Further, the entire deal is not yet done because it is connected to the buyer being able to get a building permit.
Holocaust memories : Traces of the Pogrom in Bad Godesberg

Bad Godsberg A historical tour leads through a darker chapter of Bad Godesbergs history. One participant in the tour was a witness.

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Its a warm summers evening. The smell of pizza from a local restaurant drifts through the air of the small Oststrae. A group of mainly older residents look here into the heart of old Godesberg up at an unremarkable looking wall. It was where there used to be an entrance to the local synagogue.

And there a fire broke out on November 11, 1938 at around 1 p.m. during broad daylight. Reason unknown. At least thats what it says in the fire report, says Beke Ritgen. She is the historian for the Memorial of Bonn Victims of Nazism and she led a two-hour tour for the Volkshochschule (Community education) through the surrounding streets, following in the footsteps of Bad Godesberg Jews.

The Nazis didnt have time to set fire to the synagogue on Pogrom night. It would be done later when SA soldiers (Stormtroopers) came in from outside of town. And then the roof came down at midday. The perpetrators had fueled the flames with fire accelerants, explains Ritgen. There was no concern about the flames spreading to other homes in the compact neighborhood because the fire department stood ready - only to protect the neighboring homes. Ritgen explains, Everything was well-prepared.

And where were the non-Jewish citizens? They were not allowed to come close. They were not allowed to help the Jews. It was all sealed off by men in uniform, chimed in an older gentleman in the group. Werner Hagen turned out to be a witness. He was a child and staying with his uncle at the time, who was a painter. He explained to GA, I keep coming back to this place, I cannot help it. His grandmother had taken him in a stroller on this black November day past the burned-out synagogue. Only smoke was coming out. Terrible.

His grandmother told him later that they had seen a young woman crying on the steps of the synagogue. I will never forget, said Hagen. And even today he has tears in his eyes. The young woman was then picked up and taken away. From strapping SA soldiers. These are family memories that remain, says Hagen as he swallows.

Even the clearing of the rubble had to be paid by the 112 Jews of the Godesberg community and a kind of penance paid before almost all were murdered - only a few survived by escaping. Unbelievable, mutters a participant. Much more should be done to talk about how the holocaust began in this area. The tour serves exactly this purpose, and immediately, parallels are drawn to current racist violence against refugees.
With US President Barack Obama set to leave office in January after serving two four-year terms, security experts have generally appreciated his policy of a strategic rebalance to Asia as a way of countering the rise of China.

Citing Obamas decision to join the East Asia Summit in 2011 and regular participation by his secretaries of state, Hillary Clinton in his first term and John Kerry in the second term, in the Asean



Regional Forum, an annual regional security meeting, they agree that his most significant legacy for Asia will be deeper and sustained engagement with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

In historical perspective, this is probably the most deliberate and sustained engagement of Southeast Asia since the Vietnam war

MICHAEL GREEN, CENTRE FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

In historical perspective, this is probably the most deliberate and sustained engagement of Southeast Asia since the Vietnam war, said Michael Green, senior vice president for Asia at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

This year alone, Obama hosted all 10 Asean leaders in California in February , visited Vietnam in May and hosted Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong at the White House in August before travelling to Laos this week as the first sitting US president to visit the country. Next week, Obama will host Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmars de facto leader and democracy icon, in Washington.

I think the Obama administration will deserve some rightful credit for reconnecting with Southeast Asia and opening up in a sustained way an engagement strategy, Green said, noting that Asean needed the United States and Japan as a counterbalance to China.

However some argue the US rebalance, also dubbed pivot , to the worlds fastest growing region is half-measured, given Obamas reluctance to use military leverage as part of diplomacy and uncertainties about the fate of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a pending Pacific free trade deal and a major pillar of the rebalance policy, amid rising populist forces in the US election cycle.

I say half-measured in a sense that it has articulated a primary interest in Asia, which I think is correct, but it has not been backed up with a lot of muscle, said Henry Nau, a professor of international affairs at the George Washington University in Washington.

If China doesnt see us backing up a policy of rebalancing with real power, they are not going to pay any attention to us, Nau said. And to some extent, that seems to be happening in these island issues.

He was referring to Chinas island construction and militarization of outposts in the South China Sea, parts or all of which are claimed by Beijing and its smaller neighbours such as the Philippines and Vietnam, as well as its act of repeatedly sending official ships around a group of East China Sea islets in an attempt to undermine Japans administration over them.

Obamas repeated warnings have done little to halt Chinas attempts to alter the status quo in the South and East China seas. Beijing may further test Washingtons will to see how far it could go by, for example, unilaterally declaring an air defence identification zone over the South China Sea and reclaiming Scarborough Shoal, which Manila claims as its territory

Mr. Obama has, more than any other president in recent history, taken the position that you can conduct diplomacy without much military leverage, Nau said. He keeps saying that we cannot address every problem as if it is a military problem, but he addresses every problem as if it isnt a military problem.

Nau suggested that, whoever succeeds Obama after the November 8 presidential election, the next commander-in-chief needs to immediately re-examine the defence budget so the United States can project a stronger sea power in Asia to curb Chinas muscle-flexing in the South and East China seas

Michael Auslin, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, also calls on White House hopefuls  Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, and her Republican rival Donald Trump  to employ a tougher policy toward China.





If the next president is unable to moderate Chinas behaviour and unwilling to risk upsetting relations with Beijing to send a stronger message, then Mr. Obamas legacy will be an ironic one as the president who made Asia a priority, only to have squandered his countrys position, Auslin wrote in the September 1 edition of the Wall Street Journal.

While Obama vows to push Congress to ratify the US-led TPP, a trade pact signed by 12 member nations, including Japan but not China, during the so-called lame duck session between the presidential election and his departure from office, his failure to ensure its passage would be a huge blow to US credibility and leadership, as White House officials acknowledge.

Apparently wary of a backlash among voters who appear to be riding a wave of protectionism, Clinton and Trump both oppose the TPP.

Calling the pact a litmus test for US leadership and a demonstration of Americas commitment to be a Pacific power, Ben Rhodes, Obamas deputy national security adviser, said: We would be stepping back from that leadership role, we would be ceding the region to countries like China, who do not set the same types of high standards for trade agreements, were we to not follow through the TPP.

Brad Glosserman, executive director of the Pacific Forum CSIS, a Honolulu-based think tank, agreed and said that Asian governments actually consider the TPP as important as military action  if not more so  when they assess US commitment to the region.
Article

Protecting the worlds oceans  an important goal of Germanys climate diplomacy

The worlds oceans are vital to our survival. They regulate the global climate and are a source of food and income for billions of people. Only a very small part of the seas enjoys legal protection, however. Our diplomats are working in New York right now to change this state of affairs.
North Korea would love me then, because I would pull all the American troops out and just let it be a South Korea vs. North Korea matter, and shift the problem of North Korea away from the USA and on China where it belongs. I would also basically allow Japan to have a real upfront military who can defend their own ground against North Korea.



China wants to keep North Korea as a buffer state which really to me does not make much sense anymore. If nothing else, the Chinese can get rid of Kim Jong Un and his boys, (an idea is to invite them all to a state dinner and then arresting the whole bunch) and installing a pro-Chinese general in Kim's place, and buildup North Korea over time to where China is now. Get the damn people fed and put them to work in sweatshops and the people in the middle and upper classes can have their fast food, restaurants, bars, KTVs, and whatever else like every other Asian nation.



North Korea is so beyond the pale of other tightly authoritarian nations. Chinese live under authoritarianism, but have plenty of selections of food to eat, can buy a car, travel abroad, travel freely through most of their country. Not a good system, but North Korea starves its citizens, has children and babies in concentration camps, just a literal nothing economy, an economy so pitiful that the government resorts to making crystal meth and fake $100 dollar bills. That's pitiful. No nation on Earth should have diplomatic relations with North Korea. Shun them out, don't trade with North Korea and let China take care of NK or make a change.
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How to Recover Wi-Fi Passwords Using Android Smartphone How To oi -Vigneshwar

Do you need to re-connect your device to WiFi, but forgot your password? If you are a user, who deals with lots of Wi-Fi connections, it is not possible to remember all the passwords. Nowadays, it's quite hard it's quite hard to find the password since most of the device obscure the character with star/asterisk.

Also Read : Fix the 'Reliance Jio SIM Not Working' Issue with These Tips

Moreover, this task is not a hard nut to crack either! As there is no default option available, we have to use the third-party applications. So today we will guide you through some steps on how to recover your Wi-Fi network password easily.

Before going into the steps, just make sure your Android smartphone is connected to Wi-Fi network. In this 'How To' we have stated two apps that work only on the rooted device. Moreover, you can retrieve all the password are saved on your device when it gets connected to wifi network as well.

Also Read: Top 10 Most-awaited 6GB/7GB RAM Smartphones of 2016

Wi-Fi Key Recovery

Step 1: Make sure your Android device is rooted, otherwise this method won't work. Once the rooting process is done, download the Wi-Fi Key Recovery app on your device.

Step 2: Once the installation is done, allow the app or grant permission to access your smartphone.

Step 3: After the superuser access, it will take you to the page where you can see all the Wi-Fi connections that you had connected along with the passwords.

Step 4: Now copy the password and login to the Wi-Fi connections. If you wish to change the password, you can do it by heading on to the administration panel on the network.

Also Read: Here's the Difference between Reliance Jio Preview and Welcome Offer

Free Wifi Password Recovery App

Step 1: First, download the Free Wi-Fi Password Recovery app from Google Play Store on your rooted device.

Step 2: Once the installation is done, grant permission for the app to access your phone.

Step 3: After all these procedures, it will show you the saved wifi passwords listed with SSID Name and Pass. If you wish to copy the password simply tap on the network and then select "Copy password to clipboard"

Best Mobiles in India
'Feels Like Home Season 2' offers something real and tangible to think about; takes home a pertinent point - if your intentions are good, there is nothing in life that isn't achievable.
German Intelligence Services Seeking Budget Increase of Over $170Mln in 2017

Sputnik News

09:46 08.09.2016(updated 10:40 08.09.2016)

Two German intelligence services, the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), have requested a budget increase of over 152 million euros ($171 million) amid heightened terrorism and the threat of cyberattacks, local media reported, citing secret budget documents.

MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Germany's Federal Intelligence Service requested an increase of 12 percent, which would result in a total budget of 808 million euros, while the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution demanded an 18-percent hike, which would result in them being able to obtain a 307 million euro budget, Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported.

The BND plans to spend more on the decryption of messengers, which are popular among criminals and terrorists, since out of 70 communication services it can only decipher 10.

The BfV says it needs more funding to close the technological gap, as it has to cooperate with agencies like the US National Security Agency (NSA) to perform its own duties. It also cites the need to expand networking with other security agencies and create 55 new jobs in countering both far-left and far-right extremists and Islamist terrorism. The office also intends to spend another 4.5 million euros on cyberdefense.

The German Interior Ministry has proposed a set of new security measures, including an increase in the number of police officers by 15,000 people in the wake of the two lone-wolf attacks in Bavaria in July. Responsibility for both attacks was claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group, which is banned in Germany and Russia as well as many other countries.

 Sputnik

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Shaping Operations Continue in Iraq, Syria as ISIL Leaders Targeted

By Cheryl Pellerin DoD News, Defense Media Activity

WASHINGTON, Sept. 8, 2016  The past three weeks has seen continued shaping and clearing operations in Iraq, continued reduction of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant's ability to move fighters in and out of northern Syria, and sustained pressure on ISIL's command and control, the Operation Inherent Resolve spokesman said today.

Air Force Col. John Dorrian briefed the Pentagon press corps via teleconference on OIR operations, describing work being done to remove ISIL leadership figures.

Over the past 60 days coalition precision air strikes have targeted and struck more than a dozen ISIL leaders in Mosul alone, he said.

Strikes on ISIL Leaders

"These strikes have a disruptive effect on the enemy command and control, which is important in setting conditions for Mosul's liberation," Dorrian said, noting that the strikes have been against military commanders, safe houses, weapons facilitators, vehicle-borne bomb attack coordinators, security commanders and operations and communication leaders.

On the precision strike announced last week against Abu Mohammad al-Adnani, widely known as ISIL's No. 2 leader, Dorrian said coalition forces had been tracking him for a long time, knowing it was important to remove him from his role as ISIL's senior plotter for external terror attacks.

"Adnani was  responsible for spying, internal messaging and discipline as well as planning and directing the murder of innocent men, women and children in terror attacks around the world," he added.

It has been widely reported that Adnani was killed in the strike but Dorrian said the coalition is still assessing the results of the strike.

"It's a rigorous process of intelligence gathering and analysis before we confirm the strike had its desired effect. When the professionals have gone through the relevant intelligence and that process is completed, we will inform you at once," he added.

Iraq Operations

Over the past several weeks east of Mosul, Iraq, coalition forces supported peshmerga forces who were conducting Operation Evergreen II. The effort was designed to seize and control key terrain near the Gwer River Bridge, which crosses the Great Zab River, Dorrian said, adding that the operation was executed with 1,500 to 2,000 peshmerga with support from coalition and artillery strikes.

"The coalition used helicopters to lift the artillery into position and then exfiltrated the guns when the operation was complete. The firing solutions this offered provided maximum flexibility for the commander on the ground," he said.

The operation was conducted Aug. 14-16 and took less than 48 hours to achieve its main goals, Dorrian said. It also liberated 12 villages and, he added, "a lot of people who were living under miserable conditions" under ISIL.

Also in Iraq, Iraqi forces and Counter Terrorism Service forces added Qayyarah to the list of cities liberated from ISIL, Dorrian said.

"In the last two weeks alone the [Iraqis] liberated an additional six villages in the area. The significance of these liberation battles is that the Iraqi security forces continue to gain control of key terrain and lines of communications, while [ISIL] continues to lose freedom of movement and the resources that come from controlling terrain," he explained.

Qayyarah West Airfield, which will be a stepping stone and staging area for Iraqi forces, has been cleared and efforts are underway to develop the area to support upcoming operations to liberate Mosul, Dorrian added.

Partners in Syria

In Syria, after taking Jarabulus with its partnered forces, Turkey has announced that they've cleared the remaining border region from further infiltration by ISIL, Dorrian said.

This terrain was important as an route into and out of the region, he added, noting that ISIL's loss of freedom of movement in this area improves security in Europe and around the world and severely impacts their ability to reinforce fighters in Syria and Iraq.

"ISIL is an adaptive and determined enemy," the OIR spokesman said, "and the coalition will continue to support Turkey as our NATO ally, and their partner forces, as they continue to strengthen their lines and secure that border. The coalition will also continue working with our Syrian Democratic Forces partners in Syria to assure the latest progress continues to build momentum for a lasting defeat of [ISIL] in the region."

The latest progress along with continuous airstrikes to dismantle ISIL command and control, financing and resupply routes set conditions for the eventual liberation of Raqqa, the city that ISIL considers its capital, he added.

Part of setting those conditions is continued work to assure that all counter-ISIL forces operating in Syria have opened their lines of coordination to deconflict operations in what has become a very crowded battle space, Dorrian said. "Unity of focus on [ISIL] over the coming days and weeks is imperative," he added.

"Our allies, our coalition members and all of our partners have a unifying interest in defeating [ISIL]," Dorrian said. "We believe the improved coordination of armed activities in northern Syria will improve the safety of our forces."

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U.S. Department of Defense

Press Operations

News Transcript

Presenter: Secretary of Defense Ash Carter September 08, 2016

Media Availability with Secretary Carter in the United Kingdom

SECRETARY OF DEFENSE ASHTON CARTER: Good afternoon.

I'll just very briefly recap the very busy two days.

First of all, I very much appreciate Secretary Michael Fallon of the U.K. both convening this peacekeeping meeting -- more on that in a moment -- but also he and I met bilaterally to talk about the many things that we're doing with the U.K. everywhere around the world. And its continuing role as one of the very few countries in the world that has the capability to use military power in an independent, effective way.

And we value that. And that was true before Brexit, and we expect it to be true after Brexit as well. And their commitment to two percent of GDP for defense spending, which has been leading other European countries to head in the same direction. Their recommitment to their strategic deterrent, their strategic defense review which lays out a road map for the future of the U.K. military.

All that is -- undergirds the statements that the British government has said about its intention to maintain its historical, strong physical and moral role in the world. And I heard that from both Secretary Fallon and the prime minister, and their actions reflect that.

We also, and very particularly with Secretary Fallon, signed a memorandum of understanding on cyber cooperation, something that we do very closely with the Russians, and this is yet another step in our cooperation with them in that regard.

I had very good meetings -- bilateral meetings today with both Minister Isk of Turkey, my colleague and friend from Turkey; and also Minister Poltorak of Ukraine, both of whom I've met with on a number of occasions. I had a very good discussion. Minister of Defense Isk was appreciating everything we do together as NATO allies, and in keeping up the pace of the counter-ISIL campaign, which they assist in so many ways as a member of the coalition. And obviously, we talked specifically about their counter-ISIL efforts in northern Syria, which we're supporting.

I, with the Ukrainian minister of defense, signed a very important agreement. It provides a framework for us to work bilaterally with them, to help them continue to modernize their military, something they're committed to doing, and it covers the whole gamut from training and command and control, through acquisition and logistics.

And Assistant Secretary Slotkin can brief you more on that, and all the details on that, but a very, very important agreement with them. And to go with that, I informed the minister that I'd prevailed upon my very, very respected friend, former General John Abizaid, Central Command commander, among many other important roles he played on the Joint Staff and elsewhere, to serve as senior adviser to the minister.

This is a role that I had discussed with him previously. He said he thought he would welcome someone making suggestions to him. Obviously, he will be free to take advice or not. But these would be suggestions made in support of everything that we're trying to do under this new agreement.

And as I describe some of my relationship with John and the fact that I personally appealed to John to spend his time, which he is gracious enough doing this. This is an important thing, working with an important and longstanding partner of the United States in Ukraine. So I'm delighted -- I was delighted with that, too, and I was delighted to be able to tell the minister all about John.

I also briefly before I left the meeting had a chance to chat briefly with Angelina Jolie Pitt, who was present at this conference on United Nations peacekeeping, and I thanked her for taking an interest in that subject, which obviously I am here because we think it's extremely important as well.

One thing she told me that meant a lot to me was she says, "Yes, I am here and I am helping out the United Nations, but I am -- I am also an American and I want you to know how proud I am of the American military." And I told her that the support of our public means a lot to all of us. So I wanted everyone to know that.

And that was it for this trip and now let me go to the questions, which I'm sure -- (inaudible).

STAFF: We have time -- (inaudible).

Q: Mr. Secretary, -- (inaudible)  does the Abizaid appointment indicate your intention to help the Ukrainians with more offensive (inaudible) operations against the Russians?

SEC. CARTER: No, it's about the Ukrainian capability for defending its own territory. That has been the objective of all of our assistance to Ukraine. And so it continues in the same vein, Bob, as everything else we've been doing now for the last couple of years with Ukraine.

But it just allows us greatly to strengthen that and to get it off of a sort of ad hoc basis of the last two years, reacting to events, and put it on, in this case, a five-year horizon; a more sustained and systematic horizon because we believe Ukraine's going to be an important European power for a long time. And it is important that it have the capability for self-defense; that that be interoperable with ours; and that it be modern and undergo necessary reforms and transformation. And that is what it is all about.

STAFF: (inaudible)

Q: Sir, are we providing any money or platforms to Ukraine as part of this agreement?

SEC. CARTER: This agreement does not per se do that, but you know that we are providing several hundred million dollars worth of equipment to Ukraine. We're involved in training. There is a multinational training unit in Ukraine. All of this agreement makes all of that both easier and all pursuant to the purposes of transformation of the Ukrainian military.

(CROSSTALK)

Q: Mr. Secretary, yesterday President Erdogan suggested that the U.S. and Turkey are considering a joint operation in Raqqah. Can you flesh that out at all?

SEC. CARTER: Well, I talked the Minister Islik today about our joint operations in northern Syria, which are aimed at securing the border area there on both sides. And that is -- and we are working very hard and very closely with the Turks, and I was assuring him that we were doing that and that I think other coalition members will want to do that, too.

We talked about everything else that we're doing with Turkey as part of the coalition. I thanked them for what is now a normal pace of operations from Diyarbakir and from Incirlik. I also did talk to him about the work that we're doing with the Syrian Democratic Forces in Syria. And we know that those two parties are -- have doubts about one another and suspicions about one another.

My promise to both of them -- our promise to both of them, and this, in the case of Turkey has been communicated by the president to President Erdogan, is we need to defeat ISIL and we're going to pursue that path, but we will be transparent with both parties and make sure that everybody knows what everyone else is doing.

And we're doing that now to coordinate so that they don't come into any kind of conflict between them as they're both pursuing objectives against ISIL with our assistance. So we did talk about that as well. It was a very good conversation with Minister Islik.

I had met with him back at Andrews a few months ago, and then of course the coup transpired in Turkey about a week after that, and I called him at that time to express my support and hope he was okay and so forth. And our continuing need to work together, and he's been strong and very clear. So we had a very clear, very candid, extremely productive conversation. Good partner.

Q: (inaudible) -- the conversations with the Turkish defense minister about the conflict between the Turks and -- (inaudible), does this presage a sort of conflict between -- (inaudible) -- partners that the U.S. is allying with on the ground after ISIL is defeated? Is there any thought, any discussion being given to the fact that the defeat of ISIL would in fact potentially impact bringing peace to Syria or Iraq and -- (inaudible)?

SEC. CARTER: Well, the defeat of ISIL is a good thing, but you're right, that now that people can see that that defeat is inevitable, they're beginning to think about what goes on after that. And we, as the leader of the coalition, that's what coalition management and leadership is all about, trying to make sure that no one tries to take advantage of the situation created by the defeat of ISIL to otherwise change the circumstances there.

And we're quite firm about that, both in Syria and Iraq, by the way. And that's the basis of my understandings and our understandings with leaders in Iraq as well. And another important principle, of course, is that places that are rid of ISIL need to be given back to the people who live there to run them.

You see us working to that end in Manbij. You've seen us working to that end progressively in the cities in Iraq that the Iraqi security forces have taken back, and you'll see it again in Mosul and Raqqah where we're intent upon driving ISIL out of those cities. But nobody's going to go in there and occupy those cities except the people who already live there.

That's the point is to give them back, because not only is that the just thing to do, but we all know that that's the only practical way to make a defeat of ISIL last. And I've talked right from the beginning about a lasting defeat. That's part of it.

(CROSSTALK)

Q: Has the YPG left Manbij?

SEC. CARTER: Yes, the YPG, which just to remind you all, has membership in the Syrian Democratic Forces. The Syrian Democratic Forces also contained Arabs and other ethnicities, and that's important. And those are the ones who are part of the Manbij Military Council and that are trying to restore and stabilize things in Manbij.

YPG assured us, and we work with them every day, so those forces would not attempt to be part of a hold force in Manbij. That's part of the principle I described, of people who live in a place should be the hold force in that place. They understand that completely.

We have that understanding with the Syrian Democratic Forces, including the YPG parts of it, and specifically that the YPG would remain east of the Euphrates. And that's our understanding with them. And I was able to assure Minister Islik today that that was our firm understanding with them and the basis for our continued cooperation with them.

Q: (inaudible)

SEC. CARTER: Yes, that's -- they are.

Q: They are?

SEC. CARTER: Yes. Yes, and in fact, we talked about making sure that our commanders and their commanders, that is the Turkish commanders, are in touch enough so that everybody knows exactly what the situation is and can confirm these things.

http://www.defense.gov/News/News-Transcripts/Transcript-View/Article/938454/

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NATO Warships Arrive in Canada for Submarine Warfare Exercise Cutlass Fury

Sputnik News

17:26 08.09.2016(updated 17:38 08.09.2016)

Warships from NATO countries arrived in Halifax, Nova Scotia for the Canadian-led military exercise Cutlass Fury, Royal Canadian Navy Commander Vice Admiral Ron Lloyd said in a Twitter post on Thursday.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  Warships from NATO countries arrived in Halifax, Nova Scotia for the Canadian-led military exercise Cutlass Fury, Royal Canadian Navy Commander Vice Admiral Ron Lloyd said in a Twitter post on Thursday.

"Several warships from NATO nations arrive at RNC MARLANT [Royal Canadian Navy Maritime Forces Atlantic Formation] today for Cutlass Fury  strengthening international partnerships and interoperability," Lloyd stated.

The Canadian Armed Forces explained that Cutlass Fury will involve Task Group-level exercises with a focus on anti-submarine warfare, air defense, amphibious operations and support to Special Operations forces.

Cutlass Fury will take place from September 9-26. The Canadian-led exercise involves 3,000 participants from France, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States, according to MARLANT.

 Sputnik

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Obama Highlights Strong Commitment to Asia Pivot Despite Challenges

By Cindy Saine September 08, 2016

As President Barack Obama wrapped up his final trip to Asia while in office, he reflected Thursday on his long ties to a region that he has made a central focus of U.S. foreign policy.

In a final news conference before departing Laos, he said that he was proud to be the first U.S. president to meet with the leaders of all 10 Association of Southeast Asian Nations countries, and that he hoped his successor would continue to make the region a priority.

"My hope and expectation ... is that my successor will, in fact, sustain this kind of engagement, because there is a lot happening here," he said. "You've got countries here that are taking off. You've got one of the most dynamic and youngest populations in the world. This is where the action is going to be when it comes to commerce and trade, and ultimately creating U.S. jobs by being able to sell to this market."

Bumpy begininng

Obama's final Asia trip ended on a positive note after getting off to a rough start.

There was his botched arrival in China, where the president had to disembark from Air Force One on a shorter staircase from the belly of the plane when the Chinese failed to provide the customary metal staircase. North Korea tested a nuclear missile during the visit, as if to highlight one of the big failures of U.S. and international nonproliferation efforts.

Also, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte uttered an insult about Obama, prompting him to cancel their sit-down meeting. The two did speak briefly on the sidelines of the summit, after Duterte and his foreign minister expressed regret.

These awkward and tense moments prompted critics, including Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, to say that foreign leaders were showing disrespect to the "lame duck" U.S. president, who only has five months left in office.

'Flap' dismissed

Asia expert and Brookings Institution senior fellow Jonathan Pollack told VOA he fundamentally disagreed: "The whole flap over the airplane stairs, this is one of the classic snafus, a glitch that could and should be avoided by the staffs of both leaders. There is a long record of similar glitches in the U.S.-China relationship."

Pollack told VOA the long, substantive, face-to-face meeting between Chinese President Xi Jingping and Obama was much more important than any staircase drama, which he said the media had exaggerated.

Pollack said Philippine foreign ministry officials sincerely apologized for their president's vulgar remark, because the last thing they want to do is to undermine that country's relationship with the United States. He praised Obama for the way he handled the insult.

Obama struck a wistful tone at the news conference, saying he realized this was his last trip to Asia as president and remembering the years he spent in Indonesia as a child.

"When I think back to the time that I spent here as a boy, I can't help but be struck by the extraordinary progress that's been made across so much of the region in the decades since  even as there's still a lot of work to be done," he said. "And so it means a great deal to me, not only as president, but also personally, that over the past eight years we've increased cooperation between ASEAN countries and the United States."

Paris climate accord

Pollack said Obama's commitment to the Asia-Pacific region was political, economic and highly personal, and pointed to the ratification of the Paris accord on climate change as the most significant accomplishment.

Pollack said the fate of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement the president passionately supports, rests in the hands of Congress, which has vowed not to even take it up until after the next president has been inaugurated. He said the president's Asia-Pacific rebalance ambitions were incomplete, but added that true success is often measured in the tough work of "keeping at it" instead of flashy breakthroughs.

But Matthew Goodman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, told VOA he thought Obama's legacy in Asia hinged on whether Congress ratified the TPP agreement: "The economic part of the pivot is essential to the overall strategy and so if we can't get TPP ratified by Congress, that is going to undermine the view of his overall legacy in the region in the political, military and social sides as well."

VOA's Ron Corben contributed to this report from Bangkok.

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Coalition Strikes Continue Against ISIL in Syria, Iraq

From a Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve News Release

SOUTHWEST ASIA, Sept. 9, 2016  U.S. and coalition military forces continued to attack Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant terrorists in Iraq and Syria yesterday, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported today.

Officials reported details of the latest strikes, noting that assessments of results are based on initial reports.

Strikes in Syria

Attack, bomber, fighter and remotely piloted aircraft conducted nine strikes in Syria:

-- Near Ayn Isa, two strikes engaged an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed a vehicle and an anti-air artillery system.

-- Near Dayz Az Zawr, six strikes damaged 10 ISIL supply routes.

-- Near Mara, a strike destroyed an ISIL vehicle.

Strikes in Iraq

Attack, fighter and remotely piloted aircraft conducted five strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of Iraq's government:

-- Near Haditha, a strike destroyed two ISIL vehicles and an artillery cache.

-- Near Kisik, a strike destroyed two ISIL rocket rails and a fighting position.

-- Near Mosul, two strikes destroyed an ISIL fighting position, a tunnel entrance and a vehicle bomb factory.

-- Near Tal Afar, a strike destroyed a vehicle bomb factory.

Task force officials define a strike as one or more kinetic events that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a single, sometimes cumulative, effect. Therefore, officials explained, a single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIL vehicle is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against buildings, vehicles and weapon systems in a compound, for example, having the cumulative effect of making those targets harder or impossible for ISIL to use. Accordingly, officials said, they do not report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual munition impact points against a target. Ground-based artillery fired in counterfire or in fire support to maneuver roles is not classified as a strike.

Part of Operation Inherent Resolve

The strikes were conducted as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, the operation to eliminate the ISIL terrorist group and the threat they pose to Iraq, Syria, and the wider international community. The destruction of ISIL targets in Syria and Iraq further limits the terrorist group's ability to project terror and conduct operations, officials said.

Coalition nations that have conducted strikes in Iraq include the United States, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Jordan, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Coalition nations that have conducted strikes in Syria include the United States, Australia, Bahrain, Canada, France, Jordan, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom.

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Pacific Partnership 2016 Concludes

Navy News Service

Story Number: NNS160909-13

Release Date: 9/9/2016 12:45:00 PM

From Pacific Partnership Public Affairs

PACIFIC OCEAN (NNS) -- The 11th annual Pacific Partnership mission recently departed the Western Pacific after completing mission stops throughout Southeast Asia.

The annual multilateral, multi-service mission saw partner nation counterparts working alongside one another in six countries to improve disaster response preparedness and enhance relationships in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region.

Pacific Partnership is the largest annual multilateral disaster relief preparedness mission conducted in the Indo-Asia-Pacific. The 2016 mission was led by Commander, Destroyer Squadron (DESRON) 23, embarked aboard hospital ship USNS Mercy (T-AH 19). Approximately 1,200 military and civilian personnel from Australia, Canada, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Republic of Korea, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States participated for the duration or parts of the four-month mission.

Pacific Partnership 2016 visited Dili, Timor Leste; Legazpi, Philippines; Da Nang, Vietnam; Kuantan, Malaysia; and Padang, Indonesia. Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force personnel embarked aboard tank landing ship JS Shimokita (LST 4002) led a mission stop to Koror, Palau. Multinational humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR), medical, and civil-engineering teams partnered with their counterparts in each country to conduct live search and rescue field training exercises, subject matter expert exchanges, cooperative health engagements and community relations events.

The collaborative efforts between Pacific Partnership teams and their counterparts in each country improved collective capacity and multilateral cooperation to respond to a disaster and enhance regional partnerships at all levels.

"The men and women of Pacific Partnership made significant advances to the mission through their collaboration with host nations and our civilian and military partners," said Rear Adm. Don Gabrielson, commander, Task Force 73. "Their hard work deepened partnerships and enhanced readiness in search and rescue and humanitarian and disaster response preparedness, preparing us to work together even more closely in the future."

Pacific Partnership began in response to one of the world's most catastrophic natural disasters, the December 2004 tsunami that devastated parts of Southeast Asia. The mission has evolved over the years from the provision of direct care to collective capacity building, and Pacific Partnership 2016 focused primarily on knowledge exchange with the intent of sharing knowledge and skills that last long after the mission is over -- increasing resiliency and building sustained relationships.

Pacific Partnership 2016 was also different from previous missions with several other distinctions, to include:

* A multinational command-and-control structure for disaster relief, which included a deputy mission commander from the Royal Australian navy and a mission chief of staff from the Royal New Zealand air force.

* The visit by Mercy to Vietnam saw improved U.S. and Vietnamese military cooperation during a live search and rescue exercise on the Han River in Da Nang, which also included Vietnam People's navy ship Khanh Hoa (K-123) and crew members from Shimokita. Pacific Partnership underscores the deepening relationship between the United States, partner nations and Vietnam.

* Pacific Partnership 2016 capitalized on the Women Peace and Security program, an international initiative designed to empower women and demonstrate the importance of including them in the planning and implementation of disaster preparedness and relief efforts. The Pacific Partnership 2016 Women, Peace and Security team hosted seminars and workshops as well as discussions during HADR symposiums.

* This year's mission visited Malaysia for the first time, although Malaysia has contributed forces to Pacific Partnership since it began in 2006.

"Our partner nations in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region have firsthand experience dealing with natural disaster, and our goal on this mission was to learn from that experience and also to share some of our lessons learned in disaster response," said Capt. Tom Williams, mission commander, Pacific Partnership 2016. "Throughout the mission we all learned from each other and continued to strengthen professional and personal relationships. I am very proud to have been part of Pacific Partnership 2016."

Planning for Pacific Partnership 2017 is ongoing, with a sustained focused on disaster preparedness with partner nations in the Indo-Asia-Pacific.

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Uzbekistan will not enter into military-political alliances: Mirziyoyev

Iran Press TV

Fri Sep 9, 2016 1:18PM

Uzbekistan says its position remains to be non-membership in alliances of military and political nature.

Acting President Shavkat Mirziyoyev said the "firm position of our country, as before, is non-membership in all military-political alliances and not allowing other states' military bases and facilities on the territory of Uzbekistan."

Mirziyoyev made the remark during a parliament session in which he was appointed interim president, a foreign ministry statement reported Friday.

The acting president followed in the footsteps of late President Islam Karimov.

On Thursday, the parliament approved 58-year-old Mirziyoyev as the acting president after he received the support of senate leader Nigmatilla Yuldashev, who "recused himself" from his right to take the post. Under Uzbekistan's constitution, Yuldashev should have become the acting president until an election was held later this year.

"No one should doubt that any attempt by internal and external forces to encroach on the sovereignty and independence of our country will be severely suppressed," Mirziyoyev stated.

Also on Friday, the election commission said presidential polls would take place on December 4.

Analysts predict that Mirziyoyev, who served as the prime minister for about 13 years, will be the winner.

Islam Karimov, who had ruled Uzbekistan since its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, died on September 2, almost one week after he suffered a brain stroke.

Under his reign, Uzbekistan refrained from having any military alliance with the strategic partners Russia and the United States.

Tashkent left a Russia-led security organization in 2012 and annulled a military base lease to the US after Washington urged an independent investigation into the May 2005 unrest in Uzbekistan.

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Moldova Rejects Call For Transdniester To Join Russia

September 09, 2016

Moldova has rejected a decree by Transdniester's leadership that says the breakaway region should join Russia, in line with the results of a referendum 10 years ago.

In a decree posted on September 7 on the website of Transdniester's separatist leader, Yevgeny Shevchuk, he said it was time to enact the results of the 2006 referendum, in which some 97 percent of the region's residents voted to join Russia.

The Moldovan government's Bureau on Reintegration said in a September 9 statement that the referendum was held illegally by the "unconstitutional" separatist leadership.

The Kremlin denied to comment on the decree.

Transdniester, which shares a border with Ukraine but not Russia, split from Moldova in 1990. The move has not been recognized internationally.

The region holds elections in December and Shevchuk is expected to run.

The region is currently in an economic downturn and the separatist government is unpopular.

Based on reporting by AP, TASS, and Interfax

Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/moldova-rejects- transdniester-joining-russia/27977403.html

Copyright (c) 2016. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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If bullyboys want to attack women, France is the place for them. Tear off any costume you think too big, bully little girls for wearing headscarves, pass laws to discriminate against minorities and then have big dramas when they shoot you! Collaborate or die!
Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)

North Korea has been ruled by one of the most repressive totalitarian regimes on earth. Millions of North Koreans have been starved to death and sent to concentration camps to die in inhumane ways not seen since the days of Hitler or Stalin. The extent of human rights abuses, a list too long to go into great detail, are deliberate and calculated actions utilized by the Kim regime to quell dissent and maintain ultimate control.

Exposure to and desire for other cultures is spreading throughout the poplulace and armed forces. As people begin to see how other cultures live, they find their current situation less appealing and question huge defense expenditures like missile launches. Kim Jung Un is not only aware of the increasing dissatisfaction and desertion within the ranks of the NKPA, but also understands how a weakening of the military threatens his national defense strategy and the stability of his regime. He is quoted as saying If the military deteriorates and collapses, our fatherland will be blown away like sand.

Kim Jong Un rebuked the military for having many political schools that practice Hailing Yang, while practicing Yin. This phrase means that they pretend to obey but secretly betray.Kim Jong Un ordered the eradication of aberrant lifestyles, in which people view and listen to impure materials, but according to a North Korean source, interest in and desire for different cultures is spreading in the country.

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea or DPRK) is a Communist state with an underdeveloped economy, but a powerful military, situated on the Korean peninsula between northeast China and the Republic of Korea (South Korea). North Korea limits trade and transportation links with other countries and tightly restricts the circumstances under which foreigners may enter the country and interact with local citizens. Telephone and fax communications are unavailable in many areas of the country, and foreigners can expect their communications to be monitored by DPRK officials. In recent years, North Korea has experienced intermittent famine, chronic fuel and electricity shortages, and outbreaks of disease. Many countries, including the United States, have contributed to international relief efforts to assist the people of North Korea.

The DPRK adopted Marxism-Leninism as its ruling philosophy when it proclaimed its establishment in 1948, but in a Constitutional revision in 1972, supplemented it with the juche ideology, or national self-reliance. The two philosophies were combined into one as "the juche idea of the Worker's Party of Korea, a creative application of Marxism-Leninism to the conditions of our country". In 1980, the official ideology was simplified as "the juche thought of the Great Leader, Kim Il-Sung". According to the DPRK Constitution, juche is "a revolutionary ideology with a people-centred view of the world that aims to realise the independence of the masses, the guiding principle of its actions". Juche consists of two parts: the philosophical theory that claims the masses are the masters of history and the revolution, and the principle that the masses need the guidance of a leader (Kim Il-Sung and his son, Kim Jong-Il) to fulfil their destiny.

In practice, juche resulted in an inward looking economic and political system that ostensibly rejected international trade, but in reality became heavily dependent on the provision of goods on favourable terms from fraternal socialist states. With the demise of the communist bloc, the difficulties of this position soon became apparent. Shortages in spare parts, fuel, and food have grown but the isolationist ideology of juche continues to underlie all government policies and emphasis remains in advancing an independent road to national development. The population is motivated to pursue juche through an intensive ideological campaign and a pervasive programme of political indoctrination. Since its inception, juche has primarily stressed independence from external powers, but the regime now faces the dilemma of how to expand trade and investment with the outside world in order to resuscitate the economy, without jeopardising its political stability.

The "Military First" orientation has always been the heart and soul of the North Korean regime. It provides the only conceivable means by which the regime can survive and achieve its ultimate security through reunification. The military continues to grow in both conventional and asymmetrical forces with increasing emphasis on the latter. The military provides deterrence, defense, and a massive offensive threat, as well as leverage in international negotiations. The army is much more than just a military organization; it is North Korea's largest employer, purchaser, and consumer, the central unifying structure in the country, and the source of power for the regime.

In August 1945, the Japanese in Korea surrendered to the former Soviet Union, which gained control of the Korean peninsula south to the 38th parallel. In August 1948, supposedly following general elections throughout the peninsula, the DPRK was established, with Kim Il-song heading the central government. These factitious elections are the basis for Pyongyang's claim as the only legitimate government of Korea, and Pyongyang has made a national goal of reunifying the country on its terms. In pressing this claim, the DPRK has engaged in a political, economic, and military competition with the Republic of Korea (ROK). However, in any comparison except military power, Pyongyang is a poor second.

On Saturday, 24 June 1950, DPRK forces invaded the ROK. The United States, acting with a mandate from the UN, took the lead in defending the ROK. The Chinese entered into the fighting, and the war's inconclusive end led to a return to the status quo at the 38th parallel. An armistice, signed in July 1953, was followed 2 months later by the signing of a mutual defense treaty between the United States and the ROK.

The country is facing insurmountable internal problems and is unstable politically, economically, and socially. The Government of the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea) continues to commit serious human rights abuses, including extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrests and detention, forced labor, and torture. Many of these abuses are committed in the countrys political prison camps (kwanliso), which hold an estimated 80,000 -120,000 prisoners, including children and family members of the accused. The government also maintains an extensive system of forced labor through its rigid controls over workers, and restricts the exercise of freedoms of expression, peaceful assembly, association, religion or belief, and movement.

There are no independent media in the country; all media are strictly censored and no deviation from the official government line is tolerated. The government allows no editorial freedom; all stories are centrally directed and reviewed to ensure that they are in line with the state ideology. The government also controls academic and cultural content. Authorities prohibit listening to foreign media broadcasts and take steps to jam foreign radio broadcasts. Various ministries are responsible for modifying television and radio equipment to prevent users from accessing material from overseas and other material deemed illegal by the government. Individuals accused of viewing foreign films are reportedly subject to imprisonment or even execution.

Various political setbacks have further isolated the DPRK and include the 1990 formal recognition of the ROK by the former Soviet Union, and the 1991 entrance of both Koreas to the UN. The DPRK lost one of its major supporters with the demise of the Soviet Union. Moreover, although the People's Republic of China (PRC) remains the only credible supporter of the DPRK, economic and political rapprochement between the PRC and the ROK continues. The DPRK will continue to be both economically and socially repressed and will become increasingly isolated. The DPRK will likely cling to its outmoded style of communism and political change will not occur until the current leaders are gone.

On June 19, 2000, the US eased economic sanctions against North Korea. Imports from North Korea are allowed, subject to an approval process. Direct personal and commercial financial transactions are allowed between US and North Korean citizens. Restrictions on investment have also eased. Commercial US ships and aircraft carrying US goods are allowed to call at North Korean ports with prior clearance. Although modified periodically since 1995 as a result of commitments made to begin normalization of relations, US economic and financial sanctions against North Korea -- administered by the US treasury department -- remain in force. They affect all US citizens and permanent residents wherever they are located, all people and organizations physically in the united states, and all branches, subsidiaries and controlled affiliates of US organizations throughout the world.

Negative economic growth, chronic shortages of raw materials (especially oil), ineffective centralized economic planning, and an emphasis on military power contributed to the economic failure of North Korea. The requirement by Russia and the PRC that materials exported to the DPRK be paid for with cash further degraded North Korea's economic viability. The DPRK can no longer generate sufficient electrical power to meet industrial needs, social services have been severely degraded, and segments of society have been reduced to one meal a day. There are chronic shortages of many of the basic commodities required for subsistence and industrial production. Critical resources continue to be dedicated to the military with increasing detriment to the economy.

There will be no relief from the severe shortages, which could foster growing dissatisfaction among the intelligentsia, workers, students, and bureaucrats. The DPRK's management of its economy provides no freedom of action for producers, real incentives for individuals to excel, or a government responsive to scientific and technological progress. If the DPRK keeps its emphasis on its military and does not reform its eco-nomic system, the country could eventually be in grave danger of imploding. The DPRK is, and will likely remain, one of the most dangerous countries in the world.

With its external reputation for worst-case socialism, in the 1990s most observers thought North Korea would go the way of the Stalinist states of Eastern Europe and collapse. Some thought East Germany would be the model, with North Korea folding up and embracing a new unity with the South. Others suggested the example of Romania, where Nikolae Ceausescu had modeled his dictatorial rule on Kim Il Sungs. The revolution of 1989 was so unexpected as to breed humility into all observers of socialist states, but, so far, North Korea has not followed the East German path.

It was Mikhail Gorbachev who reined in the military there; amid the widespread demonstrations against Erich Honneckers regime, Gorbachev kept the 360,000 Soviet Army troops in their barracks. North Korea, however, has an independently controlled army estimated at 1.2 million strong, and most of the pressure the Soviets could exert had been applied (overall Soviet aid to Pyongyang declined precipitously after Gorbachev took power, although military aid continued). In the early twenty-first century, the North reportedly has trafficked in illegal narcotics and counterfeit currency.

Koreas main difference from Eastern Europe was that it suffered a terrible civil war, with some 4.5 million killed, in recent memory. The North probably suffered nearly 2 million casualties. There also were 1 million Chinese casualties. It was very hard to believe that military commanders who fought the South in a bloody civil war would allow South Korea to overwhelm North Korea, by whatever means. If North Koreas socialist system collapses under intense international pressure, probably the apparatchiks will declare themselves to have been nationalists all along (with some measure of truth) and try to keep their hold on power.

In April 2016 the Government called on the citizens to prepare for a new "arduous march." The term was first coined by the North Korean leadership in 1993 as a metaphor for the four-year famine that decimated the nation from 1994. The famine - in which as many as 3.5 million of the nation's 22 million people died - was brought on by economic mismanagement, natural disasters, the collapse of the Soviet bloc, and the consequent loss of aid, combined with the regime's insistence on putting the military first.

Acute respiratory disease common cold, flu and bronchitis may be more dominant during winter seasons. (December ~ February) No human case of SARs and Avian Influenza has been reported so far in DPRK. Diarrheal Disease is also common during summer months. The main casuses being poor water quality, lack of sanitary facilities and poor food storage. However, Pyongyang city and the hotel facilities strictly observe the sanitation standards, causing no harms to the foreigners. Only boiled water should be used for drinking, bottled water is also available in most cities.





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Beijing disapproves of North Korea's latest nuclear test

Iran Press TV

Fri Sep 9, 2016 12:44PM

China has criticized North Korea for its latest nuclear test, urging Pyongyang to resolve issues in the region through dialog.

"Despite universal opposition from the international community, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) conducted its fifth nuclear test," said Hua Chunying, China's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, on Friday at a press briefing.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry official said Beijing had "issued a statement and expressed Chinese government's stance of firm opposition."

North Korean media announced on Friday that the country had conducted a "nuclear explosion" test.

"Our nuclear scientists staged a nuclear explosion test on a newly developed nuclear warhead at the country's northern nuclear test site," North Korea's state TV said.

The three-minute broadcast said North Korea stood ready to "retaliate against the enemies."

"We will take further measures to bolster the state's nuclear force in quality and quantity for safeguarding the dignity and the right to existence ...[against] the US's increasing threats of a nuclear war," the state TV said.

"Realizing de-nuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, preventing nuclear proliferation, and safeguarding peace and stability in Northeast Asia have always been China's firm stance," the foreign ministry spokeswoman stated.

She reiterated Beijing's commitment to resolving disputes on the Korean Peninsula through dialog, calling for Pyongyang to refrain from unilateral action that could worsen the situation.

"We strongly urge the DPRK side  [to] halt any move that could aggravate the situation  and complicate the issue," the Chinese official said, adding, "China will continue to remain committed to solving the relevant issues of the Korean Peninsula through dialog and consultation."

International condemnation

North Korea's Friday nuclear test has met with similar criticisms from international bodies and other countries.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) described the test as "deeply troubling" and a disregard to the viewpoints and concerns of the international community.

It was a "clear violation of numerous United Nations Security Council resolutions  It is a deeply troubling and regrettable act," said IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano.

Britain also condemned North Korea's test and said it would consult with international partners on an appropriate reaction.

"The United Kingdom strongly condemns North Korea for conducting a further nuclear test, which is a flagrant violation of UN Security Council resolutions and a threat to regional peace and stability," said British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson.

Other countries, including the United States and Germany, followed suit in criticizing North Korea.

Diplomatic sources say the UN Security Council is to hold a closed-door meeting on Friday afternoon to discuss the matter.

In January, North Korea said it had detonated a hydrogen bomb with success. It was Pyongyang's fourth nuclear test. The country vowed to build up its nuclear program as deterrence against potential aggression from the US and its regional allies.

The UN and the West have imposed a series of sanctions on Pyongyang over its nuclear and missile activities.

North Korea says it will not abandon its nuclear "deterrence" unless Washington ends its hostile policy toward Pyongyang and dissolves the US-led command in South Korea.

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North Korea confirms conducting nuclear test

Iran Press TV

Fri Sep 9, 2016 3:37AM

North Korea confirms that it has conducted a successful "nuclear warhead explosion" test, saying it was meant to counter US hostility.

"Our nuclear scientists staged a nuclear explosion test on a newly developed nuclear warhead at the country's northern nuclear test site," a TV announcer said on Friday.

The confirmation came after South Korean authorities said they believed North Korea has conducted a fifth nuclear test  its biggest to date  following the detection of an "artificial earthquake."

South Korea's meteorological agency said the magnitude 5.3 quake was detected near North Korea's Punggye-ri nuclear test site.

"The 10-kiloton blast was nearly twice the fourth nuclear test and slightly less than the Hiroshima bombing, which was measured about 15 kilotons," said Kim Nam-Wook of South Korea's meteorological agency.

Reacting to the development, the White House said it was assessing the explosion near North Korea's nuclear test, but stopped short of confirming a nuclear test.

China calls for restraint

China's official Xinhua news agency said all parties in the international community should exercise restraint following the test as it is in nobody's interest for there to be chaos or war on the Korean Peninsula.

In a commentary, Xinhua said North Korea's nuclear test is "not wise," but South Korea's decision to deploy an advanced US anti-missile system has also seriously damaged regional strategic balance.

China's Foreign Ministry said it was "firmly opposed" to the test but called for the issue to be resolved through six-party talks. The long-stalled negotiations process chaired by China brings together the two Koreas, Japan, Russia and the United States.

The UN and the West have imposed a raft of sanctions on North Korea, prompting Pyongyang to step up its nuclear activities.

On Monday, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called on the country's military to bolster its nuclear capabilities after ordering the launch of three ballistic missiles.

In January, North Korea said it had successfully detonated a hydrogen bomb, its fourth nuclear test, and vowed to build up its nuclear program as deterrence against potential aggression from the US and its regional allies.

North Korea says it will not give up on its nuclear "deterrence" unless Washington ends its hostile policy toward Pyongyang and dissolves the US-led command in South Korea. Thousands of US soldiers are stationed in South Korea and Japan.

Pyongyang is incensed by joint military drills held in the Korean Peninsula by the South and the US as well as their plan to deploy the THAAD missile system in the region.

China and Russia have also voiced opposition to the deployment, saying the system would threaten security, stability and peace on the Korean Peninsula and cannot help denuclearize the volatile region.

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5.3 Magnitude Quake Reported Near North Korea Nuclear Test Site

Sputnik News

03:52 09.09.2016(updated 05:25 09.09.2016)

A 5.3 magnitude earthquake has been reported in North Korea, according to the United States Geological Survey. The incident occurred near nuclear test sites, raising speculation that Pyongyang has conducted new tests.

The seismic activity, also confirmed by a European monitoring agency, comes amid speculation that the DPRK was preparing for a fifth nuclear test. A South Korean government source said that it sees a "high possibility" that the DPRK has conducted its latest underground nuclear test, according to Yonhap news agency, which described it as an "artificial quake."

"Possible explosion, located near the location where North Korea has detonated nuclear explosions in the past. If this is indeed an explosion, the USGS National Earthquake Information Center cannot determine what type of explosion it may be, whether nuclear or any other possible type," USGS said.

The China Earthquake Networks Center said the epicenter of the quake was detected at an altitude of 0 kilometers.

The earthquake was detected near a location where the DPRK's fourth nuclear test occurred in January.

Radiation monitoring posts in Russia's Far East have not detected any excess radiation after the seismic event, a Far East representative of the Russian Emergencies Ministry told RIA Novosti.

"The radiation control systems did not record any excess background radiation," the representative said on Friday morning.

South Korean presidential Blue House will hold an emergency National Security Council meeting after the seismic activity.

The United States is aware of the seismic event and is coordinating with its partners in the region, National Security Council Spokesperson Ned Price told RIA Novosti.

"We are aware of seismic activity on the Korean Peninsula in the vicinity of a known North Korean nuclear test site. We are monitoring and continuing to assess the situation in close coordination with our regional partners," Price said.

Pyongyang has conducted a series of nuclear and ballistic missile tests since January, resulting in harsh new sanctions being implemented by the UN Security Council.

Last month, security experts said that indications showed North Korea's nuclear arsenal to be expanding rapidly.

"Assuming the current rate of development, while North Korea still faces significant technological challenges including building a new class of submarine to carry the missile, it is on track to develop the capability to strike targets in the region  including Japan  by 2020," reads a recent report by the US Korea Institute at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at John Hopkins University.

 Sputnik

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North Korea Conducts Second Nuclear Test This Year

By Brian Padden September 09, 2016

North Korea has confirmed that a 5.3-magnitude artificial earthquake that occurred Friday morning near its Punggye-ri nuclear test site was caused by a nuclear test.

U.S. Geological Survey and European agencies detected the quake Friday at 9:30 a.m. local time. The China Earthquake Networks Center said the quake was due to a suspected explosion.

An announcer with North Korean state television KCNA read a statement from the Nuclear Weapon Research Institute of the DPRK confirming a successful nuclear test was conducted to assess the capacity of a nuclear warhead that can now be miniaturized to fit on various types of missiles.

"This nuclear warhead explosion test is part of responsive measures to threats and sanctions from the U.S. and enemies denying our strategic position as a nuclear state," The KCNA announcer said during the broadcast.

Pyongyang did not advise the international community in advance of its plans to conduct a nuclear test.

September 9 marks the 68th anniversary of the founding of North Korea and Pyongyang has in the past marked important holidays by conducting nuclear and missile tests.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye condemned North Korea for conducting its fifth nuclear test in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions.

President Park, who is in Laos for the ASEAN security summit said this nuclear provocation," proves Kim Jong Un's rabid recklessness to cling to nuclear development."

The South Korean president will leave the ASEAN summit early and return to Seoul to monitor the situation.

South Korean Prime Minister Hwang Gyo-ahn says Seoul will call for additional and stronger U.N. sanctions against North Korea.

"We are facing a grave situation which is totally different from the past when North Korea conducted nuclear tests once in three years. North Korea's nuclear and missile threats are clear and existential," said Hwang.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said if a nuclear test is confirmed, it would be "something absolutely inadmissible" and that Tokyo would call for action from the U.N. Security Council.

"Japan is currently a member of the U.N. Security Council, so we will also work closely with New York, if this nuclear test was indeed carried out, to figure out how best to react to this situation," Abe said.

The White House released a statement reiterating President Barack Obama's "unbreakable" commitment to allies in Asia and the world, and said the president will consult with other leaders to make sure North Korea's provocations are met with "serious consequences."

China's official Xinhua news agency urged all parties in the international community to exercise restraint following North Korea's latest nuclear test, saying that it is in nobody's interest for there to be chaos or war on the Korean peninsula.

Most powerful yet

North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test in January, causing a 5.1 magnitude earthquake. Pyongyang said it tested a hydrogen bomb, which is much more powerful than past atomic bomb blasts.

Analysts, however, said the January blast was not big enough to be a full thermonuclear explosion or "H-bomb."

North Korea also conducted nuclear tests in 2006, 2009 and 2013.

South Korea's meteorological agency said Friday's test produced a 10-kiloton blast, nearly twice the power of the January nuclear test but slightly less than the Hiroshima bombing, which was measured about 15 kilotons.

Jeffrey Lewis with the California-based Middlebury Institute of International Studies told Reuters that an earthquake of this magnitude would indicate a device with a 20- to 30-kiloton yield, which would be the largest yield estimate yet of a North Korean nuclear device.

Defiance

The United Nations in March imposed harsh new sanctions on North Korea for its continued and defiant violations of Security Council resolutions banning the country's development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

Since the latest round of sanctions were imposed, Pyongyang has conducted 20 tests of short- and medium-range missiles, including submarine based launches, advancing its capability to reach the U.S. mainland with a nuclear strike.

The last missile test occurred during the G-20 summit of the world's largest economies that took place in China and included the U.S., South Korea, Japan and Russia.

While the U.N. Security Council recently denounced North Korea's repeated missile tests, it has not imposed any further sanctions.

Chinese officials have said they don't want to impose crippling sanctions that could cause the collapse of the Kim Jong Un government, spark instability at the Sino, North Korea border and increase U.S. power and influence on the Korean peninsula.

At the same time, Chinese President Xi Jinping has voiced opposition to the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile system to be deployed in South Korea.

Capabilities

Last year, the U.S.-Korea Institute at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) estimated that North Korea has enough plutonium and highly enriched uranium to build 10-16 nuclear devices and the nuclear fuel cycle capability to replenish and increase its nuclear stockpile.

North Korea has claimed it has successfully miniaturized a nuclear warhead to fit on the head of missile. While this claim has not yet been demonstrated, U.S. and South Korean military officials say they are developing defensive strategies based on the assumption that the North does possess this offensive nuclear capability.

Sanctions

The U.N. sanctions along with new unilateral measures from the United States, South Korea and other countries imposed in response to Pyongyang's previous nuclear test and rocket launch this year have the potential to impose real economic pain over time.

International sanctions include suspending currency transfers and restricting the North's lucrative mineral trade that had accounted for over half of the country's $2.5 billion in exports to China alone.

South Korea cut all remaining ties with the North that includes closing the jointly run Kaesong Industrial Complex that employed over 54,000 North Koreans.

Beijing's cooperation to enforce these international sanctions is considered crucial because 90 percent of North Korean trade flows either to or through China.

There have been reports that China has been lenient in enforcing the U.N. restrictions.

The U.N. ban on North Korean mineral exports includes a difficult to verify humanitarian exemption for coal and iron exports, as long as the profits are not used to fund the development of nuclear weapons or other illicit arms.

Washington also imposed unilateral sanctions that could also target Chinese and other international companies involved using North Korean labor abroad, which has become a lucrative source of income for the Kim government. The U.S. treasury is also authorized to seize the financial assets of any individuals or organizations involved in illicit activities with North Korea.

THAAD

After North Korea's nuclear test in January, the U.S. brought in a B-52 long range bomber, capable of delivering nuclear weapons, and other fighter aircraft to conduct low level flights near the inter-Korean border.

South Korea and the United States are also moving forward to deploy the THAAD missile defense system on the Korean peninsula.

Chinese officials have objected to placing THAAD in the region, saying the system's radar has the capability to spy into its territory.

Youmi Kim in Seoul contributed to this report.

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North Korea Claims Nuke Test Proves It Can Miniaturize Warheads

By Brian Padden September 09, 2016

North Korea Friday carried out its fifth nuclear test near its Punggye-ri test site, triggering a blast that seismic monitors indicated was its largest such detonation yet.

An announcer with North Korean state television KCNA read a statement from the Nuclear Weapon Research Institute of the DPRK that said it was a successful test of the country's capacity to create a nuclear warhead that can be miniaturized to fit on various types of missiles.

"This nuclear warhead explosion test is part of responsive measures to threats and sanctions from the U.S. and enemies denying our strategic position as a nuclear state," The KCNA announcer said during the broadcast.

Pyongyang did not advise the international community in advance of its plans to conduct a nuclear test. On Monday, North Korea fired three ballistic missiles which flew about 1,000 kilometers before falling into the Sea of Japan, inside Tokyo's Air Defense Zone. Those launches were condemned by U.S., Chinese and other leaders who were gathered at the G-20 summit in Hangzhou, China.

September 9 marks the 68th anniversary of the founding of North Korea and Pyongyang has in the past marked important holidays by conducting nuclear and missile tests.

Biggest bomb yet

Friday's detonation was the country's fifth test since 2006, however it is the second one so far this year. North Korea has claimed the past two tests involved hydrogen bombs, which are much more powerful than atomic bombs. Analysts, however, said the January blast was not big enough to be a full thermonuclear explosion or "H-bomb."

South Korea's meteorological agency said Friday's test produced a 10-kiloton blast, nearly twice the power of the country's nuclear test in January but slightly less than the Hiroshima bombing, which was measured about 15 kilotons.

Jeffrey Lewis with the California-based Middlebury Institute of International Studies told Reuters that an earthquake of this magnitude would indicate a device with a 20- to 30-kiloton yield, which would be the largest yield estimate yet of a North Korean nuclear device.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye condemned North Korea for conducting its fifth nuclear test in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions.

President Park, who is in Laos for the ASEAN security summit said this nuclear provocation," proves Kim Jong Un's rabid recklessness to cling to nuclear development."

The South Korean president will leave the ASEAN summit early and return to Seoul to monitor the situation.

South Korean Prime Minister Hwang Gyo-ahn says Seoul will call for additional and stronger U.N. sanctions against North Korea.

"We are facing a grave situation which is totally different from the past when North Korea conducted nuclear tests once in three years. North Korea's nuclear and missile threats are clear and existential," said Hwang.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said if a nuclear test is confirmed, it would be "something absolutely inadmissible" and that Tokyo would call for action from the U.N. Security Council.

"Japan is currently a member of the U.N. Security Council, so we will also work closely with New York, if this nuclear test was indeed carried out, to figure out how best to react to this situation," Abe said.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said "at the appropriate moment today I am confident President (Barack) Obama will address this and we will certainly be discussing this in the context of the United Nations, I am sure."

The top U.S. diplomat made the comment while in Geneva to discuss Syria with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, who said, "We are very much concerned and the resolutions of the Security Council must be implemented and we will send this message very strongly."

The White House released a statement reiterating President Obama's "unbreakable" commitment to allies in Asia and the world, and said the president will consult with other leaders to make sure North Korea's provocations are met with "serious consequences."

The Pentagon said the North Korean test was "yet another flagrant violation" of U.N. Security Council resolutions, as well as a "serious provocation."

The International Atomic Energy Agency said North Korea's nuclear test is a "deeply troubling and regrettable act."

Hua Chunying, a spokeswoman for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said China "strongly" urges North Korea "to honor its commitment to denuclearization, comply with the relevant Security Council resolutions, and to stop taking any action that worsens the situation."

China's official Xinhua news agency urged all parties in the international community to exercise restraint following North Korea's latest nuclear test, saying that it is in nobody's interest for there to be chaos or war on the Korean peninsula.

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg also expressed condemnation on Twitter.

Defiance

The United Nations in March imposed harsh new sanctions on North Korea for its continued and defiant violations of Security Council resolutions banning the country's development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

Since the latest round of sanctions were imposed, Pyongyang has conducted 20 tests of short- and medium-range missiles, including submarine based launches, advancing its capability to reach the U.S. mainland with a nuclear strike.

The last missile test occurred during the G-20 summit of the world's largest economies that took place in China and included the U.S., South Korea, Japan and Russia.

While the U.N. Security Council recently denounced North Korea's repeated missile tests, it has not imposed any further sanctions.

Chinese officials have said they don't want to impose crippling sanctions that could cause the collapse of the Kim Jong Un government, spark instability at the Sino, North Korea border and increase U.S. power and influence on the Korean peninsula.

At the same time, Chinese President Xi Jinping has voiced opposition to the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile system to be deployed in South Korea.

Capabilities

Last year, the U.S.-Korea Institute at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) estimated that North Korea has enough plutonium and highly enriched uranium to build 10 to 16 nuclear devices and the nuclear fuel cycle capability to replenish and increase its nuclear stockpile.

North Korea has claimed it has successfully miniaturized a nuclear warhead to fit on the head of missile. While this claim has not yet been demonstrated, U.S. and South Korean military officials say they are developing defensive strategies based on the assumption that the North does possess this offensive nuclear capability.

Sanctions

The U.N. sanctions along with new unilateral measures from the United States, South Korea and other countries imposed in response to Pyongyang's previous nuclear test and rocket launch this year have the potential to impose real economic pain over time.

International sanctions include suspending currency transfers and restricting the North's lucrative mineral trade that had accounted for over half of the country's $2.5 billion in exports to China alone.

South Korea cut all remaining ties with the North that includes closing the jointly run Kaesong Industrial Complex that employed over 54,000 North Koreans.

Beijing's cooperation to enforce these international sanctions is considered crucial because 90 percent of North Korean trade flows either to or through China.

There have been reports that China has been lenient in enforcing the U.N. restrictions.

The U.N. ban on North Korean mineral exports includes a difficult to verify humanitarian exemption for coal and iron exports, as long as the profits are not used to fund the development of nuclear weapons or other illicit arms.

Washington also imposed unilateral sanctions that could also target Chinese and other international companies involved using North Korean labor abroad, which has become a lucrative source of income for the Kim government. The U.S. treasury is also authorized to seize the financial assets of any individuals or organizations involved in illicit activities with North Korea.

THAAD

After North Korea's nuclear test in January, the U.S. brought in a B-52 long range bomber, capable of delivering nuclear weapons, and other fighter aircraft to conduct low level flights near the inter-Korean border.

South Korea and the United States are also moving forward to deploy the THAAD missile defense system on the Korean peninsula.

Chinese officials have objected to placing THAAD in the region, saying the system's radar has the capability to spy into its territory.

Youmi Kim in Seoul contributed to this report.

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India May Purchase Four Stealth Frigates From Russia Worth $4Bln

Sputnik News

11:15 08.09.2016(updated 11:36 08.09.2016)

Russia and India are discussing the purchase of four stealth frigates for the Indian Navy.

NEW DELHI (Sputnik)  New Delhi and Moscow are discussing the purchase of four stealth frigates for the Indian Navy in a deal worth $4 billion, local media reported, citing a Ministry of Defense source.

"Under the proposal, two of the frigates will come from Russia, while the other two will be constructed in India. The MoD has asked for some clarifications before taking a decision on the price and inter-governmental agreement," the source told Time of India newspaper.

The source added that Moscow offered to equip the vessels with modern weaponry including BrahMos cruise missiles.

It was reported in July that Russia and India were discussing a delivery of three new guided missile frigates for the Indian Navy. India has six frigates of the Talwar class, the forerunner of Project 11356, which are built at the Yantar shipyard in Russia's westernmost Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad.

 Sputnik

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Set for a Siege: Battle for Iraq's Mosul to Start Soon, US General Reveals

Sputnik News

00:55 09.09.2016(updated 02:15 09.09.2016)

Despite the fact that Daesh (also known as ISIS/Islamic state) is losing its grip on territories it seized in Iraq in 2014, the terrorist group still controls the city of Mosul, an extremist stronghold that government forces, backed by American troops, plan to retake by the end of this year.

Over the past year, Daesh has been swept from several cities in northern and western Iraq, including Tikrit, Sinjar and Ramadi, as well as Fallujah.

In July, Iraqi forces cleared the Qayyarah airbase, some 60 kilometers from Mosul, preparing for a major offensive on the city, which the violent extremist group declared the Iraqi capital of its self-proclaimed caliphate in 2014.

Now, preparations for the retaking of Mosul are on full display. US forces have set up a logistics center south of the city and the United Nations is bracing for a complicated humanitarian mission.

Newly-appointed commander of the US-led anti-Daesh campaign, Gen. Stephen Townsend, told the Wall Street Journal that the offensive against Daesh could begin as early as October.

Following that report, Air Force Colonel John Dorrian, a spokesman for US forces in Iraq, refused to confirm the dateline at a Department of Defense briefing, saying only that "if the desire is to try to get it done around the end of the year, we're going to have to start soon."

At least 3,000 Daesh fighters are said to remain in the city, of which a third is "the hardest-core" group, according to Gen. Townsend. He adds that retaking Mosul will be difficult to achieve quickly.

"We're preparing for a hard fight, a long, difficult fight" Townsend said on Wednesday. "Really, it's a siege I'm talking about here."

Major General Najm al-Jabouri, the Mosul operation commander for Iraqi forces, claimed, however, that it would be "easy" to take the city by the year end. He said that many Daesh commanders have been recently killed in coalition airstrikes, while others have fled to Syria.

Al-Jabouri added that government forces are ready to clear the west of Iraq from Daesh prior to the beginning of 2017.

"We will go to Mosul, they will go to Tel Afar. We will go to Tel Afar, they will go to Baaj," Al-Jabouri said. "We will go to Baaj, maybe. It depends on the situation in Syria. They can get to Syria but the situation there is not like before. It is not a safe haven for them now."

Gen. Townsend added that only Iraqi "army and police" would enter Mosul, excluding Shiite and Kurdish groups involved in the offensive. The move is aimed at avoiding "sectarian" violence between rival groups pursuing different goals.

The UN has expressed concern that the offensive will result in a massive humanitarian crisis that the government is not prepared for. Under some assessments, up to a million people could flee the city during the offensive, but there are said to be resources to accept only 450,000.

"If there is mass displacement, there could be shantytowns in the disputed border areas because the plan for camps doesn't accommodate them all," said Tom Robinson, director of the Rise Foundation, in analyzing Iraq's humanitarian crisis.

 Sputnik

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Russia to Start Mass Production of Korsar Surveillance UAVs in 2017

Sputnik News

10:38 08.09.2016(updated 11:01 08.09.2016)

Serial production of the Russian Korsar UAVs will start in 2017, a manufacturing UIMC firm spokesperson told Sputnik on Thursday.

KUBINKA (Moscow Region) (Sputnik)  Serial production of the Russian Korsar (Corsair) surveillance unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) will start in 2017, a manufacturing firm United Instrument Manufacturing Corporation (UIMC) spokesperson told Sputnik on Thursday.

"Russia's newest tactical surveillance UAVs of the Korsar tactical family will go into production in 2017," the spokesperson said on the sidelines of the Army-2016 international military forum.

The spokesperson added that in the long term the Korsar UAV family could receive a new drone that would be different from the existing UAVs by a number of characteristics.

In late 2014, the Russian army announced the expansion of its aerial fleet with a new generation of Korsar reconnaissance drones which are set to join the forces in late 2016.

The Army-2016 expo, organized by the Russian Defense Ministry, kicked off on Tuesday and is due to last through Sunday. The forum is held in the military-themed Patriot Park in Kubinka near Moscow and in a number of locations in Russia's military districts.

 Sputnik

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US House Approves Bill Allowing Lawsuits Over 9/11 Attacks

By VOA News September 09, 2016

The U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation Friday that would allow families of the victims of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to sue the Saudi Arabian government for allegedly supporting terrorism, despite White House threats to veto the bill.

The Senate passed the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act in May despite opposition from Saudi Arabia, a key ally to the United States. Fifteen of the 19 airline hijackers involved in the attacks were Saudi nationals, but Riyadh has denied allegations it had any role in the attacks or supported organizations with ties to terrorist groups.

The White House's opposition to the legislation stems from concern it could weaken U.S. ties with Saudi Arabia, expose U.S. citizens overseas to legal risks and open the door to lawsuits against the U.S. from foreign countries. A White House veto can be overridden with votes from at least two-thirds of House and Senate members.

The bill, sponsored by Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, has strong support from the victims' families. Nadler has said he wants the legislation brought to a vote before the 15th anniversary of the attacks, which claimed the lives of nearly 3,000 people when terrorists hijacked and crashed commercial airliners into New York City's World Trade Center, the Pentagon just outside Washington, D.C., and a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Texas Congressman Ted Poe said the bill provides recourse which families of those who perished on 9/11 otherwise would not have.

"The legislation gives the victims' families access to the courts, to the rule of law. An we as a people should be more concerned about these victims of terror than about diplomatic niceties," Poe said.

The House vote comes two months after Congress released 28 declassified pages from a congressional report about suspected Saudi connections to the attacks. The papers did not significantly add to information that was publicly disclosed in other reports and documents.

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Didn't Obimbo say everything was going smoothly? What hard-times is he talking about? What racism is he talking about? Is he talking about racist comments he's made about the police only to have egg thrown in his face?

Looks like Obimbo is barrowing from the Hillary game plan. If you screw up, blame everybody else.
Syrian Army Retakes Lost Ground in Aleppo

Sputnik News

22:53 08.09.2016(updated 00:46 09.09.2016)

A key district in southern Aleppo has been reclaimed by the Syrian Army and its allies.

The Syrian district of Ramousah was seized by rebels last month. Back under the control of the Syrian government, it could allow the Army to blockade the rebel-held eastern districts, and provide a crucial waypoint for government troops moving to the western districts.

"Units of our armed forces in cooperation with allied forces control the gas works, the tannery, the slaughterhouse, the post office and the military checkpoint area of Ramousah in Aleppo," a Syrian military source said.

"[The army and its allies] managed to restore control over all of Ramousah district," the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights stated.

Over the weekend, Syrian forces cut off supply routes into Ramousah, with the help of Russian airstrikes.

The reestablishment of the siege in Aleppo turns back progress made by anti-Assad fighters, supported in part by the United States, and turns back the clock on progress made by Washington's so-called "moderate" rebels who shocked the international community last month when they successfully busted through the Assad regime's siege in a victory heralded by the West.

Forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad took back a strategic military complex in the Ramosa district earlier this month.

"The army has managed now to control many areas within the vast complex that houses military installations," said al Jazeera's Hashem Ahelbarra.

"Ramosa is crucial for all parties. It is crucial for the government because it will pave the way for them to encircle rebel-held areas. It's also crucial for the rebels because it is the only supply line."

On Sunday, Syrian state television reported that "armed forces, in cooperation with their allies, took full control of the military academy zone south of Aleppo and are clearing the remaining terrorists from the area."

The offensive, the report added, "cut all the supply and movement routes for terrorist groups from southern Aleppo province to the eastern neighborhoods and Ramosa."

 Sputnik

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Kerry, Lavrov Will Again Confer on Syrian Cease-fire

By Steve Herman September 08, 2016

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will meet Friday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Geneva for another try at arranging a cease-fire in Syria.

The State Department said their talks would focus on "reducing violence, expanding humanitarian assistance for the Syrian people and moving towards a political solution needed to end the civil war."

Kerry and Lavrov have met several times over the past two weeks in Geneva and at the Group of 20 summit in China, but failed to finalize an agreement on a cessation of hostilities in Syria. U.S. officials said the talks have been hung up on "technical issues."

American diplomats, speaking to VOA, have expressed frustration with their Russian counterparts, accusing them of reversing direction on some key points of agreement in recent days.

Kerry has said he does not want a tenuous deal, but a realistic agreement with the Russians.

Russia is the Syrian government's strongest ally in Damascus' fight against numerous rebel groups  moderates and Islamic extremists  who are trying to topple the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

Moscow's determination questioned

The U.S. backs the moderate opposition and has accused the Russians of making things worse in Syria. Some U.S. officials have questioned Moscow's seriousness in pursuing a political solution.

Meanwhile Thursday, activists and state-run Syrian media said Syrian forces had taken a strategically important southern suburb of Aleppo.

Rebels control the eastern part of the city, while government forces, backed by Russian warplanes, control the west. Thousands of suffering civilians are stuck in the middle.

The fighting is preventing humanitarian aid from getting into the city, which used to be Syria's commercial capital.

Also Thursday, Syrian officials denied reports that the military was behind suspected chlorine gas attack on civilians Wednesday in a rebel-held part of the city.

The officials blamed "armed terrorist groups," the government's term for the opposition.

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Kurdish Fighters Blame Turkey for Deadly Border Attack

By Amina Misto, Sirwan Kajjo September 08, 2016

Six Syrian Kurdish fighters were killed and a dozen were wounded as Turkish military artillery fired across the border Thursday into Syria, Kurdish officials and rights activists said.

Some of those wounded in the attack on the northern town of Afrin were civilians, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a group that has researchers across the country.

"Two members of our security forces were killed by Turkish snipers before their artillery attacked us," Ahmed Ali, a wounded Kurdish fighter, told VOA.

Another Kurdish fighter said he came under a Turkish mortar attack while he was trying to retrieve the body of a fellow fighter.

Afrin is controlled by the Kurdish People's Protection Units, known as YPG, that are allied with the United States in the fight against Islamic State in Syria. Turkey views the YPG as a terror group linked to the Turkey-based Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Turkish military sources said the Afrin incident began when border guards came under machine-gun fire from unknown forces inside Syria. Turkey's Dogan News Agency reported that Turkish military responded to "harassment fire in accordance with rules of engagement." Turkey fears that a strong Kurdish entity in Syria would aid and embolden PKK fighters who have been fighting against the Turkish military for decades.

Tensions between Turkey and Syrian Kurds have increased since Turkish-backed Syrian rebels not affiliated with the YPG entered the border town of Jarablus in late August, pushing back IS fighters and preventing further expansion of the U.S.-backed militias.

The United States has repeatedly called on both sides to exercise restraint and focus more on fighting IS militants.

"We have agreed with them about where each party will be, geographically, in such a way that they can conduct their operations against [Islamic State] and not run into each other," U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said in a recent interview with CNN. Otherwise, he added, there could be a "collision between the two [sides]  which we don't want to see."

VOA's Uzay Bulut contributed to this report from Washington.

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US, Russia Resume High-level Face-to-Face Diplomacy on Syria War

By Steve Herman September 09, 2016

An American official says U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov "are making progress in Geneva Friday towards advancing proposals that would lead to a nationwide cessation of hostilities in Syria."

The United States is also pushing a deal that would allow "sustained and unimpeded access" to humanitarian assistance for the most desperate areas of the country.

"We are not in a position right now to say where or not a final can be reached," according to a State Department official accompanying Kerry.

Discussions are continuing with "technical issues" unresolved.

Aleppo

A key one, it has been revealed, involves ensuring "there will not be a siege of Aleppo," according to a second State Department official who earlier spoke to reporters aboard Kerry's plane.

Kerry spoke by telephone with Lavrov at least four times Wednesday and Thursday before flying back to Switzerland for Friday's talks.

There is considerable skepticism that a nationwide, sustainable cease-fire - the immediate goals as it has been repeatedly characterized by State Department officials - can hold for any period of time.

Syria is fractured after five years of war. There are numerous client forces of questionable allegiance and discipline pitted against each other, in addition to the so-called Islamic State group, which is beholden to no one.

Assad

Russia wants to see Syrian President Bashar al-Assad stay in power while moderate opposition forces and Turkey insist there can be no transition deal that retains him for any period of time.

The United States long-held stance is that the Syrian leader, for his brutal acts, cannot lead any future government.

U.S. diplomats, however, express hope diplomacy can end the bloodshed, sustained misery and mass migration.

"The opposition tells us they want us to succeed" in order "to get the bombs to stop falling on them," said another State Department official with Kerry.

No military solution

U.S. diplomats have stressed in recent days that Kerry does not have unlimited patience and he was unlikely to remain longer in Geneva  his second visit in two weeks  if an agreement is not reached quickly.

Officials with Kerry decline to speculate on what could happen next if the talks fail.

The Obama administration has repeatedly stated there is no military solution to bringing the crisis to an end.

Protracted opposition against the four-decade rule of the Assad family has deteriorated into a complex civil war. The violence has left dead hundreds of thousands of Syrians and 12 million people  more than half of the country's pre-war population  has been displaced, according to the United Nations.

The U.S. leads a coalition conducting air strikes in Syria against the so-called Islamic State group. Russia, a long-time backer of the Assad family, has also conducted air strikes that often target forces deemed an immediate threat to the Syrian government.

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Message to Beijing? US Set to Approve New Torpedo Sales to Taiwan

Sputnik News

01:56 09.09.2016(updated 02:26 09.09.2016)

Last month, Taiwan approved a service extension for its two Dragon-class submarines. The sub upgrades will allow the craft, launched in the late 1980s, to operate for at least another 15 years. Additionally, the government plans to build eight new attack subs.

But Taiwan also needs to keep its submarine fleet armed. After stalling for many years, the United States has finally agreed to approve the sale of MK-48 heavyweight torpedoes to the island nation.

The news comes from an unnamed official within Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense, speaking to Defense News. Neither country has officially confirmed the agreement, and it remains unknown how many torpedoes will be purchased.

The projectile is developed by US-based defense firm Raytheon, which describes the MK-48 as being "effective" against "all targets, in both littoral and deep-water environment."

"The torpedo is capable of autonomous operations or control via wire link," according to the company's website.

"Software-based guidance and control enables autonomous operation, 'fire and forget' tactics, simultaneous multiple target engagement and close-in attack. MK-48 quieting technologysignificantly reduces self-noise to enable covert deployment and minimize detection."

The deal comes amid escalating tensions in the South China Sea, where Beijing has constructed a series of artificial islands. The United States has accused China of attempting to establish an air defense zone, while Beijing maintains it has every right to build within its own territory and that the islands will be used primarily for civilian purposes.

In response, the Pentagon has conducted a number of provocative patrols through the contested areas, and encouraged Pacific allies to play a more active role in preventing China's growing influence in the region.

With a growing submarine fleet, Taiwan could no doubt play a role in those patrols.

A highly-contested region through which roughly $5 trillion in international trade passes annually, most of the South China Sea is claimed by China, though there are overlapping claims by Taiwan, Brunei, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Vietnam.

The United States has no territorial claims in the region.

 Sputnik

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Alan Burkitt-Gray speaks to Don MacNeil, chief operating officer of GTT, about its company restructuring after coming out of Chapter 11 and its strategic roadmap for the next 12 months.
FOCUS ON DEFENSE CAPABILITY DEVELOPMENT IN SOUTHEAST ASIA AND OCEANIA
Bishop Lawrence G. Campbell Sr. quoted Matthew 5:9 when discussing building citizens relationship with police: Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.

To have peace, you have to make peace, Campbell said in an interview with the Danville Register & Bee. Its not just given to you.

Bibleway Cathedral and more than 50 local businesses and organizations are teaming up with the Danville Police Department, the sheriffs office and fire department for the Community and Law Enforcement Partnership Day  to build a stronger relationship between police and residents.

The free event takes place from 2 to 6 p.m. Saturday at the Bibleway Cathedral on Grant Street. Virginia Deputy Attorney General Cynthia Hudson is the events guest speaker.

Police are taking part in safety and traffic stop demonstrations throughout the day.

Before Saturdays event, a panel will be held at Bibleway at 6 p.m. Friday with leaders of local law enforcement agencies about creating positive relationships between police and residents.

Following the panel will be a forum at 7 p.m., then the premiere of Restored Me, a movie about an ex-offenders path of faith after his release from prison. Danville is one of the few cities selected to premiere the movie, Campbell said.

The event was created to:

 To create a reciprocal community relationship with the local police department and the community;

 To develop a continual active police partnership with the community, especially with the youth;

 To make this day a teachable moment by [police] extending themselves to the community; and

 To be proactive in preventing/avoiding the possibility of a Baltimore, Maryland; Ferguson, Missouri; Cleveland, Ohio; and similar incidents.

In other cities, the fatal shootings of African-Americans by white police officers  and those officers acquittal for the shootings  were followed by protests, riots and an increased distrust of police.

Policing, as well as racism and violence, are the three biggest issues traumatizing our country, Campbell said.

The need for the community to come together is paramount, he said.

But Campbell said there has been resistance from local white faith leaders to unite.

Ive talked to white preachers, and some have promised that they would participate but have not, Campbell said. Its difficult to get the white community to partner with the black community.

When Danville Regional Medical Center had its neighborhood walks for community safety from February to April, black residents readily participated.

It was not a question about where the venue was, Campbell said of the walks. They were interested in the eradication of violence, just like we are.

When black residents promoted their own anti-violence and pro-community initiatives, there has been hesitation from white people to participate in the planning or even attend, Campbell said.

A white pastor suggested that a location for Community and Law Enforcement Partnership Day like Ballou Park  instead of a black church like Bibleway, set in a predominantly black neighborhood  would be more neutral and bring more people.

But theres never been a problem with black people socializing or gathering with white people, Campbell said, so he asks why the opposite isnt true?

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference hosts an annual Stop the Killing walk in January, but the white community does not come to that, Campbell said.

With all of the violence in Danville, the white community has a perception  as they look at whats happening, they look at it as a black problem, Campbell said.

But the shooting of [Dr. Randolph Neal in February], shows that violence knows no race, no boundaries, no religion or culture  Were all in Danville. Whatever happens here, it affects all of us.
Kyocera SGS Tech Hub LLC  which announced Thursday it was bringing 35 jobs and $9.5 million in investment to the Dan River Region  plans to begin manufacturing in Danville in November and open up in its own separate facility in the Cyber Park in early 2018.

The company will start out operating in the Gene Haas Center for Integrated Machining, where it will produce solid carbide rotary tools.

Danville and Pittsylvania County  which jointly owns the Cyber Park under the Danville-Pittsylvania Regional Industrial Facility Authority  competed against localities in Ohio and South Carolina for the project.

The arrival of Kyocera SGS Tech Hub LLC will include construction of a new 30,000-square-foot facility in the park by 2018. The average annual salary for the positions will be $65,000, said Alan Pearce, CEO of Kyocera SGS Tech Hub LLC.

Kyocera SGS Tech Hub LLC is a subsidiary of Kyocera SGS Precision Tools Inc., which is owned by Kyocera Corp. in Kyoto, Japan. KSPT is known for its solid carbide high-performance end mills, drills, stainless steel medical tools and PVD coatings.

The company supplies Rolls Royce and serves three main markets: aerospace, airplane companies and medical products, Pearce said during an interview after Gov. Terry McAuliffe announced the project Thursday afternoon at the Gene Haas Center at the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research.

The announcement included company representatives from other countries, state and local officials, and representatives from local foundations.

It was the first economic development announcement in the area for Dan River Region native Todd Haymore as the new Virginia secretary of commerce and trade.

I wouldnt have missed this for the world, said Haymore, who previously served as secretary of agriculture and forestry.

In the 31 months since McAuliffe took office, there have been 788 economic development projects and 148,000 new jobs across Virginia, Haymore said. Unemployment is at 3.7 percent in the state, the lowest since May 2008 and the lowest in the southeastern United States, he said. Its the seventh-lowest rate nationwide, he added.

Haymore said in a prepared statement that we are confident that [Kyocera SGS Tech Hub] will benefit from a talented pool of employees that are trained at a world-class facility [Gene Haas Center].

McAuliffe called the announcement a huge win for the city of Danville and Pittsylvania County and pointed to the companys position as a supplier of Rolls Royce and a new organizing member of the Commonwealth Center for Advanced Manufacturing.

As a strategic supplier to Rolls-Royce and an organizing member of CCAM, we are confident that the company can serve as a hub to attract additional local machine tool operators and suppliers operations to the region, McAuliffe said during the announcement. Recruiting global companies of this caliber is a key component of our marketing and trade mission, as well as our goal to diversify and build a new Virginia economy.

The Virginia Economic Development Partnership worked with Danville, Pittsylvania County and CCAM to secure the project for Virginia.

McAuliffe presented a $200,000 check from the Commonwealths Opportunity Fund to help Danville and Pittsylvania County with the project. Del. Danny Marshall presented a $350,000 check from the Virginia Tobacco Commissions Tobacco Region Opportunity Fund to the company.

Marshall called the project a good fit for Southern Virginia, especially Danville and Pittsylvania County.

As the delegate representing the Danville area, I have met with Kyocera SGS Precision Tools several times and am very happy that they have chosen Danville as the location for their U.S. expansion, Marshall said in a statement. We appreciate the jobs that they are bringing to our region and wish them much success.

McAuliffe met with company officials during the 2015 Paris Air Show and the 2016 Europe Marketing Mission.

Pearce said company officials visited Virginia and Danville under encouragement from McAuliffe.

We instantly connected with a location and a population of people that are in the early stages of a renaissance that perfectly aligns with our own internal revolution, Pearce said in a statement.

The history of the Danville area and its people  along with the high-level technical skill development and engineering advancement efforts  is why the company is being created in Danville, Pearce said.

Jason Wells, chief technical officer with the company, said Kyocera SGS Tech Hub LLC will optimize its products for customers. They will provide specifications and the company will design and make those products according to the specifications, Wells said.
Former Gov. Bob McDonnell was sitting in his office in Virginia Beach on Thursday afternoon when he got the call from his lawyer.

Its over, attorney Hank Asbill told him at 1:45 p.m.

With those two words, Robert F. McDonnell, the 71st governor of Virginia, knew that the legal trials and tribulations of the last 3 years were finally behind him.

Shedding tears of relief, the 62-year-old got out from behind his desk at The ESG Cos., a Virginia Beach-based developer, stepped out into the hallway, let out a holler, and was immediately embraced by co-workers. Then he called his wife, former first lady Maureen McDonnell.

Ive been waiting to hear those words for 43 months now, McDonnell told the Richmond Times-Dispatch in an exclusive interview.

Its been such an ordeal  its almost hard to remember the last time I wasnt under the gun with the federal government, he added. Just a tremendous sense of relief.

McDonnells odyssey began with notice in February 2013 of a federal corruption investigation into his acceptance of gifts while in office.

McDonnell, once touted as a potential running mate to 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, was toppled from the pinnacle of political power and into the pit of felony indictment, conviction and prison sentence, before the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously overturned the convictions in June, leading to Thursdays move by federal authorities for dismissal.

U.S. moves to drop corruption case against Bob and Maureen McDonnell Federal prosecutors on Thursday moved to drop their corruption case against former Gov. Bob McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, bringing to a close a case that gripped the state capital, tarnishing the former governors reputation and the states.

In the interview, the humbled and faith-driven former governor, a Catholic, recounted his experience, reflected on what he has learned and how it has transformed his life, and discussed his plans for the future.

When you go from governor to indicted in 11 days, its an exceptionally humbling and very, very tough experience, he said.

But I felt that we had extremely good lawyers. They absolutely believed that under the law that I was innocent. I knew in my own heart and my own soul that while I wish I had made some other decisions, that I never violated any state or federal laws, and at some point the justice system would get it right.

Indelible dates

McDonnell is blessed, or cursed, with a sharp memory for dates and times. The significant moments of the past four years are burned into the former governors memory. He remembers the date  Feb. 15, 2013  the day after Valentines Day, when he first learned he was the subject of a federal corruption investigation with roughly 11 months left in his four-year term.

It was probably the biggest blow to my sense of self-worth, and sense of honor that my parents had taught me, McDonnell recalled. And I was shaken to my core.

McDonnell said he called his team together, close-knit Cabinet officials, a number of whom had served with him dating to his time as attorney general from 2006 to 2009.

No matter what else is going on, how many subpoenas are flying around, weve got to finish strong and govern well, he told them.

It was an incredible, collected effort from the team, he recalled Thursday. Everybody hung in there. Nobody abandoned ship.

He said that the 11 months in office under the shadow of an investigation were emotionally difficult and disruptive. If it werent for Gods amazing grace and remarkable friends during that time, I dont know how I would have endured.

The former governor was indicted in January 2014, 10 days after he completed his term as governor. He said things got easier to manage once he was out of office. The low point came Sept. 4, 2014  two years and four days ago, when the jury verdict came down guilty, was obviously far and away the most devastating day of my life.

I just could not believe that a jury believed that I had corrupted my office. That my good name that my parents had given me was now in tatters, he said. And that it was going to be a long haul to be able to demonstrate my innocence.

A deeper walk in faith

McDonnell said that day began a deeper walk in faith, with so many people around the state and country who supported him and said they were praying for him.

That began the most amazing two years of my life, the former governor said. I have never felt as much love and affection and appreciation and kindness and unmerited favor and grace in my entire life, during these two years of some very deep suffering but some remarkable kindness from people.

McDonnell said the experience allowed him to enjoy the simple things in life  my children, simplifying my life in a lot of ways, downsizing, and adding four grandchildren to his family over the past 18 months. That was a remarkable blessing.

He said he focused on one day at a time, whether it was working at his business, babysitting a grandchild or volunteering for a charity and trusting in Gods providence for the future.

It was a very new and radical way of living, McDonnell said. When youre governor you think you can do everything. Youve got a hundred thousand people working for you, youve got capable people, youve got immense power, he explained. And then you go into a circumstance where you are completely powerless against the decisions of the federal government. It was a vast shock to the system.

Grief to joy

McDonnell said the U.S. Supreme Courts decisions to let him remain free on bond instead of beginning to serve his two-year prison sentence, then agreeing to hear his appeal, gave him immense hope that the court might look at his case differently than the lower court in which he was convicted and the appeals court that had affirmed his convictions.

Grief and disbelief to tears and extraordinary joy, McDonnell said, describing the range of emotions leading up to the resolution Thursday.

The former governor said the entire experience has given him the opportunity to take a very hard look at my own conduct over 60 years.

I had been blessed to accomplish some things ... but where have you failed, what can you do better? he asked rhetorically. What was your own role, governor, in allowing the situation even to happen, even if you believe in your heart youre not guilty and you didnt violate any laws? ... What could you have done differently? And what can you do for the rest of your life?

McDonnell said he is more focused on the present than the future, less on material possessions and more on what he called the basics  which are your family, your friends, your service to others, your faith life. Things that I rushed through too much during my time in politics.

The former governor said he thought the Supreme Court did a good job defining the standards by which routine political behavior can be differentiated from corruption and what should be subject to prosecution.

Sometimes when the laws are very broad ... they can be used as a meat ax instead of a scalpel, and legal conduct gets caught up in prosecutions just because something may not look good, McDonnell said.

He said the lesson for elected officials is to keep your eye on the ball, to in all measures go beyond the requirements of the law, to govern your own behavior, and for prosecutors not to stretch the theories of the law beyond what it is pretty clear the law ought to cover.

McDonnell also said he supported recent law changes tightening gift rules in the Virginia legislature.

I wish in retrospect that there were different decisions that I made, he said, referring to his acceptance of gifts and loans from Jonnie R. Williams Sr., then-CEO of Star Scientific, who testified against McDonnell during his trial.

It created an appearance of something that just wasnt the case. It created an appearance maybe of something that was in violation of the law, which was not the case. There will be an opportunity for people on all sides of this to reflect on their own conduct, and ultimately do better going forward.

A changed man

Going forward, McDonnell said he expects to have his law license restored within the next 30 days. But that is just part of his plan for the future.

This has changed me, I believe for the better, said McDonnell. Ive had such a blessed life ... but now that Ive learned suffering, and a deeper sense of humility, and a greater sense of compassion for other people that are hurting or may have felt injustice. ... I feel a calling to maybe ... be able to help on a much more retail level.

McDonnell has been volunteering at a food bank and a faith-based charity known as Operation Blessing. I still like public service, but its going to be in a very different way outside of elected office, he said. McDonnell said he would pursue more charitable works and some ideas he has been kicking around at some universities, while continuing to build a business he owns with his sister Maureen.

I get a huge chunk of my life back, McDonnell said, thanking his legal team, including Asbill, John Brownlee and Noel J. Francisco, who argued his case before the Supreme Court. They never stopped believing  they always believed in my case. They never stopped fighting, McDonnell said.

Now I have the luxury of being able to do some of those things, and the fourth quarter of my life, I think will be very satisfying.

Without bitterness

McDonnell said he also moves forward without anger or bitterness toward anyone.

You cant live daily with those kind of emotions, he said, describing a supernatural peace that came over him that things were ultimately going to be OK after the sadness and disbelief of the scandals initial months.

I havent for years, nor do I today, have any bitterness against the government, he said. They were doing their job. I think they certainly stretched the theories of the law well beyond what they should have been.

Nor is McDonnell bitter about Williams  the dietary supplement impresario and former friend who was the prosecutions star witness. Williams testified that he showered McDonnell, his wife and their children with more than $177,000 in gifts, loans and luxury trips in exchange for the governors influence to promote his product.

Thats between Mr. Williams and God  I cant judge him, nor can I be angry or bitter, McDonnell said. All I can control is what could I have done differently.

McDonnell acknowledged that revelations about the details of his marriage and the McDonnells personal lives that surfaced during the scandal created some challenges that now may be able to begin to heal.

The former governor and his wife have been living apart since the trial, but lawyers for Maureen McDonnell said that she is likely to relocate to Hampton Roads, where Bob McDonnell lives.

I talked with my wife today, McDonnell said. We cried together  we laughed a little bit. These two words  Its over, are what weve been waiting to hear for so long, he added.

But it hasnt been easy. Being governor was a cakewalk compared to going through a trial like this. I wouldnt wish this on anybody.

McDonnell credited his weekly prayer group in Richmond with helping him handle the ups and downs of the past 43 months. People have surrounded me with prayer in such a way that its allowed me to completely release any anger, any bitterness, including anger with myself, he said.

He spoke of the Bible stories of Joseph and Job, as guides and inspiration for his journey.

They persevered; they endured, he said. At the end of the day, Joseph becomes the number two leader in Egypt, and Job has everything that was taken away from him restored double.

McDonnell said his faith life has increased dramatically. He said that at the end of his ordeal, I know that I am innocent. I know my lawyers believe Im innocent. I know weve got the best system of justice in the world, and I know God is faithful.

Those beliefs have all been vindicated today. And Im just amazingly grateful for this.
VANCOUVER, BC--(Marketwired - September 09, 2016) - Marifil Mines Ltd. (TSX VENTURE: MFM) ("Marifil" or "the Company") announces that Mr. Alexander McAulay, CPA CA, from the firm Assent Advisory Partners has been appointed Chief Financial Officer of the Company. Mr. McAulay replaces Mr. Roger Foster, who has resigned to pursue other opportunities.

The Company wishes to thank Mr. Foster for his services and we wish him well in his future endeavors.

On behalf of the Board of Directors,

John Hite

President

This press release has been reviewed and approved by John Hite, President of Marifil Mines Ltd. and by Richard Walters, Vice President.

WE SEEK SAFE HARBOR.

General Disclaimer

Marifil Mines Ltd. "Marifil" has taken all reasonable care in producing and publishing information contained in this news release, and will endeavor to do so on a periodic basis. Material in this news release may still contain technical or other inaccuracies, omissions, or typographical errors, for which Marifil assumes no responsibility. Marifil does not warrant or make any representations regarding the use, validity, accuracy, completeness or reliability of any claims, statements or information on this site. Under no circumstances, including, but not limited to, negligence, shall Marifil be liable for any direct, indirect, special, incidental, consequential, or other damages, including but not limited to, loss of programs, loss of data, loss of use of computer of other systems, or loss of profits, whether or not advised of the possibility of damage, arising from your use, or inability to use, the material from this news release. The information is not a substitute for independent professional advice before making any investment decisions. Furthermore, you may not modify or reproduce in any form, electronic or otherwise, any information on this site, except for personal use unless you have obtained our express written permission.

Forward-Looking Statements

This news release may contain forward-looking statements, including but not limited to comments regarding predictions and projections. Forward-looking statements address future events and conditions and therefore involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those currently anticipated in such statements.

"Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release."

For further information regarding Marifil Mines Ltd., please refer to the Company's filings available on SEDAR (Http://www.sedar.com) or at Marifil's Website (Http://www.marifilmines.com.)
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - Sept. 9, 2016) -

NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES

Resource Capital Gold Corp., (TSX VENTURE:RCG) ("RCG" or the "Company") considers the resource estimates for Tangier and Forest Hill to be current resource estimates and will be filing updated technical reports on each property on form NI 43-101 within180 days.

On behalf of the Board of Directors of Resource Capital Gold Corp.

George S. Young, Chairman and CEO

About Resource Capital Gold

Resource Capital Gold Corp. (TSX VENTURE:RCG) is an emerging precious metals developer and producer. The Company's focus is on gold and silver and it has a pipeline of late-stage exploration, development and previously producing assets in Nova Scotia and Nevada.

Qualified Person

The scientific and technical data contained in this news release was reviewed and prepared under the supervision of David S. Smith, MS, MBA, CPG, who is a Qualified Person under National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements.

Certain information contained herein may constitute "forward-looking information" under Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking information includes, but is not limited to, the use of proceeds of the Offering. Generally, forward-looking information can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as 'believe', 'expect', 'anticipate', 'plan', 'intend', 'continue', 'estimate', 'may', 'will', 'should', 'ongoing', or variations of such words and phrases or statements that certain actions, events or results "will" occur. Forward-looking statements are based on the opinions and estimates of management as of the date such statements are made and they are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements or forwardlooking information, including the receipt of all necessary regulatory approvals. Although management of the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking statements or forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements and forward-looking information. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements or forward-looking information that is incorporated by reference herein, except as required by applicable securities laws.
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By Greg Gardner, Detroit Free Press (TNS)

DETROIT  Ford on Thursday dropped its 2016 profit forecast by $600 million after expanding an existing door latch recall to 1.5 million additional vehicles.

"We now expect our 2016 total company adjusted pretax profit to be about $10.2 billion," the automaker disclosed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Previously, Ford told investors it expected pretax profits of $10.8 billion for the full year.

The filing also estimated the cost of the expanded recall at $640 million, which will reduce Ford's third-quarter earnings.

"We continue to expect our total company adjusted pretax profit in the third quarter of 2016 to be about 10 percent of our full-year 2016 results," the filing stated.

The initial recall, issued in early August, covered 2013 through 2015 model C-Max and Escape vehicles; 2012 through 2015 Focuses; 2014 through 2016 Transit Connects, and 2015 models of the Lincoln MKC and the Mustang.

Now the recall covers nearly 2.4 million vehicles in North America. More specifically, it covers 2 million in the U.S., 233,034 in Canada and 61,363 in Mexico.

The recall was issued because the pawl spring tab in the vehicle's side door latch could break, which could prevent the door from closing.

Dealers will replace side door latches at no cost.

Owners who want to know if their vehicle is included in the recall can go to www.ford.com
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By Corilyn Shropshire, Chicago Tribune (TNS)

CHICAGO  Jimmy John's Sandwiches said Thursday it sold a majority stake to an affiliate of Atlanta-based private equity group Roark Capital Group. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

No changes to management are planned and founder Jimmy John Liautaud, who serves as chairman of the board, will "continue to help shape the company's high-level strategic direction," according to a news release.

President and CEO James North will continue to head day-to-day operations of the Illinois-based sandwich chain. Investment group Weston Presidio, which has held a minority stake in the business for 10 years, will exit.

Roark focuses on franchised and multiunit business models in the retail, restaurant, consumer and business services sectors. It also is an investor in Anytime Fitness, Arby's, Atkins Nutritionals, Corner Bakery and CKE Restaurants, the owner of Carl's Jr. and Hardees. In 2014, founder and managing director Neal K. Aronson was ranked fourth on Nation's Restaurant News' list of the 50 most influential people in the U.S. restaurant industry.

In an interview with the Chicago Tribune, Liautaud said that he and Aronson got to know each other over a couple of years and came to an agreement. "I'm still the single individual largest (noninstitutional) shareholder," he said, adding that Jimmy John's was ready for a "nonentrepreneur" to step in. "I'm a good operator, good with food and good with math," said Liautaud. "I'm not a strategist and the company deserved that."

Last year, Liautaud announced plans to take the company public and then canceled them after months of consideration.

In June, the Illinois attorney general's office filed a lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court against Jimmy John's, alleging the company imposes "highly restrictive non-compete agreements on its employees." The suit is pending.

Liautaud in 1983 opened the first Jimmy John's in Charleston, in east-central Illinois, after high school, with $25,000 from his father. He enrolled at Eastern Illinois University, only to drop out before finishing the first semester to grow his business.

Jimmy John's has more than 2,5000 locations in 43 states and $2 billion in systemwide sales, according to a company statement.
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By James Rufus Koren, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

LOS ANGELES  City and federal officials have accepted a $185 million settlement with Wells Fargo over allegations that the bank's employees, driven by strict sales quotas, regularly opened new accounts for customers without their knowledge.

The settlement, announced Thursday morning, calls for the San Francisco banking giant to pay $100 million in penalties to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau  the largest fine the federal agency has ever imposed  and $35 million to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, another federal regulator.

It also will pay $50 million in penalties to local officials and to compensate account holders for fees related to bogus accounts. The bank will not admit any wrongdoing.

The questionable practices were uncovered by a 2013 Los Angeles Times investigation that found Wells Fargo pressured its employees to open more accounts and that some employees even resorted to opening fake ones to meet sales goals.

Last year, Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer filed a lawsuit that alleged Wells Fargo "victimized their customers by using pernicious and often illegal sales tactics" including unrealistic quotas and policies that have "driven bankers to engage in fraudulent behavior."

The federal agencies conducted their own investigations into the bank's sales tactics.

"Wells Fargo employees secretly opened unauthorized accounts to hit sales targets and receive bonuses," said Richard Cordray, director of the CFPB, in a statement Thursday. "Because of the severity of these violations, Wells Fargo is paying the largest penalty the CFPB has ever imposed."

In a statement Thursday, Feuer called the settlement a victory for consumers.

"We're holding Wells Fargo accountable and assuring the violations we've alleged never happen in the future," he said. "Consumers must be able to trust their banks."

The bank has consistently said such practices are not widespread and that workers who cheat to meet sales goals are disciplined or fired. In a statement Thursday, Wells Fargo confirmed the settlements and said it has set aside $5 million to cover refunds to customers.

"Wells Fargo is committed to putting our customers' interests first 100 percent of the time, and we regret and take responsibility for any instances where customers may have received a product that they did not request," the bank said in its statement.

The Times' 2013 story, based on court records and interviews with dozens of former and current Wells Fargo employees, reported that workers opened duplicate accounts, ordered credit cards for customers who did not ask for them and even forged customers' signatures.

In many cases, customers say they've had to pay fees related to accounts they never opened.

In a more extreme case, Mexican pop star Ana Barbara this summer sued Wells Fargo, saying an employee opened up accounts without her knowledge then spent more than $400,000 in her name.

Wells Fargo employees have sued the bank alleging they were forced to work unpaid overtime as they tried to meet goals, while bank customers have sued alleging that fake accounts were opened in their names.

But the customers have so far been unsuccessful in their lawsuits. At Wells Fargo, as at many other banks, when customers sign up for accounts, they agree that any dispute with the bank will be handled in private arbitration rather than in court.

Judges have ruled that those arbitration agreements hold up even in cases in which customers are suing over accounts they never authorized.

Along with reimbursing customers and paying $25 million to the city of Los Angeles and another $25 million to the county, the bank will send notices to customers asking them to stop by a branch so that employees can "help you close any accounts or discontinue services you do not recognize or want," according to the settlement agreement with Feuer's office.

Already, Wells Fargo officials said the bank has hired an outside firm that has reviewed customer accounts looking for bogus accounts and that the bank has paid $2.6 million in refunds so far. The bank said the outside review was finalized before the settlements.

The bank said it has also disciplined and fired managers and employees who "acted counter to our values," and has worked to improve training and monitoring programs.
San Angelo Central girls and boys shine at SA Swimming & Diving Invite

The San Angelo Central High School girls team ran away with the team title and the boys tied for first at the SA Swimming & Diving Invitational.
SHARE Paramount Pictures/Entertainment Pictures/Zuma Press/TNS Actors Leonard Nimoy, William Shatner and James Doohan were among the cast of the original "Star Trek" series. The show premiered 50 years ago as one of the new fall shows on NBC's 1966-1967 schedule.

Characters became part of their lives

By Jack Millrod, Newsday (TNS)

NEW YORK  The future began 50 years ago Thursday for "Star Trek" fans.

When NBC aired the show's first episode on Sept. 8, 1966, Capt. James T. Kirk and the 23rd century crew of the starship Enterprise began a journey that would include an animated series, four spinoffs and 13 movies. And another TV series, "Star Trek: Discovery," launches in January.

To mark the anniversary, many of the actors who brought the various incarnations of "Star Trek" to the screen gathered last weekend in Manhattan for a convention that drew thousands of fans. We asked them to share their own quintessential "Star Trek" moment and what they loved about their characters.

WALTER KOENIG (Pavel Chekov)

Koenig, who played the Russian ensign in the original "Star Trek" series, vividly recalled the day in 1976 when he first understood the show's true impact.

HIS MOMENT: We were invited to the rollout of the shuttle  the Enterprise shuttle. We each drove ourselves to the designated area, not really understanding what was transpiring.  There were chairs set up for us, and lo and behold, out of the corner of my eye, I see the Air Force band is there. I'm still not quite sure what is about to happen.  At one point, a tow truck, a tug, came from around the corner of the building, and behind it, it was pulling the shuttle craft. And that's when the band started playing the theme music from "Star Trek." That was the most extraordinary moment that I can think of. Holy cow, we're not just two-dimensional images on a screen. We have some substance in this world and some influence. And we've made an impression.  And when it came fully into view, I looked across the nose and saw "Enterprise," and that just about knocked me down. A chill ran through all our spines.

HIS CHARACTER: When I was in drama school, a teacher pointed out to me  that my personal comment in life was self-pity. It was a terrible thing to hear, but almost immediately it resonated with me, and I knew that was something I would have to cope with, and I began to learn how to do that. I began to be able to play somebody who could lead with his chin and not be ducking, and have fun. And that's what I liked most about playing Chekov  that I could inject some humor and some sense of fun and feel comfortable doing it.

LAVAR BURTON (Geordi La Forge)

For Burton, who portrayed the Enterprise's chief engineer in "The Next Generation," his quintessential "Star Trek" moment occurred when he was in the director's chair.

HIS MOMENT: In the first episode of "Star Trek" I directed, "Second Chances," I had the opportunity to bring Mae Carol Jemison, the first African-American woman in space, onto the set to play a transporter chief. Having a real astronaut who grew up and became a doctor, a scientist and an astronaut because of "Star Trek" and seeing the show when it was on TV, that was a quintessential "Star Trek" moment for me that really spoke to the enduring nature of the legacy of this franchise.

HIS CHARACTER: His enthusiasm. The fact that he never let anything stand in his way.  Without the chief engineer, we don't get to boldly go anywhere!

NANA VISITOR (Kira Nerys)

On "Deep Space Nine," Visitor played the space station's Bajoran first officer.

HER MOMENT: At a convention, just this past year, a youngish guy in his 40s had his computer with him. He was waiting in line with his family, and he got my autograph. And he said, "Do you have a moment? Can I show you something?" And I said, "Absolutely." And he showed me  it looked like it was from a space movie, something landing on Mars. I said, "That's amazing. Did you do the graphics for that?" He said, "No, no that's really Mars. I landed that on Mars."  An astrophysicist getting my autograph. He said, "You guys  this is why I do what I do."

HER CHARACTER: She was fully realized. She was lovely shades of gray in a moral, ethical sense. She was struggling to know herself and to know why she was where she was.  She was struggling from post-traumatic stress, and over seven years recovered from it.

ETHAN PHILLIPS (Neelix)

Ethan Phillips played the lovable Talaxian chef and chief morale officer in "Voyager."

HIS MOMENT: I was in graduate school, up in Ithaca at Cornell. Me and my roommate were eating dinner at 6 o'clock at night and he said, "Should we watch a little TV?" I said, "Sure."  And he put on "Star Trek." He said, "Did you ever see "Star Trek," and I said, "No." "Really, well, let's watch this episode." And it was unbelievable! We loved it  And we watched it every night for the next two years.

HIS CHARACTER: I liked the fact that Neelix was anonymous  that he was covered in a mask. I liked hiding behind that incredible makeup. I also liked the fact that he was a very empathetic and generous person. He was way different from everybody else in that ship, who were military  They had to hold things together, but Neelix was all over the map emotionally, and that gave him great contrast to the other characters. He was a great listener. He was a good soul. He knew everyone was fighting a battle, so he was always kind.

DOMINIC KEATING (Malcolm Reed)

Keating portrayed an armaments officer in "Enterprise."

HIS MOMENT: I grew up watching the original show. I look a little younger than my actual years. I started watching it in black and white, and I nagged my father rotten to get what was possibly one of the first color TVs in our street in Leicester in England to watch "Star Trek" in color. This TV came from a company called Multi-Broadcast and it was the size of an aircraft hangar and it had a louvered door in wood because you'd pull that across it. What could that coffin in the corner of the sitting room be? Surely not the television! I was just absolutely blown away as a tender 8-year-old to see that Spock's shirt was blue  To find myself 50 years later knowing Mr. Shatner quite well. I knew Mr. Nimoy quite well. You know, we were friendly, God bless his soul. So it's an extraordinary journey for me to be a part of this incredible phenomenon.

HIS CHARACTER: I loved the fact that he was a bit of a dichotomy  and I hope I brought some of this to him. I fleshed him out. As an actor, you're given a three-line bio, and mine was that he was a stiff-upper-lipped Brit, button-down shirts and shy around women  I thought, oh cripes, I'll have to act that bit  I could easily have just played those three lines and they would have written it that way for me  I decided to flesh him out a little bit and make a little bit of Dominic into Malcolm's sinew, and I think it worked well. It made him three-dimensional, made him a little contrary at times  and it made him more fun to act.
Women who prefer casual sex few and far between

Dear Advice Goddess: When I was in my 20s, watching "Sex and the City," I saw the Samantha Jones character as a sexual role model  thinking I could have love-'em-and-leave-'em sex like her. However, even when I only wanted sex, I always had a sense of loss when one-nighters didn't evolve into something more.

I reflected on this while reading your recent column about how women often wake up after casual sex wanting more from a guy  even a guy they don't want. But I personally know two women who actually prefer casual sex. They have it often and don't get attached. Why can they do this?

 Not Teflon

Dear Not Teflon: "Sex and the City's" Samantha isn't a completely fictional character in how, after sex, she brushes men off herself like crumbs. However, in that column you mention, I referenced research from anthropologist John Marshall Townsend, who discovered that Samantha's post-sex detachment is pretty atypical  that many women who intend to use and lose a guy often find themselves going all clingypants the next morning.

Understanding what allows the Samantha type to escape this takes separating the women who have casual sex from those who feel OK about it afterward.

Women have casual sex for various reasons. For some, it seems the feminist thing to do  to prove they can do anything a man can do. Townsend notes that women hook up because they aren't ready for a relationship, because they're trying to punch up their sex skills, or  as with rock groupies  to get some small piece of a guy they know is out of their league. Other women see hookups as the "free candy!" they can use to lure some unsuspecting man into the relationship van.

There's a widespread belief, even held by some researchers, that higher testosterone levels in women mean a higher libido, but testosterone's role in female desire is like that Facebook relationship status: "It's complicated." Research by clinical psychologist Nora Charles, among others, suggests that "factors other than ... hormones" are behind which women become the Princess Shag-a-lots.

Personality seems to be one of those factors. In looking at what's called "sociosexuality"  what sort of person has casual sex  psychologist Jeffrey A. Simpson finds that extroversion (being outgoing, exhibitionistic and adventure-seeking), aggressiveness and impulsivity are associated with greater willingness to have an uncommitted tumble.

However, once again, all the reasons a woman's more likely to have casual sex don't stop her from getting tangled up in feelings afterward. The deciding factor seems to be where she falls on what the late British psychiatrist John Bowlby called our "attachment system." According to Bowlby, how you relate in close relationships  "securely," "anxiously" or "avoidantly"  appears to stem from how well your mother (or other primary caregiver) sussed out and responded to your needs and freakouts as an infant.

If she was consistently responsive (but not overprotective), you're probably "securely attached," meaning you have a solid emotional base and feel you can count on others to be there for you. This allows you to be both independent and interdependent.

Being "anxiously attached" comes out of having a caregiver who was inconsistently there for you (perhaps because they were worn thin) or who was overprotective. This leads to fear and clinginess in relationships (the human barnacle approach to love).

And finally, being "avoidantly attached" is a response to a cold, rejecting caregiver  one who just wasn't all that interested in showing up for you. Not surprisingly, perhaps to avoid risking all-out rejection by being too demanding, the avoidantly attached tend to adapt by becoming people who push other people away.

It's avoidantly attached women who social psychologist Phillip Shaver and his colleagues find can have casual sex without emotional intimacy  and, in fact, tend to see their "discard after using" attitude as a point of pride. (It sounds better to be a "sexual shopaholic" than a person with unresolved psychological problems.)

Other women  those who didn't have a really chilly caregiver  are likely to have that "sense of loss" you feel after casual sex. As Townsend notes, female emotions evolved to act as an "alarm system" to push women to go for male "investment"  that guy who'll go to the ends of the earth for you ... and actually come back afterward instead of growing a beard, getting a passport in a fake name and starting a new life in some remote Japanese fishing village.

Got a problem? Write Amy Alkon, 171 Pier Ave., #280, Santa Monica, CA 90405, or email AdviceAmy@aol.com.
In this April 29, 2016, photo, Anna Taylor, founder and CEO of Dene Adams LLC, poses for a portrait in Atlanta, Ga. For decades, women have had few choices when it comes to the clothing they can wear to hide that theyre carrying a firearm. Taylor's company makes clothing geared to women seeking to carry a firearm concealed. (AP Photo/Lisa Marie Pane)

SHARE In this April 29, 2016, photo, Anna Taylor, founder and CEO of Dene Adams LLC, poses for a portrait in Atlanta, Ga. For decades, women have had few choices when it comes to the clothing they can wear to hide that theyre carrying a firearm. Taylor's company makes clothing geared to women seeking to carry a firearm concealed. (AP Photo/Lisa Marie Pane) In this Aug. 29, 2016 photo, Marilyn Smolenski uses a mock gun to demonstrate how to pull a handgun out of an undergarment she designs for concealed carry at her home in Park Ridge, Ill. Interest in clothing that allow women to carry a firearm concealed is rising. Pioneers in the industry say they allow women to avoid looking frumpy and still carry a firearm safely and effectively. (AP Photo/Tae-Gyun Kim) In this April 29, 2016, photo, Anna Taylor, founder and CEO of Dene Adams LLC, displays a corset that allows for the concealed carrying of a firearm in Atlanta, Ga. For decades, women have had few choices when it comes to the clothing they can wear to hide that theyre carrying a firearm. Taylor's company makes clothing geared to women seeking to carry a firearm concealed. (AP Photo/Lisa Marie Pane) In this Aug. 29, 2016 photo, Marilyn Smolenski uses a mock gun to demonstrate how to pull a handgun out of the concealed carry clothing she designs at her home in Park Ridge, Ill. Interest in clothing that allow women to carry a firearm concealed is rising. Pioneers in the industry say the clothes allow women to avoid looking frumpy and still carry a firearm safely and effectively. (AP Photo/Tae-Gyun Kim)

By LISA MARIE PANE, Associated Press

ATLANTA (AP)  Does this gun make me look fat?

For decades, women have had few choices when it comes to the clothing they can wear to hide that they're carrying a firearm. They could wear baggy T-shirts or coats, or put it in a purse and hope it didn't get swiped or that they didn't have trouble getting it out in an emergency.

Enter holsters, corsets, camisoles and other clothing designed to be flattering, feminine a and functional a for the pistol-packin' mama crowd.

"I don't want to dress in tactical gear and camo all the time. I love tactical clothing for the range. It's comfortable. I don't want to ruin my everyday clothing," said Marilyn Smolenski, who in 2012 created Nickel and Lace, a company that caters to women who want to carry a firearm concealed but don't want to trade in their femininity. "But I don't want to wear it to the grocery store."

Smolenski started her company right around the time when Chicago city laws changed and she could again legally carry a firearm. When that happened, she struggled to find something that didn't make her look frumpy and didn't broadcast that she was packing heat. Most of the clothing was geared to men a coats with hidden pockets, or holsters that tuck neatly inside a waistband. But until the last few years, those weren't always great options for women who don't wear belts as frequently and are more likely than men to wear form-fitting clothing, making it difficult to hide the fact they're carrying a firearm.

"When you put a man's holster on a woman's body it sticks out. It doesn't hug the body," said Carrie Lightfoot, founder and owner of The Well Armed Woman in Scottsdale, Arizona, which does everything from providing firearms instruction to women to selling a variety of concealed carry clothing. One of her company's first missions was to design and produce a holster that recognized the differences in body types and clothing styles between men and women.

Women's waists tend to be shorter, providing less room to withdraw a gun from a holster. Hips and chests can get in the way too, she said.

Lightfoot and Smolenski said that some manufacturers tended to "shrink it and pink it" a thinking that taking gear produced for men and making it smaller and brightly colored would satisfy female customers. They and their counterparts emphasize they are driven first by function and safety before aesthetics come into the equation.

"Women need to know they can carry effectively," Lightfoot said. "I think the key is finding a way to carry it so you can be comfortable and move through your day without being poked and having a big hunk of metal in your pants and not be able to sit at work."

Both also are advocates for providing women with information and guidance on ways to feel secure and be safe. For Smolenski, that goal has led to the creation of the annual Firearms and Fashion Show which includes seminars on personal safety. Her company actually got its start with a line of jewelry a from necklaces that can be pulled away easily and then used as a weapon to "chopsticks" that can both be used to hold up hair and then be wielded against an attacker.

For Anna Taylor, the founder and CEO of Dene Adams LLC a named after her grandfather, who first taught her to respect firearms and handle them safely a the road to creating a line of concealed carry clothing began at around the time she became a single mom and the safety of the family rested on her shoulders. When she got her first concealed carry permit in 2013, she went through seven different holsters.

"Some were hard and uncomfortable. Some of them I'd have to take off and set down when I went to the bathroom and I was afraid I would go off and leave it just like I've left my phone behind before. Others, belly band types with a print so bad you could see the grip or outline of the gun through my clothes," Adams said. "So when I went out in public, I felt like I had these awkward arms always trying to hide this thing."

Her first design involved a mousepad and a post-partem corset to create a soft holster. She was able to carry the kids around, nurse, give the kids baths a even jump on the trampoline a "and I could forget that it was there." With her last $200, she found a manufacturer willing to do a small run. Flash forward three years and she now has products on shelves at nearly 100 dealers around the country. She has expanded into safety and training and is now an NRA pistol and rifle instructor. She even has a few men who buy her products a including, she said, air marshals, who gravitate to the snug, comfortable designs.

"We have options that don't have lace. We have solid black," she said.
Contributed photo South of the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth, England, the Millennium Promenade hugs the water and leads to the quaint historic district.

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By Rick Steves

Portsmouth is the famed home of Britain's Royal Navy. But as Britain's military shrinks, the port is pumping up its tourism. Many travelers pass through this major port on England's south coast, busy with ferries heading for France's Brittany. And there are plenty of excuses to stop here. The city has amazing maritime history on display and enough candy-floss-on-the-beach fun to save someone from having to visit the more touristy seaside towns like Brighton or Blackpool.

In London, I passed a billboard advertising an exotic harbor skyline with the question: "Dreaming of Dubai?" Then they break it to me: It's Portsmouth, 90 minutes away by train.

Comparing Dubai and Portsmouth is a stretch, but Portsmouth's iconic Spinnaker Tower is a sail-shaped monolith reminiscent of a Dubai skyscraper. It stands like an exclamation mark above a once rundown military port that is morphing into a pleasant people zone as the city undergoes an impressive gentrification.

Like Seattle's vaguely futuristic Space Needle, the 560-foot-tall Spinnaker Tower has become an icon of its city. In 2015, the Dubai-based Emirates airline paid 3.5 million pounds to change the Spinnaker's name to the "Emirates Spinnaker Tower"  but I just can't get comfortable calling it that. Visitors can ride up the tower for a panoramic view, or court acrophobia with a stroll across a glass floor.

Portsmouth works well as a day trip from London. Almost all of its visit-worthy sights line up along a 2-mile stretch of waterfront, from the Historic Dockyard in the north to the Southsea neighborhood, with the D-Museum, in the south. The top sights in the walkable core can be seen in a few hours. But with its bustling shopping complex and Spinnaker Tower at Gunwharf Quays, the D-Day Museum and seafaring atmosphere, you can easily fill a whole day.

The highlight of Portsmouth is its Historic Dockyard with Britain's great warships, dubbed the "Wooden Walls of England." Here, visitors can marvel at both the modern-day warships anchored on the docks and visit several historical warships, as well as an entertaining collection of model ships, paintings, uniforms and other artifacts at the National Museum of the Royal Navy.

Britannia's HMS Warrior was the first iron-hulled warship  a huge technological advance in the late 1800s. The Warrior's very existence was sufficient to keep the peace, so it never saw combat and is still shipshape today.

Perhaps the most consequential battle in British naval history was the Battle of Trafalgar, where Admiral Nelson and the British fleet defeated Napoleon's fleet and saved England from so many uninvited French guests back in 1805. Nelson's flagship, the majestic HMS Victory, is the main attraction here, and for Brits a visit here is a patriotic pilgrimage.

Henry VIII's much older warship, the Mary Rose, is less well-preserved but just as interesting. In 1545, it capsized just 2 miles offshore on its way to engage a French enemy fleet. Of the 400 sailors onboard, only about 30 survived. The wreckage  with all sorts of Tudor-era items  was raised from the mud in 1982, and today it is beautifully displayed in the newly renovated Mary Rose Museum.

As a major military target, Portsmouth was flattened by World War II bombs (ironically, the Historic Dockyard was relatively unscathed). Postwar reconstruction was hasty and poorly planned, and the city became infamous for its bad architecture. But that's changed. Besides the waterfront shopping complex and Spinnaker Tower, efforts to rejuvenate have included refurbishing the old historic district. From the Old Portsmouth promenade, you can watch a procession of 21st-century ferries as they navigate into and out of port. It's an enjoyable place to stroll around and imagine how different this district was in the old days, when it was filled with salty fishermen and sailors who told tall tales and sang sea shanties in the once rough-and-tumble and now trendy pubs.

While exploring Old Portsmouth, look for the stylized chain-link pattern in the sidewalk, marking the Millennium Promenade. The chain symbol recalls the great steel chain that once spanned the mouth of the harbor and was raised to block invading warships. For a pleasant stroll, I like to follow the portion of the trail south of Old Portsmouth along the oceanfront. Interpretive panels along the way give insight into Portsmouth's fascinating evolution, from its stone towers and fortifications to Clarence Pier, a Coney Island-type beach-party zone.

While many areas of Portsmouth are becoming gentrified, deep down it's still a hardworking port town with plenty of touristic value. The blustery beaches may not be as warm and sandy as Dubai's, but the city's fascinating military presence and modern attractions make Portsmouth a fun and educational stop on a trip to southern England.

Rick Steves (www.ricksteves.com) writes European travel guidebooks and hosts travel shows on public television and public radio. Email him at rick@ricksteves.com and follow his blog on Facebook.
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Bill allows families to sue other countries

By Maria Recio, McClatchy Washington Bureau (TNS)

WASHINGTON  A 9/11 widow who succeeded in getting the House of Representatives to schedule a vote on a bill pushed by victims' families ahead of the 15th anniversary of the attacks decided she didn't want to be present for Friday's expected approval of the legislation.

"They don't need me anymore," said Marge Mathers, 75, as she left Washington on Thursday, struggling with a wheelchair  "I threw out my knee"  and helped by a granddaughter. "I accomplished what I set out to do."

Mathers, a Galveston resident, left Washington to take the train to the New Jersey town she'd lived in with her husband, Charles W. Mathers, who died in the World Trade Center.

Mathers had made a last-minute trip to lobby the House this week, joining other 9/11 family members to urge a vote on a bill that would enable victims' families to sue foreign states that funded the terrorists responsible for the attacks. The bill, the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, would primarily apply to Saudi Arabia. Of the 19 hijackers on 9/11, 15 were from that country.

The Saudi government has vigorously objected to the legislation and before the Senate in May approved the bill, co-sponsored by Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas and Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., threatened to pull $750 billion in assets from the United States.

The White House has also threatened to veto the legislation out of concerns it would undermine state sovereignty and could prompt retaliation against U.S. citizens by other governments.

Cornyn urged President Barack Obama to back the bill.

"I hope that the president will rethink his previous statements expressing an intent to perhaps veto this legislation," Cornyn said Thursday in a Senate floor speech.

The bill got some momentum this year, especially after the release of the so-called "28 pages" this summer, classified information from a congressional report that linked the hijackers to Saudi financial support.

But House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis. was initially reluctant to move the legislation without going through regular procedures, which would have meant a slower process, starting with a vote by the House Judiciary Committee, that would have missed the 15th anniversary.

But after a flurry of activity by bill supporters Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Robert Goodlatte, R-Va., bolstered by 9/11 families, Ryan agreed that a vote under "suspension of the rules" could take place. The procedure is usually reserved for noncontroversial legislation and a bill must have approval of two-thirds of those present to pass.

"It's been 15 years, so a lot of emotion has gone out of it," said King in an interview. "So we really had to work it."

The families, he said, were "definitely a factor" in persuading leadership. Another issue was a commemoration of 9/11 for Congress and victims' families on the U.S. Capitol steps that was already scheduled for Friday.

"It wouldn't look so good to have the families here and not have the vote," said King.

Despite opposition from what King called the "foreign policy establishment," the GOP leaders, with the support of Democratic leaders, decided to let the bill go forward.

Even scheduling suspension was difficult, King said, and to let that vote take place on a Friday and not the first two days of the week required a rule change by unanimous consent  meaning even a single "nay" could have sunk the bill. But House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., made sure Democrats did not object even if Obama was going to veto the bill.

The family members, asking for justice, also carried weight. "They made a very effective case," King said. "That puts such a human face on it."

Rep. Randy Weber, R-Texas, who is Mathers' congressman, is a big supporter of the bill.

"It has been a privilege to work with and get to know Marge Mathers," Weber told McClatchy. "She has been a tireless advocate for the surviving families of 9/11 who are simply asking for accountability. JASTA empowers those families to seek justice for their loved ones murdered by terrorists as well as the entities that funded the bloodshed."
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By Staff Report

Austin Chronicle publisher Louis Black will be the featured speaker at the Texas Exes meeting Sept. 27.

Black is publisher and editor of The Austin Chronicle, a senior director of SXSW, and a partner

in Production For Use, all of which he also co-founded. A columnist for over 25 years, Black has written extensively on film, music and politics.

The meeting is slated for noon at Zentner's Daughter Steak House, 1901 Knickerbocker Road.

Email sanangelotxexes@gmail.com for more information.
Yfat Yossifor / Standard-Times Susan Brooks tours the dance studios during a dedication ceremony Thursday at the San Angelo Performing Arts Center, 82 Gillis St.

SHARE Yfat Yossifor / Standard-Times Philanthropists Steve and Pollyanna Stephens, who were instrumental in funding the new San Angelo Performing Arts Center, speak during a dedication ceremony Thursday. Yfat Yossifor / Standard-Times The San Angelo Performing Arts Center at 82 Gillis St. is open and was officially dedicated Thursday. Yfat Yossifor / Standard-Times Fred Keyes (center) introduces San Angelo Performing Arts Center Executive Director Mark Levine (left) during the dedication Thursday. Yfat Yossifor / Standard-Times Andrew Graves, alongside Elaine Stribling (center) and Patsy Cleere, tours the theater at the San Angelo Performing Arts Center on Thursday

By Rashda Khan, rashda.khan@gosanangelo.com / @rashda_SAST

Several San Angeloans got their first look inside the new Performing Arts Center, at 82 Gillis St., at its dedication ceremony Thursday. The San Angelo Performing Arts Coalition named it the Stephens Performing Arts Center in honor of local philanthropists Pollyanna and Steve Stephens.

The Stephens family collectively donated more than $5 million to the project and helped raise more than $25 million from other sources. The funds went toward two main projects  converting an empty CocaCola warehouse into the performing arts center, and renovating the City Auditorium, which should be complete mid- or late 2017.

"It's almost like birthing a baby," Susan Brooks, a daughter of the Stephenses and the first president of the SAPAC board, said to a visitor. "It's been a long haul."

The center drew exclamations, grins and a bit of tearfulness with its 301-seat theater space, a black box performance area and seven ballet dance studios. The building is a mix of industrial chic, warm wood and bright spots of colors. Visitors were able to see the center in use as Ballet San Angelo (formerly the San Angelo Civic Ballet), which moved into the building in August, had toddlers in tutus and elegant young women using some of the dance studios Thursday.

"The performing arts in San Angelo have been a big part of the community since the frontier days," Steve Stephens said, adding that despite the long history, the various arts have not had the venue they deserved until now. "Instead of having to drive to Dallas, San Antonio, Austin and Fort Worth for great shows, we'll have them all right here in San Angelo."

The center is still getting some finishing touches, but its first show  Ballet San Angelo's traditional Nutcracker performance  is scheduled for Dec. 9
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The following editorial appeared in Monday's Chicago Tribune:

North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un recently ordered the execution by firing squad of a top government official for unspecified high crimes and misdemeanors against the state. Deputy Premier Kim Yong Jin, 63, was dispatched in a blaze of fire from an anti-aircraft gun, a South Korean newspaper reports.

What infraction prompted the supreme leader's ire?

Some accounts suggest that Kim Yong Jin dozed off during a meeting with He Who Is Not To Be Trifled With. Although maybe Kim Jong Un instead found fault with the deputy's reported "disrespectful posture." Was he slouching? Pouting? Unclear. The JoonAng Ilbo newspaper's epilogue: "He was arrested on-site and intensively questioned by the state security ministry. He was executed after other charges, such as corruption, were found during the probe."

Whatever his capital crime, Kim Yong Jin now becomes a global object of sympathy among all those millions of suffering, sleep-tempted minions trapped in interminable meetings that meander this way and that, sapping from its participants the very will to live.

Show of hands:

Who hasn't nodded off as a meeting droned into its second hour?

Who hasn't imagined a nice pillow and comfy bed while a co-worker prattled on about his or her stellar achievements in a desperate attempt to impress the boss, who, truth be told, seemed drowsy herself?

Who hasn't surreptitiously checked a smartphone or played a game in a fevered if dangerous bid to keep  eyelids  open.

Zzzzz  Huh? OK, right, back to the editorial.

Kim Jong Un isn't the only dear leader who demands stern-faced attention at meetings.

American workers have told pollsters they'd opt to watch paint dry or undergo a root canal instead of being trapped in a go-nowhere meeting.

In the past we've cheered smart thinkers who innovated ways to reduce the inevitable meeting creep and veer. There's the walking meeting, espoused by tech titans Jack Dorsey of Twitter and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook. A fine idea  we get some of our best ideas while walking  but assembling a meeting outdoors assumes the weather cooperates.

Another idea: Everyone stands. That way, no one gets too comfortable. Purportedly that helps meetings move along at a rapid clip, eliminating distractions and digressions. Several years ago a Sears exec with a military background tried this. Meetings got shorter. More crisp.

But some people complain that even standing meetings can stretch on for an hour or more.

And standing can make you tired. It can provoke foot and leg problems.

Note to standing-meeting bosses: The point isn't to stand for very long. The point is to dispense with all the pleasantries, fripperies, self-promotional gasbaggery, diatribes, passive-aggressive snipes and get to the point of why the meeting was called in the first place. You should leave a meeting energized, ready to Get Something Done. Not staggering for another Venti at Starbucks.

If bosses can't limit meetings they at least should provide roll-up napping mats for employees. That way, workers will be refreshed and ready to go when the dithering and digressing  finally  ends.
Description

GIS - 09 September, 2016: The Small and Medium Enterprise Development Authority (SMEDA) signed two Memoranda of Understanding yesterday, one with the Association of Chartered Certificated Accounts (ACCA) Mauritius and the other with Microsoft Indian Ocean Islands Limited. The ceremony was held in Port Louis at the headquarters of MyBiz in presence of the Minister of Business, Enterprise and Cooperatives, Mr S. Bholah and other eminent personalities. The Small and Medium Enterprise Development Authority (SMEDA) signed two Memoranda of Understanding yesterday, one with the Association of Chartered Certificated Accounts (ACCA) Mauritius and the other with Microsoft Indian Ocean Islands Limited. The ceremony was held in Port Louis at the headquarters of MyBiz in presence of the Minister of Business, Enterprise and Cooperatives, Mr S. Bholah and other eminent personalities.

These two MoUs make provision for training to local entrepreneurs in the fields of finance and accounting, financial entrepreneurial education and an introduction to information technology and cloud computing.

On this occasion Minister Bholah underlined the significance of these collaborative agreements and added that they are a major boost to entrepreneurship, as Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) have been identified as major role players in the economic growth and transformational development of Mauritius.

He pointed out that it is very important to develop the capacity, knowledge and skills of local entrepreneurs. He added that even though many entrepreneurs still have limited access to technology, financial support and mentorship there is a need to create an environment that promotes business entry and expansion for SMEs to develop.

The Minister urged all entrepreneurs as well as those engaged in cooperatives to make the most of the trainings so that they can make use of modern technology to boost their enterprises.
On Sept. 8, the state of Oregon signed a Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) agreement with Amazon Web Services (AWS), making it the fourth state, next to California, Minnesota and Colorado, to give its police access to AWS Cloud.The Oregon State Police is pleased to announce  [an] agreement that meets every requirement of the FBIs CJIS Security Policy," Maj. Tom M. Worthy, chief security officer of the Oregon State Police, said in an AWS blog . "This agreement gives Oregon agencies additional hosting options that enhance security, while meeting their business requirements pertaining to criminal justice information."AWS has turned a stronger focus toward the public sector this year, most recently announcing another iteration of its City on a Cloud Innovation Challenge, which seeks to recognize and promote best practices in innovation and data storage.Recent trend data collected by the Center for Digital Government indicates that cultural barriers to cloud adoption are diminishing, and that more IT leaders view the cloud as a viable and secure possibility for their organization's needs. More vendors are joining the CJIS bandwagon, including Microsoft, which announced last year that its cloud services were suitable for organizations bound by the FBI security requirements.
Seeing Crime Before It Happens

The Rise of Biometrics and Fingerprint Alternatives

Video: Anytime, Anywhere?

The Evolution of Data Analytics and Collection

From the right vantage point, it is almost possible to watch the steady tide of technology seeping into the briefing rooms and patrol cars of American law enforcement agencies.The devices and technologies that may have once started as benign civilian conveniences have transformed into powerful tools that enable agencies to pinpoint their resources, prevent crime and cast a wider net for wrongdoers. The exponential escalation of mobile computing and analytics has given officers intelligence on the go and greatly improved their chances of being in the right place at the right time.While these tools come with profound benefits to the men and women behind the badges and the communities they serve, there are ramifications that ripple far into the public space as well as considerations that must be made to prevent misuse and infringement on civil rights.But we still seem far from the broad-stroke reports of many in the mainstream media who might tell you that cops everywhere can peer into your life with the click of a mouse or a well placed drone  at least at the local level. Despite some of these overblown stories of advanced surveillance capabilities, many in local law enforcement would tell you that funding for boots on the ground will almost always win out over bids for the latest NSA-style tech. Even if smaller agencies want it, they probably cant afford it.This is not to say there arent those with a spy-style kit they cant or wont talk about. These methods tend to encourage public distrust and suspicion, but well cover that a bit later on.Despite the gloomy and often mischaracterized capabilities of police powers in the U.S. and the tools they use daily, a wider look at the profession and its emerging capabilities can show us just how important technology is and will become in policing.Its 4 p.m. on a Tuesday in June in Santa Cruz, Calif., and the squad car radio echoes off with chatter about a strong-arm robbery near the rail bridge that connects the popular boardwalk with a nearby beachfront neighborhood. The suspect, a woman with a backpack, has taken another womans belongings by force and was last seen making her way toward the network of vacation homes and beachgoers enjoying the sunny afternoon.But Santa Cruz police officers are already nearby and move in to track the perpetrator within moments of the first report. Theres nothing random about their presence in the area. What on the outside might look like blind luck or coincidence is actually part of a predictive system the department has been perfecting with the help of academic partners turned businessmen since 2011.And this is not someone sitting in a room with a crystal ball or tarot cards trying to pinpoint the next crime; this is the intersection of advanced probabilistic algorithms and community policing. Its appropriately called PredPol, short for Predictive Policing.Crime data fed into the PredPol system provides officers with 15 different zones for four types of crime  auto theft, vehicle burglary, burglary and gang-related activity  at the start of each shift. Each zone covers an area of 500 square feet.In a city where tourism can double the population in a single night, the deputy chief said maximizing the efficacy of his department was a no-brainer. The technological edge provided by the advanced software would help to close the gap between what was, at the time, increasing crime and staffing limitations.Time is a zero-sum game. I only have the number of officers times the number of hours that theyre working to address crime issues in the city. If now all of a sudden a chunk of our time is dealing with radio calls for service, that greatly reduces my proactive policing time. The only way to increase that is you either lower the demand or you get more officers to dilute or diffuse the calls for service so you have more proactive time, said Deputy Chief Steve Clark. I couldnt afford more officers, so I had to get smarter about how we were going to deal with our limited time resources.Despite giving officers a substantial leg up when it comes to patrolling the city, Clark said the system still requires them to interact with the community and walk the beat, as it were. They cannot, and do not, rely solely on the systems predictions to do their jobs. They still patrol the city as any cop would, but theyre looking for any indication that the predictions were correct.However effective the system might be in predicting crime, Clark said the job of policing is more than simply following the data. You cant become too reliant on these things. The officers have to continue to sharpen their saws as far as their instincts, their training, their experience, their instincts  those things that we spend a lot of money to teach them and train them, those years of experience, he said. Public safety is a discipline or a field, if you will, that you can never lose the human element in.From Clarks perspective, the platform does more than just point cops in the right direction; it also removes the potential for race- and income-based biases so often a concern in policing. The predictive platform doesnt see race, financial status or any of the other indicators that often lead to the perception of police profiling. All PredPol sees are the reports of crimes that have occurred, which are then translated into where they are likely to occur next.Theres nothing in there about demographics, Clark said. Whether it be the population type or monetary demographics. These are actual crime reports, and thats what it makes its predictions from.Halfway across the country in Eden Prairie, Minn., a town of about 63,000 people, predictive policing has taken on a slightly different form. Officers rely on a dedicated analyst for up-to-the-moment intelligence on their patrols.The public safety system may not rely on advanced probabilities and mapping, but rather law enforcement analyst Ryan Kapaun, who tracks each crime and translates it into usable intelligence for the department, which averages 60,000 calls for service a year.Using fairly simple tools, like the Microsoft Office suite and IBMs Analysts Notebook, Kapaun funnels officers suspect descriptions, potential patterns and anything else that may help stop or catch a criminal.To just map every burglary, for me, doesnt tell me a lot, because it doesnt tell me that those burglaries are linked. So one might be an overnight garage burglary [and] one might be a front-door-kicked-in burglary during the day while people are at work, he said. What Im most interested in is not aggregating and mapping all of the burglaries. What I want to know is, what are the anomalies? What doesnt fit? What are the burglaries, as an example, that arent fitting the other burglaries?The concept took time to catch on with his badge-wielding colleagues, according to the analyst. But now Kapauns work represents one more tool in each officers belt that can help them make split-second decisions on patrol.Everyone is using data, and they might not either be aware of it or understand it, and if you think of it, a police department has a wealth of data  theyre data-rich. Its just figuring out how to take that data and use that data in a way thats meaningful, he said. I think a lot of agencies end up using the data to just say, Burglaries are up 15 percent from this week over last week. For a patrol officer, when I used to do that, eyes would glaze over. What does that mean? You have to tell the story with the data.Kapaun said the programs successes have the department looking at how to expand it and potentially bring in other analysts.In recent years the push to include alternative identification methods in daily police work has exploded past fingerprinting and the classic mug shot. Law enforcement agencies are now looking toward options like facial recognition to help finger the right perp.At the federal level, the FBIs Next Generation Identification program has given new identity tools to federal, state and local law enforcement, and has stoked the flames of critics, who believe the system is little more than a way to catalog people  the guilty, the innocent and those somewhere in the middle.But the program seems to be the next logical step in a national process where fingerprints and photographs dont always tell the whole story of a persons criminal past. The larger program, which extends its database services to participating state and local agencies, relies on a growing index of finger and palm prints as well as facial and iris scans to identify persons of interest.In San Diego, the citys police department (SDPD) employs facial recognition equipment to identify people its officers come in contact with. For example, if an individual does not produce an ID during a traffic stop, facial recognition could close the information gap for the officer.According to Officer Steve Thorn, the SDPD facial recognition program coordinator, around 100 facial scanners have served the department well since the city first signed on with the Automated Regional Justice Information System, a larger regional law enforcement collective.Officers use the devices to assist in the identification of individuals lawfully detained or arrested when those persons are unwilling or unable to provide identity. A typical situation would be when officers contact an individual for a crime. The crime could be minimal in nature, such as littering or jay-walking, or more severe such as battery or theft, he said. If the individual has no identification on them or would not provide their name, the officers could use the device to verify their identity and issue a citation in the field versus having to transport the individual to a police station and take fingerprints, which could be very time-consuming.But the usefulness of the tools extends far beyond identifying criminals. Thorn said officers also use the departments 100 or so scanners to work with the homeless community and identify potential missing persons.I have spoken to a number of officers who use the device regularly. They all say the device works very well, saves time and helps prevent misidentification. The device is extremely useful for officers assigned to the quality-of-life team and homeless outreach team. Both teams are a resource to the homeless population, but also take enforcement action as necessary. A vast majority of homeless peoples have no identification in their possession, and the device enables the officers to make quick identification and take appropriate action.For critics, programs like these represent a way to capture and store permanent, vital information about civilians with little oversight. Most recently, the Next Generation Identification program took fire from critics when the FBI petitioned to exempt it from federal privacy regulations, which critics say would prevent the misuse and abuse of data.In a U.S. Government Accountability Office report, published in May, the agency pointed to gaps in the FBIs processes and recommended steps the top domestic law enforcement agency could take to improve the programs accuracy and transparency.Police video is not a new concept by any stretch of the imagination. What started as the occasional camera capturing a liquor store or bank robbery has grown into cameras being installed on seemingly every street corner. In the past few years, law enforcement agencies across the country have started equipping officers with body cameras to document interactions with citizens.The prevalence of video and its societal benefits are the reason that researchers at Purdue University are working on the CAM2, a cloud-based platform that links publicly available cameras through a single, easily accessible portal. Despite how popular reports may have painted the research to this point, the team scoffs at the idea that its a way for police to peer into the lives of unsuspecting Americans.Yung-Hsiang Lu leads the team behind CAM2. From his perspective as a technologist, the system has applications in law enforcement environments, but it doesnt give them anything sensitive.We do not use any data that requests passwords, and furthermore we actually take reasonable efforts to exclude any camera we think may look at a private space, he said. Most of the cameras we have in our system come from Departments of Transportation of different governments, different states, different cities. For obvious reasons, because our research is about data management, it is not about looking at whether you are sitting on your sofa or not.The scalable video platform allows users to log in and view a wealth of publicly available cameras collected from around the world, which can be watched in real time or recorded for later. In terms of potential, Lu said the analyzable data from the platform could ultimately help in a number of sectors, including transportation planning.The problem facing the system is the fragmented sources of the video feeds, Lu said. Engineers have had to work around the multitude of camera systems to adapt them to a singularly accessible platform.The larger challenge of video is inextricably linked to big data and has unsurprisingly been the focus of researchers around the world. While the platform may not equate to the next big surveillance tool, there are undeniable benefits for police, first responders and the communities they serve.David Ebert heads up Purdue Universitys Visual Analytics for Command, Control and Interoperability Environments in conjunction with the Department of Homeland Securitys Centers of Excellence, and said the video platform has sparked the interest of some in the larger law enforcement environment who see more potential applications.One of the things that I see as a great potential for this also is in the emergency response and disaster response fields, he said. Basically a tornado comes through or hurricane comes through, youre trying to do assessment of damage and where your resources should be allocated. Being able to pull up that information through this sort of system is a good way to crowdsource the information instead of having to wait until people upload photos, or look through Twitter images or Snapchat information and things like that.But the tool comes with the need for the inclusion of best practices, Ebert added. While it may not be peering into the living rooms of everyday citizens, he likens it to how local agencies address the collection of information on publicly available social media platforms.I think a similar set of guidelines for these type of cameras would be very appropriate. Depending on your current interpretation of the laws, the view is that all of the information that people put out on social media theyre making publicly available if they dont have privacy settings turned on, so there is no violation of privacy. Thats the perception, but the question is, have the laws caught up with what the public expects?And now to the stuff agencies seem a bit shy about.The Stingray made recent national news as information slowly trickled out that the U.S. Justice Department had provided local agencies with the funds to purchase so-called cell-site simulators. The devices are designed to intercept cellular communications, access the data within them and track locations. But as quickly as the technology made its way to the headlines, legislation began to consider the implications of what many considered to be the possibility of mass surveillance by local agencies.States like Illinois and Nebraska began to propose legislation to strip agencies of their simulators and bar them from buying new ones. But this isnt the only kind of tech that has some people concerned. The Los Angeles Police Department declined interview requests about its use of a software platform produced by a company called Palantir, which also wont discuss its work with law enforcement agencies.On the upside, the department talked about the product and its potential for a company testimonial, so we do have a small idea about what it is capable of, even if its just the stuff the company needs to sell it to other departments. While the lack of transparency might seem like a cause for concern for residents, the system appears to be little more than an advanced data analytics platform geared toward law enforcement applications.Basically Palantirs platform uses available data sources to make sense of all of the noise that is out there, according to Police Chief Charlie Beck in a 2013 testimonial. For years weve had stovepipe systems that have a lot of information, but dont talk to each other and dont compare that information, and Palantir allows us to do that, he added.While details are limited, as of a few years ago, the company was gaining momentum. In 2012, Palantir founder Alex Karp toldthat while he could not disclose how many government contracts the company had, he did say that doubling his staff would help it meet demand.By pulling untapped or underutilized data sets into the investigative process, officers are now able to piece together information that might otherwise appear unrelated. Combining information like crime and arrest records, field interview cards, automatic license plate readers, Department of Motor Vehicle information and rap sheets, as well as publicly available camera footage and police body cameras, is helping to usher in effective predictive policing programs across the country.
(TNS) -- A new app consolidates links that connect users to service information and high-profile projects available on the city of Corpus Christi, Texas' website.The app, developed by City Councilman Chad Magill, includes an aggregation of direct links to pages on the city's website such as the customer service center, bond projects, the proposed budget, and reporting code violations and potholes. Going through the city's website can sometimes mean navigating through several links to reach the information."There are thousands of pages (on) the city website," Magill said. "This makes it easier for citizens to have one-click access to what they want to get done or addressed."There are existing city-managed apps, including the CC Mobile app. The CC Mobile app, available in iTunes and Google Play, can be used to report various issues, such as potholes. There is also a city website revamp in the works.The CC mobile app is included as a download on Magill's app. Magill described his app as complementary to the city's.The app can be found on iTunes and Google Play by searching "Councilman Chad Magill," according to a news release.Magill is seeking re-election as an at-large councilman. With eight candidates, it is the most crowded race in the November election.
Cybersecurity governance just got a leg up in federal government.An ongoing effort from the Obama administration to shore up the nation's digital defenses was punctuated Sept. 8 by the creation of the first federal Chief Information Security Officer (CISO). The first to fill the role will be Gregory Touhill , a retired brigadier general and deputy assistant secretary of cybersecurity and communications for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.As is typical for a CISO, Touhill will lead cybersecurity policy, planning and implementation across the organization, which in this case includes the federated offices of the U.S. government. This new office, which was created by the Cybersecurity National Action Plan (CNAP) announced by President Obama in February, will follow in the spirit of the White House's vision for short- and long-term cybersecurity planning, according to an official release The importance of cybersecurity leadership was highlighted last year with the record-breaking data breach that affected the Office of Personnel Management. A Sept. 7 House committee report blamed OPM leadership for allowing the personal information of 21.5 million people to be leaked."Tools were available that could have prevented the breaches, but OPM failed to leverage those tools to mitigate the agency's extensive responsibilities," the report concluded The White House now seems intent on preventing future high-profile breaches through stronger cybersecurity governance. In addition to the CNAP that created the new CISO role, the White House also established earlier this year the Presidents Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity, a 12-person group that gathers recommendations from a variety of public- and private-sector backgrounds. The White House also proposed a bill to create a $3.1 billion Information Technology Modernization Fund (ITMF) that would modernize the government's aging computer systems.Grant Schneider, director for cybersecurity policy on the National Security Council staff at the White House, will fill the acting deputy CISO role.
(TNS) -- Los Angeles-area residents who witness potential terrorist activity can now report the details to law enforcement using their smartphones.On Thursday, the LAPD and the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department unveiled a new phone app called iWATCHLA that makes filing a report as simple as a few keystrokes.The LAPD launched its If you see something, say something terrorism reporting program in 2009. But until now, in an age when making phone calls increasingly takes a back seat to tapping out messages, people had to dial 911 or their local police station to report suspicious activity.The app also provides a primer on what kind of behaviors to flag.Trust your instincts, and if it makes you feel uncomfortable, report it, the app suggests.For example, a hotel guest who arrives with an unusually large amount of luggage, who makes inquiries about government or military sites or who refuses cleaning services for a long period might be worth reporting, the app says.After a video store clerk reported that there was anti-American material on a DVD he was copying, police arrested individuals planning a bomb attack, the app notes.In another case, a woman smelled bad odors from a neighbors apartment, where police later discovered a poison gas factory, according to the app.Even more important than the ability to respond is the ability to prevent, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said at a news conference in front of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.With the rise of ISIS and self-radicalized, home-grown terrorists inspired by the internet, attacks on soft targets like a nightclub or an office Christmas party are difficult to prevent. On Thursday, Beck and Los Angeles County Sheriff Jim McDonnell asked for the publics help.We cant be everywhere, but the public is everywhere, McDonnell said.LAPD and sheriffs officials will sift through the tips, filtering out those that do not need to be in the terrorism database and investigating others in greater depth.In reporting suspicious activity, Beck said, the focus should be on a persons behavior, not on his or her race or religion.Wed rather have more information than less. We dont mind doing the vetting, Beck said.
The Greensboro Farmers Curb Market, 501 Yanceyville St., will host the 14th annual Farmers Appreciation Day from 8 a.m. to noon Saturday. Guest Chef Alex Amoroso will prepare a traditional southern breakfast.

The event, featuring live music, will be held on the lawn at the corner of Lindsay and Yanceyville Street.

The cost of the breakfast is $7 per plate with proceeds benefiting the Greensboro Farmers Curb Market. All vendors will receive a complimentary breakfast.

The event is sponsored in part by Biscuitville, Craft Insurance and Neeses Country Sausage.

For information, call (336) 373-2402.

Shining Light Gospel hosts prayer breakfast

Shining Light Gospel Church, 2100-A Phillips Ave. in Greensboro will host a prayer breakfast at 9 a.m. Saturday.

Apostle Nancy Donnell will speak. Her theme is God Has Something to Say.

For information, email Nancy Donnell at shininglightgospelchurch@gmail.com.

Mad Hatter Tea set for Saturday at Starmount

AbolitionNC, a Triad faith-based 501c3 nonprofit that assists survivors of human trafficking, will host its second annual Mad Hatter Tea from 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday at Starmount Forest Country Club in Greensboro.

The annual tea serves currently as the nonprofits only fundraiser.

Guests are encouraged to wear their wildest and most eclectic hats in hopes of winning the annual hat contest. AbolitionNCs program includes an extensive silent auction, high tea, prayer, stories from survivors and a visionary call to action in which guests will be asked to give monetarily to the nonprofits mission.

Simply Megs is the headline sponsor.

For information, call (336) 453-2698.

Barnabas Networks capital campaign

The public portion of The Barnabas Networks capital campaign starts Monday to provide $600,000 for The Barnabas Network to renovate property that was donated to the nonprofit by Mary Hart Orr and Katie Rose.

When completed, the 12,000-square-foot building at 838 Winston St. in Greensboro will serve as the organizations new home and will include offices, warehouse space for donated furnishings and a separate entrance for The Barnabas Network furniture thrift shop, Barneys Basement.

The first and second phase of the campaign have been successful enough to start renovations, which are now underway. The Barnabas Networks executive director, Erin Stratford Owens, will be onsite from 8 to 10 a.m. Monday to discuss the campaign with supporters.

The campaign is called A Home of Our Own: A Capital Campaign for The Barnabas Network and is headed by honorary chairs Kathryn and Bobby Long.

To make a donation, call (336) 370-4002 or visit thebarnabasnetwork.org.
Week after week, I see letters to the editor in this paper from people in support of the voter ID laws. The argument is you have to have an ID to do most anything. That would be a reasonable argument if voter ID were the only issue. It is not. The problem is all the other restrictions in the law (HB 589) that are targeted at minority voters.

Why do we need to restrict early voting or people who register and vote on the same day, people who vote a straight ticket or people who vote a provisional ballot? Why are government-issued drivers licenses an acceptable form of identification but government-issued public assistance cards, used disproportionately by minorities in the state, are not? Why did North Carolina legislators request information on these practices, and why did they want the information broken down by race?

In some cases you have to give the benefit of doubt, but this is without doubt aimed at minority voters. There is no arguing that, and unless you believe that restricting citizens right to vote is the right thing to do, you cannot reasonably with clear conscience support this law.

Steve Gilley

Reidsville
STAMFORD  The professional-services firm Deloitte launched this week a new family leave program that gives employees up to 16 weeks of fully paid time off for the birth and adoption of children and caregiving of other family members.

The new initiative aims to respond to changing family dynamics and the needs of Deloitte's employees, a program that is the most far-reaching of its kind in the professional-services industry, according to company executives. The policy covers all of Deloittes U.S. employees regularly working at least 20 hours per week, including the approximately 1,100 professionals based in Deloittes Stamford offices.

If you think about the nature of our business, people are our greatest assets, said Heather Ziegler, Deloittes Stamford managing partner and deputy strategic risk leader. Were committed to our people and creating a culture of well-being. Weve been looking at well-being and inclusion and trying to expand upon that.

Deloitte employees previously could receive up to eight weeks of paid family leave if they were primary caregivers or three weeks if they were secondary caregivers. But the former policy only covered births and adoptions; the new program extends to caregiving for spouses, children, parents, siblings and domestic partners. Female and male employees have equal eligibility for the expanded leave.

Prior programs tended to focus more on the arrival of children, Ziegler said. This one is different because it supports more life events, such as caring for a spouse or aging parents.

New mothers can combine the 16 weeks of paid leave with short-term disability support to take as much as 24 weeks of paid time off after their children are born.

Employees salaries and benefits packages will not change with the new program, Ziegler said.

Deloitte executives said that they have not conducted recent employee polling focused on paid family leave, but they said that they have studied other data on the issue. In a news release, they cited an external survey that Deloitte conducted last year showing that 88 percent of respondents would value a paid leave policy that covered family care beyond parental leave.

An estimate by Deloitte of the cost of implementing the new program was not immediately available.

Paid family leave has emerged as an increasingly prominent political issue at the state and federal levels in recent years, as dissatisfaction has grown among constituents and public officials about the lack of government and private-sector support.

Only 12 percent of private-sector workers have access to paid family leave through their employers, according to U.S. Department of Labor statistics.

There is no federal law mandating paid family leave, and only three states  California, Rhode Island and New Jersey  currently offer paid time off for care of relatives. New York will join that list in 2018, after approving a new policy this year.

When it is fully implemented, New Yorks program will give employees up to 12 weeks of paid leave to care for babies, family members with serious health conditions or to support their families when a relative is called to active military service.

The federal Family and Medical Leave Act provides certain workers with up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave during a 12-month period to care for newborn, adopted or foster children, other family members or for employees to manage their own health issues. Connecticuts regulations give up to 16 weeks of unpaid time off in a two-year period.

Several bills introduced in the state General Assembly in recent years have proposed instituting paid family leave, but none of them has been signed into law.

In contrast, Connecticut has led on paid sick leave. In 2012, it became the first state to require employers of more than 50 to provide paid sick leave to each of their in-state service workers.

In the 2016 party platform, Democrats said that they would make sure that the U.S. enacts a national family and medical leave act that would provide all workers with at least 12 weeks of paid time off to care for a new child or attend to a personal or family members serious health issue.

The 2016 Republican Party platform does not specifically mention paid family leave.

pschott@scni.com; 203-964-2236; twitter: @paulschott
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A two-story, 4,800-square-foot home priced at $4 million blends into the picturesque Connecticut landscape at 130 Old Church Road, but it boasts mostly nontraditional features like a doorbell camera and a volcanic rock bathtub that keeps water heated for an extended time.

Greenwich Realtor Sabine Schoenberg turned the home she coined The Greenwich House into a modern feature of the neighborhood and subject of a popular YouTube channel home design show called Sabines New House.

She finished the reconstruction earlier this year after nine months where she took viewers through the gritty decisions of homebuilding and educating them on how to make houses tech friendly without losing control of security.

Many of the houses potential buyers admit theyve already watched all her videos when Schoenberg shows them the home, she said.

She is hoping the autumn uptick in real estate sales will help her find the right buyer after a steady stream of interest but no offers at the price she wants. While waiting for the house to sell, Schoenberg, who has owned a real estate brokerage called PrimeSitesCT in Greenwich since 1988, has been planning her next big project: the second season of Sabines New House.

The first season garnered international interest with 300,000 views from architects, builders, interior designers, real estate agents and home design fans who subscribe to her channel and often email asking for advice on their own projects.

CEDIA, a home technology trade association, also invited Schoenberg to speak at its large annual conference next week in Dallas. There, Schoenberg said she hopes to debunk the myth that only a select type of buyer wants home automation.

Some people slice it up by age, but thats not true, she said. Consumers are choosing it based on the benefits they can have. And once you have it, its addicting and you cant give it up.

The proof of her point comes in the wide range of interested buyers in The Greenwich House. Both young families moving out of New York City and local baby boomers have appreciated the technology the home offers, she said.

With a saturated market of home designers and builders offering homebuilding advice, Schoenberg said she distinguishes herself by her professional background.

Im a designer, builder and realtor all in one, she said.

This knowledge base gives her the ability to help both homeowners and industry professionals with their projects.

For Sabines New House season two, Schoenberg said she still has to choose a home to remodel, but shes leaning toward another in Greenwich.

MBennett@hearstmediact.com, 203-625-4411.
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The lengthy to-do list the state has been ordered to implement within 180 days  make state school aid fair, raise graduation standards, revamp special education and revise teacher evaluations  has some lawmakers wondering if there is the time and political will to get the job done.

This will have a generational impact, said Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff, D-Norwalk. Making sure we get it right is better than rushing to some sort of conclusion.

But Hartford Superior Court Judge Thomas G. Moukawsher  who presided over the trial stemming from a lawsuit brought against the state and delivered his lengthy decision on Wednesday  said too much time had already been wasted on legislative task forces and committees. The court cant make the state pay more toward public education, he said, but it can make sure the money is distributed in a rational, constitutional way.

To get rid of an irrational policy, adopt a rational one, Moukawasher said in his decision. Its the courts job to require the state to have one. Its the states job to develop one.

While the ruling has raised hopes among school districts that stand to benefit, it has also set off a debate over the timeline, over who is tasked with the work and when the clock actually starts ticking. The legislative session doesnt even begin until January.

I think there is a lot of ambiguity in the ruling, Senate Minority Leader Len Fasano, R-North Haven, said Thursday.

More Information Net expenditures per pupil 2014-15* Ansonia$13,217 Bridgeport$13,923 Derby$16,605 Easton$17,645 Fairfield$15,920 Milford$17,645 Monroe$15,629 Oxford$13,846 Seymour$13,708 Shelton$13,249 Stratford$14,094 Trumbull$15,078 Regional District 1 (Bethany, Orange, Woodbridge)$16,349 Regional District 9 (Easton, Redding)$18,859 Bethel$15,707 Brookfield$13,943 Danbury$12,728 New Fairfield$14,441 Newtown$15,428 Ridgefield$16,523 Regional District 12 (Bridgewater, Roxbury, Washington)$28,271 Greenwich$21,687 Stamford$17,409 Darien$18,548 Norwalk$16,719 Weston$19,995 Westport$19,748 Wilton$18,490 Net expenditures per pupil 2014-15* Ansonia $13,217 Bridgeport $13,923 Derby $16,605 Easton $17,645 Fairfield $15,920 Milford $17,645 Monroe $15,629 Oxford $13,846 Seymour $13,708 Shelton $13,249 Stratford $14,094 Trumbull $15,078 Regional District 1 (Bethany, Orange, Woodbridge) $16,349 Regional District 9 (Easton, Redding) $18,859 Bethel $15,707 Brookfield $13,943 Danbury $12,728 New Fairfield $14,441 Newtown $15,428 Ridgefield $16,523 Regional District 12 (Bridgewater, Roxbury, Washington) $28,271 Darien $18,548 Greenwich $21,687 Stamford $17,409 Norwalk $16,719 Weston $19,995 Westport $19,748 Wilton $18,490 See More Collapse

Fasano, a lawyer, said hes not even sure the ruling would be considered final before the state submits its plan to the court. If its not final, hes not sure Attorney General George Jepsen can even appeal yet. Fasano said Jepsen has several grounds for requesting clarifications, which could push back the 180-day deadline.

The bottom line is, I dont believe this judgment will become final, Fasano said.

Thus far, the attorney general, whose office tried the Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education Funding v. Rell case for the state, will only say the office is reviewing the decision and assessing its available next steps.

Some ready to get

to work

Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim said he wants to get as many parties together as possible, as soon as possible.

We need to come up with a plan, Ganim said.

Although the state has tried and failed in the past to come up with a workable school funding formula, Ganim hopes the court order will finally get it done. For Bridgeport, change could mean millions of extra dollars for the citys school system.

Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton, who like Ganim listened in the courtroom as the decision was read, called it one of the most well-reasoned, on-point indictments of public education he has heard.

He sees the marching orders as clearly telling Jepsen to develop a plan to eventually bring to the General Assembly and back to the courtroom for approval.

He specifically didnt mention the Legislature, said Boughton, who is also a former high school teacher.

If an appeal is not filed, Boughton expects that Jepsen, acting as the governors attorney, will hire consultants and begin a radical restructuring of public education.

Boughton said the states current fiscal crisis is bound to mean less money for some districts, so others can get more.

Kevin Maloney, a spokesman for the Connecticut Conference of Municipalites, said his organization stands ready to help develop an education funding solution within the six-month time frame.

If our state and local leaders work collectively with educators and other interested parties, this can and should be accomplished, Maloney said.

His organization has a laundry list of suggestions for needs-based school funding and spending more wisely, he said.

Getting it right

If the six-month clock is ticking, the deadline set by the judge would fall in early March  two months after the start of the 2017 legislative session.

House Republican Leader Themis Klarides, R-Derby, said that timeline would be problematic.

To assume that we can find a solution by next March, two months after the next session convenes, is not realistic, based on how long this case has been argued, Klarides said.

State Rep. Toni Boucher, R-Wilton, does expect an appeal, and said the judge may have overstepped his bounds.

He may have gone too far when he started (talking) about teachers and their evaluations, she said.

Sheila Cohen, president of the Connecticut Education Association, the states largest teachers union, said her group stands ready to work to ensure equitable resources for all students, but also questions the courts attempt to impose one-size-fits-all mandates that erode flexibility and local education control.

She also said six months wasnt enough time.

To appeal or not

to appeal

Ganim said he came away with the sense the decision may not be appealable, though I do think the Supreme Court would love to get their hands on this.

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy said that while he continues to review the decision, the judge seemed to agree with many of the education reforms Malloy implemented or tried to when he took office.

Beyond steering more money to needy districts, Malloy tried to reform the teacher evaluation system and, in 2013, suggested shifting some municipal aid grants into school funding. The idea was rejected.

It is too early to say if 180 days is enough, Malloy said. I think we should act in earnest. Quite frankly, I think quite clearly the judge is saying, Hey Connecticut, get this right and and get it right quickly, and quite frankly I think we should get it right quickly.

Duff said this is an opportunity.

We must be creative, bold and strategic, he said. This issue is far too important to rush into, Band-Aid or wax poetic. Our childrens future, their success and our states economy are counting on us to get it right.
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GREENWICH  The Stanwich School students clustered in large groups to tap enormous white beach balls overhead in a heated competition to see which group could get the most touches.

The five-foot spheres bounced back and forth like popcorn until an occasional hard hit sent one out of reach, sinking to the turf.

Friday was the kick off to Stanwichs third annual Triskelion Cup, a contest modeled off the house competitions in the Harry Potter book series.

Stanwich students grades 9 through 12 are divided into three houses, Twain, Hale and Stowe, named after historical Connecticut figures. The students compete throughout the year in monthly contests from bowling, trivia and sledding to blanket making. They accrue points with each victory until, at the end of the school year, the house with the most points is chosen as winner.

Basically, its a program that we felt would help bolster school community and also provide an opportunity for kids across grade levels 9 through 12 to work together as a team, to get to know one another, said Jerome Murphy, head of the Upper School, who acts as a referee of the cup.

Before many of the competitions, students work with their houses to prepare strategies, with seniors acting as team captains.

Because the seniors are automatically captains, it puts kids who otherwise would not normally take on a leadership position and kind of forces them to be a leader in a healthy way, he said.

Junior Maeve Sebold of Hale House has participated in the Triskelion Cup since it started in 2013.

Each year they add different competitions, she said. Ive noticed the grades have gotten a lot closer with each other.

In Fridays competition, Hale House scored the most consecutive beach ball touches without a player tapping twice or the ball hitting the ground. For the past two years, Hale House claimed the Triskelion Cup trophy.

Sophomore Ted Frascella said he enjoyed the game.

I think its a great tradition, he said. It definitely helps build friendships among the students.

Murphy hoped that Stanwich can invite Lower School students to attend more of the cups events to get them excited about future participation.

Its been a great boost I think for school spirit, he said.

emunson@hearstmediact.com; @emiliemunson
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A motorist who allegedly caused an accident that killed a well-regarded family of musicians with roots in Greenwich has been charged with criminally negligent homicide, and prosecutors said he caused the accident when he began steering with his knees at a high rate of speed.

Killed in the accident on the Taconic State Parkway in northern Westchester County, N.Y., last summer were Ledell Mulvaney, 61, a music teacher in the Greenwich School District from 1989 to 2008, and her daughter, Katherine Mulvaney, 31. Donald Mulvaney, 63, the husband of Ledell, succumbed to his injuries a month later.

Nerim Sinanovic, 34, of the Bronx, was driving a BMW SUV at the time of the afternoon crash, which also claimed the life of his 2-year-old daughter.

According to a statement released Friday by the Westchester County District Attorneys Office, The defendant told New York State Police that while driving northbound on the Taconic State Parkway he took his hands off the steering wheel, turned towards the back seat and steered with his knees. This caused the vehicle to veer to the right. The defendants wife then grabbed the wheel and the vehicle veered left and continued up and over the dividing center median between the north and southbound lanes.

The vehicle became airborne before it hit the Toyota Camry that the Mulvaneys were driving. They were returning from a Christian music-theater camp they helped organize every year in Sharon, Conn.

A toxicology report found Sinanovic had a high level of Xanax in his system at the time of the crash, according to the D.A.

Besides the felony charge of negligent homicide, he was also charged with a misdemeanor count of reckless driving, and cited with a criminal violation for speeding. Sinanovic has entered a plea of not guilty, and bail was set at $10,000.

He faces a maximum of two to four years in state prison.

The Mulvaney family lived in Greenwich and Norwalk before moving to Brooklyn in 2008.

Robert.Marchant@scni.com
GREENWICH  The committee to look into whether a proposed 61,230 square foot replacement for New Lebanon School suits its neighborhood has released its report  restricted to information, not opinion.

The ad hoc committee created to review town resident Matthew Popps appeal of the Planning and Zoning Commissions unanimous June 7 approval of municipal improvement status for the school said its goal was never to judge the site plan. All it wanted to do was look at the MI process.

We always had the goal of fact finding, said Peter Berg, chairman of the ad hoc committee. We never intended to take a position on it. Its such a complicated issue.

The committee, made up of Representative Town Meeting members Berg, Philip Dodson, Glen Canner and Matthew Crawford will discuss the report at 8 p.m. Monday before a joint meeting of the land use, education and legislative and rules RTM committees at Town Hall.

The full RTM meeting, where Popps appeal will be discussed, is scheduled for Sept. 19.

Popp, who was part of an architectural group that unsuccessfully bid on the new facility, has said he is not against a new school in Byram, where he is a resident. He said the current plan is too big for the neighborhood, will disrupt the neighborhoods environment and exacerbate traffic patterns.

He said it did not fit the towns own Plan of Conservation and Development. The town P&Z and the schools building committee disagreed.

Part of the reason the school is being expanded is to accommodate magnet students. New Lebanon is in violation of state racial balance guidelines. The district administrators said they feel a magnet program would bring in more white students to the school, which is in a neighborhood with a large Spanish-speaking population.

Popp questioned using a magnet school at New Lebanon to fix the racial imbalance.

Based on the lack of success of the Hamilton Avenue School, New Lebanon and Western Middle School magnet programs to attract students from other town areas to reduce racial imbalance, the proposed oversized Byram magnet school will fail to improve the existing racial imbalance, Popp told the committee.

My goal is for the town to build a new hilltop neighborhood school that meets the needs of Byram and is in scale with the surrounding landscape, Popp said. The new school would focus on increasing students academic achievement instead of their race.

The report was compiled based on questions sent to key figures in the debate: Popp, Interim Superintendent of Schools Sal Corda, Town Attorney Wayne Fox and RTM Moderator Tom Byrne.

An RTM vote to cancel the project could have serious ramifications, supporters said. Construction of the school is expected to receive significant state reimbursement because its being built, in part, to respond to the racial balance mandate. Building is slated to begin in June 2017. A delay could jeopardize the reimbursement.

Board of Education Chairman Laura Erickson has spoken out against delays, saying the racial balance plan has been approved through negotiations with the state and requires Greenwich compliance. Corda, in his comments to the committee, said a bigger school is needed because the current school is over-enrolled, with 259 students for 2016-17 and 32 kindergartners being taught off-site at the Byram Archibald Neighborhood Center.

The new school also would house Pre-K.

The current school is about 37,000 square feet.

We do not believe it is desirable for kindergarten students to be located in a separate location from the rest of the body, Corda said. In 2015-16 school year, total enrollment was 266 students, which included 41 kindergarten students at BANC. The new school is expected to accommodate a neighborhood population of 279 students. Pre-K seats a total of 45 students and the magnet program is designed to add 50 seats, increasing the school population to 374 students.

Corda noted that in the 2015-16 year, 65 students living in the New Lebanon area opted to attend other district schools. He said the new school could change that.

The committee recommended that RTM members visit the site.

The report, which is posted online at www.rtm.greenwich.org , includes a map of the area for anyone looking to take a self-guided tour.

kborsuk@scni.com
I started teaching entrepreneurship in prisons more than 20 years ago, when a minister-friend who worked in the prison system started inviting me to do so. Then, eight years ago, we formalized this teaching into a program called Inmates to Entrepreneurs; and, today, I go into prisons about once a month to talk about how to start a business.

Since then, Inmates to Entrepreneurs has become the most viral thing weve done at Sageworks: With limited effort, we regularly receive a significant number of inquiries from current and former inmates about how we can help them. Apparently, there is incredible demand for the service, which is a no-fee, no-donation based effort. In fact, our only constraint is getting mentors, meaning people who have run companies and can help these ex-offenders.

Related: 3 Entrepreneurial Skills Inmates Perfect

Meanwhile, having done this work over the years, I've been struck time and time again that starting a business is a great option for people who have been incarcerated, not only because their job options are limited, but because some former inmates offer hard-to-come-by traits that can help tremendously when starting a business. Ive outlined them below.

1. Fear of failure is much less of an issue.

According to the most recent Amway Global Entrepreneurship Report, 70 percent of the study's respondents said fear of failure is an obstacle to starting a business. So, there is, understandably, an element of self-preservation that comes into play here: People are afraid they wont be able to make a living. They're afraid that theyll be looked at as failures.

But this isnt a reaction I hear very often in my conversations with inmates and former inmates. While striking out on your own in business isnt easy for anyone, former inmates, I've found, are much more willing to jump in with both feet. Evidence? The observation, What do I have to lose? is one that comes up regularly in my conversations with ex-offenders.

Theyre not making the decision about whether to leave the comforts of a full-time job with pay and benefits; theyre leaving a correctional institution with the expectation that they have to build a new life from the ground up.

Absent the fear of failure, the question isnt, What if I fail? Instead, the question is, How can I get my first customer? Starting by focusing on the latter question significantly increases the likelihood of success for a would-be entrepreneur.

2. They are no strangers to risk.

Starting a business is weighted with risk: financial risk, operational risk, compliance risk and so on. It's therefore common for entrepreneurs to be branded as risk-takers. They're the ones who have gone past the stage of daydreaming about starting a business from the confines of their corporate cubicles and actually done it.

Former inmates are commonly no strangers to risk, themselves. Oftentimes (but not always), the actions that landed them in prison in the first place involved risks that many other people wouldnt chance.

Related: 6 Life Hacks Learned in Prison That Will Maximize Your Productivity

For many former inmates, taking risks is not unfamiliar, so confronting the new risks that come with starting a business doesnt present the same barrier to them as it does to many other people. In fact, in a 2013 study, conducted by Ross Levine of the University of California-Berkeley and Yona Rubinstein of the London School of Economics, found that Smart teenagers who engage in illicit activities are more likely to become successful entrepreneurs than equally intelligent, rule-abiding teenagers.

3. The stakes are high.

It is extremely difficult for former inmates to find jobs. Survey results indicate that as many as three-quarters of ex-offenders are jobless up to a year after release. Another survey found that less than half were working full-time five years after their release. Additionally, Bureau of Justice Statistics data for the five-year period ending 2010 showed that about three-fourths of state prisoners were arrested for a new crime within five years.

Ex-offenders dont have many options for quickly becoming productive members of society again, so theyre motivated to be successful in business.

Here, then, is my advice to ex-offenders who are looking to start businesses: Start small. Consider a small, service-based business that requires very little up-front investment. Start a landscaping company, a cleaning service, a mobile car-detailing company or a cake and cookie business out of your home.

Related: 11 Mindsets Learned in Prison Made Me Mentally Unstoppable

Focus on getting your first customers, not creating a pages-long business plan. Print a flyer and then distribute it. Start small and grow from there.

Related:



Copyright 2016 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
Blue Hills custom Damascus knife. Photo: Courtesy of Blue Hill

There are many, many things to adore about Dan Barbers justifiably celebrated Blue Hill at Stone Barns. Including the cutlery, which you would probably be tempted to slip into your bag if you thought you could get away with it. Now, however, you dont have to resort to a life of crime to get your hands on the restaurants distinctive, beautiful knives.

The custom Damascus knife is forged from antique farm equipment  a salvaged 1920s spring-tooth harrow, to be specific  by blacksmith Michael McCarthy in upstate New York. The blade is sharpened with an antique sandstone grinder, and its handle is gilded with hand-brushed brass. The knife is incredibly sharp, pleasantly weighty, and extremely easy to grip.

The knife has been generating so much excitement in the restaurants dining room, says a Blue Hill rep, that they finally decided to make it available for purchase. Theyre also working with McCarthy to develop a different knife for Blue Hill New York, though the design is still in the works. For now, though, you can grab these direct from Blue Hill for $125 each, a relatively steep price, but the material has already been around for nearly a century, so its a safe bet the knives will last a very long time.
The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has finally come up a formal statement on Samsung Galaxy Note7's in-flight use, and no they haven't banned the phone from flights. The agency, instead, is "strongly" advising users against turning on or charging the device on board a plane.

Here's the complete statement:

In light of recent incidents and concerns raised by Samsung about its Galaxy Note 7 devices, the Federal Aviation Administration strongly advises passengers not to turn on or charge these devices on board aircraft and not to stow them in any checked baggage.

Meanwhile, a couple of Australian airlines - Qantas and Virgin Australia - have also asked Galaxy Note7 users to not switch on or charge the phone inside the flight.

Source 1 2
For those who are in interested in knowing the behind-the-scene stuff that's causing some Samsung Galaxy Note7s to explode, it's worth knowing that the South Korean company has briefly shared the outcome of its internal investigation on the issue.

We all know that faulty batteries (from Samsung own subsidiary SDI) are to blame for the issue, but the company - on its UK website - goes a step further to explain that overheating of the battery cell occurs "when the anode-to-cathode came into contact." The tech giant further says that "it is a very rare manufacturing process error."

In addition, Samsung revealed that of the 35 explosions that have come to its notice through its customer service centers, 17 have happened in Korea, 17 in the US, and 1 in Taiwan. The company, however, said that "there have been no reported injuries globally."

Finally, Samsung declined to officially confirm that it's Samsung SDI whose batteries are at fault. When asked about this, the company just said, "Unfortunately we will not be able to confirm this as we work with several suppliers."

Source




Haiti - FLASH : Scheduled power interruption





The Electricity of Haiti (EDH) informs us that a power is scheduled this Friday, September 9, 2016, from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm in the Downtown Port-au-Prince and the Communes of Petionville, Kenscoff, Carrefour, Gressier and Leogane.



Indeed, during the night from 7 to 8 September, several major faults were found including the chains of burnt out insulators, conductors eroded, which require urgent work. Therefore, this scheduled interruption is essential to achieve maintenance and pruning of the 69 kV lines. The later aim the replacement of the chains of insulators as well as pruning in the communities of Delmas, Morne l'Hopital, Diquini and Riviere Froide in order to prevent future incidents.



EDH calls for the cooperation of the population for these works are performed in the best conditions.



HL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - Politic : Quiet day for the Head of State...





Thursday, the President of the Republic de facto Jocelerme Privert, accompanied by his wife participated in the Eucharistic celebration of Our Lady of the Nativity, patroness of Petit-Trou de Nippes, in the presence of numerous personalities, including members of private cabinet of the Head of State and of Government, parliamentarians and local authorities including the Mayor, Pierre Wilnord.



In his homily, the main celebrant Mgr. Pierre-Andre Dumas, called the pilgrims to unity and reconciliation in order to celebrate in peace and joy. The prelate also put the emphasis on the historic significance of this commune that has seen grow Jocelerme Privert whose he welcomed the efforts to give his presence, a very special sparkle to this feast day.



On the sidelines of the ceremony, Privert received a plaque of honor from the Trounippois toward the one who contributed to the construction of the city.



After the ceremony, Jocelerme Privert visited the Dany Laferriere library of Petit-Trou de Nippes, where he was welcomed by the Director of the institution, Benoit Clement II who handed him a plaque of honor for his commitment to the community.



The Head of State has concluded his visit by walking in several streets of the city, saluting citizens, young and old friends, before returning to his private residence where he continued to receive guests and visitors.



HL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - News : Zapping politics...





Jude Celestin negotiates with voodoo

Thursday, houngan Alix E. Compas, Grand servant for Legal Affairs and Policy of the National Confederation of Haitian Vaudouisants (KNVA in creole) announced that the Confederation had decided to support Jude Celestin the presidential candidate of the "Alternative League Progress and the Haitian Emancipation "(LAPEH). To explain this choice, Alix Compas declared that Jude Celestin had promised them once in power, to sign a protocol with the voodoo sector so that it is able to make hear its voice.



The RENAPA support Moise Jean-Charles

On Wednesday, the "National Network of Haitian Peasants" (RENAPA) confirmed its support for the presidential candidacy of the leader of the Platform Piti Dessalines, Moise Jean Charles. Let's recall that the RENAPA already support the candidate of Piti Dessalin in the election of October 25, 2015.



Jovenel Moise and education

As part of his campaign for the presidential elections of October 9, Jovenel Moise calls for quality education that takes into account the integral development of the Haitian. He proposes among others, the inclusion in the school curriculum of a reforestation component alongside other traditional matters and the establishment throughout the country of High Schools of excellence, to train a new class of young, able to meet the challenges and needs of Haiti.



3 former presidents out of 6 responded to the UNIR

The party "National Union for Integrity and Reconciliation" (UNIR) led by Clarens Renois, contacted 6 Former Presidents of Haiti to form a reflection group on the country. So far, 3 of them gave their agreement of principle : the former President Ertha Pascal-Trouillot (March 1990 - February 1991); former President Boniface Alexandre (March 2004 - February 2006) and former President Prosper Avril (September 1989 - March 1990). UNIR is awaiting responses from Aristide, Preval and Michel Martelly...



Guy Philippe not willing to lose irregularly

I'll fight if I lose this election, because it is that the government will have made it illegally," said Guy Philippe Senate candidate in 2015, given winner in the second round for Grand'Anse, adding "The path I have chosen is not easy, but I chose it and I am ready to die for it."



Last delivery of non-sensitive materials

Thursday, the last delivery of non-sensitive materials or 5,854 electoral kits arrived at the Toussaint Louverture International Airport on a flight from Qatar Cargo. On all 4 deliveries, the CEP received 59.928 voting booths, 30.764 bottles of indelible ink, 10.331 electoral kits including 1,631 training kits.



HL/ HaitiLibre


















Published on 2016/09/09 | Source

K-pop group Girls' Generation appeared on NBC's "Better Late Than Never", the U.S. version of Korean reality show "Grandpas Over Flowers".

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In the third episode of the series, which aired early this week, the members taught the dance routine accompanying their hit song "Gee" to the cast of the U.S. show during their visit to Seoul.

The four-part series chronicles the experiences of a group of old folks -- comedian Jeff Dye, actors Henry Winkler and William Shatner, sportscaster Terry Bradshaw and former boxer George Foreman -- as they encounter new cultures on their travels to Seoul, Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Hong Kong, Kyoto and Tokyo.
Published on 2016/09/08 | Source

Korean movie of the week "The Target" (2014)

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Directed by Director Chang

With Ryu Seung-ryong, Yu Jun-sang, Lee Jin-uk, Kim Sung-ryung, Cho Yeo-jeong, Jo Eun-ji,...

Formerly known as "Point Blank" ( , po-in-teu beul-laeng-keu)

Synopsis

A remake of the French movie made in 2010.

An ex-mercenary killer is framed for the murder of a renowned corporate leader. He is accompanied by an ordinary doctor who is desperate to save his abducted pregnant wife and together they embark on a dangerous 36-hour pursuit.

Release date in Korea : 2014/04/30

Read William's and Christopher's review on HanCinema

Available on Blu-ray and DVD
Published on 2016/09/08 | Source

Actresses Song Hye-kyo and Jun Ji-hyun have come out with pictorials.

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First, Song Hye-kyo modeled for the brand Amore Pacific Laniege under the title, 'Her True Colors'.

The theme of the pictorial was fall, bringing out the sensitivity and unique elegance. She went for the sexy look with red lipstick and even looked laid back and relaxed.

Song Hye-kyo is currently on rest after filming the drama "Descendants of the Sun".

Jun Ji-hyun who is coming back with the SBS drama "The Legend of the Blue Sea", came out with a chic outdoor collection from NEPA.

Jun Ji-hyun has returned to her perfect body after giving birth and has taken very good care of herself.

In this pictorial taken from London, she styled a white down jacket, safari jacket and other casual looks.

Meanwhile, "The Legend of the Blue Sea" is coming out in November.

Jun Ji-hyun takes on the role of Sim Cheong, a mermaid who suffers from the hardships of life in Seoul. Lee Min-ho takes on the role of a fraud Heo Joon-jae who falls for her.
Harlow is a former New Town in Essex with a population of 86,000. Located in the upper Stort Valley, it was built in the decades after the Second World War to ease overcrowding and London and provide homes for people bombed out during the Blitz. It includes Britain's first pedestrian precinct and first modern residential tower block, The Lawn. Old Harlow, the historic part of the town, was mentioned in the Domesday Book. David and Victoria Beckham's former home, Rowneybury House, nicknamed 'Beckingham Palace', is nearby.

06:00, 29 OCT 2022
Sabato's Crystal Ball Yesterday Kyle Kondik, Managing Editor of reported they're not seeing any evidence of the big swing towards the Democrats that Pelosi and her team are running around hyping . Why would Pelosi build up expectations for something that's not going to happen? A notorious short-term, non-strategic thinker, she and her even less talented lieutenants are hoping if Democratic donors believe the bullshit about a wave, they'll contribute more money for the DCCC to waste on their favorite projections





The fact of the matter is that Pelosi's grotesquely incompetent DCCC-- always more concerned with pushing forward New Dems and Blue Dogs and sabotaging progressives than in doing the formidable and well thought-out-over-cycles-work it takes to win actual elections-- failed at recruiting in can-win/must-win districts and even if there is an anti-Trumpanzee tsunami, the DCCC isn't even close to being in a position to take advantage of it. The DCCC staff is composed almost completely of losers who have never won anything and have no idea what winning even is. It was "politically incorrect" for Pelosi to fire incompetent boobs Chris Van Hollen or Steve Israel after their serial disasters-- and they keep on their corrupted and incapable staffers-- and the whole disastrous Rahm Emanuel Republican-lite theory of elections is still keeping the Democrats in the minority and will forever and ever until Pelosi and Hoyer are just a memory and someone-- Becerra?-- gets in there and straightens out the perennial mess. (Sharp Democratic congressmembers tell me the only chance of keeping Crowley or Wasserman Schultz-- far, far, far worse even than Pelosi and Hoyer-- out of post-Pelosi/Hoyer top leadership is Becerra. Jesus!

Loserism-- it's the dominant ideology at the DCCC





Kondik reports Republicans insisting that the pro-Clinton wave "will be like Godot-- it wont show up. The waves absence will allow Republicans to run their own races, limiting damage to the Republican caucus in the event of a Trump loss and maintaining a big GOP edge in the House... Republican House incumbents," he writes, "have seemed largely insulated from Trump down the ballot. Yes, our current ratings do suggest that Democrats should net somewhere in the low double digits. If one assumes that all the Safe, Likely, and Leaning seats in fact vote that way, Republicans would have 227 seats, and Democrats would have 192, with 16 Toss-ups. Split the Toss-ups down the middle, and Republicans would have 235 House seats and Democrats would have 200, for a net gain of 12 for the Democrats. Thats actually a tiny downgrade for Democrats from our most recent ratings, which showed Democrats netting 13 seats if one allocated the Toss-ups evenly. But our basic projection of a Democratic gain of 10-15 seats remains unchanged." Those prospective Democratic gains include open seats and the newly created blue districts in Florida and Virginia-- where the DCCC made sure conservaDems would be installed.





Chane lost his primary to DCCC-favored Randy Perkins, a right-wing plutocrat





Crystal Ball ratings are good for weak, conservative Democrats who vote too frequently with the GOP and don't merit reelection-- Wall Street-owned New Dems Scott Peters (CA), Sean Patrick Maloney (NY) and John Delaney (MD) and porto-new Dem Raul Ruiz (CA). The chances of winning the open Ribble seat in Wisconsin and McSally's Arizona seat are fading. Seats that are Changes inratings are good for weak, conservative Democrats who vote too frequently with the GOP and don't merit reelection-- Wall Street-owned New Dems Scott Peters (CA), Sean Patrick Maloney (NY) and John Delaney (MD) and porto-new Dem Raul Ruiz (CA). The chances of winning the open Ribble seat in Wisconsin and McSally's Arizona seat are fading. Seats that are winnable but that the DCCC refuses to contest because the primary winners were progressives are being starved of resources by Pelosi's venal DCCC-- and with virtually no pushback from House progressives who are, as always, more interested in policy than in politics.





The load of crap Pelosi tried selling Beltway reporters yesterday was that Trump is so awful that Hillary will win by a landslide and drag random Democrats to victories. It's a fairytale and it's just not going to make up for a goo, competent, hard-working smart DCCC that she made sure would never exist-- the biggest failing of her entire career. "I thought in December I wouldve told you wed win 20 seats, left to our own devices," she told Politico. "Seeing the behavior of the [GOP] presidential candidates right after that when the debates, I became even more optimistic because they were so pathetic Since then, I think anything is possible. I think it comes down to probably a single digit, one way or another... If Hillary [Clinton] were to win 54-46, oh my God. Its all over. If it's 53-47, and I think thats in the realm of possibility... thats a big deal. Five or more [percentage points] is a big deal." Poor lady; I should stop making fun of her. It's kind of pathetic.

Pelosi, 76, was more optimistic than ever about her party's political footing as the election nears.



She declined to say whether she would run for speaker again if her party wins the majority, deferring to a caucus that has been unflinchingly loyal to her. Few believe Pelosi would pass up a chance to reclaim the speakership.



Its really up to the members, she said. Weve been good to each other. Whatever they want is what I want. Right now all we are focusing on is amassing as many resources [as possible]  We can [only] win as many races as we can afford to win, so I spend a great deal of my time making sure we can win as many races as possible.

If the Democrats were serious about taking back the House-- and had the competence to go for it (Lujan and Israel being two of the least competent DCCC leaders in living memory)-- they would be pursuing districts like WI-07, where Democratic stalwart Dave Obey was congressman for over 4 decades until 2010 when empty suit Sean Duffy got in. Duffy is one of Trump's most prominent congressional surrogates and extremely vulnerable. Obama won the district in 2008 (53-45%) and lost it narrowly in 2012 (51-48%). It's the kind of district the Democrats have to win to have even a shot to take back the House.





Bernie won every single country in the gigantic district. After progressive Mary Hoeft won a landslide primary victory last month, with 81% of the vote, despite being outspent by her opponent, the DCCC turned it's nose up at the district and professed no interest in going after the Trump-supporting Duffy. This isn't how you win back the House. This isn't how you build a competent DCCC either.





Yesterday, Mary told me that "five months ago when Duffy supported Marco Rubio for President, he referred to Trump as a man with no ideas when it comes to solving our nation's greatest problems. When called upon by media to explain Trump's second amendment threat to the life of Hillary Clinton Duffy wrote off Trump's remarks as 'not the most articulate' and suggested Trump 'stay on script.' Recently, Duffy said he felt 'left out' when Hillary speaks and praised Trump as a man who speaks to white males. So what are the qualities Sean Duffy is looking for in a presidential candidate? An inarticulate man with NO ideas when it comes to solving America's problems who can't be trusted to speak off script. Last night, at a gathering in Washburn, citizens found no humor in Duffy's support of Donald Trump, a man they regard as our world's greatest threat-- an angry, hot tempered, irrational man who, as President, would have his finger on a nuclear button."





Even if Pelosi and her DCCC henchmen refuse to get involved, please consider helping Mary replace Sean Duffy in Wisconsin. In fact, all the progressives at this page the thermometer takes you to have won their primaries and are being ignored-- or, in some cases, worse-- by the DCCC:
City Council Leaders Endorse Djou for Mayor

News Release from www.Djou.com

Honolulu, HI - Several Honolulu City Council leaders, all Democrats, endorsed Charles Djou in the non-partisan race for Mayor of Honolulu this morning:

Councilmember Ernie Martin, Council Chair Councilmember Ann Kobayashi, Council Budget Committee Chair Councilmember Trevor Ozawa, Council Zoning Committee Chair

(L to R - Council Chair Ernie Martin, Charles Djou, Councilmember Ann Kobayashi and Councilmember Trevor Ozawa)

"I believe that Charles Djou is the best choice for the Office of the Mayor," stated Council Chair Martin. "Whether dealing with rail or our homeless issue, I know Charles will bring a different perspective and bold style of leadership in addressing these issues and he will do it collaboratively with the Council."

"I support Charles because I trust Charles and I trust him more than the current administration," declared Councilmember Ozawa. "First of all, I can't trust that I can even get a meeting with the mayor.... If he's unavailable to even meet with us how can we collaborate and put the people first as he says ...It's not good for the rest of the community... It took me about seven months to initially have a meeting with the mayor when I reach first reached out to him."

"With Charles coming from the City Council he knows how important it is to collaborate and he'll sit down and work at the same table not on my behalf or his behalf but for the people. It's not a game." It's a non partisan race."

"I've never seen a Democratic pothole or Republican pothole. We're not the state legislature we're not congress and let's get to work," Ozawa stated

Councilmember Ann Kobayashi stated, "I am alarmed by the type of campaigning that's going on - the vicious attacks upon Charles. The same thing happened before, the same candidate - Kirk Caldwell - used false negative ads against Ben Cayetano and the same thing is happening again. This type of negative campaigning should not happen, that's why I reaffirm my support for Charles Djou," stated Councilmember Ann Kobayashi.

---30---

Charles Djou is running for Mayor of Honolulu. He represented Hawaii's 1st Congressional District in the U.S. House and previously served on the Honolulu City Council and Hawaii State House. Djou is an Army Reservist and Afghanistan war veteran. He is married to Stacey Kawasaki Djou and together they have three children.
A legal battle between Uber and the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) may transform the way rideshare drivers are classified under Australian workplace law.



In a submission to the inquiry, workplace insurance giant Suncorp has said a victory by Uber could challenge the independent contractor classification since paying tax is something all independent contractors must do.



The current court case was initiated by Uber in an attempt to overturn an ATO decision that all rideshare drivers must register for GST.



If Uber were to be successful, it may have flow-on implications for workers compensation, Suncorp manager Matt Kayrooz told the inquiry.



Specifically, it may be a relevant consideration in respect to a legal determination as to whether an injured ride-sourcing driver is a worker.



Current federal and state workplace laws look into a range of factors when considering whether someone is an independent contractor  including whether the individual chooses their own hours, is able to work for other employers, and pays their own tax and superannuation.



If an Uber driver successfully challenged any of these factors  ie through a tax ruling or unfair dismissal case  this may change the categorisation of the work relation to that of employer/employee, Kayrooz said.



With regards to workers compensation, it was not clear whether UberX drivers would always be considered as independent contractors, he added.



"Every case would come down to the individual circumstances of each driver, after considering the relevant criteria that go to the nature of the work relationship between the parties."



Uber has declined to comment on the matter.




Andrew Otto Boggs, aka INCURSIO, 22, of North Wilkesboro, North Carolina, and Justin Gray Liverman, aka D3F4ULT, 24, of Morehead City, North Carolina, were arrested today on charges related to their alleged roles in the computer hacking of several senior U.S. government officials and U.S. government computer systems.

According to charging documents filed with the court, Boggs and Liverman conspired with members of a hacking group that called itself Crackas With Attitude. From about October 2015 to February 2016, the group used social engineering hacking techniques, including victim impersonation, to gain unlawful access to the personal online accounts of senior U.S. government officials, their families, and several U.S. government computer systems.

In some instances, members of the conspiracy uploaded private information that they obtained from victims personal accounts to public websites; made harassing phone calls to victims and their family members; and defaced victims social media accounts. At least three other members of the conspiracy are located in the United Kingdom and are being investigated by the Crown Prosecution Service.

According to an Associated Press report:

Earlier this year, British authorities arrested a 16-year-old boy who they said used the name Cracka to target Brennan and others. Indeed, the affidavit states that three British teens, ranging in age from 15 to 17, are members of the conspiracy.

The affidavit cites email exchanges in which Boggs tells another individual, I want to carry on (Crackas) legacy if or when he is arrested. I know hell receive a harsh sentence because our government doesnt like being embarrassed.

According to the affidavit, Boggs and Liverman lived in their respective parents homes. They used the hacked accounts to send harassing messages to their victims. While Brennan is not named in the affidavit, he appears to be Victim 1. The affidavit states that Victim 1s emails were released by WikiLeaks on Oct. 21, 2015, which corresponds with a WikiLeaks disclosure pertaining to CIA Director John Brennan [whose email was hacked].

Boggs and Liverman will have their initial appearances at the federal courthouse in Alexandria next week in front of U.S. Magistrate Judge Theresa Carroll Buchanan.

Dana J. Boente, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia; Paul M. Abbate, Assistant Director in Charge of the FBIs Washington Field Office; and Brian J. Ebert, Special Agent in Charge of the U.S. Secret Services Washington Field Office, made the announcement after Boggs and Liverman were arrested.

Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph V. Longobardo and Assistant U.S. Attorneys Jay V. Prabhu and Maya D. Song are prosecuting the case on behalf of the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Eastern District of Virginia. The U.S. Attorneys Offices for the Eastern and Western Districts of North Carolina, and the FBIs Charlotte Division provided significant assistance with the investigation.

A copy of this press release may be found on the website of the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Eastern District of Virginia. Related court documents and information may be found on the website of the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia or on PACER by searching for Case No. 1:16-mj-406.

A criminal complaint contains allegations that a defendant has committed a crime. Every defendant is presumed to be innocent until and unless proven guilty in court.

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DWT. He was a very conservative House member and he is a very conservative senator. But unlike most Republicans in Congress, Flake isn't a coward when it comes to the execrable Senor Trumpanzee. When Flake was asked by Jake Tapper on CNN's State of the Union if Clinton could win his state-- polls show a dead-heat in Arizona, although the most recent shows Jeff Flake has never been someone with whom we've found much common ground here at. He was a very conservative House member and he is a very conservative senator. But unlike most Republicans in Congress, Flake isn't a coward when it comes to the execrable Senor Trumpanzee. When Flake was asked by Jake Tapper on CNN'sif Clinton could win his state-- polls show a dead-heat in Arizona, although the most recent shows Hillary beating Trumpanzee 35.1% to 33.5% -- he said he wouldn't vote for either Hillary or Trump and pointed to "the tone and tenor of his campaign" and "the characterizations of many of the state's population" and said that's "put the state in play." Trumpanzee went ape-shit of course, running to his twitter account and declaring that Flake is "very weak and ineffective." Anyone who opposes Senor Trumpanzee is... as anyone who follows him on Twitter knows.





Yesterday Flake struck back at Trump, saying that his electoral woes stem from an unwillingness or inability "to propose serious solutions to the problems facing our state" and that "what Trump has been willing to do is say terrible things about women, mock the disabled, disparage minorities, impugn the character of POWs, and go after the Gold Star parents of a fallen U.S. soldier. Im not OK with that, and Im going to keep speaking out until he changes the tone of his campaign. If he refuses to do so, Republicans will lose a lot more than the election in November."





Many Republicans and independents in the congressional district that stretches from downtown Austin into San Antonio and through the suburbs of both cities wish they had a congressman who would call Trump out on his gratuitously insulting and demeaning bullying that way Jeff Flake does. Instead, they have Lamar Smith, the anti-science chairman of the House Science Committee who was the first House committee chairman to endorse Trump and the only member of the House-- from any state-- to donate money to Trump. Many are wondering why Smith has attached himself at the hip to Trump despite all the crazy utterances. We asked the progressive Democrat running for the TX-21 seat, Tom Wakely, a military veteran who won the primary against a conservative Democrat, if he's coming across voters fed up with Lamar Smith's pandering to Trump and all his crackpot, ever-changing positions on serious matters. He sure is-- and here's what he told us:

"I'm finding folks all over the district who are simply sick of Lamar Smith. From the Hill Country to the metro areas of our district, they're not only tired of a congressman who's done nothing for the district in nearly three decades, but they're sick to death of Trump's insane rhetoric and Smith's utter lack of repudiation. Lamar must feel it, too, as he's begun campaigning across the district, which by most local accounts, signals that we're doing far better than anyone would have guessed. It really shows the shortsightedness of my opponent, as Trump barely cracked 30% in the district during the primary, yet it didn't stop Smith from getting greedy in his unwavering support of one of the most dangerous candidates in recent memory.



"And as far as I'm concerned, there's a pretty simple reason for that. Lamar Smith finally found a presidential candidate who really shares his values. Islamophobia, xenophobia, misogyny-- you name it. Smith really only goes further than Trump in his rampant homophobia. Times have changed immensely over the last 30 years, and yet we have the same representative in the House. In my book he'd essentially be unfit to serve on this aspect alone, but when you're willing to go on record as Trump's #1 congressional supporter? It's inexcusable. It should be disqualifying and if you ask any amount of voters in this district, they tend to agree.



"The voters of this district might disagree with me ideologically on several issues, or maybe even every policy issue, but they recognize that I'm here working for them. They didn't take kindly to Trump in the Republican primary and they don't take kindly to Smith now. Local papers are calling out Smith's subpoenas of climate groups and state attorneys general as inexcusable and a waste of taxpayer dollars. Local media is beginning to question how a congressman has gotten away with this kind of arrogance for so long. The voters? The voters are starting to realize there's a chance for change. The voters are ready to wake up Congress."

Moderate Republicans and independents on Long Island may be wondering why their own congressman, Peter King, has stuck with Trump like they're brothers. Nothing seems too much for King and he's always on talk shows defending him. We asked the progressive Democrat running for the South Shore seat, DuWayne Gregory, a veteran Army officer and the presiding officer of the Suffolk County legislature if he's coming across many voters who are noticing King's subservience to Trump and apparent acquiescence to all his crazy, ever-changing positions on serious matters. "My dismay with Washington politics has only grown since I announced my campaign 15 months ago," DuWayne told us. "Peter King is a well heeled member of the Washington establishment, and he's repeatedly put party politics before his country. He once said Donald Trump was 'unfit morally and intellectually' to be president. Since then he has stood by silently as Donald Trump has insulted a POW, women, Muslims, Mexicans, African-Americans, the disabled and... the list goes on. Donald Trump exemplifies the worst of America and no party label can hide that fact. Peter King's lack of leadership has not gone unnoticed."





Alina Valdes is a physician and a dedicated progressive running against an entrenched Republican incumbent, Mario Diaz-Balart, the only South Florida member of Congress who is backing Trump. Miami-Dade neighbors and fellow Republicans Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Carlos Curbelo have both said they wouldn't endorse or even vote for Trump. Diaz-Balart, somewhat desperately, keeps defending him. This morning Dr. Valdes told us she had "come across many constituents who are frankly fed up with Diaz-Balart and his policies. He supports the Cuban embargo despite changing opinion in the Cuban community where more than half now support lifting the embargo. He also has voted over 60 times with his Republican colleagues to repeal Obamacare while having people in the district living in Hialeah with the highest enrollment anywhere in the country last year. He also follows the party line when it comes to privatizing and cutting back on Social Security benefits despite the large population of retired elderly living in this community. It comes as no surprise that he puts his party above country when he will support the Republican Presidential nominee, Trump, despite the horrible things he has said about Latinos, who make up about 70% of this district. By supporting Trump and his vitriol, he is essentially agreeing with his policies and condoning his hatred towards anything not white and male. This man does not deserve to represent the good, hard-working people of Florida's 25th district since he does not listen to their wants and does not fight for their needs. At least the other two Republican Cuban Americans representing South Florida had enough sense to disavow Trump and what he represents, which is certainly not what the people in the district expect from someone who wishes to represent them for another term."





Arizona Republican Jeff Flake hasn't been allowing Trump to spew his hatred and his crazy and divisive statements without being called out. The Republicans being challenged by Democratic nominees DuWayne Gregory, Alina Valdes and Tom Wakely aren't holding Trump accountable for anything. These three candidates would make great replacements for Peter King, Mario Diaz-Balart and Lamar Smith. The DCCC isn't helping any of them... but we can. Please tap the thermometer below and consider helping them make Congress a more progressive and accountable body:
Why do you always take out the stick first when dealing with the jobless? asked Andersson.

Li Andersson, the chairperson of the Left Alliance, has voiced her disapproval of the proposal to oblige all job seekers to participate in quarterly interviews at Employment and Economic Development Offices (TE Offices).

The Government, she stated, has announced that it will impose additional sanctions on unemployed job seekers and developed an employment policy that is reflective of its lack of trust in job seekers.

The Government's starting point is that people would prefer not to work, not that we have a massive shortage of jobs, said Andersson.

Her criticism was firmly rejected by Jari Lindstrom (PS), the Minister of Justice and Employment, during yesterday's question time debate at the Finnish Parliament. The interviews, he insisted, are not a means to punish job seekers but rather to alleviate and show an interest in their situation.

Andersson is way off when it comes to this issue. We luckily have an opportunity to fix these problems. You claim that it's lack of trust, but it's quite the contrary. If you're passive, you'll face sanctions. If you're active, you'll be rewarded, said Lindstrom.

He also questioned the willingness of opposition parties to focus on a single aspect of the employment policy. The Government, he reminded, has drawn up and introduced a wide variety of measures to improve the employment situation and has hardly failed to recognise the shortage of jobs.

The Government really is aware that we don't have enough jobs, but should we not care [and not take action]? asked Lindstrom.

Aleksi Teivainen  HT

Photo: Markku Ulander  Lehtikuva

Source: Uusi Suomi
Vietnam's fruit and vegetables exports are becoming a major revenue stream.

Vietnamese dragon fruit growers are looking at ways to break into the Australian market, which has a stable demand and offers higher prices.

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc on Thursday asked his Australian counterpart to give more market access for fresh dragon fruit from Vietnam.

The two prime ministers met in Vientiane, Laos on the sidelines of the 28th and 29th ASEAN Summits.

In late June, Australia sent a team to the Southeast Asian country to review biosecurity import requirements for fresh dragon fruit, said the Vietnam Trade Office.

Australian agricultural officials are expected to release their final report on the quality of fresh dragon fruit from Vietnam later this year. The results will then be subject to public comment before Australian authorities can officially allow the tropical fruit to enter the country.

Fresh dragon fruit are one of the agricultural products Australia is giving priority to, said the Australian Embassy in Vietnam on April 27 in a press release.

Statistics show Vietnam exported more than 1 million tons of dragon fruit last year. As the fruit can stay fresh for up to 40 days, it is mainly shipped to foreign markets by sea at transport costs ranging from $0.02 to $0.03 per kilogram. Low transport costs make Vietnamese dragon fruit more competitive in Australia.

Consumers in more demanding markets such as the United States, Australia, Canada and Japan have been developing a taste for tropical Vietnamese fruit.

Vietnam has so far this year exported more than 10 tons of lychees to Australia, according to the Vietnam Trade Office under the Vietnamese Embassy in Australia, adding that the customer base for the fruit has quickly expanded across the country.

Vietnam shipped its first consignment of lychees to Australia and the United States in 2015. Even though the volume was small, just 35 tons in total, it was a significant step.

Industry experts said Vietnamese fruit exports are likely to grow if the country can meet the strict standards and quarantine regulations set by these demanding markets.

Related News:

> Vietnam's fruit and vegetable exports grow past rice

> Farmers opt for red dragon fruit in hope of doubling profit from China

> Hanoi treatment center a godsend for lychee exports to Australia
Will foreign investors start renaming Vietnamese brands now the ownership cap has been lifted?

The Vietnamese government has embarked on a fresh round of selling off stakes in state-owned companies in a bid to spur economic growth, which has shown signs of slowing down so far this year, and to counter the state budget deficit which has extended to $4.7 billion in the first seven months of this year.

This fresh effort, combined with the removal of the long-standing foreign-ownership cap, is expected to attract serious interest from foreign investors looking to enter the Vietnamese market by acquiring shares in domestic companies.

There is no doubt that the governments latest privatization efforts could give the economy a fillip as state-owned enterprises are seen as a drag on the countrys growth.

However, some have raised concerns that as foreign investors can now own a 100 percent stake in local companies, they will rename recognized Vietnamese brands.

Vinamilk, the countrys largest listed company, has become an iconic Vietnamese brand name. Recently, the government's investment arm the SCIC announced it will fully divest its 45 percent stake in Vinamilk, giving foreign investors room to raise their ownership in the dairy company.

Foreign investors currently own a 49 percent stake in Vinamilk, while domestic individuals and institutional investors hold 6 percent, said CEO Mai Kieu Lien.

SCIC, as the main shareholder, has the greatest say in how best to privatize Vinamilk, Lien added.

I dont think foreign investors, if they manage to acquire Vinamilk, will change such a valuable brand name. Instead they will certainly milk it for all its worth, said economist Le Dang Doanh.

Other experts share the same view on the matter.

Senior economist Pham Chi Lan said the government should hold the golden share in companies to be able to outvote all other shareholders in case foreign investors want to change the brand name of a company.

A golden share is a nominal share often held by a government organization in a state-owned organization undergoing the process of privatization.

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has made it official that the government will continue offloading shares in as many as 12 state-owned giants this year.

The list includes dairy giant Vinamilk and the countrys biggest brewers Sabeco and Habeco, which are among the few state-owned enterprises currently performing relatively well.

It is estimated that Vietnam could rake in about $7 billion from these divestments.

Related News:

> Vietnam to rake in $7 billion from massive divestment push

> Privatization helps Vietnamese contractors compete with foreign players

> Privatization quickens as investors lay eyes on
Anthony Kelly (19) didnt have the money to pay taxi driver

A young man arrested for refusing to pay a taxi fare "had gotten drunk after finding out a family member had cancer".

Anthony Kelly (19) was upset and drank too much on the night, before falling asleep in the cab, which he had no money to pay for.

The taxi fare from the city centre to his home had been 14.

Judge Michael Walsh fined him 150.

Kelly pleaded guilty to public intoxication and failing to pay a taxi fare.

Dublin District Court heard the incident happened at The Steeples on August 17.

A garda sergeant said the taxi driver called gardai at 4.40am and said that he was having problems getting payment from the defendant, who was a passenger in his cab.

When officers spoke to him, the defendant was extremely intoxicated and was refusing to pay the fare.

He was arrested and charged with the offences.

Convictions

The court heard he had previous convictions for public order offences.

At the time of the taxi incident, Kelly, with an address at The Steeples, St Laurence's Road, Chapelizod, had found out a relative who he was very close to had been diagnosed with cancer.

She had since died, the court heard.

"He went out drinking in the city centre - unbeknownst to him he had no money for the taxi," his barrister John Griffin said.

Kelly had fallen asleep in the cab.

The accused was unemployed but was willing to pay for the fare if given time, Mr Griffin told Judge Michael Walsh.

Instead, the judge fined Kelly 75 on each charge and set bond in the event of an appeal.

He also granted free legal aid to the defendant following an application by Mr Griffin, who handed a statement of Kelly's financial means in to court.

The charges against the defendant were under the Public Order and Road Traffic Acts.

He did not address the court.
Tony Byrne who has asked for a flagpole and Tricolor to erected at the flats complex in recognition of George Reynolds who fought in 1916.

A bid by locals in the south inner city to raise a flag in honour of a 1916 hero will finally be realised after months of campaigning.

Neighbours in the George Reynolds House flats in Irishtown applied to Dublin City Council (DCC), who own their homes, to have a flagpole erected for the 2016 commemorations.

The idea was to commemorate Reynolds - who was a section commander of C Company, 3rd Battalion, of the Dublin Brigade.

On Easter Monday, he was given command of Clanwilliam House, which was the last rebel post to fall during the Battle of Mount Street. He was one of three volunteers who died during the fighting there.

The initial application was turned down by DCC, who said the residents could not erect a pole where compliance with the rules, which were agreed by the commemorations committee, could not be guaranteed.

However, constant persevering, led by resident Tony Byrne and Councillor Paddy McCartan, means it will finally come to fruition today.

The first flag-raising ceremony was due to take place at the complex at 12pm, with hundreds of local school children attending, with readings, poems and a rendition of the nation anthem.

The schools represented at the historic event will be St Patrick's National School in Ringsend and St Mary's National School, Sandymount.

The initial flag-raising ceremony will be conducted by Irish Army officers.

The flag is set to be raised and lowered at appropriate times by a resident's group - under Government guidelines that ensure the tricolour is not disrespected or used inappropriately.

Enthusiasm

"There were a few hurdles to be cleared. There wasn't huge enthusiasm there from the council, but we persevered and it eventually came to fruition," Mr McCartan said.

He also explained the significance of Reynolds to the history of the area, and how, with the flag as an example, future generations will be able to appreciate his significance.

"It will be good for the children in the local area," Mr McCartan said.

"It will make them more aware of George Reynolds. It's a great recognition of our 1916 hero."
Hue's colorful history will be made available in five languages for visitors.

Vietnam's central city of Hue plans to introduce audio guides in five foreign languages to talk visitors through the ancient city.

English is the only language to be confirmed so far.

The audio guides will be available at major tombs and the royal citadel, said Phan Thanh Hai, director of the Hue Monuments Conservation Centre. Funding for the guides will come from private investment, but the exact launch date of the service is unknown.

In addition to the audio guides, Hue is planning to offer e-tickets and free wi-fi at the city's sites in the near future.

Thua Thien-Hue Province, known as the seat of the Nguyen Dynasty from 1802 until the end of feudal Vietnam in 1945, welcomed approximately 58,000 tourists during the Independence Day holiday on September 2.

Foreign visitors to Thua Thien-Hue Province during the first eight months increased 36.5 percent from a year ago.

Related news:

> East meets West at Vietnamese Emperor's tomb

> Hanoi to roll out free, city-wide wi-fi

> Saigon gets connected with free wi-fi across the city
COMMUNITY

NEWCOMER AND FRIENDS CLUB: Bristol, Virginia, 701 Goode Street, Bristol Public library, Kelgley room, Sept. 9, 10:15 a. m.: Book reading, by Mary Lou Smith on Virginia Intermont College, refreshment included, fee $10 for reservation call 276-466-6835. Community welcome.

CHRISTIAN LIFE CENTER OF TRI CITIES: Kingsport, Tenn., 2401 John B. Dennis Highway, Sept. 11, 10 a. m.: Commemorative ceremony, We Will Never Forget 9/11, remembers the sacrifice, honor the serving, call 423-288-2211 or 423-967-5908.

GUNNINGS CEMETERY ASSOCIATION: Blountville, Tenn., Highway 126, all day event Sept 10  11: Annual decoration for the cemetery.

ROCKY TOP GUN PERMIT SCHOOL: Elizabethton, Tenn., 135 Keensburg Road, Sept. 17, 8 a. m.: Hand-gun permit, state certified class, instructor Ken Potter, enroll call 423-341-1709 or 423-543-6048.

BUFFALO RURITAN CLUB: Bluff City, Tenn., 200 Willowbrook Drive, Sept. 17, 8  10 a. m.: 1st Annual Benefit Run, cost $15 per person, 50/50 drawing at end of ride, best hand $100, for info call Ralph Roark 423-276-8848 or Keith Crussell 423-534-0210.

CRISIS CENTER, INC.: Bristol, Va., 300 West Valley Drive, Sept. 20, 10:30 a. m.: Bristol Special Needs Support Group, monthly meeting, speaker Project Lifesaver to speak with special needs families, RSVP James Almaroad 276-466-2218.

ST. ANNE SCHOOL: Bristol, Va., 300 Euclid Avenue in school gym, Sept. 24, 9 a. m.  3 p. m.: Craft Bazaar, vendors from all over the area, 276-669-0048.

SPEEDWELL CEMETERY: Jonesborough, Tenn., 3326 Cherokee Road, Oct. 8, 9 a. m.: Prepare cemetery for the winter months, Speedwell Board of Trustees need volunteers, volunteers must bring on equipment to clean, call Elaine 423-257-2264 or Chad, chadfredb@gmail.com.

COMMUNITY INFANT MEMORIAL SERVICE: Mountain City, Tenn., 999 Honeysuckle St., Sunset Memorial Park, Oct. 15, 6 p. m.: Remember our little ones a service to anyone who lost a child during pregnancy or infancy, for any reason, office@communitymemorialbabies.com

KINGSPORT CAROUSEL: Kingsport, Tenn., Wednesdays  Saturdays, 17 p.m.: $1. 423- 343-9834 or www.EngageKingsport.com

COMMUNITY CENTER OF ABINGDON: Abingdon, Va. 300 Senior Drive, every Monday afternoon 2 p. m.: Movie, every Monday night 6 p. m.: Music jam, every Wednesday night: Ballroom dance class 7:15 p. m.: every Friday afternoon 1  4 p. m.: Game day, 276-628-3911.

ALZHEIMER/DEMENTIA CAREGIVERS MEETING: Abingdon, Va., View United Methodist Church, 18416 Lee Highway. For more, call Sissy Frye or Brenda Jones at 276-783-8157 or 1-800-541-0933.Brenda Jones at 276-783-8157 or 1-800-541-0933.

PTERODACTYLS BMW MOTORCYCLE CLUB: Johnson City, Tenn., 2801 Boones Creek Road, 3rd Saturday, 9 a.m. Contact David Robertson, 423-323-2046 or drobertson@btes.tv.

BRISTOL BINGO: Bristol, Va., 516 Birthplace of Country Music Way, Bingo Saturdays and Sundays, 6 p.m. early bird and 6:30 p.m. regular, sponsored by VFW Post 6975. 276-669-2446.

WATAUGA VALLEY FIFE & DRUM CORPS: Elizabethton, Tenn., Sycamore Shoals State Historic Area, 1651 West Elk Avenue. Saturdays, 10 a.m. noon. The Fife & Drum Corps open to anyone ages 13 and up. Musical experience is welcome but not necessary. Meet volunteer coordinator John Large at the visitors center. Lessons are free; call and let us know youre coming. 423-543-5808.

SONS OF CONFEDERATE VETERANS: Bristol, Va., 1601 Euclid Ave., Bristol Life Saving Crew, monthly meeting will be the third Monday of each month. New members welcome. renegade24201@yahoo.com, 276-591-6732.

WASHINGTON COUNTY JAM: Abingdon, Va., 25236 Hillman Hwy., Southwest Virginia 4-H Educational Center, after-school program, or youth (4th through 8th grade) in Washington County, who are interested in learning traditional, old-time musical instruments and Southern Appalachian culture. Classes will run through May 2016. 276-6676-6180 or programs@swva4hcenter.org.

CHEER WITH THE NATIONAL CHAMPIONS: Johnson City, Tenn., Oakland Ave., Princeton Arts Center, Learn cheers, jumps, splits, tumbling, dance routines, builds with National Champion Taylor Melons. Beginners cheer, ages 3-6, $25 per month; Competition Cheer, ages 7-12, $60 per month. 423-283-5800 or email tricitiestalent@hotmail.com.

MOUNT ROGERS REGIONAL ADULT EDUCATION PROGRAM: Providing free GED classes at the following locations and times: Marion Baptist Church on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 1-4 p.m., Marion Senior High Library on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 4-7 p.m., Northwood High School - Room 105 on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 5- 8 p.m., Old Chilhowie High School on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 12-3 p.m. Classes and materials are free to adults 18 and older. 1-800-322-7748 or www.mrraep.com.

JACKSON THEATRE PHOTOS NEEDED: Jonesborough, Tenn., The Town of Jonesborough and the Heritage Alliance are seeking old photos of the Jackson Theatre in Jonesborough. Photos are needed for the exterior of the building or interior, and they can be of any time period going back to when the building was a furniture store in the very early 1900s. 423-753-1031 or virginiac@jonesboroughtn.org.

SENIOR CENTER MEMORIAL PARK COMMUNITY CENTER: Johnson City, Tenn., 510 Bert Street. Join the Senior Chorale Thursdays 10 a.m. No audition required. (423) 434-5750.

VIRGINIA COOPERATIVE EXTENSION: Abingdon, Va., One Partnership Circle, Southwest Virginia Higher Education Center, Oct. 5, Oct. 13, Oct. 19, and Oct. 27: Offering an opportunity to train as Master Food Volunteer, training includes, lunches, training material, apron, tote bags, and supplies. Application due Sept. 23, contact Sandy Yarber 276-619-4336.

FARMERS MARKETS

ABINGDON: Downtown Abingdon, Virginia, corner of Remsburg Drive and Cummings Street (!-81 Exit 17). Through November: Saturdays, 8 a.m.-1p.m. and Tuesdays, 3-6 p.m. More than 50 full-time vendors, offering local meats, eggs, cheeses, vegetables, fruits, wines, prepared foods, art and , plants and a couple food trucks. Haley Stewart, 276-698-1434; abingdonmarket@gmail.com or www.abingdonfarmersmarket.com.

BRISTOL: Downtown Center, 810 State Street. Saturdays, 8 a.m.-noon, Through Oct.; Wednesdays, 2-6 p.m. Through Sept. Vendor apps at Slater Center, 325 McDowell St., Bristol, Tenn. Accepts SNAP/EBT cards. 423-764-4023.

GLADE SPRING: Downtown Glade Spring, Virginia, 100 Town Square St. (I-81 Exit 29) Through Oct. 31: Saturdays, 9 a.m.-noon. Fruits, vegetables, flowering plants and cut flowers, mushrooms, honey, meats, eggs, herbs, lotions, baked goods and more. Paul Case, info@gladespringfarmersmarket.com.

MARION: Downtown Marion, Town Square Parking Lot, corner of Cherry and Chestnuts streets. Through Oct. 29. Saturdays, 8 a.m.-noon. 276-783-4113.

FOOD PANTRY

THE TABLE: Bristol, Va., 1754 Kingmill Pike, Community Baptist Church, every fourth Friday 1  4 p. m.: Food pantry, donations are welcome, contact Pastor Todd Crusenberry, 423-646-8760.

PARKS

BREAKS PARK: Breaks, Va., Campground and Rhododendron Restaurant open. Boat dock closed. Front lobby at the lodge will be open daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. during the week and 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on week-ends. The administration office will be open Monday-Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Park lodging is open year round. Conference Center is open with regular catering services available. New activities: lodging packages with whitewater rafting excursions and elk tours. 276-865-4413 ext. 3201 or www.BreaksPark.com.

SYCAMORE SHOALS STATE HISTORIC AREA: Elizabethton, Tenn., 1651 W. Elk Ave. The park grounds open daily from dawn to dusk. Visitors Center: 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday; 1-4:30 p.m. Sunday; closed Mondays. Visitor Center open weekends 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. 423-543-5808 or www.sycamoreshoalstn.org, www.tnstateparks.com/SycamoreShoals.
A class with 6 students in Ha Hai Middle School, Ha Tinh Province on September 6. Photo by VnExpress/Duc Hung

Fishing families have got the support they needed so their kids can go back to school.

The majority of students from Ky Anh Town, one of the areas worst-hit by the recent mass fish deaths in Vietnam's central coast province of Ha Tinh, have returned to school after being stuck at home for the last two weeks, said Phan Duy Vinh, the town's top official.

Since the new school year started (September 5), more than 750 students have gone back to class, Vinh said.

Since August 25, fishermen in Ky Ha Commune have been keeping their children at home to put pressure on the government, calling for their children to be exempt from tuition fees and additional costs in the wake of the environmental disaster that ruined their livelihoods.

Some 1,000 of the 1,500 students in the area were absent from the new school year's opening ceremony on September 5.

Parents say that they have been unable to fish or produce salt since waste from Taiwan's Formosa steel plant contaminated a 200 kilometer stretch of Vietnams central coast.

My kids will only go back to school when we've received adequate compensation, said one fisherman.

In response, authorities in Ky Anh Town have decided to cover all tuition fees and school maintenance costs for those hit by the environmental disaster in an attempt to bring all students back to school.

Dang Quoc Vinh, vice chairman of Ha Tinh's People's Committee, said that every child has a right to education, so provincial authorities are encouraging students not to drop out of school.

Related news:

> No fish, no school: 1,000 students forced to stay at home in central Vietnam

> Vietnamese fishermen remain beached 4 months after toxic disaster
Halloween is coming! Here's when to trick or treat in your town
2016 Rio Paralympics - Powerlifting Final - Men's -49kg Victory Ceremony - Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - 08/09/2016. From left, Omar Qarada (JOR) of Jordan holds his silver medal, Le Van Cong (VIE) of Vietnam holds his gold medal and Nandor Tunkel (HUN) of Hungary holds his bronze medal following men's Paralympic Powerlifting competition. Photo by Reuters/Ueslei Marcelino

The thirty-two-year-old weightlifter born with deformed legs set a new world record.

Vietnam has won its first ever medal at the 2016 Rio Paralympic Games in style with weightlifter Le Van Cong breaking the world record in the mens 49kg class by lifting 183kg.

I hope this gold medal will motivate the less fortunate to strive, the Paralympic champion told VnExpress. I also hope that this achievement will make other Vietnamese athletes more confident when they compete at the Paralympics to win many more medals.

The weightlifter, who was born with deformed legs, entered the event as the current world record-holder with a 182kg lift he set in 2015.

Le Van Cong celebrates after setting a new world record in the men's 49kg class. Photo by Reuters/Ueslei Marcelino

Knowing that he had already secured gold, the Vietnamese lifter went on to make history with his first Olympic record. The mens 49kg class had nine athletes competing for medals, with each one allowed three lifts. Cong managed 181kg on his second attempt, while his biggest rival Omar Qarada of Jordan failed to make the weight.

The bronze medal went to Hungarian weightlifter Naldo Tunkel.

Vietnam got a taste of its first Olympic gold last month with a record-breaking performance by shooter Hoang Xuan Vinh but, until Le Van Congs victory yesterday, the country still held a zero-medal record at Paralympic Games since the delegations debut at the 2000 games in Sydney.

Besides Cong, the Vietnamese team also have high hopes for swimmer Vo Thanh Tung, a world-class athlete and the Asia record-holder in the men's 50m freestyle.

Related news:

> Shooter secures Vietnam's first Olympic gold medal

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Vietnam's largest city has something for everyone around the clock: from a leisurely walk, a journey to the past to spectacular sight of skyscrapers of Vietnam's business hub.

Nguyen Hue walking street

Photo by Thien Chuong

Located in downtown Saigon, the walking street opened in April last year. On week days, vehicles are allowed to drive down Nguyen Hue Street, but from 6pm to 1am on Saturday and Sunday, vehicles are banned to make room for pedestrians. The street holds public events like parades, meetings and street festivals, and is turned into a flowery paradise during Vietnams traditional Tet holiday.

The street is the ideal place for young people to practice their hoverboarding skills or to put on street music performances. On the two sides of the street, you can also find several hot shopping spots.

Nhieu Loc Canal

Photo by Thao Nghi

The boats, which depart from Le Van Sy Marina (District 3) or Thi Nghe Marina (District 1), carry tourists 4.5 kilometers along the canal to enjoy the peace and quiet of Vietnams largest city to a musical background. Tickets range from VND110,000 (5$) for a large boat (10-22 people) to VND220,000 (10$) for a small boat (3-5 people).

Century-old buildings

Notre Dame Cathedral, photo by Huu Cong

Standing silently in the bustling city, buildings constructed following European styles draw the attention of any passers-by. The names tourists shouldnt ignore are Notre Dame Cathedral, Saigon Central Post Office, the Opera House and Ben Thanh Market.

Ham Thu Thiem Park

Photo by Thuy Phuong

Almost all Saigoneers know this: to see the two different side of Saigon, glory and shabbiness, find Ham Thu Thiem Park. Looking along a dark river, tourists can record a panoramic view of District 1 and the prominent image of the 68-story Bitexco building, Saigons iconic tower. If you are a photography lover, visit the park before sunset to capture stunning images when the sun starts disappearing behind the skyscrapers.

Cholon

Photo by Thanh Hai

Cholon, which means big market in English and was formally known as Binh Tay Market, is Vietnams largest Chinatown. Visitors can find anything they want here, dried fruit, Chinese herbals and even flip flops. Cholon is a great place to see classical Chinese architecture reminiscent of years gone by with plenty of Chinese restaurants and temples in the surrounding area.

Fun-fact: The Cholon we know today is not the original. It was built from 1927 to 1930 as a replacement for the old Cholon which burnt down in a fierce fire at the time.

Cu Chi Tunnels

Photo by VnExpress/Hai Nam

The Cu Chi Tunnels form an immense underground network in Cu Chi District, about 70 kilometers from the center of Saigon. The tunnels were used to shelter during combat and to transport food and weapons for North Vietnamese fighters in the 1960s. Visitors can crawl through the tunnels, view command centers and booby traps and even enjoy the food soldiers lived on in the tunnels.

Coffee culture

Racket coffee, or 'ca phe vot', is a must-try in Saigon. The coffee is filtered through a fabric racket, which offers an unique taste and smell. Photo by Phong Vinh.

Not just a beverage, coffee has become a part of life in Saigon. If Hanoians love to check into luxury coffee chains, Saigoneers just need a cup of coffee, a plastic stool and a space on the sidewalk to chat with friends. Prices for black coffee and white coffee, the city's beverages of choice, range from VND10,000 to VND15,000 ($0.5-0.7) per cup, just half the price you'd find in Hanoi.

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North Korean leader Kim Jong Un meets scientists and technicians in the field of research into nuclear weapons in this undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang March 9, 2016. Photo by KCNA/Files via Reuters.

The blast set off was more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

North Korea conducted its fifth nuclear test on Friday and said it had mastered the ability to mount a warhead on a ballistic missile.

Its most powerful explosion to date follows a test in January that prompted the U.N. Security Council to impose tightened sanctions that increased North Korea's isolation but failed to prevent it from accelerating weapons development.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye, in Laos after a summit of Asian leaders ended there on Thursday, said North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was showing "maniacal recklessness" in completely ignoring the world's call to abandon his pursuit of nuclear weapons.

U.S. President Barack Obama, aboard Air Force One on his way home from Laos, said the test would be met with "serious consequences" and held talks with Park and with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the White House said.

China, North Korea's only major diplomatic ally, said it was resolutely opposed to the test and urged Pyongyang to stop taking any actions that would worsen the situation.

North Korea, which labels the South and the United States as its main enemies, said its "scientists and technicians carried out a nuclear explosion test for the judgment of the power of a nuclear warhead," according to a report from its official KCNA news agency.

Ryoo Yong-gyu, Earthquake and Volcano Monitoring Division Director, points at where seismic waves observed in South Korea came from, during a media briefing at Korea Meteorological Administration in Seoul, South Korea, September 9, 2016. Photo by Reuters/Kim Hong-Ji

North Korea said the test proved it is capable of mounting a nuclear warhead on a medium-range ballistic missile, which it last tested on Monday when Obama and other world leaders were gathered in China for a G20 summit.

Its claims of being able to miniaturize a nuclear warhead have never been independently verified.

North Korea has been testing missiles at an unprecedented rate this year, and the capability to mount a nuclear warhead on a missile is especially worrisome for its neighbors South Korea and Japan.

"The standardization of the nuclear warhead will enable the DPRK to produce at will and as many as it wants a variety of smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear warheads of higher strike power," KCNA said, referring to the country's formal name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Japan Defense Minister Tomomi Inada said the Pyongyang regime's advances in mobile ballistic missile technology posed a grave threat to Japan.

South Korean soldiers and passenger watch a TV broadcasting a news report on Seismic activity produced by a suspected North Korean nuclear test, at a railway station in Seoul, South Korea, September 9, 2016. Kim Ju-sung/Yonhap via Reuters

Severe challenge

North Korea's nuclear test coincided with the anniversary of its 1948 foundation as a republic.

Its continued testing despite sanctions presents a severe challenge to Obama in the final months of his presidency and could become a factor in the U.S. presidential election in November.

"Sanctions have already been imposed on almost everything possible, so the policy is at an impasse," said Tadashi Kimiya, a University of Tokyo professor specializing in Korean issues.

"In reality, the means by which the United States, South Korea and Japan can put pressure on North Korea have reached their limits," he said.

Japan's Abe said such a nuclear test could not be tolerated. Japan's foreign minister lodged a protest and Tokyo also sent two military jets to begin measuring for radiation.

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe speaks to media after reports on a suspected nuclear test by North Korea, at his official residence in Tokyo, Japan, in this photo taken by Kyodo September 9, 2016. Mandatory credit Kyodo/via Reuters

China's environment ministry began emergency radiation monitoring along its borders with North Korea in northeast China, state television reported.

Jeffrey Lewis of the California-based Middlebury Institute of International Studies said the highest estimates of seismic magnitude suggested this was the most powerful nuclear test conducted by North Korea so far.

He said the seismic magnitude and surface level indicated a blast with a 20- to 30-kiloton yield. Such a yield would make this test larger than the nuclear bomb dropped by the United States on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in World War Two and potentially bigger than that dropped on Nagasaki soon after.

"That's the largest DPRK test to date, 20-30kt, at least. Not a happy day," Lewis told Reuters.

"The important thing is that five tests in, they now have a lot of nuclear test experience. They aren't a backwards state any more," he said.

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Obama says Trump not qualified to be president

"I don't think the guy's qualified to be president of the United States, and every time he speaks, that opinion is confirmed."

Outgoing President Barack Obama condemned Donald Trump as unsuitable to be commander-in-chief Thursday, after the Republican nominee blasted U.S. military brass and praised Vladimir Putin.

Obama, who was in Laos for a summit with South East Asia leaders and his final trip to east Asia, said that Trump holds contradictory and "outright wacky ideas" and is "uninformed".

"I can tell you from the interactions I have had over the last eight or nine days with foreign leaders that this is serious business," Obama said.

"You actually have to know what you are talking about and you actually have to have done your homework. When you speak, it should actually reflect thought out policy you can implement."

Trump on Wednesday raised eyebrows by saying that Russia's president was "far more" of a leader than Obama.

Putin is "very much of a leader," Trump said in a televised interview.

"It's a very different system, and I don't happen to like the system. But certainly in that system he's been a leader, far more than our president has been a leader."

Trump also drew fire for criticizing the military.

"The generals have been reduced to rubble," Trump said, before noting he had "faith in certain of the commanders".

The bombastic mogul will face Hillary Clinton in November's election, which the Democratic former first lady is tipped to win.

Trump has previously angered many in the military community with mocking remarks against U.S. Senator and former prisoner of war John McCain for being captured in Vietnam.

Speaking in Laos about Trump's unsuitability for office, Obama observed that over the course of the election season "people start thinking behavior that in normal times we would consider completely unacceptable and outrageous becomes normalized".

Obama is expected to hit the campaign trail with Clinton when he returns to the United States, with voter turnout likely to be a key theme.

Obama won the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections handily by mustering large numbers of young, black, Latino and Asian voters to go to the polls.

Related news:

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LOS ANGELES (JTA)-There is a remarkable moment in "Maestro," Hershey Felder's one-man show about Leonard Bernstein, when the late famed conductor-composer is shown in an old film clip on a giant screen and the two perform a seamless piano duet from Richard Wagner's "Tristan and Isolde."

The tour de force characterizes the fusion between Bernstein, who died in 1990 at 72, and Felder, very much alive and lively at 48.

"Maestro" opens off-Broadway (59E59 Theaters) on Sept. 1 for a six-week run and will tour cities throughout the United States and abroad in the future.

The multitalented Felder, who sings, acts and plays the piano in a combination of biographical narrative and concert, seems confident he will remember his lines. After all, he tells an interviewer, "I've impersonated Lenny Bernstein on stage some 600 times."

However, even those who have seen Felder tributes to Bernstein will find different nuances and characterizations in the upcoming New York presentation.

"The tone of each performance depends on the reaction of the audience, so my job never gets easier, only harder," Felder said, but he hopes the result is "a more realized piece."

There are some actual parallels in the lives of the two men. Both grew up in Yiddish-speaking homes, the sons of Eastern European immigrants and in tightly knit Jewish communities-Bernstein in the Boston area, Felder in his native Montreal.

A recurrent shtick in the show is Bernstein's Ukraine-born father agonizing how his son is ever going to make a living as a musician.

The show follows Bernstein from his admission to Harvard (squeezing in under the 10 percent Jewish quota), to his first steady job as assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic, to his triumphs as a composer both of classical music and classic Broadway musicals.

There is the historical date of Nov. 14, 1943, when in a pure Hollywood fantasy, a hung-over Bernstein is awakened by a phone call telling him that the evening's scheduled conductor, Bruno Walter, has suddenly fallen ill and that he, the 25-year-old Lenny, must wield the baton at 3 p.m. Bernstein, of course, triumphed and the rest is history.

"Maestro" introduces the great conductors who influenced Bernstein, each infused by Felder with a distinct personality and different European accent.

We meet the likes of Walter Damrosch, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Fritz Reiner ("With the permanent expression of a man who had sex once and didn't like it," says Felder), Walter and, above all, the beloved music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Serge Koussevitzky.

On another level, there is Bernstein the composer, whose works, such as "Jeremiah," "Dybbuk Suites" and "Kaddish," reflected his deep Jewish roots.

From a world-renowned classical conductor, Bernstein turned to the musical stage with works ranging from "On the Town" to "Candide" and the triumphant "West Side Story," a modern-day version of "Romeo and Juliet." (Bernstein originally cast the warring clans as Jews vs. Catholics, but cooler heads prevailed, "so we threw out the Jews and brought in the Puerto Ricans," Bernstein is quoted as saying.)

On a third level is Bernstein, the complex and conflicted human being. He was happily married to the Chilean-born Felicia Montealegre, the mother of his three children, but made little effort to hide his liaisons with men.

"Maestro" opens with Bernstein on his deathbed. Felder believes that for all the worldly acclaim, the celebrated musician pronounced a harsh judgment on himself. Perhaps his greatest sorrow was that he never composed the one classical masterpiece that would immortalize his name, Felder said.

In his later years, "Bernstein also suffered from strong feelings of guilt," Felder believes. "He shoved [his affairs with men] down Felicia's throat and he didn't care how devastated she was."

"Maestro" runs nearly two hours, without an intermission, and the sheer physical stamina required for the one-man play is astonishing. Even more so as Felder throws himself into the role with unreserved physical and emotional passion that stops just short of going over the top.

In addition, Felder transmits a real feeling for the creative processes underlying the arts of conducting and composition.

Over a span of 19 years and some 4,500 stage performances, Felder has also interpreted the lives and works of Beethoven, Chopin and Liszt, as well as Irving Berlin and George Gershwin (Felder introduces the latter by his birth name, Yankele [Jacob] Gershowitz.) In addition, Felder presents his own works, including the concerto "Aliyah," the opera "Noah's Ark" and "Love Songs of the Yiddish Theatre."

Next on Felder's intense schedule is his musical and biographical homage to "Our Great Tchaikovsky," which will premiere next year.

When not touring, Felder lives in Paris and New York with his wife, Kim Campbell, the former Canadian prime minister, whom he met while she was serving as her country's consul general in Los Angeles.

"Maestro," directed by Joel Zwick, will run through Oct. 16, with Felder's signature "The Great American Songbook Sing-Along" added as an occasional bonus.
Your Jewish Community Relations Council has been working hard at the relations part of our name, with a focus on building relationships within and beyond our Central Florida Jewish community. Those relationships help us find allies who support our values and whose values we can support in turn. Though we may not agree with each other on all issues, we look to find common ground on the issues that do offer ways to partner.

In last months FYI column, we talked about the importance of listening, and how really listening to one another is how we begin to understand one another. This month, we want to showcase another avenue for building understandingthe very unsexy, often frustratingly slow, extremely important concept of process. As Bernard Reisman, the founding director of the Hornstein Jewish Professional Leadership Program at Brandeis University, would say, Trust the process. We called on Bernies words this past month when confronted with a complex dilemma: how to respond to the Movement for Black Lives platforms divisive and unnecessary language on Israel.

As some of you may know, the Movement for Black Lives (affiliated with Black Lives Matter) issued its first platform a few weeks ago. Much of the platform resonated with many of us, particularly the calls for reforming the criminal justice system and for overall economic and social justice. However, the platforms agenda split terribly with ours when it claimed that U.S. support for Israel makes the United States complicit in the genocide committed against the Palestinian people and labeled Israel as an apartheid state. It also called for divestment from Israel, which does nothing to advance peace between Israelis and Palestinians. This language conflated the real need to address the systemic racism faced by people of color in the United States with the entirely different set of moral and political questions related to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Several JCRCs around the country issued strongly worded statements condemning the platform. Our gut instinct, and our desire to protect our beloved Israel, kicked in, and we were set to do the sameand then we remembered that we needed to first trust the process. Would issuing a statement help Israel, now or in the future?

We put out a call to our JCRC colleagues, asking them how they planned to respond, and the answers were as varied as their geographies. In St. Louis, the JCRC had a longstanding relationship with a statewide association of African-American Christian clergy that wrote a letter to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch condemning the platform. In Chicago, a city that had recently seen police shootings of unarmed black men, the JCRC set up meetings with its African-American allies, most of whom were not affiliated with the Movement for Black Lives, to ask them directly about the platform. Dallas reached out to its African-American allies for advice and chose to help put together a dialog. Milwaukee aimed to meet with leaders from the traditional African-American leadership groups as well as the newer groups like Black Lives Matter. Boston issued a deeply thoughtful and strongly worded statement, which despite its thoroughness was received with backlash. New Haven put out a statement only on its social media, which was meant for its own Jewish community. Many other communities noted that without a specific local contact in the Movement for Black Lives, it seemed pointless to simply issue a statement that would not reach the right audiencea tree would effectively fall in a forest where no one lived. Most of us did not even know how our local Movement for Black Lives groups are related to other groups within the local African-American and social justice world.

With this information in hand, the Orlando JCRC went to work. With our support and love for Israel front and center in our hearts and minds, we (rather reluctantly!) collectively decided against making a statement, and instead committed to keep working on our relationships with our local African-American community organizations, clergy, elected officials and advocacy groups so that we can ensure that we are always learning together and understanding together. Without those person-to-person and organization-to-organization relationships, we cannot make a difference in the opinions of those who can influence policies and platforms. Without listening to and understanding others, we cannot expect them to afford the same benefit to us. We think this is the right way forward. We trusted the process.

We will see you here in this space again next month. In the meantime, should you have any questions, please contact JCRCs staff director, Marli Porth, at mporth@jfgo.org.
(JTA)-Last year I joined some 3,000 people at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark for a wide-screen showing of Mel Brooks' 1974 Western parody "Blazing Saddles." In the onstage interview that followed, Brooks, then 89, was beside himself in his delight at sharing his 42-year-old comedy with a real live audience.

There was only one awkward moment in a joyous and hilarious evening, and it came when Brooks asked if anyone in the audience actually lived in Newark. One person, in the balcony, said yes. Brooks couldn't know it, but it was a reminder of the sad history of Newark and the white ethnic populations, including a vibrant Jewish community, that fled the city for the suburbs-an exodus that culminated with the riots that scarred its downtown in 1967. The Performing Arts Center is an attempt to woo back suburbanites, although few linger after the concerts and performances end.

Brooks' inadvertent reminder of the yawning divide between mostly black Newark and its mostly white suburbs was particularly poignant considering the themes of racial bigotry and reconciliation that he doesn't just sneak into "Blazing Saddles," but are in fact its comic engine.

Co-written in part with the black comic genius Richard Pryor, "Blazing Saddles" is about a lily-white town in the desolate West that is in the way of a railroad being built by the villainous Hedley Lamarr, played by Harvey Korman. To rile the people of Rock Ridge and make it easier for his henchmen to drive them away, Korman appoints a black railroad worker, played by a dashing Cleavon Little, as their new sheriff, inevitably named Black Bart. The townspeople are appalled, and much of the plot, such as it is, involves Little trying to win over the bigots and unite the town against Korman's robber baron.

That's where Gene Wilder comes in. The orange-haired, blue-eyed master of the comedic pause and the slow burn, who died Sunday at 83, plays Jim, aka the Waco Kid, a washed-up gunslinger who Little finds sleeping it off in the town jail. The chemistry between the characters-and the actors-is apparent from their first encounter.

"Are we awake?" Bart asks of the drunk cowboy hanging upside down from his bunk.

"We're not sure. Are we... black?" Jim replies.

"Yes, we are," Bart says.

"Then we're awake," Jim says, "but we're very puzzled."

The "we" there is telling, as is Wilder's stating the obvious from the get-go. His character isn't racist-he understands in an instant that black men do not become sheriffs in the mythical American West. From this brief encounter grows one of the cinema's greatest onscreen friendships, as well as a brief reminder of an off-screen black-Jewish alliance that was already fading, if not dead, by the time the movie came out.

Jews and blacks had made common cause in the early years of the civil rights movement-out of mutual self-interest, it's true, but also a sense of idealism represented by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s frequent invocations of the Old Testament and the Jewish kids who traveled south to agitate for black voters' rights. Jews were overrepresented in the NAACP, especially among its legal teams, and the big Jewish organizations often adopted the civil rights cause as their own.

By the late '60s, however, identity politics, the rejection by black militants of "colonialist" Zionism, and riots that hollowed out Newark and dozens of other cities drove a wedge between blacks and Jews.

And yet something in the friendship of Black Bart and the Waco Kid echoes what one was. Wilder's character is never identified as a Jew, but Wilder, with a frizzy Jewfro that he can barely contain under his ten-gallon hat, is the furthest thing possible from the central casting idea of the movie gunfighter. (One can only imagine what the film would have been had Brooks' first choice for the role, the typically handsome actor Gig Young, not shown up too drunk to handle the movie shoot. "If you want an alcoholic, don't cast an alcoholic," Brooks once said.)

Like the slickly urban Little in his tailored buckskin outfits, Wilder lands in the movie like a visitor from the multi-ethnic, post-civil rights era future, as if the two met at a jazz club in the West Village, not a one-horse town in the Badlands.

Wilder also plays a role that recalls the black-Jewish dynamic of the civil rights movement, the Jewish consigliere. The Waco Kid is Black Bart's only ally against the racist townspeople, and while Bart faces most of the real physical dangers, Jim provides some muscle and moral support.

When Bart is upset that he's been rejected by the citizens of Rock Ridge, Wilder consoles him with a gentle monologue: "What did you expect? 'Welcome, sonny'? 'Make yourself at home'? 'Marry my daughter'? You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons."

(Why does that speech sound particularly apropos in 2016?)

Later, the two will rally Rock Ridge against a mercenary army of bad guys that includes-in addition to your standard Western lineup of "hustlers, cutthroats, murderers, bounty hunters [and] desperadoes"-robed members of the Ku Klux Klan, helmeted Nazis and camel-riding Arabs. Talk about your common cause.

The amity between his black and white protagonists grew out of the writing room itself, Brooks recalled after the Newark screening, explaining that "Pryor wrote the Jewish jokes, the Jews wrote the black jokes."

In an essay for NPR, Nadya Faulx once noted that the interracial relationship between Bart and Jim wasn't unprecedented in film, but "it was one of the first in which race wasn't treated as an obstacle." "Blazing Saddles" came after "The Defiant Ones," in which Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier are literally shackled together as a white and black (and Jewish and black) odd couple. "Blazing Saddles" also anticipated a string of black-white buddy movies to come, including Wilder's own collaborations with Pryor on "Stir Crazy" and other comedies, as well as "Beverly Hills Cop," "Lethal Weapon" and "48 Hours."

The black-Jewish alliance was never as solid as some survivors of the '60s like to claim. Philip Roth, the bard of lost Jewish Newark, once recalled that when he was growing up in the city in the '30s and '40s, "we were all-Irish, Italians, Slavs, blacks, Jews-settled and secure in different neighborhoods. There was barely any social overlap."

"Blazing Saddles" is, perhaps, a movie about what could have been and what might still be: a better world in which Jews and African-Americans win out over racism, xenophobia, ignorance and a rapacious tycoon through the power of friendship, cunning, some bloodless gun play, and the occasional fart joke.
(JTA)-Gene Wilder, a comedic actor known for playing wild-eyed eccentrics such as the titular characters in "Young Frankenstein" and "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory," has died at 83.

Wilder, who was Jewish, died Aug. 28 from complications of Alzheimer's disease, his nephew, filmmaker Jordan Walker-Pearlman, told The Associated Press.

Born Jerome Silberman in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1933, Wilder later adopted his stage name, saying he couldn't imagine a marquee reading "Jerome Silberman as 'Hamlet.'"

He worked closely with Jewish director Mel Brooks. In addition to starring in Brooks' "Young Frankenstein" as the American grandson of the creator of the famous monster, he portrayed accountant Leo Bloom in "The Producers" opposite "Fiddler on the Roof" star Zero Mostel's Max Bialystock, and a hard-drinking, pot-smoking gunman, the Waco Kid, in the satirical Western "Blazing Saddles."

The New York Times called Wilder's performance in "Young Frankenstein," which he co-wrote with Brooks, a "marvelous addled mixture of young Tom Edison, Winnie-the-Pooh, and your average Playboy reader with a keen appreciation of beautiful bosoms." "Blazing Saddles" and "Young Frankenstein," were, respectively, the top and fourth-highest grossing movies of 1974.

In 1972, Wilder appeared in the Woody Allen film "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask)."

Wilder also starred as Avram Belinski, a rabbi who befriends a bank robber played by a young Harrison Ford, in the 1979 Western comedy "The Frisco Kid."

He and the late comedian Richard Pryor also teamed up in a series of black-Jewish buddy movies, including "Stir Crazy" and "Silver Streak."

Wilder was married four times, including to Jewish comedian Gilda Radner in 1984. Radner died of ovarian cancer in 1989.

Following her death, Wilder became active in promoting cancer awareness and research, co-founding "Gilda's Club," a nonprofit organization providing support to those affected by cancer.

In 1991, he married Karen Webb, a speech therapist, and the couple was together until Wilder's death.
President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping have agreed to adopt the International Climate Change Agreement that was reached in Paris last December. The cooperation on climate change by the US and China is being touted as a form of leadership that will encourage other countries to adopt the Paris Agreement. The road to hell is paved with good intentions; the agreement between the two presidents may not lead to hell, but it will lead to the United States being the international chump of the year.

For China, the provisions of the agreement do not come into force until 2030, when it pledges to cap its greenhouse gas emissions, which will experience considerable growth over the next 14 years. After that China has only pledged to reduce the ratio of emissions to its GDP. The United States, on the other hand, has pledged to reduce its emissions 26 to 28 percent below its 2005 level.

The difference in obligations, if anyone takes them seriously, is significant. The United States will have to make actual reductions in emissions while China can continue to increase emissions as long as its energy efficiency reduces the ratio of carbon to GDP. The United States has been doing that for decades. According to an Energy Department report, Energy Intensity and Carbon Intensity by the Numbers, the United States has reduced its carbon intensity by 27.7 percent since 2000 and actual emissions are already about 12 percent below the 2005 level. Incremental reductions will be harder and more expensive, not easier.

The Paris Agreement, which enters into force when adopted by at least 55 countries representing at least 55 percent of global emissions, only requires that participating countries submit national plans every five years. Now that the United States and China have entered into the pact, 25 countries representing 39 percent of the worlds greenhouse gas emissions are formal participants, according to the United Nations.

But, what does that mean? Developing countries, which contribute 63 percent of global emissions, have been exempt from any obligations to reduce them since 1992. The Paris Agreement makes clear that the priority of developing countries is economic and social development and poverty eradication. And even though China has ratified the agreement, it remains a developing country.

Although climate activists and the media hail the Paris Agreement as a major breakthrough, it is nothing of the sort. Developing countries will continue to increase emissions as they pursue economic growth. The Energy Information Administration forecasts that fossil fuels will continue to provide around 80 percent of the worlds energy by 2030.

Countries who participate in the Agreement will submit Five-Year Plans and reports without any independent validation or agreed-upon reporting system. Based on the past reporting under the Kyoto Protocol, records can be gamed and honest compliance is likely to be the exception, not the rule.

Only the United States will make the effort to actually comply because of the way our regulatory system works. President Obama has found a way to circumvent the treaty ratification requirement of the Constitution by making support of the Agreement an Executive Agreement that will be implemented by agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency. He has demonstrated over the past 8 years that he can require emission reductions without Congressional legislation.

If Hillary Clinton wins in November, which presently appears likely, these past regulatory trends will almost certainly continue unless Congress find the courage and votes to take corrective action. What is an international fig leaf for the international community is anything but for the United States and will impose real burdens on our economy and advantage our competitors.

William O'Keefe is the President of Solutions Consulting. You can follow him on Twitter here.

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Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., waving on the day of the New Hampshire primary in Concord, New Hampshire, Feb. 9, 2016.

WASHINGTON (JTA)-A Florida state senator caught up in a boycott-Israel controversy. A Wisconsin state representative who combated anti-Israel bias on his campus.

The diversity of Israel-related outlooks among the 63 candidates endorsed by Our Revolution underscores the eclecticism of the left-leaning movement launched by Bernie Sanders.

The endorsed candidates represent an opening salvo by Sanders, the Independent senator from Vermont to build on the progressive following he earned in his unsuccessful bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Sanders, the first Jewish candidate to win major nominating contests, has said that he wants to transform the party from the bottom up. Of the endorsed candidates, just 13 are running for Congress. Most are running for state legislatures, and some are running for local office.

That, coupled with Sanders' longtime focus on economic reform, means that the group's organic emphasis is on domestic issues.

Still, Our Revolution's issues pages list foreign policy postures close to those Sanders touted during the campaign, including a call on Israel to end settlement activity and end its blockade of the Gaza Strip, and on the Palestinians to "unequivocally" recognize Israel's right to exist. The group also calls for the United States to remain alert to the threat Iran poses to Israel and backs the two-state solution.

When it comes to Israel issues, Our Revolution's endorsees run the gamut.

In a fundraising appeal on Wednesday, the group counted as one of its successes Dwight Bullard's victory the day before in the Democratic primary for a Miami-Dade area state senate seat.

Bullard was the target of a pro-Israel protest over the weekend because of his participation in a tour of the West Bank earlier this year sponsored by a group that backs the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement targeting Israel. Bullard has said he is "agnostic" about BDS, but one of his opponents, Andrew Korge, said the trip was "disturbing."

By contrast, Jonathan Brostoff, a Wisconsin state representative running for reelection, has been to Israel on the Birthright-Taglit program and led a pro-Israel group at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

"I was exposed to knee-jerk leftist anti-Israel stuff," Brostoff told the Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle in 2008, describing how the trip converted him to pro-Israel activism. "I had a narrow range of false information regarding Israel before I went." Jewish officials in Milwaukee said Brostoff remains strongly pro-Israel.

Another Our Revolution endorsee, Ilhan Omar, is a onetime refugee from Somalia running for Minnesota state representative. She reportedly told the Twin Cities Daily Planet earlier this year that she favored divesting the University of Minnesota of its Israel bonds. (The newspaper did not directly quote her, and JTA has asked Omar's campaign to clarify her stance.) In the Aug. 9 primary, Omar defeated Phyllis Kahn, who is Jewish and who has held the Minneapolis-area seat for 44 years. Omar, running unopposed, will become the first Somali-born representative in the legislature.

In its appeal to donors, Our Revolution said Bullard's victory in Florida alleviated the disappointment of its most prominent loss in backing Tim Canova, a law professor who sought to unseat Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla.

Canova, who is not Jewish but who lived in Israel for a period, attacked her for backing last year's Iran nuclear deal, which was opposed by much of the pro-Israel community. Ironically, his campaign pitted a pro-Sanders gentile against one of the most prominent Jews in the party, premised on the accusation that she was insufficiently pro-Israel-even though Sanders also backed the Iran deal.

Sanders opposed Wasserman Schultz because he believed she thwarted him in her capacity as chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee.

Wasserman Schultz insisted she was neutral in the race, but on the eve of last month's Democratic National Convention, a release of hacked emails showed her speaking of Sanders and the campaign in harsh terms, and she quit the party chairmanship.

Another one of Our Revolution's losses on Aug. 30 was Aaron Baumann, the scion of a Jewish Arizona family, the Capins, with roots in the Tucson and Nogales area that date back more than a century.

Baumann failed to oust the incumbent state representative, Rosanna Gabaldon. (Also losing to Gabaldon was Daniel Hernandez, the congressional intern whose quick first aid helped save the life of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., the Jewish congresswoman who was shot in a 2011 spree that left six people dead.)

Other Jewish candidates endorsed by the group include Russell Feingold, attempting to wrest back Wisconsin's U.S. Senate seat from Ron Johnson, who defeated him in the 2010 Tea Party sweep of Congress; David Zuckerman, a Vermont state senator and farmer who belongs to the state's Progressive Party and who is running for lieutenant governor; and Jamie Raskin, a state lawmaker running for Congress in Maryland's Washington suburbs. Altogether, at least five of the 63 endorsees are Jewish.

Our Revolution's 11-member board is chaired by Larry Cohen, until recently the president of the Communications Workers of America, and Huck Gutman, a University of Vermont literature professor who is one of Sanders' oldest friends.

Also on the board is James Zogby, the president of the Arab American Institute and a Sanders appointee to this year's DNC platform-drafting committee who led an unsuccessful effort to include language critical of Israel's occupation of the West Bank.
In the wake of expanding East African-Israeli relations, African nations often reach out to Israel for know-how on a range of topics: water conservation, energy, agricultural productivity, counter-terrorism; and now business negotiation.

Although it may seem like the beginning of a tasteless joke about Jews and negotiation tactics, this work is anything but a joke. DLA Piper is one of the largest law firms in the world, a title that comes with big responsibilities. They take pro-bono work particularly seriously and have worked on dozens of such global initiatives as a part of their New Perimeter program.

In one of their most recent initiatives, Jeremy Lustman, head of DLA Pipers Israel office, was sent to Kenya to teach a course titled, The Ins and Outs of Legalities in Special Economic Zones. In collaboration with the East Africa Development Bank, Lustman taught a group of 40 East African government lawyers, in-house lawyers, and educational practitioners how to approach deals and negotiations with western countries. According to Lustman, it is necessary to educate on-site in special economic zones that attract foreign money, as there are many international rules, tax implications, and employment-related issues that these lawyers might not otherwise know.

Particularly in Africa, Lustman added, which has a lot of underdeveloped areas, they are often receiving offers of money from companies who want to put a business there, but want to make it attractive to them. The course was taught as a workshop so the lawyers could take what they learned back to their countries with confidence in their ability to grow and attract new businesses.

The classes and workshops included hands-on training in appreciating the other sides interests and sensitivities. The 40 participants split up into two teams for simulated negotiations: one group representing East African lawyers, and the other group representing the Western companies wanting to make deals in Africa. They explored various topics that would come up in real-life future negotiations, explained Lustman. It was a lot of analyzing how the two sides come together: what does the Western company want from Africa and what does Africa want from the Western company? How much money will it cost? How will you split up who is going to pay what? How do you create a joint venture? How do you deal with media issues? How do you market in Africa with 500 different dialects? The list of topics continued, and the nine to 10 hour-per-day workshop kept the lawyers busy for five days.

This project comes at a time of expanding development and relations between East African countries and Israel, especially following Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahus visit to East Africa last month. With boundless new opportunities in East African infrastructure, Israeli companies are continuing to look to do business with Africa. Just two years ago, Israeli entrepreneur Yosef Abramowitz led his company Gigawatt Global in a $23 million energy project in Rwanda. This project, which represented East Africas first commercial-scale solar field, provided seed money and strategic guidance to Rwanda, as well as an 8.5 megawatt solar power plant. The opportunity is great, and geographically, Israel and East Africa are close, [the two countries by airplane are] three or four hours away, said Lustman. He also noted that, this is a time where we see East Africa really opening up to the West, and East African lawyers need that training. Israel has become one of the prime examples of Western companies that are doing business internationally, and Israel is a phenomenal exporter of technology and innovation.

The East African response has been largely positive. There are many Christians in East Africa, and they look at Israel as the Holy Land and the home of religion. They see Jews as connected to God and they love Israel. East Africa is also home to Ethiopia, the land of the lost Jewish tribe in Africa. There is mutual admiration, Lustman said.

In the end, Lustman said he learned from the East African lawyers and hopes they learned from his extensive knowledge of global markets, legal expertise, and business experience. After a long week, Lustman returned home to Israel with confidence that East Africa will continue to open to business with other Western countries and we will see more deals and mutual opportunity flow between the two regions in the near future.

Eliana Rudee is a fellow with the Haym Salomon Center and the author of the Israel Girl column for JNS.org. Her bylines have been featured in USA Today, Forbes, and The Hill.
Children peering out from a doorway as armed soldiers patrol outside their school in the Jewish quarter of the Marais district in Paris, France, Jan. 13, 2015.

PARIS (JTA)-Twenty-five years after he graduated from a public high school in the French capital, Stephane Tayar recalls favorably his time in one of the world's most thorough education systems.

As for many other French Jews his age, the state-subsidized upbringing has worked out well for Tayar, a 43-year-old communications and computers specialist. Eloquent but down to earth, he seems as comfortable discussing the complexities of French society as he is adept at fighting-curses, threats and all-for his motorcycle's place in the brutal traffic here.

"You learn to get along with all kinds of people-Muslims, Christians, poor, rich," Tayar said in recalling his school years. "You debate, you study, you get into fistfights. It's a pretty round education."

But when the time came for Tayar and his wife to enroll their own boy and girl, the couple opted for Jewish institutions-part of a network of dozens of private establishments with state recognition, hefty tuition and student bodies that are made up almost exclusively of Jews.

"Enrolling a Jewish kid into a public school was normal when I was growing up," Tayar said in a recent interview as he waited with two helmets in hand to pick up his youngest from her Jewish elementary school in eastern Paris. "Nowadays forget it; no longer realistically possible. Anti-Semitic bullying means it would be too damaging for any Jewish kid you put there."

This common impression and growing religiosity among Jews in France are responsible for the departure from public schools of tens of thousands of young French and Belgian Jews, who at a time of unprecedented sectarian tensions in their countries are being brought up in a far more insular fashion than previous generations.

Whereas 30 years ago the majority of French Jews enrolled their children in public schools, now only a third of them do so. The remaining two-thirds are divided equally between Jewish schools and private schools that are not Jewish, including Catholic and Protestant institutions, according to Francis Kalifat, the newly elected president of the CRIF umbrella group of French Jewish communities.

The change has been especially dramatic in the Paris area, which is home to some 350,000 Jews, or an estimated 65 percent of French Jewry.

"In the Paris region, there are virtually no more Jewish pupils attending public schools," said Kalifat, attributing their absence to "a bad atmosphere of harassment, insults and assaults" against Jews because of their ethnicity, and to the simultaneous growth of the Jewish education system.

Whereas most anti-Semitic incidents feature taunts and insults that often are not even reported to authorities, some cases involve death threats and armed assaults. In one incident from 2013, several students reportedly cornered a Jewish classmate as he was leaving their public school in western Paris. One allegedly called him a "dirty Jew" and threatened to stab the boy with a knife. A passer-by intervened and rescued the Jewish child.

The increase in schoolyard anti-Semitism in France, first noted in an internal Education Ministry report in 2004, coincided with an increase in anti-Semitic incidents overall. Prior to 2000, only a few dozen incidents were recorded annually in France. Since then, however, hundreds have been reported annually. Many attacks-and a majority of violent ones-are committed by people with a Muslim background, who target Jews as such or as payback for Israel's actions in what is known as the "new anti-Semitism."

In 2012, payback for Israel's actions in Gaza was the stated motivation of a jihadist who killed three children and a rabbi at a Jewish school in Toulouse. Since then, Jewish institutions across Europe and French Jewish schools especially have been protected by armed guards-most often soldiers toting automatic rifles.

In neighboring Belgium, the Belgian League Against Anti-Semitism has documented multiple incidents that it said were rapidly making Belgian public schools "Jew-free." Some blamed Belgian schools for being more reluctant than their French counterparts to punish pupils for anti-Semitic behavior.

The latest incident there involved a 12-year-old boy at a public school outside Brussels. Classmates allegedly sprayed him with deodorant cans in the shower to simulate a gas chamber. The boy's mother said it was an elaborate prank that also caused him burns from the deodorant nozzles.

In April, another Jewish mother said a public school in the affluent Brussels district of Uccle was deliberately ignoring systematic anti-Semitic abuse of her son, Samuel, in order to hide it. She enrolled him specifically at a non-Jewish school because she did not want him to be raised parochially, the mother said, but she had to transfer him to a Jewish school due to the abuse.

In addition to charting anti-Semitism among students, watchdogs in France and Belgium are seeing for the first time in decades a growing number of incidents involving teachers-as victims and perpetrators.

Last month, the Education Ministry in France began probing a high school teacher who shared with her students anti-Semitic conspiracy theories on Facebook-including ones about the clout of the Jewish lobby in the United States and another about French President Francois Hollande's Jewish roots (he has none).

In 2012, a teacher from a suburb of Lyon said she was forced to resign after her bosses learned that she had suffered anti-Semitic abuse by students. Days later, two teenagers were arrested near Marseilles on suspicion of setting off an explosion near a teacher who had reported receiving anti-Semitic threats at school.

The atmosphere is pushing many French Jewish parents to leave for Israel, which is seeing record levels of immigration from France. Since 2012, 20,000 Jews have made the move. Their absence is already being felt in Jewish schools and beyond, said Kalifat, because "the people who are leaving are exactly the people who are involved in the Jewish community."

Some of those who left were responsible for developing France's Jewish education system long before anti-Semitism became a daily reality for French Jews, said Kalifat. More than 30 years ago he enrolled his own two children in a Jewish school "not because of anti-Semitism, which was not a problem back then, but simply to give them a more Jewish education," he said.

Jewish immigrants from North Africa to France had a major role in the growth of Jewish schools from a handful in the 1950s and '60s to the formation of Jewish education networks with dozens of institutions, said Kalifat-himself an Algeria-born Jew and the first North African Sephardi to be elected CRIF president.

Arriving in a country where a quarter of the Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, the Jewish newcomers from former colonies of France were more traditional and religious than many French-born Jews.

"They developed all sectors of Jewish life, but Jewish schools more than anything," Kalifat said.

The effort has paid off in several ways. Last year, Jewish schools topped two French media rankings of the country's approximately 4,300 high schools. One was a Chabad institution; the other was part of the more liberal Alliance network.

Some French Jews, including Yeshaya Dalsace, a Conservative rabbi from Paris, say the rise of Orthodox religious schools and other institutions is part of a trend toward insularity that comes at the expense of openness at a time when Jews should be more engaged in French society than ever.

But to Tayar, the growth of Jewish schools amid anti-Semitism is a much-needed silver lining.

"That parents like me effectively can't send their children to public schools is tragic," he said. "The only positive aspect I can see here is that anti-Semitic hatred drives us to make the financial sacrifice that will raise a generation that has much more Jewish culture and knowledge than our own."
The Turkish government ship Lady Leyla in Mersin before being sent to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza following the completion of the reconciliation deal between Turkey and Israel, July 1, 2016.

JERUSALEM (JTA)-Israel and Turkey ought to be friends, geopolitically speaking.

As Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan put it in January: "Israel needs a country like Turkey in this region. We, too, should admit that we need a country like Israel."

But the regional powers often can't seem to make it work.

In 2010, Turkey cut ties with Israel over its deadly military raid of the Gaza-bound Mavi Marmara flotilla. And this week, days after the Turkish parliament ratified a reconciliation agreement to restore bilateral relations with Israel, the states traded recriminations over Israel's bombardment Sunday of Hamas targets in Gaza.

Yet if Israel and Turkey can keep from quarreling, they each have much to gain.

"The situation for the past six years wasn't good for either of us, Turkey or Israel, and eventually everyone realized we should repair the damage. So that's what happened," David Kushner, professor emeritus of Middle Eastern history at the University of Haifa, told JTA. "I think most people actually welcome this new phase. It may not bring back the intimacy of the past, but both countries realize their interests are common, and that's what counts in international relations."

Israel and Turkey are to exchange ambassadors in the coming days, as per the reconciliation deal. Here are three good reasons they shouldn't bring them home and return to their standoff anytime soon.
The Amos-6 satellite, Israel's largest ever, and the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on which it is perched go up in flames after the rocket exploded on the launch pad during a static fire test at a launch facility on Florida's Atlantic coast, September 1.

(JTA)-A rocket that was scheduled to launch an Israeli communications satellite into space exploded on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral in Florida.

The unmanned SpaceX rocket reportedly was in the midst of routine fueling test for Saturday's scheduled launch when it exploded on Thursday morning. The explosion was felt throughout the NASA facility and for several miles around, The Associated Press reported. Dark smoke could be seen hanging in the sky over the blast site.

SpaceX is a private aerospace company found by Jewish entrepreneur, engineer and inventor Elon Musk.

The rocket was scheduled to hoist into orbit the Amos 6 satellite, built by Israel Aerospace Industries and owned by Spacecom Ltd. in partnership with Eutelsat Communications of France. It was expected to operate for 16 years in part on behalf of Facebook and bring Internet connectivity to sub-Saharan Africa and television service to providers in Europe and the Middle East. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the project in June 2015.

The loss of the satellite could also harm Israel's space program and some of its commerical projects.

The satellite costs about $300 million. It was destroyed in the explosion, SpaceX said.

Zuckerberg was in Kenya on Thursday in meetings about the Internet program when he heard about the explosion, which could delay the initiative by several years.

He said in a Facebook post: "As I'm here in Africa, I'm deeply disappointed to hear that SpaceX's launch failure destroyed our satellite that would have provided connectivity to so many entrepreneurs and everyone else across the continent.

"Fortunately, we have developed other technologies like Aquila that will connect people as well. We remain committed to our mission of connecting everyone, and we will keep working until everyone has the opportunities this satellite would have provided."
Milan Chatterjee, the former president of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Graduate Students Association and third-year law student, informed UCLA that he would be leaving the school due to a "hostile and unsafe campus climate" fostered by Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) groups.

"It's really unfortunate," Chatterjee told the Los Angeles Jewish Journal. "I love UCLA, I think it's a great school and I have a lot of friends there. It has just become so hostile and unsafe I can't stay there anymore."

While he was student president, Chatterjee, who is Indian-American and a Hindu, made the distribution of funds from the Graduate Students Association (GSA) for a school diversity event contingent on its sponsors not being associated with the BDS movement.

This move brought protests from BDS supporters, and a June 2016 investigation by the UCLA Discrimination Prevention Office (DPO) concluded that Chatterjee violated school policy requiring a neutral viewpoint on the distribution of funds.

In a statement, UCLA spokesman Ricardo Vazquez expressed disappointment over Chatterjee's decision to leave but stood by the DPO's judgement.

"Although we regret learning that Milan Chatterjee has chosen to finish his legal education at a different institution, UCLA firmly stands by its thorough and impartial investigation, which found that Chatterjee violated the university's viewpoint neutrality policy," the Aug. 31 statement read.
Russia's unprecedented move last week of dispatching warplanes to bomb targets in Syria through an Iranian airbase may have Israeli officials worried.

The move shows growing cooperation between Russia and Iran, Israel's biggest foe in the Middle East in recent years, and a regime that, like Russia, has been working to maintain the rule of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

On Aug. 22, Russian and Iranian officials announced that Russia's use of the Iranian base has ended. Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Bahram Qasemi, told the Tasnim news agency that Russia's operation from the Iranian base "is finished for now." However, although Russia's Foreign Ministry confirmed this, it also stressed that if Iran agrees, Russia could use the base again "depending on the situation" in Syria.

Although Russia announced the withdrawal of its forces from Syria back on March 14, the Kremlin has continued its activity on the ground, Vera Michlin-Shapir, a Neubauer research associate at Israel's Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), told JNS.org.

Russia dispatched its long-range warplanes to bomb targets in Syria through an Iranian airbase near Hamadan, located about 175 miles southwest of Tehran. Hamadan is also home to the ancient Tomb of Esther and Mordechai, a major pilgrimage site for Iranian Jews. Significantly, this is the first time the Islamic Republic has allowed another nation to conduct a military operation from inside its borders since the 1979 revolution. The planes dropped bombs on the Syrian provinces of Deir al-Zour, Idlib and Aleppo.

Russia "kept its support from the air to the [Syrian President Bashar al-Assad] Assad coalition throughout the past few months," Michlin-Shapir said. "It's not surprising that Russia still helps Assad in Aleppo, although Russia's recent operations from Iran are a novelty in this campaign and probably meant to antagonize the U.S."

As JNS.org reported in March, Russia has long been an ally of the Syrian government dating back to the Cold War. Russia's President Vladimir Putin entered the Syrian civil war in the fall of 2015, claiming it would be attacking terror groups like the Islamic State. But reports indicated Russian forces were largely targeting Syrian rebel groups battling the Syrian government.

Then, in March, Putin made a surprise announcement that he would withdraw the main part of his forces from Syria, though allowing some to remain at Russia's naval base in Tartus and its Hmeimim airbase near Latakia.

The withdrawal announcement was simply a facade and geared towards Russia's domestic audience, said Anna Borshchevskaya, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

"Putin has purposefully presented the Syria campaign as very clean, virtually casualty-free, and limited," Borshchevskaya told JNS.org. "After his announcement of his so-called withdrawal, Syria virtually disappeared from the news in Russia, but its operations continued, and reports showed that more Russian weaponry was coming into Syria."

Also, the launch of the Russian bomber planes from Hamadan was not surprising.

"Putin appears to be building a bloc to confront the West in the Middle East, and though he says he wants to be friends with everyone in the region, in practice, his policy has more of a pro-Shia tilt," Borshchevskaya said.

Putin also wants to reduce Western influence in the Middle East by stopping what he sees as a Western tendency to orchestrate regime changes through "color revolutions, Arab Spring protests, and by supporting protests against Putin inside Russia. From his perspective, he is being pre-emptive. And he wants to appear most of all as a great world leader," she added.

When it comes to Russia's apparent growing closeness to Iran, the two nations seem to have a common interest in disrupting U.S. influence in the Middle East. Russia may also hope to take advantage Aof economic opportunities in Iran, now that sanctions from the nuclear deal have been lifted. Both Russia and Iran have large reserves of gas and may also be interested in a partnership on that front. There are, however, key differences. Experts warn that such rapprochement may wane. Borshchevskaya expressed concern that in the long term, it's unclear how well Russia can continue to balance the Sunni-Shia Muslim alliances in the region.

Experts also agree that while Russia and Iran are both interested in keeping Assad in power, their reasons are different. Iran wants to keep the Assad regime because it allows it to send the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah arms and ammunition. Russia wants to maintain its economic and security interests in the region, especially by maintaining its bases in Syria.

"While Moscow is looking for a secular regime, Tehran is looking for a religious regime, or at least a regime which supports the Shiite aspirations of Iran," Ofer Israeli, an international security policy and Middle East expert at the National Security Studies Center (NSSC) of the University of Haifa, told JNS.org.

Meanwhile, Israel has stayed out of the Syrian conflict, except by providing medical and humanitarian treatment for civil war wounded Syrians, who are able to escape and cross the border into Israel. In July, Israel's government also authorized the delivery of humanitarian aid into Syrian territory near its border.

Yet Israel and Syria are enemy nations, and the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) keeps a close eye on Israel's border with the country. The IDF has also targeted military targets within Syria relating to Hezbollah, which is also fighting with Assad in Syria and is supported by Iran. From a strategic standpoint, the Israeli government may fear that Russia's intervention in Syria, and now the apparent collaboration with Iran on this front, could strengthen both Hezbollah and Iran's influence in the region.

Despite such concerns, however, Russia and Israel have been developing their own strategic cooperation in the region. In June, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with Putin in Moscow, where the two discussed issues such as the fight against global terror, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and the Syrian civil war.

Russia's interest in Israel has a lot to do with the more than one million Russian speakers living in Israel, as well as the two countries sharing strong economic ties, Borshchevskaya said.

"Putin also inserted himself in the [Middle East] Quartet in an effort to present himself as an impartial peacemaker, though in practice he tends to take a more pro-Palestinian position," she said. "Most of all, Putin wants to appear important and to stick a finger in the eye of the West. He will probably work to reassure the Israelis that this incident won't damage Russia's relations with Israel, but it will certainly raise many questions in Jerusalem."

Yet, in the wake of reports that Russian jets have fired at Israeli jets patrolling the Syria-Israel border, Israel and Russia have also been increasingly collaborating to prevent either country from inadvertent attacks.

Although Israel and Russia have established a successful dialogue to avoid unnecessary clashes in Syria, "one should not expect that this would fundamentally change Russia's policies in the Middle East," the INSS's Michlin-Shapir warned.

"Israel is looking for a coordination with Russia for keeping safe its pilots while they are flying near Russian fighters in Syria," Israeli of the NSSC told JNS.org. "More than that, Jerusalem is also looking for more collaboration with Moscow in any future settlement in Syria, with or without Assad."

Israel's foreign ministry spokesperson, when contacted by JNS.org, declined to comment on the implications for Israeli interests in the region or for Israel's relationship with Russia.

Israeli, of the NSSC, believes that the departure of Russian bomber planes from the Iranian does not have direct influence on the relationship between Israel and Russia in the short term. "In the long run however, [this incident] may tighten Russia-Iran relationship and that may damage Israel," he said.

For now, because Israel, as other Western allies, perceive a Western retreat from the region, it simply has fewer options, other than expanding a strategic relationship with Russia, Borshchevskaya said.
(JTA)-When Vladimir Putin grabbed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, the Russian president claimed it was to protect minorities from anti-Semitic fascists whom Putin maintained were behind the revolution that year that ousted his ally in Kiev, former President Viktor Yanukovych.

But a physicist named Josef Zissels, who heads one of the groups representing Ukraine's fractured Jewish community of 350,000, wasn't buying it.

In hundreds of media briefings and interviews, Zissels called the revolution "an expression of the Ukrainian people's desire for independence, Western democracy and an end to the corruption by sellout leaders," as he put it at one news conference in Kiev in 2014.

That defense of the revolution, coming from a former political prisoner who spent nearly 10 years in a Soviet prison, severely undermined Putin's narrative.

Two years later, Zissels finds himself at the center of another controversy that confounds good guy-bad guy narratives in Eastern Europe, especially when it comes to anti-Semitism.

Unlike other Ukrainian Jewish leaders who remained neutral as they waited for the dust to settle on the revolution, Zissels emerged as a proud pro-revolution nationalist. Distinguishing himself from other Jewish leaders who used their personal wealth to gain influence, Zissels, a poker-faced man with a wry sense of humor and modest means, accused anti-revolution Jews of "thinking with their pockets."

Two years on, however, even Zissels is confessing his discomfort at the post-revolution government's controversial veneration of local pro-Nazi collaborators-amid an explosion of nationalist and anti-Russian sentiment-who were responsible for the murder of countless Jews and Poles during World War II.

In Ukraine, that means the rehabilitation of "heroes" like Stepan Bandera, who last month had a street named after him in Kiev; Symon Petliura, a 1920s anti-Semitic statesman who in May was commemorated on public television, and Roman Shukhevych, a militia leader who will also be honored with a street name in Kiev.

Such veneration has deepened divisions among Ukrainian Jews and heightened their concern over the government's commitment to democratic values.

"These are not my heroes," Zissels, the head of the Vaad organization of Ukrainian Jews, told JTA during a recent interview. "They're being honored not for anti-Semitic crimes, but for their fighting for Ukrainian independence against Russia. And still I don't like the naming of streets after them, which has divided Ukrainians and Ukrainian Jews.

"Unfortunately," he added, "most Ukrainians do like it and the Jewish minority, or any other ethnic minority, should not interfere with the choice of the Ukrainian people as they name their national heroes."

Speaking out against this trend, Zissels said, "can and will serve Russian propaganda."

Nearly all of Ukraine's mainstream political Jewish groups share Zissels' unease over the veneration of Bandera and Shukhevych. During the war, the two served as leaders, respectively, of OUN and UPA, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. Their men butchered thousands of Jews and Poles, including women and children, while fighting alongside Nazi Germany against the Red Army and communists.

Unlike Zissels, however, other leaders are willing to publicly denounce this trend as Jews.

Last month, more than 20 Ukrainian Jewish groups published a statement harshly condemning the state's honoring of UPA and OUN leaders. Such efforts, they said, are a form of "Holocaust denial" that erases "from our shared history the tragic pages connected with the anti-Semitic activities" of the militias. Zissels' Vaad did not sign the declaration.

The salutes for these militiamen and others in Ukraine is occurring amid similar debates across Central and Eastern Europe. Fear of Russian aggression, nostalgia and, at times, naked anti-Semitism are inspiring similarly nationalistic gestures in Hungary, which is rehabilitating figures like the Nazi collaborator Miklos Horthy; Lithuania, where the pro-Nazi former ruler Juozas Ambrazevicius-Brazaitis is treated as a national hero, and other countries.

But the issue is especially volatile and disconcerting to Jews in Ukraine, a binational state that is home to Europe's second-largest Jewish population.

Venerating pro-Nazi and anti-Soviet leaders heightens tensions between the ethnic Ukrainian majority and ethnic Russian minority in a politically unstable country suffering an economic crisis. Ongoing fighting in the east between government troops and Russian-backed rebels only adds to the sense of doom. Jews prefer not to be caught between a government that rewrites the past and a Russian antagonist that claims to act in the name of anti-fascism.

During and after the revolution, anti-Semitic incidents have remained rare in Ukraine, where on average only 20 have been reported in recent annual tallies-a total similar to the one recorded in neighboring Russia and a fraction of the annual count in Western European countries with comparable Jewish communities such as France and the United Kingdom.

Ukraine also has a Jewish prime minister, Vlodymir Groysman, who is widely popular.

But "the concern here is that in post-revolution Ukraine, these murderers serve as the cornerstone for a new national narrative," said Boruch Gorin, an Odessa-born Chabad rabbi who serves as the chairman of Moscow's main Jewish museum and editor in chief of the Jewish weekly L'Chaim.

"Now Ukrainian officials are explaining away the UPA's anti-Semitic nature," he said. "But in the future, it will come to light, it will be quoted and it will, inevitably, mainstream anti-Semitic hate."

Eduard Dolinsky, the director of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee and a critic of the government's honoring of UPA and like-minded groups, sees "a clear connection between initiatives to honor Bandera and his kind, and other forms of disrespect of the Holocaust." He noted a traveling zoo being set up recently on a Holocaust killing site in Kovel, 260 miles northeast of Kiev, despite preparations in the capital to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Babi Yar massacre by the Nazis and local collaborators.

In a further twist, the honors conferred on Bandera-who was killed by the KGB in 1959-and other nationalists with a dark past are popularizing theories that Jews in Ukraine were murdered not only because of their race or religion, but as payback for their presumed support for communism and complicity in Soviet crimes, Dolinsky warned.

"Astonishingly, this false narrative is being helped by some Jewish organizations," he added, referring to Tkuma, Ukraine's only Holocaust museum. Located in the eastern city of Dnepropetrovsk, the museum in recent years has explored such sensitive themes as Jewish participation in-and suffering from-communist repression against Ukrainians.

Igor Schupak, a Jewish Ukrainian historian and the director of Tkuma, defended the discussion of such subjects, saying they help bring closure to issues connected with Ukraine's bloody wartime past.

Schupak, like Zissels, maintains that honoring Bandera is "the right of the Ukrainian people." He also said he thinks it "necessary to speak about the participation of Jews in the implementation of mass repression in 1930s along with the Ukrainians, Russians, Latvians, etc."

Zissels, who lost one uncle to the Nazis and another to communists, called it "inappropriate" to look into Jewish complicity in Soviet crimes because "communist repression was based on ideology, not ethnicity."

Notwithstanding, Zissels said he has lived much of his life "on streets named after communist torturers and killers," some of whom were anti-Semites.

While many Ukrainian Jews do not like this fact, he added, it did not prevent Ukraine "from becoming a country where Jews are visible and successful in every industry and sector of society."
2 dead, 5 missing in collapse of Tel Aviv construction site

JERUSALEM (JTA)At least two construction workers are dead and five reportedly are missing following the collapse of a tiered parking structure under construction in Tel Aviv on Monday morning.

Two workers who had been trapped under the rubble for hours were pulled out early Monday evening.

The search-and-rescue effort for the missing workers, who are believed to be trapped, was expected to last through the night, The Times of Israel reported.

At least 24 workers, Israelis and Palestinians, were injured in the collapse. The two dead are reported to be Palestinians.

Some 18 construction workers were rescued in the hour after the collapse late Monday morning; structural failure is being cited as the cause of the accident.

Three workers who had been trapped underground were rescued earlier after firefighters dug through rubble and sand to reach them, according to reports. One of the workers was seriously injured.

A Tel Aviv Police spokesman said there is danger that the structure, in the northern part of the city, will collapse further. Initially the accident was blamed on the collapse of a crane.

The Israel Defense Forces also sent a K-9 unit to the scene to help locate missing workers and others who may be trapped in the rubble, according to reports.

The parking garage, for which construction began in November 2014 and was to be completed at the beginning of next year, was slated to have four levels.

Israeli official: Chances of finding construction workers alive under rubble diminishing

JERUSALEM (JTA)Five construction workers remained missing and believed trapped underground nearly 12 hours after the collapse of a tiered parking structure under construction in Tel Aviv that killed two and injured at least 24.

One trapped worker reportedly had been communicating with rescue workers, but the communication ceased at about 8:30 p.m. Monday, The Times of Israel reported, citing Dudi Mizrahi, the head of the Israeli armys Home Front Commands Search and Rescue Unit.

Earlier, the Home Front Command said the locations of the five missing workers had been approximated and rescue workers were monitoring the positions.

Five other workers were pulled from the rubble throughout Monday afternoon and early evening.

Mizrahi said the search-and-rescue operation could go on for days. He said the chances of finding anyone alive was less likely with each passing hour, according to The Times of Israel.

One of the dead has been identified as a worker from the Ukraine and the other is reported to be Palestinian, though he has not yet been identified.

Some 18 construction workers were rescued in the hour after the collapse late Monday morning; engineering failure is being cited as the cause of the accident.

Some 300 Israeli army search-and-rescue personnel are involved in the search, as well as 160 rescue workers from the fire department. A K-9 unit also is on the scene to assist in locating the missing workers.

Netanyahu considering meeting with Abbas under Putins auspices

JERUSALEM (JTA)Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he is considering meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas under the auspices of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Netanyahu in a meeting Monday morning with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov, Putins special envoy for the Middle East, discussed the Putin proposal to host a face-to-face meeting between Netanyahu and Abbas in Moscow, according to a statement from the Prime Ministers Office.

Netanyahu is reviewing the proposal and considering the timing of a possible meeting, according to the statement. He told Bogdanov that he is always ready to meet with Abbas directly and without preconditions.

In late August, Abbas office said the Palestinians were ready to participate in a peace initiative.

The Palestinians favor the French peace initiative launched in June at a one-day summit in Paris of foreign ministers from two dozen countries aimed at rebooting peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians, who were not invited to the event. The ministers proposed an international conference to further talks between the two sides by the end of the year without setting a date.

Israel has balked at the initiative, saying it enables the Palestinians to continue to avoid the direct talks Israel wants and compromise.

Abbas and Netanyahu last met officially in 2010, but it is believed that since then they have held secret meetings.

Husband of slain Israeli mother of 6 urges families to adopt

JERUSALEM (JTA)The husband of Dafna Meir, a mother of six who was stabbed to death by a Palestinian assailant in her West Bank home, urged people not to be afraid to adopt.

Natan Meir wrote a Facebook post early Friday morning reflecting on the first day of first grade for one of his foster sons. Prior to going to school, he took the boy to visit his foster mothers grave.

Dafna Meir, 38, was a mother of four and foster mother of two young children who was stabbed to death in January at the entrance of her home. She was fighting off her attacker in what is believed to have been an attempt to save three of her children in the house.

Yesterday I took this wonderful boy to mommys grave, for the first time since the murder that took place before his very eyes, Meir wrote on Facebook. The grave of a mother who chose him to be her son, and who in her final moments fought the terrorist and saved him.

He described how the boy tried to move the gravestone in order to help his mother get out.

I think God shed many tears yesterday. I did too. This child is so innocent. He just wants mommy to read him another story. So simple, yet so impossible, Meir wrote.

He said his children have helped him to cope with the brutal murder of his wife.

The essence of evil visited my home eight months ago. A moment of evil and afterwards a river of tears, pain and longing, Meir wrote. While on the other hand, the best part of the world is in my house every day, every hour. Innocence and purity that never ends. Difficult and challenging work that is an incalculable privilege. If youre looking for love, take a child. There are a lot of children who are waiting for a loving family.

Meir told the Ynet news website that after he posted the Facebook message, he received a call from a family that decided they wanted to adopt and called to ask him for guidance. He said he was pleased that the post accomplished something.

Israel attacks Syrian target in response to mortar fired on Golan

JERUSALEM (JTA)The Israel Defense Forces attacked a Syrian army artillery target in response to a mortar from Syria that landed in Israeli territory on the Golan Heights.

The mortar shell that exploded Sunday evening in Israeli territory was errant rebel fire from Syrias civil war. No injuries were reported and no warning sirens were triggered.

The IDF holds the Syrian government accountable for this clear breach of Israeli sovereignty, and will continue to act in order to safeguard Israel, the army said in a statement.

A senior Syrian military official told the official Syrian news agency, according to Ynet, that two missiles from Israel hit in the area of the village of Khdeir and damage was caused. The source did not report any injuries.

Several stray rockets and shells have landed in Israel since the start of the civil war in Syria more than five years ago. The IDF frequently retaliates by firing at the source of the shells.

French Jewrys president appears to back burkini ban

(JTA)Ending a long and conspicuous silence on the burkini ban in France, the president of the umbrella group of French Jews appeared to support the ban, saying he favored limiting political-religious symbols.

In an interview published Monday on the Actualite Juive Jewish news website, Francis Kalifat of CRIF for the first time directly addressed the ban last month by 30 French municipalities on the full-body swimsuit favored by Muslim women seeking modesty.

Kalifat said lawmakers should consider differentiating religious symbols from political-religious symbols. Radical and sectarian Islam and its fanatics, he said, are looking for ways today to destabilize the French republic with the aim of vanquishing the societal model we inhabit today.

He also said: This polemic will, of course, also affect the Jewish community.

Religious Orthodox women also adhere to clothing deemed modest, though few wear burkinis to the beach in France.

Kalifat has resisted calls to speak against the divisive ban, which a court on Aug. 26 ruled was illegal, in solidarity with French Muslims.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has defended the ban, saying the wearing of burkinis on French beaches was part of a political project... to perpetuate female servitude. Critics of the ban have argued it infringes on the very liberties its supporters say it is designed to protect.

The burkini controversy reawakened the debate on the wearing of religious symbols in public in France, where a law banning face-covering clothing such as the burka was passed in 2010. Critics of such legislation say it opens the door to religious persecution, including of Jewish men who wear kippot and women who cover their hair.

In the interview, Kalifat reiterated his scathing criticism of Jean Luc Melenchon, a far-left politician who compared the ban to the persecution of Jews during the Holocaust. The comparison, which Kalifat called indecent, prompted him to make his first indirect reference about the burkini bans two weeks after they were put in place.

Whereas Kalifat expressed an opinion that can be interpreted as supportive of the ban, a prominent Paris rabbi who early on told JTA that he supported the ban outright has walked back the statements, claiming they were taken out of context.

Asked by JTA on Aug. 23 whether he personally supported the burkini bans, Rabbi Moshe Sebbag, who heads the Grand Synagogue of Paris, said: Yes, because you see that going with it [a burkini] is not innocent, its sending a message.

The mayors who banned it, he said, understood this is not about womens liberty to dress modestly but a statement as to who will rule here tomorrow.

But in an interview published Thursday by the Forward, Sebbag said: I think my words were taken out of context. I was trying to explain this situation from a political level and how politicians in France view our current situation.

He added: I understand where the mayor is coming from, but it doesnt mean that I agree with him. Passing this kind of law is unacceptable. It just screams Islamophobia. But from our current climate and environment, it is understandable.

Daughter of late Rep. Tom Lantos returns state award from Hungary

(JTA)The daughter of the late Rep. Tom Lantos is returning a state award to Hungary to protest the same award being presented to a nationalist journalist described as racist and anti-Semitic.

Dr. Katrina Lantos Swett joins about 100 other Hungarians or people of Hungarian heritage in returning the Knights Cross of the Order of Meritto protest the recognition last month of the right-wing journalist and columnist Zsolt Bayer for his writings.

Lantos Swett was honored with the award in 2009 for establishing the Budapest-based Tom Lantos Institute, which focuses on minority rights. Tom Lantos, who served as a Democratic congressman for California, died in 2008. A native of Hungary, he was the only Holocaust survivor to serve in the U.S. Congress.

Lantos Swett told The Associated Press that she had hoped to leave her Knights Cross award to her children, but could not keep it after it was awarded to Bayer.

Andras Heisler, the president of Hungarys main Jewish umbrella organization, Mazsihisz, returned his award last month. He described Bayer as a man who is a racist, who is an anti-Semite, who is polluting Hungary with his destructive sentiments and his burning hatred of the Roma, who is vigilantly protecting the traditions of the Hungarian extremist right, keeping alive feelings of fear and hatred.

I do not wish to belong to any community to which Zsolt Bayer belongs, even virtually, Heisler said.

Bayer, a co-founder of the ruling Fidesz party, has long angered Jews and others with his articles and op-eds in right-wing publications. In April, the Israeli ambassador to Hungary protested to the editor of the Magyar Hirlap newspaper, saying that Bayers columns openly advocate anti-Semitic sentiments and incite against the Jewish People and the State of Israel.

Lviv opens Jewish memorial on former historic synagogue

MOSCOW (JTA)The city of Lviv in western Ukraine inaugurated a controversial memorial monument on part of the former Golden Rose Synagogue complex.

On Sunday, designated the European Day of Jewish Culture, hundreds attended the unveiling of the Space of Synagogues led by Mayor Andriy Sadovy, despite legal action against the monument by Meylakh Sheykhet, Ukraines director of the Union of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union.

The project, which is supported by some Jews in Lviv, including the Chesed-Arieh association, features a memorial space with commemorative stone slabs on one area of the 16th-century Golden Rose complex, which the Nazis largely destroyed in the 1940s.

Started in July 2015, the Space of Synagogues project also includes the controversial cementing of some of the complexs foundations and relics.

Sheykhet objected to the project, calling it a ruse to create a public park at the expense of a Jewish heritage site in a central area of the city. He said the project serves tourist industry interests but falls short of international commemoration standards.

Its a disgrace and a project that sells out on the memory of the murdered, Sheykhet said.

But Sofia Dyak, director of the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe in Lviv, which is leading the project in partnership with the Lviv City Council, defended the project as something dignified that exposes countless Ukrainians to the destruction of Lvivs Jewish community precisely because of its central location.

Sheykhet, who is among a handful of Orthodox Jews living in Lviv, has lobbied for the synagogues reconstruction in a city with a Jewish population of 1,200a vision his critics say is unrealistic. Dyak said the current commemoration project may be expanded in the future, but that right now, something is better than nothing.

In 1939, Lviv was home to 110,000 Jewsa third of its total population.

In 2014, a Ukrainian court issued an injunction against the citys plan to move ahead with designs for memorial projects in three Jewish sites in Lviv, including the Golden Rose Synagogue complex. The designs were selected in 2010 in an international competition. The Higher Economic Court of Ukraine ruled that the plans did not conform to local and international standards and procedures.

But the city obtained permission from the Ministry of Culture to go ahead at Golden Rose with a design similar to the one selected in the competition and by the same German architect, Franz Reschke.

Sheykhet sued again, arguing the project violated the 2014 court ruling. A verdict is expected later this month. He said the courts were deliberately dragging their feet on his lawsuit while the project was being completed.

Dyak rejected the assertion, saying: The project is fully compliant with the law or it would not have existed.

The city also plans to create a memorial park on part of the Old Jewish Cemetery of Lviva plan that Sheykhet has vowed to fight because he and some rabbis believe it would violate religious Orthodox laws against disturbing Jewish graves.

The issue of commemorating sites and individuals connected to the Holocaust is divisive in Ukraine, where anti-Russian sentiment is rife and streets were named recently for pro-Nazi collaborators whose troops killed Jews.

Jewish leaders critical of this development have also spoken out against the perceived desecration of Holocaust sites, including in the city of Kovel, near Lviv, where a traveling zoo was set up this summer atop a mass grave of Jewish Holocaust victims.

German Jewish leaders: Far-right partys strong showing in election a nightmare

(JTA)A far-right party in Germany finished second in voting in the political home state of Chancellor Angela Merkel, ahead of Merkels party, spurring concerns among Jewish leaders in Germany.

Alternative for Germany, known as AfD, with its anti-immigrant and ultranationalist platform, picked up 21 percent of the vote Sunday in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, behind the center-left Social Democratic Party with 31 percent, which retained leadership in the state. Merkels Christian Democratic Union had 19 percent; it was the first time that the AfD surpassed the Christian Democrats in any German state election.

The fact that the right-populist party did so wellwinning 18 seats in the 71-seat legislatureis widely seen as a further indictment of Merkels liberal policy toward accepting refugees from war-torn Muslim countries and has set off alarm bells among Jewish leaders in Germany.

The AfD is not an option for Germany but an indictment of Germany, Josef Schuster, the head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, told the German media after the results came in.

Schuster said it appeared that many voters either did not realize or simply accepted the fact that the AfD had not distanced itself from right-wing extremists.

The fact that a right-wing extremist party that bluntly and disgustingly incites and mobilizes hatred against minorities can rise unchecked in our country is a nightmare come true, said former Central Council President Charlotte Knobloch, who heads the Jewish Community of Munich and Upper Bavaria.

Christian and Muslim leaders expressed similar concerns following Sundays vote.

But Leif-Erik Holm, the AfD party leader in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, told the German media that this might be the beginning of the end of Merkel.

State Governor Erwin Sellering now will have to decide with which party to share powerthe Christian Democrats or the Left Party. All the mainstream parties had already ruled out taking part in a coalition with the AfD.

The party, which was founded in 2013, has seen mounting successes in state elections, and now has seats in nine of Germanys 16 state legislatures. Berlin holds state elections later this month; three additional states will cast ballots in the first half of 2017, followed by national parliamentary elections in September.

The AfD in the state of Baden-Wurttemberg recently suffered an internal split over a member of the legislature, Wolfgang Gedeon, who withdrew from the party faction within months of his election over charges that he had made anti-Semitic comments and belittled the Holocaust in writings.
French politician Marine Le Pen, who is the head of the far-right National Front party.

The refugee crisis, escalating terrorism and dissatisfaction with the political elite are blamed for the current rise of Europe's far-right political parties. Such a revival has not been seen since World War II.

What's uniting the parties is an "imagined Muslim enemy in Europe," and a desire to support and connect with Israel, according to Farid Hafez, a sociology and political science professor at Austria's Salzburg University.

The ideology of Europe's far-right parties is rooted in several things, said Cas Mudde, a Dutch political scientist and an associate professor at the University of Georgia's School for Public and International Affairs.

"The refugee crisis speaks to a fear of aliens taking the native land," Mudde said. "Authoritarianism is a reaction to the terrorism, and the connection made between refugees and terrorism. Populism plays into the European Union and its inability to deal with terrorism and the refugee crisis."

Over the last 17 years, Europe has seen the number of seats for far-right parties double in each election, from 11 percent in 1999 to 22.9 percent in 2014, according to a report by European Parliament research fellow Thilo Janssen.

If the trend continues, the far right could win 37 percent of European Parliament seats in the next election.

Many of these political groups have a history of anti-Semitism. After the fall of the Nazi regime, blatant anti-Semitism lost popularity, and so did the far right, Hafez said.

When large numbers of foreign workers began streaming into Europe in the early 1990s, the far right tried to re-establish prominence through economic nationalism, a feeling of loyalty and pride in their own country. They also felt native-born citizens should be given job preferences and welfare support over non-natives. But their efforts were largely unsuccessful.

However, after 9/11, and in the wake of Muslim refugees flooding into Europe, the far right found its ticket, Islamophobia, according to Ayhan Kaya, director of the European Institute at Istanbul Bilgi University in Turkey. He calls what's happening in Europe "Islamophism" and likens it to the anti-Semitism of the 19th century.

"Muslims have become global scapegoats, blamed for all negative social phenomena, such as illegality, crime, violence, drug abuse, radicalism, fundamentalism," Kaya wrote in a recent paper. "There is a growing fear in Europe that Muslims will demographically take over sooner or later."

Bar-Ilan University professor Amikam Nachmani says Nazi-style rhetoric employed against the Jews is now targeted against Muslims.

He estimates the anti-Muslim hatred increasingly being employed by the far right is a proxy for its longstanding racism and anti-Semitic ideologies.

In France, for example, there were 806 anti-Semitic hate crimes against Jews in 2015, as reported by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA). While attacks against Muslims tripled in volume, the total was only 400, half the number of attacks committed against Jewish people and property.

"The far-right parties claim they want to defend Europe's Judeo-Christian heritage and foundations," said Hafez. "This is a game."

The right wing and Israel, bedfellows?

So why are members of the ruling Likud party in Israel making increasing efforts to engage with the young leadership of conservative parties throughout Europe? The belief, according to Michael Kleiner, president of Likud's tribunal, is that these parties share their ideology.

"This is a bloc that is becoming stronger in the European Parliament," Kleiner told JNS.org. He contends the parties are pro-Israel and have taken steps to clean house, apologizing for their anti-Semitic pasts.

"The fascist party in Italy was taken over by [Gianfranco] Fini," Kleiner said. "He cleaned the platform and made it pro-Israel, pro-Jews and apologized for that part of the platform which was anti-Jewish in the 1930s."

Kleiner has been inviting far-right party leaders to Israel, including representatives from Germany's Christian Democrats, the Danish People's Party, France's National Front and Austria's Freedom Party.

These political groups don't agree with Europe's leftists on Judea and Samaria, the West Bank territories, and refuse to participate in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

"There is no logical reason why these parties should be on a black list," Kleiner said. "They should be treated minimally like any other party in Europe in which we are in touch, including left-wing parties that are pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel and blame us for Hamas shooting at us. Do you know how we look when someone wants our friendship and we reject it for no obvious reason?"

Kleiner does not view the far right as anti-Muslim, but rather anti those Muslims that are not ready to accept what's required by Europe to become upstanding citizens.

Dutch politician and leader of the far-right Party for Freedom (PVV), Geert Wilders. Wilders, who spent time in Israel as a young adult, has been an outspoken supporter of Israel.

Others, like Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, a Likud party member, feel it's not difficult to find indications of extreme, anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic vitriol from within the populist party. After learning of a visit by Austrian party leader Christian Strache to Israel in May, Rivlin said he's "amazed at what appears to be an erosion of our national honor, in the face of a crackpot union with fraudulent voices on the extreme right in parts of Europe." Rivlin was speaking at a ceremony marking the end of Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Mudde said renewed relations make sense from the perspective of Likud and supports Kleiner in his view that the far-right and Likud share a similar vision of the dangerous strength of Islam in the world.

The European left continues to weaken, so these ties could have far-reaching political implications in the future, especially if the right maintains control in Israel, Mudde added.
Dear Editor:

I would like to respond to the staunch advocate of the plight of the poor Palestinians, Linda Gradsteins recent article, Gaza reconstruction proceeding slowly. There is much to be said for the current situation resulting in an almost total lack of reconstruction of the damage caused by their unprovoked attack(s) on Israel.

There are several reasons for the slow show of a desire to rebuild. First, that would not enhance the projected image of the living conditions in Gaza. By maintain the image of poverty, the government of Gaza, Hamas, can weep tears of both outrage and pity for their people.

However, let the truth be known. Not only do the surrounding Arab states not care, they dont give a damn. Trust me, with unemployment as high as 60 to 70 percent for working age men and women, there is no lack of job opportunities to rebuild and improve all aspects of the conditions in Gaza.

Money an issue? No, not really. The U.S. alone provides over $400,000,000 yearly to the Palestinian Authority. This is in addition to the over $150,000,000 contributed to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency ( UNRWA). Add that to what is donated by the European Union, African countries, Asian countries, African countries, South American countries and the little bit from the Arab countries, and you have a lot of working capitol.

So why has this not happened? Like Tevya sang in Fiddler on the Roof, Tradition! Tradition!

Graft, corruption, theft of materials, the diversion of funds for other projects such as the purchase of weapons from Iran, the manufacturing of rockets, the continued construction of tunnels, the rebuilding of Hamas infrastructure and so on.

The least important in this equation are the Palestinian people themselves. Between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas over 35 percent of the potential funds designated for reconstruction get siphoned off.

Until they fix their own leaks, please dont shed any tears for the plight of the poor Palestinians. Peace with Israel would resolve most of these problems.

Laurence Morrell

Maitland
Were taught to honor principles, and there is merit to that principle. But they are also the traps in which disappear decency and good sense.

Those who think and express themselves in absolutes and reject dispute from those who doubt the value of the principles being promoted, risk a lonesome life in politics, where the language of survival and success is nuance.

Fierce opposition to occupation is one of the principles that gets in the way of dialog. Occupation has become a four-letter word pointed at Israel. It is said to be occupying Palestinian territory and thereby not only robbing Palestinians of their patrimony, but creating the major cause of radical Islam and a lack of peace throughout the Middle East.

This could be hilarious if many did not believe it, or at least express the sentiment.

Currently it seems that only some westerners are interested in Palestine, along with the Iranian leadership and an occasional comment from Bashar Assad in need of turning popular concern away from his own problems. A number of Muslim leaders seem to have given up on their Palestinian cousins, either because Palestinians were not able to decide what to take from the several opportunities handed to them, or because those other Muslims have more pressing issues closer to home.

A principled opposition to occupation is relatively new in international relations. Virtually every established country has in its history stories of one or more people occupying land claimed by another. Moreover, the principle is made fuzzy by the failure of a key 1907 Hague enactment to deal with colonialism, and the highly politicized nature of post 1967 proclamations directed against Israel.

Occupation has become a curse to be used in slogans, typically overlooking the several occasions when Palestinians have failed to negotiate, have turned down arguably decent offers, continue to incite hatred of Israel in their media and schools, and make heroes of those who have died while attacking civilians.

The title of one item on an Internet newsletter, The Problem is not Black Lives Matter. Its the Occupation takes off from American Jewish responses to an item published by Black Lives Matter citing Israel as an apartheid state guilty of genocide.

While such nonsense brought accusations of anti-Semitism from a number of prominent American Jews, a JStreet activist elevated Israels occupation of Palestinian land as an equivalent affront to moral sense.

The expansion of settlements, the rightward drift of Israeli politics, the biannual assaults on Gaza, and the festering and aggressive racism that permeates any society that administers a 50-year occupation has led many to conclude that Israel is engulfed in a moral crisis of its own.

After visiting Hebron the first timewhere Israelis and Palestinian neighbors charged with the same crime are tried in different courts under different legal codesI thought this is Jim Crow on steroids.

The authors assignment to Jim Crow on steroids the use of different legal codes in the West Bank reflects his elevation of ideology over the complex realities of the West Bank, and the remnants of Jordanian law that apply to the Palestinians living there. Should Israel apply its own law throughout the area, we could guess that he would be quick to describe yet another form of conquest, even more complete than what currently exists.

The complexity of Israels existence reflects, in no small part, the animosity of outsiders to its existence. The problems apply not only to outer areas of the West Bank, but also to areas made part of Jerusalem almost a half century ago. Opponents note that public services in Jewish areas of the expanded city are far superior to those in the Arab areas, but do not probe the explanation that rests at least partly on the Arabs rejection of Israel, their refusal to participate in municipal elections, and giving up an opportunity to gain power by serving as a balance between contending Jewish parties in local politics. When the municipality has opened post offices and parks in Arab neighborhoods, residents have destroyed the facilities as signs of occupation.

Jews long intellectual history has provided ample opportunities to probe the nuances in law and other principles. Our disputatious character provides one of the sources of anti-Semitism. Its not easy dealing with a people conscious of many ways of viewing issues, and not content with simplistic formulations.

Occupation may seem unfair, but it evolved in the context of Arab aggression and Palestinian refusal to bargain down from demands fixed in 1967, 1948, or earlier.

One can doubt that Israel will agree to turn back history as Palestinians demand. Especially when a number of Muslim governments are showing greater rapprochement with Israel than with Palestine, it is time for Palestinians to consider another way to their future. If not, they risk becoming one of the many forgotten peoples, occupied by others, and claiming priorities that few bother to recognize.

Comments welcome, Irashark@gmail.com.
Recently, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif embarked on a five-nation tour of Latin America to spread the message that Tehrans global influence is on the up.

Zarif is one of those Iranian leaders eagerly embraced as a moderate by the Obama Administration. Like other Iranian officials of his rank, Zarifs room for maneuver is strictly regulated by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Irans Supreme Leader. Still, the notion that he represents a genuinely reformist faction within the Islamic Republic has been a convenient and comforting tool for persuading a skeptical public that Tehran will abide by its international commitments.

Without a leading outside power to put a brake on his activities, or even point out the appalling destruction wreaked by Iran and its allies in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon, Zarif has no reason to delay his charm offensive. As he sees it, the world is finally ready to accept that Iran is, firstly, a pillar of the new, multilateral global order, and secondly, that Iran is a viable commercial partner now that sanctions have essentially been lifted.

Speaking before his plane landed in Cuba, the first stop on a tour that also takes in Nicaragua, Bolivia, Chile and Venezuela, Zarif emphasized the importance of the 60 executives from the Iranian private sector who were accompanying him.

Absent from that description of the trips purpose is the one element for which Iran is renowned in Latin Americathe spread of terrorism and of terror-supporting ideologies. Zarif hinted at these links when he praised the Cuban peopleby which he means the Communist regime still in powerfor resisting the atrocities leveled by the U.S. empire. For his part, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez praised Iran for the success of its foreign policy and reiterated the Communist governments support for all countries to develop nuclear energy with pacific ends.

Not everyone in Washington, D.C., has followed these developments with indifference. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R., Fla.), chair of the House Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa, told the Washington Free Beacon that the timing of Zarifs visit is significant as Iran could use many of these rogue regimes to circumvent remaining sanctions, undermine U.S. interests, and expand the drug trafficking network that helps finance its illicit activities. Tehrans classic playbook is to use cultural centers, new embassies or consulates, or cooperative agreements on various areas to act as facades aimed at expanding Irans radical extremist network.

Its not as if we dont already know the havoc and suffering that same network is capable of inflicting. Iran, after all, was responsible for the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish center in Buenos Aires, the Argentine capital, killing 85 people and wounding hundreds morejust two years after a similar attack on the Israeli embassy in the same city.

Its worth noting that Argentina is not among the countries that Zarif is visiting, and its doubtful he would be welcome there. For more than 20 years, the AMIA case has remained unresolved and not a single Iranian identified by Interpol as involved with the atrocity has been arrested. In fact, for the last two years, that investigation has been diverted as a result of the likely murder of Alberto Nisman, the prosecutor in charge of the case, in January 2015. Nisman was found dead in his apartment just hours before he was due to launch a report charging that the government of former President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner colluded with the Iranians to shield those responsible for the AMIA bombing.

Kirchner was defeated in last years election by the centrist Mauricio Macri, a former mayor of Buenos Aires. Under Macris government, the wheels of Argentine justice have slowly started to turn again, and thats not good news for the Iranians. The Argentine judiciary, amid persistent rumors that Kirchner ordered Nismans assassination, is once more examining both the circumstances of the AMIA bombing as well as Nismans accusations against Kirchner.

Any investigation will inevitably lead back to Tehran, into the highest echelons of the Iranian regime. But Argentina wont be able to secure the extradition of the AMIA suspects without international support.

In the meantime, Iran will continue to back Latin American governments out of favor with their own citizens. Zarifs presence in Venezuela is a clear signal that Iran is intent on maintaining a mini-empire of its own, despite Tehrans protestations about American meddling. Its current leader, Nicolas Maduros policies have brought Venezuela to its knees. Hunger is rampant, crime has reached record levels and hospitals have run out of basic medicines.

Indeed, one look at the sorry state of Venezuelaonce the richest Latin American country, with huge oil reservesshould be enough to persuade the most skeptical observer that an alliance with Iran is part of a package that also includes economic ruin and political repression. But until we take the necessary steps in Latin America, and in other regions vulnerable to Iranian influence, the mullahs have no incentive to pull back.
Its one of the most disturbing photos from Israel that Ive seen in years.

Im referring to last weeks image of the hundreds of Palestinian terrorist weapons captured in Israeli raids. It was enough to send shivers down ones spine. And it revealed more about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than all the panel discussions, research papers, and expert analyses with which we are always being bombarded.

Friends of Israel often complain about what they say is the Israeli Foreign Ministrys inadequate effort to make Israels case to the international community. And those complaints are not entirely without merit. But somebody in the foreign ministrys hasbara division deserves credit for coming up with a simple, yet incredibly effective way of demonstrating what Israel is up against: show their weapons.

Telling the world that hundreds of terrorists have been arrested, or thousands of weapons captured is mind-numbing. Theyre just numbers. The public yawns and turns the page. But recall what the Israelis did after capturing in January 2002 the Karine A, the Palestinian ship seized by Israeli commandos. They didnt just issue a press release about the 50 tons of arms, or the 700,000 rounds of ammunition on board. They actually spread the weapons out, on the ground, for the photographers and television cameras. And they reached as far as the eye and the lens could see.

The images of the Karine A weapons were what exposed and destroyed the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. All his years of pretending to be moderate and peace seeking went up in smoke. The whole world could see, and never forget, the unbelievable arsenal he was trying to smuggle into Palestinian Authority-controlled territory.

In terms of what it revealed about Palestinian intentions, that photo from 2002 was worth a thousand words. And so is last weeks photo.

Israeli security forces captured no less than seven separate Palestinian terrorist weapons storehouses. And then they spread the weapons out so photographers could actually see them.

Rifles. Pistols. Bullets. Knives. Handcuffs.

To shoot Jews. To stab Jews. To handcuff hostages.

And where were the weapons captured? In Bethlehem and Hebron, that is, where the Palestinian Authority rules.

Thats right, the same Palestinian Authority (PA) that is obligated by the Oslo accords to fight terrorists, to put them in jail, to seize their weapons. But once again, the terrorists are manufacturing and storing weapons right under the PAs nose, and they do nothing about it. Even though it has one of the largest per capita security forces in the world, the PA for some reason is unable to find the weapons.

We know from the New York Timesno friend of Israelthe real reason that Israel is forced to go in and do what the PA is supposed to be doing. On March 23, 2014, the Times published a report about Israeli troops entering the Palestinian-ruled area of Jenin in pursuit of terrorists. The reporter needed to explain why it is that the Israelis, and not the PA police, were doing the pursuing. The reason, she said, was that although the Jenin refugee camp is under the full control of the Palestinian Authority, the Palestinian [security forces] did not generally operate in refugee camps, even though those camps are hotbeds of terror activity.

And dont think for a minute that last weeks weapons capture is some isolated incident. The Israeli news media report, although the international news media never report it, that since the beginning of this year, the Israeli Army and security services have uncovered 29 Palestinian terrorist factories.

Twenty-nine! Imagine the quantities of weapons they found. And imagine the kind of terrible slaughter the Palestinians intended to carry out with all those weapons.

Lets be grateful Israels security forces have once again pre-empted the terrorists. But at the same time, lets learn an important lesson from this latest episode: the Palestinian Authority has never acted seriously against the terrorists, and never will. The PA regards the terrorists as martyrs and heroes, and it says so every day in its newspapers, radio shows, and television programs. It allows them to operate freely, and sometimes even directly assists them.

Last weeks photograph proves it yet again.

Stephen M. Flatow, an attorney in New Jersey, is the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995.
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Soon after the 2014 general election, Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav candidly told journalists that his party helped Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi win their seats as he did not want the BJP to win in the state.

While Sonias win from Rae Bareli was certain, Rahul had faced a massive challenge from Bharatiya Janata Partys (BJP) Smriti Irani in his family constituency of Amethi.

But less than a year later, Mulayam walked out of the grand alliance that he had built in Bihar to defeat the communal forces, only because Janata Dal (United) leader Nitish Kumar had quietly met the Gandhis in Delhi.

The political chapter on the uncanny relationship between Mulayam and the Gandhis has several pages of mistrust, beginning from the days of late prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1990.

A recap: Mulayam was heading a minority government, supported by the Congress. While talks were on for an electoral alliance between the two parties, Mulayam woke up the then governor Satya Narayan Reddy at 4.30am to recommend the dissolution of the house. By the time Congress leader ND Tiwari reached Raj Bhawan, the assembly had been dissolved. Mulayam continued as a caretaker chief minister.

Their love and hate relationship has continued till date. While Mulayam talks about betrayal and misuse of the CBI against him and his family by the UPA government in a disproportionate assets case, Congress leaders accuse him of stalling Sonias ascent to power in 1999.

Now the big question: Can the Gandhi and the Yadav scions remove the deep mistrust their seniors have and build an electoral partnership?

Politics is all about imponderables, with no permanent friends and foes. Rahul and Akhilesh may take their friendship beyond personal to politics, says a political expert.

Apparently, both the scions have moved away from the animosity of the 2009 Lok Sabha elections when Rahul had aggressively campaigned in Ferozabad Lok Sabha constituency to defeat Akhileshs wife Dimple Yadav. She later created history by winning the Kannauj seat, vacated by her husband after becoming the chief minister in 2012, unopposed.

And in 2014, Congress was the first to announce its decision of not contesting from Kannauj where Dimple was seeking a re-election. In response, SP did not field any candidate against the Gandhis though Akhilesh had taken his revenge by defeating the Congress in their bastions in the 2012 assembly polls.

Soon after Akhilesh said on Thursday that he and Rahul could be friends, speculations have been rife over a possible Congress-SP tie up for the upcoming UP assembly elections. Many in his party are of the view that an alliance with like-minded parties, including the Congress, will obviate a split in anti-BJP votes and thus checkmate the takeover of UP by the saffron power.

But the partys consistent official line has been, SP may have electoral tie-ups with smaller parties, including RLD of Choudhary Ajit Singh.

SP veteran Beni Prasad Verma, who returned to the party fold after a brief stay in the Congress, finds it hard to fathom Mulayams mistrust of Congress. They can break bread together but would not forge an electoral alliance, he said recently.

Apparently, the scions may be looking at post- poll opportunities. While the SP may need the Congress support to form the government in 2017, two years later it could be the latters turn to knock at Yadavs doors.

However, last year at the Hindustan Times Summit in Delhi, Akhilesh took a jibe at Rahul sitting in the audience.

He is an old friend but I will say yes to alliance right now if agreed on Netaji (Mulayam) as PM and Rahul Gandhi his deputy, he had said.

The future of their friendship, perhaps, depends on the 2017 poll results.
Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhis visit to Ayodhya on Friday is being widely viewed as an attempt to change the perceived pro-minority image believed to be one of the contributing factors for the partys near decimation in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

Rahul became the first member of the Gandhi family to visit Ayodhya since the demolition of the Babri Masjid in December 1992. Former prime minister and Rahuls father Rajiv Gandhi had visited Ayodhya in 1990.

It was the Rajiv Gandhi government that allowed the shilanyas or a ground-breaking ceremony at an undisputed site close to the structure and also opened the doors of the Ram temple in 1986.

Rahuls visits to temples across the country have increased ever since Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power in May 2014. In the past two years, he has visited Kashi Vishwanath temple in Varanasi, Kamakhya in Assam, Badrinath and Kedarnath in Uttarakhand, Kheer Bhawani in Kashmir, Guru Gaddi in Chhattisgarh and now Hanuman Garhi in Ayodhya.

The BJP has often accused the Congress of minority appeasement and Rahuls temple visits are part of an attempt to change that impression.

The image makeover exercise is also in line with the findings of a four-member panel, headed by former defence minister and Congress veteran AK Antony, tasked to look into the reasons for the 2014 debacle. In its report, the panel concluded that fighting polls on the secularism versus communalism plank had hurt the Congress as it was identified as a pro-minority party, which resulted in substantial gains for the BJP. The Congress also failed to drive home the point that minority and majority communalism were equally dangerous for the country.

Read | History, politics in the air as a Gandhi visits Ayodhya after two decades

The Congress minority appeasement policy had also proved counterproductive as it failed to reap any electoral dividend from the strategy. Besides, frequent statements by some party leaders on the Muslim quota issue had also antagonised and alienated the majority community.

However, the Congress dismisses the suggestion that it is going for an image change. Rahulji insists that Indian flag is his religion. For him, a temple, a mosque, a gurdwara or a church is where he goes to pray for peace and prosperity of our people, party spokesman Tom Vadakkan said.

Political analysts see Rahuls visit as a symbolic act. He is trying to do a balancing act. Congress cannot leave the minorities and at the same time, cannot afford to antagonise the majority community, said Prof Badri Narayan of Jawaharlal Nehru University.

Will it help the Congress in terms of electoral gains in the state where caste and religion influence the outcome? Congress is trying to appease both the communities. This is a major change in its politics but I dont think the move will have any significant impact on the poll outcome, Narayan said.

Assembly elections will be held in UP along with Punjab, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur in February-March next year. The Congress had won just 28 of the 403 seats in the 2012 assembly polls.

To regain power in the politically important state after 27 years, the Congress is desperately trying to win back the support of its traditional vote bank of Brahmins, Muslims and Dalits that have over the years moved away from it.

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He is considered one of the best Indian actors in Hollywood. But ask Irrfan Khan to reveal how he cracked the Hwood code, and he says, Even if I knew any such codes, why would I talk to the media about them? When I write my book, Ill reveal them. In fact, whenever I write it, I have a few issues regarding the film industry that I plan to talk about (laughs).

Read: On a movie date with Irrfan Khan

However, the star adds that theres still time before he seriously thinks about penning a book. I have had some great experiences in the industry, which I have to dedicate some paragraphs to (in his book), says Irrfan, adding that he isnt working only in the US, but in Europe as well. In between, I also signed a film in Bangladesh. Im doing one thing at a time, so its easy, he says.

Read: Irrfan Khan is not scared of anybody

After Madaari, which released earlier this year, Irrfan is now busy with a few upcoming projects he is producing. My job, as a producer, is to develop the subjects, and find the right partner who can raise the money [for the project]. Then, I am out. Its my job to recognise the potential of a subject and bring in the right team  the director, cameraman and other technicians, he says.

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When as an 18-year-old, Vaishali Shadangule fled her home in Vidisha, a small town in Madhya Pradesh, to escape an impending marriage; she might not have had a destination in mind and jumped onto the first train out. But today, two decades later, the journey through the warps and wefts of life has landed her in the fashion capital of the world. Just a few hours back this young designer added her name to coveted list that includes the likes of Tom Ford, Vera Wang, Micheal Costello, Anna Sui and Alexandra Wang, when she showcased her Spring Summer 2017 collection, And Quiet Flows the Thread, under her eponymous label at the New York Fashion Week. When we caught up with the designer, the excitement of the previous night was still palpable in her voice.

How was yesterdays experience?

It was a surreal! The reaction is fabulous! Even though the whole concept is unconventional for them, the way they accepted the silhouettes, weaves, drapes was amazing. It was that common connection to woven art that brought all of this together. A lot of people are turning up for queries and showing interest in the collections, which I hope will all turn into bigger things for the brand. I will be displaying my collection with a renowned sustainable artist, Jeff Hong, who has worked extensively with Disney, at a Sustainable Fashion and Art show today. Later between 15 and 22 of this month, my collections will be displayed at the FTL MODA showrooms in Manhattan.

Also, I would like to give a shout out to Reshma Khureshi, who closed our show. She is an acid attack survivor and even though this industry is new to her, she walked the ramp to promote the End Acid Sale initiative with the NGO, Make Love Not Scars, with immense confidence and gusto

Tell us about the collection:

The collection attempts to depict the flow of life through knots and threads where the interwoven floating threads symbolise the free-spiritedness and the knots signify the anchor points. The colour palette comprise off-white, beige, and shades of blue, grey and black which reflect the progression of the flow. I have used fabrics like silk, khadi and Jamdani

Shadangules new collection,And Quiet Flows the Thread, attempts to depict the flow of life (Vaishali S)

How did you land up at the New York Fashion Week?

I had been to a few art shows and exhibitions during my last visit to New York and London and had showed my work to a lot of people. Everyone liked my work and probably since I had expressed my interest in taking my work to an international platform, I think the word had reached the right place at the right time and the FTL MODA NYFW team contacted me. Since they liked my work a lot, they gave me a direct entry to the fashion week.

How different was this from the fashion weeks in India?

It was more or less the same. On a personal level it is mainly the pressures of finding that connect with the audience, buyers and the people who come from different sensibility and rate your work. It is easier to play a good inning at the home ground but you need to be much more prepared before going international because there you are seen and judged as Indian designer and not as an individual label.

The designer is known for using traditional Indian textiles in modern silhouettes (Hindustan Times)

So, how did you go about with it?

The main challenge was to create a collection which inherits Indian aesthetics, sensibility and innovative approach and yet appeal to the audience which comes from diversified cultures.

I would say its an extension of what I usually do but the overall appeal and look is more western. Maintaining the same signature style, the collection is a display of versatility of Indian textile though unconventional silhouettes, intricate texturing and unique ideas. The Indian weaves have their strong character, which becomes an asset when you innovatively modernise it by crafting it with various designing elements and unusual silhouettes. Of course the traditional colours are something one need to change according to international sensibility but, the fall and the texture of the textile has to suit the western cuts and silhouettes perfectly.

Do you think there is a fatigue for mass produced machine made clothes in the international market and there is a newfound interest for Indian handcrafted textiles?

Of course its growing and will grow faster when as a nation we develop a genuine love for our cultures and traditions and proudly share it with the world. India can and will make its strong presence and remarkable change in the global fashion scenario by exposing its centuries old art and cultural heritage to the world. I feel our self-perception is restricting us from the acceptance that we are expecting from the world. The main advantage hand woven textiles have is the adaptability, versatility in terms of colour, motifs and the feel on the body. These are things machine made textiles can never aim for as they lack that human element which brings emotion, warmth and detailing in the fabrics. I think it is just a matter of time that hand woven textiles will rule the major fashion segments. When I experiment a western silhouette with a sari weave most of times it comes out so well that you get amazed by the versatility of the textile.

While most designers are besotted with the Benarasi and Khadi, you have worked extensively with fabrics like Paithani, Khand, Jamdani. What made you pick these?

I have worked with Paithani, Khun (Maharashtra), Jamdani (West Bengal), Chanderi and Maheshwari (Madhya Pradesh) and Mekhla Chador (Assam). I suppose it is because khadi and Banarasi are more popular and well placed in the retail and designer wear market so it becomes easy for production and business. But my idea behind working with different weaves is to introduce weaves, which are beautiful and appealing, but lacks the connect with the market due to poor and unorganised production structure. The effort is to create awareness about these weaves by developing them as per the modern sensibility and aesthetics keeping the traditional value intact. I want to present these in such way that it catches the attention of the other designers and big fashion houses. Once the weavers start getting good business, the whole cycle can be streamlined and we can truly revive these textiles.

How is the experience of working directly with the weavers?

For me the best part of the whole process is to work with weavers. It feels like vacations when you surrender yourself to the simplistic lifestyle of weavers, surrounded by nature and enjoy the warmth they offer to you for few weeks. You get amazed not just by their openness and acceptance for something new and different but also by their appreciation and contribution to the idea This is also one of the reason behind working with different weaves every time  I get exposed to a completely new experience of working with weavers and developing a new textile.

Shadangule made her debut at the Lakme Fashion Week in 2011 with her Chanderi collection (Hindustan Times)

How did your affair with handloom first begin?

Now when I look back I feel it started very early in the childhood as the only fabric one could touch, see or wear was the woven textile. From the frocks I use to wear to the mothers sari and even upholstery was made of hand woven textile and the beauty of that got imprinted in my mind. So the association with woven fabric is of warmth and comfort. Though the realisation of love happened much later when I observed my intuitive inclination towards weaves and discovered the roots behind the all the inspirations in the childhood. My first collection at LFW in 2011 was based on childhood memories. Rest of the collections produced and showcased after that with traditional weaves after that were pure pleasure of revisiting the experiences.

How has the journey been so far?

I have been in the fashion business for more than 10 years but came into the mainstream industry in 2011 by showcasing my first collection at Lakme Fashion Week with Chanderi. The collection was very well received by the fraternity as well as the buyers. I was very sure about the philosophy and the style of working of the label and remained committed to that. Initially it was hard to sustain to the path of working with only handwoven textile because of the limited acceptability in the market and difficult production cycles. But slowly I managed to build my own business model based on the originality and unusualness of the collections.

I started with a very small unit where I used to attend to individual clients. I managed to win hearts of most of my customers and the business flourished. But the turning point was when I felt the need for formal education to excel in the technical and conceptual aspect of fashion and it was a tough decision to put a well-established business on risk and join an institute. With great difficulty I managed to strike a balance between both and after completing the course I was ready and prepared to jump into the mainstream fashion industry. Then, I showcased my first collection at Lakme Fashion Week in 2011 which was received so well by the senior designers and people from the fraternity that I never looked back and have produced 17 collections back-to-back.

Whats next?

Before starting with the SS17 collection, I was working on two more collections but had to leave it half way to prepare for NYFW. I will resume my work on the same when I head back to India.

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In making the new iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, Apple has not been innovative. The phone is merely an upgrade of the previous model. The company that is led by Tim Cook is facing slowing profits and its latest four-inch iPhone SE has received a poor response.

As the SE that was aimed at emerging markets didnt impress consumers, the companys shipments were hit.

In April, Apple reported its first-ever drop in iPhone sales, with shipments down 16% to 51.2 million in the second quarter. In this quarter, last year, the company sold 61.1 million units.

The company expects the sales for this quarter to fall in double digits again. Apple aims to make sales between $41 billion and $43 billion for the three months ending in June, below analysts expectations of $47.3 billion.

The company is also facing a sales crunch in China that was its biggest overseas market. A Canalys report said the company would continue to face pressure in the Chinese market even after the iPhone 7 launch and has to focus on markets like India to increase sales.

The launch of the iPhone 6 saw Apples shipments in Greater China skyrocket, but the company has struggled to maintain this momentum, Jessie Ding, Canalys research analyst, said in the report.

The iPhone 6s had a lacklustre reception in comparison and the iPhone SE is unlikely to make a big difference to Apples fortunes in the region this year. Huawei, Oppo and Vivo offer products with better specifications at significantly lower price points, Ding added.

However, experts have mixed opinions about the iPhone 7. Apple needs the iPhone 7 to be a major success because it is the main growth driver for the company. Direct revenues for the iPhone represented 57% of total Apple revenue in the second calendar quarter, but the importance of the iPhone for Apple is much greater than direct revenues alone, Ian Fogg, head of mobile analysis of IHS Technology, told HT.

Moreover, Apple Watches, especially in India, have failed to make a mark. Watches are not selling as expected in India. There are other cheaper products that cater to fitness better such as Gooqi, Fitbit and others, said Vishal Tripathi, research director at Gartner, adding the Watches will give stiff competition to other global brands like Fitbit and Garmin.

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ELKO  Wanting to educate the public about the services the attorney generals office provides to Nevada residents brought Adam Laxalt and some of his staff to Elko on Thursday to speak at Great Basin College.

He borrowed the idea from his grandfather, Gov. Paul Laxalt, who used to do a capital for a day tour and take the cabinet around the state.

He felt it was really important to take government out of Carson City; take it around the state and make sure that they were in tune with what was going on, Laxalt said. I wanted to do this for the last year.

When he ran for office, Laxalt said many people did not know what the AGs office did for the state.

One of the new services the office is organizing is a military legal assistance program, led by Nic Danna.

The program is one of the first of its kind in the country, Danna said.

We offer free legal representation for active guard and reserve, he said.

Attorneys throughout the state have volunteered with the AG office to provide free legal advice to military personnel. When a serviceman has legal trouble, he or she can contact a JAG officer and that person can contact the Nevada AGs Office of Military Legal Assistance to handle the case. Danna said the military personnel usually have an attorney within 24 hours of contacting the AGs program.

To date weve actually had 150 volunteer attorneys with about 20 to 30 more pledged, he said.

The attorneys are volunteering their time and doing the work pro bono, so the legal advice to military personnel doesnt cost the taxpayer any money, Danna said. The program also helps veterans, spouses of veterans and their children.

After the presentation, Danna said the program needs more volunteer attorneys and the office has a hard time finding lawyers in the rural areas. Any attorney who wants to volunteer his or her time to help with the program should contact Danna as 775-722-3595.

Many of the AGs staff that spoke dealt with criminal investigations concerning guardianships and elder abuse, and fraud including scams.

The AGs office also deals with domestic violence issues. Arlene Rivera, AGs domestic violence ombudsman, said victims of domestic violence comprise the largest victim category in the state.

Nevada still ranks in the top five states in the nation when it comes to females being murdered by males, she said.

She said the AGs office provides the VINE or Victim Information Notification Everyday program, which notifies victims of domestic violence when their aggressor is released from jail or prison.

During her talk Rivera referred to Lidia Cortes, the mother of murder victim Stephanie Gonzalez.

I want to commend your courage, she said to Cortes. Stephanie lost her life because of domestic violence.  The accommodation is for (Cortes) because she is being very courageous at wanting to help other victims.

Gonzalez was killed June 25, 2011, and her estranged husband, Eduardo Estrada-Puentes, is waiting to stand trial in Elko for her death.

During the presentations, Laxalt explained that when he campaigned for office, he kept hearing that the AG wasnt integrated enough with other law enforcement in the state. Since he was elected he has hosted four law enforcement summits.

We keep working on trying to integrate our office with law enforcement, he said, as well as take that leadership role where we need to, identifying some of these statewide problems that we have.

One of those areas concerned the backlog of 8,000 sexual assault kits. By last fall, the AGs office found the funding to test all but 200 of those kits, he said.

Laxalt also said he wanted to improve his office with a solicitor general who was willing to fight federal government overreach. He said Nevada has been hit with many issues including the federal governments sage grouse plans.
Credit card major MasterCard is facing a lawsuit filed on Thursday seeking 14 billion in damages - the largest legal claim in British history - over allegations it overcharged 46 million consumers in the UK.

MasterCard said it would oppose the lawsuit vigorously. Filed by law firm Quinn Emanuel in the Competition Appeal Tribunal, the lawsuit relates to fees imposed by MasterCard on businesses that accepted its debit and credit cards between 1992 and 2008.

According to Quinn Emanuel, the fees  known as interchange fees  were set at an unlawfully high level and pushed up prices for British consumers. The claim was brought by Walter Merricks, the UKs former chief financial services ombudsman.

It is the first claim to be filed under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 on behalf of all UK consumers. The Act enables a collective damages claim to be brought on behalf of a class of people who have suffered loss, the law firm said in a statement.

MasterCard had the option to accept that its card fees were set at an unlawfully high level and reach a settlement with the European Commission to lower its fees. It chose not to do that and instead imposed these unlawfully high card fees for nearly 16 years whilst it engaged in a decade-long legal battle with the Commission. MasterCard lost this battle at every level and showed complete disregard for its cardholders and consumers at large, focusing instead on generating unlawful profits, Quinn Emanuel said.

Consumers, it said, were unaware of the level of these fees or that they were illegal. The fees were a significant cost for retailers that was then passed on through increased prices of goods and services. All UK consumers, including cash purchasers  and not just MasterCard holders  had lost money as a result, it added.

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Ankur Panwar, convicted of murdering Preeti Rathi by throwing acid on her, had lied to the police, claiming he had nothing to do with the attack when he was picked up by the Mumbai crime branch for questioning.

Inspector Ashok Khot from the crime branch said it were the lies, evasive behaviour and burn injuries  which Panwar tried to hide from the police  that helped them nail him. The case was initially investigated by the Government Railway Police (GRP). Disappointed with the initial investigation, the Rathis moved Bombay high court and asked the case be investigated by the CBI. However, the case was handed over to the Mumbai crime branch on December 4, 2013.

Read: Panwar lied, fumbled and tried to hide his burn injuries: Police

The crime branch formed a 12-member special investigation team (SIT), which camped in Delhi for more than 40 days and prepared a family tree of the Rathis and a list of their neighbours, acquaintances and other possible suspects. Later, they turned their attention to the list of suspects named by Rathi, which included Panwar and Gahalon.

Read: Family wants death for acid attack

We interrogated Panwar and found he had no answers to many of the questions asked. His family told us that he was not in [Delhi] at the time of incident and that he had left to look for a job. But there was no proof of this. When we verified his claims, we found that he was lying. He also had burn injuries which he tried to hide, and when we questioned him about it, he fumbled, Khot said.

Read: Attack could have been prevented with policeman guarding coach

He said the police then checked the CCTV footage from Bandra terminus and Panwars call records before arresting him on January 17, 2014. Panwar even threw away the SIM card he was using to fool the police.

Read: Till death, she just kept asking why: acid attack victim Preeti Rathis mother

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The situation in Kashmir is now at an inflection point. Two months after the elimination of Hizbul Mujahideen militant Burhan Wani threw the valley into protests, violence and turmoil, the sense is that attempts at political outreach have failed  I would argue these efforts came far too late- and we are now entering a phase of a fiercer security crackdown, especially in the rural hinterland. The government  rightly so  is alarmed at large swathes of South Kashmir slipping out of the control of the local administration. Concern over the continuing protests and the simmering violence has been amplified by the surfacing of Pakistani flags and armed militants at some of the processions and rallies. The priority now is to re-establish the authority of the State. An increased army footprint  despite the reluctance of the military to be drawn into crowd control  is the clear next step.

What is worrying though is the level of confusion and contradictions evident, both in public debate and in the framing of the Kashmir policy. True, the situation is defined by myriad truths  genuine anger and alienation, historic sins of omission and commission by successive governments in Delhi; the ideological incompatibilities of the ruling alliance, the rising levels of religious radicalism, with demands for Azaadi increasingly getting framed within larger expressions of Muslim identity and finally, the Pakistani perpetration of militancy. For any government, the sheer complexity of whats unfolding in Kashmir does make a linear response difficult.

Read | Kashmirs disturbing new reality

Yet a lack a of consistency and clear-thinking  and the many differences that have pulled Mehbooba Mufti and the BJP in opposite directions  are simply unaffordable at this juncture.

Lets start with how the outreach with separatists unfolded during the visit of the all-party delegation to the state. It was only a few hours before their arrival that Mehbooba Mufti sent a letter inviting the Hurriyat Conference to meet the delegation at a place and time of your convenience. But the letter went from her, not as chief minister of the state, but as PDP president. Later her colleagues claimed that since all others had been sent letters from the citys divisional commissioner, this personal communique was her going the extra mile with the separatists. Its reliably learnt that the BJP leadership was less than happy with some of the language in the letter that made the government seem over-eager to meet separatists. The next morning  especially after the discourteous snub from Pro-Pakistan representative Syed Ali Shah Geelani to the individual parliamentarians who attempted to meet him- the Home Minister put clear distance between his government and the chief minister. Asked specifically whether the BJP was on board with the invitation, he cryptically said  I was informed of her letter, his discomfort evident with how things had emerged.

Read | Find the terms of engagement with Kashmir

This ideological dissonance is more striking as both parties have committed themselves to a written agenda of alliance agreement which seeks talks with all stakeholders including the Hurriyat Conference. Has the BJP changed its mind about that? On Twitter, Ram Madhav, the co-author of the alliance document, questioned the unsolicited efforts by MPs to meet the Hurriyat Conference and the over-importance given to them over elected legislators. The BJP is absolutely within its rights to consolidate that as its ideological position  but is it in sync with its coalition partner? The Mufti government too has since lashed out at the separatists; its Finance Minister said Geelani had sullied Kashmiriyat by showing no social graces to parliamentarians and turning them away from the door; another minister Sajad Lone challenged Geelani saying if he was the leader of the boys on the street, how he could he allow more young men to die and not seek dialogue with Delhi. The PDP has a point; the Hurriyat has also been plagued by inconsistency  and some like party MP Muzaffar Beig have implied that the separatists will not move forward without a green signal from Islamabad. The public debate is all about Kashmiriyat, he told me, but there is another dimension  Pakistaniyat. But then dont the changed circumstances make the political vision for dialogue in the PDP-BJP alliance document completely redundant for now?

Read | PM Modis hardline Kashmir strategy suits BJP, but not India or the Valley

Security forces argue that there is evident hypocrisy in the anti-India tirade of the separatist camp, given their family links to government jobs and other institutions of the state. In continuing ironies of Kashmir, Hizbul Chief Syed Salahuddins son, a state government employee, was among those saved recently in a terror strike on a government facility. Burhan Wanis father is a headmaster of a government school, and Abdul Rashid Bhat, father of Wanis so-called successor in the Hizbul is also an engineer in the governments PWD department. BJP legislators like Ajatshatru Singh have argued in the state assembly that the government has spent hundreds of crores over five years on providing security, travel and health benefits to Kashmiri separatists; a Supreme Court petition now puts this number at 356 crore. Trace this revelation back to Ex-R&AW chief AS Dulat who first revealed that intelligence agencies funded not just separatists, but also some militants, as an established Spook technique to engage them and also to compete for influence with Pakistans ISI. Corrupting someone with money is more ethical and smarter than killing him, Dulat told me wryly.

Read | Centre hardens stance, will not hold talks with Kashmir separatists

But the government is unable to decide  should it crack down on separatists or continue to try and engage them. Some sleuths argue that a weakened and irrelevant Hurriyat may be worse news for Delhi at a time when the faceless, leaderless agitation on the streets of Kashmir may leave no one else but them to talk to. Others are pushing for a harder clampdown.

Similarly, if the government assessment is (as a senior minister informed the all-party meeting) that autonomists and humanists are now irrelevant in the Valley; Islamists are directing the agitation  then Delhi must wonder at the efficacy of its outreach attempts. If greater autonomy for the state is not on the dialogue table (despite such a resolution passed by the state assembly 16 years ago), the government must ask itself  what will it talk about and with whom? At the moment the Kashmir conundrum is trapped in a dangerous web of paradoxes and confusion.

Barkha Dutt is consulting editor, NDTV, and founding member, Ideas Collective

The views expressed are personal

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NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Thursday asked the Central Bureau of Investigation to resume its probe into the gang rape of a woman and her teenage daughter in Uttar Pradeshs Bulandshahr in July after the agency pointed out that the delay might lead to the accused getting bail.

A bench headed by justice Dipak Misra revised its earlier stay order and said since it was dealing with the case, the proceedings before the Allahabad high court stood stayed.

The CBI moved the top court on Tuesday requesting it to lift the stay on the ongoing probe into the Bulandshahr gang-rape case, contending the order was likely to delay the filing of the charge-sheet. If a final probe report was not filed within 90 days of the arrest of the six accused, they will be entitled to bail, the agency added.

The FIR, initially lodged by UP police under various provisions of the Indian Penal Code, was transferred to the CBI following an Allahabad high court order.

The SC had stayed the CBI probe after the womans husband filed a petition asking for a transfer of the case outside Uttar Pradesh. The top court also issued a notice to the state government regarding the transfer as well as to Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan for his statement that the gang-rape was a political conspiracy.

It had fixed September 29 to hear the case again.

But CBI told the court that it will hardly have any time to file the charge-sheet after September 29 and the delay might also lead to the disappearance of crucial evidence.

That on behalf of the CBI, it is most humbly and respectfully submitted that continuation of stay of the investigation by the CBI may result in the disappearance of material evidence and may cause prejudice to the conduct of this case, the agency had said in its plea.

The woman and her minor daughter, who were on their way to Shahjahanpur from Noida with their family, were gang-raped on July 29 by a group of robbers after they waylaid their car on the Delhi-Kanpur highway. The accused dragged the women out of the vehicle at gunpoint and brutally assaulted them in front of their family.

The Supreme Court has appointed senior advocate Fali Nariman to assist it on whether politicians, especially those in power, can issue statements that could impact a fair and impartial probe into criminal cases.

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MUMBAI: In a landmark judgement on Thursday, special womens court judge AS Shende sentenced 25-year-old Ankur Panwar to death for a fatal acid attack on 23-year-old nurse Preeti Rathi at Bandra terminus in May 2013. Panwar, Rathis neighbour in Delhi, threw sulphuric acid on her just after she arrived in Mumbai on May 2, 2013 to join the Indian Navy as a nurse. Rathi died of multiple organ failure at Bombay Hospital a month later. Panwar attacked her as he was jealous of her success and because she had rejected his marriage proposal.

This is the first time that a convict in India has been sentenced to death for an acid attack. India is also only the second country, after Bangladesh, to have done so. Under Bangladeshs Acid Crime Suppression Act, attackers can be sentenced to death.

Panwar was convicted primarily on the basis of eyewitnesses statements, and because he could not explain certain injury marks on his hand. Judge Shende said that acid attacks were more brutal than rape. The judge said, Rape destroys the soul of the victim. But she can be kept in isolation, without disclosing her identity, and be rehabilitated. But for an acid attack victim, she has to move around with her destroyed body.

Judge Shende added, Preeti survived for 30 days because she did not know how she looked; she was blind. She had no idea of the effect of the attack on her face. Survivors of acid attacks look like aliens  their own children can get scared of them. This is the kind of effect acid has on the body, and a person cannot live without their body.

According to the police, Rathi arrived in Mumbai with her father and aunt on May 2, 2013 to join INHS Aswini as lieutenant (nursing). Soon after they alighted at Bandra terminus, Panwar, who had followed her from Delhi, tapped Rathi on the shoulder. When she turned around, he threw acid on her, also injuring her father Amarsingh, aunt Sunita Dahiya, and two other passengers, Sudeshakumari Singh and Sameer Shaikh. Rathi was taken Guru Nanak Hospital and later shifted to Masina Hospital. When her condition worsened, she was taken to Bombay Hospital on May 18. But she succumbed to her injuries on June 1.

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Delhis water supply lifeline, the Munak canal, may soon get a wire mesh to stop rotting human bodies from floating into the Capital from Haryana.

The 102-kilometre canal brings water from the Yamuna to Delhi and is crucial for supply to vast swathes of Dwarka, southwestern and southern Delhi.

But before the water reaches the Haiderpur treatment plant, it carries scores of corpses  many of them victims of crimes and decomposed beyond recognition. The police have now decided to build a wire mesh across the canal near Daryapur village, and say the structure will help reduce the number of unsolved cases of floating dead bodies that arrive in Delhi from neighbouring states. By the time bodies are recovered in Delhi, they are heavily bloated, making identification near impossible. If theyre caught in Haryana itself, it will help in identification, said Vikramjit Singh, deputy commissioner of police (outer Delhi).

The canal flows around 20 km in the capital covering areas of outer Delhi and falling under the jurisdiction of five police stations  KN Katju Marg, Bawana, Shahbad Dairy, Narela and Samaypur Badli.

Police say they recovered 81 bodies last year and 49 already this year till August. The bodies comprised those who committed suicide, were murdered or drowned.

Read | Death floats in Delhi lifeline Munak canal

But the move may run into a bureaucratic hurdle as the Haryana and Delhi authorities have differed in the past over how to best deal with dead bodies. Haryana Police removed a decades-old wire net across the Munak canal in the 1990s, saying it was blocking waste.

This time, Delhi Police say, theyre in talks with their Haryana counterparts and the decision to install a mesh was taken at a recent inter-state coordination meeting.

The canal has become a dumping ground for bodies. The mesh at Daryapur would help discover the bodies at Haryana itself, which will fasten the process of identifying the body and start investigation, said a senior officer.

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GHAZIABAD: A 15-year-old student of Delhi Public School Indirapuram jumped off the third floor of the school building on Thursday afternoon.

His classmates said a girl from the school spurned his proposal after which he decided to take the step.

The boy jumped off the schools third floor balcony around 1.30 pm. He was taken to Shanti Gopal Hospital from where he was referred to a hospital in Noida.

Officials at Shanti Gopal Hospital said the boy had sustained head and back injuries.

He was brought to the hospital in a conscious state and was able to speak, said a hospital official.

According to the classmates, he had proposed to a girl on Wednesday .The girl turned down his proposal and told him she liked someone else. They had a heated exchange after which the boy told her that he will commit suicide, said a class 10 student.

He said that for the past few days, both students had become good friends but on Wednesday the girl told the boy that she used to talk to him only to make someone else feel jealous.

According to school authorities, the balcony from which the boy jumped was supposed to be inaccessible to students.

The school building is completely safe and no dangerous area, such as the rooftops or balcony, is accessible to students. It is an unfortunate incident, said Sangeeta Hajela, vice principal, DPS Indirapuram.

Neither the school authorities nor the boys family had informed the police about the incident till the filing of this copy.

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NEW DELHI: The Delhi high court quashed on Thursday the appointment of 21 A am Aadmi Party (AAP) lawmakers as parliamentary secretaries after the city government conceded that the decision was taken without the lieutenant governors approval.

The decision follows the high courts verdict on August 4 that the lieutenant governors (L-G) approval is mandatory on administrative issues since he heads the Delhi administration.

The courts order was a setback for the Arvind Kejriwal government in its power tussle against the L-G, who reports to the Centre, his appointer.

The Kejriwal government challenged the high court order in the Supreme Court, which will hear the case on Friday.

The high court verdict came on a petition by an NGO, Rashtriya Mukti Morcha, seeking scrapping of the order. The government said on Thursday it wont challenge the petition, prompting a bench of chief justice G Rohini and justice Sangita Dhingra Sehgal to set aside the appointments.

However, the government will defend in the top court the decision to appoint the 21 officials to assist different ministries after coming to power in February 2015.

The AAP government argued that the public exchequer wont be burdened since the secretaries will not receive any pay or perks, other than transport for official purposes. The no-pay argument is viewed as a strategy to escape a legal trap that bars lawmakers from holding positions that offer a salary or benefits.

The Centre called the move unconstitutional and the President refused to sign the bill that ratified the appointments, which are considered office of profit.

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NEW DELHI: The Congress and BJP on Thursday demanded the resignation of all 21 AAP MLAs, who were parliamentary secretaries, after the high court ruled that their appointment was illegal.

The Delhi High Court ruled set aside the appointments, saying they did not have lieutenant governors approval.

The BJP described the appointment of 21 parliamentary secretaries as a criminal conspiracy . The party said the courts ruling was a confirmation of its (BJP) charges of anarchy in Kejriwal government.

Leader of the opposition Vijender Gupta said, We will not allow the assembly to function till the 21 MLAs resign from the assembly.

We will meet the Election Commissioner and give a copy of the high court order. We will request the commission to soon take a decision on the disqualification of 21 parliamentary secretaries soon , Gupta said.

New Delhi MP, Meenakshi Lekhi, who is also a member of the Parliamentary Committee on Office of Profit, said that it has been made clear in the Constitution that MPs and MLAs cannot hold an office of profit.

From time to time Parliament and the courts have also defined office of profit and given categorical verdicts. This is not the first occasion in Delhi. Even during the Sheila Dikshits tenure such controversy has arisen but then the government did not cross all the constitutional limits, she said.

Delhi Congress president Ajay Maken wrote to the Speaker, Ramniwas Goel, requesting him to debar the 21 legislators from attending the Assembly.

Recalling a December 2005 incident when 11 MPs (10 from the Lok Sabha and one from the Rajya Sabha) were disqualified for demanding money for asking questions in the House, Maken said: There are serious charges against the three former AAP Ministers---Jitender Singh Tomar, Asim Ahmed Khan and Sandeep Kumar---and therefore, a resolution should be introduced to terminate their membership from the assembly in the special session. The Delhi Assembly will meet for a one-day special session on Friday.

Similarly, the 21 parliamentary secretaries should not be allowed to attend the special session and all the future sessions of the Assembly, Maken said.

The EC verdict in the case of office of profit is awaited, he said.
GURGAON/PANCHKULA: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Wednesday evening arrested Ravneet Garg, a serving civil judge of Haryana, in connection with the murder of his wife Geetanjali three years ago.

Garg, 34, was arrested after the CBI intimated the chief justice of Punjab and Haryana High Court and sessions judge of Kaithal.

Ravneet, was produced before CBI special magistrate Kapil Rathi on Thursday morning at Panchkula where he was remanded to five-day police custody.

The CBI has arrested the then chief judicial magistrate, Gurgaon (presently serving as the civil judge- senior division, Kaithal, Haryana) in an on-going investigation of a case relating to the alleged murder of his wife Geetanjali, a CBI spokesperson confirmed.

The agency alleged discrepancies in lie detection and brain mapping. Lie detection uses physiological functions to ascertain the truth, while brain mapping is based on brainwave frequency bandwidths to ascertain the truth.

Geetanjali, 28, was found dead in a park of Police Lines complex in Gurgaon with multiple bullet injuries on July 17, 2013. Ravneet was then posted as chief judicial magistrate in the district.

The couples two daughters Ashima, 8 and Adiva, 5 have been living with Ravneets parents in Chandigarh ever since Geetanjalis murder.

During Thursdays court proceedings, the CBI  represented by assistant deputy attorney DP Tiwari  told the court that Geetanjali was found dead in mysterious circumstances. He said a dowry case had been registered against the judge and his family. Also there were discrepancies in his lie detection and brain mapping tests.

SK Garg Narwana, counsel for Ravneet Garg, said: The CBI was seeking a remand of 14 days. We strongly opposed it. Ravneet had been cooperating with the CBI.

Geetanjalis death was initially projected as a case of suicide. The suicide theory, however, fell flat after the post-mortem report said one bullet had hit the victim in her stomach, another hit her chin and pierced her head and the third had injured her neck.

Geetanjalis parents then alleged that she was being harassed for dowry and accused their son-in-law Ravneet and his family of killing their daughter.

The Haryana government recommended a CBI probe in the case on July 27, 2013 with the central agency officially taking over the case on August 7 that year.

The CBI lodged a murder case in Gurgaon in which Ravneet was named as the prime suspect.

Geeatanjalis family on Thursday welcomed the development and hailed it as a step towards justice.

They allege that Ravneet was never sacked from his official position, which he used to influence the case.
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Finlands government schools dont have exams and rarely give homework. Singapore raised trainee teachers pay to match other professionals.

Some of the worlds best centres of school education are finding creative solutions to problems that plague Delhis government schools as well. Local problems can be solved using global solutions, say education experts.

Hindustan Times outlines some of the best schooling practices across the world.

Shortage of Teachers

Thirty thousand out of the 64,000 total posts in the 1,011 Delhi government schools are vacant. Since 2012, there have been no teacher recruitment tests.

Finland and Singapore, considered the best education centres globally by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) 2015 report, invest heavily in its teachers.

Finland was a lot behind other European countries  the government decided to pay teachers as much as ministers and bureaucrats. They decided to build a public-funded education system. In a few years, they moved to the top, said educationist Anil Sadgopal.

A teachers highest annual pay in the Scandinavian country is $40,160 (`26 lakh) as of 2013, according to UNESCO.

Finland raised the social status of teachers to a level higher than most other professions  In 2010, over 6,600 applicants competed for 660 openings in primary school preparation programs, said a report by the (OECD).

Similarly, Singapore offers trainee teachers a monthly stipend that is on a par with what new graduates in other sectors earn. England created a council of 25 representative teachers and principals in 2010 that the government consults on policy reforms.

Poor Infrastructure

Students with better access to infrastructure score higher than those who dont, showed the 2015 OECD study conducted in 14 secondary schools in Belgium.

However, it is common to see students of Delhi government schools sit outside classrooms because of lack of space, broken equipment and crumbling buildings.

On the other hand, Latin American schools are trying to improve infrastructure to bridge the gap between private and public schools, said an Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) study.

The study showed that the schools in urban areas added a library, a science lab or a computer room, while those rural areas tried to improve basics such as toilets and furniture.

Japanese schools have libraries, music rooms, art rooms, gymnasia and playgrounds.

In countries with sufficient infrastructure, the schools are working to integrate information and communication technology in education.

In South Korea, the education budgets priority is modernise classroom facilities. In Finland, teachers and principals are closely involved in renewal and construction of new schools.

Improving Learning Levels

Over 50% of the Class 6 students in Delhi government schools cannot read basic Hindi texts, showed a government study.

Schools in Finland focus on fewer topics and teach them in great depth, said educationist Anita Rampal.

After several years of research and consultation, the curriculum (in Finland) was changed. They said learning was not memorising, but turning students into critical thinkers. This is what we want our government to realise. Curriculum can just not be decided, said Rampal.

The country has no examinations and the assessment is continuous. In Japan, too, promotion is automatic and not based on academic achievement.

India has similar policies, but their implementation has been challenging. The Central Board of Secondary Education introduced a Comprehensive and Continuous Evaluation (CCE) system in all schools and the Right to Education law says no student can be detained up to Class 8.

I am against Right to Education Act, but I strongly believe in the no-detention policy and assessment through CCE. Instead of the state governments trying to remove the system, they should work towards strengthening it as CCE is a good practice, said Sadgopal.

Making Learning Joyful

Government students in Delhi attend six-day weeks and 220 school days in year. As there in no clarity on the structure of CCE assignments, students may be burdened with written tests, activities and home work projects at one go.

In Finland, students attend five-day weeks and 190 school days in a year. Home assignments are rare.

We need to make learning a joyful experience for the children. What is the point of having homework and tests? said educationist JS Rajput. He is former director of National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), a government body on education.

Singapore also adopted a similar curriculum in 2004. Teach Less, Learn More focuses on improving a childs learning through art, music and physical education.

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VIENTIANE, LAOS: Prime Minister Narendra Modi used two global summits on Thursday to excoriate Indias neighbourhood rivals, first targeting Beijings muscleflexing in the South China Sea and then seeking strongest action against state-sponsors of terrorism to hit out at Islamabad.

Modi named neither country in his speeches, but his twin attacks before top Asian leaders as well as US President Barack Obama were seen as a strategic move to send out a strong message against New Delhis nuclear-armed foes.

In recent weeks, India has ratcheted up criticism of Pakistan, accusing it of inciting protests in Kashmir, while ties with China have been fraught over Beijings blocking of New Delhis entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group.

China is also wary of Indias growing presence in the South China Sea.

At Thursdays East Asia Summit in Laos, Modi stepped up his attack on Pakistan, speaking of a country whose competitive advantage rests solely in producing and exporting terrorism. The time has come for us to stop this global exporter of terror, he told the summit, also attended by Chinese premier Li Keqiang.

We need to target not only the terrorists but also their entire supporting ecosystem. And our strongest action should be reserved for those state actors who employ terrorism as an instrument of state policy.

The fresh jibe came three days after Modi launched a sharp attack on Pakistan, telling G20 leaders that one single nation in South Asia was spreading agents of terror.

Earlier in the day, Modi launched a veiled criticism of Chinas belligerent stand on the South China Sea, saying India believed the threat or use of force to resolve disputes would complicate matters affecting peace and stability.

India urges all parties to show utmost respect for the Unclos, he told the India-Asean Summit, referring to a UN convention on laws governing the seas.

China is involved in disputes with littoral countries of the region over the South China Sea. In July, an international tribunal ruled in favour of the Philippines in its dispute with Beijing over the South China Sea.

But China reacted angrily, saying it neither accepts nor recognises the ruling. In recent months, Beijing has scrambled fighter jets and boats to the region citing threats to Chinese sovereignty. India has oil assets off the coast of Vietnam, another party to the dispute over the South China Sea.

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NEW DELHI: The Centre will not hold talks with separatists in Kashmir as it aims to first establish the primacy of the state by quelling attempts to topple an elected state government through violence, government sources said on Thursday.

The hardening of the NDA governments stance is based on assessment that the current unrest in the Valley is quite different from those in the past as it has excessive religious dimensions and its objective is to establish a theocratic state.

The government was earlier open to talks with all stakeholders, a stance reiterated on Wednesday by Union minister Jitendra Singh after a meeting of the all-party delegation that visited Jammu & Kashmir on September 4-5.

A senior government functionary said that there has been improvement in the situation in the Valley where 62 people unofficial estimates put the number at 75  have lost their lives in clashes between security forces and protesters since the killing of militant commander Burhan Wani on July 8.

There is a distinction between separatists and people. As far as people are concerned, we have full compassion. But when it comes to dealing with separatists, there is no scope of the government of India blinking, said a senior government functionary.

Hurriyat leaders are not seen as a significant player in the Valley today and they are only trying to get in and gain relevance when the protesting youth are not in their control.

Professor Noor Ahmad Baba who teaches political science at Kashmir University also said the ( current) movement is not driven by Hurriyat leaders.

It is happening spontaneously. They (separatists) have a limited area of influence, Baba told HT.

In 2014, India called off foreign secretary-level talks with Pakistan after its high commissioner Abdul Basit made Hurriyat leaders a stakeholder by inviting and meeting them. Until then, Hurriyat leaders would seek meetings with visiting Pakistani leaders or the high commissioner.

The NDA government is also 101% convinced about Pakistans role in the current unrest in Kashmir and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti has conveyed the same to the Centre.

But it is concerned about radicalisation in Kashmir that has witnessed a shift from Sufism to Wahabism, which is attributed to the proliferation of new religious structures in the past decade and indoctrination of the people. The Wahabi sect follows a radical interpretation of Islam.

The Centre is also learnt to be disinclined to entertain demands for full or partial withdrawal of Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA) because the state police does not have adequate capacity to deal with terrorism.

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In a suicide pact, three members of a family consumed poison at their Khera Dabar home near Jaffarpur Kalan in southwest Delhi on Friday morning.

Ex-serviceman Bhagwan Dass (50), his wife Sharda (48) and 20-year-old daughter Sarita were found unconscious at their home by neighbours around 7.16 am on Friday. The neighbours alerted their relatives following which the police were informed.

While Dass and Sarita could not be saved, Sharda is battling for her life at Rao Tula Ram (RTR) hospital in southwest Delhi. A suicide note recovered from their house said the three were depressed after the couples only son,Kuldeep, passed away last month after a cardiac arrest. He was a first-year student of medicine in Russia.

Shardas condition is critical. Chances of survival look slim. Doctors are trying their best to save her, said a police officer.

Surender Kumar, deputy commissioner of police (southwest), said, Our preliminary probe has revealed that the family members were upset over the death of the couples son. We are questioning their relatives and neighbours to know what forced them to take the extreme step.

Further probe into the incident is on.
Students voted on Friday to elect the students union of JNU, which is witnessing a three-cornered contest this year as ABVP and BAPSA fight it out with the AISA-SFI alliance.

The JNUSU polls, a keenly fought contest, have been hogging more limelight this year against the backdrop of a February 9 event during which anti-national slogans were allegedly raised. The incident had led to the arrest of outgoing JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar and two others.

Umar Khalid near a polling booth for the Jawaharlal Nehru University students Union election in New Delhi on Friday. Khalid was arrested for allegedly shouting anti-national slogans at the university on February 9 and was later released on bail. (Vipin Kumar/HT Photo)

The counting of votes will begin on Friday tonight.

It is very unpredictable this year. It is a three-cornered contest. Students have become very cautious after the recent saffronisation attempts on the campus, Maanvi Ahuja, a student of School of Social Sciences said.

Outgoing JNU students union president Kanhaiya Kumar at the university on Friday. Kumar was arrested for allegedly shouting anti-national slogans at the university on February 9 and was later released on bail. (Vipin Kumar/HT Photo)

JNUSU, which remained a Left-dominated arena for years, saw RSS student wing ABVP securing a seat last year, making a comeback in the university after a hiatus of 14 years.

Outgoing JNU students union vice-president Shehla Rashid at the university on Friday. (Vipin Kumar/HT Photo)

Birsa Ambdekar Phule Students Associations candidate Rahul Sonpimple has been the show stealer at the debate this year. BAPSA has a small presence on the campus, but voters in JNU are fed up of AISAs arrogance. They had a monopoly. This might go against the Left alliance, said a student who did not wish to be identified.

Outgoing JNU students union vice-president Shehla Rashid talks to a student at the university on Friday. (Vipin Kumar/HT Photo)

Others, whose candidates are in the fray, include Congress National Students Union of India (NSUI) and Students Front for Swaraj (SFS), the student wing of AAPs breakaway group Swaraj Abhiyan.

Vijay Kumar, Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishads candidate for the general secretary post in the JNU students union , near a polling booth at the university on Friday. (Vipin Kumar/HT Photo)

All India Students Federation (AISF), of which Kanhaiya is a member, is not contesting this year while All India Students Association (AISA) and Students Federation of India (SFI) have formed an alliance named Left Unity.

(Vipin Kumar/HT Photo)

JNUSU is the representative body of the students in the varsity. While the polling has coincided with that of DUSU for the fourth consecutive year, the poll pattern at JNU differs from that of Delhi University.

ABVP supporters near a polling booth at the Jawaharlal Nehru University on Friday. (Vipin Kumar/HT Photo)
Delhiites may soon have to pay much more for travelling on the Metro system.

Government sources told HT that the Delhi Metros Fare Fixation Committee (FCC) has recommended increasing the minimum passenger fare from `8 to `10 and the maximum fare from `30 to `50.

The Delhi Metro Rail Corporations (DMRC) board, headed by urban development secretary Rajiv Gauba, will take a final call on revising the fares based on the FCCs recommendation. If the board wants, then they can reduce the fare that the FCC has recommended but not increase it, said a source.

The last time the Delhi Metro fares were revised was back in 2009, when the minimum fare was increased from `6 to `8 and the maximum fare from `22 to `30.

The FCC  that was set up in June 9 this year to recommend a revision in fares  submitted its report on Thursday night  after its request seeking a three month extension was turned down by the Union urban development ministry.

The fare panel was due to submit its report on September 8, but at the eleventh hour had written to the urban development ministry seeking more time. The request was turned down as there is no provision in the Metro Act to provide extension to FCC beyond the mandated three months, an urban development ministry official said.

The DMRC has been requesting a fare increase since 2009, but hasnt been able to do so as the Centre failed to set up a fare panel. Since 2009, electricity tariff has gone up by over 90%, accounting for almost 30% of DMRCs total operating costs.

The three member fare panel was headed by Justice ML Mehta, a retired judge of Delhi High Court. The other two members were Delhi chief secretary KK Sharma and additional secretary in urban development ministry DS Mishra.

The fare fixation committees are temporary in nature and are set up by the Centre only when a metro rail corporation requests a fare hike.

The fare panel had come in for a lot of flak after going on a whirlwind tour of Hong Kong, Singapore and Taipei to study the Metro fare structure prevailing there, barely a month after it was set up.

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The Supreme Court refused on Friday to stay the Delhi high courts verdict declaring the Lieutenant Governor (L-G) the administrative head of the National Capital Territory, a move viewed as a setback to the Arvind Kejriwal government.

A bench headed by justice AK Sikri also declined to stop the functioning of a three-member panel set up by L-G Najeeb Jung to scrutinise 400-odd files related to the decisions taken by the Aam Aadmi Party government without his concurrence.

The SCs refusal to stay the August 4 high court order comes a day after the HC declared the appointment of 21 parliamentary secretaries illegal in the absence of the L-Gs approval.

While issuing notices to the Centre and the L-G on the governments petitions against the HC verdict, the bench indicated that it might refer the matter to a larger bench. The top court said it will hear the six appeals filed by the AAP government on November 15.

The Centre questioned the affidavit accompanying appeals because it was signed by deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia and not a secretary, which is the usual practice.

Represented by a battery of senior advocates, including KK Venugopal, Gopal Subramanium, PP Rao, Indira Jaisingh and Rajeev Dhawan, the AAP government complained that the secretary concerned refused to sign the appeals/affidavits under the L-Gs instruction, forcing the deputy CM to sign them.

No public servant is willing to sign the papers, Venugopal told the bench.

The AAP government told the apex court that its appeal was aimed at resolving the issue if an elected government could work independently. It said the L-G had taken over the administration and he had tied the hands of secretaries.

On the other hand, the Centre found fault with the AAP governments appeals in the top court. Attorney general Mukul Rohatgi sought dismissal of the appeals on various grounds, including that the deputy CM had sworn the affidavit in support of the petition instead of a secretary .

This petition deserves to be dismissed on this ground alone, Rohatgi said.

He said a nine-judge constitution bench had already dealt with this issue by holding that Delhi was a union territory and not a state.

The AAP government said the L-G was the acting like an employee of the Centre and constituted the committee illegally. It took strong exception to the L-G debarring it from hiring special counsel at an exorbitant fee, saying it was against the spirit of the high courts order.

Earlier, the AAP government had told the apex court: A piquant situation has emerged in Delhi due to the Delhi High Courts August 4 judgement which had held that all decisions of the elected government have to get prior approval of the L-G.

It had said the verdict created an impression that all the bureaucrats are required to report only to the L-G.

In an application filed before the SC, the Kejriwal government had urged the top court to make the L-G a party to the case. It said the L-G has been issuing orders that were affecting the day-to-day administration, which are under challenge. The L-G was not heard in the high court.

The HC had on August 4 held concurrence of the L-G in administrative issues was mandatory.

It rejected AAP governments contention that the L-G was bound to act only on the aid and advice of the chief minister and his council of ministers with regard to making of laws by the Legislative Assembly under the Article 239AA and termed it was without substance.

The HC had rejected all the contentions of Delhi government. It, however, agreed with its submission that the L-G will have to act on its aid and advice in the appointment of special public prosecutors.
The Delhi government is investing in teachers training to drive innovative learning and teaching ideas.

Of the over Rs 10,000 crore that the Aam Aadmi Party government has allocated for education in the current budget, Rs 102 crore has been set aside to train teachers.

Thirty principals and teachers went to IIM-Lucknow on five-day training in April. Another group of 30 principals was sent to Cambridge in United Kingdom in July-August. They visited three schools there and a few colleges to interact with students and teachers.

During the 12-day trip to the UK, principals attended sessions on leadership in classroom, understanding learning and teaching methods, child-centered learning and innovations in teaching methods.

Principals have picked up ideas, which they now plan to customise for their schools.

Schools in Cambridge focused on value education as much as on academics, said Anju Chawla, principal, Sarvodya Senior Secondary School for Girls, Sultanpuri.

I have tried to replicate the idea in my school. The school has 33 sections and each one of them has adopted a value each such as honesty, responsibility, and sharing, said Chawla.

Seema Roy Choudhary, principal of a girls school in New Kondli, said, Youth Parliament is conducted in many schools. But, in my school, students discuss studies and education policy during the debate.

Read more: IIM trained principals share feedback on education reforms

At Shaheed Hemu Kalani Sarvodaya Bal Vidyalaya, Lajpat Nagar, teachers were being trained by a Learning Manager appointed by the governments directorate of education.

Principal BK Sharma decided to change the learning process after his visit to Cambridge. I decided to implement the Teach Meet concept, in which teachers meet and discuss ways to improve classroom teaching, said Sharma.

The trained teachers now also meet regularly in groups and exchange ideas, said Sharma.

Kavita Rana, who went to IIM-Lucknow, said she learned to identify the weaknesses and strengths of the teachers and working on them to improve teaching.

We had a legal literacy cell in our school. I thought to strengthen it, said Rana.

We have now transformed the cell into a mediation centre where students meet and resolve their problems and disputes, she said.

The teachers, however, said there should not be comparisons with the foreign countries. They said the change will be slow because of additional responsibilities that the teachers have to shoulder, in addition to teaching duties.

They said there are practical difficulties in implementing the ideas from the West. Unlike in India where teachers have to do administrative work, the teachers in London just teach, said a principal who visited Cambridge.

The teaching there is result-oriented, said another principal.

If teachers in the UK have to spend more time on students, they can do so. But in our schools, teachers work for a fixed number of hours, he said.

Even during that time, they remain busy with administrative work such as replying to RTIs and maintaining files, the principal said, requesting anonymity.

The government, however, is optimistic.

Officials said two more batches of 30 principals each will be sent to Cambridge after the lieutenant governor approves the visit.

We sought L-Gs approval for the policy of sending teachers abroad for training. Once he approves the proposal, we will fix the time of next batchs visit, said Atishi Marlena, adviser to education minister Manish Sisodia.

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Acid attack survivor Reshma Bano Qureshi has become the toast of India and the world ever since she walked the ramp at the New York Fashion Week on Thursday.

Reshma was scarred for life after her face was disfigured in an acid attack two years ago.

But by walking for fashion designer Archana Kochhar at the world-famous fashion gala, she sent a message of courage and inspiration to other acid attacks survivors.

HT City was the first publication to do an elaborate fashion shoot with Reshma before she left for New York. The chirpy teenager was full of life when she met us for an early morning shoot in Delhi.

Reshma told us she loves pink lipstick, and wanted her hair to be styled exactly like Katrina Kaif, her favourite actor.

She also told us how much she hates it when someone calls her a victim.

I survived the attack, didnt I? How can I ever be a victim? she said, adding, she feels more beautiful now than ever, as her perception of beauty has changed.

And this is the message she wants to share with the world: Make your heart beautiful. Beauty it not just about how you look, she said.

Here are 11 things you must know about the brave and beautiful Reshma:

(Reshma Bano Qureshi)

1 Reshma Bano Qureshi is the youngest daughter of a taxi driver from Mumbai.

2 The chirpy 19-year-old loves watching Katrina Kaif films, dressing up and taking selfies.

(Shara Ashraf/ HT Photo)

3 Reshmas world turned upside down two years ago when she was attacked by her brother-in-law, who disfigured her face with acid.

4 Her brother-in-law mistook her for his wife (her elder sister) and doused her face with acid as both were wearing a burqa.

(Reshma Bano Qureshi)

5 The incident took place at the railway station in her hometown, Mau Aima, 36 km away from Allahabad in Uttar Pradesh. She had gone there to give her 10th standard exams.

6 Just weeks before the attack, Reshma got a haircut and bought make-up for the first time in her life, for a family wedding.

(Shara Ashraf/ HT Photo)

7 Reshma went into depression after she saw her face in the mirror for the first time, a few weeks after the attack. She cut herself off from the world and even contemplated suicide.

8 A meeting with Ria Sharma, founder of NGO Make Love Not Scars, transformed Reshmas life. Ria talked her out of depression, and started a crowd-funding campaign to help Reshma meet hospital and legal expenditure. Ria built a strong emotional bond with Reshma. She helped her regain her courage and fight for justice. It was then that Reshma stopped covering her face in public.

(Make Love Not Scars )

9 Reshma made her modelling debut in the online campaign #EndAcidSale, which became a big hit. In the one-of-its-kind beauty tutorial, Reshma talked about how it takes two minutes to put on blush, but just 3 seconds to scar a face forever. She also talks about how finding the right shade of lipstick is harder than buying concentrated acid in the market.

10 The posters and videos of the campaign won a Glass Lion and two Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity 2016, France.

(Ria Sharma)

11 Russel Powell, a California-based artist famous for his hand-stamped artwork, made a black-and-white painting of Reshma. She was touched to see this one-of-a-kind artwork, and broke into tears.

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Nineteen-year-old Reshma Quereshi, scarred in an acid attack, challenged the perceptions of beauty as she strutted down the runway at New York Fashion Week to promote a ban on the sale of corrosive substances used to maim thousands of women and children each year.

She opened the FTL Moda show on Thursday to applause in a long-sleeve, white gown with embroidered appliques by Indian designer Archana Kochhar during her first trip to the United States.

Reshma rehearses before walking the ramp. (Reuters)

The buzz and glamour of the event was a world away from Allahabad, India, where she suffered severe facial burns and lost an eye two years ago after being attacked with sulfuric acid by her estranged brother-in-law and two men.

Quereshi never thought she would be going abroad, much less modelling in New York.

After enduring numerous skin graft surgeries and contemplating suicide, she met the founder of Make Love Not Scars, a group that helps survivors of the gender-based crimes.

Quereshi is the face of the groups online video campaign, which has been viewed by 1.3 million people and led to her appearance in New York.

I couldnt believe it was happening to me, Quereshi said about the trip through a translator. In that moment I felt extremely happy.

Reshma has make up applied before walking. (Reuters)

She said she hopes her turn on the catwalk will inspire hope and confidence in other acid attack survivors and spur countries to regulate the sale of cheap and easily available acids.

No one else understands what an acid attack is except the survivors themselves, she said. I do not want this to happen to anyone else.

About 1,500 acid attacks are reported each year, but Jaf Shah, the executive director of the London-based charity Acid Survivors Trust International (ASTI), said the real number is many times higher.

Reshma Querishi rehearses before walking the runway. (AP)

There are whole swathes of regions across the globe where acid attacks are occurring but are not being recorded, he said in a telephone interview.

It is not reported for fear there might be reprisals from the perpetrators due to the fact that survivors and their immediate family have no confidence in the police or the judiciary to take action.

Reshma walks the runway. She suffered severe facial burns and lost an eye two years ago after being attacked with sulfuric acid by her estranged brother-in-law and two men. (AFP)

India has the highest number of recorded attacks, which are often a form of revenge by jilted husbands or rejected suitors. ASTI describes it as a global phenomenon that occurs in countries ranging from Afghanistan and Iran to Nigeria and Colombia.

Reshma Quereshi has make up applied. She is the face of the groups online video campaign, which has been viewed by 1.3 million people and led to her appearance in New York. (REUTERS)

Shah said limiting the sale of acid, punishments for attackers, and compensation and care for survivors, are needed. People like Quereshi speaking out is also very important, he said.

Victims coming forward are defying the perpetrators of the attacks, he added.

Increasing diversity on the catwalk has been an aim of FTL Moda. The production company has featured models with disabilities, in wheelchairs, on crutches and amputees. Australian model Madeline Stuart, who has Down Syndrome, made her runway debut at the FTL Moda show last year.

I think this is a powerful tool, said FTL Moda founder Ilaria Niccolini. I think it can make a change for the better.

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ELKO  Public comments at the National Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board addressed contraceptive efforts as well as what was described as the disastrous effects of the animals on the rangelands.

No, folks its an emergency today and it will be a disaster tomorrow, said State Veterinarian Dr. JJ Goicoechea.

He used the example of over 250 horses that were in desperate need of water Thursday, referencing an earlier phone call resulting in the horses receiving both care and water.

Goicoechea furthered the conversation concerning how the issue of wild horse population is truly about the resource.

The spring, surrounding range and the horses will not come back, he said.

Its an emergency today and I encourage this board to please ask the director to declare it an emergency, said Goicoechea, explaining if there is a concern about funding emergency appropriations can be sought to complete the work.

He said both fertility control and the removal of excess horses is necessary. The former is not going to fully alleviate the situation until the appropriate management level is achieved.

Goicoechea also said he wanted to discuss the Bureau of Land Managements issues with fertility control because of branding problems.

The veterinarian expounded upon the fact the State is willing to work on identification efforts and not keeping the agency from conducting fertility control in that manner.

Dr. Goicoechea couldnt have hit it any better on the head. Weve got a disaster out here on the open range, said Assemblyman John Ellison. People should be arrested for the shape these horses are in.

Ellison also discussed the state of the range, claiming ranchers are being pushed out with the water levels from the drought and more wildland fires are started due to an increased fuel load by taking cows off the land.

What you need to do is find a place to move these horses, he said.

He asked the advisory board if something is not done, who would be responsible for the death of the horses?

If the photographic evidence were to be looked at, it would be seen the horses are pushing away cattle and elk from riparian areas, said Ellison, encouraging members to look at different areas around Nevada to get first-hand knowledge.

With no water and no vegetation out there, this is getting to where its critical. Either you can sit here and do nothing and let them die, or make the decision this board needs to make, he said, discussing how what is being done is not working.

Ellison brought up a point made by many commenters that these are feral horses, not mustangs, with 90 percent of the horses being wild.

Dr. Boyd Spratling restated the cost these animals are having on the resources, such as the potential of an entire generation losing a watershed or habitat.

On behalf of the Nevada Cattlemens Association, Spratling said, it will support any safe manipulation to reduce population growth.

More information concerning public comment will be in the weekend edition of the Elko Daily Free Press.
Twenty-one years ago Michael Manns iconic crime opus Heat paired Hollywood legends Al Pacino and Robert De Niro for the first time, delighting moviegoers and inspiring a generation of filmmakers.

The sprawling 1995 epic, which pits the actors against one another as kindred spirits on opposite sides of the law, has become a benchmark in neo-noir cinema, lauded for its melancholic but visually stunning depictions of Los Angeles.

The stars and their director reunited this week for the first time to share memories of an intense 107-day shoot, debunk myths and reveal an aspect of Pacinos acclaimed performance kept secret for two decades.

I knew it would be special when I read the script so Im happy that it got the attention it did, De Niro, 73, told a panel at the Academy in Beverly Hills, moderated by Oscar-nominated British filmmaker Christopher Nolan.

Heat follows Pacinos LAPD detective Vincent Hanna over almost three hours as he and his team chase a gang of robbers led by De Niro across Los Angeles.

It is lauded for its striking cinematography, taut action and a meeting in a diner between the two leads that marked their first scene together after appearing separately in The Godfather: Part II 21 years earlier.

Read: My competition is with Robert De Niro and Al Pacino: Anupam Kher

Pacino, 76, revealed for the first time that he deliberately played his famously brash detective -- a role which has come to define his later career -- as a drug addict who regularly chips cocaine.

Mann never filmed the character taking drugs but Pacino said much of his motivation for the over-the-top, erratic detective came from thinking of him as constantly strung out on coke.

- Conspiracy theory -

Ive always wanted to say it, just so you know where some of the behaviour comes from, Pacino said.

Nolan, who drew inspiration in his portrayal of Gotham City in the Dark Knight films from Heat, rebuffed a long-held conspiracy theory about the movie -- that Pacino and De Niro didnt actually act opposite one another.

Their paths cross on several occasions but they appear separately in close up shots, and an urban legend asserting that they were never together at the same time has grown popular over the years.

Nolan pointed out, however, that after moving to LA he had seen a picture of the acting legends on set together, hung for years above a door at the now closed Kate Mantilini diner in Beverly Hills, where the scene was filmed.

The famous exchange, mostly taken from the 11th take, revealed something of De Niros meticulous acting method, Pacino said, recalling that his co-star didnt want to rehearse.

Pacino said the dynamic between the two actors was helped in part by the fact that De Niro was in a bad mood when the cameras rolled due to a production delay.

I loved the scene, and I really wanted it to be the best it could be. I was a little unhappy that we started so late, in the middle of the night, but anyway we did it, De Niro shrugged sheepishly.

Mann was inspired to write the script by the experiences of his friend, a real-life detective in Chicago called Charlie Adamson, who shot dead criminal Neil McCauley in 1963 after the pair had enjoyed an amiable dinner.

Mann said the real-life pair shared the kind of intimacy only strangers can have, even though Adamson didnt hesitate for a second when he had to kill McCauley.

It was one of those things where the contrapuntal nature of it really fascinated me, that both are true, it wasnt a contradiction. Thats the real germ of the film.

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Film director Tim Burton left his hand and foot imprints in cement outside Hollywoods famed TCL Chinese Theatre on Thursday, bringing with him to the ceremony some of the dark humour often seen in his movies.

Director Tim Burton shows his hands after placing them in cement during a ceremony in the forecourt of the TCL Chinese theatre in Hollywood. (REUTERS)

Its amazing,Burton told the crowd, adding later, I love weird things so this is an amazingly weird thing,

The filmmaker, known for Big Fish, Planet of the Apes and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, was introduced by actress Winona Ryder, who starred in his earlier works Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands.

I grew up in Los Angeles...I used to walk these pavements as a child so something like this to happen its just a really special, surreal honour, Burton said.

Burtons latest work Miss Peregrines Home for Peculiar Children hits cinemas in September.

Director Tim Burton is helped to place his handprints in cement during a ceremony in the forecourt of the TCL Chinese theatre in Hollywood. (REUTERS)

Photographers walk around the fresh handprints and footprints of director Tim Burton in the cement of the forecourt of the TCL Chinese Theatre. (AFP)

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Four-time Rashtriya Janata Dal parliamentarian Md Shahabuddin is likely to walk out of jail on Saturday to a heros welcome by thousands of supporters after 11 years behind bars.

The Siwan strongman is facing around 35 cases  including those of murder  but has been granted bail on most charges for want of evidence.

He was convicted in seven cases but for his legions of supporters, the bails granted to him are no less than acquittals.

His release is set to be a show of strength of the RJD. All hotels and circuit houses are booked in advance, in both Bhagalpur  where he is in jail currently -- and his native place, Siwan, as supporters throng the region.

Lets see how many of the top RJD leaders and ministers reach here. Nobody would like to miss this opportunity, said a local Siwan leader.

It was raining sweets and crackers in Pratappur and Siwan on Friday, a day after the release order was issued by a Siwan court. The former MPs supporters burst crackers and distributed sweets all long the day to welcome Saheb, as Shahabuddin is known locally.

It is a matter of pleasure for all of us. He is our party leader. There is immense enthusiasm and happiness among his supporters in Siwan, said minority welfare minister Abdul Ghafoor, whose picture with Shahabuddin inside Siwan jail had led to furore in Bihar assembly, early this year.

But not everyone is happy. Many complainants and witnesses in cases against Shahabuddin have already sought police security. Since 1990, the district has seen blood on the streets because of a brutal battle for supremacy between Shahabuddin and the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation.

Fear has once again gripped local people, who were used to living in fear, but experienced peace over the past decade. Most residents in Siwan and Bhagalpur preferred to remain silent. Who wants to invite trouble? He is being released by the court. What do we say, said a lawyer, preferring anonymity.

In Bhagalpur, a huge number of vehicles carrying RJD workers and supporters have started to throw traffic out of gear.

Suddenly, there are Scorpios, Pajeros, Fortuners zipping all around, said an RJD leader.

For the police, the challenge to maintain law and order is reminiscent of the chaos triggered by Shahabuddins arrest in 2005 from Delhi. This time, it is the crowd management that is creating a big problem.

We have to make sure that things dont go out of hand, as we cannot estimate the number of people who would be there. There will be fleet of vehicles following Shahabuddin to his native place Pratapur in Siwan. Traffic control will be a big ask, as we are getting reports that 1,300 SUVs have already reached Bhagalpur, said a police officer.

In Siwan security arrangements have been bolstered.

We are keeping close watch and patrolling has been intensified, as miscreants may also try to create mischeif and disturb peace in such situation. There will be force at all intersections and roads, said Siwan superintendent of police Saurav Kumar Shah.

The Patna high court had on Wednesday granted bail to former MP in the 2014 Rajiv Roshan murder case in which Shahabuddin was named as a conspirator.

Rajiv Roshan was killed in 2014, a few days before he was set to depose in court in a case involving the murder of his brothers, Satish and Girish. The duo was killed in an acid attack in 2004, to which Rajiv Roshan was a witness.

His return has brought happiness to family. We will re-unite all the old people and re-activate the RJD in Siwan, said Ijajul Haq, brother-in-law of Shahabuddin.

Shahabuddin was shifted to Bhagalpur central jail on May 19 this year following allegations that his presence could interfere with investigations into the murder of Hindustans Siwan journalist Rajdev Ranjan, in which one of his close aides, Laddan Mian, has been named.
Arunachal Pradesh governor Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowa has complained to the President for being put under pressure to resign by the Centre, sources said.

The president has forwarded the complaint to the home ministry for further action. It was put up for home minister Rajnath Singh for his perusal, said a senior home ministry official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

A Rashtrapati Bhawan official confirmed the development, saying the President forwarded the complaint to the home ministry before leaving for Chennai on Friday.

In his complaint, governor Rajkhowa has defended himself and narrated how he was pressurised to resign.

In the last few days, Rajkhowa, in interviews, complained of being spoken to by a junior minister in the NDA government. He has also claimed that a senior home ministry official asked him to resign, otherwise the government would sack him.

However, the governor has denied any pressure from RSS to quit. He has also denied speaking with or writing to President Mukherjee. Do let me know if I have communicated with the President, he said, probably in sarcasm.

Further, he said, there has been no communication from BJP on his position.

Sources said the governor, in his complaint to the President, has named the Guwahati businessman who first contacted him to tell that the centre wants his resignation.

A senior home ministry official said it was governor Rajkhowa who got in touch with Union home secretary Rajiv Mehrishi after getting an indication from the Centre that he should resign.

It is understood that Mehrishi told him if the Governor wishes, he can check about it, said the official.

Rajkhowa was appointed the governor on May 12, 2015.

With Rajkhowa digging his heels, the government has decided to go slow on the matter for the time being. But ultimately he has to go, said the official.

Rajkhowa had recommended imposition of Presidents rule in the state, a decision later overturned by the Supreme Court. The top court also restored the Congress government in the state and held the decision to impose central rule as unconstitutional.
A BJP leaders son who was abducted last month by United Liberation Front of Assam-Independent (Ulfa-I) was released on Friday near the Myanmar-Arunachal Pradesh border.

Kuldeep Moran, 27, son of Tinsukia district panchayat vice-president Ratneshwar Moran, was abducted on August 1 from Arunachal Pradesh by the banned militant outfit.

Police sources from Changlang told PTI that the police team rescued Kuldeep from a cliff in a dense jungle, around 10km from Longvi village that borders Myanmar.

The matter came to light three weeks later after Ulfa-I released a video where Kuldeep was seen kneeling with five masked youths carrying assault rifles and surrounding him.

In the video, a first for militant outfits in the Northeast, Kuldeep was seen pleading for his life and urging his parents and the state government to get him released.

I have become very weak and my health has also deteriorated. I am afraid I might die in cross-firing, the youth said in Assamese.

There were reports that Ulfa-I has sought Rs 1 crore as ransom for the youths release. But the outfits chief Paresh Baruah called television channels to deny any such demand.

He was abducted as he was involved in anti-Ulfa activities and was passing information to security agencies. He will be tried in our court and released if found not guilty, Baruah had said.

Local reports say the youth was handed over to his parents by Ulfa-I cadres. There is no confirmation whether any ransom was paid.

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BJP MP Manoj Tiwari on Friday questioned the timing of comedian-actor Kapil Sharmas allegation that a Mumbai municipal officer sought a bribe from him.

The timing of raising the matter is doubtful. Yesterday (Navjot Singh) Sidhu announced the launch of a party, and today he (Sharma) has raised this matter. We know their connection, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Manoj Tiwari told reporters.

Sidhu features on Kapil Sharmas popular comedy show.

Tiwari also asked Kapil Sharma to name the official of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) who had sought the bribe. If somebody has demanded a bribe then he should tell his name. He should have complained against that officer to the competent authority, Tiwari added.

Tiwaris remarks came after Sharma on Friday complained to Prime Minister Narendra Modi about corruption in the Mumbai civic body and even questioned if these were the achhe din (good days) he had promised in the run-up the 2014 general elections.

Taking and giving bribes -- both are crimes. This angle is also important, Tiwari said, adding, There are reports of illegal construction in his house that also needs to be looked into.
While numerous figures about government spending on separatists have been doing the rounds, sources in security reveal that only eight separatists have police protection and just two own passports.

Most of the leaders are from the moderate faction of Hurriyat and have been provided security after independent threat perception by police. According to government sources around Rs 1.5 crores is spent on security of the resistance leadership by the government.

While HT could not access recent figures, Jammu and Kashmir government had informed the Legislative Assembly in March 2013 that over Rs 9.47 crore was spent on providing security to separatist leaders and activists for a period of 12 years from 2001 to 2012.

In its written response to a question, the then CM Omar Abdullah said an expenditure of around Rs 4.96 crore has been incurred on salaries of PSOs/drivers attached with the separatists. Another Rs 71.10 lakh has been spent to meet the fuel expenditure for the security vehicles deployed with the separatists during the same period, the government reply said.

Besides, the government has borne an expenditure of Rs 3.79 crore on salaries of residential guards of the separatists, Omar had said. All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) leaders, who have been provided security cover, include Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, Molvi Abbas Ansari, Prof A B Gani Bhat and Bilal Lone.

Hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani has no security cover.

Reacting to the media reports of providing hotel and airfare expenses, spokesperson of moderate Hurriyat Conference, Shahid-ul-Islam, said the government provided security to Mirwaiz after his father was killed in 1990. APHC denied that government provided any travel expenses to Mirwaiz.

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A hunter shot dead a man-eater leopard a day after he left the big cat severely injured in Uttarkhands Tehri-Garhwal, officials said on Friday, triggering a debate over the ethics of killing a maimed animal.

Officials said the leopard was left with a shattered spine on Wednesday by the first bullet and the big cat had chewed off its hind paws in an attempt to lessen its pain. Parts of the paws were found in the leopards stomach during the post-mortem.

A picture of the hunter, Joy Hukil, posing with the 12-year-old leopard angered activists who demanded police action against him for killing an animal which was no longer was threat to people.

Once considered a haven for big cats, Uttarakhand is battling growing man-leopard conflicts for the past decade due to increasing human population eating into animal habitats. According to 2015 estimates, there were more than 140 man-eater leopards in the state. Thirty of them have been killed by hunters.

Forest officials in India are often accused of putting tigers and leopards on the man-eater list without sufficient proof.

Wildlife officials said the leopard was declared a man-eater last year after it killed and ate parts of a minor girl in the area.

Activists, however, said the hunter displayed insensitivity in killing the injured animal.

When the animal was already shot once and was paralysed, how could it be a threat to people? questioned animal rights activist Gauri Maulekhi.

She said the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960 empowers officials to give kill order only if an animal is deemed cruel and a threat.

Maulekhi demanded an FIR against the shooter as well as the forest department for intentionally killing an ailing animal.

Hunter Joy Hukil with the body of the leopard. Villagers could be seen around him. (HT Photo)

Activists were also concerned over alleged non-adherence to the standard operation procedure (SOP) prescribed by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), the countrys apex body on affairs of big cats.

The first step, as per the SOP, is to capture and translocate the animal, said Abhishekh Kumar of an NGO named TRAFFIC. Did the department try that?

Some experts said euthanasia could have been an alternative though painless killing of an animal suffering from incurable or painful disease is also deemed hunting under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972.

Others, however, said the focus should be on saving the species and not just one leopard.

I am not trying to justify the death of the leopard but it is important to get rid of an individual and save its species than to keep one alive and destroy its race, said veteran wildlife activist AJT Johnsingh.

Experts were baffled by the leopards act of eating its own paws.

Never have I seen such an incident. I believe the pain in its spinal cord was unbearable and so it chewed on its own paws, said Sandeep Kumar Talwar, a veterinary officer based at Devprayag who conducted the postmortem on the leopard.

Some activists also flagged the increasing number if hunters deployed to kill leopards in the state as many of them allegedly dont have the expertise and sensitivity required for big game hunting.

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The Delhi high court on Friday sought the response of Payal Abdullah, the estranged wife of former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah, on his plea challenging a trial court order dismissing his divorce petition.

A bench of justices Pradeep Nandrajog and Pratibha Rani issued notice to Payal asking her to file a reply by November 17, the next date of hearing.

On August 30, the trial court had dismissed Omars plea seeking divorce from Payal, saying he had failed to prove irretrievable breakdown of the marriage.

The court had said that Omar could not prove his claims of cruelty or desertion that were the grounds alleged by him for grant of decree of divorce.

The petitioner (Omar) has not been able to explain a single circumstance to show that the supervening circumstances have erupted, which has made it impossible for him to continue his relationship with the respondent (Payal).

Rather, evidence shows that they were in continuous contact till the filing of the divorce petition, the court had said in its order, adding that there is not an iota of evidence in regard to the circumstances which have prevailed to prompt the petitioner to file the divorce plea.

It had further held that Omar failed to prove his case for divorce on ground of cruelty.

In his plea seeking divorce, Omar had claimed that his marriage had broken down irretrievably and he has not enjoyed conjugal relationship since 2007 and that the couple, married on September 1, 1994, were living separately since 2009. The couple have two sons who are staying with their mother.

The petition before the trial court had also added that Omar was subject to unreasonable conduct of Payal, causing pain and harassment to the politician.
Amid escalating war of words between India and Pakistan, the US has called for dialogue between the neighbours to reduce tensions, saying it does not want to see the situation to spiral out of control and lead to some kind of incident.

We strongly encourage in all of our dealings with either India and/or Pakistan stronger relations between the two countries. Its clearly in the security interests of the region that they work to de-escalate tensions and that they have dialogue, state department deputy spokesperson Mark Toner told reporters on Thursday at his daily news conference.

Thats something we constantly encourage for just that  or out of just that concern, which is that we dont want to see tensions escalate, spiral out of control, and lead to some kind of incident, he said.

Toners remarks came amid escalating war of words between India and Pakistan, and on a day Pakistan accused India of destabilising it by financing terrorism and supporting militancy, in a fresh rhetoric after Prime Minister Narendra Modi rapped Islamabad for producing and exporting terror.

In back-to-back remarks at international summits, the Prime Minister criticised Pakistan for sponsoring terror and sought sanctioning and isolation of the country.

It is important for the two countries, the two governments to maintain strong, cordial, and productive relations, Toner said in response to a question seeking his reaction on American senators remarks that the US should play the role of mediator between the Pakistan and India.

The US, he said, wants Pakistan to take more action against terrorist network.

Our discussions continue to focus on the fact that were urging the government of Pakistan to take concerted action against safe havens and terrorist groups that threaten other countries in the region and weve been very clear about that, he said.

And we have seen them attempt to address it. We want to see more action taken, but it continues to be a topic of conversation with them, he added.

Toner said Americas relationship with India and Pakistan is not a zero-sum game.

As weve said many times, theres no zero-sum game here. We need to have a very strong and robust relationship with India and we do  the worlds largest democracy. And we also want to have a strong relationship with Pakistan. Its in the interests of the region to do so, he said.

The recent India and Bangladesh visit of the Secretary of State (John Kerry) and not going to Pakistan should not be treated otherwise, Toner said.

It doesnt clearly indicate anything about our relationship with Pakistan. The Secretary has a very intense travel schedule. Hes been to Pakistan recently; he speaks often to senior Pakistani leadership, he said,

Specifically, he was in India for the Strategic and Commercial Dialogue and took the opportunity to also visit Bangladesh  I think the first time hes been there, he added.
The Delhi high courts order setting aside appointment of 21 Aam Aadmi Party MLAs as parliamentary secretaries has brought the focus back on their possible disqualification for violating the office of profit law.

The order by a bench headed by Chief Justice G Rohini is based on its August 4 verdict that gives primacy to the lieutenant governor (LG) over the chief minister in the power tussle over administrative matters in Delhi.

Since the March 13, 2015 order for the appointment of parliamentary secretaries was issued without the concurrence of LG Najeeb Jung, the AAP government counsel conceded that judgment stands against me (Delhi government).

Real question

But the real question is: Can it save the 21 former parliamentary secretaries from being disqualified as MLAs under the office of profit law?

All eyes are on the Election Commission, which is already seized of a petition demanding their disqualification for holding the post of parliamentary secretaries  alleged to be an office of profit.

On August 29, the EC reserved its order on the AAP MLAs plea against maintainability of the petition seeking their disqualification. The EC said it will examine the high court verdict to ascertain its possible impact on the disqualification proceedings.

But the proceedings in the Delhi high court and those before the EC are of different nature inasmuch the former related to the legality of appointment of the 21 MLAs as parliamentary secretaries while the latter sought their disqualification for allegedly holding an office of profit.

The allegation is that as parliamentary secretaries these MLAs held positions that profited them  in terms of perks, position, monetarily or otherwise. The Union Ministry of Home Affairs had told the court that such an appointment was not covered by the law.

AAP govts stand

The Arvind Kejriwal government had earlier defended the appointment of parliamentary secretaries, saying it was done to assist ministers and no office akin to the Council of Ministers had been created and that they were not given any access to confidential documents. They were not receiving any remuneration or perk of any kind from the government, it maintained.

Sonia Gandhis case

Its not the first time that the office-of-profit law has troubled politicians or a political party. It was the same law that forced Congress chief Sonia Gandhi to resign from her Lok Sabha seat in 2006. A member of Lok Sabha, she was appointed the chairperson of the national advisory council by the UPA-1 government. After the issue of office of profit was raised, she quit as an MP and sought re-election. The Prevention of Disqualification Act was amended in 2006 to add the position of NAC chairperson to the list of exempted posts.

The then Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, too, faced disqualification but was saved by the amendment. Samajwadi Party MP Jaya Bachachan lost her seat for holding the post of chairperson of the Uttar Pradesh Film Development Federation.

The act was again amended in 2013 to save the chairpersons of the national commission for the scheduled castes and national commission for the scheduled tribes from disqualification.

The AAP MLAs real problem emanates from President Pranab Mukherjees refusal to give his assent to a bill passed by the Delhi assembly in 2015 to shield these lawmakers from the office-of-profit law. Had the bill been cleared, it could have led to the dismissal of petitions pending with the EC and the Delhi high court.

What is office of profit?

The idea behind the office of profit law  which evolved in England  is to preserve the independence of the legislature by keeping the members away from any temptation from the executive that can come in the way of independent discharge of their duties. It also seeks to enforce the principle of separation of power between the legislative, the judiciary and the executive  a basic feature of the Constitution.

The term office of profit has not been defined in the Constitution. But, Articles 102 (1) and 191 (1)  which give effect to the concept  prescribe restrictions at the central and state level on lawmakers accepting government positions. Any violation attracts disqualification of MPs or MLAs, as the case may be.

According to Article 102 (1) (a), a person shall be disqualified as a member of Parliament for holding any office of profit under the government of India or the government of any state, other than an office declared by Parliament by law not to disqualify its holder. Article 191 (1) (a) has a similar provision for the members of state assemblies.

Ministers exempted

However, Articles 102 and 191 clarify that a person shall not be deemed to hold an office of profit under the government of India or the government of any state by reason only that he is a minister.

Further, the last part of the two provisions protects a lawmaker holding a government position if the office has been made immune to disqualification by law.

Office of profit under NCT Act, 1991

Section 15(1)(a) of the government of national capital territory of Delhi act, 1991, says a person shall be disqualified for being chosen as, and for being, a member of the legislative assembly if he holds any office of profit under the government of India, a state or a union territory other than an office protected by law.

Like articles 102 (1) and 191(1), Section 15(2) of the NCT act also protects ministers at the Centre, in states or union territories from disqualification. Section 15(3) of the NCT act says in case of a dispute over disqualification of an MLA, the matter would be referred to the President, whose decision would be final.

But, before deciding on a petition seeking disqualification, the President, says the NCT act, has to get the opinion of the election commission which is binding on him.

Financial benefit not necessary

What is important is that an office of profit does not necessarily mean financial benefits. Even an administrative position without any financial entitlements can fall foul of this law.

In Guru Gobind Basu vs Sankari Prasad Ghosal and others, the Supreme Court ruled in 1964 that the test for determining whether a person holds an office of profit is the test of appointment. Several factors such as appointing authority, the authority vested with the power to terminate the appointment, the authority that determines the remuneration, the source of remuneration and the power that comes with the position have to be considered.

The shield

The Parliament (prevention of disqualification) act, 1959 declares that certain offices of profit under shall not disqualify their holders. The act has been amended several times to exempt holders of various offices from the mischief of the office of profit law.

As the EC examines constitutional provisions, the Parliament (prevention of disqualification) act, 1959 and the Delhi high court verdict to take a final call on the disqualification petition, the fate of these MLAs hangs in balance.

Read | EC seeks details from Delhi govt on facilities to 21 AAP MLAs
The Centres rural job scheme proved crucial in the dry months of April-June this year, underlining its importance as a source of alternate income during distress for rural India.

The 12 drought-hit states generated 79% of the total work done under the MGNREGA schemes this financial year. The biggest share of those jobs was done between April and June, when large parts of the country reeled under rainless heat.

Question marks were raised over the future of the MGNREGA when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power. A section of the ruling party was critical about the assured job plan  enacted during the UPAs regime  and the scheme even faced budget cuts. But things have changed.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi repeatedly instructed us to ensure timely wage payments and creation of long-term assets in the job scheme. More than 75% workers get payment on time this year, so in the summer, people could fall back on MGNREGA to earn money, said a senior rural development official.

Top 5 states in generating work State Persondays Tamil Nadu 19.11 Rajasthan 15.6 Andhra Pradesh 13.31 Uttar Pradesh 11.25 West Bengal 9.77 All figures in crore

Tamil Nadu generated most persondays under MGNREGA this financial year  19.11 crore  followed by Rajasthan (15.60 crore persondays).

The Centres focus on generating jobs in summer was such that the rural development ministry had to seek additional money for MGNREGA in the supplementary demands for grants in the monsoon session of Parliament.

When the rains came, there was a drastic fall in MGNREGA work.

MGNREGA in 2016:

 Total persondays generated from April to August: 12193.13

 Persondays in April-June: 9477.17

 Persondays in July-August: 2715.96

 78% of total persondays generated in summer (April to June)

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Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi prayed at a temple in Ayodhya on Friday, the first visit by a member of the Nehru-Gandhi family to the Uttar Pradesh town since the demolition of the disputed Babri mosque by Hindutva activists in 1992.

The BJP was quick to term the visit politically motivated though Gandhi offered prayers at the Hanuman Garhi temple, a kilometre from the spot where the foundation stone was laid in 1989 for construction of a Ram Temple to replace the razed mosque.

The visit was high on symbolic value with the Congress attempting to end its nearly three-decades-long exile in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh where caste and religion influence voters.

Gandhi also met Gyan Das, the seer of the temple, at his residence nearby. All politicians come here to seek blessings and I bless everyone. I also blessed Rahul Gandhi. He is a nice man, said Das, who is known for his stand against the right-wing Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP).

As a convoy of cars, buses and open trucks rolled into the temple town, people rushed out of their houses to catch a glimpse of the Congress leader. Former Prime Minister and Rahuls fathers, Rajeev Gandhi, had visited the historic town in 1990.

Rahul had with him a picture of Lord Hanuman and a Ramnami chadar  a piece of cloth with the name of Ram printed on it.

Hindu groups claim that the disputed Babri Masjid, which was attacked on December 6, 1992, was built by the Mughals after razing a temple at the birthplace of Ram. The demolition of the mosque marked an important chapter in Indian politics and remains a flashpoint of tensions between Hindus and Muslims.

Later, Rahul visited a Dalit colony in Ayodhyas twin city Faizabad and interacted with students.

Rahul Gandhi offered prayers at the Haunman Garhi temple and met Gyan Das, the seer of the temple, at Dass residence nearby. (HT Photo)

Political analysts view Rahuls visit as an attempt to change the Congress perceived pro-minority image, believed to be one of the contributing factors for the partys near decimation in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

The VHP and a section of saints of Ayodhya, however, said the Congress leaders prayers would not yield any result without darshan of Ramlala, the idol of Ram installed at the disputed site.

The darshan of Hanumanji is incomplete without paying obeisance to Lord Ram. Has Rahul not paid obeisance to Ramlala to appease the Muslims? His family members had also done incomplete darshan and the results are visible, VHP spokesman Sharad Sharma said.

(With inputs from agencies)

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India will test the waters to know whether the US is keen on redoubling the efforts for membership to the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) by November, before taking a call on ratifying the Paris climate deal.

After China also ratified the accord, which President Barack Obama sees as part of his presidencys legacy, the US is pushing India to ratify the agreement at an early date. India had linked its membership of the NSG, an elite club of countries dealing with trade in nuclear technologies and fissile materials, to ratifying Paris climate agreement.

An early positive decision by the NSG would have allowed us to move forward on the Paris Agreement, external affairs ministry had said after India failed to make the cut at the NSG in June.

Americans didnt take kindly to this. According to sources, at the last strategic dialogue and subsequent high level interactions, the US pressed for Indias consent for an early ratification of the pact.

External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj made it clear that Indian commitment is firm (for ratifying the Paris accord) and India will compress the internal processes for the same. But the US needs to walk the talk on NSG membership, which has a direct bearing on our pursuit of clean energy, said a government official. India hopes that the US will step up its efforts in this regard by November.

The US has assured India that it will redouble efforts but sources said whether the US would do enough at the highest levels to lobby for India is an important question. Also, how much leverage an outgoing president would have on countries, most importantly on China, is the key question.

A historic agreement to combat climate change and to accelerate and intensify the actions and investments needed for a sustainable low carbon future was arrived at in Paris last year. The Paris Agreement requires all parties to put forward their best efforts through nationally determined contributions (NDCs) and to strengthen these efforts in the years ahead.

In accordance with Article 21, the Paris Agreement enters into force on the 30th day after the date on which at least 55 parties to the convention, accounting for at least an estimated 55% of the total global greenhouse gas emissions, have deposited their instruments of ratification, acceptance, or accession. Large polluters like China and India ratifying the pact will help it come into force at an early date.

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The governments decision to introduce a dynamic pricing system on some of the Indian Railways premium trains does have a strong case on the need to raise passenger fares.

The Indian Railways carry 23 million people every day but successive governments have backed away from reforms and especially hiking passenger fares, which is a politically sensitive topic. As a result, the countrys largest employer runs many trains at rock-bottom fares and struggles to balance its books.

Read | Financial trouble? Indian Railways fails to meet earnings target

Amongst major countries that have rail operations, the Indian Railways are placed at the bottom of the heap in terms of revenues earned from freight and passenger traffic.

A 2012 World Bank study based on purchasing power parity (PPP) calculations brings out the grim situation: The Indian Railways earn 1 cent from each passenger per kilometre as against 9.4 cents earned by the Japan railways, 6.7 cents by the Russian railways, 6.2 cents by the Deutsche Bahn (German railways) and 2.7 cents by the Chinese railways.

In terms of nominal price, the gap in earnings is larger. Calculated on such terms, the Indian Railways earn 0.6 cents from each passenger as against 19 cents earned by the Japan railways, 12.6 cents by the Deutsche Bahn, 5.2 cents earned by the Russian railways and 2.4 cents by the Chinese railways.

Read | Worried about railway fares? Heres all you need to know about dynamic pricing

Calculations based on the PPP index are more accurate, as these take into account various economic parameters including comparative currency values and service costs, officials said.

Trends in respect of freight earnings are also at a sharp variance. According to PPP calculations, the Indian Railways earns 1 cent from the transportation of goods for every kilometre as against 0.75 cents earned by the Russian railways, 0.58 cents by the Chinese railways and 0.51 cents by the US railways, official documents show.

In terms of nominal prices, other countries have done better. The US earned 2.28 cents from the transportation of every kilometre of freight according to such calculations, while the Indian Railways earned 2.11 cents against 2.20 cents earned by the Russian railways and 1.49 cents by the Chinese railways.

While freight earnings of the Indian Railways have been healthy, the transporters overall finances have not improved -- largely because earnings from goods transportation have been used over past decades to cross-subsidize passenger services.

The 2015 White Paper of the Indian Railways brings out the magnitude of the freight versus passenger distortions.

In 2012-13, the Indian Railways spent 57.76 paise and earned only 28.52 paise to carry one passenger on its network of 65,000 kilometres. Against this, the transporter spent 75.28 paise and earned 123.27 paise from the transportation of each kilometre of freight.

Also read | Surge-pricing introduced, fares of premier Rajdhani, Duronto, Shatabdi to go up

Also read | Ticket dynamic pricing on experimental basis, will be reviewed: Railways
India hit out at Pakistan on Friday, saying nations cant escape responsibility over terrorist acts from their soil by just blaming non-state actors.

Foreign secretary S Jaishankar said the concept of state and non-state actors on the issue of terrorism was a false dichotomy, hitting out at Pakistans narrative that terror attacks on India were carried out by non-state actors.

He also said acting against some terror groups was not a justification to giving a free hand to other such groups.

Read: At Asian summits, Modi takes shots at China and Pak on sea dispute, terror

There is a connect between state actors and non-state actors which is why we use the word sponsored. So, the state cannot escape responsibility by saying it is non-state. This is not just vis-a-vis India. It was the situation even after 9/11 (attacks), Jaishankar said.

We have always maintained the view that acting against some groups is not a justification for giving a free pass, leave alone active support, to other groups. So, you cant have a segmented, differentiated fight against terrorism, he said.

He was responding to questions about the US -- which supports Indias stand on terrorism -- saying that Pakistan was fighting against terrorism by taking action against various groups.

Jaishankar said the world has a better sense of the nesting ground of terrorism in the region, where terrorism is being bred and nurtured.

His remarks came as India upped the ante on the issue of terror export from Pakistan, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi raising it at the BRICS meet and East Asia Summit, where he called on the international community to isolate and sanction this instigator.

Modi urged other BRICS members to intensify joint efforts to combat terrorism and sought coordinated actions by the grouping to isolate supporters and sponsors of terror.

Theres one country in our neighbourhood whose competitive advantage rests solely in producing and exporting terrorism, he later said in his address at the East Asia Summit, without naming Pakistan.
Three-time MP from Agra and UP Congress president Raj Babbar rubbished reports that his daughter Juhi Babbar may contest assembly election from Agra South constituency.

Talking to HT over phone, Babbar said on Friday that Juhi had told him that she had no intention to contest assembly election in Uttar Pradesh and reports suggesting her candidature from Agra South were imaginary.

Earlier, a section of the media had reported that Juhi Babbar may contest assembly election on a Congress ticket.

The UPCC chief said he would be very happy if his children join politics in future and choose Agra as their constituency. Agra unka ghar hai (Agra is their home), he said.

Raj Babbar was born in Agra and studied at Mufeed-e-Aam Inter College before joining theatre and film industry as an actor. He successfully contested parliamentary election from Agra seat on a Samajwadi Party ticket before losing as a Congress candidate from Fatehpur Sikri (Agra rural).

Juhi was active in the neighbouring city of Firozabad when Raj Babbar contested Lok Sabha byelection in 2009 and defeated Dimple Yadav, wife of chief minister Akhilesh Yadav.

Juhi was instrumental in roping in film stars to campaign in favour of her father.

Juhi is married to actor Anup Soni. After his daughters marriage, Raj Babbar had organised a reception in Agra.

Juhi has worked in Hindi and Punjabi movies and has also assisted her mother Nadira Babbar in theatre productions.

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Life in the city and most parts of the state was affected on Friday by the dawn-to-dusk Karnataka bandh called by pro-Kannada outfits to protest against the Supreme Courts direction to release Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu.

A few activists who tried to enter the departure terminal of the Kempegowda International Airport and the railway station here were stopped and detained by police.

Transport services were hit with government buses staying off the roads while auto-rickshaw and cab unions extended their support to the bandh. Metro services in the countrys IT hub have also been halted.

People who reached the city from distant places and those travelling towards the airport are facing difficulties in reaching their destination with no mode of connectivity.

Our airport staff continue to be onsite to help in every way possible. They are wearing 'May I help you' badges , for easy identification  BLR Airport (@BLRAirport) September 9, 2016

The day-long protest is being spearheaded by as many as 500 pro-Kannada organisations, which represent sections including farmers, traders and businesses, and has the tacit support of the state government. Extra forces have been deployed with two companies each from Kerala and Andhra Pradesh, one from Maharashtra and 10 companies of central forces, police said.

Chief minister Siddaramiah had appealed for peace and said no damage should be caused to public property during the bandh.

Educational institutions declared a holiday, and attendance at government offices was comparatively less. While some private companies have declared a holiday, others made alternate arrangements for employees to work from home.

Petrol bunks, hotels, malls and other commercial establishments remained shut, besides banks services were also hit.

Karnataka Cable Operators Association, which is supporting the strike, said Tamil TV channels will not be aired.

Read | Cauvery water row explained: Why Tamil Nadu, Karnataka fight over river usage?

The bandh has evoked a positive response from various parts of the state including Mandya, Mysuru, Ballari, Koppala, Chikkaballapura, Dharwad and Kolar.

In Mandya, the epicenter of the Cauvery protests, agitators blocked the Bengaluru-Mysuru highway at several places. A section of farmers in the district staged a protest by venturing into the river carrying stones on their heads.

In Ballari, three lorries bearing Tamil Nadu registrations were stoned by protesters.

The transgender community in the district also took part in the bandh related demonstrations.

This is the second bandh that the state is bracing for in a weeks time and the fourth this year.

Officials said with the bandh on the emotive Cauvery issue being supported by several organisations, unions and political parties, it was likely to be total.

Opposition parties of BJP and JD(S) have also lent support to the bandh.

Read | Karnataka starts releasing Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu

The perennial water war between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka escalated on Tuesday after the Supreme Court ordered Karnataka to release 15,000 cusecs of water from the Cauvery river to Tamil Nadu, sparking off equal and opposite protests in the two states.

The farmers had threatened a bigger agitation after the order and called for a bandh on Friday. They had also announced intentions to block feeder canals to prevent water being given to Tamil Nadu.

When we are being given only drinking water and not a drop for irrigation, why should farmers in Tamil Nadu be given water to grow their crops? This is patently unjust and the Karnataka government must file a review petition in Supreme Court against the decision, Mandya MLA MH Ambareesh had said.

However, bowing to the apex courts order, the state began releasing 15,000 cusecs of water daily from early Wednesday from its reservoirs across the river basin for 10 days amid protests and demonstrations in the Mysuru region.

The Karnataka government has said it will approach the apex court seeking modification of its order because of the difficulties in implementing it, given that the live storage in four reservoirs in the Cauvery basin now was 46.7 TMC ft against their capacity of 104 TMC ft.

Read | Nagaraj, man behind Cauvery protests in Karnataka, has staged 10,000 protests
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday said the Valley is facing a proxy war from Pakistan, and the situation can only be tackled strategically.

The BJPs statement came after Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) leader Muzaffar Hussain Baig reportedly demanded chief minister Mehbooba Muftis resignation for the governments failure to control the volatile situation in Kashmir.

This is not the first time that Kashmir is having this kind of episode, these things have happened before also. We should not forget that there is a proxy war going on in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, which is being operated by our neighbouring country. So, we have to deal it that way, strategically, BJP spokesperson Khalid Jehangir told ANI.

He added that Mufti has the full support of the BJP, and the PDP-BJP alliance is committed to provide the people of the state with better governance.

As far as the BJP is concerned, it adheres to the agenda of alliance to provide good government and good governance to the state of Jammu and Kashmir. We have our full support to Mehbooba Mufti and the coalition. Not only has the state leadership, but the Central leadership has also reiterated their vision, he said.

In an interview, Baig had on Thursday expressed disappointment with the functioning of the alliance between the PDP and the BJP in the state.

According to reports, Baig said Mufti had lost credibility due to wrong policies of the state and the central government.

Read | Mehbooba should quit if J-K alliance agenda not implemented: PDP MP
Justifying the security extended to separatist leaders of Kashmir Valley, Union minister Jitendra Singh said on Friday they faced threat from Pakistan which might attack them to blame it on India.

Singh said the Kashmir unrest was first such turmoil in the world in which number of civilians injured are more or less equal to those in security forces and policemen. It clearly shows how much restraint the security personnel exercised.

He said there is a need to engage with the youth of the state as soon as the situation improves.

We keep blaming Mehbooba (Mufti), but miss the sight of those forces engaged in it. Pakistan and separatists are threat, he said at a function organised by Sanjeevni Sharda Kendra in Jammu.

Pakistan is not only a threat to us but to separatists as well. Separatists have no threat from us (India) but from Pakistan, he said.

What has happened to Moulvi Farooq... what has happened to Abdul Gani Lone... They have fear and threat from their own people, Singh said.

The Union minister further said that Pakistan has a threat from Pakistan itself. See what is happening in Peshswar...What is happening in Balochistan.

Pakistani is trying to engineer terrorism selectively. These forces who have upped its ante fear from their own people. We have to prepare ourselves, he said.

On the situation in Kashmir, he said, We will have to move forward on three basic ideologies. First, there will be no compromise with violence...... we have to put an end to the circle of violence. It has no place in the society and all political parties agree to it.

Second, as the situation will improve there is a need to engage with the youth of the state and the beginning of chain of several schemes by the government headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi for last two years. The youth of the country are taking benefit of these and we do not want that the youth of Jammu and Kashmir are deprived of it. The youth of Kashmir valley also wants to become stakeholder of the journey of development but due to some reasons they are not fully coming forward, he said.

And third, there should be no premium on anti-India activism. It should not look that if someone raises anti-India and pro-Pakistan slogans, I will get glorification, he said.

Asked about Prime Minister Narendra Modis statement that Pakistan manufactured terrorism, Singh said, Certainly, PM is reiterated this more than once and now the entire world is coming round to this view point that Pakistan indeed is the epicenter of the terrorism.
In fresh trouble for former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) has registered a money laundering case against him and others in a case of alleged financial irregularities in acquisition of land in Gurgaons Manesar in which farmers were cheated to the tune of Rs 1,500 crore.

The ED has filed a criminal complaint against the Congress leader based on a CBI FIR, under which the probe agency conducted searches in Haryana and Delhi last week.

The ED is expected to seek a copy of case documents from the CBI soon.

The ED has begun the process of identifying proceeds of crime in the case and will soon start questioning all the accused.

The case pertains to CBI registering a case last year on allegations that private builders in conspiracy with unknown Haryana government servants had purchased around 400 acres of land from farmers and land owners of village Manesar, Naurangpur and Lakhnoula in Gurgaon district at throw away prices, showing the threat of acquisition by the government, during August 27, 2004-August 24, 2007.

The agency alleged that a loss of Rs 1500 crore was caused to the land owners of village Manesar, Naurangpur and Lakhnoula of Gurgaon.
A host of safety features such as speed warning beeps, seat belt alarm and rear sensors will be made mandatory for all passenger cars in India from April 2018.

The Union road transport ministry decided on these features to reduce fatal car crashes in a country where more than 140,000 people were killed in road accidents in 2015.

Road minister Nitin Gadkari approved the proposals on Thursday.

Most developed countries, including the US, UK, and those in the European Union, have made these features mandatory long ago, said Abdul Majeed, partner automobile leader, Price Waterhouse & Co.

The additional features will increase a vehicles cost between Rs 20,000 and Rs 60,000 depending on the model. But the price factor should not matter for the lives that will be saved, he explained.

Ministry officials, however, dismissed fears about car prices shooting up because of these measures, saying only an incremental increase can be expected.

Manufacturers provide most of these features in mid- and high-end cars, while cheaper models  which are more popular and have a larger sales volume  come without these accessories. Buyers can get them retrofitted, but thats rarely done since there is no rule now barring people from driving cars without, say, speed warning beeps.

Read | Highways to hell: Indian roads now with safer cars but more reckless drivers

The proposed speed alert will start beeping for a few seconds when a car hits 60kmph, start again at 80kmph, and turn into continuous series of frantic beeps when the speed exceeds 90kmph.

The government feels the alarm system will help cut the number of fatalities from people driving above the speed limit. Last year, 64,633 deaths from speeding-related accidents were recorded.

Manufacturers will have to put these features in all new cars, while old vehicles will have to get them retrofitted, a ministry official said.

The driver cant deactivate the beep, and it will go off when the speed is reduced.

The measures will go a long way in ensuring safety of drivers and fellow travelers, said Abhay Damle, joint secretary (transport) in the road ministry.

The rear parking sensors will get activated if a person or object comes too close to a car when the driver is reversing it. Similarly, the seat belt alarm will keep blinking or sounding a recurring ping until the driver and co-passenger in the front seat fastened the belt.

The Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) praised the proposed measures, but cautioned that these features will help if enforcement is strengthened side by side.

Over-speeding is an enforcement issue. The ministry is looking at technical solution to an enforcement issue. Unless that happens, having these features will not help, said KK Gandhi, executive director, SIAM.

Another feature the ministry proposes to make mandatory is manual override for central locking system.

It has been noticed that the central locks often get jammed in accidents and the trapped passengers struggle to get out.

Read | Celerio, Kwid, Scorpio among Indian cars scoring zero in safety test

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The increase in deployment of troops in the troubled state of Jammu and Kashmir is only for sealing the India-Pakistan border to prevent infiltration and not to tackle ongoing protests, defence minister Manohar Parrikar asserted on Friday.

That is for border sealing. We are tightening the border position so that infiltration does not become a reality, Parrikar said, when asked why more soldiers had been deployed in the northern state, which has been facing violence ever since the July 8 killing of Hizbul Mujahideen militant Burhan Wani.

Parrikar was speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a function for the commissioning of the Indian Coast Guard offshore patrol vessel Sarathi.

Protests are the home ministrys concern. The ministry is taking necessary action. As you have seen, Rajnath (Singh) ji said the situation is much better than earlier. The army does not act in internal matters unless asked by the local authority. This is the basic norm of operation, Parrikar said.

The local civil administration will have to ask (for) the army there, like it happened in Haryana, where the (Jat) agitation took place. When the local administration called the army in, we went there only then and followed the orders of the local administration. We dont operate anywhere internally on our own, he said.
The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) conceded on Friday that its crime statistics for 2014 and 2015 had misreported cases registered under Section 66A, a cyber law under the Information Technology Act that was scrapped by the Supreme Court last year.

The NCRBs Crime in India report released last month had put the number of people arrested under Section 66A at 3,137 in 2015 and 2423 in 2014. This implied that the police arrested, on an average, 8 people every day in 2015 though the law had been scrapped for violating the constitutional freedom of speech and expression.

Section 66A prescribed a three-year jail term for online content that could be construed to be offensive or false.

The NCRB reviewed figures in its reports after the Hindustan Times report, SC scrapped it, but thousands held last year under dead cyber law, provoked widespread outrage. Rajya Sabha MP, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, who had campaigned against Section 66A, wrote to the Prime Minister and called for an end to abuse of the provision.

On Friday evening, the NCRB put our a corrigendum on its website to fix errors in its report.

Told about the errors, Chandrasekhar told HT that he was happy to know that the provision wasnt as abused as the NCRB report had indicated. But he stressed the episode had an important lesson for the NCRB.

Given that NCRB is the repository of all crime data--that forms the basis for public opinion and policy decisions-- this body needs to be a lot more circumspect about the integrity of the data that it produces, Chandrasekhar said.

The goof up

NCRBs review indicated that it had collected a combined figure for Section 66, which relates to unauthorised access to a computer or an account, and Section 66A from the state police forces. But this combined figure was attributed to Section 66A in the NCRB report.

A quick inquiry revealed that a software engineer who wrote the computer program two years back apparently knocked out Section 66 because the two sections did not fit in. The engineer did not realise how it would impact the data integrity.

Implications

Since the error had crept in 2014, the NCRBs report for last year too has the same inaccuracy but it went undetected. And thus, no attempt at NCRB to review its figures, and procedures.

So when Biju Janata Dal MP Tathagata Satpathy asked the government how many people were booked under Section 66A, the then IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad relied on the same set of NCRB figures. Parliament was told that 4037 cases had been registered by the police under Section 66A in 2014. As it now turns out, this too was an exaggeration.

Since the state crime records bureau also use the same NCRB software, corresponding state-level reports also suffer from the same anomaly vis-a-vis Section 66A.

But this also means that nobody really knows how many people were really sent to jail under the draconian provision in 2014, or 2015.

Problems elsewhere too

NCRB officials have also detected issues with regard to another set of data, but this is on account of faulty reporting by the state police. According to the NCRB report, the courts had compounded hundreds of cases relating murder and rape. If this was true, it too would be in violation of the Supreme Court guidelines that restrict high courts from dismissing heinous criminal cases even if the victim and accused arrive at a compromise. When HT pointed it out, an NCRB official said it could be a mistake in reporting from the states. He said a clarification would be sought from the states.

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Terming the nuclear test conducted by North Korea as a matter of grave concern, India on Friday deplored it and asked DPRK to refrain from such actions which adversely impact peace and stability in the region and beyond.

It also expressed concern over the proliferation of nuclear and missile technologies which has adversely impacted Indias national security.

India deplores the nuclear test conducted by the DPRK this morning. It is a matter of grave concern that DPRK has again acted in violation of its international obligations and in contravention of the objective of the de-nuclearisation of the Korean peninsula that the DPRK itself has endorsed.

We call upon DPRK to refrain from such actions which adversely impact peace and stability in the region and beyond. India remains concerned about the proliferation of nuclear and missile technologies which has adversely impacted Indias national security, External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Vikas Swarup said.

Earlier in the day, Pyongyangs state media said North Korea has successfully tested a nuclear warhead.

Fridays test, which comes after a series of ballistic missile launches that have drawn international condemnation and UN sanctions, was deplored from many countries including the South Korea which said the maniacal recklessness of young ruler Kim Jong-Un would lead to self-destruction.
The Centres tough stance on dialogue with separatists and a review of the Afspa has put a question mark on the alliance between the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the BJP.

The coalition government formed in February-March 2015 is guided by an agenda of alliance, which both the parties have from time to time described as a sacred document.

The framework agreement talks about taking the dialogue process initiated by the previous NDA government, led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee, with all political groups, including the Hurriyat Conference, forward in the spirit of insaaniyat, jamhooriyat and Kashmiriyat.

Following the same principles, the coalition government will facilitate and help initiate a sustained and meaningful dialogue with all internal stakeholders, which will include all political groups irrespective of their ideological views and predilections, the document reads. This dialogue will seek to build a broad-based consensus on resolution of all outstanding issues of J&K.

The PDP has been emphasising on dialogue and reconciliation as the way out of the current unrest in Kashmir. Its leaders have insisted that the PDP will act as a bridge between India and Pakistan, the Centre and the separatists and also between the Centre and Kashmiris.

Despite pressure from the PDP and opposition parties that dialogue should be held with all stakeholders, the Centre is of the view that meaningful talks cannot be held in the present circumstances.

The governments assessment is that there are serious attempts to throw out a democratically elected government and install a Wahabi theocracy in the troubled state, and that the need is to establish the primacy of the state by acting tough against the protestors.

As part of its iron fist policy, the Centre is sending 1,000 shells of chilli-based PAVA guns a day to replace pellet guns in Kashmir.

Kashmir has been on edge as at least 76 people have died and more than 10,000 wounded in clashes with security forces since the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani in an encounter on July 8.

The Centre is also not in favour of reviewing the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (Afspa), a controversial law often blamed for alleged excesses by security forces. Government managers argue that the state police does not have adequate capacity to deal with militancy and that the hands of security forces will be tied if the Afspa is lifted.

The Afspa was one of the contentious issues during the talks between the PDP and the BJP on government formation.

After a series of discussions, the two sides agreed to incorporate the issue in the agenda of alliance. While both parties have historically held a different view on Afspa and the need for it in the state at present, the coalition government will examine the need for de-notifying disturbed areas. This, as a consequence, would enable the Centre to take a final view on the continuation of Afspa in these areas, the agreement said.

During the state governments presentation before the all-party delegation in Srinagar on September 4, senior PDP leader and finance minister Haseeb Drabu reiterated his partys longstanding demand for withdrawal of the law from some areas of the state.

With the Centre showing disinclination on both these issues, it remains to be seen how the PDP will react to such assertions.

Already voices of dissent have emerged within the PDP, with senior leader and MP Muzaffar Hussain Baig setting a deadline of six months to implement the agenda of alliance. He also urged chief minister Mehbooba Mufti to resign from her post if the agenda is not implemented.

The PDP is being discredited due to non-implementation of the alliance agreement, he said, indicating that the people of Kashmir are directing their anger primarily at his party.

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In fresh trouble for Kannada actress and former MP Ramya, a local court has directed the police to file a criminal case against her for her recent reported remarks that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) had colluded with the British.

The direction by the court at Belthangady near here comes on a private petition filed by advocate Vasanth Marakada, who moved it after the police refused to register his complaint against Ramya, already facing a complaint in another court for alleged sedition.

The advocate said Ramya might be summoned to record her version after he (complainant) records his statement.

Ramya, who was elected to Lok Sabha from Mandya in the 2013 by-election on a Congress ticket, had reportedly said that the RSS had colluded with the British during the nations struggle for independence. The 33-year-old multilingual actress is already facing a complaint in a court in Kodagu district on sedition and other charges.

After a recent visit to Islamabad as part of a Saarc delegation of young lawmakers, Ramya had reportedly said at a meeting in Mandya, Pakistan is not hell. People there are just like us. They treated us very well.

Her remarks had come as an apparent counter to comments of defence minister Manohar Parrikar, who while lashing out at Islamabad for promoting terror, had said, Going to Pakistan is same as going to hell.

Ramyas comments had triggered a bitter backlash but she stood her ground, saying she would not apologise.

An advocate had filed a complaint in a court at Somwarpet in Kodagu district, seeking action on sedition and other charges against Ramya for insulting Indian patriots by her remarks.

Advocate K Vittala Gowda filed the complaint before the Somwarpet Judicial Magistrate First Class (JMFC) court, which has admitted it. The complaint has sought a direction to police to book Ramya under IPC sections 124(a)(sedition), 344 (wrongful confinement for ten or more days) and 511 (punishment for attempting to commit offences punishable with imprisonment for life or other imprisonment).
Petroleum minister Dharmendra Pradhan began a six-day visit to Singapore and the UK on Friday to lead Indias road shows to attract foreign investors for its discovered small oil and gas fields.

The bidding round for discovered small fields had been announced in July 2016 a Houston. Following that, 67 such fields are on the block, an official statement said. The process is open till end-October.

These fields are spread over nine sedimentary basins and will be offered in 46 contract areas. These fields are projected to yield 625 million barrels of oil and oil equivalent gas and spread over 1,500 sq km on land, shallow water and deep water areas.

The auction is also being held under new norms, which replaces the controversial production-sharing contracts  by which oil and gas blocks are awarded to firms which show they will do maximum work on a block  that has governed the bidding under the earlier nine rounds.

Eventual operators will be issued a single licence for exploration of conventional and non-conventional hydrocarbons and will have the freedom to sell oil and gas at arms length market prices. There would be no cess on crude oil.
A doctor and a sweeper of a leading hospital in Gandhinagar district of Gujarat have been arrested in connection with the rape of a 19-year-old dengue patient who was admitted in the ICU for treatment, police said on Friday.

Both the accused  Dr Ramesh Chauhan and sweeper Chandrakant Vankar  from Apollo Hospital, located at Bhat village in Gandhinagar were arrested on Thursday.

We have arrested Chauhan and Vankar on the charges of rape. The girl alleged that both of them took turns to rape her on the night of Saturday and Sunday at the hospital where she was undergoing treatment for dengue, said Adalaj police inspector AK Pandya.

The duo has been remanded to police custody by a local court till Saturday.

The girl was allegedly raped in the ICU unit of the hospital, where authorities do not allow relatives of the patient to stay back at night.

On September 7, the girl had lodged a complaint with Adalaj police alleging that she was raped by the hospital sweeper, whom she identified as Chandu, besides a doctor, whom she could recognise.

Based on the complaint, police lodged a case under section 376 (C)(D) of the Indian Penal Code for rape and subsequently arrested Vankar and Chauhan, said Pandya.

Apollo Hospital said that they are cooperating fully with the police in the investigation.

The ward where the incident took place has 14 staff working round-the-clock, and is equipped with CCTV cameras. We are co-operating fully with the police, who are examining CCTV footages and carrying out the investigations, said a statement issued by the hospital.
Judicial intervention didnt lead officials to act promptly on a request to terminate a teenagers pregnancy, prolonging the trauma of the girl who says she is a victim of sexual exploitation.

The 14-year-old native of northwest Uttar Pradesh, who is carrying an eight-month-old foetus, is expecting the result of a medical assessment she underwent on Thursday--more than a week after Allahabad High Court directed the health administration to check if the girl was fit for an abortion.

It took six days for Bareillys Chief Medical Officer to sanction the examination of the girl, who, along with her family, had approached the authority last Saturday following a high court directive. The court, on August 29, asked the girls father to move an application before the CMO for an appropriate decision on the pregnancy.

The law disallows abortion in cases of pregnancy of more than 20 weeks, even as the Supreme Court is hearing a litigation challenging the clause.

The teenagers family had first movedon August 17an application for termination of pregnancy, but it was rejected. The girls father then moved the HC, which asked him to seek the Bareilly CMOs opinion.

But, the officer, Vijay Yadav, seemed in no hurry to follow up, going by the complainants statements.

When I approached him last weekend (September 3) with the courts order, the CMO declined to take any action regarding it, said VP Dhyani, the counsel for the girl. We had to approach the district magistrate on Monday to secure an order for pregnancy termination.

After allowing three initial days (from Saturday) to lapse, the CMO called the girl, along with her father, for medical review on Tuesday. He did not meet the girl at Bareilly District hospital, a kilometre away from his office. Neither did he ask doctors to start the tests, said the girls father. We waited for over three hours at the CMOs office; he didnt turn up.

The family was then asked to visit the CMO on Thursday.

Sources in the CMO said the officer was too busy in other official work on Tuesday, and declined to comment on why the medical review was not fixed for the next day.

On Thursday, CMO asked a team of gynecologists to perform medical tests.

The girl became pregnant after being repeatedly raped by a man in her village on alleged pretext of marriage. The accused abandoned her once she conceived and he is now in judicial custody along with his brothers.
Controversial preacher Zakir Naiks NGO Islamic Research Foundation has been banned from receiving foreign funds directly and the home ministry has asked RBI to seek prior permission from it before releasing any money to the NGO.

The decision has been taken after a preliminary inquiry conducted by the Home Ministry found that the NGO was carrying out activities contrary to the Foreign Contribution Regulations Act (FCRA) under which it has to function.

Sources said with IRF being put into prior permission category, the Reserve Bank of India, henceforth, has to inform the Home Ministry about all funds coming to the NGO and permission has to be taken from the ministry before releasing them to IRF.

They said that last month the Home Ministry had renewed the FCRA licence of IRF despite several ongoing probes against the NGO and its founder Naik including one by the Home Ministry itself.

Taking strong exception to the goof-up, the Home Ministry suspended joint secretary GK Dwivedi, who was heading the foreigners division of the ministry looking after the FCRA-related issues, and three other officials.

Naik was accused of radicalising and attracting youths for terror acts.

Naik has come under the scanner of the security agencies after Bangladeshi newspaper Daily Star had reported that one of the attackers of the July 1 terror strike in Dhaka, Rohan Imtiaz, ran a propaganda on Facebook last year quoting Naik.

He, in a lecture aired on Peace TV, an international Islamic channel, had reportedly urged all Muslims to be terrorists.

Naik, a popular but controversial Islamic orator and founder of Mumbai-based IRF, is banned in the UK and Canada for his hate speeches aimed against other religions. He is among 16 banned Islamic scholars in Malaysia.

He is popular in Bangladesh through his Peace TV, although his preachings often demean other religions and even other Muslim sects.
Two days after a Jaipur woman was arrested for the murder of her daughter, police on Friday recovered the kitchen knife used to slit the throat of the child. Neha Goyal, wife of a local industrialist, had killed her four-month-old daughter as she wanted a son.

The body of the child, Mahika, was recovered from an air conditioner cabinet from her Shastri Nagar house on August 26. After two-week-long probe the police nailed the suspect because of traces of blood found from her nails. The woman had claimed that she hadnt touched the body.

Today we searched the house and recovered the murder weapon from the bedroom of the accused. Neha Goyal had used a kitchen knife to kill the child, said additional deputy commissioner of police (north) Rajesh Kumar Meel.

According to the police, the woman was depressed over having a girl. She had consulted several doctors for in-vitro fertilization and surrogacy and searched these subjects extensively on the Internet. Preliminary investigation does not indicate that anyone in her family had ever put pressure on her for having a boy. She acted on her own, Meel said.

An English literature graduate from Delhis Hansraj College, Neha had tried to kill the daughter once before on August 19 but wasnt successful.

On August 26, Neha took her daughter to her bedroom around 2 pm and murdered the child between 2 and 3pm. She hid the body in an AC cabinet and returned to her room to wash off the bloodstains. She later raised an alarm that the child was missing, said Meel.

According to the police, the woman had posted photos with her infant on Facebook a month before committing the murder and nobody had any inkling that she was depressed about giving birth to a girl child and was planning to kill her.

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Boosted by the Election Commission declaring it a national party, the Trinamool Congress is keen to extend its national footprint by setting up party units in the crucial Hindi heartland state of Uttar Pradesh (UP), Uttarakhand and Punjab. UP and Punjab are headed for Assembly polls next year and Bengals ruling party may contest the elections in both states.

Party insiders said that the leadership is open to coordination or alliances with regional parties, a policy in tune with the national-level federal front dream of Trinamool supremo and Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee.

Incidentally, the Trinamool is already the main opposition party in Tripura, the small Northeastern state that remains a CPI(M)-led Left bastion for decades. It is now busy devising a strategy to challenge the Left Fronts grip on the state in the Assembly elections due in 2018. Mamata attended a huge rally in Tripuras capital, Agartala, on August 9 and gave a call for regime change in the state. Most of the Congress MLAs of Tripura have defected to the Trinamool. The party also has MLAs in Manipur, another Northeastern state.

We are gearing up to launch party units in Punjab. We are also spreading our base in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and other states. We are a national party and Mamata Banerjee has a pan-India presence, said a senior leader of Trinamool Congress.

The recent Supreme Court verdict vindicating Mamata Banerjees stand on Singur escalated her popularity among farmers. (HT Photo)

The success of its long-drawn movement against forcible land acquisition, as reflected in the recent Supreme Court verdict in the Singur Tata Nano car project case, has come as a boon for the Trinamool. Party leaders think that they can now better project the Trinamool as the champion of the poor and middle class farmers.

A senior party leader told HT, We are open to alliances with like-minded regional parties. Mamata Banerjee has already given a call to build a non-Congress, non-BJP secular front to take on the BJP at the Centre.

Read: After Bengal, Mamata Banerjee sets eyes on Tripura

Senior party leader Mukul Roy also held meetings in Punjab end August in a bid to launch a party unit in the state. Talks are also on with leaders of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand to strengthen Trinamools base in those states.

Mamata has good ties with many regional leaders. She recently met Delhi CM and Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal over dinner in Rome. Both were there to attend the canonisation ceremony of Mother Teresa. She also has a good equation with Bihar CM and JD(U) leader Nitish Kumar, RJD leader Lalu Prasad and UP CM Akhilesh Yadav and his father, Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav.

This year on July 21 Martyrs Day rally, the Trinamool Congress chief and her colleagues gave clear indications that the its time the party looks towards Delhi.

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Amidst fresh spotlight on triple talaq, the All India Shia Personal Law Board (AISPLB) has come out with a model nikahnama (marriage contract) that denounces the controversial practice of triple talaq (divorce) in one sitting among the Muslims.

I have given a draft of the nikahnama to Maulana Kalbe Sadiq, who is vice chairman of the board and Zafaryab Jilani, senior high court lawyer, for proper vetting after which it would be adopted, AISPLB spokesperson Maulana Yasoob Abbas told Hindustan Times.

He said Maulana Sadiq had endorsed the draft that was originally presented by him at AISPLB convention in Mumbai in 2007. Incidentally, Maulana Sadiq is also senior vice president of All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB), the apex governing body of Muslims on religious matters, which is against any kind of ban on triple talaq.

The AIMPLB too had mooted a similar model nikahnama in 2003 laying down specific guidelines and conditions on which a marriage can be annulled by both husband and wife and the prescribed format has been prevalent among a large section of Sunni Muslims here in Uttar Pradesh.

Maulana Yasoob said it was a misconception that women did not have divorce rights. Both men and women have equal rights but it is the provision of triple talaq that has been cropping of and on and unnecessary putting the religion (Islam) in bad light. And now the matter has reached Supreme Court, he pointed out.

The Supreme Court is hearing a petition filed by womens rights activists who want declaration of triple talaq -- whereby Muslim men can divorce their wives by simply stating their intention three times orally -- as unconstitutional.

Maualan Yasoob said he was confident that the draft would be accepted and adopted across the country by the Muslims as it empowered women and gave them rights in the modern context and was not in variance with anything laid down in the Indian Constitution.

Read more: Women protest Muslim Law Boards support for triple talaq and polygamy

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Sully

Director: Clint Eastwood

Cast: Tom Hanks, Aaron Eckhart, Laura Linney

Rating: 3/5

On January 15, 2009, Captain Chesley Sully Sullenberger landed a plane on the Hudson River in New York. Both its engines had been destroyed after the aircraft hit a flock of geese just 3 minutes into the flight. There were 155 souls on board. It was all over in 208 seconds.

Everything you need to know about Clint Eastwoods new film  his first since American Sniper, a movie it shares many similarities with (but more on that later)  is in the title.

Sully.

Read more movie reviews here

It is, as most Eastwood films are  especially the more recent ones  blunt, unfussy, melodramatic, efficient. Sully, the film, explores the meaning of heroism in the modern world  or at least, it tries to. And what it finds is that not much has changed in the many centuries since tales of bravery and selflessness have been told. Some heroes work behind desks. Others land airliners on rivers.

Eastwood teases the centrepiece crash throughout the film.

There is more to Captain Sullys act of heroism than the emergency landing. In January 2009, America was in the middle of two wars, millions of people were out of work and the economy had just suffered its most devastating blow in 75 years. It was January 15, just two weeks into the new year. Reading those headlines about a Miracle on the Hudson gave the people something valuable: Hope. But at what cost?

A post 9/11 America is no place for innocence. An investigation is initiated. Its purpose: To blame Sully for endangering the lives of those he saved. So lets talk about Eastwoods continued exploration of heroism. Sully can easily be a thematic successor to American Sniper  that film also featured a man being tried for his actions - and a cousin to Denzel Washington-starrer Flight, directed by Robert Zemeckis, who coincidentally directed Tom Hanks in another famous plane crash sequence in Cast Away. Both films feature strong antiheroes  especially Flight, with its post-crash trials, is strikingly similar.

Tom Hanks as Captain Sully, hounded by the media. He is a reluctant hero, thrust into the spotlight for just doing his job.

But there is some turbulence.

Like most things, melodrama works fine if done well. But its also the one thing that keeps Sully from soaring. Eastwood, over the last 15 years or so (at a guess, since Mystic River) has developed an unmistakable style that can only be described as workmanlike  no frills, no nonsense. Just some solid filmmaking. But even he cant elevate ordinary writing, which is what happens here. A fair chunk of the film, mostly around the hour mark, is plain bad  too spelled out, too on the nose, too ham-fisted, too (add your favourite idiom here).

Also, spare a thought for poor Laura Linney, whose only co-star in this film is a landline telephone. Her character is given next to nothing to do, and borders on being a parody of itself  the much ridiculed worrying wife. And it would be unfair to blame it on her, but her scenes single-handedly crash the film, which is mostly enjoyable, thanks in no small part to the otherwise excellent acting.

This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Laura Linney in a scene from Sully. (AP)

Tom Hanks is, and always has been, the real American hero  at least in the movies. He can nail roles like this in his sleep. No one but Tom Hanks couldve played Sully like this  confident yet never cocky, humble but never cloying. There are many scenes in which the film is threatened with dual engine failure, but Hanks is the captain who lands it safely.

But the biggest star of the film  and Eastwood knows this  is the IMAX. Sully is first film to be shot almost entirely with IMAX cameras, and theyre so proud of this that theyre using it as a tagline on the poster (no kidding, go check). Its slightly ironic that it wasnt Christopher Nolan or JJ Abrams or Michael Bay who achieved this unprecedented feat, the vocal advocates of the format that they are, but the visually unremarkable Clint Eastwood.

While they say most of the film is shot in IMAX, unless the sight of the pores on Tom Hanks skin excites you, chances are that the only time youll appreciate the full potential of the format is during the terrific crash sequence - which Eastwood gives you three times. He teases it throughout the film, Rashomon-style, from different perspectives. He builds up to it, only to stop short, or to cut away  until the end.

The Miracle on the Hudson, caught on camera.

The final few minutes of Sully are exhilarating. Its what the film has been surging towards. Watching it unfold on that huge screen was incredible. The sounds, the images, the atmosphere envelopes you.

And then, another curious thing happened. There was applause  not hooting or whistling  but real applause - genuine, respectful, appreciative and very uncommon.

Like Sully.

Follow @htshowbiz for more

The author tweets @NaaharRohan

And heres the special IMAX trailer

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In an interview which was recorded in Compact Disc(CD) format, Mamta Kulkarni said the Thane cops have seized her houses without any evidence. I still have faith in the Indian judiciary, she said.

There is no evidence against Kulkarni. In Gujarat, a similar case was registered but we have not received information about it.The Drug Enforcement Agency in America has a strong interest in Kulkarni as she is a friend of Vicky Goswami. Vicky will be brought to America and charged with Kulkarnis help, said advocate Daniel Arshack.

Mamta is my friend and I have spoken to her many times. She is not involved in any kind of drug activity. She has not been charged with any other crimes in the past. We have gone through CCTV camera footage of the Blitz Hotel in Kenya but have not spotted her. We spoke to the hotel staff who said they did not see Kulkarni at any point, said Cliff Ombetta, Kulkarnis advocate.

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Four people sustained minor injuries in a stampede during a recruitment rally at INS Hamla in Malad (West) for Senior Secondary Recruits (SSR) on Friday morning.

The incident occurred around 5.30 am, when people gathered in far greater numbers than expected, said senior inspector Milind Khetale of the Malwani police station.

Owing to overcrowding in the queues, candidates started pushing each other and a stampede ensued. Additional policemen were deployed to control the situation, Khetale added.

We were expecting a good response from volunteers. However, the response was overwhelming and chaos ensued in the early hours. This was subsequently handled efficiently by the local police and Navy officials, said captain DK Sharma, chief public relations officer, Navy..

Four sustained minor injuries during the stampede. They have been admitted to the Naval hospital inside INS Hamla, said Khetale.

The ministry of defence issued a statement on Friday afternoon, Adequate arrangements for crowd control have been made in collaboration with the Mumbai police. Due to some overenthusiastic candidates trying to enter the premises before others, there was crowding at the main gate.

The examination is currently in progress in shifts, and will continue till all eligible candidates bearing valid documents are examined. The ministry also clarified that no changes have been made in the minimum educational qualifications for the drive.
Hours before he was sentenced to death, Preeti Rathis killer, Ankur Panwar, appeared defiant as he flashed a victory sign at a camera as he arrived in court.

Inside the courtroom, Panwar, dressed in a peach shirt and grey trousers, sat in the accuseds box at the back, looking nonchalant as lawyers, journalists and relatives of Rathi entered.

Read | How police cracked the Preeti Rathi acid attack case

Around 3pm on Thursday, the court called the case and Panwar was made to stand. The judge pronounced the verdict: After considering the mitigating and aggravating circumstances, the convict is sentenced to death. As the courtroom fell silent, a smile appeared on Panwars face. He would later tell Hindustan Times, I was very relaxed as I had no hope.

Panwars smile angered Rathis relatives and soon after the judge left the courtroom, her aunt walked up to the killer and began shouting at him. Why are you laughing? she said over and over again. Rathis brother Hitesh tried to attack Panwar but was stopped by a constable.

Read | He is a cruel man, does not deserve to live in society: Preeti Rathis father

Chaos ensued and more police officers were called in to escort Rathis relatives out.

Panwar was left visibly agitated by the confrontation  his body shook in anger as he mumbled to himself. For the next two hours, police tried to calm him, offering him bottles of water. This had little effect on Panwar, who also refused to eat.

It was only after 5pm that Panwar, who was still sitting in the courtroom, appeared to calm down.

In a landmark judgement on Thursday, special womens court judge AS Shende sentenced 25-year-old Ankur Panwar to death for a fatal acid attack on 23-year-old nurse Preeti Rathi at Bandra terminus in May 2013. Panwar, Rathis neighbour in Delhi, threw sulphuric acid on her just after she arrived in Mumbai on May 2, 2013 to join the Indian Navy as a nurse.

Rathi died of multiple organ failure at Bombay Hospital a month later. Panwar attacked her as he was jealous of her success and because she had rejected his marriage proposal.

Read | Preeti Rathi verdict reignites debate: Does capital punishment reduce crime?

This is the first time that a convict in India has been sentenced to death for an acid attack. India is also only the second country, after Bangladesh, to have done so. Under Bangladeshs Acid Crime Suppression Act, attackers can be sentenced to death.

Panwar was convicted primarily on the basis of eyewitness statements, and because he could not explain certain injury marks on his hand.

Judge Shende said acid attacks were more brutal than rape. Rape destroys the soul of the victim. But she can be kept in isolation, without disclosing her identity, and be rehabilitated. But for an acid attack victim, she has to move around with her destroyed body, the judge said.

Preeti survived for 30 days because she did not know how she looked; she was blind. She had no idea of the effect of the attack on her face. Survivors of acid attacks look like aliens  their own children can get scared of them. This is the kind of effect acid has on the body, and a person cannot live without their body.

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A Bombay Parsi Punchayet (BPP) trustee and its former chairman filed criminal complaints against each other after a fight at Ballard Pier magistrate court on Thursday.

Kersi Randeria, the trustee who said he sustained eye and shoulder injuries in the fight, was admitted to a hospital and discharged on Friday morning. Dinshaw Mehta, a former trustee, said Randeria had hit his son Hormuz, who was representing him as a lawyer, causing him to faint.

The magistrate was hearing a criminal complaint filed in January 2014 by Khojeste Mistree, who was then a BPP trustee, against Mehta, the then chairman of the trust, accusing him of collecting Rs25 lakh from a businessman for tenancy rights to a trust-owned property in Fort. The BPP is one of the biggest landlords in Mumbai and manages over 4000 flats in community housing estates across the city, land, and commercial premises. It also manages fire temples and the 50-acre Tower of Silence cemetery in Malabar Hill. The BPP has seven trustees who are elected by the community.

As we stepped out, Hormuz said unpleasant things. Dinshaw was hitting me with a piece of concrete. My eye went blank and I was lifted and taken to the courtroom. The judge asked us to file a police complaint, said Randeria.

Randeria was taken to St George Hospital near CST and then shifted to JJ Hospital, Byculla, from where he was discharged after a CT scan and other tests ruled out any serious injury.

Mehta denied he hit Randeria. I am a 75-year-old man. He [Randeria] is double my size and he is accusing me of hitting him? My finger could have accidentally poked his eye or he could have had an eye infection, said Mehta. Why was he in the court? It was a private complaint filed by Mistree.

Senior police inspector Sukhlal Varpe from MRA Marg police station said, After the court proceedings on Thursday, the two parties had a fight outside the premises and arrived at the police station. We have only registered cross complaints.

On Friday, online community forums were filled with comments about the street fighters who had brought shame to the BPP. Mistree, who was in court when the incident occurred, said, It is sad and shocking that community leaders and elders have stooped to this level.

(With inputs from Sagar Rajput)

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In a statement recorded on a CD, former Bollywood actor Mamta Kulkarni, an accused in the Thane ephedrine haul case, said the police seized her houses despite having no evidence against her.

But she added, I still have faith in the Indian judiciary.

The recording was played for journalists at Taj Lands End, Bandra, on Friday. Also present were Kulkarnis battery of lawyers  Daniel Arshack from the US; Cliff Ombeta from Kenya; and Sudeep Pasbola, Majeed Memon and Parvez Memom from Mumbai.

Kulkarni said in the recording, I have written to external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj and minister of state for home Kiren Rijiju demanding a probe against the Maharashtra police to find out the exact reasons why my name has been included in the ephedrine case.

The rest of the recording was devoted to her parents and her spirituality.

She said, My mother is follower of a Hindu god while my father is a follower of Mother Mary. My birth was a boon on earth as my grandmother told my mother during my birth that Goddess Adishakti is going to take birth. Right from childhood, I have always been come across spiritual incidents but that has not bothered me. With this spirituality I have cleared all my past sins. I am ready to go through investigation of my all legal documents. She also said that she has been a yoga practitioner for the past two decades and has never been involved in any kind of drug racket in Mumbai or Kenya.

Her lawyers demanded that the Indian government evaluate the case properly before launching extradition proceedings against Kulkarni.

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LAS VEGAS  The Nevada Wildlife Federation and associated groups from across the country released a public letter on Thursday seeking a commitment from the presidential candidates to keep federally managed public land in federal hands.

Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump and Jill Stein have said they support that position. But Libertarian Gary Johnson, the former governor of New Mexico, has said he thinks some Bureau of Land Management properties should be turned over to the state  which could then sell them to private companies to extract precious metals, oil and gas.

National Wildlife Federation President Collin OMara said he worries that the public could lose access.

Were asking candidates across America to affirm their commitment to keeping these public lands in public hands for the good of everyone that loves the outdoors, everyone that likes to hunt or fish, or camp or hike or bird and for the nations wildlife and water supplies and our natural resources, OMara said.

Nevada became known for its strong anti-federal government sentiment after the 2014 standoff at the Bundy Ranch. In 2015, the state Legislature passed a joint resolution asking the feds to transfer public lands to the state, but the Secretary of the Interior declined. However, when citizens submitted public comments online about that resolution, 90 percent were against it.

Robert Gaudet, president of the Nevada Wildlife Federation, said the state has a poor track record when it comes to managing public lands.

When they became a state, they were given 2.7 million acres, Gaudet said. We only have 3,000 acres left. They sold everything else off.

81 percent of the land in Nevada is federally managed. Gaudet said he thinks the state could never afford to fight fires on all that land  even with the $1.5 billion tax increase that passed in 2015.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has faced flak from opposition parties for what they term as his flip-flop policy vis-a-vis Pakistan. But sources in the foreign policy establishment here said on Thursday that it was Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif s sudden metamorphosis from a dove to a hawk that has imperiled the resumption of bilateral talks.

There was a great chemistry between the two leaders until the Pakistani Premier took New Delhi by surprise, calling slain militant commander Burhan Wani as a martyr and freedom fighter last July. He allowed terror outfits in Pakistan to hold rallies and demonstrations against India. Sharif then dedicated Pakistans 70th Independence Day on August 14 to the freedom movement in Kashmir.

Read | India-Pakistan ties look bleak after war of words, says Pak daily

New Delhi is still trying to come to grips with a transformed Sharif. On May 31, Modi had called him up to enquire about his health ahead of his open heart surgery in London. Sources said that Sharif called up Modi later, saying, I am heading to the operation theatre and I need your best wishes. That was the last time they spoke.

Nobody know what happened after Sharif went back to Islamabad. He was totally changed. Lihaj khatm, aakhon mein sharm khatm, jahar ugalna shuroo kar diya, said a source involved in the bilateral dialogue process. The Indian establishment has been wondering about the reasons for this change: Was it to fend off pressure at home after Panama leaks revealed the offshore assets of his three children? Was it the pressure from the army? Was it the local election in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), a fortnight after Wanis killing? There are no easy answers.

Read | Modi targets Pak abuses in I-Day speech: Walking Baloch talk will be tough

What the foreign policy establishment seems convinced about is that Sharif made efforts to improve bilateral ties. Modi had invited him, along with other SAARC leaders, to attend his swearing in ceremony on May 26, 2014. Bam dhamakon mein baat-cheet ki awaaz band ho jaati hai, Modi told his Pakistani counterpart the next day. Sharif agreed and the two sides decided to hold foreign secretary level talks, which were called off after Pakistani high commissioner Abdul Basit met Hurriyat leaders.

Read | Basit provokes, dedicates Pak I-Day celebrations to Kashmirs freedom

Modi and Sharif met at Ufa in Russia in July 2015 and agreed to resume talks. There was no mention of Kashmir in their statement, which created a storm in Islamabad forcing Sharif to back off. They had a brief meeting in Paris on December 1. The Pakistani premier urged Modi to send external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj to Islamabad to attend Heart of Asia conference.

When the Indian PM expressed difficulties given the stalled dialogue process, it was Sharif who took the initiative that resulted in NSA level meeting in Bangkok, three days before Swarajs visit to Islamabad.

The growing warmth in relations encouraged Modi to make a stopover at Sharif s farmhouse in Lahore on his way back from Russia via Afghanistan a fortnight later. The out-of-box initiative was, however, marred by Pathankot attack on January 2. Pakistan never owned up to any terror attack in India but this time Sharif called up Modi and said, You have stated its Paksponsored. Give me evidence and I will take it to a logical conclusion.

The bonhomie between the two leaders continued till Sharif s surgery in London three months ago.

Also read | Pakistan is neither hell nor heaven, its simply schizophrenic towards India

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In a relief to medical students, the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee-run Sri Guru Ram Das Institute of Medical Science and Research, Amritsar, has decided to retain the 50% government quota MBBS seats. The seats will soon be filled through a central counselling by the Baba Farid University of Health Sciences (BFUHS), Faridkot.

Last month, the institute had announced to convert 65 MBBS seats under the government quota into management and NRI quota seats.

When contacted, institute principal Dr Geeta Sharma confirmed that the number of government quota seats would remain the same as last year.

Till last year, 75 of the 150 seats were being filled under government controlled fee structure and rest from its minority quota on which management quota fee structure was applicable. After getting the status of a private varsity a month ago, it converted 90% of its government quota seats into management seats having higher fee structure and also announced an independent counselling for the coming session.

This decision came under criticism as the fee for the five-year MBBS course under a government quota seat is Rs 13.30 lakh whereas it is Rs 40 lakh in case of the management seat.

The state government had recently clarified that the institute had not been accorded the status of a private university as the statutes and rules were yet to be approved. Secretary, medical education, Punjab, Vikas Partap said the mode of admission and the fee structure of the institute will remain the same as of last year for the coming session. The university has not submitted its statutes and rules. Once these are approved, it can function independently, he added

Sources said it may be the last session in the institute having government controlled seats. It is likely to get a status of a private varsity from the next session, and the fee structure and nature of seats may change.

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The role of Punjab State Power Corporation Limited (PSPCL) supervising authorities, including the superintending engineer (SE), is under the scanner in the billing scam, wherein meter reading of some consumers was changed in the server, causing a loss of more than Rs 50 lakh to the corporation.

Must read | Rs 50-lakh billing scam: PSPCL SDO among seven suspended

As per norms, the SE has to monitor the defaulters list and if the unpaid bill amount is over `1 lakh beyond a billing cycle, the power connected has to be snapped. But SE Bhupinder Sharma allegedly ignored it and no action was taken even after 18 months of the first bill default.

Sources say by suspending seven employees and ordering registration of a first information report (FIR) against them, the PSPCL authorities are trying to save top officials. At a meeting of the PSPCL management in Ludhiana recently, chairman-cum-managing director (CMD) KD Chaudhry blamed the supervising authorities for the scam. Director (distribution) KL Sharma told the meeting that he had brought the irregularities to the SEs notice, but he simply ignore them.

Sharma questioned why the SE didnt took action against the sub-divisional officer (SDO) and the executive engineer (XEN) concerned as they took no action against the defaulting consumers for years together and also changed the power meters showing them as damaged. How an SDO alone can manage it all? he questioned. Sources said the task force was formed by the SE to carry out checks in violation of norms. As per rules, no official less than the rank of assistant engineer can check any premises.

Sources said irregularities were detected in the release of tubewell connections in Barnala around sex months ago. Though, no direct involvement of the SE was detected in the scam, he was suspended for not performing his supervisory duties. But in the Patiala billing scam, which runs into lakhs of rupees, no independent inquiry has been ordered.

When contacted, SE Bhupinder Sharma said he was ready for any inquiry. He said he had already disbanded the task force. On being asked why no action was taken against defaulting consumers for more than 18 months, the SE passed buck on the SDO and XEN saying: I am not responsible for their job. He, however, admitted that power supply losses have gone up in his division.

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The Rajpura police have arrested the two youths who allegedly molested two Dalit sisters of Patarsi Kalan village in Fatehgarh Sahib district on Thursday.

The accused were identified as Rinku of Patarsi Kalan village in Fatehgarh Sahib and Sandeep Singh of Balsua village in Rajpura.

The accused were arrested from the Basantpura area in Rajpura.

Basantpura police post in-charge assistant sub-inspector (ASI) Shamsher Singh said the two accused will be produced in a local court on Friday.

In their complaint, the two sisters said they were on their way to Basantpura when the accused ambushed them near Chandumajra village. The girls alleged that the accused, who had their faces covered, tore off their clothes.

Police have booked the two accused under sections 376/511 (attempt to rape), 354 (assault or criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty), 107 (abetment), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) and 341 (wrongful restraint) of the Indian Penal Code.
Suspended from the Aam Aadmi Party, local MP Dr Dharamvira Gandhi dropped hints of joining hands with Navjot Singh Sidhus fourth front on Friday.

To get him into the fourth front, suspended Shiromani Akali Dal leader and Jalandhar Cantonment legislator Pargat Singh had a closed-door meeting with him at his house here. I wont allow AAP national convener Arvind Kejriwal to befool the people of Punjab, Dr Gandhi said afterwards. Later, sacked Punjab AAP convener Sucha Singh Chhotepur also met him.

The second MP suspended from the AAP, Harinder Singh Khalsa, was not invited to the talks, as he isnt keen to join an outfit that doesnt have a formal shape, though he is open to joining hands with anyone against Kerjriwal and the Akalis.

MP Dr Dharamvira Gandhi with former Punjab AAP convener Sucha Singh Chhotepur in Patiala on Friday. (HT Photo)

Pargat Singh drove to Patiala for the two-hour meeting with Dr Gandhi. The Patiala MP had reservations over the style of functioning of former BJP MP Navjot Singh Sidhu, but he was open to any give-and-take with whoever agrees with my vision paper.

We had a good chat and resolved many issues, said Dr Gandhi. I gave him (Pargat) my vision document and assured him that I was open to floating a regional party to take on the Akalis, the Congress, and the AAP. Punjab needs a regional outfit, as the Shiromani Akali Dal has failed to protect the states interests, while the AAP is coming to loot the state. Its now for the Awaaz-e-Punjab to respond.

After Pargat Singh left and Chhotepur dropped in, Dr Gandhi and he discussed the plan of action against Kejriwal and the AAPs Delhi leadership. The idea of forming a new party by joining hands with Sidhu figured in that chat. Chhotepur invited Dr Gandhi to a parallel rally to Arvind Kejriwals campaign in Patiala on Saturday.

Kejriwals rally will be in late evening, while Chhotepur will address the AAP rebel volunteers in the afternoon.

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This is no ordinary Punjab village. Situated on the Ludhiana-Ferozepur road, it has palatial houses and a private college that boasts of foreign students. KNS Kang, who heads the PCTE group of institutes, claims it ranks second among all private business schools in return on investment and ninth when even IIMs and IITs are counted.

The return on investment has helped Kang build a palatial bungalow in the village. It has a swimming pool and acres of greens. Kang plays host to Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) convener and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal during his four-day Punjab outing, as he sets his partys house in order.

Must read | Kejriwal wants to be Punjab CM: Sacked AAP state chief Chhotepur

Students from Kangs hospitality college  one of the four institutes he runs in Ludhiana  are catering to the AAPs army of leaders and volunteers. The only glimpse of the luxurious inside of this house surrounded by imposing walls is offered when its huge gates open for letting in the SUVs of aam aadmi candidates. The place was chosen for security reasons, a party volunteer whispers.

You cant miss the VIP air around the candidates. Talwandi Sabo contender Baljinder Kaur  also AAP womens wing president  breezes through the police cordon in a swanky SUV.

The village falls in the Dakha assembly constituency of high-profile candidate HS Phoolka, who also arrives late at the venue where Kejriwal is meeting all 32 candidates announced, so far, most of whom face growing dissent.

Dont miss | Sukhbir Badal has 63 fake CDs to malign me: Arvind Kejriwal

Two farmers from Dakhas Chhajjawal village who came to meet Phoolka send in a letter through a volunteer. For them, the recent controversies against the AAP are just plants by the rival parties. Our village gave Phoolka a lead of 997 votes in his 2014 Lok Sabha contest from Ludhiana. He helped us move the Punjab and Haryana high court against an Akali sarpanch, Swaran Singh, who had dug 24-foot-deep illegal sand pits. Now he (Phoolka) will get 1,500 of the villages 1,600 votes, said a farmer. Both are Ravidassia Dalits and claim that the party speaks for their rights. Dakha has an Akali MLA, Manpreet Ayali.

The presence of thousands of supporters at the Ludhiana railway station to greet Kejriwal as he arrived from Delhi showed that he still strikes a chord in Punjab. A motorcade including cars to SUVs followed him to Jhande village. Is he an outsider? Not to Punjabis!

Also read | Sidhu never asked to be made CM face, said God told him to work with AAP

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A three-member delegation of senior judges of the Lahore high court visited the Amritsar district courts complex on Thursday.

On the first day of their visit to India, judges Anwar ul Haq, Sayeed Shehbaz Ali Rizvi and Mohammad Farrok Irfan Khan said they plan to develop a museum at their high court on the lines of the one at the Punjab and Haryana high court in Chandigarh.

The museum project will be part of the 150th foundation day celebrations of the high court this year, said the delegation.

The judges will also be visiting the Punjab and Haryana high court in the coming days to study the museum. We also plan to invite our counterparts here for the foundation day celebrations in Lahore, they said.

The delegation praised the free legal aid and alternative dispute resolution facilities being provided in India, terming it a great initiative and vying to make similar efforts back home.
Describing the fourth front formed by cricketer-turned-politician Navjot Singh Sidhu as a bunch of fugitives and defectors, Punjab chief minister Parkash Singh Badal said here on Thursday that the people who backstabbed their party can never be loyal to the state.

These (fourth front) people have neither vision for the state nor any commitment to it, he told the media on the sidelines of a state-level function to hand over appointment letters to 4,500 teachers. Reacting to Sidhusstatement against the state government, the CM reminded him that he had been an MP (from Amritsar) in the same ruling alliance and his wife a legislator. Why didnt he raise these issues then?

Must read | Sidhu never asked to be made CM face, said God told him to work with AAP

Sidhus forum would make no impact, he said. When elections come, many fronts mushroom but only those parties survive that have a glorious history and a legacy of serving people.

Asked to comment on the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Badal said that it was a party of scandals and a leadership trying to hide its failures. Its internal tug-of-war will tear it to pieces soon. About AAP conveners threatening to put his family in jail after coming to power in Punjab, the CM said: Arvind Kejriwal should know that jail is not a new place for me. Its where I spent about two decades to safeguard the states interests.

AAP took politics to its lowest ebb

After another function  the swearing-in of new information commissioners and Punjab Public Service Commission members in Chandigarh  he said the Kejriwal party had taken politics to its lowest ebb by the conduct of its MLAs and workers. Kejriwal, he said, should apologise to women for the indecent behaviour of his colleagues.

On Kejriwals plan to buy a house in Punjab, Badal took a jibe at his Delhi counterpart, saying: It is immaterial whether he settles here or in Delhi. First of all, he should put his own house (the AAP) in order and teach some morality to the members of his party.

Also read | Sidhu blasts Kejriwal, says he didnt want him to contest Punjab polls

Capt gimmick

Attacking Punjab Congress president Captain Amarinder Singh for protesting outside the deputy commissioners office in Bathinda on farmers issues, Badal said he was fond of playing to the galleries, and this was another of his gimmicks to woo farmers. What did he do for them as chief minister from 2002 to 2007? Discontinue free power... just to satisfy his ego!

In almost a decade on the other hand, the Akali-BJP government paid `5,000 crore subsidy every year to Punjab State Power Corporation Limited (PSPCL) for free electricity to the farm sector, said Badal. And we gave them interest-free loan up to Rs 50,000.

Transfers waste teachers time

Addressing 4,500 newly appointed teachers at Mandi Bhawan in SAS Nagar, he regretted that transfers and postings wasted a lot of their time and energy. If they seek transfer because of some pressing family circumstances, it could be considered but teachers shouldnt make it a practice, he said.
The right to get pension from the civil services is an independent right and cannot be declined on the ground that the person gets pension from the army as well, the Punjab and Haryana high court has held.

The high court bench of justice Kuldip Singh observed that if someone has served the army until retirement and then put in requisite years in the civil services to be entitled to pension, the civil authorities cannot decline him his family pension on the ground that he gets it from the army.

The court was hearing the petition of a widow from Sangrur, whose husband, Harbans Singh, had retired from the army in October 1994, joined Punjab State Power Corporation Limited (PSPCL), and died in 2008. After his death, she applied for pension from the PSPCL, but it rejected her claims. She moved the high court in 2012.

The PSPCL argued that two pensions were not permitted under the Punjab Civil Service Rules. The high court took note of the fact that the Haryana Civil Services Rules (as applicable to Punjab) do not say that the dual family pension to any ex-serviceman or his family is not permissible. Also, the central government had stated in a 2013 circular that one can draw two pensions  one from the military and the other, ordinary family pension, from the civil services, subject to fulfilling other conditions.

It also came to light that the civil services rule cited by the respondents does not debar dual pension to the family of the departed government servant who earlier served in the army and received pension from that source. The ex-serviceman gets the second pension on account of services rendered by him in the civil service and not merely because of his service in the army, the bench observed, giving the PSPCL three months to release pension to the widow along with arrears and 9% annual interest.

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The Congress has chalked out a strategy to target deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal on Friday, the second day of the last assembly session of the current Akali-BJP government in the state. This was finalised during the Congress Legislature Party (CLP) meeting on the opening day of the session on Thursday.

We have decided to target the deputy CM because he is to be blamed for sufferings of the people of Punjab, CLP leader Charanjit Singh Channi told HT.

Former CLP leader Sunil Jakhar will also be bringing in a breach of privilege motion against Sukhbir. Jakhar has submitted an application with the Vidhan Sabha secretary to move a privilege motion against the deputy CM for his failure to fulfil the promise of providing water supply, sewerage facilities and other basic amenities to all households in the state. He had made this promise in the House on March 18.

Our entire focus will be on the deputy CM, because he has emerged as the one who will lead the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) into the assembly polls in 2017, and the entire party and government affairs revolve around him, said a Congress legislator.

The party also decided to move a no-confidence motion against the government on 10 different issues, for which an application was moved before the Vidhan Sabha secretary. Channi, who chaired the meeting, asked all 42 party MLAs to be present in the House on all days of the session.

The party decided that six MLAs  Channi, Raj Kumar Verka, Sukhjinder Randhawa, Sunil Jakhar, Sadhu Singh Dharamsot and Kaka Randeep Singh  will speak on various issues, while other MLAs will support them. Congress plans to move the no-confidence motion on the governments failure to protect the states interests in the matter of SYL canal and transfer of Chandigarh to Punjab, failure to protect interests of farmers and farm labourers, deteriorating law and order situation, emergence of mafia in different fields, rampant corruption and failure to generate employment.

Other issues include deteriorating fiscal health of the state, failure to apprehend those behind the desecration of Guru Granth Sahib and give justice to families of those killed in Behbal Kalan firing. The Congress also decided to raise various issues during zero hours in the current session. The issues are law and order problem, farmer suicide and Dalit atrocities besides civic issues such as lack of amenities and non-issuance of blue cards.

To attack aap

Congress MLA Parminder Singh Pinki suggested to bring a resolution against the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) for the alleged involvement of its Delhi ministers in sex scandals. Party MLAs were of the view that they can bring in this resolution successfully because the treasury benches would also support it.

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Brazilian president Michel Temer and Spanish acting PM Mariano Rajoy in China. Juan Carlos Hidalgo (EFE)

More information Rajoy se lanza a arropar al nuevo presidente de Brasil

Spains acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy took advantage of his visit earlier this week to the G20 Summit in Hangzhou, China to show his support for Brazils new president, Michel Temer, who came to power last week following the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff.

Temer, a former vice-president of Brazil, was sworn in as president on August 31 following a Senate vote against Rousseff.

But Latin American and other leaders have kept their distance: his approval rating is below 20% according to recent polls, while his Party of the Brazilian Democratic Movement (PMDB) is embroiled in the Petrobras state oil company scandal, as is Rousseffs Workers Party, its ally for more than a decade.

Spanish government sources said no dates for state visits would be announced for at least six months

Polls show that half of Brazilians want new elections, seeing Temer as having stabbed Rousseff in the back through the impeachment process.

Keen to attract much-needed investment to Brazils ailing economy, Temer met with Japans Shinzo Abe and Italys Matteo Renzi, but Rajoy was the only leader to accept a joint photo op, with both national flags in the background.

Temer also extended an invitation to Spains King Felipe VI as head of state. Rajoy and Temer reportedly discussed the situation in Colombia following the peace accords between the government and the leftist FARC guerilla force, as well as the ongoing crisis in Venezuela.

Rajoy outlined the situation in Spain following inconclusive elections in December and June and the subsequent impasse that has prevented his Popular Party from forming a government.

Temer avoided detailed conversations with other leaders, who limited themselves to congratulating Brazil on hosting successful Olympic Games.

Rajoy is the only leader so far to offer such a public display of support to Temer

I think this encounter was very productive from all aspects, said Temer at a press conference for Brazilian journalists.

Rajoy and Temer discussed the economic outlook for their respective countries, and the need to establish stronger bilateral economic and political ties. Brazil is Spains third-largest investment destination, and companies such as Santander and Repsol have extensive interests there.

Spanish government sources said that while both leaders had extended official invitations to each other, as well as to King Felipe VI, no dates would be announced for at least six months.

Rajoy also held bilateral meetings with Argentinas President Mauricio Macri and Chinas President Xi Jinping.

English version by Nick Lyne.
Thalli Pogathey, the smash hit number from filmmaker Gautham Vasudev Menons upcoming Tamil-Telugu bilingual romantic drama Accham Yenbathu Madamaiyada, will be canned in Bangkok over the weekend.

Starring Simbu and Manjima Mohan in the lead, the film is gearing up for release this month-end.

The song will be shot over Saturday and Sunday in Bangkok. Simbu already left this morning while the rest of the team leaves tonight. Contrary to reports, it wont be a dancer number. It will be shot like a love montage track, said a source from the films unit.

Listen to the song Thalli Pogathey here:

The same song for the Telugu version, starring Naga Chaitanya, was shot earlier this year in Turkey.

Unfortunately, Simbu couldnt join the team in Turkey in the last minute. Hence, the makers had to only shoot the Telugu version of the song with Naga Chaitanya, he said.

With the most of the project wrapped up including post-production, the makers are planning to release both the versions of the film on September 30.

In Telugu, the film is titled Saahasam Swasaga Sagipo.

ott:10:ht-entertainment_listing-desktop
Exhausted Afghan security forces were surrounded on Friday by Taliban fighters in the capital of Afghanistans south-central province of Uruzgan, a day after fighting off a concerted push by the militants, officials said.

The Taliban attack, in one of the countrys top opium-producing areas, has exposed how thinly stretched Afghan security forces have become as they try to contain insurgents in other areas of the country.

On Thursday, Taliban insurgents had battled their way to within a few hundred metres of key government buildings in Tarin Kot, the provincial capital home to as many as 70,000 people, while many local leaders fled to a nearby airport.

Bolstered by reinforcements and air support, Afghan troops pushed the Taliban out of the city by nightfall, but the situation remains serious, said Dost Mohammed Nayab, a spokesman for the Uruzgan governor.

The Taliban are still in surrounding areas of the city, he said. Our forces are exhausted and are running short of ammunition.

Overnight clashes left at least seven dead on the government side and 30 among the Taliban, said Abdul Karim, head of the Uruzgan provincial council.

An Afghan National Army (ANA) vehicle patrols Tarin Kot district of Uruzgan province on Thursday. The Taliban fighters stormed Tarin Kot, triggering heavy fighting around government buildings. Pitched battles prompted urgent calls from officials for reinforcements and air support, after the militants toppled security posts on the outskirts to breach the city gates. (AFP)

He accused the Taliban of using civilians as human shields, complicating efforts to drive out the insurgents. It will take more attention and effort to clear all areas, he added.

The Taliban on Thursday rejected claims by government officials of high casualties among the attackers.

In a statement, the militant group said its fighters had overrun more than a dozen checkpoints and seized many weapons and other equipment from retreating troops.

Photos posted online by the Taliban purport to show fighters looting and burning what appears to be a government military base.

At least 69 coalition troops died in Uruzgan during nearly a decade and a half of international military efforts to defeat the Taliban and other militant groups after 2001.

About 16,000 NATO and allied troops remain in Afghanistan, mostly in an advising and counterterrorism mission, but as of Thursday, US officials said they had no troops in Uruzgan, nor had they conducted any air strikes.

The province is in a part of south-central Afghanistan long dominated by the Taliban and warlords who vie for access to its lucrative smuggling routes and illicit drug production.
Al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri threatened the US that the September 11, 2001 attacks will be repeated thousands of times, in a video marking the 15th anniversary of the deadly assault.

Addressing the United States in a video message posted Thursday on YouTube, Zawahiri blamed 9/11 on your crimes against us.

He said that if these continue, 9/11 will be repeated thousands of times.

On September 11, 2001, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were struck by hijacked aircraft, claiming 2,753 lives.

Further deadly attacks that day were carried out against the Pentagon and on a third commercial aircraft that crashed in rural Pennsylvania.

In the video, Zawahiri cited Washingtons policies towards Arab and Muslim countries, its occupation of lands in their countries, and support for their criminal and corrupt governments.

The Statue of Liberty stands in the foreground as Lower Manhattan is viewed at dusk, in New York City. (AFP Photo)

An aerial view of the National September 11 memorial & museum in New York City. (AFP Photo)

His threats come as American officials say the United States has become hardened against such well-developed plots as 9/11 but remains vulnerable to small and home-grown attacks.

The 9/11 attacks spawned Washingtons so-called war on terror, which initially focused on al Qaeda and the Taliban, before later targeting the Islamic State group which has seized territory in Syria, Iraq and Libya.

Zawahiri also urged jihadists to unite and urged African Americans to convert to Islam to save them from US laws, which he said are controlled by the white majority.
North Koreas fifth nuclear test is yet more evidence of how ineffective sanctions are in deterring Pyongyang while China is unwilling or unable to intervene, analysts say, with some arguing a new approach might be necessary -- engagement.

Since Pyongyangs first nuclear test sent tremors worldwide, it has been hit by five sets of United Nations sanctions over its atomic and missile programmes.

The carrot has been tried as well as the stick, with offers of food aid if Pyongyang abandons its weapons.

It has pursued them regardless, even as its own people have regularly suffered crippling food shortages over the years, under both Kim Jong-Il and his son and successor Kim Jong-Un.

His rule -- the third reign of the Kim dynasty -- has seen former top officials executed, including his own uncle, and blood-curdling threats of war against the South and the US, interspersed with appeals for peace.

Read | Four questions and answers about North Koreas latest nuclear test

A sales assistant watches TV sets broadcasting a news report on North Korea's fifth nuclear test, in Seoul, South Korea, September 9, 2016. (REUTERS)

At the same time he has yet to visit Beijing to pay his respects to Chinas rulers, his countrys key diplomatic protector and provider of trade and aid.

Even so, and despite Fridays new test, Beijing is unlikely to opt for significantly greater pressure on the DPRK, said Bonnie Glaser, senior adviser for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington.

China prefers diplomatic engagement with Pyongyang that results in a peace treaty and an eventual decision by the DPRK to give up its nuclear weapons in exchange for economic assistance and US diplomatic recognition, she said.

Each successive test has been met with greater outrage and hand-wringing from the international community, to no avail.

Read | Obama says provocations will deepen North Korea isolation

Washington has long pushed the Asian giant to up the pressure on its unruly neighbour, but it is not clear how rigorously Beijing has enforced sanctions and tensions between the worlds top two economies have risen.

Without Beijings help, analysts agree, sanctions are a lost cause.

Fridays test shows that our approach to North Korea has failed, we havent managed to deter their nuclear ambitions, said Jenny Town, managing editor of 38 North, a website focusing on North Korea analysis.

Without China, this is a losing battle, we need cooperation and collaboration to find solutions, she said.

John Carlson of the Lowy Institute in Sydney took a similar stance.

The only way to change the DPRKs behaviour is to engage with it and see if there are incentives that can persuade it to freeze its nuclear and missile programmes, he said.

But prospects for engagement look dim. US President Barack Obama has his hands full with conflict in Syria, and South Korean president Park Geun-hye has held a hard line against the North.

Read | North Koreas star newsreader back to announce nuclear test success

Graphic comparing estimated size of nuclear tests, including Friday's suspected fifth nuclear tests by North Korea. (AFP)

- Driving a wedge -

While China has been increasingly frustrated by the Norths defiance, Beijing fears both a flood of refugees if its neighbour is plunged into turmoil, and the presence of US troops on its border in a unified Korea.

Relations have improved recently, with top North Korean party official and former foreign minister Ri Su Yong making a rare visit to China and meeting Xi in May -- just months after Pyongyangs fourth nuclear test.

The North may have even informed China of its intention to stage Fridays blast, said Adam Cathcart an expert on Sino-North Korean relations at the University of Leed in the UK.

North Korean diplomat Choe Son-hui went to Beijing on Tuesday, and slipped out sometime thereafter -- it is quite possible that the purpose of that visit was to privately inform Chinese comrades of the planned test, he said.

A recent agreement between Washington and Seoul to station a missile defence system known as THAAD in the South has infuriated Beijing, which says the hardware poses a significant threat to regional security.

THAAD brought China and North Korea closer by driving a wedge between China and South Korea, said John Delury, a historian at Yonsei University in Seoul.

Beijings foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said Friday that unilateral actions taken by relevant parties had made the situation more tense and complicated, in remarks apparently directed at South Korea and the US.

To some degree, North Korea is using its nuclear plan to manipulate Chinas relationship with South Korea and the US, said Zhang Liangui, a professor at the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee school.

Without Chinese action, Cathcart said, there is very little that can be done to retaliate or otherwise make the North Korean leadership feel more pain as a result of the test.

North Korea has done very thorough work in insulating itself from intrusive global systems generally, and the people are well accustomed to outside sanctions.
North Korea conducted a fifth nuclear test on Friday, an underground blast that Seoul quickly labelled its most powerful to date.

Here are some key questions around the blast and the isolated states nuclear programme.

What do we know so far?

Seismologists detected a powerful artificial earthquake at 00:30 GMT Friday, which they said was centred around Punggye-ri, North Koreas nuclear test site.

South Korea says it believes the quake was caused by the testing of a nuclear device, with a yield of 10 kilotons. That would make it the most powerful of Pyongyangs five nuclear tests to date.

Timeline actual and suspected nuclear tests conducted by North Korea. (AFP)

Why have they carried out another test?

The North Korean leadership says a credible nuclear deterrent is critical to the nations survival, claiming it is under constant threat from an aggressive United States.

Although it has regularly threatened neighbouring South Korea, its main priority is developing a effective strike threat against the US mainland.

It has always insisted it will continue testing, ignoring global condemnation and toughened UN sanctions.

Its first nuclear test was in 2006. That was followed by one in 2009 and another in 2013. The most recent test was in January this year.

Experts say the tests are likely aimed at refining designs and reliability as well as increasing yield.

Outside monitors will analyse the yield from Fridays test to try to determine whether it signals any fresh breakthrough.

An official of the Earthquake and Volcano of the Korea Monitoring Division points at the epicenter of seismic waves in North Korea, in Seoul, South Korea. (AP)

How advanced is North Koreas weapons programme?

The four confirmed tests so far have resulted in artificial quakes of increasing size. Fridays quake followed that pattern, registering 5.3 magnitude.

Seoul said the 10-kiloton yield was the most powerful to date.

The bomb that destroyed Hiroshima had a yield of 15 kilotons, and the most powerful nuclear test ever was a Russian blast in 1961 with an estimated yield of 50,000 kilotons.

Pyongyang claims its January test was of a miniaturised hydrogen bomb, which hsa the potential to be far more powerful than other nuclear devices.

However, scientists say the six-kiloton yield was far too low for a thermonuclear device.

But experts caution Pyongyang is clearly making progress -- regardless of whether or not it has mastered hydrogen bomb technology.

With each test they can learn a lot, atomic scientist Siegfried Hecker said in January.

The claim of miniaturisation is a significant worry for the international community, especially in the light of an apparently stepped-up missile testing programme over recent months and years.

If Pyongyang can make a nuclear device small enough to fit on a warhead, and can bolster the range and accuracy of its missiles, it might one day achieve its oft-stated aim of hitting US targets.

Graphic comparing estimated size of nuclear tests, including Friday's suspected fifth nuclear tests by North Korea. - AFP / AFP / JOHN SAEKI (AFP)

How will the international community react?

Condemnation from the United States and its allies will likely be swift and sharp, and will almost certainly include calls for action from the United Nations Security Council.

However, the world will be watching most keenly for what China does.

Beijing has been North Koreas main diplomatic supporter and protector for decades, shielding its errant ally from harsh international action.

But its patience is running thin. It strongly opposes Pyongyangs nuclear programme, which it sees as a source of instability.

And Chinas seeming inability to rein in Kim Jong-Un is increasingly embarrassing for Beijing: the Norths latest missile tests this week came as China was hosting a G20 summit.

However, Beijings problem is that while it wants Pyongyang to stop causing trouble, it is desperate to avoid anything that might imperil the stability of the regime.

Its nightmare scenario is that if the regime collapses, millions of hungry North Koreans might flood over its border -- and the US-allied South would take over, meaning American troops could be stationed right on the Chinese border.
A grumpy looking husky dog has netted his owner a staggering 20,000 pounds that she is now using towards paying for her medical degree.

Jasmine Milton, 20, from Shropshire bought her two-year- old pup Anuko as a way of helping her battle with her bipolar disorder.

Guess whos birthday it Is today? Happy 2nd birthday Anuko  today will be spent mostly traveling, so tomorrow he'll have pressies bought and a proper little celebration had. A photo posted by Anuko (@huskyanuko) on Jan 2, 2016 at 6:09am PST

But the dogs unusual markings have since caused a sensation online after she set up an Instagram page in Anukos name.

Appearing to have a steely stare and furrowed brow because of the pattern of his fur Anuko has amassed 21,000 followers on the social media site. (Photo: @HuskyAnuko/Instagram)

Jasmine said, Hes really affectionate, he loves people. He loves cuddles, he loves dogs. Hes never been grumpy at all!

Hes always had social media since he was a puppy and he has always had this look as well, she said.

Thank you ~ A photo posted by Anuko (@huskyanuko) on Sep 5, 2016 at 8:35am PDT

#pokemongo #pokemon A photo posted by Anuko (@huskyanuko) on Jul 16, 2016 at 3:08am PDT

Jasmine is hoping to enrol at the Plovdiv Medical University in Bulgaria next year and said: Its certainly going to help towards it all the money that he is making. Its not going to cover the whole thing but its a real good start.

She added: Before I got him I went through a really low phase, when I was in hospital someone said dogs are a really good therapy dogs, they help their owners.

(Photo: @HuskyAnuko/Instagram)

It really did [help] I had him three months after I got out of hospital and literally straight away, Jasmine said.
An Indian-American girl attracted a sizeable audience at the White House when she narrated a poem that shared her experience as an immigrant and how it was painful to replace her mother tongue Tamil with English.

Among the audience were the First Lady, Michelle Obama, who felicitated Maya Eashwaran and four others including another Indian-American Gopal Raman with the prestigious National Students Poet in recognition of their poetry skills.

I have lost more than I have ever lost in sixteen years. I have started shedding ethnicity like hair: Mother, I fear Ill go bald, Maya, 17, concluded reading her poetry. Ma, I havent spoken (Tamil) in three years amidst applause from the audience.

She even received a shout out from the First Lady in her speech.

Maya -- wheres Maya? You put it best. These are your words, Im told: On the stage, there is no way to leave unnoticed. Did you say that? the First Lady asked.

Maya, born in the US to Tamil parents, nodded.

My family is Tamil. I was born here. I write a lot of my poems based on my culture, my heritage, she told PTI after her White House event.

The poem that I actually read at the White House linguistics is based on experience of losing my mother tongue and kind of replacing it with another, which is very painful thing to imagine to go through, she said, adding when she was in the middle school she stared getting interested in poetry.

Gopal, 17, the other Indian-American budding poet who received national attention lives in Dallas and is a high school student.

His parents - father from Chennai and mother from Kerala  moved to the US in the 1980s. He was born here.

It (love with poetry) started in seventh grade. I had a really great English teacher. He really pushed me in writing in more creative way. I choose poetry as my avenue of writing, he said.

I am super honoured to meet the First Lady, he said.

I also want to plan for pre-med. My dream job right now is some sort of medical doctor he added.

At the event, Gopal read out the poem This Apple.

The other three poets honoured at the White House are Stella Binion from Chicago, Joey Reisberg from Towson in Maryland and Maya Salameh from San Diego in California.

Since its inception in 2011, the National Student Poets Program has showcased the essential role of writing and the arts in academic and personal success for audiences across the country.

This is the last time that were going to have the pleasure of welcoming a class of National Student Poets to the White House, at least under this administration. So Im feeling a little melancholy here, because this has truly been an honour and a privilege and a joy, Michelle said.

Recollecting how it all started, she said when they came here, they wanted to use this incredible platform of the White House to inspire young people to dream really big for themselves, to think about what their lives could look like beyond what their everyday existence is like.
North Korea said it conducted a higher level nuclear test explosion on Friday that will allow it to finally build an array of stronger, smaller and lighter nuclear weapons. It was the Norths fifth atomic test and the second in eight months.

South Koreas president said the detonation, which Seoul estimated was the Norths biggest-ever in explosive yield, was an act of fanatic recklessness and a sign that leader Kim Jong Un is spiraling out of control. President Barack Obama condemned the test and said the US would never accept the country as a nuclear power.

North Koreas boast of a technologically game-changing nuclear test defied both tough international sanctions and long-standing diplomatic pressure to curb its nuclear ambitions. It will raise serious worries in many world capitals that North Korea has moved another step closer to its goal of a nuclear-armed missile that could one day strike the US mainland.

Seoul vowed to boost psychological warfare efforts by increasing the number of propaganda loudspeakers along the rivals border, the worlds most heavily armed, and the number of hours of anti-North Korean broadcasts.

Read | Carrot and stick: How do you solve a problem like North Korea?

Hours after South Korea noted unusual seismic activity near North Koreas northeastern nuclear test site, the North said in its state-run media that a test had finally examined and confirmed the structure and specific features of movement of (a) nuclear warhead that has been standardized to be able to be mounted on strategic ballistic rockets.

The standardisation of the nuclear warhead will enable (North Korea) to produce at will and as many as it wants a variety of smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear warheads of higher strike power, North Korea said. This has definitely put on a higher level (the Norths) technology of mounting nuclear warheads on ballistic rockets.

North Korea, led by a third-generation dictatorship and wary of outsiders, protects its nuclear program as a closely guarded state secret, and the claims about advancements made in its testing could not be independently verified. But they centre on a technological mystery that has long bedeviled outside experts: How far has North Korea gotten in efforts to consistently shrink down nuclear warheads so they can fit on long-range missiles?

South Koreas main spy agency told lawmakers in a closed-door briefing after the test that it does not think North Korea currently has the ability to develop nuclear weapons that can be mounted on ballistic missiles, but intelligence officials expressed worries that the Norths efforts to do so are progressing more quickly than previously thought, said Kim Byungkee, a lawmaker from the opposition Minjoo Party.

A tourist looks at a North Korean propaganda village, in Paju, South Korea. (Reuters Photo)

South Korean President Park Geun-hye strongly condemned the test, saying in a statement, that it showed the fanatic recklessness of the Kim Jong Un government as it clings to nuclear development.

She told a meeting of top security officials Friday night that, We have to believe that Kim Jong Uns mental state is spiraling out of control because he is not listening to any words from the international community or neighbouring countries in his attempt to cling to power.

Obama condemned the nuclear test in the strongest possible terms as a grave threat to regional security.

Read | North Koreas star newsreader back to announce nuclear test success

The United States does not, and never will, accept North Korea as a nuclear state, he said in a statement. Todays nuclear test, a flagrant violation of multiple UN Security Council resolutions, makes clear North Koreas disregard for international norms and standards for behaviour and demonstrates it has no interest in being a responsible member of the international community.

South Koreas weather agency said the explosive yield of the North Korean blast would have been 10 to 12 kilotons, or 70 to 80 percent of the force of the 15-kiloton atomic bomb the United States dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945. The Norths fourth test was an estimated six kilotons.

North Korea said no radioactive material leaked, but the explosion put the region on edge.

North Korean soldiers turn and look towards their leader Kim Jong Un from a military parade vehicle as they carry packs marked with the nuclear symbol during a ceremony marking the 60th anniversary of the Korean War armistice in Pyongyang. (AP File Photo)

Chinese state media said the nations environmental protection agency started nuclear radiation monitoring. Japanese planes began to collect air samples from national air space to analyse possible radioactive materials. Tokyo governor Yuriko Koike said Japans capital city is also testing water samples and monitoring radiation levels in the air.

In the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, residents were delighted.

Its really great news, said Rim Jong Su, 42. Now, I am full of confidence that if the enemies make any little provocations we will make a counter attack and we will surely win.

The 5.0-magnitude seismic event Friday is the largest of the four past quakes associated with North Korean nuclear tests, according to South Koreas weather agency. Artificial seismic waves measuring 3.9 were reported after North Koreas first nuclear test in 2006; 4.8 was reported from its fourth test this January.

North Korean leader Kim has overseen a robust increase in the number and kinds of missiles tested this year. Not only has the range of the weapons jumped significantly, but the country is working to perfect new platforms for launching them  submarines and mobile launchers  giving the North greater ability to threaten the tens of thousands of US troops stationed throughout Asia.

North Korea has fired a total of 33 ballistic missiles since Kim took power in 2011, Seouls defence ministry said. In comparison, North Korea fired 16 ballistic missiles during the 17-year rule of Kims father, Kim Jong Il.

The seismic activity comes on the 68th anniversary of the founding of North Koreas government and just days after world leaders gathered in China for the Group of Twenty economic summit.

The test will lead to a strong push for new, tougher sanctions at the United Nations and further worsen already abysmal relations between North Korea and its neighbours. The North is already one of the most heavily sanctioned places on Earth, and many question whether the penalties work.

China opposed North Koreas nuclear test, a key denunciation by the Norths economic lifeline and only major ally.

North Korea likely wanted to show the world that strong international sanctions following its fourth nuclear test and long-range rocket launch earlier this year havent discouraged its efforts to advance its nuclear weapon and missile programs, according to Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea expert at Seouls Dongguk University.

North Koreas persistent pursuit of missiles and nuclear weapons has long been one of the most intractable foreign policy problems for US administrations.

Diplomacy has so far failed. Six-nation negotiations on dismantling North Koreas nuclear program in exchange for aid were last held in late 2008 and fell apart in early 2009.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un meets scientists and technicians in the field of research into nuclear weapons in this undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang. (Reuters File Photo)

The Korean Peninsula remains technically at war, as the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.
North Korea is believed to have conducted a fifth nuclear test, its most powerful to date, South Koreas military said Friday after monitors detected a 5.3-magnitude artificial earthquake near its main nuclear site.

A confirmed test by the isolated North would send tensions soaring over its nuclear and ballistic missile ambitions, which have already earned international condemnation and United Nations sanctions.

South Korean president Park Geun-hye said North Korea has conducted the nuclear test in clear violation of UN Security Council resolutions and in a direct challenge to the international community.

The Norths fifth nuclear test proved the countrys leader Kim Jong Uns maniacal recklessness in completely ignoring the worlds call to abandon his pursuit of nuclear weapons, Park was quoted as saying by her office.

Japanese foreign minister Fumio Kishida said on Friday that Tokyo has protested to North Korea over the secretive countrys suspected latest nuclear test. Such a test, if confirmed, would breach UN resolutions and pose a grave challenge to global nuclear non-proliferation efforts, Kishida told reporters.

The White House said it is assessing the explosion, but did not confirm reports of a nuclear test.

We are aware of seismic activity on the Korean Peninsula in the vicinity of a known North Korean nuclear test site, said National Security Council spokesman Ned Price.

We are monitoring and continuing to assess the situation in close coordination with our regional partners.

Chinas environment ministry has also begun emergency radiation monitoring along border regions in northeastern China after the suspected test.
Mariano Rajoy, Pedro Sanchez, Albert Rivera and Pablo Iglesias. ULY MARTIN

The campaign for regional elections in Galicia and the Basque Country kicked off on Thursday night, with Spanish voters hoping that the results of the polls will help resolve an eight-month political impasse.

The leaders of Spains four major parties will use the regional campaign to advance their own national agendas through numerous public appearances. Strategists for the Popular Party (PP), Socialist Party (PSOE), Podemos and Ciudadanos (Cs) feel that September 25 will be a turning point in the stalled negotiations to form a government in Spain.

Rajoy is still hoping that Sanchez will be pressured into supporting him one way or another in order to avoid a record third general election in Spain

Mariano Rajoy (PP), Pedro Sanchez (PSOE), Pablo Iglesias (Podemos) and Albert Rivera (Cs) will visit both regions repeatedly over the next two weeks in a bid to make the most of the media exposure.

Acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, who recently submitted his own name for reinstatement but failed to secure enough congressional support, is hoping that a strong victory by the incumbent Galician premier, Alberto Nunez Feijoo of the PP, will provide added backing for his own aspirations to return to La Moncloa. In the Basque Country, the best he can hope for is that nationalists will turn to the PP if they need allies to form a government.

Meanwhile, Socialist leader Pedro Sanchez knows that the outcome of the Galicia election could undermine his own national leadership, if polls are right and the PP wins an absolute majority in the northwestern region. Forecasts are not good for the PSOE in either region.

Alberto Nunez Feijoo is widely expected to win the re-election on September 25. Eliseo Trigo (EFE)

At their last bilateral meeting, which lasted a mere 30 minutes, Sanchez told Rajoy that he would not help him return to power, either by actively voting for him or by abstaining at the investiture vote. The Socialist said that he wanted to wait to see the results of the regional elections, and then well see.

Rajoy is still hoping that Sanchez will be pressured into supporting him one way or another in order to avoid a record third general election in Spain that would take place on a highly impopular day, December 25.

The anti-austerity Podemos is hoping to prove that only an alliance of leftist forces has the ability to dislodge the PP from power in Galicia, and same with the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) in the Basque Country. Such an outcome would reinforce Pablo Iglesias idea for a similar alliance to form an alternative government at the national level, given that the most-voted party at the June general election, the PP, has failed to attract enough allies to form a majority of its own.

As for Ciudadanos, the emerging party needs to preserve its image as a key player with the ability to influence the PP and PSOEs policies, even though polls say that it will not manage a single representative in Galicia, and one at the most in the Basque Country. Its leader, Albert Rivera, has alternately sided with the PSOE and the PP at the national level in a bid to reach a congressional majority and form a government, but its 32 national deputies are insufficient to do so and support from third parties is required.

English version by Susana Urra.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte told Barack Obama he never called him a son of a bitch, he said on Friday, but he maintained a defiant stance on his war on drugs, saying UN chief Ban Ki-moon was a fool for bringing up human rights.

US President Obama cancelled a planned meeting with Duterte at this weeks Asean summit in Laos after the Philippine leaders alleged insult in his native Tagalog, but the two met briefly later as they waited to take their seats at a banquet.

While on a visit to the Indonesian capital on Friday, Duterte told a group of Filipinos that the slur was not directed at the US president and that he had told him so.

I was ready (for Obama). I was waiting for Obama to respond. Lawyer to lawyer, we are both lawyers anyway...I said I never made the statement. Check it out...I said that, but not in relation to Obama, he said. Im not fighting with America.

Obama and Duterte shook hands and had a brief chat on Wednesday, officials said, easing the standoff. Duterte had his outburst on Monday when he was defending his war on drugs that has killed at least 2,400 Filipinos.

Duterte on Friday said he thought UN Secretary-General Ban a fool for bringing up the issue of human rights violations weeks before the summit in Laos.

Even Ban Ki-moon weighed in, Duterte said. Also gave a statement before, several weeks ago, about the human rights violation. Sabi ko, isa ka pang tarantado (You are another fool).

Read | Foul is fair for Duterte: The Philippine President insulted everyone
The whimpers from skeletally thin babies too weak to cry are a harbinger of worse things to come: A quarter of the children lucky enough to make it to this emergency feeding center are dying. They are the latest victims of Boko Harams Islamic insurgency.

No one knows how many more children are dying of starvation in refugee camps and areas too dangerous to access because of the extremists presence, according to Doctors Without Borders, which runs the emergency feeding center. The aid group first sounded the alarm of a humanitarian crisis of catastrophic proportion in northeast Nigeria as Boko Haram lost its grip on some areas and its victims began to emerge.

These are kids that basically have been hungry all their lives, and some are so far gone that they die here in the first 24 hours, said Jean Stowell, an American midwife in charge of the center in Maiduguri, the biggest city in this largely Muslim region. The 110-bed center has quadrupled in size in recent weeks, but each time it expands it rapidly fills.

In this photo taken Monday Aug. 29, 2016 Jean Stowell, an American doctor from Loconia, New Hampshire, running the emergency operation, carries 18 month old Yakubu a malnourished child at a feeding centre run by Doctors Without Borders in Maiduguri, Nigeria. (AP)

Nearly a quarter of a million children are severely malnourished because Boko Haram has disrupted trade and farming, U.N. Assistant Secretary-General Toby Lanzer warned at a meeting in Brussels on Thursday. About 2 million people in the region have not been reached, and we cant assess their situation. We can estimate that its awful.

With Nigeria in a recession and without speedy outside help, we will see, I think, a famine unlike any we have ever seen anywhere, he said.

One million refugees from Boko Haram are crowded into camps in Maiduguri. Outside the camps, fresh produce is cruelly bountiful. Markets are filled with pineapples, oranges, cabbage, green beans, tomatoes and carrots. But most refugees cannot afford them, and Nigerias government is investigating reports of officials stealing food aid.

Women feed their malnourished children at a feeding centre run by Doctors Without Borders in Maiduguri, Nigeria. (AP)

Elsewhere, 1 million children are trapped in areas too dangerous to reach because of Boko Haram, the U.N. childrens agency estimates. Its effort to reach some of them was put on hold in July when the extremists attacked a military-escorted humanitarian convoy on a major highway and a rocket hit the windshield of an armored car. A UNICEF worker was among three civilians wounded.

Boko Haram has been hostile to Western medicine. A Doctors Without Borders vehicle exploded a land mine on the same road in July; no one was seriously hurt. The organization had just brought the first aid to Bama, the regions second largest city, where they discovered that six people a day were dying of malnutrition and diarrhea.

Some children who make it out of such areas remain in danger.

Hassana Mohammed, tries to breast feed her baby while comforting her malnourished son 18- Month Yakubu, at a feeding centre run by Doctors Without Borders in Maiduguri, Nigeria. (AP)

In the steamy heat inside the feeding center, Hassana Mohammed tried to breastfeed a baby while comforting 18-month-old Yakubu, who was too weak to swallow and was irritated by the intravenous drip that fed him through his nose.

Mohammeds five children have known little but hunger and fear since Boko Haram killed her first husband when her eldest, 7-year-old Aisha, was just a month old.

Weve been on the run ever since, but Boko Haram was never far away, Mohammed said. You will see some women dying in the bush during childbirth, and some dying on the way while running because of hunger. Some will run and leave their children for their safety, now many children were left in the bush to die.

In this photo taken Monday Aug. 29, 2016, a woman with her malnourished children sit at a feeding centre run by Doctors Without Borders in Maiduguri, Nigeria. (AP)

The hardest thing now is finding food, she said. When aid workers made it to her refugee camp in Maiduguri, an informal collection of huts made of plastic sheeting and palm leaves, she received four handfuls of rice.

Its supposed to last a week, but we run out after just a day or two, she said.
Norways Prime Minister on Friday challenged Facebooks restrictions on nude photos by posting an iconic 1972 image of a naked, screaming girl running from a napalm attack in Vietnam. Facebook quickly deleted it.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning image by Associated Press photographer Nick Ut is at the centre of a heated debate about freedom of speech in Norway after Facebook removed it from a Norwegian authors page last month.

Many Norwegians have since posted the photo on the social media network in protest, and Prime Minister Erna Solberg joined them on Friday. Facebook removed her post within hours, said Sigbjorn Aanes, one of Solbergs aides.

What they do by removing images of this kind, whatever (the) good intentions, is to edit our common history, Solberg told the Norwegian news agency NTB.

Facebook, in a statement from its European headquarters in London, responded that its difficult to create a distinction between allowing a photograph of a nude child in one instance and not others.

The little girl in the image, Kim Phuc, is naked and crying as the napalm melts away layers of her skin.

Several members of the Norwegian government followed Solbergs lead and posted the photo on their Facebook pages. One of them, education minister Torbjorn Roe Isaksen, said it was an iconic photo, part of our history.

Solberg later reposted the image with a black box covering the girl from the thighs up. She also posted other iconic photos of historic events, such as the man standing in front of a tank in Beijings Tiananmen Square in 1989, with black boxes covering the protagonists.

The front cover of Norway's largest newspaper by circulation, Aftenposten, is seen at a news stand in Oslo, Norway. (Reuters Photo)

While I was on a plane from Oslo to Trondheim, Facebook deleted a post from my Facebook page, she wrote. Today, pictures are such an important element in making an impression, that if you edit past events or people, you change history and you change reality.

Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten published the photo on its front page on Friday and also wrote an open letter to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in which chief editor Espen Egil Hansen accused the social media giant of abusing its power.

Hansen said he was upset, disappointed  well, in fact even afraid  of what you are about to do to a mainstay of our democratic society.

We try to find the right balance between enabling people to express themselves while maintaining a safe and respectful experience for our global community, Facebooks statement said. Our solutions wont always be perfect, but we will continue to try to improve our policies and the ways in which we apply them.

Paul Colford, AP vice-president and director of media relations, said: The Associated Press is proud of Nick Uts photo and recognises its historical impact. In addition, we reserve our rights to this powerful image.
U.S. President Barack Obama condemned North Koreas nuclear test on Friday as a grave threat to regional security and international peace and said he would work with U.S. partners on new sanctions against Pyongyang.

To be clear, the United States does not, and never will, accept North Korea as a nuclear state, Obama said in a statement, in which he singled out Pyongyang as the only country to have tested nuclear weapons this century.

North Koreas launch on Friday of its fifth and biggest nuclear test also drew condemnation from its main ally, China. Pyongyang said it had mastered the ability to mount a warhead on a ballistic missile, ratcheting up a threat the international community has been powerless to contain.

Obama said the test was a grave threat to regional security and to international peace and stability and follows an unprecedented campaign of ballistic missile launches.

The test was launched on the 68th anniversary of North Koreas founding, and came as Obama returned to Washington from a nine-day trip to Asia.

The U.S. president said he had spoken by telephone with the leaders of South Korea and Japan, who agreed to work with other countries to take additional significant steps, including new sanctions, to demonstrate to North Korea that there are consequences to its unlawful and dangerous actions.

Earlier in the week, North Korea fired three ballistic missiles into the sea off its east coast, the South Korean and U.S. militaries said, as the leaders of the Group of 20 major economies held a summit in China.
French police investigating the discovery a car containing six gas cylinders in Paris, on Thursday arrested three female suspects said to have been planning acts of violence, shooting one of them in the process.

The three women arrested, aged between 19 and 39, were radicalised fanatics who were preparing new violent.. and imminent actions, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said.

The woman who was shot was a daughter of the cars owner. All three were seized together in Boussy-Saint-Antoine, south of Paris, an inquiry source said.

A police officer also suffered a knife wound during the arrest, the source added.

Four people--two brothers and their girlfriends--were already in custody over the discovery.

A 34-year-old man and a 29-year-old woman, the first couple arrested, have been held since Tuesday and are known to the security services for links to radical Islamists.

The mans brother and his girlfriend, both aged 26, were arrested late Wednesday, the source said.

Police said earlier they were searching for the two daughters of the owner of the grey Peugeot 607 that was found abandoned on Sunday near Notre Dame cathedral, which draws millions of visitors every year.

They have both been described as radicalised.

A bar employee working near Notre Dame had first raised the alert on Sunday after noticing a gas cylinder on the back seat of the parked car, police said.

The car had no number plates and its hazard lights were flashing.

Although the cylinder on the back seat was empty, five full cylinders were discovered in the boot of the car.

Three bottles of diesel fuel were also discovered in the vehicle, but police found no detonators.

France is on high alert following a string of jihadist attacks, including last Novembers coordinated bloodshed in which Islamic State extremists killed 130 people.

Speaking on Thursday, President Francois Hollande referred to attack plots that have been foiled in recent days, without elaborating.

If it was an attack plot, the method was very strange, a police source said Thursday.

Photographs of the car after it was discovered showed its boot open and the gas cylinders placed on the ground in a quiet side street opposite the cathedral.

Cazeneuve said on Wednesday the intentions of those arrested were as yet unknown.

Hollandes comments followed a deadly summer in France in which 86 people were killed when a truck ploughed into a Bastille Day crowd in the southern resort of Nice.

IS said the truck was driven by one of its followers.

Less than two weeks later, two young jihadists murdered a priest near the northern city of Rouen.

In May, the head of Frances DGSI domestic intelligence service, Patrick Calvar, warned of a new form of attack in which explosive devices would be left near sites that attract large crowds.

French security services are particularly worried about the danger posed by extremists returning from Syria after fighting with IS forces.

Around 700 French nationals are still in Syria, Frances top prosecutor said last week.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump criticized US policy in Iraq again, but this time he aired his grievances on an unusual platform: a Russian government-funded television network.

Trump, who has often praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, made the comments in an interview with former CNN broadcaster Larry King, whose podcast was aired on Thursday night on the RT network, a 24-hour news channel that broadcasts in both English and Russian.

Critics of the network, which mostly targets audiences outside of Russia and also includes programming in Spanish, Hindi and Arabic, have described it as a propaganda arm of Putins government.

Traditionally, American presidential candidates do not bash their country before a foreign audience, even if they are fierce critics of the current administration while campaigning in the United States. Trump has said far worse about President Barack Obama in appearances on US broadcast networks.

The White House said it had no comment on Trumps remarks.

Trumps praise of Putin, which he repeated during a televised national security forum on Wednesday night, has drawn sharp criticism from Democrats and some Republicans.

Trump told King he does not think the Russians were intervening in U.S. elections, a concern expressed by some US officials and by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

The New York businessman also said he did not think Russias government was behind the hack of Democratic National Committee email servers. Experts inside and outside the government have pointed to Russian-backed actors as the source of the hack, which has been used to leak information in an attempt to embarrass Democrats.

Trump criticized US policy in Iraq from the days of Republican President George W Bush, who ordered the American-led invasion in 2003 in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, al Qaeda attacks on the United States. Trump then attacked Obama and Clinton, the presidents first secretary of state, for their roles in the U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq.

Its a war we shouldnt have been in, number one, Trump said in the interview. And its a war that, when we got out, we got out the wrong way. Thats Obama.

Clintons campaign has seized on criticism of Trump for lauding Putin, frequently pointing to the Republicans praise of the Russian president as a disqualifying for the White House.

Trumps interview surfaced as he and Clinton continue to clash over foreign policy in the run-up to the Nov. 8 election.

In the national security forum on Wednesday night, the two sought to portray themselves as most fit to be commander in chief, with Trump arguing that Putin is a better leader than Obama.

Clinton on Thursday said Trumps comment was not just unpatriotic and insulting to the people of our country, as well as to our commander in chief, it is scary.

Trump and his running mate, Indiana governor Mike Pence, defended the comment. Pence called it inarguable that Putin is a stronger leader than the US president.

House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan - the top elected Republican official who has frequently broken with Trump - again took a sharply different view from that of his partys candidate.

Putin is an aggressor that does not share our interests. Vladimir Putin is violating the sovereignty of neighboring countries, Ryan said at his weekly news conference.

Clinton was scheduled on Friday to meet with former senior national security officials in New York.

Clintons campaign also announced on Friday that an additional 15 retired U.S. generals and admirals were endorsing her, bringing the total number of endorsements by retired military leaders to 110.

On Tuesday, 88 retired generals and admirals endorsed Trump.

Trumps and Clintons intensifying political combat over national security came as Clintons lead in opinion polls has slipped in recent days. The current average of polls from website RealClearPolitics puts her at 45.6 percent support, compared with Trumps 42.8%.
The United States and Russia grappled over a possible deal on ending the bloodshed in Syria Friday, as Moscow-backed forces tightened the noose on the beleaguered city of Aleppo.

In Geneva, secretary of state John Kerry was once more locked in talks with Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov but US officials warned talks could not go on forever without a breakthrough.

The two powers back opposite sides in the five-year conflict, with Moscow supporting the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and the US behind a coalition of rebel groups it regards as moderate.

Senior officials travelling with Kerry said he would not have flown out once again to new face-to-face talks with Lavrov unless he thought there was a chance of progress.

But they warned there was no guarantee of a final agreement within the narrow window before both men return home later Friday, coming just four days after the pair met in China and failed to narrow their differences.

The ministers met in the familiar confines of a hotel on the shore of Lake Geneva and made brief remarks to reporters about North Koreas latest nuclear test before beginning closed-door talks on Syria.

UN envoy on Syria, Staffan de Mistura, said a successful outcome from the talks could provide a major boost towards resolving the conflict that has killed 290,000 people.

(It) would have a major impact on humanitarian access, and in turn would have a positive impact on the way the political process would be relaunched, de Mistura said in Geneva.

Back to square one

Washington wants concrete steps from Russia to force Assad to stop bombing his own people, respect a ceasefire and lift the siege of Aleppo.

We need to see a situation where its clear within whatever is being agreed with the Russians that there wont be a siege of Aleppo, a senior US official told reporters.

Pro-regime forces have taken back a strategically important district on Aleppos southern outskirts, rolling back nearly every gain from a major month-long rebel offensive there, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Thursday.

The government advance further seals off Aleppos opposition-held eastern districts and regime troops backed by the Russian air force have completely encircled opposition-held neighbourhoods.

Meanwhile, the top military commander of the Army of Conquest, the largest rebel alliance, was killed in an air strike during a meeting of the leaders of the anti-government group, Islamist sources said Thursday.

The former Al-Nusra Front, an Al-Qaeda affiliate recently renamed Fateh al-Sham Front, announced the martyrdom of commander Abu Omar Sarakeb on Twitter, in the biggest blow to the group since its formation early last year.

Rebels are now back to square one, under an even more ruthless siege, Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the observatory, told AFP.

Shops in the east of Aleppo have been struggling since Sunday to secure goods and prices are skyrocketing.

The price of a kilo of meat rose from 3,000 pounds to 6,000 (from $6 to $12), complained father-of-three Ahmad in the strike-hit district of Bustan al-Qasr.

Reducing violence

Ahead of the Geneva talks, the US pressed Russia for a true cessation of hostilities against a backdrop of continued military turmoil but warned that its patience is running thin.

US Defence Secretary Ash Carter told BBC radio on Thursday there was quite a long way to go before a final peace deal could be struck.

State Department spokesman John Kirby said the talks would focus on reducing violence, expanding humanitarian assistance for the Syrian people, and moving toward a political solution needed to end the civil war.

In exchange, US officials said, Russia will enjoy closer military cooperation with the US forces fighting the Islamic State group and former Nusra Front, jihadist groups not party to the ceasefire.

Adding to the flurry of diplomatic efforts, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin also agreed to intensify efforts for a ceasefire as soon as possible in Aleppo, the Turkish news agency Anadolu reported.

Lavrov has suggested that problems in another part of the world -- namely, US sanctions against Russia over the Ukraine crisis -- may be hampering efforts between the former Cold War rivals to resolve the Syrian crisis.

The Syrian war -- which began as a pro-democracy revolt in 2011 but morphed into a multi-front conflict after the regime unleashed a crackdown -- has killed more than 290,000 people and forced more than half the population to flee their homes.

IS has used the chaos to spread throughout the country and into Iraq.
The US House of Representatives passed legislation by voice vote on Friday that would allow the families of victims of the September 11, 2001, attacks to sue Saudi Arabias government for damages, despite the White Houses threat to veto the measure.

The US Senate passed the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, or JASTA, unanimously in May. Opponents of the bill said it could strain relations with Saudi Arabia and lead to retaliatory laws targeting US citizens or corporations in other countries.

The votes timing was symbolic, passing two days before the 15th anniversary of the hijacked-plane attacks on New York and Washington. Its passage was greeted with cheers and applause in the House chamber.

The White House on Friday reiterated that President Barack Obama would veto the bill.

If Obama carries out his veto threat and the required two-thirds of both the Republican-majority House and Senate still support the bill, it would be the first time since Obamas presidency began in 2009 that Congress had overridden a veto.

The House passed the measure by voice, without recorded individual votes, which is not technically considered unanimous. That could make it easier for Obamas fellow Democrats to uphold his veto later without officially changing their positions.
Pakistan came very close to being declared a state sponsor of terrorism in the 1990s, a CIA operative once posted as the station chief in Islamabad said during a hearing on Capitol Hill, home to US legislature which has actively considered that option in recent months.

Richard Grenier, the retired CIA operative, told the Senates foreign relations committee on Thursday that while he was posted to Islamabad on loan to the state department, an annual terrorism reviewnearly resulted in Pakistans being placed on the formal list of state sponsors of terrorism.

That would have been devastating for Pakistan, if it had indeed been put on the US list that currently has Iran, Syria and Sudan; past entries on the list were North Korea, Iraq, South Yemen, Libya and Cuba. Inclusion in the list would have meant an end to all aid and assistance at the very least.

Islamabad escaped then, Grenier didnt go into the details of it, and became a major beneficiary of US aid, both security and humanitarian, which has come under withering scrutiny in recent months, specially at the hands of lawmakers.

We have this policy where in effect we are working with Pakistan and yet the extreme duplicity that exists with the relationship is that on one hand they say they want to see a stable Afghanistan, on the other hand they are harboring people and through their own proxies are destabilising Afghanistan, Senate foreign affairs committee chairman Bob Corker, a Republican, said as he opened the hearing.

Corker, who prevented the Obama administration from subsidising the sale of eight F-16 jets to Pakistan earlier by denying funding for it, was joined by other senators in roundly criticising Pakistan, primarily because of its failure to act decisively against the Haqqani Network, a Pakistan-based terror group that fights US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan.

Ben Cardin, the senior most Democrat on the committee, was equally angry, and demanded to know from experts deposing at the hearing what can we do to fundamentally change the relationship. Lawmakers wanted to know if there was a better way to administer the US aid that goes to Pakistan to get the best results.

At a hearing of the foreign relations committee of the House of Representatives in July, lawmakers went much further. If our current efforts in Pakistan are not producing the results we seek then what are our options, Representative Matt Salmon, a Republican, had said, adding, We could simply turn the money off  we could enforce sanctions or declare Pakistan as a state sponsor of terrorism.

Lawmakers at the senate hearing on Thursday said they were equally frustrated Corker used the word duplicitous or a variation of it for Pakistan a few times  but he also conceded, agreeing with experts deposing at the hearing, that the relationship with Pakistan is important.

Grenier, for instance, said the US should not turn its back on Pakistan, and accept to work with it. Toby Dalton, another expert, said, Notwithstanding challenges posed by Pakistan to US interests, this means preserving to the extent possible patterns of cooperation and institutional relationships that facilitate US influence.
Days before he arrives in New Delhi for an official visit, President Ashraf Ghani on Friday warned he would close Pakistans transit route to Central Asia if his countrys entrepreneurs were not allowed to trade with India via the Wagah border crossing.

The remarks reflected Kabuls growing frustration with Islamabad after the virtual collapse of a Pakistan-backed process to engage with the Afghan Taliban. Ghani has been angered by Pakistans failure to deliver on a commitment to bring the militants to the negotiating table.

Ghani, who is scheduled to visit India on September 14, issued the warning during a meeting with Britains special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Owen Jenkins, according to a statement from the presidential palace.

The tit-for-tat action was prompted by Pakistans persistent refusal to let Afghan traders do business with India through Wagah, he said. Afghanistan is no longer a land-locked country as it has access to multiple transit trade routes, he added. The remark was an apparent reference to the recent pact between India, Pakistan and Iran to develop a transit corridor centred round Chabahar port.

Ghani complained to Owen that Pakistan usually closes transit routes during the fruit-growing season, leading to losses of millions of dollars. On the other hand, India has agreed to exempt Afghanistan from tariffs for fruit exports and Prime Minister Narendra Modi has allowed the airlifting of fruits, he added.

Besides the blocking of trade with India, Ghani raised Pakistans support for terror groups involved in destabilising his country. He told the British diplomat that support for terror was a violation of good neighbourliness and international norms. This act of the neighbour was no longer acceptable to Afghans, he added.

Ghani, who has repeatedly called on Pakistan to crack down on terror groups involved in strikes inside Afghanistan, said the continued attacks proved terrorists enjoyed uninterrupted support from certain quarters.

Hinting at a diplomatic push to counter the use of terror groups for destabilising Afghanistan, he said: I want you to convey my message to PakistanPakistan has always held out promises of supporting peace in Afghanistan, but taking its vows on face value is hard. And thats why we want the neighbour to take practical steps.

Ghani is expected to discuss ways to increase bilateral cooperation, especially in defence and security, when he visits India next week. Afghan Army chief Gen Quadam Shah Shahim raised Kabuls wish list for military aid, including more helicopters and spares for Russian-origin equipment, during a low-key visit to New Delhi last month.

Last year, the Modi government set aside Indias long-standing policy of not providing military equipment to Afghanistan and supplied four Mi-25 gunship helicopters. India also trains about 800 Afghan military personnel every year.

Ghanis visit to India comes ahead of the crucial Brussels Conference on Afghanistan to be co-hosted by the European Union on October 5. Last week, Afghanistan, India and the US also announced a new trilateral dialogue to be held on the margins of the UN General Assembly in New York.

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Aaron Vidal, the soldier killed in Iraq.

A Spanish soldier serving at the Besmayah military base, 40 kilometers east of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, was killed on Wednesday when a truck belonging to the Iraqi armed forces collided with the armored vehicle he was aboard.

Aaron Vidal Lopez, 25, was in the shooters position inside the Lince vehicle, which was waiting to escort a convoy. As a result of the impact, he was ejected out of the vehicle and then run over by the truck. His body will be transported back to Spain on Friday.

Spanish soldiers at Besmayah are working with the US military in training an Iraqi brigade in bomb disposal techniques

Two other Spanish soldiers were injured in the incident, according to the Iraqi Defense Ministry.

Vidal Lopez is the first Spanish soldier to die in Iraq since Spanish troops returned to the country in January 2015 as part of Operation Inherent Resolve. Around 300 members of the Spanish armed forces are deployed at the bases of Besmayah, Taji and Baghdad airport in support of the Iraqi armed forces in their fight against the Islamic State.

An investigation has been opened into the incident and the truck driver, an Iraqi national, detained after being taken to hospital. There is no reason to think that this was any kind of terrorist attack, said a Spanish Defense Ministry spokesman.

Spanish soldiers at Besmayah are working with the US military to train an Iraqi brigade in bomb disposal techniques. The mission is in response to a 2014 Iraqi government request for support following the Iraqi armys collapse in the face of an offensive by the Islamic State.

The Spanish forces were the first to join an international coalition led by the United States. They were joined in May by a Portuguese commando unit.

The Lince armored vehicle, manufactured by Italys Iveco, weighs 6.5 tons, has a top speed of 130km/h, and can cover 500 kilometers on a single tank of fuel. It carries up to six passengers, and has a mounted heavy machine gun.

A Spanish soldier and another serviceman from El Salvador were killed in 2014 aboard a Lince involved in a traffic accident in Lebanon.

English version by Nick Lyne.
The women behind a foiled attack in Paris were guided by the Islamic State group from Syria, the citys prosecutor said on Friday.

The terrorist organisation uses not only women, but young women, who get to know them and develop their plot from a distance, Francois Molins told a news conference.

A failed attack involving a car loaded with gas canisters near Notre Dame Cathedral was spearheaded by a group of women that included a 19-year-old whose written pledge of allegiance to the Islamic State group was found by police.

Molins spoke a day after three women were arrested, including a teen whose father owned the car that contained cylinders of gas.

No detonators were in the car, discovered on Sunday morning.

One of the women detained in a police raid over a failed attack near Notre Dame Cathedral was engaged separately to two French extremists who themselves carried out deadly attacks this year, Molins said.

Molins said the woman was engaged to Larossi Abballa, who killed two police officials in Magnanville in June and filmed the aftermath on Facebook Live before dying in a police raid.

He said she was also betrothed to Adel Kermiche, who slit the throat of an elderly French priest during morning Mass in July.

Her current fiance was arrested on Thursday, Molins said.
LONDON/BEIJING : China said on Thursday it opposes all forms of racial discrimination after Air China withdrew an in-flight magazine that warned travellers to be careful while visiting Indian, Pakistani and black neighbourhoods of London.

The Chinese flag carrier was at the centre of a racism row as the latest edition of its magazine, Wings of China, featured an article with the blunt advisory. Angry British politicians, especially those representing areas with Indian and Pakistani populations, demanded an apology.

Foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told a news briefing: We consistently advocate for and support the equality of all ethnicities without exception and oppose all forms of racial discrimination. She said Air China would appropriately handle the issue through an investigation.

Air China said the magazine used inappropriate language and the article didnt represent the airlines views.

After discovering this problem, Air China immediately removed this magazine from all flights and demanded that the publishers of Wings of China seriously learn from this lesson, strengthen their content review and avoid making similar mistakes, it said.

The article, in English and Mandarin, read: London is generally a safe place to travel, however precautions are needed when entering areas mainly populated by Indians, Pakistanis and black people. It also advised tourists not to go out alone at night, and for women not to travel alone.

Virendra Sharma, Labour MP for Ealing Southall, was upset by the magazines advice and invited visitors to his constituency, which has many people of Indian-origin, to see how safe it is. Sharma told Hindustan Times on Thursday it was not fair for the magazine to tender such advice and it was not right to brand entire communities as criminal or neighbourhoods as unsafe.

He said: I am shocked and appalled that even today some people would see it as acceptable to write such blatantly untrue and racist statements. I have invited representatives of Air China to visit my constituency to see that a very multicultural area is safe, and would be of great value for those visiting London to see.

Sharma said he wrote in the strongest possible terms to Chinas ambassador to Britain, Liu Xiaoming, asking Air China to visit his constituency. He also asked the envoy to seek an apology from the airline. I will await their response, and if an appropriate one is not forthcoming I shall feel forced to question whether Air China is a fit company to operate in the UK, he said. Southall is among Londons most diverse areas.
AUSTIN: At least one person died in a shooting on Thursday at a high school in the West Texas town of Alpine, with early reports indicating a female student shot another female student in a bathroom and apparently killed herself, ABC News reported.

The other student is alive, ABC news quoted Brewster County Sheriff Ronny Dodson as saying. Dodson said an officer responding to the scene was shot in what appears to have been an accident.

The Brewster County Sheriffs Office told Reuters that there was an active shooter incident at Alpine High School, but declined to give further details.

Alpine, with a population of about 6,000, is 200 miles southeast of El Paso on the border with Mexico.

Alpine High School, which has about 280 students, has been evacuated and other area schools were also on lockdown, KWES TV reported. Students at the high school said they heard about two or three shots, KWES reported.

The incident was just the latest in a long series of shootings at US schools, some of which have claimed dozens of lives.

The deadliest mass school shooting was in 2007, when a gunman slaughtered 32 people at Virginia Tech. In 2012, a gunman shot dead 20 children and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
TORONTO : Indias first virtual reality (VR) film, the short documentary Right To Pray, will premiere as part of a batch being showcased at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).

While the film itself is brief, clocking in at just over eight minutes, its director, Mumbai-based Khushboo Ranka, described its arrival at TIFF as a big deal.

The film, Right To Pray will be part of POP VR, a special event at TIFF. We couldnt have had a better platform. Theres the excitement of having the film seen by people from all over the world at TIFF, but also to meet others who are experimenting in this medium to brainstorm with them because everything is groundbreaking in VR, Ranka told Hindustan Times. The film deals with a phenomenon that appears to be spontaneous and sudden - that of women seeking entry into the sanctum sanctorum of religious places that have so far been barred to them, as in the case of the Haji Ali dargah in Mumbai.

In this instance, these are women looking to break a 450-year-old tradition (and their success in that effort) at the Trimbakeshwar temple in Maharashtra.

The film makes for an immersive environment, allowing the viewer to virtually enter the same space as the activists and devotees. The episode itself is not just a religious thing, but a very political, seminal kind of act, Ranka said in an interview in Toronto.

The film was produced by Memesys Culture Lab helmed by Anand Gandhi, the director of the feature Ship Of Theseus, which gained great acclaim when it premiered at TIFF in 2012.

Gandhi said VR was the natural next step as a medium, as part of the trajectory of storytellers upgrading their ability to replicate our environment and record it in accurate ways of complete fidelity.

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WASHINGTON: Russian President Vladimir Putin is far more of a leader than Barack Obama, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said on Wednesday, echoing previous praise for the Kremlin strongman.

Putin is very much of a leader , Trump said in a televised interview, where he and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton were separately grilled over their national security and military credentials.

Trump has made no secret of his admiration for Put in, who last year praised the US business man as very outstanding.

Put in has very strong control over a country, Trump said.

Its a very different system, and I don t happen to like the system. But certainly in that system hes been a leader, far more than our president has been a leader .

Before Trump spoke, Clinton too was asked about her security smarts, but also faced questions on the sprawling email scandal that continues to over shadow her White House run. The interviewer, NBCs Matt Lauer, asked why it wasn t disqualifying for Clinton to have handled government emails on a private server while secretary of state .It was a mistake to have a personal account. I would certainly not do it again. I make no excuses for it .
WASHINGTON: American flying ace Chuck Yeager, who first broke the sound barrier, seems to have gotten the 1971 India-Pakistan war so wrong: He believes Pakistan won, because it remained a sovereign nation, India didnt annex it.

This claim came in a testy Twitter exchange with TV host and former editor Shekhar Gupta, who started out Wednesday night (India time) by teasing Yeager about his role helping the Pakistani Air Force in 1971.

You touched no nerve-you dont have that power. Pakistan won. They are a sovereign nation. India did not annex them, Yeager, who is 93, wrote in a post further down into the exchange.

Pakistan won, because India didnt annex them? This is not how he saw it in 1986 when he wrote Yeager: An autobiography. He then said, having seen the war from up close as US adviser to the Pakistan Air Force, East Pakistan  now Bangladesh  fell in three days, and Pakistan stopped India from annexing that part by opening up the western front.

Here is how he went further, much further, on Twitter.

Gupta started with this tweet: Gen, @GenChuckYeager have you written abt your role with PAF in 71 war besides yr memoir. Was your parked plane shot up by IAF at Chaklala?

Yeager, a seemingly spry tweeter, shot back in minutes: Asked & answered many x. Indian pilots shot themselves in the foot. That plane helped rescue downed Indian pilots.

Gupta responded: Sorry, I touched a raw nerve, Gen. Youre among the finest fighter pilots ever but sadly were on losing side in 71

Yeager followed that one with the Pakistan-won claim. Gupta had squeezed in one another by then: And the pilot who you say shot himself in the foot by strafing yr plane rose to head Indian Navy, Adm Arun Prakash.

And Yeager was up to it once again: Not because he shot an unguarded parked airplane - one that had been used to help his countrymen. But in spite of it.

In sum, here is what Yeager said: One, Pakistan won the 1971 war because India left it standing and did not annex it; and two, Admiral Prakash shot up an unguarded plane, as if thats not an honourable thing to do in a war.

Yeager is a celebrated US air force pilot who first earned acclaim shooting down 13 German planes during World War II, and then for breaking the sound barrier as a test pilot in 1947.

His flight to fame formed the anchor for The right stuff, a 1983 film that covers 15 years of American air-power, based on a book by the same name by Tom Wolfe.

Yeager continued in the US air force till his retirement in 1975, four years after he was sent, he has said in his book Yeager, to advise the Pakistani air force months before the 1971 war. To his credit, the general, as Yeager prefers to be called  he retired as a brigadier general, did write about his plane being totaled in a raid by Indian Air Force.
UFOs are the latest eye candy. However, while flashing lights and eerie hits are making waves and catching attention everywhere, they seem to be outnumbered by disbelievers. The debate over 'are they UFOs or are they birds and aircraft' stirs up a storm every time there is some alien 'observed' in the skies.

The latest book, 'The 37th Parallel' by Ben Mezrich--best-selling author of books that made it to Hollywood through '21' and 'The Social Network'---will probably make as many waves as the rumours of aliens, as it documents a number of UFO sightings through the decades.

The first evidence of aliens, Mezrich explains, is cattle mutilations.

He writes: "Over the past seventy years, more than ten thousand cows and horses have been found killed and mutilated, in frighteningly similar fashion: usually left lying on their sides, with multiple organs removed through precise, circular wounds."

There were more horrors. "Missing hearts, eyes, tongues, lungs- and that isn't even the worst part. Almost all of these carcasses have been found completely drained of blood."

However, there was never enough effort to find out the reason for the mutilations. Was it due to aliens?

Chuck Zukowski till the summer of 2010 was a microchip engineer and part-time reserve Sheriff's deputy. But when he began to investigate cattle mutilations on a ranch and believed that they could be attributed to UFOs, he got fired, stripped of his badge as well as his gun.

That made him not an amateur UFO enthusiast, but what he calls himself---a "ufo-nut." Even though he bought an RV and toured the country to get some answers along with his family, he did not hit any solutions.

Although sightings of UFOs, videos and suspicious lights are quite widespread, there are no real efforts to explore them by the higher-ups, who just dismiss them as a lot of hot air.

Still, UFOs cannot be disproved. The most famous sighting happened in Roswell, New Mexico, back in 1947, July 3. Radar operators at Walker Air Base, the first nuclear base of the US, noticed and began to keep track of a couple of strange alien and objects totally geared up at "impossibly high speeds."

Hence, when a huge electrical storm struck a nearby ranch, it scattered debris that was metallic, and covered with strange hieroglyphics.

Although the debris was made public, it was disclosed years later that the real debris had been sealed, while what was put out to the public was fake.

The second UFO sighting happened in the UK. Called the Rendlesham Forest Incident, near RAF Woodbridge, a British Air Force Base, it happened on December 26, 1980, when a group of officers saw lights coming down on the forest. They sighted something "huge, glowing and metallic, hovering over the trees."

It left indentations on the ground, along with "triangular scorch marks." It was followed by another object in flashing lights that zoomed past at incredible speed.

"In both these cases, Roswell and Rendlesham, the efforts to cover up the incidents seems almost as damning as the events themselves."

It seems puzzling that since the 40s, all UFO sightings have been veiled at every level. But the explanation is simple----"mainstream scientists, legitimate historians, and respected journalists" are faced with ridicule every time they introduce the UFO cases.

One high-level aerospace executive said: "A generation from now, people will look back at us the same way we look back at those who believed the Earth was flat; the evidence that we've been visited by extraterrestrials is so overwhelming, it's actually a leap of faith to believe anything else."

We don't even have to build giant telescopes, keep our ears cocked for radio waves from other star systems, or even send probes into deep space, because it looks as if the UFOs and aliens have already descended.

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
What exactly happened during the Great Plague of London to kill 100,000, or a quarter of the population, just 350 years ago?

Daniel Defoe had something quite ghastly to say about it, even in the 18th century, in A Journal of the Plague Year, he wrote:

"The plague, as I suppose all distempers do, operated in a different manner on differing constitutions; some were immediately overwhelmed with it, and it came to violent fevers, vomitings, insufferable headaches, pains in the back, and so up to ravings and ragings with those pains."

Scientists investigated 20 of the 3,500 skeletons in a mass grave discovered last year during a Crossrail dig at the Bedlam burial ground, also known as the New Churchyard, in East London.

The skeletons belonged to the bodies that had been annihilated in 1665, during the second plague epidemic. They showed some bacterium that also caused the 1348 Black Death outbreak, which was the first plague epidemic to hit Britain.

"It's significant because we had this famous, severe outbreak of plague in 1665, but until very recently, there was quite a lot of doubt about what had caused it," a researcher told the Independent.

Hence, the bubonic plague bacteria Yersinia pestis led to the Black Death first, but did it also cause the Great Plague in 1665? At first, they thought that it had an effect that was different from the first outbreak.

Scientists extracted tooth pulp from five of the 20 patients who were examined, though. It at last set the matter to rest. "We could clearly find preserved DNA signatures in the DNA extract we made from the pulp chamber and from that we were able to determine that yersinia pestis was circulating in that individual at the time of death," a researcher says.

So its clear that Yersinia pestis was the villain and can be quite a killer when it is let loose.

What about you? You don't have to worry about plague of any sort---great or small---if you hop into London. Improved hygiene and antibiotics show that the risk for you is very low, says the Londonist.

YouTube/Crossrail Project

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
"Thor: Ragnarok" will introduce a new character Hela, the ruler of Nilfheim and ruler of the realm of the dead. She will try to expand her power in Valhalla and opposing Odin, who comes back, and his son Thor. Along with Hela, Bruce Banner will also appear.

"Thor: Ragnark" is the third installment of the Marvel superhero Thor, the god of thunder. In the movie, Thor's adopted brother Loki has changed its character, but he is always a trickster. According to Movie News Guide, there is already a lot of anticipations about the plot in the movie. As Hela will challenge the ruler of Valhalla.

In the Marvel Universe, Hela is the goddess who rule the realm of the dead. She and Odin rule their own world separately. However, as Odin is not on the throne of Asgard, Hela decides to take over Asgard and to rule beyond her realm.

Actor Anthony Hopkins, who played Odin in the previous two installment of "Thor," was spotted in the film set in Brisbane, Australia. His appearance raised the speculation about the return of Odin in "Thor: Ragnarok." There is a rumor that Odin will become a homeless man and preaching about the end of the world in the street acoording to The BitBag.

Fans still wait for the chance that Odin will return to his throne as the king of Asgard and lead the war to defeat Hela.

Meanwhile the original cast from the previous series will also return. Chris Hemsworth, Idris Elba, and Tom Hiddleston who just ended his relationship with girlfriend Taylor Swift is also spotted in the set. While actress Cate Blanchett is cast as Hela, and Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner.

"Thor: Ragnarok" is currently shooting at Village Roadshow Studios in Brisbane, Australia. The entire principal photography is expected to finalize next month before going into post-production. The movie is scheduled to release in November 2017.

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Now that there are reports suggesting the revival of the show, which will still air on Fox, speculations loomed that the series will be released sometime in 2017.

The series brought so much sentimental ending viewers witnessed Miller's character dead and buried.

After that, the series was no longer revived and Wentworth Miller went to do "The Flash" together with his co-star Dominic Purcell. Their great team-up was first noticed in "Prison Break."

Due to the show's high demand and great ratings, it will release its fifth instalment in March 2017, earlier than anticipated.

But the Parentherald.com revealed that there are speculations that the release date might be this December as the production team is already in their post-production stage.

Would that mean joyous Christmas for the fans?

Even if the management will issue an official announcement regarding this, they already threw hints which are really good news to the fans.

"Prison Break" took a long hiatus. Amid that, the series created a huge blockbuster hit while also generating huge fan base in the social media.

Viewers cannot anymore contained their excitement in the new season, according to ListenFirst Media.

The new season produced 19.5 million total engagements in social media, beating other latest show that will also be aired this season.

Dominic Purcell shared said the new season contains thrilling plots as they will be dealing with ISIS and ISA while maintaining on his mission to get his brother out of prison in Yemen.

The clear possibility of airing new season of "Prison Break" will be something that's not going to let the fans down.

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Police and volunteers search for Diana Quer in Galicia last week. EFE

Until last year, there was no centralized database in Spain for missing persons. Instead, the countrys different regional police forces had their own figures, based on reports filed by relatives and spouses each year.

Ivan Duran.

But in 2015, the Justice, Security and Social Affairs secretaries of state agreed to work together in conjunction with the newly created Fundacion Europea por las Personas Desaparecidas QSD Global (European Foundation for Missing Persons QSD), fronted by journalist Paco Lobaton. The latest figures show that around 100 people go missing each year, never to be heard of again. QSD Global says that at present there are 84 people missing in Spain who are at risk.

The Interior Ministrys figures show that last year alone 24,995 missing persons reports were filed to the police (the figure so far for this year is 14,473). Of these, 24,088 have been found, reports the ministry, although very often people do not bother to withdraw a report when a loved one turns up.

Manuela Chavero.

Up until September 2, there were 1,270 police investigations into missing people, among them an 18-year-old girl called Diana Quer, whose disappearance since August 22 while on holiday in northwestern Spain has generated intense media scrutiny. Sadly, most other people who go missing fail to garner similar attention.

Three days after Quer went missing from the tiny community of A Pobra de Caraminal in Galicia, Ivan Duran, aged 30, disappeared from his home in Baiona, also in Galicia. So far there has been no sign of him, but then photographs of him have not filled Spains television screens. His family are angry at the attention being given to the Quer case. We pay our taxes and have the same right for the state to use all its resources, they complain.

David Gomez.

The family of Manuela Chavero have not heard from the 42-year-old for two months since she disappeared from her home in the town of Monesterio, in the western province of Badajoz. The mother of two was last seen on the night of July 4 with a female friend. Police found the clothes she had been wearing the day before on her bed, while the lights and television in her house were on. Her phone and purse were also in the home; the last call she had made was a 1.55am on July 5. The case is being investigated by the local division of the Civil Guard.

Maria Carmen Carracedo.

David Gomez, a 39-year-old, was also last seen on July 4. He had been to the Madrid dormitory town of Tres Cantos for a job interview, but after drinking a Coke in a bar around 4pm, disappeared instead of returning to his home in nearby Colmenar Viejo.

In the northern province of Zamora, three people have disappeared over the last month: 54-year-old Carmen Carracedo, who was recovering from an operation to remove a brain tumor and was last seen seated outside her house in the village of Rozas on September 3.

In nearby Gallegos del Campo, 78-year-old Miguel Fernandez went missing the day after taking his daily walk.

Felisa Ferrero.

Felisa Ferrero, a 91-year-old resident of Robleda, has been missing for the last month. Theres no link between the three cases, even though they have all taken place within a short space of time, said a spokesman for the local Civil Guard. These kinds of disappearances are common in summer, and theyre not easy to solve, because we have to use dogs to help search thick woodland, he added.

Last week, a group of hunters found the body of Raquel Perez, an octogenarian suffering from Alzheimers disease who had been missing since August 25. She had wandered four kilometers from her care home in Pobra de Trives, in Orense province.

Miguel Fernandez.

Such cases are reported each month throughout Spain, but few generate the media attention that Diana Quers case has. Teenagers  and particularly females  who go missing are much more shocking to the media, says one spokeswoman at a civil society association set up by families of missing people. In the case of Diana Quer, the fact that her father, Juan Carlos Quer, a property developer, has friends in high places, is obviously part of the reason the media is paying so much attention, she adds.

English version by Nick Lyne.
The passing of the bill happened two days before the U.S. and the rest of the world pay tribute to the more than 3,000 victims of the 9/11 attacks.

Also known as Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, the bill was approved amid early objections of the White House to link the government of Saudi Arabia in the September 11 attacks. This bill will allow U.S. courts to hear cases against any country for injuries or death as a result of terrorist attack.

Last July, the White House, through press secretary Josh Earnest, maintained that the 9/11 Commission find no evidence linking the government of Saudi Arabia, or any of its official, to the attack.

"They [9/11 Commission] found no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution, or senior Saudi officials individually funded al Qaeda," according to Earnest.

The White House official also disclosed that the FBI conducted some works as a part of the 9/11 Review Commission and find no new evidence that would change the 9/11 Commission's findings.

The White House believed that the newly enacted bill will endanger U.S. companies and personnel when they do business or official work in other countries.

"The way that this law is written could open up U.S. companies and even potentially U.S. personnel to vulnerabilities when they're engaged in actions or doing business or conducting official government work overseas," Earnest pointed out.

The White House believed that the bill will harm the principle related to sovereign immunity, a principle by which the U.S. founded its relations to other countries.

"When you're the most powerful country in the world, you're invested in the idea of sovereign immunity, given how deeply the United States is involved in so many other countries. So we believe that's a principle worth protecting," said the White House official.

Sen. John Cornyn, sponsor of the bill, called on President Obama to sign the bill into law, according to a Buzzfeed report.

"Today's vote sends an unmistakable message that we should combat terrorism with every tool we have, and that the families of those lost in attacks like that on September 11th should have every means at their disposal to seek justice," said the senator.

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
News, events, history, and other mid-week tidbits.

Tuesday, October 25, 4:30  7 p.m.

Orr Area EMS Open House

Brats and burgers will be served. Event includes a new ambulance tour and blood pressure screenings. For more info: 218-780-3798.

Orr Fire Hall

4540 Lake St., Orr

Tuesday, October 25, 12  6 p.m.

Essentia Health Job Fair

Talent recruiters and department managers will be on-site at Essentia Health-Virginia. Candidates from all backgrounds are encouraged to attendnurses, nursing and clinical assistants, surgery technicians, radiology technicians, respiratory therapists, human resource professionals, and those interested in environmental services or nutrition services. Essentia staff will greet candidates, conduct an initial screening and filter them to appropriate hiring managers for interviews. Select candidates will be verbally offered a position before leaving. Candidates are asked to bring a resume, but its not required. Attire is business casual. For more info: www.essentiacareers.org.

901 9th St. N., Virginia
Rosa Roisinblit and her grandchildren, Mariana and Guillermo, leave the courthouse. Telam

More information La vicepresidenta de Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo consigue justicia a los 97 anos

It marks the end of impunity. At 97 years old, Rosa Tarlovsky de Roisinblit, the vice-president of the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, heard an Argentinean court sentence three men for the kidnapping and forced disappearance of her daughter, Patricia Roisinblit. Patricia was eight months pregnant when she was taken from her house in front of her 15-month-old daughter, Mariana, on October 6, 1978. Her partner, Jose Perez Rojo, had met the same fate hours before. Her family never saw them again. The baby was brought up by her grandparents after the military handed her over to Perezs family.

Patricia was eight months pregnant when she was taken from her house in front of her 15-month-old daughter

Thirty-eight years later, a federal court has sentenced Omar Graffigna, former Air Force chief and member of Argentinas second military junta, and Luis Tomas Trillo, ex-director of the Buenos Aires Regional Intelligence (R.I.B.A.) office, for unlawful imprisonment and torture practices that took place at the old RIBA building, a secret prison used under the dictatorship and Dirty War (1976-1983).

Roisinblit, granddaughter and daughter of the first Jews who arrived in Argentina at the end of the 19th century, and her grandchildren, Mariana and Guillermo, were together in the courtroom when the sentence was read. Guillermo was born while his mother was in captivity and he did not discover his real identity until 2000. His guardian, former intelligence officer Francisco Gomez, was also sentenced to 12 years in prison on Thursday.

Guillermo was born while his mother was in captivity and he did not discover his real identity until 2000

The courts decision is the first sentence for the 90-year-old Graffigna, who was was acquitted at the 1985 military junta trial and since then has evaded justice. This time the court found him guilty of crimes against humanity for his activities at the RIBA building, a huge mansion of 800 square meters located on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. According to details revealed during the trial, Jose Perez Rojo and Patricia Roisinblit were held at the RIBA building before Roisinblit was sent to the maternity ward of the Naval Mechanics School in Buenos Aires, then the largest clandestine detention center in the country.

In 2003, Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon requested Graffignas extradition but to no success. In 2013, the ex-military officer was arrested after Mariana Perez Roisinblit formally accused him of her parents disappearance. On April 27, 2000 she met her brother Guillermo for the first time to tell him that he was the son of desaparecidos. DNA tests confirmed her message. Guillermo has taken his biological parents last names, Perez Rosinblit.

English version by Dyane Jean Francois.
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Armenia-Azerbaijan: EU sets up monitoring capacity along the international borders

PACE co-rapporteurs on Armenia concerned by reports of alleged war crimes or inhuman treatment perpetrated by Azerbaijans armed forces

There is still 35% gender pay gap: Sona Ghazaryan

Global Finance Names Ameriabank the Safest Bank in Armenia

Mikayel and Karen Vardanyans provided 136 million AMD support for the overhaul of the Myasnikyan statue, which was in unsafe state of disrepair

Believe me, as a representative of a country which uses the Schengen system very often, it is quite important. Vardanyan

I really look forward to having answers from the Azerbaijani side for these alleged gross human rights violations: Secretary General

I call on Armenian and Azerbaijani parliamentarians to use this Assembly as an agora of opportunities President Tiny Kox

UCOMS SPECIAL OFFER OF THE UNLIMITED INTERNET IS NOW TERMLESS

There is no place for the death penalty in a State that respects human rights: PACE General Rapporteur

EU and CoE call on two Member States that have not yet acceded to this Protocol  Armenia and Azerbaijan  to do so without delay

An urgent debate requested on "The military hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan".

UCOM AND PES-PES CONTINUE COOPERATION WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF EDUCATIONAL PROJECT

The statement of the meeting between Prime Minister Pashinyan, President Aliyev, President Macron and President Michel of October 6, 2022

Largest Corporate Bond Program at the Securities Market of Armenia Completed Successfully

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The statement of the Defender on the video of the execution of Armenian PoWs by the Azerbaijani armed forces

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STATEMENT BY SECRETARY ANTONY J. BLINKEN

This criminal act is another proof that the Armenophobia policy. Tatoyan

Nikol Pashinyan, Nancy Pelosi discuss a number of issues related to the Armenian-American agenda and regional developments

Delegation by Nancy Pelosi Accompanied by Alen Simonyan Visits Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex

Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi Arrives in Yerevan

Armenian Revytech, global technology leader SAP and financial services software specialist SAP Fioneer sign a cooperation agreement

With 120 million drams donated by Mikael Vardanyan, the defenders of the homeland will be treated in a new building

OSCE Chairman-in-Office and OSCE Secretary General call for immediate cessation of hostilities along Armenia-Azerbaijan border

Statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Artsakh

USA Embassy Message for U.S. Citizens

ANCA Issues National Call to Action to Stop Taxpayer Funding of Aliyevs Aggression
Africa is increasingly moving towards achieving part of its African Union's Agenda 2063, which envisions the abolishment of visa requirements for African citizens by 2018. The recent launch of the Pan-African Passport is a big milestone towards freer movement of people within the continent, a move expected to further integrate Africa. This will in turn create more job opportunities, boost economic growth, increase cultural integration and elevate domestic tourism.

While some African countries have become visa open over the years, majority still have a long way to go, with Africans requiring visas to travel to 55% of other African countries. The Africa Visa Openness Report 2016 further shows that out of the 55 African countries, only 13 offer visa free or visa on arrival to all Africans. The infographic below by Jumia Travel, Africa's leading online hotel booking portal, provides a more comprehensive outlook on the visa trends in the continent. A lot of changes are expected in the near future, with the gradual roll out of the unified passport.
The debates that are stirring up the French population and are being fed by the beginning of the presidential campaign have cast a pall over the image of a welcoming country. Any demonstration of cultural diversity seems to purposefully goad the perfect model of a secular republic.

It is normal for the multiplication of attacks against France's population and its symbols of liberty to cause a security reflex. However, it is important to distinguish between the need to guarantee security for all citizens and visitors alike, regardless of their origins or culture and the temptation to reject the other and fall back on limited values.

France, the symbolic image of the development of Human Rights, an illustration of humanist values that have come down from the Age of Enlightenment and its greatest philosophers, has nothing to do with the accusations that try to overthrow the country's very principles of welcome and individual freedoms. The negative commentaries regarding France's supposedly segregated community that circulate freely in Asia and on the American continent suggest that there is a fair amount of incomprehension as well as rivalry. Meanwhile, now is the time for solidarity among all peoples in the stand against fanatic abuse of power, without stigmatizing one another. France has shown far more comprehension toward America's decisions on its own territory and actions it has taken abroad following 9-11.

It must also be observed that today's political discourses do nothing to offer any peace of mind. Despite its official will, France continues to have trouble finding room for peoples reflecting its colonial past. From frustrations to misunderstandings, the division grows deeper and a confrontational state of mind is being established against a backdrop of poorly assimilated religions. France is good at enjoying more than 400 varieties of cheeses, dozens of languages and regional cultures, but the diversity of religious practices is another matter.

If it is difficult to live together, among French citizens with a variety of origins, how can the country properly and sincerely express welcome to foreign visitors from a variety of cultures, who have elected France as a land for discovery? Will France become a timorous land? Will wariness become widespread with regard to all those who wear their traditional dress that is out of line with occidental standards?

Such questions are delicate to raise since the need for security and the concern for national identity have become a major subject in the upcoming presidential campaign. And the tourism industry has something to add to the debate: being open to the world and its diversity by nature, it is obliged to preach tolerance and intelligence. It is part of France's positioning on planet Tourism and, even more concretely, and France's ability to welcome clients of all nationalities, all religions, all cultures honorably. It will, unfortunately, be necessary to continue live in fear that new atrocities may happen. But this should not prevent us from living together, happily and in tolerance.

Georges PANAYOTIS

Founder, Chairman & CEO

Hospitality ON

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SALT LAKE CITY -- Today, the Ascend Hotel Collection from Choice Hotels International, Inc.(NYSE: CHH), one of the world's leading hotel companies, welcomed The Peery Hotel in Salt Lake City, Ut., as the newest addition to its growing portfolio of one of a kind distinctive hotels. Built in 1910, this property is a historic landmark located at 110 West Broadway, in the heart of downtown Salt Lake City.

"The Peery Hotel is a truly special property that takes you back to the rich history of the region, while offering the modern luxuries expected of today's discerning traveler. That is at the core of the Ascend Hotel Collection," said Janis Cannon, senior vice president of upscale brands for Choice Hotels. "This historic hotel's architecture is rooted in the early prairie and classical revival style, strengthening the Ascend Hotel Collection's diverse portfolio of distinctive independent hotels and resorts that guests seek out for a truly immersive experience."

The Peery Hotel, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, went through extensive restoration and renovations to provide guests with a fresh way to feel a part of local history with its unique design and art throughout its walls that nod to the railroad and mining industry, an integral part of Salt Lake City's past. The hotel features two new independent specialty restaurants, The Oak Wood Fire Kitchen and Aristo's, which is scheduled to open in the fall of 2016. The hotel is located close to many popular attractions in downtown Salt Lake City, including the Salt Palace Convention Center, Vivint Smart Home Arena, Temple Square, Mormon Tabernacle Choir, The Gateway Mall, among many others.

"We're excited to play homage to the railroad and mining industries of Salt Lake City's past through this beautifully renovated historic property, and we are thankful for the partnership with the Ascend Hotel Collection," said Sid Patel, Regional Manager,Marin Management, Inc. "Through Ascend, Choice Hotels has given us the ability to expand and be seen globally while still empowering us with the freedom to realize our vision for The Peery Hotel. We are grateful to be backed by Choice's indisputable reputation and all of the resources they provide. It has equipped us to continue to deliver on our promise to deliver a superior experience to our guests, as well as the benefits of the Choice Privileges rewards program."

The 73-room hotel features an architecturally unique aesthetic, great views of downtown Salt Lake City, and Tempur-Pedic beds that include premium triple sheeting and down comforters to ensure guests have a comfortable stay. Rooms range from a Classic Queen to a King Suite, which sleeps up to 4 people. All rooms include:

Complimentary Wireless Internet

Cable TV

Iron/Ironing Board

Non-smoking

Air Conditioning

Hair Dryer

Sofa Bed

Gilchrist & Soames Bath Amenities

The Ascend Hotel Collection offers unique, historic and boutique best-in-class options for guests pursuing authentic, local experiences in exciting urban and worldwide locations.

For a complete listing of properties, visit www.choicehotels.com/ascend.

Ascend Hotel Collection: let the destination reach you.

The best travel experiences can't be found in a guidebook. That's why the one-of-a-kind, upscale properties in the Ascend Hotel Collection membership program let you focus on your destination in a whole new way. Each Ascend hotel is a unique reflection of its local community, with staff committed to sharing their insider knowledge of the places, moments and experiences that makes each destination special. You'll discover hidden treasures off the beaten path, and find the true local flavor you crave.

About Marin Management, Inc.,

Headquartered in Sausalito, California, is celebrating its 26th year as a full-service hotel and restaurant management company. The company provides a variety of management, consulting, sales-support, acquisition and development services in the U.S. and internationally for the lodging, restaurant, spa, resort and mixed-use hotel industries. Marin Management currently operates 25 hotels throughout California, Arizona, Washington, Texas, Wyoming and Utah and is expanding into other states. Marin Management operates full-service and limited-service hotels affiliated with 14 brands of major international franchisers, such as Hilton Hotels Corporation, Wyndham International, Choice Hotels International, Carlson Hotels Worldwide, Intercontinental Hotel Group (IHG) and other franchisors. The company also operates unique independent hotels, such as Bay Landing Hotel,San Francisco International Airport, The Vineyard Country Inn and Wine Country in St. Helena, California, Carlin Cottages,Calistoga, CA, The Napa Winery Inn in Napa CA. and The Peery Hotel in Salt Lake City and the Ben Lomond in Ogden, Utah.

About Choice Hotels

Choice Hotels International, Inc. (NYSE: CHH) is one of the largest lodging franchisors in the world. With nearly 7,000 hotels, representing nearly 600,000 rooms, in 35 countries and territories as of March 31, 2022, the Choice family of hotel brands provides business and leisure travelers with a range of high-quality lodging options from limited service to full-service hotels in the upscale, midscale, extended-stay and economy segments. The award-winning Choice Privileges loyalty program offers members benefits ranging from everyday rewards to exceptional experiences. For more information, visit www.choicehotels.com.

 2022 Choice Hotels International, Inc. All rights reserved.

SOURCE Choice Hotels International, Inc.

Forward-Looking Statement

This communication includes "forward-looking statements" about future events, including anticipated hotel openings. Such statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, including construction delays, availability and cost of financing and the other "Risk Factors" described in our Annual Report on Form 10-K and our Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, any of which could cause actual results to be materially different from our expectations.

Addendum

This is not an offering. No offer or sale of a franchise will be made except by a Franchise Disclosure Document first filed and registered with applicable state authorities. A copy of the Franchise Disclosure Document can be obtained through contacting Choice Hotels International at 1 Choice Hotels Circle, Suite 400, Rockville, MD 20850, [email protected].

 2022 Choice Hotels International, Inc. All Rights Reserved
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Truck owner regularly changes his testimony

The investigative body has requested a Yerevan court to extend for another two months the custodial term of Khachatur Gichyan, the man whose truck was used by the Sasna Dzrer armed group during the takeover of a police building in Yerevans Erebuni district on July 17. Gichyans lawyer Tigran Sargsyan told A1+ that the court sitting is scheduled for Sept. 9 at the Court of General Jurisdiction of Yerevans Arabkir and Kanaker-Zeytun administrative districts. The lawyer sees no grounds for keeping his client in custody. A person is kept in custody if there are reasons to believe that he/she may avoid appearing in court, eliminate evidence, exert illegal pressure on witnesses, avoid responsibility or may not have a permanent place of abode. My client has a permanent place of residence and has no reasons to avoid responsibility. He has not been convicted in the past and does not have criminal record, said Tigran Sargsyan. Khachatur Gichyan, 69, is a citizen of Georgia.  Gichyan is accused of capturing buildings and structures, as well as illegal possession and transportation of weapons. He was arrested for two months on charges of helping the Sasna Dzrer armed group in capturing the building of the Armenian police patrol-and-guard regiment. After his arrest, the National Security Service issued a statement claiming that Gichyan said in his testimony that members of the Sasna Dzrer group threatened him to take revenge on his family members if he refused to give his truck. The lawyer says Gichyan regularly changes his testimony, without mentioning details.
Darren Seals, a well known leader of the Ferguson protests, was found shot and killed inside of a burning car early Tuesday morning in Missouri.

According to reports, he 29-year old was a proud local activists and rather than going out on the national level like some other activists, he chose to stay local and try to encourage reform in Ferguson following the 2014 police killing of unarmed teenager, Michael Brown.

We have lost a great champion of civil rights in our community, said Bassem Masri, a friend who had live-streamed the Ferguson protests, sometimes with Seals walking behind him to protect him as he filmed. Activists who attended the vigil said they were furious to find that police had not taped off the crime scene, and that there were still bullet casings on the ground they thought police should have collected as evidence. We were literally stepping on the ashes from his car and his body, said Tamara Bates Dodd, a St Louis hip-hop artist and activist. That was probably the thing that shook me up the most, seeing little kids walking past, not knowing what theyre standing on.

While Seals was regarded as a champion of civil rights in the community by his friends and family, he also created some controversy by speaking out against the Black Live Matter movement, and even hit high-profile Black Lives Matter activist, Deray McKesson.

According to The Guardian;

In a Twitter post last year, Seals wrote: #BlackLivesMatter is a gay/feminist movement not a black movement they are not leaders theyre thieves who exploited the work of black ppl.

McKesson addressed Darren Seals death on twitter, although he didnt specifically mention his name which goes against the movements Say his name rallying cry.

https://twitter.com/_/status/773274284785557504



Some activists were understandably frustrated with the way Darren Seals went about his protest but he was truly dedicated to improving his community. He had planned to open a community center staffed by people with street backgrounds and former inmates, offering job programs and training on how to open a bank account, how to vote, and how to stay out of trouble by buying a gun legally. His friends still hope to raise enough money to open the Darren Seals Youth Community Center in his honor.

Seals death is eerily similar to the 2014 murder of Deandre Joshua near the street where Michael Brown was gunned down, though police say the two crimes appear unrelated.

As T.I. pointed out on instagram, this tragedy marks the sixth time that a black man has been found shot and burnt to death in the Ferguson/St. Louis area in the last two years.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BKHSd_mAOqI



[Via]

Darren Seals
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BEIJING - Leaders of the United States, China and other Group of 20 major economies who meet this weekend say more trade would shore up sluggish global growth but are tightening their own controls on imports.

China hopes its status as G20 host will give it more sway in managing the global economy and has made trade a theme of the meeting in Hangzhou, a scenic lakeside city southwest of Shanghai. Chinese officials say Beijing will propose a plan to promote commerce through cooperation in finance, tax and energy.

Governments also have said they want to discuss climate change, efforts to reduce surplus production capacity in steel and other industries and limits on use of tax havens.

President Barack Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other leaders will speak out against protectionism, their governments say. But at the same time, G20 governments are ratcheting up restraints on imports of steel and other goods, prompting concern support for global trade might be eroding.

The summit is the first global event for British Prime Minister Theresa May after her country's June vote to leave the European Union, a move seen by some political analysts as the start of a possible wave of nations pulling back from economic integration. In the United States, France and elsewhere, politicians are calling for protection for local industry.

"Protectionism is resurfacing," said a Chinese deputy foreign minister, Li Baodong. "In many parts of the world, we have seen calls for deglobalization."

This year's global trade growth is forecast by the World Trade Organization at an anemic 2.8 percent - its fifth straight year below 3 percent.

Progress on initiatives such as Obama's Trans-Pacific Partnership and a WTO plan to help poor countries integrate into global markets has stalled. On Sunday, German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel said talks on a U.S.-European trade deal "have de facto failed," though EU officials denied that.

In Hangzhou, Obama will call for an "open, integrated global economy," according to a senior American official who described the government's plans on condition of anonymity.
Urbanist Richard Florida popularized the term "creative class," describing the millions of workers in fields such as the arts, sciences and technology whose work largely involves coming up with new ideas and innovating on old ones.

The creative class has, for better or worse, primarily been associated with big American cities along the coasts: out of Richard Florida's top 20 creative-class cities in 2015, only one  Dublin, Ohio  was located in a non-coastal state.

But new data recently released by the National Endowment for the Arts suggests that there's an awful lot of creativity happening far inland from America's coastal tech and arts hubs.

Among other things, the NEA worked with the Census to poll residents of all 50 states on their participation in the arts, particularly whether they performed or created works of art in 2014.

Those data reveal a somewhat surprising pattern: America's Great Creative Divide isn't between the coasts and the center, but rather between North and South. (Take a look at the map above.)

Nationwide, 45 percent of American adults said they personally performed or created artwork in 2014. "Art," in this case, was defined by a wide variety of activities. Rather than recite all of them, I'll just leave the definition, from the NEA's report, here:

Personal performance or creation of artworks: Created pottery, ceramics, or jewelry; created leatherwork, metalwork, or woodwork; did weaving, crocheting, or other textile art; played a musical instrument; did acting; performed or practiced dance; did social dancing; performed or practiced singing; created films or videos as an artistic activity; took photographs as an artistic activity; created visual arts such as paintings, sculptures, or graphic designs; did creative writing.

As you can see from the map, the study found a surprisingly wide range of arts participation between states. At one end of the spectrum, folks in places such as West Virginia, Oklahoma and Florida seemed to have little interest in doing art  participation levels there hovered around 30 percent.

By contrast, people in states such as Colorado, Vermont, Montana and Oregon were roughly twice as likely to personally create or perform artwork.

You can see that the states are heavily sorted by geography, with the dividing line at parallel 3630' (by chance, the line that delineated the boundary between new slave and free states in the Missouri Compromise).

In no state to the south of that line do a majority of people say they personally create or perform art. Conversely, in only three states above that line  Kentucky, Delaware and West Virginia  do fewer than 40 percent of residents create or perform art.

What's driving these differences? A separate analysis by the NEA has some answers. Education is a big part of it. The percent of state residents with a bachelor's degree or higher is positively correlated with creating artwork: in other words, more education, more art.

This relationship is even stronger in some of the other categories the NEA looked at, such as attendance at art exhibits or performing arts events.

Conversely, poverty rates are a strong negative driver of arts participation. If you're working three minimum wage jobs, you're probably not going to have a lot of time to indulge in crochet or creative writing.

Of course, education and poverty are big drivers of each other, too. States with more money can spend more on better education, which leads to higher wages, which leads to more education, in an ongoing virtuous cycle. Unfortunately, the reverse holds true as well.

Rates of participation in the arts are a powerful and under-appreciated proxy for human well-being. "Self-actualization," including creative activities, are all the way at the top of Maslow's famous hierarchy of needs. If you're able to spend the time and resources necessary to, say, practice with the local theater group or join the local community band, it's highly likely that you've got all the basics like food, shelter and safety taken care of.

The NEA numbers suggest that a lot of folks in Southern states are falling behind their Northern counterparts on some of those measures. This mirrors what researchers see in other domains too, such as child well-being.

Geography, again, is destiny. Statistically speaking, a kid born in a state such as Florida is likely to have a harder time reaching the pinnacle of Maslow's pyramid than one born in, say, Minnesota.

Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) writes about politics, drug policy and all things data. He previously worked at the Brookings Institution and the Pew Research Center. He wrote this story for the Washington Post's Wonkblog.

Bookmark Gray Matters. It does weaving, crocheting, or other textile art.


AUSTIN -- Attorney General Ken Paxton waded back into the climate change debate Thursday by arguing that Massachusetts' attorney general exceeded her constitutional authority in launching a probe of Exxon Mobil's marketing and sale of fossil fuel products.

Paxton and attorneys general from 10 other states filed an amicus brief Thursday contending that Maura Healey is using her office as attorney general to "tip the scales on a public policy debate," undermine the first Amendment and abuse the office's subpoena power.

"The Constitution was written to protect citizens from government witch-hunts that are nothing more than an attempt to suppress speech on an issue of public importance, just because a government official happens to disagree with that particular viewpoint," Paxton said in a statement.

The attorneys general argue a statistically small sample of scientist agree on climate change and contend the issue is up to scientific debate. Healey's demand for decades worth of internal company documents regarding Exxon Mobil's fossil fuel products and securities is an attempt to squelch free speech on the topic, according to the filing.

The overwhelming majority of climate scientists and professional organizations of scientists have said the planet is warming, humans are primarily responsible and solutions are needed.

The brief supports Exxon Mobil's request for a preliminary injunction to block Healey from enforcing a Civil Investigate Demand for decades worth of internal company documents regarding fossil fuel products and securities to determine if the company violated consumer protection laws.

The power of the attorney general "does not include the right to engage in unrestrained, investigative excursions to promulgate a social ideology, or chill the expression of points of view, in international policy debates," read the brief filed in the Forth Worth division of the United States District Court in the Northwestern District of Texas.

Paxton's filing Thursday was joined by 10 other states with Republican attorneys generals, including Alabama, Arizona, Louisiana, Michigan, Nebraska, Nevada, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah and Wisconsin. The filing supports Exxon Mobil's motion for a preliminary injunction to block the Massachusetts attorney general from enforcing a Civil Investigative Demand for decades worth of internal company documents.

This is not the first time Paxton has jumped in on the climate change fight in support of Exxon Mobil.

In May he asked a Texas judge to block what he described was an illegal investigation by the U.S. Virgin Islands into the company. The attorney general for the U.S. Virgin Islands subpoenaed Exxon Mobil looking for correspondence and internal research related to climate change in an apparent quest to determine whether Exxon Mobil's public positions line up with what executives and researchers communicated among themselves.

The U.S. Virgin Islands attorney general agreed to drop the subpoena in June.
Cleaning up Laos

Regarding "Obama declares 'moral obligation' to clean up 80M bombs in Laos" (Page A13, Wednesday), once again, it appears that the American taxpayers are having to bear the burden for corporate inefficiency.

If, as the article states, there are 80 million unexploded bombs in Laos that need to be disposed of at a cost of $30 million a year for three years, the manufacturer of those bombs should be responsible for the cost of their clean-up, not the taxpayer.

It is apparent that with so many pieces of faulty ordnance, a lack of quality control was present in their manufacture. An examination of the contract between the government and the producer should reveal the acceptable level of bomb failure; surely not 80 million. The manufacturer should be fined and the cost of disposal recouped.

Kenneth Campbell, Cypress

Noisy open-air shows

Regarding "Open-air discord" (Page B1, Wednesday), here in no-zoning Houston, noise is especially relevant. I currently live next to a site that is an off/on location for a carnival. Back in the '90s, I lived by an after-hours club. Neither one was in business when I moved into these areas.

The after-hours club was a haven for underage drinking and drug use, but after-hours clubs are another issue for another time. Noise, I believe, should be contained inside the property owner's property lines.

Morgan Rauch, Houston

Sensitivity or madness?

Regarding "Colleges train new freshmen to be sensitive" (Page A10, Wednesday), it has been reported there are now sensitivity sessions on many college campuses to direct faculties and students on approved behavior and speech.

The examples are numerous: Princeton now encourages the use of vocabulary that is more gender-neutral.

Today's winner is Clark University in Worcester, Mass., stating "you guys" is not to be used because it could be interpreted as non-inclusive of women.

Has anyone considered that this effort has the counterproductive result of instructing individuals to discover multiple diverse reasons to feel offended? Or that it is beginning to stifle innocent spontaneous conversation and interaction between us all? Have we gone mad? Oops. Is that a banned word?

Beverly Chadd, Houston

Radical ideology policy

Regarding "Identity politics is ruining national life" (Page A13, Tuesday), David Brooks' column suggests that this is a recent phenomenon. In fact, moderate Republicans have pandered for decades to the "us against them" radical right.

Unfortunately for the Republicans, their cynical strategy has resulted in the takeover of their party by the radical right to which they pandered. Thus, what was once merely cynical lip service to a radical ideology has morphed into a mainstream party's policy. This is what is different.

The Republicans have made this bed, and now they must lie in it. How long remains to be seen.

David Feldwisch, Houston
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said on Wednesday that the United States should "take the oil" in Iraq as part of the "spoils of war" and to keep it out of the hands of ISIS. "I've always said, shouldn't be there, but if we're going to get out, take the oil," he said. "If we would have taken the oil, you wouldn't have ISIS, because ISIS formed with the power and the wealth of that oil."

When moderator Matt Lauer asked how, Trump said, "we would leave a certain group behind and you would take various sections where they have the oil."

What would doing that actually involve? A supertanker-size set of problems.

The United States can't just walk off with Iraq's oil when it decides to get out. In 2015, Iraq produced about 4 million barrels a day, enough crude oil to fill more than 700 Trump Towers. Billions of barrels more sit underground in conventional reservoirs. The International Energy Agency has estimated that Iraq could produce twice as much as it does currently -- by 2035.

That means taking the oil would take decades. That might explain Trump's suggestion that "a certain group" should be left behind to hold down parts of the country so that the United States could siphon off oil. What he didn't say is that that group -- undoubtedly U.S. soldiers -- could be there quite a while.

In addition, Iraq's oil wells and pipeline networks span the length of the roughly 700-mile-long country, from the border near Syria to Kurdish areas in the northeast to the giant fields in the south and the export facilities on the Persian Gulf.

A relatively modest U.S. force - meaning about 20,000 to 30,000 soldiers, according to Douglas Ollivant, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation who did military tours in Iraq -- could occupy the area in the south where 85 to 90 percent of the oil lies. That would qualify as "spoils of war" Trump said he favored.

But securing the oil fields across the country to make sure ISIS couldn't get its hands on any of it would require a force bigger than the one the Bush administration sent to take over the country. So far, ISIS has tapped into small oil fields in the north. The biggest was damaged in a U.S.-led air strike in August 2014. Currently ISIS is still producing a small amount from Iraq's northern Qayara field and that's been enough to help sustain the group.

"To 'take the oil' would require the United States to occupy Iraq. We tried that after 2003 with something approaching 200,000 troops and it did not work," said Andrew Bacevich, a retired colonel and professor of history and international relations at Boston University. "What would effective occupation actually require? A minimum of a half-million troops, perhaps more."

Bacevich added, "Presumably, Trump would have them stay until the oil runs out, which would entail an occupation running into decades. The total cost? Probably more than the value of the oil itself. The whole idea is beyond goofy."

The troops tasked with taking the oil would also be in even greater danger than before because the seizure of the oil could ignite broader opposition across all Iraqi political groups.

"You could probably secure the area if you're willing to have a forever war and 19-year-old Americans sniped at by Iraqis," said Ollivant, a former National Security Council director on Iraq for Presidents Bush and Obama.

"Taking oil from the Iraqis is akin to taking oil from Texans, coal from West Virginians or timber from Oregonians. This is the stuff their economy is based on and they would probably fight to keep it," added Ollivant, who is now a part-time consultant on development for U.S. firms and the Iraqi government in Baghdad and the provinces. "If someone came to my country and stole my oil I'd probably shoot at them too."

There are legal issues as well. Seizing the natural resources of a sovereign nation after invading it would violate the Geneva Conventions. Indeed, that's why the United States went to war with Iraq the first time: In 1990 Iraq invaded another sovereign country, Kuwait, to take its oil reserves.

"Under what possible legal regime could we hope to do this?" Ollivant asked.

"And we're the only ones, we go in, we spend $3 trillion, we lose thousands and thousands of lives, and then, Matt, what happens is, we get nothing." Trump said to Lauer. "You know, it used to be to the victor belong the spoils. Now, there was no victor there, believe me. There was no victor. But I always said: Take the oil."

Not so simple, policy veterans say. "I was on National Economic Council and National Security Council when we invaded Iraq," said Robert McNally, now head of the Rapidan Group, an energy consulting firm. "We didn't do it for Iraq's oil. And we took pains to avoid even seeming like we were out to seize Iraq's oil."

Instead, he said, "We were hoping Iraq's production would recover quickly. What mattered was use of those revenues to rebuild Iraq." Reconstruction and a well-supplied oil market were the top goals, McNally said, adding "that is still what I think is the correct way to think about Iraq's production."
Yazidis in Armenian insulted by Gurgen Arsenyan's statement (video)

ISIS committed genocide against Yazidis in Iraq, killing more than 25 000 people, Sayid Avdalyan, Chairman of the Association of Young Armenian Yazidis NGO, said on Sept. 9. He was angered by the statement of Armenian lawmaker Gurgen Arsenyan made during the discussion of a bill condemning the genocide of the Yazidi people of Iraq by the Islamic State. Arsenyan said that the slaughter of 20 000-25 000 Yazidis cannot be considered genocide. Before the genocide of Yazidis in Iraq, some 1-1.5 million Yazidis lived in the country. Does Mr. Arsenyan want to say that all those people were to be killed by the IS to call the occurrence genocide? I just want to remind Mr. Arsenyan that UN Conventions say that if three people are killed for their religion or ethnicity, it is genocide, Sayid Avdalyan said today. He added that the number of victims could be much higher because new fraternal cemeteries are being discovered in Iraq, with 400-500 bodies in them. The real number of victims will become clear only after conducting a census in Iraq. The bill condemning the genocide of the Yazidi people of Iraq by the Islamic State group was put into circulation in the Armenian legislature by Naira Zohrabyan, who heads the Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK) faction in parliament.
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href="/asia/companies/monetary-authority-of-singapore/148441">Monetary Authority of Singapores (MAS) managing director Ravi Menon spoke recently to the Foreign Correspondents Association and he encouraged financial institutions in Singapore to practice a more ethical company culture.The financial services sector is one of the key pillars of the Singapore economy  [but it] is inherently vulnerable to risk and volatility, he said, adding that the financial industry across the globe is suffering from distrust from the public.While he lauded the strength of the banking system in Singapore, he also urged senior managers at financial institutions to get the culture right, particularly in helping MAS with their efforts in monitoring for anti-money laundering and countering of financing of terrorism (AML/CFT).This is a resource-intensive business. Each AML/CFT inspection of a bank takes about four to eight weeks and involves four to six supervisors, he said.MAS may have a dedicated AML department but Menon still believes that banks should be able to monitor themselves and that responsibility falls on the shoulders of senior management. Setting the right moral tone from the top should be a key consideration, he said.Boards and senior management, in particular, must send a clear signal that profits do not come before values and ethics. Compensation structures must motivate not just high performance but also right conduct, he concluded in his speech.
chief operating officer of Kiwi plastics company Sistema has hit back at allegations that the firm is operating a sweat-shop  insisting the claims are entirely fabricated."We have a great relationship with our employees, many of whom have been with us for over 10 years, and in fact we have a waiting list of people who want to work here, said Auckland-based COO Drew Muirhead.The company  slammed by E tu as New Zealand's very own sweatshop  is currently in negotiations with the union but had now been accused of exploiting its migrant workers."You've got workers doing 60-hour weeks, five days per week, on minimum wage without any additional allowances, and if they don't like it then they're told to get another job, said E tu manufacturing coordinator Anita Rosentreter.The workers are exhausted all the time," she added. They barely have any time to relax, they barely have any time to spend with their family.The union, which has been trying to negotiate a collective agreement since February, has also accused the company of discouraging union activity."This is a company that discourages its workers of being part of the union. It discourages workers from having a voice in the workplace. And when concerns have been raised in the past by workers, whether they're union members or not, the response has been: 'Don't like it? Get another job, said Rosentreter.Unsurprisingly, Sistema has staunchly disputed the allegations and has, in turn, accused the union of using bullying tactics.According to Sistema, only 26 of its 700 employees are currently in the union and 266 are on the minimum wage  175 of those are reported to have been employed at the company for less than two years.He also stressed that the company had invested considerable resources to upskill members of its workforce.Muirhead added that the firm was "disappointed and frustrated at the completely false claims and said he was discouraged by the unions decision to go to the media in the midst of negotiations.
Zaruhi Postanjyan puts into circulation draft declaration on the right of people to revolt

Draft Declaration of the National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia on the Right of the People to Revolt The people are the only source of any power. Power in Armenia belongs to the people. The people exercise their power through free elections, referenda, as well as national and local self-government bodies and officials. This prominent provision of law has been unattainable for the citizens of modern Armenia for a quarter of a century. The public and state government institutes designated for exercise of public authority in Armenia, viz. the president, the government, the parliament, were not formed through free elections and thus are not administered by legitimately authorized officials. Judicial power also has not been formed through legitimate mechanisms, therefore cannot serve the people. The usurpation of power by any organization or individual constitutes a crime. This prominent provision of law has also been violated in Armenia for more than two decades. Usurpation of power has been committed by Levon Ter-Petrossyan, Robert Kocharyan, Serzh Sargsyan and their attendant political organizations. The established system was a relapse into the modified Soviet totalitarian political system and pursued policy contradicting the interest and goals of the Armenian people. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men [public authority], deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends it is the right of the People to alter or to abolish it and to institute a new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. The Armenian people did not bestow legitimate power on Levon Ter-Petrossyan or Robert Kocharyan, or Serzh Sargsyan, or on their attendant National Movement and the Republican Party. They usurped the power. In their fight against the usurpers people have used and exhausted all possible means and are exercising their right to revolt as the last resort. After the April War in 2016 it is the duty of each and every person in Armenia to withstand any order that violates human rights, freedoms and their guarantees, as well as it is their right to use force to be able to prevent aggression. It is the duty of the Armenian society to abolish, through revolt, the political system unbefitting its interest and goals. Through revolt and resistance it is possible to prevent the disaster - Turkish and expansionist attacks threatening the Armenian people with genocide and expatriation anew. The distinguishing characteristics of the revolt and resistance of 2016 are national liberation and national goals  the struggle against colonization, the restoration of territorial integrity and the establishment of democracy and constitutionality. The revolt and resistance of 2016 announce elimination of dependence upon other countries and creation of independent, unified Armenian state. The demand of the revolt is to create independent Armenian statehood based on the principles of national sovereignty, democracy and republicanism. The rule of law envisages guarantees against tyranny, usurpation of power and change in the constitutional order without the consent of the people. The widely-known right to revolt is such a guarantee. Hence, the National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia:

Expresses solidarity with the demands of the revolt of the Sasna Dzrer group,

Condemns repressions against the participants of Sasna Dzrer national revolt,

Calls for immediate release of all prisoners of conscience, as well as abatement of criminal prosecution against them.

The right to revolt as a natural and unalienable right is an important achievement of the period of Enlightenment later reflected, for the first time, in the US Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of the Great French Revolution in 1789 as a source of law. The norms of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of the Great French Revolution were expanded when being integrated into the Constitution of France in 1793. The lack of respect for the key principles of civil society in Armenia and the violation of the fundamental rights and freedoms of the entire nation are the main causes for laws being paralyzed, thus leading to urgent exercise of the peoples right to revolt against the Government violating their rights. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. [1]  When a Government does not comply with the law, the principle of resistance becomes operational assuming practical importance through exercise of the legitimate and lawful right to revolt and making it an urgent duty. Let any person who may usurp the sovereignty be instantly put to death by free men [2] . Resistance to oppression is the consequence of the other rights of man [3] . When the government violates the rights of the people, insurrection is for the people and for each portion of the people the most sacred of rights and the most indispensable of duties [4] . Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law [5] . The right to revolt with a goal of generating resistance against tyranny is an integral part of the legal system of a democratic state. Without exercise of such a legal provision it is impossible to protect human rights in the Republic of Armenia. Before the National Revolt on 17 July 2016, there almost always were persons persecuted and convicted for their political views, but from that day on their number drastically increased, amounting to around a thousand. As of today there are around a hundred citizens officially persecuted for their political views. Some of them were put to jail before 17 July 2016, some of them  during the revolt and upon completion of its first phase. It is obvious that criminal prosecutions are legally groundless, as actions of the persecuted lack constituent elements of offence as envisaged by the criminal law. None of the confined, either before the National Revolt or after it, has been imprisoned on the basis of the law and fair court decisions. During the Revolt the participants of peaceful protests, becoming targets for the authoritarian regime, were subjected to criminal persecution and imprisonment on false charges as supporters of the armed group or organizers and participants of mass disorders, while charges fabricated against the members of Sasna Dzrer group included illegal carrying of weapons, taking of hostages and seizing of buildings. However, the real organizers of mass disorders, initiators of armed groups, as formulated by the regime, are the police of the Republic of Armenia and their attendant criminal civil security squads, and the representatives of the authoritarian regime of Armenia are the ones who have seized weapons and buildings and taken hostages. [1] Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. [2] Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen from the Constitution of Year I (1793) Let any person who may usurp the sovereignty be instantly put to death by free men. [3] Resistance to oppression is the consequence of the other rights of man. [4] When the government violates the rights of the people, insurrection is for the people and for each portion of the people the most sacred of rights and the most indispensable of duties. [5] Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law.
Tourism Calgary

Tourism Calgary used a pedal-powered kiosk this summer to bring tourists and locals free, mobile Wi-Fi.

The kiosk, which was staffed by city guides, featured tablets and pamphlets on different things to do around Calgary.

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Now that summer's over, the cart is no longer out every day, but it'll be showing up at special events, festivals and popular locations around the city.

Tourism Calgary said the initiative was a big success and helped more tourists than last year.

We had our summer team on the streets of Calgary every day from July 1 to August 31, and while were still analyzing the data, we know that our consults in July were up over 106 per cent over the same month the previous year," Cassandra McAuley of Tourism Calgary told the Lonely Planet.

The organization's CEO said one of the inspirations for the mobile kiosk was to give Calgarians more info on what there is to do around the city.

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"As Calgarians are staying closer to home this year we think it's a really great idea. There's so much to do in Calgary," Cindy Ady told CBC News.
Canadian kids have headed back to school, but not all of our children will be educated equally.

As Manitoba MLA and activist Wab Kinew told The Huffington Post Canada earlier this year, "The government of Canada gives $4,000 less per student per year to First Nation schools."

He added, "There is no rationale that you could come up with that would satisfy your basic morality or your sense of fairness. So it's up to us to fix those things."

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One Canadian who has devoted much of the past decade to fixing those things is former prime minister Paul Martin who had first tried to address indigenous education with the Kelowna Accord, which included $1.8 billion in increased funding to address the discrepancy. But that agreement was never implemented by Martin's replacement, Stephen Harper, who assumed office in 2006.

So two years later he founded the Martin Aboriginal Education Initiative to try and move the needle on his own, with efforts like the incredibly successful five-year Model School project (launched in 2010), which pushed rock-bottom reading rates right past the provincial average.

Martin sat down with HuffPost Canada to discuss indigenous education and what needs to change right now.

When we spoke in 2011, you called the underfunding of aboriginal education "absolutely discrimination." How is it possible that Aboriginal kids get an estimated $4,000 less per pupil?

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How is discrimination possible? The fact of the matter is that the federal government funds education on reserves and the provincial governments fund education off reserves, so its two different governments. For too many years, the federal government has argued that that comparison cannot be made and this is not a charter case, which I always believed that it is.

That's why when I became prime minister I brought into place the Kelowna Accord which eliminated those gaps, they eliminated them in health care, in terms of education and the wide range of areas in fact the federal government has not met its responsibilities and theres no other way of describing it as disgraceful. Thank heaven the new government has said they will eliminate that gap.

[But] it's 10 years too late.

Can you explain the current state of Aboriginal education and what we need to change, aside from more money?

There are outstanding indigenous educators in this country and they have been leading the fight for reform and there's people like ourselves who have joined with them. The foundation that I have created has brought in a number of programs in terms of literacy, in terms of teaching business. We've brought in courses that have taught principals and help them.

All of this is done, however, in partnership with Aboriginal leadership and the Aboriginal educators. This is their bailiwick, it is under their control and if they had been given their wish, we would not have these problems.

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The problem is the gross underfunding by the federal government.

Your Model School projects, I'm sure you're very proud of that partnership with Kettle and Stony Point First Nation and with Walpole Island First Nation. Can you explain what it is, why it worked, and how we can scale it out?

The numbers are very clear in North America: if you cannot read and write by the end of Grade 3, the odds are against you from being able to graduate high school because you keep on getting passed on and, eventually, it is too late. There was a program brought into the province of Ontario about 15 years ago in which they went from having the worst literacy records in North America to the best, they brought in experts and did the whole thing.

So when I started up the program, I went to see [Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne], she was then the education minister, I asked for the program and we hired the people who implemented it and we went into two on-reserve schools.

At the time that we went in, 70 per cent of Ontario hit the provincial standards. On the two reserve schools, 13 per cent hit that standard. We brought in this program [and] five years later, 81 per cent of our kids hit the standard and beat the Ontario numbers, it was spectacular to see it.

And now, working in conjunction with the federal government, we're going to bring in a whole new series of new schools and I really hope this becomes the standard for the country for Aboriginal schools.

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The dropout rate is unbearable in many of these communities. How can we address that issue?

How do we improve the dropout rates? When 13 per cent can hit the Ontario standard of reading and writing by the end of Grade 3 and 70 per cent hit it in the rest of the province, then you could understand why those kids are going to drop out. But if what you do is bring in the programs  and it's going to cost money  bring in the experts so they can read and write by the end of Grade 3, then those kids are not going to drop out.

Let me tell you after the [Model School] program was completed and we announced the results of this literacy program that was directed to stop kids from dropping out in Grade 9 and Grade 10, the chief stood up in front of the whole assembly, tears coming down his face, and he said, "You see what we can do when we're given the funding and the tools to do the job?"

I don't think there's a more powerful statement in terms of Aboriginal education ever given.

Given the rash of suicides and suicide attempts in our northern communities like Attawapiskat, what role does education play in this crisis?

In terms of these terrible suicide rates, education plays an enormous part because education gives you hope. Also in the education system that the First Nations want  and that they're quite right to want  there will be a major focus on languages, their own languages and culture as well as the provincial curriculum or math, science, history, and those things.

And that confidence in your identity when you're a teenager gives you the resilience to take some of the problems that teenagers always have. So we're very confident  and the experts are very confident  that we reduce the suicide rates and the studies have shown that. But the fundamental thing is hope and that's what education is all about.

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It's about giving somebody the chance to have the same opportunities that other people have and I'm very confident that if we can succeed at this we will provide that hope and those awful suicide rates will start to go down.

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Employment in Canada grew by 26,000 in August, Statistics Canada said Friday -- a much stronger number than economists had been expecting.

Still, the country's unemployment rate rose a notch to 7 per cent as more people entered the workforce to look for jobs, the statistical agency said.

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Beneath the headline number, the details were even stronger: Canada added 52,000 full-time jobs, while shedding 26,000 part-time jobs, suggesting an improving labour market. It more than offset the large 31,000-job decline the month before.

A poll by Thomson Reuters showed economists expecting a much more timid 15,000 net increase in the number of jobs this month.

But the two provinces that had been driving much of the country's job growth in recent months -- Ontario and British Columbia -- took a breather in August. British Columbia lost 6,600 jobs, while Ontario added some 10,500 jobs -- but that wasn't enough to keep the province's jobless rate from rising three notches, to 6.7 per cent.

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Recession-riddled Alberta lost another 1,200 jobs in the month, though its unemployment rate dropped two notches to 8.4 per cent.

Still, the strong month wasn't enough to offset a surprisingly weak job market through much of this year. Overall, employment in Canada is up just 0.4 per cent over the past year, not nearly enough to cover the roughly 1.1 per cent annual population growth the country is seeing.

The strong numbers suggest Canada is indeed seeing an economic rebound in the third quarter of this year. StatsCan reported last month that the country's economy shrank 1.6 per cent in the second quarter, its worst performance since the depths of the Great Recession in 2009. But much of that weakness was due to the Alberta wildfires in May, and economists expected to see a rebound later this year.

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A push to establish the first safe-injection site in Edmonton has gained a big supporter in the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta.

On Thursday, the organization voted to back an initiative by Access to Medically Supervised Injection Services Edmonton (AMSISE).

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The group has been working to set up a safe space with clean needles for users where they can be supervised by medical professionals.

Elaine Hyshka, a researcher at the University of Alberta and a member of AMSISE, believes the move could save lives.

Currently there are no safe-injection sites in Alberta. (Photo: Getty)

"When people inject in public, they basically increase every risk associated with injecting drugs," she told CBC News.

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Alberta is currently facing a fentanyl crisis. Last year, 270 people died from overdoses and AMSISE says safe injection sites could help reduce the number of deaths.

And the sooner this can happen before the next election, the more opportunity there will be to show the difference it can make, the group's project co-ordinator Ann Goldblatt told the Edmonton Journal.

The College of Physicians and Surgeons also voted to work on setting a standard of safe prescribing for opioids, which could help prevent addiction and overdoses.

The medical profession has had a hand in creating the prescription opioid issue, said Kelly Eby, spokeswoman for the college, to Metro News. And now theres a responsibility to guide physicians and their patients onto a better and safer path.

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It was day one of the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival on Thursday evening and who better to kick off the red carpet fashion than Fan Bingbing?

The Chinese starlet blessed the 6ix with her presence when she attended the world premiere for her film "I Am Not Madame Bovary" wearing a Elie Saab haute couture velvet gown.

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The long-sleeved dress, which featured a low-plunging neckline and thigh-high slit, was equipped with a silk organza printed-skirt that had sequined blue and red birds embellished on it.

As for her beauty look, the actress wore her hair straight down and flaunted a glossy deep pink lip and winged eyeliner.

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And you bet the fifth highest-paid actress in the world had adoring fans waiting for her on the streets of Toronto. The actress dealt with a frenzy of "Bingbing Fans" after attending a night of parties.

Waited to see Fan Bingbing in film I am not Madame Bovary last night #Tiff2016pic.twitter.com/xbCNJQBvMt  Sally W (@salconcert) September 9, 2016

Oh, and can we just point out that upon arriving in Toronto for the festival, Fan was spotted at the Beijing airport in the most gorgeous set of pyjamas, proving you can look comfortable and chic in one of the biggest fall trends.

#FanBingbing arrives at Airport on September 6, 2016 . pic.twitter.com/WnoajlwdGZ  Fan Bingbing (@HiFanBingBing) September 7, 2016

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If one of the world's top actresses wears pyjamas, we'll wear pyjamas.

For more glamourous photos from TIFF 2016, check out the slideshow below!

TIFF 2016 Photos See Gallery
CALGARY  A judge has apologized for comments he made at a sexual assault trial where he asked a woman why she couldn't keep her knees together.

Robin Camp says he has come to understand that what he said in 2014 when he was a provincial court judge was hurtful and inappropriate.

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Camp is appearing before a Canadian Judicial Council panel hearing in Calgary about whether he should lose his job.

The panel has already heard from the complainant in the trial, who said Camp's comments led her to contemplate suicide.

"I was rude and facetious.'"

Camp acquitted the man accused of assaulting the 19-year-old woman after deciding his version of events was more credible.

Court transcripts show he questioned the woman's morals and suggested she didn't try hard enough to fight off her alleged attacker.

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The judge, who is 64, told the hearing he wishes he had never said what he did.

"I was not the good judge,'' he said. "I thought I was. I struck the wrong tone in counsel submissions. I was rude and facetious.''

Camp said his "questions were not only offensive but they carry with them the implication that the complainant should have done something.''

He said he has reflected on and reread what he said and is "very sorry ... that I intimidated her, using facetious words.''

Justice Robin Camp arrives at a Canadian Judicial Council inquiry in a Calgary hotel on Friday. (Photo: Todd Korol/CP)

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The court transcripts show that Camp questioned the woman  "Why couldn't you just keep your knees together?''  and told her that "pain and sex sometimes go together.''

The transcripts also show he called the woman "the accused'' throughout the trial, something he did again at the hearing.

"The thing I feel worst about is the questions I asked of the accused,'' he said Friday before correcting himself. "The complainant.''

His verdict was overturned on appeal and a new trial was ordered.

'He made me hate myself'

"He made me hate myself and he made me feel like I should have done something ... that I was some kind of slut,'' the woman told the hearing earlier this week.

A justice, a law professor and a psychologist who were paid by Camp to mentor him after his comments came to light have all told the hearing that he has worked hard to change his attitude. They said he hadn't been trained properly about the crime of sexual assault or how to conduct a sexual assault trial.

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The panel hearing the complaint against him will forward a recommendation to the full Canadian Judicial Council. The council will then forward its final recommendation to the federal justice minister.

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A little boy is in the back of an SUV. He's wearing a colourful shirt with cartoon dinosaurs.

As he sits there, staring at the camera, the two adults in the front lie lifeless.

Both, according to police in Ohio, frozen from a drug overdose.

The haunting image was shared on the city of East Liverpool's Facebook page on Thursday.

The unconscious woman in the passenger seat was Rhonda Pasek, said police, and the boy is her four-year-old grandson.

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Photo shared as a warning

"We feel it necessary to show the other side of this horrible drug. We feel we need to be a voice for the children caught up in this horrible mess," said the city in the Facebook post.

"This child can't speak for himself but we are hopeful his story can convince another user to think twice about injecting this poison while having a child in their custody."

According to a police report, East Liverpool police officer Kevin Thompson spotted a Ford Explorer driving erratically on Wednesday before it drifted to a stop in the middle of the street.

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The man at the wheel, identified as James Acord, told police he was taking Pasek to the hospital.

The officer said Acord's head was "bobbing back and forth."

As he tried to drive the SUV again, Thompson reached in and removed the keys. That's when he noticed the boy in the back seat.

"We are well aware that some may be offended by these images and for that we are truly sorry, but it is time that the non-drug using public sees what we are now dealing with on a daily basis."

The driver then lost consciousness, and Pasek was turning blue. Paramedics arrived on the scene and administered a drug called Narcan, which is used to reverse opioid overdoses.

The couple eventually gained consciousness and were taken to a hospital. The boy is in custody of childrens services, according to an affidavit.

"We are well aware that some may be offended by these images and for that we are truly sorry, but it is time that the non-drug using public sees what we are now dealing with on a daily basis," the city said on Facebook, adding that heroin has taken a "strong grip" on many communities.

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Acord, 47, was sentenced to 360 days in jail, reported the LA Times, after he pleaded guilty to child endangerment and operating a vehicle while intoxicated.

Pasek, 50, was charged with endangering children, public intoxication and not wearing a seatbelt.

CLARIFICATION: The police report originally identified Pasek as the boy's mother; in fact, she is his grandmother.

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Thanks to research, we now know that a childs name can influence his or her future success.

University of California professor Albert Mehrabian wrote a book called The Baby Name Report Card: Beneficial and Harmful Baby Names to explain his findings. According to his book, a names success rate is based on how other people perceive it.

For a lot of people, their idiosyncratic associations with names are based on their personal experiences with particular people, Mehrabian told UCLA News. Other things that influence their impressions are historical figures and the historical usage of names.

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Based on peoples impressions, the professor then ranked names based on four categories: ethical-caring, popular-fun, successful, and masculine/feminine.

Using this system, Mehrabian determined the most successful names for girls and boys. Flip through the slideshow below to see if your name made the top 10 list!

10 Most Successful Baby Names See Gallery





People treat you differently depending on how attractive or unattractive your name is, Mehrabian continued. Imagine someone who calls himself Bill becoming a CEO of a corporation? People make intuitive judgments based on names.

As a result, the professor found that Wilma and Rufus were the top names that connote failure. Other names that were deemed unsuccessful included Tina and Sissy for girls, and Alfie and Gary for boys.

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Interestingly, the name Gary has fallen out of fashion in recent years and is used so little that it is almost at the point of extinction. While this may or may not be linked to the names rate of success, the downward trend is more likely due to its untrendy factor.

Parents have become increasingly interested in finding unique and stylish names for their kids. And now we're wondering if they'll eventually join Trixie, Bud and Phonso on Mehrabians least successful list fit this criteria.
A Bloomberg column by Stephen Marche comparing Justin Trudeau's use of social media to Donald Trump's was published on Thursday.

And if that wasn't inviting enough, check out the piece's accompanying photo:

Why Justin Trudeau is like Donald Trump https://t.co/drQLDwppRmpic.twitter.com/LNZ8rj4LGW  Bloomberg (@business) September 9, 2016

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The mashup of the prime minister and the Republican presidential nominee was, as you would expect, a hit on Twitter:

This picture is just all kinds of wrong https://t.co/hq1IQW0aYNpic.twitter.com/TpeOhJNFA0  Siraj Datoo (@dats) September 8, 2016

@tracyalloway I'm having an unsettling tumult of emotions looking at this  David Fickling (@davidfickling) September 8, 2016

No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no  The Trudeau-Trump mashup you can't unseehttps://t.co/9Hqw66P9sx  Karen Lopez (@datachick) September 9, 2016

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The accompanying photo of Trudeau mashed with Trump is somewhat terrifying. https://t.co/u7g2tEe4Se  Stephen Marche (@StephenMarche) September 8, 2016

In his piece, the Canadian writer argues that Trudeau's mastery of going viral  posing with pandas, getting spotted shirtless more than once, etc.  has allowed him to circumvent political obstacles and controversy.

"If you can control the viral space, traditional politics dont matter," Marche writes. "Virality provides one of the greatest political covers ever."

Toward the end of his column, however, Marche paints Trudeau as being "beyond" Trump as well as Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. He says the prime minister has used social media not to just win popularity, but also to govern.

"The shirtless man emerging from the Quebec cave is eager to smile for the selfie," March writes. "That way, you wont look to see whats behind him. Everyone on Facebook will love it."

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School is back and for many families this is the big year: the year their kids are going to start walking to school alone! Its both a scary and exciting milestone. How do we make sure our children are ready? What do they need to know to be safe?

Here is a plan to make sure you hit this milestone prepared:

1. Deciding on their readiness

You, and only you, can make the final decision on when your child is ready to walk to school alone. You can expect to see other children beginning this walk around age nine to 11 or grades 4 to 6.

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Some children are less attentive and more impulsive. Some intersections are very difficult to cross safely, while others are benign and have crossing guards. You as a parent are responsible for making sure your child is street proofed and trained properly to handle the challenges of their route. The sooner you begin, the sooner they will be ready.

2. Develop safe pedestrian skills

To ensure your child is ready to walk to school alone, practice safety skills. Do they cross only at intersections? Do they watch and wait for the light to change colours at intersections? Do they look both ways before stepping into the street regardless if the light is green? Are they able to estimate the speed of an oncoming car? Do they understand that while they may have the right of way, they cant assume that cars can see or notice them? Are they aware of cars coming out of alleys or making turns? Do they know to walk instead of run and move in predictable ways so that drivers can anticipate their direction?

Parents can use the first part of the school year to review these skills and allow their children to practice them independently while you walk behind them, but still in ear and eye-shot. If you are looking for supporting curriculum to ensure you have everything covered off, check out this website.

3. The case against cell phones

While parents say they would feel better if their child had a cell phone on them, walking with electronics creates its own hazards. Children need to pay attention to their surroundings and lets face it phones, texting and listening to music with earbuds all distract. Electronics can also be stolen, making your child a vulnerable target.

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Instead, why not consider making a plan for how your child can get access to help if they need to? Are there familiar houses on the street that they could make a call from? A gas station or convenience store where an employee could help them place a call? So many people have cell phones, they could probably just borrow one if needed.

4. Walking buses

A recent report on the activity level of Canadian children cited that we are among the most enabling of nations when it comes to driving our children around. The researchers recommend increasing childrens daily activity level by encouraging children to walk to and from school instead of getting rides.

One way to encourage young walkers is to create walking school buses. The idea is that a group of students walk together with one parent supervising the whole group to ensure safety.

Moving from a ratio of 1:1 supervision to 1:6 is a good stepping stone to autonomy and ensures your kid is getting exercise and socializing.

5. Parking lot safety

Even if you encourage your child to walk to school independently, many of their fellow students will still be getting a ride. That means that the area around the school drop-off zone and parking lot is a very busy place with poor visibility. For more accident safety advice, review the tips and information here.

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6. Stranger danger

Abduction by a stranger in Canada is exceedingly rare. Most missing children have run away from home or are taken by a non-custodial parent. Still, we have to ensure our children have safety rules to keep them safe from both people they know and dont know. Check out the safety rules I suggest here.

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Roberto Machado Noa via Getty Images TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA - 2016/07/01: Night view of the Toronto skyline from inside the waters of Lake Ontario. The landmark is a major tourist attraction in Canada. (Photo by Roberto Machado Noa/LightRocket via Getty Images)

From September 8-18, Toronto rolls out the red carpet for some of the biggest names in Hollywood. But, it's not just the promise of international interviews, parties and film premieres that lure the heavy hitters. Toronto International Film Festival gifting lounges pack their own punch offering some of the most extravagant giveaways and luxurious pampering.

This year, big names like Michael Fassbender, Justin Timberlake, Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, Nicole Kidman, Amy Adams and Denzel Washington are expected to pass through these invite-only, exclusive gifting suites. I've rounded up some of the hottest, paparazzi pit-stop worthy, lounges to get the inside scoop on this year's swag.

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Tastemakers Lounge

The Tastemakers Lounge is one of the top TIFF destinations and this year they've got a fabulous lineup of products and services. President Deb Goldblatt-Sadowski and her team at Rock-it Promotions paved the way 12 years ago in terms of gifting suites in Canada so it's no wonder that their lounge is packed with exciting product. This year, talent, media and influencers can slip into a pair of stylish Sorel boots, merino wool Weekender socks by Canada's McGregor socks (available soon at Sears and Hudson's Bay), Davine hair care products from Salon Dew, CND nail polish, tweezerman brow touch-up tools, sweet treats from Krispy Kreme and much more.

Their gift bags are stuffed to the brim with goodies and celebs know it and there's always a charitable component as well. Brad Pitt, Kate Winslet, Liam Hemsworth, Brie Larson and Kristen Stewart are just a few of the big names that hit up Tastemakers Lounge in the past and they're expecting another star-studded turnout.

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The Gold Party by L'Oreal Paris

Another way to acquire the most glamorous goodies is by attending the biggest bashes. With L'Oreal Paris as the official beauty sponsor of the festival, their take-home swag is tantalizing. From Voluminous Feline Mascara and Liner Noir, to mens' skincare products and gold nail polish, attendees receive over $100 worth of beauty swag. They'll also walk away with tickets to TIFF. These types of parties are a great way for companies to get their brand new products into the hands of some of the world's most powerful trendsetters (the gold nail polish hits stores in November, for example)

Bask-It Style

Bask-It Style Lounge is marking it's eighth year at the festival and this year they're tackling all five senses. Their gift bag, put together by Glo Communications, totals between $1400 to $1700 per person with talent taking home a designer Annie Thompson bag (valued at $325), Studio1098 Canadiana jewelry, top fashion items and a gift card for Turo. Haven't heard of Turo? Well, TIFF is the place to garner brand recognition and Turo is a peer-to-peer car rental service. Upon entering the Basket-It Style lounge, guests pretty much walk smack into a sexy Tesla Model 370D (which is available to rent during TIFF) and receive a gift card toward renting their own luxury vehicle.

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Celebrities who have enjoyed this full-service lounge in the past include Matt Damon, Jennifer Garner, Julianne Moore, Naomi Watts, Colin Farrell, John Legend, Sir Elton John and more.

Beauty Boutique by Shoppers Drug Mart

The name of this lounge pretty much sums up the incredible swag: beauty in a boutique setting all from Shoppers Drug Mart. This lounge offers a place for media, editors, bloggers, socialites and talent to get pampered and primped for festival events.

They offer head-to-toe service featuring popular brands such as St. Tropez Tan, Stila, Duo, Ceramic Glaze, Phyto and more. It's a welcomed, chic break from the festival and leaves everyone feel shiny, new and ready to tackle the red carpets. Then, the lucky ones, walk away with hundreds of dollars in product to maintain their regime throughout the festival and beyond.

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Hudson's Bay x Hollywood Reporter

This one gets me really excited - Hollywood Reporter has a suite decked out entirely in The Hudson's Bay bold stripes. Talent then take home a tote, water bottle, iphone cover, umbrella, puffa coat, scarf, socks and more -- all in the striking striped pattern. This lounge gifts well into the thousands per guest.

Producers Ball x IT House

HGTV's Jonathan and Drew Scott have teamed up with PR powerhouse NKPR to put together the coveted "it" gift bag of 2016. This year, talent take home LUG bags packed with candies, socks, candles, Purdy's chocolate, and a BeGlammed gift card, among other swag.

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The IT House is designed to be a fun break from the red carpets and interviews where stars can relax and enjoy a variety of experiences like a Barilla pasta bar, David's Tea and artwork. The dynamic duo of the Scott brothers combined with NKPR is sure to excite party-goers and send everyone home with something exceptional.

Overall, this TIFF promises to be an exciting, product-packed event. The lounges and parties are just part of the hype and companies pay a lot to get their product into the hands of influencers and talent alike. It's a great opportunity for emerging and local companies to stir up some media attention and it helps premier companies maintain their place in the market.

Given the above list (which only grazes the actual total number of suites popping up around the city -- with others like the Stylist Box setting up shop in an antique bank vault), celebrities are going to need some extra luggage, to hold all of their new swag, when leaving Toronto this festival season.

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I'm proud of our PR firms and local shops for putting together such fun destinations for our international visitors. A big thank you from those of us who know just how hard you all work all year.
Minister of Defence Harjit Sajjan, pictured here delivering a speech at the 15th International Institute for Strategic Studies Shangri-la Dialogue on June 5, 2016, wants to commit Canadian troops to an undefined peacekeeping mission. (Photo: Wong Maye-E)

Yesterday at a UN peacekeeping conference held in London, Minister of Defence Harjit Sajjan announced that Canada will commit to a yet undefined peacekeeping mission, probably in central Africa, and in doing so Canada will be a "responsible partner in the world."

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Being such a responsible partner means that 600 troops and somewhere in the neighbourhood of 100 to 150 police officers will be placed in harm's way by the government. $450 million of taxpayer's money will be spent, and it will probably not be until the end of the year that we know the details -- why, where, the mission's duration, what will they do, what victory looks like and the terms of engagement.

What we know for sure from minister Sajjan's announcement and follow-up questions is that this matter will not be brought before Parliament for a vote before the commitment to the UN is finally agreed upon and put into operation. The reason why Parliament is being ignored is because the Liberals claim they received a mandate to do this in the last election.

Steven Chase of the Globe and Mailwrites that Sajjan said "the Liberals campaigned in 2015 on a revived commitment to United Nations peacekeeping and Canadians expect this government to proceed as they promised." Sajjan is quoted as saying "we will be deciding in cabinet and moving forward as quickly as possible."

Government by cabinet decree is back, now in the form of a government which campaigned on the restoration of parliamentary democracy, based on openness, transparency and accountability. To be clear, there is no legal requirement to consult parliament or secure a vote in favour of the mission from the House and the Senate, but over the last decade this was something the Harper government actually did, even when it was a minority government.

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One would have thought that the government would have learned that more democracy is better than less.

Surely there is no more important decision for a prime minister to make than the decision to put Canadian lives in harm's way. Surely one would have thought that this government in making that decision would want to be as open as possible with Canadians and bring this decision to the people's house, the House of Commons.

In the spring, during the debates on Bill C-14, the medically assisted death bill, and in the establishment of the Special Committee on Electoral Reform and the debate over its composition and the right of Greens and the Bloc to a vote in committee, one would have thought that the government would have learned that more democracy is better than less. It was forced to back down on Procedural Motion 6 which effectively moved all parliamentary authority to the government side, neutering the opposition and it gave in, providing the Green Party and the Bloc with full membership on the Electoral Reform Committee.

Parliament is not an irrelevant institution to be ignored by the government and the opposition, and its demands for debate and the right to advance alternatives is not simply an inconvenience to be swept out of the way by cabinet decision.

Yes, the Conservative gang before Trudeau was less than perfect in their respect for Parliament, but on matters of national security, such as the commitment of troops overseas, there was consultation in most instances. And in any event, this is now about the Trudeau government, the past is the past.

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Also it is not as if this peacekeeping mission is without controversy. From the time rumours about it surfaced, there have been questions raised about the government's motives. If this is just about currying favour in UN circles to secure a seat on the Security Council, retired general Lewis MacKenzie has stated publicly that Canada's efforts should be placed elsewhere.

He said, "Canada should focus on increasing support to UN agencies that have been saving and improving lives around the world." When it became clear that the peacekeeping is what the government was going to do, MacKenzie -- who is not without experience in this field -- stated that Canada must play "hardball" with the UN in order to keep Canadians safe. He went on to say that Canadians will be going somewhere dangerous and need to bring the right weapons and the rules of engagement should be developed by Canada.

Sajjan himself has been clear that this mission has no resemblance to the original Pearsonian peacekeeping missions. He said Thursday "this is not peacekeeping of the past. There is no peace to keep in some cases, and where there is peace, it is extremely fragile." He also pointed out that in this "whole of government" approach Canada will be dealing with economic development, which -- in the case of the recruitment of child soldiers -- means preventing their recruitment and presenting them with economic opportunity away from the battlefield.

The question arises as to what else the Liberals campaigned on that they deem can be implanted without seeking the authority of Parliament.

While Sajjan and others went recently to Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and the Congo, betting is that Canada's troops will be deployed to Mali, South Sudan and/or the Democratic Republic of Congo. There will also be a small group sent to Niger in the fall to engage in training local troops.

So it is for all of these reasons that this mission is unique and definitely deserves to be debated in Parliament. It is very slippery slope to say as Sajjan did Thursday that because the Liberals campaigned on re-engaging in peacekeeping that the actual fulfillment of that promise, as vague as it was, does not need to be brought before Parliament. The question arises as to what else the Liberals campaigned on that they deem can be implanted without seeking the authority of Parliament.

Hopefully the Liberals, as they did with the medically assisted death bill and with the committee on electoral reform, will listen to their critics and change direction to bring this mission and NATO's in Latvia to Parliament for a full debate and a vote. It is the right thing to do. And they may want the cover of parliamentary approval when, as may very well happen, in this dangerous part of the world, our soldiers start to return in body bags.

In any event, this peacekeeping mission and the lack of parliamentary authority probably just made its way close to the top of matters to be dealt with in question period on September 19.

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As top marine predators, the population status and physical condition of Southern Resident killer whales is emblematic of the overall health of the Salish Sea. As citizens of the Salish Sea, we know these whales represent much more. This irreplaceable killer whale population has significant and widely recognized social, cultural, and ecological values.

It has been 14 years since Southern Resident killer whales were listed as endangered under Canada's Species at Risk Act. Today, less than 85 of these whales remain. Despite their legal obligation to act, the federal government has failed to take measures to further recovery of the Southern Residents. As one of Canada's most endangered group of animals, actions for their survival cannot wait any longer.

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A Population Viability Analysis (PVA) is a tool used by scientists to understand and rank threats to endangered species. It also provides direction on the most effective conservation actions to reverse their endangered status. Raincoast Conservation Foundation's PVA, conducted by leading scientists studying killer whales, acoustics and endangered populations, shows that Southern Resident killer whales require more Chinook salmon (their primary food source), and less noise and disturbance from vessels.

The Raincoast PVA assessed the viability of the southern residents in light of their cumulative disturbances and threats, including increased ocean noise resulting from additional vessel traffic and oil spills. It also examined the role of Chinook salmon abundance and contaminants. The Southern Resident population has experienced almost no population growth over the past four decades, and has declined in the last two decades. Our analysis shows that increased traffic and noise conditions will intensify existing threats, accelerating their rate of decline and possibly leading to complete extinction. Conversely, reducing existing vessel noise and increasing Chinook availability increases their likelihood of long-term survival.

"Low abundance of Chinook (Spring) salmon corresponds to killer whales not getting enough to eat, their survival and birth rates dropping, and mortality increasing. More Chinook for killer whales will require closures of commercial and recreational Chinook fisheries, and allowing these depleted salmon runs to rebuild," states Misty MacDuffee, a Raincoast biologist and director of the foundation's Wild Salmon Program.

In addition to their diminishing food supply, vessel noise and disturbance make it difficult for killer whales to successfully hunt, feed and communicate. Southern Resident killer whales produce and listen to sounds in order to establish and maintain critical life functions: to navigate, find and select mates, maintain their social network, and locate and capture prey (especially Chinook salmon). The existing level of noise has already degraded critical habitat and studies suggest it has reduced the feeding efficiency of these whales.

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Until a Cumulative Effects Assessment is undertaken, no expansions in Salish Sea shipping should be approved or considered. Southern Resident killer whales are within 400 metres of a vessel most of the time during daylight hours from May to September. Reducing boat disturbance requires regulations that increase the approach distance from 100 meters to 200 meters, matching US regulations. Other disturbance initiatives, like limiting boat numbers, and/or constraining the viewing times and/or the days when boats follow whales, must also be considered. Such regulations also require enforcement.

Raincoast's senior scientist Dr. Paul Paquet states, "This unique population of killer whales has continued to struggle while recovery actions have been delayed. In addition to addressing prey shortages and vessel disturbance, there is a clear need for longer-term action on marine pollutants, commitments to marine protected areas, amendments to marine mammal regulations, identification of Salish Sea killer whale sanctuaries, and reduction of ship noise."

From commercial and recreational fisheries closures on Chinook salmon to whale watching regulations and enforcement, Raincoast scientists are calling for meaningful recovery actions for Southern Resident killer whales as they can only survive with strong protection measures and immediate action.

A version of this article previously ran in Seaside Magazine.
As a volunteer, I've had the opportunity to visit the most remote places of my country. In Mexico, extraordinary wealth and heart-breaking poverty exist side by side. It is a land of harsh contradictions -- skyscrapers and wood houses, modern-day Internet and illiteracy.

Years ago, when I used to think about this, I always asked myself; with all our diverse natural resources and hard-working labor force, why are we in this situation?

The answer: Innovation.

According to the Geneva-based United Nations World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), in 2015 all Latin American countries filed 1,216 patent applications, meanwhile Israel filed 1,698. This comparison left me speechless. How is it possible that a country so small is patenting so much more than all the Latin American countries together?

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I like to think that the answer is the fact that our global economy is no longer fundamentally based on natural resources, but on knowledge. It is not a coincidence that countries with more economic growth, like South Korea, are the ones producing and patenting more scientific and technological innovations. Creative and well-educated minds are now worth more than thousands of primary resources.

So technically, in order for innovation and economic growth to happen, we have to educate our students and workers, giving them the best opportunities to imagine, transform, and create. But how is this going to be possible if half of the population is often not considered, or does not have the same rights and opportunities?

Yes, that half I am referring to are women.

As the Mexican delegate at the 2016 G(irls)20 Summit, I believe the most important barriers women face when it comes to innovation and entrepreneurship are:

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1. Education for Innovation: Breaking the standards in Science and Engineering.

According to the Regional Office for Science in Latin America and the Caribbean of the UNESCO, the number of women in this region studying careers related to sciences and engineering has reduced from 25 per cent in 1994 to 15 per cent in 2012. This clearly shows that Latin American women are underrepresented in these areas. The cultural and institutional barriers need to be urgently attended to and resolved.

G20 Leaders could encourage women's participation in science and technology through the creation of more public policies that can help to retain and recruit women in these areas of industry. Also, providing micro-credits and financial incentives for women that want to start a business, or to conduct a study related to technology.

2. Creating a women's innovation culture:

Break those cultural barriers that are still very popular, like defining women only as "Housewives". These stereotypes only prove that women are still not accepted or trusted as innovators or entrepreneurs.

We have to slowly introduce factors that allow us to live in a culture that encourages us to be creative and enthusiastic, where our ideas can be nurtured and transformed into great inventions, which can glorify female entrepreneurs the same as men.

3. Finance and Investment Capital:

Accessing appropriate financing is one of the biggest challenges that female entrepreneurs face. We need to explore new models of impact investing focused on women's businesses such as assessment and specific segmented funding tracks for supporting businesses in the micro enterprise category.

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If we are able to boost innovation and entrepreneurship among women, we will have a better shot at closing the employment participation and wage gap between women and men, which could ultimately increase their income globally by up to 76 percent.

By Clarissa de la Vega Chavoya, delegate representing Mexico at the 2016 G(irls)20 Summit in Beijing, China.
Sean Gallup via Getty Images BERLIN, GERMANY - AUGUST 13: An activists smokes a marijuana joint prior to marching in the annual Hemp Parade (Hanfparade) on August 13, 2016 in Berlin, Germany. German proponents of cannabis legalization are hoping that the legalization in several states in the USA in recent years will increase the likelihood of legalization in Germany. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

The CBC recently reported that Matthew Harvey, a British Columbia resident, was permanently banned from the United States because he admitted to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection (USCBP) officer in 2014 that he had previously smoked marijuana. Although Mr. Harvey currently holds a medical marijuana license in British Columbia, he admitted to recreational marijuana use before the receipt of his license.

It is true that travellers may be banned from the United States if they admit to the commission of a crime, even if they have never been charged with or convicted of any offence. This is not limited only to controlled substance offences, either. But why does this occur and what can be done if it happens to you?

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The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) contains numerous grounds of inadmissibility that relate to criminal conduct; several of these grounds apply even where no conviction exists. One such ground is INA 212(a)(2)(A)(i)(II), which addresses controlled substance offences (not including trafficking offences, which are covered by a different section).

INA 212(a)(2)(A)(i)(II) states that any foreign national who is convicted of, or who admits to having committed, a violation of any law or regulation of a State, the United States or a foreign country relating to a controlled substance will be considered inadmissible to the United States. In other words, making an admission to a USCBP officer that you previously violated controlled substance laws in Canada can result in a permanent bar.

Of course, for this ground of inadmissibility to apply, the foreign national must admit to violating a controlled substance law. If Mr. Harvey had only admitted to smoking marijuana in accordance with his medical marijuana license, he would never have been barred. It was his admission of prior illegal marijuana use that sealed his fate.

In my view, such broadly worded questions are inappropriate, but USCBP officers have been known to ask them.

In general, the admission must also be made before an immigration officer. So when Justin Trudeau publicly admitted to marijuana use, this did not automatically make him inadmissible because the admission was not made before an immigration officer. However, since his marijuana use is now public record, Justin Trudeau could be questioned by USCBP during a future visit to the United States. At that point, it would be difficult for him to deny that he smoked marijuana in violation of Canadian laws. That said, it is unlikely that USCBP would raise this issue while Justin Trudeau is prime minister of Canada.

Earlier this year, the Government of Canada announced that it would introduce legislation to legalize marijuana in 2017. However, this problem will not simply disappear once marijuana becomes legal. Although smoking marijuana after it became legal would not result in inadmissibility to the United States, admitting to illegal marijuana use prior to its legalization would still result in a permanent bar.

Although broadly worded questions such as "Have you ever smoked marijuana?" are not typically asked during an inspection unless the USCBP office has reason to believe that the traveller has committed such an offence, overzealous officers have occasionally asked random questions without any preconceived notion of what the answer might reveal. In my view, such broadly worded questions are inappropriate, but USCBP officers have been known to ask them.

Falsely denying the facts is not the best solution.

Mr. Harvey believes that he should have denied that he ever smoked marijuana in violation of Canada's laws. However, this would be considered a material misrepresentation under INA 212(a)(6)(C)(i), which also results in a permanent bar to the United States. So falsely denying the facts is not the best solution.

If you are ever asked such a broadly worded question, the best course of action is to tell the USCBP officer that such a random and broadly worded question is inappropriate and that you are not going to answer it. Of course, this response will also have serious repercussions.

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If you are a land port of entry, you can expect to be detained for an extended period and interrogated. You can also expect to be denied entry and sent back to Canada based on some other default ground, such as being an intending immigrant, but at least this will not result in a permanent bar.

If you are at a pre-clearance facility located in a Canadian Airport, the USCBP officers do not have the power to detain you unless you have committed an actual crime (for example, you are found to be in possession of a controlled substance during your inspection). If this is not the case, you may simply tell them that you no longer wish to travel to the United States and that you are leaving.

In either case, you can expect to encounter problems travelling to the United States in the future. Although you will still not be permanently barred from the United States, USCBP will not be inclined to grant you admission due to your prior lack of cooperation. However, this is still preferable to dealing with a permanent bar.

If you ultimately end up making a harmful admission to an immigration officer, there are some options available to you:

First consider whether the admission really does result in a permanent bar. According to the Board of Immigration of Appeals, an adequate definition of the crime, including all essential elements, must first be given to the foreign national. USCBP officers rarely comply with this requirement. However, arguing this point will likely require a formal opinion from the Admissibility Review Office or a ruling from an Immigration Judge.

If you really are subject to a permanent bar, your only alternative may be to seek a non-immigrant waiver of inadmissibility. These waivers are temporary so you will need to renew them every few years. This is certainly an inconvenience but it will allow you to travel to the United States in the future.

Remember to retain only reputable U.S.-licensed lawyers for U.S. immigration cases, since USCBP does not recognize Canadian lawyers, paralegals or immigration consultants as legal representatives.

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Dr. Brian Day's legal fight seeks to overturn the province's ban on private health care insurance. (Photo: Canadian Press)

A long-awaited trial got underway on Tuesday before the Supreme Court of British Columbia, pitting Dr. Brian Day against the province's Health Ministry. Dr. Day, former head of the Canadian Medical Association, has filed a lawsuit against the government of British Columbia on behalf of six patients who contend that their health had suffered due to long wait times.

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Sadly, two of the plaintiffs have died from cancer during the delay. One of the four remaining, Walid Khalfallah, a teenager with a particularly severe form of scoliosis, is now paraplegic, having been unable to obtain the surgery he needed in a timely manner. The plaintiffs are asking for the right to obtain access to care in private clinics if the public system can't provide timely care.

It is truly sad to see that we have to go to court to make these necessary changes. It shows the lack of courage and vision of many politicians, as if we needed more proof.

This court case is reminiscent of the 2005 Supreme Court of Canada decision in Chaoulli v. Quebec. In that case, the court ruled in favour of Dr. Jacques Chaoulli, who claimed that the province's ban on private health insurance violated Quebec's Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms.

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Dr. Brian Day, Medical Director of the Cambie Surgery Centre, sits for a photograph at his office in Vancouver on Aug. 31, 2016. (Photo: Darryl Dyck)

This ruling hinted at major changes in the field of health care in Quebec, raising the hopes of many patients. Yet very little has changed. The government remains incapable of offering access to care in a timely manner, all while maintaining a strict monopoly over the provision of medical treatments.

The law was indeed modified in order to allow Quebecers to purchase duplicate private insurance, at least in principle, but only for a limited number of medical and surgical treatments such as hip and knee replacements and cataract removals. As a result, no actual market for this kind of insurance has developed, since the number of admissible surgeries remained too restricted to be of interest to individuals and employers. The Chaoulli decision was clearly a missed opportunity.

This upcoming trial in British Columbia offers new hope. And it is an opportunity to reiterate that reforms are needed in order to improve access to health care in this country.

Canadians have accepted the unacceptable for too long.

Among the solutions put forward by the MEI over the years are:

Develop a market for private insurance, as exists in most industrialized countries.

Promote a mixed system in which doctors could practice both in the public sector and in the private sector.

Finance hospitals based on services rendered rather than with a global budget.

In a way, Medicare has been on trial for decades because of its inability to deliver health-care services in good time. In Quebec, nearly one in five patients still waits over six months for a hip or knee operation, and wait times for elective surgery have not improved significantly since 2008. In British Columbia, the situation is even more problematic, with the longest wait times in the country.

Private options could only make the public system stronger and better. Indeed, international experience confirms that the presence of a mixed health-care system is not incompatible with health-care services that are accessible to all, not just the wealthiest but the poorest as well. Those who are covered by private insurance policies continue to contribute to the financing of the public system through their income taxes. Access to care for all patients is thus improved.

Should we be afraid that the universal health care system will collapse if the plaintiffs in B.C. should win their case before the courts? Absolutely not. On the contrary, the coexistence of public and private health-care systems allows for more flexibility and diversity of services, to the benefit of all, as a great number of European countries have shown.

Canadians have accepted the unacceptable for too long. Provincial governments remain incapable of providing access to care within a reasonable timeframe, yet continue to maintain their monopoly over the provision of medical care. There's no justification for maintaining a strict government monopoly on the delivery of medical care, and it's time for policy makers to make the changes required for Canada to have a universal and efficient health-care system.

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Recently, a top cleric in Saudi Arabia branded Iranians as non-Muslims, referring to them as "sons of the Magi." Such takfir (excommunication) is neither a unique feature of the Saudi clerics nor is it restricted towards Shia Muslims. Throughout Muslim history, scholars have held similar opinions.

In a video, the leading Imam offered the following prayer in Mecca:

"O Allah, grant victory, dignity and empowerment to our brothers mujahideen (Jihadists) ... O Lords of the Worlds grant them victory over the godless Rafidah (Shia Muslims). Grant them victory over the treacherous Jews, and over the spiteful Christians, and over the untrusted hypocrites"

Ahmadis have been officially termed as non-Muslim and face immense persecution in Pakistan. Ismailis and Bohras are viewed no differently. Such minority Muslim denominations often experience social discrimination even in the West. For instance, recently in Birmingham, Ahmadis were blocked from representation on an interfaith council as Muslims.

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Progressive Muslims do not fare any better. Conservative scholars with immense popularity and following in the West have threatened them with charges of kufr (apostasy). This was made clear to Muslim feminists when they challenged rape jokes of a popular Islamic teacher in 2014. Grossly oversimplifying the position of Muslim reformers, one conservative scholar clearly branded their hermeneutic as "a manifestation of kufr."

Likewise, LGBT Muslims are told that while "practicing homosexuality" is a major sin, justifying and defending LGBT rights through articles is kufr. The taboo is so strong that both Sunnis and Shias have branded each other with charges of homosexuality.

Excommunicating people for holding different beliefs is not new to Islam. Some scholars in the past have been guilty of such spiritual abuse on petty issues. Professor Kecia Ali notes the opinion of Haskafi, a 17th century jurist, in her book Sexual Ethics and Islam, as follows:

"If a man has four free [wives] and a thousand concubines and wants to buy another [concubine] and [another] man reproaches him for that, it will be as if [the latter] had committed unbelief."

Fortunately, in his book Freedom of Expression in Islam, Dr. Hashim Kamali alluded to the 19th century jurist Ibn Abidin, who asserted that those who made charges of disbelief were mainly writers of a lesser caliber. Ironically, Ibn Abidin made such charges on Shia Muslims.

In contemporary times, some Muslim scholars have tried to limit such abuse by bridging the gap between Sunni and Shia Muslims. However, in doing so they end up erecting barriers against Jews and Christians. For instance, the late Pakistani scholar Muhammad Ishaq stated that if Sunni and Shias forge unity, Jews and Christians would be crushed.

Such parochialism is also manifest in the salvific exclusivism espoused by some young conservative Muslim leaders in the West.

It is therefore imperative that Muslims in the West adopt various strategies to salvage their faith from the clutches of hateful exclusivists. They can emphasize Qur'anic verse 4:94 that teaches not to call someone an unbeliever who offers a greeting of peace. Likewise, they can emphasize the Prophet's warning against calling someone an unbeliever who recites the Muslim testimonial of faith.

Actions speak louder than words. This means that Muslims will have to include Shias, Ismailis, Bohras, Ahmadis, progressives, LGBT Muslims, their intersections and other denominations in their religious spaces.

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Likewise, Muslim student bodies can ensure that Islam Awareness Weeks include a diverse array of Muslim speakers. Earlier this year, commenting on one Muslim student group, a Shia student mentioned:

"Where is the Shia, Ahmadi, Ismaili representation etc. It's more of a Sunni students association. So I guess the point is that they are not even inclusive when it comes to other sects. That just gives a hint about their attitudes towards LGBT inclusiveness. They have double standards when it comes to acceptance of minorities. The least they could do is show tolerance by not inviting hateful speakers."

The main targets of extremists are fellow Muslims. This makes it even more pressing for Muslims in the West to put an end to exclusivism and excommunication. One way to do this is to embrace people on the basis of human dignity. This includes Jews, Christians, Hindus, atheists, minority Muslims and above all, ex-Muslims.
Vahram Baghdasaryan admits that many in Armenia agreed with Sasna Dzrer group (video)

Vahram Baghdasaryan, head of the parliamentary faction of the Republican Party of Armenia (HHK), would not say that he saw the need for the resignation of Prime Minister [Hovik Abrahamyan]. I see a need for changes and will to implement programmes more intensively and quickly, he said. The HHK lawmaker thinks that Karen Karapetyan will remain in the post after the elections, as well. He believes that the opposition will not be able to remove the Republicans from power through the elections because they [opposition forces] are too busy with one another. This type of opposition cannot think of forming a majority or achieving their goals by swearing one another, Vahram Baghdasaryan said. Anyway, Mr. Baghdasaryan admits that many people agreed with the Sasna Dzrer group members that the Republicans should be overthrown by all means, even by force. But, I also took into consideration to the assessment of political forces, especially those who have a significant role in politics and a critical approach, he added. Sasna Dzrer group does not have anything to do with the changes in government. Negative phenomena of this type simply contribute to the polarization of society, the lawmaker stressed. Vahram Baghdasaryan is not concerned by the fact that the new prime minister [Karen Karapetyan] has not lived in Armenia in the last five years. He is a citizen of Armenia, he has an Armenian passport and he has not been absent from the country for a long time.
Daryl Benson via Getty Images Cirrus clouds in sky

As we sat down to our last meal in St. John's, Newfoundland, after a busy week of activities and exploring in the city as well as around the Avalon Peninsula, I asked my 17 year old daughter if she would recommend Newfoundland as a family vacation spot for her friends.

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"Only my adventurous ones", she said.

Newfoundland is unlike any other province in Canada. With 29,000 kilometers of coastline (including Labrador), boasting the most eastern part of North America at Cape Spear, the topography is constantly changing, and with it the adventures and activities you can do. "Newfoundland is one province, but two lands", said our tour guide Larry. The population in Newfoundland and Labrador is sparse; only 150,000 in St. John's (the capital city), with a total population of less than 500, 000 in Newfoundland, and only 28,000 in Labrador.

First things first; there seems to be some confusion on how to pronounce Newfoundland. Residents tell us to remember it like this "Understand Newfoundland," making the two words rhyme.

Traveling with teenagers can be a challenge, but I knew when I started researching for our trip that we would be able to find a mix of physical activity, exploration, and (when they weren't looking), learning as well.

We started our stay in downtown St. John's, which is home to many restaurants, pubs, and shops. It is also adjacent to the area of St John's which is often featured on postcards and travel brochures; the Jelly Bean Row houses. These row houses are brightly coloured and line the surprisingly hilly streets just north of the main strip of downtown St. John's.

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According to Larry, the tradition came from using the leftover paint from the fishermen's' dorys (fishing boats). Today, you are allowed to pick the colour, but the city has approval to make sure there aren't two houses of similar colour in a row. And colourful describes most of the people we met, their storytelling and friendliness matched only by the pride they have in their home province. After all, you often hear people refer to themselves as Newfoundlanders, but when's the last time you heard someone say they were an Ontarian?

"How can you tell a Newfie in heaven?"

"He's the only one who's saying he wants to go home."

So, coming "from away" as we did, our week long itinerary in Newfoundland had plenty to offer. Here's a breakdown of what you can pack in to that timeframe. And as our sea kayaking guide Stan Cook reminded us, "If you don't like Newfoundland and Labrador, that's your problem."

What to do:

McCarthy's Party: Day tours in and around the St. John's area. We took a City Tour which included Cape Spear, Signal Hill, Quidi Vidi, Petty Cove, and a quick spin down the main street of St John's. Guide Larry was fantastic.

The Rooms: St. John's Art Gallery and Museum all in one. Great moving exhibits plus permanent displays; good for kids of all ages and adults too. Restaurant as well.

Stan Cook Sea Kayaking: We took the two hour guided tour which included a ride back. Kayak in caves, see sea creatures 80 feet down in crystal clear water. Great stories from our hosts.

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North Atlantic Ziplines: Canada's longest zipline course; 10 lines with longest being 2,200 feet. Great tandem rides out of Petty Cove; views unbelievable.

Gatherall's Whale Watching: A humpback whale waved a fin and breeched right in front of us. 90 minute tour; Gravol recommended.

Salmonier Nature Park: 3km boardwalk trail through woods and wetlands. We spotted moose, caribou, owl and more.

Mistaken Point: UNESCO World Heritage site as of July 2016. 565 million year old deep-sea floors now rock and preserving fossils of oldest complex life-forms. Need to book tour in advance.

Cape St Mary's: Cliffs are huge and the most accessible seabird colony in North America awaits. Easy trail to watch nesting colony of gannets and seabirds.

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Wooden Boat Museum: Boat builder Jerome Canning offers workshops and advice on building a dory. Great exhibits and history to discover.

Where to stay:

Sheraton: Located right downtown St. John's, with indoor pool, gym, bar, and easy access to Water Street for other restaurants and shopping.

Hometel: (St. John's) Half hotel; half home. We had two rooms in our own "townhouse" and shared breakfast (included) with other residents. Great for families, close access to downtown and Terry Fox Memorial.

Edge Of The Avalon Inn (Trepassy): Host Carol Ann Devereaux runs the inn, and it seems like the county. Newly renovated rooms, great restaurant and Earhart's Pub a great spot to catch up with Carol Ann and other locals.

Where to eat: Moose were introduced to Newfoundland as a form of food in 1904, when six of them were transported over from New Brunswick. Today, there are 125,000 of them in Newfoundland. My husband and son did their part in controlling the herd by munching down on a moose burger, one of the many excellent meals we had. And you can never go wrong with Newfoundland fish & chips.

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St. John's:

Yellow Belly Brewery: An on-site brewery and menu mixed with traditional Newfoundland fare as well as some specialty meals.

Tavola: Tapas style eating topped off with their excellent chocolate platter.

Mustang Sallys: A great lunch spot for pizza, tortillas, nachos and wraps, all made fresh with ingredients you choose.

Duke of Duckworth: Typical Newfoundland pub with some of the city's best fish and chips.

Mallard Cottage: The weekend brunch is not to be missed in this quaint cottage in the fishing village of

Quidi Vidi, five minutes from downtown St. John's. Order the chef's breakfast plate and let him decide.

Carbonear:

The Stone Jug: Newly opened gastro pub with fresh ingredients, a tin ceiling and three floors of dining space.

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Listen to Kathy talk travel on What She Said Radio, Saturday nights on Jewel FM.

Watch Kathy talk travel on CHCH Morning Live, with her Get Set, Go! travel segment, last Thursday of every month.
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It's back to school time. Imagine for a moment that you are working in the front office of a small, private school. Someone you have never seen before comes in demanding to see the library. The phone is ringing. A student is sneaking by you to get to class on time. You try your best to answer his questions. He is a stranger and not allowed on the premises. You are nervous. You ask him to leave.

This scenario is akin to the investigation underlying the recently published report, "The Lovers of Death"?: Islamist Extremism in our Mosques, Schools and Libraries. It is authored by Saied Shoaaib, a writer originally from Egypt, and Thomas Quiggin, a former Canadian security analyst. Alarming claims are made in the report: "It is not the presence of extremist literature in the mosque libraries that is worrisome. The problem is that there was nothing but extremist literature in the mosque libraries."

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The real problem, however, is the report itself. It makes gross generalizations that at times border on the absurd, cataloguing every real, imagined or exaggerated piece of news about Muslim communities across Canada.

These are incredibly sweeping claims after having looked at a handful of books in a few libraries.

Let me give you an example. The report recounts that, after successfully gaining access to one Islamic school library in Ottawa and browsing through some -- but not all -- of the books, the authors conclude that "the content and methods of some Islamic teaching here in Canada, the West and in much of the Islamic world is incompatible with modern human civilization." These are incredibly sweeping claims after having looked at a handful of books in a few libraries.

You'll also note that the authors are not referring only to the books, but how they are taught. Did the authors observe how these books are used in the classroom? Spend some time in these communities? Learn about pedagogical directions? It does not appear so.

I have dedicated the last four years to conducting research in a private Islamic school in Ottawa. I have spent hundreds of hours in the school and classroom, and talking one-on-one with students, teachers and administrators. In short, I have had unfettered access to the Islamic school community and been welcomed as a researcher. My take on Muslim schools is somewhat different from Shoaaib and Quiggin's.

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Accredited private Islamic schools in Ontario, like the one I am situated in, are overseen by the Ministry of Education. The ministry conducts regular inspections of the school and ensures that they are teaching the Ontario curriculum. Thus, claims by the authors that "The level of supervision and oversight by the Ministry of Education is not clear..." or "We cannot know the curriculum" are simply false.

But oversight by the ministry is not really what the authors are concerned about. The issue, it seems to me, is a fear over what is being taught in their Qur'an and Islamic Studies classes.

My own observations indicate that a wide array of lessons are given that are drawn from the Qur'an, Hadith and other texts. I have not witnessed teachers advocating violence. What I do see is a critical engagement with the meaning of Islamic texts on many of the issues that young Muslims encounter in Canada: Can they listen to rap music? Is "friending" someone on Facebook considered dating Sometimes, Muslim students have to confront issues that other teenagers in Canada do not: How to respond when spat at in the street. How to reply when asked "where are you really from?"

The Muslim school that I know focuses on shaping young Muslims to be contributing members of the Canadian society to which they belong. As the principal said at last week's opening session for new parents and students, the first goal of the school is to shape citizens that engender constructive civic engagement.

Of course, the school also aims to ground students in their Islamic identity and community. After all, we are all more likely to make a positive contribution to the society around us if we are firmly grounded in who we are.

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No one can predict how any student will react to the educational, social and religious messages they are exposed to. Muslim students are no different. Ensuring they feel they belong in Canada, and can reflect critically on the Islamic texts that are central to their identity, is a really good way to start.

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The five things you need to know on Friday, September 9, 2016

1) GENERAL SELECTION TIME

The personality split that is Bold Theresa/Cautious Theresa will be on display today as the PM flaunts her more radical side with a grammar school revolution. We hacks often overdo that word revolution but in this case Mays education reforms genuinely merit the tag. Her proposals look like being more extensive and more controversial than anything Michael Gove could have dared dream up in a PolicyExchange wonkathon.

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The idea of allowing ALL state schools - comps, academies, Free Schools - to introduce an element of selection by ability is truly radical. Of course there are very significant conditions attached, and such new grammars would have to take quotas of poorer kids, sponsor feeder primaries or create a 'high quality' new non-selective school. Some of those conditions are tough, some look like easier figleaves.

By promising concrete help for the poorest, Mays plans could get more support than some are predicting. What happens to those rejected by the ability tests is very much central to all this, but Labour needs to change its attack lines to reflect the new nature of this mixed economy proposal.

Yet the plans could also prove very unpopular for the big chunk of parents of middle-of-the-road pupils - those who are neither supersmart enough to pass the 11+, nor poor enough to get a quota place. And if May disrupts current grammars (or private schools too according to some leaks), you could see a Tory revolt bigger than the disquiet in the 1950s, when middle class kids were losing out to brighter working class ones.

Senior Tories Neil Carmichael, the chairman of the education select committee, and Sir Des Swayne, Camerons former PPS and the least politically correct MP you can meet, made plain their unease in the Commons yesterday. And May has a working majority of just 17. Other Tories may actually scream 'political correctness gone mad', if it looks like standards are lowered in any way to give places not on ability but on how poor a child's parents are.

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Angela Rayner made an impressive Urgent Question debut yesterday, pointing out May had long said 'her policy would be led by the evidence'. Justine Greening struggled on Today to answer where the evidence came from (whereas Ofsted's Michael Wilshaw was scathing). Maybe Mays plans are so radical and so new (no country has this model) that there is in fact little evidence either way of how it would affect standards or social mobility.

Universities will also be affected: they may not be allowed to hike tuition fees unless they sponsor a new or existing state school. The radicalism extends to faith schools too: May wants to let them increase faith selection from 50% at present to 100%. Sarah Wollaston tweeted her opposition last night.

Heres a final thought. One reason Mays plans may meet less opposition is that any education policy story tends to excite just a narrow bit of the population. Education stories are afflicted by the serial myopia of parents and voters: youre very, very interested in policy affecting newborns/toddlers/Year6/GCSEs/sixth formers/students for that short window of time that it directly affects you. But everyone else normally kinda goes meh. Or will this be so comprehensive a package that it just cant be ignored?

2) HI! NET-WORTH INDIVIDUALS

Philip Hammond wont be appearing in any hi-vis jackets so beloved of George Osborne, I was told this week. But he does share his predecessors Remainer concern about protecting the UKs financial services from the risks of Brexit.

And yesterday he told a Lords committee that defending the City meant exempting some bankers from migration controls. We will use it [control over free movement] in a sensible way that will facilitate the movement of highly-skilled people between financial institutions and businesses to support investment in the UK economy.

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His support for high net-worth individuals, or wealth creators stands in stark contrast to the Suns front page today. It has a striking photo of the UKs youngest EU migrant - a 20-day old girl born in the The Jungle camp near Calais, smuggled in a lorry and rescued at Watford Gap.

Someone in Europe has a keen sense of humour. Arch federalist Guy Verhofstadt tweeted that he will be the European Parliament's negotiator in Brexit talks with the UK. The glee in his tweet was palpable.

Meanwhile, Hammond warned EU businesses didnt want to undermine the City as it served them well. But Francois Hollande thinks differently. Oh, and Hollande accused David Cameron of running away" for resigning after the referendum, suggesting that he had "failed to deal with the consequences". Ouch.

3) ME, MY SELFIE, AYE

Jeremy Corbyn and Owen Smith faced each other for yet another hustings on the BBC last night and Im not sure we learned much that was new on policy. What it did do was confirm the increasing bad blood between them.

We last night had sight of new data from the Corbyn camp - which claimed that even in Smiths backyard, the Corbyn vote is solid: Jez has 64% of Pontypridd CLP member vote to Smiths 29%. The Smith camp pointed to methodological flaws and still insist their own phone banking shows the race is on a knife edge.

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Well the divisions are certainly still as sharp as a razor's edge. Smith doubled down on Corbyns links to anti-semites last night. But at the end of the show, Corbyns camp seized on the way the Oldham audience mobbed their man for selfies, with his opponent left looking a bit BillyNoMates.

One Corbyn backer, Len McCluskey, is facing fresh scrutiny after the Guardian revealed details of Unite funds being used to fund his London flat. The union says its all very normal and members cash will be returned with healthy profits once its sold. It adds its about equity not a loan. Shame, as I really liked Len Me Your Arrears as a possible headline..

BECAUSE YOUVE READ THIS FAR

Forget IDSs throat frog, watch the Hillary Clinton Phlemghazi coughing fit thats got America talking (and prompted her first press conference in ages).

4) PRIVATE EYE COVER

The row over Saudi/Yemen arms sales has taken a new twist after last nights Newsnight. The BBC prog has been leading the way in breaking stories on various drafts of the Committee on Arms Export Controls (CAEC) report into the affair - much to the irritation of some of its members.

Foreign Affairs Select chairman Crispin Blunt (who sits on the joint committee) stands accused of trying to water down elements of the draft that are more critical of the Saudis and the FCO. The latest charge is that he was so worried about losing the argument that he walked out of a CAEC meeting so it would be inquorate and couldnt pass radical amendments.

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"Did you walk out of the committee, Crispin Blunt?" Kirsty Wark asked him several times. Each time, Blunt ducked the question. It was all very Paxo (ah, Did-you-threaten-to-overrule-him?)

But whats got some MPs really worried is the leaking of the drafts - and Blunts call on the Speaker yesterday to ask Parliaments privileges committee to use private investigators to probe the leaks.

Blunt wanted private investigators who have the capacity to interrogate the electronic records, including deleted emails of potential sources of this confidential and private consideration of select committees, in this instance of the greatest seriousness involving life and death issues and the employment of tens of thousands of our fellow citizens. DD wont like that - will he?

5) EXES FACTOR

IPSAs reports on MPs expenses arent as newsworthy as they used to be, not least as the watchdogs datasets makes it very difficult to work out any league table of whos claimed the most/least.

But PoliticsHome has spotted one new development: MPs spent three quarters of a million pounds in taxpayer cash on business and club class air travel last year - a ten-fold increase on the previous 12 months. A whopping 735,914 was claimed on plush high class travel in 2015/16, compared to just 71,637 the year before. MPs are scared of first class train travel, but clearly dont like sitting in economy on planes.

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The Mail and others prefer to hone in on micro-claims. Jeremy Hunt made an expenses claim for just 24p for travel. The Education Secretary, who is thought to be worth more than 5 million, made mileage claims for 'constituency travel' totalling 0.52 miles, 0.8 miles and two lots of 0.87 miles in April.

COMMONS PEOPLE

Our Commons People podcast is back folks. Listen to us HERE chew the fat over Brexit, UB40, PMQs, grammars and housing.

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Four Labour MPs walk into a room. Five policies on Brexit emerge.

It's an old joke, but that's how it seems looking at the official opposition right now.

Jeremy Corbyn doesn't want the UK to remain a member of the Single Market, but John McDonnell does.

Chuka Umunna is part of a group determined to hold Brexit campaigners to account for their referendum promises, but it's not clear if they actually agree with those policies, or whether they are just acting out of sheer bloody mindedness.

Owen Smith wants a second referendum, while David Lammy believes Parliament should veto Brexit and stop the madness.

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As in 1975, the party most divided by a referendum on Europe is Labour, not the Tories.

So where should Labour go from here?

Analysis of the referendum results by Chris Hanretty of the University of East Anglia suggests that 70% of Labour-held constituencies either probably or definitely voted Leave. Seeing as Labour's official position in the referendum was for Remain, this shows a huge disconnect with the views of the people the party claims to represent.

On that basis, Owen Smith's call for a second referendum seems particularly strange. More than one Labour MP has told me they believe it to be a strategic error, as instead of appealing to the '48%' of Remainers, it comes across as telling the '52%' it got the wrong answer.

In the same vein, some Labour MPs are hoping David Lammy will stop calling for Parliament to vote down Brexit. The vote has happened, and no one likes bad losers.

So with the second referendum/blocking Brexit proposals proving unpopular with MPs, what about the other options?

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Chuka Ummuna is chairman of Vote Leave Watch (VLW), an organisation which is planning to scrutinise the claims made by Vote Leave in the run up to referendum as it tried to persuade Brits to back Brexit. But what exactly does it want? Is it calling for all of Vote Leave's policies to be adopted by the Government, even though those involved with VLW campaigned strongly against them in the referendum?

Or does it want merely to flag up which policies aren't being implemented - which presumably it would be pleased about anyway.

Tonight's BBC Question Time laid the tensions in the Labour movement bare, with one audience member winning a round of applause for echoing Theresa May's line that "Brexit means Brexit". On stage, Owen Smith tried to argue that no one knows what the mean - but he could well be missing the point. Instead of trying to guess what May and the Tories mean by Brexit, he should be trying to deduce what Labour voters think Brexit is.

If only there was someone he could ask.

There is, of course. Quite a few people actually, but the two that seem most obvious are Gisela Stuart and Kate Hoey. Both played prominent roles in the EU referendum, with Stuart one of the frontpeople of the official Vote Leave campaigns.

Why haven't these two Labour MPs - who clearly have the pulse of millions of voters - being called into the tent to get their views on how Labour misjudged its supporters? Why aren't they being asked about the kind of immigration system Labour voters want? Why aren't they being asked what they were hearing in the rallies and on the doorsteps?

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How very depressing it is to discover that Theresa May shares Michael Gove's lip-curling disdain for experts. She may claim to be someone who likes to evaluate all the available evidence before reaching a decision, but there seems to be at least one, glaring exception.

She is a huge fan of grammar schools. Despite there being no evidence at all that they improve social mobility or educational outcomes, she wants more of them. Experts? Who needs 'em?

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Sir Michael Wilshaw, outgoing chief schools inspector for England, who says creating more grammar schools would be a 'profoundly retrograde step'? Huh. What does he know?

Alan Milburn, who chairs the government's social mobility commission and says more grammar schools 'will not provide a social mobility dividend, it will be a social mobility disaster'? He's an expert. Ignore him.

Even the pro-grammar school commentator Tim Montgomerie is forced to concede that 'there is some evidence that the remaining grammar schools disproportionately benefit better-off families and are not the great engine for social mobility that proponents claim.'

It's funny, isn't it? No one says: 'Let's bring back secondary modern schools.' (Note for younger readers: In the days when all children had to sit an exam at the age of 11, those who passed the exam went to grammar schools, and those who failed went to secondary modern schools. Most of the 'failures' left school at the age of 15 with few if any qualifications.)

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It is not difficult to find evidence to disprove Mrs May's contention that grammar schools improve social mobility. Take Kent, which has the highest proportion of selective state schools in England. According to Alan Milburn, only 27% of children in Kent who receive free school meals (which is the standard measure of poverty) get five good GCSEs. The national average is 33% and in London, where most areas are purely comprehensive, it is 45%.

Conclusion? Children from less well-off backgrounds do worse, not better, in areas with grammar schools. It is exactly the opposite of what Mrs May says she wants. In the words of former Labour Cabinet minister Alan Johnson, one of those rare working class boys who made it to a grammar school - but who then left at the age of 15 without a single qualification: 'My argument against selective education is that it wastes more talent than it nurtures; destroys more potential than it realises; ruins more young lives than it enhances.'

There are still more than a hundred secondary modern schools in England, and 28% of them have been officially judged 'inadequate'. (The equivalent figure for grammar schools is one per cent.) According to the National Association of Secondary Moderns: 'With grammar schools come secondary moderns, lots of them. For every grammar school created there will be an extra three (or more) secondary moderns.'

The proponents of more grammar schools seem not to understand this. If you create separate schools for children who are more academically gifted, it stands to reason that there will then be fewer academically gifted children in the non-selective schools. Less will be expected of the pupils who didn't make it, the best teachers will shun them, and their exam results will be unimpressive.

When Michael Howard was leader of the Conservative party, he famously told the then prime minister Tony Blair: 'This grammar school boy will not take any lessons from that public school boy.' It was an effective bit of parliamentary point-scoring, but when I asked him some time later if the secondary modern schools in Llanelli, where he was educated, were as good as the grammar schools, he was not much amused.

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(Full disclosure: like Lord Howard, I went to school before comprehensives were invented - my school was half grammar, half secondary modern. My own children both went to a comprehensive school.)

If Mrs May is serious about wanting to improve educational standards and social mobility, which she should be, she should leave the secondary schools alone and focus on early years education instead. All the evidence suggests that it is in primary schools that the really important work is done, which is why I spend two afternoons a week in a local primary school as a voluntary reading helper. (If you'd like to do something similar, you can contact the childhood literacy charity Beanstalk by clicking here.)
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"There are different types of cells: healthy ones, slightly ugly ones.....and then there are the really dodgy-looking kind. As you have stage three pre-cancer, well.....yours are the type you'd cross the road to avoid....."

Oh. Rightio.

My GP carried on talking, but, having dropped the C-bomb, all the other words she was saying seemed to be dissolving like sugar in tea. A few seconds passed and I realised I was looking at her lips moving but I wasn't really absorbing what was coming out of them. I made a conscious effort to focus my racing mind. One, two, three.....aaaaaand you're back in the room.

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"....So you'll need to go to the hospital for an operation to remove the affected area. They'll perform what's called a Loop Cone Biopsy - you'll get a letter with all the details shortly. Any questions?"

It's very rare for a motormouth like myself to be rendered mute but here I was, aged 24 and uncharacteristically lost for words, muttering a simple "No" before gathering my things and walking back to the flat I shared with my boyfriend Liam, clutching the leaflet she'd given me.

Liam and I had met late in the summer of '98, when I was living in Ibiza and he was on a lads' holiday. We went on our first "date" to Amnesia, danced all night and the rest is history; when he went home at the end of his holiday we kept in touch by phone and post (yes, actual letters!) and were reunited the moment I arrived back in the UK that October. He was from Essex, I'm from Kent, and after a year or so of dating we began renting a little place together in Brentwood and were blissfully happy. The only reason I'd had the smear test that had set off this rollercoaster chain of events was because we'd registered with a new GP after moving home; the accompanying nurse appointment was standard procedure.

In those days, cervical cancer screening was offered to women from the age of 20 every five years. I'd previously had one smear test at 21, which had come back fine, and wasn't due another until I was 26. So it was by pure chance a few years later that I'd had the extra test that had detected these aggressively mutating cells.

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The result letter had dropped on the mat: "abnormal."

I'd had a further investigation at hospital via a colposcope (basically a telescope for ladybits) whereby they put iodine on the cells of the cervix, explaining that the bigger the area that changed colour (from black to yellow) with the iodine, the worse it was. The gynaecologist and I peered at the screen as the entire area instantly lit up like a Christmas tree. Oh.

Hence that dreaded follow-up appointment with the GP and then the operation to remove the cells using a hot wire. Had I not moved surgeries and just waited to be called for my next smear, two more years would have passed and they said I'd almost certainly have had full-blown cervical cancer due to the rapid rate of mutation - yet I'd had no symptoms.

Time passed, I was closely monitored with extra smears: every six months at first, then yearly. All clear. Liam and I bought a house, got married, and turned our attention towards starting a family, safe in the knowledge that there would be no repercussions from my earlier treatment. Wrong!

When months turned into years and no double blue lines appeared on the pregnancy stick, more tests revealed that, having had a sizable chunk of my cervix removed, the area was more prone to infection and my fallopian tubes had subsequently been completely damaged by an undiagnosed infection. I wasn't prescribed antibiotics after the treatment as a precaution; I had no symptoms of infection, just as I'd had no symptoms of pre-cancer. I was left infertile.

I had to have a partial hysterectomy during which both fallopian tubes were removed (salpingectomy) and parts of my ovaries (oopherectomy). Attempting pregnancy with damaged tubes can result in potentially fatal ectopic pregnancy. We both took a sabbatical from our jobs and backpacked around the world for 6 months, before throwing ourselves headlong into the IVF process.

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The subsequent years of treatment proved fruitless whilst everyone around me effortlessly popped out sprogs at an impressive rate. It was like a baby-making conveyor belt; it made my head spin. My marriage broke down under the strain after fifteen years together and at 37 I was eventually diagnosed with premature menopause as a result of all the treatment and surgeries (approximately fifteen years earlier than is normal) and prescribed HRT, which was a godsend after suffering years of menopause symptoms, and essential when weighing up my age against the considerable health problems associated with not taking it. Even with the hormone replacement therapy, my life expectancy is reduced.

Why am I telling you all this? Who gives a rat's ass about your medical history, I

hear you cry. Because I don't want you, or your friend/sister/daughter to go through what I have.

There are 3 things I feel I have to share with you, and apologies if I'm stating the obvious here:

1. Use condoms to prevent cancer.

At school, we were told to use condoms to avoid pregnancy and STIs. We were NEVER told that unprotected sex causes cancer. Almost everyone will get the HPV virus, certain strains of which cause cervical and other cancers, at some point in their lives - that's how common it is. Even condoms don't guarantee protection, since HPV is also passed on simply through skin-to-skin contact - but they help. Teenage girls are routinely vaccinated against HPV these days, but the injection doesn't provide complete protection, and obviously it's still fairly recent. And what about those young women aged 19-24 who missed out on/declined the vaccine and are still too young for routine testing?

2. Go for your smears, my dears!

These days, women aren't called for their first smear test until they are 25 years old. For many that's too late: a woman may have been sexually active for up to a decade by then, and even then abnormalities can be missed. It's just a human looking at a slide, after all. If you have any concerns or symptoms and are under 25 OR if you're not yet due your routine smear test the doctor will flat-out refuse to do it (I know, I pleaded to have one last year and was declined, despite my history), so pay to have it done privately if you have to, at around 80. At the very least get an HPV test from Superdrug online for less than 50, since almost 100% of cervical cancers are caused by the virus. The test arrives quickly in the post, is easy to perform, and the results are emailed to you just a few days later.

It still amazes me that about 40% of women don't go for their smears. Attendance rates are in continuous decline, with women in the 25-49 age group least likely to attend, despite the fact that cervical cancer is the most common cancer in women under 35. Worryingly, it seems the "Jade Goody effect" is wearing off, as this recent article in The Telegraph highlights. Are you crazy, girls?!

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3. Don't ignore symptoms.

I didn't have any, but cervical cancer symptoms include bleeding after sex and/or between periods and severe abdominal pain are the main ones and shouldn't be dismissed.

I hope this post doesn't make me sound all little-miss-preachy-pants, that's not my intention at all. I find most things in life are improved with a generous dose of humour served up with a side order of silliness; I don't really do serious if I can help it.

But since this has been one of the biggest game-changers of my life, I guess it's an issue close to my heart. If it means that even one woman swerves the evil HPV, or goes for a smear test who may not otherwise have bothered, then it's worth the embarrassment of sharing such personal details with you all.

I may have missed out on being a mother, but thanks to the screening I'm lucky enough to be alive to tell the tale.

And that, after all, is what counts.

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September is Gynaecological Cancer Awareness Month #KnowYourBody

Useful links:

https://www.jostrust.org.uk (cervical cancer info and support)

http://gynaecancerfund.com/ (gynae cancer info and fundraising)

http://gateway-women.com/ (support for childless women)

www.eveappeal.org.uk (all 5 gynae cancers info and support)

This article first appeared at www.lifeabirdseyeview.blogspot.comhere

Fancy reading my back-story before you go any further? You can find my other blogs at:
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In a move devoid of any common sense, Theresa May's government looks set to capitulate to the demands of religious groups by relaxing admissions rules for faith-based academies, allowing them to select all pupils along religious lines.

It's hard to think of a more retrograde policy than the facilitation of greater religious segregation of children and young people in our education system.

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What are we to make of the Government's warnings about schoolchildren from minority religious backgrounds having little or no understanding of others, when their policies seem destined to exacerbate exactly that?

Only last year the schools minister Lord Nash said the Government had "no plans to review the 50% limit for faith-based admissions to free schools", describing the cap as "an important way of supporting these schools to be inclusive and to meet the needs of a broad mix of families".

So what changed?

Part of the answer may lie in the fact that 900,000 new school places will be needed in England by 2024.

The free schools initiative was originally hailed as a parent and teacher-led 'schools revolution', but as it turns out, parents don't really have the time, expertise or inclination to open their own schools.

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Only a tiny proportion of new schools are being set up by parent groups, most are being established by multi-academy chains and faith groups. The success of free schools policy very much relies on school sponsors coming forward - and until now the Catholic Church has been reluctant to do so, rejecting limitations on the extent to which it can discriminate against non-Catholics. It insists that the public money it receives to run schools should be spent on providing schools to serve only people of the Catholic faith.

It's clear that this latest proposal to relax admissions arrangements follows relentless lobbying from religious organisations urging the Government to remove the 50% cap. But by rushing to satisfy the demands of faith-based education providers, the Government risks recklessly neglecting the civic purpose of state education - which surely includes preparing children for their role as equal citizens of a multicultural, religiously diverse liberal democracy.

In a society as diverse as ours, rather than facilitating segregation along religious lines, the Government should be doing everything it can to ensure that children of all faiths and none are educated together in inclusive schools.

Allowing faith schools to apply 100% discrimination is a gargantuan step in the wrong direction - and the dangers are clear.

In David Cameron's Birmingham speech on countering extremism, the former prime minister said:

"It cannot be right... that people can grow up and go to school and hardly ever come into meaningful contact with people from other backgrounds and faiths. That doesn't foster a sense of shared belonging and understanding - it can drive people apart."

The Government's horribly muddled thinking over faith schools is illustrated by its own guidance on 'promoting fundamental British values" in schools. On one hand it calls it "unacceptable" for schools to "promote discrimination against people or groups on the basis of their belief, opinion or background" yet at the same time seems content to allow them to do just that with regard to their admissions arrangements.

It's hard to see how schools can effectively teach "mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs" if they don't even want kids with different faiths and beliefs in their schools.

Perhaps it's only years further down the line that we'll be able to fully assess the damage religious schooling causes to the social fabric of British society, but the warning signs are already there.

A look across the Irish Sea also provides valuable lessons that politicians would do well to learn.

Only recently the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child rebuked the UK over the way Northern Ireland's education system still separates children along religious lines. The UN called on the UK to do more to promote integrated education, but here we are going in the opposite direction, allowing yet more segregation.

In the long-term the only real solution is to phase out faith schools and replace them with inclusive secular schools where people of all faiths and none can be educated together. Unfortunately, we're still heading in the wrong direction.

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The political world has turned topsy turvy in many ways in recent years. In China the Communists glorify getting rich. In the US a billionaire poses as the champion of the working man. The amoral Kremlin funds the right wing in France and the left wing in Spain and Greece. And here in Britain the PM has found a way to stop Boris Johnson from making rude remarks about foreign leaders.

But one dramatic change of political stripes has attracted little notice: The Conservative Party has become cavalier about the security of the United Kingdom. Labour is even worse. As the Liberal Democrats' record shows ours is the only party that has consistently acted as a mature, prudent defender of our country's security.

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Compare the Lib Dems' and the other major parties' positions on the three issues that have defined our security. First, the invasion of Iraq. Politically aware Britons, certainly those who were old enough to vote when the US was trying to rally British support for invasion in 2003, remember the passionate opposition of the then leader of the Lib Dems, Charles Kennedy. Kennedy argued for giving the weapons inspectors time to finish their work, as their leader, Hans Blix, requested. He warned against the precedent that would be set by attacking a country to pre-empt a danger that had not been conclusively proven. Millions of Britons supported the Lib Dems' position, not least because they rightly suspected that Tony Blair was ready to follow George Bush anywhere.

Fifteen years on from the 9/11 attacks, the Chilcot Inquiry has thoroughly vindicated the Lib Dems' opposition to the invasion of Iraq and by implication condemned Labour and the Conservatives for supporting it. The position we took in 2003 was right and that of the other major parties was wrong. Imagine the how much safer the world might be and how much stronger the UK had the Lib Dem position carried the day. Might the US itself have been deterred long enough to establish that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, the belief in which was the main justification offered for the war? Without the diversion of resources to Iraq, what might have been accomplished in Afghanistan? Had the US invaded without the UK, how much greater would our moral standing and global influence be today?

Next, a strong military. The Conservatives presided over major cuts to defence spending, cutting total military personnel from almost 200,000 to barely 160,000. There is likely to be another funding crisis by the end of this Parliament due to a number of large-ticket items which are coming up for replacement and renewal, and due to lack of long term thinking the UK is still inadequate when it comes to our cyber defenses. Lib Dems, on the contrary, have pushed for a longer-term plan for our armed forces which assesses which capabilities are needed to maintain a 21st Century forces, and invests in the welfare and development of our troops.

And then, of course, there is Brexit. David Cameron called the referendum and many top Tories, including Foreign Minister Boris Johnson, led the campaign to abandon Europe. Labour's Jeremy Corbyn adopted a position whose ambiguity and weakness materially contributed to millions of Labour voters crossing the box to leave the European Union. Thanks to these feckless leaders, the UK is now moving towards a deliberate diminution of prestige, influence and structural integrity unprecedented by any country in modern history.

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Brexit means losing our leading role in a community of 500million and undercutting the non-military security achievements we've accomplished in concert with our neighbours. In the EU, for example, the UK has led efforts to increase Europe's energy independence so it can't be blackmailed by Russia and to maintain economic sanctions against Moscow for occupying huge swathes of Ukraine. Brexit destroys the UK's role as a bridge between the US and Europe, undermining the special relationship. Meanwhile, it pushes the overwhelmingly Europhile Scots towards independence and threatens the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland. Against all these self-inflicted wounds, the Liberal Democrats have stood alone as the only party whose every elected official, candidate and member has supported the UK playing an ever more influential role in the EU and through the EU, in the world.

As ever, here at home we Liberal Democrats continue to strive to build and safeguard a fair, free and open society, in which no-one is enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity. But we also understand that the world today is full of dangers. This is why we hold positions that add up to keeping our powder dry: a strong military, picking our battles, safety in numbers, and a united United Kingdom.

Many voters - especially Conservatives - undoubtedly agree that protecting the United Kingdom is the most fundamental duty of any Government. The only party today whose actions live up to this duty is the Liberal Democrats.
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It's understandable and right that all politicians want to focus on social mobility. Having "a fair chance to go as far as their talent and their hard work will allow", as the Prime Minister said today, is what everyone wants for themselves and their children. And as a society the last thing we can afford to do is to put up barriers that mean we waste our precious talent as a nation.

So it's good that Theresa May has laid such an important marker for social mobility - or meritocracy as she chose to call it - by making it the subject of her first policy speech since entering Downing Street.

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Crucially, she also spelt out whose mobility she was really focused on - the 'just managing'. This group, which she differentiated from the 'disadvantaged' on lower incomes who receive more direct support from the state, she described as earning between 16,000 and 21,000. In general, 'just managing' seems like a good name for this group and it is a welcome focus indeed for the Prime Minister of a 21st Century Britain struggling with the dual perils of an overreliance on low paid work and rising housing costs.

New analysis from us at the Resolution Foundation shows there are 2.3million families with gross earnings of between 16-21,000. That number falls to 2.1million families once we exclude pensioners, where interestingly the focus on struggling working age families marked something of a shift for a Conservative politician. Of those 2.1million households, half a million have children, giving us two important conclusions about how a government supports them. First the state is already a big deal for these families. A big majority of 'just managing' households with children are receiving tax credits, with a one child family on even 21,000 receiving 2,100 a year. Secondly, even though some of the remaining 1.6million households will go on to have children, the fact that right now the vast majority do not tells us that if the Prime Minister wants to help this group then action will need to be about much more schooling.

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That said, the focus on schools in the speech today is understandable. After all one of the clearest signs of backward social mobility in the second half of 20th century was how family income became more important in determining educational attainment. So there is a problem to address, and the good news is that it's something we know we can do something about - witness the big falls in the educational attainment gap in London over the last two decades. However, that was achieved through leadership, high quality teaching and funding, not through grammar schools - which in selective areas recruit 3% of kids on free school means compared to 18% in other schools. The detail of how the government intends to bring these figures closer together will help to determine how different the new grammar schools of the future really are.

The risk however with focusing solely on schools is that any progress made - and the evidence suggests grammar schools do the opposite - is unwound by 'here and now' problems elsewhere. We saw this in the 90s when richer families scooped the rewards of expanded access to higher education while not enough was done for those that didn't make it to university - a problem that blights the life chances of millions today.

And we still haven't got to grips with helping the one in five workers in Britain who are low paid, the lack of opportunities to move on in the workplace, and that still great barrier to social mobility - where you live. The capacity for these here and now issues to destroy people's hopes and dreams for intra-generational mobility, never mind intergenerational mobility, is real and one of our great failings as a nation.

One here and now mobility problem that needs a here and now solution for the 'just managing' is pay progression. By the end of this parliament around one in seven workers throughout Britain are set to be on the minimum wage. That's partly because of the boldness of the new National Living Wage which is rightly raising the pay of the lowest paid - but it's also because too many of our industries have become reliant on low skill labour, and have neglected real training or progression. This also reminds us that even if we just focus on intergenerational mobility, the challenge doesn't finish with getting people equal educational outcomes. Recent research has shown that even if people from high and low income families get the same degree, the former are more likely to go into top jobs and at age 40 earn 20 per cent more than their university mates from poorer families.

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In some cities one in five workers will be paid the state set minimum. One wage towns are not ones in which people progress on and up, giving themselves a better life and giving their children the opportunity to do better still. We also need to be honest that for too many low pay isn't some kind of temporary launch pad onto better things, but more a career path that few are able to escape from. Resolution Foundation research has found that even over a ten year period only one in four low paid permanently escaped into higher paying roles. It's no good raising educational attainment if a fifth of the pupils move on to the minimum wage - and struggle to proceed much further than that.

So yes social mobility matters - and yes schools matter a lot in shaping those outcomes. Improving teaching quality should be the first priority in that regard. But just as crucial if we're to help those just managing is the hard graft of creating routes from school to decent careers, beyond the existing route from A-levels to university and work. It's remarkable how little we hear about the forgotten 40% who are non-graduates, who face huge barriers in their careers.
Prosecutor General nominee: Who says that there are political prisoners in Armenia? (video)

Members of the Sasna Dzrer group are guilty of the death of three policemen killed during the seizure of a police station in Yerevans Erebuni district on July 17. "Charges will be brought against them if there is sufficient evidence, says Artur Davtyan, one of the candidates for the post of the Prosecutor General. Today, Mr. Davtyan heard for the first time that citizen Artur Sargsyan, who supplied food to the members of Sasna Dzrer group, was unable to leave the territory of the seized police headquarters as the law enforcers opened fire in his direction. The investigative body does not possess such information. I do not know anything of the kind, he said. The only candidate for the Prosecutor Generals post says 'no one was starving inside the seized building,' hence, Sargsyans step is viewed as a crime. The person you are speaking about is in custody today but not for taking bread to the group members, he said. On September 9, Arthur Davtyan had a meeting with representatives of the factions represented in the National Assembly to present his visions as the only candidate for the position. In reply to journalists question whether Armenia will continue to have political prisoners after he is elected to the post, Mr. Davtyan said, No one is arrested for his political views in Armenia. Who says that there are political prisoners in Armenia? The Prosecutor Generals post has been vacant since Gevorg Kostanyan announced his resignation on August 4. The National Assembly shall elect the new Prosecutor General by a secret ballot.
The Brock Turner fallout continued today seeping into the Twitterverse. It looks like Change.org, the petition organizers who have called for the impeachment of Judge Persky who gave Turner a slap on the wrist for rape, have had enough. Publicist Sharika Soal and activist Maria Ruiz are calling out State Assembly woman and vice-chair of the Legislative Women's Caucus, Cristina Garcia and Susan Eggman, for not following through on a promise to do everything in their power to have Judge Aaron Persky impeached.

Monday the women took to Twitter and unleashed a set of stern tweets directed at media and the two California assembly members. The activists called them liars and reminded them of their promises made to them and the 1.3 million people who have now signed their petition.



Soal tweeted, "She lied to us, and Change.org and she continues to ignore 1.3 million people." She then added, "Susan Eggman also promised us and she has failed to do anything at all."

Maria Ruiz, the original creator of the now infamous Change.org petiton to Impeach Judge Aaron Persky, chimed in alongside her frustrated partner and agreed that she too felt deceived by Garcia and Eggman.

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Ruiz tweeted "@AsmGarcia how long will you keep 1.3 million people waiting. We deserve a response. #impeachpersky #solidarity4survivors". She asked, "@asmgarcia and @AsmSusanEggman do I have to chain myself to the door of your office with boxes of signatures to get your attention???" to which Soal replied, "Actually that's exactly what we are going to do in a couple weeks".

Judge Aaron Persky's job came under fire when he sentenced the then 20-year-old Brock Turner to just six months in jail after he was found guilty of raping an unconscious woman behind a dumpster. Turner served just three months of his six-month sentence. He was released September 2, 2016.

According to Courthouse News. Christina Garcia and Susan Eggman told the media: "Rape is a cancer that impacts the lives of survivors daily and for a lifetime. It is disappointing; the judicial process put this victim on trial and the judge has reduced his sentence to no more than an inconvenience." The assembly women said they will "exhaust other measures" if Persky does not step down from the bench.
Before tubes were put down my throat to help me breathe, I was put in an ambulance. An emergency responder found me barefoot and terrified just blocks from Ground Zero. I was on the corner of West and Vesey when the second tower collapsed and had run out of my favorite pair of slip-on shoes escaping the downpour of debris, abandoning them somewhere a few blocks away. The bottoms of my feet were bleeding, lacerated from sprinting across pavement strewn with broken glass. The crisis worker (was my lifeline a he or a she? In the mind-blanking terror of that morning I still don't recall) thrust a triage tag around my neck. Scrawled in black ink and shorthand, the rectangular piece of paper lists my medical conditions: "diff breathing," "inhalation," "abd pain."

My triage tag is just one of 11,000 artifacts in the official collection of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. A decade after the attacks I donated it, along with my press pass working as an investigative producer for WNBC-TV. And while seeing the triage tag on display and reading the accompanying description likely makes some visitors wonder whatever happened to me, I wish there were a button next to the plexiglass case that played an audio recording of how I feel 15 years later. "I'm so happy," the voice would proclaim again and again. "Some days are harder than others, but mostly I'm at peace."

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I've come to learn this sense of healing is the experience of many individuals who've donated belongings to the museum, some in recognition of their own experience, others in memory of loved ones who died. In a just-completed, yet to be published study called A Theory of Psychotherapeutic Object Dynamics, researchers conclude that the act of donating objects to the 9/11 Museum has made moving forward easier for many people.

Brenda Cowan, Associate Professor of Exhibition Design, School of Graduate Studies at SUNY/Fashion Institute of Technology, led the investigation and partnered with the museum to find participants. I was part of that group, each of us interviewed separately. At the conclusion of the report, which the National September 11 Memorial & Museum shared with me, Cowan writes that every subject of her study expressed "deep themes" of "personal healing," "renewal," "transformation," and "growth."

There are several reasons why donating objects sparks this surprising uptick in happiness, even years after a donation is made. In the process of bequeathing possessions, the 9/11 Museum became viewed as a partner in keeping our personal survivor stories and the memories of our loved ones alive. Donors came to recognize the museum as a protector of belongings and recollections, a place to keep them safe, in perpetuity. One person even referred to the museum as a "therapeutic ally." Cowan calls this phenomena the result of "Releasing/Unburdening."

This has certainly been the case for Eileen Fagan who lost her older sister, Pat, on September 11. Pat worked as an insurance adjuster on the 98th floor of the south tower. Eighteen months after she was killed, Fagan learned her sister's black purse had been located, covered in dirt and dust, but miraculously, fully intact. Among the items still inside were an extra pair of eyeglasses, a few credit cards, a driver license, and the ID card she used every day to get into her job at Aon. There was also Pat's signature coral-pink creamy lipstick. The most evocative items for Fagan, though, were the small denomination dollar bills and rosary beads.

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"My sister would often stop in church for mass on the way to work," she told me. "She'd always wanted to light a candle, and she'd needed a few dollars to do that. When I see that pocketbook, it's not a reminder of her death. It's a wonderful and inspiring reminder of her life."

Like Fagan's donated pocketbook, my triage tag is also a surprising reminder of good memories. It helps me recall that after I was released from the hospital, with the triage tag cut off and in my bag, I had somewhere in Manhattan to go that felt completely safe -- my father's apartment. My mother had been dead five years by then, and even though my dad was frail and desperately ill from lung cancer, a day-long wave of panic gradually transformed into a nighttime oasis of love and support -- a safe harbor that included much-needed parental doting and affection.

September 11 was the last time I saw my father sitting up, able to talk to me, or hold my hand. It was also the final Tuesday I got to be somebody's daughter. That Friday, my dad died in another New York City hospital, a few miles from where I'd nearly suffocated on soot and rubble.


(Photo by A. Libutti)

I am not fond of intelligence testing for my son with autism, but it is required by the school district since he receives services. These tests rely on strong verbal communication and auditory processing skills, which are a challenge for Jack and many others with autism.

Jack had not been tested for years, so our Special Education Consultant, Dr. John reached out to me a few weeks ago. He has known Jack for seven years so it was in Jack's best interest to have Dr. John administer the test. Besides, Jack loves Dr. John, he is an amazing human being. He is a true advocate for children on the spectrum with the right mix of science and compassion and a keen sense of what's best for each individual child.

I sat in Dr. John's office with Jack while he administered the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-V). Unlike other standardized IQ tests, the WISC-V includes a section for visual-spatial aptitude. Dr. John felt this would best represent Jack's abilities.

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Jack was whizzing through the visual-spatial section with flying colors. Dr. John and I were glancing up at each other with a slight air of disbelief at his performance as the test continued. He flew through it, solving puzzles with such speed and accuracy we were somewhat awestruck.

And then, the last part of the test in the visual-spatial section really surprised us as Jack completed the final task.

Dr. John looked up at me and said with a chuckle and disbelief, "In all the years I have been testing people, not one person has ever solved this last puzzle. Not only did Jack solve it, he did so in 62 seconds, breaking the record of 90 seconds."

He looked at Jack and said, "Jack, you my friend, are a visual super genius."

I left Dr. John's office determined to discover more about visual-spatial abilities and how this strength could be cultivated. I knew as his mother, that he was bright, but now I had something tangible to explore.

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(Photo by A. Libutti)

I received Dr. John's full report of the IQ test the next day and I was not surprised to see that Jack scored very, very low in verbal communication. He was in the 1st percentile, which meant 99% of the population tested, scored higher than Jack. He was very low in most categories, except the visual category.

Jack scored in the 99.9th percentile for visual-spatial intelligence. That number represents all children and individuals, typical and otherwise. In other words, it is measured against the general population. Wow!

I went into research mode, determined to harness this brilliance. There are vast resources about visual-spatial learners and I discovered a new term - twice exceptional or 2e. Twice exceptional refers to children that are intellectually gifted with some form of disability. These children are considered exceptional both because of their gifts and their special needs.

It dawned on me in that moment how powerful labels are. There's something very positive about the word "exceptional" and I wanted more parents to know about this label and how to discover their own child's brilliance.

The talents and gifts of this population are grossly underestimated. But we are beginning to catch glimpses as more and more remarkable non-verbal autistic individuals "speak up". Carly Fleishman, Carly's Voice: Breaking Through Autism (Touchstone, 9/2012), Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism (Random House, 8/2013), Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay, How Can I Talk If My Lips Don't Move?: Inside My Autistic Mind (Arcade, 4/2011), Ido Kedar, Ido in Autismland: Climbing Out of Autism's Silent Prison (Sharon Kedar, 10/2012), and others are letting us in to their world.

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And their world is anything but ordinary. They are poetic and brilliant and funny. And some even have talents that are more aligned with Einstein and Tesla, and the great innovators of the world. These are unique, very different individuals.

One of the biggest fears that parents of children with autism have is how their child will survive independently. What will they do for work? How will they make a living or contribute and be happy?

We have these fears because we are trying to fit our children in to the status quo.

It's time to think differently.

Think way, way outside the box. If you are worried that your child won't find a job than its time to consider the possibility that based on your child's talents, new jobs will be created, maybe whole new industries will spring up.

Henry Ford, a visionary and innovator laughed when he asked people what they wanted. Everyone said they wanted a faster horse. No one could fathom a car.

This is the kind of leap I am talking about. The status quo wants a faster horse. The innovators want something else entirely. Our children with their unique set of exceptionalities may be the next innovators of our time, given the support and guidance they deserve.

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By Hong Soon-do, Beijing correspondent, AsiaToday - It has become increasingly popular among unmarried women in China to go abroad to freeze their eggs. Besides, this trend is expected to become a matter of course in the future.

According to the September 6th report of Chinese internal newspaper Cankao xiaoxi (Reference News), at least thousands of Chinese women are heading to the United States and Canada to have their eggs frozen. Among them is Lu Yi, a Chinese woman who has a business degree from Stanford University and works in a renowned foreign-affiliated company in Beijing. Although she is in her mid 30s, she hasn't found her marriage partner yet. Nevertheless, she doesn't want to live alone for the rest of her life. The problem is the fact that she may get married and have children beyond her 40s. If this is the case, she should deliver a child in her old age. Then, egg freezing can be her choice. In fact, she actually did it. Recently, she visited a hospital in California, where they retrieved eight eggs from her body.

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[Chinese actress and director Xu Jinglei admitted that she had her eggs frozen. She revealed the whole process of egg freezing./ Source: search engine Baidu]

Among them are also considerable number of celebrities. Chinese actress and director Xu Jinglei is one of them. In July 2015, it was revealed that she had gone to the United States to have her nine eggs frozen. When the rumors spread, the actress admitted it. Apart from her, other well-known celebrities including Ms. L and K are embroiled in egg freezing rumors, and most of the rumors seem true.
As the 2016 presidential election enters its final phase, Hillary Clinton has a slight lead over Donald Trump. While it's still possible for Trump to win, this is unlikely to happen because of four traps he has set for himself.

The latest Huffington Post Poll of Polls shows Clinton leading Trump by five percentage points. The current NBC news poll shows Clinton with 272 electoral votes versus 174 for Trump.

On November 8th Trump will lose because of four traps:

1. Alienating people-of-color. Given Trump's history as a "birther" and his track record of discriminating against African-Americans, it's no surprise that Trump is losing the black vote; one poll shows him with zero support.

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Nonetheless, Trump could have garnered some Hispanic support if he had taken a more traditional Republican position on immigration. Instead Trump chose to take an extreme position, calling Mexican immigrants "killers and rapists." Even when given a chance to moderate his position on what to with the 11 million undocumented immigrants currently in the US, Trump time and again has taken the stance: "They all have to leave." Predictably, Hispanic voters have turned against Trump. The most recent poll shows Clinton getting 70 percent of the Latino vote and Trump getting 19 percent. This has put Trump behind in the polls in Colorado, Florida, and Nevada; and it has put into play once-safe Republican states such as Arizona and Texas.

2. Alienating women. Pew Research estimates that 31 percent of the 2016 electorate will be "Hispanic, black, Asian, or another racial or ethnic minority." Trump is not only losing with these voters, he is also losing with women. According to 2012 presidential-election-exit polls, 53 percent of voters were women.

Trump has a history of misogyny. As a consequence, female voters favor Clinton. A recent poll found that women favor Clinton over Trump by 24 percentage points.

3. Disdaining to raise money. Trump began the Republican primary season by proclaiming that he was the ultimate outsider and bragging that he would self-fund his campaign. Once he secured the Republican nomination, he kept the outsider mantle but announced (sotto voce) that he would accept donations from his adherents.

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Trump's problem is that he isn't willing - or able - to pay for his entire presidential campaign and he hasn't raised enough money to keep up with Hillary Clinton. The result is a campaign that is massively underfunded. As of August 22nd, Clinton's combined campaign had raised $435 million and Trump's combined campaign had raised $137 million. (For the month of August, Clinton reported raising $143 million while Trump just reported raising approximately $90 million.)

Trump's inability to match Clinton is due to three factors. First, because he is an outsider, he has not attracted traditional Republican mega-donors. Second, Trump doesn't seem as motivated to raise money as Clinton is; typically, whenever Clinton flies somewhere to give a speech, she also finds time to hold a fundraiser - Trump doesn't do this. And finally, Trump believes that he can run his campaign on the cheap because he is such a well-known media personality.

4. Believing he can run an unconventional campaign, Trump believes that he is "the smartest guy in the room" and, therefore, doesn't need to rely upon seasoned campaign professionals to run a conventional campaign. For example, Trump isn't running national TV ads because he believes that he generates the same amount of news with his daily campaign activities (plus his use of Twitter). Thus Clinton is outspending Trump on TV advertising. (NPR reported that, in 7 battleground states, Clinton is outspending Trump by $127 million to $18 million.)

Trump is also being outspent on field operations in swing states. For example, The New York Times reported that Trump's Ohio field operations were late getting started and are underfunded: he has 15 offices in Ohio and 70 paid organizers; in contrast, Clinton has 35 field offices and 170 paid organizers. (And Ohio is the swing state where Trump has the most mature field operation.)

At the moment, Clinton leads Trump in all the swing states - except for Iowa. Trump continues to disparage a conventional get-out-the-vote effort, but many experts believe this can generate a voter differential of several percentage points on election day.

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Donald Trump, president and chief executive of Trump Organization Inc. and 2016 Republican presidential candidate, holds up a Bible while speaking at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Friday, Sept. 25, 2015. The annual event, organized by the Family Research Council, gives presidential contenders a chance to address a conservative Christian audience in the crowded Republican primary contest. Photographer: Drew Angerer/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Countless articles have been written on Donald Trump's relationship with the Religious Right, often by those who argue that his rise reveals the movement's increasing irrelevance. After all, how could social conservatives ever get behind a thrice-married failed casino mogul who is more comfortable at the Playboy Mansion than at church? He has bragged that he has never asked God for forgiveness, insisted that Jesus Christ had a massive ego (in an interview with Playboy) and, in an episode that carries obvious symbolism, threw cash on the communion plate in an Iowa church.

It's almost as if the Religious Right cares more about gaining political power than defending Christian teachings.

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Trump is slated to make an appearance today at the Values Voter Summit, the annual Washington, D.C., convention organized by the Family Research Council that's the marquis event on the Religious Right's calendar. Trump's appearance at the summit isn't discordant; as his campaign has progressed, it has become clear why the movement has rallied behind him and why he has relied on its support.



Trump once told a crowd at a Christian university not to forgive their enemies but to "get even." The leaders of today's Religious Right have been preaching that message for years, treating politics as a no-holds-barred battle against opponents who they regard not just as people with different points of view, but as spiritual enemies.

For instance, Tony Perkins, the president of Family Research Council (FRC), has described supporters of LGBT rights as pawns of Satan.

Trump's demagogic, hateful rhetoric has nothing on the Religious Right, whose leaders have been belittling and denigrating LGBT people, religious minorities and Christians who don't agree with their right-wing political ideology for years.

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It wasn't surprising that most Religious Right leaders who talk a big game on religious liberty either stayed silent or were openly supportive when Trump called for a ban on Muslims entering the country. A spokesman for the American Family Association, a cosponsor of the Values Voter Summit, had called for a Muslim ban long before Trump ever did.

While many evangelicals, along with Roman Catholics and mainline Protestants, have worked tirelessly to reform the country's immigration system, conservative Religious Right groups like the FRC and the AFA have denounced immigration reform.

Trump and Religious Right groups have also joined together in portraying American Christians as a marginalized group under constant persecution thanks to the Johnson Amendment, which prohibits houses of worship and other nonprofits from explicitly endorsing candidates if they want to maintain their tax exempt status, and injustices like the "War on Christmas," with Trump even claiming that he was personally a victim of anti-Christian persecution because he was subject to a routine IRS audit.

And above all, the movement's leaders are thrilled that Trump has promised to give them the Supreme Court of their dreams, even letting conservative activists hand-pick his nominees.

The Religious Right, with its constant talk of the country's imminent undoing by evil anti-American actors, promotion of conspiracy theories and patently hateful rhetoric, paved the way for Trump's success in the GOP primaries. Now, Trump needs the movement to help put him over the top in November, and will be more than happy to further its agenda if he makes it into the White House.

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Miya Ando is an internationally respected and honored artist who works primarily with light and metal surfaces, notably aluminum, on which she applies pigments and urethanes, creating evocative naturalistic imagery which also retains a powerful sense of abstraction. Her ability to produce remarkably "real" clouds and rain in glass blocks is nothing short of magical and otherworldly. This is technique raised to a level of the mysterious.

Miya's treatment of surface requires an extraordinary level of ability, knowledge and skill, and her technique combines subtlety and understatement with a planetary scope of view. She captures oceans, skies, air, clouds, permanence and impermanence, time and timelessness, with an apparent ease (this is only the appearance of ease, what Miya accomplishes is very difficult to achieve) that is captivating. Her work produces an immediate emotional response which wells up, sometimes quite unexpectedly, into a feeling of universality and enormity.

As can be seen from Miya's answers to this writer's questions, as well as in the video interview, below, she is extremely articulate and humble about her abilities, constantly seeking renewed expression, and "non-attachment" - a comment which provides insight into how deeply felt her work is, for she removes herself from it, permitting her work to assume its own presence and sense of being.

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What are your thoughts and feelings about sharing your artworks ?

I think of artwork as part of a dialogue or conversation as opposed to a soliloquy. The artist makes a work and the viewer responds. I very much like to think of the making of art as participating in this form of communication, one that occurs whether I myself am physically present or not. I like the idea of a silent/non-verbal communication.

Do you ever feel vulnerable presenting your evocative artworks to gallery patrons ?

Yes I think it is natural to feel a vulnerability any time one has given one's very best effort.

I practice a non-attachment both in the making of and exhibiting of the works because ultimately I can only make that which I'm making.



Do you have thoughts to share about the differences between gallery patrons and museum visitors as viewers of your artworks ?

A non-commercial context may impact the work, it also may not. Each viewer I believe has a unique experience. The new works speak to this as the focus is on the experiential quality of the paintings and sculpture.

Do you believe that art is universally understandable ?

There may be artworks which evoke or conjure feelings, experiences and senses which are perceived by most, so yes. How they are perceived may vary greatly, however.

All art is rooted in the culture from which it arises, but does it therefore have limited appeal ?

I was raised in Japan and in California so I have a different perception of this question. Is my work therefore appealing to only half-Japanese and half-Russian American people who lived in a Buddhist temple in Japan and a redwood forest in Santa Cruz? I hope not.

Is an understanding of the cultural context of a work of art necessary for the viewer to fully appreciate the work ?

No. It is a different understanding that's all.

In today's commercial and artistic worlds, can an artist have great success, such as you have had and are having, acting only by themselves ?

Definitely not, I think most achievements are the sum of the efforts of many people collectively.

Do you determine everything about your works or do the works themselves sometimes suggest paths to follow ?

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Each work comes out of the last. The artworks are in a progression of thought for me and have been since I began in 2002. A continuum of thought.

How would you characterize the visual arts scene today, vibrant ?... imaginative ?... repetitive ?... or... ?

Exciting, vibrant, global with all the artfairs, interconnected and very interesting and dynamic. Manhattan where I am based is particularly so.

How important are social connections and personal relationships in developing a successful career as an artist ?

I think in life relationships are the key to happiness. In art it is no different, I feel grateful daily for having the presence of longtime dealers, collectors, friends and colleagues in my life.

It seems obvious that your family's legacy of sword making has influenced your art, but to what degree and in what ways ?

Mostly as a way to investigate the idea of identity, perception and time.

Do you consider yourself fluent in multiple mediums ?

I consider myself a person who respects and studies very carefully multiple mediums.

Is self-reflection difficult for an artist ?

It shouldn't be. Introspection and focus are imperative and should be cultivated.

Where would you want your career to be in 10 years ?

I hope to continue my practice and continue making things which interest me.



Miya Ando can be reached via her website at http://www.miyaando.com

UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS OF MIYA ANDO'S ARTWORK

September 8 - October 29, 2016 - Tasogare/Twilight (The Time of Moonlight, Sunlight and Starlight) - Winston Wachter Fine Art, Seattle, Washington
The Cassandra Against Leukemia Association was created after little Cassandra was diagnosed with leukemia, when she was only two months-old.

Its main objective is to raise awareness among as many people as possible about life-saving donations of blood, platelets, plasma, umbilical cord blood, and bone marrow, and about infant leukemia. But it doesn't stop there.

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The association is committed to the fight against pediatric cancer, and like the association Eva pour la vie, actively participates to a parliamentary program dedicated to addressing cancer and childhood leukemia  which is chaired by Gironde deputy Martine Faure.

The Cassandra Against Leukemia Association was established in October 2015, eight months after the girl was diagnosed. As soon as Cassandra's illness began, her parents started a Facebook page dedicated to her battle with cancer. The goal was to give a face to infant leukemia and to raise awareness about blood donation.

Cassandra's Facebook page received so much attention that the parents were propelled to start fighting infant cancer at large.

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"Today, despite the passing of Cassandra, the fight continues, because there are still many children to save," they posted on Facebook.

Xavier and Elodie were overwhelmed with the incredible support they received from people they didn't know.

"Thousands of people have recognized the importance of blood donations, through Cassandra's Facebook page, or through the association. We have received thousands of anonymous notes from people telling us that they have decided to give blood for the first time, or to register as bone marrow donors because of Cassandra. In certain departments, the EFS (French Blood Establishment) also noted a significant increase in the number of blood and bone marrow donors in the days following Cassandra's death. This is was what we were fighting for, and what we will continue to fight for," they wrote.

If we look at global statistics, we would see that leukemia is one of the least fatal cancers, including for children. Unfortunately, this is not the case for younger children, and even less so for infants. Cassandra was given experimental treatments, including chemotherapy and immunotherapy; there is no conventional protocol for infants and young children with leukemia.

Those who claim that leukemia "has a good prognosis" totally forget about the hundreds of babies, children, and adolescents who suffer.

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"There are months, even years of hospitalization, getting chemotherapy, spinal taps and myelograms, not counting the side effects. The children who are lucky enough to overcome it, a small number, will be affected for life," Xavier and Elodie explained.

Like most parents, Cassandra's parents could never imagine that their daughter would get cancer, let alone die from it.

"I had never really asked myself the question. It is difficult, especially in France, where we often hide these things, to become aware of it. The action of associations fighting against pediatric cancers, such as Eva Pour la Vie, is essential in raising public awareness, and enacting policies," the said.

"When we give blood, plasma or platelets, we are saving a life! When a patient receives a blood pouch, it is because they are at risk of dying. Over the course of her short life, Cassandra received around 50 blood pouches. During the final days of her life, she received one pouch of blood a day," Xavier and Elodie said.

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But it's not only patients with leukemia who benefit from these donations. There are dozens of illnesses or cancers that necessitate regular transfusions. Any of us could one day need a blood or platelet transfusion. Artificial blood does not exist. Only blood donations can save lives.

Unfortunately, there is a lot of misconceptions around bone marrow donation. Many people do not even distinguish between bone marrow and the spinal cord. When a bone marrow donor is called upon to save a life, the bone marrow is extracted from the pelvic bone (in 30 percent of cases), or directly from the blood (in 70 percent of cases).

Pharmaceutical laboratories invest very little money in researching and finding treatments for children, perhaps because they consider it to be a less profitable endeavor. Only a couple of thousand children are diagnosed with cancer or leukemia in France every year -- a very small market by their standards.

"I am less upset with the pharmaceutical laboratories, which are private corporations, than with the state that should take measures where the private sector doesn't want to intervene for reasons of profitability. It's the state that should take charge of research into rare diseases and pediatric cancers. The state has the means to intervene. It's just a question of political will."

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At the end of the year, the deputies in the National Assembly should vote on a bill proposed by Deputy Martine Faure. The goals include allocating funds for research on pediatric cancers and infant leukemia and improving aid to families dealing with childhood illnesses. There are also educational and pedagogical objectives.

The parents of Cassandra eagerly await the outcome of the vote.

"There are thousands of families who are devastated by serious childhood illnesses each year. Our children die in hospitals amidst total indifference, and are denied proper treatments. However, they are the future of our country. I cannot imagine that our representatives, on the right and on the left, will allow this situation to continue for much longer," they said.
I started meditating on Thursday, January 31st, 2013. I haven't missed a day since.

My first few attempts were difficult. I wanted to quit. And in the past, when I had tried to make meditation a habit, I did quit.

My first sincere effort at meditation occurred in the spring of 2006. At the time I was struggling with chronic anxiety issues. Every morning I woke up and felt like I was about to have a heart attack. In addition to Qi Gong, yoga, and tai chi, I tried meditation. The first few sessions brought me some limited relief, but despite my desperation I couldn't manage to stick to the practice.

I tried again in the summer of 2008. After experiencing minor flare-ups with my anxiety, I tried inventing my own form of meditation. It involved lying down on a yoga mat and doing deep breathing exercises.

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Not surprisingly, this approach causes you to fall asleep. Most civilizations refer to this as a siesta, not meditation. Again, I quit.

The years passed. Every few months I'd read about a leader, such as Steve Jobs, or Phil Jackson, using meditation, and I'd consider giving it another shot. But nothing was strong enough to move me to action.

A turning point in my attitude toward meditation came when Matt Smith and I acquired Early To Rise in July, 2011.

This led to spending more time with Matt on work trips around the world, from Thailand to Nicaragua, and many days at his home in Denver.

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That's where I learned that meditation is a non-negotiable daily habit for him, like my Daily Document review and early morning writing. On many trips we would agree to meet for breakfast or a morning workout, but neither could commence until after I did my writing and he did his meditation.

Hmmm, I thought, here's a guy that I respect who is committed to this simple act. What does he know that I don't?

I was one step closer to trying again.

But still, it was not enough to garner my full commitment.

Finally, the tipping point was reached in 2013. While I no longer suffered from crippling anxiety like I did in 2006, I often felt a tightness in my chest when hurrying to finish tasks on a busy day. I would catch myself breathing from my upper chest, which only makes things worse.

One day, while working on the ETR editorial calendar, I just happened to choose two essays for Early to Rise that mentioned the power of meditation. Later that afternoon I discovered that even the US Military was teaching meditation to their elite fighting forces.

I realized it was time to get serious about meditation and to take action, no matter how imperfect.

As General Norman Schwarzkopf taught, "It is easier to correct motion going in the wrong direction than it is to get started."

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Here's the big lesson.

Everything is a learnable skill, and you can get better at any skill, but you first must begin with commitment. Once committed, you devote yourself to action, and you keep going with persistence.

In the past, I had missed the first mental step of commitment. And that's why I would always quit.

I had wasted years because I was not mentally prepared for habit change. But committing is the first step in getting better at anything.

To get better, we must stop dabbling, and get serious. That's how we create any new, positive habit in our lives.

Commitment and persistence keep you going through tough times.

My first session wasn't easy. I sat down on the floor of my hotel room in St. Petersburg, Florida (where I was visiting for a Superbowl party). I crossed my legs, closed my eyes, gently rested my forearms resting on my legs.

The first two minutes were miserable.

My mind was racing. I couldn't focus. My brain would not stop thinking about all the things I had to do or could be doing. And despite all my effort, I still wasn't breathing properly.

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But I persisted. Seven minutes passed, each better than the last. I began to calm down, even experiencing moments of almost pure stillness in mind and body. My breath came deep from my belly, diaphragmatic breathing, a proven way to reduce stress and anxiety.

Something had clicked. And it was all because of my commitment and the end of my dabbling.

Later that day I described my difficult experience to Matt. He has since become my teacher, offering valuable feedback as I engage in deliberate practice of this new commitment. Each day since has gotten better as I've corrected course with Matt's advice.

Today, I can sit for almost twenty minutes in a calm, meditative state. It still takes a few minutes for me to reduce the chaos in my cranium, to focus, and to get into a good breathing rhythm. And my monkey mind still chatters while I sit there. But each day there is improvement. My breathing is better. The anxiety that often bubbled up on busy days has quelled. I'm even becoming more patient when going about daily activities, something I've always struggled with.

That is how you get better at anything - you stop dabbling and you start taking it serious. You pledge yourself to a craftsman-like approach of new skill development.

You must commit.

It's a mental shift. As soon as I made that decision, as soon I resolved to take meditation as serious as I take my reading, writing, exercise, and healthy eating, my progress accelerated because I accepted that I was willing to put in the time and sacrifice to improve.

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This first step will work for you, too.

It is possible to get better at anything. It might take a few false starts before things start to click, but if you persevere, you'll see improvement.
I was wandering the San Francisco Airport when I came across a wonderful museum-style exhibit on the Bauhaus-educated potter, Marguerite Widenhaim of Pond Farm. One of the explanation boards declared, with a quote from Ms. Widenhaim:

Pond Farm is not a "school;" it is actually a way of life, and I believe that the attraction of the session is not only that the students really learn their craft, but more than that, they also learn to concentrate and find themselves.

After completing the exhibit, charging my devices and surfing a bit, I came across the Advocate's transgender page. It's been in existence for a while, but I remember the time when the Advocate barely knew trans persons existed. That there is a section devoted to trans persons and issues is a great advance.

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But as I scrolled through the stories, I noticed a disturbing trend - the themes were overwhelmingly negative, emphasizing problems within the community and generally promoting the attitude that trans persons are in pretty bad shape, both as a community and individually. This fit in too well with a recent rollout from the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), to which I will return later.

I've written before about learned helplessness, the impact that one's feelings of helplessness can be reinforced like any other type of learning. People who are depressed, or have lost faith in the future, have a tendency to see everything with a negative spin. The reinforcement of the sense of helplessness drives a mind even further down, making recovery more difficult and the creation of a positive attitude less likely. It's hard to maintain hope under such conditions.

Two weeks ago I wrote about being on the negative phase of the dialectical spiral, relating a number of legal events that had temporarily halted the drive for trans equality. "Temporarily" being the operative word, which seems lost on many. Given the recent events, it wasn't surprising that the Advocate would be full of negativity, but it was striking nevertheless. Here's a list:

The trans-focused medical profession is talking about this, and has recognized its existence for years. However, the mismatch of supply and demand only recently occurred with the advent of greater insurance coverage, and it takes many years to train surgeons with such subspecialty training. I may never have thought I'd live to see this situation, but it's a good problem to have.



A Primer on Hollywood Transploitation

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Matt Bomer's Transface



I've discussed this before - I'd like to see trans persons play cis ones, not trans ones. Maybe the actor who got the role is simply a better actor? And maybe we shouldn't be rushing to play the role of trans sex workers? Why are they the primary representatives of the trans community?

The Justice Department had good intentions in linking Title IX with transgender equality, but our recent judicial setback proves we need laws that unequivocally address our rights.

That was not a "judicial setback," just the normal give-and-take of the adversarial system. And, more importantly, the Obama administration didn't take a huge gamble. It had been taking this position for years, though not with any fanfare. North Carolina Governor McCrory decided to nationalize the issue, and the Administration stepped up. To have failed to do so would have been a setback; this was a huge victory.

And while it would be nice to have explicit protections, we won't be seeing them anytime soon, so we shouldn't be constantly complaining about it.

Or are we a people who make determined -- if painstakingly slow and unsteady -- progress toward realizing the high ideal of equality upon which our county was founded? What does this legal assault on vulnerable children tell us about the direction we're going?

Rebecca Robertson, Texas ACLU

The ACLU is a great ally, with leadership coming from the top in the person of James Esseks. However, it is not fair to say the progress is "painstakingly slow and unsteady," except maybe by the standards of those who are accustomed to obtaining everything they want when they want it. There is a process which has moved remarkably quickly over the past decade, which we should be praising and celebrating, because we are moving overwhelmingly in the right direction.

Again, we live in an adversarial system, and our opponents are using the same tools we are. They may be bigots, but they're not necessarily stupid bigots. They've always been there, have fought us for decades, and this is nothing new. Except that we're winning.

Not every comment about a trans person is transphobic. This certainly didn't sound like it was. We need to be less sensitive and overreactive; there are larger problems in America, such as the mainstreaming of fascism, which threatens all of us.

And to show that this isn't limited to the Advocate, there's this from out.com:

All the girls are freaking out. The doctors and pharmacists swear up and down that [pills and patches] are the exact same thing with the exact results. But everyone knows that if you go from pills to injections, that's when you really start noticing changes. Everyone more or less prefers the injectables.

Health care workers have an obligation to explain the truth and persuade their patients. This is not a crisis. And 40 mg is a huge dose, the largest there is.

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And to show it's not just the media, but they're taking their approach from the national advocacy organizations, there's this from NBC Out:

I've discussed Hopkins many times. While the school administration should be clear and convincing in its dissociation from Mayer and McHugh, neither of whom works for Hopkins, it is not the authors who are claiming the association. It is the conservative fundamentalist community that is making the claim, and it is up to the LGBT media to undermine that false narrative. It is unfair for HRC to state,

There is no question that the public narrative is that this is a Hopkins study.

The Hopkins trans team today has provided quality care to hundreds of regional trans persons over the past fifteen years, care to which I can personally testify. Why not ask them to comment on the Mayer-McHugh piece?

Each one of these reports, even when based on clear facts, spins off into a world where trans persons are always the victims, are always suffering, and deserve pity, rather than liberty. Individually each is bad enough, but taken together they're enough to drive one either to despair or back into the closet.

Most disappointing to me is the new tack HRC has taken, buying into the learned hopelessness or "Woe is me; the sky is always falling" narrative. After decades of ignoring the trans community, HRC is now ignoring the remarkable progress that has been made to bring us to the point of the more inclusive definition of sex by the federal courts and federal government, as well as the full-throated support by the Department of Justice for the trans community. Even more stunning has been the awakening of the majority of Americans and major players in the business community to have sided with us since Governor McCrory signed HB2 in April.

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The reality I just described cannot be sighted in the following from the HRC press secretary:

McBride noted that in contrast to what is popularly viewed as a year of tremendous acceptance and progress for transgender Americans, the stark reality is that trans people and their allies nationwide are on the defensive. "This year, in particular, trans people have experienced pretty significant and harmful political and legislative attacks."

It's popularly viewed as a year of tremendous acceptance and progress because it has been.

If you are a young trans person, or the parent of one, which interpretation would you rather hear? Which should you be hearing to help develop a sense of self confidence and self-worth?

It's still not easy being trans, and it still takes a major effort, more for some than others. But there has never been a better time in American history to be out as trans (or even closeted as trans). The popular support is amazing, and its remarkable unexpectedness should have the trans population dancing in the streets. Instead we're fed dose after dose of pessimism.

Finally, you really can't have it both ways. The public narrative that this has been a great year for trans persons is deemed to be wrong, but the public narrative that the Mayer-McHugh essay is a product of Hopkins is correct? The "public" is right about the trans community at large, and it is not the "public" that associates McHugh with Hopkins, but the right wing media and legal advocates who feel they have something to gain by lying about it.

Let's continue to welcome the public's growing support, and challenge the lies the right wing spins about us. It's not hard; the Advocate has already published Dr. Dean Hamer's rebuttal, and there will be others.



And a community allowed to "concentrate and find itself" with optimism and hope, as was taught at Pond Farm, will fare better and attain its freedom and equality sooner than one mired in despair.
Political culture is a set of attitudes and practices held by a people that shape their political behavior, and includes moral judgments, beliefs, and ideas about what makes for a good society. It is not the political culture of a group within a national polity that defines it, but rather, all of its members. As such, it is not intellectually honest to attribute the political rise of Donald Trump solely to Republicans and the Republican Party. It is more complicated than that, and as the Trump story continues to unfold, something rather disturbing has been revealed about American political culture, and its voters.

Trump has become a political phenomenon because he has successfully tapped into the beliefs and fears of a lot of Americans, and while the majority tend to ally themselves with the Republican Party, some independents and cross-over democrats are also riding the Trump train. Research by Salon notes that an increased sense of economic peril substantially increases racial resentment among both liberals and Democrats. When the perception of economic peril is at above-average levels, the resentment attitudes of white Democratic partisans become almost indistinguishable from those of Republicans. Additionally, the attitudes of white liberals become indistinguishable from those of ideological conservatives. For that reason, and because of collective disgust with Washington and the status quo, there is reason to believe that Trump may be elected.

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That is what is putting the fear of God into Republicans, and should be doing the same for the Democratic Party. A poll earlier this year by Mercury Analytics found that up to 20 percent of Democrats would in fact vote for Trump in a general election. When Trump talks about economic disenfranchisement, he isn't just speaking to his core constituency (angry, white, blue collar, uneducated voters) who lap up his incendiary rhetoric. He is also resonating with some educated white collar democrats and independents who remain victims of the Great Recession, are equally sick and tired of 'politics as usual', or don't like Hillary or what she represents.

Republicans aren't solely responsible for income inequality in America any more than Democrats are for the country's immigration problem. It has taken two to tango on these, and a variety of other topics, over the course of decades. While the Republicans can rightly be blamed for fanning the flames of bigotry and racism in America this election cycle, and for failing to criticize it (loudly and repeatedly) whenever it appeared among its candidates for local, state and national elections, the Democrats can rightly be blamed for historically encouraging a sense of economic insecurity among blue collar voters on a regular basis.

To be clear, it is America's two-party system that has enabled Trump to rise, and both parties are to blame for failing to quickly and effectively object to the many outrageous things Donald Trump has said throughout the course of this campaign. Democrats sat back and watched gleefully as the Republican candidates slugged it out as if in a school yard sand box during the primaries, and in anticipation of Trump inevitably self-destructing (which of course did not happen). Republicans continue to circle the wagons in defense of Trump, now that he is barreling toward the grand finale, and democrats continue to deflect Hillary's variety of transgressions, when they should both be taking both candidates to task.

This presidential campaign has revealed some disturbing things about America and its voters. First, decades of bashing immigrants and minorities by Republicans has had a cumulative effect on the American psyche, appealing to the worst among voters inclined to be bigoted or racist. When combined with lingering economic insecurity, this has proven to be poisonous. Second, the failure on the part of both Democrats and Republicans to raise their voices and object whenever incendiary rhetoric has arisen has given a green light to demagogues like Trump to enter the fray and step on the gas pedal. Third, both parties have forgotten why their members were sent to Congress, who they represent, and the job they are 'supposed' to be doing. They also jointly own their abysmal failure to reach across party lines and introduce the word 'compromise' into their vocabulary to get things done. Lastly, the lines between Republicans and Democrats are less distinct than they have ever been; Cross-over and independent voters are likely to determine who will prevail in the end.

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Imagine trying to find a way to inject a serious discussion about the shape and future of American education into the current presidential campaign.

Can you say "thankless task"?

But that's not stopping PBS, which is marshaling forces Sept. 12-17 for a series of 11 prime-time programs on the subject. (Photo below from Craft in America: Teachers.)

"There's a need for a larger conversation about education in this country and we just don't see anyone else doing it," says PBS President and CEO Paula Kerger. "We're hoping to focus enough attention that when there are debates, this subject could be swept in."

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Kerger tacitly acknowledges there are hotter topics. None, she says, are more important.

"The future of our country is about us having an informed and engaged citizenry," she says. "Our education system today will also be shaping the workforce of the future."

PBS's week, called Spotlight Education, begins Monday (10 p.m. ET) with the POV special All the Difference, following two Chicago teenagers (above, Krishaun Branch) as they try to defy the statistics and make it to college.

Tuesday's Frontline (9 p.m. ET) features two films, A Subprime Education and The Education of Omarina, which examine the difficulties of for-profit colleges and an innovative program that helped one student navigate the college system.

Wednesday's Nova (9 p.m. ET) looks at different places education could be going in School of the Future (above).

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On Thursday PBS will air Craft in America: Teachers at 8 p.m. ET and Time for School, about five students from other countries trying to get the kind of education Americans often take for granted, at 9 p.m. ET.

As this lineup suggests, PBS is focusing on real-people stories rather than talking-head forums. Kerger also points to an Anna Deavere Smith program on "the repercussions of failed education."

This is a particularly interesting and challenging time in education, Kerger says, "because we're still figuring it out.

"Colleges are looking at a changing way of talking about education. You have students looking for a different experience than just going away to college and getting a degree. Then there are all the online opportunities."

So contemporary education in some ways has become "a work in progress," she says, though she adds that certain "very simple and basic" fundamentals still apply - like the need for encouragement and support at all levels.

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"Kids consistently do better," she says, "if they feel that someone cares about them."

She also says technology hasn't changed many of the fundamental measurements of education, like high school graduation rates - which she notes have quietly been creeping up.

Education has been something PBS has pushed for a long time, Kerger says, noting the success of the PBS Kids programming (above, WordGirl) and the planned launch in January of a 24/7 PBS Kids channel, which will be available both on broadcast and online.

She says PBS is concerned that in an age of exploding technology, "There are still many families that have limited or no Internet access. We want to serve them as well."

PBS works extensively with teachers, Kerger notes, many of whom use PBS material in their classrooms. Toward that end, PBS produces educational content "in shorter forms," so it can be incorporated into classroom lessons.

One of the hardest parts of talking about education, of course, is just getting people to listen, because those who don't have kids in school often don't pay much attention.

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"Education affects everything, including the economy," says Kerger. "We hope our Spotlight can help bring the issue to the public.

"It's not spinach."

There's also one other issue, by the way, whose absence from the current election campaign Kerger doesn't mind at all.

In campaigns as recent as four years ago, public broadcasting itself was a target, with some candidates calling for termination of its federal funding.
At GRAND Magazine, we're on a mission to disrupt thinking about grandparents. The times they have "a-changed" when it comes to the vibrant lives of grandparents, but popular culture has yet to evolve to match the reality. Today's grandparents work and play like no previous generation of grands. We redefine the images of older people while functioning as the glue that solidifies family bonds. GRAND Magazine presents a variety of helpful and entertaining content for today's Boomer and Gen-Xer grandparents with an eye to empowering families to create loving and lasting relationships across the generations. To punctuate our mission we decided to create an award -- GRANDPerson of the Year -- to highlight an individual who exemplifies the characteristics of a stellar human, who just happens to be a grandparent, who works tirelessly to improve lives for families, just as grandparents do every day. We had a lively and spirited discussion about the candidates, but one person kept hovering above the others. She had an almost lifelong body of work devoted to advocacy for children and families. She exhibited a relentless passion for public service. She appeared to be a flawless mother and grandmother. And, then there was this: She was running for president.

The person who fit our profile better than any other is Hillary Clinton.



We're on the cusp of the first potential grandmother/POTUS. Talk about a GRANDPerson! We agreed unanimously, though, that we wouldn't choose Hillary because of her potential presidency, we would choose her for everything else she's done up to this point.



No one else matched Hillary's record. Her work for the rights of children and families spans four decades. It began with an internship during college to study the health needs of migrant workers and continued with her legal work for the Children's Defense Fund, and her co-founding of Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families. Later, as First Lady of the United States, she helped spearhead the creation of the Children's Health Insurance Program. As Senator from New York she was part of a bipartisan effort to secure better healthcare for the members and families of the Reserves and National Guard. Additionally, she introduced bills to assist grandparents and other relatives working as primary caregivers for children. On an international level she stood up repeatedly for the rights of women. As Secretary of State Hillary fought sex trafficking and convinced the UN Security Council to adopt a resolution to stop sexual violence against women and children in conflict zones.



And, she's a "Grandma!" (That's what her two grandchildren call her.)



Yeah, that's right. For all of you who may think being "Grandma" means the end of vivacity and energetic enthusiasm for life, you best think again. These days, "Grandma" is synonymous with "look out world, a force to reckon with is headed your way."



So, with great exuberance and admiration, GRAND Magazine is thrilled to announce the awarding of our inaugural GRANDPerson of the Year Award to Hillary Clinton. We hope you'll join us in saluting her and thanking her for helping all families to live better lives.

If you'd like to read our exclusive interview with Hillary Clinton, you can access the issue totally free here.
BANGKOK -- Thailand is a prime tourist destination, a favorite for pleasure-seekers around the world. But that's not why nearly 10,000 Pakistanis have ended up in Bangkok, most of them living an underground existence in some of the city's poorer neighborhoods.

Pakistan is one of the most dangerous nations for religious minorities. Thailand also is one of the few countries which allow Pakistanis easy entry as tourists. With the United Nations certifying refugees from the lengthy conflict in neighboring Burma, persecuted Pakistanis started arriving four years ago seeking resettlement in the West.

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Alas, the UN offered false hope. The typical refugee waits years just for an interview, the first step to receiving official refugee status. So far, not one has moved on to America or anywhere else. In the meantime, humanitarian groups such as Christian Freedom International are helping the refugees survive in the shadows. CFI President Jim Jacobson argues that the only feasible solution is for the U.S. to admit people who are not only in desperate need, but "who share Americans' values and are America's friends in the fight against terrorism."

Although Pakistan is nominally a U.S. ally, in practice no government other than Saudi Arabia has done more to promote Islamic radicalism and terrorism. Such malicious behavior is merely an outward expression of inner failure.

Pakistan is a very illiberal society. A weak civilian administration faces a dominant military. Islamic radicals battle government forces and assassinate liberal Muslims. Sectarian murderers are publicly supported and applauded.

Religious minorities are at greatest risk, facing persecution and death. Christians are disproportionately targeted by the draconian blasphemy laws, often as retaliation in commercial and personal disputes. The application of these laws is "deeply troubling," noted the State Department in a recent special report. Churches are destroyed; mobs threaten Christians who refuse to convert. At Easter the Pakistan Taliban bombed a children's park frequented by Christians, killing more than 70 people of all faiths.

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In its most recent report on religious liberty, the U.S. Commission in International Religious Freedom concluded: "the Pakistani government continued to perpetrate and tolerate systematic, ongoing, and egregious religious freedom violations." The Commission pointed to discriminatory legislation, violence by non-state actors, forced conversions, government failure to protect likely victims, and a "deep-rooted climate of impunity."

The State Department's most recent report on religious liberty made many of the same criticisms. Islamabad continues to enforce blasphemy laws, discriminate against religious minorities, and include derogatory attacks on non-Muslim faiths in school textbooks, as well as fail to safeguard "minority rights." State also pointed to forced conversions and marriages as well as "violence and abuses committed by armed sectarian groups" which targeted individuals as well as houses of worship.

Last year the group International Christian Concern produced a special feature on Pakistani Christians. Writer William Stark visited multiple locations of persecution and violence against believers. Examples included suicide bombings against churches, Christians burned alive after being accused of blasphemy, police torture of Christians accused of crimes against Muslims, mob attacks on homes and businesses, and assaults on believers after the release of an anti-Muslim movie.

Stark talked to many of the victims, including survivors of bombing attacks. He reported finding "Extreme fear, intense anger and devastating grief." He spoke to women who had been kidnapped, raped, and forced into marriage with Muslim men. This was, he explained, "one of the most frustrating and heartbreaking issues" he discovered in Pakistan. Unfortunately, the authorities do little; at this rate "hundreds more Christian girls and women will be victimized," he warned. He also talked to those who lost family members to sectarian attacks; "Little has been done to prevent these deadly incidents of mob violence sparked by blasphemy accusations."

This is the environment from which Christians currently stuck in Bangkok fled. Sectarian threats and attacks drove them from their homes. In one case a man married a Christian convert from Islam. Her family threatened to kill him--not idle talk in Pakistan--causing the two to seek asylum in Thailand.

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In another case, a minister was approached by Islamic radicals and told to stop preaching or they would murder him and his family. The Christians escaped to Bangkok. A janitor was told to convert to Islam by a police officer. When the Christian refused, the cop threatened the latter and his family. They fled.

Pakistani asylum seekers endure a tenuous existence. While 30-day tourist visas are freely granted, some entering Pakistanis are dunned for bribes by border guards. On arrival they approach the UN, only to receive an appointment set a year or two in the future; the date often is delayed as the appointment approaches. Once their visa expires, the asylum hopefuls are unable to work legally and subject to arrest whenever they leave home. They cannot purchase property and even marriage does not make them citizens.

Some of the refugees mistakenly assumed that the majority-Buddhist nation, which is suffering from a deadly Muslim insurgency, would welcome them. In fact, nationalism is on the rise under military rule and there has been pressure to make Buddhism the national religion. The junta has no sympathy for either foreigners or Christians.

In fact, the Thai authorities stake out neighborhoods and raid apartments where refugees are believed to live. Some officials appear as interested in collecting bribes as enforcing the law. Hundreds of unlucky asylum-seekers have ended up in detention. Even those who avoid arrest, or are released, for bail or bribe, from crowded facilities, live a sharply circumscribed existence. Multiple families share small apartments; work is limited; children receive only informal education. Everyone fears going out to shop or even to seek medical care.

The United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees is supposed to make a designation within 90 days, but some Pakistani Christians end up waiting several years. Being formally recognized by the UN brings some financial assistance, but not legal status. Thailand never ratified the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, so even UN-designees are still considered to be in the country illegally. Earlier this year the military regime began preventing both families and aid agencies from visiting incarcerated Pakistani refugees.

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CFI does its best to help refugees, providing food and sundries. But the group can only assist a limited number of families. Although the refugee flow ebbed after word returned to Pakistan that there was no easy exit from Thailand, those already arrived are essentially trapped. After selling their possessions, they can't return, and only persecution and violence await them anyway. But they see no path forward either.

Jacobson acknowledges that fear of refugees permeates U.S. politics. However, he observes that the number of people involved is small. Giving them a home also would improve U.S.-Thai relations, frayed by the military's seizure of power.

Moreover, people persecuted for their faith are among the best candidates to receive asylum. Christians fleeing persecution in a majority-Muslim nation are about the lowest risk imaginable for terrorism. In fact, Jacobson points out, it would be hard to find a more pro-American group.

Indeed, both major political candidates have reason to support such an effort. Democrat Hillary Clinton is attempting to break into GOP constituencies, of which religious conservatives are among the most important. Republican Donald Trump wants to counteract charges of xenophobia. Taking in oppressed Christian refugees would be in unmistakable signal for both candidates to send.

One normally wouldn't expect to find Pakistani Christians in Bangkok, but such is the state of the world today. The U.S. has learned at great cost that it can't remake foreign societies. However, at little expense Americans can help save a few desperate people seeking to escape the same destructive sectarian forces that rage across the Middle East. The U.S. should do well by doing good.
If you're a teen heading off for your freshman year at college this fall, it may be the first time you will live on your own. In addition to studying and going to class, you may need to learn how to cook, do your own laundry and manage a budget. You may find yourself expanding your social networks and engaging in new behaviors, some of which may be bad for your health. With all the demands for your attention, don't neglect your health. This is particularly important if you need to keep allergies and asthma under control.

Self-management is a vital part of staying healthy. For teens, this means understanding your body's signals, including what elements trigger your allergies or asthma, what makes them worse and how to correctly use your medications. Self-management also means taking medications consistently and knowing who to contact in case of an emergency. You'll need to make your own appointments and pick up prescriptions from the pharmacy. It takes time and practice to get comfortable taking care of your own health needs, so start now to get used to the added responsibility.

You may have been taking a back seat during your allergist visits in the past, but it's important for you to start a more active role. Ideally, you should be the one asking questions and discussing your concerns during visits. There are specific issues that need to be addressed and understood, particularly if any type of medical device -- such as an inhaler or epinephrine auto injector -- is needed. Improper use of devices makes medications less effective. Although never an easy discussion, your allergist is a great person to ask about how intimacy or alcohol may interfere with your health, especially if you have food allergies or asthma.

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Good communication plus preparation eases a lot of anxiety and helps ensure a smooth transition to living on your own. Before you leave, contact school administrators to discuss necessary arrangements for your dorm room, meals or transportation around campus. If you're moving far from home, identify new primary care and specialty physicians -- especially an allergist -- as well as a new pharmacy. Ask your current allergist for a referral. The American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology has an allergist locator that can help you find an allergist in your new town. Prescriptions should be transferred prior to leaving for college, not when medications run out, which inevitably will occur at an inconvenient time. The nearest hospital facility may not be equipped to treat patients with special medical needs, so identify the best facility in case of emergency.

If you have food allergies, you'll need to up your game when heading off to college. Plan to talk to food handlers and ask about ingredients at every meal or snack. You'll also need to carefully read labels on packaged products. It helps if you inform your friends, roommates and resident advisor of your food allergies. It can be hard to manage new social situations, but don't ever knowingly eat foods you're allergic to because you're afraid of standing out. It's your job to educate others about your need to strictly avoid certain foods.

Despite your best efforts, accidents can still occur. Anyone at risk for anaphylaxis needs to have immediate access to epinephrine auto injectors at all times. Anaphylaxis is a severe, life-threatening allergic reaction, and being an adolescent is a big risk factor for severe food allergy reactions, along with peanut or tree nut allergy and coexisting asthma. Almost every fatality from food allergy involves lack of timely administration of epinephrine.

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Epinephrine is the first line and only effective treatment for anaphylaxis and can rapidly reverse all symptoms associated with a severe, life-threatening allergic reaction. Unfortunately, lack of access to epinephrine is common, particularly among adolescents. One survey found adolescents were less likely to carry their auto injector at inconvenient times, including at the gym or because of wearing tight-fitting pants. Figure out a way to keep two doses of epinephrine on hand at all times, and remember to check expiration dates.

If you have food allergies, be aware that impaired judgment from drug or alcohol use increases your risk for accidental ingestion of foods that cause anaphylaxis. There are also risks associated with intimacy and the potential for partners to transfer food allergens through saliva. Discussions surrounding drugs, alcohol and sexual activity are never easy, but you may find your allergist is a great resource for providing straightforward information about these issues.

The transition to living on your own is an important milestone for adolescents. This is a time that should be mostly exciting, although often a little bit scary. With some foresight and preparation, anyone with allergies or asthma can successfully make this transition -- and have a fantastic first year at college.

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David Stukus, MD, FACAAI, is a Fellow of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology and serves on the ACAAI Public Relations Committee. He is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Allergy and Immunology at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. Dr. Stukus' interests lie in dispelling commonly held misconceptions surrounding allergic conditions and dissemination of best practices to health care providers. You can find him on Twitter @AllergyKidsDoc.
Asia Ramazan Antar, a fearless 19-year-old Kurdish woman fighter was killed in Syria fighting ISIS. Many brave Kurdish fighters, men and women, are being killed these days in the slaughter fields of Syria and Iraq, being the victims of Assad's army, the Turkish army, ISIS, Russian airstrikes, but also Western, chiefly American, betrayal. So, why any mention of Asia? What makes her such a special person, whose death is widely reported? Is it because she won the nickname of "the Kurdish Angelina Jolie," due to her physical resemblance to the Hollywood superstar? Well, what a question... can anyone think of any reason, other than that, for the posthumous fame of the young brave Kurdish youngster? The truth is, that there are many reasons why she and her fellow martyrs deserve much bigger publicity than what they get.

Some demographic and historic context is necessary here; the Kurds are the largest single ethnic group in the Middle East NOT to have their independence. Numbering over 30 million people, carved between the countries of Iran, Turkey, Iraq and Syria, they have an obvious geopolitical problem. The Kurds say, that they "have no better friend than the mountains," but this was relevant in the past, when the mountains provided a natural shelter to the persecuted ethnic and religious minorities of the Middle East. Not anymore in the 21st Century, and so during most of the previous century. Their legitimate claim for independent nationhood was already recognized in the 14 points of President Woodrow Wilson, but since then, their political history is one of continuous fighting to realize their rights, coupled with on-going history of being a pawn in a big game of regional and super-powers, a game which leaves them always in the sidelines, bleeding, bitter, but never abandoning their hope to have independence. They were betrayed with the establishment of Iraq in 1920 by Britain as a Sunni-Arab dominated state. They were betrayed in 1946, a year after the Kurdish Republic of Mahabad was established in Iran's Kurdistan. They were betrayed in 1975, when the Shah of Iran and the CIA assistance to their revolt against Saddam Hussein regime was abruptly terminated when the Shah and Saddam signed the Shat Al Arab Agreement, which was five years later violated by Saddam with his invasion of Iran. They were betrayed again in the early months of 1991, following the end of the Gulf war, when Saddam vented his bloody revenge against them, much the same as he did in March 1988, when 6,000 Kurdish civilians were killed in a gas attack in Halabja. They are being betrayed again these days, when the so-called Turkish anti-ISIS attack in Northern Syria, is aimed, in the first place, against the Kurds in this part of former Syria, due to the Turkish desire to establish Cordon Sanitaire, a security zone to separate between the Kurds of Syria and Turkey. The Turks enjoy American support, and here is where the problem is.

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For many months we were bombarded with the almost universally accepted mantra used by Americans of both sides of the political spectrum "help the Kurds, they are our natural allies, they are brave, they have the boots on the ground which we do not want to have in the fight against ISIS." The last we heard these words was in the Town Hall forum just the other day. So they said. In Arabic it is called Kalam Fadi[empty words], but in the moment of truth, the Kurds were told bluntly by Secretary Kerry to abide by the Turkish demand not to cross the Euphrates. The Kurds do not like it, why will they? They are reacting, but not much is being reported about that. Few days ago Kurdish leaders started a hunger strike in Turkey, their brothers fight in Syria, and the head of the Kurdish region in Iraq, Masud Barazani, considers the option of declaring referendum leading to complete separation from Iraq and independence. All these developments are not necessarily connected, as the Kurds have a long history of internal struggles, but they are clearly indicating, that the Kurdish situation in the Middle East is a ticking bomb waiting to explode.

Here is what can be done to detonate this potential bomb and bring justice to a persecuted nation.

Turkey should stop the attacks on Kurds in Northern Syria, and get into serious talks with the Kurds about improving the situation in South East Turkey. This is as much a Turkish interest, as it is a Kurdish one. ISIS is on its way to a defeat, but a defeat to many millions of freedom-hungry Kurds is another matter altogether.The Kurds of Iraq and Syria should be allowed to hold free, democratic referendums and if the results will be a vote for complete independence, then so be it. Iran should stop its repression of 6 million Kurds, and the Kurdish issue should become part of the agenda in any discussion about violation of human rights in the Islamic Republic. The U.S. should be helpful in attaining all these goals. The Kurds should not be treated only as the brave allies to be thrown to the battle against ISIS, but also as the political allies, whose national demands should be part of any fundamental solution to the problems of Iraq and Syria.

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I felt a pang of anxiety as I left Venice this morning, in the midst of the boats' rush hour traffic. It was a strange feeling, like knowing that this kind of event, this combination of great films, magnificent interviews and wonderful meetings will never happen again. And perhaps that's the magic of the Venice Film Festival, this idea that the same assortment -- for lack of a better word -- of projects, filmmakers and premieres will never be quite like this again. It's a cinematic Ship of Theseus conundrum in reverse, perhaps, torn down and rebuilt at the next festival, in the next city, but is ever quite the same again? As the Italian song goes, "I think that a day like this will never ever come back..."

During my last day in Venice, I watched four films, three features and a short.

In the early morning hours, I tore myself away from my ideally located hotel, the idyllic Hotel Quattro Fontane, to watch Pablo Larrain's Jackie starring Natalie Portman, in the main Competition program. Part of me wanted to watch it, another part of me didn't. Do we need another film about the Kennedys I thought. What more can be explored since we have basically seen it all?

But Jackie did something to me, something completely unexpected. It moved me, deeply. I cried more than once, thankfully sitting next to a well-respected critic friend who did the same, and even pulled out the tissues. Portman channels Jackie O. in a strange way, the human way. We've all seen the public Jackie, the grieving widow, the distraught mother, the timeless fashion icon. And yet, this side, the strong woman side, the side so sure of herself in a time of personal and national tragedy to be able to set aside her own grief and regrets and serve the United States as a mother to the nation, this was the Jackie that clearly broke my heart.

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Then it was the turn of White Sun, a film by Nepalese director Deepak Rauniyar screening in the Orizzonti section. I have to say, this year Orizzonti's line-up has been so deliciously full of wonderful works that I pity the jury that will have to choose just one best film.

White Sun is a road movie, of sorts. It begins with the death of the patriarch of a family, a man of considerable weight, and follows the corpse's voyage down the mountain accompanied by his son and two spellbinding children. The film is set in the aftermath of the civil war that raged on in Nepal and finally came to an "official" end, or did it, once the new constitution was drawn in 2015. Family dynamics, caste constrictions and the various reasons for the civil war are explored in Rauniyar's film, who perfectly balances everything until a wonderfully written ending.

A late afternoon screening of Russian filmmaker Andrei Konchalovsky's Paradise turned out to be for me an adventure into discoveries. Discovery of an alternate way to tell a story, discovery of a master storyteller whom I luckily got to meet and discuss the film with the following day, and a re-examination of the justifications for evil. It's always interesting to me when a filmmaker can write a likable villain because those characters help us redefine what seems incomprehensible around us at times. In a moment in history when it's important to get to the root of the problem, by looking to the past to understand the future that surely awaits us, Paradise seems like the perfect film to comprehend it all.

And Konchalovsky's respect for his audience is palpable, from his use of what he called "the obvious choice" of black and white to tell the story of the Holocaust, to his choice of actors, even the decision to call the film Paradise. You'll have to watch it to understand just why and stay tuned for an upcoming interview.

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Finally, as my last film this time around, I watched on my computer a short film, Good Luck, Orlo! by Slovanian filmmaker Sara Kern. The reason this gem fell onto my already full plate was thanks to its producer Rok Bicek someone whose wonderful work has been on my radar since his groundbreaking Class Enemy which incidentally also premiered in Venice in 2013. If Bicek chose to produce this film, I knew there would be a wondrous message awaiting me within it. And there was.

As Vienna based producer Angelo D'Agostino told me at the afterparty, "a child does not play because he is young; he is young because he needs to play," and his quote applies to Good Luck, Orlo! so perfectly I had to include it here. Kern tells a story, within the 14 minutes of her film, that lets us look at the world through the eyes of a child. And explains the simplicity of that POV, where if something is missing and a replacement is needed, a child will not think twice about grabbing it, never thinking of the consequences. While in world diplomacy we have seen the terrifying consequences of that behavior -- perhaps this morning on CNN the announcement of North Korea's nuclear tests is the perfect example -- it would sometimes simplify our personal relationships to behave more like kids.

So, as I leave Venice and my heart behind as well, inside that tiny room on the top floor of Quattro Fontane, the hotel where everyone made me feel like a queen, a daughter, a friend, a respected professional and most importantly so incredibly comfortable, I reflect on a festival that filled my heart and will inhabit my dreams for months to come. And I thank everyone who made it possible, from the press attaches of the films who organized those impossible to get interviews with mega talents, to the organization of a festival that is always available and ever kind and last, but not least, the police and armed forces that kept us safe from the world infringing on our cinematic magic.
During the year of grace 2013, I worked as a Swedish for immigrants language teacher in the outskirts of my hometown Stockholm. Sweden is statistically multicultural, with roughly one-fifth of the population being born abroad or with both parents being born abroad. As a society though, it leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to integration. The municipality where I was working, still has Sweden's second highest immigrant population per capita at nearly 40%. When I met one student on the metro and asked if he enjoyed living there, his reply was "Nah. Norsborg, Afghanistan. Same thing."

Ironically, meeting native Swedes is a common difficulty among those who move to Sweden. Besides offering insights like this, the students invited me to dinners and birthday parties. The way I was included in their cultures, that was how I wished more people got included into the Swedish society.



So, the idea of United Invitations (in Swedish it's Invitationsdepartementet) really came from them. It's an initiative where immigrants who study Swedish are invited to the homes of native Swedes for dinner, or vice versa. A dinner that is free of charge for the guest, served at home and takes place with no further obligations then to meet and eat this one time. If you become friends - that's great, and around 25% of participants do. But we also believe that anyone is nice enough to have dinner with, at least once.

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After one of the initial dinners, a guest from Pakistan told me that this was the first time during his two years in Sweden that he had been invited to a native's house for dinner. I remember finding that remarkable. Since then I've heard of the first invitations in seven, nine, eleven years. A woman from Eritrea, who for the first time after 20 years had dinner at a Swedish couple's home, asked if someone were paying them to do this. The answer is no, as no one pays or gets paid to participate and the host cooks the food at their own expense.

The idea of sharing food is ancient and anyone can start their own chapter. What began with a simple invitation handed out in a few classes, eventually grew into initiatives in 44 locations in Sweden and another thirty something around Europe. In Stockholm we had 200 dinners the first year, three times as many the following year, and another 600 already this year. And yet a city of nearly a million inhabitants, so much more can be done.

I am fully aware of the larger challenges facing the Swedish society as a whole, with lack of housing, access to labour markets and polarized political views. But when it comes to integration - have we even tried, if we haven't even shared meal?
Matt Lauer interviews Hillary Clinton  NBC Screenshot photos

NBC NEWS' MATT LAUER is taking heat from some journalists and political partisans for his performance as moderator of NBC/MSNBC's one-hour "Commander-in-Chief Forum" with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump on Wednesday night.

"Too soft on Trump!" say those who think Lauer spent too few of his 24 minutes with Trump trying to pin him down on specifics  as if Trump were suddenly going to start filling his empty suit with substance.

Lauer's critics were particularly offended that he didn't call out Trump when he falsely claimed  for about the 10,000th time  that he never supported the Iraq war. Never mind that this particular claim has been exposed as a lie 9,999 times, including by a 2002 audio recording of Trump saying he favored invading. Trump keeps repeating the lie anyway.

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More relevant to the position Lauer was in on Wednesday's live program is that just moments before Trump's separate segment began, Clinton mentioned during her segment that her opponent always lies about having opposed the Iraq war. She, on the other hand, has admitted her mistake as a senator in 2002 voting to authorize military force in Iraq. Sure enough, after his segment got going, Trump called attention to Clinton's criticism and then lied about Iraq again. Call it 10,001. Was Lauer supposed to echo Clinton's comment and create the impression that he and Clinton were working together to undermine Trump  and lose even more of his fast dwindling minutes in the process?

"Too hard on Clinton!" say those who didn't like Lauer urging Clinton to shorten her answers and beating the e-mail controversy to death.

Let's be honest: Clinton never met a long answer she didn't like, maybe because she knows the nuts and bolts of governance and policy so well and understands, unlike Trump, that details actually matter. But 24 minutes of airtime might as well be a flash of lightning; Lauer was working against a relentless and utterly unforgiving clock.

As for the e-mail questions, if Lauer had succeeded in beating the issue to death, an awful lot of people would've thanked him. To Clinton supporters, its zombie-like refusal to die continues to fuel intense anxiety and even doubt. Of course, to fervent anti-Clinton fantasists, it's the gift that keeps on giving.

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CLINTON'S E-MAIL SYSTEM

For her most cranked-up opponents, no scenario involving Clinton is too far-fetched to consider. Thus, it was Clinton the control freak who arrogantly dismissed as "inconvenient" the in-house computer systems at the State Department when she became Secretary of State in 2009. Instead, she made hirelings create a personal e-mail system for her, built around a computer server stashed in the basement of her house in Chappaqua, N.Y. where she could control what it did and didn't do. And because Clinton the elite cares only about personal power and despises America and true Americans, she didn't bother with securing the classified material that filled her unclassified e-mail system.

From that mindset, it's only a tiny stretch to believe that cyber thieves tracked down and cracked open Clinton's unprotected system, snagged more than 250,000 classified State Department cables and made them public, much to the delight of America's adversaries.

Except that's not even close to true.

Those classified State Department cables certainly were stolen and published while Clinton was Secretary, but it had nothing to do with her or her e-mail system. The documents were snatched in 2010 from a Department of Defense database intended to improve the sharing of security information among government agencies after 9/11.

Who took them? A distressed and disgruntled Army private then known as Bradley Manning (now Chelsea Manning, a transgender woman) serving as an intelligence analyst. He used his security clearance to gain access to the database, copied the documents to a small flash drive and provided the information to WikiLeaks. Chelsea Manning was court-martialed, convicted and sentenced to 35 years at the military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Ks.

But surely Clinton's unauthorized basement server provided the cyber highway that invaders took into the State Department's unclassified computer system, which they then infected with viruses. The Wall Street Journal reported the intrusion was so devastating that some intruders were still rummaging around in the system three months later.

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That's also part fiction.

The cyber attack happened, all right, and it was devastating, as the Journal reported. But this, too, was unrelated to Clinton or her personal e-mail system. The invasion, most likely by Russians, started long before Clinton took over at State and was part of a broader assault that also got into an unclassified system in the Executive Office of the President at the White House. The hack was discovered in the fall of 2014, more than a year after Clinton and her staff had left the State Department and decommissioned her personal system's Internet domain: clintonemail.com.

Ironically, if Clinton had been using State's supposedly more secure system during her tenure, as her critics say she should have been, her e-mails certainly would have been compromised, classified information would have been lost and her worst fears about preserving the privacy of personal, non-work-related communications would have been realized.

And the State Department is far from alone among government entities that have been the victim of cyber mischief and worse. In the spring of 2015, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management discovered that its "secure" computer system had been penetrated, exposing the personal information of 22 million people, including highly sensitive applications for security clearances. The year before, a cyber intrusion at the U.S. Postal Service affected 800,000 employees and three million customers. And in a 2008 breach at the U.S. Central Command  predating not only Clinton but the entire Obama administration  attackers used a digital worm that spread through military computers and took 14 months to clean out.

HACKING CLINTON'S E-MAIL SYSTEM?

According to a summary of a recently completed FBI investigation into Clinton's use of her personal e-mail system, State Department policies at the time she became Secretary put "no restriction on the use of personal email accounts for official business." But it was discouraged, both for security reasons and because it complicated the retention of government records.



So in this vulnerable, risky real world, how many times was Clinton's private e-mail system hacked? How much damage did Clinton and her State Department staff do to U.S. security interests and the safety of intelligence personnel by being "extremely careless," as FBI Director James Comey has put it, in handling classified information through her personal unclassified system?

So far as FBI investigators have been able to tell, the short answers to those questions are that Clinton's system was never hacked, and that Clinton's handling of classified e-mails through her unclassified system did not damage U.S. interests or jeopardize any intelligence operatives. It's worth noting that the FBI's cyber forensics team is the only group of people who have physically and digitally scrutinized the e-mail issue from the perspective of detached, trained professionals, as opposed to being political partisans engaged in speculation or even distortion for political gain.

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Longer answers:

"We did not find direct evidence that Secretary Clinton's personal e-mail domain, in its various configurations since 2008, was successfully hacked," Comey said on July 5, announcing the results of a year-long criminal investigation into Clinton's personal e-mail system and her related handling of classified information. Comey restated that conclusion on July 7 in response to questioning during an interminable appearance before a so-called emergency session of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee (4 1/2 hours without a break).

Comey took care to add cautionary qualifiers. He said it still was possible that Clinton's system had been hacked by someone or some organization that was clever enough to completely cover its tracks. He also pointed out that some system-related equipment used over the four years of Clinton's tenure had not been available for examination. It had been used until it no longer could be maintained in working order and then was replaced and either recycled or destroyed. Even so, FBI's forensic examiners have proved over time to be tenacious and resourceful enough in other investigations to detect and piece together infinitesimal digital fragments of evidence of intrusions. They apparently found no such indicators in Clinton's system.

HANDLING CLASSIFIED INFORMATION

On September 2, the FBI released a dense, partially redacted 58-page summary of its Clinton investigation. The summary supplemented Comey's announcement in July that he and his investigative team had found insufficient evidence of willful wrongdoing to justify prosecuting Clinton or any senior members of her State Department team.

FBI agents had closely examined some 47,500 e-mails with which Clinton had contact while she was Secretary of State: 30,000 work-related e-mails that Clinton had supplied in response to a State Department request and another 17,500 that FBI investigators had recovered from recipients or through forensic retrieval and reconstruction. Of the 47,500, the FBI determined that 303  .64 percent of the total reviewed  contained at least some classified material when they were sent or received.

Investigators also found, however, that when Clinton and members of her senior staff were handling these 303 e-mails, none of them bore the header and footer markings that are supposed to identify U.S. documents containing classified information. There were three e-mails  .0064 percent of the total  with only a "(c)" mark next to at least one paragraph, but nothing on the document explaining the symbol's significance. (It means "Confidential," the lowest category of classified material.)

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When questioned by FBI agents about several specific e-mails she sent and received that were deemed to have contained at least some classified information at the time, Clinton said several times that she trusted that the people with whom she corresponded, including "experienced foreign service professionals" in her department, knew to not send classified material on an unclassified system. And since the e-mails were not marked as classified, she had no reason to conclude they were, even if the subject matter was sensitive and the wording carefully constructed.

Comey said that he and the experienced team of agents who questioned Clinton concluded that she answered all their questions truthfully.

In his July announcement, Comey pointed out that "even if information is not marked 'classified' in an e-mail, participants who know or should know that the subject matter is classified are still obligated to protect it." He did not explain, however, on what basis people who do not know that specific subject matter is classified, whether they should or not, could act to protect it as such.

Absent that knowledge, absent classified markings and knowing the expertise of the experienced people with whom she was corresponding, it made perfect sense for Clinton to believe  and to state publicly, as she did many times  that she did not send or receive e-mails through her unclassified system that contained classified information.

It turned out she was wrong about that. But life and common sense teaches us that there's a difference between being wrong and not knowing it and knowing what you're saying is wrong and saying it anyway. The former is simply a mistake. The latter is a lie.

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Some Republicans are ignoring this elemental distinction when it comes to Clinton. They continue to stridently and repeatedly accuse her not of being mistaken about the classified e-mails but of having lied about them.

It's possible they truly believe that, but the FBI investigation strongly suggests they are mistaken.

It's also possible that they know what they're saying is wrong. But they're saying it anyway.
by Captain Alan W. Price, Delta Air Lines Retired

Most people remember the tragedy that occurred on September 11, 2001. For me, however, it is the day after "911" that I recall most vividly.

Shortly after dawn on the 12th of September, I entered the Delta Air Lines Chief Pilot office in Atlanta. I had been Chief Pilot of the world's largest pilot base for a total of 42 days. When "911" occurred, I had barely gotten my bearings in the new position. That morning, the day after, it was back to first steps: How would we restart our airline and deal with a dramatically new operating environment?

My staff had not yet arrived, and all flights were grounded. There were no pilots or support personnel and I was alone in the quiet. Sitting at my desk, I felt compelled to take some action, to do something --so I took a "walk-about". Exiting my office, I headed west at ramp level toward T Concourse, turned north in the alleyway mid-point between concourses T and A, circumnavigated the end of A Concourse, turned south midway between concourses A and B, and reentered my office.

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In normal times, this walk would have been impossible, but these were not normal times. This was a unique and surreal situation. Literally hundreds of aircraft were parked at every gate, at every conceivable angle - sadly, they were mostly Delta aircraft. There were no sounds - no jet engines, no bag tugs, nothing to disrupt the absolute stillness. There were no smells. No jet fumes, no vehicle exhaust - nothing. I was the only living soul at the world's busiest airport. No pilots, no flight attendants, no mechanics, no ramp personnel and no passengers.

I was a small figure moving among a world of giants - those massive silver aircraft were unmanned and unmoving. Listening to my footfalls on the concrete, I realized I was alone in the world's largest aviation museum. Airplanes are meant to fly. Stillness here was not a good thing.

In the midst of this tragedy, however, I felt a renewed confidence in our ability to recover. Physically seeing and sensing these aircraft, I was reminded of what we were capable of - a greatness too often taken for granted. I now had a certainty that we would rebuild - even while lacking the finer details as to how this would happen.

We faced the greatest challenge of our lifetime, and an opportunity, borne out of crisis, to remake our culture. Business as usual was simply not possible: surviving would require that we see the world differently; thriving would require a significantly higher level of teamwork.

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For the previous five years, I had led and taught Delta's New Captain Leadership program, "In Command", where we focused upon the challenges of being a Delta captain. Now, in this unique moment in time, I recognized the opportunity to apply and leverage these essential leadership skills in a new and innovative way.

Communicate to Build Trust: During "In Command" we stressed effective communication as the cornerstone of great teamwork. Now, it would become our lifeline in creating innovative new ways to converse with our pilots and all those who supported Flight Operations. Our greatest task was to serve as a conduit between our pilot group and senior leadership, ensuring each knew with certainty what the other was thinking; what challenges they were facing. Mutual reliance created mutual trust and respect - new cultural norms borne out of necessity.

Bring Certainty to Decision-making: Effective decision-making is an essential leadership skill - all else either supports an environment that makes highly effective decisions possible or abets how they are implemented. Using known and proven concepts in a chaotic and unknown environment brings a sense of certainty to decision making. All may not work out as expected, but making decisions based upon proven principles is an essential first step.

Execute Core Values: In crisis, a temptation exists to address the urgent before the important. The first priority is to formulate a standardized decision-guideline based upon organizational core values. Safety first, passenger comfort next, public relations, and schedule and economy afterward - Delta's core values. These are essential decisional guidelines, even more critical in the midst of uncertainty.

While seeking to restart the airline, we made a special effort to pause and remember those who were lost on September 11th. So many of these were our fellow pilots, employees, and passengers along with the many lost in the Towers, at the Pentagon, and in a lonely field in Pennsylvania. It was never their intention to be martyred when they arose that morning, but in their loss we were able to gain a new appreciation of the beliefs that sustain us.

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No act of terrorism can be allowed to foreclose our way of life, nor force us to forsake our values. Almost 3,000 of our fellow Americans left us that day, but in their loss we knew once again the value of community, of valuing each other as individuals, and of accomplishments that exceed what we imagine is possible.

Most of all, "911" taught us that any crisis, no matter how extreme or severe, is truly an opportunity to remake that which was old into that which is new. If we believe in our future, great things can come from terrible circumstances.

In future blogs, we'll expand on these concepts about leadership for a time of crisis.


From Futurama "The Farnsworth Paradox" written by Bill Odenkirk

As we endure this excruciating election cycle, in which the most vile and regressive impulses in our culture have found a champion, it is harder than ever to imagine constructive dialogue across partisan and ideological lines. Naturally, those of us who long for such dialogue are always on the lookout for insights and practical tools. But we need to be vigilant. It is far too easy, especially on social media, to be seduced by the comforting notion that our ideological opponents are simply irrational or ignorant.

I rarely take those online personality tests where you answer a bunch of odd questions in order to learn something inane about yourself, like which "Scooby-Doo" character or "Golden Girl" you are. But, nudged by my sister and my own curiosity, I took one that purports to tell you whether you have the brain of a liberal or a conservative. The quiz is based on a 2014 study that found, according to the press release, "the way a person's brain responds to a single disgusting image is enough to reliably predict whether he or she identifies politically as liberal or conservative." Some clever person then designed a quiz that asks you how grossed out you are by various things, such as maggots or puke, and uses your answers predict your brain's politics -- the stronger your self-reported disgust, the more conservative your brain supposedly is.

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I'm not actually going to comment on the quiz, other than to note that it embodies all the rigor and reliability we've come to expect from online personality tests. I will, instead, focus on the original study, which, despite being published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, has serious problems of its own.

The biggest problem with the study is its apparent assumption that conservative ideology is an ahistorical universal. It is as if conservatives in every age, in every society, share the U.S. conservative movement's opposition to environmental regulations, same-sex marriage, and organized labor, and its unwavering support for personal gun rights and national defense. The absurdity of this, I hope, is self-evident.

Another, more subtle problem is what the study implies about causality. Though never explicitly saying that disgust-sensitivity causes people to be conservative, it seems to welcome that inference. According to the press release, the study shows that, "political ideologies ... have deep connections to the way our bodies respond to threats of contamination." Of course, everyone knows that correlation does not equal causation. And yet everyone forgets this all the time. Moreover, what makes the study interesting, the reason it was widely discussed in the press and blogosphere, is precisely because of what it seems to suggest about causality.

Had the authors consulted political historians, they might have learned other ways to think about the causal relation between disgust-sensitivity and politics. They might have discovered that conservative ideology in the U.S. is a product of a deliberate political strategy that exploits contamination anxiety for its own purposes. As Ian Haney Lopez and Thomas Frank document in their respective books, Dog Whistle Politics and What's the Matter with Kansas, the politics of race, gender, and religion have been used for decades to attract those who might not otherwise support the agenda of the 1%. In the 1960s, political strategists began, intentionally but implicitly, to associate crime and welfare with black people and to equate the weakening of straight male hegemony with moral decline. The main target of this strategy is aging white voters, of course, and its primary emotional weapons are fear and disgust.

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Unfortunately, the study completely ignores the role of demographics other than sex. An earlier study, which at least recognized the significance of geography, made the obvious observation that "a resident of Utah is far more likely to be conservative than a resident of Massachusetts, but it seems unlikely that Utah residents are dramatically more disgust-sensitive than Massachusetts residents." Still, oddly, neither study mentions race, despite the fact that, in every presidential election since 1952, the Republican candidate has received the majority of the white vote (with the possible exception of 1996). It seems unlikely that white people are just more disgust-sensitive.

So I'm wondering who made up the (rather small) sample of 83 volunteers in the 2014 study. What were their class backgrounds? How much formal educational did they have? Was everyone white? It seems relevant to note that a recent meta-analysis of studies has shown that white undergraduate students in the U.S. make up the vast majority of all research subjects in the behavioral sciences. Since the authors of the present study mention nothing about race, class, or education, I can only assume they didn't give them much thought. This is sort of shocking in a study about political attitudes.

The press release states, rather optimistically, "perhaps the new findings can help us find a way to a less-polarized political future." I am definitely in favor of less polarization, but I fail to see how focusing on the irrational emotions that characterize only one pole of the polarity will accomplish this. The study purports to show that political ideology is influenced by emotions (does anyone still doubt this?), but the implicit message of this entire line of research on disgust-sensitivity is that conservatives are just too squeamish. This might be an interesting finding, but what about the emotions associated with liberal/left politics? Are we to conclude that liberalism is just the result of a lack of squeamishness?

I do not doubt that many of us liberals are reassured by studies that explain what's wrong with conservatives. But encouraging liberals to feel satisfied about our relative rationality does not seem like a very promising starting point for constructive political dialogue. Moreover, it seems profoundly naive to imagine that neuroscience is going to get us out of the political mess we're in.
The art of photography has improved itself a lot over the years. Today, as we are well-seated into the 21st century, anyone who knows how to turn on a computer can learn to manipulate images with little or no effort. Thanks to tools like Photoshop CC for graphics and iMovie for videos, graphic designing has developed into a rich and varied form of artistic splendor, one that has grown into a corporate industry that employs millions of artists and transacts in billions of dollars. However, contrary to the popular misconception, the creative arts of photo manipulation and graphic designing began well before the vast and wonderful software from Adobe ever came into the picture.



Photo manipulation and graphic designing began well before the vast and wonderful software from Adobe ever came into the picture.



One of the earliest known acts of photographic manipulation was performed in circa 1856 by Gustave Le Gray, when he simply merged two photographs, one of the sky and the other of the sea, by joining them at the horizon. While this may seem like a rather simple affair today, it was considerably complicated back in the days when you needed to have access to an entire dark room in order to even get your photography developed. While the act was quite an achievement, it was far from perfect, as the greyscaled photograph still showed visible differences in exposure between the sky and the sea, making the manipulation seem awkwardly detectable. But it was a start.

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A start to what would seem like several centuries of hard work put in to improve and enhance the effects of photography as an art. Once made available for public use, photo manipulation came to be used quite widely by artists large and small. The simplest trick that most photographers perfected in the early days was the use of double exposure to merge different negatives into one and give the photograph a touch of humor. The alteration was obvious and therefore somewhat funny, giving birth to popular stereotypes such as the two-headed man and the so-called art of "spirit photography". While this was all pretty basic by today's standards, the speed with which this new technique seemed to gain popularity was worth noting. Photo manipulation soon became a widely used technique when it came to architectural mapping, concept design, advertising and plain photography. The commercial sector made a fortune out of this technology, giving attractive looks to various products in advertisements and commercials.

The idea of using photo manipulation and graphic designing in order to tell stories through "narrative images" gained acceptance in the early 1900s, when it came to be adapted by artists like Henry Robinson and patronized by critics such as the Queen herself. Instead of being used merely as a tool to generate laughter or perfect product images, graphic manipulation was now being used as a medium of storytelling and narration. This was a leap into the next generation of what we understand today by the terms "graphic designing"and "concept art".

Of course, the art was still quite inconvenient and overtly expensive, requiring access to such things as a dark room and a host of physical tools such as reels of negatives and fixer liquids. With the introduction of fully-functioning computers in the '50s, the practice of digital photography started to gain prominence. Instead of going through the old and tedious procedure of photo development through the use of negatives, images were now developed quite easily through the digital media.

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The first version of Photoshop was released in the later half of the 1980s, and became the very first image processing software to ever lay foot in the genre of photography. The earliest versions were actually pretty basic, far from what we have today. The only tools available included some basic filters and image adjustments, and no layer support whatsoever. However, they still offered considerable leeway when compared to the kind of traditional photo development that took place in the dark rooms.

Once released, the development of Photoshop was pretty steadfast, with new improvements, tools and filters arriving every new version. The interface transformed from old and clunky to elegant and stylized, the tools became more and more perfect in what they did, the effects became smoother, the transitions became more natural, several new features, including layer management, were introduced.



While image manipulation remained an art for the selected few even a few years ago, this software made it possible for anyone.

The effect this revolutionary tool had on society was pretty clear. For the first time ever, something so robust and convenient had been made accessible to the general public. People flocked to it like sheep. While image manipulation remained an art for the selected few even a few years ago, this software made it possible for anyone to take up arms and become an expert in photography. At first, there was an explosion of interest and enthusiasm. People were simply awestruck by what this tool could do. Before awareness increased on its many capabilities, it became widely popular as a tool used to confound the common populace with fake effects and filters. A man who had never set foot beyond his small town in Texas began telling stories of visiting the Pyramids of Egypt, and this was merely the start. Soon enough, people realized that Photoshop could be used to manipulate any kind of graphic content to make the impossible seem possible. Eventually, the word Photoshop became almost synonymous with all things fake and modified, pictures, places and even people. When a piece of software managed to secure a position in the Oxford Dictionary, we knew this was going to be an epic journey.

Fast forward to the year 2016. The latest version of Adobe Photoshop has been rebranded as Photoshop CC 2015.5, and offers a host of tool designed for web designers, photo manipulators, concept artists, graphic designers and so forth. With a mixture of highly perfected versions of common photo editing tools such as crop, lasso, paintbrush and quick select, a bunch of high profile visual effects and filters and a host of freemium add-ons to choose from, Photoshop CC, along with its brother Adobe Lightroom, pretty much dominates the world of advanced graphic designing for experts. Priced at a reasonable $9.99/month, it is the most widely used image processing tool today, followed closely by competitors such as PhotoDirector by Cyberlink and Corel Paintshop Pro.

While reviewing the latest version of Photoshop CC for this piece, I couldn't help but appreciate the beautifully designed interface and the amazingly vast capabilities that this software is famous for. It is a magnificent beast, to be honest. With a nice assortment of image editing tools and a relatively smaller but expandable array of filters and effects, Photoshop is no doubt the best choice when it comes to choosing a fully functional graphic-designing suite. What it still isn't, however, is simple. This is where online tools like Picmonkey and applications such as PicsArt and Fotor still have the edge. They may not be anywhere near as robust as the mogul, but they are free, easy-to-use and very accessible, which makes them the go-to choice for amateur designers and photographers alike. If, however, you are a professional looking to derive actual monetary compensation for your work, a subscription with Adobe Creative Cloud couldn't possibly be bad investment. It will take you a certain amount of time to become privy with all the features, a little less if you decide to do a professional course. But once you're ready, the world is your oyster and the sky's the limit as to what you can do with Adobe Photoshop.



Not every effect [Photoshop] has had on the community has been a good one. But was there ever a great achievement made without any sacrifices?



Considering the fact that it started out as nothing but an indie startup software to enhance your digital images, Photoshop has grown to impact the community in quite a huge way. True, not every effect it has had on the community has been a good one, given that creating fake images is now a lot easier. But was there ever a great achievement made without any sacrifices? Take the Internet for example.

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Immigration reform activists protest with a sign reading 'Reform Not Raids.'

In the past few weeks, Donald Trump's zig-zags on his immigration positions have been dizzying for the public. Because of his unconventional presidential campaign style, he has managed, thus far, to avoid the usual scrutiny and analysis that all candidates normally face. For us in the Latino and immigrant community, his speech in Arizona represents more of the same as we have directly felt the impact of his words for over a year.

With the election nearing, it is about time to look beyond the rhetoric and unravel the truth behind his declarations. In particular, now that Trump has reaffirmed his extreme nativist position on immigration, we have to examine seriously and thoroughly his "10-point plan." Correlating his statements with reality takes a concerted effort, so let us tackle his points one-by-one.

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Before delving into each point, it is important to highlight the overall contribution of immigrants to this country. In fact, studies have shown that immigrants contribute over $700 billion to the U.S. economy each year. In 2011, it amounted to $743 billion in total wage, salary, and business proprietor income. In addition, according to the Brookings Institute, immigrants are 30 percent more likely to start a small business and three times more likely to file a patent.

Furthermore, contrary to Trump's assertions and portrayals of immigrants, both documented and undocumented as criminals, there is ample evidence that demonstrates otherwise. In fact, according to the New Yorker's Eyal Press in his recent article, studies by Harvard sociologist, Robert Sampson, have shown that incidences of crime decrease in neighborhoods with an influx of immigrants. These studies have reported that immigrants contribute to the revitalization of neighborhoods, thereby advancing economic growth and development. Also, immigrant communities are marked by their drive to improve the wellbeing of their families with immigrants focused on economic advancement and educational achievements for their children.

With this context in mind, let us explore the Trump plan.

1. Complete the border wall.

Building a wall in the fashion that Donald Trump envisions along the entire 1,989 miles of the U.S.-Mexican border is not only costly but also highly unrealistic. The Washington Post estimated the cost of an actual physical barrier across the border at more than $25 billion. And, as the BBC reported in its recent story, the plan will mean extension into remote areas, as well as incursion into private lands. These elements will add considerably to the overall expense and only highlight the impracticality of his proposed wall.

It is also worth mentioning, as noted by reporter Todd Miller in his piece, that a significant portion of the border is already covered by remote cameras, drones, watchtowers as well as other forms of human surveillance.

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Finally, the central issue is who will pay for the wall. Trump is insisting that he will make Mexico pay for it. But, as verified earlier this month during his visit to Mexico City, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto continues to assert that Mexico will not pay for the wall.

Considering these factors, the wall cannot be seen as a serious policy consideration. The facts demonstrate that it is purely a political ploy and attempt to pander to Trump's base. After all, it is a powerful hallmark of his campaign that aims to create a culture of division, based on dominance and hate.

2. End "catch-and-release."

In his speech in Arizona, Trump made very clear that 11 million undocumented immigrants would not have a path to legalization. He added that he would institute immediate and swift deportations. His proposal would end due process for people apprehended by U.S. immigration authorities. Beyond the legal ramifications of his actions, deporting 11 million undocumented immigrants living and working in this country would cost an estimated $400 to $600 billion, and harm our economy by reducing our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by nearly $1.6 trillion over the next two decades.

The hateful rhetoric and unending focus on immigrants also has deterred us from the truth that over the years, undocumented workers have contributed up to $300 billion, or nearly 10 percent, of the $2.7 trillion Social Security Trust Fund. Also, granting legal status to undocumented immigrants would cause the U.S. GDP to increase by $1.1 trillion and increase tax revenue by $144 billion over 10 years.

Aside from the substantial economic implications, the deportation of people will tear apart families, separating U.S.-born members from others. The cases of the brave women in the Berks County, Pennsylvania detention facility make evident the cruelty and illegality of his proposal.

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And Trump's proposed "touchback" principle, in which undocumented immigrants would need to return to their home country as a condition to regularize their immigration status is not realistic. Current immigration laws do not support reentry for undocumented workers. Families would be separated indefinitely without hope of return or a viable future.

These hardline, inhumane policies will signal a sharp departure from our fundamental principles as a nation of immigrants. We will no longer represent a country of freedom, prosperity and justice for all.

3. Hire 5,000 new Border Patrol agents and create a Deportation Task Force.As part of Trump's proposal to banish all undocumented people, he pledges to create a new deportation task force by hiring 5,000 new border agents. This increased militarization at the border is completely pointless and misdirected.

Immigrants, by all available evidence, are less likely to commit crimes, with one study finding less-educated immigrant men from Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador are three to five times less likely to be incarcerated than less-educated native-born men.

Instead of investing in key sectors of our economy and promoting innovation, Trump will focus on the border. It would be far better to invest in our schools, infrastructure, affordable housing, and workforce development.

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The border is more secure than ever. In 2012, the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol already had a budget of over $11 billion, overseeing a jurisdiction that stretches 100 miles from the border, covering 200 million Americans, and has over 300 video surveillance systems and a dozen drones at its disposal. Trump's plan is more expansive and calls for greater coverage which invariably will be more costly and divert funding from other critical programs.

4. Block funding for "sanctuary cities."

This proposal only caters to the anti-immigrant impulses of Trump's constituency and does not contribute to improving public safety. As the ACLU and others have made clear, "There are NO 'Sanctuary' zones free from immigration enforcement." The attempt to draft local police as ICE officials disregards over 350 cities and counties whose elected officials and police have chosen to limit interaction between federal immigration agencies and local law enforcement in order to build trust and cooperation with immigrant communities. It is a necessary measure to help ensure that immigrant communities view local law enforcement as a partner in combating crime -- not as agents out to deport people from their community and tear families apart.

Politicians who want to end community trust agreements are disregarding local police chiefs and sheriffs who know best how to keep their communities safe. Let us not glorify self-proclaimed "law-and-order" candidates, such as Joe Arpaio, who are capitalizing on fear of immigrants as criminals. There are ample studies to demonstrate that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes. Instead of scapegoating immigrants, it is time to focus on combating criminality where it actually exists and improving the economic and social well-being of all Americans.

5. Rescind Obama's executive orders.

Trump reiterated his opposition to President Obama's Executive Orders on immigration - DAPA, and proposed expansions to DACA, which are currently tied up in federal courts. His proposed plan will take aim at both. Once again, Trump made clear that he would rescind these actions, thereby threating the future of an estimated 5 million undocumented individually who would benefit from these deferred action policies.

Not surprisingly, Trump did not mention that these executive actions would boost economic output by an estimated 0.4 to 0.9 percent over ten years, corresponding to increases in GDP of $90 billion to $210 billion in 2024.

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By targeting DAPA and DACA, Trump demonstrates once again not only his hardline approach to immigration but his complete disregard for the real economic and social implications of his policies.

6. Suspend visas from certain countries.Trump's proposed plan also targets immigration quotas and visa processes. In his speech, he called for greater screening of refugees and a suspension of granting visas in certain locations.In addition, he also noted that he would institute "ideological certification" for all incoming immigrants.

What Trump left out in his speech is that immigrants are a vital force in our society contributing to our economic, social and cultural growth. Furthermore, the acceptance of refugees is not only a key tenet of our international humanitarian obligation as a party to global treaties as well as pledges to safeguard those fleeing from war, famine, and other disasters.

Beyond our international responsibilities, Trump failed to mention that refugees are currently being screened, under the most stringent of vetting processes, in accordance with the U.S. State Department's guidelines. "Extreme vetting" which Trump calls for is already in place and being undertaken.

Finally, the suspension and reduction in the issuance of visas will not generate greater security for this country. The biased assumption that criminals and those seeking to inflict harm on us will only come from developing countries creates greater vulnerability in our security. It does not account for the fact that Europeans and several other developed nations have easier access to this country through the Visa Waiver Program.

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7. Ensure countries take back immigrants the United States deports.Trump's demands that other countries take back U.S. deportees is impractical. After all, these countries cannot be treated as if they were sitting governors of U.S. states or former big-city mayors. Without a clear effort to improve this nation's immigration system and the necessary diplomatic skill, it is highly doubtful that Trump could achieve better or faster results than current U.S efforts with the 23 nations reported to not yet accept U.S. deportees. 8. Complete the biometric entry-exit visa tracking system.Yet another unfeasible proposal made by Trump is to complete an entry-exit biometric visa system. Currently, almost all non-US citizens (including Legal Permanent Residents) are already processed on entry through the US-VISIT program, managed by the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Biometric Identity Management (OBIM), which verifies their identities (narrow exceptions include diplomatic personnel, children under 14 and adults over 79).

Implementation on the exit side is not yet complete and proves to be a complicated, as well as costly, measure without demonstrable proof that it will ensure our security as a nation. Once again, Trump's proposal will be seen as a symbol of hostility and isolationism from the rest of the world.

9. Continued expenditure on "e-verify."Another element of Trump's plan is to focus more investment into the e-verify program. To date, the e-verify system to confirm work eligibility has been riddled with problems including both false denials and failing to catch legally ineligible workers. Rather than focusing efforts on creating a pathway to legalization and reforms that would benefit so many, Trump is focused on unworkable programs that do not have tangible benefits.

10. Reform legal immigration.Trump proposes to create a commission to find ways to reduce legal immigration, based on the pretext that immigration is at an all-time high. In fact, the proportion of the U.S. population that are immigrants reached 13.3 percent in 2014, which falls below the high of 14.8 percent in 1890. And net migration with Mexico in recent years actually became negative, meaning more Mexicans are returning to Mexico than entering the U.S.

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Above all, Trump's proposed plan must be viewed as a gross failure to accurately and appropriately address the real issues plaguing the current immigration system. It is a system in desperate need of an overhaul. Without reform, this country is losing the opportunity to reap dividends from immigration that would spur economic growth, innovation, and contribute to the social and cultural development of this nation.
Arthur C. Brooks

President, American Enterprise Institute

I can still remember my first glimpse of real poverty. One day as a young boy I was flipping through National Geographic and came across a heartbreaking photo of a malnourished African child. He had flies on his face and a distended belly. I had never seen poverty like that before. Certainly, by today's standards, my childhood neighborhood in Seattle was working class. But compared to the condition of that young boy - who appeared to be about my age - our Seattle neighborhood seemed like Beverly Hills.

That image has been imprinted on my mind ever since. For decades, I would pause and wonder what happened to that boy. What happens to desperately poor people like him?

Many years and several graduate degrees in economics later, I know the answer. Desolate poverty still exists in our world, of course, but it has fallen dramatically since I was a kid. To be specific, the percentage of the world living on a dollar a day has fallen by an astonishing eighty percent since 1970. Let's put this in perspective. When I was a kid, more than one in four people around the world lived on a dollar per day or less. Today, that fraction has fallen to just about one in twenty. Without a doubt, this is one of the greatest humanitarian victories in the history of mankind.

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What brought this miracle about? It wasn't primarily US foreign aid, the brilliant insights of technicians at the International Monetary Fund, or expansive government redistribution. It was the five pillars of free enterprise: globalization, free trade, property rights, the rule of law, and entrepreneurship.

But paradoxically, while American values have done so much to combat poverty around the world, we Americans have less reason to celebrate. To be sure, poor Americans have made some advances since the 1970s. In absolute terms, of course, poor Americans have higher standards of living than poor people in the developing world. But when we benchmark our relative success in defeating poverty, our progress has been utterly substandard. While free enterprise has been lifting people up around the globe, the poverty rate in the United States remains virtually unchanged. Life in poverty here has become less miserable, but it has not become meaningfully more escapable.

Consider the current state of the American economy. On paper, it seems clear that the economy is recovering, slowly but surely, from the financial crisis and subsequent recession.

But we know that most of the recovery was driven by a surge in capital markets. And since the top ten percent of the income distribution owns four-fifths of all stocks and mutual funds, this 'recovery' almost exclusively benefited wealthy Americans. Meanwhile, the number of Americans on food stamps - a reasonably good rough metric for the proportion of the country at or around subsistence - has increased from 33 million to 47 million since 2009.

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What's going on here? Has capitalism run its course? Has it morphed into simply being a tool for the wealthy to build their fortunes? Is it now incapable of lifting up the masses?

The amazing record of free enterprise plainly rejects this interpretation. Declining opportunity and stagnant mobility for our most vulnerable brothers and sisters do not reflect an excess of competitive capitalism, but rather a drought of free enterprise where it is needed most. Democratic capitalism done right is the greatest force for opportunity in the history of our species. Our calling is not to clamp down on it and minimize it, but rather to expand it, thereby making capitalism more inclusive and more available for those who are being left behind.

How can we accomplish this? How can we promote free enterprise for those who need it the most? As the president of a think tank, I can tell you firsthand that countless exceptional scholars within our movement are inventing and refining fantastic policy ideas to advance free enterprise and make it more inclusive. I lack the time and the space to list them all here. But, with humility, I offer one recommendation. I challenge everyone to undertake an examination of conscience. Every night, as you put aside your tasks and reflect back on the day, ask yourself: "Has all of my work today benefitted those with less power than me?"

If we advocates of free enterprise cannot honestly answer "yes," then we have a great deal of soul-searching to do. But if we can, then let us fight on all the more boldly. Many in the world are desperately hungry for the fruits of inclusive capitalism. They deserve lives rich with the meaning and deep satisfaction that only earned success can bring.
On August 25th of this year, the National Park Service turned 100. You can celebrate by gazing at Fall Foliage at Acadia National Park in Maine, smelling the Wildflowers in Glacier National Park, Montana or stargazing at Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah (find a list of fourteen national parks and what people love most about them, here).

Or, you can pick up a book by one of the indie authors below and experience the parks through their eyes.

Wall Street Journal bestselling memoirist and biographer Carolyn Jourdan is a former U.S. Senate Counsel to the Committee on Environment and Public Works and the Committee on Governmental Affairs.

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Carolyn worked at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park-which has one of the densest populations of black bears in the U.S.-for seven years, in close proximity to a huge number of tourists. This provided the inspiration for Bear in the Back Seat, Carolyn's chart-topping account of zany and touching interactions with wildlife in the park.

Carolyn's path to writing about National Parks was circuitous. She temporarily left her legal job to fill in for her ailing mother in her father's rural medical practice in the Smokey Mountains, where she stayed for four years until he retired. With her legal career over, Carolyn decided to write a book about what happened. Heart in the Right Place was traditionally published and became a national best seller although her subsequent books were rejected. After losing her job at age 58, Carolyn began to self publish. "From the first year I've made more money with indie publishing [via Amazon's CreateSpace and Kindle Direct Publishing] than I was making on my full-time job," said Carolyn.

Carolyn decided to write about her encounters with wildlife in the Park, which ultimately became Bear in the Back Seat. The book became a Wall Street Journal best seller, as well as the best-selling book in the park stores inside the nation's most visited park. Carolyn's hope: to help teach the 11 million people who visit the Smokies to never feed wild animals in the park or get close enough to disturb their natural behavior.

Carolyn is currently putting the finishing touches on the third book in the Bear series, as well as working on a biography about an adventurous female wildlife photographer in Yellowstone National Park. Undertaken due to reader demand, the upcoming title about Yellowstone is designed to help people stay safe around grizzly bears and bison.

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When Andra Watkins decided to walk the full length of the 444-mile Natchez Trace Trail, hiking around three states for more than a month, her 80-year-old father was the only one who would accompany her. The trip became a way to connect with her dad.

By the end of the walk, Andra realized she had stumbled onto a universal story that could encourage readers to make memories with the people who are most important to them, resulting in her New York Times bestseller, Not Without My Father: One Woman's 444-Mile Walk of the Natchez Trace. The memoir has been nominated for three awards, including the prestigious 2015 National Book Award for Nonfiction.

Andra originally decided to walk the Trace as a way to publicize her debut novel, To Live Forever: An Afterlife Journey of Meriwether Lewis. "My father was the only person who could schlep me around three states for more than a month--AND the last person I wanted anywhere near me," said Andra. "The trip morphed into a battle to connect with Dad before it was too late."

To launch To Live Forever, Andra decided to walk the Natchez Trace as the pioneers did: Natchez, MS to Nashville, TN. She hiked 15 miles a day, six days a week and finished her trek in 34 days. While she traveled the Trace to draw attention to her novel, Andra ended up having a life-changing adventure with her father, which she decided to chronicle and self-publish via CreateSpace and Kindle Direct Publishing.

Andra has a new book coming out November 1, 2016, Hard to Die, the sequel to To Live Forever. It creates an afterlife adventure for Theodosia Burr Alston, the ill-fated daughter of Aaron Burr. The book combines elements of history, the paranormal, and suspense, while breathing fresh air into Theo's story.

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Andra publishes her books via Word Hermit Press, a tiny press that uses KDP to bring books to market. She has almost total control over her books, especially for marketing. "Nothing worth achieving is easy. I certainly have my moments of distress, but when I compare the KDP process to my traditional publishing contract in South Korea, I'd choose KDP and Word Hermit again and again and again."

Historian and retired teacher Barbara Ann Mojica wrote her colorful children's book, Little Miss History-Travels to Sequoia National Park, to make learning about the park's history both educational and fun.

The book takes young readers on an exciting adventure guided by a fictional park ranger. With her Little Miss History Travels... series, Barbara aims to encourage parents and educators to take learning one step further by visiting these historical sites with their kids. Barbara's books feature her husband's inventively hand-drawn illustrations, and all the photos were taken by the couple while visiting the featured sites. Her next two kids' titles about National Parks are now in the works.
Our local paper carried an article that essentially said Donald had "made a complete turn-around." It said he is now "being inclusive."

Get real!

Just because he is paying new people gazillions of dollars to write scripts and reading them from the teleprompter does not mean he has changed. He's just trying to fool a few more voters.

Don't let him.

Can you imagine our nation's being more divisive than it is now?

Can you imagine the hate this irrational hate-spewing, bigoted, misogynistic liar generates and spreads like a virus to those who also hate others for their race, color, sexual orientation, gender, and whatever other divisions they can create?

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Can you imagine the first time he feels insulted and reaches for the nuclear button to destroy the nation whose head said something he didn't like...and eventually destroys our own nation?

When one of his lies gets applause, he creates bigger, more evil lies. His small constituency eats it up.

Have you read Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here? This fictional book follows a presidential candidate who--immediately after being elected--declares martial law, takes control of the media, jails his opponents, moves known-opposition party members into prison-camps, hires local thugs to kill any who speak against him, and utterly destroys the U.S.A. The nation never recovers.

I believe electing Donald would destroy our nation and all it stands for.

We must elect an intelligent person who can keep things on an even keel! Hillary has served as Secretary of State, as a U.S. Senator, and as First Lady. She knows how our government works. She is ready to serve as president.

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I saw one of Donald's new public relations people on The Rachel Maddow show a week or so ago. She tried to convince Rachel--and her audience--that he had changed. Rachel didn't buy it...nor did I.

Her attitude communicated what this man thinks of American voters. It appears he thinks we are dumb enough to believe everything he says. Surely we are not.

~*~

Let's look at what Hillary has done and can do...and ignore the names her opponent creates.

I've written this before, but in case you missed it I'm repeating it. Here are a few things you may not know about Hillary Clinton.

1. She started the first rape crisis hotlines in the south.

2. In the 1970s, she was denied a credit card because she was a woman. The bank told her to use her husband's--even though she made more money.

3. As Secretary of State, she spearheaded the Office of Global Women's Issues which has, among many things, funneled millions into cracking down on sexual violence.

4. When she was 13, she wrote to NASA to ask to join but they wrote back saying women aren't allowed to be astronauts.

5. In the 90s, her opponents spent $75 million trying to destroy her effort to establish universal health care. (Nita and Shaunna from UltraViolet Action, https://www.facebook.com/weareultraviolet/ photos/a.308793015857415.71731.260933440643373/1100191736717535/?type=3)

Nevertheless she worked to get universal health care passed...as all other advanced nations have. In 2009 True Cost stated, "Thirty-two of the thirty-three developed nations have universal health care, with the United States being the lone exception. (8-9-09, https://truecostblog.com/2009/08/09/countries-with-universal-healthcare-by-date/ ).

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Republicans have spent a lot of money blaming Clinton about problems they have helped create...such as:



Emails: Previous Republican Secretaries of State also used private emails for their government business. It was legal at the time.

The State Department Watchdog reports that both Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, Secretaries of State under president George W. Bush, were sent sensitive national security information to nongovernment email addresses. Representative Elijah Cummings, House Oversight Committee, said, "My concern has been that Republicans are spending millions of taxpayer dollars singling-out Secretary Clinton because she is running for president...often leaking inaccurate information while at the same time disregarding the actions of Republican secretaries of state."(http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/04/ colin-powell-condoleezza-rice-private-email-accounts-classified-hillary-clinton ).

When asked to turn in his emails from his time in office, Powell did not...yet no one hounded him or called him "Crooked Colin."

Phone: Fortune reports that Hillary Clinton requested a secure smart phone when she became Secretary of State (http://fortune.com/2016/03/17/clinton-email-server/ ). Judicial Watch obtained State Department documents revealing that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton repeatedly sought to obtain secure "Blackberry-like communications," but was rebuffed by the National Security Agency due to security and cost concerns (http://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/judicial-watch-state-department-documents-show-that-nsa-rebuffed-hillary-clintons-attempts-to-obtain-a-secure-blackberry/ ).

Both sources report that the National Security Agency denied her requests.



Created-conspiracy about Benghazi: Congress spent 22 million taxpayers' dollars investigating Benghazi...and discovered no guilt (http://benghazicommittee.com/ benghazi-by-the-numbers/). The fact is that Congress denied the money and troops needed to better protect our embassies. (http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/12/politics/ fact-check-benghazi-security/). Congress should own-up-to its own shortcomings and quit blaming Secretary Clinton and President Obama.

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John Garamendi reported, "During the George W. Bush period, there were 13 attacks on various embassies and consulates around the world. Sixty people died" (The Ed Show, MSNBC, 5-5-14, http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2014/may/12/ john-garamendi/prior-benghazi-were-there-13-attacks-embassies-and/). Politifact checked the Global Terrorism Database between January 2001 and January 2009. It found "39 attacks or attempted attacks on U.S. embassies and embassy personnel." The total death toll was 87! Politifact concludes, "So, using what we think is the most reasonable definition, Garamendi's numbers are a bit low."

You may want to read the report. Then ask yourself why Republicans are attacking Democrats over this issue.

Meanwhile, let's listen to both candidates and do research on our own. Don't trust a person who calls another created negative names. Then let's vote for the candidate we believe will do the most to help our nation.
New York, NY - Democratic Nominee for President of the United States former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton participates in a NBC/MSNBC/Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America Commander in Chief Forum in midtown Manhattan in New York, New York on Wednesday September 7, 2016. Hosted by Today show co-anchor Matt Lauer. (Photo by Melina Mara/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

With just two months remaining until the general election, what choices have we really been left with this cycle?

As we count down the final two months until Election Day 2016, we have officially been left with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump as our primary choices for president in November. Technically, we also have Green Party candidate Jill Stein and Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson vying for the position, but I think we can all safely assume they are going to go virtually nowhere.

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The fact that these are now our two main choices leaves myself and many other Americans exhausted and exasperated. Even though we are down to the final two months of the campaign, both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have exhibited ratings of untrustworthiness as high as 60%. Which begs the question: If over half of the American voting population feels that neither of our choices for president can be trusted, then can we even choose a "lesser of evils" this time around? That's the question the rest of this article will attempt to answer.

Dissecting Donald's Dream

Where do I even begin with Donald Trump? I could probably spend the rest of this blog -- and maybe several others -- listing all of the problems with his campaign, his views, his goals for America, his rhetoric, and really just about everything he says and does. But if I am going to select just one thing which defines Donald Trump more than practically anything else, I would choose his penchant for discriminating against virtually everyone who is not a white male voter.

In fact, Donald Trump has committed so many offenses against so many Americans that it's almost impossible to believe he hasn't been drummed completely out of the race -- or out of the country. And yet some recent polls show Trump either ahead of, or within striking distance of, his Democratic challenger in some states.

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The fact that Donald Trump can make so many offensive statements and tout so many policies which many would perceive as un-American, is a testament to the anger which has permeated our country. There is a level of disgust with minorities we have not seen at least in the last few decades, if not since the days of slavery. We see more and more attacks against women with the litany of anti-abortion laws and continuing income inequality, attacks against the LGBT community with the expansion of religious freedom laws, murders of black Americans in droves by police which are supposed to protect all Americans. Donald Trump didn't create this situation, but with his rhetoric and the selection of someone like Mike Pence as his running-mate, he is continuing to fuel these flames.

And just as another example of how enraged the American public has become: On MSNBC's The Last Word recently, Lawrence O'Donnell interviewed Glenn Beck, who told of possibly the most disturbing phone call from a listener he had ever received. The subject was on Donald Trump seemingly rolling back his aggressive immigration stance somewhat. The caller suggested that if Trump breaks his campaign promise to clamp down on illegal immigration and build the border wall with Mexico, then he and others like him would personally go after Trump. Many have taken Trump's recent comments about Second Amendment supporters going after Hillary Clinton should she select judges which uphold tighter gun control regulation as a veiled assassination threat; the caller on Glenn Beck's program has now basically issued a much less veiled threat against Donald Trump should he roll back his campaign promises on illegal immigration.

Keep in mind that this is someone threatening a potential Republican president. And this is one of the more disturbing examples I have seen of the animosity and rage which now seemingly drives American politics, especially in 2016. It also shows that, no matter who ultimately wins the Oval Office in November, there is a faction of American citizens who are willing to directly go after a sitting president. This should chill every decent American to the bone.

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My Final Take on Voting for Donald Trump: Voting for Donald Trump is potentially a vote for misogyny, racism, and anti-Americanism, and a sound rejection of many of the things which have helped America to maintain itself over the course of nearly two-and-a-half centuries. There is little doubt that Trump would enact an agenda which would block many types of immigration, possibly inflaming tensions with the broader Muslim community to the point it could help to bolster ISIS' influence within the mainstream Muslim community. Trump's propensity for bravado and just saying whatever comes to his mind at any given time also has the potential to begin new international conflicts, reduce respect for America around the rest of the world, and create new national security problems. In short, a vote for Donald Trump would potentially destabilize the very fabric of our nation, potentially decimating our economy, our standing in the world, and our ability to negotiate our way out of conflict.

In Hillary We Do Not Trust

We've already discussed a little bit through poll numbers the problems Hillary Clinton has with credibility. One thing that I personally have found amusing this cycle is that both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton supporters keep accusing the media of focusing on negative stories for their chosen candidate, and not enough negative attention on their respective opponent. Whenever I watch or read the news, however, it seems that Donald Trump is dominating virtually all of the coverage. Unless there is something new regarding Hillary's E-mail scandal (or a Wikileaks remark), or I'm watching CBSN and see coverage of a Hillary Clinton rally, I hear next to nothing about her. This election is seemingly all Trump, all the time.

Which makes the possibility of a Clinton victory all the more galling for more hard-core Democrats (admittedly, like myself) who will always feel that Bernie Sanders was simply cheated by the DNC. Hillary Clinton seemingly does not even have to run a campaign to have a chance to defeat Donald Trump, because that candidate's campaign is so rooted in hatred and discrimination that unless she does something to truly screw up within the next roughly 60 days, she is likely going to win.

That simple fact is one of the most disturbing aspects about this entire election: The campaign is no longer even about debating issues. It is simply about America figuring out which candidate they hate the least, and which candidate will screw up the least before Election Day. I'm still reasonably young, but I still can't remember a time when a presidential election came down to two almost universally-hated candidates, with the choice being down to which one voters hated just a tiny bit less than the other.

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So it's up to blogs and independent journalists to shine light on the potential pitfalls of a Hillary Clinton presidency, in order for the electorate to make the most informed decision possible. And, just as with Donald Trump, there is a whole litany of controversies surrounding our first female nominee for President of the United States.

But we'll get to the E-mail scandal here shortly. First, I want to talk about my top reason for refusing to support Hillary Clinton: Her unwavering support of Israel. Time has posted a full transcript of her AIPAC speech from March of this year. In it, Clinton declared:

The United States and Israel must be closer than ever, stronger than ever and more determined than ever to prevail against our common adversaries and to advance our shared values. This is especially true at a time when Israel faces brutal terrorist stabbings, shootings and vehicle attacks at home. Parents worry about letting their children walk down the street. Families live in fear. Just a few weeks ago, a young American veteran and West Point graduate named Taylor Force was murdered by a Palestinian terrorist near the Jaffa Port. These attacks must end immediately... And Palestinian leaders need to stop inciting violence, stop celebrating terrorists as martyrs and stop paying rewards to their families.

But what "shared values" is Clinton referring to here? An agenda which involves the state-sanctioned massacre of an entire population? Israel's torture and murder of the Palestinian population has become so extreme that earlier this year, the State Department released a 124-page report on the subject. Make no mistake: Israel is committing human rights atrocities against Palestinian civilians. From the article:

Citing NGO reports, it acknowledges that "impunity among Israeli security forces remained a problem, in part because mechanisms for investigating allegations were not effective," and that "authorities systematically disregarded abuse allegations." In 2015, Israeli forces killed 149 Palestinians, roughly half (72) of whom were not attempting to attack Israelis. Israeli forces killed 22 Palestinian civilians before Oct. 1, when the wave of violence increased. Another 127 Palestinian civilians were killed after Oct. 1. (The State Department does not mention a U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs report that found that Palestinians were injured 14,000 times in 2015.) Some of those killed or injured were children. The report cites an example in March 2015, in which an 11-year-old Palestinian boy was shot in the stomach during a weekly protest.

What is equally galling, though, is that to date, the United States has taken no action to curb Israel's genocide of the Palestinian population (this is a failure on the part of every presidential administration). Under a Hillary Clinton administration, expect to see the United States grant even more latitude to Israel, and more support in the form of supplying advanced weapon systems to the Israeli government. In short, Hillary will continue sanctioning Israel's mass eradication of the Palestinians.

Let's take a couple more significant issues which will dictate the future of America. We'll start with fracking. The BBC provides a good primer on just what fracking -- formally known as "hydraulic fracturing" -- is and how it is accomplished. One area in which it is controversial, however, is in its possible creation of man-made earthquakes. More specifically, the injection of wastewater into the ground may reduce friction between tectonic plates, making them more likely to slip and cause an earthquake. In fact, it is possible that a strong, 5.6 magnitude Oklahoma earthquake which struck this past Saturday morning may have been created by such practices.

Hillary Clinton supports the practice of fracking. In fact, as Secretary of State, she launched the Global Shale Gas Initiative to sell European countries on fracking, attempting to push the Obama administration into devoting resources towards finding new shale reserves and securing agreements with other nations to fund further fracking projects. Specifically, Poland was to be used as a guinea pig to determine if American advances in fracking could be replicated in other countries; however, this experiment was a failure:

The State Department's hopes for establishing Poland as a fracking success have so far been dashed. In addition to underperforming wells, local activists rose to fight Chevron's fracking development. In January, the company announced it was abandoning its fracking operations in Poland. In fact, the prospects of establishing a shale gas boom across Europe as a bulwark against the increasing energy influence of Russia -- whose exports supply a quarter of Europe's energy consumption -- are fading. In addition to the false start in Poland, Romania's wells have not produced to expectations. Fracking deals in Ukraine collapsed in 2013, as potential sites were identified in conflict zones. The Netherlands, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic have enacted fracking bans. France has had a fracking moratorium in place since 2011.

Bernie Sanders, in a claim rated Mostly True by PolitiFact, criticized Hillary Clinton for her support of fracking during the primary. While she may have evolved on the issue -- she allegedly is against it whenever local governments oppose or forbid it -- it's yet another in a long list of examples of Clinton's questionable judgment on a whole slew of issues.

Clinton also has a questionable record on our government's use of widespread domestic surveillance to effectively spy on most Americans. In an interview with technologist Kara Swisher, Clinton was extremely evasive on the subject of the NSA and determining limits for its vast surveillance powers. She has also called for more surveillance, in particular on social media, to help in the fight against ISIS, and has also effectively demanded that Edward Snowden face American justice for revealing details about the NSA's surveillance programs, suggesting that he should have sought status as a whistle-blower even as the Obama administration sought to shut down government whistle-blowing:

As secretary of state in an administration that has charged three times as many Americans with violations of the draconian Espionage Act as all preceding presidents combined, Clinton must know that the Obama Justice Department has effectively moved to silence whistle-blowers from stating their case in court. It even tried to prevent Thomas Drake, an honored NSA employee charged under the Espionage Act, from using the words "whistle-blower" or "First Amendment" in his defense. Drake had taken his concerns over the NSA's violation of the law to the Defense Department Inspector General and the intelligence committees of both houses of Congress, but that did not stop the Obama administration, when Clinton was in the Cabinet, from prosecuting him under the Espionage Act for talking to the press. The government's case collapsed, with a federal judge calling it "unconscionable" that Drake had been put through "four years of hell."

We can only assume, then, that Hillary Clinton would likely continue the practice of stifling anyone who tries to expose the types of government activities, such as unlimited domestic spying, which should make every American fear their government. Her ambiguity over the NSA, calls for more surveillance in the wake of ISIS attacks, and unabashed criticism of Edward Snowden suggest that she could potentially work to expand government surveillance powers, thus further putting our private lives at risk.

So we now come full circle to Hillary Clinton's E-mail scandal. On Friday, the FBI released a report on its findings on whether or not her use of a private E-mail server led to the improper handling of classified information. The report finds her actions to be "extremely careless"; they also note that Clinton may have used as many as 13 different devices to access that server -- none of which, they say, Clinton's team could find for their investigation. She allegedly also did not understand that the notation of "(C)" meant that information was classified.

Clinton also apparently mishandled federal records, violating relevant laws numerous times. From CNN's analysis of the report:

The FBI report references, for example, the earlier finding of the State Department Inspector General that Clinton violated the federal records laws by failing to surrender her work-related emails to the State Department when she left office in 2013. The FBI investigation further reveals the highly questionable decision-making of both Clinton and her attorneys in how they reviewed Clinton's emails when the State Department subsequently requested their return in 2014. Clinton has repeatedly justified not having an impartial review of her emails to determine which constituted federal records by pointing to the fact that government employees routinely make such determinations given that they are best placed to assess the relevance and significance of such records. Yet Clinton revealed to the FBI that when she directed her private attorneys to locate work-related emails, she "did not participate in the development of the specific process to be used" and that she was never "consulted on specific emails in order to determine if they were work-related."

And finally, just for good measure: Soon after The New York Times published a report of their own on Clinton's use of her private E-mail server, many of her private E-mails were securely deleted and rendered unrecoverable.

My final take on voting for Hillary Clinton: Casting a vote for Hillary Clinton means supporting a president who will continue enabling Israel to slaughter an entire population on the Gaza Strip. It also means supporting a candidate who clearly does not have the judgment to be a good Commander-in-Chief, one who continuously has to evolve on critical issues facing our nation and, quite simply, cannot be trusted to get anything right the first time. Clinton has been called a "flawed candidate" numerous times. Flawed is one thing; outright untrustworthy and of questionable judgment and moral character are quite another. Whether or not Clinton will be or can be charged for her actions in the E-mail scandal is almost irrelevant; what is relevant is that the allegations illustrate a continuing pattern of questionable, dishonest, and reckless behavior unbecoming of a future president in separate-yet-similar ways to how Donald Trump's nascent racism and sexism disqualify him from becoming our president. In the corporate world, it doesn't take outright illegal behavior to be disqualified from a position; why should this be any different for Hillary Clinton?

Who Should the American People Vote for? Is There a Lesser of Evils This Time?

For many people, the last few presidential elections have come down to one crucial, fundamental question: Which candidate is the lesser of two evils for which I can hold my nose and vote? We were luckier in 2008 and 2012 with Barack Obama, someone who, while flawed, has the charisma, compassion, and love of country to serve in the Oval Office. I don't agree with a lot of the choices he has made and wish he would have stood up to the Republicans many years ago, but I am still glad to call him my president. He is an example of a "flawed candidate" who is still worthy of the title.

Now, look at Hillary Clinton. The nomination of the first female candidate for President of the United States should be one of the proudest moments in our history, just as the nomination of the first black presidential candidate was for us in 2008. But it's not the historical significance of the candidate which ultimately matters; it's her ability to lead, to be able to make good, sound decisions, and her ability to inspire confidence in the American people that yes, she is the most qualified choice to lead our nation.

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Hillary Clinton is none of these things. She has had scandal after scandal plague her, and even if there isn't absolute proof that she is guilty of many of the things she has been accused of, there is enough doubt about her decision-making that we should all be questioning if she is truly the best person to work in the Oval Office. The fact that she is not being prosecuted is of far less importance than the fact that she has repeatedly shown an inability to make the right decisions in a lot of her day-to-day handling of her government responsibilities. Combine this with her constant need to change her positions on the issues with time and the high numbers of Americans who deem her untrustworthy, and you have no good reason to vote for her, unless voting for the first female president in history is your only consideration -- or if you just want to beat Donald Trump, no matter the cost. Hillary Clinton has permanently tainted one of the most significant moments in American history.

As for Donald Trump...what more can I say? He is an arrogant, racist, misogynistic, self-absorbed blowhard, with seemingly no compassion or respect for anyone but himself, a candidate who has already pledged to do everything he can to isolate America from the rest of the world, including the Muslim community we so desperately need to finally take down the likes of ISIS. That he has even gotten this far into the campaign is as much a testament to where the people of America stand as it is to Trump himself, but either way, he is no more fit to be our president than Hillary Clinton.

In the final analysis, my conclusion is that we do not have a lesser of two evils to even pick from this time around. Whether Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton is elected to the presidency, either one has the capability to inflict tremendous harm upon the United States. Their sole difference lies in the form that damage will take. For Donald Trump, the type of damage is fairly obvious; he will inevitably harm our ability to negotiate agreements with other nations, alienate minority groups within the United States, damage our economy in the aftermath, and likely bolster ISIS' position within the Muslim community by validating their claims that the Western world opposes Islam. This will no doubt feed into their recruitment, leading to a growing terror threat that very well may finally hit us again here at home.

With Clinton, on the other hand, I expect slower, more subtle damage to our country. Clinton is no doubt able to talk a good game and win the support of many. This means she will have the trust of a good many Americans should she indeed propose things like more government surveillance, expanding our war presence throughout the Middle East, and providing more support to Israel in their fight against Palestinian "terrorists." Given the money she has accepted from Wall Street, we have no reason to believe she will actually do anything to clamp down on the banks or to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour (remember that she originally only supported $12 until Sanders pressured her). We may not see the full effects of a Hillary Clinton administration for a few years, until her questionable decisions come back to haunt America -- except that it will likely be too late for the lives of those who will be affected by those decisions. (For more on my concerns about Hillary Clinton, see my previous article, written just before the New York Democratic primary.)
During the summer of 2006, in his first term as state House speaker, Romanoff faced a critical decision: Have a broadly worded initiative appear on the November ballot that would strip state benefits and even some medical services from those in the country illegally -- including children -- or strike a legislative compromise.

He choose the latter option and staved off a late effort to revive the ballot initiative by spearheading a bill that pleased some hardliners and upset some in the Latino community...

Among the proponents of the ballot initiative that didn't make it to voters was Coffman, the state treasurer at the time.
Nearly 15 million viewers tuned in for NBC's "Commander-in-Chief" Forum last Wednesday. The forum consisted of back-to-back 30-minute interviews with both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton (albeit not onstage together), where each candidate discussed foreign policy, national security, and a host of other issues. If there is one lesson we can take away from this event, it's that fact-checking is crucial in political journalism.

Matt Lauer moderated the proceedings, which took place at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in Manhattan. The "Today Show" stalwart has since come under fire for his line of questioning and his demeanor with the candidates.

With the presidential debate just a couple of weeks away, Lauer's performance serves as a teachable moment for the moderators as they prepare for the mammoth event. First, though, let's examine why Lauer was so roundly criticized.

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The most apparent critique of Lauer was that he appeared to hold Hillary Clinton to a higher standard than Donald Trump. For example, he devoted about a third of his time with Clinton to questions about her use of a private email server, and repeatedly interrupted her when she attempted to clarify the issue. He then seemed to rush through other topics like terrorism.

However, with Trump, Lauer asked more open-ended questions, such as what books he has read to prepare himself for office. Most notably, he failed to fact check Trump's claim that he was against the Iraq War before it started. To his credit, Lauer did manage to press Trump on his controversial comments on sexual assault in the military. He referenced a tweet from 2013 in which Trump said the issue was simply a result of men and women serving together. Yet, that was the most contentious moment of Lauer's interview with the GOP nominee. He appeared much more confrontational and impatient with Clinton.

For an event which Lauer had a week to prepare, he seemed woefully ill equipped to handle the most basic duty of political journalism: fact-checking. New York Times TV critic James Poniewozik equated Lauer's performance to "a solder sent on a mission without ammunition." By Thursday, the hashtag "Lauering the Bar" became a trending topic on Twitter.



Now, I don't mean to demean Lauer's career accomplishments as a journalist. It seems, though, given his performance last week, that a political journalist would've been better suited to handle such discussions.

The 2016 election has presented countless conundrums for the press. CNN Senior Media Correspondent, Brian Stelter, called covering this race (and Trump specifically) "the journalistic challenge of this decade."

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However, the debate moderators can make their coverage much less cumbersome by sticking to tough questions for both candidates and utilizing some kind of real-time fact checking method. It could be as simple as a quick aside after a commercial break, during which the moderators succinctly go over the previous segment's discussion and the major false claims made. Sure, it would take up time, but for the sake of truth telling, that shouldn't matter. If those methods aren't feasible, at least have newspaper clippings of past interviews, excerpts from speeches, etc. on hand for quick verification.

At the very least, simple follow-up questions are essential, as are challenges on universally known falsities. If Clinton tries to skirt around the email issue, challenge her. If Trump tries to claim he never flip-flopped on immigration (or nearly every other policy), call him out.

Unfortunately, Fox News' Chris Wallace, the moderator for the final debate, infamously stated his intention NOT to fact-check the candidates, saying "I don't believe it's my job to be a truth squad."

I'm sorry, Mr. Wallace, but that is exactly what your job, and that of every journalist, is in this election.

We have seen, as was the case in Jake Tapper's interview with Trump last summer, that when pressed, the GOP nominee backs down a bit. Employing this strategy for both candidates would do wonders to help the voters see where the two truly stand. To simply dance around false statements, as Lauer did, is not fair to journalism, nor is it fair to the general public.

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On the debate stage, with millions of viewers tuned in and no place for the candidates to hide, this becomes exponentially more important. It is the duty of the press to keep Trump and Clinton honest, especially in an election where trustworthiness is such a bugaboo for both candidates.
Hispanic voter voting in polling place

One of the most apt descriptions of what has been happening over the past few years with regards to racial discrimination and voter suppression came from my friend and colleague Rev. William Barber II, writing for Sojourners. Barber helped launch Moral Mondays in North Carolina in 2013 in response to an unprecedented attack on human rights, including voting rights, and the movement has since spread to other states. Rev. Barber has referred to modern-day attacks on the civil and voting rights of people of color using the phrase "Mr. James Crow, Esq."

I believe Mr. James Crow Esq.'s biggest concern these days is the demographic shift that is presently occurring in the United States -- by 2040, the U.S. will no longer be a white majority nation and, instead, will be made up of a majority of minorities. This fundamental demographic shift in racial and cultural identity is underneath almost everything in U.S. politics -- including the presidential election.

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And I think Mr. Crow has a clear, systematic strategy to protect white supremacy during this election and beyond. On the one hand, he knows that he can't outright prevent the demographic changes that our population trends dictate. What he aims to do, instead, is to obstruct and delay changes that new racial demographics will bring to American life and politics.

It seems to me that Mr. James Crow, Esq. has therefore developed a five-part strategy for protecting white supremacy in the United States, which includes racial gerrymandering to diminish the impact of minorities, fighting comprehensive immigration reform to prevent an earned path to citizenship for new voters, mass incarceration linked to voter disenfranchisement of prisoners when they return to society, voter suppression based on new voting regulations deliberately targeted against minority voters, and encouraging a political resurgence of white nationalism. In the forthcoming November issue of Sojourners magazine, we will unpack all five of these tactics in greater detail, but this week I want to talk about voter suppression, its impact on the most vulnerable members of society, and what we can all do to fight against it.

Since 2010, 21 states -- including some key battlegrounds in the presidential election -- have instituted new voting restrictions, boosted by Republican victories in statewide elections. In the April issue of Sojourners magazine, Myrna Perez of the Brennan Center for Justice called this "the biggest rollback of the right to vote since the Jim Crow era." The 2013 Supreme Court ruling (in Shelby v. Holder) made voter suppression even easier for states by gutting a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

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The Washington Post did an excellent job of documenting the impact of Shelby v. Holder on North Carolina's voting laws, which were being crafted at the same time as the Supreme Court was debating the case:

Under a decades-old provision in the Voting Rights Act of 1965 -- called Section 5 -- Southern states like North Carolina with a history of voter discrimination could not change election laws without the approval of federal officials...On June 25, 2013, the Supreme Court issued its ruling on the case, nullifying Section 5...In North Carolina, within hours of the court ruling, [Republicans lawmakers] told local reporters, "Now we can go with the full bill." ... The new bill shortened early voting by half, cutting one of the Sundays when black churches held their "Souls to Polls" drives. It eliminated same-day registration and out-of-precinct voting. It also proposed changes that...made no sense unless you were purposely trying to discourage voting.

Just this summer, a federal court struck down the North Carolina law, ruling that certain provisions of it "target African Americans with almost surgical precision." The court added, "With race data in hand, the legislature amended the bill to exclude many of the alternative photo IDs used by African Americans" and "retained only the kinds of IDs that white North Carolinians were more likely to possess." Yet, importantly, restrictive voter ID laws in a number of other states remain on the books, and will be in place for Election Day."

These restrictions, usually done under the guise of preventing alleged voter fraud, are in fact aimed at making it more difficult for poor people and minorities to vote. Numerous investigations and studies have shown that voter fraud is largely a myth. One rigorous academic study documented just 31 cases of voter fraud out of one billion ballots cast between 2000-2014.

In the 25th chapter of Matthew, Jesus calls us to protect the "least of these" -- the hungry, thirsty, and naked, strangers, those sick and in prison. Because the new voter restrictions are aimed at these very people, I call this effort "the Matthew 25 voter-suppression campaign" as it often targets our most vulnerable voters; protecting them now becomes a gospel issue. Deliberately suppressing voting rights is the most effective technique for those seeking to obstruct the changes brought about by the new demographics in this country. That is a fundamental moral issue, a democracy issue, not just a partisan one.

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So how can we, as people of faith, respond to these efforts at voter suppression and protect the right to vote of "Matthew 25 people"? Activists will continue to work at the state and federal level to challenge unjust voter suppression laws in court, and we should continue to lift up that work and partner with allies like the Moral Mondays movement, The Advancement Project, The Brennan Center, the Freedom Sunday Coalition, and the Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, to name just a few.

But in the meantime, since many of these laws will be in effect on Election Day and beyond, volunteers will be needed all across the country to ensure that vulnerable voters know their rights, have a way to get to the polls, are supported while they are there for long waits in lines, and have the opportunity to express their constitutional right to vote.

On Election Day, I would love to see clergy collars and congregation members in polling places all over the country to protect and support our most vulnerable voters. Sojourners is organizing and planning with many other non-partisan groups to organize and train pastors and congregations to do just that.

The fact of the matter is that there will always be those who utilize the unjust tools of voter suppression for partisan objectives. But as Christians committed to justice and living in a representative democracy, it's hard to argue against wanting as many people as possible to participate in self-government by exercising their right to vote -- no matter how they vote. The results should teach any party that stands to lose elections if more people vote that it isn't appealing to enough people.

Voter protection is a moral issue for democracy, and when it especially calls for the protection of our most vulnerable voters, is also becomes an issue of faith. Let's show that with our presence on Nov. 8.

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When President Kennedy launched the Peace Corps in 1961, his revolutionary call for Americans to build bridges to other peoples through service inspired Americans of all stripes. More than 220,000 Americans have since served in the Peace Corps, positively impacting millions around the world. This is why I joined the Peace Corps more than two decades ago as an Environmental Education volunteer in Costa Rica -- I was stirred by a deep commitment to serve our country overseas while helping those who asked for our help. This is also why I firmly believe that Hillary Clinton, who has for years promoted peace and development through diplomacy, will be an outstanding champion for the Peace Corps and what it stands for as our next president.

As nearly every Returned Peace Corps Volunteer will attest, what we learn while serving is invariably much richer than what we are able to share. Service overseas is a humbling experience, where we see with our own eyes how much we have to learn about the world around us and where we struggle to create lasting positive change. We then bring this awareness back home with us, striving to achieve the Peace Corps' Third Goal -- to strengthen our communities by sharing what we learned overseas. And our country is much richer because of this.

Yet we are at a crossroads in our public debate about how Americans think about the world around us and about service, peace, and development. Our two presidential candidates provide stark contrasts on this point. On one side, Hillary Clinton, who has spent years in public service and been a leader for international development, education, and women's empowerment, promotes a vision of the United States that leads by building partnerships with the rest of the world. On the other side, Donald Trump has derided the notion of service and selflessness, with nary a day of public service on his resume. He has a platform that seeks to build walls and reject whole communities because of their ethnicity or religion. Trump seeks to divide where Clinton seeks to unite.

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The American people are optimists and have a decades-long bipartisan tradition of promoting international peace through service. Doing so strengthens both our security and reflects our values. We need to accelerate this work, as Hillary Clinton will do, not walk away from it, as Donald Trump will do.

In Costa Rica, the village I lived in and the teachers I worked with made me feel like one of their own. While I taught my Costa Rican colleagues educational techniques to help strengthen their skills in the classroom, they taught me about our common humanity, the value of diversity, and community.

This type of partnership, commitment to community, and love of education are lessons that I try to share with my three daughters every day. I saw it work in Costa Rica, and I know that it works here at home, too. And as my girls return to school this fall, I am reminded of how important these lessons are -- and how crucial it is for every child to have an opportunity to acquire the skills they need to succeed. Teachers around the world are living the true definition of service by providing our kids with these tools, and we need to ensure that dedication to service is recognized.

This is why we need to expand our engagement with the rest of the world, just as the vision of the Peace Corps demands. We must deepen our commitment to diversity and service; we must strengthen our commitment to education; and we must elect leaders who demand that we aim to meet these goals, not ones who deride them.

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We must therefore do everything we can with a sense of urgency -- from talking to friends to knocking on doors to pressing the case through social media -- to ensure that Hillary Clinton, the candidate of optimism and service, is our next president. Children around the world are smiling in anticipation of her election. I know that mine are -- and I am, too.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks to Matt Lauer during the Commander in Chief Forum in Manhattan, New York, U.S., September 7, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Segar

During a recent interview, Matt Lauer elected not to challenge Donald Trump on his assertion that the Republican nominee never said he supported the Iraq War, despite clear evidence to the contrary. No doubt Lauer, like many others in the media, feared being labeled "partial towards liberals," despite the absence of evidence that such a liberal media bias exists.

Certainly, claims that there is a liberal media bias are louder, leading to a Gallup poll where almost a majority of Americans believe there is one. Yahoo.com searches reveal that there are eight times as many references to "liberal media bias" as there are mentions of "conservative media bias." But is there such a bias, or are there simply more complaints by conservatives that the media is out to get them? Critics point out their own studies showing ways the press tilt toward the right. So who is right?

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Four years ago, I did a study of all elections from 1996 to 2012, looking at several analyses of election coverage. In 1996, I found that President Bill Clinton (Democrat) did fare better in media coverage than Senator Bob Dole (Republican) did, according to the Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA). But it was a different story in 2000. A Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) study revealed that it was Texas Governor George W. Bush (Republican) who was liked better with the media, while Vice-President Al Gore (Democrat), who barely broke even with a split on positive and negative coverage in the press. "George W. Bush was twice as likely as Gore to get coverage that was positive in tone, more issue-oriented and more likely to be directly connected to citizens," wrote the PEJ. In 2004, President Bush continued that favorable media coverage, besting Senator John Kerry (Democrat) in the process, according to a CMPA study (see page 6).

In 2008, it was a different story. The Pew Research Center reported

"The media coverage of the race for president has not so much cast Barack Obama in a favorable light as it has portrayed John McCain in a substantially negative one, according to a new study of the media since the two national political conventions ended. Press treatment of Obama has been somewhat more positive than negative, but not markedly so. But coverage of McCain has been heavily unfavorable--and has become more so over time. In the six weeks following the conventions through the final debate, unfavorable stories about McCain outweighed favorable ones by a factor of more than three to one--the most unfavorable of all four candidates--according to the study by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism."

And some of that negativity was Fox News beating up on him, probably for being too moderate.

When Obama ran for reelection, the Project for Excellence in Journalism found

"Barack Obama and Mitt Romney have both received more negative than positive coverage from the news media, though overall Obama has had an edge, according to a new study. That advantage for Obama, however, disappeared after the debates began in early October and news coverage shifted in Romney's direction, mirroring the momentum change reflected in many public opinion polls, the study by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism found."

So there is a bias in the media, but not what you think. Rather than picking liberals or conservatives, the media tends to favor incumbents when running for reelection, regardless of political party. When there's no incumbent, the press likes the nominee from the party out of power. That's what's happened over the last five elections. These studies are done analyzing articles, instead of repeating mantras.

If that theory holds, expect Trump to get the benefit of the media coverage (even has he complains of bias) as the press tires of covering the party in power. That's bad news for Clinton and good news for the GOP. Despite this historical trend, journalists like Lauer are too afraid to challenge Trump for fear they will be labeled "biased" despite what studies of the press actually find.


("Idol Worship Stone" - image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Our readings in the Torah at this season, in the book of Deuteronomy, are full of anxiety about idolatry.

At times, in these readings, the hazard of worshiping sticks and stones seems to lurk behind every citadel corner and under every field tree.

This week, in our reading, for example...

"You shall not set up a sacred post, any kind of pole beside the altar of the LORD your God that you may make, nor erect a stone pillar, which the Eternal One your God detests... If there be found among you, in one of the dwelling places that the Eternal One your God is giving you, a man or woman who has affronted the Eternal One your God and transgressed God's covenant, turning to the worship of other gods and bowing down to them, to the sun or the moon or any of the heavenly host, which I never commanded..." (Deuteronomy 16:21, 17:2-3)

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...and horrible punishments follow.

Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berdichev (1740-1809) offers a reading of this particular biblical segment that, at first, may seem excessively clever or artful, and, beyond that, may seem to undermine the warning of these verses, against veneration of anything temporal and this-worldly--but I think he's on to something.

First, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak notes how, in scripture, our ancestors bow down out of respect before righteous individuals--and he offers, for example: "...as Obadiah was on the way, behold Elijah met him, and Obadiah recognized him, and he fell on his face and said, 'Are you indeed m'lord Elijah?'" (I Kings 18:7)

The Berdichever explains that righteous individuals embody divine inspiration and represent the work of fulfilling divine teaching to such a great degree that one may well bow down in respect before them; by contrast, he says, to "the sun or the moon or any of the host of heaven, which I [God] never commanded."

And there's the cleverness, as he reads the Deuteronomic verse to say that, grand as the sun and the moon and the stars may be, such heavenly bodies never are charged and are not commanded by the Divine in the justice-seeking way that human beings are--and, for that reason, ought not inspire the awe one may feel at encountering a notable person.

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"How lovely on the mountaintops are the footfalls of the messenger," says the reading from Isaiah that accompanies our Torah-portion this week (Isaiah 57:2)--and an ancient rabbinic interpretation asks, "What can be so special about mountains that they should merit such association with a message of redemption?"

The teaching answers, "Rather, you must understand that the great ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, are called 'mountains,' as we read 'Hear, O mountains, the Eternal One's argument,' (Micah 6:2)," with actual rocks and stones, however majestic, being excluded by this interpretation as plausible recipients of divine impetus toward justice and righteousness.

In a vein that I read as similar, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, in a 1953 address to the Rabbinical Assembly of America, cautions against a philosophical version of mistaking the possible locus of indwelling divinity. Heschel warns against what we perhaps may call an idolization of abstractions, or of notions, suggesting:

"We are not ready to emend the text and begin the Amidah, the central prayer of the Jewish liturgy, by saying, "Blessed be It, the Supreme Concept, the God of Spinoza, Dewy, and Alexander." Indeed the term "God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob" is semantically different from a term such as "the God of truth, goodness, and beauty." Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob do not signify ideas, principles, or abstract values... The life of him who joins the covenant of Abraham continues the life of Abraham... We are Abraham, Isaac, Jacob."

That is to say, important as words can be upon the path, only a human life can be the living quest for righteousness. Crucial as ideas are, only human life can become righteousness' actualization in this earthly world.

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A propos father Abraham, though, and Obadiah and Elijah, we come, in turn, to an equally real hazard--that of idolizing forebears and other human beings.

Back to E. E. Cummings for a moment, whose third Norton Lecture at Harvard (or 'nonlecture,' as he called it) I found helpful last week. Some more:

"...so far as I am concerned, poetry and every other art was and is and forever will be strictly and distinctly a matter of individuality. If poetry were anything--like dropping an atom bomb--which anyone did--anyone could become a poet merely by doing the necessary anything; whatever that anything might or might not entail. But (as it happens) poetry is being, not doing. If you wish to follow, even at a distance, the poet's calling (and here, as always, I speak from my own totally biased and entirely personal point of view) you've got to come out of the measurable doing universe into the immeasurable house of being. I am quite aware that, wherever our socalled civilization has slithered, there's every reward and no punishment for unbeing. But if poetry is your goal, you've got to forget all about punishments and all about rewards and all about selfstyled obligations and duties and responsibilities etcetera ad infinitum and remember one thing only: that it's you--nobody else--who determines your destiny. Toms can be Dicks and Dicks can be Harrys, but none of them can ever be you."

It will be no novelty if I pause here for a moment on some tension between Cummings and Judaism. It may well be you are recalling that our Torah is full of rewards and punishments, not to mention obligations and duties.

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Obedience, however, is not the same as righteousness. The latter, not the former, is the apogee and the sine qua non of being human. And the difference between obedience and righteousness is individuality.

Many books and lots of other people may tell you about righteousness. Only you, as your own, distinct, inimitable self, can quest for righteousness and be it.

We should not exist as a species of robot. If you shudder at the thought, it is a good sign you are still alive. If some part of you chimes in, as you embrace such vital chutzpah, remonstrating that it might be better, or more true to a divine plan, if we all were slavishly compelled to uniform compliance, let me suggest you fear for your very life.

Back to pianist Jeremy Denk, whose musical thinking I found helpful two weeks ago. Some more from the New Yorker, where he writes about once having won a piano competition:

Years of grad-school indulgences (liquor, Chinese takeout, kitchen appliances) had left me with a Visa bill of forty-five hundred dollars, and I was able to erase it in a flash. All that remained of my glorious prize, of all those months of practicing, was a photograph of Princess Diana handing me my award onstage at Royal Festival Hall, which I faxed to everyone I knew. At the time, my hair resembled hers. This close shave made me wonder: How could I convert my high thoughts about Mozart into hard cash? Within a year, I decided to leave the Midwest for New York, in search of a new teacher and a serious career. My first few months in the city were marked by financial panic and a deep nostalgia for closets. The expensiveness of things conspired with their copious availability. I never had a budget. I survived by currying favor at the Juilliard gig office, and was assigned to weddings and parties, where I thundered on pianos that whimpered at what was being asked of them. I made conversation with drunken grooms, society ladies, recently minted lawyers. The locations got worse and worse. "White Christmas" was filmed at the Tavern on the Green, in Central Park, against its now vanished riot of Yuletide kitsch. I had caught a flu in the course of filming the "about town" segments. We couldn't work until after business hours. It was 3 a.m.; I was wiped out, coughing, sniffling, hovering over the food tray, stuffing my face with handfuls of greasy shrimp crackers. Periodically, I'd be called back to the set, to mime seasonal enthusiasm. What had I done? What had happened to all my musicology lectures, to all those hours of crafting Bach preludes and fugues? I'd come to New York partly in search of money, and here I was, bathed in the stuff, playing "New York, New York." Vast sums were being spent, it seemed, for my cheesy humiliation.

Talk about the rewards and incentives "for unbeing"--per E. E. Cummings--and about the hazard of doing, more and more, what others want from you. And that can happen, too, in the world of spirituality and religion, just as much as in any career.
People, what is up? How is it possible that former Fox News morning show anchor Gretchen Carlson can receive $20 million and a public apology from one of America's most successful and influential media companies, while the same day two New Hampshire female defense attorneys go on national television to smear, shame and degrade a teenage boarding school sexual assault victim? How does a father of two college-student daughters come to terms with this enormous contradiction?

Gretchen Carlson, an accomplished professional adult television broadcaster sued her employer/boss Roger Ailes for ongoing on-the-job verbal sexual harassment, less than a month ago. She never alleged any improper physical contact from Ailes. Chessy Prout, who until a week ago, was the anonymous accuser/victim of very prestigious St. Paul's prep school senior Owen Labrie, was a 15-year-old freshman at the time. She was lured by the BMOC into a one-time encounter the day before graduation weekend in 2014.

Labrie gave Prout a Senior Salute, an extremely intimate physical assault in the mechanical closet of a campus classroom building, which Prout tried desperately and unsuccessfully to fend off. Labrie then bragged to several friends of his "score" with Prout.

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A very courageous Chessy Prout, flanked on both sides by her family, appeared on The Today Show last week to publicly reveal her own trauma of the assault and subsequent trial. I watched Chessy's father and wondered just how he was able to maintain his composure? His young daughter had found the strength to re-script her role from victim to empowered survivor in her first-ever national television interview. I don't ever want to imagine trading places with the Prout family, but am very proud of their grit and tenacity.

Yet, where is the public apology from St. Paul's School? Or from Owen Labrie, his father and mother? What about the very accomplished and successful members of St. Paul's School board of trustees?

The ghastly details of what Owen Labrie did -- how an 18-year-old senior and top student, targeted and lured Chessy into the so-called Senior Salute -- go way beyond verbal sexual harassment experienced by Carlson. Roger Ailes would be on trial for felony rape if he had engaged in the behavior Owen Labrie inflicted on Prout. Yet Labrie now has two female defense attorneys petitioning the New Hampshire Supreme Court to overturn his conviction and retry the case again on the basis of ineffective counsel.

The two NH attorneys, Jaye Rancourt who served on Labrie's defense team and Robin Melone, had the temerity in Tuesday's CBS This Morning appearance to say, "We were troubled that when she's (Prout) interviewed and she makes statements purporting to know what the jury was thinking, that that statement goes unchallenged in the media and that then it's picked up that he's a rapist and he's a predator and he's this horrible person when the facts are he was found innocent of that conduct."

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Except, Labrie was not found innocent, he was found guilty of three counts of sexual assault on a child and one felony count of using the internet to lure her into his trap. According to the Boston.com story, "Because the age difference between Labrie and the girl was less than four years, he was charged with misdemeanor sexual assault, not felony statutory rape." In sentencing Labrie, Merrimack Superior Court Judge Larry Smukler labeled Labrie, "a very good liar."

Speaking of very good liars, CBS This Morning anchors Norah O'Donnell, Charlie Rose and Gayle King seemingly very ill prepared for this week's interview, failed to challenge attorneys Rancourt and Melone on their misrepresentations and outright lies. Rancourt has twice been ruled "disqualified" from further representation of Labrie, yet continued to on the CBS This Morning show.

While that is distressing, more disturbing is the role these women are freely willing to play in seeking to re-try the case and put teenage victim Prout through the whole trauma and ordeal of public trial again. I don't want to believe the worst about lawyers, but their choices and lies for their client in this case make that very difficult to ignore.

By the way, in addition to Rancourt on Labrie's original defense team was Boston-based lead attorney J.W. Carney, who recently defended mobster James "Whitey" Bulger. Hey, when you're going after a 15-year-old sexual assault victim, you hire the toughest SOB you can find.

Readers might wonder how defendant Labrie's divorced working-class parents have been able to afford all this legal talent to defend their predator-son. Easy, just put up a defense fundraising website and get St. Paul's School wealthy alumni to contribute. Wow, not how 21st Century Fox handled morning show anchor Carlson's lawsuit. They showed her the money!
"I teach in hopes of turning content into rocket ships--

Tribulations into telescopes,

So a child can see their true potential from right where they stand."

Excerpted from "Lift Off," by Donovan Livingston

Earlier this year, newly minted teacher Donovan Livingston won national acclaim for his passionate poem at the Harvard Graduate School of Education convocation. Even as he called out racial injustice in education, he celebrated teachers, saying they have the power to "inspire galaxies of greatness for generations to come."

The vast majority of people who have chosen to be educators would agree. Overwhelmingly, teachers say they're motivated by the chance to change a child's life for the better. In the Primary Sources survey of 20,000 U.S. teachers, 98 percent of respondents confirmed that teaching is how they make a difference in the world. They dream of building those galaxies of greatness, one bright-eyed girl or boy at a time.

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Being a teacher is more than just a job: It is a calling. Yet, for all their hopes, aspiration, and dedication, at least 17 percent of teachers leave the profession within the first five years. And while the reasons for teacher dropout vary, the Primary Sources survey holds a clue: More than a quarter of respondents don't think teachers are well respected in the community where they teach.

Low pay is not the only way that teachers are made to feel devalued or disregarded in what author Frank McCourt, a 30-year veteran of New York City public schools, once described as "the downstairs maid of professions." Too often, the climate of the school itself takes a devastating toll--creating an insurmountable gulf between a new teacher's expectations and experiences.

In his groundbreaking 1975 book Schoolteacher, Dan C. Lortie highlighted how U.S. educational practices contribute to isolation, with each teacher working behind closed doors, cut off from one another and from support. You can feel the anguish in this journal entry from a first year teacher, writing in 2001: "Now I am all alone. I teach in my room alone, I plan at home alone, I execute plans alone, and I reflect alone." Many teachers confront a complex set of challenges, from overcrowded classrooms to students with social, emotional, or behavioral difficulties to being expected to teach multiple levels of ability simultaneously. Yet, they rank "not enough time collaborating with colleagues" as one of their top two concerns.

Physical and operational isolation is compounded by psychological stress. We often hear about bullying in schools--but students aren't the only ones at risk. One study by the American Psychological Association revealed that 80 percent of participating teachers were victims of harassment at school--by parents, students, administrators, or even fellow teachers. In Canada, 60 percent of teachers say they have seen students verbally abuse other teachers. Meanwhile, one analysis of news reports found 269 incidents of students caught with guns in U.S. schools last year. How can a teacher feel fulfilled in their calling, against a backdrop of insecurity and fear?

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In my last post, I explored how negative school climates are fertile grounds for social isolation. This problem doesn't just afflict young people; it burdens teachers, too, risking a downward spiral of reciprocal suffering and neglect. But, by the same token, a safe, supportive, kind environment can spark a virtuous cycle, enabling teachers and students alike to perform at their best. If we want good people to go into teaching--and stay--then we need to provide a nurturing school climate, with a standard of care, compassion, and support that enables teachers and students to grow together.

How?

One innovative program, "Leading Together," sponsored by the Center for Courage & Renewal, focuses explicitly on enhancing the quality of adult relationships within a school community, based on the premise that psychological safety, teamwork, collaboration, and mutual trust are the foundation of a school's ability to improve itself. The program brings principals and teacher-leaders together to become more self-aware, to reflect on their successes and challenges, and to reinforce their sense of shared purpose.

Another inspiring model is the Prince's Teaching Institute (PTI) in the U.K. PTI offers subject-specific networks where teachers are encouraged to share lesson plans, ideas for activities, and general tips and tricks of the trade. New teachers can take classes to deepen their subject knowledge, and receive one-to-one consultations from more experienced educators. It's a great example of how we can support teachers, re-ignite their passion, build connectedness and show caring, to the benefit of teachers, students, and the school community as a whole.

In a nationwide survey of American public school teachers conducted by CASEL (Collaboration for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning), 82 percent of respondents said they would like more training on social and emotional learning (SEL). Educators know that interpersonal skills such as discipline, empathy, responsible decision-making, and conflict resolution are indispensable to student success; and, moreover, that teaching SEL in schools improves students' relationships with their teachers and with each other.

Not every school, community, or country has resources to spare for implementing extra teacher training; many struggle just to provide classroom supplies and books for students.

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But as societies and citizens, we don't need to wait for budgetary priorities to change in order to rethink what it means to honor teachers and their profession. Beyond celebrating individuals with Teacher of the Year awards, let's recognize the work that all teachers put in, every school day of every year. For students to thrive, we need to provide better care and support to every member of the school community, a better sense of being valued, of being connected and appreciated as a whole person.
With photographs and video by Eric Minh Swenson

The subversive power of women's laughter filled the outdoor courtyard of the new Hauser Wirth & Schimmel art complex when over 700 women artists - along with women art professionals and some supportive men - gathered for Now Be Here , a photo event in DTLA, on a sunny Sunday on August 28th.



Paul Schimmel and Catherine Opie



Helen Pashgian (center) and Gisela Colon (right)

The late-morning event was organized by artist Kim Schoenstadt and Aandrea Stang (head of education at HW&S) to celebrate the last week of the international gallery's groundbreaking thematic survey of 70 years of women's sculpture: major artworks using hands-on techniques and soft materials that broke new ground in sculpture. Revolution in the Making: Abstract Sculpture by Women, 1947-2016 is the first exhibition to celebrate the contribution of legendary women sculptors who changed the history of sculpture and women's art. Photographers Isabel Avila and Carrie Yury have been commissioned to archive the group photographs, and each participating artist will get a link to her photograph for her own archive. Schoenstadt will also provide archival copies of the photographs to SoCal museums and the National Archives of American Art, making this event an historic turning point for L.A. women artists.

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While women artists still do not have gender equality in the art world, they are no longer the outsiders they used to be. In 1981, heritage feminist artists Suzanne Lacy and Ruth Weisberg organized a playful protest at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art against a 1970s survey exhibition curated by chauvinistic womanizer, Maurice Tuchman, which only included one woman artist. Dressed as cowgirls wearing masks of Tuchman's face, they staged a protest - with great production values - to make fun of the antiquated gender imbalance.

This spirit of fun, love of costume and celebration is characteristic of Los Angeles. The power of laughter can be subversive - as we all know, watching political comedians like Samantha Bee, Bill Maher, John Oliver, Sarah Silverman, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Hollywood Halloween parades and gay pride parades also share this quality. On the same day as this photo event, women went topless to the "Go Topless" event at Venice Beach. We know that "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" (Cyndi Lauper, herself a politically-engaged artist) especially when they make fun of Jurassic gender inequality in amusing feminist stunts.



Gesela Colon (left) and Micol Hebron (center)

The phenomenal turnout - 973 people in total - at the cross-generational, historic photo event continued this L.A. tradition of combining humor, costume and celebration to energize women to continue the advancement of women's art. Heritage women artists attended the event as role models to inspire emerging women artists. Major artists including Catherine Opie, Betye Saar, Alison Saar, Alexis Smith, Ruth Weisberg, Lita Alburqueque, Helen Pashgian, Gisela Colon, Barbara T. Smith, Meg Cranston and Liza Lou all attended.

Maybe "we have come a long way, baby," but there is still more work ahead to ensure women artists get more equal representation in galleries and auction prices. Today, only 31% of the art currently on display in most galleries is from women artists, according to Micol Hebron in her "gallery tally." The sales of womens' art represents only 17 cents on the male artist dollar, and only a few living women artists (like Cindy Sherman) can command top dollar. A woman artist either has to be deceased or over 80 years old to sell her work for the higher prices consistently earned by male artists of equal stature. These horrifying statistics can no longer pass muster with today's cross-generation of women artists, who refuse to remain in stunned silence. The HW&S photo event is galvanizing a cross-generation of women to come together in a call for solidarity - just as previous generations did in the '70s and '80s womens' art movement. But today we have heritage feminist artists - and some female identified men - to support women in this fun. Outmoded chauvinism will soon be ridiculed by women artists empowered by this new solidarity and the trending of a more expansive feminism in all areas of life.

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I recall an ancient Chinese story in General Sun Tse's manual of strategy - a handbook for warriors. A king commanded General Sun Tse: "[you] claim to be able to teach anybody in the arts of war... take my wives and make soldiers out of them!" (he had 180 wives). Sun Tse arranged the women in two rows to teach them the meaning of the drumbeat: two beats = right, three beats = left, four beats = about turn/march backward. Instead of following the code, the women began laughing, and Sun Tse, ever the military strategist, repeated the order several times. The more he commanded the women, the more they laughed. So Sun Tse applied a law: should women fall about laughing instead of learning to march to the drumbeat, they will have their heads chopped off. The king was concerned because he did not want to lose all his wives (okay, maybe just a couple) so two women were beheaded as an example. The women watched and then marched in silence.

Women have marched in silence for centuries, suppressing their laughter at the absurdity of misogynistic commands. But times have changed: a new brand of cross-generational, gender fluid, feminism is trending. As an artist-centered gallery, Hauser Wirth & Schimmel has tapped into the zeitgeist of womens' subversive power of celebration.



Alison, Lezley and Betye Saar with group

Reactions from women artists at the photo event



Betye Saar: "My daughter Alison invited me to go with her to the women artists photo event at Hauser Wirth & Schimmel. It was wonderful. I saw many old friends and ex-students. It was very hot, but the camaraderie made it all worthwhile. I was probably the oldest artist there: I'm 90. But I wanted to be an example that being an artist can be a life long experience."

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Ruth Weisberg (center)

Ruth Weisberg: "It gives a feeling of solidarity and mutual support. It is also wonderful to see friends and former students. I think it is long overdue and wonderful for young women artists who won't have the same struggle we had. Some of it was good for us, but we have to do things differently now because there aren't the same impediments. There still are impediments if you look at auction prices and the number of women in shows. This is important politically for reasons of social action, but not quite the same as it was when we were real outsiders."



Lita Albuquerque

Lita Albuquerque: "I think the show is a wonderful museum historical show. It brings the role of women artists up into the forefront. I think this event is groundbreaking, and this may cause more in terms of changing the face of women artists. Kim's event here at Hauser Wirth & Schimmel combined with the exhibition opens doors for women artists and it is a tremendous amount of fun and brings a lot of women together."

Gisela Colon: "There is a lot of significance attached to a gathering of over 700 women artists in the context of a group exhibition that dates back over 70 years of sculpture. In the context of being a sculptor myself and seeing the gathering, it is historic and from a woman's point of view it gives attention to women sculptors working in areas that have never been shown in the right light and right context. I think it is a sign of the times that it is all coming together: Feminine power brings about equality in the art world today.

May Sun: "I think it is a good idea in relation to the exhibition that is really strong with powerful women artists over decades. It is very generous of Kim Schoenstadt to start this project, and it shows physically how many women artists there are in L.A. It shows a real solidarity."

Lisa Adams: "It looks to be an enormous amount of women artists, right? But if you look at female artists in places of power and strength at the top, then the percentage is small. If you used this nearly 1,000 women as a database and did research, what percentage are represented officially by an established gallery?"

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Nancy Buchanan: "It is always great to see how many wonderful women artists there are in our city. But it is discouraging that things haven't changed more than they have, and that there are still discrepancies in representation, in pay, and simple things like respect."

Phyllis Green: "This is a great moment. I thought this show would be a great catalyst for bringing women out of the woodwork and it has. I've been in L.A. since 1979, and I've seen people here I met then, plus students that were my students years ago. So, it is amazing."

Catherine Opie :" I've known Kim a long time, but I had no idea it would be such a statement and celebration of women artists. Looking at multiple generations of women artists, from women in their twenties to Betye Saar, was a very powerful event. But I want true equality embedded at every level, through gallery represention, sales, and not just museum shows, for celebration."
If you want rise the heights in politics, get in front of a mirror and start reading aloud from the newspaper, a novel, anything. The proof of this lies before us in the presidential election.

Donald Trump is a natural orator. Brilliant. But when it comes to reading from a teleprompter, he is much less so. The act of reading aloud reduces him, robs him of his ebullience and his tremendous talent at playing an audience.

Hillary Clinton, with or without a teleprompter, is not a great speaker, but she reads her speeches well. Her problem may be in the content of the speeches; they seem, like so much of the Clinton campaign, to be touched by too many hands, massaged by committee.

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But she has skill at the teleprompter, seldom looking at the speech in front of her, but looking up to the judiciously placed screens that carry the words that she is reading, looking as though she is saying them, not often going off script.

I believe the ability to sightread may be something we are born with. Most broadcasters have it, but not all. I marvel at the ability of my friend and colleague Tim Farley, host of "The Morning Briefing" on SiriusXM Radio, to read anything faultlessly, even if he has never seen it before.

By contrast the late Tim Russert, a master questioner, often stumbled when reading. I myself am such a stumblebum that I do without a teleprompter, which has its own liabilities.

When Winston Churchill - the man who was to become the greatest orator of the 20th century -- gave his first speech in the House of Commons as a 29-year-old, he blew it. He had planned to speak extemporaneously and he froze for three minutes.

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From that time on, Churchill wrote out his speeches, memorized them and delivered them as though extemporaneously. During World War II, he kept his dental technician handy so that a prosthetic he wore could be adjusted to maintain that distinctive lisp.

George W. Bush was a disaster when trying to speak off the cuff, failing and falling back on platitudes and cliches, but reading effortlessly. Also his speeches were well-written and not bolted together.

I watched Bush stumble through an impromptu session outside the German Parliament, the Bundestag, in May 2002. The German chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, showed off his ability to think on his feet.

But inside, Bush carried the day by reading a good speech superbly. I was watching Secretary of State Colin Powell sitting a few feet from me, and he visibly relaxed as Bush found his stride.

Martin Luther King wrote out his great speeches and seemed to have at least half-memorized them, so that when he said, "I have a dream," it came not from his notes but his heart.

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Much as we love to hear speakers who can enthrall without notes, in high-stakes politics, delivery and content need to be written down, so that, if for no other reason, they are accurately reported in the high-speed news cycle.

Trump needs to work on his reading-aloud skills, to get comfortable with the teleprompter. If he should win, he will not, one hopes, wing it when war and peace are in the balance.

Clinton, needs fewer props, like the teleprompter. She needs to peek out of the shell of committee-written jargon so the voters can get the measure of her.

Press conferences would be good start. At a press conference, we learn how fast the candidate is on his or her feet, what the blindsides are, and the candidate learns firsthand, perhaps for the first time, what people are asking. It is a two-way affair, ideas coming and going.

That is the test of the unscripted response: the American equivalent of Britain's revered "Question Time."

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It is a strange truth that the actions of someone who I consider to be one of the most blatant warmongering individuals on the planet propelled me onto the path of peace.

In February 2003, I went on the "Stop the War" march in London's Hyde Park where over a million people tried to convince Tony Blair that invading Iraq was not something the British people wanted. "NOT IN OUR NAME!" screamed the placards and yelled the protestors. With the war in Iraq imminent, I remember feeling a level of frustration and fury that I'd never felt about any political situation before. I was convinced that attempting to bomb Iraq into a democracy and removing its dictator from power would only make matters much worse.

But Tony Blair turned a blind eye to the largest political demonstration in London's history and one million people's anger had no political impact whatsoever other than to motivate and mobilize people like me.

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From that moment on I felt compelled to do whatever I could to reinforce the counter-argument. Within the year I had founded a charity which collects and shares real stories of forgiveness as a way of building understanding around intolerance and enabling people to reconcile and move forward from pain and trauma. Anger was my spur.

There is often a false dichotomy between forgiveness and anger. Anger has its place on the path to peace. As Marian Partington, whose sister was one of the victims of serial killers Fred and Rosemary West, has said, "Forgiveness for me began with murderous rage."

Anger is also the fuel of protest and protest has a long track record of improving lives and eradicating injustice. After the Charleston Church Shooting, when some victims' families spoke instantaneously of forgiveness, a number of black activists pointed out that people needed to be angry because anger is a motivation for change and any refusal to accept anger as a necessary, positive human response was a dangerous excuse to ignore racism.

Anger has seeded great creative works too. We Are Many is a documentary film by Amir Amirani which in my mind is one of the most remarkable and yet overlooked documentaries of this decade. Remarkable because it documents a shift in the consciousness of humanity, and overlooked because there are still forces at work who seek to bury it.

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The late Tony Benn's final comments in the film explain perfectly the positive force of anger. Change can occur he says when there are two forces at work -- "anger about injustice and optimism that you can make a better world."

Amirani also went on the London 2003 march and his indignation at Tony Blair for refusing to listen to the demonstrators led to a 12 year project exploring the causes and consequences of the February 2003 global day of protest against the Iraq War. We Are Many is a hymn to protest and the most potent and accurate record that we have of the anti-war movement of that time.

To mark the 15th anniversary of 9/11, Stacy Bannerman adds her voice to The Forgiveness Project's bank of stories. It is another forgiveness story that grew out of anger and moral outrage. This is more than a story about forgiving the casual violence of her Iraq war veteran husband but also a story about forgiving the American people who supported a war based on lies, including the distortion that Iraq was in some way responsible for the September 11th terror attacks.



"I wanted everyone who supported that war to suffer," she says. "I blamed the 76 percent of people in this country who wanted that war, and the 99 percent of Americans who sacrificed nothing for it. I blamed them for all of my friends' kids who were killed in Iraq, or who killed themselves when they got back. I blamed them for the deaths of the military spouses I knew who had been murdered by their returning veteran."

Bannerman's transformation came through a realization that she couldn't live the rest of her life controlled by the need for vengeance. Forgiveness is often a pragmatic choice, a decision to compromise and release your moral indignation. "I decided that being reconciled to what had happened was more important than being right about why it never should have occurred," she says understanding that forgiveness will never change the past, but it can change the present, which is where the future starts.
The first line of Alexander Maksik's third novel, "Shelter in Place," perfectly sets the stage for this brutal, elegant book full of yearning and nostalgia.

"In the summer of 1991 my mother beat a man to death with a twenty-two ounce Erstwing framing hammer and I fell in love with Tess Wolff."

"Shelter in Place" explores questions of family loyalty, love and mental illness, but most importantly, it delves into the frustrating lack of options for those eager to end the epidemic of violence against women. Ensconced in a house in the woods in the present day, Joe March, the novel's narrator, reflects back on his strange coming-of-age, which began that fateful day when his mother snapped in the parking lot of a hardware store after witnessing a man she didn't know hit first his child, and then his wife.

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In sensual, musical prose, Maksik creates Joe's March's longing for both the love of his life, and the family that was irremediably changed that summer day in 1991. "Shelter in Place" is as unquestionably brilliant as it is painful; a rare meditation on mania, depression, and the rage of youth that so often dissipates with the approach of middle age.

I had an email exchange with Maksik about the novel.

In "Shelter in Place," the narrator's mother, Anne-Marie March, beats a man to death in a parking lot after she sees him hit his wife. What made you want to write about that particular kind of vengeance and its repercussions for Anne-Marie and her family?

I'm not sure I'd define the act as one of vengeance. To my mind, that word suggests a certain level of forethought. She came across this man by chance and responded. Also, she acted in defense of both his wife and his children. On the other hand, on some level, perhaps she'd been preparing for it for much of her life. Or her life had been preparing her. For years she'd been an ER nurse and like anyone who has done that work, she was intimately familiar with both the horrors of domestic violence and the utterly dysfunctional and chauvinistic system that claims to serve its victims. So perhaps she'd just had enough of seeing women injured by cowardly, bullying men. Enough of seeing those men defended and protected and excused.

This kind of systemic cowardice is something that makes me very angry and is therefore something I want to write about. Add to that an interest in moments of sudden change, when we act in ways that are not immediately explicable, and our actions have dire and far-reaching consequences. Those are moments I'm very interested in writing about, particularly when they deal with questions of courage and moral certainty.

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You write that Anne-Marie "treated countless women and children for terrible injuries sustained at the hands of husbands and fathers. Women who returned to the hospital, often holding those very hands. Women who would later turn up dead. A State reluctant to get involved in family affairs. Anne-Marie March had had enough. There is a limit and these things do not happen in a vacuum." Can you talk a little bit more about this idea?

One in three women in this country has been a victim, or will be a victim of violence by an intimate partner. That's a shameful and staggering number. Violence against women, particularly violence that occurs within the home, is regularly ignored, excused, underplayed and accepted by a wide variety of institutions, but most immediately dangerous are the institutions whose responsibility it is to protect women from that abuse. Abusers are infrequently convicted, but when they are, rarely do the courts impose maximum penalties. Our prisons are packed full of non-violent offenders, but a man nearly beats his wife to death and we're unwilling to get involved. And yet we still ask that same ignorant question: why doesn't she just leave? Well, for any number of reasons. To begin with, because a victim believes that if she does leave, her abuser with kill her. Or her children. Or that she'll lose custody of those children and she'll no longer be able to defend them. Or that she'll end up homeless. Her church, her family, the police, the courts have been telling her the same thing for years and years: it's better to make it work, than "tear a family apart." As if she's doing the tearing. How can a person know these things and not be furious? How can you see the hypocrisy and horror of this system and not want to revolt against it?



During the course of the novel Joe March is forced to understand the fear many women feel of being assaulted by men and he's also forced to become aware of the anger some women experience as a result of that ongoing fear. Did you ever personally have a moment of awareness like that?

I'm fortunate to know some very smart, very tough women and I've learned a great deal from them. My mother, first and foremost. She takes no shit and never has. I remember being a kid, young, and sitting in the passenger seat while she was driving. Some guy pulled up next to us, leaned out his window and made some comment. I don't remember what, but it's not difficult to imagine. She turned to him with such fury. It terrified me, but afterwards it was so clear who the powerful one was, and I was glad to be in her car, not his. So: my mom, who is as smart and independent and fierce as any woman I've ever known, set the bar. Of course, I won't ever know what it is to be a woman, but I have learned a great deal by listening to my friends and by walking with them through cities.



Alexander Maksik



Some of the characters in "Shelter in Place" seem to believe that the only way to combat the epidemic of violence against women is either through college campus-based activism or to counter the violence with violence. When a female student is raped in a frat house, a minor character even says they can hold a peaceful protest in front of the frat house or they can "set it on fire." Do you think that in reality there are other options and avenues for change?

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What a great question. Difficult, too. There are many days when, I have to admit, I'm very much in favor of setting it all on fire. It's often difficult to believe that these systems will change without some kind of violent revolution. And the epidemic is systemic, it permeates so many aspects of so many cultures. I often struggle to muster much enthusiasm for the kind of cautious campus protests described in the novel. I'm far more enthusiastic about organizations like The Gulabi Gang, a group of armed Dalit women which formed in Uttar Pradesh. Members of the group wear a uniform of pink saris and fight against, among other things, domestic violence. (For the cultural chauvinists among us, violence against women is only slightly more common in India than it is in the US. Contrary to popular and convenient opinion, domestic violence cuts across national boundaries, as well as those of education, race and class). They organize protests and rallies, but they are also perfectly willing to use force and have done so against both the police and perpetrators themselves. As I understand it, similar groups are forming throughout the world. At a certain point, as some of the women say in the novel, you run out of patience. What one does with that impatience is another thing altogether.



Joe March suffers from severe bipolar disorder. The language in the novel speeds up and becomes more fluid, more precise when Joe experiences mania. Likewise, when he's manic he feels invincible, capable of incredible precision of movement. In a scene in which Joe is tending bar, you write: "And as if to prove your point, as if to prove your own invincible brilliance, you fly the shaker across each glass and there is just enough, down to a single violet drop, there is just enough to fill those three full to their brims." How did you come to write about mania in this way?

I wanted the experience of reading the novel to mirror Joe's mind as closely as possible. I wanted the reader to feel those rapid changes - both the wild mania and the sudden slumping lows. While Joe himself occasionally tries to describe these feelings, he also recognizes (as I do) the futility of describing them. The only chance I had of doing his mind justice, was by altering the style to suit his given mood. At a certain point, I began to see it in terms of music, as if while writing I was scoring his mind.



You are a native Idahoan living in New York. What's it like to go from a land of wilderness to NYC?



Well technically I'm not a native Idahoan. I was born in Los Angeles, but I do feel very much connected to Idaho. I grew up there, my family is there. And I certainly feel more drawn to Idaho than I do to New York. I like this city, its vast variety of faces and languages and cultures, but it's never felt like home. There are other cities I truly love, and I think I'll return to them, but ultimately I'll end up somewhere wilder, in a place that favors the natural world, that pays it more respect.



Could you name a couple of favorite novels you've read in 2016 and what you love about them?

Just a few days ago I finished Peter Orner's new book, "Am I Alone Here." It's not a novel. What it is exactly, I'm not sure, but I will tell you that it's the most beautiful, moving book I've read in a very long time and I'll use any opportunity to mention it. It comes out in November and I encourage anyone who loves reading, I mean who truly loves reading, to immediately go to a bookshop and demand a copy.

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Here are a few others, not all of them novels, that I read or reread this year and that I think are exceptional, that moved me:
The race for Illinois comptroller pits Republican incumbent Leslie Geissler Munger against Chicago City Clerk Susana Mendoza. But it might as well be Bruce Rauner vs. Michael Madigan.

On this week's "Only in Illinois," we discuss how both parties in state legislative races will use the opposite party's leader in negative campaign ads. Republicans already have aired attack ads that portray Democratic lawmakers as servants of House Speaker Michael Madigan, who also is chairman of the Illinois Democratic Party.

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Munger was appointed comptroller by Rauner in 2015 and Mendoza rarely mentions her opponent without a reference to Rauner. Likewise, Munger has criticized Mendoza -- who served 10 years in the Illinois House under Madigan's leadership -- for citing Madigan as a mentor.

For his part, Madigan has used every opportunity to denigrate Rauner's "extreme" politics, which he says is the cause of the state's prolonged, damaging budget impasse. In a speech to rally county Democratic leaders, Madigan linked Rauner's "extremism" with that of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

As campaign season gains momentum in the final eight weeks before Election Day, voters are assured of an avalanche of negative ads by Democrats that seek to link Republican opponents to Rauner.

Meanwhile, in the U.S. Senate race, Republican incumbent Mark Kirk's repeated disavowal of Trump has not stopped Democratic challenger Tammy Duckworth from linking Kirk to Trump as often as possible.

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When I was a small child, our whole family (eleven kids and parents) were in the local newspaper because my parents were so widely known for their hobby of doing genealogy. We often spent evenings working on family history, writing our own, reading journals from grandparents, or memorizing names and dates of ancestors. My parents even named ten of the eleven of us after ancestors. I'm named after Mette Marie Hansdatter/Hansen, who emigrated to Utah after being converted by missionaries in the late 1800s in Denmark. At home, I learned stories about ancestors who had been pioneers in the early days of the Mormon church, crossing the plains pushing a handcart to get to "Zion," aka Utah. We were very proud of the sacrifices our ancestors had made and this made us determined to "honor" them by continuing to be good Mormons. In Mormonism, family history is basically a requirement for getting to heaven, where you will meet all your ancestors and be part of one giant, eternally bound family.

No, Mormons don't worship or pray to ancestors. No, we don't believe we have lived previous lives. No, we don't believe that by doing temple work for the dead we force them to become Mormon. No, we don't believe that everyone has to or will convert to Mormonism in the after-life.

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But yes, Mormons believe that families are eternally sealed to each other in heaven, which means not only our nuclear families, but generations in the past and descendants in the future. Mormons also believe that certain rites are necessary for entry into heaven and that the dead wait for this work to be done so that they can pass from spirit prison to spirit paradise, both of which are places souls wait to be resurrected after this life. Because Mormons believe in a God who is all-loving, we believe that He intends for everyone to have the chance to have these rites done. While we do not believe that everyone will accept these rites and become "Mormon," we do believe it is our responsibility to act as proxy for the dead, in particular our own ancestors, so that they can pass into heaven if they choose to accept these ordinances.

I've heard countless stories in church about Mormons being "prompted" to look in a particular place for family history information, attics, drawers, even phone numbers of certain lost family members who have records. These are inspiring stories about how important temple work and genealogy are to those in the "spirit world," and to God. Mormons will sometimes spend their vacation time going to churches where family members were born so that they can experience a connection with their ancestors, or so that they can find out more information. They will spend time regularly working on genealogy, and feel that it is important to keep their own records in journal form, of photographs, and of important family documents for their own children and later descendants.

When I was a child, my parents would frequently make the cross-country drive from New Jersey to Utah in the summer to visit family. Along the way, my father would stop at cemeteries and hand out notepads and pencils, then send all eleven of us out to write down information from gravestones so that it could be collected and added to the enormous collection of genealogical information which the church stored at the genealogical library in Salt Lake City. When I was a teenager, my mother would take me with her to The Family History Library to record information from microfiche that had come from local parish archives in Denmark. I was instructed to write down everything I could make out, names and dates and family information. Sometimes it was difficult to make out letters or numbers in a strange hand written centuries ago in another language.

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Of course, in the age of the internet, this genealogical store of information is a lot bigger and a lot more accessible to everyone, not just Mormons. Anyone can find out information about their ancestors. Anyone can also find the holes in their family trees and seek out more information. Mormon teens are now encouraged to do "indexing," which is seeking out those holes and trying to fill them, and eventually getting temple work done for these family members. Frequently, wards will have a designated "Family History" person who is called and dedicated specifically to helping other ward members with their genealogical work. But if there isn't a specific calling, be sure that in many areas, there will already be a member who is an expert. Mormon missionaries often also try to make connections with non-members through offers to help with genealogy (though if you aren't interested in learning about the church, they will still help you and you can use church resources for free).

As I consider the genealogical work of the Mormon church from a non-spiritual perspective, I think it still has great value. Family history is just another word for history, the history of those who lived so-called ordinary lives and did the working and living and loving and dying in the past that the world may never have noticed before. Family history is also an important way of making sure that people of all nationalities and races are remembered. The Mormon Church combined volunteer efforts of hundreds of thousands of hours to complete the Freedmen's Bureau Project of two million records of freed slaves.
The human mind has some curious powers. We can attend to things which may never register in our consciousness. And, we can block out all seeming awareness of that which should be obvious.

This latter trait we call "denial."

We all do it to varying degrees -- some of us more successfully than others.

For example, the President of the Philippines seemed in denial over the simple idea that calling President Obama the "son of a whore" was NOT going to endear him to the leader of the free world. He seemed in denial when Obama cancelled a planned meeting.

Then we have the Donald. Told bold-faced lies on national TV claiming he opposed the war in Iraq and opposed going into Libya. When confronted with VIDEOS which show him stating the opposite -- at the time -- denial.

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Or Brock Turner -- America's favorite rapist. Caught by two witnesses in the act. But, he denies he was responsible for anything more than being drunk.

Or Bill Clinton -- America's favorite ex-president. Paid more than $17 million by a for-profit college company. Runs a foundation which collects millions in "gifts." But cannot see why anyone would think anything improper about his staff trying to impress the education company or these "donors" with the illusion of access to Hillary when she was Secretary of State. Cannot see the potential "conflict" of Chelsea continuing to run the foundation if HRC is our next president. Its just the illusion of access after all. Depends on what the meaning of is is.

Brock Turner's family has trouble with the idea that maybe Brock's victim is who we should be worried about ...not Brock (who pity has lost his taste for rib eye steaks).

Bill Cosby on the same note wants us to know that it is HE who is the victim ... not the perhaps hundreds of women he did G=d knows what to. Sort of like Roger Ailes. He said he did nothing. That "nothing" just cost Fox News $20 million. Few of us can afford such "nothings."

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So let's look at the serious denials of the week.

It turns out HRC's chief counsel Cheryl Mills directed the email mess. Hillary is in denial. After all Cheryl is a trusted aide. But, she seems to have a problem with the idea that national security over-rides HRC's addiction to her blackberry. Why not just admit you screwed up big time? Answer? Bill would not approve. Denial.

Trump visits Mexico to have a "productive" conversation. Sure, if by productive you mean embarrass the President, cause a cabinet minister to resign, and alienate a huge swath of Americans. But we are going to have a wall. Believe me. Denial may be the reason that most of us don't.

Trump gets an intelligence briefing and then blatantly lies about what went on. How to ensure that the intelligence community will "trust you". Maybe not. But then again, HRCV brought email problem director Cheryl Mills to her intelligence briefing. Denial.

How does this happen?

The simple answer is that such denials take the form of suggesting that the ends justify the means. For HRC, the Donald, and Bill the ends are their ability to do "X". Since "X" is important and "X" depends on them, then obviously little problems like email, foreign relations, corruption, or national security should not matter.

The delusion is twofold: 1) that "X" depends on that person and 2) that "X" is more important than how it ends up happening. It gets compounded when you surround yourself with sycophants who echo the idea that YOU are the key to X and that X is critically important.

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HRC believes (yes honestly believes) that America needs her to be the President. That need "trumps" everything else.

The Donald believes (well this week) that his innate judgments and instincts are the key to success. And America needs success. Thus Trump "trumps" all.

But how do we explain Bill and Chelsea not understanding that avoiding the illusion of conflicts of interest, of corruption, of "favors" is key to HRC being trusted? Surely they know better. Their denial is based on something else -- a conviction that they can bluff their way to what they want. Power "trumps" sense.

Brock Turner tried that approach. So did his family. There are lessons there for Bill and Chelsea. If they can just get past denial.

But then again. Brock Turner still has not apologized for his actions. Neither has Cheryl Mills. Neither has HRC nor the Donald.

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It is not that the emperor has no clothes. It is that our would be emperors think they have no need to bathe.
The holy land of Hejaz, home to the two holy cities of Mecca and Medina, is a strictly Muslims-only area as non-Muslims are not issued visas to that region. One would assume that Mecca is a city of religious purity and traditionalism. However, a visit to the holy city a couple of years ago led me to the astonishing realization that the troops of globalization have reached not only the Saudi Kingdom, but the cradle of Islam as well.

Being a good "Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques" has been and remains a source of pride and legitimacy for the Saudi rulers. Starting from the 1970s, booming oil prices unleashed a wave of infrastructural modernization programs and enabled generous efforts to accommodate those making the great pilgrimage (Hajj) or small pilgrimage (Umra). Today, Mecca has the necessary infrastructure to welcome more than twelve million pilgrims a year, a number expected to rise to 17 million by 2025. Rapid modernization resulted in the drastic revamping of the image of the holy city. However, pilgrims (Hajjis) who wish to walk the path of the Prophet Muhammad, or to visit sites where famous events of early Islam took place, will be definitely disappointed. Today's Mecca has more in common with the flamboyance of Dubai than with a romantic place of pilgrimage.

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According to the rules of the Meccan real estate market, the closer a property to the Grand Mosque (al-Haram), the more expensive it is. Therefore, old buildings are wiped out from the area of Mecca's old town. The sites of historical events can only be located approximately. The house where the Prophet Muhammad was born is now a library, while other important sites are lost in the shade of skyscrapers. The Western-style towers obscuring the sky around the Haram have little to do either with Arabic, or with Islamic architecture. Some Muslim scholars see them as a sign of the Day of Judgement and quote a hadith of the Prophet Muhammed that predicts that the last day will come when the guardians of Mecca compete in building tall structures around al-Haram. Judging from the 600 meter tall high Royal Mecca Clock Tower - the world's largest clock face and second tallest skyscraper - that looms over the Grand Mosque from the south, the Day of Judgement is frightfully close.

Walking on the streets of Mecca, Hajjis experience a hybrid mix of Wahhabi puritanism and Western consumer culture. Even though the advertisements do not feature human figures, the sheer number of sellout signs evokes Paris in the days before Christmas. Of course, prices are usually up during the days of Hajj. Pilgrims spend more than 5 billion riyals (1.33 billion USD) each year to buy souvenirs for friends and relatives back home. Even before the appearance of the Prophet Muhammad, Mecca had been a commercial hub where caravans from Syria met their peers from Yemen. The members of the Quraysh tribe ruling the city in the early 7th century were powerful merchants who gained profit from trading. Muhammad also recognized the importance of trade and Mecca thus remained a call of port for goods even after the capital of the Islamic empire moved from Hejaz to Syria and, later, to Iraq. However, the Wall Street style boutiques surrounding the Mecca Clock Tower are more like Western luxury malls than traditional souks. Wealthy pilgrims can do their shopping at Mango, Ralph Lauren and a spate of other Western luxury boutiques in extravagant plazas, while poorer Hajjis can purchase cheaper clothing and Made in China miniature models of the Kaaba from street vendors.

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When it comes to eating in Mecca, forget traditional Saudi dates and lamb. The main fare and the most readily available dish is American junk food. Leaving the Haram Mosque through the King Fahd Gate, the first sign a pilgrim sees is a KFC advertisement offering "Hajj ad Umra Meals" containing rolls, fries and halal drumsticks for 15 riyals (4 USD). As the box does not include drinks, thirsty pilgrims have to buy their own. Unfortunately, there are few alternatives to Pepsi products, bottled in the western region of Saudi Arabia. Coca Cola, boycotted by some Muslims for the company's alleged support of Israel, is still available in McDonald's restaurants on al-Houjoon Street, less than two miles away from the Haram.

There are many places where one can eat and drink around the Grand Mosque. On the first floor of the neighboring plaza, a Starbucks Coffee offers real Americanos, and Pizza Hut and Burger King too offer their fare. The most tragicomic sight I personally experienced was a Nigerian Hajj praying outside the Haram who used a torn Pizza Hut box for a carpet, placing his forehead right on the logo while bowing.

Mecca can accommodate up to three million people during Hajj season. Of course, the price of hotel rooms often goes up tenfold during those days. The wealthiest pilgrims can stay in the Mecca Hilton, part of the Hilton chain, which will soon be inherited by scandal-star Paris Hilton. The 30-storey luxury hotel offers rooms with view of the Kaaba for a price starting from around 200 USD per person per night.

While the globalization of Mecca might disturb Muslims, it does not legally conflict with Islamic law. At the same time, several other phenomena are hardly compatible with Sharia law. For example, taking photos inside the Haram is strictly forbidden as Salafis hold that taking pictures of live creatures is an act forbidden by God. This regulation, easily imposed in the age of normal cameras, is now unenforceable. I saw iPhones, BlackBerrys, and Samsung Galaxys and other smartphones merrily clicking away around the Kaaba and the powerless security guards watching it. The list of controversies does not end here. Just a stone's throw away from al-Haram, there are branches of the Riyad Bank and other financial institutions that owe a fair share of their profit to applying interest (known as Riba in Arabic), a practice strictly forbidden by Islamic law. The Saudi British Bank, the Saudi Hollandi Bank and the Banque Saudi Fransi are also proud to have branches in the Holy City.

"Why can a mosque can be built in Europe and America, and why can't a church be erected in Saudi Arabia?" is one of the questions asked by opponents of Islamic expansion. The heart of the Muslim world is not as closed to foreign impacts as one might assume.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally in Greenville, North Carolina, U.S., September 6, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Segar

In focus groups with women voters in Pennsylvania and Nevada this week, my organization posed a simple question: "I'm going to say a name and I want you to tell me the first thing that comes to your mind." When we uttered the words "Donald Trump," the comments came flying:

"Scary. Obnoxious. Like a tyrant." "Liar. Narcissist. Racist." "I can't trust anyone with such an explosive temper."

The results, while anecdotal, have been confirmed in survey after survey ever since. In a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll, three-quarters of registered voters said Trump is biased against women and minorities. Nearly three in four African-American women are now "strongly" afraid of what will happen if Trump is elected, a Gallup poll confirms.

American women are fearful of a Trump presidency and so am I. In incident after incident, interview upon interview, Trump has insulted and disrespected women. Consider just a few choice examples: He's called women fat pigs, slobs and disgusting animals, mocked a Gold Star mother, suggested that women who are sexually harassed should just find new jobs and declared that abortion should be outlawed and women punished for terminating a pregnancy.

Trump has made abundantly clear that he's ignorant of, or hostile to, the concerns of women and the unmarried women -- single, separated, divorced or widowed -- who make up over 25 percent of all Americans eligible to vote and are one of the fastest growing demographic groups in America.

I founded the Women's Voices Women Vote Action Fund more than a decade ago, and we've been listening closely to single women ever since. After years of conducting focus groups and extensive polling, I'd be glad to educate Trump in what unmarried women truly care about.

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They want good-paying jobs, since unmarried women make up almost half of all workers earning either minimum wage or less than minimum wage. They want equal pay for equal work, since unmarried women earn only sixty-two cents for every dollar a married man makes. They want affordable health care and child care. They want to lift themselves and their families up by attending colleges that won't break the bank. And, yes, they want--and deserve--to make their own medical decisions.

But, mostly this campaign season, they are looking for politicians who understand their lives and will work to improve their futures. As the women of Philadelphia and Las Vegas made clear this week, name callers, bullies and misogynists need not apply.
Taking a close look at multiple success stories, even before it was scientifically proven, those who were brought up with home education at an infant age, they had leverage to their peers academically, some in later prospects in life.

The missing link in any education system globally, is parents.

A fascinating research by Charlotte Alter from Time magazine, noted of parents who raised children who all went on to extraordinary success - "They realized the importance of early-childhood education and taught their children to read and count before they even set foot in a classroom. Some even taught their children to read before they were 2 years old.

They empowered their kids because they wanted to make sure they could take care of themselves. If they can read early they can read signs. If they can do math early, they could handle money. The more you do for your kids, the less they do for themselves and the less empowered they feel."

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That also denotes character building approach by those parents.

Imagine how parents can impact education in those countries scoring low on education if they can give their children a solid foundation before their children even set foot in a school.

For a moment, indulge me in examining a country such as South Africa (SA) where Apartheid and HIV AIDS have a major impact on their education. The majority of South African children are not learning to read in any language by the end of Grade 3 according to a research paper published. (Identifying Binding Constraints in Education, 2016)

Furthermore, South Africa ranks last out of 148 countries in the Global Competitive Index for Primary Education (2014), clearly illustrating the need for an innovative, cognitive intervention plan for early childhood development in order to change the future of their human capital.

Keep in mind that human capital is quickly becoming the most valuable asset for any nation, above their mineral resources. This is evident by the prosperity of small countries in relation to land size and population, despite few or no minerals like Netherlands, Singapore, England and Japan. Those countries and more, leveraged their human capital to excel, which is developed from an early age.

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The root problem lies with parents not talking, playing or reading to their offsprings. Children from fortunate families, hear 30 million and more words by age 3. Parents left behind by Apartheid in SA don't have the knowledge, they don't know that it is their responsibility to teach their kids the basics, they believe it is their government's job.

Therefore most children enter school without knowledge of color, shapes, numbers, big and small, position words and that written words have meaning. These basic words and concepts are the vocabulary children need to understand the world around them. These concepts are the foundation blocks for ALL FUTURE LEARNING, especially mathematics.

It has been found out that an important predicting factor of later academic achievement is the early mastery of basic maths concepts according to a study by Norhwestern University, USA in 2007. Support for the study came from the Center for the Analyses of Pathways from Children to Adulthood at the University of Michigan, a National Science Foundations-funded Developmental Science Center.

Many existing Early Childhood Development programs in emerging markets were written for privileged children with adequate vocabulary. These programs were never adjusted to suit the needs of the millions of under privileged children.

We have to try and bring disadvantaged kids on par with advantage kids using an appropriate method so that children can learn these basics in a short period of time.

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A phenomena have been trailblazing the globe, in the emergence of cutting edge organizations that took it upon themselves to address these challenges, one such organization is BrainBoosters which adjusted, tested and developed programs for disadvantaged children zooming on early math and early reading.

There should be no concern about the advantage of teaching a child to read before they go to school if the majority of children cannot read in any language by a later grade.

In South Africa children have to switch from mother tongue to English in Grade 4, which is late. This is a major reason for children not coping with mathematics, the language barrier is just too big. BrainBoosters offers a solution to their government to consider replacing a subject called Grade 1 EFAL. (English First Additional Language) with the BrainBoosters Grade 1 EFAL program.

In this subject they address mathematical concepts in English and use an embedded phonics method to give children 'I can" mentality and attitude in Grade 1. Parent involvement is insured by giving parents board games and showing them how to interact and play with their children at parent evenings.



To merely try to copy the Hillary Clinton campaign in the USA to encourage parents to read to their kids will never succeed in South Africa because the majority of parents don't read themselves. We have to be innovative and take baby steps that will lead to young parents reading to their kids. Example of these baby steps are done by the BrainBoosters Clinic program that is currently tested in a clinic.

They provide BabyBooster Packs when mothers visit the clinic. Each of these 6 packs consist of five written words and their meaning (e.g. red, blue, yellow, green, and orange). Using picture driven examples showing parents how to play four games daily with their baby using five written words.

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Recognition by industry players, when honoring excellence within the African Education Industry, BrainBoosters in 2016 they won NGO Award, Early Childhood Development Award as well as being a finalist in the Innovation Award.

Worldwide there is a move to open source learning and BrainBoostersAcademy.co.za is one of them, offering parents guidance on how to teach these basics to their kids from 15 months - 7 years focusing on early math instruction with a strong undertone of literacy.
orange marker on truth word

Wow. We now know Colin Powell lied about giving advice on avoiding FOIA requests and public scrutiny of her emails to Hillary Clinton. The Washington Post reported

the emergence of an email exchange between Ms. Clinton and former secretary of state Colin Powell in which he explained that he used a private computer and bypassed State Department servers while he ran the agency, even when communicating with foreign leaders and top officials. Mr. Powell attempted last month to distance himself from Ms. Clinton's practices, which is one of the many factors that made the email story look worse. Now, it seems, Mr. Powell engaged in similar behavior.

I haven't heard one word from Trey Gowdy (R-SC) or Darrell Issa (R-CA) or the head of the Republican Party Reince Preibus. The silence is deafening.

Now I didn't actually expect any of them to speak up because Colin Powell is a Republican even if by his own words not a very good one. He joked "I only stay a Republican to annoy them."

Then there was the so called Commander in Chief Forum moderated by Matt Lauer who embarrassed all real journalists with his horrendous performance. Lauer was so bad it may have actually triggered a turning point in getting the media to report more fairly on this campaign. Lauer's grilling Hillary on her emails and then interrupting her five times when she was answering real questions trying to impart important information was shameful. He then tossed softball questions to Trump who didn't answer one question demonstrating again he has no idea what he is talking about. He managed to offend women and the entire military. He incorrectly criticized a veteran talking about suicide and her struggles. He said he has a 'secret' plan to defeat ISIS but then said he would ask the military leaders for a plan. He lauded Communist former KGB leader Vladimir Putin quoting polls about how great he is while viciously attacking President Obama. Not once did Lauer call him on any statement even when he blatantly lied about his support of the Iraq war.

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So yesterday the Washington Post published an editorial 'The Hillary Clinton email story is out of control' writing

In fact, Ms. Clinton's emails have endured much more scrutiny than an ordinary person's would have, and the criminal case against her was so thin that charging her would have been to treat her very differently. Ironically, even as the email issue consumed so much precious airtime, several pieces of news reported Wednesday should have taken some steam out of the story. First is a memo FBI Director James B. Comey sent to his staff explaining that the decision not to recommend charging Ms. Clinton was 'not a cliff-hanger' and that people 'chest-beating' and second-guessing the FBI do not know what they are talking about. Anyone who claims that Ms. Clinton should be in prison accuses, without evidence, the FBI of corruption or flagrant incompetence.

Then the New York Times editorialized 'A Debate Disaster Waiting to Happen' warning future debate moderators not to fall into the trap of allowing Trump off the hook when lying or talking gibberish writing "For the sake of the nation, the moderators need to be fully prepared to challenge the candidates, so voters can have a clear picture of how they will lead."

We have seen over-and-over Hillary attacked and called a liar and time-after-time we find she didn't lie or do the things she was falsely charged with. We see sexism rear its ugly head time-and-time again recent examples being Donald Trump saying Clinton doesn't have a "Presidential Look" and Reince Preibus calling on her to 'smile' more.

We are facing the most important Presidential election in decades. The world is watching us as we go to the polls. Americans more than people in any other nation have a dual responsibility when they vote. We are voting for the person who will ensure our safety; will work to rebuild our economy; and deal with all the issues facing us in our daily lives including education, fighting addition, ensuring all Americans access to healthcare, rebuilding our roads and bridges and rail lines among others. Above and beyond all this Americans are electing the leader of the free world. Our economy and military are the strongest in the world which means the world looks to us for guidance and support. So it is incumbent on American voters to elect someone who won't be looked upon by other nations either as a joke or with fear.

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Hillary Rodham Clinton is the only person running for President with the experience, ability and global respect to deal with our issues at home and be the leader of the free world.

Donald Trump has already shown himself to be even worse than a joke, he is scary. He sees himself not as a President but rather a dictator potentially in the pocket of Vladimir Putin.

On 'Morning Joe' Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson was asked a question about Aleppo and responded "What is Aleppo?" Responding to that "Mike Barnicle, an MSNBC commentator who is often part of the "Morning Joe" program panel, explained that Aleppo was the center of Syria's refugee crisis." This man who wants to be President is clearly a joke.

Then there is Jill Stein of the Green Party who is just weird. She rants about Wi-Fi being dangerous to children, is against vaccinating children and is in bed with Putin. Not even worth calling a joke.

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Fifteen years ago this Sunday on September 11, 2001, 2,996 people left their homes on a seemingly ordinary day that boasted crystal blue skies in New York City, Washington, DC, and Shanksville, Pennsylvania. They did not return home because 4 planes hijacked by terrorists crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and an empty field.

I was a rabbi then in New York City, and that day is etched in my heart forever. After the attack, I called the members of my synagogue who worked downtown - thankfully everyone was accounted for. But one man lost his best friend, and another lost his sister - the one funeral I presided over during those days.

Three out of our four friends who worked in the Towers were not at work that day. For nearly five hours after the attack, we didn't hear from the Best Man at our wedding, and we feared the worst. Already flyers with pictures of loved ones were plastered all over the city. People missing who had been in the midst of life.

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We finally got an email late in the afternoon: "I am ok. Walked to my sister's in Brooklyn." We later learned that he descended 40 flights of stairs with his coworkers, he passed an engine from one of the planes on the street, and saw things he would not soon forget.

The events of September 11, 2001 happened just before Rosh Hashanah, in the month of Elul, which began once again just last week. The horrors of that day, as well as so many since that robbed the world of people in the midst of their lives, serve as constant reminders that life turns on a dime. We can be here today and gone tomorrow, and we swing precariously on the pendulum between stability and fragility with the aching awareness that the longer we live the more our lives will be touched by tragedy and loss. That day, and many others since, have tested our sense of safety, trust, connection, and community. Yet, everyday we remember the profound gift and challenge it is to be alive.



Jewish tradition does not present a naive view of the world. Our Torah reading this week, in fact, Parashat Shoftim offers some rules of war that are less about engaging the enemy and more about engaging the self. Before Israel goes off to war, the Torah teaches that the army officers must address the people with the following: "Is there anyone who has built a new house but has not let lived in it?...planted a vineyard but has never harvested it?...who is betrothed, but not yet married? Let him return to his home, lest he die in war" (Deut. 20:5-7).

The idea here, as expressed powerfully by the rabbis, is that if we leave something unfinished or incomplete, we have fallen into a state of trafe da'at - a "torn mind." Because of the "unfinished business" of life, a person such as this would be of little use in war, and might even pose a danger to fellow soldiers.

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The phrase, "lest he die," is not insignificant because it underscores that there are no guarantees in life, and even without being a soldier heading off to war, every day we leave our homes, families, loved ones, and we don't really know what might come our way. September 11, 2001 left so many stories of life tragically interrupted - the weddings that would not happen, the expectant mothers without a partner, the children growing up without a parent.

This is where the text relates to the work of teshuva - returning to ourselves. We should seek to enter the new year without a "torn mind," resolving conflicts, repairing our relationships, and repenting for our wrongdoings. We don't really know how long we have, and it is up to us to recognize our mistakes in order to experience the compassion that comes along with apology and forgiveness and make changes in our behavior, thereby making each day matter.

These are the terms of the covenant we reaffirm in these weeks before Rosh Hashanah. As we deal with the messy complexities of our lives, we hope to experience divine love and compassion from others, and from ourselves in the year to come.

Psalm 15 asks and answers: "God, what are we that you have regard for us? What are we, that you are mindful of us? We are like a breath; our days are like a passing shadow; At sunrise we shoot up, renewed; At sunset we fade and whither. If only we were wise and could comprehend this..."
When Henry Miller (1891-1980)--novelist, critic, memoirist--returned to the US in 1940 after a louche but productive decade in Paris, he did so with apprehension.

Although concerned about money, he also had spiritual reservations: "There was a frigid, moral aspect to [America] which chilled me to the bone." His reaction was to travel and rediscover his homeland, the end result being a travelogue--The Air-Conditioned Nightmare--which wears its seventy years extremely well.

The book is very much a critique of American society and rereading it amidst the fervor of this election cycle is a reminder that the upsets of today are not unique to our age.

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Having lived in the US for the last seven years, I can relate to Miller's uneasiness about returning to the "rat trap". For America's greatest attraction--the seemingly infinite opportunity and scope for reinvention--runs parallel with a gnawing subtext of dissatisfaction: the pressing need for more, the relentless drive to be fitter, happier, more productive. It is no coincidence that millions of Americans spend what little free time they have each weekend shopping for mulch and ride-on mowers at establishments such as Lowes. The home goods superstore's motto? Never Stop Improving...

And it is in this environment that "President Trump" has emerged, Pandora-like, as an orange-tinged savior. And if there is a better description of the archetype that has propelled Donald J. Trump to the precipice of American politics, I have yet to read it:

"The American type par excellence, ever ready to believe what is written in the newspapers, ever on the lookout for a Messiah."

But these are not the incredulous words of some political blogger trying to understand the Republican Party's fervid embrace of The Donald; they were written during the reign of FDR--Miller's prescience is uncanny.

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Wrapping himself in a flag of Law and Order, Trump has herded the bugbears of the American psyche--illegal immigration, crime, race--into a bilious outpouring of fear. These are all issues that could launch a thousand PhDs (hopefully common sense ones), yet Miller cuts through the intellectual brush to deliver an Orwellian rebuke across the decades:

"If at the bottom of law and order there is only a man armed to the teeth, a man without a heart, without a conscience, then law and order are meaningless."

Of course, at the heart of all this discord, at the heart of this wave of vilification upon which Trump is riding high, lies a deep sense of dissatisfaction, over what has gone away and what is to come. The security and status that was the birthright of every non-college educated white man in the US has disappeared, and it is a prime factor explaining why some historically blue-leaning, blue-collar voters have embraced Trump and his own brand of entropic egoism.

There is also a deep dissatisfaction with the "system"--on both sides of the political divide--and a sense that the economy is rigged for a certain class of people, no matter their political affiliation. In one chapter, as Miller describes his relationship with a convict with whom he develops an acquaintance, he touches on a sentiment that both Bernie Sanders and Trump have tapped into, with varying degrees of authenticity:

"He had done a bit of thieving first, not anything however to compare with the operations of our illustrious industrial magnates, our bankers, politicians..."

This passage is taken from a chapter titled "The Soul of Anaesthesia" that at one point asks the question: "What is the most steadfast condition of Life? Cruelty to one another." Again, Miller's 1940s prose speaks to us with immediacy. For cruelty is very much the condition of US political life today. One's opponent is not simply someone to defeat, but a grave threat to the nation and an offense to all that is right and proper.
By Kevin Hoffman

As Airbnb re-shapes the hospitality industry in cities across the country, concerns have been raised over discriminatory practices among its home-sharing hosts.

Allison Schraub, Chicago program director for Airbnb, was asked about that issue during a panel discussion hosted by Reboot Illinois in August at the tech incubator 1871.

"I had a feeling someone was going to ask that," Schraub replied. "I will tell you that at Airbnb this our absolute highest priority."

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Schraub said Airbnb had recruited former Attorney General Eric Holder and Laura Murphy, former director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Washington legislative office, to help identify ways to address racial discrimination after complaints came to a head on social media earlier this year and spurred the hashtag #AirbnbWhileBlack.

In a 32-page report published Thursday, the San Francisco-based startup outlined a number of new anti-discrimination policies, including a "community commitment" Airbnb hosts will have to agree to beginning Nov. 1. The commitment asks hosts to work with users "regardless of race, religion, national origin, disability, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation or age, with respect, and without judgment or bias."

The company also plans to reduce the prominence of user photos and automatically block out a host's reservation calendar for days they have told potential renters are not available. Both policies are aimed at tackling problems experienced by people of color, particularly African-Americans.

Additionally, Airbnb said it will ramp up the use of "Instant Book" listings, a feature that allows would-be guests to make reservations without a host's approval.

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Murphy, who authored the report, wrote that it was clear Airbnb "needed a comprehensive, end-to-end review," noting there have been too many instances of people being discriminated against "because of who they are or what they look like."

"These changes are merely a first step. Airbnb understands that no one company can eliminate racism and discrimination," she added. "Fighting bias is an ongoing task that requires constant vigilance from all of us. And there is no question that we will continue to see examples of bias and discrimination in society, the sharing economy, and Airbnb in the future."

A report published by several Harvard University researchers in December found "widespread discrimination" by hosts against people with names that sounded African-American. Booking requests from guests with distinct African-American names, such as Tanisha and Tyrone, were about 16 percent less likely to be accepted than identical guests with distinctively White names like Kristen and Todd, according to the report.

In May, a class-action discrimination lawsuit was filed against Airbnb by a black man who claimed he was denied a reservation because of his race.


Photo courtesy of J&M Concrete Contractors.

There's no denying that college can be a difficult time for many in the decor department -- lava lamps, beaded doorway curtains and shower caddies all routinely make unwelcome appearances in dorm rooms. Although, sometimes dorm living can be the highlight of a person's young adult life, subsidized in many instances by mom and dad, and at the very least providing a sort of communal safety net for our life choices. How else does one make friends for group outings to Target?

In the spirit of celebrating all of the wonderful things dorm life can give us, we've rounded up 10 of the most impressive living situations to be found on U.S. campuses. From colonial Williamsburg to modern Mediterranean in California, scroll through to see our favorites.



Image courtesy of MIT.

MIT's Simmons Hall is nicknamed "The Sponge" and houses 340 students spread across 10 floors and three towers -- plus, there's even a ball pit!

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Photo courtesy of Illinois Institute of Technology.

Illinois Institute of Technology's State Street Village was designed by acclaimed architect Helmut Jahn. Better yet, the Green Line elevated train runs right behind it.



Photo courtesy of Best College Values.

Boston University's Student Village was described by The Boston Globe as, "[The] most opulent residence hall to ever grace the local college landscape."



Photo courtesy of Scripps College.

Scripps College's Gabrielle Jungels-Winkler Hall houses 86 students in a traditional 1920s Mediterranean style building.



Photo courtesy of The Callway House Austin

The excellence of this off-campus freshmen residence hall for The University of Texas, can be summed up in two words: rooftop. pool.

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Photo courtesy of Mike Lovett/Brandeis University.

Usen Hall at Brandeis University is the oldest building on campus -- oh, and it's a castle.



Photo courtesy of J&M Concrete Contractors.

Sontag Hall at Pomona College is LEED Platinum certified housing, and it won the 2013 Builder's Choice award.



Photo courtesy of University of Cincinnati.

Morgens Hall at University of Cincinnati recently re-opened after a $35 million renovation.



Photo via William & Mary.

On the other end of the spectrum is the College of William & Mary's Colonial Williamsburg House, built back in 1737. Only two rising juniors or seniors get to live here each year.



Photo courtesy of Adam Fagen.

University of Virginia's The Lawn is known as a prestigious row of housing. It also claims Katie Couric among its former residents.
Photo via Nick Onken.

At my age, if you aren't Oprah or a man, the stigma of getting older starts to take shape. I'm 47. I am seriously and officially middle-aged. Like, deep into it. I'm here, but heck if I know how I got here so fast. I certainly don't feel it. In a sense, I've grown up without becoming a conventional grown-up. Meaning, I'm not married. I don't have kids, a second home, or a mortgage. I don't run an office full of employees. I don't go to the same job every day. And because of this, sometimes people (myself included) find it hard to measure my value without the traditional milestones of a life lived or a collection of identifiable CliffsNotes at the ready.

There are moments when this unconventional approach to aging feels freeing, and I can romanticize it. Not being able to be labeled so easily has its advantages. I'm a curiosity of sorts. I'm a mystery. An enigma. People seemingly want to know more about me, because I haven't played by conventional social rules. I don't "act" my age. That was cute when I was the precocious youngest woman in the room. It can be equally as enticing as the oldest. But my point is that I am usually the oldest in the room these days. Almost all my friends are younger than I am. I simply don't have as much in common with friends my age who got married and had kids. My younger friends haven't had to make these life choices yet. They enjoy the kind of freedom that I do. But for all my freedom, as I age, I'm not always sure where or with whom I belong. I'm a new classification of person, really. And like anything new, the unknown can feel a bit scary.

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Photographed by Winnie Au.

Don't get me wrong. I'm happy with where I'm at. I am very proud of my career and all that I've accomplished. I get joy from work, and that probably keeps me somewhat youthful in disposition. But there seemed to be so much time back when I was 32. It wasn't this "decision" written in stone that I wouldn't get married or have kids. Maybe I still will. What has happened is I've had to let go of the age when all things were possible (32) and started to look at what is (47). I am part of the first generation of women not truly dependent on anyone. My feminist mom was married, had kids, got divorced, and made a career for herself. Does only being able to check the last box make me a pariah or a pioneer? Because in my opinion, they dress differently, I can tell you that.

One thing I am sure of: I didn't really start to think about my age until I started to feel that all clothes were not appropriate for me. Now, of course, not all clothes and not all trends are appropriate for everyone. I spent years and years telling everybody yes to this, no to that. But when I started to ask myself if a dress was too short or showed too much skin or the eyeshadow I wanted was a little too bright, I realized my style wasn't in Kansas anymore. (Or maybe it wasonly allowed in Kansas. Hard to say. Not sure where I was going with this metaphor.) I've been dying to wear that LoveShackFancy pink cotton tiered halter minidress that I got at the sample sale. But every time I put it on I laugh, proof positive that my brain has NOT caught up to my age. She (my young girl brain) still loves too much sparkle and skirts that twirl. But at 47, I really don't want to go for a Suicide Squad-Harley Quinn-looking pouf skirt. (I know, she wears underwear most of the movie, but you get my point.) For me, that dress simply reinforces that I may not act my age, but I can't avoid aging. I can make choices that allow me connections with people younger than myself, but I am no longer young.

It reminds me of a scene in the movie Knocked Up, which I recently saw for the kabillionth time. Leslie Mann tries to get into a club in her sexy blue dress and is told she can't come in. She explains that her outfit is totally appropriate for the occasion, and the bouncer tells her it's because she's too old. TOO OLD. If you don't know who Leslie Mann is, please Google her now. She's stunning -- for a woman her age and for a woman of any age. How is it that I never remembered this scene? Watching it, I cried more than Leslie Mann does in the movie. She looked so pretty in that dress. She was feeling herself in that dress. But she was also taking on the style of a younger woman, dressing in a way that no longer aligned with the person she had become.

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When I look back, I realize the style I had while I was on What Not to Wear -- the pencil skirts and sheath dresses, the floral and ruffled tops -- does not reflect who I am now. It reflects the television persona I gave up a long time ago. It no longer "fits." (Pun intended.) I dress much more androgynously than I did when I was younger. Frilly, girly clothes don't have enough gravitas for me. I like suits and leather and jumpsuits, and I almost exclusively wear pants. I am pretty sure this change in my style happened quite naturally. But there have been times when I've worried this change won't sit well with fans of my old look, that I've ostracized them, that I am no longer playing by the rules I prescribed to countless women over the course of the show. More than anything, I don't want people who have believed in my advice over the years to feel I've betrayed them by no longer "looking the part." The fact is, my public persona was only ever "part" of who I was to begin with. The Stacy I was in 2002 cannot possibly be the Stacy of 2016. Age is part of time, and does in fact change things.

It isn't simply that I no longer play by the gender rulebook, it's that the rules suddenly feel stacked against me. We still live in a culture where men grow more handsome, distinguished, and even trustworthy with age. Women are not afforded the same. Sociobiologically speaking, in caveman days, if we could no longer bear children our use-value dropped sharply and inevitably. And it was rather convenient that our lifespans were short enough that we would generally die soon after childbearing age anyway. So what's a modern-day woman, who could live to be 120, going to do with all this extra time in the middle? In the middle of the middle? Current culture leads me to believe I'm supposed to attempt to look 25 for the next 50 years. Even if we're past bearing children, are we meant to look as if we still can? Is that what Botox and fillers and peels and exercising 11 times a week are meant to do for us? Hang on. What?

What's so bad about growing older when it's revered in almost every society except ours? (All of you who hate my gray streak because you say it makes me look "old"? I don't see why that can't be a compliment.) Of course we want to stay strong and healthy as long as possible, but young? Why don't we embrace age for all of its positive attributes? Because to value those things above youth and a particular kind of beauty requires a change in thinking (and seeing) much like changing the way we perceive a woman like me. You don't need to ask me about my feelings on marriage or children. You can invite me over to dinner parties, even when it's just married couples. (I have a boyfriend, but even if I didn't!) Really! It's okay! You can ask me about politics, the stock market, the best movies of the 1970s, what I think of this election, and of course whether or not you should keep the dress you wore once three years ago. (The answer to that is OF COURSE NOT.) I don't want to be defined by my age. But I consider it to be a great asset. You can ask me about heartbreak and disappointment, about triumph and fear and courage. I've had more experience with it because I've had more TIME to have experience. And I want my style to reflect that experience.

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There's that Alice in Wonderland quote: "I'm not the same girl I was yesterday." In some ways, the woman I've become didn't even exist yesterday. I am the first generation of this kind of woman: the kind of woman whose traditions and values are being written right now. The way I dress has become a symbol of that evolution for me. The traditional colors and styles and actual "femininity" associated with a woman's wardrobe feel as antiquated as the ideas that you can't be an accomplished woman without marriage or children.

It's one thing to blaze your own path. (I thank my mom dearly for showing me how.) It's quite another to blaze a path that few even see, let alone walk, just yet. But truth be told, there's never been a better time to be an "evolutionary woman." We are more accepting of self-expression than ever before. It's not my gender I'm questioning, though that's a perfectly valid identifier that many people do question. Rather, it's the demands society tends to put on the way I (and perhaps even some of the women who appeared on What Not to Wear) look. I have no intention of sliding back into the pin-striped, shoulder-padded pantsuits of the '80s to be and feel empowered. I have no interest in emulating a purely masculine style to have a seat at the table. In fact, the suits I'm starting to wear are bespoke, fit for a woman's figure, and co-designed with Emily Meyer, a designer who specializes in just that: suits for women only. They are bright and plaid and shiny but tailored to perfection -- exquisite, chic, and most of all feel like me now.

In my late 40s, I'm ready for the kind of uniform that empowers and emboldens. Not the me people may know from TV and not the me from 20 years ago. My style doesn't have to have a context yet, just like my value in society doesn't. It is all evolving. And it all remains to be seen. But I own who I am when I walk into a room, and it is only age that has given me the privilege to feel that. What 32-year-old me could never have known is that growing older is such a gift. Age has mellowed many of my insecurities because the pressure is no longer on me. At 47, I'm finding that my trouser pockets are filled with fewer and fewer fucks.

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I'm not saying all women my age should dress the way I do. But my style is helping me to understand the kind of woman I am now. The point is, no matter HOW you dress, many women my age don't always own the exciting possibilities afforded them because they don't feel valued by our current culture. In fashion advertising, the end of 2014 and most of 2015 all of a sudden became the Age of Age. Julia Roberts for Givenchy. Cher for Marc Jacobs. Joan Didion for Celine. Charlotte Rampling for Nars. Iris Apfel for Alexis Bittar. Seeing older women incorporated into the fashion world should feel like progress. But the Age of Age came and went in less than a year. It may as well have been called the Shock of Age. To sensationalize age for the sake of attention isn't the same as reverence or acceptance. It merely made age a momentary trend. Trends can be escaped. Age can't.

So what's this article about? An aging woman who wants to wear suits and not poufy dresses? No. It's about taking a hard look at the traditional ideas that are associated with women's inalienable rights, be they wearing skin-baring dresses or having children, and that "having it all" no longer means those rights need to be exercised. As our freedoms change, so too will cultural expectations. It's hard to think about being 47 when you're 27. Not that you should feel compelled to. I know I didn't. I didn't know what my future would look like or how I would dress for it. I didn't know I would wind up on TV, helping people develop a style that made them each feel like their best self. I didn't know I wouldn't get married or have kids. I didn't know I would feel caught between the age that I am and the accomplishments that normally define that age. What I did know was that I wouldn't know. What I know now is that it feels both strange and entirely okay.

I want to embrace my age for the importance that it holds. I don't need anti-aging products to feel young or to know we are all going to live longer. And with time, we can form a new sense of our identities as useful and productive. I will have more to say and experience and share and love and do. Age is a gift, not simply because we aren't dead. It's the gift of time that allows us to change our prejudices and perceptions. We'll be here longer to preserve history and make history. I want to celebrate that. I want to respect it. And if I'm going to live to be 120, then I'm practically a teenager.

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Pariah or pioneer, I'll be the one in the suit.
Over the weekend, Kanye West caused a social-media storm when he tweeted the casting call for his upcoming Yeezy Season 4 show, taking place this Wednesday during New York Fashion Week. The ceaselessly controversial star stated that he was looking for "multiracial women only" in his model call. Understandably, people weren't pleased.

In an industry that is infamously non-representative, more inclusivity and racial diversity is undoubtedly necessary on the catwalk, but judging from the incensed reactions, West has gone about it in entirely the wrong way.

Twitter was ablaze with users angered by the ambiguous term "multiracial." What does multiracial even mean? Aren't we all, to some degree, multiracial? Doesn't a term, which we can only assume is akin to "mixed race," exclude those with darker or lighter skin tones? Was West calling for no white or Black people, just those somewhere in-between? And how, pray tell, did West plan to assess models' ethnic mix?

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A casting call for 'multiracial women only' how do you expect to determine that?  Danie Durst (@daniecal) September 3, 2016

In a Kanye West world there is no place for black women...that's been quite obvious for some time.  #CreativeSmartGirl (@CreativeSmartCo) September 3, 2016

Stop telling dark skinned women it's "not that deep" about Kanye West only asking for multiracial women, you don't have the right to do so.  ebon (@abstractnights) September 3, 2016

In March of this year, Demna Gvasalia, fashion's most lauded designer-of-the-moment was condemned for casting only white models in both the Vetements and Balenciaga fall/winter '16 shows during Paris Fashion Week. When he was asked about his discriminatory casting in May by The Telegraph, Gvaslia answered, "Our criteria for choosing models was purely based on the idea of diversity of character. We had very different types of girls but Lotta [Volkova, stylist and model] who works with me, we come from this cultural background where [race] is not even an issue. We don't even have that thing to think we have to be politically correct. I guess the criticism is justified, but from my point of view it was the attitude of those girls that was important for me not the shade of their skin or their origin."

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The half-hearted answer left most critics unimpressed. But it seemed Gvasalia learned from his mistakes -- or was disgruntled by the bad press -- and included non-white models in his Vetements couture show in July. Isn't Kanye's call for "multiracial" models only as insulting as Demna's denial of ethnic minorities in the fall '16 shows?

Last season, The Fashion Spot analyzed all of the models who hit the A/W '16 catwalks in New York, London, Paris, and Milan. Results showed that about 75% of all models cast were white. When will the fashion world wake up and become the accepting, celebratory, and ethnically rich place that it ought to be in 2016? As the spring/summer '17 season looms, we can only hope that the catwalks will be more representative than ever and that brands will be inspired to be more inclusive in response to West's ill-conceived casting call.

Despite the controversy, the Yeezy casting was attended by a large number of eager hopefuls who lined in droves at Jack Studios in New York. We'll have to wait until Wednesday to understand exactly what West means by "multiracial," but let's hope he decides to cast a diverse range of models.
School uniforms are a daily reality for many students at countless institutions around the world. So are dutifully enforced dress codes, which dictate what is and isn't kosher to wear to class without prescribing specific items. Uniforms and dress codes certainly aren't new aspects of the scholarly experience, but the value of policing kids' and teens' wardrobe choices has come under fire a lot in the past year. Considering all this controversy over "appropriate" attire in academia, is it really necessary or worthwhile for schools to continue calling the shots fashion-wise in 2016?

Not all news about fashion's role in academia is bad news, though. Some institutions have progressively adopted gender-neutral uniform rules. Schools in traditionally conservative cultures are even are moving away from policies that rigidly adhere to the gender binary to ensure LGBT students are more comfortable in the classroom.

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It's a really polarizing topic, to put it lightly. We scoured around for a range of perspectives about the joys and frustrations that result from having a uniform or dress code. Ahead, 15 people sound off on being told what you can and can't wear to class, whether they spent their formative years attired according to a uniform, grappled with adhering to a nebulous dress code -- or, in some cases, actually wish they'd had guidelines for getting dressed each morning.

"I wore a uniform starting in kindergarten through when I went to college -- and I absolutely loved it. I definitely see both sides of the argument. During adolescence, there's so much for teenagers to think about and so much that they're experiencing. It's really nice to have an equalizer.

"I don't think I always had this opinion, but looking back, I think having a uniform was actually the impetus for why I love getting dressed now...when I got to college, I started experimenting with my own style and understanding the value of dressing for my body, rather than dressing for other people." -- Athena Chen

"A school uniform can be very different things to different people, ergo the endless controversy. For me, it was a blessing for three reasons: as a socioeconomic equalizer, a reprieve from all of the effort and judgment and menial mental exhaustion usually spent on clothing, and a way to, at least superficially, fit in when it was painfully clear to me that I did not.

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"I spent 12 years at a private, all-girls school where the tuition costs as much as most universities, and as far as I can tell, only a third of my classmates' mothers were employed. It was rarely spoken of directly, but money (and more importantly to girls too young to have real direct experience with it, its trappings) was paramount to the culture of the place. There are many ways to communicate wealth: the cars your parents drive, the gifts you show off the day after your birthday, the destinations of your summer vacations -- but the easiest and most omnipresent is your clothing.

"To give you a taste of it, there was a notorious Lilly Pulitzer sale each year on the Main Line in which a whole store-load of discounted crocodile-print sundresses would be made available for 40% of original price, which never failed to generate astonishing stories of block-long lines, stampeding moms, and dressing-room thievery. Money played an oversized role in the culture of the school; I can only imagine the arms race had we been allowed to dress as we (or our parents) saw fit.

"Middle and high school is emotionally difficult, full stop. For me, with about five of those years spent plunging publicly into, and then slogging out, of life-threatening clinical depression, it was also agonizing and exhausting and nearly impossible. Being able to wake up every day and allow muscle memory to handle the donning of an ugly, starched kilt allowed me reprieve from yet another source of decision fatigue.

"It was also a chance to blend in with the normal kids. To a young teenager with the unfortunate combination of rampant insecurity and debilitating depressive fatigue, having a mandatory way to fake normal and direct attention away from me was a beautiful thing. I felt like human skin stretched too tight over a supermassive black hole, but when I walked the halls of the Agnes Irwin school, superficially at least, I was just another blue-and-white-garbed girl, blissfully indistinguishable from all the others." -- Anonymous

"I went to Noble and Greenough School, which is a small, private co-ed high school school outside of Boston. We didn't have uniforms, but we had a strict dress code. Essentially, it was no jeans, no leggings, all skirts and shorts down to the top of the kneecap, no sweatshirts, no writing on any clothing, no open-toed shoes or flip-flops, guys couldn't have anything pullover, and certain colors weren't permitted.

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"Over the years, I found that the items we could wear to school were so much more expensive than the items that were forbidden. Finding corduroys or nice khaki pants is more expensive than getting a pair of jeans from T.J. Maxx! Sweaters are more expensive than sweatshirts; leather shoes more expensive than other materials.

"When a friend would found a basic pair of corduroys for the fall, we'd all ask where she got them. Then, we'd all go and get the same pairs, anyways. So essentially, my close girlfriends and I ended up in our own expensive uniform looks of our own. When I went to college, I didn't want to wear those clothes anymore. I only had one pair of jeans, since I could never wear them to school, so I had to go out and basically buy a new wardrobe.

"I so wish we had just had a uniform. A strict dress code was a huge waste of money." -- Mariah Pongor

"I grew up going to one of many all-girls Catholic schools in the Philippines, a country that is over 85% Catholic. Some of the rules on our uniforms didn't ever make sense to me -- our plain, white socks, for example, had to fully cover our ankle bones at all times. For P.E., we were required to wear knee-length grey skorts -- not shorts! -- through the seventh grade, when we could finally don black sweatpants, instead.

"I remember sitting and squirming in my scratchy plaid skirt, which had to fall to my shins, despite Manila's 90 weather. I remember getting ready in the morning, looking in the mirror, and feeling awkward, shapeless, and downright ugly every day I went to school. I thought I'd grow up, look back, and think, that wasn't so bad...still not the case." -- Isabel Francisco

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"I wore uniforms from preschool through high school and I LOVED it. Granted, I went to an all-girls Catholic high school, so I didn't experience any of the sexism associated with co-ed clothing standards. But I still believe uniforms are the best way to keep the focus on learning, as opposed to status.

"I would've found it overwhelming to plan my outfit every day and I would've compared myself to the wealthier girl. I would've felt inferior if I didn't have the cool new Frankie B. jeans, Tory Burch flats, or Juicy bags. That shit matters to 15-year-old girls, unfortunately.

"Being able to wake up at the last minute, throw on the same thing as the day before, and skip hair and makeup was the best. Granted, when it came time to go out on the weekends or pack my suitcases for college, I had about 10 non-uniform clothing items to choose from.

"To this day, I would love to have a uniform -- I'd wear jeans, a T-shirt, and Converses every single day if it was acceptable." -- Alix Tunell

"I always had a uniform. My uniforms varied from complex (tights, pleated skirt, button-down, tie, sweater, blazer, specified shoes, and even a hat) to very simple (polo shirt, khaki pants, and my choice of any closed-toe shoes). However, regardless of how complex or lax my uniform regulations were, I always loved having a uniform; they just simplified my life. To note, I'm cis-gender woman, which made it far easier for me in terms of certain regulations, like wearing skirts.

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"Uniforms granted me the ability to not care at all about my presentation at school; I never had to think about what to wear in the morning. I could just wake up, roll out of bed, and throw on a pre-designated outfit. I adored the simplicity and I wish I still had a uniform. When I was younger, I was more self-conscious; I never had to be concerned with whether I was as stylish as my fellow classmates.

"While I had a great experience, I do feel that many of the motivations behind uniforms are insanely problematic. Oftentimes, schools over-penalize young women and girls for dress-code violations, or implement uniforms due to outdated sexist notions that female students are a distraction to their male counterparts. It's disgusting and it sends a message that females are sexual objects and males are idiots who are incapable of controlling their sexual desires. It's offensive to everyone.

"Uniforms are best when gender-neutral. My high school uniform was a polo shirt and khaki pants for everyone. It was simple, comfortable, and gender-neutral, while also allowing for individual expression. The school allowed you to wear any closed-toe shoes you felt comfortable in, allowed for jewelry, and dyed hair. It was a great intersection of uniformity and individual expression." -- Lidiana Economou

"Growing up in NYC, I attended public school and never had the opportunity to wear a school uniform. My cousins went to Catholic school and I was always present when their new school uniforms arrived towards the end of the summer. The collared shirts, pleated skirts, knee-socks intrigued me. My public-school friends and I sometimes entertained the idea of uniforms; discussing the ease and femininity of the preplanned outfits.

"Now, considering school uniforms as an educator, I would never fathom making such a requirement of my students. I teach preschool and I realize, even at such a young and tender age, how important it is for children to be able to express themselves. Building autonomy is so imperative in children's lives; allowing them to outwardly self express through fashion is one way for children to build a sense of self, as well as their own sense of style. "-- Alexandra Mikhailoff

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"Critics of uniforms today have myriad reasons to dislike them. It's argued that uniforms are passe -- relics of a more conservative past that we can't seem to do away with. Or that uniforms are direct examples of church and/or state policing young bodies or sartorial sins that continue to stymie creativity and self-expression. These observations are not far from the truth.

"Yet after spending literally half of my life wearing a uniform to attend school every day, I can think of at least two powerful reasons to keep them around for the time being.

"First, practicality. You wake up in the morning and you know exactly what you'll wear that day. (And the next one. And the next...) Yes, the monotony can be devastating. But think about the time and the mental energy that you saved by not stressing out over what to wear today. You'll automatically focus on more important matters, such as school.

"Second, egalitarianism -- or the illusion of it. More and more, our consumerist culture intrudes upon the classroom, filling young children's heads with status symbols that they absolutely must own and display for all their peers to admire. In a media-driven, materialistic environment, uniforms are perhaps the one terrain in which the latest Yeezys are denied admission.

"Uniforms ensure that, regardless of family income or class, students are met on an equal playing field. In a world in which the gap between the have and the have-nots is alarmingly widening, it might be necessary to have one space, however superficial, where students are encouraged to zoom in on what really matters: their own academic promise." -- L. Seda

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For more uniform stories, visit Refinery29.
Almost everyone I know is saying this is the scariest election they have ever experienced.

They (the people with whom I have talked) don't like Hillary Clinton so much, but they are absolutely terrified of what a Donald Trump America would look like. Again, the people with whom I have talked have said it feels like America would be like Nazi Germany. They say that Trump has no regard for anyone but himself, and has used and will use anyone to get to victory. They point to how he has prevented some of the so-called "mainstream media" from attending his rallies. That is a violation of the First Amendment but none of his followers seem to care. They again point to how they feel he so often lies - saying one thing about an issue one day and completely reversing himself the next.

It doesn't bother his followers at all.

"How can anyone be a card-carrying American and not be concerned about a potential president violating the United States Constitution?" asked one participant in a group meeting. "When a president is elected, he or she vows to uphold the Constitution, but even before being elected, Trump is trashing the document politicians say they hold dear!"

I reminded the speaker that the Republican Congress is violating the Constitution now by not even letting President Obama's nominee for the United States Supreme Court have a hearing. "Yes," the young man said, "but for some reason, this thing that Trump is doing seems dangerous. What the Congress is doing is annoying; it is being obstructionist, which is what it has been doing throughout Obama's presidency, but Trump keeping journalists out of his rallies has a different feel."

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People are bothered that Trump has said the most offensive things about black people and Hispanics and women, that he has trashed fellow Republican Sen. John McCain being hailed as a hero "only because he was captured," that he has shown that he knows little to nothing about the Christian Bible and faith to which he says he adheres. They are bothered that his Trump University seems to have some serious legal issues surrounding it, that he has not released his taxes and that his wife apparently plagiarized her speech at the Republican National Convention.

Nobody cares.

"I think it's racism, pure and simple," said one person in the group, a white professional. "People are so angry that a black man has had the highest office in the world that they are not thinking straight," he said.

The fact that his base, if reports are to be believed, is mostly blue-collar white men might support the "racism pure and simple" reasoning, but there are other components of the Trump phenomenon. People are angry because the tanked economy caused them jobs. "Radical Islamic terrorism" has scared people to death, and has made their Islamophobia justifiable. People who say they believe in God are anxious to discriminate against entire groups of people because of the actions of a few.

"One thing that this election cycle has done to me," said one participant, an African-American woman, "is that it makes me question what kind of country America is, really. It doesn't feel like "the land of the free and the home of the brave." It feels like a giant cauldron of white supremacists. Now when I look at white people -- and I know I am generalizing -- I am asking myself, "are you a racist? Are you a danger to me and my family?"

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Trump says he wants to make America great again -- to take it back to a time that is familiar to us all, a time before the catastrophe of 9/11, a time before globalization effectively killed the middle class, a time before there were things like same-sex marriage and room to talk about rights for the LGBTQ community. There have been too many changes, too fast, agreed several people in the group, and not enough time to process it all.

One gentleman protested, however: "People say they want to make America great again. It was only great for a few people, and most of them were white males at best, white people in general. The jobs that Trump says he's going to bring back, ain't coming back," he said. "The middle class like it was here... is not coming back, not anytime soon, I don't care what Trump promises."

The group grew silent and then someone said, "I remember reading about how the people of Germany were upset because the German economy had gotten bad and people didn't have work. Hitler came and promised Nirvana and they all drank the Kool-Aid... and looked what happened."
As people express their respect for GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, the adjective that comes up repeatedly is that he is "tough." People like his "tough" words, his "tough" promises of how things will be if he is elected, including his building a wall between the southern border of the United States and Mexico that the Mexican government will pay for.

Meanwhile, Trump has heaped praise upon Vladmir Putin, whom Trump says is a tough leader. John Avlon, in The Daily Beast, described the leadership styles of both Trump and Putin as "tough guy thuggery." Avlon writes, "There have always been people in this world who get weak-kneed at the first whiff of authoritarianism. They think that the bullying bluster of self-styled strongmen makes them great leaders. They mistake heat for light." (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/09/09/donald-trump-vladimir-putin-and-the-thug-theory-of-leadership.html)

I call it unbridled testosterone, a pissing contest with contenders all wanting to prove who is the toughest - at the expense of the people they govern.

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Avlon writes that "thugs believe that raw power is the only way to get respect and terror is a tactic to that end." As Trump has let loose his raw, bullying spirit and accompanying words, we are seeing more and more male leaders follow suit. In the Philippines, it's President Rodrigo Duterte, who this week cursed President Obama openly and unabashedly, and in North Korea, young Kim Jung-un is letting the world know that he is ready and able to wipe out the world with his country's growing nuclear capability.

Some have said that in the case of Trump and Putin that the latter is playing Trump like a fiddle. Putin was in the KGB and, it is said, learned the art of manipulating people. In the case of Trump the manipulation seems to be relatively easy; compliment The Donald and you're his friend. Putin no doubt has noticed that and is able to oblige. His goal is to make Russia not only "great again," but "the greatest" again. So he can compliment Trump and is probably smiling smugly as he watches the GOP candidate fall into the web he is spinning. He is studying Trump closely, no doubt, and is planning his strategy to put Russia ahead of the United States. Trump, it seems, is either clueless or does not care. What seems to be true is that both men have inordinate confidence in themselves, and both are sure they can win against the other should a final countdown come to be.

Trump is working hard and effectively on the fear that is running rampant in this country among white men in particular and white people in general as he talks about the loss of jobs, made worse by the presence of illegal immigrants and radical Islamic terrorism. He knows fear and he knows how to work it to his advantage. He knows that people equate bullying with strength, and will do anything to protect themselves. He is a master at what he is doing.

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Putin and Kim Jung-un are also playing into fear. In Putin's case, he is pandering to the American fear of terrorism and is setting himself up as a partner with Trump to wipe the fear and the terrorists out. They are putting out the message that they can do what nobody else has been able to do in decades. In Kim Jung-un's case, the strategy is to make the entire world afraid of his country. He is young and brash and eager to show his strength and is warning the world that he is ready to place North Korea on the map as a formidable nuclear power, regardless of the cost.

These three men seem to be part and parcel of the same mentality, and what is troubling is that it feels like they are circling each other, feeling each other out, but ready to prove just who is the greatest. They are being called "leaders," but they are really immature schoolboys who care about nothing but their own power. The danger is that their venue is not an isolated schoolyard but is, instead, the world stage.

In the event of a showdown, in the event that one of these men says something to or about another that makes that person angry, what happens to the world? All of them want to be the leader of "the greatest nation" in the world, but there can be just one superlatively defined nation; in such a state of reality, someone has to lose. These men are reminiscent of the cowboys seen on old Westerns, using guns to knock each other out. The weapon for this fight, though, will not be a handgun. No. The weapon of choice for this fight is a nuclear arsenal. Someone has to lose; someone will lose, and the likes of the battle and its aftermath is something most of us just do not want to think about.
Maine is a state of great beauty and contrast. There are places that are picturesque, rugged sea scape landscapes, and then there are areas where there are a lot of forests, occasional lakes and then in the northern part of the state there is the Caribou.

I have visited the state twice in the last several years providing mental health training. My first visit I was hosted by the Maine National Guard ,and I presented in both Portland and Bangor. Portland was a lovely place especially its harbor area with the cobblestone streets and restaurants that lined the marina. My second visit brought me to Lewiston , again providing a mental health presentation hosted by the Tri-County Mental Health Services. On this visit I saw a lot more of rural Maine, again peaceful lake settings complete with Adirondack chairs and hammocks.

The people I met in Maine were great, very friendly, hospitable, kind and hard-working. Here, the current situation regarding the Governor of Maine Paul LePage becomes mystifying. The governor has chosen to take a combative, hostile posture with several groups within the state including the NAACP. Like another well-known politician, he has delivered incendiary remarks at minority populations. According to a recent article, LePage delivered:

" a series of outbursts in which he endorsed racial profiling, falsely asserted that the majority of drug dealers arrested in Maine were black and Hispanic, called people of color "the enemy" and threatened a state lawmaker in an angry, obscenity-laced voicemail, subsequently telling reporters he wished he could shoot him "right between the eyes" in a duel. " "Paul LePage: is this one outburst too many for Maine's Trump-like governor?The Guardian - 5 hours ago

Why does Maine government have to endure all of these theatrics ? The Governor now indicates that he will not resign and that he will not talk to the press anymore. Michael Socolaw has described Paul LePage as being " Charles Dickens with a dash of Stephen King." Paul LePage says he won't quit The Boston Globe - 3 hours ago

One wonders how can anything legislatively get done in this state ? How are the good people of Maine being served by this example of intemperate ill-advised behavior on the part of the state's chief executive ?

LePage has previously been forthcoming about his embattled childhood: He was the eldest of eleven who ran away from the incessant physical abuse that he suffered at home. He was befriended by Paul Snowe, husband of former US Senator Olympia Snowe, and has been supported by established elected officials in Maine. Yet his demeanor has been in stark contrast to that of other legislators. ( The Guardian )

One would hope that the Governor could extend compassion to his constituents. Despite his reservations concerning the welfare system, you would hope that Paul LePage would strive to represent the people of Maine in a stately dignified manner instead of presenting his tenure as one long and unending reality television show.

My friends in Maine, the people of Maine, deserve so much better. Instead of sailing, enjoying a lobster boil with friends or gazing at a pristine seascape, the citizens of Maine are protesting in an Augusta park regarding their governor.

It's not an august time right now in Augusta.

However, the whales of September are coming.

It has to get better. It must get better for Maine and its people.

May it be so.
I totally agree with Donald Trump that Hillary Clinton's character, temperament and transparency are legitimate issues in this Presidential campaign. We are about to elect an imperfect human being to the most important and most powerful position in the world and we need to know as much about them as possible . . . before November 8!

And, after so many months of doing an "Emailoscopy" on Secretary Clinton, perhaps it is time to require the same level of scrutiny on Donald Trump and his emails.

Imagine what we might find when we search all of Donald Trump's many servers? Character, whether you are an official of The United States Government, confirmed by a majority of The United States Senate on official business, or a private businessman (and perhaps especially when you are an un-confirmed private businessman) is a paramount issue in a national election!

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And when we search through Donald Trump's emails, we will get to find out things that are truly important about his character, temperament, beliefs and potential biases, all of which can impact any and every decision he might make in The Oval Office over the next 4 years.

For example:

1. Is Donald Trump in cahoots with Vladimir Putin? Are there any emails to Putin or about working with Putin or others in Russia to hack or otherwise disrupt America's 2016 Election? Are there any conversations with or about Julian Assange and a possible "October Surprise" that could impact the results of our election? 2. How exactly does Donald Trump feel about Hispanics?3. How exactly does Donald Trump feel about Muslims?4. How exactly does Donald Trump feel about women? What kinds of controversial things might he have said in his emails - in jest or seriously - about his employees or other women? Has he said things about employees that might have broken the laws of sexual harassment like his buddy and aide Roger Ailes? Has he said things about women's rights that women in this country would want to know? 5. What shady financial or business dealings has Trump engaged in or might Trump be doing or talking about doing? Are there any emails with organized crime? Are there any payments or political contributions with respect to Trump University? Are there any emails about disputes with laborers or related to lawsuits about business practices that the American voter might find to be relevant? 6. What potentially controversial things - beyond the ones we already know about - has Donald Trump said to others about John McCain or Barack Obama or The Khan Family or anyone else that we might feel would reveal a temperament that is unfit for our Commander in Chief and the leader of our nation.

And on and on and on.

Donald Trump says he won't release his taxes to comply with what has become a baseline level of transparency for all American Presidential candidates since 1976. Fine. But because of that, and because "turnabout is fair play", perhaps there is something else he can do.

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Mr. Trump - you call on Hillary Clinton to release all of her emails. How about you releasing all of yours!?
During the Commander-in-Chief Forum, when Donald Trump was asked about his supposed Secret Plan to stop ISIS, his convoluted response made clear he didn't have a clue about one. Indeed, when he explained - in future tense, mind you - "When I do come up with a plan I like..." that makes eminently clear in his own words that, no, he doesn't have a Secret Plan. Or any plan, period. In the end, the best explanation he could come up with when trying to answer was that he would talk to the generals.

Needless to say, there were those on social media who immediately ridiculed the concept to the degree that it sounded like a song out of Dr. Doolittle. And so it does. So, with thanks to Leslie Bricusse, just click play, and then follow the bouncing Trump and sing along.

If I could talk to the generals

Just imagine it

Letting them solve everything for me.

A plan that surely would stop ISIS,

And every other crisis,

What a huge assistance that would be!



If I could talk to the generals

Many people say

I could put my name on all the jets.

And I would even go to court, sure,

Make it law to torture

Families, little children and their pets.



I would become the best of pals with Putin

Because, believe me, he tells me that I'm good.

If people asked if I'd give nukes for Syria's?

It's not mysterious.

I would!



If I conferred with the upper brass

Had a Secret Plan.

Everyone could see I was no dunce.

If I could stand with the generals, band with the generals,

Bomb and have big hands like a general's

I could be great for once!
Fifteen years after the September 11th attacks on New York City and Washington, DC, the religious extremism that made that tragedy possible is more apparent than ever. In 2001, Richard Dawkins was hatefully criticized when he suggested that the 9/11 attacks could have only occurred with a weaponized Islam. But today, with ISIS blatantly advertising their religious motivations, it's undeniable that faith, whether it's the faith of al Qaeda, ISIS, or others, plays a significant role in global terror.

Part of the fear of identifying religion, particularly strains of Islam, as being a source of extremist behavior is the concern that such critique will lead an already embattled minority to face even more prejudice and discrimination. And that is certainly an understandable fear. Since 9/11 there has been a marked increase in hate crimes against American Muslims, an overall increase of which spikes even more dramatically when terrorist attacks happen around the globe. Coinciding with the meteoric rise of Trump's presidential campaign, anti-Muslim sentiment is now reaching new heights, with 21 percent of Americans stating that they support Trump's temporary ban on Muslim immigration. Just as concerning is the fact that 25 percent of Americans hold an unfavorable view of Islam, rating it at the bottom of all religious categories -- even below atheism!

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Islamophobia, or more relevantly, fear of Muslims, has led to persistent prejudice against a community of people who are just as compassionate and patriotic as anyone else.



Islamophobia, or more relevantly, fear of Muslims, has led to persistent prejudice against a community of people who are just as compassionate and patriotic as anyone else. So even while we call out the factual religious roots of extremism, we should keep in mind that blanket criticism of American Muslims is just another kind of bigotry.

But our opposition to fanning the flames of hate need not preclude us from discussing and condemning religiously motivated extremism, something President Obama failed to do in his remarks to the United Nations two years ago when he said that ISIS is "not Islamic. No religion condones the killing of innocents." While some liberals also expressed concerns, conservative media outlets in particular excoriated the President for his stance, with Breitbart describing his position as "feigned" and "out of touch with reality." The President's claim that the United States is not at war with Islam is correct, but pretending that we're not confronting extremists within Islam is plainly false.



Even while we call out the factual religious roots of extremism, we should keep in mind that blanket criticism of American Muslims is just another kind of bigotry.



The reverberations surrounding the President's continuing remarks led Republican candidate Donald Trump to demand that his opponent Hillary Clinton resign if she unable to use the term "radical Islamic terrorism." Perhaps as a result, and more directly in response to the Orlando nightclub shooting, Hillary Clinton broke away from the President's stance, announcing on CNN that she would use the words "radical Islamism." Donald Trump further demanded the President resign if he could not utter the same phrase, but that demand continues to be unmet.

Recently the ISIS publication Dabiq, a magazine dedicated to promulgating propaganda among ISIS sympathizers, informed Western nations of Why We Hate You and Want to Fight You. Contrary to the growing belief that ISIS is somehow "unIslamic," the reasons they provide are inherently religious. They list their hatred of our nonbelief in Islam, our secular liberal society, the existence of many atheists amongst us, our crimes against Islam, our crimes against Muslims, and the invasion of Muslim lands.



Dabiq makes its final key point, stating that even if the United States and the Western consortium were to cease their bombing campaign in the Middle East and even if they were to release all Muslim prisoners, halt their torture and cease usurping Muslim lands, ISIS would still conduct operations against the West and citizens of the West because their "primary reason for hating [us] will not cease to exist until [we] embrace Islam." Furthermore, Muslims who hold Western beliefs have committed apostasy in their eyes and therefore should be sentenced to death as a form of religious retribution affirmed by the Qu'ran, which states that not believing is worse than killing, and therefore the killing of apostates is permitted.
Presidential hopeful Donald Trump's incessant support for the Russian neo-czar Vladimir Putin has received flak from the Democrats, as well as some Republicans. This didn't deter him from going on to sing praises of Putin on his propaganda mouthpiece, the Russia Today. Using the same platform, Trump also lambasted the US media for its allegedly partisan approach. These antics, which have become a hallmark of Trump, didn't surprise many. What's worrying is the Democrats, including President Barack Obama, also secretly agree to his assessments. US is becoming a Russian acolyte of sorts in the global arena. It is no longer a secret either.

The process started years ago when the Obama administration was at a loss for words -- and actions -- on how to confront the Russians fast advancing towards Ukraine. They annexed Crimea and since have practically controlled the eastern border regions. Except for a brief period post-annexation, when tensions ran high between the two states, the Americans have largely accommodated the Russians in advancing their interests in the region. Obama even called the Crimean annexation by Russia as the machinations of a "regional power," which didn't warrant a stern response. American reticence fractured the European brotherhood with key states like Germany adopting a cozier approach towards the Russians.

Emboldened by American reticence, Putin went on to hijack the Syrian civil war and inflict terrible miseries on the already battered civilians. Russia is no longer keeping the facade of attacking the ISIS, as its fighter jets regularly bomb civilians, decimating entire neighborhoods. The barrel-bombing brigades of Bashar al-Assad and his Iranian and Hezbollah allies plug the carnage gaps, if any are left to fill.

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Despite the death toll climbing to 470,000, the Obama administration has advanced from its earlier dithering to clandestinely support the Russian operations. Foreign secretary John Kerry has met several times with his Russian counterpart as well as with Putin and has discussed ways to up the ante. The European Union, on the other hand, has been left to its own devices to address the refugee crisis, the biggest since the Second World War. European troubles advance Russian agenda and the Brexit may ultimately spell doom for the once-promising union of states, cobbled together under American tutelage.

Putin is even asking for a seat on the negotiation table between Israel and the Palestinians. Russia has thus regained its status as a power broker in the Middle East, a region that had long been forgotten after the fall of the Soviet Union.

The perception that Russia is replacing the Americans in Europe and the Middle East should have been a cause for concern in DC. The notion is feeding the personality cult of Putin as a global leader at the expense of Obama. Trump fell into the same trap owing to his lackadaisical understanding of global politics. Obama should worry less about Putin using the Trump card in the elections and more about salvaging the Russian policy. Trump has fewer chances of getting elected anyway but Hillary's adherence to Obama's Russia doctrine on Russia will not augur well for American interests.

The question is thus not about Trump's admiration for Putin. The real question is: Who is not supporting Putin in the US? Obama is supporting him through his actions. Hillary is supporting him by voicing support for Obama's foreign policy decisions. Is there any key contender or top official who is actually eager to stop Putin?
New York, NY - Democratic Nominee for President of the United States former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton participates in a NBC/MSNBC/Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America Commander in Chief Forum in midtown Manhattan in New York, New York on Wednesday September 7, 2016. Hosted by Today show co-anchor Matt Lauer. (Photo by Melina Mara/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

The "Commander-In-Chief" forum on NBC this week put on display a variety of issues. How the press treats, and grades, candidates who are unequal in their preparation and experience, was quite disappointing. But the most troubling issue was that for a half hour, a major party presidential candidate made shocking statements about our military and veterans that in any other year would have been disqualifying.

While Hillary Clinton has broad and deep experience with security and foreign policy issues, Donald Trump used his time in the Commander-in-Chief forum to disrespect our own generals, praise our enemies, blame military sexual assault on the decision to allow women to serve in our military, suggest we should steal the natural resources of another country, and interrupt a veteran to correct her (and let's be clear: She had the correct information and he was wrong.) That was just the tip of the iceberg.

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Donald Trump misrepresented his own position on the war in Iraq (he was for it.) He implied that he would use different generals than President Obama (he cannot fire our military generals.) He suggested our military needs a court system (it already has one.) And much, much more.

Trump said our military is embarrassing. He said he is looking forward to having a "very, very good relationship with Putin" and working closely with Russia, seems genuinely impressed with Putin's "leadership" in his country, and is even more impressed when Putin strokes his ego. As President Obama said, Trump's views are not particularly Republican. They are incredibly dangerous.

There is a list a mile long of reasons that a President Trump would be disastrous for our country, but at the top of the list of these concerns is the idea that he would be in charge of the most powerful military in the world and in charge of the services on which our nation's veterans rely. On the other hand, Hillary Clinton is one of the most prepared and qualified presidential candidates we've ever had, with global diplomatic experience and the steadiness the country needs in a Commander-in-Chief.

As we have seen in Los Angeles, when the VA suffers from poor management and chronic problems, our veterans and their families are put at great risk. The VA system is too critically important to have someone like Donald Trump, who one minute says he would never privatize the VA, and the next minute suggests veterans should see private doctors, serve as our Commander-in-Chief. Trump has no coherent plan for fixing the VA or improving services for our veterans. His response to a question from a veteran about what he would do to reduce veteran suicide showed he doesn't even have a shallow understanding of the problem.

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By William Shatner





Death ends a life, but it does not end a relationship.

PLAYWRIGHT ROBERT ANDERSON

At the conclusion of the second Star Trek movie, The Wrath of Khan, the Enterprise is facing destruction. The starship had less than four minutes to escape the activation of the Genesis Device, which will reorganize all matter. But it can't get away fast enough because the warp drive has been damaged. It can be repairedbut it's a suicide mission. Enough radiation has leaked into the reactor room to kill anyone going in there to make those repairs. As Dr. McCoy tells Spock, "No human can tolerate the radiation that's in there."

To which Spock responds, ever logically, "But as you are so fond of observing, Doctor, I am not human." After incapacitating McCoy with a Vulcan nerve pinch, Spock goes into the reactor room and saves the ship and its crew. But the cost is his own life.

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When Kirk realizes what has happened, he runs down to the engine room. Spock is still barely alive. The two men, who have fought together throughout the universe, are separated by a clear plate glass wall. In his last moments, Spock tells Kirk, "Don't grieve, Admiral ... it is logical. The needs of the many ... outweigh..."

"the needs of the few," Kirk finishes.

"Or the one," Spock adds, then places the palm of his hand, open with Vulcan salute, on the glass. On the other side, Kirk lays his hand on the wall, their hands seemingly touching. A final good-bye. With his dying breath, Spock tells Kirk, "I have been ... and always shall be ... your friend. Live long ... and prosper."

At the conclusion of the 2001 documentary Mind Meld: Secrets Behind the Voyage of a Lifetime, which is simply a long conversation between Leonard Nimoy and me about our lifelong journey to places no man had gone before, we are together in his den. Earlier in this film, we were looking at a framed photograph of us in our Star Trek costumes on the cover of TV Guide. "This is us," he'd mused. "Siamese twins."

I agreed, "Yes, you and I. Joined at the hip." A few seconds later, I added, "You and I have spent more than half our lives together. I think of you as one of my dearest friends, my dearest. And I truly love, I love you."

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Leonard wasn't a man given to public displays of emotion. Much like the character Spock, he was very reserved. "The same," was the best response he could muster at that moment. But at the very end of the documentary, as we stood next to each other looking into the camera, he suddenly and quite unexpectedly threw his arm around my shoulders and blurted, "You're my best friend."

In life, as well as through the characters we created on Star Trek, Mr. Spock and Captain James T. Kirk, Leonard Nimoy was my best friend. And like the millions of people who loved him, I will miss him forever.

Leonard and I were born four days apart. While I was born first, and was therefore the wiser, more mature, and more experienced one, he simply enjoyed pointing out, "You're a lot older than I am." Although neither one of us remembered it, we met briefly for the first time in 1964 when we both appeared in an episode of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. I played a supposedly drunken bon vivant; he was the Russian bad guy. In our first scene together, I slung my arm over Leonard's shoulder, raised my martini glass, and muttered, "Calvin Coolidge! How are you, Cal baby? Want a taste of this?" But our friendship, our friendship that was to last fifty years, actually began in July 1965, when we filmed our first Star Trek episode together.

Obviously, neither one of us could have imagined that eventually we would become best friends. Nor did we have the slightest hint that we were creating two of the most iconic characters in American cultural history. We were two working actors showing up to do the job. Honestly, until Leonard and I developed our relationshipwith the exception of my wivesI never had a real friend; I didn't even know what a friend was. I had never had anyone in my life to whom I could completely emotionally unburden myself. There certainly have been some wonderful people I have been close to, people I know I could rely on, but as far as speaking openly and revealing that which is most troublesome and most secretive, secure in the knowledge it will remain as buried in their breasts as it is in mine, there was only Leonard. We worked together for three seasons. During production, actors will spend more time with each other than with their families. When actors work together for a lengthy period of time, comfortable friendships often develop. We've worked together under great stress and forged a common bond. We've faced ridicule and shared feelings of inadequacy. We've pushed each other past exhaustion to try to do better work. We've fought the front office and the business staff, and we've made something good. Through it all, many of us come to love and depend on each other.

Before doing Star Trek, for example, I did a series called For the People with Howard Da Silva, Lonny Chapman, and Jessica Walter. It was a wonderful show, and they were all my best friends. When it ended, we hugged and told each other how much we loved each other and pledged eternal friendship and never saw each other again. Long after Star Trek, I did Boston Legal with James Spader. My God, I love James Spader. We cared for each other, we respected each other, and I learned from James Spader the value of facing a problem rather than burying it and hoping it goes away. The characters we played were so close I suggested we marry, so as my senility took control, he would have legal authority to take care of me. Off the set, we weren't quite that close, but certainly I consider him a very good friend. If I called him and asked the wildest favor, I have no doubt he would respond. When the series ended, we knew we would be friends forever. And with very few exceptions, we have never spoken since.

Actors' friendships are like that. They tend to be deep and temporary. During the closing party, we hold each other firmly, intimately; man, woman, and child, we've been through the wars together. I love you. I'll never forget you. You're my friend forever. But within a few days, if you're lucky, you've got another job, and your life is filled with all new and equally wonderful people, and you never see each other again. Every series, every movie or play I've done, they were all my good friends, and I never saw them again.

But with Leonard, it was different. What should have happened was that after three years of making a mildly successful series and gaining a great deal of respect and good feeling toward each other, after our last day on the set, we each should have gone in whatever direction our careers took us. But this was a unique situation; there never has been anything comparable. Rather than being forgotten in television history, after going into syndication, Star Trek grew to become one of the most popular programs in history. It became part of the American dialogue. Leonard and I made five movies together; he directed two of them, and I directed one. We attended several conventions a year and otherwise made appearances and even commercials. While circumstances should have taken us to different places, the unprecedented success of Star Trek continually brought us together.

Our friendship took root in the many common bonds we shared. We had similar childhoods; both of us were raised in lower-middle-class Orthodox Jewish immigrant families, we grew up in religiously mixed neighborhoods in great cities, and both of us found the magic of acting when we were very young and filled our emotional needs with it. We both defied our fathers to pursue our dreams. We had our families, our children, our homes and marriages; we both had a strong work ethic, a need for approval, and a great respect for the craft we'd chosen. We went through marriages and painful divorces together, we fought the studio together, we even got tinnitus together. Mostly, though, we shared an extraordinary experience that very few people have ever known. We were carried and buffeted by the same winds, and there truly was no one else who could understand what that meant. But beyond all that, beyond the success and the recognition and the applause, I really liked being with the guy. Leonard was smart and funny and nice; he had learned from all the challenges in his life and gotten through them and taken from them a great deal of wisdom that he was kind enough to share with me.

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My respect for him was profound. I was in awe of his creative talents. There are people who rush through life pursuing various passions; Leonard's life unfolded slowly, revealing passions I wouldn't have guessed were there. As an actor, he created an archetype character that has become part of our culture. He was a very successful director, a wonderful fine-arts photographer; he wrote and starred in plays and published books of his poetry. Leonard Nimoy was the only man I have ever known who could perform Shakespeare in Yiddish; he could make you appreciate the beauty even if you didn't understand a word beyond, "Oy gevalt, Hamlet."

He was my friend. But according to the Global Family Reunion project, we also were distantly related; supposedly I am Leonard's wife Susan's fifth cousin twice removed's wife's aunt's husband's uncle's wife's second grandnephew. Admittedly, that was not something we ever discussed, but in fact, on some level, we were related; we came from the same tribe. Leonard and I were both products of the same history. Our lives were shaped by the same historical hatreds and the courage and desire of our familiesJews who fled eastern Europe to escape persecution. Leonard's mother and father came from the village of Iziaslav in Ukraine. His mother and grandmother were smuggled out of the brand-new Soviet Union hidden under bales of hay in the back of a wagon and made it to America; his father snuck across the border on foot, sailing first to Buenos Aires and then on to New York. When his father found out that a cousin in Boston was opening a barbershop, he settled there, remet Leonard's mother, and married her. Like Leonard, my family also came here from eastern Europe; my grandparents were from Ukraine, Lithuania, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Leonard and I were both born in March 1931.

Both of us grew up in the west end: my family lived in the west end of Montreal; his family lived in the Boston neighborhood known as the West End. My father was in the schmatta business, manufacturing inexpensive suits for the workingman who owned only that one suit. Leonard's father had the local barbershop. I grew up in a mostly Catholic neighborhood, while Boston's West End was the American melting pot, Italians and Jews and Poles and Irish, everybody who came from Europe, and even as Leonard described it, "A sprinkling of blacks." In most immigrant communities, there was a great sense of equality; we all had nothing together. I can remember the pushcarts and the beggars, the ice man delivering hunks of ice to keep the small icebox cold, the singsong and the bells of the merchants as they drove slowly down the street. Leonard could recite the merchant's singsongs, singing out in Yiddish, "We have threads, we have needles, we have cloth, we have ribbons. What do you need? It's all here on my cart."

While neither one of us actually came from poverty, growing up in the Depression, we both saw too much of it. Leonard always remembered the families who had been evicted from their apartment, sitting on the sidewalk with all their belongings, waiting for someone to come with a wagon and take them somewhere else, never to be heard from in the old neighborhood again.

I'm not sure why, but in retrospect, I actually knew quite a bit more about Leonard's childhood than he knew about mine. Leonard was a wonderful storyteller, and he would weave these vivid word portraits of the people and places of his childhood. His father's barbershophaircuts twenty-five cents, shaves a dimehad three chairs, quite extravagant for that neighborhood, but a lot of life took place in the back room. Apparently, that was the local hangout. There was always a pinochle game going on, maybe some other gambling that nobody talked much about, and if someone was hard up and needed to borrow a few bucks, that was the place to go. Leonard's father was the treasurer of the Iziaslav Letter Society Credit Union, an organization the immigrants all chipped into to offer assistance when it was needed. Leonard remembers people coming into the Modern Barbershop, as it was named, once a week to give his father as much as a dollar.

Leonard and his older brother grew up in an apartment with their parents and grandparents. Like mine, it was a kosher home; maybe we didn't have any luxuries, but we always had three sets of dishes. A lot of Jewish immigrants in the West End, including his grandparents, spoke mostly Yiddish, so Leonard actually became quite fluent in Yiddish. Leonard loved the sound of that language; he used to repeat some of the wonderful expressions his grandmother used: "You should grow up like an onion, with your head in the ground and your feet in the air." "Go bang your head against the wall when you say you're bored and got nothing to do." By the time we became friends, he was concerned he was losing his facility for the language, so he actually found a Yiddish-speaking psychiatrist in Los Angeles and paid her hourly fee once a week just to sit and speak with him in Yiddish.

He was always proud to be a West Ender. He named his house in Lake Tahoe West End, and that also was the name painted on the back of his boat. People like us, who grew up in that kind of environment, carried the values we learned there with us wherever we went for the rest of our lives. For Leonard, that meant being a responsible citizen; respect other people, give back to the community by helping those people who needed help, work hard, and take responsibility for your actions.

Leonard described his parents as hardworking, extremely ethical, and constantly concerned about what might happen next. "Everything my parents did was colored by fear," he said. "'What could happen if you did this or did that? So, be safe, just be safe.'" In his family it was his grandfather Sam Spinner who was the real character. When his parents were telling him, "No, don't do it, it's not safe," his grandfather was slipping him a dollar and telling him, "Here, go do something."

It was his grandfather who continually pushed Leonard to go ahead, try it, do it. He was the adventurer in the family, the one who came to America first and then started bringing over the rest of his family one by one. It was my father, Joseph Shatner, who did the same thing for my family: he came here alone at fourteen and slowly and over many years helped bring each of his ten brothers and sisters to America.

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My father cut fabric and made suits; Sam Spinner was a leather cutter. I remember Leonard telling me that when he went home after his first few years in Hollywood, his grandfather would reach down and feel the leather on his shoes to determine how well he was doing. If Leonard needed heels, his grandfather knew he wasn't doing well.

And, quite naturally at that time, both of us were exposed to anti-Semitism. I actually had to plan my strategy for getting to my Hebrew school; I'd walk past it on the far side of the streetthen race across the street and inside. But I still got in my share of fights with the Catholic kids. I was a tough kid; that was my nickname"Toughie." Leonard's family called him liebe, which was the German word for love. The moment that had the most lasting impression on him took place one day during World War II when his father suddenly laid down his newspaper and said softly, "They're killing Jews." Killing Jews meant the Jews of Europe, in many cases our distant family members. There was a real feeling among all the Jews: that could have been me. For kids the age of Leonard and me, that had a strong impact. There also were a lot of whispered conversations in Jewish homes about whether or not Franklin Roosevelt was good for the Jews. He received a lot of criticism in the Jewish community for not bombing the rail lines to the concentration camps; although some people explained that if he did that, there would be complaints that he was more worried about Jews than the war effort. But what it came down to was that Jews were on their own, they were different, and I suspect Leonard felt that at least as much as I did. It was part of our shared heritage.

And both Leonard and I got called all the nasty anti-Semitic names. Experiences like that create a sort of subtext, and as we got to know each other, those common experiences helped bind us together. It's almost an emotional shorthand.

We also learned the value of a dollar and inherited a work ethic. Later in life, Leonard would do a very funny impression of me in which he made fun of the fact that I can't stop working. "It's quarter of four," he'd say in his best Shatner. "What's scheduled for four ten? If I'm done here by four thirty-two, can we book something at four forty?" But the reality was that for most of his life, Leonard really never slowed down too much either. It just was in our blood to be anxious about the next job, the next paycheck. In some fashion, we both worked all our lives.

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Growing up, I worked as a suit packer in my father's factory; I take great pride in my ability to fold. I've often said if the acting thing hadn't worked out, I would have had a fine career in professional folding.

As a kid, Leonard took any job he could find. He sold newspapers, he worked in his cousin's card shop, he shined shoes, he set up chairs for the Boston Pops. Whatever somebody was paying to be done, he would do it. He even sold vacuums for the Ace Vacuum Company. The money made a big difference in the family finances. Leonard's biggest memory about the day the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, for example, was the fact that he sold all his copies of The Boston Record and couldn't get any more of them.

Neither one of us were especially good students. With so much out in the real world to learn, school just didn't hold our attention. But there was one skill at which both of us excelled: we could talk. My mother was an elocution teacher and never hesitated to correct my speech; Leonard once won a declamation contest at the neighborhood settlement house, the Elizabeth Peabody House, by memorizing and reciting the entire text of Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha. If I close my eyes, I can hear his deep and somber voice, playing with Longfellow's words as he says with utter conviction:

By the shore of Gitche Gumee,

By the shining Big-Sea-Water,

At the doorway of his wigwam

In the pleasant Summer morning ...

And when I do that, it's almost impossible not to smile.

It is, however, a little more difficult but considerably more fun to imagine the taciturn Mr. Spock reading that poem with both curiosity and a complete lack of emotion.

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Copyright  2016 by William Shatner
When some think about entrepreneurship, they imagine how the Gates, Brins, Winfreys, and Dangotes of the world are feeding economic mobility and self-sufficiency. For me, however, the story of entrepreneurship not reserved for a select and privileged few begins in Lagos, Nigeria.

Growing up in Nigeria I was surrounded by entrepreneurship, although we simply referred to it as "doing business." I saw that entrepreneurial spirit in mother who ran three profitable businesses at any given time; my uncle, the medical doctor, who sold shoes and suits bought during his family's Italian vacations to friends and family; and the street-hawkers who had everything I could possibly need to get through 3 hours in traffic on Third Mainland Bridge.

From the very highly educated to those whose only education came from life lessons, the hustler mentality born out of economic need was alive and well. No matter your stated 9 to 5 (or lack thereof), you were expected to hold the moniker of businessman or businesswoman. And those who did were respected for it. So it came as no surprise to my father that my plan to pay for college was simply to "invent something." (I still believe earning a full scholarship stifled my ability to have invented the Hoverboard).

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In Nigeria, as in much of Africa, there has always been a cultural expectation to create opportunities for yourself and foster your own self-sufficiency. This need to be entrepreneurial is as much a part of what it means to be Nigerian, as accumulating as many degrees as possible.

Turns out, I'm not the only one who sees this. Last week, Facebook founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg made a "surprise" visit to Nigeria. While touring the nation's economic capital, Lagos, Zuckerberg said he chose to come there first "because of the vibrant developers and entrepreneurial ecosystem." As I heard this, I thought, of course!

Zuckerberg's first stop was to Co-creation Hub Nigeria (CcHUB) in Yaba, which connects and clusters those innovating around many social problems in Nigeria. While reflecting on his time in Lagos at a Town Hall Zuckerberg said, "the reason I am here now is because this is where a lot of the future will get built." I couldn't agree more.

In Africa, there is a natural disposition towards innovation - a passion for living that focuses on solutions rather than problems - within this innate ability lies the key to sustainable development in Africa but this cannot be realized without the right type of investments. Take for example Mobile Banking. Africa is leading the way in the adoption of mobile banks. According to the World Bank, 16 percent of sub-Saharan mobile users have used their phones for banking purposes. This is a larger portion than any other global region and it is still growing. With further development, mobile payment applications could generate as much as $1.5 billion in sales by 2019. This is an economically viable investment that also solves serious social problems for underserved communities, including reducing the vulnerability to theft suffered by cash-only vendors, settling bills without the hassle of expensive and time-consuming travel, and access to loans for the unbanked majority.

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Revenue potential in a number of industries continues to drive interest in Africa but for the most part, western investments in Africans has tended to focus on aid and humanitarian relief. Although necessary, the long-term development plan for Africa must also include investments in indigenous entrepreneurs and startups. Africa's growth and sustainability require people innovating around issues peculiar to Africa, and Africans are doing that better than anyone else.

On the list of startups that Zuckerberg visited is one that he is already backing, Andela - a solutions focused enterprise that trains engineers in Africa and places them in global tech jobs. The Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative's $24 million investment in this startup co-founded by Nigerian Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, models investments in Africans innovating in support of Africa.

Andela first caught my attention last year while exploring technology solutions that allow for greater inclusion of underserved communities in the global workforce. Last September, I toured the Yaba campus with Iyinoluwa and met some of the fellows Andela had trained and placed with various global tech companies. I witnessed first hand the challenges inherent in closing the gap between where talent lives and opportunities exists - with the most glaring being poor infrastructure. But, what I also saw was a burgeoning social enterprise responding to Africa's tech training deficits through a self-funding model of education; empowering women through increased participation in the workforce; and solving remote work concerns around infrastructure deficits and isolation.

In the two years since its inception, Andela has trained just under 200 engineers, accepting them from a pool of 40,000 applicants. In an Africa currently home to 1.2 billion people with a projected rise to 2.4 billion by the year 2050, there is an urgent need to close the skills gaps and significantly increase access to jobs.

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After leaving Andela, I headed over to the Nigeria-focused tech startup investment fund 440 for Deal Weekend Lagos - a 24-hour event where shortlisted startups compete to receive an equity investment of between $100k and $250k. There, I was surrounded by a community of innovators committed to advancing Nigeria's tech ecosystem. Throughout the event was a palpable determination to find and nurture innovation - impassioned young Africans fighting for solutions for themselves and their communities.


Credit: U.S. Air Force, Air Force Core Values at the United States Air Force Academy

The United States Air Force declares its core values as "Integrity First, Service Before Self, Excellence in All We Do."

The treatment and trial of Air Force 1st Lt. Joshua Seefried is an affront to those values. Assuming an accused is guilty until proven innocent, does not demonstrate "Integrity First." When Generals, the leaders of the Air Force, put their careers before the well being of their Airmen, their conduct is inconsistent with "Service Before Self." Conducting a trial with no credible evidence demonstrates incompetence, not "Excellence in All We Do."

There may be alternate theories regarding why the Convening Authority, Maj. Gen. Darryl W. Burke, against the recommendation of his appointed Article 32 Hearing Officer, continued to pursue the case against Lt. Seefried. Some in the LGBT community have suggested the Seefried case is a 21st century version of the infamous Dreyfus affair. Just before World War I, a French army officer, Alfred Dreyfus was accused of providing secret information to the German Army. He was court-martialed, found guilty, and sentenced to prison on Devil's Island. Many contended he was persecuted only because he was Jewish. The French army at the time was notoriously anti-Semitic. Eventually, he was exonerated and released from prison.

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Those who argue Lt. Seefried's case was a persecution, and not a prosecution, point out that he was an outspoken advocate for the rights of LGBT service members. Seefried likely had many enemies both within the military, and in the wider general population, including conservative members of Congress. They speculate that some in the military wanted to make an example of him. Charges of rape and sexual assault against a gay officer, with sordid details made public, would send a message to all LGBT service members.

It would be naive to assume that the homophobia that existed in the military for many decades would vanish with the repeal of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" law. Over 14,000 service members were discharged for being gay in 17 years that law was on the books, and over an estimated 100,000 were discharged when there was an outright gay ban. Cultural change in such a traditional and hierarchical institution does not happen overnight.

On the other hand, military leadership embraced the repeal of the law, and its implementation, with a few exceptions, has been flawless. This would clearly militate against the claim that because he was a gay activist, Seefried was a specific target of the Air Force leadership.

The decision by Gen. Burke to take Siegfried's case to trial was not made in a vacuum. There were several significant events that likely had impact on him as the Convening Authority. First, the number of sexual assaults within the military had increased dramatically to the point of being almost epidemic. Rightfully, this drew the attention of members of Congress, particularly female Senators. Something had to be done to get this intolerable situation under control. One of the most controversial proposals was to take away the duties and responsibilities of the Convening Authority from Commanding Generals, and create a separate system in which experienced and trained Judge Advocates would determine which cases were taken to trial. The Pentagon, and some members of the Senate, opposed such a change, arguing that to do so would remove an important tool used by commanders to maintain good order and discipline. Of course, this debate also placed the actions of Convening Authorities under scrutiny.

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The second event was the decision of Air Force Lt. Gen. Craig Franklin to overturn the court-martial conviction of a fellow F-16 pilot, Lt. Col. James Wilkerson. Wilkerson, the inspector general at Aviano Air force Base in Italy, had been accused of sexual assault, abusive sexual contact, and three counts of conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman. These charges arose from a party at his home in which he allegedly digitally penetrated a female civilian contractor.

Wilkerson's court-martial, made up of an all male panel of officers, sentenced him to dismissal from the military and a year in prison. Wilkerson requested a commutation of his sentence or clemency from the Convening Authority, Lt. Gen. Franklin. In support of this request, Wilkerson submitted 90 letters praising him as a loyal husband, doting father and professional Air Force officer. Franklin reviewed the entire record of trial, and post-trial submissions, and against the advice of his staff Judge Advocate, overturned the conviction and reinstated Wilkerson. Under the military justice system, the Convening Authority's decision is final. The Service Secretary, the Secretary of Defense, nor any military Court of Appeal can overturn it.

After Gen. Franklin took this action, a later investigation found Wilkerson had fathered a child out of wedlock. This revelation led to public outrage. Franklin retired early, losing a star in the process.

Certainly, General Burke was well aware of the facts of the Wilkerson case. Like his fellow senior officers, he must have been mindful of the negative impact General Franklin's decision had on his career. If Burke had not pursued Seefried's case, would he have come under pressure from members of the Senate who were closely monitoring the actions of Convening Authorities, particularly in cases involving sexual assault? Since the Senate must provide advice and consent to the President for all General Officer promotions, would that action have prevented him from pinning on another star?

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Burke's options were two fold. The easy choice was take the case to trial and avoid any second-guessing by the Senate, potential adverse impact on his career or any negative press. Just throw Seefried under the bus, and let the court-martial sort out the accusations of sexual assault. The more difficult decision, one calling for the exercise of prosecutorial discretion, would be to follow the advice of the Article 32 Hearing Officer, and not move forward to prosecute Seefried. If General Burke had made this hard choice, because Seefried was such a public person, it is likely victim rights groups and the press would have taken Burke to task for "letting the accused off the hook."

This "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation often confronts a Convening Authority when making a decision on whether to prosecute a felony or sexual assault case. Do senior leaders really need this authority to maintain good order and discipline? I submit that they do not, and quite frankly, I suspect many of them would rather not have to carry this burden. The solution to this dilemma can be found in changes to the military justice system made by our closest allies, the British, Canadians and Australians. They have done away with Convening Authorities and now have a professional military judicial system, in which trained Judge Advocates determine which cases go to trial.
Last year the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), approved a vaccine for meningococcal disease, or meningitis, yet many of this year's 20.5 million college students are not vaccinated, leaving them vulnerable to contracting the disease.

According to the CDC, meningococcal disease refers to any illness that is caused by the type of bacteria called Neisseria meningitides and there are several serogroups, including A, B, C, Y and W-135. The illness they cause are often severe and include infections of the lining of the brain and spinal cord. They may also cause bloodstream infections. Up to 15% of people who contract it die, usually within 24 hours.

I know about this disease first-hand. I contracted it during my first few weeks of college and I nearly lost my life. I spent two weeks in coma and lost my hearing. I had to put off medical school for a year while I recovered.

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How does one typically contract the disease? Meningococcus bacteria are spread through the exchange of respiratory and throat secretions like spit, particularly wherever large groups of people gather together or live in close quarters. This makes college students one of the groups most at risk, as was the case for me.

A few months ago, two Rutgers University students contracted meningitis B, and thankfully, both students recovered. Earlier this year, three othercollege campuses had cases, leading to the death of one person. Additionally, outbreaks occurred on five campuses between March 2013 and February 2016, resulting in two deaths, along with a limb amputation in one victim and neurological issues in others. Scores of other cases occurred on many campuses across the country during that time period which did not rise to the level of an outbreak.

While many states have mandates of vaccination for all incoming college and university freshman, at least 12 states do not require the vaccination, including my own state of Michigan. This needs to change.

Most college students physically interact with other students from out-of-state. As such we cannot afford to a situation where divergent vaccination policies further limit the effectiveness of vaccines in states they are required. To optimize herd immunity against meningitis among college students in the U.S, we need to mandate vaccination in all schools in all states.

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While meningitis can be treated with antibiotics, quick medical attention is extremely important to save lives. Keeping up with the recommended vaccines is the most comprehensive and best defense against it.

The first vaccine for the prevention of meningococcal disease was developed in 1912. By the 1970s, specific vaccines were available for four of the five serogroups which commonly cause the infection. But serogroup B remained elusive until 2013 when Bexsero, a Meningitis B vaccine produced by Novartis, was approved for use in Europe. In October 2014,Trumenba, a serogroup B vaccine produced by Pfizer, was approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Bexsero was subsequently approved for use in the United States in February 2015.

Thus, vaccines are available, but the problem is the policies that govern vaccination practices in the different states.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) recommends that clinicians administer a vaccine that offers protection against serogroups A, C, Y and W-135 to adolescents at 11 or 12 with an initial dose and again at 16 years of age for a booster dose. As of this month, New York students in grades 7 and 12 must be vaccinated against meningococcal disease, for instance, and already 27 states include the vaccine as part of the regular slew of immunizations.

But ACIP only states that clinicians may choose to administer serogroup B meningococcal vaccine to patients 16 through 23 years of age. In part, this is because important data for making policy recommendations are not yet available because these vaccines were recently licensed for use in the United States under an accelerated approval process. Hopefully, in the near future, with more research the vaccine may be mandated for this age group, too.

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But since not all states have actively mandated the vaccine for adolescents and teens and college-age students are at a heightened risk, the CDC should do more than just recommend meningitis vaccination for college-age students.

Others agree. Several universities in states like Arizona, Michigan,Pennsylvania and Texas are strongly recommending or requiring that students receive the vaccination this fall.

Emily Stillman was a sophomore at Michigan's Kalamazoo College when she tragically contracted meningitis. On February 2nd 2013, after just 36 hours in the hospital, Emily died from complications of the disease. The Meningitis B vaccine was not available before Emily's illness, but now that it is, her mother Alicia Stillman is fighting to avoid this from happening to other families in the future. She created the Emily Stillman Foundation to raise awareness of the dangerous risks of Meningitis B and wants the vaccine to be a requirement for all college students.

Meningitis is preventable through vaccines, let's make sure no college student is ever hospitalized or dies from it again.

Utibe Effiong MD,MPH, is a meningitis survivor who told his story in a TED Talk in Berlin, Germany. He is a U.S physician and public health scientist and an alumnus of the Aspen Institute New Voices Fellowship.

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Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, in 2015 only 17 percent of Black men ages 25-29 had completed a bachelor's degree or higher. Not only is this a problem for the millions of students who do not have the benefit of higher education, but to our country as a whole. In the 21st century economy, sitting satisfied with a high school education is not enough for an individual to remain employed long term nor for America to remain one of the world's leading innovators. Talking about our leadership on the world stage means nothing if we ignore so many of our own human assets, thereby losing the opportunity to solve global problems in the future.

Unfortunately, going to college, let alone graduating with a degree, is seen as a distant glimmer for many, particularly those growing up in low income neighborhoods or those who are first generation college-goers. It's not that these students don't have the heart or don't want to work for their education; the real problem is the layers of hurdles -- academic, social and financial challenges -- that students have to overcome just to get their foot in the institution's door, and then to stay there.

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I am the co-executive producer of a new documentary All the Difference, that is premiering September 12 on the PBS award-winning POV series. Filmed over five and a half years, All the Difference weaves together the stories of two determined, promising young black men -- Robert Henderson and Krishaun Branch -- as they overcome the obstacles of under-resourced homes, and high-risk communities in Chicago to attend college. The film explores the particular factors in their lives that made "all the difference" in helping them be the first in their families to most likely escape poverty and secure a place in the middle class by following them through college and illuminating the academic, social, and financial barriers they faced.

Robert and Krishaun were fortunate enough to attend a high school specifically designed to prepare students academically for the collegiate experience. Unfortunately, too many students do not have the luxury of such preparation, and they enter college believing the same level of effort they exerted in high school will allow them to make it through higher ed. Higher expectations and more demanding courses cause many students to struggle to stay afloat. The lack of adequate preparation and study skills often results in the need to take developmental courses. These courses, which have the same price tag as any other college course, do not earn any transferrable credits. The lack of adequate academic preparation combined with credit empty courses and additional debt discourage students and stall college careers within the first few semesters.

The academic challenges for many students are directly connected to the challenges associated with the social transition as well. While students are confronted with more demanding curricula, they are also in a new space separated from the support networks they are familiar with. Without the guidance and support of mentors and even peers, the academic and financial struggles seem more and more insurmountable. Both Robert and Krishaun faced economic insecurity, academic frustration and even family loss. These factors push both dangerously close to leaving college and stalling, if not ending, their education. What brings Robert and Krishaun back are the mentors they seek out. Each boy develops a network of academic advisors, mentors and financial aid officers to help them work through the challenges they face. Unfortunately, not all students are able to make these connections and find the support networks necessary to succeed.

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The financial hurdle of attending college can also be truly prohibitive. Research shows that low-income students, while qualified for need-based grant aid, still take on the most debt. Having ready access to the Internet and time to meet deadlines are significant challenges, as are managing the application process and retrieving data from the IRS, especially without guidance. The paperwork and process of the FAFSA are difficult for most to navigate, including students who have college savvy families. Then even once you are in college, the need for emergency financing to deal with things like books, childcare, food, and transportation can be show-stoppers.

Platforms like my Baltimore, Maryland-based BridgeEDU are working to solve this problem. At BridgeEDU, we partner with universities such as the Community College of Baltimore County and Coppin State University to provide our students with greater supports, including a suite of wrap-around services and an experiential co-curriculum. Our program, along with other great platforms like Thread, and College Possible, was created to address the college completion crisis and ensure that more students have the tools and know-how to succeed.
If you're a woman who owns a business you may find the woman-owned certification requirements a bit excessive - and a little overwhelming - at first. If you can get past the initial shock, you may find the benefits of certification outweigh the work required to complete certification. Some of the many important benefits to this certification include increased visibility and access to the Fortune 500 business world.

The National Women Business Owners Corporation (NWBOC), became the first private national certifier of women-owned businesses when it formed in 1995. Since then many local, state and national organizations have been created that also offer certifications to help female business owners grow their businesses and gain access to big clients.

The Benefits of Woman-Owned Certification

#1. Government Contracts

The U.S. government is one of the largest buyers of goods and services and even have set goals to help award more contracts specifically to women, which can become reliable sources of income.

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Back in 2000, it became apparent that federal procurement dollars were bypassing women-owned businesses. This prompted the government's 5 percent goal of awarding government contracts to woman-owned businesses in hopes of leveling the playing field.

Since 2010, the government has been within 1 percent of reaching their 5 percent goal, but only achieved it in the 2015 fiscal year. Gaining access to government contracts is one of the many benefits of becoming a certified woman-owned business.

Last year, 5.05 percent - or $17.8 billion dollars - were contracted with women-owned small businesses. The steady incline over past years demonstrates a strong trend that the percentage of contracts with woman-owned businesses will continue to rise.

#2. Access to databases



Another benefit to being certified through an official organization is the access to databases of information. With access to lists of suppliers and procurement executives and hundreds of major U.S. corporations and federal, state, and local government entities, finding big business leads can become easy.

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This also means agencies and purchasers can easily find your company since your information will be added to the database as well.

#3. Educational and Networking Opportunities



Most big organizations include educational and networking opportunities to those who have successfully received certification. This can help you learn which major corporations or government agencies are interested in the types of goods or services you supply, helping your market directly to the buyers you want to reach.

#4. Enhance Your Business Marketing

There are also many ways to use this certification to promote your company. Most certifying organizations provide a seal to use on marketing materials and retail product packaging. In addition, it can provide the opportunity to partner with other woman-owned businesses. An American Express study found that business owners who team with another business win 50% more contracts.

Before applying to become a certified woman-owned business it is important to know that ownership is not the only criteria. It's a bit more complex. The following are the criteria to be eligible for this certification:

A woman or multiple women must own and control at least 51.0% of the business The woman owner must serve as President or CEO - if both positions exist She must be active in daily management She must be a U.S. citizen The woman owner must have the ownership and officer position for at least 6 months

The benefits of becoming a certified Woman-Owned Business could outweigh any initial cost because the certification helps create credibility, access, and opportunities for companies that may otherwise not be available.

I spoke with Tricia Wallwork, CEO of Milo's, a producer of organic teas and other beverages. Milo's is a certified woman-owned business.



Q: Why did you get your business certified?

A: We are always looking for ways to explain the Milo's Corporate Difference. The Women Business Enterprise (WBE) certification was a great way for us to acknowledge our unique and diverse culture so our loyal fans could understand more about who we are as a company.



Q: Have you seen any benefits to being certified?

A: The WBE certification has opened many doors for Milo's through networking with other talented professionals, our customers and the fine retailers where our products are sold. During Women's History Month in March 2015, Walmart featured six women-owned businesses nationally and Milo's was one of the chosen products featured. This enabled us to reach many new customers and further tell our story, as well as meet and learn from many other dynamic WBEs.



Q: Was the certification process difficult?

A: The certification and recertification processes are not difficult but they are detailed enough to ensure that the company is truly majority owned and controlled by women and remain that way during certification.

Q: Do you believe the certification process was worth it?

A: I believe the WBE certification process was worth the time, expense and effort because it gave Milo's another way to demonstrate the Milo's Difference, network with other talented WBEs and differentiate ourselves to our customer and retailers.
In his novel, Damned, Chuck Palahniuk depicts the telemarketing industry as a business that is operated in the afterlife by condemned souls who call their targets at mealtimes to ask inane survey questions. This depiction plays on a sense that telemarketing calls are annoying, with an added suggestion that only people who are consigned to eternal damnation would perform a telemarketing job.

The telemarketing reality, however, is that the industry is robust and profitable, even though the products and services sold by telemarketers may not deliver the value that targeted purchasers are led to expect. Nowhere is this truer than in telemarketing sales of Google marketing services to businesses by companies that have no connection with Google.

Google's revenue exceeded US$67 billion in 2015 - and the company didn't make a penny of that using telemarketing. Phony Google telemarketers overstate their affiliation or relationship with Google to sell a service that a business usually doesn't need because they can likely get that service for free.

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Less scrupulous callers use a variety of sales pitches to give unsuspecting business owners an impression that Google riches can be theirs; all they have to do is buy one of the services the caller is selling. It's just that easy.

Telemarketing and Robocalls

Google itself has filed a federal lawsuit to shut down one of the most egregious participants in this scam, but telemarketers continue to contact small business owners with offers to sell listings on Google My Business or Google Search pages. Businesses might also receive calls from self-proclaimed SEO experts who guarantee placement of a business listing at the top of search page results.

Google might contact a small business to verify information, but it will not offer to sell services or request payment for inclusion on any page listings, nor will it guarantee top placement in any search results. Carlton Smith of Flagstone Search Marketing puts it quite plainly:

Google does not, ever, place robocalls.

Google does not, ever, ask someone to "update your listing on the front page."

Google does not, ever, ask someone to "claim your free website."

Google does not, ever, charge someone to be included in Google Search or Places.

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Google also does not make calls to offer free websites or to offer businesses an opportunity to update their front page listings. If a business has any questions about the legitimacy of a Google-related call, it can refer to the company's support information page or report the call to the Federal Trade Commission's Robocalls resource site.



Google Lotteries

Google does not run contests or lotteries, but individuals and businesses alike receive almost daily emails and occasional phone calls congratulating them on their good fortune of having won Google Lotto. The emails and calls ask the recipients to provide personal information and to pay a fee to release the prize funds. This is nothing more than a variation on the "Nigerian Prince" and foreign lottery scams that have plagued the internet since its inception.

Businesses should instruct their employees never to respond to these emails or calls and to delete them without opening any attachments that may have been sent to them.



Deletion of Google Business Listings

Disreputable telemarketers will seek to grab a business owner's attention with claims that the business will be deleted from Google Places or Google Plus local business listings. The callers might request payment for inclusion of the business on Google Maps. Google does not charge a fee to show a business on a Google Map, and it has consolidated its Places and plus listings under its Google My Business portal, which offers basic business listings for free. A business that receives an invoice for a Google service or that is solicited for payment of fees for a Google service should first confirm the legitimacy of the offer.



Miscellaneous Google-Themed Scams

Some businesses have become victims of phishing scams, in which they received emails and calls telling them that their Gmail accounts have been compromised and then divulged sensitive information to reactivate the accounts. Others have been targeted with Google Wallet claims (previously known as "Google Checkout"), where they have received invoices that appear to come from a Google Wallet account.

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A business's employees can be trained to spot a Wallet scam. Every legitimate Google Wallet transaction requires a party to sign into a Google account and it only uses Google's Wallet interface to complete a transaction. Google does not operate its payment services with bank wire transfers or other electronic payment systems.

Small businesses are the targets and victims of telemarketing and other scams because they do not have the manpower or resources to erect barriers against them. A busy employee will often approve payment of a small invoice or provide information to a cold caller simply to get the caller off the line and to get back to the business at hand. Increasing employee awareness of the universe of scams is the first step toward avoiding victimization by a scam.
Buhler stopped the run but often got beat deep as Ark City wins 32-13
The reinsurance sector will see lower profits again in 2017 with falling premiums and low investment yields according to a new report from Fitch.The ratings firm believes that smaller reinsurers focused on commercial lines could see particular pressure due to their less diverse portfolio. It also warns that thinner underwriting margins could leave the industry more exposed to greater major loss claims.Fitch notes the fall in rates due to increased competition and forecasts that some reinsurers will switch their focus from property to casualty, however that will ultimately lead to lower margins in that sector too.Despite the pressures on revenue, Fitchs outlook for reinsurers is generally stable.Chubb Insurance has expanded its voluntary workplace benefits business of its Combined Insurance affiliate with a dedicated broker-focused channel.The program of benefits offered by Chubb Workplace Benefits includes a line of supplemental insurance products, including accident, critical illness, hospital indemnity, life and disability income.The products will be available via benefit brokers, agents, and consultants."The voluntary benefits space is one of the fastest areas of growth in the benefit broker channel," said Ed Clancy, Executive Vice President, Global Accident & Health and Life, Chubb Group. "Our continued investment in this space follows the successful growth we've had over the last three years. There is a broader platform for growth available to us now that we can leverage Chubb's strong reputation in the brokerage community and our extensive national branch office infrastructure."Global reinsurer Munich Re has announced profit of almost 1 billion Euros (U$1.13 billion) for the second quarter of 2016. The figure has been achieved despite higher expenses from major losses and investment in its strategy program."Overall, we have achieved an above-average result for the second quarter. And that was despite higher natural catastrophe expenditure in the second quarter  arising from wildfires in Canada and earthquakes in Japan  after many quarters without major losses," commented CEO Nikolaus von Bomhard.Gross premiums written were down 4.3 per cent but in volume terms would have decreased 1.4 per cent if exchange rates had remained static.
Financial report details challenges over the first nine months of 2022
When Matt Stadler joined MHBT Inc. as a market leader in 2012, he was thrilled at the chance to bring greater profitability to the brokerages Forth Worth branch. The office had a great client list, he said, as well as a high knowledge base and plenty of resources  management was just aiming to bring in a little more business.As it turned out, they brought in a lot more. In the past four years, the group has taken its revenue from $3.5 million in 2012 to $11 million and counting. When asked the story behind this remarkable growth, Stadler says its all to do with creating the right work environment.Were your typical Fort Worth company  a good mixture of cowboy and culture, Stadler told Insurance Business America.Weve really built a great depth in our service roles with people who know the industry and work as a team to do right by our clients. Were heavy on relationships and do business on handshakes. When youve got all that, the business will start rolling in.Knowing that developing culture often starts with the newest generation of employees, Stadler helped refine MHBTs existing Strike Force program, a regimen designed for any new producer with fewer than two years in the insurance business. In addition to training and onboarding, employees in Strike Force are taught company success strategies around sales and industry knowledge. They also receive mentors and meet together to discuss prospects and practice presentations.The program has generated huge success for MHBT. While the industry posts a troubling 56% success rate in hiring new employees, according to a 2015 study from Reagan Consulting, MHBT reports a 90% success rate and greater revenue companywide.When you have young producers finding success, it energizes them, Stadler said. They have fun and are eager to go out and find new business. When you bring in that kind of energy, everybody wins.Stadler knows the truth of that himself. When he joined the insurance industry in 2005, he was fresh out of college and a brief stint as a financial advisor. Though he had both a father and brother in the business, it was down to two great mentors to help him cultivate industry knowledge, confidence and eventual success.Mentors encourage energy and optimism, and make sure you have the resources to make good decisions, he said. When someone has a true mentor, they always do better  they succeed faster and display more consistent growth.Stadler says the program has also been key in tackling another common industry challenge: attracting millennials to the business of insurance. Calling MHBTs young employees pied pipers, Stadler says millennials happy in insurance will spread the word and bring in more young recruits to perpetuate the business.Looking ahead, he hopes to continue his push for innovation, primarily by hiring great people and bringing on more resources, including technology.Thats how well position ourselves to be the most successful agency possible and find creative solutions to upcoming problems, Stadler said. Weve already laid a lot of groundwork and are starting to feel the effects.
Adam Hinds poses with who may be his youngest campaign volunteer, Jared Senzel. City Councilor Peter White holding signs at a polling location for Adam Hinds. The race was mostly between Adam Hinds and Andrea Harrington. Dick Dassatti was supporting Harrington in North Adams. PreviousNext

Hinds Wins Democratic State Senate Primary



Adam Hinds hugs a support at Hotel on North on Thursday night. PITTSFIELD, Mass.  Adam Hinds says over the last seven months if his "head was off the pillow" he was working on his campaign for state Senate. And it paid off.

Hinds won the Democratic nomination on Thursday in a three-way race. He claimed victory at Hotel on North and will now face Republican Christine Canning-Wilson in the general election.

While he may have won the first step, Hinds says he is going to be getting right back to work toward filling the seat being vacated by state Sen. Benjamin B. Downing, who opted not to run for re-election.

"We're going to keep to the same message. It is based on the fact that we can do politics differently. We can ensure that it is inclusive and ensure that it is positive and staying focused on the issues. Drawing on my background of being involved in negotiations and being involved in critical issues here in the district, that demonstrates what we will focus on," Hinds said.

Hinds won the nomination over Andrea Harrington and Rinaldo Del Gallo, both local attorneys. Harrington ran closely behind Hinds in the polls but ultimately conceded the race when it clear Hinds had the numbers.

"It was a great race. We thought it was going to be close, we didn't know what was going to happen. We were hearing a lot of enthusiasm but it was a tough race. I learned a lot and it was fun. I'm grateful for my opponents because they made me a stronger, better advocate," Harrington said.

Harrington is now throwing her support behind Hinds saying, "I absolutely endorse Adam Hinds 100 percent. I'm excited to help him become our next state senator in November." Del Gallo, however, already believes Hinds will be the next senator.

"I really like Adam. It was kind of hard to go up against him. I didn't know Andrea but I knew Adam and I liked him. He is a very likable guy, he comes from a great family. I think he'll serve the district well. I like Chris Canning a lot, she's a wonderful person. But, historically, the Democratic primary decides it. I think Adam is the next state senator and I wish him all the best," Del Gallo said.

Del Gallo wasn't surprised by his polling numbers, far behind Hinds and Harrington, because he expected it. But, throughout the numerous debates and campaigning, Del Gallo, who ran as a "Bernie Sanders Progressive," believes his campaign was successful in bringing out issues that moved Hinds and Harrington farther to the left, specifically when it comes to wealth inequality and the environment.

"We knew by the end of June that we didn't have a chance of winning at all. There was a real debate whether to stay in a race where it wasn't possible, there was clearly no path to victory. One of the reasons we decided to stay in it was because we knew we were pushing these guys to the left. I think we really did that," Del Gallo said. "In June, I didn't know where they were on the political spectrum and I hopped into the race and pushed them far to the left and that was good."

Hinds said he has "nothing but respect for his opponents."

"When you are going through a grueling process like this, we've shared a lot of knowing glances of exhaustion. Going through this with them has been great," Hinds said.

The district represents 52 cities and towns, the largest in the state, so neither Hinds nor Harrington had a good sense going into Thursday who would be victorious.

"I certainly wouldn't claim that I was confident. The race really tightened up in the last week. To me, it was really about doing everything we can until we reached that finish line," Hinds said. "We had people calling right up to the last minute. We had an office full of people doing those calls. We were sprinting until the very last moment."

Harrington said she was "cautiously optimistic" but the ultimate results were "a huge question mark" until polls closed.

Sherwood Guernsey, founder of the Democratic advocacy group the Berkshire Brigades, said the race came down to Hinds making "connections with people" that the other candidates did not and his track record.

"I think the race came down to integrity and Adam was all about integrity and being a proven leader. Nobody else in the race has ever proven what they could do. He took policy and the progressive Democratic ideas that all of the candidates have and he converted them to action with the Pittsfield Community Connection, with Employ North Berkshire. He showed the people what he could do and he was a really good listener and cared. In today's world people respect that," Guernsey said.

Guernsey said he quickly supported Hinds in the campaign because of his work with the Pittsfield Community Connection and the Northern Berkshire Community Coalition. He said Hinds "understands the problems and understands people."

Another supporter of the Hinds campaign was 9-year-old Jared Senzel, who volunteered his time to work on the campaign.

"I made phone calls. I didn't really do any canvassing  I did do that in my last campaign but not this time. I got some signs," Senzel said. "I've been in politics for about three years."

The Richmond Consolidated School student said politics have become a hobby for him and he's participated in three prior campaigns  that of Hillary Clinton, former Mayor Daniel Bianchi, and now Hinds.

"I feel great. I feel like we were a success and, hopefully, we can be another success for the general," Senzel said.

When it comes to the general election, Hinds said he will continue doing what he has been doing.

"I'm going to be focused on the big challenges and being a strong voice for working families, and standing up for education funding, and making sure we can deal with energy costs and accelerate the transition to green energy. To me, those priorities aren't going to change," Hinds said.

The voter turnout will be much different in November. In the largest city in the district, Pittsfield, which had a state representative race, only 20 percent of voters turned out. In towns without a House race, the numbers were dismal. Lanesborough reported just 11 percent of voters cast ballots.

At 2:30 in the afternoon election worker Ron O'Brien at St. Elizabeth's Parish in North Adams said only 400 out of the 8,861 registered voters in North Adams voted. Less than 10 percent of voters bothered to cast ballots in the end.

"It has been very very slow," O'Brien said. "We had a line in the beginning, just two people but it was a line usually it gets better around 4 but then it just dies. It is amazing how many people dont know there is an election today." Clarksburg had only 21 votes cast shortly before 11 a.m. but managed to get up to 75 before the polls closed. Adams faired slightly better and at 3 p.m. Adams Town Clerk Haley Meczywor said 438 out of the 5,849 voters made it out to the DPW Garage to vote. "We have been really busy and have been trying to keep the crowd away," Meczywor joked. "We might have had four or five people at once in here at the most. We have two now, and thats not good." At 3:30, Cheshire Town Clerk Christine Emerson reported similar low numbers with 171 of the 2,273 registered voters casting ballots at the community center. "It's like watching paint dry," Emerson said. Those numbers are reflective throughout the state. But, when it comes to the general election, a much higher turnout is expected because the presidential election drives higher participation.

Hinds said having a primary gives him a head start on that election cycle. He said the primary "gets our name out there and quite frankly, as a first-time candidate I needed a long runway for name recognition. So that helps going into the general."

Guernsey called the seat "the most important position in this county by far" and is dedicated to helping Hinds win it. He said the seat is "critical" to the state's Democratic Party.

"The position of state senator is incredibly influential because there are only 40 of them in the state. To have our senator be a Democrat with the Democratic values that they bring to it is absolutely critical to be able to get the legislation passed that we need," Guernsey said. "It is the most important position in this county by far."

While Harrington fell short of the votes, she said she wouldn't take anything back. She said she is proud of the campaign she ran and looks to take the belief she found in supporters in the race and turn it into something else for the community  what, she doesn't know yet.

"I'm amazed by the support I gathered. I had the biggest labor unions supporting me. I had people out today really beating the bushes trying to get people to the polls. I'm really overwhelmed and honored and humbled by the support of just so many people who have helped throughout the campaign," Harrington said.




SVMC Names Future Long Term and Post-Acute Care Leader

BENNINGTON, Vt.  Suzanne Anair, administrator of Southwestern Vermont Health Care's Centers for Living and Rehabilitation, will represent Vermont in the 13th annual Future Leaders of Long Term Care in America program.



The Vermont Health Care Association nominated Anair to attend based on her leadership skills and professional presence at the state level. The selection process is highly competitive, and only 38 long term care professionals were selected nationwide. Anair is the only representative selected from the state of Vermont.



The year-long program is hosted by the American Health Care Association (AHCA) and the National Center for Assisted Living (NCAL). It offers training and guidance for long term and post-acute professionals, beginning with a three-day symposium in Washington, D.C., September 21-23.


We work towards an equitable,

gender-just, self-reliant and

sustainable fisheries,

particularly in the small-scale,

artisanal sector

We work towards an equitable,

gender-just, self-reliant and

sustainable fisheries,

particularly in the small-scale,

artisanal sector

We work towards an equitable,

gender-just, self-reliant and

sustainable fisheries,

particularly in the small-scale,

artisanal sector

We work towards an equitable,

gender-just, self-reliant and

sustainable fisheries,

particularly in the small-scale,

artisanal sector
Google promotes digital literacy among Filipino youth

Google is searching for a new batch of Web Rangers in the Philippines to make a campaign to encourage their peers to use the internet for good. Now on its second year, the competitions campaign theme is digital literacy and the aim is to explore what netizens can do to use the internet for meaningful activities that will help them pursue their passion, develop new talents and skills and discover things that can help the youth level up.

Filipinos 15 to 20 years old are encouraged to take part by signing up at the Web Rangers website beginning August 1. Sixty Web Rangers will be selected based on their answers to the questions theyll get in the sign-up sheet. They will be teamed up with other Web Rangers and undergo a one-day workshop on September 17 on how to make an effective campaign on digital literacy. Experts known for their creative digital pursuits and innovation will share their insights, experiences, and techniques with the Web Rangers so they can get ideas on how to use the Internet for good and create a campaign that will encourage their peers to do the same. They will be given three weeks to produce a campaign, which will be their entry to the competition.

Applicants will have the chance to choose their Web Ranger character during the sign-up process. These characters embody the five meaningful activities online that open up opportunities and encourage users to use the internet for good: First is The Innovator who goes online to be well-informed and find new ways to disrupt the ordinary to make it extraordinary; second is The Visionary who surf the net and sees the possibility in every opportunity, develops it and grows it; third is The Creator who logs in to create artistic content and share them to others; fourth is The Analyst who likes to search and research to delve deep into content that can enhance his knowledge and use it for something productive; and fifth is The Inspiration who likes to perform and upload content that entertain through different art forms.

Wed like to give the Filipino youth an opportunity to use their creativity in the online space for a good cause. Web Rangers is a campaign and competition that will equip them to look at digital as an extension of their creativity where they can turn their ideas into something impactful and truly meaningful to others, said Gail Tan, Google Philippines Head of Communications and Public Affairs.

The winning campaign will be awarded in October and will be supported by Google Philippines in terms of publicity and outreach.

Level up to become a Web Ranger at http://webrangers.ph.

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Governor Brown Announces Appointments

Sacramento, California - Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. today announced the following appointments:

Victoria Benson, 62, of Fresno, has been reappointed to the California State Rehabilitation Council, where she has served since 2014. Benson has been adult transition project coordinator at the Exceptional Parents Unlimited Region 3 Parent Training and Information Center since 2005, where she has held several positions since 1992, including special education advocate, training coordinator, family specialist, assistant program manager, director of the Central Valley Inclusion Network and lead trainer. She is a member of the Fresno City College Advisory Board for Disabled Student Services, California Services for Technical Assistance and Trainings Regional Coordinating Council for Special Education and the Fresno County Office of Educations Alternative Dispute Resolution Panel. Benson is chair and founder of the Community Adult Transition Task Force. This position does not require Senate confirmation and there is no compensation. Benson is registered without party preference.

Lesley Ann Gibbons, 46, of Santa Rosa, has been reappointed to the California State Rehabilitation Council, where she has served since 2014. Gibbons has been co-owner and director at Sterling Adaptives since 2007. She was an administrator at Access Ingenuity from 2002 to 2007, an executive assistant at Beta Breakers Inc. from 2001 to 2002 and an office manager at Alpha Vision from 1999 to 2001. Gibbons was an assistant to the director at the Cornwall Rural Community Council from 1996 to 1999, clinic administrator at Berks Physiotherapy Centre from 1992 to 1996 and sales office manager at Data Translation from 1989 to 1992. Gibbons is a member of the EmploymentLINK California Corporation Board. This position does not require Senate confirmation and there is no compensation. Gibbons is registered without party preference.

Jacqueline Jackson, 60, of San Diego, has been reappointed to the California State Rehabilitation Council, where she has served since 2014. Jackson has been an independent nonprofit management consultant since 1994. She was development director and a consultant at the San Diego Center for the Blind from 2002 to 2004 and director for charter school development at Norman and Norman Inc. from 1996 to 2005. Jackson was an education consultant at the School Futures Research Foundation from 1994 to 1996 and director of education, health and family support services at the Urban League San Diego from 1988 to 1994. She is a member of the San Diego County Committee for Persons with Disabilities, San Diego County Disability Issues Committee, American Council of the Blind, San Diego County Voter Accessibility Committee, Deaf and Disabled Telecommunications Programs Equipment Program Advisory Committee, San Diego Braille Club, San Diego Delta Foundation Inc. and the California Council of the Blind. Jackson earned a Master of Arts degree in nonprofit leadership and management from the University of San Diego. This position does not require Senate confirmation and there is no compensation. Jackson is a Democrat.

Abby Snay, 65, of San Francisco, has been reappointed to the California State Rehabilitation Council, where she has served since 2015. Snay has been chief executive officer at Jewish Vocational Services of San Francisco since 1984, where she has held several positions since 1975, including executive director, assistant director, supervisor and counselor. She is chair of the National Skills Coalition Board of Directors and a member of the California Workforce Investment Board and the California Health Workforce Development Council. Snay earned a Master of Arts degree in education from Washington University in St. Louis. This position does not require Senate confirmation and there is no compensation. Snay is a Democrat.

Joe Xavier, 57, of Elk Grove, has been reappointed to the California State Rehabilitation Council, where he has served since 2014. Xavier has been director at the California Department of Rehabilitation since 2014, where he has held several positions since 1998, including deputy director of the Specialized Services Division and of the Independent Living and External Affairs Division. He was owner and operator at Snack N Things from 1996 to 1998, at Skyline Food Services from 1986 to 1996 and at the Gold Star Cafe from 1984 to 1986. Xavier is a member of the Council of State Administrators of Vocational Rehabilitation and the Association of California State Employees with Disabilities. This position does not require Senate confirmation and there is no compensation. Xavier is registered without party preference.
Governor Brown Issues Proclamation Declaring Admission Day

Sacramento, California - Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. today issued a proclamation declaring September 9, 2016, as Admission Day in the State of California.

PROCLAMATION

Soon after the outbreak of war in 1846, United States forces invaded the Mexican province of Alta California. Seven months later, on January 13, 1847, representatives of both countries signed the Treaty of Cahuenga in the San Fernando Valley, ending the fighting. For three years thereafter, California remained under American martial law. During this period, our population exploded following the discovery of gold, giving impetus to the demand that California be admitted to the Union. In 1849, leaders from around the future state met in Monterey to draft the first constitution, which was approved on November 13 of that year by a vote of 12,064 to 811. Peter Burnett was elected governor, and in January, 1850, the State Legislature began its first two-year session.



As our lawmakers went about establishing the basic institutions of state governance, the United States Congress argued about whether to admit California to the Union as a slave or free state or as two separate states, one slave and one free. The issue was resolved by the famous Compromise of 1850, and on September 9th of that year California was admitted to the Union as the 31st state.



The observance of Admission Day was once prominent in the civic life of our state and nation. On September 9, 1924, by order of President Coolidge, the Bear Flag flew over the White House in honor of Californias admission to the Union. In 1976, I vetoed a measure to remove the observance of Admission Day as a state holiday, writing: For 125 years California has celebrated its admission into the Union on September 9th. To change now comes a bit late in our history and hardly seems in keeping with the Bicentennial Spirit. In 1984, however, Governor Deukmejian signed legislation eliminating our traditional observance of Admission Day on September 9th in favor of a personal holidayconvenient to some but in no way respectful of our storied founding.



Californias early history is too often neglected in schools and among our citizens. For that reason, I call upon Californians to pause and celebrate Admission Day this year by reflecting on how it was that California became the 31st state.



NOW THEREFORE I, EDMUND G. BROWN JR., Governor of the State of California, do hereby proclaim September 9th, 2016, as Admission Day.



IN WITNESS WHEREOF I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Great Seal of the State of California to be affixed this 8th day of September 2016.







___________________________________

EDMUND G. BROWN JR.

Governor of California





ATTEST:







__________________________________

ALEX PADILLA

Secretary of State
As a Condition of Acquiring Meda, FTC Requires Mylan to Sell Rights to Two Generic Drugs

Washington, DC - Following a public comment period, the Federal Trade Commission has approved a final order settling charges that Mylan Inc.s $7.2 billion acquisition of Swedish drug maker Meda would likely be anticompetitive.

Under the FTCs order, first announced in July 2016, the companies will be required to divest the U.S. rights to two generic drugs, 250 mg generic carisoprodol tablets, which treat muscle spasms and stiffness, and 400 mg and 600 mg generic felbamate tablets, which treat refractory epilepsy.

The FTC sought the drug divestments on the grounds that the acquisition would likely have otherwise led consumers to pay higher prices, and that it would also have eliminated competition between Mylan and Meda in the markets for both drugs.

Under the proposed order, the U.S.-based generic pharmaceutical company Alvogen Pharma US, Inc. will acquire all of Mylans rights and assets related to 400 mg and 600 mg felbamate tablets. The order also requires Mylan to relinquish its U.S. marketing rights for 250 mg generic carisoprodol tablets. With the settlement, Indicus Pharma LLC, which owns the product, will reacquire the rights and be able to enter into an agreement with a new marketing partner.

The Commission vote approving the final order was 3-0. (FTC File No. 161-0102; the staff contact is Christina Perez, Bureau of Competition, 202-326-2048.)
English for All: A New Identity for U.S. Government English Programs

Washington, DC - The U.S. Department of State and Peace Corps are launching English for All, a new initiative highlighting the U.S. governments commitment to help people around the world learn American English. The U.S. government invests more than $200 million a year in English instruction programs, providing a gateway to opportunity for millions worldwide. English for All provides a unified brand to promote all English language teaching programs run by the State Department and Peace Corps.

The English for All website will serve as a resource for foreign audiences interested in learning about the range of English programs supported by the U.S. government, and for Americans looking to serve their country by teaching English abroad.

English for All is the culmination of this Administrations drive to promote English-language skills globally. English-language instruction programs include the State Department Fulbright English Teaching Assistant Program, English Language Specialist Program, and English Language Fellow Program, as well as the Peace Corps Volunteer and Peace Corps Response Volunteer programs. The U.S government also provides online American English tools and resources for both teachers and learners, including the American English Facebook page.
Watch: Man's Fire Stunt Goes Horribly Wrong, Beard Up in Flames
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We spoke to actors Jamie Dornan and Cillian Murphy who have united for Anthropoid, a new WWII drama recounting the biographical tale of the assassination attempt on Hitler's third in command, SS General Reinhard Heydrich.

In the film, the two play Czech soldiers Jan Kubis and Josef Gabcik. Heydrich - played in the film by Detlef Bothe - was the main architect of the Final Solution which was the Nazis' plan to exterminate the Jewish race.

Speaking about what separates Anthropoid from other WWII films, Peaky Blinders actor Murphy - who will next be seen in another war film, this one Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk - said: "I think the story is not very well known outside of the Czech Republic - I think it will be a revelation to cinemagoers to realise that this incident in history took place."

 Exclusive Anthropoid clip

He continued: "It's a different kind of war film - it's old-fashioned in many ways - which is a good thing."

Later this month, Dornan will reprise his role of serial killer Paul Spector for the third and final series of BBC drama The Fall - we asked him how it feels to be leaving the role behind.

"Put simply, that job changed my life. If they wanted to [keep making] The Fall, I would happily play Paul Spector for the rest of my life. I find it hugely comforting to do that job despite the content and how hard it can be."

With a solid number of dramatic roles under their belt, would the two consider comedy?

"You do a couple of roles that are dramatic and it just so happens that you wouldn't be first on a comedy producer's list," laughs Dornan. "The two of us in a comedy just isn't going to happen; I don't think any studio or independent filmmaker would think that's a good idea."

Anthropoid is in cinemas now
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A tenth of the worlds wild land  an area equivalent to half the vast Amazon basin  has been lost in just two decades in an alarming trend that requires urgent action on an international scale, experts have warned.

At the current rate of decline there will be no significant areas of wilderness  defined as an area mostly free of human disturbance  left on the planet in less than 100 years, the researchers said.

Mining, illegal logging, deliberately set fires to clear forest for agriculture, and oil and gas exploration were all contributing to the devastation of essentially natural environments, which are home to many of the worlds endangered species.

 10 per cent of the world's wildernesses disappearing in 20 years

Writing in the journal Current Biology, the researchers said: All wilderness areas, regardless of their size threshold, warrant immediate scrutiny for conservation action, especially in regions with low levels of remaining wilderness areas.

The continued loss of wilderness areas is a globally significant problem with largely irreversible outcomes for both humans and nature: if these trends continue, there could be no globally significant wilderness areas left in less than a century.

A map of the wildernesses still left shows the main remaining areas are in the Sahara, the northern tundras of Russia and Canada, the Amazon basin and central Australia.

The researchers concluded there was a total of 30.1 million square kilometres of wilderness left, amounting to just 23 per cent of Earths land mass.

An estimated 3.3 million square kilometres has been lost since the early 1990s, equating to a 9.6 per cent decline over that period.

The one glimmer of hope was that most wilderness areas were large  with 82 per cent extending for more than 10,000 square kilometres.

The international team of researchers, led by Professor James Watson of the Wildlife Conservation Society, found vast areas of the Amazon had been lost since the 1990s with other major declines in west Africa, Russia and Indonesia.

Some scientists believe the Earth has entered the sixth mass extinction of life in its history  comparable to the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.

This is one of the reasons why geologists are considering declaring a new epoch, called the Anthropocene, because of humans widespread effects on the planet.

The paper said the loss of wilderness could tip already endangered species over the edge.

Earths remaining wilderness areas sustain the last strongholds of many imperilled species, it said.

The geographic ranges of one-third of all terrestrial mammal species overlap with globally significant wilderness areas, including extensive parts of the distribution of 12 per cent of all threatened mammal species.

Thus, ongoing and rapid loss of wilderness increases the risk of extinction for species that are already highly threatened.

It noted the rewilding movement in Europe and North America and some conservation efforts by individual countries, but added such positive examples were too few to make a significant difference.

Animals in decline Show all 8 1 /8 Animals in decline Animals in decline Harbour seal (Phoca vitulina) Where: Orkney Islands. What: Between 2001-2006, numbers in Orkney declined by 40 per cent. Why: epidemics of the phocine distemper virus are thought to have caused major declines, but the killing of seals in the Moray Firth to protect salmon farms may have an impact. Alamy Animals in decline African lion (Panthera leo) Where: Ghana. What: In Ghanas Mole National Park, lion numbers have declined by more than 90 per cent in 40 years. Why: local conflicts are thought to have contributed to the slaughter of lions and are a worrying example of the status of the animal in Western and Central Africa. Animals in decline Leatherback turtle (Dermochelys coriacea) Where: Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Costa Rica. What: Numbers are down in both the Atlantic and Pacific. It declined by 95 per cent between 1989-2002 in Costa Rica. Why: mainly due to them being caught as bycatch, but theyve also been affected by local developments. Alamy Animals in decline Wandering albatross (Diomedea exulans) Where: South Atlantic. What: A rapid decline. One population, from Bird Island, South Georgia, declined by 50 per cent between 1972-2010, according to the British Antarctic Survey. Why: being caught in various commercial longline fisheries. Alamy Animals in decline Saiga Antelope (Saiga tatarica) Where: Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Russia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan. What: fall in populations has been dramatic. In the early 1990s numbers were over a million, but are now estimated to be around 50,000. Why: the break up of the former USSR led to uncontrolled hunting. Increased rural poverty means the species is hunted for its meat Animals in decline Swordfish (Xiphias gladius) Where: found worldwide in tropical, subtropical and temperate seas. Why: at risk from overfishing and as a target in recreational fishing. A significant number of swordfish are also caught by illegal driftnet fisheries in the Mediterranean Animals in decline Argali Sheep (Ovis mammon) Where: Central and Southern Asian mountains,usually at 3,000-5,000 metres altitude. Why: domesticated herds of sheep competing for grazing grounds. Over-hunting and poaching. Animals in decline Humphead Wrasse (Cheilinus undulatus) Where: the Indo-Pacific, from the Red Sea to South Africa and to the Tuamoto Islands (Polynesia), north to the Ryukyu Islands (south-west Japan), and south to New Caledonia. Why: Illegal, Unregulated and Unreported (IUU) fishing and trading of the species

Professor Watson, of Queensland University, urged world leaders to take action before it was too late.

The amount of wilderness loss in just two decades is staggering and very saddening, he said.

We need to recognise that wilderness is being dramatically lost and that without proactive global interventions we could lose the last jewels in natures crown.

You cannot restore wilderness. Once it is gone, the ecological process that underpin these ecosystems are gone, and it never comes back to the state it was. The only option is to proactively protect what is left.

Paul de Zylva, a nature campaigner with Friends of the Earth, said a healthy natural environment underpins everything else  our economy, health and well-being.

World governments must take drastic action now to meet their pledges to reverse natures decline by 2020, he said.

This means changing direction from the business as usual destruction  and especially the damage caused by farming, mining and oil and gas exploration.
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Facebook has made a u-turn over its decision to censor an iconic image of a child victim of the Vietnam War after it was removed from the social media platform under nudity guidelines.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg was accused of abusing his power by the editor of Norways biggest newspaper after Facebook deleted an article containing the 1972 image of nine-year-old Kim Phuc running down the street without any clothes on after sustaining severe burns in a napalm attack.

Aftenpostens editor-in-chief Espen Egil Hansen wrote a front-page open letter to Zuckerberg expressing concern that his editorial responsibility was being restricted by Facebook.

When Aftenposten reported the ban and shared the picture again, they reportedly received an email from Facebook demanding it to be taken down or pixelised in conjunction with its nudity guidelines.

The email said: Any photographs of people displaying fully nude genitalia or buttocks, or fully nude female breasts, will be removed." Before Aftenposten could respond, they claim the article had been removed.

Napalm victim in iconic photo receives medical treatment - in pictures Show all 5 1 /5 Napalm victim in iconic photo receives medical treatment - in pictures Napalm victim in iconic photo receives medical treatment - in pictures Napalm victim in iconic photo receives medical treatment - in pictures Napalm victim in iconic photo receives medical treatment - in pictures Dr. Jill Waibel examines Kim Phuc before the first of several laser treatments to reduce pain and the appearance of burn scars in her back and left arm in Miami. Phuc was injured by a napalm bomb in Vietnam 40 years ago. AP Photo/Nick Ut Napalm victim in iconic photo receives medical treatment - in pictures In this Sept. 26, 2015, photo, Dr. Jill Waibel, left, applies a laser to the back of Kim Phuc to reduce the pain and appearance of her burn scars in Miami. Phuc was burned in the back and left arm by a napalm bomb in Vietnam 40 years ago. The procedure creates microscopic holes in the skin, which allows topical, collagen-building medicines to be absorbed deep through the layers of tissue. AP Photo/Nick Ut Napalm victim in iconic photo receives medical treatment - in pictures In this Sept. 25, 2015 photo, Kim Phuc shows burn scars on her back and left arm at a hotel in Miami. The scars were caused by a napalm attack when she was 9 years old in Trang Bang, Vietnam. While she spent years doing painful exercises to preserve her range of motion, her left arm still doesn't extend as far as her right arm, and her desire to learn how to play the piano has been thwarted by stiffness in her left hand. Tasks as simple as carrying her purse on her left side are too difficult. AP Photo/Nick Ut

Facebook initially defended the move on Friday, saying in a statement: While we recognize that this photo is iconic, its difficult to create a distinction between allowing a photograph of a nude child in one instance and not others."

But following intense backlash, Facebook have now said they are reinstating the image and allowing uses to share it due to its status as an iconic image of historical importance.

A Facebook spokesperson said: After hearing from our community, we looked again at how our Community Standards were applied in this case. An image of a naked child would normally be presumed to violate our Community Standards, and in some countries might even qualify as child pornography.

"In this case, we recognize the history and global importance of this image in documenting a particular moment in time. Because of its status as an iconic image of historical importance, the value of permitting sharing outweighs the value of protecting the community by removal, so we have decided to reinstate the image on Facebook where we are aware it has been removed.

"We will also adjust our review mechanisms to permit sharing of the image going forward. It will take some time to adjust these systems but the photo should be available for sharing in the coming days. We are always looking to improve our policies to make sure they both promote free expression and keep our community safe, and we will be engaging with publishers and other members of our global community on these important questions going forward.

The opening letter written by Mr Hansen, who referred to Zuckerberg as the worlds most powerful editor, said: I am upset, disappointed  well, in fact, even afraid  of what you are about to do to a mainstay of our democratic society.

Even though I am editor-in-chief of Norways largest newspaper, I have to realise that you are restricting my room for exercising my editorial responsibility. This is what you and your subordinates are doing in this case.

I think you are abusing your power, and I find it hard to believe that you have thought it through thoroughly.
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A new plastic 5 note featuring Sir Winston Churchill will start to appear in the nation's wallets after going into circulation from next week.

The new banknote will start to enter circulation from Tuesday. In a break from the Bank of England's current paper notes, it will be printed on polymer - a thin flexible plastic film, which is seen as cleaner, more secure and stronger.

The new note can last around five years longer than paper notes.

It may take a few weeks for some people to start seeing the new note as it gradually appears. The old fiver, featuring prison reformer Elizabeth Fry, can still be used in shops until it is withdrawn from circulation in May 2017.

The new 5 note paves the way for a new generation of security features, making the note even harder to counterfeit. They include a see-through window featuring the Queen's portrait as well as Big Ben shown in gold foil on the front of the note and silver on the back.

The announcement by the Bank in 2013 that Fry would be replaced with the former prime minister caused an outcry as it could have meant that, apart from the Queen, there would be no female faces on the UKs notes.

Thousands signed a petition in protest. It was subsequently announced that novelist Jane Austen would be the face of the new 10 note from summer 2017.

Picture: (Getty Images)

The new plastic 5 banknote, featuring Sir Winston Churchill, enters circulation from Tuesday.

Why is the fiver being replaced?

The Bank of England replaces notes from time to time to introduce new security features and stay ahead of counterfeiters. It also means new characters can be featured on the note.

The next 5, 10 and 20 notes will be printed on polymer, a thin plastic material.

Why use plastic banknotes?

The Bank says polymer notes last longer, stay cleaner and are harder to counterfeit than paper notes. It has been suggested the new fiver can survive a spin in the washing machine.

Will the new fiver look particularly different?

The new notes are around 15% smaller than the old 5 banknotes. They also feel different to paper notes. Brand new polymer notes can sometimes stick together, but the Bank says this effect is short-lived once they are in use. Tapping the new notes on a hard surface like a desk top may make them easier to count.

A Victorian five pound coin and the 1980 5 note (Getty Images)

Will I still be able to fold up the new fiver in my wallet, given that it is made out of plastic?

Yes, the banknotes are thin and flexible so they can still be folded.

Can I still use the old fiver in shops?

Yes. The paper 5 note featuring Elizabeth Fry can still be used until it is withdrawn from circulation in May 2017, at which point it will no longer be accepted by shops. After May 2017, paper 5 notes can still be exchanged with the Bank of England. Genuine Bank of England banknotes retain their face value for all time.

Will the 50 note also become plastic?

There are currently no plans to replace the 50 note and the Bank will announce the material for future 50 notes in due course.

Picture: (Getty Images)

Which other countries use polymer notes?

More than 30 countries issue polymer notes, including Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, Singapore and Canada. In Scotland, Clydesdale Bank issued polymer banknotes in 2015 to commemorate the 125th anniversary of the opening of the Forth Bridge.

Facts and figures about the new fiver:

Some 440 million new plastic fivers have been created and will gradually enter circulation

There are currently around 329 million 5 paper notes in circulation, so it will take time for the existing notes to be replaced

The new polymer note can last around 2.5 times - or five years - longer than paper

The new banknote is resistant to dirt and moisture, helping it to stay in better condition for longer

The new fiver's security features include a see-through window featuring the Queen's portrait; a hologram which contains the word "five" and changes to "pounds" when the note is tilted; and a hologram of the coronation crown which appears 3D and multi-coloured when the note is tilted

Only a tiny proportion of existing banknotes are counterfeit according to the Bank of England's figures - 0.0075% in 2015

The design of the new 5 note includes a portrait of Sir Winston Churchill from a photograph taken by Yousuf Karsh on December 30 1941 as well as a view of Westminster

Beneath Sir Winston's portrait reads his declaration in his first speech as Prime Minister: "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat."

Some 21,835 banknotes were replaced in 2015 due to damage, according to the Bank of England. This included 10,761 notes that were torn as well as notes that had been washed, chewed, damaged by fire or contaminated in some way.

Following the introduction of the new plastic fiver, a new polymer note featuring Jane Austen will be issued in summer 2017. A new polymer 20 note, featuring JMW Turner, will be issued by 2020.

PA
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Sir Philip Green has insisted that he is working every day to plug the 571 million hole he left in BHS pension fund and dismissed allegations that he is attempting to delay a settlement for 20,000 former workers.

The billionaire retail magnate, who has been accused by MPs of the systematic plunder of the defunct high street chain, is believed to be holidaying in the Mediterranean on his 300-foot superyacht, Lionheart.

Green said he had been co-operating with the pensions regulator for about 18 months and providing whatever has been requested on a very regular basis.

He stressed that his cooperation is wholly voluntary, but that he still intends to try and find a solution to the BHS pensions debacle.

The Topshop owner has come under fire for taking more than 400 million in dividends and interest payments from BHS, running stores into the ground through under-invesment and then leaving the company with a 571 million pension deficit, after selling it to a man with no retail experience.

Green said he felt compelled to correct allegations made by Labour MP Frank Field. Mr Field suggested in the House of Commons on Wednesday there was a lack of willingness on my part to reach a settlement with regard to the pension fund. This is untrue, totally inaccurate and unhelpful in solving this issue, Green said.

The former BHS owner has come under fire from MPs who have named him the "unacceptable face of capitalism" (Reuters)

He insisted he had been working tirelessly since March 2015 to secure an outcome that would be better than that offered by the Pension Protection Fund.

Green also denied media reports that he has attempted to blackmail the pensions regulator by injecting money into the BHS pension scheme in exchange for extracting concessions on any future deal.

 Sir Philip Green tells Sky News cameraman 'that's going in the f****ng sea'

This is wholly untrue. I am not in control of the process. I am following the process which has been set down by the Regulator. Pensions are extremely complex issues, especially when there are more than 20,000 members involved, Sir Philip said.

Green apologised sincerely to all the Bhs people involved in this sorry affair.

Biggest business scandals in pictures Show all 20 1 /20 Biggest business scandals in pictures Biggest business scandals in pictures Volkswagen emissions scandal VW admitted to rigging its US emission tests so that diesel-powered cars would looks like they were emitting less nitrous oxide, which can damage the ozone layer and contribute to respiratory diseases. Around 11 million cars worldwide were affected. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Martin Shkreli and Turing Pharmaceuticals Martin Shkreli became known as the most hated man in the world after his drug company, Turing, increased the price of a 62-year-old drug that treated HIV patients by 5,000% to $750 a pill. He was charged with illegally taking stock from Retrophin, a biotechnology firm he started in 2011, and using it pay off debts from unrelated business dealings. Shkreli, who maintains he is innocent, and says there is little evidence of fraud because his investors didn't lose money. Biggest business scandals in pictures Panama Papers: Millions of leaked documents expose how worlds rich and powerful hid money - April 2016 Millions of confidential documents have been leaked from one of the worlds most secretive law firms, exposing how the rich and powerful have hidden their money. Dictators and other heads of state have been accused of laundering money, avoiding sanctions and evading tax, according to the unprecedented cache of papers that show the inner workings of the law firm Mossack Fonseca, which is based in Panama. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Google's tax avoidance Google reached a deal with the HM Revenue and Customs to pay back 130 million in so-called back-taxes that have been due since 2005. George Osborne championed the deal as a major success. But European MEPs have since called for the Chancellor to appear in front of the committee on tax rulings to explain the tax deal. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Rogue trader A French court cut the damages owed by rogue trader Jerome Kerviel from 4.9bn (4.2bn) to just 1m (860,000). The court ruled on that Kerviel was partly responsible for massive losses suffered in 2008 by his former employer Societe Generale through his reckless trades. Kerviel has consistently maintained that bosses at the French bank knew what he was doing all along. AP Biggest business scandals in pictures Barclays CEO under investigation for trying to identify whistleblower - Monday Paril 10 Authorities have launched an investigation into Barclays chief executive officer Jes Staley for trying to identify a whistleblower, the bank said on Monday. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) are both investigating Mr Staley after the bank notified them that Mr Staley had tried to identify the author of two anonymous letters, which were sent to the board and a senior executive in June 2016. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures UK to crack down on bank money laundering after reports of 65bn Russian scam, City minister says - March 2017 The Economic Secretary to the Treasury has vowed that the Government will crack down on money laundering practices, after several of the UK's biggest banks were accused of processing money from a Russian scam, believed to involve up to $80bn (65bn). Reuters Biggest business scandals in pictures Former HBOS bankers convicted of bribery and fraud over 245m loan scam - February 2017 Two former HBOS bankers were among six people found guilty of bribery and fraud that cost customers and shareholders hundreds of millions of pounds, the BBC reports. Lynden Scourfield, 54, a manager at HBOS, forced struggling clients to use the services of his friends David Mills, 60, and Michael Bancroft, 73. In return, the two businessmen arranged sex parties, cash and lavish gifts. On Monday, the three were convicted at Southwark Crown Court on accounts including bribery, fraud and money laundering. Mark Dobson, another manager at HBOS, Alison Mills, and John Cartwright were also convicted. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Lloyds chief apologises for damage caused by affair allegations - August 2016 Antonio Horta-Osorio, the chief executive of Lloyds Bank, has broken his silence over allegations about his private life admitting he regrets any "damage done to the group's reputation". In a message sent to the bank's 75,000 employees, the banker said that anyone can make mistakes while insisting that staff had to maintain the highest professional standards. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Christine Lagarde faces court over 340m Bernard Tapie payment - July 2016 The head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Christine Lagarde, must stand trial in France over a payment of 403 million (now 340m, then 290m) to tycoon Bernard Tapie, a France's highest appeals court has ruled. The court rejected Ms Lagarde's appeal against a judge's order in December for her to stand trial over allegations of negligence in her handling of the affair. Ms Lagarde could risk a maximum penalty of one year in prison and a fine of 15,000 euros if convicted. Reuters Biggest business scandals in pictures HSBC senior manager arrested in FX rigging investigation at JFK airport in New York - July 2016 A senior executive at HSBC has been arrested at New York's JFK airport for his alleged involvement in a conspiracy to rig currency benchmarks, according to reports. Mark Johnson, global head of foreign exchange cash trading in London, was reportedly arrested on Tuesday. He will appear before a federal court in Brooklyn on Wednesday charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, Bloomberg said. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Former PwC employees found guilty in 'Luxleaks' tax scandal - June 2016 Two ex- PricewaterhouseCoopers staffers were found guilty in Luxembourg of stealing confidential tax files that helped unleash a global scandal over generous fiscal deals for hundreds of international companies. Antoine Deltour and Raphael Halet face suspended sentences of 12 months and 9 months and were ordered to pay fines of 1,500 (1,230) and 1,000 (822) for their role in the so-called LuxLeaks scandal. Despite the minimal sentences, the ruling was described by Deltours lawyer as shocking and a terrible anomaly. The ruling puts on guard future whistle-blowers, Deltour told reporters.The LuxLeaks revelations sped beyond Luxembourg, causing European Union regulators to expand a tax-subsidy probe and propose new laws to fight corporate tax dodging, while EU lawmakers created a special committee to probe fiscal deals across the 28-nation bloc. Reuters Biggest business scandals in pictures Goldman Sachs dealmakers lavished Libyan officials with prostitutes to win contract - June 2016 A former Goldman Sachs dealmaker trying to persuade Gadaffi-era Libya to invest $1 billion with the investment bank procured prostitutes and invited Libyan officials to lavish parties in the hope of winning the business, the High Court heard on Monday June 13.The Libyan Investment Authority sovereign wealth fund is suing Goldman Sachs for inappropriately coercing its naive staff into giving its sovereign wealth fund cash to the bank to invest in products they did not understand. The products were designed to generate big profits for Goldman, the LIA claims.Goldman denies wrongdoing and says the LIA was treated as an arms-length customer Reuters Biggest business scandals in pictures Former boss of BHS said his life was threatened - June 2016 Darren Topp, the former boss of BHS, has said former owner Dominic Chappell threatened to kill him when he challenged him over a 1.5 million transfer out of the business. MPs on the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee asked Mr Topp about a 1.5 million transfer Mr Chappell made from BHS to a company called BHS Sweden. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Sports Direct founder Mike Ashley admits paying workers below the minimum wage - June 2016 Mike Ashley admitted paying Sports Direct employees below the minimum wage at a hearing in front of MPs. The company founder said that workers were paid less than the statutory minimum because of bottlenecks at security in an admission that could result in sanctions from HMRC. Reuters Biggest business scandals in pictures Mitsubishi admits improper fuel tests - April 2016 Mitsubishi has admitted to using false fuel methods dating back to 1991. The scale of the scandal is only just coming to light after it was revealed in April that data was falsified in the testing of four types of cars, including two Nissan cars. AP Biggest business scandals in pictures Quindell, the scandal-ridden insurance firm Quindell was once a darling of AIM but its share price fell in April 2014 when its accounting practices were attacked in a stinging research note by US short seller Gotham City. In August the group was forced to disclose that the 107 million pre-tax profit it had reported for 2013 was incorrect, and it had in fact suffered a 64million loss. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Toshiba Accounting Scandal The boss of Toshiba, the Japanese technology giant, resigned in disgrace in the wake of one of the countrys biggest ever accounting scandals. His exit came two months after the company revealed that it was investigating accounting irregularities. An independent investigatory panel said that Toshibas management had inflated its reported profits by up to 152 billion yen (780m) between 2008 and 2014. Biggest business scandals in pictures FIFA Corruption Scandal Fifa, football's world governing body, has been engulfed by claims of widespread corruption since the summer of 2015, when the US Department of Justice indicted several top executives. It has now claimed the careers of two of the most powerful men in football, Fifa President Sepp Blatter and Uefa President Michel Platini, after they were banned for eight years from all football-related activities by Fifa's ethics committee. A Swiss criminal investigation into the pair is ongoing. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Libor fraudster City trader Tom Hayes, 35, has become the first person to be convicted of rigging Libor rates following a trial at London's Southwark Crown Court. Hayes worked as a trader in yen derivatives at UBS before joining the American bank Citigroup in Tokyo. He was fired from Citigroup following an investigation into his trading methods. He returned to the UK in December 2012 and was arrested following a two-and-a-half year criminal investigation by the SFO. Getty

Contrary to all the coverage I have been working on this issue on a daily basis, and will continue to do so with my best efforts to achieve a satisfactory outcome for all involved as soon as possible, he said.

Green sold the business to serial bankrupt Dominic Chappell for 1 in March 2015 after it made a 70 million loss. Chappells consortium, Retail Acquisitions, extracted over 17 million before the company was put into insolvency, making 11,000 employees redundant.

In July two commons select committees issued a scathing report saying that Greens systematic extraction of hundreds of millions of pounds and under-investment in BHS left the business and its pension fund weakened to the point of "inevitable" collapse.

 Philip Green apologise to BHS

His actions represent the unacceptable face of capitalism, the report said.

Green  one of the UKs most recognisable businessmen  owns a range of fashion chains including TopShop and Miss Selfridge. Born in London, Green has amassed a personal fortune of 2.5 billion, according to the Bloomberg billionaires index. He is now a resident of Monaco, a move which he told MPs was for health reasons.
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Either I'm a psychopath in sheep's clothing, or I am you.

This is the sentence uttered by a tearful Amanda Knox, whose conviction, acquittal, re-conviction and acquittal are once again under scrutiny in a new documentary for Netflix.

The 29-year-old spent four years in an Italian prison for the murder of British student Meredith Kercher in Perugia. Her ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito was also convicted of her murder and they both had their sentences overturned by Italy's highest court in 2015.

Netflix originals to look forward to in 2016 Show all 14 1 /14 Netflix originals to look forward to in 2016 Netflix originals to look forward to in 2016 House of Cards - Season Four - 4 March Last time we were in Frank Underwoods White House things werent looking to great for the President, his first Lady having just walked out on him. What will happen next in the critically acclaimed show is anyones guess. Netflix Netflix originals to look forward to in 2016 Daredevil - Season Two - 18 March Back in Hells Kitchen things were seemingly getting better. Kingpin is in prison and the crime syndicates should have dispersed - for the meantime at least. Unfortunately for Matt Murdoch, theres a new anti-hero in town: The Punisher. Netflix originals to look forward to in 2016 Flaked - 11 March According to Netflix, Flaked is set in the insular world of Venice, California. It follows the serio-comic story of a self-appointed 'guru' who falls for the object of his best friends fascination. Soon the tangled web of half-truths and semi-b******* that underpins his all-important image and sobriety begins to unravel. Arnett plays Chip, a man doing his honest best to stay one step ahead of his own lies. Netflix Netflix originals to look forward to in 2016 Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt - Season Two - 15 April Following the story of 29-year-old Kimmy Schmidt on her journey through New York, season two is set to start right where the last left us. The Tina Fey created sitcom has already been renewed for a third season, so you know this one has to be good. Netflix originals to look forward to in 2016 The Ranch - 1 April A comedy starring Ashton Kutcher. Based on a failed semi-pro footballer who returns home to a Colorado ranch. It also has some of the producers from Two and a Half Men behind it, which just happens to be one of the most successful shows of all time. Netflix originals to look forward to in 2016 Marseille - 5 May Netflixs first French language original is a tale of power, corruption and redemption. Sounding like it could very well be the next Narcos. Netflix originals to look forward to in 2016 Grace and Frankie - Season Two - 6 May The tale of a retired cosmetics mogul and a hippie art teacher living together was a hit across the world, especially in the US. Starring Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, the show has already been renewed for a third season. Netflix originals to look forward to in 2016 Orange is the New Black - Season Four - 17 June Another Netflix powerhouse, Orange is the New Black will see us returning to Litchfield Penitentiary. Prepare for more Piper, Alex and Red come June. Netflix originals to look forward to in 2016 Stranger Things - 15 July Eight-episode series starring Winona Ryder that follows a small community as they look for a young boy who has seemingly vanished. It all sounds quite scary. Netflix originals to look forward to in 2016 The Get Down - August 12th "Told through the lives and music of a ragtag crew of South Bronx teens, The Get Down is a mythic saga of the transformation of 1970s New York City. Directed by Baz Luhrmann, this is sure to be as stylish as anything hes done before. Netflix originals to look forward to in 2016 The Crown - Spring Starring Doctor Who actor Matt Smith, the period drama reveals the political rivalries and romance behind Queen Elizabeth II's reign and the events that shaped the 2nd half of the 20th century." Netflix originals to look forward to in 2016 Luke Cage - Fall 2016 First appearing alongside Jessica Jones in her Netflix series, Luke Cage will pic up the pieces, seeing Cage come to terms with his super-strength and impenetrable skin. It is unknown whether Kathryn. Netflix originals to look forward to in 2016 Narcos - Season 2 - Fall 2016 Its back. The Netflix series hyped to match Breaking Bad was an astounding success around the world, apparently watched more than Game of Thrones. Well find out what happens to Pablo Escabar now he doesnt have the protection of all his men. Netflix Inc. Netflix originals to look forward to in 2016 A Series of Unfortunate Events - Fall 2016 Netflix is set to revisit the much-loved childrens novel, putting Neil Patrick Harris as Count Olaf in a show that looks so much creepier than the 2004 film. Not much else is known - i.e. casting - but Lemony Snicket is on board as executive producer, so get excited.

The saga has already formed the fictionalised basis of a feature film, The Face of an Angel, starring Cara Delevingne. Now hot off the heels of arguably Netflixs most successful documentary, Making a Murderer, it will be examined factually.

Trailers for Amanda Knox are split into two to reflect the divided public opinion over the case: Suspect Her and Believe Her. Both Knox and Sollecito are interviewed for the film, which explores how Knox was portrayed in the media in 'Foxy Knoxy' headlines and sensationalist tabloid reports.

The whole world knew who I had ever had sex with, says Knox. I felt like a child again and I know I was a kid.

Of Ms Kercher, she said: We weren't best friends but I was so shocked by what happened to her. Suddenly I found myself tossed into this dark place.

The film is released on 30 September.
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Brotherhood actor Aaron Eaton has died days after the premiere of his film and breakout role.

Eaton, who died on Wednesday, appeared in the third instalment of director Noel Clarkes trilogy, in which he played the character Teardrop.

The 29-year-old from New Addington, south London, had also worked as a mentor for aspiring actors.

Notable deaths in 2016 Show all 42 1 /42 Notable deaths in 2016 Notable deaths in 2016 Debbie Reynolds was an American actress, singer, businesswoman, film historian, and humanitarian. She died on December 28 in Los Angeles Rex Notable deaths in 2016 Actress Carrie Fisher died on December 27 aged 60 Rex Notable deaths in 2016 Comedian and Actor Ricky Harris died on December 26 aged 54 Rex Notable deaths in 2016 British singer George Michael died on 25 December aged 53 Getty Notable deaths in 2016 Rick Parfitt OBE was an English musician, best known for being a singer, songwriter and rhythm guitarist in the rock band Status Quo. He died on December 24 in Marbella, Spain Rex Notable deaths in 2016 Lord Jenkin of Roding died at the age of 90 on the 21 December PA wire Notable deaths in 2016 Rabbi Lionel Blue died on the 19 December Rex Notable deaths in 2016 Zsa Zsa Gabor died on December 18 Getty Notable deaths in 2016 Leonard Cohen died on 7 November Getty Images Notable deaths in 2016 Grand secretary of the Orange Order Drew Nelson died on 10 October aged 60 after a short illness PA Notable deaths in 2016 Aaron Pryor, the relentless junior welterweight died Sunday, Oct. 9, at the age of 60 at his home in Cincinnati after a long battle with heart disease AP Notable deaths in 2016 Polish Director Andrzej Wajda died on October 9, aged 90 Reuters Notable deaths in 2016 Stylianos Pattakos has died following a stroke on 8th October. He was 103 years old. AP Notable deaths in 2016 Dickie Jeeps, was an English rugby union player who played for Northampton. He represented and captained both the England national rugby union team and the British Lions in the 1950s and 1960s. He died on 8th October. He was 84 Getty Notable deaths in 2016 Duke of Westminster Billionaire landowner the Duke of Westminster, Gerald Cavendish Grosvenor has died on 9 August, aged 64 Rex Features Notable deaths in 2016 Christina Knudsen Sir Roger Moores stepdaughter Christina Knudsen has died from cancer on 25 July at teh age of 47 Getty Images Notable deaths in 2016 Caroline Aherne The actress Caroline Aherne has died from cancer on 2 July at the age of 52 Getty Images Notable deaths in 2016 Christina Grimmie Christina Grimmie, 22, who was an American singer and songwriter, known for her participation in the NBC singing competition The Voice, was signing autographs at a concert venue in Orlando on 10 June when an assailant shot her. Grimmie was transported to a local hospital where she died from her wounds on 11 June Getty Notable deaths in 2016 Kimbo Slice Former UFC and Bellator MMA fighter Kimbo Slice died after being admitted to hospital in Florida on 6 June, aged 42 Getty Notable deaths in 2016 Muhammad Ali The three-time former heavyweight world champion died after being admitted to hospital with a respiratory illness on 3 June, aged 74 Getty Images Notable deaths in 2016 Sally Brampton Brampton who was the launch editor of the UK edition of Elle magazine has died on 10 May, aged 60 Grant Triplow/REX/Shutterstock Notable deaths in 2016 Billy Paul The soul singer Billy Paul, who was best known for his single Me and Mrs Jones, has died on 24 April, aged 81 Noel Vasquez/Getty Images Notable deaths in 2016 Prince Prince, the legendary musician, has been found dead at his Paisley Park recording studio on 21 April. He was 57 Notable deaths in 2016 Chyna WWE icon Joan Laurer dies aged 45 after being found at California home on 20 April Notable deaths in 2016 Victoria Wood The five-time Bafta-winning actress and comedian Victoria Wood has died on 20 April at her London home after a short illness with cancer. She was 62 Notable deaths in 2016 David Gest The entertainer and former husband of Liza Minnelli, David Gest has been found dead on 12 April in the Four Seasons hotel in Canary Warf, London. He was 62-years-old PA Notable deaths in 2016 Denise Robertson Denise Robertson, an agony aunt on This Morning for over 30 years, has died on 1 April, aged 83 Notable deaths in 2016 Zaha Hadid Dame Zaha Hadid, the prominent architect best known for designs such as the London Olympic Aquatic Centre and the Guangzhou Opera House, has died of a heart attack on 31 March, aged 65 2010 AFP Notable deaths in 2016 Ronnie Corbett British entertainer Ronnie Corbett has passed away on 31 March at the age of 85 2014 Getty Images Notable deaths in 2016 Imre Kertesz Hungarian writer and Holocaust survivor Imre Kertesz, who won the 2002 Nobel Literature Prize, has died on 31 March, at the age of 86 REUTERS Notable deaths in 2016 Rob Ford Rob Ford, the former controversial mayor of Toronto, has died following a battle with a rare form of cancer. The 46-year-old passed away at the Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto on 22 March Notable deaths in 2016 Joey Feek Joey (left) passed away in March after a two-year cancer illness. She was part of country music duo, Joey + Rory, with her husband Rory (right) Jason Merritt/Getty Images Notable deaths in 2016 Umberto Eco Italian writer and philosopher Umberto Eco died 19 February 2016 aged 84 EPA Notable deaths in 2016 Harper Lee Harper Lee, the American novelist known for writing 'To Kill a Mockingbird', died February 19, 2016 aged 89 2005 Getty Images Notable deaths in 2016 Vanity Vanity, pictured performing in 1983, died aged 57 REX Features Notable deaths in 2016 Dave Mirra The BMX legend's body found inside truck with gunshot wound after apparent suicide aged 41 Notable deaths in 2016 Harry Harpham The former miner became Sheffield Labour MP in May after many years as a local councillor. He died after succumbing to cancer, at the age of 61. Notable deaths in 2016 Dale Griffin The Mott the Hoople drummer died on January 17, aged 67 REX Notable deaths in 2016 Rene Angelil Celine Dion's husband and manager Rene Angelil has lost his battle with cancer on 14 January, aged 73 2011 Getty Images Notable deaths in 2016 Alan Rickman Legendary actor Alan Rickman has died on 14 January at the age of 69 after battle with pancreatic cancer. He is largely regarded as one of the most beloved British actors of our generation with roles in Love Actually, Die Hard, Michael Collins, and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and an illustrious stage career 2015 Getty Images Notable deaths in 2016 Maurice White The Earth, Wind & Fire founder died aged 74. The nine-piece band sold more than 90 million albums worldwide and won six Grammy awards Notable deaths in 2016 Lawrence Phillips Former NFL star found dead in prison cell on 13 January in suspected suicide, aged 40 AFP/Getty Images

Clarke and Grime artist Stormzy paid tribute to Eaton, on social media. Stormzy and Eaton were childhood friends.

Eaton also appeared in the 2015 film AWOL  Absent Without Love.

Eatons death was confirmed by the AWOLs official Twitter account: With a heavy heart we say sleep well to our brother Aaron Eaton who has passed on. Aaron played Wolfy in AWOL. RIP.

His cause of death remains unknown.
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Facebook has defended removing a post containing the iconic image of a child victim of the Vietnam war, saying it is "difficult to create a distinction" between allowing an image of a nude child in that instance and not in others.

On Wednesday, Espen Egil Hansenthe editor of Norways largest newspaper Aftenposten, wrote a front-page open letter to Mark Zuckerberg after Facebook removed an article containing the Pulitzer-Prize winning image on the grounds of nudity.

In the letter, Mr Hansen accused the founder of abusing his power and expressed his concern his editorial responsibility was being restricted by the company.

I am worried that the worlds most important medium is limiting freedom instead of trying to extend it and that this occasionally happens in an authoritarian way, he wrote.

In response, a spokesperson for Facebook told the Independent: While we recognise that this photo is iconic, its difficult to create a distinction between allowing a photograph of a nude child in one instance and not others.

We try to find the right balance between enabling people to express themselves while maintaining a safe and respectful experience for our global community. Our solutions wont always be perfect, but we will continue to try to improve our policies and the ways in which we apply them.

Facebook's brand new office in Singapore Show all 10 1 /10 Facebook's brand new office in Singapore Facebook's brand new office in Singapore A mural from local artist Justin Lee CK blending East and West. Facebook Facebook's brand new office in Singapore Visitors can leave a message on the 'Write-Something-Wall' Facebook Facebook's brand new office in Singapore Sign in here Facebook Facebook's brand new office in Singapore The library space Facebook Facebook's brand new office in Singapore Teach gear vending machine where employees can tap their tags and get what they need in case they forgot to bring their equipment at the office. Facebook Facebook's brand new office in Singapore An internal staircase, adorned with acrylic confetti by Singapore designer Dawn Ng, connects the four floors comprising the Singapore HQ Facebook Facebook's brand new office in Singapore Relax at the game corner Facebook Facebook's brand new office in Singapore The hangout area, use your break to try the Instagram Anti gravity booth or the Facebook mahjong Facebook Facebook's brand new office in Singapore The Instagram "gravity booth" that Facebook set at the hangout area for the athletes at the Southeast Asian Games that was held in 2015. The booth's furniture is set at a 90-degree angle rotated left, turn the picture to the right and it will look like you are floating. Facebook Facebook's brand new office in Singapore Drink in the beer garden anyone ?

Facebook have somewhat of a blanket rule on these types of images which apply to everyone and every news outlet on the social networking site. This is another area Mr Hansen lambasted in his open letter, writing: First you dont create rules that dont distinguish between child pornography and famous war photographs. Then you practice these rules without allowing space for good judgement.

In the companys letter to Aftenposten, Facebook said: Any photographs of people displaying fully nude genitalia or buttocks, or fully nude female breasts, will be removed and warned the newspaper to either remove or pixelate their post. Mr Hansen claims before the paper had a chance to reply, the website deleted the post.

Facebook tends to rely on users to report content they deem offensive to moderators. When the company receives a complaint and has reviewed it, they can remove posts and then notify users of its removal. If users contnue to break their rules, their ability to post content on Facebook can be restricted or they can be banned from the site.
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The Norweigan Prime Minister took on Facebooks decision to delete an iconic image from the Vietnam war by sharing the image herself, before swiftly finding her post had been taken down as well.

On Friday, the countrys largest newspaper, Aftenposten, led with a front-page open letter by its editor Espen Egil Hansen who accused Mark Zuckerberg of abusing power by censoring the post. The letter came after the daily paper published a story leading with the 1972 Pulitzer-prize winning photo of nine-year-old Kim Phuc running terrified after being hit with napalm in the Vietnam war.

The post was deleted by Facebook under its nudity guidelines. In response, Facebook defended their actions saying, its difficult to create a distinction between allowing a photograph of a nude child in one instance and not others.

Napalm victim in iconic photo receives medical treatment - in pictures Show all 5 1 /5 Napalm victim in iconic photo receives medical treatment - in pictures Napalm victim in iconic photo receives medical treatment - in pictures Napalm victim in iconic photo receives medical treatment - in pictures Napalm victim in iconic photo receives medical treatment - in pictures Dr. Jill Waibel examines Kim Phuc before the first of several laser treatments to reduce pain and the appearance of burn scars in her back and left arm in Miami. Phuc was injured by a napalm bomb in Vietnam 40 years ago. AP Photo/Nick Ut Napalm victim in iconic photo receives medical treatment - in pictures In this Sept. 26, 2015, photo, Dr. Jill Waibel, left, applies a laser to the back of Kim Phuc to reduce the pain and appearance of her burn scars in Miami. Phuc was burned in the back and left arm by a napalm bomb in Vietnam 40 years ago. The procedure creates microscopic holes in the skin, which allows topical, collagen-building medicines to be absorbed deep through the layers of tissue. AP Photo/Nick Ut Napalm victim in iconic photo receives medical treatment - in pictures In this Sept. 25, 2015 photo, Kim Phuc shows burn scars on her back and left arm at a hotel in Miami. The scars were caused by a napalm attack when she was 9 years old in Trang Bang, Vietnam. While she spent years doing painful exercises to preserve her range of motion, her left arm still doesn't extend as far as her right arm, and her desire to learn how to play the piano has been thwarted by stiffness in her left hand. Tasks as simple as carrying her purse on her left side are too difficult. AP Photo/Nick Ut

The Prime Minister Erna Solberg expressed support for the newspaper and shared the image on her Facebook account. The social media giant responded by taking down the post, according to one of her aides.

What they do by removing images of this kind, whatever [the] good intentions, is to edit our common history, Ms Solberg told a Norweigan news agency.

Ms Solberg has now responded by sharing the image again, but this time with a black censorship box. She also effectively trolled Facebook by sharing other historic images such as Martin Luther Kings I Have a Dream speech and the protester standing in front of Chinese tanks at the 1989 Tiananmen square protests by censoring their faces.

On Friday, Mr Hansan told the Independent he had not heard from Facebook since his letter but hopes he has started a discussion. He also dismissed Facebook's "technocratic" suggestion they can not differentiate between images of two children, saying: "This is not a naked child, it's a victim of an attack".

"It was most important to me to start a discussion. I'm actually really pleased because I hope to raise this discussion in Norway but it is taking place globally.

"I think that it is my role as an editor and journalist to bring up something that was not, maybe, pleasant for everyone but has started a discussion."

If Facebook had existed in 1972, he added, we probably would never have seen the powerful image.

And they wouldnt have posted pictures from the Holocaust because there are naked children there on the way to the gas chambers. They would have been unpleasant pictures and it wouldnt have been possible to publish them there.

Additional reporting by the Associated Press.
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Mark Zuckerberg has been accused of abusing his power by the editor of Norways biggest newspaper after Facebook deleted an iconic image of a child victim of the Vietnam war under nudity guidelines.

Aftenpostens editor-in-chief Espen Egil Hansen has written a front-page open letter to Zuckerberg expressing concern his editorial responsibility is being restricted by Facebook. Mr Hansen accused the social network of refusing to distinguish between child abuse images and famous war photographs after an article containing the 1972 image of nine-year-old Kim Phuc running down the street without any clothes on after sustaining severe burns in a napalm attack was removed.

The image of Kim is one of the serving legacies of the horrors of the Vietnam war. The photographer Nick Ut won the prestigious Pulitzer prize for the image in 1973.

The article that was removed reported that Norwegian writer Tom Egeland recently had his Facebook page temporarily banned after he shared a number of posts containing the image.

When Aftenposten reported on the ban and shared the picture again, they received an email from Facebook demanding it to be taken down or pixelised on the grounds of its nudity guidelines: Any photographs of people displaying fully nude genitalia or buttocks, or fully nude female breasts, will be removed, the email said. Before Aftenposten could respond, they claim the article had been removed.

Napalm victim in iconic photo receives medical treatment - in pictures Show all 5 1 /5 Napalm victim in iconic photo receives medical treatment - in pictures Napalm victim in iconic photo receives medical treatment - in pictures Napalm victim in iconic photo receives medical treatment - in pictures Napalm victim in iconic photo receives medical treatment - in pictures Dr. Jill Waibel examines Kim Phuc before the first of several laser treatments to reduce pain and the appearance of burn scars in her back and left arm in Miami. Phuc was injured by a napalm bomb in Vietnam 40 years ago. AP Photo/Nick Ut Napalm victim in iconic photo receives medical treatment - in pictures In this Sept. 26, 2015, photo, Dr. Jill Waibel, left, applies a laser to the back of Kim Phuc to reduce the pain and appearance of her burn scars in Miami. Phuc was burned in the back and left arm by a napalm bomb in Vietnam 40 years ago. The procedure creates microscopic holes in the skin, which allows topical, collagen-building medicines to be absorbed deep through the layers of tissue. AP Photo/Nick Ut Napalm victim in iconic photo receives medical treatment - in pictures In this Sept. 25, 2015 photo, Kim Phuc shows burn scars on her back and left arm at a hotel in Miami. The scars were caused by a napalm attack when she was 9 years old in Trang Bang, Vietnam. While she spent years doing painful exercises to preserve her range of motion, her left arm still doesn't extend as far as her right arm, and her desire to learn how to play the piano has been thwarted by stiffness in her left hand. Tasks as simple as carrying her purse on her left side are too difficult. AP Photo/Nick Ut

Opening his letter, Mr Hansen, who referred to Zuckerberg as the worlds most powerful editor, wrote: I am upset, disappointed  well, in fact, even afraid  of what you are about to do to a mainstay of our democratic society.

Recommended Read more Girl in Vietnam napalm photo receives medical treatment for burns

Even though I am editor-in-chief of Norways largest newspaper, I have to realise that you are restricting my room for exercising my editorial responsibility. This is what you and your subordinates are doing in this case.

I think you are abusing your power, and I find it hard to believe that you have thought it through thoroughly.

Mr Hansen said it is the responsibility of the press to report and share unpleasant images which reflect the horrors of war. Newspapers have a right to consider publication of every article which should not be undermined by algorithms encoded in your office in California, his letter continued.

 What has the US not apologised for?

Mr Hansen also accused the company of censoring criticism after their decision to temporarily ban Mr Egelands profile reportedly came after the writer shared an article from the Norweigan daily paper Dagsavisen which also contained the image. The article quoted Kim saying she was saddened by those who would focus on the nudity in the historic picture rather than the powerful message it conveys.

Mr Hansen concludes by explaining he has written the letter because I am worried that the worlds most important medium is limiting freedom instead of trying to extend it and that this occasionally happens in an authoritarian way.

A representative for Facebook told The Independent: While we recognize that this photo is iconic, its difficult to create a distinction between allowing a photograph of a nude child in one instance and not others. We try to find the right balance between enabling people to express themselves while maintaining a safe and respectful experience for our global community. Our solutions wont always be perfect, but we will continue to try to improve our policies and the ways in which we apply them.

A representative for Zuckerberg did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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The Northern Lights are one of the most spectacular natural events on the planet.

The usual explanation given by tour guides and in books is that charged particles carried by solar winds from the sun hit the Earths magnetic field.

But if this was the whole story, the aurora borealis, named after the ancient Greek goddess of the dawn, Aurora, and Boreas, the Greek name for the north wind, would hardly be visible as it would take place during the day, physicist Dr Melanie Windridge pointed out.

And the particles themselves do not actually have enough energy to create some of the staggering light shows seen closer to the poles.

Northern Lights seen near the town of Salekhard, Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, Russia

A key part of the process is missing.

After journeying to northern latitudes to learn about traditional cultures views of the lights for a popular science book on the subject, Dr Windridge gave a talk on the subject at the British Science Festival.

Speaking ahead of the event, she told The Independent there was so much more to it than the traditional explanation about charged particles from the sun hitting the Earth's magnetic field.

The wildfires glow underneath The Northern Lights, also known as the Aurora Borealis, near Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada (Reuters)

If they were coming in directly, they would come in during the day time and the aurora happens at night, she said.

So something is happening to get these charged particles round to the night side of the Earth.

Northern lights from around the world Show all 10 1 /10 Northern lights from around the world Northern lights from around the world Northern Lights The northern lights as they are commonly known at Embleton Bay in Northumberland Northern lights from around the world Northern Lights The aurora borealis, or the northern lights as they are commonly known, at St. Mary's Lighthouse and Visitor Centre, Whitley Bay, North Tyneside Owen Humphreys/PA Wire Northern lights from around the world Northern Lights A full moon helps illuminate the Alaskan pipeline under the faint glow of the Aurora Borealis near Milne Point, Alaska Northern lights from around the world Northern Lights The Northern Lights are seen in the skies near Faskusfjordur on the east coast of Iceland Northern lights from around the world Northern Lights The Aurora Borealis glows over a lake near the Greenland town of Kangerlussuaq. The Northern Lights most often occurs from September to October and from March to April and are a popular tourist attraction Uriel Sinai/Getty Images Northern lights from around the world Northern Lights Northern lights near the village of Vik, in southern Iceland Northern lights from around the world Northern Lights A display of Aurora Borealis, northern lights, in Ostby, Sweden. The northern lights occur in a circular band around the geomagnetic north pole, otherwise known as the northern lights oval AFP/Getty Images/Sven Nackstrand Northern lights from around the world Northern Lights Northern lights in Abisko, Swedish Lapland AFP/Getty Images/Francois Campredon Northern lights from around the world Northern Lights This picture taken overnight on shows the northern lights, seen in Tallinn AFP/Getty Images/Raigo Pajula Northern lights from around the world Northern Lights The Aurora Borealis light up the sky at twilight on between the towns of Are and Ostersund, Sweden AFP/Getty Images/Jonathan Nackstrand

The particles that come in directly dont have enough energy to make the sort of vibrant displays that we see.

Somewhere those electrons are being accelerated, there has to be acceleration.

That key part of the process is largely provided by the Earth, specifically its magnetic field.

Recommended Read more US astronaut shares amazing picture of the Northern Lights

This protects life on the planet from being killed off by radiation from the Sun.

It has a basic pattern but is constantly moving and it is hear that the aurora is created.

In the Earths magnetic field, the lines snap and rejoin in a new configuration and this snapping and rejoining releases huge amounts of energy, Dr Windridge said.

The Northern Lights, or Aurora Borealis, shine over Derwentwater, near Keswick, in the Lake District on Wednesday night (PA)

This takes the particles from the sun and hurls them onto the dark side of the Earth with tremendous force. A video produced by Nasa explains the process.

Dr Windridge, whose book Aurora: In Search of the Northern Lights is already published in hardback, said she had travelled through countries including Iceland, Sweden, Norway and Canada asking local people about the effect.

A reindeer herder in northern Norway told me the aurora was a natural baby sitter, she said.

The parents would tell their children that they mustnt be home late or the aurora would get them.

And theres an old Sami story about a boy who was mocking the moon and the sun and then he mocked the Northern Lights and was struck down and killed.

But she said for people who saw it regularly, the Northern Lights were simply part of everyday life.

One lucky person in the UK could find themselves working under the elusive northern lights this winter (via Verypcc/100 Days Of Polar Night Magic) (Verypcc/100 Days Of Polar Night Magic)

The reindeer herder told me its just like weather, like the rain or the wind. It was such a normal thing for them.

Despite her travels, Dr Windridge has not yet seen the most dramatic light shows that can be produced by the effect.

Im still waiting for that incredible lighting up of the whole sky, she said. I still havent seen that big display, but Im planning to go to Iceland in November.
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A City trader has been jailed for six years for raping a young woman after a cocaine and champagne-fuelled office party.

Daniel Green, 26, was found guilty of attacking the woman, in her 20s, after she had curled up to sleep under a desk in the early hours of May 16 2015.

The pair had met during drinks in the City of London and gone back with several others to the StratX stockbrokers' offices near Monument, where he had only just started work.

While there, partygoers danced on desks to music, drank champagne and took lines of cocaine into the early hours.

Most of the StratX men went home after the mood soured as the woman's companion complained her stash of cocaine had gone missing because she was reluctant to share it.

The woman, who cannot be identified, was left in the office with Green, her friend and another StratX employee who tried to rekindle the party atmosphere.

But she told jurors she became tired and decided to take a nap under a desk, intending to catch the first train home because she did not have enough money for a taxi.

Wiping away tears, she described how she awoke to find Green "tugging" her trousers down and asked him "What the f*** are you doing?".

"At that point I remember just trying to crawl forward to get away. I knew what was going to happen. I remember being pulled back," she told the jury.

"The next thing I remember was Daniel raping me.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 26 October 2022 A meerkat explores a pumpkin in the enclosure at Wild Place, Bristol, where some of the animals are having pumpkin treats as part of their environmental enrichment PA UK news in pictures 25 October 2022 King Charles III welcomes Rishi Sunak during an audience at Buckingham Palace, where he invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative Party to become Prime Minister and form a new government PA UK news in pictures 24 October 2022 Rishi Sunak celebrates with Tory MPs outside the Conservative Campaign Headquarters after becoming the new leader of the Conservative Party Reuters UK news in pictures 23 October 2022 The Green Man at October Plenty, Borough Market's annual Autumn Harvest festival, in London, which returns for the first time post pandemic PA UK news in pictures 21 October 2022 Sculptor Peter McKenna puts the finishing touches to a pumpkin that will form part of the Planet A Hebden Bridge Pumpkin Trail in the West Yorkshire town PA UK news in pictures 20 October 2022 Britains Prime Minister Liz Truss delivers a speech outside of 10 Downing Street in central London to announce her resignation AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 19 October 2022 Salmon leap up Stainforth Force on the River Ribble in the Yorkshire Dales as they swim upriver to their spawning grounds during the annual Salmon migration PA UK news in pictures 18 October 2022 Just Stop Oil protesters continue their protest for a second day on the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, which links Kent and Essex and which remains closed for traffic, after it was scaled by two climbers from the group PA UK news in pictures 17 October 2022 Hundreds of students take part in the traditional Raisin Monday foam fight on St Salvator's Lower College Lawn at the University of St Andrews in Fife PA UK news in pictures 16 October 2022 A protester holds a placard during a march into central London at a demonstration by the climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 15 October 2022 A member of the public drags an activist who is blocking the road during a "Just Stop Oil" protest, in London, Britain REUTERS UK news in pictures 14 October 2022 Germanys Womens double skulls during day one of the World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals at Saundersfoot beach, Pembrokeshire PA UK news in pictures 13 October 2022 Family and mourners arrive at St Michael's Church, in Creeslough, for the funeral mass of 49-year-old mother of four Martina Martin, who died following an explosion at the Applegreen service station in the village of Creeslough in Co Donegal on Friday PA UK news in pictures 12 October 2022 Motorists in Coventry pass trees showing autumnal colour PA UK news in pictures 11 October 2022 A woman and her dog in the the North Sea at Tynemouth Longsands beach before sunrise PA UK news in pictures 10 October 2022 Police officers remove a campaigner from a Just Stop Oil protest on The Mall, near Buckingham Palace, London PA UK news in pictures 9 October 2022 A drummer plays during the Diwali on the Square celebration, in Trafalgar Square, London PA UK news in pictures 8 October 2022 Timothee Chalamet attending the UK premiere of Bones and All during the BFI London Film Festival 2022 at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London PA UK news in pictures 7 October 2022 Two young male fallow deer lock antlers in Dublins Phoenix park as rutting season begins PA UK news in pictures 6 October 2022 The Princess of Wales during a cocktail making competition during a visit to Trademarket, a new outdoor street-food and retail market situated in Belfast city centre, as part of the royal visit to Northern Ireland PA UK news in pictures 5 October 2022 Greenpeace protesters interrupt Prime Minister Liz Truss as she delivers her keynote speech to the Conservative Party annual conference PA UK news in pictures 4 October 2022 Prime Minister Liz Truss and Britains Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng wearing hard hats and hi-vis jackets, visit a construction site for a medical innovation campus in Birmingham AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 3 October 2022 British artist Sam Cox, aka Mr Doodle, reveals the Doodle House, a twelve-room mansion at Tenterden, in Kent, which has been covered, inside and out in the artist's trademark monochrome, cartoonish hand-drawn doodles PA UK news in pictures 2 October 2022 Erling Haaland celebrates after scoring Manchester City's second goal against Manchester United at Etihad Stadium. Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. The building was built in 1480 as a residential dwelling but has been a tearoom for over 50 years PA UK news in pictures 28 September 2022 Criminal barristers from the Criminal Bar Association (CBA), demonstrates outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, as part of their ongoing pay row with the Government PA UK news in pictures 27 September 2022 David White, Garter King of Arms, poses with an envelope franked with the new cypher of King Charles III 'CIIIR', after it was printed in the Court Post Office at Buckingham Palace in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 26 September 2022 A gallery staff member poses next to a painting by Lucian Freud - Self-portrait (Fragment), 1956 - on show at a photocall for the Credit Suisse exhibition - Lucian Freud: New Perspectives at the National Gallery in London PA UK news in pictures 25 September 2022 Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer is interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg in Liverpool before the start of the Labour Party annual Conference which he opened with a tribute to Queen Elizabeth II and sang the national anthem PA UK news in pictures 24 September 2022 Handout photo issued by Buckingham Palace of the ledger stone at the King George VI Memorial Chapel, St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 23 September 2022 A climate change activist protests against UK private jets while lighting his right arm on fire during the Laver Cup tennis tournament at the O2 Arena in London EPA UK news in pictures 22 September 2022 Woody Woodmansey, Lee Bennett, Kevin Armstrong, Nick Moran and Clifford Slapper attend the unveiling of a stone for David Bowie on the Music Walk of Fame at Camden, north London PA UK news in pictures 21 September 2022 A flock of birds in the sky as the sun rises over Dungeness in Kent PA UK news in pictures 20 September 2022 Flowers which were laid by members of the public in tribute to Queen Elizabeth II at Hillsborough Castle in Northern Ireland are collected by the Hillsborough Gardening Team and volunteers to be replanted for those that can be saved or composted PA UK news in pictures 19 September 2022 The ceremonial procession of the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II travels down the long walk as it arrives at Windsor Castle for the committal service at St Georges Chapel AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 18 September 2022 A man stands among campers on The Mall ahead of the Queens funeral Reuters UK news in pictures 17 September 2022 Wolverhampton Wanderers Nathan Collins fouls Manchester Citys Jack Grealish leading to a red card. City went on to win the match at Molineux Stadium three goals to nil. 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"I was still trying to wriggle away, doing anything I could to stop that. I guess I was in a state of shock at what was happening. I was just trying to say no and get across this is something I don't want to happen.

"I just kept saying 'No, no, no, no, no, no' but it absolutely didn't stop anything.

"He was making sexual noises, making me feel horrible, so I burst into tears. After realising I was not going to get away and this was actually happening, I started crying, and at that point - it seemed so bizarre as he'd said absolutely nothing before - he said 'Oh shit, she's crying'.

"He got off then. I was just distraught. Then he was out of the office really quickly."

The Old Bailey heard how the group had ended up back at the stockbroker's office after a night of heavy drinking and drug use (Getty Images)

The woman rang her best friend from the office and she alerted police, who arrested Green, of Walthamstow, east London.

Green insisted the sex was consensual but he stopped when she began to cry as he thought his 10in (25cm) penis was causing pain.

He said: "Maybe my penis was hurting her. I always have difficulty when it comes to having sex with girls. I find my penis is hard to penetrate females."

The defendant said his penis was 10in (25cm) long and around 4in (10cm) in girth, demonstrating for the jury with his hand.

Prosecutor Timothy Forster dismissed Green's account, saying he had treated his victim like a "piece of meat".

He told jurors: "You perhaps do not need to know the truth of what was going through Mr Green's mind. He was a new member of the company.

"He was suddenly in this world where everyone was drinking and taking cocaine. To a certain extent he might feel he wants to impress people."

The barrister said the defendant had been jealous that the alleged victim's female friend was getting close to his co-worker and had acted because he was "frustrated and humiliated in front of his new work colleagues".

The jury took six hours to find Green guilt of rape by a majority of 11 to 1.

PA
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Britons may be forced to pay a fee in order to visit Europe after Brexit, according to plans reportedly being drafted by the European Commission (EC).

A scheme being debated by the executive body of the European Union suggests the 26-nation Schengen zone, which does not include the UK, could operate a visa programme comparable to the United States' ESTA scheme, according to the Guardian.

Currently, the US ESTA system requires travellers from participating countries from the Visa Waiver Programme (VWP) to apply to visit online. Since 2010 a payment of $14 (10) has been required to obtain the ESTA.

Such a programme has been backed by France and Germany following calls for bolstered security throughout Europe after a string of terror attacks on European soil, according to EU sources.

All 26 countries in the Schengen Area have abolished passports and border control at their mutual borders.

Although not a member of the zone, British nationals are able to travel freely within it after showing a valid passport upon entry.

But after Britain's exit from the bloc, UK citizens may be forced to apply to visit the zone and pay a fee, legal experts have said.

Leave campaigners admitted such a scheme could be a possibility in the build-up to the EU referendum.

6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you Show all 6 1 /6 6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you 6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you More expensive foreign holidays The first practical effect of a vote to Leave is that the pound will be worth less abroad, meaning foreign holidays will cost us more nito100 6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you No immediate change in immigration status The Prime Minister will have to address other immediate concerns. He is likely to reassure nationals of other EU countries living in the UK that their status is unchanged. That is what the Leave campaign has said, so, even after the Brexit negotiations are complete, those who are already in the UK would be allowed to stay Getty 6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you Higher inflation A lower pound means that imports would become more expensive. This is likely to mean the return of inflation  a phenomenon with which many of us are unfamiliar because prices have been stable for so long, rising at no more than about 2 per cent a year. The effect may probably not be particularly noticeable in the first few months. At first price rises would be confined to imported goods  food and clothes being the most obvious  but inflation has a tendency to spread and to gain its own momentum AFP/Getty Images 6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you Interest rates might rise The trouble with inflation is that the Bank of England has a legal obligation to keep it as close to 2 per cent a year as possible. If a fall in the pound threatens to push prices up faster than this, the Bank will raise interest rates. This acts against inflation in three ways. First, it makes the pound more attractive, because deposits in pounds will earn higher interest. Second, it reduces demand by putting up the cost of borrowing, and especially by taking larger mortgage payments out of the economy. Third, it makes it more expensive for businesses to borrow to expand output Getty 6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you Did somebody say recession? Mr Carney, the Treasury and a range of international economists have warned about this. Many Leave voters appear not to have believed them, or to think that they are exaggerating small, long-term effects. But there is no doubt that the Leave vote is a negative shock to the economy. This is because it changes expectations about the economys future performance. Even though Britain is not actually be leaving the EU for at least two years, companies and investors will start to move money out of Britain, or to scale back plans for expansion, because they are less confident about what would happen after 2018 AFP/Getty Images 6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you And we wouldnt even get our money back All this will be happening while the Prime Minister, whoever he or she is, is negotiating the terms of our future access to the EU single market. In the meantime, our trade with the EU would be unaffected, except that companies elsewhere in the EU may be less interested in buying from us or selling to us, expecting tariff barriers to go up in two years time. Whoever the Chancellor is, he or she may feel the need to bring in a new Budget Getty Images

In April, Conservative MP and leading leave campaigner Dominic Raab said Britons could need a visa or some other kind of check to travel to continental Europe after Brexit.

Speaking to the BBCs Sunday Politics show, Mr Raab said the issue would be a matter for post-withdrawal negotiations with the EU.

I think wed have to look at that as part of the negotiations in detail. But look, at the moment president Barack Obamas administration  is looking at new visa requirements and screening from Germany, Belgium, Greece, France, because of the recent terrorist attacks," he said.

Earlier on Friday, Boris Johnson confirmed he had abandoned his EU referendum promise to introduce points-based immigration curbs.

During the campaign, the now-Foreign Secretary claimed the Australian-style system would tackle immigration that was completely out of control and would neutralise the extremists on the toxic issue.

On Monday, however, Theresa May announced she had rejected the idea  despite it being a key focus of the Vote Leave campaign, backed by Mr Johnson.

Asked if he agreed, the Foreign Secretary said the important point was that immigration was curbed, not the exact form that control took.

He said: The crucial utensil that needs to be applied is, of course, control and you may remember there was a campaign on which the slogan was take back control".
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One of Britain's largest police forces is considering allowing Muslim officers to wear the burka while on duty in an effort to boost diversity.

West Midlands Police Chief Constable, David Thompson, said the force would not rule out allowing female officers to wear the outfit which includes a long flowing outer garment from head to toe and an Islamic veil, or niqab, that covers all facial features except the eyes.

One female officer currently being trained by the force reportedly already wears a hijab, a headscarf that covers the hair and neck.

But West Midlands Police said no officer has yet applied to wear a burka.

At a recent meeting during which diversity in the force was discussed, Chief Constable Thompson refused to rule out allowing female officers to wear the controversial veil.

He said: We would need to consider our own rules and cultural sensitivity. Clearly we don't have any barriers relating to that (the burka).

As it stands we have not had any approaches from potential recruits asking to wear the burka, but if such an approach was made it is something we would have to consider.

Serving the people of the West Midlands is at the heart of what we do and I would need to carefully consider anything that could be seen as standing in the way of that relationship."

In pictures: Protest against burkini bans in London Show all 10 1 /10 In pictures: Protest against burkini bans in London In pictures: Protest against burkini bans in London Demonstrators stage a beach party outside the French Embassy, in Knightsbridge, London, in protest against burkini bans PA In pictures: Protest against burkini bans in London Jenny Dawkins, a curate from All Saints Church in Peckham, at an anti-burkini ban protest at the French Embassy in London on 25 August Lizzie Dearden In pictures: Protest against burkini bans in London Demonstrators stage a beach party outside the French Embassy, in Knightsbridge, London, in protest against burkini bans PA In pictures: Protest against burkini bans in London Somayia Khan's six-year-old daughter at a protest against burkini bans at the French Embassy in London on 25 August Lizzie Dearden In pictures: Protest against burkini bans in London Friends Rebecca (L) and Hannah (R) at a protest against burkini bans at the French Embassy in London on 25 August Lizzie Dearden In pictures: Protest against burkini bans in London Demonstrators stage a beach party outside the French Embassy, in Knightsbridge, London, in protest against burkini bans Reuters In pictures: Protest against burkini bans in London Demonstrators stage a beach party outside the French Embassy, in Knightsbridge, London, in protest against burkini bans EPA In pictures: Protest against burkini bans in London Demonstrators stage a beach party outside the French Embassy, in Knightsbridge, London, in protest against burkini bans AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Protest against burkini bans in London People participate in a 'Wear what you want beach party' protest outside of the French Embassy in London EPA In pictures: Protest against burkini bans in London A protester holds a sign which reads "Are you Burkini Beach Body Ready?" as she lies on a beach towel outside the French Embassy in London on August 25, 2016, AFP/Getty Images

Chief Constable Thompson's comments come as West Midlands Police plans to employ 800 new officers, with the aim of ensuring 30 per cent of them come from ethnic minorities.

Currently just nine per cent of West Midlands 7,000 police officers are from the BME community, compared with 30 per cent of the West Midlands community as a whole.

People from ethnic minorities make up 5.5 per cent of UK police, compared with 14 per cent of the overall UK population.
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Drug-related deaths in England and Wales have hit record levels, official statistics show.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures reveal that a total of 3,674 drug poisoning deaths involving legal and illegal substances were recorded in 2015, up from 3,346 in 2014 and the most since comparable records began in 1993.

The ONS also found that cocaine deaths reached an all-time high in 2015, and that deaths involving heroin and/or morphine have doubled over three years to reach record levels.

The record death toll has led to Prime Minister Theresa May facing a barrage of criticism over the policies she pursued while Home Secretary, with Niamh Eastwood, the executive director of drugs and drugs law charity Release, saying: The Home Offices pursuit of a tough on drugs strategy and refusal to acknowledge the evidence for best practice in drug treatment is quite literally killing people.

She was backed by Martin Powell, of the Transform Drug Policy Foundation, who said: The Home Office  under Theresa Mays watch  is responsible for the highest number of drug deaths ever recorded.

That the Prime Minister keeps claiming her drug policy is working should send a chill down the spine of every parent and reasonable person in the country.

She knows, from countless studies, what keeps communities safe, and it isn't driving people away from help and into the hands of criminals. It is responsible reforms that take the drug market away from dealers, and puts it into the hands of doctors and pharmacists.

The ONS figures also show that the mortality rate from drug misuse is now at the highest level ever recorded, at 43.8 deaths per million people.

World's 10 deadliest street drugs Show all 10 1 /10 World's 10 deadliest street drugs World's 10 deadliest street drugs Whoonga Whoonga is a combination of antiretroviral drugs, used to treat HIV, and various cutting agents such as detergents and poisons. The drug is widely available in South Africa due to South Africas high rate of HIV sufferers, and is believed to be popular due to how cheap it is when compared to prescribed antiretrovirals. The drug is highly addictive and can cause major health issues such as internal bleeding, stomach ulcers and ultimately death Getty World's 10 deadliest street drugs Scopolamine Scopolamine is a derivative from the nightshade plant found in the Northern Indian region of South America (Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela). It is generally found in a refined powder form, but can also be found as a tea. The drug is more often used by criminals due its high toxicity level (one gram is believed to be able to kill up to 20 people) making it a strong poison. However, it is also believed that the drug is blown into the faces of unexpecting victims, later causing them to lose all sense of self-control and becoming incapable of forming memories during the time they are under the influence of the drug. This tactic has reportedly been used by gangs in Colombia where there have been reports of people using scopolamine as way to convince victims to rob their own homes World's 10 deadliest street drugs Heroin Founded in 1874 by C. R. Alder Wright, heroin is one of the worlds oldest drugs. Originally it was prescribed as a strong painkiller used to treat chronic pain and physical trauma. However in 1971 it was made illegal under the Misuse of Drugs Act. Since then it has become one of the most destructive substances in the world, tearing apart communities and destroying families. The side effects of heroin include inflammation of the gums, cold sweats, a weak immune system, muscular weakness and insomnia. It can also damage blood vessels which can later cause gangrene if left untreated World's 10 deadliest street drugs Crack cocaine Crack cocaine first came about in the 1980s when cocaine became a widespread commodity within the drug trafficking world. Originally cocaine would have attracted a high price tag due to its rarity and difficulty to produce, but once it became more widespread the price dropped significantly. This resulted in drug dealers forming their cocaine into rock like shapes by using baking soda as a way of distilling the powder down into rock form. People were doing this because it allowed for them to sell cocaine at a lower quantity and to a higher number of people. The side effects of crack cocaine include liver, kidney and lung damage, as well as permanent damage to blood vessels, which can often lead to heart attacks, strokes, and ultimately death World's 10 deadliest street drugs Crystal meth Not just famous because of a certain Walter H White, but also because it is one of the most destructive drugs in the world. First developed in 1887, it became widely used during the Second World War when both sides would give it to their troops to keep them awake. It is also believed that the Japanese gave it to their Kamikaze pilots before their suicide missions. After the war crystal meth was prescribed as a diet aid and remained legal until the 1970s. Since then it has fallen into the hands of Mexican gangs and has become a worldwide phenomenon, spreading throughout Europe and Asia. The effects of crystal meth are devastating. In the short-term users will become sleep depraved and anxious, and in the long-term it will cause their flesh to sink, as well as brain damage and damage of the blood vessels World's 10 deadliest street drugs AH-7921 AH-7921 is a synthetic opioid that was previously available to legally purchase online from vendors until it became a Class A in January 2015. The drug is believed to have 80% of the potency of morphine, and became known as the legal heroin. While there has only been one death related to AH-7921 in the UK, it is believed to be highly dangerous and capable of causing respiratory arrest and gangrene World's 10 deadliest street drugs Flakka Flakka is a stimulant with a similar chemical make-up to the amphetamine-like drug found in bath salts. While the drug was originally marketed as a legal high alternative to ecstasy, the effects are significantly different. The user will feel an elevated heart rate, enhanced emotions, and, if enough is digested, strong hallucinations. The drug can cause permanent psychological damage due to it affecting the mood regulating neurons that keep the minds serotonin and dopamine in check, as well as possibly causing heart failure World's 10 deadliest street drugs Bath salts Bath salts are a synthetic crystalline drug that is prevalent in the US. While they may sound harmless, they certainly arent the sort of salts you drop into a warm bath when having a relaxing night in, they are most similar to mephedrone, and have recently been featured throughout social media due to the zombification of its. The name comes from the fact that the drug was originally sold online, and widely disguised as bath salts. The side effects include unusual psychiatric behaviour, psychosis, panic attacks and violent behaviour, as well as the possibility of a heart attack and an elevated body temperature World's 10 deadliest street drugs Purple Drank One of the more unusual drugs around at the moment, purple drank was popularised in 90s hip hop culture, with the likes of Jay Z and Big Moe all mentioning it in their songs. It is a concoction of soda water, sweets and cold medicine, and is drunk due to cold medicines high codeine content, which gives the user a woozy feeling. However it can also cause respiratory issues and heart failure World's 10 deadliest street drugs Krokodil Krokodil is Russias secret addiction. It is believed that over one million Russians are addicted to the drug. Users of krokodil are attracted to the drug due to its low price; it is sold at 20 a gram while heroin is sold for 60. However, krokodil is considered more dangerous than heroin because it is often homemade, with ingredients including painkillers, iodine, lighter fluid and industrial cleaning agents. This chemical make-up makes the drug highly dangerous and likely to cause gangrene, and eventually rotting of the flesh

A total of 1,201 deaths involving heroin and/or morphine were recorded last year, and the 320 deaths involving cocaine that were registered in 2015 represented an almost 30 per cent increase on the 2014 total of 247.

The ONS figures also showed that 2,479 (67 per cent) of the drugs deaths registered in 2015 involved illegal drugs only  a 10 per cent increase on the corresponding 2014 total and the third year in a row that this figure has increased.

This rising death toll led Ms Eastwood to claim the Governments ideologically driven drugs policy was partly causing the increase in deaths.

She said: The shocking rise in drug misuse deaths for the third year running raises serious concerns about the Governments drug policy and the state of the drug treatment sector in this country.

Since 2010, we have seen a worrying implementation of abstinence-based treatment under the Governments ideologically-driven recovery agenda.

This goes against all the evidence for best practice in drug treatment, and is contributing, we believe, to this shameful rise in deaths. Such a hostile environment means people simply dont want to access treatment.

One example of the effect of current Government policy, she said, involved an increasing number of cases in recent years whereby people are being forced to reduce their opioid substitution therapy (OST) prescriptions, or indeed have had them removed altogether.

Ms Esastwood added: This is despite OST being well-evidenced in providing stability to peoples lives and it being a vital component of treating opioid dependence. Rapidly removing OST for those who need it can force people back to the black market and significantly increase the risk of death.

She said the push for people to be drug-free had been accompanied by a worrying cut in funding to community and treatment services nationally, which has impacted on the level of care being offered to an extremely vulnerable and marginalized group.

Government drugs policy was also criticised by Rose Humphries, of the Anyones Child families for safer drug control group, who lost her sons Roland and Jake to heroin when they were aged 23 and 37 respectively.

Ms Humphries, 70, a retired school governor from Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, said: Bitter experience has taught us that the current drugs policy doesnt work.

It didnt protect my children and it probably wont protect yours. If heroin had been legally regulated, when my son relapsed he could have had access to a clinic with a safe dose and counselling.

The ONS statistics were issued as an independent expert group convened by Public Health England and the Local Government Association issued a series of recommendations on how to tackle the rising death toll, including a call for improved access to good quality drug treatment.

Rosanna OConnor, Director of drugs, alcohol and tobacco at Public Health England, said: Drug use is the fourth most common cause of death for those aged 15-49 in England and we know that the majority of those dying from opiates have either never, or not recently, been in treatment.

Reassuringly, overall drug use has declined and treatment services have helped many people to recover, but there is a need for an enhanced effort to ensure the most vulnerable can access treatment.

The expert group said that the reasons for the rising death toll were complex, but could be linked to the an increasing purity of drugs like heroin and an ageing group of heroin users who have multiple physical and mental health problems.

Despite the recent ban on so-called legal highs, the experts also noted that deaths associated with new psychoactive substances  while still relatively low compared to fatalities caused by other substances  were increasing.

They concluded that legal high deaths may present a more significant problem in the future, especially as not enough is known about the long term effects of their use.
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Why are we asking this now?

Theresa May has revealed plans to create a new generation of grammar schools by scrapping a ban placed on them almost 20 years ago.

The plans would allow existing grammar schools in England to expand, and new ones to open.

What are grammar schools?

Grammar schools are state secondary schools which select students on the basis of ability. Students have to pass an exam when they are 11  called the 11-plus  to be admitted.

The modern grammar school concept was introduced by the Education Act in 1944, which enforced a division between primary and secondary schools, and further divided secondary schools into two main categories: grammar schools and secondary moderns.

Student who passed the 11-plus went to grammar schools, while students who failed the 11-plus went to secondary moderns.

The system effectively divided pupils into two types before their 12th birthday  those who were heading for university, and those who were not.

In 1965 a Labour government began the process of phasing out grammar schools. Eventually, in 1998 Tony Blair's government put an outright ban on new grammar schools being created.

As a result, comprehensive schools are now far more common than grammar schools in the UK state education system. In comprehensive schools pupils of all abilities are taught together and there are no academic entry requirements.

There are currently only about 163 grammar schools left in England, out of around 3,000 state secondary schools, with around 167,000 pupils between them. There are a further 69 grammar schools in Northern Ireland, but none in Wales or Scotland.

Why do some people want to bring grammar schools back?

Ms May said the longstanding ban on new selective schools has held bright poor children back.

Grammar schools are supposed to identify children who have the potential to do well, and separate them from children who are less academic and might hold others back, proponents say.

Ms May said students are currently being selected for schools by the area they live in, which gives an unfair advantage to students who live in affluent areas close to good comprehensive schools.

She said children's potential was being sacrificed for "dogma and ideology" under the current ban.

"The truth is that we already have selection in our school system  and its selection by house price, selection by wealth," she said. "That is simply unfair.

Ms May argued that grammar schools improve social mobility and reintroducing them would help make the country a true meritocracy.

The Education Secretar,y Justine Greening, has said. There will be no return to the simplistic, binary choice of the past, where schools separate children into winners and losers, successes or failures."

Why do others oppose them?

Many believe reintroducing grammar schools will do precisely the opposite of what Ms May and Ms Greening claim.

Labour say the plans will entrench inequality, and shadow Education Secretary Angela Rayner called the policy divisive, saying it would segregate children.

Ms Rayner criticised Ms May's evasive language, suggesting the truth of the matter is less palatable than Ms May is letting on. If youre going to say, theres bright kids and theres kids that are not that bright, and we need to segregate those kids,' then say it, Ms Rayner said.

A spokesperson for the Sutton Trust, an educational charity that supports underprivileged young people, said "the existing 163 grammars are largely very socially selective".

The 11-Plus has been criticised for including types of questions that are not taught in most state primary schools. As a result, students who have been to private primary schools or can afford private tuition tend to perform better in the test, whereas poorer students are disadvantaged.

Ofsted also attacked the plans, arguing the current system is improving and should not be put at risk.

The world's toughest school run Show all 5 1 /5 The world's toughest school run The world's toughest school run Children carry their schoolbags climb on a cliff on their way home in Zhaojue county in southwest China's Sichuan province Chinatopix/AP The world's toughest school run Children carry their schoolbags accompanied by adults climb on a cliff bu using ladder as they on their way home in Zhaojue county in southwest China's Sichuan province Chinatopix/AP The world's toughest school run A child carry her schoolbag looks as she takes a rest on a cliff as she and other children on their way back to home in Zhaojue county in southwest China's Sichuan province Chinatopix/AP The world's toughest school run A village in China's mountainous west where schoolchildren must climb an 800-meter (2,625-foot)-high bamboo ladder secured to a sheer cliff face may get a set of steel stairs to improve safety Chinatopix/AP The world's toughest school run Schoolchildren carry their schoolbags climb on a cliff on their way home in Zhaojue county in southwest China's Sichuan province Chinatopix/AP

Sir Michael Wilshaw, the Chief inspector of schools, said the system would only help a few children, at the expense of many others,

We will fail as a nation if we only get the top 15%-20% of our children achieving well, he said, adding the culture of all-ability schools would be negatively impacted if they lost their top 20 per cent of pupils.

We've got to, if we're going to compete with the best in the world, get many more children to achieve well in our schools," he said.

Other people have raised concerns about the pressure reintroducing the 11-plus could put on children, and the sense of failure 11-year-olds who fail the test would feel.

Critics argue it is not fair to effectively limit children's life choices on the basis of one exam taken at a very young age.
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A man has been captured on CCTV opening fire on a pedestrian with a sawn-off shotgun on a quiet residential street in Brixton, south London.

The footage - described as "chilling" by the Metropolitan Police - shows three men dressed in black walking down a road before one of them passes the weapon to another.

The gunman then appears to open fire on a man, aged 21, who is standing at the side of the road.

The victim, wearing a white shirt and jeans and holding a carrier bag, is seen turning back to the pavement and running down the street as the gunman fires at him.

He can then be seen leaping to the ground behind a parked car before getting back to his feet and running on.

Separate CCTV footage shows one of the hooded suspects later running with the gun and mounting a bicycle leaning against a wall before riding off, with his accomplices following behind on foot.

Footage from a third security camera shows the suspect riding the bike down a residential street and waving the gun at passersby while the other men run behind him.

A second male victim, aged 16, was also injured in the attack, according to the Metropolitan Police.

The 21-year-old suffered a punctured lung and serious damage to his windpipe while the 16-year-old, who was on his way to the library when he inadvertently crossed paths with the gunman, was shot in the arm.

Detective Constable Jo Ross, from Trident and Area Crime Command, said: The 21-year-old victim was fortunate to recover from what were potentially life-threatening injuries at the time of the incident.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 28 October 2022 A cosplayer attends the MCM Comic Con London 2022 at the ExCel Centre in London Reuters UK news in pictures 27 October 2022 98-year-old D-Day Veteran Bernard Morgan, whose story is among those featured on the giant poppy wall, during the launch of The Royal British Legion 2022 Poppy Appeal, at Hay's Galleria in central London PA UK news in pictures 26 October 2022 A meerkat explores a pumpkin in the enclosure at Wild Place, Bristol, where some of the animals are having pumpkin treats as part of their environmental enrichment PA UK news in pictures 25 October 2022 King Charles III welcomes Rishi Sunak during an audience at Buckingham Palace, where he invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative Party to become Prime Minister and form a new government PA UK news in pictures 24 October 2022 Rishi Sunak celebrates with Tory MPs outside the Conservative Campaign Headquarters after becoming the new leader of the Conservative Party Reuters UK news in pictures 23 October 2022 The Green Man at October Plenty, Borough Market's annual Autumn Harvest festival, in London, which returns for the first time post pandemic PA UK news in pictures 21 October 2022 Sculptor Peter McKenna puts the finishing touches to a pumpkin that will form part of the Planet A Hebden Bridge Pumpkin Trail in the West Yorkshire town PA UK news in pictures 20 October 2022 Britains Prime Minister Liz Truss delivers a speech outside of 10 Downing Street in central London to announce her resignation AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 19 October 2022 Salmon leap up Stainforth Force on the River Ribble in the Yorkshire Dales as they swim upriver to their spawning grounds during the annual Salmon migration PA UK news in pictures 18 October 2022 Just Stop Oil protesters continue their protest for a second day on the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, which links Kent and Essex and which remains closed for traffic, after it was scaled by two climbers from the group PA UK news in pictures 17 October 2022 Hundreds of students take part in the traditional Raisin Monday foam fight on St Salvator's Lower College Lawn at the University of St Andrews in Fife PA UK news in pictures 16 October 2022 A protester holds a placard during a march into central London at a demonstration by the climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 15 October 2022 A member of the public drags an activist who is blocking the road during a "Just Stop Oil" protest, in London, Britain REUTERS UK news in pictures 14 October 2022 Germanys Womens double skulls during day one of the World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals at Saundersfoot beach, Pembrokeshire PA UK news in pictures 13 October 2022 Family and mourners arrive at St Michael's Church, in Creeslough, for the funeral mass of 49-year-old mother of four Martina Martin, who died following an explosion at the Applegreen service station in the village of Creeslough in Co Donegal on Friday PA UK news in pictures 12 October 2022 Motorists in Coventry pass trees showing autumnal colour PA UK news in pictures 11 October 2022 A woman and her dog in the the North Sea at Tynemouth Longsands beach before sunrise PA UK news in pictures 10 October 2022 Police officers remove a campaigner from a Just Stop Oil protest on The Mall, near Buckingham Palace, London PA UK news in pictures 9 October 2022 A drummer plays during the Diwali on the Square celebration, in Trafalgar Square, London PA UK news in pictures 8 October 2022 Timothee Chalamet attending the UK premiere of Bones and All during the BFI London Film Festival 2022 at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London PA UK news in pictures 7 October 2022 Two young male fallow deer lock antlers in Dublins Phoenix park as rutting season begins PA UK news in pictures 6 October 2022 The Princess of Wales during a cocktail making competition during a visit to Trademarket, a new outdoor street-food and retail market situated in Belfast city centre, as part of the royal visit to Northern Ireland PA UK news in pictures 5 October 2022 Greenpeace protesters interrupt Prime Minister Liz Truss as she delivers her keynote speech to the Conservative Party annual conference PA UK news in pictures 4 October 2022 Prime Minister Liz Truss and Britains Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng wearing hard hats and hi-vis jackets, visit a construction site for a medical innovation campus in Birmingham AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 3 October 2022 British artist Sam Cox, aka Mr Doodle, reveals the Doodle House, a twelve-room mansion at Tenterden, in Kent, which has been covered, inside and out in the artist's trademark monochrome, cartoonish hand-drawn doodles PA UK news in pictures 2 October 2022 Erling Haaland celebrates after scoring Manchester City's second goal against Manchester United at Etihad Stadium. Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. The building was built in 1480 as a residential dwelling but has been a tearoom for over 50 years PA UK news in pictures 28 September 2022 Criminal barristers from the Criminal Bar Association (CBA), demonstrates outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, as part of their ongoing pay row with the Government PA UK news in pictures 27 September 2022 David White, Garter King of Arms, poses with an envelope franked with the new cypher of King Charles III 'CIIIR', after it was printed in the Court Post Office at Buckingham Palace in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 26 September 2022 A gallery staff member poses next to a painting by Lucian Freud - Self-portrait (Fragment), 1956 - on show at a photocall for the Credit Suisse exhibition - Lucian Freud: New Perspectives at the National Gallery in London PA UK news in pictures 25 September 2022 Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer is interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg in Liverpool before the start of the Labour Party annual Conference which he opened with a tribute to Queen Elizabeth II and sang the national anthem PA UK news in pictures 24 September 2022 Handout photo issued by Buckingham Palace of the ledger stone at the King George VI Memorial Chapel, St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 23 September 2022 A climate change activist protests against UK private jets while lighting his right arm on fire during the Laver Cup tennis tournament at the O2 Arena in London EPA UK news in pictures 22 September 2022 Woody Woodmansey, Lee Bennett, Kevin Armstrong, Nick Moran and Clifford Slapper attend the unveiling of a stone for David Bowie on the Music Walk of Fame at Camden, north London PA UK news in pictures 21 September 2022 A flock of birds in the sky as the sun rises over Dungeness in Kent PA UK news in pictures 20 September 2022 Flowers which were laid by members of the public in tribute to Queen Elizabeth II at Hillsborough Castle in Northern Ireland are collected by the Hillsborough Gardening Team and volunteers to be replanted for those that can be saved or composted PA UK news in pictures 19 September 2022 The ceremonial procession of the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II travels down the long walk as it arrives at Windsor Castle for the committal service at St Georges Chapel AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 18 September 2022 A man stands among campers on The Mall ahead of the Queens funeral Reuters UK news in pictures 17 September 2022 Wolverhampton Wanderers Nathan Collins fouls Manchester Citys Jack Grealish leading to a red card. City went on to win the match at Molineux Stadium three goals to nil. Action Images/Reuters UK news in pictures 16 September 2022 Members of the public stand in the queue near Tower Bridge, and opposite the Tower of London, as they wait in line to pay their respects to the late Queen Elizabeth II, in London AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 15 September 2022 Members of the public in the queue on in Potters Fields Park, central London, as they wait to view Queen Elizabeth II lying in state ahead of her funeral on Monday PA UK news in pictures 14 September 2022 The first members of the public pay their respects as the vigil begins around the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II in Westminster Hall, London, where it will lie in state ahead of her funeral on Monday PA UK news in pictures 13 September 2022 Crowds cheer as King Charles III and Camilla, Queen Consort arrive for a visit to Hillsborough Castle Getty UK news in pictures 12 September 2022 Crowds line the Royal Mile, Edinburgh, as King Charles III joins a procession from the Palace of Holyroodhouse to St Giles Cathedral following the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II Katielee Arrowsmith/SWNS UK news in pictures 11 September 2022 Members of the Public pay their respects as the hearse carrying the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II, draped in the Royal Standard of Scotland, is driven through Ballater AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 10 September 2022 Britain's Prince William, Prince of Wales, Britain's Catherine, Princess of Wales, Britain's Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, Britain's Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, wave at well-wishers on the Long walk at Windsor Castle AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 9 September 2022 King Charles III and Camilla, Queen Consort wave after viewing floral tributes to the late Queen Elizabeth II outside Buckingham Palace Getty UK news in pictures 8 September 2022 A screen commemorating Britain's Queen Elizabeth II in Piccadilly Circus, London Britain EPA

Other passersby were threatened by having a shotgun pointed at them - these are dangerous people.

We are keen for the public to give us any information in relation to this appeal, who witnessed the incident or who recognises the suspects. It happened in broad daylight and in an area full of schoolchildren.

The police ask anyone with information to contact police on 101 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.
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A nurse who celebrated her 83rd birthday last week said she has continued working for the NHS because she didnt want to retire.

Monica Bulman, who works in the endoscopy unit at Torbay Hospital in Devon, entered the profession 64 years ago at the age of 19.

The NHS has been a huge part of my life and I wouldnt want it any other way, she said.

I love my job, each and every part of it. Being a nurse brings me so much pleasure and keeps me on my toes.

Im always happy at work  I just dont have down days when Im at work, she added.

Ms Bulman, who is originally from Sailsbury and has three grandchildren, spends 15-20 hours each week in the ward.

And she has no plans to retire, saying she hopes to keep going for as long as I am able."

Monica Bulman in 1957, the year she qualified as a nurse (Torbay and South Devon Health and Care NHS Trust)

She started working as a State Enrolled Nurse at Eltham hospital in south London in 1952, just four years after the NHS was founded.

When she qualified as a State Registered Nurse, now known as a Registered General Nurse, in 1957, she received a salary of just 12 a month.

Over the years Ms Bulman, who turned 83 on 1 September, has seen many changes, including to the uniforms.

"Nursing has changed a lot over the years, especially the technology, which is wonderful - unless it breaks down," she said.

"Although we now have much more paperwork to complete, it is fantastic that with the technology we can now look up our patient's X-rays and test results at the click of a button, rather than having lengthy waits for the information.

"Another change that amuses me is that years ago the theatre nurses, who were all gowned up, had to manually thread the needles for surgery, whereas now these all come in packs, pre-threaded.

"The uniforms have also changed considerably although I have to admit I did prefer our old uniforms, they were much more glamorous.

"I bought a belt to wear with my uniform when I qualified in 1957 - I still have and wear the very same belt to this day."

83-year-old nurse Monica Bulman with her colleagues in the 1950s (Torbay and South Devon Health and Care NHS Trust)

After qualifying at St Johns hospital in north west London Mrs Bulman stayed there to work as a staff nurse as well as a theatre nurse until she left in 1959.

Since then, she worked at a number of different hospitals until moving in 1968 to Torquay with her husband Lesley, who passed away last year, and their two sons.

She worked at a nursing agency until 1978, when Ms Bulman started to work at Paignton Community Hospital in casualty as well as for outpatient departments.

Monica celebrating her 83rd birthday with her colleagues at Torbay Hospital (Torbay and South Devon Health and Care NHS Trust)

Reaching retirement age in 1998, she was asked to work casually as a 'bank' nurse at Torbay Hospital for a few weeks and nearly 20 years later she is yet to leave.

"My job has kept me going and helped me through some of the toughest times in my life, she said.

I don't know what I would have done without my colleagues and a job where I can dedicate myself to caring for others

Great Ormond Street Hospital's history Show all 10 1 /10 Great Ormond Street Hospital's history Great Ormond Street Hospital's history 'Treating rickets, 1920': This image of two children in protective eyewear in front of an ultraviolet screen was used in the 1930s to encourage donations to the hospital's redevelopment Great Ormond Street Hospital's history The Childrens Hospital School, which had opened with just one teacher, 1951 Great Ormond Street Hospital's history Staff and patients celebrate Christmas on Dresden Ward, which opened in 1893 after a large endowment from a London businessman Great Ormond Street Hospital's history 'Lady Folkestone cot, 1880s' shows a child in a bed with the name of the viscountess who sponsored her cot. The idea of cot sponsorship had begun just over a decade earlier, in 1868 Great Ormond Street Hospital's history Mrs Francis Willey, the hospitals first matron, appointed two months before GOSH opened, 1851 Great Ormond Street Hospital's history The hospitals nurses home, 1914 Great Ormond Street Hospital's history An operating theatre, circa 1930 Great Ormond Street Hospital's history Patients with lung conditions or infectious disease were wheeled on to the balcony for fresh air, 1920s. 'Images such as the balcony scene would have been used to show that the buildings were becoming antiquated and in need of replacement,' says Baldwin. 'The idea was to encourage people to donate towards maintenance, which was a constant concern.' Great Ormond Street Hospital's history The RAF Cranwell cot, funded from 1920 by a base in Lincolnshire Great Ormond Street Hospital's history GOSH acquired its first X-ray machine in 1903

Ms Bulman regularly attends the gym and spinning classes at Torbay Leisure Centre. She is also an avid reader as well as a keen member of a local skittles club.

She said: "I do like to keep fit and healthy, but I also like to be 'glam' - I enjoy going to my local beauty salon as well as doing all my hobbies.

"Most of all though I love spending time with my family and my grandchildren; this is what I enjoy the most."
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Jeremy Corbyn and Owen Smith have been told that Labours bitter election contest has made them both look unelectable and they should step aside for another candidate, as the pair clashed in a series of tetchy exchanges.

Appearing in a live television hustings, Mr Smith and Mr Corbyn were jeered in the opening minutes of BBC Ones Question Time programme  the penultimate debate in the leadership contest. While Mr Corbyn was told he had no support from the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP), Mr Smith was accused of wanting to split the party.

The squabbles have made the party look unelectable and both of you look unelectable, an audience member said. You should stand aside and let someone else, maybe Harriet Harman, somebody, just anybody, lead the party to victory.

One voter told the candidates I can't say my heart is beating for either side, while another bemoaned the state of the party.

After being asked by a member of the audience what they would do to make Jewish people feel safe in the Labour Party, Mr Smith, the former shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, said Shami Chakrabartis review of anti-Semitism in Labours ranks was viewed as inadequate by the Jewish community, and he would commission a new report.

The fractious event in Oldham consisted of an audience made up of people supporting both the Labour Party and other political parties, including Ukip, the Greens and Liberal Democrats. Among the Labour supporters, there was an even split of both Mr Smith and Mr Corbyn supporters.

The penultimate debate comes just two weeks before the Labour Party announces its next leader at a special conference in Liverpool. But many commentators are treating the race as a foregone conclusion, with Mr Corbyn, according to one poll, significantly ahead of his rival who has attempted to position himself as just as radical as the current leader.

When asked about the future of the party, Mr Corbyn said he had been talking to Labour MPs in recent weeks and believed they would turn their fire on the Conservatives after the contest. He added: "I think after the election is over and after the conference is over you will see the wish of MPs to reflect the wishes of party members all over the country that there is a coming together in order to oppose this Tory government."

Mr Smith, who ruled out serving in Mr Corbyns shadow Cabinet should lose the contest, repeated his claim that Labour would be out of power for a generation if the left-wing MP for Islington North remained at the helm of the deeply divided party.

He said: "I say to everybody in the Labour movement right now, it's in your hands, the choice is with you as to whether we want to be with Jeremy and in opposition, potentially for a generation, or start leading the way back to Labour being in power."
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Boris Johnson faced embarrassment as he confirmed he had abandoned his EU referendum promise to introduce points-based immigration curbs.

During the campaign, the now-Foreign Secretary vowed the Australian-style system would tackle immigration that was completely out of control and would neutralise the extremists on the toxic issue.

But, on Monday, Theresa May announced she had rejected the idea  despite it being the centrepiece of the Vote Leave campaign, backed by Mr Johnson.

Asked if he agreed, the Foreign Secretary said the important point was that immigration was curbed, not the exact form that control took.

He said: The crucial utensil that needs to be applied is, of course, control and you may remember there was a campaign on which the slogan was take back control.

That was the ambition and that is what we are going to do.

No 10 had already stressed that the decision had full Cabinet support, which suggested that Mr Johnson had stepped into line.

But the confirmation comes on the back of Ms May also refusing to stand by Vote Leave pledges on increased NHS spending and not to pay into the EU after Brexit.

After a meeting between British and Australian ministers in London, Mr Johnson spoke of a glutinous harmony between the two countries during the annual meeting.

Australia is keen to do a free-trade deal with the UK and the Foreign Secretary said he was very confident that an outline agreement can be reached.

This week, the Australian government has sent out mixed messages  Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull promising a very strong, very open trade deal with Britain, but trade minister Steven Ciobo dampened hopes of a swift deal.

Mr Ciobo described his countrys historical tie with the UK as a relationship of yesteryear, insisting formal negotiations could not begin until the UK had finally left the EU.

Mr Johnson said: Im very confident that we will be able to at least sketch out, pencil in, the essentials of a very progressive deal that will be good for Australia, good for the UK, good for Europe and good for the world.
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Only China can stop North Korea carrying out further nuclear tests, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said  appearing to admit the West has little leverage.

Speaking after the Communist state carried out its largest atomic test to date, Mr Johnson conceded that the current strategy to curb Kim Jong-un's regime did not appear to be working.

At a press conference, he went further than his immediate statement that the overnight test was a flagrant violation of UN rules which demanded a robust response.

Standing alongside his Australian counterpart, Mr Johnson said: This is a chronic problem and it is intensifying.

We have now seen a couple in the last year, which suggests, worryingly, that the technology that the North Koreans have access to is improving and we need to think how to calibrate our response and what the right response should be.

Asked if the UK should start talking to North Korea, he said: At the moment, we are still looking at security council resolutions and the strongest possible condemnation.

But I think its no secret to you, or the world, that there is only one country that really has influence on North Korea and that, of course, is China.

So we very much hope that the Chinese will use their good offices to get over to the North Koreans that this cannot go on, that this is unacceptable and these detonations must cease.

The higher level test - branded an act of fanatic recklessness by South Korea  showed the regimes nuclear programme continuing, despite repeated international sanctions.

Kim Jong-un inspects military exercises and missile launch Show all 11 1 /11 Kim Jong-un inspects military exercises and missile launch Kim Jong-un inspects military exercises and missile launch The North Korean leader inspects a missile launch from a safe distance Kim Jong-un inspects military exercises and missile launch Kim Jong-un discusses plans with military leaders Kim Jong-un inspects military exercises and missile launch A ballistic rocket of the type launched by the DPRK in defiance of UN sanctions Kim Jong-un inspects military exercises and missile launch UN officials tracked two ballistic missile launches from North Korea on Friday 18 March Kim Jong-un inspects military exercises and missile launch The Supreme Leader laughed with officials as the missiles were fired Kim Jong-un inspects military exercises and missile launch Kim Jong-un was also pictured observing military exercises Kim Jong-un inspects military exercises and missile launch Tanks fire missiles during military manoeuvres at an undisclosed location Kim Jong-un inspects military exercises and missile launch The exercises are timed to coincide with military drills by the US and South Korea Kim Jong-un inspects military exercises and missile launch As well as a tank-driving competition, amphibious craft carried out landing and anti-landing exercises Kim Jong-un inspects military exercises and missile launch Including paramilitary reserves, the North Korean army is the largest in the world Kim Jong-un inspects military exercises and missile launch The Supreme Leader appeared pleased with the show of force

In a statement through state-run media, North Korea said a test had finally examined and confirmed the structure and specific features of movement of ... a nuclear warhead that has been standardised to be able to be mounted on strategic ballistic rockets.

The standardisation of the nuclear warhead will enable (North Korea) to produce at will and as many as it wants a variety of smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear warheads of higher strike power.

This has definitely put on a higher level (the North's) technology of mounting nuclear warheads on ballistic rockets.

The latest test was announced on state TV hours after a 5.3 magnitude tremor was detected near the Punggye-ri underground nuclear site.

Japan called North Korea an outlaw nation and the US warned of serious consequences.

Mr Johnson spoke after holding talks in London with Julie Bishop, the Australian Foreign Minister.
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The UK risks breaking up unless all home nations play a hands-on role in the Brexit negotiations, Wales's First Minister Carwyn Jones has warned.

This week Prime Minister Theresa May has vowed she will not be giving a running commentary on her Government's plans about leaving the European Union. But Welsh Labour leader Mr Jones believes that talks will fail if they just end up being a two-way dialogue between Brussels and London.

The former barrister, who is on a trade mission in the US, will speak about Britain's vote to leave the EU at a speech in Chicago. He is expected to say: Wales and the other devolved nations must play a full and active role in the negotiations to leave the EU, to ensure our interests are fully protected. Cardiff, Edinburgh and Belfast must also have seats at the table.

Whatever deal is finally negotiated, its acceptance should be subject to the support of the four Parliaments that now legislate for the UK. There can be no return to the old constitutional status quo, where the United Kingdom was one of the most centralised states in the developed world. We have to embrace the new reality with fresh constitutional thinking if our British Union is to survive the new tensions created by EU exit.

Unless we take this seriously, nothing - up to and including the break-up of the UK into its component parts - would be inconceivable.

 Theresa May questioned on single market

Earlier this week, Ms May insisted the UK could become a global leader in free trade once the country had left the EU. But the Conservative leader said Britain should not reveal its hand prematurely about the process and any possible trade deals - including details of its preliminary discussions with Australia.

The desire to keep the country's cards close its chest has prompted criticism from political rivals - including Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon. The SNP leader expressed concern of there being a cloud of secrecy around the UK Government's Brexit negotiations plans and called for greater transparency.

Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has expressed concern of there being a cloud of secrecy around the Government's Brexit negotiations plans (PA)

Now Wales's First Minister Mr Jones is to make similar calls when he addresses an audience at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. He is expected to say that his Government will not give consent to any Brexit deal unless the UK secures continued access to the European single market.

Brexit reactions  in pictures Show all 10 1 /10 Brexit reactions  in pictures Brexit reactions  in pictures Supporters of the Stronger In campaign look at their phones after hearing results in the EU referendum at London's Royal Festival Hall AP Brexit reactions  in pictures Leave supporters cheer results at a Leave.eu party after polling stations closed in the Referendum on the European Union in London Reuters Brexit reactions  in pictures Mr Cameron announces his resignation to supporters Getty Brexit reactions  in pictures Donald Tusk proposes that the 27 remaining EU member states start a wider reflection on the future of our union Getty Brexit reactions  in pictures Ukip leader Nigel Farage greets his supporters on College Green in Westminster, after Britain voted to leave the European Union PA Brexit reactions  in pictures Supporters of the Stronger In Campaign react as referendum results are announced today Getty Brexit reactions  in pictures Boris Johnson leaves his home today to discover a crowd of waiting journalists and police officers Getty Brexit reactions  in pictures Leave EU supporters celebrate as they watch the British EU Referendum results being televised at Millbank Tower in London Rex Brexit reactions  in pictures Supporters of the Stronger In Campaign react as results of the EU referendum are announced at the Royal Festival Hall Reuters Brexit reactions  in pictures Supporters of the Stronger In campaign react after hearing results in the EU referendum at London's Royal Festival Hall PA

It is absolutely vital that when we leave the EU, the United Kingdom must retain access to the single market, he will say. Without that guarantee, we risk inflicting needless economic harm on our country, and on our citizens.

PA
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Plans for new grammar schools will mean the return of discredited secondary moderns as well, schools chief inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw warned today.

The outgoing head of Ofsted let rip at Theresa Mays decision to forge ahead with the controversial policy which will open the floodgates to many more grammar schools.

In her first domestic speech as Prime Minister today, Ms May will vow to reverse the ban on the creation of new grammar schools put in place by Tony Blairs Government in 1998.

She will announce new selective schools will be allowed to open and existing schools given the opportunity to become grammars, insisting it will help in making this country a true meritocracy - a country that works for everyone.

In an interview today, Education Secretary Justine Greening  thought to be sceptical about the policy  argued only grammar schools could ensure pupils were academically stretched.

But Sir Michael, who is about to retire, told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme that the revolution would be going backwards and putting 20 years of progress in education policy at risk.

He said: We will fail as a nation if we only get the top 15% to 20% of our children achieving well.

We've got to, if we're going to compete with the best in the world, get many more children to achieve well in our schools.

My fear is that by dividing children at 11 and by creating grammars and secondary moderns - because that's what we'll do - that we won't be able to achieve that ambition.

Sir Michael warned, from his experience as a head teacher, of the damage that would be done to existing, successful all-ability schools if they lost their top 20% of pupils  thus turning them into old-style secondary moderns.

But Ms Greening hit back, insisting parents would get more choice, dismissing critics who say that, in selective schools, it is the school  not the parents  that does the choosing.

And she pointed out that schools are already able to select a proportion of their pupils on the basis of their aptitude in sport, music or the arts.

Ms Greening said: This is not about going backwards, this is about a 21st century education system.

Parents want choice for their children. There are some children that want and need to be academically stretched.

This is not a return to secondary modern schools which, for a long period of time, did not even set an exam for children as they finished their education in them.

The Education Secretary said existing grammar schools were stuck in the past by not admitting more pupils from poorer backgrounds.
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Nigel Farage has apparently been offered his own show on Russian television.

Kremlin-backed broadcaster RT, formerly known as Russia Today, has entered talks with a range of outspoken public figures.

The TV station is looking to improve its English-language output in time for the US presidential elections in November and is thought to have also started negotiations with columnist Katie Hopkins, the Telegraph reported.

Reports suggest Mr Farage has discussed a wide range of options including working as a reporter during the White House election, according to The Week.

Mr Farage, who has appeared regularly on the station, has said that an agreement has not yet been made.

Ive appeared on RT occasionally. They are a broadcaster with an audience. They may well have a political agenda, but you cant ignore them, he told the Telegraph.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

The pro-Moscow broadcaster is thought to have also been in talks with Russell Brand to move his YouTube series, The Trews, over to their channel.
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Theresa May faces her first Tory revolt after a former Education Secretary became the latest Conservative MP to attack her plans to unleash a new generation of grammar schools across England.

Nicky Morgan joined other Tories voicing concern over the controversial proposals by warning the Prime Minister she risks undermining years of progress by opening new grammars.

Another Conservative MP said Ms Mays plan to re-introduce the schools could lead to a divisive system and put the clock back on education.

Two other Conservatives already questioned the policy in the Commons, while another has said she will vote against part of the proposals relaxing rules on faith schools.

Signs of dissent appeared within hours of Ms Mays speech in central London, in which she confirmed she would allow new grammars to open and existing ones to expand as long as they undertook measures to help children from low-income families.

It was a major about-turn for her party, whose former leader David Cameron was unequivocal on how grammar schools had always been wrong. For Ms Morgan the new approach went too far.

 Theresa May defends grammar school plans

She posted on Facebook: I believe that an increase in pupil segregation on the basis of academic selection would be at best a distraction from crucial reforms to raise standards and narrow the attainment gap and at worse risk actively undermining six years of progressive education reform.

The evidence is now incontrovertibly clear that a rigorous academic education does not need to be the preserve of the few.

One supporter of Ms May suggested Ms Morgans opposition was expected  she was a member of Mr Camerons circle, who supported Michael Gove in the leadership contest and was sacked by the new Prime Minister.

Elitist Britain: Run by the privately educated Show all 7 1 /7 Elitist Britain: Run by the privately educated Elitist Britain: Run by the privately educated MPs Hardly a surprise: One in three (33 per cent) of MPs went to private school, compared to seven per cent of the public. This includes 52 per cent of Conservatives, 41 per cent of Liberal Democrats, and 10 per cent of Labour MPs PA Wire Elitist Britain: Run by the privately educated The media More than half of the top 100 media professionals (54 per cent) are privately educated, compared to 47 per cent in 1986. Half of them went to Oxbridge, while two thirds of new entrants to journalism have managerial and professional family backgrounds Getty Elitist Britain: Run by the privately educated Judges Although the Government is committed to ensuring a more diverse judiciary, seven in 10 senior judges went to independent schools Rex Features Elitist Britain: Run by the privately educated The England cricket team A large percentage of England's cricket team is privately educated: 33 per cent PA Elitist Britain: Run by the privately educated BBC executives 26 per cent of BBC executives went to private school. Getty Elitist Britain: Run by the privately educated Civil Service Over half (57 per cent) of Whitehall permanent secretaries are Oxbridge educated, while 11 per cent went to comprehensive schools Getty Elitist Britain: Run by the privately educated House of Lords Although it doesn't seem possible, the House of Lords is even more dominated by the elite than the Commons: two thirds of Conservative peers, half of Labour, and 62 per cent of crossbenchers attended an independent school. A miserable 12 per cent went to a comprehensive AFP/Getty

But she was not the only one raising concerns about what could turn out to be the biggest education reforms in a fifty years. Redditch MP Karen Lumley said: I went to a grammar school, and it certainly wasnt for me.

I took the 11-plus and was in the bottom quartile. Nobody moved in or out while I was at school and so I remained at the bottom of the pile. I hated it and left as soon as I took my exams and got a job. I am very sceptical about the idea that poor children will benefit from a return to grammar schools.

This could lead to a divisive system and put the clock back on education, negating much of the great progress we have made over the last few years.

Speaking in the Commons, New Forest West MP Desmond Swayne said he did not relish the prospect of informing parents whose children failed the 11-plus exam that their sons and daughters would have to be bussed to other schools.

Neil Carmichael, the Conservative Stroud MP who chairs the Education Select Committee, warned the discussion on grammars could distract us from our fundamental task of improving social mobility.

He said the government should ensure that we make the best use of all the talent across the whole country and do not just talk about the few.

Ms May only has a working majority of 17 in the House of Commons making her plans vulnerable to defeat. In the Lords the Tories are already in a minority, against an opposition made up largely of Labour and Lib Dem peers who oppose her reforms.

One Tory peer, former education minister David Willets, has already spoken out against Ms Mays plans, saying evidence suggested they fail to help disadvantaged children.

He said: If you look overall, not just in Britain but around the world, at those school systems we admire that have got high performance and high standards, from Shanghai to Finland, by and large they dont put their effort into trying to pick which kids they educate. They put their effort into raising standards for all the kids.

Ms May also confirmed proposals to redraw rules restricting the proportion of children that faith schools take from their chosen religion to 50 per cent.

She argued that existing regulation only really impacted on largely oversubscribed and successful Catholic schools.

Tory MP Sarah Wollaston said: I strongly oppose 100 per cent faith schools and will be voting against religious segregation of our children.

She added on Twitter: 100 per cent faith schools can have nothing to contribute to a more integrated and cohesive society.
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Theresa May is to make her first major policy announcement in giving a green-light to a new generation of selective grammar schools, despite critics claiming they entrench privilege.

Ms May will allow new grammar schools to open and let existing ones expand in one of the biggest shifts in education policy in a generation.

In a bid to pre-empt claims the schools embed elitism, she will tout a series of measures aimed at ensuring they help children from low income families.

Her education proposals will also see social-mobility demands placed on universities wanting to charge higher tuition fees.

She will set out her agenda in her first major domestic speech as Prime Minister, arguing that grammar schools will create a true meritocracy and stop the selection by house price that exists in the UKs education system.

For days as the Government has hinted at the move, political opponents and education organisations urged ministers against it, citing data that it could harm social mobility.

But speaking at the British Academy in central London, Ms May will highlight how there are currently 1.25 million children in failing schools.

She will say: For too long we have tolerated a system that contains an arbitrary rule preventing selective schools from being established, sacrificing childrens potential because of dogma and ideology.

The truth is that we already have selection in our school system  and its selection by house price, selection by wealth. That is simply unfair.

That is why I am announcing an ambitious package of education reforms to ensure that every child has the chance to go to a good school.

She will add: This is about being unapologetic for our belief in social mobility and making this country a true meritocracy, a country that works for everyone.

Ministers will consult on proposals, including requiring new or expanding grammars to take a proportion of pupils from lower income households.

Each grammar would also have to establish a new non-selective free school and set up or sponsor a primary feeder school in an area with a high density of lower income households.

Alternatively they could sponsor a currently-underperforming non-selective academy.

The Prime Minister will also say universities who want to charge higher fees should be required to set up a new school or sponsor an existing underperforming one.

An education Green Paper expected to be published next week, but leaked to the BBC, is also thought to include a relaxation of rules limiting faith schools from only selecting half of their intake by reference to religion.

The measure was implemented as a safeguard against faith schools entrenching religious segregation in society. Instead they may be allowed to undertake other activity to that end.

The idea of new grammars has been criticised by Teach First, an educational charity praised by the Government, which places graduates to work in deprived schools.

The Association of Teachers and Lecturers have called the plan a massive distraction from the real issues facing our education system.

Former Labour minister Alan Milburn, the Governments social mobility tsar, said ending the ban on grammar schools risked creating an us and them divide.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 28 October 2022 A cosplayer attends the MCM Comic Con London 2022 at the ExCel Centre in London Reuters UK news in pictures 27 October 2022 98-year-old D-Day Veteran Bernard Morgan, whose story is among those featured on the giant poppy wall, during the launch of The Royal British Legion 2022 Poppy Appeal, at Hay's Galleria in central London PA UK news in pictures 26 October 2022 A meerkat explores a pumpkin in the enclosure at Wild Place, Bristol, where some of the animals are having pumpkin treats as part of their environmental enrichment PA UK news in pictures 25 October 2022 King Charles III welcomes Rishi Sunak during an audience at Buckingham Palace, where he invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative Party to become Prime Minister and form a new government PA UK news in pictures 24 October 2022 Rishi Sunak celebrates with Tory MPs outside the Conservative Campaign Headquarters after becoming the new leader of the Conservative Party Reuters UK news in pictures 23 October 2022 The Green Man at October Plenty, Borough Market's annual Autumn Harvest festival, in London, which returns for the first time post pandemic PA UK news in pictures 21 October 2022 Sculptor Peter McKenna puts the finishing touches to a pumpkin that will form part of the Planet A Hebden Bridge Pumpkin Trail in the West Yorkshire town PA UK news in pictures 20 October 2022 Britains Prime Minister Liz Truss delivers a speech outside of 10 Downing Street in central London to announce her resignation AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 19 October 2022 Salmon leap up Stainforth Force on the River Ribble in the Yorkshire Dales as they swim upriver to their spawning grounds during the annual Salmon migration PA UK news in pictures 18 October 2022 Just Stop Oil protesters continue their protest for a second day on the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, which links Kent and Essex and which remains closed for traffic, after it was scaled by two climbers from the group PA UK news in pictures 17 October 2022 Hundreds of students take part in the traditional Raisin Monday foam fight on St Salvator's Lower College Lawn at the University of St Andrews in Fife PA UK news in pictures 16 October 2022 A protester holds a placard during a march into central London at a demonstration by the climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 15 October 2022 A member of the public drags an activist who is blocking the road during a "Just Stop Oil" protest, in London, Britain REUTERS UK news in pictures 14 October 2022 Germanys Womens double skulls during day one of the World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals at Saundersfoot beach, Pembrokeshire PA UK news in pictures 13 October 2022 Family and mourners arrive at St Michael's Church, in Creeslough, for the funeral mass of 49-year-old mother of four Martina Martin, who died following an explosion at the Applegreen service station in the village of Creeslough in Co Donegal on Friday PA UK news in pictures 12 October 2022 Motorists in Coventry pass trees showing autumnal colour PA UK news in pictures 11 October 2022 A woman and her dog in the the North Sea at Tynemouth Longsands beach before sunrise PA UK news in pictures 10 October 2022 Police officers remove a campaigner from a Just Stop Oil protest on The Mall, near Buckingham Palace, London PA UK news in pictures 9 October 2022 A drummer plays during the Diwali on the Square celebration, in Trafalgar Square, London PA UK news in pictures 8 October 2022 Timothee Chalamet attending the UK premiere of Bones and All during the BFI London Film Festival 2022 at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London PA UK news in pictures 7 October 2022 Two young male fallow deer lock antlers in Dublins Phoenix park as rutting season begins PA UK news in pictures 6 October 2022 The Princess of Wales during a cocktail making competition during a visit to Trademarket, a new outdoor street-food and retail market situated in Belfast city centre, as part of the royal visit to Northern Ireland PA UK news in pictures 5 October 2022 Greenpeace protesters interrupt Prime Minister Liz Truss as she delivers her keynote speech to the Conservative Party annual conference PA UK news in pictures 4 October 2022 Prime Minister Liz Truss and Britains Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng wearing hard hats and hi-vis jackets, visit a construction site for a medical innovation campus in Birmingham AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 3 October 2022 British artist Sam Cox, aka Mr Doodle, reveals the Doodle House, a twelve-room mansion at Tenterden, in Kent, which has been covered, inside and out in the artist's trademark monochrome, cartoonish hand-drawn doodles PA UK news in pictures 2 October 2022 Erling Haaland celebrates after scoring Manchester City's second goal against Manchester United at Etihad Stadium. Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. The building was built in 1480 as a residential dwelling but has been a tearoom for over 50 years PA UK news in pictures 28 September 2022 Criminal barristers from the Criminal Bar Association (CBA), demonstrates outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, as part of their ongoing pay row with the Government PA UK news in pictures 27 September 2022 David White, Garter King of Arms, poses with an envelope franked with the new cypher of King Charles III 'CIIIR', after it was printed in the Court Post Office at Buckingham Palace in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 26 September 2022 A gallery staff member poses next to a painting by Lucian Freud - Self-portrait (Fragment), 1956 - on show at a photocall for the Credit Suisse exhibition - Lucian Freud: New Perspectives at the National Gallery in London PA UK news in pictures 25 September 2022 Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer is interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg in Liverpool before the start of the Labour Party annual Conference which he opened with a tribute to Queen Elizabeth II and sang the national anthem PA UK news in pictures 24 September 2022 Handout photo issued by Buckingham Palace of the ledger stone at the King George VI Memorial Chapel, St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 23 September 2022 A climate change activist protests against UK private jets while lighting his right arm on fire during the Laver Cup tennis tournament at the O2 Arena in London EPA UK news in pictures 22 September 2022 Woody Woodmansey, Lee Bennett, Kevin Armstrong, Nick Moran and Clifford Slapper attend the unveiling of a stone for David Bowie on the Music Walk of Fame at Camden, north London PA UK news in pictures 21 September 2022 A flock of birds in the sky as the sun rises over Dungeness in Kent PA UK news in pictures 20 September 2022 Flowers which were laid by members of the public in tribute to Queen Elizabeth II at Hillsborough Castle in Northern Ireland are collected by the Hillsborough Gardening Team and volunteers to be replanted for those that can be saved or composted PA UK news in pictures 19 September 2022 The ceremonial procession of the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II travels down the long walk as it arrives at Windsor Castle for the committal service at St Georges Chapel AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 18 September 2022 A man stands among campers on The Mall ahead of the Queens funeral Reuters UK news in pictures 17 September 2022 Wolverhampton Wanderers Nathan Collins fouls Manchester Citys Jack Grealish leading to a red card. City went on to win the match at Molineux Stadium three goals to nil. Action Images/Reuters UK news in pictures 16 September 2022 Members of the public stand in the queue near Tower Bridge, and opposite the Tower of London, as they wait in line to pay their respects to the late Queen Elizabeth II, in London AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 15 September 2022 Members of the public in the queue on in Potters Fields Park, central London, as they wait to view Queen Elizabeth II lying in state ahead of her funeral on Monday PA UK news in pictures 14 September 2022 The first members of the public pay their respects as the vigil begins around the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II in Westminster Hall, London, where it will lie in state ahead of her funeral on Monday PA UK news in pictures 13 September 2022 Crowds cheer as King Charles III and Camilla, Queen Consort arrive for a visit to Hillsborough Castle Getty UK news in pictures 12 September 2022 Crowds line the Royal Mile, Edinburgh, as King Charles III joins a procession from the Palace of Holyroodhouse to St Giles Cathedral following the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II Katielee Arrowsmith/SWNS UK news in pictures 11 September 2022 Members of the Public pay their respects as the hearse carrying the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II, draped in the Royal Standard of Scotland, is driven through Ballater AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 10 September 2022 Britain's Prince William, Prince of Wales, Britain's Catherine, Princess of Wales, Britain's Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, Britain's Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, wave at well-wishers on the Long walk at Windsor Castle AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 9 September 2022 King Charles III and Camilla, Queen Consort wave after viewing floral tributes to the late Queen Elizabeth II outside Buckingham Palace Getty UK news in pictures 8 September 2022 A screen commemorating Britain's Queen Elizabeth II in Piccadilly Circus, London Britain EPA

Both the Liberal Democrats and Labour are opposed to the move, raising questions over whether the Government will be able to pass legislation on the matter through the House of Lords.

A study by the Institute of Fiscal Studies showed that the existing 164 grammars in the UK are four times more likely to admit private school children than those on free school meals.
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Theresa May has called her counterpart in Poland to express "deep regret" over race-hate attacks on Polish citizens living in the UK.

Downign Street said Ms May told Beata Szydlo that "hate crime has no place in UK society" after Poles fell victim to a series of incidents since Britain voted to leave the EU, including one which left a man dead.

The Polish Embassy in London said its consuls have intervened 15 times in recent weeks over reports of xenophobic incidents.

A Number 10 spokesman said: "The Prime Minister called Prime Minister Szydlo this afternoon to express her deep regret at recent attacks on Polish citizens in the UK.

"Prime Minister Szydlo thanked her for the continuing support of the British authorities and expressed her gratitude that the home secretary and foreign secretary had received their Polish counterparts in London this week to discuss the incidents.

Brexit racism and the fightback Show all 9 1 /9 Brexit racism and the fightback Brexit racism and the fightback Demonstrators protest against an increase in post-ref racism at London's March for Europe in July 2016 PA Brexit racism and the fightback These cards were found near a school in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, the day after the EU referendum Twitter/@howgilb Brexit racism and the fightback Getty Brexit racism and the fightback Romford, Essex, June 25 @diamondgeezer Brexit racism and the fightback A worker at this Romanian food shop was asleep upstairs at the time of this arson attack in Norwich on July 8, but escaped unharmed. Hundreds later participated in a love bombing rally outside the shop to express their opposition to racism and their support of the shop owners. JustGiving/Helen Linehan Brexit racism and the fightback This neo-Nazi sticker was spotted in Glasgow on June 26 Courtesy of Eoin Palmer Brexit racism and the fightback But after news emerged of neo-Nazi stickers appearing in Glasgow, some in the city struck back with slogans of their own. Courtesy of Eoin Palmer Brexit racism and the fightback Getty Brexit racism and the fightback More signs began to appear in some parts of the UK, created by people who wanted to show their opposition to post-referendum racism Courtesy of Bernadette Russell

"The Prime Minister reiterated that hate crime has no place in UK society, highlighting the action that both the Government and the police are taking.

"She updated Prime Minister Szydlo on the UK's new Hate Crime Action Plan and the UK-hosted event at the 26 September OSCE meeting in Warsaw."

Attacks on Polish citizens include the killing of Arkadiusz Jozwik in Harlow, Essex, and the assault of two Polish men within hours of a vigil following his death.

The discussions between the two leaders came after Home Secretary Amber Rudd and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson also held talks with their counterparts on Monday.
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Theresa May has launched a scathing attack on big private schools by claiming they are divorced from normal life, as she set out sweeping education reforms.

The Prime Minister said she will make them justify the huge tax breaks they receive by setting up and running state schools and ensuring their success.

Her words were part of an audacious bid to grab the political centre-ground, presenting herself as a social reformer who will act on behalf of the working class.

She also developed her plans to massively expand the number of selective grammar schools, by saying children who do not pass an 11-plus exam will still be able to move into them later in their education if they perform well.

Only this morning chief inspector of schools Sir Michael Wilshaw warned that bringing back grammars would be going backwards and mean the de-facto return of the much-hated secondary moderns.

Mrs May had already revealed she planned to roll new grammar schools out across the country, sparking a backlash from education charities and unions.

But her speech today revealed the move is a key part of a much wider agenda for her administration.

Elitist Britain: Run by the privately educated Show all 7 1 /7 Elitist Britain: Run by the privately educated Elitist Britain: Run by the privately educated MPs Hardly a surprise: One in three (33 per cent) of MPs went to private school, compared to seven per cent of the public. This includes 52 per cent of Conservatives, 41 per cent of Liberal Democrats, and 10 per cent of Labour MPs PA Wire Elitist Britain: Run by the privately educated The media More than half of the top 100 media professionals (54 per cent) are privately educated, compared to 47 per cent in 1986. Half of them went to Oxbridge, while two thirds of new entrants to journalism have managerial and professional family backgrounds Getty Elitist Britain: Run by the privately educated Judges Although the Government is committed to ensuring a more diverse judiciary, seven in 10 senior judges went to independent schools Rex Features Elitist Britain: Run by the privately educated The England cricket team A large percentage of England's cricket team is privately educated: 33 per cent PA Elitist Britain: Run by the privately educated BBC executives 26 per cent of BBC executives went to private school. Getty Elitist Britain: Run by the privately educated Civil Service Over half (57 per cent) of Whitehall permanent secretaries are Oxbridge educated, while 11 per cent went to comprehensive schools Getty Elitist Britain: Run by the privately educated House of Lords Although it doesn't seem possible, the House of Lords is even more dominated by the elite than the Commons: two thirds of Conservative peers, half of Labour, and 62 per cent of crossbenchers attended an independent school. A miserable 12 per cent went to a comprehensive AFP/Getty

It was a direct pitch to exactly the kind of voters the Tory party needs to win elections, lower middle class people who cannot afford private schools and working class people who do not qualify for state support  those who ex-Labour Leader Ed Miliband once called the squeezed middle.

Mrs Mays speech was laced with language about creating a great meritocracy and helping those just getting by.

It even mirrored some Ukip rhetoric, attacking a distant and irresponsible elite behind the 2008 crash, that has gained the anti-EU party ground in Labours northern heartlands.

In a key moment, aimed at showing she is not afraid of taking on the establishment, Mrs May said: Most of the major public schools started out as the route by which poor boys could reach the professions.

The nature of their intake may have changed today  indeed these schools have become more and more divorced from normal life.

 Theresa May Gives Maiden Speech Outside Downing Street as new PM

Between 2010 and 2015 their fees rose four times faster than average earnings growth, while the percentage of their pupils who come from overseas has gone up by 33% since 2008.

The attack, which Eton-educated David Cameron could not have credibly made, was followed by a pledge that big private schools will have to sponsor or set up a new government-funded school in the state sector, and take responsibility for running it and ensuring its success.

They may also have to fund places within their own schools for children who cannot afford the fees.

Announcing her plan to expand the number of grammars, she then sought to address concerns over selection at age 11.

She said: We will demand that new grammars make the most of their freedom to be flexible over how students move between schools, encouraging this to happen at different ages such as 14 and 16 as well as 11.

The Prime Minister will hope that the focus on help for working class pupils will also help her pass the reforms through Parliament, where she faces a minority in the House of Lords. Both Labour and Liberal Democrat politicians have signalled their opposition to her policy.

Mrs May also confirmed proposals to redraw rules restricting the proportion of children that faith schools take from their chosen religion to 50%.

She argued that existing regulation only really impacted on largely over-subscribed and successful Catholic schools.

The Prime Minister said: This is especially frustrating because existing Catholic schools are more ethnically diverse than other faith schools, more likely to be located in deprived communitiesand there is growing demand for them.

School inspector Sir Michael, who is about to retire, told BBC radio that selection would be going backwards and putting 20 years of progress in education policy at risk.

He said: We will fail as a nation if we only get the top 15% to 20% of our children achieving well.

We've got to, if we're going to compete with the best in the world, get many more children to achieve well in our schools.

My fear is that by dividing children at 11 and by creating grammars and secondary moderns - because that's what we'll do - that we won't be able to achieve that ambition.

Following Mrs Mays speech, Sir Peter Lampl, chairman of the Sutton Trust and Education Endowment Foundation, said: Sutton Trust research has shown the existing grammar schools to be highly socially selective, mainly because of private tuition and prep schools for those who can afford them.

The government should ensure that existing grammar schools get it right before opening more grammar schools.
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The Unite union has defended giving its leader, Len McCluskey, 400,000 to help him buy a central London flat as extraordinarily commonplace.

Britains biggest union came under fire after it emerged it put forward 60 per cent of the cost of the 700,000 property, just south of the river Thames, in February this year.

One union insider said there would be much disquiet over the arrangement, at a time when many of Unite's members are struggling, according to The Guardian.

But Howard Beckett, executive director for legal services at Unite, insisted its agreement with Mr McCluskey was not a loan, but an equity share arrangement  which was often used to help general secretaries buy homes in London.

And he insisted the deal would raise more money for Unites members when the property was eventually sold.

The union's equitable interest in the property was 60 per cent, with a requirement that the property must be sold 12 months after 66-year-old Mr McCluskeys employment finishes.

The union's entire equity interest in the property must be repaid at the time of sale and would be bolstered by any increase in price.

Mr Beckett said: The agreement is extraordinarily commonplace. Unions have put such measures in place for senior officers for decades.

The intention is to best facilitate the performance of roles that are London-based whilst ensuring the union's finances are best invested and receive a return on the properties concerned.

This is commonplace across the entire union movement and, frankly, if parliament adopted a similar approach to MPs, we would all have avoided the expenses scandal.

Unite is the Labour party's biggest donor and Mr McCluskey is backing Jeremy Corbyn's campaign to defeat Owen Smith for the leadership.

According to Land Registry documents, he became the registered owner of the 695,500 flat in February. Unite paid 417,300 towards the flat and signed the agreement with its leader.

At the age of 66, the Unite chief is likely to have struggled to raise a conventional mortgage for such a property.
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The father of the 19-year-old man accused of beating and stabbing a Florida couple to death  before gnawing on the male victims face  said that his son showed psychotic symptoms two weeks before the alleged attack.

Speaking on Dr Phil, Wade Harrouff said he believed his son, Austin, suffered a psychotic episode before his rampage that ended with the deaths of John Stevens, 59, and Michelle Mishcon, 53, outside the couples home in Tequesta.

Hes had the symptoms for about two weeks prior, he told Phil McGraw this week. I just thought hed snap out of it. He went from a happy person to, he cant sleep, pacing the floors. He could barely work, he was tired. Theres no question he had mental problems.

Mr Harrouff added that his sons health has significantly deteriorated since the attack. He speculated that his son drank some kind of poison before the attack, resulting in his burned oesophagus.

It took three Martin County Sheriffs deputies to pull the younger Mr Harrouff, a former student athlete and bodybuilding enthusiast, off Stevens when they arrived at the scene. He withstood multiple jolts from the Taser and resisted a police dog, according to reports.

He was taken to a West Palm Beach hospital, where he lost consciousness for 11 days.

Its very puzzling, because I read all the things about how they pulled him off the people that he killed and all this and that, but he was poisoned, Dr Harrouff said. He had an inflamed oesophagus, stomach. His metabolites were way out of whack, and he almost died. I dont know what happened. The biggest question I have is  where did the poisoning come from? How did he get poisoned? I cant figure it out.

According to Dr Harrouff, his son left a restaurant abruptly and walked to his mothers house two miles away, where he tried to drink a bottle of cooking oil. Austin Harrouffs mother took him back to the restaurant, but he stormed off again.

Surveillance footage captured the Florida State University exiting the restaurant 45 minutes before the alleged attack.

Investigators are still working to determine what caused Mr Harrouff to commits the attacks that evening. Hospital blood tests found no evidence of methamphetamine, cocaine, or heroin in his system. Sheriff William Snyder speculated that the suspect could have been under the influence of the hallucinogenic drugs bath salts or flakka, but lab results are still pending.
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The US Congress has passed a bill that would allow families of the victims of the 9/11 attacks to sue Saudi Arabia over the assaults that left almost 3,000 people dead.

The House approved a bipartisan so-called voice vote on Friday, two days before the 15th anniversary of the attacks by Al-Qaeda militants.

Leaders of the House called it a moral imperative to allow victims families to seek justice. But the White House has indicated that it will veto any such bill.

Saudi Arabia has stridently denied that its government officials or intelligence operatives were in any way linked to the Al-Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington

The US Senate passed the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, or JASTA, unanimously in May. Opponents of the bill said it could strain relations with Saudi Arabia and lead to retaliatory laws targeting US citizens or corporations in other countries.

In April, it was reported that Saudi Arabia had warned the US that it would hit back economically at Washington if the bill proceeded. Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi foreign minister, said his country would be forced to sell up to $750bn in treasury securities and other assets in the US before they could be frozen by American courts.

 9/11 brought a country together - 15 years later it could not be more divided

The votes timing was symbolic, passing two days before the 15th anniversary of the hijacked-plane attacks on New York and Washington. Its passage was greeted with cheers and applause in the House chamber, Reuters said.

Yet while the bill may have considerable support, it carries with it huge sensitivity. Saudi Arabia is not just a major supplier of oil to the US, it is also one of its most important regional allies. The US and Saudi are currently involved in efforts against Isis, while the US is supporting Saudi Arabia military operation against rebels in Yemen.

Fifteen of the nineteen men who hijacked four planes and flew them into targets in New York and Washington in 2001 were Saudi citizens, though Riyadh has always denied having any role in the attacks.

The White House on Friday reiterated that President Barack Obama would veto the bill. This administration strongly continues to oppose this legislation, and, you know, well obviously begin conversations with the House about it, White House Spokesman Josh Earnest said in May when the Senate passed the bill.

If Mr Obama carries out his veto threat and the required two-thirds of both the Republican-majority House and Senate still support the bill, it would be the first time since his presidency began in 2009 that Congress had overridden a veto.

The House passed the measure by voice, without recorded individual votes, which is not technically considered unanimous. That could make it easier for Mr Obamas fellow Democrats to uphold his veto later without officially changing their positions.

This is more important than campaigning, Terry Strada, who lost her husband in the attacks and is national chair of the victims families organization bringing a lawsuit against Saudi Arabia.

She told the Washington Post: You can campaign after, you will never have a chance to pass [the bill] again. This is the priority.
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First a federal judge denied the Standing Rock Sioux tribe's request to stop construction of the four-state, $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline. Then, within minutes, the US government and military said it would not allow the pipeline to be built on its land Lake Oahe, delivering a huge victory to Native American campaigners.

The lawsuit alleged that the pipeline, which would be placed less than a mile upstream of the tribe's reservation, could impact drinking water for more than 8,000 tribal members and millions who rely on it downstream. Protesters and private security guards recently clashed on private land where the tribe says construction disturbed ancient sacred sites.

Here's a look at the planned pipeline and the tribe's ongoing protest.

Native Americans march to the site of a sacred burial ground that was disturbed by bulldozers building the Dakota Access Pipeline

Pipeline planned after fiery train derailments

Owned by Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners, the $3.8 billion, 1,172-mile project would carry nearly a half-million barrels of crude oil daily from North Dakota's oil fields through South Dakota and Iowa to an existing pipeline in Patoka, Illinois, where shippers can access Midwest and Gulf Coast markets. Announced in 2014, supporters said the pipeline would create more markets and reduce truck and oil train traffic  the latter of which has been a growing concern after a spate of fiery derailments of trains carrying North Dakota crude.

Tribes sue over water and sacred sites

The Standing Rock Sioux's lawsuit challenged the US Army Corps of Engineers' decision to grant permits at more than 200 water crossings. Filed on behalf of the tribe by environmental group Earthjustice, the suit says the project violates several federal laws, including the National Historic Preservation Act, and will disturb sacred sites outside the 2.3-million acre reservation. A separate lawsuit filed Thursday by the Yankton Sioux tribe in South Dakota challenges the same thing.

ETP says the pipeline includes safeguards such as leak detection equipment, and workers monitoring the pipeline remotely in Texas could close block valves on it within three minutes if a breach is detected.

Protesters set up camp and a movement grows

Since April, there's been a tribal protest  held mostly by members of the Standing Rock Sioux at the confluence of the Cannonball and Missouri rivers. It's grown considerably, as they've been joined by other American Indians and other, non-Native Americans from across the country, including celebrities such as Divergent actress Shailene Woodley.

 Hollywood Stars Join Standing Rock Sioux Members to Protest North Dakota Pipeline

Nearly 40 have been arrested as the protest has grown size, including Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Chairman David Archambault II. None of the arrests stemmed from Saturday's confrontation between protesters and construction workers.

Politicians enter the fray

Jill Stein joins the protests

Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and running mate Ajamu Baraka have been charged with misdemeanor counts of criminal trespass and criminal mischief stemming from their time at the protest. Stein's campaign spokeswoman acknowledged Stein spray-painted construction equipment Tuesday.

Jack Dalrymple, the governor of North Dakota, has activated the National Guard, with a handful of soldiers providing security at traffic checkpoints, and another 100 on standby to respond to any incidents. Meanwhile, the Great Plains Tribal Chairman's Association has asked US Attorney General Loretta Lynch to send federal monitors to the protest, alleging racial profiling.

Security guards with dogs confronting protesters

Culture Clash

Last weekend, tribal officials said crews bulldozed several sites of significant cultural and historic value on private land, which Energy Transfer Partners denies.

It led to Saturday's clash between protesters and private security guards; law enforcement officials said four security guards and two guard dogs were injured, while a tribal spokesman said six people were bitten by the dogs and at least 30 people were pepper-sprayed.

Earlier this week, US District Judge James Boasberg partially granted the tribe's request to temporarily stop work near Lake Oahe to prevent the destruction of more sacred sites, but not on the private land that sparked the protest.
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A US man has publicly condemned the actions of his mother, who married his sister after a previous relationship with his brother was annulled.

Patricia Spann, 43, has been arrested along with her daughter Misty Spann, 25, after Oklahoma Police found out they had married in March.

Under Oklahoma state law, marrying a close relative is considered incest whether or not a sexual relationship exists.

Cody Spann, another of Patricia Spann's children, told KSWO: "I think she's worthless.

"She forced my sister into this, there's a lot of people that know it. Why would you to want to put your own daughter through this, what kind of person are you?"

"If that's what you want, that's on you. But none of us kids want that, and now you got my sister behind bars because of your choices, why don't you let that sit on you as a mom."

Patricia Spann told investigators neither her of relationships with her son and daughter were sexual.

Mrs Spann said she had lost custody of three children, who were cared for by a grandparent, but reunited with her daughter two years ago.

She stated that her motive for marrying her son was to prevent him being deployed with the military and that she married her daughter in the hope of fostering a child.

The weirdest and most shocking news stories Show all 30 1 /30 The weirdest and most shocking news stories The weirdest and most shocking news stories What do horse semen, an elephant and a yurt have in common Leading removals company AnyVan.com operates on the premise that they can move anything anywhere, an undertaking which has certainly given them more than they bargained for over the years. In addition to the more common requests to move homes, furniture and pianos, listings have included a horse semen, live elephant, a cabinet engraved with the Kamasutra, a phallic statue, a dungeon gynaecological bondage chair, a yurt and an ice cream van The weirdest and most shocking news stories Couple find dead lizard inside the can of tomatoes A couple in Birmingham were making lunch when they found the surprise addition of a dead lizard in a can of tomatoes. Muhammad Hussain and his wife Sanam discovered the critter had managed to get into the can that Mrs Hussain had been using to cook a curry. Mr Hussain was alerted to the presence of the lizard when he heard his wife screaming as she made lunch BBC The weirdest and most shocking news stories Greggs (a bakery) has actually stopped selling loaves of bread You'd have thought a bakery would be the one place you'd be guaranteed to buy a loaf of bread. Well, not at Greggs. According to the companys website, customers are able to buy white or malted sliced loaves which are freshly baked every day. So when one customer went into his local Greggs in Burton-upon-Trent, he was surprised to be told they didn't stock them any more. According to the company, they will now focus on the food to go market, which means most of the bread that the company sells is in sandwiches AFP The weirdest and most shocking news stories Man trolls plane passengers by painting sign on his roof welcoming them to the wrong city One US homeowner has taken trolling to another level by painting a message on his roof top to deliberately trick aeroplane passengers into thinking theyve boarded the wrong flight. Mark Gubin painted the sign Welcome to Cleveland on his home which is next to Mitchell International Airport in Milwaukee. Milwaukee is a city in Wisconsin, some four hundred miles away from Cleveland, in the state of Ohio, prompting passengers to fear theyve accidentally boarded the wrong flight as they spy the trick lettering from the aeroplane window Google Maps The weirdest and most shocking news stories Missing cat found after spending 64 days trapped inside a mattress A family who thought theyd lost their cat as they prepared to move 3,000 miles across the US, were relieved when they found their pet inside a mattress some 64 days later. Moosie, a 2-year-old tabby cat, disappeared when Kymberly Chelf and her husband Jesse Chelf boxed up their belongings in preparation for their move from El Paso, Texas, to Anchorage, Alaska. In early June, the familys belongings arrived at their new home along with a big part of their old life. When the Chelfs heard a meow coming from inside the box, Mrs Chelf said: "it just sounded like he [Moosie] was giving it everything he had just to let us know he was there." The cat had been trapped for over two months without light, food or water. Moosie emerged from the ordeal suffering from severe dehydration and with a damaged liver, but vets have said he is in a good condition, CNN reported AP Photo/Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, Eric Engman The weirdest and most shocking news stories There's a lottery in which the prize is a 20-year supply of bacon Indiana's Hoosier Lottery is switching from cold, hard cash to hot, crispy bacon for its prize, offering players the chance to win 20 years-worth of the stuff. $5,000 of bacon will be dished out in 20 annual instalments to winners, according to the rules, presumably because no-one has the freezer space for 20 years of bacon. It's an ingenious ploy, given that anyone who tried to eat 20 years of bacon would probably struggle to live 20 years The weirdest and most shocking news stories Demonic CIA Osama Bin Laden doll goes up for sale at auction for $5,000 One of the strangest propaganda weapons of the War on Terror has gone up for sale at auction, and it could be yours for only $5,000. The item in question is a doll of Osama Bin Laden, designed to terrify the children of the Middle East so much that they would be permanently put off from joining Islamist groups. The doll is a fairly faithful recreation of the late terrorist leader, complete with white robes, combat boots, and a scraggly black beard. The propaganda value in the bizarre toy comes from the heat-sensitive paint used on the doll's face. When children played with the doll, the heat from their hands would activate the paint, and change Osama into a terrifying green-eyed, red-faced demon, with black markings all over his face Nate D. Sanders The weirdest and most shocking news stories The mystery of the 25-year-old Australian cat which turned up in Northern Ireland An Australian cat has been mysteriously found in Northern Ireland, sparking speculation as to how he made the 12,000 mile journey. The ginger cat was picked up by Cat Protection helpers in County Armagh last week. When animal welfare officers took him to the vet for a health check, it was discovered that he had been micro-chipped in Australia. The plot thickened as the chip revealed he has also been found as a stray across the Irish Sea in London Photo: Cat Protection The weirdest and most shocking news stories Replacement found after 'over-enthusiastic' bull breaks his own penis A prize bull has had to be taken off his farmers breeding programme after he suffered a broken penis. The injury, which the Simmentall bull sustained at the beginning of the breeding season, was probably due to being over-enthusiastic, according to his owner, Tommy Moyles. According to the Irish Mirror, Mr Moyles was then forced to bring another bull, which was previously destined for the slaughterhouse, out to provide his services Ian Forsyth/ Getty The weirdest and most shocking news stories Thieves steal four pints of bull semen from Minnesota farm A group of thieves have stolen about four pints of bull semen from a farm in southern Minnesota in the US - and could sell it on for an extraordinary amount of money. Police in the town of Leroy said they are investigating the theft of a $500 storage container with around 90 filled vials. On the open market, that amount of semen would be worth around $70,000 (47,000) Screengrab via CBS News The weirdest and most shocking news stories Charcoal has become the hot new flavouring If you want to be in on the latest trend in Britain's restaurants and bars, you're going to have to feel - and indeed taste - the burn. Some words of comfort next time you overfry, overbake, overboil or otherwise burn your dinner to a crisp: charcoal, in all its dark and mysterious forms, is being embraced by some of the best in the food and drinks business. It's not just about cooking on a grill (although that's also a booming market), but charcoal as an actual ingredient  bringing flavour, colour, texture and a touch of playfulness to plates of food and bottles of juice. This news comes on the heels of Burger King Japan's Kuro Pearl offering, a burger with a jet-black bamboo charcoal bun, which met with a mix of hysteria and confusion upon its launch last year. It turns out that the fast food giant was bang on: charcoal is the new, well, black Victor De Jesus The weirdest and most shocking news stories Woman claims ski accident has given her extraordinary mental powers An anonymous woman in America has told an incredible story of how she was left with extraordinary mental abilities after hitting her head in a skiing accident. The ex-student revealed that she now has a condition known as acquired savant syndrome following the heavy fall on the slopes during a family holiday. The syndrome now lends her incredible powers of memory and the writer explains how she can draw diagrams of thousands of places, with thousands of rooms, branches and doorways right down to the smallest detail in a piece for xojane.com. An individual with savant syndrome will display remarkable and sometimes spectacular talents, according Jonathan Hiles, Principal Lecturer of Health and Life Sciences at De Montford University, in an online article regarding the condition Getty The weirdest and most shocking news stories This octopus learned to use a camera faster than some humans A brainy octopus at a New Zealand aquarium has learned how to take photos - using a waterproof camera specially designed to be operated with tentacles. Rambo the octopus, a popular attraction at Kelly Tarlton's Sea Life Aquarium in Auckland, New Zealand, stunned her trainers with how quickly she got to grips with the camera. Speaking to Cult of Mac, Mark Vette, Rambo's trainer, said: "When we first tried to get her to take a photo, it only took three attempts for her to understand the process. That's faster than a dog." He added: "Actually, it's faster than a human in some instances" ULI DECK/AFP/Getty Images The weirdest and most shocking news stories 4-year-old leaves home at 3am to buy a 'Slushie' drink Its commonplace to see strange sights on the night bus. But passengers were completely baffled to witness a little girl boarding the vehicle alone at 3am just to satisfy her sweet-tooth. Four-year old Annabelle Ridgeway climbed onto a bus, having been drenched in the rain and without her parents knowledge, to find a place to buy a crushed-ice beverage. Bus driver Harlan Jenifer, 52, quickly called for assistance and Annabelle was taken to a local hospital to wait for her mother YouTube The weirdest and most shocking news stories Little girl goes off on surprising tangent after being told she's going to be a big sister It starts like one of those classic, schmaltzy parent-and-child YouTube videos. 3-year-old Kathryn's dad informs her in no uncertain terms that she's going to get a little sister. Kathryn pauses for a second, apparently stunned by the news. But no! There's no tearful excited, she just whispers "I farted" The weirdest and most shocking news stories Shia LaBeouf's heartbeat is now available for livestreaming Walking Hollywood masterpiece Shia LaBeouf is offering the internet the chance to get closer to him than ever before. But dont let that utterly terrify you  the actors latest offer has nothing to do with paper bags, paraphrasing footballers or running around museums in Amsterdam 144 times sporting lycra and a single dreadlock. Instead, the 28-year-old will be livestreaming his heartbeat for the next week as part of a new metamodern performance art piece with his previous #IAMSORRY collaborators Nastja Sade Ronkko and Luke Turner. The project, called Follow My Heart, was announced at the SXSW festival The weirdest and most shocking news stories What color is this dress? The internet has been divided into two warring tribes by a picture of a dress functioning as an accidental colour perception experiment. #TheDress, as it has become known, was spotted by a blogger who turned to Tumblr for help when the garment started an argument among her friends. The question of whether it is blue and black or gold and white has divided friends, families and the celebrity world. This dress has sparked an internet frenzy the likes of which has not been seen since Left Shark took the Super Bowl by storm Caitlin McNeill/Wired The weirdest and most shocking news stories Llamas on the run The world didn't know how to contain itself when it saw two llamas running around a city but for motorists in Arizonas Sun City, it was no doubt an a-lama-ing sight. Two of the animals, one black and one white, decided to dash through the centre of the city, doing their best to evade local residents trying to catch them. After a number of near things, the animals were captured by means of a lasso. The owner of the llamas told local media there had actually been three llamas that got spooked and ran away near the centre of the town. He said the animals were part of a mobile petting zoo at a Sun City care centre The weirdest and most shocking news stories Madonna falls off stage at Brit Awards This years Brit awards ceremony looked set to fade from memory like so many others in recent history until Madonna fell down the stairs after a serious wardrobe malfunction. The queen of pop, 56, was making her first performance at the Brits in two decades, when just seconds into Living for Love she was pulled backwards down a flight of stairs by her backing dancers. She fell heavily on to her back, the long cape and hood she had been wearing failing to separate from her other clothes. She fell heavily on to her back, the long cape and hood she had been wearing failing to separate from her other clothes The weirdest and most shocking news stories 'Left Shark' steals Super Bowl 2015 as Katy Perry is upstaged by her out-of-time support dancer While Katy Perry strutted her stuff during the half-time show  which involved multiple costume changes, an entrance on a large metallic lion and duets with Lenny Kravitz and Missy Elliott  social media users were left star-struck by the figure now known as Left Shark. Within minutes, Left Shark had its own Twitter account  which has since expanded to no fewer than six different accounts  but it was not the sharks killer moves and deadly accuracy on stage that gained so much attention, but rather the fact that it had no idea what it was doing. Perhaps even drunk, Left Shark was out of time with Right Shark, who was a picture of perfection as he moved with the beat and in time with Perry  who by this time was already onto her third costume change and bursting into a rendition of Teenage Dream Getty Images The weirdest and most shocking news stories Kim Kardashian breaks the internet Kim Kardashian West has recreated the iconic "champagne incident" image by Jean-Paul Goude for the December issue of Paper magazine. Kardashian West is pictured on the cover of the magazine popping open a bottle of champagne which lands in a glass perched on her bottom. In another image released by the American publication, Kardashian-West is pictured naked from behind provocatively dropping her dress. Two further images were released by the magazine last night which show the reality TV star baring all; in one full-frontal shot and another topless image The weirdest and most shocking news stories Zombie cat A US cat owner has been left baffled after he claimed his dead pet turned up outside his front door  five days after being buried. Ellis Hutson told vets in Tampa Bay, Florida, that he had found his black and white cat Bart lying in a pool of blood after he was hit by a car. According to Fox 13, Hutson told the Human Society of Tampa Bay that he had taken Bart away and buried him, and could not explain how the cat came to be spotted by neighbours a full five days later YouTube The weirdest and most shocking news stories 'F*ck it, I quit': KTVA reporter Charlo Greene quits live on air in spectacular fashion KTVA reporter Charlo Greene quit her job on live TV last night, outing herself as the owner of an Alaskan cannabis club and declaring "f*ck it." Having grown weary of reporting the news, Greene told viewers she would instead be putting all her energy into the fight to legalise marijuana in the state, having previously reported on the Alaska Cannabis Club without mentioning her connection to it KTVA The weirdest and most shocking news stories Nation in shock as Cadbury's changes the Creme Egg recipe In a bilateral attack on the glory of Easter, Cadbury's has stunned consumers by changing the recipe of its Creme Eggs and reducing their number in boxes from six to five. Reports that the latest batch of Creme Eggs tasted different were followed up by The Sun, wih Cadbury's confirming to the tabloid that it has switched out Dairy Milk for a "standard cocoa mix chocolate" in the shell Cadbury's The weirdest and most shocking news stories Chocolate Digestives revelation could change the face of biscuit eating forever Shut the biscuit tin, defenestrate your cup of tea, this is serious snack news: you have been eating chocolate biscuits upside down. Biscuits in fact have the chocolate on the bottom of the biscuit, not the top, McVitie's have confirmed, meaning Digestives, Hobnobs and more have a history of being eaten the wrong way up. The news sent shockwaves across the UK's subreddit, after a user posted an email from United Biscuits explaining their composition. "For your information," a spokesperson wrote, "the biscuits go through a reservoir of chocolate which enrobes them so the chocolate is actually on the bottom of the biscuits and not on the top" The weirdest and most shocking news stories Dollar store toy wand has hidden picture of demonic child cutting herself with a kitchen knife A mother in Dayton, Ohio was shocked when she purchased a toy wand for her child at a dollar store only to find it ran not on unicorn hair but a picture of a child slicing her arm open. In fairness to the dollar store (literally called '$.100 store') the product was named 'EVIL STICK', though the pink lettering, fairies, swirls and snowflakes on the packaging ensured it would catch the eye of toddlers. The fact that the wand emits a cackling laugh when activated is probably permissible, the horrific hidden image less so WHIO The weirdest and most shocking news stories Hello Kitty is not a cat - she's a British girl The revelation comes from Sanrio, the creators of the international toy, who contacted University of Hawaii anthropologist Christine R. Yano who was putting together a 40th anniversary retrospective of Hello Kitty in Los Angeles. Professor Yano, speaking to the LA Times, said: That's one correction Sanrio made for my script for the show. Hello Kitty is not a cat. She's a cartoon character. She is a little girl. She is a friend Getty The weirdest and most shocking news stories Cannabis-eating sheep munch through 4,000 in plants dumped in bag near farm Cannabis is known to leave its smokers feeling woolly-headed, but it seemed to have little effect on a flock of sheep who chomped their way through thousands of pounds worth of the drug. The hungry hash-eaters came across seven black bags containing the class B banned substance that had been dumped at the edge of their farm in Merstham, Surrey, and started scoffing Getty The weirdest and most shocking news stories Tesco cash machine offers 'free erection' because of mistake translating sign into Welsh Aberystwyth councillor Ceredig Davies took this picture after the new cash machine became the talk of the town, explaining that 'codiad am ddim' translates colloquially as 'free erection' Ceredig Davies The weirdest and most shocking news stories Parrot returns to British owner speaking Spanish - four years after disappearing Nigel, a grey African parrot, flew away from his home in California in 2010 but was returned to his British owner, Darren Chick, after he was discovered in Torrance, California. Although the Spanish-speaking bird bit Mr Chick when he first saw him, the happy owner said: "He's doing perfect. Mr Chick says his birds British accent is gone, replaced by fluent Spanish  and someone called "Larry". Even though he has no idea where the bird has been for the last four years, he claimed: "It's really weird, I knew it was him from the minute I saw him" Getty

Ms Spann added that she thought it was a legal match with her daughter as she was not listed on Misty's birth certificate.

Both women were being held in Stephens County Jail in Duncan, Oklahoma.

State authorities found out about the illegal relationship in August, discovering at the same time that she had married one of her sons in 2008.
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The last time Kristin Smart was seen she was returning to her dorm room at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. It was May 1996.

For years, the authorities and her family searched for her but could uncover few clues. It was as if she had disappeared. She was declared legally dead in 2002.

This week, 20 years after the 19-year-old went missing, authorities in California said they had uncovered items of interest after excavating an area of the college campus.

The Smart family said they were heartened by developments (NBC)

Items of interest have been recovered and are now being analysed, the sheriff's office said in a statement. It did not disclose what items were found.

Investigators focused on a hillside area of the campus after a comprehensive review of the entire case and after FBI dogs trained in identifying human remains were brought in from Virginia in January, Sheriff Ian Parkinson told reporters, according to NBC.

Were not sure where this is going to take us, said Mr Parkinson. Obviously, we want to be as optimistic as possible and we hope this leads us to either Kristin or evidence of Kristin.

The excavation was timed to avoid the presence of students on campus, he said. The schools summer term ended on September 2 and the autumn session begins on September 15.

The teenager was returning from the party with fellow student and friend, Paul Flores. The Associated Press said Mr Flores had been the subject of several police inquires but had never been charged in connection with her disappearance. In 2007, police dug up a back patio at Mr Flores' home in Arroyo Grande, but found nothing.

The items discoverd this week were discovered on a hillside near a large concrete letter P that is a landmark of the school, located halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

In a statement, the Smart family said they welcomed the search.

Investigators are to dig at three sites (NBC)

We have been hoping, praying and waiting for the last twenty years for the return of our daughter, it said.

Jim Murphy, a lawyer representing the Smart family, told reporters that while this weeks dig is progress in the case, he was fearful it may lead to another dead end.

Its always bittersweet. More interest, a dig, a leadmost of the time they haven't led anywhere, hey said. But I know there are answers out there. And I think the family is going to keep looking, just as my office is going to keep looking.

Ms Smarts parents, Stan and Denise Smart, said that although they were requesting privacy they were beyond grateful for the efforts to find their daughter.

Dogs trained to detect old human remains identified the locations of the dig in January. The location was disclosed because of its high visibility, but the other sites were being kept secret.

We do not want to tip our hat to the possible suspect or suspects out there, Mr Parkinson said.
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Police in the Ohio city of East Liverpool said the intention of posting the images on their Facebook page was to deliberately shock people.

But the officials have found themselves at the centre of a debate about whether they are exploiting victims - and a child - after sharing pictures showing two overdosed heroin addicts passed out in a car. In the back seat of the vehicle sits a four-year-old boy.

We feel it necessary to show the other side of this horrible drug. We feel we need to be a voice for the children caught up in this horrible mess. This child can't speak for himself but we are hopeful his story can convince another user to think twice about injecting this poison while having a child in their custody, said the posting by East Liverpool Police Department.

The decision to post the picture has sparked debate on the force's Facebook page (Facebook)

We are well aware that some may be offended by these images and for that we are truly sorry, but it is time that the non drug using public sees what we are now dealing with on a daily basis.

It added: The poison known as heroin has taken a strong grip on many communities not just ours, the difference is we are willing to fight this problem until it's gone and if that means we offend a few people along the way we are prepared to deal with that.

The little boy is now in the custody of child services (East Ohio Police Department ) (East Ohio Police Department)

NBC said that police were alerted to the vehicle when an officer saw a Ford Explorer driving erratically and then slamming on the brakes as it approached a stopped school bus that was dropping children off.

When the officer approached the driver, his head was bobbing and his speech was almost unintelligible. The driver told the officer he was taking his front seat passenger, who was passed out, to the hospital.

The officer said he reached into the vehicle, turned it off and removed the keys just as the driver attempted to get away away. It was at that point, that police said they spotted a four-year-old in the back seat.

Police said it was at that point that the driver passed out as well. Emergency responders reached the scene and administered Narcan, a drug used to reverse the effects of a heroin overdose.

 Myanmar burns $19.7m of drugs

Opioid addiction is a massive problem in many of the heartland states of America. Experts have linked its spread to poverty and the impact of economic decline in many traditional manufacturing communities.

The decision by the police in East Ohio sparked heated debate on its Facebook page. Many posters said they believed police were doing the right thing by highlighting the problem. Others said that the childs face should have been blurred, and he should not have been identified.

One poster, Donya McCobb, wrote: It is a disease. Downgrading them wont help them - pray for them. If u was in there shoes u would know what it's like to be an addict and an active addict is worse.

She added: U dont care cause the drug dont allow u to care. Pray for these people let's not downgrade them or judge them - thats Gods job!

The boy is currently in the custody of Columbiana County Childrens Services.
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Inmates in as many as 40 prisons in 24 states are refusing to go to work to protest what many believe is modern-day slavery and calling for reforms in the US prison system.

The strike comes on the 45th anniversary of the Attica prison uprising, when inmates in the notorious New York correctional facility revolted and demanded better living conditions. But many of the reforms demanded during the Attica protest still remain among the demands of the prisoners today.

Recommended Read more Justice Department plans to end private prison use

Organisers with the Incarcerated Workers Organising Committee and the prisoner-run Free Alabama Movement have helped prisoners band together to decry the state of labour in prison  for which inmates make only 12 to 40 cents hourly, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Slavery is alive and well in the prison system, but by the end of this year, it wont be anymore, the IWOC wrote in a call to action. This is a call to end slavery in America.

But the prisoners demands go beyond fair wages for work  which is, in some cases, performed for private, for-profit companies like McDonalds, Victorias Secret, and IBM, according to organisers. Prisoners in various states are calling for wider reforms within the incarceration system.

Different prisoners have different goals and aims, Brianna Peril, co-chair of the IWOC and former prisoner, told The Independent. Its looking like its going to be a state-by-state thing.

South Carolina prisoners issued their list of demands Friday afternoon, which included a call for state minimum wage for general labour, fairer parole practises, the reinstitution of educational courses for high school diplomas, lowered commissary costs, among others.

Ms Peril added that some prisoners are demanding an improvement to horrendous meals and changes to solitary confinement policies.

People are left in solitary confinement for years on end, which is torture, literally, she said.

The precise number of prisoners participating in the strike is unclear due to the nature of the response by authorities at the correctional facilities. According to Ms Peril, many of the prisons engage lockdown protocols even in the event of nonviolent protests, barring inmates from communicating with the outside world. Advocates are calling prisons across the country for reports of lockdowns.

Still, organisers are able to share periodic updates from the inside via mobile phones and social media.

Prisoners at Alabamas Holman Prison reported confirmation of their participation, according to Support Prisoner Resistance.

12.01 Sept 9th, all inmates at Holman Prison refused to report to their prison jobs without incident, the report read. With the rising of the sun came an eerie silence as the men at Holman laid on their racks reading or sleeping. Officers are performing all tasks.

The strike follows the success of the Free Alabama Movement in May. Prisoners in at least five prisons in Alabama coordinated a strike to call attention to the state of labour in the facilities, which protesters said were exploitative and led to recidivism. Two prisons were locked down as a result of the protests.

Recidivism is guaranteed in living conditions like these, founder of the movement Melvin Ray told ABC News from inside the William E Donaldson Correctional Facility. If I want to smoke crack, I can smoke crack right now. But as Im talking to you, there are 96 men on both sides of me and not a single one of them can get access to a book.

The Alabama Department of Corrections denied Mr Rays claim about the lack of books.

As the demands of inmates continue to seep out from behind bars, the message in prisons across the US remains clear: change must come.

Ms Peril called for an alternative to incarceration, going so far as to suggest abolishment of the prison system altogether.

It cant be any worse than what we have now, she said, If only we had a social service instead of punishment and torture. We want rehabilitation  or just plain habilitation.

Prisoners want basic life skills, education, she added. All of those things are really important to people in prisons."
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San Bernardino achieved international notoriety last December, when 14 people were killed in an Isis-inspired mass shooting at a local business centre. But the California city has long had one of the states highest murder rates and, in the months since that attack, San Bernardinos streets have seen a surge in everyday gun violence that police and residents are struggling to explain.

By late April, just over 100 days into 2016, more people in the troubled city had been shot dead than were killed in the December 2014 massacre. According to a new report by the Los Angeles Times, by the end of August there had been 150 shootings and 47 homicides in San Bernardino this year, compared to 44 overall in 2015  including those who perished in the mass shooting.

The city is now expected to see more murders in 2016 than in any year since 1995, when 67 people were killed. San Bernardino has approximately 216,000 residents but has suffered approximately the same number of homicides this year as Oakland, which has more than 410,000. On top of the 47 homicides, three people have also been shot dead by police.

If the drumbeat of deaths continues over the coming months, the city will see out 2016 with a homicide rate of 31 per 100,000 residents. Chicago, where the epidemic of gun violence has received widespread attention, had a rate of 18 homicides per 100,000 residents last year. Almost half of those killed in San Bernardino this year have been black, though black people make up just 14 per cent of its population.

There are mixed explanations for the sudden spike in violence. San Bernardino declared bankruptcy in 2012 and its police department has been decimated by budget cuts. There are approximately 215 police officers serving in the city, compared to more than 340 in 2008. Fewer than 40 per cent of this years murders have been solved.

The decline of employment opportunities and cuts to other services may also have contributed to the violence, the LA Times reported, with some residents blaming small but significant issues such as the lack of working street lights in some neighbourhoods.

Yet the economic situation has been dire for several years, so that alone cannot explain the 2016 surge. San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguan, who told the paper that he needs around 300 officers to effectively serve the city, pointed to state measures that have reduced sentences for certain drug-related and other crimes, meaning criminals return to the streets with greater frequency.
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Barely able to tamp down the tidal wave of opprobrium for his adoring remarks about Vladimir Putin at a forum on national security this week, Donald Trump now finds himself in trouble for appearing on a Kremlin-backed television channel to be interviewed by Larry King.

The segment, aired on Thursday evening, showed Mr Trump criticising US policy, particularly the decisions first to invade Iraq and then, under Barack Obama, to get out of the conflict, in his eyes too hastily.

Mr Trumps willingness to air political dirty laundry on the RT network, a 24-hour news channel that airs programmes in both Russian and other languages to audiences mostly outside Russia itself, has reinforced impressions of his wanting to cozy up to the Moscow authorities.

It's a war we shouldn't have been in, number one, Mr Trump said of the Iraq conflict in the RT interview. And it's a war that, when we got out, we got out the wrong way. That's Obama.

In his conversation with Mr King, the Republican nominee also cast doubt on speculation that the Kremlin has been trying to influence the US election and was possibly behind a hack into the emails of the Democratic National Committee in July. He said he thought it unlikely.

Maybe the Democrats are putting that out - who knows, Mr Trump averred to Mr King. If they are doing something, I hope that somebody's going to be able to find out so they can end it. Because that would not be appropriate at all.

The RT affair comes after Mr Trumps suggestion at the security forum on Wednesday that Mr Putin is a stronger leader for Russia than Mr Obama is for the United States, a comment that was backed up on Thursday by his running mate, Mike Pence.

Hillary Clinton on Thursday said Mr Trump's comment was not just unpatriotic and insulting to the people of our country, as well as to our commander in chief, it is scary.

But speaking to CNN on Thursday, Governor Pence called it inarguable that Mr Putin is a stronger leader than the US president.

Larry King handed over his CNN timeslot to Piers Morgan in 2010 (EPA)

Some senior Republicans also weighed in to chastise Mr Trump for his pro-Putin statements. I think this is the biggest miscalculation since people thought Hitler was a good guy, Senator Lindsey Graham, who competed in the primaries for the Republican nomination, said. Other than destroying every instrument of democracy in his own country, having opposition people killed, dismembering neighbors through military force, and being the benefactor of the butcher of Damascus, hes a good guy."

This miscalculation by Trump unnerves me to my core, he added, suggesting he was thinking of writing in Senator John McCain for president when he votes in November.

The Trump campaign said on Friday that Mr Trump had done the interview only as a favour to Mr King, an old friend. Mr King is a veteran on-air broadcaster who for many years had his own talk-show in primetime on CNN before he was forced out to make way for Piers Morgan, who has also now left the network.

Kellyanne Conway, his campaign manager, told CNN on Friday that Mr Trump had essentially been tricked by Mr King, saying that no one realised the segment would be aired on RT and that it was bound only for his CNN podcast.

A former CNN superstar, Larry King, has a podcast, and Mr. Trump went on his podcast. Nobody said it would be on Russian TV, Conway said on CNN's New Day.
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America has a new star political donor and the beneficiaries are Hillary Clinton and the Democrats, not Donald Trump.

Dustin Moskovitz, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and a co-founder of Facebook, has confirmed he wrote cheques worth no less than $20m for a variety of entities fighting to give the Democrats control of Congress once again and backing Ms Clinton for the White House.

Recommended Read more Hillary Clinton opens up in Humans of New York interview

Once a a room-mate of Mr Zuckerberg in their early Harvard days, Mr Moskovitzs only other foray into the donor circus was to give four-figure sums to Sean Eldridge, the husband of another Facebook co-founder, who ran unsuccessfully for a House seat in New York four years ago.

In a post on the Medium website, Mr Moskowitz, 32, who left Facebook in 2008, admitted to some hesitation but also made clear he had been motivated in part by disdain for the Republican presidential choice.

We hope these efforts make it a little more likely that Secretary Clinton is able to pursue the agenda shes outlined, and serve as a signal to the Republican Party that by running this kind of campaign  one built on fear and hostility  and supporting this kind of candidate, they compel people to act in response, he and his wife, Cari Tuna, wrote.

The money they are unleashing  and more cheques might be written before this election season is over  will be split between various groups, including $5m for the League of Conservation Voters. Mr Moskovitz, believed to be worth about $10bn, becomes the second big Democratic donor to emphasise the environment alongside Tom Steyer, a billionaire hedge fund manager also in California.

Mr Steyer has emerged in recent years as the Democrats answer to big-time Republican donors, not least industrialists brothers, David and Charles Koch. In 2016 so far he has given $30m to Democrat groups.

Ms Clinton is in part relying on fear among Democrat donors of a Trump presidency  the latest national polls put the two candidates essentially neck and neck  to raise funds and so far she has the easy advantage. Latest filings from the campaigns show that she raised a record-setting $143m in August alone compared to $90m harvested by Mr Trump. Ms Clinton spent much of the second half of August on a fund-raising spree through some of Americas wealthiest post codes on both coasts.

Cari and I have dedicated our lives to figuring out how to do the most good we can with the resources weve been given. Until now, those efforts have not included making endorsements or contributions in presidential elections, Mr Moskovitz wrote. The Republican Party, and Donald Trump in particular, is running on a zero-sum vision, stressing a false contest between their constituency and the rest of the world.

Tim Kaine, the number two on the Democratic ticket, is also doing his bit, managing to rake in $500,000 from supporters at a single event in New York on Thursday night. He had more fundraising gatherings planned for Friday in both Virginia, his home state, and Alabama.

Mr Moskovitz revealed that another $5m of his would go to the union-led For Our Future super PAC and that the remainder of his donation would go variously to a fundraising committee for Hillary Clinton; the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee; the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee; a political arm of MoveOn.Org; Color of Change PAC; and several nonpartisan voter registration and GOTV (get out the vote) efforts.
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Native American campaigners appeared to have scored a major victory after the US government said it would not grant permission for a controversial oil pipeline to be built near tribal land.

A judge on Friday had denied the Standing Rock Sioux tribes attempt to halt the construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline near its North Dakota reservation. However, three federal agencies asked the pipeline company to voluntarily pause work on a section that tribal officials say holds sacred sites and artifacts.

The Standing Rock Sioux tribe, whose cause drew thousands to a protest site in North Dakota, had challenged the Army Corps of Engineers decision to grant permits at more than 200 water crossings for Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners $3.8bn pipeline, saying that the project violated several federal laws, including the National Historic Preservation Act, and will harm water supplies. The tribe also says ancient sacred sites have been disturbed during construction.

The plan to build a pipeline has been hugely controversial (Reuters)

But a joint statement from the Departments of Justice, Army and Interior said it would reconsider any of its previous decisions on land that borders or is under Lake Oahe and requested that Energy Transfer Partners halt work within 20 miles east or west of the lake.

The statement also said that the case highlighted the need for a serious discussion on whether there should be nationwide reform with respect to considering tribes' views on these types of infrastructure projects.

The Army will not authorise constructing the Dakota Access pipeline on Corps land bordering or under Lake Oahe until it can determine whether it will need to reconsider any of its previous decisions regarding the Lake Oahe site under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) or other federal laws, said a statement from the Department of Justice.

 Hollywood Stars Join Standing Rock Sioux Members to Protest North Dakota Pipeline

Therefore, construction of the pipeline on Army Corps land bordering or under Lake Oahe will not go forward at this time. The Army will move expeditiously to make this determination, as everyone involved - including the pipeline company and its workers - deserves a clear and timely resolution. In the interim, we request that the pipeline company voluntarily pause all construction activity within 20 miles east or west of Lake Oahe.

The Standing Rock Sioux, whose tribal lands are a half-mile south of the proposed route, say the pipeline would desecrate sacred burial and prayer sites, and could leak oil into the Missouri and Cannon Ball rivers, on which the tribe relies for water. Last weekend, protests at the site turned violent.

Dakota Access and its parent company, Energy Transfer Partners LP of Dallas, declined to comment.

Reuters said the pipeline would be the first to allow movement of crude oil from the Bakken shale, a vast oil formation in North Dakota, Montana and parts of Canada.

It would carry oil from just north of land owned by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe to Illinois, where it would connect with an existing pipeline and route crude directly to refineries in the US Gulf Coast.

In recent days, we have seen thousands of demonstrators come together peacefully, with support from scores of sovereign tribal governments, to exercise their First Amendment rights and to voice heartfelt concerns about the environment and historic, sacred sites, the DOJ statement added.

It is now incumbent on all of us to develop a path forward that serves the broadest public interest.
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A woman who was raped and tortured for seven years after being kidnapped on her way to a friends party has said she learned to go somewhere else in her mind to escape the horror of her daily life.

Colleen Stan was 20 years old when she was abducted in May 1977 by Cameron Hooker and his wife Janice and taken to their home in Red Bluff, north California.

She was held captive as a sex slave by the couple and spent years locked in a homemade wooden box for 23 hours a day, brought out only to be raped, beaten and emotionally abused.

I thought I was going to die, Ms Stan, 59, told US magazine People ahead of the release of a TV film of her ordeal, called The Girl in the Box.

Ms Stan accepted a lift from Mr and Mrs Hooker, near her home in west Oregon. But while she said the pair  who had their baby with them  initially seemed nice, things soon turned ugly.

According to the magazine, around half an hour into the journey, Mr Hooker stopped the car and threatened her with a knife, before tying her up, gagging her and forcing her head into a box.

Cameron Hooker, who kidnapped Colleen Stan in 1977 and subjected her to seven years of daily rape and torture (USA Today / Youtube screengrab)

She endured perpetual sexual assault and violence, including being chained up and imprisoned under the couples bed, until Ms Hooker helped her escape seven years later in 1984.

In a previous interview with CBS news, Ms Stan said Mr Hooker renamed her K and made her sign a contract that basically said that he owned me body and soul.

He would whip her, burn her and give her electric shocks, according to the broadcaster, and told her that if she ever told anyone, a secretive, powerful authority would kill both her and her family.

She was even taken home to visit her family with Mr Hooker about halfway through her captivity  but by that stage was so fully under his control she didnt tell them anything about what had happened, leaving them to worry she had joined a cult.

Ms Stan told People she would focus on pleasant thoughts and happy memories to help her cope with the horrific ordeal.

I learned I could go anywhere in my mind, she told the magazine. You just remove yourself from the real situation going on and you go somewhere else.

After Ms Stans escape, Mr Hooker was sentenced to 104 years in prison, with his wife accepting immunity to testify against him.

Feminist protests demand end to violence against women in Brazil after gang rape of teenage girl Show all 10 1 /10 Feminist protests demand end to violence against women in Brazil after gang rape of teenage girl Feminist protests demand end to violence against women in Brazil after gang rape of teenage girl Brazilian women march in Sao Paulo during a protest following the gang rape of a 16-year-old girl Rex Features Feminist protests demand end to violence against women in Brazil after gang rape of teenage girl There have been calls for protests to end to what campaigners call Brazil's 'culture of rape' after the attack Rex Features Feminist protests demand end to violence against women in Brazil after gang rape of teenage girl An online campaign has been set up in response to the crime, using the hashtag #EstuproNuncaMais, meaning 'rape never again' Rex Features Feminist protests demand end to violence against women in Brazil after gang rape of teenage girl The 16-year-old victim was attacked in a poor neighbourhood in the west of the city on 21 May 2016 Rex Features Feminist protests demand end to violence against women in Brazil after gang rape of teenage girl Two of the attackers posted pictures and video on Twitter of the assault, which has shocked the country Rex Features Feminist protests demand end to violence against women in Brazil after gang rape of teenage girl Brazilian women protest in front of the Candelaria Church in Rio de Janeiro AFP/Getty Images Feminist protests demand end to violence against women in Brazil after gang rape of teenage girl Seven men have been charged in connection with the attack AFP/Getty Images Feminist protests demand end to violence against women in Brazil after gang rape of teenage girl Women's underwear and photos from Brazilian photographer Marcio Freitas displayed on Copacabana beach during a protest by non-governmental organization Rio de Paz (Rio of Peace) against rape and violence against women REUTERS Feminist protests demand end to violence against women in Brazil after gang rape of teenage girl Women's underwear smeared with paint is seen during a protest against rape and violence against women in Brasilia, Brazil REUTERS Feminist protests demand end to violence against women in Brazil after gang rape of teenage girl Demonstrators attend a protest against rape and violence against women in Brasilia, Brazil REUTERS

Ms Stan has had years of therapy and is now a grandmother.

Thirty years have passed, Im better, Im healed, Im doing good, Ive got on with life, and then things like this come up and it has a way of pulling you right back to that event, she told USA Today when Mr Hooker was up for parole in 2015.

He was denied release and was told he would remain in prison for at least 15 more years  and probably much longer, a California prisons spokesperson said, according to the broadcaster.
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North Korea says it has conducted its latest major nuclear test and claims to have the capabilities to mount a warhead on ballistic missiles. Here are the latest updates:

Please allow a moment for the live blog to load

North Korea claims to have conducted a higher level explosion of a nuclear warhead in a test that will allow it to finally build an array of stronger, smaller and lighter nuclear weapons.

It is Pyongyang's fifth atomic test and the second in eight months, generating a magnitute 5 earthquake sparking alarm in neighbouring South Korea and around the world.

South Korea's president called the detonation, which Seoul estimated as the North's biggest-ever explosive yield, an act of fanatic recklessness.

While the North is known to have a small stockpile of nuclear warheads, experts are divided about its ability to mount them on a working missile delivery system that could allow a long-range strike.

 North Korea claims success in fifth and biggest nuclear test

If minaturisation has been achieved, it will raise serious concern over the capability of the totalitarian government to realise years of threats aimed at the US and other enemies.

North Korea's state media agency said the test had finally examined and confirmed the structure and specific features of movement of (a) nuclear warhead that has been standardised to be able to be mounted on strategic ballistic rockets", adding: The standardisation of the nuclear warhead will enable (North Korea) to produce at will and as many as it wants a variety of smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear warheads of higher strike power."

The claims by Kim Jong-un's government have not been verified but China, the country's main diplomatic ally, cautioned against "adding fuel to the flames" in state-run media.

Park Geun-hye, the South Korean President, spoke with Barack Obama over the test on Friday morning and said her government would increase pressure on its neighbour to stop violating international sanctions.

South Korea's weather agency said the explosive yield of the North Korean blast would have been 10 to 12 kilotons, or 70 to 80 percent of the force of the 15-kiloton atomic bomb the United States dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945.
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North Korea tested its most powerful nuclear device on Friday, but the more worrying aspect for its rivals was Pyongyang's claim that it had advanced its ability to make a nuclear weapon, by miniaturising and mounting a warhead on a missile.

Its KCNA news agency said the test had used a nuclear warhead that had been standardised to be able to be mounted on strategic ballistic rockets.

The standardisation of the nuclear warhead will enable the DPRK to produce at will and as many as it wants a variety of smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear warheads of higher strike power, KCNA said, referring to the North's formal name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

 North Korea claims success in fifth and biggest nuclear test

There is little scientific evidence to verify that North Korea has perfected the science of creating a nuclear bomb small enough to fit on a ballistic missile and withstand the physics of atmospheric re-entry. But it may be getting closer.

In April, a South Korean official said the North had accomplished miniaturisation of a warhead, although the Pentagon said it did not necessarily share that assessment.

In March, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met nuclear scientists working on miniaturisation. He was photographed at the visit looking at a small, ball-like device KCNA said was a miniaturised nuclear warhead. He was also photographed inspecting a missile nosecone.

They called the A-bomb they displayed 'small-type' or 'miniaturised', but it might be better to say 'compact', said Joshua Pollack, editor of the Nonproliferation Review. It looked bigger than what we would call miniaturised, but they wanted to show us that it would fit into an ICBM (inter-continental ballistic missile) nosecone.

If it fits that nosecone, it ought to fit on a Scud or Rodong as well, said Pollack. The Rodong is a North Korean medium-range missile tested earlier this week that can fire a 1 tonne warhead up to 1,250 miles.

That would bring all of South Korea and Japan within range.

Inside the daily life in North Korea Show all 19 1 /19 Inside the daily life in North Korea Inside the daily life in North Korea People reading a newspaper at the metro station Inside the daily life in North Korea Thoughts of the leaders on the tram. They have about a dozen of these on every tram, all with different thoughts Inside the daily life in North Korea Young people training for a big upcoming festival Inside the daily life in North Korea People at the Pyongyang's annual marathon Inside the daily life in North Korea Many stars on one of the trolleys in Pyongyang Inside the daily life in North Korea An intimidating poster in a primary school in North Korea. Inside the daily life in North Korea Solar panels installed on a street lamp. Inside the daily life in North Korea A poster on the window next to one of the venues we visited in Pyongyang Inside the daily life in North Korea Kids playing football next to the Arch of Triumph. After a while tourists were allowed to join, so some of us did Inside the daily life in North Korea Class in an educational center in Pyongyang (where people over 17 years old can attend any classes they choose after school, for free) Inside the daily life in North Korea People waving at me during the Pyongyang marathon Inside the daily life in North Korea People having a great time dancing at a public park Inside the daily life in North Korea A metro driver in a metro station in Pyongyang Inside the daily life in North Korea Fireworks to mark the birthday of the Eternal President Kim Il Sung on our last night in Pyongyang Inside the daily life in North Korea My wonderful tour guide at a public park Inside the daily life in North Korea One of the parks in Pyongyang Inside the daily life in North Korea A person rowing some boats for the day at a river in Pyongyang Inside the daily life in North Korea The National War Museum Inside the daily life in North Korea Public park in Pyongyang

After Friday's test, however, experts were more focused on the intensity of the blast.

Earthquakes triggered by North Korean nuclear tests have gradually increased in magnitude since Pyongyang's first test in 2006, indicating the isolated country is steadily improving the destructive power of its nuclear technology.

After Friday's test, South Korean monitors said the blast caused a 5.0 magnitude earthquake. The US Geological Survey (USGS) measured a magnitude of 5.3.

In terms of energy, the USGS estimation translates to a nuclear blast potentially 2.8 times stronger than the estimation given by the South, according to a USGS tool used to calculate earthquake strength.

After its fourth test, in January, North Korea boasted it had tested a hydrogen bomb, although the yield of that explosion indicated it was more likely to have been a boosted atomic bomb.

South Korean measurements indicated an explosive yield similar to the bomb tropped on Nagadaki in WWII (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

A boosted bomb is not as powerful as a standard H-bomb, but can efficiently increase the explosive power of an A-bomb by using small amounts of radioactive hydrogen isotopes.

Boosting means North Korean scientists can get more explosive yield out of a smaller amount of fissile material, stretching their small stockpile of plutonium further.

This means they might have more bombs than a simple plutonium count would leave you to believe, said Jeffrey Lewis of the California-based Middlebury Institute of International Studies.

In terms of explosive yield, the USGS measurement points to a North Korean bomb more powerful than the Little Boy bomb dropped on Hiroshima, and almost as powerful as the Fat Man bomb dropped on Nagasaki.

The South Korean measurement would indicate a yield slightly smaller than the Little Boy at 10 kilotonnes, although calculating yield is difficult and subject to the unknown variables in terrain and geology of the test site.

North Korea's first nuclear test in 2006 created a magnitude 4.3 earthquake, according to USGS data. Friday's bomb-induced 5.3 earthquake was a magnitude and therefore ten times bigger, indicating a significantly more powerful nuclear blast.



Reuters
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Why are we asking this now?

North Korea claims to have conducted its largest ever nuclear test, generating an explosion that triggered an artificial magnitude 5 earthquake.

State media claimed the successful experiment, carried out at a secretive underground facility, saw a nuclear warhead detonated.

The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported that the weapon could be mounted on strategic ballistic rockets, allowing Kim Jong-uns military to target enemies around the world.

"The standardisation of the nuclear warhead will enable the DPRK to produce at will and as many as it wants a variety of smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear warheads of higher strike power, it continued.

The nuclear warhead explosion test is a demonstration of the toughest will of the Workers Party of Korea and the Korean people to get themselves always ready to retaliate against the enemies [including] the US-led hostile forces.

Although it was impossible to verify the totalitarian regimes claims, analysts at South Korea's weather agency said the explosive yield would have been 10 to 12 kilotons  almost as powerful as the 15-kiloton atomic bomb the US dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.

The US Geological Surveys analysis said it could be even stronger, nearing the strength of the even more devastating blast that destroyed Nagasaki.

The explosion was the largest recorded in North Korea following previous tests in January, 2013, 2009 and 2006.

 North Korea claims success in fifth and biggest nuclear test

How has the world reacted?

Global leaders have united in their condemnation of the provocation, which came just days after North Korea tested several ballistic missiles during the G20 summit.

The United Nations Security Council called an emergency meeting to discuss the international response on Friday afternoon, while Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, promised a robust reaction.

China, the closest ally of isolated North Korea, said it resolutely opposes the test and would launch a diplomatic protest, calling on Kims regime to stop any behaviour that worsens the situation.

It was one of several countries including the US and Russia voicing their consternation, alongside the European Union and Nato.

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said that if confirmed, the test was in clear violation of numerous UN Security Council resolutions and in complete disregard of the repeated demands of the international community.

The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organisation also said it constitutes yet another breach of the universally accepted norm against nuclear testing; a norm that has been respected by 183 countries since 1996.

People watch a television news broadcast showing a North Korean anchor announcing the country's latest nuclear test, at a railway station in Seoul on September 9, 2016. (AFP/Getty Images)

Can North Koreas claims be trusted?

Shannon Kile, a nuclear specialist at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said the test had a symbolic value coming on the 68th anniversary of North Koreas foundation.

But he told The Independent the available data suggest more explosive power than previous experiments and a possible progression from rudimentary weapons.

Im inclined to believe [the claims], Mr Kile said. I think they are a very long way from having a long-range ballistic missile that can carry a nuclear warhead but they may have medium-range ballistic missiles that could take them.

On Monday, North Korea launched three Rodong missiles that travelled more than 300 miles to land in the Sea of Japan, suggesting the medium-range weapons could be intended to carry nuclear warheads.

Mr Kile said that would put Japan, South Korea and possibly US military bases in Guam in range of a nuclear strike, with the missiles capable of travelling up to 930 miles depending on the load.

These are mobile missiles so it makes it particularly dangerous for South Korea and Japan because if they wanted to carry out a pre-emptive strike they would not be easy to find, he added.

Dr John Nilsson-Wright, head of the Asia Programme at Chatham House, said North Korea was previously thought to be two to three years away from miniaturising a weapon for long-range missiles.

This is a way of bolstering Kim Jong-uns standing in the country, he told The Independent.

I think we have seen missile testing, submarine launches and now this  it all adds up to a pretty clear intention from the North that they are going to keep on going.

Kim Jong-un has previously been shown meeting nuclear scientists and inspecting weapons (Reuters)

Has North Korea really miniaturised a nuclear warhead?

While North Korea is known to have a small stockpile of nuclear warheads, experts have been divided about its ability to mount them on a working missile delivery system that could allow a long-range strike.

If miniaturisation has been achieved, it will raise serious concern over the capability of the totalitarian government to realise years of threats aimed at the US and other enemies.

There is little scientific evidence to verify that North Korea has perfected the science of creating a nuclear bomb small enough to fit on a ballistic missile and withstand the physics of atmospheric re-entry.

In April, a South Korean official said the North had accomplished miniaturisation of a warhead, although the US Department of Defence did not share the assessment.

The previous month, Kim Jong-un was shown meeting nuclear scientists, with photos published by state media displaying a small, ball-like device that KCNA claimed was a miniaturised nuclear warhead.

He was also photographed inspecting a missile nosecone, although analysts said the weapon shown could be described more accurately as compact, rather than miniaturised, suggesting it could not fit on an inter-continental ballistic missile.

No images immediately emerged from Fridays test.

In pictures: North Korea hydrogen bomb test Show all 15 1 /15 In pictures: North Korea hydrogen bomb test In pictures: North Korea hydrogen bomb test In pictures: North Korea hydrogen bomb test In pictures: North Korea hydrogen bomb test A lab employee from the Korea Institute of Nuclear Safety's regional office in Gangneung, east of Seoul, checks for radioactive traces in the air, in Gangneung, soon after North Korea announced it successfully conducted a hydrogen bomb test. The office in Gangneung is the closest one to the site of the North's claimed test. Officials said it will take three to four days to analyze air samples in detail for any traces of radioactivity, the Yonhap news agency reported EPA In pictures: North Korea hydrogen bomb test In pictures: North Korea hydrogen bomb test In pictures: North Korea hydrogen bomb test North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un signing a document of a hydrogen bomb test in Pyongyang In pictures: North Korea hydrogen bomb test People watch a TV news program showing North Korea's special announcement at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea AP In pictures: North Korea hydrogen bomb test Getty Images In pictures: North Korea hydrogen bomb test Getty Images In pictures: North Korea hydrogen bomb test In pictures: North Korea hydrogen bomb test In pictures: North Korea hydrogen bomb test South Korean people watch TV news at Seoul station EPA In pictures: North Korea hydrogen bomb test Japan's meteorological agency officer Yohei Hasegawa displays a chart showing seismic activity, after a North Korean nuclear test, at the agency in Tokyo Getty Images In pictures: North Korea hydrogen bomb test Ko Yun-Hwa, administrator of Korea Meteorological Administration, briefs reporters showing seismic waves from the site of North Korea's hydrogen bomb test, at his office in Seoul Getty Images In pictures: North Korea hydrogen bomb test North Korea's border county of Kaepoong is seen from a South Korean observation post in Paju near the Demilitarized zone dividing the two Koreas as North Korea announced it had successfully carried out its first hydrogen bomb test Getty Images

So should we be worried?

The experts view seems to be in the affirmative, with potential weapons development combining with Kim Jong-uns threatening and confrontational rhetoric, and increasing regional tensions around US and South Korean military deployments.

What this has demonstrated is that the commitment of the North to develop its nuclear capabilities is as strong as ever  and that is why we should be worried, Dr Nilsson-Wright said.

We have to worry about the risk of a conflictthe options for the international community are getting narrower and narrower, and more and more unattractive.

The North Korean government is also considered highly volatile, operating outside of international law and alliances after decades of dictatorships that have seen its population indoctrinated with the Kim dynastys totalitarian ideology.

State media recently threatened to reduce Seoul and Washington to a heap of ashes and any weapons giving North Korea the ability to carry out the threat are justifiably a cause for alarm.

Mr Kile, who has visited the secretive state of several occasions, said its government should not be considered jokers.

They are not crazy but they start from different assumptions about how the world works, he added.

Im afraid that something may spark a confrontation and things can get out of control easily because of the nuclear risks.

Tensions are mounting and I dont see any signs of de-escalating what has become a very dangerous situation.

Footage of a North Korean missile launch on July 9 2016 (Getty Images ) (Getty Images)

What can be done to stop North Korea?

The isolated country has been subjected to decades of sanctions, with the toughest ever measures agreed by the UN Security Council in March, but North Korea has continued its nuclear programme seemingly unabated.

Sanctions clearly have not acted as a deterrent so far, Dr Nilsson-Wright said.

The wildcard is China, which is becoming even more irritated with North Korea and is no friend of Kim Jong-un.

Mr Kile said restrictions on the import of aviation fuel seemed to be having an affect but that the regime was good at getting around attempted curbs.

He suggested that rather than demanding nuclear disarmament in North Korea, international bodies offer temporary compromises such as a moratorium on testing in exchange for the loosening of sanctions.

Denuclearisation is a long-term goal but its a distant one and we now need to think about what steps can be taken now, Mr Kile added. They are not going to give the nuclear weapons up.
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Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has told reporters he informed Barack Obama he did not call him a "son of a whore" in a short meeting.

Mr Duterte caused outrage earlier in the week for saying the slur against the US President after Mr Obama pledged to ask about alleged extrajudicial killings by Filipino government forces in their war on drugs.

As a result of the Filipino President's comments, the United States cancelled a formal meeting between the leaders ahead of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Laos.

 Rodrigo Duterte calls Barack Obama 'son of a bitch'

Despite the cancellation, the pair did meet before a dinner at the ASEAN summit - of which Mr Duterte was reported by the Star Online: "I was ready (for Obama). I was waiting for Obama to respond. Lawyer to lawyer, we are both lawyers anyway...I said I never made the statement. Check it out.

"I said that, but not in relation to Obama, I'm not fighting with America."

Mr Obama shrugged off the comments, saying he didn't take it personally and confirmed he shook Mr Duterte's hands.

He declined to say whether Mr Duterte apologised to him in the brief meeting.

Philippines ambassador to the United States, Marciano Paynor, said the tiff with the United States was part of a learning curve for Duterte, who needed a chance to make the transition from being a city mayor to a head of state.

Mr Paynor said: "He has to experience it, if you don't experience it, you don't know how it's done, you'll be grappling."

Since gaining power in June, Mr Duterte has engaged in a bloody war on drugs, which has seen around 2,400 people killed by hit squads, drawing international criticism.
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A rescue operation has freed 33 people who spent the night trapped in cable cars in the French alps.

The tourists were part of a larger group who were left suspended at an altitude of 3,800m, above Mont Blanc, when the cars' cables became tangled and the cabins stopped moving on Thursday night.

Mathieu Dechavanne, CEO of the Mont-Blanc Company which manages the machine, said the cables became tangled for "unexplained reasons" but speculated it was probably due to high winds.

A team of engineers worked from dawn to untangle the wires and managed to restart the cable car early on Friday morning.

The cable cars "restarted five minutes ago, the last cable, which was blocking the system, was untangled," Mr Dechavanne told AFP just before 8am (0600 GMT).

110 people were onboard when the cable car stopped, but 77 were rescued by helicopter before nightfall on Thursday, when poor visibility made it too dangerous for rescuers to continue.

Local officials said the operation resumed on Friday morning at 06:30 local time (04:30 GMT).

Technicians untangled the cable cars by loosening the cables holding them. If it had not been possible to repair the cable cars, people would have been rescued by helicopter, local officials quoted by French media said.

Water, energy bars and survival blankets were distributed to those who remained in the cars overnight.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said first aid workers also spent the night in the cable cars with the trapped group, which reportedly included a 10-year-old child.

"We were in touch with them all night. The people were cold but there was no vital distress," said the commander of the rescue operation Stephane Bozon, from the Chamonix Gendarmerie.

French, Italian, and Swiss teams equipped with three helicopters took part in the large rescue operation.

Royal skiing holiday in French Alps Show all 6 1 /6 Royal skiing holiday in French Alps Royal skiing holiday in French Alps Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge and Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, with their children, Princess Charlotte and Prince George, enjoy a short private skiing break in the French Alps Reuters Royal skiing holiday in French Alps The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge after she threw a snowball at him during a short private break skiing in the French Alps Royal skiing holiday in French Alps The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge after she threw a snowball at him during a short private break skiing in the French Alps Royal skiing holiday in French Alps The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge walk together during a short private break skiing in the French Alps Royal skiing holiday in French Alps The Duke of Cambridge cuddles Princess Charlotte, as they enjoy a short private break skiing in the French Alps 2016 Getty Images Royal skiing holiday in French Alps The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge with their children, Prince George and Princess Charlotte, during a short private break skiing in the French Alps

The cable car journey usually takes around 35 minutes and connects the Aiguille de Midi peak in France, at 3,842m (12,605ft), to Pointe Helbronner in Italy, at 3,462m (11,358ft), offering a panoramic view of Mont Blanc during the journey. It attracts around half a million tourists each year.

Frederic Maurer, 49, one of the first passengers to be rescued along with his daughter and son on Thursday, said, We were in the cab for two-and-a-half hours locked under the sun.

"We had just started from flagship station Helbronner on the Italian side, when everything froze."

On Friday morning Mr Cazeneuve congratulated all the teams involved in the operation.

He confirmed the rescue had been completed and said everyone who spent the night in a cable car was now safe.

He paid tribute to the rescue team and emergency services "for the success of this operation in particularly difficult and dangerous conditions".
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A Cambridge University student killed in Egypt had mysterious letters carved into his body, according to a post-mortem examination.

The body of Giulio Regeni, an Italian student, was found by the side of a road in Cairo on 3 February with signs of extreme torture, including cigarette burns, cuts and contusions, more than a week after he had vanished.

The 28-year-old had been researching independent labour unions in Egypt for his doctorate studies at Girton College and disappeared on the fifth anniversary of the 2011 Egyptian popular protests that led to the downfall of president Hosni Mubarak.

There have been appeals over social media following Giulio Regeni's disappearance

A post-mortem by Italian authorities discovered Mr Regeni had been viciously beaten over seven days and four or five symbols that appeared to be letters had been carved into his skin, the Telegraph reports.

The 220-page post mortem report also found a letter, believed to be an X, had been cut into Mr Regeni's left hand and further marks had been carved into his back, above his right eye and on his forehead.

It also found he had broken bones, shattered five teeth, had been hit with kicks, fists, sticks and hammer and was killed after his neck was broken.

"'They used him like a blackboard, his mother, Paola, was quoted as saying by the Corriere della Sera newspaper.

Egyptian officials initially said Mr Regeni had been killed by a criminal gang, a theory disputed by international experts and his family.

The Egyptian government has been heavily criticised for refusing to look into claims its security services may have been involved in the PhD students death.

Activists and Italian nationals living in Egypt took part in a rally in memory of Italian student Giulio Regeni (Getty)

An Egyptian prosecutor said in Rome, that the head of Egypt's independent union of street vendors, who Mr Regeni had been in contact with as part of his research, reported the graduate student to police a few weeks before he disappeared.

Government and security services deny taking Mr Regeni into custody. But security and intelligence sources told Reuters in April he had been arrested by police outside a Cairo metro station on 25 January and was taken to a Homeland Security compound.

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The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. 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In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. 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Rome's chief prosecutor Giuseppe Pignatone and Egyptian general prosecutor Nabeel Sadek met for the third time this year on Thursday and Friday to exchange information collected during their respective investigations.

Mr Sadek "said that he confirmed that Cairo police, on Jan 7 2016, received a report from the head of the independent union of street vendors on Giulio Regeni," according to a joint statement by prosecutors released on Friday.

"Afterward the police carried out checks on [Regeni's] activity. After the checks, which lasted three days, no activity of interest to national security was discovered and, as a consequence, the checks were stopped," the statement said.The statement said there was a "common commitment" to overcome "technical obstacles" in recovering the video, without elaborating.

The two prosecutors also said they renewed their commitment to exchange information and find the truth about Mr Regeni's death.

Additional reporting by Reuters
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A suspected group of Isis supporters who abandoned a car filled with gas cylinders near Notre Dame cathedral had been planning to attack one of Paris largest railway stations, officials say.

A police officer was stabbed while detaining three women linked to the alleged plot, including a 19-year-old who had pledged allegiance to the so-called Islamic State.

The French interior ministry told Reuters an alert was issued to all railway stations in the capital after a plot was uncovered to attack the Gare de Lyon on Thursday.

A car containing gas cannisters discovered near Notre Dame cathedral in Paris on 4 September. (AFP/Getty Images)

It lies south-east city centre, little over a mile from where the car was found abandoned near Notre Dame on Saturday night.

Officials said the youngest of the three women arrested, 19-year-old Ines Madani, had written a letter pledging allegiance to Isis.

She was shot in the leg and arrested after a stand-off on Thursday night with police in Boussy-Saint-Antoine.

Television footage showed a officers leaving the scene carrying a large knife.

Madanis father, the owner of the car, was already suspected of wanting to travel to Syria to fight for the group by police.

French policemen take part in a police raid in Boussy-Saint-Antoine (Reuters)

He was taken into custody earlier this week but later released after presenting himself to police on Sunday to report his daughter had disappeared with the car.

These three women aged 39, 23 and 19 had been radicalised, were fanatics and were in all likelihood preparing an imminent, violent act, interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve said.

They are among five women and two men so far arrested in the case.

French media has reported links between the suspects and Hayat Boumeddiene, the wife of supermarket attacker Amedy Coulibaly who now lives in Isis territory, Larossi Abballa, who murdered a police officer and his wife earlier this year, and Normandy church attacker Adel Kermiche.

There was speculation the plot could have been intended as revenge for last month's killing of Isis' second-in-command and spokesman Abu Muhammad Al-Adnani in an air strike.

Security in train stations around Paris was visibly higher as the investigation widened on Friday, and prosecutor Francois Molins has scheduled a major press conference for the afternoon.

Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Show all 9 1 /9 Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Policemen outside Rouen's cathedral during the funeral of Jacques Hamel, the priest who was killed in a church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray in Normandy on 26 July during a hostage-taking claimed by Islamic State group Joel Saget/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Two jihadists, both 19, slit Hamel's throat while he was celebrating mass in an attack that shocked France as well as the Catholic Church Joel Saget/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Muslims place flowers and hold a minute of silence in front of the church if Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, western France, where French priest Jacques Hamel was killed on 26 July Charly Triballeau/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Two people hold each other by the new makeshift memorial in Nice, in tribute to the victims of the deadly Bastille Day attack at the Promenade des Anglais Valery Hache/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the truck attack that killed 84 people in Nice on France's national holiday. Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, 31, smashed a 19-tonne truck into a packed crowd of people in the Riviera city celebrating Bastille Day Valery Hache/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Police work at a site where a Syrian migrant set off an explosive device in Ansbach, southern Germany, on 25 July, killing himself and wounding a dozen others Daniel Roland/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis A Syrian migrant set off an explosion at a bar in southern Germany that killed himself and wounded a dozen others in the third attack to hit Bavaria in a week. The 27-year-old, who had spent a stint in a psychiatric facility, had intended to target a music festival in the city of Ansbach but was turned away because he did not have a ticket Friebe/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Police officers walk along train tracks in Wuerzburg southern Germany on 19 July, a day after a man attacked train passengers with an axe. German authorities said they had found a hand-painted IS flag among the belongings of the man, an asylum seeker from Afghanistan, who seriously injured four members of a family of tourists from Hong Kong in his rampage Daniel Roland/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis German police killed a teenage assailant after he attacked passengers on a train in Wuerzburg, southerg Germany with an axe and a knife on 18 July, seriously wounding three people Karl-Josef Hildenbrand/AFP/Getty Images

The probe was sparked on Saturday night, after a Peugeot 607 laden with gas cylinders was found abandoned in Rue du Petit-Pont, with its hazard lights flashing and no number plates.

Police sources said no detonator had been found in the car, though the vehicle also contained three containers of diesel.

Gas cylinders and fuel can be used in attempts to make car bombs, such as those discovered and disabled in London in 2007.

Police were alerted after another vehicle containing gas canisters was discovered near Montpellier on Friday but found no link to terrorism, Midi Libre reported.

Terror attacks have killed more than 230 people in France since January last year, with the Charlie Hebdo massacre carried out by al-Qaeda sympathisers followed by Isis Paris attacks, a string of lone wolf murders and the Nice attack that left more than 80 dead.

Isis has called on its supporters to launch massacres on French soil as the country continues to take part in international air strikes against its militants in Syria and Iraq.

The country remains under a continuing state of emergency, allowing authorities increased powers of surveillance and arrest.
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A cell of young women including one who had been engaged to two terrorists who were both later killed has been directed by Isis commanders in Syria to attempt another attack in France.

Their plot failed after police discovered a car filled with gas canisters and containers of fuel near Notre Dame cathedral, sparking an investigation that is rapidly uncovering links with a far wider network of French extremists.

Theres a group that has been annihilated, but there are others, President Francois Hollande said. Information we were able to get from our intelligence services allowed us to act before it was too late.

Francois Molins, the Paris prosecutor, said the women were guided by members of Isis from its strongholds.

French policemen take part in a police raid in Boussy-Saint-Antoine (Reuters)

One of the seven arrested so far, named as Sarah H, had been betrothed to two extremists who have since been killed, he added.

The 23-year-old was first engaged to Larossi Abballa, who was shot dead in a police raid after murdering a police officer and his wife earlier this year, and then to teenage Normandy church attacker Adel Kermiche, who was killed during the assault in July.

Her current fiance, who has not been identified, was arrested on Thursday, Mr Molins said.

A terrorist cell comprised of young women has been dismantled, he added. They were guided by individuals in Syria in the ranks of Islamic State.

A 19-year-old suspect in the group, Ines Madani, allegedly wanted to travel to Syria and wrote a letter declaring allegiance to Isis.

She is also reported to have links with Hayat Boumeddiene, the wife of supermarket attacker Amedy Coulibaly who now lives in Isis territory.

A car containing gas cannisters discovered near Notre Dame cathedral in Paris on 4 September. (AFP/Getty Images)

Madanis father, the owner of the car found in the early hours of Sunday morning, was already suspected of wanting to travel to Syria to fight for the group by police.

He was taken into custody earlier this week but later released after presenting himself to police on Sunday to report his daughter had disappeared with the vehicle.

The Peugeot 607 was found abandoned in Rue du Petit-Pont, with its hazard lights flashing and no number plates.

Police sources said no detonator had been found in the car, which contained six gas cylinders and three containers of diesel.

Gas canisters and fuel can be used in attempts to make car bombs, such as those discovered and disabled in London in 2007 and explosives used by Algerian extremists in Paris during the 1990s.

These three women aged 39, 23 and 19 had been radicalised, were fanatics and were in all likelihood preparing an imminent, violent act, interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve said, describing a race against time.

Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Show all 9 1 /9 Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Policemen outside Rouen's cathedral during the funeral of Jacques Hamel, the priest who was killed in a church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray in Normandy on 26 July during a hostage-taking claimed by Islamic State group Joel Saget/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Two jihadists, both 19, slit Hamel's throat while he was celebrating mass in an attack that shocked France as well as the Catholic Church Joel Saget/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Muslims place flowers and hold a minute of silence in front of the church if Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, western France, where French priest Jacques Hamel was killed on 26 July Charly Triballeau/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Two people hold each other by the new makeshift memorial in Nice, in tribute to the victims of the deadly Bastille Day attack at the Promenade des Anglais Valery Hache/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the truck attack that killed 84 people in Nice on France's national holiday. Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, 31, smashed a 19-tonne truck into a packed crowd of people in the Riviera city celebrating Bastille Day Valery Hache/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Police work at a site where a Syrian migrant set off an explosive device in Ansbach, southern Germany, on 25 July, killing himself and wounding a dozen others Daniel Roland/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis A Syrian migrant set off an explosion at a bar in southern Germany that killed himself and wounded a dozen others in the third attack to hit Bavaria in a week. The 27-year-old, who had spent a stint in a psychiatric facility, had intended to target a music festival in the city of Ansbach but was turned away because he did not have a ticket Friebe/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Police officers walk along train tracks in Wuerzburg southern Germany on 19 July, a day after a man attacked train passengers with an axe. German authorities said they had found a hand-painted IS flag among the belongings of the man, an asylum seeker from Afghanistan, who seriously injured four members of a family of tourists from Hong Kong in his rampage Daniel Roland/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis German police killed a teenage assailant after he attacked passengers on a train in Wuerzburg, southerg Germany with an axe and a knife on 18 July, seriously wounding three people Karl-Josef Hildenbrand/AFP/Getty Images

Madani, who stabbed a police officer attempting to detain the trio on Thursday, was shot in the leg during the altercation in Boussy-Saint-Antoine.

Footage recorded by a neighbour showed a woman wearing an Islamic veil being carried away by police as she cries out Allahu Akbar or God is Great in Arabic.

Television footage showed officers leaving the scene carrying a large knife. Five women and two men have so far been arrested in the case.

An official from the French interior ministry previously said the group intended to attack the Gare de Lyon on Thursday.

It lies south-east city centre, little over a mile from where the car was found abandoned near Notre Dame.

Terror attacks have killed more than 230 in France since January last year, with the Charlie Hebdo massacre carried out by al-Qaeda sympathisers followed by Isis Paris attacks, a string of lone wolf murders and the Nice attack that left more than 80 dead.

Isis has called on its supporters to launch attacks on French soil as the country continues to take part in international air strikes against its militants in Syria and Iraq.
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Britain could already be taking tips from Switzerland about the best way to navigate life outside the European Union after Brexit.

Switzerland is not a member of the EU, but is the blocs third largest trading partner after the USA and China and currently has a free movement agreement that means EU citizens can work and live there.

Swiss trade diplomats have visited Whitehall for preliminary meetings so the two countries can begin to share notes on matters of trade and migration, according to the BBC.

The Independent has contacted the Foreign Office to confirm when these talks might have taken place.

The UK, which has eight times the population of Switzerland  but around half its GDP per capita  appears to be seeking advice from the landlocked country as it prepares to negotiate its new position in relation to Brussels.

Speaking to the broadcaster, former Swiss president Micheline Calmy-Rey said Britain and Switzerland should work together to prevent the EU exploding over disagreements regarding free movement of people.

Immigration has been a key issue in the Brexit debate, with polls naming the number of immigrants coming into Britain as the most important issue relating to the referendum one week before 23 June,when 17 million people voted to leave the EU.

Micheline Calmy-Rey was president of the Swiss confederation in 2007 and 2011 (Getty Images)

But on Monday Theresa May said there would be no radical changes to immigration into the UK and ruled out an Australian-style points system.

In its own legally binding referendum in 2014, Switzerland voted narrowly in favour of quotas to limit the number of migrants from the EU, with a deadline of February 2017 for its implementation.

For the last two years, the country has been in talks over its agreement with Brussels, but last month was told it would lose access to the single market if it went ahead with its plans to restrict free movement, according to the Guardian.

Switzerland, unlike Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, is not a member of the European Economic Area (EEA) but instead has more than 100 of its own bilateral trade agreements with the EU.

These are managed by a complex structure of more than 15 joint committees  a set-up Britain may want to study in detail as it looks to negotiate its own trade deals with the bloc.

Ms Calmy-Rey told the BBC the both Switzerland and Britain needed to find a solution in order to respond to our population to limit migration.

Switzerland and Britain have in common the same question - that means the question of freedom of movement and [the need] to find a solution in order to respond to our population to limit migration, she said.

The former president questioned to what extent the two countries would have to concede their access to trade in order to impose limits on free movement.

She suggested Brussels may have to compromise to avoid a split between two separate visions of free movement currently at war within the union.

Brexit protest: Thousands march in London Show all 12 1 /12 Brexit protest: Thousands march in London Brexit protest: Thousands march in London A woman poses with a home-made European Union flag as Remain supporters gather on Park Lane in London to show their support for the EU in the wake of Brexit PA Brexit protest: Thousands march in London Remain supporters demonstrate in Parliament Square PA Brexit protest: Thousands march in London Tens of thousands of people gathered to protest the result of the EU referendum PA Brexit protest: Thousands march in London A majority of people in the capital voted to remain in the European Union Reuters Brexit protest: Thousands march in London Protesters chanted: What do we want to do? Stay in the EU PA Brexit protest: Thousands march in London The march follows a similar rally in Trafalgar Square that was cancelled due to heavy rain  but which tens of thousands of people turned up to anyway Reuters Brexit protest: Thousands march in London Britain voted to leave the European Union in a referendum by 52 per cent to 48 per cent Reuters Brexit protest: Thousands march in London But support for the Leave campaign in urban areas and among young people was significantly lower Rex features Brexit protest: Thousands march in London Marchers gathered at Park Lane at 11am and marched towards Parliament Square PA Brexit protest: Thousands march in London Some protesters held up baguettes in a display of affection for our continental neighbours PA Brexit protest: Thousands march in London The disparity between different parts of the country has promoted a four million signature petition calling for a second referendum and even a renewed push for Scotland to cede from the UK PA Brexit protest: Thousands march in London The events organiser, Kings College graduate Kieran MacDermott, wrote: We can prevent Brexit by refusing to accept the referendum as the final say and take our finger off the self-destruct button" Reuters

You have one vision which wants more integration, more solidarity with migrants, more freedom of movement and more integration of economic policies, of fiscal policies, she said. And you have other countries that do not want all of that.

If the European Union doesn't want to take the risk of exploding we have to take into account these two visions and perhaps find a third way.

Last month, a Swiss government report highlighted the countrys heavy reliance on immigration in its work force, underlining the importance of its participation in free movement agreements with the EU.

And with more than two million EU workers currently in the UK, this may well be something Britain will also have to take into consideration.
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Turkey has suspended 11,285 teachers for alleged links to the illegal Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK).

Prime Minisiter Binali Yildirim said that an estimated 14,000 teachers have links to the PKK, considered a terrorist organisation by the Turkish government, the European Union and the United States.

It is not clear where the majority of those suspended come from, though Turkey's Kurdish population are mainly based in the southeast near the Syrian, Iraqi and Iranian borders.

Turkey has 850,000 teachers of which the suspensions account for 2 per cent, the BBC reports

According to the state-run Anadolu news agency, the suspended teachers are suspected of activities "in support of the separatist terrorist organisation and its affiliates".

In a crackdown on the followers of exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen earlier this year, 15,200 education ministry officials were sacked while 21,000 private school teachers had their licences revoked.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 28 October 2022 A cosplayer attends the MCM Comic Con London 2022 at the ExCel Centre in London Reuters UK news in pictures 27 October 2022 98-year-old D-Day Veteran Bernard Morgan, whose story is among those featured on the giant poppy wall, during the launch of The Royal British Legion 2022 Poppy Appeal, at Hay's Galleria in central London PA UK news in pictures 26 October 2022 A meerkat explores a pumpkin in the enclosure at Wild Place, Bristol, where some of the animals are having pumpkin treats as part of their environmental enrichment PA UK news in pictures 25 October 2022 King Charles III welcomes Rishi Sunak during an audience at Buckingham Palace, where he invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative Party to become Prime Minister and form a new government PA UK news in pictures 24 October 2022 Rishi Sunak celebrates with Tory MPs outside the Conservative Campaign Headquarters after becoming the new leader of the Conservative Party Reuters UK news in pictures 23 October 2022 The Green Man at October Plenty, Borough Market's annual Autumn Harvest festival, in London, which returns for the first time post pandemic PA UK news in pictures 21 October 2022 Sculptor Peter McKenna puts the finishing touches to a pumpkin that will form part of the Planet A Hebden Bridge Pumpkin Trail in the West Yorkshire town PA UK news in pictures 20 October 2022 Britains Prime Minister Liz Truss delivers a speech outside of 10 Downing Street in central London to announce her resignation AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 19 October 2022 Salmon leap up Stainforth Force on the River Ribble in the Yorkshire Dales as they swim upriver to their spawning grounds during the annual Salmon migration PA UK news in pictures 18 October 2022 Just Stop Oil protesters continue their protest for a second day on the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, which links Kent and Essex and which remains closed for traffic, after it was scaled by two climbers from the group PA UK news in pictures 17 October 2022 Hundreds of students take part in the traditional Raisin Monday foam fight on St Salvator's Lower College Lawn at the University of St Andrews in Fife PA UK news in pictures 16 October 2022 A protester holds a placard during a march into central London at a demonstration by the climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 15 October 2022 A member of the public drags an activist who is blocking the road during a "Just Stop Oil" protest, in London, Britain REUTERS UK news in pictures 14 October 2022 Germanys Womens double skulls during day one of the World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals at Saundersfoot beach, Pembrokeshire PA UK news in pictures 13 October 2022 Family and mourners arrive at St Michael's Church, in Creeslough, for the funeral mass of 49-year-old mother of four Martina Martin, who died following an explosion at the Applegreen service station in the village of Creeslough in Co Donegal on Friday PA UK news in pictures 12 October 2022 Motorists in Coventry pass trees showing autumnal colour PA UK news in pictures 11 October 2022 A woman and her dog in the the North Sea at Tynemouth Longsands beach before sunrise PA UK news in pictures 10 October 2022 Police officers remove a campaigner from a Just Stop Oil protest on The Mall, near Buckingham Palace, London PA UK news in pictures 9 October 2022 A drummer plays during the Diwali on the Square celebration, in Trafalgar Square, London PA UK news in pictures 8 October 2022 Timothee Chalamet attending the UK premiere of Bones and All during the BFI London Film Festival 2022 at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London PA UK news in pictures 7 October 2022 Two young male fallow deer lock antlers in Dublins Phoenix park as rutting season begins PA UK news in pictures 6 October 2022 The Princess of Wales during a cocktail making competition during a visit to Trademarket, a new outdoor street-food and retail market situated in Belfast city centre, as part of the royal visit to Northern Ireland PA UK news in pictures 5 October 2022 Greenpeace protesters interrupt Prime Minister Liz Truss as she delivers her keynote speech to the Conservative Party annual conference PA UK news in pictures 4 October 2022 Prime Minister Liz Truss and Britains Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng wearing hard hats and hi-vis jackets, visit a construction site for a medical innovation campus in Birmingham AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 3 October 2022 British artist Sam Cox, aka Mr Doodle, reveals the Doodle House, a twelve-room mansion at Tenterden, in Kent, which has been covered, inside and out in the artist's trademark monochrome, cartoonish hand-drawn doodles PA UK news in pictures 2 October 2022 Erling Haaland celebrates after scoring Manchester City's second goal against Manchester United at Etihad Stadium. Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. The building was built in 1480 as a residential dwelling but has been a tearoom for over 50 years PA UK news in pictures 28 September 2022 Criminal barristers from the Criminal Bar Association (CBA), demonstrates outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, as part of their ongoing pay row with the Government PA UK news in pictures 27 September 2022 David White, Garter King of Arms, poses with an envelope franked with the new cypher of King Charles III 'CIIIR', after it was printed in the Court Post Office at Buckingham Palace in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 26 September 2022 A gallery staff member poses next to a painting by Lucian Freud - Self-portrait (Fragment), 1956 - on show at a photocall for the Credit Suisse exhibition - Lucian Freud: New Perspectives at the National Gallery in London PA UK news in pictures 25 September 2022 Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer is interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg in Liverpool before the start of the Labour Party annual Conference which he opened with a tribute to Queen Elizabeth II and sang the national anthem PA UK news in pictures 24 September 2022 Handout photo issued by Buckingham Palace of the ledger stone at the King George VI Memorial Chapel, St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 23 September 2022 A climate change activist protests against UK private jets while lighting his right arm on fire during the Laver Cup tennis tournament at the O2 Arena in London EPA UK news in pictures 22 September 2022 Woody Woodmansey, Lee Bennett, Kevin Armstrong, Nick Moran and Clifford Slapper attend the unveiling of a stone for David Bowie on the Music Walk of Fame at Camden, north London PA UK news in pictures 21 September 2022 A flock of birds in the sky as the sun rises over Dungeness in Kent PA UK news in pictures 20 September 2022 Flowers which were laid by members of the public in tribute to Queen Elizabeth II at Hillsborough Castle in Northern Ireland are collected by the Hillsborough Gardening Team and volunteers to be replanted for those that can be saved or composted PA UK news in pictures 19 September 2022 The ceremonial procession of the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II travels down the long walk as it arrives at Windsor Castle for the committal service at St Georges Chapel AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 18 September 2022 A man stands among campers on The Mall ahead of the Queens funeral Reuters UK news in pictures 17 September 2022 Wolverhampton Wanderers Nathan Collins fouls Manchester Citys Jack Grealish leading to a red card. City went on to win the match at Molineux Stadium three goals to nil. 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Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan blamed the 15 July coup on Mr Gulen who is currently living in the United States.

Thousands have been killed over the past ten years as militants battle for greater self-rule for Kurdish people in Turkey.
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At least 11 people have been killed and 28 wounded following twin car bomb blasts outside a shopping mall in eastern Baghdad, police and hospital officials have said.

Three Iraqi police are understood to be among the dead following the explosions near Nakheel mall just before midnight (21:00 GMT) on Friday.

A parked car is believed to have been the source of one explosion, while the second was caused by an explosives-laden vehicle driven by a suicide bomber, a police colonel told AFP.

The death toll is expected to rise and reports from Reuters suggest 12 people have been killed and more than 40 wounded.

Video footage uploaded onto social media appeared to show four separate fires, including two cars in flames, under a highway overpass near the mall.

The Isis propaganda agency, Amaq, has released an online statement claiming responsibility for the attack, details of which differ from those given by officials.

It said that two suicide bombers, one wearing a vest and another in a car, had targeted a gathering of Shia [Muslims] on the street outside the mall, which is located opposite the oil ministry.

Interior ministry spokesman Saad Maan said no casualties had been reported inside the mall.

The shopping centre opened last year in the Iraqi capitals Palestine Street. Shops are likely to have been open late in anticipation of next weeks Eis al-Adha celebrations.

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The attack comes as Iraqi ground forces move into position around Mosul ahead of a planned operation to retake the militant-held city from the so-called Islamic State group.

Isis had seized a third of Iraqs territory in 2014 and has exacerbated a long-standing sectarian conflict in the country mainly between the Shia majority and the Sunni minority.

Isis has lost ground in the past year to US-backed government forces and Iranian-backed Shia militias.

Additional reporting by agencies
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Isis will flourish and survive even if it is defeated in the present battle for Syria and Iraq an Isis militant has told The Independent.

In an exclusive interview, Faraj, a 30-year-old veteran fighter from north east Syria, says that when we say that the Islamic State [Isis] is everlasting and expanding, it is not a mere poetic or propaganda phrase. He says the group intends to rebuild its strength in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Libya and Tunisia, adding that Isis has sleeper agents all over the world and their numbers are increasing.

In his account of his life in Isis, Faraj makes plain that only a year after the caliphate was declared in the wake of the capture of Mosul in 2014, its leaders could foresee that it might be overrun militarily. He reveals hitherto unknown details of the apparent close cooperation between Isis and Turkey and the degree to which foreign fighters who flooded into Syria to fight for Isis alienated local people from the movement by ordering them about and interfering in their lives.

 Palmyra before ISIS

Speaking through WhatsApp from outside Syria and asking for his real name to be concealed, Faraj says that when he first heard from my emirs [commanders] that Isis would win even if it had been defeated militarily in Iraq and Syria, I thought they were just energising and encouraging us or they were just hiding their defeats. But he soon found out that Isis leaders were taking practical measures early on to set up bases elsewhere in the world. A Libyan commander told him over a year ago that he was returning to Libya for a certain mission and would be back in two months.

It is significant that as early as August 2015, when Isis was close to its maximum territorial expansion, after capturing Ramadi in Iraq and Palmyra in Syria in May, it was already preparing for defeat. Faraj says that the world powers underestimate its resilience because they do not understand the attractiveness of Isis and its ideology to those who find the status quo unacceptable. He says: I, like my commanders and comrades, fight in reaction to the tyranny and injustice I had experienced before.

Faraj comes originally from a Sunni Arab village between the cities of Hasaka and Qomishli in the predominantly Kurdish north east corner of Syria. He is better educated than most Isis members, having graduated from the Faculty of Education at Hasaka University. He joined Jabhat al-Nusra along with his extended family in 2012. Known as the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda, Jabhat al-Nusra recently claimed to have cut any ties with al-Qaeda and rebranded as Jabhat Fatah al-Sham. However, when Isis fighters entered Farajs village and offered the young men a choice of leaving or joining them, he opted to join Isis.

Syrian refugees walk on their way back to the Syrian city of Jarabulus on September 7, 2016 at Karkamis crossing gate, in the southern region of Kilis (Getty)

His eyewitness account of developments within Isis and, in particular, its relationship to Turkey are revealing because they do not come from an embittered former Isis member trying to distance himself from his past. He says he is no longer a fighter, after differences with Isis that he does not explain, but I am still an Isis supporter because I strongly believe in the wisdom or purpose behind its existence. Interestingly, he finds Isis attractive not so much because of its extreme religious ideology but as an effective and well-organised vehicle for protest. He says: Isis is the best solution to correct the wrongdoings of the authoritarian regimes in the region.

Speaking of the Turkish military intervention in Syria which began on 24 August, Faraj helps explain a mysterious development which took place at the time. As Turkish tanks and anti-Isis rebel Syrian units moved into the border town of Jarabulus on the Euphrates River, Isis appeared to know they were coming and made no attempt to resist them. This was in sharp contrast to the ferocious resistance put up by Isis fighters to defend the Isis-held town of Manbij a little further south from attack by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) whose fighting muscle comes from the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG). Isis may have lost as many as 1,000 dead in ground fighting and US bombardment from the air.

It was reported at the time that Isis fighters had fallen back from Jarabulus towards their other stronghold in the area at al-Bab, but Faraj has another explanation. He says: When the Turkish army entered Jarabulus, I talked to my friends who were there. Actually, Isis didnt leave Jarabulus; they just shaved off their beards.

He has compelling claims about the degree of complicity between Isis and Turkey a year earlier relating to the defence of Tal Abyad, another Isis-held crossing point between Turkey and Syria which was a particularly important supply route for Isis because it is 60 miles north of the Isis Syrian capital Raqqa.

In the summer of 2015, the YPG forces advancing from east and west with strong US air support caught Tal Abyad in a pincer movement, which made it difficult for Isis to defend the town. Faraj was part of a 150-strong Isis force resisting the YPG attack. Turkey supported Isis a lot, he recalls. When I was in Tal Abyad in May, 2015, we received a lot of weapons and ammunition without any obstacles from the border guards. This has long been an accusation by the Kurds, but this may be the first time that allegations of Turkish complicity with Isis during a battle has been confirmed by an Isis fighter taking part in it.

Turkish government officials have repeatedly denied any accusations of complicity in the actions of Isis, or that weapons are getting into the hands of the group via Turkey.

Faraj, as a Syrian Sunni Arab, is critical of both Turks and Syrian Kurds. He expresses dislike for the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, but adds he is much better than the Arab dictators. At the same time, he holds Mr Erdogan responsible for destroying Syria by pursuing a conflict with the Kurds in Turkey that spread across the border into Syria and by supporting Isis and pushing them into Syria.

In pictures: The rise of Isis Show all 74 1 /74 In pictures: The rise of Isis In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters Fighters of the Islamic State wave the group's flag from a damaged display of a government fighter jet following the battle for the Tabqa air base, in Raqqa, Syria AP In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters Fighters from Islamic State group sit on their tank during a parade in Raqqa, Syria AP In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters Fighters from the Islamic State group pray at the Tabqa air base after capturing it from the Syrian government in Raqqa, Syria AP In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters Fighters from extremist Islamic State group parade in Raqqa, Syria AP In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis kidnapping A video uploaded to social networks shows men in underwear being marched barefoot along a desert road before being allegedly executed by Isis Getty Images In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis kidnapping Haruna Yukawa after his capture by Isis In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis kidnapping Khalinda Sharaf Ajour, a Yazidi, says two of her daughters were captured by Isis militants Washington Post In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters Spokesperson for Isis Vice News via Youtube In pictures: The rise of Isis A pro-Isis leaflet A pro-Isis leaflet handed out on Oxford Street In London Ghaffar Hussain In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters Isis Jihadists burn their passports In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis controls Syrian Aid A man collecting aid administered by Isis in Syria In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis controls Syrian Aid A woman collecting aid administered by Isis in Syria In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis controls Syrian Aid Local civilians queue for aid administered by Isis. Since it declared a caliphate the group has increasingly been delivering services such as healthcare, and distributing aid and free fuel In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Iraqi security forces detain men suspected of being militants of the Isis group in Diyala province In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Mourners carry the coffin of a Shi'ite volunteer from the brigades of peace, who joined the Iraqi army and was killed during clashes with militants of the Isis group in Samarra, during his funeral in Najaf In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraqi refugees An Iraqi Shiite Turkmen family fleeing the violence in the Iraqi city of Tal Afar, west of Mosul, arrives at a refugee camp on the outskirts of Arbil, in Iraq's Kurdistan region In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi A photograph made from a video by the jihadist affiliated group Furqan Media via their twitter account allegedly showing Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi delivering a sermon during Friday prayers at a mosque in Mosul. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared an Islamist caliphate in the territory under the group's control in Iraq and Syria In pictures: The rise of Isis Islamic extremists destroying mosques in Iraq Shiite's Al-Qubba Husseiniya mosque explodes in Mosul In pictures: The rise of Isis Islamic extremists destroying mosques in Iraq Smoke and debris go up in the air as Shiite's Al-Qubba Husseiniya mosque explodes in Mosul. Images posted online show that Islamic extremists have destroyed at least 10 ancient shrines and Shiite mosques in territory - the city of Mosul and the town of Tal Afar - they have seized in northern Iraq in recent weeks In pictures: The rise of Isis Islamic extremists destroying mosques in Iraq A bulldozer destroys Sunni's Ahmed al-Rifai shrine and tomb in Mahlabiya district outside of Tal Afar In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Iraqi security forces celebrate after clashes with followers of Shiite cleric Mahmoud al-Sarkhi, in front of his home in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Baghdad In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Iraqi security forces arrest a follower of Shiite cleric Mahmoud al-Sarkhi after clashes with his followers in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Baghdad In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Iraqi security forces arrest a follower of Shiite cleric Mahmoud al-Sarkhi at his home after clashes with his followers in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Baghdad In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Iraqi security forces arrest a follower of Shiite cleric Mahmoud al-Sarkhi after clashes with his followers in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Baghdad In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis A vehicle burns in front of a home of a follower of Shiite cleric Mahmoud al-Sarkhi after clashes with his followers in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Baghdad In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraqi refugees An Iraqi woman holds her exhausted son as over 1000 Iraqis who have fled fighting in and around the city of Mosul and Tal Afar wait at a Kurdish checkpoint in the hopes of entering a temporary displacement camp in Khazair In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraqi refugees Displaced Iraqi women hold pots as they queue to receive food during the first day of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, at an encampment for displaced Iraqis who fled from Mosul and other towns, in the Khazer area outside Irbil, north Iraq In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria A militant Islamist fighter waving a flag, cheers as he takes part in a military parade along the streets of Syria's northern Raqqa. The fighters held the parade to celebrate their declaration of an Islamic "caliphate" after the group captured territory in neighbouring Iraq In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria Isis fighters wave flags as they take part in a military parade along the streets of Syria's northern Raqqa province Reuters In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria Isis fighters travel in a vehicle as they take part in a military parade along the streets of Syria's northern Raqqa province In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria Fighters from the Isis group during a parade with a missile in Raqqa, Syria. Militants from an al-Qaida splinter group held a military parade in their stronghold in northeastern Syria, displaying U.S.-made Humvees, heavy machine guns, and missiles captured from the Iraqi army for the first time since taking over large parts of the Iraq-Syria border In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria Isis fighters during a parade in Raqqa, Syria In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria Fighters from the Isis group during a parade in Raqqa, Syria. Militants from the splinter group held a military parade in their stronghold in northeastern Syria, displaying U.S.-made Humvees, heavy machine guns, and missiles captured from the Iraqi army for the first time since taking over large parts of the Iraq-Syria border In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria Isis fighters hold a military parade in their stronghold in northeastern Syria In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria Isis fighters during a parade in Raqqa, Syria In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria A member loyal to the Isis waves an Isis flag in Raqqa In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Iraqi anti-government gunmen from Sunni tribes in the western Anbar province march during a protest in Ramadi, west of Baghdad. The United Nations warned that Iraq is at a "crossroads" and appealed for restraint, as a bloody four-day wave of violence killed 195 people. The violence is the deadliest so far linked to demonstrations that broke out in Sunni areas of the Shiite-majority country more than four months ago, raising fears of a return to all-out sectarian conflict In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Iraqi security forces hold up a flag of the Isis group they captured during an operation to regain control of Dallah Abbas north of Baqouba, the capital of Iraq's Diyala province, 35 miles (60 kilometers) northeast of Baghdad In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Iraq Isis fighters parade in the northern city of Mosul In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Volunteers, who have joined the Iraqi army to fight against the predominantly Sunni militants from the radical Isis group, demonstrate their skills during a graduation ceremony after completing their field training in Najaf In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Kurdish Peshmerga troops fire a cannon during clashes with militants of the Isis group in Jalawla, Diyala province In pictures: The rise of Isis Lieutenant General Qassem Atta speaks during a press conference Iraqi Prime Minister's security spokesman, Lieutenant General Qassem Atta speaks during a press conference about the latest military development in Iraq, in the capital Baghdad. Iraqi forces pressed a campaign to retake militant-held Tikrit, clashing with jihadist-led Sunni militants nearby and pounding positions inside the city with air strikes in their biggest counter-offensive so far In pictures: The rise of Isis A police station building destroyed by Isis fighters An exterior view of a police station building destroyed by gunmen in Mosul city, northern Iraq. Iraq's new parliament is expected to convene to start the process of setting up a new government, despite deepening political rifts and an ongoing Islamist-led insurgency. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani issued a decree inviting the new House of Representatives to meet and form a new government In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Iraq Smoke billows from an area controlled by the Isis between the Iraqi towns of Naojul and Tuz Khurmatu, both located north of the capital Baghdad, as Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga forces take part in an operation to repel the Sunni militants In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraqi refugees An elderly Iraqi woman is helped into a temporary displacement camp for Iraqis caught-up in the fighting in and around the city of Mosul in Khazair In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraqi refugees An Iraqi Christian woman fleeing the violence in the village of Qaraqush, about 30 kms east of the northern province of Nineveh, cries upon her arrival at a community center in the Kurdish city of Arbil in Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraqi refugees An Iraqi woman, who fled with her family from the northern city of Mosul, prays with a copy of the Quran AP In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Iraq The body of an Isis militant killed during clashes with Iraqi security forces on the outskirts of the city of Samarra Reuters In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Iraqi civilians inspect the damage at a market after an air strike by the Iraqi army in central Mosul EPA In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Members of the Al-Abbas brigades, who volunteered to protect the Shiite Muslim holy sites in Karbala against Sunni militants fighting the Baghdad government, parade in the streets of the city AP In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Shia tribesmen gather in Baghdad to take up arms against Sunni insurgents marching on the capital. Thousands have volunteered to bolster defences AFP/Getty In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis A van carrying volunteers joining Iraqi security forces against Jihadist militants. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki announced the Iraqi government would arm and equip civilians who volunteered to fight AFP/Getty In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Fighters of the Isis group parade in a commandeered Iraqi security forces armored vehicle down a main road at the northern city of Mosul In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq An Islamist fighter, identified as Abu Muthanna al-Yemeni from Britain (R), speaks in this still image taken undated video shot at an unknown location and uploaded to a social media website. Five Islamist fighters identified as Australian and British nationals have called on Muslims to join the wars in Syria and Iraq, in the new video released by the Isis In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Al-Qaida inspired militants stand with captured Iraqi Army Humvee at a checkpoint belonging to Iraqi Army outside Beiji refinery some 250 kilometers (155 miles) north of Baghdad. The fighting at Beiji comes as Iraq has asked the U.S. for airstrikes targeting the militants from the Isis group. While U.S. President Barack Obama has not fully ruled out the possibility of launching airstrikes, such action is not imminent in part because intelligence agencies have been unable to identify clear targets on the ground, officials said In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Militants attacked Iraq's main oil refinein Baiji as they pressed an offensive that has seen them capture swathes of territory, a manager and a refinery employee said In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Militants from the Isis group parading with their weapons in the northern city of Baiji in the in Salaheddin province In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq A smoke rises after an attack by Isis militants on the country's largest oil refinery in Beiji, some 250 kilometers (155 miles) north of the capital, Baghdad. Iraqi security forces battled insurgents targeting the country's main oil refinery and said they regained partial control of a city near the Syrian border, trying to blunt an offensive by Sunni militants who diplomats fear may have also seized some 100 foreign workers In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Militants of the Isis group stand next to captured vehicles left behind by Iraqi security forces at an unknown location in the Salaheddin province. For militant groups, the fight over public perception can be even more important than actual combat, turning military losses into propaganda victories and battlefield successes into powerful tools to build support for the cause In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq An injured fighter (C) from the Isis group after a battle with Iraqi soldiers at an undisclosed location near the border between Syria and Iraq In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Fighters from the Isis aiming at advancing Iraqi troops at an undisclosed location near the border between Syria and Iraq In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Fighters from the Isis group taking position at an undisclosed location near the border between Syria and Iraq In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Fighters from the Isis group inspecting vehicles of the Iraqi army after they were seized at an undisclosed location near the border between Syria and Iraq In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq One Iraqi captive, a corporal, is reluctant to say the slogan, and has to be shouted at repeatedly before he obeys Sky News In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Iraqi captives held by the extremists Sky News In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Iraqi captives held by the extremists Sky News In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Militants of the Isis group force captured Iraqi security forces members to the transport In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Militants of the Isis group transporting dozens of captured Iraqi security forces members to an unknown location in the Salaheddin province ahead of executing them In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq A major offensive spearheaded by Isis but also involving supporters of executed dictator Saddam Hussein has overrun all of one province and chunks of three others In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Militants of the Isis group executing dozens of captured Iraqi security forces members at an unknown location in the Salaheddin province In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Isis militants taking position at a Iraqi border post on the Syrian-Iraqi border between the Iraqi Nineveh province and the Syrian town of Al-Hasakah In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Isis rebels show their flag after seizing an army post AFP/Getty Images In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Isis militants waving an Islamist flag after the seizure of an Iraqi army checkpoint in Salahuddin Getty Images In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Demonstrators chant slogans as they carry al-Qaida flags in front of the provincial government headquarters in Mosul, 225 miles (360 kilometers) northwest of Baghdad. In the week since it captured Iraq's second-largest city, Mosul, a Muslim extremist group has tried to win over residents and has stopped short of widely enforcing its strict brand of Islamic law, residents say. Churches remain unharmed and street cleaners are back at work

Defenders of Turkish actions argue that whatever tolerance for Isis by Turkey there may have been previously, the two have been at war over the last year. There have been repeated Isis attacks in Turkey, including one on Istanbul International Airport that left 42 dead and culminating in a suicide bombing of Kurdish wedding in Gaziantep on 20 August that killed 54, of whom 21 were children. But, despite Mr Erdogans anti-Isis rhetoric, the restrained reaction by Isis to the Turk invasion, of which it is the nominal target, suggests that the understanding between Isis and Turkey, so blatant in the past, may not be entirely dead.

Paradoxically, although Faraj has enthusiasm for the spread of Isis and its beliefs to foreign countries, he is very critical of the foreigner volunteers who came to Syria to fight for the self-declared Caliphate. He found these foreigners, including British, French and Turkish volunteers, surprisingly ignorant of Islam and local customs, often impelled by unhappy home lives or boredom, and only useful for propaganda and suicide attacks. Worse, their failings alienated Syrians who had previously supported Isis.

He says: When Isis came, locals were happy and welcomed it. People believed that Isis will be their saviour, but psychologically and socially, they couldnt accept foreign commanders in charge of their day-to-day lives. For instance, people in Raqqa complained when a Saudi emir used physical force to get a woman to wear a niqab. Any local will be annoyed when a stranger interferes in their life, not as a guest, but as a ruler who tells people to obey his orders. I was angry when a Tunisian man ordered me to go to the mosque and hit me on the back with a stick.

Faraj finds some consolation in the thought that the behaviour of skilled but tough Turkish Kurd guerrilla commanders brought in by the YPG to give military advice to the Syrian Kurds in 2012-13 caused similar offence among local Syrian Kurds. The Turkish Kurd officers in charge of training had lived all their lives in military camps and were harsh and had never experienced civilian life. He suspects that Syrians supporting the government in Damascus react with similar hostility to being ordered about by their Russian and Iranian allies.

Turkish soldiers stand in a Turkish army tank driving back to Turkey from the Syrian-Turkish border town of Jarabulus on September 2, 2016 in the Turkish-Syrian border town of Karkamis (AFP/Getty)

The war in northern Syria is very distinct from that in the rest of the country. Its main protagonists are Kurds, Arabs, Isis, the YPG and Turkey with only limited involvement by the government in Damascus. Faraj says that many Arabs in the area have joined Isis simply because they have been persecuted by the YPG. He cites as an example two cousins of his from the town of Tal Hamis on the Khabur river west of Hasakah who were killed fighting the YPG. Their houses in Tal Hamis were then confiscated by the YPG and the widows of the dead fighters were left with nothing so their children join Isis to get revenge for their parents.

This is the pattern all over Syria and Iraq. Protagonists may not love the side they are on, but at least it enables them to fight an enemy whom they fear and hate. He cites as an example one of his earlier commanders, a Kurdish emir named Abu Abbas al-Kurdistani, subsequently killed in battle, who had been imprisoned without trial and tortured in Iraqi Kurdistan for four years. Kurdistani said that Isis was ideal for himself because it was the best option for oppressed people and gave him the opportunity to take revenge. Nowhere in the interview does Faraj acknowledge the role that Isis atrocities have played, not just in Syria and Iraq but across the world, in creating a host of enemies for the movement who now encircle it and are threatening to overwhelm it.
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Palestinian officials have dismissed as "smears" allegations from an Israeli researcher that Mahmoud Abbas was once a KGB spy.

Gideon Remez, a researcher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalems Truman Institute, claimed he had found a connection between Palestinian Authority President Abbas and the defunct Soviet-era agency in documents smuggled out of the country by former KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin in 1991.

Mr Remez said the material, now held at the Churchill Archive at the University of Cambridge, was released for public research two years ago and he had requested a file marked "the Middle East".

He said: "There's a group of summaries or excerpts there that all come under a headline of persons cultivated by the KGB in the year 1983.

"Now one of these items is all of two lines ... it starts with the codename of the person, 'Krotov', which is derived from the Russian word for 'mole', and then 'Abbas, Mahmoud, born 1935 in Palestine, member of the central committee of Fatah and the PLO, in Damascus 'agent of the KGB'."

But the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO), which Mr Abbas chairs, has dismissed the allegations, which first emerged on Israels Channel One TV station on Wednesday, saying it was a smear campaign designed to derailed efforts to revive peace talks which collapsed in 2014.

It comes after Russia President Vladimir Putin, himself a former KGB agent, offered to host a meeting in Moscow between Mr Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a bid to resume the talks.

Both leaders agreed to the meeting in principle but have yet to set a date.

The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Show all 10 1 /10 The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Medics evacuate a wounded man from the scene of an attack in Jerusalem. A Palestinian rammed a vehicle into a bus stop then got out and started stabbing people before he was shot dead AP The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Israeli ZAKA emergency response members carry the body of an Israeli at the scene of a shooting attack in Jerusalem. A pair of Palestinian men boarded a bus in Jerusalem and began shooting and stabbing passengers, while another assailant rammed a car into a bus station before stabbing bystanders, in near-simultaneous attacks that escalated a month long wave of violence AP The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Getty Images The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Palestinians throw molotov cocktail during clashes with Israeli troops near Ramallah, West Bank. Recent days have seen a series of stabbing attacks in Israel and the West Bank that have wounded several Israelis AP The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Women cry during the funeral of Palestinian teenager Ahmad Sharaka, 13, who was shot dead by Israeli forces during clashes at a checkpoint near Ramallah, at the family house in the Palestinian West Bank refugee camp of Jalazoun, Ramallah AP The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies A wounded Palestinian boy and his father hold hands at a hospital after their house was brought down by an Israeli air strike in Gaza Reuters The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Palestinians look on after a protester is shot by Israelis soldiers during clashes at the Howara checkpoint near the West Bank city of Nablus EPA The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies A lawyer wearing his official robes kicks a tear gas canister back toward Israeli soldiers during a demonstration by scores of Palestinian lawyers called for by the Palestinian Bar Association in solidarity with protesters at the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem's Old City, near Ramallah, West Bank AP The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Undercover Israeli soldiers detain a Palestinian in Ramallah Reuters The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Palestinian youth burn tyres during clashes with Israeli soldiers close to the Jewish settlement of Bet El, in the West Bank city of Ramallah, after Israel barred Palestinians from Jerusalem's Old City as tensions mounted following attacks that killed two Israelis and wounded a child

Mr Abbas, who received a PhD in Moscow in 1982, is a founding member of Fatah, the dominant faction within the PLO, and has been President of the Palestinian territories since 2005.

The documents cited by Mr Remez do not give any indication of what Mr Abbas may have done for the USSR during his purported time on its payroll.

A Palestinian official, who declined to be identified as he was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter, said that Mr Abbas had served as an "official liaison with the Soviets, so he hardly needed to be a spy", without elaborating.

The official said any suggestion that the president was a spy was "absolutely absurd".
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A British-Iranian mother has been jailed for five years on secret charges, her husband has said.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a charity worker from Hampstead, north-west London, was sentenced on charges that remain secret after being detained for 150 days, Richard Ratcliffe said.

The 37-year-old, who was accused of plotting to topple the Iranian regime, was arrested at Imam Khomeini airport on 3 April as she was trying to return to Britain after a holiday visiting family with her daughter Gabriella.

The little girl, who celebrated her second birthday in June without her mother or father, is being cared for by her grandparents in Tehran who speak little English.

The five-year sentence, expected to be served in Evin prison, was handed down by Judge Salavati of the Revolutionary Court on Tuesday  the day after the UK and Iran upgraded Embassy relations.

Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe phoned her husband on Friday morning to confirm the sentence, which he branded a punishment without a crime.

On Friday afternoon family were due to visit Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe who, according to her husband, had suffered dangerous weight loss, lost some of her hair and became virtually unable to walk since being imprisoned.

Speaking to The Independent in May, following her arrest, Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffes husband Richard said: Nazanin is a kind, caring and very sociable person, a lovely and loving wife and mother, and it will be breaking her heart to be so far from her baby. She draws strength from being with family and friends and other mums, being stuck away in solitary confinement will be killing her.

New York protests against Iran nuclear deal Show all 10 1 /10 New York protests against Iran nuclear deal New York protests against Iran nuclear deal New York A woman holds a poster as she takes part in a rally on Times Square in New York opposing the nuclear deal with Iran New York protests against Iran nuclear deal New York An inflatable mushroom cloud stands among demonstrators during a rally apposing the nuclear deal with Iran New York protests against Iran nuclear deal New York Protesters rally against the nuclear deal with Iran in Times Square New York protests against Iran nuclear deal New York A member of the Neturei Karta Orthodox Jews sect is escorted away by New York City Police during a rally near Times Square to demand that Congress vote down the proposed US deal with Iran in New York New York protests against Iran nuclear deal New York A woman shouts slogans during a rally against the nuclear deal with Iran in Times Square in New York New York protests against Iran nuclear deal New York A protestor holds a placard during a demonstration and rally apposing the nuclear deal with Iran in Times Square New York protests against Iran nuclear deal New York Some of several thousand protestors crowd into 7th Avenue at 42nd street as they demonstrate during a rally apposing the nuclear deal with Iran New York protests against Iran nuclear deal New York A woman holds a placard as she joins several thousand other protestors to demonstrate during a rally apposing the nuclear deal with Iran New York protests against Iran nuclear deal New York Protesters rallied against the Iran nuclear deal in New York's Times Square KENA BETANCUR/AFP/Getty Images New York protests against Iran nuclear deal New York Protestors shout slogans as they demonstrate during a rally apposing the nuclear deal with Iran

Family have asked Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffes lawyer to appeal against the decision. No date for the appeal has yet been set.

A spokesperson for human rights group Amnesty International said the trial was a complete travesty of justice throughout.

With additional reporting by agencies
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A senior military commander of the former Jabhat al-Nusra rebel group in Syria has been killed in air strike targeting Islamist leaders.

A spokesperson for the militants, who rebranded themselves to become Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (JFS) after claiming to cut ties with al-Qaeda, said Abu Omar Saraqib was martyred in a rural part of Aleppo province on Thursday.

Its Twitter account named him as the general commander of the group, with analysts believing the name is an alias for Abu Hajer al-Homsi, who was among jihadists who fought American forces in Iraq after the 2003 invasion before returning to Syria.

Syrian supporters of the Al-Nusra group wave flags as they march during an anti-regime demonstration (Getty Images)

He was a founding member of Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda whose fighters later spawned Isis and split from the group.

Its emir Abu Mohammad al-Jolani announced the groups supposed departure from al-Qaeda leadership in July and re-named it as Jabhat Fateh al-Sham.

But the organisation, which is among the most powerful rebel forces in the Syrian civil war, has not been shy of declaring its Islamist ambitions, announcing it would continue our jihad with the aim of establishing an Islamic government and the downfall of President Bashar al-Assad.

Analysts suspected the rebrand was a move to generate support from potential rebel allies deterred by al-Qaeda and the presence of foreign fighters in its ranks.

It was also seen as a pitch to prevent fighters being targeted by international air strikes against Isis and other terrorist groups.

Abu Mohammad al-Jolani reading the announcement of the creation of Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (Front for the Conquest of the Levant) (EPA)

But American commanders said their operations would continue, with State Department spokesperson John Kirby saying: They are still considered a foreign terrorist organisation. We judge a group by what they do, not by what they call themselves.

The nationality of the planes that carried out Thursdays strike was not immediately known, but a rebel source told Reuters initial information suggested it was most likely an American fighter jet that struck the hideout.

It would be the first time the US-led coalition had targeted the group since its rebrand.

JSF is currently leading the Jaish al-Fath (Army of Conquest) coalition of Islamist rebels battling Syrian government forces and Shia militias in Aleppo city, which in split between regime and opposition control.

They succeeded in breaking a siege of eastern districts earlier this year but have been pushed back in fierce battles over recent days, seeing forces loyal to President Assad retake the key Ramouseh district on Thursday.

In pictures: Aleppo bombing Show all 14 1 /14 In pictures: Aleppo bombing In pictures: Aleppo bombing Bombing in Aleppo Smoke rises after airstrikes on the rebel-held al-Sakhour neighborhood of Aleppo, Syria April 29, 2016. Reuters In pictures: Aleppo bombing Bombing in Aleppo A Syrian family runs for cover amid the rubble of destroyed buildings following a reported air strike on the rebel-held neighbourhood of Al-Qatarji in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, on April 29, 2016. AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Aleppo bombing Bombing in Aleppo A man reacts as he stands on blood stains at a site hit by airstrikes in the rebel held area of Aleppo's al-Fardous district, Syria, April 29, 2016. Reuters In pictures: Aleppo bombing Bombing in Aleppo The damage of the airstrikes in the rebel-held area of Aleppo on April 28 Reuters In pictures: Aleppo bombing Bombing in Aleppo The damaged the Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF)-backed al-Quds hospital after it was hit by airstrikes, in a rebel-held area of Syria's Aleppo Reuters In pictures: Aleppo bombing Bombing in Aleppo Syrians evacuate an injured man amid the rubble of destroyed buildings following an air strike on a rebel-held of Aleppo on April 29, 2016. AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Aleppo bombing Bombing in Aleppo People inspect the damage at a site hit by airstrikes, in the rebel-held area of Aleppo's Bustan al-Qasr AP In pictures: Aleppo bombing Bombing in Aleppo A man leads a woman in tears and child out of the scene after airstrikes hit Aleppo AP In pictures: Aleppo bombing Bombing in Aleppo Civil defence members search for survivors after an airstrike at a field hospital in the rebel held area of al-Sukari district of Aleppo Reuters In pictures: Aleppo bombing Bombing in Aleppo A Syrian boy is comforted as he cries next to the body of a relative who died in a reported air strike in the rebel-held neighbourhood of al-Soukour in the northern city of Aleppo Getty Images In pictures: Aleppo bombing Bombing in Aleppo A Syrian family walks amid the rubble of destroyed buildings following a reported air strike in the Bustan al-Qasr rebel-held district of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo Getty Images In pictures: Aleppo bombing Bombing in Aleppo Syrian civil defence volunteers and rescuers remove a baby from under the rubble of a destroyed building following a reported air strike on the rebel-held neighbourhood of al-Kalasa in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo Getty Images In pictures: Aleppo bombing Bombing in Aleppo Syrians help a wounded youth following an air strike on the Fardous rebel held neighbourhood of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo Getty Images In pictures: Aleppo bombing Bombing in Aleppo Syrian civil defence volunteers evacuate people from a damaged building following a reported airstrike in the rebel-held neighbourhood of Tareeq al-Bab in the northern city of Aleppo

JFS main strongholds are in the province of Idlib, where Sharia law is enforced in parts amid reports of numerous summary killings and executions.

The group itself advertises regular suicide bombing operations, with 14 listed in the past three months using vehicles laden with explosives and driven into targets.

Its militants have also been hit by Russian air strikes that have turned the tide of the civil war in favour of President Assad since Vladimir Putins intervention started in September.

The US Secretary of State, John Kerry, and Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, have been trying to reach a deal on deeper cooperation between their respective militaries against radical groups operating in Syria, particularly Isis and JFS.

One of the complications is that former Nusra militants often co-operates with Western-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) rebel groups along major frontlines against government forces, putting both in the sights of Russian air power and Iran-backed militias.

American and Russian diplomats continue attempts to negotiate a ceasefire in Aleppo, which has seen mass casualties, destruction and food shortages after years of battle and bombardment.
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A 5.0 magnitude quake has been detected near North Korea's north-eastern nuclear test site, raising immediate suspicions the secretive regime has tested another device.

The US Geological Survey reported an explosion in the area, but there was no immediate confirmation of a nuclear test, which similar seismic activity has previously indicated.

South Korea's Defence Ministry said it could not confirm the cause, and the country's weather agency said it was analysing what might have happened.

North Korea conducted a fourth nuclear test earlier this year, part of its push for a nuclear-armed missile that could one day reach the US mainland. Recent satellite imagery syggested increased activity at the Punggye-ri site, where North Korea carried out its fourth nuclear test in January.

A second test inside a year would represent a defiant response to increasing Western calls for a tightening of sanctions.

And analysts said the shockwaves made it highly likely a nuclear bomb had been tested.

The size of the seismic signal represented a device with a 20- to 30-kilotonne yield, according to one analyst, making it the largest estimated yield so far of a North Korean nuclear device.

That's the largest DPRK test to date, 20-30kt, at least. Not a happy day, Jeffrey Lewis of the California-based Middlebury Institute of International Studies told Reuters, using the North's official title of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Yield estimates are always kind of approximate. The point is that it is the biggest one to date unless they revise the yield downward, he said.

Friday morning's seismic activity tremor put regional governments on immediate alert.

A Japanese government spokesman said there was a high possibility Pyongyang had conducted a nuclear test.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has instructed the relevant ministries to collect and analyse information, said Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga at a news conference.

South Korea's presidential Blue House was also expected to hold a National Security Council meeting.
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Efforts by the United States and Russia to agree the terms of a putative, nationwide ceasefire for Syria appear to be faltering with both sides reportedly snared by technical issues.

On Friday evening, Russia's foreign minister said he was close to "calling it a day".

Sergey Lavrov blamed Washington for the impasse after negotiations designed to end to more than five years of conflict between Syria's Russian-backed government and US-supported rebels.

"We are thinking of calling it a day and meeting next week," he said at the hotel in Geneva were talks were held.

Recommended Read more Isis attack plot suspect was engaged to two killed French terrorists

Before talk began on Friday there had been guarded optimism that an agreement was at hand. Aides to the US Secretary of State, John Kerry, indicated he would not have agreed to a face-to-face session with his Russian counterpart if that wasnt the case.

But as dusk approached, the mood changed. We are not in a position right now to say whether or not a final deal can be reached, a US official told the Reuters agency. Discussions continue into the early evening, as technical issues are worked out between the two teams.

It was the fourth such meeting between the top Russian and American diplomats in two weeks as the world strains to see whether there might at last be a formula for ending fighting that has already claimed 500,000 lives and triggered a refugee crisis.

The US official added that the two sides were, making progress ... towards advancing proposals that would lead to a nationwide cessation of hostilities in Syria, as well as sustained and unimpeded access to humanitarian assistance for communities most in need".

Not propitious are the circumstances on the ground, however, with fighting reaching new levels of ferociousness in and around the divided city of Aleppo, the most populous in Syria and once a key commercial hub.

Syrian refugees walk on their way back to the Syrian city of Jarabulus on September 7, 2016 at Karkamis crossing gate, in the southern region of Kilis (Getty)

As part of any deal, the Russians would be expected to persuade the regime of President Bashar al-Assad to end its military actions against rebel forces many of which receive US support. At the same time, however, the Americans would have to demonstrate their ability to detach the rebels groups from extremist terror networks including al-Qaida.

Separately, Turkey on Friday renewed its appeals for the creation of a no-fly-zone over northern Syria, a step it says is vital to allow the return of thousands of Syrian refugees to their homeland and for the training of local groups to fight Isis.

For the people to return home, ensuring ground safety alone would not be sufficient, it would need to be supported by a no-fly zone so that there are no attacks from the air, Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters after talks with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in Istanbul.

Human rights groups report that the escalating conflict in Aleppo has claimed more than 700 civilian lives in just the last forty days, including 165 children.

Aside from the political challenges, the proposed deal would be replete with tangled detail, for instance stating how far troops of all sides would have to fall back from demilitarised zones and the weaponry they would be allowed to keep. Establishing access for humanitarian aid was also a priority.

Just on Friday, the UN said that the Syria government had stopped aid convoys to Aleppo earlier this month and the city was on the brink of running out of fuel.

And events on the ground in Syria never stop evolving. The Pentagon said on Friday that the US had not been responsible for an air strike that killed Abu Omar Saraqeb, who led the former Nusra Front. It was not a U.S. strike, Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said.Whatever happened there, it was not something that the US military did.

Indeed, Pentagon officials say that American forces have stayed away from the fighting in Aleppo itself because it is not an area where Isis has any presence.

Not helping are all the simmering tensions between the US and Russia, many stemming from the Syrian crisis itself. Trust between Washington and Moscow remains an elusive commodity.

When it started its own military operations in Syria last year, Russia said its sole aim was to help crush Isis and the al-Nusra Front, the affiliate of al-Qaida in the country. The US has asserted however that Moscows main aim has been to prop up al-Assad.

The frayed nature of the relationship has also featured more and more frequently in the US elections, not least in the course of this week when Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, suggested in a national security forum on live TV that Mr Putin was a stronger leader than Barack Obama. Then on Thursday he appeared on a Moscow-backed news network, RT, and criticised American foreign policy, notably in the Middle East.
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Q I've just realised you can't get Moroccan dirhams in England. Do you know if it's best to get some at the airport, or just use an ATM when I get there? Or is it worth taking euros? The guy picking us up from the airport quoted a price in euros, so can we just use them instead?

Emma Henderson

A Morocco is one of a (thankfully dwindling) number of countries that restricts the movement of its currency, the dirham. The Foreign Office says: The Moroccan Dirham (MAD) is non-convertible. You can import or export up to a maximum of 1,000 MAD to or from Morocco. Thats about 80-worth.

The tourist board warns that the dirham cannot be converted outside the Kingdom's borders. Currency dealers in France, Spain and Algeria may dispute that last assertion, but from a British holidaymakers point of view there is no point in trying to get dirhams before you leave. Instead, just bring cash and change it, little and often, when you get there.

If you happen to have some euros from your last trip to Europe, then do bring them along; the narrowest spread between buying and selling rates are for euros. But pounds are also acceptable  so long as they are Bank of England notes (as opposed to Scottish or Northern Irish) and in reasonable condition.

Why not change a big slab of cash all at once? First, you will probably not get a particularly good rate at the airport when you arrive; you will probably find better deals in town at hotels or bureaux de change (youre looking for a rate of 12.5 dirhams to 1).

Next, when you change back surplus dirhams to hard currency (sterling, euros, dollars, etc) at the end of your stay, you are allowed only half the amount that you changed during your visit  this will not prove a problem if you have bought dirhams as you go along, so long as you remember to keep all receipts.

Finally, the Foreign Office warns Its very difficult to exchange travellers cheques, and I agree. If you want a back-up, bring a debit card  but use it in an ATM only as a last resort, because youll lose a small fortune in fees.

Every day, our travel correspondent, Simon Calder, tackles a readers question. Just email yours to s@hols.tv or tweet @simoncalder
Minister for finance Michael Noonan has said he expects other countries to take an interest in Irelands appeal against the EUs recent ruling that Apple enjoyed illegal tax breaks in the country.

He added that he was not trying to drum up support from fellow finance ministers over the issue.

"The Irish government has decided to appeal the ruling and Apple have also decided to appeal the ruling so in terms of process, the Commission, the competition commissioners have stated their opinion and its now under appeal, he said on his way into a meeting of eurozone finance ministers in Bratislava.

"So were in a kind of a judicial phase, he added.

France and Germany have come out behind the Commissions recent ruling, while EU economic and tax commissioner - and Frances former finance minister - Pierre Moscovici said that Irelands reluctance to accept the 13 billion euro tax windfall was a strange decision.

"I wouldnt agree with him and, you know, hes a commissioner. Obviously the commission will defend theyre ruling and well appeal it, Mr Noonan said.

Austrian Minister of Finance Hans Jorg Schelling said on his way into the meeting that Italy, France and Austria would be looking into whether their countries are entitled to a share of the 13 billion tax windfall the Commission said is owed to Ireland.

In terms of support, again, because its judicial were not trying to drum up support. In a court case, you dont drum up support. But there have been cases and rulings in the last 12 months or so in respect of Luxembourg, Belgium and Holland, and they have all appealed, and Ireland has associated itself with the appeals, and we are legally represented at the appeals, he added.

"I would assume something similar will happen in this case because interested parties will be very interested in the legal argument because of the similarities between the cases - theyre all taken on state aid grounds, he added.

The dossiers under appeal are historic issues, and Im sure a lot of colleagues will disucss these with me privately but I dont see them as a debating issue or a discussion issue which will be adverse to Ireland in any way, he said.

He wouldnt be drawn on whether Ireland will appeal for flexibility under the EUs fiscal rules, which say spending must be in line with GDP growth so the economy doesnt overheat.

"I think the appeal period at a minimum will take four years, maybe longer, so I think one of my successors is going to have great fun making these decisions, but I doubt itll be me."
An increasingly competitive European airline market could soon bring consolidation and possibly European low-cost carriers providing local connecting services or "feeder" flights for full-service long-haul airlines, the CEOs of easyJet and IAG said yesterday.

Low fuel prices have led to a big growth in capacity on European routes, putting market expansion at a 10-year high on forecasts that airlines will add new capacity of 8pc over the next six months.

But inevitably increased competition is causing fares to drop, good news for consumers but bad news for the profit margins of airlines.

Willie Walsh, the chief executive of British Airways-owner IAG, said IAG was not currently actively considering any acquisition deals.

"I think there are airlines out there that would like to be consolidated into a larger group, I get calls from a lot of them," said Walsh, who has been Europe's most active acquirer of airlines in the past five years, combining BA with Iberia to form IAG, which has since taken over Spanish budget airline Vueling and Irish airline Aer Lingus.

However, Carolyn McCall, the chief executive of easyJet said she expected more consolidation over the next 12 to 18 months, with weaker airlines suffering in the tougher trading conditions, as the previous boost to margins from lower fuel prices is competed away.

Deutsche Bank on Wednesday downgraded its investment recommendations for Ryanair, Lufthansa, Air France-KLM and IAG, with the analysts saying there was too much capacity in the industry and prices would fall further this winter.

Price drops could stimulate further change in the industry in the longer term, McCall said.

Ryanair and easyJet both have an eye on providing feeder flights for long-haul carriers, but so far no deal has been struck. (Reuters)
All passengers flying with Ryanair could soon have to sign up for the airline's 'myRyanair' programme before being able to book tickets, and the change might be introduced as early as next year, according to chief executive Michael O'Leary.

The move would be a major shift in how the airline sells its tickets, and would help Ryanair further develop its plan to offer more personalised offers for flyers. Over 11 million people have already voluntarily signed up for the service.

Only this week, the airline was offering an incentive to flyers to sign up to the for myRyanair service, which was launched in 2014, giving a 10 voucher against a future flight booking if customers enlisted as a myRyanair member. It launched a myRyanair app this year, and claims it makes the booking process 20pc faster.

Ryanair tells customers that the service offers "even faster access" to fares, allowing customers to create their own personal profile, save passport details and set their travel preferences. It also saves payment details.

But if Mr O'Leary has his way, the sign-up won't be optional for long.

"Maybe next year, we won't allow you to make a booking online unless you join up for our myRyanair programme," he told an audience at the US Ambassador's residence in Dublin.

"That will be every single passenger's individual frequent flyer programme," he said. "If you flew five times with us last year, you'll get an even bigger incentive to fly with us six times this year. We'll also know if you like to park your car at the airport, and we can give you a one-click discount on the car-parking. You order your coffee on board, you click and it's all done. No payments on board the aircraft. We're going to transform the whole travel journey."

Ryanair attracted about 300m unique visits to its website in the first six months of 2016, and will carry about 117 million passengers this year.

Boeing's vice president of strategy, Sheila Remes, said at the event at the Ambassador's residence that the manufacturer worked closely with Ryanair to develop its new 737-Max aircraft, for which the airline has placed 100 firm orders and has 100 options. She said that the toilets were made slightly smaller on the aircraft, for instance.

The first delivery of that aircraft type is slated to take place next year.

Meanwhile, Davy Stockbrokers yesterday raised its 12-month price target on Ryanair shares to 16. They were trading at 13.32 yesterday.

Analysts including Stephen Furlong also set out a scenario where Ryanair shares could hit 25 in the longer term, which would give the airline a market capitalisation of almost 33bn.

That potential is based on increased ancillary monetisiation, the better economics of the Max aircraft, and distributable free cash that the airline will have on hand, according to Davy.
UK Prime Minister Theresa May wants to make Britain a global leader in trade after Brexit, but former negotiators say the country faces a long slog despite warm words from some world leaders over forging new relationships.

With other countries reluctant to get involved in detailed discussions until Britain's future ties with the European Union are clear, and a lack of negotiators in London ready to begin talks, any firm deals could be years away.

While the government says it can do the groundwork, Britain cannot formally sign trade agreements until it leaves the EU, and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has said EU member states should not even negotiate deals while still part of the bloc. "Nobody with any sense from China, the US, Brazil or wherever is going to engage with the UK other than a friendly drink in the bar until the UK has a regime with the EU," retired British trade negotiator Roderick Abbott told Reuters.

"That gives them the yardstick against which you negotiate," said Abbott, who during his more than 40-year career worked on trade for the British government, the European Commission and the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

May and her team strike an optimistic tone, highlighting nations which have said they are keen to do deals. But behind the scenes, countries are pragmatic.

A senior diplomat from a developed country with which Britain has suggested negotiating a deal said the EU was a more important partner, so any deal with Britain would depend on how it affected his country's trade with the EU.

"They want to talk to us. We're always happy to talk trade. But frankly there isn't much we can seriously talk about in detail, which is really what trade deals are all about, until we know what their relationship will be with the EU," he said, on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the subject.

Japan has expressed concern over uncertainty surrounding Britain's future EU relationship, including its access to the bloc's single market, while US President Barack Obama quashed the prospect of a fast-track deal.

Australia said this week that it would focus on pursuing a free trade agreement with the EU while it waited for Britain to be able to negotiate formally.

According to government figures, Britain's total trade exports for June were worth 24.9bn (29bn), with the United States its biggest export market in terms of value.

The government has said three million British jobs are linked to trade with the EU, while the EU estimates a further almost four million jobs in Britain are supported by EU exports to the rest of the world.

May has promised to deliver Brexit after 52pc of Britons backed leaving the EU at a June 23 referendum.

But she has also said she will not trigger Article 50, beginning the formal two-year divorce process, this year in order to allow the government time to prepare.

While Article 50 refers to "taking account" of the departing country's future relationship with the EU, many say detailed talks will have to wait until Britain has left, meaning it could be 2019 before substantial trade negotiations begin.

With a British election due in 2020, Theresa May could feel pressure to get deals done, and has said Australia, India, Mexico, Singapore, China and South Korea had all welcomed talks about post-Brexit trade. (Reuters)
The bank has opened a data lab in Dublin that will create 40 new jobs

Deutsche Bank is hiring 165 staff in Dublin, as Germanys biggest lender adds to an already fast growing workforce here.

The bank has opened a data lab in Dublin that will create 40 new jobs. The data lab, known as The Hive, will be a global centre of excellence for the bank.

The bank is also adding 125 Technology and Operations roles to support its Global Markets and Corporate & Investment Banking divisions, which is largely based in London.

Jobs Minister Mary Mitchell O'Connor welcomed the investment as a vote of confidence in the country.

"This project by Deutsche Bank represents a great vote of confidence in Ireland and its attractions for Financial Services companies. The new data lab builds on the bank's strong investment and job creation here over recent years and the provision of an additional 165 quality jobs is very welcome indeed.

"The Government has been making strenuous efforts to ensure that we have the right conditions in place in Ireland to continue job creation across the country. I look forward to a long and fruitful engagement with the company over the coming years and I am confident that this decision will be mutually beneficial for the company and for Ireland"

The IDA has actively targeted investment from the international financial sector as a strategic goal.
European Union regulators surveyed London Stock Exchange Group and Deutsche Boerse competitors and customers on how the firms' planned merger might affect a range of competitive interests including market-data fees and clearing, said people who received the documents.

The questionnaires' recipients were given a few days to respond to the survey, some of which also included topics such as indexes, sources said. Deutsche Boerse has said it expects regulators to open an expanded probe into the deal ahead of a September 28 deadline.

The questionnaires show that clearing houses are among the top concerns for officials. Clearing - a key back-office function that acts as a firewall against defaulting traders - is a major rationale for the $13bn (11.55bn) deal. Regulators have previously expressed concerns that Deutsche Boerse would become too dominant in clearing. (Bloomberg)
A former senator faces two charges of dangerous driving and one charge of drink driving after attending a Cork music festival.

James Heffernan (36), identified in court as Seamus O'Heifearnain, was charged before Fermoy District Court with a total of five counts.

These include two counts of dangerous driving, one count of driving while over the alcohol limit, one charge of driving without correct insurance and one count of driving without a valid license.

The counts all relate to August 1 last and involve locations at either the Limerick Road and Coolnanave area of Mitchelstown.

Garda Dave Delea gave evidence of arrest, caution and charge.

He told Judge Brian Sheridan that Mr Heffernan made no reply when the charges were put to him.

Mr Heffernan briefly addressed the court. "I am representing myself here today," he said.

"I am in the process of engaging a solicitor. I will be seeking details of all documents for disclosure."

However, Judge Sheridan said these were technical matters for another date.

He adjourned the matter until October 7 next when he said the issue of a plea and defence can be dealt with.

Judge Sheridan advised Mr Heffernan about the importance of legal representation.

"I will be consulting a solicitor," Mr Heffernan said.

The charges relate to a date on which the Indiependence music and arts festival was taking place in Mitchelstown in north Cork.

Mr Heffernan of Baile na Lyna, Kilfinane, Co Limerick was elected as a Labour Party senator to the 24th Seanad.

He had unsuccessfully contested the 2007 and 2011 General Elections in Limerick County for the Labour Party.

A graduate of the University of Limerick and a qualified primary school teacher, Mr Heffernan taught at schools in both Ireland and the UK.

He is also a former member of Limerick Co Council.

Mr Heffernan lost the Labour whip after he voted against the Fine Gael-Labour Government over the 2012 Social Welfare Bill.

He contested the 2016 General Election for the Social Democrats but, despite garnering over 3,000 votes, was not elected to the Dail.
The High Court has extended the manager of a Co Dublin Credit Union's suspension from holding a management position in any financial-services firm by an additional three months.

The order was made in respect of Anne Butterly who was temporarily suspended from her position at Rush Credit Union by the Central Bank in June.

The move to suspend Ms Butterly arose after investigations were launched into alleged irregularities at the credit union. It is thought that more than 1m could be missing. It is not known who is responsible for any alleged wrongdoing.

At Friday's sitting of the court, following an application by Nuala Butler SC for the Central Bank, Ms Justice Marie Baker agreed there were "sufficient reasons" to extend Ms Butterly's period of suspension by a further three months.

In her ruling the Judge said that the concerns that gave rise to the Central Bank's decision to open an investigation and suspend Ms Butterly were still present.

Additional concerns had also been raised during the course of the investigation which is on going and being carried out with "due diligence and skill," the Judge noted.

In her submission to the court Counsel said the board of Rush Credit Union suspended Ms Butterly in March.

In June, the Central Bank, which regulates financial institutions including credit unions, also took the decision to suspended Ms Butterly from acting in any management role in a financial institution under its fitness and probity regulations.

Counsel said that the extension was necessary while its investigation remains in being. The original suspension was due to expire on September 18th counsel said.

The court heard that Ms Butterly was not represented in court, and was in hospital following a serious accident.

Three separate investigations, by the Central Bank, the Credit Union itself and gardai, are being carried out into the suspected fraud. The credit union, which also covers the village of Lusk, has 12,000 members.
The boy and his co-accused were identified via Facebook where the woman allegedly saw photos of them which she then showed to gardai (Photo: TED ALJIBE/AFP/GettyImages)

Two teenagers accused of taking part in a vicious mugging of a woman in Dublin were tracked down by the victim on Facebook, a court has heard.

A 16-year-old boy charged with the robbery in Balbriggan on August 30 last year appeared at the Dublin Children's Court for a preliminary hearing to decide his trial venue.

In an outline of the allegations for purpose of ruling on jurisdiction, Garda Kevin Fitzpatrick told Judge John O'Connor that the woman (31) was walking through a housing estate when she noticed small group of teenagers behind her. It would be alleged a girl asked her for a light and as the woman turned around the girl tried to grab her handbag from her shoulder.

It was alleged the boy was also present and grabbed the woman by her hair. There was a struggle and it was also alleged the woman was punched several times in the head by the boy.

The court heard the woman claims the teenage boy also produced a knife and told her to give me your money.

Her bag, which contained 90, house keys and her bank cards, was taken. Gda Fitzpatrick said the boy and his co-accused were identified via Facebook where the woman allegedly saw photos of them which she then showed to gardai.

Defence counsel Damian McKeone pleaded with the judge to accept jurisdiction and not to send the case forward to the circuit court, which has tougher sentencing powers. He asked the judge to note the boy, who is taking part in an educational and training course, and was aged 15 at the time of the incident.

Judge O'Connor accepted jurisdiction but said if the boy had been aged 17 the case would be sent forward to the higher court.

Mr McKeone asked for a trial date to be set meaning the teenager is going to contest the charge. The youth, who was accompanied to court by his mother, was remanded on continuing bail.

The teenage girl has already pleaded not guilty. Their trial date will be set next week.
The court heard claims Tusla management decided to abandon legal proceedings aimed at taking a boy aged nine and a girl aged six into care because it was 'too toxic and was costing too much'

The foster parents of two children allegedly abused by their father and mother have taken a High Court case questioning a decision by the child and family agency which paved the way for them to be returned to the family.

The court heard claims Tusla management decided to abandon legal proceedings aimed at taking a boy aged nine and a girl aged six into care because it was "too toxic and was costing too much". This has been disputed by Tusla, but the full reasons for the U-turn have yet to be disclosed.

Ms Justice Marie Baker heard that earlier this year Tusla made a district court application for a full care order for the children, but withdrew the application on the 29th day of the hearing.

Up to that point, the agency had vehemently opposed the return of the children to their parents on the grounds they would be at risk of abuse.

But just a few months later it emerged the agency had agreed to the return of the children to their parents for an initial three-month period, beginning on August 23.

But the president of the High Court, Mr Justice Peter Kelly, temporarily restrained the children from being reunited with their parents on August 18 after hearing "disturbing evidence" about alleged sexual abuse and brutal treatment.

He returned the case to Ms Justice Baker for a full hearing which began yesterday.

Rosario Boyle SC, for the foster parents, asked Ms Justice Baker to direct an inquiry into whether the children should become wards of court.

She said the brother and sister were first taken into foster care in 2012 over concerns about substance abuse by their parents, mental health issues and neglect. The children displayed highly sexualised behaviour, the barrister said.

Some 18 months later the children were returned to the parents under a supervision order, which meant Tusla could visit the home regularly.

However, in 2014, two elder siblings, boys aged 12 and 13, who were in the care of another foster family, made allegations they had been sexually abused by the parents.

The eldest boy also claimed there had been sexual abuse of the two youngest siblings. His allegations also extended to other family members.

As a result, the youngest boy and girl were returned to their foster carers.

Yesterday, Ms Justice Baker continued the existing temporary order blocking their return to their parents. She also made orders restricting the publication of material that could identify the children, their relatives or their foster parents.

The case has been adjourned to next Thursday when counsel for Tusla is expected to outline the agency's position.
A wheelchair user has criticised Iarnrod Eireann after she claimed a train driver refused to put down the ramp because they 'werent trained to do so'. Pic: Collins Photos.

A wheelchair user has criticised Iarnrod Eireann after she claimed a train driver refused to put down the ramp because they "weren't trained to do so".

Ann Marie Champ was on her daily commute from Dublin to Newbridge when she said she was forced to continue on to Kildare Train Station. When she arrived at Kildare, she had to wait over an hour for a wheelchair taxi to arrive.

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She said the experience was "incredibly embarrassing".

Ms Champ made a formal complaint a week ago but has yet to hear back from the company.

Geraldine Campbell, Accessibility Officer for Iarnrod Eireann, said the company will be issuing a formal reply in a day or two.
Prescription charges for medical card holders are set to be slashed in the upcoming Budget. Stock Image: PA

Unpopular prescription charges for medical card holders are set to be slashed in the upcoming Budget - bringing the maximum monthly cost down by as much as 5.

The monthly cost is expected to be capped at 20, along with a cut of up to 50c in the 2.50 levy which is charged on every prescription item.

Expand Close Health Minister Simon Harris arriving for a Cabinet meeting at Government Buildings yesterday. Photo: Tom Burke / Facebook

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The prescription charge, which is currently forcing medical card holders to pay more than 120m in prescription fees annually, is to be gradually phased out in the lifetime of the Government.

Pensioners, who may be on several medications, are particularly hit by the charges and find the cost quickly mounts to the current maximum of 25 a month.

The extent of the cut is being finalised but Health Minister Simon Harris is expected to announce the reduction in October. The last government promised to abolish the charge - but ultimately ended up making it even more harsh.

A reduction in the charge was promised by Fine Gael in its pre-election manifesto, which said it would bring down the monthly cap to 17.50.

Fianna Fail pledged it would abolish the charge.

Sick

Age Action, which has campaigned for the removal of the charges affecting 1.7 million card holders, said they were "a tax on being sick, a tax that has gone up 500pc since it was introduced in 2009".

Spokesman Justin Moran warned: "It hits older people particularly hard because 31pc of over-65s have five or more prescriptions, rising to 36pc for the over-75s. We have reports of older people playing roulette with their prescriptions, working out which they will skip this month because they cannot afford them all."

The Irish Independent has also learned that approval has been given for the appointment of 83 new speech and language therapists to address the crisis in waiting lists.

Read more: Tax credit system must be re-examined to help the 'squeezed middle'

Read more: Ministers water down USC plans as FF muscles in on Budget

The most recent figures show 14,047 people were waiting for a first assessment in March, up from 13,545 in June of last year.

The minister has told the HSE it can appoint 83 new speech and language therapists for children and teenagers.

A spokeswoman for the minister said all the waiting lists - including initial assessments and therapies - will be addressed "by prioritising the longest-waiting children".

The aim is that no one will be waiting for more than eight months.

The proposed measures come as Mr Harris is under pressure to secure a substantial rise in the 13.2bn given to the health service in last year's Budget.

He has already been promised 50m in funding to tackle hospital waiting lists, with a large slice of this having to be paid to private hospitals as operations and outpatients are outsourced.

However, the scale of patient suffering on the list emerged in new figures yesterday, which showed waiting lists reached a record of 530,000.

There were 435,000 people waiting for an outpatient appointment in August - up 5,000 on July.

Another 78,500 are in the queue for surgery with 8,000 enduring delays of more than 15 months.

The underlying trends overall show that long-waiters - the numbers in the queue for at least 15 months - are on the rise.

The numbers in the waiting list for diagnostic endoscopy procedures went down to 18,000, a drop of 1,500 following an outsourcing initiative.

Fianna Fail health spokesman Billy Kelleher reacted with outrage, warning: "Targets on waiting times have been consistently missed, even after they were widened.

"An 18-month target set for June 2015 has again been missed and 4,143 people are now waiting more than a year-and-a-half for treatment."

Timeline: Budget 2017

Today

The deadline for departments to submit their spending plans to Public Expenditure Minister Paschal Donohoe. Mr Donohoe has asked for three-year spending plans from all ministers.

The Independent Alliance meets to discuss their Budget demands.

September 12

With just over four weeks to go until the Budget, the first formal bilateral meetings between Mr Donohoe, Finance Minister Michael Noonan and their ministerial colleagues officially begin.

Fianna Fail are also due to hold their own talks with ministers.

September 14-15

Mr Donohoe and Mr Noonan meet with interest groups, business organisations, charities and other stakeholders to discuss their pre-Budget submissions.

Week beginning Monday, September 19

The Oireachtas Budget Oversight Committee discusses the Budget with ministers.

September 27

Ministers hold a key Budget Cabinet meeting as Dail formally resumes following the summer recess.

Early October

Mr Donohoe and Mr Noonan conclude meetings with ministers as they finalise their tax and spending plans.

October 11 Budget Day
Former Labour and Sinn Fein Dublin city councillor who made threatening hoax calls to a man has been told to take part in a restorative justice programme.

Killian Forde made 40 telephone calls consisting of "drunken gibberish" and also threatening adverse consequences if the victim did not contact him.

Judge Patricia McNamara referred him to the programme and remanded him on continuing bail for three months. Forde (46) made all the phone calls in the middle of the night, between 12.30am and 6am.

Forde was a councillor with Sinn Fein from 2004 to 2010, before switching to Labour. He resigned his seat on Dublin City Council in 2011 after he took up a job assisting immigrants and refugees.

The defendant, with addresses at Carndonagh Park in Donaghmede and Sutton Park in Sutton, admitted to making 40 hoax telephone calls.

The offence is contrary to the Post Office (Amendment) Act, 1951, and the calls were placed over a six hour period to a house at Homelawn Drive in Tallaght on October 7, 2014.

Forde had pleaded guilty on an earlier date and the case was back before Tallaght District Court today for the production of a probation report.

Garda Stephen Neylon said the victim received 40 phone calls and voice messages from the accused.

The messages were generally of a threatening nature demanding that the injured party make contact with him and outlining there would be adverse consequences if the injured party didnt, Garda Neylon said,

Forde attended Tallaght Garda Station on October 10, 2014 and made a voluntary cautioned statement. He was co-operative and indicated that he had been intoxicated at the time he made the calls, Garda Neylon said.

He had no previous convictions. The case had had adverse effects on Forde who had expressed his remorse, his barrister George Burns said.

Judge McNamara said the accused seemed to have co-operated fully and that the probation report was positive.

She said the case was suitable for restorative justice, which would involve the victim attending if he wished to do so.

If that is a positive report I can look a little bit more favourably (on the case), Judge McNamara said.

She adjourned it to a date in December.

Forde, wearing a grey blazer, white shirt and black slacks said Thank you, judge when the hearing ended.

A sergeant previously alleged the phone calls were mostly "drunken gibberish" but Forde also told a victim that "you'll be got".

Garda Neylon said on an earlier date in court he started an investigation after the victim complained about receiving a number of nuisance phone calls.

Garda Neylon said the mobile phone number was registered to the defendant.

He said the voice messages and phone calls were of a threatening and intimidating nature, and were along the lines of "you'll be got". Sergeant Michael Ahern had also alleged a lot of the messages were "drunken gibberish".
A gay couple have resigned from leading a church choir after claims they came under intense pressure from a religious activist.

Married couple Jacinta O'Donnell and Geraldine Flanagan have been involved in the St Michael's church choir in Athy, Co Kildare, for a number of years.

However, the women claim that local church activist Anthony Murphy called for them to resign from their position in the church because they "contradict" the teachings of the Catholic Church.

The bizarre story has engulfed social media after it unfolded on Kildare FM yesterday.

The couple married in July and have been heavily involved in the adult and children's choir at the church.

But they have now left after claims that Mr Murphy sent a text calling for them to resign.

The Kildare women say that although they have not been asked to resign by the clergy, they feared demonstrations would be held.

"We felt the ordinary people who were just going along to their weekly mass didn't need to be subjected to this," Jacinta told her local radio station yesterday.

"We thought we were going to slip away quietly in the background, that was our intention, as hurtful as it may have been.

"Geraldine and I have only wanted to provide a music ministry to enhance the Eucharist and bringing this trouble to the church door would be futile.

"We met with the adult choir because we felt they needed to be told the truth of the situation."

Church activist Mr Murphy said that he didn't ask the couple to resign, but that he sent a text to Jacinta days after the couple's wedding, to "do the right thing".

"The way the choir operates in Athy, Jacinta and Geraldine are positioned on the altar in the sanctuary, on a stage almost, sharing the stage with the parish priest," said Mr Murphy.

"You cannot have a contradiction where the church teaches one thing, and people ... right next to the Blessed Sacrament, contradict all of that teaching.

"Nobody is trying to exclude Jacinta or Geraldine from the church. I'm certainly not doing that. This is about leadership positions within the church."

Parish priest Fr Frank McEvoy told KFM that he was supportive of the women, has spoken to them personally, and would not be commenting on the issue.

The Irish Independent was unable to contact Fr McEvoy last night.
Survival rates for patients who develop a type of blood cancer are improving significantly following new treatments. Stock Image

Survival rates for patients who develop a type of blood cancer are improving significantly following new treatments.

Around 250 people are diagnosed with multiple myeloma, and 170 die from the disease, every year, leading expert Prof Paul Richardson of Harvard Medical School told a meeting in Dublin.

"The last decade has seen multiple myeloma survival improve significantly," he said.

It has gone from an average of two to five years at best, to seven to 10 years or more, thanks to new therapies."

Multiple myeloma is a cancer of the blood arising from a type of white blood cell that is made in bone marrow.

Myeloma often affects many places in the body, which is why it is called multiple myeloma. It commonly affects the spine, skull, pelvis and ribs.
Some Waterford heart patients will need to travel to Cork instead of their local hospital for treatment, under the recommendations of a controversial expert report.

Patients who have suffered a heart attack and need a special procedure to reduce muscle damage will no longer be treated at Waterford Hospital.

Heart patients currently receive the procedure, known as percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), between 9am and 5pm at the Waterford catheterisation laboratory.

But under the recommendations of Belfast doctor Niall Herity, the service will be switched to Cork University Hospital and the cath lab at Waterford will lose the service.

It is among the unexpected fallout from the review but is a separate issue to the row over a second cath lab which has brought Independent John Halligan to the brink of quitting government.

Dr Herity turned down the call for a second cath lab in the hospital - although he did recommend an expansion of the existing service, opening an extra eight hours a week with more staff.

But he found that Waterford was not meeting the minimum of 100 PCI procedures to widen arteries that needed to be carried out annually.

Dr Rob Landers, a pathologist who is clinical director of the south and south-west hospital group, said the report had flaws because it only considered a catchment of around 286,147 when it should have extended to more than 580,000.

"We have waiting times for elective cardiology extending to 18 and 24 months. It's a disgrace. It needs to be addressed rapidly," he said.

What is a cath lab?

A cardiac catheterisation laboratory is an examination room in a hospital with equipment used to carry out tests, detect abnormalities and treat arteries and chambers of the heart.

The lab provides cardiac procedures, including diagnostic angiography, percutaneous intervention (stents), pacemaker and defibrillator implants, and cardiac structural procedures.

Patients presenting with a heart attack can also receive emergency percutaneous coronary artery intervention (PCI) to open a blocked artery and limit the damage to the heart muscle.
Embattled Minister John Halligan is refusing to budge on his position that a clinical review of cardiac services in Waterford is "flawed" as his future in Government hangs in the balance.

The Independent TD remained bullish in his view that a second catherisation lab is necessary at University Hospital Waterford, despite calls from within his own Independent Alliance that the matter be resolved.

Expand Close Minister Katherine Zappone: We must ensure stability. Pic Tom Burke / Facebook

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Last night Mr Halligan claimed that a HSE document demonstrates "gross interference" with the review into cardiac services at the hospital.

Health Minister Simon Harris yesterday published the clinical review, conducted by Belfast doctor Niall Herity.

It recommends additional opening hours for the existing lab, more staff and additional equipment.

Crucially, it states that a second cath lab is not justified and Mr Harris said he accepts this finding. But Mr Halligan was still in Government last night, putting off a decision on whether or not he'll stay pending a study by doctors in Waterford of Dr Herity's report.

Last night RTE's 'Prime Time' revealed details of a briefing note that was prepared for the review's highly-respected author, Dr Herity.

Read more: Harris rules out second cardiac cath lab for Waterford despite Halligan threats to quit government

The note, prepared by the HSE's Acute Hospital Policy Unit 3, referred to the "growing public and political pressure in the Waterford region to build and staff an additional cath lab at the hospital".

But the note continued with the view that providing additional facilities "in a geographical area which does not have the population base to justify such a service, would be wasteful of very limited resources".

It added: "Such a unit might struggle to achieve the levels of activity essential to maintain operator and unit competency, potentially compromising patient safety. Staffing an extended service might also represent a challenge."

The note was dated May 27, shortly after Dr Herity was commissioned for the review.

Last night Mr Halligan claimed that the HSE document demonstrates "gross interference" with the review.

And earlier yesterday Mr Halligan clashed with a number of his Government colleagues over the airwaves.

Formality

He claimed on WLR FM that Finance Minister Michael Noonan told him the clinical review of cardiac services was "only a formality" and that the lab "will be delivered".

He also claimed that Minister Simon Coveney told him that Fine Gael would deliver the lab whether he joined the Government or not.

A spokesman for Mr Noonan said the commitment given to Mr Halligan was that the cath lab would be developed "subject to a favourable recommendation from an independent clinical review".

Mr Coveney said he had told Mr Halligan that Fine Gael was committed to investing in Waterford Hospital "whether John was part of the government or not". But he said any investment had to be based on clinical advice. He said he hopes Mr Halligan stays in Government.

Mr Halligan's departure would mean that the Fine Gael-led minority Government had the bare 58 TDs it needs to ensure it could win Dail votes with the support of Fianna Fail.

Meanwhile, other Independent deputies have been approached with the view to replacing Mr Halligan if he does decide to jump ship.

Independent Minister Katherine Zappone - who is not in the Alliance - said that everyone in Government "will do whatever we need in order to ensure the stability".

"Ultimately, if that means we have to look for other people to join us, then that's what we would do," she said.

The Alliance insisted that they remain supportive of Mr Halligan - but that the situation needs to be "resolved".

Read more: Minority Government is in peril as Ireland now faces its own 'winter of discontent'

One possible replacement is Mattie McGrath, who said he'd have to consult with his family and supporters on the matter.

Wicklow TD Stephen Donnelly - who quit the Social Democrats earlier this week - has ruled out joining the Government.

Independent TD Michael Lowry has been voting in support of his former party Fine Gael, despite not being part of the government formation negotiations. He said that his support for the Government will continue and he wouldn't see Mr Halligan leaving as "an opportunity for me to seek additional demands".

The Tipperary TD added: "I think it's hugely important that we have a stable government."

But it has emerged that funding for a so-called 'patient hotel' in Mr Lowry's constituency will not be included in Mr Harris's 40m Winter Initiative budget to be announced today.

It had been reported that Mr Lowry had come to an arrangement with the minister.

A source said the project is still "being considered by officials" but it is "highly unlikely" to be in place for this winter.

Fine Gael insists it has no deal with Mr Lowry.
Mr Perry has been at war with Fine Gael since he successfully won a High Court action which paved the way for him to contest Februarys general election. Photo: Tom Burke

Tensions between Fine Gael and its former minister John Perry have heightened after the party accused him of "ventilating" utterly unfounded allegations.

Mr Perry has been at war with Fine Gael since he successfully won a High Court action which paved the way for him to contest February's general election.

But following the election, Mr Perry made serious allegations against the party.

Most significantly, he claimed that a witness was placed under "considerable pressure" not to appear at the court case before Christmas. The witness allegedly put under pressure was Sligo councillor Hubert Keaney.

However, in a letter seen by the Irish Independent, Fine Gael described the allegation as "utterly unfounded and made recklessly without justification".

The party's solicitor Kevin O'Higgins wrote to Mr Perry's legal representatives saying it is a "matter of disquiet" to the party that the former politician would "seek to dredge up" matters related to a High Court case which was settled and included a confidentiality agreement.

"We see no benefit, therefore, in re-engaging, through you, with your client on matters pertaining to your client's litigation," Mr O'Higgins said.

Restraint

"We would expect you can exercise some decorum and restraint upon your client concerning the most serious about which he appears oblivious in ventilating," he added.

The solicitor describes the claim Mr Keaney was put under pressure not to give evidence in Mr Perry's High Court case as an "extremely serious allegation" which "is unfounded and baseless".

Mr Keaney claimed, in a letter to Fine Gael general secretary Tom Curran, he was told by a third party that his political career could be in jeopardy if he took the stand in Mr Perry's case.

In the legal letter, Mr O'Higgins notes that Mr Keaney acknowledged that he was not approached directly about not appearing in court.

"What he has suggested, however, is that a named third party was told that Councillor Keaney's political future could be imperilled if he gave evidence," he said.

"The general secretary utterly refutes this allegation which is utterly unfounded and without justification," he added.

It is also understood Mr Curran has written to Mr Keaney denying he sought to stop him from appearing in court.

The John Perry row has caused deep disquiet within Fine Gael and is understood to have concerned Taoiseach Enda Kenny. The matter is due to be raised at the Fine Gael think-in in Kildare next week when Mr Curran is due to address TDs.

Mr Perry was unavailable for comment last night.
Heavy traffic this evening in Phibsborough due to the bus strike. Picture credit; Damien Eagers

Commuters face the prospect of industrial action on the trains on the same day as bus strikes in the coming months.

Travel chaos could result from the failure to resolve the current dispute at Dublin Bus, coupled with a breakdown of negotiations over productivity and pay at Irish Rail.

Expand Close Unions have criticised Transport Minister Shane Ross and threatened to step up their industrial action, with the prospect of an all-out strike looming. Pic Tom Burke / Facebook

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More than 400,000 commuters in Dublin will be inconvenienced again today, as the row at Dublin Bus shows no sign of abating.

Now a Siptu official involved in negotiations on behalf of workers at Irish Rail said that while the eventuality of same-day strikes was down the line, it could not be ruled out.

"If the Dublin Bus dispute rolls on, it is a possibility," assistant divisional organiser Paul Cullen told the Irish Independent.

Two distinct industrial relations issues have been rumbling on at Irish Rail, including productivity discussions specific to the driver grade at the company.

Separately, employees across all grades are awaiting a response from management on a pay claim similar to that which has caused unrest at Dublin Bus - around 15pc, and 6pc deferred from 2008.

In the case of Dublin Bus, workers have sought a payment in lieu of the 6pc increase, which was deferred during the crisis.

It's understood train workers will seek the same.

Read more: 'I couldn't get the Luas, there was just no room' - Commuters struggle to find alternative transport during bus strike

Read more: As it happened: Traffic chaos on the streets as Dublin deals with bus strikes in rush hour

"You couldn't rule anything in or out at this stage," Mr Cullen said, when asked if staff at Irish Rail staff would be balloted for industrial action.

Mr Cullen stressed that negotiations between unions and Irish Rail management were ongoing.

"If the pay offer falls short of members' expectations, (strike action) could be a possibility," he added.

A total of 515 of Irish Rail's 3,800 employees are drivers on services including the Dart and inter-county trains.

Late last year, Irish Rail management floated the idea of Dart services every 10 minutes.

However, a spokesperson for the company confirmed the proposal was now off the table, following resistance from drivers.

Talks facilitated by the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) began this week aimed at hammering out a deal on the duration of the working week for train drivers, as well as around driver training. Unions, including Siptu and the National Bus and Railway Workers' Union (NBRU), have been representing train drivers.

They have sought a reduction in the working hours in line with train drivers in the UK where the working week is 35 hours, compared to 48 hours here.

The company said it hoped the discussions would result in benefits both for drivers and the company.

"We are looking for increases in productivity and efficient ways to do more, splitting the benefits between the drivers and the company," the Irish Rail spokesperson said.

According to Irish Rail, Dart passengers made an extra 1.6m journeys, a rise of over 10pc, last year compared with two years previously.

Dublin Bus workers have already said they would strike next Thursday and Friday and on the following Friday and Saturday.

It is understood the issue was raised at a Cabinet meeting yesterday.

The Taoiseach led a discussion where the bus strike was one of the main items on the agenda.

Unions have criticised Transport Minister Shane Ross and threatened to step up their industrial action, with the prospect of an all-out strike looming.
At the heart of such unimaginable sorrow, a cluster of mourners wearing Minnie Mouse T-shirts carried jaunty pink helium balloons bearing the face of the cartoon mouse, floating high in the air, as they followed the hearse up Cathedral Street.

It was a deeply poignant and somewhat unusual sight - but it spoke volumes.

Of Nicola Kenny's 26 short years. Of her love of life, frivolity and Disney characters. Of her femininity and her penchant for fashion.

But it also said more. With Minnie Mouse a familiar totem throughout maternity units everywhere, the bravely floating polka dot balloons seemed to strike a defiant note of hope and courage for the newborn baby to whom Nicola had been a mother for just one short day.

Expand Close Nicola's mother Ann is helped by relatives with her wheelchair. Photo: Colin O'Riordan / Facebook

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Whatsapp Nicola's mother Ann is helped by relatives with her wheelchair. Photo: Colin O'Riordan

Amid the grief, seemed also to come a vow that little Lily-Rose would want for nothing when it comes to love.

The baby was present, too, in the flowers held by Nicola's friends - a red rose for her and a white lily for her tiny daughter.

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It was down to the family and friends to fill the vacuum left by Nicola's untimely death, Chief Celebrant Fr Vincent Stapleton told mourners at the funeral.

"You must be Nicola's arms to hold her, her mouth to praise her and lift her up, Nicola's ears to listen to her," he said of her baby.

Nicola's mother, Ann, also injured in the collision which took the life of her beloved daughter, attended the funeral in a wheelchair, her arm in a sling draped in black, together with her husband Patrick and son Patrick Junior.

The Cathedral of the Assumption in Thurles was filled with those who had come to pay their last respects, amongst them former minister Alan Kelly and former politician Des Hanafin, a long-time friend of the family. "The baby will be well looked after because that's the kind of family they are," he said.

Expand Close Nicola's father, Patrick is comforted by friends and relatives. Photo: Colin O'Riordan / Facebook

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Symbols of Nicola's "great zest for life" were brought to the altar, including a Mini Mouse headband and an Olly Murs CD.

A pair of runners signified her love of fashion and her "many, many pairs of runners" while her best friends Nellie and Aisling brought up a framed photo symbolising Nicola's many friendships.

Read more: Tragic Nicola made 'so many heart connections' in her short life, funeral hears

The funeral mass was con-celebrated by archbishop of Cashel and Emly, Kieran O'Reilly.

Fr Stapleton commented on the circumstances of Nicola's sudden passing, as Tipperary had been celebrating the All-Ireland hurling final victory.

"Little did we know that just down in the road in Kennedy Park, the Kenny family and local community around them were left reeling from the cruel blow, as the news of Nicola's tragic death in a road accident filtered through," he said.

But he said he could not speak well enough of the support given to the family.

Nicola had been just days into motherhood and had just received the good news about Lily-Rose when her own life came to a sudden end, he said.

But in her short 26 years, the young woman had made "so many heart connections".

"She was a beacon of life to her family and to a wide circle of friends and their children," said Fr Stapleton.

"She was a 'get up and go' girl," he said.

Fr Stapleton said Ms Kenny's last great act of love was the birth of her daughter.

"She would have had so much love to give her. She can give it no longer in body now but in spirit."

And he called on the family and friends to fill that vacuum so that Lily-Rose can live life to the full like her mother did.

As the coffin left the church, a young woman, her baby in a buggy, stepped forward bearing a large bouquet of cheerful sunflowers. She placed them carefully next to the coffin, one mum to another.
Using more potent doses of statins could prevent thousands more heart attacks and strokes, research claims

The number of people taking statins should double, according to the author of a landmark report which has found that the drug's side effects have been exaggerated and the treatment prevents 80,000 heart attacks a year.

The study, which looked at 30 years of evidence, today declares the cholesterol-reducing drug safe and says that the reported side effects have "inappropriately dissuaded" people from taking them.

Debate over whether statins are safe or carry the risk of a series of damaging side effects have raged for years.

The controversy surrounding the pills, prescribed to approximately six million people in the UK, may have put thousands of patients health at risk as they were scared off the drugs, the report published in The Lancet warns.

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Its findings prompted the report's author, from Oxford University, to suggest that the number of patients prescribed statins should in fact double to up to 12 million - meaning one in three of the adult population would be on the drugs.

Leading heart experts hailed the review of 30 years' evidence as proof that the benefits of statins had been repeatedly under-estimated while the chance of side-effects had been exaggerated.

Prof Rory Collins, of the clinical trial service unit at the University of Oxford, said the review of statins showed the numbers of people who avoid heart attacks and strokes by taking statin therapy are very much larger than the numbers who have side-effects with it.

Read More

Consequently there is a serious cost to public health from making misleading claims about high side-effect rates that inappropriately dissuade people from taking statin therapy despite the proven benefits, he said.

But critics questioned the research study, pointing out that some of the trials into statins had been funded by commercial companies involved in the manufacture of drugs.

One cardiologist also questioned the report's figures, claiming they did not accurately represent the true rate of side effects.

The review found that the risks of a negative reaction to statins are outweighed by the benefits.

It found that if 10,000 patients are treated over five years with statins, just 200 (two per cent) will experience adverse side effects.

In comparison, Prof Collins, the review author, said statins help prevent around 80,000 major cardiovascular events, such as heart attacks or strokes, per year.

The only side effects reliably shown to be caused by statin therapy are myopathy - a type of muscle weakness -, diabetes and haemorrhagic strokes, according to the report.

Other side effects typically associated with statins, such as memory loss, cataracts, kidney injury, liver disease, sleep disturbance, aggression or erectile dysfunction, have not been proven to be linked to the drug.

The review put the exaggeration of side-effects down to too much weight being placed on unreliable evidence from observational studies. It said the results from randomised drugs trials, which are reliable, have not previously been properly acknowledged.

The release follows an intensification in the debate surrounding statins, with some health officials previously calling for an end to widespread prescriptions for the drug.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has previously recommended that anyone with a 10 per cent chance of cardiovascular disease within the next decade should be advised to take the medication.

Read More

Experts said the report - described as a one stop shop for evidence on statins - has been released in a bid to avert a MMR-style public health scare, which saw a decline in the uptake of the vaccine after a report linked it to autism. That research has since been completely discredited.

Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of The Lancet, said the lessons learned by the journal during the MMR scandal needed to be widely propagated.

We saw in a very painful way the consequences of publishing a paper which had a huge impact on confidence in a safe and effective vaccine, he said.

The review was welcomed by a number of medical professionals. Dr Maureen Baker, chair of the Royal College of GPs, said she hoped the research reassures patients.

In the majority of cases statins are safe and effective drugs but in most cases where adverse side effects are seen, these are reversible by stopping taking statins, she said.

As with any new research, it is now important that this study is taken on board as guidelines for healthcare professionals are updated in the best interests of our patients.

Dr Tim Chico, a reader in cardiovascular medicine at the University of Sheffield, said statins had been unfairly demonised.

This prevents a sensible discussion of the risks and benefits of their use, he added. Statins can cause side effects, but the chance of developing these is low, while the effects of suffering the heart attack that a statin might have prevented can be fatal or life-long.

Dr Aseem Malhotra, a leading cardiologist, told The Daily Telegraph he believed it was quite clear that the number of side effects reported by patients is higher than what has been reported in the trials. He pointed to a previous report, which suggested 62 per cent of patients that stop taking statins within a year do so because of perceived side effects.

He added: There is great concern amongst doctors about the reliability of industry-sponsored trials. In my view they should be seen as marketing until seen otherwise.

In many ways this review is anti-science and gives the impression of stifling the debate on statins where there remains considerable controversy about side effects.

Dr June Raine, a director at the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, said any new significant information would be carefully reviewed.

Medicine safety and effectiveness is of paramount importance and under constant review. Our priority is to ensure that the benefits of medication outweigh the risks," she said.

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022]
This Owen Ego bed frame from Lomi Design (2,848 for a standard double) by Bonaldo of Italy is upholstered in a huge range of quilted fabrics, such as this mustard yellow

So you take your car in to have the paint touched up on your driver's door. In the garage, everyone agrees that the new colour is a perfect match with the old. A few hours later, you're standing in your driveway looking at a door that appears to be a completely different shade to the rest of the car.

This happens because certain types of lighting can affect your perception of how colours match. This is called metamerism. Metameric failure occurs when two colours look the same under one type of light but completely different under another.

Metameric failure is one of the hazards of introducing a new colour scheme at home and it's one of the reasons that sample pots of paint are certainly not a waste of money.

So you think that your chosen paint colour matches the curtains? If you test the paint on the wall, you'll be able to see both colours in the same light. Neglect this bothersome step at your peril. Two coats of expensive eggshell later, you might realise that the colours don't match at all. In fact, they clash horribly.

Paint brochures are so beautiful that it's tempting to select your favourite colour scheme and work the rest of the room around it. According to Niamh Courtney, colour consultant with MRCB Paints & Papers, that's the wrong way round. "Paint is one of the cheapest aspects of decorating, so that comes last! If you're decorating from scratch, begin with the most expensive items in the room and work your way down to the paint. And, if you're updating a room, choose a paint colour that will work with the things that you want to keep."

Unless you plan to change your sofa and curtains, make sure that the new paint colour works with these fabrics.

Whether the colours clash or harmonise also depends on the mix of background colours within the paint, and these aren't always obvious to the untrained eye. Courtney suggests that you bring samples of the existing materials into the paint shop with you. "Colour is like music. You can have harmony and you can have discord. For me, it's become an instinct because I've been working with colour for years."

Rather than painting one brave feature wall in a bright colour and copping out in the rest of the room, Courtney suggests that you use strong colour in smaller areas.

"If you use a bright colour on a radiator cover, or on the back of a bookshelf, you might want to use that same colour somewhere else in the room," says Courtney. "It's more effective than using it on a whole wall. You're not coming into a room and thinking - look at the orange wall - you're getting an overall impression of the room."

Like music, it's not about the single notes; it's about the way that the ensemble plays together.

In Crown Paints' autumn/winter 2016 catalogue, the trend described as 'out of the dark' combines an intense orange called Dance Fever, Tibetan Gold (deep yellow), Millionaire (metallic gold) and Quick Kiss (red) with some of their deeper darker greys. The bright colours are used as accents against walls in a charcoal grey (Celestite) and almost-black (Rebel). Awesome as this looks in the photographs, I suggest that you take it handy at home. Dark walls take a long, long time to paint over. And too much black and orange could leave your room looking like a children's Halloween party.

Most of the paint companies have variations on this autumnal palette - earthy yellows, russets, gold, and bright deep orange. It's a look that reminds me of leaves in October. Because they're strong, bright colours, you'd think that they might clash, but colours that you see together in nature generally tend to combine just as well indoors.

That's so long as they don't fight with the colours that you already have. If you want to bring in a splash of orange, for example, and already have a beige rug with warm earthy tones, the combination will probably look as harmonious as maple leaves and tree-bark. But this doesn't mean that you're stuck with a brownish palette. Although some cool greys may fight with warm strong colours, deep greys can work very well with autumnal tones. Imagine a yellow leaf fallen on dark wet rock and you'll get the idea.

If you like strong autumnal colours, another option is to introduce them in the furniture itself. Buying cheap furniture in bright colours is almost certainly a bad idea, but it's possible to get good design on a medium budget.

The online-only company Made offers very good value by cutting out the middle-man.

The Scott two-seater sofa comes in rich orange velvet with dark hardwood feet and costs 1,075. The catch is that you can't go and bounce on it in a showroom. The company keeps the prices reasonable by skipping that step.

As Italian design goes, the Jesse range from Lomi Design in Dublin offers decent value and also comes in autumnal colours.

The mustard yellow Fedra armchair costs 1,766, it has removable covers, and you can check it out in the showroom. In the same range, the Open system of modular furniture comes in finishes that include a spectacular orange lacquer. You can order a whole sideboard in that finish (this option is not for the faint-hearted) or combine a walnut unit with an orange lacquered base. The orange lacquer is used in a subtle way, but you can highlight it with a single wall cube shelf unit in the same bright colour (prices for the range begin around 1,500).

Also from Lomi Design, the Owen Ego bed frame (2,848 for a standard double) from Bonaldo of Italy is upholstered in a huge range of quilted fabrics. Adventurous people might go for mustard yellow. Others might be afraid that it would give them nightmares. The more cautious might opt for the plainer and cheaper Jesse Clay bed (from 1,878) and spend the savings on a rich orange rug.

"My first tip is to keep the ceiling bright white. It will make the room feel taller and give relief to the strong colours below," says Lorraine Egan of Lomi Design.

"My second tip is to use a rich matt finish on the walls and woodwork. It gives a much deeper visual presentation. Shine of any kind in the paintwork will only cheapen the final look. Keep the gloss and shimmer for the furniture and accessories, and you won't go wrong."

For more information, see mrcb.ie. lomi.ie, crownpaints.ie, made.com.
Owning a large collection of German World War II militaria can lead to great misunderstandings. In a side-splitting episode of the sitcom, Father Ted, (Are You Right There Father Ted), Dermot Morgans Ted inherits a sizeable collection of Third Reich memorabilia from his friend, Father Seamus Fitzpatrick. In the episode, Ted claims repeatedly that hes not a racist but, when Mrs Doyle displays the collection in the living room, its difficult to defend this position

Third Reich militaria is highly collectible but its associated with an ideology so abhorrent that many people dont want to go near it. Although historians feel that its important that this period of history is recorded with the same care and attention as any other, theres a dark side to this area of collecting. Neo-Nazis like to buy historical objects that link them to the Third Reich. Consequently, there are a lot of fakes about and many of them are of very poor quality indeed.

Most dealers who specialise in genuine German militaria make it very clear that they (a) dont espouse Nazi ideology and (b) dont want to offend anyone. Some dealers even ask you to click a disclaimer promising that you wont be offended at anything they have on sale before you enter their website!

Because of this association, collectors of Third Reich militaria tend to be discreet. As Father Ted discovered to his cost, a collection of swastika-emblazoned objects can be a hard one to explain to the dinner party guests.

In real life, most collectors of German World War II militaria are serious history buffs. The typical collector is male, may have played with Action Man as a child, and probably enjoyed the HBO series, Band of Brothers (2001). The truth of the matter theyll explain (in private), is that the Germans had all the best stuff. They may have lost the war, but in terms of design, they left the Allies standing. Most American soldiers, for example, were issued the standard M1 combat helmet in generic green. Its iconic and collectible but, lets face it, not that interesting.

The German armed forces (known collectively as the Wehrmacht) had far more variety. Each branch had helmets in different colours and with different decals.

There are more than 30 German World War II helmets in the forthcoming Eclectic Collector Auction at Whytes, which takes place on September 17. They range from a Third Reich Feuerschutzpolizei (fire police) helmet, which comes with a firefighters hand axe (200 to 300) to a Deutsche Afrika Korps pith helmet and goggles (250 to 350). Theres also a Gebirgsjager (mountain division) field cap with an Edelweiss badge and ski goggles in their original tin (250 to 350, pictured right); and a cosy looking Luftwaffe sheepskin field cap (400 to 600) complete with hand-embroidered Luftwaffe eagle and cockade.

Theres even a red fez with eagle and swastika and deaths head badges (200 to 300).

This was part of the dress uniform of a Waffen-SS military detachment of Muslims from Bosnia, Croatia, and Herzegovina in occupied Yugoslavia. The sale also includes a combat version of the fez, with a dark green tassel (200 to 300).

Remarkably, all the head gear, along with an extensive array of other 20th century German militaria, came from a single Irish collection, amassed over the past 25 years. There is absolutely no evidence that any war veterans were included in the collection. The collector just ran out of space, says Stuart Purcell of Whytes.

The collectors modus operandi was to collect the best preserved example of every imaginable item of a German soldiers kit. It includes two pairs of hobnailed boots and an evocative selection of personal kit items. One lot comprises two packs of playing cards, a tyre band for a helmet, two packs of razor blades, a box of soap, a peppermint tin, a pack of cigarettes, three packs of small bandages, a butter dish, a Bakelite match holder, a tent peg, a pair of prescription glasses and a Bakelite lighter (200 to 300). There is even an (unused) roll of Wehrmacht-issue toilet paper with an Edelweiss brand (80 to 120). Some of the objects tell the story of the progression of the war. A field mess kit issued to a Wehrmacht officer in 1941 includes a beautifully crafted stainless steel set of knife, fork, spoon and can/bottle opener stamped with the eagle and swastika. A second kit, dating from 1943, was made to a similar design but from cheap nickel plate.

The common soldiers version was made in aluminium. It looks like it would bend if you stuck it in a spud.

In terms of design, the attention to detail is phenomenal and each object is fit for a specific purpose. The water bottle of a standard issue kit, with felt cover and leather strap, has a much larger cup than the one designed for the Deutsche Afrika Korps (desert soldiers were trained to drink sparingly).

A set of Heer (army) landmine identification flags have red metal poles with yellow deaths head pennants and come in a neat grey canvas bag with a webbing shoulder strap (120 to 180).

A few of the objects in the sale are associated with the in-your-face pageantry at which the Nazis excelled. Theres a 1939-1945 Kriegsmarine War Ensign (400 to 600) and a Third Reich, State Service flag (250 to 350), signed by the American soldiers who captured it. But the collection is not focused on display. Its more about the everyday experience of the ordinary soldier.

See whytes.ie

In the salerooms

Sotheby's

Sotheby's next Irish Art sale takes place in London on September 13. The sale was reintroduced last year and includes an energetic seascape, Blue Sea and Red Rocks, Brittany, by Roderic O'Conor. It was painted in the late 1890s and looks down into a tumultuous sea (est. 95,296 to  142,944). A drawing by William Orpen, The Fiddler (71,472 to 95,296) is a study for The Western Wedding, 1914, a large allegorical work that has since been destroyed. The auction also includes a number of works from the collection of the late George McClelland, with six paintings by Colin Middleton. Their estimates range from 7,147 to 9,530 for The Bride to 21,442 to 29,780 for The Toy Box, a disquieting surrealist painting with puppet-like figures in Harlequin colours. See sothebys.com.

John Weldon Auctioneers

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Celebrating 15 years in business, John Weldon Auctioneers' next auction takes place on September 13 at 2pm. Amid an array of jewellery, a diamond single stone ring set with diamond shoulders in platinum is estimated to sell between 55,000 and 65,000 (an IGI certificate which states the diamond is 4.02cts H colour and VS2 clarity). Other pieces include an 18ct gold set heat treated pink sapphire and diamond cluster ring (1,000 to 1,500) and an amethyst and diamond set pendant on a chain (4,000 to 6,000). There are two silver trophies for the GAA Oriel Cup, both hallmarked for Birmingham, 1937, with the Irish import mark for 1938 (500 to 700) and a silver RDS medal set dish engraved "Horse Show 1927 Class 28 2 year old Gelding First Prize awarded to The Hon Mr Justice Wylie for 'Night of Nights' (40 to 80). See jwa.ie.

O'Reilly's

A grisly but interesting 17th century memento mori (reminder of mortality) - an enamel skull and cross bones mounted over woven hair - sold for 2,000 at O'Reilly's auction on August 24. The piece, possibly French or Swiss and dating from around 1650, had been estimated between 250 and 350. Other surprises in the sale included a George V Celtic Revival Irish silver three-handled punch bowl, with applied Celtic ornament raised over three dolphin feet, which sold for 3,600. More predictably, an 18ct yellow gold Art Nouveau octagonal pendant and chain depicting the image of the goddess Veleda, signed Vernier (est. 700 to 900) fetched 1,000. O'Reilly's next auction takes place on September 21. See oreillysfineart.com.

Morgan O'Driscoll

Bidding on Morgan O'Driscoll's Irish Art Online Auction concludes on Monday between 6.30 and 8.15pm. Paintings of interest include the delicately coloured Summer Light - Physicianstown (1991) by Tony O'Malley (10,000 to 15,000). There are two cheaper paintings by O'Malley in the sale: Irish Landscape - Autumn (1962) (5,000 to 7,000) and October on St Martin's Island (1972) (1,500 to 2,000). There are also two works by Patrick Scott. Atlantic Landscape (5,000 to 7,000) was exhibited at the 30th Biennale International D'Arte Venice in 1960 and is accompanied by a catalogue from this. Fontana II (6,000 to 8,000) is executed in tempera with palladium leaf. See morganodriscoll.com
Dublin Fashion Festival is in full swing, meaning that a coterie of beautiful young Irish women are rushing hither and thither from one fitting to the next: Littlewoods today, Helen McAlinden tomorrow. The pace is hectic at this time of year, and requires a preternatural stamina. Luckily, the Irish modelling industry is kinder to its charges than others across the world, even on weeks as frantic as this.

In many of Dublin's agencies, the average size of the models on the books is 8-10; size 6 girls often work steadily, too. Plus-size divisions are also expanding. And where size 0-2 might be a prerequisite for working on the couture catwalks of London, Milan, Paris and New York, it's not a body type that chimes with Irish clients.

"If you want to walk for the world's top designers, there is a requirement to being exceedingly thin," observes designer Sonya Lennon. "But being a local model anywhere in the world is so different to being a catwalk model. A few years ago, there was a very thin, beautiful girl out there, and there was a real reticence in clients using her. It wasn't because the girl wasn't eating or had an eating disorder, she was just naturally thin."

Certainly in Ireland, the client is king, driving demand for certain body shapes. Just as they always have done, they prefer wholesome, approachable, supple. The couture scene is minimal in Ireland, the sample sizes don't run at size zero or 2 as they do in other fashion capitals, and the models that can flit with ease from commercial to fashion house are the scene's high rollers. There have been notable exceptions: Faye Dinsmore and Loran Foran have enjoyed success on the couture catwalks, but their preternatural thinness has often been credited to a natural body shape, as opposed to anything more untoward.

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"There are some girls that are naturally very slim, and don't have to work hard to keep their shape," says Rebecca Morgan, owner of Morgan The Agency.

Several Irish models have dreams of following Dinsmore and Foran to the upper echelons of the fashion industry, although it's not a move necessarily encouraged by their agency bosses.

"If some want to go about sensibly changing their weight, so long as they're healthy, I'm more than happy for them to be whatever size they wish."

It all flies in the face of the reputation of the global modelling industry; one marked with nicotine-stained glamour and a sort of dangerous, heady beauty. By most accounts, its young denizens are lithe, lost and vulnerable to all sorts of seamy influences, from drugs to prowling photographers. And despite calls for diversity, its influence has yet to truly wane.

In an alarming turn of events, the original size zero, which came to prominence a decade ago, is a British size 4. More recently, retailers in the UK like J Crew and Abercrombie & Fitch (who have a Dublin store) have launched triple zero clothes (which fit a 23-inch waist).

This move is partly attributed to the vanity sizing phenomenon (where shops re-number normal dress sizes to boost a buyer's self-esteem), but there's no doubting that there is a demand for such garments.

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Australian model Rosie Nelson moved to the UK and was told by a number of agencies that she was too big to work as a model. She embarked on a punishing regime, slimmed her hips to 35 inches, and returned to the agency.

"They said, just lose more weight - get down to the bone," Nelson is quoted as saying. "They pressed on my hips and I just sat there thinking, 'no, I can't. I can't physically lose more weight'. I was in shock. I didn't know what to say."

The episode prompted the model to join Sophie Walker, leader of the Women's Equality Party, and Jada Sezer, a plus-size model on the verge of launching her own clothing range, to talk about WEP's forthcoming campaign, which will operate on social media under the hashtag #NoSizeFitsAll.

In addition, WEP is calling for legislation that will require all models hired or rehired by agencies to have a minimum body mass index (BMI) of 18.5; any lower, and they will have to see a doctor from a list of accredited medical experts to be signed off as healthy. This, says Walker, would bring the UK into line with law in France, Spain and Italy.

"I have been everything from a size eight to a size 18, and I can tell you at every point in my life which size I've been and when," Walker has noted. "We live with this. And I am 45-years-old. I have been living with it for 30 years and I'm tired of it. I'm seeing it happen to my children, I'm seeing my daughters - my seven-year-old and my 14-year-old - under the same pressures."

Elsewhere, there is the All Woman Project, a powerful body positive movement founded by models Clementine Desseaux and Charli Howard. Howard was dropped from her New York agency when she was a size 6. They decided to launch their own short film and campaign starring 10 models who all have strong views on the need for diversity.

Soon, the question looms large: does Instagram culture and the behemoth of the global fashion culture turn the heads of Irish models? Or, for that matter, other young Irish women?

Courtney O'Hara, managing director of Assets Agency, is an industry veteran and hasn't noticed a marked change in recent times.

"It's still about healthy-looking girls," she says. "We've had girls who are a size 8-10 and they might be a little smaller on top and their collarbones are sticking out, and we've had to dress them in a certain way to hide that. You get complaints from clients here about those things. That said, we've had girls who were told to go away and tone up by their London agencies. It really does depend on the agency.

"I think these days, young girls don't want to be skinny," she adds. "They look at fit girls and think, 'I want abs, I want a bum, I want to be womanly'. Don't underestimate the influence of the fitness thing."

Adds Morgan: "I don't think young girls look at models and think, 'I want to be like her specifically'. "I think these days, it's more that young women want to be famous. They also see a lot of fit, strong role models (on social media) and they want to be more like them. They've seen them get that positive attention in recent years."

It could be argued that celebrity and modelling culture has become an interchangeable entity by now. Certainly, there's been the rise of the 'skinny selfie' - celebrities posting airbrushed photos of themselves. Morgan certainly has a point: the 'strong not skinny' faction, who value fitness and vitality over a race to size zero, has gained serious traction on social media.

One of Morgan's charges, Louise O'Reilly, is one of the busiest high-profile models working today. Currently cutting a swathe across New York for Fashion Week, the size 16 beauty has made body positivity her raison d'etre, and Ireland's young fashion followers can't get enough of her.

"Louise is the perfect example because she's as healthy as anyone else, and goes to the gym and keeps in shape," says Rebecca. "Not only is she particularly good at what she does, she's absolutely gorgeous."

And despite featuring on the September cover of 'U Magazine', O'Reilly has in the past noticed a sort of 'otherness' between mainstream and plus-size modelling. Worse still, old prejudices prevail.

"The thing people seem to forget is that, as a curvy model, you are like any other model and you still need to eat right, exercise and lead a balanced lifestyle," she said.

"You don't know where you are going to be, so you have to be fit and able to run around so many shoots a day. I definitely feel that the industry fails to see that."

As Ashley Graham (the first plus-size model on the cover of 'Sports Illustrated''s swimsuit issue) has pointed out, just because you are curvy it doesn't mean you are promoting an unhealthy body image. "It is about uplifting people and making them feel good about themselves."

It's here that O'Reilly has a point: the Irish fashion industry has rarely been so calculated as to trade on women's niggling insecurities to make buyers part with their cash. With its approachable figureheads and fondness for a cutesy photocall, the feel-good factor and body positivity have always been the Irish industry's cornerstones. This means they've been ahead of their New York or London counterparts all along.

Still, the stranglehold of a specific Western feminine ideal - lithe, fat-free, dewy - isn't going to let up anytime soon. With 10 million photos uploaded to Facebook every hour, it's safe to assume that we're more visually oriented than ever. The world, both online and off, is a catwalk.

There is a backlash or sorts afoot in terms of bodyshaming, with those who denigrate others facing an almighty negative reaction. Famously, 'Playboy' model Dani Mathers Snapchatted an unsuspecting naked woman in the gym recently (captioning her post, "If I can't unsee this, you can't either"). The Twitter uproar was one thing; quite another was the news this week of the alleged victim's willingness to testify in court against the model, and willingness of the LAPD to bring a case against her.

Are we heading towards a new world order where all sizes will be equally embraced? Is the modelling industry coming good on its promises to diversify?

"Wallis Simpson said, you can never be too rich or too thin, so this isn't new," surmises Lennon. "Thin has always been about control, and people want to feel in control. That's what it's all about. There's an increasing pressure to post pictures online to present something to the world that you're not. Perhaps the tide is about to turn on that, and that honesty, openness and authenticity will bring rewards."
'In the course of this, they discovered that some children believe that not having their parents around as much as they would like is affecting their health'

Should parents feel guilty about putting their children in day care? The broad answer is no. Does this mean the Government should promote day-care? Again, the answer is no.

Parents who work and spend long hours out of the home and away from their children might have felt a few pangs of guilt after reading the front page story of this newspaper on Monday. "Busy parents risk children's health by 'not being there'," read the headline.

This was based on a perception on the part of the children themselves. A team from University College Cork and the Citizens Participation Unit of the Department of Children and Youth Affairs questioned a group of children to ascertain their views on a range of topics.

In the course of this, they discovered that some children believe that not having their parents around as much as they would like is affecting their health. There doesn't seem to be any hard data backing this up.

Still, the perception is interesting because it shows that even if there is no effect, children do want their parents to be around more than they are.

In a way, this topic fits in nicely with the 'squeezed middle' series the Irish Independent has been running for the last few days. Even if the long hours that parents spend out of the house at work are affecting their children adversely, what choice do they have? They have to make ends meet. It would affect their children a lot more adversely if their parents couldn't put food on the table and a roof over their heads.

One of the answers offered by the Government to parents in this situation is to offer subsidised childcare. When parents have to put one or more children into day care for long hours every week, that is like having to pay for a second mortgage.

Fortunately, most parents don't have to rely on day care centres to look after their children. The huge 'Growing Up in Ireland' study showed that only 10pc of nine-month-olds are put in day care. The rest are looked after by their own parents, or by relatives, friends, au pairs and the like.

A CSO study from 2009 likewise showed that only 20pc of pre-school age children are looked after outside the home for part of each day and then mainly in Montessori schools or playgroups, which are not the same as day care centres.

Parents who are put to the pin of their collar paying for childcare do need more support, but this doesn't necessarily have to come in the form of State-subsidised day care, which is the preferred policy of this Government. It could instead come in the form of tax breaks targeted at all parents and not just at those with children in day care, or else in the form of a direct payment, again to all parents of pre-school age children. This would be in addition to Child Benefit.

Why to all parents? It's because if State help goes only to parents with children in day care that discriminates against parents who don't use day care.

How could the State justify this? The only possible answer would be if young children clearly benefit more by being in day care than by being minded at home. No such evidence exists, despite the protestations of the day-care sector and its supporters.

Studies showing long-lasting positive effects of day care tend to be based on children from severely disadvantaged backgrounds who have been put into very heavily resourced, very high quality day care.

One expert in the field, Kathy Sylva, who is basically pro-day care, summed up what the studies have to say in remarks to the 'Guardian' a few years ago.

The article said: "She [Sylva] argues that there are no concerns whatsoever connected with putting a child into nursery above the age of three; between two and three, the research is mixed; and below the age of two, there are some 'serious and valid concerns'."

According to another child-care expert, Jay Belsky, the effects one way or the other (very small children aside) are not that big. This is why parents shouldn't feel guilty about putting children who are not very young into day care.

But again, this is not an argument for State-subsidised universal childcare such as exists in a country like Sweden.

Polls consistently show that most parents do not favour day-care for their children. One poll, commissioned by The Iona Institute (which I head) and carried out by Amarach Research, found that only 17pc see day-care centres as their preferred option for children younger than five.

A UK poll, carried out on behalf of the Centre for Policy Studies, found that only 4pc of parents with children under the age of 11 thought it was a good idea for both parents to be working full-time if their children were still in primary school.

So quite apart from any good or bad effects day care might have, the fact is that the vast majority of parents do not want to put their children into day care. Therefore, the Government should not be pushing them in that direction.

If the Government wants to help the 'squeezed middle' with the cost of raising children, throwing untold millions at day care is not the way to go. To repeat:; it discriminates against those who look after their children at home, or want to do so.

Direct payments to parents of young children, or else bigger tax breaks for parents with young children, are the way to go. This doesn't favour one choice over another. Instead, it backs parents, whatever it is they want for their children and for themselves.
Like it or not, the European Commission's ruling on Apple's Tax affairs and Ireland has been a defining political event in several ways. It has propelled Ireland's tax law on to the international stage in spectacular fashion by the charge of our State's complicity in tax evasion on a massive scale and prompted a review of our relationship with the European Union. It would be difficult to imagine a more damaging claim against Ireland's reputation. That is why the Government had no choice but to appeal the ruling to the European Courts.

But the affair has been defining in another important way. It has revealed clear blue water between politicians and parties who are, in my view, fit to govern and those who are not.

Fianna Fail and the Labour Party have given solid support to the Government on the appeal.

Meanwhile, Sinn Fein and the other parties of the far left, Social Democrats and the Greens, have created maximum uproar seeking to dine out on the Government's discomfort, regardless of the impact on Irish jobs and the national interest. Because of yet another wobble by Independent Alliance ministers, the decision to appeal was blocked for several days, exposing the Government to embarrassment and compromise. At a time when it needed to be surefooted, it was wrong-footed by members of the Cabinet behaving like Opposition deputies. They demanded clarifications, concessions, meetings with the Attorney General, and the recall of the Dail as a trade-off for their consent to the appeal. This is intolerable for any government, particularly on a major fiscal issue of national importance.

This week there was yet another row, with Independent Minister of State John Halligan seeking to barter his support for Government for improved cardiac services in University Hospital Waterford. An independent review of the matter has not recommended a second cath lab, and the Government is adamant it cannot go against clinical assessment of the hospital's needs. This is not the first stand-off with the Waterford TD and junior minister. Even as negotiations for government were in play the TD was a reluctant participant and although appointed a minister, he declared he would not pay water charges. On Mick Wallace's Bill on fatal foetal abnormality he voted against the Government, disregarding the Attorney General's advice that it was unconstitutional. On the Apple ruling he shared his colleagues' reluctance to support the Government appeal. He is now threatening to resign on principle if he fails to achieve his Waterford Hospital demands.

It is difficult to see now how the Government can continue to lurch from crisis to crisis on a weekly basis and retain public credibility. No government can function satisfactorily with such instability within Cabinet. The Government motion to appeal the Apple tax ruling was ultimately carried by 93 to 36 votes with the support of Labour and Fianna Fail, both parties demonstrating admirable maturity and restraint.

Unless alternative arrangements can be made, the country might be better served by a general election and a government with a clear majority.

What the Apple crisis has revealed is that Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and Labour represent the centre ground of Irish politics; a steady axis of stability which the country needs as we emerge from the worst recession in our history and face into unprecedented challenges arising from Brexit and the European Commission assault on our tax sovereignty.

The Apple affair has also unleashed a wave of newfound handwringing about the morality or otherwise of multinationals and their global tax arrangements. And no one could condone tax evasion on a massive scale by multinationals, as alleged. But, reforms have been introduced to close off such tax avoidance schemes and Ireland has apparently been very much part of that OECD process. It is complicated stuff, normally left to Revenue authorities and tax accountants. So for most of us, the last two weeks has been a sudden immersion in the complex global workings of multinationals. As Peter Sutherland once said referring to the GATT negotiations, "if you are not confused, you are not listening".

But the net point of this whole debacle is that Ireland is entitled to protect its tax sovereignty from overreach by the Commission and in particular by the Commission imposing retrospective penalties on companies operating in Ireland fully compliant with our laws.

That is the issue and if deputies were genuinely motivated by the national interest, they would support that position. Instead we have some politicians and commentators ranting and raving about morality and global tax justice, as if taking part in a university debate.

Such existential debates were of scant interest to 400,000 Dubliners struggling to go about their business as Dublin Bus workers went on strike over pay.

With pay claims and industrial unrest by teachers, gardai and nurses looming, the Finance Minister will be under pressure to increase spending as the October budget approaches. He would be wise to heed the Fiscal Advisory Council (FAC) warning that any further loosening of the purse strings beyond the agreed 'fiscal space' would be beyond the limits of prudent spending.

It was instructive to hear FAC Chairman Professor John McHale describing the Council as "institutionalising the memory of the economic crisis", providing information to the public and objective assessments of government spending with a view to avoiding the mistakes of the past. He attributed the 50pc surge in corporation tax receipts last year to the on-shoring of assets by multinationals like Apple and warning that any changes in the sector could also lead to a slowdown.

These are indeed challenging times for the minority Government. The solutions to the critical problems in health, housing and organised crime are expensive and cannot be achieved quickly.

Ministers are doing their best to govern against a background of instability, always conscious of the need to garner support from Fianna Fail before any significant measure is passed in the Dail.

To its credit, Fianna Fail is behaving responsibly with impressive contributions to the Apple tax debate by Finance Spokesperson Michael McGrath.

Against a cacophony of populist hot air, ideological rants and posturing by the Opposition and their supporters in the media, his has been a steady and reassuring voice of reason. Despite the noise, people can be assured that the centre is holding.
Picture this: it's July 21, 2016, and Donald Trump has taken to the stage to begin his presidential nominee acceptance speech. The atmosphere is intoxicatingly palpable: bright lights, chants, an abundance of Trump memorabilia. You can feel the energy pulsating from the live Twitter stream as you watch remotely on your phone, absorbed in the moment with the crowd. It is an experience at the cross-section of modern politics and the digital world, not to mention 19th century figure Gustav Le Bon.

In his much-vaunted 'Psychologie des Foules', Le Bon outlined his theory that individuals in crowds undergo a psychological transformation in which they become less rational, more impulsive and given to overly exaggerated feelings; feelings which have a habit of infectiously spreading across the group.

Fast track 121 years later and it remains a startlingly accurate template for political interactions in the 21st century. The difference today is that the fast, connected, anonymous digital world has mobilised the mob on a global scale and exaggerated its most tempestuous temperaments.

With global platforms like Facebook and Twitter, as well as aggregators like Reddit and 4chan, instant access to real-time news and political updates from across the world has created unlimited opportunities for people to unite around ideas in a virtual crowd.

After Trump's incendiary comments calling for a ban on Muslims entering the US, the backlash in UK news and social media was overwhelming; a petition calling for Trump to be banned from the country attracted 378,000 signatures and another successfully had him stripped of his honorary degree.

Despite people in the UK having no direct involvement in the US election, the virtual world has provided them with a platform to engage.

The influence of sophisticated algorithms on what news we see, channels us further into virtual crowds. Whilst the type of news people access has always, to a degree, been self-selecting, automated algorithms remove the conscious choice to avoid conflicting and challenging positions.

In doing so we are becoming more exposed to people like ourselves, making it easier to unite around shared viewpoints and block out those that disagree.

Analysis by Oxford statistician Emma Pierson on tweets about the US Ferguson shooting revealed conservatives and liberals operated as two highly distinct groups on Twitter. Whilst within these groups there was a dense level interaction, between them there was little, and where there was, it was largely adversarial and offensive.

As well as creating opportunities to participate in virtual crowds, the attributes of modern digital engagement support the transformation of individuals within them.

Le Bon believed even the most erudite become impressionable, impulsive and irresponsible in groups - qualities exaggerated by the social media environment.

The ubiquity of smartphones, and access to social media sites, has made it increasingly easy to pick up news, share posts, tweet and retweet on the fly.

By virtue of catchy hashtags and Twitter's 140-character constraint, these comments are often heavily simplified and binary too.

With this set up, it is unsurprising that in a YouGov poll in America last year, more than half of those surveyed said they regretted something they had posted on social media, with the biggest reason cited as not having given proper consideration to the post.

Coordinated trolling is a newly sinister twist to the online collective mentality. Anti-Trump delegates have received death threats from online trolls, whilst in the UK MP Stella Creasy was recently subjected to a barrage of rape threats on Twitter.

As well as falling victim, political leaders can be an engine for some of this less appetising group activity. In Le Bon's world, leaders influence the beliefs of crowds by presenting them with highly simplified messages and ideas.

In the modern age, social media has further facilitated this by providing platforms for politicians to share simplistic statements and images.

The downside is that these messages are often decontextualised and reduced to the type of hyperbole that fuels extreme sentiments.

Is it any surprise that, after the crude and divisive rhetoric of Trump, the Brexit campaign that anti-immigration sentiment in the UK and US is enjoying new highs?

There are a lot of old ideas that turned out to be wrong - plenty of Le Bons were pretty far off the mark - but crowd psychology wasn't one of them. In reality, crowds aren't all bad.

Le Bon recognised that they were capable and responsible for "the heroism that history is made [of]".

But we as participants need to be more cognisant of their trappings.

In the meantime, let's hope on November 8 it is individual reasoning that wins out at the ballot box in the US, not the mob's - despite some of the candidates' best attempts to encourage otherwise. ( Daily Telegraph, London)
As Irish people, we are often much better at fighting our corner than patting ourselves on the back.

'Self-praise is no praise' as the saying goes.

Historically we were the victims of a foreign oppressor and our path towards self-governance and a modern global society we made for ourselves has been less than smooth.

There are plenty of gaps in many parts of our public service today.

But as a place of business, we are among the world's best and we need to say so - out loud and internationally. I say this not just because we have to secure future investments, but because the perception that we are merely a low-tax country is incorrect and is wrong to leave unchallenged.

The Commission's verdict and handling of the Apple case allowed Ireland to be painted in the international press as a mere tax haven and repeat the line 'Leprechaun economics'. Even Joseph Stiglitz accused us of taking other people's money.

We are a country that makes real goods and provides real services - whether it's medical devices, pharma products, infant milk powder, microchips or fintech software, to name just a few. As a nation last year, industrial production amounted to 115bn along with exporting 121bn worth of services. If all this was because of low corporation tax, why are medical device companies not flocking to the Cayman Islands or Bermuda? It is because our economic model is based first on people and skills. Efficient access to markets is extremely important, as is being English-speaking, in the eurozone and politically stable. But it's about people first.

To allow the Commission decision go unchallenged would do a massive disservice to our education system. We churn out many bright minds that are being snapped up by industry. Yes, this pipeline needs to be sustained, but Irish workers are renowned for being hard-working, flexible, innovative and efficient. It is those workers and graduates who are the key driver of our economic offering. So let's not get complacent on that.

Our corporate taxation offering is competitive, but even more important than that - its major advantage is its certainty. Businesses and investors like certainty over costs - especially over those for which they do not have direct control. Being certain about taxation means they can apply energy to managing other costs and business obstacles that arise. In no way should we apologise for this or seek to jeopardise it, but it is secondary to having the best and brightest minds in the world work on adding value to a product or service.

Taxation is not a function of the EU institutions. In fact, had the Revenue Commissioners attempted to tax Apple for 13bn over that 25-year period - such an action would have been in breach of Irish law and likely be struck down by the courts as that economic activity did not occur in Ireland.

Furthermore, the Commission doesn't even know who the 13bn is owed to, so we can't spend money we don't have. We've been there before, with disastrous results.

I am happy to accept that the issue of how Apple or any other company is able to legally avoid tax through complex financial arrangements should be tackled. But it requires an international effort which Ireland can lead on, as we have done already.

But it's wrong to lay that entire problem at Ireland's door and say Ireland must collect all the tax owed to all jurisdictions in Europe.

FDI companies account for 15pc of all employment and export 130bn worth of goods and services - about one in six Irish jobs is dependent on it. That's 187,000 people directly employed and almost as many indirectly employed - often by Irish firms servicing or supplying foreign companies. FDI companies contribute significantly and support innovation across our economy. They represent the potential pipeline of employment for our children and grandchildren. So yes, it is incumbent on us to protect our reputation, and we will. Therefore, we cannot allow the fallout from this Commission decision to hamper our ongoing efforts to win more foreign direct investment for Ireland. The ruling has the potential to cast a cloud over our reputation as a legitimate home for international business. It has the potential to create uncertainty.

Uncertainty frightens investors and delays investment.

We have a responsibility to robustly contest the Commission's decision, not only because it's in our self-interest, but because it's the right thing to do. We must do so while we develop the skill-set to service a growing technological economy. We cannot rely on our taxation rates alone to drive our economic offering. It must continue to be about people.

But we do have a reputation to protect. There is a legal appeal to be fought on the complexities of tax policies, but we have an international reputation to uphold also.

Fighting our corner and patting ourselves on the back is something we may have to become good at.

Mary Mitchell O'Connor is Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation
There once was a shepherd boy who was bored as he sat on the hillside watching the village sheep. To amuse himself he took ... Sound familiar? It ought to. It is Aesop's Fable, number 210; better known as the "Boy who cried Wolf". It ends badly for everyone.

That is why it is told to small children as a cautionary tale about consequences and actions. John Halligan may be a "Junior" Minister, but he is behaving like he belongs in "Senior Infants". Infants like to throw the rattle out of the pram to keep the attention of those watching over them. They can play this game for a very long time until either one or two things happen: The baby gets bored and stops, or the indulgent carer gets vexed and the baby gets scolded.

John Halligan is about to get scolded. The national parliament is not a creche where those who throw the biggest theatrical tantrums get to wear the tiara. He has made himself the Minister for Wobbles.

Although attached to Cabinet, he appears to be a government of one. His latest histrionics centre on University Hospital Waterford. But the Government cannot go against the clinical assessment of the hospital's needs. But Mr Halligan has form; he declared he would not pay water charges.

He also voted against the Government on the fatal foetal abnormality bill. Mr Halligan has not got his way, and has made it known that he will not be walking out of Government "for the time being".

It is said that when one is in a fix, the fix is often to be found in one. John Halligan needs to have a quiet word with himself. Playing with the stability of Government with so much at stake is irresponsible.

Even so, it appears that having marched up and down all the hills and valleys of his undulating conscience; making optimal use of the best military strategies - as laid down in the Grand Old Duke of York's military manual - the Government, and the whole nation, must further await Mr Halligan's final decision.

Beefing up Garda force in more ways than one

Not only is the reach of the long arm of the law to be extended with 3,000 new recruits, but it is to become more muscular as completing a new physical test becomes part of the process.

Most of us think exercise is a good thing and are quite prepared to watch people taking it from the comfort of the couch for hours on end.

Indeed, did none other than Neil Armstrong once say: "I believe that every human has a finite amount of heartbeats. I don't intend to waste any of mine running around doing exercise." It is difficult to imagine what the first members of An Garda Siochana, when it came into being out of the Irish Civic Guard in 1925, would have said had they been asked to: "Weave through cones, walk along a balance beam, or lift a car wheel and carry it three metres."

All the same, it is a safe bet that their language would have been as blue as the uniforms worn by today's members. A policeman's lot may not have always been a happy one but at least in the past, no garda was ever required to: "Drag a 45kg mannequin two metres, or climb over a gate in order to get into the ranks."

One assumes carrying the aforementioned wheel is all about losing the spare tyre, so to speak.

Presumably it all adds up to making sure that the 'Thin Blue Line' stays that way.
There is a prison in Colombia where 4,000 prisoners, including women and their children, are housed and where there is a sink and three showers between 160 inmates. Authorities turn the water on for an hour in the morning, and 45 minutes in the evening, and for the rest of the day, there isn't a drop, not even for drinking, in temperatures that can reach up to 40 degrees.

Some of them are sentenced prisoners, but many are on remand, awaiting trial, some for up to five years.

It was at this prison, called Jamundi, that Dundalk solicitor Sean T O'Reilly met members of the Colombian guerilla groups last month as part of the international delegation of lawyers and human rights defenders who visit the country regularly to document the human rights abuses the government say aren't happening.

During his trip he met with human rights defenders, university law students, lawyers, trade union leaders judges, rebel leaders and officials of the Colombian state. Sean was joined by other lawyers from Ireland and Britain, as well as Canadian and Spanish judges and members of the Dutch Law Society.

A day after the visit to the prison, the FARC - who have been waging a war against the Colombian state for nearly 60 years - announced they were going to sign up to a peace process that would, it is hoped, lead to stability in a country that has not had peace for more than two generations.

Sean was 'very hopeful' ahead of his trip to Colombia that the deal was inching closer, but he was nonetheless delighted to be in the country when the historic announcement was made. It has, he says, the potential to end this conflict - which has killed 230,000 people - once and for all, but there are plenty of pitfalls ahead.

And one thing all sides in the Colombian conflict can agree on is the importance of the Irish peace process in lighting the way for other difficult conflicts to find resolution. Sean says it was of huge interest to both the government officials and the rebel leaders that he met on his trip, but he remains concerned that the Irish government, who have been involved in the delicate and difficult negotiations that brought about a lasting peace here, are not offering the benefit of their unique experience to the Colombians whose own conflict has many similarities to our own.

'By meeting with the FARC in the morning, the judges that afternoon and the public prosecutor the following day, you are building up a fuller picture of the complex and multi-sided conflict and the responses to it.

'Importantly, by meeting with the judicial officials, we were helping human rights activists in Colombia get access to these people, that they wouldn't get otherwise. It remains the case that the poor have little access to justice in this country and they have to find a lawyer 'silly' enough to take on their case, which often doesn't happen.

'And even if they get a judgement in their favour, the state often doesn't enforce it and things don't change'.

One of the main oppositions to last month's peace deal, brokered in the Cuban capital Havana in which Fidel and Raul Castro were heavily involved, are far right militias and paramilitary groups. Officially, they don't exist, but observers believe they are a threat to the peace process and are often used by large landowners and multinationals as 'enforcers' in certain areas. One thing the factions involved - the FARC, the human rights defenders and the state prosecution services can agree on is that the 'number one' threat to the process are the large landowners who have dispossessed poor people and the right wing paramilitaries they fund.

The situation is further complicated by the existence of the narcotics gangs, though the rate of 'political' violence has dropped by 90% in the past 12 months, helping to pave the way for this peace process.

As part of the deal, the FARC will demilitarise and their prisoners will be confined to 'zones' in certain parts of the country. It's unclear so far, Sean says, as to how restrictive that will be, and how enforceable. In addition, the FARC has been guaranteed a certain number of seats in parliament's two houses as part of the deal to get them more involved in politics.

'We were very hopeful when we arrived that a deal was close. The Colombian people have endured 60 years of this and it's understandable they are afraid to be hopeful, they have had many false dawns.

'Having said that, this is the best chance Colombia has had for peace in six decades'. At present, the FARC leaders are touring the country speaking to their guerillas, estimated at between 5,000 and 7,000, telling them what's happening, talking to them about how their objectives can be better met at the ballot box.

It was against the backdrop of the peace deal that many Colombians asked Sean about the Irish peace process, how the withdrawal of British troops was managed and how the North was demilitarised. The Irish experience is being held up by the FARC as a way forward.

One of the major concerns, not yet fully addressed even in our process, is impunity for those, both state-backed and rebel, who committed atrocities and murders.

Security remains a concern, even as a new dawn seems to break on the Colombian horizon. Sean said: 'Already this year, 35 human rights defenders have been murdered. And in parts of the country, it takes just $50 to get someone to kill another person. There is a 98% impunity rate for those responsible for these, and similar, deaths'.

The Irish government can do more, of course. Sean said: 'I really believe our government, though the EU if necessary, could help a lot more in Colombia and the peace process in Ireland is what all the groups we met were asking about.

'They hold it up as an example of what they are trying to achieve in Colombia and it's a pity that the Irish government, on their own or through the EU, are not pushing to give assistance and the benefit of their unique experience to Colombians who have a great regards for the peace process'.
Aspiring female entrepreneurs in rural Wicklow are being encouraged to apply for the free development programme ACORNS.

The six-month part-time key development programme is for aspiring female entrepreneurs living in rural Ireland who have recently started a business or who have taken concrete steps towards setting one up.

It is fully funded under the Department of Agricultur's CEDRA Rural Development and Innovation Fund and there is no charge for successful applicants.

'I believe that this programme could be of huge benefit to many female entrepreneurs living in rural areas of Wicklow and I would encourage them to apply,' said Deputy Andrew Doyle.'

'The objective of ACORNS is to equip these early stage entrepreneurs with the appropriate knowledge, confidence and networks to successfully start and develop sustainable businesses,' he said. 'It provides a safe, supportive, challenging, informative and highly collaborative environment, where entrepreneurs help entrepreneurs to learn from each other and benefit from positive peer pressure. A core element is the involvement of lead entrepreneurs, who have already started and successfully grown businesses in rural Ireland. These business women, on a voluntary basis, facilitate the interactive round table sessions, act as role models and mentor the successful applicants.'

The deadline for application is Thursday, September 22. To find out more go to www.acorns.ie.
Visitors to Wicklow are able to take a journey through some of the county's on-screen highlights through a series of routes known as 'The Wicklow Film Trails.'

Launched by the Wicklow Film Commission, the three trails loop through Wicklow and link locations used for films, television series and pop videos.

The Braveheart Drive starts in Hollywood, skirts along the Blessington Lakes, linking Ballyknockan, Lacken of 'Widow's Peak' fame, and Manor Kilbride from where it heads over the Sally Gap where many scenes from 'Braveheart' were filmed. It then goes into into Laragh and finishes in Hollywood, which shot to stardom thanks to films such as 'This is my Father' and 'Dancing at Lughnasa'. The Braveheart Drive also comes over the Wicklow Gap, which was the location for many of the scenes in 'Reign of Fire'.

The 42 mile Excalibur Drive starts in Roundwood and takes in Lough Tay, which served as the backdrop of 'Excalibur' and 'Into the West'. It then heads towards Powerscourt Estate, which was featured in 'The Count of Monte Cristo' and has also been visited by people such as Princess Grace of Monaco. Bray is also one of the main stops on the trail. As the home of Ardmore Studios, the town has played host to films such as 'The Snapper', 'My Left Foot' and 'Ella Enchanted'. The trail then leads through Kilcoole of Glenroe fame before looping back around Newtownmountkennedy to Roundwood.

The Michael Collins starts in Wicklow Town, where the some of the court scenes for the Pierce Brosnan film 'Evelyn' were filmed in Wicklow Courthouse. From there the route heads out to Rathdrum, made famous by such films as 'A Love Divided', 'Durango' and 'Michael Collins'. The next stop of Avoca will be familiar to any Ballykissangel fans as it was where the entire series was based. Next on the route is Arklow where some scenes for 'Angela's Ashes' were shot and Brittas Bay, which was in 'The Count of Monte Cristo'.

The trails were launched at Ardmore Studios in 2002. Funded by the National Millennium Committee, Wicklow County Council, Bray Town Council and Wicklow Rural Partnership through Leader II, the aim of their establishment was to attract more film-related tourism to the county. It has proven popular with tourists and locals alike.
Since opening in 1958, Ardmore Studios in Bray has been the hub of much of the film production activity, not only in Wicklow but in Ireland as a whole.

Over 100 films have been hosted by the studios in the years since then, including Oscar winning productions such as 'Braveheart', 'My Left Foot' and 'The Lion in Winter'. It has also proved to be a winner with TV series producers, welcoming the cast of 'Raw' and 'Penny Dreadful' among others. One of the most successful series hosted by Ardmore was 'The Tudors', which saw hundreds of cast and crew members descend on the Wicklow studios from 2006 until 2010 for approximately six months each time. The surrounding areas of Wicklow, Killruddery and Powerscourt were also used to portray the meadows of Tudor England, London city in the 16th century and Vatican city.

Siun Ni Raghallaigh, CEO of Ardmore Studios, believes that several aspects of Ardmore Studios have made it attractive to film producers throughout the years.

'Ardmore Studio is uniquely placed in the Irish film and TV landscape - it is the only full service studio offering in Ireland. It has seven sound stages and all the ancillary production and post-production services required for film and television as well as access to crews and other film service providers - all on the one site in the one location a short distance from the capital city,' she said.

'It has a 50 year track record of world acclaimed film and television productions, has brand recognition throughout the world and, most importantly, is widely respected as a location in the key decision making markets where film locations are decided.'

The studios have a selection of hair, make-up, prop and costume facilities on site, making it a one-stop shop for producers. Lighting and camera equipment and production services are also available, while the on-screen extras company Movie Extras is based on site, offering a pool of film extras to anyone filming in the area.

These service providers, coupled with Ardmore itself, employ in excess of 50 people. However, according to Siun, when a large scale production is on site, it can create employment for an additional few hundred people who are part of the cast and crew.

'We know for example that over its three years filming at Ardmore and in Wicklow, 'Penny Dreadful' contributed some 65m to the local economy and provided employment for some 500 people whilst it was in production here,' she said, explaining that it is hard to put a firm estimate on the benefit that Ardmore provides to the local economy.

Although the pace at Ardmore has remained consistent, Siun said that they must remain aware of their competition elsewhere in Ireland and internationally.

'The business pipeline is steady - but we can never be complacent. There has always been competition from competing countries but none so close as the North of Ireland where significant proactive planning and cross stakeholder co-operation has resulted in a premium film and television location product being available,' she said.

Most recently, the studios upped their game by redeveloping and enhancing the existing facilities. The addition of the Film Factory provides an additional 30,000 sq ft of studio space and 11,000 sq ft of office space to the Bray studio.

'The Film Factory was the next step in expanding our footprint and creating additional studio capacity for potential productions whilst complementing the Herbert Road facilities,' said Siun.

At present, activity at Ardmore includes the filming of television series for AMC 'Into the Badlands' along with feature film 'The Professor and The Madman'. They are also involved with various productions around the county.
The 'thundering disgrace' that led to the resignation of a Bray man from the post of President of Ireland will be recalled on RTE next week.

At 7.30 p.m. next Monday, September 12, the Scannal programme will look back at the two-word phrase that brought about a constitutional crisis and led to the resignation of President Cearball O Dalaigh.

At the opening of a cookhouse at Columb Barracks, Mullingar, on October 18, 1976, the Minister for Defence Paddy Donegan told the massed army ranks that their Supreme Commander and President of Ireland was a 'thundering disgrace!'

This was in response to President O Dalaigh referring the Coalition Government's Emergency Powers Bill to the Supreme Court to test its constitutionality. The Bill proposed extending the period of time in which gardai could detain and interrogate certain suspects without charge from two to seven days.

The Supreme Court found no constitional objection to the Bill and President O Dalaigh duly signed it into law. But Minister Donegan, whose own pub had been bombed twice, insisted on having his say at Columb Barracks.

As the words 'thundering disgrace' echoed through the media, the Minister offered to resign, but then Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave refused to accept his resignation. Four days later, Cearbhall O Dalaigh became the first President of Ireland to resign from office.

After a distinguished and stellar career, it was an inglorious end for President O Dalaigh. From journalist to Ireland's youngest Attorney General, and from Chief Justice in Ireland to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, his career marked him out as exceptional.

He was appointed, with no election, to the presidency in 1974 following the sudden death of President Erskine Childers.However, relations between President O Dalaigh and the Fine Gael-Labour Coalition were luke-warm at best and O Dalaigh felt that he was denied opportunities to represent Ireland abroad.

The Minister for Defence's comments in Mullingar became the straw that broke the President's back.

'Scannal: Thundering Disgrace', which was produced by Bray man Sean O Mealoid, looks at the phrase that led to a President's resignation and would live in political infamy for decades to come.
An honorary Drogheda man in many respects, Johnny Logan is down to play a rare Irish gig on Septemer 17 next at Vicar Street.

Australian born, he came to Ireland at just three years old and the family ran a pub on West Street, where Johnny developed much of his early music influences.

Twice winner of the Eurovision, he is still huge in the likes of Denmark and Norway and this gig is part of a tour. He heads back to Denmark for further concerts in November.
A Gorey family has sent a sincere thank you to all those in the local area who showed such kindness to two children from Belarus who stayed with them for a month this summer.

Samantha and Sean Rath hosted 15-year-old Luibou and 12-year-old Maryia. They have lived in the Vesnova Orphanage all their lives.

When Samantha and Sean decided to something worthwhile and different for the summer, they set up a charity page. 'We got so much support from family and friends,' she said. 'We started to collect items for a nappy appeal first, and then we got involved with Chernobyl Children International's rest and recuperation programme with the Kilkenny Outreach Group. They are a fantastic group of people.'

She complimented the CCI's organiser Jim Kavanagh, and Rita and Carmel, who work tirelessly for the cause. In late July, Samantha went to Kilkenny to collect two very tired, scared -looking, malnourished children who had just arrived.

'They stayed with their carer Volha and my family for the month in my home here in Gorey,' said Samantha. 'They quickly settled into our lifestyle'.

She sent a special thank you to the businesses in Gorey that showed support, including: Dr Peter Harrington in The Palms Surgery who did a health check; dentist Jane Montague Peters of Gorey Dental who provided a dental check; Bailey's Toymaster which donated vouchers; the Art Box gallery for two mugs; Kool Kidz and Funges for their donations of stylish clothes and shoes; Primmy's Tearoom for treating the girls to cakes; and Boots pharmacy and Grants chemist for hampers full of vitamins and treats for the girls' stay.

'Both girls have only ever lived in Vesnova Orphanage so we had many firsts on their Irish holiday,' said Samantha, recalling their faces when in a supermarket for the first time, dipping their feet into the sea, and horse riding with Sandra McGuire in Ballycanew.

'I just want to thank everybody who helped give two beautiful Belarussian girls happy lifetime memories of their first holiday outside Belarus,' she said. 'They will always have a place in our hearts.'
'Cardboard Gangsters' will open the Fingal Film Festival this year when it kicks of at Movies@Swords on September 30, running until October 2.

Director Mark O'Connor's 'Cardboard Gangsters' is set to open the festival starring John Connors (Love/Hate) at 8pm on Friday, September 30, celebrating its Dublin premiere. Connors takes the lead as the head of a group of young Cardboard Gangsters attempting to gain control of the drug trade in Darndale, chasing the glorified lifestyle of money, power and sex.

The documentary line-up at this year's festival includes Risteard O'Domhnaill's 'Atlantic', Megan Murphy's 'Murphy's Law' and Xuban Intxausti's 'In Dialogue'.

This year's workshop series at the festival includes an animation workshop from Stephen Fagan, founder and creative director of Treehouse Republic. This half-day workshop takes place on Friday September 30 and will cover the topics of pre-production, production and post-production, with a focus on SFX and music. There are major film screenings throughout the weekend including Murphy Law, South, In Dialogue, Atlantic, and many more.

This is the fifth instalment of the independent festival and Dave Byrne Creative Director, Fingal Film Festival said he was 'thrilled about the selection of films we have for our Irish and international audience this year'.

Further info at www.fingalfilmfest.com.
Fingallians GAA Club in Swords will be the start and finish point for one of 10 charity cycles happening right across the country in aid of Pieta House, this month.

Swords n will be one of 10 venues that will host this year's Pieta 100 Charity Cycle on September 25.

The cycle, which is supported by Aviva, includes a 100 and a 50km route around Dublin that will start from Fingallians GAA Club and travel north-west towards Swords, then towards Malahide, Howth, Naul, Stamullen and Balbriggan before finishing back in Fingallians GAA Club.

Rugby stars David Wallace and Jenny Murphy, cyclist Martyn Irvine, rugby analyst Brent Pope and Today FM presenter Paula MacSweeney were in the Aviva Stadium this week to launch the nationwide Pieta 100 charity cycle.

After a successful debut last year, the Pieta 100 has expanded from three locations to 10 in 2016. It's a fitting number as Pieta House - the centre for the prevention of suicide and self-harm - marks its 10 -year anniversary this year. Almost 1,500 people took part a year ago and raised nearly 100,000, funds that help to keep Pieta's life-saving counselling services free.

Sunday September 25 is the date for people saddle up for the 100k or 50k events in Cork, Donegal, Fingal, Galway, Kerry, Kildare, Kilkenny/Carlow, Limerick, Tipperary/Offaly or Waterford.

Earlier this year, Pieta House was chosen by employees at Aviva Ireland as their charity partner over the next two years. The primary objective of the partnership is to make Pieta 100 a 32-county event that will become over time as successful in raising funds for their work as Darkness Into Light.

Pieta House CEO Brian Higgins says there are many reasons why the Pieta 100 should appeal to people; 'It's an exciting thing to be involved in. We wanted to build on the momentum of support that we have amassed from Darkness Into Light," he said. "The Pieta 100 is open to individuals and teams, but everyone is in this together - it's not a race. It's about starting and finishing a journey in a time that suits you and that's a reflection of how our work at Pieta House is done.

'It's about engaging with people and sitting alongside them on a journey and that journey can take as long as it needs to for that person. We want to travel alongside them and support them.'
A young St Joseph's Secondary School student from Rush has become an ambassador and student leader for the annual Cycle Against Suicide initiative.

The annual Cycle Against Suicide Student Leader Ambassadors' Retreat took place in Kippure Estate, Co. Wicklow recently and was attended by young Tom Groome, of St Joseph's.

The aim of the Student Leader Ambassador Programme is to harness the immense leadership potential of these young adults, and empower them to bring the Cycle Against Suicide message that 'it's ok not to feel ok; and it's absolutely ok to ask for help', back to their schools and communities. The Student Leaders actively participate in all Cycle Against Suicide activities throughout the year.

Among the group of exceptional students, nominated by their schools and selected from hundreds of applicants, was Tom Groome of St. Joseph's. Tom and his fellow Student Leader Ambassadors from all over the island of Ireland gathered to participate in the wide range of workshops, including media skills, outdoor pursuits, team building, presentation skills and leadership training. As well as participating in workshops and presentations, students also collaborated to develop a theme for this year's Student Leaders' Congress, which will take place in University of Limerick, next year.

Link Teacher Aine Duffy said: 'It is a huge honour for St. Joseph's Secondary School to have a student selected for such a prestigious and worthwhile programme at a national level. We are immensely proud of Tom's achievement.' Among the guests at this year's Retreat were Jim Breen, Founder of Cycle Against Suicide, and Ombudsman for Children, Niall Muldoon.
A preschool in Donabate has won an Early Childhood Ireland award for an initiative that encouraged children to reflect on their time in preschool and represent their experiences with picture stories.

Beverton Preschool Donabate who have won an Early Childhood Ireland award for their 'learning story' entitled 'Reflections', showing children taking great pride as they reflect on their time in preschool and compare their 'then and now' picture stories.

The Donabate pre-school is celebrating its success in the nationwide initiative from Early Childhoold Ireland and the stories the children came up with, show how valuable this time in their young lives can be and how positively their experiences in pre-school can influence their early development.

The Beverton story joins a series of winning learning stories from around the country published on www.earlychildhoodireland.ie, giving parents to a sense of what play based, child centred, early years education looks like.

Beverton's learning story entitled 'Reflections' saw its little graduates reflect on their own time in preschool and compare their colourful 'then and now' pictures and stories

Early Childhood Ireland is encouraging families with children starting preschool this September to read some of the winning learning stories on www.earlychildhoodireland.ie including the story entitled 'Reflections' from Beverton Preschool in Donabate to get a true sense of what play based, child centred, early years education looks like, and just how much fun and reflective it can be.

The Beverton, award-winning learning story begins as the time comes to start preparing for the end of year graduation and the children stopped the educators in their tracks when they began to reflect on their own time in preschool.

Instead of getting too busy with the logistics of an end of year show, the team of early educators at Beverton turned the usual production into a reflective look by the children, for the children, of their time at Beverton.

The children tell of the things they couldn't do that they have now mastered and of friends they didn't have, that are now firm friends. This was celebrated by an evening together where they were presented with their own playful journey that was captured so nicely in their individual learning journals.

For the new children and families starting in Beverton Preschool this September, this story is a wonderful insight into what to expect.

In the words of John Dewey's famous quote 'We don't learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience.'

'And in this case that was as true for the child as it was for the practitioner,' says Nickola Cullen manager at Beverton Preschool Donabate, who was delighted to accept this award from Early Childhood Ireland.

Early Childhood Ireland is a membership-based organisation focused on the comprehensive provision of early childhood care and education in Ireland.
Just two years after it brought a brand new dimension to secondary education in Balbriggan, Colaiste Ghlor na Mara turned the key on its brand new and state-of-the-art permanent home last week.

Colaiste Ghlor na Mara became the first Irish language secondary school in Balbriggan in 2014 and has carried on its work in temporary accommodation for the last two years while it waited for its permanent home to be constructed.

That job is finally complete now and the school's students were welcomed to their new home last week, for the first time, marking a huge day in the history and life of the fledgling educational institution.

The new, state-of-the-art An Foras Patrunachta secondary school building on the Naul Road in Balbriggan opened its doors for the very first time at 8.30am on Thursday, September 1.

The multi-denominational secondary school, where Irish is the primary language used, is equipped with a full range of both practical and academic facilities, including a special education unit in the school for students with special needs.

While it will eventually accommodate 1,000, on Thursday 130 students from 15 countries, all of whom will be educated through the Irish lanuage, started at Colaiste Ghlor na Mara.

Speaking ahead of the opening day, Aoife Elster, principal of the school said: 'We are really excited about opening the doors to our new school premises on Thursday morning.

'This is the result of eight years of hard work by parents, our founding committee and our patron, An Foras Patrunachta.'

The school principal added: 'We are delighted that the Irish language is so popular in this area, and that students with such diverse backgrounds and cultures have chosen to learn through Irish.

'I look forward to working with a great team of teachers and offering our students from the North County Dublin area and its environs equal access to education, an extensive curriculum and choice of subjects 'as Gaeilge', for many years to come.'

Patron of the school, An Foras Patrunachta, provides Irish-medium education at primary and secondary levels, with a range of spiritual ethos.

Colaiste Ghlor na Mara opened in September 2014 to serve the people of North Fingal, East Meath & South Louth. The School is situated in Balbriggan, as this is a central location to the feeder Gaelscoileanna in the area. There are currently Gaelscoileanna in Ashbourne, Balbriggan, Drogheda, Rush and Swords as well as other active founding committees in the area

A meeting was called in September 2008 following discussion with parents of Gaelscoil pupils to asses the public interest in establishing a school. A founding committee was formed that hosted meetings with potential patrons and decided to go forward with Foras Patrunachta as patron.
Balbriggan's own BT Young Scientists of the Year are set to shine on the European stage.

Maria Louise Fufezan and Diana Bura, are heading to Brussels on September 15 to represent Ireland at the 28th EU contest for Young Scientists.

The contest run by the European Commission showcases the best of European student scientific achievement. Ireland has a successful track record first place no less than 14 times in the past.

Maria Louise and Diana's study investigated the effects of enzymes used in chicken feed on C.Elegans, an important component of our soil environment.

The girls have been working hard since their win at the BT young scientist and technology competition in January.

They have increased the sample size of their study significantly and further examined microscopically the potential side effects of enzymes used to enhance chicken feed on C.elegans.

This work involved working right up until the end of June in their school laboratory and carrying out advanced fluorescent microscope analysis in Dr. Oliver Blacque's Laboratory in UCD over their summer holidays.

The girls are currently putting the finishing touches to their project by completing statistical analysis and preparing their poster and project book for the European judges.

The judging panel consists of 20 members of high academic and industrial reputation. The competition runs from the 15th to the 20th of September and all the pupils and staff from Loreto wish them the best of luck and will be cheering them on from Balbriggan.

Meanwhile, during the summer Renuka Chintaplalli qualified as a regional finalist and placed in the top 100 in the Google Science Fair.

This is a remarkable and well deserved achievement and reflects the years of hard work that Renuka has undertaken on her project entitled 'Developing a predictive tool for identifying FLNc-associated biomarkers of oesophageal cancer metastasis' .

As a result of all her success Renuka has been invited to speak at the Royal Society of Medicine conference in London this September.
A Swords woman whose battle against cancer began with a simple freckle on her foot changing shape and colour and progressed to a stage four melanoma has honoured the doctors and nurses who have guided through her a tough two years of treatment and allowed her to be well enough to get married.

Katriona Morley Smith has been receiving treatment in Beaumont Hospital for the past two years for malignant melanoma.

Her cancer journey began when she initially noticed a freckle on her foot had changed shape and colour over a six week period. It never dawned on her that it could be something worth getting checked out and it was only when she hit her foot and the freckle bled continuously for 15 minutes that she thought she should see a doctor.

Her GP sent her to Beaumont Hospital to have a biopsy and two weeks later she received a call inviting her for a full body scan. She knew this could only mean bad news and following the scan, Katriona was told that she had stage four, malignant melanoma.

Katriona, who lives in Swords, said: 'I was never a sun worshipper and remember always covering my feet in the sun so I was amazed that this had happened to me. But being a very positive person my first reaction was that I was going to get rid of this.'

Four surgeries later, the cancer in her foot was removed, two skin grafts were taken from her thigh and twelve lymph nodes were removed from her groin area, ten of which also proved to be cancerous. She was then put on a course of the drug, Interferon - a 'tough drug to be on', according to the Swords mum whose teenage son, Josh injected her three times a week with the drug, at home.

By January 2016, Katriona was feeling great. She had her energy back and she felt things were going so well that she and her partner went on an early honeymoon, spending a month in Thailand. However, in April 2016 she noticed what looked like skin tags growing on her legs. She showed them to her doctor and biopsies were taken. Devastatingly for Katriona, they came back confirming cancer again. Despite her enduring positivity throughout her treatment, she admits that this set her 'way back' and she did something she hadn't done up to this point - she cried.

Katriona was referred on to Prof Liam Grogan, Consultant Medical Oncologist in Beaumont Hospital. She was placed on a new drug and was scheduled to receive four infusions. On the day she was to receive the fourth infusion, she felt desperately unwell and was admitted to Beaumont again. She had developed colitis which is a known side effect of the new drug she was taking.

Since then she has been recovering and preparing for her wedding to her partner, David, which took place a couple weeks ago on August 20.

Katriona took part in an 'Honour Your Heroes' ceremony at Beaumont Hospital last week where patients publicly thanked the medical teams that have treated then. The Swords woman was thanking Consultant Medical Oncologist, Prof Liam Grogan, for the incredible care and good humour he has shown throughout her treatment.

The relentlessly positive Swords woman who is still undergoing treatment for her cancer, said: 'I know that I am a lucky lady to be under the care of Prof Grogan and I know that if anyone can fix me, he can.'
Feel like a bit of exploring? Pack a picnic, plan an adventure, head out for a breath of fresh air and get closer to nature on a family walk within just a hop of the city.

Whether you want spectacular sea views, cliff walks, a stroll near some good coffee shops or a harder hike through woodland its all there within easy access of Dublin. Here are 4 great family walks within an hour of Dublin:

1. Limber Up for the Lighthouse

A walk to the red lighthouse will be an adventure for families with children of any age. Still a well-kept secret for some, the Poolbeg Lighthouse/South Wall walk offers some of the most exceptional views around Dublin Bay. The Great South Wall, which was completed back in 1795, starts at Sean Moore Park at Ringsend in Dublin 4 and extends over 4km out to the sea and was once the longest sea wall in the world and is now still the longest in Europe. For families with younger children, its best to drive down past Irishtown Nature Reserve and Shelley Banks beach where theres free parking within easy access of the start of the walk to the lighthouse.

The walk takes around 40 minutes along a stony walkway surrounded on both sides by the sea. Half way out youll pass the Half Moon Club where you are likely to see swimmers jumping in. Theres a chance to wave at the ferries, get close to one of Dublins most famous landmarks, the ESB chimneys and marvel at how huge they look close up, plus watch birdlife and spot the occasional seal. The views at the end are breathtaking, as you can see out to Dun Laoghaire and Killiney and also over to Howth. This is a great walk for all weathers as it becomes even more dramatic on a windy day as the waves crash over and gets you close to the elements right by the city.

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Highlight: The reward of racing to see whos fastest to touch the lighthouse at the end!

2. Superb Scenery at the Cliff

Howth Head Cliff Walk is ideal for families as there are no major steep rises or falls but it still remains very varied. It starts from the East Pier in Howth  an ideal DART trip - and is a looped walk of around 6.5km. As it is a cliff walk, it is narrow in places so care needs to be taken and children need to be closely supervised. Depending on the ages of children, you can do the walk in stages and double back or tackle the entire walk.

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Theres a Martello Tower, one of many built during the Napoleonic Wars to protect against French invasion and the views out to Irelands Eye, a bird sanctuary and site of an early Christian monastery are stunning. Lambay Island can be seen clearly and the walk goes past Balscadden House which was once the home of WB Yeats. As the walk progresses, the south coast of Wicklow can be seen and children will love the chance to see Bailey Lighthouse come in to view, in addition to the Howth Harbour Lighthouse. There are many sea birds to be observed so its a good idea to bring binoculars.

Highlight: Post-walk fish and chips or ice-cream in Howth Village. Youve earned it!

3. Away with the Fairies for Forest Fun

The beautifully named Fairy Castle Loop at Ticknock Forest Recreation Area is perfect for younger families. Bring a picnic and stop off wherever you like for amazing views of Dublin City from the Dublin Mountains / Wicklow Way. This walk, which can be reached by car via the M50 through Lambs Cross and Lamb Doyles, starts at Ticknock Car Park. Its best to park at the top for easier access.

Youll get the freshest of air at 270 metres above sea level and walk through the stunning forests of Sitka spruce, Scots pine, Japanese larch, lodgepole pine and Monterey pine. The walk is well marked throughout with green signposts and is around 5.5km in length.

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Highlight: Finding the Fairy castle, reaching the landmark masts at Three Rock and arriving at the mound at the summit!

4. Head to the Hole in the Wall

The Hole in the Wall beach, also known as Burrow Beach is still one of the best kept secrets near Dublin city centre. This is one of the most magical walks and days out for families, as its close to town, easy to get to and feels as if you have stepped away to the countryside but with an easy journey home.

This beach is the most perfect spot for a walk with stunning views out across Irelands Eye. Its right between Sutton Dart Station and Howth, stretching for about 1.5km and can be easily accessed by car or by DART. Depending on tides, the beach actually joins up with Claremont beach in Howth. The area is very popular with dog walkers, so if you have a family dog this is the perfect walk and is great for photographs with golden sands and dunes as a scenic backdrop.

Highlight: The big reveal: When you come through the narrow pathway and the wide sandy stretch appears!

Forget the cries of are we there yet? Youll get your fix of fresh air and be back before you know it. Get close to nature  right by the city!

Why not register for the Free Nature Valley Family Fun Walk at Rathbeggan Lakes, September 17th? It's the perfect day out for all the family. For more info and to register, click here

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The director of Leonardo DiCaprio's documentary on climate change has claimed a Donald Trump victory in the US presidential election would be "the worst thing that could happen" for the environment.

Oscar-winner Fisher Stevens filmed DiCaprio as he travelled around the world to see the effects of global warming for his latest feature, Before The Flood.

Stevens joined The Revenant actor at the documentary's world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival where he voiced concerns about Mr Trump's views on climate change.

The Republican nominee has previously claimed global warming is a hoax created by China and said he would "cancel" the Paris climate deal aimed at cutting carbon emissions.

Stevens told the Press Association: "Donald Trump would be the worst thing that could happen on the planet if he's elected president.

"At least that's what he says....you never know with Donald Trump. Right now, he says he won't validate the Paris climate talks and he's going to overturn all of the good things (Barack) Obama has been doing."

Stevens, who produced the Oscar-winning documentary The Cove about dolphin hunting practices in Japan, said DiCaprio,41, approached him about making their latest film together.

Before The Flood follows DiCaprio as he travels to a number of countries, visiting flooded streets in Miami Beach, smog-choked areas of Beijing and incinerated forests in Indonesia.

"We're not doing this to get rich," Stevens said.

"Leo certainly didn't schlep around all over the world to enhance his career.

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"I learnt the climate is actually in worse shape than I expected. I also learned we could fix it a lot easier than I thought. The way renewables and solar and wind are becoming more affordable, it's all economics."

DiCaprio's long-time collaborator, director Martin Scorsese, is an executive producer on the Before The Flood.
Taylor Swift and Lily Aldridge seen on the streets of Manhattan on September 7, 2016 in New York City. (Photo by James Devaney/GC Images)

Taylor Swift is seen in Chelsea on September 7, 2016 in New York City. (Photo by Alo Ceballos/GC Images)

Taylor Swift and Tom Hiddleston are seen at LAX on July 06, 2016 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by starzfly/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images)

The claws are coming out after Tom Hiddleston and Taylor Swift's split.

It looked like Taylor Swift's people had succeeded in getting her side of the story out there first: she was pictured beaming leaving her New York City apartment the day after the news broke, she partied with Lily Aldridge later that night and it was apparently all down to her being "uncomfortable with him being so public".

Hiddleston reported asked Swift to be his date for the Emmys later this month and that didn't sit well with her. Taylor has never walked a red carpet with a boyfriend. She has however hired a photographer to document their Fourth of July shenanigans and very publicly traverse Europe with paparazzi hot on their trail for the first few weeks of their relationship.

But now the Night Manager's side has come out swinging.

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Whatsapp Actor Tom Hiddleston and singer Taylor Swift leave restaurant 'Gemelli Italian' in Broadbeach on the Gold Coast, Queensland

Today, it's being reported that the British actor "dumped" her because he is a "commitment-phobe who gets bored easily". Apparently, "even his sisters affectionately chide him on his lack of relationship staying power" due to his unofficial "three month rule".

Don't worry, the pop superstar already has her own back already,

"Taylor knows what went on with Tom and wont be affected by his teams claims," a source told The Sun, the same newspaper which first published the world exclusive photos of Taylor and Tom kissing on the beach of her Rhode Island mansion.

"Its all water under the bridge as far as she is concerned."

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An Afghan policeman travels in the back of a truck in Tirin Kot, the capital of Uruzgan province southern of Kabul (AP)

Afghan forces have retaken most of a southern provincial capital, a day after it was nearly overrun by the Taliban in fighting that claimed at least eight Afghan troops, officials said.

After day-long heavy battles, the army and the police regained control of all strategic locations in Tirin Kot, the capital of Uruzgan province, said Mohammad Radmanish, the deputy spokesman for the Ministry of Defence.

Sporadic fighting was only under way on Friday in the city's north-eastern neighbourhood, he added.

The Taliban pushed deep into Tirin Kot on Thursday, setting off fierce fighting. After hours of the onslaught, Kabul sent Afghan commandos and reinforcements to Tirin Kot, backed by US air strikes.

Mr Radmanish said that more than 80 Taliban fighters were killed in the past 24 hours as Afghan forces repelled the insurgent attack. He did not provide a casualty toll for Afghan forces or civilians.

The Uruzgan provincial spokesman, Doost Mohammad Nayab, said that the Taliban have been pushed back and were now at a 3.1 mile distance from the city, thanks to the reinforcements from Kabul and the US air support.

Mr Nayab said that according to their figures, "around 100 Taliban fighters were killed" while the Afghans lost eight troops and had 10 wounded.

A spokesman for the Taliban, Qari Yousaf Ahmadi, insisted that the government claims of a Taliban retreat were inaccurate.

"We are still holding our positions," Mr Ahmadi said, denying reports of high insurgent casualties. He said Taliban fighters had captured several Afghan policemen.

AP
Flat-faced cat breeds such as Persian can be more likely to have breathing difficulties, according to research

Pedigree cats bred to have flat faces are more likely to suffer from breathing difficulties, according to a study.

The research led by the University of Edinburgh found flat-faced cat breeds were more likely to have breathing problems after exercise and while asleep.

Researchers say owners of breeds with flat faces - such as the Persian and Exotic - should be aware of the risks and seek veterinary care if they suspect their pet is in difficulty.

The study - published in the journal PLOS One - saw hundreds of owners submitting photographs of their cats so researchers could measure the faces of the animals.

Owners were asked to complete a detailed health survey about their pets, including questions about lifestyle and breathing patterns.

Impaired breathing is a hallmark condition called brachycephalic obstructive airway syndrome (BOAS), which can lead to health problems throughout an animal's life.

The difficulties are well-reported in dogs but breathing problems in flat-faced cats have not been fully investigated.

Professor Danielle Gunn-Moore, of the University of Edinburgh's Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies, said: "This study demonstrates the need to further understand the genetic basis of brachycephalia in cats.

"Owners worried about their cat's breathing should consult a vet immediately."
A missile is launched during a drill at an undisclosed location in North Korea. Photo: KRT via AP

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un looks though binoculars at the site of a ballistic missile launching at an undisclosed location in North Korea. Photo: AP

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un provides field guidance during a fire drill of ballistic rockets by Hwasong artillery units of the KPA Strategic Force, in this undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA)

This undated released by the North Korean government, shows ballistic missiles launched during a drill at an undisclosed location in North Korea. Photo: AP

International monitoring agencies have reported an earthquake near North Korea's north-eastern nuclear test site, a strong indication that Pyongyang has detonated a fifth atomic test explosion.

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement that "artificial seismic waves" measuring 5.0 were detected near the Punggye-ri test site, and officials were analysing whether it was a nuclear test.

European and US monitoring services also detected seismic activity, with the US Geological Survey calling it an "explosion".

North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test earlier this year, part of a push for a nuclear-armed missile that could one day reach the US mainland.

A second nuclear test this year would be a defiant response to Western pressure on Pyongyang to halt its nuclear ambitions. The country has previously conducted tests every three to four years.

Any new test will lead to a strong push for tougher sanctions at the United Nations and further worsen already abysmal relations between Pyongyang and its neighbours. North Korean nuclear tests worry outside governments because they are seen as moving its scientists and engineers that much closer to the goal of an arsenal of nuclear-tipped missiles that can reach the US.

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North Korea is thought to have a handful of rudimentary nuclear bombs and has spent decades trying to perfect a multi-stage, long-range missile to eventually carry smaller versions of the bombs. After several failures, it put its first satellite into space with a long-range rocket launched in December 2012, and has since had another such successful launch.

Experts say ballistic missiles and rockets in satellite launches share similar bodies, engines and other technology. The UN calls the North's long-range rocket launches banned tests of ballistic missile technology.

Some analysts say the North has probably not achieved the technology needed to manufacture a miniaturised nuclear warhead that could fit on a long-range missile capable of hitting the US, but there is a growing debate on how far the North has advanced in its secretive nuclear and missile programmes.
KRT newscaster confirming that North Korea has conducted a nuclear test in this still image taken from video on September 9, 2016. KRT/via Reuters

Earthquake and Volcano of the Korea Monitoring Division Director Ryoo Yong-gyu points at the epicenter of seismic waves in North Korea, in Seoul, South Korea. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

North Korean officials gather for foundation anniversary of North Korea in this still frame taken from video released on September 9, 2016 by North Korean state-run television KRT KRT/via Reuters

South Korean soldiers and passenger watch a TV broadcasting a news report on Seismic activity produced by a suspected North Korean nuclear test, at a railway station in Seoul, South Korea, September 9, 2016. Kim Ju-sung/Yonhap via REUTERS

Students sit on a playground of a school in Yanji, Jilin Province, China as they are evacuated after a seismic event in North Korea, September 9, 2016.

A photographers takes picture of a monitor showing the seismic event was indicated on North Korea and observed in Japan during a news conference at the Japan Meteorological Agency in Tokyo, Japan, September 9, 2016. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon

North Korea says it has successfully conducted an atomic explosion test aimed at examining the power of its nuclear warheads.

State TV said the test elevated the country's nuclear arsenal and is part of its response to international sanctions following its earlier nuclear test and long-range rocket launch in January and February.

Pyongyang said it will continue to take efforts to strengthen the quantity and quality of its nuclear weapons.

South Korean president Park Geun-hye strongly condemned the test, saying in a statement that it showed the "fanatic recklessness of the Kim Jong Un government as it clings to a nuclear development".

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Whatsapp North Korean leader Kim Jong Un salutes at a parade in Pyongyang, North Korea (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E, File)

Confirmation of a fifth nuclear test by Pyongyang came after international monitors detected unusual seismic activity near a north-eastern test site.

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement that "artificial seismic waves" from a quake measuring 5.0 were detected near the Punggye-ri test site.

A South Korean Defence Ministry official said Seoul detected an estimated explosive yield of 10 kilotons and assessed that it was from a nuclear test.

After the fourth test in January, South Korean policymaker Lee Cheol Woo said Seoul's National Intelligence Service told him an estimated explosive yield of six kilotons was detected.

The 5.0 magnitude earthquake is the largest of the quakes associated with North Korean nuclear tests, according to South Korea's weather agency. Artificial seismic waves measuring 3.9 were reported after the first nuclear test in 2006, and 4.8 was reported from its fourth test.

North Korea's nuclear tests are part of a push for a nuclear-armed missile that could one day reach the US mainland. A second nuclear test this year is a defiant response to Western pressure on Pyongyang to halt its nuclear ambitions. The country has previously conducted tests every three to four years.

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Whatsapp South Korean soldiers and passenger watch a TV broadcasting a news report on Seismic activity produced by a suspected North Korean nuclear test, at a railway station in Seoul, South Korea, September 9, 2016. Kim Ju-sung/Yonhap via REUTERS

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North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has overseen a robust increase in the number and kinds of missiles tested this year. Not only has the range of weapons successfully tested jumped significantly, but the country is working to perfect new platforms for launching them - submarines and mobile launchers.

The longer ranges and mobile launchers give the North greater ability to threaten the tens of thousands of US troops stationed throughout Asia.

The seismic activity comes on the 68th anniversary of the founding of North Korea's government and days after world leaders gathered in China for the G20 economic summit.

The new test will lead to a strong push for tougher sanctions at the United Nations and further worsen already abysmal relations between Pyongyang and its neighbours. North Korea is already one of the most heavily sanctioned places on earth, and many question whether the penalties work.

North Korea is thought to have a handful of rudimentary nuclear bombs and has spent decades trying to perfect a multi-stage, long-range missile to eventually carry smaller versions of the bombs. After several failures, it put its first satellite into space with a long-range rocket launched in December 2012, and has since had another successful launch.

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Experts say ballistic missiles and rockets in satellite launches share similar bodies, engines and other technology. The UN calls the North's long-range rocket launches banned tests of ballistic missile technology.

It is unclear whether the North has achieved the technology needed to manufacture a miniaturised nuclear warhead that could fit on a long-range missile capable of hitting the US. Some analysts believe the country has the ability to arm shorter range missile with warheads.

On Tuesday, North Korea fired three medium-range Rodong missiles that travelled about 620 miles and landed near Japan, and last month, a missile from a North Korean submarine flew about 310 miles, the longest distance achieved by the North for such a weapon. This worried many South Koreans because submarine-based missiles are harder to detect before launch than land-based weapons.

Diplomacy has so far failed to stop North Korea's progress. Six-nation negotiations on dismantling Pyongyang's nuclear programme in exchange for aid were last held in late 2008 and fell apart in early 2009, when North Korea was led by Kim Jong Un's father, Kim Jong Il, who died in late 2011.

North Korea blames the US and South Korea for its nuclear programme, saying long-running "hostility" from Seoul and Washington to its government makes the development crucial for the small country's survival.
Bill Cosby is set to go on trial next June on charges he drugged and sexually violated a Temple University employee (AP)

Lawyers for Bill Cosby have suggested for the first time that racial bias is to blame as he faces the prospect of 13 women - 12 of them white - giving evidence in court that he drugged and molested them.

The 79-year-old comedian 's legal team raised the issue on the courthouse steps after a hearing in his criminal sex assault case in suburban Philadelphia.

Whether they intend to bring up race in the courtroom remains to be seen. At a minimum, some legal experts said the defence is trying to influence potential jurors.

"I think that you've always got to have in mind who's your jury pool," said Los Angeles lawyer Mark Geragos, whose clients have included Michael Jackson. "That's probably the end game."

Or the lawyers may have been dutifully carrying out Cosby's instructions: "It could well be they are expressing the concerns of the client," said Carl Douglas, who was on OJ Simpson's legal team.

Cosby is set to go on trial next June on charges that he drugged and sexually violated Temple University employee Andrea Constand at his home in 2004. He could get 10 years in prison if convicted.

In bringing up race, his legal team took aim at celebrity lawyer Gloria Allred, who represents about half the women who have agreed to give evidence against Cosby.

Ms Allred "calls herself a civil rights attorney, but her campaign against Mr Cosby builds on racial bias and prejudice that can pollute the court of public opinion", the lawyers said in a statement.

"Mr Cosby is no stranger to discrimination and racial hatred. When the media repeats her accusations - with no evidence, no trial and no jury - we are moved backwards as a country and away from the America that our civil rights leaders sacrificed so much to create."

Ms Allred called the tactic "desperate".

"It is ironic that a man who has chastised the black poor for making race an excuse would now have to lean upon that as part of his defence strategy," said Georgetown University sociology professor Michael Eric Dyson, a black scholar and author of the book Is Bill Cosby Right? Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind?

"If you're more cynical, you might say, 'What manipulation of racial rhetoric in defence of the indefensible'," Mr Dyson said.

Cosby's lawyers have not raised any bias claims in court during their myriad efforts to get the case thrown out. The focus for now is on keeping out the most damning evidence, including Cosby's 2005 deposition in which he admitted using drugs and alcohol to seduce women. The defence will also fight strenuously to keep other accusers off the stand.

His lawyers have asked to have the trial moved out of suburban Montgomery County, where the case was a major topic in the election campaign for district attorney last autumn. Lead defence lawyer Brian McMonagle suggested that the jury be drawn instead from Philadelphia.

Montgomery County is 80% white and 10% black. In Philadelphia, the racial split is nearly even.

AP
Barack Obama's easing of the US trade embargo on Cuba has had virtually no positive effect on the island's economy, Cuba's leading diplomat has said.

Presenting Cuba's annual report ahead of a UN vote on condemning the embargo, foreign minister Bruno Rodriguez said the sanctions cost his country 4.6 billion US dollars (3.5 billion) last year.

The total cost of the 55-year-old embargo stands at 125.9 billion dollars (95 billion), he added.

Cuba's update on the embargo is an annual ritual driving home to a mostly domestic audience Havana's message that US sanctions are to blame for most of the country's problems.

The report contains a detailed accounting of specific damage from the embargo, such as US government fines on Cuba's business partners, and scenarios in which Cuba faults the US for the loss of hypothetical business.

For example, the report estimates that Cuba could sell 2.5 million cases of Havana Club rum in the US each year and factors in that theoretical lost revenue, 105 million dollars (79 million), to the total damages in the report.

Mr Rodriguez praised Mr Obama for allowing easier US travel to Cuba, permitting commercial flights and attempting to ease financial transactions, among other measures.

However, he said, "there's been no fundamental change in the application of the blockade, and because of that, I can say, there hasn't been a greater economic impact of the executive actions until now and there won't be until we see bigger steps".

He acknowledged the problems of Cuba's centrally controlled economy, which is struggling to increase productivity in the face of an outdated and inefficient bureaucracy and low state salaries that lead many employees to steal from their workplaces or accept small bribes to get by.

"No-one's ignoring or aims to hide our problems, our limitations, our mistakes," he said. "But neither can we diminish the impact of the blockade."

The United Nations votes next month on an annual resolution on condemning the embargo that usually passes with overwhelming support. Last year the US considered abstaining for the first time, before voting against it.

AP
Peter Kazimir answers questions upon his arrival for the informal meeting of ministers for economic and financial affairs in Bratislava, Slovakia (AP)

European creditors have urged the Greek government to speed up the implementation of a series of economic reforms so it can get its hands on the next batch of bailout cash it is due before the end of October.

Greece, which depends on the money due from the bailout to stay afloat, has recently fallen short of its commitments to reform its economy, stoking some concerns of a renewed flare-up in the country's debt crisis.

Because it has not delivered on the reform promises it has made, it cannot yet get hold of the 2.8 billion euros (2.3 billion) that is next due from this current phase of its bailout programme.

However, senior European officials at a meeting in the Slovak capital of Bratislava said Greece still had enough time to meet the deadline set to trigger the release of the money.

As part of last year's third bailout agreement, which is potentially worth up to 86 billion euros (72.6 billion), Greece promised to meet a series of reforms to such things as pensions and labour markets, in return for the money that it needs to prevent going bankrupt and possibly exiting the euro currency.

The latest release of cash will only come after Greece has met 15 "milestones" relating to privatisation, energy sector reform, bank governance and the establishment of the revenue agency.

So far, Greece has only met two of those conditions, with the remainder at varying degrees of implementation.

Though Greek finance minister Euclid Tsakalotos told his counterparts from the 19-country eurozone that the government intends to complete the milestones in a timely manner, the country is unlikely to meet a September 15 deadline.

And while the European ministers do not appear concerned about stretching that deadline, there are limits - the disbursement of the money has to happen by October at the latest.

"More progress is needed and we strongly encourage the Greek government as a whole to speed up the implementation of the remaining milestones," said Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the eurozone's top official.

There was little sense that Greece was lagging to such an extent that the country was facing another clash with creditors.

Slovak finance minister Peter Kazimir, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, praised Greece's efforts to put its economic house in order but said Athens' job is not done.

"They did a lot, but a lot of homework is ahead of them," he said at the start of a two-day meeting of European finance ministers. Echoing that message, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said that "there is still time" for Greece to meet its commitments.

While Greece has made some progress in reshaping its economy over the past six years that it has been in receipt of bailout money, it remains encumbered by a heavy debt burden because the economy has shrunk by around a quarter over that period, a staggering contraction that sent unemployment, particularly among the young, sky-rocketing.

With its debt standing at more than 175% of national income, the Greek government is hoping to get some relief from its creditors - the International Monetary Fund, which has been one of the country's major creditors over the bailout era, thinks some sort of debt relief is necessary if its involvement is to continue.

Greece's eurozone partners, notably Germany, have said outright debt reductions are not on the agenda but help could come in the form of lower interest payments or extensions to repayment dates.

Tax policies within the EU were also on the agenda at the Bratislava meeting amid calls for an end to corporation loopholes.

The talks are being held just over a week after the European Commission ruled that technology giant Apple did not pay the correct volume of tax in the European Union for more than a decade, a mounting bill that analysts say could constitute 19 billion euros (16 billion) with interest.

Both Apple and Ireland, the location of Apple's European headquarters, are appealing the ruling, but Pierre Moscovici, the EU's economy commissioner, defended the move saying Europeans "are waiting for multinational corporations to pay their taxes as common people do".

He said he backed the idea of drawing up black list of tax haven countries as a detriment to unfair tax practices.

"The message must be heard," he said. "No more tax havens."

Austrian finance minister Hans Joerg Schelling said it wasn't clear who should benefit if Apple is ordered to pay back taxes, saying other EU nations might "take a look whether the (tax) money is due to Ireland or other countries."

With the EU economy struggling with anemic levels of growth, the European Central Bank has urged governments across the eurozone to do more to improve economic fundamentals.

Mr Kazimir projected optimism nonetheless, declaring "the future is bright".

AP
The only surviving suspect in last November's attack on Paris refused to speak to a judge yesterday for a third time, in frustration at 24-hour video surveillance of his prison cell.

Salah Abdeslam's lawyer, Frank Berton, said the judge repeatedly asked questions to no avail.

Berton said Abdeslam wasn't obligated to explain his silence but "obviously" it's linked to the constant surveillance.

Authorities hope Abdeslam can provide information about the Islamic State (Isil) group's strategies and networks, and identify others who might have had a connection to the November 13 attacks, which killed 130 people.

The same network that attacked Paris struck again in Abdeslam's hometown of Brussels in March, days after he was tracked down in his hideout and arrested.

His Brussels lawyer was present at yesterday's hearing in Paris.

While Abdeslam is the only person suspected of directly participating in the attacks, others believed linked to it also are being identified as French and other European authorities continue their investigations.

Austrian prosecutors, meanwhile, announced yesterday that two men who spent time in a Salzburg refugee camp with other suspects in connection to the attacks have been charged with being part of the Isil "terrorist organization".

A statement from the Salzburg prosecutor's office said the two are suspected of helping two other suspects who Austria extradited to France earlier this year through "logistics as well as through gathering information and arranging contacts".

Those extradited had been charged with "the preparation of ... attacks in Paris as members of Isil," according to the statement.

The two whose charges were announced yesterday are identified as a 26-year-old Moroccan and a 40-year-old Algerian, but haven't been publicly identified in keeping with Austrian privacy laws. They also are charged with belonging to a criminal organisation.

The two extradited in July were a 35-year-old Pakistani and a 29-year old Algerian. All four are believed to have come to Europe last year posing as refugees.

Abdeslam kept silent at a hearing in May, and refused to attend a hearing in July. Berton argued that two round-the-clock video cameras in Abdeslam's cell in Fleury-Merogis prison could cause psychological damage, but France's top administrative authority struck down the lawyer's request to remove them.

Judicial authorities argue the surveillance is needed to ensure he doesn't commit suicide.

Abdeslam (26) had initially said he wanted to explain his path to radicalisation and his role in the November 13 attacks on the Bataclan concert hall, cafes and the national stadium. The other attackers died in suicide bombings or under police fire. Abdeslam's precise role in the attacks has never been clear. The Paris prosecutor has said he was equipped as a suicide bomber that night, but abandoned his plans and fled.

Abdeslam evaded police for four months, but was arrested in March in the Brussels neighbourhood where he grew up. He was later extradited to France and handed several preliminary terrorism charges.
Immigration officials are investigating reports that a 20-day-old baby was smuggled into Britain in the back of a lorry.

Immigration officials are investigating reports that a 20-day-old baby was smuggled into Britain in the back of a lorry.

The girl was among a group discovered at Watford Gap services on the M1, The Sun reported.

The newspaper said they had made the journey from Calais.

A Home Office spokesman said: "This incident is of concern and is under investigation.

"Would-be migrants need to be aware that they are putting their lives, and those of their loved ones, at risk by attempting to reach the UK illegally.

"That is why we have increased security and boosted technology used at border controls and are working with law enforcement at home and abroad to target the criminal gangs who are often behind such attempts."

The Home Office confirmed Northamptonshire Police alerted Immigration Enforcement to the discovery of 10 migrants in a vehicle at Watford Gap services on Tuesday.

It said nine presented themselves as being from Iraq and a 10th from Iran, adding that all of those on board the vehicle were being interviewed by immigration officers.

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022]
French policemen take part in a police raid in Boussy-Saint-Antoine near Paris. Photo: Reuters

French police investigating the abandonment of a car packed with gas cylinders near Paris's Notre Dame cathedral last Saturday, arrested three women on Thursday evening, in Boussy-Saint-Antoine, some 30 km south-east of Paris. Photo: Reuters

Three women have been detained by police in France after a violent stand-off in a terrorism investigation into six gas canisters found in a car abandoned near Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.

The discovery of the car has revived worries about the threat of new attacks in France, already repeatedly targeted by Isil extremists.

Seven people are now in custody in the Notre Dame case, including those with links to radical Islam.

In the operation in Boussy-Saint-Antoine last night, one of the women attacked police, and one suspect and one police officer were injured, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve told reporters.

"France is confronted with a terrorist threat of unprecedented scale," Mr Cazeneuve said. "It requires the vigilance of all our compatriots."

The Paris prosecutor's office said that police arrested a couple - a 27-year-old man and a 26-year-old woman - a day earlier in the Loiret region of France, south of Paris.

Expand Close French police investigate an apartment in a residential building, during a police raid in Boussy-Saint-Antoine near Paris. Photo: Reuters / Facebook

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A second couple - a 34-year-old man and a 29-year-old woman - were detained in the same case on Tuesday.

Prosecutors opened a terrorist investigation after the car was found near the famous cathedral on Sunday morning.

No one was inside, but police found five canisters filled with gas in the boot and an empty canister on one of the seats. There were also three jerry cans of diesel and papers with Arabic writing inside the vehicle.
The man was caught holding his penis in a public place outside the University of Catania in Sicily. Photo: Deposit

Masturbating in public should not be considered an illegal act, Italy's Supreme Court has ruled, in a case involving a 69-year-old man who was caught exhibiting himself in front of female students.

The man, identified only as Pietro L, was caught holding his penis in a public place outside the University of Catania in Sicily.

Charged with indecency, he was put on trial. He told the court that he only engaged in the practice "occasionally", insisting that it would have been hard to see him because the incident had happened around dusk and there was "reduced visibility".

Accused of "taking out his member" and engaging in "auto-eroticism", he was found guilty of indecent behaviour and sentenced to three months in jail and a fine of 3,420. That sentence was upheld by the Court of Appeal in Catania.

But his lawyers took the case to a final appeal in front of the Supreme Court in Rome, which over-turned the conviction, citing a law introduced last year which decriminalised the offence of masturbating in public in front of women. "The act is no longer regarded as a crime by the law," the Supreme Court ruled.

It decided that rather than a custodial sentence, the man should be fined between 5,000 and 30,000.

The exact amount will be determined by a court in Catania. Opposition politicians said that it was outrageous that the law had been changed and accused the centre-Left government of Matteo Renzi, the prime minister, of going soft on perverts.

"The Renzi government has never given equal opportunities much notice, but to save from the prison cells people who commit obscene acts in front of women is really unjustifiable," said Elvira Savino, an MP from the centre-Right Forza Italia party.

"The government's law is an invitation to every maniac to molest women."
The first Nasa explorer of its kind has taken off on a seven-year quest, chasing after a big, black, unexplored asteroid to gather a few handfuls of gravel and bring them back to Earth.

The bite-size bits of ancient space rock from asteroid Bennu could hold clues to the origin of life, not just on our planet but potentially elsewhere in the solar system.

Thousands gathered to witness the evening launch of Osiris-Rex, a robotic hunter that looks something like a bird with its solar wings. The spacecraft took flight atop an Atlas V rocket.

Victory was declared an hour later as launch controllers shook hands and embraced after the spacecraft shot out of Earth's orbit, bound for Bennu.

"Tonight is a night for celebration. We are on our way to an asteroid," said Nasa's chief scientist, Ellen Stofan. "We've just done something amazing."

"We got everything just exactly perfect," added Osiris-Rex chief scientist Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona. "It was an amazing evening for me and for this team."

It will take two years for Osiris-Rex to reach Bennu, which is circling the sun in a slightly wider orbit than Earth's. The boxy spacecraft will go into orbit around the asteroid, seeking out the best spot before going in for a quick bite.

The SUV-sized spacecraft will have travelled more than four billion miles by the mission's end in 2023.

Nasa has gone after comet dust and solar wind particles before, but never anything from an asteroid. It promises to be the biggest cosmic haul since the Apollo moon rocks.

The roundish rock - about 1,600ft across and taller than the Empire State Building - is believed to harbour carbon dating back 4.5 billion years, to the beginning of our solar system. That makes it a time capsule and a scientific prize.

"We will make discoveries on this mission that we have not anticipated. It's exciting," said Bill Nye, chief executive officer of the Planetary Society.

The launch came 50 years to the day after the first Star Trek episode aired on TV. Nasa launch commentator Mike Curie referenced the anniversary, urging the spacecraft at lift-off "to boldly go" to Bennu and back.

Osiris-Rex may lead to asteroid-mining missions, according to scientists, and could help protect the planet from menacing space rocks.

Japan has already visited an asteroid and returned some specks, and is chasing another space rock for more samples. Osiris-Rex's bounty should surpass that. Mr Lauretta and his team want at least 60 grammes of dust and gravel when the big day comes in 2020. Ground tests have yielded eight times that in a single scoop, so hopes are high for four to five handfuls.

Osiris-Rex will hover like a hummingbird over Bennu, according to Mr Lauretta, as the spacecraft's 10ft mechanical arm touches down like a pogo stick on the surface for three to five seconds. Thrusters will shoot out nitrogen gas to stir up the surface, and the loose particles will be sucked up into the device. Spacecraft managers call it "the gentle high five". They get just three shots at it before the nitrogen gas runs out and the effort is abandoned.

The team opted for this touch-and-go procedure instead of landing to increase the odds of success. Despite extensive observations of Bennu from ground and space telescopes, no-one knows exactly what to expect there, and it could be difficult if not impossible to anchor a spacecraft on the surface, Mr Lauretta said.

Osiris-Rex's freed sample container - the same kind used for the comet-dust retrieval - will parachute down with the pristine asteroid treasure in Utah, and the mother spacecraft will continue its orbit of the sun.

Among the 8,000 Nasa launch guests was the schoolboy who came up with the asteroid's name for a contest.

Twelve-year-old Mike Puzio of Greensboro, North Carolina, cheered as he watched his first up-close rocket launch: "It was awesome!"

The name Bennu comes from the heron of Egyptian mythology. Mike thought Osiris-Rex looked like a bird, with its twin solar wings and long arm outstretched for a sample grab, and with the spacecraft named after the Egyptian god Osiris, Bennu was an obvious choice.

Osiris-Rex is also a Nasa acronym for origins, spectral interpretation, resource identification, security-regolith explorer. The estimated cost of the mission is more than 800 million dollars (600 million).

"Space exploration brings out the best in us," Mr Nye said shortly before Osiris-Rex began its journey. "It is an extraordinary use of our intellect and treasure to elevate humankind, to help us know our place in the cosmos."

It may also one day save the home planet.

Bennu swings by Earth every six years, and 150 years from now, could hit us. The odds are less than a tenth of 1%, according to Mr Lauretta. While this particular rock would not destroy Earth - just carve out a huge crater - other asteroids could cause more trouble.

Osiris-Rex will help scientists better understand the ever-changing paths of asteroids, and that could prove its biggest payoff.

AP
A 29-year-old American woman has been sentenced to eight years in prison after her five-month-old child consumed baby formula laced with heroin.

Massachusetts woman, Ashley Cyr, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and reckless child endangerment on Thursday, a day after the baby's father, Ryan Barry, was sentenced to 12 years.

Baby Mya was found dead at their apartment in 2011 and a medical examiner later ruled that the cause of death was opioid poisoning.

Police at the scene found heroin and hypodermic needles in the bedroom the couple shared.

They also found a child's bottle containing opiods.
One person has been taken to hospital after a gunman opened fire at a high school in Texas, the local sheriff's office has said.

Police were called to Alpine High School, in western Texas, at around 9am.

Ronny Dodson, sheriff of Brewster County, told ABC News that the gunman was dead, from what appeared to be self-inflicted wounds, and the shooting was over. Nothing further has been confirmed about the shooter, including gender or whether the person had any connection to the school.

A student at the school was shot but is still alive, and an officer was reportedly shot as well in what appears to be an accidental shooting, said Mr Dodson. The school has just under 1,000 students. Parents were asked to assemble at a nearby Jehovah's Witness centre to collect their children.
Donald Trump takes the stage with his daughter Ivanka during a campaign town hall meeting in Virginia Beach, Virginia

Hillary Clinton has said that leaders of the Islamic State (Isil) are hoping that Donald Trump becomes president, and are praying: "Please, Allah, make Trump president of America."

Speaking on Israeli television yesterday morning - a carefully chosen outlet for her remarks about the Middle East conflict and Mr Trump's candidacy - Mrs Clinton said Isil was "rooting" for her Republican rival.

She discussed an article for 'Time' magazine, published on Wednesday evening, by Matthew Olsen, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center. In it he argues that Isil is working "to advocate for Trump".

Gift

"I found it even surprising how clear and compelling the case was where he quoted Isil spokespeople rooting for Donald Trump's victory because Trump has made Islam and Muslims a part of his campaign - and basically Matt Olsen argues that the jihadists see this as a great gift," said Mrs Clinton, using another acronym for the Islamist group.

"They are saying, 'Oh, please Allah, make Trump president of America'."

Expand Close Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at a rally at Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte. Photo: AP / Facebook

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Whatsapp Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at a rally at Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte. Photo: AP

She added: "So I'm not interested in giving aid and comfort to their evil ambitions. I want to defeat them. I want to end their reign of terror. I don't want them to feel as though they can be getting more recruits because of our politics."

A little later, addressing the press before boarding her campaign plane in New York state, she once again referenced the article. And she added that she would prioritise killing or capturing Isil's leader, in the same way that President Barack Obama sought al-Qa'ida's mastermind.

"We should make it a top priority to hunt down the leader of Isis, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and bring him to justice, just as we did with Osama bin Laden," she said. "I believe it will send a resounding message that nobody directs or inspires attacks against the United States and gets away with it."

Mrs Clinton reiterated her criticism of Mr Trump's "secret" formula for how to combat Isil - saying that "he clearly has no plan".

And she once again expressed her bafflement at the 70-year-old's continued support for Russian President Vladimir Putin, describing it as "bizarre" and "astonishing," and adding that his favouring of Mr Putin over Mr Obama was "insulting and scary".

"It suggests that he'll let Putin do whatever Putin wants to do," she said. "What would Ronald Reagan say about a Republican nominee who rubbishes the generals and heaps praise on another president?"

Trump earlier declared that Putin had been a better leader than Obama, as the Republican nominee used a televised forum to argue he was best equipped to reassert America's global leadership.

Security

"Every Republican holding or seeking office in this country should be asked if they agree with Donald Trump about these statements," said Clinton.

Her comments followed a national security forum where the presidential candidates made back-to-back appearances.

The Democrat was repeatedly challenged on her controversial email use at the State Department and her vote as a senator for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

She also flushed out several national security priorities if she is elected, including trying to take out the leader of Isil and vowing to defeat the extremist group without putting US troops on the ground in Iraq or Syria.

Mr Trump suggested at the event that US generals had been stymied by the policies of Mr Obama and Mrs Clinton, who served as the Democratic president's first secretary of state.

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022]
Kim Jong Un has overseen a robust increase in the number and kinds of missiles tested this year (AP)

President Barack Obama has condemned North Korea's latest nuclear test, saying the US would never accept the country as a nuclear power.

North Korea said it conducted a "higher level" nuclear test explosion that will allow it to finally build an array of stronger, smaller and lighter nuclear weapons. It was the North's fifth atomic test and the second in eight months.

South Korea's president said the detonation, which Seoul estimated was the North's biggest-ever in explosive yield, was an act of "fanatic recklessness" and a sign that leader Kim Jong Un "is spiralling out of control".

North Korea's boast of a technologically game-changing nuclear test defied both tough international sanctions and long-standing diplomatic pressure to curb its nuclear ambitions.

It will raise serious worries in many world capitals that North Korea has moved another step closer to its goal of a nuclear-armed missile that could one day strike the US mainland.

Seoul vowed to boost psychological warfare efforts by increasing the number of propaganda loudspeakers along the rivals' border, the world's most heavily armed, and the number of hours of anti-North Korean broadcasts.

Hours after South Korea noted unusual seismic activity near North Korea's north-eastern nuclear test site, the North said in its state-run media that a test had "finally examined and confirmed the structure and specific features of movement of... a nuclear warhead that has been standardised to be able to be mounted on strategic ballistic rockets."

"The standardisation of the nuclear warhead will enable (North Korea) to produce at will and as many as it wants a variety of smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear warheads of higher strike power," North Korea said.

"This has definitely put on a higher level (the North's) technology of mounting nuclear warheads on ballistic rockets."

North Korea, led by a third-generation dictatorship and wary of outsiders, protects its nuclear programme as a closely guarded state secret, and the claims about advancements made in its testing could not be independently verified. But they centre on a technological mystery that has long bedevilled outside experts: How far has North Korea got in efforts to consistently shrink down nuclear warheads so they can fit on long-range missiles?

South Korea's main spy agency told politicians in a closed-door briefing after the test that it does not think North Korea currently has the ability to develop nuclear weapons that can be mounted on ballistic missiles, but intelligence officials expressed worries that the North's efforts to do so are progressing more quickly than previously thought, said Mr Kim Byungkee, a politician from the opposition Minjoo Party.

South Korean president Park Geun-hye strongly condemned the test, saying in a statement that it showed the "fanatic recklessness of the Kim Jong Un government as it clings to nuclear development".

She told a meeting of top security officials on Friday night that, "We have to believe that Kim Jong Un's mental state is spiralling out of control because he is not listening to any words from the international community or neighbouring countries in his attempt to cling to power."

Mr Obama condemned the nuclear test "in the strongest possible terms as a grave threat to regional security".

"The United States does not, and never will, accept North Korea as a nuclear state," he said in a statement.

"Today's nuclear test, a flagrant violation of multiple UN Security Council resolutions, makes clear North Korea's disregard for international norms and standards for behaviour and demonstrates it has no interest in being a responsible member of the international community."

South Korea's weather agency said the explosive yield of the North Korean blast would have been 10 to 12 kilotons, or 70 to 80% of the force of the 15-kiloton atomic bomb the United States dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945. The North's fourth test was an estimated six kilotons.

North Korea said no radioactive material leaked, but the explosion put the region on edge.

Chinese state media said the nation's environmental protection agency started nuclear radiation monitoring. Japanese planes began to collect air samples from national air space to analyze possible radioactive materials. Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike said Japan's capital city is also testing water samples and monitoring radiation levels in the air.

In the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, residents were delighted.

"It's really great news," said Rim Jong Su, 42. "Now, I am full of confidence that if the enemies make any little provocations we will make a counter attack and we will surely win."

The 5.0 magnitude seismic event on Friday is the largest of the four past quakes associated with North Korean nuclear tests, according to South Korea's weather agency. Artificial seismic waves measuring 3.9 were reported after North Korea's first nuclear test in 2006; 4.8 was reported from its fourth test this January.

North Korean leader Mr Kim has overseen a robust increase in the number and kinds of missiles tested this year. Not only has the range of the weapons jumped significantly, but the country is working to perfect new platforms for launching them - submarines and mobile launchers - giving the North greater ability to threaten the tens of thousands of US troops stationed throughout Asia.

North Korea has fired a total of 33 ballistic missiles since Mr Kim took power in 2011, Seoul's Defence Ministry said. In comparison, North Korea fired 16 ballistic missiles during the 17-year rule of Kim's father, Kim Jong Il.

The seismic activity comes on the 68th anniversary of the founding of North Korea's government and just days after world leaders gathered in China for the G20 summit.

The test will lead to a strong push for new, tougher sanctions at the United Nations and further worsen already abysmal relations between North Korea and its neighbours. The North is already one of the most heavily sanctioned places on Earth, and many question whether the penalties work.

China opposed North Korea's nuclear test, a key denunciation by the North's economic lifeline and only major ally.

North Korea likely wanted to show the world that strong international sanctions following its fourth nuclear test and long-range rocket launch earlier this year have not discouraged its efforts to advance its nuclear weapon and missile programmes, according to Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea expert at Seoul's Dongguk University.

North Korea's persistent pursuit of missiles and nuclear weapons has long been one of the most intractable foreign policy problems for US administrations.

Diplomacy has so far failed. Six-nation negotiations on dismantling North Korea's nuclear programme in exchange for aid were last held in late 2008 and fell apart in early 2009.

The Korean Peninsula remains technically at war, as the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.

AP
Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte has said he told President Barack Obama during their encounter in Laos that he never cursed him.

On a visit to Indonesia, Mr Duterte told the Filipino community there that he told Mr Obama: "President Obama, I'm President Duterte. I never made that statement, check it out."

He said that Mr Obama responded: "'My men will talk to you', and he replied 'OK'."

Mr Duterte blamed the media for distorting his words, saying he did utter "son of a bitch" but it was not directed at Mr Obama.

Before travelling to Laos for regional summits, Mr Duterte said on Monday that Mr Obama should not question him about the rising death toll in his war on drugs, which has been criticised abroad and by Mr Duterte's opponents in the Philippines. More than 2,800 suspected drug dealers and users have been killed since Mr Duterte took office.

Asked how he would explain the killings to Mr Obama, he said in a long answer that the Philippines has long ceased to be a colony of the United States and he did not have a master except the Filipino people.

"I do not care about him. Who is he?" Mr Duterte said. "You must be respectful. Do not just throw questions and statements. Putang Ina, I will swear at you at that forum," he added, using the Tagalog phrase for "son of a bitch".

Mr Obama then cancelled a meeting with Mr Duterte in Laos but the two met informally on Wednesday in a holding room before attending a gala dinner.

Mr Duterte, who assumed the presidency in June, has had an uneasy relationship with the US, his country's longtime treaty ally. He has said he is charting a foreign policy not dependent on the US, and has moved to reduce tensions with China over rival territorial claims.

He also said he showed a picture of an atrocity during the US pacification campaign in the southern Philippines at the beginning of the last century at the East Asia Summit in Laos that included Mr Obama, in order to stop criticism over human rights violations in the war on illegal drugs.

The photograph showed about 200 dead Filipino Moros stacked in a common pit, with an American soldier holding a rifle while stepping on the breasts of a naked Moro woman.

He said he told the leaders, "This is human rights, what do you intend to do?" and "Human rights violations whether committed by Moses or Abraham, is still violation of human rights."

The whole room was silent and he waited for Mr Obama to respond but he remained quiet, Mr Duterte said.
A 10th of the world's unspoiled wilderness areas have been lost since the 1990s, say experts calling for urgent action to preserve biodiversity on Earth. Photo: PA

A 10th of the world's unspoiled wilderness areas have been lost since the 1990s, say experts calling for urgent action to preserve biodiversity on Earth.

New findings from a global ecosystem study show "staggering" declines affecting the last bastions of undisturbed nature, it is claimed.

In the last 20 years, wilderness regions amounting to an area twice the size of Alaska have vanished, the research reveals. The Amazon basin and central Africa have been hardest hit. 'Wilderness' is defined as a biologically and ecologically intact landscape free of any significant human disturbance.

Lead researcher Dr James Watson, from the University of Queensland in Australia, said: "Globally important wilderness areas, despite being strongholds for endangered biodiversity, for buffering and regulating local climates, and for supporting many of the world's most politically and economically marginalised communities, are completely ignored in environmental policy.

Policy

"International policy mechanisms must recognise the actions needed to maintain wilderness areas before it is too late. We probably have one to two decades to turn this around."

The scientists mapped wilderness areas around the world and compared the results with a previous similar map produced in the 1990s. Their findings are reported in the journal Current Biology.

The updated map shows that a total of 30.1 million sq km of the Earth - more than a fifth of the world's land area - now remains as wilderness. Although that might sound like a large amount of land, the proportion of surviving wilderness in the world has fallen alarmingly in the last two decades, say the authors.

An estimated 3.3 million sq km - almost 10pc - of wilderness has disappeared since the 1990s, the research showed.

The most affected continents were South America, which had lost 30pc of its wilderness, and Africa, where 14pc had gone.

The majority of wilderness areas today were located in North America, North Asia, North Africa, and Australia.

Dr Watson added: "The amount of wilderness loss in just two decades is staggering and very saddening.

"We need to recognise that wilderness is being dramatically lost and that without proactive global interventions we could lose the last jewels in nature's crown. You cannot restore wilderness," he said.

"If we don't act soon, it will be all gone, and this is a disaster for conservation, for climate change, and for some of the most vulnerable human communities on the planet. We have a duty to act for our children and their children."
By Pritesh Samuel

Globally, the Know your Customer (KYC) process is a way for companies, particularly financial institutions, to verify the identity of their clients. The process is increasingly becoming common to prevent fraud, identify theft, money laundering, and terror financing activities. In India, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) released KYC guidelines for all banks in 2002 and directed all banks to ensure they were fully compliant with KYC guidelines before December 31, 2005.

The RBI has clarified that banks must reconfirm KYC details every two, eight, or ten years depending on the risk profile of the customer. If a customer wants to open a bank account, they will need to provide one proof of identity, an address proof, and a recent photograph on the KYC form. The Aadhaar card (which represents a unique identification number), driving license, voters identity card, or passport serve as identity and address proofs, while a PAN card only serves as an identity proof.

An individual can also open a bank account without KYC details; however, the balance in such accounts cannot exceed US$ 7,512 (Rs 50,000) at any time, and withdrawals and transfers in a month cannot exceed US$ 1,500 (Rs 10,000). Further, and in a setback for expats working in India, foreign remittances cannot be credited to such accounts. In addition, if a user does not have a bank account but needs to make a remittance transaction, they will need to comply with KYC guidelines.

In addition, individuals can opt for e-KYC. However, this is only for members who have Aadhaar cards. Users can then authorize the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) to release their identity and address to the appropriate bank. The UIDAI then transfers the data electronically to the bank, which makes it convenient for the customer as opposed to submitting documents.

Banks ask for KYC details periodically and customers are required to comply with the guidelines or risk their accounts being closed. Generally, banks will send a notice and partially freeze accounts until the KYC details have been updated.

Challenges Posed

While the RBI has mandated that banks must comply with KYC guidelines since 2005, tightening of the regulation only recently began in the past two to three years. Several market intermediaries like mutual funds, brokerages, and payment banks have started verifying KYC details from customers. Nevertheless, challenges remain. Most recently, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) sought several changes after the government shifted to the central KYC process implemented by the Central Registry of Secularisation and Asset Reconstruction and Security Interest of India (CERSAI) from August 1, 2016. Among the changes, SEBI has asked for more time between opening an account and registering with the central KYC registry. As per current norms, every financial institution needs to make an electronic copy with the central KYC within three days of the account being opened. Most financial institutions have raised concerns over how difficult it is to achieve the task and have asked for an extension.

SEBI also wants to avoid duplication of work and wants to exempt individual clients whose accounts were opened before August 1 from undergoing the KYC process all over again. It has asked government authorities to allow transfer agents to do KYC on behalf of mutual funds, though ultimately it will be the responsibility of the mutual fund to ensure they have complied with KYC guidelines.

RELATED: Expanding the Digital Payments Ecosystem in India

Other Players

Several other businesses such as payment banks PayTm and Mobikwik have also voiced concerns. Current regulations do not allow such companies to do e-KYC, but must manually use paper-based KYC forms for customer accounts that have more than US$ 1,500. This is likely to change in the future as more and more businesses become KYC compliant, but remains a tedious process for now.

Aside from financial institutions, telephone operators have begun to use e-KYC to activate new mobile sim cards. Recently, Vodafone and Airtel made use of the procedures allowing customers to get talking as soon as they receive new mobile connections. Reliance Jio  which is offering free phone connections  is also urging customers to use e-KYC, enabling them to activate their connections immediately.

Key Takeaways

While analysts agree that the KYC process should make it easier to avail services quickly, compliance is only part of the problem. Unlike Western countries like the U.S., where a social security number is a unique national identifier, India only recently adopted the Aadhar, with many still to get it. The use of multiple documents for identification is a concern as these can be forged. The e-KYC conforms with the countrys Digital India campaign, which ensures that government services are available to citizens online. However, resolving issues surrounding the KYC process may prove to be a long and difficult task. Regulators will have to iron out issues that crop up so that all industries can benefit without hampering economic growth. A systematic and transparent approach using government entities and vetted third party service providers will help businesses to meet KYC guidelines as the regulations are likely to be further tightened.



About Us Asia Briefing Ltd. is a subsidiary of Dezan Shira & Associates. Dezan Shira is a specialist foreign direct investment practice, providing corporate establishment, business advisory, tax advisory and compliance, accounting, payroll, due diligence and financial review services to multinationals investing in China, Hong Kong, India, Vietnam, Singapore and the rest of ASEAN. For further information, please email india@dezshira.com or visit www.dezshira.com. Stay up to date with the latest business and investment trends in Asia by subscribing to our complimentary update service featuring news, commentary and regulatory insight.





Managing Your Accounting and Bookkeeping in India

In this issue of India Briefing Magazine, we spotlight three issues that financial management teams for India should monitor. Firstly, we examine the new Indian Accounting Standards (Ind-AS) system, which is expected to be a boon for foreign companies in India. We then highlight common filing dates for most companies with operations in India, and lastly examine procedures and regulations for remitting profits from India.

Using Indias Free Trade & Double Tax Agreements

In this issue of India Briefing magazine, we take a look at the bilateral and multilateral trade agreements that India currently has in place and highlight the deals that are still in negotiation. We analyze the countrys double tax agreements, and conclude by discussing how foreign businesses can establish a presence in Singapore to access both the Indian and ASEAN markets.

Passage to India: Selling to Indias Consumer Market

In this issue of India Briefing magazine, we outline the fundamentals of Indias import policies and procedures, as well as provide an introduction to engaging in direct and indirect export, acquiring an Indian company, selling to the government and establishing a local presence in the form of a liaison office, branch office, or wholly owned subsidiary. We conclude by taking a closer look at the strategic potential of joint ventures and the advantages they can provide companies at all stages of market entry and expansion.
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Photo for illustration. (Source: VNA)

Together with Vietnam, Thailand has also won a bid for the remaining 100,000 tonnes in the countrys tender of 250,000 tonnes.

Vietnam will supply the whole volume of rice to the market in September and October, said Mr. Huynh The Nang, Chairman of the Vietnam Food Association.

The contract winning is very significant for Vietnams rice exports, as there were no big deals in the first half of the year.



Currently, traders see 1.3 million tonnes of rice in stock, in which 1.1 million tonnes were signed for commercial contracts./.
PM Nguyen Xuan Phuc met UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in Vientiane on September 8th (Photo: VNA)



At the meeting, which was held on the sidelines of the 28th and 29th ASEAN Summits and related meetings, the Vietnamese leader highly valued Australias assistance in infrastructure development, education, poverty reduction, clean water and environmental sanitation.

He proposed that Australia widen its door for Vietnamese farm produce, while speeding up the conclusion of the risk assessment procedures on Vietnams dragon fruit to allow the fruit to be sold in its market.

The two PMs expressed delight at the growing bilateral ties and discussed measures to further the comprehensive partnership, especially in economy, trade and investment.

PM Nguyen Xuan Phuc affirmed that Vietnam always backs foreign investors, including those from Australia, to expand their business in Vietnam.

Regarding the international and regional situation, both sides underscored the significance of maintaining peace, security and cooperation in the East Sea, respecting international law, and settling disputes through peaceful measures in line with the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea 1982, and agreed to enhance coordination for the targets.

The same day, PM Nguyen Xuan Phuc also met UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, during which he lauded the UNs responses to global challenges.

He said he hopes the UN will continue promoting its leading role in keeping peace, safeguarding international security, and supporting countries to implement important agreements, especially the 2030 agenda on sustainable development and the Paris Agreement on climate change.

As an active and responsible member of the international community, Vietnam commits to joining the UNs efforts and initiatives, he pledged, revealing that the country is implementing sustainable development goals and integrating the work into its socio-economic development plans.

Vietnam hopes for more aid from the UN in realising the plans, thus effectively coping with climate change and securing sustainable development, he stated.

The UN leader hailed Vietnams support and close coordination, especially in the commencement of One UN policy. He affirmed that UN bodies will work together with Vietnam in fulfilling sustainable development goals and dealing with climate change, contributing to the success of Vietnams socio-economic development goals./.
A growing number of people, celebrities included, have publicly expressed their support of Black-owned businesses. But, at times, it can be difficult to find where certain products or services from Black-owned business are available to consumers. One woman just came up with an innovative solution to solve that problem.

Angie Coleman, an account manager at CodeHS in San Fransisco, California, created a Google Chrome extension called BuyBlack, which helps online customers find Black-owned alternatives to the site theyre currently shopping on.

After downloading the extension, shoppers will see a fist in the upper-right corner of their browser. Clicking on it populates a list of related Black-owned businesses in a dropdown list for the user.

Inspired by Solange Knowles and other celebs, Coleman told The Huffington Post that bringing more attention to these Black-run companies is a priority for her.

When people are asked to buy Black, a lot of what we hear is that no one knows where to find these Black-owned businesses, the 26-year-old said to HuffPost via email. Its similar to conversations around Silicon Valley about hiring Black people and how  out of 46 million Black people in the U.S. alone  they just cant seem to find Black entrepreneurs that are qualified. I didnt want anyone to have that problem, so I made a list.

Coleman, who has admitted to having a hard time finding products, like makeup, created by Black people, said she created the extension during a hackathon hosted by the nonprofit organization Reboot Safety. She, with the help of a small team, curated a list of active businesses that offered products and services ranging from makeup, clothing, home goods, art, vacation rentals, food and more. Currently, more than 300 businesses can be found on BuyBlack.

Were actively growing and weve open(ed) up user submissions to find new businesses or ones we missed, she told HuffPost. The next version of the extension will allow users to rate and save their favorites.

Coleman noted that the Black communitys buying power is expected to reach $1.2 trillion this year, despite more than 27 percent of the Black population living in poverty  the highest rate of poverty in the country.

She told HuffPost that she hopes BuyBlack leads more people to supporting, discovering and having easy access to companies run by Black people to create a positive change and encourage economic growth.

If the government isnt going to pay reparations for hundreds of years of unpaid labor that built this nation, then Black people need to start supporting each other, and hopefully this will empower other groups to support our ideas and businesses, as well, she said.

Black business owners can submit their company on BuyBlacks website at buyblack.io/submissions/ or email them at hello@buyblack.io.
Its a conversation few people want to have. It makes us uncomfortable. Tense. Pits people against each other. Its a conversation about racism. How to confront it and how to prevent it. Undoing racism. Is that even possible? One nonprofit executive has been committed to finding out, speaking loudly and clearly on the subject, since 2010. And she is doing it to fight for the rights of African-American children in the child welfare system and to fight inherent prejudices in our community.

Cindy Booth is the executive director of Child Advocates, an organization that serves abused and neglected children, providing court-appointed special advocates to represent them in court and in the foster care system. Studies have shown that Marion County has much higher numbers of African-American children, compared to children of other races, in the child welfare system  in past years rising as high as 70 percent  and those numbers were unsettling to Booth. I thought, as advocates for children, we needed to see if we were doing anything to perpetuate the dismal disproportionality, she said. I wondered what we were doing that brings such high numbers of African-American children into the foster care system, compared to other races? What training and policies do we need to look at?

Booth was on a mission to look at biases within the child welfare system that might make the system treat a Black child differently than a white child. That led Booth to reach out to the Peoples Institute for Survival and Beyond, an anti-racism training institution from New Orleans. Since 2010, Child Advocates has invited the Peoples Institute to host more than 40 Undoing Racism workshops for child welfare workers, community organizations and the whole community. The Peoples Institute focuses on the history of race, what racism is and how it can be undone.

I attended my first Undoing Racism workshop this summer, as a consultant for Child Advocates, and I found it mind-blowing, teaching us race history that we may have never learned. Rick Derksen, a white trainer at the Peoples Institute, stated, Race is a myth, a story that we constructed, and it was constructed, in part, to separate people by skin color as a way to validate slavery, with Blacks placed on the bottom of a race hierarchy. Barbara Major, an African-American trainer, discussed why it is crucial to talk about race today. Racism is so insidious and a part of every aspect of our lives, she said. If we dont figure out what it is and how it functions, well stay a very confused nation with the potential of imploding as a society. So the Peoples Institute creates safe places for people of all races to have this conversation, to better understand race history and each others experiences.

The workshops have been so successful that Cindy Booth is now bringing the Peoples Institute trainers to Indy for a four-part Undoing Racism Speakers Series this fall. Its free and open to the public. Joyce James, one featured speaker, will discuss the oppressive impact of 400 years of racial inequities on African-Americans. Racism is embedded into the very fabric of our systems and institutions, she says. There is a history to it. Learning the history helps shift our thinking from, Whats wrong with African-Americans? to Whats happened to them? James believes that, when we learn the true history of racism, people of all races can work collaboratively to undo it. Another featured speaker, Berwick Mahdi Davenport, says, Black people think racism is designed to hurt them, but its really designed to keep power among the ruling class. He will launch the Speakers Series with a discussion about how African-Americans can identify their own power and embrace their strengths.

The first Undoing Racism Speakers Series takes place on Sept.15 at Martin University, and will continue at new locations, with new speakers, once a month through December. Gather your friends and family, of all races, and attend this free Undoing Racism Speakers Series. To register, contact Nikita Garner with Child Advocates, at nikita@childadvocates.net or call her at (317) 493-2227. To learn more, go to childadvocates.net. If you want change, be a part of the solution.
Four years after Bank of America was formally accused of discriminatory practices in minority-majority neighborhoods in Indianapolis and several other cities, the issue remains unresolved, and the alleged discrimination continues to be found in more cities across the country.

The Federal Fair Housing Act complaint submitted to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development says the bank has failed to properly maintain foreclosed properties in several communities of color, while bank-owned properties in predominantly white neighborhoods in the same cities appear to be routinely maintained.

Last week, the National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA) announced the addition of six cities  including Gary, Indiana  to the complaint against the bank, plus the discovery of new evidence in cities that were already included. The complaint now includes 30 metropolitan areas, from coast to coast.

Though new evidence from Indianapolis was not submitted, Amy Nelson, executive director of the Fair Housing Center of Central Indiana, said the investigation is ongoing.

We continue to conduct our investigations, look at properties at different times, Nelson said. As part of the evaluation, my staff physically goes to the foreclosure, we walk around the foreclosure, and we score it on 39 different basic items that the lender or, in this case, the bank, is responsible for maintaining.

During those evaluations, staff members look at the condition of the lawn, shrubbery and other plants; check for unsecured or broken doors and windows; inspect fences, roofs, porch steps and handrails, gutters and other parts of the home; and look for issues like graffiti, trash, water damage and mold.

According to the original complaint filed in 2012, those inspections in Indianapolis turned up significant racial disparities. Compared to foreclosure properties in white neighborhoods, properties in communities of color were:

 More than twice as likely to have unsecured or broken doors,

 Almost twice as likely to have broken or boarded windows,

 More than four times as likely to have broken, hanging or obstructed gutters and more than twice as likely to have missing gutters,

 More than six times as likely to have holes in the structure of the home or a damaged roof.

The complaint also says more than 14 percent of the foreclosures in Indianapolis communities of color had graffiti, water damage, small amounts of mold and at least half of the property covered in dead grass, while none of the foreclosures in the citys mostly white neighborhoods had any of these issues. Many of these disparities were also found in Gary, Indiana, according to the complaint.

Shanna Smith, president and CEO of NFHA, said some people might assume these damaged and poorly maintained homes are indicative of the condition of the neighborhood as a whole, but photos of neighboring properties juxtaposed with the BOA foreclosures in communities of color show thats not necessarily the case.

During a webinar announcing the amended complaint, Smith also shared photos from Google  photos that were taken prior to foreclosure  showing well-maintained homes and lawns with no signs of the current issues.

Jenni Ruiz of Ruiz Realty, which specializes in marketing and selling foreclosure properties in central Indiana, says in general, the state of foreclosed homes in Indianapolis has improved in recent years and theyre selling much more easily, mostly due to low inventory. Curb appeal issues like long grass and untrimmed bushes, which might have once kept a foreclosed property from selling, no longer have the same impact.

With low supply, we arent having these problems. Theyre buying these foreclosures because they dont have a choice; theres no supply, Ruiz said.

Claire Belby, vice president of communications and marketing at MIBOR REALTOR(r) Association, said all of central Indiana has about four months of inventory.

Basically, that means if no more homes went on the market, it would take four months to sell everything thats out there, Belby said, adding that a six-month or seven-month inventory would be considered more balanced.

When bank-owned homes dont sell so easily, Belby said, it can impact housing prices in the neighborhood.

It will depress prices over time, she said. We dont have any good data that talks about the direct percentage impact a foreclosure can have on a contiguous property, but anecdotally, as real estate professionals are pricing homes to sell in neighborhoods, they use all the comparables as a vehicle for pricing. Even a few foreclosures will affect that overall picture.

Smith, with NFHA, said the poor maintenance practices laid out in the complaint against BOA keep foreclosed homes in communities of color vacant. In some cases, the homes arent even marketed with for sale signs in the yard. Nelson said in the Indianapolis homes investigated, 100 percent of the foreclosed homes in communities of color lacked a for sale sign. And the impact goes beyond just home values, Smith said.

Smith mentioned research that has shown a health impact on people living near foreclosed properties, including stress, high blood pressure and asthma, citing an American Heart Association study that tied hikes in blood pressure to unhealthy stress caused by perceived instability of the neighborhood.

In properties with trash and standing water, mosquitos and rodent infestations pose health concerns as well, Smith said.

The issue goes beyond BOA, too. Other complaints involving Indianapolis have been filed against Safeguard Properties, Fannie Mae and US Bank.

Nelson said she hopes these complaints can come to a resolution.

Were seeking resolution for these neighborhoods that have been so impacted by the foreclosure crisis, and specifically by the actions of Bank of America, when it comes to not properly marking and maintaining these properties to get them sold and to get them owner-occupied, she said, citing a recent complaint, and subsequent resolution, involving Wells Fargo.

According to NFHA, Wells Fargo gave $30 million to the organization to be invested in communities harmed by its disparate treatment of foreclosure properties. The money has been used for home repair funds, foreclosure prevention, financial literacy education and more.

Nelson said the Wells Fargo resolution is a good guide for what BOA could do.

Wells Fargo stepped up, she said. They made some changes to their process of how foreclosures were maintained, including having a set-aside period for owner-occupants to have first shots at those properties rather than going to investors and still sitting. Theres some great guidance there of things that could be done in order to resolve the case in a satisfactory way.
As I sat down to write my column for this week, I had so many thoughts running through my mind. To be totally honest, my first thought was to write a column that discussed all the political chaos we are witnessing on both a local and national level. I even thought about sharing some of my most recent experiences. But I realized to use this column to discuss a negative topic would not be a good use of my time  or yours. I realized I cant take the bait and let those that choose negativity and hate to distract us from real issues impacting our lives, in particular a topic that has impacted my life in a tremendous way. Every family has had to deal with it, and its a subject we can no longer turn a blind-eye to. Its the topic of substance abuse, and its time we all acknowledge it in its true form.

When I look back at my life, I can recall laughing at friends and family members who kept a brown paper bag in their back pockets. I also remember giggling quietly as to not be heard after being asked to leave the room when adults had conversations about individuals who were having a nervous breakdown. Now that I am an adult and after working in social services, I know that substance abuse and mental illness are no laughing matter. Its also a topic that we as a community refuse to discuss publicly.

Mental illness and substance abuse carry a strong stigma in this country and within the African-American community. The shame associated with mental illness and substance abuse is so strong that it often prevents individuals from seeking much-needed help, which in turn leaves so many feeling lost and ashamed. For years, I have witnessed men and women operating in crisis mode because of mental health issues and substance abuse, oftentimes losing contact with loved ones, losing their jobs and simply hitting their bottom.

September is recognized throughout our country as Recovery Month. It was so deemed to increase awareness and understanding of mental illness and substance use disorders and celebrate the people who are in recovery. Several days ago, I had the opportunity to turn the canal purple in honor of Recovery Month. It was an event that truly touched my soul, and I was honored to participate.

We are blessed in this city to have so many incredible organizations serving those who suffer from substance abuse. To those who work tirelessly to protect the dignities of those who suffer from mental illness and addiction, more often than not you do not receive the recognition you deserve. Your job is not easy, and I honor your efforts in making Indianapolis a better place to live. You are making a difference.

Finally, to the men and women who had the courage to surrender and admit that your lives are no longer manageable  I salute you! You chose your health, your family and your life over your current situation. Ive witnessed it first-hand, and to me what you have accomplished is the true meaning of strength. I carry you all in my heart!

Maggie A. Lewis is president of the Indianapolis City-County Council.
Dave Archambault II, the chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe addresses supporters outside of the federal courthouse in Washington, D.C., on August 24, 2016. Photo by Indianz.Com



The leader of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe is calling for peace and prayer amid a law enforcement buildup and as the #NoDAPL movement awaits a crucial court decision.

Chairman Dave Archambault II said the tribe will keep fighting no matter how the ruling turns out. At issue is whether a federal judge will put a halt to the $3.8 billion Dakota Access Pipeline

"We call upon all water protectors to greet any decision with peace and order," Archambault said in a statement . "Even if the outcome of the courts ruling is not in our favor, we will continue to explore every lawful option and fight against the construction of the pipeline."

The comments came after North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple (R), who has been less than receptive to the #NoDAPL movement, told Archambault earlier in the day that he is activating the National Guard ahead of the anticipated ruling. The buildup stirred fears of intimidation and harassment among the thousands who have gathered at campsites near Cannon Ball.

"Since the very beginning, public safety has been a top priority," Dalrymple said at a press conference.

The North Dakota National Guard issued a statement and has been busy fielding questions on Facebook about it role in the law enforcement buildup near the #NoDAPL campsites.



Amid questions about its role, the National Guard issued a statement on Thursday and said it was only going to assist in "administrative capacities" as well as provide security at "traffic information points" in the area. Personnel will not be going to the #NoDAPL encampment, according to the statement.

As a result of the added security, Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier, whose office has used Facebook to accuse pipeline resisters of crimes without actually arresting anyone, announced that the roadblock along Highway 1806 will be lifted . The roadblock had been a source of contention because it forced people to drive longer distances to get to and from the reservation, including the tribe's Prairie Knights Casino and Resort , even if they weren't involved in the resistance efforts.

Kirchmeier also said only a "small number" of National Guard personnel will be on site. But Dalrymple confirmed that additional law enforcement units from across the state are being called to the Cannon Ball area and even to the areas around Bismarck, where the United Tribes Technical College is hosting the 20th annual Tribal Leaders Summit and the 40th annual International Powwow , events that draw tens of thousands to the region.

video of the full press conference with the sheriff and the governor was posted on Facebook.

This UmoNhoN Mizhinga handed the US Army Corps of Engineers letters from the four Nebraska tribes in opposition to DAPL. The youth are our future. Thank you Quinn Wolfe for your courage today! Posted by Omaha Tribe of Nebraska on Thursday, September 8, 2016

Amid the activity, #NoDAPL resisters at the Sacred Stone Camp stayed busy and peaceful on Thursday. Many started the day with a morning prayer ceremony and, later on, began welcoming canoes from the Pacific Northwest and Alaska to the encampment as part of the Paddle To Standing Rock 2016

The paddlers, some of whom traveled thousands of miles to get to North Dakota, pushed off from Bismarck on Wednesday as part of the journey. At least 18 canoes are participating, according to the organizers.

As for the court case, Judge James E. Boasberg has promised to issue a decision on Friday. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe is asking for a preliminary injunction against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers , a move that could indefinitely delay the pipeline.

Regardless of the outcome, the Army Corps has yet to issue a key easement for the pipeline to cross Lake Oahe and the Missouri River . The pipeline can't transport oil without this segment.

Appeals are expected no matter how the decision turns out. Dakota Access has said it needs to complete work in time to start moving oil on January 1, 2017.

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Jonathan Old Horse, left, practicing at the Sanano Martial Arts Club in North Rapid City, South Dakota. Photo courtesy Jon Old Horse



Lakota man first to receive Martial Arts award

Old Horse defends himself in knife attackBy Richie RichardsNative Sun News Today Staff Writer

RAPID CITY  When Jonathan Old Horse, 47, defended himself against a simulated knife attack in Keystone, Colorado last week, the thunder people were present to cheer him on.

As a First Degree Black Belt in Trecehampas Arnis Sikaran, the Lakota father of two has been training in Martial Arts since 2010 and on Aug. 28, Old Horse received an Associate Instructor of Martial Blade Concepts Award in Keystone, Colo. during the 14th Annual Martial Blade Camp (MBC).

The MBC was held at the Mountain House in Keystone. This annual training event allows participants with the opportunity to learn and refine core MBC and Counter-Blade Concepts skills in a highly focused format. It allows participants to meet and train with other edged-weapon and self-defense enthusiasts

To earn this award from Martial Blade Concepts, Old Horse had to defend himself in a full-on simulated knife attack.

Born in Sioux City, IA, Old Horse spent much of his life outside of South Dakota and Lakota culture. At age 24, while living in Denver, Colo., he began dancing at powwows. He credits his return to Lakota traditional ways as, Being away inspired me to learn the language, the culture. This was my identity.

I started dancing at age 24. It was my father-in-law, Bill Center (Oglala), who got me interested in dancing and singing and taught me a lot of the songs, especially the old-time songs. I made my own regalia. Its Old Style Omaha, based on my grandpas 1920s style of regalia.

Read the rest of the story on the Native Sun News Today website: Lakota man first to receive Martial Arts award

(Contact Richie Richards at staffwriter@nsweekly.com)

Copyright permission Native Sun News

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In a country like India where politicians love to speak and masses buy their honeyed lies, it's seldom that three big politicians are seen getting heckled by the masses on the same day in three different states.

Thursday was a bad day for Indian politicians as three big politicians, Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi, BJP President Amit Shah and AAP Supremo and Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal were not only heckled but also booed while they tried to convince masses with their rhetoric.

AFP

First, Congress scion Rahul Gandhi, who's out on the 2500 kms Kisan Yatra in a bid to win the trust of voters in UP, got booed. Meanwhile, his 'Khat Sabha', that had been looted of cots a day before, saw people breaking cots this time.

Rahul was in Basti on Thursday and Congress workers led by none other than the strategist Prashant Kishore were keeping a close eye on people to make sure no one fled with cots this time. However, rumours are doing the rounds that Congress workers and security people allegedly beat up some people for trying to flee with cots. In response, people allegedly broke the cots.

A few hundred kms away from Rahul's bandwagon, Delhi CM and AAP Supremo Arvind Kejriwal got booed by people both in the capital as well as in Ludhiana where Kejriwal had gone to inspect the party's prospects in the upcoming assembly elections.

AFP

Kejriwal, who is being taken to the cleaners by people for not speaking on the alleged sex CD of Delhi government minister Sandeep Kumar, alleged that it was a deliberate attempt by his political rivals to sabotage the party's image. First, CM Kejriwal was gheraoed in Delhi by workers of BJP Mahila Morcha, who waved bangles at him. So much so that even Kejriwal's security found it difficult to get the protesting women away from the Delhi CM.

On escaping the situation, Kejriwal might have been relieved, but his joy was terminated prematurely when he found the Mahila Congress workers waving black flags at him, Youth Akalai Dal workers hurling bangles, and AAP rebels protesting against the removal of Sucha Singh Chhotepur as Punjab convener, when he landed in Ludhiana.

A few hundred kilometres away from where Kejriwal was getting humiliated, BJP President Amit Shah also felt the heat of the masses when during a programme in Surat, Patidar protesters disrupted his speech and shouted Hardik Hardik. The Patidar movement did cost former CM Anandiben Patel her chair and BJP replaced her with Vijat Rupani. The businessmen-led Patidar Abhivadan Samiti (PAS) had organised this programme to felicitate prominent Patidar BJP leaders and party president Amit Shah as part of the partys run-up to state elections next year.

Shouting Hardik, Hardik,, their Patidar leader who is currently in Udaipur serving the bail condition, the protesters disrupted the proceeding in Shah's presence with slogans of Jai Sardar, Jai Patidar, and Bharat Mata Ki Jai

AFP

The protesters also took on policemen who were trying to stop them. Apart from Shah, CM Vijat Rupani, his predecessor Anandiben Patel, BJP state president Jitu Vaghani, Union Ministers Parshottam Rupala, Mansukh Mandaviya and 44 Patidar MLAs of the BJP were also present on the stage.

The discontent against politicians has always been there in the masses, but it seldom gets out. Thursday was clearly an unlucky day for our politicians who always take the people for granted.
After actor and comedian Kapil Sharma tweeted this morning stating that he was asked to pay Rs. 5 lakhs as bribe by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) for making an office in the city, it has come to light that unauthorised construction done by the actor in his property at Andheri in July this year has been demolished by the civic body on August 4.

AFP

BMC local ward office -K-west, has claimed that the actor was issued a stop work notice for his ground-plus-one storied structure at Andheri West where he had built an additional second floor and also extended the rear side of the ground floor in July this year. The K west assistant municipal commissioner Parag Masurkar told TOI, "The stop work notice was given for the unauthorised horizontal extension to the existing ground plus one storied structure. On August 4 after receiving no reply from the actor the same was demolished."

BCCL

In a tweet put out today from his official handle the actor said, "I am paying 15 cr income tax from last 5 year n still i have to pay 5 lacs bribe to BMC office for making my office @narendramodi."

ALSO READ: Kapil Sharma Takes On PM Modi On 'Achche Din' After Being Asked For A Rs 5-Lakh Bribe!

BMC chief engineer-vigilance, Manohar Pawar has said the actor would need to provide them with additional details on the matter. "He must have made these allegations with some base hence we need him to provide us with all the evidence he might have and the name of the official. Depending on the same action would be initiated," said Pawar.
GB Road is the capitals notorious red light district that everyone knows about but few want to admit. For those whove never been, a red-light area sparks the images from a movie of neon lights hanging outside, even in the daylight, and women walking around in skimpy clothes picking up men in fancy cars. Delhi's red light district, however, stinks of normalcy.

Indiatimes/Shreya Kalra

Chawri Bazaar, on the yellow line, is the metro station that opens to the infamous road in Old Delhi, sat between two gates - Ajmeri and Lahori. In broad daylight, there is a sense of quiet and unease in the hustle. Maybe thats because, recently, the Supreme Court ordered the shutdown of brothels in the area.

ALSO READ: Delhis Infamous GB Road Red-Light Area On Verge Of Shutdown, HC Directs Police To Seal Brothels Immediately

The place attracts the obvious for everyone beyond just interested customers. The sex workers attract men who went to spend a few raunchy hours with them, but they also attract cops who want to bust their scenes, activists who want to save them and journalists who want to write about them.

Indiatimes/Shreya Kalra

And in the middle of this business, there are those people who have become reluctant characters in their stories by default of living or working on GB Road. There are seemingly normal stores, mostly electric ones, operating beneath the kothas where these women live. Ironically, at every turn, there are only men, old and balding men in stores hunched over their number notebooks, men selling orange juice from a wooden trolley, men pulling rickshaws and men selling cigarettes at their panvari.

I spoke to one such panvari, Hasan, who sits outside one of the brothels and electric stores. In complete denial of the reality of his work place, pointing to the store behind him, he says, Only businesses run here. I sit here till about 7pm and go home. Stores also shut down.

ALSO READ: A Brothel Is Not A Home, It Is A Market That Needs To Be Shut Down, Says Activists

Indiatimes/Shreya Kalra

However, another panvari, Waheed, who was surrounded by customers, said, Everyone knows what happens here. He sells cigarettes till midnight before retreating to his home. Waheed, who has been selling cigarettes and paan on GB Road for well over 25 years now says the business of girls has dropped compared to earlier. However, Jameel and Mohammed Swasi, hanging around Waheeds make-shift shop, disagree.

Jameel says, Things have only gotten worse. He was born and brought up in the area and is ashamed of its address. Autowalas only operate at the periphery of the capitals red light district, he says, and coincidentally, there wasnt a single three-wheeler vehicle with a yellow and green body loitering around the area.

Indiatimes/Shreya Kalra

He lives with his family including wife, daughter and daughter-in-law. Life carries on, we live here and we cant stop going out because of what happens outside our doors. He shrugs with a look of adopted frustration on his face.

Swasi also agrees with Jameel. You get what you expect here. People with all kinds of money come here, he told Indiatimes. Sometimes when the police busts in, they will leave their car and run to save themselves from embarrassment at home if caught.

Indiatimes/Shreya Kalra

Just behind Waheeds shop is a broken down tempo where three men in vests inside are shooting drugs. And just across from them, another man, also in a vest, is earning his living by ironing clothes.

Funny for a place that is supposed to be brimming with women, there are close to none on GB Road. I saw one sitting in the dark stairs leading to a kotha. She said, Nothing happens here. Just business.
Days after the Haryana Police launched its beef-hunt in birayani in Mewat, a Muslim dominated area of the state, a government veterinary lab has claimed that seven samples collected by the cops contained beef.

Thefoodfairy/ Representative Image

We have received seven samples from the Mewat administration and after tests we found the samples positive. Reports of the samples have been sent to the concerned department and to the government, a spokesperson of the Lala Lajpat Rai University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences said.

These samples were randomly picked up by the police for inspection from Muslim traders across Mewat ahead of Eid.

According to police, a search was initiated after a number of specific complaints about the biryani vendors serving beef.

WSJ/ Representative Image

After the first samples turned out to be positive, the police are likely to widen the search to more areas.

Many road-side vendors however said they are being harassed by police in the name of the search.

PTI/ Representative Image

Haryana Minister Anil Vij defended the police action claiming that it was their duty.

"They (police) are in charge of implementing the law. It is part of their duty to check that beef is not consumed, as it is illegal in India," Vij told NDTV.

Cow slaughter and consumption of meat is a criminal offence in Haryana. In March, the government enforced Haryana Gauvansh Sanrakshan and Gau Samvardhan Act 2015 making cow slaughter punishable with rigorous imprisonment of up to 10 years and a fine of Rs 1 lakh.
The telecom watchdog, TRAI held a meeting with Reliance Jio, Airtel, Vodafone and Idea representatives on Friday over the controversial issue of network interconnection at the insistence of Reliance Jio.

However representatives of industry body Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) were kept out of the meeting.

BCCL

COAI Director General Rajan S Mathews in a statement said the body was "kept out of the TRAI meeting at the insistence of Reliance Jio and TRAI acquiesced to their demand, in an unprecedented manner."

A Reliance Jio Infocomm board member, who was present in the meeting, refuted the allegation, saying they did not make any such request, adding, whosoever is invited should attend.

BCCL

TRAI had called a meeting with telecom operators to resolve the ongoing dispute involving Reliance Jio and incumbent telecom operators, like Airtel, Vodafone and Idea, over interconnecting points.

huffpost/representational image

COAI had on Thursday wrote to Trai that the meeting scheduled for Friday, where in Airtel, Vodafone and Idea, have been called for discussing the issue, pertains to all members and not just the three telcos.

"Therefore we request Trai to invite all members of COAI for the said meeting," COAI letter to Trai said.

COAI in August accused Trai of biases, but later apologised for levelling such allegations.

Reliance Jio, which commercially launched its services on September 5, had earlier accused incumbent players for not releasing sufficient interconnection ports and had sought legal action against them.

dqindia

COAI has been confronting Reliance Jio representing views of incumbent telecom operators, saying that is the view of majority in the association.

Reliance Jio is also member of COAI, but has been sidelined by leading telecom operators in the association.
A 24-year-old British Sikh model-cum-campaigner sporting six-inch-long facial hair on Thursday entered the Guinness World Records as the youngest female with a beard.

facebook/Harnaam Kaur

Harnaam Kaur from Slough in Berkshire in south-east England, described her entry as "absolutely humbling".

"Now with a beard measuring as long as six inches in places, she overcame years of bullying to take ownership of her appearance and achieve this record title at the age of 24 years 282 days," her record citation reads.

facebook/Harnaam Kaur

"She describes her place in the `Guinness World Records' book as `absolutely humbling' and hopes it will help her to impart her empowering message. 2016 has been a huge year for Harnaam, having become the first female with a beard to walk the runway at London Fashion Week in March," it adds.

Kaur has polycystic ovary syndrome, a hormonal condition that can result in the growth of excess facial hair.

She describes herself on social media as "Bearded Dame, Body confidence activist, Anti Bully Activist, Plus Size Model" and dresses in a Sikh turban.

facebook/Harnaam Kaur

"I can now proudly announce that I am a 'Guinness World Record' holder. I have been wanting to publish this news for absolutely ages, but I had to keep things under wrap until the book launched," she said in a social media post.

facebook/Harnaam Kaur

She added: "I am super proud to hold this record, the inner child in me is so pleased. I grew up reading this book, I even tried breaking some of my own records wanting to be in this book. It is amazing to be valued and celebrated being a Bearded Lady. I am proud to hold this amazing record."

She said, "I hope those who read or see my record can take away positivity, inspiration and realise that no matter who you are or what you look like, you are officially amazing!" Kaur, who was bullied as a child, has gone on to model for Urban Bridesmaid Photography and made her debut on the catwalk by opening the Marianna Harutunian Royal Fashion Day show in March, wearing her traditional Sikh turban, a navy dress and black heels.
The telecom watchdog, TRAI held a meeting with Reliance Jio, Airtel, Vodafone and Idea representatives on Friday over the controversial issue of network interconnection at the insistence of Reliance Jio. However representatives of industry body Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) were kept out of the meeting.

COAI Director General Rajan S Mathews in a statement said the body was "kept out of the TRAI meeting at the insistence of Reliance Jio and TRAI acquiesced to their demand, in an unprecedented manner." Read more

1. 5.3 Magnitude 'Artificial Earthquake' After North Korea Carries Out Its Biggest Ever Nuclear Test

Even amid growing tensions in the region and increasing international pressure to halt its ongoing weapons development, North Korea has conducted its fifth nuclear test. South Korea on Friday reported a 5.3 magnitude earthquake, which it claims was artificial. The epicenter of the quake is believed to be around the site of Pyongyang's previous test site.

The quake was also reported by neighbouring Japan and later the US Geological Survey, and European agencies. The latest test also comes at a time when North Korea is celebrating its founding day. Read more

2. Delhi Police Launches All-Women PCR Vans, Lady Cops Trained In Musketry And Firing

With an emphasis on empowering women, the Police Control Room unit of the Delhi Police has launched a pilot project in which five PCR vans will be manned by all women staff  from driver of the vehicle to I/C van.

Initially, these women-only vehicles would be placed at Vigyan Bhawan near Central Secretariat, Jesus & Mary College in Chanakyapuri, Khan Market Metro Station, American Centre at Kasturba Gandhi Marg and Motilal Nehru Marg.

Women police play very important part in day to day policing in the national capital. They form the back bone of the police functioning in various units  including police stations, communications, Special Juvenile Police Units, PCR etc. Read more

3. 'Want To Come To India, But No Passport' - Vijay Mallya's Bizarre Reason For Evading Court Summons

Liquor baron Vijay Mallya informed a Delhi court that he wants to come to India but is unable to travel back as his passport has been suspended by Indian authorities. Mallya made the submission through his counsel in a case lodged for allegedly evading summons in connection with a FERA violation matter.

The court had cancelled the exemption from personal appearance granted to him and had directed him to appear before it. Read more

4. Delhi Man Dies After Being Hit By Train Inside Rajiv Chowk Metro Station

The folly of not adhering to the constant exhortations at Delhi Metro stations to "stand behind the yellow line" had tragic consequences for Amit Talwar. The 34-year-old, impatiently waiting for a train, was a little too close to the track and was hit by a train at Rajiv Chowk station during rush hour. Witnesses say that Talwar was thrown about 15 feet away and hit one of the metal barricades installed to keep commuters away from the track.

Talwar, a resident of Saket, was taken to Lady Hardinge Medical College by the Central Industrial Security Force and metro staff, but he had succumbed to his injuries by the time he reached the hospital. Read more

5. Gujarat Doctor Arrested For Allegedly Raping A Dengue Patient In The ICU

A day after Apollo Hospital, Gandhinagar was rocked by a rape scandal, the accused doctor and his help, a sweeper, have been arrested. Dr Ramesh Chauhan is accused of raping Asmita (name changed) who was under treatment for dengue around midnight on Sunday inside the ICU.

Too weak and traumatised to react, she chose not to disclose the incident to her family members for two days. The victim kept crying and pleading with her parents to take her out of the hospital. Read more

6. Seven Biryani Samples Picked Up From Mewat In Random Checks Had Beef In It, Says Haryana Lab

Days after the Haryana Police launched its beef-hunt in birayani in Mewat, a Muslim dominated area of the state, a government veterinary lab has claimed that seven samples collected by the cops contained beef. These samples were randomly picked up by the police for inspection from Muslim traders across Mewat ahead of Eid.

According to police, a search was initiated after a number of specific complaints about the biryani vendors serving beef. Read more
Details have emerged on a failed rocket launch that destroyed China's secret spy satellite in a disaster that resonates with the SpaceX explosion a few days ago.

The rocket, which was launched from Shanxi on Thursday last week, failed to thrust its cargo into orbit. The Gaofen-10 satellite was blasted from aboard China's Long March 4C rocket but failed to get into orbit following an "undisclosed" failure that the Chinese government is trying very hard to slide under the rug.

Getty Images

Social media reports suggest that the resultant debris were scattered all across the Shanxi province.

South China Morning Post stated that the Gaofen-10 satellite constituted a part of a network aimed at providing "24-hour intelligence gathering capabilities for military and civilian users by 2020". But it was also equally equipped for spying in any corner of the planet.

Weibo via Daily Mail

The satellite had taken off with a great start from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center but minutes later, it plummeted back to the Earth due to alleged faults with the rocket's boosters in the third stage.

Images of the disaster were shared on Chinese social platform Weibo but were later taken down by authorities. The absence of media coverage of the incident, therefore, led experts to believe that the government was trying its best to cover the whole thing up.

One Weibo user, as reported by The Wall Street Journal, wrote on Weibo: "An American satellite blows up and it gets reported on without restraint."
Brandon Stanton of Humans of New York recently interviewed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, where the latter candidly spoke on sexism and how differently she has to conduct herself from her male colleagues.

In the first of the two posts, she talks about her experience of taking a law school test at Harvard where men tried to put her down:

"One of them even said: 'If you take my spot, Ill get drafted, and Ill go to Vietnam, and I'll die.' And they werent kidding around. It was intense. It got very personal. But I couldnt respond. I couldnt afford to get distracted because I didnt want to mess up the test."

And while she got admitted in Harvard, things haven't changed much.

Now that she's in the run for America's presidency, she still has to conduct herself a certain way - which is definitely different from how her male colleagues do:

"If you want to run for the Senate, or run for the Presidency, most of your role models are going to be men. And what works for them wont work for you. Women are seen through a different lens. Its not bad. Its just a fact. Its really quite funny. Ill go to these events and there will be men speaking before me, and theyll be pounding the message, and screaming about how we need to win the election. And people will love it. And I want to do the same thing. Because I care about this stuff."

She may come across as "aloof", "cold" and even "unemotional", but she has to wear these masks while making public appearances because that's how she is expected to behave:

"Ive learned that I can't be quite so passionate in my presentation. I love to wave my arms, but apparently thats a little bit scary to people. And I cant yell too much. It comes across as 'too loud' or 'too shrill' or 'too this' or 'too that.' Which is funny, because Im always convinced that the people in the front row are loving it."

These posts really help one get familiarised with the woman who may very well become America's first woman president. And for that, we only have Brandon Stanton to thank!
Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has dropped charges against an accused in the 26/11 Mumbai attack case, citing a lack of evidence.

AFP

The FIA submitted a chargesheet before an anti-terrorism court (ATC) and placed the suspect, Sufiyan Zafar, in the second column, which means that no evidence was found against him.

But the prosecution told the court that Zafar, a suspected financier of the Mumbai attack, is still being investigated and ordered FIA to submit a separate challan to the court on September 22.

Read Also: The Untold Story Of Ravi Dharnidharka - The Soldier Who Saved 157 Lives At The Taj Hotel On 26/11

Zafar was arrested last month on a charge of financing the 26/11 Mumbai attacks in November, 2008. FIA documents revealed that Zafar, a former activist of the now banned Lashkar-e-Taiba, had provided financial assistance to other suspects in the case.

The chargesheet against him mentioned that he had transferred Rs 14,800 into a suspect's account.

AFP

He was declared a proclaimed offender in 2011 when the ATC indicted seven people, including Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, a key planner, facilitator and executor of the Mumbai attacks.

Pakistan had on Wednesday issued notices to seven accused of 2008 Mumbai attack case, including mastermind LeT commander Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, on a plea to examine the Al-fauz boat used by the 10 Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists to reach the Indian coast.
Russian police have arrested a 23-year-old man for the rape of a 10-year-old girl, allegedly sold to him by her mother.

newsweek/ Representative image

The woman allegedly handed the girl over in exchange for alcohol and 100 roubles. (104 rupees)

He claimed that he 'bought' the girl and he could do 'whatever he liked' with her. He also told the police that her mother was present in the room when he raped the girl.

Siberian Times

The crime was reported after a passer-by spotted the girl, scared and crying with her legs covered in blood, near the block of flats where the incident happened.

According to reports the mother tried to visit the girl in a hospital, but the victim became 'extremely scared' and asked staff to protect her.

She later fled to her village of Avan, where she was reportedly 'beaten' by locals who had came to know about the incident.

The girl who was discharged from hospital is currently under the protection of an orphanage.
A Eurogroup meeting in Bratislava on Friday touched on the Greek program, as expected, with Eurozone finance ministers reiterating the need for Athens to implement the remaining 13 out of 15 prior actions necessary to collect a 2.8-billion-euro sub-tranche in bailout money in October
The X-Squad unit of the Lagos State Police Command has arrested 20 policemen from different divisions in the state over alleged misconduct and corrupt practices.

This is as the Command has foiled attempt by kidnappers to abduct an Indian at a construction sight in Epe area of the state.

Commissioner of Police, Lagos State Police Command, Fatai Owoseni, who made the disclosure while briefing journalists on the commands recent achievement, said that the arrest of the policemen which was made in one week, was in furtherance to the Inspector-General of Polices resolve to ensure that the Force was sanitised and weed out bag eggs.

Within the period under review, Owoseni revealed that five armed robbery suspects were also arrested including a suspected kidnapper. Recovered from them were five vehicles, one of which was snatched yesterday around Magodo area of the state and was at the verge of being sold.

Other recoveries included four different kinds of ammunition and charms.

Source: Vanguard
According to the Information Officer, Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), Helen Okoro, the World Bank has set aside $500 million dollars as a grant to fund basic education in five states for five years.

Okoro revealed this in a statement yesterday, also adding that the head of World Bank International Reconstruction and Development team, Olatunde Adekola, disclosed the grant in Abuja.

She said Adekola explained that the fund was for the Global Partnership for Education (GPE), established to improve access to quality education at the basic level in the states.

The states are:

Kano, Kaduna, Jigawa, Sokoto Katsina

Okoro also said Adekola commended the Federal Government for the Nigerian Partnership for Education Project (NIPEP) project and added that it was the first time government would focus on strategies aimed at moving the basic education sub-sector forward.

She said the $2.5 billion credit the Federal Government requested from the World Bank to finance the 2016 budget could only be released after fulfilling certain conditions.
The abducted Catholic priest, Rev. Fr. Paul Irikefe, who was kidnapped by unknown gunmen on Monday in Delta State, has regained freedom from his captors.

Our correspondent gathered that the priest was freed on Wednesday around Benin, where he was reportedly taken to by his abductors.

Father Irikefe, a lecturer with St. Peter and Paul Catholic Major Seminary in Bodija, Ibadan, Oyo State, was kidnapped on Monday evening within the Warri/Effurun metropolis.

Irikefe was in Warri to attend the burial of his friend and colleague, Rev. Fr. Amaefule Chike, who was buried on Tuesday at the Agbarho Pastoral Centre, Ughelli North Area of the state.

A source within the Warri Diocese, who confirmed the priests release, said it was not clear if the church paid the N30m ransom the abductors had earlier demanded.

Our source, who called our correspondent on Thursday morning to disclose the news, added that the Catholic father had been reunited with the Bishop of Warri Diocese, Bishop John Okeoghene Afareha.

The Rev. Father was said to be traumatised as a result of the maltreatment he received from his captors.

Rev. Father Benedict Ukutegbe, acting Administrator, Sacred Heart Cathedral, Catholic Diocese of Warri, confirmed his colleagues release, when contacted by our correspondent.

Ukutegbe also confirmed that the priest was released in Benin, the Edo State capital.

Source: Punch
In Africa, despite her abundant natural resources, a vast majority of the continents people still wallow in poverty, not just the UNs standard of poverty (living below $1 a day), but a type peculiar to Africa, where having up to a dollar a day is luxury.

The current news in Nigeria is about recession, its probably the most used word on the street. The market women, the taxi drivers, even the illiterates in the hinterlands have got wind of whats going on as analysts and government officials have been barraging previous governments, passing the bulk of the blame to them.

It is impossible to overlook the clay-footed giant of Africa as its once vibrant economy slowly grinds to a halt. With a population of over 170 million people, getting jobs in Nigeria was already tough enough, a predicament that has been made more difficult by its over reliance on oil. Recently released official statistics say youth unemployment increased to 24 percent from 21.5 percent.

Recently in Gabon, there was an uprising as the Gabonese openly revolted, setting their Parliament ablaze in protest over the strangle hold on the government by the Bongo family. A family that has been in power for about five decades in a democratic nation, after its late leader Omar Bongo devised a means of ensuring his son succeeded him in office.

The family is alleged to have skimmed off 25 percent of the oil-rich nations gross domestic product over the years yet the present occupant of the highest office in the land is bent on staying in power. Investigations in France have shown that the Bongo family own no less than 39 residences across France, including Paris.

The tales are unending; South Sudan, Burkina Faso, Congo, Zimbabwe and sadly even South Africa where the men who have succeeded Madiba have perfected the art of ensuring the standards of governance keep falling to its present state.

An ageing and ineffective Mugabe still holds sway in Zimbabwe amidst protest from his people, the list just goes on and on. As long as African political leaders are drawn from this class of predators, no amount of preaching about the virtues of good governance or tuition on public administration will alter the quality of governance.

Across Africa, woes are being linked to an obvious leadership deficit, an argument that perhaps bears further credence as there exists a correlation between leadership and economic development.

What are the leadership answers Africa seek? Are they found in one man? Are they found in adopting a specific system? Say democracy? (Saudi Arabia has to some extent proven that even without democracy, it is possible to build a system that works). Is there some sort of curse on the continent? That we will never find a Mandela-type leader ever again?

As with any complex problem, there is never one simple answer, and to the economic problems in Africa it will be difficult to prescribe a simple, single dose treatment.

In Nigeria for example, an objective analysis will truly reveal that our present economic quagmire was not brought upon us (solely, some might say) by the present regime; it is a culmination of decades of misrule and visionless leadership.

That said, the present Government has been in power long enough (1 year and 4 months) to chart a clear economic course for the country, but so far the country is still deeply enmeshed in its problems.

Its an economic crisis across the continent, yet it seems the not so secret ingredient in the antidote is the leadership. In the midst of gloom and chaos people want to know what direction they should take, foreign and local investors need to see what the policy plan is.

What is the governments socio-political ideology? Whats her stand on taxes? Whats the governments plan on spending? Does it favor a certain sector? Companies are shutting down, what is the plan/incentive to convince businessmen to get back to work? WHAT EXACTLY IS THE PLAN? Is there any?

Suffice it to say that what we see is an economic recession, but the real challenge is the leadership recession.
The National Pension Commission (PENCOM) yesterday said it would soon launch a new pension scheme for people under the informal sector of the nations economy.

Dr Farouk Aminu, Head, Corporate Strategy and Research Department of PENCOM, said this in Abuja. According to him, the objective of the pension scheme is to get the people under the informal sector to be covered by pension system.

Aminu listed bean cake (Akara) sellers, tailors, mechanics, vulcanisers and artists were among the persons under informal sector the commission would establish new pension scheme for. He stressed that this would be special scheme designed to help the peculiarity of these people under the informal sector of the economy.

When one looks at the people under informal sector, you will notice that their income are irregular and does not come often. So you cannot put them with people whose incomes are regular; example, yesterday the person earned a million naira and today he earned nothing. People that earn regular incomes, their pensions are percentages of their salaries, hence you have to consider these peculiarities, he said.

Aminu explained that people working under the informal sector, each of them had to be met one by one on their different locations to be captured for pension.

People who earn regular incomes work under the ministries or agencies and are easily to be captured under the pension scheme.

He added that all the states in the country presently were reforming their pension systems to ensure that they operated a safer and credible pension scheme.

Aminu explained that formerly when a federal civil servant retired, he or she would stay up to six months before he started to receive his retirement benefits.

But now with the new reform pension law, any person that retires under the federal civil service will start to receive his retirement benefits from four months, Aminu said.

He explained that Nigeria pension law had some sort of social security to assist self-employed persons in the country. Aminu advised employees to always register with Pension Fund Administrators of their own choice, adding that they should also give correct information for their pension.

He also advised pension contributors under Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) that had challenges for remittance issues to see IPPIS to rectify these problems. Aminu added that pension contributors who were yet to transfer to IPPIS but still under PENCOM should see the commission to correct the challenges.

He said that if there was any challenge from the PENCOM, it must be from the Nominal Roll of the contributor. He added that when such challenge arose, PENCOM always ask the retirees to send their nominal roll to the commission for corrections and the pensioners would immediately start to receive their benefits.

Source: Vanguard
President Muhammadu Buhari attended todays Jumaat prayers with Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki, and National Security Adviser, Babagana Monguno at the Statehouse, Abuja.

The President prayed together with the highly influential personalities ahead of the sallah celebration, which comes up on Monday, September 12, 2016.

Later, Buhari will depart Abuja for his native home in Daura, Katsina state, where hell be celebrating this years Eid-el-Kabir.
President Muhammadu Buhari will lead the Federal Governments delegation to the 71st session of the United Nations General Assembly, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama, said on Friday.

The Nigerian leader, will join other world leaders to address issues of global importance as well as those peculiar to their different countries and regions.

The UN General Assembly summit begins on Tuesday in New York.

According to Onyeama, the president will use the opportunity to put in proper perspective some issues about his administration, which had been largely misconstrued, particularly on human rights.

Addressing a press conference in Abuja on the forthcoming UN summit, the minister said, there is need to tell our own story and tell it persuasively too to get support from the world. We are not a sick patient looking for help. Nigeria is a power house seeking opportunity to play a greater role in global affairs.

Reacting to the alleged human rights abuses by the administration, Mr. Onyeama said, It would be an opportunity to put the record straight. Government does not interfere with the judiciary; neither does it interfere with the activities of the EFCC and other investigative bodies.

He also stressed that the President Buhari administration has from onset defined the rule of engagement in the battle against terrorism.
The Anglican Archbishop of Enugu Archdiocese, Most Reverend Emmanuel Chukwuma, has said that the current economic hardship in the country has made Nigerians hungry and angry, advising the federal government to urgently do something about it before the situation gets out of control.

The cleric also condemned the decision of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to postpone the Edo State governorship election, earlier scheduled for this Saturday, following an advice by security agencies.

Chukwuma spoke during the funeral service of late Mrs. Janet Elobelu Madu at the Christ Church Achi, Church of Nigeria Anglican Communion, Diocese of Oji River, Enugu State on Friday.

Mrs, Madu, who died at 101 years, was the mother of Anglican bishop of Oji River diocese, Most Reverend Pius Madu.

Pointing at the Chairman of the All Progressive Congress (APC) in Enugu State, Dr. Ben Nwoye, Most Rev. Chukwuma urged him to pass the message of hunger in the land to the APC-led federal government under President Muhammadu Buhari.

APC used to be a very effective medicine for headache in those days. If this APC cant cure the illness in Nigeria now, Nigerians will begin to drink codeine. Dr. Nwoye, please pass the message to the APC government in Abuja, Chukwuma said.

Speaking further on the Change Begins With Me campaign launched Thursday by the president, the Anglican Archbishop advised Buhari to lead by example.

Change should begin with Mr. President, he said. Let him pay federal civil servants. Buhari will try and make the change crusade begin with him by paying workers at month end.

On the postponement of the election in Edo state, Chukwuma said: The postponement of the election is a big indictment on the security of the nation. It shows the security men are inefficient and cannot control the security situation of the country.
Governor of Ekiti State, Mr. Ayodele Fayose, has described the postponement of the governorship election in Edo State by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as a very bad signal and the beginning of the end for democracy in Nigeria.

According to him, the governing All Progressives Congress, out of fear of losing the election, resorted to what he said was crude means, to subvert the wish of the people of Edo State.

He said President Muhammadu Buhari should be held responsible for the plot.

I warned Nigerians not to elect Buhari because he lacked capacity mentally, morally and intellectually to superintend over any civilised society, now we are all seeing the results. Our economy is in recession and democracy is also in recession! Mr. Fayose said in a statement by his Special Adviser on Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka.

Apart from the security agencies that they instructed not to provide security for the election, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) was under instruction since yesterday (Wednesday) not to release electoral materials to INEC.

It was just a game by the APC-led federal government to frustrate the people of Edo State from kick-starting the journey of changing the APC one-chance change in Nigeria, but they should realise that the power of the people will always be greater than the power of those in power.

The INEC, late Thursday, announced a postponement of the election by two weeks after the police and the State Security Service, SSS, said they could not guarantee security.

The commission had initially vowed to go ahead with the polls despite the warning.

How can you postpone an election less than 48 hours to the scheduled date? What manner of security concern could prevent an election in just one State when elections were held in Northeast States that are confronted by Boko Haram insurgents? asked Mr. Fayose.

Obviously, this is a sign of what to come in 2019 and Nigerians should not be amazed if in 2019, they tell us that elections cannot be conducted.

This is sad! It is a sad commentary for democracy in Nigeria and I only hope this Buharis APC government will not collapse democracy in this country, Fayose lamented.
The Edo State chapter of the All Progressive Congress, APC, has described as idiotic, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDPs claims that the APC masterminded the postponement of the state governorship election to September 28.

The APC said the postponement did not add any value to its activities in preparation for the polls.

The APC Chairman in the State, Anselm Ojezua, who spoke at a press briefing on Friday in Benin, said the decision to postpone the election has adversely affected the party.

He claimed that the APC and some other critical stakeholders were not consulted before the shift in the date for the election was announced.

Ojezua noted that the APC has effectively campaigned and marketed its candidate, Godwin Obaseki to the electorate as well as mobilized its members ahead of the election.

The APC chairman, however, recalled that the party had previously drawn attention to the influx of militants into the state from neighboring states during the Continuous Voters Registration exercise even though the party does not have details from the security agencies.

He expressed optimism that the postponement would provide an opportunity for security agencies to address the influx of militants in addition to other threats that may have been discovered.

He said, Elections have largely been peaceful in Edo State since 2007 until the sudden interest of the Governors of Rivers State and Delta State who are hell bent on realizing the long standing obsession of an individual to rule this State by all means.

We believe that the timing and mode of communication by the security agencies could have been better handled having regards to the very hard work and huge resources deployed towards the election by all concerned.

However, having regards to the provisions of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and the Electoral Act, we are obliged to defer to the decision of INEC particularly when security threats have been cited as the reason for the postponement.

All these, taken with the reported threat by the Governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Nwike to the effect that the APC people should go and write their will should be a source of concern to any right thinking person. You recall that the last time the same man issued the same threat in Port Harcourt several people lost their lives including Youth Corpers who had been deployed to assist in the exercise in that State.
A former Minister of Education and co-convener of the #BringBackOurGirls (#BBOG) campaign, Oby Ezekwesili, said yesterday that nobody could threaten the group or its members since they were bonafide citizens of the country.

She was reacting to the warning issued by the newly-confirmed Inspector General of Police, IGP Ibrahim Idris that the police would no longer fold its arms and watch members of the group, whose activities he claimed, are becoming worrisome and a threat to public peace and order in the Federal Capital Territory.

The BBOG has been holding a daily sit-out at the Unity Fountain, Central Business District in the FCT for over two years, demanding the safe return of about 219 Chibok schoolgirls, who were abducted by Boko Haram insurgents.

It, however, upped the ante last week when it vowed to lead a march to the Presidential Villa every 72 hours until the federal government moves swiftly to bring back the girls.

Following the groups clash with police officers on Tuesday after they were prevented from proceeding with their march to the Presidential Villa, Abuja, Mr. Idris on Wednesday, while receiving a delegation of the National Council of Women Societies (NCWS), led by its President, Gloria Shoda, said enough is enough.

The IGP was quoted as saying: The essence of procession is to bring the attention of the society or government to your plight and I think the demonstration [by BBOG] has been going on for too long. We believe and advice that it is time for them to maintain some level of control so that people of Abuja can live in peace and tranquility.

In her response, Ezekwesili said that the rights of the BBOG are guaranteed by the constitution and advised IGP Idris to educate himself properly about democracy and citizens right to peaceful assembly.

She also said the previous administration used similar tactics to try to violate their rights but their rights was upheld by the constitution and court.

Speaking yesterday in Abuja, at the usual sit-out of the group, Ezekwesili said:

Our response is he should ask for the file that recorded our advocacy between 2014 and 2015 when the previous administration used all kinds of tactics similar to this one to try to violate our constitutional liberty, not only did the constitution uphold that right, the court also upheld our rights, he should just read this files, he should be able to find what he needs in order to educate himself properly about democracy and citizens right to peaceful assembly.

We are a peaceful movement as everyone knows, so we are not changing anything, no retreat, no surrender; are our girls back? If the government says that we are unreasonable in demanding for our Chibok girls in the way that we have been demanding for them since 2014, they need to show the evidence that counters our stance.

For us as a movement, we plead for the rescue video of August 14th, which is an incredible opportunity for our government, which really conveyed a message to the world.

It was observed that unity fountain, which was earlier in the day occupied by policemen, was devoid of their presence by the time of the sit-out.
Governor Abubakar Sani Bello of Niger State on Thursday advised the Inspector General of Police, IGP Idris Koptun Ibrahim, to remain focused and justify the confidence reposed in him.

Governor Bello said though the new IGP was leading the police force in a trying time, he should consider his confirmation as a challenge and greater responsibility to bring his experiences to bear for a superlative stewardship.

According to the governor, the IG needs to remain focused for the police to reassert itself as a vital institution in governments efforts at restoring peace to trouble spots.

Being the lead agency in internal security, the police, under your watch, should strive to build on the gains recorded by the military in the fight against terrorism by finally restoring peace, security and civil life to the affected areas.

I enjoin you to, as a matter of priority, reposition the police to effectively provide efficient policing and a more proactive service to the people. The much talked about community policing should be given attention so that the force can effectively provide the much needed security, Gov. Bello said.

Mr. Ibrahim, who hails from Niger State, was confirmed on Wednesday by the Nigeria Police Council as substantive IG of Police.
The Inspector General of Police (IGP), Ibrahim K. Idris NPM mni, on behalf of the Officers and men of the Nigeria Police Force heartily felicitates with Muslims faithful in Nigeria on the occasion of the 2016 Eid-El-Kabir celebration.

In order to ensure adequate security and guarantee utmost protection of life and property during the celebration and throughout the public holidays, the Inspector General of Police has directed the Assistant Inspector General of Police in charge of zonal commands and all the Commissioners of Police in the state commands to deploy adequate personnel to cover all the Eid-El-Kabir praying grounds, recreation centres, public places, public infrastructures and utilities, and other points and venues where celebration will take place.

The Nigeria Police Force is confident that with the operational strategies being executed for the Sallah festivities will guarantee a peaceful and hitch free Eid-El-Kabir celebration. The IGP therefore wishes the Muslim faithful and all Nigerians a happy celebration. He however implores them to be vigilant and continue to support the Police to prevent crimes in their localities.

Similarly, the Police Commanders are directed to collaborate with sister agencies, cultivate intelligence, interface with community leaders to monitor the activities of undesirable elements in the society who may take undue advantage of the public holidays to cause mischief and disturb public peace.

The Police mobile Force, Counter Terrorism Units, Explosive Ordinance Department and personnel and of criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department will also be deployed to all the locations mentioned above. Sustained surveillance and special attention will be paid to flash/vulnerable points and other identifiable hot spots to prevent criminalities during the sallah celebration and beyond.

The Inspector General of Police commends the dedication and commitment of officers in ensuring that security and peace prevail throughout the Country despite the enormous challenges.
The Afro juju legend, who started his birthday celebrations on 1st September 2016 with a special prayer from Pastor Adeboye,

says he plans to celebrate for 3 months.

KSA, who will clock 70 on September 22, 2016, said; Usually my birthday celebrations lasts for only ONE Week, but this time, itll spread from September 21 till the end of December.

Highlights of events that have already been confirmed as part of the birthday celebrations, include a Gospel Music Night on Wednesday, September 21, in Ondo State. Followed by the actual birthday celebration, on the 22nd, where the juju King plans to have a special prayer session with his kids at home and later that day, hell have a little house party. On September 23, 2016, he plans to visit a couple of charity homes.

Speaking further on his plans, KSA said, On September 24, the entire family has planned a big party for me. Then On September 27, therell be a special Lecture at Obafemi Awolowo University in collaboration with his Royal Majesty, OONI of Ife after which well head to the Palace for a grand reception. The celebration will continue in October as we head to South Africa. Theres also plan for a Book Launch sometimes in October. A special music concert will also hold in Ibadan in October thatll be a blend of music from the hip hop acts to fuji and juju. The Redeemed Christian Church of God is also planning a special event to celebrate me.

Members of FIBAN are also planning a party as well as PMAN and several other bodies that are waiting for dates to confirm when theyll host and celebrate me, You know am a member of over 79 clubs and they all want to celebrate me, so it not been easy fixing dates. Theres also a plan for an International concert that will be held later in the year, we hope to have the like of Stevie Wonder, Yousou Ndor, Awilo and others he concluded.
Lagos State Governor, Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode on Thursday demonstrated his commitment to attract foreign investors into the State by approving land for the establishment of a training centre in Lagos where architects, civil engineers and craftsmen will be trained on modern trends and technologies in the construction sector.

Governor Ambode, who gave the approval when he received a delegation from The Knauf Group, which is a German firm currently establishing a $75miilion building/construction tools manufacturing factory in Lagos, said the approval for the land became imperative in view of the need to encourage investors to continue to invest in Lagos.

The Knauf Group is one of the worlds leading manufacturers of modern insulation materials, dry lining systems, plasters and accessories, thermal insulation composite systems, paints, floor screed, floor systems, and construction equipment and tools.

The delegation was led by a member of the Management Committee of the firm, Isabel Knauf and Consular General of German Embassy in Lagos, Mr. Ingo Herbert.

Governor Ambode, who recalled the last time Herbert visited the Lagos House about eleven months ago, said his administration has remained focused to the promise of upholding judicial and security sector reforms, as well as creating a friendly environment for investment to thrive.

He said the massive investment by The Knauf Group in Lagos was a pointer to the fact that investors were still willing to invest in Nigeria despite the economic recession, and that the country will come out of the economic doldrums even stronger.

I must commend the German government and The Knauf Group for showing something important to all Nigerians that beyond the economic recession, their total believe in our economy is unshaken because it is not enough for any investor to come into an area where they have never invested before and months after, the parameters for investment are not really looking good, but you stuck in there and beyond the fact that you have gone to procure land, you also have an established office within the last eleven months and you are already pumping in money into what you want to do.

This is a great pointer to the fact that you believe in the Lagos economy and also believe in the future of Nigeria and I like to encourage other investors to emulate what your firm and government is doing in Lagos and as they show interest, we will not hesitate to give them the necessary support, the Governor said.

Governor Ambode said The Knauf Group specifically deserved to be commended for not just investing in Nigeria, but also bringing the German vocational expertise on an area of construction that was hitherto not in existence in Nigeria into Lagos.

Besides, the Governor said he was excited about the fact that the firm was not just establishing a factory here in Lagos, but also a training centre where Nigerians will be trained, adding that he would stop at nothing to encourage investors such as The Knauf Group.

Earlier, Isabel Knauf said the team was at the Lagos House to brief Governor Ambode on the progress made so far since the project started in September 2015.

She said the firm has 23 training centres all over the world training about 14,000 people annually, and that they would like to build the same training centre in Lagos where architects, civil engineers and craftsmen would be trained on how to technically install their products.

She said upon completion of the factory, the firm would create 25,000 direct employment, adding that the training centre will cost about two million Euros to establish, while at least 800 Nigerians will be trained annually in the first phase.

Knauf, however, solicited the support of the State Government in land space for the training centre and permit issues, a request which was instantly granted by the Governor.
Governor of Edo State, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, has kicked against postponement of the governorship election in the state by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, for two weeks or more.

Instead, he advised the electoral body to postpone the polls for one week because of the planned coronation of the Oba of Benin, which was fixed for September 26.

The INEC National Commissioner in charge of Voters Education and Publicity, Prince Solomon Soyebi, last night in Benin, the state capital, told journalists that the governorship election earlier slated for tomorrow, Saturday, would now hold on Wednesday, September 28.

The shift came 24 hours after the warning by the Department of State Services (DSS) and the Police that terrorists might target Edo and other states during Sallah.

In his reaction, the governor, who spoke on a television programme last night in Benin, said the coronation is a big event which every Edo man celebrates and has a role to play, therefore, the election should be held earlier.

We have a big event in Edo on September 26 which is the Obas coronation. Before that day, there are other events that must be done. It will not be proper to hold election during that period, why not postpone the election for one week? Oshiomhole asked rhetorically

He denied claims that the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) was afraid of defeat, saying that the party defeated the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in 16 local government areas in the last election held in the state.

Gov. Oshiomhole, while stressing that his party was ready for the election and that Edo is not a war zone, said, We will win the election. The PDP has no credibility in this state.
The Port Harcourt Magistrates Court on Thursday, arraigned three persons suspected of taking part in the killing of nine police officers of the Rivers State Police Command.

The trio, Odum Atokaritou, Napughi Duba and Godgift Gwenbe were also accused of being involved in different bank robberies, which resulted in the death of at least 10 persons including the nine policemen.

The suspects and others, who are now at large, are facing 18 counts of conspiracy, murder, robbery and kidnapping.

The court gave the names of the slain Policemen as: ASP Bamidele Mohammed, (attached to Sterling Bank, Port Harcourt); Inspector Austine Moore, Corporal Prince Tigbara, Inspector Jonah Oletu, who were officers at Elekahia Police Station in Obio/Akpor Local Government Area of the state.

Also, Inspector Peter Olavoghokere, Corporal Paul Nnaa, Inspector Dennis Akpan, Sergeant Ekwere Epoulo, Corporal Okougor Nyambi, and Mr. Femi Oloukun, the Regional Manager of Sterling Bank.

The suspects were additionally accused of Similarly, abduction one Miss Nkechi Chika, who is the Director of Pre-Pay Hotel, Eagle Island, Port Harcourt and only released the victim after receiving N10 million ransom.

They were believed to be among members of the robbery gang that attacked a bullion van conveying $400,000, belonging to Sterling Bank Plc in Port Harcourt and those that stole N350 million from Diamond Bank in Trans-Amadi and N24 million at Fidelity Bank, GRA Branch.

When the matter was called, the trial magistrate, M. F. Poromon, referred the case to the Director of Public Prosecution, DPP, for legal advice.

The court could not take pleas, but Poromon adjourned the case till November 28 for legal advice from the DPP, while he ordered that the accused persons be remanded in prison custody.
The senator representing Ondo North senatorial district, Prof. Ajayi Boroffice, has called for the cancellation of the just concluded governorship primary election of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Ondo State.

He made the call just as a member representing Akoko South West/South East federal constituency in the House of Representatives, Hon. Babatunde Kolawole, said the exercise was characterized with malpractice.

The duo spoke at a reception rally organised by Kolawole and attended by thousands of indigenes of Oka town and its environs at the Palace of Olubaka of Oka-Akoko in Akoko South West local government, Oba Adebori Adeleye.

Borrofice, who came fourth in the primary election, said he was informed that those who were not delegates, were allowed to vote in the exercise.

He said if the APC primary election appeals committee finds the allegation to be true, he is expecting a total cancellation of the exercise.

The senator said: Before the conclusion of the election, I kept hearing the rumor that the delegate list has been infiltrated.

That there are even some people who are not accredited, who are not even delegates but were given tags and induced to come and vote. And that has been substantiated now and its unfortunate.

I am in support of total cancellation of the election, we must do it again, he said.

When asked whether he will contest under another party if the primary election result is not cancelled, Boroffice vowed to stay put in the APC.

I am a loyal party man, I had the opportunity to leave the party in 2012 but I didnt. I was one of the three people that remained then, among the aspirants

I am not in this party to be a governor. I am in this progressive party to help build Nigeria

And if dont become governor, another person will be a governor, as long as the process is free, fair and credible, he said.

In his remarks, Kolawole said the senator has just returned from a battle field and they are happy he returned safety despite all the odds against him.

He commended the national leader of APC, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed for ensuring the party remains united.

Earlier, the monarch said the town was happy with the performance of Senator Boroffice in the governorship primaries of the APC.

He said Boroffice, who is the Asiwaju of Akoko, stood tall among other aspirants in the election, adding that he had represented Oka town well.

Oba Adeleye stressed that the people of Oka will keep pushing the aspirations of the senator until he attains the position agitated for by the people of the community.
The Federal Government on Friday explained that the flooding on portions of the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway was caused by structures built on water channels by some companies along the road.

In a statement explaining the cause of the flooding at a portion of the road opposite the Mountain Top University in Ogun State where construction is currently ongoing, the Government said the structures blocking the channels include those built by Hi-Impact Hotel and Parks and Buildwell Plants and Equipment Company as well as various Warehouses.

It said the flooding at the portion became severe because the various structures built along the road had blocked the water channels through which runoffs were to flow away from the road, adding that the water retention spot of the whole area had been blocked off by building on the wet zones.

The Statement explained that these locations which are now built up, were the drainage basins where surface runoff was directed when the road was built about 40 years ago.

According to the Statement, the flooding has also been accentuated by the fact that some of the communities in the area discharge their runoffs to the road where drains are yet to be provided adding that the rains have also been unusually heavy in the past few days, thereby undermining the palliative efforts recently done by the contractor.

Source: Punch
The World Bank has earmarked 500 million dollars as grant to fund basic education for five years in 5 different states of Nigeria.

The Information Officer, Universal Basic Education Commission UBEC, Mrs Helen Okoro, revealed this in a statement on Thursday in Abuja, the Federal Capital Terrirtory.

Mrs Okoro in the statement quoted the Head, World Bank International Reconstruction and Development team, Dr Olatunde Adekola, the source of the information.

She stated that the fund was for the Global Partnership for Education (GPE), established to improve access to quality education at the basic level in Kano, Kaduna, Jigawa, Sokoto and Katsina states.

Five hundred million dollars has been set aside as Global Partnership for Education (GPE)/ Nigerian Partnership for Education Project (NIPEP) to fund education in the five beneficiary states of Jigawa, Kano, Kaduna, Katsina and Sokoto, she said.

Okoro said Adekola commended the Federal Government for the NIPEP project and added that it was the first time government would be focusing on strategies aimed at moving the basic education sub-sector forward.

She said the 2.5 billion dollars credit that the Federal Government requested from the World Bank to finance the 2016 budget could only be released after fulfilling certain conditions.
Developers using the open source Ruby dynamic language are in for some big changes. The language is set to feature a new concurrency and parallelism model, called Guild, in the Ruby 3 upgrade tentatively slated to arrive before 2020.

Plans detailed at a technical conference in Kyoto, Japan this week cite intentions to equip Ruby for a programming landscape that increasingly has moved to multi-core processing. Currently, Ruby supports concurrency via threads, but making thread-safe programs is hard because of a need to manage object mutations. Guild overcomes this issue via a concurrency model enabling parallel execution.

"Since threads provide no data protection, it is very difficult to write correct programs," Ruby founder Yukihiro Matsumoto said. "Guilds are isolated [from] each other and do not share mutable states, basically like an actor model that many other languages have." Ruby needs a new concurrency model because it already has a thread model that cannot be removed, as it maintains compatibility in the language, Matsumoto said.

The conference presentation from Heroku's Koichi Sasada, a Ruby core committer, maps out intentions for Guild, described as a "new concurrency abstraction." Each Guild has at least one thread; threads in different Guilds can run in parallel, but threads in the same guild can't because of a Giant Guild Lock capability. Mutable objects should belong to one Guild, but there can be communication between Guilds.

Multi-threaded programming is difficult, with risks including race conditions among threads, Sasada noted. There can be trade-offs in performance versus safety, it's difficult to tune performance, mutable objects must be shared correctly, and debugging is difficult.

"Guild is part of our Ruby 3 experiment," Matsumoto said, but he also noted that the name, Guild, as well as its behavior could be changed by the time it arrives.
The tech world is increasingly awash in containers, and despite stiff competition, the industry seems to be settling on Kubernetes as the default container orchestration engine. Given the options, including Dockers own Swarm, its worth looking at what makes Kubernetes so popular, especially given its comparative complexity.

As with other popular open source software, such as MongoDB and Linux, the answer seems to come down to smart plays in community buildingand 15 years of Google R&D doesnt hurt. Ultimately, this unique blend of exceptional engineering and a willingness to let others take over make Kubernetes such an impressive open source project.

[ Are you ready for the container invasion? Learn how to get started with Kubernetes. | Keep up with the latest developments in cloud computing with InfoWorlds Cloud Computing newsletter. ]

Kubernetess community is real

It shouldnt be this way. After all, Kubernetes is a mere two years old (as a public open source project), whereas Apache Mesos has clocked seven years in market. Docker Swarm is younger than Kubernetes, and it comes with the backing of the center of the container universe, Docker Inc.

Yet the orchestration rivals pale in comparison to Kubernetess community, whichnow under management by the Cloud Native Computing Foundationis exceptionally large and diverse.

Kubernetes is one of the top projects on GitHub: in the top 0.01 percent in stars and No. 1 in terms of activity.

While documentation is subpar, Kubernetes has a significant Slack and Stack Overflow community that steps in to answer questions and foster collaboration, with growth that dwarfs that of its rivals.

More professionals list Kubernetes in their LinkedIn profile than any other comparable offering by a wide margin.

Perhaps most glaring, data from OpenHub shows Apache Mesos dwindling since its initial release and Docker Swarm starting to slow. In terms of raw community contributions, Kubernetes is exploding, with 1,000-plus contributors and 34,000 commitsmore than four times those of nearest rival Mesos.

What accounts for these wildly disparate community results? In a word: Googleor rather, the relative lack of Google. While each of the other orchestration projects comes with a heavy dose of single-vendor influence, Kubernetes benefits from Googles hands-off approach to ongoing development, as well as its original engineering.

Meanwhile, Docker, which owns the de facto container standard, has struggled to build a community as broad and deep as Kubernetes has. The reason, as Googles Kelsey Hightower points out, is Docker itself, which has blocked competitors from collaborating around a Docker standard.

Docker, of course, doesnt need anyones input on standardization, but it would appear the market favors less concentration of power at the orchestration layer of containers. Given its need to come up with a viable business model, we should expect Docker Inc. to compete hard to own ops and, hence, orchestration, for Docker containers. But unless the company can turn Swarm into a true industry effort, its likely to win the container battle but lose the orchestration war, even if it could credibly claim better performance.

Kubernetes has deep roots at Google

Behind the community uptake of Kubernetes is exceptional technology. As Googles Borg technology, Kubernetes enjoyed more than 15 years of active development and heavy production. The technology was so good that Urs Holzle, then Googles head of technical infrastructure, reacted with disbelief when a few Google engineers suggested building a version of Borg and open-sourcing it:

So let me get this straight. You want to build an external version of the Borg task scheduler. One of our most important competitive advantages. The one we dont even talk about externally. And, on top of that, you want to open source it?

Those engineers used Borg as a cluster management tool that powered the infrastructure behind Gmail, YouTube, Google Search, and other popular Google services. Later it was built into the Google Compute Engine, but the engineers noticed that customers were spinning up CPUs with terrible utilization rates. A container management system was needed, and they had one running behind the scenes. The trick was to get it out in the open.

According to Google product manager Martin Buhr, Googles motivation behind Kubernetes comes down to noble intentions ... and enlightened self-interest. Google hopes an open source Kubernetes will dramatically scale developer productivity and thereby make the world a better place. More selfishly, We think over time that our deep, comprehensive support for containers on Google Cloud Platform will create a gravity well in the market for container based apps and that a significant percentage of them will end up with us.

In other words, let developers and operations teams get comfortable fiddling with Kubernetes so that theyll opt to let Google Cloud Platform make it easy to run. None of this works, however, if Google has a direct monetary interest in Kubernetes, which is something of a poison pill for open source communities.

In a nutshell, Kubernetes is rocking because of the 15-plus years of Google R&D that goes into its code, but also because of Googles eagerness to encourage a community to take charge of the next 15-plus years of Kubernetes development.
Limit up on Wheat? Banghart Properties - Sat Oct 29, 7:09PM CDT News broke over the weekend that could help wheat trade limit up when it reopens.

Rains in the Plains, Dow soars Sidwell Strategies - Sat Oct 29, 8:38AM CDT 1st winter wheat ratings Monday; consider carbon for cash flow during drought

Open Enrollment 101: Make the Most of Your Benefits Young & The Invested - Sat Oct 29, 6:00AM CDT The 2022 open enrollment season will be a difficult one as workers have to factor in persistently high inflation while they choose their coverage. These tips can help you maximize your benefits.

Hogs Rebound into Weekend Barchart - Fri Oct 28, 4:39PM CDT Lean hog futures ended the Friday round with 32 to 97 cent gains to fade the triple digit losses from Thursday. The USDA National Average Base Hog Price was $90.54 in the PM update, down by $1.15. The... HEZ22 : 86.100s (+1.15%) HEJ23 : 92.700s (+0.62%) KMZ22 : 96.125s (+0.37%)

Cotton Falls Triple Digits Barchart - Fri Oct 28, 4:39PM CDT December cotton ended the day locked limit lower on the 3c loss. The March contract worked back off the limit for the bell, but still went home down by 274 points. For the week, Dec cotton closed 702 points... CTZ22 : 72.11s (-3.99%) CTH23 : 72.07s (-3.66%) CTK23 : 72.30s (-2.99%)

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Loss for Friday Wheat Barchart - Fri Oct 28, 4:39PM CDT Wheat futures faded on Friday with the front month contracts going home 6 1/4 to 9 1/4 cents lower in SRW. For the December contract that completed the week with a 21 1/2 cent loss. KC futures closed down... ZWZ22 : 829-2s (-1.10%) ZWH23 : 849-0s (-1.05%) ZWPAES.CM : 7.6281 (-1.18%) KEZ22 : 925-0s (-0.78%) KEPAWS.CM : 8.8324 (-0.81%) MWZ22 : 945-0s (-0.58%)

Corn Closes Red on Friday Barchart - Fri Oct 28, 4:39PM CDT Front month corn futures settled the Friday session with fractional to 1 1/2 cent losses. The December contract saw a tight 7 1/2 cent range from -6 cents to +1 1/2 cents on the day. It was also down for... ZCZ22 : 680-6s (-0.22%) ZCPAUS.CM : 6.7193 (-0.15%) ZCH23 : 686-6s (-0.15%) ZCK23 : 686-2s (unch)
If you ask us, one of the most promising things happening in philanthropy right now when it comes to fostering more economic opportunity, is the intensifying focus on closing the big mismatch in America between jobs and skills.

This issue, which has long received attention from labor market analysts, is now squarely on the front burner of many funders, as we report oftenand for several very good reasons. If you're a funder that cares about equity, it's heartbreaking to hear again and again about all the well-paying middle-skills jobs that are going unfilled for months on end even as so many young people languish in low-wage, dead-end positions at CVS or give up on the work world altogether.

As we've described in the past, middle-skills jobs require more education or training than a high school diploma, but less than a four-year bachelor's degree. Such jobs account for more than half of the U.S. labor market, and pay a lot better than you'll make at CVS. They're also the jobs so often left unfilled, because the skills they require can be quite specific.

Related: A Funder Zeroes In On One Promising Solution to Inequality: Middle-Skilled Jobs

Equity funders aren't the only ones worried about this gap. Businesses are even more alarmed, since they're on the front lines of this problemunable to find the workers they need to expand, even as they dangle out nice salaries. We all pay the price when economic growth is slowed in this way.

Lately, as if some secret memo went out, numerous corporate funders have jumped all over the mismatch issueelevating it to the very top of their priority lists, as we often report, with many grants going to STEM education. On the one hand, such funding looks self-interested; on the other, it holds real promise for tackling inequality. To be sure, addressing the skills mismatch doesn't offer any solution to such underlying inequality drivers as globalization or technological change, much less the overall way that power is heavily tilted in favor of capital and against labor. What this approach does offer is a concrete strategy to make progress in finding more people good paying jobs that a variety of stakeholders can get behindsidestepping familiar ideological differences.

Often, work to address the skills mismatch is quite local. What's happening with funder-backed efforts in Houston and New Orleans, as well as Phoenix, offer good examples.

Two years ago, JP Morgan Chase released a report that detailed the mismatch between the needs of local employers and the skills of local jobseekers in the Houston area (it did similar work in a few other cities as well). At that time, it found that the petrochemical and industrial and commercial construction sectors employed over a half-million workers with an expected annual growth rate of nearly 20,000 jobs through 2017. A construction boom that has spawned over 120 petrochemical facilities worth an estimated $80 billion in investments over the past few years has fueled this surge.

At the heart of the mismatch is the inconvenient fact that 90 percent of middle-skill jobs, such as those in the petrochemical industry, require one to five years of work experience. At the same time, nearly 1 million local residents 25 and older lack a high school diploma. Nearly half of the areas Latino populationits largest and fastest growing sub-populationlack that key credential. In the report, Chase called for the creation of more career pathways to meet the needs of employers while also developing opportunities for young people to gain the skills necessary to enter the industry. Now, it's putting more dollars behind that issue with a recent investment in a technology platform to train and source workers for careers in the petrochemical industry.

Its a website, Petrochemworks.com, that helps students and adults take advantage of career opportunities in the industry that are hidden in plain sight according to the local manufacturers association in Harris County. The site hosts career maps, educational resources, and job postings that help applicants understand what the industry offers as well as the skills and educational prerequisites needed to find a gig in the industry.

JPMorgan Chase developed the career development platform with the assistance of the local manufacturers association and the Council for Adult Experiential Learning (CAEL). The bank's charitable arm invested a half-million dollars in the project to support the development of an engaging and interactive platform packed with information about career exploration and preparation in the booming local industry. This singular investment is part of Chases broader $5 million dollar commitment to support innovative programming to address the education and skills gap in the Houston area.

For Chase and the local workforce development and education efforts its supporting, the issue is about line of sight. Building out a website like Petrochemworks.org as a one-stop shop for both employers and jobseekers resolves the mismatch that currently exists between the two groups. One question that remains is how easily jobseekers will be able to access the robust training necessary (noting that experience requirement of one to five years mentioned above) as a result of this new site. The hope is that this central organizing space for the industry will allow thousands of workers to prepare for the jobs available in this in-demand field.

If this all sounds familiar to IP readers, it's because we reported earlier this year on another online match-making and training effort, backed by the Markle Foundation and LinkedIn, that rolled out in Phoenix and Colorado.

Related: A Foundation and a Tech Firm Walk Into a Bar Together. Does Anyone Get a Better Job?

Meanwhile, what JPMorgan Chase is up to in New Orleans with Bloomberg Philanthropies is another promising approach to addressing the skils mismatch. These two funders teamed up in May to give $7.5 million (Bloomberg gave $5 million, Chase gave $2.5 million) to a coalition of community and education leaders working to help the New Orleans public high schools redesign their career and technical education programming. YouthForce NOLA, as they are called, provides coursework, credentials and work-based learning experiences designed to put students on a path to well-paying jobs in high-demand fields.

The investment will allow the organization to help 1,600 students earn qualifying credentials for jobs in regional industries like health science, technology and skilled crafts. They also hope to place over 1,200 students in paid internships aligned with students coursework in order to give them real-world experience in those fields. It should also be noted that Chase has committed $75 million over the next five years for career and technical education as part of its New Skills for Youth initiative.

Such philanthropic support could not have come at a better time for youth in New Orleans. Still reeling from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, nearly a fifth of young people in that city are neither working nor in school. The region is home to the third-largest population of disconnected youth in the United States. Forty percent of children in the region live in poverty. Current projections suggest that nearly 70,000 workers will be needed over the next decade in the fields covered by this grant.

Local leaders have also jumped on the bandwagon to support the effort by Bloomberg and Chase, highlighting the continued appeal of public-private partnerships among top philanthropies nationwide. New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu has promised to marshal the resources of the city government to support the funders efforts. John White, Louisianas Superintendent of Education, has committed to reshaping the curricula for students across the state. And local business leaders are onboard to develop new career pathways for students into internships and jobs with local employers.

Michael Bloomberg himself pointedly noted, For too long, business leaders have been missing from the table in discussions about vocational programs, and it shows. Unless they are involved, new program will failand the disconnect between career-focused education and the job market will grow even wider. Thats a strong stand and it underscores how many funders are beginning to look less at individual gifts and more towards delivering resources in ways that build pipelines for the people their contributions are meant to serve, particularly in the career and technical education field.

With this investment, Bloomberg and Chase arent just donating; theyre also working with multiple stakeholders to create conditions on the ground to ensure their investment works. Its a bold strategy that will hopefully bear fruit New Orleans youth.

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Its been a decade since the Gates and Rockefeller foundations co-founded the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) and both remain on a funding roll. Rockefeller just committed an additional $50 million and Gates is promising a one-to-one match of other donor support of AGRA programs.

Rockefellers $50 million builds upon the foundations investments in AGRA of nearly $200 million over the past decade. The Gates Foundation hasnt gone into much detail as to how much more money it will invest in AGRA on top of the over $430 million it has given so far. Earlier this summer, the foundation pledged at least $5 billion toward development programs across Africa over the next five years with at least $1 billion going toward agricultural initiatives.

Related: Gates Foundation Ups its AGRA Support

Gates and Rockefellers recent AGRA pledges were announced at the latest African Green Revolution Forum. The forum resulted in more than $30 billion in total commitments including $24 billion over 10 years from the African Development Bank.

So why after a decade, are powerful donors like Gates and Rockefeller continuing to pour big money into Africas agricultural sector? Surely, progress has been made over the past 10 years, right?

Indeed, AGRA has made major strides toward improving the lives and livelihoods of the millions of smallholder farmers throughout Africa over the past decade. Smallholder farmerswhich comprise around 70 percent of the continents populationare now using technologies that are helping them to increase their yields and profits. Also, training and education programs offered by AGRA are working to cultivate the next generation of agricultural leaders in Africa.

Additionally, AGRA has launched a number of programs and projects that have led to the development of better seeds, improved soil fertility, better market information systems, increased access to financial products, and improved storage and transportation systems.

Related: Postharvest Food Losses Are Still a Big Deal. Which is Why Rockefeller is on the Case

So, yes, a good deal of progress has been made. But with around 1.2 billion people in the world who are hungry and undernourished, much more work needs to be done. Particularly since the number of hungry people around the world is expected to grow to 2 billion by 2050. Not to mention, the heavy lifting needs to continue if AGRAs vision of doubling the incomes of 30 million farm households by the end of this decade is to be realized.

AGRA is getting plenty of powerful help toward realizing that vision, and its not just coming from Gates and Rockefeller.

In 2015, The MasterCard Foundation launched its Fund for Rural Prosperity. This $50 million initiative aims to improve the livelihoods of up to 1 million of Africas rural poor population, mainly through improving and increasing their access to financial products and services. The foundation is an AGRA partner, focusing on promoting financial inclusion. According to AGRA, it shares the foundations belief that smallholder farmers and local agriculture businesses deserve access to affordable financial services.

In 2015, AGRA received a $15 million grant from MasterCards Fund for Rural Prosperity in support of its work toward increasing access to financial services for over 700,000 smallholder farmers in Ghana, Kenya, and Tanzania. The overall goal of the projectwhich emphasizes women farmersis to help increase crop yields and improve economic security.

Related:AGRA and Mercy Corps Win Big Inaugural Give from the MasterCard Foundation

Another big AGRA supporter is the Howard G. Buffett Foundation. No surprise here given Howard Buffetts love for farming.

According to Buffett, We have not succeeded in reducing hunger. Weve not succeeded in increasing productivity in [any] African country the way we need to. So were not getting it right. To make things right, Buffett made a $500 million investment in Rwandas agricultural sector. Those funds support a 10-year plan to help smallholder farmers through a number of projects related to irrigation and agricultural training.

Related: A Test Case in Africa: Howard G. Buffetts $500 Million Commitment to Rwandan Farmers

In his book, 40 Chances: Finding Hope in a Hungry World, Buffett writes about Joe DeVries, a man he calls a modern day hero. DeVries, who serves as the chief of Agricultural Transformation at AGRA, saw a major gap in seed industry in Africa as governments were failing to conduct enough seed research and development and private markets had no interest in the field. So DeVries created a private seed industry. Now, millions of farmers are obtaining more productive and resilient seeds.

By DeVries numbers, his efforts have helped feed some 25 million people. Those numbers are likely to grow as AGRA has announced that it plans to invest $500 million over the next five years to help agricultural companies as well as governments in Africa produce seeds. DeVries projects that 11 of the countries in which AGRA is currently working to be food secure in the next decade. Which is kind of a big deal. With projections like that, its no wonder that the likes of Gates, Rockefeller, Buffett and MasterCard continue to invest heavily in Africas green revolution.
Phoenix-based U-Haul International Inc. is expanding one of its self-storage properties in Denver. Plans are underway to add more than 700 indoor, climate-controlled units to U-Haul Moving & Storage of the Mile High at 7540 York St. The facility opened in 1976, but lacked space to expand its storage offering until the company recently acquired a nearly 6-acre parcel abutting property.

"We are excited to finally bring climate-controlled self-storage to this area," said Mike Blau, president of the U-Haul Co. of N.W. Colorado. "It's a much-needed service that our customers demand. Our outdoor, drive-up self-storage is at capacity, and we have been looking for ways to expand for the last three years. This is going to be huge for us and this community."

Covered vehicle-storage spaces will also be added. The new units will roughly double the amount of self-storage among the six U-Haul-owned and -operated facilities in the region, Blau said.

U-Haul plans to hire new employees as the expansion is completed, according to a press release.

Established in 1945, U-Haul has more than 44 million square feet of storage space at more than 1,200 owned facilities throughout North America.
Aussie work injury insurance mutual Employer Mutual Limited (EML) has announced two executive appointments.Tracey Harris has been appointed group executive for corporate services, and Gerard McDermott has been delegated to the role of group executive for managed funds.Harris brings to the role strong operational and strategic experience in both local and international markets. She previously worked for Cover-More Group as GM for insurance operations and CEO, China.She was also executive director for corporate & CFO at CareFlight Group responsible for overseeing the Groups financial, shared services, and sales & marketing divisions.McDermott joins EML with extensive experience in the insurance and retail banking industry. He was head of general insurance for Westpac BT; EGM for personal insurance distribution and EGM for direct distribution, administration and servicing at Suncorp Group; and GM, small business banking for St. George Bank.Mark Coyne, EML chief executive, commented on the appointments: We look forward to Tracey and Gerards leadership and vast experience in overseeing our Corporate Services and Managed Funds operations.
A work injury insurance mutual company has been recognised for delivering innovative approaches to return to work with tangible and outcome-focused results at a ceremony in Melbourne.Employer Mutual Limited (EML) has been awarded Swiss Re s 2016 Excellence & Innovation in Return to Work Award in recognition of its joint study partnership with icare self insurance, NSW Health, and University of Sydney on work injury screening and early intervention in relation to major at-risk musculoskeletal injuries.The award was presented by Jimi Groom, head of P&C claims ANZ for Swiss Re, and Rob Whelan, executive director and CEO of the Insurance Council of Australia . It was accepted by Elisa Hitchens, EML client services manager, on behalf of EML and the joint study partnership.Rachel Elmes, GM TMF Operations EML said: Industry partnerships are vital for improving the outcomes for injured workers returning to work. As a mutual, EML has invested $26 million over the past four years in research based study and risk prevention tools for our members and the industry as a whole.It is studies such as this joint partnership, that are making a real difference to people recovering from a work place injury, added Elmes.In a bid to change the face of insurance education, the Australian and New Zealand Institute of Insurance and Finance (ANZIIF) has announced its new education model at the recently held Australian Insurance Industry Awards in Sydney.The relaunch of the ANZIIF Skills Units follows a 2015 partnership with NIBA on the delivery of broker education, and sees traditional education from semester-long study periods disaggregated and condensed into 4-6 week units based around required industry skills.Were changing the way education is done in insurance, Prue Willsford , ANZIIF CEO, said.Instead of traditional talk and test learning where the focus is on short-term memorisation, were using explorative methods of teaching to ensure students truly understand the concepts theyre studying and can directly apply that knowledge to the workplace.The education model  completely done online  combines audio, visual, and interactive tasks; and comprised of stand-alone units to allow students to tailor their study to meet their career and organisation goals. Units have also been mapped to insurance roles and experience levels for those who want more direction.Students learn by filtering information, selecting outcomes, organising and integrating data, and reflecting on prior knowledge. To pass a unit, students must successfully complete an interactive real-world scenario they would likely face at a typical day at work by analysing a situation, interacting with a virtual consumer, and solving the problem to the satisfaction of insurer and insured, ANZIIF explained in a statement.In consultation with industry, we identified issues that organisations felt werent served by traditional education offerings. Namely, that the competencies taught in existing education options werent aligned to what the industry actually needed and that study took too long in a market where the ability to adapt quickly is crucial, said Willsford.With traditional development pipelines being eroded, the industry told us it needed a way to fill talent gaps and up skill employees in a timely and effective manner. Our new offering provides that.Ansvar Insurance has held its second interfaith arson forum in Geelong to help communities navigate and better prepare for the threat of arson and deal with the psychological effects of an arson attack on faith property.The forum, which was held in response to the recent spate of church fires, was held in partnership with the Geelong and Interfaith Network, Victorian Council of Churches, and Ansvars Risk Solutions team; and attended by faith customers and community members from the Geelong region.Like the first arson forum, the second forum educated communities on how to protect faith properties from arson through protective measures, early detection, and fire suppression.Attendees were also given insight into the behaviour of arsonists, as well as information about the psychological impacts of arson and the counselling and support services available to arson victims. Warren Hutcheon , Ansvar Insurance CEO, said: Based on strong word of mouth and high levels of interest in the first forum held earlier this year at the end of May, we held a second arson forum in July to meet the needs of the interfaith community in helping them to deal with arson attacks, both from a preventative and risk mitigation angle. Additional to this, and just as important, the forums also provided guidance and advice on dealing with the psychological impact of the losses endured as a result of arson attacks on church and community properties.Due to the success of the two Victorian events, Ansvar is currently planning for arson events in other states including NSW and Queensland.
A Virginia judge has denied Rolling Stone magazines attempt to throw out a $25 million lawsuit filed by the fraternity that was the focus on its now debunked article about a gang rape.

The Phi Kappa Psi fraternity at the University of Virginia filed a defamation lawsuit against the magazine last year over the now discredited article A Rape on Campus. The story described in chilling detail a students account of being raped by seven men at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house in September 2012.

Charlottesville Circuit Judge Richard E. Moore said in his decision released Thursday that the statements made about the fraternity in the story could reasonably be considered defamatory.

An attorney for Rolling Stone didnt immediately return a message left at her office Thursday.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Lawsuits Legislation Virginia
Greenlight Capital Re Ltd., the reinsurer that counts on hedge fund manager David Einhorn to oversee its investment portfolio, reached a deal to expand in Europe and Asia as the company seeks to improve underwriting.

The reinsurers Irish subsidiary is partnering with Kattan Associates Ltd. to seek new business, Greenlight Re said Thursday in a statement that didnt disclose terms.

Greenlight Re has posted losses in five of the last six quarters, as Einhorns investments slumped and the company struggled to find profitable insurance contracts. The second-quarter net underwriting loss widened to $24.5 million from $13.3 million a year earlier.

The extensive experience and relationships that Kattan Associates brings to the insurance industry will provide an excellent network for Greenlight Re to access attractive business, Brendan Barry, chief underwriting officer of the Cayman Islands-based company, said in the statement. We continue to expand our global footprint and further diversify our underwriting portfolio.

Greenlight Re previously announced that it was pushing into the mortgage-guaranty market after being burned by costs tied commercial-vehicle contracts and fraudulent claims on property policies in Florida. Reinsurers offer coverage for primary carriers, and can provide a stable source of funds for money managers to invest.

Kattan Associates Habib Kattan previously was the group head of ceded reinsurance and credit control at Tokio Marine Kiln. In a career of about 40 years, he has had senior roles in underwriting and as a middleman between insurance buyers and sellers, according to the statement.

Greenlight Re slipped 3 cents to $21.74 at 1:26 p.m. in New York. It has advanced 16 percent this year after dropping 43 percent in 2015.

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Copyright 2022 Bloomberg.

Topics Mergers & Acquisitions Europe Reinsurance
Two employees laid off by the parent company of Indiana-based for-profit college chain ITT Technical Institute have filed a lawsuit claiming the company violated federal law by not providing 60 days notice.

Allen Federman, a business analyst at ITT Educational Services Inc.s Carmel, Ind., headquarters, and Steve Ryan, an instructor at two ITT Technical Institute locations in California, filed the complaint in U.S. District Court in Delaware.

The lawsuit seeks class-action status on behalf of the 8,000 employees who are losing their jobs as a result of ITTs decision to shut down all 130 ITT Technical Institute campuses in 38 states, the Indianapolis Business Journal reported.

ITT announced Tuesday it was closing the campuses because it cannot survive recent sanctions by the U.S. Department of Education.

The lawsuit claims ITT violated the federal Worker Adjustment Retraining and Notification Act, which requires 60 days advance written notice in the case of mass layoffs or plant closings. The law affects employers with more than 100 employees and business sites with more than 50 workers. ITT Tech campuses with fewer than 50 employees might not be responsible for following the law.

The suit also claims the layoff violates California labor laws, which also require 60 days notice during mass layoffs. ITT Educational operated 15 ITT Tech campuses in California.

The lawsuit asks for each affected employee to receive unpaid wages, salary, commissions, bonuses and other benefits that would have been paid over a 60-day period.

ITT spokeswoman Nicole Elam called the campus closures a complicated process. In an email to the newspaper, Elam said all matters involving students and personnel are priorities.

The chain was banned Aug. 25 from enrolling new students who used federal financial aid because, Education Department officials said, the company had become a risk to students and taxpayers. The department also ordered ITT to pay $152 million within 30 days to help cover student refunds and other liabilities if the chain closed.

ITT Educational Services CEO Kevin Modany told reporters on a conference call that ITT was the victim of a regulatory assault and never had the chance to defend itself.

One of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs is Jack A. Raisner of Outten & Golden LLP of New York, who represented employees of Corinthian College, another for-profit education chain that closed in April 2015 after the government withdrew aid.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Lawsuits California InsurTech Tech Training Development Indiana
The insurance brokerage Willis Towers Watson Plc has agreed to pay $120 million to settle litigation accusing it of helping now-imprisoned Texas financier Allen Stanford run a $7.2 billion Ponzi scheme, court papers show.

The papers, in which Willis denied wrongdoing, were filed on Wednesday with the federal court in Dallas. The accord requires court approval.

In a lawsuit, investors and a court-appointed receiver for Stanfords companies accused Willis of providing letters describing the insurance policies and touting the credentials of the swindlers Antigua-based Stanford International Bank.

They said Willis did this with an expectation that Stanford would use the letters to lure investors into buying his bogus offshore certificates of deposit and assure them that his business was sound and their investments were safe.

The settlement is the largest in 7-1/2 years of litigation brought on behalf of roughly 18,000 former Stanford investors, Edward Snyder, a lawyer for the Official Stanford Investors Committee, said in an email on Thursday.

Overall settlements total well over $300 million, Snyder added. Many lawsuits remain pending.

In a regulatory filing, London-based Willis said it has set aside reserves to cover its settlement.

A spokesman, Josh Wozman, declined to comment on Thursday.

Stanfords fraud was uncovered in 2009. Now 66, he is serving a 110-year prison term following his March 2012 conviction.

The case is Janvey et al v. Willis of Colorado Inc et al, U.S. District Court, Northern District of Texas, No. 13-03980. The main Stanford litigation is SEC v. Stanford International Bank Ltd et al in the same court, No. 09-00298.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Dan Grebler)

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Topics Claims
Eleven years ago, Sam Barbera hooked up his boat and headed to New Orleans to ferry people from Hurricane Katrinas floodwaters. Four weeks ago, he found himself in another boat for rescues  this time at home in Baton Rouge, when a massive rainstorm ravaged the area.

It was night and day, he said. Katrina was kind of baptism by fire. It was just people showing up, everybody doing their own thing.

But during the catastrophic flooding in mid-August, police directed volunteer boats and their owners  nicknamed the Cajun Navy  to neighborhoods where water was rising, and social media postings offered guidance on where victims needed help.

You didnt have that in Katrina. Katrina was kind of like you just put your boat in. Katrina was mayhem, Barbera said.

In 2005, the monster storm exposed huge gaps in disaster response plans on local, state and federal levels. More than 1,500 people were killed in Louisiana alone. After the levees failed and inundated New Orleans and surrounding communities, thousands were plucked from rooftops and attics. Response was a fly-by-the-seat-of-your pants effort, with no coordinated strategy for rescues  or what to do with the people saved. First responders were overwhelmed, and many were left to fend for themselves.

Lessons learned from Katrina formed the backbone of state and federal reaction as historic flooding ravaged 20 parishes last month. The response in the immediate aftermath was widely praised by officials and storm victims, Republican and Democrat alike.

But the slog of the longer-term recovery is starting to show that cracks remain in the disaster safety net  and that wariness lingers about federal help after the troubled response to Katrina.

Criticisms are emerging about the pace of housing aid, the size of grants from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the question marks that surround rebuilding and recovery.

I dont feel like yall are pushing the issue quick enough or fast enough to be able to get people back in their homes, state Rep. Clay Schexnayder, a Republican who represents hard-hit areas, told FEMA at a recent hearing on flood response.

Stephan Perkins, 46, was waiting for a FEMA inspector to show up 10 days after he registered with the agency. Perkins had a flood insurance policy that covered the structural damage to his home but not its contents. A neighbor with the same type of flood coverage told Perkins that FEMA offered him less than $200.

Im just hearing the horror stories, said Perkins, a father of two.

FEMA defends its response, saying it has approved more than $575 million in recovery grants for households so far, set up 26 disaster assistance centers and brought more than 2,500 staff to Louisiana.

FEMA has been on the ground in Louisiana since before the first drop of rain hit the ground. Weve already provided shelter and support to thousands of families, agency spokesman Rafael Lemaitre said in a statement.

Perhaps complaints are inevitable when a disaster displaces so many who desperately want to get back to their homes. Officials estimate more than 110,000 homes are damaged from flooding described as the worst disaster since Superstorm Sandy.

But discontent took longer to surface this time, and theres little disagreement about improvements in the federal and state response in the years since Katrina.

People werent left stranded for days without supplies, like at the New Orleans convention center and on interstate overpasses after Katrina. Hospitals and nursing homes werent left to fend for themselves when threatened with floodwaters, like in 2005. Shelters allowed pets to come with their owners, to avoid prior disaster scenes where people risked drowning rather than leave pets in flooded homes.

Sgt. Cliff Ortis performed rescue missions for the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries in both disasters. To him, the change was obvious. He noted that state and local agencies now hold regular meetings to chart out disaster response protocols and synchronize efforts.

Theres definitely a giant education movement from Katrina to now, Ortis said. No question the coordination was better.

Republican Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser, who rode out Katrina in devastated Plaquemines Parish, said the state and FEMA response has been right on target.

Thats not to suggest the response wasnt without a hitch. Flood damage to AT&T equipment disrupted service and hampered some communication for first responders. Hundreds of motorists got trapped on an interstate when state officials didnt close it fast enough. Local officials criticized the Red Cross for taking too long to assist with shelters and for turning away donations.

And just like after Katrina, the great challenge moving ahead is funding. With less than one-fifth of storm victims estimated to have flood insurance, Edwards and Louisianas congressional delegation are discussing an additional flood aid package from Congress.

Carlette Dawson, 49, said she received $15,000 from FEMA after an inspector visited her Baton Rouge home. Needing much more to repair the damage, Dawson was inquiring about a loan from the U.S. Small Business Administration. Problems with the computer system kept her waiting more than two hours.

Why is it so hard to get help? she said.

Associated Press writer Michael Kunzelman contributed to this report.

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Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Louisiana Flood
A meat processing plant in Bakerhill, Ala., has been fined more than $70,000 following an investigation after a worker lost his fingertip.

Al.com reports the Keystone Food plant is facing about $76,700 in proposed penalties following an investigation by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

The agency began looking into the plant after a 65-year-old employee lost the tip of his index finger while cleaning an overhead saw blade on March 7.

The citations include unguarded platforms that pose a fall risk, unguarded saws and workers not wearing eye protection.

Keystone Foods is based in West Chester, Pennsylvania, and supplies fresh and frozen food products including poultry, beef, fish and pork. It has several facilities in Alabama including a hatchery in Eufala.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Workers' Compensation Alabama
A judge this week ordered the Washington Attorney Generals Office to give him internal emails that might help explain when state lawyers handling a case about liability for the devastating Oso landslide realized that their expert witnesses were improperly deleting emails.

King County Superior Court Judge Roger Rogoff ordered the office to produce the emails within a week, saying its critical for him to know what they show as he considers punishing the state for allowing the destruction of potential evidence in the case.

Im just trying to figure out when yall knew, Rogoff told the states lawyers.

Attorney General Bob Ferguson has already acknowledged that one of his lawyers, Mark Jobson, knew for the past year and a half that experts hired by the state to determine the cause of the 2014 slide were deleting emails among themselves. But the office insists that its other lawyers were unaware, and that Jobson and the experts sincerely believed the emails did not need to be turned over to the plaintiffs and thus could be deleted.

During a hearing Wednesday, neither state Solicitor General Noah Purcell, who investigated the offices handling of the matter, nor Rene Tomisser, senior counsel in the Attorney Generals Office, could definitively answer the judges questions, and Rogoff insisted on seeing any emails sent among state lawyers or between state lawyers and the experts that might shed light on the issue. The judge said he would review the messages in private rather than immediately turn them over to lawyers for the other side.

Rogoff noted that he was a prosecutor for 22 years before becoming a judge: Youre sitting in a room with your agents, essentially, and they mention the word emails, and they mention the word deletion, and someone isnt jumping up and saying, What?!

Purcell said the state was willing to provide the internal emails.

The landslide wiped out a rural neighborhood 60 miles northeast of Seattle on March 22, 2014, killing 43 people and making it the deadliest landslide in U.S. history. In lawsuits, victims or their families alleged that the state, Snohomish County or a company that logged above where the hillside collapsed have liability for worsening the damage or failing to warn about the danger; some claims have been dismissed, but some remain, with trial scheduled to begin in about a month.

Attorneys for the families said they were shocked to hear, during depositions this summer, that the experts had routinely deleted emails to each other as they studied the landslide, and that one of the states lawyers knew about it.

In asking the judge to punish the state, the victims lawyers argued that the experts tailored their findings to suit the states case, and that deleting the emails helped them cover their tracks. They asked the judge to hold the state liable for landslide damages, make a finding that the state knew or should have known of the danger the landslide posed or bar the states experts from testifying.

These are very smart people and they dont like the idea of lawyers getting inside their communications and cross-examining them on it, John W. Phillips, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, told the judge.

The states lawyers rejected that assertion, saying the state spent $3 million to advance scientific knowledge in hopes of preventing further such catastrophes. The state turned over extensive raw data as well as other documents noting the significant scientific uncertainty about the factors contributing to the landslide, they said.

Purcell told the judge the experts didnt believe they were doing anything wrong, because they acknowledged the practice openly during their depositions. The state has hired a private company to see whether the deleted emails can be recovered; about 1,000 have been provided to the plaintiffs lawyers, but its not clear how many more can be recovered.

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Topics Legislation Washington
Ukraine has implemented all liabilities for receiving $1 billion secured by the United States, the fund could arrive by late September.

According to a posting on the Facebook page of the Finance Ministry of Ukraine, Finance Minister Oleksandr Danyliuk gave this information at opening of the Ukraine Investor Day conference organized by Dragon Capital in London.

Danyliuk said that this is one of the positive signals for investors.

According to the report, dozens of investors from all over the world took part in the conference to discuss opportunities of investing into Ukrainian securities and economy.
Nel terzo trimestre del 2016 il prodotto interno lordo, espresso in valori concatenati con anno di riferimento 2010, corretto per gli effetti di calendario e destagionalizzato, e aumentato dello 0,3% rispetto al trimestre precedente e dello 0,9% nei confronti del terzo trimestre del 2015. Lo sostiene lIstat.

La crescita congiunturale e la sintesi di un aumento del valore aggiunto nei comparti dellindustria e dei servizi e di una diminuzione nellagricoltura. Dal lato della domanda, vi e un contributo ampiamente positivo della componente nazionale (al lordo delle scorte), in parte compensato da un apporto negativo della componente estera netta.

Nello stesso periodo il Pil e aumentato in termini congiunturali dello 0,7% negli Stati Uniti, dello 0,5% nel Regno Unito e dello 0,2% in Francia. In termini tendenziali, si e registrato un aumento del 2,3% nel Regno Unito, dell1,5% negli Stati Uniti, dell1,1% in Francia. Nel complesso, il Pil dei paesi dellarea Euro e cresciuto dello 0,3% rispetto al trimestre precedente ed dell1,6% nel confronto con lo stesso trimestre del 2015.

I dati Istat sul Pil sono in linea con le stime del governo ha commentato il ministro dellEconomia, Pier Carlo Padoan, arrivando alla Camera per lincontro con il gruppo Pd sulla legge di Bilancio. ll titolare di via XX Settembre in un tweet, poco prima, aveva sottolineato come i dati Istat confermano che leconomia e sulla strada giusta e le stime di crescita sono affidabili. Ma occorre spingere per accelerare
Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN), one of the largest companies in the world, is a global leader in e-commerce and cloud computing. The company operates an online marketplace offering a vast variety of products mostly from other merchants, including electronics, apparel, furniture, food, and toys. It also offers video and music streaming services. Amazon's cloud services platform hosts online applications for a broad range of customers.

Founded in 1994, Amazon started out as an online bookstore. But its founder and former chief executive officer (CEO), Jeff Bezos, envisioned Amazon as more than merely an online retailer. Instead, Bezos saw Amazon as a technology company whose competitive advantage was making online transactions simpler for consumers. Amazon shares began trading following an initial public offering (IPO) in May 1997. Its stock is listed on the Nasdaq Global Select Market.

Amazon has long been based in Seattle. In 2018 it unveiled plans for a "second headquarters" in Arlington, Virginia, which is slated to open in 2023. Andy Jassy has been the e-commerce giant's CEO since succeeding Bezos in July 2021. Bezos remains as executive chair. Amazon is grouped with consumer discretionary stocks for investing purposes, though it is also included in many mutual and exchange-traded funds focused on the technology sector in recognition of Amazon Web Services' (AWS) status as a leading cloud computing provider. The company's main competitors include brick-and-mortar retailers like Walmart Inc. (WMT), the e-commerce platform operator eBay Inc. (EBAY), and cloud computing services rivals Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) and Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL). Amazon posted net income of $33.4 billion on net sales of $469.8 billion in FY 2021, which ended Dec. 31, 2021.

Key Takeaways Amazon is an online retailer, streaming services provider, and cloud computing company.

Amazon's rivals include Walmart, eBay, Microsoft, and Google parent Alphabet.

Amazon earned $33.4 billion in net income on net sales of $469.8 billion in FY 2021.

On March 9, 2022, Amazon's board of directors approved $10 billion in share buybacks and a 20-for-1 stock split that went into effect on June 3.

Amazon's Recent Developments

On May 2, 2022, the results of the second of two unionization votes at Amazon facilities were announced. The first vote came out in favor of unionization, the second against.

On March 9, 2022, Amazon's board of directors approved a 20-for-1 stock split and authorized a buyback of up to $10 billion in shares over an indefinite period of time. Shareholders of record on May 27 received their additional shares on June 3, with the stock resuming trading on a split-adjusted basis on June 6.

Also in March, one U.S. judge dismissed an antitrust suit by the District of Columbia over the company's pricing rules for third-party merchants, while another U.S. judge refused to dismiss a private class-action suit challenging similar practices.

On April 1, 2022, workers at one of the company's warehouses in Staten Island, New York, voted to be represented by the recently formed Amazon Labor Union, the first successful unionization vote at an Amazon facility.

What's Happening with the Amazon Union Votes? On April 1, 2022, workers at Amazon's JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island, New York, elected the recently formed Amazon Labor Union to represent them in collective bargaining, the first successful unionization effort at an Amazon facility. On April 8, 2022, Amazon filed a motion with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) asking it to invalidate the Staten Island election results, alleging legal violations by union backers and bias in favor of the union by the NLRB's regional office. On April 9, 2022, the NLRB said workers at an Amazon warehouse in Alabama rejected union representation on March 31, in an election re-run because the NLRB ruled the company improperly interfered with the first vote. On April 18, 2022, an administrative law judge ruled Amazon illegally fired an Amazon Labor Union from his job at the Staten Island warehouse in 2020 in retaliation for protected organizing activities. On April 25, 2022, workers at a second Amazon warehouse in Staten Island began voting on union representation. However, the effort to unionize the Staten Island warehouse failed, with 618 employees voting against joining the union and 380 for, according to results released by National Labor Board announced on May 2, 2022.

What's Happening with Amazon's Product Recall? In mid-July 2021, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) sued Amazon to force it to recall hazardous products sold on its marketplace by independent merchants. The products included 24,000 faulty carbon monoxide detectors, 400,000 hair dryers sold without the required immersion protection devices to guard against electrocution risk, and an unspecified number of children's sleepwear garments that failed to meet mandated flammability standards. While Amazon removed some of the hazardous product listings, notified purchasers they presented a hazard and offered a refund in the form of an Amazon gift card, it failed to comply with all the requirements the CPSC imposes on product distributors, including issuing an agency-approved recall notice specifying the hazards, tracking product returns and documenting the destruction of hazardous products, Amazon contended it was a third-party logistics supplier exempted from CPSC distributor rules. On, Jan. 19, 2022, an administrative law judge ruled Amazon must comply with CPSC distributor rules because it handles functions that qualify it as such, including decisions on product returns and consumer refunds.



What's Happening with the Antitrust Lawsuits Against Amazon? On March 18, 2022, the a U.S. Superior Cout judge dismissed an antitrust suit filed against Amazon by the attorney general for the District of Columbia, ruling the suit failed to show that Amazon's agreements with third-party merchants obligating them to price their products on Amazon no higher then they do elsewhere serves to increase consumer prices. On April 13, 2022, the attorney general for the District of Columbia sought reconsideration of the ruling, arguing the agreements allow Amazon to charge higher fees for third-party listings than other online marketplaces, because merchants can't pass on the lower listings fees to consumers. On March 11, 2022, a U.S. district court judge in Washington state refused to dismiss a class action suit against Amazon over the same "most favored nation" pricing rules, brought by two frequent Amazon shoppers and several law firms.





What's Happening with Amazon's Acquisition of MGM? On March 17, 2022, Amazon said it completed its acquisition for $8.45 billion of MGM, along with its catalog of more than 4,000 films and 17,000 TV shows. MGM was not the same company as MGM Resorts International (MGM). The acquisition, announced on May 26, 2021, was Amazon's second-largest after its $13.7 billion deal for Whole Foods in 2017, and will allow the company to augment its video streaming offerings. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which closely scrutinized the deal, reportedly did not attempt to block it because its four commissioners were split along party lines on the matter.

FAQs

Has AMZN ever split its stock? Amazon has split its stock four times, as follows. The first three stock splits took place in its first two years as a public company, and the fourth more than 20 years later. as follows: June 2, 1998: a 2-for-1 split.

Jan. 5, 1999: a 3-for-1 split.

Sept. 1, 1999: a 2-for-1 split.

June 3, 2022: a 20-for-1 split.



Does AMZN pay a dividend? No, it does not pay a dividend.

How many shares of AMZN stock are there? As of Apr. 20, 2022the date of the last official disclosureAmazon had 508,720,481 shares outstanding. Following its June 3 stock split, Amazon has 10,174,409,620 shares outstanding.

Who is Amazon's CEO? Andy Jassy, who succeeded founder Jeff Bezos on July 5, 2021. Jassy is also a member of the board of directors, where Bezos is executive chair. Jassy founded AWS, Amazon's highly profitable and fast-growing cloud computing platform. He was CEO of AWS from April 2016 until July 2021. Jassy has been with Amazon since 1997.


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REE Stock News - Defense Metals (TSX-V: DEFN.V) (OTCQB: DFMTF) Drills 113 metres of 2.50% Total Rare Earth Oxide at Wicheeda

Vancouver, British Columbia - October 26, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) Mining / Metals / Green Energy Stock News - Defense Metals Corp. (TSX-V: DEFN / OTCQB: DFMTF/ FSE:35D) is pleased to announce high-grade Rare Earth Element ("REE") assay results from one additional core hole, totalling 383 metres (m), collared within the northern area of Defense Metals' 100% owned Wicheeda REE Deposit.

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CAVE CREEK, Ariz. - October 27, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) Endexx Corporation (OTCBB:EDXC), a provider of innovative, plant-derived, and sustainable health and skincare products, today announces it has secured three key significant orders for its newly acquired, non-nicotine plant-based vape product, HYLA.

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Update 10.20pm: 45 people will spend the night trapped in cable cars over Mont Blanc after a rescue operation was stood down for the night.

110 people became trapped as they rode the Vallee Blanche Cable Car in the Alps, when overhead cables crossed over for "unknown reasons" earlier this evening.

Rescuers managed to evacuate 65 people by helicopter, but the operation was suspended for safety reasons including bad weather and poor visibility.

The remaining 45 will be rescued in the morning.

Those still trapped have been given water, food and survival blankets.

Rescue officers are staying to stay inside the cabins to reassure affected holidaymakers throughout the night.

Earlier: More than 100 people are stuck on a series of cable cars in the Mont Blanc region of the Alps, French officials said.

Chamonix mayor Eric Fournier said "the people stuck are being evacuated by helicopter" and added that "there's nothing fundamentally to fear".

Mr Fournier, who spoke to BFM-TV, said Italian authorities were helping with the rescue.

It is not clear what caused the cable cars to stop - or if there was an electricity outage.

A local police official said that the 110 people trapped were in the Vallee Blanche Cable Car that rises to an altitude of 3,778 metres (12,395ft).

It connects the famed Aiguille du Midi peak to the Pointe Helbronner and takes 30 minutes.
The existing model of economic development of Ukraine has run out of steam and requires urgent replacement, one of the founders of the Ukrainian Business Initiative Serhiy Taruta said at the 26th Economic Forum in Krynica (Poland).

"The main mistake during defining the economic strategy for further Ukraine's development is an attempt to conduct reforms without radical changing the existing economic development model. The course of stabilizing the economy is pointless without changing the system. Only a splash economic growth can save Ukraine. There are opportunities for this growth," he said.

The European Union (EU) could help Ukraine to implement a plan to restore the economy in 2017-2030 on the basis of re-industrialization and a broad application of innovations. The implementation of the plan would allow Ukraine to reach GDP of around $500 billion by 2030.

According to some economists, the successful realization of the new economic growth model would require only around $250 billion of foreign direct investment (FDI) or some $16.5 billion a year.

"This figure for investment looks realistic. Ukraine must draft a strategy for which Europe would be ready to provide an investment resource. This must be an action plan acceptable for European administrations and business structures. We want Europeans to participate first in the examination of the strategy and then supervise its implementation," Taruta said.
North Korea says it has successfully conducted an atomic explosion test aimed at examining the power of its nuclear warheads.

State TV said the test elevated the country's nuclear arsenal and is part of its response to international sanctions following its earlier nuclear test and long-range rocket launch in January and February.

Pyongyang said it will continue to take efforts to strengthen the quantity and quality of its nuclear weapons.

South Korean president Park Geun-hye strongly condemned the test, saying in a statement that it showed the "fanatic recklessness of the Kim Jong Un government as it clings to a nuclear development".

Confirmation of a fifth nuclear test by Pyongyang came after international monitors detected unusual seismic activity near a north-eastern test site.

Earthquake and Volcano of the Korea Monitoring Division Director Ryoo Yong-gyu points at the epicenter of seismic waves in North Korea, in Seoul, South Korea. Picture: AP

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement that "artificial seismic waves" from a quake measuring 5.0 were detected near the Punggye-ri test site.

A South Korean Defence Ministry official said Seoul detected an estimated explosive yield of 10 kilotons and assessed that it was from a nuclear test.

After the fourth test in January, South Korean policymaker Lee Cheol Woo said Seoul's National Intelligence Service told him an estimated explosive yield of six kilotons was detected.

The 5.0 magnitude earthquake is the largest of the quakes associated with North Korean nuclear tests, according to South Korea's weather agency. Artificial seismic waves measuring 3.9 were reported after the first nuclear test in 2006, and 4.8 was reported from its fourth test.

North Korea's nuclear tests are part of a push for a nuclear-armed missile that could one day reach the US mainland. A second nuclear test this year is a defiant response to Western pressure on Pyongyang to halt its nuclear ambitions. The country has previously conducted tests every three to four years.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un (pictured below) has overseen a robust increase in the number and kinds of missiles tested this year. Not only has the range of weapons successfully tested jumped significantly, but the country is working to perfect new platforms for launching them - submarines and mobile launchers.

The longer ranges and mobile launchers give the North greater ability to threaten the tens of thousands of US troops stationed throughout Asia.

The seismic activity comes on the 68th anniversary of the founding of North Korea's government and days after world leaders gathered in China for the G20 economic summit.

The new test will lead to a strong push for tougher sanctions at the United Nations and further worsen already abysmal relations between Pyongyang and its neighbours. North Korea is already one of the most heavily sanctioned places on earth, and many question whether the penalties work.

North Korea is thought to have a handful of rudimentary nuclear bombs and has spent decades trying to perfect a multi-stage, long-range missile to eventually carry smaller versions of the bombs.

After several failures, it put its first satellite into space with a long-range rocket launched in December 2012, and has since had another successful launch.

Experts say ballistic missiles and rockets in satellite launches share similar bodies, engines and other technology. The UN calls the North's long-range rocket launches banned tests of ballistic missile technology.

It is unclear whether the North has achieved the technology needed to manufacture a miniaturised nuclear warhead that could fit on a long-range missile capable of hitting the US. Some analysts believe the country has the ability to arm shorter range missile with warheads.

On Tuesday, North Korea fired three medium-range Rodong missiles that travelled about 620 miles and landed near Japan, and last month, a missile from a North Korean submarine flew about 310 miles, the longest distance achieved by the North for such a weapon. This worried many South Koreans because submarine-based missiles are harder to detect before launch than land-based weapons.

Diplomacy has so far failed to stop North Korea's progress. Six-nation negotiations on dismantling Pyongyang's nuclear programme in exchange for aid were last held in late 2008 and fell apart in early 2009, when North Korea was led by Kim Jong Un's father, Kim Jong Il, who died in late 2011.

North Korea blames the US and South Korea for its nuclear programme, saying long-running "hostility" from Seoul and Washington to its government makes the development crucial for the small country's survival.
A cell of young women behind a thwarted attack near Notre Dame Cathedral were radicalised by the Islamic State group and guided by commanders in Syria, the Paris prosecutor said.

Francois Molins spoke during a press conference a day after three women were dramatically arrested, including a teen whose father owned a car loaded with gas canisters that was abandoned in central Paris. No detonators were in the car, discovered on Sunday morning.

The women who spearheaded the failed plot included a 19-year-old whose written pledge of allegiance to the Islamic State group was found by police, a security official said on Friday.

The teen, Ines Madani, stabbed a police officer with a knife and was shot in the leg on Thursday evening in a raid south of Paris, police said.

One of the women detained in a police raid, referred to as Sarah H and who was wearing a veil during the police raid, was betrothed separately to two French extremists who carried out deadly attacks this year, the Paris prosecutor said.

Sarah H was engaged to Larossi Abballa, who killed two police officials in Magnanville in June and filmed the aftermath on Facebook Live before dying in a police raid.

She was also betrothed to Adel Kermiche, who slit the throat of an elderly French priest during morning Mass, and died in July, Molins added.

Mr Molins did not say when she was engaged to either man.

France's interior minister described the pursuit as "a race against time" to find Madani and the two women with her before they struck. Another of the women had been engaged to the extremist who killed two French police officials earlier this year before he was shot to death, two officials said.

A man arrested on Thursday also had ties to the dead jihadi, Larossi Abballa, who filmed himself on Facebook Live pledging allegiance to IS as he sat in the home of the couple he had killed, one of the officials said.

"There's a group that has been annihilated, but there are others," French president Francois Hollande said on Friday. "Information we were able to get from our intelligence services allowed us to act before it was too late."

One of the security officials said French authorities found a note on Madani declaring allegiance to the extremist group, which has called on followers to attack France. The official said Madani was taken to hospital.

VIDEO - France: Paris prosecutor shares details on foiled terror attack on Notre-Dame and https://t.co/cyGrZiuBWK pic.twitter.com/0N7ZnunIKC  FRANCE 24 English (@France24_en) September 9, 2016

Another official, who also cannot be identified when speaking about the investigation, said Madani had pulled a knife during the raid outside a small apartment building near the Boussy-Saint-Antoine train station.

In video filmed by a neighbor, a veiled woman, her face uncovered, is seen being carried away by police as she cries out "Allahu Akbar" or "God is the Greatest" in Arabic.

Five women and two men have been arrested in the case.

The car loaded with gas cylinders belonged to Madani's father, who flagged her to police on Sunday 14 hours after the vehicle was discovered. Since then, authorities have worked frantically to untangle the relationships among the group and thwart what they increasingly feared was another plot.

More than one-third of the nearly 700 French citizens who have reached the war zones of Iraq and Syria are women, according to government figures. And officials have said for months that those being recruited by Islamic State in France are increasingly adolescent girls and young women.

Security around Paris was visibly higher on Friday as the investigation widened.

A bomb squad, sniffer dogs and a scanner were deployed when a gas canister with a timer but no detonator was found outside a police station on Friday morning in the suburb town of La Plaine Saint Denis, just north of Paris, and near the Stade de France in Saint-Denis, a local police official said.

In a sign of fraying nerves, the son of a gas delivery driver was briefly detained because he had canisters in his car. Elsewhere, police in Paris used explosives to disable an illegally parked motorcycle.

Explosive gas canisters filled with nails were the weapon used in bomb attacks by Algerian extremists on Paris in the 1990s.
Update 9pm: Russia's foreign minister has said he is thinking of "calling it a day" on talks with the United States to forge a ceasefire in Syria.

He said it may be necessary to have follow-up talks next week.

Sergey Lavrov expressed frustration with what he said was a five-hour wait for US Secretary of State John Kerry to get approval from the Obama administration for some sort of understanding. He did not specify.

The two sides have been trying to find a way to end more than five years of fighting between Syria's Russian-backed government and US-supported rebels.

Several previous efforts have failed in recent months.

Mr Lavrov spoke to journalists in a clear attempt to put pressure on the US for an answer.

Earlier: American officials have played down hopes of an imminent ceasefire agreement for Syria as US Secretary of State John Kerry opened a fourth set of negotiations with his Russian counterpart in the past two weeks.

Previously, officials suggested Mr Kerry would not travel to Geneva unless a deal was clearly at hand.

The talks between Mr Kerry and Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov aim to produce a nationwide ceasefire in Syria after more than five years of warfare and as many as 500,000 deaths.

A deal hinges on an unlikely US-Russian military partnership that would come into force if Moscow can pressure its ally, Syrian president Bashar Assad's government, to halt offensive operations.

Washington would have to persuade the anti-Assad rebels it supports to end any coordination with al Qaida and other extremist groups.

Neither side has succeeded in doing its part despite months of diplomacy. And the task may be getting even more difficult as fighting rages around the divided city of Aleppo, Syria's most populous and the new focus of the conflict.

Mr Assad's government appeared to tighten its siege of the former Syrian commercial hub on Thursday, following several gains over the weekend.

Forty days of fighting in Aleppo has killed nearly 700 civilians, including 160 children, according to a Syrian human rights group.

Volunteer first-responders said they pulled the bodies of nine people, including four children, from the rubble following air raids on a rebel-held area, after reports of helicopters dropping crude barrel bombs over the area on Friday.

The US officials accompanying Mr Kerry to Geneva said they could not guarantee an agreement on Friday and more talks may be needed.

Aleppo will be a large part of the day's discussions, they said, along with the technical details of a ceasefire, defining everything from how far back from demilitarised areas combatants would have to stay to the types of weapons they would need to withdraw from front lines.

Mr Kerry and Mr Lavrov held at least three sessions of discussions on Friday in Geneva. It was unclear how long the talks would go on.

Since August 26, Mr Kerry and Mr Lavrov have now met twice each in Geneva and in China on the sidelines of a global economic summit.

They have held a flurry of phone calls in recent days. Both governments had said they were close to a package that would go beyond several previous truces between the Syrian government and armed opposition - all of which failed to hold.

For Mr Kerry, securing a sustainable peace in Syria has become his biggest objective as America's top diplomat since last summer's Iran nuclear deal.

"Our own goal is to try to settle the remaining issues that we have in reaching an agreement," State Department spokesman Mark Toner said on Thursday as Mr Kerry weighed the trip.

"Once we feel like we're closer to a settlement and a meeting would be valuable, then we'll have that meeting."

In addition to those killed, Syria's conflict has chased millions of people from their homes, contributing to Europe's worst refugee crisis since the Second World War. Amid the chaos of fighting between Syria's government and rebels, the Islamic State group has emerged as a global terror threat.

Russia's military intervention last year has shored up Mr Assad's position. Although Russia claims to be targeting IS and the Nusra Front, al Qaida's Syria affiliate, the Obama administration says the majority of its air strikes have hit "moderate" rebels backed by the United States and its Arab partners.

Russia has been keen to unify its counterterror campaign with that of the United States, but up to now Washington has held back.

Mr Kerry's offer includes intelligence sharing and joint targeting coordination. In exchange for getting Mr Assad's air forces out of the skies, the US and Russia would work together to identify acceptable targets and then approve strikes.

The idea of such cooperation, however, has prompted significant scepticism from powerful members of the US national security establishment in Washington.

In a speech this week in Britain, US defence secretary Ash Carter accused Russia of sowing seeds of global instability and questioned whether Moscow genuinely wants a viable cease-fire in Syria.

Russia's support for Mr Assad, he said, "has made the situation in Syria more dangerous, more prolonged and more violent".

US National Intelligence director James Clapper has been another vocal opponent of any enhanced US-Russian coordination.

Perhaps reflecting these divisions, the State Department's Mr Toner said internal US discussions also were continuing.

"These are difficult processes," Mr Toner told reporters. "The Russians have conditions they want to see met and addressed; we have our own. And in reaching our own consensus... we continue to have those conversations. We're just not there yet."
Ryanair holds its AGM in Dublin next week. Earlier this week it cut passenger targets for Dublin and Shannon, said it would not be placing new planes in the UK over Brexit uncertainty, and expressed caution on its full-year guidance.

However, its shares were up nearly 4% yesterday at over 13.30. While it has clawed back much of the loss seen in the wake of Junes Brexit vote, the stock is still down by over 12% from where it started the year.
The dead man has been named locally as 62-year-old James Joy, a father of two, from Listowel town.

The collision occurred in the townland of Bealkilla, on the main Abbeydorney to Finuge road, the R557, at around 10.40pm.

Mr Joy was brought to Kerry University Hospital where he died in the early hours of yesterday. The lorry driver was uninjured but severely shocked.

Mr Joy had been visiting the Finuge area, and had been dropped by taxi from Listowel at around 10.30pm. However, the person he was visiting was not at home.

Gardai say the road in question, the main road between Finuge and Abbeydorney, is extremely dark and pedestrians have to use the main carriageway as there is not enough room to walk in the yellow margin. There is no street lighting.

Superintendent Dan Keane of Listowel gardai said they are investigating the accident and are appealing for information. Supt Keane is asking witnesses to contact the Listowel gardai at 068 21000, or call to any Garda station.

Meanwhile, the funeral arrangements for a cyclist killed in Dublin during the week have been announced.

Donna Fox died on Tuesday after she was hit by a truck as she cycled to work.

Ms Fox, 30, will repose in McNallys Funeral Home, Balbriggan on Friday evening from 6pm to 8pm, ahead of funeral mass at SS Peter and Pauls Church at 10am which will be followed by burial in Ardla Cemetery.

Also this week, Maureen Creaner, 92, died after she was hit by a car the Navan Road in Cabra on Sunday morning and a man in his 60s died following a single vehicle crash on the N53 Castleblaney Road outside Dundalk on Monday morning.
At just over four carats, the single stone diamond ring has a guide price of between 55,000 and 65,000.

Its a very important diamond single stone ring set with diamond shoulders in platinum with an IGI (International Gemological Institute) certificate which states the diamond is 4.02cts, H colour and VS2 clarity, said John Weldon, who is hosting the auction early next week in Dublin.

There are very few four-carat single diamonds around, he told the Irish Examiner.

Youd struggle to get one if you went into your local jewellers. Most people get one or one-and-a-half carats.

Another notable item going under the hammer next week is a silver medal that once belonged to a prosecution lawyer involved in court trials after the 1916 Rising. The engraved Dublin Horse Show medal is made out to the Hon Mr Justice Wylie, and is dated 1927.

William Wylie was born in Dublin but grew up in Coleraine, Co Derry. He was educated at Trinity College Dublin and called to the Irish bar in 1905.

From 1915 to 1918, he was a lieutenant in the Territorial Army, serving with the Trinity College Officer Training Corps in Dublin where he took part in the defence of the university during the 1916 Rising. He was subsequently appointed as the prosecuting officer at the trial of the leaders of the rising.

While the medal is low in weight and value, the auctioneer believes it could sell for anything because of its previous owner. It came in as part of an estate of silver, Mr Weldon said. The guide price is only between 40 and 80 but if two people get stuck into it, it could go for anything.

The auction, which marks 15 years in business for John Weldon Auctioneers in Dublins Temple Bar, is one of its biggest-ever catalogues, comprising of almost 600 lots.

The auctioneer previously sold a collection of Irish coinage in 2008, with the full sale grossing over 70,000.

The company also sold jewellery in 2012 which had belonged to Princess Victoria Louise of Prussia, with one of the pieces making 5,600.

The auction will take place at 2pm on Tuesday next in Dublin.
It has emerged that when the companys unions meet next week, they may ramp up their action. They are already due to hold two further 48-hour strikes this month, one of which takes place next week.

The workers have been humbled by the support shown to them by members of the public on picket lines at bus depots across the city, said Siptu divisional organiser Owen Reidy.
A dispute over increasing cardiac care at the hospital this week saw Mr Halligan threatening to go, after a clinical review ruled out recommending a second lab.

Crisis talks between the Independent Alliance minister and Health Minister Simon Harris broke up on Wednesday. Amid increased warnings from the TD that he would quit, the review of cardiac care was published. It found a second lab was not justified as activity at the hospital was appropriate for the catchment population.

But Mr Harris committed to improving cardiac services, staff levels, and equipment at the hospital yesterday while also promising a second review of Waterfords cardiac services next year.

The commitment leaves the way for the Government to potentially accept a fresh set of recommendations for a cath lab and appease Waterford concerns.

Ministers either denied or refused to address claims yesterday by Mr Halligan that Fine Gael senior negotiators had reneged on a promise for a second lab.

Mr Halligan called them dishonourable. He said Finance Minister Michael Noonan had said providing a second lab was a formality and claimed Housing Minister Simon Coveney pledged it would be funded whether Mr Halligan supported the Government or not.

Mr Coveney denied this and said no trickery was involved. Social Protection Minister Leo Varadkar said: I dont know what other conversations may have happened on the side but whats in the programme for government is what we signed up for. The programme for government is there in black and white and people can read what it says and what it says is that we would be willing to find the funds to build a second cath lab but it had to be subject to a clinical review.

Tanaiste Frances Fitzgerald refused to address the claims, saying this would not be helpful.

But Mr Halligans claims that he and supporters were promised a second lab will raise questions as to what exactly was pledged by Fine Gael with him. His Facebook postings in June also reveal he was promising locals that new jobs and funding for a second lab were already agreed and on the way.
One Ukrainian serviceman was killed and another two suffered injuries in Donbas in the past 24 hours, Ukrainian presidential administration spokesman Andriy Lysenko said.

"One of our soldiers was killed and two suffered injuries in the hostilities over the past day. The casualties were suffered in a hostile attack near Maryinka," he said at a press briefing in Kyiv on Friday.
Lisa McInerney yesterday revealed that her debut novel The Glorious Heresies  a story of five misfits whose lives intertwine in post-crash Cork  has been optioned for television by production company Fifty Fathoms.

The novel has won both the 2016 Baileys Womens Prize for Fiction and the 2016 Desmond Elliott Prize, amid critical praise.

Ms McInerney, who will adapt the novel into the shows script, told the Irish Examiner that she cant wait to get cracking.

The series is set to be directed and executively produced by Julian Farino, whose directorial credits include episodes of Entourage, Sex and the City, and the US version of The Office.

Mr Farino told trade magazine The Bookseller: The Glorious Heresies has a terrific ensemble of original characters, all of whom have compelling journeys, making it ideal for a classy television series.

Not only does Lisa write with edge and compassion, but her dialogue and sense of rhythm is hugely cinematic. Her material is made for the screen.

Having read the book, Mr Farino and Fifty Fathoms approached the author about working on the adaptation, and Ms McInerney said she is looking forward to seeing the book presented through another medium.

Its exciting to discover what aspects of the world youve made interest other creative people, and you need to have different ways of approaching the telling of the story for different mediums, she said.

Julian has such affection for the characters and plenty of ideas that feel very right for the Heresies world and the people in it. So Im looking forward to seeing what we all come up with together.

While she does not know if the series will retain the books setting, Ms McInerney said she is hopeful the show will take place in Cork.

In a sense, Heresies is a story that could take place anywhere, but in another sense everything about it is so steeped in Cork, in terms of the size of the city, its history, even its geography, she said.

And who wouldnt froth at the mouth for a chance to write dialogue in Cork-Hiberno? I might be being a small bit biased here but its the liveliest of our dialects.
Mark Clifford said hes endured yet another massively frustrating year in which no progress has been made in bringing to trial the five Guantanamo Bay-held suspects who were captured more than a decade ago.

And speaking ahead of the 15th anniversary of the terror attacks, Mr Clifford said the ongoing failure of the US government to bring those responsible to justice has left his family and the loved-ones of the 3,000 victims of the atrocity in an unbearable limbo.

Marks sister, Ruth McCourt and her four-year-old daughter, Juliana, were passengers aboard the second hijacked aircraft to crash into the twin towers of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

In a cruel twist of fate, Mark had been told just hours before that his older, US-based brother, Ron, had narrowly survived the disaster when a ball of flaming wreckage fell on the building plaza in front of him.

However, Mr Clifford said his still very raw grief has been compounded by the endless administrative hurdles and legal complications that have so far prevented a trial taking place in Guantanamo Bay.

And the 56-year-old Cork native said he is increasingly concerned that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the four other accused 9/11 plotters could evade justice altogether.

Its now 15 years since 9/11 and we havent moved on at all in terms of bringing those responsible to justice.

For the thousands of people like me, who lost family members and loved-ones, its hugely frustrating. Just two years ago, David, Ruths husband, died without seeing those who caused his wifes death brought to trial. And there must be hundreds more cases like that, where for example mothers and fathers of victims have passed away.

There seems to be a lack of political will to get anything done, and thats extremely difficult for all the victims family members, because we need to get closure, Mr Clifford said.

Were all extremely frustrated and I have a fear that some legal do-gooder could come in and get the five suspects off, which could let them walk free without facing trial.

Despite the lack of progress, Mr Clifford said his older brother, Ron  who witnessed first-hand the devastation of the immediate aftermath of the terror attacks  is still expected to play a key role in the trial, if and when it gets under way.

But more immediately, Mr Clifford is preparing to privately celebrate the lives of Ruth and Juliana on Sunday, the day of the 15th anniversary of 9/11.

Juliana should be a happy, 19-year-old young woman now, maybe entering her second year of college or travelling the world.

So many lives were destroyed that day, and the anniversaries dont get any easier, he said.
Sedatives accounted for two thirds of the seizures and GPs warned it is further evidence of a growing problem of addiction to tranquilisers and anti-anxiety drugs and the lucrative black market that feeds it.

However, the haul also included erectile dysfunction products, illegal cosmetics, anabolic steroids, slimming pills, and pain relief products that were unlicensed, substandard, or fake. They were at best ineffective and, at worst, dangerous.

The seizures, amounting to 1,136,494 individual items, were recorded by the Health Products Regulatory Authority (HPRA) and mark a significant increase on the previous year when 730,000 were taken out of circulation. Average annual quantities since 2010 have been 798,000.

Ray Walley, of the Irish Medical Organisations GP Committee, said people were taking a huge gamble by buying products from abroad or other unregulated outlets.

Many of these medications are adulterated. Youre sticking a pill in your mouth that you dont know the contents of and some of which may cause irreversible damage, he warned.

While a third of the seizures related to lifestyle-related drugs sourced by people possibly too ignorant or embarrassed to ask their GP or pharmacist, the bulk reveal a more sinister trend.

Drug dealers have been increasingly supplementing their trade in prohibited substances with sales of prescription drugs, genuine and counterfeit.

The Government rushed legislation through the Dail over the summer to increase Garda powers to tackle this illicit trade following the spate of drug gang murders in Dublins inner city.

However, Dr Walley said the legislation would not be effective without an increase in funding for the gardai, healthcare and other support services.

More than ever we need appropriate resourcing of all the structures for tackling this problem, he said. We have only 35 public funded detox beds in the system.

He said the seizures were likely to be the tip of the iceberg.
A study to be published later this year looks at the experiences of 20 prison service staff of varying grades and degrees of experience in relation to their experience of inmate deaths.

It found that while many welcomed the progress made in relation to peer support in recent years, more could be done, in particular, following the example of the Defence Forces in having dedicated peer support personnel.

The study was conducted by Colette Barry of the School of Languages, Law and Social Sciences at Dublin Institute of Technology, and involved speaking with staff at various grades, including at prison governor level.

She will discuss her findings today on State Accountability for Vulnerability at the School of Nursing in DCU.

Some of the interviewees had experience of just one death in custody, while other staff had experience of a number of deaths in jail.

She said all interviewees stressed the professional response to the deaths that occurred, whether they were suicides, murders, drug- related, or from natural causes, but she said some had experienced a ripple effect in their own lives afterwards.

Referring to the aftermath of a death in prison, Ms Barry said one interviewee had said he had difficulty afterwards in looking at representations of suicide on television.

Another interviewee became preoccupied with his own childrens safety, and particularly when it came to them having anything around their necks.

There were other pressures, such as involvement of the inspector of prisons in the reviewing of any prisoner death, leading some staff to worry about any level of exposure they might be open to around issues such as the regularity of checks on inmates.

A lot of [the interviewees] would say that you can train people but how can you train them to deal with a death? she said.

Much training is conducted through the higher certificate in custodial care but Ms Barry said: Many of the more experienced staff felt that the prison service had gone too far towards book learning and academia, that it was like studying the Leaving Cert.

Peer support programmes are in place but many interviewees said they should be full-time positions, with Ms Barry claiming many felt the foundation is built but can we take it a step further.
It has also emerged that the Independent Alliance minister was openly promising constituents on his Facebook page in June that jobs and funds were on the way for a second catheterisation laboratory at the hospital.

Mr Halligan effectively said that his political future would be decided by local consultants and clinicians now examining a review of care at the hospital.

This independent review, released after Mr Halligan threatened to quit, did not recommend the hospital get a second cath lab for patients. Instead, improved staffing levels and equipment were pledged by the Government.

However, Health Minister Simon Harris also agreed to a fresh review at Waterford.

During this period of investment and enhancement of services, the situation will be closely monitored, he said. To assess the impact these improvements have had on the volume of patients attending the cath lab, I will have a further independent review carried out in early 2017.

Mr Halligan had criticised the terms of the first Herity review and said it was flawed and did not properly take account of the population in the region.

His criticism and threat to resign has now forced the Government into agreeing to conduct a second review of Waterfords cardiac services, which leaves the door open for a second lab.

This was also confirmed by Housing Minister Simon Coveney, who denied that there had been any trickery or false promises in the pre-government talks for a second lab.

Last night, Mr Halligan told RTEs Prime Time programme he was shocked when told of the contents of a briefing note given to Consultant Cardiologist, Dr Niall Herity, the author of an independent review into the provision of a second cath laboratory for Waterford University Hospital.

The briefing note was given to Dr Herity just after he started the review and was, according to RTE, prepared by the HSEs Acute Hospital Policy Unit. The note told him: It has been the view of the Department that providing additional facilities and extending PPCI (angioplasty) services, in a geographical area which does not have the population base to justify such a service, would be wasteful of very limited resources.

Such a unit might struggle to achieve the levels of activity essential to maintain operator and unit competency, potentially compromising patient safety. Staffing an extended service might also represent a challenge.

Mr Halligan said the note was a gross interference with an independent review.

He said he had expected any briefing documents to deal with the issues he was assured the review would consider - in particular the clinical risks for patients in Waterford who present for emergency cardiac care as well as those patients who currently wait up to 10 days for cardiac procedures that should be done within 24 hours and others waiting for over a year for elective procedures.

We understood these issues would be in the terms of reference but when we got the review we were very taken aback to learn that they were not included, he told RTE Prime Time.
The Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors (AGSI) said lack of supervision of new gardai had been cited as a cause of police failings in the past.

AGSI president Antoinette Cunningham was commenting following the announcement by Tanaiste and Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald that 3,200 recruits would be needed over the next four years to satisfy the Governments commitment to bring numbers to 15,000.

An accelerated Garda training programme for new recruits is positive in theory, said Ms Cunningham.

However, the reality is what happens when those young gardai arrive for operational duty at stations, there will be a severe lack of supervisors due to a lack of sergeants.

Investigations by the Garda Inspectorate and inquiries into Garda failures in the Cavan/Monaghan district highlighted problems associated with large numbers of inexperienced gardai and inadequate supervision by sergeants.

We have already seen cases whereby supervision was cited as the cause of police failings, said Ms Cunningham.

Have we learned nothing? This accelerated recruitment approach will not work unless a simultaneous response to supervision is activated.

The projected intake of roughly 800 a year represents an increase of 33% on the 600 being trained this year, a number which was thought to be the maximum capacity of the Garda Training College in Templemore.

Senior Garda sources said supervisory numbers will increase with the recruitment.

The Irish Examiner understands Garda bosses are actively looking at renting out space outside of Templemore College and appointing more training staff.

The Tanaiste said to reach the Programme for Government commitment of 15,000 gardai, and taking into account retirements, some 3,200 new Garda members will need to be recruited over the next four years.

It is essential that An Garda Siochana has the capacity to train large numbers without any diminution in the quality of its training programme, and to provide appropriate supervision and support to newly qualified gardai to ensure that victims and the public are well served, she said.

I welcome the detailed planning process that the Commissioner and her team have in place to ensure the delivery of increased numbers of gardai without any compromise on the quality of those recruited or the training programme.

Ms Fitzgerald urged members of minority and new communities to apply.

The Garda Representative Association welcomed the recruitment.

This is a vital step forward to restoring the force, said GRA president Ciaran ONeill.

However, he said the starting salary of 23,171 a year was too low and may not attract the calibre required for a demanding job.

He urged the government to restore Garda pay to an appropriate level for the dangerous but essential work that our members undertake on a daily basis.

Garda Commissioner Noirin OSullivan said she wanted people from every part of Irish life to apply.

She said that more needs to be done to increase the number of women in the force and the representation from different nationalities and backgrounds.

See publicjobs.ie
Workers Party councillor Ted Tynan described the Cork City briefing on the Rebuilding Ireland plan in City Hall as a cosy meeting of stakeholders including builders, speculators, and a few token voluntary bodies.

He claimed the key stakeholders  any of the thousands of people across the city and county who are languishing on local authority housing waiting lists  will not be able to attend.

The stakeholders dont include those on the housing lists  instead, the builders, speculators, and a few token voluntary bodies have been invited in to be told all the wonderful things Simon says hes going to do about housing, said Mr Tynan.

And what is he going to do? Not a lot  only continue to present policy of favouring private developers and ensuring that most people have little or no chance of being housed in the short term or even the much longer term.

Mr Tynan claimed that Mr Coveney will not listen to local councillors because the Rebuilding Ireland plan is set in stone.

A spokeswoman for Mr Coveney defended the format of the briefing. She said local councillors and the various housing agencies will represent those on the housing waiting list. She said the format worked well in Limerick last week, and will be used again in Waterford next week and in Cork County on September 30.

The briefing is expected to hear details on timelines and targets for various house building projects in Cork City to identify logjams and issues around funding, and deal with the repairs of vacant local authority housing.

The Rebuilding Ireland plan, unveiled in July, is designed to accelerate all types of housing supply  social, private, and rental.

It proposes to spend up to 5bn supporting the delivery of some 47,000 new social houses by 2021, to double the output of overall housing from the current levels to at least 25,000 a year by 2020, to tackle homelessness, and to address problems in the rental sector.

It also proposes to provide up to 200m to local authorities to provide enabling infrastructure on key sites that will open lands up for early development.
Mr Creans grandson Brendan OBrien told of his grandfathers heroic Antarctic mission last night at the launch of the online resource which has made records from the General Register Office (GRO) available to all.

The images, which include over 12.5m individual records dating back as far as 1864, can all be accessed online and free of charge.

Along with Mr Creans birth, marriage and death certs, the database includes death register entries for the leaders of the 1916 Rising.

Speaking at the launch in the National Library last night, Mr OBrien said that on Easter Tuesday, 1916, the same day as Dublin was in turmoil, his grandfather was struggling to stay alive with his fellow explorers in the Antarctic.

Social Protection Minister Leo Varadkar said the records provide us with a new insight into our past.

What used to require weeks and months of research in dusty archives can now be done online in a matter of minutes.

Given the theme of exploration, its fitting that we are joined at this launch by the grandson and great-grandson of one of the greatest polar explorers of all time, Tom Crean.

For the first time, the original register entries of Tom Creans birth, marriage and death are now available to view. These records also provide an incredible insight into the 1916 Rising which helped to create the modern Irish State. We can view the death registers for its leaders, including James Connolly, Patrick Pearse, and Thomas Clarke. It helps to bring the past alive, and we can piece together fragments to create a whole story.

Arts and Heritage Minister Heather Humphreys said she hoped the resource would encourage more people to visit the county.

By providing as much information as possible free online, the Irish Government is leading the way internationally and encouraging the diaspora to come to Ireland to explore their roots.

This is the first time that this huge volume of records is being made available online and it is a very important development in family history research for Irish people and Irish descendants both at home and abroad.
She was a friend to many throughout her 26 years, a mam to her newly delivered baby for just one day.

Prayers were said at yesterdays funeral Mass in Thurles, Co Tipperary, for Nicola Kenny, whose death in a motorway crash on Monday cast a cloud of grief over her family, friends, and community, and shocked the country.

Prayers were also said for Lily Rose, who was just one day old when Nicola died; and for Nicolas aunt Irene, who had been driving the car when it was hit by a truck after the car had pulled over on the hard shoulder of the M8 motorway, and is now in a critical condition at the intensive care unit at University Hospital Limerick.

Nicolas mother Ann was also a passenger in the car and her injuries meant she attended yesterdays funeral  with her husband Patrick, son Patrick, and the rest of the family  in a wheelchair and wearing a sling around her broken arm.

The car had stopped between the Cahir and Cashel motorway junctions to allow Nicola take a call from Temple Street Childrens Hospital telling her there was no need to make the journey to Dublin as Lily Rose was well enough to go back to Tipperary.

A huge crowd gathered at the Cathedral of the Assumption in Thurles yesterday to say their last farewells to Nicola, whose popularity was illustrated by the amount of young people present, including girls in the uniform of the Ursuline Convent she attended, and staff from the local Tesco where she worked.

Nicola Kenny brought her childlike joy and vivacious personality into everything she did, the funeral Mass heard.

Some of her friends wore Minnie Mouse T-shirts. They were in memory of Nicolas love of Disney characters and cartoons but were also a reminder of her young age, as were the symbols of her life brought to the altar during the Mass: A Minnie Mouse headband; an Olly Murs CD; a pair of runners to remember her love of fashion; and a framed photo of her friends.

Chief celebrant and local curate Fr Vincent Stapleton pointed out in his homily that, just a few short days ago, the town and county were celebrating Tipperarys success on the hurling field and had gathered in their thousands for the teams homecoming on Monday night in nearby Semple Stadium.

Little did we know that just down the road in Kennedy Park, the Kenny family and local community around them were left reeling from the cruel blow, as the news of Nicolas tragic death in a road accident filtered through.

The floral tributes spelled out the words friend and mam. She was a friend to many, a mam to her newly delivered baby for one day.

The sense of shock and inability to comprehend what happened was made so much worse by the knowledge that Nicola was just days into motherhood and she had just heard good news about baby Lily Rose when her own life came to an end.

Nicola made so many connections throughout her 26 years, from her love of family to her wide circle of friends and colleagues, and brought her childlike joy and vivacious personality into everything she did.

During prayers later in the Mass, Fr Stapleton said Nicolas last great joy was the birth of Lily Rose.

Nicolas father Patrick Kenny at the Cathedral of the Assumption, Thurles.

We pray for Lily Rose now and ask Nicola and Gods guardian angel to continue to watch over her from heaven.

Among the mourners were local TDs Alan Kelly and Jackie Cahill, while a number of local priests con-celebrated Mass, along with Archbishop Kieran OReilly of Cashel and Emly.

Afterwards, the streets outside fell silent as Nicolas coffin emerged from the cathedral and was placed in the hearse, before being brought on the young mothers last journey to St Patricks Cemetery. Her family was disconsolate as they followed behind, with her friends clutching balloons and red roses.
Niall Herity, who conducted the independent clinical review, said because the existing lab does not meet the accepted standard of carrying out an absolute minimum of 100 primary percutaneous coronary interventions (angioplasties) per year, the hospital should cease this service.

He said instead patients should be sent from the region who suffer heart attacks to Cork University Hospital or St Jamess Hospital Dublin.

By shedding its emergency workload, it could concentrate on conducting a much larger volume of planned cath lab work and ensure patients booked in for a procedure, many of whom travel long distances, were not cancelled at the last minute to accommodate urgent cases, as currently happens.

Dr Herity, clinical director of cardiology at Belfast HSC Trust, said building a second cath lab was not justified to accommodate the workload and that instead, the existing lab should be staffed and funded to work for 12 sessions of four hours each, every week. Currently the lab is open from 9am-5pm.

Dr Herity said the range of planned cath lab work that UHW currently undertakes for its catchment population should continue and that the interventional cardiologists at the hospital should continue to carry out angioplasties by taking part in the 24/7 primary PCI rota centred in CUH.

In addition, cardiology services in the South/South West hospital group should agree a strategy that makes best use of their combined excellent skills, cath lab facilities and teams, in order to optimise clinical outcomes for all the patients across the hospital group.

In an approach that is causing controversy, Dr Herity based his conclusions on a catchment population of 286,147  clinicians in UHW argue the catchment population is c.500,000.

However, Dr Herity argues that he tracked hospital admissions for cardiac catheterisation and angioplasties by county of residence and that residents of Carlow, Kilkenny, and Tipperary North travelled in much greater numbers to Limerick or Dublin hospitals for treatment  hence the reduced catchment population.

Dr Herity said there was insufficient local population need to justify an additional 24/7 cath lab in the south east and that there would be a significant risk that a 24/7 centre at UHW would not be able to guarantee a robust, sustainable rota of consultants and cath lab staff.

There are currently two interventional consultants at UHW and there should be three.

Dr Herity also spoke to the National Ambulance Service to establish the actual times of contemporary blue light journeys from UHW to CUH and found it was approximately 90 minutes.

He said of 80 patients who activated the angioplasty service at UHW last year, 54 were within a 90-minute drive time of either CUH or St Jamess.
Panama sees no grounds to refuse the extradition of ex-head of the State Agency for Investment and National Projects Management Vladyslav Kaskiv to Ukraine, the Ukrayinska Pravda online edition has stated, with reference to Prosecutor General of Ukraine Yuriy Lutsenko.

"In case of his consent for voluntary extradition, extradition will be carried out under a simplified procedure and will last up to 30 days until all the procedural issues with the Ukrainian side are agreed," Lutsenko said.

He explained if Kaskiv refuses voluntary extradition, under the Panamanian law, the party is given 60 days to protect his interests and file counterarguments against the materials of Ukraine's competent authorities.

"However Panama assures it does not see reasons for refusing Kaskiv's extradition. Panama during Kaskiv's staying in the territory of the country has not revealed violations of Panama's criminal laws," Lutsenko added.
ITS said that the Irish have the gift of the gab. We are known the world over for our beautiful blas and turn of phrase. We are, we are told, great storytellers.

But are we any good at listening?

According to English-based business consultants Cross Culture, Irish people fall somewhere between what they call linear-active and multiactive communicators, two of three categories classified by the Lewis Model of Cross-Cultural Communication, devised by 86-year-old British multilinguist Richard D Lewis.

The Irish are linear-active on account of their close historical connection with the Anglo-Saxon peoples [who are planners that prefer direct discussion], says Lewis.

However they also have multiactive qualities engendered by their liveliness, talkativeness, and sense of humour. They are not as loquacious as the Italians but much more so than the English.

Lewis Model: Irish people fall somewhere between what they call linear-active and multiactive communicators.

Put another way, according to the Lewis Model, we are three steps away from the Germans, the strongest linear-actives on the Lewis Model Diagram and we are moving towards the red multiactive Italians.

We share the same spot as Australians and Danes.

So where does that leave us as listeners?

The Irish are good listeners, says Lewis.

They are constantly on the hunt for humour, especially anecdotes which they can retell. They are adventurous listeners in as much as they love zeroing in on their own interpretation of anything out of the ordinary.

"They are great storytellers, which automatically classifies them as eager listeners and gatherers of material.

The third string to the Lewis Model bow is the reactive communicator, typical of the cultures of Japan, China, and Vietnam who tend to listen attentively and react slowly.

Does that make the Asians the best listeners in the world then?

Its impossible to quantify really, says Pat Dermody, a relationship counsellor with the Hazelton Clinic in Cork.

You cant say one nation is better than the other. Everyone can be a good listener but not everyone chooses to be. You have good individuals who listen and others who are not so good.

Over his ten-plus years as a psychotherapist and counsellor, Dermody has come across couples and individuals who come to him when they realise they are at something of a crossroads in their lives and relationships.

More often than not, listening is at the heart of the problem.

I think first of all its worth identifying what listening actually is, he says.

Listening isnt mind reading. Quite a lot of the time in relationships you might hear one partner say, I know what they are really thinking when in fact theyre not actually listening at all.

"We think we listen but we dont necessarily do so because we just hear the stuff we want to hear, the things that fits in with what we imagine or want to be the case.

"There is a preconceived notion of what the person is saying but not what the person is actually saying.

Dermody explains that communication breakdown often starts within oneself.

Im sure youve used the phrase, Oh this always happens to me the odd time, he says.

It doesnt always happen to you but it fits in with the narrative of you having a bit of bad luck. By creating this false narrative for yourself, youre actually not listening to yourself.

The same applies to something like you never listen to me, he continues.

Including a word like never gives it an emotional punch but its probably not entirely accurate. By including never, the speaker is creating a false narrative.

Its a lie. But it packs a stronger emotional impact than you dont listen to me on the odd occasion and I can dismiss what the other person is saying by using a word like never.

According to Dermody, there is no major physiological difference between men and womens ability to listen. Any differences are perceived and/or cultural.

Im a psychotherapist, he says.

Its a profession thats predominantly inhabited by women because traditionally women are looked upon as better communicators.

"Thats part of the culture that we grow up in and we are exposed to as children. But we all have the capacity to transcend that and to be good listeners.

It is not just our health that benefits from being good with our ears, listening is also financially prudent.

Bernard Ferrari, author of Power Listening: Mastering the Most Critical Business Skill of All believes that when youre quiet you are in control.

Listening is an important ingredient in investment decisions, Ferrari told www.MarketWatch.com a number of years ago.

Companies that deserve our confidence in investment are those that have leaders who we believe are the better listeners.

Fabio Grassi, of the Irish Management Institute, takes it a step further.

I dont know if entrepreneurs are necessarily good listeners per se, he says, but they are good at making connections. They pay attention to the markets and look at how the markets are behaving. They see whats available in the market and see what the market is missing.

For Grassi, the modern business world is plagued by distractions with information coming at us from so many different places.

The big thing for people, not just people in business, is to be present, he says.

The Chinese have a symbol they use for listening. They take a holistic view, so its made up of the ear, obviously, for listening but there is also the brain that processes what we hear, and the eyes to make contact, the heart which symbolises feeling, and the body for presence.

Dermody agrees with the necessity for presence and explains that when he was studying to become a counsellor there was a specific module on how to listen.

Listening and attending skills are so important, he says.

If we are talking and Im looking at my watch or my leg is going or Im talking more than you are or Im changing subject, theres all these different ways that we can distract and deflect and not listen.

"When we listen, we need to look at body posture, maintaining eye contact, the tone of the voice and that verbal attending I see, I know what you mean and so on.

Given that we live in a world of smartphones and instantly available social media, is the art of listening something that needs to be added to the curriculum?

I think it is something that should be taken on from an educational point of view, says Dermody.

Our children actually need to be taught and learn how to listen.

Maybe we all do. As Mark Twain put it: If we were supposed to talk more than we listen, we would have two tongues and one ear.

LISTEN UP

Dont talk, listen: When somebody else is talking listen to what they are saying, do not interrupt, talk over them or finish their sentences for them. Particularly the latter. Not only is it enraging but you might say something you regret.

Focus on the speaker: Put other things out of mind. The human mind is easily distracted by other thoughts.

Get off the phone: Self-explanatory really but so often broken.

Ask, ask and ask some more: If youre not clear what they are saying then ask. It shows you are interested.

Be yourself: If you dont understand their, probably pretentious gibberish, then dont be afraid to stop them and say: Whats schadenfreude?.
HER appointment to Cabinet and as jobs minister was heralded as a victory for female politicians but also a surprise promotion from the Fine Gael backbenches.

Her strong support for Taoiseach Enda Kenny and electoral success in the general election was seen as support for the decision.

But Mary Mitchell OConnor will have her work cut out for her in the months ahead.

Her own job will be and is one of the biggest in the Cabinet  namely to ensure Ireland continues to attract fresh employment and investment here, especially in the aftermath of Britains shock decision to leave the European Union.

Ms Mitchell OConnors reelection  where two Fine Gael TDs were returned in three seats in Dun Laoghaire  silenced her critics, leading to much speculation that the Galway-native would be elevated by Mr Kenny, which she was.

In an interview with the Irish Examiner conducted last month, the new minister addressed questions about job creation, Brexit, being in Cabinet and her vision. She also insisted she would just rate herself and didnt care what others thought of her.

She also claimed the Midlands was flying when it came to new jobs  despite the fact some towns there have shown little or no signs this year in increased levels of employment overall.

Central Statistics Office figures show there has been no indication of unemployment levels decreasing this year in Athlone or Mullingar, two major Midlands towns.

Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Richard Bruton TD, with Kerry Ingalls, right, vice president of Amgen, and Mary Mitchell-OConnor at the officially opening of biotech company Amgens new 300 million facility in Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin, on August 24. Picture: RollingNews.ie

The Live Register figures for Mullingar from January to July have risen slightly from 4,028 to 4,068. Similarly, figures for Athlone show the register rose from 3,405 to 3,418.

During a discussion about the low- wage commission and its remit, Ms Mitchell OConnor could not recollect the name of her junior predecessor in the department, former minister Ged Nash, who set up the body.

While ambitious and eager to create jobs, it is clearly early days yet for the new minister as she struggles to get a handle on her new portfolio.

What follows are sections of the transcript of the interview.

ON GETTING THE JOB

Question:

How did you feel about getting such a prestigious role?

Answer:

A fabulous role and for the economy and the future of Ireland and the future of, you know, the next generation.

It was such an honour to be in the room, there were 17 [female] ministers appointed since the foundation of the State and there were 14 of us there that day. I looked around and I thought my God, imagine I am here, in this really prestigious group of people but also that the job is so honorous [sic] and I feel such a responsibility.

Q:

Four ministers in pictures on the department wall went on to be taoiseach. Its a strong department to build a political career. Talk to me about your vision?

A:

To be honest, Im not building a political career, Im actually totally focused on the job at hand, thats to make sure that there are sustainable jobs, especially around the country.

Q:

Do you want to talk to me about your own ambitions, your own vision for the department, for jobs?

A:

I will rate myself, I dont care how anyone else rates me, but I will be rating myself on what I achieve for rural and regional Ireland, how many jobs we get out there.

ON INCREASING EMPLOYMENT

Q:

Have you decided on a level of employment or a type of employment you want?

A:

I didnt decide at all. The Taoiseach instructed me on the day that he appointed me, that in the programme for government, theres 200,000 jobs and he said Mitchell OConnor, I want you to deliver 135,000 of those in rural Ireland and I just take that responsibility very seriously.

Q:

Thats a big number to deliver, hows that going now?

Mary Mitchell OConnor, and student Claudia Aragoneses, 5th Year, St Andrews Booterstown, as she participated in the Amgen Biotech Experience, which enables students to experience a real working lab, using state of the art technology in their own classroom. Picture: Iain White/Fennell Photography

A:

If you break it down, our figures are showing there will probably be approximately 50,000 jobs this year. Since I came into office...

Q:

What in?

A

May, June, July, Ill answer that in a second. Weve about 7,400 announcements and thats of the ones we know about.

What are they in? Some of them are very high paying, very sustainable jobs and they are all in hi-tech, biopharma, IT, all of that area. But Im actually also very interested in small businesses, thats whats really sustainable in rural Ireland. And if every business took on one person, wed wipe out the unemployment lists.

Q:

British Prime Minister Theresa May met SMEs recently, will you?

A:

I have had them in, Ive had the LEOs in, Ive had the SFA in, Ive had Isme, Ibec, they came in very early to me.

The first phone call I made the morning that we got the results of the Brexit referendum. First to IDA, second to Enterprise Ireland and the next was to Ibec.

Q:

Was that to set the ball rolling? We are talking biotech, pharma, is that going to hit the rural areas, are they going to get into the small towns in the country?

A:

Interestingly, the midlands is doing really well. Midlands is flying, as in Athlone. Tullamore is doing well, Athlone is doing really well. I think I have been there three or four times announcing really hi-tech jobs there.

Theres a cluster there, its also being supported by the institute of college there in Athlone.

HER VISION FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF JOBS

Q:

Is there anything else youd like as part of your roadmap or vision for jobs?

A:

Obviously small business is really important to me. That will permeate all around rural Ireland.

Womens entrepreneurship and women going back to work, thats hugely important to me as well because I do understand that it is difficult and there are roadblocks for women. Be it childcare, confidence, cash, all of those things.

Q:

What would you do to help women get back to work?

A:

Again we have put together, Ive met different groups of people. I would very much, as chair of the education committee, have put together that whole thing of, you know, that policy where we open up our schools after school hours.

Q:

Homework?

A:

Not homework clubs. More childcare, recreational; not homework, its bigger than that.

Q:

So thats when you were at committee, what about [being a] minister?

A:

Ill be pushing that with our minister for education because I think that is one way that you can enable women to come back into the workplace.

Q:

But in your own brief?

A:

So, here, what we are doing here is obviously I mentioned about confidence and all of that. So every group I go to I would seek out the women. Say for example I was at the Bloom festival, there was loads of young women, of women entrepreneurs there all involved in home cottage industries, thats not the name for it, but you know what I mean, and again, just to make sure that they know whats going on, so we will have a whole kind of thing around, we will have a whole womens forum putting that together.

Q:

Whats that going to do?

A:

Its bringing together and giving confidence to women, because Im telling you its very difficult for women to get out there, create.

MORE ON HER VISION FOR THE DEPARTMENT

Q:

Is there anything else in terms of your vision of what you want to do?

A:

Again, coming from the background of education, I would feel very strongly, that now because there are so many opportunities available in the whole tech industry, pharma industry, that we will be encouraging young women, again, to take up STEM [science, technology engineering and mathematics] subjects because that is not happening.

Q:

How are you going to do that?

A

Well, you know, Im talking to the universities, were talking to the institutes of education.

Q:

What would they be asked to do?

A:

I have given, just give me a chance now please, I have at every public announcement that I make in public, every speech I give, I talk about, Im talking to the mothers of Ireland and parents and to encourage their children into those areas because there are huge opportunities.

Q:

What will the universities do to help young women get into those STEM subjects?

A:

Well first of all they are going to have to make sure that young women know that they are welcome into the industries because thats not whats happening.

Q:

So what are they going to do?

A:

What they are going to do and what they are doing? If you take UCD, which I would have been doing anyway before I was a minister, I would have attended the engineering department, weve been out with NIBERTA [NIBRT] there, thats the training group there.

THE LOW WAGE COMMISSION

Q:

One of the things that has come across your desk is the minimum wage. The commission report recommended recently a 10c increase. There is some criticism and concern about that. How are you going to get the Government commitment to get 10.50 an hour across the line if it is only 10c now?

A:

I have received the report and am examining the findings of the report, in the context of the budget, the decision will be made.

Q:

The commitment was 10.50 by 2020, thats the commitment. How do you see that proceeding?

A:

First of all, I have to say to you that the low-paid commission was an independent commission, they gave me a recommendation and Im looking at that.

Q:

There are rules and terms coming from the last government. Have you updated them and given them permission to go ahead with the roadmap?

A:

Those rules were devised by the last minister, the lad from Drogheda.

Q:

Ged Nash?

A:

Ged. I mean, that was in 2014? The commission were doing their work when I came into office, and they gave me, they were asked to give a report in July every year, which they did, and Im working with the findings.

ON WOMEN IN POWER AND BEING A WOMAN IN CABINET

Q:

Can I ask you about gender issues, you were quite strong about them when you were a TD. And you still are, you are seen as a strong figure when it comes to women. There was talk before of 50/50 in [makeup of] the Cabinet. There was a necessity for a minority government. How did you feel maybe that there wasnt half men and half women in the Cabinet. You were very strong supporter of that policy.

A:

Yes, and I am still a strong supporter and I believe that boards and boardrooms should have 50/50.
WE GOT chatting in a Dublin city centre cafe. After exchanging a few pleasantries the man began to tell a story of how he had been driving just off the South Circular Rd in Dublin this day last week.

As he drove he heard a succession of loud noises. It was, as they say in all the best crime stories, broad daylight, and traffic was quite heavy. It was also very near a part of Dublin in which I used to live. A passenger apparently asked: What was that? to which the he replied: Gunshots. Just then they saw a man run out of the back of a house into a waiting car, a small one, most likely he thinks a Micra or a Fiesta. The car drove towards them on the opposite side of the road. As it passed them they got a clear view of the driver and the guy they assumed to be the shooter who was wearing sunglasses and a hat, so not identifiable. Lets see how long it takes for us to hear the sirens, he said to his passenger. That took, if I remember correctly from what he said, eight minutes. By that time they were out on to the city quays.

What he realised subsequently was that a man had been shot at up to six times in a house as he attempted to flee a male attacker. Quite unbelievably he escaped uninjured. The gunman fled the scene in a red car, and a car was later found burned out nearby. At the time of writing the shooting was the latest instalment in the Hutch/Kinahan fued. Its worth remembering that so far, 10 men have been shot dead in what we are told is a feud between the international Kinahan gang and Dublin-based Hutch family.

After the shooting a local Sinn Fein councillor Janice Boylan spoke of how parents in that area had been so scared for their children who were out playing at the time. As they heard the shots and recognised what they were they ran out of their houses to gather up young children.

Co-workers set up fund for Trevor O'Neill's family https://t.co/pvJSmRjVcl pic.twitter.com/t6cQ90vifO  Irish Examiner (@irishexaminer) September 2, 2016

Back in the cafe I sort of knew the answer but still asked what seemed like the obvious question, and that was whether the man had reported what he had seen to the gardai. He had not, he said, adding, with a laugh, he didnt think his wife would have allowed him. But he had kept an ear out on the news and knew the gardai had made an arrest and were questioning a man.

Later that same day I was at home with Radio One on in the background. The next thing I knew the 7pm headlines were on. The newsreader was telling of how the body of a man was found in a shallow grave in Rahin Wood in Co Kildare. Uh oh I thought as I ran to hit the off button before the children heard any more detail. But I got there too late. The detail of how an attempt had been made to set the remains on fire rang out around the kitchen. I did not want my children hearing that level of awful detail, but I didnt even wish to hear it myself. For most of the previous week I had kept the radio off and ensured they did not see the TV news because of the death of the Hawe family in Cavan, and the level of detail which had been broadcast on those awful events.

As my discussion with the man in the cafe showed, coupled with the level of lurid detail we are being subjected to on an almost daily basis, events such as shootings and killings are becoming almost run of the mill. I realise that if I dont get to the radio off button fast enough and often enough, my children may well grow up virtually inured to such horror. I can quite understand why the man in the car decided not to go to the gardai, but I was also struck as he told his story by how commonplace it seemed that he almost drove upon an attempted murder on a regular Friday evening in the city in which we both live.

I think of Trevor ONeill. Remember Trevor? On holidays last month with his family in the resort of Santa Ponsa in Spain, so beloved of Irish people. He was gunned down in front of his partner and three children in a case of mistaken identity. They had gone on holidays to celebrate Trevors 42nd birthday. They had been on their way to a restaurant. His youngest child was in a buggy being pushed by his partner Susanne.

Sinn Fein TD: Trevor O'Neill's death could have been prevented https://t.co/2Ea6NXfCaA pic.twitter.com/CQ8yeHctQ9  Irish Examiner (@irishexaminer) August 19, 2016

Subsequently police said Trevor was not the intended target but a man he had been talking to, a member of the Hutch family. After the shooting the ONeill family was immediately taken to a safe house by police. So much of the horror of what occurred to this family is just heartbreaking, but the fact they did not know Trevor was dead until Susanne spoke to family members in Dublin the next morning remains quite unbelievable.

At Trevors funeral parish priest Fr Melvyn Mullins said that while accidents can happen, what happened to Trevor on August 17 was no accident. Its so understandable to hear the priest saying he was appalled at expressions like mistaken identity or the wrong person in the /wrong place at the wrong time. They are empty expressions because they do not mark what is the true story, he said.

That true story, said the priest, was: Trevor ONeill was murdered, shot when he was doing something that an ordinary father would do: Enjoying a holiday in Spain with his partner and their children.

And Trevor, being the social guy that he was, did nothing but talk to everyone, no matter where he was, and he talked to people around the pool, he talked to people who were there at the hotel, and as he walked out into the evening, we find ourselves here.

How right Fr Mullins is. By using such phrases we almost excuse what has happened, or at the least lessen its impact. The converse logic here is that if the assassin had hit the right target it would almost be grand, a successful hit, as it were. Thats where we are at with crime at the moment  virtually unshocked by murder and attempted murders taking place on the streets of our capital, and sad about Irish citizens being gunned down mistakenly abroad, but not as truly shocked as we should be. Hearing about partially burnt bodies has become virtually ho hum in our daily lives.

Maybe its just me. I didnt even watch Love/Hate. I found it far too gruesome and awful and rather than enjoyable viewing on a Sunday night I found it stressful because I would wonder how close to real life it really was. The way things are going that programme is looking increasingly like Irish gangland crime lite.
John Halligan must be exhausted from wrestling with his conscience. Its one thing to have to compromise on ones principles for the sake of power, making internal accommodations for a bigger political project. But how much worse it is to be told that there will be nothing for the folks back home.

Halligans torturous wrestling has been a constant since he took up his role as the minister of state for training and skills. Hes like a man whos suffering from altitude sickness, unable to come to terms with the rarefied altitude of executive power, when he was so accustomed to a laid-back life down at ground level.

First there was his discomfort with supporting the Government against Mick Wallaces private members bill on abortion. He, along with his partisans, Shane Ross and Finian McGrath, voted against the Government. Theres a new Dail and votes are supposed to be taken on matters of conscience and I think that is what the Government should do, he said at the time.

The votes of Halligan and his fellow Independent Alliance ministers didnt matter a whit in relation to the Bill, but it was a matter of principle. These are men of principle. When they are bought by Fine Gael for their support, they dont stay bought.

Then there was the problem over the appeal against the EU Competition Commissioners ruling on Apples 13 billion in back taxes. Here, Halligan was on sounder ground. Michael Noonan outlined the Governments position before consulting the constituent parts of the Government, and Halligan made his displeasure known. He said it was his personal view that Apple should pay the 13bn.

Independent TDs Sean Canney, Finian McGrath, Shane Ross, John Halligan, Kevin Boxer Moran at Leinster House. Picture: Collins

His heretofore left-wing credentials were also offended by the positioning of the Fine Gael people. If he had been in opposition, there is little doubt but that Halligan would have voraciously demanded that the money be taken immediately and ploughed into ailing services.

The latest crisis to flood the conscience of the Waterford TD is of a different standard altogether. This exposes Halligans heretofore tortured attempt to accommodate his principles as little more than a sham. This is about parish pump politics, in which the politicians guiding focus is to ask not what he can do for his country, but what his country can do for his constituency.

Halligans price for power included a commitment to make improvements in his local Waterford general hospitals cardiac care. This was to come in the form of a second cath lab  a dedicated cardiac unit  within the hospital.

Despite their desperation to get back into Government, Kenny, Noonan, et al couldnt be seen to be messing around with finite health resources for power. They agreed to conduct an independent review of the need for the facility. In the normal run of things, these reviews throw up the answer that is expected. Not this time. The review concluded that there was no case for an extra cath lab in the south-east.

This is fundamental stuff. Earlier this week it was revealed that people in need of brain surgery in Beaumount Hospital are being turned away because of lack of resources. The clinical director of the centre was quoted as criticising politicians who tried to pressurise hospitals into prioritising specific patients, irrespective of clinical need.

Protestors march in 2012 over the downgrading of services at Waterford Regional Hospital. Picture: Patrick Browne

Halligans Waterford hospital dilemma is an example of this stuff writ large. Clinical professionals decide on the basis of need where resources must be directed.

A review has decided that there is no justification for the extra cardiac unit in Waterford. Anything that attempts to interfere with that is playing with peoples lives.

Why should a sick person in Donegal, or Dublins inner city, or West Cork be denied health resources because Fine Gael require John Halligans vote?

As might be expected, Halligan blames the review, claiming it is fatally flawed. The only thing that is fatally flawed was his decision to enter government. Hes simply not suited to the job.

Interestingly, Fianna Fail was quick out of the blocks to announce that if they return to Government, Waterford will get sorted out, irrespective of clinical priorities. When we are in Government we will ensure that cardiac care in Waterford is strengthened and improved, the partys health spokesman Billy Kelleher said.

Thats the state of politics as we know it, and there is zero prospect of the problems within the health service being properly addressed while politicians continue to undermine clinicians in attempting to allocate resources.

Meanwhile, a separate independent review is underway to decide which garda stations closed in the last few years should be reopened. This review was set up reportedly at the behest of Shane Ross, who has long protested against the closure of the Stepaside station in the heart of his south Dublin constituency.

The smart money says that the review will do whats expected of it and independently conclude that Stepaside must reopen. But wouldnt it be great fun if it missed the cut? Wouldnt be great to watch another man of principle wrestle with his conscience to determine what is best for his country?

If Halligan goes

Independent Alliance TD John Halligan may not jump ship, but that doesnt mean Fine Gael isnt thinking of giving him a nudge. Who might Enda Kenny turn to if a position suddenly needs filling?

Noel Grealish:

The Galway West TD is, on the surface, exactly what Fine Gael needs to help shore up the Government. Calm, relatively uncontroversial, and centre-right leaning, he would be a far less complex politician to work with than Mr Halligan.

The former leader of the PDs once toyed with joining Fianna Fail, and given the fact he abstained on the Dail vote in May to make Enda Kenny taoiseach, he would not be out of place in the current coalition.

However, Mr Grealishs five-seat constituency already has two Fine Gael TDs  Hildegarde Naughten and Sean Kyne  and would risk one losing out come the next election.

Dr Michael Harty:

The first-time Clare TD and practising GP is another option being discussed in Leinster House right now.

While he, like Mr Halligan, would understandably come with some health service reform preconditions  chief among them drastic improvements in rural GP services for rural western areas  this is already something the Government is seeking to address.

Stephen Donnelly:

The former Social Democrat made it clear on Tuesday he is willing to take calls, and notably chose to abstain during Wednesdays Dail vote on the Apple appeal.

However, some stumbling blocks persist.

Chief among them is the fact the Wicklow TDs constituency already contains two Fine Gael TDs  Health Minister Simon Harris and Andrew Doyle  while such a move may also portray him as power hungry.

For now, staying out of power and waiting for a better climate after the next election may be Mr Donnellys best strategy.

Best of the rest:

Given their previous involvement in springs government formation talks, Maureen OSullivan, Michael Healy Rae, Michael Fitzmaurice, Green Party TDs Eamon Ryan and Catherine Martin, Mattie McGrath, and Michael Collins could all conceivably fill Mr Halligans position.

-Fiachra O Cionnaith
It wont come cheap. It costs 14m to join and 2m a year thereafter, but being a member is no mere indulgence. The ESO is the foremost international astronomy collaboration in Europe.

Together its 15 member states and Chile operate large telescopes involved in some of the most important astronomical discoveries of recent decades.
Burma Armed Forces Chief to Kofi Annan: Solutions Must Win Arakanese Approval

Arakan State Advisory Commission chairman Kofi Annan meets with Burmas Commander-in-Chief Snr-Gen Min Aung Hlaing on Thursday in Naypyidaw. / Senior General Min Aung Hlaing / Facebook

RANGOON  Burmas armed forces chief Snr-Gen Min Aung Hlaing warned the Kofi Annan-led Arakan State Advisory Commission that proposed solutions to the communal conflict in the state must win the approval of the Buddhist Arakanese community.

Ascribing the Buddhist-Muslim conflict in large part to labor migration during the colonial era, and illegal migration thereafter, the senior general conveyed a hard line on the issueconsistent with previous governmentsreiterating that Bengalis, as the Rohingya are routinely termed, do not belong to Burma, falling outside of the 135 recognized ethnicities.

At the meeting on Thursday in Naypyidaw, he said, the wishes of ethnic people are pivotal, under a definition that excludes the Rohingya. We have to consider ethnic unity and democracy [] not only citizenship, he saida likely reference to the widespread rejection among the Burmese public of the Rohingyas claim to being rightful citizens of the country.

He also recommended that the commission take into account the historical context and background of the communal conflict in Arakan State.

The senior general went on at length about agricultural labor migration from Bengal in India to the Arakan coast from the late 1880swhen Burma was merged with India under the colonial British administrationand violent confrontation between Buddhist and Muslim communities dating back to 1942 during World War II, as well as the Burmese governments failure to control migration in the 1970s while cracking down on communists in the north-east of the country.

We have 135 ethnicities, including eight national races, in the country. But there is no Bengali ethnicity, said Snr-Gen Min Aung Hlaing.

The senior general stated that the Rohingyathe large majority of whom remain statelesswould be assessed for citizenship under the 1982 law. The law places considerable barriers to citizenship for those, like the Rohingya, whose ethnicity is not officially recognized, and establishes different tiers of citizenship with diminishing rights.

If they consider themselves [fit for the citizenship], they should feel free to be verified, he said, in reference to a continued citizenship verification drive in Arakan State.

The senior general also claimed that the Arakan State conflict was not based on religion, instead being attributable to people instigating riots using religion as a pretext.

He claimed that Burma scored well on religious freedom, having accepted Muslim communities in Burma for a long time, and that Muslims currently occupy senior levels in the civil service.

Kofi Annanthe Ghanaian former UN secretary-general and peace envoy appointed by State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi to lead the new advisory commissionstressed during the meeting that the commission would only make recommendations to the government, and would take a holistic approach, not only on citizenship but also regional development.

The former UN secretary-general arrived in Burma on Sunday. First meeting with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in Rangoon, he traveled to Arakan State earlier this week with the new commission, meeting with Buddhist and Muslim community representativesand facing protests from several hundred Buddhist Arakanese on their arrival and departurebefore meeting with President U Htin Kyaw and Snr-Gen Min Aung Hlaing in Naypyidaw.

The formation of the advisory commission was announced by the State Counselors Office in late August. The commission is comprised of three international members, including the chairman Kofi Annan, and six from Burmatwo Buddhist Arakanese, two Muslims (from Rangoon) and three representing the government.

According to the state counselor, the commission will investigate the root causes of the conflict in Arakan State and develop a reconciliation process between the two religious communities in the region.

Communal violence, mostly directed against the Rohingya, took place across Arakan State in 2012 and 2013, displacing up to 140,000 people, the vast majority Muslim. Buddhist and Muslim communities remain segregated across most parts of the state, with restrictions placed on displaced Muslims movements and access to public services.

The advisory commission drew criticism soon after its formation. The Arakan National Party and the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) objected to the inclusion of the international members, because it would interfere with Burmas sovereignty. Their fears chiefly revolve around the likelihood of the international members siding with the Rohingya. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has attempted to allay concerns, stating that no one can interfere with our sovereigntysovereignty is owned by all people, not only by the government.

This week, a heated debate took place in the Lower House of Parliament, with 148 lawmakersincluding military representatives and members of ethnic parties and the USDPcalling for international members of the commission to be replaced with local academics. However, 250 lawmakers from the ruling National League for Democracy defeated the proposal.

After the eruption of violence in 2012, former President U Thein Sein formed the 27-member Arakan Investigation Commission. Given the continued displacement and religious segregation across Arakan State, the panels mission of conflict resolution and reconciliation between the two groups could not be said to have made much headway over four years.

Zaganar, a former member of the investigation commission, told The Irrawaddy that the previous government failed to act on the commissions findings.

I think less than 20 percent of our [recommendations] were carried out. I dont know why they failed to do so, he said.

The former political prisoner said he is hopeful for the new Kofi Annan-led commission, believing that the inclusion of the international members would help the international community understand the root causes of the conflict.

It would be good if the government could properly implement their recommendations, provided they are beneficial for the country. But its too early to say [] we still dont know what the recommendations will be, he said.
Burma Gun-Brandishing Police Officer in Hpakant Detained, Facing Internal Investigation

Police Lieutenant Soe Zaw Zaw threatening locals at gunpoint on Tuesday. / Facebook

A police officer who threatened local villagers in Kachin States Hpakant Township at gunpoint has been suspended and detained, pending an internal police investigation.

On Tuesday, at a meeting with locals of Hmaw Pon Village in Lone Khin Village Tract of Hpakant Township regarding the election of 100-household administrators, Police Lieutenant Soe Zaw Zaw took out and pointed his gun at the villagers during an argument.

A video file of the incident, in which he is heard threatening to shoot the villagers, went viral online, drawing extensive public criticism.

The police lieutenant later apologized to the villagers, who accepted his apology, said Lower House lawmaker U Tint Soe, who represents Hpakant Township. But the lawmaker considered the police officers behavior unacceptable and he called on the authorities to punish him for his misconduct.

I found his behavior in the video terrible. So, I immediately asked the [Kachin State] chief minister to take legal action against him. Police Battalion 16 will now conduct an internal police investigation. He will be detained at Hpakant police station until Sept. 13, U Tint Soe told The Irrawaddy.

The reason for [officers] holding arms should be to protect the people, not to harass them. They must avoid abusing their power in an issue which is none of their business, said U Tint Soe.

Police Battalion 16 is mainly responsible for providing security for jade mining businesses in the Hpakant area.

Dashi La Sai, a National League for Democracy lawmaker in the Kachin State parliament, said: We have never heard of a police officer threatening [people] with a gun during a [local] election, although there are cases of police firing warning shots against illegal [jade] prospectors.

Translated from Burmese by Thet Ko Ko.
Burma Jade Companies Threaten to Sue Trespassing Prospectors

Small-scale miners at work in Hpakant. / JPaing / The Irrawaddy

RANGOONJade mining companies in upper Burma have threatened to sue jade prospectors taking small stones from dumping areas, in an announcement made by Sagaing Division jade operators in a state-run newspaper on Friday.

Newspaper Myanmar Ahlin said that seven licensed jade mining companies operating in Nan Si Pon jade region in Hkamti Township, Sagaing Division have released a joint notice, saying they possess full-term jade mining licenses from the Ministry of Mines which includes residual jade in the designated dumping areas.

The notice warns prospectors to stop illegally entering dumping areas in search of residual jade within seven days of Sept. 7, adding that legal action will be taken against violators.

Khine Nan Shwe, Aung Htee Phyu, Zabu Thiri, Htet Yi Lin, Myauk Kyon Thu Mama, Min Htet Oo and Lin In Ar companies posted the notice in the newspaper.

U Aung Thein, secretary of the Mandalay Gems Traders Association, said many hand pickers have entered jade mines illegally in Sagaing Division and Kachin State to search for small stones in waste dumps.

There is less security in those areas, he said. I have heard that people are hand-picking in big groups without approval from the mine owners, causing considerable trouble. Thats why they agreed to this announcement.

According to the Myanmar Gems Enterprise, under the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation, there are warning signs posted by the ministry to deter prospectors from entering jade mines illegally.

By law, nobody can enter someones boundaries without approval, so if jade mining companies have not given hand-pickers permission, they cannot, said U Min Thu, director of Myanmar Gems Enterprise.

Companies have given notice to these people before taking this most recent action, he said.

Mining companies have complained to local authorities and ministry officials about this problem before. Police and legal experts suggested giving prior notice before taking action against them. Thats why jade companies have made this announcement public, U Min Thu said.

More than 5,000 jade mines in Sagaing division and more than than 6,000 mines in Kachin State continue to operate as government licenses expire across the country. U Min Thu said these numbers are falling as licenses cease to be valid.

Jade mining in Kachin State was suspended in 2012 after the breakdown of a 17-year ceasefire between the government and the Kachin Independence Army. After government approval, mining operations continued, halting temporarily in early 2015 when renewed fighting broke out before a more widespread resumption of armed conflict in March of last year.

The new NLD government decided not to renew jade mining licenses, prompting 310 companies to cease operations as of last month, as listed by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation.

The government has announced that all remaining jade mining licenses will expire in 2018, and licenses will only be considered for renewal after the completion of an environmental management plan for jade mining areas of Kachin State.
Burma Mon and Karen Forces Clash in Dawei District

Members of the Mon National Liberation Army on maneuvers in Ye township, Mon state / NMSP / Facebook

RANGOONA clash erupted Thursday afternoon between the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) and the Mon National Liberation Army (MNLA) in Tae Chong village of Dawei District. The two ethnic armed groups both claim land in the area, also known as Tavoy, in Tenasserim Division.

Members of the Karen National Union [KNU] came into the village, Nai Win Hla, a spokesperson from the New Mon State Party (NMSP), told The Irrawaddy Friday.

Two of their members came to observe our army base nearby. On their way back, two of our soldiers chased them, they fought back and a short firefight broke out.

The spokesperson reported no casualties from MNLA soldiers but that one soldier from KNLAthe armed wing of the KNUwas wounded by a gunshot, according to local residents.

The NMSP informed Burmas Joint Monitoring Committee (JMC) of the incident; the group oversees the implementation of 2015s nationwide ceasefire agreement, which the KNU/KNLA signed, but the MNLA opted out of. The NMSP also told the Dawei regional government and contacted KNUs liaison office in Dawei to meet and resolve the problem, Nai Win Hla reported.

According to local Mon and Karen sources, tensions have been high in recent months because ethnic Mon have begun growing rubber plants on an area claimed by KNU in the past but currently controlled by the MNLA.

First, they [KNU] wanted ethnic Mon growing rubber plants in the area to get out, then they even wanted our troops to move out from these areas, NMSP spokesperson Nai Win Hla said.

We have been based in this area since before we signed the ceasefire agreement with the government [in 1995, and renewed in 2012]. But now the KNU are saying this area belongs to them, this is the dispute that caused the fight to break out.

The Irrawaddy contacted the KNU liaison office in Dawei and a staffer confirmed that there was a fight with the Mon but said that they were not available to discuss it further.

An ethnic Karen Dawei resident close to the KNLA, who asked to remain nameless, said this is not ethnic conflict; it was just a land dispute.

The source said that after the KNU tried to remove a Mon rubber farmer from a KNU-controlled area, the rubber farmer called the MNLA, leading to the clash.
Burma New Law Proposed to Protect Citizens Against State Surveillance

A Special Branch officer records as student activist Nanda Sit Aung talks to the Reuters news agency during an interview at Thayawady court, during a mass trial of student protesters in Pegu Division, August 25, 2015. / Reuters

RANGOON  A new bill to protect citizens privacy, security and freedom from state surveillance and intrusion was submitted to Parliament on Thursday by the Lower House Bill Committee.

Despite democratic reforms since 2011, and the coming to power of an elected civilian government in April of this year, Burma retains much its surveillance and repressive security apparatus, which remains under the control of the military.

Plain-clothed Special Branch officers, a division of the police under the military-controlled Ministry of Home Affairs, can still freely intrude on peoples privacytaking pictures, videos and sound recordings of ordinary citizens, collecting material that can be used against them in legal suitsand keep a particularly close watch on political and civil society activists.

The bill prohibits unwarranted household arrests and inspections, and surveillance of individuals and their private communication in a manner that harms their privacy or dignity, barring the approval of the President or Union ministers.

The draft law also states that no one can request or provide private communication logged by telecom operators, unseal private letters and parcels, intrude on an individuals private affairs and family life, and seize citizens moveable or immoveable property. These intrusions are permitted under the frequently vague provisions of Burmas existing laws.

Under previous military and military-backed governments, political dissidents, student activists, and journalists routinely had their phones tapped and their movements closely followed by both Special Branch and Military Intelligence officers.

U Aung Myo Kyaw of the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners said he welcomed the bill because it would help protect the rights of the individual, which have been severely curtailed in Burma over a long period.

Not only under the previous government but up till now, we have been facing these kinds of [abuses]. It is unchanged. In some areas, if we arrive to hold a public event, there is surveillance of our movements. Influential politicians and former political prisoners are still facing this, he said.

He said that, during the military regime that ruled Burma over five decades, thousands of politicians, student activists and their associates were jailed or closely followed.

If they want to know what we are doing, they can ask and take the information directly from us. But stalking and secretly taking pictures of us shouldnt happen now. But since there was previously no legal protection from those kinds of things, they kept doing it. If the law is enacted, it will provide for the protection all citizens. But everyone, especially special branch officers, the police and administrators, need to follow it, U Aung Myo Kyaw added.

The bill proscribes a punishment to anyone who violates the law with prison terms of up to five years and a fine of 2,500,000 kyats (US$2,050).

In the past, we always felt insecure. We were anxious at night that wed get a knock on our door and be arrested, U Tun Tun Hein, chair of the Lower House Bill Committee and a former political prisoner, told reporters at the parliament on Thursday.

But under democracy, citizens shall live and sleep without such anxiety, he said, adding that the government needs to be held responsible for ensuring citizens privacy and security.

After the law is enacted, you can file a complaint with the police if you suspect that your phone is being tapped or have experienced household inspections without a warrant, he said.
The next prisoner exchange between Ukraine and illegal armed units will take place in the very near future, Leonid Kuchma, second president of Ukraine (1994-2005) and Ukraine's representative in the Trilateral Contact Group on the settlement of the situation in Donbas, said.

Negotiations on this matter are now in the final stage, he said. "I have hope that the next prisoner exchange will take place in the very near future. These negotiations are virtually in the final stage. Let's wait," Kuchma said during a meeting with students of the Chernihiv National Technical University.

The issue of prisoner exchange is "truly sensitive," he said. "Some regions of Donbas use [them] for political purposes [...] as a method to put pressure on Ukraine. And one of the main conditions, including amnesty. They are saying that Ukraine should pass a law under which we should amnesty everyone who engaged in it. But we know, and, factoring in world experience, that people who have blood on their hands are not amnestied. And then, there is a legal system: every person should go to trial, starting from the law enforcement agencies, and a court has to say if this person should be amnestied or not. They are speculating on that," the politician said.

He said militants understand well that "responsibility will have to be borne" for what has happened in Donbas. "Although I understand that an overwhelming majority of people are not to blame for what happened, but it is also being used for prisoner exchange - it is so," Kuchma said.
Burma Regional Parliamentarians Lament Continued Govt Centralization

NLD lawmakers stand in the Rangoon Division parliament. / Moe Myint / The Irrawaddy

RANGOON  Burmas civilian-led government recently marked five months since the transfer of power from the countrys previous, military-backed administration.

The Irrawaddy explored the ongoing challenges facing regional parliamentarians in the new system by surveying six National League for Democracy (NLD) lawmakers from Pegu, Irrawaddy and Rangoon division parliaments, and six representatives from parliaments in ethnic states, including those serving in the Arakan National Party (ANP), the Kachin State Democracy Party (KSDP), the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy (SNLD) and the once-ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP).

In interviews, parliamentarians discussed and reflected on the first official 100 days in their divisional legislatures, a period which ended in August.

Regional lawmakers revealed a struggle surrounding limited transparency and a sense of helplessness they attribute to continued centralization in the countrys young government.

Lawmakers decry lack of transparency from Arakan State government

On Aug. 22, at a session of the Arakan State parliament, Khin Maung Htay, an ANP legislator from Ann Constituency (2), submitted a question: do we have the right to know the governments 100-day plan for our state?

The inquiry was in reference to the period from May 1 until mid-August.

I have no idea about the governments 100 day project, so thats why Im asking this question, he said.

Arakan State, like Burmas other states, has a set of appointed ministers who are largely members of the ruling NLD. Arakan States municipal minister, Min Aung of the NLD, simply replied by referring Khin Maung Htay to a government press conference held on July 22 in the state capital of Sittwe, pointing out that many respected individuals and civil society representatives had been invited, leaving nothing left to explain in the regional parliament.

He didnt say anything about the specifics of the 100-day plan, Khin Maun Htay said, adding that he assumed the regional government was continuing the development of infrastructure throughout the stateprojects started by the previous governmentalthough this could not be confirmed. Budgets were specified by the former administration, and there is concern that the Arakan State government is working through its annual budget at an alarming rate by continuing projects prioritized by previous leadership.

As a representative of my constituents, I must know the status of ongoing projects. I want the [state government] to explain details in the [state] parliament for all lawmakers.

The Irrawaddy phoned Min Aung multiple times for comment, but was not able to reach him.

USDP lawmaker Htun Hla Sein, from Maungdaw Township, also said he felt ignored by the government; talking to parliamentarians, he argued, should be viewed in the same way as talking to the public, he said.

Another outspoken ANP lawmaker Kyaw Zaw Oo of Sittwes Constituency (2) spoke with The Irrawaddy over the phone, and lamented the lack of effort made by government ministers to keep MPs up to date with relevant facts and figures. He admitted that he had not heard any updates on budget allocation, and wondered if centralization of government was to blame.

Many problems are handled by the central body [the Union government], and sometimes I dont think the Chief Minister can do anything here, he said.

Kachin, Shan lawmakers highlight regional limitations

Meanwhile, members of the Kachin and Shan state parliaments identify as a key challenge determining whether a legislative issue is of regional or national importance, and the implications of introducing it in the regional or Union-level parliament.

For KSDP parliamentarian Maran Ja Seng Hkawn, representing Kachin States Ingyan Constituency (2), the controversial Myitsone dam is planned for construction within her area, at the confluence that forms the Irrawaddy River. Yet if the China-backed hydropower project proceeds, the impact would be felt nationwide.

She described being censored after attempting to discuss the dam in the NLD-dominated Kachin State parliament, with the House Speaker reportedly rejecting a debate on the issue, pointing out that the state lacks power to make decisions on such matters due to restrictions laid out in the 2008 Constitution.

Tu Ja, chairman of the KSDP, said, The centralization is not much different from the previous government.

Ongoing fighting between government troops and the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) has been met with silence from the Kachin State Chief Minister, leading MPs to question his influence and authority in the state; would the Burma Army listen if the Chief Minster ordered a halt to the attacks?

Tu Ja went as far as declaring that nothing has changed at the state level, since the shift to a civilian-led government in Naypyidaw, lamenting continued armed conflict in Kachin State. The state government knows [there is fighting], but they do nothing about it, he said.

Ja Seng Hkawn recommends that greater authority be granted to the state level, particularly regarding the ability to respond to clashes, but until the military-drafted 2008 Constitution is amended, regional powers will continue to remain limited.

Fighting between ethnic armed groups and the Burma Army has also continued in northern Shan State, even as the 21st Century Panglong peace conference commenced in Naypyidaw on Aug. 31.

Regional MP Nang San San Aye, representing the SNLD in Hsipaw Township, said she is still awaiting a government plan for resettlement and rehabilitation of internally displaced communities in Shan State. The states Chief MinisterLinn Htut of the NLDshe said, had not yet addressed the conflict or the displacement. At the very least, she said, the state government could have instructed the Burma Army to halt troop reinforcements in areas of conflict.

Like Kachin States Ja Seng Hkawn, Nang San San Aye told The Irrawaddy that every time she brought up concerns about armed conflict in the state parliament, the House Speaker rejected her proposal, deferring such issues to the Union government.

Armed clashes are not happening at the Union levelthey are happening around ethnic Shan communities. Awaiting instructions from the Union level government would not help our people, she said.

Communication challenges within divisional governments

Rangoon Division lawmakers Myat Min Thu and Daw Khaing Mar Htay also describe being kept in the dark regarding government planning, budgetary matters and construction projects. Despite legislators inquiries about definitive timeframes or action plans, the MPs that The Irrawaddy spoke to said that ministers often fail to provide accurate information.

Some ministers make promises, said Irrawaddy Division parliamentarian U Khin Win. But I dont know whether or not they have done as they said.

Nyi Nyi Htwe and Thet Win Hlaing, lawmakers from Pegu Division, admitted that they knew little of their governments plans for the first 100 days in power.

A legislator from the Irrawaddy Division parliament, Khaing Zin Oo, attributed these issues to the newness of the NLD-led government, pointing out that ministers are still learning how to apply and adhere to government procedures.

In order to improve communication and working capacity, the director of the Tanpadipa Institute, Khin Zaw Win, said that regional governments should explain their projects to the parliament.

Centralization and a lack of transparency could continue, he warned, if the majority of state and divisional parliaments continue to be dominated by only one party, with mostly NLD lawmakers and appointed NLD ministers.

I dont hold out much hope with this government. Their actions involve an information blackout. That will not take us in a good direction, Khin Zaw Win said.

He recommended the development of stronger checks and balances between legislatures and ministers, especially over decision-making. The requirement to wait for instructions from the Union government delays urgent action when it is most needed, he explained, pointing to the lack of power afforded to the divisional government during a recent measles outbreak in the Naga Self-Administered Zone in Sagaing Division.

Moreover, constituents who voted in support of particular parties view a lack of transparency as irresponsible, he said: regional cabinets must release all information relevant to regional lawmakers.

Khin Zaw Win encouraged chief ministers of states and divisions to be aware of the importance of their role.

They have the power to act, but do not dare to apply that power out of fear of being disqualified [from their post], he explained. They are just waiting for orders from the central body.

Irrawaddy Division MP Khin Win said that it would take time to develop a more efficient working system.

The country has been torn for several decades. How could that be solved within 100 days? he said.
Business Burma, Czech Republic Sign MoU on Trade

U Ai Tun (middle) at the Czech-Burma economic forum in Prague this week / Lin Thant

PRAGUE, Czech Republic  Burma and the Czech Republic entered into historic economic relations on Monday when the two countries signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on economic cooperation.

The International Business Promotion Centre (IBPC), the second largest independent business association in Burma, and the Confederation of Industry of the Czech Republic signed the MoU at a Czech-Burma economic forum in Prague. It is the first of its kind in six decades.

U Ai Tun, chairman of IBPC, said the MoU covers Czech investment in Burma, Burmas exports to the Czech Republic, and cooperation between Burmese and Czech business professionals in mining and agricultural production.

The Czech Republic is a technologically advanced country; they export good quality machinery for a reasonable price. My company has already bought machinery from them, said U Ai Tun, who is also the chairman of Shwetaung Development Co.

The signatories view the bilateral cooperation as an entry point to the EU market for Burma and a way into the Asian market for the Czech Republic.

Frantisek Chaloupecky, vice-chairman of the Confederation of Industry of the Czech Republic, said his country is not only interested in exporting to Burma, but also wants to promote bilateral relations with Burma as an economic partner.

He said the Czech government knows that Burmas banking system and intellectual property rights issues remain challenges, but the Czech Republic is ready to help the country with those sectors.

The Burmese business delegation comprised over 30 members and will finish its trip to Europe on Sept. 12. They plan to sign a similar MOU with Croatia.

Suffice to say our mission was successful, business delegation leader U Ai Tun said of the Czech Republic visit.

Translated from Burmese by Thet Ko Ko
Ukrainian Foreign Ministry expressed protest over the visit of Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to Crimea, Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mariana Betsa said.

"The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry expresses protest over the unapproved by the Ukrainian side stay of the Russian Defense Minister in the sovereign territory of Ukraine, within its internationally-recognized borders, which includes the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol. Shoigu's stay in the territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea is blatant disregard for Ukrainian state sovereignty on the part of the Russian government," she said.

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry will send a relevant notice of protest to Russia, she said.
Friday, September 9th, 2016 (9:28 am) - Score 1,017

The non-profit Scottish Rural Action group has published a new report that points to serious failings in Scotlands existing roll-out of superfast broadband services with BT and calls for 5 major policy changes, which they say would establish an ultrafast (300Mbps+) model for rural areas.

At present the 410m Digital Scotland project with Openreach (BT) has already made its FTTC/P based fibre broadband network available to 85% of premises in Scotland and theyre now working towards the next goal of 95% by December 2017, although the more rural Highland and Islands (HIE) region alone currently only expects to hit 84% by the end of this year.

A recent report from Audit Scotland (here) appeared to confirm that good progress was being made, although it also said that there was still a lot more work to do particularly in improving download speeds in rural areas. On top of that they highlighted the need for a clear plan to boost take-up and deliver on the new pledge for 100% coverage by 2021.

By comparison SRAs new report (PDF) is somewhat less forgiving and accuses BT of using the strategy to prop up its decaying copper network and of reducing its expenditure on duct with the result that the net value of its asset base is beginning to decrease. Furthermore it claims that faults on BTs network have increased due to the redirection of resources to the NGA rollout.

SRA Report Statement This is the time to accept that BT has misjudged its strategy and that copper-reliant technology will no longer meet the needs of Scottish rural communities. Fibre to the Cabinet [FTTC] is an inefficient methodology in rural communities and the red herring of VDSL is fit only to provide BT with a way to continue to leverage its monopoly of copper exchange lines. Rural Scotlands economy will face many challenges in the next few years and there is uncertainty over future business support, especially in the agricultural sector and in rural development post-Brexit. The Scottish Government needs to ensure that rural connectivity is not an additional challenge, by establishing an ultrafast model (defined by Ofcom as more than 300 Mbps) for the most remote and rural areas, supporting real futureproof networks so that the rural area will not be marginalised again in 10 years, by which time all applications will be designed for hyper networks.

Apparently the report was collated by the SRAs working group, consisting of more than 30 individuals and community groups, who are all said to be working hard on a voluntary basis to deliver this essential service to their locality.

They feel strongly that the systems need to change if we are ever going to see equity between rural and urban communities and delivery of the Scottish Governments commitment to superfast broadband to 100% of premises in Scotland, said Amanda Burgauer, Chair of the SRA.

In keeping with that the SRAs Broadband Working Group has proposed five recommendations, which it believes would help to improve rural connectivity in Scotland.

The Five SRA Recommendations 1. The Scottish Government should redirect resources to quickly facilitate the provision of community/national backhaul, local backbone networks and community hubs to support access networks. This will prime the pump for Internet Service Providers to provide connectivity either commercially or through community projects, possibly including State Aid-funded projects. 2. The Scottish Government, having made the commitment to reach 100 per cent super-fast coverage, should accept that this is a stepping stone to ultra-fast speeds and ensure that there are clear upgrade paths available to all rural networks. 3. Rural communities should be supported through access to specialist advice according to their needs. This might include business planning, technical advice, help with funding, legal guidance regarding way leaves and other support. There needs to be a mechanism for accessing this support and sharing knowledge amongst community projects in a collaborative way, and not through the current Community Broadband Scotland approach, which has blocked many projects rather than facilitate them. 4. Existing rural broadband and rural initiatives and resources should be coordinated to best respond to rural broadband requirements and overcome obstacles that currently impede rural broadband deployment. These should be addressed and managed by the team responsible for reaching 100 per cent, as a singly managed project, with clear accountability for delivery. 5. There should be a Scottish Broadband Conference, using an Open Space-type of facilitation, that brings together all stakeholders, including Scottish Government, community projects, network providers and suppliers, to evaluate the status quo and share views and solutions.

Some of the suggestions, such as to help provide rural communities with more support (no.3), to establish more coordination (no. 4) and setting up a meeting between all of the stakeholders (no.5), seem to be fairly logical.

Likewise the idea of encouraging the Scottish Government to start thinking about ultra-fast connectivity (no.2) would actually be in keeping with the current direction of travel within the EU. Even the UK Government has quietly begun to talk about it (here), although were admittedly still a very long way away from seeing a firm strategy.

However the issue of backhaul (no.1) is more complex and the recommendation isnt entirely clear about its idea for community hubs to support access networks. In some ways this issue is already being tackled by Ofcoms move to free up access to BTs Cable Ducts / Poles (DPA) and their Dark Fibre Access (DFA) measures, although funding and building any new backhaul network for rural areas will always be difficult due to the challenge of getting a return on such investments.

Never the less, supplying capacity to remote rural networks is a big part of the battle, but the situation is improving and today there are many more methods (inc. Microwave) for getting capacity to such locations. Whether or not new backhaul links should also be built and managed by the state is an altogether more complicated question and one that Ofcom would perhaps need to consider. If it were to happen then there would need to be strict rules to help tackle any competition issues.

UPDATE 6:32pm

BT has given us the following statement.
Samsung has just come out with the new Galaxy Folder 2. The new phone is a clamshell device that comes out first in China. At a time when most smartphones feature touchscreen phones, the Samsung Galaxy Folder 2 has a physical keyboard, much like older cellphones.

The Samsung Galaxy Folder 2 is an Android phone, according to Android Headlines, despite being a bit unconventional than the conventional smartphone. The appeal to the new smartphone is its retro appeal. Consumers who might want a more old-school vibe to their phone will find the Galaxy Folder 2 to be a good choice.

Protection

One advantage that a clamshell smartphone has is protection, especially on the screen. Smartphones these days with touchscreens would sometimes need extra protection by putting a plastic cover over it. Sometimes, users also buy the phone a protective case to lessen screen damage. With a clamshell design, smartphone screen protection is already there as it can easily be folded to hide the screen when not in use.

Size

Another advantage of a clamshell smartphone is that it is more portable. Once it is folded, it would be much smaller in size and so can fit into pockets more easily. Since it is a clamshell smartphone, its screen would be much smaller than most touchscreen smartphones. With only a 3.8-inch LCD display, the Samsung Galaxy Folder 2 has a small screen as compared to most touch screen phones.

Features

The Samsung Galaxy Folder 2 has a Snapdragon 425 processor, 16GB of internal storage that can be expanded through microSD. It has 2GB RAM. It will come with Android Marshmallow 6.01 as its OS. At the back is an 8MP camera while the front has a 5MP camera, as GSM Arena reports.

Availability

Currently, the Samsung Galaxy Folder 2 is only coming out in China. It is not yet known how much would it cost, or whether Samsung has any plans of releasing the phone outside the Asian country. Given that clamshell smartphones are rather rare, it is not certain if Samsung would release the phone in great numbers for other regions.

For those who would like a phone that would be different from the usual touchscreen phone, the Samsung Galaxy Folder 2 might be the phone then. That is, of course, if ever it does come out in other territories aside from China.

Check out other great tech news at iTechPost, such as the ones about the PlayStation 4 Slim and PlayStation 4 Pro.
Google is on an aggressive stance in entering the smartphone industry as the Google Pixel and Pixel XL is expected to be unveiled at an event on October 4. A report that traces its origin from Australia reveals that Google is planning to launch its new armada of Android phones powered by a Nougat OS.

The Google Pixel and Pixel XL

According to Ausdroid, Telstra will most likely offer one of the two devices to the market, putting the much larger Google Pixel XL as a much viable option for consumers. In the bright side, the Google Pixel will be available for pre-order starting on October 4 and is rumored to start shipping on October 20.

The United States market is also part of this pre-order feature, simultaneously with the Australian market on October 4. The Pixel and Pixel XL is also most likely to be available at a much sooner date if one was to purchase them directly from Google.

But a possible premise is that pre-orders will start once the new Google phones are unveiled to the public. If this was the case, then it would follow the same strategy with that of previous Nexus devices.

4K Chromecast for Google Pixel and Google Pixel XL

Along with the release of the Google Pixel and Google Pixel XL, the company is also speculated to be revealing the all-new 4K Chromecast as well as the official details of the Google Home smart speaker during its hosted event on October 4.

The new Chromecast can be plugged into the back of a TV through an HDMI port. It then eases the mirroring or casting of content from the device that has the 4K Chromecast app. What makes it really interesting is that it just costs $35, less expensive than the other streaming devices of Amazon, Roku and even Apple.

The new 4K Chromecast features a sleeker look to it as now features a disk-shaped plastic device instead of the previous stick design that it had.

It has a longer and more bendable HDMI arm enabling it to hang further away from the TV, refraining users from being distracted. It will be available in three colors, lemon yellow, bright red and black.
Just a few months ago, a leaked photo emerged showing four new devices coming up from the Surface team. After that, a surge of rumors about new Surface devices came out. Included in the rumors is the new Microsoft All In One Surface PC.

Microsoft All-In-One Surface PC Rumors

According to a Neowin post, Microsoft will be holding an event in October and the company is set to do a hardware launch. However, much to the disappointment of Surface fans, it is assumed that Microsoft won't be releasing any of last year's next generation iterations. This could also mean that the rumored Surface Phone, if it actually does exist, may also not be launched until next year.

Right now, what is rumored to arrive is the All-In-One PC from the Microsoft Surface team. According to a source, this new PC was developed using the codename "Cardinal." This new device is said to have a giant touchscreen, designed to make workplace collaboration smoother and more productive.

Microsoft All-In-One PC Specs

It was said that the upcoming All-In-One PC will come with three display variants. There will be a 21-inch display with Full HD 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution and there will also be two models coming with 4K 3680 x 2140 pixel resolution at 24-inch and 27-inch displays.

If the Surface Pro devices were dubbed as the tablets that turn into a laptop, this new All-In-One PC from Microsoft is described to be a device that can "turn your desk into a studio".

Microsoft Surface Next Generation

According to the source, the next generation of Surface devices is expected to arrive Spring of 2017. It was said that these new devices cannot be launched unless the upcoming Windows 10 update called Redstone 2 gets announced as well.

Microsoft's October Event

As per the same source, the event is very likely to take place last week of October. For the location, the Microsoft event is expected to occur in New York City.
With President Barack Obama's term about to end, he might appreciate the fact that a parasite is named after him. Apparently, the researcher who has chosen that name considers it as an honor.

What Is Baracktrema Obamai?

American Parasitologists Jackson R. Roberts, Thomas R. Platt, Raphael Orelis-Ribeiro and Stephen A. Bullard have discovered a new species of parasitic flatworm. They named it Baracktrema Obamai in honor of US President Barack Obama. The said parasite infects turtles in Malaysia. It is about 2-inch in size and lives in turtle's blood, according to the Washington Post.

Baracktrema Obamai, like any other parasites, feed of the nutrient of its host. They often have a bad reputation to people according to Platt. He considers this parasite as a phenomenally incredibly resilient organism.

Editor Michael Sukhedo of the Journal of Parasitology and Rutgers biologist added that they are actually cool and crucial to life. Apparently, 7 out of 10 animals on Earth are considered parasites.

According to PRWeb, this parasite is a distantly related to the parasitic flatworms that cause schistosomiasis. This human disease affects millions of people in developing countries.

The Parasite Is Named After Obama

Platt that the physical characteristics of the parasite remind him of President Obama. He said that it's long, thin and cool as hell. It turns out that he is used to naming new species after people that he has a great deal of respect for.

Out of the 30 new species that he has discovered, he named two of them after his father-in-law and his doctorate adviser. Naming the parasite after Obama is only a small way for Flatt to honor him.
Google has announced on Thursday, Sept. 8, the acquisition of company Apigee, in a deal valued at $625 million. The deal will close by the end of the current fiscal year.

Google Buys Apigee

With this new acquisition, Google continues to follow its plans to build out a new-look cloud. The internet search giant plans to compete on the cloud services market with top companies such as Microsoft and Amazon.

Apigee announced the agreement to join Google on its company website. According to Forbes, Google cloud chief Diane Greene, who will have the Apigee a new unit joining soon her Google Cloud Platform, explained that the Apigee acquisition is related to APIs.

According to her, customers of Google's cloud services are considering APIs as a key function for their business. This is why Google is lo0oking for ways to improve its offer to enterprise customers of tools needed in their digital transformation.

Google has lately tried to raise its cloud profile by bringing in new technology and specialists through acquisition and hiring and investing in reorganizing the unit's structure. The company has know-how in analytics, back-end services and machine learning.

Apigee matches Google's expertise by coming with a full solution in back-end services. Using the company's APIs, customers can decrease time to and market apps.

Apigee chose to sell to Google because Google's cloud platform is committed to an open architecture ecosystem of hybrid and multi-cloud strategies. Customers using this cloud platform can mix and match products from different vendors.

According to Recode, the software tools built by Apigee could help non-tech companies develop apps they couldn't on their own. By integrating Apigee in its own cloud platform, Google will support its nearly year-long effort to reposition the company as a viable enterprise operation. This way, the search giant will have one more entry point to reach corporate clients in its stiff competition with Salesforce, Microsoft and Amazon.
Though DNA profiling is still the standard for analyzing evidence in crimes, forensic scientists have discovered something as unique and more effective. Researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California have recently published their study about the matter.

Unique Identification Through DNA

DNA is unique for every individual. It is beneficial to forensic scientists in identifying victims and criminals. It is often used to put someone in the crime scene. DNA profiling is a strong evidence that can convict or acquit a suspect.

However, DNA also has its limitations. One of the researchers and Chemist Brad Hart explained that DNA breaks down easily when exposed to light, heat exposure or other environmental conditions. In that case, it will become useless. The problem of DNA's durability is not the same as our hair.

The Proteins In Hair

According to TechTimes, the protein in our hair is more stable than our DNA. It can actually overcome the limitations of the established DNA profiling. At the same time, it can also be as reliable and precise, according to the Washington Post.

The proteins in our hair are actually made out of amino acids. Proteins are specific in its structure. If it's changed, it may not be able to function. With amino acids, it's less strict.

There are times that it can be interchanged. It will still not cause any damage. These particular switches in amino acids are what they are trying to locate. If they could do that, it would lead them to a single mutation in the DNA.

Deon Anex, one of the researchers and a chemist at Livermore, said that a mutation in the DNA may show up in the protein itself. This connection between proteins and DNA is crucial. He added that the rules that apply to DNA can also be applied to proteins.

Since your hair contains proteins, it might be as unique as your DNA.

The Future Of Hair Proteins

According to Quartz, the researchers have already analyzed hair from 66 people of European descent, five African Americans, five Kenyans and six set of remains from the 1700 and 1800s. They found out that there are 185 distinctive patterns of amino acids. They admitted that a more precise identification requires further research.

It might take more years to be able to actually use hair in solving crimes. He added that it will be really relevant in a faster way to identify suspects and convict them.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has had a telephone conversation with German Chancellor Angela Merkel during which they discussed security in Donbas, eastern Ukraine.

"The president of Ukraine has expressed concern about the provocations by Russian mercenaries, including the use of heavy weapons, despite the announcement of the ceasefire on September 1," the Ukrainian presidential press service said on Friday.

Reportedly, the two parties agreed to step up diplomatic efforts within the framework of the Trilateral Contact Group and the Normandy format to ensure the fulfillment of the security provisions of the Minsk agreements.

"The President of Ukraine thanked the German and French sides for a principled position regarding sanctions-based pressure on Russia until the complete restoration of Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity," it said.

Poroshenko and Merkel also underlined the importance of the release of all hostages, including those who are illegally held in Russian territory.

During the conversation, the President of France was represented by his diplomatic adviser.
Recently, George RR Martin's highly anticipated book "The Winter Winds" have been rumored to release sooner than expected - complete with ISBN and an exact release date. However, it has been confirmed that the said info is fake.

Reports claim that "The Winds of Winter" is already available for pre-order in Amazon France with a listed release on March 9, 2017. This has caused quite a buzz particularly to fans who have been waiting long for the release of George RR Martins's sixth instalment.

However, US publishers quickly denied the rumors and clarified that no release date has been announced for the book.

In an interview with EW, Random House stated, "As his publisher, we support George RR Martin as he works hard to finish "The Winds of Winter". Any on-sale dates currently listed online for the novel are incorrect. Once we have a publication date for The Winds of Winter, the world will know."

Same goes with the UK publishers claiming that "nothing has been finalised regarding the publication or the date."

The publishers explained that George RR Martin is working really hard to finish "The Winds of Winter" and that they will announce any progress including the release date once they have it.

On the other hand, well-known author George RR Martin has apologised for the delay of the sixth instalment in the "A Song Of Ice And Fire" series. He too hopes that "The Winds of Winter" will be reaching bookstores soon.

Although it might be disappointing to many fans out there, it is still best to wait for George RR Martin to finish his book at his own pace and let him do what he does best. After all, a masterpiece isn't done overnight.
The Zika virus started its deadly scourge in Brazil with more than 4000 babies affected between October 2015 and January 2016. Now, the deadly virus is extending its claws in the Southeast Asian region and this time, the strain was similar to that found in the 1960s. It was so alarming that WHO already issued a warning for the region to be vigilant about it.

Singapore and the rest of the Southeast Asian region are now worried after reports of patients affected by the virus in different Southeast Asian nations have surfaced. The fear even doubled after Singapore, which is considered as the cleanest and most advanced country in the region, has reported its first two cases. Doctors, however, found out that the Zika strain in Singapore is the same as the one which circulated Southeast Asia in 1968. The same strain had expanded in South Asia until the 1980s.

Although the Zika virus has been around the region even before the recent outbreak, less attention has been given to it in the past because its symptoms only include mild fever, joint pains, and rashes which goes away after the patients receive treatments for a week.

"The big puzzle is that even though we have had the Southeast Asian strain in the region for many years, nothing big has happened so far," said Prasert Auewarakul, a professor and director of the Institute of Molecular Biosciences at Mahidol University in Thailand.

However, with the number of cases increasing in Southeast Asia, health officials are not taking any chances issuing a warning, especially to pregnant women, to be more careful and avoid unnecessary travel to countries which are reported to be high risk to the zika virus.

According to the World Health Organization, Singapore has already reported 240 cases as of late. Malaysia and Thailand have reported that they have detected infections already. Meanwhile, India, China, and Indonesia were only identified as high-risk countries. In the Philippines, one case have been reported but then it was also stated that the infected person was already cured. Some countries, like the USA, Australia, and the UK, have issued warnings to their citizens against traveling to these countries.

WHO officials in the region told Southeast Asian countries to create "effective surveillance and reporting systems" so that they can properly monitor the movement of the virus. Health officials from different countries of the region are also closely monitoring those who have been affected. In Thailand, two pregnant women have been detected to have the virus, but are both currently being under close surveillance by the medical staff.

Voravit Suwanvanichkij from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine said that both the government and the public should never let their guard down because a new endemic might be happening in the region. He further added that if the critical level of the virus can be removed, then it is possible to stop what could become a worldwide epidemic.
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SMM OSCE can't confirm the presence of Russian troops in Donbas as such, but draws attention to the evidence of foreign residents' involvement in the conflict and inexhaustible amount of weapons in the region.

"If people ask me are there Russian units on the ground and I ask my people and they say there are no Russian units as such. But of course, what we say it's first of all, there is military equipment that keeps being renovated. So it looks like there is an influx of military equipment that never diminishes in number in spite of the conflict, in spite of the losses. Secondly we see that fuel and ammunition is always there so that also comes from somewhere. Thirdly, we see the fighters,' OSCE Secretary General Lamberto Zannier said at a briefing in Kyiv on Friday.

He stressed that these fighters come from outside the region and "they acknowledge this," but say that they come on private basis.

"And they deny any connections, any official connections with Russian structures at least when we talked to them," Zannier said.

There are also people who do not just shoot, but operate sophisticated military weaponry and equipment, the OSCE Secretary General said.

Answering journalists' questions about the similarity of the crisis in Donbas with other conflicts on the continent in recent decades, Zannier said he abstained from drawing parallels. Every single conflict has its own peculiarities, but what distinguishes the conflict in the east of Ukraine from other similar conflicts, and even from Yugoslavia, is the presence of a large number of weapons and military equipment, he said.

In his words, the OSCE refrains from evaluations, their task is to promote dialogue, facilitate the creation of platforms on which the parties concerned can discuss the situation, including the economic interests.
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The big yellow Gum Guzzler has arrived in town to deal with Ealing's stickiest dilemma ,, the globs of discarded gum disfiguring the streets.

At a cost of more than 7,000 ,, the council won't say exactly how much ,, the guzzler or super saturated steam cleaner, to give it its proper title, will be clearing the streets of the sticky menace.
Panama court has temporarily arrested ex-head of the State Agency for Investment and National Projects Management Vladyslav Kaskiv for the period up to 40 days, Deputy Prosecutor General of Ukraine Yevhen Yenin has said.

"With the appearance of comments in mass media regarding preventive measures against Kaskiv I would like to say that now a temporary arrest (the period of up to 40 days) has been applied to him under a ruling of Panama court dated August 25, 2016," Yenin wrote on his Facebook page on Friday.

He said that if it is required Panama court can apply an extradition arrest under a request of Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office (PGO), the original of which has been handed to Panama. We are in contact with Panama," he said.

"This is a temporary arrest. This preventive measure can be imposed until the moment when Ukraine provides the original of the request to extradite the lawbreaker. At the present stage, all required documents have been transferred to Panama authorities. In three or four hours a court hearing will be held and the procedure for Kaskiv would be selected: if he expresses a desire to apply a simplified extradition procedure and he will come to Ukraine within one month, or if he insists on the complete procedure," Yenen said on the 112 Ukraine television channel on Friday.

He said that Kaskiv could insist on getting a political asylum in Panama, which could hinder the extradition process, but it would not halt it, as it is likely that Panama would refuse to give a political asylum to him.

Earlier on September 8 Yenin said that PGO has received confirmation from INTERPOL on the arrest of Kaskiv in Panama.

He said that during 48 hours a court hearing will be held and the extradition procedure will be determined. He said that if Kaskiv gives consent, it could take 30 days to implement the procedure.

As reported, on August 8, 2016, Prosecutor General of Ukraine Yuriy Lutsenko said: We have just received information on the detention of "the second Spanish instructor" Mr. Kaskiv in Panama. He was put on the international wanted list under Article 191 (theft) and other official crimes.

The petition to extradite Kaskiv had been handed to the Foreign Ministry of Ukraine and "now diplomatic executives are to send the documents to Panama," PGO spokesperson Larysa Sarhan wrote on her Facebook page on August 20.

Kaskiv refuted the statement of Lutsenko about his alleged arrest in Panama.

In his blog on the website of Ukrayinska Pravda publication he posted a photo with a Panamanian police officer and a fresh newspaper in his hands and wrote: "I have never been detained and arrested in Panama or elsewhere. There is no Interpol red card on me. Only politically motivated 'law enforcers' have information about my 'crimes'. The motive for the event was a usual clearance of my migration status by the Panamanian Migration Service when I crossed the border with Costa Rica where I planned to go with friends and my family."

In its turn, Ukrainian PGO said that INTERPOL had issued Red Notice against former head of the State Agency for Investment and National Projects Management of Ukraine Vladyslav Kaskiv and law enforcement agencies are taking measures to extradite him to Ukraine. On August 1, 2016, INTERPOL General Secretariat published a Red Notice to arrest and extradite former head of the State Agency for Investment and National Projects Management of Ukraine Kaskiv under Part 5 of Article 191 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (misappropriation, embezzlement or conversion of property by abuse of official post committed in respect of an especially gross amount, or by an organized group) and Part 2 of Article 366 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (forgery in office).

The press service said, referring to a report of the INTERPOL National Central Bureau in Panama that on August 18, 2016 Kaskiv was detained on the border with Costa Rica when he did not get a permit to enter the country on August 17, 2016.

In turn, Director of Communications Department of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry Artem Shevchenko said that as of Thursday, the Ukrainian Bureau of INTERPOL hasnt received information on Kaskivs detention in Panama.

From December 2010 until March 2014 Kaskiv headed the State Agency for Investment and National Projects Management.
Interfax-Ukraine to host press conference "Crisis of Ukrainian Political System. What Should be Done by Political Forces Which Have Political Will?"

On Wednesday, September 14, at 10.00, the Interfax-Ukraine News Agency's press center will host a press conference "Crisis of Ukrainian Political System. What Should be Done by Political Forces Which Have Political Will?" The participants will include Socialists Party Chairman Leonid Kozhara and Socialists Party Deputy Head Denys Zharkykh (8/5a Reitarska Street). Accreditation by phone: (050) 471 2629.
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On Wednesday, September 14, at 11.30, the Interfax-Ukraine News Agency's press center will host a press conference 'Corruption in Courts: How to Expose and Fight It?' The participants will include analyst at Transparency International Ukraine Dmytro Yakymchuk; Director for judicial issues at Transparency International Ukraine, chief editor of the "First Instance" website dedicated to questionable court rulings Fedir Oryschuk; and Executive Director of Transparency International Ukraine Yaroslav Yurchyshyn (8/5a Reitarska Street). Registration requires press accreditation. More information by phone (050) 352 9618, tymchenko@ti-ukraine.org (Communications Department Head at Transparency International Ukraine Olha Tymchenko).
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By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) |  

Stars and Stripes is reporting that the number of US troops in Iraq has risen from 4,000 to 4,460 in preparation for the Iraqi government campaign against Mosul.

The WSJ reported that the government of Iraqi prime minister Haydar al-Abadi wants to begin the campaign in October.

Mosul was a city of 2 million in its metropolitan area before Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) took it in June of 2014, and mostly Sunni Arab. It is probably now only 1 million, held by about 4,000 Daesh fighters. Originally the terrorist organization was able to take Mosul because local groups like the Naqshbandi Sufi order cum resistance guerrilla group welcomed Daesh into the city. Some reports speak of a city-wide uprising against the then Iraqi army, which helped to chase them out of the city. But by now everyone in Mosul hates Daesh and the population will likely welcome the Iraqi army as liberators. This is so even though many Sunni Iraqis view the Iraqi government as a Shiite preserve and see the Iraqi military as having been sectarianized by former prime minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Meanwhile, Athil al-Nujayfi, the titular governor of Ninewah Province (in which Mosul is located), engaged the prime minister Haydar al-Ibadi in a spirited debate, over the participation of the Shiite militias in the taking of Mosul. Al-Abadi is said to be committed to deploying them, but Sunni Arabs often feel that they have carried out reprisal attacks on Sunnis and fear them..

President Obama reconstituted the Iraq Command of the US military after the fall of most of Sunni Iraq to Daesh fighters in summer of 2014. Many of the personnel are on secure bases in Baghdad, but US trainers and support troops have gotten permission from the Pentagon to get pretty close to the front in order to help the Iraqi military.

If Mosul falls before Election Day in the US, it will undermine a key talking point of the Republican Right, i.e. that Obama is weak on terrorism. (Why they say this is anyones guess. Obama has authorized enormously more drone strikes than any other country in the world, and killed Bin Laden. Obamas counter-terrorism strategies could be questioned on human rights grounds, but not on the grounds that they are a sign of weakness.)

The Democrats will suddenly be the party that defeated Daesh/ ISIL. This is kind of an October surprise of the sort that campaign managers dream of.

It seems a little unlikely that PM al-Abadi cares about US electoral problems. He has his own reasons for wanting to roll up al-Qaeda in Iraq quickly. But his timetable could play into Hillary Clintons hands.

Related video:

Aljazeera English: Inside Story  Is the Iraqi army ready to liberate Mosul?
The US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit [official website] on Thursday restored [opinion, PDF] gun ownership rights of two individuals convicted of minor crimes. One of these individuals was 41-year-old Daniel Binderup, who was convicted of having a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old female employee at his bakery. Binderup was aware that the employee was a minor, but the legal age of consent in Pennsylvania at the time was 16. Binderup only served three years probation in addition to being required to pay a $300 fine, court costs and restitution. The other individual was Julio Suarez, previously convicted of being in possession of a firearm without a permit and of a separate DUI charge. Both individuals successfully challenged the state prohibitions against their ownership of firearms in Pennsylvania in 2009, but the federal prohibition continued to this date. The appeals court concluded that Suarez and and Binderup have rebutted the presumption that they lack Second Amendment rights by distinguishing their crimes of conviction from those that historically led to exclusion from Second Amendment protections and that the Government has failed to present sufficient evidence to demonstrate under even intermediate scrutiny that it may, consistent with the Second Amendment, apply  922(g)(1) to bar Binderup and Suarez from possessing a firearm in their homes. Counsel for Binderup and Suarez stated that they expect the Department of Justice to appeal the ruling.

Gun control and the Second Amendment continue to be controversial topics across the US. Earlier this month the New Jersey Second Amendment Society filed [JURIST report] a lawsuit against the states Attorney General in New Jerseys district court alleging the states stun gun ban is unconstitutional. In June the Supreme Court ruled [JURIST report] that a state law conviction on reckless domestic assault is sufficient to bar possession of a firearm under federal law. Earlier in June Hawaii Governor David Ige signed a bill [JURIST report] requiring gun owners to be listed on an FBI database, notifying police if a Hawaii citizen is arrested in another state and providing a continuous criminal record check on those individuals seeking to possess a firearm. Also in June the US Supreme Court denied certiorari [JURIST report] in two separate cases challenging bans on assault-style weapons. The court denied the appeals without comment, letting stand lower court rulings that had upheld the bans [JURIST report] as constitutional. In response to the mass killing in Orlando in June, the UNs top human rights official urged [JURIST report] the US to increase its gun control measures. The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held [JURIST report] in June that the right to carry a concealed gun is not within Second Amendment right to bear arms.
[JURIST] Jean Ping, an opposition leader in Gabon, has filed a complaint with the Constitutional Court in a move challenging the validity of the recent presidential vote. Ping, who was also running for president, lost in the election last week by a very small margin, which brought criticism from many and spurred his request that the votes be recounted [Al Jazeera report]. Ping has previously expressed doubts about the courts independence.

As a result of the election, protests began in Gabon and at least three people have been killed, 100 injured and 800 arrested in mass protests [CFR report]. Earlier this week President Ali Bongo Ondimba refused to address the EUs recent findings regarding an anomaly in last weeks presidential election. Following his loss to Bongo in the poll results, opposing candidate Ping questioned [JURIST report] the results from Bongos home province, Haut-Ogooue, where the voter turnout was 99.93 percent and Bongo received 95 percent of those votes. A report released last week by Amnesty International condemned Gabon security forces [JURIST report] for using excessive force against protesters after the countrys disputed election. Protesters attacked the national assembly building, and in response police used tear gas and arrested hundreds that emerged from the building. Ping claims that his headquarters were bombed by security forces killing at least two people. Amid recent protests and outbreaks of violence, Gabons Justice Minister Seraphim Moundounga resigned [JURIST report] from his post on Tuesday.
A judge for the US District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi [website] on Thursday dismissed [opinion, PDF] a challenge to the constitutionality of the Mississippi state flag. In his opinion, Judge Carlton Reeves noted that the flag, which prominently features the Confederate battle emblem, was adopted in 1894 and survived a 2001 referendum to redesign it. Carlos Moore, the attorney who brought the case, claimed that the Confederate imagery of the state flag violated the Equal Protection and Privileges and Immunities Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. The injuries cited by Moore included physical and emotional responses elicited by the emblem. While the judge condemned the Confederate badge, he ruled that, the injuries alleged by Moore are untethered to any legal right. Reeves wrote that while the judiciary could not remedy the injuries suffered in this case, perhaps the people themselves' could act to change the flag. He concluded by stating that the emblem is better left retired to history.

Debate has intensified in the past year over the acceptability of confederate symbols in everyday life. In August 2015 a judge in Texas denied a request for a temporary restraining order to halt the University of Texas at Austin from relocating a statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis [JURIST report]. In July it came to light that Dylann Roof, who is charged with the murder of nine black church members in South Carolina [JURIST report], prominently posed [NYT report] with the confederate flag. Also in July South Carolina removed the Confederate flag from the state house [JURIST report]. Although the Charleston shooting led to renewed focus on the use of the Confederate flag, controversy over the flag has persisted for years. In June of last year the US Supreme Court ruled that state governments can restrict [JURIST report] the kinds of messages printed on specialty license plates after the Sons of Confederate Veterans argued that the Texas governments refusal to issue specialty license plates including an image of the confederate flag violated the First Amendment. In 2008 a federal court affirmed [JURIST report] a district courts grant of summary judgment to a Tennessee public high school in a lawsuit brought by three students who claimed the schools ban on wearing the Confederate flag was unconstitutional.
The US House of Representatives [official website] approved legislation [text, PDF] Friday that would allow US nationals to seek relief from foreign governments if that entity is believed to have had involvement with a terrorist attack taking place within the US that caused physical damage to that citizens person or property. The Act, titled the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, would allow families of those killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks to sue the government of Saudi Arabia. President Barack Obama is in opposition [NYT report] to the bill because of its major foreign policy implications, including the possibility that US approval of the Act would open the country up to receiving civil suits by foreign nationals in return. The Saudi government has warned [NYT report] that if such legislation is enacted it may begin selling off up to $750 billion in Treasury securities and other assets. The US government maintains [BBC report] that Saudi Arabia did not fund the 9/11 attacks.

The Act was approved [JURIST report] by the Senate in May. Obama has threatened to veto the bill. In 2012 a US District judge dismissed a motion [JURIST report] to reinstate Saudi Arabia as a defendant in a civil compensation lawsuit by victims against the perpetrators of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The claim against Saudi Arabia was dismissed in 2008 by a US Appeals Court due to insufficient evidence that the Kingdoms princes has actual knowledge that their money was going to be used in the attacks. In 2005 Judge Richard Casey dismissed [PDF text; JURIST report] Saudi Arabia, its defense minister and its ambassador to the UK as defendants in litigation stemming from the terrorist attacks, ruling that all had sovereign immunity [Cornell LII backgrounder].
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The Singaporean RSS Steadfast frigate arrived in Shanghai on Sept. 8 for its second visit to the city, which will last four days. During the visit, the two countries' navies will conduct a joint drill on communication and vessel formation in the waters where Yangtze River meets the sea. (Photo/People's Daily Online)
UK business Fresh Marketing distributes brands locally, exports British brands overseas and sources private-label for retailers. The company is also building its own range of brands, which include Fuel 10K, a product that was one of the pioneers of the breakfast drink category in the UK. Dean Best spoke to Fresh Marketing co-founder Barney Mauleverer about his plans for the business and how the increased scrutiny on sugar, as well as Brexit, could affect the company.

BITESIZE STATISTICS Name: Fresh Marketing Brands: Fuel 10K breakfast, I Am Super soups / grains Export agent: Brands including Lizis and Manomasa Annual sales: GBP6m. Forecast GBP8m for 2016/17 year. Founded: 2005

just-food: The UK food sector is assessing what the countrys decision to leave the EU will mean for the industry and for how they do business.

Barney Mauleverer: Our type of business, which sources manufacturing from Europe, is really quite affected by the big one, which, really in the short term, is the exchange rate. We are reasonably hedged, but hedges run out and what we really care about is the medium-term situation because if that does become dramatic, we will have to make dramatic changes like price increases or even move manufacturing back to the UK. Our Fuel drinks, granola and Protiflakes are in Germany. Our I Am Souper soups are made in Italy, and our grains and soon our beans are made in France. Weve got some UK-based production  our porridge pots and our wheat biscuits.

Its our job to steer the business. Weve already started working on trying to take on more products that we pay in pounds and sell in euros, so that we start creating a natural hedge and benefiting from that exchange rate. We have also introduced an area of our business called Fresh Ventures, which is helping brands in the UK on NPD projects where we can take consultancy fees, which contributes to bringing another kind of income stream in to support any damage that we might get from the exchange rate. Its just about being nimble and quick and adjusting your business model according to where the opportunities lie.

Weve had concurrently in the last three months our three biggest months ever in terms of turnover but, from the profitability point of view, the exchange rate drags it right down. We should be having a wonderful time at the moment. But nothings that easy, and if it was everyone would be doing it.

just-food: At what stage do you think you could have to bring some of that continental manufacturing back to the UK?

Mauleverer: We forecast every quarter. There are a number of things you can do before making that sort of dramatic move  like doing less promos, less steep promos, or talking to your manufacturers, saying Are you going to help us out? You try and trim as much as you can before you make that jump. If we went to parity and it looked like we were going to be parity for the next two years, wed have to do it. Or wed go to our retailers and say weve got to put our prices up. Everyones in the same boat really at a reasonable scale apart from those that are producing in the UK, but in this country things dont grow like they do in the Caribbean and around the world. Nuts and dried fruit, theyre all dollars. So, a weak pound against the dollar will make their ingredients really expensive. Everyones going to be slightly shafted by it.

The other hope is that Europe starts having more problems and the Euro actually just weakens naturally.

just-food: Have you seen any impact from Brexit on consumer confidence in the UK?

Mauleverer: No, I dont think so. Food and drink tends to be the last bastion that is properly affected. Big-ticket items are the ones that get affected first. Things seem to be pummeling along, but we may get affected by how the retailers are affected and if they then start changing their strategy and going more own label or what have you. Our job is to try and make sure our products are good value and reasonably priced.

just-food: Looking at other parts of your business, what impact do you think Brexit will have on Fresh Marketing as an export agency?

Mauleverer: Its a great time for exporters if you are paying in pounds and getting paid in dollars and/or euros. Our business used to be 90% export. Its now 80% own brand import probably. Thats just because our own brands have been growing while our exports are going down. So, weve definitely got a real push on trying to find more brands that we can help export and benefit from that. The exchange rate, its a good time for it. We have sort of slowed the emphasis on that side down as our own things have been going up, but actually, its probably quite a good bolt to say: Actually now its a really useful valuable part of what we are doing. Lets bring back some more focus on it.

just-food: Another recent significant development in the UK is the Governments announcement last month of a plan of action to tackle child obesity, including a tax on soft drinks and a voluntary programme to reduce sugar in nine categories by at least 20% in four years. What do you make of the plans?

Mauleverer: We here do feel pretty strongly that the Government should be more involved in a social issue that is affecting our future generation. I have four young kids and I would suggest the Government works on a long-term solution to educate the young  and old  and make added sugar socially unacceptable, as they have done with smoking and drink-driving, as examples, and explain the difference between naturally occurring sugars and refined sugar, plus the importance of taking regular exercise. If consumers demand it then this, in turn, will force self-regulation in the industry. A small tax is perhaps just annoying rather than impactful but forced warning messages would certainly have an effect. If the Government could do anything it would be to expose any brand adding more than 5% added or refined sugar to their products by imposing a front-of-pack warning label. Taxes wont work.

At Fresh Marketing, were all the more aware that adding refined sugar is not on the list for NPD  we have recently launched a range of Fuel 10K Quark pouches and this week our baked beans range, both of which are no-added sugar or low sugar. We have removed 30% of total sugars from our milk drinks and just about to reduce the sugar further in our porridge pots. Taste buds will change and have to adapt to less added sugar in these types of products. I feel for the bigger older brands that have established taste profiles  but you have to move with the times.

just-food: Looking at your drinks, Fuel 10K was one of Fresh Marketings early proprietary brands, starting in granola and then three years ago moving into breakfast drinks, a significant category in Australia and New Zealand but one that was just bubbling away in the UK. The category has more recently attracted Weetabix and Australian brand Up & Go. Reformulation appears to be one strategy you are following to compete. Was it consumer insight that prompted the reformulation work on drinks or were there discussions with buyers looking for these kinds of efforts?

Mauleverer: Its a bit of both. I think no one could avoid the importance of sugar in the diet these days, but also we felt we could probably achieve a product that tastes as good if not better without adding any extra sugar. Were not using things like stevia or xylitol, but weve just been able to tweak the recipe to make sure that it punches through strong enough but of course reduce the sugar impact. When youre playing with protein you want to have the right balance of carbs and protein in a drink like this. There was a good dose of consumer feedback that we were responding to as well.

just-food: Were you seeing consumers perhaps move away from your projects because of the sugar element? How does the added sugar in your drinks compare to the likes of the lines from Weetabix and Up & Go?

Mauleverer : After the reformulation, Weetabix sits at 8.3 grams of sugar per 100, Up & Go at 7.4 and were at 6.4. What we were really trying to do is get our sugar levels to match our protein levels, which weve been informed that nutritionally thats a good place to be. We just feel we are positioning ourselves in a better value position than the other two. Thats the way we have to work, without the deep pockets these guys seem to have.

just-food: What impact did Weetabix and Up & Go coming into the UK breakfast drinks segment have on your sales?

Mauleverer: We were always terrified that we would just get booted out but as it happens we had early enough good sales for the retailers to think theres something in this. They gave the breakfast drink category more space. Then when Weetabix launched, telling people it was okay to drink breakfast out of a bottle, that only really could have had a positive effect on the category as a whole.

When Up & Go came across with their Australian heritage and deep pockets, we were a little worried again that that was doomsday, but Up & Go had purposefully gone for a consumer, a look and feel thats similar to Weetabix, whereas we truly think the consumer that is wanting this sort of product is a younger, perhaps more male millennial, rather than a catch-all everyday consumer that Weetabix, particularly, historically targets.

Can Weetabix hold up in this category and grow as much as they think theyre going to grow? Its going to be an interesting conundrum. With their massive muscle and getting shelf space, theyre of course going to get a quick start, but I think its going to be really interesting to see how theyre faring in a couple of years time or so. Then perhaps by that time, breakfast drinks will have become the norm. If it becomes anything like Australia, where Sanitarium just developed this category to an immense size compared to the population size, then that could be the answer for breakfast cereal buyers here.

just-food: Fuel 10K was a brand developed in partnership with Tesco.

Mauleverer: We had a great relationship with the breakfast buyer at Tesco who wanted to launch a new brand in granola. Its the way Fresh Marketing tends to operate. We work collaboratively with the retailers as best we can. One or two of them are more difficult than the others but if you start a relationship in that sort of way and are prepared to move and bend and tweak and twerk, youre more likely as a smaller brand to find the gaps and holes without having to pay your way in.

just-food: Were more recent products  the Fuel 10K Protibrick wheat biscuits and the I Am Souper soups  developed in a similar way?

Mauleverer: We developed a great relationship with Asda. We ended up being put forward for an internal Dragons Den where we presented Protibrick as a new innovation taking the wheat biscuit to a new level. That kind of got us ridden up through the ranks within Asda and noticed by some of the directors. When it came to talking about the soup category, which we had cited as a similar category that had been in decline for the last four years or so [and] we felt that we could pick up our model, our similar consumer set, and talk about protein in a new pack format.

just-food: You said around 80% of Fresh Marketings turnover is through your proprietary brands. What are Fresh Marketings annual sales?

Mauleverer: Last year, we did GBP6m turnover and were on track for eight this year to the end of March. Our plan for Fuel is to get it to a GBP10m turnover within the next couple of years, mostly driven from UK sales, product development and white space. That would take Fresh Marketing to around the GBP15m mark. Similarly, with soup, were off to a good start and once that gets to about the GBP3m or GBP4m turnover well pull that out to a limited company and target that brand at GBP10m.

Once you get to GBP10m, youve done the course and youve survived three or four years or so, you then become quite interesting to the bigger players, they kind of start looking at you and saying who are these guys?
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Dallas, Texas, 09/08/2016 /SubmitPressRelease123/

Dallas employment lawyer Keith Clouse suggests that executives take these preservation steps if anticipating litigation for misappropriation of trade secrets.

1. Image your personal computer and email. Preserving the metadata on your personal devices is extremely important. Most employers will accuse you of stealing or misappropriating confidential information and trade secrets. To protect yourself, preserve this information as close to your termination or resignation as possible.

2. Dont forget to image your phone. We forget that sometimes relevant evidence can be stored in text messages or photographs on your phone. Because losing, destroying, or altering data is far greater on a phone, it is necessary to preserve this information as soon as possible.

3. Prevent inadvertent spoliation. Be sure to turn off all automatic deletions and syncing features on your devices. Although you may not intend to delete emails or documents, automatic deletion settings may erase relevant information and alter metadata.

Proactively preserving data helps the litigation process go smoothly and guarantees that evidence has not been altered or destroyed. To speak to an employment law attorney about non-compete agreements, send an email to [email protected] or call (214) 239-2705. This article is presented by the Dallas employment law lawyers at Clouse Dunn LLP.

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Type 051 guided missile destroyer Nanchang has been officially decommissioned as of Sept. 8, after serving in the Chinese Navy for almost 34 years. According to some, Nanchang was China's last active Type 051 destroyer.

Type 051 destroyers are Chinas first generation of domestically-manufactured missile destroyers. The first Type 051 destroyer was commissioned on Dec. 31, 1971, and was later named Jinan. The commissioning of Jinan marked a historic moment for China, as that was when the country became capable of controlling its surrounding seas, according to Navy Today magazine.

Nanchang began to serve in the navy in 1982. Two years later, it sailed and anchored, for the first time, at the southernmost shoal of Zengmu Reef in the South China Sea during a 35-day patrol mission to the Nansha Islands, Navy Today reported. The Type 051 destroyers have since been serving as coastal defense in the Nansha Islands.

The decommissioned destroyer will be sent back to Nanchang, Jiangxi province, where it will become a major tourist attraction at a local military-themed park.
(Xinhua) 15:09, September 09, 2016

South Korean President Park Geun-hye denounced the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)'s fifth nuclear test during her trip to Laos, calling it as "fanatic recklessness," her office said Friday.

Park, who has stayed in the Laotian capital of Vientiane to attend the East Asia Summit (EAS), said that the DPRK conducted a second nuclear test this year following the January test, strongly criticizing it as a clear violation of UN Security Council resolutions and a grave challenge to the international society.

The South Korean president said the DPRK's nuclear test proves the "fanatic recklessness" of Pyongyang adhering to nuclear development in a thorough defiance of the international community's unified will not to accept the DPRK's nuclear program.

Her denunciation followed the DPRK's fifth nuclear test Friday morning at its main Punggye-ri test site. Seoul's military said artificial seismic waves were detected from a 5.0 magnitude quake close to Punggye-ri, where the fourth nuclear detonation was carried out in January.

South Korea regards the latest test as the most powerful as the 5.0 magnitude can put its estimated explosive yield at about 10 kilotons. Six kilotons of explosive yield were spotted from the fourth test.

The DPRK's state media announced it has successfully carried out "nuclear warhead explosion" test, saying this test showed its capability of mounting nuclear warhead on ballistic missiles.

Pyongyang had claimed it already possessed a technology of miniaturizing nuclear warhead small enough to fit on ballistic missiles that can reach the U.S. mainland.

Since top DPRK leader Kim Jong Ungave an order on March 15 to test a nuclear warhead and ballistic rockets capable of carrying the warhead "in a short time," the DPRK has conducted a series of ballistic missile launches including ground-based ballistic missiles and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM).

President Park decided to return to South Korea some four hours earlier than scheduled, right after holding a bilateral summit with Laotian counterpart.

What Pyongyang can gain from nuclear tests, Park said, would only be the international society's tougher sanctions and isolation. She said this provocation would speed up its self-destruction.

The president said her government will push for additional harsher sanctions, both bilateral and multilateral in UN Security Council, in cooperation with the international society, vowing to strengthen pressures on Pyongyang with all available measures to make it give up its nuclear program.

President Park made a phone call with U.S. President Barack Obama, agreeing to take all available measures including fresh tougher sanctions in UN Security Council, according to Park's office. The United States, South Korea and Japanasked for an emergency meeting of UN Security Council to address the DPRK's fresh nuclear detonation.

Cheong Wa Dae announced a separate statement of the government, urging Pyongyang to immediately dismantle its nuclear and missile programs in a complete, verifiable and irreversible manner.

Chairman of South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) convened an emergency video conference with field commanders to review defense readiness against possible provocations from the DPRK. The JCS head ordered a stern, strong retaliation against any DPRK provocation.
[File photo]

Scientists in Shanghai published the results of their research on light-driven manipulation of liquids on Sept. 8. The research team believes that the new technology may promote the development of at-home medical tests in the future.

Scientists at Fudan University have jointly published a paper in the Nature in which they outline a strategy to manipulate fluid through the photo-induced asymmetric deformation of tubular micro-actuators. This induces capillary forces for liquid propulsion. In other words, by altering lighting conditions, the new technology can accurately change the speed and direction of the movement of fluids.

We expect that our research will find use in micro-reactors and micro-optomechanical systems in the future. The new technology will simplify the current micro-fluidic system, making it possible to manufacture medical labs on chips, said Yu Yanlei, a professor in the department of Materials Science at Fudan University.

Yu, who is also the leader of the research team, gave an interview to thepaper.cn on Sept. 8. According to Yu, if the new technology can be used in the medical industry, blood tests will only require a few drops of blood to get results, and ordinary people can even test their own blood at home.

Yu and her team have applied for a national patent for their research results, thepaper.cn reported.
[File photo]

A new hardback edition of "Zhu Rongji Meets the Press," a collection of talks and interviews given by Chinas former premier Zhu Rongji during his term, was published in Beijing on Sept. 8.

The new edition not only includes the content previously published in the 2009 edition, but also features color illustrations and video recordings, which faithfully showcase Zhus charisma and wit at five press conferences between 1998 and 2002.

The book has earned a warm reception from readers since its first publication in 2009. Zhus wisdom impressed many readers, who expressed their wish to see a complete set of video recordings of Zhus responses to journalists. At the request of the public, we have published this hardcover edition, which was proofread and approved by Zhu himself, said Huang Shuyan, president of Peoples Publishing House, in an interview with Beijing Youth Daily on Sept. 8.

There are around 260 minutes of video footage in total. This is the first time that video materials on such a large scale have been included in the published work of a Party leader, said Ren Chao, vice president of Peoples Publishing House, in an interview with Beijing Youth Daily.

The book has sold more than 1.5 million copies since its first publication, and was translated into both English and Korean. Zhu has donated all royalties from the book to a foundation that promotes education and poverty alleviation throughout China. Thanks to Zhu's donations, the foundation has so far been able to offer nutritious meals to 2,200 impoverished students in 12 rural schools, and further assisted 300 orphans and students in need in Hunan Provincein Hunan province, Peoples Daily Online reported on Sept. 8.

Zhu Rongji acted as Chinas premier from March 1998 to March 2003. He is an unswerving economic reformer who put China on the path to international economic integration.
Weak yuan following reforms in exchange rate regime of the Chnese currency has led to stronger-than-expected foreign trade data for China in August, as imports unexpectedly rose for the first time in nearly two years. Exports also showed signs of improvement, according to experts.

Imports increased 10.8 percent, compared with a previous decline of 5.7 percent, according to figures from the General Administration of Customs. The numbers also show that exports in yuan-denominated terms rose 5.9 percent year on year in August, accelerating from 2.9 percent in July and beating Bloomberg's expectations for a 4-percent decline.

The peformance of exports and imports in August led to a monthly trade surplus of 346 billion yuan ($51.9 billion), down 5.1 percent from a year earlier.

Processing trade, the most sensitive indicator of the competitiveness of exports, is still at a low point, which means that China's foreign trade remains under pressure. This is despite the fact that figures show the situation has improved in the short term, said Lu Zhengwei, chief economist for Industrial Bank in Shanghai, in an interview with thepaper.cn.

The marked increase in imports is related to higher prices for international commodities, and the exchange rate of the RMB was corrected about 6 percent, Lu added.

Discussing the reason for the unexpected trade figures, Bai Ming, a senior international market researcher at the Ministry of Commerce, said that the RMB's sharp depreciation impacted the calculation of trade figures after exchange rate reform on Aug. 11, 2015. Meanwhile, import and export data from last year was generally low.

Regarding exports, a report released in May by China's State Council, which intended to promote foreign trade, likely had some effect on trade volume.
China opted not to send a delegation to this weeks Seoul Defense Dialogue(SDD) because of reasons of work arrangement, the Global Times wrote on Sept. 8, quoting an unidentified Ministry spokesperson. No further details were offered.

The SDD, which opened on Sept. 7, was scheduled to discuss security issues including North Korean nuclear tests and maritime disputes. South Korean media has asserted that the real reason for China's absence from the dialogue is the THAAD deployment.

Jin Jingyi, a Peking University expert on North Korean affairs, told the Global Times that "although the specific reasons remain unknown, it might be related to souring Sino-South Korean ties over THAAD deployment."

Three Chinese scholars are nevertheless taking part in SDD this year. According to the South China Morning Post, the participants are: law expert Zhang Xinjun from Tsinghua University, international relations expert Shi Yinhong from Renmin University of China and U.S. affairs expert Teng Jianqun from the China Institute of International Studies.

The SDD is one of the regions highest-ranking multilateral security dialogue, hosted by South Koreas Ministry of National Defense. Under the slogan security and peace for cooperation, the dialogue aims to improve security and establish military trust in the Asia-Pacific region, including the Korean Peninsula.

Counting SDD, there are currently four regular state-level international security dialogues. Last year, Major General Xue Guo'an headed a six-person delegation to SDD, which included Colonel Lu Yin and Zhang Tuosheng, director of research and a senior fellow at the China Foundation for International Strategic Studies, according to the report.
Lets see now: One presidential candidates campaign director resigns after being outed as a Russian stooge, allegedly accepting millions in cash under the table. The other candidate meets with a Nobel Prize-winning economist who once donated to her husbands charity  dedicated to providing HIV/AIDS medication to millions of Third World victims.

Quickly now, which of these two situations registers higher on the news medias scandal meter? Which candidate has portentous questions to answer about troubling appearances?

Look, its all about the horse race and the ratings. But things are getting ridiculous. Trumps right: He could say hed been an All-Star third baseman for the Yankees or shoot somebody dead on national TV, and the next item on the evening news would involve Hillary Clintons emails. Has the press ever given such scrutiny to any other politicians communications?

Wouldnt you love to see Gen. Colin Powells emails from the time of his infamous 2003 United Nations speech about Saddam Husseins phantom weapons of mass destruction?

Oops! All deleted. Sorry.

On TV in particular, the concept of balance requires solemnly equating the truly consequential with the utterly absurd. OK, so Trumps campaign manager appears to have been a covert lobbyist for Vladimir Putin. Old news. Ho-hum.

Meanwhile, this just in! Huma Abedins crazy husband has been texting dirty pictures again. Try to believe the New York Times published this sentence: Mr. Weiners extramarital behavior also threatens to remind voters about the troubles in the Clintons own marriage over the decades, including Mrs. Clintons much-debated decision to remain with then-President Bill Clinton after revelations of his relationship with Monica Lewinsky.

Much debated by the voices in columnist Maureen Dowds head, perhaps. Most rationally consequent adults long ago decided that other peoples marriages are a foreign country where they dont speak the language and got on with their lives. Weiners clearly mentally ill; journalists compulsively focused on Bill Clintons zipper 20 years after the fact appear similarly deranged.

Meanwhile, Manafort may have exited stage right, but Boris and Natasha remain. Those are my pet names for the Russian emailers who began sending me unintentionally funny messages a while back. Theyre named for the bungling Soviet spies in the old Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons (Must capture moose and squirrel).

Hiding behind the pseudonyms Jason and Karyn, they pretended to be angry Americans disgusted by my pointing out that candidate Trump had adopted an oddly pro-Putin foreign policy agenda  conceding that Russia had stolen Crimea fair and square, and hinting that NATO should basically be a protection racket, defending only nations whose premiums are paid up.

Being outed as Russians (via their I.P. addresses) really annoyed them. Calling themselves Natasha Nabokov and Ilya Tchaikowsky this time, they reacted with scatological insults and implied threats.

Addressing me as Jeanie, sweetheart  Natasha wanted to know, How are things at the Market & Grill in the one horse town? Maybe well bump into you there sometime. You are one old degenerate, thats for sure. You are described by everyone as being a long time leftist. A massive understatement to be sure.

Nice try, Natasha, but Ive never been there.

Arkansas Times columnist Gene Lyons is a National Magazine Award winner and co-author of The Hunting of the President.
FILE - In this Jan. 16, 2015 file photo, Geraldo Rivera participates in "The Celebrity Apprentice" panel at the NBC 2015 Winter TCA in Pasadena, Calif. Rivera says he's "filled with regret" for initially discounting the sexual harassment allegations against his former Fox News Channel boss, Roger Ailes, and is apologizing for his skepticism. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)
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Contrary to many people's expectations, Shan Jixiang, the director of the Beijing Palace Museum, actively encourages museum visitors to take photos. Shan was very clear about the value of photography in a recent interview he did with China News.

Taking photos is an indispensable part of visiting the museum for many tourists. A visitor surnamed Wang from northeastern China said he would surely take photos, since it's a long journey from his hometown to Beijing. Meanwhile, a student surnamed Zhang had come to the museum specifically to shoot photos, acknowledging that taking great photos was the main purpose of her visit.

Some people believe that photographing the relics should be forbidden. Shan, however, views photos as a means of cultural transmission; he encourages visitors to take pictures in the museum as long as their behavior does not damage the relics. For that reason, flash photography is not permitted in the exhibition halls. Using a flash is not only harmful to the relics, it can also be a disturbance to other visitors. In addition, tripods and selfie sticks are banned, as the former occupy too much public space, and the latter can potentially injure visitors or damage the relics.
JR American Horse, left, raises his fist with others while leading a march to the Dakota Access Pipeline site in southern Morton County North Dakota. Several hundred protesters marched about a mile up Hwy 1806, Friday Sept. 9, 2016, from the protest camp to the area of the pipeline site where some archeological artifacts have been discovered. (Will Kincaid/The Bismarck Tribune via AP)
In this photo provided by the Alpine Avalanche, people gather near the Alpine High School school campus after a shooting, in Alpine, Texas, Thursday, Sept. 8, 2016. A student died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, the Brewster County sheriff said. (Gail Yovanovich/Alpine Avalanche via AP)
A victim is carried on a stretcher after a train derailed in O Porrino, northern Spain, Friday, Sept 9, 2016. A passenger train traveling from Vigo to Porto, in neighboring Portugal, derailed Friday in Spain's northwestern Galicia region, killing three people and injuring several others, authorities said. (AP Photo/Lalo R. Villar)
Concrete blocks are positioned in front of the hotel President Wilson in Geneva, Switzerland, ahead of a meeting between Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US Secretary of State John Kerry on the conflict in Syria, Thursday, Sept. 8, 2016. (Martial Trezzini/Keystone via AP)
These two boys pictured above, aged between 4 and 8 have been arrested for

raping and killing a one year old girl. After murdering her, they dumped her body into a

pit toilet.

The gruesome incident reportedly happened Wednesday in

Mundemba, Ndian Division, South West region, Cameroon. They have been

arrested by the Cameroonian police.



Medical reports indicate the murdered toddlers genitalia was destroyed.

As the population struggles to come to terms with this horrific news,

some wondered if the boys could even get an erection, or let alone be

capable of damaging the late babys genitalia in such a way, as the

medical report indicates.

There is another school of thought that someone could be using these children to finish a crime he/she started.

The two boys has admitted to throwing the little girl in the toilet and killing her whilst she was in there.
It's an ordinary Wednesday in Shangrao, Jiangxi province. Pan Wenwen gets up early as usual. She eats her breakfast and then rolls up her sleeves, standing on a small bench to wash her bowl.

This skinny 4-year-old girl looks just like any one of her peers. What makes her unique, however, is the fact that she became an internet darling when she was only a little over a year old. She made a name for herself by hiking with her parents. On social media, Chinese netizens hailed her as "the youngest backpacker in China."

Pan and her family spend six to seven months a year traveling across China. In mid-June, Pan embarked on a new journey with her father, journeying from Chengdu, Sichuan province to Lhasa, Tibet within two months. They traveled a total distance of 2,167 kilometers, eating wild vegetables and sleeping in tents along the way. They persisted even when, in late July, frequent and heavy rains pounded Sichuan.

"We encountered storms, hail, mudslides and landslides," said Pan's father in an interview with West China City Daily. But Pan's reaction surprised him.

"She did not even cry, or cause any trouble along the way. She was much braver than before, probably due to our previous experience in Yunnan province."

The Chengdu-Tibet hiking trip was barely a challenge for the young, experienced backpacker. Just after arriving in Tibet, Pan's family set a new goal: to trek through Nepal and cross the Himalayas. Now that has been crossed off Pan's list as well.

The family is currently back in Shangrao, their home city. While other 4-year-olds are crying about going to kindergarten, Pan's parents are planning a new challenge for her  trekking across Southeast Asia and completing a trip around the world, all before she starts primary school.

"After entering kindergarten, it's almost like children are shut away in cages. Going to school, graduating and finding a job will take all her free time away. I want Wenwen to experience the world as much as possible while she can," said Pan's father.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on Friday visited a Chinese-language school in the Laotian capital of Vientiane.

The Lieutou Chinese School, founded in 1937 and financed by local Chinese, now hosts more than 2,800 students. It teaches both Chinese and Laotian and offers courses from kindergarten to high school.

The Chinese premier received a warm welcome on the campus, where students sang well-known Chinese songs and recited a poem that highlighted China-Laos friendship.

Li also watched a group of students writing Chinese calligraphy and encouraged the youngsters to make contributions to the development of their countries and to the friendship between the two countries.

While meeting with a team of over 20 volunteer teachers from China, Li praised them for sowing the seed of friendship. He expressed the hope that the teachers will promote exchanges between the two peoples.

Li told the students and faculty that China and Laos enjoy strong mutual political trust, long-standing friendship, and close people-to-people and cultural exchanges.

Li arrived in Vientiane on Tuesday for a China-ASEAN leaders' meeting, a meeting between leaders of ASEAN nations and those of China, Japan and South Korea, and an East Asia Summit. He also made an official visit to Laos.
Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Russian Federation Council Speaker Valentina Matviyenko on Friday, pledging to improve bilateral relations.

Xi said China and Russia enjoy a high-level of mutual political trust and engage in mutually beneficial cooperation.

The comprehensive strategic partnership of collaboration between the two countries has helped shape a new type of international relations with win-win cooperation as its core, he said.

This year marks the 15th anniversary of the signing of the China-Russia Good-Neighborly Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation, as well as the 20th anniversary of the establishment of a strategic partnership of collaboration between the two countries.

Xi met with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Sunday in Hangzhou on the sidelines of the G20 summit, the third meeting between the two leaders this year.

Stressing that he and Putin reached new consensus on ties during the meeting, Xi called on both countries to work together to convert the political advantages into more substantial results, which would benefit the two countries and their people.

Regarding parliamentary relations, Xi spoke highly of the close exchanges between China's National People's Congress (NPC) and the Federal Assembly of Russian Federation in recent years.

He encouraged both sides to continue to share governance, legislation and oversight experience as this would help to consolidate political and strategic mutual trust and support bilateral relations.

Matviyenko spoke highly of the G20 summit in Hangzhou. She said Russia is willing to work with China to implement the consensus reached by two presidents, adding that the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation hopes to improve relations with China's NPC.

Matviyenko is on a three-day visit to China, from Wednesday, at the invitation of Zhang Dejiang, chairman of the NPC Standing Committee.

Later on Friday, Zhang and Matviyenko held talks on exchanges between the two countries' legislatures.

Zhang called on both sides to enhance cooperation in various fields, including under multilateral frameworks, to fully implement the important consensus reached by the two heads of state.

Following the talks, Zhang was presented the medal "Order of Friendship" by Matviyenko, on behalf of President Putin, in recognition of his contribution to China-Russia ties.
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Mom. She was a feisty 100 percent Italian, straight from New Jersey. Her dad, straight from Italy, was a tailor and made the finest suits for New York and New Jersey businessmen. Mom learned this trade well. She could sew some of the most beautiful tailored suits for herself. She loved to cook and every night was a banquet, a feast which required up to 2 hours of clean-up time by us kids. The food was always delicious; the clean-up was always dreadful.

Mom loved the dinner parties she gave for Dads fellow businessmen from IBM. And she adored Jackie Kennedy. She wore her hair like her, dressed like her, as many women across the USA did in the 1960s.

Mom went back to school in her 50s and earned a bachelor degree in teaching. Soon to quit that job after her junior high school kids climbed out the windows when the end of the year dismissal bell rang.

Mom was pretty healthy, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, but always manageable. When she turned 60, she started to have rectal bleeding and abdominal pain. And her once well nourished body soon started to lose weight. After a visit and a colonoscopy from her physician, the biopsy showed cancerous colon cells. Soon after that, she was diagnosed with colon cancer.

A colectomy was performed. A segment of her colon was surgically removed. And the surgeon triumphantly announced, we got all of the cancer.

One year later, the abdominal pain returned. The liver was suspected. And with a CT scan, a large tumor in the liver was found. She went to a large hospital Institute. The best of the best. The experts. And the surgeon told her there was nothing they could do for her. The tumor was so large it was not operable. What about the we got all of the cancer?

Unpredictable, those cancer cells. No one ever really knows when they got it all. A sad truth. The surgeon said, Get your house in order.

My father and mother drove home in disbelief. Mom entered a support group therapy called the Can Care Cancer. Unfortunately, she was not alone. She saw small children, young mothers smiling and laughing and bald headed. Each day they had learned to come to grips with their destiny.

Mom did some rounds of chemotherapy but to no avail. The tumor just got bigger. And so after a week admitted to the hospital, she asked to go home. She wanted her bed at home. She made herself a DNR. She requested hospice, and she requested comfort care.

We got Mom home, and she would go into comas, and then wake up. She saw two angels standing behind my one sister. Shed wake up and look out her window and proclaimed, oh those beautiful dogwood trees and shed slip back into a coma. We had to clean mom up; she was unaware of the need for a bathroom. The oncologist told us that if we fed her, we would feed the tumor. The tumor would get even larger and cause excruciating pain. So as a nurse, I understood dont feed the tumor.

But as a daughter, it tore me apart. How hard it is to separate nurse role and daughter role. We three daughters would take turns taking care of mom, along with the assistance of hospice.

Mom woke up one more time and told us of the beautiful angels that were floating around her. I would have never imagined this passageway of death could be so beautiful. Her last words to us were of the angels she saw. And I was comforted by that. She let out a final breath as her arm dropped off the bed. Her once plump body, now very thin. And the wedding ring that she had worn for 43 years  fell off her finger and hit the hardwood floor.

The loudest sound I have ever heard. But I knew mom had landed. Landed into her hereafter.

Peacefully. In comfort. And pain free.

Debbie Moore-Black is a nurse who blogs at Do Not Resuscitate.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
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I write this while sitting in our sailing catamaran, swaying in the wind and current eight feet above sand and sea grass. I know this because I can see right through the water in the Bahamas. There is clarity here.

When I started this journey thirteen months ago, I was burning with anger. I was angry at insurance companies for developing complex, mutable formularies, coverage policies, and appeal procedures, maximizing my burden to minimize their cost. I was angry at pharmaceutical companies and the many layers of profit-seeking middlemen between them and my patients, their unregulated maneuvering resulting in arbitrary swings in drug pricing so that I was unable to tell my patients if they could afford even their generic seizure meds that month. I was angry at the government, which shortsightedly addressed the morass of medical economics with more bureaucracy, and, with ICD-10, even defined more diseases. I was angry at my physician leaders, who awkwardly wielded their newly-acquired economic jargon like a weapon, distancing themselves from the fellow doctors they supervised. And finally, I was angry at multiple EMRs, which clearly placed the doctors time and effort last on the priority list.

After all, medicine is complex these days. The doctors must pay for this.

These concerns of mine could be extracted from any online physician forum, conference dinner conversation, or burnout retreat. But most of those doctors are still practicing. So why did I quit?

Consider how I was trained. In my medical school, I was acknowledged as an intellectual with a higher calling, and the humanity of medicine was emphasized. I will not just maximize patient outcomes, I will heal; I will not just fill my 3 p.m. slot with a well-reimbursed EMG, I will bear witness to suffering; I will not just maintain my certification, I will embrace the fascinating science of medicine. When I finished medical school and residency, I didnt just feel qualified to do a complex job, I felt ennobled, as if my life had a higher purpose.

When I started my outpatient neurology job for a multispecialty practice, I had a lot of fun. It wasnt so hard to make a difference. But over time, my practice started taking on water. It is a story familiar to many by now. The administrative duties escalated in spite of a competent but dwindling support staff, and the time allotted for paperwork disappeared out of the workday. It became all uncompensated time, which was humiliating, as that fact suggested that if I was just more efficient, I should be able to get it all done before dinnertime. My frustration built as my employers seemed unable to address my difficulties in a manner that respected my time and autonomy. I needed something more than a support group, with the implication that the problem lay within myself, not the system.

And so my dream of becoming a great doctor dissolved. The message received from multiple institutions was loud and clear: You are no longer special. You are just an employee.

So I quit. I live on a sailboat now.

I jumped into my lifestyle change with the old enthusiasm I had for neurology. I spent several months lying on deck watching sunsets, relishing the fact that it was 6 p.m. and I was home with my family. These days, my husband and I have control over what we will do each day, where we will go next, and when we will leave. If a mistake occurs, we change our system rapidly to minimize future errors, and we document only what is necessary. Finally free to think, I have gazed at the sea on night watch, Southern Cross in my headphones, searching for answers. What is the fix for uncontrollable health care costs? What is the fix for Parkinson disease? What is the fix for burdensome documentation requirements? What is the fix for me?

I am calling this a self-funded sabbatical rather than a career change. It is hard for a person to give up a profession that requires such a large initial investment. Slowly, the neurologist in me has resurfaced from its burial ground in the deep sea of disillusionment, and the tsunami of anger is starting to subside.

It is not a panacea, but taking a break from the degrading surge of checkboxes and lethargic dropdown lists has rejuvenated my soul. While sabbaticals have been traditionally reserved for academics, I propose that more practices consider offering them. Many benefits are obvious, from improving recruitment, encouraging loyalty, promoting education, and addressing burnout. Of course, there will be resistance to this expensive idea. Offering sabbaticals acknowledges the physician as an intellectual with unique motivations, a person worthy of respect. It may be perceived as elitist, this idea to give physicians special treatment.

But there is a deeper consequence. On sabbaticals, one can regain control over ones day and recover a lost sense of agency, an underappreciated but important cause of physician discontent. This is dangerously empowering. In fact, my sabbatical has given me new strength to take the helm of my career and do more to be heard, as I am ennobled and willing to fight for my patients and fellow physicians.

Physicians cannot continue to work as uncompensated paper-pushers for a multitude of silent overlords seeking profit above patient care. The establishment may reject this call to mutiny, but nothing will change until physicians start requesting sabbaticals if they are not offered. We have given so much already to this system. Its time to start taking something back. We have to restore our status as captains of the ship.

Fortunately for me, those problems seem far away at the moment. In this light breeze, I search through the clear water below me for the hope that someday this respect I seek will spread like a wave through the health care industry, and physicians will regain their voice before they drown.

Melinda Burnett is a neurologist who blogs at Burnetts Ahoy!

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
(Xinhua) 20:35, September 09, 2016

Cambodian Prime Minister Samdech Techo Hun Sen on Friday encouraged more Chinese investors to invest in Cambodia, saying that their investment would contribute to developing the economy and reducing poverty, a senior official said.

Hun Sen made the remarks during a meeting with a group of 47 Chinese business executives led by Jiang Zengwei, chairman of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT).

"The prime minister briefed the delegation about investment potential, peace, stability and security in Cambodia," Kao Kim Hourn, minister attached to the prime minister, told reporters after the meeting.

"He also informed the delegation that Cambodia had focused on the development of four sectors - transport infrastructure, water, energy and human resources - and encouraged them to invest in these sectors."

During the meeting, Hun Sen also highly valued the Cambodia-China relations, saying the ties currently reached new heights in all fields, particularly in politics, economics, trade and investment.

For his part, Jiang lauded Cambodia's development and promised to help attract more Chinese investors to Cambodia.

Earlier in the day, Jiang signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Kith Meng, president of the Cambodia Chamber of Commerce, in order to contribute further to promoting trade and investment ties between the two countries.

According to the Chinese statistics, the two-way trade volume between China and Cambodia reached 2.34 billion U.S. dollars in the first half of 2016, up 10.2 percent year-on-year.

On the investment side, China is the largest investor in Cambodia with cumulative investment of about 14 billion U.S. dollars from 1994 to March 2016, according to the figures of the Council for the Development of Cambodia.
Kilkenny Chamber of Commerce and main sponsor, Glanbia Plc have opened nominations for the Kilkenny Business Awards 2016.

Following last years phenomenal response and unprecedented number of award entries, nominations are now being sought for this years Kilkenny Business Awards for local businesses who demonstrate excellence within their sector.

The awards process is free to enter and open to both members and non-members of Kilkenny Chamber of Commerce alike. Businesses and individuals are being encouraged to nominate themselves or a local business that they think is deserving of an award. A simple nomination form can be downloaded from www.kilkennychamber.ie.

Diverse Categories

With over 20 diverse award categories available, businesses can enter in up to three categories in which their business excels. Categories include Agricultural Business of the Year, Food and Drink Producer of the Year, Emerging New Business and Excellence in Hospitality.

New to the awards this year, Kilkenny Chamber of Commerce has introduced the Best Venue of the Year award to acknowledge the countys variety of outstanding events settings. Businesses can now recognise the rising stars within their company by electing an employee or intern under the Employee of the Year category.

President of Kilkenny Chamber of Commerce, Deirdre Shine said, We are delighted to announce the opening of nominations for the Kilkenny Business Awards. This is a wonderful opportunity to recognise the accomplishments of Kilkenny businesses, their entrepreneurial spirit and to provide a platform to celebrate their success. We strongly encourage enterprises across the county to put forward a nomination and get the recognition that their business deserves.

Nominations

Nominations close on Friday, 21st of September; thereafter candidates will be required to put forward a full application. A shortlist of finalists will be announced and go on to the interview round in October. The winners will be announced on Saturday, 19th November at the Chambers annual black-tie banquet, the Kilkenny Business Awards ceremony in Lyrath Estate Hotel.

The event sponsors are:

Glanbia; State Street; LEO; Bank of Ireland; Kilkenny County Council; Skillnets; Kilkenny People; KCLR96fm; Ulster Bank; T Butler Engineering; FBD; PwC; VHI; AIB; EPA; KLP; PRL; RIKON; St Canices CU; Taxback.
Aut Even Hospital, Kilkenny, has been given the go ahead for a major capital investment.

The 8 million - a major boost of confidence to the hospital - will include a state-of-the-art, purpose built, radiology suite.

The project will include upgrades within its six unique ultra-clean theatres.

The new diagnostics department will include the most technologically advanced diagnostic equipment available on the market.

The purpose built radiology suite will include a new MRI (Magnetic Resource Imaging), with Cardiac MR capability, CT (Computed Tomography), X-Ray and Ultrasound machines.

Patients will scanned using only state-of-the-art diagnostic equipment.

Diagnostic radiology is the field of medicine that uses imaging exams and procedures to diagnose a patient. In any form of medical care, diagnostic radiology plays an integral part in the diagnosis of disease or injury.

The hospital employs over 250 staff and is a major. With this announcement today, the hospital will create a further 20 positions, to include the building project along with administrative and allied health professional roles.

Speaking at the announcement Margaret Swords CEO, Aut Even Hospital said the hospital, which has been providing excellent clinical care for 100 years, is putting in place a foundation for another 100 years of excellence.

Our patients and our clinical teams require the best of technology to provide all of our services and this investment will sustain and grow the suite of services we provide to the local and regional community.

This investment speaks volumes in terms of our future as a private hospital and as a partner in support to St Lukes hospital in providing medical care to the community of Kilkenny, Carlow, Tipperary and the wider geographical area on the south East and Midlands.

The construction work and the expansion of our Radiology Department will provide additional jobs for the local population and as with our recent refurbishment we will strive to use local suppliers and businesses in these developments, she said.

The hospital has six ultra-clean laminar flow operating theatres, the upgrade will bring the already first-class facilities to the forefront of Irish Private Hospitals.

In 2015 Aut Even had over 14,000 admissions into its 100-bed hospital. Aut Even is a major player in the Private Hospital market in the South East and offers patients access to a broad range of surgical specialties. The tradition of care, upon which its foundations have been built, continues to be of paramount importance to the Hospitals framework of quality and patient safety. Since 2008, Aut Even has been accredited by the US-based Joint Commission International (JCI) which represents the highest seal of approval for medical facilities that provide the safest and most effective quality care.
An image of an article from onboard magazine "Wings of China" shows in Chinese and English that "precautions are needed" for visitors going to areas of London "mainly populated by Indians, Pakistanis and black people." [Photo: Agencies]

Air China and the publisher of its in-flight magazine have issued apologies in the wake of accusations of racism, after an image of an article from onboard magazine "Wings of China was posted on Twitter.

The article, which has caused uproar in the UK and on social media, says in Chinese and English that precautions are needed for visitors going to areas of London mainly populated by Indians, Pakistanis and black people.

A photo of the magazine article was posted to Twitter where it was quickly shared, with many users expressing outrage and accusing Air China of racism. Member of Parliament Virendra Sharma, who represents a constituency of London with a large ethnically Asian population, called the advice blatantly untrue and racist.

Sharma, along with fellow London MP Rosena Allin-Khan, has approached the Chinese ambassador to the UK, Liu Xiaoming for comment. Sharma also invited Air China staff to visit his constituency in Ealing to see that a very multicultural area is safe, and would be of great value for those visiting London to see. Ealing was home to a 30 percent Asian population in the last UK census in 2011.

In response, Air Chinas North American branch tweeted and then deleted an apology on Thursday, saying Air China do not condone discrimination in any shape or form. The message promised that the magazines with the offending article would be removed from all flights, and that the issue would be raised with the publisher - "a separate entity from Air China." It remains unclear why the apology was deleted.

A screenshot shows an apology from Air Chinas North American branch, saying Air China do not condone discrimination in any shape or form. [Photo: Agencies]

Later on Thursday, a Chinese language notice statement from the publishers of the magazine apologized to Air China for improper expressions that had hurt its brand. The statement said the article had triggered misinterpretations among media and readers, and expressed its sincere apologiesto all the readers and passengers who felt uncomfortable because of this.

On Twitter, Labor MP for Dulwich and West Norwood Helen Hayes called the article disgusting, unacceptable racism, while Florence Eshamoli, a government representative for Lambeth and Southwark told The Evening Standard you couldnt make up these outdated and near-racist views.

However, there were some posts on social media in support of Air Chinas article, with Facebook user Matt Byles saying Air China are only following statistics, and other users calling the advice kind of true.

Air Chinas in-flight magazine is not only sweeping in its generalization by linking crime in London with areas with high populations of ethnic minorities, it is also simply not based on fact.

According to the Metropolitan Polices website, which gives up to date statistics on crime in each of Londons 32 boroughs, as of July 2016 only 3 boroughs had "high" or "above average" rates of crime  Westminster (high), Camden and Islington (both above average). Based on the most recent nationwide census of the UK, these three boroughs all have majority white populations, with black and Asian populations of between 7 and 15 percent. In fact, the areas that Air Chinas advice appears to be specifically keen on warning visitors about  those with high black and Asian populations  are not particularly dangerous, according to official police data.

In the most recent census, the boroughs of Lambeth, Southwark, Lewisham, Croydon and Newham had the highest percentage of black residents, but only average crime rates. The boroughs of Newham, Redbridge, Brent, Tower Hamlets and Harrow had the highest percentage of Asian residents, but again all had average crime rates except for Harrow, which is one of only three out of thirty two boroughs in London to have a below average crime rate.

Air China is, according to its annual 2015 report, the only Chinese airline with operations covering all six continents. It carried 89.816 million passengers in 2015, operating routes to 40 countries and regions.
Lorraine Keane epitomises what many Irish women strive for - she has an indelible sense of style and keeps herself in good shape.

The TV presenter and much-loved celebrity is bringing her Keane on Style to the Ormonde Hotel on November 4.

The night out promises to be glamorous and fun-filled with plenty of tips and advice on how to look and feel your best.

It started as a small event in the Spring/Summer of last year. My friend Charlotte Bradshaw gave me the idea - I go to her husband, Dylan's hair salon and people are always asking me about me hair. She said that over the course of the past two decades I had gained so much information and experience when it comes to style and hair and make up and that I should do something with it.

I have five sisters and I love female company. The event emanated from that - my love of fashion and style and sharing and being in the company of women. It started on a small scale last year and we have expanded it into a bigger event this Autumn.

It is an excuse for women to get out and be with their girlfriends and sisters and Mums. Keane on Style is about fashion and helpful advice on make up and hair and style but mainly it is about having fun. It is about knowing what to wear and how to wear it and what best suits you, said.

Lorraine is radiant and enthusiastic about the project and explains that Keane on Style is a great night out.

It starts with a glass of bubbles and some nibbles and the ladies can peruse the many pop up shops.

There are stands and nibbles and demonstrations and their are also experts on hand to give advice on hair and make up.

Expert Peggy Stringer will speak on skin care and anti-aging and Rita Mylett will talk about body shape and styling.

After each talk there will be a questions and answers section and there will also be a number of Irish designers.

Tickets for the event are 75 euro and there is a goodie bag (valued at 80) included.

The evening will kick off at 7pm with a drinks and nibbles reception and the onstage performances will start at 8pm.

Tickets are available from the Ormonde hotel and from www.eventbrite.ie

I am delighted to bringing Keane on Style to Kilkenny. It is all about being the best me I can be and there is someone there for everyone. 

For more information see www.lorrainekeane.com and check out the Life Style pages over the coming weeks for details of our ticket giveaway.
I saw your article about the new ABLE accounts for children with special needs. I'm interested in opening an account for my son, but we don't have a plan available in our state yet. Can I open an account in another state? How do I pick the best one?

Even though the federal law permitting ABLE accounts was passed in 2014, it took a while for states to develop their plans. Ohio was the first, introducing its plan in June. Florida, Nebraska and Tennessee now have plans, too, and several other states will open their plans in the next few months. Most plans will be available to residents of any state, although a few, such as Florida's plan, are limited to residents of that state. Otherwise, you can choose from any state's plan.

People of any age who developed a qualifying disability before age 26 can open an ABLE account and contribute up to $14,000 per year. The money can be used tax-free for any expenses that can benefit the person with the disability, which could include the cost of a home modification, transportation, a special wheelchair that isn't covered by Medicaid, and even therapeutic horseback riding, says Chris Rodriguez, senior public policy adviser for the National Disability Institute.

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You can see an updated list of states offering plans, as well as updates on the status of plans in development, at the ABLE National Resource Center (opens in new tab). The site also has a tool that helps you compare state programs by key features, such as initial minimum contribution, annual fees, investment manager and investment fees.

Selecting an ABLE plan is similar to choosing a 529 college-savings plan; look at the plan's fees, investing choices and minimums, and other special benefits (Ohio's plan, for example, offers a debit card). Florida, Nebraska, Ohio and Tennessee have different investment options (from four to seven funds, depending on the state), including some Vanguard funds and a savings account.

You may receive some extra perks by picking your own states plan, when it becomes available. Nebraska residents, for example, can get a state income tax deduction of up to $10,000 for their ABLE contributions, and Virginia residents will be able to deduct up to $2,000 in contributions on their state income tax return when their plan opens later this year. In Ohio, residents pay lower fees than nonresidents. You can't have two plans open at the same time, but you can roll your balance over to another plan.
SHANGHAI, Sept 9 (Reuters) - China's Ministry of Financeauctioned 10 billion yuan ($1.50 billion) of three-month billsand 15 billion yuan of six-month bills in the interbank marketon Friday at average yields of 1.9892 percent and 2.0507percent, respectively, traders said.

The auction yield for three-month bills came in belowThursday's benchmark secondary market yield of 2.0492 percentfor three-month government bills .

The auction yield for six-month bills came in belowThursday's benchmark secondary market yield of 2.0550 percent. .

For stories on Chinese debt issues, click on . ($1= 6.6750 Chinese yuan)

(Reporting by the Shanghai Newsroom; Editing by JacquelineWong)
* Global issuers start marketing bond deals in Asian hours

By Daniel Stanton

SINGAPORE, Sept 9 (IFR) - More international issuers havebegun marketing US dollar bonds in Asian hours, thanks to acombination of flush liquidity and compliance concerns.

This week, Prudential, AXA Insurance and Toronto-DominionBank marketed Tier 2 notes, Societe Generale offered AdditionalTier 1 securities and RBS Bank marketed senior notes in theAsian trading session, rather than waiting for markets in Europeor the US to open.

Issuers like Prudential, which has a large business in Asiaand strong brand recognition there, have long targetedhigh-yield-loving Asian private banks with hybrid offerings, butthe region is becoming the first port of call for many otherglobal issuers.

Even Nissan Motor Acceptance Corp, which has historicallymarketed and priced its US dollar bonds in the US session, gaveguidance in Asian hours last week. Its $1.5 billionthree-tranche deal can hardly be said to have offered a highyield, paying just 1.9 percent on its longest tranche of fiveyears.

These deals are the most recent examples of changing marketpractice.

"In the past, we would have soft-sounded before booksformally opened," said one debt capital markets banker.

Arrangers often sought orders from big investors such asAsian sovereign wealth funds without formally announcing a dealuntil Europe or the US began trading, but it also led somemarket participants to complain that information was not beingshared equally.

"Regulations have tightened," said one Asian syndicate head."If you want to test investor interest, you need to do itformally."

The European Union's Market Abuse Regulation, which cameinto effect on July 3, is intended to ensure that investors donot misuse sensitive information that could affect the prices ofexisting securities. It has expanded previous rules to coverissuers with securities listed in multilateral tradingfacilities in Luxembourg or Ireland, for example. The previousrules covered only issuers with securities listed onEU-regulated markets, although some MTFs applied the rulesvoluntarily.

Affected issuers need to be more transparent about theirintentions to sell securities, while investors need to show thatthey are not benefiting from inside information, which will makeit difficult to discuss a potential bond issue before it isannounced to the whole market.

Issuers covered by the MAR will need to record the identityof all of the investors they sounded for a deal and theinformation that was disclosed, and will need to keep therecords for five years.

Law firm Shearman & Sterling warned in a note that issuerswho did not follow this practice would need to be confident thatwall-crossing could not be regarded as market abuse, and thatthe investors they approached could maintain confidentiality.

Overnight risk

Apart from the need to avoid breaching compliance rules, theAsian investor base is attractive in its own right.

"Liquidity has increased significantly in this region, andissuers want to take advantage of that," said the syndicatehead.

"It started with the Australian banks, who were able tobuild multi-billion dollar books before the US opened."

Australia's Big Four banks traditionally waited for the USto open before beginning formal bookbuilding for their Yankeesenior offerings, but have recently started giving guidance inAsian hours.

Now US and European issuers are following suit, looking toattract Asian orders at tight spreads despite the logisticaldifficulties involved.

"US and European investors used to say they don't liketaking what they call 'overnight risk', because they're in bedwhen books open," said the DCM banker. "But by the time they goto the US, they are in a much stronger position, and thatoverrides their concerns. There is so much demand for paperhere, and at ridiculous levels."

Chinese banks and Japanese institutions have been increasingtheir holdings of US dollar bonds to counter shrinking yields athome and weak domestic currencies, while Asian private bankclients have been keen buyers of high-yielding securities.

That strong Asian demand for US dollar bonds has also meantthat the region's issues now sell fewer offerings under the 144Aformat to US investors. Just 36 percent of US dollar bondofferings from Asian issuers this year were marketed under 144Athis year, down from 76 percent in 2009, according to ThomsonReuters data.

(Reporting by Daniel Stanton; Editing by Vincent Baby)
* Nikkei once above forecast price of futures and optionssettlement

* Nikkei flat for the week

* Mining shares outperform

By Ayai Tomisawa

TOKYO, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Japan's Nikkei share average edgeddown in choppy trade on Friday morning, erasing earlier gainsfollowing a suspected North Korean nuclear test.

The Nikkei fell 0.3 percent from the previous closeto 16,913.99 in midmorning trade, after rising to as high as17,029.78 earlier.

In early trade, Nikkei futures and options contracts expiring in September were forecast tosettle at 17,011.77. A seismic tremor was recorded on Friday in an area aroundNorth Korea's known nuclear site, and was suspected to be thefifth nuclear test by the isolated nation, South Korea's Yonhapnews agency said. A South Korean government official said it was a suspectednuclear test, Yonhap reported, and Seoul called for an emergencyNational Security Council meeting.

"With U.S. stocks lower and no fresh catalysts to buy,trading was subdued anyway, but the North Korea news has madeinvestors stay on the sidelines even more," said Yutaka Miura, asenior technical analyst at Mizuho Securities.

For the week, the Nikkei was flat.

Japanese stocks have been trading in a tight range in recentweeks as investors try to assess the outlook for U.S. interestrates and the Bank Of Japan's monetary policy.

"Since many of the U.S. August economic data were poor,investors are cautiously focused on September figures," saidHikaru Sato, a senior technical analyst at Daiwa Securities.

On Friday, exporters were mixed, with Honda Motor Co falling 1.2 percent, Panasonic Corp shedding0.2 percent and Advantest Corp rising 0.1 percent.

Mining shares outperformed, with Inpex Corp rising3.2 percent and Japan Petroleum Exploration Co advancing 1.8 percent after oil prices soared more than 4percent overnight.

The broader Topix declined 0.4 percent to 1,341.08and the JPX-Nikkei Index 400 shed 0.3 percent to12,029.67.

(Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)
* Exports down 13.0 pct y/y in July

* Imports fall 1.7 pct in July

* July trade deficit at $2.05 billion

MANILA, Sept 9 (Reuters) - The Philippines statistics agencyon Friday released data on July exports and imports:

KEY DATA July June May Apr Mar Feb Total exports ($bln) 4.67 4.75 4.7 4.25 4.61 4.31 yr/yr chg (pct) -13.0 -11.4 -3.8 -4.1 -15.1 -4.5 Electronics exports 2.40 2.43 2.26 2.26 2.36 2.13 ($bln) yr/yr chg (pct) -14.8 -5.1 -4.0 1.9 1.0 8.1

KEY DATA July June May Apr Mar Feb Jan Total imports ($bln) 6.73 6.85 6.74 6.56 6.36 5.41 6.83 yr/yr chg (pct) -1.7 15.4 39.3 29.8 11.7 -5.6 20.5 Electronics ($ bln) 1.83 1.7 1.67 1.74 1.76 1.52 2.21 yr/yr chg (pct) -8.1 -15.8 44.5 69.9 30.1 -14.8 67.1

KEY POINTS:

- The bigger drop in exports in July was due to declines ineight of ten major commodities, led by a near 40 percent annualfall in exports of machinery and transport equipment, and 24percent decline in shipments of woodcrafts and furniture.

- Electronic exports, which accounted for 51 percent oftotal exports in July, were also down 14.8 percent.

- Exports to the country's top trading partners - Japan,U.S. and China, also posted declines, as global demand remainedweak.

- Imports fell for the first time in five months due to adecline shipments of minerals fuels, electronic products andiron and steel

- But power generating and specialised machinery, transportequipment and industrial and machinery equipment posteddouble-digit increases, which point to strong domestic activity.Imports of capital goods were also up 23.1 percent in July.

- The Philippines posted annual growth of 7 percent inApril-June from a year earlier, the highest level in threeyears. (Reporting by Karen Lema; Editing by Shri Navaratnam)
(Repeats item issued late Thursday, with no change to text)

By Wilda Asmarini

JAKARTA, Sept 8 (Reuters) - Indonesia's mining ministry isscrambling to find a way around a deadline on mineral processingthat could prevent some miners, including U.S. copper mininggiant Freeport-McMoRan Inc , from exporting minerals fromthe country from 2017.

Under a government regulation introduced in 2014, miners ofcopper, zinc, lead, manganese and iron are restricted toexporting partially processed minerals until January 2017, afterwhich only shipments of refined metals will be allowed.

The export curbs - which have cost Indonesia billions ofdollars in lost revenue - were intended to shift sales fromunprocessed raw materials to higher-value finished metals, butsmelters have been slow to materialise as low commodity priceshave made them economically unviable.

The government is now "comprehensively evaluating (therequirements) for each commodity," coal and minerals directorgeneral Bambang Gatot said on Thursday, referring to meetings onthe rule with acting mining minister Luhut Pandjaitan.

Uncertainty over Indonesia's mining rules have been aflashpoint between miners and the government for years. Thesector accounted for almost 6 percent of Indonesia's GDP beforethe 2014 ban on metal ore exports, and has since slipped toabout 4 percent.

Also of concern to Jakarta, the government's non-tax revenuefrom mining missed its target by 43 percent last year. "There will definitely be a solution ... at least byJanuary," Gatot said, noting that the government was discussingwhether it needed to change the law or revise a regulation.

Earlier this week, acting mining minister Pandjaitan saidthe government had been too slow in implementing domesticprocessing requirements mandated in Indonesia's existing 2009mining law. "The implementing regulation only came in 2014, so there'sno way they could build smelters (in time), and what's morecommodity prices were down," Pandjaitan said.

"Now we are trapped with how to continue applying the mininglaw properly. We can't change the law just like that," he said.

The 2017 deadline would not apply to nickel ore or bauxite,exports of which have been completely banned since 2014.

The rules on those ores were also "still being discussed,"Pandjaitan said.

The government has been rolling out new measures tore-energise Southeast Asia's largest economy after growth cooledto its slowest in 6 years in 2015, partly as a result of weakerreturns from commodities.

The government is also seeking new revenue sources, with afiscal deficit expected to widen to 219 trillion rupiah ($16.8billion) this year.

Freeport, Indonesia's largest copper miner and an importantsource of government revenue, has said it is confident thegovernment will not push ahead with the 2017 deadline, as themove could harm Southeast Asia's biggest economy. ($1 = 13,067 rupiah)

(Reporting by Wilda Asmarini; Writing by Fergus Jensen; Editingby Tom Hogue)
HANOI, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Here's a snapshot of Vietnamese dong exchangerates in the official market and indicative SJC gold prices in Hanoi at 0100GMT.

Sept 9 Sept 8 USD/VND mid-point 21,932 21,914

USD/VND interbank 22,270/22,330 22,301/22,302 SJC gold (mln dong/tael) 36.30/36.57 36.30/36.57

NOTES: As of Jan. 4, 2016 the State Bank of Vietnam has begun setting themid-point rate on daily basis, allowing dollar/dong transactions to move in aband of +/- 3 percent around the mid point. The dong's exchange rate against other currencies is not restricted by aband. Interbank quotes are indicative bid/ask prices.

One tael is equivalent to 37.5 grams or 1.21 troy ounces. SJC gold pricesare quoted by state-owned Saigon Jewelry Co, the gold manufacturer.

Interbank offered rates are indicative, quoted from market sources.

For Vietnam market overview click on: Vietnam's bonds market auctions: Bonds auction results: (Compiled by Hanoi Newsroom)
(Adds quote, details, background)

MEXICO CITY, Sept 8 (Reuters) - Mexico's governmentpresented a budget on Thursday that forecast economic growth ofbetween 2 and 3 percent in 2017 and oil production sliding to1.928 million barrels a day - its lowest level in decades.

Newly installed Finance Minister Jose Antonio Meade said thebudget also forecast the local peso trading on average around18.2 per dollar next year.

The budget also forecast a primary surplus of 0.4 percent ofGDP in 2017, the first such surplus since 2008.

Standard & Poor's lowered Mexico's sovereign credit outlookto negative last month, adding that a downgrade could happen ifthe government's debt deteriorated.

"We are proposing a substantial effort in reducing plannedspending," said Meade, who took office this week after LuisVidegaray stepped down from the Finance Ministry.

Videgaray resigned on Wednesday after Mexicans expressedoutrage over a visit by U.S. Republican presidential nomineeDonald Trump to Mexico last week that officials say the formerfinance minister arranged.

The budget forecast an average oil price of $42 per barrel,in line with the price at which Mexico hedged next year's crudeexports.

Meade said the government had proposed an adjustment to thetax regime of state oil giant Pemex, which has struggled underhefty debt and decreasing oil output.

Mexico's economy, which has been battered by slumping oilprices and uneven U.S. demand for its manufactured goods, shrankin the second quarter for the first time in three years.

Meade also reiterated that the country would not raise taxesor introduce any new levies, after a 2014 fiscal reform angeredmany businesses.

(Reporting by Jean Luis Arce and Alexandra Alper; Editing byPeter Cooney)
* Bank to offer 12.2 bln shares in HK$4.68-HK$5.18 range-IFR

* Five cornerstone investors to buy 75 pct of deal

* PSBC's indicative range equivalent to 0.94-1.02 P/B for2016

(Adds cornerstone investors, PSBC valuation, company comment)

HONG KONG, Sept 9 (Reuters) - State-owned Postal SavingsBank of China (PSBC) plans to raise up to $8.2billion in a Hong Kong initial public offering and will starttaking orders from investors next week after it set a pricerange for the deal, IFR reported on Friday.

PSBC plans to sell 12.2 billion shares at an indicativerange of HK$4.68 to HK$5.18 each, putting the total deal at upto HK$63.2 billion ($8.15 billion), added IFR, a Thomson Reuterspublication, citing people close to the deal.

The company will start taking orders from investors for theIPO on Sept. 13, with pricing slated for Sept. 20, IFR said.

PSBC declined to comment on the IPO terms.

The lender, China's largest by number of bank branches,lined up five cornerstone investors that will buy nearly 75percent of the shares on offer, IFR reported. The investorsinclude China State Shipbuilding, which agreed to buy $2.5billion worth of shares, Shanghai International Port Group andHNA Group, with $2 billion and $1 billion in investmentsrespectively.

The indicative range represents a 2016 price-to-book ratioof 0.94 to 1.02 times, one of the people told IFR. Bycomparison, large-size peers trade in Hong Kong at an average of0.71 times, according to Thomson Reuters Eikon data.

Overseas fund managers remain skittish over valuations forPSBC, despite the bank's low levels of non-performing loanscompared to publicly-traded rivals. PSBC met in late July withseveral marquee international investors keen to learn more aboutthe bank, its finances and plans for growth, but some were stillconcerned over unattractive valuations for thelender. ($1 = 7.7571 Hong Kong dollars)

(Reporting by Fiona Lau of IFR; Writing by Elzio Barreto;Editing by Stephen Coates and Simon Cameron-Moore)
A Tibetan woman helps raise 5,109,600 yuan to buy 6,387 goats from various slaughterhouses.(Photo from Internet)

The Weibo account of a professor at Northwest University for Nationalities broadcast a message on Sept. 4. According to the message, a Tibetan woman spent 5,109,600 yuan to buy 6,387 goats from various slaughterhouses. The goats were later freed in the grasslands of Sertar County, Sichuan province. The post has triggered heated online debate.

The Tibetan woman had recounted the deed on her own Weibo and WeChat accounts on Sept. 2, correcting a few misconceptions. First, she said that the release of the goats was organized by a group called Snowland Release Group, and that the funds were the result of donations from nearly 100 people.

Based on the woman's WeChat Friends Circle, a reporter from thepaper.cn concluded that the goats were freed on Aug. 30. They were purchased and transported from slaughterhouses in Xining and several other places. Despite the formal "release," the Tibetan woman reported that the goats are actually being kept temporarily by local farmers; they didn't just free the goats randomly in the grassland.

Many netizens have praised the group's actions. However, others worried about the ecology of the grassland.

Employees of the Environmental Protection Bureau of Sertar County told thepaper.cn that such a large-scale release has never happened there before. Since animal husbandry is a major industry in the county, there are already many herds of goats in the area. If more than 6,000 goats were released at once, many locals worried that the region would take a hit. Once winter arrives, the problem will only grow.

Sun Quanhui, a consultant with World Society for the Protection of Animals, said that the aims and reasoning behind the release were good. However, simultaneously releasing so many animals without prior scientific research could have a negative outcome.

Goats in the grassland of Sertar County, Sichuan province. (Photo from internet)
* Central bank seeks data for improved monitoring

* Regulation at odds with rest of Europe

* Market participants rush to meet October deadline

By Helene Durand

LONDON, Sept 9 (IFR) - Banks and issuers are scrambling toget to grips with new trade reporting requirements set by theBank of Italy, potentially leaving them exposed to sanctions ifthey do not comply.

Under Article 129 of the Italian Banking Act, Italianissuers placing securities domestically and non-Italian entitiesselling securities into the Italian market must file post-tradedata with the central bank. The provision is due to come intoforce on October 1.

The regulation - which is unique in Europe - adds to theraft of new rules set by regulators in the aftermath of thefinancial crisis that bank intermediaries and issuers areobliged to follow.

"We have argued to the Bank of Italy that imposing too heavyrequirements could be detrimental to Italian investors,especially if only a negligible amount of securities were to besold to Italian investors - people might not bother and sellelsewhere," said Cristiano Tommasi, a partner at Allen & Overyin Rome.

"The Bank of Italy listened to that, but still feels thatthe collection of information would be helpful to them and givethem an observatory point on market trends, and also to interactwith other domestic and EU authorities."

Under the new post-trade reporting requirements, marketparticipants will have to provide information such as the ISINcode, issuer name, settlement date, type of interest payment,and even hedging information to the central bank.

Equity placements fall outside the new requirements.

They will also have to disclose which category of investorbought an issue - whether retail, institutional or governmententity.

Retail holders of subordinated debt in four Italian smalllenders saw their investments wiped out at the end of 2015 afterthe banks went bankrupt, and the Bank of Italy has beenparticularly keen to clamp down on what is sold to that class ofbuyer.

"The Bank of Italy is concerned about retail; it wants toknow what's going on that market and, for example, if a new typeof security or structure becomes popular, it wants to know thevolumes and probably also who the main players are," saidTommasi.

NOT READY

But while the consultation process for the new rules hasbeen ongoing since late 2013, there are plenty of hurdles stillto be overcome.

"As people start to prepare, it's given rise to a number ofquestions and further guidance is something that people arehoping for," said Charlotte Bellamy, director, market practiceand regulatory policy at the International Capital MarketAssociation. "While the rules are better than they were formanagers, they will represent an additional administrativeburden."

Italian issuers, as well as issuers with an Italian parent,need to file general information on the instruments one dayafter settlement, while other items such as placementinformation need to be provided within 20 days.

Managers or distributors selling or offering non-Italiansecurities into Italy have 20 days to file an almost identicalseries of data points.

There are additional requirements for non-vanilla products.That might include, for instance, details of the bond andderivative components of a structured trade, or an ongoingobligation to report the amount of a particular security incirculation each quarter.

While the provisions kick in next month, the Bank of Italyhas given market participants a testing period to familiarisethemselves with the new procedures.

Distributors will need to meet the first reportingobligation on January 1 2017, according to Bellamy.

"Managers will need to get to grips with the platform onwhich they need to report; it's going to be important that theplatform and any related information and guidance is madeavailable in English," said Bellamy.

(Reporting by Helene Durand, Additional Reporting by AlexChambers, Editing by Julian Baker, Ian Edmondsson)
By Alonso Soto

BRASILIA, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Brazil will not follow theUnited States in openly questioning China's market economystatus at the World Trade Organization but will maintain anaggressive stance to protect local producers from cheaperChinese goods, two sources familiar with the decision toldReuters.

China is pushing partners to grant it market economy statusafter its WTO admission protocol expires in December.

That would force them to take at face value China'sstate-controlled prices to judge whether or not it is "dumping"exports unfairly in their markets. That makes it much harder toimpose higher duties and challenge the Asian nation's cheapexports at the WTO.

The United States warned China in July it had not doneenough to qualify for market economy status, mainly in the steeland aluminum sectors.

The European Union is weighing its stance on China's statusbut rejected loosening its trade defense. Brazil, a major WTO player and the world's fifth-mostpopulous country, will remain on the sidelines, said the twohigh-ranking officials, who asked for anonymity because they arenot allowed to speak publicly on the matter.

"We are not going to point fingers," said one officialdirectly involved in issue. "But anti-dumping challenges willcontinue. We will continue to act to protect our industry."

The government is studying an alternative method tocalculate prices of Chinese products, which currently make upabout one-third of all anti-dumping challenges in the SouthAmerican nation, the official said.

Like its WTO peers, Brazil has used surrogate prices fromthird parties to reflect China's state subsidies.

Brazil's Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond torequest for comment on the matter.

Considered the most closed major economy in the Americas,Brazil is one of the world's champions in implementinganti-dumping measures to safeguard its local industry, which hasseen its participation in the economy more than halve since the1980s.

Another official said staying silent on China's marketeconomy status would help Brazil avoid potential challenges fromits main trade partner. China is expected to launch tradedisputes against countries that reject its new status inDecember.

Brazilian steelmakers, struggling with a two-year recessionat home, are pressuring the government to take a stand againstChina, which they accuse of flooding global markets with cheapsteel.

"These phenomena of heavily subsidized, state-run companiesare causing a lot of damage to us," said Marco Polo de MelloLopes, the head of the Brazil Steel Institute, which representssteelmakers in Brazil.

Recognizing its new status would lead to the bankruptcy of4,811 companies in Brazil and cost Brazil's already weakenedindustry 397,476 jobs, according to a study by consultancyBarral M Jorge that was commissioned by the institute.

China's admission protocol allowed WTO countries not toconsider China a market economy for its trade defenses. Now thatthe protocol is due to expire, China argues WTO members shouldautomatically grant it the status.

(Reporting by Alonso Soto; Editing by Brad Brooks and CynthiaOsterman)
(Adds details on stocks and sectors, updates prices)

* TSX down 151.78 points, or 1.03 percent, to 14,651.48

* All of the TSX's 10 main groups fall

TORONTO, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Canada's main stock indexslumped 1 percent on Friday in a broad retreat led by sharplosses for resource stocks as oil and gold prices fell, with aNorth Korean nuclear blast and hawkish talk from a U.S. FederalReserve official weighing.

Falling stocks were outnumbering advancers by more than8-to-1, and the index was heading for a 0.7 percent slip on theholiday-shortened week.

One of the most influential movers on the index was CrescentPoint Energy Corp , which fell 8.2 percent to C$18.59after announcing a plan to raise C$650 million by issuing moreshares and a C$600 million hike in its capital spending plans. At 10:50 a.m. EDT (1450 GMT), the Toronto Stock Exchange'sS&P/TSX composite index was down 151.78 points, or1.03 percent, to 14,651.48.

The energy group retreated 1.8 percent as oil prices fellmore than 2 percent. Pipeline company Enbridge Inc pulled back 1.8percent to C$58.04 following days of sharp gains afterannouncing a major takeover.

The materials group, which includes precious and base metalsminers and fertilizer companies, lost 2.2 percent.

Barrick Gold lost 2.9 percent to C$23.15, as theprice of gold slipped, while Goldcorp Inc declined 2.1percent to C$20.92. Goldcorp has hired Bank of Nova Scotia tohelp it sell a gold and silver mine in Mexico, sources said. North Korea conducted its fifth and biggest nuclear test onFriday and said it had mastered the ability to mount a warheadon a ballistic missile. Meanwhile, a top Fed official said the U.S. central bankincreasingly faces risks if it waits too much longer to tightenmonetary policy. The financials group slipped 0.1 percent, with ManulifeFinancial Corp advancing 1.6 percent to C$18.21.

The CEO of the country's biggest life insurer said onThursday that Manulife would consider share buybacks andexpected a pause in acquisitions. Industrials fell 0.8 percent.

U.S. crude prices were down 2.5 percent to $46.43 abarrel, while Brent lost 2.5 percent to$48.73. Copper prices declined 0.7 percent to $4,633 atonne. Canada created more jobs than expected in August onincreased hiring in the construction and services sectors, butthe gains did not fully make up for recent declines inemployment, pointing to a labor market that was struggling togain momentum. (Reporting by Alastair Sharp; Editing by Nick Zieminski)
* Zloty off 2-week high vs euro

* Moody's downgrade of Poland unlikely, but worries linger

* Kuna, Croatian bonds steady ahead of Sunday elections

(Adds Croatian elections, Czech forwards)

By Sandor Peto and Marcin Goettig

BUDAPEST/WARSAW, Sept 9 (Reuters) - The zloty led a retreatof Central European currencies on Friday, hit by concerns thatMoody's may downgrade Poland's credit rating later in the day asinvestors locked in recent broad-based gains.

The zloty eased by 0.4 percent to 4.3371 againstthe euro by 1257 GMT, lagging its regional peers.

Moody's, expected to publish its review after Europeanmarkets close, has the highest rating on Poland among the threemajor credit agencies.

It caused alarm two weeks ago when it warned that reforms ofPoland's constitutional court, which have angered Brussels,might hit investments. In a Reuters poll that time, 15 out of 20analysts said Moody's would not downgrade Poland. But worries resurfaced by Friday as some investors tookprofits after a week of regional market gains as prospects of aU.S. rate hike this month faded.

KBC analysts called the Moody's review a "wild card" whileBZ WBK Bank said a downgrade would not be justified. A downgradecould weaken the zloty towards 4.4 per euro, but it could firmpast 4.31 if the rating is left unchanged, Bank Pekao said.

Warsaw's bluechip equities index shed 1.8 percent.

Polish and Hungarian government bond yields rose 2-5 basispoints in line with euro zone yields, after the European CentralBank announced no further monetary stimulus plans on Thursday.

The Czech crown eased slightly to 27.02 versus theeuro from Thursday's 27.007 close, but it remains within awhisker of the central bank's cap of 27.

Czech one-year outright forwards have droppedsince August from an implied crown rate of around 27 to around26.70, indicating expectations for a crown surge when thecentral bank removes the cap, which it has said it would doaround mid-2017. "There has been a higher activity of investors since thebeginning of September, so the central bank has to defend itscommitment ever more by (currency) interventions," KomercniBanka analysts said.

The kuna was flat and Croatian bonds moved littleahead of a snap election on Sunday. Local markets could fall ifthe vote fails to resolve a political stalemate that hashindered efforts to cut public debt, Commerzbank said in a note.

"If a government is formed quickly, yields may fallsomewhat," one Zagreb-based dealer said.

CEE SNAP AT 1457

MARKETS SHOT CET

CURRENCIES

Late Prev Dail Chan

st ious y ge

bid clos chan in

e ge 2016 Czech <EURCZK 27.0 27.0 -0.0 -0.0 crown => 200 070 5% 8% Hungary <EURHUF 309. 308. -0.1 1.80 forint => 0700 4750 9% % Polish <EURPLN 4.33 4.31 -0.4 -1.8 zloty => 71 99 0% 2% Romanian <EURRON 4.44 4.44 +0. 1.69 leu => 40 65 06% % Croatian <EURHRK 7.48 7.48 +0. 2.08 kuna => 30 45 02% % Serbian <EURRSD 123. 123. +0. -1.3 dinar => 1200 3200 16% 4% Note: calcula prev clos 1800 daily ted ious e at CET change from

STOC

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e ge 2016 Prague 883. 884. -0.1 -7.6

26 80 7% 4% Budapest 2848 2850 -0.0 +19

2.54 5.53 8% .07% Warsaw <.WIG20 1760 1793 -1.8 -5.3

> .43 .48 4% 1% Buchares 7045 7060 -0.2 +0. t .37 .84 2% 59% Ljubljan <.SBITO 737. 730. +0. +5. a P> 30 56 92% 91% Zagreb <.CRBEX 1848 1838 +0. +9.

> .99 .29 58% 43% Belgrade <.BELEX 638. 639. -0.0 -0.8

15> 69 01 5% 4% Sofia <.SOFIX 471. 468. +0. +2.

> 00 71 49% 19%

BOND

S

Yiel Yiel Spre Dail

d d ad y

(bid chan vs chan

) ge Bund ge

in Czech spre Republic ad 2-year <CZ2YT= -0.4 -0.1 +01 -14b

RR> 96 27 4bps ps 5-year <CZ5YT= -0.1 -0.0 +03 -2bp

RR> 64 02 3bps s

<CZ10YT 0.24 0 +02 -5bp 10-year =RR> 4 5bps s Poland 2-year <PL2YT= 1.77 0.03 +24 +3b

RR> 7 8 1bps ps 5-year <PL5YT= 2.30 0.02 +28 +0b

RR> 3 0bps ps

<PL10YT 2.89 0.03 +29 -1bp 10-year =RR> 4 8 0bps s

FORWARD RATE AGREEMENT

3x6 6x9 9x12 3M

inte

rban

k Czech <CZKFRA 0.28 0.25 0.22 0 Rep ><PRIBO

R=> Hungary <HUFFRA 0.73 0.7 0.71 0.88

><BUBOR 5

=> Poland <PLNFRA 1.71 1.70 1.69 1.71

><WIBOR 25 5 25

=> Note: are for FRA ask quotes prices ***************************************** *********************

(Additional reporting by Robert Muller in Prague/Igor Ilic inZagreb; Editing by Gareth Jones and John Stonestreet)
RIGA, Sept 9 (Reuters) - The European Central Bank isconsidering changing the size of its bond-buying programme, itscountry composition and the minimum yield of the debt it canbuy, among other measures, ECB rate setter Ilmars Rimsevics saidon Friday.

"There are three elements: capital key, purchase amount ofsecurities and the third relating to reduction of the depositrate (yield) floor," said Rimsevics. "So, all those questionsare being considered there and, of course, some others as wellmost probably."

"But... we have to be patient most probably and have tolet those committees work until December and I think that that'swhen we will know if it is necessary at all to modify thecomposition in any way."

(Reporting By Francesco Canepa; Editing by Gareth Jones)
By Jan Strupczewski and Francesco Guarascio

BRATISLAVA, Sept 9 (Reuters) - European Union financeministers and central bank governors discussed on Friday theidea of a euro zone budget, called a "fiscal capacity", amidsome scepticism if it was needed and under what conditions.

There was no agreement on any aspects of the idea, exceptthat talks should continue.

"The majority agreed on the fact it is important to discussthese issues, and agreed it is not for tomorrow or the day aftertomorrow. It takes some time," Slovak deputy finance ministerIvan Lesay told a news conference.

The idea of a euro zone budget has been around since thesovereign debt crisis in 2012 and is part of plans for furthereuro zone economic integration over the medium to long term.

It is seen as a necessary final stage of building a monetaryunion to provide a counterbalance, together with a euro zonetreasury, to the monetary policy of the European Central Bankand as a way to help the single currency area absorb externaleconomic and financial shocks.

But the issue is sensitive because it carries a risk thatmore fiscally prudent countries may end up bank-rollingspendthrift ones.

"There were very different opinions," Swedish FinanceMinister Magdalena Andersson said on leaving the informal talks.

"Some countries are very enthusiastic whereas othercountries were a lot less enthusiastic. So there is absolutelyno agreement there should be a European fiscal capacity. We arenot even close to talking about a timeline," she said.

Slovakia, which holds the rotating presidency of theEuropean Union, outlined several options for the set-up of sucha "fiscal capacity", also called "stabilisation function" in apaper prepared for the ministers.

"Some ministers seemed to be in favour of a stabilisationmechanism built around an unemployment scheme, others lookedmore towards investment-based mechanisms," European CommissionVice-President Valdis Dombrovskis told reporters.

"But there were also some doubts expressed by some otherministers that this may not be the time to launch newinitiatives," he said.

Officials said there was agreement among the ministers andcentral bankers that before a euro zone budget could beconstructed, euro zone countries would have to act to restoremutual trust between themselves through respect to alreadyexisting rules on budget deficit and public debt.

"There was a common view in the meeting that any additionalinitiative requires mutual trust among the countries that ruleswill be respected," said ECB Vice-President Vitor Constancio.

The Slovak paper prepared for the discussions noted that aeuro zone budget could improve compliance with EU fiscal rules,now often disregarded and not enforced, because the money couldbe made available only to countries that obey the rules .

The fund could take the form of a European UnemploymentInsurance Scheme, the paper said, complementing nationalunemployment plans. Under the scheme, countries that accumulatesurpluses in economic good times could spend the money to helpcover deficits in countries in recession.

Another option would be an investment fund that wouldfinance large, pan-European infrastructure projects, similar tothe European Fund for Strategic Investment now in operation, thepaper said.

(Additional reporting by Jason Hovet, Tatiana Jancarikova andShadia Nasralla in Bratislava)
(ADVISORY- Follow European and UK stock markets in real time onthe Reuters Live Markets blog on Eikon - see cpurl://apps.cp./cms/?pageId=livemarkets)

* STOXX 600 slips, healthcare stocks underperform

* JP Morgan cuts rating on Novo Nordisk

* North Korea nuclear test also weighs on markets

* French company Rubis touches record high

By Sudip Kar-Gupta

LONDON, Sept 9 (Reuters) - European stock markets fell onFriday, weighed down by a drop in the shares of healthcarecompanies, while the latest nuclear test conducted by NorthKorea also rattled markets.

The pan-European STOXX 600 index was down 0.3percent, adding to a pullback from the previous session aftersome investors expressed disappointment at the fact that theEuropean Central Bank (ECB) had not discussed an extension ofthe timetable for its economic stimulus programme.

World stock markets in general were also lower, with Asianmarkets falling after North Korea conducted its fifth nucleartest on Friday, setting off a blast that was more powerful thanthe bomb dropped on Hiroshima in World War Two. Europe's STOXX 600 had hit an eight-month high earlier inthe week but has since drifted down from that level, with theindex down 5 percent since the start of 2016.

"Some people in the market had been positioned for a bitmore stimulus from the ECB, but the sell-off has not been toodramatic. We are having a little bit of a consolidation afterreaching highs earlier in the week," said Clairinvest fundmanager Ion-Marc Valahu.

The STOXX Europe 600 Healthcare index underperformedto shed 0.9 percent, with Novo Nordisk down 1.8percent after JP Morgan cut its rating on the stock to "neutral"from "overweight".

Shares in British pub operator Greene King fellsharply after the company warned trading conditions could gettougher following Britain's 'Brexit' vote in June to quit theEuropean Union. However, shares in French company Rubis - whichspecialises in the petroleum and chemicals sector and operatesstorage facilities - rose to a record high after posting higherinterim profits. (Editing by Gareth Jones)
LONDON, Sept 9 (Reuters) - European stock markets fell onFriday, weighed down by a drop in the shares of healthcarecompanies, while the latest nuclear test conducted by NorthKorea also rattled markets.

The pan-European STOXX 600 index was down 0.4percent in early trading, adding to a pullback from the previoussession after some investors expressed disappointment at thefact that the European Central Bank (ECB) had not discussed anextension of the timetable for its economic stimulus programme.

The STOXX Europe 600 Healthcare index underperformedto shed 0.7 percent, with Novo Nordisk down 1.7percent after JP Morgan cut its rating on the stock to "neutral"from "overweight".

World stock markets in general were also lower after NorthKorea conducted its fifth nuclear test on Friday. (Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta; Editing by Gareth Jones)
LIBREVILLE, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Gabon opposition leader JeanPing on Friday urged an international inquiry into violence thatfollowed the announcement of presidential election results inwhich at least six people were killed.

President Ali Bongo was declared winner of the Aug. 27election by less than 6,000 votes but is under pressure over theresult, which Ping says was rigged. The announcement of resultstriggered days of riots in the capital Libreville and elsewhere.

(Reporting by Gerauds Wilfried Obangome; Writing by MatthewMpoke Bigg; Editing by Dominic Evans)
LONDON, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Germany bond yields soared onFriday, hitting their highest levels since the day after theUK's Brexit vote as investors expressed disappointment withECB's lack of policy action this week.

The European Central Bank on Thursday left monetary policyunchanged and said that an extension of the central bank's 1.7trillion euro bond-buying programme had not been discussed.

That triggered a sell-off in bonds across the euro zone thatgathered momentum on Friday.

Germany's 10-year Bund yield rose more than 6 basis pointsto minus 0.003 percent , its highest level sincethe day after Britain's decision to leave the European Union ina June 23 referendum that sent shock waves through worldmarkets.

The German 30-year bond yield extended its rise to 0.61percent and was up 10 basis points on the day .

"The market is disappointed with the lack of ECB action,"said BNP Paribas rates strategist Patrick Jacq. "The U.S.Treasury market is also opening on a negative note, so that'sadding momentum to the bond sell-off in Europe."

U.S. 10-year Treasury yields were 4 bps higher at 1.65percent .

(Reporting by Dhara Ranasinghe, Editing by Abhinav Ramnarayan)
Details added (first version posted on 14:10)

Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept. 9

Trend:

President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev received the delegation led by Deputy Chairman of the Peoples Consultative Assembly of Indonesia Oesman Sapta Odang.

The president hailed the rapid development of bilateral relations between the two countries. President Aliyev underlined the importance of the fact that the two countries have always supported each other in international organizations. He also noted the necessity of developing bilateral relations in economic, energy and tourism fields.

Expressing regret over the fact that trade between Azerbaijan and Indonesia is not at the desired level, the president noted that it is possible to make accomplishments in this area too through joint efforts. Underlining Indonesia's great experience in tourism sphere, the president hailed good potential to develop bilateral cooperation between the two countries in this area.

President Aliyev also pointed to the appropriateness of taking steps to simplify visa regime between the two countries in order to expand relations in the field of tourism.

The president said Azerbaijan is interested in more Indonesian tourists getting acquainted with Azerbaijan.

President Aliyev expressed confidence that Oesman Sapta Odangs visit to Azerbaijan with a large delegation will be of pivotal importance in strengthening bilateral relations between the two countries.

Oesman Sapta Odang extended the greetings of President of the Republic of Indonesia Joko Widodo to President Ilham Aliyev.

He said that he is visiting Azerbaijan with a large delegation, which represents 10 Indonesian parties. Oesman Sapta Odang noted that the Indonesian government is looking forward to the Azerbaijani president's visit to Indonesia, and extended the official invitation of the president of Indonesia to President Aliyev.

Ilham Aliyev thanked for the greetings of President Joko Widodo and asked Oesman Sapta Odang to extend his greetings to the Indonesian president.

At the end of the meeting they posed for photographs.
BRATISLAVA, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Germany has no plans toreduce its export surplus, Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeublesaid on Friday, as the European Central Bank (ECB) has notchanged its monetary policy which has led to a weaker euro whichin turn boosts German exports. Schaueble dismissed a suggestion this week by ECB head MarioDraghi that Germany should use fiscal room for manoeuvre todecrease its export surplus.

"Even before the European Central Bank decided its policiesof unusual monetary policy, which also led to the euro exchangerate falling significantly, I said that we will increase Germanexport surplus," Schaueble told reporters.

"If the surplus in the euro zone as a whole rises by a totalof 3.6 percent , one should not be surprised that the Germanexport surplus has also risen, if not by 3.6 percent but by 2percent," he said before meeting other European financeministers.

When asked whether he had any plans to decrease Germany'sexport surplus, Schaeuble said: "I haven't heard that the ECB ischanging its monetary policy."

Berlin expects domestic demand to be the sole driver ofeconomic growth this year, with an estimated expansion rate of1.7 percent in 2016.

The Munich-based Ifo economic institute has said Germany'scurrent account surplus would probably hit a new record of 278billion euros ($313.28 billion) this year, overtaking that ofChina again to become the world's largest.

($1 = 0.8874 euros)

(Reporting By Shadia Nasralla)
(Kitco News) - Gold prices are once again ignoring more hawkish comments from a regioal Federal Reserve President.

Speaking at an event Friday morning in Quincy Massachusetts, Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren once again made an argument for the central bank to raise interest rates at some point this year.

My personal view, based on data that we have received to date, is that a reasonable case can be made for continuing to pursue a gradual normalization of monetary policy, he said.

The voting central bank president said that there is a risk are growing the U.S. economy will overheat if there is a delay in rate hikes. He also noted that the U.S. economy has been resilient to global economic shocks.

However, despite Rosengrens comments he did not provide a deadline for the next rate hike. His comments come just over two-weeks before the Federal Open Market Committee will hold its monetary policy meeting.

Rosengrens comments have boosted expectations of a move in September, despite the fact that they are still at extremely low levels. CME 30-Day Fund Futures are now pricing in a 27% chance of a rate hike in September, up from 18% see Thursday.

Markets are pricing in a 31% chance of a rate hike in November up 10 percentage points from the Thursday. By the end of the near there is a 60% chance of a 25 basis point move, up from 51% priced in the previous day.

Despite increasing expectations, gold prices are holding relatively steady. December Comex gold futures last traded at$1,338.50 an ounce, down 0.23% on the day.

Some analysts are not surprised markets are not seeing a bigger reaction as Rosengren has bene making hawkish comments since early spring.

Currency analyst at BNP Paribas said that Rosengren may sound sympathetic to a near-term rate hike, but markets are unlikely to reprice significantly absent a signal from a core member of the FOMC

By Neils Christensen of Kitco News; nchristensen@kitco.com

Follow @Neils_C
BRATISLAVA, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Euro zone finance ministerspushed Greece on Friday to get back to work and speed up areform drive it agreed to in a bailout package before getting anew tranche of money.

Under a deal signed last year with euro zone countries, theEuropean Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund,Greece can receive financial assistance of up to 86 billioneuros by 2018 in return for agreed reforms.

The Eurogroup, comprising euro zone finance ministers, hadapproved a tranche of 10.3 billion euros for Greece in May fromthe overall package. An initial 7.5 billion euros of that sumhad been transferred to Athens with the rest available to Greeceuntil the end of October if it meets some conditions.

Ministers at an informal summit in Bratislava on Fridayexpressed concern that the country, which was due to update thegroup, was falling behind schedule in its efforts.

"I'm not feeling very good about Greece, agreements arethere to be implemented," Austrian Finance Minister Hans JoergSchelling told reporters ahead of the meeting.

Schelling joined others in saying the aid release would belinked to meeting agreed conditions and pushing Greece to movefaster. The head of the Eurogroup, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, said alot of time had already been lost.

"The pressure is back on, it really needs progress," hesaid. "The summer is over. Pack up the camping gear, get back towork."

Greece is due to fulfil 15 reforms, including privatisationplans and energy sector changes, in September to get the final2.8 billion euros available in this tranche.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said Greece stillcould complete its work.

"Today is Sept. 9, so there is still time for Greece," hetold reporters. "It's not new that, with Greece, we see theimplementation of the measures that have been agreed towards thefinal phase of the agreed time frame."

With the highest debt to GDP ratio in the euro zone at morethan 175 percent of national output, and after threeinternational bailouts, Athens is hoping its official lenderswill specify debt relief measures by the end of this year.

It is also hoping to get back to borrowing markets and,according to sources, may sell one or two small bonds followingthe inclusion of its debt in the European Central Bank'squantitative easing programme. (Reporting by Tatiana Jancarikova, Shadia Nasralla and JasonHovet)
Portugal to offer up to 1 bln euros of bonds on Wednesday



LISBON, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Portugal will offer between 750million euros ($842 million) and 1 billion euros total inseven-year and 20-year debt in a bond auction on Wednesday, thestate debt agency IGCP said on Friday. The bonds on offer are the taps of October 2023 and April2037 maturities. Portugal's benchmark 10-year bond yields rose to one-monthhighs of 3.17 percent on Friday after the European Central Bankdisappointed the market the previous day by saying it did notdiscuss an extension of its asset-buying programme. ($1 = 0.8913 euros)

(Reporting By Andrei Khalip, editing by Shrikesh Laxmidas)

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and may not reflect those of Kitco Metals Inc. The author has made every effort to ensure accuracy of information provided; however, neither Kitco Metals Inc. nor the author can guarantee such accuracy. This article is strictly for informational purposes only. It is not a solicitation to make any exchange in precious metal products, commodities, securities or other financial instruments. Kitco Metals Inc. and the author of this article do not accept culpability for losses and/ or damages arising from the use of this publication.

kitco news
(Refiles to fix typo in para 3)

By Robert Smith

LONDON, Sept 8 (IFR) - Ardagh pitched upcoming IPO plans tosell a deeply subordinated payment-in-kind note, and saw strongdemand despite its track record of abandoning listings.

The packaging company sold a Triple C ratedUS$1.715bn-equivalent seven-year PIK toggle bond on Wednesday,split into a euro tranche at a 6.625% yield and a dollar trancheat 7.125%.

Ardagh's chairman Paul Coulson told investors that thecompany will IPO its operating company in the first half of nextyear, but will only float around 5% - equating to just250m-300m.

The listed entity would be one of the companies below thePIK issuer ARD Finance, most likely Ardagh Finance Holdings SA.

The PIK offering is Ardagh's first to have registrationrights with the SEC, and is set to be filed later this year,which the company touted as further proof of its intention toalso file IPO documents with the SEC.

But several fixed-income investors said they were notconvinced a listing will actually come to fruition.

"They've been promising an IPO since I started in thehigh-yield market more or less," said one. "I've heard them saythe same thing so many times before."

The company has history of stalled IPO plans, having burntthrough 8.7m in "aborted IPO costs" in 2010, according to itsaccounts. Since then it has announced, and then delayed, apublic equity market debut several times.

Last year, the company called off plans for an IPO of thebusiness in favour of a planned New York listing of its metalcan division Oressa. But this too was put on ice in November,with the company announcing that market conditions were notsuitable.

Peter Schwab, a portfolio manager at Pax World, said the IPOdelays had made it "a little frustrating as a company tofollow".

"They have been talking about it for five years now andevery time the market is difficult, then an acquisition comesalong and they do it," he said.

Ardagh has grown its business through a string ofdebt-funded acquisitions, most recently raising US$4.5bn ofbonds in April with US$2.85bn earmarked to fund its acquisitionof a beverage can business disposed of during Ball and Rexam'smerger.

THIS TIME IT'S DIFFERENT?

Another investor said he was happy to buy Ardagh's bondsgiven the company's strong performance and "stable defensivebusiness", but was not "naive or complacent" on the long-awaitedlisting.

"A Q2 IPO would make sense as they want to consummate thebeverage can acquisition and get some full-year numbers behindthem, but who knows what equity market conditions will be likethen," he said, adding that some were also disappointed at howsmall the planned IPO would be.

"This business is now generating 1.3bn Ebitda so even 300mwill make quite a small impact from a deleveraging perspective."

He said that changes to the PIK notes' structure fromArdagh's previous deal indicated that the company may be moreserious about listing, however, even though the deal will hand a270m dividend to shareholders.

The company's last unsecured PIK raised in 2014 used themore aggressive pay-if-you-want structure, whereas the newsenior secured deal uses a stricter pay-if-you-can toggleformat. This means Ardagh has to pay the coupon with cash if itsoutstanding bonds at Ardagh Packaging Holdings Limited (APHL)have sufficient restricted payment capacity.

And Ardagh increased the deal's size by US$150m to pay downdebt at APHL, which will improve its capacity to pay the PIKcoupon in cash. In contrast, the size of the 2014 deal wasincreased purely to boost the dividend paid to owners.

"They seem serious about paying cash, as the longer a PIKaccretes the more it dilutes shareholder value, because it'djust be rolling up and compounding," the investor said.

Other investors also said Ardagh is running out ofacquisition targets, which have delayed IPOs in the past.

"It seems like the story is coming to its natural end," saidSchwab.

(Reporting by Robert Smith, additional reporting by DavideScigliuzzo. Editing by Alex Chambers, Julian Baker)
* German firm sells 3.6bn PIK at lowest coupons

* Greatly improved credit lures bond investors

* Warning signs of riskier deals emerging

By Robert Smith

LONDON, Sept 9 (IFR) - Schaeffler sold the largestpost-crisis payment-in-kind toggle bond on Thursday, a monster3.59bn-equivalent trade that also smashed records for the riskyasset class's lowest coupons.

The German bearing maker announced plans on Wednesday toraise a 2.5bn-equivalent senior secured PIK toggle note splitinto euros and US dollars at its holding company, withmaturities of 5NC2, 7NC3 and 10NC5. At this size the deal wouldalready have been the largest PIK toggle sold post-crisis.

But on Thursday the transaction was upped to3.59bn-equivalent, with the three euro tranches sized at 750mand the three dollar pieces at US$500m.

The euro tranches cleared at par to yield 2.75%, 3.25% and 3.75% respectively, well inside the 6% yield Schaeffler soldPIKs at in October 2014, the previous market low for theinstrument.

PIK notes are deeply subordinated debt instruments thatallow companies to pay coupons with additional bonds rather thancash. PIK toggles are a twist on the format where the securitycan toggle between either paying coupons in cash or additionalbonds, depending on the company's ability to service debt.

"Investment-grade buyers were willing to buy not onlycallable bonds, but also PIK toggles," said a source close tothe deal.

"It's hard to tell if a deal is definitely going into IGfunds, but when pretty much every long-only fund manager in theworld is in for at least 100m, that tells you it is going intopeople's IG funds."

BANKING ON ECB UPSIDE

Despite the unprecedentedly low yields on offer, oneinvestor said he saw scope for Schaeffler's holding companybonds to grind tighter in secondary, given Moody's upgraded itsoperating company to a Baa3 investment-grade rating this week.

"You have an opco that is becoming CSPP eligible, whichshould lead to massive tightening that should in turn pull thePIK tighter," he said.

"Of course, there's an argument that the relationship mightnot hold - because you're talking HY PIK on the one hand and IGbullet on the other - but I don't think you'll lose your shirton this regardless."

The ECB's corporate bond buying programme has spurredmassive tightening in investment-grade credit, which this weeksaw the first negative-yielding euro bonds sold in the primarymarket by non-state owned companies. And the secondary market is on the cusp of achieving theultimate paradox: negative-yielding high-yield bonds. Bank ofAmerica Merrill Lynch strategists said the market was close toseeing the first negative-yielding Double B rated bullet bonds,in a piece called "Think the unthinkable" published this week.

The two euro bonds in question - HeidelbergCement's 9.50%2018 and Peugeot's 7.375% 2018s - are bid at 0.30% yields,according to Tradeweb.

WORRYING SIGNS?

PIKs are often seen as a worrying symptom of an overheatingcredit market, particularly as they are often used to paydividends to shareholders.

Schaeffler's deal in contrast refinanced existing holdingcompany debt, while the upsize allowed it to full repay a legacyintercompany loan.

Ardagh raised a Triple C rated US$1.715bn-equivalent PIKtoggle in euros and dollars on Wednesday, that returned 270m ofcash to the European packaging firm's owners. But the dealprimarily refinanced debt, with a US$150m size increase used toreduce more debt at its operating company.

"PIK deals are obviously not best for the market structurein the long term, but the use of proceeds is stillconservative," said the investor.

"Both deals were refinancing trades, save for a little bitof dividend at Ardagh."

Dividend recapitalisation deals have been thin on the groundin Europe since Phones 4U went bust in September 2014, one yearafter raising an aggressive PIK deal to hand cash to its owners.

But there are signs that the market's clamour for higheryielding paper could bring these deals out of the woodwork.

"There's been a lack of new supply this year, and we knowbanks are pitching dividend recaps to companies with the rightcredit story in a bid to satisfy demand," said JonathanBrownson, co-head of global leveraged finance at Allen & Overy.

"This dynamic will depend on how much primary LBO activitythere is in the next few months, as it's the lack of M&A thisyear that's really driven the low supply."

A second investor noted that while Schaeffler has spentyears prudently improving its capital structure - afteroverloading on debt in a mistimed 2008 bid for tyre makerContinental - it looks set to start buying up assets again.

CEO Klaus Rosenfeld told Handelsblatt on Thursday that thecompany was now ready to pursue acquisitions in the three-figuremillion range, having greatly reduced its debt-load.

"Now we have to see what kind of acquisitions," the investorsaid, "...and if it means more debt to come in the next fewmonths."

(Reporting by Robert Smith)
* Exports down by 3.1 pct y/y in July

* Exports rise by 3.4 in Jan-July

* Industrial output up by 7.4 pct y/y in July

By Marja Novak

LJUBLJANA, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Slovenian exports and importsboth fell in July but the government said the decline was due todays lost to holidays and analysts said economic growth wouldremain relatively strong this year.

Separate data on Friday showed industrial output rose by 7.4percent in July compared with the same month last year, to givean increase of 6 percent in the first seven months of 2016.

The statistics office reported that exports fell 3.1 percentyear-on-year in July while imports declined by 2.4 percent. FromJanuary to the end of July, exports were 3.4 percent higher withimports up by 1.4 percent.

"Exports in July fell mainly because it was a holiday monthso there is not reason to worry about that for now," said IztokTrobec of Dezelna Banka's treasury department.

"I expect exports to rise in the coming months althoughgrowth will not be as high as in the first half, mainly due tothe expected slowdown of the German economy."

Slovenia's macroeconomic institute blamed the export fall onthe fact there were two fewer working days in July compared tothe same month in 2015 and said exports remained at a "highlevel" for the summer months.

Slovenia exports about 70 percent of what it produces,mainly to other European Union countries, with Germany alonetaking 21 percent of its exports, which include cars, car parts,pharmaceuticals and household appliances.

Earlier this week Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime MinisterKarl Erjavec said Slovenia's economy could expand by 2.7 percentthis year after growing 2.3 percent in 2015. But Trobec said that forecast was too optimistic, adding:"I expect growth between 2 and 2.5 percent this year."

(Reporting by Marja Novak; Editing by Catherine Evans)
TABLE-South Africa's 3-month T-bill average yield eases to 7.45 percent



JOHANNESBURG, Sept 9 (Reuters) - South Africa sold 2.555billion rand ($179 million) worth of three-month Treasury billson Friday, at an average yield of 7.45 percent compared with 7.5percent last week, central bank data showed. The bid-to-cover ratio rose to 3.2 from 2.6. Auction date: 09/09/2016 Settlement date: 14/09/2016 Days 91 182 273 364 Amount received (R'bln) 8.188 4.9 4.986 5.392 Amount on offer (R'bln) 2.555 1.961 1.71 1.603 Amount allotted (R'bln) 2.555 1.961 1.71 1.603 Bid-to-cover ratio 3.2 2.5 2.9 3.4 Avg discount rate (pct) 7.31 7.42 7.38 7.34 Average yield (pct) 7.45 7.71 7.81 7.92 ($1 = 14.2367 rand)

(Reporting by Mfuneko Toyana; Editing by James Macharia)

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and may not reflect those of Kitco Metals Inc. The author has made every effort to ensure accuracy of information provided; however, neither Kitco Metals Inc. nor the author can guarantee such accuracy. This article is strictly for informational purposes only. It is not a solicitation to make any exchange in precious metal products, commodities, securities or other financial instruments. Kitco Metals Inc. and the author of this article do not accept culpability for losses and/ or damages arising from the use of this publication.

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ISTANBUL, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Here are news, reports andevents that may affect Turkish financial markets on Friday.

The lira stood at 2.9599 at 0510 GMT, easingfrom 2.9447 at the end of Thursday.

The benchmark 10-year bond was at 9.55percent in spot trade on Wednesday and rose to 9.57 percent inThursday-dated trade.

The main share index rose 0.26 percent to 77,843.49points on Thursday.

GLOBAL MARKETS

Asian shares extended losses on Friday following reportsNorth Korea had conducted a nuclear test, while global stocksand bonds slid on uncertainty over the prospect of furthereasing from the European Central Bank after it left policyunchanged. ERDOGAN-PUTIN

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and Russian PresidentVladimir Putin agreed in a phone call on Thursday that effortsshould be intensified for a ceasefire in Aleppo over the Eidholiday. SYRIA

At least five people were killed and 12 wounded in anIslamic State attack in the Syrian border town of Jarablus,Turkish security and hospital sources said on Thursday, only aday after civilians started returning to their homes in thetown. GDP DATA The Turkish Statistics Institute will release gross domesticproduct data for the second quarter (0700 GMT). A Reuters pollof 22 economists forecast a 3.4 percent growth in the period.

CURRENT ACCOUNT The central bank will release data at 0700 GMT on thecurrent account balance for July. A Reuters poll of 13economists forecasts a deficit of $2.4 billion for a year-endgap of $33.9 billion.

For other related news, double click on:

Turkish politics Turkish equities Turkish money Turkish debt Turkish hot stocks Forex news All emerging market news All Turkish news For real-time quotes, double click on:

Istanbul National-100 stock index , interbank liratrading , lira bond trading (Reporting by Seda Sezer)
LONDON, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Ukraine plans to relaunch itsstalled privatisation process, Finance Minister OleksandrDanylyuk said on Friday, adding the Odessa fertiliser plantwould be first in line for sale after an initial effort failedin July.

Ukraine plans to privatise hundreds of state-ownedenterprises as part of a reform programme supervised by theInternational Monetary Fund, but recent efforts, including withthe Odessa plant, have come to nought.

"The fact that the privatisation of Odessa Portside Plantdidn't happen initially was a bad signal, I openly communicateto you, but it's also a lesson," Danylyuk told an investmentconference in London.

"We are re-launching (the) privatisation process, the firstbeing Odessa (plant). I am confident that the next privatiationattempt of Odessa will be successful."

He added: "As a finance minister, I am hungry forprivatisations, I need some money."

(Reporting by Sujata Rao and Karin Strohecker, editing by NigelStephenson)
Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept.9

By Aygun Badalova - Trend:

Vice-President of the European Parliament Ryszard Czarnecki, speaking to reporters in Baku Sept.9, said that the parliament will respect the results of the upcoming referendum in Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijans President Ilham Aliyev earlier signed a decree to hold a referendum on making amendments to the countrys constitution Sept. 26, 2016.

We are here before the important referendum in your country. We want to know more about this referendum, Czarnecki told reporters.

We will respect the result of this referendum. Because for us the will of your nation is the most important, he added.

He also noted that this visit is especially important, because Italian and Polish representatives of the European Parliament delegation are in Azerbaijan for the first time.

They have lack of experience, and for them these meetings and this trip was the first lesson of Azerbaijani culture, history and politics, Czarnecki said, stressing the importance of closer cooperation.
(Adds quote, context)

LIBREVILLE, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Gabon opposition leader JeanPing on Friday called for an international inquiry into violencethat followed the announcement of presidential election resultsin which at least six people were killed.

President Ali Bongo was declared winner of the Aug. 27election by around 5,000 votes but is under pressure over theresult, which Ping says was rigged.

The announcement of results triggered days of riots in thecapital Libreville and elsewhere. At least six have been killed,but Ping this week put the death toll at between 50 and 100, anumber that could not be independently verified.

"We demand the opening of an international inquiry," Pingtold a news conference.

Ping's party appealed to the Constitutional Court onThursday to authorize a detailed recount of votes in thesoutheastern Haut-Ogooue province, a Bongo stronghold. Bongo was declared winner in the province with 95 percent ofthe vote on a 99.9 percent turnout. A European Union observermission said it found anomalies in the result.

Ping has said he lacks faith in the constitutional courtbecause of its ties to the Bongo government. On Friday, heappeared to say he would support fresh protests if the courtdoes not authorize a recount.

"If ... the Gabonese people don't accept the constitutionalcourt's decision [in Bongo's favour], the people will assumetheir responsibility, and I will stand by their side," Pingsaid.

Bongo says only the constitutional court can authorize arecount and has accused Ping of cheating in the election.

(Reporting by Gerauds Wilfried Obangome; Writing by MatthewMpoke Bigg; Editing by Dominic Evans)
* Euro zone lenders say lost time needs to be made up

* Greece striving to meet reform conditions for aid

* Eurogroup head: joint interest in staying on track

* Austria finmin says "not feeling good" about Greece

(Updates with news conference, more comments)

By Jan Strupczewski and Jason Hovet

BRATISLAVA, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Euro zone lenders pushedGreece on Friday to make up for lost time by speeding up areform drive it agreed to in a bailout package before gettingany new aid money.

Under a deal signed last year with euro zone countries, theEuropean Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund,Greece can receive financial assistance of up to 86 billioneuros by 2018 in return for agreed reforms.

With a deadline for important reforms this month and aclosing window to available funds, euro zone officials sought tomake sure Greece stayed on track to meet its obligations toreceive 2.8 billion euros by the end of October.

"As the Eurogroup, we took the more general point andmessage that the summer is over, we really need to restart andpick up on the time lost," Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the head of theeuro zone finance ministers, said after talks in Bratislava.

"And the Greek minister, our Greek colleague, was, I think,convinced there was a joint interest for all of us to keep thison track."

The Eurogroup, comprising euro zone finance ministers, hadapproved a tranche of 10.3 billion euros for Greece in May fromthe overall package. An initial 7.5 billion euros of that sumhad been transferred to Athens with the rest available to Greeceuntil the end of October if it meets some conditions.

With the highest debt to GDP ratio in the euro zone at morethan 175 percent of national output, and after threeinternational bailouts, Athens is hoping to show its lenders andinvestors the country is getting back on its feet.

But it still has work to do, including privatisations,energy market reforms and establishing an independent revenueagency that are part of 15 reforms it has promised.

"One could have wished to see more progress than we havebut what I state is that we have seen in recent days anintensification of efforts by the Greek authorities," EUcommissioner for economic and tax affairs Pierre Moscovici said.

Other ministers meeting in Bratislava on Friday expressedconcern that Greece was falling behind schedule.

Austrian Finance Minister Hans Joerg Schelling toldreporters ahead of the meeting he was "not feeling very goodabout Greece". But German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeublesaid Greece still had time to complete its work, saying Athenshas in the past come through on required measures at the wire.

Athens is keen to keep the process on track as it also seeksdebt relief and a return to debt markets following the inclusionof its debt in the ECB's quantitative easing programme. "There are serious concerns regarding the sustainability ofGreek debt and it is in the interest not only of the Greeks butof the whole euro zone to find a lasting solution," ECBexecutive board member Benoit Coeure said.

(Additional reporting by Tatiana Jancarikova, Shadia Nasrallaand Francesco Guarascio)
(Updates prices, adds Eurogroup meeting comments)

By Abhinav Ramnarayan

LONDON, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Euro zone bond yields rose onFriday with investors anxious the European Central Bank's policymeeting had ushered in a new "wait-and-see" stance.

Having already risen on Thursday, yields on Germany's30-year Bunds rose over 8 basis points to 0.59percent, the highest level since the day after the Brexit votein June.

That was over 18 basis points higher than Thursday's low of0.41 percent.

Most euro zone government bond yields were also up 3-5 bpson Friday.

The ECB left monetary policy unchanged the day before andgave few hints about its next move.

"The ECB has gone from 'jumping the gun' to 'wait and see'mode and that has taken the market a little bit by surprise,"said David Schnautz, a rates strategist at Commerzbank.

"The market is also realising that a lot of the monetarypolicy tools are exhausted and there's not that much juiceleft," he said.

Expectations were that the ECB would extend its assetpurchase programme beyond the current cut-off date of March 2017and tweak the criteria to expand the pool of eligible assets.

However, though the central bank kept the door open forfurther stimulus, it was reticent over what measures it wouldtake. The euro zone's central bank kept its deposit rate at -0.4percent, charging banks for parking cash overnight, and held themain refinancing rate, which determines the cost of credit inthe economy, unchanged at 0.00 percent.

Lower-rated euro zone sovereigns may particularly be underpressure in the next few trading sessions. Portugal's 10-yearyield hit its highest level in over seven weeks,rising 7 bps to 3.16 percent.

"The underperformance of large peripherals is not completelysurprising given the referendum in Italy, uncertainty in Spainand problems in Portugal," said Schnautz.

Portugal is seen as particularly vulnerable because DBRS,the only remaining agency to give it investment grade status, isdue to review the rating on Oct. 21. A move to junk status wouldmake the country ineligible for ECB purchases.

Last month the ratings agency told Reuters that pressure wasmounting on Portugal's rating. Euro zone finance ministers pushed Greece on Friday to speedup a reform drive it agreed to in a bailout package beforegetting a new tranche of money. For Reuters new Live Markets blog on European and UK stockmarkets see reuters://realtime/verb=Open/url= (Reporting by Abhinav Ramnarayan; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)
By Josh Farley of the Kitsap Sun

Tomache L. Vargas was on his way to Bangor the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, hearing the horrors underway across the country on his commute. As the terror attacks unfolded, his attention increasingly turned to his friend, Brian A. Moss, a fellow submariner who had been transferred to the Pentagon not a month before.

Vargas had met Moss in 1994, when the two men were stationed as radiomen aboard the USS Alabama. They became close friends, and on that fateful morning he tried repeatedly to reach Moss by phone. No luck.

"You couldn't get through to anybody," he said.

The same night, Vargas learned from Moss' family that he was still unaccounted for. The reality began to sink in. They found the 34-year-old Oklahoma native's body a week later. He was later buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

On this, the 15th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, Vargas and his wife, Karen, believe it's long overdue to honor Moss here in Kitsap. He may be one of the few  and possibly the only  submariner that had been based here to die in the attacks.

"We just wanted to make sure that we recognize one of ours, who served here and had perished there," Vargas said. "We want to remember his life."

They believe it fitting to do so at Bremerton's Sept. 11 memorial, which opened in 2013 perched above the Port Washington Narrows in Evergreen-Rotary Park. It's among the only memorials in the country with steel beams from the fallen World Trade Center in New York, limestone from the damaged Pentagon in Washington D.C., and dirt from the field where Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania.

Each year the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 239, which maintains the memorial, hosts a ceremony there marking the anniversary. But this year, there will also be another: the "SOS" or "Sacrifice of Service" Ceremony. They'll honor Moss and its organizers also plan to use the opportunity to educate residents about emergency preparedness, should such an attack happen again. The Kitsap Immigrant Assistance Center and New Life Community Development Agency, part of Bremerton's Emmanuel Apostolic Church, hope that more vulnerable populations in the county  Spanish-speaking residents, for instance  will come and meet emergency responders. Karen Vargas worries that many aren't ready should disaster strike.

"There's a disconnect somewhere and we need to fix that," she said. "The community and the neighbors next door need to know how to respond. We don't want to wait for something bad to happen."

The SOS event takes place in the morning and the VFW ceremony in the afternoon.

Martitha May, executive director of the Kitsap Immigrant Assistance Center, said she's hoping for a big crowd not only to reflect but to help spread the word on what to do should another attack come.

"We want everyone to feel loved and connected," May said.

Kitsap County 9/11 remembrance events

Sacrifice of Service ceremony

What: A reflection ceremony, to include remarks about Brian Anthony Moss, a former Kitsap submariner killed at the Pentagon. Plus, local law enforcement, fire agencies and emergency management officials will be present to help vulnerable and immigrant communities prepare for what to do when disaster strikes.

When: 9-11 a.m. Sunday

Where: Evergreen-Rotary Park, 1500 Park Ave., Bremerton

Info: martithamay@hotmail.com

Remembrance ceremony

What: U.S. Rep. Derek Kilmer delivers keynote remarks in a ceremony set among more than 300 American flags (one for every 100 people killed in the attacks). A band will perform and taps will be played. Organizers are asking attendees to bring chairs if possible.

When: 5:30-8:30 p.m. Sunday

Where: Evergreen-Rotary Park, 1500 Park Ave., Bremerton

Info: mtcbflash@msn.com

NKFR 9/11 breakfast

What: North Kitsap Fire and Rescue firefighters are marking the solemn anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks by inviting in the community. A meal, sponsored in part by Port Madison Enterprises and Clearwater Casino Resort, is free and donations will be accepted to benefit the firefighters' North Kitsap Community Partnership Fund.

When: 8-11 a.m. Sunday

Where: NKFR headquarters
The 9/11 Memorial at Bremerton's Evergreen-Rotary Park on Wednesday, September 7, 2016. (MEEGAN M. REID / KITSAP SUN)

Sacrifice of Service ceremony

What: A reflection ceremony, to include remarks about Brian Anthony Moss, a former Kitsap submariner killed at the Pentagon. Plus, local law enforcement, fire agencies and emergency management officials will be present to help vulnerable and immigrant communities prepare for what to do when disaster strikes.

When: 9-11 a.m. Sunday

Where: Evergreen-Rotary Park, 1500 Park Ave., Bremerton

Info: martithamay@hotmail.com

Remembrance ceremony

What: U.S. Rep. Derek Kilmer delivers keynote remarks in a ceremony set among more than 300 American flags (one for every 100 people killed in the attacks). A band will perform and taps will be played. Organizers are asking attendees to bring chairs if possible.

When: 5:30-8:30 p.m. Sunday

Where: Evergreen-Rotary Park, 1500 Park Ave., Bremerton

Info: mtcbflash@msn.com

NKFR 9/11 breakfast

What: North Kitsap Fire and Rescue firefighters are marking the solemn anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks by inviting in the community. A meal, sponsored in part by Port Madison Enterprises and Clearwater Casino Resort, is free and donations will be accepted to benefit the firefighters' North Kitsap Community Partnership Fund.

When: 8-11 a.m. Sunday

Where: NKFR headquarters station, 26642 Miller Bay Road

Do you know of a Sept. 11 memorial ceremony that's not listed here? Send information to sunnews@kitsapsun.com.
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Rest in peace, Phyllis Schlafly. I respected her for her leadership skills, even when she campaigned against almost all of the causes that I supported.

I also was often bewildered by her contradictions. In that I was not alone. Schlafly, who died Monday at age 92 in her home in St. Louis, was the quintessential anti-feminist leader in the 1970s, yet she lived a life that embodied in many ways the feminist dream.

She was a proud wife and mother but also a lawyer who built her own media empire, wrote or edited 20 books, published a monthly newsletter, wrote a syndicated newspaper column (a colleague!), produced radio commentaries, anchored a radio talk show and maintained stardom on the college lecture circuit.

To me she was the anti-feminist feminist. She founded the Eagle Forum, a potent social conservative group, denounced feminism as promoting "power for the female left" and called "oppression by the patriarchy," among other feminist arguments, a "ridiculous idea."

Yet she maintained the view that a woman's most important job was to be a wife and mother  even as she publicly thanked her wealthy lawyer husband, Fred Schlafly, who died in 1993, for saving her from "the life of a working girl."

Instead he enabled her activism by employing a full-time housekeeper to help them to raise their six children. Nice.

Hypocritical? Of course, she believed in equal pay for equal work, she said. But she opposed the government "intrusion," in her view, that the Equal Rights Amendment would bring  including, she argued, the drafting of women into the military.

False as I believe that argument to be, I cannot deny that Schlafly's rallying of opposition to ERA in 1972 until it died a decade later was a breathtaking demonstration of how much power one determined woman can leverage against a major cause  and win.

The ERA merely declared that "equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." Schlafly's campaign killed that seemingly innocuous amendment by linking it in the public mind to coed bathrooms, gay rights and the draft.

But as a politically aware African-American kid, I felt Schlafly's influence as early as 1960. She was one of the "moral conservatives" whom I saw on TV in full revolt at the Grand Old Party's convention against a civil rights plank that called for "aggressive action" against segregation and discrimination.

As a politically aware African-American kid, I saw access to jobs, housing, education, lunch counters and  not the least important to 12-year-old me  amusement parks hanging in the balance of that debate. Much of today's conservative GOP began in that year's ideological conflict between the party's moderates and right wing.

Four years later, Lyndon B. Johnson's Civil Rights Act of 1964 would be enacted  with the crucial help of moderate Republican votes against Southern Democratic segregationist opponents. But Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona voted against it on the same states' rights principles that Schlafly held, and Schlafly loved him for it.

She also achieved national fame that year with her first book, the self-published "A Choice Not an Echo," which attacked the GOP's eastern liberal Rockefeller elites for ignoring Goldwater's grass roots heartland conservatives. It sold more than 3 million copies.

Goldwater won the GOP presidential nomination that year but lost in a November landslide. A liberal resurgence virtually exiled Schlafly and her allies from power in the party. But she wasn't done yet. Her Eagle Forum and its allies staged a comeback that led to the election in 1980 of another veteran of Goldwater's movement, Ronald Reagan.

If much of this factional infighting sounds familiar, children, think of Donald Trump, whom Schlafly endorsed, as today's leader of grass roots conservatives against today's GOP establishment.

The last time I saw Schlafly speak, she was rallying the Conservative Political Action Conference after Mitt Romney's 2012 defeat.

The GOP establishment's "autopsy" called for more outreach to minorities, liberals, women and the young. Schlafly scoffed at that. As delegates roared their approval, she called for them to knock on more doors and rally GOP conservatives who had stayed home.

That sounded like folly to me in light of population changes. But it turned out to be Donald Trump's path to the nomination. Whether it takes him all the way to the White House or not, I expect Phyllis Schlafly's influence to shake up our nation's political scene for years to come.

Email Clarence Page at cpage@tribune.com.
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K.J. Klein, Silverdale

It's liberal ideology causing the problem

The recent letter "Ideology that doesn't understand the economy," Aug. 16, gives us a perfect example of turning the truth on its head.

The writer says "(Cal Thomas) is obsessed with his ideology." But it is Obama and the Democrats that are famously driven by their ultra-liberal ideology  the failed Obamacare is a good example of that.

Another: The Clinton Administration is praised for creating jobs by increasing taxes and regulation. Obviously, taxes and regulation will reduce investments and thereby lessen employment.

On the national debt, does the writer think an increasing debt spiral is a good thing? Spending on infrastructure is surely a good thing, and it normally is funded by taxes from an economy that is thriving  which has not happened under the Obama Adminstration. By the way, Hillary Clinton, will surely continue that. All of this, as Cal Thomas writes, we could learn from history.
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Greg Iverson, Manchester

Voting for Hillary, with reservations

I would like to help J.B. Holcomb, who wrote the recent letter "Can you explain this election?"(Sept. 6)

As a Bernie Sanders voter I am also troubled by the choice between Donald and Hillary, because neither is progressive.

Like Holcomb, I would never vote for Donald he has zero experience, his dishonesty is epic and he has no respect for the Constitution. Unless one is willing to vote for the third-party candidate who has zero chance of getting elected we are left a choice between the lesser of two evils  again. In that case Hillary is the only choice. Given that she will have one and possibly more Supreme Court vacancies to fill and she may have a Senate majority she is more likely to select someone who can rise above petty party politics.

However, I have reservations about Hilary. The idea of electing a previous president's relative or spouse strikes me as undemocratic. Like Obama, Hillary will talk about the seriousness of anthropogenic climate change but will promote fossil fuel extraction and corporate subsides. Like Obama, she will talk about the growing problem of income and wealth inequality but will promote Wall Street over Main Street policies. Like Obama, she will fight our counterproductive "war on terror" and she may exceed Obama by invading one of our Middle East "enemies."
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In my consulting work, I have on occasion assisted people intent on creating a startup company. I tell them they must come up with a comprehensive business plan that answers key questions related to the prospects for success in the proposed venture.

Some time ago I came upon just such a business plan, remarkable for many reasons, just one of which was the fact that it was written in 1947, well before the advent of many modern business practices. Also, the entrepreneur was a woman.

She was already a well-regarded practitioner of her trade and for almost 20 years part of a successful organization, yet she wished to launch a totally new corporation. Her name was Mary Teresa; her current organization was the Sisters of Loreto. She was a nun.

Her proposed startup was to be named the Missionary Sisters of Charity, and to make the move, she needed the hearty sponsorship of the archbishop of Kolkata, India, Ferdinand Perier. He is the one who sought Teresa's business plan before he could bring himself to sponsor her proposal.

Perier gave her an excellent list of questions for someone contemplating a startup. He told her to "sit down quietly and write" her response to seven queries: What did she want to do (mission)? How would she bring it about (strategy)? How would she recruit her team? Whom would she recruit? Where would she locate? Can the same end be achieved through existing organizations? Can the end be achieved with a more loosely organized group?

Teresa took her time and answered all seven questions within two months. She even added two: What confidence did she have that her organization would succeed, and how would she fund the startup in its initial stages? (Too bad she never got into business consulting.)

Her answers were, from a purely business perspective, startling. Her mission would be to bring Christ's love to the poorest people she could find. Her strategy would be to nurse the sick, bring peace to the dying, run free schools for destitute kids  "in a word, act the love of Christ among the poorest."

She then created a job posting for those who would join the startup. Women from age 16, strong, healthy, with common sense. Generous, lovers of the poor, bright and cheerful nature, able to put their hand to any work however repugnant. This was not for everybody.

They would live where the poorest lived, period. And no, no existing organization of sisters did this work. Plenty of nuns served the rich, she wrote; none served the poorest of the poor.

How about the chances of success? Here, of course, success must be defined. Teresa admitted that she had no idea how successful she would be, but she made the outrageous claim that even if only one dying person left this world with peace in his heart, the enterprise could be called successful.

Funding, too, was addressed. Since the members would live in absolute poverty, they would need little. They'd farm, sell the excess, live off that. For the rest, she said, she and her cohorts would trust God.

After pestering the archbishop ceaselessly, Teresa did receive permission to create her startup, and On Aug. 17, 1948, dressed in a white sari with a thin blue border, she ventured into the tumultuous India of that day. Her cache of capital consisted of five rupees.

Mother Teresa, the CEO known since Sunday as St. Teresa, parlayed those five rupees into a massive organization serving the poor all over the world. The 5,000 sisters have been joined by orders of brothers, priests, and lay missionaries with one mission: to bring the love of Jesus Christ to the forgotten poor.

Her measure of success, that just one destitute person die surrounded by love, has been achieved. One person at a time, many thousands of times over.

Orlando R. Barone is a writer in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. He wrote this for The Philadelphia Inquirer. Readers may email him at orby114@aol.com
The Credit Check: What's a good score and how do you get it?
Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept. 9



Trend:



The 25th General Assembly of the Association of the Balkan News Agencies  Southeast Europe (ABNA) has kicked off in Bulgaria's Nessebar city on Sept. 9.



On the same day, the 8th conference of the Black Sea Association of National News Agencies (BSANNA) will take place.



Trend Agency has been invited to take part in the event, which is to unite the biggest and most authoritative news agencies in the world. Bulgarian News Agency (BTA) organizes the event.



The Association of the Balkan News Agencies  Southeast Europe (ABNA-SE) was established in 1995, with an aim not only to develop a full cooperation among the news agencies of the region, but also to contribute to the establishment of a climate of peace, friendship, security and cooperation in our region, which was considered the 'powder magazine of Europe'.



The founding Conference was held in Thessaloniki on June, 26 1995 with an initiative of the Macedonian Press Agency, while the Association's 1st General Assembly was held in Antalya, Turkey, on December, 15 and 16, 1995.
The NBR headline:

In the story:

He notes that as head of the United Nations Development Programme (the third-highest ranked role in the UN), the former Labour prime minister has achieved what was hitherto thought impossible: she managed to cut staff numbers, a feat that required buy-in from 60 countries as she wrestled with a quota-based staffing system.

Mr Farrar says hes surprised himself by becoming an enthusiastic backer of Ms Clarks campaign.

But:

The problem is that the selection of the next Secretary-General is controlled by the P5 or the five permanent members of the Security Council: China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, all of whom have veto power over candidates.

All will appreciate Ms Clarks skills as an effective manager in her role, he says.

But when it comes to the big job, they want a former foreign minister. They want someone who will do what they say. They dont want a former prime minister like Helen Clark who could be dangerously independent.

And countries dont just want a yes-man (or indeed, yes-woman) but their yes-man. Russia wants someone from Eastern Europe. France has traditionally plumped for a candidate who can speak French.
Glenn Reynolds writes in USA Today:

Donald Trump likes to call his opponent, Hillary Clinton, Crooked Hillary. Theres even a #CrookedHillary hashtag on Twitter. Meanwhile, Hillary seems to be doing her best to make that nickname stick.  When FBI Director James Comey declined to prosecute the former Secretary of State for mishandling classified information, he said that although she was extremely careless, there was no criminal intent. That was a bit iffy, since the statute governing mishandling of classified information doesnt require intent. But the new information indicates that Hillary is either criminal, or criminally incompetent. Or maybe both.

Harsh words. But why?

Considering that Hillary has been accused of mishandling classified information on an almost industrial scale, what shines through is that Clinton is utterly clueless about classification matters, betraying an ignorance that is shocking when encountered in a former top official of our government  and one who wants to be our next commander-in-chief. . . . When asked, Clinton could not give an example of how classification of a document was determined, the FBI recorded. Hillary could not explain what the (C)  for Confidential  classification marking at the beginning of a paragraph was. She thought it perhaps had something to do with alphabetical order. This tragicomedy continued with the FBI pressing Hillary on specific examples of classified information that wound up in her Unclassified emails. She explained her position concisely. As the FBI noted, Clinton stated that she did not pay attention to the level of classified information.

It is unbelievable a Cabinet level officer would not have an in depth understanding of the national security classification system.

In addition, there were mass deletions of emails just after news reports of her secret private server became public, and after she received a subpoena, and order not to destroy any records, from the House committee investigating the Benghaziaffair. Hillary also claimed a lot of memory problems, leaving blogger Tamara Keel to write: I have an Ivy League lawyer, wife of a former governor and president, who lived in the White House for eight damned years, then went on to be a senator and Secretary of State telling me she didnt know about classified email and that work-related documents needed to be saved as part of the public record? Look, I dont mind you bullshitting me a little bit, Hillary, but dont you ever lie to me like Im Montel Williams. You dont have to be an Ivy League lawyer to recognize a coverup when you see one. This goes far beyond anything Richard Nixon did after Watergate. If the coverup is this big, whats being covered up must be pretty bad, bad enough that theyre willing to blow lots of smoke rather than let us see the fire

If there is a smoking gun in the deleted e-mails and it gets releases before the election, say hello to President Trump.

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Stuff reports:

Tobacco companies are now banned from advertising their brand on cigarette packets. The Smoke-free Environments (Tobacco Standardised Packaging) Amendment Bill passed its third and final reading in Parliament on Thursday evening, by 108 to 13. The law would make it illegal for tobacco companies to print any branding on cigarette boxes, only allowing the name in small plain type with graphic warnings about the risks of smoking. Associate Health Minister Peseta Sam Lotu-liga said he hoped to see the new packs in stores late next year. Its just another measure to attack the premature deaths around tobaccothats a huge human cost for New Zealanders, Lotu-liga said.

It will be interesting to monitor whether or not it does actually have any impact on the smoking rate.

We will never know for sure as the Government isnt doing a controlled trial in a distinct area where you could compare any change in smoking in the area with plain packaging to the change in the area without. That would have been a science based approach.

The overall NZ smoking rate has been declining for many years, so I expect it will decline under plain packaging. The test should be whether the decline is faster under plain packaging that it has been without it.

To further complicate matters excise tax is getting increased every year, so how do you measure whether any decrease is due to plain packaging or the excise tax increase? Again, a good case for a regional trial.

But as we have had excise tax increases for the last few years, then the best we can probably do is compare the future decreases from when plain packaging comes in to the average decrease over the years of the excise hikes (say 2011 to 2016). This may give us some idea if plain packaging does have any impact. Also will be important to not just measure one years worth of data as often there are initial impacts that reduce or reverse. So if plain packaging gets implemented in 2017, then the 2017 to 2020 data is what I would look at to try and evaluate it.

Having been passed, I hope it is successful. Fewer people smoking would be a good thing.

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Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept. 9

By Samir Ali  Trend:

Former National Security Minister of Azerbaijans Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic Vali Alasgarov, who is under arrest, has been transferred from an investigatory isolation ward to a detention facility in Nakhchivan, Alasgarovs lawyer Vugar Khasayev told Trend Sept. 9.

Khasayev said he met with his client in prison Sept. 6.

During the meeting, the lawyer inquired about conditions of Alasgarovs detention and his health.

Vali Alasgarov has no complaints about the conditions of detention and health, Khasayev said. Currently, we are preparing a cassation appeal.

Alasgarov was charged under articles 179.3.2 (large-scale embezzlement), 308.1 (abuse of power) and 309.1 (excess of power) of the Criminal Code of Azerbaijan.

The Military Court of Nakhchivan sentenced the former minister to 14 years in prison.

An appeal was filed regarding the courts decision, but the Supreme Court of Nakhchivan upheld the decision of the first instance court.
Tense talks continue over whether University Health hospitals will stay open with their current leadership. The Biomedical Research Foundation is looking at what amounts to a contract to continue running hospitals in Monroe and Shreveport.

"In fact, the partnership is so strained, it's been the one really strained partnership since day one," F King Alexander said.

University System President F. King Alexander was candid with the Board of Regents, saying University Health hospitals aren't paying their bills, owing four million dollars.

University Health denied these claims, firing back in a letter, which reads in part, "...Dr. Alexander's statements are just as inaccurate as the attacks LSU made on University Health and BRF last summer..."

"Lawmakers were troubled by the fact we're not sure exactly what's going to happen," Jay Morris, a state representative, said.

Morris, and other Louisiana lawmakers, say despite the back and forth about BRF's future, University Health hospitals will stay open. They sat down with Governor Edwards to find out more about a contract, given to BRF which would change some terms of their agreement.

"[They] wouldn't tell us what was in it, so we don't know what the offer is going to be. Quite honestly, they didn't ask for our input, and didn't want our input on what the offer should be. It was just a meeting to let us know," Morris said.

When asked, Commissioner Jay Dardenne wouldn't say either, but he did say their next deal would be different than what they've worked with so far.

"That's the case for all of our partners across the state. We've been negotiating with all of them across the state," Dardenne said.

Dardenne says BRF has until September 15th to decide if they will stay and operate University Health hospitals, or go, passing on the partnership.

Dardenne also said there have been some rumors they wanted to move the medical school away from Shreveport, but they plan to keep the school where it is.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept. 9



By Aygun Badalova - Trend:



Analysts of the British economic research and consulting company Capital Economics expect Turkeys GDP growth to be much weaker in the coming quarters compared to the second quarters figure of 3.1 percent year over year.



Data released this morning showed that Turkish GDP expanded by 3.1 percent year over year in Q2, down from 4.7 percent year over year in Q1, William Jackson, Senior emerging markets economist at Capital Economics said in the report, obtained by Trend.



In seasonally-adjusted terms, output rose by 0.3 percent over the quarter, down from 0.7 percent quarter over quarter (q/q) in Q1, its worst reading in two years," said the report.



The breakdown of the data showed that the slowdown in headline GDP growth was driven mainly by weaker consumer spending and a larger drag from net trade, he said.



The key point, however, is that todays weak data predate Julys attempted coup, which already seems to have disrupted activity, according to Jackson.



Overall, Capital Economics analysts think theres a very real possibility that GDP may contract in q/q terms in the third quarter.



Todays data mean the risks to our growth forecast for this year of 3.3 percent are now skewed to the downside. Growth of 2.8-3 percent now looks more plausible. We remain comfortable with our view that growth will average just 2 percent next year, which is far below the consensu, Jackson said.
Like most illustrations in children's books, the image of Mother Teresa is quite simple, showing her kneeling in prayer beside her bed in a dark room, facing a bare cross and a single candle.

The tiny nun's eyes are open, and her expression is hard to read. The text on the opposite page is candid.

"Mother Teresa experienced a great sorrow. Ever since she had moved to the slums, she no longer felt the presence of Jesus as she had before. She felt as though abandoned, rejected by him," according to "Mother Teresa: The Smile of Calcutta," a storybook for young children. "In her heart, she felt darkness and emptiness. She experienced the suffering of the poor who did not feel loved. She shared in the loneliness Christ suffered on the Cross."

Only the priests who worked with her knew about this "dark night of the soul," an experience seen in the lives of some other saints.

Working with text by Charlotte Grossetete, originally written in French, Ignatius Press editor Vivian Dudro said she "spent lots of time working on how to phrase that part. ... You picture a young child reading about this pain in a saint's life or having this story read to them. How do you explain something like this in a few simple words?"

This dark night is clearly a crucial part of the life of the Albanian nun who was canonized this past weekend as St. Teresa of Kolkata. The formal petition to Pope Francis concluded: "Despite a painful experience of inner darkness, Mother Teresa traveled everywhere, concerned ... to spread the love of Jesus throughout the world. She thus became an icon of God's tender and merciful love for all, especially for those who are unloved, unwanted and uncared for."

St. Teresa's sense of spiritual loss was the mirror image of the intense spiritual visions that, in 1946, inspired her to plunge deep into the slums of Calcutta (now called Kolkata) to serve the poorest of the poor. This move eventually led to the founding of the global Missionaries of Charity.

Early in this work, in 1951, her private letters and journals indicate that she prayed to be allowed to experience the isolation and pain Jesus suffered on the cross. Her visions immediately stopped.

"Lord, my God, who am I that you should forsake me? The one  you have thrown away as unwanted  unloved," she wrote in 1957. "I call, I cling, I want, and there is no one to answer. ... Where I try to raise my thoughts to heaven, there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives."

It will be a challenge to explain this concept to young children, said Father James Martin, the author of "Jesus: A Pilgrimage" and many other popular works of apologetics. He has called Mother Teresa the greatest Catholic saint of modern times because of her faithful service to the poor, even while experiencing such a profound challenge in her prayer life.

Asked to explain this painful puzzle, as schoolteachers and priests will do in the years ahead, he said he would focus on the common experience of prayer.

Martin offered, by email, these thoughts for children: "Do you know how sometimes it's hard to pray? Well, believe it or not, Mother Teresa didn't feel like God was close to her. Even though she knew that God was close, she just didn't feel it. She felt very lonely. When she talked to a friend about it, though, he said that even Jesus felt lonely. And poor people feel lonely, too. So Mother Teresa started to understand that this was one way she could be closer to Jesus."

This is the key point, stressed Dudro. St. Teresa used her suffering as a motivation to continue serving the poor and abandoned, rather than as an excuse to flee to safety elsewhere.

"She asked for this experience, and she got it," said Dudro. "That's a powerful and beautiful thing, but that's also the kind of beauty that strikes a chord of terror in me. But she wanted that sense of communion with her Beloved. ...

"So be careful what you pray for. Right? ... But whatever happens, be faithful and keep putting one foot in front of the other. Keep going."
Burghart Klaussner in "The People vs. Fritz Bauer."

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By Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service

A couple of recent German films have taken on the task of reckoning with the country's history, depicting the prosecution of Nazis and SS officers responsible for the horrendous crimes of the Holocaust. Last year's German submission for the foreign language Academy Award was "Labyrinth of Lies," about the prosecutor Johann Radmann, who went after Auschwitz officers in the late 1950s.

This year sees the release of a film about Radmann's boss, Attorney General Fritz Bauer, who worked diligently to pursue Adolph Eichmann, in "The People vs. Fritz Bauer." The political thriller directed by Lars Kraume picked up six German Film Awards, and is an intelligent depiction of Bauer's personal quest to not only bring Eichmann to justice, but to bring justice to Germany.

Bauer is here played by Burghart Klaussner, who nails the dogged, pugnacious attorney general's manner, which we see in a clip of archival footage. We're introduced to him in his most vulnerable state, slipping away into unconsciousness in the tub, red wine and sleeping pills at hand. While he claims it's an accident, the incident is spun into a suicide attempt by his political enemies, who would prefer the rabble-rousing Nazi hunter not retain his post.

For Bauer, Nazi hunting is personal. Having been imprisoned in a concentration camp in the 1930s for his political activities, and possibly for his sexuality, he spent the war in exile in Scandinavia, before returning to his homeland to rebuild. Germany's democracy is also a deeply personal issue. As we see in a television appearance, he believes that living the ideals of democracy are of utmost importance, and he sees an opportunity for Germany to find redemption through the pursuit of justice, including acknowledgment of its mistakes and tortured history.

This proves complicated in late-50s postwar Germany, when Nazi officials disappeared abroad or melted back into everyday life, which Bauer finds at odds with Chancellor Adenauer's desire to reconcile with Israel. That doesn't stop him from the only kind of hunting he cares for, which as he says, is not for animals. After receiving a tip that Eichmann is in Argentina, he secretly meets with Mossad, the Israeli secret service (an act of treason), to arrange Eichmann's arrest and trial.

Bauer is aided in his quest by Karl Angermann (Ronald Zehrfeld), a fictional character who is an amalgamation of the young, driven prosecutors who brought fresh blood to this fight. Angermann and Bauer share many of the same secrets and burdens, targeted for their personal choices, railroaded by larger forces. Zehrfeld sensitively renders Angermann's internal angst, struggling with the conflict of personal values that go against status quo.

Shades of Weimar-era hedonism lurk just below the pristine and proper surface of this period, which Kraume re-creates in rich hues and layered textures; cigarette smoke and raindrops wafting by detailed architecture and design.

What "The People vs. Fritz Bauer" does so well is distill large, complicated political issues into an intimate, personal story about one man's desire to bring not only justice, but catharsis to post-war Germany, mired in a fog of complacency. Bauer and Angermann never stop fighting because they know that this moment will decide what kind of country they can choose to be in the wake of unspeakable horror. It's a lesson that remains resonant, in any time, in any place.
SHARE Tom McFarland, 2014 candidate for 9th Judicial Circuit court judge. Mike Pemberton, attorney and candidate for 9th Judicial Circuit Court Judge.

By Jamie Satterfield of the Knoxville News Sentinel

Roane County attorney Tom McFarland had a choice to make  file legal action in the midst of a tough campaign for a judgeship against a candidate accused of not even living in the judicial district at issue or roll the dice that voters would choose him.

McFarland bet on the voters. He lost.

Two years later, the Tennessee Supreme Court is poised to use McFarland's case to explore just what authority election commissions have to approve candidacies in judicial races and whether candidates who choose not to challenge their opponents' qualifications before an election are out of luck if they lose.

The high court met Thursday in Knoxville to hear McFarland's challenge to the process that led to the election of attorney Michael Pemberton as Circuit Court judge for the 9th Judicial District, despite allegations Pemberton lived and worked in Knox County at the time of the 2014 race.

Pemberton filed a petition to run for the judgeship in February 2014. The district includes Roane, Loudon, Meigs and Morgan counties. At the time, Pemberton had a law office in Knox County and a home. His son went to school in Knox County. He bought a lakefront home in Roane County in July 2013.

The Tennessee Constitution requires a candidate for a Circuit Court judgeship to have lived in the district for at least a year before the election. Pemberton insisted he had been living in the Roane County home since he bought it and, therefore, met the residency requirement with a month to spare.

McFarland made a campaign issue out of whether Pemberton was really a Knox County resident, but he did not file a complaint with the Roane County Election Commission. A Roane County resident did. The commission held a hearing and voted to approve Pemberton as a candidate.

If no one had filed a complaint with the commission, McFarland could have turned to the courts when he lost via an election contest lawsuit and mounted a legal case Pemberton was lying about his true residency. But a judge and the Tennessee Court of Appeals have ruled that since the election commission made its decision  based on the resident's complaint, not McFarland's  McFarland lost the right to sue after the election.

Justices Cornelia A. Clark and Sharon Lee seized on that issue at Thursday's hearing.

"Isn't this the best way in the world for a candidate to put a citizen up to filing a sham complaint (to bar a later lawsuit)?" Clark asked Ryan Lee, an assistant attorney general representing state Coordinator of Elections Mark Goins and the commission. "We have clear case law that says there is a right to file an election (contest) lawsuit."

Ryan Lee responded, "Only if there had not been a determination by the coordinator of elections."

Justice Lee noted McFarland had no way to prevent a resident from seeking an election commission decision and, if forced to join that resident or file legal action before the election as the lower court held he should have, was essentially robbed of tactical campaign decision-making and legal remedy in the event of a loss.

Both justices noted the danger in preventing election contest lawsuits under such a scenario is that an election commission  made up of lay people  might be wrong, and an unqualified candidate elected as a result.

Chief Justice Jeffrey Bivins and Justice Roger Page pushed back at the notion that an election commission does not have final authority in determining a candidate's qualifications.

"What if someone came in and said so and so was a convicted felon?" Page asked McFarland. "Are they supposed to have a hearing then? What should they have done?"

McFarland responded, "They should have told the citizen we can't decide constitutional qualifications. That's a judicial decision."

Attorney Jennifer Raby, who represents Pemberton, argued McFarland must live with his choice not to mount a legal challenge before the election.

It could be months before the high court rules.
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By News Sentinel Staff

Fewer students from each school, but more schools overall will be able to participate in an annual safety patrol trip to Washington, D.C., according to a AAA spokeswoman.

The number of students from each school who can go on the trip will drop from unlimited to eight.

Knox County Schools, in a news release, said it is aware of AAA's decision to limit the number of participants and we will be working with principals to determine "other options."

"We know how exciting it is for our students to have the opportunity to visit Washington, D.C., as part of Knox County Schools Safety Patrol," schools spokeswoman Carly Harrington wrote in an email.

"What our hope is is that we will be able to allow the schools who have been on the waiting list over the past years  to join in," said Stephanie Milani, Tennessee spokeswoman for AAA.

Milani said that though the number of schools participating in the trip in recent years has remained flat, the number of students has set a record each year.

One school brought as few as six students this past year, while another brought 73 members of its safety patrol, Milani said.

Parents pay for the trip.

She sent a letter in August to parents who participated in the 2016 trip that announced the upcoming changes.

Document: Letter announcing the AAA safety patrol trip changes

"The AAA School Safety Patrol Trip has a long tradition in East Tennessee, and over the last four years it has set record numbers of participants each year. We simply cannot sustain the trip at its current size and must make these changes so the opportunity can be available for students in future years," she wrote.

The move will allow more students to participate from other schools, Milani said, and added that it was not a financial decision.

"Over the coming years, we want to allow other Tennessee schools to also send patrollers on the trip. Under our existing structure, we have had to turn away interested schools because we did not have the capacity to accommodate them," Milani wrote.

The annual trip, which comprises students from Knox County and East Tennessee, brought nearly 2,000 students to the nation's capital this past summer, and about 2,200 people overall. Of the 72 East Tennessee schools that participated this past year, 36 were from Knox County, she said.

The students in the safety patrol are fifth-grade students from each school who arrive 45 minutes early each morning or stay late in the afternoons to help with traffic and getting students into and out of school.

Details on the future of the trip will be forthcoming, according to AAA.

"If new schools would like to join the trip, they can reach out to me," Milani said.

Her email is smilani@aaasouth.com.
Izmir, Turkey, Sept. 9

By Maksim Tsurkov  Trend:

Construction of the Star oil refinery in Turkey has been completed by over 75 percent, Director General of the refinery Ibrahim Palaz told reporters in Izmir, Turkey.

He noted that some 99 percent of the design work has been completed.

Already 90 percent of all equipment has been delivered to the plant and processed, Palaz said. Before late September, this figure will rise to 95 percent. The mechanical work will be fully completed in September 2017, and after that the plant will start its work in test mode. The start of production at the refinery is scheduled for April 2018 and the plant is expected to reach its full capacity during three-six months.

He said that the projects cost is $5.7 billion.

"The share of SOCAR in the financing of the plant is $2.4 billion, and the remaining $3.3 billion are provided at the expense of 23 banks funds, said Palaz. At the moment, SOCAR has already allocated $2.2 billion from its share. The banks have no problems with financing, payments are made in a systematic manner.

He said that the refinery will enable Turkey to reduce imports of oil products by 50 percent.

In addition, Turkey will cover a budget deficit of $2.5 billion by the construction of Star refinery, said Palaz. At present, 12,000 people are engaged in the construction of the plant, in October at the peak time, this figure will reach 15,000 people, and number of permanent employees will be 850 after the launch of the refinery.

The annual naphtha production volume, used by Petkim as the main raw material, will amount to 1.66 million tons at the STAR refinery.

Along with naphtha, the new oil refinery will produce diesel fuel with ultra-low sulfur to the amount of 5.95 million tons, aviation kerosene - 500,000 tons, reformate - 500,000 tons, petroleum coke - 630,000 tons, liquefied gas - 240,000 tons, mixed xylene - 415,000 tons, olefin LPG - 75,000 tons and 145,000 tons of sulfur. The refinery will not produce petrol and fuel oil.

It is planned to refine Azeri Light, Kerkuk and URALS oil at the plant.

At present, the share distribution in the project is as follows: 60 percent is owned by Rafineri Holding A.S. (100 percent owned by SOCAR Turkey Enerji A.S.), which had previously acquired all the remaining 18.5 percent share of Turcas Petrol in the project, and 40 percent belongs to SOCAR.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @MaksimTsurkov
SHARE Tonja Johnson Joe DiPietro

By Megan Boehnke of the Knoxville News Sentinel

University of Tennessee President Joe DiPietro will ask trustees in October to promote the system's marketing vice president to chief operating officer, creating a new position that DiPietro said would help him reduce his work load.

Tonja Johnson, who was hired to oversee marketing and communications in 2013, would receive a raise from her current salary of $239,328, but the amount has not been negotiated yet, DiPietro said.

The university started a search in November for the position, which includes the title of executive vice president, but it was ultimately suspended.

"If you look at it, I've got three chancellor searches cooking, I've been at Martin twice a week lately  which is fine. I've got a CFO we're trying to find," DiPietro said, referring to the need to replace the retiring leaders at the Knoxville, Martin and agriculture campuses. "I need somebody to help me with the operations side of the place.

"If we do a search that has external candidates in it, the likelihood of bringing somebody on board immediately is not there and I need somebody now."

If approved, Johnson would also oversee academic affairs, institutional research and facilities, DiPietro said. Meanwhile, likely staff changes in the marketing and communications division would mean someone else would handle day-to-day operations in that office, he said. The system's only current executive vice president, David Millhorn, who manages research across the system and at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, will likely become senior executive vice president, DiPietro said.

Before her arrival at UT, Johnson served as chief deputy to the president of State University of New York Stony Brook, where she also taught higher education leadership.

"She has progressive experience in administration at major universities and she has experience around her Stony Brook experience, that when we evaluated her communications skills we looked at that, but I don't think anybody focused on it," DiPietro said. "That's who we're headed toward, but it's all subject to board approval."

The board for years has recommended DiPietro delegate more and reduce the number of employees who report directly to him. It was the primary criticism to come out of a 2014 performance review conducted by an outside evaluator at the end of DiPietro's first four-year contract.

But, he said, with three of the five chancellor searches open and a chief financial officer to hire, the need to remove tasks from his plate is urgent.

The president first made the suggestion of an internal hire that would quickly fill the slot at the board of trustees' Executive and Compensation Committee meeting in Nashville on Aug. 30. The trustees responded positively to the idea, he said.

Now it will be added as an action item for the regular fall board meeting on Oct. 13-14.

DiPietro said he also hopes to nominate a candidate to become the next chancellor at the Martin campus and recommend a new chief financial officer at the October meeting.

The field for the Martin job has been narrowed to four finalists, including DiPietro's executive assistant. The president said he expects to get feedback from the search committee on the finalists today.

The search to replace retiring Chancellor Jimmy Cheek at Knoxville began holding meetings with the campus community for feedback late last month and has received 120 nominations so far. Candidate interviews will begin next month and DiPietro said he hopes to have a recommendation for the next chancellor by the end of the year, at which time he would call a special meeting of the Board of Trustees if necessary.

The search to replace Agriculture Chancellor Larry Arrington just started, DiPietro said he hopes to have a new leader in that role by the end of the first quarter of 2017.
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News Sentinel staff

Strong local babies have a chance at a $200 savings bond  and fame, in the name of health.

Knox County Health Department is looking for infant "stars" for its Strong Babies public health campaign. A casting call will be 11 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Oct. 1 at the main health department, 140 Dameron Ave.

Earlier this year, the health department unveiled the campaign, designed to encourage healthy behaviors. But the posters and ads around town all feature babies from Wisconsin, where the campaign originated.

"The babies in this campaign captured our hearts, and we were thrilled to be able to use the fun images from Milwaukee," said Katie Larsen, program manager for Knox County Health Department. "But it's time we take this effort to the next level and, for the first time, feature Knox County's amazing babies. After all, there are no better ambassadors than our own."

Eligible babies must be 7-18 months old at the time of the casting call; no talent experience is necessary. Parents do not need to pre-register and may come any time between 11 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. on Oct. 1. Parking is free.

In addition to taking home a $200 U.S. savings bond, the winning babies will appear on billboards and in social media posts, web banners, and print materials in the coming year.

Winners will be chosen by a panel of judges and announced in November.

Parents can call 865-215-5170 or email strongbaby@knoxcounty.org for more information.

"Just as important as it is for us to find the next generation of strong babies, we're also looking for parents who will be advocates for the kind of healthy behaviors that lead to stronger babies," Larsen said.

Strong Babies aims to improve birth outcomes and reduce infant mortality rates, using lighthearted, attention-grabbing images of babies performing feats of unusual strength. The campaign focuses on the importance of early and adequate prenatal care, breastfeeding, good nutrition, avoiding tobacco, and other healthy activities.
State Rep. Joe Armstrong, center, with his wife, LeTonia, and attorney Gregory Isaacs, leaves court after being found guilty of one felony count in his tax fraud trial Monday, Aug. 8, 2016, at the Howard H. Baker Jr. U.S. Courthouse. The jury acquitted Armstrong of two other counts. He was charged with conspiring with accountant Charles Stivers to hide the profit from a cigarette tax stamp hike that Armstrong helped pass. (PAUL EFIRD/NEWS SENTINEL)

By Georgiana Vines of the Knoxville News Sentinel

Veteran state Rep. Joe Armstrong, who was convicted last month of filing a false income tax return, said Friday he will retire from representing the 15th District House seat  effective with the convening of a special legislative session on Monday.

Armstrong, a Democrat who first took office in 1988, said he took care of the paperwork in Nashville on Thursday. He said he hand-delivered papers to the Tennessee Consolidated Retired System and letters to the offices of the governor, House speaker and minority leader.

"I'm trying to follow protocol," Armstrong said.

He said he was prompted to retire after Gov. Bill Haslam called for the special session to resolve an issue that could cost the state $60 million in federal highway funds that were in jeopardy after the state passed a law that made changes to Tennessee's DUI law.

Federal authorities say the state's law is not in compliance with a federal zero tolerance law on blood-alcohol levels for underage drivers.

Armstrong said he considered providing an excuse for not attending the special session because of other commitments.

"I decided since I'm not going to be a part of that, I got to thinking that I'd go ahead and submit my retirement," he said.

He said about eight other people already have announced they will not attend the session.

"He (the governor) has the votes. I'm retired. I'll be a constituent," Armstrong said.

His letter to Haslam, with copies to Speaker Beth Harwell and Minority Leader Craig Fitzhugh, said he thought the state had made substantial progress, especially under Haslam's leadership.

"It is with my deepest regrets that I choose not to participate in the upcoming special session and am announcing my retirement to become effective Monday, Sept. 12, 2016, as a state representative for the 15th District," Armstrong wrote.

Although Armstrong said he hand-delivered the materials on Thursday, the letter was dated Friday. As of late Friday afternoon, a retirement application had not been received by the state retirement system office, spokeswoman Shelli King said.

"It is possible the application was received by another office in state government, but has not yet been delivered to TCRS," she wrote in an email.

Harwell's office acknowledged receipt of the letter in a statement.

"I appreciate Rep. Armstrong's long service to our state. I know he has a deep respect for the integrity of the House, and he is doing the right thing for his family, constituents, and his colleagues," Harwell said in the statement.

Armstrong's departure presents Knox County commissioners with the choice of appointing a temporary replacement or leaving the seat vacant until the November election, less than two months away. Knox County Commission Chairman Dave Wright said he would discuss the question with Bud Armstrong, the county law director.

A U.S. District Court jury found Armstrong guilty Aug. 8 of hiding profits from the IRS on a $321,000 windfall from a cigarette tax-stamp deal he made with a Knoxville tobacco wholesaler, Tru Wholesale, in 2007. The jury convicted Armstrong of "wilfully" aiding, abetting, assisting and causing a false tax return to be filed.

Armstrong's attorney, Gregory P. Issacs, has asked a judge to either throw out the conviction or grant a new trial.

The Knox County Democratic Party has since replaced Armstrong as the party's candidate in the Nov. 8 general election with Rick Staples, a community activist. Independent Pete Drew also is on the ballot.

Just this week, Rhonda Lynnese Gallman, also known as a community activist, filed a certificate to run as a write-in candidate.

Armstrong wouldn't discuss his legal problems, saying questions about that should go to his attorney.

Reaction to Armstrong's announcement of retirement was swift, with Democrats praising his years of service.

"I wish him the best and thank him for his service. I'm very thankful Joe has served our community so well over the years. I wish him the best in the future," said Cameron Brooks, Knox County party chairman.

The state Democratic Party chair, Mary Mancini, offered similar praise, saying Armstrong had worked as an effective voice for his constituents.

"Whether he was serving in his capacity as minority leader pro tempore in the House or working hard on behalf of children with dyslexia and our students and teachers, Rep. Armstrong has been a fierce advocate for ordinary Tennesseans. Tennessee is a better place because of his service, and I wish Rep. Armstrong and his wife, LeTonia, all the best in his retirement," Mancini said.

The Tennessee Black Caucus of State Legislators released a statement publicly expressing gratitude to Armstrong for service that included time as president of the National Black Caucus of State Legislators.

"Joe Armstrong has been a tireless warrior for the disenfranchised of this state," caucus chair Brenda Gilmore said.

She said his "experience, institutional knowledge and diplomacy will definitely be missed in the Tennessee General Assembly."

Staples said he looks forward to representing the district in a positive way if elected.

"I respect the years of service that Rep. Armstrong had over the past several decades," he said.

State Rep. Eddie Smith, a Republican who chairs the Knox County legislative delegation, also chimed in.

"Today's announcement by Rep. Armstrong closes an unfortunate chapter for our community," Smith said. "This episode shouldn't overshadow the good work he's done for Knox County in the Tennessee General Assembly. However, I believe this was the best resolution for the citizens of Knox County. We wish him well in his future endeavors."
Unfunded mandates are regular order for Washington. Federal lawmakers seem to hardly hesitate to pass legislation that could cost states  read us Tennessee taxpayers  oodles of our hard-earned cash. Evidence? Obamacare, the anything-but-affordable health care act that continues to see ever-expansive premiums and deductibles and ever-narrowing insurance choices.

Now comes a "defunding mandate." The federal Department of Transportation is holding Tennessee hostage, threatening to take $60 million in highway funding from the state if we do not bring our DUI laws into compliance with the D.C. diktat.

Tennessee toughened DUI laws to bring greater pain to underage drinkers by raising the legal blood alcohol limit from 0.02 to 0.08. The feds, never content to let the elected officials who actually live and work in the communities affected make decisions on behalf of their neighbors, insist the state fall in line with the federal 0.02 blood alcohol level for underage drinkers.

Meanwhile, Democrats, conveniently and completely ignoring it is their guys in Washington usurping state power, are trying to rake in political dividends from the discrepancy.

"This was not an accident," said state Rep. Mike Stewart, D-Nashville, chairman of the state House Democratic Caucus. "This was the direct result of specific policies put in place by Speaker Beth Harwell."

"This never should have happened in the first place," said U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Nashville. "I'm glad state lawmakers are fixing their $60-million mistake."

Cooper is referring to Gov. Bill Haslam calling a special session to address the issue solely and wholly created by the Obama administration. As Cooper and Stewart struggle for political relevance, Haslam again takes a pragmatic path to address an issue created by yet another instance of President Barack Obama's overreach.

"Disappointingly we found out (Friday) that the (federal Department of Transportation) is not going to work with us on (an administrative fix) and so to avoid putting the $60 million at risk we will be having a special session sometime in the next three weeks," Haslam said last week. With road needs far outstripping road funds, Haslam really has no choice.

State Rep. William Lamberth, R-Cottontown, who sponsored the DUI law that ran afoul of the feds, supports the special session. In a statement released on Twitter, Lamberth said, "I have spent my entire professional career fighting to improve the safety of our highways and will not stop now. I find it abhorrent that federal bureaucrats are holding us hostage with our own money and pretend to know what will keep Tennesseans safe."

Tennessee taxpayers will be out about $100,000 for a four-day special session. Yet some state Dems chastise Haslam et al. for not aligning with Washington to get health care funds by fully adopting Obamacare. The cost-benefit for the road fix is understandable. The cost of the Democrats' unaffordable health care act is incalculable and the Democrats' irrelevance in Tennessee is immeasurable.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Sep. 9

By Elena Kosolapova - Trend:

Oil production at Kazakh Kashagan oil and gas field will be resumed on October 23, Kazakh Acting Energy Minister Kanat Bozumbayev said, Novosti-Kazakhstan news agency reported.

"The official launch of Kashagan is scheduled for Oct. 23, Bozumbayev told reporters.

Commercial production in the amount of 75,000 barrels per day at Kashagan field is expected to be reached in Nov., he said.

Kashagan is a large oil and gas field in Kazakhstan, located in the north of the Caspian Sea.

The geological reserves of Kashagan are estimated at 4.8 billion tons of oil. The total oil reserves amount to 38 billion barrels; some 10 billion out of them are recoverable reserves. There are large natural gas reserves at the Kashagan field - over one trillion cubic meters.

The production at the Kashagan field started in September 2013, but in October, it was suspended after a gas leak in one of the main pipelines.

North Caspian Operating Company BV (NCOC) consortium is engaged in developing the project. Currently, the shareholders are: KMG Kashagan BV (16.88 percent), AGIP Caspian Sea BV (nearly 16.81 percent), Exxon Mobil Kazakhstan Inc. (nearly 16.81 percent), Shell Kazakhstan Development BV (nearly 16.81 percent), Total E&P Kazakhstan (nearly 16.81 percent), INPEX North Caspian Sea Ltd. (7.56 percent) and CNPC Kazakhstan BV (8.33 percent).

Follow the author on Twitter: @E_Kosolapova
Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept. 9



By Elena Kosolapova  Trend:



The resignation of Kazakh Prime Minister Karim Massimov became the result of the problems piled up in the country over the past year, Andrey Chebotarev, director of the Alternative research center in Kazakhstan, told Trend Sept. 9.



Massimov's resignation is the reaction to problems in the country, said Chebotarev. It is caused by the need to resolve topical problems that arose after the devaluation last year, which led to the deterioration of economy and social sphere.



Earlier, President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev dismissed Karim Massimov from the post of prime minister, which he held for about seven years, and appointed Massimov chairman of the countrys National Security Committee. Nazarbayev explained this appointment by the fact that Massimov is needed at this post to enhance security sphere, as there is a problem of terrorism.



Chebotarev said that a number of rallies and protests against land reform, as well as a series of terrorist attacks took place in Kazakhstan this year.



When things get worse in a particular area, it's not the systematic measures that are taken, but a person responsible for this area is dismissed instead," he said, adding that Kazakhstan has been doing this for a long time.



The expert believes that the countrys acting Prime Minister Bakytzhan Sagintayev is a suitable candidate for the post of prime minister, since he has held various key positions and proven himself quite well.



Karim Massimovs appointment as head of the National Security Committee shows that he remains on the team and enjoys great confidence, according to Chebotarev.



He pointed out that the security sphere in Kazakhstan really needs strengthening.



However, the appointment of Massimov, who hasnt served in special services and is one of the key managers in Nazarbayevs team, shows that aside from the anti-terrorism activities, such spheres as ensuring economic security, fighting corruption and shadow economy will also be strengthened, according to the expert.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @E_Kosolapova
By Jhoo Dong-chan





Hanjin Group Chairman

Cho Yang-ho

Foreign shipping lines are increasing their transpacific routes after Korea's largest shipper, Hanjin Shipping, filed for court receivership last month.

The world's largest shipper, Maersk Line, said Wednesday it is introducing a new service between Asia and the United States West Coast to fill the capacity gap left by Hanjin Shipping and complement its existing ships on the transpacific route.

The route includes Yantian, Shanghai, Busan, Los Angeles and Long Beach as a part of the 2M shipping alliance network, and its first sailing is scheduled for Sep. 15. The company plans to deploy six container vessels with a capacity of 4,000 TEUs (20-foot equivalent units) a week.

"We are responding to increased demand in the transpacific," said Klaus Rud Sejling, head of Maersk Line's East-West Network. "With supply chains disrupted, many customers are approaching us for transport solutions for their cargo. The service is a stable, long-term solution to meet our customers' needs."

The world's fourth-largest shipper, COSCO Line, has decided to deploy its container ships to Korea's Busan Port while China's largest shipping line, Yang Ming Marine Transport, has recently included the port in its transpacific operations.

Experts said Hanjin Shipping's court receivership is an opportunity for global shipping lines that have long competed in a game of chicken with low-price strategies.

"Now, Hyundai Merchant Marine (HMM) is the nation's only major shipping line operating its service on the transpacific route," an industry insider said.

"Korea is an export-driven economy that requires massive shipping services to the global market. I don't think HMM's shipping capacity can solely cover such transport demands. If Maersk Line decides to replace Hanjin Shipping's absence in earnest, HMM won't stand a chance maintaining its service grounds in the transpacific route. If that comes to pass, Korea's exports would depend heavily on the service of foreign shipping lines."

Most of the container ships operated by Hanjin Shipping have reportedly stopped sailing at home and abroad.

Its container ships have reportedly been denied entry to the Busan port since the troubled company's court receivership was filed last month. Another of the shipper's container ships, Hanjin Roma, was seized in Singapore soon after creditors announced they would stop supporting Hanjin Shipping.

Another container ship, Hanjin Mexico, has stopped operation because the ship owner, PIL, refused to allow it to sail due to overdue charter fees from the shipping line.

Hanjin Shipping also filed for bankruptcy protection in the United States to stop creditors seizing its assets.
Ford Sales and Service Korea CEO Jung Jae-hee poses with the all-new MKZ sedan during its unveiling at the company's showroom in Gangnam-gu, southern Seoul, Monday. / Courtesy of Ford



By Jhoo Dong-chan

The luxury division of American carmaker, Ford, has introduced the all-new MKZ sedan to recapture its past glory in the premium auto market.

Ford Sales and Services Korea CEO Jung Jae-hee said during the unveiling at the company's showroom in Gangnam, southern Seoul, Monday, that the all-new MKZ sedan inherits "Lincoln's signature beauty in design."

The famous Lincoln Design Studio led by top designer Korean-American Soo Kang and 50 world-class experts has strived to revive the classic Lincoln style combined with modern aerodynamics. The luxury sedan model won the Good Design Award sponsored by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy in 2014.

The new MKZ sedan retains the elegant legacy in design from its previous version created by the design studio.

Inspired by glittering jewels, the MKZ's LED headlamps in the front use the Adaptive Lamp System to enhance a wider range of visibility. Straight-line tail lamps in the back are perfectly matched with the dual exhaust under the bumper.

The MKZ's steering wheel features best-in-class hand-made Wollsdorf leather while its multi contour seats with the Active Motion System are covered with Deepsoft leather manufactured by Bridge of Weir, offering a pleasurable driving experience without fatigue.

The MKZ also features high-end audio maker Revel's quality audio system that has 19 speakers installed in optimal positions inside the cabin so that passengers can enjoy the best sound quality through three different audio modes  Stereo, Theater and Stage.

The all-new MKZ is powered by a 2.0-liter EcoBoost direct injection engine with the Select Shift six-speed transmission that guarantees responsive drive dynamics. It produces a maximum of 234 horsepower with a 37.3 kg.m torque.

The front-wheel-drive sedan also has mileage of 13.1 kilometers per liter on the highway and 8.4 kilometers per liter in the city.

It is priced beginning at 52.5 million won ($48,143).
Streets of Seoul circa 1905-1910 / Courtesy of Robert Neff collection



By Robert Neff

Like a thief in the night, cholera crossed quietly into Korea through the Yalu River port of Wiju in early September 1821. It was part of the first cholera pandemic which began in 1817 in India and had spread to China killing hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people. Korea's self-imposed isolation from the rest of the world was no protection from this disease.

Its arrival at Wiju went relatively unnoticed until people began to die from severe dehydration brought on by intense diarrhea. The pain was excruciating and some people claimed that it felt as if rats were gnawing their way out of their victim's stomach. So violently painful were the deaths that one of the names for the disease is hoyeolja  which roughly means a disease that made you feel as if you were being ripped apart by a tiger.

From Wiju the disease spread rapidly south. On Sept. 9, the governor of Pyongyang reported that the residents of the city were stricken by a strange and virulent disease. According to one witness, "no more than one or two out of ten patient survived" and within ten days more than a thousand people were dead.

Two days later, Seoul, with its large population and crowded and dirty living conditions, reported its first cases. According to the annals, the disease spread from one house to the next faster than fire and within ten days more than 10,000 Seoul residents were dead, including several high officials.

From Seoul the disease continued to spread throughout the country claiming the lives of tens of thousands of people. The only region spared was Jeju Island and the smaller islands in its vicinity. The epidemic finally abated at the end of November when the weather cooled and as winter descended, the shocked population was left to bury its dead.

The disease returned "with unabated fury" the following June. It appears to have originated in Seoul and from there spread north and south until the entire peninsula was suffering from its effects. Governors of northern provinces reported thousands of people had died from the new outbreak of the disease.

Even Jeju was not spared. In November it was reported that some 2,000 people on the island had died from the disease. King Sunjo (r. 1800-1834) sent his condolences and reminded the people that there was nothing they could do for the dead but to continue to live and that they should concentrate on the harvest.

According to Homer Hulbert, the devastation in human lives throughout the country was so severe that "houses were built at intervals along the roads, by the government, for the sake of those who might be struck down with the plague while traveling and gangs of men were kept busy along the main road burying the dead."

Gathering from the annals, the region around Seoul was filled with people roaming the countryside seeking food and shelter. Some were seeking refuge from the disease while others were waiting to die. Bodies lay everywhere. The king was urged to segregate the infected victims from the general population. They would be provided with food and shelter  presumably outside the gates  and when they died they would be buried in deep holes. The uninfected refugees would also be gathered together and given shelter and food and then sent back to their hometowns to begin farming.

Eventually the cold weather brought the ravages of the disease to a halt. It has been estimated that more than 200,000 people died during the cholera epidemic but it was one (albeit possibly the worst) of many disasters that plagued Joseon during King Sunjo's 34-year-reign and robbed the country of its population. In 1807, the population was estimated to be 7.6 million people but by 1835 it had dropped to only 6.6 million. For the survivors Joseon must have truly seemed like hell.

Robert Neff is a historian and columnist for The Korea Times. He can be reached at robertneff103@gmail.com.
Students visit booths set up by firms looking to recruit employees at Yonsei University in Seoul on Tuesday.

/ Yonhap







A student views a list of some 150 companies that took part in a job fair held at

Seoul National University this week. / Yonhap

By Kim Ji-soo

Life-time employment is in its last throes at leading Korean companies, but the announcement of massive recruitment is raising anticipation as well as anxiety among jobseekers.

As general skepticism pervades among the nation's young, jobseekers are approaching the "recruitment season" with mixed attitudes.

For Shin Eui-jin, 27, of Ilsan, Gyeonggi Province, it may well be another season in his second year of looking for a job. A graduate of Kyung Hee University in restaurant and business management, he has specifically been looking for a job related to his major. Once again as the second half of the year has begun, large Korean conglomerates have made announcements of large recruitments, including CJ and Lotte, which have affiliates Shin might apply to.

"I have looked around, but it seems that the regular employee positions at firms I am interested in are recruiting in single digits," Shin said. He is not looking forward to this season; he has been through this before.

Shin added that he may aim lower in terms of company ranking, having learned from the past two years or so.

Shin is among the 9.2 percent of unemployed young people (aged 15 through 29) recorded in July, according to Statistics Korea. It's a figure about three-times larger than the national average. Unlike their parents who grew up poor but witnessed miraculous growth, young adults in this era of slow growth in Korea are facing major difficulties finding jobs. The strong labor unions and the extended retirement age may well compound their situation.

Non-working young adults or those working part-time jobs have grown to such great numbers that Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn recently said he feels responsible for the frustration that the young generation feels regarding the harsh job market.

Park Jin-woo, 25, a junior at the University of Suwon in Gyeonggi Province, majoring in global business is stepping up his preparations to make himself more viable in the job market. He is feeling the pressure, so he has made elaborate plans. He's applied for an exchange student program at the University of California at Irvine, and he is planning to obtain an international trade accreditation while there. Next year, which will be his last at Suwon, he is looking to finish an eight-months-long Korean-English interpretation and translation course at another university.

"I don't think I have much time left, and I am trying to highlight my experiences and my focus on my major, because there will be so many other excellent candidates to beat," Park said.

Park said he is currently watching with anticipation the announcements of recruitment by Korean companies, hoping that he will be among the successful jobseekers when he graduates next year.

Korean firms recruit annually, in larger numbers in the second half. The coveted workplaces of Samsung, LG, Kia Motors, SK groups have announced recruitment plans without specifying just how many they will choose. Also, CJ and Lotte groups have announced that they plan to select around 1,700 and 1,300 new employees and interns, respectively. Overall, some 800 companies are expected to recruit in the second half.

Thus, around campuses, from the University of Ulsan in southeastern Korea, to Seoul National University and Korea University in Seoul, job fairs are underway with companies taking part and students flowing to them en masse.

Shin in Ilsan does not attend those job fairs anymore.

"I just realized that these companies already have a certain number or type of people they will recruit," he said. Yet, he is still hoping to find a job that will be a lifetime career.

Some job seekers like Kim Kyeong-bin, have also grown more realistic. She graduated with a bachelor's degree in economics from Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, in the United States. To further develop her capacity, she recently graduated with a master's degree in economics from Ewha Womans University in Seoul.

The Korean Thanksgiving holidays are ahead, but Kim said she will be busy preparing job applications. "I would like to work at a bank or financial institution," she said, adding that she would find such a job ideal for lifetime employment.

"But otherwise, I have done many internships and noticed that people move around a lot these days. So I am thinking that I may also move around," Kim said.

She said she is not sure she would do well in competition with people who grew up in Korea who are more used to the excessive competition that is everywhere in Korean society, even in preparing cover-letters or getting ready for job interviews. Kim also faced pressure from home to get a job soon to the extent that she does not feel like meeting friends, another reason she has grown realistic.

Meanwhile, Korean companies are expecting some of the stiffest competition in the upcoming recruitment period. "We are recruiting a massive number of people, and we are also expecting even more applications," said one senior official at CJ Group.
Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn is set to hold an emergency National Security Council (NSC) meeting later in the day, the presidential office said Friday, amid rising speculation that Pyongyang conducted its fifth nuclear test.



President Park Geun-hye is on an overseas trip, currently staying in Laos to hold a series of bilateral and multilateral summits.



Jung Youn-kuk, presidential spokesman, said the meeting will be held at Cheong Wa Dae after a magnitude 5.0-earthquake was detected at North Korea's nuclear site in the country's northeastern region earlier in the day.



The premier's office said Hwang has cleared his schedule for the rest of the day.



The meeting will focus on discussing the impact of the possible nuclear test on South Korea's national security as well as international relations. Participants will also share ideas on what actions will be taken at the United Nations.













In January, North Korea conducted a fourth nuclear test after its previous tests in 2006, 2009 and 2013. The Seoul government has yet to confirm the earthquake as a nuclear test.



The previous NSC session as held on Aug. 24 after North Korea fired submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM). (Yonhap)
A local court on Friday sentenced a 26-year-old to two years in prison for breaking into a government complex to tamper with exam results earlier this year.

The Seoul Central District Court found the man, identified only by his surname Song, guilty of unlawfully entering the complex in central Seoul multiple times between February and March, and manipulating the results of the civil service examination he took.

"Song destroyed the fairness of the test, which is grounded on the idea of equal opportunity," the court said. "The nature of the crime is very bad in that it could lead to despondency of competitors with good intentions."

Prosecutors said the defendant entered the building a total of five times after he stole the identification card of a public official working in the building in February. He later stole two other ID cards.

The court, while finding him guilty of all the allegations raised, said it took into consideration that he has a record of receiving psychiatric treatment for obsession.

Following the incident, the government announced in April that it will strengthen security at the country's public buildings. (Yonhap)
By Jung Min-ho



A local court has acquitted a 41-year-old woman of the charges of raping her husband, dismissing allegations that she forced him to have sex with her in May 2015 while he was tied up in bed.



The case marked the first time that a wife has ever been charged with marital rape since the country's Supreme Court recognized it as a criminal offense in 2013 when a husband was convicted of raping his wife for the first time.



On Friday the Seoul Central District Court found the wife, whose surname is Shim, not guilty of the rape charges.



But the court sentenced her to a two-year prison term suspended for three years for confining him inside her house against his will for 29 hours and assaulting and threatening him.



Her boyfriend, whose surname is Kim, was also given an eight-month prison term suspended for two years for assisting her with the rape attempt.



"It does not appear that the husband had sex with her because of an irresistible force," the court said. "Their conversation just before sexual intercourse suggests that he agreed to do so."



Given that the husband was allowed to go to the bathroom before having sex and was able to use his arms to fight back at the time of sexual intercourse, the court said it didn't seem that he tried to resist.



"Also, it appears that Shim did not threaten her husband to have sex, and both of them said that the mood changed in a good way after having sex," the court said.



Shim and her husband tied the knot in 2001. They later moved to Britain, where they lived together for years doing business. Their relationship started to fall apart in 2007, when Shim was found guilty of swindling international students there. Fines of hundreds of millions of won (hundreds of thousands of dollars) put them in financial trouble. They separated in April 2015, and returned to Korea the following month to go through divorce proceedings.



In order to obtain "favorable evidence" for divorce proceedings, Shim and Kim conspired to confine him in her house, where they forced him to say "I have an extramarital relationship, and I do not want to live with my wife any more. I am responsible for the divorce."



During his confinement, sexual intercourse occurred, which the husband claimed was a rape. The incident was revealed after the husband called police.



Many countries from across the world, including the United States, Japan, France, Russia and Kenya, recognize marital rape as a criminal offense. The United Nations said in 2006 marital rape is prosecutable in at least 104 countries worldwide.




By Chung Hyun-chae

A drunk U.S. Embassy official is suspected of hitting a taxi driver in Itaewon, Seoul, early Friday morning, the Yongsang Police Station said.

The police said that the American diplomat, 36, identified as Kim, was apprehended for allegedly punching the driver in the face five times after wrangling with him.

Police officers, who were dispatched to the scene, took the official to the police office in Itaewon for questioning.

First he tried to hide his identity. But when investigators verified who he was, he admitted that he worked at the American Embassy.

After questioning, the official was let go because of his diplomatic immunity.

According to diplomatic immunity, which ensures diplomats are not subject to criminal charges in a host country, he will not face criminal punishment, unless the U.S. Embassy waives the privilege.

"We will request his summons through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but he can refuse to come," a police officer said.

Earlier in May, a New Zealand diplomat was arrested on charges of assaulting a police officer who responded to complaints about his drunk behavior.

The New Zealand Embassy revoked his diplomatic immunity, saying that it would cooperate with any investigation.
President Park Geun-hye and her Laotian counterpart Bounnhang Vorachith will hold a summit in Vientiane on Friday to discuss bilateral cooperation in trade, investment, energy, development, defense and other areas, her office Cheong Wa Dae said.

Park began her official visit to the Southeast Asian country Thursday after a series of bilateral and multilateral summits in the Laotian capital, the third and last leg of her eight-day trip that also took her to Russia and China.

It is the first time that a South Korean president has officially visited Laos.

Aside from economic issues, the two leaders will exchange views on North Korea's escalating nuclear and missile threats and joint efforts to tackle them, Cheong Wa Dae said.

"The summit this time will add fresh momentum to the development of bilateral relations by deepening and expanding exchanges with the new leadership of Laos, which took office in April," Kim Kyou-hyun, senior presidential secretary for foreign affairs, told reporters.

Diplomatic ties were severed after Laos became communized in 1975, but the two nations restored formal relations in 1995. North Korea has maintained diplomatic relations with Laos since 1974.

South Korea is Laos' fourth-largest trading partner after Thailand, China and Japan.

Two-way trade, which stood at $41 million in 2006, reached $198 million last year due in large part to the free trade deal between South Korea and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which took effect in 2007. (Yonhap)
U.S. President Barack Obama said he told Chinese President Xi Jinping that Beijing should work harder to change Pyongyang's behavior if it doesn't want to see the THAAD missile defense system deployed to South Korea.



"China continues to object to the THAAD deployment in the Republic of Korea, one of our treaty allies. And what I've said to President Xi directly is that we cannot have a situation where we're unable to defend either ourselves or our treaty allies against increasingly provocative behavior and escalating capabilities by the North Koreans," Obama said at a news conference in Laos after the East Asia Summit.



"And I indicated to him that if the THAAD bothered him, particularly since it has no purpose other than defensive and does not change the strategic balance between the United States and China, that they need to work with us more effectively to change Pyongyang's behavior," he said, according to a White House transcript.



Obama and Xi held one-on-one summit talks on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in China last week.



Obama said that China has done more to carry out the latest U.N. sanctions on the North than before, but there are "still places where they need to tighten up".



"We continue to indicate to them the importance of tightening those up," he said.



Obama acknowledged that his policy on North Korea has failed to change the North's behavior.



"When it comes to changing Pyongyang's behavior, it's tough," he said.



Should the North be serious about denuclearization talks, the U.S. is ready to have such talks.



"It's not as if we are looking for a problem, or avoiding a willingness to engage diplomatically. But diplomacy requires that Pyongyang meet its international obligations," he said.



"Not only is it failing to meet those international obligations, it's not even suggesting that they have any intention to do so anytime in the future regardless of the inducements that might be put on the table," he added.



Obama said the U.S. is "deeply disturbed by what's happened," pledging to make sure to defend itself and allies while at the same time ensuring to "put some of the toughest pressure that North Korea has ever been under as a consequence of this behavior." (Yonhap)




Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Sept. 9

By Huseyn Hasanov  Trend:

Turkmenistan has adopted laws on legal regulation of the Internet.

Participants of the workshop organized by the OSCE in Ashgabat have emphasized the significance of the laws adopted in Turkmenistan on regulating the activities of media outlets, in particular, the law On legal regulation of development of Internet and rendering online services, Neutral Turkmenistan newspaper reported.

Ashgabat is hosting a three-day workshop (Sept.7-9) on new possibilities of communication with help of online resources of public authorities. The event has been organized as part of the joint projects of Turkmen government and OSCE Centre in Ashgabat.

Representatives of parliament, a number of ministries, media outlets are taking part in the event.

During a government meeting, Turkmenistans President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov tasked the representatives of government and local media outlets to widely use digital tools for increasing efficiency, comprehensive and timely coverage of events in the country and in the sphere of international relations.
The U.S. House of Representatives adopted a resolution calling for greater trilateral cooperation between the U.S., South Korea and Japan to cope with ever-growing nuclear and missile threats from North Korea.



The resolution (H.RES.634), which was introduced in March by Rep. Matt Salmon (R-AZ), passed on Wednesday, two days after North Korea test-fired a barrage of three Rodong medium-range ballistic missiles in the latest in a series of banned missile launches in defiance of the international community.



The passage also came just a day after the House reopened following a summer recess.



"A strong United States-Republic of Korea-Japan trilateral relationship is a stabilizing force for peace and security in the region, with capabilities to combat future provocations from North Korea," the resolution said.



It said the House "strongly condemns North Korea's nuclear tests, missile launches, and continued provocations" and reaffirms the importance of trilateral cooperation to "counter North Korea's destabilizing activities and nuclear proliferation, and to bolster regional security."



It also said the House "supports joint military exercises and other efforts to strengthen cooperation, improve defense capabilities, and oppose regional threats like North Korea" while "encouraging the deployment and coordination of regional advanced ballistic missile defense systems."



The resolution called for expansion of information and intelligence sharing between the three countries and stressed the importance of three-way cooperation "in tracking North Korea human rights violations and holding it accountable for its abuses against its citizens and the citizens of other countries."



The United States has long sought to bolster trilateral security cooperation with South Korea and Japan as a counterbalance to China's rise, leading efforts to put together the three-way military intelligence sharing agreement signed in late 2014.



The deal paved the way for Seoul and Tokyo to share such intelligence via the U.S. after the two countries failed to strike a bilateral intelligence sharing deal in 2012 due in part to negative public sentiment in South Korea about signing such a pact with the former colonial ruler.



The U.S. push for trilateral cooperation got a boost from a landmark agreement between South Korea and Japan in late December on resolving the issue of Japan's wartime sexual slavery, a major thorn that had soured not only relations between the two countries, but also hampered three-way cooperation with the U.S.



The House resolution also noted that the North conducted its fourth nuclear test in January and a long-range rocket launch the following month. It said the communist nation "has an estimated stockpile of nuclear material that could be converted into 10-16 nuclear weapons, with clear intentions to continue nuclear proliferation activities."



"With North Korea's continued bellicose rhetoric and belligerent actions, it is critical that we stand with our Korean and Japanese allies to ensure the stability of the Asia-Pacific," said Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.



"Today, with an ever more belligerent North Korea, this partnership has never been more critical," he said ahead of the House voting, according to his office, adding that the North's submarine-launched ballistic missile test last month moved the regime "one step closer to being able to target any site in the Pacific."



On Thursday, Bruce Klingner, a senior Korea expert at the Heritage Foundation, also called for greater trilateral cooperation in countering the North's submarine warfare threats.



"When people think and people sort of try to downplay the submarine launch ballistic missile threat, saying, 'The North Korean subs are old, they're noisy, they're not a threat.' Well, remember the Cheonan," Klinger said of the North's 2010 sinking of a South Korean warship.



"It is a threat. It is a danger. Now that you have SLBMs being put on them or in the process of that, it clearly is sort of an exponential increase. It's in all three countries' interests to have the three navies working very closely on anti-submarine warfare," he said during a seminar hosted by the Korea Economic Institute. (Yonhap)




U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said he will "respectfully" ask South Korea and other allies to pay more for American defense support if elected to the White House.



Trump made the remark during a campaign speech in Philadelphia, once again reaffirming one of the key points of his foreign policy: that allies take U.S. defense support for granted and don't pay their fair shares.



"I will be respectfully asking countries such as Germany, Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia to pay more for the tremendous security we provide them," Trump said.



Trump also said that only five NATO countries, including the U.S., are meeting their minimum requirement to spend 2 percent of their gross domestic product on defense.



"They know they have to do it. They can afford to do it. They have no respect for our leadership. They have no respect for our country. They will do it. They'll be happy to do it. They will be happy to do it," he said.



The real-estate tycoon has expressed deeply negative views of alliances and U.S. security commitments overseas, seeing them as a cumbersome burden sucking up taxpayer dollars, and arguing that the U.S. should no longer be the "policeman of the world."



He has said allies should pay 100 percent of the cost of stationing American troops, or the U.S. should be prepared to end their protection. He even suggested allowing South Korea and Japan to develop their own nuclear weapons for self-defense so as to reduce U.S. security burdens.



About 28,500 American troops are stationed in South Korea to deter North Korean aggression, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended in a truce, not a peace treaty. Many agree that the troop presence is also in line with U.S. interests in a region marked by China's rise. (Yonhap)




South Korean President Park Geun-hye on Friday condemned North Korea's apparent nuclear test, saying that its provocation will only invite stronger international sanctions, deepen its isolation and hasten its self-destruction.

Park also said the latest provocation explicitly ignored the international community's united position against the North's nuclear program and attested to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's recklessness.

The commander-in-chief, in addition, said that South Korea, in close cooperation with the international community, will seek "much stronger sanctions" and mobilize "all possible means" to pressure Pyongyang into renouncing its nuclear ambitions.

"This (nuclear test) is a clear violation of U.N. Security Council (UNSC) resolutions and a grave challenge to the international community," Park said during an emergency meeting with her aides in Vientiane, the last leg of her three-nation trip.

The emergency meeting was attended by Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se, Trade Minister Joo Hyung-hwan, Park's chief foreign policy secretary Kim Kyou-hyun and Kang Seog-hoon, senior presidential secretary for economic affairs.

Park also held emergency telephone talks for 15 minutes with U.S. President Barack Obama, who is aboard his presidential plane, to discuss the North's provocation.

During the talks, the two sides agreed to mobilize "all means available," including a stronger UNSC sanctions resolution, and to apply stronger pressure on the North, Park's office Cheong Wa Dae said.

Obama pledged to take all measures under the South Korea-U.S. mutual defense treaty, which include Washington's "extended deterrence" involving the nuclear umbrella, Park's office said.

Extended deterrence means the U.S.' stated commitment to mobilize all military capabilities, nuclear and conventional, to defend its Asian ally against North Korea's possible aggression and provocations.

Park, meanwhile, cut short her overseas trip after a magnitude 5 earthquake was detected near the North's nuclear site in its northeastern region, suggesting that the reclusive country carried out another nuclear test.

If confirmed, it would be its fifth nuclear tests carried out since its first in 2006. Pyongyang conducted its last test in January.

Park is in the Laotian capital to attend bilateral and multilateral summits involving the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Laos is the third and last leg of her eight-day trip that also took her to Russia and China. (Yonhap)
North Korea threatened South Korea on Friday, saying it will pay a "dear" price if its Navy speedboats continue to violate the western sea border.

North Korea claimed that the South's military made a reckless military provocation repeatedly in September as its patrol boats intruded into the North's territorial waters, according to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

It said that on Tuesday alone, a boat belonging to the South Korean Navy's 2nd fleet went more than 4 kilometers across the sea border, and other vessels made five similar provocations afterward.

North Korea insisted that in the wake of the latest Seoul-Washington military drills, the South conducted "ceaseless infiltration" into the northern side of the sea demarcation line.

"The puppet military gangsters of South Korea should not forget even for a moment that they will have to pay a dear price for their extremely adventurous military provocations," the KCNA said.

Pyongyang does not acknowledge the inter-Korean maritime border, known as the Northern Limit Line (NLL), which was drawn unilaterally by the U.S.-led United Nations Command when the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a ceasefire.

The North has long demanded that the line be drawn farther south. The two Koreas' naval forces fought bloody battles in 1999, 2002 and 2009 near the border.

This year North Korea has increased its ballistic missile tests, including the launching of a submarine-launched ballistic missile in late August in defiance of international condemnation.

On Thursday, Pyongyang said it will take "multi-phased eventful measures" to double its capabilities for nuclear attacks against Washington if the U.S. sticks to its hostile policy toward the North. (Yonhap)
Japan responded quickly to the suspected nuclear test carried out by North Korea earlier in the day Friday by convening a national security meeting to discuss countermeasures.

A magnitude 5 earthquake was detected near North Korea's nuclear test site in its northeastern region at around 9:30 a.m., raising suspicions that Pyongyang may have conducted its fifth nuclear test.

If confirmed, this would be the latest nuclear provocation since January when it carried out its fourth nuclear test detonation, which drew strong condemnation from the international community and the toughest resolution ever by the United Nations Security Council in March.

Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida told reporters that he has set up and is running an emergency team dedicated to monitoring related developments.












China said on Friday that it would lodge a diplomatic protest with North Korea's embassy in Beijing, hours after the country conducted its fifth nuclear test.



Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying made the comment during a regular press briefing.



Earlier, China's Foreign Ministry said it was resolutely opposed to North Korea's latest nuclear test and strongly urges North Korea to stop taking any provocative actions that will worsen the situation.













China will stick to its aim of denuclearising the Korean Peninsula and uphold the six-party talks process to resolve the issue, the ministry added in a short statement.
North Korea is experiencing difficulties in controlling its borders after heavy rains in its northeastern region destroyed barbed-wire fences and guard posts along the country's border with China, U.S.-based media Radio Free Asia (RFA) said Friday.

A Chinese resident living in Longjing city in Jilin Province told RFA that the heavy rains accompanied by a recent typhoon caused the water level of the Tumen River flowing between the two countries to rise rapidly. The source said this caused considerable devastation in places like Hoeryong city, North Hamgyong Province.

North Korea's northeastern region and coasts were affected the most by the recent Typhoon Lionrock, reports indicated.

The Chinese informant said the guard posts and wire fences have been swept away by floods and landslides.

The reclusive country's northeastern area is a main route for North Koreans to flee to China after crossing the Tumen River.

Due to the severe damage, North Korea's border control is expected to see setbacks for the time being, according to a North Korean defector who has recently settled in South Korea.

Kim Dong-nam, a North Korean defector, told RFA that it will be easier now for North Koreans to cross the river to defect if they realize border barriers have been destroyed.

He said he heard that the Pyongyang regime is tightening travel control for citizens going to the border area from inside the country.

North Korea's state media said Tuesday that heavy rains have left more than 60 people dead and 25 missing in the country's northern Hamgyong Province. The North's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported that the flooding in North Hamgyong Province alone submerged 7,980 hectares of rice paddies and destroyed or inundated hundreds of buildings. (Yonhap)
The United Nations Security Council will hold an emergency session to address North Korea's latest nuclear test, a government official said Friday.

The meeting of its 15 member countries, set for Friday evening (New York time), was arranged after South Korea, the United States and Japan asked the U.N. council to convene an urgent session to react to the nuclear test, the official said.

North Korea conducted its fifth nuclear test earlier in the day on the occasion of the 68th anniversary of the regime's founding.

Seoul, Washington and Tokyo immediately relayed their request for an emergency UNSC session.

The latest nuclear test is expected to result in a punitive UNSC resolution that is more stringent than Resolution 2270, which the U.N. panel adopted in reaction to the North's previous nuclear test in January and a long-range nuclear test the following month.

President Park Geun-hye and U.S. President Barack Obama agreed to mobilize "all means available," including a stronger UNSC sanctions resolution, to mount increased pressure on North Korea so the country will give up its nuclear programs. The two leaders discussed the matter during their telephone talks held right after the North's nuclear test. (Yonhap)
South Korean civic groups expressed grave concern over North Korea's fifth nuclear test on Friday, denouncing it as an act that only escalates tension on the Korean Peninsula.

"We can no longer tolerate the North's nuclear test," said Lee Ok-nam at conservative civic group Citizens United for Better Society. "The government should come up with effective measures, instead of just verbally saying that it will take 'stern' or 'decisive' steps."

Lee said South Korea should be more active in informing the reality of North Korea to the outside world and strenghthen international sanctions levied on the reclusive country.

"(The South Korean government) should promptly deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system and get down on measures to bring fundamental change to the North Korean regime," the Korea Freedom Federation said.

Kim Sam-soo at progressive Citizens' Coalition for Economic Justice, meanwhile, questioned the effectiveness of the country's current policy towards Pyongyang.

"The incident shows that (South Korea) should approach denuclearization through other means, such as a dialogue or a negotiation," he said, urging the need to normalize the relation between the two Koreas.

North Korea conducted its fifth nuclear test earlier in the day on the occasion of the 68th anniversary of the regime's founding.

In January, North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test after its previous tests in 2006, 2009 and 2013. (Yonhap)
Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Sept. 9

By Demir Azizov  Trend:

Shavkat Mirziyoyev, who was appointed as Uzbekistans acting president, believes that his main task is to continue the policy pursued by the countrys first President Islam Karimov who passed away Sept.2.

Mirziyoyev was appointed the acting president by a decision of a joint meeting of the Senate and the Legislative Chamber of Uzbekistans Parliament Sept. 8.

I believe that in this responsible period, my main task is to continue the policy effectively pursued by Uzbekistans first President Islam Karimov throughout 25 years for intensifying the democratic reforms and reformations in political, economic and social spheres, he said.

The acting president pointed out that first of all, it is necessary to maintain peace and tranquility, to even more strengthen the interethnic and interreligious harmony, atmosphere of mutual respect and goodness in the society.

Aside from that it is necessary to strengthen the lawfulness, the rule of law, strict compliance with citizens rights and freedoms, he added.

Mirziyoyev also emphasized the necessity of fully strengthening the state security, ensure peace and tranquility for every citizen.

One of the most important priorities is to continue the structural reforms in economy and ensure its competitiveness, said the acting president.

He noted that under the conditions of considerable slowdown in the global economic growth, decrease in external demand, lower world prices for the most important export goods, it is necessary to strengthen the work on intensifying the reforms in economy and fulfill the priority tasks set by Islam Karimov.

Mirziyoyev urged to focus on the implementation of such priority tasks as ensuring the further strengthening of macroeconomic stability and maintaining the high economic growth rates achieved in recent years.
By Yi Whan-woo

North Korea's fifth nuclear test may prod China to change its stance on its ally and shift to a hard-line policy, analysts said Friday.

China issued a statement immediately after the nuclear test was reported, pledging to "actively" participate in U.N. sanctions against the North  a rare reaction to the North's provocations.



The test infuriated Beijing, Pyongyang's largest benefactor, because it came days after the G2 summit in Hangzhou, where Chinese President reaffirmed its support for Pyongyang's denuclearization.

North Korea also fired three ballistic missiles on the second and last day of the G20 summit, Monday.

"China certainly was embarrassed by North Korea because the test took place amid media reports that Beijing is loosening its noose on the military state," said Park Won-gon, an international relations professor at Handong University. "China will find it more difficult to find excuses for a refusal to join international pressure against the Kim Jong-un regime."

This week, China agreed on adopting U.N. Security Council (UNSC) statements condemning North Korea's launch of three ballistic missiles and also a submarine-launched ballistic missile in August.

But it previously opposed adopting separate statements concerning North Korea's ballistic missile launches from June to July. It has been speculated that this is to protest against the planned deployment a U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery in South Korea.

Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies, cited a "trigger clause" that automatically require additional response to North Korea in case of its violation of the UNSC Resolution 2270. The resolution was imposed in March against North Korea's fourth nuclear test in July.












President Park Geun-hye speaks in an emergency meeting at Cheong Wa Dae, Friday. She convened the meeting with high-ranking security officials to discuss countermeasures following North Korea's fifth nuclear test. / Yonhap



Park shortens trip to Laos



By Kang Seung-woo

VIENTIANE, Laos  President Park Geun-hye condemned North Korea's fifth nuclear test, Friday, saying it would hasten its self-destruction.

Following the test, she held a phone conversation with U.S. President Barack Obama, who was aboard Air Force One returning home from Laos, to discuss ways to respond to the provocation.

Park herself returned home earlier than scheduled from Laos, where she attended international security forums along with Obama and other leaders. Laos was the last leg of Park's week-long three-nation trip that also included Russia and China.

On her arrival, she convened an emergency meeting of top security and foreign affairs officials to discuss measures to tackle the test, and lambasted the North's leader Kim Jong-un.



Park said, "Kim's mental condition is out of control," adding that the North's provocation was a frontal challenge to the international community, and has pushed past the limits of patience of South Korea and other countries.



Park also had a phone conversation with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, calling the test an "intolerable provocation" and agreeing to closely cooperate to come up with follow-up measures, according to Cheong Wa Dae.

Pyongyang detonated a nuclear device at its nuclear test site in Punggye-ri at around 9:30 a.m. on the occasion of its Foundation Day, estimated to be the most powerful explosion yet in its five tests.












The barrier draw for the Korea Cup was held at the Grand Intercontinental Seoul Parnas Hotel in southern Seoul, Thursday. The Korea Cup will take place at LetsRun Park Seoul in Gwacheon, Gyeonggi Province, Sunday. / Courtesy of Korea Racing Authority



By Baek Byung-yeul

The Korea Racing Authority (KRA) is providing a rare opportunity for people to witness the world's greatest racehorses this Sunday as the country's sole horse-racing operator inaugurates the Korea Cup at LetsRun Park Seoul in Gwacheon, Gyeonggi Province.

The Korea Cup offers a purse of 1.7 billion won ($1.54 million), the highest prize in Korea's horse-racing history. The KRA said the event will be contested in two categories  a 1,200-meter Korea Sprint race worth 700 million won and a 1,800-meter Korea Cup race worth 1 billion won.

More than 100 countries have horse racing and the International Federation of Horseracing Authorities (IFHA) has divided them into three categories, depending on the size of their horse-racing industry.

Korea was in part 3, but after establishing international events, such as exchange races with the Japan Racing Association and the Singapore Turf Club over the past three years, the country was promoted to part 2 last July.

With the Korea Cup as "a foundation stone," the KRA said it has set a goal to join part 1 by 2022, the centennial of the first horse race in Korea.

"Korea is now categorized with part 2 countries, such Singapore and Sweden, 94 years after its first horse race," said Park Yang-tae, the KRA's executive director of racing.

He said hosting the Korea Cup will be "a leap for the country's horse-racing industry to move forward to the next level. We will do our utmost to become a part 1 country by 2022."

The Korea Cup is sponsored by the U.S.-based Keeneland Association, the world's largest thoroughbred sales company.

"Keeneland is pleased to team with KRA in this exciting new racing endeavor," Keeneland President and CEO Bill Thomason said. "For many years, Keeneland has enjoyed a successful partnership with Korea and its horsemen through our premier horse sales. We now look forward to supporting the KRA as they prepare to welcome the world to Seoul."

The Korea Sprint race will begin at 4:25 p.m. while the Korea Cup will start at 5:30 p.m. on Sunday.
By Oh Young-jin



One may rightly feel it absurd to put a private company in charge of government.

True, private firms seek profits, while the role of the government is, well, to run the country -- requiring it to serve many different purposes with profit at the bottom of its list of priorities.

The theory goes: a private company in charge would run the nation aground as it pushes for maximum margins at whatever costs -- poor people being treated like stray dogs and the disaffected rioting in total chaos. Or so we think.

But what if the government is incompetent enough to drive the nation into the ground as well? And that government is complacent solely because of the absence of competition until its mandate runs out and the next election comes.

Two recent cases -- Samsung Electronics handling a battery meltdown in its latest Galaxy Note 7 smartphone and the government on the Hanjin Shipping debacle -- tempt one to think about the untried "private government."

Let's go over the two's crises management step by step.

Samsung decided to recall all 2.5 million Galaxy 7 phones, Sept. 2, nine days after the first claim of a defect was reported.

The government, led by Deputy Prime Minister Yoo Il-ho, has spent months before letting Hanjin Shipping enter court receivership. Within a week, all hell broke loose, bringing major disruptions to the global maritime transportation chain.

The Galaxy 7 recall is unprecedented in scope as the tech giant is replacing all Galaxy 7s with new ones or other models, or paying refunds, depending on the customers' wishes. When a similar battery problem occurred for Apple, Samsung's rival, it settled at offering replacements.

The Hanjin case has seen about 80 ships out of its fleet of 141 seized, impounded or denied port entry around the world with some crewmembers onboard suffering from low provisions.

The government twisted Hanjin's largest shareholder Cho Yang-ho to force him to contribute 40 billion won to a package of 100 billion. But this falls far short of the worst-case scenario in which, according to one study, related parties may seek up to $14 billion in damages affecting delayed arrivals of a maximum 1.2 million containers.

Samsung estimated about 2 trillion won or $1.8 billion needed for the recall. The defect rate for the Galaxy 7s is an infinitesimal 24 per every 1 million phones.

Regarding the Hanjin mayhem, Financial Services Commission Chairman Yim Jong-yong confessed in a media briefing, "We didn't anticipate a disruption of this scale."

Samsung's mobile chief Koh Dong-jin held a press conference, saying, "Even though the related expenses for the recall are heart-breaking, we believe that our customers' safety is the first and foremost priority."

The differences between the government and Samsung in handling the crises are striking, to say the least.

It's not clear how the recalls will affect the Korean company's future as it comes ahead of Apple's new product launch. Experts say that it will certainly set Samsung back but its bold recall decision earned the firm, which has been widely discounted as "an early adaptor," many new supporters. Postings after the recall was announced showed renewed confidence about Samsung and its products.

The government's mishandling of the Hanjin case upset people as the country was portrayed as a third-rate nation for its failure to fathom the immediate consequences of government action but didn't surprise them as much because they took it as just another case of administrative incompetence they have grown accustomed to.

It is true that the two cases are poles apart so a direct comparison may not be fair.

A product recall is a decision that is pretty much up to the maker, while the case with Hanjin involves many parties with different interests.

Still, it cannot be denied that a lot was at stake for the decisions facing the government and Samsung respectively, and the latter's decision proved to be more inspiring than that of the former.

In an unlikely event that the two were put on the ballot, it can't be ruled out that voters may overcome conventional wisdom and choose Samsung as their representative.

The problem is that Samsung likely doesn't want the job of government.
By Frank Ching

In what was the most closely fought election in Hong Kong's history, a record turnout on Sunday, an electorate politicized by the Umbrella Movement of 2014, and last-minute pan-democratic strategy changes enabled the opposition to thwart hopes of Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying to produce a legislature with a two-thirds pro-government majority, which would strip the pan-democrats of their ability to veto constitutional changes.

The election was marked by several stunning upsets. Social activists who back localism, if not independence, have won a bloc of seats, thereby emerging as a new political force, generally aligned with the traditional pan-democrats but very much with their own thinking and approaches vis-a-vis the Hong Kong and Beijing authorities.

As new members of the pan-democratic camp, they will influence its positioning and strategy, especially since the biggest vote-getter in the election was social activist Eddie Chu Hoi-dick, who amassed over 84,000 votes but had attracted little attention of the mainstream media.

Another surprise was Nathan Law, a student leader in the 2014 protest movement, who also won a seat. At 23, he is the youngest person ever elected into the legislature. Contrary to general expectations, Ricky Wong, a media entrepreneur, failed to garner a seat.

The election of people like Eddie Chu and Nathan Law enabled the pan-democrats to win 19 of the 35 seats in the geographical constituency, which means that they will be able to block motions, bills and amendments to government bills proposed by other pro-establishment lawmakers.

Half of the seats 70 legislators are elected in five geographical constituencies and the rest by functional constituencies, such as business and professional bodies. The former has always been dominated by pan-democrats and the latter by pro-establishment legislators.

The pro-establishment camp not only failed to win a two-thirds majority of all seats, it also failed to win a majority of geographical seats, which fact would have deprived the pan-democrats of the ability to block motions and amendments to government bills proposed by other legislators.

However, the legislature to be seated next month is very different from its predecessors. Gone are the leading lights of the past, such as Emily Lau and Albert Ho, former chairmen of the Democratic Party, who chose to retire. Gone, too, are such veteran legislators as Lee Cheuk-yan, Cyd Ho and the radical Raymond Wong, famed for throwing bananas and other objects in the legislature, all of whom lost their seats.

Instead, there is a new crop of legislators in their 20s and 30s, including localists who by law are not allowed to support independence but who champion related ideas such as self-determination.

Thus, there is likely to be greater dissension within the ranks of pan-democrats and greater confrontation between legislators and the government. The gridlock in executive-legislative relations may well worsen.

This was an election with many "firsts," including the first time that the Electoral Affairs Commission had required certain candidates to declare in writing that they did not support Hong Kong independence. In the end, six candidates were disqualified on the ground of support for independence.

Three days before the election, a rolling poll conducted by the University of Hong Kong suggested that the highly fragmented pan-democratic camp was likely to lose heavily. Subsequently, seven pan-democratic candidates announced an end to campaigning in an attempt to consolidate support for the camp overall.

This worked to some extent, but still a number of veteran politicians lost because votes for pan-democrats were not evenly distributed.

The election on Sunday was not to determine who would run Hong Kong. The term of Chief Executive Leung won't expire until next June, and it is still unknown if the Chinese government will give him a second term. Technically, the choice will be made in March by a 1,200-member Election Committee but, since most members of the committee are loyal to Beijing, they will in effect endorse Beijing's chosen candidate, who will then be formally appointed by the Chinese government.

But Sunday's election is likely to influence Beijing's decision whether to allow the current chief executive a second term. It depends on how Beijing interprets the election's outcome. If Beijing feels that the Hong Kong government did well by excluding independence advocates from running, perhaps it will extend the chief executive's term. But if Beijing feels that he did not go far enough to block localists from winning seats, then his fate may well be different. Between now and March, Beijing will decide if it wants a new man in charge in Hong Kong.

Frank Ching is a Hong Kong-based journalist. Contact Frank.ching@gmail.com.
Two Busan universities have announced a merger to deal with problems from difficulties in recruiting students. The consolidation of Kyungsung University and Dongseo University is gaining attention as a new model of survival for regional universities in an increasingly aging society with fewer university students.



The presidents of the two universities signed an agreement for comprehensive cooperation Thursday. Chang Je-kuk, president of Dongseo University, said the cooperation with Kyungsung is a paradigm shift in university education as it saves money and provides students with quality classes while advancing their competitiveness.



The agreement is noteworthy in that their consolidation goes beyond just exchanges of classes, which are already taking place among some universities. The two universities will share all their facilities and faculties. They will also jointly pursue projects to recruit foreign students and establish overseas campuses. Starting this semester, the students and the faculties of the two universities will be able to use the libraries, auditoriums, concert halls and other facilities of both schools. The universities will jointly operate class curriculums staring next semester. The professors will be assigned to lecture at both universities.



It remains to be seen whether their cooperation plan will achieve the desired outcomes. However, the merger is still meaningful in that it is a fresh approach to dealing with the crisis facing universities resulting from the declining number of students. Rather than relying on government subsidies, the two schools have created a survival strategy on their own, aiming for a win-win result for the schools and the students.



The education ministry expects that starting in 2018, there will not be enough high school graduates to fill university enrollment quotas. Universities outside Seoul, particularly those in the less populous regions like Gangwon Province, are already having much difficulty in staying viable. Many of the universities that received a low grading in the education ministry's restructuring performance evaluation released this week are outside Seoul.



With reduced state subsidies, regional universities have come under growing pressure to conduct self-reform measures for survival before they are forced into extinction. As such, other local universities should take note of the Kyungsung-Dongseo cooperation model to stay viable and raise their competitiveness through a synergy effect. Their merger should be an occasion for other universities undergoing financial difficulties to consider similar moves. The presidents of four state universities gathered at Pusan National University this week to discuss the establishment of a cooperative network among them.



Restructuring universities is one of the most urgent tasks as Korea deals with a reduced student population. It is important for universities to take the initiative for their own survival. But it requires special attention from policymakers and the National Assembly as well. The 18th and 19th National Assemblies failed to process bills related to university restructuring, but there is not much time because Korea is aging at an alarming pace.




World will keenly watch China's reaction



North Korea chose the anniversary of its government founding to carry out yet another nuclear test, Friday, despite harsh international sanctions for its previous nuclear and missile provocations.



President Park Geun-hye strongly condemned Pyongyang's latest test, which comes only eight months after one conducted Jan. 8. This means that the North has conducted two nuclear tests this year alone. Pyongyang has been conducting nuclear tests since 2006 with an interval of two or three years. However, since Kim Jong-un took power, the tests have become more frequent. This requires heightened urgency and stronger action from relevant parties.



President Park convened an emergency meeting with her aides in Vientiane, the last leg of a three-nation trip, and talked with U.S. President Barack Obama to discuss ways to apply stronger pressure on North Korea to halt its nuclear weapons program.



As President Park said, the latest nuclear test is an act of self-destruction that will certainly invite tougher international sanctions and force Pyongyang into deeper economic and diplomatic isolation. Kim must stop the nuclear tests that violate U.N. Security Council resolutions and jeopardize the security situation on the Korean Peninsula and beyond.



The continued nuclear tests highlight the need for tighter global cooperation on reining in North Korea. In particular, the world will be keenly watching for a reaction from China, North Korea's key supporter and protector. Beijing issued a statement a few hours after the nuclear test, calling on the reclusive state to stop all activities that hamper the security situation in the region and adhere to the UNSC resolutions. It also repeated its commitment to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and peace in Northeast Asia.



South Korea got in touch with the U.S. and Japan immediately after the nuclear test, which facilitated swift consultation and joint action on the issue. Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry spoke on the phone and reportedly discussed ways to induce China and Russia to participate in additional sanctions against North Korea.



So far Beijing has defied international calls to take a firm stance against Pyongyang's nuclear program. North Korea's missile tests this week came as Beijing was hosting a G20 summit in Hangzhou. While being soft on North Korea's provocations, it has lodged persistent protests against Seoul's decision to host a U.S.-made advanced missile defense system as a protective measure against the increasingly violent North. This time the world expects Beijing to be tougher on Pyongyang. If it does not want to see Korea and the U.S. deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system on Korean soil, it should actively do its part to contain North Korea's nuclear ambitions.



The U.S. should also renew its commitment to reining in Kim's increasingly reckless behavior. The Obama administration has not been forthcoming in dealing with North Korea and it has failed to change Pyongyang's behavior. The new U.S. president needs to place North Korea on the front burner of his or her diplomatic agenda and mobilize all possible means to terminate Pyongyang's missile and nuclear provocations.



The latest nuclear test shows that the Kim Jong-un regime will be unyielding on nuclear development. North Korea conducted a nuclear test even as the resolution 2270 adopted by the UNSC earlier is being implemented. The UNSC should swiftly prepare sanctions that will ensure irrecoverable damage to the North Korean economy.




Cha In-hyuk, right, head of the IoT business division at SK Telecom, poses with Shanghai Pujiang Holdings CEO Xiao Xingtao, after signing a contract to allow the Korean mobile carrier to supply its smart building management system for some 200 buildings in Shanghai, Thursday. / Courtesy of SK Telecom



By Lee Min-hyung

SK Telecom plans to export its smart building management system (BMS) to major buildings in Shanghai.

The nation's top mobile carrier said Friday it signed a memorandum of understanding with Shanghai Pujiang Holdings (SPH) to supply its BMS incorporating the Internet of Things (IoT) and wireless network technology. SPH offers building management for traditional and large buildings in the Chinese economic hub.

Under the deal, SK Telecom is expected to supply its BMS for some 200 buildings located around Waitan in central Shanghai. They include Shanghai Disney Resort and Hongqiao International Airport. The company hopes to raise its relatively weak profile in the global BMS market through the partnership.

The BMS market is fast growing, at a time when more firms underline the importance of efficient energy management for their offices and manufacturing facilities. The computer-based management system also allows companies to cut costs, as it helps them control and monitor electrical equipment in buildings in easy and safe ways.

The latest partnership is expected to help SK Telecom build more datasets for its next revenue source, as massive big data is crucial for the company to offer more elaborate, smart BMS, according to the company.

"We will focus on improving efficiency for our building management and strengthening the safety for workers and visitors," Cha In-hyuk, head of the IoT business division at SK Telecom, said. "SK Telecom hopes to lead the new emerging market by offering more sophisticated smart BMS for clients both at home and abroad."

The company highlighted that the recent partnership is meaningful, as it has extended the coverage of the smart BMS into more office buildings. So far, the BMS has mainly been adopted by manufacturing and construction facilities.

The smart system will also enable building managers to control ventilation, lighting and even available parking spots, SK Telecom said.
Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Sept. 9

By Demir Azizov  Trend:

Foreign Minister of Uzbekistan Abdulaziz Komilov has received Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Iyad Ameen Madani, who is in Tashkent on a visit.

Komilov thanked the OIC secretary general for the condolences over the death of the first president of Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov, who passed away Sept. 2 at the age of 78 after a stroke.

During the meeting, the sides discussed the preparation for the upcoming 43rd session of the OIC Council of Foreign Ministers under the chairmanship of Uzbekistan.

The sides stressed their mutual interest in the successful holding of the meeting.

The 43rd session of the OIC Council of Foreign Ministers will be held in Tashkent on Oct. 18-19.

The decision on Uzbekistans 2016 chairmanship in the organization was made at a meeting of the OIC Council of Foreign Ministers in Kuwait in May 2015.

Uzbekistan became an OIC member in 1996.

The OIC was established in 1969 to ensure Islamic solidarity in social, economic and political spheres. The organization has 57 member states.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept. 7

By Fatih Karimov  Trend:

Irans Telecommunications Infrastructure Company (TIC) and Germanys DE-CIX (Deutscher Commercial Internet Exchange), the largest internet exchange in the world by peak data rate, signed a deal for cooperation in internet sector.

The deal, which was signed on the sidelines of Iran Connect 2016 conference in Tehran, envisages Irans direct connection to the worlds leading internet operators, Fars news agency reported Sept. 7.

The TIC also signed an agreement with Telecom Italia Sparkle to set up a Point of Presence (PoP) in Tehran.

A PoP is an access point from one place to the rest of the internet. A PoP necessarily has a unique internet protocol (IP) address.

Alessandro Talotta, the Telecom Italia Sparkle CEO and Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi, Irans deputy ICT minister, signed the agreement on the sidelines of the Iran Connect 2016 conference.

The two-day Iran Connect 2016 conference kicked off in the capital city of Tehran on Sept. 6. The gathering is a platform for foreign companies willing to invest in Irans information technology and telecommunication sector.
Tehran, Iran, Sept. 9

By Mehdi Sepahvand - Trend:

Iran held protests against the rulers of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain as Iranians partook demonstrations after their Friday prayers across the country.

The demonstrators shouted Death to the House of Saud and Death to the House of Khalifa, Mehr news agency reported September 9.

Iran accuses Bahrain's ruling family of violating human rights and mistreating the Bahraini Shia citizens.

The House of Khalifa recently revokes Bahrains leading Shia cleric Ayatollah Sheikh Isa Ahmed Qassim of his nationality, which found strong criticism from Tehran.

Iran is also in political rift with Saudi Arabia after over 460 Iranians were found among the hundreds of pilgrims who died in a stampede on September 24, 2015, that occurred in Mina, near Mecca, during the annual Hajj pilgrimage.

This week on the anniversary of the tragedy, Irans Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei criticized the House of Saud for mismanaging the incident.

Saudi's Grand Mufti Abdul Aziz Sheikh replied by saying that Tehrans leaders are not Muslims, adding that Iranians are descendants of Majuws a term that refers to Zoroastrians (those who worship fire).

The Islamic Republic announced on May 29 that it wont dispatch pilgrims this year to Mecca due to Riyadhs failure to address Tehrans concerns regarding the safety of the pilgrims.
Tehran, Iran, Sept. 9

By Mehdi Sepahvand  Trend:

Iran is going to host an aerospace exhibition with 400 domestic and international science-based companies on October 25-28.

More than 80 companies from the Netherlands, the US, France, Germany, the UK, Belgium, Russia, China have expressed willingness to attend the exhibition, Bahmad Eftekhari, a member of board of directors of Iran Aerospace Industries Association, said, Mehr news agency reported Sept. 9.

He said the exhibition is going to be the seventh version of its kind. It has missed international participants in previous years.

However, now as sanctions are lifted, there is a chance to cooperate with foreigners, which means that Iranian companies will be trying to reach shared markets with foreign counterparts, Eftekhari said.

Irans Minister of Transport Abbas Akhondi will be heading the exhibition.
The Missouri Public Service Commission this week approved a proposed merger between Empire District Electric Co. and Liberty Utilities, a subsidiary of the Canadian Algonquin Power and Utilities Corp. The deal still requires approval by other regulatory agencies, including two agencies in Kansas.

The approval came as a result of settlements between the various interest groups involved in the case, including a settlement with the Missouri Division of Energy and Renew Missouri, which advocated for further clean energy commitments from Empire.

In its agreement with Renew Missouri and the Division of Energy, Empire committed to propose a new energy efficiency portfolio under the Missouri Energy Efficiency Investment Act. Empire is the only investor-owned utility without a PSC-approved approved energy efficiency portfolio, and Empire recently proposed discontinuing all of its energy efficiency programs entirely.

Energy efficiency is typically seen as both the cheapest and cleanest resource available to utilities, while also employing the most workers of any energy resource in the State.

Empire also committed to design and propose a community solar program, consider deploying microgrid technology, and study the potential for Combined Heat and Power, a technology that turns waste heat into electricity at industrial facilities.

Empire also agreed to separate settlements with the Office of Public Counsel, the City of Joplin, several labor unions, and groups representing Empire retirees.
A man who police say admitted hitting a bicyclist with his vehicle three months ago now is charged with leaving the scene of the accident.

The bicyclist died at a hospital but Yuwel Edwards, 23, is not charged with his death because police havent determined that he did anything criminal to cause the crash.

The hit-and-run crash was shortly after 11 p.m. on June 10 on Kearney Street near Baptist Bible College. Jesse Beach, 28, was the bicyclist who died a few days later after his family arranged for the donation of his organs and had him taken off life support systems.

Heres the

edited probable cause statement

written by a detective that is the basis of the charge against Edwards:

Witness information was obtained by Officer S. Martin indicating a white color SUV to be involved in this accident. Officer S. Martin spoke with a witness. She said a white older Ford Expedition or Explorer with tinted windows nearly struck her vehicle near the intersection of Kearney and Bolivar Road.

Officer D. Rowles was able to watch video footage from Baptist Bible College, 628 E. Kearney, and gained information which gave him a description for this Ford SUV. The only motor vehicle involved in this crash is the white Ford SUV according to Officer D. Rowles (DSN 1555). Officer D. Rowles advised the age of the vehicle was either late 1990s or early 2000 Ford Explorer or Expedition.

A 9-1-1 call led police officers to a 2000 Ford Explorer. The unknown 911 caller told dispatchers that someone was wiping/cleaning the front of this white 2000 Ford Explorer.

When Officer J. Miller (DSN 1576) arrived on scene, he began to photograph the vehicle and found the vehicle to have damage on the front bumper, hood and windshield. The vehicle was towed from 2100 N. Clifton (John B. Hughes Apartments) to the compound garage of the Springfield Police Department. The doors were sealed up with evidence tape by Officer J. Miller.

I examined a Shimano bicycle that Jesse Beach was seen riding on June 10 as well as the towed Ford Explorer. Upon examination of the front of the 2000 Ford Explorer, I was able to see damage under the front grill. Damage was found on the passenger side front of the vehicle near the headlight.

Damage on the passenger front bumper consisted of tire tread marks, a missing fog lamp housing and a small hole in the front vehicle body above the bumper. The hole was splintered and had paint transfer. The paint transfer was red.

I examined the Shimano bicycle and found it red. This red color was the same color as the paint transfer for the hole in the front body of the 2000 Ford Explorer. I further examined the Shimano bicycle and found the seat tightening screw to have a small piece of fiberglass stuck in the tightening nut.

The piece of fiberglass was white. Around the tightening nut was a white powdery substance that was the same white as the 2000 Ford Explorer. The height for the fiberglass piece found in the rear seat adjustment nut and height of the hole with red paint transfer in the front bumper of the 2000 Ford Explorer appear to be similar.

I spoke with several witnesses to this crash and found two witnesses that were nearly struck by this 2000 Ford Explorer before the collision with Beach. Witnesses (CC) and (AA) were riding in a passenger vehicle eastbound on Kearney when they were nearly struck several times by the Ford Explorer.

According to Officer S. Martins report, "CC stated she turned eastbound from Kansas Expressway onto Kearney when she observed a older white Ford Expedition or Explorer with tinted windows turn eastbound onto Kearney from Bolivar near Walgreens. CC said the white SUV almost collided into her vehicle then took off at a high rate of speed to get in front of her. CC told me she could see the driver of the vehicle and described him as a skinny black man.

CC said she remained behind the SUV as they both traveled eastbound on Kearney. CC told me both the SUV and her vehicle were in the outside lane when she observed a bicyclist riding eastbound on Kearney swerving between both the inside and outside lanes in front of the SUV near 628 E. Kearney. CC said the SUV moved to the inside lane at one point to try and pass the bicyclist then moved back to the outside lane as the bicyclist moved towards the middle of Kearney.

CC stated the SUV accelerated in what she thought was an attempt to pass the bicyclist from the outside lane. CC told me the bicyclist swerved back into the outside lane when the SUV collided into the rear of the bicycle. CC advised the SUV never slowed down and continued eastbound on Kearney after the crash.

I spoke with AA away from CC. AA provided a similar statement to CC. AA added that she observed the SUV turn southbound onto Summit from Kearney after the crash. AA advised the driver of the SUV was a black man but could not provide further information on the driver or SUV.

When I interviewed AA and CC, they provided the same details as stated above. AA and CC where shown a photo lineup with Yuwel Edwards's Department of Revenue photo. CC and AA were unable to identify Edwards as the driver of the Ford Explorer.

I spoke with two other witnesses identified as JR and ZB over the phone. Both JR and ZB are related to Beach and saw the accident when it took place. According to ZB's statement to me over the phone, he was driving a vehicle and JR was in the passenger seat as they were eastbound on Kearney. As they were driving on Kearney he saw Beach riding a bicycle going westbound on Kearney. ZB identified Beach as his cousin.

ZB said Beach was in the center lane when Beach saw ZB. ZB said Beach turned around to go back eastbound again. ZB said Beach was clipped by another vehicle but ZB was not sure of the style of vehicle that hit Beach.

JR indicated the same story as ZB but said she was driving ZB in a vehicle when the accident took place. JR told me during her phone interview that she saw the crash between a white SUV and Beach in the rearview mirror of her vehicle. She pulled over and had ZB take her car home while she tried to get Beach some help.

LH is the owner for this 2000 Ford Explorer. LH consented to an interview which took place at the South District Station on 07/14/2016. LH admitted during the interview that she spoke with Edwards about this accident. LH spoke with Edwards about this accident on 06/12/2016 around 1 p.m. Edwards was crying when speaking with LH. Edwards admitted to LH that he was not trying to hit the man while he was driving her vehicle.

Yuwel Edwards consented to an interview on 07/18/2016 at the South District Station. Yuwel admitted to being involved in the crash. Edwards told me during an interview that he was driving a white Ford Explorer that belongs to LH. Edwards admitted to driving LH's 2000 Ford Explorer east on Kearney near BBC.

Edwards saw Beach riding a bicycle. Edwards said he was driving the Ford Explorer in the right lane going eastbound on Kearney. He said Beach was also riding eastbound on Kearney in the right lane.

Edwards said Beach was swerving back and forth in the right lane and Edwards went to pass Beach in the left lane. Edwards said Beach swerved over into the left lane at the same time. Edwards attempted to pass Beach again by moving over into the right hand lane of eastbound Kearney. Beach again moved to the right and Edwards collided with Beach in the middle of the left and right lanes of eastbound Kearney. Edwards said Beach was thrown off the bicycle.

Edwards admitted to making a right turn onto Summit and left the scene of the accident. Edwards told me he left the scene of the accident due to fear of hitting Beach. Edwards admitted to not wanting to tell anybody about the accident.

Edwards also did not place a 9-1-1 call to let police and dispatch know about the accident. Edwards admitted going back to where he parked the SUV the next morning to wipe down the hood of the Ford Explorer so nobody would know the vehicle was involved an accident. Edwards said he used an old towel or shirt to wipe down the hood of the vehicle.

There was damage to the lower driver side portion of the front windshield of the Ford Explorer. Edwards said that damage was from the accident.

End of edited probable cause statement

Edwards could face a prison sentence as long as four years if hes convicted of leaving the scene of an accident. Prosecutors asked for a $25,000 bond when they filed the charge on Tuesday.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept. 9

By Orkhan Guluzade  Trend:

Turkey's continuing military operations in Syria, in particular the expected operations in the city of Al-Raqqah may cause dissatisfaction of the US, former head of the intelligence department of the General Staff of the Turkish Armed Forces, retired colonel-general Ismail Hakki Pekin told Trend Sept. 9.

However, the US will support Turkey in operations to liberate the Syrian city of Al-Bab from militants of the Islamic State (IS, aka ISIS, ISIL or Daesh) terrorist group, he said.

Pekin said that the Free Syrian Army (FSA) with the support of the Turkish Armed Forces is already on the outskirts of the city of Al-Bab.

The former intelligence chief of the Turkish General Staff believes that the country carries out operations in Syria not only for the security of its borders but also to preserve the territorial integrity of Syria.

The city of Aleppo must be cleared of IS terrorists to preserve Syria's territorial integrity, Pekin said. Aleppo is also strategically important for the onset of the Turkish Armed Forces on Al-Raqqah, and both Russia and Iran supports Ankara in this move.

Pekin doesnt rule out that it will be much easier to restore stability in Aleppo with the support of Tehran and Moscow.

On Aug. 24 morning, the Turkish Air Force, with the support of the coalition aircraft, launched an operation to liberate the city of Jarabulus from the IS militants in northern Syria, near Aleppo. The operation was dubbed Shield of the Euphrates.

Syria has been suffering from an armed conflict since March 2011, which, according to the UN, has so far claimed over 500,000 lives.

Militants from various armed groups are confronting the Syrian government troops. The Islamic State (IS, ISIL, ISIS or Daesh), the YPG and the PYD are the most active terrorist groups in Syria.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @o_quluzade
Missouri State University said Thursday that a touring production of Andrew Lloyd Webbers The Phantom the Opera will stop in Springfield for an extended run in May 2018. The famous show will be at Juanita K. Hammons Hall for the Performing Arts.

Edited news release:>/b> Cameron Mackintoshs spectacular new production of Andrew Lloyd Webbers THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA will make its Springfield premiere at Juanita K. Hammons Hall for the Performing Arts, on the campus of Missouri State University, in May 2018. With newly reinvented staging and stunning scenic design, this new version of PHANTOM is performed by a cast and orchestra of 52, making this one of the largest productions on tour in North America. The opportunity to reserve best seats for this long-awaited and highly-anticipated musical will go first to current Hammons Hall Broadway season subscribers, and new subscribers to the upcoming 2016-2017 Broadway Season at the Hall. For more information on the production and a video sneak peek, please visit www.ThePhantomOfTheOpera.com/ustour/ Andrew Lloyd Webber said, Its wonderful to have a new production of PHANTOM touring America now that the show has celebrated 28 years on Broadway. Director Laurence Connor has done an amazing job and this production has received huge critical acclaim in the U.K. Cameron Mackintosh said, With PHANTOM still the reigning champion as the longest-running production on Broadway after 28 phenomenal years, with no end in sight, Im delighted that this spectacular new production of PHANTOM has been as well-received in the U.S. as the brilliant original, and has already been seen by over 2 million people across North America since it opened in November 2013. With an exciting new design and staging, retaining Maria Bjornsons amazing costumes, the new PHANTOM is thrilling audiences and critics alike all over again  the music of the night is soaring to dazzling new heights. THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA has historically been one of our most requested shows, said Keith Boaz, executive director of Juanita K. Hammons Hall. We are thrilled to finally present it to our Springfield audiences, and to all the patrons who will travel to our venue to see it. We have no doubt that THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA will make our 2017-2018 Broadway Season one of the hottest tickets in town! End of edited news release
The Catholic Priest, Rev. Fr. Paul Irikefe, who was abducted by unknown gunmen along Benin bypass last Monday, has been released by his captors.

ThisDay checks revealed that the priest regained freedom on Wednesday night, though it could not be ascertained whether or not ransom was paid.

Father Irikefe, a lecturer with Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Major Seminary in Bodija, Ibadan, Oyo State, was kidnapped at Benin bye-pass in Edo State while on his way to attend the funeral of his colleague. It was further gathered that the traumatised priest has been reunited with the Bishop of Warri Diocese, Bishop John Okeoghene Afareha.

Follow Us on Facebook  @LadunLiadi; Instagram  @LadunLiadi; Twitter  @LadunLiadi; Youtube  @LadunLiadiTV for updates
04:23(GMT+4) Twelve people were killed late on Friday in two suicide bombings claimed by Islamic State at a shopping mall in eastern Baghdad, police and hospital sources said, Reuters reported.

More than 40 people were wounded in the attack at Nakheel Mall across from the oil ministry, the sources said. One bomb went off at the entrance to the mall, the other in the parking lot.

01:45(GMT+4) At least seven people were killed late on Friday when a car packed with explosives went off in front of a shopping mall in eastern Baghdad, police and hospital sources said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast, but Islamic State militants regularly attack civilian and security targets inside Iraq's capital.

More than 30 people were also wounded in the bombing at Nakheel Mall across from the oil ministry, and the death toll was expected to rise.
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A large earthquake has been detected in North Korea amid reports that the countrys regime had been planning a nuclear bomb test, the Guardian reported.

The US Geological Survey said on Friday that it had recorded a 5.3 seismic event near a nuclear test site.

The event took place at 9:30am local time and occurred at ground level. Naturally occurring earthquakes strike below ground. Its epicentre was 18 km (11 miles) east-northeast of Sungjibaegam, North Korea, the USGS said.

Three days ago, the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, said his military should continue nuclear weapons development after another round of test-firing of ballistic missiles.
Introductory Remarks by

Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hon. Mangala Samaraweera, MP.,

to Address by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon

organized by the Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute

Colombo, 1 September 2016

His Excellency Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations

Madam Ban Soon-taek

Excellencies

Ladies and Gentlemen

The first Prime Minister of Sri Lanka to address the UN General Assembly since Sri Lanka was granted membership in the United Nations in 1955, Hon. S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, articulated our intentions as a member of the UN, as follows:

This is an Organisation which expresses itself most effectively by bringing to bear a certain moral force  the collective moral force and decency of human beings. That is a task in which the weak as well as the strong can render a useful service, and I give the assembly the assurance, on behalf of my country, that as far as we are concerned, every endeavour that we can make in all sincerity to assist in the achievements of those noble ideas for which this Organisation stands, will always be forthcoming in the fullest measure.

Since joining the United Nations, Sri Lanka has contributed in numerous ways to the UN system including its norm setting process. Just five years since becoming a Member, Sri Lanka, then Ceylon, was elected as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council. Many distinguished Sri Lankans have served with distinction at the United Nations and have held important positions in the UN and its agencies. Our diplomats have chaired important conferences such as the Law of the Sea Conference and presided over the General Assembly, and the Security Council, as well as numerous other UN Ministerial level Meetings.

However, the long years of conflict that plagued our country saw us veer away at times, from the path of giving effect to that moral voice. Following the end of conflict in 2009, Sri Lanka tread a path that was unfamiliar to many of us; even quarrelling with the United Nations Organisation itself. But the winds of change began to sweep across our nation on the 8th of January 2015, when the people of our country, staying true to their legacy of being Asias oldest democracy, took charge of their destiny and voted decisively to steer us back on course.

Today, under the leadership of President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, Sri Lanka stands firmly on the path of engagement and friendship with all nations; engagement and friendship with the world community; and engagement and friendship with the United Nations and its agencies, which have stood by our people and travelled with us in our journey, since Independence, both in good times and in bad.

Today, we are working to heal the wounds of our people who bear scars from years of conflict that has left no individual and no community untouched. We are taking our responsibilities towards our people and the international community with due seriousness, and as we work to promote understanding amongst our peoples, we also strive to work for the promotion of understanding and respect for each other, at a global level. We have set for ourselves a clear path towards reconciliation and for achieving equitable and sustainable development for all our people; to build a country that upholds the dignity of all, and stands firmly against the politics of ethnic and religious division.

Sri Lanka has realigned its policies with the principles enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations. By committing ourselves to the safeguarding of universal values and by respecting international system regulations that sustain global stability, Sri Lanka has shed its brief period of self-isolation which, no doubt, was an aberration in our long democratic journey.

We are now on a historic journey today to build a Sri Lanka that,

-safeguards, promotes and protects the rights and dignity of all, and equality of all;

-respects and celebrates the multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-religious nature of our society;

-empowers our youth and our women;

-upholds the rule of law; respects democracy and fundamental freedoms including the freedom of the media;

-preserves our environment while taking steps to ensure integrated and equitable sustainable development;

-gives priority to securing the best education possible for our children and youth, including the skills they require to meet the demands of the global value chain;

-focuses on infrastructure development, and economic growth required for the prosperity of all our people;

-and enhances and encourages understanding and preservation of culture, respect for each others traditions and beliefs, and is always conscious of the need to be a responsible and respected member of the international community.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Our Guest Speaker today, His Excellency Ban Ki-moon, is perhaps the worlds best known and most recognised personality, and does not need a lengthy introduction. Yet, perhaps a brief one would not be out of place.

I had the honour of first meeting Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon when he was the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade of his country. His generosity towards the people of Sri Lanka  the childrens hospital and the bridge in Matara  stand tall as icons etched in peoples hearts.

Mr. Ban Ki-moon was appointed as Secretary-General of the United Nations on 1 January 2007 and was unanimously re-elected by the General Assembly for a second term in 2011. He is the 8th Secretary-General of the UN and only the second from Asia to hold this important post.

During his tenure at the helm of the United Nations, he has devoted himself to actively mobilising world leaders around a set of new global challenges, from climate change and economic upheaval to pandemics and increasing pressures involving food, energy and water.

One of his first major initiatives was the 2007 Climate Change Summit, followed by extensive diplomatic efforts that have helped put the issue at the forefront of the global agenda, culminating in the Paris Agreement. I believe that this historic Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals will stand as milestones achieved during His Excellency Secretary-General Ban Ki-moons tenure. Just yesterday, we were discussing about how much time and energy His Excellency has devoted to these noble goals, which we hope will be carried forward with the same vigour when the leadership of the United Nations passes on at the end of this year.

His Excellency advocated successfully for the creation of UN Women, a major new agency that consolidates the UNs work in this area. His advocacy for womens rights and gender equality has also included the "Unite to End Violence against Women" campaign, the "Stop Rape Now" initiative, the creation of a "Network of Men Leaders" and the establishment of a new Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict. Within the UN itself, the Secretary-General has increased the number of women in senior management positions by more than 40 per cent, reaching the highest level in the Organizations history.

The Secretary-General has also worked hard to strengthen UN peace efforts and has taken several important steps to improve the impact of the United Nations "blue helmets" operating in the worlds conflict zones.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

As you all know, this is Secretary-General Ban Ki-moons second visit to Sri Lanka, his first visit having taken place seven years ago in 2009. Throughout these 7 years, the Secretary-General maintained his advocacy for democracy, good governance, reconciliation, justice and human rights in our country  goals which the National Unity Government under the leadership of President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe  share, and are determined to pursue for the benefit of all our peoples.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moons visit at this juncture, along with Mrs. Ban Soon-taek is an honour and recognition for the people of our country who have taken bold decisions at elections, twice last year, and signifies the firm renewal of engagement between the United Nations and Sri Lanka.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

In my capacity as the Chairman of the Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute of International Relations and Strategic Studies, I now have the honour of inviting the Secretary-General of the United Nations, His Excellency Ban Ki-moon, to address this gathering.

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United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has condemned North Koreas latest nuclear test and called on the United Nations Security Council to take "appropriate action" in response of Pyongyangs action undermining peace and security in the region, TASS reported.

"I condemn in the strongest possible terms the underground nuclear test by the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea. This is yet another brazen breach of the resolutions of the Security Council," Ban said on Friday.

"For the fifth time in recent years, the DPRK alone has broken the international norm against nuclear tests," he said.

"This unacceptable act endangers peace and security in the region and is another vivid reminder of the urgent need to strengthen the global nuclear test ban regime."



"I count on the Security Council to remain united and take appropriate action. We must urgently break this accelerating spiral of escalation," Ban stressed.

The United Nations secretary general reminded that the Security Council has already taken a series of sanction measure against North Korea but they failed to force the North Korean leadership to abandon nuclear weapons. He called on all countries to strictly obey the United Nations Security Council resolutions and cooperate in their implementation to ensure maximum efficiency of the sanction regime.

He called on North Korea to "to reverse its course and commit to a path of denuclearization." "Rather than pursuing nuclear weapons and ballistic missile technology, the DPRK should be promoting the well-being of the countrys people," he said.

The United Nations Security Council is to have a meeting later on Friday to discuss the situation on the Korean Peninsula and possible measures in response to North Koreas latest nuclear test, the firth one in the past ten years.

Earlier on Friday, Russias Permanent Representative to the United Nations Vitaly Churkin said the Security Council should collectively condemn Pyongyangs activities and discuss possible response measures. Britains Permanent Representative, Matthew Rycroft, said London would seek to have the anti-Pyongyang sanctions be toughened and the list of those covered by these sanctions be extended.

The United Nations Security Council resolutions ban Pyongyang to engage in any activities linked with the development of nuclear weapons and their delivery means. In March, The United Nations Security Council passed resolution 2270 that dramatically toughens the sanctions imposed on Pyongyang. But despite this, North Korea has conducted more than ten missile tests in the recent months, with the latest test carried out on September 5. The United Nations Security Council condemned these tests and warned Pyongyang of further sanctions in case it continues to violate resolutions.

On Friday, North Korea conducted its fifth nuclear test. According to South Koreas ministry of national defense, it was the most powerful missile ever tested by Pyongyang. The four previous nuclear tests were conducted by North Korea in 2006, in 2009, in 2013 and in January 2016.
J.D. Salinger was such a recluse that the idea of living in his house seems fantastically impossible. But for cartoonists, its not: A new residency will launch at his old house in Cornish, N.H., in early 2017.

Salinger is no longer there, of course. The famed author of The Catcher in the Rye, Franny and Zooey, Nine Stories and Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters and Seymour, an Introduction died at age 91 in 2010.

By then, he wasnt living in the house where the residency will take place. It was his home from 1953 to 1967, when he divorced his wife, Claire, and moved to another house in town. Claire kept the house, selling it in 1983; it went on the market again, mostly unchanged, in 2014.

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The New Yorker details that history in a story about the residency; Sarah Larson visited the house to learn more about it (and also to look at original artwork by Garth Williams, who illustrated the childrens book, Charlottes Web.)

Larson reports that New Yorker cartoonist Harry Bliss bought the house recently  charmed by its vintage kitchen tile and by its many nooks. One thing that didnt get detailed in the 2014 real estate listing was the tunnel connecting the house and garage studio apartment. The tunnel, well built and spacious, was carpeted; the garage was carpeted too, she writes.

1 / 13 The former Salinger home sits on 12 acres. (Jim Mauchly / Mountain Graphics Photography) 2 / 13 J.D. Salingers former home in Cornish, N.H., is for sale for $679,000. (Jim Mauchly / Mountain Graphics Photography) 3 / 13 The house was purchased by J.D. Salinger in 1953, the year Nine Stories was published. (Jim Mauchly / Mountain Graphics Photography) 4 / 13 The open-plan kitchen opens to dining room, which includes a brick fireplace at right. (Jim Mauchly / Mountain Graphics Photography) 5 / 13 the former J.D. Salinger home was built in 1939. (Jim Mauchly / Mountain Graphics Photography) 6 / 13 Salingers house is secluded, of course, located down a 1-mile dirt road. (Jim Mauchly / Mountain Graphics Photography) 7 / 13 Salinger sold the house in the 1960s. (Jim Mauchly / Mountain Graphics Photography) 8 / 13 A vintage fireplace upstairs in the former home of J.D. Salinger thats for sale. (Jim Mauchly / Mountain Graphics Photography) 9 / 13 An upstairs hallway of J.D. Salingers former home. (Jim Mauchly / Mountain Graphics Photography) 10 / 13 A spare bedroom in J.D. Salingers former house. His character Seymour Glass would have had to stoop to sit on one of these beds. (Jim Mauchly / Mountain Graphics Photography) 11 / 13 A workshop in Salingers house holds many books. (Jim Mauchly / Mountain Graphics Photography) 12 / 13 The former Salinger property includes a studio apartment above the garage. (Jim Mauchly / Mountain Graphics Photography) 13 / 13 Salingers house sits on 12 acres and has its own stream. Its nice to think he might have written here. (Jim Mauchly / Mountain Graphics Photography)

You could argue that in New Hampshire, with its frigid winters, a tunnel is a cozy way to travel between buildings. You could also make the case that Salinger, who treasured his privacy, found a way to come and go away from prying eyes.

Larson continues, We climbed a staircase to a little studio with white walls, a bright window, a kitchen area. In the back, there was a little office and a bathroom with a claw-foot tub. Bliss said that Salinger had liked to come there to be alone and work, and had stayed there toward the end of his first marriage.

Thats where the artist-in-residence will live, in the garage apartment. The garage itself has been turned into a kind of gallery.

Bliss, who lives not far away in Burlington, Vt., uses the main house himself as a place to go for seclusion to work.

The Cornish Cartoon Residency, which will take place during February 2017, is being offered by the Center for Cartoon Studies. It is accepting applications now through Nov. 1, and in addition to living in Salingers place, the cartoonist will get a $600 stipend and be asked to give a talk at the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, Vt., 16 miles away.

The residency, aside from the perk of living where Salinger once did, does have some special requirements: The resident should have a four-wheel drive vehicle and be willing to shovel snow from the walkways.

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Read the obituary: J.D. Salinger dies at 91
Pushing forward with its plan to be both a car company and a mobility company, Ford on Friday said its getting into the crowd-sourced shuttle business and moving into bicycle sharing.

The automaker also said it would collaborate more closely with cities around the world to help solve transportation problems.

Its pretty clear the transportation systems we developed in the last century are at a breaking point, Ford Motor Co. Chief Executive Mark Fields said.

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In a fenced-off area in front of San Francisco City Hall, Fields said the company will acquire Chariot, a young San Francisco company. The start-up operates about 100 Ford Transit vans to shuttle passengers around the Bay Area, with the 28 routes chosen based on rider demand.

Fields did not disclose the purchase price for Chariot, which plans to roll out to five more cities over the next 18 months.

Ford will also collaborate with Motivate, a Brooklyn, N.Y.-based bicycle-sharing service. The two plan to provide 7,000 bikes in the Bay Area by the end of 2018 under the brand Ford GoBike, accessible through the FordPass app platform.

Joined on stage by the mayors of San Francisco, San Jose and Berkeley, Fields, 55, said the moves signal a much larger presence by Ford in alternative transportation.

Were going to see bikes reproducing like bunnies all around the Bay Area, said San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo.

Globally, Fields said, We want to work with communities to offer even more transportation choices and solutions for people  for decades to come.

Ford began its push into the mobility business years ago, but redoubled its efforts after Fields became CEO in July 2014.

Last March, the company created a subsidiary, Ford Smart Mobility, to work with the companys existing research and development group to bring transportation innovations to market.

Its operations are split between Fords headquarters in Dearborn, Mich., just outside Detroit, and Palo Alto, in the heart of Silicon Valley.

Beyond its own R&D, the group intends to form relationships with technology companies large and small to quicken the pace from conception to salable products and services.

The group is led by Jim Hackett, who quit Fords board of directors to take the job. Hackett was the longtime chief executive at Steelcase, the Michigan-based office furniture giant. Hes been credited with identifying early the trend from office cubicles to open office areas.

russ.mitchell@latimes.com

Twitter: @russ1mitchell

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UPDATES:

11:40 a.m. This article was updated with additional details and quotes from the news conference.

This article was originally published at 10 a.m.
The gig: Stephen Cheung, 37, is president of World Trade Center Los Angeles, which is charged with promoting local businesses overseas and attracting foreign investment to the region. Before that, Cheung worked as director of international trade for the Port of L.A. and served as an aide to two mayors: Eric Garcetti and Antonio Villaraigosa.

China factor: In his role at World Trade Center L.A., an affiliate of the nonprofit Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp., Cheung eyes business opportunities from all over the world. But his background and expertise make him vital for one of the globes biggest economic trends  Chinese outbound investment. China is on a spending spree, and L.A. County is a major beneficiary. Hollywood studios, downtown real estate developments and hotel properties are now regularly infused with Chinese money. Over the years, Cheung has become one of the first points of contact for Chinese companies looking to enter the L.A. market.

Helping them adjust: One of Cheungs biggest jobs is explaining how things work in the U.S. Though China is the worlds second-largest economy, many of its companies are going global for the first time. As a result, some executives are learning the American regulatory and cultural environment on the fly. Its not uncommon for Chinese firms to complain to Cheung that projects require too much environmental oversight and community input. In China, they say, the government is all-powerful. Why isnt it the same in L.A.?

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I explain what [the California Environmental Quality Act is] and what an environmental impact report is, Cheung said. They usually have heard of them and understand them in concept. But theyre not completely convinced its necessary.

Then there are the blunders caused by inexperience. Instead of using a commercial real estate broker, one Chinese firm looking to build a mixed-use development chose a residential real estate agent instead. The salesperson had been helping a company executive find a house in the San Gabriel Valley but did not have the expertise to handle the commercial project. The development never made it off the ground.

Then there was the Chinese bank that promised Cheung it would open an office in L.A. Cheung was mystified when the firm later chose Pasadena. It turned out to be a misunderstanding about the geography of L.A. County. The Chinese bank didnt know the difference between L.A. city and L.A. County, Cheung said. They thought that Pasadena was in L.A.

Hardscrabble beginnings: Unlike many of the well-heeled Chinese immigrants who come to Southern California today, Cheung grew up poor in Hacienda Heights. At only 9 years old, Cheung joined his mother working at a sweatshop in El Monte. He earned half a penny for each thread he cut off a dress shirt. He later toiled as a busboy and waiter at Chinese restaurants where hed dread seeing his classmates come in with their families on weekends for dim sum.

When youre in survival mode that young, you dont know how to feel sorry for yourself, said Cheung, who after graduating from UCLA took jobs at Asian American social service agencies because of his experience at the sweatshop.

Language barrier: Cheung spoke only Cantonese, the native language in Hong Kong, when he arrived in the U.S. in 1987. The local school district found a Chinese speaker who could help Cheung learn English. The problem was the tutor was from Taiwan and spoke Mandarin, the primary language in China.

I had to learn Mandarin to learn English, Cheung said. In hindsight, it helped my career.

From politics to commerce: After a few years in social work, Cheung interned with Rep. Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles) when she was a state assemblywoman. That led to a position as a community liaison for Villaraigosa. Cheungs background later proved invaluable to the former mayor as commerce between the city and China increased. Cheung later landed at the Port of L.A. and then served as secretary general of foreign affairs and trade under Garcetti.

Being diplomatic: Cheung has helped plan trade missions and mayoral trips to China. One of the keys to a successful visit is knowing cultural protocol. In China, government officials are seated prominently ahead of businesspeople.

I have to explain to our [American] CEOs as director of international trade I will sit in the head seat in front of them even though we view them as equal to the mayor and staff, Cheung said.

david.pierson@latimes.com

Follow me @dhpierson on Twitter
Samsung Electronics acquired Southern California oven-and-stove maker Dacor in order to get a foothold in the upscale home appliance market, Samsung Chief Executive Boo-Keun Yoon said Thursday.

Yoon said buying the City of Industry company, a deal announced in August, gave Samsung access without forcing it to undertake the slow process of developing its own in-house brand.

In order to meet our aspirations in becoming the global leader in home appliances, we needed a premium brand, Yoon said. We can go faster by acquiring a company such as Dacor.

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The purchase price was not disclosed, but the Korean Economic Daily, citing unnamed sources, pegged the deal at $150 million.

Dacor  short for Distinctive Appliance Corp.  makes and sells high-end home appliances such as ovens, ranges and stoves that are a common sight in luxury homes (much of the cooking-related products sold are produced in the City of Industry). The company has roughly 250 employees.

On Thursday, Yoon and other high-ranking Samsung executives feted the purchase with a celebration at Dacor headquarters. Employees, mostly dressed in white polo shirts embroidered with the words Samsung Dacor, clinked champagne glasses and ate a blue-and-white iced cake.

Lloyd Greif of Greif & Co., the investment banker who represented Dacor in the deal, has said that he expects Samsung to aggressively market the Dacor brand, including outside the United States. Samsung also gains a new manufacturing hub in Dacors three-building complex in City of Industry, Greif said.

Samsung is driven to be No. 1 across the board, he said.

Gregory Lee, head of Samsung Electronics in North America, said the company has found that consumers are increasingly interested in appliances that do more than just cook food and keep produce from spoiling. He pointed to Samsungs Family Hub refrigerator, which enables people to see photos of whats inside via their phones and send notes and reminders via the Wi-Fi connected touchscreen (it also plays music).

Smart appliances are among the items Samsung found attractive about Dacor. The company already sells a smart oven with an integrated tablet. The Korea Economic Daily reported Dacor has about $45 million in estimated annual sales.

Dacor was founded in 1965. But its roots trace back to 1948, when brothers Stan and Anthony Joseph started selling ventilation hoods under the Stanthony Corp. name, according to the company website.

Yoons visit comes as the CEO is facing pressure following the high-profile recall of Samsungs Galaxy Note 7 smartphones after reports of batteries catching fire or exploding.

On Thursday, Yoon declined to comment on the recall.

Im not in a position to answer about mobile phones, he said. Im in charge of consumer electronics.

shan.li@latimes.com

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Airbnb tries to fight racism with rule changes
Accused of doing too little to thwart discrimination on its short-term home rental platform, Airbnb announced policy changes Thursday that are intended to educate and punish hosts who dont follow its rules and protect guests.

In a 32-page report written by former American Civil Liberties Union director Laura Murphy, Airbnb detailed new policies such as voluntary anti-bias training for those who list their homes on the service, and suspensions for those who violate its code of conduct.

The San Francisco start-up will offer 24/7 personalized support to guests who cannot book a listing because they have been discriminated against, and give users quick and easy ways to report discrimination. Airbnb also pledged to diversify its workforce.

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Brian Chesky, Airbnbs co-founder and chief executive, wrote on the companys website: Discrimination is the opposite of belonging, and its existence on our platform jeopardizes this core mission. Bias and discrimination have no place on Airbnb, and we have zero tolerance for them.

The moves come as diversity, discrimination and the social responsibility of firms that operate peer-to-peer platforms have become issues du jour in the technology industry.

The news drew mixed responses from observers, who were split between applauding the new policies and calling the effort too little too late.

There are parts of it that make me feel optimistic, and there are parts that are almost laughable, said Rohan Gilkes, the founder of Innclusive, an alternative to Airbnb that is slated to launch next month.

Gilkes, 40, said he liked a new feature that bars a host who has turned down a prospective guest from accepting a different guest on the same dates. The feature hits close to home for Gilkes, who penned an essay this year titled Im a black man  heres what happened when I booked an Airbnb. In the essay, he wrote about a host telling him that certain dates were unavailable only to later accept a booking from his Caucasian friend for those very dates.

Although he thinks that the date-blocking feature is a step in the right direction, Gilkes believes that Airbnb needs to go further by implementing blind booking. Hosts and guests can currently see information such as a persons first name, a short bio and a profile picture.

If you look at what Uber did, you dont get to see the persons name or photo until after youve been matched with them, he said. It doesnt solve the problem of someone canceling a booking once its been made, but at least it lets you gather data, you can isolate the issue and you can take action.

In Airbnbs report, Murphy said information such as user photos are essential to Airbnbs overall mission of building a community. Instead of introducing blind booking, it will experiment with reducing the prominence of a users profile picture.

But even that move drew criticism.

Protests of Airbnb, like this one on the Venice boardwalk last year, have focused on affordable housing and zoning. Now Airbnb is addressing another issue: discrimination. (Christina House / For The Times)

I feel like that takes away from the community aspect and makes things less transparent, said Stefan Grant, 27, the co-founder of Noirbnb, a black-owned competitor to Airbnb that rolled out this summer.

Grant and Noirbnbs co-founder, Ronnia Cherry, made news last year when, while they were staying at an Airbnb home, neighbors called the police assuming that they were burglarizing the house. Their story was one of several prominent case studies showing the challenges that people of color face when using the service.

People shouldnt have to hide who they are because other users are prejudiced, Grant said.

Blind booking would tackle discrimination on the platform to some extent, but the problem reaches far beyond that, according to business strategy and branding experts.

Thats because racial, gender and sexual identity discrimination arent procedural problems, theyre human problems, and companies cant create a feature that will make them go away while also hanging onto lofty notions of community, said John Paolini, partner and executive creative director of brand engagement firm Sullivan.

A major hotel chain can establish hard-and-fast rules to halt discrimination among its staff, but Airbnb cant come across as too heavy-handed if it wants to retain hosts. It must strike a balance to retain the sense of community, Paolini said.

Ultimately Airbnb is a de facto hotel, even if it doesnt want to be, Paolini said. While it may have begun as a community between hosts and guests when its base was smaller, the platform is now just too widely used to maintain that sense of community.

Other business experts think that its possible for Airbnb to nudge its users into better behavior, but it will take more than new policies.

We have to think of it in layers, said Bernice Ledbetter, a professor of faculty organizational theory and management at Pepperdine University. We cant legislate morality through laws and guidelines. We can corral behavior, but we cant change attitudes. I think Airbnb is trying to change attitudes and the way people think by talking about discrimination.

In that sense, Airbnb finds itself in the same boat as other tech companies whose users have discriminated against each other on their platforms.

Instead of retroactively suspending users for their actions, these companies are trying to proactively educate and prevent discrimination in the first place. After being criticized for not doing enough to curb racism on its platform, neighborhood social networking site Nextdoor implemented a feature this year that required users  when reporting a crime or suspicious character  to describe a persons dress in addition to his or her race.

Business strategists believe that moves like this are important first steps and their effectiveness will have to be measured over time.

Airbnb wont be alone in figuring out its discrimination problems.

This challenge is particularly endemic to the digital world, Paolini said. The Internet has created the illusion that we have no responsibility for each others humanity, and this is something the Internet is going to struggle with for a very long time.

tracey.lien@latimes.com

Twitter: @traceylien

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Its payoff time: Los Angeles dance community, after decades of slow progress, is poised to have a season thats unprecedented in its breadth and quality.

The biggest stages  Royce Hall and the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion  will present the national and international troupes that we have come to expect. But the striking difference this season is that so much worthwhile dance will be generated from companies that call L.A. home.

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The training of dancers and cultivation of choreographers, directors and audiences has been, and probably will continue to be, a painfully slow, two-steps-forward, one-step-back process, and a major venue dedicated to dance still eludes us. But an increasing number of theaters are stepping up to provide more consistent support to companies based here.

The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills will have L.A.-based Jacob Jonas company on Jan. 13, and the renovated Ford amphitheater in Hollywood will host contemporary Invertigo Dance Theatre on Sept. 30. Barak Ballet is collaborating with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for a Nov. 6 performance at ARC Pasadena inspired by Mars exploration, and next month USC opens its Glorya Kaufman International Dance Center. Jodie Gates, school director and vice dean, is partnering with the Music Center and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for an extravaganza of October shows, exhibitions and discussions celebrating the work of choreographer William Forsythe.

Other dance highlights in the months to come:

SEPT. 23-25

Diavolo and Passengers

Diavolo, an L.A.-born troupe that has made it to the international stage, will celebrate its 25th anniversary with a program that includes the new work Passengers.

The Broad Stage, 1310 11th St., Santa Monica. $40-$90. (310) 434-3200. www.thebroadstage.com

FULL COVERAGE: Your fall arts and culture guide to L.A.

SEPT. 29-OCT. 23

William Forsythe

Born in New York but long based in Frankfurt, Germany, William Forsythe is a theatrical provocateur whose radical innovations changed classical dance. Now hes an artistic advisor and professor at USCs Glorya Kaufman School of Dance, where vice dean Jodie Gates is one of Forsythes former dancers. Members of Houston Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet and San Francisco Ballet will perform classics and newer pieces at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. USC will host three days of events, the Music Center will have a costume exhibition and LACMA will host site-specific performances by professionals and students.

Focus Forsythe: The Choreographers Process, Sept. 29-30, and Futures in Motion, Oct. 14, Glorya Kaufman International Dance Center, USC, 849 W. 34th St., Los Angeles, free. Forsythe Designed: A Costume Exhibition, Oct. 1-23, Music Center, 135 N. Grand Ave., Los Angeles, free. Site-Specific Forsythe, Oct. 15-16, LACMA, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, museum admission $10-$15. Celebrate Forsythe with Houston Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet and San Francisco Ballet, Oct. 21-23, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., Los Angeles, $34-$138, (213) 972-0711, musiccenter.org/forsythe. General info: kaufman.usc.edu/fall-for-forsythe/.

OCT. 8, 22 and 29

Los Angeles Ballet and Untouched

Co-directors Thordal Christensen and Colleen Neary kick off the ballets second decade with a fall repertory program that includes the company premiere of Untouched, a 2010 piece choreographed by New York-based Aszure Barton. Also scheduled: Bournonvilles Pas de Six and Tarantella from the ballet Napoli and the return of Balanchines brilliant and still-provocative Stravinsky Violin Concerto.

On Oct. 8, Alex Theatre, 216 N. Brand Blvd., Glendale. On Oct. 22, Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center, 1935 Manhattan Beach Blvd. On Oct. 29, Royce Hall, UCLA, 340 Royce Drive, Westwood. $29.50-$104. (310) 998-7782. www.losangelesballet.org.

Los Angeles Times Ideas Exchange: Christopher Hawthorne in conversation with Frank Gehry  On Now Frank Gehrys thoughts on the Broad? Watch his hilarious groan On Now Watch Frank Gehry in conversation with architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne On Now Why Frank Gehry never showed up to work for Richard Neutra On Now Frank Gehry recalls Rudolph Schindler style: Rough, raw and unpredictable On Now How Frank Gehry defended his Santa Monica home against a critical neighbor On Now Frank Gehry wants the L.A. River Revitalization project to help the neighboring communities On Now With the L.A. River, Frank Gehry thinks L.A. wont need to import as much water, saving a lot of money 1:28 On Now Frank Gehrys approach to the L.A. River  a lot of collaborators

OCT. 15-16

Deborah Hay and Cullberg Ballet

A founding member of the influential Judson Dance Theater collective of the 1960s, Deborah Hay is as focused on the process of creation as the performance. She began exploring the use of technology in choreography back with Bell Labs computer experts in the late 60s and developed large-scale works with untrained dancers who executed simple, everyday gestures. The Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA will present adaptations of a Hay solo in two separate but related events: longtime Hay collaborators Ros Warby and Jeanine Durning in an afternoon performance of As Holy Sites Go, and then in the evening, Swedens cutting-edge Cullberg Ballet performing Figure a Sea, with a sound score by Laurie Anderson.

Freud Playhouse, UCLA, 245 Charles E. Young Drive, Westwood. $29-$49 per performance (10% discount with purchase of both). (310) 825-2101. www.cap.ucla.edu.

OCT. 27-29

BodyTraffic

Dancers from BodyTraffic perform at the Music Center Plaza last year. (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times )

This homegrown, high-energy contemporary company will be all over Southern California in the next two months. Its in Orange County for the Laguna Dance Festival on Sept. 24 and at the new Musco Center in Orange on Oct. 15. But co-directors Lillian Barbeito and Tina Finkelman Berkett also have found an important landing spot at the Broad Stage, where the company had a residency over the summer. There, choreographer Richard Siegal will present a new work to Gershwin, 3 Preludes, his third piece in the rep (with a fourth planned for next year). The group also has commissions from London-based choreographer Arthur Pita, who has compared his style to that of filmmaker David Lynch, and from Anton Lachky, Czech maker of high-octane and occasionally dark pieces. Barbeito and Finkelman Berkett continue to populate the repertory with works by exciting choreographers who are lesser known in Los Angeles.

The Broad Stage, 1310 11th St., Santa Monica. $40-$90. (310) 434-3200. www.thebroadstage.com.

OCT. 28

Carmen de Lavallade

Born in Los Angeles 85 years ago, Carmen de Lavallade has had a remarkable life as a dancer, choreographer and actress. The one-woman show that she co-wrote and stars in, As I Remember It, hits the high points and some of her struggles. After she moved to New York City with Alvin Ailey, whom she introduced to Lester Hortons L.A. dance studio, De Lavallade spent most of her life on the East Coast. This is a rare chance to spend an evening with a legend.

Bram Goldsmith Theater, Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, 9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd., Beverly Hills $50-$75. (310) 746-4000. www.thewallis.org.

OCT. 29

Ragamala Dance Company

This Minneapolis-based company is headed by mother Ranee Ramaswamy and daughter Aparna Ramaswamy, who returned annually to India for months at a time for intensive study of the classical dance form bharata natyam. From that base, the Ramaswamys create works using nontraditional story lines and contemporary hybrid musical compositions. The audience will be sitting onstage for Written in the Water, their latest piece, in which the space is transformed into an ancient board game on which the dance is partly based.

Valley Performing Arts Center, 18111 Nordhoff St., Northridge. $43. (818) 677-3000. www.valleyperformingartscenter.org.

NOV. 3-6

Pat Graney Companys Girl Gods

For more than 25 years, Seattle-based choreographer Pat Graney has been exploring female roles in her dances and using her art to improve womens lives. Her most recent performance-dance piece, Girl Gods, continues that examination with the all-female cast expressing some red-hot rage at the system.

REDCAT, 631 W. Second St., Los Angeles. $10-$25. (213) 237-2800. www.redcat.org.

NOV. 18-19

Robert Wilson and Mikhail Baryshnikov

Letter to a Man is not your typical one-man show: Mikhail Baryshnikov stars in Robert Wilsons adaptation of Vaslav Nijinskys diary, written in the 6 weeks before the renowned dancer was confined to a mental institution. This is theater with movement, featuring Wilsons trademark slow-motion and his complex lighting designs.

Royce Hall, UCLA, 340 Royce Drive, Westwood. $99-$129. (310) 825-2101. www.cap.ucla.edu.

NOV. 18-20

Mikhailovsky Ballets Le Corsaire

If the forthcoming season is short on anything, its classical ballet. Le Corsaire provides some of that with choreographer Marius Petipas precise, crystalline lines, as revised by Konstantin Sergeyev and by Mikhailovsky ballet master in chief Mikhail Messerer. The story is pure movie matinee  about pirates, slave girls and harems. Check reality at the door and enjoy the dancing.

Segerstrom Center for the Arts, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. $29-$149. (714) 556-2787. www.scfta.org.

DEC. 9-10

Benjamin Millepied and L.A. Dance Project

Some wondered if Benjamin Millepied would abandon L.A. Dance Project when he left the city to be artistic director of Paris Opera Ballet in 2014, only two years after founding the L.A. troupe. But the company, started with Music Center support and fanfare, is clearly Millepieds baby, and here he is, back in town. L.A. Dance Project will come to the Theatre at Ace Hotel with a Millepied premiere to music by Rufus Wainwright, who will be singing and playing, and the first local showing of Millepieds On the Other Side, with a backdrop by L.A. artist Mark Bradford. Theatre at Ace Hotel, 929 S. Broadway, Los Angeles. Call for ticket prices. (213) 623-3233. www.acehotel.com/losangeles/theatre.

JAN. 28

BalletBoyz

Created in 2000 by Michael Nunn and William Trevitt, former principal dancers with the Royal Ballet of London, this all-male company broke ground with choreography and cheeky videos. Nunn and Trevitt wanted to make ballet more fun and interesting for general audiences, and though they have retired from the stage, BalletBoyzs reason for being remains the same. In Long Beach they will perform two new works themed on life and death.

Carpenter Performing Arts Center, 6200 E. Atherton St., Long Beach. $50. (562) 985-7000. www.carpenterarts.org.

Follow The Times arts team @culturemonster.

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Some promising works to read and watch for this fall, including a pleasant discovery at UC Davis:

Sept. 22

Eyes on the Street: The Life of Jane Jacobs

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Robert Kanigels new biography of the pioneering social critic and author Jane Jacobs takes its title from the phrase most closely associated with her life and work  one suggesting that the most crowded city blocks, those with the most eyes on them, tend thanks to that collective attention to be the safest and liveliest. Arriving near the end of Jacobs centenary year, the book explores her theories on what makes neighborhoods and cities successful  theories that helped topple the leading Modernist dogmas of postwar American urban theory, including those advanced by her longtime nemesis, New York planning czar Robert Moses.

$35, Alfred A. Knopf

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Sept. 23

Irving J. Gill: New Architecture for a Great Country

This exhibition at the San Diego History Center is but one part of an ambitious, sprawling tribute to the pioneering California architect; it also includes shows at the Oceanside Museum of Art, the La Jolla Historical Society and the Barona Cultural Center & Museum, among others. Despite a fair amount of scholarly and critical attention over the years  including a fine 2000 biography by the architectural historian Thomas Hines, who will be lecturing on the architect at UC Santa Barbara on Sept. 17  Gill remains hugely underappreciated, a figure who was producing ruthlessly spare, flat-roofed modern houses and apartment blocks as early (and expertly) as any member of the more famous Bauhaus school in Germany. You could even say he is the architect most directly responsible  more than R.M. Schindler, Richard Neutra or any of the Case Study crowd  for the character of Southern California modernism.

Through March 31. 1649 El Prado, Suite No. 3, Balboa Park, San Diego. $6-$10. (619) 232- 6203, sandiegohistory.org, Information on the series of exhibitions and events at irvingjgill.org.

FULL COVERAGE: Your fall arts and culture guide to L.A.

Sept. 24

National Museum of African American History and Culture

The soon-to-open Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. (Alex Wong / Getty Images )

The newest of the Smithsonian museums and the 19th overall  and the deeply fraught product of a dream pursued by African American cultural and political leaders for a full century  the NMAAHC occupies a fittingly prominent spot near the center of the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Designed by a team of architects led by David Adjaye, who was born in Tanzania to Ghanian parents and lives and works in London, the dramatic rectangular building is wrapped in latticed bronze panels, a feature Adjaye has said is drawn from Yoruba artwork of West Africa.

(844) 750-3012, nmaahc.si.edu

Nov. 5

Louis Kahn: The Power of Architecture

A show on arguably the most important figure in postwar American architecture lands at the San Diego Museum of Art after stints in Germany and Bellevue, Wash. Organized for its Southern California run by SDMAs Ariel Plotek, it includes models, drawings and photographs of Kahns most important works, including the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, the National Assembly Building in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and the Salk Institute in La Jolla. A Nov. 5 symposium marking the opening of the show will include Plotek, the Salks Claire Grezemkovsky and Wendy Lesser, whose biography of Kahn will be published next year.

Through Jan. 31. 1450 El Prado, Balboa Park, San Diego. $10-$15. (619) 232-7931, www.sdmart.org

Nov. 13

Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art

Designed by the New York firm SO-IL, founded in 2008 by the architects Jing Liu and Florian Idenburg, the new art museum for UC Davis has flown somewhat under the radar in California, obscured by the high-profile recent openings of the Broad museum in L.A. and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. But it has a chance to be the most significant work of architecture of the three, a low-slung building that spreads beneath a dramatic canopy of white aluminum.

(530) 752-8500, manettishremmuseum.ucdavis.edu

Los Angeles Times Ideas Exchange: Christopher Hawthorne in conversation with Frank Gehry  On Now Frank Gehrys thoughts on the Broad? Watch his hilarious groan On Now Watch Frank Gehry in conversation with architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne On Now Why Frank Gehry never showed up to work for Richard Neutra On Now Frank Gehry recalls Rudolph Schindler style: Rough, raw and unpredictable On Now How Frank Gehry defended his Santa Monica home against a critical neighbor On Now Frank Gehry wants the L.A. River Revitalization project to help the neighboring communities On Now With the L.A. River, Frank Gehry thinks L.A. wont need to import as much water, saving a lot of money 1:28 On Now Frank Gehrys approach to the L.A. River  a lot of collaborators

christopher.hawthorne@latimes.com

Twitter: @HawthorneLAT

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And so it begins The fall arts season is upon us with a tsunami of exhibitions that cover everything from large-scale video installation to intimate drawing to Chinese feminism. This includes historic prints at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, paintings by Henry Taylor at Blum & Poe and a new film by Wu Tsang at 356 Mission  and lots of things in between. Here are 15 exhibitions and events to keep you busy in the coming week:

The Serial Impulse at Gemini G.E.L., at LACMA. Over the course of five decades, the innovative Los Angeles print studio has produced historic limited edition works for renowned artists such as Richard Serra, Claes Oldenburg, Vija Celmins, David Hockney and Robert Rauschenberg. Now the museum, in conjunction with the National Gallery of Art, brings together some of the most exquisite examples of work produced at the famed West Hollywood shop, including Rauschenbergs 1967 print, Booster, a 6-foot-tall print that in its day was the largest art print ever made. Do not miss Oldenburgs pieces, which ruminate on the nature of Los Angeles. Opens Sunday and runs through Jan. 2. 5905 Wilshire Blvd., Mid-Wilshire, Los Angeles, lacma.org.

Doug Aitken, Electric Earth, at the Museum of Contemporary Art. The L.A. artists first North American museum survey features an array of collage, photographic and video installation works from throughout his career  including the cinematic Song 1, from 2012, screening on a massive circular screen, and Electric Earth, the 1999 video installation that earned him the International Prize at the Venice Biennale. Opens Saturday and runs through Jan. 15. Geffen Contemporary, 152 N. Central Ave., downtown Los Angeles, moca.org.

Henry Taylor, at Blum & Poe. The artists latest solo exhibition features a series of new paintings and sculptures displayed in three unique environments that tackle ideas of class  including a dirt lot and a grassy lawn. As part of the exhibition, he will also be screening a film by friend and collaborator Kahlil Joseph, who last year hypnotized with his installation, Double Conscience, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in downtown Los Angeles. The gallery will also be having a concurrent show of the early sign paintings of Mark Grotjahn. Opens Saturday and runs through Nov. 5. 2727 S. La Cienega Blvd., Culver City, blumandpoe.com.

Betye Saar, Black White, at Roberts & Tilton. The grand dame of L.A. assemblage art (who is about to open a one-woman show at the Prada Foundation in Milan) is showing four decades worth of sculptures and wall pieces in the gallerys project space  transformed to reflect both the colors and politics of black and white. Also on view will be the abstract paintings of Evan Nesbit. Opens Saturday at 6 p.m. and runs through Dec. 17. 5801 Washington Blvd., Culver City, robertsandtilton.com.

Edith Beaucage, Sequencer, Spectrum, Reverb, at Luis De Jesus Los Angeles. In loose, wild brush strokes, the L.A. artist captures figures in hallucinatory landscapes that evoke a painted rave. Also on view will be an exhibition of photographs and large-scale video by Bryan Zanisnik, a New York-based artist preoccupied by the architecture of monuments and theatrical sets. Opens Saturday at 6 p.m. and runs through Oct. 22. 2685 S. La Cienega Blvd., Culver City, luisdejesus.com.

Leben, leben / Life, living, at 1997-1998, 1998, by Hanne Darboven, at Spruth Magers. (Timo Ohler / Spruth Magers - Hanne Darboven Foundation / ARS )

Hanne Darboven, at Spruth Magers. The first solo exhibition devoted to the German conceptualists work in half a dozen years contains three installations that riff on the nature of time and other concepts through monumental pieces laden with obsessively detailed charts and calendars. This includes work dating to the 1970s (Darboven passed away in 2009). Through Oct. 29. 5900 Wilshire Blvd., Mid-Wilshire, Los Angeles, spruethmagers.com.

Tom Knechtel, The Reader of His Own Self, at CB1 Gallery. The Los Angeles painter renowned for rendering fantastically detailed paintings that seem to channel William Blake and Hieronymus Bosch in equal parts is displaying a selection of prints and drawings produced throughout his career  including new works that riff on the personal, such as two new prints created especially for the show. The exhibition also serves as a prelude to a show of the artists paintings that will open at Marc Selwyn in Beverly Hills next week. Opens Saturday at 3 p.m. and runs through Oct. 30. 1923 S. Santa Fe Ave., downtown Los Angeles, cb1gallery.com.

Mira Schor, War Frieze (1991  1994) and Power Frieze (2016), at CB1 Gallery. Schor, the New York-based feminist artist who first made her name in the 70s at CalArts is back in L.A. with a new selection of paintings that riff on politics, art world politics and the body. A separate space features her historic work, War Frieze, created between 1991 and 1994, a series of panels that, when presented together, runs more than 200 feet. Opens Saturday at 3 p.m. and runs through Oct. 30. 1923 S. Santa Fe Ave., downtown Los Angeles, cb1gallery.com.

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Jud Fine and Barbara McCarren, AND/OR, at the University Art Museum. A survey exhibition includes works old and new by the L.A.-based art-making couple. This features a number of pieces related to such topics as offshore banking and the nature of currency, and a new installation, Continental Edge Dwellers (CED), that explores the coast  that blurry line between land and water. Its a good subject to marinate in at a time when Californias coast is subject to struggles over development. Opens Saturday and runs through Dec. 11. Cal State Long Beach, 1250 Bellflower Blvd., Long Beach, web.csulb.edu/org/uam.

Tong Kunniao, Why Dont You Eat Stinky Tofu? at Nicodim Gallery. The Chinese-born artist features messy assemblages and kinetic sculptures crafted from detritus that includes Barbie dolls and religious souvenirs. Opens today at 6 p.m. and runs through Oct. 15. 571 S. Anderson St., Suite 2, Boyle Heights, nicodimgallery.com.

James Richards, Hack the Analog, at Shoshana Wayne Gallery. A series of new paintings play with their structure in pieces that function partially as sculpture and partially as weaving. Opens Saturday and runs through Oct. 22. Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Ave., B1, Santa Monica, shoshanawayne.com.

Wu Tsang, The Luscious Land of God Is Sinking, at 356 Mission. The L.A.-based filmmaker and performer is screening her recent film, Duilian, about a Chinese feminist revolutionary who was executed for attempting to foment revolution in the early 20th century. She will also be showing new sculptures, photographs and a limestone plaque that will be embedded in the sidewalk out front. Opens Sunday and runs through Nov. 6. 356 S. Mission Road, Boyle Heights, Los Angeles, 356mission.com.

Clint Woodside, Under Cover Cars, at These Days L.A. The artists first solo exhibitions gathers five years worth of images chronicling SoCal cars draped in all manner of plastics and tarps. Opens Saturday at 7 p.m. and runs through Oct. 23. 118 Winston St., 2nd Floor, downtown Los Angeles, thesedaysla.com.

100 Days of Film and Performance, at the Hammer Museum. This four-and-a-half-month program will bring a series of screenings, performances, film and video to the museum  including a Hawaiian dance troupe (from New York), the gender-bendy Dynasty Handbag, performances inspired by William Faulkner and a street march that touches on the history of womens political power. Kicks off Sept. 13 and runs through Jan. 25. Check the schedule for events and times. 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Westwood, hammer.ucla.edu.

Dissent: What They Fear Is the Light, at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions. A group show explores issues of privacy, control and surveillance, in our hyper-connected, always-logged-on digital world. Opens Sept. 13 at 7:30 p.m. and runs through Nov. 6. 6522 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood, welcometolace.org.

LAST CHANCE

Ed Ruscha: Books & Co., at Gagosian Gallery. For its summer group show, the gallery is gathering historic artist books by Ed Ruscha (think: the seminal Every Building on the Sunset Strip) and exhibiting them with a range of book and book-inspired works by other artists, such as Amy Parks ambitious paintings project that renders Ruschas famous work as a series of watercolors, as well as other pieces that bear Ruschas influence in less direct ways, such as Jennifer Daltons exhaustive catalogue of potentially hazardous environmental sites in Brooklyn. Through today. 456 N. Camden Drive, Beverly Hills, gagosian.com.

Phantom Limb, at Shulamit Nazarian. A group exhibition features the work of five artists whose work treads the line between the figurative and the abstract, including the wild collaged canvases of Trenton Doyle Hancock and the paintings of Scott Anderson, whose abstracted figures and landscapes manage to nod to art history even while feeling totally sci-fi. Through today. 17 N. Venice Blvd., Venice, shulamitnazarian.com.

Ken Price, Drawings, at Matthew Marks Gallery. The gallery is displaying more than 40 drawings from the estate of the artist, one of the largest West Coast presentations of the famous ceramicists work on paper. He produced often whimsical and otherworldly renditions of mundane objects, as well as sketches for possible sculptures. The exhibition will also feature a small selection of the three-dimensional works. Through Saturday. 1062 N. Orange Grove Ave., West Hollywood, matthewmarks.com.

Claire Falkenstein: Beyond Sculpture, at the Pasadena Museum of California Art. The 20th century California artist, whose name is circulating once again after being included in the debut exhibition at Hauser Wirth & Schimmel, is now the subject of her own retrospective, tracking her entire career, from the 1930s to the 90s. (She passed away in 1997.) The artist, who worked in San Francisco and Los Angeles  as well as Paris  produced prints and murals, among other works, but she is best known for her sculpture: in particular, her often gritty assemblages made out of wire studded with chunks of glass. Through Sunday. 490 E. Union St., Pasadena, pmcaonline.org.

Danielle Abrams, Quadroon, at the Grand Central Art Center. A reference to someone who is one-quarter black, the term quadroon gets at the absolutist ways in which race is viewed in the United States. (Someone who is part black is regarded simply as black.) Abrams is part Jewish and part African American, and in this video installation, she picks apart the myriad elements  beyond simple ethnicity and race  that come together to make up any one persons identity. Through Sunday. 125 N. Broadway, Santa Ana, grandcentralcenter.com.

Hito Steyerl: Factory of the Sun, at the Museum of Contemporary Art. A video installation by the German artist takes the viewer into a dystopia where the movements of workers are harvested to create artificial sunshine. The piece, which debuted at the Venice Biennale in 2015, is a mash-up of contemporary communication, told as video game, news report documentary film and Internet video. Through Monday. MOCA, 250 S. Grand Ave., Los Angeles, moca.org.

ONGOING EXHIBITIONS

Alex Da Corte, A Season in Hell, at Art + Practice. An exhibition by the New Jersey-born conceptual artist includes a series of works inspired by French poet Arthur Rimbauds influential prose poem, A Season in Hell, which explores topics of morality, desire and death. In video and in sculptural installations  works that employ banal consumer goods and pop cultural tropes  Da Corte takes on these topics and others, touching on issues of identity, alienation and instability. Through Sept. 17. 4339 Leimert Blvd., Leimert Park, Los Angeles, hammer.ucla.edu and artandpractice.org.

Tanya Aguiniga, Loie Hollowell and Lenore Tawney, 3 Women, at the Landing. A three-woman show  inspired by the Robert Altman movie of the same name  serves as a cross-generational gathering of works that blur the line between craft and fine art. These are represented by the weavings of Tawney, a contemporary of painter Agnes Martin; Hollowell, who paints pulsing abstractions inspired by the female form; and Aguiniga, who uses modern and traditional weaving techniques to create wild biomorphic forms. Through Sept. 17. 5118 Jefferson Blvd., West Adams, thelandinggallery.com.

Reflections on the Self, at the California African American Museum. Drawn from the museums permanent collection, this wide-ranging exhibition looks at the representation of the self, examining the idealized and mythicized ways that artists have portrayed pop and cultural icons, from Malcolm X to Thelonious Monk to a New Orleans grand marshal. Also on view at the museum is Oh Snap! West Coast Hip Hop Photography, which will feature an array of hip-hop artists who came up in the 90s, such as Ice Cube, Tupac Shakur and others. Through Sept. 18. 600 State Drive, Exposition Park, Los Angeles, caamuseum.org.

Play: Open Call 2016, at the L.A. Municipal Art Gallery. A community-based biennial riffs on the notion of play  featuring works of painting, photography, collage and more by 300 L.A. artists. Through Sept. 18. 4800 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood, lamag.org.

In the Cut, at Gallery Luisotti. A group show curated by Michael Pena explores the myriad meanings of the phrase in the cut  from the idea of a wound to places that are remote, either physically or psychologically. The show brings together photography by Sam Contis, Whitney Hubbs, Lisa Ohlweiler and Cindy Bernard, depicting secluded desert spaces, nudist camps and a Riverside ranch, among other spaces. Through Sept. 24. An artists reception will be held at 6 p.m. Aug. 13. Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Ave., Building A2, Santa Monica, galleryluisotti.com.

Fast Forward: The Architecture of William F. Cody, at the Architecture and Design Museum. A new exhibition looks at the career of one of Palm Springs most notable Modernist architects  known for a range of designs (some quite flamboyant) that included homes, condominiums, commercial centers and the temple-like El Dorado Country Club for a clientele that included Frank Sinatra, Walt Disney and Bing Crosby. Through Sept. 25. 900 E. Fourth St., downtown Los Angeles, aplusd.org.

Karla Klarin: Subdividing the LAndscape, at CSUN Art Galleries. The San Fernando Valley-raised artist examines some of our citys more quotidian landscapes in a series of painted works that take sprawl and the suburban as points of inspiration. But dont expect the cookie cutter: Klarins works have a way of capturing grit. Through Oct. 8. A reception will be held Saturday at 4 p.m.; an artist talk will take place Monday at 10 a.m. Cal State Northridge, 18111 Nordhoff St., Northridge, csun.edu.

Bosco Sodi, Malpais, in a pop-up exhibition at 143 N. Robertson. The Mexican artist is known for densely pigmented monochromes and geometric clay cubes (evocative of the work of Isamu Noguchi) that play with color and the visceral qualities of his earthy materials. This one-off show is presented by the New York-based Paul Kasmin Gallery with Brandon Davis Projects and Jose Mestre. Through Oct. 8. 143 N. Robertson Blvd., Beverly Grove, Los Angeles, brandondavisprojects.net.

Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle and Tyler Matthew Oyer, Exploring The Nowannago: Kentifrican Modes of Resistance, at Grand Central Art Center. A combination of performance and video piece, Exploring the Nowannago is part of Hinkles long-running exploration of the ways in which black female bodies are commoditized and exoticized. Also on display is Jesse Kees sound installation featuring a series of pieces drawn from the artists experience working in Santa Ana. Through Oct. 16. 125 N. Broadway, Santa Ana, grandcentralartcenter.com.

London Calling, at the Getty Museum. Drawn primarily from the collection of the Tate in London, this exhibition brings together six of the leading British painters of the 20th century, figures who resisted trends toward abstraction to focus on the figure, revolutionizing the act of painting in the process. Through Nov. 13. 1200 Getty Center Drive, Brentwood, Los Angeles, getty.edu.

 WATCH: Writer-director Guillermo del Toro takes us on a tour through Bleak House, his suburban L.A. home where he has amassed a formidable collection of art, books, horror movie props and other oddities that serve as inspiration for the filmmaker.

Guillermo del Toro: At Home With Monsters, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The filmmakers work  which includes movies such as Pans Labyrinth, Hellboy and Pacific Rim  all play with notions of the fantastical. This exhibition looks at the directors artistic process, including plenty of drawings and maquettes, along with the objects that inspire him (including some truly odd and macabre works from LACMAs permanent collection). These are presented in a series of thematic rooms that explore magic, occultism, death and monsters. A totally wild ride. Through Nov. 27. 5905 Wilshire Blvd., Mid-Wilshire, Los Angeles, lacma.org.

Marcos Ramirez ERRE and David Taylor, Delimitations: A Survey of the 1821 United States-Mexico Border, at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. In 2014, Ramirez and Taylor set out on a more than 3,000-mile journey to mark the 1821 border between the U.S. and Mexico, which took them to unlikely places such as Medicine Bow, Wyo., and Dodge City, Kan. This exhibition presents photography and other documentation from that journey, one that looks at the fragile nature of political borders. Also on view will be the wild urban architecture-inspired sculptures of L.A. artist Ruben Ochoa  rising like monsters from the gallery floor. A pair of shows not to miss. Through Nov. 27. Jacobs Building, 1100 Kettner Blvd., downtown San Diego, mcasd.org.

American Mosaic: Picturing Modern Art Through the Eye of Duncan Phillips, at the Orange County Museum of Art. In the early 20th century, at a time when many U.S. moguls were focusing on amassing European masters, banking and steel scion Duncan Phillips focused his collecting efforts on American art, acquiring canvases by now venerated painters such as Thomas Eakins, Marsden Hartley, Winslow Homer, Georgia OKeeffe and Helen Frankenthaler. This exhibition brings together more than five dozen works from his collection. Through Dec. 4. 850 San Clemente Drive, Newport Beach, ocma.net.

The Spun Universe: Wixarika (Huichol) Yarn Paintings, at the Fowler Museum. A new show at the Fowler gathers the brightly woven yarn paintings of Wixarika artist Ramon Medina Silva, known for his elaborate compositions depicting astral figures, holy plants and important ritual objects, all crafted with brilliant threads. Through Dec. 4. UCLA, 308 Charles E. Young Drive N., Westwood, Los Angeles, fowler.ucla.edu.

MOLAA at Twenty: 1996-2016, at the Museum of Latin American Art. The Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach is celebrating two decades in existence with a show that draws from the museums permanent collection of more than 1,600 objects. These include works by renowned Modernists Joaqun Torres-Garca and Wifredo Lam, Argentine conceptualist Len Ferrari as well as contemporary figures such as Alexandre Arrechea and Patssi Valdez. Through Jan. 1. 628 Alamitos Ave., Long Beach, molaa.org.

Ernesto Yerena Montejano, Espejismo/Cicatriz, at La Plaza de Cultura y Artes. A series of intensely detailed, layered collages by the Los Angeles-based artist explore issues of identity in the Latino community. Through Jan. 1. 501 N. Main St., downtown Los Angeles, lapca.org.

Senses of Time: Video and Film-Based Works of Africa, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. For one of its long-term installations, the museum has gathered works of video or film by contemporary African artists that explore the body and the looping nature of time. This includes pieces by figures such as Yinka Shonibare, Sammy Baloji, Berni Searle, Moatax Nasr and Theo Eshetu. Through Jan. 2. 5905 Wilshire Blvd., Mid-Wilshire, lacma.org.

Non Fiction at the Underground Museum. An emotionally charged exhibition curated by the late Noah Davis, in collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles brings together works that explore issues of race and violence. This includes important works from MOCAs permanent collection by artists such as Robert Gober, Kara Walker, Henry Taylor and David Hammons. Through March. 3508 W. Washington Blvd., Arlington Heights, Los Angeles, theunderground-museum.org.

Islamic Art Now: Part 2 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Contemporary works from LACMAs permanent collection by 20 artists who live in or have roots in the Middle East look at questions of society, gender and identity. Runs indefinitely. 5905 Wilshire Blvd., Mid-Wilshire, lacma.org.

Loris Greaud, Sculpt, at the L.A. County Museum of Art. The entire theater has been taken over by the European artist for a film that only screens to one person at a time. The nonlinear picture follows a man about whom we know very little, who seems to be constantly developing the concept of what experiencing beauty, thought, or obsession can be, according the write-up. Times critic Christopher Knight describes it as pretentious and uninvolving. A good hate-watch, maybe? On view through a yet to be determined date. 5905 Wilshire Blvd., Mid-Wilshire, Los Angeles, lacma.org.

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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin agreed Thursday to intensify their efforts to convince the warring parties in Syria to achieve a cease-fire in the city of Aleppo, Anadolu reported.

On the phone on Thursday, the two leaders discussed Turkish-Russia bilateral relations as well as the latest developments in Syria, said presidential sources, speaking on condition of anonymity due to restrictions of speaking to the media.

Erdogan stressed the importance of achieving a cease-fire as soon as possible in the northern city of Aleppo, a rebel-held city under a devastating siege.
The head of the Carpenter Performing Arts Center at Cal State Long Beach is resigning after the university canceled a popular and provocatively titled play about race.

Michele Roberge, who has served as executive director of the center for 14 years, called the cancellation an act of censorship, but the universitys president has maintained that the decision was based on academic considerations.

The Carpenter was to present the comedy N*gger Wetb*ck Ch*nk on Sept. 29. The order to pull the plug came in early August from university President Jane Close Conoley, who instructed the dean of the College of the Arts to tell the Carpenter to cancel the show, Roberge said in an interview.

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Following failed efforts to reach a compromise, Roberge said she canceled the performance and then submitted her resignation.

It took me about 15 nanoseconds to decide that I could no longer work for an organization that not only condones but practices censorship, she said.

Her last day at the university was Thursday.

The play uses racial slurs in an effort to explore stereotypes and identity in contemporary American culture.

The show originated as a project among student theater artists at UCLA, and it has toured the country for nearly 10 years, playing at more than 150 colleges and universities. It was performed at the Carpenter last season.

University leaders didnt attempt to cancel the play last year, Roberge said.

I told [the university] president that I wanted to present the show each year. She laughed, and I dont know if she thought I was joking, but I wasnt, Roberge said. The show is hugely popular because its fun. Its not a controversial show, but its a provocative title.

Conoley said in a statement that she is standing by her decision to cancel the performance but added this was a decision that was not made lightly and came after much deliberation and feedback.

She said that after last years performance, faculty members shared feedback that the performance lacked educational value.

Conoley said she didnt intend my decision as a form of censorship, and I fully support the right to free expression. As an academic, my decision was based on my perception of the academic value of the performance for our students and faculty.

The effort to cancel the show came from faculty members and private donors, Roberge said. She declined to identify the individuals but said none was a student.

Roberge said that she met with Conoley twice to voice her concerns and offered to postpone the show until spring to create contextual programming, such as lectures and student discussions.

The president kept saying it was a bad time to do the show, Roberge said.

A university spokesman said Conoley wasnt available for interview.

One of the shows creators described the cancellation as bizarre, saying that the show received enthusiastic support from Cal State Long Beach students last year.

I dont know what to say except when is the right time, if not now? writer-actor Rafael Agustin said by phone.

He declined to elaborate but said in a prepared statement that he was disappointed by the cancellation and Roberges departure.

While we acknowledge the undeniably challenging nature of the show title, there is a long history of broad support for this project dating back to its origin as a student show at UCLA, the statement said.

Agustin said the shows cancellation comes at a critical juncture in the path of free speech on the campus of a public educational institution in perhaps our most liberal state. The same act of censorship that today may seem to protect a community may be used next time as justification to silence a community in desperate need of a voice.

david.ng@latimes.com

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This time last year, we were still a couple of months away from watching Leonardo DiCaprio battle, bludgeon or, if youre Matt Drudge, mate with that angry mama bear in The Revenant. And yet, most awards pundits already had DiCaprio winning the lead actor Oscar, by the sheer pedigree of the movies Oscar-winning director, Alejandro G. Inarritu, as well as the demanding nature of the frontiersman character he was playing.

Just as important, DiCaprio, a four-time nominee, was seen as being due his moment on the podium. And, with the Oscars, timing is often just as important as the work itself.

Which brings us to another accomplished actor, one who has earned five Oscar nominations over the course of her distinguished career: Amy Adams.

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Adams has two major films playing at Toronto this week  Denis Villeneuves sci-fi drama Arrival and Tom Fords dark, nasty thriller Nocturnal Animals. Both films open in theaters in November.

Is it Adams turn to finally win an Oscar?

Maybe. But likely not  though she could very well be nominated again. Yes, the 42-year-old actress is overdue. Keep reading and youll see she should have already taken home at least one Academy Award, maybe two.

And with two major movies arriving within a week of each other in the heart of awards season, shes certainly going to enjoy a high profile. Adams has already been feted at the Telluride Film Festival and has an upcoming tribute at Novembers Gotham Awards.

But neither Arrival nor Nocturnal Animals plays as the kind of movie traditionally embraced by Oscar voters. Arrival blends spectacle and intimacy with Adams at the center of the story, playing a linguist enlisted to find a way to communicate with alien visitors. Its an emotionally rich performance, effectively conveying the wonder of the situation. But its also in the middle of a genre movie possessing a story that many academy members might find half-baked at best.

Nocturnal Animals, set partially in the L.A. art scene, will likely play better with Oscar voters. In it, Adams portrays a deeply unhappy gallery curator who, one day, receives a manuscript written by her ex-husband (Jake Gyllenhaal), a man she hasnt spoken to for nearly 20 years. Reading it dredges up regrets and guilt about the past and highlights the isolation of her current life.

FULL COVERAGE: Toronto International Film Festival 

The movie, directed by Tom Ford (A Single Man), is superbly structured, provocative and laced with acidic humor. And, like Arrival, Adams supplies the movies crucial center, excelling whether the movies flashing back or hurtling forward. But Nocturnal Animals is also two movies in one  and Adams isnt in one of those films. (The action shuttles between Adams story and the plot in her ex-husbands manuscript that she spends the movie reading.) Absence, in this case, might make voters hearts look elsewhere.

But who knows? As I previously noted, like DiCaprio last year, Adams is more than owed. Take a look at her Oscar history:

2006

Nominated for supporting actress: Junebug (2005)

Lost to: Rachel Weisz, The Constant Gardener

Should Adams have won? Yes.

See, we wouldnt even be having this conversation if the academy had honored Adams right out of the gate for her disarming, comic turn as the chatterbox pregnant wife in Junebug. At this point, Adams was known mostly for playing DiCaprios wide-eyed, would-be bride in Catch Me If You Can. So her performance in Junebug  humorous and heartbreaking  made for the kind of out-of-nowhere splash that Oscar voters sometimes honor in the supporting actress category. (Think Marisa Tomei.)

Instead they went with Weisz for The Constant Gardner, a deadly serious John le Carre adaptation that belonged to Ralph Fiennes. Playing Fiennes young, tempestuous wife, Weisz spends most of the movie dead. Her few scenes contained plenty of emotional fireworks but lacked the depth of Adams work in Junebug.

2009

Nominated for supporting actress: Doubt (2008)

Lost to: Penelope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Should Adams have won? No.

Vicky ranks as one of Woody Allens better recent films, a droll, mature look at love thats most memorable for Cruzs combustible work, which both roasts and revels in the stereotype of the hot-blooded Latin. Adams is quite good as the sweet, hopeful nun in Doubt, but its the fourth-best performance in the movie, behind Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Viola Davis. And none of them won Oscars either.

2011

Nominated for supporting actress: The Fighter (2010)

Lost to: Melissa Leo, The Fighter

Should Adams have won? No.

Adams revealed another side in David O. Russells rousing family drama, playing the strong, vulgar barmaid opposite Mark Wahlbergs blue-collar boxer. But the Oscar went to Leo, because impossibly high heels and leopard-print pantsuits are always going to trump blue jeans and sensible shoes. Also: Leo had never had a role like this, a spectacular, chain-smoking force of nature. When you remember The Fighter, you probably picture Leos matriarch in that bleach-blond beehive, screaming the truth for the sake of her sons. She earned that Oscar.

2013

Nominated for supporting actress: The Master (2012)

Lost to: Anne Hathaway, Les Miserables

Should Adams have won? Absolutely.

Adams pretty much played two characters in Paul Thomas Andersons cult classic  the public and private Peggy Dodd, one motherly and genteel, the other pathologically controlling and suspicious. She was married to the leader of the Cause, and it didnt take long to realize who the Master of the title really was. Shed make a meal out of Lady Macbeth.

But Hathaway Dreamed a Dream and, in a single take (sung live on set!), stole the Oscar.

2014

Nominated for lead actress: American Hustle (2013)

Lost to: Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine

Should Adams have won? No.

Once again, Adams was bested by an actress giving an intense, unhinged performance in a Woody Allen movie. This was Adams first nomination for lead actress, and she brought a steely determination to her complicated, self-invented dreamer in Hustle. Russell pushed her to some dark places, and Adams responded with what is arguably her most fearless performance. But she shared the movie with an excellent ensemble  Jennifer Lawrence, Christian Bale and Bradley Cooper, all Oscar-nominated. Blue Jasmine belonged to Blanchett.

See the most-read stories this hour 

glenn.whipp@latimes.com

Twitter: @glennwhipp
Is a repressive 19th century drama from a newbie director the most radical movie of the season?

Ever since his Lady Macbeth  a 19th century re-imagining of a Russian novella about an arranged marriage  became one of the conversation pieces at the Toronto International Film Festival, director William Oldroyd has found himself having an unusual conversation.

Filmgoers whove seen his movie and expected (or apparently dont know much about) William Shakespeare have been wondering what happened to Duncan, Banquo and the rest of the gang.

I know it sounds funny, but Ive had people come up and say to me, This isnt anything like the play,  Oldroyd recalled in an interview. And I have to pause and think about what to say. I mean, its not an adaptation of the [Shostakovich] opera either. Its not really anything traditional.

The director isnt kidding.

This is already shaping up as a film year of a particular trend: complex female characters reacting provocatively to sexual repression and assault. Movies such as Elle, with Isabelle Huppert, and Una, with Rooney Mara, both confound simple victim narratives in ways that are honest or dangerous, depending on your point of view.

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Albert Finney, Richard Burton, Bob Hoskins, Timothy Spall, Peter Sellers, Ian McNeice  these are just a few of the actors who have played Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill on film and television. Two upcoming feature films will add Gary Oldman and Brian Cox to that formidable list, but it is difficult to imagine any of them topping the ragged wonder of Michael Gambons performance in Churchills Secret, which airs Sunday night on PBS Masterpiece.

Seriously, Michael Gambon as Winston Churchill all but precludes a review  of course hes great, hes always great  but here we are. And before we go any further, lets dispense with the unfortunate title. The film is based on a novel but the secret isnt some salacious, sensational or deeply private revelation or speculation. No one is rooting through Churchills underwear drawer, thank heavens.

Instead, it refers to the major stroke the great man suffered in 1953 during his second term as Britains prime minister.

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So not a secret, except at the time.

As inevitably the case when a world leader physically falters, the event was kept from the British citizenry and the world. Churchill was taken to his family home in Kent where his family, doctor and a small number of advisors waited to see first if he would survive, and then if he would be able to remain prime minister.

This small and finely wrought film is about that time.

Opening with the fateful night during which the still remarkable orator (Gambon) begins fumbling for words during a dinner at Downing Street, Churchills Secret immediately introduces the other larger not-secret secret of Churchills life: The national monument and international icon, the voice that miraculously rallied a small island nation when there was absolutely no good reason to believe it too would not succumb to German invasion, was also just a man.

Subject, obviously, to physical ailment (this isnt his first stroke), but more thematically important, also to the inevitable tension between work and family, duty and arrogance, ambition and love.

Indeed, we see Clementine Churchill (Lindsay Duncan) and their youngest daughter, Mary (Daisy Lewis), before we see Churchill himself. Having already made some last-minute seating adjustments, Clemmie is the first to notice her husbands stutter and, when he recovers to end his speech, it is she who quickly takes control. Graciously yet firmly, she clears the room and quietly issues the necessary orders  call the doctor, shut the door, clear the house, dont let the servants in  before she can say what she really wants to say: Just hold my hand, Winston, just hold my hand.

Its a small and fleet scene, a preface really, but in it Duncan lends Clementine such an astonishing mix of love, fear, control and weary nerve that it creates a portrait of a marriage in a matter of moments.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in London, another strong woman stirs. Millie Appleyard (Romola Garai) is a nurse so kind and skillful that other nurses come to her for advice. It is only a matter of time, then, before she is pulled into the tense and silent group assembling at Chartwell, the Churchill estate.

As the family gathers, the very real possibility of Churchills death forces all manner of bitter and heated encounters. The eldest children, Randolph (Matthew Macfadyen) and Diana (Tara Fitzgerald), become openly contemptuous of what they consider their fathers lifelong narcissism and their mothers willingness to nurse it.

The histrionics of one dinner table rise to a pitch that borders on manipulative  even fathers who were not prime minister during a world war put work over family at the time just as many mothers, particularly of the Churchills class, put the needs of their husbands above their children  but Clemmie manages to ground the scene enough for it to make its point.

As Churchills doctor Lord Moran (the always fine Bill Paterson) reminds her, the cost of greatness is high and usually not paid by the great themselves.

Which, intentionally or not, the film itself goes on to prove: From the moment Gambons Churchill shows signs of (spoiler!) life, it is difficult to care about anything else.

Fighting against his own wayward flesh, the great orator must learn how to form simple words, the world leader must regain the strength to stand while those around him push and pull. One part of the Conservative Party wants him to stay in power, another hopes to force his retirement, and Clementine vacillates in between; obviously she wants her husband well, but she would also like him home. Finally. He has done enough, she says repeatedly.

Only nurse Appleyard, free from any emotional or even political baggage (she voted for the other guy), treats his recovery as simply that  a man struggling against diminishment. With his drooping face and bleary eyes, Churchill is clearly aware of all that roils around, and within, him but Gambon finds the small, essential flame of his spirit and blows it into a beacon.

The presence of Appleyard allows both Churchills to open up in scenes of powerful emotion as yet another non-secret secret is revealed, and Duncans Clemmie is a masterpiece of conflict and surrender. We would not be here without him, and he would not be here without you, Lord Moran says, and we believe him. But Duncan also lets us see how little daily sustenance that knowledge brings.

Because then Churchill sits up, or rolls in, or struggles to speak and we have eyes for no one else.

Masterpiece Classic: Churchills Secret

Where: KOCE

When: 8 p.m. Sunday

Rating: TV-PG (may be unsuitable for young children)

mary.mcnamara@latimes.com

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Summer in Los Angeles has a tendency to slip by all too quickly. Recapture some of the spirit of summers potential with a glass of beer infused with the essence the most summer-y of fruit: peaches.

Fruit in beer, in America at least, has long been ridiculed, ridiculously branded as girly or heretical to beers purity. However, fruited brews form not only the historical foundation of fermented beverages (and an important aspect of Belgian brewing culture), but fruit-flavored craft beers are some of the more popular recent trends in American craft brewing. Just count the number of IPAs featuring some fruit or fruit-flavor additions. Beer made with peaches is particularly popular with brewers both traditional and innovative, and sipping on a peachy brew is a tasty way to hold on to that fleeting summer feeling.

Some of the best peach-infused brews are made in the Seine Valley in Belgium, where traditional lambic brewers age tart and funky brews with the stone fruit to create peche. American craft brewers adept at producing sour wood-aged beers of their own have also turned to peaches for their tart and earthy flavors (and the wild yeasts harbored in the peach fuzz is another bonus that adds more complexity), but peaches also find their way into other styles of craft beer, from IPAs to wheat beers. While much of the best examples of American peach brews are made on a very small scale  the kinds of beers that the dedicated beer geeks will line up to purchase  there are more widely available peachy brews to try. Here are a few examples that shouldnt require you to camp out to find.

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Avery Brewing  Perzik Saison

This farmhouse-style ale from Colorados Avery Brewing pairs a subtly tart and juicy peach essence with the dry and spicy flavors of saison yeast. A bit of wheat adds a brisk snap to the finish, and the peach flavor is well balanced. Its a great match for a cheese-and-charcuterie board, and 12-ounce cans are widely available at BevMo stores and Whole Foods locations.

Dogfish Head Brewing  Festina Peche Berliner Weisse

Berliner Weisse, the light-and-tart German wheat beer style, has threatened to be the best it style in craft beer for a couple of years, and the sharp acidity and refreshing effervescence of the beer is a natural match for peach flavor. Delawares Dogfish Head was one of the first major craft breweries to offer a peachy Berliner back in 2007, and its still a highlight of their lineup. The sometimes aggressive sour bite of the style is tempered by peach sweetness, and the brewery keeps the alcohol level at an all-afternoon friendly 4.5%. Find four-packs at Total Wines or even the supermarket, and try the brisk bubbly brew with a summery burrata salad.

Angel City Brewery  Harvest Peach Berliner Weisse

Locally, downtown Los Angeles Angel City Brewing recently released a special peach-infused Berliner Weisse thats worth seeking out. Well balanced between bright acidity, earth peach aroma and subtle funk, the Warehouse Series (brewed once then gone) beer is made with freshly harvested California peaches. You can score a bottle at the brewerys retail shop, or at Craft Beer Cellar in Eagle Rock and Buzz Wine Beer Shop downtown (or use the brewerys beer finder). 216 S. Alameda St., Los Angeles, (213) 622-1261, www.angelcitybrewery.com.

The Dudes Brewing  JuiceBox: Peach Berliner Weisse

The Torrance brewery better known for its potent Double Trunk canned imperial IPA added a peach entry to the Blood Orange Amber ale in its JuiceBox series. Peach Berliner is a touch sweeter but just as tart and refreshing, and with a restrained alcohol content so you wont have to think twice about reaching for a second can. Stocks of four-packs seem limited, but you can try the brew at both of the Dudes tasting rooms. 1840 W. 208th St., Torrance, (424) 271-2915, and now| 173 N. Moorpark Road, Suite D, Thousand Oaks, (424) 271-2915, www.thedudesbrew.com.

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Youve had tempura  that tangle of crisply fried vegetables that showed up in the bento the last time you had Japanese lunch or the fried shrimp that came with the teriyaki when you got the No. 2 combo meal. Perhaps you were lucky enough to try the tempura course at Komatsu in Torrance before it closed its doors. Hannosuke, related to a well-known Tokyo stand, serves delicious ten don, tempura-topped rice bowls, in the food court of a Mitsuwa supermarket in Torrance  youll want the one with eel. Maybe you even experienced the tempura bar at the old New Otani.

Still, there has never been a tempura restaurant in Los Angeles quite like Tempura Endo, the first American branch of a Kyoto, Japan, institution that dates back to 1910. The restaurant occupies a modest storefront next door to a Japanese knife shop and right by a rental car yard. The location, although it is in the Beverly Hills triangle, has never been noted for fine dining  I remember a sushi bar that seemed really to specialize in sukiyaki.

Tempura Endo is the other kind of tempura bar  an exquisitely expensive place that exists to serve intricate omakase dinners, well-calibrated multi-course meals presented with the detail and attention to seasonality of kaiseki, the lightness and purity you might not associate with two hours of deep-fried food. Youve powered through a basket of fried shrimp or a salty, sizzling brick of kakiage, the Bloomin Onion of Japanese cuisine? This isnt that.

So you remember to reserve, you park down the block in the city lot, and you walk into a deserted hallway, alive with the smell of fresh, hot oil. A hostess intercepts you and guides you into a small, spare room, avocado-green, pottery on shelves on the back wall, with an eight-seat dining bar at its center. Your place has already been set: black-lacquered tray, four squat dishes of salt, chopsticks, a little bowl of sauce. A hot towel appears, cradled in a bendy metal holder you probably wont be able to stop playing with. If you are slow to do it yourself, a waiter unfolds an absorbent bib and drapes it around your neck.

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The executive chef is Satoshi Masuda, also executive chef of the Kyoto restaurant. He stands in the middle of the counter, behind a handmade hammered copper shield, tending to the boiling oil. An assistant taps at vegetables with his knife. You order sake, and almost at once a blue bowl appears in front of you, chunked zucchini with seaweed, a puddle of barely thickened dashi, and a spoonful of salmon roe. When you have finished that, you are brought a tart herb salad garnished with a swirled nest of slivered sweet potato, as hair-thin and as crisp as Lebanese kataif. There will be a fair amount of fried food in your immediate future. You probably need the ballast.

You wish that the soundtrack at Tempura Endo did not include quite so much Kenny G.

The chef plucks a slender raft of Japanese corn from the oil, joined in a neat slice from the cob, lays it on a sheet of absorbent paper in front of you, and directs you to dip a corner of it in the salt flavored with the powdered tea called matcha. The hot kernels pop like caviar under your teeth. A tiny deep-fried shrimp sandwich, Japanese characters charred into the toast, has the crunchy appeal of grilled cheese. A sashimi platter, if you have opted for one of the higher tiers of omakase menus, is good enough, but at this point you may become almost annoyed with it. Those slivers of tuna belly and snapper stand between you and the rest of the meal.

Preparing scallop tempura with caviar at Tempura Endo. (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times )

The chef opens a bottle of Chardonnay and sloshes a few drops into a bowl of flour. A twitching Santa Barbara spot prawn is neatly decapitated. The shell is flicked off. The chef trims the feelers on the head with a sharp knife, then flicks off the eyes with the motion you might use to remove a bit of lint from a jacket. The assistant expertly scores the prawns belly with a few slashing motions  the cuts prevent it from curling  and the chef flashes it through the batter and into the hot oil in what seems like a single motion. A few seconds later, the prawn is on the filter paper, delicately crisp but not crunchy, paler than golden, firm but juicy: the purest expression of Endos house style. The Pringle-crisp head is the chaser.

You follow with fried bites of Santa Barbara uni wrapped in seaweed, perhaps cooked a little too long to express its distinctive brininess; fragile king crab leg; and slightly overcooked golden-eye snapper wrapped in a shiso leaf. A single fried pea pod appears, stuffed with pureed peas  its a lot of work for a single mouthful, the assistant acknowledges  and then a fat Japanese sea scallop, split in half and stuffed with osetra caviar before it is fried.

On the pricier menus, there will be a chunk of Miyazaki A5 Wagyu beef, richer and even more prized than Kobe beef in Japan, dunked in lacy batter and fried to a dead rare. Is deep-frying the best way to treat the dearest mouthful of beef you are ever likely to taste? I would maintain not  the entire point of steak in my view is its caramelized, charred crust  but you may disagree.

The ten don, a sauce-softened mixed-tempura cake on rice, is superb  even better than the ones at Hannosuke, which I love.

But the bill, with tax, tip and a modest bottle of sake, is likely to approach $600 for two. (Some a la carte dishes are available after 9 p.m.) It is the only meal of its sort in Southern California at the moment, a new kind of Beverly Hills luxury. It is as expensive as a grand tasting menu at Melisse, three dinners at Animal or about 50 ten don bowls at Hannosuke. It is almost exactly twice as expensive as the original Kyoto restaurant  maybe the location; maybe the caviar.

To finish, there is a lovely slice of glazed Japanese sweet potato, fried, then flambeed with a glug of cognac; beautiful housemade mocha; and a wide bowl of frothy, perfect matcha, the elixir of the Japanese tea ceremony. Savor it. It may be a long time before you can afford this meal again.

::

Tempura Endo

A tempura specialist from Kyoto opens in Beverly Hills

LOCATION

9777 S. Santa Monica Blvd., Beverly Hills, (310) 274-2201, beverlyhills-endo.com

PRICES

Set menus $150-$280. A la carte after 9 p.m., $4-$50 (market price).

DETAILS

Dinner nightly, 5 p.m. to midnight. Credit cards accepted. Beer, wine and sake. Nearby city-lot parking.

RECOMMENDED DISHES

Corn; prawn; pea-stuffed pea pod.

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Not long ago, brewers were ridiculed for daring to adulterate their beer with fruit, and drinkers largely bought into the idea that beer should be free from additives beyond the malt and hops integral to the beverage.

The craft beer awakening has changed that outlook, and many American craft brewers are dusting off the traditional techniques of Belgian brewers whove long created complex, fruit-flavored brews.

Californias craft brewers enjoy an edge in this new fruity arms race: Thanks to the bounty of the Golden States farms and Chris Quiroga  a beer geek turned fruit broker  a dozen breweries in Southern California have access to some particularly noteworthy peaches. Quiroga has become the conduit between a network of adventurous brewers and a singular farmer famous for his passion  and his heirloom peaches.

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On 80 dusty acres south of Fresno, David Mas Masumoto grows organic grapes, peaches and nectarines. The struggles to save his beloved Sun Crest peaches and forge a new connection to land that his family had farmed for three generations was the subject of one of Masumotos nine books, 1995s Epitaph for a Peach. Also a columnist and speaker, Masumoto explores the farmers shifting place in society, and his latest book  Changing Season: A Father, a Daughter, a Family Farm, about his daughter taking over the farm  was released this year. But it took the death of a backyard peach tree for Masumoto fruit to catch on with brewers.

The dead peach tree belonged to an employee at San Diegos Lost Abbey brewery, and the last peaches it bore  before blowing over in a windstorm around 2008  were used to make that brewerys Yellow Bus. That experimental golden, sour ale became a craft beer sensation even though (or perhaps because) only 50 gallons were brewed. A regular at the brewerys tasting room and special events, Quiroga  then 29 and working as a residential contractor  loved Yellow Bus and wanted to help the brewery make more peach beer.

Looking to source the best peaches in the country, he asked an online beer-nerd acquaintance in Florida for leads; his beer-trading buddy pointed him to the Adopt-a-Tree program at Masumoto Family Farm.

Masumoto screens applicants of the program, and he wants to know how the fruit will be used. We want people who care about the food, care about the farm ... and who are serious, he says. The plan to use his fruit in beer intrigued Masumoto, and he offered Quiroga a tree to harvest in 2011.

Quiroga enlisted the help of like-minded beer nerds for the trek to Fresno and the hands-on work of picking the peaches. That first years harvest  over 600 pounds of Sun Crest peaches and Lagrange nectarines  went primarily to the Lost Abbey, Pasadenas Craftsman Brewing Co. and some of Quirogas homebrewer friends. The fruit was not as large or as picturesque as supermarket peaches, but it had what the brewers were looking for: flavor and a balance of sweetness and acidity.

Craftsman Brewing founder Mark Jilg is particularly fond of the Masumoto fruit, and hes worked with it more than perhaps any other brewer. He describes the character of the finished beer as biting into a peach, but in reverse  that the tannins in the peach skin add a drying sensation to the beers finish. Like peach fuzz, but at the end of the sip instead of the beginning of the bite, he says.

With each harvest, the collaboration between Masumoto and Quiroga expands, and Quiroga has no trouble finding brewers eager to add Masumoto peaches and nectarines to their brews. At the end of this years harvest  his sixth  over 10,000 pounds of Masumoto fruit had been delivered around Southern California, and each piece is hand-sorted and inspected by Quiroga before delivery. The whole thing started as a beer nerd who wanted a crazy project, he says.

Quirogas love of Masumoto peaches is shared by all the brewers with whom hes chosen to work, including Orange Countys the Bruery and San Diegos Modern Times Beer. In Los Angeles, Highland Park Brewery co-founder and brewer Bob Kunz has used the fruit since before his brewery opened, and on days that he receives a shipment of fruit, its like a brewery-style barn raising. Friends gather in the cramped brewery space to wash and breakdown hundreds of pounds of fruit while its at the peak of ripeness. Most of the beer featuring Masumoto fruit is wood-aged and takes months to mature; many of the brews wont be released until the spring.

These old varieties are finding a home and resonating with the work the brewers do, Masumoto says. Were not just having fun together, were in these endeavors together.

Masumoto has even started farming with the brewers in mind. My sense is to really push this high-acid, high-sugar balance, he says, so Ill do things like alter some watering practices and look for the fruit that will really work for Chris.

On the last weekend of the harvest in late July, Quiroga traveled to the farm and shared a selection of peach-infused beers from several breweries with the Masumoto family.

Its a real thrill for our whole family, to see our name actually on a beer label, Masumoto says. Theres nothing like sampling a beer made with your fruit, under the trees that grew that fruit. Its really a cool experience.
We met on Bumble, another swipe-right app that creates a hive of connections. The woman makes the first move within 24 hours, otherwise the match disappears forever.

Id developed what I believed to be a highly discerning online dating strategy. I seldom swipe right and rarely match, but when I do Im certain Ive stung him.

I was visiting the Bay Area when we matched. (Men in Northern California are much more interesting.) I was already back in L.A. when I heard from him, though he wasnt in Northern California at the time but rather in St. Louis, where hed unexpectedly flown to support a hometown friend whose dear mother had died.

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Sweet. He lives in Marin, was raised in the Midwest, and works in finance. Solid.

After texting a bit, he noted that he prefers communicating by phone. Texting is for teenage girls. And he should know, because he has two daughters in college. Which is why he understands women so well, he said. The phone is more personal. He asked for my number. Chivalry is still alive, he said.

Or wait, did he text that?

Are you a veteran of L.A.'s current dating scene? We want to publish your story

We chatted a bit for a few weeks. L.A. must be a hard place for single women, he said. Its so superficial. Men seem to care only about how women look and women about men with money.

Finding me a fascinating, beautiful woman, he offered to fly to L.A. under the pretense of an important business trip. But really, he said, the trip would be all about finally meeting me.

We spoke the night before our date. The plan was to meet at 4 p.m. in Venice at Gjelina. He was landing at LAX early in the morning for a meeting in El Segundo. Afterward, wed have the whole evening together before his 9:50 flight back to San Francisco.

At 2 p.m. I received a text: Hed been called to an unexpected meeting downtown. Our date would now be around 5:30. Ill call you in 20 minutes. Ruh-roh. Red flag.

At that point, I was in Mid-Wilshire, halfway between Venice and downtown in 93-degree heat. I was sweating through my date-wear: off-white silk lace camisole, black pants, low heels. Not too sexy, not too professional. My freshly blow-dried hair was damp and losing volume, quickly.

I was super annoyed. All I wanted to do was go home, tear my clothes off, turn on the AC and climb into cotton jammies. Id rather be alone watching election coverage than be out on a date anyway. This could be a deal-breaker.

But hed flown all the way to L.A. to see me, so I thought Id be open and extend myself by offering to meet downtown. Id be on the 10 in late afternoon traffic either way. Whats the difference?

About 15 degrees.

He texted back at about 3:30 to say, Ill get to Venice. Right. I took a minute and replied, I imagine youll be closer to 6. His next two texts: No stress. Ill call you soon.

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I decided to drive toward Venice. Id be early, but at least its cooler there. Id already canceled our dinner reservation  there was no way Id be able to push it back. It was Gjelina after all. No substitutions.

Next text, 5:50 p.m. He had another unexpected stop in Century City. Sure. By the time he gets to Venice, wed have time for only a drink and quick bite before bolting for LAX.

I wanted to be home. But traffic to the Valley would be a nightmare. It had cooled off, so I wandered down the street to Wabi-Sabi. I sat down at the bar, the restaurants folding doors flung wide open. I felt the beach breeze and could almost smell the ocean air.

I ordered a glass of sparkling rose. I decided Id wait till 7:15 p.m. If I didnt hear from him by then, Id head home.

7:07: Weve an unexpected dinner  Ill call as soon as Im out. So sorry for all this.

Sorry at 7 oclock for not showing up to a 4 p.m. date?

He  who hates texting  texted to say hes sorry.

Really?

Outrageous. Rude. Deal-breaker, definitely.

I hadnt eaten in hours. I was starving. Instead of feeling sorry for myself, I committed to staying in Venice. Alone. At a bar. Which in nearly my entire adult life in L.A., Id never done before. I ordered some snacks and $85 later I walked to my car, but not before stopping at Salt & Straw for a $7.50 double scoop ice cream cone.

9:15: On the 405, my phone rang. It was him, probably just about to board the plane at LAX. I let it go to voice mail. Hi, Julie. Its ___. Give me a call back when you get a chance.

Really, thats it? Not even a Please? So much for chivalry. I deleted the message.

9:50: I was home in my cotton, watching MSNBC, wondering: Does the dude feel guilty? Is he embarrassed, ashamed? Does he even realize how badly he blew it? I decided to send a scathing text while he festered in-flight.

The following night he left another voicemail. Its __. There was something going on personally yesterday. I want to explain.

I didnt call back. His Bumble profiles since disappeared. Forever.

Julie Buckner is a communications consultant and owns a yoga studio. She lives in the San Fernando Valley with her two teenage sons.

L.A. Affairs chronicles the current dating scene in and around Los Angeles. We pay $300 a column. If you have comments or a true story to tell, email us at LAAffairs@latimes.com.
President Obamas last tour of Asia while in office was marked by a series of provocations, punctuated by North Koreas fifth nuclear test Friday.

Obama condemned the test but minimized other slights, including a rude welcome by China and a vulgarity from the new Philippine president, highlighting instead a step forward in the fight on climate change with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

As Obama prepares to leave office, his 10th and final trip to the continent underscored his mixed record on the cornerstone of his foreign policy, a repositioning of diplomatic and military resources toward Asia, in part to counter the increased power of China.

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Obama has touted successes, such as improved diplomatic relationships with Vietnam and Myanmar and a 2014 climate deal with China that served as something of a model for the global accord reached in Paris last year. Obama opened his trip by ratifying the deal alongside Xi, who did the same for China. But he ended it, even before North Korea conducted a test, by lamenting the work ahead on the rogue nation, perhaps the most prominent example of goals hes leaving unmet.

He also stressed that the alliances he helped shore up need tending even after he leaves office. Some Southeast Asian leaders are worried by China, which has grown more hostile to its neighbors during Obamas presidency.

The concern that Ive heard is not that what we have done hasnt been important and successful, Obama told reporters as he wrapped up the trip. Rather, he said, leaders one after another told him, We hope that Americas interest and presence and engagement is sustained.

Obama has tried to deepen engagement to Southeast Asian countries  he is the first president to meet with leaders of all 10  chiefly by strengthening trade ties with the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership pact in the works for years.

But if Obama cant persuade Congress to ratify the trade deal, it could send a message that the U.S. is turning away from the region. Both presidential nominees have come out against the deal.

Our leadership in Asia depends on how well we manage great power relations, and trade is a big part of our credibility in Asia, said Michael Green, a former security advisor of the Bush administration and Asia analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He has expanded our engagement, has built it up in Southeast Asia. If our economy grows, that counts. Trade counts.

China, for its part, appears to be starting to understand that it probably cant advance its interests if it is hostile toward the U.S.

China helped the U.S. negotiate an agreement with Iran to limit its nuclear capabilities and has provided some aid in the effort to pressure North Korea to follow suit.

Obama spoke privately with Chinese leaders about human rights issues but steered clear of publicly raising specific instances of repeated violations in China, which has embarked on a vigorous campaign to close political space for opposition and civil society organizations, a reversal of a gradual awakening seen nearly a decade ago. And little has been done to make it easier for American and European businesses to work in China.

This undermines the two pillars of the U.S.-China relationship, said Elizabeth Economy, director of Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. It is contrary to everything we anticipated in 2010, 2011, even 2012.

Back home, Republican Donald Trump complained of a humiliation for the president when Obama was forced to walk down the short set of stairs from Air Force One for his official arrival in China rather than the tall one he customarily uses on such occasions. It wasnt made clear why China failed to provide a set of stairs for him.

Obama responded by describing the breadth and depth of the relationships he has fostered with China and with the 10 Southeast Asian nations looking for a world power that can stand up to China.

If this theory about my reception and my rebalance policy is based on me going down the short stairs in China, I think that is overblown, he said. Any reasonable person  would be puzzled as to how this became somehow indicative of the work that weve done here.

Another troubling sign this week came in the public insult from Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who, as head of a treaty ally nation, had been scheduled to hold a bilateral meeting with Obama on the sidelines of a leaders summit in Laos.

The day before, Duterte announced that, if Obama dared to broach the subject of his governments extrajudicial crackdown on the drug trade, he would call him a coarse name to his face.

Obama parried with success, at least in the short term. He announced that he did intend to bring up the question of human rights and due process whenever he sat down with Duterte, and that perhaps the two should find a more constructive atmosphere in which to convene. Duterte said he regretted his comment, but the meeting was canceled.

But the insult highlighted a concern with such a valuable partner as the Philippines, and with most of the rest of the region. China is their leading trading partner and their close neighbor, significant advantages should it choose to bring those nations more closely into the fold.

But a lot depends on what the next U.S. president does, Green said.

The piece that President Obama filled in is Southeast Asia. He did a lot of shoring up of relationships that the next president will have to continue.

Times staff writer Tracy Wilkinson in Washington contributed to this report.

Christi.Parsons@latimes.com

Follow @cparsons for news about the White House.

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Los Angeles-area residents who witness potential terrorist activity can now report the details to law enforcement using their smartphones.

On Thursday, the LAPD and the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department unveiled a new phone app called iWATCHLA that makes filing a report as simple as a few keystrokes.

The LAPD launched its If you see something, say something terrorism reporting program in 2009. But until now, in an age when making phone calls increasingly takes a back seat to tapping out messages, people had to dial 911 or their local police station to report suspicious activity.

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The app also provides a primer on what kind of behaviors to flag.

Trust your instincts, and if it makes you feel uncomfortable, report it, the app suggests.

For example, a hotel guest who arrives with an unusually large amount of luggage, who makes inquiries about government or military sites or who refuses cleaning services for a long period might be worth reporting, the app says.

After a video store clerk reported that there was anti-American material on a DVD he was copying, police arrested individuals planning a bomb attack, the app notes.

In another case, a woman smelled bad odors from a neighbors apartment, where police later discovered a poison gas factory, according to the app.

Even more important than the ability to respond is the ability to prevent, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said at a news conference in front of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

With the rise of ISIS and self-radicalized, home-grown terrorists inspired by the internet, attacks on soft targets like a nightclub or an office Christmas party are difficult to prevent. On Thursday, Beck and Los Angeles County Sheriff Jim McDonnell asked for the publics help.

We cant be everywhere, but the public is everywhere, McDonnell said.

LAPD and sheriffs officials will sift through the tips, filtering out those that do not need to be in the terrorism database and investigating others in greater depth.

In reporting suspicious activity, Beck said, the focus should be on a persons behavior, not on his or her race or religion.

Wed rather have more information than less. We dont mind doing the vetting, Beck said.

cindy.chang@latimes.com

Follow me on Twitter: @cindychangLA

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Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept. 9

Trend:

NATO continues to stand in solidarity with Turkey, with increased naval and air presence and with defensive missile systems on the border with Syria, said NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in Turkey.

Stoltenberg arrived in Ankara for a two-day visit Sept. 8 in a sign of the Alliances enduring support for the Turkish people and their democracy, said the message posted on NATOs website.

On Sept. 8 evening, the secretary general met with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to discuss Turkeys contributions to the Alliances shared security, including in Afghanistan, in the fight against the Islamic State (IS, aka ISIS, ISIL or Daesh) terrorist group, and in NATOs efforts to stop human trafficking in the Aegean Sea.

The secretary general also reiterated NATOs condemnation of the July 15 coup attempt in Turkey, expressing condolences for those who lost their lives, and respect for the courage of the Turkish people.

Any attack on democracy, in any of our countries, is an attack on the very foundation of our Alliance. A strong and democratic Turkey is essential for the stability and security of Europe and the region, he said.

On July 15 evening, Turkish authorities said a military coup attempt took place in the country. Meanwhile, a group of servicemen announced about transition of power to them. However, the rebelling servicemen started to surrender July 16 and Turkish authorities said the coup attempt failed.

Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had said the death toll as a result of the military coup attempt stood at 246, excluding the coup plotters, and more than 2,000 people were wounded. Erdogan declared a three-month state of emergency in Turkey on July 20.

During his trip to Ankara, Stoltenberg will also meet with Prime Minister Binali Yildirim, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, Defense Minister Fikri Isik and other senior officials.
More than 25 years of lawsuits, court rulings, aborted sales and property transfers over the landmark Mt. Soledad cross in La Jolla have finally come to an end, closing one of the longest legal battles over religious symbols on public property in the country.

On Wednesday the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a one-page ruling ordering the end to the latest round of appeals and dismissal of the case, because the central issue  a religious symbol standing on government property  was moot.

Thats because in July 2015 the Mount Soledad Memorial Association agreed to purchase the cross and the land beneath it for $1.4 million from the Department of Defense. While that was seen as the beginning of the end, the plaintiffs in the suit who were seeking removal of the cross needed time to review the terms of the sale and work out other details.

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It took more than a year for that to be worked out, lawyers for the Defense Department said in a motion filed Aug. 25. A settlement agreement resolves all remaining issues, including attorneys fees, arising from the federal governments acquisition, ownership and 2015 disposition of the Mt. Soledad Veterans Memorial, they wrote.

The short motions and brief order from the court mark a muted end to a legal battle initiated in 1989, involving both the city of San Diego and then the federal government. The case traveled several times up and down the federal courts, including two trips to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The issue was always the same: Opponents said that the cross on public property violated the provisions in the state and federal constitutions prohibiting the government from endorsing one religion over another. Supporters countered that the cross had been a longstanding landmark and ultimately argued it was a secular sign of service and sacrifice by military veterans.

Courts consistently sided with opponents of the display. But that didnt temper the passions of people on both sides of the issue as the case played out in what appeared to be an endless series of court hearing over the years.

I think this now resolves the case, said David Loy, the legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of San Diego & Imperial Counties, which has long fought alongside other plaintiffs opposed to the presence of the cross.

The government doesnt own the cross or the land underneath it any more, Loy said. The government is no longer in the business of endorsing religion.

The cross site, with a panoramic view of the city, was on land owned by the city of San Diego for decades. The city was the first defendant in the initial suit filed by Vietnam War veteran and atheist Philip K. Paulson in 1989.

U.S. District Judge Gordon Thompson ruled in 1991 that the cross, which is 29 feet tall and stands on a base that lifts it to a height of 43 feet, was unconstitutional and had to be moved off public land.

That triggered rounds of appeals and two attempts by the city to sell the property. Both were blocked by federal courts, which ruled that various terms of the sales violated the constitution because they gave a preference to buyers who planned to keep it as a religious symbol.

By 2006 the city was under pressure, facing the spectre of a daily $5,000 fine from the courts if it did not abide by the 1991 ruling ordering the cross off public land. At that time the U.S. Congress stepped in at the urging of local legislators and took the property by eminent domain, handing it to the Defense Department for use as a war memorial.

That move then triggered a second round of lawsuits, this time with the federal government as defendant. A group called Jewish War Veterans sued, as did veteran Steve Trunk, replacing Paulson after his death in 2006.

In 2008, cross supporters got a victory when U.S. District Judge Larry Burns in San Diego ruled that the cross was not a religious symbol, but one of service and sacrifice. That ruling was appealed, and in 2011 the 9th Circuit again ruled in favor of opponents, overturning Burns ruling and concluding the cross was a distinctively Christian symbol and could not remain on public land.

That ruling was under appeal when in 2015 the sale of the property to the private Mount Soledad Memorial Association went through. Lou Scanlon, president of the group, said Thursday that ending the case was welcome.

Its a pleasure to be able to operate without the cloud of litigation hovering over the monument, he said.

Jim McElroy, the lawyer for Trunk who has been involved in the case for two decades, said the long battle was worth it.

From our perspective, I think I can say that after 25 years we finally got the message through, that a 40-foot, 20-ton ubiquitous symbol of Christianity on public property is not constitutional, he said.

A cross in some form had stood on the site since 1913 and had long been the site of sunrise Easter services since the 1950s. After the litigation began in 1989, the base of the cross was filled in with plaques commemorating services of veterans.

A condition of the sale to the association requires that the site be maintained as a veterans memorial in perpetuity.
After the first plane hit the north tower of the World Trade Center, OHaras Restaurant and Pub filled up quickly with the commodity traders who flooded in from the doomed building, taking refuge in the neighborhood tavern.

They had no idea what was to come. Nobody was really sure what was going on, recalled Michael Keane, the pubs co-owner.

Together they watched the terror attack unfold on a 19-inch television perched in a corner of the bar. When a live video feed showed a second plane hitting the south tower, Keane and some bar employees ran up five floors to the roof of the bars quaint red brick building.

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We could see the hole on this side of the tower and we had a bunch of papers burning on the roof, so we came down and got everyone out, he said.

OHaras Restaurant and Pub became famous after the events of Sept. 11, 2001, as a gathering spot for emergency personnel from around the world. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times )

And so began OHaras life after 9/11. The bar went through the same arc of emotions and challenges that so many New York residents and workers experienced in the aftermath of the attack  shock, grief, rebuilding and somehow finding a way to move forward.

It was a tough go for a while, said Keane.

Fifteen years later, OHaras remains much as it used to be  an unpretentious Irish bar with Guinness on tap and bartenders who greet regulars by name. But it is altered, too.

Large television screens mounted on walls of the bi-level bar have replaced the 19-inch TV. A new influx of customers  workers who moved into the gleaming office towers rebuilt on the World Trade Center site  have adopted the pub as their after-work social spot. Tourists, too, often find their way to OHaras after visiting the National September 11 Memorial and Museum.

Perhaps the biggest change in OHaras post-9/11 incarnation is the way it embraced the past and became a memorial to the first responders who died trying to rescue people from the towers.

It started on the first anniversary, Keane said, when the bar was filled with police officers and firefighters, not just from New York, but from across the country and abroad, who gathered to drink and reminisce after the official commemorations at ground zero.

The new World Trade Center is only a block from OHaras Restaurant and Pub. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times )

Some of the visitors posted cloth patches with the insignias of their departments to the walls of the bar. The gesture took hold and became a tradition as the years passed. As the word got out, cops and firefighters came to OHaras on pilgrimages, adding their own patches to the collage that honors the 343 New York City firefighters, 23 New York police officers, 37 Port Authority police officers and eight paramedics who died on 9/11.

Now, the walls have become a road map of Americas emergency responders  Detroit, Chicago, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Baton Rouge. Too many places and too many patches to count, Keane said.

The bars close ties to first responders is not without reason. One block away is the FDNYs Engine 10, Ladder 10 firehouse, which lost six men on 9/11, including a retired captain who had been working as the fire marshal for the World Trade Center.

See the most-read stories this hour 

Firefighters from the Ten House, as it is known, have been coming to OHaras since it opened in 1983 and many were close to the bars staff.

It was partly due to this relationship that OHaras managed to reopen in April 2002, earlier than many other nearby businesses. Using their FDNY connections, Keane and his colleagues obtained passes allowing them to enter the street where the bar is located, even though a large area around the collapsed towers remained cordoned off for months.

They found the building still standing, but it, too, was covered in debris. They spent months clearing it out, lugging heavy bags gathered on the roof down the stairs, Keane said.

The reopening of OHaras in April 2002 gave returning customers some normalcy, co-owner Michael Keane said. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times )

On the day the tavern reopened, many of the bars old customers returned to a neighborhood forever changed.

People who had worked down here didnt work here any more. The trains that they took were different. Everything was different. So this gave them some normalcy, Keane said.

Those early months were difficult emotionally for the employees, especially when they would learn that a regular they had not seen for a while, who they had hoped had moved to offices in another part of the city, was among those who died when the towers collapsed.

Over the years, OHaras patrons and employees evolved to reflect the passage of time. On a recent weeknight, the patrons were a mix of tourists and office workers, none of whom had worked in the area before 9/11. Bartender Dave DeMarco, 28, who recently also became a partner in the bar, was just starting eighth grade on 9/11.

Michael Weaver started coming to OHaras a year ago when the digital advertising company he works for moved from midtown Manhattan to 4 World Trade Center. For Weaver, 47, the bars draw is less about its ties to 9/11 than about its friendly atmosphere, a place where he can have a beer and conversation before commuting home to New Jersey.

Its a community, he said.

Its a nice day when people feel comfortable coming here.  Michael Keane, OHaras Restaurant and Pub co-owner

Tourists, too, sometimes land at OHaras for reasons other than the lessons it holds about the past. John Raymond, 75, and his wife, Mary Raymond, 74, of Dallas, were spending one night in New York before joining a cruise to New England and Canada. Their hotel was near the World Trade Center and they had spent part of the day visiting the 9/11 memorial.

Both of Irish ancestry, they had wanted to have dinner in an Irish bar nearby and had identified OHaras in an Internet search before leaving Texas. Once at the bar, they were immediately curious about the patches and other 9/11 memorabilia on the walls.

Their waiter quickly produced the book, a large album kept at the bar that is filled with photos of OHaras immediately after the attacks and other images of the aftermath that had been donated by police and firefighters.

Taking turns looking at the photos, the couple was clearly moved. Its really hard to fathom what happened here, Mary Raymond said. There are photos here that we didnt see in the museum. Its more personal.

It is personal for Keane. Every year as the anniversary approaches, the painful memories return .

I dont want to feel that way anymore, he said.

But then, on the day itself, the bar fills with police officers, firefighters and family members who lost relatives in the attack. And he feels a bit better.

Its nice to see those guys, Keane said. Its a nice day when people feel comfortable coming here.

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California is officially done with telling parents that schools are only as good as their test scores.

The state Board of Education voted unanimously Thursday to rate schools using an evaluation that includes many more factors  among them academics, graduation rates, college preparedness and the rates at which non-native speakers are learning English.

The evaluations will incorporate scores on new science tests when those tests are ready. Attendance data also will factor in eventually.

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But unlike in the past, schools will not get an overall rating. Instead, theyll receive results on how theyre doing across the new categories, for different groups of students. The results will focus not just on how theyre doing now but how theyve progressed from year to year.

The vote marks the end of a long philosophical shift away from judging schools using only their test scores, as more people agree that numbers alone can never capture the complexity of classrooms.

In 2013, the Legislature passed the Local Control Funding Formula, which finances education by allotting a certain amount of money for each child, plus extra if that child had special needs.

In Thursdays vote, the board satisfied a requirement that by Oct. 1, 2016, there be a statewide system for evaluating schools along the lines of the funding formulas eight priorities, which include parent engagement and school climate. If a school districts performance and progress in two or more priorities are low, the corresponding county education office is supposed to intervene.

The new system replaces the Academic Performance Index, the states test-based accountability system that gave each school a one-number rating.

The shift in direction, officials said, should make the accountability process more broadly useful. There are many functions of accountability, not just finding schools and districts that are not meeting performance standards, board President Mike Kirst said.

More than 100 parents, students and others spoke about the plan before the board voted. Laurie Benn, who lives in Altadena, left her house at 4 a.m. Thursday to fly to Sacramento.

The mother of seven, whose children attend school in Pasadena, said she made the trip because she needed the board to know the type of information she is looking for as she tries to determine which schools are best.

The state board discussed presenting an array of factors  test scores, suspension rates. But Benn wanted something else: a single rating for each school, which, she said, would give me an idea of which school I would like to look at before she investigated further.

Benn came with Parent Revolution, a group that organizes parents to take control over who leads those schools deemed to be failing. Determining which schools fit this bill might be more difficult with the new less clear-cut, many-layered assessments.

Advocates and some parents hope that the decision about whether to use a single rating or not isnt necessarily final. They contend that the board will have to revisit accountability soon, because of the timeline of implementing a new federal law.

President Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act in December. Known as ESSA, the law replaced the more test-centric No Child Left Behind Act. Every Student mandates that states continue to emphasize academics in assessing schools  but, in line with Californias desire to look at more than scores, it requires the consideration of at least one non-academic factor.

The new law requires that states use their accountability system to identify the lowest-performing 5% of schools serving low-income students, low-income schools where specific groups of students underperform, as well as high schools where one-third of students dont graduate on time. States must then help those schools improve.

Kirst maintained that the proposal the board voted on Thursday satisfied the federal statute. He acknowledged, though, that school evaluations may not align with the federal governments proposed regulations, which require states to give schools comprehensive, summative ratings.

Still, although the public comment period for those federal regulations regarding school accountability just ended recently, they might not be set in stone for months and priorities could change with a new president.

Kirst and others have resisted boiling down the different factors that make up an evaluation into one rating because there are no conclusive findings that can guide how much each one should be weighted.

Samantha Tran, education policy director of the advocacy group Children Now, maintained that the new Local Control Funding Formula framework doesnt comply with federal law. There are some key equity guardrails that theyre not embedding, she said. For the kids that are furthest behind, you have to have standards with expectations for them to grow faster.

Board member Feliza Ortiz-Licon expressed similar concerns. Im still disappointed in this system as it relates to decreasing the achievement gap, she said.

More than 300 groups have signed on to a letter supporting AB 2548, a bill co-sponsored by Children Now that includes different growth standards for different student groups and would give academic factors more weight. The bill is now on the governors desk.

The board received much criticism a few months ago when it released a preliminary model for how school ratings might be conveyed to the public in a series of colored boxes. People called the meaning behind those boxes impenetrable. Benn compared trying to glean information from the boxes to digging in a ditch.

The board isnt taking action on how to represent the school assessments yet. Kirst likened school accountability to a cellphone, and said Thursdays vote targeted the operating system, not the screen. Still, officials presented an updated model of the colored boxes template, designed by a graphic artist. On the color scale, red represented the worst and blue the best.

For each school, next to each factor being considered, a ball would be colored, either fully or partially depending on its measurement. The color coding scheme remained unchanged from the boxes.

But State Board of Education senior fellow Nancy Brownell called the concept much different from our Excel spreadsheet set of boxes.

She noted that the balls are called Harvey Balls, and are used by Consumer Reports in its rating charts  not to be confused with Harvey Balls, the creator of the smiley face.

You can reach Joy Resmovits on Twitter @Joy_Resmovits and by email at Joy.Resmovits@LATimes.com.

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Kathryn Barger, a candidate running to replace retiring Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich, won a legal challenge Thursday over a rivals candidate statement that implied Barger supports Donald Trump.

Barger, who is Antonovichs chief of staff, is in a runoff with Darrell Park, a former staffer with the White House Office of Management and Budget turned entrepreneur.

Although the race is nonpartisan, Parks strategy has largely centered around pointing out that he is a Democrat and Barger is a Republican.

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Barger filed a challenge to Parks candidate statement that will be sent to voters. It said: I am the only candidate endorsed by the Democratic Party. Barger argued that the California election code prohibits candidates from including party affiliation in their statements.

She also challenged another line in Parks statement: Los Angeles County cannot afford to elect a supervisor who will support Donald Trumps extreme Republican agenda.

Bargers challenge called that a false statement in a direct personal attack.

Superior Court Judge Mary Strobel ruled in Bargers favor on both counts Thursday, striking the language from Parks statement.

After the ruling, Bargers campaign said in a statement that she has made clear on many occasions that she does not support Mr. Trump, she hasnt voted for Mr.Trump and will not vote for Mr. Trump in November, and she certainly does not support Mr. Trumps radical agenda.

In turn, Parks campaign consultant released a statement expressing disappointment that Barger had prevailed in court, adding, It is more than a little ironic that Barger chose to file this superfluous lawsuit since it is exactly what Donald Trump would have done.

abby.sewell@latimes.com

Twitter: @sewella

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The Los Angeles Police Department issued a traffic advisory for downtown Los Angeles on Friday, warning of potential congestion during a visit by Vice President Joe Biden.

The potential Bidenjam may occur while the vice president is scheduled to speak at the Stand Up to Cancer live event at Walt Disney Concert Hall.

The LAPD said that the following areas of the city should be avoided if possible to prevent travel delays Friday afternoon and evening:

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The area around Pershing Drive between Westchester Parkway and Imperial Highway from 3:45 to 4:30 p.m.

The area around Imperial Highway between Vista Del Mar and California Street from 4:30 to 4:45 p.m.

The area around the eastbound 105 Freeway between California Street and South Broadway from 4:45 to 5 p.m.

The area around the 110 Freeway between West 117th Street and West 1st Street from 5 to 5:15 p.m.

The area around 3rd Street between Huntley Drive Street and South Hope Street from 5:15 to 5:30 p.m.

The area around South Figueroa Street between West 5th Street and West Temple Street from 5 to 5:15 p.m.

The area around 1st Street between South Beaudry Avenue and South Olive Street from 5:15 to 5:30 p.m.

The area around Hope Street between West Temple Street and West 3rd Street from 5:30 to 5:45 p.m.

The area around South Figueroa Street and West 5th Street from 6 to 7 p.m.

The area around South Hope Street between 2nd Street and 5th Street from 6 to 7 p.m.

The area around Grand Street between 3rd Street and 7th Street from 6 to 7 p.m.

The area around Grand Street between Olive Street and Figueroa Street. 6 to 7 p.m.

The area around 110 Freeway between West 1st Street and West 117th Street from 6 to 7 p.m.

The area around the westbound 105 Freeway between South Broadway and California Street from 6:30 to 7 p.m.

The area around Imperial Highway between California Street and Vista Del Mar from 6:30 to 7 p.m.

The area around Pershing Drive between Imperial Highway and Westchester Parkway from 6:30 to 7 p.m.

Closures and restrictions will also be in place in the following locations:

Downtown Los Angeles east and westbound 1st Street between Hope Street and Grand Avenue; east and westbound 2nd Street between Hope Street and Grand Avenue; north and southbound Hope Street between 1st Street and 2nd Street; north and southbound Grand Avenue between 1st Street and 2nd Street will be closed from 1 to 6:30 p.m.

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A judge has dismissed a perjury case this week against a Los Angeles County sheriffs deputy after a jury deadlocked over whether the deputy filed a false police report.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge C.H. Rehm dismissed the case Wednesday against Gregory Rodriguez, who was charged last year with one count each of perjury and submitting the untrue police report.

Prosecutors alleged that Rodriguez, 36, lied when he said a bystander to an Aug. 23, 2012 traffic stop, Christopher Gray, attempted to free two people in custody. The deputy claimed Gray reached for the door handle of the sheriffs patrol vehicle to release the suspects.

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On Aug. 8, after two days of deliberation, eight of the 12 jurors found Rodriguez not guilty. In a downtown courtroom on Wednesday, prosecutors said they would not seek a retrial.

It was the right decision, defense attorney Vicki I. Podberesky said. I never thought that there was sufficient evidence in this case to prove the allegations that the district attorney brought. At the end of the day, I think the majority of the jurors felt the same way.

During a weeklong trial that began July 29, prosecutors relied on witness testimony as well as videos, which showed Gray standing near sheriffs deputies with his arms folded.

In the footage, a deputy asks Gray to move from the street onto the sidewalk in the 1300 block of South Marrianna Avenue, at the border of Commerce and East Los Angeles.

When Gray didnt comply, the deputy handcuffed him before pressing him onto a patrol car, according to videos obtained by The Times.

In a police report filed the next day, Rodriguez and his partner gave a statement that appeared to contradict the video.

I saw [Gray] reach for the rear door handle of the patrol vehicle, the deputies wrote in a supplemental report, which was signed by a supervisor.

Podberesky said the video of the arrest was merely a snippet of what occurred.

Sheriffs dispatch records showed that about 20 to 25 minutes of the incident  a traffic stop that resulted in the arrest of two other men  were not recorded on video, the lawyer said.

There were just some looming questions about what really happened in the 20 minutes that wasnt captured on the video played in court, Podberesky said. The most critical time period was never shown.

Rodriguez has been relieved of duty since April 2014, and his pay was suspended in 2015. As of Wednesday, he remained an employee of the Sheriffs Department, Podberesky said.

Prosecutors declined to file charges against Rodriguezs partner, citing insufficient evidence, according to district attorneys office spokesman Ricardo Santiago.

Also citing insufficient evidence, prosecutors declined to charge Mucio Ramirez and Renato Jiminez, the two people arrested in the traffic stop on suspicion of marijuana possession, Santiago said.

Gray spent about five days in jail after deputies booked him on suspicion of attempted lynching for trying to free someone from the custody of a law enforcement officer, according to his attorney, Olu K. Orange. Criminal charges against him were later dismissed.

Gray filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the Sheriffs Department and the county in October 2013. The case was settled for $549,000, according to county records.

matt.hamilton@latimes.com

Twitter: @MattHjourno.

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After a 16-year search, the Los Angeles Police Department held a news conference this summer to announce it had captured a murder suspect on the departments Most Wanted list.

A woman had recognized his face after she logged into the wanted section of the LAPDs website and called a tipster hotline, authorities said.

Guillermo Torres was arrested in late July because police thought he was the suspected killer, Samuel Calvario. Torres, officials said, had adopted a new identity to evade police.

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But Torres was cleared Thursday after DNA testing determined he was not Calvario, the man sought in the Nov. 9, 2000, killing of 31-year-old Daniel Felix.

Torres, 45, the father of an adult son, spent 17 days in custody after being arrested at his workplace in Los Feliz.

This was an innocent family man. This was a real tragedy and nightmare. This could have been anyone, and they never really verified his identity, said Torres attorney, Leonard Levine. This should have never happened. They even held a press conference to announce his arrest and told people hed been living a double life.

LAPD Chief Charlie Beck on Friday announced that he had directed the departments chief of detectives, Deputy Chief Matt Blake, to oversee a comprehensive review of the case, to determine if it was handled as the department requires.

The review is designed to determine whether the handling of the case was consistent with department protocol and [to determine whether] appropriate efforts have been taken to identify and arrest the individual responsible for the 2000 murder, the department said in a statement.

Greg Risling, a spokesman for the District Attorneys office, said that because a new warrant has been issued in the case, his office cannot comment.

Torres was arrested for the killing on July 25 and held in lieu of $2-million bail.

Levine said the police report shows that the department took a photo of Calvario and had the FBI use technology to age it to compare with Torres image to confirm his identity.

Police say Felix was killed late one night after he witnessed Calvario arguing with his girlfriend inside a white truck. Felix intervened in the dispute and Calvario became angry, pulled out a gun and shot him, according to authorities.

With the help of Torres two employers, who believed he was an innocent man wrongly identified, Levine was hired to defend Torres.

I knew within five minutes of meeting him he didnt do it. For starters, he was married five years before the killing and lived a completely different life to the suspect, Levine said. He is not even the same height.

Levine said the DNA proved vital because Calvario and his girlfriend had a child together, allowing for a DNA comparison to Torres.

As doubt grew that the man in county jail was the accused killer, a judge ordered Torres release with electronic monitoring.

On Thursday, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Sergio C. Tapia II told him, You are discharged from this matter.

Levine said the case represents a troubling breakdown of the system.

Mr. Torres wants to move on with his life. He doesnt want any publicity, Levine said. Unbelievably this already cost him moneythey sent him a bill for $1,000 for an ambulance the police had to call after he had an anxiety attack when they accused him of a murder he did not commit.

Levine added, the crazy thing is there is a killer out still.

richard.winton@latimes.com

Follow @lacrimes on Twitter

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UPDATES:

4:20 p.m.: This story was updated with comments from Chief Beck.
Los Angeles Police Officer Danielle Lopez and her partner were driving to a South L.A. jail when they spotted a man in the middle of the street pointing an assault rifle at other cars.

The officers jumped out and drew their guns.

Drop the gun! Lopez remembers shouting at the man. Drop the gun!

It was a tense moment, a potentially life-or-death scenario that police train for but hope to avoid: one that could have ended in gunfire.

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Instead, Lopez and her partner were able to persuade the man to drop the rifle and step away, arresting him without firing a single bullet. After taking him into custody, the officers realized that the gun he was carrying was, in fact, a fake.

On Thursday, Lopez and Officer Bryan Waggener were recognized for their judgment and restraint, joining a group of 25 officers who became the LAPDs first recipients of a new award: the Preservation of Life medal.

The LAPD has long recognized officers for heroic acts, bestowing the departments highest honor  the Medal of Valor  upon those who have pulled people from fiery car crashes or shielded fellow officers during shootouts.

But the Preservation of Life medal honors officers who go above and beyond normal police work to avoid using deadly force during dangerous encounters.

Six months after her confrontation with the rifle-wielding man, Lopez said Thursday that she was honored to receive the award but felt she was simply doing what she was trained to do.

We put on the uniform, go out there and in some situations like this, its part of our job, Lopez said after the ceremony, the new medal pinned to her uniform.

The new award marks a relatively novel approach by the LAPD, reflecting an increasing emphasis within policing on so-called de-escalation strategies aimed at defusing tense encounters with the public amid a heated national debate over how officers use force.

The LAPD is one of only a handful of agencies nationwide that have such an award. Police in Camden, N.J., have adopted a similar recognition. So too has the Philadelphia Police Department, which created a Medal of Tactical De-escalation in December and has since handed out 44 of the awards, according to an agency spokesman.

The LAPD is held in special regard, so for them to put this award at the same level as the Medal of Valor sends a huge message.  Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum

Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington think tank focused on law enforcement issues, said other departments could follow suit.

The LAPD is held in special regard, so for them to put this award at the same level as the Medal of Valor sends a huge message to the entire policing profession, he said.

But the award has stirred some controversy. The union representing rank-and-file officers blasted the medal when the honor was created last fall, saying it was a terrible idea that prioritized the lives of suspected criminals over the lives of LAPD officers.

The concern, the union said, was that officers would second-guess themselves during dangerous encounters if they felt pressured to avoid using force because of the award.

That stance appeared to have softened after Thursdays ceremony for at least one of the unions directors. Jerretta Sandoz, the unions vice president, said that although officer safety is always a priority, those who received the Preservation of Life award displayed very, very heroic acts.

Those stories that I heard today, it took tremendous courage to do their job, she said. It made me proud to be a police officer.

Hundreds of officers packed the ballroom of a downtown L.A. hotel for the ceremony and a lunch, joined by their families, police commissioners, the mayor and a long list of city officials. It was a solemn event, the room falling silent as the scenarios each officer faced were described.

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Officer Vincent Ortiz was off duty, driving along the 5 Freeway in February, when he saw a man trapped inside a sport utility vehicle that had been involved in a fiery car crash. Ortiz pulled the man from the burning wreck, moments before another vehicle involved in the crash exploded nearby. He received the Medal of Valor.

In August 2014, a gunman in an SUV opened fire on officers in South L.A. During a mile-long rolling gun battle, a veteran SWAT officer was seriously wounded in his leg and pulled to safety by his colleagues. Nearly a dozen officers received the Medal of Valor for their actions during that encounter. The injured officer, Nelson Fong, returned to SWAT duty a day before Thursdays ceremony.

When Officer Ericandrew Avendano was confronted in February 2015 by a man with an ax, he tried to talk the man into dropping the weapon as he waited for other officers to arrive, believing the man was mentally ill or had been using drugs. Police ended up shooting the armed man with less-lethal beanbag rounds, subduing him without resorting to deadly force. Avendano was the first LAPD officer pinned with the new Preservation of Life medal.

The awards, Beck said, were for officers who jeopardized their own safety for someone else  many times people they didnt know.

There can be no finer definition of hero, Beck told the crowd. There can be no better example of a Los Angeles police officer.

Officer Francisco Rubio left the ceremony with three awards: the Medal of Valor, the Preservation of Life and the Purple Heart, given to officers killed or seriously injured.

In 2011, when Rubio had been on the job about five years, he and his partner responded to a fight at a party. As the officers were questioning people outside, Rubio saw headlights fast approaching. He grabbed his partners collar and yelled for other officers to get out of the way. A car barreled toward them, slamming into a nearby police cruiser that knocked Rubio 15 feet through the air into a fence and some brush.

As he drifted in and out of consciousness, Rubio recalled, he couldnt feel anything from his neck down. He struggled to breathe. He thought he was going to die.

Then the fight kicked in, he recalled Thursday.

Rubio survived, taking six months off work to recover from brain and other injuries. He now calls the crash a humbling experience.

It was someones way of saying, Frank, youre not bulletproof. You need to slow down a little and take your time before getting into things, he said.

In October, Rubio responded to a report of a man with a gun in the San Fernando Valley. When he and his partner arrived, Rubio saw a man pointing a gun at himself while other LAPD officers were across the street with their own guns drawn.

Rubio pulled his car up between the man and the officers to protect his colleagues, giving them protection and more time to decide how to resolve the standoff. Eventually, officers were able to subdue the gunman by shooting him with a less-lethal beanbag shotgun.

Rubio recalled Thursday that he was surprised when he learned he would receive the Preservation of Life award for his actions.

I was shocked, he said. For what? For doing my job? Yes, thats not a problem.

kate.mather@latimes.com

Follow me on Twitter: @katemather

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Jonathan Fischer is never sure whos going to be more surprised when he, as he likes to put it, comes out of the gun closet  the gun aficionados who find out hes gay or the gay friends who find out he likes shooting guns.

When the 38-year-old television editor showed up last month to a defensive handgun class near Piru with a Glock 27 pistol on his hip, he wore a T-shirt sporting a rainbow-colored AK-47. His gay-K-47, he said.

In the days after 49 people were fatally shot at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., this summer, Fischer wanted to do something to make his community safer. So he started the West Hollywood chapter of the Pink Pistols  a loosely organized, national LGBT gun group.

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If someone was to try and break into my home, and especially if someone were armed, I dont want to fight back with a kitchen knife, Fischer said. And I dont think thats extremist or crazy.

1 / 10 Elizabeth Southerns pistol is holstered at her hip at the ISI gun range in Piru. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times) 2 / 10 Gun owner Elizabeth Southern gets a fist bump from firearms instructor Jeffrey Bova at a gun range in Piru. Southern is a member of the West Hollywood chapter of the Pink Pistols. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times) 3 / 10 Gun owner Jonathan Fischer trains with a handgun the at the ISI gun range in Piru. Fisher is the founder of the West Hollywood chapter of the Pink Pistols, an LGBT gun group that formed after the mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times) 4 / 10 Bullets and magazines inside an ammunition box at a gun range in Piru, Calif. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times) 5 / 10 Gun owner Elizabeth Southern trains at the ISI gun range in Piru, Calif. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times) 6 / 10 Gun owner Elizabeth Southern listens to firearms instructor Jeffrey Bova at the ISI gun range in Piru. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times) 7 / 10 Gun owner Jonathan Fischer trains with a handgun under the tutelage of instructor Jeffrey Bova at the ISI gun range in Piru. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times) 8 / 10 Gun owner Elizabeth Southern puts a clip into her pistol at a gun range in Piru, Calif. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times) 9 / 10 Firearms instructor Jeffrey Bova, left, talks with West Hollywood Pink Pistols members Elizabeth Southern, center, and Jonathan Fischer at a gun range in Piru. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times) 10 / 10 Instructor Jeffrey Bova, center, provides firearms training to a group of gun owners, including West Hollywood Pink Pistols members Elizabeth Southern and Jonathan Fischer, right, at a gun range in Piru. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

Its a stark contrast to how the overwhelming majority of LGBT activists and organizations responded to the Orlando massacre, which has sparked calls within the community for gun control.

In the wake of the shooting, some gay bars like the Abbey in West Hollywood beefed up security. The same day as the Orlando mass shooting, L.A.s annual gay pride parade was rattled after a heavily armed man en route to the event was arrested.

For all the anxiety Orlando has caused, many gay activists say becoming armed is not the answer.

Some people say you need a gun to protect yourself from the bad guys. We just fundamentally disagree with that, said Rick Zbur, executive director of Equality California. We dont want to live in a world where you have to be packing heat to live your daily life.

But for a small subset of the community, Orlando has become a call to arms.

When the firearms instructor at the range near Piru asked each person in the class why he or she was there, Fischer ticked off several reasons and mentioned the Pink Pistols.

What is the Pink Pistols group? a man asked.

There was a pause.

Were  a gay gun group, Fischer said hesitantly. He tried quickly to explain.

Gun owner Elizabeth Southern, left, trains with a handgun at a gun range near Piru. (Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times )

No, thats awesome, the man said, nodding reassuringly.

Interest in the Pink Pistols has increased since the Orlando attack, with new chapters springing up across the country, including the West Hollywood chapter and another one in North Hollywood. There was such an outpouring of support from firearms trainers, many of them straight, that the Pink Pistols website now has a map listing LGBT-friendly firearms instructors in every state.

The week of the attack, signs depicting a rainbow-colored Gadsden flag and the hashtag #ShootBack appeared in West Hollywood, where an estimated 46% of the population identifies as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. City officials were outraged.

Even during our heightened days of civil disobedience and protest, we have only advocated peaceful means, never arming ourselves and retaliating with violence, said City Councilman John Duran, who is gay.

Gwendolyn Patton, the national spokeswoman for the Pink Pistols, has spent the summer trying to keep up with the all inquiries about the group and how to start new chapters.

People dont like to feel helpless, said Patton, a lesbian who lives outside Philadelphia.

The Pink Pistols has received a mostly negative response from the broader LGBT community, she said. Some LGBT centers, she said, have even specifically banned the Pink Pistols from using their facilities.

The group dates to 2000 when gay author and journalist Jonathan Rauch wrote an article for Salon.com calling for gay people to set up Pink Pistols task forces, get licensed to carry guns and arm themselves to protect their community.

Not all that many gay people would need to carry guns, as long as gay-bashers couldnt tell which ones did, Rauch wrote.

Rauch told The Times he wrote the article at a time when the brutal murder of gay college student Matthew Shepard was still fresh in the public consciousness. It woke people up, he said, to what gay people had known all along: that we were targets of day-to-day terrorism.

There is a huge amount of anti-gay stereotype in America that has to do with weakness  people calling us limp-wristed and fairies, Rauch said. Over the years, many gay people came to internalize this stereotype and assume that we are weak and defenseless, and of course we are not.

The first Pink Pistols chapter, taking its name directly from Rauchs article, was started in Boston just after its publication, Patton said. Today, there are 50 chapters in the U.S. and Canada.

Gun owner Elizabeth Southern gets a fist bump from firearms instructor Jeffrey Bova at a gun range near Piru. (Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times )

Though the group is not, according to Patton, affiliated with the National Rifle Assn., it has worked with them and has become increasingly involved in gun-control litigation. The Pink Pistols filed an amicus brief in the federal appeals case Peruta vs. County of San Diego  in which the court ruled in June that people do not have a 2nd Amendment right to carry a concealed firearm in public and that local authorities can require people to show good cause before issuing them a permit to do so.

We wish to dispel the misleading and insulting caricature that supporters of Second Amendment rights are either tobacco-chewing, gap-toothed, camouflage-wearing rednecks or militia posers who are morbidly fascinated with firepower, their amicus brief stated.

Because LGBT people are frequently the targets of violence, they have a particularly acute need for armed self-defense, the Pink Pistols argued, adding: Without self-defense, there are no gay rights.

The Pink Pistols and LGBT groups that have pushed for more gun control cite violence against LGBT people as a reason for their disparate views.

A fifth of the 5,462 single-bias hate crimes reported to the FBI in 2014, the most recent year for which data are available, were because of the victims sexual orientation or identity as a transgender or gender non-conforming person. That was higher than the number of religiously motivated hate crimes and surpassed only by racially motivated hate crimes. And, experts say, the number is disproportionate because of the relatively small size of the LGBT community.

In Los Angeles County, preliminary data for 2015 show that anti-LGBT hate crimes have reached their highest level of violence in over a decade, said Robin Toma, executive director of the countys Human Relations Commission, which has been tracking hate crimes since 1980.

Orlando made it very clear to us that common-sense gun safety laws are part of what we needed to be working on, said Zbur, with Equality California.

Zburs organization this summer aggressively lobbied for a package of state gun control bills, including a measure signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown that requires Californians buying ammunition to undergo background checks.

Zbur dismissed the Pink Pistols as a small but very vocal fringe group.

Since the Pulse shootings, more than 100 LGBT organizations have signed a pledge backing gun control legislation. The Los Angeles LGBT Center now includes gun safety in weekly policy discussions. And a growing new group called Gays Against Guns has staged protests across the country.

In a major 2013 Pew Research Center survey of LGBT Americans, they were more supportive of gun control than the general public. A clear majority of LGBT adults, 64%, said it was more important to control gun ownership than to protect the right to own guns, versus 36% who said the opposite. The general population was almost evenly split on the issue, with 50% saying it was more important to control ownership and 48% saying that gun rights mattered more.

At last months defensive handgun class near Piru, the instructor, Jeffrey Bova, said he reached out to the West Hollywood Pink Pistols, offering to teach them himself. Bova, a truck driver in the movie industry, said many of his friends and colleagues are gay, and he respected what Fischer was doing.

Instructor Jeffrey Bova, center, provides firearms training to a group of gun owners, including West Hollywood Pink Pistols members Elizabeth Southern, second from right, and Jonathan Fischer, right, at a gun range near Piru. (Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times )

During the class, on a triple-digit day, Bova stood next to Pink Pistols member Elizabeth Southern, trying to get her comfortable with the gun as she practiced drawing it from a holster on her hip. Her back rigid, her shoulders tense, she pulled out the model 1911 pistol and fired, striking a steel plate in the distance. She let out a deep breath, her hands shaking slightly.

Im not used to it being loaded and on me, she said.

I get it, I get it! Bova said. Who walks around with a loaded gun in the holster?  Relax.

Wearing a pink T-shirt and pink earplugs, with the word Blessed tattooed on her wrist, Southern was shooting only for the second time. The 25-year-old Downey resident is bisexual, African American and a woman  and likely to experience discrimination because of all three factors, she said.

Southern joined the Pink Pistols this summer because she was a recent victim of domestic violence and had to get a restraining order against a former boyfriend who threatened to kill her and her young son. She attended the West Hollywood Pink Pistols first group shooting event in Sylmar in July. The first time she pulled the trigger, she broke down crying.

It was the first moment in my life that I felt like I wouldnt have to live in fear anymore, that Id be able to protect myself and my family, Southern said. I felt an enormous sense of relief.

Last month, she bought her first gun.

hailey.branson@latimes.com

Twitter: @haileybranson

To read the article in Spanish, click here

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A surveillance video shows a Murrieta police officer approaching a young man at the register of a CVS Pharmacy and trying to talk to him. Within seconds, the two begin to push and pull each other until the man runs toward the door.

The officer catches up to the 22-year-old and wraps his arm around the mans neck. Still uncooperative, the man breaks free and runs outside, where, cellphone video posted on a witness Facebook page shows, an officer repeatedly beats him with a baton while he thrashes, held down on the ground.

Murrieta police said Alejandro Rojo began fighting with the officer inside the store and grabbed at his holstered gun. The struggle inside was a battle over possession of the firearm, authorities said.

The incident began around 8:45 p.m. Tuesday, when police received reports of a man creating a disturbance and possibly under the influence of drugs. Rojo had been inside the store tearing open packages of medical supplies and possibly ingesting them prior to the officers arrival, police said.

Authorities said Rojo tried to disarm the officer again outside, after he fled the store. Thats when additional officers arrived and attempted multiple force techniques in an attempt to stop the suspect from attempting to disarm the officer.

The officer who chased Rojo broke his hand as a result of the fight and Rojo was arrested with several bruises and cuts, police said.

After being treated at a medical facility, Rojo was booked on suspicion of attempting to disarm a police officer, resisting a police officer causing injury, obstructing a police officer causing injury, battery on a police officer with injury and retail property trespassing. He was to be booked on suspicion of being under the influence of drugs pending lab results, police said.

Rojos booking photo shows him with a black left eye and bruises around his face. He was released Wednesday on $20,000 bail.

Rojos family is very concerned about the arrest, said attorney Brett Parkinson, who has been retained by the family.

They have a lot of unanswered questions were going to try to get answered, he said Friday. Were in the process of reviewing everything and conducting our own investigation. ... If we think theres a violation of Alexs rights, we will file a suit.

Police said the incident is being reviewed by investigators and the use of force is being looked into as a matter of policy.

Use-of-force experts who reviewed the video said Friday that Rojos resistance made the use of physical force necessary and reasonable. However, one veteran policing expert said the actions of the officer who repeatedly struck Rojo with a baton as he lay on the ground, and after he had been zapped with a Taser, required scrutiny.

Charles Sid Heal, a former sheriffs commander, said, It is ugly, but if the guy is going for an officers gun and showing repeated resistance, he is lucky not to get shot here.

He said the suspect was clearly not complying with the officer and could be seen actively fighting the officer inside the store.

It is rapidly escalating. I could not see if the suspect grabbed the gun. But I could see the officer check to see if his weapon was still in the holster, Heal said.

Heal said he suspected that chemical tests on Rojo will show he was under the influence of a powerful stimulant given the blows from the telescoping baton that he sustained. He is getting struck  and it does not seem to produce any compliance. That hurts, and he isnt feeling that pain, Heal said.

Ed Obayashi, a use-of-force expert and Plumas County sheriffs deputy, said, There is close to a 25-second struggle inside this store. At 30 seconds, you are close to getting gassed. This officer knows this guy is under the influence and strong.

Obayashi said the officer would tell his arriving colleagues the man tried to grab his gun, heightening the force.

Obayashi said a second and third officer joined the struggle as it moved outside the CVS Pharmacy.

The third officer arrives and starts hitting the suspect with his baton, Obayashi said. That third officer then applies a Taser and places it on the subjects back ... and then drops the Taser and goes back to his baton.  The question is why did he drop the Taser and go back to the baton. That is what looks bad on the video, Obayashi said.

Greg Meyer, a former LAPD training division captain, said the video doesnt tell the whole story.

This is yet another case that shows several of the limitations of video evidence, he said. One of the questions, in this case, has to do with the subject grabbing for the officers handgun, but the view of the subjects hands is often blocked by objects in the store.

Meyer said that in the video outside the store, officers can be heard giving Rojo repeated commands, which he ignores. The subjects resistance is very strenuous and appears typical of someone under the influence of stimulant drugs. The subject is able to physically resist the officers attempts to get him turned over onto his stomach and to control his arms. Impact techniques are used, and still the subject resists, Meyer said.

sarah.parvini@latimes.com

For more California news follow me on Twitter: @sarahparvini

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UPDATES:

2:05 p.m.: This article was updated with comments from use-of-force exports.

10:15 a.m.: This article was updated with comment from the family attorney.

This article was originally published at 8:15 a.m.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept. 9

Trend:

The EU is against military coups both in the Unions members and neighbors, the TRT Haber news channel quoted the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini as saying Sept. 9.

She pointed out that the EU supports the democratically elected Turkish government.

Touching upon Turkeys military operations in Syria, Mogherini said the EU sees no military solution to the Syrian crisis.

On July 15 evening, Turkish authorities said a military coup attempt took place in the country. Meanwhile, a group of servicemen announced about transition of power to them. However, the rebelling servicemen started to surrender July 16 and Turkish authorities said the coup attempt failed.

Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had said the death toll as a result of the military coup attempt stood at 246, excluding the coup plotters, and over 2,000 people were wounded.

Erdogan declared a three-month state of emergency in Turkey on July 20.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @o_quluzade
Seven Bay Area law enforcement officers will be charged with sex offenses and other crimes in a scandal that has rocked the Oakland Police Department, threatening its hopes of ending 13 years of federal oversight and causing a major shake-up in its command staff.

The plan to charge the officers was announced Friday by Alameda County Dist. Atty. Nancy E. OMalley, who said she could not file the charges until the teenage woman at the center of the scandal returns to California after being sent to a rehabilitation program in Florida by another agency.



For the record: An earlier version of this article reported that charges had been filed. The Alameda County district attorney announced that she plans to file charges in the case. Also, Doug McMaster, the Contra Costa County chief assistant district attorney, was misidentified as John McMaster.

Anyone, particularly in a position of authority, who engages in sexual exploitation or inappropriate sexual conduct with a minor or a young adult will be held accountable if we have the evidence, OMalley said. It doesnt matter if theyre a police officer, a doctor, a probation officer, or a lawyer or a judge.

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Two law enforcement officers  Giovani LoVerde of the Oakland Police Department and Ricardo Perez, who has resigned from the Contra Costa County Sheriffs Department  will be charged with felony oral copulation with a minor, OMalley said. Perez will also be charged with two counts of engaging in a lewd act.

Four other Oakland police officers will be prosecuted: Brian Bunton, on charges of felony obstruction of justice and engaging in an act of prostitution; Warit Utappa and Tyrell Smith, who allegedly searched a criminal justice computer system without an authorized purpose; and LeRoy Johnson, on charges of failing to report sexual misconduct against a minor.

Johnson has retired and Smith has resigned from the department.

Dan Black, who has retired from the Livermore Police Department, will be charged with two counts of engaging in an act of prostitution and two counts of a lewd act in a public place.

The alleged sexual offenses do not appear to have occurred while the officers were on duty, OMalley said.

The officers could not immediately be reached for comment.

Earlier this year, Contra Costa County prosecutors declined to charge Smith after he had been accused of attempting to forcibly sodomize the woman. OMalley said she believes Smith and Utappa had sexual contact with the woman in Contra Costa County, but her office has no jurisdiction outside of Alameda County.

In a television news interview in June, the 19-year-old Richmond woman claimed she had sex with more than a dozen Oakland police officers. Some of the encounters happened in exchange for information about planned prostitution raids, the woman has alleged, and others occurred when she was underage.

The scandal soon widened, as the woman claimed she also had had sex or other inappropriate contact with officers from other police agencies.

The womans name has been widely reported, but the Los Angeles Times has not published her identity because she may be a sex crime victim.

Some officers who engaged in sexting with the woman cannot be prosecuted because the victim was not underage, said OMalley, who characterized the online activity as sexually explicit or inappropriate chatter.

OMalley said that many police officers who were friends with the woman on Facebook had never met her in person, including Oakland police Officer Brendan OBrien, whose suicide in September 2015 caused the citys internal affairs unit to begin digging into the scandal. The woman has said in numerous interviews that she met OBrien along International Boulevard when he saved her from an attack by a boyfriend or pimp.

OMalley repeatedly stressed that those linked to the scandal did not represent the larger Oakland Police Department.

The actions of a few have really shone a very negative light on all of the hardworking men and women who come to work every day as police officers to protect our community, OMalley said.

Barry Donelan, president of the Oakland Police Officers Assn., also emphasized that the vast majority of his colleagues were not involved in the scandal.

Our officers are just as disappointed as everyone else in the blemish these events have made on the reputations of Oakland police officers who come to work every day and serve with honor in our community, Donelan said in a written statement.

The decision to file charges was made public days after Oaklands mayor announced that the city would fire four officers and suspend seven others without pay in connection with the scandal.

Local activists said OMalleys decision to prosecute might lead other victims of police misconduct to step forward and help flush bad officers out of the agency.

OMalley showed real leadership in choosing to prosecute, but every officer implicated in the scandal should be forced out of the department, said Kenyatta Carter, a 37-year-old Oakland native and activist who founded Victims Of The System, a group that helps people bring grievances against state and city agencies.

These officers should not be allowed to remain suspended and come back, Carter said. Training is not enough if you knew about what was going on with a minor, or sexting. Thats unacceptable. Period.

Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf said Friday that she hoped the announcement of the charges would make clear that city officials are committed to eliminating a small group of officers who committed disgusting misconduct. Asked about calls to fire, rather than simply suspend, some of the officers connected to the scandal, Schaaf said the city attorneys office and Oakland police internal affairs investigators were hamstrung by when and where some of the alleged misdeeds occurred.

This case is complicated because most of the misconduct occurred off-duty, she said in a telephone interview. Not all of it  certainly, the improper use of databases was done on duty  but that should be taken into consideration.

She said she could not comment on LoVerdes, Buntons or Utappas status with the city police department.

OMalley said her office had uncovered evidence of additional misconduct in several other jurisdictions, including the city of San Francisco, as well as San Joaquin and Contra Costa counties. On Thursday, Contra Costa County Chief Dist. Atty. Doug McMaster told The Times that his office had not been presented with any prosecutable cases in connection with the scandal.

McMaster previously told The Times that the woman at the center of the case was sent to Florida with funds from a state victims advocacy program. He scoffed at the idea that she was spirited away to keep her from testifying. Calls to McMaster seeking additional comment Friday were not immediately returned.

On Aug. 29, the woman was arrested and charged with aggravated battery in Florida after she bit a security guard at the rehabilitation facility in Stuart, Fla., according to an arrest report filed by the Martin County Sheriffs Office.

Police were called to the facility after the woman became physically combative with several staff members. In interviews with sheriffs deputies, she repeatedly discussed her past drug abuse and sexual encounters with police officers and later attempted to solicit sex from the deputies, according to the report.

An attorney representing the woman could not be reached for comment.

John Burris, the civil rights attorney who negotiated a legal settlement that placed Oakland under a federal monitor in 2003, said the womans arrest in Florida, coupled with OMalleys investigation poking holes in some of her narrative, could allow the officers attorneys to attack her credibility at trial.

The sex scandal grew in scope after Oakland Police Chief Sean Whent, who had been credited with bringing the department out of the shadow of the 2003 brutality scandal that led to the implementation of a federal monitor, resigned the same weekend the womans TV news interview aired.

Whents successor stepped down within days, as did the next police chief. The department is now run by a civilian city administrator.

Schaaf, the citys mayor, said she will focus her attention on helping heal the widening rift between police and citizens, adding that she remained hopeful Oakland could attract a progressive, reform-minded candidate to fill the vacant chiefs post.

No doubt this scandal has shaken not just community trust, but the forward momentum that this department was feeling, Schaaf said. But I have every confidence that we will move forward.

james.queally@latimes.com

cindy.chang@latimes.com

For more crime and law enforcement news from California, follow us on Twitter: @JamesQueallyLAT and @cindychangLA

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UPDATES:

3:45 p.m.: This article was updated with comments from the Oakland mayor, a local activist and additional details from OMalleys press conference.

2:15 p.m.: This article was updated with additional details about the charges.

12:30 p.m. This article was updated with the district attorneys office announcing that it would charge seven officers.

This article was originally published at 7:35 a.m.
Dr. Bob Sears, an Orange County pediatrician and nationally known critic of vaccination laws, faces the loss of his medical license after the state medical board accused him of improperly excusing a toddler from immunization and endangering both the child and the public.

The Medical Board of California contends in legal documents released Thursday that Sears committed gross negligence and deviated from standard practice when he issued a letter in 2014 prescribing no more vaccines for the child.

In the six-page accusation, the medical board faults Sears for failing to obtain a detailed history of a 2-year-old patients vaccines before writing the letter and instead relying on the childs mother, who described how the boy lost urinary function and went limp in response to previous immunizations.

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By not providing an evidence-based recommendation, Sears left the child, his mother and future contacts at risk for preventable and communicable disease, according to the medical boards accusation.

The physician faces a wide range of penalties if found negligent, including the revocation or suspension of his medical license.

Sears, 47, whose The Vaccine Book: Making the Right Decision for Your Child has sold more than 250,000 copies and made him a celebrity among parents who see peril in the mandatory vaccination regime, could not be reached for comment late Thursday.

The Dana Point resident opened his practice in 1998 and offered patients a delayed vaccination schedule. In The Vaccine Book, Sears offered his alternatives, such as delaying the start of the varicella vaccination for chickenpox from age 1 until 2 and pushing back the polio vaccination from 2 months to 9 months.

His stance has been criticized by fellow pediatricians for misinforming parents about the in-depth testing of vaccines and downplaying the dangers of vaccine-preventable diseases.

In an interview with The Times in 2014, Sears defended his philosophy of offering alternative immunization schedules, saying they allow parents to get vaccinations in a way theyre more comfortable with.

The medical boards accusation says that Sears began seeing the 2-year-old child, identified only by his initials, on April 3, 2014. The childs mother described the childs vaccination history and said he went limp like a ragdoll  for 24 hours after his three-month vaccines, according to the accusation.

Ten days later, Sears excused the child from vaccines and wrote that the boys kidneys and intestines shut down after prior immunizations, according to the legal papers. The doctor also said that at three months, the child suffered an apparent encephalitis reaction that began 10 minutes after receiving the vaccine.

The letter was not stored in the boys medical file, for which the board accused Sears of failing to maintain adequate and accurate records.

In a later visit, the boy complained of a headache and reported that he was hit by a hammer two weeks before the medical visit. The medical board accused Sears of negligence by failing to conduct neurological testing on the child.

matt.hamilton@latimes.com

Twitter: @MattHjourno

Times staff writer Paloma Esquivel contributed to this report.

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A wealthy Mexican businessman accused of making illegal campaign donations to candidates in San Diegos 2012 mayoral race was convicted Friday of 36 counts, including conspiracy to make political contributions by a foreign national.

Jose Susumo Azano Matsura also was found guilty in federal court of making contributions in other peoples names and falsifying records related to campaign finances.

The jury, which deliberated about a week, was unable to reach a unanimous decision on whether Azano unlawfully possessed a firearm, and several other charges related to the other defendants in the high-profile case. U.S. District Judge Michael Anello declared a mistrial on those counts.

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Federal prosecutors had also charged campaign services specialist Ravneet Singh, lobbyist Marco Polo Cortes and Azanos son, Edward, with the same charges of conspiracy and falsifying records. Azano and Cortes were also charged with conspiracy to make donations in the name of another.

Singh was found guilty of all four counts with which he had been charged.

Edward Azano Hester was convicted of conspiracy and donations by a foreign national, but the jury acquitted him of six counts related to falsifying records and deadlocked on five others.

Cortes was acquitted of four counts related to falsifying records. The jury did not reach verdicts on other charges, including conspiracy.

The case focused on more than $500,000 of Azanos money that was funneled into the campaigns of Republican Dist. Atty. Bonnie Dumanis and Democratic Rep. Bob Filner when both were running for San Diego mayor in 2012. Filner won the race but resigned several months later amid a sexual harassment scandal.

Azano money also went to the county Democratic Party and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, prosecutors said.

As a foreign citizen without legal status in the U.S., Azano was prohibited by law from donating to domestic campaigns. Although he lived in a Coronado Cays mansion and both his wife and son were U.S. citizens, Azano did not have a green card or any immigration status that would allow him to financially support political campaigns in this country.

The evidence included numerous bank records, emails and billing invoices that prosecutors said showed the route the money took from Azanos bank accounts. The money made it into campaigns via straw donors  friends or family members who made donations to the Dumanis and Filner campaigns and were reimbursed by Azano, sometimes on the same day.

Prosecutors said that Azano secretly paid Singhs company, which specialized in political social media campaigns, to work for Dumanis and later Filner. The largest contributions went to supportive political committees, via a shell corporation owned by Azano, and through businesses owned by La Jolla luxury car dealer Marc Chase.

Chase testified that Azano asked him to make the donations during a meeting in the business tycoons Coronado kitchen. He said Azano later reimbursed him. Azano, a car buff, had purchased more than 20 luxury vehicles, including Lamborghinis and Rolls-Royces, from Chase, who pleaded guilty earlier in the case and agreed to testify against Azano.

Another key conduit was retired San Diego police Det. Ernie Encinas, who was Azanos security chief. Prosecutors said he was the go-between who connected Azano and his money to the campaigns and political professionals.

Encinas agreed to cooperate during the investigation and pleaded guilty after Azano was arrested in January 2014. Though he was expected to be a star witness, the former police officer was never called to testify, either by the government or the defense.

The trial had several high-profile witnesses, including Dumanis and San Diego County Sheriff Bill Gore. Dumanis testified that she had little memory of her interactions with Azano, other than she believed he was a legal resident and eligible to contribute to her campaign.

Azanos lawyer, Michael Wynne, argued that his client was targeted and victimized by Encinas and Chase, who used his money to elevate their own status and businesses, then turned on their benefactor to aid the government investigation.

Wynne said after the verdicts on Friday that he and his client would continue the fight the case, even all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, if necessary.

I am absolutely confident that we will win on appeal, he said outside the courthouse.

The judge set sentencing hearings for Azano, Singh and Cortes for Dec. 12. Azanos son will be sentenced on Dec. 5.

Meanwhile the judge has allowed the elder Azano to remain free until the sentencing date. Prosecutors had asked for him to be placed in custody in light of the verdicts, arguing that he was a flight risk.

local@sduniontribune.com

Littlefield and Moran write for the San Diego Union-Tribune.

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The sound of gunfire and sirens drew about a dozen people out of their homes on San Bernardinos west side one recent Wednesday night.

A beat-up Honda sat in the street  a small cross dangling from the rearview mirror, two bullet holes in the door. Rescue workers pulled Alejandro Herrera, 28, from the drivers seat and wheeled him into an ambulance.

The other day, they killed someone down the street, said a middle-aged woman, leaning against a fence next to her husband. All around this part of the city, she said, there are candlelight memorials to victims of violence.

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Before, we would hear about killings every once in a while. Now, there are so many, she said, asking that her name not be published for fear of becoming a victim herself.

A few days later, in a neighborhood less than two miles away, investigators pulled the body of Jose De La Torre, 24, from the trunk of a Nissan.

1 / 15 A San Bernardino police officer assists as a resident tries to stop the bleeding of a male gunshot victim found lying next to the curb after being shot with a shotgun at the intersection of 11th Street and Acacia Avenue on July 29, 2016. There have been 150 shootings and 47 homicides so far this year in the city. This victim survived, but declined to identify who shot him. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 2 / 15 San Bernardino County coroner and investigators open the trunk of a Nissan where the body of Jose De La Torre, 24, was found shot to death on August 13, 2016. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 3 / 15 Firefighters and paramedics extricate Alejandro Herrera, 28, from his Honda after he was shot while sitting in his car at an intersection on Aug. 10, 2016. Herrera died at the hospital. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 4 / 15 Paramedics arrive at the scene of a male gunshot victim found lying next to the curb at the intersection of 11th Street and Acacia Avenue on July 29, 2016. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 5 / 15 Bystanders watch as a male gunshot victim found lying next to the curb is tended to at the intersection of 11th Street and Acacia Avenue on July 29, 2016. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 6 / 15 A San Bernardino police police officer searches an alleged burglarly suspect with gang affiliations on July 29, 2016. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 7 / 15 San Bernardino police officers search for shotgun casings near a shooting victims bicycle. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 8 / 15 San Bernardino Police Sgt. Manuel Gaitan waits for backup after handcuffing two burglarly suspects with gang affiliations on July 29, 2016. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 9 / 15 San Bernardino police officers working with OSS, Operation Safe Streets, question parolees for possible gang ties in a troubled neighborhood on June 10, 2016. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 10 / 15 San Bernardino police officers working with OSS, Operation Safe Streets, take down a suspected gang member who tried to run and dump drugs on June 10, 2016. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 11 / 15 Hundreds of family and friends participate in a car wash for Travon Williams, 9, who was shot and killed outside Superior Liquor Store on July 8, 2016 in San Bernardino. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 12 / 15 Ebony Newman, second from left, is consoled while particpating in a car wash for her son Travon Williams, 9, who was shot and killed outside Superior Liquor Store on July 8, 2016, in San Bernardino. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 13 / 15 Pastor Joshua Beckley of Ecclesia Christian Fellowship leads community members in prayer at a memorial site for shooting victim Jason Spears, 12, who was gunned down and killed after he left the house to go to the nearby Circle K for a bag of chips. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 14 / 15 Community members join for a prayer walk in remembrance of Jason Spears, 12, who was gunned down and killed two weeks ago after he left the house to go to the nearby Circle K for a bag of chips. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 15 / 15 Sandra Hall of San Bernardino marches with about 200 community members in a Peace Walk to honor the victims of the recent homicides and to end gun violence on May 19, 2016, in San Bernardino. Halls nephew was killed last year in the city. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

The next night, Shonta Edwards, 33, was shot to death outside an apartment complex about half a mile from there.

And soon enough, Herrera, who died at the hospital, had his own candlelight memorial on the sidewalk in the neighborhood where he was shot.

::

San Bernardino, still healing from the Dec. 2 terror attack, has seen a surge in violence this year unlike any it has faced in decades. With four months left in 2016, there have been 150 shootings and 47 slayings in the city of 216,000 residents. It had 44 homicides all of last year, including the 14 people killed by terrorists at the Inland Regional Center.

The city is now on track to have more murders than in any year since 1995, when 67 people were killed, and there is no clear explanation why.

Residents and officials point to a police force hobbled by budget cuts and attrition. But the budget situation was bad last year too, and the homicide rate was far lower.

San Bernardino has had about as many homicides as Oakland, which has nearly twice the population. San Jose, almost five times more populous than San Bernardino, has had 35 killings.

If the current pace continues, San Bernardino will end the year with a homicide rate of about 31 per 100,000 residents. Chicagos rate last year was about 18; Los Angeles had seven.

In addition to the 47 homicides, three people have been killed by police.

The San Bernardino County coroner and law enforcement investigators open the trunk of a Nissan, where the body of gunshot victim Jose De La Torre, 24, was found Aug. 13. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times )

Our city right now is bad, said resident Aguadia Brown, 27, whose cousin, a friend and his son all were killed this year. Its like everyone is on edge, and nobody really knows how were going to fix this.

The killings have disproportionately victimized the citys black residents, who account for 14% of the population but nearly half of those killed. Certain neighborhoods have been affected, but the mayhem has occurred throughout the city.

Police Chief Jarrod Burguan says the city has been especially hard hit by state initiatives that reduced some drug and property-related felonies to misdemeanors, leading to shorter sentences for criminals.

Others say the citys dearth of economic opportunities, its years of cuts to diversion programs and a lack of other basic services  such as working street lights in many neighborhoods  have contributed to this years violence.

Because of San Bernardinos financial turmoil, which began even before it declared bankruptcy in 2012, the size of the Police Department has been reduced repeatedly over the years.

The ranks have gotten so thin that officers who specialize in drugs, gangs and traffic enforcement have been reassigned to patrol just to keep up with calls for service.

Were not getting to calls fast enough, Burguan said. We dont have the capacity to investigate everything thats reported in the city.

The Dec. 2 attack turned the worlds eyes toward San Bernardino. And the presidential election has made it an ongoing political talking point.

But even as its name has come to symbolize the dangers Americans face at the hands of terrorists, the city is suffering a mounting nightly toll with little attention from the outside.

::

Firefighters and paramedics extricate Alejandro Herrera, 28, from his car after he was shot while sitting at an intersection on Aug. 10 in San Bernardino. Herrera died at the hospital. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times )

On a Friday night in June, Det. Ernest Luna and Officer Brian Olvera drove through town in a patrol car, a rifle mounted between them.

They had been pulled off their regular gang detail to patrol the streets for a 45-day operation aimed at calming the surge of violence. The city also paid four county deputies to beef up its numbers during that period.

As they wound their way through San Bernardino, Luna said officers who won widespread support after the terrorist attack at the Inland Regional Center now struggle to get information from residents that might help solve or prevent violence.

During IRC, it seemed like everyone loved us, Luna said. But its kind of gone back to how it was.

A lot of times, theyre scared, he added. They have to live in the neighborhood.

Fewer than 40% of this years homicides have been solved.

In one neighborhood, Luna and Olvera drove past a corner where a long-established gang had painted two tall, elaborate murals of the Virgin of Guadalupe and the Aztec calendar  each emblazoned with the gangs name in massive letters.

The brazen graffiti on the walls of two neighborhood stores is a vivid reminder of the citys dwindling resources.

A San Bernardino police officer searches a suspect. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times )

In 2008, there were more than 340 police officers on the force. Today, there are about 215.

The gang unit used to be twice its size, Luna said.

The department has fewer officers per capita than nearby Riverside and Ontario, neither of which have comparable problems with violence.

Burguan said he needs about 300 officers to comfortably meet the citys basic service needs  more, he said, if city officials expect to blunt violence through sheer police presence.

The city is trying to make do as it prepares to emerge from bankruptcy later this year.

The Police Department is trying to fill about 30 vacancies and is hoping for a federal grant to add 11 officers. But the hiring process is slow.

In the meantime, officers are busy.

Hundreds of family and friends participate in a car wash to benefit the family of Travon Williams, 9, who was shot and killed outside Superior Liquor Store on July 8 in San Bernardino. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times )

Before their shift was over, Luna and Olvera stopped to talk with the mother of four young gang members about one of her sons Facebook posts and responded to a man exposing himself at a convenience store.

They stopped a group of young men drinking beers outside an east-side neighborhood and entered their names on gang identification cards. They helped search for and arrested a teenager who they heard had pulled a gun on people in an apartment complex.

And nearby, officers responded to a stabbing that  two weeks later, when the victim died  would become another homicide.

::

Pastor Joshua Beckley of Ecclesia Christian Fellowship leads community members in prayer at a memorial for shooting victim Jason Spears, 12, who was shot while buying a bag of chips. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times )

Two days before Herrera was killed, a few dozen clergy members, residents and activists gathered to call for an end to the violence.

They began in front of St. Bernardine Church, the citys oldest Catholic parish, and walked two-by-two to City Hall, about a half-mile away, shouting, Alive and free is what we want to be.

When they reached the steps of City Hall, a woman read aloud the names of San Bernardinos homicide victims.

John Black.

We remember you, the crowd replied.

Rayshawn Sandy.

We remember you.

The march and recitation of names are a monthly ritual organized by Inland Congregations United for Change, a coalition of local religious groups and others that has been pushing the city to do more to stop the killings.

Organizer Sergio Luna, a father of two young children who has lived in San Bernardino for 17 years, says the violence weighs on the entire community.

Knowing theres a few shootings within a few blocks from your house, he said, that brings a psychological toll.

While the death toll is particularly high this year, Luna said that for years, San Bernardino has had a high homicide rate that went largely ignored.

After the terror attack, he said, all of a sudden, everyone cared about mass shootings in San Bernardino. But weve been crying about urban gun violence for many years.

Since 2014, when there were 43 homicides  about one every eight days  the group has been pushing the city to adopt Operation Ceasefire, a program used in cities around the nation to reduce homicides by reaching out preemptively to those at risk of violence.

We cannot only prioritize first responders after violence takes place if were not prioritizing preventing violence from taking place in the first place, Luna said.

Burguan, the police chief, said that earlier this year, the city was turned down for a state grant to help fund Operation Ceasefire.

Community members join together for a prayer walk in remembrance of Jason Spears, 12, who was shot to death in March. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times )

The decision made Burguan wonder whether the city is alone in its battle against killings, he said.

Who really is that concerned about San Bernardino? Or are people at the state level happy letting San Bernardino drown in this stuff? he said. We clearly have the most significant crime spike of any place in the state, and all that money went elsewhere.

City Manager Mark Scott said San Bernardino is looking for other private or government grants to fund Operation Ceasefire, which he estimates would cost about $500,000. The city agreed to spend $175,000 on it.

::

On a hot evening in July, a man waiting outside a liquor store on the east side shot 9-year-old Travon Williams, his father and another man. The boy had spent the afternoon swimming with his dad.

Travons family didnt have the money to pay for his burial.

So in a ritual that has been enacted after many of the citys homicides, Travons family and friends, and those of his father, spent hours in restaurant parking lots, washing cars and soliciting donations from passing drivers.

On a 104-degree day, they hosted a park barbecue that from afar might have been mistaken for a birthday party. They sold snow cones and popcorn and T-shirts with a photo of Travon and his father, superimposed with angel wings.

It was more than just a fundraiser, family members said. It was a call to the community to gather, to draw some attention to the onslaught of violence that had now claimed the life of a fourth-grader.

Its not even just because of my nephew, but because of all the killings that happened before him and all the ones that have happened after, said Travons aunt, Erica Newman. Were trying to stop all this killing.

When the day of the funeral came, hundreds of mourners filled the Way World Outreach, a large church not far from Cal State San Bernardino.

Father-and-son caskets were covered with red, white and blue flowers. Travons younger sisters wore red, white and blue barrettes.

Toward the end of the service, mourners began a procession past the caskets. Many were in their 20s and held small children by the hand or babies in their arms. They visibly struggled to walk past the slain 9-year-old boy.

The pastor walked to the front of the room and leaned into a microphone.

This is not normal, he said emphatically. Its not normal to see mothers cry, aunties cry, because their children are killed.

This is enough, Lord, of young people losing their lives. This is enough. This is enough.

paloma.esquivel@latimes.com

Twitter: @palomaesquivel

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Seven Bay Area law enforcement officers will be charged with sex offenses and other crimes in a scandal that has rocked the Oakland Police Department, threatening its hopes of ending 13 years of federal oversight and causing a major shake-up in its command staff.

The plan to charge the officers was announced Friday by Alameda County Dist. Atty. Nancy E. OMalley, who said she could not file the charges until the teenage woman at the center of the scandal returns to California after being sent to a rehabilitation program in Florida by another agency.

Anyone, particularly in a position of authority, who engages in sexual exploitation or inappropriate sexual conduct with a minor or a young adult will be held accountable if we have the evidence, OMalley said. It doesnt matter if theyre a police officer, a doctor, a probation officer, or a lawyer or a judge.

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Two law enforcement officers  Giovani LoVerde of the Oakland Police Department and Ricardo Perez, who has resigned from the Contra Costa County Sheriffs Department  will be charged with felony oral copulation with a minor, OMalley said. Perez will also be charged with two counts of engaging in a lewd act.

Four other Oakland police officers will be prosecuted: Brian Bunton, on charges of felony obstruction of justice and engaging in an act of prostitution; Warit Utappa and Tyrell Smith, who allegedly searched a criminal justice computer system without an authorized purpose; and LeRoy Johnson, on charges of failing to report sexual misconduct against a minor.

Johnson has retired and Smith has resigned from the department.

Dan Black, who has retired from the Livermore Police Department, will be charged with two counts of engaging in an act of prostitution and two counts of a lewd act in a public place.

The alleged sexual offenses do not appear to have occurred while the officers were on duty, OMalley said.

The officers could not immediately be reached for comment.

Earlier this year, Contra Costa County prosecutors declined to charge Smith after he had been accused of attempting to forcibly sodomize the woman. OMalley said she believes Smith and Utappa had sexual contact with the woman in Contra Costa County, but her office has no jurisdiction outside of Alameda County.

In a television news interview in June, the 19-year-old Richmond woman claimed she had sex with more than a dozen Oakland police officers. Some of the encounters happened in exchange for information about planned prostitution raids, the woman has alleged, and others occurred when she was underage.

The scandal soon widened, as the woman claimed she also had had sex or other inappropriate contact with officers from other police agencies.

The womans name has been widely reported, but the Los Angeles Times has not published her identity because she may be a sex crime victim.

Some officers who engaged in sexting with the woman cannot be prosecuted because the victim was not underage, said OMalley, who characterized the online activity as sexually explicit or inappropriate chatter.

OMalley said that many police officers who were friends with the woman on Facebook had never met her in person, including Oakland police Officer Brendan OBrien, whose suicide in September 2015 caused the citys internal affairs unit to begin digging into the scandal. The woman has said in numerous interviews that she met OBrien along International Boulevard when he saved her from an attack by a boyfriend or pimp.

OMalley repeatedly stressed that those linked to the scandal did not represent the larger Oakland Police Department.

The actions of a few have really shone a very negative light on all of the hardworking men and women who come to work every day as police officers to protect our community, OMalley said.

Barry Donelan, president of the Oakland Police Officers Assn., also emphasized that the vast majority of his colleagues were not involved in the scandal.

Our officers are just as disappointed as everyone else in the blemish these events have made on the reputations of Oakland police officers who come to work every day and serve with honor in our community, Donelan said in a written statement.

The decision to file charges was made public days after Oaklands mayor announced that the city would fire four officers and suspend seven others without pay in connection with the scandal.

Local activists said OMalleys decision to prosecute might lead other victims of police misconduct to step forward and help flush bad officers out of the agency.

OMalley showed real leadership in choosing to prosecute, but every officer implicated in the scandal should be forced out of the department, said Kenyatta Carter, a 37-year-old Oakland native and activist who founded Victims Of The System, a group that helps people bring grievances against state and city agencies.

These officers should not be allowed to remain suspended and come back, Carter said. Training is not enough if you knew about what was going on with a minor, or sexting. Thats unacceptable. Period.

Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf said Friday that she hoped the announcement of the charges would make clear that city officials are committed to eliminating a small group of officers who committed disgusting misconduct. Asked about calls to fire, rather than simply suspend, some of the officers connected to the scandal, Schaaf said the city attorneys office and Oakland police internal affairs investigators were hamstrung by when and where some of the alleged misdeeds occurred.

This case is complicated because most of the misconduct occurred off-duty, she said in a telephone interview. Not all of it  certainly, the improper use of databases was done on duty  but that should be taken into consideration.

She said she could not comment on LoVerdes, Buntons or Utappas status with the city police department.

OMalley said her office had uncovered evidence of additional misconduct in several other jurisdictions, including the city of San Francisco, as well as San Joaquin and Contra Costa counties. On Thursday, Contra Costa County Chief Dist. Atty. Doug McMaster told The Times that his office had not been presented with any prosecutable cases in connection with the scandal.

McMaster previously told The Times that the woman at the center of the case was sent to Florida with funds from a state victims advocacy program. He scoffed at the idea that she was spirited away to keep her from testifying. Calls to McMaster seeking additional comment Friday were not immediately returned.

On Aug. 29, the woman was arrested and charged with aggravated battery in Florida after she bit a security guard at the rehabilitation facility in Stuart, Fla., according to an arrest report filed by the Martin County Sheriffs Office.

Police were called to the facility after the woman became physically combative with several staff members. In interviews with sheriffs deputies, she repeatedly discussed her past drug abuse and sexual encounters with police officers and later attempted to solicit sex from the deputies, according to the report.

An attorney representing the woman could not be reached for comment.

John Burris, the civil rights attorney who negotiated a legal settlement that placed Oakland under a federal monitor in 2003, said the womans arrest in Florida, coupled with OMalleys investigation poking holes in some of her narrative, could allow the officers attorneys to attack her credibility at trial.

The sex scandal grew in scope after Oakland Police Chief Sean Whent, who had been credited with bringing the department out of the shadow of the 2003 brutality scandal that led to the implementation of a federal monitor, resigned the same weekend the womans TV news interview aired.

Whents successor stepped down within days, as did the next police chief. The department is now run by a civilian city administrator.

Schaaf, the citys mayor, said she will focus her attention on helping heal the widening rift between police and citizens, adding that she remained hopeful Oakland could attract a progressive, reform-minded candidate to fill the vacant chiefs post.

No doubt this scandal has shaken not just community trust, but the forward momentum that this department was feeling, Schaaf said. But I have every confidence that we will move forward.

james.queally@latimes.com

cindy.chang@latimes.com

For more crime and law enforcement news from California, follow us on Twitter: @JamesQueallyLAT and @cindychangLA
President Obama called North Koreas latest nuclear test a grave threat to regional security and international stability and again vowed to take additional significant steps, including sanctions, against the rogue state.

North Koreas fifth test, which South Korean officials called its most powerful to date, demonstrates that the communist nation has no interest in being a responsible member of the international community, Obama said in a statement Friday.

The president reiterated that the U.S. does not, and never will, accept North Korea as a nuclear state.

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Far from achieving its stated national security and economic development goals, North Koreas provocative and destabilizing actions have instead served to isolate and impoverish its people through its relentless pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile capabilities, he said.

The latest North Korean test occurred as the president was returning from a trip to Asia that included a bilateral meeting with South Korean President Park Geun-hye. He was briefed about the detonation aboard Air Force One en route to Washington, and spoke again with Park and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in separate calls from the presidential aircraft.

North Koreas increasingly aggressive ballistic missile tests that preceded the nuclear test, which took place as Obama joined Asian leaders for a regional summit in Laos and after the G-20 Summit in China, had already led Obama to promise to seek more effective sanctions from the United Nations.

At the same time, he told reporters this week that he still saw opportunities for us to dialogue with them, and that the U.S. had no interest in an offensive approach.

At a news conference Thursday, Obama said that persuading Pyongyang to change its behavior has been difficult and acknowledged the shortcomings of various diplomatic approaches over the past decade. Not only has it failed to meet its international obligations, but there was no indication North Korea was inclined to do so soon, he said.

We are going to make sure that we put our defensive measures in place so that America is protected, our allies are protected. We will continue to put some of the toughest pressure that North Korea has ever been under as a consequence of this behavior, he said. Can I guarantee that it works? No. But it is the best options that we have available to us right now.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said in a statement that the latest nuclear test was the latest example of the Obama administrations failed policy of strategic patience.

The North Korean regime is a thuggish criminal syndicate that brutally represses the North Korean people. Instead of more vague pronouncements about a world without nuclear weapons, we must ensure that there are consequences for North Koreas actions, he said.

michael.memoli@latimes.com

For more White House coverage, follow @mikememoli on Twitter.

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The governor of North Dakota has activated the states National Guard ahead of a U.S. District judges decision Friday morning that could inflame protesters who have been gathered here for weeks in an effort to block a pipeline project.

An encampment stretching a half-mile amid pastureland along a lonely state highway is home to a weeks-long protest against the Dakota Access oil pipeline, which could carry more than 400,000 barrels of crude oil a day from the Bakken region of western North Dakota across South Dakota and Iowa to connect with an existing pipeline in Illinois.

The National Guard is so far limited to serving as an imposing, uniformed presence at what it called traffic information points, but it could be put to more active duty if needed, a news release said.

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The Guardsmen will not be going to the actual protest site, the North Dakota National Guard said Thursday afternoon. The governor also placed additional Guardsmen on standby alert in the event they are needed to support law enforcement response efforts.

On Thursday afternoon, a cluster of national guardsmen stood near a group of Morton County sheriffs deputies at concrete barricades located midway between Bismarck, N.D., and the protesters. Police asked travelers about their destinations but did not appear to be blocking entry or forcing vehicles to return to Bismarck.

Lawyers from the environmental group Earthjustice are representing the Standing Rock Sioux in a legal effort to stop construction of the pipeline. They contend that the Army Corps of Engineers violated the National Historic Preservation Act when it approved the project and that a more stringent environmental review should be done.

Tribal leaders say the pipeline and its construction would damage ancestral sites of the Standing Rock Sioux and put the tribes water supply at risk.

The Army Corps of Engineers argued in court in Washington this week that the Standing Rock Sioux and other parties had ample time to express concerns during a review process and that the pipeline was properly approved. Energy Transfer Partners, the Texas company building the pipeline, says it will increase the nations energy independence and that it is a safer means of transport than rail.

U.S. District judge James A. Boasberg said this week that he will rule no later than Friday on a request by the Standing Rock Sioux to stop construction and reconsider permits the project has received.

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Wisconsins attorney general on Friday appealed the overturned conviction of a man accused of helping his uncle kill a woman in a case profiled in the popular Netflix series Making a Murderer.

A federal magistrate judge ruled in August that investigators tricked Brendan Dassey into confessing that he helped his uncle, Steven Avery, rape and kill photographer Teresa Halbach in 2005. The judge ordered that Dassey, who was 16 at the time of the killing, be freed within 90 days unless prosecutors appealed or decided to retry him.

Republican Atty. Gen. Brad Schimels office filed a notice of appeal with the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, keeping the 26-year-old Dassey behind bars. Schimel didnt include any arguments for upholding Dasseys conviction; those will come later.

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Halbach was killed on Halloween 2005, after she visited the Avery familys salvage yard in Manitowoc County to take pictures of a minivan. Investigators say Avery lured her to the junkyard by asking her to take the photos.

Dassey confessed to helping his uncle, but his attorneys argued that his constitutional rights were violated throughout the investigation. Court documents describe Dassey as a slow learner who had poor grades and has difficulty understanding language and speaking.

Dassey was convicted of first-degree intentional homicide, second-degree sexual assault and mutilating a corpse. He was sentenced to life in prison in 2007.

Avery was convicted in a separate trial and also sentenced to life in prison. Avery made headlines in 2003, when he was released from prison after spending 18 years behind bars for a rape he didnt commit. He had a $36 million lawsuit pending against public officials when Halbach disappeared. He is pursuing his own appeal.

Their cases gained national attention after Netflix aired Making a Murderer last year. The series raised questions about the legal process in the case, spawning widespread conjecture about the pairs innocence. Authorities who worked on the cases said the series was biased, but it generated a myriad of calls from the public to free both men.

State courts had rejected Dasseys appeal. However, U.S. Magistrate William Duffin said his confession to police in 2006 was clearly involuntary because of investigators false promises, Dasseys intellectual deficits and his young age.

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Approval of a bipartisan bill that would allow families of 9/11 victims to sue the government of Saudi Arabia puts Congress on a collision course with President Obama on the eve of the 15th anniversary of the attacks.

The House passed the legislation Friday by voice vote, about four months after the measure cleared the Senate despite vehement objections from Saudi Arabia. Fifteen of the 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudi nationals.

The White House has signaled that Obama would veto the legislation over the potential for the measure to backfire. The Obama administration cautions that if U.S. citizens can take the Saudis to court, then a foreign country could in turn sue the United States. There also is apprehension the bill would undermine a longstanding yet strained relationship with a crucial U.S. ally in the Middle East.

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Votes from two-thirds of the members in the House and Senate would be needed to override a veto.

There was no immediate comment from Saudi Arabia, which was preparing for the annual hajj pilgrimage beginning Saturday.

The legislation gives victims families the right to sue in U.S. court for any role that elements of the Saudi government may have played in the 2001 attacks that killed thousands in New York, the Washington area and Pennsylvania.

Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas) said the U.S. government should be more concerned about the families of the victims than diplomatic niceties. Poe said he doesnt know if the Saudi government had a role in the attacks that killed more than 3,000 people.

Thats for a jury of Americans to decide, Poe said.

The vote came after House members from both parties briefly adjourned to commemorate the anniversary of the attacks. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis) led a moment of silence on the Capitol steps, and lawmakers sang God Bless America in remembrance of 9/11, when lawmakers gathered in the same location to sing the song immediately after the attacks on New York and Washington.

The Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act had triggered a threat from Riyadh to pull billions of dollars from the U.S. economy if the legislation is enacted. But Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Jubeir denied in May that the kingdom made any threats over the bill. He said Riyadh had warned that investor confidence in the U.S. would shrink if the bill became law.

In fact what they [Congress] are doing is stripping the principle of sovereign immunities, which would turn the world for international law into the law of the jungle, Jubeir said.

The House vote came two months after Congress released 28 declassified pages from a congressional report into 9/11 that reignited speculation over links at least a few of the attackers had to Saudis, including government officials. The allegations were never substantiated by later U.S. investigations into the terrorist attacks.

Brian McGlinchey, director of the advocacy website 28pages.org, said making the documents public strengthened the resolve of 9/11 families and other advocates of justice to bring about the enactment of the bill.

A decision by Obama to veto legislation that would give 9/11 families their well-deserved day in court would truly stain his legacy, McGlinchey said.

In a separate development, a bipartisan group of senators announced Thursday that theyve introduced a joint resolution of disapproval to block the Obama administrations proposed sale of more than $1 billion worth of U.S. weapons to Saudi Arabia.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) cited Saudi Arabias poor human rights record and the kingdoms role in Yemens civil war.

The war is pitting Yemens internationally recognized government and a Saudi-led coalition against the Shiite rebels known as Houthis, who are allied with army units loyal to a former president. The Saudi-led coalition has been carrying out airstrikes in Yemen since March 2015.

Selling $1.15 billion in tanks, guns, ammunition and more to a country with a poor human rights record embroiled in a bitter war is a recipe for disaster and an escalation of an ongoing arms race in the region, Paul said.

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Hillary Clinton on some Donald Trump supporters: a basket of deplorables

(Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Even as shes hurled criticism after criticism at Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton has avoided slamming his fans.

But that changed Friday night.

During brief remarks at the LGBT for Hillary Gala in lower Manhattan, Clinton called half of those supporting the Republican nominee a basket of deplorables.

Right? she said to laughter from attendees, which included entertainer Barbra Streisand. The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic -- you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up.

Clinton assailed Trump for emboldening such individuals through social media and his own rhetoric. In a deluge of television advertisements in battleground states, Clinton and her Democratic allies have cast Trump as divisive and lacking the even temperament required of a president.

Still, recent national polls show support for Trump, as Clinton outpaces him by about 3 percentage points, according to an average of polls compiled by Real Clear Politics. Moreover, in several swing states, such as Florida and Ohio, Trump has gained ground in recent weeks.

Clinton didnt slam all Trump supporters. While she called some irredeemable, she said that others are just seeking a better future for their families.

They dont buy everything he says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They wont wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like theyre in a dead-end, she said at the gala. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept. 9

By Orkhan Quluzade  Trend:

Turkey can set up a camp in the Syrian territories liberated from the Islamic State (IS, aka ISIS, ISIL or Daesh) terrorists and resettle Syrian refugees there after creation of a safe zone, the Turkish Office for Prevention and Elimination of Consequences of Emergency (AFAD) told Trend Sept. 9.

AFAD said it is preparing to create a camp in Syria.

Some groups of Syrian refugees are voluntarily leaving Turkey and settling in Syrias Jarabulus, previously liberated from the IS militants as part of the Shield of the Euphrates operation, AFAD said.

Earlier, it was reported that the first group of Syrian refugees, consisting of 250 people, returned to their motherland Sept. 7.

On Aug. 24 morning, the Turkish Air Force, with the support of the coalition aircraft, launched an operation to liberate the city of Jarabulus from the IS militants in northern Syria, near Aleppo. The operation was dubbed the Shield of the Euphrates.

The Free Syrian Army and the Turkish Armed Forces have liberated around 100 villages and Jarabulus from the IS militants since the beginning of the operation.

Syria has been suffering from an armed conflict since March 2011, which, according to the UN, has so far claimed over 500,000 lives.

Militants from various armed groups are confronting the Syrian government troops. The Islamic State (IS, ISIL, ISIS or Daesh), the YPG and the PYD are the most active terrorist groups in Syria.

According to AFAD, there are three million Syrian refugees in Turkey. Turkey has spent more than $10 billion on Syrian refugees.
Im Davan Maharaj, editor-in-chief of the Los Angeles Times. Here are some story lines I dont want you to miss today.

TOP STORIES

War and Peace? No, Its the California Voter Guide

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Coming soon to mailboxes across California: the Nov. 8 voter guide, checking in at 224 pages. Election officials think its the biggest in state history, thanks to 17 statewide ballot propositions, some of which just go on and on. (Proposition 64, were looking at you.) The total cost to print and mail could be $15 million. So why dont they just email it out?

Clinton Switches Gears

You can bet Donald Trump will keep calling Hillary Clinton low energy, but the Democratic nominee is kicking things up a notch on the campaign trail. That means breaking from the script, challenging Republican voters to face their partys uneasiness with Trump, and even returning to news conferences. Its clear that coasting is no longer an option.

What Is Aleppo? Big Trouble

Too bad for Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson he wasnt on Jeopardy! That way, his response, What is Aleppo? would not have made such awkward headlines for him. Instead, it came during an MSNBC interview. Though he explained later that he understood the dynamics in Syria and his mind had simply blanked, the gaffe went viral in a bad way for a candidate trying to get into the debates.

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-- Mike Pence defends Trump: They said Ronald Reagan was a celebrity and an entertainer. ... Sound familiar?

-- Could Russian hackers mess with U.S. election results? It wouldnt be easy.

-- Millennials are more conservative than baby boomers or Gen-Xers were at their age, according to a study.

He Went to Fight ISIS, but Not With the Marines

As Susan Shirley tells it, her son, Levi, was determined to be a Marine. But the Marines wouldnt take him because of his eyesight, even after she had paid for his Lasik surgery with a credit card. Then one day, he had an announcement: Im joining a militia to fight ISIS.

Levi Shirley, nicknamed Heval Agir by Kurdish fighters, guards a lookout point during clashes with Islamic State fighters. (Uygar Onder Simsek / AFP/Getty Images )

The Great Climate Experiment

More solar power, more electric cars, more energy efficiency. Those goals are just a starting point for how California will need to ramp up its efforts to hit an aggressive climate change goal under legislation signed Thursday by Gov. Jerry Brown. The idea is to reduce emissions to 40% below 1990 levels. Some business groups are already balking.

The Coast Is Clear, at Least for Now

The California Coastal Commissions rejection of a big project in Orange County was one of its most-watched decisions in years. But just because the vote has come and gone doesnt mean the Newport Banning Ranch proposal for a hotel, shops and nearly 900 homes is dead. Columnist Steve Lopez gives his take on the commissions actions, and heres a closer look at what could happen next.

CALIFORNIA

-- L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti says he plans to put a stop to private meetings between planning commissioners and real estate developers or other outside parties.

-- A study finds that a lack of psychiatric care beds and rising homelessness are fueling a dramatic increase in mental competency cases in Los Angeles County.

-- The LAPD has long recognized officers for heroic acts, but this year, for the first time, it honored those who go above and beyond to avoid using deadly force during dangerous encounters.

-- Richard Ruggieri, a Berkeley attorney who is the only product liability litigator to have ever driven a gun maker out of business, reflects on American firearms culture.

HOLLYWOOD AND THE ARTS

-- Our fall TV preview is here: Get the lowdown on the familiar faces and newcomers coming to the small screen; Speechless, a comedy about a family that has a child with special needs; and the sexbot series Westworld, based on the 1973 Michael Crichton film.

-- Clint Eastwood and Tom Hanks team up to tell the tale of 2009s Miracle on the Hudson emergency landing in Sully.

-- How would you rate the various Star Trek TV series and movies? Our film editor has ranked them all.

-- Tig Notaros new Amazon series, One Mississippi, powers through the comedians pain with humor and wisdom.

-- As the debate over safety at raves goes on in L.A., London has shut down one of the worlds premier electronic music clubs after two drug-related deaths.

NATION-WORLD

-- North Korea said it conducted a higher level nuclear warhead explosion, a fifth atomic test that set the region on edge.

-- When the twin towers fell 15 years ago, OHaras Irish Pub was covered by debris. But like so much at ground zero, it rose again, forever changed.

-- The governor of North Dakota has activated the states National Guard ahead of a judges decision that could upset protesters trying to block a pipeline project.

-- In a surprise move, the Palestinian Supreme Court indefinitely postponed municipal elections that were scheduled for Oct. 8.

-- No spoons or forks allowed: A number of Beijing preschools are insisting that kids 4 and older eat exclusively with chopsticks.

-- What are the long-term health effects of living in space? NASA is studying twins Mark and Scott Kelly to find out.

BUSINESS

-- Wells Fargo will pay $185 million to settle allegations that its employees regularly opened new accounts for customers without their knowledge. The questionable practices were uncovered by a 2013 Times investigation.

-- Airbnb is trying to fight discrimination against guests with changes to its rules.

-- How can a wine made in Georgia be labeled Napa Valley?

SPORTS

-- Hes back! Landon Donovan is coming out of retirement to rejoin the LA Galaxy.

-- Dylan Hernandez: The Dodgers breakup with Don Mattingly has worked out pretty well for all concerned.

OPINION

-- FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler: Lets end the set-top-box stranglehold on pay-TV subscribers.

-- The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power was right to end rebates for artificial turf.

WHAT OUR EDITORS ARE READING

-- How do police decide whether to dismiss or pursue rape cases? (BuzzFeed News)

-- Chef Thomas Keller responds to his critics and says he isnt done building his restaurant empire. (Town & Country)

-- How to get that presidential look. (Washington Post)

ONLY IN L.A.

Doug Aitken goes to great lengths (and depths) to create art. In 2013, he led a caravan of musicians and artists on a three-week cross-country train trip. He once drilled 700 feet underground to record the sound of the Earth. Soon, it will be time to get out the diving gear: In October, Aitken will premiere three underwater sculptures off Santa Catalina Island, about 5, 10 and 50 feet below the oceans surface.

Please send comments and ideas to Davan Maharaj.
My parents, brother and I were on vacation in Florida, and we were talking about Donald Trump. The idea of leaving America if a scary Republican wins has always been a joke among high-minded liberals who can just fly off and find a job in Toronto or Geneva. But for my family, the joke had taken on a more sinister tone.

It was the Muslim version of the talk, and it went something like this: If, God forbid, it gets worse and a President Trump encourages a climate of hatred and persecution against American Muslims, then what are our options? Trump, after all, has expressed support for registering Muslims in a database and refused to disavow Franklin D. Roosevelts internment of Japanese Americans, so it wasnt too much of a stretch.

My dad was born and raised in authoritarian Egypt, later immigrating to Canada and then the United States.

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To my surprise, he is still technically a Canadian citizen. We had a backup plan! As we played out the various frightening scenarios, my parents, after flirting with the idea of self-imposed exile, reached the same conclusion: This is their country too, and they would fight for it. They wouldnt give up.

Its possible to be both fully Muslim and fully American  right-wing noise to the contrary.

It was an inspiring thing to watch, and a reminder that its possible to be both fully Muslim and fully American  right-wing noise to the contrary. One 2016 survey actually found that Muslims who say their faith is important to their identity are more likely to say being American is important to how they think of themselves.

Still, I understand why many Americans might find Islam puzzling and foreign. Theres no contradiction in the term American Muslim; but that doesnt mean Islam is like other monotheistic faiths. It isnt, in part because it doesnt lend itself as easily to modern liberalism. The more Ive studied my own religion  its theology, history and culture  the more Ive come to appreciate how complicated it is and how much more complicated it must be for people who are coming at it from scratch.

Contrary to what many think, there is no Christian equivalent to Koranic inerrancy, even among far-right evangelicals. Muslims believe the Koran is not only Gods word, but Gods actual speech  in other words, every single letter and word in the Koran comes directly from God. This seemingly semantic difference has profound implications. If the Koran is Gods speech, and God is unchanging and perfect, then so is his speech. To question the divine origin of the Koran, then, is to question God himself, and God is not easily put in a box, well away from the public sphere.

Differences between Christianity and Islam also are evident in each faiths central figure. Unlike Jesus, who was a dissident, Muhammad was both prophet and politician. And more than just any politician, he was a state-builder as well as a head of state. Not only were the religious and political functions intertwined in the person of Muhammad, they were meant to be intertwined. To argue for the separation of religion from politics, then, is to argue against the model of the very man Muslims most admire and seek to emulate.

Islams outsized role in public life leads, circuitously, all the way to the burkini controversy. Westerners might ask themselves: Is it really that big of a deal if a few French mayors ask women to wear a normal swimsuit on the beach? Well, yes.

If youre a Muslim woman who wears the hijab  covering the hair and most of the body  you cant wear just any swimsuit. Some women, of course, are pressured or even legally mandated to wear the hijab (as in Saudi Arabia and Iran), but most choose to do so; its about their personal relationship with God. Regardless of whether we like it, the predominant scholarly opinion today is that wearing hijab is fard, or obligatory. Although Western feminists may argue that covering up is sexist  it can encourage the idea that women are primarily sexual objects  asking Muslim women to take off the hijab is akin to asking them to violate their connection with the creator.

There are dress codes in Judaism too, of course, but it is only a relatively small number of ultraorthodox women who observe them. The hijab, by contrast, is ubiquitous in Muslim communities, and in some Muslim countries, such as Egypt and Jordan, the majority of Muslim women cover their hair. Again, this is often a conscious choice: Many Muslims take their religion so seriously that they want to observe seemingly restrictive and pre-modern dress codes. This is the case even in Turkey, where millions of women cover their hair despite decades of secular government and forced unveiling in state institutions.

This fact gets at something deeper, which often goes unsaid because it suggests there is  or at least there may be  a clash of cultures. Islam seems, at least by Western standards, unusually assertive and uncompromising. Critics might see it as full-blown aggressiveness. But Muslims often point to these qualities as evidence of Islams vitality and relevance in a supposedly secular age. To put it a bit differently, this is why many Muslims like being Muslim.

Whether consciously done or not, to be unapologetically Muslim today is to, in a way, show that other futures are possible, that the end of history may in fact have more than one destination. If Islam has been  and will continue to be  resistant to secularism, then the very existence of practicing Muslims serves as a constant reminder of this historical and religious divergence.

I realize that some of my fellow American Muslims will view such arguments as inconvenient, portraying Islam in a not-so-positive light. But it is not my job to make Islam look good, and it helps no one to maintain fictions that make us feel better but dont truly reflect the power and relevance of religion.

In the West, the common response to the challenge of theological diversity has been banal statements of religious universality. All too often, interfaith dialogue, however well-intentioned, is about papering over what makes us  or at least our beliefs  different. It is a tenet of our American faith that were all basically the same and ultimately want the same things. This is true in some ways, but not in every way.

The crisis of culture and identity  one that sees the rise of the far-right and white nativism in our own country  makes it clear that our differences and divides are real. We would all be better off acknowledging  and addressing  those differences rather than pretending they dont exist.

Shadi Hamid is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author of Islamic Exceptionalism: How the Struggle Over Islam is Reshaping the World.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook

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As Donald Trumps resilience defies his erratic style, thin policy plans and incendiary pronouncements, Hillary Clinton is confronting the reality that coasting to election day is no longer a viable strategy.

Clinton has abruptly switched gears in her effort to lure the vast numbers of suburban swing voters and moderate Republicans who are still undecided. The carefully scripted candidate cautiously grinding it out has given way to a more aggressive street fighter, one who is eager to force Republican voters to face their partys uneasiness with its own nominee.

What would Ronald Reagan say about a Republican nominee who attacks Americas generals and praised Russias president? Clinton said Thursday morning, when she greeted reporters about to board her campaign plane with the type of impromptu news conference she had avoided all summer. It was her third in three days.

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The new energy is being infused into Clintons campaign alongside an effort with the White House to exploit the uneasiness that swing voters have with Trumps contradictions and shoot-from-the-hip approach. As the clock runs down, Democrats are working to sow enough doubt to overshadow the concerns many of those same voters have about Clintons trustworthiness and motivations.

Thursdays spontaneous tarmac news conference followed a night when adhering to the campaigns carefully mapped playbook cost Clinton. She had gone to NBC News military issues town hall in New York better prepared than Trump and armed with warnings from top GOP national security players that a Trump presidency would destabilize Americas national defense.

But she got tangled in questions about her email troubles, and then had to watch as Trump, who followed her on stage, was largely unchallenged by moderator Matt Lauer. The GOP nominee misrepresented his earlier positions on the Iraq war, disparaged American generals and spoke fondly of Putin with little pushback.

The event was yet another signal to Clintons campaign that she needs to be more present on the trail, driving the narrative instead of leaving her engagement to the occasional big-ticket event. The forum came only days after a CNN poll showed Trump had taken the lead nationally, a conclusion that is at odds with other surveys but worries Democrats nonetheless.

Instead of moving on to the next scheduled event, as Clinton often does, she paused Thursday to make the point that Trumps comments at the forum were offensive not only to Democrats, but also Republicans.

Every Republican holding or seeking office in this country should be asked if they agree with Donald Trump, she said. Republicans are in a terrible dilemma of trying to support a totally unqualified nominee.

By late morning, House Speaker Paul Ryan found himself bristling when asked about Trumps fawning description of Putin.

Im not going to sit up here and do the tit-for-tat on what Donald said last night or the night before in Hillary versus Donald. That is not my job, Ryan told reporters. But he then broke with Trump in warning, Putin is an aggressor that does not share our interests.

Across town, Vice President Joe Biden amplified Clintons message to Republicans at his own event. This is not your fathers Republican Party, he said, reviving a line that had been central to his stump speech in 2012, when he and President Obama sought a second term.

Four years ago, the line was delivered as part of an effort to link Republican nominee Mitt Romney to the tea party movement that had come to dominate the congressional Republican majority. This time, it served instead to link the GOP to its unconventional and unpredictable nominee.

Theyve reverted to attitudes that were jettisoned in the 40s by their party, Biden said in a speech to the Center for American Progress, a leading liberal think tank.

Red vs. blue states: Check out our interactive Electoral College map 

And across the globe in Laos, Obama wrapped up his final diplomatic trip to Asia by asking Americans to ponder how such trips might go if Trump were leading them with his outright wacky ideas.

I can tell you from the interactions Ive had over the last eight or nine days with foreign leaders that this is serious business, Obama said. You actually have to know what youre talking about. When you speak, it should actually reflect thought-out policy that you can implement.

Obamas remarks came hours after Trump suggested at the NBC forum that the U.S. should have taken oil from Iraq following the invasion there  a move that would have been illegal under international law  and that under Obama, U.S. generals have been reduced to rubble.

Trump fired back at Democrats during a rally in Cleveland, where he aimed to lure the same swing voters Clinton is targeting by unveiling a $20-billion plan for school vouchers. But he too veered back to the Wednesday forum and its aftermath. He began the education address by spending several minutes lambasting Clintons foreign policy experience and renewing his false claim that he opposed the war in Iraq before it began.

The media is so terribly dishonest, Trump said, criticizing reporters who called him out for repeating the claim that he opposed the war during the town hall.

Trump insisted that he would have voted against the war if he had not been a private citizen and blamed Clintons policies for unleashing Islamic State.

Trump again called Clinton, who voted for the war as a senator, trigger-happy, and he called Iraq one of the biggest differences in this race.

Meanwhile, the effort by Democrats extended across the country to California, where Trump running mate Mike Pence delivered a speech at the Ronald Reagan presidential library in Simi Valley, declaring Trump a modern-day Reagan. But before Pence spoke, the Democratic Party taunted him with comments from Reagans children.

It released a video of news footage of various Reagan children saying a Trump presidency would be a calamity. My father would be appalled, Michael Reagan, the former conservative talk radio host, said of Trump in one clip.

Clintons push to lure voters who might typically vote Republican was set to continue Friday as she meets in New York with national security experts, including some high-profile advisors normally aligned with the GOP. Among those who planned to attend were Michael Chertoff, the secretary of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush, and Richard Fontaine, who was a foreign policy advisor to Republican Sen. John McCains 2008 presidential run.

After announcing the meeting, Clinton mocked Trumps secret plan to defeat Islamic State.

He says his plan is still a secret, but the truth is, he simply doesnt have one, she said.

Times staff writers Noah Bierman and Michael A. Memoli in Washington, Seema Mehta in Simi Valley and Christi Parsons in Vientiane, Laos, contributed to this report.

evan.halper@latimes.com

Follow me: @evanhalper

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Donald Trump says he wants to end long U.S. military entanglements. But he has also repeatedly said the U.S. should have seized Iraqs oil after the 2003 invasion  an undertaking that would have been illegal, required decades of occupation by hundreds of thousands of troops, increased the risk of casualties and probably cost more than the oil itself was worth.

Its just plain nonsense, said Anthony Cordesman, a senior government official for decades who has traveled extensively in Iraq and written on Middle East security and energy. Theres no question whatsoever that if you had bothered to spend even a minute or two, you would realize how impractical this is.

Trump has made the statement several times, most prominently on Wednesday during a prime-time nationally televised military forum in New York.

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It used to be, To the victor belong the spoils, Trump said. Now, there was no victor there, believe me. There was no victor. But I always said: Take the oil.

Trump said that it would have required leaving only a certain group behind to pump Iraqs oil and that doing so would have prevented the rise of Islamic State. Trump has often said he would use the money to compensate U.S. military families for their sacrifices.

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On all counts, experts say, he is wrong.

Start with the premise that defeated countries should have their resources taken.

Antiquated is a nice way to put it, said Douglas J. Feith, a top defense official for George W. Bush during the invasion. Barbaric would be more apt.

It basically aligns him with the views of Stalin after World War II, he added. The Soviets after World War II went into Germany and dismantled every piece of equipment that they could find and stripped the country down.

In the 20th century, Western allies determined that leaving war-torn nations hobbled and humiliated  as happened after World War I  was a sure way to create hostility, instability and more warfare. After World War II, allied countries instead helped rebuild Japan, Germany and other Western European nations in a successful effort to stabilize the region, buffer the Soviet threat and strengthen the world economy.

After failing to locate the weapons of mass destruction that were the initial U.S. justification for the invasion, taking Iraqs resources would have only confirmed the view of many Iraqis that the war was mainly about oil.

It also would have violated decades of international law, including the Geneva Conventions, as well as the United Nations mandate that authorized the invasion.

Iraqs economy is nearly entirely reliant on oil. Any sway in the price per barrel sends shudders through the country because oil accounts for 95% of all government revenues. Oil remains the lifeblood for Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Abadis fragile governments efforts to provide basic services to citizens and maintain the nations aging infrastructure.

Recognizing the importance of oil to Iraqs security and finances, the U.S. played a critical role in ensuring an oil exports and revenue-sharing deal signed this year between Baghdad and the Kurdish regional government, the autonomous ruling body of Iraqs north.

Taking oil after the invasion would not only have devastated the Iraqi people, it would likely have increased the size of the insurgency that fought against the U.S. military  feeding on beliefs that Americans were there as modern-day crusaders  and undermined U.S. efforts to build allies throughout the Middle East.

Every country in the region would have opposed us, Kori Schake, a top defense and security advisor to Bush, said in an email. And it would have made governments the world over suspicious of U.S. involvement.

One of the greatest problems during the postwar occupation was the alienation of large numbers of Sunni Muslims and members of the Iraqi military after the U.S. insisted on eliminating all members of Saddams Baath Party from government positions, Cordesman noted. Taking oil would have eliminated whatever goodwill remained.

Even putting aside those complications, the practical implications of taking oil are just as daunting.

Because the reserves are in the ground, they would need to be pumped and transported, a decades-long effort that would require a significant U.S. force, perhaps hundreds of thousands of troops, and tens of billions of dollars, likely more than the oil is worth, military analysts say. All of those troops would be potential targets for insurgents, who would have greater justification in pointing to the U.S. military as enemies of the Iraqi people.

Assuming that would have prevented the rise of Islamic State, as Trump has, misreads the groups history as a spinoff of Al Qaeda resulting from an internal power struggle between 2011 and 2013, Cordesman said.

The U.S. military has, however, recognized that oil production is a revenue generator for Islamic State, which at one point was estimated to take in about $2 million a day. Starting last fall, the U.S. military stepped up attacks on the militants oil wellheads, oil and gas separation plants, and tanker trucks, mainly in oil-rich eastern Syria.

The attacks have cut production in the region in half, according to Department of Defense officials. The Pentagon is calling the bombing campaign against the oil installations Operation Tidal Wave II, named for the American daylight bombing raid on heavily defended Nazi-controlled oil refineries around Ploiesti, Romania, during World War II.

noah.bierman@latimes.com

Twitter: @noahbierman

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In a season replete with clothing catalogs and campaign flyers, the biggest item stuffed in mailboxes this fall may be the Nov. 8 statewide voter guide, coming in at a record-setting 224 pages.

The information booklet covers all 17 statewide ballot propositions, a document that election officials believe is the most voluminous election guide in California history. And it hasnt come cheap: The total cost for printing and mailing, done in Sacramento and taking seven weeks to complete, will come close to $15 million.

It could have been worse, said Kim Alexander, president of the nonpartisan California Voter Foundation.

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The qualification in late June of this falls large slate of statewide voter propositions, the most in more than 15 years, set in motion plans to roll out what became a hefty voter guide. State law requires the document be mailed to each of Californias 18 million voters, a two-week process that begins on Sept. 29. The printing started in the middle of August at a state government warehouse in Sacramento, and the final cost wont be known until the effort concludes.

On election day every voting Californian is a lawmaker, said Secretary of State Alex Padilla.

This fall, voters are being asked to wade through some of the most complex laws ever proposed, initiatives with details so granular that they could easily confound all but the most expert legal minds.

Leading the pack is Proposition 64, the much-talked-about effort to fully legalize marijuana use for California adults. The broad question may be straightforward, but the initiative is not.

Even the guides overview analysis of Prop 64 is 10 pages long. The actual proposed state law to make pot legal takes another 33 pages of the document, more than 17,000 words in all.

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While there have been longer lists of state propositions in the past, the accompanying guides were shorter. In the 2012 general election, California voters weighed 11 propositions. That years voter guide ran 144 pages and cost taxpayers $8 million.

A review of decades worth of voter guides, compiled online by the University of Californias Hastings School of Law, suggests the length of propositions is increasing. In 1988, for example, a much longer list of 29 ballot propositions translated into a 159-page voter guide.

Alexander said the system hands taxpayers the bill no matter what the interest groups backing the initiative measures in question choose to write.

It might be worthwhile to consider charging initiative proponents extra to propose their measure if it exceeds a certain number of pages, she said.

The guide is intended to offer a variety of pieces of information on ballot measures, including a quick reference guide for what Padilla described as voters short on time that offers ballot titles and short summaries. The guide also includes arguments in support or opposition to each proposed law as well as a fiscal analysis by the independent legislative analysts office.

Many voters use the guide as a tool for quickly learning who supports and opposes a measure, Alexander said.

Beyond Prop. 64, other propositions are hardly less dense -- from new gun control efforts to a higher tobacco tax and beyond. The two shortest, and simplest, ballot measures were the ones crafted by the Legislature: A repeal of existing restrictions on bilingual education in public schools, Proposition 58, and the advisory measure asking if state officials should work to overturn a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on campaign finance, Proposition 59.

Unlike companies that now offer consumers the option of canceling paper documents in exchange for online records, voters cant yet opt out of receiving the state ballot guide in the mail and choose instead to read it online. A new state law, however, anticipates giving voters that option as soon as 2018 in conjunction with the certification of a new statewide voter registration database.

Because the guide is mailed to each voter in the state, some households receive multiple copies.

Some counties, like Los Angeles and San Francisco, already offer an online option for their local election documents. It could prove particularly valuable this November; San Francisco voters will have 25 local measures to ponder after they consider the 17 statewide propositions. Voters who provide an email address can stop receiving the paper brochures.

For voters overwhelmed by the weighty tome that will arrive in a few weeks, its always worth remembering that not every proposition requires a choice.

We like to remind voters that voting is not a test, said Alexander. You dont have to vote on every measure on the ballot, its perfectly fine to skip one if you are confused or unsure of how you want to vote.

john.myers@latimes.com

Follow @johnmyers on Twitter, sign up for our daily Essential Politics newsletter and listen to the weekly California Politics Podcast

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The papers in her hand crackling, Maya Salameh stepped behind a microphone in the White House State Dining Room on Thursday afternoon and read:

I speak to you / terrorists, skyjackers, lifejackers / and otherwise-flavored peddlers / of sacred hearsay, she began.

The 16-year-old from San Diego and four other high school students have been selected as the 2016 national student poets, and will spend the next year sharing their poetry, and encouraging others to write their own.

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I speak to you / for senseless violence / has no part in my definition of humanity, Maya said, ending her poem. I speak to you / because blind faith / is no faith.

The five-year-old program created by the Obama administration honors student poets from five areas of the country. Students begin the program by reading their poetry at a White House reception, then spend a year attending poetry classes and art festivals, and doing community service projects. Past student poets have focused on teaching poetry to female prison inmates, wounded veterans or children.

Maya said she hasnt decided on a project, but she would like to work with immigrants, especially children. She is the oldest daughter of Lebanese Americans, and the two poems she provided as examples of her work discuss the intricacies of being Arab American and about the effects of war.

When she visited Lebanon with her father toward the end of middle school, she began to think of herself as a writer.

It was when I realized that being Arabic could be seen as different, and not in a good way, she said. It really made me question my identity, what does it mean to be Arab or American?

Maya said shes often inspired by news events, and writes poems on the bus or between classes.

Theres always these free spaces when no one is asking anything of you and no one tells you, this is this deadline. Thats where my mind can kind of gallivant wherever it wants, she said.

Students also get a $5,000 scholarship. Maya, a junior at the San Diego High School of International Studies, wants to study psychology or diplomacy, hopefully at a California university.

The event was another in a series of lasts before the Obamas leave the White House in January, and First Lady Michelle Obama got teary-eyed as more than a dozen alumni of the program stood to recite portions of a poem about how being a National Student Poet changed their lives.

We knew that we wanted to use this incredible platform of the White House to inspire our young people to dream really big for themselves, to think about what their lives could look like beyond what their everyday existence is like, Obama said.

More than 70,000 10th and 11th grade students have applied through the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, with just five selected each year by a panel of poets and artists.

We chose you because we believe you can handle this, she told the newly crowned poets, some of whom were visibly nervous. You never know where youll end up.

Heres the poem Maya read at the White House:

Maya Salameh, 16, of San Diego was one of five students picked to be a 2016 national student poet. Maya and the other students participated in a poetry reading at the White House on Thursday.

sacrilege incorporated

i speak to you

terrorists, skyjackers, lifejackers

and otherwise-flavored peddlers

of sacred hearsay

i speak to you

just fyi

just for your illumination

god is not

a mcdonalds franchise

you dont hold any right to sell, market, or

otherwise operate in his name

i speak to you

for now is the time

to open your eyes

to close your pocketbooks

no prophets have ever had

swiss bank accounts

i speak to you

for if you love god

you would not lie

in his name

you would not kill

in his name

you would not explode

in his name

i speak to you

for the only god you seem to know

is the god of destruction

always thirsty

for more blood, more tears,

more futures gone wrong

i speak to you

for children

belong to no creed

and if holiness exists

it is the selflessness that runs in their

veins

i speak to you

for the magnetic attraction of violence

keep no home

in the nonpolar

hearts of the young

i speak to you

for senseless violence

has no part

in my definition of humanity

i speak to you

because blind faith

is no faith

sarah.wire@latimes.com

Follow @sarahdwire on Twitter.

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Democrats might have wished for Hillary Clintons big, post-convention lead to last right through election day, but that was never likely.

Instead, like almost all convention bounces  why else would we call them by that name?  Clintons came back down to earth. The result has the race pretty much back to where it was at the start of the summer, with one big difference.

Good afternoon, Im David Lauter, Washington bureau chief. Welcome to the Friday edition of our Essential Politics newsletter, in which we look at the events of the week in the presidential campaign and highlight some particularly insightful stories.

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GROUNDHOG DAY?

Go back to June 1, before FBI Director James B. Comey sharply criticized Clinton for her handling of classified information while secretary of State, before Clinton and Donald Trump named their running mates, before the two party conventions and millions of dollars of TV ads: Clinton led Trump by about 5 percentage points in polling averages.

Thats where the race stands once again and has all this past week.

So does that mean that the entire summers worth of campaigning  all those headlines, all that rushing around  went for naught?

No.

One thing has changed hugely: the clock.

On June 1, Trump had five months in which to find a way to catch up with Clinton. Now he has 59 days.

The Clinton campaign has used the past three months to try to close off routes that Trump might have been able to take. Several states, most notably Virginia and Colorado, now seem out of Trumps reach. He trails in Pennsylvania, a key battleground, largely because of his problems with college-educated, suburban white voters, reports Cathy Decker.

That same dynamic has Democrats considering a serious effort to win Georgia, something they havent done since 1992, writes Mark Barabak. Bill Clinton, who was the last Democrat to carry the state, is a big advocate of making a renewed push there, which would require a major effort to register and turn out black voters.

But Trump still has potential advantages: After two terms of a Democrat in the White House, voters customary desire for change would normally make the Republican nominee at least a small favorite. He has rock-solid support from his core backers.

And, as I wrote earlier this week in an analysis of polling data, a lot of voters remain up for grabs.

The number of voters who remain undecided between the two major party candidates  about one in five  and the even larger number of people whose support for a chosen candidate remains soft mean that the race will remain up for grabs at least through the first presidential debate, scheduled for Sept. 26.

DONT FORGET THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE

As our interactive electoral map shows, Clinton currently leads in more than enough states to secure the White House. But if the race tightens further, some of those states could begin to change.

Winning requires 270 electoral votes. How to get there? Weve updated the map with our best estimates. Now you get to play political strategist and try out as many scenarios as you like.

FOLLOW OUR TRACKING POLL

The USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times tracking poll has been tracing Trumps and Clintons trajectories since early summer.

The poll shows a tighter race than many other surveys. Why is it different? Here are several of the reasons. and heres what the poll tells us about Trumps potential path forward.

WHAT ABOUT THIRD PARTIES?

With all those uncertain voters, and two major-party candidates who remain deeply unpopular, one might think that this year would provide a great opportunity for a third party.

So far, its an opportunity lost.

The Libertarian candidate, Gary Johnson, has been getting about 9% support in polls all summer. Thats well short of the 15% threshold for participating in the debates. And, unfortunately for Johnson, the fact that about a third of his backers are under 30 isnt a good sign  young people are less reliable voters than their elders, particularly in the absence of a well-funded get-out-the-vote effort.

Thursday, Johnson hurt himself further by blanking out when asked in a televised interview about Aleppo, the Syrian city thats been at the center of that countrys civil war and humanitarian crisis.

As Melanie Mason wrote, What is Aleppo? may become Johnsons most memorable campaign line, much as retired Adm. James Stockdale, Ross Perots running mate, got tagged by his Who am I? Why am I here? remark in the 1992 vice presidential debate.

Another minor-party candidate, Jill Stein of the Green Party, has been receiving about 3% support in polls. Thats way better than her showing four years ago, where she got less than half a percent of the vote, but its also not having an impact on the overall results  at least so far. Stein also sat down with our Los Angeles Times editorial board this week to talk about why she thinks voting Democrat or Republican makes little difference.

THE CONTEST IS HEATING UP

The 2016 campaign has already been a brawl, but as the first debate nears, its becoming more intense. Clinton, who for a while seemed content to let Trump hog the spotlight, is no longer coasting, reports Evan Halper. The Democratic nominee has been repeatedly talking to reporters, whom she mostly kept at arms length during the spring and summer, and is aggressively trying to drive the campaign debate.

Clintons new approach comes about in part because her aides feel that they cant count on debate moderators to challenge Trumps statements. At Wednesdays candidate forum on national security issues, for example, Trump repeated his claim to have opposed the war in Iraq from the beginning, which is clearly contradicted by his own statements at the time. The moderator, Matt Lauer, did not question him about the claim.

Lauer has been pummeled for his questioning, Stephen Battaglio reported.

Both sides are framing the race as a referendum on Trump, Decker reported from Ohio  Clinton because she sees that as a clearest path to victory, Trump because he cant help himself.

Trump is starting to unfurl some policy positions, but many raise as many questions as they answer. Consider his plan to increase military spending, for example, which Noah Bierman and Bill Hennigan analyzed. The plan offers only faint outlines of how Trump would pay for his promises.

In another sign of an intensifying campaign, President Obama, who plans to stump for Clinton this coming week in Pennsylvania, stepped up his criticism of Trump, hitting his outright wacky ideas, Christi Parsons reported from Laos, where the president was meeting with Asian leaders.

A FEW GOOD READS

Remember this summer, when Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey campaigned hard to be chosen as Trumps running mate? Imagine how that would have played out. The Bridgegate trial is finally getting underway, reports Joe Tanfani, and much attention will be paid to any hints about what Christie knew of his aides plans to create traffic jams at the George Washington Bridge.

With the FBI and others talking about Russian cyberattacks on U.S. databases, theres been a lot of speculation about an effort by Vladimir Putin to hack the U.S. election. The risk is seriously overstated, Del Wilber reports, largely because the U.S. election process is so decentralized  and so antiquated in most of its systems  that its not particularly vulnerable to online tampering.

The Obama administration is considering an end to putting immigrants in privately owned detention centers. But immigration officials are pushing back, reports Brian Bennett. Closing the private detention centers would be a major victory for civil rights and immigrant advocacy groups.

And Noam Levey takes a look at the latest problems with the Obamacare marketplaces and finds an interesting pattern: States with the biggest Obamacare problems are the ones that have actively tried to impede the law.

QUESTIONS ABOUT TRUMP, CLINTON? WEVE GOT ANSWERS

Where they stand on issues, what theyve done in their lives, their successes, their failures, what their presidencies might look like: Weve been writing about Clinton and Trump for years, and weve pulled the best of that content together to make finding what you want to know easier. So check out All Things Trump and All Things Clinton.

LOGISTICS

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That wraps up this week. My colleague Christina Bellantoni will be back Monday with the weekday edition of Essential Politics. Until then, keep track of all the developments in the 2016 campaign with our Trail Guide, at our Politics page and on Twitter @latimespolitics.

Send your comments, suggestions and news tips to politics@latimes.com.
FluMist Quadrivalent And James Van Der Beek 'Insist On The Facts' Campaign (Photo : Michael Buckner/Getty Images for FluMist Quadrivalent)

FluMist, a nasal spray vaccine which was found to be ineffective, was removed by the pediatricians from the new flu vaccine guidelines. They recommend the influenza vaccine through injection as the foolproof way to fight flu.



As the cold season is fast approaching, kids are prone to becoming ill with the flu. The nasal spray FluMist would be withdrawn from the guidelines of the American Academy of Pediatricians (AAP) because of their recommendation, CNN reported.



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The health officials of the U.S. have already proposed a non- provision of the FluMist vaccine. This announcement is supported by the statement of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). As with the earlier years, it is still highly recommended to provide flu vaccine injection for children especially. The academy of pediatricians suggests that children from 6 months and up need to be given flu vaccine this October 2016, as it is the start of the influenza season which extends up to the year 2017.



According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, in 2015-16, the nasal spray vaccine is just three percent effective among kids, two to 17 years of age, compared with 63 percent for the injected vaccine.



As recommended by AAP, the breastfeeding and the pregnant women also need to be inoculated by the flu vaccine. Pregnant women are safe to be given by flu vaccine shots at any term of their conception, according to U.S. News & World Report.



The flu vaccine injections are crucial to pregnant women as they have a high risk of developing complications as a result of the flu. Also, giving the pregnant a flu vaccine shot could provide the infant flu protection in the course of the initial six months.



According to Dr. Wendy Sue Swanson of Seattle Children's Hospital, additional protection from the flu is provided to newborns through breastfeeding. Even the healthy children are still vulnerable to experience and contract serious flu virus complications due to the unpredictability and of the common nature of flu.



From the announcement of AAP, that from October to June 30, health-care givers must already be providing flu vaccine shots.






A strand of hair at a crime scene, or clinging to human remains unearthed by archaeologists, could hold new promise as a means to identify its unique owner and unravel mysteries sealed by the passage of time.

In research published this week, scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories reported they are devising a test of human hair that could fingerprint its owner in cases in which DNA evidence is fragmented, damaged or nowhere to be found. Like DNA sequencing, the test they have devised not only could identify an individual but trace his or her ancestry.

The researchers discovery, reported Wednesday in the journal PLoS One, addresses one of forensic scientists most pressing needs: a reliable alternative to DNA identification. DNA is actually quite fragile and notoriously vulnerable to degradation with time and exposure to the environment. Its tricky to coax a full sequence from an old biological sample or one thats been buried, frozen or baked in the sun.

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While a shaft of hair often is presented as evidence in an old-fashioned whodunit, it does not actually contain nuclear DNA, the chemical blueprint an individual inherits from both parents. It does contain mitochondrial DNA, but because that is passed down matrilineally, it has limits as a means of identification.

In quainter times, investigators might put a hair under a microscope and compare it to, say, that of a defendant. But in current forensic science, a seeming match under the microscope would not be accepted as proof that two different shafts of hair came from the same person.

Every strand of hair is made up of proteins. In addition to being more resilient to environmental damage than DNA, those proteins are like an echo of a persons DNA, said Brad Hart, co-author of a paper and director of Livermores Forensic Science Center.

Its a simple but ingenious idea, conceived in 2013 by the papers lead author, Glendon Parker, then a biochemistry professor at Utah Valley University and now a scientist at Livermore: DNA provides the blueprint for proteins. So the coding quirks found in an individuals DNA (called single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs) will translate into recognizable variants in the proteins, known as single amino acid polymorphisms (SAPs).

These SAPs are the protein markers that could guide future forensic scientists in identifying an individual even when DNA is not available. While they can be found in a single strand of hair, they also can be found in shed skin cells, bones and teeth.

In an effort to discern how specific SNPs became recognizable SAPs, researchers from seven universities collected and analyzed male and female hair samples from 82 people of varying ethnicities.

In the hair samples of 66 European-Americans, five African Americans, five Kenyans and six skeletal remains from the 1750s and 1850s, they identified 185 protein markers that could collectively be used to tell one person from another.

Each persons number of hair protein markers, combined with his or her pattern of protein markers, is unique, researchers found. The authors of the report suggest that as many as 1,000 protein markers could be used to identify individuals and distinguish one person from another. But they are aiming to winnow those to a battery of 90 to 100 protein markers, which could be used to pick one individual out of a worldwide population.

Currently, it takes about two-and-a-half days to prepare a sample and sequence and analyze its proteins. Its cost, say the authors, likely will be competitive with other forensic tests.

The discovery phase has been quite complex, but once the technique is established, we believe it can be made into a routine procedure for use in crime labs, said Deon Anex, one of the papers co-authors.

We really see our job as providing tools for the forensic toolkit, which has been faulted in recent years for its reliance on methodologies considered to be subjective, Hart said. When DNA is not available, he said, looking for its echo in hair proteins is a clever way to glean its missing secrets.

melissa.healy@latimes.com

Follow me on Twitter @LATMelissaHealy and like Los Angeles Times Science & Health on Facebook.

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For decades, Kim Phuc has been haunted by a photograph.

The black and white image taken in 1972 by Associated Press photographer Nick Ut shows Phuc, then 9 years old, burned by napalm and running naked through the streets moments after her village in South Vietnam was bombed.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning picture often has been credited with helping to end the Vietnam War  the Paris peace accords were signed six months after its publication  but it also shaped Phucs life long after the violence in Southeast Asia was over.

That photograph changed my life forever, Phuc told the congregation at Liberty Baptist Church in Newport Beach on Sunday.

Though the image of fear and anguish has defined her for years, Phuc, now 52, wants to bring a different message to the world  one of forgiveness and peace.

Growing up in South Vietnam, Phuc was a happy child and knew nothing of war, she said. The worst injury she had endured was scraping her knees while falling off a bicycle.

Everything changed on June 8, 1972, when her village, Trang Bang, was attacked by South Vietnamese forces who reportedly mistook some villagers for North Vietnamese soldiers. Phucs clothes were burned off, and her skin was on fire. She ran away, screaming too hot.

The photographer who documented her suffering helped her reach a hospital. Everybody was expecting to bring my body back to the village for burial, she said. Phuc had endured so many burns that she was transferred to the morgue.

She survived, though she needed 17 operations over the next 12 years.

Drawing back a flowing purple sleeve, Phuc revealed to the crowd of churchgoers Sunday the white scars that still twist around her left arm. I should have died, she said.

My skin should have burned off my body. But as you can see, my hands and face are still beautiful, right? she said, smiling as the audience laughed.

Her body healed, but the photographs impact was far from over. Phuc was accepted to medical school in Saigon, but the communist government cut her studies short so it could turn her into a propaganda symbol, she said.

I became a victim all over again, Phuc said. My life was like a bird in a cage, and I became so bitter and angry.

The government let her continue her studies in Cuba, another communist country where it was easier to control her, she said. She later sought asylum in Canada, where she lives today with her husband and two children.

I had a lot of anger, but I knew I could not live like that, she said. I had to change my heart or die from hatred.

So Phuc undertook what she called the hardest work of my life  forgiveness.

My life in a new country was a challenge, she said, but by far my biggest challenge was learning to forgive those who had caused me so much suffering.

Phuc frequently cited her Christian faith  which she embraced at 19  as the reason she was able to move beyond her pain. And once she did, I was free, she said, and that was heaven on Earth.

Forgiveness is more powerful than any weapon of war, she added.

Today, Phuc is a UNESCO goodwill ambassador and runs Kim Foundation International, which helps child victims of war.

Phuc said she looks at the 43-year-old photograph in a new way and urged the audience to do the same.

When you see this little girl, you can see her crying out, she said. Try not to see her as crying out in pain or fear, but see her as crying out for peace.
A Costa Mesa police officer pleaded not guilty in Orange County Superior Court on Tuesday to felony counts of insurance fraud and making fraudulent statements.

Ryan Patrick Natividad, 30, of Corona could be sentenced to six years in jail if hes convicted on the two charges.

Prosecutors allege Natividad lied when he said hed injured himself at work on Sept. 23, 2014, and then filed a workers compensation claim based on the incident.

According to court documents, Natividad allegedly said his hand was hurt while he was escorting an arrestee to the Costa Mesa Police Department jail.

Investigators, however, wrote in court documents that surveillance video contradicts Natividads account that his hand was pinned against the wall when the arrestee stumbled.

The Orange County district attorneys office charged Natividad in July, but his lawyer requested the arraignment be delayed until Tuesday.

Both Natividad and attorney Michael Goldfeder declined to talk about the case.

Natividad is free on his own recognizance and is due back in court in February.

He is on paid administrative leave from his position at the Costa Mesa Police Department, according to city spokesman Tony Dodero.
Though the latest chapter in a nearly two-decade saga over Banning Ranch ended late Wednesday with the California Coastal Commissions rejection of a large development project proposed for the site, the story is likely far from its conclusion.

Property owner Newport Banning Ranch LLC had hoped to build 895 homes, a 75-room hotel, a 20-bed hostel and 45,100 square feet of retail space on 62 acres of the 401-acre scrub- and grass-covered coastal expanse in Newport Beach, some of which has been occupied by oil operations for decades.

But after roughly nine hours of discussion at the Newport Beach Civic Center on Wednesday, the Coastal Commission  which has final say over development on the coast  denied the project on a 9-1 vote, saying the company and commission staff were too far apart in their visions for the site.

The decision left the developer to weigh its options, which may include abandoning the prospect of developing the site, suing the Coastal Commission over the vote or revising the project and resubmitting it to the commission after at least six months. If it resubmits, it would have to pay a fee of at least $250,000.

Newport Banning Ranch LLC consists of Aera Energy  a subsidiary of Exxon Mobil Corp. and Shell Oil Co.  investment firm Cherokee Newport Beach and real estate developer Brooks Street.

Spokesman Adam Alberti said Thursday that its too early to speculate what the partnerships next move might be.

But supporters and opponents of the project agreed on one thing following the commissions decision: Its unlikely Newport Banning Ranch will accept Wednesdays vote and do nothing.

Were going to be ever vigilant, said Steve Ray, executive director of the Banning Ranch Conservancy, which opposed the project over concern for environmentally sensitive areas on the site.

Commission Vice Chairwoman Dayna Bochco also indicated Wednesday that the denial wouldnt kill Newport Banning Ranchs hope for a development on the land, which she said has been battered, bruised and decimated by oil operations for the past 70 years.

Were here to say yes to things, but were here to say yes to things that make sense, she said. I dont think ... thats the end of this project. What we really need to do is take a much closer look at a very, very sensitive habitat.

Commissioner Mary Shallenberger made the motion to reject the plan, citing a lack of cohesion between the developer and commission staff members who recommended the development be reduced to about a third of the proposed size.

It is clear to me from todays testimony from the staff report, the developer and the public that we are still very far apart, she said during the hearing. The developer has made it clear they do not accept staffs recommendation. This is a project we have to get right. We cant get just good enough on this one.

Commissioner Roberto Uranga dissented in the vote, citing merits of the proposed project, including opening the site for public use and educational opportunities.

There is a project; its just not to the level thats acceptable to everyone, he said. Theres probably still some opportunity to come to middle ground on this. We just havent reached it yet.

Commissioner Wendy Mitchell was absent, and Chairman Steve Kinsey recused himself after falling under scrutiny earlier this year for failing to promptly report private meetings with members of the Banning Ranch development team.

As part of its proposal, Newport Banning Ranch had set aside about 329 acres as preserved, natural open space with about seven miles of public trails. The company had long billed its development project as a means to fund cleanup and restoration of the oil field.

The result of the vote is continuation of walled and gated acres of California coast thats deeply in need of restoration, Alberti said. That being said, we remain committed to a clean, restored, open Banning Ranch and the vision that weve established.

Commission staff had recommended approval of the Banning Ranch development only with conditions that would have reduced its footprint to about 19.7 acres that fall outside of areas identified as environmentally sensitive habitat, particularly for burrowing owls.

Staff also proposed conditions to eliminate Bluff Road, which the developer planned as a major artery for the project, connecting Costa Mesas Westside to West Coast Highway at 17th Street.

Staff said the project would affect 38 acres of sensitive territory, including areas that sustain vernal pools, native grasses and species such as the burrowing owl, the San Diego fairy shrimp and the California gnatcatcher.

Newport Banning Ranch representatives said staffs recommendation amounted to a denial of the project and was not based on the current conditions of the land.

Michael Mohler, senior project manager for the developer, said staffs plan would allow development on only about 10 acres after buffers for environmentally sensitive habitat and fire safety were taken into consideration. He said the project would not be economically viable if the commission followed the staff recommendation, which he argued constitutes an illegal land grab.

Recent staff data indicating the project would pose a threat to burrowing owl habitat and foraging areas on the site proved to be a major roadblock for the proposal. Newport Banning Ranch officials said the findings were incorrect and based on information provided by project opponents.

Commission staff countered that the information was legitimate, though saying it was inconvenient that it didnt come much earlier in the process.

Interim Executive Director Jack Ainsworth urged commissioners during the hearing Wednesday to be conscious of the significance of the Banning Ranch property, which is said to be the largest undeveloped coastal area in Southern California.

This is one of the most important decisions weve faced in 40 years, he said.

Newport Beach Councilman Ed Selich, who voted for a larger version of the project when it went before the City Council in 2012, said Thursday that environmentally sensitive habitat seems to be a moving target, with no one really clear about what it is.

I thought the applicants plan was a good compromise, Selich said. At the end of the day, the commission didnt really deny development; they just said the current proposal wasnt a solution that worked for the site.

Late Wednesday, preservationists cheered as they exited the commission meeting after the vote, waving green signs with Save Banning Ranch printed in large white letters. Others carried posters depicting various wildlife.

Several said they couldnt believe they had won.

Its almost impossible to win these kind of victories, Ray said.

Residents of Westside Costa Mesa also were celebrating Thursday, said former Costa Mesa councilwoman Wendy Leece.

If theres an earthquake in Newport Beach today, it must be Costa Mesans jumping up and down for joy, Leece said. No one over here wants Bluff Road and the traffic that would come with it.

The Banning Ranch environmental impact report, which studied the larger 1,375-home version of the project in 2011, indicated that the west side of Newport Beach and Costa Mesa would experience traffic congestion at more than seven intersections, including Newport Boulevard and 17th Street; 18th and 19th streets; Newport and Harbor boulevards and Superior Avenue and 17th Street.

Others in Costa Mesa didnt see the Coastal Commissions decision as a victory at all. Instead, some officials said the move will just drag out the fight over the coastal property.

Its going to come back, said Mayor Pro Tem Jim Righeimer. Nobody is going to walk away from that piece of land. As far as Im concerned, I want the 300 acres for the public. Whatever the Coastal Commission and the property owner can agree to, Im all for it.

Banning Ranch chronology

1874:

Phineas Banning buys 4,077 acres of farm and ranch land near the Santa Ana River now known as Banning Ranch for $17,500

1940s:

Oil drilling begins on the Banning Ranch site

Early 1980s:

Property is transferred to Mobil Oil and Santiago Partners Investment Group. Roughly 93 acres are identified as a wetland restoration site.

1997:

Proposal to build 1,750 homes on the property is floated by Mobil, Santiago Partners and Taylor Woodrow Homes but is abandoned in the early 2000s.

1999:

Sierra Clubs Banning Ranch task force is formed by Terry Welsh. The group proposes to restore the land to its natural habitat.

2004:

Activists introduce a restoration plan, but property owners say they are still interested in developing the property.

2006:

Voters approve Newport Beach general plan amendments, including a plan for West Newport that prioritizes open space.

2008:

Banning Ranch landowner Newport Banning Ranch LLC unveils a plan for 1,375 homes, a luxury hotel and retail on about 95 acres of the 401-acre property.

2012:

Newport Beach City Council approves the development proposal. Banning Ranch Conservancy sues the city and the developer, alleging the city violated its general plan.

2013:

Orange County Superior Court judge rules partially in favor of the conservancy, agreeing that the city violated its general plan process by not involving California Coastal Commission staff. However, the judge rejects the conservancys main complaint that the projects environmental review left out key components about possibly sensitive habitats.

March 2015:

Newport Banning Ranch LLC settles with the Coastal Commission to correct unpermitted mowing and drilling operations on the site.

May 2015:

Appellate court finds in favor of Newport Beach on the general plan issue, reversing the Superior Court decision of 2013.

August 2015:

State Supreme Court agrees to review the Banning Ranch Conservancys petition to reverse the citys approval of the development project. A hearing date has not been set.

October 2015:

Coastal Commission sends Newport Banning Ranch back to the drawing board to scale back the proposed development after staff recommends denial.

November 2015:

Newport Banning Ranch sends the Coastal Commission a smaller version of the project featuring 895 homes, a 75-room hotel, a 20-bed hostel and 45,100 square feet of retail space on about 62 acres.

May 2016:

Coastal Commission staff recommends approval of the Banning Ranch project, but with conditions that would reduce its footprint to about 55 acres. The developer opts to postpone a commission hearing to continue working with the staff.

August 2016:

Commission staff recommends approval of the Banning Ranch proposal, but with conditions that would cut the development area to about 19.7 acres to preserve habitat and foraging space for burrowing owls. Newport Banning Ranch decides to stick with its 62-acre plan.

Sept. 7, 2016:

Coastal Commission votes to deny the Banning Ranch development.
The Costa Mesa City Council will appeal a preliminary injunction against a proposal to redevelop the Costa Mesa Motor Inn into luxury apartments  a project that has been the subject of criticism and a target of legal challenges from affordable-housing advocates.

Meanwhile, Motor Inn owner Miracle Mile Properties has begun the process of evicting people who still live in the mostly vacant motel at 2277 Harbor Blvd.

The City Council voted 3-2 during a closed session Tuesday to direct city staff to appeal the preliminary injunction issued against the project in June by Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Robert OBrien. Council members Katrina Foley and Sandy Genis dissented in the vote.

The citys case will be heard at the state 4th District Court of Appeal in Riverside, city spokesman Tony Dodero said Thursday.

We look forward to this being resolved soon, Dodero said. A hearing date has not been determined, he added.

The judges order effectively prevents Miracle Mile from moving ahead with plans to replace the 236-room Motor Inn with 224 high-end apartments.

The courts have held, though, that Miracle Mile can continue efforts to relocate or vacate tenants ahead of demolishing the structure.

Thirteen of the motels rooms were still occupied as of Thursday, according to Ellia Thompson, a lawyer who represents Miracle Mile.

By the end of next week, eviction proceedings will have been initiated against virtually all remaining tenants, Thompson said.

In June and July, Miracle Mile served Motor Inn occupants with 60-day notices to vacate.

My client has tried to do everything they can to be as thoughtful and considerate and kind to these long-term occupants as possible, Thompson said Thursday.

The Costa Mesa City Council approved the redevelopment proposal in November, with supporters saying it would rid the city of a blighted motel that has been a hotbed of illicit activity.

Shortly after that, the Kennedy Commission, an affordable-housing advocacy group based in Irvine, and some Motor Inn residents challenged the project in court, alleging the city had approved it without providing a relocation plan or appropriate assistance for low-income motel residents who would be displaced.

OBrien has indicated that the plaintiffs are unlikely to prevail on some of the issues raised in their lawsuit  including an assertion that the plan violates state law because the city granted a density incentive for the project without requiring low-income units.

However, he ordered his preliminary injunction to remain in place until Costa Mesa adopts and implements a valid replacement housing and relocation assistance program.

OBriens ruling cited state law, including Title 25 of the California Code of Regulations, part of which states, A public entity shall not participate in or undertake a project that will displace individuals from their homes unless comparable replacement dwellings will be available within a reasonable period of time prior to displacement.

According to Julian Burns, an attorney for the Kennedy Commission, For years in California, those whose displacement is instigated by local government have been entitled to relocation assistance.

The Motor Inn project falls into that category, Burns said, because Costa Mesa solicited Miracle Miles proposal, shepherded it through the approval process and ultimately approved it.

Miracle Mile previously agreed to provide relocation assistance to long-term motel residents. Those still living in the motel have been offered packages ranging from $6,000 to $8,000 but have turned them down, Thompson said.

Weve been told by several of the occupants that they think they deserve more and until they get more they wont leave, no matter what, she said.

Relocation money is no longer being offered to those who remain.

During interviews at the motel last month, some remaining residents told the Daily Pilot that the money wouldnt do them any good in the long run, saying that given their bad credit histories, they cant get a proper apartment. Motels are the only place they can go, they said.

The Kennedy Commission is in contact with most of the remaining residents and is providing some legal support during the eviction process, according to Cesar Covarrubias, the organizations executive director.

Covarrubias said hes aware of Costa Mesas decision to appeal the injunction.

When they made the decision [to approve the project], the decision should have also been to examine all the issues, including relocation benefits, he said. We dont think theyre following the law; we think theyre circumventing it.

Relocation benefits, he said, need to account for residents circumstances on a case-by-case basis.

Im not saying the situation or the conditions of living in a motel are optimal, Covarrubias said. But in many cases it was the only choice they had  the only choice they could afford.

Some former residents, though, have put the relocation money they received toward renting an apartment or even buying a condominium, Thompson said.

Miracle Mile, she said, is still paying for utilities, maintenance, security and other services at the motel, even though its about 95% empty.

Certainly we would like to stop the financial harm that continues to plague my client, but at the same time, were just trying to do this in the best way possible, she said.

Thompson added that theres no definitive timeline as to when the eviction process will be complete or when demolition of the motel might start.

At this point, she said, Miracle Mile wants to close the motel, stop the bleeding of finances and then figure out what will be next.

luke.money@latimes.com

Twitter: @LukeMMoney
Traditionally, a political partys endorsement meant a great deal to local candidates electability.

But as the curtain lifts on the discourse behind those endorsements, I wonder how much juice theyll really have with Newport Beach voters this season.

City Council races are supposed to be non-partisan, and since Republicans dominate Newport, more times than not we see Republicans running against Republicans.

Watching them eat their own, though entertaining, doesnt do much for the partys credibility.

But that doesnt seem to matter, as we saw last week at the O.C. Republican Central Committee.

The night the GOP Central Committee was choosing whom to endorse, OC Political  a right-of-center-blog  wrote a blow-by-blow description of the discussions that ultimately led to endorsements. Its an interesting read at ocpolitical.com/category/republican-central-committee/.

When it came time to determine who in Newport would get the nod, things didnt go well for council candidate Fred Ameri.

Ameri, running against Phil Greer and Will ONeill for District 7, was the choice for the endorsement committee.

Ameri has a long history with the party. He served as an alternate for former state Sen. Tom Harman on the Central Committee, was a business partner of the late former O.C. Republican Chairman Tom Fuentes  who got Ameri involved in the GOP  and helped grow the party by registering 5,000 Republicans through the Iranian American Republican Council, which he founded.

Ameri calls the current GOP head honcho Fred Whitaker a friend.

Though Ameri has contributed beaucoup bucks to O.C. Republican candidates for years, his contributions to Democrats  brought to the committees attention by Newport Councilman Scott Peotter  seem to have created problems for him.

Now, its not an uncommon practice for businesses to cover their bets by donating to both parties. My husband did it when he was in business, calling them his anti-assassination fees. Elections are a crap shoot, and his goal was to be friendly with everyone.

Ameri tells me the deck was stacked against him at the Central Committee meeting, as those opposed to his endorsement came out in force, including former O.C. Republican Chairman Scott Baugh, Peotter and Newport Councilman Kevin Muldoon.

Whitaker made a motion the party remain neutral in the race.

Ameri wasnt happy, and then said he was out of there.

Ameri tells me he just said, Im out of here because he thought it was a done deal.

It wasnt.

The tide changed, and after Ameri left the endorsement went to ONeill, who is represented by political consultant Dave Ellis.

Elliss other candidate in the Newport District 5 race, Lee Lowrey, also got the GOP nod, beating out Mike Glenn and Jeff Herdman, who wasnt involved here.

Ameri told me hes shocked at how corrupt the inner-workings of politics and the goings-on in our Central Committee is.

So did Ameri get hosed?

Or did the Central Committee just take a clue from that famous quote by legendary actress Mae West, When caught between two evils I generally pick the one Ive never tried before.

Who knows? The real issue for voters in Newport isnt party affiliation. Its whether they want to continue to build the Team Newport concept on this council, or start to dismantle it, so I dont see these endorsements mattering much.

Ameri did, however, get the influential Lincoln Clubs endorsement.

And one endorsement that I think will mean a lot to voters comes from the Political Action Committee, Line in the Sand.

Readers may remember this PAC came out of the core group SPON  Still Protecting Our Newport  spearheaded by longtime community activist Jean Watt.

Line in the Sand will announce endorsements next week, but Ive got the early scoop.

Members Nancy Skinner and Watt told me their group has chosen to endorse Greer over Ameri and ONeill, and will support Herdman over Glenn and Lowrey.

Theyre neutral in the race between Brad Avery and Shelley Henderson.

Skinner says the fact that Lowrey, Henderson, Avery and ONeill didnt show up for Feet to the Fire Forum weighed heavily with her committee.

Watt and Skinner also said in evaluating candidates their committee had concerns about those represented by Ellis feeling he had too much influence over them as candidates  and if they are elected.

Skinner says Greer and Herdman reflect the mission of Line in the Sand to advocate for our town.

Greer tells me hes ecstatic, pleased and humbled by the endorsement, and calls Line in the Sand the quintessential neighborhood organization that understands what residents want and are willing to stand up for it.

BARBARA VENEZIA lives in Newport Beach. She can be reached at bvontv1@gmail.com.
Opponents of a new ban on vaginal-breech delivery procedures at Glendale Adventist Medical Center protested outside the facility Wednesday.

The demonstration, organized by the activist group Improving Birth, sought to pressure the hospital to reverse its decision, which officials said this week was made in the interest of ensuring a safer delivery process for women and their children.

Instead of doing a vaginal-breech delivery  the rare instance when a baby is delivered buttocks or feet first rather than head first  Glendale Adventist staff will perform a cesarean section or refer the mother to academically affiliated obstetrics and gynecology programs that will perform the procedure.

This change was met with disdain from Improving Birth, doulas and midwives, who argued that Glendale Adventist is unfairly forcing women to have c-sections. Vaginal-breech deliveries, they contend, are safe when performed by qualified physicians, and Glendale Adventist  which staffs a doctor who is one of only a few who do vaginal breech deliveries in the Los Angeles area  is giving pregnant women fewer choices.

Carrying a sign that read Breeched birth: A human right, Dawn Thompson, president of Improving Birth, called the hospitals ban unethical.

Its being led by the fear of liability, she said.

In an interview Wednesday, Glendale Adventists vice president of clinical services and chief nursing officer, Karen Brandt-Mayo, said the ban will affect a very small number of births. In 2015, she noted, of the 2,400 deliveries at the hospital, nine involved vaginal-breech births.

There is increasing medical evidence of potentially catastrophic risk to a baby born via vaginal-breech delivery, she said. Our primary focus is safety for the mom and baby.

Protestors lined up along Wilson Terrace, in front of the hospital, to make their views known. Some drivers in passing cars honked to support the group as they chanted and carried signs with phrases such as #LiberateLabor, Keep choice in childbirth, Reteach breech and My body, my choice.

Glendale police said about 40 people, mostly mothers apparently, participated in the project, with no incidents reported.

It was peaceful, said Glendale Police Sgt. Robert William.

Tracy Hartley, a doula for 20 years, said Glendale Adventist staffed one of only two doctors in Greater Los Angeles who perform vaginal-breech deliveries.

Theyre taking away half of the choices, she said.

Hartley and other protestors, who included Fear the Walking Dead actress Mercedes Mason, explained what they see as an unfair contradiction: If a patient enters a hospital with a deadly case of gangrene on his or her foot yet doesnt consent to having the foot removed, the hospital obeys the wish.

But if you go in with a breeched birth and you say, I dont want to have a c-section, theyll do it to you anyway, Hartley said.

Added Mason: Its all about maintaining rights for patients. Theres no other healthcare system where they force you into surgery  Its my body, my choice. Simple as that.

Dr. Elliot Berlin, an area prenatal chiropractor who served as executive producer for a 2015 documentary titled Heads Up: The Disappearing Art of Vaginal Breech Delivery, said he sees Glendale Adventists decision as a slippery slope toward not allowing vaginal births at all.

The hospital could no longer allow vaginal births for twins or for women who are older than 35, he said.

Its a crime against humanity, Berlin said.

Brandt-Mayo countered Berlins statement, saying the hospital encourages vaginal births that are safe and appropriate and is also implementing a program to reduce the number of c-sections its staff performs.

In a statement, Dignity Health Glendale Memorial Hospital officials said, Glendale Memorial Hospital does not prohibit vaginal-breech deliveries. Doctors carefully evaluate and discuss with patients whether vaginal-breech birth can be performed safely. We want every birth to be safe and joyful, and adhere to [American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, or ACOG] guidelines and prevailing standards.

Though the organization once favored c-sections over vaginal-breech births, it has since reversed its opinion if the providers of the procedure have the sufficient skill and experience to perform it.

The ACOG opinion states, in part, Cesarean delivery will be the preferred mode for most physicians because of the diminishing expertise in vaginal breech delivery ... before a vaginal breech is planned, [the] woman should be informed [of the] risk of perinatal or neonatal mortality ... and the patients informed consent should be documented.

St. Joseph Medical Center officials in Burbank said they also follow ACOG guidelines regarding vaginal-breech births.

USC Verdugo Hills Hospital in Glendale does not offer the procedure, a hospital spokeswoman said.

--

Bradley Zint, bradley.zint@latimes.com

Twitter: @BradleyZint
Creativity runs deep at Costa Mesas Vanguard University, where a third of the upcoming seasons stage productions will be of the home-grown variety.

These would be Open All Night, a comedy with familiar Christmas music, and ACTCs Christmas Cabaret, the similarly themed holiday show that follows. Its creators are writer-director Vanda Eggington and choreographer Bretlyn Schmitt, both of whom have been honored as the Daily Pilots women of the year in theater.

The Vanguard season kicks off in two weeks with Blame It on the Movies, an homage to movie musicals and cinematic history that features no fewer than 75 songs from pictures running the gamut of Hollywoods genres.

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Audiences will love this musical revue, promises its director, Susan K. Berkompas, artistic director of the colleges theater program. Blame It on the Movies will be performed from Sept. 16 to Oct. 2.

Shakespeare will put in an appearance at the Costa Mesa theater from Oct. 21 to 30 with A Midsummer Nights Dream, one of the Bards most popular comedies.

This fantasy centers on quarreling lovers and mischievous fairies orchestrated by the sly sprite Puck, who famously observes, What fools these mortals be. Kevin Slay will be the guest director for this magical adventure.

As for Open All Night, ticketed from Dec. 1 to 11, Eggington describes it as a show that will warm your heart and remind you of the true meaning of Christmas.

The original production centers on sisters Holly and Ivy, who operate an all-night cafe in a small town and take in a single mother and her 10-year-old daughter. It combines, as Eggington notes, comedy, music, lovable characters and an interesting story line.

Eggington and choreographer Schmitt also are at the helm of ACTC Christmas Cabaret, a 70-minute song-and-dance show focusing on the yuletide season. It features, its director says, six of the most talented professionals in Orange County, members of Vanguards pro offshoot, the American Coast Theater Company.

Berkompas returns to direct Oscar Wildes comedy The Importance of Being Earnest, a tale of articulate deception with a British accent. This stylish piece will be performed in the schools Lyceum Theater from Feb. 24 through March 5.

Winding up Vanguards 2016-17 season will be a musical favorite from the 1980s, Stephen Sondheims musical melange of fairy tale characters, Into the Woods. Eggington returns to direct her third show of the new season, which will be on the boards from April 6 to 23.

Tickets for all Vanguard shows are $19 for general admission and $15 for seniors, students and groups of 10 or more. Vanguard University is at 55 Fair Drive, Costa Mesa. For further information, call (714) 668-6145 or visit vanguard.edu/theatre.

--

TOM TITUS reviews local theater.
If you can decide by the end of this month, you can get a $648 round-trip ticket from LAX to Vientiane or Luang Prabang in Laos on Singapore Airlines.

You must buy your ticket, which is subject to availability, by Sept. 30. It is for departures Tuesdays or Thursdays (or, for $100 more, Saturdays) from Nov. 1 to Dec. 18 and Jan. 9 to June 30. You may return Mondays, Thursdays or Saturdays. There is no minimum stay, but you may not stay more than a month.

Info: Singapore, (800) 742-3333, www.singaporeair.com

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Source: Airfarewatchdog.com

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Tremors that emanated Friday from North Koreas northeastern nuclear test site alerted the world to another crucial step that the isolated nation had made in its defiant, decade-long march to develop long-range missiles tipped with lightweight nuclear warheads.

The man-made earthquake, detected by U.S. instruments Friday at 5.3 in magnitude, was more powerful than any of the previous underground tests conducted by the government of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un  indicating that the weapon detonated with a yield of about 10 kilotons.

The test, when coupled with the three successful ballistic missile launches earlier in the week, offered a hint to world leaders that North Korean engineers and scientists are making another incremental, yet significant, step in their nuclear weapons program.

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Two of the nations five successful nuclear detonations have occurred in the last eight months. Over that same period, the military has launched an unprecedented 21 ballistic missile launches  more than four times as many as North Korea had ever fired previously.

State-run media in the capital of Pyongyang made a number of assertions Friday, saying North Korea had become a full-fledged nuclear weapons state, had a standardized weapon design and now possessed warheads small enough to be affixed to ballistic missiles. It characterized the Friday tests as a higher-level nuclear warhead explosion that would prepare the country to retaliate against any provocation by U.S.-led hostile forces.

The test drew condemnation from across Asia and exacerbated fears that the communist country, derisively nicknamed the Hermit Kingdom, is steadily making progress toward its goal of developing the technology to unleash a nuclear strike on the U.S.

The apparent advancements have come despite a range of United Nations sanctions that have ground the North Korean economy to a halt. The U.N. Security Council convened an emergency meeting Friday in New York.

President Obama issued a statement promising additional significant steps, including further sanctions, against the rogue state.

Far from achieving its stated national security and economic development goals, North Koreas provocative and destabilizing actions have instead served to isolate and impoverish its people through its relentless pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile capabilities, Obama said.

American defense officials expressed concern Friday that the tests demonstrate a new level of sophistication, though non-government experts in the U.S. are still hungering for evidence or formal analyses of where North Korean technology and industrial capability stand.

Joel Wit, a founder of the 38north.org website affiliated with Johns Hopkins University, said North Korea almost certainly has achieved a capability to place a nuclear weapon on a regional ballistic missile that could threaten South Korea, Japan, China or Russia, as well as U.S. bases in the region, where tens of thousands of American troops are deployed.

The most recent tests could signify that the nation is making new technological strides, he said  or, alternatively, that its programs are only now reaching a stage when more testing is necessary, or that Kim is conducting propaganda stunts.

It is a nuanced picture, he said. People are jumping to conclusions that the tests mean there is a big acceleration and that may not be the case.

To be sure, the nuclear device developed by North Korea is rudimentary by U.S. standards. South Koreas military said the early indication is that North Koreas test created a blast of 10 kilotons in yield, which is less than the atomic bomb that the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima in World War II.

Pyongyang was able to develop a bomb ready for testing just eight months after its previous detonation in January. But clearly North Korea has not reached the level of sophistication of Pakistan or India, which each detonated five nuclear weapons on a single day in 1998 and now have stockpiles estimated by the Federation of American Scientists of about 120 warheads.

Two detonations would burn six to 10 kilograms of plutonium, depending on how sophisticated the device was, said Hans Kristensen, a federation nuclear weapons expert. They have enough capability to do that.

But Kristensen said what is missing is an open U.S. intelligence estimate of North Koreas program. The statements we have heard are contradictory.

An exhaustive investigation by military and intelligence agencies into the test to confirm the size of the detonation, the type of radioactive fuel it used, how the fuel was produced and the sophistication of its design, will take weeks. The rebuke for the test, however, was immediate.

Even China, North Koreas only real ally, which has customarily used its diplomatic sway to shield North Korea from punishment, issued a statement condemning the detonation.

Zhang Liangui, a North Korea expert at the Central Party School of the Communist Party of China, said Beijing would likely adopt any new sanctions that the U.N. decided to take against North Korea following the test.

This is a critical moment to solve the crisis on the Korean Peninsula, so [I predict] the U.N. will adopt tougher sanctions against North Korea than ever before, he said. I think China will take more effective methods to carry out the sanction.

The frequent, unannounced missile launches by North Korea, prompted Washington to announce plans in July to deploy a U.S. antiballistic missile system in South Korea. China, however, protested that the system would undermine its own nuclear deterrent, a reaction that shows how North Koreas program is exacerbating tensions in the region.

U.S. Strategic Command tracked the unprecedented 21 missile launches so far this year, including North Koreas first successful launch of a missile from a submarine, after spotting them on U.S. early warning satellites and radar systems that ring the Pacific.

The military has determined that the missiles were launched from North Korea but have not yet posed a threat to North America. But that assurance provides scant comfort at a time when North Korea has stepped up the pace of both missile and nuclear weapons testing, fueling growing concern in the U.S., Japan and South Korea

North Korea has steadily built its own base of missile technology, allowing it to launch a satellite into orbit in 2012. A Defense Department report to Congress last year described nine major North Korean ballistic missiles, including three versions of old Soviet Scuds that represent its largest force. The Scud, used by Iraq to terrorize Israel during the Persian Gulf War, has a range of up to 600 miles, long enough to reach anywhere in South Korea and most of Japan.

The latest tests involve road-mobile missiles that are hard to track, which could extend North Koreas range to 2,000 miles, easily encompassing Japan, South Korea and a broad swath of China.

North Korea is developing a three-stage missile, dubbed the Hwasong-13 or KN-08. The system has an estimated range of more than 3,400 miles, roughly the distance from North Korea to Anchorage, making it a legitimate intercontinental ballistic missile, according to the Pentagon report to Congress.

william.hennigan@latimes.com

ralph.vartabedian@latimes.com

Hennigan reported from Washington and Vartabedian from Los Angeles. Times staff writers Jonathan Kaiman in Beijing and Michael A. Memoli in Washington contributed to this report.

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Many Chinese and expats in China have been victims of phone and online scams. (Photo : Getty Images)

Phone and online scams are rampant in China. A recent report was released that the scams are aiming at expats who are becoming more vulnerable to fraudsters.



This was the case for Austin Guidry, an American working in Beijing for the past five years. He can speak fluent Chinese.



Guidy received a call and was informed that a package arrived for him. The so-called parcel service wanted him to give his personal details.



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He said, "I asked them where the package had been delivered, but they wanted to know my full name, address, and ID number before telling me where the package was. I talked to them for a second but then I realized that I had not ordered anything. I hung up the phone immediately."



According to the Ministry of Public Security, the number of telecom fraud cases has increased by 70 percent per year from 2011 to 2013. In 2014, there were over 400,000 telecom fraud incidents that occurred in China.



Another case of fraud involved Xu Yuyu, a high school graduate from Linyi, Shandong Province, who died of "cardiac and respiratory arrest" on Aug. 21, after a con artist defrauded her of 9,900 yuan. She was asked to send money to a third party account in exchange for a scholarship.



Hao Yide has been dealing with fraud in China since 2012. He is a lawyer who works with the Beijing-based Yingke Law Firm.



"Most con artists register fake companies, addresses and use false information to contact the victim. When defrauding expats, they give them the falsified information and later disappear to register a new company somewhere else. Because expats are not familiar with China and may not have friends in many cities, it is harder for them to find a person to help check the authenticity of the information or find the con artists," said Hao.


Three women behind a thwarted attack near Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris were radicalized by Islamic State commanders in Syria, and one had been engaged to an extremist who killed a priest in July, the Paris prosecutor said Friday.

Francois Molins spoke a day after the women were dramatically arrested over the failed attack that centered on a car discovered Sunday morning in central Paris abandoned and loaded with gas canisters. No detonators were found in the car.

In the last few days and hours a terrorist cell was dismantled, composed of young women totally receptive to the deadly Daesh ideology, Molins said, referring to Islamic State by its Arabic acronym.

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The women suspected of spearheading the failed plot included Ines Madani, a 19-year-old whose father owned the abandoned Peugeot car. Her written pledge of allegiance to Islamic State was found by police, a security official said Friday.

Madani stabbed a police officer with a knife and was shot in the leg Thursday evening in a raid south of Paris, police said. She was being treated in a hospital.

Five women and two men have been arrested in the case.

One of the women detained in a police raid, referred to as Sarah H., was betrothed separately to two French extremists who carried out deadly attacks this year, the Paris prosecutor said.

Sarah H. was engaged to Larossi Abballa, who killed two police officials in Magnanville in June and filmed the aftermath on Facebook live before dying in a police raid.

She was also betrothed to Adel Kermiche, who slit the throat of an elderly French priest during morning Mass in July before being killed by police, Molins said. He didnt say when she was engaged to either man.

Frances interior minister said the pursuit had been a race against time to find Madani and the two women with her before they could strike.

A man arrested Thursday also had ties to Abballa, one of the officials said.

Theres a group that has been annihilated, but there are others, French President Francois Hollande said Friday. Information we were able to get from our intelligence services allowed us to act before it was too late.

A security official, who was not authorized to be identified when speaking about the investigation, said Madani had pulled a knife during the raid outside a small apartment building near the Boussy-Saint-Antoine train station.

In video filmed by a neighbor, a veiled woman, her face uncovered, is seen being carried away by police as she cries out Allahu akbar, or God is great.

A plot conceived and carried out by a group of women would mark a new step in the Islamic State groups attempts to sow fear in Europe.

Its at the same time rare and predictable, Matthieu Suc, author of Wives of Jihadis, told France Info radio.

Women in the group do not take part in attacks, he said, but are there to ensure the longevity of the caliphate by having babies and providing moral support. But, he added, there are often young girls, who are just as radicalized as the young men, and they also want the status of martyr, and they want to act.

The car loaded with gas cylinders belonged to Madanis father, who flagged her to police on Sunday, 14 hours after the vehicle was discovered. Since then, authorities have worked frantically to untangle the relationships within the group and thwart what they increasingly feared was another plot.

More than one-third of the nearly 700 French citizens who have reached the war zones of Iraq and Syria are women, according to government figures. And officials have said for months that those being recruited by Islamic State in France are increasingly adolescent girls and young women.

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UPDATES:

1:15 p.m.: This article was updated with more details and comments from officials in France.

This article was originally published at 8:55 a.m.
The Obama administration on Friday blasted new comments by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in which he said critics of Israels settlement expansion in the West Bank are advocating the ethnic cleansing of Jews.

Using unusually forceful language to criticize a longstanding ally, the State Department said it was protesting Netanyahus comments directly to his government. It was not clear if U.S. officials believe Netanyahu was referring to them in the comments.

The U.S. has long condemned Israels aggressive building of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, contested land that the Palestinians want for their eventual state.

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Netanyahu said that just as Israel has nearly 2 million Arabs living in Israel, so should Palestinians tolerate Jews living in their midst.

Yet the Palestinian leadership actually demands a Palestinian state with one precondition: no Jews, Netanyahu said in a video he posted on Facebook. Theres a phrase for that. Its called ethnic cleansing.

He added that he had always been perplexed that critics viewed settlements as an obstacle to peace.

Israel captured the West Bank and East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East War, areas that the Palestinians claim for their state. Since then, Israel has built more than 100 settlements in the West Bank for about 400,000 Jews. Most of the international community considers the settlements illegal.

Palestinians have demanded a halt to settlement construction as a condition to resuming peace talks, which have been essentially stalled for years. Although many Israelis and Palestinians continue to favor a two-state solution  an independent Israel and an independent Palestine living side by side  there seems to be little or no political will these days for pursuing an agreement. Palestinians believe the settlements, scattered all over the West Bank, prevent a geographically coherent state.

Asked about Netanyahus video, State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau cited broad international consensus that regards settlements as an obstacle to peace.

We obviously strongly disagree with the characterization that those who oppose settlement activity or view it as an obstacle to peace are somehow calling for ethnic cleansing of Jews from the West Bank, Trudeau said. We believe that using that type of terminology is inappropriate and unhelpful.

She criticized what she called Israels dramatic escalation of the demolition of Palestinian homes and structures, leaving hundreds without shelter. Israel has also retroactively legalized unauthorized remote settler outposts and seized additional West Bank land for exclusive Israeli use, she said.

We have repeatedly expressed our strong concerns that trends on the ground continue to move in the opposite direction of a two-state solution, Trudeau said. Israels actions raise real questions about Israels long-term intentions in the West Bank.

There has been speculation in Washington that President Obama may instruct Secretary of State John F. Kerry to make one last attempt to find an Israeli-Palestinian accord before the administration leaves office. Russia, meanwhile, hoping to assert itself further on the world stage, has offered to host Israeli-Palestinian talks in the coming weeks.

For more on global affairs, follow @TracyKWilkinson on Twitter
The South American sovereign is on pace to grow almost 5% this year and could issue up to $1 billion in bonds
The Obama administration is rumored to be considering ending its much debated relationship with for-profit immigration detention centers.

The proposed moves follow a recent Federal Bureau of Prisons decision outlining how the agency will no longer make use of private prison systems. Back on Aug. 18, the Department of Justice ordered that all Bureau of Prisons facilities end their associate with private prisons for the purposes of housing noncitizen inmates.

"The Department of Justice announced that the Bureau of Prisons will reduce and ultimately end its use of private prisons," Homeland Security chief Jeh Johnson said in a statement back then. "I directed our Homeland Security Advisory Council...to evaluate whether the immigration detention operations conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement should move in the same direction."

Homeland Security Secretary oversees both immigration services and Border Patrol.

A move away from use of the for-profit systems would be seen as a major victory for civil rights and immigration advocacy groups, both of whom have long lobbied for a roll back of the growing use of private-prison systems.

Official Decision due Over Next Couple Months

Word is Johnson is expected to make a formal recommendation to the Homeland Security Advisory Council by the end of November.

Not surprisingly, the idea has already sparked widespread condemnation from immigration officials, all of whom have insisted any such move would not be cost-effective.

"It would be remarkably detrimental," said one senior Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official, speaking on the condition of animosity.

The official estimated that not allowing private companies to be a part of the equation would ultimately cost taxpayers billions of dollars more a year and take authorities at least a decade to implement a new system.

Currently, nine of the country's 10 largest immigration detention centers are privately operated and serve as holding centers for roughly two-thirds of the more than 31,000 people typically held in custody on a daily basis.

Federal 2017 Budget Allocates $2.1 Billion for Detention Centers

For 2017, the Obama administration has budgeted $2.1 billion for detention operations, a marginal decrease from 2016 as the White House has stuck with its plan of reducing the number of people held in detention each day from 34,000 and "960 family beds."

ICE pegs the cost of housing a person in immigrant detention at $127 a day and $161 a day for those held in facilities designed for families.

While the agency has remained mum about how much of those funds go private facilities, a recent analysis by the Grassroots Leadership advocacy group found that roughly half of that $2 billion went to private companies.

Meanwhile, civil rights advocates have documented a pattern of poor medical care and abuse inside the privately run institutions that all seems to lead back to their hell-bent commitment to maximize profits.

"We certainly see a lot of these problems magnified when a company is seeking to extract as much profit as it can out of a detention center," said Bob Libal, executive director of Grassroots Leadership.

In addition, the use of jails leaves many non-criminal detainees at potential risk, as they are routinely housed in the proximity of potentially dangerous criminals.

"They are not better-run, they are not better-managed, they are not providing better service," he said.

Since ICE officials made their announcement, the two leading publicly traded prison companies (Correction Corporation of America and Geo Group) have seen their stock prices noticeably slide. Following DOJ's earlier announcement back in August, stock at the two companies fell by roughly 40 percent.

DOJ's decision to steer clear of private prisons followed a Nation and Investigate Fund investigation that uncovered longstanding medical neglect at privately ran prisons, including dozens of fatalities.

Various watchdog groups have long documented similar instances of abuse at various immigration detention facilities.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is known for his verbal attacks on officials, including U.S. President Barack Obama, where he called the leader a son of a b*** among many other comments. Check out some of the most memorable and infamous Duterte top controversial quotes.

The Filipino president is dubbed the Donald Trump of the Philippines due to his attacks against the media, the United Nations and an American ambassador among many others.

Rodrigo Duterte Quotes

Duterte, also a lawyer, made comments about a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry calling his business partner a gay ambassador, and saying that the only way to get financial assistance from the U.S. is to insult the country.

We were talking to Kerry, hes okay but I had a feud with his gay ambassador, Duterte said of U.S. ambassador to the Philippines, Philip Goldberg. Son of a b***, Im annoyed with this guy. He meddled in the elections, giving statements here and there...So that Kerry, he came here and we had lunch and he left $33 million with me... I said, ahhh this is okay, lets insult them again so this fool will make a compromise.

Next he attacked the media, saying that journalists are not exempt from being killed then later apologized about the comments.

Most of you are clean, but do not ever say all journalists are clean, the Filipino president said in a June press conference. Just because you are a journalist, you are not exempted from assassination if you are a son of a son of a b***.

Duterte also supported vigilantism in his native land where more than 2,000 suspected drug dealers were killed with no fair hearing.

Please feel free to call us, the police, or do it yourself if you have the gun  you have my support. Shoot him and Ill give you a medal, Duterte said.

Duterte Jokes About Rape

The Filipino president, and former mayor of Davao City, made jokes about a rape victim and also called his daughter a drama queen when she reported an alleged rape.

Duterte recalled an incident in 1989 at a Davao jail where an Australian missionary was raped and killed during a prisoner hostage stunt.

When the bodies were brought out, they were wrapped. I looked at her face, son of a b***, she looks like a beautiful American actress. I was angry because she was raped, thats one thing. But she was so beautiful, the mayor should have been first, Duterte said referring to himself. What a waste.

He later apologized for the rape comment saying that he said it in the heat of anger.

Duterte also called Pope Francis a son of a b*** when he visited the Philippines.
A 4-year-old in Australia has been approved of getting a sex change operation before entering kindergarten. Psychologists warned that the toddler is too young to make that decision although many other young children have considered a sex change operation, including a 3-year-old.

I would have thought four is pretty young for any official policy support, transgender advocate Catherine McGregor told The Sun. In my experience, kids with strong cross-gender identification tend to get it right. However, I can understand there would be caution on the part of the department and medical practitioners on making any irreversible decisions at that stage.

School Program Supports Gender Transition

The New South Wales Department of Education supports the toddlers decision and has provided a support package for the gender transition. Government officials in New South Wales say there a dozens of students in state schools undergoing gender transition surgery.

We have a number of students who are going through gender transition in our schools, with the youngest being a 4-year-old at the moment, NSW Education Department deputy secretary of school operations told Evening Standard UK. The Safe Schools (program) is only one resource that can be used in how we would support that family, student and school to accommodate a child going through transition.

Gender Change Section at Childrens Hospital

A doctor at the Sydney Childrens Hospital confirmed that the number of gender transition operations have tripled over the years throughout Australia while a hospital in Melbourne is assisting about 250 children in the gender dysphoria unit.

Clinical psychologist Rose Cantali warned about the precautions of doing an operation at such a young age.

I would be very hesitant and other psychologists would say the same, Cantali said. Everything is developmental at that age.

Government Approves Gender Status Change on Birth Certificates

Meanwhile, Victorias state Labor government allows for residents to receive a gender change on their birth certificates. The state introduced legislation that would make the process much easier.

This is about removing barriers for trans, gender diverse and intersex people, Attorney General Marin Pakula told HuffingtonPost Australia. A birth certificate is more than just a piece of paper.

The birth certificate legislation allows for transgender people to go through the name change without being forced to have a sex change surgery. Many transgender people decide not to have surgery because of the cost and many other reasons.

Nobody should be forced to undergo major surgeryjust to have a birth certificate that reflects who they are, Pakula said.

Transgender people do not need a supporting statement from a doctor to change the gender on their birth certificates.
Members of the Nature Conservancy is spreading awareness about the water crisis in New York by asking for donations and updating residents on the latest issues concerning safe drinking water and availability in the state.

Water Crisis Efforts

The Nature Conservancy pushes people to be active in the fight against the water crisis and other environmental issues by making contributions through its nature.org website.

When you make a tax-deductible donation to The Nature Conservancy, youre supporting the most effective solutions to the environments most pressing challenges, the website reads. No other nonprofit has done more to advance conservation around the world. Thats why your contribution is so much more than charity, its an investment in the future of our planet.

The site tells you that donations starting at a $10 minimum, helps to advance science, foster collaboration, make a global impact, shape practical policies and safeguard nature.

Water Crisis in New York

New York State residents filed a suit for one issue regarding the water crisis, where they revealed blood test results showing that they have chemicals in their body that links to certain forms of cancer.

The PFOA Facebook Page is a public group for people wanting to join the cause. Residents used social media to spread awareness of the water crisis, even showing images of six-year-old children affected by contaminated water. PFOA stands for the cancer chemical perfluorooctanoic acid.

Studies show that PFOA can be linked to kidney and testicular cancer. It is also linked to thyroid disease and ulcerative colitis. Residents in New York State have shown levels of PFOA that are 10 times higher than the general population, the state Health Department told the New York Daily News.

Support for Water Crisis

Last year, residents in upstate New York went 10 consecutive days without water because of a main break, adding to the water crisis issues in the state. Environmental advocates said that the government needed to invest more money into waste-water management and the New York drinking water system.

Extreme weather and increase of rainfall due to climate change is one of the main causes of the water crisis in New York and other parts of the U.S.

Environmental organizations drafted a report at the time, warning the state that NYS needs direct and immediate support in fixing the water crisis. Some of the organizations included Environmental Advocates, the New York League of Conservation Voters and the Adirondack Council.
Four members of the scandal-ridden Oakland Police Department will be terminated and seven others are slated to be suspended without pay stemming from a sexual misconduct investigation that has rocked the department and sparked national criticism.

Mayor Libby Schaaf recently made the announcement, adding that the officers have been found guilty of a slew of charges ranging from attempted sexual assault, engaging in lewd conduct, assisting in the crime of prostitution and accessing law enforcement databases for personal gain.

Eighth Officer Disciplined

The seven suspended officers are alleged to have remained quiet about the colleagues' wrongdoing. An eighth officer was also assigned to undergo counseling and training for "bringing disrepute" to the department.

"I want to send a clear message to the victims of sexual abuse and exploitation living in our city. We see you. We hear you, and we are here to help you," Schaaf said at a news conference. "And to those who exploit these victims and profit or take pleasure in their pain, we see you too."

The lengthy probe kicked last June after a self-described teenage prostitute publicly claimed she had sexual contact with several officers. The woman later told authorities she first came in contact with officers after meeting one of them along a stretch of International Boulevard known for the sex trafficking of underage girls.

According to the victim, some of the intercourse took place while she was still a minor. She added some of the sexual interaction took place in exchange for information about prostitution raids the department was in the midst of planning.

Since then, the scandal has expanded to include several members of at least four other East Bay law enforcement agencies, all of whom are also accused of engaging in inappropriate contact with the victim.

While declining to identify any of the officers she was taking action against, Schaaf indicated the Alameda County district attorney's office is expected to soon complete a criminal investigation into the matter.

"It looks to me like there's been a wide-ranging investigation, the kind that I was hopeful for," said civil rights attorney John Burris, who negotiated the settlement that placed the department under federal oversight more than a decade ago. "It's the first step, a major step, to restoring the department."

New Leadership

Meanwhile, fallout from the scandal has resulted in a major shake-up for the department, commencing with the resignation of former chief Sean Whent in the same week that the woman went public.

Whent's resignation was followed by the abrupt dismissals of two acting chiefs within in a span of less than two weeks. Ultimately, Schaff placed the department under the authority of civilian City Administrator Sabrina Landreth.
Dominican-American running for Congress, Marco Gutierrez, told MSNBCs Joy Reid that if Hillary Clinton won the vote, there would be taco trucks on every corner. His comment on live television prompted the trendy #TacoTrucksOnEveryCorner hashtag, mocking the Latino politician and Trump's stance on immigration.

It is imposing and its causing problems, Gutierrez said. If youll crane your neck all the way to the top of the page, youll see a taco truck lined up by a Denver councilman for goal of lunch and talk with passers-by about the stakes in this election

Twitter user Bobby Gladd compared Gutierrezs remarks to former New Mexico governor Gary Johnsons comments about the crisis in Aleppo, Syria. Johnson asked on MSNBC, What is Aleppo? prompting social media users to mock him with the #WhatIsAleppo hashtag.

In another post, Twitter user Jeannine Love used the #TacoTrucksOnEveryCorner hashtag to promote an idea of turning tack trucks into voter registration centers.

Some users poked fun at the idea of taco trucks and made it seem like it was a political discussion to be had.

Americans would much rather enjoy #FoodTrucksOnEveryCorner rather than #TacoTrucksOnRveryCorner / just think of the variety and quality here, Balloons4Hillary said.

#TacoTrucksOnEveryCorner means lower property values and tears down the minority community with poor quality living, Balloons4Hillary replied to that comment on a much serious note.

Gutierrez joined the in the social media conversation, mentioning Trump in the tweet.

I see the rising of a great franchise opportunity with #TacoTrucksOnEveryCorner @realDonaldTrump bringing jobs to the food industry already, Marco4Trump tweeted.

Another user used the hashtag to take a jab at Johnson.

Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate for president, doesnt know what tacos al pastor are #TacosOnEveryCorner, Jeronimo Saldana tweeted.

Twitter User Guzman labs made a fake presidential campaign poster, mocking Trumps famous quote, Make America great again.

Gutierrez Speaks Up About #TacoTrucksOnEveryCorner

Gutierrez, the founder of Latinos for Trump, told DW that he did not mean to ridicule his fellow Mexicans and that he will not apologize because he meant to say the comment.

I wanted to describe something and I didnt use the proper words to do it, he said. We Hispanics are very emotional, so I guess I hit a nerve.

Gutierrez said he supports what Trump wants to do for the Mexican community in the U.S.

We are a sub-culture within the American culture and I think that Trump is trying to put a little balance into that, he said. I came to this country to become an American. I didnt come here to be a Mexican.

He said he loves his heritage but when in Rome do as the Romans do.

Many people ae asking me how someone that looks like me and talks like me can be backing Donald Trump, Gutierrez said. My answer is that I have six kids and I want a better future for them.
Brazil has a rich source of hydroelectric power such as the Itaipu hydroelectric plant in Foz do Iguacu, Parana state, Brazil, in the border with Paraguay. (Photo : Getty Images)

Two Chinese companies are among the bidders competing to gain a major stake in Brazil's fourth largest energy generator Santo Antonio Energia SA, China Daily reported.



According to the report, the two companies are China Three Gorges Corp and State Grid Corp of China, while the rival bidder is Canada's Brookfield Asset Management Inc. They are vying to get 28.6 percent of shares in the Brazilian company.



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According to its website, the Santo Antonio hydropower plant can generate 3,150 megawatts of power that is sufficient to provide electricity for 40 million people.



The company's hydroelectric plant is being built on Madeira River. Once completed, it will become the third largest power plant in the country, in terms of power generation, and the sixth-largest hydroelectric plant in terms of installed capacity.



Although it is not uncertain if Chinese companies would be able to clinch the first round this week, more mergers and acquisitions between China and Brazil are expected to occur as the two countries aim to deepen their cooperation, especially in the new energy sector.



Lin Chuxue, the executive vice president of CTG, told media in Beijing that Brazil is currently relying on hydropower as its largest power source, which accounts for more than 80 percent of the total energy, aside from its rich wind power resource.



Lin added that wind power development in Brazil's northeast and southern regions have also attracted local and foreign investors.



"We will consider other possibilities of wind and solar power projects if the right time comes," Lin said.



According to Liu Zhenya, former chairman of the Beijing-based State Grid, foreign takeovers of companies in South America have been prevalent because the foreign assets generate higher returns with double-digit growth every year.



Since Brazil has the largest electricity market in South America, it provides investors with an open competition environment, Liu Ximei, an assistant professor at North China Electric Power University, noted.



"Currently, the US is a major foreign investor in the Latin American country, but China has competitive edges in terms of financing capability and project management," the professor said. "Chinese companies should work together in Brazil and form a united alliance, especially in the aspects of electricity development, infrastructure construction and heavy equipment manufacturing."


Ancient Lhasa Metamorphoses Into Modern Metropolis (Photo : Getty Images)

From giving former presidential aides life prison terms to closing luxury clubs, Chinese President Xi Jinping continues his anti-corruption campaign to curb graft and wrong practices in government.



The Telegraph reported that a lot of luxury clubs in China were forced to close or downgrade as part of the presidents campaign. Local officials used to frequent these clubs which charge up to 200,000 yuan annual membership fee.



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In the last two years, over 30 private clubs in Hangzhou, an eastern city, were forced by local authorities to amend their business practices or reduce their prices. In southern China, four clubs were shuttered in Guangzhou and Shenzhen, while a fifth club was closed in nearby Zhuhai.



The clubs are on the scrutiny list of Xis campaign because it has been used by Chinese officials as venue to conduct their corrupt practices since they could be discreet in the members only establishments. The clubs are where a lot of bribes have traded hands, according to the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.



In Beijing, 24 expensive clubs were forced to shutter or curb their prices in 2014, reported Xinhua News Agency. The aim of the measures it to reduce extravagance of officials such as Zhou Shaoqiang, the head of a local state-run company. Zhao, member of a club in Zhuhai which charges 200,000 yuan membership fee annually, drank  together with his friends  12 bottles of imported wine at one visit and racked up 80,000 yuan bill.



On Tuesday, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection said it has returned to China one-third of its top 100 list of most wanted corruption suspects who had fled overseas. Beijing issued the list in 2014, and since then 33 of those on the list had been apprehended and repatriated back to China for trial, reported Reuters.






An unidentified flying object, or UFO, in its most general definition, is any apparent anomaly in the sky that is not identifiable as a known object or phenomenon. (Photo : Youtube/ UFO Channel)

Even though there are still more than three months to go before the year ends, 2016 has already become the year with most UFO sightings and alien theories. Now a new theory suggests that aliens could be behind a number of things happening on Earth, and not just restricted to the galaxy.



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The importance of revealing the truth about the UFOs is evident from the fact that even Hillary Clinton promised during her presidential election campaign that she would do everything to reveal facts about military UFO files. The military and even American space agency NASA have been long criticised to cover up facts about alien life and UFOs.



Upon being asked whether she thinks that Earth has already been visited by aliens so far, Clinton replied that we may have been, but nothing is confirmed. According to the Mirror, Ben Mezrich, author of the book on which "The Social Network" was based, believes that Clinton's statement may be true.



In an article written for the publication, Mezrich explained how belonging to a family of scientists, he did not believe in UFOs until 2015. However, his thoughts quickly changes when he met his inspiration behind the book, "The 37 Parallel," Chuck Zukowski.



Zukowski was fired when he was investigation about cattle mutilations in Colorado. Cattle mutilation has been one of the most bizarre and mysterious phenomenon taking place in the modern times that never fails to keep researchers around the world confused.



It is estimated that in the past 70 years, more than ten thousand cows and horses have been killed and mutilated in a similar way. A majority of such animals were found lying on their left side, with several missing organs, including eyes, tongue, lungs and heart. In fact, a majority of animals were also found to be completely drained of blood.



Several years have been spent on investigation and still no clues. Zukowski initially linked the cattle mutilation to UFOs, but speaking about it in public made him lose his job.



Zukowski went on to become a UFO enthusiast and Mezrich was immediately left awestruck by the amount of evidence that signify involvement of UFOs. But no mainstream efforts are ever made to study the evidence and dig deeper into them.



The emergence of RAF base videos and Roswell UFO sightings make everything clear, but everything is so well covered up all the time to hide the facts about the extraterrestrial life. In fact, UFOs were recently spotted attacking ISIS base camps in the Middle East, according to Daily Star.



Why military agencies and scientific organizations continue to cover up continues to remain a question. May be the files recovered from UFO crash sites contains data that people should not be aware of.



The following video talks about Top 10 Real UFO sightings:






Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Barack Obama have both agreed to ratify the Paris Agreement on controlling carbon emissions. (Photo : Twitter)

China and the United States have announced that they will both be ratifying the landmark Paris Agreement to control carbon emissions.



The two countries made the announcement during the G20 summit in Hangzhou, China, The Wall Street Journal reported. According to Brian Deese, a senior adviser to U.S. President Barack Obama, the move to ratify the agreement serves as the biggest turning point for both nations to come together to combat climate change.



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The ratification of the agreement, which was announced at the and of the Paris Climate Change Summit in December, has gone through significant hurdles. Negotiators from the U.S. tried to lobby for changes in the agreement's stipulations such that the individual emission targets would not be legally binding after 2020.



U.S. Republican legislators also wanted any international agreement with legally binding clauses and sanctions should first be approved by the Congress.



The UN eventually adopted a less binding mechanism that allowed signatory countries to issue their own targets but is required to regularly disclose their progress in meeting these. The organization said that pressure from other nations and global attention would serve to force compliance.



China said that it plans to peak emissions by 2030, though experts said that it is likely to meet the target before that.



To finally take effect, the agreement, which was signed by 170 countries, needs to be further ratified by at least 55 countries representing 55 percent of emissions. Being the world's two biggest producers of greenhouse gasses, China and the U.S. account for almost 40 percent of total global emissions, the BBC reported.



Aside from the ratification of the main agreement, China, and the U.S. also agreed to support a proposed deal to place international limitations on aircraft emissions. The greenhouse gases released by aircraft accounts for 2 percent of global emissions, with the U.S. owning to the largest share.



Obama himself expressed confidence that the U.S. and China's move to ratify the Paris Agreement will help push it further to achieve its goal of combating climate change. In an address delivered during the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's World Conservation Congress in Hawaii, he stressed that a vibrant world economy should not be in conflict with a healthy planet.


Chinese consumers were more excited for the iPhone 6 than the latest iPhone 7. (Photo : Getty Images)

The iPhone 7 release is drawing near and compared to the buzz prior the release of the iPhone 6, Chinese consumers are on a "wait and see" mode.



Observers say that posts in Sina Weibo, a Chinese microblogging site, were 15 times more than the posts for the iPhone 7.



Apple is facing challenges in the Chinese market as consumers are now preferring cheaper locally made smartphones which offer similar specifications to the iPhone.



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Sales were down by $8.8 billion and the California-based manufacturer is only fifth in market ranking. According to IDC, Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, Oppo and Vivo together accounted for 47 percent.



Although some buyers remain excited. Wang Yue, a student from Beijing said, "I'm looking forward to the launch, but I won't rush to buy anything. I want to know what new functions it's got. My feeling is there are no real major changes from the 6S, so I think I'll hold off for a while."



Some consumers say that they will wait for the price of the iPhone 7 to drop and some said that they will just buy an older iPhone model.



Ben Cavender, Shanghai-based director at China Market Research Group, said that market seems to be "muted". He said, "The word among consumers is the updates are not going to be revolutionary, but smaller changes."



Last year, sales of the iPhone 6 soared to 71 percent. The slow decline in sales occurred afterwards, according to Strategy Analytics.



"Apple is struggling with consumer 'iPhone fatigue' in China, while competition from Huawei, Oppo and others remains fierce," said Strategy Analytics analyst Neil Mawston.



Another observer thinks that since it's been only a year since the launch of iPhone 6, consumers are waiting to see iPhone 8.



"Because it's just one year, lots of people are choosing to wait for the iPhone 8. The changes with the 8 will be much bigger, which I think will be a drag on sales of the new phone this year, said Wang Bo, a finance worker at a securities firm in Shanghai.


Women and children would be amongst the worse impacted by a downgrade of Portlaoise hospital, and doctors believe that centralisation will not work.

As a result of national controversy there has been a huge ongoing overhaul in maternity services. A downgrade will reverse this.

In all, 1,606 babies were delivered at the unit last year. There is no capacity in the region or in units in Dublin to absorb these numbers in the event of a downgrade, said the report in relation to the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.

The doctors say Portlaoise hospital women's services is participating in Ireland's first managed clinical network with the Coombe hospital under the guidance of regional hospital management.

This has led to increased staff and more services.

The first managed clinical network offers an alternative to centralisation of services.

We recommend that this clinical network continues to be pursued. We recommend that this be extended to other clinical departments, says the plan from the doctors.

Paediatrics in Portlaoise probably has the widest remit as it takes children from Laois, Offaly, Tipperary, Kildare and Carlow.

It is closely linked to maternity.

The implications of downgrading Portlaoise hospital to a model 2 hospital will mean that safe acute paediatric services can no longer be provided or sustained. As a consequence there will be no maternity service, they stated.

The doctors recommend that formal links with the National Paediatric Hospital Group continue to develop to allow shared care of sick children with complex medical problems, and to enable more of that care to be delivered locally.

Doctors at the unit expect the appointment of consultants as part of the managed care network with the Coombe hospital in Dublin will strenghten and extend the level of care that could be delivered at Portlaoise hospital.

The doctors recommend that a paediatric emergency department be co-located with the adult A&E.

At present many children are admitted through the paediatric department.

They also want a paediatric assessment unit to manage children who require a short hospital stay.
This time next week, many of us will be heading down to Conference in Brighton. I wont be as I have the particular joy of the 6:25 am flight from Edinburgh to look forward to on Saturday morning.

Here are some top tips for pre-conference preparation which will help you get the best out of the event. Once you are in the fast moving frenzy of our four days in Brighton, its difficult to find the space to take stock and plan. Putting the time in now to work out what you want to do will pay dividends.

So, here are a few things you can do this weekend to make sure you are properly prepared. In no particular order

Get your ticket for the Lib Dem Disco

Cambridge Lib Dems have captured the Saturday evening conference market with their annual disco. It is hilarious, with guest DJs competing against each other. Last year Jo Swinson triumphed in spectacular style. Buzzfeed were there to report it all and take video, so dont be under any misapprehension that what happens at Lib Dem Disco stays at Lib Dem Disco.

I came second to Alistair Carmichael in the DJ competition 2 years ago. I went slightly off-message with the Disco theme as we were in Scotland. I thought it might be a really good idea to get lots of people who may have had the odd wee drink doing the Gay Gordons at 11 oclock at night. When I suggested this to the organisers, they replied: Your proposal for carnage is appealing.

In the end it was pretty civilised and, thanks to Paul Walter, there is video.

I did actually play some proper disco stuff as well, just so you know.

Anyway, its back this year and you really dont want to miss out on a ticket. And you certainly dont want to have to queue on the night. Some people who did missed Paddy last year. So, buy your ticket here, now. I mean right now, this minute. You might forget and you would never forgive yourself if you couldnt get in.

Jo has some serious competition as she attempts to keep hold of her crown. Wales education secretary Kirsty Williams loves her music and knows how to party. The brilliant Abi Bell from Hull and Simon Hughes complete the line up.

Read the papers

The last thing you want to do is find yourself in a Conference debate wondering what on earth they are talking about, what the motion says and where you can find it. It can all get very confusing. So, get yourself ahead of the curve by reading the agenda. Find out what the motions say. Work out which debates you might want to speak in.

The words Governance Review do not make for the most exciting phrase in the English language but they are important. Key decisions will be made at the Conference about how the party is run. You need to make sure that you understand where the power is going to lie and whether enough of it is being left in members hands. There is a helpful explanatory booklet that sets out the changes Conference is being asked to make and the rationale behind them.

All the conference papers are available here.

Write your speeches

With the best will in the world, even with wifi for doing research available in the Brighton Centre, its best to get it all done up front. If you have even the bare bones of your speech written, or some key facts about the topic, it will be much less stressful in the long run.

You can always update it with any flashes of inspiration you get from discussions at Conference.

If you are a wee bit nervous about the idea of speaking, it might be a good idea to ask a question at a fringe meeting, or go along to the one of the consultation sessions, on nuclear weapons or sex work and contribute to that in a less formal environment.

Check out the online training guide

There is a huge array of training available at Conference. Some of it starts very early in the morning. The party has made this online training guide to help you plan whats best for you.

Theres some really good stuff on diversity for local party officers with the aim of ensuring more diversity in local parties and at party events. Theres every angle of campaigning you could probably wish for. You could go to Conference and just spend all your time in the excellent training on offer.

Sort out your Conference Diary

At the time of writing, the Conference App isnt available yet. Its a great tool for organising your Conference life as it easily lets you schedule things from the agenda. You will be able to get it from the App store at some point next week. However, its worth sitting down with the agenda, directory and training guide over the weekend and working out where the inevitable clashes are and what choices you are going to have to make.

Of course this doesnt mean you have to stick fervently to it. If you get a better offer, spontaneity is a great thing. Its just that having a basic framework there makes life so much easier.

Its also worth making arrangements to see any friends you know are going to be there. Ive got to the last day of Conference before and realised that Ive not caught up with even some of my best friends.

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings
The European Parliament has appointed its lead negotiator for the Brexit discussions. And its someone well known to Liberal Democrats. He announced it on his Twitter this afternoon:

Honour to be appointed as lead #Brexit negotiator for @Europarl_EN, which will play central role Art 50 deal + any future EU-UK agreements.  Guy Verhofstadt (@GuyVerhofstadt) September 8, 2016

The BBC has this to say about his appointment:

An EU official close to Mr Verhofstadt said the former Belgian leader will be in the room, as he was in December when he was renegotiating the terms of British [EU] membership with [ex-UK PM] David Cameron.

Hell report back to the political group leaders in parliament and feed the parliaments position into the negotiations. Hell be in the room with the [European] Council and [European] Commission, he told the BBC.

The Council  representing the other 27 EU governments  and the Commission, which enforces EU treaties, share power with the parliament. But the Council and Commission are expected to have the most muscle in the Brexit talks.

Alyn Smith MEP of the Scottish National Party (SNP) welcomed Mr Verhofstadts new role. The Leave vote was 52% overall, but in Scotland 62% voted Remain  and Mr Verhofstadt believes Scotland has a right to stay in the EU.

Over the years, the British tabloid press has been less than polite about various EU figures. Thats part of the reason were in this mess in the first place. Remember back in the day when the Sun told us that we should face France and shout Up yours, Delors.

Guy is no doubt going to get the same sort of lamentable treatment. He is well able to cope with it, however. Watch him here in the European Parliament way back in 2012 tearing a strip off Nigel Farage.

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings
Theres a lot of talk of the return of grammar schools in England.

In Wales, however, there is no chance of any expansion. Liberal Democrat Education Secretary Kirsty Williams had this to say on the matter:

Wales Education Secretary Kirsty Williams ruled out a return to grammars in Wales and said: It seems that some terrible ideas just wont go away. The Tories in England and Wales seem determined to bang this tired old drum. For them, this is all about dogma and doctrine, rather than looking at what actually works for our young people. The facts show that grammar schools do nothing to improve social mobility. The Sutton Trust found that less than 3% of grammar school pupils were on free school lunches, compared with 20% across the country.  The Welsh Liberal Democrats believe in opportunity for all, which is why under no circumstances will Wales be seeing an expansion of grammar schools. As Education Secretary, I will be guided by evidence so that we have a schools system that is modern, innovative and rooted in optimism about the potential of all our children.

Yesterday, Kirsty made her first major speech as Education Secretary on Higher Education. She said she was setting up a group to look at the implications of Brexit for higher education in Wales. She also called on universities to do more to close the gap between campus and community.

She warned: At a UK-level, the pro-EU campaign of universities was too easily dismissed as one of self-interest, almost exclusively focused on income.

This is not to exempt politicians and government from criticism, far from it. But it is certainly incumbent on universities to reflect on the distance between campus and community exposed by the referendum.

Ms Williams has also announced she is establishing a Welsh Higher Education Brexit Working Group, to advise on the impact and possibilities arising from the UKs departure from the European Union.

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings
A COUNTY Limerick agricultural contractor had a very narrow escape when the harvester he was driving suddenly burst into flames.

The freak incident occurred last week in a field adjacent to the R519 Balingarry Road out of Adare.

As the destroyed harvester is next to the road a passing motorist saw it, stopped, took a photo and send it into the Limerick Leader.

I couldnt believe what I was seeing. It looks like something you would see in a Hollywood action movie. It is burnt to a crisp. Im not sure how it happened, he said.

The Leader contacted then the contractor, who didnt wish to be named.

I was harvesting whole crop wheat last Saturday week. Smoke started coming from the back of the machine. It went up very quick.

I tried to stop it but it got out of control. Anything can go up on fire, he said.

It is understood that the value of the self-propelled harvester is estimated to be around the quarter of a million euros mark. The fire brigade was called and a unit was on the scene within minutes to quench the blaze.

It is believed that there were a number of blasts when the cab, tyres and diesel tank exploded. Smoke billowing from the fire could be seen for miles around and the heat was supposed to be ferocious. The hot day and warm breeze fanned the flames.

And while the loss of a harvester has caused the contractor a considerable amount of hardship at a busy time of year it could have been a much more serious incident and, thankfully, no one was hurt in the rare occurrence.
SEVERAL properties which initially lay outside the preferred route for the new Limerick to Foynes road will now be affected, it has emerged this week.

This follows the publication of the latest design update, which identifies the 100-metre wide route along which the road will run. However, in a number of locations, this route falls outside the 300-metre corridor initially chosen for the route.

Local councillor Stephen Keary has warned that, as a result, at least two houses will have to be demolished and a dairy farm near Rathkeale will be destroyed. They have destroyed his livelihood and his capacity to make a living from his farm, he said of the landowner.

People are totally shocked because where they werent affected heretofore, now they are, said Cllr Keary.

What this has done is it has disenfranchised a lot of people who did not have an opportunity to make a submission on the first route selection because they werent included in the corridor.

His other concern is that the updated design includes provision for junctions at Ballyclogh, Rathkeale and Adare, but none at Croagh.

Its the final nail in the coffin now for Croagh if they dont get proper connectivity, said Cllr Keary.

Some of his concerns were echoed by Cllr Emmett OBrien who, while welcoming the publication of the 100m route, also expressed disappointment that no provision was made for Croagh.

It obviously has reduced the effect on a number of landowners and householders, said Mr OBrien of the latest plan.

The major concern I have is that the now 100m route at Ballyclogh junction has been moved to the south west which is off the [original] 300m corridor so there are now people affected who would not have been affected to date. I am calling on Transport Infrastructure Ireland to immediately contact these owners, he said.

One farmer in the Croagh area whose property is set to be divided diagonally by the proposed route said the road designers had taken the completely wrong option.

This is the best land in the country. We are the last in and the first out every year with our dairy cows here. They have gone through the best of ground. It is criminal what they are doing, he said.

In addition to pinpointing the likely location of junctions along the route, the Mid-West Road Design Office identified three locations where the new route falls outside the original 300m corridor. These are in the townlands of Ballyclogh, Ballycullen, Lismakeery and Ballynacaheragh where the corridor will move by up to 400m to minimise the impact on Ballycullen House demesne; Graigeen and Ballingarrane where it will vary by 150m; and through Amogan Beg, Clogh East and Ballycannon where it will be up to 200m outside the original corridor.

The design is available to view on www.foyneslimerick.ie
A LEADING local GP has condemned the city and countys chronic shortage of community doctors, with new statistics showing that Limerick GP numbers are below international best practice.

And Adare woman, Dr Yvonne Williams, who is the National Association of GPs vice-president, said the shortages in towns and villages across Limerick has reached crisis point.

It really has reached crisis point, even from a patients point of view. Because there are patient safety issues here. Because if a doctor cannot take a day off when they are sick, or cannot take a day off when they are exhausted from working a 70-80 hour a week, they get burnt out. You are more likely to make mistakes when youre tired and when youre overworked.

In a recent Medical Council of Ireland report, it states that there are 61 GPs per 100,000 people in Limerick. According to the NAGP, for a region to meet international standards, there must be 80 full-time GPs per 100,000.

Dr Williams said that GPs struggle to secure annual leave, sick leave and time off for a family bereavement. This is because, she said, there is a lack of incentives for young GPs to enter the workplace; a large number of GPs are retiring without replacements; and the lack of locum doctors.

Traditionally, we would have been well-trained to recognise those warning signs and to realise when we need a break. But, now, when we recognise that we need a break, we simply cant take a break, she added.

She explained that she was personally affected while she was pregnant.

I had someone who had agreed to provide maternity cover for me, five months before my due date. And three months before my due date, they decided to emigrate because of the lack of a new contract and the instability in terms of working conditions. I struggled for those three months because I didnt think I was going to find a week off. It was very stressful for me and for my husband.

On a personal level, I stayed awake late at night. I think I cried, every night, going to myself: Why did I decide to have another baby? Why would you have a baby if you cant spend two weeks at home with them? It was awful. It was very stressful, she explained.

Frantic she went all out to get someone.

 I was lucky, in the end, I rang every GP scheme in the country and texted everybody I knew, and I eventually got a combination of different GPs who could cover the few months for me. But, really, what should have been an enjoyable pregnancy was actually a very, very stressful time, she said.

.She said finding a new GP in Limerick city can be as difficult as sourcing one for the Aran Islands. The NAGP is due to meet with Minister for Health, Simon Harris in late October, which Dr Williams welcomed.

Clinical lecturer at UL and NAGP president, Dr Emmet Kerin is also well aware of the shortages and said that the figures are misleading and worse than they appear because that the 61-figure covers part-time, retired and registered non-practising GPs in Limerick.
Isabelle Dinoire poses for a portrait on Nov. 21, 2006, in Amiens, France. The portrait was taken one year after the surgical operation in which she received the world's first partial face transplant. (Photo : Getty Images/ CHU Amiens )

In a statement released by Amiens Hospital, which carried out the ground-breaking procedure in November 2015, said Dinoire died on April 22, 2016 as a result of a long illness, but the announcement was delayed out of respect for her family. Amiens University Hospital which is located in northern France explained the delay in a statement released on Tuesday, Sept. 6.



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The statement read, "In accordance with the will of the relatives, there was no obituary published in the press in order to protect their legitimate privacy at that painful time."



According to Associated Press, Amiens hospital did not provide any other information on the cause of Dinoire's death. Hence, it is unclear whether her illness was related to her transplant. French media argued that she succumbed to complications from her most recent operation.



On Tuesday, a prominent French newspaper, Le Figaro reported and said that Dinoire suffered a rejection of the transplants last winter and lost part of the use of her lips. And according to the reports, the heavy anti-rejection treatments she had to take contributed to the occurrence of two cancers.



Surgeons carried out the operation when Dinoire was 38 years old, after her face was mauled by her pet dog while she was passed out from an overdose of sleeping pills, US Magazine reported. She underwent a 15-hour operation in 2005 in Amiens to replace her nose, lips and chin. French doctors Bernard Devauchelle and Jean-Michel Dubernard decided to use the body parts of a brain-dead woman and opted out of the more traditional reconstructive surgery route.



Dinoire was given the lower part of a face that was taken from a woman who had committed suicide.



According to the AP, she was warned about the risks ahead of time but the medication she later took so that her body would not reject her face often caused health issues.



Dr. Jean-Paul Meningaud, the head of reconstructive surgery at Henri Mondor Hospital, said that the results were very good in the medium term, but the long-term impact were not impressive.



The medical marvel resulted to a wave of controversy at the time, with many questioning the ethics of transplanting a face before attempting reconstructive surgery.



According to CNN, Dinoire declared a year after having the procedure that though it was someone else's face, when she looked in the mirror, she saw herself.



In the Amiens statement on Tuesday, the doctors said that facial transplants remain complex surgery with high risk adding that it is important to remember that face transplants are still in the evaluation stage. They ... cannot be considered a routine activity.



The surgery created way for other transplants involving varying combinations of facial parts performed in six other countries, among them, the United States.



Dinoire is survived by two teenage daughters.



Watch a video of Isabella Dinoire after the transplant here:






THE hugely popular and long-running Mid-West Press Ball was launched in The Strand Hotel on Wednesday and is expected to raise up to 15,000 for charities and local voluntary groups.

This years press ball will take place in The Strand Hotel on October 1 and will be in aid of the Childrens Ark, the Neonatal Unit in Dooradoyle and CARI (Children at Risk in Ireland)  all of which work with children in the Mid-West region.

Launching the event, Mayor of Limerick City and County Cllr Kieran OHanlon said: I have a particular fondness for local media as it provides such a public service, keeping people up to date with whats happening in their communities.

Tonight, we see a side to media that backs up my belief that stereotypes of journalists being indifferent, hard-nosed or insensitive are certainly wide of the mark when it comes to my experience in Limerick and the Mid-West.

He also said that the ball is a declaration that media very much care; to the extent that you are willing to put voluntary time into pulling together the Mid-West Press Ball, to raise money for local charities.

Chairman of the popular black-tie event Ron Kirwan also spoke of the great impact this event can have on local charities.

As we are a body of people working in all areas of the media industry throughout the Mid-West, we feel that the money we raise should primarily benefit the communities that we work and live in.

These three beneficiaries are three perfect examples of this and the work they do is extremely necessary and highly valued right through the Mid-West.

We also hope to be able to support other charity, community and voluntary groups with smaller sums of badly needed funding and hopefully the usual generous support of sponsors, business and all the people in the industry will allow us to do this, he said.

The press ball started in Limerick in 1951 and after fading out in the 1970s, it was revived in 1999 as a fundraising event and has raised over 100,000 for local charities since.

It has a huge appeal for members of the media, supporters and guests and is considered a highlight on the social calendar each year.

It will begin with a reception at 7.30pm on October 1 and following dinner, the Mid-West Media Merit Award will be presented. The contributions of a number of media people will also be acknowledged on the night.

Anyone wishing to support the Mid-West Press Ball as a sponsor or who wishes to buy tickets can contact Ron Kirwan on ronkirwan@gmail.com or 086 2265696 for information.
THIS weekend marks the 55th anniversary of the deadliest plane crash in Irish history, in which 83 passengers and crew were killed after crashing into the Shannon estuary.

The President Airlines Douglas DC-6 aircraft crashed into river Shannon during a stop-over on a journey from Dusseldorf to Chicago on September 10 1961 and there were no survivors.

One victim of the crash was 33-year-old Austrian father of three Ferdinand Berger, and his children will be travelling to Shannon this weekend for a special prayer service. His daughters Christa and Eva contacted me during the summer and asked if they can come to Shannon on that day to honour the memory of their father, said Fr Tom Ryan, parish proest om Sjammpm/

Were having a memorial service to pray for all who died on that fateful day 55 years ago.

Christa, Eva and their brother Ferdinand Jr were all under five years old when their father tragically died. Christa and Eva will be coming with their husbands and children but unfortunately Ferdinand Jr and his family wont be able to make it. The late Ferdinand was travelling to Chicago for business when the plane crashed.

Himself and his brother had set up an agricultural business in Austria and he was on his way to Chicago to expand his business, explained Fr Ryan.

While investigating the crash, Fr Ryan discovered the up to 300 people were killed in plane crashes in Shannon in a period of just under 30 years.

My investigations have led me to believe that in the period from 1947 up to 1976, there were an awful lot of air crashes in Shannon and 250-300 people died in different accidents, he said, adding that the crash of September 10 1961 was the biggest.

Parishioners are welcome to go to the memorial service in the Adoration Chapel, Skycourt at 10am on Saturday September 10 to show support to the family and to pray for all who have died in air tragedies over the years.
FORMER HMV staff in Limerick are unlikely to receive redundancy payments after the firm was placed into liquidation.

HMV closed its store at the Crescent Shopping Centre last month, after turnaround specialist Hilco took the decision to bring the shutters down on all of its Irish operations.

Twelve people had been employed at the store prior to its closure.

It is understood Hilco Capital has chosen to put HMV's Irish operation into liquidation, a move which means workers in Limerick will not receive redundancy payments as expected.

Anti-Austerity Alliance councillor Cian Prendiville has accused Hilco of engaging in "pure gangster capitalism", and claimed the company had reneged on a promise made to workers who lost their jobs.

"It now seems that was just a lie in order to avoid a sit in from the workers, like took place in 2013. Instead, last night, Larry Howard, the managing director of Hilco who made the promise in writing to the workers put the company into liquidation in order to avoid paying the workers what they were due," he said.

Cllr Prendiville said the lesson for other workers is they must be organised and take action.

He also called for changes in business law to ensure workers are entitled to redundancy even in the event of liquidation.

The Rubberbandits took to Twitter this Friday afternoon to say that "HMV staff were getting f****d over again"

And Fine Gael councillor Daniel Butler added on the social media site: "Disgraceful treatment once again for the HMV staff."

Robyn Long, who is a former worker at HMV in Limerick, took to Facebook claiming redundancy pay was due in staff accounts today - but staff learnt about the liquidation last night.

"This was a premeditated act, a calculated and despicable move to deny us our dues. We were promised at every opportunity, and in writing, that we would receive our redundancy in full on the September 9. Now, we will receive nothing from the company, she said.

Hilco has been contacted for comment.
LIMERICK city centre will be Miles Ahead of Irelands music itinerary this month, with the fifth annual Limerick Jazz Festival, showcasing some of the worlds most renowned performers.

From morning until Round Midnight, from Thursday, September 22 to Sunday, 25, US, UK and Latin jazziacs will head to the citys finest venues to share the seminal genre with the people of Limerick.

The festival will also mark the Limerick Jazz Societys 35 years, furthermore reaffirming it as the oldest, inclusive jazz organisation in the country.

Local drummer and jazz aficianado, John Daly said it is a special year for Limericks music scene.

It is 35 years running now, and the longer it goes on, the more special the society is. And it has all got to do with the top acts that we are bringing in.

There is very little jazz shown across the country, but what people should should remember is that jazz has been part of Limericks culture since, for as long as I can remember, the 1960s. For example, the Granary [Michael Street] used to be a great place for jazz. It was the perfect atmosphere for it and that is what made it successful. Dolans is now the new home for jazz, he said.

Indigenous acts include the Dublin City Jazz Orchestra and artist-in-residence, David ORourke, who will be joined by a band, featuring leading Irish jazz musicians and a jazz quartet, with Hugh Buckley, Tommy Halferty and Joe OCallaghan.

International artists this year include renowned vocalist Norma Winstone and the Partisans from the UK, plus Latin Jazz group Atchere from the Canary Islands.

Two, of many, free events include music for children at Ormston House and masterclasses by Mr ORourke at Music Generation and the Hunt Museum.

Limerick man and Riverdance composer, Bill Whelan welcomed the launch of this years jazz festival. He said that it has its roots in the vibrant local music scene. Once again this years programme features some great artists and will have a broad appeal to all music fans.

Limerick City and County Council arts and culture officer, Sheila Deegan said: Festivals are a great way of Limerick people coming together and celebrating, whatever the genre. Limerick Jazz Festival has been celebrating and programming quality acts since it started, and this year is no different!

Limerick Jazz Festival is promoted by the Limerick Jazz Society. It is supported by the Arts Council and Limerick City and County Council. Since 2007, the society has provided jazz education programmes through its Limerick Jazz Workshop, the only regular jazz workshop in Ireland outside of the capital.
May 2, 2021, 8 PM

Regency-Superiors Oct. 1 auction in St. Louis will include this die-cutting-omitted error pane of 20 of the 2001 34 Lucille Ball stamp.

Two unused 1870 90 Oliver Hazard Perry stamps will cross the Regency-Superior auction block Oct. 1 in St. Louis. The example shown, with full original gum, is estimated at $20,000.

By Charles Snee

Regency-Superior will conduct a public auction of stamps and postal history Saturday Oct. 1 at its St. Louis gallery.

Crossing the auction block at the sale, which begins at noon Eastern Time, will be an array of United States classics; British and worldwide singles; covers; and various U.S., British and worldwide collections.

A smattering of U.S. carriers, locals, and postmasters provisional stamps will open the sale.

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Among the more unusual items in this selection is a counterfeit block of four of the Providence, R.I., postmasters provisional. The bogus block is described as having no gum and is listed in the auction catalog with an estimate of $110.

Early classics, including the 1847 and 1851 issues, are well-represented, with stamps in a range of conditions to suit any budget.

A particularly attractive selection of large and small Banknote stamps of 1870-90 includes a handsome unused example of the 1870 90 large Banknote stamp picturing Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry (Scott 144).Two Philatelic Foundation certificates (dated 1973 and 2011) accompany the stamp.

Regency-Superior describes the stamp as having full, fresh original gum that has been lightly hinged.

The stamp carries an estimate of $20,000, against a 2016 Scott Specialized Catalogue of United States Stamps and Covers value of $25,000 for a sound unused example in very fine condition.

A second unused example of the 90 Perry stamp up for bids, with tighter margins, is estimated at $9,000.

Highlights of the early 20th-century issues for sale include three examples of the 1901 1 Pan-American with the steamship vignette inverted (Scott 294a).

If your album pages for the Washington-Franklin stamps still have a few holes that need filling, be sure to review the more than 200 lots of this popular and challenging series. Here you will find a number of tough-to-find issues, along with a handful of graded examples.

A standout among the graded Washington-Franklins is a 1909 $1 George Washington (Scott 342) with a 2014 gem 100 graded certificate from Professional Stamp Experts. Regency-Superior estimates this condition rarity at $3,750.

Modern U.S. issues include some scarce plate-number coil and booklet varieties, and a recalled 1994 Legends of the West pane still sealed in its blue-bordered U.S. Postal Service envelope, estimated at $150.

Collectors of modern U.S. errors will have a number of eye-catching items to choose among.

One such error is a complete die-cutting-omitted error pane of 20 of the 2001 34 Lucille Ball stamp in the long-running Legends of Hollywood series.

A die-cutting-omitted pair of the Lucille Ball stamp (Scott 3523a) is valued at $800 in the Scott U.S. Specialized catalog. This value is italicized, meaning that the Scott editors had limited market data to establish a value for the error.

Regency-Superior estimates the imperforate Lucille Ball pane at $6,000  $2,000 below the combined Scott catalog value of $8,000 for 10 imperforate pairs.

Desirable postal history to be sold includes an impressive 1875 cover with a three-color franking of large Banknote stamps that was sent from New York to Buenos Aires, Argentina. Regency-Superior lists this very fine and attractive cover with an estimate of $1,500.

A remarkable opportunity for collectors of specimen items presents itself near the end of the auction, in the form of more than 50 lots of postal stationery from the Universal Postal Union archives of Portugal. Estimates for these unusual artifacts range from $200 to $900.

The Oct. 1 Regency-Superior auction in St. Louis is online with complete lot descriptions, estimates, color images, and opening bids.

Each lot is subject to a 20 percent buyers premium that is added to the hammer price.

For additional information, contact Regency-Superior at 800-782-0066; or write to Regency-Superior, 229 N. Euclid Ave., St. Louis, MO 63108.
Customers walk outside a KFC restaurant in Shanghai. KFC is under the Yum! Brands Inc. (Photo : Getty Images)

Yum! Brands Inc's partnership with Alibaba's Ant Financial has put pressure on McDonald's Corp, which is in the verge of selling its business in China as both companies have realized that getting a Chinese business partner and franchising are the keys to growth in the country's fast food market, China Daily reported.



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For both companies, the strategy will also help them stay on top of the fast food market, capitalize on growth in smaller cities and enhance their reputation.



Although Yum, which also manages Pizza Hut, has 7,200 outlets in the country, its market share dropped to 23.9 percent last year, from nearly 40 percent in 2012. McDonald's, on the other hand, has about 2,200 outlets nationwide but its share fell from 16.5 percent in 2013 to 13.8 percent, according to data from Euromonitor International.



According to the report, Yum has increased its online relevance faster than McDonald's when it sold shares of its business to private-equity firm Primavera Capital and Alibaba's Ant Financial, the country's leading payments platform with stake food-delivery website Eleme. This connection is seen to help Yum attract customers who want to order and pay for food via their mobile phones.



Yum will also gain the advantage of taking one of the country's top dealmaker through Primavera, with Fred Hu, a former chairman of Goldman Sachs in China, who will now serve as chairman of Yum China, which will become a separate company next month.



Although Ant and Primavera will buy only 6 percent minority share in Yum China, it is still seen as a step forward and a better move than McDonald's, which is having difficulty seeking a buyer for its business.



On the contrary, McDonald's does not intend to get its China operations listed in the country, as most of its restaurants in the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong and South Korea are directly owned by the company. However, it said in March that it wants local ownership for 95 percent of its restaurants in Asia.



The report however, said that McDonald's may find it difficult to hand over control to local owners since it may risk its reputation which has been marred by a food safety scare in 2014. It was reported in May that the company has implemented a strict deal condition which include a three-year ban on changes in senior management.



The said factors may deter potential bidders, which include only a few and has none of the capabilities that Ant has. Some of the bidders include China Cinda Asset Management, a bad-loan manager, and dairy producer Beijing Sanyuan Foods.



Sanyuan's largest shareholder is state-owned Beijing Capital Agribusiness Group, which manages some of McDonald's restaurants in Beijing. Chinese State conglomerate Citic Group, which has only a modest retail presence, is also in the roster of bidders.



But despite that, McDonald's is far from leaving its business in China as it is still the second-most-popular fast food brand, according to Euromonitor.


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US President Barack Obama has a Parasitic Flatworm Named after Him

Baracktrema obamai from black marsh turtle and (right) Dr. Thomas Platt who named this flatworm after Pres. Obama. (Photo : Dr. Thomas Platt)

The Republicans are going to love this. A team of American parasitologists that discovered a new species of parasitic flatworm infecting turtles has named this parasite in honor of U.S. President Barack Obama.



Naming the new flatworm found in turtles in Malaysia "Baracktrema obamai" apparently has no political undertones and the scientists apparently aren't rabidly anti-Obama.



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Dr. Thomas R. Platt, an authority on turtle parasites who initially discovered and collected the new species, said he was inspired to name his discovery after Obama when genealogy research traced his and the president's families back to a common ancestor.



"I have named a number of species after people I admire, from my father-in-law, my Ph.D. advisor, and good friends who are academics and/or amateur naturalists," Platt said.



"Baracktrema obamai will endure as long as there are systematists studying these remarkable organisms."



Naming a species after an individual is not uncommon and is typically viewed as an honor.



Baracktrema obamai was the last organism new to science Dr. Platt found before he retired from Saint Mary's College in Indiana.



Platt and his co-authors, Jackson Roberts, Dr. Raphael Orelis-Ribeiro, and Dr. Ash Bullard, of Auburn University in Alabama, based their new finding on specimens taken from two turtle hosts.



They analyzed the evolutionary history of the worm and its relationship to other turtle parasites, including the closely related Unicaecum, using a combination of genetic and morphological information.



Their results affirmed the newly discovered worm should belong in its own genus, a means of further separating the new species from all previously discovered organisms. The final conclusion: Baracktrema and Unicaecum share a recent common ancestor.



The team of American parasitologists said Baracktrema obamai is so unusual and distinctive they've named a new genus to include the new species. This is the first time such an action has been taken for this group of turtle parasites in 21 years.



Details about the proposed new genus and species, Baracktrema obamai, are presented in an article in the current issue of The Journal of Parasitology.



These turtle parasites are distant relatives and likely ancestors of the parasitic flatworms that cause the human disease schistosomiasis that debilitates millions of people in developing countries annually.



Researchers said studying the evolutionary history of this group of worms could broaden our understanding of the origins and evolution of schistosomiasis and help point the way to helpful new approaches for studying how the disease causes harm.



Another aspect of the study, which was funded by the National Science Foundation, emphasized that freshwater turtles worldwide are increasingly vulnerable to poaching and habitat loss. Many species are threatened or endangered.



Although many people understandably view parasites negatively, Dr. Platt said those who study the organisms see them as beautiful and resilient.



They "face incredible obstacles to complete their journey (life cycle) and must contend with the immune system of the host in order to mature and reproduce," he said.


Chengdu J-20 stealth fighter. (Photo : PLAAF)

China is apparently using prototypes of its non-operational and unarmed Chengdu J-20 stealth fighter in "show the flag" operations to scare its strategic foes.



Chinese media last week reported the J-20 "Mighty Dragon" taking to the air above the Tibetan Autonomous Region where China shares an unclear and potentially dangerous border with India. Now, Chinese media claims the J-20 might soon patrol the skies above the South China Sea to intimidate Japan, the United States and their Asian allies.



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China has eight prototypes of the J-20 that are currently being tested. If all goes well, this stealth fighter should see service in 2018. Low rate initial production of the J-20 has commenced, however.



Revealing the J-20 flights in Tibet followed a warning by China's Ministry of Defense that India not deploy its supersonic BrahMos supersonic cruise missile, the fastest in the world and against which China has no effective defense, at Arunchal Pradesh state.



In early August, India announced the deployment to Arunachal Pradesh of an Indian Army BrahMos regiment operating the latest Block III version of this potent supersonic cruise missile. China claims ownership of Arunchal Pradesh state.



This military move was in response to a huge build-up of Chinese military forces all along the 4,057 kilometer Line of Actual Control (LAC) dividing China and India. Arunachal Pradesh is the most northerly state along the LAC and one of the most threatened by China.



To be deployed to Arunachal Pradesh will be the 864 Regiment of the Indian Army's 41st Artillery Division. The regiment will operate from four to six BrahMos batteries, and three to four Mobile Autonomous Launchers (MALs). The regiment will command up to 100 BrahMos Block III cruise missiles, each armed with a 290 kg warhead.



The fire-and-forget BrahMos Block III, the newest model of this feared weapon, possesses unique trajectory maneuver and steep-dive capabilities that allow it to hit targets hidden on the reverse slopes of mountains. It can steep dive up to 75 degrees.



Some observers said the J-20 was in Tibet for high-altitude testing. Chinese military analysts claim the People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) does test defense technology in high altitude conditions to ensure they operate properly.



Media speculation claims the PLAAF intends to use one or two of the prototype J-20 for patrols over the South China Sea where they might encounter U.S. Marine F-35B stealth fighters now stationed in Japan. Unlike the J-20, the Marine F-35s are combat ready and armed.



Any armed encounter with the F-35s will turn out badly for the J-20 because of the latter's underpowered engines and inferior electronics. The J-20 is also less stealthy than the F-35.


An attendee holds the Apple Inc. AirPod wireless headphones next to the iPhone 7 Plus during an event in San Francisco, California, U.S., on Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2016. (Photo : Getty Images/David Paul Morris)

Apple and Samsung dominate the smartphone market when it comes to giving flagship phones with a combination of potent hardware, functional software, and unique features. The Cupertino-based tech giant has released the iPhone 7, taking things a notch higher by incorporating an advanced processor and other features. Here is how Apple's flagship phone compares with the Samsung Galaxy S7:



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Features



The iPhone 7 comes with IP67 dust and waterproofing, which means it can withstand water submersion up to 3 feet for 30 minutes, according to PC Magazine. On the contrary, the Galaxy S7 has IP68 waterproof, which allows users to submerge the smartphone in 6 feet of water for 30 minutes. It is hard to differentiate the two phones for most users in real-world usage since both devices can survive spills, rain, and drops into toilets.



The iPhone 7 should survive water well as long as the user does not go swimming. For swimmers, it is advisable to use the Apple Watch Series 2, according to another report by the same publication.



Apple may have gotten rid of the headphone jack from the iPhone 7, but that does not imply that it is poor on sound. The smartphone now comes with dual stereo speakers, one on the back and the other on the front, which the manufacturer claims are two times louder than the iPhone 6s. The Galaxy S7 has one speaker on the bottom, which may not compare well with the iPhone 7 dual stereo speakers.



Processor and Battery



iPhone 7 is equipped with a 64-bit A10 Fusion chip, which is one of the most powerful new processors on the market. Apple claims that this chip is 50 percent faster than the A9, it has a better GPU, and gives users console-level gaming on the device.



The chipset should be able to match the 64-bit octa-core Snapdragon 820 SoC on the Galaxy S7. While the iPhone 7 is said to come with 2GB of RAM, the S7 pack 4GB of RAM.



Furthermore, the iPhone 7 has a battery boost, which allegedly can last two hours longer than the iPhone 6s with a wireless video playback time of up to 13 hours. Samsung Galaxy S7 battery can last nine hours when streaming full-screen video over LTE at maximum brightness.



Price and Availability



Customers will receive the iPhone 7 in jet-black, black, gold, rose gold and silver colors. The phone comes in three configurations: the 32GB for $649, 128GB for $749 and 256GB for $849. However, the jet-black and black variants only come in 128GB and 256GB configurations.



Pre-orders commence on Sept. 9 and shipping will start on Sept. 16. The iPhone 7 will be available on AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon, and directly from Apple.



Samsung Galaxy is already on the market and available in the United States for $672 or $699.99 unlocked on the four major carriers. While it only has a configuration of 32GB, it does support microSD cards, though with Android's adoptable storage disabled. As a result, the base configuration for the iPhone 7 is slightly more affordable.



The bottom line is that both the iPhone 7 and Galaxy S7 are excellent smartphones that share premium builds, potent hardware, and many great features. Here is footage for more information:






Minuteman launch. (Photo : USAF)

The United States test fired an LGM-30G Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile from California into the Pacific Ocean on Sept. 5, the same day North Korea fired missiles into the Sea of Japan and four days before North Korea conducted its largest nuclear test.



The unarmed Minuteman III launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California flew 6,800 kilometers to the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, said the U.S. Air Force. Eleven of the 97 islands are leased by the United States and are part of the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site.



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The Air Force said the missile's re-entry vehicle contained a telemetry package for operational testing. The Minuteman test was the first of its kind since February. The Air Force, however, conducted five test firings in January and February.



Col. Craig Ramsey, the 576th Flight Test Squadron commander, said the September launch took six months to complete and needed a reconfiguration of test assets.



The Minuteman test, which took place a few hours after the North Korean triple launch, also comes at a time when President Barack Obama has called for more deterrence measures against North Korea and its outrageous leadership, and reaffirmed U.S. commitment to the defense of its Asian allies.



If the test was a warning to North Korea not to escalate its missile and nuclear programs, it apparently failed in this purpose.



On Sept.9, North Korea detonated an underground nuclear warhead with a yield of 10 kilotons, the most powerful yet. It claims the warhead can be mounted on ballistic missiles and will allow it to produce "a variety of smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear warheads of higher strike power."



North Korea has conducted five nuclear tests, each more powerful than its predecessor.



"North Korea needs to know that provocations will only invite more pressure and further deepen its isolation," said U.S. President Barack Obama.



The current LGM-30G Minuteman III has a range in excess of 13,000 kilometers and a circular error probability of just 120 meters.



The Minuteman III, which entered service in 1970, carries a single warhead, either the W78 with a yield of 300 kilotons or the W87 with a yield of 475 kilotons. The U.S. has a stockpile of some 450 Minuteman IIIs.


A small outbreak of chicken pox was traced back to a single school bus in Michigan, and highlights the importance giving kids the chicken pox vaccine, according to a new report.

Health officials in rural Muskegon County, Michigan, were alerted to a suspected case of the chicken pox in an 8-year-old last December after the child was sent home from school, according to the report of the outbreak from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), published today (Sept. 8).

Shortly afterward, three more kids came down with the illness, the researchers wrote. The link among the cases appeared to be the school bus that all four children rode to and from school each day, according to the report. The kids didn't interact socially in school or have classes or lunch together, the researchers noted.

Chicken pox outbreaks are rare, because most children are now vaccinated against the virus. At the school in the report, 95 percent of the students were fully vaccinated, meaning they had received both doses of the vaccine, as recommended, the researchers said. Another 3 percent of students at the school had received one shot, the researchers noted.

No other cases of chicken pox were diagnosed in the school for the rest of the year, according to the report. [5 Dangerous Vaccination Myths]

The health officials investigating the outbreak revealed that the first child to get sick had not been vaccinated, and that the child's four siblings (also unvaccinated) had all also recently been kept home from school because of a rash that looked like chicken pox.

Among the three children who likely caught the virus on the school bus, one had been fully vaccinated, according to the report. Full vaccination is between 88 and 98 percent effective at preventing chicken pox, according to the CDC.

The other two children, who were siblings, had not been vaccinated, the investigators wrote. Those children later spread chicken pox to their 17-month-old sibling, according to the report.

Chicken pox is caused by the varicella zoster virus. The same virus also causes shingles in adults. In this case, a shingles infection turned out to be the source of the chicken pox infection: The first child's parent had a shingles infection several weeks before the children developed chicken pox, according to the report.

Before the chicken pox vaccine was developed, the virus spread easily from kid to kid, especially in schools. However, now that most kids are vaccinated against the virus, it may be increasingly likely that kids, particularly those who are unvaccinated, will get the virus from adults who have shingles, rather than from other kids, the researchers wrote.

The researchers mentioned only one previous report, which occurred in China, of chicken pox spreading on a school bus. Because school buses put kids in close proximity to each other, however, doctors and public health officials investigating similar outbreaks might want to consider these vehicles as a possible risk factor, the report said.

Originally published on Live Science.
The Feejee Mermaid (sometimes spelled Fiji Mermaid and FeJee Mermaid) was a hoax promoted by P.T. Barnum during the 1840s. It was the most famous of several fake mermaids exhibited during the 19thcentury. The Feejee Mermaid was exhibited in New York, Boston and London. Its whereabouts after 1859 are uncertain.

The Feejee Mermaid and other hoax mermaids had the upper bodies of apes sewn to fish tails, according to "The FeeJee Mermaid and Other Essays in Natural and Unnatural History (opens in new tab)" (Cornell, 1999), by Jan Bondeson. The Feejee Mermaid was probably made from an orangutan and a salmon.

Unlike images of mermaids in folklore and popular culture, such mermaids were unattractive, often described as hideous. In his autobiography, Barnum described the mermaid as "an ugly dried-up, black-looking diminutive specimen, about 3 feet long. Its mouth was open, its tail turned over, and its arms thrown up, giving it the appearance of having died in great agony."

The Feejee Mermaid was instrumental in Barnum's success as a master showman. Not only was it hugely popular, it is emblematic of Barnum's ingenious plots to generate interest in his curiosities. "Barnum concocted quite an elaborate scheme to expand the curiosity into 'mermaid fever,'" said Adrienne Saint-Pierre, curator of the Barnum Museum in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

Origins in Asia

According to Steven C. Levi, in "P.T. Barnum and the Feejee Mermaid," an article in the journal Western Folklore, the mermaid was likely created in the early 1800s by a Japanese fisherman. Levi suspected that the fisherman created the mermaid as a joke, while Alex Boese of the Museum of Hoaxes writes that such figures were used in religious practices in Japanese and East Indian villages.

Barnum's Feejee Mermaid was probably sold to a Dutch merchant during the 1810s. At that time, the Dutch were the only Westerners permitted to trade with Japan. After Commodore Matthew Perry opened trade between Japan and the rest of the Western world in 1853, many more fake mermaids appeared on the scene. Though these mermaids did not resemble the beautiful creatures described by Hans Christian Anderson, Shakespeare and others, the craftsmanship of the Asian mermaids was so fine that many Westerners were taken in anyway, according to Bondeson.

An illustration of P.T. Barnum's Feejee Mermaid. (Image credit: Public domain)

The mermaid goes to England

After being acquired by the Dutch, the mermaid went to England. The Dutch merchant ship sank but an American captain named Samuel Barrett Eades rescued the crew and the mermaid. According to Bondeson, Eades was so fascinated by the mermaid that be bought it from the Dutch in January 1822. He had to sell his ship to pay the $6,000 price.

Eades needed travel money, so he exhibited the mermaid in Cape Town. There, it was met with fanfare. A prominent English missionary wrote a much-circulated newspaper article that attested to the mermaid's validity.

In September 1822, Eades arrived in London with the mermaid. He set up a display at a coffeehouse with the mermaid under a thick glass dome. According to Bondeson, it was called the "Remarkable Stuffed Mermaid" and was the talk of the town throughout the fall. Every day, hundreds of people paid the 1-shilling price to see the mermaid.

Soon after arriving in London, Eades, who seems to have believed that the mermaid was real, invited two prominent naturalists to examine it. They proclaimed it fake, but Eades consulted other, less-knowledgeable naturalists, who said it was legitimate. This pleased Eades, who, in an act of great hubris, eventually claimed that one of the prominent naturalists, Sir Everard Home, had also stated that the mermaid was genuine. Home was furious and got several respected publications to announce that the mermaid was a fraud. This, Bondeson writes, was the beginning of the end for Eades' success with the mermaid.

The rush of articles denouncing the mermaid also implied that the public was gullible. Attendance at the mermaid exhibit fell off and in January 1823 the coffeehouse closed. Over the next few years, the mermaid toured England but it was not overly popular, as news of its fakery had circulated the country.

Meanwhile, it came to light that Eades had not been the only owner of the ship he sold to pay for the mermaid. The other part-owner brought legal action and the mermaid was ultimately declared a ward of the chancery (a ward of the court), which inspired several political cartoons. It nevertheless seems that Eades was able to keep exhibiting it, according to Bondeson.

Eades was ordered to pay back the co-owner of the ship. According to Boese, Eades sailed the seas for the next 20 years trying to pay off the debt but never succeeded. When he died, the mermaid went to his son. It was his sole inheritance.

Mermaid fever in New York

After its initial fame in England, the mermaid existed in relatively obscurity for nearly 20 years, according to Bondeson. Then in the early 1840s, Moses Kimball, proprietor of the Boston Museum, met with Eades' son and bought the mermaid. In 1842, Kimball traveled from Boston to New York to meet with his friend, P.T. Barnum, who had recently purchased a museum in the city. He suggested that they work together to exhibit the mermaid.

"Between the two of them they engineered quite a story preceding the public presentation of the Fejee Mermaid," Saint-Pierre told Live Science. "Barnum leased the mermaid from Kimball. The plan was cleverly crafted to incite, at first, just a little interest from the press, with made-up letters to the papers from people in distant states who claimed to have met a Dr. Griffin from London and had seen his amazing creatures, including the mermaid. Interest escalated when Griffin 'arrived' at a hotel in Philadelphia before his supposed return to London, and the press had to get a look."

But Dr. Griffin was not who he said he was. He was Levi Lyman, who, according to Steven C. Levi, had worked with Barnum on a hoax in 1835. But "Dr. Griffin" proved pivotal in the mermaid's success.

At the time, new animals from around the world really were being discovered, said Saint-Pierre. Dr. Griffin showed the public other unusual animals, like the platypus, which seemed to offer proof that he was a naturalist and that the mermaid was real.

Additionally, Dr. Griffin and Barnum appeared to have a public tiff, which aroused interest. Barnum wanted to exhibit the mermaid at his new American Museum, but Dr. Griffin refused. Barnum said he had already created publicity materials for the mermaid, and, supposedly unable to use them, gave them to the New York media to use. This made him look generous, but was really a devious way to promote the mermaid, said Saint-Pierre. It also angered the newspaper staffs, for each had been told they were the only outlet getting the publicity materials. Instead, on Sunday, July 17, 1842, identical advertisements for an exotic mermaid appeared in all the papers. Interestingly, the advertisements showed beautiful mermaids with the torsos of voluptuous human women  completely different than the Feejee Mermaid's appearance. But given the mermaid's success, the public didn't seem to mind.

Dr. Griffin's letters, the Philadelphia appearance and the advertisements had New Yorkers desperate to see the mermaid. Following his and Barnum's plan, Dr. Griffin agreed to exhibit it for a week at the New York Concert Hall. Crowds flooded the exhibit, where the fake naturalist gave lectures stating that all land-dwelling animals have counterparts in the ocean (sea horses, sea lions, etc.), so it only followed that sea-humans would exist, according to Boese.

After a week at the New York Concert Hall, Dr. Griffin "generously" agreed to let Barnum show the Mermaid at his American Museum. Attendance at the museum tripled.

"The idea of first showing the Fejee Mermaid at a venue other than the American Museum was a brilliant strategy because Barnum knew his reputation was tarnished, or 'suspect,' that people had not forgotten the Joice Heth hoax from a few years before," said Saint-Pierre. (The Joice Heth hoax involved claiming a woman was 161 years old when she was, in fact, in her 70s.)

"That had been his first real venture into showmanship, and one he looked back upon in later years with regret for how it was handled, Saint-Pierre continued. "But at the time, Barnum was smart to realize that if all he did was simply show the mermaid in his museum there would have been a lot of scoffing and doubt, and perhaps only a little interest."

Barnum exhibited the Feejee Mermaid in New York with great success for one month. After that, he decided to send it on a tour of the Southern United States. His uncle, Alanson Taylor, was to care for it.

Phineas Taylor "P.T." Barnum (Image credit: Public domain)

A controversial tour

Taylor lacked his nephew's showmanship and press navigation skills. In Charleston, Taylor found himself at the center of a feud between two local newspapers; one attested to the mermaid's genuineness, while the other adamantly claimed that the mermaid was a fraud and that the people of Charleston were idiotic to see it. Taylor was harassed publicly. The skeptics were led by the Rev. John Bachman, who threatened to destroy the mermaid.

The rental lease between Barnum and Kimball stipulated that Barnum would take upmost care of the mermaid, so this threat worried Barnum. Though he initially tried to use the controversy to generate press and keep the tour going, Barnum ultimately realized that Taylor was not up to the task. The mermaid was returned to New York.

Saint-Pierre noted that this episode illustrates an important aspect of Barnum's development as a showman. He was able to recognize when the mermaid had had her run in a town. "I think Barnum was realizing he had crossed the line perhaps a few too many times with the mermaid scheme. He speaks about regretting it when he was older, though he did show other mermaids during the years of the American Museum."

Additionally, Saint-Pierre said, the Charleston incident helped cement his friendship and business relationship with Kimball. When the mermaid was under threat, Barnum went out of his way to rescue it and adhere to the lease.

What happened to the Feejee Mermaid?

Upon its return from Charleston, the Feejee Mermaid was again displayed at Barnum's American Museum in New York. According to Boese, in 1859, Barnum took the mermaid on tour to London, where it again proved a popular attraction. When Barnum returned to the United States, the Feejee Mermaid took up residence at Kimball's museum in Boston. That is its last known location.

In the early 1800s, Kimball's museum burned down. It is unclear whether the Feejee Mermaid was destroyed in the fire or rescued. According to Bondeson, some sources report that it was retrieved from the debris. In 1897, Kimball's heirs donated a fake mermaid to Harvard University's Peabody Museum. It is still there today, but it is still unknown if it is the original Feejee Mermaid.

"The Peabody has no solid documentation that their mermaid was the one that Barnum rented from Moses Kimball," Saint-Pierre said. "Kimball did exhibit mermaids at later times, so it could be that the mermaid is a later one.  It could certainly be argued that its rather good condition indicates it was a later version, not as well travelled as the original Fejee Mermaid."

The mermaid at the Peabody also looks significantly different from the Feejee Mermaid described by and pictured in Barnum's autobiography. There, she is depicted mounted vertically, "with a large head and pendulous breasts," said Saint-Pierre. "The Peabody's mermaid is very different, being horizontal, like a fish, and with a small head and no breasts." The Barnum Museum has a replica of the Feejee Mermaid as depicted by Barnum, which was made for a TV documentary.

The Feejee Mermaid's legacy

Though hoax mermaids existed before the Feejee Mermaid, its success and the opening of Japan made them far more common in the curiosity landscape of the 1800s. According to Boese, the term "Feejee Mermaid" came to be something of a generic term for "hoax mermaid." Nevertheless, Barnum's original Feejee Mermaid was a bigger success and captured the public imagination in a way other hoax mermaids did not. It was and continues to be regularly referenced in popular culture.

Some of its power probably comes from the important role it played in the development of Barnum's career as "America's Greatest Showman." Saint-Pierre said, "A large measure of Barnum's success was due to his understanding of his audiences, discerning what they wanted and finding clever ways to promote what they wanted, and finding ways to get people to want what he had to offer them. The challenges that came about with the mermaid scheme undoubtedly set the stage for Barnum's later successes with Tom Thumb and Jenny Lind [and Jumbo the elephant], because he realized the immense value of promoting in advance, and that it had to be carefully choreographed, not done at random."

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To fight mosquitoes that may be carrying the Zika virus, officials in Miami-Dade County are now using aerial spraying, and this is stirring local controversy about the safety of the chemicals that are used in those sprays.

The debate is over a pesticide called naled, which has been registered for use by the Environmental Protection Agency since 1959. The insecticide has been banned in Europe since 2012, however, which has made some locals nervous.

The European Union classifies naled as harmful to aquatic life, dangerous if swallowed and harmful if it comes in contact with the skin. However, the effects of any chemical greatly depend on the amount that is used, said Keith Solomon, a professor emeritus at the University of Guelph in Canada, who researches environmental toxicology. [5 Things to Know About the Zika Virus]

"Obviously, people have to [apply it] properly," to the environment, Solomon told Live Science. "But as long as you put it on properly, there's not going to be an excess risk to humans."

Naled is part of a family of pesticides called organophosphates. It works by inhibiting enzymes found in animals called cholinesterases, particularly one called acetylcholinesterase, which is crucial to the transmission of nerve signals. Mosquitoes absorb the toxin through their skin, Solomon said, and die rapidly of paralysis and respiratory failure.

In high enough concentrations, Naled can cause nausea, dizziness, confusion and even convulsions and death in humans. But according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, these effects require exposure to naled at far higher levels than licensed professionals dispense during spraying. Aerial spraying of naled is done in ultralow volumes  approximately an ounce, or two tablespoons, are sprayed per acre of land. The pesticide also breaks down quickly in the environment. A 1996 study in the Journal of the American Mosquito Control Association found that naled sprayed on filter paper and placed in sunlight outdoors had a half-life of just over an hour, meaning that half the substance degraded in that time period.

In a 2008 study of naled spraying that was also published in the Journal of the American Mosquito Control Association, researchers asked 205 people to provide urine samples before and after an ultralow-volume naled spray in their area of Florida. The researchers found that the participants were actually less likely to have components of naled in their urine after the spray, suggesting two things: One, that aerial spraying of naled doesn't result in elevated levels of the chemical in the human body, and two, that some of the participants had probably been exposed to naled before the study started, perhaps from pest control chemicals used in their homes or workplaces.

Humans have a much lower ratio of body surface area to body volume than insects, and human skin is less prone to absorb naled than insects' outer coverings, Solomon said. In comparison, he said, "The risks of Zika, at least in pregnant women, are pretty serious."

The virus attacks the nervous system of a developing fetus and can cause severe birth defects, according to the CDC. The most visible is microcephaly, a condition in which the infant's brain and skull are abnormally small, leading to severe developmental disabilities.

Researchers recently reported in the journal Radiology that some babies born to Zika-infected mothers may also have less obvious brain defects, including enlargement of the fluid-filled ventricles in the brain and abnormalities in the corpus callosum, the nerve bundle that connects the two sides of the brain. [Top 5 Ways to Reduce Toxins in Homes]

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, naled is used regularly across about 16 million acres in the United States and has also been used in targeted anti-mosquito efforts after hurricanes in Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. Miami-Dade county is currently conducting aerial sprays in Miami Beach in the early-morning hours. Officials are also using trucks to spray a larvae-killing bacterium called BTI.

Europe's stricter regulatory climate shouldn't be taken as evidence that naled is unsafe, Solomon said. The European Union operates according to the precautionary principle, meaning that "where scientific data do not permit a complete evaluation of the risk, recourse to this principle may, for example, be used to stop distribution" of a product that is thought to be dangerous. In the United States, actual harm must be demonstrated to get a product off the market. Europe also bans aerial spraying altogether, Solomon said.

Original article on Live Science.
Don Lincoln is a senior scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermilab, America's largest Large Hadron Collider research institution. He also writes about science for the public, including his recent "The Large Hadron Collider: The Extraordinary Story of the Higgs Boson and Other Things That Will Blow Your Mind (opens in new tab)" (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014). You can follow him onFacebook. Lincoln contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

They say that love makes the world go around and that may well be true. But when you look at things on a much larger scale  say the size of galaxies  love just isn't enough. And, for that matter, neither are the stars of the galaxies themselves. In fact, what makes galaxies go around is a kind of matter that has never been directly observed. That undiscovered "stuff" is called dark matter, and an amazing new measurement was recently announced that is causing the scientific world to rethink long-held thoughts.

The most recent contribution to our knowledge of dark matter was made by the Large Underground Xenon (LUX) collaboration. LUX is a vessel consisting of a third of a ton of liquid xenon and it is the most powerful dark-matter detector ever constructed. Located at the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF), this dark-matter laboratory sits nearly a mile under the Black Hills, near Lead, South Dakota. It is designed to occasionally detect the vaporous wind of dark matter that is thought to waft through the solar system. [6 Cool Underground Science Labs]

And the thing is, it didn't detect anything. That non-discovery is what's causing physicists to rethink how they think about dark matter.

Holding up galaxies

Dark matter is an answer to a nearly century-old problem. In the early 1930s, shortly after astronomers realized that the universe consisted of countless galaxies, scientists turned their attention to understanding the dynamics of how stars orbited within the galaxies  essentially, how galaxies rotate. Dutch astronomer Jan Oort applied Newton's laws of motion and gravity to the observed matter in our own Milky Way and found that our galaxy rotated faster than he had calculated. It appeared that the Milky Way had twice the mass that astronomers had estimated. Of course, this was in an era in which precise galactic astronomy was coming into existence and a disagreement between calculation and measurement of only a factor of two was considered excellent agreement.

A violent collision of galaxy clusters formed the Abell 520 galaxy cluster. False-color maps superimposed on the image reveal the highest concentration of mass in the cluster (blue), which scientists say is dominated by dark matter. (Image credit: ASA, ESA, CFHT, CXO, M.J. Jee (University of California, Davis), and A. Mahdavi (San Francisco State University))

However, shortly after Oort's measurement, Bulgarian-Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky was studying the Coma Cluster, a large group of more than a thousand galaxies that were bound together by their mutual gravity in an enormous structure. When he measured the velocity of the galaxies, he found that they, too, were moving far too fast for gravity's gentle tug to hold them together. By all rights, the cluster should have torn itself apart. But it didn't. He calculated that the cluster held 400 times more matter than could be seen by ordinary telescopes. Modern measurements have reduced that number, but the discrepancy still is thought to be a factor of 100. Zwicky proposed that there was a type of unseen matter holding together the cluster that he called "dunkle Materie," or dark matter. [TED-Ex Talk: How Does Dark Matter Explain a Star's Speed?]

In the 1970s, astronomer Vera Rubin was trying to find a noncontroversial topic to study when she turned her attention to the rotation curves of galaxies. This is a measure of the orbital speed of stars in galaxies as a function of their distance from the center. She found that the measurements agreed with predictions very well at the center of the galaxy and even approaching the periphery. But, in the very outskirts of the galaxy, stars were orbiting far faster than could be accommodated by the known laws of physics and the observed matter. It looked like Zwicky's dark matter might be showing up in the interiors of galaxies as well. (Clearly, Rubin failed epically in her attempt to find a noncontroversial topic.)

Over the decades, several ideas have been proposed to explain an extensive array of astronomical mysteries, from the possibility that Newton's laws of motion might not apply when accelerations become small, to the idea that both Newton and Einstein were wrong about gravity. These hypotheses have not survived rigorous testing. Another idea was that perhaps there exist types of matter in the universe that do not emit electromagnetic energy  this was Zwicky's dark matter.

But, even here, there were many possibilities. The most plausible option was that the universe was home to a menagerie of black holes, brown dwarfs, rogue planets and other dark objects that consisted of the same kind of ordinary matter that makes up the visible component of the universe. These objects are massive and compact and cold enough that they dont emit light like stars. Some objects like these were found, but not enough to solve the mystery. And so, astronomical surveys in the 1990s completely ruled out this idea, too. Taking a page from Sherlock Holmes in The Sign of Four, in which he said, When you have ruled out the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth, scientists have been forced to conclude that a new form of invisible dark matter permeates the universe. Perhaps even more surprising, there appear to be five times more dark matter than ordinary matter.

The properties of dark matter

We have never directly observed dark matter, but we know a great deal about what it must be: It must be massive (because it affects the rotation of galaxies); it must be electrically neutral (because we can't see it); it must be different from ordinary matter (because we see no evidence for it interacting with matter in the usual ways); and it must be stable (because it has existed since the dawn of the universe). These properties are unequivocal.

However, we don't know exactly what it is. In the most popular generic theory, the dark-matter particle is called a WIMP, for weakly interacting massive particle. WIMPs are kind of like heavy neutrons (but definitely not neutrons), with a mass of 10 to 100 times heavier than a proton. They were created in great quantities during the Big Bang and a small relic remainder persists to this day.

When cosmologists add the WIMP idea to their ideas of the Big Bang, they can calculate how it would interact. They find that in the earliest stages of the universe, WIMPs were a dominant form of matter, but, as the universe expands and cools and the interaction rate drops to zero, the relic amount of WIMPs is about five times as massive as ordinary matter. Combined with the fact that the WIMP idea can also explain a pressing theoretical mystery of why the Higgs boson particle has such a small mass, scientists call this the "WIMP miracle," in view of the fact that the WIMP idea seems to answer so many questions.

A dark non-discovery

So this brings us back to the LUX experiment. It is simply the latest and most powerful experiment designed to detect WIMPs. The idea is that the detector will sit underground for a long time, say a year or more, and a rare WIMP will bump into a xenon atom and be detected. (The detector is buried underground to protect it from cosmic rays, which would bump into xenon atoms and fake a dark matter detection. Being half a mile or a mile underground stops nearly all cosmic rays.)

The above volume, part of the Large Underground Xenon collaboration, will be filled with liquid xenon and any interaction with the xenon can be detected, possibly revealing the identify of dark matter. (Image credit: Photo by C.H. Faham)

On Aug. 27, the LUX researchers announced their results. They saw no evidence for dark-matter WIMPs.

So that's not actually that surprising. There have been dozens of experiments that have looked for dark matter and found nothing. In this sense, LUX has joined a venerable group. But LUX is also far more capable. It was expected to have a better shot at finding WIMPs than any other apparatus.

But it didn't.

So does that mean that the WIMP idea is dead? No, not really. Dark matter detectors are optimized to be most sensitive to certain masses, kind of like how a particular microphone might pick up tenor voices better than they hear soprano or bass ones. LUX was optimized to find a WIMP with a mass of a few tens of times heavier than a proton. In fact, it ruled out a WIMP having a mass 50 times of a proton with impressive rejection. However, LUX doesn't do so well at detecting WIMPs with a mass below 10 times that of a proton. And, if WIMPs exist and have a mass of 1,000 times heavier than a proton, this is also not LUX's optimum range for investigation. So there remains a range of masses where a WIMP might exist.

Axions, dark life and dark charge

Even so, WIMPs were simply the most popular idea for dark matter. There are other hypotheses. One hypothesis points to a particle called a sterile neutrino, which is a cousin of the more familiar neutrino generated in nuclear reactions. In fact, neutrinos from the biggest nearby nuclear reactor (the sun) are constantly barraging the Earth. Unlike regular neutrinos, which are ultralight and interact via the weak nuclear force, sterile neutrinos are heavy and don't experience the weak force. It is the heavy mass and non-interacting qualities that make the sterile neutrino an ideal dark-matter candidate.

Another possible dark-matter particle, the axion, was proposed in 1977 as a way to ensure that the strong nuclear force treated matter and antimatter on equal footing (so as agree with observations). The axion is a very light, but still massive, hypothetical particle. The LUX detector is not designed to study axions.

Then, of course, there is the even more creative hypothesis, which suggests that dark matter isn't a single, neutral, non-interacting particle. After all, ordinary matter is pretty complicated. At the quantum scale, we have quarks and leptons and four forces. At the macro scale, we have you and me and sugar and stars and volcanoes and all the various ways they interact. Ordinary matter has all sorts of interactions and constituents. Why not dark matter? [7 Strange Facts About Quarks]

Under this hypothesis, dark matter might have a "dark charge," or dark matter's form of electrical charge. In the same way that dark matter doesn't experience dark charge, maybe ordinary matter doesn't experience dark charge. This dark charge would interact with dark photons, or the dark twins of ordinary light particles.

And, even more daring, perhaps dark matter experiences many forces and there is an entire complex dark sector, with dark atoms and dark molecules and perhaps even dark life. We are able to set constraints on these possible dark interactions; for instance, we know enough to rule out dark stars and planets, but dark asteroids are possible. Again, LUX is silent on these new ideas.

It's not fair to say that the LUX measurement leads to a crisis in particle physics and cosmology. But it certainly gives scientists pause and suggests that maybe we should take another look at this WIMP thing. Maybe other ideas need to be revisited. On the other hand, scientists who want to continue to pursue the WIMP idea still have something to look forward to as technology advances. LUX uses a third of a ton of liquid xenon. In 10 or 15 years, scientists are planning to build detectors that might contain 100 tons, providing even more chances of capturing that rare WIMP interaction. These are heady times to be a dark-matter scientist.

But, in the end, we still don't know. We just know that the capabilities of LUX are good enough that maybe it's time to broaden our thinking. In the words of the rock band Buffalo Springfield, "There's something happening here. What it is ain't exactly clear..."

Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates  and become part of the discussion  on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published on Live Science.
<em>Geogemma barossii</em> takes the record for tolerating the hottest temperatures of any catalogued life-form. The single-celled organism was found in a deep-sea hydrothermal vent along the Endeavor segment of the Juan de Fuca Ridge (shown here). But can life survive even hotter conditions? Scientists hope to find out.

By exploring the limits of life deep beneath the seafloor, an upcoming international research mission will seek to discover what scorching levels of heat may be too extreme for life on Earth  and maybe alien life on distant worlds.

The public can also take part in an online contest to guess the hottest temperature at which life can exist.

On Sept. 12, scientists are heading out for a 60-day quest aboard the state-of-the-art Japanese drilling vessel Chikyu to the Nankai Trough, about 75 miles (120 kilometers) off the coast of Japan. The ocean is about 2.9 miles (4.7 km) deep there, and the expedition will drill down 0.75 miles (1.2 km) beneath the seafloor to collect samples. All in all, the distance from the ocean's surface to the sample depth is equivalent to the height of about 20 Eiffel Towers. [Infographic: Explore Earth from the Tallest Mountain to the Deepest Ocean Trench]

New life-forms?

The Nankai Trough is located near the superhot border of two clashing tectonic plates, where underwater volcanoes bubble like cauldrons. The samples that researchers will collect may reach temperatures of 266 degrees Fahrenheit (130 degrees Celsius). Gathering such hot samples in other areas would require drilling to about 2.5 miles (4 km) below the seafloor, rather than the 0.75 miles currently planned, the researchers said.

"We may discover some unknown life-forms that can survive or adapt to the extremely challenging deep and hot sedimentary environment," Fumio Inagaki, the expedition's co-chief scientist and a researcher at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, told Live Science. "The nature and extent of the deep sub-seafloor biosphere is still largely unknown."

Analyzing such deep-sea microbes could help scientists inthe search for alien life. "We have already known, based on previous DNA-based studies, that most microbes living in marine subsurface sediments are evolutionarily distinct from known life in the Earth's surface biosphere," Inagaki said. "In this sense, we may have already seen alien life in the different world on our planet," since they are distinct from life on the surface, he noted.

"Our study will provide some clues to understand habitability of deep life not only below the ocean floor of our planet, but also inside of other celestial bodies," Inagaki added. A deeper understanding of how life might live in extreme places on Earth could shed light on whether or not it could exist in similarly extreme places elsewhere.

A globular, single-celled organism called Geogemma barossii tolerates the highest temperatures of any catalogued life-form on Earth. The microbe was discovered in 2003, in deep-sea hydrothermal vents at the Juan de Fuca Ridge off the northwest U.S. coast, where it withstands temperatures of about 250 degrees F (120 degrees C). The new samples that scientists hope to collect as part of the International Ocean Discovery Program's (IODP) Expedition 370 may yield microbes that break the current record for the hottest temperature at which life on Earth can exist. [Axial Seamount: Images of an Erupting Undersea Volcano]

Like a trip to outer space

Chikyu is the world's largest scientific research ship, measuring 689 feet long, 125 feet wide and 393 feet high (210 by 38 by 120 m), Inagaki said. A system of thrusters and GPS sensors also makes the ship quite stable, "enabling the vessel to keep at the same position for deep drilling under strong currents," he added.

To search for the temperature limit for Earth-style life, scientists aboard the Japanese drilling vessel Chikyu will head to the Nankai Trough. (Image credit: Deep Carbon Observatory)

Indeed, an ordinary research vessel wouldn't suffice for such an extreme mission.

"This expedition is as complex as a mission to outer space might be," Kai-Uwe Hinrichs, a researcher at the University of Bremen in Germany and lead author of the scientific proposal behind the expedition, said in a statement.

"It requires the technology to 'land' the coring bit on the right spot in over 4-kilometer-deep water, drill through ancient ocean sediments to collect samples far below the ocean floor, bring them back onboard intact, then transport them by helicopter to the super-clean geomicrobiology laboratory to ensure no contamination," Hinrichs added. "Like a space mission, this expedition is fraught with complexity, danger and vast opportunity for discovery."

After the samples are collected, they will be sent on a 1-hour helicopter ride to a superclean lab onshore (to prevent contamination), where scientists will investigate them further. The researchers will analyze the qualities of the sediments and count minuscule and sparse cells, looking for as few as 100 cells per 0.06 cubic inches (1 cubic centimeter), or about the equivalent of 100 sand grains floating in an Olympic-size swimming pool.

"Looking for life in core samples is like looking for a needle in a haystack," Yuki Morono, the expedition's co-chief scientist and a researcher at the Kochi Institute for Core Sample Research in Japan, said in the statement. "At the surface, the sediments are teeming with microbial cells, but in samples from deeper in the core, the cells become far more sparse."

The aim of the expedition is to define the limits to deep-dwelling life by exploring the so-called biotic fringe, the boundary where current knowledge predicts that no living cells persist. The mission will examine whether this boundary is sharp, diffuse or exists at all.

"We have the extraordinary opportunity to explore the depth at which sediments and rocks become too hot for life, even for microbes that can live at temperatures greater than 85 degrees C [185 degrees F]," Verena Heuer, the expedition's co-chief scientist and a researcher at the University of Bremen in Germany, said in the statement.

"The gradual increase in temperature from approximately 30 degrees C to 130 degrees C [86 to 266 degrees F] in the sampled sediments will give us the opportunity to explore how microbial life changes with increasing temperatures and ultimately ceases to exist," Heuer added. "Is this lower boundary of the sub-seafloor's habitable zone like a rigid brick wall, or is it like a leaky fence?"

The researchers will also use DNA-sequencing technology to determine the ancestry of deep-sea microbes and how they adapt to such extreme environments. During the cruise, they will share their experiences via blogs and the Expedition 370 website.

The public is also invited to guess the heat limit of deep life via an online contest.

Original article on Live Science.
Salt crystals accumulate on the shore of the Dead Sea, one of the saltiest lakes on Earth.

Bordered by Jordan to the east and by Israel and Palestine to the west, the Dead Sea is a landlocked lake rather than a true sea, and is recognized as one of the saltiest bodies of water on Earth.

Its name is well earned  no fish, birds or plants can survive in its high-saline environment. Along the shores, salt buildup collects in rocky ridges, peaks and towers, and visitors find that the Dead Sea's extra-salty water is so buoyant that they can practically sit on its surface.

Recently, an artist used the Dead Sea to transform an ordinary dress into a brittle, glittering, salty sculpture. After spending two months immersed in the "sea," the dress emerged thickly coated in brilliant white crystals, a gleaming testament to the quantity of salt in the water. [Crystal Bride Gown Transformed by Dead Sea Salt (Photos)]

But what is it that makes the Dead Sea so excessively salty  nearly 10 times saltier than normal seawater?

Salt of the Earth

Famed author Mark Twain visited the Dead Sea in 1867, describing the unusual experience in his travel book, "The Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrims' Progress" (American Publishing Company, 1869) as "a funny bath" that left him with "a splendid brand-new smell."

"Some of us bathed for more than an hour, and then came out coated with salt till we shone like icicles," Twain wrote.

Most ocean water is typically about 3.5 percent dissolved salts, according to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). This salt originates in rocks on land; acids in rainwater dissolve the rocks and create ions  charged atomic particles  that runoff carries into the ocean. The most common of these ions are sodium and chloride, which accumulate in the ocean as salt.

If all of the salt in the ocean were removed and spread over all of the dry land on Earth, the layer would reach a height of 500 feet (150 meters), according to NOAA.

But all of that salt is still just a drop in the bucket compared to the quantities in the Dead Sea's waters.

How low can you go?

NOAA estimates that the water in the Dead Sea is five to nine times as briny as seawater. Salinity increases in the sea's deeper waters; at depths below 300 feet (100 m), the water becomes so concentrated with salt that it can hold no more, and the salt builds up on the seafloor.

The Dead Sea lies in a fault valley that covers more than 620 miles (1,000 km), beginning at the Sinai Peninsula's tip and extending northward to Turkey. Its elevation is the lowest on the planet  1,407 feet (429 m) below sea level. A series of lakes once occupied this valley, but the last of them disappeared 15,000 years ago, leaving only the Dead Sea behind, according to the Minerva Dead Sea Research Center (MDSRC).

One source of freshwater feeds the Dead Sea: the Jordan River. But without any outlets, when freshwater reaches the sea, it has nowhere else to go. In the arid low-lying desert, the water that collects in the Dead Sea evaporates more quickly than water in the open ocean, leaving vast quantities of salt behind, the MDSRC explains.

Left for dead

In recent years, human activity has siphoned still more precious water from the Dead Sea by diverting the Jordan River for agricultural use, thus shrinking the sea's boundaries and making the remaining water even saltier.

In fact, the Dead Sea is disappearing at an alarming rate, receding by about 3 feet (1 m) each year, according to a study published in 2010 in the journal Environmental Economics. The study authors further noted that the Dead Sea has retreated by about 100 feet (30 m) since the start of the 20th century.

And research suggests that even without human intervention, the Dead Sea could be in trouble. In 2010 and 2011, scientists drilled below the Dead Sea to look for clues about its geologic past. They found that about 120,000 years ago, during a warm period that preceded the last ice age, the Dead Sea dried up completely, leaving all of its salt behind.

But though its future may be uncertain, the body of water long known for being a "dead zone" still has a few surprises to offer scientists. In a 2011 expedition, researchers donned specialized diving equipment and descended to previously unreachable depths in the salty water, finding freshwater springs that were surrounded by colonies of microbes.

It looks like the Dead Sea might still have some life in it after all.

Original article on Live Science.
There are at least 35 documented cases of the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 bursting into flames.

The Samsung Galaxy Note 7 is suffering the same fate as countless hoverboards  there are reports that some phones have been bursting into flames, prompting Samsung is issue a recall and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration to strongly discourage passengers from carrying the device on planes, news sources report.

Why is this smartphone such a fire hazard? The answer has to do with its lithium-ion battery, a common power source that isn't just used in cellphones but also in computers, power tools and toys. [9 Odd Ways Your Tech Device May Injure You]

Lithium, the third element on the periodic table, is a silver-white metal that can catch fire when exposed to oxygen or water, Lloyd Gordon, the chief electrical safety officer at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, told Live Science last year.

But in 1991, Sony Corp. commercialized a way to safely use the ions, mainly by keeping the lithium ions in a suspension or chemical so that it isn't pure lithium, Gordon said.

Well-made electronics have safety measures built into their lithium-ion batteries, but faulty ones with poorly made electric circuitry can meet with fiery ends, he said.

For instance, faulty batteries can be overcharged. Well-made batteries will stop charging automatically once they're full, but that's not always the case for faulty batteries, Gordon told Live Science. If left plugged in for too long, the lithium ions can collect in one spot and be deposited as metallic lithium within the battery, he said. Also, heat from the overcharging can cause oxygen bubbles within the gel, which are highly reactive with metallic lithium.

Likewise, defective lithium-ion batteries can also be over-discharged, meaning they don't shut off when the power is too low, which can also lead to fires, Gordon said.

It's unclear exactly what's causing the problem in some Galaxy Note 7 devices, but one user showcased the result on YouTube after he removed the phone from its official Samsung charger.

As of Sept. 1, Samsung is aware of 35 cases globally of lithium-ion battery malfunction, the company said in a statement.

"In response to recently reported cases of the new Galaxy Note7, we conducted a thorough investigation and found a battery cell issue," the company said in the statement (opens in new tab). The company said it would temporarily halt sales of the device, and that it would replace current Galaxy Note7 smartphones with newer, safer models in the coming weeks, Samsung added.

In the meantime, the FAA took action, saying that it "strongly advises passengers not to turn on or charge these devices on board aircraft and not to stow them in any checked baggage," according to a statement.

In response to the FAA advisory, Samsung is expediting new shipments of the smartphone this week, Reuters reported today (Sept. 9).

Original article on Live Science.
This x-ray of the hands of someone with leprosy was taken in Thailand. The disease causes deformities and contractures, seen here.

Two schoolchildren in California are suspected of having leprosy, but where might they have caught the disease?

This week, officials in Riverside County (which is near Los Angeles) said they are investigating the suspected cases of leprosy, now usually called Hansen's disease, at an elementary school in the area. Nursing staff at the school first notified officials about the possible infections on Sept. 2, but it will take several weeks to confirm them, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Cases of Hansen's disease in the United States are rare, but they do occur, with about 100 to 200 cases typically reported each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2014, there were 175 new cases of Hansen's disease diagnosed in the United States, and nearly three-quarters of these cases were reported in seven states: Arkansas, California, Florida, Hawaii, Louisiana, New York and Texas, according to the U.S. National Hansen's Disease (Leprosy) Program.

"There's a lot of stigma and a lot of misunderstanding about leprosy," said Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious-disease specialist and a senior associate at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center's Center for Health Security. "In the United States, there are thousands of people" who have the disease, Adalja told Live Science. It's estimated that, overall, about 6,500 people in the United States have Hansen's disease, and about half of these require active medical treatment, according to the National Hansen's Disease Program. [Top 10 Stigmatized Health Disorders]

There's currently not enough information provided about these two suspected case to know where they might have originated, Adalja said. But armadillos in the United States are known to harbor the bacteria that cause the disease, and it's possible for people to become infected through contact with the animals, Adalja said, although the risk of this is low.

People can also become infected with leprosy through prolonged close contact with patients who have leprosy, Adalja said. Because the disease is not very contagious, people are unlikely to become infected through casual contact, he added.

In addition, a sizable number of the people who have Hansen's disease in the United States (about 60 percent) were born in another country, Adalja said, and so it's possible they contracted the disease in another country, but this is not certain. Countries with more widespread leprosy transmission include Angola, Brazil, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Federated States of Micronesia, India, Kiribati, Madagascar, Mozambique, Nepal, Republic of Marshall Islands and the United Republic of Tanzania, according to the CDC.

The disease is caused by a bacterium known as Mycobacterium leprae. It mainly affects the skin, peripheral nerves, upper respiratory tract, eyes and lining of the nose, according to the National Institutes of Health. The bacteria multiply very slowly, so it may take two to 10 years before a person who is infected with the bacteria has any symptoms, the CDC says. Left untreated, the bacteria can cause permanent damage to the skin, nerves, limbs and eyes (including paralysis and blindness), according to the World Health Organization.

But the disease is easily treatable with antibiotics, according to the CDC. And patients are unable to transmit the disease to other people after taking just a few doses of antibiotics.

Hansen's disease is not easily spread between people, and it's unlikely that people would catch the disease in a school or work environment, Barbara Cole, of the Riverside County Department of Public Health, told the Los Angeles Times. One reason that the disease doesn't appear to be very contagious is that most people are naturally immune to the disease  it's estimated that about 95 percent of people are not able to contract leprosy, Adalja said.

The school with the suspected cases said it has disinfected a few classrooms as a response to the news, according to the Los Angeles Times. But Adalja said that this action was probably overdoing it relative to the risk that the cases pose. "Almost all of it will be overkill because this disease is not that contagious," Adalja said.

Original article on Live Science.
US has its First Chief Information Security Officer in Gregory Touhill

Gregory Touhill (Photo : Department of Homeland Security)

U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. (Ret.) Gregory Touhill was named the federal government's first Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) whose mammoth challenge will be protecting federal informaton networks and critical infrastructure from cyber attacks and threats.



The White House's selection of Touhill, who most recently was Deputy Assistant Secretary, Cybersecurity and Communications, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, capped a search lasting some seven months.



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U.S. President Barack Obama announced the new position of CISO last February alongside a budget proposal to Congress asking for $19 billion for cyber security across the federal government.



Obama has made the improvement of federal cyber security a top priority. Cybersecurity, or the federal government's lack of it, has become more prominent because of an ongoing spate of attacks attributed to China and Russia, with the latter accused of hacking Democratic Party records.



Touhill retired from the Air Force in 2013. His final posting was Commander, 81st Training Wing, Keesler Air Force Base in Mississippi. This unit is the Air Force's information technology technical training center.



Touhill will begin his new role as federal CISO later this month. Touhill's responsibilities will include creating and implementing policy for best security practices across federal agencies and conducting periodic audits to test for weaknesses.



In his new role as CISO, Touhill will put to good use his considerable experience in managing a range of complex and diverse technical solutions with his strong knowledge of both civilian and military best practices, capabilities, and human capital training, development and retention strategies.



"Greg will lead a strong team within OMB who have been at the forefront of driving policy and implementation of leading cyber practices across Federal agencies, and is the team that conducts periodic cyberstat reviews with Federal agencies to insure that implementation plans are effective and achieve the desired outcomes," said U.S. Chief Information Officer Tony Scott.



"In creating the CISO role, and looking at successful organizational models across government, it became apparent that having a career role partnered with a senior official is not only the norm but also provides needed continuity over time," Scott said.


Local News, Health & Wellness, Press Releases

By Long Island News & PR Published: September 09 2016

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today called for aggressive new water quality protections to protect New Yorkers and ensure clean drinking water.

Commissioners urge EPA to reform and expand unregulated contaminant monitoring to include all public water systems - or state will take action.

Albany, NY - September 7, 2016 - Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today called for aggressive new water quality protections to protect New Yorkers and ensure clean drinking water.



In a letter to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy, Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner Basil Seggos and Department of Health Commissioner Howard Zucker urged the EPA to close a loophole in federal oversight that exempts public water systems that serve less than 10,000 people from its Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule program. Under the status quo, public water systems serving some 2.5 million New York State residents are not required to be tested for these contaminants.



Combined with those who use private wells for drinking water, 6.5 million people  one-third of all New Yorkers and nearly 60 percent of residents outside of New York City  rely on water systems that do not require the testing of emerging contaminants such as perflurooctanoic acid (PFOA).



Governor Cuomo will also be advancing legislation to address the EPAs failure to provide oversight of private wells by requiring testing for contaminants by homeowners prior to the sale of a home and mandating that landlords test their properties and share those results with tenants.



"We firmly believe that the health and safety of our residents should not depend on the size of the town in which they live," Commissioner Zucker said. "The EPAs current testing requirements leave millions of New Yorkers in the dark about the quality of their water simply because they are not part of large water systems. If the EPA fails to act, we will move new legislation to mandate the testing of unregulated contaminants in the 9,000 public water systems across the state. The administration is also advancing legislation to require the testing of private wells  which currently have no federal oversight whatsoever. We urge the legislature to join us in supporting these critical actions.



"At DEC, we work to remediate pollution in communities of all sizes. By only requiring testing of water systems that serve 10,000 residents or more, the EPA's current program does not reflect the reality of drinking water in our state and across the country," Commissioner Seggos said. "I strongly urge the EPA to reform their inadequate, subjective threshold for the requirement of testing of unregulated contaminants in public water systems. In addition, I encourage the Legislature to back our proposal to require testing of private wells. Whether youre buying a home or renting an apartment, you should have access to information about the quality of water you are drinking.



Require Testing of All Public Water Systems

The EPAs current UCMR program mandates testing for unregulated contaminants in only 188 of the states 9,000 public water supplies. The UCMR program does not apply to water systems with less than 10,000 people  which means that 2,700 smaller community water systems and more than 6,000 other non-municipal water systems, like businesses and schools, are not required to test.



The result is that approximately 2.5 million New Yorkers are provided water from a system that is not required by the EPA to test for unregulated contaminants. This lack of federal oversight creates situations like Hoosick Falls, where for potentially decades, residents were drinking water contaminated with PFOA, which remains unregulated by the federal government and since it was not on the villages testing list. The letter asks that these important changes to federal oversight of unregulated contaminants testing are made prior to the end of the current administration. 



The letter from Commissioner Seggos and Commissioner Zucker makes a number of specific requests to the EPA:

Expansion of the UCMR program to require sampling of unregulated contaminants for all public water supplies  no matter the size  to protect the 2.5 million New Yorkers who currently drink water from systems not required to test.

Sampling results of unregulated contaminants should be provided to states in a timely and transparent manner, since the EPA currently does not report them.

Actionable guidance to make clear the steps that should be taken when unregulated contaminants are detected in a water supply.

Funding and technical assistance to support sampling, analysis, and technologies to address unregulated contaminants in drinking water.

If the EPA fails to comply with the states request to overhaul their egregiously inadequate monitoring program, the Administration will:

aggressively pursue legislation to mandate the testing of public water supplies for unregulated contaminants, regardless of size.

take into consideration specific issues affecting localities across the state and require additional testing based on each particular circumstance.

provide funding opportunities for small community water systems with financial hardship.

The letter to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy can be viewed here.



Require Testing of Private Wells

In February, Governor Cuomo established the New York State Water Quality Rapid Response Team, co-chaired by Commissioners Seggos and Zucker, to swiftly identify and address New Yorks most critical drinking water contamination concerns. A major challenge identified through this effort is the fact that the EPA fails to provide any degree of regulatory oversight for the nations private wells.
Music, Movies & Entertainment, Local News, Press Releases, Seasonal & Current Events

By Long Island News & PR Published: September 09 2016

The Long Island Music Hall of Fame is proud to present a press conference announcing details for its 6th star-studded red carpet Induction Awards Ceremony & Fundraising Gala.

Westbury, NY - September 7, 2016 - The Long Island Music Hall of Fame (LIMHoF) is proud to present a press conference announcing details for its sixth star-studded red carpet Induction Awards Ceremony and Fundraising Gala.

Tuesday, September 13, 2016  11:00am at The Space at Westbury, 250 Post Avenue, Taking place onat The Space at Westbury, 250 Post Avenue, Westbury , New York, the Hall will announce its 2016 Class of Inductees -- a diverse array of performers, groups, music industry leaders and venues that have made significant contributions to Long Islands rich music history. The evening will also include the announcement of the 2016 Harry Chapin Award recipient, presented to an individual who has a strong, proven dedication to music education on Long Island.

In addition to tributes, performances and introductions by the class of inductees, the Induction Ceremony will host a variety of celebrity appearances, musical performances and visits from former inductees. Past attendees have included: Billy Joel, Lou Reed, LL Cool J, DMC, Eddie Money, Joan Jett, Clive Davis, Johnny Maestro & the Brooklyn Bridge, members of KISS, Paul Shaffer, Leslie West & Mountain, Roger Waters, Blue Oyster Cult, Taylor Dayne, Little Anthony, Laurie Anderson, Charlie Daniels, Al Kooper, Salt N Pepa, Vanilla Fudge, Alec Baldwin, the family of Aaron Copland, Public Enemy, members of Dream Theater, and many more.

Additional Information:

k) for a significant portion of their career. Induction is based on historical importance and the significance of their contribution to Long Islands rich musical heritage. Complete induction criteria and more about previous inductees, visit Inductees are selected by the Hall of Fames Board of Directors from an evolving and growing list of people, artists, and entities that were born, raised, founded, or have resided on geographic Long Island (Brooklyn/Queens/Nassau/Suffolk) for a significant portion of their career. Induction is based on historical importance and the significance of their contribution to Long Islands rich musical heritage. Complete induction criteria and more about previous inductees, visit here

Past inductees include: Simon & Garfunkel, Louis Armstrong, Billy Joel, Lou Reed, Carole King, George M. Cohan, Eddie Money, Joan Jett, Twisted Sister, Mariah Carey, The Ramones, Barbra Streisand, John Coltrane, members of KISS, Run DMC, Vanilla Fudge, Johnny Maestro and the Brooklyn Bridge, Jones Beach Theatre, LL Cool J, Public Enemy, Taylor Dayne, Salt N Pepa, Clive Davis, Lovin Spoonfuls Joe Butler and Steve Boone, Gary U.S. Bonds, Eric Bloom and Buck Dharma (Blue Oyster Cult), Tony Bennett and many more. Full list upon request, or please check our website.
Hauppauge, NY - September 7, 2016 - Chief Roy Gross of the Suffolk County SPCA said that owning exotic OR illegal animals/reptiles can be dangerous. A perfect example just occurred. A West Babylon man was airlifted to Jacobi Medical Center after he was bitten by one of his venomous snakes. The owner of the snake was lucky. His injuries were not life threatening.

Not all animals make good pets. Attempting to keep wild animals often ends badly for both the animal and the human.

Not all animals make good pets. Attempting to keep wild animals often ends badly for both the animal and the human.

Not all animals make good pets. Attempting to keep wild animals often ends badly for both the animal and the human.

Photo Credit: SCSPCA.



Big cats, primates, small mammals, birds, and reptiles are available for sale from dealers across the United States . This means the public has easy access to inherently dangerous animals that are unsuitable as pets and illegal in New York State without a proper permit.

Exotic animals do not make good companions and pose serious health risks if they become aggressive. They can also be carriers for diseases and parasites that can cause serious risk of disease.

We have seen the dangers of owning a chimpanzee. Suffolk County has seen its fair share of exotics including alligators, leopards, cougars, bears, snakes and a variety of other animals.
Local News, Community, Charity & Cause, Press Releases

By EAC Network Published: September 09 2016

Nassau County Bar Association's We Care Fund grant will go to the Nassau Supervised Visitation Program.

NSV offers supervised visits between non-custodial parents and children when the court feels that unsupervised access may be harmful to the child.

Mineola, NY - September 8, 2016 - EAC Network is pleased to announce the Nassau County Bar Associations (NCBA) We Care Fund has generously awarded $5,000 grant for the agencys Nassau Supervised Visitation (NSV) program.

NSV offers supervised visits between non-custodial parents and children when the court feels that unsupervised access may be harmful to the child. Parents and their children generally visit once per week for an hour at the agencys child-friendly facility in Hempstead and are overseen by specially trained case managers. Over 500 families used NSV for their supervised visitations in 2015.

We are so grateful for the NCBA We Care Fund for its compassion and generous support of our Nassau Supervised Visitation program, says Lance W. Elder, President & CEO at EAC Network. This funding is vital to running this essential service to keep parents and children in each others lives.

In addition to supervised visits, parents also receive direct help and referrals to improve parenting skills, learn appropriate play behavior, and develop constructive relationships with their children.

We are so grateful for the funding provided by the We Care Fund, says Dorothy Worrell, Program Director at EAC Networks Nassau Supervised Visitation. Positive parent-child relationships are integral to the development and well-being of growing children. Our goal is to facilitate non-custodial parents access to their children in a safe and caring environment where parent-child bonds can flourish despite the hardships that might be occurring at home.

To learn more about EAC Networks Nassau Supervised Visitation program, visit here.

About EAC Network

EAC Network (www.eac-network.org) is a not-for-profit social service agency that empowers, assists, and cares for over 71,000 individuals across Long Island and NYC. EAC Networks mission is to respond to human needs with programs and services that protect children, promote healthy families and communities, help seniors, and empower individuals to take control of their lives. The organization has grown tremendously since its inception in 1969 and now offers over 70 diverse programs that address many of societys core problems. Peoples lives are being destroyed by addiction, families continue to struggle to overcome poverty, abuse, and neglect, and seniors face isolation and abandonment. EAC Network aims to build a better community one individual at a time.
Local News, Press Releases

By Long Island News & PR Published: September 09 2016

Governor Cuomo announced that State Police arrested 739 individuals for driving while intoxicated during the Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over national crackdown on impaired driving.

Albany, NY - September 8, 2016 - Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced that State Police arrested 739 individuals for driving while intoxicated during the Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over national crackdown on impaired driving. The campaign, which ran from Friday, August 19 to Monday, September 5, is aimed at significantly reducing deaths and injuries caused by motorists driving drunk or impaired by drugs.



"Impaired and reckless drivers are danger to themselves and others on New York's roadways and we have zero tolerance for this dangerous and selfish behavior," Governor Cuomo said. "I thank state and local law enforcement for their efforts to get these menaces out from behind the wheel and off our streets and for their continuing efforts to protect the safety of all New Yorkers."



State Police and local law enforcement agencies also targeted drivers who were distracted, speeding, not wearing seatbelts, and not abiding by the move over law. The campaign was coordinated and funded by the Governors Traffic Safety Committee.



State Police report that of the 739 DWI arrests between the August 19 to September 5 enforcement period, 219 occurred during Labor Day weekend alone. For the entire 18-day campaign, Troopers issued 43,704 total tickets, including 17,555 for speeding, 1,413 for distracted driving, 2,306 for child restraint and seatbelt violations, and 531 for failing to "move over."



Additionally, Troopers investigated a total of 3,243 crashes, compared to 2,973 last year. Of these crashes, 1,006 people were injured, and 11 people were killed.



New York State Police Superintendent George P. Beach II said, "Our message is very simple: Drive sober, put on your seat belt and put down your smart phone. Making these smart choices each time you get behind the wheel will help avoid needless tragedies. The State Police will continue to work with our local partners to target reckless drivers and keep our highways safe."



Terri Egan, Governors Traffic Safety Committee Acting Chair and Department of Motor Vehicles Executive Deputy Commissioner said, "While we have made great strides combating drunk and drugged driving, it is clear that many drivers are not getting the message that reckless behavior costs lives on our roadways each and every day. In addition to impaired driving, there are so many factors contributing to unsafe and dangerous driving, such as distracted driving, making it more important than ever to support our partners in state and local law enforcement and traffic safety to keep New Yorkers safe. I thank the New York State Police and all law enforcement for protecting motorists, bicyclists, motorcyclists, and pedestrians not only during crackdown periods, but each and every day."



The results of the campaign are broken down by Troop region below:


School & Education, Local News, Press Releases

By Long Island News & PR Published: September 09 2016

Faculty at Long Island Universitys Brooklyn campus overwhelmingly voted down a contract offer from the administration after it chose to lock out more than 400 faculty members.

Event on Friday, Sept. 9 to feature AFT President, Public Advocate for the City of New York and NYSUT President.

Update - September 9, 2016 - Locked-out Long Island University Brooklyn faculty will hold a teach-in/speak-out on Friday, featuring national, state and city leaders who will express their disgust at the universitys insistence on locking out its approximately 400 faculty members. Students are expected to attend as well.

What: Teach-In/Speak-Out. Also, live demonstration of a dance class, taught by a locked-out professor

When: Friday, Sept. 9, 10 a.m.

Where: LIU Brooklyn, DeKalb and Flatbush avenues

Who: American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten; Public Advocate for the City of New York Letitia James; and New York State United Teachers President Karen Magee

An earlier press release is available below.

Brooklyn, NY - September 6, 2016 - Faculty at Long Island Universitys Brooklyn campus overwhelmingly voted down a contract offer from the administration after it chose to lock out more than 400 faculty members rather than bargain in good faith, the Long Island University Faculty Federation said today.

Tuesday afternoon, the University Faculty Senate, which represents faculty on all of LIUs campuses, followed the unions lead, with 93 percent voting no confidence in the administrations leadership. Combined with the resounding defeat of the universitys proposal to the union, the vote by the faculty senate shows that the administration is moving in the wrong direction.

The administration's decision to lock us out rather than negotiate has already damaged our students and our members. Over the weekend, our health insurance was cut off, with people finding out as they were filling prescriptions. We want to teach our students under a contract that affords us dignity and voice. That is why we're fighting back, said Jessica Rosenberg, LIUFF president.

The universitys behavior is appalling. Rather than work collaboratively with the union to reach a settlement, the administration chose to lock faculty out and deprive students of the instruction that they expected and are paying for through their tuition. The university is showing its disregard for students and disrespect for the hardworking professional faculty who make up the heart and soul of the campus, said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, the LIUFFs parent union.

Faculty are planning an informational picket starting at 8 a.m. Wednesday, Sept. 7, at 1 University Plaza, located at the corner of DeKalb and Flatbush avenues in front of the main building of LIU Brooklyn. Speakersincluding students, educators, representatives from New York Communities for Change and the Working Families Party, and other allieswill address the crowd starting at 11:30 a.m.

Currently, nearly half of the Brooklyn faculty are paid less than their LIU Post campus (Nassau County) counterparts, some by as much as 20 percent, yet both campuses charge the same tuition$32,000 a yearand faculty credentials are equivalent. LIU says it will not reach parity between the two campuses until 2020. The union wants to reach parity earlier, by 2019.

The Brooklyn faculty unions contract expired on Sept. 2. The university locked out the faculty at 12:01 a.m. on Saturday, cut off their health insurance and threatened to replace faculty with administration staff.

LIU started looking for replacement faculty over the summer but cant find enough qualified faculty to teach classes. LIU Brooklyn students will be entering classrooms on Wednesday with faculty who may have no qualifications at all, imperiling their education and LIUs accreditation status.

It also means that student teachers from LIUabout to enter public schools all over the New York City metropolitan areamay have no qualified supervising faculty.

Additional statements in support of the Long Island University Faculty Federation can be found here:

New York State United Teachers: here

United University Professions: here

Professional Staff Congress of the City University of New York: here
School & Education, Local News, Community, Charity & Cause, Press Releases, Seasonal & Current Events

By Long Island News & PR Published: September 09 2016

U.S. Representative Kathleen Rice will host a Service Academy Information Session on Thursday, September 15th, at 6:00 p.m. at the Uniondale Public Library.

The event is open to all high school students in New Yorks fourth congressional district who are interested in applying to a U.S. service academy this fall.

Uniondale, NY - September 6, 2016 - U.S. Representative Kathleen Rice will host a Service Academy Information Session on Thursday, September 15th, at 6:00 p.m. at the Uniondale Public Library. The event is open to all high school students in New Yorks fourth congressional district who are interested in applying to a U.S. service academy this fall. Students and their family members will have the opportunity to meet with representatives from all five service academies  the U.S. Military Academy, the U.S. Naval Academy, the U.S. Air Force Academy, the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, and the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy  and learn about the application and admissions process as well as various programs offered at the academies.

Students and parents who would like to attend can call our office at (516) 839-3008 or email to RSVP or request more information.

When: Thursday, September 15th  6:00 p.m.

Where: Uniondale Public Library, 400 Uniondale Avenue, Uniondale, NY 11553

What: Service Academy Information Session

Who: U.S. Representative Kathleen Rice. Representatives from all five U.S. service academies (the U.S. Military Academy, the U.S. Naval Academy, the U.S. Air Force Academy, and the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy)
Looking to stay up to date about all of the news stories and local headlines that are important to Long Islanders? We've rounded up the top coverage for all of the important topics from multiple sources around Long Island, so you can be sure you've got the most recent update on the top stories for Long Island. Have an idea for a news story? Email us at news@longisland.com

Columnists Press Releases
Sheikh Akram al Kabi, the leader of the Harakat al Nujaba Iraqi militia, has completed a week-long, high-profile visit to Iran that began in late August. Kabi met with top Iranian government officials and clerics, briefing them about the militias activities in both Iraq and Syria. He also gave prime-time television interviews and held multiple press conferences, all in Arabic and translated into Farsi. Militia officials frequently travel to Iran, but the publicity surrounding Kabis visit is unprecedented. This indicates the rising clout of the Iraqi cleric among the political elite in Tehran.

Kabi boldly proclaimed his allegiance to Irans Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, as well as the concept of velayat-e faqih, or guardianship of the jurist, which is the political and theological basis of the Islamic Republic as established by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Kabi echoed Tehrans propaganda claims, and boasted about targeting American forces during the Second Gulf War. He reiterated his commitment to the Axis of Resistance, an alliance of state and non-state actors led by Iran. Kabi vowed that the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), the umbrella organization of Iraqi paramilitary groups that includes Iranian-backed groups such as Nujaba, would participate in the anticipated operation to lay siege to Mosul, which has been held by the Islamic State since 2014. Following Mosul, Kabi called for Iraqi militias to shift resources to Syria and chase the Islamic State into the strongholds of Deir ez-Zor and Raqqa. He also threatened to target Turkish forces stationed near Mosul.

Kabi thanked Tehran for its full support of Nujaba and other resistance groups during his trip. He stressed the necessity of the continued advisory role of Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) elite external operations unit, the Qods Force. Kabi defended the Iranian commanders presence in Iraq as legal and per the request of the central government, which Iraqi government officials have said earlier this summer. Kabi also credited Iranian commanders with equipping and training Nujaba, including in urban warfare, which is happening in Syria.

As Kabi openly flaunts his ties to Tehran, Baghdad has recognized the PMF as a parallel military institution this past year, making the IRGC-backed network that dominates the PMF and includes designated terrorists like Kabi into legitimate actors in the Iraqi state (See previous analysis by The Long War Journal here). A U.S. military official told Fox News last month that the Iranian-backed Shiite militias number at least 80,000 and up to 100,000.

Although there are Iraqi Shiites and the Holy Precinct of Najaf that oppose velayat-e faqih, the IRGC-backed network in Iraq is poised to become an imposing power bloc post the Islamic State. This network is linked to the global jihadist network led by Tehran, which means they have access to Iranian resources. These actors will work patiently to consolidate and expand their influence in Iraq, which translates to the expansion of Tehrans influence.

Akram Kabi and Harakat al Nujaba

Kabi has served as a senior commander in the disbanded Mahdi Army and the Asaib Ahl al Haq (AAH), or League of the Righteous. The cleric was listed by the US as a terrorist in September 2008 for aiding the Iraqi insurgency. He was listed along with Abdul Reza Shahlai, a deputy commander in the Qods Force. The Qods Force was instrumental in establishing Harakat al Nujaba, or Movement of the Noble, in 2013 out of AAH to deploy to Syria as part of a larger Iraqi Shiite militia contingency fighting on behalf of Bashar al Assad. Most of these units returned home in 2014 following the incursion of the Islamic State.

In the past year, Nujaba has expanded its activities in Syria, becoming the largest contingent of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias in Syria, thus sustaining military operations in two theaters. Nujaba has deployed to Aleppo its Ammar Yasser Brigade, which has 3,000 fighters, Kabi stated in an interview to Irans Press TV on Aug. 31.

Nujaba has impacted the Syrian theater, particularly in Aleppo. Last month, Iranian media announced the deployment of 2,000 Nujaba and Lebanese Hezbollah forces to Aleppo to repel opposition forces attempting to break the siege of the city. After successfully repelling the opposition last week, Nujaba announced the redeployment of an additional 1,000 from other positions in Syria to bolster positions in Aleppo. Qassem Soleimani was sighted on September 6 inspecting Nujaba positions in the southern Aleppo countryside preparing to expand their offensive.

Nujabas two other brigades fight in Iraq as the 12th and 30th brigades of the PMF, each numbering 3,000. According to Kabi, Nujaba commands a total of 10,000 men and claim that they have a reserve of thousands more volunteers for emergency situations. Kabi claims Iraqi Sunnis are members of the 30th Brigade, and that they have fought in Fallujah and Samarra. He also sought to stress that Nujaba protects Sunnis, Yezidis, and Christians.

Ideological commitment

The IRGC seeks to identify and nurture zealous, competent militiamen who are committed to the Islamic Republics ideology and will follow Tehrans command and control. For the Islamic Republic and its proxies, establishing an Islamic power block as envisioned by Khomeini transcends national identity.

I say clearly that the Nujaba Islamic resistance is the party of the velayat-e faqih, Kabi declared in a meeting with Khameneis top foreign policy advisor, Ali Akbar Velayati, on Sept. 1. Two days earlier, the Iraqi cleric said that Nujaba is the followers of the line of the velayat-e faqih with the leadership of Grand Ayatollah Khamenei, and will be present wherever the Axis of Resistance needs it. The militia leader called Khamenei a divine blessing for Iraq. Kabi repeated this line several times during his latest trip.

His devotion to Iran and its Supreme Leader has manifested itself in public in the past. Last year, he declared that he would overthrow Iraqs government if ordered by Khamenei.

Kabis reference to Khamenei as Grand Ayatollah further underscores his loyalty. Khamenei is not recognized by the Shiite clergy in Qom or Najaf as a Grand Ayatollah, and his formal Ayatollah status stands on shaky grounds, at best. Khamenei was a mid-ranking cleric and barely 50 years old in 1989 when he was selected among top regime insiders to become Supreme Leader. Officials amended the constitution to allow for Khameneis ascendance, as the leader was supposed to be a leading jurist who is recognized at least as an Ayatollah by senior clergy.

We believe that Iran is the leader of the Islamic world and the velayat-e faqih is the symbol of Islams strength, Kabi said during a meeting with the chairman of the National Security and Foreign Policy Parliamentary Commission, Alaeddin Boroujerdi, on Aug. 29. It is has come in the accounts from the Innocent Imams [12 Imams] that Imam Mahdi will come with an army from Khorasan (province in northeastern Iran), Kabi said.

We in Nujaba believe that a political process must exist in Iraq, but we believe in Islamic government, Kabi told a conference held at a hardline-affiliated university in Tehran on Aug. 31. We will not participate directly in Iraqs political process, but will support some political groups in Iraq, he declared. As a velayat-centered group, we believe that the government must be Islamic, but in Iraq, a new political system was established by the Americans, and this political system is tribal-oriented, Kabi said.

The Battle for Mosul, shift to Syria



Kabi emphasized several times during his trip that the PMF would participate in the battle for Mosul. In late July, the Iraqi Prime Minister approved the participation of 15,000 PMF units following discussions with Hadi al Ameri, head of the IRGC-backed Badr Organization. The Iraqi militia leader told Iranian media during a press conference on Aug. 28 that he could not reveal the time of the operation to liberate Mosul would commence, but that the central government would announce it soon.

We also intend to enter that [citys] center, Kabi declared during a meeting with former IRGC chief Mohsen Rezai on Aug. 28. Although the arrangement may hold to keep militias on the outskirts of major Sunni-majority cities while Iraqi Security Forces and the U.S. military act as the tip of the spear, these militias have played important roles in paving the surrounding areas, and have entered urban centers following the Islamic States expulsion. In the past, these militias have committed atrocities and abuses against the civilian population.

During the meeting with Rezai, Kabi claimed that the PMFs participation in the Mosul operation would foil a U.S. plan to build permanent military bases there. He claimed that the U.S. opposes PMF participation in Mosul because it intends to build such a base. Kabi touted the Iraqi Prime Ministers decision to deploy PMF forces to Mosul.

At a press conference on Aug. 28, Kabi vociferously declared his opposition to the deployment of U.S. forces to Qayyarah Air Base, south of Mosul, in July. Kabi charged that the U.S. deployment happened because of intense pressure from the U.S. and Iraqi politicians sympathetic to the Islamic State, whom he called political DAESH [a pejorative term for the Islamic State].

He also expressed willingness to continue operations until Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor, arguing that a barrier would prevent future Islamic State incursion into Iraq and that it would serve the countrys national security interest. This would also help reestablish a land bridge from Iraq to Syria that has been lost to the Axis of Resistance as a viable supply route since rebels in Syria asserted presence in the border areas in late 2012. Nujaba and other IRGC-backed militias could employ this argument of fighting the Islamic State to deploy to Syria after Mosul.

The Iraqi militia leader also sneered at Turkish military presence near Mosul despite this past summers coup detat. Right now, the [PMFs] priority is the operation to liberate Mosul, Kabi told Iranian media, after this operation we will target Turkish forces occupying Iraqs soil. Abu Mahdi al Muhandis, the head of PMF, has also vowed that Mosul would not be left for Turkey.

Warm reception in Tehran

Kabi has met several top-ranking Iranian government officials, most of whom are close to Khamenei. The Iranian media has not reported on whether Khamenei has met with Kabi, though the Iraqi cleric told the media that he had come to Tehran to pay his respects to the leader and express gratitude for his support. The media does not report on covert meetings with IRGC commanders including Soleimani. Nonetheless, it is almost certain that Kabi met with senior Guard commanders.

Iranian officials vowed to continue supporting Nujaba and stressed the territorial integrity of Iraq. Both Kabi and Iranian officials acknowledged the long fight ahead in Iraq and Syria.

Kabi repeatedly propounded his anti-American positions. He boasted that his forces attacked US forces during the Iraq War. Kabi accused the US of being two-sided, fighting the Islamic State while also supporting the group. Kabi also blasted Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Qatar for their involvements in Iraq and Syria, accusing them of supporting extremist groups.

Iranian media reported that Kabi met with Saeed Jalili, the former presidential candidate who is the representative of the supreme leader in the Supreme National Security Council, on Aug. 27. Jalili is close to Khamenei, who chairs the council.

Kabi and Jalili discussed ongoing operations in Aleppo and upcoming operations for Mosul. Kabi reportedly said at the end of the meeting that the successful operation for Mosul would formally destroy DAESH in Iraq, subsequently freeing resources and troops to shift to Syria.

Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani, a close confidant of Khamenei, also received Kabi on Aug. 27. Larijani vowed to support Nujaba with everything, because you are good sons of Imam Khomeini in pure Muhammadan Islam.

We must know that the enemys project in Iraq and Syria continues, and the problem of these two countries will not be resolved with one or two issues, Larijani continued, acknowledging the long fight ahead.

On Aug. 28, Kabi met with notorious hardline cleric Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, chairman of the Assembly of Experts, the body that is tasked with selecting the next supreme leader. Jannati is also close to Khamenei.

The blood of your martyrs will support you, Jannati declared, and we from the supreme leader to the government and nation of Iran will support you.

Kabi also met with Ali Askari, the head of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), Irans national media, on August 28. Askari stressed the importance of the media and its effects on the resistance front, and presented Kabi with a gift from the state outlet.

Kabi held a press conference at Tasnim News Agency, a media outlet affiliated with the IRGC, on August 28. He thanked the Islamic Republic for all its support and announced that Imam Khomeini was hundreds of years ahead of his generation.

Kabi praised Soleimani, proclaiming that we need Qassem Soleimanis presence, who has been involved in all operations as an advisor. He reiterated that Soleimani was invited to Iraq per the formal invitation of Baghdad. Indeed, the Iraqi government this past summer publicly recognized Soleimani as an official adviser

They relied on Damascus fall within a few months, but it has been a few years that it resists with the help of some countries, Kabi said. That the Syrian government has remained is a big victory, he proclaimed.

Kabi also discussed Nujabas links to Lebanese Hezbollah. There have been strong relations with [Lebanese] Hezbollah since the beginning of Iraqs occupation, and many of our forces have been trained by Hezbollah, and today we receive advising services from them, Kabi announced. The official spokesman for Nujaba declared in March that Hezbollah and Harakat al Nujaba are the twins of resistance.

On Monday, Aug. 29, Kabi met with Alaeddin Boroujerdi, the chairman of the National Security and Foreign Policy Parliamentary Commission. If the Hashd retreats from Iraqs western areas, DAESH terrorists will once again return to Iraq. Liberating Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor in Syria are national security issues for Iraq, Kabi announced.

Kabi on August 29 also gave an interview to Al-Kowsar, Tehrans Arabic-language television channel that broadcasts to Arabic-speaking audiences across the globe.

You DAESH have damaged Islam, but we are the representative of pure Islam, Kabi declared. You have been defeated in history, but we have been victorious, and will be victorious again.

On the evening of Aug. 30, Kabi met with Ayatollah Mohsen Araki, secretary general of the World Forum for the Proximity of Islamic School of Thoughts. The organization was established in 1990 by supreme leader Khamenei to reconcile differences between various Islamic sects. The forum has clerical representation and members in several countries.

Kabi predicted that the Islamic State would continue to have an insurgent presence in Iraq following its anticipated defeat in Mosul. Kabi aims to push back against accusations that Nujaba is a sectarian group. Kabi emphasized Nujabas open embrace to Sunnis, claiming that the group established a Directorate for Religions and Proximity of Schools [of thought]. According to Kabi, Nujaba supports moderate Sunni clerics and takes them to areas recently captured from the Islamic State to speak with locals. Kabi also claimed that Nujaba has opened Sunni mosques in Shiite areas and protects them.

Kabi held a conference at hardline-affiliated Imam Sadegh University on Aug. 31. Without Tehrans support, Kabi told the audience, Damascus and Baghdad would have fallen. Kabi was optimistic about the end of the war in Syria. America and Israel are behind the crisis in Syria, he claimed, creating this crisis was aimed at damaging the Axis of Resistance, so a pro-Israeli government is established in Syria. Kabi told the audience that the Syrian war may take a long time due to the support of Western and Arab countries for the anti-Assad opposition.

On August 31, the Iraqi militia leader gave a special prime-time interview on state media. The presenter introduced Kabi and Nujaba as having prominent roles in major operations and as a serious opponent of the presence of the US, accusing it of supporting the Islamic State.

Kabi again thanked the Islamic Republics support, calling it the center of the Axis of Resistance of the Oppressed in the world. He said one of the duties of resistance groups is to travel to Iran from time to time to thank and brief the the officials and nation of Iran and the great leader of the revolution who has always supported the resistance on field developments in Syria and Iraq. He said that the PMF benefits from Irans advisory support.

We believe that Hashd forces must formally enter Syrias soil following the liberation of Mosul and liberate Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor to preserve Iraqs national security, Kabi declared.

On Sept. 1, Kabi met with Ali Akbar Velayati, the top foreign policy adviser to the supreme leader. He thanked Iranian officials for receiving us with open arms.

The main goal of my trip with Iranian officials was to inform them about the latest developments in Iraq and Syria and thanked the great leader of the revolution and the honorable nation of this country, he said. The Islamic Republic of Iran is the leader of the worlds oppressed, and this system has stood alongside the Iraqi resistance against the occupiers and DAESH, proclaimed Kabi.

Resistance forces have been trained by Iran. It has armed these groups, and Iraqi resistance forces have achieved many victories so far, claimed Kaabi.

Velayati thanked Kaabi, vowing to continue supporting the territorial integrity of Iraq and accused America of seeking Iraqs disintegration. He stressed the strategic importance of Iraq and Syria to the Islamic Republic, which form the Axis of Resistance. If Iran, Iraq, and Syria do not cooperate, Lebanon cannot be saved, and this means the chain of resistance, Velayati said, and if, God forbid, one of these rings breaks, the whole chain is broken.

On Sept. 1, Kabi traveled to the holy city of Mashhad and met with an important cleric, Hojjat al Eslam Ebrahim Raisi.

A close confidant of Khamenei, Raisi is the trustee of the Imam Reza Shrine Foundation, which is not only Irans most sacred religious shrine but also by some reckoning the Islamic Republics biggest and richest business empire.

The foundation answers only to the supreme leader and runs its accounts independent from the state, as does the supreme leaders financial conglomerate. According to Western intelligence reports, this is one of several foundations that provides financial support to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Abdallah Safieddine, Hezbollahs representative in Iran, told a reporter that his organization receives funding directly from the supreme leader and his conglomerate. Kabi and other IRGC-backed militias in Iraq have access to millions of dollars to finance a wide range of activities, from military operations to social services.

Kabi boasted about Nujabas fight against US forces during the Second Gulf War, claiming its fighters undertook 3,000 operations  and the footage of these operations exist. He stressed Irans support of resistance groups.

The Nujaba Islamic resistance warriors were trained and equipped by Iran, and attained much experienced in the field of combat, Kabi noted. He also highlighted militias use of soft power to gain influence.

After the exit of American forces from Iraq, Kabi said, we started social activities in the country so to confront cultural backwardness in Iraq with intellectual and cultural resistance.

The wide range of Kabis meetings in Iran with wealthy foundation trustees, senior parliamentarians, advisers, diplomats, and commanders reflect the multiple dimensions of Iranian support. One must look beyond the battlefield to understand the Iranian-backed networks influence in Iraq, especially for the post-Islamic State era. The organizations that the IRGC-backed militias model themselves after, like the IRGC and Lebanese Hezbollah, derive significant portions of their power from non-military activities. The broad range of their activities complement each other.

Kabis high-profile visit to Iran underscores his ideological commitment to the Islamic Republic, as well as the Iranian governments support of its proxies in Iraq. In post-Islamic State Iraq, Kabi and the IRGC-backed network  which are now considered legitimate actors in Iraq  can be expected to contribute to consolidating Tehrans sphere of influence in Iraq and the Middle East.

Amir Toumaj is a independent analyst and contributor to FDD's Long War Journal.

Are you a dedicated reader of FDD's Long War Journal? Has our research benefitted you or your team over the years? Support our independent reporting and analysis today by considering a one-time or monthly donation. Thanks for reading! You can make a tax-deductible donation here.
Luke Air Force Base held a memorial today to remember the events of September 11, 2001 and to honor those who lost their lives during the terror attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and Shanksville, Penn., marking the 15th anniversary of the attacks.

Military personal and civilians gathered at the flight line control tower and held vigil as well as spoke about the events that transpired on that fateful day.

The sound of bagpipes played as the colors posted and then the emcees gave the timeline of events.

 8:46 am  Hijackers aboard American Airlines Flight 11 crash the plane into floors 93-99 of the North Tower of the WTC, killing everyone on board and hundreds inside the building.

 8:47 am  Within seconds, NYPD and FDNY forces dispatch units to the WTC, while Port Authority Police Department officers on site begin immediate evacuation of the North Tower.

 9:03 am  Hijackers crash United Airlines Flight 175 into floors 75-85 of the WTCs South Tower, killing everyone on board and hundreds inside the building

 9:37 am  Hijackers aboard American Airlines Flight 77 crash the plane into the western facade of the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., killing 59 aboard the plane and 125 military and civilian personnel inside the building.

 9:59 am  The South Tower of the WTC collapses.

 10:07 am  Passengers and crew members aboard the hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 mount an attempt to retake the plane. In response, hijackers deliberately crashed the plane into a field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, killing all 40 passengers and crew aboard.

 10:28 am  The WTCs North Tower collapses, 102 minutes after being struck by Flight 11.

During a moment of silence, Airmen unfurled a giant American flag spanning more than 3 stories from the catwalk of the flight control tower. Afterword, the memorials guest speakers took the stage to recount their personal experience on that day.

I was a staff sergeant at the time of the attacks and everything changed in a single day, said Chief Master Sergeant Todd Kirsch, 56th Mission Support Group command chief. We went from fighting for deployments to counting more deployments than I have fingers. I am proud to be standing here with the Airmen who joined after 9/11. I am proud of all of you who stand the line to protect this country. We have all decided this is the greatest nation in the world and we are going to stand here and protect it and if that concludes our lives then that is the way it is. I am extremely proud to stand up here and speak to you, but I am even more proud to be serving in the United States Air Force and to serve with every one of you.

The last alarm tradition was carried out by the chiming of a bell with three rings per set, representing the completion of a firefighters tasks and that the firefighters were coming home for the final time.

After the ceremony concluded, everyone in attendance lined up to receive one of the 411 first responder names to carry the nine stories to the top of the control tower where they were collected and laid across the top of the American Flag draped on the tower.

It is humbling to know that we only went nine stories today when the first responders climbed 10 times the amount of stairs we just did, said Col. Robert Sylvester, 56th MSG commander. Those men and women were running into hell, but not a single one of them looked back. They put others before themselves and sacrificed their own lives in pursuit of rescuing the men and women trapped in the towers and we should take not just today, but every day to reflect on those sacrifices.

After the flight tower cleared, firefighters from the 56th Civil Engineer Squadron and the 944th CES cleared the building and begin to take off all of their gear, having made the climb just as the first responders did on 9/11, wearing almost everything to the top.

I came to this country 18 years ago from Venezuela and I found myself wanting to serve this country as my new home, said Staff Sgt. Nairi Cornejo, 944th CES firefighter. Climbing those stairs gave me a brief glimpse into what those firefighters went through on that day and it just broke my heart. Now I have an idea of just how bad it was going all the way to the top of those towers.

As the last few Airmen began to leave the area, and old glory floated on the breeze, a few Airmen stood looking at the flag and the banner of names at the top.

I felt such a sense of camaraderie climbing those stairs, said Tech Sgt. James Jonathan Hickman, 56th CES firefighter. I must have passed 30 or 40 other people on just one trip. I hope we touched everyones hearts and gave them a sense of closure with the ability to honor our fallen and to remember that day.

We shall never forget the 2,977 victims who lost their lives on September 11, 2001.
Culture / Events

Sep 09, 2016 | By Vimi Haridasan

The list of sponsors at the upcoming SINGAPORE RENDEZVOUS is looking to be not only impressive but also exciting as the weeks go by. The luxury lifestyle event to be held at Raffles Marina in October, now calls LEICA its official photography partner.

With this new appointment, visitors can look forward to capturing some of the finest and most exciting moments at the event. Along with this, LEICA is set to curate a unique photographic showcase at the Raffles Marina as well as conduct photography workshops on tricks and tips. Expect to walk away with the skills and knowledge of taking some of the finest quality pictures.

Serving as the backdrop, Raffles Marina is an ideal location to put into practice the tricks imparted by the experts at LEICA. Those heading down to SINGAPORE RENDEZVOUS will also stand a chance to win exclusive LEICA products by participating in fun competitions and lucky draws.

This story is also available in Bahasa Indonesia. Read it here: SINGAPORE RENDEZVOUS Menyambut LEICA
To share with friends and brethren The Gospel of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ (the Everlasting Gospel), and to prepare a people to stand when He returns to redeem His remnant. Also, to share relevant information of current events, and to show how they relate to prophecy; By means of articles, editorials, opinions, scripture readings, and poetry.

Disclaimer

Endrtimes does not necessarily endorse or agree with every opinion expressed in every article/video posted on this site. The information provided here is done so for personal edification; It's up to the reader to separate truth from error, and to examine everything (like the Bereans) from a Biblical perspective. Let the Holy Scriptures be you guide! - - - FAIR USE NOTICE: These pages/videos may contain copyrighted () material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Such material is made available to advance understanding of ecological, POLITICAL, HUMAN RIGHTS, economic, DEMOCRACY, scientific, MORAL, ETHICAL, and SOCIAL JUSTICE ISSUES, etc. It is believed that this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior general interest in receiving similar information for research and educational purposes.
Stopping by Macys for some holiday shopping this year? You might be able to pick up an Apple Watch or a brand-new iPhone 7.

Following the launch of new Apple products on Wednesday, Macys has announced plans to sell Apple gear at 180 of its retail locations across the country. The iPhone, Apple Watch, MacBook, and other Apple accessories are expected to be available at Macys just in time for Thanksgiving and the holiday shopping season this year. Macys president Jeff Gennette made the announcement during a call with analysts on Thursday, according to Fortune.

It will be in all of our top buildings for the holiday season, said Gennette, who will become Macys CEO in early 2017.

On Wednesday, Apple unveiled the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus line, a new Apple Watch Series 2, and a special Nike-branded Watch edition. These products, along with the original Apple Watch Series 1, are expected to be sold at Macys.

Susie Ochs Apples ceramic Apple Watch Series 2

During the call, Gennette also said that this retail partnership with Apple will also include opening up Apple pop-up shops within larger Macys stores. The first of such Apple stores will open up inside Macys 1 million square-foot flagship at Herald Square in New York City. This partnerships makes Macys the first department store to house an Apple store. Previously, Apple products like the iPhone and the Apple Watch had been available at other big retailers like Target and Best Buy.

The Apple Watch, in particular, is a hot seller at Best Buy. Last year, the electronics store started selling the Watch in only 100 locations. Demand was so high, however, that Best Buy immediately expanded to selling it in 1,050 stores well before the holidays.

The story behind the story: According to Fortune, this Apple partnership is in line with Macys new strategy to bring other brands inside its confines. Previously, Macys has hosted pop-ups from Best Buy and the Sunglass Hut. Macys is trying to use Apples highly popular products to lure customers inside its mega-stores as it continues to struggle. Sales have fallen for six straight quarters. This year, the company has shut down 40 stores and announced that it will be shutting down 100 more in 2017, leaving only 650 locations.
Theresa May has announced that she wants to remove the obstacles that are currently in place to allow new selective schools from opening or current non-selective schools from converting.

In a speech today (Friday) about school reforms across Britain, the Prime Minister stated her intentions for schools to help the country become a meritocracy.

The debate over lifting the law preventing more grammar schools from opening has been rumbling on for years, with some people fearing that the change would see schools return to a binary system or become a system that is unfair for families on a lower income.

Mrs Mays proposals hope to pave the way to develop more good or outstanding schools in the country, and to become more accessible for poorer families, with grammar schools having to accept a certain number of students from less privileged backgrounds.

The Prime Minister said: I want to stop restrictions to expand selective schools and in return they will contribute reasonably to help all in education.

"They could, as a condition, be asked to establish a good new non-selective school or open a good feeder school, or might partner a non-selective school and sponsor it to allow pupils to attend certain subjects.

The government will be making 50million available to assist the schools looking for expansion or conversion.

Mrs May added: I want this country to be a meritocracy. This is the plan to deliver more great schools and set Britain on the path to be the great meritocracy it can be.

Update 2.31pm: Councillor Natasha Airey, the Royal Boroughs cabinet member for children's services, says: "The Royal Borough continues to invest in education of all types in the borough and we want to provide parents with choice when deciding on schooling for their children.

Today's announcement has opened up opportunities for the council to consider and review how we support the school system to develop further opportunities for our residents.

Hundreds of our children go outside the borough to attend a number of grammar schools every day. In the coming months we will work with all schools interested in taking up the opportunities today's announcement offers them including continuing our aspiration for expansion of grammar provision.

We, along with our growing population, continue to value parents having choice and equal opportunities in education.



"We want all schools to be outstanding in our borough, we have recently invested over 30million into our secondary school estate and we continue to support all schools in delivering their plans to secure outstanding education, particularly for those from disadvantaged family backgrounds.

We will continue to work on the opportunities that Theresa May set out in her speech with our schools.



"As referred to by the Prime Minister, Eton College sponsors one of our local free schools, Holyport College, which has a commitment to providing education opportunities for local pupils and those needing additional support such as children in care and pupil premium.

The school enables pupils from a diverse range of backgrounds to have access to Eton's facilities to enhance the educational development on the children attending and this is an area they will continue to work on.

The education proposals announced today presents are in line with our commitment to secure excellence in education for all borough residents.
Home > Archives (2006 on) > 2016 > Modis Visit to Vietnam: A New Push to Indias Act East Policy

by Rajaram Panda

Introduction

On his way for the G-20 summit meeting in Hangzhou, China, and East Asia Summit and related Summits at Vientiane, Laos, Prime Minister Narendra Modi made his maiden visit to Vietnam to hold wide-ranging talks with the countrys top leadership on ways to bolster strategic bilateral ties in key areas like defence, security, counter-terrorism and trade. This marked the first by an Indian Prime Minister to visit Vietnam in 15 years. Modi was the fourth Indian Prime Minister to visit Vietnam in over five decades, and therefore a significant landmark in the burgeoning relationship between the two countries. The last Prime Minister of India to visit Vietnam was the then Premier, Atal Behari Vajpayee, in 2001.

The relationship between India and Vietnam is not recent; it dates back to over 2000 years when Indian traders travelled to Vietnam for commerce, taking along with them Buddhist monks to Vietnamese shores where they soon got assimilated with the local population and contributed to the local economy. The influence of Buddhism also dates back to that period. The Cham community of today and the presence of Hindu temples is a testimony to the historical links that both the countries share. The relation-ship between the two countries witnessed many common historical experiences such as fighting against the colonial rule and standing by each others sides in times of need. This relationship is therefore time-tested and has become robust over the years. Prime Minister Modis visit is yet another milestone in this long journey of building a strong partnership between the two countries. In recent times, there have been also other high-level visits, including that of the President, Defence and External Affairs Ministers among others.

A Host of Agreements

A host of issues were discussed and agreements reached. These covered economy, strategy, defence, education and culture. The following were the major highlights: (i) upgrading the India-Vietnam relationship to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, which Hanoi only has with Moscow and Beijing; (ii) announcement of a new defence credit line of $ 500 million by India; (iii) signing of a contract for fast offshore patrol vessels by L&T with Vietnam Border Guards under $ 100 million from the defence credit line given; (iv) agreement on cooperation in outer space for peaceful purposes; (v) Navy-to-Navy agreement on White Shipping information sharing; (vi) memorandum of understanding on cyber security; (vii) agreement for India to assist Vietnam participate in UN Peacekeeping; (viii) grant of $ 5 million for a software park; (ix) MoU on cooperation in the IT sector; (x) MoU on setting up Centre for Excellence in Software Development; (xi) postgraduate and doctorate scholarships for Buddhist and Sanskrit studies in India; (xii) protocol on double taxation avoidance agreement; (xiii) MoU for mutual recognition of standards; (xiv) MoU on cooperation in health and medicine; (xv) MoU between the Indian Council for World Affairs and Vietnamese Academy of Social Sciences; and (xvi) protocol on celebration of the 45th anniversary of India-Vietnam diplomatic relations.

Besides holding extensive talks with his counterpart, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc, and President Tran Dai Quang, Modi also met Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong and National Assembly Chairperson Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan. The talks ranged from defence, security, science and technology, trade and culture and the above-mentioned agreements reached. Modi also paid homage to the revered leader, Ho Chi Minh, whom he described as one of 20th centurys tallest leaders, and laid a wreath at the Monument of National Heroes and Martyrs, besides visiting the Quan Su Pagoda.

Ho Chi Minhs role in Vietnams liberation movement is legendary. This iconic figure travelled to India and built strong bonding with the people of India and found common grounds in the fight for liberation. This is echoed even today. Not only has Vietnam a city named after him, he is also called as the Vietnamese George Washington. After his death, his embalmed body, kept in a mausoleum in the capital city of Hanoi, is worshipped by the Vietnamese people and it was therefore apt for Modi to lay a wreath there.

Defence Cooperation

Apart from agreements on bilateral issues, what emerged as of significance was the sharing of common viewpoints on regional issues that the nations of the region are confronting. Issues of regional and multilateral cooperation were in focus. The thrust of the multifaceted relationship between the two countries has remained towards stability, maintenance of peace, economic growth and prosperity, both bilaterally and also beyond. After coming to power, the Modi Government has rechristened Indias Look East Policy as Act East Policy to inject new vigour to the countrys economic push towards the South-East Asian region. Vietnam is an important pillar in Indias initiative to build a partnership encompassing security, strategic, political, counter-terrorism, and defence collabo-ration in addition to economic ties.

The decision to extend a $ 500 million Line of Credit to facilitate deeper defence cooperation with the South-East Asian nation was in line with the decision to raise the bilateral ties to the level of a Comprehensive Strategic Partner-ship to respond to emerging regional challenges. Modi, therefore, rightly observed that this decision to upgrade the capturties the intent and path of their future cooperation as it would now provide a new direction, momentum and substance to the relationship. Modis extensive and very productive talks with his Vietnamese counterpart therefore encompassed the full range of bilateral and multilateral cooperation. The common efforts are aimed to contribute to stability, security and prosperity in the region. In particular, the decision to construct offshore patrol boats signalled a step to give concrete shape to defence engagement between the two countries. As two major countries in this region, both India and Vietnam feel it necessary to further their ties on regional and international issues of common concern, which was why a host of agreements were inked to serve this long-term objective.

There is more to Indias offer of half-a-billion dollars defence credit than just a part of bilateral defence cooperation. As Vietnam seeks arms boost, Indias credit line provides a lift to Vietnam at a time when it is pursuing a military deterrent as discord festers in the South China Sea. Both India and Vietnam share borders with China and also enjoy large trade volumes. At the same time, both are locked in territorial disputes with ChinaIndia in the Himalayas and Vietnam in the South China Sea with no sign of early resolution. Both India and Vietnam are modernising their defences to be prepared for any crisis situation. Indias defence industry is now open to friendly countries for joint production of equipment and is also promoting sale of its supersonic BrahMos missiles to Vietnam and four other countries. In late 2014 India had made a loan of $ 100 million available to Vietnam for four yet-to-be-built patrol vessels. This time Modi made no mention of the patrol vessels, nor the possible sale of BrahMos missiles. He also did not elaborate on what Vietnam would use the $ 500 million credit for, except saying that mutual defence cooperation would contribute to stability, securities and prosperity in this region.

Economic Collaboration

In the economic domain, it was agreed to tap into the growing economic opportunities in the region. Both countries see enhancing bilateral commercial engagement would complement their strategic objective and therefore both agreed to expand trade and business opportu-nities. Bilateral trade currently stands at $ 7.83 billion and both sides are committed to achieve a target of $ 15 billion by 2020. With this in view, new sectors and thrust areas were identified to give impetus for enhanced investment.

Indian investments in Vietnam currently stand at about $ 1.1 billion and this is expected to be significantly enhanced when the large infrastructure projectTata Powers Long Phu-II 1320 MW thermal power project with an estimated cost of $ 2.2 billionis completed. Similarly, India is ready to welcome investment from Vietnam by creating an attractive and investor-friendly climate. In particular, India would be happy to invite Vietnamese entre-preneurs to invest in its North-East, a focus area in Indias Act East Policy. This is because India is committed to increase connectivity between its North-East and ASEAN and for this purpose has already allotted a $ 1 billion Line of Credit for India-ASEAN physical and digital connectivity.

Besides seeking facilitation of ongoing Indian projectsand investments in Vietnam, Modi invited Vietnamese companies to take advantage of the various schemes and flagship programmes of the Indian Government. Modi told his Vietnamese counterpart: As Vietnam seeks to empower and enrich its people, modernise its agriculture; encourage entrepreneurship and innovation; strengthen its science and technology base; create new institutional capacities for faster economic development; and take steps to build a modern nation, India and its 1.25 billion people stand ready to be Vietnams partner and a friend in this journey. The framework agreement on space cooperation would allow Vietnam to join hands with the Indian Space Research Organisation to meet its national development objectives.

India is also planning an early establishment and opening of an Indian Cultural Centre in Hanoi. Being cultural partners, the agreement also included archaeological support to Vietnam with the Archaeological Survey of India starting the conservation and restoration work of the Cham monuments at My Son in Vietnam. Seen from a larger perspective, the ASEAN, as a regional grouping known for demonstration of solidarity and unity, is important to India in terms of historical links, geographical proximity, cultural ties and strategic space that both share. India views the ASEAN as central to its Act East Policy and Vietnam as the ASEAN Coordinator for India could play a catalytic role in strengthening India-ASEAN partnership across all areas. It was therefore agreed to keep the ongoing momentum in the relationship.

South China Sea Issue

The South China Sea is a major flashpoint in the Asian region. The sea bed is believed to contain precious oil and gas and many Asian nations make claims to their exclusive economic zones to control such resources, whereas China claims it in its entirety and threatens the use of force to assert its territorial and maritime claims. This has created a situation of unease in the region. In the wake of Chinese assertiveness in staking claims, the smaller claimant nations are seeking to bolster their defence preparedness as well as solicit support from nations friendly to their cause. India-Vietnam defence cooperation needs to be viewed from this perspective.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) think-tank, which tracks the arms trade over five-year periods, there has been an almost 700 per cent surge in Vietnams defence procurements as of 2015. Vietnams quiet military build-up, designed as a deterrent, is aimed to secure its 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone in the wake of Chinas assertive claims in the South China Sea. Therefore, Vietnam is in the market for fighter jets and more advanced missile systems, in addition to its six kilo-class submarines it has bought from Russia. The 12 agreements signed during Modis visit covering cyber security, ship-building, UN peace-keeping operations and naval information-sharing are in tune with Vietnams aim to boost its defence capability and India-Vietnam defence cooperation needs to be seen from this perspective.

The significance of scheduling Modis visits to the three Asian countries cannot be missed as Vietnam was the first destination before he reached China because of differences of similar kinds that both India and Vietnam have with China. Besides differences on territorial issues, both India and Vietnam are concerned over Chinas disrespect to the rules-based international order that is contributing to rising tensions in the region.

India has taken a principled stance on the South China Sea issue and its eastern outreach in the wake of the July 12 declaration of the Permanent Court of Arbitration challenging Chinas territorial and maritime claims in the South China Sea region. This needs to be understood in perspective. It was therefore not difficult to discern the growing strategic conver-gence between the two sides as defence procure-ment was a major component of the slew of agreements signed. Naval cooperation too has been progressing smoothly between the two countries.

Vietnams Response to Indias Position on the SCS

The response in Vietnam to Indias outreach was on expected lines. Vietnam lauded Indias principled position on the disputed South China Sea and sought Indias participation in the oil and gas sectors. Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong expressed Vietnams desire to intensify coordination in the regional and inter-national fora and reiterated that India always stood as a friend with Vietnam throughout history and that it was rare to find such a relationship which has lasted 2000 years.

The strategic significance of the South China Sea in terms of the large volume of trade flow through this critical sea route cannot be under-stated. This busy waterway is also of critical importance to India as 50 per cent of its trade passes through this Sea. China is involved in a raging dispute with Vietnam, Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei over ownership of the territory in the South China Sea. The world tribunals ruling on July 12 rejected Chinas claims of having any historical basis. Though it looked a victory for the Philippines, it made China toughen its stance saying that the tribunal had no power to adjudicate. Chinas aggressive stance was further reinforced by the knowledge that the tribunal does not have the authority to enforce its ruling.

India is on the same page as its Asian partner countries on this subject. It supports freedom of navigation and overflight, and unimpeded commerce, based on the principles of international law, as reflected in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). India strongly believes that states should resolve disputes through peaceful means without threat or use of force and exercise self-restraint in the conduct of activities that could complicate or escalate disputes affecting peace and stability.

Chinas Reaction

Chinas reaction was not so kind to Indias outreach to Vietnam. The Chinese media observed that Modis Vietnam visit was aimed at putting pressure on China and to raise their bargaining chips. The state-run Global Times commented that when negative emotions towards China among the Vietnamese people have been rising because of festering tensions over the South China Sea, India by siding with Vietnam and upgrading the strategic partnership is trying to upscale the bargaining position to pile pressure on Beijing.

The paper further commented that New Delhi and Hanoi both wish to raise their bargaining position while having interactions with China, but neither of them wants direct confrontations with Beijing. It further said such a possibility cannot be totally excluded, but it will not play a vital role either. It was critical of India by observing that India is always cautious in dealing with China for fear of escalation and allowing the US to be used indirectly in the latters efforts to rebalance the Asia-Pacific strategy without the US openly admitting it. What the report meant was that there seems to be a hidden strategy between India and the US to deal with China with Vietnam being a cog in this larger wheel. It dismissed the view that if the US and Japan with their strong support could not succeed in piling pressure on Beijing, it would be unrealistic for Vietnam to garner Indias support to deal with its differences with Beijing. China views that the growing India-Vietnam bonhomie and strategic bonding would have only limited influence on China.

Concluding Observations

Going by the historical narrative that comple-ments the current priorities of Indias engage-ment strategy, India values Vietnam as an old friend and a member of the ASEAN grouping and a very important pillar in its Act East Policy. Being the ASEAN Coordinator for India for 2015-18, both are committed to strengthen their bilateral relationship within the India-ASEAN and Mekong-Ganga Cooperation framework. The year 2017 would mark a significant milestone as India and Vietnam would celebrate the 45th anniversary of establishment of diplomatic relations and 10 years of strategic partnership betweem them. Both have plans to organise various events throughout the year to commemo-rate the events.

With the elevation of the existing strategic partnership to a comprehensive level, the security and defence relationships would assume greater depth and intensity. This institutionali-sation may look recent in the journey of relationships; however, in reality India-Vietnam relationship is not recent but spans two millennia of contacts between the two civilisations. The influence of Buddhism and the remnants of the Hindu Cham civilisation stand testimony to the long-tested relationship, which has acquired robustness in recent times. Modis latest visit further contributes to this narrative. There can be no difference of opinion that, as former Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Van Dong described, India-Vietnam relationship was as pure as a cloudless sky.

Dr Rajaram Panda is currently ICCR India Chair Visiting Professor, the School of Economics and Business Administration, Reitaku University, Japan. He can be contacted at e-mail: rajaram.panda@ gmail.com
Home > Archives (2006 on) > 2016 > History is not for Revenge

A study of history of various communities and their relationships can be very helpful for building further on their friendship as well as for removing any suspicions that may exist. Unfortunately a different approach based on revenge has been taken up in some parts of the world. In South Asia this approach has found several followers in narrow-minded religious bigots who promote their own brand of scholar-ship to spread hatred between communities.

When historical incidents (or mythical incidents covered up as historical incidents) are used for spreading hatred, then an important question needs to be raised as to whether these unjust or cruel acts had come in the way of re-establishing friendships with a forget and forgive approach in the past. If this is so, and if our ancestors had themselves forgiven these wrongs, then what justification can be provided after so many generations have passed to re-assert these enmities on the basis of these old incidents.

For example, let us look at the long-drawn- out war between Akbar and Rana Pratap which continued till long after the important but indecisive battle of Haldighati. Whatever bitter-ness may have accumulated in the course of this war during which the Ranas family suffered in the wilderness for several years, the fact remains that in the next generation the Ranas son, Amar Singh, established a friendship on honourable terms with Akbars son, Jehangir. Jehangir made absolutely no efforts to humiliate him in any way, and in fact showed him the utmost respect. Subsequently the scions of the Ranas family fought on the side of the Mughal kings and princes on several occasions. Prince Karan, the son of Rana Amar Singh, was accorded the rank of 5000, which had been earlier accorded to the rulers of Jodhpur, Bikaner and Amber. He was to serve the Mughal emperor with a contingent of 1500. All the territories of Mewar were restored.

None suffered as much at the hands of Mughal rulers and their chieftains as the Sikh Gurus, and yet they revealed their greatness by adopting the attitude of forgiveness and establishing friendship. It is important to note that a few years after the cruelty shown by Aurangzeb to him and their family, Guru Govind Singh did reach a friendly agreement with Aurangzebs successor, Bahadurshah I. If the Guru was so great as to forget and forgive even at that time, when the wounds were still raw, how can there be any justification to reopen them hundreds of years later and to spread hatred on that basis?

At Haldighati Hakim Sur and his Afghan soldiers had fought valiantly on the side of Rana Pratap. On the Mughal side there were a large number of Rajput soldiers led by Raja Man Singh. Still earlier at the battle of Khanwa, Mahmood Lodi and Hasan Khan Mewati had fought on the side of Rana Sanga against the army of Babar.

When the (Hindu) King of Bikaner was defeated by the King of Marwar, his family sought refuge in the court of Shershah Suri. When Humayun was defeated by Shershah Suri, he sought refuge with the (Hindu) King of Amarkot. Akbar was born there.

It is clear from the above examples that the history of Mughal India is not a history of fights between Hindus and Muslims. Kings fought each other time and again, but generally there were mixed armies on both sides. Further, heroes and villains did not exist in any one religion. On some occasions the persons who showed great valour and large-heartedness happened to be Hindus, on some other occasions they happened to be Muslims. In fact the biggest heroes of this age were those who rose above sectarian considerations to spread the message of universal love and brotherhoodpersons like Sant Kabir and Guru Nanak.

In fact there are even instances when Muslim fundamentalists had ganged up against Muslim rulers, and the Mughal ruler then sent an army under the leadership of Hindu Rajas to quell such rebellions!

Describing such an episode Prof Satish Chandra writes: The rebellion kept the empire districted for almost two years (1580-81) and Akbar was faced with a very difficult and delicate situation. Due to the mishandling of the situation by local officials, Bengal and almost the whole of Bihar passed into the hands of the rebels who proclaimed Mirza Hakim as their ruler. They even got a religious divine to issue a fatwa, calling on the faithful to take the field against Akbar. Akbar did not lose his nerve. He dispatched a force under Todar Mal against Bihar and Bengal, and another under Raja Man Singh to check the expected attack by Mirza Hakim.

Shivaji, a courageous, kind and able statesman of medieval India, is one of the most fascinating personalities of Indian history. His manifold achievements have made him a folk hero. It is extremely tragic, however, that the name of this remarkable king has been used in recent times to spread hostility against a community. A person who is a symbol of national integration has been used in exactly the opposite way to spread discord.

It is important therefore to emphasise the historical fact that Shivaji had the highest respect for the Islam religion, and enjoyed the affection and respect of a large number of Muslims in his own time. He assigned major responsibilities to Muslims who occupied important positions in his Army. He built a mosque in front of his palace. He paid his respects to several Muslim saints and saw to it that the Muslim population of his kingdom lived without any sense of discrimination or discontent.

V.B. Kulkarni writes in his book, ShivajiThePortrait of a Patriot: Shivajis veneration for other faiths was as profound as for his own. He showed the highest respect for the holy men of Islam and of Christianity. He looked upon Baba Yakut of Kelsi as his honoured friend and benefactor, while a number of Muslim shrines received liberal endowments from his govern-ment. He showed similar respect and consideration for Father Ambrose when he met him at Surat. Like the temple and the Gita, the mosque and the Holy Koran won his highest respect. During his military operations, he made it his invariable practice to give the Koran to a Muslim divine when the sacred book fell into his hands.

It was due to his large-heartedness with respect to other religions that Shivaji was able to gather around him a strong and loyal force.

Kulkarni writes: Men of all classes and creeds enthusiastically took part in the great enterprise of building a new order in the country. The Pathan from the wilds of the North-West Frontier fought shoulder to shoulder with his Hindu comrade-in-arms in sustaining and strengthening the new creation. The sea-faring Muslim from the Konkan was received with open arms in the Maratha navy and given positions of trust and responsibility without the slightest suspicion or fear that the ties of religion would triumph over his sense of loyalty and obligation.

Similar views have been expressed by another historian, G.S. Sardesai, in his book New History of the Marathas, Vol I: He (Shivaji) never undertook a serious task without first consulting his gurus. Shivaji made no distinction in this respect between a Hindu and a Muslim saint. He honoured all with equal respect. At his capital Raigad he erected a special mosque for Muslim devotees in front of his palace in the same way that he built there the temple of Jagadishwer for his own worship.

Further, Surdesai writes: One thing is quite clear that in defending the Hindu religion, Shivaji was in no way actuated by any hatred towards the Muslims as a sect or towards their religion. Full religious liberty for all was his ideal and the practice in his State. He revered Muslim saints like Baba Yakut of Kelsi to whose shrine he made a grant which is still being enjoyed. He had many devoted Muslim servants and followers who wholeheartedly cooperated with him. His chief Naval Commanders were MuslimsDaulat Khan and Siddi Misri; Madari Mehtar, a farrash (chamberlain) was a servant near his person, who helped him in his flight from Agra. Shivajis confidential foreign secretary (munshi) was one Mulla Haidar. A considerable portion of the population under Shivajis rule was Muslim, but it all lived as contented and free as his Hindu subjects.

Shivaji was thus a tremendous symbol of national integration. But in recent times the name of the same Shivaji has been used by communal fanatics for propaganda against a minority community, namely, the Muslims. Shivaji would have been shocked at such efforts of misusing his name and personality.

Bharat Dogra is a free-lance journalist who has been involved with several social initiatives and movements.
Egyptian investigators have fit together some of the fragments of a Russian passenger jet that crashed over Sinai last October and identified the area where the plane's disintegration most likely began, the commission probing the crash said Thursday.

The Egyptian affiliate of the Islamic State militant group claimed responsibility for the October crash, which killed all 224 on board, saying it had smuggled a bomb onto the plane.

Russia said a bomb destroyed the airliner, which was en route to Paris from Sharm El-Sheikh and Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi suggested in February that the plane was downed due to "terrorism." The investigating committee looking into the causes of the crash has yet to release a report.

"The committee has concluded that a specific part is most likely to have been [the point] where the plane's body began to come apart," a statement by the committee said

Members of the investigation commission and representatives of countries taking part in the probe met Thursday to draw up a preliminary report about the latest findings.

Russia is taking part in the investigation as the airline's country of origin, Germany as the manufacturer, France because it is where the plane was designed, Ireland as the country where plane was registered, and the United States as the engine-maker's country of origin.

"Accurate and specialised laboratory studies will be conducted on parts of the wreckage identified by the assembly process, which will help reach most likely causes for the disintegration of such parts," the statement added.

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Home > Archives (2006 on) > 2016 > The Unloved South Asian

by Apratim Mukarji

Can India get beyond firefighting as a foreign policy goal in South Asia, asks a scintillating analysis of Indias neighbourhood policy.1 Despite occasional prime ministerial announce-ments of henceforth paying special attention to nurture neighbourly relations, New Delhi lapsesalmost as if involuntarilyinto prolonged periods of neglecting South Asian capitals until some firefighting becomes absolutely necessary.

This ad hocism is of course most pronounced in the case of its most important neighbour, Pakistan, giving rise to an impression that India would probably have been happy if this particular neighbour could be wished away. Let us see how long it (Pakistan) lasts, Indias first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, once remarked.2 That not being the case, there is wonderment around the world that even after three wars and one undeclared war, innume-rable armed and diplomatic confrontations, a very difficult neighbourproving increasingly to be risky not only for India but also for the neighbourhood and elsewhere for nurturing and exporting jihadisNew Delhi continues to betray an obvious absence of long-term strategy.

A direct outcome of this singular inadequacy on Indias part is the following editorial, Another missed opportunity,3 a comment that is being used and re-used many times over throughout the parallel histories of the two countries and will probably continue to be used till eternity. It would be quite honest to admit that this particular lament sounds all too familiar to us. This weeks meeting between the Indian and Pakistani Foreign Secretaries in Delhi served as a reality check on the stalemate in the bilateral dialogue... Both countries have now officially confirmed that the talks bore no results. In a world where the US and Cuba have restored ties, Russia and China have formed a close partnership, and Iran has emerged from isolation, it is not too much to hope that India and Pakistan can at least discuss key issues.

Many a time Indias Pakistan policy has been identified as constantly oscillating between hauteur and appeasement, in all probability an indication of weakness. This is something which till the other day appeared to be incompre-hensible to the international community since India was considered far more powerful than Pakistan. As former diplomat, academic and Bharatiya Janata Party leader Prof M.L. Sondhi observed in the early 1970s, this obvious imbalance between the two giving rise to an acerbic relationship could only be remedied if both countries went nuclear. With this becoming a reality, Islamabad has no reason any longer to feel inferior, and should respond more confidently to Indias peace overtures. But somehow the old sense of rivalry between the two neighbours appears to have remained intact, and an uneasiness at the best and an outright hostility at the worst times continue to be the norm.

But surely New Delhi should have enjoyed normal relations with the other neighbours where the terrible baggage of partition does not colour views and policies. Yet, the same prevarication, alternation between warmth and coldness, tendency to self-glorify and impose ones own interest on a neighbour many times over poorer and less powerful than this country continue to guide Indias policy..

Let us review our relations with Sri Lanka, an island-nation always independent of India, as an example of New Delhis uneven and unpredictable policy formulation. On my second night in Colombo in 1990, I had an unforgettable experience. Sometimes I wonder if I shall see Sri Lanka annexed by India before I die, the lady I was sharing the table with sighed, startling me considerably. While in India, I had never come across any such intention on the part of the government. It was also a few months after the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) had left Sri Lanka in mid-1990, totally unloved and under a huge cloud of good riddance exclamations.

This reward came Indias way after it had sacrificed 1165 soldiers in about three years time (1987-90) in fighting the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in the north while the J.R. Jeyawardene Government was left free to fight the second Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) insurgency in the south. There was little doubt that had India not come to its rescue at the time, the government would have collapsed under the twin burden of fighting two deadly insurrections at the same time.

For months afterwards, society ladies in Colombos party circles would reminisce about their morning outings in front of the Indian High Commission on the Galle Road, throwing pebbles at the building and chanting Go back IPKF. When the Little Viceroy would drive out, our chanting would get an additional boosting, the ladies explained. The Little Viceroy was, of course, the redoubtable Indian High Commissioner, J.N. Dixit, who seemed to be completely unmoved by the outpourings of protest against his government.

Fortunately our relations with Bangladesh have been quite satisfactory lately as the Sheikh Hasina Government has been friendly to us. But Indias relations with Begum Zia-led main Opposition party, Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), remains substantially frozen, and it is anybodys guess that once the Opposition returns to power, bilateral relations may well hit rock-bottom. Even Sheikh Hasinas friendship once dried up; on April 20, 2001, India was shocked by the horror of seeing repeatedly on the TV screen the bodies of sixteen Border Security Force jawans slung across poles like carcasses and being handed over to the Indian side. Cut to April 20, 2001 when a terribly shocked India came face to face with the pictures of sixteen Border Security Force (BSF) personnel killed, mutilated and slung across poles like animal carcasses and being borne by Bangladeshis to be handed over to the BSF. The shock was two-fold: India had been dealt an unacceptable treatment by Bangladesh which owed its very birth to this countrys all-out military help in 1971 and this atrocity had occurred under the watch of the friendly Sheikh Hasina-led Awami League Government.

What had gone so horribly wrong with India-Bangladesh relations? The A.B. Vajpayee Govern-ment was virtually clueless. So desperate was its need to learn the truth that the Prime Minister Office in its wisdom chose this writer to make an urgent clandestine visit to Dhaka in the guise of a scholar to ferret out the truth. A visa was obtained within a day and I was instructed to leave Delhi within a few hours. My visit, however, did not come to pass as second thoughts prevailed and the PMO had begun to learn the truth bit by bit.

That truth was ugly, establishing that the initial fault lay with the BSF. Since the liberation of East Pakistan, a simmering dispute had been brewing over some of the enclaves in adversarial possession. The Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) captured the Pyrdiwah village on the border of Meghalaya in a surprising show of strength on April 15 and surrounded the 31-strong BSF post there. Bangladesh claimed that the village was its part while India insisted otherwise. It was in fact an Indian enclave within Bangladesh.

As tension between the two countries soared and the usual dispute-redressal mechanism was put into operation, the BSF perpetrated a blunder. In order to put pressure on the BDR, it sought to capture a BDR post in the Boraibari village on the border of Assam (though the official position was that the operation was the local commanders responsibility and that there was no such order from the higher-ups). This village was very much part of Bangladesh, and the sixty-odd-strong BSF patrol party was soon discovered and captured by villagers and handed over to the BDR. The Bangladeshis living in the village had long-held grievances against the BSF which had often fired at and killed them for illegal entry into India; so this was their chance for revenge.

While diplomacy came into play and the two neighbouring countries talked to each other back and forth, sixteen mutilated bodies of the BSF men came back to India causing extreme outrage, and Parliament was in tumult for several days. The setback for the Vajpayee Government was all the more galling because the incident occurred right at the moment when New Delhi was setting out to win Dhakas friendship for achieving several objectives. One of these was negotiating for a sizeable slice of natural gas supply from Bangladesh; another was promoting security and economic interests not only in that country but also beyond; yet, a third objective was to secure transit rights for Indian goods through Bangladesh for quicker access to the North-Eastern States. Above all else, New Delhi was keen to settle the land border between the two countries including the vexing issue of enclaves in adverse possession. It was another matter that almost all these issues were finally dealt with successfully a full fourteen years later.

India-Nepal relations were becoming increa-singly strained in early 1989 over what New Delhi perceived as Kathmandus and, more specifically, its royaltys penchant for raising irritating demands. Negotiations were on at the time over agreeing on a new trade treaty; and in New Delhis perception, Kathmandu was seeking to place itself on an equal footing with India which was not realistic and, therefore, not acceptable. While India was pressing for a single treaty to cover all aspects of economic relations, Nepal demanded that two separate trade treaties should be agreed upon. As negotiations stumbled on tricky points, the Indian Govern-ment all of a sudden imposed an economic blockade on Nepal. As many as 19 out of the total 21 border crossings between the two countries were blocked and supplies of all essential commodities from India to Nepal ceased. The Kolkata Port, the only sea route available to Nepal, and all the land routes connecting various North Indian cities to Nepal became inaccessible overnight. The blockade, which was apparently an Indian Government device to teach the aspiring Nepal (suspected to have been instigated by anti-Indian and pro-Chinese elements in the country) a bitter lesson, lasted from March 1989 to April 1990, forcing the landlocked Himalayan country into unending and unprecedented hardship affecting every segment of its society. In hindsight, after the blockade was lifted and the bilateral relations returned to an even keel, it was revealed that behind the surprising and condemnable Indian measure lay its desire to warn Nepal about seeking closer relations with China without its consent. The Rajiv Gandhi Government sought to establish that while Nepal was an indepen-dent and sovereign state, it must respect Indias pre-eminent position in South Asia and act accordingly.

But what happened in 2013 between India and Bhutan was all the more unexpected and difficult to explain. Under the existing trade agreement, the Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) was selling LPG cooking gas and kerosene at special subsidised rates to Bhutan and was compensated by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) in quarterly instalments of fund releases. It so happened that the instalment for the last quarter of October-December 2012 did not reach the IOC during January 2013. The IOC continued its supplies till June and then stopped, and for the month of July Bhutan was suddenly starved of the cooking gas and kerosene. Diesel supplies were fortunately not interrupted, but as every household in the Himalayan kingdom suffered terrible hardships, Indias only unwavering friend in the benighted neighbourhood, Bhutan, knocked at the regional superpowers door in sheer desperation. While the problem was eventually sorted out, it was never clear why this unpleasant episode happened at all. There was no answer to the question whether it was a diplomatic overkill or simply a bureaucratic bungling. Some doubts persisted because over the years and despite the excellent bilateral relations, there are a plenty of examples to show that Bhutan has gradually sought to ease out Indias overwhelming presence over its destiny.

In the meantime, New Delhi was forced to partake of a serial unpleasantness in its relations with the Maldives, a sphere of prickly neigh-bourly experiences. On February 6, 2012 the India-friendly President Mohamed Nasheed was toppled in a coup and was succeeded by an equally unfriendly Mohamed Waheed. While the event exposed a surprising development in a country which was considered to have been on a democratic path after many decades of authoritarian rule by Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, it also showed once more the failure of Indian diplomacy not only to hold on to its sphere of influence but also to expand and build on it. Perhaps a complete analysis of the developments since then was provided by Nasheed himself.

I was sad when the coup took place, Nasheed said, because it seemed to me that India did not understand the seriousness of events in the Maldives. I do understand India has complex issues to deal with when engaging with its neighbours. I think India could have secured an election date much earlier though, had its diplomacy been a bit more forceful. Please dont get me wrong... In my years in prison, I read a great deal about the vision of Jawaharlal Nehru. I think that vision should inform Indias actions.4

Since then, the Maldives has successfully maintained its distance from India; Islamism has been growing steadily, and the country defied India repeatedly by establishing closer relations with China which led in turn to the emboldening of Sri Lanka under the Mahinda Rajapaksa regime to follow suit.

In 2015, Nepal revisited the sins of not listening to Indian reprimands. This time, the economic blockade remained undeclared, but the fact of an Indian hand in choking Nepal by the stalling of supply of essential commodities in the name of a Madhesi movement was too palpable. Ever since the Indian Government literally cold-shouldered what Nepal rightfully considered an achievementthe completion of the prolonged and often jinxed exercise over the new Constitutionand advised, quite publicly, to allow space for inclusiveness by providing adequate representation to the Madhesis, the main minority community considered close to India, the public mood was turning anti-Indian, and the blockade and resultant hardship in Nepal since then vitiated the bilateral relations a good deal.

Let us listen to the sane advice from a seasoned former Indian diplomat, Nirupama Rao. Nobody denies Indias immense power in Nepal, Rao and Atul Pokharel write. With power comes responsibility. As long as the people of Nepal perceive the outcomes of the special relationships to be unfair, it will be difficult to secure their cooperation. It is up to Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi to change that. South Asia and the world are watching.5 It is important to note that in each of these countries except Bhutan, China has emerged in the last few years as Indias main rival and is expanding its sphere of influence consistently. It speaks little good about the regional superpowers omnipotency that with the fall of the pro-Beijing K.P. Oli Government in Nepal, a major Indian newspaper headlined its story as Olis fall good news for India, blow to China.6

Juxtapose the experiences of Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, the Maldives and Sri Lanka with Indian diplomacy over the years, and one begins to understand why the Indian is the Unloved South Asian.

Footnotes

1. Indrani Bagchi, Playing Yesterdays Game, The Times of India, July 27, 2016.

2. Nehru quoted in B.K. Nehrus memoirs, Nice Guys Finish Second, Penguin Books, New Delhi, 1997.

3. The Hindu, April 29, 2016.

4. Interview to The Hindu, April 20, 2012.

5. The Hindu, October 17, 2015.

6. TheTimes of India, July 25, 2016.

Apratim Mukarji is an analyst of Central and South Asian affairs.
Home > Archives (2006 on) > 2016 > The Story of J&Ks Accession to India

by Praveen Davar

Sixtynine years after the State of Jammu and Kashmir acceded to India questions are still asked as to why India accepted a ceasefire and why its Army was not allowed to evict the Pakistani raiders from the other side of the LoC which since became PoK and the Gilgit-Baltistan area. This brief article attempts to trace the origin of the dispute and answer these oft-raised questions. Before doing so it is important to know that both the Indian and Pakistan armies during the period were headed by British Generals. While M.A. Jinnah, as the Governer- General of Pakistan, was the supreme authority for Pakistan, Lord Mountbatten, as the Governer-General of India, was the Chief of Indias Defence Committee comprising Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Home Minister Sardar Patel and Defence Minister Baldev Singh. All decisions on J&Kaccession, sending troops, reference to the UN, ceasefire etc.were taken by the Defence Committee.

As for the other princely states, it was open to the ruler of Jammu and Kashmir, a state which was contiguous to both India and Pakistan, to sign the Instrument of Accession and join it to either Dominion. All the princely states, except J&K, Hyderabad and Junagadh, acceded to India or Pakistan by August 15, 1947. Maharaja Hari Singh, the ruler of Jammu and Kashmir, delayed his decision as it was for him not an easy decision: his state was contiguous to both Dominions and, while he was a Hindu, his subjects were predominantly Muslim. He sought to enter into a standstill agreement with each Dominion in accordance with the Indian Independence Act, which, while terminating the suzerainty of the British Crown, had provided for the continuance of certain existing arrange-ments pending the establishment of permanent relations.

The rulers offer was conveyed in identical terms to both the Dominions on August 12, 1947. Pakistan agreed to have a standstill agreement on communications, supplies and postal and telegraphic arrangements. The Government of India requested the ruler to send a representative of his government to negotiate and settle the terms of the Standstill Agreement and expressed their desire for the maintenance of existing arrangements and administrative arrangements. Pakistan acted beyond the terms of the Standstill Agreement by applying economic and other pressures against Kashmir for its accession. Supplies of food, salt, petrol and other essential commodities were cut-off, and so also the only rail link with the state. Tribal raiders covertly led by the Pakistani Army officers started crossing the frontiers of the state in the third week of October. By October 22, the incursions swelled to the size of a large-scale military invasion. The armed forces of the state were mobilised to offer resistance but by October 25 the invaders had advanced deep into Kashmir and were within a few miles of Srinagar.

The state peoples movement in Jammu and Kashmir had been led Sheikh Abdullah, an outstanding leader, but neither Jinnah nor any other Muslim League leader had taken any interest in the state peoples movement, while a strong bond of cooperation had been forged between the Indian National Congress and the Kashmir National Conference. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and Sheikh Abdullah had formed a firm friendship which was to prove a great advantage for India.

With Mountbattens advice, and under pressure from Nehru and Patel, two days later the Maharaja offered to accede to India and asked for immediate military assistance. V.P. Menon, Secretary, Ministry of States, flew to Jammu and got the instrument of accession signed by the Maharaja on October 26. The emergency meeting of the Defence Committee comprising Nehru, Patel and Baldev Singh, despite initial resistance from Lord Mount-batten, the Chairman of Defence Committee, ordered troops in the Valley to evict the invaders. Operation J&K commenced at first light on the morning of October 27. One after another more than a hundred planes, both civilian (BOAC) and military (RIAF), flew out of Safdarjung Airport, ferrying weapons, rations and troops of the Sikh regiment led by Lt Col Ranjit Rai who was one of the first soldiers to sacrifice his life, but not before his unit had succeeded in establishing a bridge-head on the Baramula-Srinagar road which halted the invasion and saved Srinagar.

According to M.J. Akbar in NehruThe Making of India, Fortunately, the Prime Minister understood what was happening as soon as he got the news and he wasted not a moment in his response. As it turned out if Nehru had dithered even for a couple of hours, Srinagar would have fallen, and all would have been lost.

And what of the Kashmiri people and how did they feel about the war raging around them? Sheikh Abdullah in a speech was effusive in his praise for the sacrifice and gallantry of the Indian Army. He said: The attainment of our dream of independence might have received a setback or its realisation delayed owing to the grim war that had been forced upon us from Pakistan. The blood, which the heroic sons of India have shed on the battlefields of Kashmir in defence of the people, cannot go in vain and is bound to blossom forth as a symbol of comradeship between the people of Kashmir and India. Let us stand by the pledge that India has given us and we have given India forever.

Gilgits population did not favour the states accession to India. Sensing their discontent, Major William Brown, the Maharajas comm-ander of the Gilgit Scouts, mutinied on November 1, 1947, overthrowing the Governor Ghansara Singh. The bloodless coup detat was planned by Brown which was also joined by a rebellious section of the Jammu and Kashmir 6th Infantry under Mirza Hassan Khan. A provisional government (Aburi Hakoomat) was established by the Gilgit locals with Raja Shah Rais Khan as the President and Mirza Hassan Khan as the Commander-in-Chief. However, Major Brown had already telegraphed Khan Abdul Qayyum Khan asking Pakistan to take over. The Pakistani political agent, Khan Mohammad Alam Khan, arrived on November 16 and took over the administration of Gilgit. Gilgit-Baltastan and the western portion of the state (called Azad Jammu and Kashmir) have remained under the control of Pakistan since then. After taking control of Gilgit, the Gilgit Scouts along with the Azad irregulars moved towards Baltistan and Ladakh and captured Skardu by May 1948. They successfully blocked the Indian reinforcements and subsequently captured Dras and Kargil as well cutting off the Indian communications to Leh in Ladakh.

The war in J&K went on for fifteen months, till the end of 1948. On January 1, 1948, India took the issue of Jammu and Kashmir to the United Nations Security Council. In April 1948, the Council passed a resolution calling for Pakistan to withdraw from all of Jammu and Kashmir and India to reduce its forces to the minimum level, following which a plebiscite would be held to ascertain the peoples wishes. However, no withdrawal was ever carried out, India insisting that Pakistan had to withdraw first and Pakistan contending that there was no guarantee that India would withdraw after-wards. By the end of November 1948 Indian forces had recaptured Dras and Kargil, securing the route from the Valley to Ladakh. Simul-taneously they took Mendhar and linked up with the Poonch garrison, so lifting the year- long siege. Having fully secured Ladakh and Rajouri-Poonch, India accepted ceasefire for which international pressure had been building up and could not be resisted any longer. The guns fell silent on the last night of 1948 and ceasfire became effective from January 1, 1949.

Writes Air Vice Marshal Arjun Subramanian in his recently released book on Indias Wars : A Military History: Despite his (Nehrus) tenta-tivenness with matters military when forced to face the grim realities of an impending war and its impact on what was dear to him (Kashmir), many of his early military decisions were spot on. Given the precarious situation at Poonch, his decision to divert a part of the buoyant 161 Brigade southwards, much to the consternation of some of his military commanders, was instrumental in saving Poonch. Similarly, his decision to overrule his British C-in-Cs and allow the use of air power, albeit with some restrictions, against the raiders within Kashmir proved to be a significant force multiplier.

India agreed to a plebiscite subject to certain very specific conditions, the most important of which was that Pakistan should withdraw all its troops and vacate the entire territory of the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir. This Pakistan refused to do and still refuses to do. According to top diplomat J.N. Dixit, An even more interesting factor, which is not widely known, is that Sheikh Abdullah himself was not very keen that Indian forces retrieve the western areas of the state from Pakistani troops. The reason was that he was not sure of his popularity with and acceptance by the people who now inhabited Pakistan-occupied areas of Kashmir. His leadership and his political party, the National Conference of Jammu and Kashmir, did not have the same support in those areas which they had in the rest of Jammu and Kashmir. Sheikh Abdullah therefore endorsed India referring the case to the UN Security Council instead of having to cope with a portion of the state which would have opposed him after the completion of the military operations.

Though the whole of J&K, including PoK and northern areas of Gilgit-Baltistan, rightfully and legally belongs to India, the only pragmatic solution for India and Pakistan is to respect the status quo. This was the essence of both the 1999 Lahore Declatation and 1972 Simla Agreement. The only alternative is war which, in the 21st century, will not be conventional but a nuclear war resulting in mutual destruction. Hence it must be ruled out.

The author, an ex-Army officer, is a member of the National Commission for Minorities. The views expressed in the article by him are personal.
Home > Archives (2006 on) > 2016 > Kashmir: letter written by late Jayaprakash Narayan to the then Prime (...)

This is an abridged version of the letter written by late Jayaprakash Narayan to the then Prime Minister of India, Smt. Indira Gandhi, on June 23, 1966. The letter has great relevance for students of Kashmirs politics and those concerned with peace in Jammu and Kashmir. It was sent to us by Prof Gull Wani, who teaches at the University of Kashmir.

When I was in Delhi recently for a day, I learnt that you had asked Mr Sadiq and some of his colleagues to meet you on the 26th for a review of the Kashmir question. In view of the importance of that meeting, I am venturing to place before you some of my ideas in that connection.

The Kashmir question has plagued this country for 19 years. It has cost us a great deal materially and spiritually. We profess democracy but rule by force in Kashmirunless we have auto-suggested ourselves into believing that the two general elections under Bakshi Sahib had expressed the will of the people or that the Sadiq Government is based on popular support, except for a minority of pro-Pakistan traitors. We profess secularism, but let Hindu nationalism stampede us into trying to establish it by repression.

Kashmir has distorted Indias image for the world as nothing else has done. There is no nation in the world, not even Russia which appreciates our Kashmir policy, though some of them might, for their own reasons, give us their support. No matter how much loud and how long we shout that Kashmir is an inalienable part of India and that therefore there was no Kashmir problem, the fact remains that a very serious and urgent problem faces and will continue to face us in that part of the country. The people of India might be kept in the dark about the true state of affairs in the Valley, but every foreign chancery in New Delhi knows the truth and almost every foreign correspondent. We hope that someonemay be Sadiq Sahib or Mir Qasim Sahibmight one day perform some miracle that would bring about a psychological revolution in the Valley. I feel due to historical events any manner of de-accession of any part of the State is now impracticableno matter how just or fair according to the principles of democracy and secularism. Whatever be the solution, it has to be found within the limitations of the accession.

It is here that Sheikh Sahibs role may become decisive. It was not justice to have arrested him without giving him the chance to clear himself of the charges so wildly made against him. Nor do I think he is a traitor. Godse thought that Gandhiji was a traitor. The RSS thinks that Jayaprakash Narayan is a traitor. Nobody can be held to be a traitor by the Government of India unless it has been established in accordance with the due process of law. It was indiscreet of Sheikh Sahib to have met Chou-en-Lai. But that is all that can be said about it. No fair-minded person would consider that as a treasonable act. When the Chinese had attacked in 1962 had he not written to the Prime Minister expressing our deep anguish? Did he not, on May 25, 1964, publicly rebuke in Rawalpindi Chaudhari Ghulam Abbas for having sought Chinese intervention? In London did he not say at a press conference (The Times, March 19, 1965) that Chinas claims on Ladakh were inadmissible? About Sheikh Sahibs statements abroad I agree that it would have been better if the Sheikh had spoken less and more guardedly. But Sheikh Sahib cannot be expected to be anything but himselfhe just cannot keep quiet. This is a common failing of us Indians. I would add one more quotation from the Sheikh and this is what he said before leaving for his trip abroad in 1965: We might have differences among ourselves. But after all India is the homeland of us all. If God forbid, India ceases to be India and goes down, how others can be saved? We have to look at problems from that angle.

I have been pressing for the release of Sheikh Abdullah as I see it that if there is any chance of this matter being settled, it is with the help of Sheikh Abdullah. I am not hundred per cent sure of thisno one can be. But the odds appear to me to be favourable enough to urge for Sheikh Abdullahs unconditional release. An element of risk may be there, but there is risk in every big political or military decision, in fact in most human decisions, as even when two persons decide to wed.



Here may I digress a little? Nandaji seems to have told Shri R.K. Patil that Jayaprakash is completely out of touch with public sentiment on the question of Kashmir and Sheikh Abdullah. I suspect that more of your colleagues are of that view. I therefore want to offer certain comments.

First, of all some people (mostly crypto-communists and Hindu nationalists of all hues) have created a certain image of JPa silly idealist or a hidden traitorand whatever that man says or does it is twisted to fit that image. For instance, I am supposed to have advocated the giving away of Nagaland to the Nagas, Kashmir to the Pakistanis. I have never even remotely made any such suggestion. But having created a false image it was easy for anyone to throw stones at it. But that did not alienate JP from the public sentiment. Without appearing to be vain, I make bold to say that except for you personally, there is no one in your government who is as constantly and widely in touch with the people as I. Almost daily I address public meetings and invariably my experience has been that I am heard in pin-drop silence and afterwards people come to assure me that they had been completely misled and if that was what I meant, they were for it. The only two of my meetings that were disturbed were in Delhi at the time of my visit to West Pakistan and the trouble-makers were RSS boys whose minds were closed. I am not saying that everyone who listens is persuaded but I am saying that the views I propoundedwith frankness and sincerityare far from being out of touch with public sentiments.

Lastly (on this digressive count), the leaders of this country are not doing justice to the people. It is the job of the leaders to lead, but most of them are too timid and weak to speak out the truth, to propagate unpopular policies and, if the need arose, to face the wrath of the people. For my part, I have faith in our peoplethey are sound and intelligent. If they are given all the facts they can take the right decisions.

Returning to the main theme of this letter, why do I plead for Sheikh Sahibs release? Because that may give us the only chance we may have of solving the Kashmir problem. The Sheikh is the only leader who could swing Muslim opinion in the Valley towards his side about the future of Kashmirwhich will have to be within the limits of accession.

Several questions arise at this point. Will Sheikh Sahib agree to any such status? If he did, would he succeed in persuading the Kashmiris to rally round him? Would not autonomous Kashmir, sooner or later, attempt to secede from the Union? Nandaji tries to cloud the whole issue by asking for proof that the Sheikhs thinking has changed. This appears puerile to me. Keeping people in jail is not the best way of inducing them to be more malleable. Nandaji should have learnt that much from his own experience in British Indian jails. Moreover, supposing the Sheikh were released in the fanfare of the official propaganda about the Sheikh having changed, would an iota be left of his political utility for India? On the contrary, I am sure that on his release Sheikh Sahib would again reiterate the right of the Kashmiris to decide their future and we should have the maturity enough to understand that and not to denounce him as a Pakistani agent. He can never hope to persuade the Kashmiris to accept an autonomous position within India if he did not make it clear that it was they and not anybody else who were to take that final decision.

The more important question is: how would Sheikh Abdullah want the Kashmiris to decide their future? I am sure not by plebiscite. The Sheikh can do that by fighting the 1967 elections on the basis of his agreement with the Govern-ment of India (as envisaged above). Could the Kashmiris people be enthused over autonomy within the Union? I think they could, with Sheikh Sehab frankly telling them that that was the only way they could save their territory becoming a battle-ground for India and Pakistan.

I may be asked: what grounds have I for believing that Sheikh Abdullah would accept autonomy within India? My reply to that is:

It has been known these many years that Sheikh Sahib has been resolutely against Kashmir being merged with Pakistan. He did no doubt entertain ideas of some kind of an independent Kashmir but I believe he is realist enough to realise that (a) no solution of Kashmir could ever be accepted by India, after the last war with Pakistan that involved de-accession of the State, or any part of it, from the Union, and (b) an independent state in that part of the world could have little chance of survival in the face of Pakistans consuming hunger for the Valley of Kashmir and the emergence of the Chinese power in the regiona power that cannot be expected to exercise self-denial in relation to its weak neighbours.

In addition, I have this to say: Sheikh Sahib had told Narayan and Radhakrishnan that he would be prepared even to accept full internal autonomy for Kashmir provided history were not allowed to repeat itself. By that he meant, provided the autonomy was not gradually whittled down and the Centre did not interfere in the States internal affairs... To think that we will eventually wear down the people and force them to accept at least passively the Union is to delude ourselves. That might conceivably have happened had Kashmir not been geogra-phically located where it is. In its present location and with seething discontent among the people, it would never be left in peace by Pakistan. China is bound sooner or later to take a hand in the sport of fishing in troubled waters. With the issue settled to the satisfaction of the great majority of the people, the external mischief-makers would not find a favourable soil for sowing their mischief. Internationally, Indias prestige would soar. No reasonable government would then be able to point an accusing finger at us.

Another question may be asked: will Sheikh Sahib negotiate with the Government of India to the exclusion of Pakistan? Well, he told two sarvodaya friends that bilateral talks with India will be the first stage meaning thereby that later on Pakistan would have to be brought into the picture. Instead of resenting Sheikh Sahibs anxiety to secure Pakistans acceptance of his compact with India, we should ourselves take the initiative and use his good offices in this behalf in the manner found feasible.

I am sorry to have inflicted on you such a long letter. But I felt it was my duty to my country to put these thoughts before you and your colleagues.

With kindest regards,

Yours sincerely,

Jayaprakash Narayan

Smt Indira Gandhi,

Prime Minister of India,

New Delhi
Home > Archives (2006 on) > 2016 > BJPs Simplistic Thinking likely to Complicate the Kashmir Issue

Even after a lot of criticism, the government continues to use pellet guns in J&K against protestors. The recent victims include an eight- year-old Junaid, whose lung has been ruptured, and Adil, who has been blinded. Thirty patients in a day, victims of pellet guns, clearly shows that the government is in no mood to relent.

This reflects the tenor of the statement by Arun Jaitley made in Samba of the Jammu region where he said that militancy and stone- pelting need to be dealt with firmly and no laxity should be shown in dealing with such a situation. Although Narendra Modi, at a meeting with Opposition leaders the next day in Delhi, said that he shared the pain of the Kashmiris. He said it was a matter of distress whether the lives lost were of our youth, security personnel or police. But the PM is now known to initiate damage-control when the situation worsens and starts affecting his political prospects. Rajnath Singh earlier said that instead of stones, bricks and firearms in the hands of Kashmiris he would like to see pen, computers and jobs. Both Rajanth and Jaitley have blamed Pakistan for fomenting the current trouble in Kashmir.

It is unbelievable that the BJP leaders hold such simplistic ideas about Kashmir. Their approach is only going to worsen the situation.

When Rajnath or Modi say they would like to see development in J&K, do they really think economic prosperity is the answer to the unrest in Kashmir? If economic well-being would have guaranteed happiness then the youth of Punjab would not have taken to drugs. Mental happiness is no less important than physical well-being for peace to return to the Valley. That can happen only when a political solution, which is agreeable to the Kashmiris, is arrived at. Most commentators say it will have to be some kind of autonomy.

Jaitley must be asked: why did the women and children pick up stones? Stone-pelting was the peoples answer to the use of force against them by the Indian Government. Jaitley must thank the people of Kashmir as most of them have shown restraint and not picked up guns. Only a small minority indulges in the kind of violence which can kill the security forces. It is a pity that while the security forces can easily save themselves from stones, or at least will not suffer fatal injuries, they have no qualms about using pellet guns against the people with serious consequences. No security personnel is getting killed, except for the two who died initially, in the present round of daily violence. Only the number of civilians getting killed is going up. Kashmiris are right in doubting whether they are considered equal citizens of India, when pellet guns are used only against their agitation and not elsewhere in the country. No sensitive government would use such inhuman methods against their own citizens. Israelis use it against Palestinians but then Israel doesnt have the kind of relationship with Palestine which India claims to have with Kashmir.

The BJP seems to know only one way to deal with the problemto remain tough. The curfew, already the longest in the history since J&K became part of India, has been there for more than a month-and-a-half now. Police have given up. People are directly facing the brunt of the military and para-military. Security forces, which are trained to face the enemy at the border, start treating people like enemies. It doesnt look likely that security forces being present there in such large numbers will help create an atmosphere which can pave the way for normalcy to return. The BSF has been called out after 13 years which is not a good sign.

Modi has appealed for peace to return to the Valley so that dialogue could begin. Jaitley thinks that the stone-throwing protestors are the aggressors but in reality the security forces are the bigger aggressors given their power of ammunition. So, it is in the hands of the govern-ment to bring peace to the Valley. The govern-ment only cuts a sorry figure by blaming Pakistan for even the stone-pelting implying that Pakistan is able to influence proceedings in Kashmir while it has completely failed to have an impact.

Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar has also referred to Pakistan as hell to which a South Indian actress and former Congress MP has given a very rational reply. There are protests against her and an advocate has sought a sedition case to be filed against her. This has now become a trademark strategy of the Hindutva brigade. First a controversy is created. Then if questions are raised about this, the Hindutva brigade will take to the streets and create a scene. Nobody will question the original action. Only the reaction will be attacked. For example, there is noise about registering a case against Akhlaqs family in Dadri but nothing is said about the people who killed him in the first place.

But commendably, Ramya has stood her ground. The irrational behaviour of the Sangh Parivar affiliates will have to be pointed out and questioned whatever the cost required to be paid. They are masquerading Hindu nationalism as the only form of nationalism, which is quite at variance from the idea of nationalism which our freedom fighters believed in. Actually, since the BJP has come to power there is a sheer display of hooliganism in the name of nationalism and it must not be tolerated. Communal harmony was an integral part of our nationalist legacy which is now sought to be dismissed in the name of minority appeasement. Ramya is right. People in Pakistan are just like us. People dont hate each other. It is the governments which have created an atmosphere of enmity. Why should the people be dragged into it?

In Pakistan 48 per cent people enjoy the benefit of improved sanitation whereas the figure for India is merely 34 per cent. The proportion of underweight children in India is 43 per cent whereas in Pakistan it is merely 31 per cent. Hence for certain poor sections of the population Pakistan may not be so much of a hell.

Noted social activist and Magsaysay awardee Dr Sandeep Pandey was recently sacked this year from the IIT-BHU where he was a Visiting Professor on the charge of being a Naxalite engaging in anti-national activities. He was elected along with Prof Keshav Jadhav the Vice-President of the Socialist Party (India) at its founding conference at Hyderabad on May 28-29, 2011.
Home > Archives (2006 on) > 2016 > GOIs Insincerity in Solving the Basics of Kashmir Crisis

MUSINGS

After reading my recent comments in the context of those hitting photographs of the four- year-old Syrian child, Omran Daqneesh, injured during the latest round of bombardments in Syrias Aleppo, my Kashmiri friends said: Today there are hundreds of Omran Daqneeshs in our midst. Our Kashmiri children have been physically and emotionally wounded in this ongoing violence in the Valley, yet the govern-ment is only doing politics. No solutions, no end to this crisis. All that seems to have emerged after weeks of clampdown is that pellet guns could possibly get replaced by some other guns!

Why should guns be used on an unarmed civilian population? Prefix any word of your choicepellet or pepper or powderbut guns are guns! Also, can the fragile human being take the strain of this lethal combinationguns, curfew, crackdowns, arrests and detentions, rationed supplies of food and medicines and, to cap it all, dents in the very connectivity.

The situation in the Valley continues to be grim. Eid is barely a fortnight away but will the Valley be in a positon to observe even the basics of this festival of sacrifice, in an atmosphere riddled with fear and uncertainty, not to overlook the killings and devastation? What celebrations, cry out the Kashmiris, when there is nothing to look forward to in this state of siege! Soldiers all around, new bunkers erected around residential colonies and school premises!

Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti has been giving statements but not a single sentence reaching out to the aggrieved citizens who had been hoping that some level of declarations come up to indicate that a political process would start off. She seems in no mood to accept the core issuethat is, the Kashmiris are indeed angry and want no toffees and nor milk but a political settlement or at least concrete indications that a political process would be underway.

Kashmiris do not want to hear about the happenings in Balochistan or in PoK. In fact, contrary to the hyped propaganda the reality is this: Kashmiris do not want any level of merger with Pakistan, We want nothing to do with Islamabad or with New Delhi! We just want our azaadi so that we can live with dignity on our land and not in this state of siege.

A political way out has to be found to ease the situation. As a retired civil servant, who had earlier worked as an advisor to a former Governor of J&K, told me: Some level of concessions or flexible autonomy will have to be worked out, otherwise the situation cannot be brought under control. This time the Kashmiris anger cannot be contained by mere promises or assurances or announcements of delegations visiting the Valley. Too late for diplomatic moves. Too many killed and injured, too much alienation.

Veterans lament that if the Government of India had been somewhat farsighted and with that taken care to reach out to the Kashmiris with the best possible democratic frameworkwhich would have included freedom to speak out without fear of the aftermath and to live without the overpowering presence of the security forces then anger-cum-alienation of this magnitude wouldnt have engulfed the Valley.

And to know how earnest or sincere is the government in trying to solve the basics to the crisis, one has to read this recent statement by the editor of The Milli Gazette, Zafarul Islam Khan. I quote him... a meeting of some eminent Indian Muslims was held with the Home Minister on August 21 in which I too was invited. Friends in the Valley and beyond have objected to my participation while the current government has no agenda to solve the Kashmir problem. My answer to all was that if my participation can in any way help the resolution of this intricate problem, I am ready to meet anyone and sacrifice anything. A delegation of some Muslim personalities to go to the Valley is being planned. I will not be part of it for two reasons: there are no indications that the government is serious about tackling the issue, and I cannot accept government largesse and facilities to do such a work. Here is the message I sent to the coordinator of this group, Dr M.J. Khan, which sums up the discussions and my perspective and readiness to sacrifice for a lasting peace in the subcontinent, which cannot be achieved without untying the Kashmir knot: It was clear during our interaction with the HM that he is not ready for any confidence-building measures as of now: no readiness to bring the injured youth right away from the Valley, no readiness to immediately stop pellet guns, no readiness to announce compensations right away. No talk of lifting AFPSA from the unaffected areas like north Kashmir and moving the Army away from the inhabited areas. Instead, more troops are being airlifted to the Valley. No readiness to talk to the Hurriyat or Pakistan for a final solution of this festering wound. Hence, personally I do not see any usefulness of visiting Kashmir. In any case, it should be an independent initiative, not one sponsored and paid for by the Home Ministry. By accepting such help, we lose credibility. Personally, I have overnight lost my credibility in the Valley which was built over three decades. Despite this, I am ready to lead an independent initiative if there are people ready to listen and work for a final solution on the lines of or close to the failed Agra agreement. A Nobel Prize is waiting for Modi if he can rise to the occasion. If not, such eruptions will keep happening every few years sapping our energies and defaming us in the eyes of the world.
Home > Archives (2006 on) > 2016 > Kashmir: No Alternative to Dialogue

EDITORIAL

An all-party parliamentary delegation has lately visited Kashmir. It held a meeting in the Capital today. Thereafter the following statement was issued on its behalf:

The members of the All-Party Parliamentary Delegation have expressed concern over the prevailing situation in the State of Jammu and Kashmir. The members of the delegation are of the opinion that there is no place for violence in a civilised society. There can be no compromises on the issue of national sovereignty.

The members appeal to the people of the State to shun the path of violence and resolve all the issues through dialogue and discussion. The members requested the Central and State Government to take steps for dialogue with all stakeholders. The members asked the Central and State Government to take steps to ensure that educational institutions, government offices and commercial establishments start functioning normally at the earliest. They requested the government to take effective steps to ensure security for all citizens and provide medical treatment to citizens and security personnel injured in the agitation.

Since July 8, when a top militant of the Hizbul Mujahideen, Burhan Wani, was killed in an encounter in South Kashmir, the latest round of agitation began and the situation has still not returned to normalcy. The violence accompanying the agitation has left as many as 73 dead, and they include two cops; several thousand are reportedly injured, many of them due to the use of pellet guns by the security forces that has led to the loss of eyesight of a large number of people.

As for CPI-M General Secretary Sitaram Yechury, who was part of the all-party delegation, he said that Left parties want the PM to restart dialogue with Pakistan when he visits that country for the SAARC Summit in Islamabad next November.

He also demanded that the government withdraw the AFSPA from the civilian areas in the Valley. This Act gives the security forces sweeping powers to search and arrest people at random.

Former CM of J&K Omar Abdullah has termed the all-party delegations appeal lame and sterile, saying a sense of urgency to bring an end to the ongoing violence was missing therein.

Omars observation does indeed carry a lot of weight. But the fact is that the drafting of the appeal in itself was an achievement given the hostile approach of influential sections in the ruling dispensation. Take the case of Ram Madhav. A leading figure of the RSS sent by the Sangh to guide the BJP, he is currently the BJP General Secretary in charge of Kashmir. According to him, the call for a political solution to the Kashmir issue was a mere slogan raised by romantic people. He has also said that those not believing in the Indian Constitution must have be dealt with sternly.

He further called for a particular strategic culture in the country. For him political solution has only one meaning: that J&K is an integral part of Indiasimple and final. If the Hurriyat or certain other sections of public opinion in J&K are taking a tough line, so are persons like Ram Madhav. Still one has to wade through such impediments to restart dialogue with all stakeholders since there is no alternative whatsoever.

September 7 S.C.
Egyptian police investigated the Italian student for three days in January two weeks prior to his disappearance and murder

A statement released by Egypt's top prosecutor Nabil Sadek confirmed that Egyptian police had investigat Italian student Giulio Regeni before his murder but suspended the operation after three days.

According to Al-Ahram Arabic website, the prosecutor's statement, which came during his two-day visit to Rome to meet with his Italian counterpart Giuseppe Pignatone and discuss the case, said that police investigations started into Regeni's activities after he was reported to the authorities in early January by the head of Egypt's independent union for street vendors.

Regeni, who was in Cairo conducting research on independent trade unions, went missing on 25 January. His body was found, bearing signs of torture, by a roadside on the outskirts of Cairo on 3 February.

The prosecutors discussed with the Itlalian side the details of the ongoing investigation, the statement said, and provided Rome with a log of the phonecalls Regini received on the day of his disappearance.

The investigations revealed doubts regarding a link between a reported gang, that were killed in confrontations with the police last March, and the kidnapping and murder of Regeni, the prosecutiojn said.

At the time, the interior ministry said the gang specialised in robbing foreigners and announced they found Regenis passport and university ID in an apartment belonging to a relative of one of members of the reported gang.

The police killed all four gang members in a shootout.

Sadek travelled to Rome on Thursday to hold talks with Pignatone in the latest round of meetings between investigators from the two countries probing the murder of the Italian student.

It is the third such meeting between Egyptian prosecutors and investigators looking into the case and their Italian counterparts, after previous meetings in Cairo on 14 March and Rome on 7 April.

Egypt has strongly denied claims that security forces were involved in Regeni's murder.

The Italian government recalled their ambassador to Cairo in April in response to Egypt's handling of the investigation, Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni said. Italian officials have publicly criticised what they described as a lack of transparency from the Egyptian side.

A new Italian ambassador to Cairo, Giampaolo Cantini, was appointed in May but has not yet taken up residence in Egypt.

Egypt's President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi has repeatedly stated in various interviews that the Regeni murder should not affect Egypt-Italian relations.

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Counsel at Red Lobster, Atlassian and two other companies say its hard to register descriptive terms, but that it can be worth the slog in some cases
Thiruvananthapuram: The Kerala State Drug Control department has banned eight more drugs in the state lacking quality. Drugs including TELKOM40, Amoxycillin and Dicloxacillin capsules, paracetamol Tablets, GENIN GDG1504, Amoxyllin Pottassium Clavulanate Oral suspension IP, Metformin Hydrocloride Tablet, DILVAS2.5 Zolerab Tablets were found lacking quality during the laboratory test.

The drug controller department instructed the medical shops authorities to return back the stock and inform the department.
The European Union will continue to work with Turkey on an upgrade of a customs union and visa-free travel for Turks to the bloc, the EU's foreign policy chief said on Friday.

Federica Mogherini made the comment at a joint news conference with EU Enlargement Commissioner Johannes Hahn and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu in Ankara.

Mogherini also said that a political process needs to be started in the fight against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

The issue of visa-free travel for Turks to Europe has become a sticking point in negotiations on a landmark refugee deal. Europe says that to receive visa liberalisation Turkey must narrow its anti-terrorism law, which it says is too broad for European standards. Turkey says it needs the law to fight multiple security threats.

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Bengaluru ; Normal life in the city and most parts of the state was affected today by the dawn-to-dusk Karnataka bandh called by pro-Kannada outfits, to protest against the Supreme Court's direction to release Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu. A few activists of pro-Kannada organisations who tried to enter the departure terminal of the Kempegowda International Airport and the railway station here were stopped and detained by the police. Transport services have been hit with government buses staying off the roads while auto-rickshaw and cab unions have extended their support to the bandh. Metro services in the country's IT hub have also been halted.

People who reached the city from distant places and those travelling towards the airport are facing difficulties in reaching their destination with no mode of connectivity. Educational institutions have declared a holiday today. Attendance at government offices was comparatively less today as officials had informed that it will not be "compulsory" to work today. While some private companies have declared a holiday today, others are making alternate arrangements for employees to "work from home". Petrol bunks, hotels, malls and other commercial establishments remained shut, besides banks services were also hit.

Karnataka Cable Operators Association which is supporting the strike has said Tamil TV channels will not be aired. The bandh has evoked a positive response from various parts of the state including Mandya, Mysuru, Ballari, Koppala, Chikkaballapura, Dharwad and Kolar. In Mandya, the epicenter of the Cauvery protests, agitators have blocked the Bengaluru-Mysuru highway at several places. A section of farmers in the district staged a protest by venturing into the river carrying stones on their head. In Ballari, three lorries bearing Tamil Nadu registrations were stoned by protesters.The transgender community in the district also took part in the bandh related demonstrations.

PTI
Syria's army and its allies have regained control over the whole Ramousah district of Aleppo, a monitor and pro-government media reported on Thursday, building on an advance last week that reimposed a siege on rebel areas.

If sustained, the advance would reverse nearly all the gains rebels made in a sudden push last month, tighten the blockade over rebel-held eastern Aleppo and ease access for the army into government-held western districts through the city's south.

The battle for Aleppo has become the focus both for President Bashar al-Assad, backed by Shi'ite militias from Iraq and Lebanon, Iran's Revolutionary Guards, and Russian air power, and for the Sunni rebels seeking to overthrow him.

In early August the rebel advance into southern Aleppo gave them control over the residential district of Ramousah, a complex of military colleges immediately to its west and the 1070 Apartment Blocks district west of that.

It opened a corridor into the rebel-held parts of Aleppo that are home to at least 250,000 people and had been under siege for weeks, while forcing the government to access its own areas in the city by a longer, more precarious route.

That rebel advance was accomplished by a push from the insurgent stronghold of Idlib, 50km (30 miles) to the southwest by both mainstream and hardline Islamist groups including one that only recently broke its formal allegiance to al Qaeda.

However, on Thursday the army and its allies "managed to restore control over all of Ramousah district", the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor of the war that has a network of contacts across the country, reported.

"Units of our armed forces in cooperation with allied forces control the gas works, the tannery, the slaughterhouse, the post office and the military checkpoint area of Ramousah in Aleppo," a Syrian military source had said earlier.

Parts of the 1070 district and a school remain in rebel hands, the Observatory said.

The government campaign to retake Ramousah and its surroundings, backed by intense aerial bombardment, also included a push on parts of the countryside to its immediate southwest, where the army and its allies took a strategic hilltop last week.

On Wednesday, an Iraqi Shi'ite militia, the Harakat al-Nujaba, said it had sent an extra 1,000 fighters to southern Aleppo to reinforce positions the army and its allies had taken.

On Thursday, state media reported jets had attacked rebel positions and movements around the village of Khan Touman, 7 km (4 miles) southwest of Ramousah, which the insurgents seized in May creating a launchpad to break the siege.

Syria's five-year war has killed hundreds of thousands and displaced 11 million, half of Syria's pre-war population, while drawing in world and regional powers, inspiring jihadist attacks across the world and sparking an international refugee crisis.

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Iraqi authorities are expelling the families of suspected Islamic State members from their homes as the jihadist group loses ground, raising fears of communal violence if people seek to settle old scores.

Relatives of more than 200 militants are being forced to leave Dhuluiya, 70 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, and Hit, 130 km to the west, government and security officials said.

Iraqi forces backed by a U.S.-led coalition have recaptured more than half the territory seized in 2014 by Islamic State, also known as ISIL and Daesh, and are gearing up for an offensive on the jihadists' de facto capital of Mosul later this year. [nL8N1BL0YB]

But the expulsions raise the spectre that the ultra-hardline group's anticipated demise could trigger yet more conflict, if Iraqis seek to root out sympathizers and pursue retribution outside the law for Islamic State crimes they say include massacre, rape and enslavement.

Government forces and allied Shi'ite Muslim militias kicked Islamic State out of Dhuluiya nearly two years ago, but late last month police forced relatives of suspected insurgents, identified through intelligence and neighbours' testimonies, to leave 52 houses in the town, a local police officer said.

"After the liberation of Dhuluiya, tensions started to surface among the residents, especially people who lost relatives because of Daesh's extreme rules," said tribal leader Sheikh Ibrahim al-Jabouri. "We fear a fissure in society. Vengeance against Daesh families will only lead to more death."

Last week, a Reuters photographer observed members of the Samarra Operations Command, which handles security in Salahuddin province where Dhuluiya is located, marking the walls of shuttered houses with graffiti that said "Locked down by order of the Samarra Operations Command," and "There is no place for you among us".

Most of the families have moved in with relatives in nearby districts, said Jasim al-Jibarra, head of Salahuddin provincial council's security committee. Others may have slipped into neighbouring Kirkuk province.

COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT

An official at Iraq's Ministry of Migration and Displacement condemned forced expulsions as "oppressive" but could not confirm they were happening.

"The Iraqi constitution guarantees the right to freedom of living and settlement for each and every citizen," he said, declining to be named.

The United Nations warned that the expulsions, which it said are becoming widespread, endanger civilians' lives and undermine efforts at reconciling the country's minority Sunnis and Shi'ite majority.

"People who may have nothing to do with ISIL are effectively being punished for what a family member may or may not have done," said Francesco Motta, representative of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights in Iraq.

"There are no legal standards applied to the family member who's supposed to be suspected or accused of participating or supporting ISIL and ... the family members are being punished collectively."

In the western city of Hit, 170 families have been given until the Eid al-Adha holiday, which begins on Sept. 12, to leave, a police official and an international aid worker told Reuters.

Hit, which spent a year and a half under the extremists' control, was retaken in April by Iraqi forces who quickly returned most residents to their homes. [nL5N17B31Q]

Mayor Muhannad Zbar said he was willing to empty the city of half its population if they were shown to have links with Islamic State.

With neighbouring districts refusing to host them, the exiles may have no choice but to return to territory controlled by the jihadists.

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Trumps Visit to Mexico Was a Win-Win

BY GEORGE FRIEDMAN : Since the democratic convention, Donald Trump has been behind Hillary Clinton in the polls by about five points. He has a solid base of voters (about 40%). But, he must move about 6%7% to win the popular vote and eke out the electoral.

Trump needs a strategy that allows him to roll back his negatives a bit. He also must win over a few of those who are voting for Clinton only because she isnt Trump.

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto gave Trump that chance. This was extraordinary, given what Trump has said about Mexico.

Pena Nieto invited Trump and Clinton to meet with him in Mexico. Clinton declined; she doesnt have a Mexico problem. For Trump, though, it offered a chance to go into hostile territory, show self-control, and shift his stance a bit.

So why would Pena Nieto offer Trump this chance?

The president of Mexico took a calculated risk

Pena Nieto cant run again. His favorability ratings are in the 20% range. An invitation to Trump would just create a collective rage attack in Mexico. Given all of this, why reach out to Trump? The answer might simply be statesmanship.

If Clinton wins, Mexicos relations with the United States stay the same. If Trump wins, relations could turn disastrous. Mexico needs the US far more than the US needs Mexico. By reaching out to Trump, Pena Nieto might be able to soften Trumps positions and create a personal relationship. (This would be based on the assumption that Trump isnt actually committed to the things he says.)

This meeting had the potential to anger Clinton. But since she is locked into her position on Mexico, Pena Nieto determined it didnt matter.

Trumps talking points

The most important thing Trump said was that he wants to renegotiate NAFTA based on current conditions. This is the position the Mexican government has adopted.

Trump also tied the US immigration problem to Mexicos immigration issue. Mexico has a problem with illegal immigrants from Central America. And Trump made sure to praise the contribution of legal Mexican immigrants in the United States.

Trump linked the issue of drugs coming into the US from Mexico and illegal guns moving from the US to Mexico. Private ownership of weapons is tightly controlled in Mexico. And Mexico has charged that its violence is due to the flow of illegal arms.

Trump also raised a new claim. Countries in the Western Hemisphere should face China together. He said that unfair competition from China hurts all countries in the hemisphere equally.

Trump stuck to his plan to build the wall between the US and Mexico. But he put off the question of who would pay for it.

Heres what Trump gained from this meeting

It was a clever speech. Trump didnt abandon any positions. He reshaped them. He said little that would cost him any of his base. He may have even changed the small percentage of minds he needs to get into the race.

Trump showed he could be in control of his emotions for this meeting. He made (or read) a coherent speech, displaying his grasp of the issues. He even showed some subtlety.

Most people with negative views of him would not be swayed regardless of what he said or did. But the voters he was after are those who hate Clinton and plan to vote for her only because Trump seems unacceptable. For those looking for an excuse not to vote for Clinton, he did the best he could.

We wont know if he swayed these voters until the polls metabolize this meeting and his speech on immigration. The numbers may not move, since most people are locked into their position.

Regardless, it was a beautiful example of a zero-risk, high-reward move. If Trump ever had a chance to pull even, this was it. It may be too little, too late, but he didnt fumble it.

Russian adventurism. An ailing EU. Devastation in the Middle East. These are just three symptoms of a systemic instability engulfing a region thats home to 5 billion of the planets 7 billion people.

In this provocative documentary from Mauldin Economics and Geopolitical Futures, George Friedman uncovers the crises convulsing Europe, the Middle East and Asia  and reveals the geopolitical chess moves that could trigger global conflict. Register for the online premiere now.

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Conspiracy Theories

BY GEORGE FRIEDMAN : The term conspiracy theory has been part of our culture for a very long time. It is often justifiably followed by the word nut. It is also a way to stop discussion, or to embarrass others from believing what is being said. The aversion to conspiracy theories flows from a revulsion at the thought that well-known events are caused by a group of people acting in secret.

If that is true, then the common-sense understanding of why things happen is defective. And if it is defective, then those who are seen as best informed are actually mistaken. They lose their standing, and we are faced with a grim world where important events have dark and unknown causes.

Those who believe in conspiracy theories think that the common explanations are defective. In their view, others fail to understand that the world doesnt just happen. It is forged by hidden intentions. They believe that those who try to explain the world without recourse to secret agendas are either duped or part of the conspiracy.

Believing in conspiracy theories means that the world is not out of control. Instead, things are made to happen. This implies that something can be done to counter the conspirators actions.

There are those who believe that the price of oil fell because of a global decline in economic growth and the emergence of new technologies. In their view, nothing else is needed to explain it. There are others, though, who believe that the decline in the price of oil was deliberately engineered by some nation or powerful financial figures in order to cause harm.

If it is the former, then we are trapped by uncontrollable market forces but at least we understand what is going on in the world. If it is the latter, then the world is controlled by powerful forces that determine the worlds fate for their own benefit.

Conspiracies: from Mundane to Fantastic

We are surrounded by conspiracies. Conspiracies are a normal part of the fabric of human life. I have worked in universities and governments and with publishers. A lot of what we do, as a matter of course, is conspiratorial.

Conspiracies and conspiracy theories can be thought of in three classes. First, there is the routine. These take place in politics, business, families, and other human organizations. Second, there are significant, discreet events, such as a coup or an assassination. Finally, there is the macro-conspiracy, which is about forces controlling broader areas of life, up to and including history.

It is the last two where the debateif it can be called thatabout conspiracies takes place.

Consider the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. Both were ascribed to a lone gunman. In evaluating whether a conspiracy was behind either, the measure must be plausibility. My rule is that the idea of the lone gunmen must at least be a plausible hypothesis.

The Classic

Did Lee Harvey Oswald act alone? It is possible that he got a job at the Texas School Book Depository, heard of the presidents motorcade, and for reasons of his own, fired an old Italian rifle three times in seven seconds, hitting Kennedy twice. He was, after all, a trained Marine. I can imagine him doing it.

There are two problems, however. The first is that Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald. Ruby is described as a nightclub owner. He actually owned a strip club and was a pimp. It is said that he was emotionally distraught over Kennedys death and decided to kill Oswald. Nothing in Rubys past indicates a deep sentimental attachment to anyone, least of all a president. It stretches plausibility.

There is a second difficult piece to this. Lee Harvey Oswald defected to the Soviet Union while he was a Marine. He met his wife Marina in the Soviet Union. Her father was killed in World War II, and she lived with her uncle who was a colonel in the MVD, the Interior Ministrys security forces. She attended Leningrad School of Pharmacology.

Marina married Oswald just a few weeks after meeting him. They were granted exit visas from the Soviet Union and were admitted to the United States with no court-martial for Oswald and no apparent questions about Marina. This was 1960. Nieces of MVD colonels didnt marry American defectors and were not issued exit visas with the new hubby. Nor were they just admitted to the United States.

But in the end, Ruby could have been emotionally attached to Kennedy, and Lee and Marina might have had a magic moment, and the rest sort of happened. But since I cant really explain either story, I can say that the lone gunman theory is plausible, and I buy it pending other data.

Stretching Plausibility

The story of James Earl Ray killing King by himself is much tougher. Ray was a petty criminal in and out of jail, until his fourth conviction when he was sentenced to 20 years in Missouri for stealing $120 dollars. He escaped in1967, bought a new car in Alabama, and went to Mexico. In March 1968, he underwent plastic surgery to his face in Los Angeles. He moved around the US acquiring weapons and shot King on April 4.

Ray then drove to Canada where he obtained a Canadian passport a few days later. He then went to Britain. He was arrested at Heathrow while leaving the UK, when it was discovered that he had an American passport in addition to the Canadian one. He also had $10,000 in his possession.

Could Ray have been the sole shooter? Absolutely.

Could he have broken out of jail, bought a new car, gotten plastic surgery, and traveled the US and Mexico alone? No.

He had just broken out of jail, had no money, and was a small time punk. Could he have gone to Canada and gotten a passport under a false name in days? Could an escaped convict have gotten a US passport in days? Could he have gotten $10,000?

All of this is completely implausible. He had to have had help. Whose help? Thats tougher. The obvious help would be from white supremacists. I could postulate alternatives but havent a shred of evidence.

This brings me to the problem about discreet significant event theories. Theorists move far too quickly into the implausible category. In doing so, they immediately imply that the investigation was a fraud, and the investigators were part of the cover up.

The problem is that its implausible in the Oswald story that so many peoplefrom the Dallas Police Department to the Warren Commission to the judge advocates in the Marines to Soviet intelligencecould have been involved. There is no way to involve so many people and keep the story secret. If you have ever told five people something secret, you know that. The Oswald story would involve hundreds of people in several countries. Some conspiracy theories implode on their own implausibility. Vast conspiracy cant stay secret.

In the case of the King assassination, the utter implausibility of Ray acting alone makes the theorist try to deduce who else was involved. Sometimes it is logical. Sometimes it is an attempt to bring in someone (or some group) the theorist hates. In the case of Ray, I can say two things. First, it goes beyond plausibility that Ray did not have help. Second, the help could have come from an extraordinarily small number of people, even just one. I have no basis for naming co-conspirators. I can guess, but a guess on a matter of such importance is inappropriate.

The New World Order

There is then the macro-conspiracy theory that asserts the global economy and drug trade is controlled by the Rothschilds and the Queen of England (this is actually one I ran across). These theories run into the law of breadth. The more people who know of a conspiracy, the less likely it will remain a secret. A vast and complex conspiracy simply cant be kept secret from all those needed to execute it. They will figure it outand it will therefore become well known. The Hunt brothers once tried to corner the silver market. But the secret came out, because an action so vast couldnt be kept a secret.

Heres another problem with macro theories: if these actors are actually as powerful as theorists think, why would they be afraid of letting people know?

Conspiracies so vast, as to control part of the world, are not compatible with fear of exposure. The conspiracy is either enormously powerful or incredibly vulnerable. It is hard to think of a scenario in which long-term conspiracy on a global scale could survive for that long and then collapse on exposure.

This is the weakness of the theory that the American Revolution was a Masonic conspiracy. Those of the founders who were Masons were proud of it. They used Masonic symbols on our currency and so on. A powerful conspiracy doesnt have to hide things, and therefore, it is no conspiracy.

There is then the final test of power. Someone once told me that there was a conspiracy of stunning proportions that was completely secret. I asked the person why he was still alive. Since he knew of the conspiracy and it was supposed to be a secret and those behind it were quite powerful, I figured he should be dead. But he wasnt. So, either it wasnt completely secret, it wasnt very powerful, or it didnt exist. (Or he actually was dead but that leads to another conspiracy.)

I find both sides of the conspiracy issue wanting. First, there is no general case for conspiracies. Each must be judged on its own merits. But there are people inclined to believe that the world is as it appears as well as those who believe there is a secret world. Both are right, but the full truth is that some things are open and others are conspiracies. Distinguishing between the two is important. In general, I find macro theories implausible. There are too many people involved and too little need for secrecy, if indeed they are as powerful as they say.

The discreet, significant event is where the debate is made. The obsession to demonstrate that all assassinations, as an example, were acts by lone gunmen may be true, but there are tough hurdles in some cases. Dismissal of the difficulties derives, I think, from the psychological need to simplify the world.

On the other side, all things that raise an eyebrow are not proof of a hidden conspiracy. The world is filled with oddities to which some people need to give deeper meaning.

The blanket dismissal of secret collaboration occurring among humans is as neurotic as the total belief of vast secret powers controlling our lives. Both are, in their own ways, candidates for tin foil hats, and each school is equally contemptuous of the other. The former tend to have more prestigious degrees than the latter, but both are equally dogmatic and impervious to reason. The world is filled with conspiracies, except for the parts that are not. And some conspiracies matter. And most dont exist.

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Europes Long War with Islam

BY GEORGE FRIEDMAN : Any discussion of Islamist terrorism in Europe and the refugee crisis has to be placed in a broader historical context. One way to approach this is to think about the Mediterranean Sea, which was central to the Roman Empire.

The Romans occupied both shores of the Mediterranean and created a single integrated political and economic system around it. As the Roman Empire declined, the system fractured. The general outcome was that Christianity was prevalent on the northern shore of the Mediterranean, and Islam became dominant on the southern shore.

Over time, both extended beyond the Mediterranean basin. Christianity extended to the east (into Russia) and north of the Alps (into Germany, Britain, and Scandinavia). Islam extended south (deeper into Africa) and east (into the Indian Ocean basin and the South China Sea).

But the Mediterranean remained the center of gravity and the flash point of their relationship, as it is today.

The Early Years of Christianity and Islam

The fourth century was a critical time for Christianity. Constantine converted to Christianity and declared Byzantium (todays Istanbul) the new Rome. His ascent was bloody, and he used Christianity to hold together the remnants of the Roman Empire. One reason that he chose Byzantium as his seat was to try to control the northern and southern shores of the Mediterranean under one set of beliefs.

From the beginning, Christianity was both a religion and a political force, though never united into a single entity. It was divided into regional churches with different doctrines. The primordial split was between the Roman church and the Orthodox churches of the east.

Muhammed founded Islam about 300 years later on the Arabian Peninsula. Islam was a political religion as well, uniting the faithful and the empire. Islam surged eastward into Persia and westward into the southern shore of the Mediterranean, where it supplanted most of the fragmented Christian regions.

Then a few centuries after Muhammeds death, Islam fragmented into the Shiite regions of Persia and the Euphrates valley, and the Sunni regions in the west, the southern Mediterranean in particular.

Conquering Lands across the Sea

One of the most important sea lanes in the Mediterranean connected Tunisia and Sicily. The main land routes were along the eastern Mediterranean (through todays Israel and Lebanon) into Christian Turkey. Another route was in the west, across the narrow Strait of Gibraltar (from todays Morocco to the Iberian Peninsula).

By the early 700s, Muslims crossed into Spain. They began a conquest that was not ended by the Christians until the 1400s. The Muslims, having consolidated their control of Spain, pressed across the Pyrenees Mountains and moved toward the English Channel. Running on extended supply lines, they were defeated by forces under Charles Martel, grandfather of Charlemagne.

That defeat put Islam on the defensive, fighting to hold Iberia. The advantage shifted to the Christians. Beginning in the 11th century, the Europeans launched a series of wars designed to force the Muslims back to the southeast. After the Crusades failed to hold the land bridge from Turkey to Egypt, the initiative shifted to the Muslims.

The Ottomans attacked and seized Constantinople in the 15th century. They proceeded to push northwest into Europe through a combination of direct combat and alliances with Christians at war with other Christians. They pushed west into the Mediterranean in collaboration with Venice.

The Ottomans and allies controlled the Balkans, seized Budapest, and drove west to Vienna, where they were defeated. Still, they controlled parts of the Balkans until after World War I, and the Muslim populations of Bosnia and Albania are remnants of their presence.

Wars Continue in the Modern Era

In the 19th century, the initiative swung back to the Europeans with attacks on North Africa. The French seized Algeria in 1827 and Tunisia in 1881. The British dominated Egypt in 1882 and then built the Suez Canal.

After World War I and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Britain directly or indirectly dominated the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq, and Palestine. The French held Lebanon and Syria. Most important, the Europeans collectively dominated the entire Mediterranean Basinfor the first time returning to the geopolitics of ancient Rome.

When France and Italy were defeated and the British deeply weakened in World War II, the Europeans lost control of North Africa. They no longer had the power to control the region.

After the United States blocked a British-French-Israeli attempt to keep control of the Suez Canal in 1956, the Europeans ceased to be a factor in the southern Mediterranean Basin. But even without the Suez affair, the French and British were finished. The United States only real interest was in blocking the Soviet Union and taking over the British concern for Arabian oil.

The British defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I fragmented the heart of the Muslim World. That fragmentation gave way to massive disorder after the European mutual destruction in World War II.

Since then, the initiative has been shifting back to the Muslims. At first, they continued to behave as if Europe still dominated them. Then, they became caught up in the Cold War, manipulating the Americans and Soviets.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the underlying realities of the Islamic world began to re-emerge, just as the realities of southeastern Europe had re-emerged when the Ottomans weakened.

The Islamic Worlds Resurgence Today

The Muslim world is still chaotic. Minimal American and Russian forces are struggling to maintain some sort of order in the eastern Mediterranean. However, the forces are trivial compared to the enormity of the situation.

This is one of the periodic shifts that take place between Islam and Christianitybetween North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean on one side and Europe on the other. And for nearly 500 years, the Muslim advantage has been their control of Istanbul.

We are seeing a massive population movement triggered by the chaos in the Muslim world. The unrest comes from the collapse of European power in the region. It also stems from the conflict inherent in reconstructing regional political structures and dealing with internal battles.

The current turmoil is no different than the chaos in the Balkans that continued long after the Ottomans left. Such matters can take many decades or even centuries to sort out.

The terrorist attacks in Europe are also part of this process. Various strands of Islam are battling, and the battle will spill over into Europe, as it has for over a thousand years. Just as European quarrels have spilled over into North Africa.

The Thousand Years War

European unity was perhaps greatest when the Turks were at the gates of Vienna and southeastern Europe was under their heel. North Africa was most stable when the Europeans dominated it.

But the Europeans lack the strength and will to dominate North Africa, and the Muslims are capable of only pinprick attacks, called terrorism. The Ottoman occupation of Europe lasted four centuries, as did the Christian Crusades. The Mediterranean basin is not a place where things are settled quickly.

There is talk of a long war, lasting decades. This is a long war that has lasted 1,300 years. But it has not been simply war. Theres been economic cooperation, cross-religious political alliances, and enough complex corruption to fill many books.

It is an intimate relationship, bound together by the Mediterranean Sea. It is also a bad relationship, with both sides seeing themselves as the victim.

It is important to bear in mind the similarities between the two sides of the Mediterranean. Both Christianity and Islam are political religions, combining internal conflict with foreign adventures. Both are committed to their own beliefs and the falsehood of others.

Yet the two sides of the Mediterranean traded, made alliances across religious lines, and fought each other bitterly. Each feared the other. For Muslims, the memories of the Crusades still generate fear. For the Christians, there is a prayer going back to the Ottoman era and a visit by a comet: Lord Save us from the Devil, the Turk and the Comet.

Obviously, what Ive laid out is an oversimplification of history, but its intended to show the interconnections. I am not making the case that understanding the other side will lead to peace.

On the contrary, I am reminding readers of the constancy of the conflict between Christianity and Islam. And in any conflict, understanding both yourself and the other is the key to survival.

This is one of the oldest wars still active in the worldthe war between the northern and southern shores of the Mediterranean. It was old when Hannibal left Carthage to go north and overthrow the Romans, and the Romans came back to destroy Carthage.

Nothing about this is new, and both sides have given as good as they got. But we are in a period when the initiative is shiftingthis time away from Europe to the Muslim world. Europe has lost its grip on North Africa and the Levant, and the first population movements and small attacks are occurring. It will not stay this way.

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Turkey's efforts to set up a safe zone in Syria will continue until the Turkish border is safe and threats against the country have been removed, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Friday.

Yildirim also told reporters there was unconfirmed information that a Turkish tank had been struck in Syria.

Turkey launched a full-scale offensive into northern Syria last month in an effort to sweep Islamic State militants from its borders and stop the advance of Syrian Kurdish rebels.

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World leaders should put finding an end to the war in Syria at the centre of their discussions at the United Nations General Assembly in New York this month, actor Angelina Jolie said during a visit to a refugee camp in Jordan on Friday.

"Ask the fundamental question of what are the root causes of the Syrian conflict and what will it take to end it," she said at the Azraq refugee camp, which she visited in her role as a special envoy for the U.N. High Commission for Refugees.

Syria's five-year-old civil war has killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced 11 million, half the country's pre-war population, including many who have fled overseas, sparking a refugee crisis in the Middle East and Europe.

"Besides the millions trapped inside Syria whose lives are at risk daily, 75,000 Syrians are stranded in the berm, a no-man's land on the Jordanian border, including children, pregnant women and gravely ill patients. They have had no food since early August, there is next to no humanitarian access," she said.

However, world powers are divided over how to end the crisis in Syria, with Russia giving military aid to President Bashar al-Assad and the United States and some Western European countries helping rebels seeking his downfall.

Within the Middle East, Iran and Shi'ite militias from Lebanon and Iraq back Assad, while Turkey and Gulf Arab states including Saudi Arabia and Qatar support the rebels.

On Friday U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov resumed negotiations in Geneva aimed at finding a ceasefire deal to allow humanitarian access in Syria after two other meetings in the past three weeks.

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VIRGINIA BEACH - Martinsville resident Larry Goodman will have to wait a few more months to have his day in court. Hell spend that time out of jail, however, as a Virginia Beach judge set his bond at $10,000 during a Thursday hearing on the case.

Goodman, better known to area residents as Serendipity Metro Deli and Coffee House investor Laurence Vanderwoods, was arrested Aug. 16 by the Martinsville Police Department in connection with an outstanding warrant relating to a 2011 felony embezzlement charge in Virginia Beach. He is alleged to have embezzled $15,686 from a La Quinta Motel in that city. On Aug. 22, law enforcement transported him to Virginia Beach.

Family members have said that when Goodman moved back to Martinsville in the fall of 2014, he explained the name charge as a new pen name for a book he was writing. His mother said he told her he didnt like his birth name and had decided to go by Vanderwoods instead.

At Goodmans bond hearing Thursday, Virginia Beach Judge Glenn Croshaw entered a bond in the amount of $10,000, with the condition that Goodman is not allowed to leave the state of Virginia, according to Macy Allen, public information officer for the Virginia Beach Commonwealths Attorneys Office.

As of Thursday afternoon, Goodman had not yet met the bond requirements and remained in custody.

Allen said that as of now, Goodmans sole charge is felony embezzlement; however, she added that the prosecutors are constantly evaluating the case as it proceeds to trial, so they have the ability to add charges if necessary.

Commonwealths Attorney Julie Fink is the prosecuting attorney in the case, while Kristin Paulding is Goodmans court-appointed public defender.

A trial date of Dec. 13 has been set, Allen added.
MARTINSVILLE  One room in the Martinsville-Henry County Heritage Center and Museum, formerly the Henry County Courthouse, looks like a little girls dream come true. On loan from Cathy Stone, an entire collection of Madame Alexander First Lady dolls reside at the museum.

Theres a bunch of them, Johnny Nolen, an employee at the museum said.

Stones collection consists of dolls ranging from Martha Washington to Pat Nixon. Some noticeable ladies currently on display include Abigail Adams, wife of John Adams; Adams daughter-in-law, Louisa Adams, wife of John Quincy Adams; and Mary Todd Lincoln, wife of Abraham Lincoln. A poster board beside the collection tells facts about each doll displayed.

Just over half of the 14 inch figures in the collection greet visitors in the upstairs room adjacent to the courtroom. Each doll wears a replica of a period inaugural gown.

The doll company started producing the First Lady collection in 1976. However, Madame Beatrice Alexander made dolls long before the presidential wives series. Growing up in her fathers doll hospital, Alexander often saw children crying over broken dolls. In the early 1900s, many companies made dolls out of bisque, a material similar to porcelain. Unlike today, many girls only had one or two dolls their entire childhood. If children did not play carefully or if an accident occurred, the babies they loved to pieces often ended up in pieces. Witnessing devastated children as they brought their most prized possessions to her fathers workshop, Alexander vowed that she would create an indestructible doll  or at least one that wouldnt break as easily as bisque.

In 1923, at the age of 28, Alexander established the Madame Alexander Doll Company. Her business made dolls out of a revolutionary material called composition. A variation of papier mache, composition dolls generally consisted of glue mixed with sawdust or wood pulp. Marketed as unbreakable and given childlike features, composition dolls flew off of the shelves in America.

Composition dolls dominated the American doll market until the late 1940s when Madame Alexander partnered with DuPont. Together, they created dolls made out of hard plastic, which changed the industry forever. Now, most dolls made for children are some variation of plastic, be it hard, soft or vinyl. Most collectible Madame Alexander dolls are vinyl, like the First Lady collection.

Also in the space adjacent to the courtroom sits a doll house with furniture and figurines depicting days gone by. Keeping with the childhood theme, Dr. Mervyn King and wife Virginia King display two antique tricycles in the room.

While that specific room unlocks the child in each person, the museums downstairs takes a look at the adult-driven history of Martinsville and Henry County. Area-related collections include tobacco artifacts, largely on display by Doug Stegall and Will Gravely, furniture from Bassett Furniture and Bassett-Walker and DuPont memorabilia.

One area of the museum focuses on Civil War artifacts, some of which the Kings display.

One War Between the States item has a personal connection to Nolen.

Isaac A. Nolen, Nolen read. Thats my great grandfathers tombstone.

The headstone features an intricate carving of the Confederate battle flag along with the soldiers birth and death dates.

Nolens favorite feature of the stone appears at the very bottom. An inscription reads, A friend to his county and a believer in Christ.

As a 501 (c) (3) non-profit organization the Martinsville-Henry County Historical Society relies largely on community support in the form of monetary donations and fundraisers. The museum invited the community to Blue Jeans n Bling, a fundraiser set for September 24 at the Historic Henry County Courthouse Plaza from 6:00 p.m.  9:00 p.m.

Attendees will enjoy barbecue from Pigs R Us, a cash bar and a silent auction. Tim Martin and Friends will provide mountain music. A 50-50 raffle will also be available.

Advance tickets for $30.00 per person may be purchased from any board member by calling (276) 403-5361 during business hours, Wednesdays through Fridays from 2:00 p.m.  5:00 p.m., and online at Brown Paper Tickets. Tickets are $35 at the door the evening of the event.

Proceeds will allow the Historical Society to install new exhibits and provide lectures and activities on Martinsville and Henry County history.
COLLINSVILLE  A judge has found a man guilty of charges in the Aug. 7, 2014, robbery at the Village Market in Bassett.

On Wednesday in Henry County Circuit Court, Judge David V. Williams found George Koulouris of Martinsville guilty of robbery and use of a firearm in the commission of a felony.

Williams had taken the case under advisement after testimony, evidence and arguments were presented Aug. 30 at a trial in Henry County Circuit Court. Williams said Wednesday that he had researched and reviewed the matter thoroughly, and he cited a number of court cases.

Williams ruled that testimony of an accomplice and significant corroborating material facts linked Koulouris to the crimes.

Also in Henry County Circuit Court on Wednesday, Stephen Matthew Nelson of Collinsville was sentenced. He previously had pleaded guilty to two counts of distribution of oxycodone and one count of distribute schedule 3 controlled substance. A judge sentenced him in each case to the following: five years in prison, with all but three months of that suspended, two years of supervised probation and suspension of operators license for six months.

On Thursday in Henry County Circuit Court, Judge Williams sentenced Blake Collier Townsend, 17, of Bassett, who previously pleaded no contest to aggravated sexual battery, object sexual penetration and forcible sodomy. Williams ordered that Townsend be committed indefinitely to the Department of Juvenile Justice to receive treatment, and upon his release, each of the three cases is suspended for five years on indefinite probation and other conditions, including treatment and substance abuse counseling.

The offenses allegedly happened from Jan. 1 through April 23, 2015, and the alleged victim was a 6-year-old.
STUART  A Patrick County grand jury has indicted a Stuart woman for allegedly escaping from custody of a county deputy and attempting to murder him.

The grand jury indicted Michelle Spencer Reed (also known as Michelle Lynne Spencer) on charges of escaping from custody of a police officer by force or violence, and the attempted capital murder of Deputy Dustin Foley of the Patrick County Sheriffs Office, on May 21, 2016.

An indictment is not an indication of guilt. It is a grand jurys determination that enough evidence exists to hold a trial.

According to a sheriffs office news release at the time of the alleged offenses, the incident began when the sheriffs office was requested by Henry County authorities to locate two wanted subjects on Foley Ridge Road in the Polebridge area of the county. Deputy Foley responded to that location and located the wanted subjects, who were identified as married couple Michelle Spencer Reed, 34, and Joshua Coy Reed, 36, both of Stuart.

Foley arrested and secured Joshua Reed and then attempted to arrest Michelle Reed, who was seated in a full-sized pickup truck. Foley told Michelle Reed that she was under arrest, at which time Reed refused to unlock the doors of the truck and comply with Foleys commands.

After negotiations with Reed failed, Foley broke the passenger window out of the truck and attempted to place Reed into custody. Reed physically resisted, cranked the vehicle and attempted to run over Foley. Foley was able to jump out of the way of the truck without injury and run back to his patrol car and pursue Reed.

During the pursuit, Reed allegedly drove head-on at Foleys patrol car and attempted to hit Foleys vehicle. Foley was able to maneuver his vehicle to the right, barely missing a head-on collision. Foley pursued Reed for approximately one-half mile, at which time Reed crashed and was taken into custody.

Other indictments that the grand jury returned on Wednesday follow:

Richard Darren Cobbler, hit and run involving property damage, Nov. 21, 2015.

Lisa Lynn Foley, concealment of merchandise, March 26, 2016.

Alyson Paige Harris, three counts each of forgery, utter a forged check and obtain money or property by false pretense, on Feb. 2, Feb. 12 and Feb. 16, 2016.

Kimberly Dawn Howell (also known as Kimberly Dawn Lawson), two counts of conceal merchandise  third or subsequent offense, Sept. 23 and Dec. 24, 2015.

Mandy Nicole Smith, conceal merchandise  third or subsequent offense, Oct. 14, 2015.

Jennifer Marie Stone, grand larceny, March 4, 2016.

Gary Wayne Tilley, grand larceny, Jan. 31, 2016.

Jason Ray Ziglar, hit and run involving personal injury or death, Feb. 19, 2016.

John Dwayne McPherson, driving under the influence  third or subsequent offense within five years, April 20, 2016.

Sammy Wayne Smith, eluding police-endangerment, March 29, 2016.

James Daniel Biggs, possess schedule 1 or 2 controlled substance, Jan. 21, 2016.

Teddy Ray Goins Jr., concealment of merchandise  third or subsequent offense, May 14, 2016.

Kimberly Ann Greer (also known as Kimberly Ann Winston), concealment of merchandise, March 24, 2016.

Sydney Jason Roberts, possession of firearm by violent felon, April 13, 2016.

James Anthony Smith Jr., obtain money by false pretense  third or subsequent offense, Nov. 13, 2015.

Cynthia Besch Collins Vernon, threaten to bomb or burn, Jan. 3, 2016.

Joshua Wayne Justice, two counts of concealment of merchandise  third or subsequent offense, May 28 and May 29, 2016.

Robert Wade Payne, grand larceny, May 17, 2016.

John Edward McAdams, strangle another, causing wounding or injury, March 28, 2016.

Tyree M. Beaman, obtain money or property by false pretense, Jan. 6, 2016.

Jeanette Blankenship, indecent liberties with a minor, entice minor to perform in pornography, and child abuse and/or neglect, July 2016.

Christopher Darryl Gray, drive recklessly so as to endanger life/limb and driving under the influence with a blood alcohol content of between 0.15 and 0.20, July 12, 2016.

Crystal Leann Harris, three counts of sell, give or distribute or possess with intent to sell, give, distribute or manufacture an imitation controlled substance that is schedule 1 or two (one of the counts involved imitation cocaine and two counts involved imitation methamphetamine), June 2, June 13 and June 17, 2014. Harris also was indicted on two counts of sell, give or distribute or possess with intent to sell, give or distribute a schedule 3 controlled substance (hydrocodone/acetaminophen), July 30 and Sept. 17, 2014.

Brittany Denise Hill, child abuse and/or neglect, Aug. 21, 2016.

Jonathan Blake Howell, 11 counts of forgery, various dates from May 25 through July 21, 2016.

Christopher Wayne Johnson, grand larceny, Feb. 18 through Feb. 19, 2016.

Devin Ray Marshall, statutory burglary and larceny of firearm, Aug. 26, 2016.

John Edgar McAdams, violate protective orderassault with serious injury, March 28, 2016.

Robert James Paige, three counts of carnal knowledge of a minor, June 1 through Nov. 9, 2008; and three counts of forcible sodomy, June 1 through July 30, 2009.

Sammy Wayne Smith, two counts of child abuse and/or neglect, March 29, 2016.

Jimmy Lee Stanley, object sexual penetration and aggravated sexual battery, May 29 through June 17, 2016.

Jamie Christopher Sutton, indecent liberties with a minor, entice minor to perform in pornography, and child abuse and/or neglect, July 1 through July 30, 2016

Stephen Timothy Wilcox, forcible sodomy, July 1 through Dec. 31, 2012.

Gary Owen Williams, child abuse and/or neglect, Aug. 1 through Aug. 24, 2016.
COLLINSVILLE  A Ridgeway woman has pleaded guilty to assault and battery of a police officer, destroying property and being drunk in public.

Amanda Lynn Rabahat, 35, entered the pleas Wednesday in Henry County Circuit Court. Judge David V. Williams ordered a presentence report and set sentencing for Dec. 14 at 2 p.m.

According to the commonwealths evidence, on Dec. 1, 2015, Deputy C. Curtis responded to a call on Fisher Farm Road, where he found Rabahat walking in the road, unsteady on her feet, with a strong smell of alcohol and with bloodshot eyes. Curtis arrested Rabahat on a charge of drunk in public, cuffed her and placed her in his patrol car.

As they were getting onto the bypass, Curtis noticed Rabahat was not moving around a lot and asked her if she still had her seat belt on. When Curtis got no response, he pulled the car over on the shoulder of the exit. When Curtis got out and looked in the window, he saw that Rabahat had taken the seat belt off. Curtis then tried to open the door to put the seat belt back on.

When he did this, Rabahat allegedly held the door locks down so that Curtis could not open the door. After Curtis tried repeatedly to open the door, he returned to the drivers seat and continued on to the magistrates office. After a few minutes, Rabahat allegedly became more upset and began to hit the divider in the car. When she was told to stop, Rabahat allegedly slid back in her seat and began to kick the drivers side rear window with her feet.

Curtis pulled over at the 609 exit and radioed for help. Curtis then got out of the car, went to the door and tried to open it. As Curtis was trying to open the door, Rabahat allegedly kicked a window and shattered the glass. Curtis then reached through the window and unlocked the door.

Curtis pulled Rabahat out of the car and moved her away from the roadway. He handcuffed her hands behind her back.

Investigator C. Ashley and Sgt. S. Barnes arrived. As the three officers picked Rabahat up and tried to take her to Barnes patrol car, Rabahat allegedly continued to fight and tried to spit on the officers. They finally were able to place Rabahat in Barnes car and proceed to the magistrate.

When they drove up to the jail, Deputy Z. Smith opened the door and tried to get Rabahat out of the car. When Smith opened the door, Rabahat allegedly reared back in the seat and kicked him in the lower stomach. Smith and Barnes then allegedly had to drag Rabahat out of the car and onto the ground. They allegedly finally got her up and started to walk her to the jail. After taking some steps, Rabahat allegedly kicked Smith in his lower leg around his knee, causing the officer to lose his balance and fall to his knee.

Then the officers had to restrain her again and place her in a security chair to get her booked into the jail. Smith was not hurt during the fight with Rabahat. Rabahat calmed down once inside the jail while speaking with a magistrate over video. However, once she was given a $2,000 secured bond, Rabahat allegedly became upset again and took a step toward Deputy Curtis. Eventually Rabahat calmed back down.

Also Wednesday in Henry County Circuit Court, Dwayne Antonio Munch Valentine, 31, of Martinsville, pleaded guilty to buy or receive stolen property, possession with intent to distribute cocaine, and possession or transportation of a firearm by a convicted felon within 10 years, all on Dec. 6, 2015.

A presentence report was ordered and sentencing was set for Dec. 14 at 2 p.m.

The commonwealth dropped several other charges against Valentine.

The commonwealths summary of evidence alleged the following:

Valentine was convicted in Essex County (New Jersey) Superior Court in January 2006 of felony possession of a handgun.

Before Dec. 4, 2015, three Henry County citizens reported that property was stolen from their homes: a Yamaha 250 dirt bike, a Sig Sauer assault rifle and a PlayStation 4. In investigating these and other unrelated matters, deputies from the Henry County Sheriffs Office arrested a man on Dec. 4. The man told investigators he sold stolen property to a man he knew as Munch on Chestnut Knob Road (the man said he sold the dirt bike for $750 and the PlayStation 4 for $50 in cocaine and $100 cash). Officers determined the home was at 463 Chestnut Knob Road.

Investigator Travis Hambrick of the Henry County Sheriffs Office got a search warrant for the home on Chestnut Knob Road, and the search warrant was executed on Dec. 6, 2015. Valentine was in bed in the back bedroom of the home. The SWAT team, which executed the search warrant, found the stolen PlayStation 4 in the home and an assault rifle propped up within arms reach of the bed. Officers found other property that gave them pause, so Hambrick got a second search warrant for the property, looking for any stolen property, firearms, illegal substances and anything that might indicate distribution of controlled substances.

When investigators returned, they found the stolen Yamaha dirt bike in the shed near the house. They found that the assault-style weapon in Valentines bedroom was the stolen Sig Sauer assault rifle. They also found a Phoenix Arms .22 pistol in arms reach of Valentine. They found .40 and .45 ammunition in the dresser next to the bed where Valentine was located.

They found five baggies of rock-like substance that a lab subsequently determined to be 15 grams of cocaine. They also found green leafy plant material that was field tested and found to contain marijuana. They found three pill bottles with more than 100 pills, as well as a set of scales and a sheet of paper that resembled a ledger.

Valentine gave investigators a statement that people knew him as Munch, that he bought the PlayStation 4 and the Yamaha bike from a man matching the description of the man who told officers he had sold stolen property to Munch. Valentine told officers that, because of the prices of the items he bought, they could be stolen.

Valentine said he told the man he did not want the Sig Sauer around him and pushed it away when the man had items in the house, but he did not explain why the firearm was in his home. Valentine told officers the drugs were for personal use.
MARTINSVILLE  Telehealth clinics are to be established at two city schools as part of efforts to improve the health of students, especially those who have had trouble obtaining medical care.

The Martinsville Henry Coalition for Health and Wellness and the Karen S. Rheuban Center for Telehealth at the University of Virginia (UVa.) Health System plan to develop the clinics at Martinsville High School (MHS) and Albert Harris Elementary School with $70,000 from the federal Health Resources and Services Administration.

Plans are for the clinics to open in the next school year, after school employees can be trained to use telehealth equipment, said Beth Holyfield, health coordinator for the Martinsville City Public Schools and a nurse at the Teen Health Center that has operated at MHS for eight years.

Services received at the telehealth clinics will be free, Holyfield said.

The clinics will be in addition to medical facilities, like the Teen Health Center, already in city schools that treat minor ailments.

Telehealth is a modern branch of medicine that enables doctors and other health care workers at large regional medical centers  ones that are able to treat more ailments than many hospitals in small, rural areas  to consult with, diagnose, treat and monitor patients who would have trouble traveling long distances to those hospitals.

To serve patients, they will use computer and videoconferencing equipment enabling them to, for example, hear heart and lung sounds, see images from inside the ears and throat, monitor vital signs, examine skin conditions and evaluate a persons psychological health, according to Holyfield and UVa. officials.

Coalition Executive Director Barbara Jackman said the telehealth clinics will be designed to supplement medical care that students receive from local doctors.

In many cases, Jackman said, students already have established a medical home  a private doctors office or clinic which they first turn to when they get sick or need consultations for other health services.

However, there are many students who cannot immediately get a doctors appointment when they get sick, or they cannot get to a doctor due to a lack of transportation or they cannot afford a doctors bill, she said.

The day you get an illness, you need to see a doctor so that it does not get worse before it gets better, Holyfield emphasized.

If you dont feel well, you wont do well in school, she continued. So it will be wonderful to have a child in front of a (video) screen to talk to someone at UVa. in Charlottesville who can diagnose students, provide them advice on how to treat ailments and refer them to specialist physicians if necessary.

Anytime you can offer more health care to more people, its great, said Zeb Talley, interim superintendent of the Martinsville schools. The telehealth clinics are going to make health care available to a lot more people.

Of utmost concern, according to Holyfield, is helping students with chronic health problems such as diabetes and obesity. In recent years, she has seen an increase in pupils with such problems. She does not know the exact reasons for the increase, but she said it may be due to poverty keeping families from seeking proper health care.

UVa. medical staff also will be able to provide consultation on students behavior problems, Holyfield said.

Ultimately, we hope to improve access to coordinated primary care, help parents and school personnel assist children with special health care needs and help spark a demonstrable improvement in healthy behaviors related to fitness, nutrition and oral health, Kathy Wibberly, director of the Mid-Atlantic Telehealth Resource Center, which is based at UVa.s telehealth center, said in a news release from the university.

And, we want to facilitate communication between parents, primary care providers, classroom teachers and specialty care providers about students health conditions, Wibberly said.

Details of exactly how the telehealth centers will operate are still being worked out, according to Jackman and Holyfield.

But students should be able to talk with a doctor in Charlottesville on the day they report being sick, Holyfield said.

Money to operate the telemedicine clinics will be distributed to the schools over four years. Afterward, they will be able to keep the equipment, but they will have to decide how to continue the program, Holyfield said.
I am in favor of building a wall along our Southern border with Mexico, and to that end I support Donald Trump for President of the United States of America. Now, before you label me a racist or a bigot, let me explain my position.

I am a preacher of the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ the Son of God. I have been since my conversion in 1973. For almost 44 years, I have ministered to people all over the world. I have preached in jails, prisons, hospitals nursing homes churches and out in the open market place. A great part of my ministry has been to Hispanics living in this country.

At our church we distribute Christian literature and Bibles (KJV) to everyone without respect to skin color, race or nationality. We invite everyone to enter our open doors with praise and thanksgiving. Jesus loves the little children of the world. He said Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

Having said that, it is my opinion that we desperately need a wall along our southern border, if for no other reason than to stem the flow of illegal narcotics and the awful sin of human trafficking that is a shameful problem for Mexico and the United States.

I read an article in the Martinsville Bulletin Thursday (on Page A7) that said Britain and France have authorized the construction of a wall in Calais, and construction will begin this month on a concrete wall intended to keep migrants and refugees from the citys port where they frequently stow away on U.K.- bound trucks and ferries.

America was made great by migrants, my great grandfather migrated from Ireland, but he came legally to Ellis Island. He was properly vetted and allowed to enter this great country, he was required to pledge allegiance to this country and became an American. By the by, he was proud to be an American, not an Irish  American, but an American.

We must build a wall, or we will cease to be a sovereign nation. We must follow Britain and Frances lead, our Southern border is not secure, despite what our government tells us.

God bless the USA, love it or leave it. ISIS has already warned us they would embed terrorists in those migrants coming from that part of the world. Another great reason for a great wall.

James Thomas

Bassett
Al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri threatened the US that the September 11, 2001 attacks will be repeated "thousands of times", in a video marking the 15th anniversary of the deadly assault.

Addressing the United States in a video message posted Thursday on YouTube, Zawahiri blamed 9/11 on "your crimes against us".

He said that if these continue, 9/11 "will be repeated thousands of times".

On September 11, 2001, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were struck by hijacked aircraft, claiming 2,753 lives.

Further deadly attacks that day were carried out against the Pentagon and on a third commercial aircraft that crashed in rural Pennsylvania.

In the video, Zawahiri cited Washington's policies towards Arab and Muslim countries, its "occupation" of lands in their countries, and support for their "criminal and corrupt" governments.

His threats come as American officials say the United States has become hardened against such well-developed plots as 9/11 but remains vulnerable to small and home-grown attacks.

The 9/11 attacks spawned Washington's so-called war on terror, which initially focused on Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, before later targeting the Islamic State group which has seized territory in Syria, Iraq and Libya.

Zawahiri also urged jihadists to unite and urged African Americans to convert to Islam to "save" them from US laws which he said are controlled by "the white majority".

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CHICOPEE -- U-Haul Company of Massachusetts and Ohio, Inc. announced that that D&B Auto Sales Service LLC has signed on as a U-Haul neighborhood dealer to serve the Chicopee community.

D&B Auto Sales Service at 395 Broadway St. will offer U-Haul trucks, trailers, towing equipment, support rental items and in-store pickup for boxes, according to a news release.



D&B Auto Sales Service owner Rebecca Douville is proud to team with the industry leader in do-it-yourself moving and self-storage to better meet the demands of Hampden County.

U-Haul and D&B Auto Sales Service are striving to benefit the environment through sustainability initiatives. Truck sharing is a core U-Haul sustainability business practice that allows individuals to access a fleet of trucks that is larger than what they could access on an individual basis.

Every U-Haul truck placed in a community helps keep 19 personally owned large-capacity vehicles, pickups, SUVs and vans off the road. Fewer vehicles means less traffic congestion, less pollution, less fuel burned and cleaner air.
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Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey speaks Friday at a labor breakfast in Chicopee.

(JIM KINNEY/ THE REPUBLICAN)

CHICOPEE -- Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey reminded union activists Friday that electing a president whose signature reality show tagline was "You're Fired!" would not work out well for the workers they represent.

"Donald Trump has mistreated workers at every turn," Healey said Friday at an annual Labor Day breakfast hosted by the Pioneer Valley Labor Council, AFL-CIO. "He has abused the bankruptcy laws of this country to cheat workers out of their pensions while continuing to line his own pockets."

Healey said organized labor's effectiveness is dependent on decisions made by the Supreme Court. Workers need to be mindful of what type of justices a president Trump would appoint versus those a President Hillary Clinton would appoint.

"That is why I'm gong to be working my tail off for Hillary Clinton, for [New Hampshire Governor and Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate] Maggie Hassan and other candidates who can make a difference," Healey said.

The breakfast, held annually on the Friday morning following the Monday holiday, drew 225 to the Castle of Knights banquet hall in Chicopee.

Speaking after Healey, Mass. AFL-CIO President Steven Tolman also had no love for Republican nominee Donald Trump. But Tolman admitted that Trump's message is resonating with the same blue-collar voters who make up the rank-and-file membership of many unions.

Unions must answer, he said, by being problem solvers and using their message of progress through organizing and collective bargaining as an alternative to -- and an antidote for -- the hopelessness and frustration that feeds Trump's popularity.

Healey spent most of her time at the podium outlining her office's efforts to protect workers rights when it comes to wage theft, the misclassification of employees as independent contractors and unfair practices against labor union organizing.

Earlier this week, she issued a report outlining her office's labor-related work in fiscal 2016.

The office

Healey's

The AG's Office

Healey said her office

"I'm proud to make this office the people's law firm," Healey said.
Sushi Burritos are trendy foods in California and New York and now they've made their way into Western Massachusetts.

Genji Sushi and Whole Foods Market in Hadley teamed up to create a Sushi Burrito Lunch Popup on Friday from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

Whole Foods Market hosts the sushi lunch popup every other Friday and this time Genji Sushi brought the idea of the new trendy food.

They've had other interesting foods such as pumpkin miso soup last fall. They also have the typical sushi rolls to try and purchase. Genji says the sushi burrito is good because it doesn't need extra sauce or chopsticks, making it easy to eat.

They will be back Friday, Sept. 23 from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
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The Westfield Fire Department joined with students at Highland Elementary School to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks on America.

(HOPE E. TREMBLAY)

WESTFIELD - Members of the Fire Department, led by chief Mary Regan, visited Highland Elementary School on Friday to mark the 15th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on America.

This was the first time the school joined with the Fire Department to commemorate the day. Three Westfield natives, Tara Shea Creamer, Brian J. Murphy and Daniel P. Trant, were among the more than 3,000 killed in the attacks.

Students in Grades 2 through 5 gathered outside the school at 9:30 a.m. and silently watched as firefighters lowered, then raised, the school's American flag.

The tradition of tolling a bell known as the "Four Fives" took place during the brief ceremony.

The ceremony is based upon the pattern of the original method of communicating that a firefighter had fallen, which is the telegraph. The telegrapher would tap out the word "fell" with five measured dashes, a pause and then repeated two more times.

Regan spoke of not only the importance of remembering the terrorist attacks on the United States on 9/11, but how families should commemorate the day by being together.

Principal Mary Claire Manning encouraged students to remember the lives lost on 9/11, but also to pause and think about first responders, some of whom perished that day as they worked to save lives.

"Think about all the people who are ready at any moment to keep us safe, like these firefighters," she said.

Assistant principal Jill Phelan said before the ceremony that she was struck by the fact that many of the students were not yet born in 2001. Instead of a remembrance ceremony, it is a history lesson for them, said Phelan.

"It is such an important part of our history," she said. "Fifteen years ago, none of these students were alive. This is something they should learn. It had a huge impact, not just on our county, but on people personally."

Teachers prepared students for the ceremony by discussing the historic event in classrooms.
Dead or dying birds littered the ground on Bakersfield Street in Dorchester Thursday leaving no immediate answers as to the cause.

"We started getting complaints about birds literally falling out of the sky," John Meaney, of Boston Inspectional Services, told WCVB Boston.

"We don't know what's going on. Could it be a virus that they got very quickly? Could it be an intentional poisoning? Could it be something that was introduced to them that was unintentional but harmed them," John Meaney from Boston Inspectional Services told ABC News.

According to the Boston Globe, 15 grackles died in the Upham's Corner neighborhood, along with a cat who was sick and had to be euthanized. The Animal Rescue League of Boston is caring for the remaining birds and providing hydration.

Dot Joyce, a spokeswoman for the Animal Rescue League of Boston, told the Globe the dead birds were being tested to determine a cause. The dead birds were sent to Tufts University.

Common grackles are blackbirds that appear black from a distance, but up close their glossy purple heads contrast with bronzy-iridescent bodies. According to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, grackles walk around lawns and fields on their long legs or gather in noisy groups high in trees, typically evergreens and eat many crops and nearly anything else as well, including garbage.
CHICOPEE -- The Pilgrim Interiors slogan, "Guaranteed Results," is etched on the back of every bright yellow shirt employees wear while working at job sites around New England.

Owner Richard Bernard Jr. said he knows there are often delays in construction: Supplies don't show up on time, inspections get pushed back and architectural plans are changed.

"We do what needs to be done to get the job done right for the customer," Bernard said.

Bernard has followed that promise since he formed Pilgrim Interiors in 1999. At that time he was working with his father maintaining rental properties when he decided to open his own interior framing business.



With the construction industry improving following a long recession, Bernard has nearly doubled his staff, including hiring a new contractor and an estimator, and is still hiring skilled tradesmen. In the recent past Bernard has expanded from about 40 to 75 people.

This summer he also moved into a new headquarters complete with more office space, room for all his state-of-the-art computer equipment and an attached warehouse.

The company solely subcontracts interior commercial jobs for metal framing, drywall, drywall finishing and plaster installation. As part of the work, it also installs insulation and whatever the customer orders.

The need for more employees comes from the fact Pilgrim Interiors is currently working on more than 35 jobs that are as far away as in Connecticut, Vermont and Cape Cod and as close by as Westover Air Reserve Base and Baystate Medical Center in Springfield.

His company recently completed work in the new Applebee's restaurant in Holyoke, which opened in August. It is currently working to renovate the John Adams dorm lobby and two floors of the W.E.B. Du Bois Library, both at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Jobs include those at colleges, apartment complexes, airports and several recent ones at hotels.

His interest in technology has also helped Bernard to expand.

In a tour of his new offices on 16 Adams St., Bernard showed off the computer servers locked in a closet. "This is the brains of the place," he said.

A shelf in his office shows Bernard's long interest in technology. Generations of cellphones sit near older computers, including one of the original Commodore 64 home computers.

At his desk, Bernard has a bank of a half-dozen computer screens in his office that allows him to track the many jobs where his employees are working and one shows the most frequent changes to blueprints.

Every morning one of his employees reviews any changes in the jobs and then contacts job supervisors to ensure they are aware of them. Some who are more computer savvy have tablets or laptops so new plans can be sent electronically. He phones those who are more old school to make sure they know of the modifications.

"We try to put people where their skills are and not force feed them," Bernard said.

For years Bernard said he did all his estimations on paper, but then in 2006 he started doing more government jobs and with that came more paperwork. At the time he learned of a computer program that would make it easier to do his work electronically. He bought it and taught himself how to use it.

"Instead of staying at the same level, in order to grow, I took advantage of technology," he said.

Bernard said he continues to keep up with constant changes in technology. Now the jobs have electronic time cards, making it easy to track what jobs employees are doing and what rates they are earning. He can also gather a variety of data to follow each job to make sure nothing is forgotten.

The technology also benefits his clients. There is even a live video stream at the Whitinsville Christian School so donors can watch minute-by-minute progress of the construction of a new school there.

"I always wanted to do the right thing and the modern thing," he said. "We offer full benefits with insurance and sick time and vacation time. We are different in that aspect."

He also ensures the company is up to date on all safety and Occupational Safety and Health Administration requirements. In fact his girlfriend, Jen Cavaliere, is a full-time employee overseeing the company's safety.

She isn't the only family member working for Bernard. His daughter Monique Bernard, a student at what is now Pope Francis High School, spent the summer working as his receptionist. Bernard also has a son in elementary school.

Bernard started his business in a spare bedroom in the multifamily home where he lives. When it started to grow he took over a vacant apartment in the house. While the business has grown, he hasn't gone too far -- he purchased the building across the street from his house when the apartment started getting too cramped.

The first floor of the two-story building at 16 Ames St. has been completely renovated to suit the company needs. The second floor, which has main entrances on Front Street, is rented to long-term tenants Petros Breakfast & Lunch and ServiceNet.

On Sept. 9 he will hold a grand opening at his new place, complete with a DJ, food and tours. Invited guests include city officials and state legislators, the Chicopee Chamber of Commerce and even his daughter's school.

"We went from 1,000 square feet to 3,400 square feet. It was the right move for us," he said.

The new offices are a tribute to modern construction. Offices are surrounded by glass walls and even the conference room in the center is totally walled in with glass. The gleaming floor is coated with an epoxy finish and most of the offices have numerous computer monitors to make employees' jobs easier.

"I spend a lot of time here. I needed to let the sunlight in," Bernard said.

But one of the biggest pluses is behind the main doors. On either side is a warehouse, allowing the business to store the materials and equipment more efficiently. In the past, Bernard had to use multiple garages for storage, which was not ideal.

One of the newest hires is a warehouse manager, who Bernard met while Pilgrim Interiors was renovating the former Western Massachusetts Regional Police Academy in Agawam and converting it to Soldier On housing for homeless veterans. It was a good match because the Navy veteran had experience in inventory and Bernard was happy to help someone who needed a second chance.

He said he is proud to work with the community to be able to hire people like his new warehouse manager, along with students, such as one of his construction managers who is an intern from UMass. Bernard said he will also continue to work with Putnam Vocational-Technical Academy to hire carpentry students and plans to hire a business student from there to serve as his receptionist for the fall.

He also volunteers in the community and serves on the board of trustees for the Chicopee Boys and Girls Club.
NORTHAMPTON -- Six jurors have been selected for the third murder trial of Cara Rintala, the Granby paramedic charged with killing her wife in 2010.

The selections, made Thursday afternoon, marked the first step in assembling the 16-person jury needed for the high-profile trial in Hampshire Superior Court.

Following mistrials in 2013 and 2014, Rintala was back in court this week, charged with with first-degree murder for allegedly strangling Annamarie Cochrane Rintala in the basement of their Granby home.

Rintala, 49, is the first woman in Massachusetts charged with murdering her wife, and one of the relatively few defendants nationwide to be tried three times for murder.

She has been free on $150,000 bail since March 2014, after a second mistrial was declared due to a deadlocked jury.

At the start of jury selection Tuesday, Judge Mary-Lou Rup said the case should take four or five weeks, depending on how quickly a jury can be impaneled.

Prospective jurors, if not excluded for family, work or health-related reasons, were required to fill out a 20-page questionnaire related to the case.

Interviews with jury pool members began early Thursday afternoon and continued until nearly 6 p.m., yielding more than one-third of the required jurors.

Each candidate sat down with the judge and defense and prosecution lawyers at a table in the courtroom. Following a series of questions based on their answers to the questionnaires, the candidates were either dismissed or told they would be jury members.

In a sign the selection process could be relatively brisk, the second prospective juror interviewed won approval from both sides. Five more were added by the end of the day, said Mary Carey, communications director for the Northwestern district attorney's office.

In the first two cases, First Assistant District Attorney Steven E. Gagne asserted that Rintala strangled her wife following years of fighting over debts, custody of their adopted child and allegations of adultery.

Defense lawyer David P. Hoose contended that police believed Rintala was guilty from the outset, and failed to investigate other suspects.

In both previous trials, eight jurors reportedly voted for conviction, four for acquittal.

In January, the state's Supreme Judicial Court rejected a motion filed by Hoose and co-counsel Luke Ryan opposing a third trial. The lawyers argued that the prosecution lacked evidence to convict Rintala, and that trying her three times would violate her constitutional rights.

In July, the prosecution announced it would offer jurors the option of convicting her of murder or the lesser charge of manslaughter. The earlier juries considered murder charges only.
DORCHESTER  The Animal Rescue League of Boston has urged residents of Dorchester to keep their pets away from Bakersfield Street  the site where dozens of birds became mysteriously ill on Thursday.

Residents noted the grackles  a form of black bird  falling from trees and lying in the street Thursday afternoon.

The Boston Globe reports that the grackle death toll has now reached 32  twelve of which were dead by the time authorities arrived, eight of which died en route to an animal shelter, and twelve of which had to be put down due to their poor health.

Additionally, a resident's cat became sick and had to euthanized.

In total, 47 birds became ill on Thursday and another was found on Friday.

Authorities are taking a number of steps to understand what occurred  including investigating the neighborhood and carrying out a bird survey.

Tests were conducted on the sick birds, but the results have not yet come back, said Lisa Timberlake, a spokeswoman for the Inspectional Services Department.

The incident does not pose a "public health threat," according to a spokesperson from the Boston Public Health Commission.
Israeli occupation forces shot and killed a Gazan teenager during clashes on Friday near the border fence, the health ministry and witnesses in the Palestinian enclave said.

Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qodra identified the teenager as 16-year-old Abdel Rahman al-Dabbagh, and said he was killed east of Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza.

Witnesses said a group of young Palestinians gathered near the security barrier between Israel and the Gaza Strip and threw stones at Israeli lookout towers, prompting soldiers to open fire.

Qodra said the teenager was hit in the head and taken to hospital where he was pronounced dead.

The border region between Israel and Gaza is the scene of near weekly Friday confrontations.

Witnesses said dozens of young Palestinians pelted the lookout tower with stones and that the soldiers repeatedly opened fire at them.

Israel and Palestinian in Gaza have fought three wars since 2008 and there are frequent flare-ups along the border.

Israel regularly responds to rocket fire from militants in Gaza with air strikes.

Last month, it carried out dozens of strikes in Gaza in response to rocket fire, a greater response than usual.

The Gaza Strip is run by the Islamist Palestinian movement Hamas.

*The story was edited by Ahram Online.

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The former UMass Labor Studies director says the department needs a greater UMass commitment.

(Diane Lederman/The Republican)

AMHERST -- When former University of Massachusetts Labor Center Director Eve Weinbaum was concerned about a $30,000 budget cut to the department, she sent an email to alumni and center supporters.

She didn't expect the letter to take on a life of its own. "The email was for small group of supporters very involved with the Labor Center and know me personally," she said.

But it got forwarded widely and reposted online.

UMass officials, meanwhile, say the center is not in danger. "The narrative that the center and its faculty are under attack is simply untrue," John A. Hird, dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, wrote in a message to colleagues.

That Weinbaum's letter gained so much attention, she said, is a testament to the passion people feel for the center. According to its website, the Labor Center is "home to a unique set of programs focused on economic justice, labor movements and working people and their organizations in the United States and around the world."

The UMass Amherst Labor Relations and Research Center, as it was originally named, was founded in 1964 and became part of the sociology department in 2010.

Weinbaum is hoping her email will raise awareness -- and UMass funding. She wants the administration to reverse the budget cuts and to restore graduate student funding and externships.

She said the department for a decade had six teaching assistant positions funded by the university that will not be continued in 2017. It also had students with resident assistant jobs working with faculty; funding for those positions is also gone next year.

Without that funding, she said, "We cannot recruit working-class students, first-generation students or students who cannot afford the $60,000+ tuition for a two-year degree program," she said, pointing to a fact sheet compiled by Labor Studies faculty.

The part-time faculty budget was eliminated this year.

The money the center needs "is a drop in the bucket. With a small investment" the program could continue as is, Weinbaum said.

The total faculty budget was less than $30,000 per year, and teaching and resident assistant positions paid about $5,000 each. But that money will be gone.

But spokesman Edward Blaguszewski in an email wrote that Labor Center's budget increased 53 percent between 2011 and 2016.

For 2017, no decrease is expected in expenditures dedicated to the center.

Hird said that "the Labor Center's future is very bright and its programs enjoy the full support of the sociology department (in which it is housed), the college and the central administration."

Professor Tom Juravich has been named center's interim director, and faculty are developing a plan to grow enrollment, Hird wrote.

"There is no threat to the center and I have great confidence that Tom and the labor/sociology faculty will be able to rebuild the residential program," Hird wrote.

Weinbaum lost her position when her three-year contract expired Aug. 31. She said she would like it back. "I am hoping to remain as director of the ULA program, but the administration has not been willing to make that commitment," she wrote.

"Low enrollments in the residential program have created a budget deficit requiring regular subsidies from the sociology department,"

Blaguszewski said in email that low enrollment in the labor center's residential program has led to a budget deficit that had been subsidized by the sociology department. The centers' low-residency program, on the other hand, runs a budget surplus.

"Rather than subsidize the center from sociology, the university is simply requiring the center to use its own funds to run its own programs," Blaguszewski said.
BOH.JPG

The Holyoke Board of Health discussed needle exchange on Thursday, Sept. 8, 2016 at City Hall Annex. Chairwoman Patricia Mertes, a registered nurse, is at center, Dr. Robert Mausel, a physician, is at right and at left is Dalila Hyry-Dermith, supervisor of the division of Perinatal, Early Childhood and Special Needs, Care Coordination Unit with the state's Western Regional Health Office.

(MIKE PLAISANCE / THE REPUBLICAN)

HOLYOKE -- A Board of Health member concluded a meeting Thursday by saying it was a "disgrace" that some members of the City Council had filed a lawsuit against the board over a needle exchange program here.

"To be sued by certain people on the City Council over this was an absolute disgrace. If I'm on the Board of Health, it is for the health of the people, not for politics. Shame....It is simply politics and power," said board member Dr. Robert Mausel, a physician.

Mausel didn't mention any councilors by name.

Six councilors, including President Kevin A. Jourdain, filed the lawsuit against the Board of Health, Mayor Alex B. Morse and Tapestry Health in 2012. They argued needle exchange was permitted to operate here illegally because authorization was granted by the Board of Health but without a vote of the City Council.

A Hampden Superior Court judge in March agreed with the councilors that the program was authorized incorrectly by failing to include a City Council vote.

But a law change that took effect July 1 identified a city or town's board of health as the entity that can grant local approval over needle exchange. That's a change that even Jourdain said has ended the ability of the City Council or any community's legislative body to fight needle exchange.

Jourdain has criticized legislators for failing to give notice to local officials before the law change occurred that identified the Board of Health as the authority regarding authorization for needle exchange.

Jourdain, who was not at the Board of Health meeting at City Hall Annex, said when reached later that it was the Board of Health that was "disgraceful" by permitting needle exchange in 2012 without a City Council vote as was shown in the Hampden Superior Court decision.

"The City Council, like we often have to do, holds people accountable. This recent sneaky law change with no public hearing as a rider to the state budget is the real power play and politics at its worst," Jourdain said in an email.

"I think it is also a disgrace to watch our state senator, state rep, mayor and Board of Health think they are smarter than the citizens of Holyoke who have twice said they do not want (needle exchange) in their city. Having an elitist attitude of thinking you know better than the 'dumb' citizens you represent is anti-democratic and the ultimate power play," he said.

The Board of Health was discussing needle exchange because it was scheduled to take a vote to reaffirm the authorization of Tapestry Health to operate a needle exchange program in light of the new state law. But the board postponed that vote to its next meeting on Oct. 13 to to ensure enough time has passed for the law to take effect.

In needle exchange, intravenous drug-users visit an office, turn in used needles and get clean ones in return.

Supporters said needle exchange removes from circulation previously used needles that could be infected with HIV-AIDS and hepatitis C, diseases for which there is no cure and which could be spread through the sharing of such needles.

The program also exposes users to health referrals and tips they otherwise might never see. And the opioid-use crisis and heavy use of heroin makes such a program especially valuable, supporters said.

Mausel during the meeting dismissed arguments that opponents of needle exchange have made. Such arguments include assertions that the program hurts more than helps, enables illegal drug-users to keep using by handing them more needles, is based on a belief that drug-addicts can be trusted not to share the newly received needles after they've used them and declares Holyoke a haven for heroin users.

The program doesn't encourage drug use and instead helps prevent diseases, he said.

"Our main purpose in all of this is to prevent the spread of HIV and hepatitis C," Mausel said.

The Board of Health heard a presentation about Tapestry Health's four years of operating a needle exchange program at 15A Main St. from Tapestry's Liz Whynott, which drew praise from board members.



"I know that we're going to be really happy to do our vote at our next meeting," said Chairwoman Patricia Mertes, a registered nurse.

The third health board member is Dalila Hyry-Dermith, supervisor of the division of Perinatal, Early Childhood and Special Needs, Care Coordination Unit with the state's Western Regional Health Office.

Before July 1, a state law adopted in 1993 limited the number of needle exchange programs in Massachusetts to 10, calling them "pilot" programs, and failed to specify what constituted local approval. Holyoke's became the state's fifth needle exchange program with a Board of Health vote in August 2012.

Eight cities and towns now have needle exchange in Massachusetts, including Holyoke: Northampton, Boston, Cambridge, Provincetown, Worcester, Brockton and North Adams. Greenfield and Gloucester have approval processes in the works, Whynott said.

Jourdain has said that the state by identifying the Board of Health as the granter of local approval has undermined voters by eliminating the decision-making authority of their elected legislative board in favor of a panel appointed by the mayor.

But Mausel and others said such a decision properly lies with health specialists.

Richard P. Purcell, a resident of Martin Street, attended the Board of Health meeting and said professionals like the board members should be allowed to do their jobs.

"I believe the scientists before I believe the politicians," Purcell said.

The vagueness about what was required in terms of "local approval" formed the basis of a lawsuit filed by Jourdain and five other councilors over the Board of Health's vote to permit needle exchange in 2012.

In the councilors' lawsuit, Judge Mark D. Mason in Hampden Superior Court ordered on March 14 that the needle exchange program shut down because it was improperly established without a City Council vote.

Mason sided with the plaintiffs who said local approval when it came to needle exchange meant a vote of the City Council, an approval that didn't happen before the program began operating.

Mason's order included a 120-day stay during which the needle exchange program could keep operating while the City Council considered the merits of the program. A City Council vote on needle exchange in the wake of Mason's order never happened and the 120-day stay expired.

But then the Legislature and Gov. Charlie Baker included in the state budget for the current fiscal year approval of the law defining local approval of needle exchange as coming from a board of health.

Along with Jourdain, plaintiffs in the lawsuit were councilors Linda L. Vacon, Todd A. McGee, James M. Leahy, Joseph M. McGiverin and Daniel B. Bresnahan.
SPRINGFIELD -- A pint-sized Brockton, Massachusetts rapper, who at age 9 made waves rhyming about cocaine alongside scantily clad women, will visit Springfield on Friday night to meet fans.

Now 13, Luis Rivera Jr., known in the rap world as Lil Poopy, comes fresh off signing a four-year deal with Epic/Sony Records and starring in Jermaine Dupri's Lifetime reality show, "The Rap Game."

His appearance in the city, scheduled for 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. at Dunbar Y Family & Community Center, is part of the promotion for the "I Am Me Kid's Fashion Show" hosted annually by Strong Young Minds Youth Development Program at MassMutual Center downtown.

"Me and [Rivera] both come from low-income housing," the teenager's manager Papa Luis told MassLive on Friday. "Any opportunity we have to give back to the community, and to promote community centers and community events, we're going to be there."

Teka Jones, founder of Strong Young Minds, said, "Every year we look for children who are doing amazing things. Since [Rivera] is local, we thought it would be nice for kids to meet him and hear his story."

When Rivera's first music video, "Pop That Remix," hit YouTube in 2013, showing the then 9-year-old slapping a woman's buttocks, engaged in sexually suggestive dances and glorifying drug use and materialism.

YouTube acted quickly to remove the content, saying it "violated YouTube's Terms of Service."

Brockton Police then filed a child abuse and neglect complaint against Rivera's father, Luis Rivera. Subsequent investigation by the Department of Children and Families, involving interviews with family members, school officials and medical professionals, produced no evidence of abuse or neglect.

The video has since reappeared on the site.

In June, Rivera's father was among dozens of people arrested during a federal gang and drug raid, accused of being a part of a network of numerous leaders, members and associates of the 18th Street Gang, the East Side Money Gang and the Boylston Gang, according to The Enterprise.

In the first "The Rap Game" episode, Rivera said, "What I rap about is where I'm from. My neighborhood is horrible. Someone died two days ago. Music is a way for me to get me out of that environment. I'm just working hard to get my family out of that bad city."

Luis said fans who attend Friday night's meet and greet will have an opportunity to interact directly with Rivera, and following the event a public screening of the first episode of season two of "The Rap Game" is tentatively planned.

The rapper and his handlers are attempting to capitalize on his notoriety, with cellphone apps allowing people to view him practicing sports, a soda in his name and domestic and overseas tours in the works.
The relocation to third countries of Iranian dissidents who had been living in a camps in Iraq, some of them for decades, was completed on Friday, residents and the UN said.

The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), supported by many of Camp Liberty's former residents, announced in a statement that the last 280 people had left to Albania.

"This final round of departures marks the successful conclusion to the process of relocating members of the People's Mujahedeen Organisation of Iran (PMOI) outside of Iraq," it said.

The exiled NCRI is the political wing of the PMOI, which virulently opposes the clerical regime in Iran and thousands of whose members have been confined to camps in Iraq since the 1980s.

The United Nations, whose refugee agency UNHCR was instrumental in the protracted relocation process, confirmed that all dissidents had now left Camp Liberty, also known as Camp Hurriya.

"The international community has now successfully achieved the relocation of all camp Hurriya residents from Iraq to third countries," spokesperson William Spindler said.

The camp has come under attack on several occasions, the deadliest of which killed more than 20 people in October 2015.

The dissidents used to live in another location in Iraq known as Camp Ashraf and were then moved to Camp Liberty, near the international airport in Baghdad.

In a statement, the PMOI spoke of "three massacres at Camp Ashraf, five missile attacks on Camp Liberty, two cases of abduction of residents, and the imposition of a full-fledged eight-year siege, which left 177 residents dead."

The PMOI sided with Saddam Hussein's Iraq during the war with Iran in the 1980s and was accused of helping suppress a Shiite uprising in 1991, but the 2003 US-led invasion brought to power leaders who have ties to Tehran and despise the group.

The United States, which recently removed the PMOI from its terror list, and other Western powers had promised to support their relocation to a safe place.

The resettlement process gathered pace this year and all of the camp's residents are now in European countries.

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Egyptian film Haram El-Gasad (Sins of the Flesh) was selected for the official competition at the 27th edition of Carthage Film Festival, the director announced on his Facebook page.

This year, the Carthage Film Festival, one of the most well-known film festivals in the Arab World, will be held from 28 October to 5 November in Tunisia.

Khaled El-Haggar latest film, described on its official website as "a tragic story of betrayal, oppression and murder", explores the events of the 2011 revolution in an unconventional way.

Four characters live on a remote farm, far away from the political action, and no actual images of the revolution are shown. However, the events taking place on the farm reflect what is happening in the country.

Sins of the Flesh stars Nahed El-Sebai, Ahmad Abdallah Mahmoud, Zaki Fateen Abdel Wahab, Mahmoud El-Beezawi, and Salwa Mohamed Ali.

Recently the film was selected to screen at the Vancouver International Film Festival, taking place between 29 September and 14 October.

An award winning director, El-Haggar often uses his work to tackle sensitive subjects and break taboos regarding subjects like sex or politics. Some of his well-known works include Room to Rent, Hob El-Banat (Girls' Love) and El-Shoq (Lust).

His films have already been screened at 37 festivals and received 27 national and international film awards.

The Carthage Film Festivals last edition (2015), featured participating Egyptian films including the Out of the Ordinary, a feature by Daoud Abdel-Sayed, and two documentaries: Out on the Street by Jasmina Metwaly and Philip Rizk, and Stray by Ahmad Fostok.

For more arts and culture news and updates, follow Ahram Online Arts and Culture on Twitter at @AhramOnlineArts and on Facebook at Ahram Online: Arts & Culture

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Les membres du Cabinet ont pris mote que le pays sera en deuil le jour des funerailles de la Reine Elizabeth II, la ratification de desArticles 50(a) and 56 of the Convention on International Civil Aviation, la promulgation de Fisheries and Marine Resources (Licence and Fees) Regulations et Fisheries and Marine Resources (Licence and Fees) (Amendment) Regulations 2022 entre autres.

1. Cabinet has taken note of the passing away of Her Majesty The Queen Elizabeth II on 8 September 2022. A day of national mourning would be observed on the day of her funeral. The Mauritian flag would be flown at half-mast on all public buildings from sunrise to sunset on that day. An appeal would be made to the private sector to follow suit.

On behalf of Government and the people of the Republic of Mauritius, a message of condolence has been sent to the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

2. Cabinet has agreed to Mauritius ratifying two Protocols amending Articles 50(a) and 56 of the Convention on International Civil Aviation to increase the size of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Council and membership of the Air Navigation Commission.

3. Cabinet has agreed to the promulgation of:

(i) the Fisheries and Marine Resources (Licence and Fees) Regulations which would review the licence fees payable by foreign owned Mauritian flagged longliners and purse seiners, and introduce licence fees for mid-water trawlers operating in the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of Mauritius and international waters; and

(ii) the Fisheries and Marine Resources (Licence and Fees) (Amendment) Regulations 2022, which would make an amendment with regard to the Footnote in the Second Schedule of the Fisheries and Marine Resources (Licence and Fees) Regulations 2013 to include the following:

(a) There exists a dispute between Mauritius and France concerning Tromelin and its surrounding waters, including its EEZ.

(b) While Mauritius unequivocally asserts its sovereignty over Tromelin and its waters, including its EEZ, the French authorities unilaterally purport to exercise jurisdiction, which is not recognised by the Government of Mauritius, over Tromelin and its waters.

(c) For the avoidance of doubt, the Chagos Archipelago and its waters are an integral part of the territory of Mauritius, over which Mauritius has sovereignty, as determined by the International Court of Justice in its Advisory Opinion of 25 February 2019 and affirmed by a Special Chamber of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in its Judgment of 28 January 2021.

4. Cabinet has taken note that in line with the recommendations of the latest Actuarial Review carried out by the Sugar Insurance Fund Board (SIFB), the following Regulations would be promulgated and would be applicable as from Crop 2021:

(a) the Sugar Insurance Fund (Prescribed Area and Prescribed Percentage of Total Insurable Sugar) Regulations 2022 whereby the definition of prescribed area for the purpose of declaration of event year is being changed from Enlarged Factory Area to the whole island, thus allowing for a larger number of planters affected by crop loss or damage to be duly compensated; and

(b) the Sugar Insurance Fund (Amendment of Schedules) Regulations 2022 which would essentially allow the SIFB to consolidate its General Insurance Fund and thus improve its solvency and viability as a going concern, especially in the light of the adverse effects of climate change.

5. Cabinet has agreed to the President of the Republic being advised to make the Civil Establishment Order No. 2 of 2022 and the Civil Establishment (Rodrigues Regional Assembly) Order (No. 2) 2022 that establish offices in the public service, determine the number of persons who may be appointed to such offices and determine the emoluments to be attached to such offices.

6. Cabinet has agreed to the signing a Memorandum of Understanding between the Economic Development Board, Mauritius and the Business Unity South Africa. The Memorandum of Understanding would enable both organisations to exchange information on trade opportunities and investment potential, organise prospective business missions, study trips, commercial events, trade fairs, exhibitions, seminars and training sessions for the mutual benefit of businesses.

The main objectives of the Memorandum of Understanding are to:

(a) establish a framework for developing stronger business relations between the two countries and cooperation procedures to enhance the achievement of their respective economic objectives;

(b) promote and strengthen trade ties between Mauritius and South Africa and create new channels of business exchange; and

(c) strengthen institutional relations and capacity building through mutual cooperation.

7. Cabinet has agreed to the procurement of 14 Tablets/Braille Notes for Special Education Needs learners with severe visual impairment at the secondary and tertiary school levels.

8. Cabinet has agreed to the specifications of flour procured by the State Trading Corporation (STC) being amended to include additional enzymes in wheat flour Type A to enhance its quality to meet the needs of bakeries and expectations of consumers.

The STC enlisted the services of a French consultant in May 2022 to, inter alia, review the existing specifications of wheat flour and to make recommendations to guarantee an optimum quality and regularity of wheat flour, even in tropical conditions, for bread production. The main recommendation is to amend the flour specifications to include additional enzymes, which would allow for the modification of the composition of the wheat flour Type A procured by the STC, to cater for the bakeries requirements in terms of tolerance and yield.

9. Cabinet has agreed to exempt the Small Island Developing States (SIDS) Pooled Procurement Programme for Medical Products from the Public Procurement Act. In 2017, the SIDS Ministers of Health expressed strong commitment to implement a system for the Pooled Procurement for medical products. In 2020, the SIDS Ministers of Health signed the SIDS Pooled Procurement Agreement virtually in the presence of the Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Regional Director for Africa.

The primary advantage of Pooled Procurement is cost reduction through economies of scale and collective negotiation. To further advance in the operationalisation of the SIDS Pooled Procurement Programme, there is need for this programme to be exempted from the Public Procurement Act.

The Secretariat for the SIDS Pooled Procurement is currently hosted by WHO and would continue to be spearheaded by that organisation until around 2025 by which time, the SIDS Pooled Procurement would have its own Secretariat.

10. Cabinet has taken note of the Report on the Lagoon Monitoring, in respect of quality of water and fish from Baie du Tombeau to Pointe aux Sables for period January 2019 to December 2020.

A Monitoring Committee had been set up to monitor the water and seafood quality and make recommendations regarding the consumption of the seafood and the lagoon water quality for swimming purposes. Based on the results of seawater quality analysis undertaken from January 2019 to December 2020, the Monitoring Committee has made various recommendations. The lagoon monitoring is ongoing.

11. Cabinet has taken note of the outcome of a study which the National Housing Development Company (NHDC) Ltd has commissioned on the experience of syndics on NHDC housing estates. The recommendations proposed by the consultant were being examined by the NHDC Ltd.

12. Cabinet has taken note of the second progress report on the status of the implementation of the Health Sector Strategic Plan 2020-2024 by the Ministry of Health and Wellness for the period August 2021 to June 2022. Some 603 activities regrouped under 26 Strategic Goals had been assigned to 21 Thematic Working Groups. As at 30 June 2022, activities identified increased to 643, and some 35.3 percent were completed, 52.7 percent were either initiated or in-progress and 12.0 percent were planned for the coming years.

The Plan also caters for the Island of Rodrigues with 12 Strategic Goals.

13. Cabinet has taken note of the situation of the COVID-19 pandemic prevailing across the world. Some 612.1 million cases have been reported globally, of which 589.9 million persons have been successfully treated. With regard to Mauritius, as at 07 September 2022, there were 59 active cases of COVID-19, out of which 17 were admitted at the New ENT Hospital.

14. Cabinet has taken note of the activities being organised for World Patient Safety Day, celebrated on 17 September. The theme for this year is Medication Safety. The Ministry of Health and Wellness would organise the following activities:

(a) on 16 September 2022, a Patient ID Wristband which includes the name, surname, date of birth and unit number of the patient would be introduced at SSR National Hospital; and

(b) on 17 September 2022, Medical Activity Cards providing information on the different medical specialities being provided at the Mahebourg Hospital and New Souillac Hospital and days of consultation would be distributed to inform inhabitants of the new services being put in place. A SAMU Department would also be inaugurated at the New Souillac Hospital.

15. Cabinet has taken note that Experts and Ministerial meetings of the Commission de la Jeunesse et des Sports de lOcean Indien (CJSOI) would be held in Mauritius on 12, 13 and 15 September 2022, in view of the forthcoming 2022 CJSOI Games to be held in Mauritius from 04 to 11 December 2022.

During the Experts meeting, participants would, inter alia, review the issues taken up at the last meeting, discuss the financial contribution of member countries and the progress achieved with regard to the preparedness for the 2022 CJSOI Games.

16. Cabinet has taken note that the Sixth Meeting of the Joint Project Monitoring Committee (JPMC) for the Metro Express Project was held on 8 September 2022 in Port Louis. The purpose of the JPMC, in accordance with the Memorandum of Agreement with India on Implementation of Projects with the assistance of the Government of India, is to take stock of progress achieved and on the financing status of the Metro Express Project, namely as regards the mainline from Port Louis to Curepipe and Phase 3: Extension from Rose Hill to Reduit through Ebene.

A site visit was carried out whereby the Indian delegation led by the Joint Secretary, Development Partnership Administration, Ministry of External Affairs, India, took stock of progress achieved on the mainline from Rose Hill to Curepipe.

17. Cabinet has taken note of the participation of the Minister of Environment, Solid Waste Management and Climate Change in the Third Edition of the Africa Climate Week 2022 held recently in Libreville, Gabon. The Minister participated, inter alia, in:

(a) a Ministerial Meeting whereby all eminent Ministers of the African continent were encouraged to fully participate in COP27;

(b) a Ministerial Round Table on Finance. As climate finance is one of the pillars to address climate change adaptation and mitigation, the focus was mainly on challenges in mobilising and accessing climate finance;

(c) the African Pathways where it was highlighted that energy is at the heart of the response to the climate change emergency and at the heart of its solution;

(d) the opening of the meeting of the African Group of Negotiators on Biodiversity; and

(e) the Forum of the Climate Technology Centre & Network, which is the implementing arm of the Technology Mechanism under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The Minister also acted as one of the panelists on Enhanced Transparency Framework, which is one of the key elements of the Paris Agreement.

18. Cabinet has taken note of the recent official visit of the Minister of Environment, Solid Waste Management and Climate Change to Rodrigues. The aim of the visit was to:

(a) raise awareness on topics related to ozone layer protection and climate change;

(b) build capacity of technicians in the refrigeration and air conditioning sector and hand over domestic air conditioners running on natural refrigerants (R290) to MITD, Rodrigues;

(c) train enforcement officers on the use of smoke meters and conduct awareness programmes on the health and environmental impacts associated with vehicular smoke emissions;

(d) conduct consultations in relation to the forthcoming 27th Meeting of the Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP27);

(e) hold discussions on a sustainable Waste Management for Rodrigues; and

(f) discuss issues relating to the development of public beaches in Rodrigues.

The Minister also had a meeting with the Chief Commissioner. Two portable smoke metres were handed over to the Deputy Chief Commissioner and Commissioner of Environment.

19. Cabinet has taken note of the renewal of the contract of Mr Ramesh Sunt as Ombudsperson for Sports, for a further period of one year.

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The filmmaker and producer Marianne Khoury has launched a series of film workshops which aim at developing Egyptian creativity in the cinema field and beyond.

Held under the umbrellas of the Dahshur residences project and led by a number of prominent film critics and filmmakers, the first series of workshops will take place between 19 and 23 September.

This will be the Dahshur Film Critic Workshop.

The workshop will be held by Jean-Michel Frodon, journalist and film critic at the weekly Le Point and Le Monde and most recently editorial director of Cahiers du cinema (2003-2009).

Marianne Khoury spoke to Ahram Online about the workshops and her vision of going deep into the development of young creative talents.

Ahram Online (AO): How was the idea of Dahshur residencies born?

Marianne Khoury (MK): Since 2011, I have been organising meetings and workshops that focus on research and creativity. They are held at my family house, built 20 years ago in Dahshur, some 35km south of Cairo. Covering the area of one feddan, the house is located at the feet of the Dahshur Pyramid. Designed in a rural style, the space is suitable for hosting a large number of guests, and the positive energy of the place helps boost creativity and invites contemplation.

The idea to hold film workshops more regularly came as a natural sequence of the events.

Right after the 2011 revolution, Misr International, the production company founded by my uncle, filmmaker Youssef Chahine, launched a new initiative called Misr Film Focus. It aimed at helping young talents develop their skills in scriptwriting.

The experience of having attended a variety of meetings that focus on scriptwriting and numerous film festivals helped me realise that the most difficult phase of the scriptwriting is in its fine tuning. It is also this stage that is decisive when a scriptwriter searches for funds to support its development.

Misr Film Focus paid a lot of attention to this segment of work, and it is a regular procedure done by international festivals to support films in development.

From over 120 scenarios that were submitted to the initiative, we selected six and helped the writers to sharpen them on the one hand and put them in touch with entities that may be interested in their work on the other hand.

We were supported by an expert in the field, Jacques Akchoti a Lebanese filmmaker who met the six participants in Dahshur. He remained in touch with them through Skype for the following year and a half. Our production company has even realized three of the projects.

AO: Does the Misr International company provide an umbrella for the Dahshur residencies?

MK: The success of the workshop with Akchoti inspired us to create an independent company called MK Production. Under its aegis we will hold a variety of regular film and art workshops, while continuing to work on the development of film scripts.

To tell you the truth, I am particularly interested in these development projects, lthough they are quite difficult, because I think this is an important phase of the work that needs support, even if the results are will not be immediately palpable.

AO: The upcoming workshop will be attended by the French critic Jean-Michel Frodon for which you are choosing the participants. Will there be other workshops any time soon?

MK: So far we have opened the doors of two workshops that revolve around film criticism and scriptwriting.

The first, a film criticism workshop, is scheduled for mid-September and will be conducted by Jean-Michel Frodon, who has selected twelve participants from those who have applied. The candidates were asked to write articles about films from a list compiled by Frodon.

The second workshop will be led by Ayman El-Amir, a specialist in re-writing and development of film scripts. He is also a member of the editorial boards of several festivals, and collaborates with the Torino Lab and the Doha Film Institute.

El-Amir will focus on five scenarios through workshops held in October, February and June. The goal is to improve the writing of these scenarios, so they can get funding, especially from abroad.

We will also working on launching a third workshop in the near future. It will be held by one of the experts from the Robert Bosch Foundation. He will work with the people interested to work as producers.

AO: Though the upcoming workshop Film Critic Workshop costs EGP 1000 [USD 110], the fee will not cover all the costs. How do you finance the Dahshur residencies?

MK: So far we mainly rely on our own resources. If we want to move the cinema profession forward, it is our duty as a production house to support such initiatives. The French Institute in Egypt is covering the travel expenses of Frodon. In parallel, I am searching for other sources of funding.

AO: Is your project a way of bringing Misr Internationals visibility back to the cinema scene?

MK: It is just a way to develop projects that need to be implemented. I am personally very involved in this work as I see it as paramount. If I can help these young filmmakers in their work, perhaps we can attract foreign co-producers to support them too.

AO: Can those workshops create a new voice in the Egyptian cinema?

MK: Why not? Although I have not thought about it this way. Egyptian cinema continues to surprise us. Look at the recent films such as Clash or Hepta, and their success among the viewers. They are a proof that our viewers want to see different movies. Thats a good sign.

This interview was first pubished in Al Ahram Hebdo.

For more arts and culture news and updates, follow Ahram Online Arts and Culture on Twitter at @AhramOnlineArts and on Facebook at Ahram Online: Arts & Culture



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Selected to represent Saudi Arabia at the 2017 Academy Awards by competing in the Best Foreign-Language Film category, Barakah Meets Barakah is released in UAE

Saudi film Barakah Meets Barakah was released in cinemas across the UAE on Thursday, and will be released throughout the Arab world in the future, according to the distributors.

At the end of August, Barakah Meets Barakah, the debut film by Saudi director Mahmoud Sabbagh, was selected to represent Saudi Arabia at the 2017 Academy Awards in the Best Foreign-Language Film category.

MAD Solutions, a film distribution and PR company, which is collaborating with Film Clinic-Indie Film Distribution (FCIFD) to distribute the film, announced the film's release in a press release and said it had finalised agreements with five prominent Arab media organisations, including Sayidaty, Aljarida (Kuwait), Al-Akhbar (Lebanon), FilFan website and Empire Arabic magazine.

According to the press release, Barakah Meets Barakah tells the story of two lovers who are united in an environment hostile to dating of any kind. He is Barakah, the municipal civil servant from Jeddah, who is also an amateur actor in a theatrical troupe. She is Barakah, a wild beauty, who functions as a crowd-puller for her stylish mother's boutique and runs her own widely-seen vlog. They both defy customs and traditions, as well as the religious police, using modern communication technologies and traditional dating methods.

The film had its world premiere at the 66th Berlin International Film Festival in February 2016 where it won the Ecumenical Jury Prize within the Forum section.

The film has also been selected to compete within the Special Presentations section at the 41st Toronto International Film Festival, which runs from 8 to 18 September.

The 60th BFI London Film Festival, scheduled to take place in October, announced that the film will also compete in its LaughGala.

Written and directed by Mahmoud Sabbagh, Barakah Meets Barakah stars Fatima Al Banawi, Hisham Fageeh, Sami Hifny, Abdulmajeed Alruhaidi and Khairia Nazmi.

According to MAD Solutions, Sabbagh was born in Jeddah and studied Documentary Filmmaking in New York.



He later worked as an independent film director and producer in Saudi Arabia. His repertoire includes the documentary The Story of Hamza Shahata (2013) and TV series Cash (2014).

For more arts and culture news and updates, follow Ahram Online Arts and Culture on Twitter at @AhramOnlineArts and on Facebook at Ahram Online: Arts & Culture



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The 23rd Cairo International Festival for Contemporary and Experimental Theatre will be held from 20 to 30 September

The 23rd Cairo International Festival for Contemporary and Experimental Theatre will return to Cairo later this month after a five-year hiatus with a long list of diverse workshops, lectures, and performances.

For many years, the festival, which used to be called the Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre, was one of two large scale state-run festivals taking place in Egypt, with the second one being the Cairo International Film Festival.

Both festivals attracted dozens of creatives from all around the world and Egypt's Ministry of Culture provided a large budget to organise the events. Those proceedings have been challenged by the 2011 revolution, with many commentators citing either budget constraints or security issues behind the postponement of the festivals.

The Cairo International Film Festival returned in 2014, but the Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre however had to wait until this year to see a fully fledged return, and under a new name that indicates the inclusion of contemporary theatre troupes.

During a press conference on Wednesday, Dina Amin, the festival's director, explained that the name change will allow the festival to be more inclusive of a larger variety of artistic expression.

This years festival, which runs from 20 to 30 September, is presided over by the former president of the Academy of Arts, Sameh Mahran. The members of the festival's board include theatre-makers such as Nasser Abdel Moneim, who was also head of this year's National Theatre Festival; Essam El Sayed, who is the festival's general coordinator; Dina Amin, the festival's director; and Abou El-Ela EL Salmouny and Fahmy El-Khouly.

This year, the festival seems to be as ambitious as many of its previous editions. It will include contributions from more than 13 countries, about 5 of which are Arab countries. Among the distinguished guests are talented directors, actors, and leaders of their own troupes and festivals from the United States, China, Egypt, Kenya, the United Arab Emirates, and Nigeria.

According to the festivals organisers, the festival will allow Egyptian young people to see international and Arab, specifically Egyptian, theatre and equips them with the knowledge of international theatre they otherwise would not have wide access to.

During the press conference El-Khouly talked about how traditional and repetitive Egyptian theatre has been in the past, and says he sees the festival as a railway switch, geared towards making Egyptian theatre more dynamic and diverse.

Amin talked about this years festival as also being that of the Arabs in exile, or Arabs who have migrated to other corners of the world.

After 9/11, life for Arabs abroad changed drastically. Bringing them to this years festival will provide us with insight into the Arab experience abroad through their work in theatre, she said.

Alongside the performances and workshops planned for this years festival, there are a number of lectures planned on a variety of subjects. According to Amin, the festival aims to bridge the international and Arab theatre communities with that of Egypt.

This years lecture topics include addressing how the international community views Arab theatre as well as the experiences of Arabs in exile, and issues within Egyptian society.

The lecturers and workshops that will cover a multitude of different aspects of experimental and contemporary theatre including cinematography, directing, acting, stage orientation, will be held in the Pyramisa hotel and in other venues in the Opera complex, Metropol Theatre, Falaki Theatre, and other theatres across Cairo.

The workshops will be conducted by the Egyptian and international experts from countries such as Chile, the United States, Pakistan, and India, among others.

In addition to the workshops, lectures, and performances, the festival will also screen films to further contribute to the festivals vision of diversifying Egyptian theatre. Among the screenings we will find films such as Thunder Storm by Chinese director Chen Dalian, and Ya Sim (Oh, Poison), directed by Egyptian filmmaker Shereen Hegazy.

Unlike in previous years, this years festival will not be one of a competitive nature, hence no awards will be distributed. Previous editions included major awards -- for best play, director, actor, actress, scenography -- alongside numerous smaller recognitions.

You cannot compare Kenyan theatre to American theatre, El-Khouly commented on the suspension of the competitive element.

Asked if security concerns had lowered the number of troupes interested in participating in the festival, the organisers denied those claims, adding that this year they had received a thousand applications from all across the world, a fact which testifies to the large interest in the event.

The 23rd Cairo International Festival for Contemporary and Experimental Theatre will kick off on 20 September and run until 30 September, with many plays being staged at the Cairo Opera House. The festivals workshops and lectures will be happening simultaneously at the Pyramisa hotel and at other theatre locations, from 21 September until 29 September.

More details and a full programme will be released soon.

Updated: 19 September, 2016

For more arts and culture news and updates, follow Ahram Online Arts and Culture on Twitter at @AhramOnlineArts and on Facebook at Ahram Online: Arts & Culture

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The World Bank has provided Egypt with the first $1 billion tranche of a $3 billion loan, as part of its support for the government's economic programme, the Ministry of International Cooperation said Friday.

The money will be used to create job opportunities and improve citizens living standards, Minister of International Cooperation Sahar Nasr said in a statement.

The loan is part of the government's effort to secure billions of dollars in aid from various lenders to help revive the country's economy and ease a dollar shortage that has crippled recovery.

This includes a three-year fund of $4.5 billion from the World Bank ($3 billion) and the African Development Bank ($1.5 billion), Ithe minister added in the statement published on the ministry's website.

Cairo has now received $1.5 billion of the financing, the minister said--with Friday's tranche as well as the first $500 million of the ADB loan received late last year.

The funding will be directed at "labour-intensive projects and achieving sustainable economic debeploment," Nasr said.

The government is already working on finalising the second tranche of $1.5 billion from the World Bank, as well as from the African Development Bank, the minister said.

In August Egypt reached a preliminary agreement with the International Monetary Fund to secure a three-year $12 billion loan facility. The deal requires Cairo to secure a further $6 billion in bilateral financing.

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Chicken will be the best-positioned protein due to its low price position in times of pressure on consumer spending power but rises in production costs and the long-term impact of COVID-19 threaten to disrupt the sector, according to Rabobank.
(Beijing)  Chinese regulators have granted insurance companies permission to buy shares on the Hong Kong stock exchange through a stock link program, opening a new channel for insurance funds to invest overseas.

The China Insurance Regulatory Commission (CIRC) said Thursday that insurance companies can participate in the Shanghai-Hong Kong stock connect program, which allows investors to buy and trade selected securities in each market.

Shanghai-based Haitong Securities said the new access will unlock a large volume of funds to invest in the Hong Kong market as insurers seek to improve their asset structure. Some insurance companies have invested in Hong Kong stocks through the Qualified Domestic Institutional Investor program, but quotas have been limited, the securities firm said.

The CIRC's decision came shortly after the securities regulators removed the overall investment quota for the Hong Kong-Shanghai connect program and approved a similar link between Hong Kong and Shenzhen stock markets. Daily trading limits on the programs are retained.

Chinese insurance companies are allowed to invest up to 15 percent of their asset overseas. By the end of 2015, their outstanding overseas investment stood at $36 billion, or nearly 2 percent of total insurance assets, Haitong said.

Contact reporter Han Wei at weihan@caixin.com; editor Ken Howe at kennethhowe@caixin.com
Reference No.: AID-16-03

Position/SalaryRange: (Re-advertisement) Travel Assistant; FSN-8

Additional benefits include allowances for Housing, Transportation,

Meals, Family, and Miscellaneous; 13th and 14th month bonuses;

annual and sick leave and medical coverage

Open To: All DRC citizens

Location: USAID/Democratic Republic of Congo

Kinshasa, DRC

Opening: August 29, 2016

Closing: September 16, 2016

WorkHours: Full-Time; 40 hours/week

USAID/Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC),an equal opportunityemployer, seeks applicants for the above position.

Completion of aUniversity degree in social sciences, education, international development, public health, or related fields and Fluency in English and French proficiency are requirements for this position.

Basic Function of Position:

The Travel Assistant position is located in the Executive Office (EXO) of USAID/ Democratic

Republic of the Congo (DROC), Kinshasa and reports to the Deputy Executive Officer. The function of the EXO Office is to provide a full range of administrative management services in support of USAID activities in DROC.

The Travel Assistant for USAID/DROC is responsible for providing the full range of travel and

training services for U.S. Direct Hire (USDH), U.S. Personal Services Contractor (USPSC), Foreign Service

National (FSN) and Third Country National (TCN) employees.

Sixty percent of the responsibilities (60%) are related to travel. The incumbent serves as the subject matter

expert on travel and the automated travel system. S/he will prepare official travel documents for all employees and their authorized dependents, ensuring that all Mission travel adheres to Agency and U.S. Government (USG)travel policies and regulations. S/he advises staff on the travel regulations, recommends innovative solutions to streamline travel procedures and automate processes to provide high level of customer service. S/he liaises with the Embassy General Services Office (GSO) Travel Section on all related travel matters.

Forty percent of the responsibilities (40%) are related to training. The incumbent oversees the training programs offered to USAID Mission personnel. S/he collaborates with Mission staff and maintains a comprehensive record off all USAID/DROC training related matters.

Major Duties and Responsibilities:

Travel Management 60 percent

Prepares electronic and paper travel authorizations (TAs) for all official and entitlement travel for all types of

employees, including evacuation TAs for American personnel. Serves as the subject matter expert on travel and the automated travel system, E2. The incumbent arranges all types of travels and advises employees on their entitlements and authorized allowable expenses. Incumbent also advises staff on authorized routing, modes of transportation and shipping allowances when required. The incumbent is fully conversant with and knowledgeable in all types of authorized travel such as temporary duty (TDY), permanent change of station (PCS), home leave/return to post, Rest and Recuperation (R&R)/Regional Rest Break (RRB), emergency visitation travel,education travel, children of separated families travel, and medical evacuation travel. The incumbent ensures all supporting documentation is sufficient to pass an audit, including authorizations for business class travel. As one of the final reviewers in the E2 system the incumbent ensures accuracy, appropriate supporting documentation and adherence to regulations.

Serves as official trainer for new staff on the E2 travel system.Schedules trainings as needed. Serves as the

primary point of contact on all official travel related questions. Researches applicable travel regulations covered by the Foreign Affair Manual (FAM), Foreign Affairs Handbook (FAH), Automated Directive System (ADS), Department of State Standardized Regulations (DSSR), other Federal travel regulations, and Mission/Agency policies to answer travel related questions from Mission staff. Interprets complex regulations and policies.Solves the majority of travel problems independently. The incumbent provides creative solutions to travel concerns while enforcing travel regulations and policies. Maintains an electronic and paper filing system for all travel authorizations and ensures proper maintenance, filing and storage of travel documents in accordance with the Automated Directive System, ensuring all necessary documents are maintained in the vital records system of the Mission. The incumbent prepares and maintains current evacuation travel authorizations for USDH/USPSCs andprepares evacuation packets.

Reviews travel itineraries for all domestic and international TDY and entitlement travel, and approves

itineraries in accordance with Mission policy. Maintains an accurate record of approved itineraries, and

conducts a monthly reconciliation of travel card statement to ensure that all charges are correct. Coordinates

with Embassy HR for visa issuance. Drafts all visa support letters for USAID TDYers and coordinates thenecessary certifications with Embassy HR. Tracks Congo/Brazzaville visas for all American staff and arranges visa renewals, in coordination with Embassy HR.

Maintains accurate records of staff travel dates, ensuring a reliable report on any given day as to who is in and out of the country. Also updates and maintains various lists, such as individual staff out-of-country days, TCN and long-term TDYer visa status, and TDY staff in country.

Training

Maintain comprehensive record of all training attended by each employee, and oversee the missions training plan and budget. Assist OFM and EXO in formulating annual mission-wide training budget by providing historical cost data to inform estimations of next years training costs. Ensure compliance with Mission Order H-28, in the formulation and execution of the annual mission training program.

Hosted courses: On a continuous basis, research missions training needs and stay abreast of available trainings. Once annually, make recommendations to EXO as to what trainings should be hosted at the Mission during the calendar year. For each hosted course, oversee all logistical arrangements, including venue reservation, audio/visual and technical support, trainers travel support, the printing of course materials, compiling attendance rosters, overseeing transportation to venue for trainees, etc.

Individual courses: Once annually, oversee the submission of all teams calendar year training plans and ensure that they are finalized and approved in a timely manner. Receive proposed training plans from team leaders, review them for adherence to Mission Order H-28, and submit them to Mission Director for approval;

communicate the Mission Directors approval or request for modifications to team leaders.

Throughout year, monitor actual expenses for each approved individual training; provide updates to team leaders on their sections remaining funds and ensure that no teams expenditures exceed its allotted funds. Ensure timely processing of travel authorizations (TAs) by all employees with approved training. Accept and submit for Mission Directors approval all requests for modifications to the sections approved training plans. Track actual travel costs (airfares, etc.) in order to provide up-to-date cost estimates for the next years annual training budget.

Tuition reimbursement: Once annually, oversee the solicitation of the reimbursement requests from FSN staff. Convene a meeting of the Training Committee (TC) to review and approval requests and ensure that TCs recommendations are submitted to the Mission Director in a timely manner. Track recipients completion of their funded training and advise the EXO when reimbursement is due.

FEI: Once annually, oversee the process of selecting nominees for the Federal Executive Institute (FEI) training. Advise the Mission Director on the eligibility of all mission employees for the various courses, and ensure that the Missions nominations are submitted in a timely manner.

Ad hoc: Stay informed about course offerings, and publicize them in the mission, as appropriate. Track all

employees compliance with annual training requirements, including but not necessarily limited to Ethics Training and Cyber Security training. Use existing tracking databases and spreadsheets, and recommend improvements to more easily and accurately capture and present relevant data. Serve as the resident expert on Agency and Federal training requirements, including but not limited to AOR/COR and acquisition-related training requirements.

Attend all meetings of the Training Committee as a non-voting member.

Required Qualifications at the Full Performance Level:

Education:

At least two years of full-time post secondary study is required.

Prior Work Experience:

Three years of progressively responsible, general administrative and/or customer

service experience...

Language Proficiency:

Level IV (Fluent) English and French proficiency, both oral and written, is required.

Knowledge:

Extensive knowledge of management processes including the creation, implementation and

assessment of a system is required. A demonstrated knowledge of administrative management and support

operations is necessary. Ability to understand regulations and policies, and ability to interpret those policies

and regulations is needed. Flexibility to maintain a professional relationship with all categories of customers

in time-sensitive environment is required.

Skills and Abilities:

Ability to lead, train and supervise, across cultures. Ability to analyze, conceptualize negotiate, exercise sound judgment, proven ability to identify problems and develop creative solutions, and the interpersonal skills to handle requests and complaints with patience and diplomacy. Candidate must have the ability to present analysis and recommendations in clear written and oral formats. Ability to develop and maintain strong professional contacts with colleagues at all levels within the USAID Mission.

Evaluation Criteria andWeights:

Education/Weighted 20% based on initial application review; English Language Skills/Weighted 20% based on application review, written assessment and interview; Prior Work Experience/Weighted 20% based on application review and interview; Knowledge/Weighted 20% based on written assessment and interview; and Skills and Abilities/Weighted 20% based on written assessment and interview.

How the selection will be made:

The successful candidatewill be selected based upon

A preliminary review of the applicant's submitted package to establish that minimum educational and English writing fluency requirements are met. Tests to include an Englishwriting skills test,a Microsoft Office proficiency test that might includeany of the following:Word,Excel, PowerPoint; and any technical skill test that might be deemedappropriate. A personal ortelephone interview. Reference checks.

USAID/DRCs Technical Evaluation Committee (TEC) and Human Resources Section will performthe preliminary review (Step 1 above) toeliminate those applicationsthat do not meet the minimum educational and written Englishlanguage requirements.

The TEC will review eachofthe applications which meet the minimum qualifications against theestablished evaluation criteriato develop a shortlist of applicants tobetested and possiblyinterviewed.Applicants will be contacted for testing (Step 2) and interviews.Based on theresults ofthe tests, however, an applicant otherwise identifiedfor interviewcould bedroppedfrom the interviewlist.

Following the interview (Step 3) during which the applicant will beevaluated against theestablished criteria,the TEC will make apreliminary determinationof candidates to beconsidered for employment and forward thatlist to HR.

HR will conduct and document thereference checks (Step 4)prior to advising theTEC of the results of these checks.Pleasenote that references maybe solicitedfrom current aswell asformer supervisors inadditiontothe referencesyouprovide in your application package.

References will onlybe solicited for those interviewed applicants who are being considered for ranking.

Based on this final input, the TEC will make its final decision on whichcandidates to rank order,prepare aSelection Memofor reviewand approvalbythe Contracting Officer, after which anofferof employment willbemadetothe successfulcandidate, and unsuccessful candidates whowere interviewedwillbe contacted andadvised oftheir non-selection.

As positive medical andsecurity clearances are a condition of employment, the selectedcandidatewillundergo stringent investigation prior to employment with USAID/DRC.

USAID/DRC reserves the right to hire an applicantwhodoes notmeet the required experience levelat a trainee level.However, an applicantwhodoes not meetthe minimum educationalrequirements cannot behiredat either a trainee orfull performance level.

Compensation:

ThepositionwillbecompensatedinaccordancewiththeU.S. Embassys LocalCompensationPlan(LCP).Thesuccessfulcandidatessalarylevelwillbebasedonpriorjob-related experience andsalary history.

To Apply:

ONLY applicantswho meet the minimum educational and fluency in English and French requirements as stated in the solicitation documentwill be considered.Interested applicantswhodonotmeet these requirementsare encouraged NOT toapplysincethese applicationswill not be considered.

A complete application package consists of the following:

Application for U.S. Federal Employment, DS-174 - Job Application Form.The form can be found in the US embassy website (https://kinshasa.usembassy.gov/opportunities/jobs.html) A cover letter demonstrating how prior experience and/or training address the minimum qualifications and selection criteria, A current resume or curriculum vitae (CV), and Names and contact numbers of three professional references.

Ensure that all communications (including yourCoverLetter) include the Announcement Reference Number (AID-15-28) andtheTitleofthePosition(s)forwhichyouare applying (Travel Assistant)

Submit the complete application package via email, to usaidhrkinshasa@usaid.gov

Failure to complywiththese instructionsmayresult inyour application being considered nonresponsiveand eliminated from further consideration.

Pointof Contact:

Sandra Kiyanga: skiyanga@usaid.gov

Onlyshort-listed candidateswillbe acknowledged.

DEFINITION:

Foreign Service National (FSN): A host country national employed at a U.S. Mission abroad, who is not a U.S. citizen, nor a family member of a direct-hire Foreign, Civil, or uniformed service member under Chief of Mission authority.

Closing dateforthis position:September 16, 2016.

The U.S. Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo provides opportunity and fair and equitable treatment in employment to all people without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, political affiliation, marital status or sexual orientation. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) also strives to ensure equal employment opportunity in all personnel operations. Women and members of minority groups are encouraged to apply.
by Thom Forbes , Featured Columnist @tforbes, September 8, 2016

Chris Purdy, the president of DKT International in Washington D.C., is used to people saying something like, Oh, youre in social marketing, you must work with Facebook.

Yes, DKT does utilize Facebook  along with the whole gamut of other social media and traditional marketing levers  to inform women and men about family planning and HIV/AIDS prevention through 22 programs in 19 countries. But social marketing predates social media by several decades.

Social marketing is using the tools, the infrastructure, the incentives of the private sector to market, sell and distribute a wide range of health products  in our case, contraceptive products  not only from the supply-chain side but also from the demand-generation side, he says. But its for a social impact.

As similar as DKTs efforts are to commercial marketing, Purdys eye is not on the P&L statement. We sell these products; we dont give them away for free, he says. But the bottom line is, how many people went out and changed their behavior? How many went out and purchased a condom?

advertisement advertisement

The answer: In 2015, DKT sold more than 622 million condoms, 73.9 million oral contraceptives, 1.9 million IUDS, and averted 5.5 million unwanted pregnancies.

The concept of selling products, not giving them away, is rooted in the philosophy of DKT, which board chairman Phil Harvey started in 1989. In this video, he describes a moment when, as a CARE worker in India in the 1960s, a woman threw herself at his feet in gratitude as he was handing out food during a flood. As he reflected on that action later, Harvey resolved to find a way to help people that did not create a disparity between the giver and the recipient and a sense of gratitude.

Social marketing is particularly well-designed for this, Harvey suggests, because when youre selling something, as cheap as it may be, the customer is spending his or her own money and becomes an equal in the transaction. And, in many ways, social media is the perfect vehicle for getting the message across, Purdy says.

You are able to be more controversial because youre being more targeted, he points outs, which also means that youre able to be more sexy when talking about family planning products.

Not many young women wake up on Saturday morning and say to their friends, Hey, how was your reproductive health life like last night? he says. They talk about sex. And its hard to talk about sex on TV  but you can tease that out when youre using social media.

When we talked Wednesday, Purdy had just received an email from DKTs Brazil office, where the Seventh Annual Prudence Condom Testers campaign had just begun. Users download an app, put in a user name and then track when, where, with whom and in what position they are having sex. A online digital map shows any interested party whats going on where, as well as which variety of Prudence is in play. In addition, 100 testers chosen for having the best stories get a months supply of condoms and blog about what they like  or dont  about the product.

A few other example of current campaigns:

In Egypt, where the law prohibits the use of mass media to promote condoms and lubricants, DKTs Facebook and Instagram accounts play a critical role. Using the hashtag #MorePleasure, a recently launched campaign targets males, 18-34, and females, 24-45, by talking about the pleasure of using a variety of Fiesta condoms and lubricants.

In Turkey, DKT uses Facebook, Google Adwords, an e-newsletter and viral and email marketing to promote the Fiesta brand.

Three videos in Ghana launched on YouTube since November use animation, focusing on the themes of pleasure and safety in an ongoing effort to break taboos and dispel myths. They have received more than 230,000 views and reached more than 800,000 people.

DKT Myanmar is bypassing television with 15-second ads on the Kiss Myanmar Facebook page that appeal to youth  three for Kiss condoms and one for Kiss Easy-Jel lubricant.

Purdy, who majored in anthropology at Carleton College in Northfield, Minn., joined DKT in Indonesia 1996. He is sort of a self-made marketing guy, he says, and feels his academic background has shaped his career as a social marketer.

Anthropology is understanding how cultures change, or what culture is, or why people behave the way that they do, Purdy says. And thats at the core of DKTs mission.

How do you get the root causes as to why someone wants to use family planning? To my mind, that is one of the most impactful, influential decisions you can make. Whether you have children, or how many, the minute you make that decision, whether youre 19 or 29 or 39, your life is irrevocably changed.
by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, September 8, 2016

The Internet of Things involves a lot of sensors.

These sensors are being built into many more things and ultimately may even be implanted in people.

That was one of the many ideas included in a presentation of whats next for smart homes at the annual Internet of Things Summit in Boston yesterday.

The two-day event aggregates a host of companies creating many of the components, underpinning and gadgetry of the coming connected world.

Peter Taylor, VP of Products at Belkin International, had some interesting insights on connected homes based on the companys years of experience monitoring how consumers deal with connected products.

Belkin is best known for its WeMo switch launched in 2012, which when plugged into any outlet can be controlled via mobile app. For example, a lamp or coffee maker plugged into the WeMo switch then can be turned on or off through the app. Those smart plugs provide Belkin with some 20 million data points per day.

Over time, Belkin expanded its product line to include many home automation devices, including light switches, cameras, air purifiers, lightbulbs, coffeemakers and many other connected things.

Even though the company sells a lot of physical things, the consumer value is in the services they provide, according to Taylor.

All our products are controlled by one app, Taylor said.

The company actually gave away products to consumers to learn more about market barriers.

The company found that for smart home products, 4% inaccuracy was unacceptable and consumers would turn off a product.

Taylor sees a future with more power to brands with connected objects living within a world of software everywhere, with people controlling things with various services and experiences emerging.

There also are issues within a smart home since each home can be quite diverse. Taylor identified a few:

Who has access, such as through Amazon Alexa-controlled switches?

What do they have access to? (A 5-year-old may not have access to control a stove, for example)

How do you police it?

How do you control each room with each family member?

When marketing the products in Costco, Belkin packaged the devices as a home monitoring bundle, which Taylor says was one of the most successful marketing campaigns.

He noted that early overall industry missteps included pitching products as easy to install and use, which many consumers found was not the case.

Sensors also may go beyond being baked into products.

The future may include implanted sensors, said Taylor. Youll know exactly who is in the house and their moods. Then sensors in the home dont have to be so accurate.

Its incredibly early in our space, said Taylor. We need to start treating the customer in a more sophisticated way. The products are ready.
by Larissa Faw , September 9, 2016



Mindshare has appointed Diana Gordon to the new position of director of Shop+, its dedicated retail and e-commerce unit.

Gordon will serve as the Chicago lead for Shop+, overseeing the units expansion in that market. She will report to Joe Migliozzi, Managing Director and Global Shop+ Lead for Mindshare. She will also work with the other Shop+ offices worldwide, including hubs in New York, London, and Singapore.

Shop+ covers all forms of commerce, from exploring beacons in physical stores to the latest adaptive pricing and promotion technologies being used by online retailers.

Most recently, Gordon led the social media and search practice for Mindshares Chicago and Atlanta offices, working with clients such as General Mills, Kimberly-Clark, Abbott, John Deere, Intercontinental Hotels Group, and the United States Marine Corps.

"The work of Shop+ is becoming more important than ever for our clients, says Migliozzi. As we expand our team globally, Diana brings the experience, tenacity, and creativity to drive first-in-class solutions for our brands and grow Shop+ in the marketplace.
Police make arrest of over 100 suspects linked to phone scams in Xuchang in Henan Province on June 28. Photo: Visual China

(Beijing)  The recent deaths of two students from the same city in Shandong province who fell victim to phone scammers have led to a public outcry over the failure to enforce privacy laws and the lack of oversight of certain telecom services that have allowed con artists to operate.

Xu Yuyu, an impoverished schoolgirl, died of heart failure on Aug. 19, two days after she lost an entire semester's worth of college tuition to a scammer who had pretended to be a local education official. Fraudsters told her to transfer money so that she could access her financial aid. Four days later, another college student from Xu's hometown of Linyi died after falling prey to another con artist who pretended to be a police officer and demanded that the boy repay a bank loan that he had never taken, local media reported.

Calls from tricksters who pretend to be government officials or the police are one of the most common scams in China. On Aug. 29, a lecturer at the prestigious Tsinghua University in Beijing was swindled out of over 17 million yuan ($2.6 million) by fraudsters who pretended to be law enforcement officials.

Phone scams and internet phishing schemes have been on the rise, with nearly 285,000 such cases registered in the first half alone, causing a loss of over 8 billion yuan, data from the Ministry of Public Security showed. Last year, there were 590,000 complaints of telephone and Internet scams that had swindled nearly 22 billion yuan, official data showed. The number of phone scams rose nearly one-third in 2015 compared with the previous year, and Internet fraud more than doubled, it said.

The lack of adequate laws to prevent private information leaks and an earlier legal loophole that allowed telecom operators to sell subscriptions without checking any identification documents have created a safe haven for scammers, experts said.

In the case of 19-year-old Xu Yuyu, she received the scam call within days after applying for financial aid at the local education bureau, raising concerns that her private data may have been leaked. Police have detained six suspects allegedly linked to the scam, but are still investigating how they could have managed to get Xu's information.

Plugging the Leaks

A June survey by the Internet Society of China, a non-government industry association, found that 4 out of 5 Internet users in the country had experienced a private-information leak.

A thriving underground market of information dealers collect all sorts of personal data such as ID numbers and addresses from businesses and even government agencies and then sell it to advertisers and even scammers. This has led to the high number of data leaks, said Wan Renguo, a mobile security expert at the Internet security services company Qihoo360.

Authorities have focused on preventing hacking, but they must step up efforts to crack down on this widespread practice of insiders who have access to huge databases selling client data, Wang said.

An information dealer Caixin contacted online said he can provide all kinds of information, including a list of contacts for university professors, and ID information and phone numbers of elderly citizens, who are the most vulnerable scams. About 2,000 data points could be purchased by anyone for about 100 yuan, and the larger the volume, the cheaper it gets, said the dealer, who wished to remain anonymous.

Under China's criminal law, those who are found guilty of selling personal information face up to seven years in prison. But enforcement is difficult because under current laws, victims have to present evidence themselves to prove how their personal information was leaked and how the losses were incurred, said Zhao Zhanling, a legal adviser at the Internet Society of China.

This is because China lacks a national Data Protection Law similar to that in the European Union.

"Personal information leaks and phone scams were widespread partly due to the absence of a national law," said Long Weiqiu, a law professor at Beihang University in Beijing.

There were about 200 different legal clauses scattered in different laws linked to protecting private data, but legal experts say these rules are vague.

The government has stepped up efforts to address this issue by announcing revisions to both the Consumer Rights Protection Law and the Cyber Security Law  two of the most important pieces of legislation dealing with privacy issues.

On Aug. 5, the State Administration of Industry and Commerce released the latest draft of the Consumer Rights Protection Law for public comment. It specifically prohibits companies from using client data for marketing via electronic messages or telemarketing calls unless consumers have consented to it. It also extends protection to biometric data. The second draft of the Cyber Security Law was also published in July, and is expected to come into effect by the end of the year. That also tightens rules on data collected by smartphones, websites, etc.

Playing Catch-up

But regulators seem to be playing catch-up to con artists who have found new ways to cover their tracks.

Scammers who called Xu Yuyu used a number registered with a mobile virtual network operator called YuanTel in Beijing, two telecom sector employees said.

These virtual network operators offer cheaper voice and video calls and text messaging services using infrastructure leased from other mobile networks, and until recently, subscribers could get a connection without submitting any identification documents.

An investigation by the Internet security unit of Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) in July found that over one-third of retailers linked to virtual network operators flouted government rules for real-name registrations.

The big three state-owned telecom operators  China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom  turned a blind eye to the questionable operations of some virtual network operators, fearing that strict enforcement of real-name registration rules could erode their bottom lines, said Tu Zipei, an information security specialist, in a commentary published on Caixin.

The government has ordered telecom network operators to collect identification proof from all subscribers by June 30.

But some scammers were now using equipment that can interrupt and tamper with telecom signals, which enables them to alter their caller ID, so that victims believe they were receiving calls from official numbers. They were also using bulk messaging software to send text messages masked as notices from telecom operators, banks and other institutions to thousands of users. These new technologies and equipment makes it much harder to track scammers, said Fu Liang, an independent telecoms industry analyst.

When Liu, a businessman from Hunan, received a call from a man who claimed to be a social security bureau official from a city in far-away Fujian province and said his social security card was used for carry out "an illegal activity," his first hunch was to suspect it was a scammer.

But the caller knew his national identification number, which doubles as his social security ID, and his date of birth, leaving Liu with nagging doubts.

A few minutes later, he got another call from someone who claimed to be a police officer from the same city, who said Liu's social security card and bank account was used to launder money. Liu cut the call and quickly dialed 114 for directory inquiries, and was shocked to learn that the previous call had come from an official phone number registered under Quanzhou city's public security bureau.

Liu said he decided to trust the caller and had transferred 1 million yuan from his personal bank account to "an official account for verification" to prove his innocence. This was in October, and Liu says he hasn't able to trace the caller or his money since.

In Liu's case, scammers had used a widespread technology to spoof their caller ID, several telecom industry experts said.

Contact reporter Han Wei at weihan@caixin.com; editor Poornima Weerasekara (poornima@caixin.com)
The New York Times, Friday, September 9, 2016 9:40 AM

Two men from North Carolina have been arrested for allegedly hacking into the personal email accounts of the director of the CIA and two other officials. The men were accused of working for the hacking group, Crackas With Attitude, to break into these accounts. Prosecutors claim that the hackers broke into these email accounts between October 2015 and February 2016.

Read the whole story at The New York Times 
SC Magazine, Friday, September 9, 2016 9:44 AM

House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) and the committee's top Democrat Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) have been battling over the Clinton email investigation. Chaffetz has called on the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia to investigate if Clinton or her team illegally destroyed records. Meanwhile, Cummings has been pointing to Colin Powell's guidance to Clinton on how to run a private server.

Read the whole story at SC Magazine 
by Philip Rosenstein , Staff Writer, September 9, 2016

All four presidential candidates with any sort of noticeable support in the polls released video ads in August, a total of 22 according the video advertising effectiveness firm Ace Metrix.

The Hillary Clinton camp put out 13 new ads, the most in one month in support of the Democratic candidate. Only four of them were funded by the pro-Clinton Our Principles PAC.

The pro-Trump camp released five new ads, one sponsored by a supporting PAC. Jill Steins campaign and Gary Johnsons Purple PAC released two and one, respectively.

Green Party candidate Jill Steins minute long ad Terrible did best among Independent voters and those that lean one way or the other. The spot takes shots at both Clinton and Trump from the outset: I would feel terrible if Donald Trump gets elected and terrible if Hillary Clinton gets elected.

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The ad covers a surprisingly vast number of issues from energy policy to education and the economy, presenting Stein as a revolutionary candidate. There is a clear attempt to court those Sanders supporters still dismayed with Hillary Clinton and viscerally opposed to Donald Trump.

Its no surprise the ad had the lowest disagreement score among Independents and leaners in the month of August.

Second-strongest ad among the Independent/leaner voter contingent was the pro-Johnson Purple PAC ad The Honorable Choice. The ad calls for stronger civil-liberty protections and basically equates the collection of taxes with an infringement on freedom: The government takes away my money, theyre taking away my freedom.

Together, the Libertarian and Green Parties are capturing over 12% of the vote in RealClearPolitics most recent four-way polling averages. While the odds of either coming away with the presidency are far below 1%, they will have a noticeable impact on the eventual vote in November.

The news is probably better for Clinton than Trump. Gary Johnson, who is polling at a strong 9% in the RCP average, will inevitably peel off more voters from the Republican candidate with a message of fiscal austerity and little overlap with the liberal agenda.

Accordingly, Trump needs to up his spending in the two remaining months. Overall, the Clinton campaign has outspent Trump six-to-one during the general election. When outside spending is factored in, that ratio doesnt get any friendlier.

Over the past week, according to NBC, Trump has upped his spending in swing states, outspending Clinton in Colorado and in Virginia (where Clinton had no presence over the airwaves). In the past seven days, Clinton has spent $9,760,943 over the airwaves in swing states, with Trump closing in with $6,948,228, per NBC.

The national story is very different, where the Clinton camp outspent Trump 10-to-1 in the week before Labor Day.
by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, September 9, 2016

Publishers who have been wringing their hands about Facebook and other platforms taking control of their audiences now have another matter, closely related, to worry about: censorship. This week the biggest newspaper in Norway, Aftenposten, published a scathing open letter to Mark Zuckerberg blasting Facebooks decision to remove the worlds most famous war photographs, posted by the newspaper, due to the social networks rules governing decency.

Aftenposten had posted the iconic photograph by Nick Ut  showing a 9-year-old Vietnamese girl, Kim Phuc, crying as she flees a napalm attack with other children  as part of a series on historys most moving war images. Facebook temporarily removed the photo because the girl appears (famously) nude, having torn off her burning clothing when her group of civilians was mistakenly attacked by the South Vietnamese air force.

When the posts author, Tom Egeland, recorded a complaint by Kim Phuc herself about the censorship, Facebook blocked Egelands account and prevented him from posting any new entries.

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In his letter to Zuckerberg, Aftenposten editor-in-chief Espen Egil Hansen wrote that I am upset, disappointed  well, in fact even afraid - of what you are about to do to a mainstay of our democratic society. Hansen then summed up the accusations in a damning passage: First you create rules that dont distinguish between child pornography and famous war photographs. Then you practice these rules without allowing space for good judgment. Finally you even censor criticism against and a discussion about the decision  and you punish the person who dares to voice criticism.

Despite this, Hansen readily conceded the mostly positive relationship publishers have with Facebook, while emphasizing that the social network should stick to social networking: Facebook has become a world-leading platform for spreading information, for debate and for social contact between persons. You have gained this position because you deserve it. But, dear Mark, you are the worlds most powerful editor. Even for a major player like Aftenposten, Facebook is hard to avoid. In fact we dont really wish to avoid you, because you are offering us a great channel for distributing our content. We want to reach out with our journalism.

Nonetheless, Hansen concluded: I think you are abusing your power, and I find it hard to believe that you have thought it through thoroughly The media have a responsibility to consider publication in every single case. This may be a heavy responsibility. Each editor must weigh the pros and cons. This right and duty, which all editors in the world have, should not be undermined by algorithms encoded in your office in California.

The Norwegian culture minister, Linda Helleland, has urged Facebook execs to meet with Norwegian newspaper editors to discuss censorship and related issues. The Norwegian Press Association is also petitioning the countrys powerful sovereign wealth fund, which invests the proceeds from North Sea oil sales, to consider selling its 0.5% stake in Facebook, valued at around $2 billion.
by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, September 9, 2016

Once the most powerful figures in the magazine industry, publishers may soon find themselves an endangered species, as big magazine brands move to eliminate the role in favor of new, more forward-looking titles and executive org charts.

The latest big publisher to nix, well, publisher is Hearst, which has eliminated the traditional position at Elle Decor in addition to several other magazines, according to the New York Post, which first reported the news.

As part of the transition, Barbara Hertz Friedmann, who previously served as Hearst vice president, publisher and Chief Revenue Officer for Elle Decor, is leaving the company. The NYP notes that two other titles in Hearsts home design group, Veranda and House Beautiful, eliminated the role of publisher several years ago.

On the business side, all three titles now come under the direction of SVP and publishing group director Kate Kelly Smith. Smith assumed her current position after being promoted from her previous role as publisher of House Beautiful back in 2011.

As noted, Hearst is just one of a number of big magazine companies getting rid of the publisher title.

Back in July, Time Inc. eliminated the role from its corporate organization as part of a broader consolidation of its sales and marketing teams. Time Inc.s new sales structure has executives overseeing groups organized around advertising categories, brands or digital sales.

Time Inc. president and COO Mark Ellis explained the companys move away from the title in an interview with MediaPosts Supply-Side Insider, noting: Everyone thought [it] was fairly antiquated, because it denoted a print-centric company. Were moving to being a digital-first company, and we wanted the titles and sales structure to reflect that.
by Steve McClellan @mp_mcclellan, September 9, 2016



Ad veteran Greg Andersen has returned to his Midwestern roots. Omaha, NE-based agency Bailey Lauerman has named the Nebraska native CEO.

Andersen replaces Andy Fletecher who abruptly departed in July following a state audit that found Bailey Lauerman had overrun contracts with the Nebraska Tourism Commission by $4.4 million for work related to the states Visit Nebraska. Vice Nice, tourism campaign.

Most recently Andersen served as president of Omnicoms RAPP U.S., where hes credited with honing the shops data and technology capabilities. He left earlier this year and subsequently filed a discrimination and retaliation law suit against the agency and its then CEO Alexei Orlov who left in June, a few weeks after the suit was filed. That case is ongoing in Los Angeles Superior Court.

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Andersen is a 25-year Adland veteran who has worked with brands such as Google, Cadillac, Westin Hotels and Mattel.

Prior to RAPP he was CEO at BBH US and earlier served at EURO RSCG, Merkley + Partners and Lowe Worldwide.

Greg knows how to inspire teams to develop the kind of work that brands need to be successful today  work that is emotional, culturally relevant and harnesses the continuous evolution of media and technology, stated Carter Weitz, chairman and chief creative officer for Bailey Lauerman. He also has a great deal of integrity  something that is demonstrated in what clients and colleagues consistently say about working with him, as well as in his commitment to fostering change that is needed in our industry.
by Dave Morgan , Featured Contributor, September 9, 2016

The most important book I read this summer happened by accident, picked off the shelf since I liked the author. It wasnt a novel  or a biography, my normal summer/beach fare. And it wasn't a business book.

However, one of the greatest business writers and thinkers of all time, Peter Drucker, did write it. Its a political book written while Drucker was living in Europe as a journalist and student.

The book, The End of Economic Man: The Origins of Totalitarianism, chronicles a period of great instability in Europe, centering on the rise of the massive political movement totalitarianism, and two individuals whose marks on history would be profound and horrific. Yes, Peter Drucker was there, watched and wrote as a first-party observer to the rise of Mussolini and Hitler. It was published in 1939 and it offers chilling parallels to the U.S. presidential election today.

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Like many of you, I suspect, I've been a bit bewildered by the amount of popular support for Donald Trump and his rhetoric. After reading the book, I have a much better understanding of Trumps rhetoric and the reception hes been given by portions of the American populace today.

Peter Drucker, Austrian born, started his career as a writer and observer of politics and political movements and spent time in his early 20s covering speeches by Mussolini, Hitler and Goebbels. He wrote the core thesis of the book in 1932 about Mussolinis rise to power, suggesting that it was a sign of a bigger movement. Hitlers rise confirmed it, and the complete book was finally published in 1939 after a challenging search to find a publisher courageous enough to release the book and its controversial conclusion: that Hitler and Mussolini were not products of unique, nationalist conditions in Germany and Italy, but were rather the result of a broader set of sociological conditions present across all of Europe, conditions that could surface elsewhere and at other times.

None other than Winston Churchill reviewed the book when it was published, writing that Drucker was one of those writers to whom almost anything can be forgiven because he not only has a mind of his own, but has the gift of starting other minds along a stimulating line of thought. Still, Churchill criticized Druckers prediction that Hitler and Stalin would form an alliance as naive. History soon bore out Drucker as prescient.

Drucker wrote that those supporting democratic governments did not understand how to fight fascism. They only saw fascisms symptoms  its hateful rhetoric, obvious propaganda, self-centered characters and demagoguery  and never understood its causes. In his chapter titled The Despair of the Masses, Drucker found contributory factors in the decline of Europes spiritual and social order, the widening chasm between factory owners and workers, the failure of political elites and new doctrines like Marxist reforms to fill the void for the working class  and a desire to believe in miracles, no matter how irrational they might be.

In his chapters The Totalitarian Miracle and Miracle or Mirage? Drucker observed that even the most illogical rhetoric of Hitler and Mussolini and their surrogates was lauded and accepted by many as gospel because of the populaces base desire to want to believe that anything other than the status quo would be better for them. While it may have been illogical, they had no problem believing beyond belief.

Those disaffected by the post-World War I in Germany and Italy wanted someone or something to blame for what they perceived as desperate and worsening conditions. They gave their allegiance to anyone who delivered a claim to make it better, appeared to understand their problems and pain, and to speak their language. As the world soon learned, that blind allegiance didnt end well.

It may seem strange to turn to a virtually unknown 1930s book to better understand an election in 2016. However, if you read it, I promise you that you will be both surprised by the eerie parallels  and have a better perspective on the drivers in this election.
The harms of statins have been largely overestimated due to misinterpretation of study results, and the benefits of the cholesterol-lowering drugs have been underrated. This is the conclusion of a large-scale review recently published in The Lancet. Share on Pinterest Researchers say statin therapy poses more health benefits than risks. The authors of the review  including Prof. Liam Smeeth of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine in the United Kingdom  hope their findings will help patients and doctors make informed decisions about the use of statin therapy. Statins are a widely used class of prescription drugs that lower levels of bad low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol. Elevated LDL cholesterol is a key risk factor for cardiovascular diseases, such as heart attack and stroke, and statins lower it by slowing down the production of cholesterol in the liver. According to data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, use of cholesterol-lowering medications in the United States increased from 18 percent to 26 percent between 2003-2012, with 93 percent of these medications being statins. While many studies have hailed the heart health benefits of statin use, others have raised concerns about the safety of statin therapy, with some researchers claiming the drugs do more harm than good. For their review, Prof. Smeeth and colleagues conducted an in-depth analysis of different studies that have investigated outcomes in patients receiving statin therapy, with a view to gaining a better understanding of the benefits and risks the drugs may pose.

Assessing the reliability of different trial methods The team looked at the strengths and limitations of a variety of research, including randomized controlled trials (RCTs), meta-analyses, and observational studies. In RCTs, the effects of a particular drug are compared with a placebo in one or more groups of patients. These trials are best for determining cause and effect of a medication, the researchers note; random allocation of patients to the treatment or placebo groups means researchers are better able to attribute health outcomes to the drug, while blinding patients and researchers to what drug each participant is taking reduces bias. Meta-analyses collect and assess evidence from a number of RCTs that have investigated the effects of the same drug, which Prof. Smeeth and team say can boost the reliability and generalizability of the findings. According to the review authors, observational studies are probably the least reliable for determining the effects of drug treatments. Observational studies look at the health outcomes of patients who have been given a drug as part of their standard care and compare them with people who have not been given the treatment. However, the team notes that because doctors are likely to have given a drug to a patient for a reason, their health is likely to be different to those not taking the drug, which may influence the results. What is more, the authors point out that patients administered a drug in routine care know they are being treated with it and are aware of what the side effects are. As such, they are more likely to attribute any side effects to the drug, while people not taking the drug are less likely to do so.

Statin therapy reduces risk of cardiovascular events by 25 percent Prof. Smeeth and colleagues took all of these factors into account when assessing studies that looked at the health outcomes of patients treated with statin therapy. By looking at large RCTs, the researchers found that every 1 millimole per liter reduction in LDL cholesterol lowered the risk of ischemic stroke, heart attack, heart-related deaths, and coronary artery bypass surgery by around 25 percent each year statin therapy was used, after the first year of treatment. Looking at the results of meta-analyses, the researchers found that the risk of heart-related events was further lowered with larger LDL cholesterol reductions as a result of statin therapy. As an example, the team found evidence to suggest that a 2 millimole per liter reduction in LDL cholesterol with statin therapy  40 milligrams of atorvastatin daily  is associated with an almost 50 percent reduction in the risk of a major cardiovascular event. While some observational studies have linked statin use with lower risk of cancer, respiratory disease, and other medical conditions, the authors say there was no evidence from RCTs that these effects are a direct result of statin therapy.

Increased risks of ischemic stoke, diabetes, and myopathy with statin use Myopathy  a disorder characterized by muscle weakness  is one condition that emerged as being directly caused by statin use in both observational studies and RCTs, the authors report. However, they found that the risk of developing this condition is low, with one extra case arising for every 10,000 people treated with statin therapy each year. RCTs did show an increased risk of diabetes with statin therapy, say the authors, with around 10-20 additional cases arising in every 10,000 patients annually. However, the researchers note that these cases were most likely to occur in patients already at increased risk of diabetes. Observational studies identified a link between statin therapy and increased risk of hemorrhagic stroke, the team says, and RCTs suggest that statin use may increase this risk by around 20 percent. Extrapolating this to Western populations, the researchers estimate that statin therapy may lead to an additional 10-20 cases of hemorrhagic stroke per 10,000 patients each year. Still, the team notes that reduction in ischemic stroke risk with statin therapy is significantly bigger than the increased risk of hemorrhagic stroke, so the risk of stroke overall is reduced with statin use. While observational studies have reported that statin therapy increases the risk of muscle pain and weakness, fueling statin intolerance, the authors say this effect is unlikely to be a direct result of statins themselves. From RCTs, the team found that around 10-20 cases of adverse side effects  including muscle pain and weakness  per 10,000 patients could be attributed to statin therapy each year. Finally, the researchers found no evidence from RCTs that statins directly cause other side effects reported in observational studies, including memory loss, cataracts, kidney injury, liver disease, sleep problems, and aggression.
People have been enjoying the ability of yeasts to produce beer and wine since the dawn of civilization. Researchers from VIB, KU Leuven and Ghent University found that yeasts used for beer and winemaking have been domesticated in the 16th century, around 100 years before the discovery of microbes. Together with a US research team, the Belgian teams analyzed the genomes and fermentation characteristics of more than 150 industrial yeasts used to produce different beers, wines and bread. The results show that the hundreds of beer and wine yeasts available today are the result of brewers and winemakers unconsciously selecting variants that can consume specific sugars, tolerate industrial conditions and produce desired flavors. Fascinatingly, beer yeasts show stronger signs of domestication than wine yeasts, likely because they happily lived in the brewery throughout the year and lost all contact with their feral family members. The results are published in the scientific journal Cell.

In this research project, the lab of yeast expert Kevin Verstrepen (VIB-KU Leuven) and the bioinformatics team of Steven Maere (VIB-UGent) worked side by side.

Yeast breeding avant la lettre

Kevin Verstrepen (VIB-KU Leuven): "The ancestors of the hundreds of different yeasts on the market today have been selected in the 16th century. Ancient brewers, winemakers and bakers often practiced 'backslopping', a technique where a small part of a previous well-fermented dough or brew was kept apart to mix it with a new batch, to make the fermentation process quicker and more consistent. Without realizing what they were doing exactly, these ancient craftsmen were effectively selecting and transferring yeast cultures from one batch to the next, allowing the microbes to continuously grow and adapt to man-made industrial environments."

Pet fungi

In order to study a large variety of beers and yeasts, the Belgian team joined forces with White Labs, an American company specialized in selling different yeasts to craft brewers. The scientists found that yeast strains were selected to provide beers with desired industrial characteristics. For example, brewers clearly selected yeasts that do not produce undesirable flavors. And yeasts used for bottle conditioning are more tolerant to high concentrations of alcohol, which is necessary for stronger beers. Steven Maere (VIB-UGent): "The consequences of four centuries of domestication were very clear in the DNA of industrial yeasts. In beer yeasts for instance, specific genes have often been amplified or deleted to optimize growth in beer fermenters and beer taste."

Researchers Brigida Gallone (VIB-KU Leuven-UGent) and Jan Steensels (VIB-KU Leuven) add: "Interestingly, although wine yeasts share their origins with beer yeasts, they show fewer signs of domestication. This is probably because wine yeasts are only used to ferment grape juice once a year, and survive in and around the winery for the rest of the year, where they may interbreed with feral yeasts. In that sense, beer yeasts are like dogs, completely "tamed" and adapted to their relation with humans, whereas wine yeasts resemble the wilder character of cats."

The new study does not only yield insight in how humans have shaped the evolution and genomes of today's industrial yeasts, but also allows breeding even better yeast variants. The scientists are already using the genome sequences to select hybrids that combine beneficial DNA regions from several existing beer and wine yeasts.

"Mapping out the genome structure of yeasts in food or drinks, allows us to better understand the mechanics and applications of yeasts. As a result, it opens up new possibilities to breed yeasts to enhance flavors, aromas or conservation techniques," Kevin Verstrepen (VIB-KU Leuven) comments.
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"Anorexia - not eating - is a common behaviour during sickness that is seen in people and all kinds of animals. Our findings show that it has a strong protective effect with certain infections, but not with others."In the first of a series of experiments, mice were infected with listeria bacteria, a common cause of food poisoning. The animals stopped eating naturally, and eventually recovered. However, when they were made to eat, they died.Sugary food was the culprit, the researchers discovered - the mice survived when they were fed protein and fats but no glucose.A similar study of mice infected with the flu virus showed an opposite effect. In this case, the mice lived when they were force-fed glucose, but died when they were denied food. Giving the animals a drug called 2-DG, which prevents glucose metabolism, saved the listeria-infected mice but proved fatal to those with flu.Further research indicated that the different outcomes related to an interplay between metabolism and the immune system. "Almost everything we know about infection is based on immune response studies and looking at how the immune system eliminates pathogens (harmful agents)," said Medzhitov. "But that's not the only way we defend ourselves. There are also cases where we change and adapt so that microbes don't cause harm."Our study manipulated the ability of these mice to tolerate and survive infection without doing anything that had an effect on the pathogens themselves." The researchers also want to investigate why people sometimes display food cravings when they are sick.Source: Medindia
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The teams engaged in several multi-issue negotiations -- concerning pesticide products in one scenario, and airplane engines and parts in another."When we looked at the negotiation tactics and outcomes of these young professionals, we found several differences between men and women," Dotan added."However, the one condition under which we found no difference between men and women was when women negotiated in teams of friends," she said.The study found that women negotiate better outcomes when negotiating on behalf of others whom they care about, while men do not exhibit a difference in this respect.But, the existing research is "disheartening," the researchers rued, adding that they show that women negotiating have lower outcomes than men.According to Dotan, the existing research shows that men initiate negotiations four times as often as women. While women negotiators generally achieve 30 percent less than their male counterparts, 20 percent of women do not negotiate at all even when they believe they ought to. Women also consider negotiations a chore rather than a pleasure."We consistently read that women negotiate lower outcomes than men. But is this really true?" asked Uta Herbst, Professor at the Potsdam University in Germany."We know that women generally behave differently in the workplace. They focus on maintaining relationships and cooperation and fostering harmony, which are ripe circumstances for negotiations. This behavioural aspect and the process of negotiations have commonly been overlooked in existing research," Herbst stated.In addition, Dotan believes that company management would benefit from fostering and encouraging personal relationships at work."Women naturally form relationships and these organic friendships shouldn't be touched, because they ultimately prove profitable for the company," Dotan concluded.Source: IANS


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On July 15, the Russian daily Vedomosti published an article by a Russian military expert, Ruslan Pukhov, about Russian military planning objectives.[1] In his article, Pukhov explains that the concern exhibited by NATO members about the Baltic States' security is misplaced, as Russia did not take any significant measure to bolster its military presence in the Kaliningrad region bordering on the Baltics. On the contrary, Russian forces were radically reduced in the area.

Pukhov stressed that Russia avoids being drawn into a direct military rivalry with the West, but concentrates its forces around its main and fundamental security issue: Ukraine. Pukhov wrote that Russia is creating three strong army groups on its border with Ukraine, which are capable, if necessary, of launching a quick strike in the direction of Kiev. Therefore, Pukhov explained, current Russian military planning is divorced from any 'threat from NATO' or 'threat to NATO', but is geared towards creating a powerful force on the Ukrainian border, "which will allow the Kremlin to expand the range of possible [military] force options to the Ukrainian situation."

Below are excerpts from the Vedomosti article:

'Russian Forces In The Kaliningrad Region Were Radically Reduced'

"...While the Western NATO members are actively campaigning to prevent a 'Russian invasion' of the Baltics and have decided to start deploying a multi-national military force in the three Baltic states and Poland, Moscow is surprisingly passive in this area. For the past four years, no significant measures have been taken to strengthen the Russian military presence in the Kaliningrad region and in Russian regions bordering on the Baltic states. In the 2009-2010 military restructuring era, Russian forces in the Kaliningrad region were drastically reduced and 'relieved' of heavy equipment (which was moved out), and have remained at the same low level ever since. Suffice it to say only one tank battalion remains in the Kaliningrad region (as part of the separate 79th Motor Rifle Brigade).

"Although the 11th Army Corps administration was established in 2015 to improve the management of the Kaliningrad troops, so far it has not led to any significant changes in combat strength, except for the restoration of brigade status to the separate 7th Motor Rifle Regiment (it is the second in the region and quite weak). It is even more revealing that no new modern combat equipment (including aviation equipment) is supplied to the units in the Kaliningrad, Pskov, and Leningrad regions [adjacent to the Baltics], while re-equipment is well under way in other regions of Russia. The air force of the Kaliningrad region is represented only by a few Su-27 and Su-24M aircrafts - in good repair but not upgraded. The only bright spot is the creation of a new army aviation brigade in Ostrov in the Pskov region, and putting a regiment of the new S-400 anti-aircraft system on combat duty in Kaliningrad(as part of the routine replacement of the old S-200 system).

"The famous Iskander-M missile systems have not been permanently stationed in Kaliningrad either. Moreover, the 152nd missile brigade stationed here will, apparently, soon be the last one in the Russian army to still have the old Tochka-U missile systems.



Russia's border with the Baltics and Poland (Source: Russiasperiphery.blogs.wm.edu)

'Russia Has Been Consistently Building Up An Impressive Military Presence All Along Its Ukrainian Border'

"Thus, Moscow demonstratively ignores the NATO hysteria around the Baltics, making it clear that it is not planning to threaten the Baltic and Scandinavian countries or Poland and is not seeking conflict here...While foreign mass-media and analysts are preoccupied with the 'Suwalki gap' [the only link between Poland and the Baltic states] in Lithuania, Russia has been consistently building up an impressive military presence all along its Ukrainian border.

"In the northern part of the border, the 1st Guards Tank Army was reconstituted in 2015, which includes (in addition to the "elite" 2nd 'Taman' Guards motorized rifle division and 4th 'Kantemirov' Guards tank division) the 6th Tank Brigade in Nizhny Novgorod and, most importantLY, the new 144th motorized rifle division, which was formed in 2016 in the Smolensk and Yelnya region.

'Further to the south, the administration of the 20th combined arms army (which is being practically re-created) has been moved from Nizhny Novgorod to Voronezh. Its core is the re-activated (after its disbandment in 2009) 10th guards tank division with headquarters in Boguchar. The entire area of the Kursk, Belgorod and Voronezh regions is being actively saturated with troops, including two motor rifle brigades that were transferred here; in the future, another division may be formed here.

"Finally, in the Rostov region, which has been practically devoid of combined arms units since 1989, the creation of the 150th motor rifle division has been started in Novocherkassk. There are reports that another army may be formed here, under command of the Southern military district with further increase of its personnel.

"The meaning of all this activity is obvious - Russia is creating three strong army groupings on the border with Ukraine (where only three years ago there were no troops at all), capable, if necessary, of launching a quick strike in the direction of Kiev (it's 270 km from the Russian border via Chernigov) in the north, and to create two powerful 'pincers' to envelope and surround the main Ukrainian army group in the south - in the Left Bank area, where it is already tied at the front line against the self-declared republics in the Donbass. Ukraine simply does not have (and cannot create in the near future, because of resource limitations) military forces capable of parrying the blow of these groups and countering a possible large-scale 'deep' operation of the Russian forces on the whole. In addition, Russia has considerable reserves in the Southern military district (two armies - the 49th and the 58th), as well as in the Central and Eastern military districts (according to available data, there are plans to create three more divisions there). There is also active re-equipment of the air force, air defense forces, and army aviation in areas 'south of Moscow'.



Russia- Ukraine border with potential directions of Russian attacks (source: Royal United Services Institute)

'Current Russian Military Planning...Proceeds Divorced...From Any NATO Threat Or Threat To NATO'

"Thus, current Russian military planning and construction proceeds along its main route with no connection whatsoever to any 'threat from NATO' or 'threat to NATO'. It is basically subordinated towards the main and fundamental security issue for Moscow today - the Ukrainian one. The Russian leadership, having since 2014 lost all significant leverage over Ukraine, except for force, must place its bets on this [force]. Creating a powerful force on the Ukrainian border will allow the Kremlin to expand the range of [military] force options in reaction to the Ukrainian situation. In this context, the relations between Russia and NATO are turning into a theater of the absurd and a dialogue of the deaf; both sides are, so to speak, moving along parallel lines. On the one hand, Moscow brushes off NATO's formal concerns, considering the issue of a possible Russian invasion of the Baltics (to say nothing of Poland or Sweden) to be complete nonsense, since Russia does not have any motive or power in the region to do anything of the kind. On the other hand, it is obvious that NATO's reinforcement in the Baltic states is not really guided by defensive goals, but rather it is a way of exercising pressure on Russia over various issues, including the Ukrainian one, while simultaneously pretending that NATO is only concerned with the Baltic region.

"The paradox is increased by the fact that, from Moscow's point of view, it is acting in line with the Russian foreign policy ideal, with its idee fixe about demarcating spheres of influence -in fact, by recognizing the Baltics as the West's sphere of influence, the Kremlin continues to defend 'its own' sphere of influence in Ukraine and so on in the post-Soviet space. The West actively disputes these claims of the Russian side, but so far (for a number of reasons) cannot create a military pressure capable of diverting Russian resources from Ukraine.

"One can draw the conclusion that so far the Russian leadership has pursued a sufficiently rational and reasonable policy as far as allocation of defense resources is concerned...

"With the current power balance, Russia will invariably be the losing side in any conventional arms race against the US or NATO. Apparently, the Kremlin realizes that clearly.

" Avoiding such an arms race, restraint in the face of the NATO escalation (including NATO deployment close to the Russian border), and maintaining a dialogue, even if only a formal one, with the West in the military sphere (which is what the NATO-Russia Council is for, despite the touch of surrealism in its existence) will allow Russia not only to economize on resources and decrease at least some of the Western concerns, but, in longer term, may lay the groundwork for a hypothetical 'grand bargain' between Russia and the West on settling a wide range of mutual security issues."

Endnote:
The following are some of this week's reports from the MEMRI Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor (JTTM) Project, which translates and analyzes content from sources monitored around the clock, among them the most important jihadi websites and blogs. (To view these reports in full, you must be a paying member of the JTTM; for membership information, send an email to [email protected] with "Membership" in the subject line.)

Note to media and government: For a full copy of these reports, send an email with the title of the report in the subject line to [email protected]. Please include your name, title, and organization in your email.

EXCLUSIVE: ISIS Video: German Fighter Urges Muslims On The West To Carry Out Attacks In Their Home Countries - Warning: Graphic Images

In an ISIS recruitment video released by the Al-Furat Province, a fighter called Christian, who goes by the name of Abu 'Issa Al-Almani, describes his conversion to Islam and calls on Muslims in the West who cannot immigrate to the Islamic State to carry out attacks in their home countries. In the video, titled "From Darkness to Light," Al-Almani, speaking in German, says that "your brothers in Germany, France, Brussels, and Orlando" have proven their belief in Allah through their actions and calls "to follow in their footsteps and support your religion." The translation is from the Arabic subtitles.

JTTM subscribers click here to view this clip on MEMRI TV

EXCLUSIVE: ISIS Magazine Presents Story Of German Woman Who Joined The Organization

Issue 46 of the Islamic State's (ISIS) Arabic-language magazine Al-Naba' (published September 6, 2016) features the story of a German woman who joined the organization in Syria after spending several years in Afghanistan. It tells of her dangerous journeys and praises her courageous sacrifices, urging all Muslims to emulate her.

Pro-ISIS Group Urges 'Lone Wolf' Operatives In Europe, Especially In France, To Carry Out Attacks Before They Are Arrested

On September 4, 2016 the Nasher Media Foundation, a pro-Islamic State (ISIS) group, posted a message warning ISIS supporters in Europe to take precautions in light of the recent arrests of "lone wolf" operatives in France. It urged them to carry out attacks as soon as possible, presumably before they are arrested as well. The message was released in Arabic, English and French and circulated via Telegram.

British Nude Model-Turned-ISIS-Enthusiast Is Active On Facebook

A former nude model from Bradford, England named is part of a large and vocal pro-ISIS clique on Facebook, where she maintains two accounts. In a recent interview with the UK newspaper The Sunday Times, she acknowledged that she converses with a British ISIS fighter and recruiter.

First Issue Of ISIS Magazine 'Rumiyah' Suggests Targets For Attacks In Australia Including Sydney Opera House, Melbourne Cricket Ground, Bondi Beach

On September 6, 2016, ISIS released the first issue of a new magazine titled Rumiyah (Rome). The magazine was published in 8 languages: English, French, German, Turkish, Russian, Pashtu, Indonesian, and Uyghur and its content was mostly taken from the group's official weekly newsletter Al-Naba', which is published in Arabic.

ISIS Affiliate In South Syria Vows To Defeat U.S.-Supported Forces, Urges Muslims In Yarmouk Basin To Support It

On September 3, 2016, the Khalid bin Al-Walid Army, an ISIS-affiliated group operating in the Yarmouk area in southwest Syria, posted a 12-minute video titled "The Descendants of Kahlid [bin Al-Walid]." The video, posted on Telegram, documents the group's military operations as well as its measures to enforce shari'a law in the area under its control, including public executions. The last part of the video features an address by a member of the group who mocks the "cowardice" of America and the West that send their "mercenaries" to fight on their behalf. He promises that the group will continue to be a thorn in their side and urges the Muslims in the area to support it.

ISIS Video Features Children Who Aspire To Martyrdom, Says They Are Being Prepared To Conquer Rome, Spain

On September 6, 2016, the media office of the Islamic State (ISIS) in Al-Khayr province, Syria released a video featuring children whom the group says it will train to become "the arsenal and the elite [soldiers] of the caliphate's army and the generation which will conquer Damascus, Baghdad, Jerusalem, Makkah, Medina, Dabiq, Rome, and Spain."

ISIS Releases First Issue Of 'Rumiyah' - A New Magazine In Multiple Languages

On September 5, 2016, ISIS's Al-Hayat Media Center released the first issue of a new magazine titled Rumiyah (Rome). The magazine was published simultaneously in eight languages: English, French, German, Turkish, Russian, Pashtu, Uyghur and Indonesian. The basic format in all languages is the same, and most of the content is similar, though there are some discrepancies between versions in different languages.

U.S.-Based Walkie-Talkie Encrypted Chat Application Zello Used By ISIS Members And Supporters From Around The World

Islamic State (ISIS) members and supporters are quite tech-savvy and use a variety of social media platforms and encrypted applications to communicate with each other and to disseminate their content to a larger audience. ISIS supporters from around the world have been using the Austin, Texas-based Zello, which describes itself as a walkie-talkie application. Zello is a push-to-talk application that can be used on smartphones, tablets, and PCs. Users can create private or public channels that allow them to easily chat or listen in to conversations. The app also offers options for live private or public conversations.

ISIS Claims Responsibility For Copenhagen Attacks, Says Attacker Responded To Group's Call To Target Coalition Countries

On September 2, 2016, the Islamic State (ISIS) news agency A'maq claimed responsibility for a shooting attack of two policemen in Copenhagen, Denmark. In a breaking news statement posted on its Telegram channel, A'maq identified the shooter, who was injured in the attack and later died in the hospital, as a "soldier of the Islamic State," stating that he "carried out the operation in response to the calls to target the coalition countries."

Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP) Releases New Music Video In Uyghur: 'Rise Up, O Turkestan'

On September 2, 2016, the Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP) in Syria released a new music video of a nasheed (Islamic song) on its official media channel on Telegram "Voice of Islam." The nasheed calls on the Uyghur people to rise and take up arms against the oppression of the Chinese government. The video, titled "Rise Up, O Turkestan", is 4:30 long and is in the Uyghur language with English and Arabic subtitles.
The Cyber & Jihad Lab monitors, tracks, translates, researches, and analyzes cyber jihad originating from the Middle East, Iran, South Asia, and North and West Africa. It innovates and experiments with possible solutions for stopping cyber jihad, advancing legislation and initiatives federally  including with Capitol Hill and attorneys-general  and on the state level, to draft and enforce measures that will serve as precedents for further action. It works with leaders in business, law enforcement, academia, and families of terror victims to craft and support efforts and solutions to combat cyber jihad, and recruits, and works with technology industry leaders to craft and support efforts and solutions.
Pay close attention to the title. Yes, thats the exact amount that youre going to have to pay if you want to see Coldplay perform at the MMRDA, in Mumbai this 19th November. Oh you think Im talking about the prices of the VIP tickets? Nope.

Those will cost you nothing less than a lakh! Still think you want to sell that kidney for the Apple iPhone 7? Think again. Some of you might need it for the Coldplay tickets. Yes, a kidney, an arm, a leg, your soultake your pick!

 Paste Magazine

But its COLDPLAY! Right, I get it. Coldplay; Chris Martin; Yellow; Hymn for the Weekend. Id still pass. For a majority of us, 25k amounts to almost half a months salary, if not the entire amount. And clearly, the guys at Global Citizen Festival dont really want you and me to attend the festival either because theyre looking at the moolah coming in from the whole charitable cause. Hence, theyve put their prices up, quite literally. To be attending the concert are Bollywood celebrities, like Amitabh Bachchan (because hes such a Coldplay fan), Deepika Padukone, Aamir Khan and A R Rahman, amongst others. Rap and Hip-Hop king, Jay Z is set to perform alongside Chris Martin at the concert as well. Do we even call it a concert?
The pursuit of putting on muscle doesnt end with your last set. Your life outside of the gym actually decides how your hard work will pay off. Yoga is an ancient Indian practice that many dont know can aid in muscle building efforts. Yoga is gaining popularity as it has enormous health benefits from joint support, cognitive wellbeing to better respiratory and cardiovascular functioning, therefore a lot people are motivated to adopt this ancient practice in their lives. Heres how yoga can accompany you in your muscle building journey.

1) Increased Flexibility, Reduced Injury Risk

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The human body was meant to go through certain ranges of motion but in todays world we have compromised over that. As a result we all have certain constraint over our flexibilities. When we perform an exercise that puts our body beyond a certain degree of our flexibility, injury is the most obvious thing that happens to us. One of the standout benefits of Yoga is enhanced flexibility. Increased flexibility will reduce the risk of certain injuries.

2) Lift More. Lift Heavy

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Being a strong bad-ass is not just associated to how much muscle mass youve but its also about how well you use the mechanical links for your body. For example, a lot of people have tight hip flexors which hinders their deadlift and squat loads.

The various aasans practiced in yoga will open up your hip flexors and other stiff links in your body which will maximize your lifts.

3) Increased Blood Flow

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The relaxation exercise in Yoga boosts blood circulation, especially around your hands and legs. An enhanced blood flow ensures that your muscles are getting proper supply of nutrients for repair and growth. Youll also experience a better pump during your workouts and we all love that beautiful feeling. Yoga also gets more oxygen into your cells that improve their functioning as a result.

4) Better Sleep Quality

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Eat like a king, train like a beast and sleep like a baby

is a very famous quote in the muscle building community, that Im a firm advocate of. Youve control over the first two things (nutrition and training) but blame it on todays world, sleeping is a luxury. Sleep is actually the time you build muscle.

Restorative asna, Sawasna and Pranayama performed in Yoga can help develop a deeper inward sense which provides interlude for the nervous system. As a by-product youll enjoy a deeper sleep making you feel energetic on the training days.

5) Greater High Intensity Workouts

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A key factor for performing well at high intensity workouts is lower resting heart rate. This gives you the ability to perform better even in low oxygen levels (oxygen supply is cut short during high intensity workouts like cross fit or super-sets).

Reduced resting heart rate occurs as a byproduct of high intensity training but you can only train so much in a day. For additional decrement in the resting heart rate power yoga and asthanga yoga can be powerful tools.

6) Reduced Cortisol Activity

Cortisol is a fearsome word in the bodybuilding community. It is a hormone released during times of stress. In todays taxing environment chronically high levels of cortisol is common. Cortisol can destroy the progress you made in months in just a couple of weeks. It weakens your immune system and being a catabolic hormone also harms your hard earned muscles.

Yash Sharma is a former national level Football Player, physique Athlete & personal trainer. Believes that fitness should be functional and looks are merely a by product. Connect with him on Facebook and Youtube
People know him as the father of white revolution in India, whose efforts turned India into the worlds largest milk producer, surpassing the United States. He played a major role in empowering Indian farmers through co-operatives. He was the man behind the success of worlds largest dairy development program, also known as Operation Flood, that led to nearly 72,000 villages turning into milk producers. He is none other than Dr. Verghese Kurien who revamped the face of Indias dairy industry.

It is believed that Kurien disliked milk at a young age and did not even want to make dairying his profession. He was rather interested in studying metallurgy. Today, he is fondly known as the milkman of India because of his experimentation with milk powder produced from buffalos milk.

 wikimedia

Hailing from a Syrian Christian family of Kerala, Kurien studied mechanical engineering from Chennai, after which he was selected for a scholarship by the government of India, to study Dairy Engineering in the United States. But as luck would have it, the institute (Michigan State University) he was accepted in did not have the course. So, he ended up studying what he loved i.e. metallurgy and physics. When he returned to India in 1949, he was assigned to a government creamery at Anand, Gujarat, where his sole purpose was to release himself from the companys bond at the earliest.

 Amul

When he was preparing to leave the village, the-then Chairman of Kaira District Co-operative Milk Producers Union asked him to stay in Anand and help him put his co-operative societys dairy equipments together. Thats how AMUL was born and eventually he fell in love with the village and chose to stay there forever.

 Facebook

It was Dr. Kurien who sold the idea of cooperatives to the-then prime minister of India, Lal Bahadur Shastri. He arranged for the PMs visit to a village in Gujarat and planned it so well that he had no choice but to stay in the village for a night. He further organized for a meeting with the farmers so that the PM could spend a good amount of time listening to their plight and issues. Thats how the idea was finalized and Operation Flood began.

 Amul

In fact, there is an interesting story behind the selection of the brands name too. When experts suggested Dr. Kurien to pick a name that sounded foreign, he insisted on keeping an Indian name. Thats when the name AMUL was introduced which is also the short form for Anand Milk Union Ltd. Also, it is said that Dr. Kurien gave a lot of freedom to the agency that created the AMUL girl; they were given the liberty to release the AMUL girl ads without waiting for the companys permission. Now we know why the AMUL ads are so on point and never late to put forward their view.

 Facebook

In the year 1976, a movie called Manthan was released that was based on AMUL. However, not many people know this that filmmaker Shyam Benegal lacked funds when he wanted to make this movie and Dr. Kurien asked his half a million member-farmers to contribute Rs 2 each. This can be recognized as one of the most successful crowd-funded movies in India since thousands of farmers went to watch the film, making it a box-office hit. The distributors were so impressed that they released it for other audiences too and the movie went on to receive national awards the following year.

 Facebook

Dr. Kurien won many awards and accolades during his entire career. He received Bharat Ratna, Padma Shri, Padma Bhushan, Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership, Krishi Ratna Award and Carnegie Waterler World Peace Prize to name a few. Dr. Kurien passed away at the age of 90 on September 9, 2012, in Nadiad in Anand, Gujarat.
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Humans, animals and the environment  our health is all connected

Why the One Health approach is important now more than ever
Deputy Foreign Minister Mardas, who is on a working visit to Morocco, has met, within this context, with the Prime Minister and the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives of Morocco. Moreover, he had constructive meetings with the Minister of Higher Education, Scientific Research & Professional Training and the Minister of Infrastructure, Transport & Logistics. Furthermore, he had consultations with the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Minister for Industry & Trade and the President of the General Confederation of Moroccan Industries.



The excellent state of affairs and relations between the two countries was confirmed during the meeting with emphasis given on preparing for the next Cross-Ministerial Committee which will take place in Rabat in 2017. The Deputy FM's visit is part of an effort to strengthen bilateral economic relations between Greece and N. African countries.



In addition, Deputy Minister Mardas co-signed an MoU on RES & Energy Efficiency along with an Agreement for Scientific and Technological Cooperation, an Agreement on maritime transport as well as an MoU of Academic Cooperation between the Diplomatic Academies of the two Ministries of Foreign Affairs.

The Deputy Minister also made a speech on "the global role of economic diplomacy" at the Diplomatic Academy of Morocco.



Furthermore, he had the opportunity to exchange views with members of the Greek community and businessmen operating in Morocco. Today he is meeting with the Regional Governor and the Mayor of Marrakesh to discuss, among others, the Greek twinning proposal for the street markets of Monastiraki and Marrakesh.



Upon returning from Morocco the Deputy Minister will go straight to Thessaloniki for the opening of the International Fair.
Ladies and Gentlemen, dear friends,



I would like to thank each and every one of you for accepting our invite and attending today's meeting and update.



It is a special privilege for me to be joining you in Thessaloniki, the city all Greeks are natural-born citizens of and, literally, home to many of us.



We undertook this initiative to have this event today so as to encourage responsible public dialogue and to acquaint you with recent developments concerning social allowances and payment thereof, to formally register your concerns and worries but also exhaust every possibility to improve terms and conditions for reinstating the said social benefit.



Bringing back that allowance which was unfairly abolished, was part of our pre-electoral commitments and we eventually strove for that. It is, after all, a political battle you have also fought yourselves; we did so together.



We insisted on doing so since we believe it is the historical duty of the motherland who ought to do justice to that part of Hellenism that was wronged. We fought to that end and as you know the outcome of this struggle, following tough negotiations, was Art. 93 of Law 4387/2016 on Social Security.



The two circulars (one for the Ministry of Labour and the one on the Organisation of Agricultural Insurance) are trying, within the confines of a tight fiscal framework, to determine a procedure aimed at, also, anchoring legislative and administrative practices so that they stay and become acquis.



We realise and fully understand potential problems and we are already endeavouring to solve such problems from both a political and a organisational point of view. We wish to, nonetheless, lend an ear to what you have to say, so that, as I said before, we may fully capitalise on scope there is to improve certain parameters.



Dear Friends, ladies gentlemen,



We have restored communication with all bodies representing Hellenism, with which we are in very good terms, there is understanding and we work together to find solutions to issues such as the translation of the names of our diaspora.



At the Ministry of Foreign Affairs we secured aid that is to be granted to students of Greek origin in the form of scholarships. We managed to do so after quite a number of years (for the first time since 2009), while trying to exhaust scope there is for all the children of the Greek national minority in Albania who have filed for scholarship to be able to get one scholarship each, and indeed this is the year when all such applications were accepted.



Dear friends,

I would like to think that today's meeting is improving our cooperation and can enhance it anew.



As far as the Ministry and the General Secretariat are concerned, rest assured we are making every possible effort to that end.
SEBEWAING  A storm that rolled through the area late Wednesday night is assumed to be the cause of a fire that took place at the Sebewaing Cooperative Elevator Co., located at 969 Pine.

According to Sebewaing Fire Chief Matt Bumhoffer, firefighters were called to the scene shortly before 11 p.m., where a downed and arcing power line set two storage buildings on fire.
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Albany The black microfiber mid-heel Vaneli pumps are ash-caked and water-stained. On Sept. 11, 2001, they carried Kayla Bergeron from her Port Authority office on the 68th floor of the North Tower to safety after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.

"There was water rushing down and the smoke had gotten thicker. I thought we were going to die," Bergeron recalled.

The ability of simple objects to tell powerful, personal stories as historical artifacts are on display in "World Trade Center Survivors," a new addition opening Saturday in the State Museum's World Trade Center Gallery. The permanent 9/11 exhibit remains the most-visited area of the entire museum on the 15th anniversary of the terrorist attacks.

It has been the perennial top draw of the museum's 700,000 annual visitors since its 2002 installation. New displays have been added each year that focus on rescue, recovery and response.

The State Museum is the largest repository of 9/11 artifacts and staff also developed traveling exhibits that have been displayed in France and across the U.S.

"We felt it was the right time to add the survivors stories, who were the quiet witnesses in the beginning," State Museum Director Mark Schaming said. "They were dealing with a lot of trauma and survivors' guilt and it took them some time before they wanted to talk."

In the chaos of smoke, water, debris and hundreds of evacuees who clogged a stairwell, Bergeron ran into Port Authority coworker Patty Clark around the 23rd floor.

"We clung to each other, grabbed each other's belt buckles and made sure we both got all the way out of the building," Bergeron told the Times Union in a phone interview. "It was a disaster zone once we got outside, with people jumping from the tower and piles of glass and debris we had to climb over."

One of her shoes got caught in a piece of twisted steel and another evacuee helped her free her foot and recover the shoe.

Unlike others who discarded their footwear as they sloshed down a stairwell flooded with water from fire sprinklers, Bergeron is glad she held onto her Vanelis.

"They saved me from cutting up my feet outside and they were quite comfortable," she said. She also held onto her suit jacket and used it cover her mouth and nose from clouds of smoke and ash as she and Clark walked hand-in-hand to Church Street a few minutes before the North Tower collapsed.

Bergeron worked her way through the Holland Tunnel to a Port Authority office on the New Jersey side and kept working until 2 a.m. the following day.

"We were still learning who was alive and who was dead, but everyone shifted to work mode," she said. "That was a blessing that enabled us to move forward."

For many months afterward, Bergeron attended funerals for coworkers. The Port Authority lost 84 employees in the World Trade Center attacks, including 37 police officers.

She spoke this week by phone from Brooklyn, where she stayed before planned visits to the 9/11 Museum and attendance at an annual Port Authority memorial ceremony on Sunday.

Bergeron is now 53. She left the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in 2009, where she worked in public affairs. She spent 7 years living and working in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Everglades restoration, but her job was recently downsized.

She reconnects each year around Sept. 11 with Clark, who still works for the Port Authority. "We check in with each other because we'll always have that connection," Bergeron said. "It doesn't seem like 15 years. What I worry about most is that with the passage of time people are going to forget.

"Not a day goes by that I don't think about the people who died, the first responders and the survivors."

As the exhibit points out, Bergeron and Clark were among an estimated 13,000 to 15,000 people who successfully evacuated the towers. Nearly 3,000 people were killed in the World Trade Center attacks.

Another object on display is a Motorola StarTAC clamshell mobile phone that belonged to Dan Heldridge, who worked for Morgan Stanley Dean Witter on the 62nd floor of the South Tower. After the hijacked plane hit the tower at 9:03 a.m. and shook the building, Heldridge, who also had worked at the World Trade Center during the 1993 bombing, told his coworkers to leave all their belongings behind and to evacuate the tower immediately. They all got out safely.

Heldridge's cellphone was left in his briefcase on a window ledge. It was thrown from the tower as the building fell and the phone landed on the roof of the nearby Deutsche Bank building across Liberty Street.

Firefighter Lt. Thomas Frizalone was searching for survivors on the roof, found the phone, was astonished to discover it was still operable and used it to call his wife to tell her he was all right.

He stuck the phone in his pocket and forgot about it.

Days later, Frizalone managed to charge the phone, found Heldridge's number, called him and later returned the Motorola.

"It's a remarkable story about two people connected by that phone," said Schaming, who was contacted by Heldridge.

He donated the phone to the State Museum in 2011.

Two other items on display  a piece of the Aon office logo and a 78th floor elevator plate  help tell the survivor's story of Keating Crown, who worked for the Aon Corp. on the 100th floor of the South Tower. After he saw the nearby North Tower was hit, he began to evacuate his building and worked his way down a crowded stairwell to the 78th floor when a second plane struck that very floor.

Crown was one of only 18 people from that impact floor who survived. Aon, an insurance and reinsurance brokerage firm, lost 176 employees.

"He was seriously injured himself, but he's a big, strapping fellow who helped carry other injured victims to safety," Schaming said. "He displayed amazing bravery."

Moments after Heldridge reached the street, the South Tower fell and he was taken to a hospital, where he was treated for burns, cuts and other injuries.

"As we get further and further away, our responsibility grows of preserving the memory of the individuals that did not make it," said Crown, who now lives and works in Chicago for Sterling Bay, a real estate development company.

"These survivors were part of the largest emergency evacuation in American history and there were many heroes, including first responders and ordinary citizens," Schaming said.

Added Bergeron, "Nobody comprehended at the time that someone would fly commercial airplanes into the Twin Towers. We're in a new world now and we all need to be more vigilant. We also need to remember all the sacrifices made on 9/11.

"There are still stories of heroic acts on that day that are yet to be told."

pgrondahl@timesunion.com  518-454-5623  @PaulGrondahl
Banco Santander-Chile, together with its subsidiaries, provides commercial and retail banking products and services in Chile. It operates through Retail Banking, Middle-Market, Corporate Investment Banking, and Corporate Activities segments. The company offers debit and credit cards, checking accounts, and savings products; consumer, automobile, commercial, mortgage, and government-guaranteed loans; and Chilean peso and foreign currency denominated loans to finance various commercial transactions, trade, foreign currency forward contracts, and credit lines, as well as mortgage financing services. It also provides mutual funds, insurance and securities brokerage, foreign exchange, financial leasing, factoring, financial consulting and advisory, investment management, foreign trade, treasury, and transactional services, as well as specialized services to finance projects for the real estate industry. In addition, the company offers short-term financing and fund raising, and brokerage services, as well as derivatives, securitization, and other tailor-made products. It serves individuals, small to middle-sized entities, companies, and large corporations, as well as universities, government entities, and local and regional governments. As of December 31, 2021, the company operated 326 branches, which include 220 under the Santander brand name, 14 under the Select brand name, 7 specialized branches for the middle market, and 22 as auxiliary and payment centers, as well as 1,338 ATMs, including depository ATMs. Banco Santander-Chile was incorporated in 1977 and is headquartered in Santiago, Chile.
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Tidewater Inc., together with its subsidiaries, provides offshore marine support and transportation services to the offshore energy industry through the operation of a fleet of marine service vessels worldwide. It provides services in support of offshore oil and natural gas exploration, field development, and production, as well as windfarm development and maintenance, including towing of and anchor handling for mobile offshore drilling units; transporting supplies and personnel necessary to sustain drilling, workover, and production activities; offshore construction, and seismic and subsea support; geotechnical survey support for windfarm construction; and various specialized services, such as pipe and cable laying. The company operates and charters deepwater vessels, including platform supply and horsepower anchor handling tug supply vessels for use in transporting supplies and equipment from shore bases to deepwater and intermediate water depth offshore drilling rigs and production platforms; towing-supply vessels for use in intermediate and shallow waters; and crew boats, utility vessels, and offshore tugs to transport personnel and supplies from shore bases to offshore drilling rigs, platforms, and other installations. It also operates offshore tugs for use in tow floating drilling rigs and barges; and assisting in the docking of tankers, as well as in pipe and cable laying, and construction barges. The company serves oil and natural gas exploration, field development, and production companies; mid-sized and smaller independent exploration and production companies; foreign government-owned or government-controlled organizations, and other related companies; drilling contractors; and other companies, such as offshore construction, windfarm development, diving, and well stimulation companies. As of December 31, 2021, it owned 135 vessels. Tidewater Inc. was incorporated in 1956 and is headquartered in Houston, Texas.
About 450 more U.S. troops have arrived in Iraq in the past week to support the imminent offensive to drive ISIS from Mosul, the chief U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad said Thursday.

Air Force Col. John Dorrian, spokesman for Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve, declined to give a time frame for the start of the offensive but added, "We're going to have to get started soon" if Mosul is to be wrested from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria by the end of this year.

Army Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, task force commander, appeared to suggest in a Wall Street Journal interview that the Mosul offensive could begin as early as next month to fulfill Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi's prediction that the strategic northwestern city would fall before the end of the year.

However, in a Pentagon briefing from Baghdad, Dorrian denied that Townsend said that the Mosul push would begin in early October.

To support the coming offensive, more than 400 additional U.S. troops have arrived since last week to boost the total number of U.S. troops in Iraq from about 4,000 to 4,460, Dorrian said. The additional troops are from the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division, out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky.

The deployment of the 2nd BCT was announced by the Army in August. The troops are expected to be assigned to the Qayyarah West airfield about 40 miles southeast of Mosul, which is being built up as a logistics hub and forward operating base for the Mosul offensive.

Dorrian said more than eight Iraqi Security Force brigades were ready for the Mosul offensive against what is believed to be about 3,000 to 4,500 ISIS defenders.

However, the offensive is temporarily on hold while the Iraqis form and train a follow-on force to occupy the city, provide relief and defend the population, Dorrian said. The size of the follow-on force had yet to be determined, he said.

Townsend predicted a difficult fight to retake the city, Dorrian said. ISIS has held Mosul for more than two years, and "they've had a chance to build intricate defenses."

Townsend, who took over the task force from Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland three weeks ago, also has responsibility for the campaign to retake Raqqa, the self-proclaimed ISIS capital in northeastern Syria, in what Dorrian described as an "increasingly crowded battlespace" since Turkey sent troops and tanks into northern Syria late last month.

Dorrian said the task now is to "deconflict" the various opposition groups under the banner of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces from clashing with the Turks, who have closed off the last remaining section of the border that gave ISIS access to resupply and reinforcements by foreign fighters.

The Turkish forces initially clashed with the Syrian Kurdish YPG, or People's Protection Units, which are part of the Syrian Democratic Forces and have been the most effective rebel force against ISIS in Syria.

Dorrian said the clashes have subsided since the YPG met the Turkish demand to move east of the Euphrates River.

"We're glad to see it's been relatively peaceful between those two," he said.

-- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com.
Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson on Thursday revealed a lack of knowledge about the war in Syria when he asked, "What's Aleppo?"

Johnson, who reportedly had been making headway in gaining support from veterans, went on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" show in a bid to get exposure for his campaign. Exposure he got, but not the kind he presumably wanted.

Interviewer Mike Barnicle asked, "What would you do if you were elected about Aleppo?"

Johnson paused. "And what is Aleppo?"

Barnicle replied, "You're kidding."

Johnson may not have known what the topic was, but he seemed indignant that anyone would think he was kidding about it. "No," he said.

Barnicle began to explain that Aleppo was a city targeted by relentless Russian and Syrian bombing and the "epicenter of the refugee crisis" brought about by Syria's five-year old civil war.

"OK, got it," Johnson said.

He went on to repeat the Libertarian view that the U.S. intervenes too much in world conflicts. As for Syria, he said it was a "mess" and he recommended "joining hands with Russia to bring this civil war to an end."

"Morning Show" host Joe Scarborough then went after Johnson.

"You asked, 'What is Aleppo?' Do you think that foreign policy is so insignificant that somebody running for president of the United States shouldn't even know what Aleppo is, where Aleppo is, why Aleppo is so important?"

Johnson shot back, "I do understand Aleppo. And I understand the crisis that is going on, but when we involve ourselves militarily, when we involve ourselves in these humanitarian issues, we end up with a situation that in most cases is not better and in many cases ends up being worse."

Johnson, the former New Mexico governor, and running mate William Weld, the former Massachusetts governor, reportedly had been gaining traction in the polls in their bid to gain the 15 percent needed to get Johnson a spot in the upcoming presidential debates.

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump carry sizable leads over the third-party candidates, including Green Party candidate Jill Stein, in national polls of likely voters, but Johnson has reportedly polled well among military and veteran voters.

A recent poll by USA Today and Suffolk University of a four-way presidential ballot showed Clinton leading with 42 percent of the vote, followed by Trump with 35 percent, Johnson with 9 percent, and Stein with 4 percent. About 10 percent of respondents were undecided. The poll of 1,000 likely voters was conducted Aug. 24 through Aug. 29 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential candidate in 2012, tweeted Wednesday, "I hope voters get to see former GOP Governors Gary Johnson and Bill Weld on the debate stages this fall."

The sentiment is shared broadly among the electorate, as the majority of likely voters want to see third-party candidates on the debate stage, even if they don't hit the 15 percent threshold to do so, according to David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center in Boston, who helped conduct the poll.

Johnson has reportedly received slightly higher support from U.S. military members -- 13 percent of almost 2,000 active-duty,Guard and reserve respondents in a Military Times survey conducted in July. And some veterans have reacted strongly to his exclusion in the upcoming IAVA forum.

-- Brendan McGarry contributed to this report.

-- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com.
The price of commissary produce sold in Pacific region stores and the delivery contract are under investigation by the Department of Defense Inspector General, officials announced Thursday.

The reviews began in early August as part of an effort to examine produce quality and prices at commissaries in Korea, Guam and Japan, officials said.

Lawmakers requested the audits in a 2017 report that accompanied the House version of annual defense authorization legislation, spurred by a controversy last year when the Defense Commissary Agency switched produce contractors in the Pacific region.

Under the previous contract, taxpayers covered the approximately $48 million price tag of shipping produce to the area. The new plan, however, requires the contractor to cover that bill by encouraging it to source produce locally -- and then pass the remaining cost of shipping on to shoppers.

Since the change, shoppers in those areas have complained that produce prices have increased while selection and quality have deteriorated.

In early December in Guam, for example, prices for pre-washed lettuce rose to $10.69 a bag, though they have since leveled off. A report compiled by congressional staff in early May found an average 52 percent year-over-year price increase in core fruits and vegetables at Yokota Air Base in Japan.

The audit, Inspector General officials said in a Aug. 5 letter to the commissary agency, will investigate whether the new contract and process are better than the old one.

"Our objective is to determine whether the Defense Commissary Agency's new fresh fruit and vegetable local purchase process is more effective than the previous DoD transportation funded process in the Pacific," the document says. "Specifically, we will focus on the cost and freshness of the produce."

The letter, signed by Jacqueline Wicecarver, the DoD's assistant inspector general for acquisition and sustainment management, said the audit process began in Guam.

Commissary agency officials said they are cooperating with the audit process.

"The Defense Commissary Agency welcomes the opportunity to show that the current process of delivering produce to the Pacific is effective and efficient, and we are working with the auditors to answer all of their questions," said Kevin Robinson, a commissary spokesman.

-- Amy Bushatz can be reached at amy.bushatz@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @amybushatz.
Army weapons officials are planning a late-September response to Pentagon investigators' recent criticisms of the XM25 as the service wrestles with how this high-tech but heavy 25mm airburst weapon will fit into combat formations.

In late August, the Pentagon's Inspector General released a scathing audit of the XM25 program, criticizing the service for repeatedly delaying the weapon's initial production decision and failing to justify a basis of issue plan.

Nicknamed "the Punisher" and designed by Orbital ATK Inc. and Heckler & Koch, the XM25 is a shoulder-fired weapon featuring a target acquisition/fire control system that allows soldiers to identify a target, determine the range and program the 25mm ammunition to explode above or near enemy fighters out to 600 meters.

But the sophisticated weapon has been plagued by two years of program delays after a 2013 malfunction that inflicted minor injuries to a soldier during its second round of operational testing in Afghanistan.

The double feed and an unintentional primer ignition of one of the 25mm high explosive rounds prompted the Army to halt the operational testing and pull all prototypes from theater.

In the wake of the audit's public release, Military.com requested a program update from Project Manager Soldier Weapons and received the following email response:

"The Army is in the process of reviewing the Department of Defense Inspector General report, 'XM25 Schedule Delays, Cost Increases and Performance Problems Continue, and Procurement Quantity Not Justified' dated 29 August 2016, and has until 29 September 2016 to provide its final feedback and comments," according to Debra Dawson, spokeswoman for Program Executive Office Soldier, the command that oversees PM Soldier Weapons.

"The Army, working closely with the system's prime contractor, has previously addressed the safety issues on the XM25 through engineering design changes and improvements to the system. User feedback of the XM25 Counter Defilade Target Engagement (CDTE) System has been positive. Its revolutionary target acquisition and fire control system, previously unavailable in the infantry soldier's arsenal, will allow the warfighter to engage enemy targets under cover effectively."

The audit, which was heavily redacted, maintains that delays in the program's development caused costs to climb between February 2013 and March 2016, but it failed to specify any actual dollar amounts.

But according to budget documents, the Army has spent at least $33 million on the program and related efforts in the two-year period through fiscal 2016, which ends Oct. 1.

In fiscal 2017, the Army plans to procure a total of 105 XM25s at a unit cost of $93,000 each, budget documents show. That's more than double the $41,000 unit cost in the December 2014 contract award.

Going forward, the Army expects to spend at least $132 million on the program in the five-year period from fiscal 2017 to fiscal 2021, budget documents show.

Army leaders are still wrestling with how to field the XM25 to infantry and other combat units.

"The Army has not made a final decision on final distribution of the XM25," according to Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, director of the Army Capabilities and Integration Center and deputy commanding general of Futures at Training and Doctrine Command.

"One XM25 for each deployed squad is part of the discussion, but fiscal constraints may alter that distribution."

Part of the problem comes down to weight. The five-shot XM25 weighs about 14 pounds unloaded. Combined with a basic load of 36 rounds of 25mm ammunition, the weight jumps to about 35 pounds for a soldier to carry, sources familiar with the weapon maintain.

By comparison, an M4 carbine weighs about 7.5 pounds unloaded. Add seven 30-round magazines of 5.56mm ammo, an M68 Close Combat Optic, an AN/PEQ laser/infrared aiming device and a weapon light, and the load increases to about 16 pounds.

Grenadiers carry an M320 grenade launcher attached to an M4. The M320 and a basic load of 36 rounds of 40mm grenades increases the load to about 38 pounds.

Critics of the XM25 have said that the system is too heavy for the soldier to carry along with an M4 and basic load of 210 rounds of 5.56mm ammunition, a combination that would weigh in at about 51 pounds.

The IG audit pointed out that McMaster voiced concerns about the XM25 in 2013 when he was commander of the Maneuver Center of Excellence at Fort Benning, Georgia.

"The General's concerns included the unproven lethality of the XM25 system, the weight of the system, and the risks of limiting soldiers' capabilities when carrying the XM25 system. Specifically, the Commanding General was concerned that a soldier would have to turn in his or her rifle to carry the XM25."

McMaster stated that without a rifle:

--The soldier is unable to perform required tasks in many squad battle drills;

-- The XM25 basic load of 36 rounds is depleted quickly in a direct-fire engagement; and

-- The soldier has a reduced capacity to engage targets at close range.

Since then, however, McMaster said he has changed his mind about the XM25.

"My initial assessment from 2013 did not reflect 30 additional months of testing and improvements to the XM25 Counter Defilade Target Engagement System," McMaster told Military.com in an email.

"The Army has worked closely with the system's prime contractor to address the safety issues on the XM25 through engineering design changes and improvements to the system. Prototypes employed during two Forward Operational Assessments allowed the Army to learn from and correct system shortcomings, and feedback has been positive."

The XM25 is not a simple grenade launcher, McMaster maintains. The sight has an integrated day/thermal sight, a laser range finder, and a ballistic computer working in unison to allow the shooter to effectively engage enemy targets under cover.

The weapon is semi-automatic with a five-round magazine that ensures effective fires and rapid re-engagement, as necessary, in all operational environments -- jungle, urban, day/night, woodland, subterranean and desert, McMaster said.

"Worldwide urbanization, coupled with the extensive proliferation of rocket propelled grenades and machine guns, allowed our enemies to exploit our desire to end engagements with minimal collateral damage," McMaster said.

"The XM25 provides an innovative capability that mitigates this vulnerability and minimizes operational risks facing our soldiers, limiting collateral damage in the surrounding area while allowing our dismounted squads to decisively end firefights."

-- Brendan McGarry contributed to this report.

-- Matthew Cox can be reached at matthew.cox@military.com.
Despite Flipping in Surf 4 Times in a Year, Marines Say New ACV Is the Future of Amphibious Warfare

Some Marine veterans familiar with the vehicle and its operations have worried about the reliability of the ACV.
In the wake of a rash of engine problems that have sidelined a number of the Navy's new littoral combat ships, the service is turning the first four LCSs into non-deploying test ships -- and overhauling its force employment strategy.

In a Sept. 8 announcement, Naval Surface Force Pacific Fleet officials said the changes would be implemented over the next five years and affect the 28 littoral combat ships budgeted and ordered through 2018.

The changes will "simplify crewing, stabilize testing and increase overseas deployment presence availability," officials said.

The decision to turn the first four $360 million ships -- the Freedom, the Independence, the Fort Worth and the Coronado -- into testing ships will allow the Navy to conduct near- and long-term testing for the entire ship class without affecting deployment rotations.

The ships designated for testing would be single-crewed, officials said, and would be able to deploy on a limited basis if necessary, but it would not be their primary purpose.

Of these ships -- two from the Freedom-class made by Lockheed Martin Corp. and Marinette Marine and two from the Independence-class built by Austal USA -- only one, the Independence, has not been sidelined with a serious engine issue in the last 12 months.

"This approach accommodates spiral development and rapid deployment of emerging weapons and delivery systems to the fleet without disrupting operational schedules," SURFPAC officials said in a news release.

Crewing model change

Starting this fall, the Navy also plans to phase out its current LCS crewing model, in which three rotating crews operate two ships, so that one of the ships can always be forward-deployed.

In its place, the service will introduce a two-crew "blue/gold" model like that used on ballistic missile submarines and minesweepers, officials said. Two crews per ship mean one will be able to complete homeport training and workups while the other crew deploys.

The LCS crews also will begin training and rotating with larger elements, known as mission module detachment crews, allowing the ships to deploy as part of four-ship groups. They can deploy with other surface warfare ships, mine warfare ships, or anti-submarine warfare ships, officials said.

Aviation detachments will also begin deploying with the same LCS crew, they said.

The Navy also plans to adjust homeporting for its LCSs to enable its new testing and crew plan. While all six ships now in service are homeported at Naval Base San Diego, plans call for all of the Independence-variant ships to be based in San Diego and Freedom-variant ships in Mayport, Florida.

Of the planned 28 LCSs, 24 will be divided into six divisions, divided between the East Coast and West Coast.

One warfare focus

Each of the divisions will have one warfare focus -- surface, mine or anti-submarine, as Navy leaders aim to maximize the capability of the LCS.

"Under this construct, each division's training ship will remain available locally to certify crews preparing to deploy," officials said.

Navy brass hope these changes will allow the service to deploy more and increase its presence, with a crewing model that makes more ships available for deployment at a given time.

In the release, officials added that a blue/gold crewing model might also simplify ownership of maintenance responsibilities -- a key area of concern amid a flurry of recent engine mishaps, including at least one caused by an engineer's error.

"As we implement these changes, we will continue to make iterative adjustments and improvements based on evolving fleet requirements and technological developments," Naval Surface Forces commander Vice Adm. Tom Rowden said in a statement. "Implementing the approved recommendations from this review and continuing to examine other areas for improvement will better position the LCS program for success -- both now and in the future."

Even more changes are likely coming for the LCS.

Rowden announced earlier this week that he had ordered a comprehensive LCS engineering review to be completed by the Surface Warfare Officer's School in the next 30 to 60 days, with further adjustments and recommendations expected to emerge from that review.

-- Hope Hodge Seck can be reached at hope.seck@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at@HopeSeck.

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President Barack Obama has nominated Air Force Gen. John Hyten, commander of Air Force Space Command at Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado, to take over as head of U.S. Strategic Command, in charge of the nation's nuclear triad.

If confirmed by the Senate, Hyten would replace Adm. Cecil Haney at the command based at Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska. It was not immediately clear if Haney would retire or move to another position.

On Thursday, the Pentagon announced that Lt. Gen. John Raymond, now the top Air Force operations officer at the Pentagon, will be promoted to general to take over Hyten's post at Air Force Space Command.

In a statement, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter hailed the choice of Hyten, a 1981 Reserve Officers' Training Corps graduate of Harvard with a degree in engineering and applied sciences.

"Gen. Hyten is the perfect choice to lead this critical command in the years to come, as the men and women of STRATCOM carry out missions essential to our national defense -- including sustaining nuclear deterrence through a safe, secure, and effective triad; helping defend our networks and deter malicious actors in cyberspace; and preparing for the possibility of a conflict that extends into space," Carter said.

Hyten will immediately face the challenge of meeting the staggering costs of modernizing the nation's nuclear triad of strategic bombers, intercontinental ballistic missiles and Trident nuclear submarines.

Last month, Haney met with Chief of Naval Operations John Richardson at Offutt to discuss the mounting costs for the projected Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines meant to replace the Ohio-class submarines in carrying sea-based nuclear weapons. The 12 Columbia-class submarines are projected to be built between 2019 and 2042 at a current estimated cost of $97 billion.

In addition, the cost of fielding a new intercontinental ballistic missile to replace the aging Minuteman III missiles has been estimated at $85 billion.

Last October, Northrop Grumman Corp. won the contract to build a new fleet of strategic bombers with the B-21 designation to replace the Cold War-era Boeing B-52 Stratofortresses at an estimated cost that could reach $80 billion.

-- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com.

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"Ah, this is Dulles approach control. We're tracking a fast moving primary headed toward the White House. White House has been advised."

Minutes later: "Looks like it went into the Pentagon."

-- FAA and emergency responder tapes

The building was still on fire when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called a news conference inside the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, to tell the nation that the military would deal with those responsible for the terror attacks.

The rumors and leaks already had it that Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida were behind the attacks, but Rumsfeld brushed off questions on whether Afghanistan would be targeted.

"We're still taking bodies out of this building," he said.

Army Gen. Hugh Shelton, then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also would not speak to the U.S. response but made clear that there would be one. "Up front, I have no intention of saying what's next, but make no mistake, your armed forces are ready," he said.

As part of the ceremonies marking the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Pentagon press officials played the videotape Friday of the news conference Rumsfeld held on the evening of Sept. 11 in the effort by the Defense Department to show the federal government was in control and responding to the crisis.

Later that night, President George W. Bush would address the nation from the White House.

"These acts of mass murder were intended to frighten our nation into chaos and retreat. But they have failed. Our country is strong. A great people has been moved to defend a great nation," he said.

Bush sought to calm Americans still reeling from the series of attacks that began at 8:46 a.m. that morning when American Airlines Flight 11 smashed into the north side of the north tower of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan.

At 9:02 a.m., United Airlines Flight 175 hit the south side of the south tower.

American Airlines Flight 77 hit at a 40-degree angle on the west side of the Pentagon at 9:37 a.m., spreading burning jet fuel through the "E," "D," and "C" wings. As one survivor put it in a PBS documentary aired earlier this week, "11,000 square feet of the Pentagon just turned into flames."

At 10:03 a.m., United Flight 93 crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. The aircraft, believed to be headed toward Congress or the White House, went down after passengers and crew sought to retake control.

During the hastily called 9/11 Pentagon news conference, Rumsfeld said he could give no assurances that there would not be more attacks. "The government is certainly aware that it's difficult to know when attacks are concluded," he said. "It is not possible to give guarantees."

The Pentagon, where the response to the attacks would be planned and directed, had not closed when the airliner hit and would not close, Rumsfeld said. "It will be in business tomorrow."

Sen. John Warner, a Virginia Republican and then the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, joined Rumsfeld and Shelton at the news conference. He called the attacks "the most tragic hour in our nation's history," but "it can be our finest hour."

"We call upon the entire world to step up and help," Warner said. "We're in this thing together."

On Oct. 7, 2001, the U.S. began bombing targets in Afghanistan with support from Great Britain, France, Germany, Australia and Canada in an expanding coalition for the "war on terrorism" that continues today, primarily against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS.

9/11 Commemorations

Earlier Friday, Air Force Gen. Paul Selva, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work presided at a 9/11 commemoration in the Pentagon's courtyard to honor the 184 victims of the Pentagon attack -- 59 aboard Flight 77 and 125 inside the building.

"It is difficult to remember the tragedy that befell our nation" on Sept. 11, Selva said in the Pentagon's courtyard, but that day "is also a symbol of our national strength. That moment united our nation" in defiance and resolve.

"Our very way of life came under attack," Work said. "We must never allow, never allow, those who lost their lives to fade from our memories."

In the years since the attacks, nearly 6,900 service members have been killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and more than 52,000 have been wounded, Work said. "Yet, still they come, knowing the dangers they face" to join the all-volunteer force, Work said. "They are, without question, the best we can offer."

Prior to showing the tape of the Rumsfeld news conference, Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, noted the changes that have taken place to strengthen the nation's defenses against a terror attack. However, the overall message Rumsfeld and Shelton meant to convey on the night of Sept. 11 was that, "We are ready to go to war," Davis said.

The Defense Department now has a full-time assistant defense secretary for homeland defense -- a job that had been part-time within the office of the Secretary of the Army, Davis said.

The Pentagon also created a new combatant command -- Northern Command -- for homeland defense and began the Noble Eagle overflights with Canada to deter attacks. In addition, the White House and Congress created the Department of Homeland Security.

The tightened security meant that the nation is relatively secure against a replay of the 9/11 attacks, Davis said.

"This is something that really couldn't happen again today, given the measures we have in place," he said.

On Sunday, the 15th anniversary of 9/11, President Barack Obama will join Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford at a private ceremony at the Pentagon with families of the 184 victims of the Pentagon attack.

-- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com.

Related Video:
The Dodgers are summoning veteran outfielder Andre Ethier to meet the team in Miami and could activate him from the DL as soon as this evening, Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times reports on Twitter. Since he has been on the 60-day DL, Ethier will require a 40-man roster spot in order to return.

Ethier, 34, has not played a single major league inning this year since suffering a broken leg late this spring. Much has changed since his injury, but with less than a month to play the Dodgers are leading the NL West and can certainly stand to add another quality piece to a depth chart that already boasts plenty of outfield options.

The veteran will likely be eased back into action, and its a bit unclear just where hell end up contributing. Manager Dave Roberts says that Ethier will receive occasional starts, MLB.coms Ken Gurnick tweets, but it remains to be seen how thatll occur. Ethier has seen action all over the outfield in recent years, but the Dodgers already have a full array of left-handed-hitting options. Joc Pederson has a lock on center, Josh Reddick was acquired at the trade deadline to play in right, and Andrew Toles has been a revelation through 24 games of action.

Expanded rosters will leave plenty of room for flexibility, of course, but this all promises to make for some interesting decisions when the time comes to set postseason rosters. Ethier will be playing not only for a chance to participate in the playoffs, but also to set up his place on next years team. The veteran has been productive of late, but has also been mentioned quite frequently as a trade candidate  though he has achieved full no-trade protection through ten-and-five rights. Ethier is owed $17.5MM next year, with a $2.5MM buyout on a $17.5MM option for 2018 still to go thereafter.
Outfielder Hector Olivera, who was technically under contract most recently with the Padres  albeit quite briefly, and never in uniform  has been found guilty in his domestic abuse trial, as A.J. Perez of USA Today writes. Olivera was ultimately sentenced to 90 days in prison, but 80 of them are suspended under the judges decision for his misdemeanor conviction. It remains to be seen whether the disgraced 31-year-old will attempt any kind of comeback. He hasnt donned a Major League uniform since his arrest and was released by the Padres after they acquired his contract as part of the financial work-out of the deal that sent Matt Kemp to Atlanta.

Heres more from the NL West:
GRAND RAPIDS, MI - An abandoned factory that once stamped out millions of exhaust systems and side impact beams for cars and trucks has a new owner and new tenants.

Third Coast Development, which has developed hotels, apartments and commercial buildings in West Michigan, acquired the sprawling Benteler Automotive facility for $3.4 million in July. Third Coast said it expects to invest $2.5 million into the building and grounds.

Benteler, a German automotive parts supplier, closed the plant at 320 Hall Street SE in 2013 after operating there for more than 20 years.

Third Coast is renovating 60,000 square feet in the building for Custer Office, an office furniture company dealer, according to an announcement by Third Coast on Thursday, Sept. 8.

More than 110,000 square feet will be renovated for industrial, warehouse or manufacturing space while another 10,000 square feet will be cleared for office use, according to Third Coast. The developers said they also are updating the 400-space parking lot.



"We are excited to bring new life to this facility and help bring more people, new jobs and an increased tax base to the City of Grand Rapids," said Third Coast Development partner Brad Rosely. "The location is terrific with it being in the heart of the Grand Rapids area with easy access to US-131."

Custer also will be the lead designer in the building's renovation, Rosely said. "We are very excited to have Custer involved and can't wait to see what they do with their space," Rosely said.

"Over the past several years, we have been fortunate to have experienced significant growth and the opportunity to work with exceptional organizations within the community," said Scott Custer, vice president of Business Process Improvement at Custer Office.

"This growth has brought great change to our company, including the addition of new people, resources, and the need to expand to a larger warehouse footprint in Grand Rapids," Custer said.



"We are focused on retaining existing jobs and bringing new jobs to the city to further the economic opportunities of our city," said Kara Wood, the city's Economic Development Director. "We are excited about Third Coast's commitment to redeveloping spaces that will bring more economic opportunity to the City of Grand Rapids."



"We look forward to working with Custer and Third Coast Development on this important redevelopment project," said Mayor Rosalynn Bliss in a statement. "We thank Custer for its commitment to the City and look forward to putting back to re-use an existing industrial site."


Dustin Blitchok is on the clock.



The Detroit resident figures he'll finish his bachelor's degree sometime. He says he probably has enough credits to quality as a senior at Wayne State University, but the 26-year-old has a full-time job, as editor of the Metro Times, that keeps him busy.



But if he doesn't finish his degree within the next two years, he'll no longer qualify for state financial aid.



That's because Michigan offers no financial aid for adults looking to return to public universities and community colleges more than 10 years after high school. Economic development experts say is the age limit is hobbling efforts to help dropouts finish degrees.



It's a head-scratching hole in the student financial aid system of Michigan, a state scrambling to increase the number of adults holding college degrees.

"To offer financial aid to traditional college students, but not to offer it to people with families who are 30 years old, that's policy stuck in the 20th Century," said Peter Ruark, senior policy analyst at the Michigan League for Public Policy, a progressive-leaning advocacy group in Lansing. "The reality is, a large number of students are not the traditional 18-24-year-olds."

Nationwide about half of college students are 25 or older, with most attending college part-time.



As part of budget-cutting across state government at the height of the recession in 2010, the state Legislature eliminated three financial aid programs that focused on, or were available to, non-traditional age students: The Adult Part-Time Grant, which offered up to $1,200 in aid; the Michigan Economic Opportunity Grant which offered $1,000 per year to students of all ages, and the Michigan Nursing Scholarship and Work Study grant.



The absence of state financial aid leaves a lot of Michiganders with fewer options for returning to college. More than a million Michigan adults have some college credit but no degree, with hundreds of thousands estimated to be within a handful of classes of earning a diploma.

And yet today, nontraditional age college students enrolling in public colleges and universities are not eligible for state financial aid grants. One grant program is limited to students in their first 10 years after high school, and another has to be applied for before the age of 20. The third grant can only be used at private, nonprofit universities, even though the majority of nontraditional students attend public community colleges and public universities.



None of the three are available for busy adults taking college courses on a less-than half-time basis (Six credit hours must be taken per semester to qualify as part-time.).



"A lot of workers do need to go back, Ruark said, "and we should be helping them do that, especially low-income individuals."



Like thousands of Michigan residents, Dustin Blitchok, 26, of Detroit, is tantalizingly close to a bachelor's degree, but hasn't finished. (Photo courtesy Wayne State Magazine)

'I drifted off'



Blitchok's story is fairly common among those who leave college early. He was offered a full-time job while still in school. "I didn't know if there was going to be another job like that open up," Blitchok said. "I had to take it."

Trying to be full-time newspaper reporter for the Oakland Press in Pontiac and a full-time student at Wayne State in Detroit proved to be too much.



"At that point, it was hard to finish because I was working 60 hours a week, working 40 miles away (from Wayne State)," Blitchok said. "So you're leaving work at 6 o'clock and trying to get to campus through the snow and rush-hour traffic. You start dropping classes, and it slowly falls apart.



"I wrote a ton of stories and learned a lot (at The Oakland Press). Eventually, I drifted off."



Now editor of metro Detroit's major alternative newspaper, Blitchok is doing well in his chosen field. Still, he said he worries that the lack of degree will catch up to him at some point.



"If I look for a job nationally, I don't know if I'd get attention without it (a bachelor's degree)," Blitchok said.



GOP reform effort fails

An attempt to reinstate financial aid for nontraditional students failed in the Legislature this past spring. Rep. Paul Muxlow, R-Brown City, sponsored House Bill 4442 to offer up to $3,600 in state grants to nontraditional students enrolling at community colleges.



"I thought it would be helpful for the middle class," Muxlow said. "There are a lot of people who, with a little help, maybe could get an associate degree, which could open the door to some higher-wage jobs. We tried to put a few bucks ($6 million) in the community college level as a starting point," with the hope of expanding to bachelor's programs later.



Muxlow said he doesn't recall the bill having any real opposition, but the funding was cut to trim the larger state budget.



He said the bill could be revived in Lansing's next lame-duck session, between the November election and the swearing in of new legislators in January, though no bill has been introduced.



"If we could get a little support to people who maybe have half or more of their coursework done, maybe we could push them over the top and at least get an associate degree," Muxlow said.



Muxlow said he believes there is a good economic return for the state in offering financial support for college dropouts to finish their degree.



That same economic return is true on an individual basis for Blitchok and the other 1.2 million Michigan residents with some college credit but no degree. The average Michigan college dropout earned 12 percent less than the average owner of a two-year associate's degree in 2010, according to Census data analyzed by the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems. That equals to a $200,000 income difference over a lifetime. That shortfall is tripled to a $600,000 difference when compared with a bachelor's degree.



"I think it's worse to start and not finish than to not have gone at all," said Blitchok, who said he still has more than $40,000 in student debt. "It's a system designed for those who finish."

About the series "Degree of difficulty"

Underwriting for this report was provided by the Michigan College Access Network.

Learn more about MCAN here

. MCAN had no role in the reporting, writing, or editing of this report.
YPSILANTI, MI - Displayed as part of a low-key, yet emotionally-stirring memorial in Pease Park on the campus of Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti is a slightly mangled, significantly burned steel beam.

It's roughly 14 feet long and weighs approximately 6,800 pounds. Figuratively speaking, the beam carries the weight of a nation left feeling helpless on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.

The beam once helped to support the World Trade Center in New York City. It was pulled from the rubble of the twin towers' collapse after terrorist attacks on the United States.

EMU is hosting a remembrance ceremony at the memorial beam for the 15-year anniversary of the events, starting at 8:40 a.m. on Sunday, Sept. 11, at the corner of East Cross and Perrin streets. The ceremony starts a few minutes before 8:46 a.m., the time when the first plane flew into the north tower of the World Trade Center on 9/11.

The gathering is free and open to the public to attend.

It's believed the beam originally called the 74th floor of the south tower of the World Trade Center home. Today it rests 600 miles away on the campus of Eastern Michigan University where people often gather to pay their respects and reflect on the events of that Tuesday morning when the towers came crashing down.

Kevin Abbasse was one of two people who drove a truck from Ypsilanti to New York City to pick up the beam. A retired fire marshal who served nearly 24 years as a firefighter, Abbasse said it was an honor to bring the piece back to campus.

"If it meant me having to carry it on my back, I would have done it. That's how much it meant to me," said Abbasse, structural life and safety systems manager for the EMU physical plant. "I was very grateful that I was even considered to go down and do this."

Along with fellow EMU employee John Donegan, Abbasse set out in the largest truck EMU had to retrieve the college's artifact, not knowing what they would be bringing home exactly.

Former EMU president Susan Martin first had the idea to ask for a piece of the World Trade Center after reading an article detailing the Port Authority's plans to give away artifacts from the site.

After writing a letter to the Port Authority expressing interest in obtaining a piece, the university was informed eight months later that it would be getting something. A year later, EMU was told to come get its artifact.

Abbasse said the journey was memorable because the warehouse where they picked up the beam was extremely secure and involved several checkpoints and stops along the way. It was almost like the city didn't want people knowing where the pieces of the towers were being stored.

Once they had the beam, the trip home took on an even more emotional meaning.

"Every time we stopped, people would come over and look and wonder why we're hauling this junk piece of steel," Abbasse said. "Every stop on the way back from New York to Ypsilanti there were crowds of people there."

Because the beam is so large, it immediately drew attention at truck stops and gas stations. Once, Abbasse and his colleague told onlookers about it, the mood immediately changed and people wanted to take pictures and learn more about where it came from.

Abbasse said the stops typically lasted anywhere from an hour to 90 minutes on the way home, whereas a normal stop on the way to New York was about 15 minutes.

One stop in a small town in Ohio still sticks with Abbasse to this day. Along the way, scheduled stops were made in various municipalities to show off the beam. Abbasse doesn't remember the name of the town, but he remembers an insurance agent staring at the beam from afar.

The man was clearly nervous but interested in the beam. After inching his way ever so slightly, the man finally came forward to tell his story. Abbasse said the man was in the south tower on 9/11 when the north tower was hit.

After going downstairs to call his wife and let her know he was OK, the man saw the south tower get hit some 70 floors above him.

"For us to be there and for him to be there with the people in the crowd, it was very hard to hold back the tears," Abbasse said.

The events of the day and having the beam on campus is still an emotional topic for Abbasse, but something he is very proud of.

"To have a place for people to go to remember the sacrifices my brothers and sisters made that day...they didn't have to go into that building that day," Abbasse said. "For people to be able to come to that park and appreciate that park, it means the world to me."

Since the dedication of the memorial five years ago, Abbasse says he still sees people stopping by daily to pay their respects to those lost and to those who made sacrifices on 9/11.

"There hasn't been a day gone by since we've put that out, that there was some sort of American flag or flowers or something out there," Abbasse said.
ANN ARBOR, MI - Have thoughts on where Ann Arbor should build a new Amtrak train station? Or whether a new station is needed?

The city is inviting members of the public to give feedback on four remaining options for a new station on either Depot Street or Fuller Road.

This site in Fuller Park is one of the remaining options for a new Amtrak train station in Ann Arbor. Though it has been a city parking lot leased to the University of Michigan for many years, it's still parkland and some residents oppose the use of it for a train station.

There will be two chances to attend a public meeting on Monday, Sept. 26, at the downtown Ann Arbor library, 343 S. 5th Ave.

One session runs from 4-5:30 p.m. with a presentation at 4:30 p.m. and the other runs from 6:30-8:30 p.m. with a presentation at 7 p.m. Both sessions will take place in the lower-level multipurpose room.

There also will be a meeting of the Leadership Advisory Group for the project from 8-9:30 a.m. Sept. 21 and a meeting of the Citizen Working Group for the project from 6:30-8:30 p.m. Sept. 21.

Both of those meetings are open to the public and will be held in the council chambers on the second floor of city hall, 301 E. Huron St.

The LAG includes representation from local businesses and organizations, while the CWG is comprised of community residents.

A report released by the city on Sept. 1 indicates three possible sites remain on the table, including two different options at the existing Amtrak station site on Depot Street (one with the station elevated above the tracks and one ground level), reusing the historic Michigan Central Railroad Depot building (now occupied by the Gandy Dancer restaurant) just to the west of the existing station, and a site on Fuller Road in front of the University of Michigan Hospital, largely on the footprint of a city-owned parking lot in part of Fuller Park.

Following the upcoming round of public meetings, the city plans to conclude the alternatives analysis phase of study and prepare an environmental assessment report that will go to the Federal Railroad Administration.

The report will include an evaluation of potential environmental impacts for remaining design alternatives and will identify a preferred site.

The city already has issued a request for proposals in hopes of lining up an engineering firm to get moving on preliminary engineering drawings as soon as the FRA signs off on the environmental assessment and a site is chosen.

The city hopes to select an engineering firm by early fall. The RFP indicates the preliminary engineering work must be completed by May 31, after which the city is looking to move into the final design phase.

Ryan Stanton covers the city beat for The Ann Arbor News. Reach him at ryanstanton@mlive.com.
ANN ARBOR, MI - Jen Eyer is now the newest member of the Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners, representing Ann Arbor's west side.

The Ann Arbor resident was appointed to the District 9 seat by a unanimous vote of the board during a special meeting Thursday night, Sept. 8.

Eyer replaces Conan Smith, who recently vacated the seat he has held for the past 12 years to seek a full-time job as director of the county's Office of Community and Economic Development.

Jen Eyer addresses the Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners during her interview for the District 9 seat on Sept. 8, 2016.

Eyer, a Democrat, will serve the remainder of Smith's term through the end of December while the OCED director hiring process plays out.

She also is running as a write-in candidate in the November election in hopes of keeping the seat for the next two-year term starting in January, though Smith may want his seat back if he doesn't get the job he's seeking.

Seven people who applied for Smith's vacated seat were publicly interviewed by the board Thursday night.

Commissioners rated each candidate during the interviews using a numeric scoring system. Eyer scored the highest.

Following an 8-0 vote, she was immediately sworn in by County Clerk Larry Kestenbaum and joined commissioners at the board table.

Eyer, who lives on Hanover Court, is a former employee of MLive and The Ann Arbor News and now is vice president of Vanguard Public Affairs in Lansing. She says she developed a deep understanding of governmental processes and ability to build connections with people on both sides of the aisle during her 20-year journalism career and has deep knowledge of the district.

She emphasizes her roots in the Dicken neighborhood in southwest Ann Arbor, where she and her husband, Kevin, first bought a home 16 years ago and are raising their two children, ages 13 and 10.

Though she couldn't run for political office as a journalist, Eyer said she served the community in nonpartisan, volunteer ways, most notably as president and in other roles on the Dicken Elementary School PTO since 2008.

At Dicken, Eyer said it was clear some students had a high-quality preschool experience and others did not, and the gap in their skills was apparent.

"I realized that we needed to focus what extra attention we could on bringing those who started school already behind up to speed," she said, adding she wants to bring a similar focus on equity issues to the county board.

"Through my experiences at Dicken, I have seen firsthand the realities and outcomes of opportunity gaps that exist in pockets in our community. And so I understand and empathize with what that means for large swaths of economic hardship that exist throughout the county."

Eyer serves on the Ann Arbor Public Schools Blue Ribbon Committee and has served in other roles with the Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti Regional Chamber, United Way Young Leaders Society, Ann Arbor Art Center and other organizations.

She says the county has many pressing issues to address, including hiring a new administrator, building its tax base and addressing inequity.

Eyer attended the University of Michigan from 1992-93 before transferring to Michigan State University, where she received a journalism degree in 1997. She worked for MLive and The Ann Arbor News from 2000 to April 2016.

Through her current work, she is a communications consultant for Michigan Democrat Lon Johnson's congressional campaign.

She said she also works directly with groups such as the Middle Cities Education Association and the American Civil Liberties Union on communications strategies designed to build consensus amongst citizens, interest groups and legislators on issues such as school funding and mass incarceration.

A map showing the boundaries for the District 9 seat on the Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners.

Board Chairwoman Felicia Brabec, D-Pittsfield Township, said she's excited to work with Eyer. She said Eyer brings a strong skill set, particularly her ability to communicate effectively and her calm approach to problem solving.

"We were extremely lucky because we had such an amazing pool of candidates," Brabec said. "I mean, one after another -- just stellar resumes, amazing community involvement, and leadership, so we really couldn't go wrong."

Commissioner Yousef Rabhi, D-Ann Arbor, joined fellow commissioners in welcoming Eyer, though he said he didn't score her the highest.

He noted what he liked about each of the other candidates who didn't get appointed, starting with Bob King, former president of the United Automobile Workers. He said King has an immense amount of experience.

"Let's be clear, I'm no Bob King," Eyer said at one point during her interview, referring to King's experience in the labor movement, though she said she was raised in a strong middle-class union family and appreciates unions.

At this point, Eyer's appointment is only temporary and it remains to be seen who will be representing District 9 come January.

Smith already filed to run for reelection before he resigned, so he still will appear as the only District 9 candidate on the November ballot.

Smith said he'll return to his seat in January if he's reelected and does not get the full-time county job he is seeking. However, if he does get the job, he will decline to take office in January even if he is reelected.

In the latter scenario, the board would have to appoint a District 9 commissioner again by January, or else the seat would remain vacant until there's a special election with a primary in May and general election in August. Brabec said she wouldn't want to leave District 9 without representation for that long.

Brabec said it's theoretically possible one of the write-in candidates could win the seat for the next two years this November.

Declared write-in candidates seeking the District 9 seat in the November election include Eyer, Jeff Hayner, Elizabeth Janovic and Jeremy Peters. Janovic and Peters interviewed before the board Thursday night.

With it being a presidential election in which Ann Arbor voters will go to the polls in droves to vote Democratic, Smith is favored to win against any write-in challengers as the only Democrat on the ballot.

Interim County Administrator Gregory Dill said he expects the county to make a decision on hiring an OCED director by the end of the year, so it should be known before long whether Smith gets the job.

Eyer joined fellow commissioners at the board table Thursday night to discuss next steps in the search for a new county administrator.

The position was reposted last month and applications are due by next Tuesday, Sept. 13. The board still is refining the selection process.

It's expected the board will select four finalists on Sept. 22, followed by public interviews and selection of a new administrator in October.

Following her appointment, Jen Eyer joined fellow Washtenaw County commissioners at the board table to discuss next steps in the search for a new county administrator on Sept. 8, 2016.

Commissioners discussed different options for creating a scoring system for applicants Thursday night.

Commissioner Ronnie Peterson, D-Ypsilanti, expressed concerns that the finalists could end up being all men if the county's selection process gives preference to applicants with long-term experience as administrators.

He said it historically has been a male-dominated profession, and women -- as well as other minorities -- in many cases haven't had the opportunity to advance and gain the same experience. He said in some communities, the glass ceiling just cracked in the last few years, and in others it still hasn't cracked.

Commissioner Dan Smith, R-Northfield Township, asked if the board could predetermine that at least one of the finalists will be female. Diane Heidt, the county's human resources director, advised against doing that.

One of the two finalists in the last county administrator search, which did not result in the board hiring anyone, was in attendance Thursday night.

Muddasar Tawakkul, director of compliance and purchasing with the Detroit Wayne Mental Health Authority, said he's seeking the position again.

The board was unable to reach a consensus earlier this year when the last administrator search came down to Tawakkul and Bob Tetens, the county's parks and recreation director. The board was split.

Tawakkul worked for Wayne County for about 10 years previously, serving as assistant corporation counsel and director of purchasing. He holds a law degree from the University of Detroit Mercy.

Eyer said the most pressing issue facing the county board in the next few months is hiring a new administrator.

"We need an exceptional leader at the helm to work hand in hand with the board on its strategic vision for the county and to move that agenda forward," she said.

"The county having been in leadership limbo for more than a year now has seriously hampered its ability to fully execute its strategic vision and plan."

Eyer said the county needs to make sure people in the community feel not only aware of what's happening, but also feel part of the process.

She said she can help with that, both with written mass communication and direct outreach to target groups.

After 16 years of working as a journalist in the county, Eyer said she's intimately familiar with the different communities and groups, and how to reach them.

After roles as a reporter and senior news producer, she served as director of audience engagement for AnnArbor.com, director of community engagement for MLive and news leader for The Ann Arbor News.

"I'm personally invested in this community," she said. "We've lived here for 17 years, and I hope we will for decades to come. There were times when opportunities arose for us to consider moving to places like Chicago, Seattle, New York, and we decided Ann Arbor was where we wanted to stay."

Eyer said reasons for staying and raising a family in Ann Arbor include a strong neighborhood school, walkable neighborhoods, public transportation and safe public spaces. She said it's also a compassionate community that shares her progressive values, works to address economic inequality and supports programs to ensure the basic needs of the most vulnerable are met.

"The county handles services that touch residents in myriad ways, and so the board is where the decisions are made that really impact people's lives every day. I want to give back to this community that has given us so much."

Ryan Stanton covers the city beat for The Ann Arbor News. Reach him at ryanstanton@mlive.com.
BANGOR TWP, MI -- A brief standoff between police and a man wanted on a federal warrant led to some area schools being secured.

About noon on Friday, Sept. 9, Michigan State Police troopers went to a home at 174 Lagoon Beach Drive to serve an arrest warrant on a 42-year-old male resident. The warrant was issued out of the federal Western District of Michigan due to the man allegedly making threats against Department of Human Services' employees, according to Special 1st Lt. David Kaiser.

The man, however, refused to come outside, prompting schools in Bangor Township to go into secure mode. The man did not indicate he had hostages or a gun, Kaiser said.

The MSP Emergency Support Team responded to the scene and used the public address system to communicate with the suspect, Kaiser said. At about 1:20 p.m., the man surrendered and was taken into troopers' custody, Kaiser said.
BAY CITY, MI -- A developer looking to build a low-income senior housing apartment complex near downtown Bay City has sweetened his deal in hopes of securing a city tax break for the project.

Westbrook Housing Development, which is made up of partners from Saginaw-based Wolgast Corp., is proposing a housing development of 47 one- and two-bedroom apartments called Madison Place Senior Apartments for low- to moderate-income residents 55 years and older. The facility would be constructed on an unused parking lot at Fourth Street and Madison Avenue, just east of the Pere Marquette Depot and south of Maplewood Manor, another low-income senior apartment facility, run by the Bay City Housing Commission.

To move forward with their plans -- and secure $7 million to $10 million in federal tax credits from the Michigan State Housing Development Authority -- the developers need to strike a PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes) agreement with the city.

The developer makes his pitch to the Bay City Commission during a 6 p.m. special meeting Monday, Sept. 12, at Bay City Hall, 301 Washington Ave. A vote on issuing the PILOT agreement is slated to take place Sept. 19.

Previously, the developer agreed to pay a 4 percent PILOT, or about $15,000 per year on average, in addition to a one-time, $100,000 payment to the city's general fund.

But this week, in a letter to Bay City Manager Rick Finn, John Dupont, a partner with Westbrook Housing, said his team is willing to double their one-time payment to $200,000 "as a good faith measure in our efforts to secure the vital support of the city of Bay City."

A similar tactic was used by the Bay City Housing Commission, successfully executed in early 2014, offering the city a onetime $300,000 payment. In return, the city granted the organization a PILOT, which was needed to secure tax credits from MSHDA for a $9 million renovation project to Maplewood Manor.

Commission President Andrew Niedzinski, 3rd Ward, said he's looking forward to hearing the developer's plan, but said he has received a higher-than-normal amount of emails from constituents asking him not to support the project.

"My biggest question is if the developer thinks this is such a great investment property and he can make money on it, then why do we have to give him the break?" Niedzinski said. "Why can't he do it on his own?"

Niedzinski described the location where the developer wants to build as a "prime spot."

"That whole area of downtown is more or less the next piece in the puzzle," he said. "So we do have to be careful on what goes on there."

The property today is a parking lot owned by Bay-Arenac Behavioral Health, a nonprofit that doesn't pay taxes on the lot.

Timing for the project has proven tricky. Last month, a citywidy housing study was published that called on city leaders to "work above the market," in an aim to increase home values.

The study didn't specifically touch on affordable housing projects, but some city leaders have interpreted it to mean that those types of projects are the last things the city needs to move its housing market in a positive direction.

Bill Branigan, a real estate agent and member of the Bay City Planning Commission, was vocal against the project, pointing to the housing study.

"This means that if we have any new construction, we have to work above the market," he said last month. "This doesn't aim to push the market up."

The Planning Commission approved site plans for the project, but also passed a symbolic resolution calling on the City Commission to not support a PILOT for it.

The Zoning Board of Appeals denied a variance to allow the project -- planned as a three-story structure -- because the code calls for buildings to top out at 2 1/2 stories. Dupont, with the development team, said the building would be redesigned to meet the zoning requirement.

Timing is of the essence for the developer, who's working to secure the city tax break in order to file with MSHDA by Oct. 1.

In his letter to Finn, Dupont said the project will "make possible an important investment in the social equity of the community."

"The city as a whole will be well served both financially and socially by giving its support to this worthy effort to bring safe, affordable and financially sound senior house to the downtown," he said.
BAY CITY, MI - Studio 23, 901 N Water St, hosted its triennial all area artist awards exhibit Thursday Sept. 8.

The exhibit featured multiple works from 42 artists across Michigan. Bay City's local gallery has held the event for 57 years.

"It represent each individual's best work," said Garrett Weslock, curator of arts and exhibits.

Artists began submitting their work in early January and judging began at the end of August. Artist in Residence and Studio School Manager at Midland Center for the Arts Armin Mersmann judged the artwork.

The top prize winner was awarded $1,000, and 2nd place received $500. The best 2D and 3D works each received $250.

Kelsey Courier, a Bay City native, came from Kalamazoo to talk about her work in the show. Courier exhibited two paintings of portraits of homes in Bay City and Portland, Oregon.

"My goal is to get the viewer to feel like they're on an an afternoon walk," said Courier.

The exhibit will be up until October 21. "This is some of the best collection of regional art," said Larry Butcher.
DETROIT, MI -- The former employee of a charitable nonprofit is accused of embezzling at least $77,000 from his one-time employer with his wife's help.

Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy's office says Dalton Roberson Jr., 42, of Detroit, worked for Detroit-based Michigan Community Resources between 2012 and 2014.

Michigan Community Resources is a nonprofit that provides other low-income-focused nonprofits with free services, such as legal and technical assistance, and offers grant funds. According to the most recent financial documents available online, the organization had 2014 income of about $1.4 million.

Roberson, a Howard University graduate who unsuccessfully ran for state representative in 2000 and Detroit City Council in 2009 according to an previously created campaign biography, with the help of his wife, 41-year-old Jakeema Roberson, is accused of opening accounts for several fake non-profit organizations.

He then used his position with Michigan Community Resources to divert funds to the fictitious nonprofits.

The Robersons are each charged with embezzlement of more than $1,000 but less than $20,000 from a nonprofit or charitable organization, embezzlement of more than $50,000 but less than $100,000; conspiracy to commit embezzlement of more than $1,000 but less than $20,000 from a non-profit or charitable organization, and conspiracy to commit Embezzlement of more than $50,000 but less than $100,000.f more than $50,000 but less than $100,000.

They're waived a preliminary examination and are expected to appear in Wayne County's Third Circuit Court Sept. 22 for an arraignment.

"As young child, my parents taught me the importance of civic engagement and compassion for my fellow man," Roberson said, according to a Detroit City Council campaign site created in 2009. "However, it was a childhood spent listening to the discussions between my father and men like Coleman A. Young, Ken Cockrel Sr. and Robert 'Buddy' Battle that helped foster my commitment to political activism."
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The new government has followed its predecessor and formed a committee dedicated to ridding Myanmar of its UN designation as a Least Developed Country (LDC), which will require progress on average income and economic vulnerability.





Myanmar has been on the LDC list since 1987 but is striving to graduate to lower-middle income, said U Maung Maung Win, deputy minister for planning and finance. But there are three criteria the country needs to meet at the next triennial LDC review in 2018, and so far it has only met one, he added.

The three criteria concern gross national income (GNI) per capita, the human asset index (HAI) and the economic vulnerability index, and must all be met at two successive triennial reviews.

Myanmar had a high-enough score on the HAI, which takes into account adult literacy, secondary school enrollment, child mortality and the percentage of the population that is undernourished, during the 2015 review, said U Maung Maung Win, although he noted that data quality in Myanmar could be an issue.

Myanmars GNI per capita, however, was $1063 in 2014-15. This was some $200 short of the threshold for lower-middle income status, which is updated for each three-year review.

The countrys score on the economic vulnerability index, meanwhile, was too high. That index measures a countrys structural vulnerability to exogenous economic and environmental shocks, according to the UN. Indicators include instability of agricultural production and trade, victims of natural disasters and how much of the population lives in remote areas.

Within ASEAN Cambodia and Laos are also designated LDCs by the UN.





Being designated an LDC makes a country eligible for specific assistance programs including trade support and development loans. But U Maung Maung Win said that because of years spent under economic sanctions previous governments had benefited little from these measures.

The US adjusted its sanctions against Myanmar in May, removing some state-owned entities from the sanctions list.

Translation by Thiri Min Htun
Yangon Internal Revenue says it has arrived at a fresh set of property values for the citys neighbourhoods in which property tax is assessed. A spokesperson said the tax department was still waiting on government approval before they can be officially released, but the new valuations are higher than the current schedule being applied.





In 2013, the former government introduced a system of assessment based on a list of property values, which breaks down the price of a property per-square-foot in each of the capitals neighborhoods. A sliding tax scale is applied to each value bracket - the higher the valuation, the greater the tax rate.

In June we submitted the new standard price for which to pay taxes for property, U Aung Kyaw Tint, deputy head of the tax department at Yangon Internal Revenue, told The Myanmar Times this week. But the Yangon region government hasnt approved it yet. So the standard price to pay taxes on has been in 2014 prices, he said.

Prior to this system of valuations, home or land buyers had to declare the sale price to the tax office, but would often under-report the transaction in order to pay less tax.

Yet incorrect valuations have proved only part of the problem over the years. In an up-and-down market, the government has grappled with the right tax rate to stimulate demand, whilst at the same time incentivising tax payments.

In April the government returned to its 2014 tax schedule that saw a floor of 15 percent tax applied for the sale of property valued at up to K30 million, and a ceiling of 30pc for anything priced over K100 million. Property sold with a value between K30 million and K100 million was taxed at a rate of 20pc.

Last year, in an attempt to stimulate a sluggish market anxious about the impact of an upcoming election, the government slashed property tax rates to just 3pc on properties of up to K100 million at the lower end, rising to 5pc for up to K500 million and 10pc up to K1 billion. Areas with valuations between K1 billion and K1.5 billion were taxed at 20pc, while anything over K1.5 billion was 30pc.





But the market failed to respond. Half-year figures published last October showed tax revenue was down to K14 billion from K36 billion the previous year.

A return this year to the 2014 valuations has seen tax revenues this financial year fair only slightly better. From April to August property tax has netted Yangon Inland Revenue K15 billion.

U Aung Kyaw Tint did not say if the tax rate would change, but said valuations, if approved, would go up this year.

Now, we are using standard prices that are one-third less than real prices in the market, so we need to fix this in accordance with the current price in real terms, so the standard prices will see a little bit of an increase when the regional government approve it, he said.

Real estate insiders, however, say that the current valuations need to come down, and have cautioned that the government should be consulting with industry bodies when setting property prices.

U Saing Kun Naung, chair of Saing Kun Naung real estate agency, said that in 2013, when the Internal Revenue Department started doing the neighbourhood valuations, they worked with the Myanmar Real Estate Service Association. But since then, they have failed to do so, he said, and have over-valued areas.

The last time they fixed the prices, they were not i n accordance with the property prices at the time, because some places had already fallen, because the property market was slow, U Saing Kun Naung, who is also the chair of the Yangon Region Real Estate Entrepreneur Association, said. So the appraisal price has been higher than real prices.

U Khin Maung Aye, Shwe Kan Myae real estate agent, said that the current 2014 schedule was too high, and any re-assessment should come down, not up.

Currently we are using the standard prices that were appraised in 2014. This is still high in some places, so its not a fair price for everyone to be paying taxes on, he said.

U Khin Maung Aye agreed that the Internal Revenue Department should work more closely with industry organisations if they wanted to arrive at the appropriate level of valuations, and in turn taxation.

If they cooperated with everyone it would make things better when they fixed the price, he said.
Two Yangon townships are among a group of 20 chosen for the next cycle of a World Bank-supported national community development program, which puts funds in residents hands to help construct basic services and infrastructure in rural areas.





Kungyangon and Kyauktan townships in the countrys largest city are among those targeted for the fourth cycle of the project, which starts on November 1 with training classes for local residents, said project manager U Hla Khine.

The list of townships was confirmed last week and is spread across 11 states and regions, with five of the townships located in Kayah State. It is entirely up to community members whether they take part, and they will decide how best to allocate the funds.

Well hire an NGO to train the residents on how to manage the funding, plan repairs and build infrastructure, said U Hla Khine. That can take from one to seven months depending on how the residents education levels and the NGOs experience.

The National Community Driven Development project (NCDDP) started in 2013, and each year a new four-year cycle focusing on another group of townships begins. Initial success prompted a scale-up, with the number of townships rising from three in the first cycle to six in the second and 18 in the third.

The World Bank provides technical assistance and funding, which was originally slated as US$80 million for 15 townships. But after the first year there were many benefits for the chosen areas so officials decided to increase the funds and number of townships, U Hla Khine said.

The World Bank provided another $400 million after the first year, the Italian government contributed 20 million euros and the Myanmar government $30 million. The number of townships involved will eventually rise to 63.





U Myint Htwe Win, administrator of Yangon Regions Htantabin township, which was chosen in an earlier cycle, said residents in that township had chosen to pave roads and that 500 kilometres (310 miles) of footpaths and access roads were constructed in the first two years of the project.

Transportation [links] werent good because the township lies at the edge of Yangon and the only activity is farming, he said. But two years later transportation is good within the township and [there are connections] with other townships. Residents mindset has also changed, and they have a better sense of business and how their environment works.

The NCDDP covers at least one township in each state or region of the country. A spokesperson for the project said townships were chosen on the basis of consultation among government officials, MPs, exports and NGOs.

We dont have a strict rule on which or how many townships will be involved in each state or division - were just choosing underdeveloped townships around the country, he added.

Poverty rates are the main criteria, according to the World Bank, while things like peace and stability and an absence of other funding sources also feature.

In each township chosen, the funding provided depends on the population. At the bottom of the scale areas with 3000 or fewer residents receive K20 million, while those with 9000 or more receive K120 million. Those amounts are paid yearly for four years, and deposited in a communal bank account. But residents have to provide a detailed project plan, which includes how they will manage finances.

The project plan goes to the rural development department, in order to check that it does not conflict or duplicate existing government plans for local communities. During the cycles first year townships can only repair old infrastructure, but can start building from scratch in year two.
The Ministry of Transport and Communications will conduct a field study to make sure local and foreign firms have followed rules on building mobile communication stations and towers, following complaints from residents about noise pollution, Union Minister U Thant Sin Maung has said.





Pyithu Hluttaw Daw Yin Min Hlaing (NLD; Gangaw) asked the government how they would deal with the issue of noise from the electricity generators used to power telecom towers at a meeting of parliament on September 8.

In areas without electricity towers require large generators, which she said disturb residents and can cause mental problems. Firms are required to use generators with silencers, but this is often disregarded, she added.

The Union Minister said that solutions would be found following the field study, which might include sound-proofing generators and relying on battery banks at night and generators during the daytime.

There are over 13,000 mobile towers serving local and foreign communication operators.

Translation by Khine Thazin Han
Health officials combating leprosy are calling on the government to restore adequate staffing levels to a special unit to fight the disease.





Though up to 3000 new cases of leprosy are discovered each year in Myanmar, the specialised anti-leprosy unit was cut from last years reorganisation of the health service, they say.

The issue came to light in a seminar on leprosy held at the Peoples Health Foundation on August 26. The foundations vice chair, Dr Thein Swe, told The Myanmar Times that the new structure of the Ministry of Health and Sport contained no unit to deal with the continuing scourge of the disease. The effective and systematic treatment of leprosy required adequate numbers of trained staff, he said.

The reorganised ministry has fewer skilled health workers to deal with leprosy than before. Some technical expert posts were cut, which could weaken anti-leprosy activities, he said.

A health worker for leprosy cases who attended the seminar said, We can carry out our tasks effectively only if the new structure of the ministry is revised to restore the expert posts at district level. Most of those posts were not included in the new set-up. We want the ministry to reconsider its structure.

Dr Oak Soe, deputy director of the leprosy project at the public health department, said the reorganisation had created some confusion. Though the department continues to operate, there is no funding for the salaries of leprosy experts.

Some staff felt a bit demoralised when their posts were not included in the new structure. There are no health staff who are not getting paid, but their posts are not included in the staffing table.

Dr Than Win, deputy director general of the Disease Prevention Division of the Public Health Department, said more anti-leprosy activities would be carried out and a meeting of experts would take place this month.





To be able to undertake anti-leprosy and disease prevention activities effectively, we will devise long- and short-term plans. We will also talk about the structure of the department, he said.

The April 2015, reorganisation of what was then the Health Ministry created two departments, Public Health and Medical Services. No posts were included for the 73 leprosy inspectors and the 29 assistant inspectors who had previously been employed by the ministry. The leprosy section ceased to exist as a separate unit, and was merged with the units for TB, malaria, trachoma, and HIV under the Division of Disease Prevention in the Public Health Department.

Seminar participants said the change had blurred the responsibilities of some district medical officers, making those in areas with a high incidence of leprosy responsible for other diseases as well, while reducing the staff available to them.

Though Myanmar announced that it had achieved its leprosy elimination target in 2003, it has seen 2500 to 3000 new leprosy patients annually, with incidence largely unchanged for the past 12 years.

Of those cases, 90 percent are diagnosed only when they report to clinics already suffering symptoms, doctors say. Many of these are children. Up to 70 percent of leprosy patients in Myanmar are at risk of further infections, and about 14pc of the total patients suffer from severe, Grade 2 disabilities.

The new structure leaves senior officials and front-line workers in place, but reduces the middle-level staff. Im concerned that the disease will be neglected one day if the number of leprosy specialists is insufficient, said one doctor, who requested anonymity.

Translation by Thiri Min Htun
Myanmar has become the main route for smuggling rhino horns from India to China, according to wildlife crime experts.





Poachers are now using Sagaing Region and Kachin and Shan states as the primary link between these two countries.

The route shift emerged after crackdowns on rhino horn networks in Nepal over the last few years, which forced the illicit business to move elsewhere.

A new report by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) on rhino conservation said parts of Myanmar now function as a notorious backdoor wildlife trafficking hub to China.

In Muse township, Shan State, there were four rhino horns seized in 2015, with China as the suspected destination, according to the report.

Two distinct markets in China are known to fuel demand for rhino horns, with one catering to medicinal products and the other marketed to luxury buyers.

As recently as 2009, most smuggled rhino horns moved from the producer country of India to the consumer country of China via Nepal, with only one-tenth of the product crossing the Myanmar border.

Nepal begun to curb rhino horn smuggling networks through a joint operation of the Nepalese army and special police in October 2013.





Most illegal rhino horns are believed to come from the Indian state of Assam  one of the last strongholds for the one-horned rhino.

Assams Kaziranga National Park conserves the bulk of Indias one-horned rhinos and is around 300 kilometres (186 miles) from the Myanmar border.

The criminals involved with the wildlife trade found the Myanmar route to transport illegal wildlife products including rhino horns easy due to a porous border, Bibhab Kumar Talukdar, chair of the IUCNs Asian Rhino Specialist Group, told The Myanmar Times.

Mr Talukdar said the new National League for Democracy-led government should consider the illegal wildlife trade as serious of a problem as the illegal drug and arms trades.

[Wildlife smuggling] has the potential to have a severe impact on the national security of Myanmar due to the involvement of a nexus of criminals, Mr Talukdar said.

He urged the government to work closely with its neighbouring countries and share intelligence to effectively deal with transborder illegal wildlife trade.

President U Htin Kyaw recently called illegal wildlife smuggling a worrisome situation  impacting the environment, business sector and social community. He committed to assessing the situation.

The Protection of Wildlife and Wild Plants and Conservation of Natural Areas Law prohibits possessing or selling endangered animals or their parts. Myanmar is also a signatory to the Convention on the International Trade of Endangered Species.

But it remains to be seen if these sentiments and measures can be enforced along the more volatile parts of the new rhino horn smuggling routes.
Battling to save 40,000 children at risk from a Japanese encephalitis outbreak, health officials have had to cope with recalcitrant local militias, difficult travel logistics and parents who attribute the disease not to infection but to witchcraft.





The Department of Public Health launched an inoculation campaign in northern Shan State after four children died of the brain-swelling disease in the area since January. They started work on August 26 to cover 10 townships, but will not be able to complete the work by the deadline of today they had set in three of the remote townships: Laukkai, Konkyan and Panghsang/Pangkham.

Assistant program director Dr Aung Kyaw Moe told The Myanmar Times that, in addition to staff shortages and the inaccessibility of the locations, the health officials had to get consent from the local Wa district administration.

As of yesterday, we were still negotiating with the Wa administration. We cant proceed until they give permission. There are no midwives or health assistants in those areas, so we have to bring in qualified people from government hospitals in northern Shan State. I think they will let us go ahead, but I dont know when, he said.

He added that the health officials will not be allowed to carry out the vaccine program without the Was consent.

In the Shan village of Nantpaung, about 30 miles (48 kilometres) from Lashio township, about 100 of the 300 residents are children. The village administrator, Sai Myat Han, said the parents of one child suspected of being infected with Japanese encephalitis would not allow health staff to vaccinate her.

The health department were inoculating children in our village on August 28. They treated about 100 children aged from nine months to 15 years. But in one case, the parents would not allow them to inoculate their daughter. They knew nothing about health matters and thought the disease was the result of witchcraft, he said.





Inoculation has proceeded in the remaining townships of Lashio, Kunlone, Thibaw/Hsipaw, Theinni, Kutkai, Tang Yan and Hopan.

Japanese encephalitis is a serious infection that occurs mainly in rural parts of Asia. It is spread through the bite of an infected mosquito but is not spread from person to person. Most victims show no symptoms, but others might experience a mild fever and headache, or encephalitis, as well as fever, neck stiffness, seizures, and coma. As many as 30 percent of patients with encephalitis dies, and up to half of those who survive are left with permanent disability. It is believed that infection in a pregnant woman could harm her unborn baby.

The cost of preventive vaccination is about K35,000.

The disease is also found in Ayeyarwady, Yangon and Bago regions and Kayin and Mon states.
A pregnant Myanmar woman in Chiang Mai, Thailand, has tested positive for Zika virus, the Myanmar consulate attache said yesterday.





The virus was discovered when the woman, who is eight months pregnant, went to the hospital for a check-up. She was allowed to return to her home in Chiang Mai but it has been quarantined.

The virus, which can be spread through mosquitoes or sexual partners, typically produces mild symptoms but can cause severe birth defects, including microcephaly, if it spreads from a pregnant mother to her fetal child.

The Myanmar consulate in Chiang Mai issued a statement on September 7, warning pregnant women not to visit Chiang Mai. At least 11 cases of Zika virus have been reported in Chiang Mai, with more than 100 reported cases in Thailand overall this year.

Those infected with Zika in Chiang Mai are being monitored by the Emergency Medical Treatment Department of the Sansai Public Hospital so that the virus does not continue to spread.

The infections are not the worst, U San Yu Kyaw, the consulate attache, said. We think Thailands health officials will control the virus well.

Thai officials are testing people at the airport in Chiang Mai, said Foundation for Education for Myanmar Migrants public relations manager Daw Han Man.





We want them to check at the bus terminals, she said. There are people coming and going between Chiang Mai and Mae Sot via express terminals.

The foundation is educating migrants in Mae Sot about the virus, she said. She is concerned that Zika could spread among the migrant community, which due to living in close quarters might be more susceptible to infection.

About 400,000 to 500,000 Myanmar citizens are living in four Chiang Mai districts and about 300,000 to 400,000 live in Mae Sot.

Zika has also struck Singapore, where 57 foreigners, including a Myanmar citizen, were infected.

On September 2, the Myanmar embassy in Singapore advised pregnant women to avoid travel to the country due to the outbreak.

The Myanmar consulate in Chiang Mai wants Myanmar people who suspect they may be infected with the virus to call these phone numbers for treatment: 052004211, 0612727775.
In a move that could result in a shift of key negotiators in the peace process, the Karen National Union is set to hold a party congress and an election of new leadership this November.





The 16th party congress will be held in the Lay Wah area of Kayin States Hlaingbwe township, Padoh Saw Kwe Htoo Win, general secretary of the KNU, told The Myanmar Times yesterday.

The KNU, one of the eight signatories to last years nationwide ceasefire agreement, has been a strong proponent of both ethnic unity, and the ethnic groups involvement in the government peace process.

Padoh Saw Kwe Htoo Win said the congress will serve as an opportunity to review the political situation and progress of the KNU leadership over the last four-year term, as well as the political objectives and the KNUs activities.

We have voted to hold the congress in November, but I cannot say the exact date yet, he said. The congresss date could still change at any time.

He added that discussions of the governments recent 21st-century Panglong Conference would be on the agenda as well.

Karen local media has reported that the KNU will convene for the congress on November 24, and that it will be staging an election for a new central executive committee, a new chair and a new vice chair.

The previous, 15th KNU congress was held in December 2012. The central executive committee was formed with 11 members, and General Saw Mutu Say Poe was chosen as the chair while Padoh Naw Zipporah Sein was selected as vice chair.





The previous KNU congress was attended by all representatives from the seven brigades and seven districts, including leaders from the political organisations military wing, the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA).

Both current chair Gen Mutu Say Poe and vice chair Padoh Naw Zipporah Sein are expected to contest the election for the position of chair in what is anticipated to be a repeat of the last congress intense competition.

A source from the KNU who did not wish to be named said Gen Mutu Say Poe is seen as a strong favourite for the position. However, Padoh Naw Zipporah Sein, who the daughter of former chair General Tamla Baw, is believed to be favoured by members who are in the KNUs hardline faction.

The KNU was founded in 1947, though its predecessor organisations date back to 1881.

The KNU signed an initial ceasefire agreement with the government on January 12, 2012, before also signing the NCA last October.
Undeterred by the defeat of a parliamentary motion on the matter this week, Buddhist nationalists suspicious of the involvement of international personalities in what they insist is a local Rakhine problem have announced plans to mount a demonstration on September 11 in Yangon.





One nationalist compared the involvement of the international members of the Rakhine State Advisory Commission to a blind elephant going into the forest.

State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi set up the commission, whose three foreign members include its chair, the former UN secretary general Kofi Annan. Mr Annans arrival in the Rakhine State capital of Sittwe on September 6 was met by about 300 protesters, some of whom were reportedly brought in from surrounding villages by groups promising payment.

More than 120,000 people remain displaced in Rakhine after communal violence in 2012 between Rakhine Buddhists and the Muslim minority who self-identify as Rohingya but are referred to as illegal Bengali immigrants by the majority in Myanmar.

Opposition to the involvement of foreigners in the Rakhine question has also been voiced by the Committee for the Protection of Race and Religion, better known as Ma Ba Tha. A leading member of the group, U Tawpaka, said on September 6, Sitagu Sayadaw has said the problem in Rakhine is like a quarrel between husband and wife, and we agree, he said, referring to the prominent Buddhist cleric and Ma Ba Tha vice chair.

We should have been consulted on whether or not it was appropriate to involve the international community in our local affairs.

However, Ma Ba Tha spokesperson U Tay Za Ni Ya said his organisation would not seek to pressure the government and had no plans to release a statement on the commission.

He added, We are following the situation closely. We believe the situation in Rakhine should be considered by people who are experts on the history of Rakhine and Bengal. Otherwise, it would be like a blind elephant going into the forest.





In Yangon, local nationalists said they planned to mount a protest against the Rakhine State Advisory Commission on September 11 at the Tarmwe Bo Sein Mann grounds. They have not yet secured permission.

We filed an application requesting permission for about 1000 people to protest, said nationalist lawyer and protest organiser U Aye Paing.
A police officer in Kachin State has been suspended and detained after video circulated online this week showing him threatening to shoot villagers in Hpakant township while pointing his gun at them, according to lawmaker U Tint Soe (NLD), who represents the township in the lower house.





He told The Myanmar Times yesterday that the officers behaviour, at a meeting to select local administrators, would be subject to an internal police investigation.

Hpakant locals are the victims among many armed forces, he said of the heavily militarised township, where the Kachin Independence Army also has a presence. These forces should consider the local people. During the current civilian government period, the armed forces should only carry out their respective duties.

U Soe Zaw Zaw later apologised to the villagers, who reportedly accepted the apology. U Tint Soe posted on his Facebook, however, that he was not satisfied with the officers contrition and would continue to push for legal action against him.

The lawyer U Robert Sann Aung said that U Soe Zaw Zaws conduct was unacceptable and that effective punishment should be meted out.

Police are meant to protect the people. The police disciplinary body should take action against him. They cannot let him go, he said.

In the video, the officer threatens the villagers, telling them that he has the authority to shoot them, after expressing anger at not being invited to the selection meeting.





U Robert Sann Aung said a criminal case could be brought on multiple charges given that the officers verbal threat to harm was coupled with his brandishing of a gun.

The lawyer said authorities should use the case to set an example that police will be held accountable.
Discussions over the remaining US sanctions on Myanmar will be on the table during the state counsellors upcoming trip to Washington, a foreign affairs official confirmed to The Myanmar Times yesterday.





Next week, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is due to make her inaugural visit to the US since her government took office at the end of March. She is expected to meet with US President Barack Obama as well as Vice President Joe Biden during the two-day trip.

The US continues to apply sanctions on Myanmar under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which allows the US Treasury to blacklist certain individuals or companies. Most of the remaining sanctions deal with military-backed conglomerates, and the multi-billion-dollar jade and gems industries.

Sanctions may be lifted when the United States recognises that Myanmar has really embraced democracy, U Kyaw Zaya, director general of foreign affairs, said.

The sanction will be lifted sometime soon because we are going the right way on everything now, he added.

He said that further revising the sanctions will be discussed during the state counsellors visit.

In mid-May, the United States extended sanctions against Myanmar, adopting new measures targeted against Steven Laws Asia World while removing some state-owned entities from its list.

US officials in Washington said that the decision had been taken in line with recommendations from Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. Diplomats in Yangon said the civilian-led government wanted to maintain leverage against the Tatmadaw and its crony business associates.





Visiting Myanmar just a week after the retooling of the sanctions, US Secretary of State John Kerry said that all remaining sanctions would not be lifted until changes were made to the 2008 constitution.

The key to the lifting of the sanctions is really the progress that is made within Myanmar in continuing to move down the road of democratisation  Its very difficult to complete that journey  in fact, impossible to complete that journey  with the current constitution, Mr Kerry said during a joint press conference with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi at the time.

At the same press conference, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi said, If we are going along the right path, all sanctions should be lifted in good time.

However, the decision to further fine-tune sanctions in Myanmar might rely more on a forthcoming report from former UN secretary general Kofi Annan about the current status of Rakhine State, said another Ministry of Foreign Affairs official under condition of anonymity.

Mr Annan was recently named chair of an advisory commission on Rakhine State.

In public Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has neither opposed nor supported the continuation of US sanctions since her landslide election victory, though while she was an opposition leader she lobbied the US to maintain the blacklistings. The US has maintained sanctions on Myanmar for the past 20 years.

US and Myanmar businesses have urged an end to the sanctions, under the logic that they arguing they have repercussions on trade and investment far beyond targeted companies and individuals. International human rights groups had called for an extension in an attempt to curb human rights abuses by the Tatmadaw.

Last week, Human Rights Watch urged the United States to reconsider any plans to lift the remaining sanctions against Myanmar, saying the current sanctions were vital in deterring the Burmese military from derailing democratic reforms.

A high-ranking diplomat from Myanmars ASEAN Affairs Department said the US appreciated the recent peace talks and that it will continue to support the peace process, but that the US did not mention Rakhine States condition during the US-ASEAN summit.

The state counsellor has not met with the media during the ASEAN summits and The Myanmar Times could not reach her for comment.
Locals opposing the controversial Letpadaung copper mine in Salingyi township met with two Sagaing Region ministers this week, the first concerted effort by the regional National League for Democracy government to address long-standing grievances about the project since its leadership was installed earlier this year.





The talks on September 5 came after angry members of communities affected by the mine put a three-month pause on recurrent protests against the Chinese-backed venture, which opponents say has failed to address issues of adequate compensation for confiscated lands and environmental degradation.

Locals from several villages in the township told the regional government officials of problems with crop compensation schemes, environmentally irresponsible wastewater disposal practices and allegedly unfair treatment of protesters by police.

It was the initial meeting with the locals. We listened to the voices and suggestions of the people, U Myint Kyi, regional development minister for Sagaing, told The Myanmar Times. Weve already met with the company. We have planned for people to participate in teams and projects.

We have pushed for the CSR [corporate social responsibility] works to be implemented sooner because we heard that people have had livelihood troubles ... We will work to tackle the problems of the people and negotiate with the company, he added.

Sagaing Regions agricultural minister was also on hand for this weeks discussion.

The copper mine is a joint venture between Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings Ltd (UMEHL) and Myanmar Wanbao, a subsidiary of the Chinese firm Wanbao Mining. For years it has faced local opposition, most recently in May as operations resumed at the site, prompting renewed protests that were quelled only after a regional hluttaw MP from the NLD pledged to arrange a meeting between the aggrieved, Wanbao officials and Sagaing Region Chief Minister U Myint Naing.





This weeks meeting did not include representatives from the Chinese firm, nor U Myint Naing, whose spokesperson in June said a decision on the fate of the mine was outside the chief ministers remit.

Ma Ye Win, a Letpadaung local who participated in this weeks meeting with the ministers, said farmers present had put forward a crop compensation demand amounting to K50,000 (US$41) per acre, and would protest if that demand was not met.

Sae Tae villagers, according to Ma Mar Shwe, have complained of manipulation of bookkeeping on compensation payouts and buck-passing of responsibility for unpaid claims among officials.

U Kyi Naing echoed that sentiment.

We found that there is misunderstanding and disagreement in the requests of the people and unsystematic tasks carried out between them, he said.

Following the resumption of protests in May, Myanmar Wanbao released a statement, saying the mine had overwhelming support.

We know that a very small minority are still opposing this project, despite attempts at numerous rounds of engagement with them which they have rejected, it continued.

The company said it had rigorously adhered to a set of recommendations put forward in 2013 by a commission chaired by then-opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. Later that year a restructuring of the contract included spending on environmental protection and a greater share of revenue directed toward government coffers.

Daw Aung San Suu Kyis investigation commission was formed after an incident in 2012 in which police used white phosphorous to disperse peaceful protesters, leaving dozens of monks and others who had joined the demonstration with severe burns. In December 2014, 56-year-old Daw Khin Win was shot dead by a police officer involved in crowd control at a protest against the project.
It's gone, but not for too long. The annual monsoon season is heading out of town next week, with meteorologists expecting a departure from northern Myanmar between September 12 and 16.





The Department of Meteorology and Hydrology forecasts rainy season will stick around a little longer in central Myanmar, until September 22 at the latest, with rains continuing in the delta until September 24 to 28. The withdrawal of rainy season should be complete by October 4.

As monsoon takes its leave, cumulonimbus clouds and related unstable weather conditions, such as heavy rain, lightning and strong winds, could occur, according to a department official. A low-pressure area could formulate in this period.

More rainfall is expected in Kachin, Chin and Shan states and in Mandalay, Magwe and Sagaing regions over the next week. Average rainfall is anticipated in the rest of the country.

Isolated heavy rain could form in the evening due to the cumulonimbus clouds. It is possible that thunderbolts could be formed, U Kyaw Lwin Oo, director of the DMH, said yesterday.

The monsoon season typically weakens over the course of exiting for the year, but low-pressure areas over the Bay of Bengal could spell more storms, U Kyaw Lwin Oo added.

Cyclones tend to happen in October and November, he said. Three low pressure areas are forecast for the Bay of Bengal in September.

Annual flooding this year affected 493,000 people in July and August, far below the 1.6 million impacted last year.





In early August, the Ayeyarwady River breached its danger mark in Mandalay Region, causing flooding in Myanmars second-largest city. The river is expected to rise again from 2 to 4 feet in Mandalays Thabeikkyin township, and in 12 townships in Magwe Region.
Lawmakers discussed a proposal yesterday to include ethnic languages lessons in the last 45 minutes of the school day, rather than outside typical classroom hours.





The proposal, from Amyotha Hluttaw MP U Larl Min Htan (NLD; Chin 10), responds to legislature enacted during the 2014-15 school year, which set up ethnic languages classes as an out-of-school activity.

MP and former Speaker U Khin Aung Myint (USDP; Mandalay 8), urged the government to consider a special project to reduce illiteracy, [so that students can] access higher education, and to develop ethnic literature for all ethnic races.

U Larl Min Htan pointed to a section of the 2008 constitution that decrees an aim to develop language, fine arts, and culture for the national races.

The introduction of ethnic languages in 2014-15 was a step forward in inclusive education, as ethnic languages could not be taught at government schools prior to that change, but it required students and teachers to stay after school.

According to the 2014 census, the rate of literacy among the over-15 population is 89.5 percent. Of the over-five population of 45,807,770, 6,468,807 were unable to access education.

I am so thankful for U Khin Aung Myints proposal because the previous proposal had weaknesses that should be corrected under the new government, said MP U Kyaw Naing (NLD; Yangon 12).

The rest of the representatives will discuss the issue in the coming session.





Translation by San Layy
President U Htin Kyaw yesterday expressed his confidence that the newly formed Rakhine State Advisory Commission can solve long-entrenched sectarian tensions in the western state.





The president met with commission head and former UN secretary general Kofi Annan in Nay Pyi Taw yesterday.

The case of Rakhine State is an important affair for Myanmar, he said while meeting Mr Annan in the diplomatic hall of the Presidential Palace. I believe that Mr Annan will approach the state with his skilled leadership.

Mr Annan replied with his own confidence, saying that he too believes the nine-member commission will be successful thanks to its combined international experience  the same background which has earned it criticism among nationalists contending the issue is an internal affair.

The commission made its first field visit to camps and a Muslim ghetto in Sittwe this week, where it was both welcomed and jeered.

I embrace the local peoples democratic demonstration during my trip, he said. When the committee asks for public opinion, the commission would like to get a clear understanding of the local peoples demands. If we understand, we can settle the problem by collaborating with the experienced Myanmar officials.

He also discussed agricultural support, technical aid provisions and anti-narcotic plans that the Kofi Annan Foundation is implementing.

The visit to the presidents house lasted 30 minutes, starting at 10:30am, before Mr Annans departure from Nay Pyi Taw.





Other attendees included Union Minister for Home Affairs Lieutenant General Kyaw Swe, Union Minister for Border Affairs Lt Gen Ye Aung, Union Minister for Labour, Immigration and Population U Thein Swe and Union Minister for Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement U Win Myat Aye.

Mr Annan was assigned to chair the commission in August at the behest of State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

Translation by Thiri Min Htun
Former UN secretary general Kofi Annan has sought to assuage concerns over the potential partiality of the Rakhine State Advisory Commission, saying its mandate is to take on board concerns of both the states Buddhist and Muslim communities, and not to police human rights.





Addressing the press in Yangon yesterday at the conclusion of a six-day trip, his first at the helm of the newly formed commission, Mr Annan emphasised that the advisory body would take a consultative approach with all stakeholders.

We dont reconcile by focusing on one side of the issue, he said.

Mr Annans trip to Sittwe earlier this week was met by protests from Rakhine nationalists, who reject international intervention and say the states issues are an internal affair. He said he respected their right to demonstrate, and that he hopes to engage them in a constructive dialogue.

These issues, I hope we can put behind us, he said, noting that parliament had shot down a proposal to remove international figures from the commission, which was created at the behest of State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

The Arakan National Party has been particularly vocal about the appointment of three foreigners to the commission. Mr Annan, a Ghanaian, sits alongside Ghassan Salame of Lebanon and Laetitia van den Assum of Norway.

Mr Annan indicated neighbouring countries would be consulted in the course of the commissions work, saying he believed this was an international issue that went beyond borders.





Asked if he had witnessed any oppression during his trip to the Rakhine State capital of Sittwe, Mr Annan said he personally did not.

The trip included a brief visit to Thet Kay Pyin village, which sits at the entrance to several camps that play home to tens of thousands of Rohingya IDPs. The camps remain a subject of major concern to rights groups due to the dire humanitarian conditions faced by residents.

Fellow commission member and founder of Religions for Peace U Aye Lwin interjected by saying it was not possible to make a proper assessment from such a short trip.

It was a two-day visit and everything was stage-managed. So we need more time to find out whether there is oppression or not, U Aye Lwin said.

The nine-member commission spoke with representatives of both the Buddhist and Muslim communities in Sittwe.

Mr Annan acknowledged that the matter of nomenclature is a controversial one. He stated that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi had not requested that he avoid use of the word Rohingya  something she had asked of the diplomatic community.

The people in the camps and villages focused on issues of development, jobs, education, medical care, freedom of movement, occupation for [women]  and others spoke to us a lot about history, history of Rakhine State  That is important for us, particularly for the foreigners in the commission, to understand the background of the issue, he said.

Mr Annan confirmed he had met with military representatives and President U Htin Kyaw in Nay Pyi Taw.

The commission will be based in an office at the National Reconciliation and Peace Centre in Yangon with a satellite base in Sittwe expected to be established in coming weeks.

We intend to submit the report within one year but we will not rush. We will be very patient and submit the solid report which is helpful for the Rakhine community, he said, referring to a document recommending solutions for the state, which the commission has been tasked with producing.
What will you do if you come down with a fever, rash, red eyes, muscle and joint pain? Some of us may just take some paracetamol assuming we have contracted seasonal flu, or have a rest.





It is unlikely most of us will rush to a doctor to find out if we have contracted the mosquito-borne Zika virus, let alone be aware the two viruses share common symptoms.

In revealing 20 new cases of people who had contracted Zika in just a week, Thailands permanent secretary for public health Sopon Mekthon assured Thais on September 5 that we should not panic or be too concerned about the number. The situation remains under control, he said.

It is not the first time the ministry has played down potential threats and possible widespread transmission of this virus. It is a reminder to many of us how our governments and health authorities dealt with other disease outbreaks in the past, including bird flu. Their acknowledgment and announcement of those diseases were too little, too late.

The ministry insisted the new patients, found in Chiang Mai, Phetchabun, Bung Kan and Chanthaburi last week, have been under close watch. Two of them are pregnant women.

In Thailand, there are no cases of pregnant women infected with the virus giving birth to babies with small heads (microcephaly) and other brain defects, as reported in Brazil. Not yet. Symptoms of the disease are mild and short-lived. These could be the reasons why the level of awareness and alert are not high. They, however, should not translate into business as usual.

It is true that unnecessary public panic should not be triggered without valid reasons. But wouldnt it be better if we are not told the situation is under control and we should not be too concerned? We should be concerned if we are pregnant women or our family members are planning to have a baby. Fixing the problem then will become more costly than preventing it from erupting or spreading.





Little is known about the virus. Globally, scientists admit there are still gaps in their knowledge and understanding. In addition to microcephaly, the World Health Organization (WHO) says the virus has been linked to Guillain-Barre Syndrome, which can be fatal. There is an ongoing investigation to find out whether Zika is linked to a number of neurological disorders.

This week, a study by the Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis revealed that human eyes can be a reservoir of the virus which means patients could spread the disease through their tears. The finding means we cannot afford to be complacent about the transmission modes and the potential danger it could bring to humans. In addition to mosquito bites, the disease can be transmitted through sexual intercourse.

The first confirmed case of Zika in Thailand was in 2012. This year there has been more than 100 reported cases.

Even the Public Health Ministrys Bureau of Epidemiology admitted the Zika virus infection has been under-diagnosed in Thailand. It suggested that testing for the virus should be given for those found to have both fever and rashes. Meanwhile, patients can still be misdiagnosed with having dengue fever.

Increasing outbreaks of the virus have prompted travel advisories for visits across Asia and elsewhere. The United States has issued a travel warning for Singapore where there have been more than 250 cases found recently. Britain advises its citizens that Thailand is high-risk.

The WHO warned women living in Zika-active areas in other countries should consider delaying their pregnancies. Widespread warnings for pregnant women or those planning to have a baby should have also taken place here in Thailand.

Although some quarters of the international health community still question whether it is too early to link microcephaly cases in Brazil to the virus, as there are no other cases reported in other countries, this does not give us a reason to be complacent.

Ko Moe Ko Oo, head of the self-organised Mekong Basin Disease Surveillance Network, told me yesterday that the level of public alert and awareness in Thailand and its Mekong neighbours is not high due to the fact that the most dire consequences affect people in a minority  pregnant women. If something doesnt pose a direct threat, we seem to be less worried, he said.

So far, his network, which works with health authorities in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar and China, has been informed of a few cases each in Cambodia and Vietnam. There have been no reports of cases in Laos and Myanmar, he said.

He suggested that Thailand and its neighbours should take this Zika outbreak as the opportunity to root out dengue fever because both share the same vector.

Its better to eradicate mosquito-borne places, so that we can eradicate both dengue fever and the Zika virus, he said.

His recommendation is timely given that more than 18,000 dengue fever cases were reported during the first six months of this year in Thailand, of whom 16 have died. The number dropped from last year by only 14 percent.

When bitten by mosquitoes, I believe many of us just get annoyed. Given the recent dengue fever and Zika virus infections, we should realise that mosquito bites are not just a daily nuisance, but can also be a personal health threat.

Surasak Glahan is deputy op-ed pages editor at the Bangkok Post.
The explosion of smartphones and tablets is transforming the way we communicate, work and manage our personal lives. We stay connected everywhere, and collaborate on the go at every opportunity we get. We need the ability to access business applications at the highest speeds and quality possible  regardless of where we are or which device we are using.

Do you find yourself smiling when you enter a restaurant, coffee shop or office and see a prominent weve got Wi-Fi information sign? I sure do! Nothing better than being able to get a solid connection with excellent connectivity so I can send quick emails, reliably Skype into meetings and perhaps peek at Instagram. Today we live and work in a world that has become dependent on our mobile devices for access to both personal and business applications in a safe and productive manner. This connectivity requirement crosses boundaries of business size. So whether you are a large multi-national enterprise, a branch office or a small to midsize business (SMB), the need to connect is there.

Mohsin Shah

The combination of mobile devices and cloud based applications is changing the way small and midsize businesses (SMBs) operate and how their employees engage with customers and interact with business processes. Forbes reported that SMBs who adopt mobile technologies are seeing double the revenue growth  and are creating up to eight times as many jobs as their less mobile-ready peers . Empowering your employees to interact seamlessly with customers and partners can help build a competitive advantage and also greatly improve productivity. In the U.S. alone, SMBs are saving more than $67 billion a year using mobile applications, tablets and smartphones in day-to-day activities.

SMBs using the network as a business enabler

SMBs are embracing new technologies such as mobility, cloud and unified communications to help them compete cost-effectively in this new mobile work environment. For them, the network is evolving from an IT resource to a strategic business enabler. To support employee productivitywhether working from home, in meeting rooms, or at client offices  SMBs need a simple and reliable network infrastructure that can be supported by limited IT resources.

A recent study shows that 67 percent of the SMBs are using tablets for business purposes, and 93 percent are using smartphones that are often owned and managed by the employee but used for business purposes. Given their sheer number, properly securing access for these BYOD devices and onboarding them to the network without significantly increasing IT operations costs need to be an integral part of the conversation when preparing the foundation for your mobile-first business apps.

A Mobile-First Network creates a solid foundation

Its clear in this new business environment; the mode of choice for employees is mobile. Your business must have an affordable, high-performance and secure Wi-Fi infrastructure that can support this growing number of mobile devices and cloud-based applications. It also needs to deliver the quality experience that users expect along with the level of security controls that your business processes will demand.

Mobile Unified Communication (UC) solutions, such as Office 365, now extend enterprise-grade voice, conferencing and collaboration to mobile devices and are more widely available. A strong network infrastructure allows you to prioritize and optimize business critical applications, so you can respond faster to customers and make smart decisions quickly. You need an integrated solution that can handle issues like network reliability, security and intelligent application management:

Here are important considerations when choosing a Mobile-First solution:

Screaming fast connections - While wireless is the primary means by which employees will access the network, you need an end-to-end integrated wireless and wired infrastructure that is easy to deploy, offers built-in security and high connection speeds, along with the tools to collect and analyze network performance data.

- While wireless is the primary means by which employees will access the network, you need an end-to-end integrated wireless and wired infrastructure that is easy to deploy, offers built-in security and high connection speeds, along with the tools to collect and analyze network performance data. Security - With the arrival of digital workplaces comes added security threats. You will need integrated and automated security controls to help protect your business data from malware and unauthorized users. Wireless intrusion detection and prevention can safeguard your infrastructure from wireless threats, rogue access points and clients.

- With the arrival of digital workplaces comes added security threats. You will need integrated and automated security controls to help protect your business data from malware and unauthorized users. Wireless intrusion detection and prevention can safeguard your infrastructure from wireless threats, rogue access points and clients. Network and application visibility - With the increasing number of devices connecting to the network, you may need more insight into users, devices, and applications running on the network as well as ensuring that the network is running smoothly. You need a flexible and easy-to-use network management solution that can grow with your business  from free built-in network management to full-feature enterprise management.

- With the increasing number of devices connecting to the network, you may need more insight into users, devices, and applications running on the network as well as ensuring that the network is running smoothly. You need a flexible and easy-to-use network management solution that can grow with your business  from free built-in network management to full-feature enterprise management. Room to Grow - Your business is constantly evolving, and so should your network. You need a solution that can grow as you grow. It should provide you the flexibility to build out your network to suit your business needs. Whether you start with a controller-less Wi-Fi solution, and then add a controller to scale  or use built-in management interfaces, then add cloud-based or software-based options later  your network should evolve with your business and allow you to protect your existing investments.

Edited by Alicia Young
09.09.2016 LISTEN

Beyond the flips, runs, high notes and admirable range, this phenomenal recording artiste Micah Stampley has shown that his taste in Quality and desire for perfection go beyond his music.

Micah Stampley has proven that his fashion sense and swag go as high as his pitch, with no compromising on solid quality.

Here in Ghana on a music tour, Mr Stampley in his black velvet Chaste shoes confidently appraised the effort of this quick upcoming success story in Quality Shoes made in Ghana - *Chaste shoes*

In March 2005, he became the second male gospel artist to have a high debut on the Billboard's chat when his first album, The Songbook of Micah, debuted at number three of Billboard's chart. In 2014 he shared the same stage with Donnie McClurkin and other prominent gospel ministers at the Experience, an annual event held in Nigeria. Over 600,000 people attended.

On May 20, 2016, he released his next album: "To the King: Vertical Worship". This album featured hit songs from previous albums as well as fresh sounds like the hit single "Be Lifted" which has already be named as one of the top hot new songs in 2016 by BlackGospel.com. The album debuted at number 2 on Billboard's Top Gospel Album Chart.

In his words, Micah Stampley endorsed the brand Chaste Shoes, saying; "I am a proud advocate and fashion endorser of Chaste!"

Mr. Micah is widely know for his songs, Holiness, Corinthian song, Heaven on earth, Awesome God, Be lifted.

He further expressed his satisfaction in the solid nature and the unique precision in the designs of Chaste shoes. 'These shoes are hot!' He said; So, looking for shoes as hot as His but feel and look like heaven? You know where to go.

Here is link to endorsement video https


Brilliant Ghanaian guitarist Akablay alongside Danish musicians last week rocked the Waka Waka Festival in the Danish capital, Copenhagen, with a dramatic blend of 'Kundum Highlife' and Danish rhythms.

With Jesper Tychsen (saxophone) and Anders Boldsen (keyboard) who created the official song for the festival, Christian Lemming (drums) and Ghanaian bassist Kojo Amissah, the group showcased a vivid blend of fresh, unique and uplifting style which threw the audience into a trance-like state  culminating in long cheers and applause.

'Kundum Highlife' which is a fusion of diverse African rhythms, highlife and those of Kundum from the Western Region, took the crowd by storm alongside poignant stagecraft and deft dance movements from Akablay that are quite inventive and natural.

Organised by Shelby Production, Waka Waka Festival is an annual event which was initiated in 2011 to celebrate African culture in its diversity in Denmark. Including dance and fashion, it is held at the City Hall Square in Copenhagen and attracts between 1,000 to 3,000 guests.

In a related development, Akablay has created a highlife version of 'Sunshine Reggae', a popular composition by 'Laid Back', a Danish electric duo that stunned Denmark in the late 1970s and early 80s.

The duo is delighted by Akablay's recomposition and a video clip is currently being worked on with saxophonist Jesper Tyschen who shot scenes from Ghana early this year.

'Sunshine Reggae' which became a chart-topper in Demark was later included on the band's second album, 'Keep Smiling' in 1983, and went on to become a number-one single in Italy, West Germany and 19 other countries around the world.

The guitarist is scheduled to perform at other festivals / theatres and moderate workshops before returning to his base in Accra in late September through Jam Yard Production.
Cairo (AFP) - Egyptian police investigated Italian student Giulio Regeni days before his abduction, torture and murder but dropped the probe after assessing he posed no threat, Egyptian and Italian prosecutors said Friday.

Regeni, a 28-year-old Cambridge University PhD student, disappeared on January 25 in central Cairo.

His body was later found by the side of a road bearing signs of brutal torture.

Egypt has denied that its security forces were involved, but Italy recalled its ambassador to Cairo in April in protest at what it said was a lack of progress in the investigation.

The state prosecutor met his counterpart in Rome this week to further the investigation.

In a joint statement, the two prosecutors said Regeni, who was researching Egyptian street vendor trade unions, had been under investigation for three days by Egyptian police in January.

"The Egyptian state prosecutor pointed to information that the head of the street vendor union passed on specific information about the Italian student to Cairo police," the statement said.

"Police probed his activities for three days that concluded that his activities were of no concern to national security, and based on that dropped the investigation."

This is the first official Egyptian acknowledgement that Regeni had been on the radar of security services.

Trade unions are an especially sensitive political issue in Egypt, with successive governments fearing strikes and labour unrest.

Police officials had at first suggested Regeni might have died in a road accident, and have since offered little information on their investigation.

An Italian autopsy showed that his body was covered with cuts and his bones were broken, indicating he was hit with "fists, batons and hammers".

A letter "X" was carved on his forehead and hand, according to the report cited by Italian media.

His parents, Paola and Claudio Regeni, said the report suggested he had been tortured by a "professional".

"It seems clear to us that the torture inflicted, and the number of times our son had to endure it and the methods, can only be the perverse deed of some torture professional," they told Italian media on Wednesday.

Amnesty International activists perform a candle light demonstration in Rome's Pantheon square on July 25, 2016 to remember late Italian student Giulio Regeni

In March, police linked a gang that it said extorted foreigners to Regeni's death, saying his belongings had been found in the home of the gang leader's wife.

He and four others were killed in a shootout with police.

Friday's statement said Egypt's prosecution service was still investigating the gang's links to Regeni's abduction.

The Egyptian and Rome prosecution would also continue trying to retrieve footage from CCTV cameras in a metro station that Regeni is believed to have entered before being abducted.

Egypt had said the programme to retrieve the deleted footage was very expensive, and had asked Italy to help.

It had also accused the Italian prosecution of "unconstitutionally" demanding thousands of phone records which it refused to provide.
07.09.2016 LISTEN

(CNS): With declining fertility rates and increasing life expectancy, the proportion of people aged 60 and over is growing globally. There are currently 900,868 million people aged 60 or over worldwide (12.5% of the global population). Nearly two-thirds (533 million) of them are in the Asia Pacific region and it is at the forefront of the global phenomenon of population ageing. Due to their longer life expectancy, women constitute the majority (53.5%) of the population aged 60 or older in this region. In 2013, there were 229 million older men and 261 million women above 60 in the Asia-Pacific region.

The proportion of older women increases even more with increasing age, rising to 60% above age 80. 75% of the regions centenarians are women. In Philippines there were 136 women aged 65 and older for every 100 men in 2015. Among those aged 75 and above there were 162 women for every 100 men.

This feminisation of ageing is an important and yet highly neglected womens issue. It has profound and far-reaching social, economic and political implications. The gender dimensions of ageing are in the fore front of the HelpAge Asia-Pacific Regional Conference 2016, being currently held in Hanoi, on the theme of The Economic Implications of Ageing. There is a general consensus that female senior citizens are more disadvantaged than their male counterparts.

In an exclusive interview given to CNS (Citizen News Service), Dr John Roland Beard, Director of Department of Ageing and Life-Course at the World Health Organization (WHO), agreed that there are many issues that specifically confront older women. Women tend to live longer than men and also tend to get married to men older than themselves. So a higher proportion of older women are likely to be widowed without adequate income support. Economically, women in many countries do not have the opportunity of building the same social security safety nets as is available for men. Men are often the primary earner in the family, and when the man dies, the pension amount (if any) is reduced or becomes totally inaccessible to the widow. In some parts of the world, like in Africa, women have no ownership rights over property, and when the husband dies the widow is reduced to penury.

SEXUALITY AND AGEING

Dr John Beard lamented that apart from economic and health problems, they have to grapple with isolation and loneliness too. In his candid opinion, "There is also the issue of sexuality in older people. Older people too have sexual rights just as younger people do. But sexual rights of senior citizens are not spoken about at all and society holds to deny that they too like to have sex. This becomes particularly harder for older women who live alone. This issue should not be brushed under the carpet."

WOMEN DO NOT HAVE CUSHION OF SECURITY IN OLD AGE THAT MEN HAVE

Thelma Kay, former Chief of the Social Development Division, UNESCAP and Senior Advisor on Ageing Issues, Ministry of Social and Family Development, Singapore, echoed similar sentiments. Many women do not work and even for those who work, their careers are often interrupted due to raising of children and other family issues. As pensions are usually built up over working years, women often do not have that cushion of security in their old age that men have.

Thelma pointed out that even though women live longer than men, their health does not remain as good. Instead of compressed morbidity women suffer from expanded morbidity. Women have different sets of medical problems and people do not realise that. They are sicker for longer periods - more so because of child bearing and other reproductive health related issues. Thus older women face worse health and financial security problems as compared to men.

Unfortunately these special issues of older women are not been given due attention. Women need to be educated enough to take care of their health and genealogists should be trained into women health issues more, felt Thelma. Older women too should have their own social networks which should be strengthened.

Mathew Cherian, Chief Executive of HelpAge India, finds Indian women becoming more housebound as they grow older. In Delhi, we deal with around 600 associations working for older persons. But while older men do join in big numbers older women do not. Their participation is very low in all of them. But in religious places like temples, gurudwaras, and churches older women participation is more.

This could also be the result of stereotype social constructs wherein after a certain age, Indian women are expected to spend all their time in prayers and other religious activities. Older women tend more to be part of prayer groups - singing hymns and bhajans. Mathew felt that perhaps one could involve older women could be involved in more socially productive activities through faith-based organisations.

Gender inequality and discrimination against women is perpetuated into old age. Women are more vulnerable to falling into poverty, often being more financially dependent than men due to lower participation in the workforce and lower education levels.

INVISIBILITY OF OLDER WOMEN

The invisibility of older women is a serious global issue. The new post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) recognise the importance of older people and ageing for sustainable development. SDG-3, which talks about ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for all at all ages, is particularly relevant.

Policymakers must focus on the challenges faced by an ageing female population and make inclusive policies for older women. They should not be left behind. The challenge is to ensure that governments follow their commitments around SDGs, by putting these goals into practice in a way that is fully inclusive of women and men of all ages.

Shobha Shukla, CNS (Citizen News Service)

(The author is the Managing Editor to Citizen News Service (CNS) and is currently providing thematic coverage from the HelpAge Asia Pacific Regional Conference 2016 being held in Hanoi, Viet Nam, with kind support from the European Union (EU), United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and HelpAge East Asia/Pacific Regional Office. Follow her on Twitter @Shobha1Shukla)
United Nations (United States) (AFP) - A UN panel of experts has concluded that heavy fighting that engulfed South Sudan's capital Juba in July, forcing vice president and ex-rebel leader Riek Machar to flee, was "directed by the highest level" of the country's military.

The confidential report seen by AFP on Thursday points the finger at President Salva Kiir and army chief of staff Paul Malong as having ordered the large-scale attacks that began on July 8.

"The relatively large scale of the hostilities which featured the deployment of MI-24 attack helicopters, in coordination with ground forces, reinforced by armed units, support the conclusion that the fighting was directed by the highest level of the SPLA command structure," said the report.

In the report, the experts quoted South Sudanese officers as saying that only Kiir and Malong have the authority to order the attack helicopters into combat and that Malong acted "with Kiir's full knowledge" during the offensive.

The finding dismissed suggestions that the violence in Juba, which led to the collapse of a fragile unity government cobbled together from a year-old peace deal, was carried out by rogue elements.

More than 300 people died in the fighting from July 8 to 11, tens of thousands fled the country, and the United Nations reported a surge in sexual violence, mostly by the ethnic Dinka-dominated soldiers against Nuer women and girls.

The two-and-a-half year conflict has escalated from a "primarily political to a tribal war," said the report.

Attack on aid workers 'well-coordinated'

The panel found that dozens of soldiers gang-raped and beat aid workers in a "well-coordinated attack" on a Juba housing compound on July 11.

South Sudan's President Salva Kiir (C) walks with a high delegation from the United Nations Security Council, including US Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power (C-R) during a tour of the South Sudan's state house

Over four hours, between 80 and 100 soldiers overran the Terrain compound, beat and abused, raped and gang-raped at least five international aid workers and executed an employee of a non-governmental organization.

"The soldiers damaged every single room, and looted the compound extensively, taking over 25 vehicles," the panel said.

"Considering the degree of violence inflicted, the high number of armed actors who participated, the vast quantity of items stolen and the systematic damage exacted on the sprawling compound, the panel has concluded that this attack was well coordinated and cannot be considered as an opportunistic act of violence and robbery," it added.

The panel described the attack as a "clear turning point in the level brutality inflicted by South Sudanese soldiers on international humanitarian personnel," it added.

A separate UN investigation has been established to report on whether UN peacekeepers failed to protect civilians including the aid workers at the Terrain compound who sent several text messages to the UN mission pleading for help.

The experts said arms sales to South Sudan's military were continuing, citing the recent purchase of two L-39 jet fighters, one of which was used in combat operations in July.

Kiir's government has entered into contact with a Lebanese-registered firm, Rawmatimpex, to build a small arms manufacturing plant in South Sudan, but the outcome of those talks are unclear, according to the panel.

South Sudan descended into war in December 2013 when Kiir accused Machar of plotting a coup.

Tens of thousands have died and more than 2.5 million people have been driven from their homes.
The Electoral Commission (EC) has increased filing fees for Presidential aspirants in this years election by five folds, a move that has angered some political parties.

At an Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) meeting Thursday, the EC revealed that presidential candidates of the various political parties would be required to pay GH50,000.

Filing fee for parliamentary candidates has been pegged at GH10,000.

Nomination fee for parliamentary candidates during the 2012 election was Gh1,000, hence the new charges represent an increase of 1,000 percent. Presidential candidates paid 10,000 the same year.

Although the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the National Democratic Congress (NDC) seem unperturbed by the new fees, the Progressive Peoples Party (PPP) and the Democratic Peoples Party (DPP) have vehemently opposed the new charges, desciring them as exorbitant.

The PPP say the new filing fees constitute a deliberate attempt by the two main political parties, the NDC and NPP, backed by the EC, to block smaller parties from taking part in the electioneering process.

The EC has set September 13 for both presidential and parliamentary candidates to pick nomination forms its offices. All candidates must submit the nominations on September 29 and 30, 2016.

Meanwhile, the EC says as part of efforts towards preparation of the upcoming polls it will give all the political parties copies of the certified Voters Register by September 23, 2016.

Exhibition of the Provisional Voters Register for persons who registered during the CVR, in the prisons, and NHIS registrants will take place on September 9 and 10, 2016 nationwide. Political parties are encouraged to send their agents to observe the exhibition of the voters register at the District Offices of the Commission and the prisons. The Commission would like to urge all registered voters in these categories to visit the District Offices of the EC to confirm their details on the register, the EC has said in a statement.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | George Nyavor | [email protected]
Police in Amasaman, a suburb of Accra, have charged a 16-year-old boy who was allegedly forcefully sodomised by a man he calls uncle with having carnal knowledge of the perpetrator.

According to Little Papa (pseudonym), he was lured by Eric Owusu, a father of two, at knifepoint to have anal sex with him [Mr Owusu].

Ghana Criminal Offences Act 1960(29) Section -104- Unnatural Carnal Knowledge reads:

(1) Whoever has unnatural carnal knowledge-

(a) of any person of the age of sixteen years or over without his consent shall be guilty of a first-degree felony and shall be liable on conviction to imprisonment for a term of not less than five years and not more than twenty-five years; or

(b) of any person of sixteen years or over with his consent is guilty of a misdemeanour; or

(c) of any animal is guilty of a misdemeanour.

(2) Unnatural carnal knowledge is sexual intercourse with a person in an unnatural manner or with an animal.

Based on the above, the police are charging Little Papa for sodomising Mr Owusu.

Narrating the incident, Little Papa said he was on an errand when Mr Owusu called him, pleading that he escorts him home to change his attire at home since he was heading his way.

When we got to his room, he asked whether I had watched a pornographic material before, I answered no. He again asked whether I have watched any movie with men having sexual intercourse before and I said no. He then told me he would like to have anal sex with me, but, I boldly declined and drew his attention to the fact that, it is against our culture, Little Papa told Joy News Kwetey Nartey.

However, despite his refusal, Little Papa said his perpetrator insisted on sodomising him. When he tried to run from the room, Mr Owusu picked a knife and threatened to injure him if he attempted to escape.

He later laid the knife on a table close to where we were standing and I couldnt run because I was scared he would hurt me with the knife.

Little Papa said after trying relentlessly to talk 'uncle' out of engaging in the act, he gave in and decided that I should rather insert my manhood in his anus. When I was done, he gave me a lotion to rub his manhood till he ejaculated.

Little Papa informed his aunt about the incident when he got home.

The traumatized guardian, Vida Agbeko-Mantey then reported the case to the police who only responded six days after the incident when Joy News intervened.

Vida told Kwetey that although the police appeared prepared to follow the case, they accused the boy of being liable to the offence.

I was shocked when the commander said he was surprised that our son was able to get an erection although he claimed to have been held at knifepoint. I told him [commander] that the man looked the door and threatened that if he did not do as he wanted, he will not let him out of the room and that is why he did what he did, he said.

She said the police told her the family could avoid court if they withdrew the case and settled it at home. But she disagreed.

According to doctors, Little Papa appeared shocked and traumatized when he reported to the hospital for examination.

He didnt sustain any physical injuries but he was given medication for post-exposure symptoms and possible retroviral infections.

However, there has been contrasting legal viewpoints on the propriety of the boy being charged. Human Rights lawyer Francis Xavier Sosu says the police erred in arresting and preferring charges against the boy as it contravenes his right as a child.

But criminologist and Dean of the Law faculty at the Central University Professor Ken Attafuah believes based on the evidence before the police, the charge is correct and the boy must defend himself in court.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com
King makers of Appolonia have backed real estate developers, Sino Africa Development Company Limited, following reports that the company was working towards developing lands that it does not own.

Chief of Appolonia, Nii Tettey Mansro, says contrary to reports circulating in the media, the real estate developers are the true owners of the over 1,000-acre land in the Kpone-Katamanso district of the Greater Accra Region that Gbetsile chiefs and residents also claim to own.

We would like to send a word of caution to those who are illegally encroaching on the lands and wish to state that legal actions shall be instituted against any individual or group of persons who continue to unlawfully encroach on the property, the Appolonia chief said Wednesday September 7 at a press conference.

Photo: Nii Mansro (in smock), addressing the press

Chiefs and residents of Gbetsile a community in Kpone-Katamanso, have been in a long drawn out battle with Sino Africa over the land, claiming that a significant chunk of the land belongs to them.

According to Gbetsile chiefs, Sino Africa did not buy the land from the true owners.

However, at a media event to set the records straight, Nii Mansro, flanked by two two kingmakers of Appolonia  a Nii Seth Gbli Nartey and Nii Seth Affum  said the Gbetsile chiefs are claiming what is not theirs.

He said there was a visible demarcation of where Gbetsile lands end, attributing the action of the Gbetsile chiefs to greed.

Those parading themselves and holding press conferences showcasing land title certificates as having purchased Appolonia lands are all null and void as they acquired those documents illegally, he said.

Nii Mansro explained thay Sino Africa approached them  the accredited grantors of Appolonia lands  with a proposal to build first class, low cost apartments in the area. After negotiations, Sino Africa secured a 75-year lease agreement and the land was released to them, he said.

The area released to the company does not fall within the jurisdiction of Gbetsile and as such fully falls within the lands of Appolonia, Nii Mansro said.

Photo: The over 1,000-acre land earmarked for development

The dispute over the land is currently before a court but this has not stopped other real estate agents, who claim to have gotten clearance from Gbetsile Chiefs, from encroaching on the land.

Meanwhile, Operations Manager of Sino Africa, Gabriel Forsby, said the opposition of the Gbetsile chiefs towards efforts to develop the land is adversely affecting investments.

He said prior to acquiring the land, Sino Africa, a subsidiary of the Jospong Group of Companies, checked with the relevant authorities that declared Appolonia chiefs true owners of the land.

Although we bought the land from the right owners, we have met the Gbetsile chiefs and all parties involved in the dispute and agreed that in the event that the court rules that they own portions of the lands, we shall compensate them, he revealed, but said this has not stopped encroachment.

He said it was unfortunate that the companys name is currently in the news for the wrong reasons.

We have stated that we do not take interest in taken over lands which do not belong to us, he said.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | George Nyavor | [email protected]
The UN agency monitoring the nuclear pact between Iran and six world powers reported Thursday that it has found no violations of the deal meant to crimp Tehran's ability to make atomic arms.

But touching on one potentially sensitive area, the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a review issued Thursday that Iran had begun manufacturing rotor tubes for centrifuges, the spinning machines used to enrich uranium. Iran is allowed to make the parts, but only under certain conditions.

For the 5,060 low-tech centrifuges now producing limited amounts of fuel-grade enriched uranium in Iran, Tehran must use spare parts stripped from old or idle machines. Parts for more advanced centrifuges would fall under even tighter regulations.

Depending on its enrichment level, uranium has a variety of nuclear uses ranging from reactor fuel to the fissile core of warheads.

In its report obtained by the Associated Press, the atomic energy agency said it wanted to keep a close eye on how many rotor tubes were being made and for what models of centrifuges to make sure they were being produced only in quantities and for machines allowed under the 2015 nuclear agreement.
09.09.2016 LISTEN

I was in the Department of Communication Studies library at the University of Ghana one morning when I got a whatsupp message from my editor Dzifa Bampoh saying, Gakpo, we need to talk when you come to work in the afternoon. I wasnt sure what it was about but I responded ok. It turned out to be a busy day so that conversation eventually came off on the staircase to the Joy newsroom in the Multi TV building on the Fanoofa Street around 9pm. This was sometime in August 2015, I think.

In summary, Dzifa had an idea that as the Millennium Development Goals expired to make way for the Sustainable Development Goals in September last year, it would be good to put together a documentary that will assess Ghanas performance in meeting the MDG targets from bottom up. A look at the level of progress beyond the eyes of the United Nations, National Development Planning Commission, central government, among others. But an assessment from the perspective of the ordinary Ghanaian, particularly in rural Ghana, on how they believe we have fared on specific MDG targets like education, health, sanitation, accessibility to portable water, among others.

Weeks later, I set off on a visit to some of our countrys poorest regions, ostensibly to hear stories of rural Ghanas progression and retrogression alike over the last 15 years that the MDGs had been in existence. Tours like this involve very long, tiring days and short nights; aching backs from non-ending drives on bumpy roads, and sometimes exhaustion beyond imaginable levels. But I enjoy them and always look forward to the next.

What we found during this visit proved interesting. We saw communities like Nyitavuta in Volta Ghana which lacks all the necessary basic amenities including portable water, electricity, health post, road network and toilet facilities, but people are still surviving there in patched-up mud houses. Their children sometimes go to school bare footed, but they have decided to cancel giving up from their options. Pregnant women in this community have to walk for hours to the nearest health facility for natal care, but they wake up every morning with a thankful heart to the God of life.

At Saakpuli in the Savelugu Nantom District of the Northern Region which also lacks all the necessary basic amenities, I met a father who spoke passionately about how three days earlier, he had to carry his sick daughter on the back of a motorbike to the district capital, about an hours ride away, just to seek treatment for malaria. This father told me he was afraid she was going to die, but thanks to God, she lived.

In Bodzanutokor for example, residents have to paddle canoes on the Keta Lagoon carrying gallons of water for hours to fetch pipe borne water from a nearby community and bring back for drinking and cooking. At Atsivikope, residents drank water from a grayish looking stream they share with animals because the district assembly had started the construction of a borehole but had abandoned the project for more than one year. The closest school to the community is an hours walk away and the little ones couldnt walk there, so they stayed at home. At Bincha in the Nkwanta North District, the school there which has a population of more than one hundred pupils had no desks and children had to sit on blocks to learn. There was no teacher either to train the kids. And the structure they learn in is worse than a school under tree. The above are a few of the highlights of that one week tour. In the end, our Hotline Editor Fiifi Koomson could not have captured it any better when after editing the script, he suggested we call the documentary JUNGLE POOR.

The evidence from the ground was glaring that although Ghana had made a lot of strides at meeting the MDGs, there was still a lot of work that needed to be done in helping deal with poverty and under development. This was rightly echoed by the analysts who were featured in the documentary including the UN Resident Cordinator Christine Evans Klocke, Country Director of Care International Elkanah Odembo, Economist with the University of Ghana Dr. Eric Osei Assibey, Mr. Ken Owusu of the NDPC, among others.

Fast forward, that documentary titled Jungle Poor, which was the brainchild of Dzifa is what I used to win the Ghana Journalists Association Award as Best Journalist on Sustainable Development Goals reporting for the year 2015 on Saturday.

I wasnt at the Banquet Hall to pick up the award personally but when I heard my documentary had won the award, I was really glad. Neither was I surprised. Jungle Poor received some very good reviews after it was aired; with top among them coming from the BBCs Akwasi Sarpong, who tweeted: Heard Opoku Gakpos story on radio today. Such a powerful reminder of what journalism is about: the fate of our people.

https://twitter.com/akwasisarpong/status/647032468424495104

And Jungle Poor received very good reactions from government, philanthropists and civil society groups after it was aired. Months after the documentary run, government began work on roads leading to Nyitavuta. A US-based NGO moved in to empower residents in alternative sources of livelihood. The Rotary Club moved in to drill boreholes for residents. Charity organisation Cooper Union led by Prof. Tode Cumberbatch visited the community to provide residents with solar lamps and a solar panel.

Also, the borehole project at Atsivikope which had been abandoned by the District Assembly was fixed and the DCE went to commission it. A three unit classroom block has since gone up in the Bincha community in the Nkwanta South District. The District Education Directorate posted a trained teacher there and provided pupils with desks. All following the airing of the documentary. Akwasi was right. Journalism is really about the fate of the people, and changing it for the better. I dare say that journalism could be a more powerful tool than all the might and riches of central government combined, and this is the evidence.

So, today, I write to dedicate the award given me by the GJA to the millions of poor people in this country who are still surviving without one basic amenity of life or the other. In the hope that in a nation as rich and wealthy as ours, a day will come soon, when poverty would be eradicated from our land. In the hope that someday, every child born in this land would be blessed to live in a comfortable home, have access to portable water, health care and electricity, pursue stress free education, and live to fulfill all their wildest dreams.

I woke up this morning thousands of miles away from home and felt like re-telling the Jungle Poor story with some personal touch. So, I started writing. No flowery words, no rhythmic language, no colourful stringing of sentences. Just words put together to share the glory this award brings with all those Ghanaians who remain hopeful that the deep-seated poverty that a large chunk of our population find themselves in, can be wiped off from our land someday. And also to make the point that in this profession I find myself, there are no heroes. No one produces a good story by him or herself. It took the sacrifice of cameramen like Samuel Asante, video editors like Ernest Larmie, colleagues like Ivy Setordjie, Fiifi Koomson and Martina Bugri, big men like Elvis Kwashie, and off course, the hundreds of folks in the Joy news room to make Jungle Poor an award winning piece. Ayekoo to you all. And congrats to Seth Kwame Boateng, Beatrice Adu and Benedict Owusu on your awards.

Below are the links to the audio and video versions of the documentary for your listening and viewing pleasure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQ_8AwTwL58

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhxtP4tzASY

https://soundcloud.com/joseph-opoku-gakpo/poverty-hotline

https://soundcloud.com/joseph-opoku-gakpo/jungle-poor-part-2

By Joseph Opoku Gakpo / www.josephopokugakpo.wordpress.com
A number of happenings over the last few weeks have got me thinking about the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that more than 190 world leaders adopted at the United Nations general assembly meeting last year to replace the expired Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

First, the award the Ghana Journalists Association gave me as the best reporter in SDGs reporting for the year 2015. Then, a chat I had with Abigail Larbi of the Media Foundation for West Africa about her organisations plan to fund journalists to report on SDG related subjects. And thirdly, a seminar on the SDGs I attended at the Institute for African Development of the Cornell University in Ithaca, New York State where I am participating in a fellowship programme.

Just a brief background. A UN General Assembly meeting of world leaders in the year 2000 adopted 8 ambitious international development goals that basically had the objective of eradicating extreme poverty and accelerating development within a 15 year time frame. The goals, christened Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) had specific targets on various areas including health, education, and environmental sustainability. The life span of the MDGs ended without some of the goals being achieved, and so on 25th September 2015, a new set of 17 goals with another 15 year life span christened Sustainable Development Goals was announced.

Now, the seminar I speak of was addressed by a man of extra-ordinary repute: accomplished Zambian academic, lecturer at the Cornell Law School and Director of the Institute for African Development at the Cornell University Prof. Muna Ndulo. I googled his name and chanced on his curriculum vitae. Its 27 pages long, you should see it. Prof. Ndulo spoke on the subject: The UNs Sustainable Development Goals: Why they matter.

Just the way he carved the topic indicated he was of the conviction that the setting of the Sustainable and Millennium Development Goals was a good thing. He said, among others, the spelling out of the goals helped put peer pressure on leaders, particularly in developing countries, to work towards eradicating poverty and should thus be commended.

But he had some concerns. He noted it was not good enough for world leaders and civil society groups to just announce goals and assume that this was all we needed to do to deal with poverty. Its not sufficient to set goals. If the world has set goals and thinks that they would work, then that is extremely misleading, he said.

Prof. Ndulo noted the poverty we are trying to deal with today is built on very matured structures that have been entrenched over generations, but unfortunately we are missing the point by dealing only with the symptoms instead of dismantling the structures. We say there is no water then we put a well there but do not deal with the reason for which there is no water, he explained. Well, I cannot help but associate myself with this position Prof. Ndulo holds on the subject of SDGs. The goals dont work like African gods. Nor do they work like prayer. We must roll up our sleeves and dirty our hands if we want them to come into fruition.

Then there was this participant at the seminar who tore down the idea of SDGs/MDGs with an even severer killer punch that I would never forget. He quizzed: If you write a proposal requesting for resources to end poverty in 15 years, and when the duration ends you come back with a fresh proposal, and the objective again is to end poverty in 15 years, do you deserve the money? Most participants at the seminar nodded in agreement that such a request should be declined.

But Prof. Ndulo pointed out rightly that the difference here is that, the UNs SDGs and MDGs are not proposals for funds but a general outline of ideas that seek to put planet earths development in focus and give us all central themes on poverty eradication to work around. That, I believe is exactly where the problem is. Why do you set goals if you are not providing resources for the implementation of the necessary strategic plan for the achievement of the set goals?

One thing is clear. Good intentions have never been good enough. If they were, I am sure this world would have been paradise by now. A paradise where every child can get access to quality education, all mothers will have clean water, where all fathers can put quality houses above the heads of their families, where quality healthcare is within an arms reach and where good, nutritious food is within the reach of every one.

So, when world leaders met at the UN General Assembly and the live cameras were rolling, and they exchanged warm hand-shakes and hugs, and made sensational speeches and heartwarming pledges, did anyone bother to ask them how much that showed they care about their people back at home? Do their people themselves care about the signatures the leaders appended to adopt the SDG document? Do you care?

If you want to develop your country as a head of state, why shouldnt the approach rather be from bottom up where you go to your people and sit down with them to set nation specific developmental goals and work towards their achievement? Why should the goals be UN owned and not ordinary people owned?

There is no world leader who lacks ideas on how to deal with poverty in his or her home country. That, I am sure of. Any such leader has absolutely no business being in charge. So, if you have a to-do-list lying under your pillow at home, and you dont act on it, but travel abroad to go sign an agreement promising to work on the same assignment, should I take you serious? Sometimes, I get the impression the world leaders do not exactly take themselves serious when they gather for such meetings. Its probably just for the fun of it.

I would not be surprised if in 2030, world leaders gather again at the UN headquarters to announce another set of goals aimed at ostracizing poverty, instead of celebrating the success story of the SDGs. I will be more than happy to be proven wrong by the way.

But should we give up on the SDGs because the leaders championing it themselves appear not to be convinced it will work? I dont think so. As we say in Asante land, they have placed their hands in the food of the old woman. We need to force them to eat it.

Every citizen of this world should begin demanding accountability from his or her head of state on what is being done to meet the SDGs. The implementation is supposed to have begun by now, and we must keep the pressure on. The only way to keep it on track is to start asking the hard questions now. Not after the 14th year.

Let us continue to generate national conversations around it. If possible, lets pour out on the streets in demonstrations to demand they are met. Lets demand from our political leaders who are currently campaigning to lead our country after the December elections, how these goals fit in their manifesto plans. Afterall, we dont lose much by making these demands.

By Joseph Opoku Gakpo / www.josephopokugakpo.wordpress.com
Presidential nominee of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), for the 2016 elections in December, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, has described former President John Agyekum Kufuor, as the most outstanding President of the fourth republic.

Nana Akufo-Addo, who was speaking ahead of the public lecture on the state of the economy by his running mate Dr. Mahamoud Bawumia, thanked Mr. Kufuor for making himself available to chair the all-important event.

Let me say a big thank you especially to the outstanding statesman whom I had the privilege to serve under both as Attorney General and as a Foreign Minister, John Agyekum Kufuor; who despite the passage of time, is still so committed to Ghanaian welfare and good governance. We are so grateful sir that you've turned up today to chair this occasion for us. I know when I say this; it causes a lot of problems for a lot of people but there can be no doubt that he has been the most outstanding President of the fourth republic. No doubt about it.Thank you all for appearing here today, and we are going on and we are going to win December.

Nana Addo expressed the hope that, the delivery by Dr. Mahamoud Bawumia would help Ghanaians make informed choices at the polls in December.

It is important that at this very delicate juncture in Ghanaian history, that we should hear the truth so people can make informed decisions in December 2016. It's clear to me and I hope it's clear to people; that four more years of the Mahama government is going to lead to considerable damage to the prospect of the Ghanaian awakening. And I believe that when Bawumia finishes with us, that fact will become even clearer; and therefore in means that those of us in the NPP committed to advancing and deepening Ghana's democracy, that has been our historic mission; that we have a huge responsibility to persuade our people in all peace and serenity and in dignity to make a historic choice on the 7th of December, to put away the four years of stagnation and backwardness and usher in a new era where Ghanaian prosperity is not going to be confined to a few people in the oligarchy, but spread through the nation and amongst all the people of our country.

He noted that Dr. Bawumia, an economist and former Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana, was not going to engage in propaganda, but would give Ghanaians the exact picture of the state of affairs.

Before his brief speech, Nana Addo noted that It appears that wherever Bawumia is going to speak; people will turn up whether at the National Theatre or Conference Centre.

This comment was in reference to allegations that Government had frustrated the lecture from taking place at the original Conference centre venue.
On 23rd August 2016, the Minister for Water Resources, Works and Housing Dr. Kweku Agyemang Mensah, made a short but powerful statement at Bonsaso Water Treatment Station at Bonsaso.

Bonsaso is in the Tarkwa Nsuaem Municipal Assembly of the western region. His statement went beyond complaining about the effects of illegal mining on river bodies. It also showed that:

1. Government is either playing to the gallery about fighting illegal mining, or

2. Government is employing diversionary tactics to continue protecting and shielding the kingpins behind the act or that

3. Government lacks the competence to deal with illegal mining, which I am very skeptical of.

Hear him:



The question is, we know those who do it. We know. They are in our communities. Their relatives are assemblymen. In certain areas, you hear of some chief executives involved in galamsey. District police commanders involved in galamsey. Chiefs involved in galamsey. But I remember when I was a regional minister, we had an operation. It was done from Accra. A week later, I went to the community just to find out, and I had a discussion with the local chief. Then he said oh chief, the thing that you came to do, it leaked. And I said no no no, the people came from Accra. He said oh, a day before, the Chinese guy took some machines and hid them somewhere. So I asked him why are you moving your machines. He said oh; we have a hint that there will be an action tomorrow. That tells you how difficult it is to stump this thing out. So unless we take drastic measures or maybe those machines we don't even allow them to be brought into the country.

Dr. Agyemang Mensah made these observations when he was touring water treatment facilities in the western region.

Let's do a bit of analysis of his statement.

We know them- Indeed, you know them! Even if you don't, you can know if you wish to.

Dr. Agyemang said we know those who do it. We know themassemblymen, chiefs, district police commanders, district chief executives Question: How long have you known that these persons are involved? At least nearly a decade or more!

That fact is that, the Water Resources Commission's [WRC], has carried a research on River pollution. Their research pointed out an astronomical increase in water pollution since 2005. How many years now? 11 years. Is government aware of these heartbreaking findings? A big yes! Why? The Water Resource Commission reports to the ministry or the government so to speak.

But who has government arrested or held accountable? As far as I'm concerned, no chief executive, no district police commander or a chief has been dragged before the law for involving directly or indirectly in illegal mining. Isn't it because the government knows them?

Besides, when illegal mining equipment [particularly the Changfans] are transported, don't they cross the over 15 police checkpoints on our roads from Tema to Takoradi and beyond?

Another question: Who are these persons the minister is accusing working for? The state! DCEs are appointed directly by the president. District Police Commanders are with the interior ministry. The assemblymen? They are in an authority of some sort. The chiefs involved no longer represent the interest of their people and so government must put them back on track.

Isn't it reasonable then that the government starts fighting illegal mining from within its own circles?

We need to take drastic measures- Forget it. It's a diversionary tactic!

Dr. Agyemang also said unless we take drastic measures Drastic measures? Which drastic measures is he referring to? The use of Inter-ministerial task-force on illegal miners? Forget it. It failed. It was unsustainable and ineffective. After all the brutalities, illegal mining has gained renewed spirit in River Pra and those around.

Use the Bogoso-Bawdie road in the Western Region, and see it done in broad daylight and by the highway. On a more serious note, this approach is a diversionary tactics employed by the government to get citizens into believing it is fighting the canker.

Consider this:

Task-force pulled its self-destruct button from day one! It was built on sand.

1. Has the task-force blocked the importation of the Changfans used on rivers?

2. Have they carried out intelligence through the district BNI officers in the affected areas to identify the owners, numbers and importers of the Changfans?

3. If this intelligence were carried and done properly, was it not going to be more prudent to have used the police to arrest and confiscate their Changfans? Was the task-force going to be needed at all?

4. Doesn't the increased activity of River mining in the same areas the task-force operated send a signal that the task-force has failed or its work was unsustainable?

It may be very disrespectful to suggest that government functionaries did not consider these issues before constituting the inter-ministerial task task-force. Interestingly however, if they did consider and realize it was unsustainable, does it not raise eyebrows?

Doesn't it tell us that governments have been employing diversionary tactics to avoid the more correct approach to ending illegal mining particularly in rivers?

What will you say to people who believe government functionaries are involved in the activity? And that they make a lot of untaxed and illicit revenue from the illegality?

Check this out too:

But I remember when I was a regional minister, we had an operation. It was done from Accra. A week later, I went to the community just to find out, and I had a discussion with the local chief. Then he said oh chief, the thing that you came to do, it leaked. And I said no no no, the people came from Accra. He said oh, a day before, the Chinese guy took some machines and hid them somewhere. So I asked him why are you moving your machines. He said oh we have a hint that there will be an action tomorrow.

Oh my word! Consider this: If owners of the equipment [Changfan] or beneficiaries are not in government, how could the Chinese operators know there was going to be an operation by the task-force when the task-force was inter-ministerial?

Doesn't the above statement add to the thoughts that the National Task-force on Illegal Mining was a diversionary tactics by government to make Ghanaians feel that it was working to curb illegal mining?

Inter-ministerial task-force was ad-hoc and ineffective  Minerals Commission

The Public Relations Officer for the Minerals Commission, Isaac Abraham, recently indicated in a media interview that the task-force clamping down on the illegality has proven not to be the way to go. We need to talk more for the people to change their attitudes rather than always using security on them. This inter-ministerial task-force was just ad-hoc and ineffective because of the magnitude of illegal mining at that time. Financially sustaining it was also impossible and therefore a long lasting approach needs to be adopted.

I didn't say those words, an industry player did. But more critical questions arise from the establishment of this inter-ministerial task-force.

Was due diligence done?



In 2013, the inter-ministerial task-force on illegal mining was setup by President John Dramani Mahama to crackdown on illegal miners. This was at a time when many foreign nationals [mainly Chinese] had taken over illegal mining in Ghana.

Question is, who gives these Chinese their Visa into the country?

Who questioned them on what they were going to do, and what did they say?

Who granted them visas?

Who cleared them on the importation of the Changfans?

How come its mostly Chinese who are into this illegal trade? Does our government have any underhand deal with them?

What did the intelligence say [if there was any] about how many Chinese and changfans are in the communities?

How difficult was it for the state to recall them to warrant such drastic engagement?

What was the answer to these questions when the Chinese started digging our farms, cocoa and river bodies to alarming levels, before establishing the inter-ministerial task-force?

And finally, how was this inter-ministerial task-force going to be sustained?

My mind tells me the absence of this due diligence was to build up the diversionary tactic! My opinion.

But whichever way you look at it, there seem to be a missing link between what government functionaries [know] about illegal mining and what they [say] and [do] at ending it. Will proper data/intelligence gathering expose the hidden hands at work? They seem to be profiting from the confusion.

Small Scale, surface mining or illegal mining?

Another confusion which seems very much alive and actively harnessed by persons behind the pollution of water bodies and all the odds of illegal mining is the confusion surrounding [small scale mining], [Surface mining] and [illegal mining]. The lack of a clear distinction between the three activities hampers the so-called fight against the canker. When you visit Wassa Akropong and all other areas, apart from those on rivers, every miner will point to a form of legal document surrounding his or her operations. The irony is that, it is this same activity which is polluting every water body in the western region.

So the lack of clarity in the minds of policing institutions especially the media, is the strength on which the illegality thrives. Can the Minerals Commission, the Chamber of Mines and government for that matter identify perhaps five of the registered small/surface mining companies which have not polluted any river for the past two to five years in its operational areas? I doubt, but there are over hundreds of them registered in the fine books of government agencies. I challenge them to publish the companies for us to do independent checks on them.

Clearly, our country seems to have found a nice way of confusing us all to sleep on galamsey matters. And trust me, they benefit when the media talks about it because, they will have the opportunity to throw more dust in.

'Drastic measure' is deceptive. It's a usual talk shop!

It is true, and here is why.



In 2015, acute water shortage hit the people at Adoagyiri in the Eastern Region. Government functionaries [visited] the site and recommended a dredging exercise. [The exercise was not described as drastic]. The dredging was done and water started flowing. Bingo! Well done! But did that exempt the facility from the threat of illegal mining? A big NO! So was dredging the problem? Again NO! Was the dredging sustainable? Another No! Good!

So it was the river that was drying up because of mining in the river.

Did the visiting government functionaries know that;

1. Many artificial islands have been created by the illegal miners at many parts of the river and that stops the flow of the river?

2.That the course of the river has been widened by the miners reducing the amount and flow speed of the river to the plant's intake point?

3. That, there is no ban on the importation of Chinese made Changfan machines used to excavate and divert affected rivers?

4. That this ad-hoc diversionary tactics has been employed in time past but has not yielded any lasting result?

Dr. Agyemang, thanks for confusing us with your[drastic measure proposal].

But on a serious note, the Kyebi Treatment Plant is down and Ive not heard of how and when it is getting back on stream.

There is more 'playing to the gallery' evidence here.

More 'gallery evidence



Hmm, I can't think far! Anyway! Public Relations Officer for the Ministry of Water Resource Works and Housing Abraham Otabil, was reported as announcing the imminent shutdown of three Water Treatment Plants; the Kyebi, Daboase and Barekese water treatment Plants.

Shockingly, the spokesperson found it convenient to announce the closure. He could have outlined 'genuine committed spirit as well. But what did he do? He shifted blame or made it appear as though they have done all they could to end the canker but to no avail. Hear him:

The activities of galamsey operators have become a source of worry. As soon as the minister visits the site [Water Treatment site], then these operators run into the bush; but whenever we return to our various offices, these guys come back to operate. [Quoted by citifmonline.com]

Is it not an indication that the ministry is just playing to the gallery? Wasn't same announcement made in 2015 at Adoagyiri? Hmm!!!

Even the president has been here!



When any ordinary person walks to the Daboase Water Treatment Plant intake point at Daboase in the Wassa East District of the western region, you will see visibly without any difficulty in some less than 20 meters [yes meters not kilometers] that illegal miners are busily digging so close to the plant. The illegal miners will occasionally warn the staff of Ghana Water Company not to get into their territory.

Meanwhile the management of the plant noted that we have explained our issues clearly. We have explained how much chemicals we have had to use to purify the water because of the galamsey activities. Since I came here in 2012, we've had many several people in government visiting. We've had ministers, and even our president has been here to see the devastation illegal mining is causing us, Quamena Acquah, Communications officer-Ghana Water Company Limited-Western Region to Citi News.

How long did he say ministers and the president have been visiting the plant? 4 years ago! Since 2012! Even that is when he was posted there.

So where is the headway if The activities of galamsey operators have become a source of worry? As soon as the minister visits the site [Water Treatment site], then these operators run into the bush; but whenever we return to our various offices, these guys come back to operate. [Quoted by citifmonline.com]

Dr Kweku Agyemang Mensah is still talking. Mind you he was the former minister of health who should understand better the implication of consuming water with high concentrations of chemicals. He said

Maybe those machines we don't even allow them into the country

I was shocked to hear him prefix his comment with maybe'. But I understand. Let's dig deeper into this statement, and see how it has different ramifications.

Specifically to mining in rivers, the common method to use is the use of Changfan which the minister was asking whether we stop its importation or not.

Question is, why will anybody who wants to genuinely end mining in rivers in particular contemplate on [maybe] banning the importation of the Changfan?

Doesn't that explain that there is more at stake when it is banned?

If it is taking you [maybes] to stop the importation of a machine with a single purpose of digging in rivers, how could you deal with excavators used for illegal mining on land with multiple uses?

For the record, his statement exposes the hypocrisy with which the Inter-ministerial task-force in 2013 was established, under the leadership of the now Minister for Roads and Highways Hon. Innusa Fuseini; who was then the Minister for Lands and Natural Resources. But we have already dealt with that above.

Bu I was also asking myself that going forward.

Will more inter-ministerial crackdowns solve illegal mining?

I am just wondering which other method of combating illegal mining will be more drastic than armed military men and police, arresting and burning Changfans, and in some cases brutalizing illegal miners? Some even die. Won't that fail on the part of alluvial mining? The import of Changfans, no matter the aggressiveness, will not stop when it has not been criminalized.

Besides, a more punitive crackdown could lead to needless deaths and lawlessness, when the substantive issue have not been addressed. If it takes similar dimension as the former, it will not take long for illegal mining to return because it may not be financially sustainable.

For the REGSEC and DISEC teams deployed to deal with this problem, they should save us by doing the right thing at the grassroots which is using the right approach.

The swoops once in a while will not save the situation as they may know the political interest at stake. But as it is said, the fish starts going bad from its head; and so if we come back sometime soon to talk about illegal mining again, I will not be surprised!

If the vested interests are so much from the top to the point that insiders from the top can leak information to the illegal Chinese miners on impending crackdowns, how about the tail?

True meaning of Dr. Agyemang's drastic measures?



Indeed, drastic measures will be required when the people involved or behind the illegal mining are cronies attached to state agencies or appointees of the government. [DCEs, Police Commanders and chiefs etc].

If not, how drastic should this be if the 5 to 10 miners on each Changfan on the rivers are really those we see and not working for bigwigs in society or government functionaries?

From the above, wont it be reasonable to conclude, that government functionaries have found an express revenue highway?



By: Obrempong Yaw Ampofo/citifmonline.com/Ghana

The writer; Obrempong Yaw Ampofo, is a broadcast journalist specialized in reporting on Natural Resource and Cash Crops. His works cover the Oil and Gas, gold mining, cocoa and the fishing industry.

Email: [email protected]
The Chief Executive of the NHIA, Nathaniel Otoo, has described the number of people visiting NHIA district offices to enrol onto the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) as an indication of the growth and relevance of the Scheme to Ghanaians.

The Scheme on average registers 30,000 people every day across the country, and revenue from the NHIA to health service providers as claims reimbursements, form about 85% of all internally generated funds of those facilities.

Mr Otoo made this known on Wednesday when he made routine visits to the Osu Klottey and Ayawaso district offices of the Scheme in the Greater Accra region.

According to the Chief Executive, though he has officers at the district level carrying out the work of the NHIA, he occasionally visits to interact with people enrolling onto the Scheme and to also get first-hand information on what the emerging issues at any point in time regarding the Scheme may be.

At the Osu Klottey office, Mr Otoo met hundreds of people at the registration centre to either register to join the Scheme or renew their membership.

After interacting with them and listening to their complaints, he assured them of the NHIA's resolve to continue proffering solutions that will make their experience with the Scheme worthwhile. The situation at the Ayawaso office was no different as many turned up to be served.

According to him, though the large numbers the Scheme has seen so far this year have been very encouraging, it posed a temporary logistical challenge which resulted in some of the offices running low on some critical consumables. The Chief Executive however said the NHIA has since replenished its stocks, and all offices across the country were busily at work attending to clients.

He said 4.13 million new registrations have been undertaken between January and August, almost equalling the target for the entire year, with one more quarter to end 2016.

An additional 2.6 million cards, he mentioned, were printed as replacements because majority of those had either misplaced or defaced their cards. The reprints or card replacements, Mr Otoo explained, was one of the major factors that led to the temporary shortage of consumables the NHIA suffered.

He therefore urged NHIS members to ensure that their cards were properly kept to avoid situations where card replacements would have to be necessitated.

The real cost of the card is subsidized by government, so if the cards are not properly kept and we have to do replacements, it has financial implications for the NHIA, Mr Otoo averred.

The NHIA boss said his outfit will soon roll-out a multi-year NHIS card renewal system as a way of avoiding yearly visits by members to the NHIS office to renew cards. Under this new system, it was explained that subscribers will now have the option of renewing their cards after every two or three years as they deem convenient. According him, this will also reduce the crowd situation at the registration centres.

The NHIS was set up by an Act of Parliament to provide financial risk protection against the cost of basic healthcare to all residents in Ghana.

The Scheme currently has a membership of 11.3 million people being served by a network of about 4,650 healthcare providers across the country.



By: citifmonline.com/Ghana
The Electoral Commission (EC) has announced the cancellation of the procurement process for the Election Results Management System (ERMS) for the electronic transmission of results from the various constituencies during the 2016 elections.

The Commission has explained that the two IT firms shortlisted for the ERMS, Scytel and Smartmatic, failed to meet the criteria required for the transmission.

After a careful assessment of the technical demonstration and evaluation of the technical and financial proposals, the evaluation panel was not satisfied with any of the tenderers, a statement signed by the EC Head of Communications, Eric Dzakpasu, noted.

Reasons for cancellation

The evaluation panel's conclusion was influenced by the fact that the tenderers could not match up to the technical criteria alongside major deviations from the administrative criteria and meaning the EC had concerns about the technical ability of the tenderers to perform the project satisfactorily.

The EC also said the tenders submitted highlighted the need to significantly revise the scope of the project.

The Commission has thus said it would augment its internal capacity to deploy a modest results collation and transmission system for election 2016.

Arguments against the ERMS

The proposed implementation of the ERMS brewed some friction with the New Patriotic Party (NPP) kicking against this new EC reform arguing that process failed to address the critical challenges that the election reform process seeks to overcome.

The NPP also said that the decision to outsource the electronic transmission of results to a third party was a waste of resources because the proposed ERMS for the 275 constituencies, was ostensibly taking place as the Commission already transmits its summary collated sheets from its district offices.

Find below the EC's full statement



CANCELLATION OF TENDER FOR ELECTION RESULTS MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (ERMS)

The Commission wishes to announce the decision to cancel the tender process for the procurement of the Election Results Management System (ERMS) for the 2016 elections.

As part of the procurement process which began from March 2, 2016, two vendors out of three shortlisted companies, qualified for technical demonstration and financial evaluation of their bids.

After a careful assessment of the technical demonstration and evaluation of the technical and financial proposals, the evaluation panel was not satisfied with any of the tenderers. The panel's conclusion was influenced by the following:

There was observed failure to meet the technical criteria and major deviations from the administrative criteria. There was also concerns about the technical ability of the tenderers to perform the project satisfactorily. The tenders submitted showed the need to significantly revise the scope of the project.

For the above reasons, the Commission endorsed the unanimous recommendations of the evaluation panel and has decided to discontinue the project.

Accordingly, the Commission will augment its internal capacity to deploy a modest results collation and transmission system for election 2016.

This system has been utilised successfully in the four parliamentary by-elections conducted by the Commission since July 2015. The system would be finetuned and demonstrated to the political parties and other stakeholders involved in the elections results collation process before the December 7, 2016 presidential and parliamentary elections.

Signed: ERIC KOFI DZAKPASU Head of Communications

Follow the hashtag #GhElections on social media for more election related stories



By: Delali Adogla-Bessa/citifmonline.com/Ghana
The Director of the Institute of Environment and Sanitation at the University of Ghana, Dr. Chris Gordon, has warned of far-reaching effects of illegal mining painting a gloomy picture of the health implications for the average Ghanaian.

Aside the obvious effects to farmlands and water bodies, Dr. Gordon highlighted the far-reaching effects of the chemicals used in illegal mining which eventually make their way into the food and water for many Ghanaians.

Speaking on the Citi Breakfast Show, he explained that, the process of mining and the release of chemicals is not just confined to the immediate water body. All these chemicals and materials end up in the sea because our rivers drain into the sea.

So apart from the impact on drinking water and on the health of people and the loss of crop lands and the destruction of cocoa farms, all these chemicals come into the sea, enter the food chain and affect our fisheries, he added.

Dr. Gordon also lamented the long-term chronic effects of exposure to the chemicals used in the illegal mining processes like cyanide and arsenic, adding that the dust from these sites alone have serious consequences.

For some of the men exposed directly to the illegal mining activities, he indicated that their sperm mobility would be negatively hampered rendering them sterile and for people who are drinking this water, health in their 50s and 60s, will be nothing to write home about. A decreased quality of life.

Pollution from galamsey at Odasu

Dr. Gordon further cited some of the effects on foodstuffs that have been observed in recent times.

Per recent assessment, you find that you pick fish off the Ankobra River and you find that they have elevated levels of heavy metals. You will find in the Keta area, tomato leaves with dust with higher than normal levels of heavy metals. It is happening already.

The environmentalist added that, the miners are already affected. If you take nail clippings or a sample of hair from the people engaged in this, you will find levels of cyanide in their body which are far in excess of WHO standards.



By: Delali Adogla-Bessa/citifmonline.com/Ghana
The Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT Accra will host this year's Innovation Week (i-Week) which begins from 12th  16th September 2016.

The annual event is the countrys foremost event which brings together key stakeholders to deliberate on emerging ICT issues which impact development.

The theme for i-Week 2016 (#iweek2016, Internet of Things (IoT) and Innovation focuses on how Ghana can embrace IoT for increased development and efficiency in all sectors of the economy, fast-track growth and success rates for Start-ups and SMEs.

The term Internet of Things generally refers to scenarios where network connectivity and computing capability extends to objects, sensors and everyday items not normally considered computers, allowing these devices to generate, exchange and consume data with minimal human intervention.

A new addition to the event this year is the introduction of presentations from Academia. This is to highlight innovative research from the tertiary institutions.

This will be followed by panel discussions which will pair individuals from academia and industry to shed more light on the subject of discussion and find areas of collaboration.

Another new addition in 2016 is the Developer Conference (DevCon) for IT and software developers who will gain additional skills in crafting code, DevOps, frameworks and also find answers to real challenges, which they encounter in the course of their work. As part of the programme there will be parallel workshops on IoT and GIS applications and Real-time computing.

i-Week 2016 will also bring together players in the IoT and Drone space to showcase their innovative solutions and how the nation can leverage on the technology to develop.

More than 20 start-ups will showcase their innovations during the Innovation Waves each day as well as large vendors and exhibitors.

The event promises to be both insightful and exciting with a large number of participants from Ghana, the sub region as well as substantial on-line participation via web-streaming.

Participants are to register for the free sessions at http://iweek2016.aiti-kace.com.gh. Visitors to the #iweek website get to know more about the thought leaders, panelists, the programme scheduled and more.-Ends-
The first deputy speaker of parliament, Ebo Barton Odro has passionately appealed to the good people of Cape Coast to live in oneness and forge ahead in unity as they celebrate their famous Fetu festival this year.

He said the beauty of the annual festival could best be witnessed when it is held devoid of acrimonious attitudes such as trading of insults and above all, unnecessary politicisation of the event.

Lawyer Odro, who is the Member of Parliament for the Cape Coast North Constituency made the appeal when he presented some valuable items to the seven Asafo Companies of the Cape Coast Traditional Council.

The items included bottles of schnapps, gun powder, gallons of Apeteshi, gin, branded T-Shirts for all the seven warriors and an amount of Gh3,500.00.

The first deputy speaker further noted that it was high time the people of Cape Coast stopped pecking each other with insults because of politics and fought for development that would transform their lives.

Politics came to meet us and we must therefore not allow it to divide us. We should be prepared to forgive one another and forge ahead so that Cape Coast would move forward. He advised.

These items, according to Lawyer Odro, were meant to support the Supi Council and geared towards the successful celebration of the historic festival.

The leader of of Amanfo No.7 Asafo Company,

Supi Thomas Yallow on behalf of the Supi Council and the Oguaa Traditional Council thanked Lawyer Odro for his donations.

He disclosed that the various Asafo Companies used to struggle to put their companies together during the Fetu festival celebration until Lawyer Odro started coming to their aid.

Supi Yallow therefore called on other philanthropist to kindly come to the assistance of the Asafo Companies.

It would be recalled that Lawyer Ebo Barton Odro has been supporting the Asafo Companies and the Supi Council far before he was voted as the Member of Parliament of the then Cape Coast Constituency in 2008.

His support, that has been described by the Supi Council as invaluable, had seen him donates various items and cash to all the seven Asafo Companies in Cape Coast annually.
Vice President Kwesi Amissah-Arthur has asked supporters of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) to make sure that the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) does not win the December elections.

He told thousands of party supporters in Bolgatanga, the Upper East Region capital, that they must spread the achievements of the NDC to secure the Presidency for John Mahama.

Lets send the elephant to the Mole Game Reserve, he said.

Amissah-Arthur arrived in Bolgatanga to a tumultuous welcome from the rank and file of NDC supporters and sympathizers.

Vice-president Kwesi Amissah-Arthur appealed to Ghanaians and the people of Upper West Region to renew the mandate of John Mahama for four more years in order to continue with the systematic development of Ghana.

Mr. Amissah-Arthur observed that peace and stability form the foundation for economic and social development and the Mahama-led government has succeeded in sustaining that feat.

He said Mahama needs continuity in his agenda of changing lives and transforming Ghana because the country has seen massive infrastructure developmental projects under his tenure.

He said Mahama cannot develop the whole country at a go but assured Ghanaians that government can provide every community with its fair share of development. According to him, Ghanaians must continue to have confidence and hope in Mahama because his policies are geared towards transforming their lives.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com
An exiled Uzbek opposition leader immediately denounced the move as unconstitutional.

Shavkat Mirziyoyev, who served as Karimov's prime minister since 2003, was appointed in a joint session of the upper and lower houses of parliament, making him the favorite to win Uzbekistan's next presidential election, set to take place within the next three months.

Muhammad Salih, leader of the banned Erk (Freedom) Democratic Party, who has been living in exile in Istanbul, Turkey for more than a decade, told Russia's privately-owned TV Rain on Thursday that the Uzbek parliament's move was a "gross violation of the constitution" and a "silent coup" carried out for "the usurpation of power."
The upcoming election is a battle of our conscience and thoughts. A battle between good and evil, competence and incompetence and above all Ghanaians and the incompetent NDC government. It is a youth revolution: a time for us all to arise and relegate the promises chanting NDC to the bottom.

We must take inspiration from the words of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah which calls on on us all to have the courage to dream, believe and do and to achieve the highest excellence and the fullest greatness of man. The youth form a greater part of the country's population and if our futures would be bright, then it must be shaped well from our today.

It's undoubtedly true and a glaring fact that the NDC government led by his Excellency John Dramani Mahama has failed the youth in all spheres of the economy and his governance. The youth have suffered the highest sabotage of their development and self actualization due to the total neglect of the youth by the government.

Every sector of the economy has been paralysed and crippled by mismanagement making things fall apart. Education, employment and health have become luxuries which are only accessible by the rich. It will amaze you the number of students who were not able to enter the public tertiary universities this year though they had admissions. Most of these young ones couldn't come to school due to hike in fees coupled with the harsh economy which makes it difficult to come by money.

Unemployment still continues to run up the hill with no intention of it coming down. It is so frustrating to pay huge sums of fees only to complete school without getting access to jobs. The government argues that people must start up on their own but how can they when it's difficult to get access to capital with interest on loans nearing 35% . There have never been any good news for the Ghanaian youth under the NDC. It's either the cancellation of teachers and nursing trainer's allowances which the president has insisted on not restoring, or rising unemployment rate.

The development of every nation depends on its youth but it's unfortunate that the youth have been sidelined and rejected. The time for a youth revolution is now. A time to arise and save the country from doom is now. Let's not watch the confused Bicycle rider up the hill crash first. We must force him to apply the brakes and save the nation. It is no longer a battle of political colours but a battle between the youth and the corrupt and incompetent NDC government.

That time to go into a journey of thoughts is now. This is the time to reminisce on the our present and past woes under this government and be hopeful of a better future by electing not based on incentives of time but policies of a lifetime.

*A time is coming when mirrors will reflect our pain and struggles and overshadow the seductive gifts that live not beyond the throat and our gullible mouths will refuse to open up to be fed by propaganda and deceitful promises but will be closed in silence of our thoughts on generations unborn that race through our minds. That day, the hungry will reject food, the poor will reject money, the naked will reject clothes. It is that day that we will arise and speak with one voice. For that which binds us is greater and stronger than that which separates us.*

That time is now. A revolutionary wind is blowing. This is a revolution of our minds and a battle of our thoughts. Arise Ghana Youth and fight for your country. Save the future of the youth, save the future of the unborn generation, save Ghana now from incompetence and corruption. Boot out the NDC government which cares not about us come general election.

Asamani Mercy

UCC TESCON WOMEN'S COMMISSIONER

0263640914

Lady Victoria

UCC DEPUTY TESCON WOMEN'S COMMISSIONER

0555386024
It is roughly accurate for Dr Mahamudu Bawumia to say Ghanas GDP has shrunk by 5% in USD terms under President John Dramani Mahama, policy think tank IMANI has said in its commentary on the recent economic lecture delivered by the vice presidential nominee of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP).

According to IMANI, World Bank data suggests a fall from $47.8 billion in 2013 to $37.9 billion in 2015. In real terms, this exceeds the 5%. Poor petroleum sector performance is only partially to blame. The non-oil economy has been under considerable stress too.

On Dr Bawumias claim that Ghanas GDP per capita roughly quadrupled under the NPP but has grown by less than 20% under the NDC taking all money value factors into account, IMANI said: This is generally accurate. Ghana has seen a significant fall in GDP per capita growth since 2013, from 4.77% to 1.52%.

It, however, caveated that statement saying it is important to note that there is an aspect of this trend that cuts across sub-Saharan Africa. Between 2000 and 2008, average per capita income across the region rose from $505 to $1140. Between 2008 and end 2015, however, the growth has been comparatively lower, from $1140 to $1630. Between 2013 and end-2015, it actually fell but not at the same steep rate as Ghanas.

Below are the rest of IMANIs comments on some aspects of Dr Bawumias lecture which the policy think tank believes he used data in a fair manner to interpret data to criticise governments running of the country:

3. Claim: There has been a revenue shortfall of about GHS 700 million for the first half of the year.

Comment: Dr. Bawumia appears to be using the budget estimate of GHS11 billion as the benchmark. By that yardstick, he is completely accurate. But he could also have done a cross-year comparison against the 2015 figures and come up with an even higher shortfall of more than GHS 2 billion.

4. Claim: A raft of bad taxes has been slapped on goods such as bicycles and ambulances that do not deserve these taxes.

Comment: It is indeed true that bicycles now attract a 42% composite tariff when in the past only a 0.5% levy applied. Two issues need to be looked at critically: was this development as a result of a deliberate policy to protect local bicycle assemblers or to harmonise with the ECOWAS Common External Tariff (and does the NPP object to such policies in principle)? Generally open trade benefits almost everyone, but it is important to know whether the NPP will reverse the underlying policies that may have caused this hike or not.

8. Claim: Ghanas debt to GDP ratio declined from 189% in 2000 to 32% in 2008. Ghana's total debt has now ballooned from GHS 9.5 billion in 2008 to GHS 105 billion today. The Finance Ministers claim that the public debt to GDP ratio has declined to 63% debt to GDP ratio is plain wrong because had he used the debt stock at the end of Q1 2016 and divided it by the GDP result realised in Q1 2016 he would have obtained 71% in current 2016 dollars.

Comment: Most of the figures are about right if one sticks to current USD as we pointed out in the first section of this article. Ghanas public debt did decline from a high of 187% of GDP to 26.2% of GDP in 2006 and then rose to about 32% of GDP in 2008. Since then it has risen, according to IMF calculations, to circa 70.5% of GDP.

Caveat: Whist Dr. Bawumias calculations are quite sound, the formula he proposes, which involves dividing the debt stock as at Q1 of 2016 with the GDP realised over the same period is baffling. If he meant that the Minister should have annualised the Q1 2016 GDP result rather than use the budget projection, then that is simply a question of methodology. As for the Ministers claim that the Debt-to-GDP ratio has declined in percentage terms from 72% to 63%, he presents no data to back this computation whichcontroverts the debt sustainability analysis his own Ministry has been conducting with the IMF.

9. Claim: Infrastructure expenditure as a percentage of GDP declined sharply over the period between 2008 and 2015. Interest payments are now higher than capital expenditure. Public Investment into infrastructure is on the decline in Ghana, with capital expenditure as a percentage of GDP having come down from 11% to 5.7% on average. The money being spent on servicing our debt today is greater than the amount being spent on some six important ministries.

Comment: This is broadly accurate. The figures are best interpreted through the lens of tax revenues rather than broad GDP however since GDP growth has been quite significant (more than 40% over the same period). Capital expenditure (which captures investments in hard infrastructure) as a percentage of tax revenue did indeed fall from 36.39% in 2008 to 11.82% in 2013. Government is clearly spending more on consumption than on investment. In a similar vein, interest payments as a percentage of total revenue was 15.3% in 2005, down from 42.3% in 2000. The GDP analysis shows a current interest payments to GDP ratio of 6.5% compared to 2.8% in 2008.

10. Claim: Cedi depreciation under the NDC has been much higher than under the NPP.

Comment: Completely accurate.

11. Claim: The use of single-sourcing and non-transparent procurement processes for even, large, capital-intensive, complex, projects has led to billions of dollars being wasted, sometimes in shady deals that suggest corrupt motives on the part of some parties.

Comment: This point cannot be faulted. The $300 million loss anticipated over the lifetime of the scandalous Ameri deal, in respect of which the President has promised an audit by the PwC, is a clear example of this unfortunate trend.

12. Claim: Credit to the private sector has dropped considerably over the past year, while the debt stock of state owned enterprises continue to rise worryingly.

Comment: An important point.
The MTN Ghana Foundation has commemorated the 50th anniversary of the World Library Day to promote the spirit of reading and writing among children in Ghana.

There were forum on reading aloud and quiz competition among some selected basic schools from Labadi and Adabraka Communities held at the Adabraka Community Library in Accra.

Mrs. Rhoderlyn Entsua-Mensah, Acting Senior Manager, MTN Ghana Foundation, said this day is set aside to celebrate the joy and value of books and reading especially for children across the world.

She indicated that literacy is very important to us and as a Foundation they have executed various projects aimed at improving on the literacy rate and the learning environment of children in the country.

One of our focus areas is education and literacy is key to the work that we do therefore to mark the day, we are here at the Adabraka Community Library with about 100 children from some selected schools in Accra, she stated.

According to her, the event is mainly to organize reading clinics and quiz competition for the children, donate exercise books plus writing materials and mathematical sets to the children, and reading materials written by local authors to equip the library.

Mrs. Rhodalyn Entsua-Mensah emphasized that the Foundation has been organizing reading clubs and reading clinics every year with selected schools at the community libraries and some media houses.

Additionally, she noted that MTN Foundation has constructed a number of libraries for some communities and donated books to schools across the country.

She intimated that last year December the Foundation held a party to encourage the kids who comes to read and learn at the community library.

September 8 is International Literacy Day, a day for promoting literacy as a way to empower people and help them improve their lives.

This year, UNESCO celebrates the day with the theme Reading the Past, Writing the Future, honoring 50 years of the observance of International Literacy Day and continuing its work to raise literacy rates around the world.

It also notes that this is the first year of implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development , which has for one of its goals ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all.

One way this can be achieved, says the agenda, is attaining literacy and numeracy among all youth and a "substantial proportion of adults, both men and women."

"Fifty years ago, UNESCO officially proclaimed 8 September International Literacy Day to actively mobilize the international community and to promote literacy as an instrument to empower individuals, communities and societies," UNESCO said in a statement posted on its website.

"Now International Literacy Day is celebrated worldwide, bringing together governments, multi- and bilateral organizations, NGOs, private sectors, communities, teachers, learners and experts in the field.

On this day also International Literacy Prizes are awarded to people with outstanding solutions that can drive literacy towards achieving the 2030 Education Agenda. This year the focus is on innovation," it added.
Presidential candidates of the various political parties are expected to pay GH50,000 to enable them file their nominations to contest in the December elections.

This was revealed at an Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) meeting held yesterday in Accra.

The Electoral Commission (EC) also pegged the filing fee for parliamentary candidates at GH10,000.

Nominations will be opened on Tuesday, September 13, 2016, and close on September 28 and 29.

The Commission will be accepting nominations from presidential and parliamentary candidates on 29th and 30th September, 2016. Presidential candidates are required to pay a filing fee of GH50,000 while parliamentary candidates are required to pay GH10,000.

Meanwhile, the commission will consider a request made by some of the political parties for the filing fees to be reviewed downward, a statement from the EC added.

The statement indicated that as part of efforts towards the holding of the upcoming polls, it would give all the political parties copies of the certified voters' register by September 23, 2016.

The EC averred, Exhibition of the provisional voters' register for persons who registered during the CVR, in the prisons, and NHIS registrants will take place on September 9 and 10, 2016 nationwide. Political parties are encouraged to send their agents to observe the exhibition of the voters' register at the district offices of the commission and the prisons. The commission would like to urge all registered voters in these categories to visit the district offices of the EC to confirm their details on the register, the statement added.

Transmission of results

The tender for the electronic transfer of election results, DAILY GUIDE learnt, has been cancelled.

According to sources, the cancellation was as a result of the bidders' inability to meet the set criteria.
Amadu Bari

09.09.2016 LISTEN

The Bole Bamboi District Magistrate Court presided over by Prince Andrews Kojo, has remanded Amadu Bari into police custody in connection with a robbery case.

Amadu Bari, 29, Fulani, was arrested by the Bole police at Banda Nkwanta, near the Bole Bamboi District in the Northern Region.

DAILY GUIDE gathered that Mohammed Mamudu, 18, who was arrested by residents at Banda Nkwanta and handed over to the police for robbery, mentioned Amadu Bari as his accomplice in the operation.

During interrogation, Mohammed Mamudu mentioned Amadu Bari and directed the police to the hideout of the suspect.

Abubakari Mohammed, 20, was also arrested by residents at Banda Nkwanta and handed over to the police for robbery.

Information available to DAILY GUIDE revealed that on August 30, 2016 at about 10:30 am, some passengers on board a mini bus from Banda Nkwanta to Dakope junction were robbed at gunpoint by some armed masked men upon reaching a section of the road near Noyiri.

DAILY GUIDE gathered that on 31 August, 2016, Abubakari and Mamudu were seen offering a Samsung Galaxy Note 4 telephone for sale at the Banda township and in the process of the transaction, the buyer recognized the picture on the phone's screen saver and quickly alerted some persons and the two suspects were grabbed.

The Bole District Crime Officer, ASP Ebenezer Kwaku Dakey, who confirmed the arrest to this paper, said the police monitored the movements of the suspect and got him arrested at his hideout.

According to him, the suspect had been remanded into police custody to reappear in court on 12th September, 2016.

He indicated that another person was on the run and for security reasons, the police would not put the name in the public domain but appealed to residents in the area to volunteer information on him to the police.

FROM Eric Kombat, Bole
Good Day Sir, it has been a long time since we met, I see you in dispatches as you go about your challenging tasks in these difficult times. Unlike many of your colleagues, you have not attracted much bad press as a person compared to many other colleagues of yours in government. I personally attribute that to your avoidance of or none involvement in controversial issues. Your maturity and experience in life, both public and private, have played no mean role in formulating your style and insulating you from the lashing tongues of members of the public and the media generally.

It may also be that you are doing so well where you are such that the public angst is not directed at you very often or at all. I was however very disappointed when I read a story in the Daily Guide of Friday, September 2, 2016 when you visited the Western Region and ostensibly visited certain communities along the Pra River, where galamsey activities in the river have seriously polluted this otherwise pristine river, which has been the source of drinking water for those of us living within Sekondi-Takoradi and its environs for God knows when.

In case you have not read this story attributed to you on Starrfmonline, let me quote it to you. 'The Minister of Water Resources Works and Housing, Dr. Kwaku Agyemang Mensah has advised chiefs living along the Pra river to invoke curses on illegal miners (galamsey operators) who are bent on polluting the river in the Western Region. The minister gave the advice during a working visit to inspect water projects and treatment plants at Daboase, Ankobra and Asuogya, all in the region.

The minister who was displeased and shocked at the level of pollution of the river, said he could not understand why illegal miners continue to pollute various water bodies which serve as a source of drinking water, despite several interventions put in place to nip the practice in the bud. According to reports, the minister further advised the traditional rulers to invoke curses on the illegal miners and refuse them accommodation.

Western Regional Chief Manager of Ghana Water Company, Martin Kodjoe told the minister that the region is likely to face acute water shortage due to the continued pollution of the Pra and the Ankobra rivers'.

Sir, I have taken pains to quote the report to you so that this piece may not be considered as mischievous. In the first place, your visit was in response to an earlier expression of worry by the Chief Manager of the Ghana Water Company Limited who announced the shut down or plans to do so in respect of the Daboase in-take which had become so polluted that it has to take extra doses of purifying agents to make it consumable.

I listened to him on air and you did well in visiting the place, however, your visit was the fear of shortage of water that will affect the people living within the Metropolis and the political upheavals that the water shortage is likely to generate in this election year. You cannot say that you and the Ministry are unaware of the open destruction of the nation's water bodies across the country. In the Western Region, the Pra, Ankobra and the Tano rivers are on the verge of being rendered useless to human existence.

The Birim river is totally gone, the Offin River, even though had since time immemorial suffered some limited pollution because of the dredging which was taking place ( I lived and attended Boa-Amponsem Secondary School in Dunkwa On Offin) the situation today is filthy. Many small rivers which flow into the big rivers in Ghana have all been destroyed through illegal mining activities. There are reports that other water treatment plants in the Eastern Region are suffering similar fate because of the open pollution of water bodies by the illegal miners prying their illegal trade without let or hindrance.

The people of Kyebi, according to reports, have begun experiencing water shortages because the water treatment plant has been shut down due to the extraordinarily high turbidity of the Birim river which is their source of water intake. Mr. Minister, another study indicates that 26 out of 41 water bodies researched are highly polluted; in fact the study indicated that by 2030, that is by the next 14 years, no water can be treated in this country for consumption.

I am very sure that you know all these and more and that it may seem that I am being more Catholic than the Pope. Nay, I am expressing these or repeating them because as a son of this precious land called Ghana, I am very concerned about the future of this country. Any government that can preside over such wanton, reckless, lawlessness and show of bravado in the open destruction of our collective resource which is second to the natural requirements for human survival, is very callous and is on the path to the irredeemable destruction of the nation.

This destructive spree by both Ghanaians and non-Ghanaians, Chinese in particular is no news, but for a Minister of State under whose watch our water bodies are being destroyed with impunity to ask traditional leaders to invoke curses which are spiritual in their inputs and outputs to bring an end to acts that are physical, is what bothers me. Those who pollute the river bodies are human beings and not spirits, the equipment they use are material, we see them in operation every day, yet my Minister seems so helpless in dealing with the miscreants in our midst such that he is using surrogates to invoke the spirits to deal with physical and material problems in the 21st century.

Mr. Minister, are we being told that the State has lost its authority to provide security for its citizens by equipping and deploying the security agencies to flush out these small sections of the population who are bent on putting the safety and security of the future of this country in such jeopardy? If the state as represented by the government is incapable of dealing with internal threats to our collective survival, where do we stand should the threat be external?

Governance and leadership are physical acts of both art and science, it is not spiritual in form or shape, individuals in government or leadership positions may have their personal spiritual attachments, but modern governance is more of dealing pragmatically with situations than resorting to spiritual invocations, chanting, incantations and the rest that deal with modern challenges, least of all, the open destruction of water bodies essential for human life.

You might have arrived at this unorthodox method of believing in spiritualism to address such critical problems due to the cavalier attitudes exhibited towards this problem when it began. I am so hurt that in our time, pristine calm flowing rivers where we used to swim, wash our clothes, catch fishes, fetch for domestic use have become so turbid that even machines and chemicals cannot return them to purity for human consumption. Mr. Minister, just cast your mind back to Bibiani North in your childhood and youthful days, and see the beauty of the streams that meandered their way through the town and the fact that they no longer exist and even if they do, they are of no use for serious human activity.

Your ministry has the responsibility to ensure that clean water, not necessarily potable water, exists for varied uses as citizens of this country. Your ministry and the agencies under it which have the responsibility to ensure the survival of our water bodies seem helpless, they have given up on the criminal activities of those who want to illegally take the gold at any cost, including destroying such irreplaceable resource, as water. Their only hope, according to you, is to resort to curses to kill the operators or what?

For once, I am regretting being a Ghanaian. Good day, Sir,

Your disappointed brother,

Kwesi Biney.
Vice President Paa Kwesi Amissah-Arthur appears to have been pricked into action after a long Rip Van Winkle slumber at the helm. Even before traveling up North to seek audience with Gonja chiefs in a bid to reverse the inroads made by the New Patriotic Party (NPP), he had served sufficient notice of what he intends doing with his party's main opponents.

He said that he would deal with the NPP by matching them boot for boot.

Thankfully he has a golden opportunity to make himself relevant to the faltering campaign of his boss.

He must return to the Central Region to see whether he can do something about the below-average reception his boss garnered in that part of the country, even after the busloads of persons from outside the venues of the rallies of empty promises.

But more importantly, he has been offered an academic opportunity to deal with Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, a challenge if you like, to prove his mettle. If he handles this well  which many doubt he can  he should alter positively the impression many Ghanaians have about him. He needs this impression alteration so he can shore up his dwindled deference.

Indeed, he himself appears to have appreciated his challenges, hence his recent movement to areas where his boss had previously traveled to. This is not about releasing pigeons at the Independence Square, which refused to fly in protest anyway. It is about macro-economics and why the fortunes of the country are maintaining the downward spiral in spite of so much financial injection from the capital market and so-called IMF intervention.

The vice president should rather respond to the issues Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia put out yesterday to the admiration of Ghanaians and not the gutter approach: the preserve of his propaganda boys.

This is a subject which his boss would look up to him to deal with  the area being the preserve of the initiated such as him. We do not doubt his pedigree to respond appropriately. Allowing the propagandists to wade into it would kill the fun. Ghanaians want to see Paa Kwesi respond. After all, he has longed for such opportunity and Dr. Bawumia has presented one without plodding and gratis.

The theme of the lecture, The State of The Ghanaian Economy: A Foundation of Concrete or Straw, which the running mate to the flag bearer of the NPP joined a series which have now come to represent academic critique of the faltering economic policies of the NDC government.

Yesterday, Ghanaians once more had a rare opportunity of appreciating the depth of the country's economic challenges and why it would take a paradigm shift for us to witness growth in our fiscal circumstances.

This is a subject beyond propagandists because as Dr. Bawumia once remarked, when fiscal matters are taken over by lies the truth will soon be out.
The Conference of Heads of Assisted Secondary Schools (CHASS) says it will not back down on its demands to ensure smooth running of the various senior high schools in the country until the government sits up.

They also parried the 'politically motivated' tag placed on them by the government for complaining about constant delays in the payment of subsidies.

Cecilia Kwakye Coffie, President of CHASS, made these observations at the 54th Annual Delegates' Conference in Sunyani, the Brong-Ahafo Region.

They said CHASS was politically motivated to go to town. That was very unfortunate and could be seen as an attempt to undermine the intelligence and the integrity of the entire community of heads of schools and should be treated with the contempt it deserves, she said.

We wish to put on record that we are committed to the creation of a conducive environment that allows for effective teaching and learning by our students and to prepare them for global citizenship. What is important is the way forward. How do we address the issue of sustainability of funding SHS without interfering with normal academic work and without stress? Ms Kwakye Coffie wondered.

According to CHASS, the huge debts incurred due to the government's inability to pay subsidies had adversely affected smooth running of the schools and sometimes disrupted the academic calendar.



GH29 Subsidy

She said CHASS was of the opinion that if the government is not ready for the subsidy, it should be scrapped so that the funding could be directed at less-privileged students.

It is interesting to note that many of the children who gain admission into public SHS come through the private basic schools where fees for these students were much higher than the boarding fees in the public SHS.

The difference between the fees paid by parents and the subsidy paid by government is just about less than GH30 on the average. The question is if parents are able to pay their full fees, why can't they pay the GH29 difference so that the annual struggle over payment of subsidies would be laid to rest once and for all? Subsidies therefore, for such students, would be channeled towards the payment of full fees for less-endowed children, Ms Kwakye Coffie proposed.

She said currently, the government has not been able to pay for the Absolved fee and Feeding Grants for the second and third terms and predicted that the situation would be worse in the next academic year.

We want to remind our authorities that in future such figures should get to parents in good time before schools re-open so that they can plan for the children's school fees, she added.

By William Yaw Owusu
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! (2) This Constitution shall be the supreme law of Ghana and any other law found to be inconsistent with any provision of this Constitution shall, to the extent of the inconsistency, be void.

Chapter One of the Ghanaian Constitution



The illegal use of the frightening enormous powers of the President under the 1992 Republican Constitution while conniving and condoning with the Council of State as witnessed in the Montie 3 episode has cast into right perspective the wanton waste occasioned by the financial and economic implication of the 1992 Republican Constitution which must be addressed forthwith. To continue to spend an unspecified huge amount of state resources on a group of people who meet in a secretive conclave style setting with no accountability to the people supposedly offering advice to a president whose mind is already made up on important state matters is a height of immeasurable ridiculous tomfoolery which should no longer be countenanced. The Montie 3 were freed under a law which does not have existence or application under the Constitution. It is a typical situation which if sound judgment had not prevailed could have caused a constitutional crisis leading to the dismantling of our democratic dispensation all under the watchful and active participation of a Council of State. It should be necessary to subject the article which created the Council of State to scrutiny.



Article 91 of the Constitution which establishes the Council of State states as follows:



(1) The Council of State shall consider and advise the President or any other authority in respect of any appointment which is required by this Constitution or any other law to be made in accordance with the advice of, or in consultation with the Council of State.

(2) The advice referred to in clause (1) of this article shall be given not later than thirty days after the receipt of the request from the president or other authority.

(3) The Council of State may, upon request or on its own initiative consider and make recommendations on any matter considered or dealt with by the President, a Minister of State, Parliament or other authority established by this Constitution except that the President, Minister of State, Parliament or other authority shall not be required to act in accordance with any recommendations made by the Council of State under this clause.

(4) The Council of State shall perform such other functions as may be assigned to it by this Constitution or any other law not inconsistent with this Constitution

The composition of the Council of State makes interesting reading. The Council of State consists of 25 members, eleven of whom are appointed by the President. The President therefore has the opportunity to appoint eleven sound, sane, wise, healthy looking professionals and academicians of highest intellect and repute in various fields of human endavours to form part of the Council of State. But in reality what do we see. Many of the President's nominees are disused extra time politicians who have antagonised their constituencies with vile language and obnoxious behaviours in the past. The general public knows where they are coming from and believes that they cannot offer any sane, independent, objective advice to a president who already acts quite clearly in politically partisan manner. Worse still, the President is not bound to act on the advice of the Council of State and this is ominous since all proceedings of the Council of State are considered secret. Thus, the public has no way of judging the competencies of the Council of State, the quality of advice it offers and the respect given to it by the President.

The superfluous nature of the Council of State becomes obvious when it is linked to the constitutional provision on the prerogative of the President to make appointments onto many state bodies and in particular the powers of the President to appoint ministers. One important area where the privilege to make appointments has always been grossly abused is that of the appointments of ministers and deputy ministers. Article 76, clause 1 states:

There shall be a Cabinet which shall consist of the President, the Vice President and not less than ten and not more than nineteen Ministers of State. Article 78 expects that majority of the Ministers of State shall be appointed from among members of Parliament. Clause 2 of the article also states: The President shall appoint such number of Ministers of State as may be necessary for the efficient running of the State.

In our current dispensation what it means is that a person of dubious and idiotic credentials of a President with Parliament at his beckon can appoint 270 Ministers of State with 270 of them consisting of all the members of Parliament while designating 19 of them as Cabinet Ministers and with his Vice President designated as the 271st. Minister of State.



If the Constitution allows the President to appointment 19 cabinet ministers, an unspecified number of non-cabinet ministers, regional ministers for each region plus undefined number of deputy ministers, numerous district chief executives, should the President be allowed to spend state money to appoint additional citizens to advise him on any other issue, such non-binding advice, when such advice on any issue could be sought from any quarters by the President, even ex-gratis?



Should the Council of State be maintained at all, and if so, should it be in its present form or in a modified form? Should the mode of appointing the members be changed or maintained? If we are to maintain it, how do we shelter it from presidential abuse and ridicule and partisan politics and especially shield the members from performing executive functions on behalf of the President as happened under Jerry John Rawlings NDC administration era? If the Council of State is to maintain its dignity and independence, should the President have a hand in the appointment of its members? Is it not likely that by allowing the President a substantial leeway in the appointment of the members, the President will appoint people of like minds like him and therefore defeating the purpose of receiving sound, objective and independence advice? We must keep on making reference to our ability to minimize the operational cost of our democracy as the success of our democratic dispensation shall to a large extent depend upon our ability to institute cost cutting and cost saving measures.

In my humble view, the Council of State is one of the waste pipe institutions established by the 1992 Republican Constitution which acts a complete drain on the limited resources of the nation. It serves no democratic purpose and must be scrapped at the next available opportunity. The collective acts of omission and commission of the Council of State in the affairs of the Muntie 3 have consolidated its status as a complete waste pipe with no relevance to our democratic dispensation. It must be scrapped now!



This discussion cannot end without looking at the misuse of the President's power to make appointments. While the President has the power to appoint persons onto other constitutional bodies like the National Security Council and the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC) among others, the number of persons and the mode of appointment must be reviewed. In the past such an important national institution like the NDPC, as an example, has been made the national Siberian territory for discarded politicians and technocrats who had lost favour with the establishment but yet needed to be fed, clothed and wheeled at the expense of the state. While an important constitutional body like the NDPC which should be the engine room of the nation's planning culture and should be resourced and given all the necessary help it deserves, it is currently treated like a scarecrow while an impotent body like the Council of State is made to ride in full glory. A fool has said in his heart there is no God.

By

KWAME GYASI

E-mail: [email protected]
The U.S. on Tuesday signaled it could reconsider deploying a Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense battery in South Korea if North Korea abandons its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs.

Asked under what circumstances the U.S. would scrap the deployment, Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes said, "In terms of what could lead us to change our minds, North Korea could abandon its ballistic missile program and nuclear programs."

He was speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the ASEAN Summit in Laos, where he was accompanying U.S. President Barack Obama.

Until recently Washington only stressed that the THAAD deployment is aimed at dealing with threats from the North and has nothing to do with China, but did not explicitly identify it as a bargaining chip.

Rhodes' remarks seem aimed at finding a breakthrough in tensions with Beijing over the planned deployment and indirectly forcing the North back to the negotiating table.

Rhodes said even if China came fully on board with sanctions against the North, that alone "would not lead to a reconsideration of THAAD."

"A change of behavior from North Korea is the thing that could change that calculus, but we have not yet seen any indication, given that they just recently launched another ballistic missile," he added.


Employment & Labour Relations Minister, Haruna Iddrisu, says meeting the demands of striking government pharmacists is almost impossible, explaining that there is no budget to support their demands.

According to him, government did not make provisions for market premiums for the agitating pharmacists in the 2016 budget.

There is little that can be done because it was not budgeted for in the 2016 budget, therefore, government is unable to accede to their request, Haruna Iddrisu said at a press conference Wednesday.

GHOSPA, on Monday, declared an indefinite strike in protest of what they call the failure of the National Labour Commission (NLC) and the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission (FWSC) to address discrepancies in their market premium payment.

But, the Labour minister believes the strike will only discomfort patients and, has, therefore, urged the pharmacists to rescind their decision.

He said though there is no budget provision, government is committed to finding a solution to the issue.

Haruna Iddrisu revealed a committee formed to look into the issue had completed its work and recommendations forwarded to the Grievances Committee for the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission to take the necessary action.

The NLC had argued that the strike was inimical to the interest of the ordinary Ghanaian and has since dragged GHOSPA to court.

No Retreat

But, GHOSPA said it will continue its strike over the market premiums until there is a clear commitment by government to resolve their grievances.

General Secretary of GHOSPA, Emmanuel Owusu Owiafe, told Citi FM, As it stands now, if there is no clear unambiguous commitment to resolving this issue, we will be unable to go back to work.

GHOSPA started its indefinite strike on Monday to push for changes to their market premiums and said it was forced to resort to this action after the breakdown of negotiations with government, spanning six years, over its grade structure and placement in public health facilities.

The pharmacists have lamented discrepancies in its interim market premiums, claiming that the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission placed pharmacists working in university hospitals on a premium of 1.14, whilst the pharmacists working in the Ghana Health Service are on a premium of 0.58.

Mr Owiafe lamented that this single spine salary structure has made less of us (public sector pharmacist) and that we are not earning what our scores entitle us to. The level of faith we have now is a little bit reduced because not even intervention from the chief of staff and the committee he set up was implemented and the National Labour Commission (NLC) was not able to enforce its own ruling by the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission.

NLC Suit

Two days into the GHOSPA strike, NLC filed a suit at the Labour Division of the High Court, seeking to compel the striking pharmacists to call off their strike.

Though the NLC did not describe this strike as illegal, it has said GHOSPA's actions were not in the interest of potential patrons, hence its decision to resort to the law courts.
THE UNITED States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Ghana Health Service (GHS) and the Catholic Relief Services (CRS) have shared new strategies and tools needed to help improve maternal and child health in Ghana.

This was after the CRS and GHS, with funding from USAID, had successfully partnered to implement the four-year 'Encouraging Positive Practices for Improving Child Survival (EPPICS) Project' in the East Mamprusi District of the Northern Region.

The project was reported to have assisted the three organisations in contributing significantly to the improvement of service delivery and overcoming harmful cultural practices that serve as barriers to skilled healthcare for maternal, newborn, child health and nutrition services in the district.

The eight high impact strategies were used by CRS, GHS, with additional support from the University of Development Studies (UDS) and the beneficiary communities, to improve maternal and child health in the East Mamprusi District.

They included, among others, 'Council of Champions' used to engage custodians of tradition to act as change agents, repositioning of traditional birth attendants as link providers to health facilities, and use of modified motor tricycles rural ambulances.

During the project timeframe from October 2011 through September 2015, East Mamprusi reportedly advanced from being worst-performing district in the Northern Region in 2010 to the best-performing district overall in 2014 and the best-performing district for Maternal Child Health (MCH) indicators in 2015.

At project start, maternal and infant mortality and morbidity was high in East Mamprusi District with 240 rural communities, largely due to limited physical access to health facilities and traditional practices that put mothers and newborns at risk, DAILY GUIDE gathered.

Institutional maternal mortality reduced 131 percent from 295 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2011 to 81 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2015 due to the EPPICS project.

Skilled assisted deliveries in the district accordingly increased from 43 percent at baseline to 76 percent at end line.

The EPPICS project, this paper understands, served a total of 58,634 beneficiaries in the district, including 30,713 women of reproductive age and 27,921 children under five years of age.

It also assisted an additional 79, 616 beneficiaries indirectly through assistance to family members and activities that helped to remove cultural barriers to positive health behaviours by modifying harmful practices, rituals, attitudes and beliefs.

Speaking at the dissemination workshop for the EPPICS project on Thursday at the Mensvick Hotel in Accra, Ghana Country Representative of CRS, Kris Ozar, explained that communities and front line health workers have incredible potential to improve health and well-being.

The workshop was organised by Newmark Group Limited under the theme: 'Sustainable Health Systems to Operationalise the CHPS Initiative in Ghana and Achieve the Health Sustainable Development Goals: Lessons and Tools from the Encouraging Positive Practices for Improving Child Survival (EPPICS) Project'.

It brought together key stakeholders in the health sector, academia and international agencies.

According to the CRS representative, In partnering with Ghana Health Service and East Mamprusi community leaders, stakeholders were equipped with knowledge and tools to serve as agents for change in their own communities, with excellent results.

He said a total $1.8 million was spent on the project during the period under review, announcing that CRS would in the near future invest $7 million in the EPPICS project.

That, he said, would help assist the partners in expanding the project to six districts, three each in the Northern and Upper East regions.

He was hopeful that other stakeholders would find strategies used in the EPPICS useful for their own works.

Director of Health, Population and Nutrition, USAID Ghana, Akua Kwateng-Addo, observed that USAID would continue to support increased access to quality health services, increase availability of community-based health resources, strengthen health systems and improve governance and accountability in the health sector.

Health Program Manager, CRS, Mohammed Ali, in an interview with the media urged non-governmental organisations in the sector to engage communities in which they operate to ensure their programmes succeed.

BY Melvin Tarlue
Olam Ghana, a leading supply chain manager of agric products, has over the last three-four years provided farmers with 104, 000 hybrid cocoa seedlings.

This year, the company has supplied almost 30,000 hybrid seedlings to improve yields of cocoa farmers, and sold 27, 000 metric tonnes of certified beans over the last three-four years.

Eric Asare Botwe, General Manager of Olam's cocoa Licensed Buying Company (LBC) business, who disclosed this at this year's cocoa mangers conference in Accra, said Olam has paid a cumulative amount of GH6,500,000 as premium to hardworking farmers over the last four years.

He said this season's premiums of GH4,000,000 would be distributed to some 10,000 farmers across the country, each of whom would receive GH15 as bonus on each bag of cocoa sold to the company.

Mr Asare Botwe said, Olam believes that as we support smallholder farmers to access group financing for production, purchasing and supporting them with the necessary inputs, fertilizer and seeds, it would lead to increase in productivity and improvement in soil, water and forest management.

He said the company is committed to putting in place the right measures to ensure an increase in production of premium cocoa, adding that it would work to improve the lives of all farmers in Olam's operational areas.

Sampson Ahi, Deputy Minister for Water Resources, Works and Housing, in his remarks, commended Olam for its good work in the cocoa sector, appealing to its management to institute a scholarship scheme to give a helping hand to vulnerable farmers.

He added that a farmer-based insurance scheme should also be considered for implementation.

Olam has been in the cocoa business for some time now. In order to have a legitimacy and full acceptance by their stakeholders, it's imperative that the company takes the issues of corporate social reasonability very seriously. I know you are doing your best but there is a lot of room for improvement, Mr Ahi said.

By Cephas Larbi

[email protected]
09.09.2016 LISTEN

"... Simply, they used just Ghc19,346,845 to take $6 billion-plus from Ghana.

...We will now call it the Mahama Oil Hybrid System (MOHS) for Ghana, $6 billion-plus far, far away from good economic health for Kwame Nkrumah's Ghana...", (Prof Lungu, 4 Sep 16).

On this Labor Day, and on the occasion of the publication, by Prof Lungu, of the 111th article on ModernGhana , we are proud to present a re-statement of our thesis from that same 111th article on ModernGhana.Com!

Would Dr. Kwame Nkrumah kowtow to that predatory, oil racket of a contract (Ghana Hybrid System so-called) that has thus far siphoned over $6 billion from very hungry and desperate mouths and brains in Ghana?

Nope!

Never!

We will now call it the Mahama Ghana Oil Hybrid System (MOHS), for Ghana, $6 billion far away from good economic health for Ghana.

It is predatory and fraudulent.

But, they all have had the facts and the data!

But they've fooled many of the people, even so-called scholars and intellectuals with Masters and Ph.Ds, even agencies with million-cedi budgets, that it is a very complex and technical area that is reserved to the crooks in Mahama's government and the bureaucracy

Hogwash!

So, they still are mostly a sad lot who never bothered to ask Mr. Mahama the four (4) important, but rather simple questions about Ghana's Oil Revenues in a coherent, logical, objective fashion:

(1) How much is Ghana receiving for all that oil?

(2) How much is KOSMOS and Tullow (and the Oil companies and lobby) taking?

(3) Is Kwame Nkrumah's Ghana receiving its Fair-Share Oil Revenues?

(4) Why and how?

And so, with Ghc2,976,060.00 of DFID money in his ACEP budget, we find Amin Adam of ACEP on his knees begging Mr. Mahama to sign the fraudulent predatory oil bill...

With Ghc2,828,000.00 of DFID money in their budgets, we find PIAC/NRGI have zero interest asking the 4 simple questions of Mr. Mahama and his NDC administration...

With Ghc9,490,685 of DFID Revenue Management money in their budget, we find Ghana Petroleum Commission has no time, and ZERO interest, asking the 4 simple questions of Mr. Mahama and his NDC administration.

Still further, with Ghc4,052,100.00 of DFID money in their budget, the ethically-challenged and severely compromised Ministry of Petroleum and their deputy, Damongo Mutawakilu, are also on their knees begging Mr. Mahama to sign that same fraudulent and predatory oil bill!

It all adds up!

It all adds up to the Ghc19,346,845 UK-sponsored DFID Revenue Management Trojan Horse.

Simply, they used just Ghc19,346,845 to take $6 billion-plus, from Ghana.

The plunder and predatory selling of Ghana's Oil resources will continue until they tell Ghanaians:

Free at Last!

Free at Last!

Free at Last!

Kwame Nkrumah's Ghana now receives its Fair-Share Oil Revenues!

Don't give up until Fair-Trade Oil Share is a reality for Kwame Nkrumah's Ghana!

SOURCE:

Prof Lungu. Ghana Oil Revenue Hall Of Infamy Under John Mahama!

http://www.modernghana.com/news/717321/ghana-oil-revenue-hall-of-infamy-under-john-mahama.html , 5 September, 2016

SUBJ: Ghana Oil Revenue Hall Of Infamy Under Mahama -- Special For ModernGhana!

Twitter: https://twitter.com/professorlungu

Support Fair-Trade Oil Share Ghana (FTOS-Gh) Campaign/Petition:

https://www.change.org/p/ghana-fair-trade-oil-share-psa-campaign-ftos-gh-psa/

Brought to you courtesy www.GhanaHero.com5 September, 2016.
Accra, GHANA The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) presented tablets and other information and technology (IT) equipment to the Statistics, Research and Information Directorate (SRID) of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA). The electronic equipment and software were donated to enhance the collection of agricultural statistics. The IT equipment and data collection system will minimize human error in agriculture data collection and analysis, as well as improve overall data quality and credibility. USAID Mission Director, Andrew Karas, handed over the IT equipment to Deputy Minister of Food and Agriculture, Honorable Dr. Ahmed Yakubu Alhassan.

Among the equipment donated were 3G tablets fitted with global positioning system (GPS), which will help SRID produce credible data and information to support appropriate and effective policy analysis, decision-making and planning. In Ghana, policymakers often lack quality data, as well as the capacity to analyze and communicate findings. Funded by USAID, the Agriculture Policy Support Project (APSP) assisted SRID to design, develop and implement a Computer-Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI) data collection system in support of the Ghana Agriculture Production and Market Price Surveys.

CAPI provides a holistic approach for quality agriculture data collection including geographical information system plotting, analysis and management. The donated equipment will allow SRID to move from collecting data using a pencil and paper, to real-time mobile data collection using the CAPI system on 3G tablets to conduct Ghanas annual Agricultural Production Survey and Market Price Survey.

APSP, as part of Feed the Future, the U.S. governments hunger and food security initiative, will support SRID with its data collection to ensure data quality and for policy-making purposes. Additionally through APSP, SRID staff and district-level officers are receiving training on the CAPI system. The development of the CAPI system begun in June 2015 and the application, system implementation, monitoring and gradual transfer to SRID will be completed by September 2016.

About APSP

The Agriculture Policy Support Project (APSP) is a five-year Feed the Future project, with the goal to improve the food security-enabling environment for private sector investment. The aim is to increase the capacity of the Government of Ghana, the private sector and civil society organizations to implement evidence-based policies, conduct research and advocacy and perform rigorous monitoring and evaluation of agriculture programs implemented under the Medium Term Agriculture Sector Investment Plan.

About Feed the Future:

Feed the Future is the U.S. governments global hunger and food security initiative. With a focus on smallholder farmers, particularly women, Feed the Future supports partner countries in developing their agriculture sectors to spur economic growth and trade that increase incomes and reduce hunger, poverty, and undernutrition. For more information, visit www.feedthefuture.gov.
09.09.2016 LISTEN

I may sound not palatable to earring of those reading these frustrated but painful wording that elders, opinion leaders and of course the religious communities has failed massively in addressing since the Nation Liberia returns to civility from her deadly fourteen years pass that saw no victors but victims!

The Nation (Liberia) that once proud herself the beacon of hope for thousands of African and other foreign nationals from around the globe is yet to come up to pile with those she claimed to nurture leading to their independence!

History has recorded that, almost all of the Nations of the World once in their struggles for independence suffer tribal conflicts in difference forms or manner so was Liberia, but they overcame these anomalies in putting Countries first!

Disappointingly, in the early seventies when those who considered themselves progressive then send on studies abroad with tax payers monies precisely the United States of America under disguise came with the slogan IN THE CAUSE OF THE PEOPLE THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES indicated that the government of the day were insensitive to the plights of the Liberian people!

My information is that they were invited by the then Tolbert regime to come over to Liberia to see for themselves what were been speculated among the Liberians students and residents in the diasporas for a facts finding mission regarding the insensitivities of the Liberian people plights!

These progressives  accordingly whose later served in these various regimes from the Tolbert to the presence administration after having the opportunities to served and knowing what power look like automatically change the slogan from In The Cause Of The People The Struggle Continues I can make a good presidency

Evidence, to this was when Dr. Henry Boima Fahnbulleh was once upon the time hosted by the late Fanta Solumani Mamade Diakite then of Truth FM 96.1 on the Truth Breakfast show then on Ashmun in Monrovia clearly stated and I no absolute progressive in Liberia as compared to what on folded in Southern Africa with the African National Congress!

The Security advisor to the President of the Republic of Liberia Dr. Fahnbulleh by further that those who considering themselves as progressive in Liberia were people who only had their personals eagles and their only objective were to be president and nothing else!

He went on to say that these gentlemen when tested during the despotic regime of the late Master Sergeant Samuel K. Doe who knew nothing of multi-party democracy they (Progressives) misled the Master sergeant and the history are there for Liberians and the World to read!

When Liberians woke up to the realities of what true democracy meant after closed to hundred plus years under one party system under the regime of the True Wing party despite lies told to the People of Liberia by these progressive that they were in their interests it was catastrophe as the damages has already been done!

All along in the Liberian governance system, from its foundation vindictiveness is has had her fair share in the lives of the suffering massive when each given regime felt not obligated to continue from the previous regime in tern of her developmental goals but choose to ostracize former officials and development projects under taken by the regime they succeeded!

More disappointingly, indiscipline has find her way into top echelons of the governance systems especially within the Legislative and Executive branches wherein some members of these two distinct branches trade insults for the lease ever since I got to follow the activities of the Liberian government functions!

Precisely, I recalled when some members of the lower house traded insults and almost got into face fight just on policies difference as everyone felt their ideologies were better as such their colleagues must agree or else said colleagues branded names! For the sake of argument some political pundits will say this is not unique to Liberia as other civilized parliaments around the World also engages in seminar words of words and even face fights.

Again coming from an African tradition back ground especially the house of Representatives has and continues to be the symbol of dignity and respect as been the first branch of government where the Peoples representatives sit to do their business has been reduce to public disrepute is never heard of since my existence as a Liberian!

I recalled though young at the time in the early seventies when my late father Hon. David Z, Wandah served in the House of Representatives as the first Representative of the people of Zoe-gah district of Nimba County never did I hear even as rumor that they had an disagreement that led to heated argument or face fight and the public got to hear of it!

So frustratingly, I see some members of the Legislative using insulting languages on the Chief Executive of the Republic with the lack of understanding that they all serve just one government and one people whore the People of Liberia their employer!

Lets just retrospect a little, the 1980 so-called coup that brought Master Sergeant Doe to power those brutally killed were not only those of the Executive and spare the live of those from the Legislative, but they soldiers at that time killed just all who were working with the Tolbert government! Then came the 1990s rebellion, which degenerated into tribal war that too saw thousands of Liberians killed to as low as the janitors working in government offices just the fact that they were associated with the government of the late Samuel K. Doe!

Notwithstanding, some members of the Executive feel that they are only answerable to the Presidency and no one else as such dont even respect other officials of the Legislative in the very government that brought them all to these serving positions!

In many instances, I read on newspapers pages and saw on local television some officials of the Executive branch openly insulting some of the House of Representatives because they says that this or that Representative insulted the Presidency so I as appointee of the Presidency must defend the Presidency!

Due to these anomalies the developmental goals of this Nation come to a halt because people from either side of the government feel that they represents difference group of Liberians rather than the Republic of Liberia whose citizens stood in the rains and blazing sun to cast their votes that give them these opportunities to serve!

Lets not forget the realities, though they all came from difference political persuasion but yet for a single goal which is to serve Mama Liberia because they all told voters that the previous regime was not good enough in their stewardship! As far as developments are concern it know no political party or individual or group of individuals but a regime that promised to built on what their predecessor left undone and in making sure that the Peoples welfares are met!

Liberians have undoubted trust and confidence, in those of you serving in positions of trust to managing their affairs from all branches of governance and must see themselves as servants of the People with the highest degrees of respect to them and keep those standards that characterized these offices that they occupied prior to their accession currently!

I will want all of those elected officials of government to know that you asked the People of Liberia for their mandate to lead them to a noble destination in meeting their demands that other regimes failed on and absolute nothing else! Because of the important this attached to them Liberians that is why they make sure that you elected and appointed officials has all it requires for your comforts including lucrative salaries!

Lets all learn to keep sanity in these official offices that was once sacred to the founding fathers of this great Nation and put a complete halt to these vindictive and indiscipline activities that has shifted our developmental goals to bottom of the ladders of progress!

Remember the late African state men Nelson Mandela of South Africa once stated that NO ONE IS BORN HATING ANOTHER PERSON BECAUSE OF THE COLOUR OF HIS SKIN, OR HIS BACKGROUND OR HIS RELIGION. PEOPLE LEARN TO HATE,THEY CAN BE TAUGHT TO LOVE,FOR LOVE COMES MORE NATURALLY TO THE HUMAN HEART THAN ITS OPPOSITE!

Joe Noutoua Wandah is a Liberian broadcast journalist and writer and can be reach @ +231886224134/+231886224134 or E-mail [email protected]
The Writer

09.09.2016 LISTEN

When I arrived at Harvard in 2013 for my Master of Laws Degree (LL.M.), I took the further step of applying for the Corporate Law, Finance & Governance Concentration. Together with ten others, I got in. I was bent on making the best of my time at this hallowed institution. I cross-registered at the Harvard Business School to retrofit my intellectual wiring to suit the world of business.

Some of my friends, who like me were not quantitatively endowed, steered clear of courses such as Analytical Methods for Lawyers and Business Strategy for Lawyers. I took the former course in the semester in which Professor Kathryn Spier, an economist with a background in Mathematics, taught it.

As she announced on the first day of class, she was not a lawyer so quite predictably everything hinged on my worst fears  quantitative methods.

I had a torrid time in her class. My previous studies had not prepared me for that aspect of legal studies. With the selfless help of Michael Waks (the teaching assistant Professor Spier assigned to me) and my proclivity to punch above my weight, I earned a handshake from the inimitable Professor Spier at the end of the LL.M. programme.

As a professional law student in Ghana, I had studied the law of taxation (I actually made a grade A and was adjudged the best student in the law of taxation) but admittedly, there was no way I could have analyzed or competently discussed the liquidity, solvency, managerial efficiency, profitability, earnings per share or price-earnings ratios of any business, at the end of the course, let alone during it.

Of course I studied the Law of Contract in Ghana but I did not exactly study Contracting. By that, I mean that I was guided through many common law principles, statutes and case law.

However, the core guiding principles for entering into a contract in the first place; the need for valuation, complementarities, the allocation of risk, the position of the borrower and the lender, enlarging the contractual pie, incentive issues, uncertainty and risk-bearing, the issues to consider in performance-based contracts, negotiation and such key concepts as the moral hazard problem and adverse selection did not find a place in the curriculum.

Studying Company Law (Corporations) in Ghana, concepts such as the agency problem and the stakeholder versus shareholder primacy debate were never presented to us.

Neither did the free-rider problem, the theory of the firm, the time value of money, the efficient market hypothesis, the prisoners dilemma, game theory, decision analysis, risk and return and diversification ever come up in any identifiable shape or form.

Similarly, there was never the opportunity to study International Commercial Arbitration, Corporate Governance, Mergers and Acquisitions and Corporate Finance, to name a few.

My legal training in Ghana did not provide me with a framework of analysis with respect to key concepts in economics. Neither did it teach me the fundamentals of statistics nor multivariate statistics with its scatterplots and regression analysis.

In advising businesses in Ghana, quite unlike the report of my colleagues in the West, business executives tend not to expect me to have the foggiest understanding of matters which they consider to be the preserve of economists, accountants and graduates of business school.

Recently, at a meeting with a CEO, he did not bother to ask me whether or not I could interpret a set of financial statements.

He proceeded to explain really basic accounting principles to me as I listened in silence.

Quite satisfied that he had laid enough of a foundation for our ensuing discussion, he sought my opinion on a thing or two. Shortly, he noticed to his chagrin that I was not the ignoramus that he had imagined.

Some months earlier whilst having lunch with another CEO, he expressed quite a bit of frustration that at the table of complex transactions, he would almost always find himself and his team having to explain basic business concepts to the lawyers present.

When a CEO who graduated from a foreign business school asked me for a likelihood of success analysis of a commercial case on appeal, he was totally surprised and excited to receive an opinion based on decision analysis. It connected with him in a manner that makes him come back for repeat business.

Oh and on radio the other day, whilst I was in the process of making a presentation on the Income Tax Act, 2015 (Act 896), some listeners sent messages around asking that I be told to leave the subject for the experts seeing as, to them, I was only a lawyer. Yes, they had a pigeonhole view of who a lawyer is.

Around the world, lawyers are serving in key executive and non-executive business positions (including holding the position of CEO and/or board chairman). They advise investors on capital market transactions, insurance, banking, real estate, media, sport, aviation etc. They assess the viability of business ventures (including mergers and acquisitions) and advice clients on their tax and financial obligations and decisions.

They also apply analytical methods to commercial and non-commercial ligation and arbitration. When they serve on the boards of businesses they tailor-guide critical steps to business success.

To enable products of Ghanas legal education and training to do all of these successfully, the curricular and programmes must go beyond the slavish regurgitation of legal provisions and cases geared towards the drafting of agreements and making arguments based on templates and dogma. The analytical methods enumerated in this essay must be woven into the fabric of our legal education, at a minimum, in practical introductory form, right now!

The writer is a corporate lawyer with Clegg & Everett, a business law firm and the host of the Morning Starr on Starr 103.5 FM
Bawku (U/E), Sept. 9, GNA - The Bawku Police Command has begun providing a 24 hour police security escort to traders and travelers from Bawku to the Burkina Faso border.

This measure comes as a result of frequent robbery of traders and travelers who come from Burkina Faso to Bawku to trade and transact other socio-economic activities.

Deputy Superintendant of Police (DSP) Benjamin Ofori Acquah, Crime Officer for the Bawku Police Divisional Command, said this in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) at Bawku.

DSP Acquah said on September 05 at about 13:00 hrs, seven complainants, all Burkinabe citizens were leaving Bawku to Burkina Faso after selling their livestock.

He said on reaching the forest reserve at Kupelgu, a community near Bawku, three suspected armed robbers, Nolga Shilge aka Dongande, Ali Mumuni aka Akutu and Haruna Ahmed, attacked them with an AK47 assault rifle, a sword and a knife.

DSP Acquah said the robbers took away GHa1,780.00 and 59,400 CFA from three of the victims but while in the process some farmers on their farms saw them and raised an alarm and sensing danger the robbers fled the scene amidst the firing of gun shots.

He said the police upon getting a tip-off pursued the robbers and arrested Nolga Shilge and retrieved a jack knife, a sword and an amount of 3,270 CFA from him.

DSP Acquah said during police interrogation, the suspect, who has since been remanded into prison custody awaiting trial, mentioned the other two as his accomplices.

He urged traders and travelers to move in groups as that could serve as a source of security and seek for police escort along their journey.

GNA

By Jerry Azanduna, GNA
By Albert Futukpor, GNA

Tamale, Sept. 9, GNA - Dr Edward Mahama, Presidential Nominee of the People's National Convention (PNC) has promised to implement appropriate initiatives to make the business environment meaningful to all.

He pledged to ensure the provision of stable electric power, enactment of favourable laws to make businesses grow and create employment for the people.

Dr Mahama said this when he addressed the extraordinary congress of the Association of Small Scale Industries (ASSI) in Tamale.

The congress, amongst others, elected new executives to steer the affairs of ASSI.

Dr Mahama said the PNC would build the capacity of local producers to produce goods that would meet international standards to boost both domestic and export trade as part of efforts to protect local industries.

He said PNC would lead farmers to reduce the rice import bill by half by increasing local production of rice whiles enticing the youth to go into agriculture.

Mr Lukman Abdul-Rahim, Executive Director of National Board for Small Scale Industries (NBSSI), said the NBSSI would continue to articulate the concerns of ASSI when it came to policy formulation.

Mr Abdul-Rahim urged members of ASSI to visit Business Advisory Centres at district assemblies across the country to access opportunities created by the government some of which include skills training, matching grants and credit schemes.

The new executives of ASSI, chaired by Mr Saeed Moomen, were sworn into office.

GNA
Bolga (U/R), Sept. 9, GNA - Vice President Kwesi Amissah-Arthur has called on the Upper East Regional Campaign Task Force to resolve existing conflicts that arose during National Democratic Congress's parliamentary primaries.

He said there is the need for the Upper East NDC to have a united front to enable the party win massively in the December polls.

Vice President Amissah-Arthur said this when he inaugurated a fifteen member Upper East Regional NDC Campaign Task Force at Bolga.

The Task Force which is Co-ordinated by Mr Dominic Azumah, Member of Parliament (MP) for Garu Tempane, was selected to represent all the interests in the Region.

Vice President Amissah-Arthur called on the Campaign Task Force to ensure maximum turnout and to garner votes for President John Dramani Mahama and each of the fifteen parliamentary candidates in the December 7, elections.

Mr Dominic Azumah pledged his team's goal to garner 80 percent of the votes in the region for President John Mahama.

He said the region has benefited a lot in terms of infrastructural development from the NDC government.

He said some of the projects included the extension of electricity to 500 communities, building of Community Day Schools, rehabilitation of water and irrigation schemes, building of the Garu Tempane District Hospital and the construction of the Bolga-Bawku road among others.

Mr Azumah also appealed to the fifteen NDC parliamentary candidates to humble themselves in their dealings with the constituents.

Later, Vice President Amissah-Arthur and his team paid a courtesy call on Naba Johnson Awuni, Chief of Yorogo and Acting President of the Bolgatanta Traditional Council.

He thanked the Bolgatanta Traditional Council for maintaining the prevailing peace in the area.

Naba Johnson Awuni commended government for the various development projects in the area and called on the leaders of the various political parties and their followers to ensure that the peace of the country is maintained.

Vice President Amissah-Arthur and his team also made separate calls on the Chiefs of Sokute and Nangode all in the Nabdam Constituency as well as the Chief of Zuarungu in the Bolga East Constituency.

Later in the evening, Vice President Amissah-Arthur and his team also interacted with students from Bolga and Zuarungu Nursing Training Colleges to address challenges facing the two institutions.

He urged the students not look at the issues in terms of what they would benefit today but the plans of the government to ensure secured employment for their future.

GNA
North Korea hid its launchers in tunnels before firing three ballistic missiles on Monday to avoid the prying eyes of South Korean and U.S. intelligence agencies.

"Analysis of North Korean video footage revealed a tunnel just behind the mobile launchers that fired the three missiles," an intelligence source here said. "We're closely analyzing the data, because the tunnels could be used to conceal mobile missile launchers from South Korean and U.S. monitoring."

There are in fact two arched tunnels behind the three mobile launchers shown in the North Korean video footage. The North was probably hiding them in the tunnels and exposing them only for perhaps 30 minutes to an hour at a time to prep them for launch.

Spies were completely blindsided when the North launched the missiles on Monday.

Seoul has been working on its own missile defense that would destroy North Korean nuclear missile within 30 minutes of launch, but that is predicated on anticipating the launch. North Korea is believed to have built at least 18 tunnels around Pyongyang and Kaesong to hide mobile missile launchers.


By Hafsa Obeng, GNA

Accra, Sept. 9, GNA - An electrician, Shaibu Annan, was on Thursday remanded by an Accra Circuit Court for robbing one Samsung and one Nokia mobile phones.

Shaibu was said to have conspired with one Moro now at large and robbed the phones worth GHa550.00, belonging to one Felix Narh.

He pleaded not guilty to the charges but was remanded by the court to reappear on September 23, for trial.

Prosecuting Police Chief Inspector, Kwabena Adu told the court that the complainant, Felix is Embossment operator and resides at Tweneboah, Odorkor, while Shaibu resides at Otaten.

He said on September 3, at about 12:30 hours, the complainant was returning from a church programme and on reaching a spot near Pentecost Church, Tweneboah, the accused together with his accomplice attacked him with a knife and ordered him to surrender all his belongings or else they would kill him.

The prosecution said the two then pounced on the complainant, subjected him to severe beatings and forcibly collected his two mobile phones from him.

They also searched his pocket but could not find any money.

Police Chief Inspector, Adu, said the complainant shouted for help after the two took to their heels and proceeded to the police station to lodge a formal complaint.

He told the court that on September 4, at about 20:30 hours, the complainant chanced on Shaibu at a spot close to the scene where they attacked him.

He raised the alarm and was supported by neighbours who succeeded in arresting him and sent him to the police station.

During investigations, Shaibu told the police that, he and his accomplice met the complainant on the night in question and that it was Moro who collected the phones from him.

GNA
09.09.2016 LISTEN

By Elsie Appiah-Osei, GNA

Accra, Sept. 9, GNA - The 2016 edition of Blue Sea Land, a holistic expo of the Mediterranean, Africa and Middle Eastern agro food clusters, has been launched with a call on the business and agro processing sectors to participate extensively.

Mr Alexander Dadzawa, the Head of Marketing and Promotion of the Ghana Export Promotion, who made the call said canned tuna, when exported from Ghana generates better income for the county and so the extensive participation by players in the aquaculture, horticulture and agriculture sectors in the expo would boost the economy of the country.

"Blue Sea Land, which is a blend of culture and traditions in a multi-cultural and multi-sectorial frame, will bring opportunities to attract more Italian people to the sector for more investment to be created," he said.

Mr Dadzawa said horticulture and agriculture being important sectors in the country, the players must register and take advantage of the event for Ghana and Italy.

In his address, Mr Wakefield Ackuaku, the Business Development Manager of Doulos Consult Limited, an event management and marketing firm, organisers of the flagship expo noted that from October 5- October 7, the fifth edition of Blue Sea Land would be held at Mazara Del Vallo in Italy.

He said the event, which would cover agro products and processing, fisheries, aquaculture, textiles, and garments would provide a platform for Ghanaian companies to showcase their products to the rest of the world where the standards and quality of Ghanaian products would be projected.

"The Expo will also strengthen the cooperation among the participating countries and promote economic, social, institutional and cultural integration among people through seminars, conferences, expo, business to business meetings and cultural events," he said.

Mr Ackuaku explained that Doulos Consult Limited would advertise the Blue Sea Land event by inviting interested Ghanaian companies and industries in the fish and agro cluster to attend and participate.

"Ghana Export Promotion Authority will however scrutinise and vet all the applications received and go on to recommend for selection companies and products that will be best set and maintain the standard Ghanaian products will want to set and preserve globally.

"Doulos Consult Limited will facilitate for these companies to attend and exhibit at the Blue Sea Land 2016 with companies footing their cost participation," he said.

The Business Development Manager of Doulos Consult Limited noted that it was the aim of the organisers to foster more economic collaboration between Ghanaians and Foreign businesses seeking partnerships, markets, funding and technology transfer to grow both the Ghanaian and World economy.

Dr Lorenzo Pinelli, the Deputy Ambassador of the Italian Embassy, said Blue Sea Land is a showcase that originates from the desire to aggregate Italian, Mediterranean, African and the Middle Eastern productive Districts of the agro-food and fishing sector.

Lauding organisers for the event, he said the expo would strengthen the cooperation among participating countries.

Mr Pinelli observed that in October 2015, a Memorandum of Understanding between the Ministry of Fisheries and Aquaculture Development and the Fishing Production District of Mazara Del Vallo in Italy was signed to strengthen the relationship between Ghana and Italy through the scientific and technological development of the fishing industry.

"The agreement was also intended to increase the contribution of fishing industry to Ghana's Gross Domestic Product," he said.

Mr Paolo De Vito, a Trade Promotion AttachA at the Italian Embsay, said trade relations between Ghana and Italy had always been excellent and with the participation of Ghanaian businessmen at this year's Blue Sea Land in Mazara Del Vallo, would further strengthen previous relations.

Blue Sea Land is an initiative of Fisheries, the Sicilian Region, Confindustria Sicily, Rotary International and ANCI Sicily under the patronage of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the of Economic Development and Ministry of Agriculture. GNA
Accra, Sept. 9, GNA - The Citizens Intelligence Ghana (CI Ghana) is launching its community intelligence gathering for door to door community collection of crime data, ahead of the December 7, general election.

The exercise is aimed at collaborating with the security services to prevent crime in targeted places such as schools, workplaces, markets and other public places.

Mr Alfred Mills, Co-ordinating Director of CI Ghana, told the Ghana News Agency in an interview in Accra on Friday that the body is an intelligence gathering organisation involving citizens in intelligence compilation to support the authorities in crime prevention.

It is also interested in acts that undermine public interest and national security.

'CI-Ghana thereby calls on the public to help in crime prevention, which is a responsibility of all citizens of Ghana,' Mr Mills said. GNA
By Kofi Mensah, GNA

Obuasi, Sept 09, GNA - The National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) has called for the political parties to show genuine commitment to work together to make the December polls, peaceful, clean and credible.

Mr. Arthur Wilson, Deputy Ashanti Regional Director of the Commission, said they should stop doing anything to suggest tacit endorsement of acts of misconduct by their supporters.

He was speaking at a day's workshop held in the gold mining town of Obuasi for political party youth activists.

On hand to participate, were representatives of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), New Patriotic Party (NPP), Progressive People's Party (PPP), National Democratic Party (NDP), Convention People's Party (CPP) and the Great Consolidated Popular Party (GCPP).

'Ensuring violent free elections, transparent and peaceful political environment before, during and after the election' was the theme chosen for the programme and it formed part of the stepped up engagement with the young people to talk them out of intolerance and violence.

Mr. Wilson condemned the situation, where some politicians hid behind the youth to intimidate and visit violence on their opponents.

That, he said, was bad, shameful and tasteless, adding that, it should not continue.

He advised the youth to refuse to do the bidding of any self-seeking politician in their desperate bid for power.

The Obuasi Municipal Chief Executive, Mr. Richard Ofori Agyeman Boadi, said it was important to deepen the conversation with the people to remove the tension, which had come to characterize election campaign in the country.

Everybody, he indicated, had a responsibility to ensure that the democratic progress, Ghana was making was sustained.

Mr. Thomas Biyimba, the Municipal Electoral Officer, expressed concern about the high number of rejected ballots seen in every election and invited the parties to focus on helping voters to properly thumbprint the ballot papers.

He underlined the resolve of the Electoral Commission (EC) to make the coming polls, free, fair and transparent.

GNA
By Kwabia Owusu-Mensah GNA

Kumasi, Sept 09, GNA - The Ashanti Regional Minister, Mr. John Alexander Ackon, has asked religious leaders to use their enormous influence with the people to assist all to step back from intolerance and trash-talking those who do not share their views, beliefs and values.

That, he said, was important to sustain the peace, especially, as the nation inched closer to the December polls.

The Minister, who was addressing the 12th biennial convention of the Full Gospel Business Men's Fellowship International (FGBMFI) - Ashanti, said they should aid everybody to put 'Ghana first' in everything they did.

'Be fruitful and multiply' was the theme chosen for the three-day event held in Kumasi.

Mr. Ackon said the expectation was they would play pivotal role to dial down tension and keep the society calm.

He reminded the Fellowship that as a Christian faith organization, its members had a responsibility to become good example to others in their communities by upholding the values of love, mercy and forgiveness.

'They possess an infinite capacity to be productive in their everyday endeavor - the products of their minds and hands have the potential to transcend the ordinary and touch the lives of other creations of God.'

Mr. Ackon applauded the members for the significant contribution they were making to business growth and the strong Christian values being brought into business operation.

He cited numerous projects they were undertaking in the areas of entrepreneurship development, micro-finance and capacity-building of business operators and other professionals and said these were commendable.

Dr. George Prah, National President of FGBMFI, said the goal of the Fellowship was 'to awaken the sleeping giant of evangelism and arouse God's consciousness at every opportunity'.

It had embarked on an integrity drive to aid its members to imbibe Godly principles and values, provide sound mentorship in integrity to the youth, to give leadership and secure the country's future, he added.

Nana S.G Addai, National Director, Ashanti, said the region through its 18 chapters was working in diverse ways to win souls for Christ.

GNA
Nigerian oil tycoon, Prince Arthur Eze who embodies so many qualities of what a Prince represents  he is strapping, independent, father, politician, philanthropist, dynamic and Chairman of Atlas Oranto Petroleum  was recently spotted at a wedding ceremony stoning a couple with bunches of money; showing what he knows how best to do  giving. There is a saying that philanthropy is a ministry and not a geographical term. Philanthropy flows from Prince Eze's loving heart, not actually from his rich bank accounts and business empires. His gesture has since gone corkscrew on the internet, with bloggers making a gallery of pictures taken at the event, perhaps, to attract traffic to their blogs.

Prince Ezes act is in appraisal with a statement by Mahatma Gandhi, suggesting that the simplest acts of kindness are by far more powerful than a thousand heads bowing in prayer. Nevertheless, Prince Eze is not your everyday noisemaker, but he says his mind where necessary without fear or favour and donates unpredictably to both the rich and indigent without singing his praise, without deafening anybodys ear for cheap publicity. In the words of sages: A charitable man is like an apple tree  he gives his fruit and is silent; the philanthropist is like the hen. This epitomizes the attributes of Prince Arthur Eze.

It was revealed that the word philanthropy is in connection with the Greek Language meaning 'love for mankind.' Prince Eze is one man who has decided to walk in the light of love, for mankind, for many to see him in the court of openness, than in the court of destructive selfishness. Many financially opulent Nigerians are found in the later; they are squirrels, magpies, stashers. They hardly give out! But Prince Eze has been carving his name on hearts, while others do on tombstones.

Prince Eze is living a legacy into the minds of many and the stories they share about him are immeasurable. The billionaire businessman that owns several producing and non-producing oil and gas assets across Nigeria, Liberia, Equatorial Guinea and the Gambia, is known for giving, for easing anothers heartache. In the recent past, a rating by Forbes suggested that Prince Eze donated $6.3 million (N1 billion) to flood relief efforts in Nigeria, apart from the donations he made to universities. The world believes that the most valued and consecrated moments of Prince Ezes lives are those filled with the spirit of giving. One Joseph B. Wirthlin as if talking to Prince Eze, said that the greater the measure of our love, the greater is our joy. In the end, the development of such love is the true measure of success in life.

Just in June this year, Prince Eze put a smile on the lips of members of the Association of People Living with Sickle Cell Disorder (APLSCD), by donating the sum of N5 million lifeline for a Sickle cell standard clinic at Ukpo, Dunukofia Council Area of Anambra State, with expectation that the clinic would be commissioned on the World Sickle Cell Day by June 18, 2016. Prine Eze had also donated 1.8 billion naira ($12 million) to a Nigerian Church charity, St. Stephens Anglican Deanery and Youth Development Centre, for youth development. The dude made the donation in Lagos at the churchs fund raising chaired by the then President Goodluck Jonathan, whose hometown church was the recipient of the funds.

Prince Eze has a heart reaching down and lifting people up. In July 2014, Governor Willie Obiano of Anambra State, accompanied by his deputy, Dr. Nkem Okeke and the then National Chairman of APGA, Sir Victor Umeh, paid Prince Eze a courtesy call at his splendid home of Ukpo in Dunukofia Kingdom of Anambra State.

In that courtesy call, Prince Eze donated the sum of $1m for the programme in the state to crackdown on criminals. He also assured the sum of one billion naira to sustain the governors agricultural programme. Hence, it can be regarded as mumbo-jumbo for some leaders of Abagana community under the aegis of Abagana Welfare Union (AWU) to petition the IGP, Ibrahim Idris, on August 9, 2016 and signed by Mr. Emma Ifeadike, accusing Prince Eze of engaging in acts of terrorism and asked the police boss to arraign him. This is said because a man like Prince Eze with such a heart of giving may not engage in petty and unscrupulous activity as terrorism.

Making the donation in his palatial home of Ukpo in Dunukofia Kingdom of Anambra State, when the governor, accompanied by his deputy, Dr. Nkem Okeke and the National Chairman of APGA, Sir Victor Umeh, paid him a courtesy call, Prince Eze who is a famous philanthropist and a chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party, explained that the gesture was intended to encourage Governor Obianos efforts to make Anambra State a livable and business-friendly environment for all.

Apart from making donations in monetary aspect, Prince Eze donates his time for peace against party line. Hes of the belief that nothing can bring a division between him and his home state, not even politics. The philanthropist Prince Eze who is a stakeholder in the Peoples Democratic Party while Obiano is of the APGA sees nothing wrong in working in synergy to support the government by any positive means necessary, thereby shaving the animosity that is always in party line. He was of the gesture that Governor Obiano has shown gargantuan wisdom in bringing the issue of security first in his menu.

Following the statement by one G.K. Chesterton, saying that the whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives; the business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes; the business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected, it is not easy to say where Prince Eze belongs in the two. This is why he is simply referred to as a philanthropist; because he loathes any authority that makes colossal mistake or that prevents the correction of mistakes. To buttress this point, he cried out in July 2015, that one year after, Nigerian billionaires and government were yet to redeem to victims of Boko Haram bomb attacks vows, one year after the lavish fundraiser in Abuja.

Checks revealed that the government fundraiser which held on July 31, scraped in N54.7 billion in pledged donations from the federal and state governments, and the private sector. While the government was said to have donated N20 billion, key oil and gas operators gave N17 billion, banking sector offered N15 billion; investor Tony Elumelu gave N2.5 billion; and former defence minister, T.Y. Danjuma promised N1.6billion; the 36 states and the FCT gave N3.7billion; Arthur Eze and Mohammed Indimi gave N800million each; Folorunsho Alakija, Dahiru Mangal, Abdul Samad Rabiu, N500million each; Aliko Dangote, Zenith bank chief, Jim Ovia, Wale Tinubu, Mike Adenuga, donated N1billion each; making the donated sum exceed the governments target by N8 billion.

However, Prince Arthur Eze was in June 2015 deemed the eighth richest person in Africa with a net worth of more than $5.8 billion. With a traditional title as Ozo Igbo Ndu (saviour of Ndigbo), Prince Arthur Eze is from a royal family with his older brother as the traditional ruler of Ukpo village in the Dunukofia Local Government Area. A chemical engineer by training, Prince Eze has been a major donor to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). From his days at St. Augustine Secondary School in Nkwere in 1970 to California State University at Long Beach from 1974 to 1978, where he studied mechanical and chemical engineering, Prince Eze has not stopped to help people even as he founded Atlas Oranto Petroleum for oil exploration activities in West Africa in 1991.

In some quarters, there were expressions and speculations that he also lavishes money on himself, having had five different models of Rolls Royce in his garage, and a Bombadier worth more than $25 million, as his private jet. He believes that his God made him rich to help people. Talking on his donation to the church in the Jonathans Village, Prince Eze said that his God gave him the money to contribute to the church; the money was not meant for Jonathan to put in his pocket; he thought of God and thanked Him for what He has done for Otuoke (Jonathans village) through Jonathan.

Odimegwu Onwumere is an award-winning journalist based in Rivers State. Tel: +2348057778358. Email: [email protected]
09.09.2016 LISTEN

The primacy of the eye as an indispensable organ in the body cannot be over-emphasized. If you are in doubt, close your eyes for ten seconds and in that brief period, try to walk around or carry out an activity. The result is better imagined. This explains why the eyes are referred to as the light of the body. Therefore, if the eyes are impaired, the whole body sits in darkness. No one deserves to be without sight or vision.

Globally, research has shown that the prevalence of blindness is five-fold higher in poor than rich countries. It is also estimated that about 285 million people are vision-impaired globally with up to 80% of these cases of impairment due to treatable or preventable causes. Worse still is the fact that over 90% of these people live in low and middle income countries and proportionately more in Africa. In general, the most remote and poorest areas of low-income countries have the least access to eye care services.

The impact of unmet eye care needs in the country is compounded by barriers which include unavailability of professional eye health care services at the primary and secondary health centres, limited engagement with communities, a shortage of appropriately skilled health personnel, paucity of information about eye health from a health systems strengthening approach with poor service delivery, insufficient equipment and supplies, lack of financing, leadership and governance as major trademarks of the problem.

Poverty and eye health, including vision disability from visual impairment and blindness are interrelated. The relationship between poverty and eye health can be interpreted as being two-fold - poverty may be a cause of poor eye health and poor eye health may lead to or deepen poverty.

Visual disability impacts negatively on an individuals quality of life and their functionality and has implications on the national economy as epitomized by the fact that income and livelihood are affected, as well as access to basic services such as education, healthcare, nutrition and development. Blindness is most likely to interfere with an individuals life goals such as achieving material wealth, social status and planning for the future. In addition, people with disabilities, such as blindness, may be further impacted by a disturbance of mental health, which will affect their life goals and thus perpetuate their poverty. It therefore goes without saying that healthy eyes and good vision play a critical role in the development of an individual and how the individual interacts with others in society with a view to wealth creation and national productivity.

In view of the socioeconomic significance of blindness which often results in the loss of man-hours to the Nigerian economy, concrete and urgent steps are required to remedy the situation. When situated against the current prism as articulated above, the recent move by Guinness Nigeria to expand facilities and renovate infrastructure at the Guinness Eye Hospital, Onitsha can only be described as auspicious and timely.

The Managing Director, Guinness Nigeria Plc, Peter Ndegwa, noted that the re-commissioning of the eye hospital is in keeping with the companys commitment to supporting the Guinness Eye Centres in sustenance of the companys original vision and to ensure that the facility remains the reference point in the training of professionals and the provision of excellent eye care in Nigerias health sector.

As a company, our focus on eye care reflects our recognition of the far-reaching impact that good eyesight can have on the overall health and wellbeing of everyone. We are here to celebrate the notable accomplishments which the Guinness Eye Hospital, Onitsha, has delivered to many Nigerians. Our investment in the various eye hospitals is keeping in line with our commitment to make a positive impact on the communities in which we operate. By helping Nigerians to preserve their sight, we play a strong role in enhancing their ability to learn, earn an income and get the best out of life, he said.

It is a commonly acknowledged fact that government alone cannot carry the burden of providing adequate health care delivery as such corporate bodies need to lend a helping hand to provide succor and comfort to those in need of health care delivery. To further lend credence to this position, the World Health Organizations Global Action Plan 20142019, which aims to reduce avoidable visual impairment as a global public health problem and to secure access to rehabilitation services for the visually impaired posits that developing innovative approaches to prevent and cure eye diseases via private-public partnership is the way to go.

In its sixty-six years of operating in Nigeria, what Guinness Nigeria has demonstrated through its investment in eye health care in the country is that corporate bodies can indeed make a difference. One can only imagine the seismic shift that would occur in our heath sector, if other corporate bodies took a cue from this model and invested in other pain points within the health landscape.

The greatest gift any human can receive is the power to retain or regain his or her sight, especially when they have been deprived of it. Guinness Nigeria, through its eye hospitals has demonstrated unrivalled passion and execution in the delivery of social good to the citizenry. Here is hoping that other well-meaning organizations especially in the private sector would come up with similar initiatives that would complement governments efforts in improving the quality of lives in our communities.

Smart Adekunle is a policy analyst and resides in Lagos
One of the three loyalists of the governing National Democratic Congress jailed by the Supreme Court for contempt and released by president John Mahama has hit the campaign ground with a call on the party not to overlook the efforts of the president.

Godwin Ako-Gunn described himself, Alistair Nelson and Salifu Maase as the Shadrach Meshach and Abednego of Ghana's politics who have come back from prison stronger than ever before.

The Montie 3, as they are now popularly called, were supposed to have served four months in jail for scandalizing and bringing the court into disrepute after they threatened to kill judges and rape the Chief Justice.

But the president exercised his powers of mercy under Article 72 and remitted their sentence after serving just a month in jail.

In a thank you gesture to the president, one of the members told hundreds of NDC supporters in Winneba, Friday, the supporters cannot let the efforts of John Mahama go waste.

He said the electorate cannot afford to bring back a group of people who do not have the interest of Ghanaians at heart.

"Even in opposition, they are pushing for destruction," he stated.

Godwin Ako Gunn said just the same way Shadrach Meshach and Abednego were sent to the furnace of blazing fire to die, they were also sent to the Nsawam prison, but ended up setting a "record as the most visited inmates and returned stronger."

Daniel 3:15-16 tells the story of the three brothers Shadrach Meshach and Abednego who were put in a furnace to die after they failed to bow to an image created by King Nebuchadnezzar but were delivered from death by an angel sent by God.

Ako Gunn said Ghanaians will be throwing the vision of president Mahama away if they fail to retain him in office.

He said with the spirit of the late Atta Mills with the NDC they shall fear nothing. The president is also expected to address crowd.

Story by Ghana|Myjoyonline.com|Nathan Gadugah
Finance Minister Seth Terkper, has justified the launch of Ghana's fifth Eurobond at a high yield of 9.25 percent with a short maturity date.

Ghana yesterday (September 8, 2016), issued its fifth Eurobond of 750 million dollars at a yield of 9.25 percent a few points lower than the last one which was at 10.75 percent.

The Eurobond however will mature in 5 years; the shortest period in the history of Eurobond issues in Ghana.

Also, the principal will be expected to be repaid in three installments of US$250 million each in September of 2020, 2021 and 2022.

A number of economists including a former deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana and the running mate of the NPP, Dr. Mahamoud Bawumia, have criticized the move maintaining that the short period defeats the country's medium to long term borrowing agenda.

Contrary to government's stated objectives that it is borrowing long term, it is now being forced by the market to borrow short to medium terms for five years. Ghana, has today [September 8, 2016], issued a bond on the London market for 750 million dollars for a five year tenure at a price of over nine percent so the spread for the five year tenure is about 8 percent and which is so high, he recounted.

When we got out of HIPC, we borrowed for ten years at 8.5% but after being an oil producing and middle income country, we could only borrow for five years but now for over 9 percent, Dr. Bawumia further asserted.

But Finance Minister, Seth Terkper responding to the concerns said government borrowing the Eurobond for the short term maturity period of 5 years is strategic.

For purposes of long term capital investment, we will go back to the market and borrow long term. We are not abandoning our long term objective, but rather we're being strategic, he stated.

Mr. Terkper added, If I have to refinance that bond at 9.5 and I had previously refinanced at 8.125 or 7.925, I do not have to refinance for ten years knowing that the rates are likely to go down, so I refinance for five years so we take off one third each in 2021, 2022 and 2023 by which time the country's 2013 bond would have matured,

By which time also the sinking fund would have accumulated a bit more money and we would continue with our buy back policy.



Vivian Kai Lokko/citibusinessnews.com/Ghana
General Secretary of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) has described as unnecessary the hullabaloo that has characterized the announcement of filing fees by the Electoral Commission (EC) for both parliamentary and presidential candidates contesting the December 7 polls.

According to Johnson Asiedu Nketia, the GH 50,000 for presidential candidates and GH10,000 for parliamentary candidates are 'peanuts' as compared to what is charged by political parties in their internal contests.

Some political parties have criticised the EC for what they described as astronomical filing fees for nomination forms to contest the December 7 general elections.

The figure announced by the Commission during an Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) meeting Thursday, according to reports, is a 1,000 per cent increment from the previous amount.

This decision has anger minority political parties like the Convention Peoples Party (CPP) who have accused the EC of monetizing the process.

But Johnson Asiedu Nketia on Asempa FM's Ekosii Sen programme Friday said political parties should rather commend the EC for the fee.

He explained that, the EC will refund monies to political parties who get more than 15 percent of the total votes of both presidential and parliamentary elections.

The EC is just holding the money in trust to ensure political parties are committed to the process but they will refund it if you get 15 percent of the total votes cast. We in the NDC have been benefitting and it helps us run our activities he added.

The NDC scribe popularly known as General Mosquito said the NDC and the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) have no moral right to object to the filing fee because we charged more than fees for our internal elections.

If people clamour to pay huge sums of money to contest our [NDC, NPP] internal elections, why not pay this [GH 50,000, GH10,000] which will guarantee you power he stated.

General Mosquito said NDC will not object to the 500 percent increment announced by the EC.

But Policy advisor of the Progressive Peoples Party (PPP), Kofi Asamoah Siaw described the astronomical increase as a path of political exclusion.

He said the astronomical increase is part of a conspiracy by government to form a one party state  a development he said is a recipe for disaster.

Kofi Asamoah Siaw is hoping the EC will reduce the amount to prevent the monetization of Ghana's democratic process.

-Adomonline
The Obama administration has submitted a report to U.S. lawmakers on how it plans to help North Koreans get better access to outside information.

Republican Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on Wednesday the State Department submitted the report but declined to say what was in it.

It is billed as a "detailed plan for making unrestricted, unmonitored and inexpensive electronic mass communications available to the people of North Korea."

From 2017, the U.S. government plans to spend US$8 million a year for the next five years to get information to North Koreans. The U.S. currently broadcasts programs to North Korea 11 hours a day via Voice of America and Radio Free Asia.

The State Department seems to be looking into various plans for getting USB sticks, memory cards or small shortwave radios into North Korea.

The head of one group supporting North Korean defectors who was contacted by the State Department this year said, "One USB stick costs $15, an SD memory card costs $35, and a tablet PC costs $300. We told U.S. officials that they could distribute the devices by giving them to North Korean traders after loading them with South Korean TV dramas or programs shedding light on the regime's illicit activities."

The devices can be programmed to show up blank on cursory inspection. One diplomatic source said, "Google is currently pursuing a project using drones to provide Internet services to countries that lack mobile infrastructure, and this could be used for North Korea as well."
There is no doubt that changes in the earth's climate always occurs, however as a result of human induced activities over the years, the change is happening at a fast pace. This change is at the moment changing faster than it has happened for thousand years, according to a 2013 National Science Foundation (NSF) report. The society and every sphere of human life including food supplies, health as well as business and national economies will be affected due to climate change.

The issue of climate change truly affects the prospects that many African countries are making to achieve the newly adopted 17 sustainable development goals. In spite of the dangers that climate change poses, it also presents an opportunity to business models and innovations to create a pathway leading to addressing the problem and creating employment opportunities.

Climate change is one of the major emerging challenge to Africa's agriculture development. The nature of unpredictable and erratic weather patterns on the continent places an immense burden on food security as well as rural livelihoods. The prolonged drought in Ethiopia, and floods in Ghana, and Burkina Faso shows the danger of the changing climate in Africa.

A report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reveals that 250 million people in Africa are in pole position to experience food insecurity due to climate change underpinned by crop failure, loss of livestock, and water scarcity. In addition, the IPCC report in 2007 projects the African continent will become the most the vulnerable to climate change as result of multiple stresses in the form of poor infrastructure, poverty as well as governance.

The report continues that temperature are likely to rise by 1.5 degree Celsius in the 21st century culminating into reduction in crop yield of up to 50% with crop revenue also expected to fall by 90% by 2100. The World Bank Group has come out also with projections which shows that Sub Saharan Africa overtaking Asia as the food insure region in the world inhabiting 40-50% of undernourished people in 2080. The Breton wood institution continues that arable lands will also decline by 2080, saying that 9-20% of arable will be unsuitable for agricultural activities.

From all indications, Africa is on the brink of witnessing devastating effects of climate change on food production. With variations in temperature and precipitation, increase in crop pests and disease, as well as low soil fertility is expected to have a huge burden on food security.

For instance, in Ghana farmers are experiencing problems with cropping season. Ghana's agriculture is rain fed and thus any unexpected changes in the climate become a Herculean task for farmers. During my undergraduate study in the third year, a field trip to ask farmers on their understanding and impact of climate change on food production revealed that, most farmers find difficult to plant seedlings due to climatic changes. One farmer says, "we are not able to go to the field to plant seeds because, in the years past we could determine which months to plant and have rainfall but now it is not the case." Moisture that is required during planting period is not adequate. This leads to poor or no germination of the seeds for farmers. On the other hand, when the rain comes in, it comes excessive, resulting in floods which affects upland crops which grow under moist condition.

Farmers need fertile land to promote high agricultural output. With excessive application of fertiliser coupled with low knowledge in dosage, farmers eventually render farmlands acidic thereby leading to unproductivity for long periods. This means, farmers move from one farmland to another in search rich soil to safeguard high crop yields. Undertaking this destroys large vast of land, and intense competition placed on few fertile lands. With that in mind, lots of farmers are placed out of work and result in conflict between people, communities resulting in deaths.

The impact of climate change can be addressed through the deployment of science, technology and innovation in the agricultural sector. There are developed and even upgrading varieties of seeds that can withstand the effect of drought to provide for all year round agricultural output. In the same way, biotechnology ensures that crops that have the ability to resist pests and diseases are developed and released to farmers. What is left is the adoption and usage of these. The role of agricultural extension officers therefore play a vital in facilitating this to make sure farmers get the right information on how to apply these seeds. A lot of work has been done by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, CGIAR consortium to help African farmers adapt to the impact of climate change. African governments need to scale up initiatives undertaken by such organisations to reach large farmers.

In the same vein, African governments need to dedicate financial resources towards agricultural research to support research institutes come out with high yielding crop varieties that meet local climatic conditions. The research institutes also have to develop business models that can fast track the adoption of these varieties by farmers.

In conclusion, climate change can halt the development progress globally and particularly on the African continent. Therefore, there is the need for governments, private sector, non governmental organisations and development partners to chart a common cause and goal to address the impact of climate change in the agricultural sector to attain food security. Governments need to integrate climate related issues into national and regional development plans and processes. It is also important that development agencies cooperate with climate researchers and scientists when it comes to the design and implementing of projects to promote adaption thereby reducing emissions.
Hassan Ayarigas All Peoples Congress has welcomed the 500% hike in the filing fee for presidential candidates in the 2016 elections, but says the amount is too small.

The EC after a meeting with the partys Thursday increased the presidential filing fees from the previous GHC10,000 to GH50,000 while that of the parliamentary candidates was moved from GHC1,000 to GH10,000.

While the New Patriotic Party has raised concerns over the amount, the ruling NDC says it has no issues with it.

In a statement signed by its General Secretary Razak Kojo Opoku, the APC said even though the changes are in order, the EC should have considered a further upward review of the presidential fee.

The All People's Congress(APC) led by Dr. Hassan Ayariga gladly accepts to pay the GHS 50,000 Filing Fee for our Presidential Candidate to contest the 7th December 2016 general election.

The Electoral Commission has done well with such decision but we honestly think that the Presidential Filing Fee should have been GHS 120, 000 because to become the First gentleman of the Land there must be a relatively High standard to comply with.

The Party equally believe that our competent Parliamentary Candidates who are in better position to easily win the Parliamentary Seats for the Party shall be able to raise the GHS 10, 000 to file successfully with the Electoral Commission, the statement said.
Dr Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana's first President, established the Centre 40 years as part of an industrialization programme to expand international trade especially inter-African trade. The Ghana Trade Fair Company Limited was incorporated as a Limited Liability Company under the Statutory Corporations (Conversion to Companies) Act 1993, Act 461 in April 1997. With this vision successive governments have failed to make the facility something worth fighting for and now has turned into a white elephant.

The Company took over the assets and liabilities of the Ghana Trade Fair Authority (GTFA) which was established as a State Owned Enterprise under PNDC Law 215. The Authority had the mandate to commercially manage the Ghana International Trade Fair Centre as a commercial enterprise. Before then the Trade Fair Centre was managed by the Trade Fair Secretariat which was a unit within the Ministry of Trade and Industry. The Government of Ghana owns 100% shares of the Company.

Dr Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana's first President, established the Centre 40 years as part of an industrialization programme to expand international trade especially inter-African trade.

He said his dream of holding the 1st Ghana International Trade Fair in February to March 1966, a few months after hosting the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) Conference in 1965, was curtailed following the overthrow of his government.

Lieutenant General J A Ankrah, who became the Head of State after the 1966 Coup, therefore officially opened the 1st International Trade Fair on February 1, 1967.

A total of 17 foreign countries, seven African as well as over 40 infant Ghanaian industries participated in the 1967 Fair. Today foreign nations have registered to participate with nine African countries having over 126 established industries as well as several small and medium scale enterprises taking part,

But today the trade fair company limited is not what we all know it be or some of us have witnessed in the past. Hither to in some days when there is an exhibition, people from across the country troop in to see the beauty of Ghanaian products beings exhibited and people go there to purchase the best of products and one is guaranteed of getting the best.

The trade fair due its patronage, one might even get lost in it but today instead of people going to the trade fair to exhibit their products, companies and agencies have now resorted to the use of conference centres and other event centres to do their fair due to the bad nature of the trade fair centre.

A look at the outside of the trade fair and the sheds which was a sight to behold, one could see that it is a shadow of itself and it does not represent the vision of Dr Nkrumah.

Traders are now at a loss as they do not get where to exhibit their products and the trade fair centre until having a major international event, just sit without anything going on.

A look at the building go clearly to show that we have lost our maintenance culture. The facilitys painting is in bad shape with paint peeling off and the wall also in cracks.

The inside of the sheds are abysmal as you see there roofings rusting and the building in bad shape.

We have left it and now it has become another neglected asset left to it faith which we will eventually sell out to foreigners because we cannot maintain and will look on as it gets spoilt and then like we are known for trade for something cheaper or not worthy.

We have political leaders going round with promises of building event centres for the creative arts industry when they come to power but have this big national asset rotting before our eyes.

Meanwhile this if it is well looked after, it could generate the country lots of revenue and a national asset that will be forever cherished by generations.

This is how far today's Ghana has become as we have no sense of purpose and do not feel the need to care for our properties. Nkrumah will be crying in his grave.
Prosecutors in Accra have dropped the charge of unnatural carnal knowledge leveled against a 16-year-old boy who was allegedly forced to engage in the sexual act.

Little Papa (pseudonym) said he was forced at knifepoint to engaged in sodomy with a 30-year-old father of two whom he calls uncle.

But the Police in Amasaman, a suburb of Accra accused the truamatised boy of complexity in the act and charged him with sodomy.

Ghana Criminal Offences Act 1960(29) Section -104- Unnatural Carnal Knowledge reads:

(1) Whoever has unnatural carnal knowledge:

(a) Of any person of the age of sixteen years or over without his consent shall be guilty of a first-degree felony and shall be liable on conviction to imprisonment for a term of not less than five years and not more than twenty-five years; or

(b) Of any person of sixteen years or over with his consent is guilty of a misdemeanour; or

(c) Of any animal is guilty of a misdemeanour

(2) Unnatural carnal knowledge is sexual intercourse with a person in an unnatural manner or with an animal.

Narrating the incident, Little Papa said he was on an errand when Mr Owusu called him, pleading that he escorts him home to change his attire at home since he [Little Papa] was heading his way.

When we got to his room, he asked whether I had watched a pornographic material before, I answered no. He again asked whether I have watched any movie with men having sexual intercourse before and I said no. He then told me he would like to have anal sex with me, but, I boldly declined and drew his attention to the fact that, it is against our culture, Little Papa told Joy News Kwetey Nartey.

On Thursday, Little Papas lawyer petitioned the Inspector General of Police and the Attorney General on the matter.

A court hearing was scheduled for Friday did not come off, Joy News Joseph Ackay-Blay reports.

According to the reporter, the family of Little Papa who were waiting at the Accra Central Divisional Police office was later told the charge has been dropped.

According to the family, there were still some disagreements regarding whether Mr Owusu had anal sex with Little Papa.

Story by Ghana| Myjoyonline.com
Tunis (AFP) - Tunisia's new prime minister, Youssef Chahed, has cut the pay packets of his ministers in a show of "solidarity" at a time of economic hardship, the government announced Friday.

The lowering of "bonuses and privileges" amounts to a cut of around 1,000 dinars ($450) a month for each of Chahed's 40 ministers and secretaries of state, it said in a statement.

The cabinet approved the measure as an act of "solidarity by members of the national unity government with Tunisia", it added.

One of Chahed's aides told AFP the cuts would come into effect "immediately".

Tunisia's new government began work last month with a long to-do list.

The country has been riven by a string of jihadist attacks, including on its vital tourism sector, and the economy has struggled since its 2011 uprising.

Unemployment grew by 0.8 percent last year to over 15 percent and is even higher among young people.
President John Mahama has assured Ghanaians that he will not point accusing fingers at any group or individual concerning the challenges in the power sector but will ensure that it is resolved.

He said it is incumbent on him as the leader of the country to solve problems. As such, he will apply all measures to ensure that the country is energy sufficient.

If you look at the energy sector, people keep talking about dumsor but I will not blame anyone. I am the one who was voted as President of Ghana so I will confront it and fix it, he indicated on Friday September 9 during a campaign tour at Winneba in the Central Region.

Although it is barely three months to the December 7 polls, Mr Mahama said he wants to promise Ghanaians that very soon, we will enter into an era of energy security as government has embarked on several measures to ensure availability of uninterrupted power.

President Mahama had earlier explained to Paul Adom-Otchere on Metro TVs Good Evening Ghana programme on Tuesday September 7 that the commencement of work on the Tweneboa-Enyenra-Ntomme (TEN) fields in addition to expected generation from the Offshore Cape Three Points (OCTP) fields being operated by Italian energy firm Eni to complement gas production from Atuabo, more than 300 million standard cubic feet of the product is expected to be produced to generate power in excess of the countrys needs.

Ghana is coming out of a four-year crippling power crisis that led to a severe load management, job cuts and collapse of businesses.

However, with the situation easing since the beginning of 2016, President Mahama has said his administration is consolidating the gains made with the production of more gas for thermal power generation to usher the country into an era of energy security.

With the TEN field, sometime next year we should see about another 70 million standard cubic feet of gas coming into Atuabo and then [by] end of 2017, the Eni field will start, and sometime in 2018 we should have 150 million standard cubic feet of gas.

By end of 2017, we should be energy-sufficient. By end of 2018, we should have excess power to be able to export that power.

According to him, Ghanas total subscription in the West Africa Gas Pipeline is 120 million standard cubic feet, but with the Eni alone producing 150 million standard cubic feet, Ghana is going to get much more gas than we have subscribed to so, well have enough gas to power our thermal plants. Well even still need additional gas if we can get it and so all the other work that is going on is important towards making sure that we have enough gas, the president said.

Eni and TEN, Mr Mahama continued, will give a combined 300 million scf of gas which should produce another 2000MW of power in addition to what we are producing already.

Ghana is generating 2000MW of electricity, and the additional generation will take Ghanas production of power to 4000MW, a figure President Mahama has said is far more than Ghana needs.
The exercise was supported by Sant Nirankari Charitable Foundation, a humanitarian organisation in Dubai.

The blood donation exercise was organized to save lives of patients at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital and other health facilities in the country.

Donors from all walks of life who were eager to donate, started trooping into the premises of DPS International, Ghana at Community 25 at about 5:00 am to participate in the highly successful exercise.

At about mid-morning, over 30 Ghanaians and more than a hundred foreigners took part in the blood donation exercise which was sponsored by DPS International, Ghana with support from B5 Plus Ltd, a steel manufacturing company in Tema.

Family of Mukesh Thakwani, Chairman of DSP International, Ghana and B5 Plus Limited was not left out of the exercise.

Gulati Pankaj, Rakesh Goyal, Darshan Singh, Balden Raj Arora and many other volunteers also donated to support the worthy cause.

Mr. Gornam Singh, Head of Nirankari Mission, Dubai was highly thankful for the gesture saying that humanitarianism is very significant to society.

He said blood plays a major role in saving lives especially that of pregnant women and is provided by the hospital hence the need for every qualified person to donate to the blood bank.

My visit to Ghana has been memorable and I am impressed with the honesty Ghanaians showed and they are very sociable. I must say humanitarian exercise such as blood donation is very significant to save lives and that is the main reason why Nirankari Mission sees the importance to join, he emphasised.

Mr. Mukesh Thakwani explained that the exercise forms part of his outfits corporate social responsibilities.

We decided to conduct the exercise in the school for the children to see and also learn how to donate or give back to society as a global awareness creation, the Director of DPS International, Ghana stated.

He assured health institutions of embarking on this blood donation exercise in the future, indicating that Blood do degenerate and whether you donate or not it will replenish so this exercise is going to be a routine exercise in the near future and everyone must join to save life.

The Director of DPS International, Ghana expressed his heartfelt appreciation to participants for their kind support.

A lot of volunteers took part in this noble cause.

The event which was sponsored by DSP International, Ghana with support from B5 Plus, a steel manufacturing company in Tema, was supported by Sant Nirankari Charitable Foundation, a humanitarian organisation in Dubai.

Over hundred people set aside their daily responsibilities and thronged the Delhi Public School (DPS) International, Ghana at Tema to participate in a blood donation campaign.

Donors from all walks of life who were eager to donate, started trooping into the premises of DPS International, Ghana at Community 25 at about 5:00 am to participate in the highly successful exercise.
Libreville (AFP) - Gabon's President Ali Bongo said Friday that he had not used or encouraged the violence which erupted in his country after he won re-election last month by a wafer-thin margin.

"I have not employed or triggered the violence," Bongo said in an interview with AFP, blaming the murder and pillaging on "a climate" created by main opposition leader Jean Ping after "a violent campaign of lies and denigration".
By Iddi Yire, GNA

Accra, Sept. 9, GNA - For this year's general election, the Electoral Commission (EC) has designated 81 of the nation's 275 constituencies as flash points or places where there is the potential for election-related violence.

Mrs Charlotte Osei, the Chairperson of the EC, said this situation requires a concerted effort by all political actors, state institutions, media and of course, the Commission to work towards a more civilized political culture for peaceful elections.

She said in the limited voter registration exercise conducted earlier this year, there were over two dozen incidents of violence resulting in injuries, and the destruction of registration equipment and materials belonging to the EC.

"Again last month, an office of the Commission was set on fire in a suspected arson matter, following a dispute between political parties during the continuous voter registration exercise," Mrs Osei said in Accra during a during a colloquium on Peaceful Elections in Ghana.

The event was held on the theme: 'Reducing the Incidence of Violence in Election 2016 and Beyond'.

The colloquium was organised by the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre (KAIPTC), in collaboration with STAR-Ghana and the Multimedia Group.

'If they want peace, nations should avoid the pin pricks that precede cannon shots", she cited Napoleon Bonaparte.

Mrs Osei said: "Clearly, we have a high number of pin pricks. We cannot allow them to grow into cannon shots."

"All around us, we have seen the devastating consequences on nations when political leaders place their personal ambitions and sectional interests above national interests.

"We, therefore, call on the leaders of our political parties to engage their supporters, especially their youth wings, and lead the process for ensuring a peaceful electoral process."

She said political party leaders should also take responsibility for the actions of their supporters and condemn bad behaviour where they occur.

"As a state institution responsible for conducting free, fair, transparent and peaceful elections, we are working very hard at achieving that," the EC Chairperson said.

"So far this year, we have collaborated closely with the security agencies to institute measures aimed at guaranteeing the security of the polls," she said.

These include the formation of Election Security Task Force by the Ghana Police Service at the National, Regional and District Levels.

She said the EC would also be providing the list of polling stations and the Flash Points areas to the security services ahead of time.

She said in the creation of additional polling stations, minimizing conflict and enhancing accessibility were the key criteria.

Mrs Osei said early voting modalities have been discussed and the process commenced with the security services to ensure that they would be available for duty on Election Day.

She said the EC together with the security forces were putting a lot of effort into ensuring peaceful polls, but they cannot do it alone and that it is the responsibility of everyone Ghanaian to ensure a peaceful election.

"We call on leaders of faith based organisations, chiefs and queen mothers, professional associations, civil society to support us as we work to ensure a peaceful electoral process," she said.

Former President John Agyekum Kufuor, in a statement read on his behalf, urged the EC must work with political parties to boost their confidence and trust in the outcome of the general election.

Reverend Professor Emmanuel Asante, the Chairman of the National Peace Council, urged Ghanaians to shun politicians who use abusive language on their campaign platforms.

Air Vice-Marshal Griffiths Evans, the Commandant of the KAIPTC, said despite Ghana's huge democratic credentials since 1992, there was the need to preserve and consolidate its gains. GNA
By Iddi Yire, GNA

Accra, Sept. 9, GNA - The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has presented tablets and other information and technology (IT) equipment to the Statistics Research and Information Directorate (SRID) of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA).

The electronic equipment and software valued at GHa900,000.00 are to enhance the collection of agricultural statistics.

The equipment would minimise human error in agriculture data collection and analysis, as well as improve overall data quality and credibility.

Mr Andrew Karas, the USAID Mission Director, handed over the equipment to Dr Ahmed Yakubu Alhassan, a Deputy Minister, MoFA in-charge of Crops; in the presence of Dr Hannah Bisiw, a Deputy Minister, MoFA, in-charge of Livestock.

The donation included 3G tablets fitted with global positioning system (GPS), which would help SRID produce credible data and information to support appropriate and effective policy analysis, decision-making and planning.

In Ghana, policymakers often lack quality data, as well as the capacity to analyse and communicate findings.

Funded by USAID, the Agriculture Policy Support Project (APSP) assisted SRID to design, develop and implement a Computer-Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI) data collection system in support of the Ghana Agriculture Production and Market Price Survey.

Dr Alhassan lauded the United States Government for its immense support for Ghana's agriculture sector over the years.

He expressed gratitude to the APSP of the USAID for supporting the SRID of MoFA with the equipment to help enhance agriculture data collection, management and dissemination in Ghana.

He said the persistent constraints of delayed survey completion, low data quality and rising costs incurred using the traditional data collection approaches constituted a basis to explore new and modern tools for collecting data as the CAPI system sought to help them to do.

He said the advantage of a CAPI system in shortening the period of data collection and assisted cost savings as well as improved data quality had led SRID to seek assistance from APSP to develop a CAPI system to modernise data collection across the districts and regions of Ghana.

He said the mandate of SRID within the MoFA, is to provide relevant, accurate and timely agricultural statistics and information for agricultural policy formulation, planning, project implementation, monitoring and evaluation for efficient communication within MoFA and the public.

'With the introduction of the CAPI system, including the use of android based tablets to administer electronic questionnaires and the direct transmission of data collection to serves, the Ministry has been ushered into a new and improved phase of agricultural data collection, that should make available reliable, accurate and comprehensive data for decision making within and outside the Ministry,' Dr Alhassan said.

Mr Karas said the equipment and software would modernise the Ministry's approach to data collection with cutting edge technology and systems, enabling real-time mobile data collection on 3G Android tablets.

'It will significantly improve the Ministry's capacity to undertake field surveys and collect, secure and analyse data. I cannot overstate the importance of this. Effective policies require comprehensive knowledge about the people impacted by them,' he said.

He said the software and equipment was just the first step; and that the organisation was taking a holistic approach to ensure quality agriculture data collection in Ghana.

He said 150 MoFA officials at the district, regional and national levels were trained to effectively collect data for Ghana's Annual General Agriculture Production and Marketing Surveys.

Mr Walter Nunez Rodriguez, the Chief of Party of the APSP, said the APSP is a five-year Feed the Future project, with the goal to improve the food security-enabling environment for the private sector investment.

GNA
A seismic tremor was detected near North Korea's nuclear test site on Friday morning, suggesting that North Korea has conducted its fifth and most powerful nuclear test so far.

The European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre said it detected a 5.0-magnitutde tremor in Punggye-ri, North Hamgyong Province. A tremor of similar strength was recorded when the North carried out the fourth nuclear test on Jan. 6.

Reuters cited an expert as saying the seismic magnitude and surface level "indicated a blast with a 20- to 30-kiloton yield. Such a yield would make this test, if confirmed, larger than the nuclear bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in World War II and potentially bigger than that dropped on Nagasaki soon after."

A Defense Ministry official here said, "We believe the North conducted a nuclear test this morning and are working to find out more about it." He added that it seems to have been the biggest test so far with a yield of 10 kilotons, compared to 6 kilotons in the previous test.

President Park Geun-hye was swift to accuse the North of "maniacal recklessness' in conducting yet another test in the face of intense global condemnation and heavy sanctions.
Accra, Sept. 9, GNA - Isaac Adziwoe, who defiled his ex-girlfriend's younger sister at Afiaman, near Amasaman, has been sentenced to 10 years imprisonment by an Accra Circuit Court.

Adziwoe, a driver, pleaded guilty to a charge of defilement.

The court presided over by Mrs Ruby Naa Akwerley Quaison, stated that in sentencing it considered the plea for mitigation by Adziwoe's Counsel, Mr Charles Ofori and the fact that he was a first offender.

Prosecuting Chief Inspector Grace Bandoh said the facts before the court are that the victim's father is the complainant residing at Afiaman. Adziwoe also lived in the same area.

On August 17, this year, at 10:50am, the complainant asked the victim to fetch her water to wash his clothes.

The victim spent three hours before returning with the water. The victim had particles of foam over her head and when she was quizzed she narrated her ordeal to the complainant.

Prosecution said the victim stated that Adziwoe who dated her elder sister called her on phone inviting her to 'come and see something.'

On her arrival, the victim said the convict asked her if she had watched a pornographic movie before and she said no.

According to prosecution when the victim was leaving the room, Adziwoe pulled her back and had sex with her.

Prosecution said the complainant informed the Police and he was given a medical form to send the victim to the hospital for examination. Later Adziwoe was arrested.

GNA
Accra, Sept. 9, GNA - A Court in Accra has ordered the Police to produce a 11-year old girl and her mother who have jointly accused one Isaac Tetteh of defilement.

The victim, who is step daughter of the accused, alleged that he (accused) had defiled her on three occasions at Nungua and he was put before an Accra Circuit Court on September 5.

The Circuit Court presided over by Mrs Ruby Naa Akwerley Quaison did not take the plea of Tetteh following prosecution submissions that they were conducting further investigations into the matter.

The court, therefore, remanded Tetteh a mason facing a charge of defilement, into lawful custody to reappear on Friday.

However, during the sittings Prosecuting Detective Inspector Kofi Atimbire informed that court that the Police had concluded the investigations.

According to the Prosecutor, the complainant (the mother) had indicated that victim had confessed to her that the allegation made against the accused person was untrue and they have submitted their statements to the Police.

Prosecution said the statements have been put on the court's records.

The case of Prosecuting Detective Inspector Kofi Atimbire said the complainant was a mother of the victim who resides at Ashaiman.

The accused person, prosecution said was the husband of the complainant. Two weeks ago, the victim who lived with her biological father at Ashiaman and went to look for her mother who then was in Nungua but did not find her because she had packed out of the house as a result of a misunderstanding.

Due to her mother's absence, the victim went loitering and she was sent to the Police Station by a Good Samaritan who opted to take care of the victim while the Police conduct investigations to locate the complainant.

However, during the victim's stay with the Good Samaritan, she sneaked out on three occasions to ascertain whether she could locate her mother at the house.

Detective Inspector Atimbire said Tetteh on all the three occasions had sex with the victim. When the victim was finally reunited with the complainant she narrated her ordeal to the mother.

The victim's mother lodged complaint with the Domestic Violence and Victims Support Unit of the Ghana Police Service and accused was apprehended while a medical form was issued to the victim to seek medical attention.

GNA
Odoben (C/R), Sept. 9, GNA - President John Dramani Mahama has said nothing would change his ambition to develop the country to a standard which would be of greater benefit to present and future generations.

He said it was for this reason that the Government had initiated and implemented lots of projects in health, education, security, and economic among other areas to improve the living standards of the people.

President Mahama was addressing a crowd of supporters and well-wishers of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) at a durbar at Asikuma-Odoben-Brakwa in the Central Region.

He said under the educational programme, particularly the community senior high schools, more students would be admitted to enable them to acquire knowledge and contribute to national development.

President Mahama called on Ghanaians to give him a second term to continue with the development agenda adding; 'I promise you that by the grace of God I will never fail you'.

He appealed to the electorate to vote for him and the NDC parliamentary candidates in their respective constituencies so that collectively they could champion the course of development.

He later introduced Alhaji Joshua Ghansah, the NDC parliamentary candidate for Asikuma-Odoben-Brakwa, to the people.

The President earlier paid a courtesy call on Odaefo Amoakwa Buadu VII, the Paramount Chief of Breman Asikuma Traditional Area, at his palace.

GNA
09.09.2016 LISTEN

By Morkporkpor Anku, GNA

Accra, Sept. 9, GNA - Dr Vincent Ganu, Public Health Physician at the Korle Bu Teaching hospital, has said attitudinal change is necessary for successful kidney transplant programme in sub-Saharan countries.

He said the region is marked by deep seated traditional, cultural and religious belief systems.

Dr Ganu was speaking in Accra, during a presentation at the opening of a two-day Health Conference, organised by Lancaster University Ghana on the topic: 'Kidney transplantation in Sub-Saharan Africa-is the public ready?'

The conference on the theme: 'Current and Future Challenges for Medical Management in West Africa," is to provide a platform for exchange of ideas, insights, experiences and research findings among health academics, industry and policy makers in Ghana.

He said millions die annually from untreated kidney failure due to lack of access to affordable treatment and over two million people worldwide receive treatment with dialysis.

He said a preliminary research conducted in five communities in Great Accra with 100 consenting adult participants per community revealed that 64 per cent were willing to donate to strangers with as many as 71 per cent willing to donate after death.

Dr Ganu said that the study also found out that a majority of Ghanaians have positive attitudes towards kidney transplantation, and less than 50 per cent were willing to donate a kidney.

He said those refusing to donate attributed this to poor health status, loss of body part, religious beliefs and cultural practices, as well as, mistrust of health professionals.

He said it is time to start harnessing the ideas and resources to possibly institute a kidney transplantation programme in Ghana.

'This is cheaper at the long run,' he added.

Professor John Grainger, Provost of Lancaster University, Ghana said the country is now the home of the University and it is committed to offer the highest quality education.

He said conference was to bring together leading academics, policy makers, clinicians, practitioners and students from the UK and West Africa, with the view to assess current and future challenges for medical management in West Africa.

He said the event would mark a major transition for the University and its students, since management would also be moving towards the completion of their new campus building with addition of health science, engineering and other science programmes.

He said currently Lancaster University is providing 18 months health management programme for 24 hospitals CEOs in Gauteng.

GNA
By Emmanuel Asante Attakora, GNA

Accra, Sept. 9, GNA - The President of Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA), Jonathan Duffy, has touched down in Ghana to interact and know about some of the Agency's activities in the country.

ADRA, which is the humanitarian arm of the Seventh - day Adventist (SDA) Church, undertakes activities that are geared towards long-term development and sustainable programmes as well as immediate emergency reliefs.

Speaking to the media at the VVIP Lounge at the Kotoka International Airport, Accra, Duffy said it was a great privilege to visit a country like Ghana with so much history.

'I have been promising tovisit Ghana for three years now since I was appointed as the President of ADRA.

'I am really filled with a lot of anticipation about my visit, I have heard many good things about Ghana and ADRA Ghana as well.'

According to Duffy, ADRA as the charitable arm of the SDA Church, has a great interest in the prosperity of the people within Ghana, and more than 33 years, ADRA has supported the projects within Ghana.

In an interview with Ghana News Agency, the former CEO of ADRA, Australia, said his visit would also afford him the opportunities to advance ADRA's work in Ghana and also enter into new partnerships with other agencies to talk about how Agency's and the church could work together to make a difference in the lives of many Ghanaians.

'The visit will give me an idea about the projects in Ghana with other international bodies in other to advocateI have heard about the standards of work here.

'Is not every country you give aid and it becomes a success, but I have heard about the good work of our aid here and I have come to compliment it.

'I know I will leave with a lot of cultural practice about Ghana and the good work of the church.'

The one week stay would afford Duffy the opportunity to visit partners and embassies in Ghana including UNHCR and World Food Programme (WFP), the Embassy of Denmark/DANIDA, the US Ambassador (Heads of USAID and USDA) and a strategic meeting with the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA).

Giving an insight to Duffy's trip, Dr W. K. Brown, Country Director, ADRA, said he would be visiting the Valley View University, Ghana, a tour of the Kwame Nkrumah Mausoleum and a presentation on ADRA Ghana Projects.

Accordingly Duffy would visit the Cape Coast Castle, Kakum National Park, and Mole National Park to relish the beautiful tourist sites the country could boast of.

ADRA whose philanthropic works cover education, health, food and security, micro finance and economic security is currently operating from 139 countries and impacting lives of about 20 million people worldwide.

GNA
Flagbearer of the Progressive Peoples Party (PPP), Dr Papa Kwesi Nduom has accused Presidential Candidates of both the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC) and New Patriotic Party (NPP) of engaging in children politics.

He says the rate at which President John Mahama and Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo attack each other in the run up to the December polls is distasteful.

"Akufo-Addo talked about Mahama insulting him and calling him a dictator [and] Mahama said Akufo-Addo called him a thief and incompetent. What is presidential about this? he quizzed.

The PPP leader and business mogul disclosed this through a Video News Release (VNR) via social media Thursday.

Speaking in an interview with Paul Adom-Otchere on Accra-based Television station, Metro TV Wednesday, President Mahama accused the NPP leader of attacking his credibility as the leader of the nation.

"He says when he comes to power he wont steal your money what does that mean? It means I am stealing Ghanaians money," Mr Mahama said on the programme, adding Mr Akufo-Addo has referred to him as a thief.

But Dr Nduom says being badmouthed in the media is an occupational hazard politicians go through in the country.

There are crucial works that need to be done in the country to improve the living standard of Ghanaians which is a departure from what the two Presidential Candidates are doing, Dr Nduom said.

Have we forgotten about dumsor, unemployment, lack of potable water, people who are suffering from cholera and malaria? he quizzed adding, the two leaders need to focus on how to address the poor conditions Ghanaians are living in.

Ghana needs serious politicians who will pay attention and work hard to find solutions to the nation's many problems, Dr. Nduom said.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com
Kia opened a plant with an annual production capacity of 400,000 cars in Mexico on Wednesday.

The factory will allow Kia to export cars tariff-free to the 49 countries including the U.S. with which Mexico has free trade agreements.

Kia and affiliate Hyundai will now be able to produce 8.48 million cars a year at their 34 plants throughout Asia, Europe and the Americas.
business LIC to vote in favour of Cairn-Vedanta merger State-run insurer believes the merger with Vedanta will insulate Cairn India from potential risks arising from its single line of business based on crude oil.
business Paytm founder wants to help digital media startups make money Paytm CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma, who recently became India's richest entrepreneur aged under-40, wants to assist media startups in solving the monetisation conundrum.
business Yesterday was a lesson, but will hit back with QIP soon:Yes Bank Yes Bank on Thursday deferred its USD 1 billion qualified institutional placement (QIP). The management blamed the volatility in the stock for the same. Yes Bank, on Friday, opened 6 percent lower after a 5 percent fall in closing on Thursday.
you are here:
business Railways biz doing well but exports slowing down: Timken India The business from railways, which contributes roughly 22 percent to total revenues is doing reasonably well for Timken India but exports are slowing down, says MD Sanjay Koul.
Australia famously rode to prosperity on the sheeps back. Wool was Australias main export commodity from 1871 to the 1960s. For over a century it was Australia, not Jason and the Argonauts, who had the Golden Fleece.

Over time, Australia moved on from wool to resources. It made sense. We are a resource rich nation; one thats close to booming countries like China, which is hungry for more minerals.

Commodity prices continued to rise, which boosted our national income. Australia rode on the back of mining trucks to a decade of success.

But the party didnt last forever. Commodities had to come down at some point in time. And, around 2011, thats exactly what they did.

Source: RBA

The drop in commodity prices wasnt a huge deal at first. But as prices continued to drop, economists started to worry about the effects it would have on the economy.

Businesses tied to commodities started to panic. Investors started taking their money out of resources. From the start of 2011 to the end of 2015, the S&P/ASX 300 Metals and Mining index dropped 62.6%. The S&P/ASX 200 resource sector didnt fare any better, dropping 59.4%.

Source: Google Finance

Its now believed the Australian mining boom is over. Commodity prices remain low, and demand is struggling to pick up. However, in my view, right now is probably the best time to invest in a couple of Aussie miners.

Greedy when others are fearful

Its understandable to think the mining sector has run out of opportunities. Commodity prices are low and, therefore, its harder for miners to generate earnings.

But what do we primarily want to do as investors? Buy low, and sell high. So why would you buy when things are going great? Unless you think circumstances could get better, youll likely buy close to the top.

Instead, why not consider buying when things look bleak and uncertain? Warren Buffett has said before: Be greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy. Of course, Buffett is not punting on stocks beaten down by the market.

Instead, his message is to not trust the views of the market. Buffett is a man who does his homework. When he identifies a great company, market sentiment is not going to sway his investment decision.

So you may want to consider researching into some Aussie miners. Even if everyone has counted them out, but you believe youve found a great opportunity, you shouldnt let emotions psych you out.

Out of the top performers on the ASX 200 this year, the majority are miners. The table below shows the top 12 performing stocks on the ASX 200 this year.

Source: Investing.com

The S&P/ASX 300 Metals and Mining index and the S&P/ASX 200 resource sector have also picked up. Both are up 34% and 22.7% respectively.

Source: Google Finance

Now, this doesnt mean that mining and resource stocks are going to climb to their past heights.

But if youve been neglecting resource stocks, now might be a good time to look into them for your own portfolio.

Harje Ronngard,

Junior Analyst, Money Morning

PS: Fortescues share price rally this year emphasises the great opportunities in mining stocks. The resource sector isnt dead. Its just subdued. And there is rarely a better time to invest than when share prices are low. According to Money Mornings resource specialist, Jason Stevenson, there are many more great mining stocks out their alongside Fortescue.

After reading Jasons report The Top 10 Australian Mining Stocks for 2016, youll know exactly where to look. Jason reveals why now is the perfect time to buy mining stocks. And hell share 10 of the best miners trading on the ASX this year.

To get your free copy of Jasons report, click here.
The world's top two shipping companies are setting up new routes to and from Busan with an eye to mopping up the business of bankrupt Hanjin Shipping.

Danish shipper Maersk said Thursday it will launch a new route linking Shanghai, Busan and Los Angeles next week, deploying six 4,000 TEU vessels. One TEU is equivalent to one 6 m container.

A Maersk staffer said, "We've been getting calls from cargo clients seeking solutions to their shipping needs after the demise of Hanjin and decided to create the new route to meet demand on the Asia-U.S. route."

MSC of Switzerland, the world's No. 2 shipping company, will also launch a new route linking China, Busan and Canada next week. China's top shipper COSCO and Taiwan's Yang Ming also put more ships on their routes in Asia and the U.S.

Ryu Dong-geun at Korea Maritime and Ocean University said, "If major global shipping firms take all of the cargo, they could threaten Korean companies like Hyundai Merchant Marine."

Korean shipping firms pale compared to Maersk and MSC, which run eight to 10 times as many ships. They also have very large containers measuring 18,000 TEU, which no Korean shipping company has. The bigger the ship, the greater the price competitiveness.

In the short term the big operators will simply pick up the slack from the Hanjin collapse, but in the longer term they could snatch business away from other Korean firms.

Once they dominate the market, they could raise fees and eventually hurt the competitiveness of Korean ports.

Hanjin used to take on cargo in China, Japan and Southeast Asia and bring it to Busan, where it was loaded on to bigger ships for transport to the U.S. But foreign shippers may see no good reason to opt for Busan over Shanghai.


MAJ 23/12 : Microsoft est desormais disponible pour tous en version 5.1 !





Le Microsoft Launcher pour Android que jaffectionne tout particulierement a recu une belle mise a jour. Pour linstant, seuls les beta-testeurs peuvent la recevoir, mais la mise a jour sera egalement proposee au grand public dans les semaines a venir. Alors, quoi de neuf avec cette nouvelle version 5.1 ?



Si vous utilisez la Beta de Microsoft Launcher, une nouvelle mise a jour devrait etre des a present disponible sur Google Play. La nouvelle version numerotee 5.1 apporte des changements majeurs au lanceur alternatif de Microsoft pour Android. Parmi les nouveautes interessantes, on note lintegration de Sticky Note et de Microsoft To-Do mais pas seulement. Voici le changelog publie par Microsoft :

Surveillez le temps passe devant votre ecran et la frequence de deverrouillage du telephone. Vous pouvez meme afficher cette info sur lecran daccueil.

Une nouvelle carte To-Do affiche desormais sur lecran daccueil les taches a faire a partir d'applications telles que Microsoft To-Do, Outlook ou Skype.

Une nouvelle carte Notes affiche maintenant les notes depuis Sticky Notes sous Windows, Outlook, Cortana et OneNote Mobile.

Cortana se dote aussi de nouveautes. Pour le marche US : arrivee de la fonctionnalite Hey Cortana en beta et integration des informations routieres. De plus,s support de Cortana pour lEspagne. Esperons que cela arrive un jour en francais.

Les suggestions de Bing donnent maintenant des indications rapides sur le marche boursier et les devises. Il est meme possible de faire des conversions directement sur lecran daccueil.

Merci Remi pour l'info !
First United Methodist Church in Morganton will hold a special community service Sunday at 10:30 a.m. to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The Service of Hope and Remembrance will include recognition of local first responders led by Burke County Sheriff Steve Whisenant.

Im appreciative of the opportunity to share my thoughts on why we live in a blessed area of the United States, and the benefits of same, Whisenant said. Ill speak on the importance of our citizens partnering with law enforcement and all the first responders in Burke County, and what each of us can do to further enhance our quality of life.

FUMC Senior Pastor the Rev. Dr. John Fowler said this is the first time the church has held a service of this kind.

Especially with the 15th anniversary of 9/11 coming on a Sunday, its a good time to seek Gods help with the remembrance of such a sad time, but its a service of hope as well, looking to the future, Fowler said. And its a very natural time to honor public safety, which includes police, firemen, EMS and all the first responders, people that sacrificially serve their communities. We will be in prayer for them.

Fowler said he will preach a sermon during the service based on Psalm 46, which begins with, God is our refuge and strength; a very present help in trouble. Fowler said the psalm was the inspiration for Martin Luthers hymn, A Mighty Fortress is our God, which will be sung during the service.

FUMCs Director of Music and Arts Dr. Amalie Hinson said the music shes selected for the service will be enhanced by brass and percussion instrumentalists. She said the choir will perform an arrangement of two different hymns by local composer Jim Jerome Williams called, I Lift Mine Eyes.

Our theme is the protection and strength of God, and protection of our country, our community and especially our first responders, emergency folks who keep us safe and prevent all kinds of calamities, Hinson said. The text of the hymns gives the theme continuity. The music is timeless as the message of God as our protector and provider. Theres a connection between that history of strength and our first responders.

Fowler extended a special invitation to all public safety officers and first responders in the area, either currently serving or retired, and their families, to attend the service and a luncheon that will be held in their honor following the service.

He spoke about the important role the church has in continuing to help heal the wounds experienced by the attacks 15 years ago.

We feel like thats one of the things that the Lord and the community of faith has always been very good at, how to (help people) grieve in a healthy and productive way, Fowler said.

Fowler said he hopes Sundays service will inspire and strengthen those who attend.

(I hope) they will turn to the Lord in times of trouble for their strength and help, Fowler said. Its important to remember (9/11). Its important to mourn and lament. But we are a people of faith and people of hope. Christian folks are people of the resurrection. Its a comfort you can receive right now.

Tammie Gercken can be reached at tgercken@morganton.com.
Approximately 1,000 customers were affected by a power outage on the southeast side of Morganton on Thursday afternoon.

At around 1:20 p.m., a city of Morganton substation on West Parker Road malfunctioned, causing the outage.

A regulator, which is the piece of equipment that maintains the constant voltage, blew up, said Brooks Kirby, electric services director for the city. We have four circuits and three regulators for each circuit, so one regulator blew up.

Everything south of Interstate 40, South Sterling Street from interstate to downtown and the southeast side of town reported power outages, Kirby said before the power was brought back on around 4 p.m. on Thursday.

At the point of explosion, the regulator lifted off its stand several inches and as it fell back down, the bolts were sheared and the stand was broken, he said.

When that happened, the stand collapsed and the regulator fell against another piece of equipment, which caused that to trip off, he said.

During the failure, the voltage regulator fell to the ground, ripped out some wires, overheated and sprayed hot oil over a section of the substation, according to a press release from the city.

The exploding oil caught the grass around the substation on fire, Kirby said. It soaked the station in oil, so the reason we had to wait to turn everything on is because we had to clean all the oil off of the insulators.

If they had not waited or cleaned off the oil it would have tracked over and caused another failure, he said.

No one was at the substation at the time of the malfunction but city workers were notified immediately through remote monitoring that something happened.

Places that were affected and reported included The Burke County Public Schools Central Office, Patton High School, doctors offices on West Parker Road, Carolinas HealthCare Systems BlueRidge - Morganton Campus, Western Piedmont Community College, Mull Elementary, Liberty Middle School and North Liberty School, Kirby said.

The jail lost power, but it had a generator, he said.

Power service was restored at 4 p.m. to customers affected by the outages on the southeast side of town, the release said.

For more information, or to report an outage, call the electric services department at 828-438-5277.

Staff Writer Jonelle Bobak can be reached at jbobak@morganton.com.
This article is part of Morningstars Back to School Guide to Investing. Join us every day this week to set yourself on the right path to investment success.

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Maintaining independence and editorial freedom is essential to our mission of empowering investor success. We provide a platform for our authors to report on investments fairly, accurately, and from the investors point of view. We also respect individual opinionsthey represent the unvarnished thinking of our people and exacting analysis of our research processes. Our authors can publish views that we may or may not agree with, but they show their work, distinguish facts from opinions, and make sure their analysis is clear and in no way misleading or deceptive.

To further protect the integrity of our editorial content, we keep a strict separation between our sales teams and authors to remove any pressure or influence on our analyses and research.

Read our editorial policy to learn more about our process.
A Schedule I Bank with a particular focus on the various needs of the Chinese Canadian community has been recently inaugurated in Vancouver and the Greater Toronto Area.Launched by Chinese Canadian entrepreneurs, Wealth One Bank of Canada aims to become the preferred bank among Chinese Canadians, according to the institutions September 7 press release via CNW Group.The bank will be providing a diverse range of financial products through online, phone, or in-person transactions, including residential and commercial mortgages as well as personal and business deposits.At the heart of this bank is a team with a deep knowledge and respect for Chinese values and culture, and frontline financial services managers who are fluent in Chinese and English, Wealth One President and CEO Charles Lambert stated.With the tremendous growth we've seen in the Chinese Canadian community, the opening of Wealth One presents a significant opportunity and a historic moment for our community, according to founding shareholder Shenglin Xian.The bank is looking to expand across the country in the succeeding years, officials added.
Spooky sites Fall is the season of holiday spectacle in Moorpark. In December, of course, Pinedale Road transforms into Candy Cane Lane and dazzles visitors with Santa splendor. But for those who...

Local hula group inspires global connections When the pandemic ushered everyone indoors, Moorpark resident and longtime dancer Lisa Rauschenberger decided to get people back outsidesocially distanced, of course. She began to hold weekly hula lessons at...

Teens face high stakes in the Oval Office A press room befitting Americas commander in chief was set up inside the Reagan Library in Simi Valley. Journalists and others gathered inside. Ladies and gentlemen, I need you all...
Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg

The nations oil stockpiles, maintained in the event of a global shortage, are in need of immediate repair and must not shrink any more than already ordered by Congress , the U.S. Department of Energy said in a report Wednesday.

The findings have been much anticipated, as federal energy officials debated whether the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is in need of drastic overhaul, as its infrastructure ages and the countrys recent oil boom makes it less dependent on foreign supplies.
Some Midland organizations have planned events this week to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on America.

Fifteen years after  for many of us  its still a somber day, said Macey Meriggi, communications director for First United Methodist Church. Its still very vivid in a lot of our imaginations. For younger generations, they understand a bad thing happened, but they dont understand the magnitude.

The church is incorporating remembrance into its service at 10:45 a.m. Sunday. It will host the Rev. Felicia Hopkins  who served in the military  and will recognize people in the armed services and first responders. Tickets are available online for the optional patriotic lunch that follows the service.

Its an opportunity for the community to come together to remember, lean on one another and pray for continued support for our country, Meriggi said.

Some Midland ISD schools will have assemblies to commemorate the anniversary. First responders are invited to many of the events, taking place at seven elementary schools.

Midland High School is hosting a community event 8 a.m. today in front of the school flagpole. Speakers include Mayor Jerry Morales, Police Chief Price Robinson, Fire Chief Robert Isbell and Capt. Emily Isbell. The event will also include a flag ceremony and playing of Taps.

Natalie Jarratt, MHS senior and group deputy commander for Junior ROTC, said the purpose of the event is to honor sacrifices.

I believe that Junior ROTC is about building better citizens in the community, Jarratt said. A way we can do that on 9/11 is by honoring veterans who dedicated their lives for our country and our first responders.

Another organization hosting a commemorative event is VFW Post 4149. The public is invited to a flag-lowering ceremony 1 p.m. Sunday at the post, located on Veterans Airpark Lane. During the subsequent lunch, first responders will eat for free while others are encouraged to make donations.

Most of our first responders are veterans, said David Kator, quartermaster of the post. Its a part of our duty to support.

Nationally, 9/11 called attention to the Muslim faith. After the 2001 attacks, local churches reached out to the Muslim Association of West Texas, according to a previous Midland Reporter-Telegram article.

Farook Rafeek, a member of the faith group, has lived in Midland for 35 years and said his group hasnt experienced negativity.

The whole community is very friendly to us, Rafeek said. Theyre never [had] a bad opinion of us.

According to Gallup poll data, 43 percent of Americans admit to having some degree of prejudice toward Muslims  more than toward other religious groups. Rafeek he said some in the country may have negative perceptions of Islam due to unfavorable imagery from the media and anti-Muslim groups.

That is because people are not educated enough in Islam, he said.
We have been cursed with leaders ...
Stanislaus National Forest View Photos

Sonora, CA  This week the Tuolumne Supervisors shared a bit of displeasure along with concerns over draft state forest plans by the US Forest Service (USFS).

Released for a 90-day public comment period back in May was 1,500-plus pages of paperwork pertaining to currently proposed plan revisions and a draft environmental impact statement (DEIS) for the Inyo, Sequoia and Sierra National Forests.

Although the Stanislaus National Forest does not specifically figure into the body of work, as it was understood that these plans may become templates for other forest plans, county officials agreed a thorough review was key. However, the USFS declined an Aug. 2 request by the Tuolumne County Board of Supervisors for a 45-day extension in order to spend more time poring over and responding to the contents of the hefty USFS package.

Displeasure Duly Noted

At this weeks board meeting Board Chair and District 5 Supervior Karl Rodefer called out forest officials for not granting the county additional time. He requested that staff incorporate language to the effect into a letter already drafted and sent to some of the USFS contacts in time to meet the agencys originally stated deadline of Aug. 25.

Explaining his direction, with which the rest of the board concurred, Rodefer stated, I will just say that the reason that I offered the change [to the letter] is that we stated that we wanted to be very explicit in our disapproval over the lack of approval to the extension that we asked for.

Natural Resources Committee Chair and District 1 Supervisor Sherri Brennan, with help from committee member, District 2 Supervisor Randy Hanvelt and county staff, previously prepared the boards nine-page NFS response letter, which outlined numerous areas of concern as well as recommendations.

Figuring The Regions Future Into The Forest Plan

The communication noted that, with 75 percent of the Tuolumne County land base owned by the USFS, the area is heavily dependent on revenues generated by the multiple uses of public lands  as well as directly interested in advocating healthy forest ecosystems for the obvious safety of residents and visitors.

The letter specifically asked the USFS to ensure that its draft plans and DEIS expand upon the multiple use mandate established by Congress a half-century ago by accepting minor conflicts between uses while working to maximize achievement and balance between activities such as grazing, mining, timber management, wildlife and recreation in ways that will ensure best-outcome economic, social and ecological enhancements to the region.

Among the supervisors areas of concern outlined to the USFS were that the draft forest plans and DEIS do not adequately address and consider current forest conditions such as the states tree mortality emergency, which is already threatening long-term forest health, public safety and future property and recreation opportunities.

Recommendations Reflect Regional Industries

Along with countys comments, the letter made several recommendations. Among these are that the USFS directly support grazing as part of forest management best practices; incorporate sawmill and timber harvest infrastructure and data in the forest plans; address the state of the biomass power plant industry; and account for wildfire, insect and disease impacts on water quality.

The supervisors also asked that the vision outline of future forest plans pertaining to the region better integrate multiple uses such as grazing into watershed management; acknowledge the social and economic benefits of rangelands in the central, southern and eastern Sierra Nevada; and move away from unrealistic single-species management practices that directly conflict with species conservation.
Sonora, CA  National controversy has come over the addition of the 400-acre Ackerson Meadow to Yosemite National Park, which finalized earlier this week.

As reported here, the park announced Wednesday that it had completed all the steps to formally acquire the 400-acre meadow, through a cooperative effort between The Trust for Public Land (TPL), Yosemite Conservancy, and the National Park Service. TPL purchased it from private owners for $2.3 million. Through donations raised the lands were able to be gifted to the park.

On Friday Chair of the House Natural Resources Committee U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop said in a statement to The Associated Press that Yosemite National Park violated federal law when it added the significant acreage  Yosemites largest expansion in almost 70 years  without first clearing it through Congress.

The National Park Service points to Land and Water Conservation Fund documents, saying that only acquisitions using that funding require the approval of Congress, not donated lands.

Bishop, a Republican Congressman with the Utah delegation, stated, The Park Service acted outside of its authority, and we will require them to account for their actions. His staff indicated that while Bishop does not want Yosemite to give back the land gift, inquiries are underway to determine how the park was able to act without Congressional oversight and what other actions might be taken.

Ahead of the land transfer, TPL asked the Tuolumne County Board of Supervisors for their input on the matter as part of its process. The supervisors responded with a letter last December recommending against the move. The boards opinion was that the property should remain accessible for grazing. Pointing out that the ranchers connected with it had well-established proof of their stewardship, the supervisors noted the parks less than lustrous track record maintaining parts of its already sizable holdings.

Yosemite National Park officials say they are not commenting on Bishops remarks.
Business owners want increased patrols along International Drive in Orlando after a tourist was shot and killed early Thursday morning while on his honeymoon.

Man, 52, shot and killed during robbery attempt on I-Drive

Business owners in the area are asking for increased patrols

Have information? Call Crimeline at 800-423-TIPS (8477)

Osman Darcan, 52, and his wife were approached in the parking lot of the Wyndham Orlando Resort before 2 a.m. Thursday by a man who tried to rob them, according to the Orange County Sheriff's Office. During the robbery attempt, Darcan was shot multiple times. According to deputies, a man tried to grab the womans purse, but Darcan fought back and was shot.

Darcan was killed. The couple is from Turkey, deputies said, and were in Orlando for their honeymoon. The woman was not injured.

The Orange County Sheriff's Office had increased patrols in the area Friday morning. Deputies continue to search for the suspect or suspects involved in the deadly shooting.

"I think police patrols should increase, especially during nightfall," said Monnica Nandu, owner of Benzer Inc., a gift shop in I-Drive tourist area of Orange County. "They should be traveling around patrolling the area, keeping an eye on all the tourists and the employees that work here."

Orlando Police patrols the northern section of I-Drive, south to Sand Lake Road. Agency officials on Friday said they have seen a spike in car burglaries, but they said they have dozens of officers patrolling the area 24 hours per day.

Orange County Sheriff's Office patrols south of Sand Lake Road.

Homicides in this area of Orlando are rare, but the Orange County Sheriff's Office has also seen a major spike this year in the amount of aggravated battery and commercial and automobile burglaries.

Statistics provided by the Orange County Sheriff's Office



Orange County stats show more than triple the number of car break-ins and thefts than last year in the area. There were also double the number of aggravated batteries, which includes shootings.

The Orange County Sheriff's Office said it plans on increasing patrols throughout the weekend but wouldn't say what the long-term plan is for handling the recent increase in crime.

Anyone with information on the deadly shooting and armed robbery attempt is asked to call Crimeline at 800-423-TIPS (8477).
Dr. Candace Keller will present the first program of the year for the Plains Art Association at 7 p.m. Monday, Sept. 12, in the Abraham Art Gallery on the campus of Wayland Baptist University.

Guests are welcome.

Keller plans to give an overview of her sabbatical studies in painting and discuss her artistic processes.

A professor of art on the faculty of Wayland Baptist University, Keller serves as Art Department chair and curator of art for the Abraham Art Gallery and Museum of the Llano Estacado.

She holds a Ph.D. in Fine Arts from Texas Tech University, did fellowship studies in painting with artist Audrey Flack at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida in 1986, received the Virginia Steele Scott Research Fellowship to the Huntington Library and Collections in California in 1990, and was selected as Associate by artist Ed Paschkel of Northwestern University, Illinois, for painting studies in 1995.

A realist artist working primarily in acrylics and watercolor, Keller has exhibited widely, and her works are held in numerous private and corporate collections. She has served on the Texas Commission on the Arts, and is a regional director of the West Texas Regional Scholastic Art Competition.

Keller is a member of Phi Kappa Phi Visual Arts Academic Honor Society, Golden Key National Honors Society, Alpha Psi Omega, CIVA, The College Art Association, Texas Association of Schools of Art, Plains Art Association, Lubbock Arts Alliance and serves on the Advisory Board of the Citadelle Art Foundation.
Plainview Lions Club

Purple and gold Lions vests were abundant at noon Wednesday at the civic center as a majority of feline on the first Wednesday of every month proudly wear their own purple and gold official Lions identification to celebrate the slogan We Serve and adding color to the official meeting, in which Lion Boss Jim Tirey, Queen Madi Rossi and Princess Colti Wright tended to head table chores and keeping control of business matters tended to by the reception. Garrett Mathis led our pledges, Larry McNutt and Jim Tirey led singing and Lea Stuckey gave the invocation.

Lion James Belk announced that Lions signage has arrived and will soon be installed beside highways leading into and out of our city. Watch for these informative signs as you drive around Plainview. These welcome signs inform passersby and members of other cities clubs that Plainview is the place to be when service needs are required and perfect attendance awards can be recognized by attending the local clubs meeting.

Our raffle drew $87 for Snak Pak For Kids. Prize winners in the drawing were Bill Wells, Duffy Hinkle, Doug McDonough and Ron Miller. Misty Rowell introduced Ron Appling who spoke on Hale on Wheels, a bicycle event raced in Plainview each year. The event will be staged on Sept. 17 this year, with local Lions manning one of the rest and check point stops on the course.

Its great to be a Lion.

We Serve - Ron White

Plainview Rotary Club

The Rotary Club of Plainview held a Club Assembly Tuesday, Sept. 6, to inform membership of plans for the coming year. The assembly started with a song led by President Lydia Castillo, a prayer led by Max Browning, and the pledge led by Kenneth Hooper. The club enthusiastically recognized Abbi Hannoch as the September Rotary Student of the Month. Then the Membership Chair Janice Payne recognized the Rotarian anniversaries of Beverly Wall (8 years), Brandon Ahrens (6 years), and Jay Ganaway (3 years).

President Lydia Castillo gave the club a rousing explanation of this year's Rotary theme, "Rotary Serving Humanity," and emphasized that we are all a TEAM because, "Together Everyone Achieves More!" President-elect Kim Street described the club's administrative programs and organization. Leslie Gattis, Foundation co-chair, described the value of supporting the Rotary Foundation, which celebrates a century of service above self.

Public Relations Chair Jay Givens told of the important Student of the Month program and reminded the club that any outbound Rotary Youth Exchange students need to get their application in soon. The Rotary Youth Exchange program gives adventuresome students a chance to live in a foreign country with other Rotary families, learn a foreign language, and gain new friends. Abbi Hannoch spent the past year in Japan on a Rotary Youth Exchange, and she returned to us fluent in Japanese. Interested students can contact President Lydia Castillo at the Hale County Literacy Council, or Jay Givens at Wayland Baptist University.

Service Chair Eloise Hernandez described the club's many projects that benefit Plainview. They include presenting a dictionary to every third grade student in Hale County, awarding prizes to junior and high school students for perfect attendance, delivering meals on wheels, and helping with other events such as the upcoming Hale on Wheels bicycle race and Running Water Draw Arts and Crafts Festival.

--Jay Givens

Soroptimist International

Members of Soroptimist International of Plainview met for their regular weekly meeting on Thursday, Sept. 8, at the West Texas Wood Fire Grill. At 12:10 p.m., past-President Teresa Young called the meeting to order, and member Judy Gattis led the opening prayer. Twenty-plus Soroptimist-Plainview members and two guests joined in reciting pledges to the American and Texas flags.

After a reminder regarding the collection of Faith-In-Sharing-House donations, member Norma Loewen announced September birthdays and presented Dorothy Leija with a card and small gift. Carole Bell, chair of the Economic and Social Development Committee, presented the meetings speaker for the day, Dr. Adrienne Bennings of Texas Tech Universitys Small Business Development Center. Dr. Bennings distributed packets to all present and proceeded to share Key Considerations before Starting a Business. The importance of planning for success was stressed. Bennings closed by encouraging members to consider opening a small business and to take advantage of the free services offered by the Small Business Development Center if they do so.

Following Dr. Bennings presentation, members closed the meeting with the Soroptimist pledge. Ms. Young adjourned the meeting at 12:50 p.m.

Learn more about Soroptimist International at http://www.soroptimist.org/ .

--Cindy McClenagan

Kiwanis International of Plainview

Nineteen people were in attendance for Thursdays noon meeting at Plainview Country Club. Following the Pledge of Allegiance, Randy Kaufman offered a prayer.

Guests present were Phyllis Wall, Tyke Dipprey, Linda Morris, Melinda Brown, Jeffrey Snyder, Mayor Wendell Dunlap, Susan Blackerby and Dr. Charles Starnes.

The group was reminded about helping at the Wal-Mart Distribution Center Appreciation Dinner on Saturday. Main Street Coordinator Melinda Brown told the group about a mentor program being conducted at Ash High School and requested members participation.

The group reviewed last weeks 22nd annual barbecue dinner fundraiser. Special thanks to all of those who contributed, including S&S Electric, Xcel Energy, Tyke Dipprey and Independent Insurance Agents of Plainview, Frito-Lay, Weekends Barbecue, Covenant Hospital Plainview, Estacado Middle School, the Boy Scouts, and everyone who purchased tickets.

After an announcement by Monica Rodriguez, the group sang Happy Birthday to Sarah Castillo.

Sarah, who is serving as Septembers program chairman, introduced State Sen. Charles Perry who visited with the group on a number of issues before taking a handful of questions. - Kevin Lewis
By NICKI BRUCE LOGAN

Herald Lifestyles Editor

Although he was a toddler when Dr. Roy Hunt and his wife, Mae, were murdered in Littlefield, Plainview attorney Bill LaFont says he grew up hearing about the trial that riveted citizens across Texas.

"My father was district attorney at the time," LaFont says in explaining his interest in the story and how he got involved in a recently-published book that details the murders and subsequent trials held in Olton and Plainview.

"I grew up hearing talk about the trial. It was quite a famous deal at the time."

He adds that his father planned to write a book about the trials and his involvement "some day," but didnt get around to it.

"Dad tried to get in position to write a book but never took the time to sit down and do it, so when I was contacted by the Samuelsons, I was interested in helping them."

The Samuelsons are the books authors, Dr. Robert and Dana Middlebrooks Samuelson of Dallas, who became fascinated with the murders when Danas mother, Sue Middlebrooks, told them about a Littlefield doctor and his wife who were killed in their home in the 1940s while their two young daughters were in the house.

Sue Middlebrooks was nine at the time of the murders and, like LaFont, grew up hearing about them. Dana graduated from Littlefield High School and, after hearing the story from her mother, became fascinated with finding the real story behind the murders.

That initial interest led the Samuelsons to the Southwest Collection at Texas Tech University in Lubbock.

"I had furnished all of Dads records to the Southwest library, and the Samuelsons were allowed to see about a third of what I had given to the library," LaFont says. "When they contacted me, I gave them everything I had, made copies from the files . . . transcripts of the trials."

LaFont says that opening the old files brought back memories for him and he helped the Samuelsons in their research because he was interested in a book being written, in part because his father had intended to write one about his experiences.

Research shows that behind the murders was a love/hate triangle that had its roots in medical school where Roy Hunt and Billy Newton were dating, unbeknownst to each other, Ruth Nichols, a pretty nursing student with a reputation of being popular with the boys. Ruth was in love with Roy but he wasnt ready to get married, so she married Billy.

Later, Roy married Mae Franks and set up a medical practice in Littlefield. The Newtons lived at Cameron where Billy Newton practiced medicine.

The plot thickened when Hunt was called out in the middle of the night to meet Ruth Newton on Clovis Road. Once there, Newton stepped out from behind the car and shot Hunt twice. Hunt survived by hiding between furrows in a plowed field, then after the Newtons searched for him and drove away he crawled back to his car and got help.

Newton was charged with attempted murder, and a trial was held in Olton, which was the Lamb County seat at the time. He was convicted and sentenced to seven years in the penitentiary.

Still holding a grudge, Newton found Jim Thomas who, according to reports, never claimed to be anything but a killer.

In October 1943, he entered the Hunt home in Littlefield by climbing in a window, killed Roy and Mae Hunt and when their young daughter, Jo Ann, came into the room, he doused her with chloroform and threw her into a closet.

She escaped and went to a neighbors house for help.

On a tip, Thomas was arrested in Galveston and was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in a trial held in Plainview.

The book tells a fascinating tale of Thomas background and criminal history and how he got involved in the murders.

Bill LaFont remembers his fathers description of Thomas.

"Its interesting that Dad always told me that Jim Thomas was a very nice man  he didnt smoke, he didnt drink, he didnt cuss  he just killed people."

LaFont also remembers that the story was published in several crime and mystery magazines popular at the time.

Emotions ran high throughout both trials, and the safety of the beloved district attorney was in question.

"Dad wore a shoulder holster for six months after the last trial," LaFont says. "Nobody ever did anything to him that I know of, but he kept a gun . . . wore that shoulder holster . . . for a while."

("Clovis Road, the Dr. Roy Hunt Murder, Littlefield, Texas 1942-1943, A True Crime Story," written by Dad Middlebrooks Samuelson and Robert Samuelson, M.D., is available at Waymores in Littlefield, at Amazon.com or by calling the Samuelsons at Highgate Publishing, 214-369-6360.)

(Contact Nicki Bruce Logan, Herald Lifestyles Editor, at 806-296-1362 or nicki@plainviewdailyherald.com)
Covenant Health Plainviews dedication to health care excellence has pushed the local hospital to the front of the regional pack as it was announced the Plainview facility recently earned a 4-star rating from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).

The new CMS star rating system known as, Hospital Compare, awarded Covenant Health Plainview (CHP) one of the few 4-star ratings in the region for in the category of Acute Care Hospitals that offer emergency services.

Covenant Health Plainview is committed to providing quality care and service to our patients, said Covenant Health Plainview CEO Bob Copeland as he praised the work of physicians and staff.

This 4-star rating is a great indicator of the outstanding work performed by all our co-workers and physicians,

The Hospital Compare overall rating system uses more than 60 measures to grade facilities, including hospital-acquired infection rates, emergency room wait times, physician and nurse care, cleanliness, pain management and many other medical capabilities.

The CMS rating was created to help individuals, family members and caregivers access an easy to understand method of comparing hospitals and understand the quality of care they deliver.

Covenant Health Plainviews rating was on par with larger-city hospitals in Amarillo and scored better than most medical facilities in Lubbock, Brownfield, Hereford and Levelland.

In the collected survey data, CHP scored above the Texas and national average in patients who felt their nurses and doctors always communicated well, their pain was managed well and their needs were quickly assessed.

The same high trend of outscoring the state and national average continued in patients reporting always having a clean and quiet hospital room.

Seventy-three percent of patients reported giving the hospital an overall high rating of 9 or 10, and 71 percent reported they would definitely recommend the hospital.

To view the CMS ratings and other health care consumer information, visit Hospital Compare at www.medicare.gov.

Covenant Health Plainviews roots began in 1912 with the establishment of the first hospital in Hale County, the Guyton Nichols Sanitarium. For most of its 100-year history, the citizens of the region have benefited from the most advanced healthcare available closer to home. Covenant Health Plainview is a thriving 68- bed facility which provides top-quality care with services that include cardiology, orthopedics, ophthalmology, urology, general surgery, a trauma-4 emergency room and much more. Covenant Health Plainview is part of the integrated health care system of St. Joseph Health, broadening the scope of services available to you and strengthening the continuum of care. Covenant Hospital Plainview is a faith-based, not-for-profit institution rooted in the belief of the healing ministry of Jesus.
We liked this week



At the City Council meeting Tuesday evening, Meriden Police Chief Jeffry Cossette said that information about the killing of a resident at Community Towers in August should have been released sooner than it was. That one should have gone out earlier, but that was our error, he said. We hope this is a sign that there will be greater transparency from the department, as many residents are concerned about recent violent incidents in the city.



A local business  Savers, on Chamberlain Highway  has partnered with Meridens John Barry School and will make monthly donations of supplies while assisting with special events and fundraisers. Cassandra Ballard, Savers community donation manager, has a special connection to the school: She attended John Barry as a child.



Meriden City Manager Guy Scaife hit the ground running Tuesday, spending much of his first day on the job learning about a recent string of shootings and other issues facing the city. Scaife met Tuesday with department heads on critical and strategic items. He also spent time touring City Hall and learning the layout, and, like any other new employee, getting his computer and voicemail set up.



Connecticuts Department of Public Health has distributed more than 9,000 overdose prevention kits in the state since 2014. The kits are part of the agencys campaign called OPEN Access CT. OPEN stands for Overdose Prevention Education and Naloxone. Naloxone, also known by the brand name Narcan, is a medication that reverses the symptoms of an opioid drug overdose. The state recently received a $1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to fight opioid abuse.



Special ceremonies will be held Sunday in Meriden, Wallingford, Southington, Berlin and North Haven to honor those who died in the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, as well as to pay tribute to public safety employees.



Students and staff at Meridens Platt and Maloney high schools experienced some of the new features of both as they returned to school. The extensive renovation and expansion projects at the two 58-year-old schools started nearly four years ago and are now nearing completion.



The Collaboratory  the Wallingford Public Librarys new state-of-the-art maker space and digital media room  has opened to the public, with high-tech laser cutters, long-arm quilting machines, 3-D scanners, an old-fashioned loom and creative modern spaces for community collaboration.



Mount Southington hosted the Live Fit CT Mud Run last weekend, a three-mile test of endurance up and down the mountain with a dozen obstacles in the way. Proceeds go to help fight post-traumatic stress disorder among military veterans.



We didnt like this week



The state Insurance Department has approved 13 health insurance policy rate hikes that far outstrip increases in recent years, averaging nearly 25 percent for individuals and 13 percent for small groups.










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Seven current and former Bay Area police officers will be tried for crimes related to contact they had with a sexually exploited teenager, Alameda County prosecutors said Friday as they detailed an investigation that engulfed several police departments and cast the Oakland force into disarray.

Calling the cops conduct morally reprehensible, District Attorney Nancy OMalley said charges ranging from oral sex with a minor to misusing computer databases would be filed against five current or former Oakland officers, one former Livermore officer, and one former Contra Costa County sheriffs deputy.

Its not clear when the cases  which represent one of the broadest prosecutions of police officers in Bay Area history  will be formally lodged with the courts. Prosecutors now need to make sure the teenager at the center of the scandal, who goes by the name Celeste Guap, is available to testify.

Guap was recently arrested and jailed after law enforcement officials in Contra Costa County helped send her to a rehabilitation center in Florida, where she allegedly attacked a guard. OMalley said Friday she wasnt consulted on the cross-country trip and had protested it.

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The young woman, who lives in Richmond and has worked as a prostitute, told The Chronicle she had sex with 29 officers in the Bay Area in the past two years, and that her relations with at least four officers occurred before she turned 18. A few officers paid her, she said, while others warned her about antiprostitution stings or ran the names of people she knew through confidential databases.

Some of the most serious charges will be leveled against Ricardo Perez, the Contra Costa County deputy. He resigned in June shortly after Guap told The Chronicle he had sex with her several times last summer in his car off a rural road in Alameda County, when she was 17. Guap turned 19 in August.

Perez, who worked in the countys jails, will be charged with felony oral copulation with a minor and two misdemeanor counts of engaging in lewd acts in public, prosecutors said.

A Livermore officer who recently resigned, Dan Black, will be charged with four misdemeanors: two counts of engaging in prostitution and two counts of engaging in lewd acts in public, OMalley said.

Oakland Officer Giovanni LoVerde will be charged with felony oral copulation with a minor, while Oakland Officer Brian Bunton will face a felony count of obstruction of justice and a misdemeanor count of engaging in prostitution.

Oakand Officer Warit Uttapa is to be charged with one count of misusing computer databases, while Terryl Smith, who has resigned, is to face four counts of the same allegation. A retired Oakland officer, Leroy Johnson, will be charged with failing to report sexual misconduct despite being a mandatory reporter, prosecutors said.

Efforts to reach the accused men and their attorneys were not successful.

OMalley said many other police officers had contact with Guap, but that criminal charges could not be pressed, in some cases because the men engaged in sexual contact with Guap online, which the law does not address.

Additional potential offenses occurred in Contra Costa, San Francisco and San Joaquin counties, OMalley said, with prosecutors in those counties needing to make their own charging decisions.

Uttapa and Smith, she said, both had sex with Guap in Contra Costa County. On Friday, that countys chief assistant district attorney, Doug MacMaster, said, We havent been brought any cases that merit the filing of criminal charges.

Sarai Smith-Mazariegos, who co-founded an Oakland nonprofit that assists child victims of sex trafficking, applauded the charges.

This is sending a clear message that no matter who you are, what office you represent, if you are exploiting a child, you will be charged and prosecuted, she said.

While the announcement of the charging decision in Alameda County was a milestone in the case, it was not a culmination.

Several police agencies  including the Alameda County Sheriffs Office, the San Francisco and Richmond police departments, and the U.S. militarys Defense Logistics Agency  are still weighing whether to fire or discipline numerous officers who had sex with Guap or had other contact with her.

Oakland city officials said Wednesday that four unidentified officers would be fired, seven would be suspended without pay and another referred to counseling after an internal review.

Meanwhile, the Oakland Police Departments handling of the case in the past year is under heavy scrutiny, and could affect its ability to emerge from federal court oversight more than 15 years after a brutality scandal involving a group of officers known as the Riders.

Part of the far-reaching settlement in that case was an agreement that requires Oakland police to inform the district attorneys office of any incident in which there is probable cause to believe an officer engaged in criminal conduct.

But OMalley said she only learned of the case in May, about eight months after police supervisors first caught wind of the allegations. As the case unfolded, U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson shifted oversight of the internal probe to a federal compliance director. And Oakland Police Chief Sean Whent resigned in June.

Were not happy and were frustrated that the system we put in place to check the police did not work, said John Burris, one of the civil rights attorneys who secured the settlement. Police have a history in internal affairs of not policing themselves.

The charging decision came amid uncertainty over the availability of Guap to testify, after her jailing two weeks ago in Martin County, Fla., on suspicion of battery.

The assistant state attorney in Martin County, David Lustgarten, said he would decide Monday whether to charge Guap after speaking with his supervisor and viewing additional video evidence of the alleged battery. If she is charged with a felony, she could be stuck in Florida for months.

Pamela Price, an attorney representing Guap, blamed Richmond officials for sending her to Florida, likening the action to witness tampering or obstruction of justice.

OMalley said her office had no part in Guaps trip to Florida. To the contrary, she said, we protested her removal from California where she could receive the services she wanted and requested. An agency outside of Alameda County made arrangements to send her out of state, against our wishes and advice.

A Richmond police spokesman denied his agency was responsible.

Its not our decision, said Lt. Felix Tan. Were glad she got help, but you cant ever force a victim or anyone into rehab. It just doesnt work.

Guap, whose mother is an Oakland police dispatcher, has told The Chronicle that sexual relations with Perez as well as three Oakland police officers occurred before she turned 18. Guap said she had met the Bay Area officers through law enforcement circles, on the streets or through social media.

One of the three Oakland officers Guap said she had contact with as a minor, Brendan OBrien, committed suicide in September 2015 after leaving a note that referred to Guap. Thats what set off the investigation.

OMalley, however, said her offices investigators couldnt find any direct evidence to confirm Guap had in-person sexual contact with OBrien.

Guap said she met Perez by sending him a Facebook message after he added her as a friend on the social network. The deputy, she said, would pick her up while off-duty and drive up Fish Ranch Road, off Highway 24 near the Caldecott Tunnel, where they would have sex. She said no money was exchanged.

Id say about 10 times, Guap told The Chronicle. Asked if the deputy knew she was under 18, Guap said, I dont think he asked.

The district attorneys investigation was based heavily on online communication between Guap and police officers. OMalley said her office reviewed nearly 150,000 pages of data going back to January 2015  including nearly 60,000 texts and more than 75,000 Facebook pages and messages.

Kimberly Veklerov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kveklerov@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kveklerov
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Former 49ers tight end Bruce Miller appeared in court Friday, but a judge postponed his arraignment on a string of felony charges, including assault with a deadly weapon, arising from an alleged attack on a 70-year-old man and his son at a hotel in Fishermans Wharf.

Miller  dressed in a dark suit, blue shirt and tie  stood quietly in the courtroom with his attorney during the brief hearing. He and his lawyer left the court without answering questions from reporters.

His arraignment was postponed to Nov. 2. At the request of prosecutors, a judge issued an order of protection barring Miller  whos 6-foot-2, 248 pounds  from contacting the victims of the alleged assault.

Miller, who was released by the team soon after his arrest, is charged with seven felonies, including assault with force likely to cause great bodily injury, battery with serious bodily injury, inflicting injury on an elder likely to cause great bodily injury, along with two counts of criminal threats. Hes also charged with one misdemeanor count of battery.

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This was a clear case of elder abuse and unfortunately, it occurred by somebody that our community and certainly our young people look up to, San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon said following the court hearing. It is embarrassing.

Authorities said they went to the Marriott hotel on the 1200 block of Columbus Avenue around 2:45 a.m. Monday after receiving a report of an intoxicated person. Once there, they discovered that Miller, 29, had attempted to get into a hotel room that was not his, according to Officer Grace Gatpandan, a spokeswoman for the San Francisco Police Department.

A 70-year-old man and his 66-year-old wife were staying in that room and their son, staying next door, came out to tell Miller that he was at the wrong room, she said. At that point, Miller charged him and started a physical confrontation, according to Gatpandan.

The man attempted to defend his 29-year-old son but allegedly was punched and beaten with a cane by Miller, police said.

Both men were taken to a hospital and Miller was arrested at a hotel across the street. Gascon said the injuries were significant. Authorities did not say who owned the cane.

It appears that the injury to Millers forehead occurred during the altercation at the hotel, according to prosecutors.

Miller was released by the 49ers hours after he was arrested for the attack. He remains free on $178,000 bail.

Hours before the arrest, Miller had been thrown out of Tommys Joynt, a San Francisco restaurant on Van Ness Avenue, after a dispute with a patron over a sandwich, according to the restaurant manager.

Hamed Aleaziz is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: haleaziz@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @haleaziz
Unless you were old enough to remember the mid-1960s it might be hard to grasp the considerable impact the Kennedy family, particularly Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and the widowed first lady, Jacqueline, had on both the popular imagination and political discourse in the United States  and, arguably, the world.

Everything they did seemed to be news, even if it was just Jackie sporting a miniskirt in public (fall 1966 and cautious housewives over 30 followed suit, The New York Times noted later).

This intense level of scrutiny, sparked by President John Kennedys 1963 assassination and fueled by a yearning both for what once was and might just be again, kept the Kennedys in the spotlight.

Patience was not a virtue in the 1960s. The decade was all about change: Wonderful, horrific, bewildering, logical  often all at the same time.

Into that world and time strode Robert Kennedy. He was, as Larry Tyes new biography, Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon, shows, a man on a mission, even if he wasnt, perhaps, fully aware of where the mission would go.

Tyes well-researched and carefully sourced book details how Kennedy used such forward thinking to address the major issues of that rapidly evolving decade. He saw change coming and turned to meet it.

A revolution is coming  a revolution that will be peaceful if we are wise enough, compassionate if we care enough, successful if we are fortunate enough, but a revolution that is coming whether we will it or not, Kennedy wrote.

More Information Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon By Larry Tye Random House, $32 See More Collapse

While that revolution wasnt as great as the Left hoped for and the Right feared, America was a profoundly different place at the end of the decade than at the beginning.

Tragically, Robert Kennedy would not live to see the country he was working so hard to change.

Kennedys assassination in 1968, minutes after winning the California Democratic primary for president, cruelly cut short a life that was, as Tye so carefully lays out, was one in progress.

Kennedy began as a man who, as Tye notes, saw things starkly in basic terms, like good and evil, working for Sen. Joseph McCarthy, the Wisconsin Republican who fueled a Communist witch hunt; laboring tirelessly  ruthlessly, his critics famously said  to get his brother into the White House; and doing anything to score an administration win.

At the end of his life, Kennedy was increasingly his own man who, matured by grief and more open to lifes complexities, had become an eloquent champion for the poor and the oppressed.

RFKs record on civil rights, his wrangling with the Russians over Cuba, his crusade against organized crime, how he waged various Kennedy campaigns are all examined in this book.

Its clear Kennedys metamorphosis to liberal icon didnt happen immediately or easily. Along the way, Kennedy amassed a formidable list of people who disliked or hated him, including Frank Sinatra, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, writer Gore Vidal, Sen. Eugene McCarthy, Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa and President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Yet, he was able to win over countless others because he had the courage to change, to evolve and to respond.

Tye presents a balanced portrait of his subject that gives equal due to Kennedys achievements and failures (I suspect die-hard Kennedy haters still wont be satisfied) in and out of the public eye.

Half Che Guevara, half Niccolo Machiavelli, Bobby was a shaker-upper dedicated to the art of the possible, wrote Tye in his books preface. That he could change so substantially and convincingly over the course of his brief public life helped restore a changing Americas faith in redemption. In the end he could become this nations high priest of reconciliation precisely because he had once been the keeper of our darkest secrets.
San Antonio's dreamiest Hollywood couple, who opened picturesque Bird Bakery in Alamo Heights four years ago, just introduced another prized co-production: a second baby on the way.

Movie star Armie Hammer and his journalist/actress wife Elizabeth Chambers revealed at the Toronto International Film Festival that she's expecting child No. 2. They have a daughter named Harper.
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SAN ANTONIO  From hungry employees to food handler confessions, violations at this weeks dirtiest restaurants went beyond cross contamination hazards and dead roaches, and included some funny, yet revealing, details.

At Los Robertos Taco Shop at 226 W. Bitters Road, an inspector witnessed a plate of food being rushed to (the) trash can by employees caught eating in the kitchen.

At Wiseguys: A Chicago Eater, located at 441 W. Nakoma Drive, an inspector heard employee say he didn't like wearing gloves before handling bread with their bare hands.

Those two eateries, along with 24 other restaurants, bars and food marts around San Antonio, made this weeks dirty list.

To make the Express-News' list of dirtiest restaurants, an establishment must earn a score of 89 or below  or anything less than an "A"  during a random city inspection.

Some notable names this week include Stone Oaks Little Woodrow's at 606 Afton Oaks E., which received demerits when an employee texted on his phone before handling food, and Hacienda De Los Barrios at 18747 Redland Road, which was cited when an inspector spotted fruit flies in the margarita machine.

Other wild violations include food spotted with evidence of gnawing, live roaches in cooking equipment and kitchens in need of major cleaning.

Get all the highlights from this week's dirtiest restaurant list in the slideshow above.

RELATED: San Antonio restaurant inspections: The worst reports from last week

The San Antonio Express-News examines hundreds of restaurant inspections each week conducted by the San Antonio Food and Environmental Health Services division to bring you the eateries with scores of 89 or below.

Restaurants are graded on a 100-point system, where "100" is a perfect score, and demerits are based upon the number of violations found during a regular food establishment inspection. There are three categories of demerits and each are assigned a demerit score of 3, 2 or 1 points, according to the health division.

Scores and demerits listed are only representative of the state of the restaurant at the time of inspection and are surveyed at random.

rsalinas@mysa.com

Twitter: @RebeccaLSalinas
NEW YORK  Fifteen years after the Sept. 11 attacks, Lower Manhattan has been reborn.

The revitalization of the citys downtown, powered by $30 billion in government and private investment, includes not just the reconstruction of the World Trade Center site, but also two new malls filled with upscale retailers, thousands of new hotel rooms and dozens of eateries ranging from a new Eataly to a French food hall, Le District.

The statistics alone are stunning. There are 29 hotels in the neighborhood, compared to six before 9/11. More than 60,000 people live downtown, nearly triple the number in 2000. And last year, the area hosted a record 14 million visitors, according to the Alliance for Downtown New York.

And while theres plenty to do downtown for free, including seeing the 9/11 memorial park, visitors have also shown a willingness to pay relatively steep prices for certain attractions. The 9/11 museum, which charges $24, has drawn 6.67 million visitors since its May 2014 opening. The observatory atop One World Trade Center, which charges $34, has drawn 3 million people in the 15 months since it opened. In comparison, the Statue of Liberty gets about 4 million visitors a year.

I dont think anyone would have expected that we would have rebounded so robustly, so quickly, said Jessica Lappin, president of the Alliance for Downtown New York. Theres the physical transformation at the site itself, but theres also the neighborhood. Theres an energy here. People could have given up after 9/11 and nobody would have blamed them. Instead there has been a tenacity, a dedication that is inspiring.

The Alliance for Downtown New York was founded before 9/11, in 1995, when the neighborhood was on its heels, Lappin recalled. The vacancy rate was going through the roof. At the time, downtown was a strictly 9-to-5 area, keyed to the workday rhythms of Wall Street and City Hall, deserted at night and on weekends. Revitalization efforts were just getting underway when 9/11 hit and changed everything.

But as government funding for disaster recovery began to pour in, private investment followed, spurring a massive rebuilding that continues to this day. For blocks surrounding One World Trade, half-built towers and cranes still clutter the sky, barricades and scaffolding line the streets, and the whine and clatter of jackhammers fill the air. Construction workers in hardhats are as ubiquitous as tourists. The recession hampered efforts to bring businesses back, but Lappin says employment  266,000 workers  is finally nearing pre-9/11 numbers. Conde Nast and Time Inc. have relocated downtown. Group M, one of the worlds biggest advertising firms, will move into Three World Trade Center when its complete.

So far, three towers have been built with plans for more.

The neighborhood is also becoming a shopping destination. Brookfield Place opened last year with luxury retailers like Gucci and Diane von Furstenberg. It also houses Le District, a French food hall with a creperie, cafe, bar and more, as well as Hudson Eats, with outposts of popular local eateries like Mighty Quinns BBQ and Num Pangs Cambodian sandwiches.

A second shopping center, Westfield, opened in August inside the Oculus, a striking white structure designed by famed architect Santiago Calatrava. The curves of the Oculus two ribbed wings are silhouetted by One World Trade rising behind it. Inside the Oculus, retailers range from Apple to Kate Spade to The Art of Shaving. The complex connects to Four World Trade, where the new Eataly NYC Downtown offers a bounty of bread, cheese, coffee, produce, pasta and more. Below ground a massive transit center houses subways and a New Jersey PATH train station.

Elsewhere in Lower Manhattan, a Tom Colicchio restaurant is planned for the just-opened Beekman Hotel; the soon-to-open Four Seasons hotel will host a Wolfgang Puck restaurant, and the storied Nobu restaurant will move downtown from Tribeca. Other downtown attractions include Alexander Hamiltons tomb in the graveyard of Trinity Church, the National Museum of the American Indian and the SeaGlass Carousel, which opened last year near where boats leave for the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.

But near the top of many visitors New York itineraries these days is a pilgrimage to the place where planes turned the twin towers into smoking piles of twisted steel and rubble. The tranquil park formally known as the National September 11 Memorial features tree-lined walkways and reflecting pools in the footprints of the twin towers. Bronze parapets around the pools bear the names of the nearly 3,000 who died.

On a recent Monday, park visitors included three siblings from Barcelona, Arantxa, Meus and Pau Saloni, on their first trip to New York. Its really sad to see all the names, but its nice to remember them, said Meus.

Also visiting that day were Su-Ting Fu and his family, in town from suburban Westchester. We lived in New York City when 9/11 happened, he said. But we hadnt come to see this until today. Its nice to see everything theyve done to memorialize it, but I also love the greenery, and how it feels very much like a living type of memorial.

Lappin said the neighborhoods rebirth is a fitting tribute to the 9/11 tragedy. We honor those who were lost, but we also celebrate life and move forward.
Clifton Park

A community organization that encourages Asian-Americans to become civically engaged through education and political participation will open its newest chapter Saturday.

The Asian Pacific Islander American Public Affairs Albany Chapter will raise funds to support college students pursuing civic leadership, provide mentoring programs and place young people in government-related internships.

"It's a grassroots training and leadership program," said Albany chapter board member Qing Li. The new Albany chapter will serve the region's growing Asian-American population.

"The last 20 years witnessed a large influx of Asian-Americans into the Albany area; mostly immigrants seeking integration and participation in local communities," Albany chapter chair HP Wang said in a press release.

Asian-Americans now represent almost 9 percent of New York state's population, Li said.

The chapter's grand opening, scheduled for 1 p.m. Saturday at Clifton Park-Halfmoon Public Library, will include keynote addresses from Congress members Grace Meng and Paul Tonko along with Sandy Wai-Yan Chau, founder and president of Trident USA.

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"Asian Americans must develop a stronger political presence in order to be fully integrated into the American fabric," Wang said. "Our challenges include participation in voter registration, civil leadership and involvement in local government."

Li said she and other board members want to break the mold of their academically focused upbringing by sharing their culture with the region, helping other immigrants adapt to American life and encouraging disinterested Asian-Americans to engage in their community.

More Information If you go Asian Pacific Islander American Public Affairs Albany Chapter What: Inaugural meeting When: 1 p.m. Saturday Where: Clifton Park-Halfmoon Public Library, 475 Moe Road, Clifton Park Info: www.apapa.org See More Collapse

"We want to be more well-rounded and involved in civic engagement and community service," Li said.
Albany

There are few communities in the nation with names as freighted with grim associations as the Wyoming County town of Attica.

Friday marks the 45th anniversary of the 1971 takeover of the state prison by 1,300 inmates, many of whom had spent months beseeching prison officials and other state leaders to address deplorable conditions at the facility. After an initial spasm of violence that included the brutal beating of guard William Quinn (who died days later), convict leaders managed to organize and assemble a set of demands  including a guarantee that prisoners who had taken part in the overthrow wouldn't face charges.

That was one of several deal-breakers for state correction officials and Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, who feared that accommodating the prisoners would foment similar rebellions in prisons across the state, and possibly throughout the nation. On Sept. 13, a heavily armed force of State Police and correction officers stormed the prison, a disastrous strategy that left 39 men dead (including 10 hostages) and more than 100 wounded.

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Heather Ann Thompson, who teaches history at the University of Michigan, recounts those agonizing days in her acclaimed new book "Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising and Its Legacy" (Pantheon, $35). The author, who spent 13 years on the project, offers a harrowing account of what happened over the course of the takeover, but pays as much attention to what occurred in the months leading up to it, and the decades-long legal battle to find justice and uncover the full story.

In an interview Thursday from New York City, Thompson discussed the uprising and her conviction that the full story of Attica remains untold; the full interview will air next week on WMHT's "New York Now."

Q: Beginning in the subtitle of your book, you're careful to characterize what happened on Sept. 9, 1971, as an uprising or a civil right rebellion that came only after months of peaceful efforts to improve conditions in the prison had failed. What was life like for prisoners in Attica in 1971?

A: The prison was jam-packed  it had more than 2,400 prisoners. They were underfed on 63 cents a day; they had insufficient access to sanitary supplies like toothpaste and toilet paper and soap; their medical conditions were terrible  they suffered infections that were unnecessary, and indeed one prisoner died as a result of terrible medical care. And all of those conditions led people to ask for some of those basic human rights changes  through the system, by writing to state senators, sending a petition to the commissioner of corrections asking for help.

Q: You make sure to include the episodes of disorganized violence and abuse by prisoners in the first hours, but they were snuffed out.

A: It was a management-caused episode that leads to this uprising, and in the initial minutes it is complete chaos. Everyone is panicked  the prisoners are panicked, the guards are panicked  and it's quite violent. But what's remarkable is that within a very short period of time, the prisoners get organized, and they put aside a lot of their political differences, they try to unite across racial lines and against barriers of language. And they elected leaders to try to use this moment to actually try to negotiate for better conditions with the state.

Q: In your research, did you get the sense that there was a single moment where the situation could have turned toward a peaceful resolution, as had been the case in a similar incident at Auburn Correctional a few months before the Attica uprising?

A: I think at any moment it could have been resolved peacefully. The prisoners had asked for a quite politically-celebrity-filled negotiating team to help them, and the state had added to that team, so this was politically diverse. And to a one they thought that negotiations needed to continue, that there could be a peaceful resolution. And the prisoners made clear that they wanted to talk. The governor, however, was determined to end this. My research made clear that they were trying to end this from the very beginning, and were only stalled because the commissioner (of corrections) had invited these negotiators in. And when they retook the prison, they did it with guns  which had never been done, because the prisoners and the hostages, of course, had no guns. So all of this was avoidable.

Q: I know historians don't like to dwell in the world of might-have-been, but do you think anything would have changed if Governor Rockefeller had visited the prison, as many were clamoring for him to do?

A: Absolutely. What the observers had asked him to do was not even to go into the yard and meet with the prisoners one on one  what they asked him was to come to the prison, and to actually endorse his commitment that the prisoners would not be harmed if they surrendered, and that there would not be indiscriminate prosecutions for having rioted. And that simply was not on his agenda. He was really interested in showing a tougher side of himself politically as his own (Republican) party had moved rightward. And Attica was going to be his line in the sand.

Q: The efforts to cover up the brutality of the takeover and the actions of many in law enforcement actually began before the troopers and correction officers stormed the facility, correct?

A: I think that's right. It was very important, for example, that the governor chose a relatively low-level group commander to carry out this retaking  not the National Guard, who had a riot retaking plan, not people who might have been more measured. He allowed troopers who had been out there for four days  without sleep, hearing rumors of inmate atrocities  handing out weapons indiscriminately to come in there. So part of that was knowing that this was going to be a debacle, and to make sure before they even went in that nobody was recording serial numbers of their weapons, nobody was making much of an account of what the horror was going to be.

Q: You made what you describe as the difficult decision to name some of the guards against whom the state had evidence that could have been used in potential criminal prosecutions, which never came to be. Why did you think that was a necessary step?

A: This is a history book, and in a history book my job is to tell the history of Attica and what happened afterwards. And one of the most important things that happens afterwards is the state's investigation of this prison uprising. So when I happened upon documents that told me about that investigation, including which members of law enforcement  from the highest levels of law enforcement to a CO or a trooper  had committed a potential crime, and the state believed that that crime had been committed but never indicted those people, I had no choice but to tell that part of the history. But as I say in the book it was agonizing, because of course I have no desire to cause harm in the present. There are many survivors who have been waiting 45 years to know what happened to their father; there are many members of law enforcement who have waited 45 years in anonymity hoping that they wouldn't be revealed. So it was a very difficult emotional decision, but as a historian I had no choice but to write the history as it was.

Q: The investigations into what happened at Attica dragged on for decades, and as you describe them they almost resemble Russian nesting dolls with one probe having to investigate the conduct of the previous probes. Do you think they were designed to fail?

A: I think some of them were quite genuine. The (1972) McKay Commission was a citizens' commission that did a very thorough investigation of Attica  they were not that interested in prosecutions, just telling the story. There were congressional commissions. But the most important investigation was started by Rockefeller: He appointed its head, and it was disastrous from the beginning. For example, it allowed the same troopers who had retaken the prison with such brutality to actually investigate the retaking. They allowed the head of the State Police, who could potentially be prosecuted, to meet with Rockefeller and the head of the Attica investigation three times after the retaking to get the chronology down, to get the story straight. So this idea that the investigation was ever going to be fair-minded and balanced, I think, is a real myth.

Q: One of the most astonishing details in the story is the apparent effort by the state to head off lawsuits by the families of prison guards killed or wounded in the retaking by sending them workers compensation checks.

A: One of the most important thing for me in writing this book was to make clear that there were many victims, including the hostages in the yard  but not for what readers would expect, being victimized by the prisoners  but actually being victimized by the state. Not only were they killed or wounded in the gunfire of the state troopers and corrections officers coming in, but their families were swindled. In the days after the retaking, as widows were grieving the loss of husbands and hostages are trying to get better in the hospital, the state hands them meager checks and says, "Mrs. Cunningham, this will help tide you over." What they never said was if these widows or these survivors had cashed the check, they had "elected a remedy" under state law to not sue the state. And that was devastating  it took them years to even know that they were ineligible to sue the state.

Q: You begin and end the book by noting that there is abundant material that remains hidden, either through legal means or more mysterious circumstances. Is it possible you might have to release an updated version of your book if these materials ever come to light?

A: I would welcome the opportunity, and also invite any other scholar to take this on. We need to open the records. Prisons are state institutions: We fund them with state and public dollars, and we have the right  as the public, but also as survivors have a right  to access these records. The argument is that there's grand jury testimony in them, and to be sure there is. But there are thousands of boxes  I have the inventory, I know what's in there  and they need to be released so there can be healing.

Q: Prison conditions upstate and around the nation are still in the news, partly as the result of alleged instances of abuse. The escapes last summer from Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora put many of these issues back in the spotlight. To what extent are we still living in the shadow of Attica?

A: We very much are, and I think my book makes clear that's not accidental. When the state retakes the prison, they step outside of those prison walls and they tell the world that the prisoners are the ones that killed the hostages. That narrative soured a nation on the idea of prisoner rights and fueled an already existing move toward the punitive, a move toward building more prisons. So we went in the exact wrong direction after Attica, in no small part because of how Attica was spun. And it's time we rethink it, because in fact today conditions are worse that they were in 1971, which was bad enough that 1,300 men stood together to ask for better conditions.

cseiler@timesunion.com  518-454-5619  @CaseySeiler
The seventh annual Gathering of the Tribes will be held this weekend at Brown's Farm. "It's turned out to be something really beautiful. We're known from Pennsylvania to Maine," said Andy Brown, who established the Native American festival. About 5,000 attended last year, said Brown, who is part Mohawk, Cherokee, Seneca, Mohican and Shawnee. The event is sponsored by the Bear Clan. The festival includes a Native American teaching center focused on traditions, cultures, the environment, family and community. The gathering will be held from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday at Brown's Farm, 890 Luther Road. Admission is $5. "My whole thing is to give back to the community," Brown said. Last year, the gathering raised $9,000, which was donated to local organizations, he said. During the last six years, he said, a total of $40,000 has been distributed to charities. Proceeds from the non-profit Gathering of the Tribes have in the past benefited Military Moms in Action and the Best Luther Fire Department, according to the organization's website, http://gatheringofthetribes.weebly.com. Proceeds from the seventh annual powwow also will be donated to charities, according to the organization. Information about the gathering is available online on facebook.com at GatheringOfTheTribesAtBrownsFarm and additional information is available by calling 477-4872.

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BRIDGEPORT  Police lights bathed Maple Street residences Wednesday evening following the second shooting in three weeks.

A male victim had been shot in the back while riding a bicycle on Maple Street near the intersection with Kossuth Street.

Police said the victim was taken to a local hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, and officers were looking for a red car connected to the incident, which happened at about 9:30 p.m. A car recovered later that night has not been definitively linked to the shooting, according to Bridgeport Police Capt. Brian Fitzgerald

It was not clear whether the assailant fired from the car or exited the vehicle before shooting.

Fitzgerald said police believe one gun was used in the attack, adding that the victim, who police did not identify, told them he did not see the person who shot him.

No eyewitnesses saw the shooting, according to Fitzgerald, and no new leads were available Thursday.

The night before, neighbors flocked to the flashing lights to see what was going on. They watched as detectives combed the streets with flashlights, looking for shell casings and other evidence.

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On Aug. 17, another man was shot and killed just one block away.

I live (three) blocks away from here, but I never go (to Washington Park), because its a little scary. Especially that corner also, said Martin Dumas, 54, who works as a security guard and for a mail delivery company, as he pointed to the place where the bicyclist was shot.

Dumas said police could deter crime by increasing their presence, not to harass people but just as a deterrent.

They can put police officers here just to keep this place a little safer, he said.
If you're wondering when in September Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, is coming, I have news: It's not until Sunday night, Oct. 2, this year. This is almost the latest it could possibly be, when compared to our civil Gregorian calendar.

The next time it's this late is in 2024; it's even a day later in 2035. The latest it can begin is the evening of Oct. 4, and that won't happen till 2043. The last time it came so late was in 1929. Why does the Jewish calendar fluctuate so?

The Gregorian calendar is a solar calendar. Its 365.23 days is based on the time it takes the earth to go around the sun. The phases of the moon have nothing to do with this calendar.

The Jewish calendar is a luni-solar calendar. Each month begins at the appearance of the first sliver after the new moon. Twelve of those months make up a year. However, 12 months of alternating 29 and 30 day months  astronomically the month is about 29 days  gives a year of 354 days, one that falls 11 days short of a solar year.

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Were we only to observe by a lunar calendar, the holidays would move 11 days earlier in the solar year annually. Indeed, the Islamic calendar is purely lunar and thus we see the Islamic festivals 11 days earlier each year. The Torah, however, requires the foundational festival of Passover to be in the spring. To prevent Passover from occurring before the vernal equinox, a leap year is calculated. It includes an extra month inserted midwinter seven times in a 19-year cycle, in a recurring and predictable pattern believed to have been established by Hillel II in the fourth century.

The pattern of regular and leap years, when overlaid on a different calendar such as our Gregorian, makes the holidays seem early or late. We sometimes wonder if they ever come on time; there is the objective reality of the autumnal equinox at this season. However, only the vernal equinox influences the calendar calculations.

The Jewish holiday season begins with Rosh Hashanah after the appearance of the new moon. Some observe it for one day; others follow a different custom and observe two days.

Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, begins this year on Tuesday evening Oct. 11, and includes a 25-hour fast. At the full moon on the evening of Sunday, Oct. 16, the weeklong harvest festival of Sukkot begins, concluding a week later with Shemini Atzeret and the observance of Simhat Torah, celebrated by some as one day and by others as two separate days. Synagogues professionals and volunteers worldwide are preparing for the throngs that will attend services and other events for these holidays.

The lateness of the holidays this year pushes Hanukkah's start to Dec. 24 with the end on Jan. 1. Since it is not a leap year, Passover is right on time, beginning on April 10.

Rabbi Don Cashman is the spiritual leader B'nai Sholom Reform Congregation in Albany.
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STAMFORD  A popular childrens obstacle-course race is returning to downtown this fall.

Spartan, which sponsors adult and childrens races across the country, will hold the second annual Stamford Kids Race next month. More than 3,000 children participated last year at Mill River Park in Spartans first standalone youth race.

The amazing thing about Stamford was the entire community came together to be supportive, said Daniel Goldstein, director of Spartan Kids. Its a community that cares about its children profoundly and its action-oriented.

The obstacle-course race returns to Mill River Park in October after attendance last year topped 5,000, including parents.

The Spartan Kids Race is an offshoot of the popular Spartan Race, a rigorous obstacle course race that has spread across the country and even garnered its own show on NBC.

The mission for the standalone childrens race is to encourage youth to live a healthy lifestyle that will translate into adulthood.

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We all know that healthy eating and physical fitness correlates to intellectual development in children, Goldstein said. Were reminding children and families of better options they can consider.

The races, which are designed for children ages 5 to 12, will include 2K and 4K heat with more than 15 obstacles.

More Information Spartan Kids Race schedule of events Jr Varsity Spartan | 2K Suggested ages: 4-8 Start times: 8 a.m., 9 a.m., 10 a.m., 11 a.m., noon, 1 p.m., 2 p.m., 4 p.m. Varsity Spartan | 4K Suggested ages: 9-13 Start times: 8:30 a.m., 9:30 a.m., 10:30 a.m., 11:30 a.m., 12:30 p.m., 1:30 p.m., 2:30 p.m. Special Spartans | 2K Suggested ages: 4-plus Start time: 3 p.m. See More Collapse

Each obstacle is designed to instill child-like adventure, courage, camaraderie and a sense of accomplishment. Children will have to conquer obstacles by crawling under netting, jumping through tires and carrying objects for short distances.

Parents are also invited to race with their children.

There will also be a heat for athletes with intellectual or developmental disabilities, and those with cognitive learning or vocational delays, called the Special Spartans heat.

The races will be held on Saturday, Oct. 1 and Sunday Oct. 2 from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Participants can register at http://www.spartan.com.

eskalka@scni.com; nora.naughton@scni.com
BRIDGEPORT - Caught masturbating a male student in the classroom, a former Harding High School substitute teacher told a judge Friday he just wants to go home to Jamaica.

All I want to do is put this behind me and go back to Jamaica, Robert Seaga-Johnson told Superior Court Judge William Holden.

But first Seaga-Johnson is going to have to serve a 45-day prison term.

Police said the 43-year-old former teacher masturbated the 17-year-old student on a number of occasions in his classroom in exchange for giving the student high grades and allowing him to cheat on tests.

Seaga-Johnson, according to authorities was hired as a long-term substitute at the high school through a private company, Source4Teachers, even though he was in the country on a visa that did not allow him to work as a teacher.

School officials have put the blame on Source4Teachers which has declined comment on the case.

Seaga-Johnson pleaded guilty Friday to fourth-degree sexual assault under the law that prohibits teachers from having sexual relations with their students even if the student is over the age of majority.

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Assistant States Attorney Tatiana Messina had begun reciting the facts of the case to the judge when Seaga-Johnson blurted that the sex with the teen had been consensual.

You were the adult in this situation, you were the authority figure, his teacher and you had an obligation not to participate in this behavior, the judge retorted.

Holden refused a request by the prosecutor that Seaga-Johnson be ordered to register as a sex offender but did order him to undergo sex offender treatment and to have no further contact with the victim.

Seaga-Johnsons lawyer, Assistant Public Defender Thomas Paoletta, told the judge he expects his client will be deported once his sentence is completed.

Johnson, who taught English at the high school and was also the faculty advisor on the student newspaper, was dismissed in April from the school after the allegations against him were reported. He was subsequently suspended by Source4Teachers.

Police said the teen told them that in December 2015, he gave Johnson a poem he had written and wanted to have published in the school newspaper. He said Johnson told him the poem was one of the best he had read and then returned it with Are you gay? written in the margin.

On four or five occasions police said the teen said allowed Johnson to masturbate him behind Johnsons desk in his classroom when he thought there was no one else around. Police said when the teen told another male student he was having a sexual relationship with Johnson that student stated: Im messing with Mr. Johnson too.

Police said after the teen ended the relationship with Johnson the teacher began treating him differently.

When I asked for help he would go to other students instead of going to me, police said the teen told them.

When Johnson told the teen he was getting a failing grade, the student asked him why, police continued.

You know why, police said Johnson responded.

Police said a female student told them she had once walked into Johnsons classroom to find Johnson and the teen standing close together behind Johnsons desk. She said Johnson immediately jumped on being discovered and claimed he was helping the teen with an essay.

Police said another male student later told them he had contacted a man on the gay dating site Grindr only to discover the man he had contacted was his teacher, Johnson. Police said the student denied having sex with Johnson.

Police said when they later confronted Johnson he initially denied sexually assaulting the teen and claimed he was the victim of a conspiracy at the school. However, police said he eventually broke down and admitted he sexually assaulted the teen.

I did not want this to happen, police said Johnson told them.
Burlingame Avenue, like some other main drags on the Peninsula, grapples with its identity. During the week it remains somewhat quiet and clubby, but on the weekends, the street, or The Ave., as it is called, becomes a destination for out-of-towners escaping the fog or the heat. The confluence of sleepy community with destination shopping and dining, coupled with new money and old values, is what recently drew custom tailor Devan Vincent Rosdahl, owner of lifestyle brand Devan Vincent, to the street, and its what keeps longtime businesses like womens clothing boutique Les Deux Copines thriving. A parking structure currently under construction and visions of a new mixed-use development project on the site of the old post office only add to the allure for retailers and restaurateurs looking to capitalize on Burlingames longstanding charm and proximity to San Francisco and Silicon Valley.

Devan Vincent

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Flying under the radar in a second-floor space is the most dapper man on the avenue. Devan Rosdahl, 33, dresses television personalities, lawyers and Silicon Valley influencers. He divides his time between his small bespoke Burlingame studio, a space inside Palo Altos Four Seasons Hotel Silicon Valley, and bicoastal private fittings. Custom suits range from $1,500 to $15,000, and prices vary depending on the fabrics. I put the same attention to detail (finishes) in each suit, regardless of the fabric, Rosdahl says. Those finishes incorporate traditional British tailoring with Italian style and include five-button sleeves, peak lapels, con rollino (rolled) shoulders, and a boutonniere stem holder on the underside of the lapel. Working with Rosdahl goes beyond tailoring  he performs all consultations and fittings. We are the discreet go-to for bespoke menswear in the Bay Area, he says.

1375 Burlingame Ave., (650) 539-8920, www.devanvincent.com.

Kayu

San Mateo resident Jamie Lim has a pretty quick commute. Her handbag brand, Kayu, is headquartered a block from her newly opened flagship store. The bags ($65 and up) embody a flirty Northern California vibe and are made from natural materials like straw, wood and metal. The new store plays off that vibe, offering a large selection of the brands clutches, envelope shoulder bags and totes, in addition to resort wear from brands like Shoshanna, Solid & Stripe and Lola Hats. A native of Southeast Asia, Lim enlists women artisans from the Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia to produce each bag by hand. Though her bags can be found in major retailers across the globe, the shop carries exclusive designs not found anywhere else. 1112 Burlingame Ave., (650) 235-9699, http://kayudesign.com.

Blue Illusion

Australia natives Danny and Donna Guest opened their first Blue Illusion boutique in 1998, and since then have expanded to 140 womens clothing and lifestyle stores in Australia, New Zealand and the Bay Area. The Burlingame shop, which opened a little over a year ago, is one of three locally (the other two are in Menlo Park and Los Gatos), and the owners specifically targeted the Peninsula as their first foray into the U.S. market, noting its similar climate and lifestyle. Blue Illusion mainly attracts the over-40 set with French-inspired fashion and home accessories. Look for a colorful palette of casual tops, pants, light jackets, shifts, and shoes and bags.

1350 Burlingame Ave., (650) 579-5920. www.blueillusion.us.

Les Deux Copines

As one of the oldest boutiques on the street, Les Deux Copines and its owners have steered the shop through a recession, high rents and a transitory clientele that now solicits and buys outfits via smartphone snapshots. After 11 years, the boutiques owners understand what it takes to remain on the avenue: appealing to customers with baby strollers and dogs, and the occasional multigenerational shopping spree. Weve actually helped name more than one baby and dog, co-owner Melissa Cutter says of her family-friendly shop. Having three partners who live nearby means that there is at least one of them at the store wearing head-to-toe looks from the lines they carry. Look for French brands like Isabel Marant and K. Jacques, and domestic brands like Adaptation and Ulla Johnson. Theres also a large selection of fine jewelry by Julez Bryant. All our clothes have a laid-back California sensibility that you can wear year-round, Cutter says.

1433 Burlingame Ave., (650) 375-1933. http://www.lesdeuxcopines.com

The Podolls

Josh and Lauren Podoll opened their Burlingame flagship store in 2013, and it instantly attracted shoppers looking for effortlessly stylish fashion made from sustainable fabrics. Besides their own designs, which feature lots of skilled draping while remaining approachable, the store also carries coveted items like Freda Salvador shoes, Ryan Roche sweaters and Shawn Burke bags. Jewelry line Blanca Monros Gomez was recently added. Their childrens line, the Podots, is also available, as are local skin-care brands like Vintners Daughter.

251 Primrose Road, (650) 389-2346. http://shopthepodolls.com 

Sophia Markoulakis is a Peninsula freelance writer. Email: style@sfchronicle.com
HARBOR BEACH  A determined Harbor Beach woman is fighting for her right, which has recently been taken away, to carry a weapon while performing her duties as one of the citys employees.

Casey Armitage has been a crossing guard for Harbor Beach Community Schools for the last three years. Armitage, 32, is employed by the city and paid through the citys police budget. Her direct supervisor is Harbor Beach Police Chief Todd Bucholtz.

Since January, Armitage has been helping students safely cross the street to finish their path to school. However, Armitage hasnt been alone while performing her duties.

Attached to the right side of her hip, concealed inside a holster in her waistband, is a 9 mm Sig-938 Extreme. Its a gun she legally owns and is authorized to use since obtaining her concealed pistol license in January.

I choose to carry and provide myself, my family and my children with protection, she explained her reasons to obtain a CPL.

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Its my personal right and freedom to protect myself and others surrounding me, she added. If there were a situation that arose, I would like to be able to do more than hope a police officer makes it there on time. I would like to be able to take action.

While performing her duties last school year, Armitage carried her weapon concealed from January through June. But the Harbor Beach city council this week passed a resolution to prevent her to keep her sidearm while on the job.

In the citys employee handbook, which Armitage said she never received, there is a policy that states no city employee, other than police officers, can carry a concealed weapon. The policy doesnt say anything about open carry.

I didnt know it existed, she said of the policy. I didnt know there was any employee rules about concealed carrying. I wasnt trying to break the law at all.

Armitage went to her supervisor, Bucholtz, to see if the policy could be construed so she could perform her duties with her gun. In that case, the law would permit her to carry openly, but not concealed.

Todd (Bucholtz) and I both agreed that concealed carry brings a lot less attention, she said.  But if its carried out in the open, it draws attention.

The difference between concealed and open carry is a concealed weapon can be, and typically is, hidden from view, whereas with an open carry the weapon must be visible at all times.

At Tuesdays meeting, Armitage urged council to consider making the policy for concealed carry and leave out a reference to open carry.

Instead, the council unanimously passed a resolution to prohibit open and concealed carry by all city employees  other than police.

We called our insurance agents for the police department and it basically comes down to a liability, Mayor Gary Booms told the Tribune. The liability would be shes not trained by the city of Harbor Beach in any way to handle a firearm  and if our insurance was going to cover her for say if there was an accident or an incident and shes not trained by the city, that would be an issue.

We passed the resolution to be on the conservative side for the time being and we told Casey to gather her information and come back to us and we would readdress it at a later date, he added.

There is a difference in training offered to police officers and for those who simply earn their CPL. Bucholtz told the Tribune his officers receive training through the Michigan Commission on Law Enforcement Standards. The commission only requires firearms certification once a year, but the chief noted his men receive additional training.

We just completed the MCOLES handgun certification three weeks ago, Bucholtz said. As training courses come up, we always jump on them. We take advantage to (practice) shoot whenever we can. Every year, we do more than the minimum when it comes to training.

We do shoot and dont shoot training scenarios, he added.  Plus we have other options of less lethal weapons at our disposal whereas a city employee would have the gun only.

Armitage was not pleased with councils decision.

I talked to several council members and it was all (based on) their feelings, she recalled. All they could cite was, How they dont think its right for kids to walk past someone who is not a police officer carrying a gun.

It was all about feelings, what-ifs and how scary guns are, she added. I was asking them to not make judgment based on their feelings because thats not how we govern  and at the very least, I asked them to table the issue so I had more time to prepare information.

The fight, however, isnt over. Armitage is following the mayors advice to potentially change the policy.

I am gathering information and considering putting together a petition, she said. Im hoping to overturn this and if nothing else to at least provide an option to legal CPL holders to be able to conceal carry while on the job.

I would say theres always a possibility, Booms said regarding a possible policy change.  I know were well within our rights to pass the policy and we can have that policy to not allow firearms, open or concealed.

Were working together on this, we arent fighting about it, Booms added. Were trying to come up with the best option and I would like to hear what the rest of our employees have to say regarding this  if theres anyone else who would be interested in carrying a weapon.

While the parties may not be able to agree on the issue, all three confirmed there hasnt been a single complaint or negative remark regarding Armitage carrying a gun.

I have not received any negativity ever, she said.  In the city of Harbor Beach, I know every single one of these kids that walk past me. A majority of them are aware that Ms. Casey carries a pistol.

They ask some questions sometimes and I try to answer them as factually as possible, she said regarding interaction with students.  All of the parents have told me that they feel safer with me carrying.

The council will meet next at 7 p.m. Sept. 19 in city hall, 766 State St.
Research shows that most people complain once a minute during a typical conversation. Complaining is tempting because it feels good, but like many other things that are enjoyable -- such as smoking or eating a pound of bacon for breakfast -- complaining isnt good for you.

Your brain loves efficiency and doesnt like to work any harder than it has to. When you repeat a behavior, such as complaining, your neurons branch out to each other to ease the flow of information. This makes it much easier to repeat that behavior in the future -- so easy, in fact, that you might not even realize youre doing it.

Related: 13 Cognitive Biases That Really Screw Things Up For You

You cant blame your brain. Whod want to build a temporary bridge every time you need to cross a river? It makes a lot more sense to construct a permanent bridge. So, your neurons grow closer together, and the connections between them become more permanent. Scientists like to describe this process as, Neurons that fire together, wire together.

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Repeated complaining rewires your brain to make future complaining more likely. Over time, you find its easier to be negative than to be positive, regardless of whats happening around you. Complaining becomes your default behavior, which changes how people perceive you.

And heres the kicker: complaining damages other areas of your brain as well. Research from Stanford University has shown that complaining shrinks the hippocampus -- an area of the brain thats critical to problem solving and intelligent thought. Damage to the hippocampus is scary, especially when you consider that its one of the primary brain areas destroyed by Alzheimers.

Related: How to Break a Bad Habit -- for Good

Complaining is also bad for your health

While its not an exaggeration to say that complaining leads to brain damage, it doesnt stop there. When you complain, your body releases the stress hormone cortisol. Cortisol shifts you into fight-or-flight mode, directing oxygen, blood and energy away from everything but the systems that are essential to immediate survival. One effect of cortisol, for example, is to raise your blood pressure and blood sugar so that youll be prepared to either escape or defend yourself.

All the extra cortisol released by frequent complaining impairs your immune system and makes you more susceptible to high cholesterol, diabetes, heart disease and obesity. It even makes the brain more vulnerable to strokes.

Its Not Just You...

Since human beings are inherently social, our brains naturally and unconsciously mimic the moods of those around us, particularly people we spend a great deal of time with. This process is called neuronal mirroring, and its the basis for our ability to feel empathy. The flip side, however, is that it makes complaining a lot like smoking -- you dont have to do it yourself to suffer the ill effects. You need to be cautious about spending time with people who complain about everything. Complainers want people to join their pity party so that they can feel better about themselves. Think of it this way: If a person were smoking, would you sit there all afternoon inhaling the second-hand smoke? Youd distance yourself, and you should do the same with complainers.

The solution to complaining

There are two things you can do when you feel the need to complain. One is to cultivate an attitude of gratitude. That is, when you feel like complaining, shift your attention to something that youre grateful for. Taking time to contemplate what youre grateful for isnt merely the right thing to do; it reduces the stress hormone cortisol by 23%. Research conducted at the University of California, Davis, found that people who worked daily to cultivate an attitude of gratitude experienced improved mood and energy and substantially less anxiety due to lower cortisol levels. Any time you experience negative or pessimistic thoughts, use this as a cue to shift gears and to think about something positive. In time, a positive attitude will become a way of life.

Related: 10 Uncomfortable Deeds That Will Make You More Successful

The second thing you can do -- and only when you have something that is truly worth complaining about -- is to engage in solution-oriented complaining. Think of it as complaining with a purpose. Solution-oriented complaining should do the following:

Have a clear purpose. Before complaining, know what outcome youre looking for. If you cant identify a purpose, theres a good chance you just want to complain for its own sake, and thats the kind of complaining you should nip in the bud. Start with something positive. It may seem counterintuitive to start a complaint with a compliment, but starting with a positive helps keep the other person from getting defensive. For example, before launching into a complaint about poor customer service, you could say something like, Ive been a customer for a very long time and have always been thrilled with your service... Be specific. When youre complaining its not a good time to dredge up every minor annoyance from the past 20 years. Just address the current situation and be as specific as possible. Instead of saying, Your employee was rude to me, describe specifically what the employee did that seemed rude. End on a positive. If you end your complaint with, Im never shopping here again, the person whos listening has no motivation to act on your complaint. In that case, youre just venting, or complaining with no purpose other than to complain. Instead, restate your purpose, as well as your hope that the desired result can be achieved, for example, Id like to work this out so that we can keep our business relationship intact.

Bringing It All Together

Just like smoking, drinking too much, and lying on the couch watching TV all day, complaining is bad for you. Put my advice to use, and you'll reap the physical, mental and performance benefits that come with a positive frame of mind.

A version of this article appeared on TalentSmart.

Related:

How Complaining Rewires Your Brain for Negativity

Positive Thinking For Success? No, Not Always!

Reframe Negative Thinking to Ease Your Path to Success



Copyright 2016 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
China voices opposition to DPRK nuke test

2016-09-09 14:44

The Chinese government expressed its firm opposition after the Democratic People's Republic of Korea conducted another nuclear test on Friday, saying Pyongyang totally disregarded global criticism.

China strongly urges the DPRK to keep its promise of non-proliferation, abide by the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council and to refrain from any act that will worsen the situation, the Foreign Ministry wrote in a statement on its website.

China takes a firm stand in realizing the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, preventing nuclear proliferation and safeguarding the peace and stability of Northeast Asia, it read.

China will work together with the international society to firmly promote the denuclearization of the peninsula, and insist on solving related issues through Six-Party Talks, it added.
BAD AXE  A public hearing is planned for next month for a new proposed wind overlay district in Sigel and Sherman townships.

The Huron County Planning Commission on Wednesday scheduled the hearing for 7 p.m. Oct. 19.

NextEra Energy Resources filed the application for the district last week for the overlay district that will also reach into Sand Beach and Delaware townships, both of which are self-zoned.

The planning commissions of each entity will vote after the public hearings are held on whether to recommend that their governing bodies approve the district.

Next, the issue will go before the board of trustees in Sand Beach and Delaware townships.

For the turbines to be built in Sherman and Sigel townships, the issue must go before the Huron County Board of Commissioners for final approval.

The wind park is expected to consist of 65 turbines and will produce 150 megawatts of electricity.

In other business at Wednesdays meeting, members of the public have been pointing fingers at two Huron County Planning Commission members for violating commission by-laws.

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When a commissioner literally pointed back during Wednesday nights meeting, things got tense.

The commission postponed action on a wind overlay district that DTE Energy originally proposed in February, following the advice of the countys corporate counsel, Steve Allen.

Lincoln Township resident Les Booms expressed his disappointment in your lack of action tonight on the Lincoln Township boondoggle.

Booms was referring to the overlay district in Lincoln, Bloomfield, Dwight and Sigel townships, which was recently sent back to the planning commission by the Huron County Board of Commissioners.

Im disappointed in the board of commissioners and their lack of action, Booms said.

He said the issue should move forward so that a referendum can be held on the issue, which would be possible if a valid petition is filed if and when the Huron County Board of Commissioners approve the district.

The county commissioners last month sent the issue back to the planning commission because Lincoln Township is taking steps to become self-zoned.

When the planning commission originally recommended that the county commission approve the DTE district in July, planning commissioners Carl Duda and Terry Heck voted against it.

Dennis ONeil of Harbor Beach, who owns 55 acres in Lincoln Township, called them both out for what he says are violations to the planning commissions by-laws.

According to the by-laws, Once a vote is taken and an issue is decided by vote, the duty of each member of the commission is to represent the position reflected by the outcome of the vote.

During the public comment portion of the meeting, ONeil took Duda and Heck to task for publicly speaking out against wind energy.

And, during final commissioner comments, Heck and Duda defended themselves.

Heck, while shaking his finger at ONeil, said his constitutional right to free speech allows him to speak whether Im on the board or not.

I got on this planning commission to protect the people of Huron County, and Ill always, always do that.  You cannot destroy your neighbors quality of life. Just like you cant sit on your property with a 10,000 decibel speaker and blast it at your neighbor. It doesnt give you the right  even though its your property. Same thing with these windmills.

What gives him the right to sit there and harp at me? ONeil replied. The bylaws state that when he walks out of this room, he has to go by the majority vote. Everybody might as well know. Its time to cut the bull----. Cut the bull----!

Duda said that he voted against the district because there are so many residential parcels throughout it, which makes it unsuitable for wind turbines.

Carl, if you want to change the ordinance, lets talk ordinance, said Jeff Smith, county director of building and zoning, Lets not point fingers or blame somebody, or blame the next guy.

Heck said he was all for changing the ordinance.

If we have an ordinance in this county, that is an ordinance thats been approved and is in place, said Clark Brock, planning commission chair, and people present to us that meet the criteria of that ordinance, then were bound to go and approve (it).
The gold standard of company training sessions has long been delivering the staff to a glamorous, off-site location like Maui for the weekend, putting them up in a resort, filling them with booze and bringing in expensive and very dynamic public speakers to inspire them.

Newer edtech companies, though, are starting to question the wisdom of this age-old model and asking the big question: What happens when everybody gets back to the office? And, more to the point: How can we replicate a highly personalized learning experience in software?

The good thing about bringing people together in a room is that you can inspire them," says Barry Kayton, CEO and co-founder of edtech company Cognician. "You can hire a great speaker and really boost morale. The downside of that is everybody returns back to their drab office at the end of the weekend, and its back to normal, and people backslide into their comfort zones, and you dont see the behavior change youre looking for,

Clearly, the demand for corporate training and leadership development exists, and U.S. companies alone spend about $14 billion every year on it. According to a McKinsey & Company survey, executives ranked leadership development in the top three human capital priorities, with two-thirds of respondents calling leadership development their number one concern.

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Everybody is happy. Was the workshop a success?

Probably not. Those offsite workshops are great morale boosters, but they are expensive, and they seldom lead to lasting changes; attendees are more likely to remember how many Jell-O shots their co-workers put away than the new leadership tactics the speaker talked about.

According to McKinsey, after even the most basic training sessions, adults tend to retain only about 10 percent of what they heard in a classroom lecture.

Related: Why Leadership Development Needs to Be Updated

Kayton blames that failure on what he calls an information centric approach to learning. According to Kayton, An information-centric approach to learning solves the problem of producing learning quickly, but it doesnt solve the problem of learning. It only solves the problem of transmitting information -- but information wont actually change anybodys behavior.

"If we changed behavior based on information," Kayton says, "nobody would smoke and nobody would eat sugar. The only way to get people to change their behavior is to create an experience that starts not with the information, but with where the learner is at.

Amas Tenumah, customer experience consultant at BetterCXperience, suggests that most workshops try to do too many things, or may have too many goals. The problem is often a lack of context. Many speakers dont customize the content for their audience, says Tenumah. They just roll out their greatest hits and hope it sticks. Generally, they should focus on fewer things that fall into two categories -- inspiring everyone to make a specific change and forcing the dynamic speakers to focus on very narrow and specific outcomes.

Kayton points to three elements to a successful learning experience: inspiration, guidance and follow-through. When you put people in a room, and you have a speaker speaking to thousands of people, the only thing you can do is inspire," he says. "There is a limit on the amount of guidance you can offer. People retain very little of what they hear in a conversation, or even from a great speaker.

Fast-tracking the learning process

Back when he was studying advertising in Cape Town in the 1990s, Kayton says, he read about a company which taught adults how to read, using popular advertisements. The company figured out if you start with something that is actually known by the user -- such as brand names like Coca Cola or Ford -- you can fast-track the learning process," Kayton says. "But, more importantly, you show great respect for people in the learning process.

Kayton wrote his thesis on the companys methods, and went on to use that system to train adult illiterates. He never lost sight of the founding principle, which was to figure out what the learner already knows, and leverage what he or she is passionate about. While running a seminar at the University of Cape Town, Kayton then applied those methods, and found that they resonated with the students.

So, instead of simply providing information, he provided people with questions that fundamentally changed how they thought about things. When he asked himself, I wonder if I can do in software what Im doing in the seminar? that was the trigger for launching Cognician, and creating an instructional model based on three principles: what somebody already knows, what he or she is passionate about and what questions need to be provided to people to change the way they think about something.

Related: Why You Need to Invest in a Leadership Development Program

Changing expectations

Corporate learning has matured, and the expectations of todays employees have changed. Companies are moving away from those expensive off-site seminars, but at the same time, expectations are high for online learning environments. While earlier online learning environments were mostly information-based, not interactive, and lacked the social component found in the classroom, today's millennial learners are quick to reject that model and demand much more from the emerging edtech industry.

The key point," Kayton says, "is that people expect high-quality learning solutions. They expect the same kind of experience they get from the iPhone or Android phone -- instant feedback, an engaging experience and they dont want to wait for the system.

These changing expectations demand new technologies. But at the same time, they demand a return to something very old, which Kayton calls the master-sage relationship. You want individuals to figure things out for themselves. The problem with software that does it for you is that it doesnt raise your maturity level, he says.

This is the way learning used to happen before Gutenburg invented printing, making books possible. Learning was primarily a master-apprentice relationship, where you would learn from the master who would have unique questions that he or she would ask and you would learn to absorb the questions from an accomplished expert.

Those became the questions you yourself asked," Kayton continues. "So it is that you stand on the shoulders of giants and you figure out new questions that take you in new directions; then you pass those on to your own apprentices. Thats the way it used to happen, and thats the way our software works.

A little more Socrates, a little less high tech

More than 2,000 years ago, Socrates said that knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom. But information-centric approaches to learning dont allow for this type of self-reflection.

What doesnt work? What doesn't work are big lecture-style workshops with dynamic speakers who inspire but dont follow through. Equally ineffective are online learning methods that focus on providing information, while ignoring the social needs of the learner, and don't ask the basic question of the learner, Why do I want to know this?

Instead, the perfect corporate learning environment sounds a lot like those Berkeley-esque literature seminars that were always held in an eclectic off-campus venue, with eight students and a professor in a corduroy jacket with elbow patches, exchanging ideas over cappuccinos about why Bram Stokers Dracula was a metaphor for the evils of capitalism.

Related: 4 Ways to Make Leadership Development Part of Your Company Culture

Capturing that highly personalized give-and-take, self-reflective model that guides students to raise their maturity levels and figure things out for themselves -- and putting that model into software that can scale to a larger group -- is the next generation of intelligent learning.

Related:

Why High-Profile Speakers' Seminars and Workshops Don't Deliver

To Attract Top Young Talent Make Your Business an Employee Success Platform

How to Coach People Who Need to Lead But Don't Want To



Copyright 2016 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
This year marks the 25th anniversary of dialogue relations between China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Mainstream news media in Laos published an article by Premier Li Keqiang on Sept 7, during the Premiers stay in Vientiane, for the 19th China-ASEAN (10+1) leaders meeting, the 19th China-ASEAN, Japan and the Republic of Korea (10+3) leaders meeting, and the 11th East Asia Summit.

The Premier has attended the leaders meeting four times and published four articles about witnessing the growth of bilateral relations. Here are some highlights.

Laos, September 2016

About China-Laos ties

In the article, the Premier said that China and ASEAN are good neighbors, friends and partners, and the two sides should maintain and deepen political trust, better promote mutual development and increase cooperation in international affairs.

As more Chinese people are becoming fans of Laos culture, foods, scenic spots, and coffee, governments of the two countries should create conditions for promoting people-to-people, tourism and media exchanges and encourage people to travel to each others country, said the article.

About China-ASEAN relations

This year marks the 25th anniversary of China-ASEAN dialogue, which is the basis of regional peace and stability, and cooperation by the two sides can also promote prosperity throughout East Asia, Premier Li said in the article.

This year is also the start of the foundation of ASEAN community, and China will continue to support the pillar position of ASEAN in regional cooperation and its bigger role in international affairs.

The Premier also said that China is glad to work with Laos and other ASEAN countries to build a common destiny community and bring more cooperation results to more regions and people.

Malaysia, November 2015

About China-Malaysia ties

On Nov 20, 2015, main newspapers in Malaysia, including the Star and New Straits Times, published an article by Premier Li.

Trade exchanges between China and Malaysia can be traced back to centuries ago, and the two countries respect each other in politics, and enjoy a mutually complementary economy, according to the Premier.

China has been Malaysias largest trading partner for seven consecutive years, and Malaysia is Chinas largest partner among ASEAN countries, said the Premier.

About China-ASEAN relations

The Premier said the China-ASEAN relationship is an important basis for regional peace and stability and prosperity. With the pressure of existing international financial crisis, and downward pressures from the global economy, the unity and cooperation, working together and common prosperity of countries in the region are especially important, he added.

Under the complicated international situation, longtime regional unity, peace and stability in this region are worth being preserved by all the countries in the region, the Premier said.

Myanmar, November 2014

About China-Myanmar ties

Major media in Myanmar published Premier Lis article in November 2014, and in the article the Premier recalled his visit to the country 28 years ago.

Premier Li Keqiang said China and Myanmar should be good friends, partners and brothers sharing wealth and woes.

About China-ASEAN relations

The Premier said that China and ASEAN are good neighbors with shared borders, cultures, and blood. The two sides have set an example of common development and communication among different nationalities, religions, and cultures.

As a backbone force of peace and stability in East Asia, China supports ASEANs active role in regional stability.

The two sides are natural strategic partners and a community of common destiny with increasing cooperation in all fields.

China will increase input to underdeveloped nations in ASEAN, and strengthen cooperation and exchanges with Mekong countries in poverty alleviation and social development to bridge gaps in the organization.

Thailand, October 2013

About China-Thailand ties

Thai media released Premier Lis article in October 2013.

In the article, the Premier said that China, with successes and strong capacity in high-speed railways, is willing to take part in Thailands railway construction to help it become a regional traffic hub.

The two sides will also work together in electricity, power grid, water conservancy, and renewable energy.

About China-ASEAN relations

The development of China will unleash stronger market demands, providing immense cooperation space to Thailand and ASEAN as a whole.
The U.S. Coast Guard rescued a kayaker in the water on Thursday about 10 miles northeast of Freeport, officials said.

The 13-foot kayak overturned about 5 p.m. in a remote area on Christmas Bay near the Brazoria National Wildlife Refuge. The man told Coast Guard officials he was unable to get back to shore, officials said.
San Antonio city officials will work over the next three years to reduce lead-based hazards at nearly 200 low-income homes occupied by young children after City Council formally agreed Thursday to accept a $3 million federal grant for such efforts.

The funds awarded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development will allow the work to be done at qualified residences throughout San Antonio beginning early next year, said Bridgett White, the citys planning and community development director. The initiative will focus particularly on homes in the Eastside Promise Zone, where major urban renewal efforts are already in progress.

Homeowners must apply so city officials can determine if the properties meet certain requirements. The work will only be done at residences built before 1978 and where a child under 6 years old lives or stays at least six hours a week.

For a property to qualify, those living in the household must meet established income guidelines, earning no more than 80 percent of the median family income in the San Antonio-New Braunfels metropolitan statistical area, which would amount to $49,680 or less for a family of four, according to calculations provided on HUDs website.

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The homeowner also must have a clear title to the property and be current on their property taxes.

Homes that qualify will be tested for lead-based paint hazards. The work typically includes removing chipping or peeling paint from interior doors, cabinets and windowsills.

The effort is projected to help nearly 500 children living in San Antonio, city documents show.

Its really important to address this issue, especially as it relates to having kids in the home  because thats something that will affect them long term, as far as their health, White said after Thursdays council meeting.

HUD Secretary and former San Antonio mayor Julian Castro unveiled new initiatives in June to reduce lead poisoning in children. Heightened levels of lead can adversely affect childrens health and cognitive skills.

As part of the $3 million grant, HUD requires the city of San Antonio to contribute $750,000 toward the lead reduction effort. Those funds will come from the citys Community Development Block Grant Program.

The city has received seven grants totaling more than $19 million in the past 16 years from HUDs Office of Healthy Homes and Lead Hazard Control. Those funds have been used to assist more than 1,100 homes so far, city documents show.

pohare@express-news.net
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Lionel Sosa, a San Antonio marketing executive and lifelong Republican who defected from the GOP in June, said Friday that hes endorsing Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson.

Sosa had worked for GOP presidential nominees dating back to Ronald Reagan after getting a start in political advertising with a 1978 senatorial re-election campaign. In June, he wrote Farewell, my Grand Old Party, an op-ed in the San Antonio Express-News, that laid out his reasons for leaving the political party hes been loyal to since he was a teen in the 1950s.

It was his disdain for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump that pushed him from the party and to Johnson.

If (John) Kasich or Jeb Bush were the nominee, I would have stuck with the Republican Party all the way. I think I would have considered almost anyone but Trump, he said while waiting to catch a plane in Miami, where he was to film a segment of Al Punto, con Jorge Ramos on Univision.

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Sosa said of Trump: I sincerely believe that he is a fellow that doesnt know how to do his homework, that just relies on what he thinks he has to say at the moment to attract whoever is in his audience at the moment.

Johnson and running mate Bill Weld  both former Republican governors  are both men of character  people we can trust who havent faced investigations into alleged nefarious actions, Sosa said.

I think (Johnson) is the logical alternative since I cant stomach Trump and I cant really feel comfortable with Hillary. I feel he is just the perfect alternative because he is fiscally responsible, and yet socially open. And thats kind of the way I feel that I am.

Asked whether hes OK with Johnsons position on legalization of marijuana, Sosa said hes not bothered by it.

I dont partake in marijuana. I think I tried it twice when I was in my early 30s and it had no effect so I never did it again, but a lot of the people whom I know, you know, use it regularly, he said. I think its fine. I think its less dangerous than alcohol. It just happens to be outlawed at the time.

jbaugh@express-news.net

Twitter: @jbaugh
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A Texas A&M student from San Marcos died Thursday after being hit on her bike by a city sanitation truck in College Station.

RELATED: One student has died from a drug overdose, four arrested at a Texas A&M frat house

Alannah Rose Ritch, 21, died at the scene after a College Station garbage truck hit her as she was riding her bike at the intersection of Aryshire and Angus near Kyle Field, according to a city news release. Ritch was a psychology senior at the university, according to Texas A&M online records.

RELATED: Texan charged with robbery after 2 killed in College Station

"We are deeply saddened by the tragic accident involving one of our sanitation trucks this morning and offer our sincerest condolences and prayers to the family of the young woman who passed away, Deputy City Manager Chuck Gilman said Wednesday. The College Station Police Department is conducting a thorough and objective investigation to determine exactly how this accident occurred."

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Former class president at San Marcos High School Zach Sambrano said Ritch was "beloved," on the class of 2013's Facebook page.

RELATED: Driver accused in San Marcos crash still jailed, mother who lost husband, child planning funeral

"The entire class offers our deepest prayers and our sincerest condolences to the Ritch family," Sambrano said. "May her soul rest in peace and never be forgotten."

Sambrano reminded his fellow classmates that life should "never be taken for granted."

He added that Ritch's memory would live on in the hearts of the 2013 class "for all of the years."

kbradshaw@express-news.net

Twitter: @kbrad5
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Federal prosecutors announced Thursday that there is insufficient evidence to charge any San Antonio police officers involved in the beating of an innocent man who was left paralyzed after surgery meant to fix injuries caused by the 2014 incident.

A lengthy and comprehensive investigation led the U.S. Attorneys Office and the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice to that conclusion, U.S. Attorney Richard Durbin said in a statement.

Rogelio Roger Carlos III said prosecutors had gone to his home to tell him in person before making the announcement. He said he testified at grand jury proceedings in June or July.

He said he would proceed with the federal lawsuit he and his wife filed in March, listing several officers as defendants, including the three he said beat and kicked him or jumped on his back and neck with their knees after mistaking him for a suspect they were chasing.

One of the three is an undercover SAPD officer assigned to a multi-agency drug task force. The other two are SWAT officers. The SWAT officers have been identified as Carlos Chavez and Virgilo Gonzalez. The SAPD will not identify the third officer, who first encountered Carlos, citing safety concerns because of his work on the undercover task force. The suit names him as Detective John Doe.

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The investigation did not develop sufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that police officers knowingly and willfully used excessive force to deprive Mr. Carlos of his civil rights, Durbins statement said. The investigation has been closed.

The decision came after the matter was presented to a grand jury earlier this summer, Durbins office confirmed, though it declined to say what decision the grand jurors made. Grand jury proceedings are generally kept secret.

From the very beginning, I really didnt know if theyd be convicted or even indicted, but I needed to put this pressure on and let it run its course, Carlos said. And if it helps out as far as the departments training, or so it wont happen to anyone else, then its worth it. All I can do is put my trust in the system.

Im confident the guys in charge with the (U.S. Attorneys Office) did everything they could, Carlos added. I trust that they did not leave any stone unturned.

The incident occurred May 20, 2014, as Carlos, dressed in a white T-shirt, photographed construction of his family's pediatric clinic at Westover Hills and Rodgers Road.

San Antonio police officers had been pursuing a suspect who ditched his car at a nearby restaurant before fleeing on foot. The undercover officer, dressed in civilian clothes, thought Carlos was the suspect, and used force against him, joined by the uniformed SWAT officers. The undercover officer later claimed Carlos did not obey police orders, though Carlos denies that and said the officers would not listen to him as he tried to explain his situation.

Because there is a civil lawsuit pending we can't comment on this case, SAPD spokesman Jesse Salame said.
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A jury found Frances Hall guilty of murder and aggravated assault Thursday night after all-day deliberations, agreeing with prosecutors who said she wanted to kill her husband's longtime lover for ruining her marriage but ended up killing her husband instead.

The courtroom erupted in gasps and sobs as the judge said she was guilty on both counts.

When Bexar County Judge Jefferson Moore remanded her to be held without bond over the weekend, Frances Hall had to be led out of the courtroom in sobs.

Please, I want to see my babies! she said.

Hall was accused of killing Bill Hall Jr., by knocking his motorcycle off the road with her Cadillac Escalade, then hitting another SUV driven by Bonnie Contreras  all in a single highway chase on Oct. 10, 2013 on South Loop 1604.

At least 50 relatives from both sides of the family hugged and cried after Frances Hall was taken into custody and led from the courtroom.

Relatives filled each side each day for the past two weeks. Attorneys from both sides said they were all there in support of Hall.

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We're very surprised by the verdict, shocked and disappointed, Brown said after the verdict was read. This is a tragedy. They lost the patriarch, and now they've lost the matriarch.

When asked if they would appeal the conviction, Brown said, Theres plenty of error that gives us grounds for appeal.

Bill Hall, 50, a San Antonio trucking tycoon, was flung from the motorcycle and died the same night at a hospital. Frances Hall, now 53, also was found guilty of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, accused of hitting the Halls Range Rover driven by Contreras, who was not in court for the verdict.

Contreras testified Frances Hall chased her and hit the back of the Range Rover up to 16 times, and when Bill Hall Jr. got between the vehicles, she rear-ended his bike. Prosecution witnesses said the physical evidence shows the Escalade struck the motorcycle from the side. Experts hired by the defense said it was the other way around  that the motorcycle hit the SUV before it left the road.

Contreras testified the affair lasted three years, with the much-older Bill Hall paying for her residence and upkeep and for cosmetic surgery. Contreras said Frances Hall never stopped after her husband fell off his bike, but continued to chase her.

As a result of her rage, a man is dead, Assistant District Attorney Stephanie Paulissen said in closing arguments earlier Thursday after five days of testimony in the murder trial that started last week. Of course the defendant hated Bonnie Contreras, any wife would. She didn't need to intend to kill Bill. But her actions caused it.

Defense attorneys had called the death an accident and Bill Hall drove beside his wifes SUV, hit it, lost control of his blue custom Harley Davidson motorcycle and crashed into a grassy field just off the highway.

In closing arguments, Paulissen attempted to discredit the defenses experts, who had criticized the Bexar County Sheriffs Office for what they called a botched investigation.

Defense attorney Leigh Cutter said in her closing arguments that the state had three years to get the one witness who said he saw the motorcycle hit the SUV.

Edward Botello was a 911 caller, and they told him to leave the scene twice, she said. They knew Bonnie was wrong. Why didn't they want him? Because what he had to say did not fit their theory.

The defense did not call Botello and prosecutors said they tried to compel him to testify but he ignored a subpoena.

The Halls, who married at 18, had owned Bill Hall Jr. Trucking Ltd., a business they started with one truck in 1989. A third-generation trucker, Bill Hall grew the business to deliver road-building materials with more than 100 trucks.

An affiliated company, Bill Hall Jr. Trucking GP LLC, which owned a fleet of trucks and trailers used by Bill Hall Jr. Trucking Ltd., filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in June after creditors threatened to repossess various assets, the companys bankruptcy lawyer said at the time.

The punishment phase is expected to begin at 9 a.m., Monday in the 186th state District Court.

Frances Hall faces five to 99 years or life in prison.

ezavala@express-news.net

Twitter: @elizabeth2863
SAN ANTONIO  Two men were injured during a shootout involving four people Friday morning on the East Side, according to police.

The incident occurred around 2:04 a.m. in the 1000 block of Paso Hondo, where four men were exchanging gunfire, police said.
The prediction was supposed to sound ominous. But to many listeners, it just sounded delicious.

My culture is a very dominant culture, and its imposing and its causing problems, warned Marco Gutierrez, founder of Latinos for Trump, in an MSNBC interview last week. If you dont do something about it, youre going to have taco trucks on every corner.

In the days that followed, this culinary Cassandra was widely mocked, memed and hashtagged.

How silly and self-loathing must Gutierrez be, the Twitterverse asked, to fear-monger with flautas, to bogeyman with burritos, to alarm with empanadas? After all, any idiot knows that Americans across the political spectrum love Mexican (or at least Tex-Mex) food. Even Donald Trump has featured taco-based cuisine in his political propaganda.

Yet I understand why Gutierrez might have expected his warning of Mexican culture creep to seem scary.

In recent years, there has been a subtle shift, on both left and right, away from the idealization of the melting pot  the United States long tradition of mixing and matching from the many cultures and ethnicities that migrate to our shores. Instead, both liberals and conservatives have increasingly advocated a version of cultural autarky: You stick to the traditions of your ancestry, Ill stick to mine, and well all be better off.

Maybe some rare exceptions can be grandfathered in, among them tacos (and, presumably, bagels). But for the most part, the goal seems to be to maintain clear, pristine ethnic boundaries, for foods, languages, clothing and other traditions.

The motivations for this evolving preference differ depending on the political faction youre talking about, of course. Those on the far left increasingly avoid engagement with other cultures traditions because they worry about cultural appropriation, or exoticizing or exploiting another peoples heritage. For the far right, this avoidance is based on fear of an invasive foreign influence, one that might contaminate true American values.

The rationales may be different, but the trigger can be the same.

Take, for example, yoga.

On the left, there is a recurring debate about whether practicing yoga in the West is a crass and offensive commercialization of another cultures sacred tradition. Last year, a college famously canceled a yoga class for students with disabilities due to concerns that the practice was taken from a culture that experienced oppression, cultural genocide and diasporas due to colonialism and western supremacy.

The story earned lots of public derision, especially on the right.

But several months later, a similar yoga controversy, this time stoked by conservatives, went viral. Parents of children at a Georgia public elementary school were upset that their kids were being taught yoga and other mindfulness practices, because they believed the lessons promoted a Far East mystical religion. The school apologized.

Recent years have produced similar brouhahas about whether serving sushi, or wearing kimonos, sombreros or hijabs, amounts to oppression, invasion or even just benign appreciation of other cultures traditions and innovations.

For centuries, humankind considered the peaceful exchange of ideas, goods and customs a source of progress, a means of (quite literally) spicing up life. Many of the traditions that we today associate with specific ethnicities are themselves borrowed from elsewhere, thanks to centuries of trade. The potato, that staple of Irish cuisine, was originally brought to the Emerald Isle from South America, for example.

Which makes this recent creep of cultural isolationism both concerning and confusing. Perhaps that scare-mongering Trump surrogate could be forgiven for not realizing that, just as potatoes eventually became Irishized, many Americans already regard tacos as fully Americanized. Heres hoping that this bit of confusion and inadvertent comedy slows the impulse to separate the ingredients of the American melting pot into its many parts.

crampell@washpost.com
Donald Trumps recent rant against all things Mexican followed hard upon his promise of a gentler approach toward most of the estimated 11 million immigrants here illegally. The political media continue to agonize over what Trump really wants, but isnt it obvious by now? He wants confusion.

One of his tricks is to say ordinary things paired with vulgar smears against Mexicans. That makes the ordinary things sound tough.

Consider his deportation task force to deal with undocumented felons. Well, whos not for sending criminals back? The Obama administration has been doing that for years  and without the blowhard theatrics.

What is Hillary Clintons stance? She supports comprehensive immigration reform along the lines of the bipartisan Senate bill passed in 2013. Had the Republican House leadership allowed a vote on similar legislation, which would have been approved, America would now be well on its way to curbing illegal immigration. And the Republican Party would undoubtedly be marching behind a more respectable candidate.

The Senate bill would have forced all employers to eventually use E-Verify  a system whereby every hires photo or biometric ID would be checked against a central database. Those permitted to work in the U.S. would get an instant go-ahead. Counterfeit IDs would set off alarms.

The comprehensive reform also called for beefed-up monitoring of the southern border, including improved surveillance technology and up to 40,000 more Border Patrol agents. And it would have required that enhanced border security go into effect before any green cards could be handed to undocumented workers.

The path to citizenship, meanwhile, would have involved the paying of fines and taken 10 years.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that passage of the bill would have cut the budget deficit by $700 billion over 10 years. There would have been costs, yes, but they would have been swamped by an increase in federal tax revenues.

Trumps nasty rhetoric should not hide the reality that hes taken no fixed stand on whether millions of otherwise law-abiding undocumented immigrants should be allowed to stay in the country. Some days, its deportation. Some days not.

NBCs Chuck Todd tried to get a straight answer out of Trumps running mate, Mike Pence, but with no luck. Every time Pence was cornered, he slipped and slided. I think Donald Trumps been completely consistent, Pence insisted, lying through his teeth.

Trump clearly has no personal objection to unauthorized foreigner labor, having infamously employed 200 undocumented Polish construction workers in the building of Trump Tower. They toiled in 12-hour shifts, seven days a week, for $4 or $5 an hour. Trump stiffed some of them on even those measly wages.

For all we know, Trump might want to keep workers illegal because theyre cheaper that way.

In the meantime, Trump continues to entertain his baying fans with promises to build that ludicrous wall along the Mexican border. No matter whether the United States, Mexico or New Zealand would pay for it, the fact remains that more Mexicans are now returning home than coming to the U.S.

Three years has passed since the House failed to take up the Senates comprehensive immigration reform. The undocumented millions are still here, and theres no requirement that all employers use E-Verify to confirm the legality of their workers.

The reforms backed by Clinton would do more to control our borders than Trumps phony tough talk because theyre thought-out and unambiguous on enforcement. I suspect Trump doesnt care one way or another about the issue except as a means to inflame his crowds. Being ugly doesnt make one serious.

fharrop@gmail.com
The United States wet foot, dry foot policy for Cuban migrants has not made sense for years as a matter of equity. Other immigrants are not accorded such ease of entry and legal residency.

But a call by nine Latin American governments for the U.S. to review this policy reveals other concerns. The policy has created disorderly, irregular and unsafe human smuggling in those countries. The policy is a relic of the Cold War enmity between the Castros and the U.S., and an attempt to curry the favor of Cuban-American voters.
Researchers probing the Hayward Fault began drilling into the East Bay ground Friday to begin a new seismic study of the quake-imperiled region.

Within two weeks they plan to set off tiny underground explosions inside two dozen drill holes along 10 miles of the fault, triggering two dozen minuscule earthquakes. The quakes will be so small, scientists say, they will barely wobble the detectors in more than 500 portable seismographs deployed along the same stretch.

Each of those miniature explosions and mini-quakes will provide a valuable new understanding of the Hayward Faults underground geology and could even reveal the existence of unknown faults within the area, said Rufus Catchings, a research geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park and the leader of the experiment.

It will also give scientists the first detailed information on the nearby Chabot and Ashland faults, which parallel the Hayward and are likely connected to the Hayward at depth, Catchings said.

USGS

The Chabot Fault is dormant now, but those faults must merge at depth, and this study should tell us how, said Luther Strayer, a geology professor at California State University East Bay who is working with Catchings. The Hayward and Chabot faults run through his campus, and the little-known Ashland Fault is nearby, he said.

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The holes for the study will be drilled in public areas like parks and playgrounds between San Leandro and Castro Valley, said Catchings. The explosions that follow will be touched off during the week of Sept. 19 between midnight and 5 a.m. to avoid cultural noise, like heavy truck traffic that can shake the ground and mislead the seismograph readings.

On Friday, a Bobcat rig drilled the first hole toward a 40-foot depth along a trail in Lake Chabot Regional Park. Looking on, Strayer noted that residents have raised concerns that the research will expose earthquake risks and send their property values plummeting.

I can appreciate that concern, but its not our concern, he said. Our job is to figure out what it means for the large communities living right on the faults and the dangers there.

The Hayward Fault extends about 74 miles through the East Bays densely populated cities from San Pablo Bay to its junction with the Calaveras Fault near San Jose, and it is known as the most dangerous fault in Northern California. The last big quake hit there in 1868 with a magnitude now estimated at 7.1, and scientists have long warned that the fault is overdue for another major temblor.

The most recent report by the Working Group on California Earthquake Probabilities sets the odds at 1 in 3  a 33 percent probability  that a quake with a magnitude of 6.7 or greater will strike on either the Hayward or the Rodgers Creek fault within the next 30 years. The Rodgers Creek Fault runs from San Pablo Bay north to the Healdsburg area, and many earthquake scientists believe the two faults are linked beneath the bay.

The blasts for the study, Catchings said, will be fired one at a time. They will be so small that the seismographs spread over the area will record each subsequent tremor as an unfelt negative magnitude quake depending on its distance from the blast, Catchings said.

The result, he said, will give scientists a better understanding of the varied layers of rock and ancient sands that lie deep beneath the surface along the fault. Those formations can vary the strength of a quakes seismic waves  essential information for land-use planners and builders throughout the region, Catchings said.

David Perlman is The San Francisco Chronicles science editor; Michael Bodley is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: dperlman@sfchronicle.com, mbodley@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @DavePerlman, @michael_bodley
According to ABC 12 News, Roy Ellis Holcomb, Jr. has pleaded guilty to four counts of manslaughter for a 2014 accident that left four dead, including two young children.

Details of the Fatal Accident

On October 1, 2014, Holcomb was involved in a chain-reaction trucking accident that resulted in the deaths of 62-year-old, Glenda Blackwell, Blackwells two grandchildren, and Luis Alonso Rodriguez Comacho. Holcomb was cited for failure to control speed following the accident.

On August 19, Holcombs pleaded guilty to all four counts of manslaughter stemming from the accident after being out on bail since November 2015. Holcomb did not comment on his decision to plead guilty. Sentencing is scheduled for September 29.

Trucking Accident Statistics

The following information was provided by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA):

3,903 people were killed in trucking accidents in 2014, marking a slight decrease from the 3,981 deaths recorded in 2013.

Of those killed in 2014:

o73 percent were occupants of other vehicles

o17 percent were occupants of large trucks

o10 percent were listed as nonoccupants, including bicyclists and pedestrians

An additional 111,000 people were injured in trucking accidents in 2014, marking a 17-percent increase over the 95,000 injuries recorded in 2013.

Contact an Experienced Trucking Accident Attorney

Thomas J. Henry Injury Attorneys have handled a multitude of 18-wheeler accidents over the past two decades and continue to handle many of the largest 18-wheeler accident cases throughout the United States. Whether the company is small or large, our success is not an accident; it is because we understand how trucking companies operate. We represent clients/victims all over the country.

Thomas J. Henry Injury Attorneys are available to respond to trucking accidents at any hour, day or night. Our lawyers understand that the immediate acquisition, or acquiring, of evidence is paramount to understanding how the accident occurred. Remember, your choice does matter. Contact our offices - we are available 24/7, nights and weekends.

Editors Note: This content is made possible by Thomas J. Henry Personal Injury Law. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of The San Antonio Express-News' or mySanAntonio.com's editorial staff. Learn more about our advertising products at www.hearstmediasanantonio.com.
New legislation in Congress would repeal debit reforms that have saved consumers billions and brought competition to the debit card market.

WASHINGTON  Today U.S. Representative Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) officially introduced legislation, the Financial CHOICE Act, that seeks to repeal the Durbin Amendment.

Since implementation of the Durbin Amendment, which was signed into law in 2010 as part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act, debit reform has saved consumers nearly $6 billion per year and supported more than 37,000 jobs per year. In recent months, NACS has alerted convenience and fuel retailers that Hensarling, who is also chairman of House Financial Services Committee, has been garnering support for his bill. Earlier this week more than 400 retailers, including many NACS members, sent a letter to Congress asking them to protect debit card reforms.

Hensarling announced Sept. 8 that the House Financial Services Committee will begin meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 13 to debate the Financial CHOICE Act, consider possible amendments and vote on the legislation.

The Texas representative is a staunch supporter of repealing debit reforms contained in the Durbin Amendment. On his website, Hensarling links to an article that says the real beneficiaries of the Durbin amendment were not consumers but Durbins political alliesthe big retailers.

NACS is asking convenience retailers to reach out to their representatives and encourage them to oppose the Financial CHOICE Act as long as the provision to repeal the Durbin Amendment remains. In just a few minutes, industry stakeholders can send a letter to their members of Congress telling them how Hensarlings legislation would affect their business and their customers.
The company will expand into the U.S. chocolate market with the bars made with Milka chocolate.

DEERFIELD, Ill.  Mondelez International isnt letting a little thing like Hersheys rejection of its takeover bid slow it down. The snack maker announced its big splash plan this week to enlarge its presence in the U.S. chocolate market with its Oreo chocolate bars, the Chicago Tribune reports.

Mondelez will start selling Oreo chocolate bars made with its Milka chocolate later this year in a limited amount before a national launch in 2017. At the same time, the company will also debut a new line of premium chocolate bars under Green & Blacks. We have a very small presence in the U.S. [chocolate market], so entering this category represents a significant white space opportunity for us, said Tim Cofer, chief growth officer for Mondelez.

The Oreo bars will have several varieties, including one with bits of Oreo cookie mixed with creme enrobed in [Milka] chocolate, said Michael Mitchell, a company spokesman. Another bar will have an Oreo wafer in the center with a creme top and bottom. Meanwhile, 17 Green & Blacks varieties will be available by the close of 2016, with another 20 bars hitting shelves ahead of Valentines Day 2017.

Cofer estimates the overall U.S. chocolate channel to be around $14 billion. Mondelez is banking that pairing Oreos with its Milka chocolate will help spur U.S. sales.
By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Heres another vacation artifact from along the Maine Coast:

I like Rosa Rugosa. Some say invasive but I think tenacious would be a better word.

* * *

What fresh hell:

Anxious Dems urge Clinton to open up [The Hill].

Democratic senators, anxious over Hillary Clintons inability to pull away from Donald Trump, have some advice for their nominee: Be more open, show your soul, focus on the economy and talk about blue-collar jobs. Recent polls show Trump within striking distance of Clinton in the presidential election, defying predictions in Washington that he is doomed in November.

After all that money, the complete support of the Democrat establishment, and the virtually unanimous support of the political class, including the press, and eruption after eruption from the Trump campaign. Stupid voters? Or weak candidate? You decide.

These lawmakers, who served with Clinton in Congress and have known her for years, say her public persona is too guarded. They struggle to reconcile the charismatic, warm and funny woman they know in private with Clintons public persona, which can come across as stern, aloof or annoyed.

The sycophants in HillaryLand wish everybody could be like them!

Her decades in this arena have taken their toll, said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). When youre hit a lot theres almost an unconscious shield that controls the answers to your questions. I think shes got to get rid of that and just let herself be. Everybody that knows her loves her. They know her heart is full, she added. Thats what she ought to do, just take the shield away from the heart. Vice President Biden offered similar advice earlier in the week, calling on her to be more open. Hillary knows its a problem, and shes trying to figure out how to remedy it. And my advice to her, the best way to remedy it, is to talk about what you care about and talk about it with some passion, he told CNN. He advised her to open up and let voters see your heart a little more. It would be great if she showed her soul more, but shes got to be comfortable and it has to be authentic, said one senator, who requested anonymity to offer a frank assessment.

Is Clinton going to reintroduce herself again? Help me. Look, I dont care about whats in her heart, if any, and ditto Trump. How about Clinton comes out and says those Wells Fargo execs should be thrown in jail? That might get my attention, and m-i-i-i-i-ight make me put her in a different box. (And Manafort better hop to it and get Trump out in front on this. Eh? If he really wants Trump to be a populist.)

* * *

Readers, feel free to contact me with (a) links, and even better (b) sources I should curate regularly, and (c) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi are deemed to be honorary plants! See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. And heres todays plant (ML):

ML writes: End of summer here in south central Alaska. Here are sunflowers and pollinators on Moonstone Farm in Palmer, AK (~ 3 blocks from Parks Highway!)

I had very good luck this year with a patch of sunflowers self-seeded from last year. So I transplanted many of them elsewhere about the property, and expect even better luck next year!

* * *

Readers, if you can, please use the dropdown to choose your contribution, and then click the hat! Your tip will be welcome today, and indeed any day. Water Cooler will not exist without your continued help.
Posted by Outis Philalithopoulos, who in life was an economist, and now, as a ghost, watches fascinated as ever stranger events flit through the world of mortals.

Certain stories that get virtually no traction nevertheless involve phenomena that are quite important in understanding the way the world operates. One instance is the network of secrecy jurisdictions (tax havens), which play a huge role in the global economy by providing back channels used by a substantial fraction of the worlds wealth. For those interested in the details, one good place to start is Nicholas Shaxsons 2010 book Treasure Islands.

The Tax Justice Network in the piece below suggests that the Bahamas is now angling for a position at the head of the secrecy jurisdiction line, loudly advertising its desire to take criminal money.

Originally posted at the Tax Justice Network.

Update: as it happens, The Economist has just published an excellent story about the Bahamas, subtitled The Bahamas Cocks a Snook at the War on Tax Dodgers. (Our only beef with that subtitle is that this is about so much more than just tax.)

Weve periodically remarkedon the Bahamas as a secrecy jurisdiction of great concern. Like Panama, its generally had a greater tolerance of dirty money than most modern offshore centres: more of a willingness to turn a blind eye and to overlook noncompliance by Bahamas-based actors of its own rules and laws.

The purpose of this blog is to flag up the Bahamas in a more pointed way: as a major wrecking-ball threatening global efforts to clamp down on cross-border financial secrecy.

The Bahamas has hosted an offshore centre for crime and tax evasion for decades, and it has historically had a higher tolerance for dirty money than most tax havens. Its secrecy score of 79 in our Financial Secrecy Index is one of the worlds highest. Treasure Islands summarises an important component of the Bahamas history and identity, via Chicago gangster Al Capones moneyman, Meyer Lansky:

More recently, we have become aware of two closely related matters of concern.

The first concerns the OECDs Common Reporting Standard project, a global scheme for countries to share banking information across borders. The Bahamas is, in essence, thumbing its nose at this project  saying, in effect, that we are the dirty-money centre of choice  and it is currently attracting a lot of financial activity as a result. Second, the Bahamas government is sending out delegations around the world, to all and sundry, advertising itself as a holdout against proper compliance. And its doing this via typically tax-havenish devious methods. As one notorious offshore promoter puts it:

The government of The Bahamas . . . is highly proactive in its attempts to attract offshore business, which accounts for over 30% of the countrys economy.

The second, related problem is that the OECD doesnt (yet) seem to be doing anything about this. We do expect that the OECD will be pushed and prodded towards action soon, and we expect the criticism of The Bahamas to rise very significantly in the near future, and the Bahamas will eventually be forced to change tack.

What Bahamas is actually doing

Its fairly straightforward. Now the Bahamas has committed to the CRS system, but in a particularly narrow way. From the Bahamas Weekly:

The optional methods of implementation defined by the OECD are a multilateral and bilateral approach, both of which adhere to the international standards for tax cooperation and tax transparency.

All of which is true. The key question is: does your country engage with the CRS multilaterally, or bilaterally? Do you exchange with the world, or do you cherry-pick which jurisdictions youre going to exchange with? In general terms, cherry-picking means exchanging information with a) powerful jurisdictions theyre afraid of antagonising, like the United States, and b) jurisdictions that dont matter to their offshore industries, like the Faroe Islands. And the rest  the ones that matter, frequently developing countries that are most vulnerable to looting by their elites  get full-service secrecy for those same crooked elites. Well take your dirty money, and well cover it up.

Now the OECD has been fairly successful in corralling countries into the multilateral approach.

As of August 19th, a total of 84 countries, including nearly every major tax haven, had signed up to the multilateral approach. Among the important tax havens there are three noticeable hold-outs which havent signed: Singapore, Panama and . . . the Bahamas.

All deserve extreme opprobrium. But of these three, the Bahamas approach is by far the worst. This is because Panama (under tremendous, scandal-fueled global pressure) and Singapore have both signed (and Singapore has ratified) the so-called Multilateral Convention on Mutual Legal Assistance in Tax Matters, an older instrument which is the legal basis for exchanging information under the CRS. Bahamas hasnt even signed that. Armed with this legal basis, Singapore could sign an information-sharing agreement with Indonesia tomorrow, and Panama could sign with Brazil. But if Bahamas wanted to exchange with someone, theyd have to go about the long, arduous process of indiviually negotiating a Tax Information Exchange Agreement with that jurisdiction.

A tax adviser put it to TJN like this:

Singapore and Hong Kong: they have a law which says if you suspect the money is untaxed you should file a suspicious report. Bahamas is like whats suspicious about this suitcase full of money?

The Bahamas Ministry of Finance is crowing about this. In a briefing on the subject, not only spells out but emphasises that it has failed to sign the multilateral instrument necessary to participate, with a single isolated sentence:

The Bahamas is NOT a signatory to this Convention.

Their emphasis added. Make no mistake: this is a giant, fist-pumping Screw-You to the civilised world. The Bahamas is loudly advertising its desire to take criminal money. And, as mentioned, theyre aggressively sending delegations out to places like Mexico and Colombia, which are suffering terrible violence and murder because of their drugs wars, and advertising an open shop to the drugs cartels. As the Best of Both Worlds site puts it, on a page dedicated to the CRS:

The Bahamas government delegations travel globally, sponsoring seminars, attracting new business by assuring financial industry intermediaries that Bahamas will categorically not undertake exchange of information with many countries, especially Latin America, due to bogus security concerns.

Bahamas excuse for going this way is twofold. First, it cites bogus data security concerns. (If you think such concerns are legitimate, read this.) Second, it says that the multilateral approach isnt appropriate for jurisdictions with a direct taxation regime. Pure nonsense. Look at all those tax havens without direct taxes that have signed the multilateral instrument.

Other recalcitrants

So thats the Bahamas. We cant finish this blog without reminding our readers of other key recalcitrants, however. Weve already pointed out thatthe OECD has inexplicably allowed cherry-picking even inside the multilateral instrument. (Switzerland does this, not just to its shame, but also to the shame of the OECD, which tolerates this.)

And then there is the United States, which has opted out of the CRS entirely, instead forging ahead with its own system, which it says is equivalent to the CRS, but most certainly isnt.
Start-up spreads clean energy in Africa

(Nanowerk News) A group of highly-skilled engineering alumni, Masters and PhD students from Masdar Institute have formed a startup company called the Nigeria Future Energy Group (NiFEG), focused on clean energy development and deployment throughout Nigeria.

Fully incorporated in Nigeria, NiFEG is a non-profit organization with the ultimate goal of providing local energy solutions sustainably in Nigeria. The startup has successfully emerged out of the community of Masdar Institutes innovative students, faculty and alumni.

We believe the private sector has a huge role to play in solving Nigerias energy crisis, said NiFEG member Adewale Giwa, a Masdar Institute PhD student. NiFEG wants to promote sustainability by accelerating the use of clean and renewable energy in Nigeria.

The 2.25 kW solar photovoltaic facility donated by NiFEG to Kaduna State University.

Nigerias solar resource is approximately 4.85 billion MWh/day and utilizing only a fraction of this resources would be sufficient to provide the entire country with clean electricity. However, currently there is limited exploitation of the countrys solar potential. This gap between Nigerias energy needs and its renewable energy potential inspired Giwa and his colleagues to develop NiFEG.

Since the non-profits official launch in January 2015, NiFEG has already contributed to the development of a photovoltaic solar system in Kaduna State University, which is a government-owned research university in the northern part of Nigeria. The solar energy system, which provides 2.25 kW of electricity and 19.2 kWh of energy storage, powers two of the universitys lecture theaters.

As native Nigerians with specialized engineering skills from Masdar Institute, NiFEGs entrepreneurs are combining their expertise in renewable energy technologies and knowledge of the Nigerian economy to place NiFEG ahead of the curve of other renewable energy companies in Nigeria. All of its founding members have published articles in research journals or conference proceedings while at Masdar Institute, related to solar energy, biomass to energy conversion, and carbon dioxide capture and storage.

A strategic leverage we have over our competitors is the education and experience we gained from Masdar Institute, Giwa remarked.

The startup has partnered with several high-level organizations, including Nigerias Federal Ministry of Power, Kaduna State University, Ahmadu Bello University, the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, Qantab, NordOest, Soraytec, and ar estudio  an industrial design company. The non-profit works with its partners, sponsors and member organizations to raise awareness and provide technical information on available renewable energy resources and technologies in Nigeria.

As a result of their proven analytical skills and expertise in Nigerias energy sector, five NiFEG members - Oghare Ogidiama, Adetunji Alabi, Jubilee Adeoye, Ahmed Sodiq and Ayoola Brimmo - have contributed to the drafting of Nigerias climate change bill, at the request of the Climate Change Committee of Nigerias National House of Representatives. This bill has also passed second reading on the floor of the Senate of Nigeria. The bill proposes the creation of a climate change agency and several policy initiatives to improve the countrys institutional capacity to deal with climate change.

One way NiFEG intends to raise awareness is through its Mentorship Program, which aims to create a competition for undergraduates where candidates will be mentored in executing feasible sustainable energy projects in Nigeria.

In another effort to provide pertinent technical data about deploying solar systems to tap into Nigerias solar resources, NiFEG has developed a solar system calculator that can be used to obtain size and cost estimates for solar systems in Nigeria. The solar calculator is available for public access on their website.

The company will generate revenue from subscription fees, philanthropic contributions and sales of expertise services, including consultation, strategy formulation and creation of market exposure. NiFEG is also gathering meteorological data for Nigeria, which may serve as an additional revenue stream.
"Unpublished studies seen by EFSA were not only the core basis of the

peer review, but based on a weight of evidence approach, these

unpublished studies trumped the published studies used by IARC and thus

led to an opposite conclusion."



key studies used for the assessment remain confidential or unpublished,

glyphosate-containing formulations are not properly and fully assessed,

the Commission has not adopted specific scientific criteria for the determination of endocrine-disrupting properties.

(NaturalNews)(Article written by Michele Rivasi & 65 other MEPs, republished fromDear Commissioner Andriukaitis[1],We, Members of the European Parliament from different political groups, are very concerned by the ongoing re-approval process of glyphosate, the active substance in the most widely used herbicide.We currently witness a major scientific controversy between the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA) and the International Agency for Research on Cancer of the World Health Organisation (IARC) with regard to the carcinogenicity of glyphosate.While IARC had concluded in March 2015 that glyphosate is a probable human carcinogen (category 2A), the EFSA peer review, based on the renewal assessment report by the rapporteur Member State (BfR), concluded in November 2015 that glyphosate is "unlikely to pose a carcinogenic hazard to humans and the evidence does not support classification with regard to its carcinogenic potential". Proper classification is crucial as it entails important regulatory consequences.We do not have the necessary technical expertise to properly assess the detailed scientific arguments brought forward by either side with regard to the classification of glyphosate. However, we consider that there are some overarching problems that urgently need to be addressed.According to EFSA , there are two key issues that explain the different conclusions:a) the number of studies assessed - published vs. unpublished;b) the object of the studies assessed - active substance vs. plant protection products.With regard to the first point, EFSA stated that its "evaluation considered a large body of evidence, including a number of studies not assessed by the IARC which is one of the reasons for reaching different conclusions" (EFSA news story, 12 November 2015).In a detailed response to an open letter sent by MEPs and MPs on 20 October 2015, EFSA gives further indications: "Based on a comprehensive genotoxicity data package on the active substance glyphosate, and considering a weight of evidence approach on all available data, it is concluded that glyphosate is unlikely to be genotoxic in vivo and does not require hazard classification regarding mutagenicity according to the CLP Regulation."It is noted that unpublished studies that were the core basis of the peer review evaluation were not available to the IARC experts as reported in the IARC monograph 112 on glyphosate (IARC, 2015)."In other words, unpublished studies seen by EFSA were not only the core basis of the peer review, but based on a weight of evidence approach, these unpublished studies trumped the published studies used by IARC and thus led to an opposite conclusion.We are deeply concerned about such an intransparent weight of evidence approach, based on which positive findings (in published studies) are outweighed by referring to negative findings (in unpublished studies). This does not create a level playing field, does not allow for independent scrutiny, and as a result inevitably questions the work of EFSA.We therefore call on you to demand the publication of all the studies which were used by the BfR and EFSA to assess glyphosate and not only their summaries, including names of the authors and declarations of conflicts of interests, so that these studies can be independently assessed.With regard to the second point, EFSA has recently gone on record that its task would be to assess the active substance, not the formulated product (Le Huffington Post, 21 January 2016)[2]. While it is correct that the authorisation of the diverse formulated plant protection products is the responsibility of Member States, EFSA also has key obligations in that regard.According to Article 4(5) of Regulation (EC) No 1107/2009, for approval of an active substance, the approval criteria shall be deemed to be satisfied where this has been established with respect to one or more representative uses of at least one plant protection product containing that active substance.It is thus clear that EFSA also needs to assess at least one plant protection product against the approval criteria, and in that respect pay full attention to all relevant data, including epidemiological one. The EFSA statement referred to above raises important questions with regard to the compliance of EFSA's peer review with Article 4(5).Moreover, EFSA admitted that a number of published studies performed with glyphosate based formulations of unknown composition gave positive results when tested in vitro and in vivo. EFSA furthermore acknowledged that POE-tallowamine is one of the co-formulants that is known to be used in some glyphosate-based formulations, and that"this co-formulant has been shown to be more toxic than the active substance glyphosate on several toxicological endpoints, namely acute, short term, reproductive and developmental toxicity, further to equivocal evidence of DNA damage in vitro at high doses".However, according to EFSA, POE-tallowamine is not present in the representative formulation.We are very concerned that an applicant may get approval of an active substance based on one plant protection product alone, especially when many different formulations are placed on the market, most likely choosing a formulation with the least harmful co-formulants, despite the wide use of such highly problematic co-formulants such as POE-tallowamine.EFSA concluded that the toxicity of formulations and in particular their genotoxic potential should be further considered and addressed, leaving that task to Member States.However, given the hazards shown by formulations, and in particular by POE-tallowamine, and without prejudice to our concerns with regard to the carcinogenic properties of glyphosate as found by IARC, it seems that Member States are not properly applying Article 4(3) of Regulation (EC) No 1107/2009.We would therefore like to know whether you consider that EFSA complied with Article 4(5) and whether it assessed the most relevant plant protection product in that context, and how you want to ensure that Member States properly apply the provisions of the Regulation, and in particular its Article 4(3) with regard to the authorisation of plant protection products.Finally, we are greatly concerned that glyphosate may be reapproved prior to the adoption of scientific criteria for the determination of endocrine disrupters. Glyphosate-based formulations have been found to be endocrine disrupters in human cell lines (see Gasnier et al., Toxicology, 21 August 2009)[3].In the absence of proper scientific criteria, EFSA only assessed glyphosate against the interim criteria for endocrine disrupters, yet stated that an endocrine-mediated mode of action could not be ruled out in the context of possible adverse effects on reproductionAs you know, the Commission was obliged to present scientific criteria by 14 December 2013, but failed to do so. An analogous obligation is laid down in the Biocides Regulation EU (No) 528/2012.In this context, the General Court declared on 16 December 2015 that the Commission has breached EU law by failing to adopt delegated acts as regards the specification of the scientific criteria for the determination of the endocrine-disrupting properties.In conclusion, we urge you to refrain from re-approving glyphosate as long as:Read more at: http://www.theecologist.org Sources:[1] http://ec.europa.eu/commission/2014-2019/andriukaitis_en [2] http://www.huffingtonpost.fr [3] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19539684
Individuals who refuse vaccination are now targeted by vaccine industry propagandists

WHO's vaccine compliance training manual should be condemned



(NaturalNews) It's appalling to look back into recent U.S. history and see how top-down, coordinated propaganda campaigns have led the people into a state of blind ignorance and obedience  so much so, in fact, that people persecute one another over something as natural and harmless as the cannabis plant. It's sickening to look back and see how the "reefer madness" propaganda campaign of the 1960s ultimately led to increased incidences of violence and malice, as excessive police and government force ripped families apart and locked nonviolent people in cages for decades.The same coordinated propaganda tactics used then are being used today to usher in an era of blind obedience to an ever-increasing number of vaccinations. The goal today is the same as it was during the reefer madness of the 1960s: to turn people on one another, to suppress the truth about nature , and to usher in the destruction of individual property rights.Here's how these issues are one and the same: An individual owns their own body; what they do with their own property is an inherent freedom entirely up to them, as long as they are not harming another. There is no justification to use force against individuals who use something as harmless as cannabis. Likewise, there definitely is no justification to force an individual to receive any kind of drug or vaccine against their will.Today, the same propaganda techniques of the reefer madness era are being used to target healthy individuals who rely on their own inherent immune systems. In much the same way that cannabis was labeled as dangerous, addictive, sinful and without medical benefit, vaccines are pushed as 100 percent safe, scientific and effective. It's all just brainwashing.Newly uncovered vaccine compliance training manuals, uncovered at the European Regional Office of the World Health Organization (WHO), show that a PSYOP is in full effect to convince the public that vaccinations are necessary, and that all individuals must submit. The manual, titledshows exactly how individuals are viewed: as "adversaries" who need to be convinced and injected. We are also viewed as "conspiracy theorists" who need to be re-educated and mind controlled into believing in vaccine science. The training manual teaches academic leaders, politicians and media spokespeople how to address vaccine deniers and skeptics on public platforms. This vaccine compliance training manual teaches how to manipulate audiences into believing in vaccines, overriding individual rights and health concerns.With cannabis prohibition, force is only used when people are in possession of a substance. The situation could escalate even more with vaccines, because the government would be called upon to administer force on all individuals who do not comply with vaccine standards set by the state. If enough people can be convinced that excessive government force is necessary to vaccinate everyone into compliance, then the same violence that occurred during the dark years of cannabis prohibition may unfold in the coming years with vaccine mandates. Just as during cannabis prohibition, armed paramilitary groups could be sent to people's homes. Innocent people could be shot while resisting injections. They could be arrested and imprisoned. With vaccine mandates, anyone who refused or even questioned a vaccine of any kind could be targeted.Cannabis prohibition has never been about a drug war. Vaccine mandates are not about solving a public health crisis. The propaganda campaigns behind both, and the ensuing use of force attached thereto, are a coordinated war on people, a suppression of nature, an assault on individual, human rights.The WHO's vaccine compliance training manual is a coordinated effort attempting to "change one's mind to vaccine acceptance." Anyone who has been damaged by vaccines, who questions their ingredients, or who chooses to forgo the increasing number of injections, is made out to be an enemy by this propaganda campaign . The World Health Organization has crossed dangerous lines with this manual, and must be held accountable for unleashing such bigotry and hatred toward victims of vaccines. All intelligent individuals who prize individual liberty must stop any global propaganda efforts that will inevitably lead the world down a violent path of mandatory vaccines and the use of government force to enforce compliance.
(NaturalNews) Well, it only took two decades for Pfizer to admit that opioids are indeed addictive , even when they are used as prescribed. There is also no evidence that opioids are effective for long-term treatment of chronic pain, in spite of the clever and misleading marketing campaigns led by manufacturers. Opioids cause up toin the United States. This shocking figure is part of what finally led to Pfizer's concessions about their product's lack of safety. The corporation has recently agreed to disclose that opioids "carry serious risk of addictioneven when used properly," according to the. The company has also agreed not to promote opioid use for off-label purposes that aren't approved, such as for long-term back pain. Pfizer will also acknowledge that there is no good research on the effectiveness of opioids beyond 12 weeks of use.Pfizer makes and markets only one opioid product, which is an extended-release product known as Embeda. When it comes to the opioid epidemic, Embeda has not played nearly as large a role as Purdue's infamous OxyContin. Following a lawsuit by the city of Chicago against Purdue and several other Big Pharma corporations , Pfizer has chosen to willingly draft an opioid marketing policy. They weren't named in the lawsuit, and there's no admission of wrongdoing, so it's very clear that the company is merely trying to "cover all the bases" if you will, and protect themselves from being sued too.According to the Waking Times , "Chicago's lawsuit and similar suits brought by Santa Clara and Orange County charge the companies with a two-decade conspiracy to profiteer on opiate sales." The municipalities have charged a number of pharmaceutical corporations with spreading misleading information that minimized the risk of addiction and flat-out lied about the actual long-term efficacy of their products. Opioid manufacturers have also been charged with "buying the opinions of respected doctors."In spite of Big Pharma propaganda, most medical literature indicates that opioid painkillersin fact help workers return to work sooner. In fact, research shows that opioids seem to actuallyreturns to work. For example, one study found that people who took opioids for at least seven days during their first six weeks of an injury were more than twice as likely to still be disabled and out of work one year later. Another study found that use of an early opioid in morphine-equivalent amounts equaling 450mg or more were disabled for approximately 69 days longer than those who didn't take early opioids. A California study found that using high-dose opioids tripled time out of work, and led to delayed injury recovery.For the last decade, Big Pharma has also perpetuated the myth that opioids are great for treating chronic pain, but research has revealed that this is simply not true. Pfizer has even come forward and admitted that there is no good research to indicate the drugs have any value after 12 weeks of use. Research has revealed that over time, opioids can actually make pain worse. The condition is called "opioid-induced hyperalgesia."Years ago, the idea of treating pain with narcotics was unheard of, but now it is commonplace. Despite their legal status, prescription opioids are really no different than their illicit counterpart, heroin. They are addictive, and they do kill people. According to the American Society of Addiction Medicine, in 2014 there were 47,055 lethal drug overdoses in the US. Of those deaths, 18,893 deaths were related to prescription pain relievers. Those statistics show thatThe organization also reported that according to 2014 statistics, 1.9 million Americans had a prescription painkiller substance abuse problem. Comparatively, 586,000 people had a substance abuse disorder involving heroin.There are nearlyas many people in this country abusing prescription pain medication than there are people using heroin, and yet for some reason, these drugs continue to remain perfectly legal. Can you believe that?
(NaturalNews) Is it getting harder to breathe in the United States? A new study led by an independent researcher from Colorado State University certainly suggests that is the case. The study analyzed data on air quality that was collected by the U.S. government itself, and evaluated the relationship between ozone smog and asthma. Smog

is comprised of emissions from oil and gas production that have accumulated in the ozone layer, and it is known to be a trigger for asthma. The study, which was appropriately titled, "Gasping for Breath," collected ozone pollution data from industries across the board, and compared the health impacts to a calculated baseline case. What this means is that a case using current trends that includes predicted growth for oil and gas industries was compared to a case where there were no emissions from those industries, which is what would be considered "baseline." This was done in order to estimate what the impact of smog from the oil and gas industries will look like in 2025.The study indicates that Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado and Pennsylvania are the states that will be most dramatically effected by industrial emissions. It's been estimated that more than 300 Texans will need to seek urgent care for respiratory distress. Furthermore, Texan children will also suffer an approximate 140,000 asthma attacks due to smog exposure. They will also miss a combined total of about 105,000 days of school due to asthma-related health problems resulting from poor air quality The study also predicts that children nationwide will suffer around 750,000 asthma attacks and miss 500,000 days of school in 2025  all thanks to oil and gas emissions. And while the number of work days lost by parents who are taking care of their children cannot be calculated, it's estimated that 1.5 million adults will miss work due to an asthma-related health issue.Naturally, oil and gas companies have been quick to dismiss the study in one way or another. For example, The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality's spokesperson Andrea Morrow contacted theand said that the researchers "did not cite the sources" so that staff could "fully evaluate" the study. Morrow then went on to say: "The report also failed to take the agency's steps to reduce emissions from the oil and gas industry into consideration."What steps? While it is true that in June of 2016 the EPA finalized new methane standards for new and modified oil and gas facilities, the new standards will not apply to the 1.2 million already-existing oil and gas operations across the country. This means that in nine years, the same facilities will be operating under the same conditions they are now, and will not be forced to comply with the new EPA emission regulations. It is not speculation to say that a good portion of these facilities will not willingly change their ways if they don't have to.Let's not forget that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton also launched a lawsuit against the EPA in mid-July.reported on Paxton "calling the agency's rules 'a gross demonstration of federal overreach' and accusing regulators of failing to consider the price tag for oil and gas producers to comply." And we're supposed to believe that these industries actuallyto comply with federal regulations? Of course, if the federal government wasn't so prone to overreaching and doling out whimsical, feckless regulations, businesses might be more inclined to comply when they come up with regulations that might actually serve a purpose.The Colorado Oil and Gas Association has also come forward and attacked both the study and the Clean Air Task Force  the organization behind the study. The association even went so far as to say that the Clean Air Task Force is an activist group that "cannot be trusted."Something tells me that an independent activist group is far more trustworthy than big business.
The dangers of DEET used in combination with other pesticides

Scientific illiteracy or deliberate lies?

(NaturalNews) Judging by the number of horror stories circulating in the mainstream media regarding the so-called Zika virus "epidemic," one might get the idea that Americans are facing a health threat as dangerous as HIV/AIDS or even the Black Plague.Every day, a batch of fresh fear-mongering stories are published or broadcast by the mainstream news outlets, warning us of new means of transmission and the horrible effects of the disease.In today's news, for example, there are new stories about possible Zika virus infection through contact with human tears and contaminated meth (of all things).The media loves this kind of clickbait stuff; it generates ratings, and serves the purposes of those who want to scare the pants off the public with wild exaggerations regarding the effects of the Zika virus.What the media isn't telling you is that the chemicals being used to kill suspected Zika-carrying mosquitoes areEven theadmits that the Zika virus is nearly harmless, produces no symptoms at all in most people who contract it, rarely requires hospitalization and has killed almost no one.And the link between Zika and microcephaly in newborns is completely unproven; there have been no reliable studies corroborating such a link, and many experts believe that the reported cases of microcephaly in Brazil may have actually beenby exposure to pesticides!Meanwhile, we are being sprayed with dangerous neurotoxins in an effort to kill the Zika-carrying mosquitoes, and the media is saying nothing about theof such pesticides. In fact, they are telling us that we should also use the over-the-counter insecticide known asto further protect ourselves No mention is made regarding the fact that DEET itself is dangerous (it has been shown to cause damage to the central nervous systems of humans), and that when humans are exposed to DEET in combination with other insecticides, there may be a dangerous binary effect.In other words, if you are applying DEET to your body and are also being exposed to other pesticides being sprayed to control Zika-carrying mosquitoes, you may be subject to a far greater health risk than that of being exposed to one or the other on their own.But no one is talking about that. In fact, so-called experts are making irresponsible statements such as the one uttered by mosquito geneticist Dr. Matthew DeGennaro, who recently told CBS that "DEET should be Miami's new perfume."Even if you don't believe that the Zika virus hysteria is largely a hoax invented by those who stand to benefit from such a scheme (e.g. the vaccine industry), it's very difficult to defend such irresponsible and non-scientific information being disseminated to the public.Carpet-bombing the nation with dangerous neurotoxins that kill bees by the millions and cause untold harm to humans, while also encouraging citizens to apply DEET on their bodies  which will only heighten the poisonous effects of such spraying  is beyond irresponsible. It's completely insane  unless, of course, the real goalto actually poison the populace.As Mike Adams, the Health Ranger wrote:"A rational approach to all this would consider both the claimed benefits and legitimate risks of aerial pesticide spraying , yet what we observe across conventional science, media and government today is a quack science denial of the existence of any health risks whatsoever. This is an instant red flag that we're all being subject to a massive cover-up. Any health authority or expert who claims deadly pesticides can be sprayed on civilian populations without any risk of neurological defects in children is either scientifically illiterate or deliberately lying."Either way, we are not being told the truth.The bottom line is that we are in far more danger of being poisoned by anti-Zika pesticide spraying and combined exposure to DEET, than we are of suffering any serious effects from the disease itself.But you won't hear about that anywhere in the mainstream news.
Who owns your body?

CDC wants to hear from you

Coordinated vaccine compliance plot unveiled

CDC doing away with informed consent

(NaturalNews) Sinister, hidden motives are being revealed at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) . The agency recently announced a new invasive plan for the "control of communicable diseases," by detaining people suspected of being ill and then forcibly medicating them against their will The CDC's new proposal, published in the Federal Register [#2016-18103], will give the agency police state powers, permitting CDC officials to detain and forcibly inject chemicals into anyone they deem a threat to public health. There's no rationale for such detainments either. According to the proposal, the "CDC defines precommunicable stage to mean the stage beginning upon an individual's earliest opportunity for exposure to an infectious agent."This proposal is an open declaration that the U.S. government now owns your body. At least that's what the CDC seems to be claiming. The truth of the matter is that each individual has certain inherent, inalienable human rights that must be defended. Each human owns their own body, and should never be legally bound to become the government's property for forced injections or experimentation.Vaccines cause severe health problems; even the kangaroo court system set up by the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program cannot keep up with the increase in cases of realized vaccine damage. Thousands of cases of such damage are dismissed by the court, and in spite of this, over 3 billion in select payoffs have been issued to vaccine injured families since the court was established. (The court basically functions to give vaccine manufacturers immunity from judicial accountability.) The CDC wants to hear from you about their proposed power trip rule. This is an excellent opportunity to tell the agency exactly how nefarious and overreaching their new proposal is.If the CDC takes on these new powers, all they will need is for the media to build up enough public fear against some new strain of virus, for a new vaccine to be introduced and forced on the public. Anyone who dares to ask questions or refuse could then be forcibly injected and jailed. As the proposal reveals, "... individuals who violate the terms of the agreement or the terms of the Federal order for quarantine, isolation, or conditional release (even if no agreement is in place between the individual and the government), he or she may be subject toBe aware that there is a coordinated, global effort to indoctrinate and force people into vaccine and pharmaceutical obedience. You are not only viewed as a subject without rights, but according to internal WHO documents, you are viewed as an adversary who needs to be psychologically manipulated into believing in vaccine "science." If this new CDC rule goes through, it's not unrealistic to assume that any information you give out as you declare your opposition to forced injections could be used in the future to track you down and inject you against your will.If this course of action sounds familiar, you're probably thinking of the medical experimentation that was forced on Jews during the holocaust. When the Nazis claimed ownership over Jewish people's bodies they eventually used police state power to round them up and do whatever they wanted with them in the camps. In essence, the CDC's new rule gives the government authority to incarcerate Americans en masse, relocating them to camps to be medically experimented on with vaccines and other pharmaceutical products.Personal protection (by whatever means) has never been more important, as the CDC accelerates this same type of Nazi ideology by claiming ownership over your body. Furthermore, it wouldn't be hard to unleash a United Nations global police force into neighborhoods to round up vaccine dissenters. If the government claims ownership over your body, and has the military power to do whatever they want, people will take orders and do their jobs, no questions asked. As the document states,"When an apprehension occurs, the individual is not free to leave or discontinue his/her discussion with an HHS/CDC public health or quarantine officer."Finally, the document reveals that the CDC is doing away with informed consent altogether, (even though the American Medical Association still upholds it): "CDC may enter into an agreement with an individual, upon such terms as the CDC considers to be reasonably necessary, indicating that the individual consents to any of the public health measures authorized under this part, including quarantine, isolation, conditional release, medical examination, hospitalization, vaccination, and treatment; provided that the individual's consent shall not be considered as a prerequisite to any exercise of any authority under this part."Take action now while the CDC is still open to public comment
News Release

Archer Daniels Midland Co. (NYSE: ADM) today introduced Onavita, a new, fully refined, non-GMO flaxseed oil that provides a cost-effective solution for customers looking to add an on-trend, heart-healthy ingredient to their latest food innovations. It can be used in a variety of products, ranging from supplements to pasta sauces and dressings and much more.

Onavita flaxseed oil features non-GMO plant-sourced omega-3s, polyunsaturated fatty acids that are essential nutrients for humans. Because the body does not produce omega-3s, they must be consumed, which is driving the trend for food formulators to look for ways to include them in foods and beverages. FDA considers products containing at least 160 milligrams per serving of alpha linolenic acid (ALA), like what is found in Onavita flaxseed oil, to be a good source of omega-3s.

ADM has long been recognized in the industry as a reliable ingredient provider, but with our recent acquisitions of companies like Harvest Innovations, Eatem Foods and WILD Flavors, weve greatly expanded our portfolio with new, natural-sourced and non-GMO options like Onavita flaxseed oil, enhancing our ability to provide innovative, on-trend solutions for our customers, said Mike Zora, general manager of Natural Health and Nutrition for ADM. By leveraging this portfolio and our deep technical expertise, we can help customers transform their products by adding nutrition while maintaining product quality and taste.

For more information, visit www.adm.com.
China's largest reforestation program is helping to restore the country's forests, however it is harming the existing wildlife and is not helping biodiversity.

According to Science Daily, the Grain-for-Green Program aims to change the barren scrubland and 28 million hectares (69.2 million acres) of crop land to transform it into a forest so that it can avoid erosion and fight back rural poverty. The program also includes giving incentives such as cash payments to the people living in an area to encourage them take part in the reforestation efforts, Nature reports.

Despite the good intentions and study of the program, there is little awareness given about its effects to the biodiversity.The tree species that were brought to the area are monoculture instead of native trees that affect wildlife and biodiversity of the place.

A new research was conducted by Princeton University to find sout if this move by China will benefit biodiversity and wildlife while still improving the economy.The researchers suggested using a mixture of trees in the forest where native trees will be included, as they believe this will be better for biodiversity and wildlife.

To prove this, the researches studied 258 publications that state the current composition of trees of the program. It reveals that there are only three areas that have native trees while most of the areas have monocultured trees such as eucalyptus or Japanese cedar and bamboos. Next, they researchers focused on the Sichuan province where they conducted a fieldwork to study birds and bees. Birds and bees are great indicators to know if a place has good biodiversity.

They discovered that places that have monocultured trees have lesser bird species compared to those with mixed forests. Because of the lack of floral resources, bees have more difficulty to thrive under the reforestation program.

To answer the economic effect, the researchers interviewed people in the areas. Based on the data given by 160 households, profits from monoculture are still similar with those in mixed forests. Researchers, thus, concluded that mixed forests will be a better choice for reforestation as this will be beneficial to both wildlife and biodiversity while making similar gains of profits.

Read:

Giant Pandas Removed from IUCN's Endangered List -- How Did China Do It?

Haze Pollution and Hotter Cities in China and the US are Not Created Equal

Earth Overshoot Day: Planet Badly Losing Many of its Natural Resources
In an unfortunate incident, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket exploded last Sept. 1 destroying with it Facebook's Amos-6 satellite designed to beam Internet in remote areas such as Africa. A few days after the "anomaly," the public was given a glimpse of the explosion site in Cape Canaveral Air Force base in Florida.

Overview of the Incident

On Sept. 1, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket was being fueled when the explosion occurred. CEO and founder of SpaceX, Elon Musk, confirmed that the blast occurred during this time. However, the cause of the explosion is still unknown. "Loss of vehicle today during a propellant fill operation. Originated around upper stage oxygen tank. Cause [is] still unknown," SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said in a statement.

The explosion destroyed a Facebook Internet satellite scheduled for launch two days after the incident. Other spacecraft docked near the launch pad but were unharmed, including NASA's recently launched asteroid-hunting spacecraft OSIRIS-REx.

First Look at the Explosion's Remnants

A week after the explosion, photographs of the explosion site surfaced. Burnt launch pad systems and the remainder of the explosion can be seen from the images like the bent tower, obviously damaged by the blast.

The extent of the damage is obvious if the observation will be based on the burnt launch pad. However, the impact of the explosion transcends the physical damage. SpaceX is not the only company that suffered a great loss when the unfortunate incident occurred.

Facebook and the Israeli satellite company, who built the satellite for Facebook, both expressed disappointments towards the unfortunate event that destroyed their satellite. The consequences are higher for the Israeli satellite company, who needs to convince the government to fund another satellite project before another budget will be released. But the satellite company and other parties involved in Israel's satellite systems are hopeful that they will be able to resurrect the industry after the loss of their satellite.

"There's a synergy in the triangle between Space Com, its biggest client, and its supplier, in that they're all Israeli companies," Tal Inbar, head of space and UAV research center at the Fisher Institute for Air and Space Strategic Studies, said in an interview. "They understand each other and would be responsive to each other, so that they could amend issues in the satellite, if need be, in no time."

Cost of the Entire Damage Unknown

This only scratched the surface of the damages incurred during the explosion as SpaceX still haven't released a statement about how much the total damage has cost the company. Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg also did not discuss how much SpaceX owes him now that the launch of the Facebook satellite was delayed and their system destroyed.

This incident is the first for SpaceX, a company who successfully traveled to and from the ISS delivering cargo, crew and space equipment to the space station.

Read:

All Set! NASA Chases Down Bennu Asteroid to Unlock Solar System Secrets

How the SpaceX Falcon 9 Explosion Will Affect the Space, Telecom Industries, According to Experts

SpaceX Failed Launch Will Not Affect Asteroid Mission, According to NASA
A scientist explores the possibility of turning an alien planet into a rich environment capable of hosting life.

In an essay published recently in the journal Astrophysics and Space Science, Dr. Claudius Gros from the Institute of Theoretical Physics at Goethe University Frankfurt in Germany investigates whether it is possible to transform planets with transient habitability into a living one, like the Earth. Based on this premise, he came up with the Genesis Project, which could create life on an alien planet using a micro space probe and a miniaturized automated gene laboratory.

Over the last few years, scientists have been discovering different worlds beyond Earth, and these exoplanets vary in many aspects.

"It is therefore certain that we will discover a large number of exoplanets which are inhabitable intermittently but not permanently," Gros said in a statement. "Life would indeed be possible on these planets, but it would not have the time to grow and develop independently."

The Genesis mission involves an unmanned micro spacecraft carrying the automated gene laboratory. Prior to deployment, scientists will evaluate the target planet and decide which Earth organisms would be most suitable to grow in the planet's environment. Upon arrival, the nano-sized gene laboratory would synthesize a selection of single-cell organisms to grow on the target planet, and these would eventually develop and possibly turn into complex life forms.

"In this way, we could jump the approximately four billion years which had been necessary on Earth to reach the Precambrian stage of development out of which the animal world developed about 500 million years ago," Gros said.

According to Gros, the Genesis project has no direct benefit for people on Earth. "The Genesis project is about giving life [the chance] to evolve all by itself on other planets," he told Space.com.

Gros also added that the technology needed to send the life-carrying probes into space could be available in the next 50 to 100 years. According to Gros, the project will be influenced by the success of Breakthrough Starshot, a concept that aims to send laser-driven postage stamp-sized space probes or "nanocrafts" to the Alpha Centauri star system. Just recently, Yuri Milner, one of the founders of Breakthrough Starshot, expressed their interest in exploring Proxima B, a newly discovered Earth-like exoplanet.
Environmentalists decrying the state of our vanishing wilderness are not being dramatic, wilderness areas the size of Alaska are gone.

A paper published in the journal Current Biology put the decline of global wilderness areas in stark perspective -- a full one tenth has disappeared in 20 years. Drastic measures are needed to halt this terrifying trend.

Wilderness areas are a necessity in the global functioning of our planet. They are also a major resource for everything from pharmaceuticals to furniture.

Forests help absorb huge amounts of carbon and provide an environment for many endangered plants and animals. Many marginalized communities live in wilderness areas, surviving from natural resources that are locally available to them.

"Globally important wilderness areas -- despite being strongholds for endangered biodiversity, for buffering and regulating local climates, and for supporting many of the world's most politically and economically marginalized communities -- are completely ignored in environmental policy," associate professor at the School of Geography, Planning and Environmental Management of University of Queensland and Director of Science at the Wildlife Conservation Society James Watson said in a release.

"Without any policies to protect these areas, they are falling victim to widespread development. We probably have one to two decades to turn this around. International policy mechanisms must recognize the actions needed to maintain wilderness areas before it is too late. We probably have one to two decades to turn this around."

International cooperation on wide-sweeping policy changes are absolutely imperative to staunch the irreversible damage being done to our wilderness. South America and Africa have been disproportionately affected by the wilderness area decline.

The palm oil industry has been especially hard on wilderness areas. Ubiquitous in many food items and household products, the largely unregulated industry has led to deforestation of giant tracts of land.

Individuals can avoid unnecessary consumption, reduce waste and boycott products with palm oil in order to do their part in the effort against the loss of our wild spaces.
Bones from a newly discovered species of reptile that lived 212 million years ago were found in modern day New Mexico. Vivaron haydeni is a recently discovered species of large reptile that lived during the Triassic period.

Researchers from the Department of Geosciences in the Virginia Tech College of Science published a paper in the journal PeerJ describing Vivaron haydeni. Multiple fossils were found in New Mexico including jaw bones, pieces of skull and hip bones.

The Vivaron haydeni bones were actually found back in 2009 during an excavation in Ghost Ranch, New Mexico. Sterling Nesbitt, who is now an assistant professor of geosciences at Virginia Tech but was previously a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Texas at Austin, helped lead the excavation.

"These were some of the biggest predators at the time, all dinosaurs were much smaller," [in the Triassic period] Nesbitt said in a press release.

Nesbitt didn't know the fossils were from a new species until 2014 when they were sent to Virginia Tech to be removed from protective plaster jackets and studied. Emily Lessner, double major in the departments of Geosciences and Biological Sciences at the Virginia Tech College of Science, was the undergraduate researcher and lead author of the paper.

Vivaron haydeni are the sixth known species of rauisuchid, a group of Triassic reptilian predators. A smoother upper jaw bone helped earn Vivaron haydeni its categorization as a separate species.

Bones from three different members of the species were found. Fully grown Vivaron haydeni would measure between 12 and 18 feet in length.

Scientists had a bit of fun naming the new species. Vivaron is taken from a fabled 30 foot long snake whose territory includes the Ghost Ranch area. Haydeni comes from James Hayden, the discoverer of the quarry the fossils were found in.

The area that was once a part of Pangaea's west has been the site of many fossil discoveries. It's likely that more bones remain at the site in New Mexico. Who knows what other species are yet to be discovered.
More people from different states are being affected by the continuing outbreak of foodborne hepatitis A caused by strawberries imported from Egypt.

According to the report from CNN, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has confirmed 89 cases of hepatitis A linked to the contaminated frozen strawberries. These include 70 people in Virginia, 10 in Maryland, five in West Virginia, one in New York, one in North Carolina, one in Wisconsin and one in Oregon. About 39 people were in need of hospital care due to the virus. However, no deaths from the outbreak have been reported.

Nearly all of the patients reported drinking smoothies containing strawberries in Tropical Smoothies Cafe branches located in Maryland, North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia. The frozen strawberries used in these branches were imported from Egypt. Since the first appearance of the outbreak in Virginia, Tropical Smoothies Cafe has stopped using the contaminated strawberries and has switched to different supplier.

Additional cases are expected to appear in the next few weeks due to the long incubation period of the virus. Hepatitis A is considered to be highly contagious and can cause inflammation in the liver. Symptoms of the viral infection include jaundice, fever, fatigue, loss of appetite, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, dark urine and light colored stool.

Previously, Nature World News reported that consumers who have ordered smoothies with frozen strawberries served at Tropical Smoothies Cafe from Aug.5 to 8 to receive vaccination or take an immune globulin to prevent acquiring Hepatitis A. When taken shortly after exposure, the vaccine or medicine can help prevent a person from acquiring the virus. About 95 percent decline in hepatitis A infections were observed since the introduction of the vaccine in 1995.

Health officials noted that anyone who consumed a smoothie with strawberries after August 8 is not at risk for hepatitis A.


San Diego paid tribute Wednesday to the first responders who rushed to help those under attack on September 11, 2001.

The ceremony was held at the City Concourse in advance Sunday, the day citizens of the U.S. will remember the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon as well as the crash of United Flight 93 in Pennsylvania nearly 15 years ago.

The attacks killed nearly 3,000 people from 93 nations. In New York, 2,753 people were killed, 184 people were killed at the Pentagon and 40 people were killed on Flight 93.

Many of those killed were law enforcement officers, firefighters and paramedics who rushed to the scene to help the victims.

We need first responders to stand that line between good and evil and between chaos and calm every single day, and every single night, said Chief of Police Shelley Zimmerman.

She was pleased to see so many school children attending the ceremony designed to never forget those whose lives were lost responding to the attacks.

One of those who survived the attack at the World Trade Center is retired NYFD Lieutenant Joe Torrillo.

Torrillo brought the "Patriot Flag", a 30 x 60-foot flag that has traveled to all 50 states in the last 15 years.

He shared his story and the stories of others who lost their lives that day.

He made a point to remind the crowd of the acts of courage performed by the passengers and crew of Flight 93.

They really were the first warriors in this fight of terrorism. So let us never, ever forget that, Torrillo said.

Torrillo said he plans to spend the rest of his life traveling the country and meeting people to remind them of the great nation in which we live.

Thats my way of saying Im so grateful to have been born on this parcel of liberty and to be able to call myself an American, Torrillo said.

He presented a plaque to Mayor Kevin Faulconer commemorating the Twin Towers on 9/11.

Memorials will take place Sunday to remember the following moments (all times Eastern)

8:46 a.m.: Hijackers crash Flight 11 into the north tower.

9:03 a.m.: Hijackers crash United Airlines Flight 175 into the south tower.

9:37 a.m.: Hijackers crash American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon.

9:59 a.m.: The south tower collapses.

10:03 a.m.: Passengers launch a counterattack on hijackers aboard United Airlines Flight 93. The hijackers crash the plane into an empty field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

10:28 a.m.: The north tower collapses.

The ceremony was also attended by San Diego Fire-Rescue Chief Brian Fennessey and Director of the Office of Homeland Security John Valencia and members of the public.
The arraignment for a former San Francisco 49ers player accused of attacking a 70-year-old hotel guest has been postponed to November 2.

Bruce Miller, who recently played tight end for the 49ers, appeared briefly in San Francisco Superior Court on Friday, where a protective order was issued.

The order means Miller must stay away from the people he is accused of hurting.

"I'm not at liberty to talk about this because there's an investigation going on," Miller said when he entered the courthouse on Friday.

The San Francisco District Attorney's Office on Thursday charged Miller with seven felonies stemming from an attack on a 70-year-old man and his son, including assault with a deadly weapon - the weapon being a cane.

"They were punched. There are significant injuries to both of them," San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon said. "Unfortunately, it occurred by somebody who our young people and the community are looking up to, somebody who belonged to a major sporting organization in the area -- so it is embarrassing."

The remaining charges, according to District Attorney spokesman Max Szabo, include: one count of assault with force likely to cause great bodily injury, one count of inflicting injury on an elder, one count of battery with serious bodily injury, two counts of assault with force likely to cause great bodily injury, and one count of battery. The last count is a misdemeanor. The others are felonies.

Several of the charges carry elder abuse enhancements, Szabo said. The older man suffered a black eye and possible facial bone fractures, according to San Francisco General Hospital. He was discharged earlier this week.

Miller declined to comment to reporters after he posted bail on Monday, hours after police arrested him for allegedly punching a 70-year-old hotel guest, and his 29-year-old son at the Fisherman's Wharf Marriott earlier that day. He was found vomiting and bleeding across the street from the Marriott at the Travelodge, where a manager there called 911 and provided some surveillance video of the arrest.

His Atlanta-based agent, John Reale, told NBC Bay Area earlier this week, though, that Miller was a "great guy" and he was flabbergasted to hear about the alleged attack. His attorney, Josh Bentley, did not immediately return a call Thursday seeking comment.

The 49ers released Miller from the team on Monday.

NBC Bay Area's Gonzalo Rojas, Mark Matthews and Kristofer Noceda contributed to this report.
The San Francisco Fire Department is preparing to mark the 15th anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attack, a national tragedy firefighters in the department responded to.

"There were several members of the SF Fire Department who on their own went to ground zero and assisted with rescue and recovery," fire department spokeswoman Mindy Talmedge said. "We owe all of our respect to first repsonders that went into that building when everyone else was coming out."

One of those firefighters will ring a department bell at first responders plaza at 6:45 a.m. Sunday, symbolizing the final call for 343 New York City firefighters who died trying to save lives.

A piece of the World Trade Center also will be part of the ceremony. The family of Betty Ong, who was from San Francisco, and the fire department got the piece to the city by the bay.

Ong died in the attacks working as a flight attendant on American Airlines Flight 11. Hijackers flew that plane into the north tower of the World Trade Center.

Fifteen years later, the memories and the unveiling of a piece of the towers stir up a lot of emotion.

"Just thinking about it is an emotional thing for me," Talmedge said. "I think there will be a lot of different reactions. I think it will be a somber moment."
San Francisco's school board president says a resolution that proposes allowing the renaming of schools, including those that bear the names of slaveowners, could be pushed back.

Matt Haney said he wants to make sure school communities know its their choice and the board is obligated to listen to what they have to say.

San Francisco has George Washington High School and Francis Scott Key Elementary School. Key wrote "The Star Spangled Banner."

Haney said he personally likes Maya Angelou as a name for Washington High, but he stressed it was up to the schools. He said he didnt want to take away from the contributions of the historic leaders, but he thought it was important to open a dialogue about people who may be more relevant or representative to students and families today.

"The plan was to bring it to the board," Haney said. "I think I'm going to take a little time to listen to people and talk to people about what makes sense here and make sure we clarify some of these things before we jump into this. I think at George Washington High School, this has been especially challenging."

Haney said the resolution could be introduced this month or possibly later. He said he has received both positive and negative feedback on social media about the issue.
From Stanford University to sex offender school: Thats where Brock Turner is now heading after spending three months in jail for three counts of felony sexual assault.

As part of his three-year probation, the former student must take part in a one-year sex offender program aimed at reducing his chances of committing another sexual assault.

Turner will do this in Ohio, where he is living now. Completing a sex offender management program there was part of the deal when Santa Clara County agreed to release him back to his home state.

There are three people in the room: Theres the provider, theres the individual offender and theres the public. So everything we do we keep the publics safety in mind, said Bay Area clinical psychologist Robert Land, who specializes in sexual behavior issues in adults, adolescents and children.

He began treating sex offenders after working with victims for many years.

It came from anger and frustration that men do these things," he said. "I realized you cant end sexual abuse without addressing the offender as well.

The parole office in Greene County, Ohio, where Turner is living, did not respond to requests for specifics about the sex offender management program.

However, Land has some insight into how the programs work. Santa Clara County refers sex offenders to five providers, and Land is one of them.

One of the first steps is conducting a lengthy assessment of the individual sex offender to determine treatment. If cognitive behavior therapy is an option, experts then begin individual or group sessions aimed at changing distorted thinking and behavior. Some offenders who lack remorse or display psychopathic tendencies are usually not recommended for outpatient therapy, according to Land.

Typically the person shows up to treatment full of a lot of shame, saying, 'Im never going to be sexual with anyone again and Im never going to do any of this,'" Land said. The first goal is obviously public safety, and working on underlying emotional issues or other things that may cause them to behave that way again.

Studies show recidivism rates are lower when sex offenders undergo treatment. Without treatment, about 12-15 percent of sex offenders reoffend; with treatment, 7 to 9 percent reoffend, according to Land.

Other experts, however, do not believe there is enough data at the state and local levels to know if sex offender programs actually work.

Perpetrators of sexual violence are very charismatic. They can go through the program saying everything theyre supposed to say, doing everything theyre supposed to do and then turn around and reoffend, said Kathleen Krenek, retired executive director of Next Door Solutions.

Krenek retired last month after working with domestic violence victims, many of whom were sexually assaulted.

Brock Turner, I believe, will reoffend because there has been no admission on his part, Krenek said.

Dr. Land says the sexual assault isnt a behavior problem that gets cured. In other words, for the rest of his life, he needs to really look at this behavior and look at the milestones and the flags, look at the links in the chain that might be leading toward re-offense.

Many sex offenders choose to continue therapy even after their mandatory program is up, according to Land. Plus, therapists and probation officers can decide to extend mandatory treatment if the parolee is not progressing.

Land says though Turners six-month sentence is viewed as being light, there is another punishment: being listed on the sex offender registry for life.

Land says sex offenders hes treated have had difficulty finding work and places to live, which takes a toll.

You can only imagine [Brock Turner] dating, trying to get married and then having children and needing to tell that spouse, Land says. Just like the victim, he is never going to forget this.
Three men suspected of murder and found to be in possession of drugs and weapons were arrested last month during a traffic stop on a highway in downstate Danville, authorities said.

Shortly before 5 a.m. Aug. 27, an Illinois State Police trooper observed a Jeep Wrangler and a white Mercedes car driving erratically eastbound during a road rage incident on I-74 near milepost 200 in Danville, according to a statement from Illinois State Police. Danville is about 140 miles south of Chicago.

The trooper requested additional units and Vermilion County police officers assisted in the traffic stop of the two vehicles. The trooper suspected criminal activity and received consent to search the Jeep, which was a rental from Canada, and subsequently found a rifle, police said.

A K-9 smelled cocaine from the Mercedes and officers then found 112.1 grams of cocaine and two handguns in the vehicle, according to police.

The vehicles occupants, Michael Gresham, Joshua Baker and Lawrence Greggs Jr., all 20 years old and from Cincinnati, Ohio, were all arrested for weapon and drug offenses and brought to the Vermilion County Jail, police said.

ISP agents then contacted Colorado authorities regarding the Mercedes because the registered owner was not present. Agents learned the registered owner, 21-year-old Devon D. Smeltz, was reported missing by his mother on Aug. 26.

Smeltz was found dead by Colorado authorities on Saturday. Gresham, Baker and Lawrence are all suspected of being involved in Smeltzs disappearance, police said.

They will be held in the Vermillion County jail until they are extradited to Colorado, police said.

This is a perfect example of how a simple traffic stop can lead to the discovery of more serious crimes. said ISP Colonel Tad Williams. Their teamwork with outside agencies and across state lines led to the seizure of illegal drugs, guns and ultimately resulted in the arrest of three dangerous criminals.

The case remains an ongoing investigation by the Fort Collins, Colorado Police Department in cooperation with the Illinois State Police.
A teen from downstate Illinois has been charged with having ties to terrorist groups capable of committing a "mass casualty attack," authorities confirmed Friday.

Keaun Cook, 18, of the 1300 block of Sir Galahad Lane in Godfrey, faces two felony charges of making a terrorist threat and providing material support for terrorism.

Madison County Sheriffs police on Aug. 24 took Godrey into custody at his home after conducting an investigation they say links Cook to possible regional terrorist threats, the states attorneys office said in a news release.

The states attorneys office also said federal authorities have been contacted to help continue the investigation.

Thanks to the individual who immediately alerted authorities of the actions of this man, and the serious response executed by the Madison County Sheriffs Office, a potentially chaotic and deadly event in the area has been prevented, said States Attorney Thomas Gibbons said in a prepared statement. My staff is working closely in coordination with the sheriffs office, local law enforcement, and federal authorities to ensure that there is no further risk to the public.

Authorities say there is no credible threat to the area at this time but have contacted local law enforcement and possible targets to alert them of the investigation.

A spokesperson for the Madison County States Attorneys Office, Tayleur Blaylock, said Cook, who is being represented by a public defender, was ordered to undergo a mental fitness evaluation by Madison County Associate Judge Jennifer Hightower. Bond will be withheld until the evaluation is complete, court records show.

Cook will remain in custody until this evaluation is completed, the hearing has not been rescheduled as of yet, Blaylock said.

Cook is currently in custody at the Madison County Jail in Edwardsville. His bond was originally set at $150,000. Making a terrorist threat carries a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison and material support for terrorism carries a maximum penalty of 40 years in prison.

Godfrey, is located approximately 35 miles north of St. Louis, Ill.
ITT Technical Institute is facing more lawsuits from employees following its decision to shut down.

Two newly filed lawsuits claim the company violated federal law by not providing 60 days' notice, the Indianapolis Star reports.

Another lawsuit earlier this week sought class-action status on behalf of the 8,000 employees who are losing their jobs as a result of ITT's decision to close all of its campuses in the United States.

The three lawsuits were filed in Indiana and Delaware.

ITT announced Tuesday its closure of all 130 campuses in 38 states, saying it can't survive recent sanctions by the U.S. Department of Education. The move comes after the federal government banned the Carmel, Indiana-based for-profit chain last month from enrolling students who use federal loans to pay for classes.

"It is with profound regret that we must report that ITT Educational Services, Inc. will discontinue academic operations at all of its ITT Technical Institutes permanently after approximately 50 years of continuous service," ITT Educational Services, Inc. said in a release. "With what we believe is a complete disregard by the U.S. Department of Education for due process to the company, hundreds of thousands of current students and alumni and more than 8,000 employees will be negatively affected."

Last year, it enrolled 45,000 students and reported $850 million in revenue.

ITT says it's the victim of a regulatory assault and never had the chance to defend itself.

Officials with the Department of Education announced on Aug. 25 the ban on enrolling students with federal loans and other measures against the chain, which has been the subject of state and federal investigations focusing on its recruiting and accounting practices.

Among the measures, ITT was ordered to pay $152 million to the department within 30 days to cover student refunds and other liabilities in case the company closed. ITT is still paying another $44 million demanded by the department in June for the same reason.

The education department also prohibited ITT from awarding its executives any pay raises or bonuses, and said it must develop "teach-out" plans that would help current students finish their programs at other colleges if the chain shut down.

Under the new measures, current students would have been able to continue receiving federal grants and loans.

"The actions of and sanctions from the U.S. Department of Education have forced us to cease operations of the ITT Technical Institutes, and we will not be offering our September quarter," the company said on Tuesday. "We reached this decision only after having exhausted the exploration of alternatives, including transfer of the schools to a non-profit or public institution."

The firm said its focus and priority with remaining staff was "on helping the tens of thousands of unexpectedly displaced students with their records and future educational options."

Last month, a group that accredits ITT found that the chain failed to meet several basic standards and was unlikely to comply in the future.

One of the biggest for-profit chains in the nation, ITT has been under increasing scrutiny from the education department following allegations of misconduct.

The Massachusetts attorney general sued the company in April, alleging that it misled students about the quality of its programs. The federal government had previously sued the chain, saying that it pushed students into high-cost private student loans knowing they would likely end in default.

Department officials have been closely monitoring ITT's operations since 2014, when the chain was late to submit an annual report of its finances to the government.

Under President Barack Obama, the Education Department has led a crackdown on for-profit colleges that have misled students or failed to deliver the results they promised. In 2014, the department cut off federal aid to the Corinthian Colleges chain amid allegations of fraud, leading it to close or sell all of its schools.

"We were not provided with a hearing or an appeal," ITT Educational Services, Inc. said of the government's actions. "Alternatives that we strongly believe would have better served students, employees, and taxpayers were rejected. The damage done to our students and employees, as well as to our shareholders and the American taxpayers, is irrevocable."
Investigators are trying to piece together how a Montana woman ended up dead in her car near Spokane International Airport, and are running into more questions than answers.

Rita Maze, 47, was found in the closed trunk of her Pontiac Grand Prix early Wednesday with a 9 mm handgun and two spent shell casings next to her, deputies said. There was blood on the ground.

Her purse, containing $50, was on the passenger side floorboard in the locked car and the keys were in the ignition. An iPad was found on the rear floorboard.

"It makes no sense," her 23-year-old daughter, Rochelle Maze, said. "They could have taken the car, could have taken money from her. And then they leave the car there, and that's because this is an evil monster of a person."

Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich said they are still trying to trace how Maze ended up more than 320 miles away from the rest stop north of Helena, Montana, where she told her family she had been abducted.

Rochelle Maze told NBC 5 affiliate station KQH that her mother had traveled to Helena, about 90 miles southwest of their Great Falls hometown, to visit relatives Monday before staying overnight.

On Tuesday, Maze called her husband around 11:25 a.m. to say she had started the drive home, Rochelle said.

Hours passed, and at 3:45 p.m. Mazes husband tried to call her but didnt get an answer. When the family still had not heard back at 8:30 p.m., a missing persons report was filed, KHQ reports.

Rochelle said her mother's credit card was used to make purchases at gas stations in Kingston, Idaho and Ritzville, Washington before she called her husband at 10:25 p.m. saying, Help me.

Her mother was "hysterical" when Rochelle says she received a call from her shortly after in a panic to tell her she had been hit in the head and overpowered by a man she didn't know at a rest stop along Interstate 15.

In phone calls to both her husband and Rochelle, Maze she was in the trunk of her car as it was moving and that she didn't know where she was. Maze said the man had access to the gun she kept in her purse for protection.

The Spokane County Sheriff's Office was able to track her movements through signals from local cell towers before the phone went dead or lost signal and they were unable to reach her again.

"I told her that I loved her," Rochelle Maze said. "That's the last thing she heard."

An officer who called Maze's cellphone after Maze contacted her family said someone answered the phone and the officer heard gunshots, then silence, court records uncovered by NBC News said.

Maze's cause of death was a single gunshot wound to chest and abdomen, according to the medical examiners report. The report had no further details.

The case is currently classified as a death investigation, not a homicide.

"We know where the body was located; we know where she started out," he told The Spokesman-Review. "What happened in between? Don't know."

Rochelle Maze believes her mother met with foul play.

"I believe she was abducted," Rochelle told The Spokesman-Review. "She did not hit herself, stuff herself in the trunk and drive all the way to Spokane and shoot herself."

Law enforcement officers initially said there was a person of interest, but on Thursday, said that person had been ruled out.

Maze was a longtime cook at Morningside Elementary School, the Great Falls Tribune reported. The school's former principal told NBC News she "had such a positive presence" on the students.

The Spokane Sheriff said nothing is being ruled out, whether it be kidnapping, homicide, or self-inflicted, according to KHQ.

Rochelle Maze told KHQ her mother was a loving person and there were no family problems.

"I believe they shot her and left the gun and keys in there to make it look like she killed herself," Rochelle Maze said. "I know she did not."

When asked if her mother had any known enemies, she told KHQ, "no way."

"My mom does not make enemies. No one would have any reason to do this to her at all," Rochelle said in the same interview.

Sheriff's spokesman Deputy Mark Gregory said the case is being called a death investigation, rather than a homicide, because law enforcement officers do not know what exactly happened to Maze. They do not have a suspect.

"We do not believe there is any imminent danger to the community," Gregory said.
Sen. Mark Kirk is facing criticism for saying that the U.S. government didnt have to get our guys back from an Iranian hostage situation earlier this year.

In January, the U.S. made a $400 million cash payment to Iran. According to the Obama administration, that money was used as leverage to ensure the release of four U.S. prisoners.

We shouldnt have paid the ransom, Kirk said in an interview Thursday. The irony is the State Department, shortly after the payment was made, issued a worldwide travel alert to Americans saying, you know there's a lot of people out there looking to kidnap an American in return for a ransom payment.

Kirk noted that he chairs a Senate Banking subcommittee on national security and international finance, and that the committee is slated to hold a hearing on the $400 million payment.

When we look at the details, they made the payment in cash, he said. It was 500 euro notes and the irony is the European Union has already discontinued the 500 euro note because they worried that note was so heavily used in drug trafficking and terror.

Kirks opponent, Rep. Tammy Duckworth, criticized the senator for his statements Friday.

Mark Kirk was in the Navy and he should know that our country doesnt leave its people behind, the congresswoman said in a statement. Im sure thankful my buddies didnt forget that when my Black Hawk was shot down over enemy territory. Saying we dont have an obligation to get our guys back from a hostile country like Iran is unacceptable.

Whenever Americans are imprisoned by our adversaries, we dont leave them behind, she added. Thats not who we are.

Kirks campaign responded Friday, faulting Duckworth for her policy on Syrian refugees.

It is not surprising that Tammy Duckworth, the same person who wants to bring 200,000 un-vetted Syrian refugees into our country, supports paying ransom to terrorists and terror sponsoring regimes that kidnap our citizens, Kirk spokesperson Kevin Artl said in a statement. Paying ransom is a dangerous precedent that will only invite more kidnapping of American citizens abroad.

Duckworth's campaign rebuffed the Kirk campaign's claims Friday.

"It's an outrageous lie to say she supports 'unvetted' refugees to be allowed into this country, and it's outrageous to claim that a woman who was nearly killed when her helicopter was shot down by an insurgent fighter is a supporter of terrorists and terror-sponsoring regimes," Duckworth spokesman Matt McGrath said in a statement. "This is especially galling coming from the campaign of someone who lied about being shot at in combat multiple times, and who helped lead the charge into Iraq in the first place."

"Kirk should be ashamed of himself," McGrath added.

In August, the senator drew heat for saying President Barack Obama was acting like the drug dealer in chief for making the payment to Iran.

The payment was announced in January, a day after the four Americans were freed and on the same weekend the U.N. issued sanctions against Iran. The White House and State Department have denied Republicans claims that the transaction served as a ransom payment, claiming the timing was coincidental.

Secretary of State John Kerry said in a release that the $400 million was used by Iran to purchase military weapons and equipment from the U.S. while the shah was still in control, prior to the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
Police in Ohio posted shocking, graphic photos of two adults they believed to have overdosed on heroin, passed out in a car with a young child in the backseat.

The city of East Liverpool, Ohio, posted the photos, along with a police report detailing the incident, on their Facebook page Thursday.

Police said they hoped the images, which were shared more than 17,000 times, would send a message to drug users to think twice.

"We feel it necessary to show the other side of this horrible drug," they wrote. "We feel we need to be a voice for the children caught up in this horrible mess. This child can't speak for himself but we are hopeful his story can convince another user to think twice about injecting this poison while having a child in their custody."

An officer on duty saw a dark Ford Explorer weaving back and forth on a road just after 3 p.m. on Wednesday, skidding to a stop near children getting off a school bus.

The officer approached the car, noticing that the driver, later identified as James Acord, had unintelligible speech and his head was bobbing back and forth.

He told officers he was taking the woman in the passenger seat, Rhonda Pasek, to the hospital. The officer reached in the car, according to the police report, turned the car and removed the keys. He then noticed a 4-year-old boy sitting in the backseat, later identified as Pasek's son.

Pasek was unconscious and turning blue, and the responding officer said Acord went unconscious as well. He summoned an ambulance, administered the drug Narcan, used to reverse the effects of an opiate overdose.

Pasek and Acord regained consciousness and were taken to the hospital. Acord was charged with operating a vehicle while intoxicated, endangering children, and slowing or stopping in a roadway, police said. Pasek was charged with endangering children, public intoxication, and not wearing a seat belt.

The child was placed in the custody of children's protective services, according to police.

"We are well aware that some may be offended by these images and for that we are truly sorry, but it is time that the non drug using public sees what we are now dealing with on a daily basis," they added. "The poison known as heroin has taken a strong grip on many communities not just ours."

"We are willing to fight this problem until it's gone and if that means we offend a few people along the way we are prepared to deal with that."
If you believe what you see on television, Washington, D.C., is full of attractive people. And one of Illinois' own representatives was named one of the most beautiful people on Capitol Hill Thursday.

Rep. Cheri Bustos cracked the top ten in The Hill's annual "50 Most Beautiful" list, ranking eighth overall and first for elected officials. The list includes politicians, staffers, consultants, reporters and lobbyists.

Bustos is a Democrat who represents a large swath of the northwestern portion of Illinois in the 17th District.

In her interview, the Illinois congresswoman expressed her goal of not only flipping the House and Senate majorities, but filling them with women and people of color.

In both of those areas, we are so underrepresented, she told The Hill.

Bustos, who is facing a reelection bid in November against Republican newcomer Patrick Harlan, also discussed the benefits playing in a mixed-party congressional womens softball game. She said she strives to work across the aisle for bipartisan solutions as much as possible.

However, the congresswoman also noted that after the work week is over on Fridays, her and her family turn politics off to go out for pizza and beer.

Earlier this week, Bustos name was floated as a potential Democratic challenger to Gov. Bruce Rauner in the 2018 gubernatorial race. Nevertheless, her campaign said that it was too early for her to consider a potential bid.

With just 62 days until the election, Congresswoman Bustos in focused on doing three things -serving her constituents, stopping Donald Trump, and electing Democrats up and down the ticket who will fight Governor Rauners failed downturn agenda, Bustos campaign manager Stacy Raker said in a statement. She is proud of her record of getting real results for working families, veterans, children and seniors, but 2016 is the only election shes thinking about right now.

Chicagos Breely Ungar, the project consultant for APCO Worldwide, also made The Hills list.
Wisconsin's attorney general on Friday appealed the overturned conviction of Brendan Dassey, the man accused of helping his uncle kill a women in a case profiled in the popular Netflix series Making a Murderer."

Republican Attorney General Brad Schimel filed a notice of appeal 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, keeping the 26-year-old Dassey behind bars, according to a release from the DOJ.

We believe the magistrate judges decision that Brendan Dasseys confession was coerced by investigators, and that no reasonable court could have concluded otherwise, is wrong on the facts and wrong on the law, Schimel said in the release. Two state courts carefully examined the evidence and properly concluded that Brendan Dasseys confession to sexually assaulting and murdering Teresa Halbach with his uncle, Steven Avery, was voluntary, and the investigators did not use constitutionally impermissible tactics.

"The Halbach family has been notified of the appeal and fully supports the States decision to seek justice on behalf of their daughter," he added.

Judge William E. Duffin ruled in August that investigators tricked Dassey into confessing that he helped his uncle, Steven Avery, rape and kill photographer Teresa Halbach in 2005. The judge ordered that Dassey, who was 16 at the time of the killing, be freed within 90 days unless prosecutors appealed or decided to retry him.

Dassey and Avery were sentenced to life for Halbach's murder. was killed on Halloween 2005, after she visited the Avery family's salvage yard in Manitowoc County to take pictures of a minivan. Investigators allege Avery lured her to the junkyard by asking her to take the photos.

Dassey's attorney, Steve Drizin, said he was disappointed in Schimel's decision to prolong Dassey's case by appealing.

"We look forward to continuing to defend his rights in court," Drizin said. "Like Brendan, we remain grateful to his many supporters for their continued loyalty and strength."

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The Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth legal team, based in Chicago, first took Dasseys case to federal court in Wisconsin in 2014 in hopes that he would be granted a writ of habeas corpus, which would have forced the government to examine his case and rule whether he has been imprisoned illegally.

Avery, a Wisconsin man who was imprisoned for 18 years for sexual assault before DNA evidence exonerated him in 2003, was accused of Halbach's murder as he was suing Manitowoc County, Wisconsin, the former district attorney and the county sheriff for wrongful imprisonment, seeking $36 million in damages.

Most recently, the show's filmmakers said a juror from Avery's murder trial claims he was not proven guilty, but the juror had voted to convict him out of fear for his/her personal safety. The two filmmakers have not yet contacted other jurors to independently verify the claim, they said. NBC News has not independently verified the allegation with any jurors.

Drizin said the team investigated Dasseys case for two years before filing an appeal in 2010. The appeal was ultimately denied by a state appellate court and the Wisconsin Supreme Court refused to hear the case.

The habeas petition was filed in federal court in the Eastern District of Wisconsin in 2014.

Were hopeful is what I would say, Drizin said at the time. The deeper you go into this system, whether its in the state court system or the federal court system, the harder it is to win. Weve won cases in federal court before and were hoping that this is another one that well win.

Drizin said the petition focused largely on Dasseys original public defender, Len Kachinsky, who was ultimately removed from the case.

A lot of our appeal has to do with the actions that Brendans original attorney Len Kachinsky took, which demonstrated his disloyalty to Brendan and his willingness to work with the prosecution to try to get Brendan to plead guilty and testify against Steven Avery, Drizin said.

He also maintains that Dasseys confession was coerced by [investigators] feeding him facts.

To me, this case is a classic example of how not to interrogate juvenile suspects and the tactics that were used during Brendans interrogation are a recipe for false confessions, he said.

In a brief filed last year, the state argued Dassey failed to show that the appeals courts decision was unreasonable.

[Investigators] merely stated, in calm tones, that they already knew what happened and allowed Dassey to confess that he had raped Halbach, and was involved in her murder, the brief reads. Dasseys confession was not coerced, and the state courts decision on Dasseys voluntariness claim did not involve an unreasonable application of clearly established Federal law.

Former Calamut County District Attorney Ken Kratz, who prosecuted Dassey and Avery, recently told People magazine that he has "a great bit of sympathy" for Dassey, who he said "never would have been involved in this except for his uncle."

Dassey would have been out sooner if he had taken a plea bargain, Kratz said.

Drizin said while Making a Murderer has put Dasseys case in the national spotlight, he didn't believe it would have an impact on the judges decision.

I dont think that the Netflix movie is going to influence a federal judge, but at the same time, judges are human beings and the Netflix film has created a context for Brendans case that didnt exist at the time of his trial or his appeals, he said.
Hillary Clinton said Friday it was time for a "rethinking" of America's strategy for North Korea following the regime's latest test of a nuclear weapon. Donald Trump and his campaign chief, meanwhile, refused to outline the Republican presidential candidate's plans for defusing tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

The New York billionaire, however, vowed to deploy military muscle to attack America's enemies if provoked.

Largely ignoring North Korea, he noted a recent incident in which he said Iranian ships were "toying with" an American destroyer near the Strait of Hormuz. During a Trump presidency, he promised at a Friday night rally in Pensacola, Florida, ships trying to provoke the U.S. "will be shot out of the water."

In New York, Clinton was focused on the North Korean threat after meeting with a bipartisan group of national security experts.

The former secretary of state said she would seek to impose tougher sanctions on the communist nation, arguing the latest test provides an opening to pressure China, which has been tepid in its response to North Korea's nuclear ambitions.

"I think we have an opening here that we haven't had for the last several years that I intend to do everything I can to take advantage of," Clinton said.

Clinton spoke hours after Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, pressed repeatedly on Trump's plans for the region, said only, "He wouldn't do what's being done now."

"He's not going to reveal all of his plans and he's made that very clear. And maybe someone can ask him in a debate," Conway told "CBS This Morning." ''But the fact is that this entire world would be put on notice that there's a strong leader in the White House."

North Korea's latest atomic test was its fifth, and the second in eight months. South Korean President Park Geun-hye said the detonation, which Seoul estimated was the North's biggest ever in explosive yield, was an act of "fanatic recklessness" and a sign that leader Kim Jong Un "is spiraling out of control."

President Barack Obama condemned the test and said the U.S. would never accept the country as a nuclear power.

In appearances in Florida and Washington, Trump used the North Korean development to attack Clinton. "North Korea, like so many other things, is one more Hillary Clinton failure," he said in Pensacola.

He did not say whether he had a plan to address North Korea's claim the test will allow it to build an array of stronger, smaller and lighter nuclear weapons.

He focused instead on attacking Clinton's credibility. He said Clinton was being "protected" during the Justice Department's investigation into her use of a private email server while secretary of state.

"She could walk right into this arena right now and shoot somebody with 20,000 people watching, right smack in the middle of the heart, and she wouldn't be prosecuted," Trump said.

Meanwhile, Clinton said the United States would not let North Korea pursue a nuclear weapon and said that as president, she would seek new sanctions and work closely with allies in the region, such as South Korea and Japan.

But she also said she would consider discussions similar to recent negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, because sanctions "aren't enough."

The development in North Korea comes at the end of a week in which Trump and Clinton clashed repeatedly over national security.

The New York billionaire attacked Clinton's record as the nation's chief diplomat, yet he faced criticism from within his own party for refusing to outline his plans for combating foreign policy challenges, including threats posed by the Islamic State group. Trump said this week that he does indeed have a plan, but would convene military leaders in his first 30 days in office to craft another plan.

Trump has also faced criticism for praising Russian President Vladimir Putin during a high-profile national security forum earlier in the week, and appearing on a Russian-backed television network Thursday evening.

On Friday, Clinton said she was "disappointed" by Trump's decision to appear on RT America, saying that "every day that goes by this just becomes more and more of a reality television show. It's not a serious presidential campaign."

With several prominent Republican national security officials already concerned about Trump's national security acumen, Clinton has tried to cast herself as the better potential commander in chief. She has aggressively promoted her growing list of military endorsements from both parties.

On Friday, her campaign said the number of retired generals and admirals endorsing Clinton for president has grown to 110. Trump quickly countered by saying his list had ballooned to 120 former U.S. generals and admirals earlier in the week.

Trump's running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, received his first intelligence briefing Friday. The vice presidential nominee declined to offer any specifics since the information was classified.

Continuing her aggressive fundraising push, Clinton was to appear at two fundraisers in New York. One of them is an LGBT event featuring Barbra Streisand.

Clinton is getting some help from another wealthy backer as well. Billionaire Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz said Friday he's giving $20 million to help defeat Trump.
Hours after North Korea tested new nuclear technology, Donald Trump's campaign chief refused Friday to outline the Republican presidential nominee's approach to rising tensions on the Korean Peninsula as both White House contenders increasingly focus on national security.

Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, pressed repeatedly on Trump's plan, said only, "He wouldn't do what's being done now."

"He's not going to reveal all of his plans, and he's made that very clear. And maybe someone can ask him in a debate," Conway told CBS "This Morning." ''But the fact is that this entire world would be put on notice that there's a strong leader in the White House."

Trump later suggested that Democrat Hillary Clinton and others are wrong to outline their national security policies because they could help the nation's enemies.

"Maybe we shouldn't be so honest when it comes to military strategy," Trump said in a speech to religious conservatives.

Clinton said North Korea's determination to develop a "deliverable nuclear weapon" represents "a direct threat to the United States."

The former secretary of state, in a statement, called for new sanctions in addition to those endorsed by the Obama administration and adopted earlier in the year with the United Nations. She also said the United States must ensure China applies increasing pressure on North Korea, and she noted that regional allies such as South Korea and Japan play a critical role in missile defense.

North Korea's latest test was its fifth atomic test, and the second in eight months. South Korean President Park Geun-hye said the detonation, which Seoul estimated was the North's biggest-ever in explosive yield, was an act of "fanatic recklessness" and a sign that leader Kim Jong Un "is spiraling out of control."

President Barack Obama condemned the test and said the U.S. would never accept the country as a nuclear power.

The development comes at the end of a week in which Trump and Clinton clashed repeatedly over national security.

The New York billionaire attacked Clinton's record as the nation's chief diplomat, yet he faced criticism from within his own party for refusing to outline his plans for combating foreign policy challenges, including threats posed by the Islamic State group. Trump said this week that he does indeed have a plan, but would convene military leaders in his first 30 days in office to craft another plan.

Trump has also faced criticism for praising Russian President Vladimir Putin during a high-profile national security forum earlier in the week. The Republican nominee also granted an interview to a Russian-backed television network on Thursday.

Trump used the North Korean development to attack his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton in an afternoon speech, describing the situation as "one more massive failure from a failed secretary of state." He did not say whether he had a plan to address the intensifying national situation.

With several prominent Republican national security officials already concerned about Trump's national security acumen, Clinton has tried to cast herself as the better commander in chief.

The former secretary of state attended a meeting with foreign policy and national security experts in New York City Friday afternoon to discuss ways to combat terrorism.

Participants, both in person and via remote video, included officials who have served in Democratic and Republican administrations, such as retired Marine General John Allen, former CIA director David Petraeus and Michael Chertoff and Janet Napolitano, both former Secretaries of Homeland Security.

Clinton has aggressively promoted her growing list of military endorsements from both parties.

On Friday, her campaign said the number of retired generals and admirals endorsing Clinton for president has grown to 110. Clinton stressed that she has more military backing than Trump, who touted endorsements from 88 retired U.S. generals and admirals earlier in the week.

Trump's running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, received his first intelligence briefing Friday, the vice presidential nominee saying that he was "grateful" for the "thorough and informative" briefing. He declined to offer any specifics since the information was classified, but said he and Trump would be "ready on day one."

Trump was set to appear at a Friday night rally in Pensacola, Florida, the latest in a handful of military-rich communities the Republican has targeted this week. He'll also address religious activists at a conference for social conservatives Friday afternoon in Washington.

Clinton, continuing her aggressive fundraising push, is also appearing at two fundraisers in New York City Friday. One of them is an LGBT event featuring Barbra Streisand.

Clinton is getting some help from another wealthy backer as well.

Billionaire Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz on Friday said he's giving $20 million to help defeat Trump. He called the Republican presidential candidate divisive and dangerous and his appeals to Americans who feel left behind "quite possibly a deliberate con."

Moskovitz said Democrats and their nominee, Hillary Clinton, are "running on a vision of optimism, pragmatism, inclusiveness and mutual benefit."
And another baby makes a family of four.

Natalie Portman is pregnant, multiple sources confirm to E! News. This will be the second child for Portman, who already shares son Aleph Portman-Millepied with husband Benjamin Millepied.

The Oscar winner, who lives in Paris with her family, previously opened up to Harper's Bazaar about how life with her son and Millepied has changed her.

"Very early on, I asked [Cate Blanchett] about being a parent," she told the publication. "I said, 'How do you do it? You're a mom. You're the best at what you do.' She said, 'You just do. Stressing about it doesn't help.'"

According to the actress, Millepied likely felt the same way. "Most men I know are dealing with the same issues. They say they feel like if they work too hard they won't have enough time with their families," she mused. "Maybe those questions need to be asked of men, too. Maybe the men need better questions."

Natalie Portman &Benjamin Millepied: Romance Rewind

With five years of parenting under their belt, the couple probably has gotten into a routine, which will undoubtedly help them when their second child arrives. Millepied and Portman met on the set of "Black Swan" and married in 2012 in a Jewish ceremony in California.

"The beauty of the weekend was that it was kept a secret, and everyone was relaxed and had a great time because of it," a source told E! News, adding that it was "amazing."

When Portman accepted her Oscar in 2011--then pregnant with Aleph--she thanked Millepied for giving her "the most important role of [her] life."
U.S. Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte spoke for the first time Friday about his 10-month suspension from competitive swimming. In an appearance on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show," Lochte told the host that the suspension is heartbreaking.

And it stinks, he added.

His suspension, and $100,000 penalty, were announced Thursday by the U.S. Olympic Committee and USA Swimming in response to the swimmer's drunken encounter at a Brazilian gas station during last months Olympic games.

Lochte admitted previously that he over-exaggerated when recounting the incident, claiming to have been held at gunpoint during a drunken encounter at a gas station. Brazilian police charged him with filing a false police report.

The gold-medal winner told DeGeneres that he reached out to U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps for advice. Phelps was suspended for 6 months after a DUI arrest in 2014.

I reached out to him because I knew he hit a low point in his life, and he bounced back from it, Lochte said. He said its not what you did, its what you do now that will shape who you are, and I took that to heart.

When asked whether he wants to participate in the 2020 Olympic games in Tokyo, he said yes, definitely.

Now that the suspension and everything has happened, I can take [a] mental break. But I still have goals that I want to accomplish, so I will definitely be back. And hopefully Ill be ready to rock and roll.

Lochte appeared on the talk show with professional dancer Cheryl Burke, who will be his partner on the upcoming season of Dancing With the Stars. The swimmer told DeGeneres hed agreed to appear on the program before the gas station incident went down in Rio.

On Monday, Lochte and Burke are slated to reappear on Ellen to talk more about DWTS. Lochte will also try out to be the hosts Underwear Spokesmodel.
Two Coast Guard cadets accused of sexual assault will face a courts-martial.

Cadet Michael Shermot was charged with violating the Uniform Code of Military Justice Sexual assault. The cadet is scheduled to appear for the court-martial in Norfolk, Virginia, on Sept. 12, according to the U.S. Coast Guard Academy.

Cadet Anthony Livingstone was also charged with sexual assault, in addition to extortion. Livingstone will appear at the court-martial in Norfolk on Oct. 26, the academy said.

There were no other details immediately available.
One school district is searching for a hacker after someone sent inappropriate emails to students using a teacher's account.

Holly Cox said on Wednesday night her 11-year-old son received emails filled with sexually-explicit language.

"He had read all the emails, and he said, 'Mom, they were just so inappropriate.' I said, 'What did they say?' He said, 'I can't say it, mom. I can't say it,'" said Cox.

Her son, who is in the Region 18 Lyme-Old Lyme Public Schools, wasn't the only one to receive the messages.

Parents said hours later the superintendent of schools sent out this email:

Dear all,

This evening beginning at 8:32 p.m. someone accessed the e-mail account of one of our high school teachers and sent three highly inappropriate messages to our entire school community. These emails were not sent by the teacher whose account was used. Please be assured that this teacher, while upset by the situation, is safe. Our technology staff is on campus and is working through the night to stop the flow of emails and track the origin of the sender. Should you or your student receive one of these inappropriate emails, please delete it immediately. Do not reply to the e-mail. At this time, we have shut down all student network accounts to allow our technology team time to remove the inappropriate e-mails and subsequent responses from all student accounts. We expect to restore student account access some time late on Thursday. Staff will plan lessons accordingly. As always, our goal is to keep students safe and, in doing so, we will work with local law enforcement to determine the source of these e-mails and take appropriate action.

Sincerely,

Mr. Ian Neviaser

Superintendent of Schools

"According to my son, a lot of kids never got to read them because the email system was locked down before they got a chance, but unfortunately he did," said Cox.

And so, unfortunately, did Jeanine Jones' two children who are 12 and 15.

"My children were old enough, and I could talk to them. But I'm sure a lot of other parents were extremely shocked and upset," said Jones.

Jones thinks the culprit is more than likely another student but state police have not released any information.

"Somebody thought it was a funny joke, but it wasn't. And it also went to some children who were too young to be exposed to the language that was in the email," said Jones.

With the district shutting down the network, sending out an update to parents, and talking to kids the next day, Jones and other parents said they're pleased with the response.

"I personally spoke to the principal when I picked up my son today ... at the high school, and he was in full control. So I think they did a terrific job," said Jones.

NBC Connecticut reached out to the superintendent but did not hear back by time of publication.
Shelton police arrested a 48-year-old man Thursday and charged him with a burglary at Rita's Italian Ice.

Officers responded to a burglary alarm at the store at 783 River Road around 3:30 a.m. on Thursday. They found the front door lock damaged and a safe missing from inside.

According to police, surveillance video showed the suspected burglar driving a dark BMW 3 series car. A short time later, Stratford police stopped the car with Steven Carloto driving.

Carloto had coin rolls from Rita's and burglar tools in the car, according to police.

He was charged with third-degree burglary, fourth-degree larceny, criminal mischief and possession of burglary tools.
North Branford residents are again speaking out against a controversial proposal to build a propane tank facility in their town.

The Connecticut Department of Energy and Enviornmental Protection hosted a public hearing Thursday evening on whether the proposal meets the states wetlands regulations.

Residents tell NBC Connecticut they are concerned about much more than just the possible effects on the environment.

Linda Arsenault has lived in her home tucked away in a wooded North Branford neighborhood for nearly thirty years.

"This is something that we know about so were hoping we can stall it or forgo it,"she said.

Arsenault is one of many residents who are against the JJ Sullivan Fuel Companys proposal to build a 60-thousand gallon propane tank facility on Ciro Road.

"My initial reaction is health," Arsenault said of her primary concern.

But she also worries about rising insurance rates.

"We cant afford to keep paying more and more money for things," she said.

Another concern for homeowners is the impact on their propertys value.

"If we try to sell our house in five years and someone says theres a propane tank facility around the corner, a lot of people maybe a young couple with children wont want to live here," Arsenault said.

NBC Connecticut tried speaking with someone from JJ Sullivan in Guilford, but were told to contact the Propane Gas Association of New England (PGANE).

"We have strong federal rules on how these sites are constructed and operated," PGANE President Joe Rose said. "These above ground storage tanks are equipped with redundant safety valves that greatly minimize the possibility of an accident."

Residents say they fear any possibility of an explosion.

"In the event of an accident, it would be catastrophic, no question," North Branford resident Chris Kranick said.

At the DEEP public hearing, Kranick said he plans to present flaws in the companys application process.

"The timeline on the application at the local level has expired and the second is the application that started at the town is quite different than the application that ended up at the state," he said. "And those two applications need to be the same."

If Arsenault had the chance to speak with someone from JJ Sullivan, she said shed ask this question.

"Politely, why arent you building the facility right next to your business on river street in Guilford?" she said.

North Branfords town planner Carey Dueques said JJ Sullivan and the opposition to the proposal will present their cases to DEEP officials in Hartford on September 15.
The 40,000 member Connecticut Education Association's leadership has far more questions than answers following a judge's ruling yesterday saying the way the state funds local education is inadequate.

The more than 200 page ruling sent shockwaves through the political arena because it gave the General Assembly 180 days to come up with a funding solution.

"Its confusing at best and disappointing," said Mark Waxenberg, the executive director of the CEA.

Waxenberg fears for the possible repercussions of Judge Thomas Moukawsher's ruling that essentially threw out the window the way the state spends money on local districts of education. He said the ruling didn't provide any kind of specific guidance as to what the funding formula, known as ECS, should look like to make the funding system more fair and equitable.

"The point should be based on adequacy, not on a formula," Waxenberg said Thursday. "A formula drives money but we have to look at the adequacy necessary to drive resources in West Hartford and the resources necessary to educate that child in Hartford so he's really looking at the hole and not at the doughnut."

The most troubling example Waxenberg sees in who may be left out is children who require special education services which are distributed and in many cases paid for by local districts, and not the state.

"If you have an autistic child in Greenwich, that autistic child needs services as much as they need it in Bridgeport so the issue of equity and equality needs to be for both students, rather than pitting one town against one another," Waxenberg said.

Governor Dan Malloy said Thursday that he sees the ruling as an opportunity to make sure schools systems that are most in need get the help they need.

I think quite clearly the judge is saying, 'hey, Connecticut, get this right and get it right quickly,' and quite frankly, I think we should get it right quickly, Malloy said.

Malloy also pointed out that more than half a billion dollars more is going to the state's poorest school districts since he took office.

Another point of criticism from Moukawsher was the state's teacher evalusation system and the ability to weed out bad teachers. He described the current system as "cotton candy in a rainstorm."

Sheila Cohen, president of the CEA, said she was left with questions there, too, because of the lack of specifics. Cohen said the group has worked for changes to teacher evaluation for two legislative sessions and will continue to do so.

"We want something that's meaningful and works for both teachers and students."
The Oak Lawn community in Dallas is gearing up for Pride Week, as events kick off next Tuesday.

Dallas police are also gearing up. Commanders have been busy in recent days planning for extra staffing and security ahead of the Pride Week events and the Sept. 18 parade.

After several months of violent assaults in that area  several of which Dallas police are officially investigating as hate crimes  police say new strategies in recent months have helped keep criminals away.

There are about eight extra officers every night who have been assigned to patrolling the Oak Lawn-Cedar Springs area. Police say it's not only kept crime down, but it's also improved community relations.

"I do feel a lot more police presence around," said Oak Lawn resident Alex Gorinsky. "They've definitely stepped up their patrols."

Over the last nine months police have installed several high-definition surveillance cameras, and officers have stepped up their visibility through increased bike patrols and foot patrols.

DPD this summer also devoted thousands of hours on overtime for increased patrols. Gorinsky says it's a good use of overtime money.

"I think any place in town where you've had a lot of crime, I think overtime patrol time is necessary," he said. "And it definitely seems to be working. It feels safer. We haven't heard of as many attacks."

Crime statistics show it's paying off. In the busiest six-block stretch of Cedar Springs Road, there were eight assaults and four robberies in the summer of 2015.

In the same stretch of real estate this summer, there have been five assaults and no robberies.

Still, for the roughly two dozen men who over the last year were attacked, robbed and threatened, their sense of security has been permanently shattered.

"I still go to therapy twice a week. I'm on medicines for anxiety and sleeping," said Craig Knapp, an assault survivor.

"Remember, they still have not caught anybody. So I'd rather just stay at home and watch TV, and have a drink at my house," he said.

Knapp was attacked earlier this year by two men while he was out walking a friend's dog late at night.

He's now telling his friends to be careful, as the Pride Week events approach.

"They haven't caught them. Where'd they go? What other part of the city will they go to? Are they going to come back?" Knapp asked. "Remember, these attacks on gay men started right after the Pride Parade last year. So it's important that we can't get complacent. We can't assume we're safe walking home alone."

A large chunk of the overtime money DPD has been spending over the last 90 days comes courtesy of Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who donated $1 million this summer to Dallas police after the Orlando nightclub attack, and police pledged to use much of that money towards the LGBT community.

A lot of that money is being used to keep extra patrol officers stationed at Oak Lawn and Cedar Springs.
There are several big government jobs open, or set to be open, all at the same time in Dallas County.

The Dallas County District Attorney's office is now open since Susan Hawk resigned.

The Dallas City Attorney position is also available, with several candidates currently interested.

City Manager AC Gonzales is set to leave in January, leaving that job open.

Then there's Dallas Police Chief David Brown who be retire next month.

Those are several key positions.

In the case of district attorney, there is no timetable on her replacement, and it is up to Governor Greg Abbott to make the appointment. Hawk resigned earlier this week. Had she resigned days sooner, her replacement could have been up to voters in November. But since she resigned after that deadline, it goes to the governor.

Several lawmakers are questioning her timing.

This is way too political already, said Democratic Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins.

Since it is in the governors hands, Jenkins says he should avoid anyone in her inner circle. Jenkins believes the governor should cast a wide net in considering the county's next top prosecutor.

I think its important to the governor to open this up to not just political operatives inside of Susan Hawks circle, or party operatives, but go outside to Independents, Libertarians, Democrats, said Jenkins.

NBC 5 reached out to Abbotts office, and a spokesperson said all applicants will be considered. So far, they have received one application.

As for the city manager position, Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings is hoping there won't be a gap between when Gonzales leaves and when someone new will be hired.

I want to make sure we get the city manager before January, said Rawlings.

Rawlings said the search has already begun. Once that person has been hired, they will be immediately tasked with finding a new Dallas police chief.

I think that is what is attractive to them, to a City Manager saying, 'man, we can help this city grow and keep the momentum going, and I get to make a lot of great decisions that I can own, and bring in the people that I think are right on my team,' said Rawlings.

So, it all really falls to Dallas City Council members. They have to approve the new city manager, who will then hire a new police chief.

I know its going to be a challenge," said District 4 Council Member Carolyn King Arnold. "We can be somewhat interesting to work with as a group from time to time, but I believe we will pick the best person to make this whole coalition work.

Rawlings also said when it comes to police chief, there is a good interim police chief in place, who will executive the strategies Brown laid out.
A former Farmers Branch police officer who was off-duty when he says he shot and killed a teenage burglary suspect and wounded another boy in March has been indicted by a Dallas County grand jury.

Ken Johnson resigned from the Farmers Branch Police Department after being arrested and charged with murder and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon by the Addison Police Department.

Johnson said he saw a vehicle in his apartment complex being burglarized March 13 and he intervened. He said he got into his personal vehicle and chased two men to the 14300 block of Marsh Lane where they crashed. An altercation followed and shots were fired.

Jose Raul Cruz, 16, was killed at the scene; the second person was transported to Parkland Memorial Hospital with injuries that were not life threatening. While police have not identified the second teen shot, his family has identified him as 16-year-old Edgar Rodriguez, a friend of Cruz.

The Dallas County District Attorney's Office said the grand jury found probable cause that "Johnson knowingly caused the death of Jose Cruz and attempted to cause the death of Edgar Rodriguez Arevalo" and that the "two cases will move forward in the criminal justice system and be prosecuted by the District Attorneys Office."

A spokesman for Cruz's family spoke to NBC 5 about the indictment Wednesday.

"They're not celebrating, of course, because you can't celebrate the death of Jose Cruz. You can only celebrate the fact that Officer Johnson will be charged for the murder of Jose Cruz," Carlos Quintanilla said.

The family also realizes this is far from over, he said.

"There's still a chance that he can go to trial and jury can find him not guilty, so they have temporary justice but they don't have full justice until they actually see Officer Ken Johnson in prison with a number that says convicted," explained Quintanilla.

The indictment of former Farmers Branch Officer Ken Johnson in the shooting death of Jose Cruz gave Cruzs friends hope in their ongoing fight for justice.

Several of Cruz's friends said the indictment gives them hope in their ongoing fight for justice.

"I actually thought they weren't going to do anything, just let him go. That's what they do. But I'm thankful that they did do something," said friend Jensy Archaga.

"He was my family, you know, he was my cousin so I'm never going to forget him," said cousin Oscar Salinas. "He's in a better place now but nothing is the same like it used to be."

In the six months since he was killed Cruz's friends have had many conversations with their families and each other about law enforcement. They're clear in their belief that a vast majority of police officers are there to protect them.

Despite that belief there is still a real sense of fear and apprehension that Cruz's death could happen to any of them.

"I've been talking to my brother. I be like, 'Don't be doing nothing bad, because you know what happened to Jose,'" said friend Fatima Fraire.

The lawyer for Edgar Rodriguez Arevalo told NBC 5 he is encouraged by Johnson's indictment and hopes justice will be served.

We also reached out to Johnson's attorney for comment, but have yet to hear back.

Johnson is currently free after posting $150,000 bond. A trial date has not been set.

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NBC 5's Tyler Sieswerda and Cory Smith contributed to this report.
Authorities say a San Antonio woman has been convicted in the 2013 death of her estranged husband when her SUV and his motorcycle collided as she chased him.

Frances Hall faces up to life in prison when the penalty phase begins Monday in San Antonio. A Bexar (bayr) County jury on Thursday night convicted Hall of murder in the death of her spouse, trucking company owner Bill Hall Jr.

Attorneys for the woman say the wreck was an accident.

Hall was also convicted of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon for hitting another vehicle being driven by a woman who allegedly had an affair with her husband. Both wrecks happened during the same pursuit.
A Texas woman who arrived by train in New Orleans with more than 15 pounds of heroin has been given a 10-year prison sentence.

The Times-Picayune reported that 34-year-old Lori Broadway of Galveston was sentenced Thursday in a New Orleans federal court after pleading guilty to possession with intent to distribute at least 1 kilogram of heroin.

Louisiana State Police narcotics troopers stopped Broadway after she arrived from Houston on Jan. 22 and searched her bags. Inside, they found 15 pounds of heroin.

Investigators say they had zeroed in on Broadway because she had a history of drug arrests and had made her reservation just one day earlier.
Female janitors rallied in downtown Los Angeles Thursday, urging Gov. Jerry Brown to sign a bill that would give them greater protections against sexual assault.

The women and their supporters rallied in Pershing Square, saying they've been victimized on the night shift when they're especially vulnerable.

One woman told NBC4 her story after a supervisor stalked her before attacking her at a building in Santa Monica.

"He was like a ghost," Leticia Soto, rape survivor, said in Spanish. "He would show up behind me in this building late at night. He would sit there watch me, and look at me up and down."

The bill would require more training to prevent sexual assaults and sexual harassment.

It would also require all janitorial contractors to register with the state.

"Imagine what happens in these buildings late at night when the lights go out," Service Employees International Union's Alejandra Valles said.

Supporters at the rally said many women don't report the rapes because of fear of being deported.
A gunman was shot by deputies after he led them on a chase and barreled into a Lomita liquor store parking lot, crashed into another car and shot twice at authorities Thursday night.

No deputies were injured in the shooting, which occurred about 6:15 p.m. in the area of Pacific Coast Highway and Pennsylvania Avenue, Deputy Ryan Rouzan of the Sheriff's Information Bureau said.

Sheriff's deputies tried to pull over a man driving a silver Volvo for a traffic violation, but he took off, weaving in and out of neighborhoods, before he crashed into another car at a liquor store parking lot, authorities said.

The man ran inside the liquor store, then came out, shooting at deputies, authorities said, and the deputies fired back, shooting him several times in the upper torso.

The man, whose condition and age have not been made available, was taken to a hospital and he is expected to survive, Rouzan said.

A female passenger in the car also tried to escape, but she was detained by authorities a short time after.

"We are in the process of trying to determine why are they running, why they shooting at the police and why they were trying to get away," said Lt. John Corona of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Homicide Bureau.

City News Service contributed to this report.
A dog who suffered possible chemical burns along the length of his back is recovering at a Southern California veterinary hospital.

WARNING: Video contains graphic images

Max was turned into a San Bernardino animal shelter last month with a blistered red patch of skin along his spine.

The dog had an identification microchip and the owners were contacted, but said they did not want Max back after giving him away to another individual, said Cheryl Holbrook, of Doggy Smiles Rescue. The owners linked to the chip did not provide more details, Holbrook said.

Two-year-old Max was then brought to Doggy Smiles Rescue and the veterinary hospital, where he will stay for about two months. He'll need pain medication, antibiotics and bandages to help the wound heal.

"It's pretty severe," said Holbrook. "It's deep, it's very, very raw. Someone poured chemical on him, intentionally to hurt him. I don't know how anyone could have the mentality to do that to a helpless animal."

The rescue organization has taken in four dogs with similar burns in the past year, Holbrook said.

"It has to be treated constantly so he can heal," Holbrook said of Max's injury. "He's happy and friendly. He loves people. You would not think he's in pain, but he's in a lot of pain."

No arrests were reported in the case. Authorities have not confirmed the injuries were caused by acid or another chemical.

A Go Fund Me account was set up to help fund Max's care.
Police are trying to track down the mystery owner of a wedding ring discovered in a San Marino park on Sunday.

The silver band with a "significant mark" was found on a bench near the playground of Lacy Park, according to the San Marino Police Department.

The police department posted fliers in search of the mystery owner of the band, which may be silver, platinum or white gold.

"There are significant markings on the ring that only the rightful owner will know about. This information will have to be verified in order to claim this ring," the police department said in a Facebook post.

If the wedding ring belongs to you or someone you know, you are asked to call Sergeant Tim Tebbetts at (626) 300-0722. Refer to case number CR16-0802.
Spy a hand reaching for something in a Tim Burton film, and you can count on the object in question being mysterious and/or eerie and/or beautiful and/or extraordinary.

Think of Jack Skellington grasping a delicate snowflake in his elegantly bony fingers or Adam placing tiny homes around his model town in "Beetlejuice." And, of course, you have what qualifies as moviedom's most famous set of fingers, those shiny and sharp digits belonging to Edward Scissorhands.

The funnily frightful filmmaker's own hands now have a tale to tell, via a set of prints left at the TCL Chinese Theatre forecourt in Hollywood. In addition to the traditional handprints, Mr. Burton also stepped into a square of wet cement on Thursday, Sept. 8, giving fans the chance to one day place their own shoes inside his for a moment.

The occasion had its touching ties to both man and place, for seven of the filmmaker's movies have premiered at the historic Tinseltown cinema. And while he is apt to visit fictional lands for his highly visual tales, let us pause to applaud 1994's "Ed Wood," a work that is lush with love for Hollywood. (Yep, Boardner's, which is just down the street from the theater, makes an atmospheric cameo.)

As with all TCL Chinese Theatre ceremonies, the director's came with a delightful stop-by courtesy of a longtime friend, which was, in Mr. Burton's case, Winona Ryder. The actor, seen currently on "Stranger Things," introduced Mr. Burton, a creative partner she's worked with on multiple whimsy-packed projects, from "Beetlejuice" to "Edward Scissorhands" to "Frankenweenie."

Next up for the director, post-handprints? "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children" debuts on the final day of September 2016.
A study conducted in Western Australia showed that a teenage pregnancy prevention program that uses "robot babies" was not effective in lowering pregnancy rates in teenage girls.

Instead, the program may have made teenagers more likely to get pregnant.

The Virtual Infant Parenting, or VIP Program, is an Australian program that tries to curb pregnancies in teenage girls, and uses "robot babies" or infant simulators as part of the program, according to the Lancet, a medical journal based in the U.K. Some 89 countries, including the United States, have similar programs with infant simulators, but the authors of this study are warning of their effectiveness.

As part of the study, 57 schools in Western Australia were randomly chosen either to participate in the VIP program, or to receive the standard health education curriculum, Lancet said in a statement about the study. In total, 1,267 girls received the program, and 1,567 girls received the standard curriculum, serving as the control group for the study.

Girls who participated in the study were all 13 to 15 years old when it started, and were monitored until they were 20 years old.

Parts of the VIP program include educational sessions, a workbook, a video documentary about the experience of teenage mothers, and taking care of an infant simulator during a weekend. The robot baby cries "when it needs to be fed, burped, rocked or changed and measures and reports on mishandling, crying time, the number of changes and general care."

"Our study shows that the pregnancy prevention programme delivered in Western Australia, which involves an infant simulator, does not reduce the risk of pregnancy in teenage girls," said lead author Dr Sally Brinkman, Telethon Kids Institute, University of Western Australia, Adelaide, Australia. "In fact, the risk of pregnancy is actually increased compared to girls who didn't take part in the intervention."

Results of the study showed that eight percent of girls who participated in the VIP program had at least one birth, and nine percent of the participants had an abortion, according to the Lancet. In the control group however, four percent of girls had at least one birth, and six percent had an abortion.

"Similar programmes are increasingly being offered in schools around the world, and evidence now suggests they do not have the desired long-term effect of reducing teenage pregnancy," Brinkman said. "These interventions are likely to be an ineffective use of public resources for pregnancy prevention."

Although the trial studied a large number of teens, the authors noted that overall participation was low, adding that no information is available on the girls who decided not to participate in the program. The release also noted that girls in the control group "had on average a higher socio economic status and educational attainment, but when the research team re-ran the analysis to take these factors into account, they found that this had no effect on the findings."

In the statement released by the Lancet, it called the VIP program the "Australian adaptation" of a program used in the United States called, RealityWorks, formerly known as "Baby Think It Over."

Days after the study's findings were released last month, however, RealityWorkswhich uses infant simulators in its programresponded to the findings in a statement. The American program called the Australian study, "deeply flawed" noting that the authors had "inaccurately associated [it] with Realityworks' RealCare Program," read the statement.

Realityworks pointed out differences between the two programs which they say include the respective lengths of the two programs, and the groups of people studied.

According to the statement released by Realityworks, "the authors somehow failed to mention a key variable that occurred early in the course of the longitudinal study: In 2004, the Australian government introduced its controversial Maternity Payment Program, or "Baby Bonus," to increase family size," so families earning less than $75,000 were paid $3,000 after a child was born when the program first started.

"What distresses us most about this study, apart from the obvious flaws, is that it confuses a vital public health issue," read the statement.

Their program is currently used by two-thirds of U.S. since it was first adopted in educational institutions in 1995, Realityworks wrote. Although a decline in U.S. teen pregnancy during that time period could be attributed to several factors, Realityworks believes, "one is the marked change in attitude toward teen pregnancy and parenting found in RealCare Program participants."

The birth rate in teenagers in the United States "has declined almost continuously over the past 20 years," according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

In regards to the Australian study, Professor Julie A Quinlivan, University of Notre Dame Australia, Fremantle WA, Australia, discussed possible explanations behind the study's results about the ineffectiveness of the program in a linked statement.

"The cure for teenage pregnancy is more difficult than a magic doll. We have to address both mothers and fathers. Programmes need to start in infancy," Quinlivan wrote. "Investment in vulnerable children is needed to entice these adolescents from the path of premature parenthood into brighter futures. We cannot afford the quick fix, especially when it doesn't work."
The U.S. Coast Guard has suspended its search for a woman who reportedly fell off a cruise ship near the Bahamas.

The search for 32-year-old Rina Patel was suspended just after 7:30 p.m. Thursday, officials said.

Patel, from Interlaken, New York, apparently fell from the 11th deck of the Carnival Ecstasy as the ship passed near the island of Grand Bahama early Wednesday. Carnival Cruise Line reported that she was witnessed jumping overboard around 2:30 a.m.

After searching for 43 hours by boat and by air, covering more than 2,800 square miles, the search was called off, officials said.

"We would like to extend our deepest condolences to the loved ones and all that have been affected by this tragedy," Capt. Todd Coggeshall, chief of response management for the Coast Guard's 7th District, said in a statement. "Suspending search efforts is always a painful decision, but despite our best efforts we have been unable to locate Rina and have made the difficult decision to suspend the search pending any further developments."

The cruise ship had left Nassau, Bahamas and was en route to Charleston, South Carolina, where it was scheduled to dock Thursday.
A former worker at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach was arrested along with his girlfriend after police say he dressed up in his old scrubs and tried to steal medicine from the hospital.

Richard Julian Elliott, 43, and Amanda Lee Cochraine, 31, were arrested Thursday on several charges including attempted armed burglary, possession of a controlled substance and child neglect, according to Miami Beach Police arrest reports.

Elliott was being held Friday on $50,500 bond, jail records showed. Cochraine was being held on $27,500 bond. It's unknown if they've hired attorneys.

According to the reports, police responded to the hospital after security called about an ex-employee who was trespassing. The reports said Elliott, who was wearing the blue scrubs that he used to wear when he worked there, was spotted walking with a hammer in the hospital.

When a hospital worker began questioning Elliott, he swung the hammer at the worker, the reports said. Two workers began to wrestle with Elliott and were able to get the hammer from him and hold him until an officer arrived, the reports said.

Elliott was found to have 20 vials in his pocket, including 9 Fentanyl and 11 Versed, both controlled substances, the reports said.

According to the reports, Cochraine fled in a car when officers arrived at the scene. She was later pulled over and it was discovered her 15-month-old daughter was in the backseat of the car, the reports said.

"Mount Sinai Medical Center security observed an individual engaged in suspicious activities and apprehended him. The individual was turned over to the Miami Beach Police Department," the hospital said in a statement. "Mount Sinai Medical Center has and continues to cooperate with authorities relating to this situation."
Family members and police came together Thursday to ask the public for help in the case of a South Florida mother and her young daughter who vanished in May.

Little Daniela Moreno and her mom Liliana have been missing for months. They vanished on May 31 and haven't been heard from since.

Fighting back tears and speaking in Spanish, family members came to South Florida from Colombia. They're still hoping someone knows something about what happened to the 43-year-old mother and her 9-year-old daughter.

"Maybe someone can tell us some information that can help us," brother Eduardo Moreno Ramirez said at Thursday's family plea.

Back in June, a full-scale search was launched with trained dogs and dozens of volunteers tracking through swampy brush near Doral and a nearby lake for the mom and child but nothing turned up.

"If we think that information is good and can be credible we call to the police. I think that is the correct process, Moreno Ramirez said.

Police first suspected foul play following a search of Moreno's apartment at Northwest 107th Avenue and 50th Street. Her keys and wallet were found inside along with Daniela's toys, cello and other belongings.

Miami-Dade Police also made a plea to the public to put an end to the family's suffering.

"Hopefully we find them alive, hopefully," MDPD assistant director Alfredo Ramirez said. "If someone has abducted them we will hold them accountable as well but we cannot bring closure to this case without the help of the community, we need it."

Anyone with information is asked to call Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers at 305-471-TIPS.
An officer was hit by a car and a suspect was injured in a police-involved shooting in North Miami Friday, officials said.

The incident was reported in the area of Northeast 143rd Street and 2nd Avenue.

North Miami Police officials said the officer had spotted a stolen car and tried to pull it over when the driver tried to run the officer over.

The officer opened fire, hitting the driver of the car. A passenger who was in the stolen car wasn't injured.

The suspect and officer were both taken to Aventura Hospital, Miami-Dade Fire Rescue officials said. Both suffered non-life threatening injuries.

Footage from the scene showed the car with bullet holes and the second suspect sitting on a sidewalk in handcuffs.

Police haven't released the names of the officer or suspects and haven't said what charges they may face.
Sunday marks a somber day on the calendar as Americans across the country will remember the September 11th terrorist attacks that struck New York City, Washington D.C. and Pennsylvania 15 years ago.

Across South Florida, events will be taking place all weekend to remember the day that changed our country forever. The events started Friday at Miami Dade Colleges North campus, where several artifacts from the World Trade Center donated to the school are located.

Children of 9/11 Draw Inspiration From Tragedy

Other events scheduled across the area this weekend include:

- An interfaith service will be held at Temple Judea, located at 5500 Granada Blvd., Sunday at 4:30 PM

- Broward Sheriffs Office deputies will hold ceremonies at both Fort Lauderdale / Hollywood International Airport at 9:30 AM Sunday outside of Terminal 1 and at the Lauderhill Performing Arts Center at 2 PM.

- Pembroke Pines is holding a memorial service Sunday at 8:30 AM at the citys Memorial Pavilion, located at 10300 Pines Blvd.

- Coral Springs will be holding a memorial service at the Northwest Regional Library Sunday at 2 PM, which will include a wreath laying ceremony and nearly 3,000 American flags with the names of each victim on them.
Congress sent President Barack Obama a bipartisan bill that would allow families of Sept. 11 victims to sue the government of Saudi Arabia, putting lawmakers on a collision course with the White House on the eve of the 15th anniversary of the attacks.

The House passed the legislation Friday by a voice vote, about four months after the measure cleared the Senate despite vehement objections from Saudi Arabia. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals.

The legislation gives victims' families the right to sue in U.S. court for any role that elements of the Saudi government may have played in the 2001 attacks that killed thousands in New York, the Washington, D.C., area and Pennsylvania.

The White House has signaled Obama would veto the legislation over the potential for it to backfire and apprehension about undermining a longstanding yet strained relationship with a critical U.S. ally in the Middle East. The Obama administration has warned that if U.S. citizens can take the Saudis to court, then a foreign country could in turn sue the United States.

Votes from two-thirds of the members in the House and Senate would be needed to override a veto.

Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, said the U.S. government should be more concerned about the families of the victims than "diplomatic niceties." Poe said he doesn't know if the Saudi government had a role in the Sept. 11 attacks.

"That's for a jury of Americans to decide," Poe said.

There was no immediate comment from Saudi Arabia. The timing of the vote could be seen as an additional slap at the kingdom, which was preparing for the annual hajj pilgrimage beginning Saturday. But a sponsor of the bill, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said lawmakers were focused only on the symbolism of bringing the bill to the floor as close to the 15th anniversary as possible.

The bill's proponents disputed the argument that there will be a boomerang effect if the measure is signed into law. Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., another sponsor, said foreign governments cannot look the other way if terrorist activities are being plotted or launched from their countries.

Terry Strada, national head of 9/11 Families United For Justice Against Terrorism, dismissed fears the U.S. could be the target of lawsuits.

"If we're not funding terrorist organizations and killing people, then we don't have anything to worry about," she said.

The vote came after House members from both parties briefly adjourned to commemorate the anniversary of the attacks. House Speaker Paul Ryan led a moment of silence on the Capitol steps, and lawmakers sang "God Bless America" in remembrance of 9/11, when lawmakers gathered in the same location to sing the song immediately after the attacks on New York and Washington.

The Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act had triggered a threat from Riyadh to pull billions of dollars from the U.S. economy if the legislation is enacted. But Saudi Foreign Minister Adel bin Ahmed Al-Jubeir denied in May that the kingdom made any threats over the bill. He said Riyadh had warned that investor confidence in the U.S. would shrink if the bill became law.

"In fact what they (Congress) are doing is stripping the principle of sovereign immunities, which would turn the world for international law into the law of the jungle," Al-Jubeir said.

The House vote came two months after Congress released 28 declassified pages from a congressional report into 9/11 that reignited speculation over links at least a few of the attackers had to Saudis, including government officials. The allegations were never substantiated by later U.S. investigations into the terrorist attacks.

Brian McGlinchey, director of advocacy website 28pages.org, said making the documents public "strengthened the resolve of 9/11 families and other advocates of justice to bring about the enactment" of the bill.

A decision by Obama to veto legislation "that would give 9/11 families their well-deserved day in court would truly stain his legacy," McGlinchey said.

In a separate development, a bipartisan group of senators are seeking to block the Obama administration's proposed sale of more than $1 billion worth of U.S. weapons to Saudi Arabia.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., cited Saudi Arabia's poor human rights record and the kingdom's role in Yemen's civil war.

The war is pitting Yemen's internationally recognized government and a Saudi-led coalition against the Shiite rebels known as Houthis, who are allied with army units loyal to a former president. The Saudi-led coalition has been carrying out airstrikes in Yemen since March 2015.
What to Know Authorities in Fairfield, Conn., have determined the March 2016 death of an infant a homicide

Police say an unlicensed day care worker plied the boy with toxic amounts of antihistamine drugs

The boy's parents say they're angry and heartbroken

A Connecticut day care worker has been arrested, accused of killing an infant boy by plying him with toxic amounts of the drug popularly known as Benadryl, authorities say.

The 4-month-old boy, Adam Seagull, died on March 22 after being found unresponsive at an unlicensed day care in Fairfield. He was transported to St. Vincent's Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.

Investigators initially found no evidence of wrongdoing, according to the child's family, who thought he died of sudden infant death syndrome.

Then in June, the chief medical examiner determined the baby had died of acute diphenhydramine intoxication. Diphenhydramine, an antihistamine drug packaged in popular over-the-counter brands like Benadryl, are not to be administered to children under the age of 2, manufacturers warn.

Fairfield police on Thursday arrested Carol Cardillo, the 53-year-old woman who lives in the Edgewood Road home where she allegedly ran the unlicensed day care. The facility has since been closed.

She's been charged with second-degree manslaughter, second-degree reckless endangerment and risk of injury to a minor. Attorney information for the woman wasn't immediately clear. No one answered at the home Thursday night.

Adam's father, Matthew Seagull, said learning their son was allegedly killed by his own caretaker was "like he died all over again."

"We trusted our precious son Adam to Carol's care," he told reporters Thursday. "She violated our trust and the trust of so many parents. The idea that she was so lazy and thoughtless to use medication to put children to sleep is horrifying."

Seagull recalled the last morning he prepared Adam for day care.

"I just sort of looked at him and decided to take a picture. I don't know why, something came over me," he said. "I took a picture and it was the last moment we spent together."

He said he got a call from his father-in-law and rushed to the hospital. His son died by the time he arrived.

"I looked at my father-in-law, who was in the front of the door, who is particularly stoic, and when I walked to the front of the room, he had tears in his eyes," Seagull said. "I didn't need anyone else to tell me what had happened. He was gone."

The boy's mother, Michelle Seagull, called Adam "the light of my life."

"He had the most infectious smile and he just lit up a room when anyone ever saw him," she said. "He was sweet and right around the time he died, he was really starting to come into his own, we started to see the personality that Adam was going to have as an older child."

"I think I permanently have a hole in my heart and I don't think I will ever feel whole again," she said.
What to Know Bill Nojay served in the Assembly the last four years

He was twice rated the state's most conservative legislator

Local media reported he was facing the possibility of fraud charges

Upstate New York Assemblyman and outspoken conservative Bill Nojay committed suicide Friday morning.

Rochester police say an officer responding to a 911 call saw Nojay die Friday morning from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in the city's Riverside Cemetery.

NBC affiliate WHEC in Rochester had previously reported the Republican was facing the possibility of fraud charges over a business deal in Cambodia, and said he was due to turn himself in Friday in that case.

A person answering the phones at his district office in Pittsford confirmed that Nojay had died but said she could not comment further.

Nojay represented a variety of towns in Livingston, Monroe and Steuben counties. Last year, the Conservative Party of New York named him the state's most conservative legislator, as it did in 2013.

First elected to the Assembly in Nov. 2012, Nojay faced a primary Tuesday against Honeoye Falls Mayor Richard Milne. A party official says it's too late to remove Nojay's name from the ballot.

Nojay had a "Support the Second Amendment" fundraiser scheduled for this Saturday in Lakeville, with a number of gun companies as sponsors.

"On behalf of all NY'ers, I extend our deepest condolences to Assemblyman Nojay's family, friends & constituents during this trying time," Gov. Andrew Cuomo tweeted Friday afternoon.

Nojay was a lawyer by training who specialized in small business issues; he also hosted a radio show and volunteered as a paramedic. He was married with three grown childen.
What to Know A group of robbers have been targeting people on motorized bikes in or near Fort Washington Park, police say

The victims are attacked with sticks or tree limbs, and knocked off the bikes late at night

Crime is up across city parks 25 percent so far this year compared to the same time last year

Police are searching for a group of robbers who have been targeting people on motorized bicycles at a New York City park.

The thieves have used sticks and tree limbs to knock the victims off their bikes and rob them of their cash, phones and credit cards late at night in or near Fort Washington Park, police say.

The attacks happened between Aug. 15 and last Friday. The victims have been knocked off their bikes on 158th Street and Riverside Drive, 171st Street, 173rd Street and 177th Street.

In the most recent attack on 173rd Street and Riverside, police were able to put together a sketch of one of the suspects.

Fort Washington Park is one of the safest in the city, with only one reported robbery so far this year and none in 2015.

Violent crime in city parks overall, however, is up by 25 percent this year compared to last, with the exception of Central Park.
Some New Jersey schools will close early on Friday as high heat and humidity leave students sweltering in buildings without air conditioning.

Keyport School District said schools would let out between noon and 12:30 p.m., with after-school activities cancelled.

Sayreville Public Schools said it would also close early due to "extreme heat and potentially dangerous building conditions."

New Brunswick Public Schools said three elementary schools would close early on Friday due to the weather.

Trenton's school district had already decided earlier this week that schools would close early through the week due to heat.

Storm Team 4 has forecast potentially record heat for Friday, with feels-like conditions at or above 100 degrees in some places.

New Jersey was not alone, though; schools in Baltimore and Philadelphia were also reported to be closing early Friday due to the temperatures.
As Seen On

As seen on News 4
A state police trooper seriously wounded in a 2014 ambush a near a rural barracks in eastern Pennsylvania has put the alleged gunman and his parents on notice that he plans to sue them.

The (Scranton) Times-Tribune reports court documents were recently filed on behalf of Trooper Alex Douglass against Eric Frein and his parents, Eugene and Deborah Frein.

Scranton attorney Vincent Cimini filed a writ of summons on behalf of Douglass in Monroe County Court last month, notifying the Freins a lawsuit will be filed.

Eric Frein is charged with fatally shooting Cpl. Bryon Dickson II and wounding Douglass outside the Blooming Grove barracks.

He led police on a 48-day manhunt before U.S. marshals caught him. He's pleaded not guilty. [[281109012, C]]


Google assisted on an arrest in Montgomery County for a suspect who allegedly uploaded an image police believe to be child pornography to his personal email account.

Russell Gellman, of Abington, allegedly uploaded a photo that he allegedly later told police he believed to "probably" be an underage girl having intercourse, according to the criminal complaint filed by an Abington detective working with the county's cyber crimes unit.

The cyber trail leading up to the charges filed this week against Gellman began in February when Google reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) that a possible image of child pornography was uploaded to an email account, TheGreatFunzo@gmail.com.

A secondary email associated with that gmail account was russell_gellman@hotmail.com, Google told the NCMEC, which in turn passed along the tip to Abington police in March.

Abington Detective Rick Beaghley, who is assigned to the county's cyber crime unit, said in the criminal complaint that "based on my training and experience, the image depicts a child under the age of eighteen years old engaged in a sexual act."

Beaghley checked on the IP address that Google provided as part of its initial tip. After determining through "a check of publicly available records" that the IP address was assigned to Comcast Cable Communications Inc., Beaghley said he then secured a subpoena directing Comcast to identify their subscriber who used that IP address at the time of the alleged upload to the gmail account.

It was traced to Gellman's residence on Penn Avenue in the Glenside section of Abington, the complaint said. Beaghley said state records showed a 2003 BMW registered to Gellman with the license plate "FUNZO."

On May 26, police searched Gellman's home and seized an iPad, which Gellman later allegedly confessed to using to access two images of children pornography.

It remains unclear how exactly Gellman came into possession of the image. Beaghley was not immediately available for comment.

A press release by the Montgomery County District Attorney's office reiterated what the complaint alleged: "The tip indicated that an image of child pornography depicting a prepubescent female child, approximately 10 years old, having sexual intercourse with a man, was uploaded to a computer email address."

Gellman was charged with distribution of child pornography, possession of child pornography and criminal use of a communication device, all felonies.

He was released on $50,000 bail and ordered to have no unsupervised contact with children and no internet usage. His preliminary hearing is scheduled for Oct. 27.
For the second time, a Lancaster County mother faces charges in the death of her 2-month-old child in her bed, this time accused of homicide after ignoring doctor's warnings about sharing her bed with her children.

The baby died in July at Jessica Harper's home along Robert Fulton Highway in Peach Bottom, said authorities.

"Jessica Harper, biological mother to the infant  stated that she placed (the infant) in her bed to sleep," said an affidavit of probable cause obtained by NBC affiliate WGAL. "She as well as her 3-year-old daughter slept in that bed with (the infant) in between both of them. When Harper awoke (the baby) was not breathing."

The death was later ruled a homicide caused by the baby suffocating while he slept, said the Lancaster County District Attorneys Office.

An investigation revealed that Harper ignored the advice of multiple medical professionals who warned the 28-year-old mother not to have the baby sleep in bed with her. Just six days before the boy died, a pediatrician warned Harper of the consequences of sharing a bed with her infant son but Harper responded that she was "going to do it anyway," according to the affidavit.

"Harper demonstrated an 'extreme indifference to the value of human life' by ignoring the repeated warnings of several doctors," the affidavit stated.

Charged with criminal homicide, Harper was jailed without bail after her Thursday arrest, said court records.

Court records listed no attorney.

She has a long history of criminal issues in the state of Maryland. One of Harpers other children  also a 2-month-old  died in Cecil County, Maryland, in 2011 of suffocation, said investigators. She pleaded guilty to lesser charges in that case.

Lancaster County children and youth was working on the care of Harper's five living children, reported WGAL.
Someone shot three bicyclists  including two teenagers  from behind as they rode along a North Philadelphia street overnight.



Gunfire rang out just before 1:30 a.m. Friday along N 5th Street near Erie Avenue, said Philadelphia Police Chief Inspector Scott Small.



(Officers) found a 44-year-old male down on the highway suffering from a gunshot wound to his back, said Small.



Medics rushed him to Temple University Hospital where he was listed in stable condition, said Small.



While investigating the initial scene, officers were called to about three blocks away where they found a 17-year-old shot in the back and an 18-year-old shot in the leg. Both teens were also listed in stable condition, said police.



The 17- and 18-year-old, after being shot, were able to ride their bikes to the 17-year-olds house, said Small.



The teens know each other, the 44-year-old was not with then teens, said Small. All three were headed southbound when they heard gunshots from behind.



Investigators didnt immediately reveal who they believe the gunman targeted.



We dont know which of the three, if any of them, were the intended target, said Small.
Health officials in San Diego are teaming up with a Carmel Valley mother who knows first-hand the importance of making sure every child wears a helmet while skateboarding.

Rady Children's Hospital released statistics for pediatric injuries Thursday. Of the patients treated for falls while skateboarding, 80 percent were not wearing a helmet.

That was the case with Paige Hargis and her son, Alex, who was 13 at the time of his injury.

Alex and his friends were just hanging out on the day he was hurt in September 2013.

"He was skateboarding in front of our home," Hargis said.

Usually Alex would grab a helmet on his way out, but this day he didn't, and it proved to have some major consequences.

"He fell off his skateboard, nobody saw exactly how, hit the back of his head, and had a severe skull fracture which then caused him to have seizures where he repeatedly banged the front of his head," she explained.

Alex was immediately knocked unconscious. Once at the hospital, it was determined he needed to be put in a medically-induced coma. For 24 long days, family and friends waited for any sign of hope.

"We were told that he may remain in this vegetative state forever or he could make a full recovery," she said.

Alex started improving; day by day, getting stronger, almost making a full recovery from the nearly traumatic injury. Doctors said the extent of his injuries would've been much less if Alex had been wearing a helmet.

"He would've definitely hit his head. He could've had a concussion but the severity of his accident would not have occurred," Paige explained.

It's just one of many accidental injuries treated each year by the staff at Rady Children's Hospital.

The top threats to children and teenagers are drowning, vehicle crashes, falls and head injuries.

"Out of our skateboarders that come in, an extremely small percentage were wearing helmets, so that's definitely a target population for us," said Renee Douglas, Trauma Program Manager.

Rady Children's continues to add programs to help educate parents and kids on safety, saying even one child's life that's lost is one too many.

Hargis is teaming up with local skateboarding shops to help spread the word on the importance of wearing helmets.

The review of 2015 cases released Thursday shows death by drowning is also a major problem among children in San Diego.

In 2015, seven children died from drowning. Three of those deaths occurred in the month of August.

Rady Childrens Hospital also offers programs to help educate parents and children on the importance of water safety.
San Diego State University (SDSU) has just added another eatery to the lineup in its new mixed-use complex set to debut early next year  this time, a popular breakfast spot.

The Broken Yolk Cafe will open a new location at SDSUs South Campus Plaza development, the university announced Thursday.

This marks the Southern California chains first campus-close location  and the 11th in San Diego County. The SDSU eatery will be a modified version of Broken Yolks fast-casual format, with both hearty traditional dishes and grab-and-go style options for students.

Were adding a stable of hand-held, easy-to-eat-while-running-to-class items, explained Valerie McCartney, Broken Yolk Cafes Vice President of Franchise Development, in a press release.

Instead of a wait staff, this location will offer counter ordering so students can be served quickly, McCartney said.

Typically, Broken Yolk locations are open only for breakfast and lunch. However, the SDSU location will be open later, giving the university's approximately 35,000 students a chance to grab breakfast for dinner  if they so wish.

We'll be serving some additional dinner snacks and entrees not found at other Broken Yolk restaurants so it'll make the SDSU location something special, McCartney added.

Broken Yolk Cafe was founded in 1979 in Pacific Beach and the chain currently operates 19 locations throughout California, Arizona, Illinois and Florida. San Diego County locations include Pacific Beach, of course, the Gaslamp Quarter, Mission Valley and Del Mar, to name a few.

According to SDSU, South Campus Plaza  formerly known as Plaza Linda Verde  is a new, $143 million, mixed-use student housing and retail project on the college campus slated to be completed soon. Construction officially broke ground in November 2014.

The development is located south of the SDSU Transit Center, between Hardy Avenue and Montezuma Road.

SDSU says South Campus Plaza will include housing for more than 600 students who are expected to move into its residence halls during the universitys spring 2017 semester.

The retail space also on site is designed to serve both the campus and surrounding neighborhoods, the university says, creating a pedestrian-friendly destination for shopping, dining and living.

Broken Yolk Cafe joins two other previously announced tenants also opening up shop in South Campus Plaza: a Trader Joes grocery store and Eureka!, a restaurant known for its burgers and American comfort food.

The development will also include other retailers and restaurants, which have yet to be announced. Negotiations with additional tenants are ongoing, SDSU said.

The university says the retail portion of South Campus Plaza will encompass more than 34,000 gross square feet. Customers will be able to park in a structure on site that will include 300 parking spots, according to the university. For more details about South Campus Plaza, click here.
A billionaire businessman from Mexico was convicted Friday on multiple counts of making illegal campaign contributions of more $500,000 in San Diego local elections.

Jose Susumo Azano Matsura, 51, of Guadalajara, Mexico, was convicted of more than 30 charges including conspiracy, campaign finance violations, falsification of records and bribery.

According to federal law, it is illegal for a foreign national to donate to political campaigns in the U.S.

According to court documents, Azano's motive was to develop San Diego's waterfront into a Miami-of-the-West, with condos and a high-end hotel.

Azano's attorney, Michael Wynne, told reporters outside court that he was "very disappointed" with the verdicts and predicted a "win on appeal," even if the case goes all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Ravneet Singh, 44, of Naperville, Illinois, owner of the campaign services company known as ElectionMall Inc., was convicted of four counts including one count of conspiracy, one count of a donation by a foreign national over $25,000 and two counts of falsification of records. Singhs defense attorney, Mike Lipman, said outside federal court that his client was convicted of conspiracy and election tampering.

"Look, you respect the jurys verdict. Its not necessarily something I agree with. And its the beginning of the process. We have post-trial motions. We have appellate issues, and we have sentencing to deal with. And well deal with it. All of it," Lipman told NBC 7.

San Diego lobbyist Marco Polo Cortes, 46, of San Diego was acquitted of four counts, mistrial on three others.

The businessmans son Edward Susumo Azano Hester, 24, of San Diego, was convicted of felony charges associated with a series of illegal campaign contributions and acquitted on several charges related to the falsification of campaign donation records according to the U.S. attorneys office. Jurors could not reach a verdict on several other charges against Hester.

Earlier this month, San Diego County District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis testified that she had two meetings with Azano.

Prosecutors allege Azano contributed to Dumanis' failed mayoral campaign along with campaigns for former Mayor Bob Filner and other candidates.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Schopler told jurors that Azano got his son and others to recruit straw donors to contribute to the Dumanis campaign, then Azano reimbursed the donors.

Dumanis described her first meeting with Azano as a meet-and-greet at the businessman's home in Coronado and the second meeting happened at San Diego County Sheriff Bill Gore's house.

Azano's attorney Michale Wynne said Dumanis' testimony supported their argument that former San Diego Police Detective Ernie Encinas wanted the meetings to happen to help further his own security businesses. Encinas has pleaded guilty.

Prosecutors list 20 instances in which campaign finance records were falsified to send money from Azano to three candidates in local elections.

The businessman was also charged with illegally possessing a firearm, a black Sig Sauer P225 semi-automatic pistol.

Prosecutors said the jury could not reach a verdict on the firearm charge so a mistrial was declared. A status hearing on that count will be held in November.

Ed. Note: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated the verdict for Ravneet Singh. We have corrected the report and regret the error.
A Customs and Border Protection officer let undocumented immigrants into the U.S. in exchange for sexual favors and money, according to the FBI.

Jose Luis Cota, 50, an officer at the San Ysidro Port of Entry, was arrested Wednesday. Cota faces several charges, including destruction, alteration or falsification of records, bribery of public official and receiving bribe by public official.

Miriam Elizabeth Juarez-Herrera, 31, an undocumented immigrant, also was arrested, and charged with smuggling unlawful aliens into the U.S. from Mexico.

Authorities also arrested Gilberto Aguilar-Martinez, 31, a two-time convicted felon and previously deported undocumented immigrant. He faces a single charge of assisting with the alien smuggling operation.

According to a filed complaint, Cota allowed Juarez-Herrera and Aguilar-Martinez and others to enter the country without official authorization on multiple occasions in the past year.

FBI investigators say following the events on Nov. 3, 2015, Nov. 16, 2015, March 15, 2016 and Sept. 7, 2016, large sums of cash were deposited into his bank accounts.

Juarez-Herrera later admitted to smuggling undocumented immigrants through the San Ysidro Port of Entry in an interview with FBI agents, according to the complaint.

In exchange, she told agents, she paid him with monetary and sexual bribes, according to the complaint.

In a statement, CBP said Cota first began with the agency in August 2001. He is on unpaid administrative leave.

"We do not tolerate corruption within our ranks, and we fully cooperate with any criminal or administrative investigations of alleged misconduct by any of our personnel. CBP stresses honor and integrity in every aspect of our mission, and the overwhelming majority of CBP employees and officers perform their duties with honor and distinction, working tirelessly every day to keep our country safe," a statement from the agency says.

On Thursday, Cota, Juerez-Herrera and Aguilar-Martinez were booked into the Metropolitan Correctional Center in San Diego.

At their first appearance in federal court Thursday, the U.S. moved to detain all three due to their risk of flight, according to the FBI. It was not immediately clear if any of the three had attorneys.

The accused will next appear in court for a detention hearing on Sept. 14. A preliminary hearing is scheduled or Sept. 22.
As the leaves begin to turn, the doors will open this fall to some new spots in San Diegos food and drink scene, including an eatery that specializes in sausages, tucked inside a brewery. Eater San Diego shares the buzz on new bites around town.

North Park Beer Co. Launches On-Site Eatery

Mastiff Sausage Company, which runs a popular food truck and is a food hall vendor within Liberty Public Market, has opened a new sit-down, counter service-styled eatery in North Park Beer Co. The menu features its signature housemade sausages and chef-driven seasonal plates, including corn and ricotta ravioli and roasted bone marrow.

Look Inside San Diego's Newest Tiki Bar

The companion piece to the recently reopened Craft & Commerce, a hidden tiki bar called False Idol has debuted in Little Italy. The Polynesian-inspired space, which features a flaming volcano, is serving a drink menu of tiki classics and tropical craft cocktails.

[G] New Tiki Bar Opens at Revamped Craft u0026 Commerce in Little Italy

San Diego's Essential Vegan & Vegetarian Restaurants

Here's a guide to 21 local restaurants proving that meat-free dining can be flavorful and fulfilling. From Mexican and Asian-influenced menus to fast-food and finer dining, plant-based eateries are making a mark on the San Diego dining scene.

The Hake to Reopen in La Jolla, With New Ocean Views

The Hake Kitchen & Bar will reopen this month after a renovation and expansion that features more outdoor seating and a new dining room with stunning ocean views. The Prospect Street restaurant also has a new executive chef, whose menu focuses on seafood and vegetables and takes culinary inspiration from regions around the world, including Mexico, Asia and the Mediterranean.

Sushi Lounge Expands to Point Loma

With locations in Poway and Encinitas, Sushi Lounge has opened a third eatery in the heart of Point Loma's Tunaville neighborhood. The restaurant serves the same menu of small plates, nigiri sushi, sashimi and specialty rolls but has a new expanded bar program featuring craft beer, wine, sake flights and soju cocktails.

Candice Woo is the founding editor of Eater San Diego, a leading source for news about San Diegos restaurant and bar scene. Keep up with the latest Eater San Diego content via Facebook or Twitter, and sign up for Eater San Diegos newsletter here.


A bill introduced by a local Congresswoman would move to honor fallen San Diego Police Officer Jonathan "J.D." De Guzman.

De Guzman, 43, was killed in the line of duty on July 28 when he was shot multiple times point-blank during a traffic stop by a man now charged in his death.

De Guzman's partner Officer Wade Irwin was injured in the attack.

The bill, authored by Congresswoman Susan Davis and co-sponsored by the entire San Diego congressional delegation, would designate the postal facility on Kuhn Drive in Chula Vista as the "Jonathan 'J.D.' De Guzman Post Office Building." The post office is near where De Guzman lived.

"Officer De Guzman is no longer with us but we can ensure that his name lives on," said Davis in a statement. "He made the ultimate sacrifice in protecting our community.

Davis recently met with the fallen officer's family to offer her condolences. Her district includes central San Diego, La Mesa, Lemon Grove, Spring Valley and parts of El Cajon and Chula Vista.

"This bill will mean that future generations will know and understand the commitment Officer De Guzman and all our law enforcement officers make on behalf of San Diegans," Davis said in a statement.
A cache of high-powered firearms  including AR-15 assault rifles  were seized from a Southern California home this week, U.S. Border Patrol officials confirmed.

Border Patrol officials said four people were arrested during the seizure, which happened Wednesday during a search warrant at a home in Oxnard, California.

There, agents and other law enforcement officers with Los Angeles agencies discovered 13 firearms, including 10 AR-15 assault rifles, one semi-automatic center-fire rifle, one shotgun, one .50 caliber rifle, numerous rounds of ammunition and $10,000 in illicit money, officials said.

A woman and three men  all Mexican nationals between 23 and 35 years old  were arrested at the home for violating assault weapon possession laws. Agents determined that one of the suspects was in the U.S. illegally.

U.S. Border Patrol agents said the search at the home was the culmination of an investigator linked to a Ford F-150 truck that agents suspected was involved in cross-border smuggling activity. The truck was parked at the home raided by law enforcement.

The suspects were detained at a jail in Ventura County and their cases are being reviewing by the Ventura County District Attorneys Office, Border Patrol officials said Friday.

No further details were released.
A rescue truck used in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, made its first appearance in San Diego Thursday morning.

FDNY Rescue 5 debuted at the Toby Wells Family YMCA in Kearny Mesa as part of The Remembrance Rescue Projects nationwide Coast to Coast Remembrance Tour.

The Remembrance Rescue Project restored Rescue 5 so it could serve as an educational tool, memorial and historical artifact. The restoration project was geared toward teaching children about the events of Sept. 11 and what the day means to fire service members across the country.

"The rig behind me is designed to educate," San Diego Fire Department Fire Chief Brian Fennessy said. "Not just as a remembrance piece, but to educate us on why it's important, why remembering is important, and why what took place [on Sept. 11, 2001] and how the world has changed since then is important."

Rescue 5 will make stops at several YMCA branches and other locations throughout San Diego until the Remembrance Tour moves north to Los Angeles in November.

Eleven New York City Fire Department firefighters from Rescue 5 lost their lives during rescue efforts at the World Trade Center. The truck remained in service in New York City until it became part of the Remembrance Rescue Project in 2001.

The Remembrance Rescue Project is a nonprofit organization created by firefighters to restore and preserve FDNY Rescue 4 and Rescue 5, and works with fire departments nationwide to host the Rescues for memorials, and educational and remembrance events.
Carlsbad police have arrested two people they believe conspired and planned the late-night shooting of a 45-year-old victim off Avenida Soledad.

Diana Lovejoy, 43, and Weldon McDavid Jr., 49, were arrested Thursday near their homes in Carlsbad and Fallbrook, respectively, police said. They were charged with Attempted Murder, Conspiracy, Assault with a Deadly Weapon and Assault with Great Bodily Injury.

Investigators say the pair conspired and planned the shooting, which happened in early September.

Authorities say McDavid, an employee at a local shooting range in Oceanside where the victim reportedly took lessons, called the victim and arranged a meeting on the access road off Avenida Soledad the night of the shooting.

When the victim arrived, McDavid shot at the victim from the bushes and hit him once in the side, police say. He then fled.

The victim, from San Marcos, suffered a gunshot wound to the side and was taken to a local hospital, according to police.

The shooting prompted authorities to block off more than a mile of Rancho Santa Fe Road from northbound Camino Junipero to southbound Melrose Drive just before midnight. SWAT officers searched the area and a reverse 911 call went out advising residents to stay in their homes.

Lovejoy, also charged in the shooting, is the estranged spouse of the victim, police say.

Police are still piecing together why Lovejoy and McDavid conspired to shoot the victim, as well as the connection between the two suspects, said Chief Neil Gallucci.

We would like to thank the community for their support and for following the reverse 911 instructions the evening of the incident. We understand how frightening it must have been to learn what had occurred in the community, said Gallucci in a statement. I would also like to thank the investigators for working around the clock to identify and arrest these two suspects.

Gallucci said the incident appears to be specific to the individuals and officials do not believe there are outstanding suspects.
Animal welfare groups, industry officials and political leaders are renewing their calls for stricter federal oversight of thoroughbred horse racing, after a series of reports by the News4 I-Team.

Supporters of two different pieces of legislation have cited the I-Teams findings in championing their proposals for change.

The I-Team investigation in August revealed at least 160 horse deaths at the Charles Town Races track in West Virginia since 2014. Though the rate of horse deaths at Charles Town is nearly average the rate of thoroughbred breakdowns nationwide, the investigation also detailed dozens of positive drug tests by horses at Charles Town and an ongoing dispute over the positioning of race stewards at the track by the West Virginia Racing Commission.

The I-Teams report raises questions about whether the feds should order the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency to provide nationwide oversight of the use of medications in the industry, U.S. Humane Society Chief Executive Officer Wayne Pacelle said.

Theres a crisis of confidence, he said. All of the different racing jurisdictions have different rules, but its national industry.

The Humane Society is part of a coalition advocating for a new federal law. The coalition includes former Maryland Jockey Club Chief Executive Officer Joe DeFrancis, who said the industry needs a national governing body.

That really is the essence of the problem, DeFrancis said. (The rules) of West Virginia are different from Maryland, which in turn are different from Pennsylvania, which in turn are different from New Jersey.

The congressional bill providing authority to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, House Resolution 3084, was formally introduced in 2015. In a statement to News4, the National Horsemens Benevolent and Protective Association was critical of the proposal.

The path to national medication uniformity in horse racing is not through an additional layer of bureaucracy, but rather working together through appropriate research, the statement said.

Drug tests nationwide show only a small percentage of violations, according to the organization, and the industry is already working on uniform standards.

Rules will rapidly be adopted by regulators across all jurisdictions, negating the need for federal legislation, the statement said.

Other industry organizations have not yet taken firm positions on the bill.

In a statement to News4, National Throughbred Racing Association President Alex Waldrop said, The NTRA also wants consistent, first-rate medication regulation nationwide, but our members are not in agreement regarding how to accomplish these important goals, so we are working with all parties to find common ground. 

The American Association of Equine Practitioners said, (The organization) has long-supported uniformity of medication regulation in horse racing, and we do not oppose a single governing body for the sport. However, the regulatory structure of such a governing body is very important.

Rep. Joe Pitts (R-Pa.) said the findings of the I-Teams report were troubling.

The animals are being harmed and killed, he said. The jockeys are being maimed. It is not acceptable.

Pitts has sponsored a separate bill in Congress to outlaw the use of race day medications.

Thats the solution, with severe penalties for those who dont abide by those standards, he said.

The 160 deaths reviewed by the I-Team include a freak and tragic incident in December 2014 in which a horse stumbled, lost its jockey, then broke free in the wrong direction, triggering a head-on collision with other thoroughbreds on the track.

An investigation into the incident ordered by the West Virginia Racing Commission recommended changes in safety protocols to prevent future mishaps, including a recommendation that a state racing steward watch future races with binoculars from an outdoor position along an elevated rail above the grandstand. The investigation found the stewards were instead watching the December 2014 race on a TV monitor from inside a glass-enclosed booth when the incident occurred.

The I-Team review of multiple races at Charles Town in the year since the recommendation was issued found stewards are continuing to watch races exclusively from inside the glass-enclosed booth, not out on the railing with binoculars. During 12 races viewed by the I-Team, racing stewards watched the race from the recommended position on the railing zero times.

The stewards would be better positioned to see wrong-way horses and other safety hazards by watching races live along the outdoor rail, Charles Town Races operations manager Erich Zimny said.

Their employees are not doing what was in their initial recommendations, Zimny said. We do feel there is some risk by them not (watching on the rail), but all we can do is bring it to the racing commission's attention.

When asked why the Racing Commission hasnt ordered the stewards to move outside to a position on the rail, a spokeswoman for the West Virginia Racing Commission said, Having constant communication with the other two stewards reduces reaction time in the event there is a problem on the track. This is delayed if a steward is outside on the rail viewing the race.

Clearly in that incident there were a number of failures that allowed the tragic situation to play out, Pacelle said. They should have taken steps to fix that problem, and it's disappointing that they haven't done so."
A security guard patrolling a southeast Washington neighborhood was shot and killed Thursday night.

According to police, 29-year-old Evan Williams of Upper Marlboro was driving to his job site when he was shot in the 4000 block of 3rd Street SE Thursday night. A bullet entered through the passenger side window, nearly struck his patrol partner in the passenger's seat and struck Williams in the neck, sources said.

Williams drove to a nearby fire station, then got out of the car and collapsed. His partner sought help.

Williams was taken to a hospital but died before arriving.

Police do not believe Williams was targeted.

Another man who was shot during the same incident drove himself to an area hospital. He is expected to OK.

No arrests have been made at this time.

Residents in the neighborhood say there are shooting almost every night.

"Anytime you have security hitting the ground, that's a problem," one resident said.
The 5-month-old baby who died after a driver crashed into his stroller will be laid to rest Friday.

A funeral for Tristan Schulz will be held in Leesburg, Virginia, Friday morning.

Tristan and his mother, Mindy Schulz, were in a crosswalk on Riverside Parkway in Lansdowne when an SUV driver hit them on Sept. 1.

Tristan died at the hospital. His mother was released from the hospital the next day.

"His smile every morning made every day bright. His sweet face was always alight with laughter or wonder," an obituary for the infant reads.

A teenager, who was driving behind the Jeep SUV, told police he could see the driver was "holding a phone in his left hand, as if he was watching or reading something," court documents said.

The witness also said the Jeep was tailgating the vehicle in front of him, and it appeared the driver was trying to get ahead of the mother with the stroller, speeding up fast as if to go in front of her. As Mindy Schultz crossed with Tristan, the "walk" sign was illuminated, according to the witness.

Charges against the driver are still pending.
A Virginia man stepped up to help a veteran who dreamed of owning his own business but says he lost almost $30,000 to a local company.

Nathan Faison of Landover, Maryland, said he spent his life savings on a mobile smoker so he could start a barbecue business, but almost four years later, Riverbend Smokers and Concession Trailers of Fredericksburg, Virginia, still hadnt delivered the smoker Faison paid them $29,500 to build.

Hours after News4s story about Faison aired, viewers started asking if there was a way to donate. One email in particular caught Faison's interest. Munjeet Singh of Reston offered to donate his competition-level smoker "to help this vet get his business off the ground."

Faison got to meet this very generous man this week. Two complete strangers now are forever joined together for their love of barbecue.

After a quick lesson on how to use it, Faison took the smoker home. He still can't believe it worked out for him.

Because nobody gives you anything in America nowadays, he said.

Riverbends owner told News4 he didnt have to explain why the smoker was never built, and he hasnt returned any of our calls since. His business is no longer advertised online.

I worked so hard for this, Im not going to just let one guy just stop it all, Faison said.

He filed a complaint with Virginias attorney general.
Donald Trump's adviser Rudy Giuliani said the Republican presidential nominee has finally accepted that Barack Obama was born in the United States.

Trump has never publicly apologized or acknowledged that he was wrong in falsely suggesting that Obama was born in another country.

Trump claimed victory when Obama released his full birth certificate in 2011  showing that the president was born in Hawaii.

Giuliani told Chris Matthews on MSNBC Thursday that Trump "believes now that [Obama] was born in the United States."

"I believe it, he believes it, we all believe it," the former New York mayor said. "But it took a long time to get it out."
The United States Consumer Products Safety Commission is urging all consumers who own a Samsung Galaxy Note 7 to power them down and stop charging or using the device a week after the company issued a recall of the smartphone and suspended sales worldwide.

The CPSC warning issued on Friday comes amid mounting reports of lithium-ion batteries in certain Note 7 devices that have resulted in fires.

On Monday, a Florida man said his Galaxy Note 7 that was left charging inside his Jeep ignited a fire and charred the vehicle. Nathan Dornacher, of St. Petersburg, said he was not aware of the recall and urged "everyone to take this recall seriously."

Last Week, Samsung's Note 7s were pulled from shelves in 10 countries, including South Korea and the U.S., just two weeks after the product's launch. Customers who already bought Note 7s will be able to swap them for new smartphones, said Koh Dong-jin, president of Samsung's mobile business.

In the U.S., Samsung said it will let customers downgrade to a Galaxy S7 and refund the price difference.

The recall, the first for the new smartphone though not the first for a battery, comes at a crucial moment in Samsung's mobile business. Apple announced its new iPhone earlier this week and Samsung's mobile division was counting on momentum from the Note 7's strong reviews and higher-than-expected demand.

The company said it has not found a way to tell exactly which phones may endanger users out of the 2.5 million Note 7s already sold globally. It estimated that about 1 in 42,000 units may have a faulty battery.

Consumers who complained publicly said the problem came while the phone was being charged.

U.S. aviation safety officials took the extraordinary step late Thursday of warning airline passengers not to turn on or charge a new-model Samsung smartphone during flights.

The Federal Aviation Administration also warned passengers not to put the Galaxy Note 7 phones in their checked bags, citing "recent incidents and concerns raised by Samsung" about the devices. It is extremely unusual for the FAA to warn passengers about a specific product.

"The ball is in Samsung's court to make this right. Consumers want information about what's going on and peace of mind that this is not going to happen again," said Ramon Llamas, who tracks mobile devices at research firm IDC. "No one wants to wake up at 1, 2 or 3 (in the morning) and find out your smartphone's on fire."

He added that while phone combustions are unusual, "35 instances are 35 too many."

This summer, Samsung ran into a quality-control issue with another smartphone, a niche model called the Galaxy S7 Active. Consumer Reports found that the phone didn't live up to its water-resistance promises. Samsung said that relatively few phones were affected and that it had identified and fixed the manufacturing problem. Samsung said it would replace devices under warranty if it failed, but it declined to let customers swap phones otherwise or to issue a broader recall.

On the Note 7, after complaints surfaced online, Samsung found that a battery cell made by one of its two battery suppliers caused the phone to catch fire. Koh refused to name the supplier.

"There was a tiny problem in the manufacturing process, so it was very difficult to figure out," Koh told reporters at a news conference. "It will cost us so much it makes my heart ache. Nevertheless, the reason we made this decision is because what is most important is customer safety."

Customers' reports of scorched phones prompted Samsung to conduct extra quality controlling tests and delay shipments of the Note 7s this week before the recall.

South Korean high school teacher Park Soo-Jung said she had rushed to buy the new phone, pre-ordering and then activating it on Aug. 19, its official launch date.

The 34-year-old living in the port city of Busan said that she was bruised when she rushed out of bed after her phone burst into flames, filling her bedroom with smoke stinking of chemicals.

She's having second thoughts about buying another newly released device, especially after losing all her personal data stored in the destroyed Note 7, she said.

"If the exploded phone had burned near my head, I would not have been able to write this post," she said in a popular online forum Thursday, where she shared a photo of the scorched Note 7 and described dousing the flames.

China is not affected by the sales suspension. The company said it used a battery made by another supplier for the Note 7s sold in China.
Police responding to an anonymous tip seized more than 30 marijuana plants worth around $80,000 last week.

The plants were discovered on Aug. 31 in a heavily wooded area off Moose Meadow Drive in Fremont, New Hampshire - not far from the Raymond town line.

No arrests have been made, as police are still seeking additional information.

Police told the Union Leader that they have interviewed the property owner, but don't believe he was involved. Anyone with information can call Fremont Police at 603-895-2229.
Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is seeing a lot changes.

According to the Harvard Square Business Association, just in the past eight weeks, five businesses in Harvard Square have closed or moved, including Uno, Fire + Ice and The Tannery. And a total of seven new shops have already opened, or will be opening, in the next several weeks.

Even more changes could be coming soon.

James Williamson has lived in Cambridge for over 40 years. He's against all the changes.

"People are ready to start saying, 'enough,'" expressed Williamson. "We don't want to be a suburban style shopping mall."

Thursday night, dozens of residents and business owners packed the Cambridge Historical Commission public hearing at Cambridge City Hall. Commission members are trying to figure out whether or not to approve Equity Ones proposal to redevelop a couple buildings in Harvard Square, including the building that houses the Curious George store. The changes could displace a number of business owners.

Denise Jillson, Executive Director of the Harvard Square Business Association, attended the public hearing.

"We have found that through this public process, the end product is always better because people really do think about these things in a thoughtful way," Jillson told necn.

"I like the changes, to be honest," said Arley Sanches, who works in Harvard Square. "It gives other businesses to expand and give them a shot.

"I think for the most part, they should keep some things the same," said Cambridge resident Michael Puckering. "It adds to the mystic of Cambridge."

Whatever the Cambridge Historical Commission decides, officials say it will likely take 12 to 18 months before any changes could be made to the buildings in question. Officials say Equity One's proposal will have to be signed off by a couple more committees before it can get an official approval.
Brown University students are returning to classes this semester to find free tampons and sanitary napkins in academic building bathrooms.

The students leading the initiative at the Ivy League school say the products are a necessity, not a luxury - an argument that's being made across the country in efforts to stop taxing feminine hygiene products.

The products will be available in women's, gender inclusive and men's bathrooms in nonresidential buildings. Students wanted to offer the products in all bathrooms to be inclusive of transgender people, said Viet Nguyen, president of the Undergraduate Council of Students.

Nguyen hopes to motivate other universities and student governments to take similar actions to address this issue of equity.

"Why aren't these products treated the same way as other products we hand out, like toilet paper?" he said. "It's a necessity, rather than a luxury, so Brown and other universities should treat them as such."

National Organization for Women President Terry O'Neill said that Brown University has taken a critical step toward ensuring that tampons and sanitary napkins are accessible to all who need them.

"Feminine hygiene products are not a luxury. They're as essential as toilet paper, just ask anyone who has ever struggled to obtain or afford them," she said in a statement. "Students' participation in school should not be hindered by insufficient access to this basic necessity. Universities around the country should follow suit."

Some states and cities are ending their tax on tampons and other feminine hygiene products. State lawmakers in New York voted to repeal the tax this year.

"We were inspired by the conversation about this issue," Nguyen said.

Classes start Wednesday at Brown University. Yuzuka Akasaka, a junior at Brown, said menstruation has been "taboo."

"I think that if we can implement this project, that will add to this conversation and make it more of an accessible topic," she said.

Nguyen said he hopes the university will eventually take over and provide the products for free.

He emailed students Tuesday to announce the change.
A New Hampshire fire department captain has pleaded guilty to prostitution soliciting charges after being caught in a sting operation.

Keene police say Captain Robert Diluzio, 44, plead guilty Friday to prostitution charges and was sentenced to two years probation and ordered to complete an inpatient sexual recovery treatment program.

Authorities say the sting happened July 7, when Keene police arrested a woman for placing an ad for prostitution on backpage.com, and a search of her phone allegedly showed contact with a person using a phone issued to the Keene Fire Department. Search warrants were issued, and police say the evidence collected showed the phone belonged to Diluzio.

He was eventually charged, and pled guilty to the misdemeanor charges Sept. 9.

He has to complete the treatment program by Oct. 1 or he will face a year in jail.
Police in Massachusetts have arrested a New Hampshire sex offender for allegedly exposing himself to a group of Lexington High School students on their way to a soccer practice.

According to Lexington Police, 30-year-old Jacob Mobley-Hall of Manchester exposed himself on a fitness path near the high school on two separate occasions this week.

Mobley-Hall, a registered sex offender in the Granite State, was charged with seven counts total of open and gross, lewd and lascivious behavior.

He was ordered to be held on $5,000 bail after facing a judge Friday in Concord District Court.

Officers received multiple calls around 2:45 p.m. for the exposure and say the incident occurred on a fitness path near the high school on Thursday afternoon.

There were reports of another incident on Wednesday, and officers later determined Mobley-Hall was responsible for that incident as well.

"I think it's horrifying," Karen Griffiths of Lexington said. "I think we know why he was here, but it would be nice if something could be done about it."

Mobley-Hall was previously charged with three other counts of indecent exposure and lewdness, two in 2009 and one in 2008. Prosecutors said he served prison time, but was released on good behavior.

"He is now in Massachusetts, in Lexington where he does not live, wandering around exposing himself to young girls under the age of 18. He admitted to that," Middlesex Assistant District Attorney Ashlee Mastrangelo said.

In a statement, the superintendent says affected students are being provided support and are continuing to work with police.
Police in Manchester, New Hampshire, say they've arrested the right man suspected of a violent convenience store robbery.

Thirty-year-old Jason Crawford of Manchester was arrested and charged with robbery and first degree assault for the violent crime at Han's Food Mart on Maple Street this week after another man was arrested on Thursday for the same crime.

Charges against the other man, Thomas Ford Jr., have been dropped in connection with this incident; however, Manchester police say he'll still have to answer for charges in connection with outstanding warrants.

Manchester police say after Ford's arrest Thursday morning, unspecified new information came to light that led to Crawford's arrest.

He was placed into police custody after a violent struggle with a police detective, according to police. He's also been charged with felony level resisting arrest.

It's unclear if Crawford has an attorney or when he'll be arraigned.
Connecticut state police said Friday that the death a man found in his Willimantic apartment on Wednesday was a homicide.

Investigators initially listed William Alvarado's death as suspicious.

Police were called to the apartment complex at 621 Valley Street Wednesday after Alvarado, 73, was found dead in his apartment.

On Wednesday, Alvarado's family called his death a murder and asked anyone with information to come forward.

"William was just a sweet, generous, kind person who didn't deserve to die the way he died," Melissa Lee, Alvarado's niece, said. "Especially in his own home, where you should feel safe."

Family members said three people were brought in for questioning and released.

Anyone with information that could be useful to investigators is asked to call state police at 860-896-3230 or text TIP711 to 274637.
A Maine man was arrested after authorities say he tried to cross into Canada without legal authorization on an air mattress, according to multiple reports.

Border patrol officials detained 25-year-old John Michael Bennett after he took an inflatable mattress across the St. Croix River to New Brunswick Wednesday, the Portland Press Herald reports.

Bennett was reportedly found walking down a road, dripping wet.

The Calais resident plead guilty Thursday to crossing into Canada illegally. He says he was motivated by love and that he was trying to protect his pregnant fiancee from a violent ex-boyfriend.

Bennett attempted to travel across to St. Stephen, New Brunswick, from Maine legally Wednesday, but was turned away because of a pending criminal mischief charge in Calais, the Press Herald reports. He then returned to the U.S., bought a mattress and paddle at Wal-Mart and set sail across the river.

According to the Press Herald, Bennett was sentenced to two months in a Canadian jail and will be deported when he is freed.
After a decade, an annual walk and 5K run that raises awareness and money to combat sexual violence in the Burlington, Vermont area is coming to a conclusion.

Laura's March is named for Laura Winterbottom, a 31-year-old children's art teacher and avid hiker who was kidnapped, raped, and murdered by a total stranger in downtown Burlington in 2005.

"I think about Laura all the time," Laura's dad, Ned Winterbottom, told necn Friday. "It's as if somebody tore your arm off your shoulder. It would hurt a hell of a lot. And after a while you'd learn to cope without your arm. But it would still be gone. And you'd be aware it's gone."

Winterbottom's killer, Gerald Montgomery, is now serving a more than 40-year prison sentence.

Ned Winterbottom wants Vermonters to remember the upbeat, community-minded daughter he adored.

Since Laura's death, her family turned grief into action. The Winterbottoms manage a foundation, called the Laura Kate Winterbottom Memorial Fund, and organize an annual walk called Laura's March. The march has raised tens of thousands of dollars for Burlington-area non-profits.

The tenth Laura's March is this weekend, and it will be the final one as the city has known it, Winterbottom said.

"The foundation is going to still stay in existence," he noted. "The mission's not going to change. We're still going to be here, we're just not going to be in the same venue."

Ned Winterbottom said his family will soon start charting new ways to back kids' education causes and efforts to combat sexual violence and support survivors.

The Burlington non-profit HOPE Works, which aims to end sexual violence through healing, outreach, prevention and empowerment, used its grants from the Laura Kate Winterbottom Memorial Fund to enhance clinical therapy services for survivors.

"Many of our programs have grown tremendously as a result of being a part of this amazing community event," Cathleen Barkley, the executive director of HOPE Works, said of Laura's March.

Laura's March has also benefited other area non-profits, including the Pride Center of Vermont, which works to advance the health, safety, and community of LGBTQ Vermonters.

"Sexual violence is often such an invisible and pervasive problem," said Julia Berberan, the anti-violence coordinator at SafeSpace, a division of the Pride Center of Vermont. "Doing marches like Laura's March definitely helps bring more awareness."

The final Laura's March steps off at 10 a.m. Saturday from Burlington's Oakledge Park. Registration is at 9 a.m., and is open to anyone who wants to speak up against sexual violence, Ned Winterbottom said.
One person was killed after a shooting took place in Worcester, Massachusetts late Thursday night.

According to the Worcester Police Department, officers responded to the area of 3 Loring Street for a report of gunshots.

While en route, officers were flagged down by a group of people outside Gallagher's Pub on West Boylston Street.

Officers noticed a 21-year-old male on the ground suffering from multiple gunshot wounds to his legs, abdomen, and neck.

He was given first aid treatment and was transported to a local hospital by paramedics.

He was pronounced dead shortly after arriving at the hospital.

There was a second victim, a 20-year-old male, who suffered a gunshot wound to the leg.

He was also transported and treated for non-life threatening injuries.

The names of the victims are being withheld pending notification.

The investigation is active and ongoing.
Police in Maine say snow blower burglars hit a small business in Brunswick over Labor Day weekend, stealing $30,000 in equipment.

Surveillance footage shows a U-Haul truck pulling up to the Chad Little Outdoor Equipment store on Pleasant Street a few minutes before 11 p.m. Sunday. After an hour, the suspects allegedly left the store with 11 snowblowers, each costing several thousand dollars.

"They knew what they were taking," said sales manager Nate Curtis. "They pushed the smaller ones aside and lugged the heavier ones."

The U-Haul truck had some distinguishing features: a state of Idaho and zebra were on its side.

Police are hoping someone spotted the truck, and will help them find the thieves.

"They take so many [snow blowers] in such a short period of time, it's usually something well-organized and planned, and usually someone from further away," said Brunswick Police Commander Mark Waltz.

While the truck was distinctive  it could be difficult to track down. It was parked on the side of the building, out of sight of the security cameras. As it pulled out onto Pleasant Street, the driver kept the brake lights on, creating a glare on camera.

"It's frustrating because you see it [on camera] but it's not good enough to get a plate number or U-Haul number of something of that nature," said Curtis.

The car was last seen late Sunday night heading in the direction of I-295 in Brunswick.
Thursday marked the 50th birthday of a TV and film institution, "Star Trek," and was met with far more joy and happiness than most 50th birthdays are.

What started as a struggling TV series that limped along for three years has become an institution and part of our culture, with terms, references, and catchphrases now a regular part of our lives.

At the time of its creation, science fiction was more optimistic than it is today. It tried to envision a better future where our problems were solved.

Even so, it took some serious brass to put an Asian, Russian, and black woman on the bridge of that ship in 1966. Creator Gene Roddenberry wanted to go one further and make the second-in-command a woman but that was a bridge too far, which paved the way for Spock.

Its technology envisioned many devices we have today: wearable communications, real-time video chat, hand-held medical scanners, and real-time language translation. When something new emerges that bears any resemblance to a Trek technology, like Skype's real time language translator, the analogy to Trek is automatic.

But it was the social comment of Trek that set it apart. Unfortunately, that's what made it boring.

Roddenberry's optimism of the 60s gave way to a foolish policy decision in the '80s when The Next Generation hit the TV airwaves.

In 1995, I had the good fortune of spending time with John De Lancie, "Q" from TNG. He told me that Gene had a policy that the main characters were not to have any type of personality flaws that hindered them.

They were essentially to be perfect. He felt this "bound the hands," as he put it, of the actors because it gave them nothing to overcome.

At that moment I understood why I never liked TNG  his appearances notwithstanding, Q made things fun  but latched on to "Deep Space Nine" in a big way.

Both Ars Technica and IO9 have written wonderful tributes to DS9, but I want to add my own two cents. DS9 was created after Roddenberry died in 1991 and it threw out that requirement of perfection. The result was a far more realistic, honest, and exciting Star Trek than TNG, even if it was set on a space station.

TNG was an utterly lifeless word devoid of any excitement. It was a boring future I did not want to live to see because it seemed like they had nothing to overcome.

Agent Smith almost got it right in "The Matrix" when he said humans define themselves by misery and suffering. No, we define ourselves by the misery and suffering we have overcome.

In the TNG world, there was nothing to overcome. Life had no challenges. It was BORING.

In TNG, they would show up at any random planet and it was always the same: one race, one species, one language, one culture. Look at our planet. Are we all one culture or language worldwide? Of course not. DS9 had people at each other's throats, which sadly is how it often is.

Where Picard usually had easy decisions and always made the right one, Ben Sisko was faced with no-win situations and occasionally screwed up. He engaged in an outright fraud to manipulate the Romulans into joining the Federation in the war against the Dominion and made no apologies for it.

He did what he thought was right and let the chips fall where they may. Where Picard fixed every problem with a stern lecture, Sisko punched people, including Q.

DS9 had as a backdrop a recent war and massacre of the Bajoran people by the Cardassians in a barely-disguised reference to the Jewish Holocaust. The original series and TNG never touched the subject of religion because Roddenberry was an atheist, but DS9 had no problems with that.

Just as their faith sustained many Jews in the Holocaust, the Bajorans had their religion to sustain them through the war with the Cardassians. The wormhole outside of DS9 was considered a celestial temple where their deities, The Prophets, resided. In the end, Sisko would join The Prophets in the temple, marking the first and only time a Star Fleet captain became a god.

It also led to one of the saddest images ever in the series, with his son staring forlornly out a portal at the wormhole, knowing his father was in there but they could not communicate. Man was that a painful ending.

What made DS9 so great was it was human, full of human failings. Every character in DS9 had a problem or flaw of one sort or other that made them realistic, something Roddenberry would never have allowed.

Some were hidden, like Dr. Bashir's genetic engineering, while others were there for all to see, such as Quark's larceny or Worf's painful disconnection from the Klingon society he loved so much.

Star Fleet proved to be deeply flawed as well when it was uncovered late in the series that it had engaged in a form of genocide to kill the shapeshifters that were leading the Dominion war. It was Odo, cast out previously from his people, who returned to save them from annihilation.

I also have to point out that DS9 had three of the greatest villains (one of them debatable) in the series history. Please fanboys, spare me your support for Khan. He is the most overrated of the Trek villains, outwitted by Kirk at every single instance. Scenery chewing does not make you an effective bad guy, and that's all Ricardo Montalban did.

Gul Dukat easily wins as the most vile and dangerous character the Trek universe has ever seen, simply for the lengths he's willing to go through to achieve his vicious goals. Lots of credit has to go to the actor Mark Alaimo for adding so much menace to the character, from his voice to his stare to his freakish neck. Dukat was an utterly evil bastard and you knew it from the start, no matter how innocent he acted.

Kai Winn is the near perfect villain because she is the enemy within, a Bajoran holy person who proves a complete hypocrite and traitor. It's funny she was played by Louise Fletcher, because Fletcher's most celebrated role is of Nurse Ratched in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," and just like in that movie, we all cheered when she finally got what she had coming in the end.

Finally, there was Garak. Some may debate whether he was a villain or anti-hero. Regardless, he was the most dangerous tailor ever seen on TV. He could smile to your face and stab you in the back at the same time. He was complicated, had no qualms about playing dirty and wound up insane at the end. DS9 was the least focused on technology of the shows, but the most human despite all of its aliens.

If anyone should be the caretaker of the Trek legacy today it should be Ron Moore, the executive producer of DS9 and creator of the "Battlestar Galactica" reboot, not J.J. Abrams.

Now, where's my damn holosuite with Leeta in it?
Officials stated that an operation to find and rescue survivors trapped under the debris has concluded.
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As some of our readers may remember from previous articles, there was a long-standing custom in parts of Croatia that the Roman Rite be celebrated in the Croatian recension of Old Church Slavonic, rather than in Latin. Shawn Tribe published an article about the Glagolitic Missal, as it was called, from the ancient script originally created for the Slavic languages, back in 2011. Recently, a Mass was celebrated according to this Missal for the first time in 50 years in Zagreb; we are grateful to one of the faithful who were present for providing us with this account of it.



The lighting of the Sanctus candle

Let me start with a brief introduction. The current situation concerning the Extraordinary Form in Croatia is that there is not a single diocesan Mass available anywhere in the country. The only regular Sunday Mass was available from February 2011 to October 2014 , when the priest assigned by the Archdiocese of Zagreb suddenly died. So now, we, theof Zagreb, the capitol of Croatia, have been without a priest for almost two years, so we have to rely on the generosity and availability of the visiting priests to at least have occasional Masses. Such was the recent case when a priest from the Institute of the Good Shepherd, Fr. Mateusz Markiewicz, currently stationed in Bordeaux, was on a three day long visit in Zagreb.During those three days, Father Markiewicz celebrated the Traditional Mass in the church of St. Martin. For the first two days, these were Latin Masses, but on the third day, we had a Low Glagolitic Mass, a first public Mass of its kind in Croatia after approximately 50 years. It was a votive Mass of St. Joseph, the patron of Croatia, and also of our local ordinary, Cardinal Josip Bozanic. The Mass was celebrated from the so-called Vajs Missal (Missale Romanum Slavonico Idiomate), the last printed Glagolitic Missal from 1927, written in the Croatian recension of Church Slavonic. This Missal was transliterated to Latin script, unlike the previous Glagolitic missals, see other examples here: http://www.croatianhistory.net/etf/parcic_misal.html As a side note, the first printed Croatian book was a Missale Romanum Glagolitice dating from 1483. You can find the digitized version here: http://dk.nsk.hr/stara_knjiga/NSK_SK_ID01/ The copy of the Vajs Missal we used was purchased recently from the United States by the society Benedictus, the Croatian chapter of the Una Voce Federation. As the celebrating priest is a Slav, he had no problem in reading the Church Slavonic or Croatian. Here is a short clip of the prayers at the foot of the altar.As a gift from a local priest, we also had the Church Slavonic altar cards. A small curiosity - it was not unusual in southern parts of Croatia along the coast of Dalmatia, to have two-sided altar cards, one side containing the Latin text and the opposite side the Church Slavonic  here is an example of the Church Slavonic side from a church in Split.Unlike the southern parts of Croatia, the Glagolitic Mass was not something usual in northern Croatia, Zagreb included. However, it was regularly celebrated in the 20th century by the Zagreb Third Order Franciscans (TOR). A common name for them in Croatia was Popi glagoljasi, or Glagolitic friars/fathers). The Blessed Cardinal Aloysius Stepinac celebrated a Glagolitic Mass in 1942, during the opening of a new TOR parish in Zagreb.Sadly the TOR friars completely abandoned the Glagolitic Mass, a tradition that lasted over thousand years, after the Second Vatican Council. Nevertheless, a big part of our Glagolitic legacy, for instance praying the old Breviary, was preserved on some islands in Dalmatia, especially in the Zadar Archdiocese. You can hear the examples of the ancient Glagolitic chant still used today on the island of Iz here:or here (singing of Vespers):There are plans for celebrating a sung Mass with the Glagolitic chant in Croatia for the next year, so we will keep you informed. We sincerely hope that this Mass in Zagreb will serve as an encouragement for priests in Croatia, especially the younger ones, to learn the old rite, and to embrace the ancient Glagolitic legacy passed to us from the Apostles of Slavs, the saintly brothers Cyril and Methodius. A fun fact to end with  one of the oldest monuments of the Croatian language is the Baska tablet, dating from around 1100, who has an inscription in the Croatian recension of the Church Slavonic language. The tablet itself is part of a, or a partition that separated the sanctuary from the nave, so this remains one of the few communion rails that actually survived the numerous renovations following the Second Vatican Council.(Parts of this article have been translated into English from a report originally published on www.tradicionalnamisa.com
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Champaign, IL (61820)

Today

Partly cloudy early followed by cloudy skies overnight. Slight chance of a rain shower. Low near 45F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy early followed by cloudy skies overnight. Slight chance of a rain shower. Low near 45F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph.
NOTICE: This Consumer Medicine Information (CMI) is intended for persons living in Australia.

Consumer Medicine Information (CMI) summary The full CMI on the next page has more details. If you are worried about using this medicine, speak to your doctor or pharmacist. This medicine is new or being used differently. Please report side effects. See the full CMI for further details.

Why am I using TALTZ?

TALTZ contains the active ingredient ixekizumab. TALTZ is used to treat plaque psoriasis, psoriatic arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis (also known as radiographic axial spondyloarthritis) and non-radiographic axial spondyloarthritis. For more information, see Section 1. Why am I using TALTZ? in the full CMI.

What should I know before I use TALTZ?

Do not use if you have ever had an allergic reaction to TALTZ or any of the ingredients listed at the end of the CMI. Talk to your doctor if you have any other medical conditions, take any other medicines, or are pregnant or plan to become pregnant or are breastfeeding. For more information, see Section 2. What should I know before I use TALTZ? in the full CMI.

What if I am taking other medicines?

Some medicines may interfere with TALTZ and affect how it works. A list of these medicines is in Section 3. What if I am taking other medicines? in the full CMI.

How do I use TALTZ?

TALTZ is given as an injection under your skin, known as a subcutaneous injection. Your first dose will be given by a doctor, nurse or pharmacist. Each autoinjector or syringe contains one dose of TALTZ (80mg). The first dose of TALTZ for plaque psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis is 160 mg (two 80mg injections). The dose of TALTZ for radiographic and non-radiographic axial spondyloarthritis is 80 mg (one injection). More instructions can be found in Section 4. How do I use TALTZ? in the full CMI.

What should I know while using TALTZ?

Things you should do Remind any doctor, dentist or pharmacist you visit that you are using TALTZ. Keep all of your doctor's appointments so that your progress can be checked. If you need to get vaccinated, tell your doctor you are taking TALTZ before you have the vaccination. Things you should not do Do not stop using TALTZ unless your doctor tells you to. Do not use TALTZ if you think it has been frozen or exposed to excessive heat. Do not use TALTZ if you notice that the autoinjector or syringe is damaged, or the medicine is cloudy, distinctly brown or has particles in it. Looking after your medicine TALTZ autoinjector or syringe is single use only. Keep your unused TALTZ autoinjector or syringe in a fridge between 2C to 8C. Do not freeze or shake. Keep TALTZ in the original package in order to protect it from light. For more information, see Section 5. What should I know while using TALTZ? in the full CMI.

Are there any side effects?

Side effects include injection site reactions (e.g. red skin or pain); stomach pain or diarrhoea due to inflammatory bowel disease; upper respiratory tract infections with symptoms such as sore throat and stuffy nose. More serious side effects include allergic reactions; severe itching of the skin, with red rash or raised bumps. For more information, including what to do if you have any side effects, see Section 6. Are there any side effects? in the full CMI. This medicine is subject to additional monitoring. This will allow quick identification of new safety information. You can help by reporting any side effects you may get. You can report side effects to your doctor, or directly at www.tga.gov.au/reporting-problems

Why am I using TALTZ?

TALTZ contains the active ingredient ixekizumab. Ixekizumab is a monoclonal antibody. Monoclonal antibodies are proteins that recognise and bind specifically to certain proteins in the body. TALTZ belongs to a group of medicines called interleukin (IL) inhibitors. TALTZ works by neutralising the activity of the protein called IL-17A, which is present in high levels in psoriasis. TALTZ is used to treat: plaque psoriasis psoriatic arthritis ankylosing spondylitis (also known as radiographic axial spondyloarthritis) non-radiographic axial spondyloarthritis. Plaque psoriasis is a skin condition caused by inflammation affecting the skin. TALTZ reduces inflammation and other symptoms of the disease, such as scaling, itching and pain. TALTZ is used in adult patients with moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis who are candidates for systemic therapy or phototherapy. Psoriasis arthritis is an inflammatory disease of the joints, often accompanied by psoriasis. You will first be given other medicines to treat psoriasis arthritis but may be given TALTZ if you do not respond well to these medicines. TALTZ can be used alone or with other medicines, such as methotrexate. Axial spondyloarthritis Ankylosing spondyloarthritis (radiographic axial spondyloarthritis) is an inflammatory disease primarily affecting the spine which causes inflammation of the sacroiliac and spinal joints. This condition is visible with X-rays. Non-radiographic axial spondyloarthritis is an inflammatory disease primarily affecting the spine which causes inflammation of the sacroiliac and spinal joints. This condition is not visible with X-rays.

What should I know before I use TALTZ?

Warnings

Do not use TALTZ if: you are allergic to ixekizumab, or any of the ingredients listed at the end of this leaflet. Always check the ingredients to make sure you can use this medicine if the product appears cloudy, discoloured, or contains particles if the packaging is torn or shows signs of tampering.

Check with your doctor if you: currently have an infection or have long-term or repeated infections have tuberculosis. You may be tested for tuberculosis before you receive treatment with TALTZ have ulcerative colitis or Crohn's disease are receiving any other treatment for psoriasis, such as immunosuppressant or phototherapy with ultraviolet (UV) light have recently had a vaccination or if you are due to have a vaccination during treatment with TALTZ take any medicines for any other condition. During treatment, you may be at risk of developing certain side effects. It is important you understand these risks and how to monitor for them. See additional information under Section 6. Are there any side effects

Vaccination Tell your doctor about your vaccination history. Live vaccines cannot be used while you are on TALTZ. You should consider completing all the immunisation required for your age group before starting on TALTZ.

Pregnancy and breastfeeding Check with your doctor if you are pregnant or intend to become pregnant. The effects of TALTZ in pregnant women are not known. Talk to your doctor if you are breastfeeding or intend to breastfeed. It is not known if TALTZ is excreted in breastmilk.

Use in children TALTZ has not been studied in patients under 18 years of age.

Use in elderly TALTZ may be used in elderly patients aged 65 years and over. This medicine is not addictive.

What if I am taking other medicines?

Tell your doctor or pharmacist if you are taking any other medicines, including any medicines, vitamins or supplements that you buy without a prescription from your pharmacy, supermarket or health food shop. Tell your doctor, nurse or pharmacist if you have recently had or are due to have a vaccination. You should not be given certain types of vaccines while using TALTZ. Check with your doctor or pharmacist if you are not sure about what medicines, vitamins or supplements you are taking and if these affect TALTZ.

How do I use TALTZ?

TALTZ is given as an injection under your skin, known as subcutaneous injection. You and your doctor, nurse or pharmacist should decide if you should inject TALTZ yourself. Your first dose will be given by a doctor, nurse or pharmacist. It is important not to try to inject yourself until you have been trained by a doctor, nurse or pharmacist. A caregiver may also give you your TALTZ injection after proper training.

How much to use Each autoinjector or syringe contains one dose of TALTZ (80 mg). Plaque psoriasis: the first dose of TALTZ for plaque psoriasis is 160 mg (two 80 mg injections), followed by 80 mg (one injection) at weeks 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12 after 12 weeks, your treatment will continue at 80 mg (one injection) every 4 weeks. Psoriatic arthritis: the first dose of TALTZ for psoriatic arthritis is 160 mg (two 80 mg injections), followed by 80 mg (one injection) every 4 weeks if you have psoriatic arthritis with moderate to severe psoriasis, your first dose of TALTZ is 160 mg (two 80 mg injections), followed by 80 mg (one injection) at weeks 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12 after 12 weeks, your treatment will continue as 80 mg (one injection) every 4 weeks. Axial spondyloarthritis (radiographic and non-radiographic): the dose of TALTZ for axial spondyloarthritis is 80 mg (one injection) every 4 weeks. You should inject the whole contents of the single use autoinjector or syringe.

When to use TALTZ TALTZ is for long-term treatment. Your doctor, nurse or pharmacist will regularly monitor your condition to check that the treatment is having the desired effect. Do not stop TALTZ just because you feel better. It is important that you do not stop using TALTZ unless your doctor tells you. It is not dangerous to stop using TALTZ. However, if you stop, your psoriasis symptoms may come back.

How to use TALTZ Read the instructions for use for the autoinjector or syringe carefully before using TALTZ.

If you forget to use TALTZ If you have forgotten to inject a dose of TALTZ, inject the dose as soon as you remember, then talk to your doctor to discuss when you should inject the next dose.

If you use too much TALTZ If you think that you have accidentally injected more TALTZ than you should, or sooner than according to your doctor prescription, you may need urgent medical attention. You should immediately: phone the Poisons Information Centre

(by calling 13 11 26), or contact your doctor, or go to the Emergency Department at your nearest hospital. You should do this even if there are no signs of discomfort or poisoning.

What should I know while using TALTZ?

Things you should do Keep all of your doctor's appointments so that your progress can be checked. Your doctor will do tests from time to time to make sure TALTZ is working and to prevent unwanted side effects. If you need to get vaccinated, tell your doctor you are taking TALTZ before you have the vaccination. You should not be given a live vaccination while being treated with TALTZ. Remind any doctor, dentist or pharmacist you visit that you are using TALTZ. While you are using TALTZ, tell your doctor or pharmacist before you start any new medicine. Tell your doctor if you become pregnant or plan to breastfeed while using TALTZ.

Things you should not do Do not use the medicine if you think it has been frozen or exposed to excessive heat. It may not work as well. Do not use the medicine if you notice that the autoinjector or syringe is damaged, or the medicine is cloudy, distinctly brown or has particles in it. Do not give your TALTZ to anyone else, even if they have the same condition as you. You doctor has prescribed TALTZ specifically for you.

Looking after your medicine A TALTZ autoinjector or syringe is for single use only. Keep your unused TALTZ autoinjector or syringe in a fridge between 2C to 8C. Do not freeze or shake. Do not use if it has been frozen. Keep TALTZ in the original package in order to protect it from light. If needed, the TALTZ autoinjector or syringe can be left out of the refrigerator for up to 5 days at a temperature not above 30C, for example while travelling or transporting it from the pharmacy. Follow the instructions in the carton on how to take care of your medicine properly. Keep TALTZ where young children cannot reach it.

When to discard your medicine After 5 days out of the refrigerator, the TALTZ autoinjector or syringe must be discarded.

Getting rid of any unwanted medicine If you no longer need to use this medicine or it is out of date, take it to any pharmacy for safe disposal. Do not use this medicine after the expiry date. Empty autoinjectors and syringes should be disposed of in a sharps container or similar puncture proof container composed pf hard plastic or glass. Ask your doctor, nurse or pharmacist where you can dispose of the container once it is full.

Are there any side effects?

All medicines can have side effects. If you do experience any side effects, most of them are minor and temporary. However, some side effects may need medical attention. See the information below and, if you need to, ask your doctor or pharmacist if you have any further questions about side effects.

Less serious side effects Less serious side effects What to do Injection site reactions: red skin or pain Infection: upper respiratory tract infections with symptoms such as sore throat and stuffy nose fever, sore throat or mouth ulcers running nose influenza Fungal infection: athlete's foot oral thrush Oropharyngeal related: pain in the back of the throat Eye related: discharge from the eye with itching, redness and swelling Gastrointestinal: nausea (feeling sick) stomach pain or diarrhoea due to inflammatory bowel disease (including ulcerative colitis or Crohn's disease)* Speak to your doctor if you have any of these less serious side effects and they worry you. *New cases of inflammatory bowel disease or "flare-ups" can happen with TALTZ and can sometimes be serious. If you have inflammatory bowel disease (ulcerative colitis or Crohn's disease), tell your doctor if you have worsening symptoms during treatment, or develop new symptoms such as stomach pain or diarrhoea.

Serious side effects Serious side effects What to do Signs of serious allergic reaction - signs may include: difficulty in breathing or swallowing swelling of the face, lips, tongue or throat severe itching of the skin, with red rash or raised bumps, hives Call your doctor straight away, or go straight to the Emergency Department at your nearest hospital if you notice any of these serious side effects. Possible serious infections - signs may include: fever, flu-like symptoms, night sweats feeling tired or short of breath, cough which will not go away warm, red and painful skin or painful skin rash with blisters Stop using TALTZ and call your doctor immediately. You doctor will decide if and when you may restart treatment Tell your doctor or pharmacist if you notice anything else that may be making you feel unwell. Other side effects not listed here may occur in some people.

Reporting side effects After you have received medical advice for any side effects you experience, you can report side effects to the Therapeutic Goods Administration online at www.tga.gov.au/reporting-problems . By reporting side effects, you can help provide more information on the safety of this medicine. Always make sure you speak to your doctor or pharmacist before you decide to stop taking any of your medicines.

Product details

This medicine is only available with a doctor's prescription.

What TALTZ contains Active ingredient (main ingredient) Ixekizumab (rch) Other ingredients (inactive ingredients) Sodium citrate dihydrate Citric acid Sodium chloride Polysorbate 80 Water for injections Do not take this medicine if you are allergic to any of these ingredients.

What TALTZ looks like TALTZ is a clear solution for injection. Its colour may vary from colourless to slightly yellow. TALTZ is available as a prefilled autoinjector (also known as a pen) (Aust R 253893) and a prefilled syringe (Aust R 253892), in pack sizes of 1 and 2. Not all pack sizes may be available.
A research team today announced the launch of a European large-scale clinical trial of Nilvadipine, an Alzheimer's disease drug developed at the Roskamp Institute (www.rfdn.org) in Sarasota. More than 500 Alzheimer's patients in nine European countries will participate in the phase III trial designed to study the effectiveness of the medication.

"We believe that Nilvadipine blocks the production of amyloid proteins linked to Alzheimer's disease," said Roskamp Institute President and CEO Michael Mullan, M.D., Ph.D., who along with Associate Director Fiona Crawford, Ph.D., and Daniel Paris Ph.D. led the team that developed the drug. "That means Nilvadipine is aimed at addressing the actual disease, and not just the symptoms."

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A consortium of medical teams from nine European countries is meeting in Ireland this week to plan the US$10 million multicenter study. Phase III studies are usually the last step in the regulatory process before a drug can move into clinical practice. The consortium, called NILVAD for Nilvadipine/Alzheimer's Disease, will involve participants from Ireland, England, Hungary, Greece, France, Sweden, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands.

The 500 participants, who have mild to moderate cognitive impairments, will begin the double-blind study this fall. Each participant will be followed for 18 months to see if the drug produces a change in cognitive abilities.

"We won't cure Alzheimer' disease without clinical trials," said Crawford, who added that major pharmaceutical companies have not been able to come up with an effective drug. "Currently, there are only eight interventions underway in phase III trial, and it's a tremendous achievement for a small research institute like ours to be part of the process."

In their Sarasota laboratories, Mullan, Paris and Crawford discovered that Nilvadipine, a drug approved in Europe for treatment of hypertension, can stop the accumulation of the amyloid proteins in the brain - a development that has been implicated in Alzheimer's disease. In 2010, the institute completed a phase I/II clinical trial in Europe that focused on Nilvadipine's safety. "The initial results indicated that patients were able to tolerate the drug safely and appeared to benefit from treatment," said Mullan.

Source: Roskamp Institute
There are almost 800,000 patients in the United States who are intubated and require mechanical ventilation annually. More than half of these patients are awake, alert and desperately attempting to communicate with nurses, physicians and their loved ones. Current methods that exist today to assist patients with their communication needs are either antiquated, time consuming or just cumbersome.

A tablet-based communication application called "Speak for Myself," was developed by Rebecca Koszalinski, R.N., Ph.D., during her doctoral studies under the guidance of Ruth Tappen, Ed.D., R.N., F.A.A.N., the Christine E. Lynn eminent scholar and professor in the Christine E. Lynn College of Nursing at Florida Atlantic University. Speak for Myself is proving to be an invaluable tool empowering patients who are voiceless.

Results of a pilot study of Speak for Myself, conducted at three hospitals in South Florida, was recently published in the journal Computers, Informatics, Nursing, and demonstrates the importance of this innovative computer app as well as the disconnect between what health care providers think patients want to communicate and what patients actually want to communicate. Subjects in the study ranged in age from 45 to 91 and were hospitalized in intensive care units including cardiovascular, neurological, and surgical ICUs.

"When patients are not able to clearly verbalize their needs, there is an elevated risk of misinterpretation and misunderstanding, which could lead to errors and unintentional poorer quality of care," said Tappen. "While writing boards and other traditional methods may be helpful, important information is often lost. Furthermore, allowing others to speak for the patient has its limitations."

Speak for Myself enables a patient to communicate his or her level of pain using an analog pain scale. It also helps them convey feelings of fear and loneliness as well as their physical needs such as suctioning, repositioning needs and requests for toileting. The app has a graphic for indicating the location of their pain and the level of pain they are experiencing. When a patient touches the screen to indicate the location of pain on the body graphic, the voice says "it hurts here." Patients can use shortcuts and single words or type in phrases or full sentences to communicate their needs. The software is predictive so that if a patient begins to enter a word, the program will anticipate and present likely solutions.

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"The purpose of Speak for Myself is to provide an easy-to-use, patient-centric, and hospital experience-specific program that can assist patients in expressing their needs," said Koszalinski, now an assistant professor in the College of Nursing at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. "Patients want to be heard, to retain control, and to contribute to decisions about their care, even if it is without a voice. Technology at the bedside can play a significant role in making this a reality."

Results from the study revealed to Tappen and Koszalinski just how effective Speak for Myself was for both patients and health care providers in the ICUs. In one example, a patient who had reported unresolved pain in the back of his throat was finally able to get assessed properly. Health care providers learned that it was the nasogastric tube that had become twisted and was causing his pain. They corrected the placement of the tube and resolved the issue. Perhaps the most dramatic example for clear communication was demonstrated when a patient asked the nurses to help document her end-of-life decisions and wishes. The patient decided not to prolong treatment but to disconnect the mechanical ventilation that was keeping her alive.

"It is accurate to assert that with enhanced communication, patients will have less frustration, their pain will be better controlled, and they will have a greater opportunity to participate in their own care, and this is all supported in our study," said Tappen.
The Eurosymposium on Healthy Ageing (EHA) is an international event that provides a unique opportunity for researchers, government officials, biotech executives, entrepreneurs, and non-governmental institutions from around the world to meet, network, and forge new scientific collaborations. The EHA is a biannual conference organized for the first time in 2012 by the European non-governmental organization HEALES, a Brussels-based association stimulating, promoting and informing the public about healthy life extension. Driving Heales and the development of the EHA conference are its two co-presidents, Sven Bulterijs and Didier Coeurnelle.

The world has already faced the variety of challenges caused by an ageing population and the so called 'Silver tsunami', but following major discoveries in science and biomedicine in recent years we are now on the edge of a paradigm shift from treatment to prevention and an improvement in healthy longevity. The quickly growing trend has been marked by a number of speakers at the "World Economic Forum" in Davos and echoed by the major media such as The Economist journal which began a series of conferences in 2016 called "Ageing Societies" and "The business of longevity".

The EHA is the largest and the most authoritative conference on the subject of longevity in Northern Europe. It provides a unique platform with the particular purpose to embrace the latest findings made by passionate scientific individuals. The programme board encourages you to immerse yourself into the programme for knowledge exchange and new network creation. The time has come to live longer healthier lives, and everyone is welcome to learn about the latest discoveries in the science of healthy longevity.

This year we have over 30 scientific lectures and 3 panel sessions by the most prominent scientists in the field of biotechnology and regenerative medicine, providing access to the forefront of scientific research in the field of ageing. The keynote lecture on the first day will be given by the renowned tissue engineer Dr. Alexander Seifalian (University College London). On the second day the keynote will be given by one of the leading experts in the biology of aging, Dr. David Gems (University College London). The three days are filled with lectures given by a number of the brightest minds in biomedicine from the University of Cambridge, University of Oxford, University College London, Maastricht University and many other reputable scientific institutions.

Over the recent decades, science has been exploring how to tackle the root and consequences of ageing. While in previous years the field of longevity was explored exclusively by the scientific community, it is now widely studied and represented by the innovative general public. The biotech industry of aging has come to maturation in recent years with the founding of many biotech companies focused on aging, for example Calico, InSilico Medicine, BioViva, Human Longevity inc., and many others. This year the conference will host a number of entrepreneurs and venture investors including Dmitry Kaminskiy, the general partner of Deep Knowledge Ventures.

The conference will last 3 days, during which the participants will cover a wide range of questions from deep research and practical medical applications to investment issues. The first two days will be devoted to discussing the biology of aging and the biotech market. The last day will centre around the societal, ethical and economical aspects of aging. Europe has already faced a variety of challenges caused by the 'silver tsunami' in a manner similar to Japan, both from the economic and sociological points of view. What if the process of getting old could be mitigated and associated diseases prevented? What opportunities are there for the non-scientific community? The conference will raise the critical issues of related finance aspects, public health issues, investments and business opportunities arising out of ageing societies. In collaboration with Deep Knowledge Ventures we will discuss these matters with leading representatives. The conference will end with the adoption of a Declaration for Longevity in which the importance of longevity research will be stated, and tangible steps will be set to achieve this goal.

This year the conference will become multidisciplinary and even more informative and thought-provoking. Due to the subject's rising popularity and the exponentially growing knowledge in the field, the conference will take an annual form starting this year.

Join us in the Royal Library of Belgium at the EHA 2016, the pre-eminent longevity think tank in Northern Europe!

Source: Biogerontology Research Foundation
A research team from the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, led by Madeleine Cunningham, Ph.D., in conjunction with the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), has developed the first-of-its-kind biomarker test to help detect autoimmune-induced neuropsychiatric disorders.

The Cunningham Panel assists clinicians in identifying whether certain neuropsychiatric conditions, including obsessive compulsive disorders, tics, mood disorders and behaviors associated with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), may be due to an autoimmune dysfunction, rather than a primary psychiatric illness. This distinction is critical since treatment differs for each.

"Neuronal autoimmune responses and inflammation in the brain can be a root cause of certain neuropsychiatric symptoms," said Craig Shimasaki, Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of Moleculera Labs, sole provider of the Cunningham Panel of tests.

"If the autoimmune condition is correctly identified, the underlying cause behind these disruptive behaviors has been successfully treated with anti-infective and immune modulation therapies, rather than managing the symptoms with psychotropic drugs," added Dr. Shimasaki.

An estimated 17 million, or 1 out of every 5 children in the U.S., currently have or have had a seriously debilitating mental disorder, according to the NIMH.

However, researchers believe a significant percentage of these children have an undiagnosed and treatable autoimmune dysfunction causing their neuropsychiatric condition.

Now, the Cunningham Panel is helping identify this group of patients, by providing clinicians with objective laboratory evidence of a patient's autoimmune and anti-neuronal status.

The biomarker tests in the panel measure the levels of autoimmune antibodies directed against specific neurological targets in the brain associated with certain movements, behaviors and cognitive processes.

"It has long been known that through a process called molecular mimicry, Streptococcal infections can trigger immune responses that generate autoantibodies against certain human antigens in the heart or brain.

This autoimmune reaction can result in damage to heart valves, or in the case of the brain, the neurologic disorder Sydenham chorea," explained Dr. Cunningham, chief developer of the Moleculera panel and for whom it's named.

"There is increasing evidence that infection-triggered autoimmune and inflammatory reactions may affect neuronal cells in the basal ganglia of the brain and may also cause sudden-onset obsessive-compulsive behaviors and movement disorders in children," she added. "Moreover, such conditions may be associated with other infections besides Streptococcus, such as influenza, Lyme disease and mycoplasma."

According to the PANDAS Physicians Network, this growing body of research has led the National Institutes of Health/National Institute of Mental Health (NIH/NIMH) to develop a consortium of 14 proposed multidisciplinary sites dedicated to studying and treating children with infectious and postinfectious autoimmune encephalopathy-like disorders, including Pediatric Acute-onset Neuropsychiatric Syndrome (PANS) and Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorder Associated with Streptococcal infections (PANDAS).

Last month, the first site located in the Southwest officially opened. The Children's Postinfectious Autoimmune Encephalopathy Center of Excellence at the University of Arizona's Steele Children's Research Center expects to serve about 30 pediatric patients per month.

The Cunningham Panel was instrumental in helping diagnose the Center's first patient, an 8-year-old girl, who after several bouts of infections had a sudden onset of debilitating anxiety, fears and OCD which progressed to severe anorexia.

"The Cunningham Panel confirmed the PANDAS diagnosis and put us on the correct treatment path," said Karen Blandini, the child's mother. "Without it we were lost."

The Panel's test results revealed elevated levels of certain autoantibodies associated with the young girl's emotional, cognitive and behavioral symptoms. Once correctly diagnosed, she was treated at the new Arizona Center, given immune-modulating therapies and experienced a complete recovery.

"The advantage of this type of panel is that it identifies specific antibodies to specific neural elements," explained Dr. Richard Frye, Director of Autism Research at Arkansas Children's Hospital Research Institute. "Most importantly high-quality scientific studies have identified these antibodies and linked them to disease. This type of test gives us more specific information that leads to the diagnosis of an autoimmune encephalopathy."

The Cunningham Panel consists of five tests  four assays measure circulating levels of autoantibodies directed against specific neuronal antigens, including Dopamine D1 receptor (DRD1), Dopamine D2L receptor (DRD2L), Lysoganglioside GM1, and Tubulin. Autoimmune antibodies that bind to these targets may disrupt the functioning of these antigens, which can trigger abnormal neurologic and psychiatric behaviors, such as OCD, tics, anxiety and other mood disorders. The fifth assay measures the level of CaM Kinase II (CaMKII) activity. CaMKII is a key enzyme involved in the up-regulation of many neurotransmitters such as dopamine.
A new strategy may help halt the progression of kidney disease in patients with diabetes. The approach, which is highlighted in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN), addresses a common and serious complication of diabetes.

Diabetes is the leading cause of chronic kidney disease and kidney failure, and approximately one-third of diabetic patients develop kidney disease, or diabetic nephropathy. Current diabetes therapies are often insufficient for preventing the progression of diabetic nephropathy to kidney failure, but a team led by Jesus Egido, MD, PhD and Carmen Gomez-Guerrero, PhD (Fundacion Jimenez Diaz University Hospital-Health Research Institute at the Autonomous University of Madrid, in Spain) has discovered a promising new strategy.

The approach targets a cellular pathway called JAK/STAT that is chronically activated in diabetes and mediates the damaging effects of high blood sugar on kidney cells. The researchers developed a compound that mimics a protein called Suppressor Of Cytokine Signaling 1 (SOCS1) that helps regulate JAK/STAT, and they found that it can enter cells, inhibit the deleterious effects of high blood sugar on kidney cells, and slow the progression of kidney disease in diabetic mice. In addition, it was able to protect the kidneys in both early and advanced phases of diabetes, it improved kidney function, and it reduced expression of genes associated with kidney inflammation and scarring. These effects occurred independently of blood glucose levels.

"Our goal is to develop the compound as a novel approach to combat chronic complications of diabetes," said Dr. Gomez-Guerrero. "We plan to initiate preclinical development to support early-phase clinical trials."
As health departments around the U.S. boost efforts to combat Zika, scientists are working on new ways to kill the mosquitoes that carry the virus. One approach involves understanding the molecular mechanisms that keep the bugs alive so we can then undermine them. Scientists report in the ACS journal Biochemistry that they have revealed new structural insights on a key protein from Aedes aegypti, the mosquito species most often linked to the spread of Zika.

In February, the World Health Organization called for action against the disease after Brazil experienced a spike in the number of babies born with microcephaly, a condition characterized by an abnormally small head. Since then, the virus has been reported in more than 40 countries. Studies have shown that compounds that inhibit a protein called sterol carrier protein 2 (SCP2), which is involved in the transport of cholesterol and fats in insects, can kill Aedes aegypti larva. Kiran K. Singarapu and colleagues from CSIR - Indian Institute of Chemical Technology wanted to take a closer look at the structure of one of the protein's variants to help inform the development of future insecticides.

Using solution nuclear magnetic resonance, a technique that yields molecular-level information about proteins, the researchers were able to describe the 3-D structure and dynamics of a SCP2 variant. The new insights could help scientists screen small-molecule libraries for insecticide candidates. In addition to curbing Zika, any resulting compound that stamps out Aedes aegypti could reduce cases of other illnesses  dengue fever, yellow fever and chikungunya  that the mosquito also carries.
A new study by the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) and Northern Arizona University (NAU) used deep DNA sequencing methods to generate the anthrax genome sequence from the victims of the 1979 anthrax outbreak in Sverdlovsk, Russia, when it was part of the USSR.

The Soviet Union produced anthrax spores on an industrial scale but repeatedly denied the existence of their biological weapons program. This study, to be published in the September issue of the journal mBio, represents a precise and detailed examination of the anthrax strain used in their weapons development, and includes an anthrax genetic database that puts the weapons strain into a global context.

"I have been studying this anthrax outbreak and these specimens for more than 20 years. Finally, using genomic technology, we could comprehensively characterize this pathogen genome," said Dr. Paul Keim, Director of TGen's Pathogen Genomics Division, a Regents Professor of Biology and the Cowden Endowed Chair of Microbiology at NAU, and the study's lead author.

"This is the signature agent of the world's largest biological weapons program and now we have it in our genetic databases. Anywhere this strain shows up again, we will be able to identify it and track it back to its source. This is now an essential part of our forensic arsenal," said Dr. Keim, who also is Director of NAU's Microbial Genetics & Genomics Center (MGGen).

The anthrax bacterium produces small capsules, or spores, that can lie dormant for decades. After settling inside the human lung, for example, it can cause a severe disease that, if not treated with antibiotics, kills 90 percent of those it infects.

Anthrax is found in many parts of the globe and dispersed through the human movement of animal parts contaminated with spores. Wool and hair from goats and sheep are moved globally as textiles or their precursors. When these originate in anthrax endemic regions, they can carry the spores, which are long-lived. While this bacterium has little variation from strain to strain, whole genome sequencing has identified DNA fingerprints that enable molecular epidemiology, tracing it to its source. When anthrax outbreaks occur, their whole genome profile are now routinely compared to the genetic database to identify possible sources and exclude others. This type of analysis was used by the FBI to track the spores in the 2001 anthrax letter attacks, which infected 22 people and killed five.

The Soviet Union had signed the Biological Weapons convention that prohibited the use of biological agents, including anthrax, as weapons. The United States' biological weapons program was eliminated in a decree by President Richard Nixon in 1969, but the Soviet program was maintained and expanded in a covert fashion for decades.

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In 1992, an investigative team from the United States led by noted Harvard biologist Dr. Matt Meselson characterized the 1979 Sverdlovsk outbreak by interviewing local physicians, visiting cemeteries and examining autopsy specimens. This investigation, along with accounts by Ken Alibek, a former Soviet scientist, revealed that the Sverdlovsk anthrax outbreak was due to an industrial accident. A faulty filter at a Soviet spore production facility allowed anthrax spores, in a silent plume, to drift with the wind over the city and into the nearby countryside. Nearly 70 Sverdlovsk inhabitants died as far as three miles downwind from the facility, but more anthrax-susceptible farm animals died over 25 miles away. It remains the world's deadliest human outbreak of inhalation anthrax.

The bacterial genomes were generated from autopsy tissue specimens of two Sverdlovsk anthrax victims. These tissues were moved to the United States with permission of Sverdlovsk pathologists to continue the investigation into the disease outbreak. From these, it was established that the anthrax pathogen was detected within their tissues and the victims died from inhaling the spores.

The Sverdlovsk anthrax genome was compared to the global genome database maintained by NAU to identify its close relatives and to look for evidence of genetic engineering. The Flagstaff research team found that this strain was closely related to other Asian isolates with very few differences to naturally occurring anthrax. There were no signs of genetic engineering.

Dr. Keim notes that the Soviets had to be very meticulous to avoid mutant variants from dominating their production stock. Invariably when wild anthrax strains are grown extensively in the laboratory, they adapt to those conditions and lose the killing power.

"The Sverdlovsk strain's genome looked very much like those of wild strains we see across Asia," Dr. Keim said.

Dr. Meselson, who was not part of the current paper, notes: "If this strain had been grown repeated in the laboratory, it would have mutated to a form that had less virulence and less capacity to cause anthrax. The Soviet scientists must been very meticulous in their maintenance of the natural form."
More than 20 years ago, a billboard in China piqued the interest of a chemical biologist. It endorsed an extract from the plant known as the thunder god vine as an immunosuppressant. A brief review of published research revealed that the extracts key ingredient  the small molecule triptolide  had been identified 20 years before that billboard ad, and it could stop cells from multiplying.

Glutriptolides can act as cruise missiles against cancer. The glucose component targets glucose transporters (red) in the membrane of cells, pulling the toxic triptolide inside. Credit: Johns Hopkins Medicine

Now, that chemical biologist and his colleagues at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine report that tests of triptolide in human cells and mice are vastly improved by the chemical attachment of glucose to the triptolide molecule. The chemical add-on makes the molecule more soluble and essentially turns it into a cruise missile that preferentially seeks out cancer cells, the research says. The change might also decrease side effects in patients and make the drug easier to administer.

A summary of the research is published in the journal Angewandte Chemie and was published online on Aug. 30.

We have a long way to go before we can test this derivative of triptolide in humans, and we think that additional adjustments could improve it even more, says Jun O. Liu, Ph.D., professor of pharmacology and molecular sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a member of the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, but it already has the key characteristics weve been looking for: It is quite water soluble, and it prefers cancer cells over healthy cells.

Liu, a native of a small town north of Shanghai in China, explains that the thunder god vine has been used in traditional Chinese medicine for more than 400 years, mostly to calm an overactive immune system, which can cause diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis.

His laboratory specializes in figuring out how natural compounds with known healing properties exert their effects on human cells. Five years ago, he and his colleagues discovered that triptolide halts cell growth by interfering with the protein XPB, part of the large protein machine transcription factor IIH, which, in turn, is needed by enzyme complex RNA polymerase II to make mRNA.

Because triptolide halts cell growth, it works well to fight the multiplication of cancer cells, Liu says, both in lab-grown cells and in laboratory animals with cancer. Unfortunately, it  and many of its derivatives  has failed to work well in patients because it doesnt dissolve well in water or blood, and has too many side effects due to its indiscriminate killing of healthy cells as well as tumor cells.

Lius latest research sought to train triptolide to target cancer cells by exploiting the knowledge that most cancer cells make extra copies of proteins, called glucose transporters. Those transporters form tunnels through a cells membrane to import enough glucose to fuel rapid growth. By attaching glucose to triptolide, the researchers hoped to trick the cancer cells into importing the cell-killing poison, as had been done successfully with other anticancer drugs.

We were looking for something that could be administered intravenously, remain stable in the blood and then become active as soon as it was imported into cancer cells, says Liu.

To begin, the chemists designed and synthesized five derivatives of triptolide, dubbed glutriptolides. Each derivative had glucose attached to the same spot on the triptolide molecule but had different linkers connecting them.

An initial experiment showed that none of the glutriptolides were good at blocking the activity of purified transcription factor IIH. Liu explains that what might seem like bad news was actually a positive result, since it suggested that the drugs would only be active once they entered cells and had their glucose attachments removed.

When the five glutriptolides were tested on human embryonic kidney cells, glutriptolide 2 slowed down cell growth better than the rest and is the only derivative they continued to study.

In later test tube and cell experiments, the researchers confirmed that glutriptolide 2 works just like triptolide  by interfering with XPB  though it does so only in higher concentrations. They also showed that a cancer cell line (DLD1-Mut) known to produce lots of glucose transporter 1 was more sensitive to glutriptolide 2s effects than a similar cell line (DLD1-WT) without extra copies of the transporter.

When the researchers assessed triptolides effects on a variety of healthy cells and cancer cells in parallel with glutriptolide 2, they found that triptolide tended to equally slow the growth of healthy cells and cancer cells, while glutriptolide 2 was eight times more effective against cancer cells, on average. Liu says this result suggests that the new compound  if tested in humans  may be more selective against cancer cells and could therefore have fewer side effects.

Finally, due to the differences in the compounds general toxicity, tests showed that mice could tolerate a dose of 0.2 milligram/kilogram of triptolide and 1 milligram/kilogram of glutriptolide 2. At those doses, glutriptolide 2 eradicated tumors more quickly in mice with prostate cancer and prevented tumor cells from reappearing for a full three weeks after treatment had stopped.

We were totally surprised to see that sustained antitumor activity, says Liu. Its something we want to study further. The group plans to test additional modifications to the biochemical links that connect glucose to triptolide to see if it can further decrease the compounds toxicity to healthy cells and increase its effectiveness against cancerous ones.

Source: http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/
Singapore: Indian Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan arrived in Singapore on Friday on the first leg of his six-day, two-nation visit to lead the country's road shows to attract foreign investors in exploiting its discovered small oil and gas fields.



"Addressed road show on small discovered blocks in Singapore. About 200 delegates and potential investors participated in it," Pradhan tweeted, on what was his first engagement in the two-country visit, which will next take him to the UK.



"Singapore is a global hub for trading of petroleum, petrochemical products and oil service equipments. There can be good synergy between the two countries. It is also a major financial centre in Asia from where FDI and foreign equity investors can invest in Indian oil and gas sector."



The bidding for discovered small fields had been announced by India in July 2016 in Houston. Following that, 67 such fields are on the block, an official statement said. The process is open till end-October.



"These fields are spread over nine sedimentary basins and will be offered in 46 contract areas. These fields are projected to yield 625 million barrels of oil and oil equivalent gas and spread over 1,500 sq km on land, shallow water and deep water areas."



The auction is also being held under new norms, which replaces the controversial production-sharing contracts -- by which oil and gas blocks are awarded to firms which show they will do maximum work on a block -- that has governed the bidding under the earlier nine rounds.



Eventual operators will be issued a single licence for exploration of conventional and non-conventional hydrocarbons and will have the freedom to sell oil and gas at "arms length" market prices. There would be no cess on crude oil.


Look 4 - Jason #eidos #eidosnapoli #ss17 #barpalladiotobagru A photo posted by Eidos Napoli (@eidosnapoli) on Jul 14, 2016 at 6:56pm PDT

Look 8 - Adjit #eidos #eidosnapoli #ss17 #barpalladiotobagru A photo posted by Eidos Napoli (@eidosnapoli) on Jul 14, 2016 at 6:52pm PDT

A celebration of the excellence, culture and beauty that is Rajasthan, India. Thank you @agyesh and everyone involved. #eidos #eidosnapoli #ss17 #barpalladiotobagru A photo posted by Eidos Napoli (@eidosnapoli) on Jul 14, 2016 at 7:03pm PDT

It was a regular day for 62-year-old cab driver Arjit Singh Bharth, when he was noticed by Quinton Clemm from fashion brand Eidos.Bharth had just dropped off a passenger at Midtown Manhattan when he was spotted by Clemm who was looking for models of Indian descent to walk the ramp for the Italian luxury menswear brand in New York for it's upcoming collection.Edios's 2017 Spring/Summer Collection was all about the rich textile traditions of India inspired by Rajasthan and designer Antonio Ciongoli wanted to cast people from the culture to present the clothes rightfully.As soon as Clemm noticed Bharth, he knew he had his man."Everything from his glasses and full white beard, to the off-white spread collar shirt that he was wearing when we met made it clear that Bharth belonged in our presentation," Clemm told The Times of India.In fact, it was specifically the turban that was unique and stood out for Clemm. "In the fashion industry, particularly in the West, the turban is not a widely represented look," he told The Times of India.He followed the taxi to catch up with Bharth and told him about his intention of hiring him as a model for Edios.What followed next was a historic moment for Bharth.Clemm who was struck by the 'older gentleman' with 'gold-rimmed, aviator-style bifocals, a tan spread-collar shirt, with an awesome, full, white beard', offered Bharth the opportunity to make his runway debut.Surprised and shocked at first, Bharth agreed to take up the task.Antonio Ciongoli created a ensemble for Bharth and made him try it. There were no doubts left thereafter. They had the man they required.Bharth made his runway debut and totally rocked his look. He looked dapper with the outfit that had been designed for him. In fact, the designer was applauded for putting up a fabulous show and an extremely creative collection.Before hiring Bharth, the brand had hired 20 others of Indian descent for the show.Soon after the show, Bharth, who had an experience of a lifetime, got back to cab duty.Life may not be the same for him now and this day will surely be etched in his memories forever.
The road to Pakistan is paved with good intentions. Its the return journey that almost always smacks of betrayal.Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had a taste of this sub-continental truth in 1999 when General Pervez Musharrafs boys encroached on the Kargil Hills soon after he went to Lahore in a bus with a message of peace and a hand of friendship.As it turns out, the new escalation in Indo-Pak relationship, too, has a story of a betrayed bonhomie behind it.News18 has found out that over the last seven months, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif himself went out of the way to make the Indian establishment extremely comfortable only to turn the tables later. The high point of this story of unmitigated affection was the trip of External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj to Pakistan in December 2015. Sharif specially invited Swaraj to his family mansion, to break bread with the extended Sharif clan.File Photo of Sushma Swaraj with Advisor to Pakistan PM Sartaj AzizThe invite was personally given to the External Affairs Minister by Nawaz Sharifs daughter. Swaraj was also informed that Ammi (mother to Nawaz Sharif and his brother and Pakistan Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif) was particularly keen to meet her.Swaraj reached the place in time for lunch, and at the lunch table, she was pleasantly surprised to see four generations of Sharifs at the dining table - from his mother Shamim Akhtar to his wife to his daughter to his granddaughter. Word is that his mother got so emotional at seeing Swaraj that she hugged her and cried: Tu to mere watan se hai, maine to aaj tak udhar se aanewale kisi ko gale hee nahin lagaya" (You are from my land, I havent hugged anyone from the other side so far).What followed was a perfect mother and daughter bonding between Sharifs Ammi and Swaraj. A moved Sharif is tipped to have carried the bonhomie straight back to the Prime Ministers Office. Apparently, he even directed his National Security Advisor Sartaj Aziz that the joint statement should be drafted completely keeping in mind Swarajs concerns.Now, when was the last time a Pakistani premier got so overawed by an Indian politician to go to this extent? Obviously, Swaraj must have felt the BJP-led government could turn a new corner in Indo-Pak relations.So she escalated it to the next level. Swaraj convinced Prime Minister Narendra Modi to go to Pakistan. That there was an atmosphere of trust that could be worked on to better the relationship between the two nations. This then is the story behind Modis sudden stopover in Lahore on his way back from Afghanistan to wish Sharif for his birthday. From here on things could only get better between the two nuclear powers, no?Apparently, it could only get worse. Because what came next was the Pathankot attack when Pakistani terrorists stormed into an Indian Air Force base. That was Modis Kargil moment.Indian security personnel stand guard inside the Indian Air Force (IAF) base at Pathankot (Reuters)The whole of Thursday, CNN-NEWS 18 exposed the hypocrisy of the Hurriyat leadership in Kashmir: A bunch of people who call themselves separatists, who say they dont respect or believe in the Indian constitution. Yet most of their children are employees of Indian state living off the states salary while they themselves instigate unemployed youth to pelt stones at the symbols of Indian state. As it turns out, the Hurriyat hypocrisy is just another thing they have copied from their Pakistani masters.
New Delhi: Actress Esha Gupta will turn showstopper for designer Yoshita Yadav at the Indian runway week Autum/Winter 2016.



Yadav is set to make her debut at the fashion week with her label Yoshita Couture. The designer will showcase her collection inspired by the city of Lucknow which remains the fashion capital of Northern India.



"In this season's collection, we at Yoshita Couture have used 100 per cent. Indian woven Raw Silks, woven in Varanasi and Bengaluru, depending on colour specifications.



"In this collection, one can see a vivid representation of motifs taken from most famous Mughal monuments of Bara Imambara, Chhota Imambara, and the Rumi Darwaza," said the designer in a statement.





She alo feels that Esha perfectly epitomizes her brand aesthetics.



"I think her aura is undeniably something to watch out for. Being a diva herself, I think she can pull off anything and everything fabulously. Our aesthetics definitely match and I am sure she would definitely set the ramp ablaze," she said





Yoshita Yadav started with her label in 2012 in Lucknow. She is a graduate from the National Institute of Fashion Technology and completed her further education from Italy.


(Photo: Reuters/Acid attack survivor Reshma Qureshi getting ready to walk at the New York Fashion Week in the Manhattan.)

(Photo: Reuters)

(Photo: Reuters/ Reshma Qureshi walking towards the runway.)

(Photo: Reuters/Reshma Qureshi presents a creation from designer Archana Kochhar's Spring/Summer 2017 collection during New York Fashion Week.)

Reshma Qureshi, scarred in an acid attack, challenged perceptions of beauty as she strutted down the runway at New York Fashion Week to promote a ban on the sale of corrosive substances used to maim thousands of women and children each year.A smiling Qureshi , 19, opened the FTL Moda show on Thursday to applause in a long-sleeve, white gown with embroidered appliques by Indian designer Archana Kochhar during her first trip to the United States.The buzz and glamour of the event was a world away from Allahabad, where she suffered severe facial burns and lost an eye two years ago after being attacked with sulfuric acid by her estranged brother-in-law and two men.Qureshi never thought she would be going abroad, much less modeling in New York.After enduring numerous skin graft surgeries and contemplating suicide, she met the founder of Make Love Not Scars, a group that helps survivors of the gender-based crimes.Qureshi is the face of the group's online video campaign, which has been viewed by 1.3 million people and led to her appearance in New York."I couldn't believe it was happening to me," Qureshi said about the trip. "In that moment I felt extremely happy."She said she hopes her turn on the catwalk will inspire hope and confidence in other acid attack survivors and spur countries to regulate the sale of cheap and easily available acids."No one else understands what an acid attack is except the survivors themselves," she said. "I do not want this to happen to anyone else."About 1,500 acid attacks are reported each year, but Jaf Shah, the executive director of the London-based charity Acid Survivors Trust International (ASTI), said the real number is many times higher."There are whole swathes of regions across the globe where acid attacks are occurring but are not being recorded," he said in an telephone interview."It is not reported for fear there might be reprisals from the perpetrators due to the fact that survivors and their immediate family have no confidence in the police or the judiciary to take action."India has the highest number of recorded attacks, which are often a form of revenge by jilted husbands or rejected suitors. ASTI describes it as a global phenomenon that occurs in countries ranging from Afghanistan and Iran to Nigeria and Colombia.Shah said limiting the sale of acid, punishments for attackers, and compensation and care for survivors, are needed. People like Qureshi speaking out is also very important, he said."Victims coming forward are defying the perpetrators of the attacks," he added.Increasing diversity on the catwalk has been an aim of FTL Moda. The production company has featured models with disabilities, in wheelchairs, on crutches and amputees. Australian model Madeline Stuart, who has Down Syndrome, made her runway debut at the FTL Moda show last year."I think this is a powerful tool," said FTL Moda founder Ilaria Niccolini. "I think it can make a change for the better."
Nothing more blissful that getting a tight hug from your child, right? On his 49th birthday, Akshay Kumar shared the most adorable photo. Lying on a yatch deck, the actor is seen hugging his little daughter Nitara. The photo was shared by the actor on his birthday on Twitter.The actor, who is currently shooting for the sequel of Jolly LLB, received birthday wishes from almost everyone in the industry on Twitter. He was seen thanking and re tweeting all the wishes that his peers sent him. The actor was last seen in Rustom, a film based on the infamous Nanavati Scandal. The film received a good response both from critics as well as masses alike.
Panaji: The Centre on Friday said deployment of additional troops in Kashmir was aimed at foiling attempts by terrorists to enter India from across the border and the move has nothing to do with the ongoing unrest in the Valley.



Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said the deployment of troops in J&K was meant for foiling infiltration bids and it has nothing to do with the protests in the Kashmir Valley which started after the killing of a militant Burhan Wani in an encounter on July 8.



"Army does not act in internal matter unless requested by the local administration. Our mandate is to seal the border and foil infiltration bids by terrorists," he said.



Parrikar was talking to reporters on the sidelines of a function organised to commission Indian Coast Guard ship "Sarathi" in Vasco town, about 40 KM from Panaji.



Union Home minister Rajnath Singh, who was also present at the event, said deployment of Armymen in J&K had nothing to do with the current situation in Kashmir.



"The situation in Kashmir is being handled by district administration. We are providing them all the support they want," Singh said.



Responding to a question, Parrikar said India is taking necessary precautions in aftermath of the Scorpene submarine data leak episode.



The Defence Minister said the leak did not occur in an Indian naval area but on side of the French company which is a partner in the submarine project.
Nearly 24 years after the demolition of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992, Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi has visited the Hanuman Garhi Temple, bringing the focus back on Ayodhya. The attempt clearly is to play the "soft" Hindutva card ahead of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections. But with the BJP already travelled miles in reaping political dividends from the Ayodhya movement, will Rahul's pilgrimage to the temple town help his party?



The first counter question is why someone from the Gandhi family took so long in visiting Ayodhya post 1992. Indira Gandhi, and also Sanjay Gandhi, had in their lifetime visited Ayodhya. Rajiv Gandhi too went there in 1990, leading a Sadbhavna Yatra at a time the Sangh Parivar's 'Ram Janmabhoomi' agitation was posing a major challenge.



VN Das, a senior journalist who has been reporting out of Ayodhya ever since the stormy 80's when locks were opened at the Babri Mosque, says: "Post demolition, Congress leaders, especially the Gandhis, chose to stay away from Ayodhya. Maybe, because the party wished to distance itself from allegations of being hand in gloves with religious fundamentalists. The Narasimha Rao-led Congress government's alleged complicity in the demolition too has been a troubled chapter in the party's history."



The visit to Ayodhya thus indicates a crucial point in Congress party's new strategy. A strategy which indicates a clear willingness to go back to 'soft Hindutva'. It also can be the party's outreach to those within the community of Hindu seers and saints who are not totally in tune with Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh's or Viswa Hindu Parishad's political vision.



Rahul's meeting, after the puja, with Mahant Gyan Das of Hanuman Garhi reflects this approach. Both clearly struck the right chord. A visibly pleased Gyan Das not only praised Rahul, wishing him all success, but was also quick to take a jibe at the BJP and the VHP. Gyan Das said, "VHP and BJP were only interested in milking the Ayodhya and Ram temple issue. The construction of Ram temple is not on their agenda. More than in Lord Rama, they are interested in politics in his name."



Congress, however, rejects suggestions of soft Hindutva. For the party, Rahul visiting Hanuman Garhi is not Hindutva, but an extension of its belief in 'Sarva Dharma Sambhav' - equal respect for all religions. UP Congress spokesperson Amarnath Agarwal says "Rahul and Sonia ji not only visit Hindu temples, they have also visited sufi shrines and other places of worship. Rahul's visit to Ayodhya should not be seen under a political lens."



But social and political observers don't think it's as simple as how Congress puts it. Professor Prashant Trivedi of the Lucknow-based Giri Institute of Development studies makes a significant observation about the connect between Rahul's Ayodhya visit, his ongoing Kisan Yatra and his party's Brahmin card in Uttar Pradesh.



Prof Trivedi says, "Around 65 per cent population of UP are either farmers or economically dependent on agriculture. This population basically comprises agricultural labourers and small and marginalised farmers. While Dalits form the bulk of labourers, small farmers mostly come from the backward community. By focusing on farmers in a big way, Congress indirectly hopes to rope in these castes as well."



If the party is successful in doing so, it will be able to revive its old formula of Brahmin leadership at the top and lower caste mobilisation at the bottom. It's here that soft Hindutva can play a crucial role in making a connect with Hindu voters cutting across caste lines. As Prof Trivedi says, Rahul's visit to Ayodhya cannot be understood completely without keeping this broader picture in mind.


Several parts of Karnataka including Bengaluru will be completely shut on Friday in protest against the release of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu.Public transport may be affected as state transport buses will stay off the roads, and autorickshaw and cab unions are extending their support to bandh. Metro services are also likely to be hit.Schools in the state, which have lost many working days due to such protets, have declared a holiday on Friday across the state.Agitators tried to barge into Kempe Gowda International Airport in the city and were later taken into custody. Thousands of passengers are stranded at the airport as there is no transport between city and the airport. Situation is similar even at the city Railway station.Karnataka state cable TV operators association has also decided to not air Tamil TV channels in the state on Friday. The Kannada film fraternity will hold a rally in Bengaluru in which many of the leading actors are expected to take to join the protest.To counter all anti-social elements during the bandh, the Bengaluru Police is all geared up. Police commissioner NS Megharik told CNN-News 18 that one unit of the Rapic Action Force (RAF), 36 platoons of Karnataka State Reserve Police (KSRP), 30 units of Armed Reserve Forces (RAF) and 260 Hoysala units will be deployed across the city to control the law and order situation.Meanwhile, the state government has written to the Ministry of Water Resources asking them to constitute an expert committee to have a re-look at the ground situation in Karnataka.Protests on the Bengaluru - Mysore highway over releasing Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu (Photo: Imran Khan)Elaborate security arrangements have been made to maintain law and order. Extra forces have been deployed with two companies each from Kerala and Andhra Pradesh, one from Maharashtra and 10 companies of central forces, police said.Chief Minister Siddaramiah made an appeal for peace and said there should be no damage to public property during the bandh."We are making all required arrangements. Bandh should be peaceful and no untoward incident should happen. Those who have called for bandh should also take care," he added.The Chief Minister also held a meeting of senior officials of Home and police departments to review security measures.Seeking cooperation from public and organisations in maintaining peace, Home Minister G Parameshwara said the issue is of entire state and the government had to take certain decisions within the framework of law.Protests around PuttannaChetty Town Hall in Bengaluru (Photo: Imran Khan)In Bengaluru, more than 14,000 police personnel will be deployed. 36 Karnataka State Reserve Police, 30 City Armed Reserve platoons and one company Rapid Action Force have been deployed.'Kannada Okkoota', led by Kannada Chaluvali Vatal Paksha leader Vatal Nagaraj will be holding a "massive" protest march from Town hall to Freedom Park in city in the morning.The Cauvery row erupted after the Supreme Court on Monday directed to Karnataka to release 15,000 cusecs to Tamil Nadu for the next 10 days to address the plight of farmers there.
Normal life in several parts of Karnataka, including state capital Bengaluru, was affected due to complete shutdown on Friday in response to the dawn-to-dusk bandh call. The shutdown was called by pro-Kannada outfits in protest against Supreme Court's direction to release Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu.Public transport services were worst hit in Bengaluru and other parts of South Karnataka with government buses staying off the roads and auto-rickshaw and taxi unions extending their support to the call for shutdown. Both BMTC and KSRTC, as well as private buses, have remained off roads. Namma Metro has also suspended services till 6:00 pm in Bengaluru.Protests in Bengaluru (Image/Nagarjun)All commercial establishments, including malls, have been shut down. Cinema theatres have also joined the bandh extending support to the protest. Karnataka Cable Operators Association have suspended Tamil programmes for the day across the state. All school and colleges have been shut for the day in South Karnataka.Thousands of passengers are stranded at the Kempe Gowda International Airport (KIAL) in north Bengaluru and at the city Railway station due to non-availability of cabs. Most software companies and BPOs have also declared a holiday or asked employees to work from home in case of an emergency.The Kannada film fraternity also held a rally in Bengaluru, in which many of the leading actors joined the protest.Agitators trying to barge into Kempe Gowda International Airport in the city (Image: Nagarjun)Protesters also tried to barge into the departure terminal of the Kempegowda International Airport but were stopped and later detained by the police. Similar scenes were witnessed at the railway station, too.To handle the protests, elaborate security arrangements have been made by the Bengaluru Police. City Police commissioner, NS Megharik, told CNN-News 18 that one unit of the Rapid Action Force (RAF), 36 platoons of Karnataka State Reserve Police (KSRP), 30 units of Armed Reserve Forces (RAF) and 260 Hoysala units have been deployed across the city to enforce law and order.Security in place to avoid any untoward incidents (Image: Nagarjun)The bandh is near total in Mandya, Mysore, Chamarajanagara, Bengaluru rural, Kolar, Tumkur, Hassan and in some parts of north Karnataka.Meanwhile, Chief Minister Siddaramiah, who is under fire for releasing the Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu, has extended indirect support to the bandh. He made an appeal for peace and said there should be no damage to public property during the agitation. Speaking to the media he said that people were naturally angry over the Supreme Court order directing Karnataka to release 15,000 cusecs of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu for 10 days.Protests in Bengaluru (Image: Nagarjun)The state government has written to the Ministry of Water Resources asking them to constitute an expert committee to have a re-look at the ground situation in Karnataka.Last month back, Karnataka witnessed a similar bandh over Kalasa-Banduri irrigation project. Last weeks All India Bandh, called by the trade unions, was also successful across Karnataka. The trade bodies have expressed unhappiness over repeated bandhs, saying it affected productivity.
Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh government on Friday named Bollywood actress Vidya Balan as brand ambassador of the ambitious Samajwadi Pension Yojana.



"We are grateful of Vidya Balan for getting associated with the biggest scheme of UP, the Samajwadi Pension Scheme," Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav said at an event.



The actor who had earlier been associated with the "ghar-ghar shauchalya" campaign of the Union government will be seen campaigning about the scheme in the coming months.



"I am very happy as the money meant to be given in this scheme will go directly into the bank accounts of the beneficiaries and money is power. About 50 per cent population comprise of women who have been left far behind and are now taking small steps forward", Balan, who was also present at the event, said.



"This scheme will have a direct impact on the lives of people.. though I have not contributed anything into it I am happy to be the face of it," she said.



Akhilesh has launched the scheme with an aim to provide Rs 500 per month to poor women and cover at least 50 lakh beneficiaries in the state.
Lahore: A former LeT terrorist, arrested in August for his involvement in the 2008 Mumbai terror attack, has been absolved by Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency which says "no allegation has been proved against him."



Sufayan Zafar was accused of financing Rs 14,800 for Mumbai attack and providing Rs 3.98 million to co-accused Shahid Jameel Riaz prior to the attack.



"The FIA has found no evidence against Zafar during investigation," an official of FIA said.



He said the allegation that he had financed one of the arrested suspects in Mumbai case could not be proved after thorough investigation.



The official said: "Zafar's role in providing finances to a Mumbai attacks suspect(s) has not been established."



He said Zafar would not be charge-sheeted in the court for alleged allegations. "FIA will submit a challan in the trial court in this regard on next hearing on September 22 but will not frame charges against him," the official said.



Zafar was hiding after being declared proclaimed offender in the Mumbai case. He was arrested early last month from his hideout in Kyber-Pakhtaunkhawa province.



A resident of Gujrawala district of Punjab, some 80km from Lahore, Zafar is among 21 other (absconding) suspects wanted in this high-profile case.



Six other suspects - Abdul Wajid, Mazhar Iqbal, Hammad Amin Sadiq, Shahid Jameel Riaz, Jamil Ahmed and Younus Anjum have been lodged in the Adiyala Jail Rrawalpindi since 2009 for abetment to murder, attempted murder, planning and executing the Mumbai attacks.



Prime suspect LeT operations commander Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, believed to be the mastermind of the Mumbai attacks, has been in hiding after getting bail over a year ago.



Some 166 people were killed in the attack carried out by 10 LeT men. Nine terrorists were killed while lone survivor Ajmal Kasab was captured and later executed.
Vientiane: Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte took a thinly veiled dig at the United States, complaining that colonizers who killed many Filipinos are now raising human rights concerns with him.



President Barack Obama was among several world leaders who listened to Duterte's brief speech at the East Asia Summit in the Laotian capital of Vientiane.



Obama earlier canceled a meeting with Duterte after the Philippine leader referred to him in comments to reporters as a "son of a bitch" and warned him not to discuss the deaths of thousands of suspects in an anti-drug campaign.



Two Philippine Cabinet officials said Duterte did not criticize any country or leader by name in his speech. Other diplomats who heard the speech, however, felt he was referring to the United States, which colonized the Philippines after defeating its former ruler, Spain.



An Indonesian diplomat said Duterte held up a picture of Filipinos killed in colonial times to underscore his point.



The diplomat spoke to reporters on condition that he not be named because of the sensitivity of the issue. Philippine officials refused to release Duterte's remarks, which were not included in his prepared speech made yesterday.



The Department of Foreign Affairs in Manila said the president provided an explanation of how human rights records should be assessed in the context of the historical record.



"In the passionate intervention of President Duterte, he underscored the need to take a long historical view of human rights, mindful of the atrocities against the ethnic people of Mindanao," the department said in a statement, referring to the southern Philippine region where American forces were involved in deadly clashes with Muslim Filipinos in the early 1900s.



Duterte, who assumed the presidency in June, has had an uneasy relationship with the U.S., his country's longtime treaty ally.



He has said he is charting a foreign policy that is not dependent on the U.S., and has moved to reduce tensions with China over rival territorial claims.



The tough-talking president has also blasted U.N.-appointed human rights experts and rights watchdogs who have expressed concerns over the extrajudicial killings of more than 2,800 suspected drug dealers and users since Duterte took office. More than 600,000 others have surrendered, apparently out of fear of being killed.



After the flap over Duterte's earlier remarks, he and Obama met briefly on the sidelines of the Laos meetings and shook hands.



One Cabinet member, Jesus Dureza, said he asked Duterte how his talk with Obama went. "It was OK," Dureza quoted Duterte as saying. "He told me, 'we can talk some more at another time.'"



The summit ended with Laos turning over the chairmanship of the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations to Duterte, whose country will host the annual diplomatic gathering next year.












Paris: A 19-year-old woman arrested in a probe into a car found laden with gas cylinders in Paris had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group and was preparing an imminent attack, officials said.



French President Francois Hollande said a terror cell had been shut down and an attack "foiled," after Ines Madani, 19, and two other women were arrested.



Police shot and wounded Madani as they swooped on her and her accomplices aged 23 and 39 in a suburb south of Paris.



Investigators believe Madani is the main suspect in a probe into the Peugeot 607 found a few hundred metres from Notre Dame cathedral on Sunday. She is the daughter of the car's owner.



Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said the three women "were apparently preparing new, violent and, what is more, imminent actions".



The women were "radicalised and fanaticised", he said. Madani had sworn allegiance to the Islamic State group in a letter found in her possession, according to a source in the investigation.



A police officer suffered a knife wound to the stomach during the arrests late yesterday in Boussy-Saint-Antoine, south of Paris.



Hollande, speaking on a visit to Athens, said: "An attack has been foiled."



"A group has been destroyed," he said, but he warned: "There are others."



A police source said security services had issued a warning yesterday about a possible attack on train stations in Paris and the area where the women lived.



Police are now convinced that the car found with five full gas cylinders in its boot was intended to be used in an attack.



The car was discovered with its hazard lights flashing and its licence plates had been removed.



Three bottles of diesel fuel were also discovered in the vehicle, but police did not find any detonators.



Police said the boyfriend of one of the three women was arrested yesterday.



The man's brother is himself in custody over suspected links to Larossi Abballa, a jihadist who killed a police officer and his girlfriend in a Paris suburb in June, a source said.



Four people, two brothers and their girlfriends are already in custody over the discovery of the car.



The first couple arrested, a 34-year-old man and a 29-year-old woman, have been held since Tuesday and are known to the security services for links to radical Islam.



Police then arrested the man's brother and his girlfriend, both aged 26.



France is on high alert after Islamic State called on its followers to attack the country in revenge for air strikes on the group's bases in Syria and Iraq.



IS has claimed responsibility for a string of jihadist attacks, including last November's coordinated bloodshed in which gunmen and suicide bombers killed 130 people.
New Delhi: As war of words escalates between India and Pakistan, the United States has stepped in and has asked both countries to de-escalate tension and engage in dialogue.



"We strongly encourage in all of our dealings with either India and or Pakistan stronger relations between the two countries. It's clearly in the security interests of the region that they work to de-escalate tensions and that they have dialogue," State Department Deputy Spokesman Mark Toner told reporters.



"That's something we constantly encourage for just that or out of just that concern, which is that we don't want to see tensions escalate, spiral out of control, and lead to some kind of incident," he said.



"It is important for the two countries, the two governments to maintain strong, cordial, and productive relations," Toner said in response to a question.



The US, he said, wants Pakistan to take more action against terrorist network.



"Our discussions continue to focus on the fact that we're urging the Government of Pakistan to take concerted action against safe havens and terrorist groups that threaten other countries in the region and we've been very clear about that," he said.







"And we have seen them attempt to address it. We want to see more action taken, but it continues to be a topic of conversation with them," he added.



Toner said America's relationship with India and Pakistan is not a zero sum game.



"As we've said many times, there's no zero-sum game here. We need to have a very strong and robust relationship with India and we do the world's largest democracy. And we also want to have a strong relationship with Pakistan. It's in the interests of the region to do so," he said.



"The recent India and Bangladesh visit of the Secretary of State (John Kerry) and not going to Pakistan should not be treated otherwise," Toner said.



"It doesn't clearly indicate anything about our relationship with Pakistan. The Secretary has a very intense travel schedule. He's been to Pakistan recently; he speaks often to senior Pakistani leadership," he said.



"Specifically, he was in India for the Strategic and Commercial Dialogue and took the opportunity to also visit Bangladesh I think the first time he's been there," he added.



(With inputs from PTI)
At a time when public schools were public in name only and black children were systematically denied an education, Rosenwald schools were a lifeline to a better future for hundreds of thousands of African-Americans.

Julius Rosenwald was president and part owner of Sears, Roebuck & Co. Through his friendship with Booker T. Washington and serving on the board of the Tuskegee Institute, he became deeply involved in the fight for civil rights in America. The path he chose in 1917 was through the founding of the Rosenwald Fund. Through his private funds leveraged with publicly raised dollars totaling $28.4 million, Rosenwald built almost 5,000 schools, teacher homes and shop buildings across the 15 states to serve more than 663,000 black students. Their impact in the 1920s and 1930s cant be overstated at a time when most schools for black children were little more than shacks that were open for a four months or so each year.

Once numbering in the thousands across the Jim Crow South, today there are only a relative handful of Rosenwald schools still standing and were declared one of Americas most endangered historical assets by the National Trust for Historic Places in 2002. Many fell into disuse, were demolished or burned ... victims of time and forgetfulness.

But not in Rustburg.

Earlier this week, the Campbell County Board of Supervisors completed the process for deeding one of the 16 Rosenwald schools built in the county to the Campbell County Training School Committee, which plans to renovate the building in Rustburg and use it to shine a light on a little-known part of Central Virginia history.

When financing the Rosenwald schools, the foundation partnered with local residents in the communities they selected. In the Rustburg area, Gabe Hunt and the Rev. T.W. Tweedy stepped up and mortgaged their own homes for $500 to finance the schools construction in 1922. When operational, the Campbell County Training School was the first opportunity for post-sixth grade education offered black children in Campbell.

All of the Rosenwald schools were based on a design devised by architects at the Tuskegee Institute; even the paint scheme was part of the standardized design: The colors were selected to enhance natural light as most of the communities where they were built didnt have electricity. The Rustburg doubled in size in 1929 as demand grew; at its height, the school became a complex of five buildings.

The Campbell County branch of the NAACP and the training school committee have high hopes for the Rustburg site going forward, not the least of which is to preserve a chapter of Central Virginia history thats not very well-known, documenting its impact on the black community and telling the stories of its students and teachers.

Planning is still in the preliminary stages with a long road ahead of the local preservationists before their vision of the Rustburg school becomes reality. For more information, contact Millicent Nash, the chairwoman of the Campbell County Training School Committee, at (434) 258-4319 or nashtutor@aol.com.

This bit of local history has been saved; now, lets join together to tell its story to future generations of Central Virginians.
A Roanoke judge has overturned a jurys recent verdict, which sought to award $4.2 million in damages to the family of a Lynchburg industrial worker who died on the job.

"Because the jury's verdict for the Plaintiff on the issue of contributory negligence is plainly wrong, the Court sets aside the verdict and enters judgment for the Defendant, Judge David Carson wrote in an opinion letter filed this week in Roanoke Circuit Court.

The case involves Jerry Wayne Evans, 39, who was fatally injured in 2010 while operating a forklift at International Paper in Lynchburg.

The year after he died, Evans widow, Ronda Evans, filed a $7.5 million suit against NACCO Materials Handling Group Inc., which owns the company that manufactured the lift.

During the trial in March, and across six days of courtroom testimony, jurors were told that on Jan. 22, 2010, the day of Evans' death, he had been using a Hyster forklift to move large rolls of paper.

It was established that although Evans had undergone partial training to use the machine, he hadn't fully completed it.

At one point, his vehicle got stuck in a gap and another lift operator hooked a chain to it to tow it out of its jam. When Evans then stepped out of the lift to remove the chain, his own forklift rolled backwards and he was crushed between the two machines. He suffered blunt force injuries and died later that day.

Much of the evidence in the case concentrated on the forklifts parking brake and on the handle that was used to apply and regulate it.

It can be out of adjustment and you cant really tell, plaintiffs attorney Brent Brown told jurors during the trial. Thats pretty much what this case is about.

But in a five-page analysis of the case, filed Wednesday in response to an opposition motion that was filed by the defense in June, Carson listed more than a half-dozen decisions by Jerry Evans on the night he died, "a collective series of actions (and inactions)," which the judge felt constituted negligence on Evans' part.

Those included that Evans knowingly operated the forklift despite not being certified to do so; that he found no problems with the brake during inspection or operation; that he drove the forklift into a gap in the first place, then resolved the issue "without reporting the mishap to supervisory personnel and without the assistance of supervisory personnel;" and that after freeing the lift, he parked it on an incline and failed to clamp or chock the wheels before stepping between the two vehicles.

An individuals contributory negligence, including that of a decedent, is a complete bar to the plaintiffs negligence claims," Carson wrote.

"While the jury could have possibly differed about the reasonableness of a specific undertaking in the chain of events leading up to the accident, reasonably minded jurors could not have differed about whether Jerry Evans' entire series of conduct constituted contributory negligence which proximately caused his untimely death."

The plaintiffs have 21 days to appeal the judge's decision.

Attorneys for both sides did not respond to requests for comment Friday.

It's uncommon for a judge to overturn a jury's decision, a point raised this week within the opinion letter.

In setting aside the jurys verdict today, the Court acknowledges that disturbing a jury verdict should be done infrequently, and only in extraordinary cases," Carson wrote.
Kyocera SGS Tech Hub LLC  which announced Thursday it was bringing 35 jobs and $9.5 million in investment to the Dan River Region  plans to begin manufacturing in Danville in November and open up in its own separate facility in the Cyber Park in early 2018.

The company will start out operating in the Gene Haas Center for Integrated Machining, where it will produce solid carbide rotary tools.

Danville and Pittsylvania County  which jointly owns the Cyber Park under the Danville-Pittsylvania Regional Industrial Facility Authority  competed against localities in Ohio and South Carolina for the project.

The arrival of Kyocera SGS Tech Hub LLC will include construction of a new 30,000-square-foot facility in the park by 2018. The average annual salary for the positions will be $65,000, said Alan Pearce, CEO of Kyocera SGS Tech Hub LLC.

Kyocera SGS Tech Hub LLC is a subsidiary of Kyocera SGS Precision Tools Inc., which is owned by Kyocera Corp. in Kyoto, Japan. KSPT is known for its solid carbide high-performance end mills, drills, stainless steel medical tools and PVD coatings.

The company supplies Rolls-Royce and serves three main markets: aerospace, airplane companies and medical products, Pearce said during an interview after Gov. Terry McAuliffe announced the project Thursday afternoon at the Gene Haas Center at the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research.

The announcement included company representatives from other countries, state and local officials, and representatives from local foundations.

It was the first economic development announcement in the area for Dan River Region native Todd Haymore as the new Virginia secretary of commerce and trade.

I wouldnt have missed this for the world, said Haymore, who previously served as secretary of agriculture and forestry.

In the 31 months since McAuliffe took office, there have been 788 economic development projects and 148,000 new jobs across Virginia, Haymore said. Unemployment is at 3.7 percent in the state, the lowest since May 2008 and the lowest in the southeastern United States, he said. Its the seventh-lowest rate nationwide, he added.

Haymore said in a prepared statement that we are confident that [Kyocera SGS Tech Hub] will benefit from a talented pool of employees that are trained at a world-class facility [Gene Haas Center].

McAuliffe called the announcement a huge win for the city of Danville and Pittsylvania County and pointed to the companys position as a supplier of Rolls Royce and a new organizing member of the Commonwealth Center for Advanced Manufacturing.

As a strategic supplier to Rolls-Royce and an organizing member of CCAM, we are confident that the company can serve as a hub to attract additional local machine tool operators and suppliers operations to the region, McAuliffe said during the announcement. Recruiting global companies of this caliber is a key component of our marketing and trade mission, as well as our goal to diversify and build a new Virginia economy.

The Virginia Economic Development Partnership worked with Danville, Pittsylvania County and CCAM to secure the project for Virginia.

McAuliffe presented a $200,000 check from the Commonwealths Opportunity Fund to help Danville and Pittsylvania County with the project. Del. Danny Marshall presented a $350,000 check from the Virginia Tobacco Commissions Tobacco Region Opportunity Fund to the company.

Marshall called the project a good fit for Southern Virginia, especially Danville and Pittsylvania County.

As the delegate representing the Danville area, I have met with Kyocera SGS Precision Tools several times and am very happy that they have chosen Danville as the location for their U.S. expansion, Marshall said in a statement. We appreciate the jobs that they are bringing to our region and wish them much success.

McAuliffe met with company officials during the 2015 Paris Air Show and the 2016 Europe Marketing Mission.

Pearce said company officials visited Virginia and Danville under encouragement from McAuliffe.

We instantly connected with a location and a population of people that are in the early stages of a renaissance that perfectly aligns with our own internal revolution, Pearce said in a statement.

The history of the Danville area and its people  along with the high-level technical skill development and engineering advancement efforts  is why the company is being created in Danville, Pearce said.

Jason Wells, chief technical officer with the company, said Kyocera SGS Tech Hub LLC will optimize its products for customers. They will provide specifications and the company will design and make those products according to the specifications, Wells said.
George Aznavorian, current owner of the former Thomasville Furniture plant, will present his master plan for the property at the Town of Appomattox council meeting Monday evening.

The council will meet at 7:30 p.m. at the Appomattox municipal building, 210 Linden St.

It will also discuss pursuing the first phase of an environmental assessment of the old garment factory at 1720 Confederate Blvd.

Two previously rescheduled public hearings will be heard at 6 p.m. Monday regarding a permit allowing a trash removal company to move into the former plant and apartments on the second floor of an existing building at 1848 Church St.

Council will hold an additional public hearing on a new permitted use in the zoning ordinance allowing residential apartments above the ground-floor level of a building.
Hawk Claus spreads Christmas cheer in DC's Grifter Got Run Over By a Reindeer first look

Take a look at two stories from the DC holiday special including the titular chapter and a Hawkwoman and Hawkman tale
'It was a hit'

She put up a real fight for her life but it wasnt to be, one grieving family member told Newsday. Yesterday, (Wednesday) the hospital called all the family to come to the hospital to say goodbye to her. She looked very peaceful. Family members are now saying that Martin was attacked because she dared to walk away from a relationship in which she no longer had an interest. One of them told Newsday that her life had been threatened. He said, He told her that he would kill her if she ever went back to her old boyfriend and she didnt hide the threat because she had mentioned it to all her friends that he had threatened her and people know he is capable. Relatives revealed Martin was afraid to report the matter to the police because of the mans connections. The mother of one died at the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of the San Fernando General Hospital (SFGH) surrounded by close relatives and friends, including her boyfriend Shamshudeen Mohammed who was also shot and wounded in the gun attack in the early hours of August 31 - the Independence holiday. According to police, the couple had been liming in the gallery of Mohammeds home in Fyzabad when they were confronted by two gunmen who opened fire on them.

Martin was shot in the head and hand while Mohammed sustained gunshot wounds to the leg. He remains warded at hospital. Martin, of Dow Village, South Oropouche never regained consciousness, relatives told Newsday yesterday saying that they had been praying for a miracle. Relatives yesterday admitted that Martin may have made a wrong choice in a partner and paid for it with her life. She chose the wrong man, he said. He had given her many gifts including a car, a ring and perfumes and when they broke up, he took back all. They believe that she had a premonition of her death as just like that Martin re-organised her room, putting on a new coat of paint and carpeting the room. Her daughter loved it and they were all happy, the relative said. Looking back now it is as if she knew something was going to happen because just so she came that day and began cleaning out the room, one family member told Newsday. She even told us that she will not be here although she was doing all that.

Another relative said the last time they saw Martin was when she was leaving to meet Mohammed, and she had a worried look on her face. He said, We asked her if all was well and all she said is that she going to lime with Sham. Hours later, relatives said they were informed that Martin was shot in the head. Martin was described as an ambitious and independent young woman who loved her eight-year-old daughter and her family dearly. The daughter has been receiving counselling after her mother was shot. But up to lunch time yesterday, the child had not been told of her mothers death. Relatives promised to disclose the bad news to her when she got home from school yesterday. She was removed from her mothers apartment and has since been staying with other relatives since the shooting incident. Relatives are calling for justice claiming that the perpetrator is known to the police. Newsday was told that despite the circumstances under which the victims were shot and wounded, neither Martin or Mohammed was provided with police protection. I want to know why, the relative said. Only yesterday, we went to the station to ask for protection at the hospital but Denise has died. Her boyfriend is scared for his life now, as he is still warded at hospital.
Parents protest at 2 South schools

Students of Princes Town Presbyterian No 1 are currently on a shift system with the students of Princes Town Presbyterian school No 2. Parents held separate peaceful demonstrations at Iere Village Government and Princes Town Presbyterian No 1 yesterday to highlight their frustration at the ongoing problems at the two schools.

At Iere Village Government, parents, accompanied by several students in their uniforms, held aloft placards which read: 1st day- school starts at 8.30 am. school dismissed at 10 am. No water, no toilet and Minister Garcia- help us now. The schools PTA president

Denish Boodoo told reporters the PTA wrote the authorities, including the Ministry of Education and the Princes Town Regional Corporation (PTRC), several times since May to have the problems addressed prior to the start of the September term.

Since May this year we have been sending letters to the relevant authorities concerning this leakage on the northern side of the school, so when we came in on Monday and see the problem wasnt resolved, we decided to hold an emergency meeting with the parents because this thing cannot continue, he said. Gesturing to the sprawling school compound, Boodoo explained, across there the drain is about three feet deep, and anytime there is water in the line, we notice that water does be gushing through certain points in the drain there and after a certain point in time, the tanks becomes empty and due to that, they does have to dismiss school early.

Monday and Tuesday gone, we had to dismiss school half day because it had no water, he continued. Another concern is that the foundation is cracking, and apart from the cracking there is a piece of the box drain that has already collapsed. The problem there is that the computer room and the caf? is there so there are always students at that side of the school and that is a hazard to them. Missy Dopson, a parent, said parents will keep their children home until repairs are done. We are not going to send our children to school if it is in this condition because safety is first, as much as we want education for our children, We cant send them to a school and know that something can happen to them and when we have no water, we cant flush the toilet, that is a next sanitary health problem, Dopson said.

And in Princes Town, Presbyterian No 1s PTA president Nola Ramjohn-Karim and members held a protest at the abandoned schools Edward street compound. This protest will continue because we still havent gotten any definite answer as to what is the situation with our school so until we get something more definite, we are keeping up the protest, Ramjohn-Karim said.

She said a meeting of sorts has been held with the Presbyterian Primary schools Board and a proposal for the demolition and rebuilding of the school at its edward street site was sent to the education Ministry. In response to the two cases, a ministry official said WASA and the education Facilities Company Limited visited Iere Village Government on Wednesday to assess the school and prepare a scope of works.
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(Newser)  On the morning of Feb. 12, 1941, Army Pvt. Felix Hall went to his job at a sawmill near Fort Benning where he was stationed. After his shift ended, he told friends he was going to the Post Exchange, the only place on the segregated Georgia base where a black man could order a hot meal. He never made it. Halls body was found on March 28 hanging from a tree in woods a short walk from the center of the post. Citing never-before-seen documents, Alexa Mills at the Washington Post reports that the lynchingthe only one believed to have happened at a military base during that erawas never fully investigated. The FBI and the War Department failed to obtain or ignored important information. Although a military doctor ruled the death a homicide, authorities said the 19-year-old may have committed suicide. Outraged, the NAACP demanded a proper investigation.

Nobody was ever charged and the case went cold until 2014, when students at Northeastern University began digging. Hall was known to boldly converse and flirt across the color linea dangerous act for an African-American at that time. Rumors spread on base that his lynching was punishment for having his eyes on a white woman. On the day he died, Hall was last seen alive walking through a poor white neighborhood. Two suspects emerged, both military men who were never charged. The FBI never followed up on statements by Halls friends that his white boss at the sawmill had threatened to kill him. No word from the FBI whether it would reopen the case, though a spokeswoman said the bureau is committed to aggressively investigate these types of allegations and bring justice for the victims and their families. Read the full article here. (Read more Fort Benning stories.)
(Newser)  Wells Fargo has been slapped with a record $185 million penalty over a scam carried out by its own employees5,300 of whom were fired. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau says Wells Fargo workers trying to reach sales targets opened around 2 million phony deposit or credit card accounts, often transferring funds between customers' authorized accounts and the new ones they had created in their names. The Wells Fargo workers got bonuses for meeting targets, while the customers ended up paying fees on the phony accounts. The CFPB says Wells Fargo, which has agreed to pay the penalty, set up the bonus program without monitoring it for possible shady behavior.

"I didn't sign up for any bloody checking account," a scammed Maryland customer tells CNNMoney. "They lost me as a banking customer and I have warned family and friends." The CFPB says the $100 million fine is the largest it has levied since it was created in 2011. Wells Fargo will also have to pay $35 million to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and another $50 million to the city and county of Los Angeles, as well as make full restitution to all victims. A Wells Fargo spokeswoman tells the Wall Street Journal that the firings took place over several years, and they involved managers as well as team members from the bank's total staff of 268,000. (LA's lawsuit against Wells Fargo called it a "virtual fee-generating machine.")
(Newser)  In what Seoul called an act of "fanatic recklessness," North Korea carried out its biggest nuclear test yet early Friday, angering allies and enemies alike. The test registered as a 5.3-magnitude quake; Middlebury Institute expert Jeffrey Lewis tells Reuters that signals a blast of up to 30 kilotons, which would make the North Korean bomb bigger than the one the US dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. South Korean defense officials say the blast was closer to 10 kilotons, which is still nearly twice the size of the bomb Pyongyang is believed to have detonated in January, the Wall Street Journal reports. The nuclear test, which took place on the 68th anniversary of North Korea's founding, is the country's fifth. "This has definitely put on a higher level (the North's) technology of mounting nuclear warheads on ballistic rockets," said a statement out of the North.

Pyongyang says it will now be able to produce "at will" smaller nuclear warheads. The White House says President Obama, who is on his way home from Asia, spoke to South Korean President Park Geun-hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe after the test. China, Pyongyang's only major ally, slammed the country for conducting the test with "disregard" for international objections and said it's monitoring border areas for radiation. North Korea expert Koh Yu-hwan at Seoul's Dongguk University says the test may have been conducted to show that sanctions aren't hurting North Korea's nuclear program. "It seems that the North has decided to play an 'end game' where they push things to see how far they can go," he tells the AP. "It's already being heavily sanctioned and there will be little room for any new sanctions that will meaningfully hurt them more." (Read more North Korea stories.)
(Newser)  Navy SEALs attempted one of the daring rescues they're famous for after the kidnapping of an American and an Australian in Kabul last monthbut officials say they missed the men by what was probably just hours. Officials tell the New York Times that seven insurgents were killed in the raid on a Haqqani network compound in eastern Afghanistan, but after the firefight, they were unable to find American citizen Kevin King and Australian Timothy Weeks, American University of Afghanistan professors who were seized from their vehicle Aug. 7. Officials won't disclose whether they have any idea where the two captives are now.

"Military hostage rescue operations are inherently sensitive and dangerous, and careful deliberation went into this mission," Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook says, per the Washington Post. Sources tell Fox that the operation was the second attempt to rescue the professors. An earlier operation was called off because there were concerns about the intelligence, and the administration had not had a chance to review it. Obama signed off on the plan the next day, soon after advisers reviewed it and presented it to him, officials say. (Weeks after the professors were kidnapped, there was a deadly raid on the Kabul campus.)
(Newser)  After sparking a firestorm of outrage, a San Antonio mattress store has pulled an ad spoofing the World Trade Center attacks, reports the Dallas Morning News. What better way to remember 9/11 than with a Twin Tower sale? Miracle Mattress manager Cherisse Bonanno asks in the video. Two faux-screaming men then fall backward into two stacks of mattresses topped by an American flag. Oh my god, shrieks Bonanno, who adds, Well never forget. Before it was removed from the stores Facebook page on Thursday, the video drew hundreds of outraged comments. "I mean how stupid do you have to be ..." begins one typical one. Stung by the backlash, Bonanno admitted the ad was a stupid idea and said, We are not hate. We are love  thats not what we ever wanted," reports CBSDFW.

Her father, owner Mike Bonanno, posted an apology on Facebook saying, That horrible, utterly disrespectful film not only disgraced you, but the lives of every human being that died that day. Those moves did little to stop an outpouring of criticism. "There will never be an appropriate time to mock 9/11, and to do it to promote mattress sales?! Are you kidding me?" wrote one commenter. In Florida, meanwhile, a Walmart in Panama Beach City removed a display of soda cans stacked to look like the World Trade Center after a being shamed on social media, reports AP. A photo posted Twitter showed twin towers of Coke and Sprite cans with a banner readingyou guessed itWe will never forget. (On 9/11, a hero in a red bandanna saved lives.)
(Newser)  Amtrak is taking its lumps after a Twitter misfire. In response to a woman's tweet about being stuck in an Amtrak elevator at Baltimore-Washington International Airport, Amtrak tweeted on Wednesday, "We are sorry to hear that. Are you still in the elevator?" Well, no. Amanda Carpenter's plea for help had actually gone out seven months earlier, and Amtrak failed to notice the elapsed time. Carpenter, who is Ted Cruz's former communications director, responded, "Oh, my thank you for this but I was trapped months ago. Like last February. Thanks for checking...? Ha." The gaffe has brought all kinds of ridicule and memes down upon Amtrak, as rounded up by Mashable.

"Not our finest hour," acknowledged the company in a followup tweet. It seems that Carpenter's original tweet resurfaced all these months later because somebody retweeted it for some reason, and whoever responded on behalf of Amtrak simply didn't see the date. In fairness to the company, it responded to the original tweet just 16 minutes after Carpenter sent the request for help, telling her that "BWI agents are aware of you, and are working to get you out." Amtrak has now offered Carpenter a free train ride over the mess, but that didn't stop Twitter users from poking fun at what one guy calls "the worst customer service response time ever." Another used a gif of a skeleton holding a telephone. (Read more Amtrak stories.)
(Newser)  Donald Trump didn't do much to distance himself from the Kremlin Thursday night with an interview aired on the Russia-funded RT America network. The candidate told host Larry King that it was "probably unlikely" that Moscow is interfering in US elections and that claims that it is are probably coming from the Democrats, Politico reports. He also slammed the "unbelievably dishonest" American media and discussed third-party candidates, saying they appear to be fading away and he doesn't want to see Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson on the debate stage. In other coverage:

Trump was strongly criticized for speaking to a network widely seen as having a strong pro-Russia bias, with GOP strategist John Weaver calling it "insanity," the Washington Post reports. The Trump campaign said it thought the interview would appear on Larry King's podcast, not on RT.

The Hill reports that during a speech in Cleveland Thursday, Trump insisted that Hillary Clinton was lying when she said he was for the Iraq war before he was against it. "If I had been in Congress at the time I would have cast a vote in opposition," he said. "For years I've been a critic of these kinds of reckless foreign invasions and interventions that have been a hallmark of trigger-happy Hillary and her failed career."

The Washington Post looks at somebody who has been missing from the campaign trail since late July: Melania Trump. The possible first lady was in the audience for Trump's appearance at a military forum on Wednesday, but she hasn't spoken publicly since what turned out to be a partly plagiarized speech at the Republican National Convention and isn't expected to play a major role in the campaign's final weeks.

The New York Times examines the education plan Trump unveiled in Cleveland Thursday. He promised $20 billion in federal funds to help poor students attend the schools of their choice, though it's not clear where he plans to find the $20 billion.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Clinton's campaign has decided to try to send out a more positive message about her vision for America instead of focusing on attacking Trump. The candidate spoke about her faith to the National Baptist Convention in Kansas City, Mo., on Thursday, saying doing so "doesn't always come naturally to a Midwestern Methodist."

(Read more Donald Trump stories.)
(Newser)  A Mississippi police chief under investigation for a "personnel" issue was suspended without pay around 3pm Thursday. Moments later, colleagues say Bay St. Louis' top cop walked into the police station parking lot and intentionally shot himself in the chest. Mike DeNardo, 63, was alert and talking while being loaded into an ambulance but was pronounced dead at a hospital, reports the Sun Herald. The Hancock County Sheriff's Officewhich has taken temporarily control of the police departmenthad been asked to assist in escorting DeNardo from the police station and "it just kind of went bad, I guess," Sheriff Ricky Adam tells WLOX.

Adam says two sheriff's deputies were confiscating DeNardo's keys and weapons when the shooting occurred, per the Clarion Ledger. "It's difficult for a police officer when he is relieved of his duty, so maybe that played into it," he says. Officers aren't saying what DeNardo was being investigated for, and though the Sun Herald reports the department is missing $300,000 in DOJ forfeiture funds, Mayor Les Fillingame says the issue involving DeNardo was more personal than professional, per WWL-TV. It was "just the very initial phase of an investigation," and DeNardo likely would've been cleared of wrongdoing, he adds, per the New York Daily News. (Read more Mississippi stories.)
(Newser)  Dustin Moskovitz can spend his billions of dollars any way he wantsand making sure Donald Trump doesn't make it into the White House is apparently one of his newest investments. The Facebook co-founder announced on Medium Friday that he and wife Cari Tuna would be making what CNN calls "a historically large donation" ($20 million) to at least six Democratic organizations and non-partisan voter advocacy groups, including the Hillary Victory Fund and MoveOn.org. Once the funds go out, Moskovitz will become the third-largest donor in Election 2016. "This decision was not easy, particularly because we have reservations about anyone using large amounts of money to influence elections," he writes on Medium.

The move seems a somewhat odd one for Mark Zuckerberg's former college roommate: Per CampaignMoney.com, Moskovitz's previous political contributions over the past 15 years or so have equaled just over $10,000, $5,200 of which went to Sean Eldridge, a political activist married to another Facebook co-founder, Chris Hughes. And Moskovitz himself admits that using his resources for good causes hasn't traditionally included political donations. But "this [election] cycle is different," he writes, adding "the Republican Party, and Donald Trump in particular, is running on a zero-sum vision, stressing a false contest between their constituency and the rest of the world." (Are Trump supporters still sending money to this "registered genius"?)
(Newser)  Doubts are now emerging about a harrowing tale of a woman kidnapped, thrown in her trunk, and then murdered. Though police in Montana and Washington initially described Rita Maze's death as a homicide, now they aren't so sure, reports KHQ. At this point, they are ruling out no possibilities, including suicide. In a series of phone calls with police and family members on Tuesday, Maze described a man hitting her on the head and forcing her into the trunk of her 2005 Pontiac Grand Prix at a rest stop in Wolf Creek, Mont. She was found dead of a gunshot to the chest just after midnight Wednesday in Spokane, Wash., about two hours after an officer heard gunshots on the line.

A Spokane County sheriff tells the Spokesman-Review that people are right to question Maze's story, though he's not sure "what is going on." Maze's daughter, however, maintains that her mom was abducted. Maze, who was returning from an overnight visit at her daughter's house, was 60 miles from her Great Falls home when she arrived at the rest stop in Wolf Creek. She "did not hit herself, stuff herself in the trunk, and drive all the way to Spokane and shoot herself," Rochelle Maze says. She believes an assailant "shot her and left the gun and keys in [the car] to make it look like she killed herself." Police say Maze's keys were in the ignition, her purse was in the front seat, and blood was found on the ground near a $20 bill. (Read more kidnapping stories.)
(Newser)  North Korea may not be able to launch a nuclear attack on the US, but the Washington Post reports it's getting closer and closer to having that ability, as evidenced by Friday's nuclear test. Its a clear indication of progress towards developing a miniaturized nuclear warhead for North Koreas ballistic missiles, analyst Alison Evans says. She says North Korea probably has 15 or 20 nuclear weapons at this point, but so far it's only able to put them on trucks or short-range missiles. On Friday, North Korea claimed to have "standardized" nuclear warheads to make them "smaller, lighter" with "higher strike power."

It's impossible to confirm whether North Korea, known for exaggerating its abilities, actually has the technology to create nuclear ballistic missiles. But even if it doesn't, US military officials now believe it's only a matter of time. President Obama called for new international sanctions against North Korea after its most recent nuclear test, which he called a "grave threat," AFP reports. According to USA Today, the UN Security Council scheduled an emergency meeting Friday. But previous UN resolutions haven't done much to slow down North Korea's nuclear and missile tests, both of which have accelerated under Kim Jong Un. (Read more North Korea stories.)
(Newser)  A federal judge denied the Standing Rock Sioux's request for a temporary halt to construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline Friday, the AP reports. Judge James Boasberg says he took the tribe's request very seriouslyNPR notes he acknowledged the "contentious and tragic" relationship between Native American tribes and the US governmentbut that it hadn't "demonstrated that an injunction is warranted here." According to CNN, Boasberg says the Standing Rock Sioux failed to prove it "will suffer any injury that would be prevented by any injunction." A lawyer representing the tribe says it plans on appealing. "My heart is hurting, but we will continue to stand," the tribe's historian tells the AP, adding that protests of the pipeline will continue.

The Standing Rock Sioux had sued the Army Corps of Engineers, alleging it violated federal laws when it approved portions of the pipeline near the tribe's reservation in North Dakota and failed to properly consult the tribe. The tribe says construction is disturbing graves and other culturally, spiritually, and historically significant sites. It also says the $3.8 billion pipeline will cross the Missouri River just upstream from the reservation, putting its drinking water in jeopardy in the case of leaks. The pipeline was originally going to cross the river closer to Bismarck, but officials worried for the safety of the state capital's drinking water, the New Yorker reports. Thousands of people, including Native Americans from multiple tribes and environmentalists, have been protesting construction of the pipeline. (Read more Dakota Access Pipeline stories.)
China's state-run airline, Air China, is being slammed over racist travel advice featured in their inflight magazine. The magazine, Wings of China, warned Chinese tourists that while London is generally a safe place to travel to, they should avoid areas with Indians, Pakistanis, and black people.

According to ATTN, this was first spotted by Haze Fan, a CNBC producer based in Beijing. She tweeted a picture of the advice and tagged the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan. Khan is of Pakistani descent and was born in England.

The magazine has spouted outrage, with citizens from twitter criticizing the magazine. Several have chided the magazine for the offending advice.

Mirror reports that Virendra Sharma, the Labour MP of Ealing Southall, has demanded a public apology from the Chinese ambassador to the UK for the racist slur.

"I am shocked and appalled that even today some people would see it as acceptable to write such blatantly untrue and racist statements.", says Sharma. "I have invited representatives of Air China to visit my constituency of Ealing Southall to see that a very multi-cultural area is safe, and would be of great value for those visiting London to see."

He has also demanded that the magazine be removed from circulation immediately and that if Air China does not respond appropriately, then he questions its fitness to operate in the UK.

I have written to the Chinese Ambassador about the balant racism of Air China https://t.co/hRNsiBjB0F  Virendra Sharma MP (@VirendraSharma) September 7, 2016

The airline has already removed all copies of the magazine and blames the "inappropriate expressions" on sister firm, Air China Media. Air China Media has issued an apology.

However, Straits Times reports that Chinese mainland social media users defended the travel tips, saying that the magazine was "stating the truth" and that there was nothing to apologize about.

This is not the first instance of a Chinese company publishing discriminatory media against dark-skinned minorities. Earlier this year, a Chinese laundry detergent company called Qiaobi also received backlash for a racist ad. The ad featured an Asian woman loading a black man into a washing machine, turning him to an Asian man.
Gaya:

Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Thursday rushed to Gaya in Bihar in the wake of widespread waterlogging in many areas due to rain and amid fear of stones slipping from a hill due to the downpour.

Kumar rushed to Gaya to take stock of situation and gave necessary instructions to officials to help the people.

According to a state Met official bulletin, Gaya recorded 107.9 mm rain in the last 24 hours.

The CM took help of a megaphone to appeal to people living near the hill at Gwal bigha area to move to safety amid fear of slipping of big stones under the impact of rain, an official statement said.

If the rain continue, there is fear of slipping of stones, Kumar said, appealing people to shift to camps meant for visitors to the Pitrapaksha fair.

The police would regularly patrol to safeguard their homes and belongings, the Chief Minister, while urging the people to move to the camps, said.

He said experts of Mines and Geology department under the Principal Secretary have reached Gaya to look into the slipping of stones from the hill.

Officials of the National Disaster Management Authority would reach Gaya tomorrow to probe the situation, Kumar said, adding, necessary steps would be taken based on their recommendations.

Kumar also monitored accumulation of water in many areas of Gaya due to the rain and instructed officials to remove encroachment from middle of Mansarva nullah at the Pantnagar locality.

Later, he held a meeting with officials at the Airport and instructed them to keep fire brigade services ready to deal with any eventuality.

Minister in-charge of Gaya Krishnandan Verma, Principal Secretary Disaster Management Department Vyasji and Principal Secretary in the Chief Ministers Office Chanchal Kumar accompanied Kumar to Gaya.

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New Delhi :

North Korea has likely conducted their fifth nuclear test, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported on Friday.

A 5.3 magnitude seismic event was detected northwest of North Koreas Punggye-ri nuclear testing site at 9:30 am on Friday (Local Time), suggesting that the country has carried out its fifth nuclear test.

The United States Geological Survey reported the depth of the quake at 0 kilometers, strongly suggesting that Fridays event was a nuclear test.

In January, North Korea announced it had carried out a "successful" hydrogen bomb test and in recent months it has carried out a number of ballistic missile launches, all of which were in violation of UN Security Council resolutions.



Also read:

North Korea confirms fifth and biggest nuclear test; Japan, South Korea say it is unacceptable'

The test makes 2016 the first year since North Korea began testing its nuclear devices underground to see more than a single nuclear test. North Korea previously tested nuclear weapons in January 2016, February 2013, May 2009, and October 2006.

Fridays explosion marks the continuation of an exceptionally active year of nuclear and missile testing from North Korea. In addition to the two nuclear tests this year, Pyongyang has been repeatedly testing various ballistic missiles, including its first submarine-launched ballistic missile.

Earlier this week, during the G20 meeting in Hangzhou, China, Pyongyang launched previously unseen Scud-ER missiles.

North Korea confirms fifth and biggest nuclear test; Japan, South Korea say it is unacceptable'

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New Delhi :

Farmer and pro-Karnataka organisations have called for a state-wide bandh in Karnataka on Friday over over a Supreme Court directive to release Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu.



To prepare for the bandh the government has deployed at least 25,000 police and security personnel, who will patrol the streets of Bengaluru, Mysore and Mandya, among other parts of the state, to maintain law and order during the strike.



The state government will also bring in 10 companies of security personnel from the centre, two from Andhra Pradesh and Kerala to maintain law and order.



The state government has lent tacit support to the strike as chief minister Siddaramaiah announced that schools, colleges and government offices were likely to remain shut on Friday.



All transport services will remain off the streets, either lending support for the strike or avoiding damage to their vehicles. After a meeting with senior police officials in Bengaluru on Thursday, Siddaramaiah said the government will not oppose the action.



We have no issues with peaceful protests but any act of violence will be punished, Siddaramaiah told reporters.



Farmer and pro-Karnataka groups called for a strike on Friday after the SC directed Karnataka to release 15,000 cusecs of water per day for the next 10 days to Tamil Nadu.



The Cauvery water dispute between the two states is at least four decades old. However, this time many factors including acute shortage of drinking water, a sixth consecutive year of deficient rainfall, drop in agricultural production and the possibility of a second successive drought year has fueled emotions across the state.



Main opposition parties like the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Janata Dal (Secular) have put their might behind the shutdown strike. Even former external affairs minister of India and former CM of Karnataka SM Krishna of the Congress party has expressed his support.

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Mumbai:

A stampede broke out at the naval base in Mumbais Malad region on Friday morning, injuring several youths who were there to attend an exam.



According to initial reports, at least 10,000 youths fell victim to a sudden stampede at INS Hamla, navys base in Mumbai. The crowd had gathered at the base to give an exam organised by the Indian Navy.



From last two days, job seekers were gathering outside the naval base for the said test, however, there were no proper arrangements for food or shelter, an eyewitness said.

Also read:

Stampede at INS Hamla: Confusion caused ruckus, situation under control now, says Nany PRO



The increasing number of people and lack of administrative arrangments led to anger which quickly turned into a stampede, crushing several youths, he added.

INS Hamla is a naval base on the western shore of Mumbai.

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New Delhi :

Two prominent varsities of the countryDelhi University and JNU will vote for their respective student unions on Friday with around 35 candidates set to test their electoral fortunes in the two politically active campuses.



Election authorities at both the universities are geared up with all arrangements in place for the polls which are being closely watched in the aftermath of the controversies which have rocked university campuses across the country in recent months.



The elections at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), which have been keenly contested over decades are hogging more limelight this year in the backdrop of the February 9 event during which anti-national slogans were allegedly raised leading to arrest of outgoing JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar and two others.



While the political slugfest at DU has over the decades been between Congress-affiliated National Students Union of India (NSUI) and RSS student wing Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), left-affiliated All India Students Association (AISA) is vying for the central panel posts with a series of campaigns done by the outfit in recent months to thwart alleged attempts of attacks on university campuses across the country.



A total of 17 candidates are in fray for the four posts of DUSU office-bearers. While 7 candidates are in race for the post of President, 4 nominations have been validated for the post of Vice-President, D S Rawat, Chief Election Commissioner for DUSU polls said.



Three contestants each are in fray for the post of Secretary and Joint Secretary, he said.



The voting for Delhi University Students Union (DUSU) elections will take place in two phases across 117 booths set up at 51 colleges of the university.



With a total of 1,23,246 voters, the voting will take place across 51 colleges of the university from morning to evening, Rawat said.



According to DU authorities, the timings for voting for the students of morning colleges will be from 8.30 AM to 12.30 PM, while the students of evening colleges can cast their votes from 3 PM to 7 PM.



Rawat said 300 EVMs would be used for the elections and adequate security arrangements have also been made at each and every polling centre to prevent any untoward incident.

The results of DUSU elections will be declared by Saturday afternoon, he added.



DUSU is the representative body of the students from most colleges and faculties. Apart from DUSU, which is an umbrella council, each college also has its own students union for which they hold separate elections.

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Seoul:

In a bizarre and surprising move, Kim Jong-un has banned sarcasm in North Korea. The reason is that the controversial leader fears people only agree with him ironically, reports said. He has reportedly warned the government officials that they will "not be forgiven" if heard being sarcastic.

In order to spread the word about the new order, mass meetings were organised across the country. One state security official personally organised a meeting to alert local residents to potential hostile actions by internal rebellious elements," Radio Free Asia's Korean Services quoted a source as saying.

The main point of the lecture was keep your mouths shut. This is all Americas fault is one of the banned phases that allude to Mr Kim's default position of blaming the US for everything that goes wrong.

This habit of the central authorities of blaming the wrong country when a problems cause obviously lies elsewhere has led citizens to mock the party, the source told Radio Free Asia.

Government workers apparently refer to Kim as "a fool who cannot see the outside world.

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New Delhi :

Comedian Kapil Sharma, on Friday, alleged that a Bombay Municipal Corporation official demanded a bribe of Rs 5 lakh as bribe for opening his office. The comedian, known as Indias finest comedian in recent times, wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in early hours on Friday complaining about the incident.

I am paying 15 cr income tax from last 5 year n still i have to pay 5 lacs bribe to BMC office for making my office @narendramodi, Kapil tweeted.

I am paying 15 cr income tax from last 5 year n still i have to pay 5 lacs bribe to BMC office for making my office @narendramodi  KAPIL (@KapilSharmaK9) September 9, 2016

An angry Kapil further asked Prime Minister in another tweet if these are acche din (good days)?

Yeh hain aapke achhe din ? @narendramodi  KAPIL (@KapilSharmaK9) September 9, 2016

Reacting immediately to his complaint, Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis asked him to provide all information and ensured that a strict action will be taken as soon as possible.

Kapilbhai pls provide all info.

Have directed MC,BMC to take strictest action.

We will not spare the culprit.@KapilSharmaK9 @narendramodi  Devendra Fadnavis (@Dev_Fadnavis) September 9, 2016

Meanwhile, BMC has also requested him to file a formal complaint and name the official who demanded the bribe.



Kapil Sharma hosts a very famous comedy show The Kapil Sharma show for which he is reportedly paid Rs 60 lakh rupees per episode that comes out to be 5 cr per month. It is reportedly way more than how much many of the Bollywood stars make.

Also read: Kapil Sharma bribe row: Comedian was building the office illegally, says BMC official

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New Delhi :

North Korea on Friday confirmed that it conducted a successful "nuclear warhead explosion" test earlier in the day. According to media reports, the fifth and biggest nuclear test by North Korea was meant to counter what Pyongyang calls U.S. hostility, news agency AP said.

North Korea's government news agency KCNA has said that Friday's test confirmed nuclear warhead can be mounted on rockets.

A 5.3 magnitude seismic event was detected northwest of North Koreas Punggye-ri nuclear testing site on 9:30am on Friday, suggesting that the country has carried out its fifth nuclear test. The United States Geological Survey reported the depth of the quake at 0 kilometers, strongly suggesting that Fridays event was a nuclear test.



Read more:

North Korea: 5.3 magnitude quake sets alarm for fifth nuclear test





China on Friday expressed firm opposition to the nuclear test conducted by North Korea, believed to be its most powerful atomic explosion ever. State-run Xinhua news agency briefly quoted a Chinese Foreign Ministry statement firmly opposing the test.

Japanese Prime Minister ShinzA Abe has also condemned the test. Japan, who is the immediate neighbour of North Korea, has deemed the test as 'absolutely unacceptable'.

According to news agency AFP, the White House has said that US President Barack Obama is consulting with South Korea and Japan on North Korea's test.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency has reported that according to their military, North Koreas Friday nuclear test is its 'most powerful to date'.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye called the test a 'self-destructive' provocation by its arch enemy.

In January, North Korea announced it had carried out a "successful" hydrogen bomb test and in recent months it has carried out a number of ballistic missile launches, all of which were in violation of UN Security Council resolutions.

Pyongyang has been repeatedly testing various ballistic missiles, including its first submarine-launched ballistic missile. Earlier this week, during the G20 meeting in Hangzhou, China, Pyongyang launched previously unseen Scud-ER missiles.

'High possibility' of nuclear test after quake detected in North Korea: Seoul https://t.co/bDOeAoDjv3 pic.twitter.com/3iJcH4jjk8  AFP news agency (@AFP) September 9, 2016

#BREAKING North Korea nuclear test its 'most powerful to date': Yonhap quoting South Korean military  AFP news agency (@AFP) September 9, 2016

#BREAKING White House says assessing explosion in North Korea  AFP news agency (@AFP) September 9, 2016

#BREAKING North Korea's nuclear test 'self-destructive' provocation, says South Korean President Park  AFP news agency (@AFP) September 9, 2016

#BREAKING Japan PM Abe calls North Korean nuclear test 'absolutely unacceptable'  AFP news agency (@AFP) September 9, 2016

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Bengaluru:

Pro-Kannada outfits on Friday called a dawn-to-dusk Karnataka bandh to protest against the Courtas direction to release Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu. The Karnataka Bandh has hit the normal life in Bengaluru and has affected most parts of the state. The police stopped and detained a few activists of pro-Kannada organisations as they tried to enter the departure terminal of the Kempegowda International Airport and the railway station in Bengaluru.A

The government buses stayed off the roads and auto-rickshaw and cab unions too have extended their support to the bandh. This has hit the transport services in Indiaas IT hub hard. Metro services have also been halted.

Here are the live updates:

# Lathicharge at KRS Dam at Mandya; Protestor tries to commit suicide at Freedom park Bengaluru

Bengaluru: Pro Kannada organisations continue to protest against Supreme Court's order on Cauvery water issue. pic.twitter.com/XcEJXA2L8F a ANI (@ANI_news) September 9, 2016

#Karnataka CM writes to PM Modi, requests him to call meeting of CMs of States (forthwith on a few hours notice) to resolve Cauvery water dispute



#The two Kannada releases a Mungaru Male 2 and Golisoda a have been postponed. Film shootings in Karnataka have been suspended for the day.

Cauvery water issue: Clash between Police and Jai Karnataka activists in Gulbarga #Karnataka pic.twitter.com/XXtHeeHXPw a ANI (@ANI_news) September 9, 2016

#Educational institutions declare a holiday on Friday.



#Some private companies declare a holiday on Friday



#Petrol bunks, hotels, malls and other commercial establishments remain shut, banks services also hit



#Karnataka Cable Operators Association supports the strike, says Tamil TV channels will not be aired

#Agitators block the Bengaluru-Mysuru highway at several places in Mandya

#A section of farmers in Mandya stage protest as they venture into the river carrying stones on their heads



#Protesters stoned three lorries bearing Tamil Nadu registrations in Ballari

#Transgender community in Ballari also taking part in bandh related demonstrationsA

#Bandh evokes positive response from various parts of the state including Mandya, Mysuru, Ballari, Koppala, Chikkaballapura, Dharwad and Kolar

Karnataka's needs must be addressed first from Cauvery n hope both state Govts can resolve this long dispute amicably. a Kiran Mazumdar Shaw (@kiranshaw) September 9, 2016

We r observing Bandh in solidarity with people n farmers of Karnataka who r facing water challenges. Hope 2 states resolve dispute amicably a Kiran Mazumdar Shaw (@kiranshaw) September 9, 2016

Due to #KarnatakaBandh, There will be no Public transport BMTC / BMRCL/ KSRTC/ Auto Rickshaw. a BengaluruCityPolice (@BlrCityPolice) September 9, 2016

Pro-Kannada organizations call #KarnatakaBandh over Cauvery water issue; visuals from Bengaluru. pic.twitter.com/yGAJ5cig4C a ANI (@ANI_news) September 9, 2016

Mandya (Karnataka): Pro Kannada organizations call a shut down, protest over Cauvery river water issue pic.twitter.com/x1VbdeMPro a ANI (@ANI_news) September 9, 2016

Mandya (Karnataka): Pro Kannada organizations call a shut down over Cauvery river water issue pic.twitter.com/aAb8DstyC3 a ANI (@ANI_news) September 9, 2016

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Mumbai:

Indian Navy on Friday said that the stampede at the naval base near Mumbai broke out in the morning because security personnel was unable to control a large number of aspirants who turned up at the camp.

There was a recruitment rally at INS Hamla, Malad, this morning for senior secondary recruits. We were expecting a good response from volunteers, an official said.



The response was overwhelming and crowd control created a bit of confusion in the early hours today (Sept 9), which was subsequently handled very efficiently by the local police and Navy officials, he said.



The recruitment drive is going on smoothly now, the official added.

Also read:

Watch: Stampede during naval exam in Mumbai, several injured



Speaking to media, Navy PRO DH Sharma said that the stampede occurred after 60% of the people were called inside the gates. But that was just to control the crowd, he said.



He added, There was no intention of refusing other people. We will continue recruitment drive till the last man with requisite requirements is entertained.



Earlier, eyewitness had said that there were at least 10,000 participants but barely any arrangments for food or water, which caused anger amongst the aspirants.

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New Delhi:

Pro-Kannada outfits on Friday called a dawn-to-dusk Karnataka bandh to protest against the Courts direction to release Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu. The Karnataka Bandh has hit the normal life in Bengaluru and has affected most parts of the state. The police stopped and detained a few activists of pro-Kannada organisations as they tried to enter the departure terminal of the Kempegowda International Airport and the railway station in Bengaluru. Here are the top 5 headlines of the day:

1) Live Karnataka bandh: Bengaluru comes to a halt as water war deepens

The government buses stayed off the roads and auto-rickshaw and cab unions too have extended their support to the bandh. This has hit the transport services in Indias IT hub hard. Metro services have also been halted.

2) North Korea confirms 'successful' nuclear test; China, Japan, South Korea 'firmly oppose' it

North Korea on Friday confirmed that it conducted a successful "nuclear warhead explosion" test earlier in the day. According to media reports, the fifth and biggest nuclear test by North Korea was meant to counter what Pyongyang calls U.S. hostility, news agency AP said.

3) Rahul Gandhi visits Hanuman Garhi temple in Ayodhya, a first by Nehru-Gandhi member since 1992

Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Friday reached Ayodhya, as a part of fourth day of his mahayatra in Uttar Pradesh, where elections are due early next year.

4) Will ban alcohol, meat near Golden temple if voted to power, says Kejriwal in Punjab

AAP Party chief Arvind Kejriwal on Friday said that if AAP is voted to power in Punjab then it will ensure a prohibition on alcohol and meat around the holy area of Golden Temple. Kejriwal, who is in on a five-day visit to Punjab, also said that Amritsar ward city and Anandpur Sahib will be declared holy places, if AAP comes to power in Punjab.

5) Are you ready to pay more? Surge pricing begins in Rajdhani, Shatabdi, Duronto trains from today.

Railway passengers will have to shell out more for travelling by Rajdhani, Shatabdi and Duronto trains from .

Live Karnataka bandh: Bengaluru comes to a halt as water war deepens

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Bengaluru:

Finally clearing the hurdle, the Karnataka government has decided to hand over a piece of land on Hebbal Road in Bengaluru for establishment of a science research institute and a gallery. Ireland-based organisation Science Gallery International (SGI), which is a not-profit organisation, will set up the science gallery.

Science Gallery International, which is a part of Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, will collaborate with Karnatakas science and technology department to work towards establishing the institute and a gallery aimed at drawing scientists interested in research.

The project has also been proposed to be set up in Dublin and Singapore, apart from Bengaluru. The land was initially awarded to the Indian Veterinary Research Institute (IVRI), a central government entity, for its research institute, Law minister TB Jayachandra said.



"The land originally belongs to the animal husbandry department, and was leased to IVRI for their research institute. When IVRI said it was planning to use the space for a hostel for its international students, and quarters for its scientists, we declined. We asked them to move these facilities to Rajanakunte, where they have been awarded 110 acres. We have now decided to have the science gallery project here," Jayachandra added.

The Cabinet has decided to terminate the lease provided to IVRI as they wanted to build residential quarters on the land. We want the land to be put to public use and hence, the new lease. The land is estimated to cost Rs 100 crore and we are expecting the Science Gallery International to contribute a matching amount to set up the gallery. The IT department will monitor the project, Law Minister he said.

The state government has given one acre and 26 guntas of land to the science and technology department, while remaining 3 acres and 14 guntas remain with the animal husbandry department.



The Science Gallery International had signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Karnataka government in 2014 for establishing the gallery. As the location for the gallery could not be finalised, the project remained in limbo.

However, ending the hurdles, the state Cabinet on Thursday announced its decision to lease the land to on Hebbal Road to SGI. The SGI website says that the gallery is likely to open in 2018. The purpose of the gallery is to engage those who are aged between 15 and 25 in creative science through exhibitions and events. The youngsters will get a platform to engage in the interface between science and arts.

Indian Institute of Science, National Centre for Biological Science and Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Bengaluru already has tie-up with the SGI.

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New Delhi :

Turning the tables in the Kapil Sharma row, a Bombay Municipal Corporation of Friday told News Nation that the comedian was asked not to further build his property on July15-16 because the construction was illegal.



Speaking to News Nation, BMC Official Krishna Vishwas Rao said, The corporation is ready to swift and strict action against the culprit, if named. Giving bribe is bigger crime than taking it, she said.





The BMC official, however, said that according to the ward officials, Kapil Sharma was served with a notice on July 15-16 to stop further construction of his property because it was illegal.

Also read: Comedian Kapil Sharma complains to PM Modi about bribe demands by BMC, Govt springs into action



If he had any issues, he should have come to meet BMC commissioner, just like other celebreties do, Rao added.

Comedia Kapil Sharma had written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday alleging that a BMC official asked for Rs 5lakh bribe for permission to open his office.

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Jaipur:

A 35-year-old woman was arrested by city police on Thursday for allegedly murdering her four-month-old daughter in what appears to be a suspected case of female infanticide, reports said. The woman allegedly slit the throat of the infant because she wanted a boy, police said.

The murder took place on August 26. The incident came to light after the girl, daughter of an industrialist, was found with her throat slit at her house in Shastri Nagar.

Shockingly, the woman tried to kill the infant on August 19 too, but did not succeed. The child was admitted to hospital, police said.

We found the mother was unhappy over having a baby girl as she wanted a boy. The couple has another eight-year-old girl and her parents tried numerous times to have a boy, said deputy commissioner of police (north) Anshuman Bhomia.





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Washington:

US President Barack Obama today warned North Korea of serious consequences as he consulted leaders of South Korea and Japan after Pyongyang conducted its fifth nuclear test - believed to be its most powerful ever.

The president indicated he would continue to consult our allies and partners in the days ahead to ensure provocative actions from North Korea are met with serious consequences, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said. He said President Obama was briefed on the situation as he flew home from a visit to Asia aboard Air Force One.

Obama consulted with South Korean President Park Geun-hye and Japans Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in separate phone calls from the presidential aircraft. The president reiterated the unbreakable US commitment to the security of our allies in Asia and around the world, Earnest said.

Earlier, National Security Council spokesman Ned Price said the US was monitoring and continuing to assess the situation in view of the seismic activity on the Korean Peninsula in the vicinity of a known nuclear site.

We are monitoring and continuing to assess the situation in close coordination with our regional partners, Price said. His statement came after South Korean and international monitoring agencies reported an earthquake near North Koreas north-eastern nuclear test site, indicating that Pyongyang may have detonated a new atomic test to mark the 68th anniversary of the countrys founding.

Our monitoring stations picked up an unusual seismic event in the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK) today at 00:30 (UTC). So far, 25 of our stations are contributing to the analysis, CTBT Organisations executive secretary Lassina Zerbo said in a statement. The event seems to have been slightly larger than the one our system recorded on 6 January this year and the location is very similar to that event.

Our initial location estimate shows that the event took place in the area of the DPRKs nuclear test site. If confirmed as a nuclear test, this act constitutes yet another breach of the universally accepted norm against nuclear testing; a norm that has been respected by 183 countries since 1996, she said.

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New Delhi :

With the extreme unrest in Karnataka over release of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Friday requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi to call forthwith on a few hours notice a meeting of chief ministers of the two states to end the impasse.

As the Cauvery row hotted up with the state observing a 12-hour bandh today, Siddaramaiah dashed off a missive to Modi saying that the unrest, if continued, would have a serious impact on the states economy as also the IT economy which brings enormous revenue and foreign exchange to the country.

By this communication, I earnestly request you not only as Prime Minister, but as Head of the entire Federal system, to call a meeting of the Chief Ministers of the States (forthwith on a few hours notice) to resolve the impasse, Siddaramaiah said in the letter released to the media here.

He pointed to a precedent of December 1995, where under similar circumstances of deficit flows, the Supreme Court had requested the Prime Minister to resolve the issue.

The Supreme Court by order dated 28 December, 1995 requested the Prime Minister to resolve the issue of implementation of its order, which was then duly done to the satisfaction of all parties, he said.

Complying with the apex courts order, Karnataka government has been releasing 15,000 cusecs of water to Tamil Nadu since Tuesday, triggering a wave of protests particularly in the Cauvery basin districts with Mandya being the epicentre of the stir.

While maintaining that the release was inevitable, Karnataka government has said it would seek modification of the apex courts September five order to spare water for 10 days because of the difficulties in implementing it given that the live storage in four reservoirs in the Cauvery basin now was 46.7 TMCFT against their capacity of 104 TMCFT.

The present live storage is 45 per cent against the live storage of 104 TMCFT in the Krishnaraja Sagar, Harangi, Hemavathi and Kabini reservoirs, the government has said.

Siddaramaiah, in his letter, has invited the Prime Ministers immediate attention to the stark facts already in the public arena about extreme unrest in the Cauvery basin, especially in Bengaluru... against the courts interim order on release of water.

He said the daily release of 15,000 cusecs of Cauvery water at the inter state border, Biligundulu, which, if continued, would completely deprive the drinking water not only to the residents of Bangalore City but also to farmers of Cauvery basin and water for the only crop they grow.

The Supreme Courts direction was based on Tamil Nadus plea, seeking a direction to Karnataka to release 50.52 TMCFT of Cauvery water to save 40,000 acres of samba crops this season.

Siddaramaih pointed out that at an all-party meeting held on Tuesday last, the views of the political parties including BJP in the state, was that the order of the Supreme Court ought not to be implemented.

However, as constitutional Chief Executive of the State, I have taken it upon myself to obey the orders of the Supreme Court and the water is being released as per the order which has created more unrest and disquiet in the state.

Awaiting your favourable response urgently, by telephone, fax or email, said Siddaramaiah, as he faced the increasing Cauvery heat.

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Pratapgarh:

A BSF jawan, who was on leave, was allegedly hacked to death with a spade on Friday morning by two persons in Ibrahimpur village, said police.

Harish Chandra Patel and Ram Chandra have been detained for allegedly killing Panna Lal Saroj (31) while he was working at his field, police said. His body has been sent for postmortem, they added.
United Nations:

The UN Security Council will meet today to discuss North Koreas fifth and most powerful nuclear test to date. The 15 council members will meet at 3:00 pm (1900 GMT) for urgent consultations, at the request of the United States and Japan, said the New Zealand mission. New Zealand holds this months presidency of the Security Council.

North Koreas state media said the test, which comes after a series of ballistic missile launches, had realized the countrys goal of being able to fit a miniaturized warhead on a rocket.

The blast at the Punggye-ri nuclear site was the Norths fifth and most powerful yet at 10 kilotons, according to experts.

The council has strongly condemned North Koreas missile launches and vowed earlier this week to take further significant measures against Pyongyang.

Japan is calling for new sanctions, but China, Pyongyangs ally, has repeatedly stressed the need to avoid an escalation of tension on the Korean peninsula. North Korea has been hit by five sets of UN sanctions since it first tested a nuclear device in 2006.

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Ludhiana:

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Friday said the current phase of false propaganda targeting AAP will pass soon. He assured his party workers that selection of candidates for the 2017 Punjab Assembly polls will be from the constituencies and nobody will be fielded from outside the constituencies.

Kejriwal, who is staying at a farmhouse in Jhande village here, had a closed-door meeting with the party workers who had come from all over the state to meet him.

A party spokesman said due to last minute change in his schedule, the AAP supremo started meeting party workers from around 4 PM after returning from Amritsar.

On the second day of his four-day Punjab tour in the aftermath of the sex CD exposure and cash-for-ticket allegations, Kejriwal told his party workers that they were going to steer through this phase of false propaganda soon.

Quoting Kejriwal, the spokesman said these allegations were a part of a deep-rooted conspiracy of its political opponents to defame AAP. He also asked for suggestions from the cadres for strengthening the party.

The party workers were not allowed to carry mobile phones during the meeting, sources said, adding that Kejriwal met them in batches.

A delegation of mid-day meal workers also met and apprised him of their demands and difficulties. The AAP supremo assured them of all the help. Later, Kejriwal paid a visit to former vice chancellor of

Punjabi University and noted agro-economist SS Johal at the latters residence in Gurdev Nagar here. However, the media was not allowed to interact with him there as well.

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Brussels:

A woman arrested in connection with a foiled plot in Paris is believed to have helped recruit jihadists in Belgium for the war in Syria, a Belgian television station reported on Friday.



The 19-year-old woman, Ines Madani, was shot and wounded in France on Thursday by police investigating a car found filled with gas cylinders near Notre Dame cathedral, a tourist hotspot, last weekend. Madani is considered the main suspect in the case.

According to our information, Ines Madani had contacts with Belgian radicals from the Charleroi region,the RTBF station reported, without naming its sources. Charleroi is a city south of Brussels, in Belgiums former industrial heartland.



The names of the radicals appeared on a list from (Belgiums national crisis centre) OCAM as potential candidates departing for Syria, the station said.



Some of them have since been arrested, it added.



There is no question here (in Belgium) of a planned attack but Ines Madani seemed to fullfil a role of recruiter and facilitator for these departures, it said.



If true, it would not be the first time jihadists in Belgium have been linked to those in France.



Several based in Belgium allegedly planned and took part in the November 13 gun and bombing attacks in Paris that left 130 people dead and wounded hundreds of others.



Jihadists linked to the Paris cell then allegedly carried out the March 22 suicide bombings in Brussels that killed 32 people at the main airport and a metro station near the EU headquarters.



Both sets of attacks were claimed by the Islamic State group headquartered in Syria.



A spokesman for the Belgian federal prosecutors office told AFP today he would not comment (on the report) in the interests of the investigation under way in France.



Investigating a plot linked to the discovery Sunday of a Peugeot 607 with gas cylinders in central Paris, police arrested Madani along with her alleged accomplices aged 23 and 39 in a suburb south of the French capital yesterday.



French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said the three women were apparently preparing new, violent and, what is more, imminent actions.



The women were radicalised and fanaticised, he said. Madani had sworn allegiance to the Islamic State group in a letter found in her possession, according to a source in the investigation.

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Global supply chain collapses with Hanjin bankruptcy billions of pounds of consumer goods stranded at sea

When one of the worlds biggest global container shipping companies filed for bankruptcy protection in recent days, many in the industry shuddered. Its because they knew immediately what the implications of that bankruptcy meant: Billions of dollars worth of goods that had been ordered by companies and manufacturing plants around the world would now go undelivered, causing major disruptions in the worlds top economies.

As reported by Zero Hedge, the fiscal nightmare triggered by the fall of South Korean shipper Hanjin is about to kick in as tons of goods remain stranded at sea and in ports as global supply chains becomes paralyzed.

Because the company cannot pay its bills  which include docking/port fees  many nations have turned Hanjin ships away. For a company that handles 8 percent of Trans-Pacific trade volume, that is a very big deal, because it means that companies and factories dependent on those ships for their own to bring in the goods and supplies needed to operate will now go without. Unless another shipper picks up Hanjins seafaring assets, were about to see an economic chain reaction that the world hasnt witnessed since the U.S. banking and housing crises.

That possibility grows even more likely if it takes weeks or even months if Hanjins ships remain inaccessible and, thus, idle. This economic tanking will give economists and corporations the world over  those impacted and those not  another excuse to on which they can blame this unexpected slowdown on profits and economic growth, Zero Hedge observed.

In fact, the economic damage is already being done. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that retailers are going further than simply blaming Hanjins bankruptcy for upcoming fiscal headaches. They are now stumping for a government (read taxpayer) bailout or, as the paper put it, bracing for a blow as they stock up for the crucial holiday sales season, asked the government to step in and help resolve a growing crisis.

Sounds like a bailout to us. And of course, this precedent was established at the end of the Bush administration, when he and Congress got together to bail out the automobile industry.

Already, the doom-and-gloomers are sounding the fiscal death knell for retailers if taxpayers arent put on the hook for Hanjins bad financial decisions.

While the situation is still developing, the prospect of harm is significant and apparent, said Sandra Kennedy, president of the Retail Industry Leaders Association, in a letter to the Department of Commerce and the Federal Maritime Commission. She said the shipping giants bankruptcy presents an enormous challenge to U.S. shippers, and could have a substantial impact on consumers and the economy at large [emphasis added].

The trade groups wants the U.S. to work in tangent with ports, cargo handlers and the government of South Korea to resolve what is turning into a massive disruption of freight. Kennedy also said that the trade group is hoping that Seoul will provide some clarity and speed to the bankruptcy process, already being considered by South Korean courts.

The Wall Street Journal also reported that freight brokers in Asia believe delivery of as many as 540,000 containers could be delayed, perhaps up to a month.

At the same time that Hanjin is declaring bankruptcy and idling ships, freight rates have soared to $2,300 per container, adding another dimension to the coming economic calamity that will not only affect retailers and manufacturers, but  most assuredly  consumers as well.

Sources:

ZeroHedge.com

WSJ.com

Submit a correction >>
The Nightmare World of a Hillary Clinton Presidency

The nation is a proverbial derriere hair away from the deluded, twisted, hell on earth world of a Hillary Clinton Presidency.

Article by Ray Starmann

Make no mistake about it. Hillary Clinton isnt just another Democrat, a political rival of Republicans. She is a lying criminal who exhibits sociopathic traits. Hillary Clinton is a dangerous, reckless narcissist who believes the world owes her the Presidency and who bows to globalist policies and operatives like the demonic, George Soros.

Let us hope that the nightmare scenario below never develops:

Donald Trump rallies in the polls the last 75 days of the election. He and Hillary Clinton are neck and neck by Election Day. The Clinton campaign conducts widespread voting fraud and is able to secure victory on the night of November 8th. Trump files numerous lawsuits, but they are stalled in federal courts and will never see the light of day.

President Hillary Clintons first act as President is to turn the Clinton Foundation back on. Instead of shutting its doors, it is running at full speed, turning the Oval Office into a casino for pay to play schemes, where the house always wins and the dealer is Bill Clinton.

You cant have the Clinton Foundation without a couple private, non-secure servers. This time the servers are set up in the bathroom stall of a Fairfax, Virginia, Starbucks.

President Hillary Clinton chooses a radical, left wing socialist judge to replace Judge Scalia on the Supreme Court. With a combination of executive orders, a Democratic run Congress and the Supreme Court tilted toward the left, the Second Amendment is eviscerated in a matter of weeks. Universal gun control is now the law of the land, a law that many Americans on the right refuse to obey. A pro-gun resistance group called 1776 gains popularity and begins to push back against the gun control laws. Pockets of patriot resistance begin to dot the land from Maine to Alaska.

The stock market continues to be nothing more than a chimera, representing only the speculative trades of too big to fail investment banks, while the hopes and dreams of the average American are crushed under the weight of globalist economic policies that outsource American jobs and companies.

The Coal Industry is shut down; thousands lose their jobs and join the ranks of over 130 million Americans who are out of the workforce. Seventy million Americans are now on food stamps and 75 million Americans live under the poverty level.

Jorge Ramos is chosen as the first Secretary of Open Borders, becoming the man who throws away the key to Americas national security, subsequently allowing tens of millions of undocumented Hispanics and Muslims into the country.

Obama Care rolls along with its obscene premiums and lousy health care companies. Any reputable health insurance companies are long gone from this government monstrosity. It is a horrendously expensive train wreck, a gigantic facade that offers insurance for all and provides for none.

Across the land, veterans continue to wait for treatment and die. All calls for privatizing the VA are laughed at and silenced. The VA hospitals become more corrupt and inefficient, sucking millions out of the government that line the pockets of criminally inept VA officials.

Planned Parenthood operates 24/7, conducting late term abortions, selling body parts and organs and dealing in death like a modern day Nazi Concentration Camp Medical Clinic run by modern day Dr. Mengeles.

A Black Lives Matter anarchist is named head of the Department of Homeland Security. Other Black Lives Matter members regularly meet with Hillary Clinton in the Oval Office.

Blackmailed for years by the Chinese and Russians, Hillary Clinton operates at the whim and fancy of President Xi and Putin. They have her by the proverbial long johns. She inadvertently becomes the first communist agent to sit in the White House since Harry Hopkins.

FBI Counter-Intelligence has damning evidence that Huma Abedin is a Saudi Intelligence officer, who has been passing on top secret information to the Saudis for years, while posing as Mrs. Clintons faithful all around gopher. The evidenceand the investigation disappear like Vince Foster and his files at the National Archives.

Obamas disastrous Iran Nuclear Deal marches on. Iran continues to finance terrorism across the world, taking more US hostages and harassing a severely weakened US Navy in the Persian Gulf.

ISIS goes on a rampage across the world, knowing there is no one to stop them. Bombs explode from Berlin to London to Miami. Meanwhile, President Hillary Clinton still refuses to say the words, Radical Islamic Terrorism.

The feminist destruction of the military is now a done deal. The US military looks great on a power point presentation, but in actuality is a feckless paper tiger and simply incapable of winning any wars. A Berkeley professor and four star female Coast Guard Reserve admiral becomes the Chairwoman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Common Core continues unabated, educating no one, frustrating teachers and costing the US government millions in wasted funds.

Breitbart, Drudge and Infowars are shut down by the government under falsecharges of tax evasion and inciting hate and violence. Matt Drudge, Alex Jones and Stephen Bannon sit in federal prison, awaiting trial.

President Hillary Clintons health becomes more of a mystery. Rumors seep out of the White House about her seizures, bed wetting, dementia and violent outbursts. President Hillary Clinton has not conducted a press conference for 708 days. She does call Anderson Cooper regularly from her Oval Office couch though, and conducts weekly fireside chats by Skype audio to a perplexed nation.

This country is at a tipping point. There has simply been no election in recent history that is as important as the current one. If Hillary Clinton is elected, it will be a victory for the globalist criminals that fund her campaign, direct her every action and more importantly, who seek to bring America to its knees, by weakening our economy, our national security, our family structure, our churches, our military and our way of life.

Read more at: USDefenseWatch.com

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One hundred and eighty days is not a long time to fix an education system that has been inequitable for decades. State legislators and leaders better get to work right away.

They must call for a special session of the General Assembly to address the grave concerns raised by Superior Court Judge Thomas Moukawsher in a landmark ruling Wednesday that rightly indicted the states funding of education as irrational. With a six-month deadline for a corrective plan, action cannot be delayed until the next General Assembly convenes in January.

Alarms have been raised for more than 40 years about the inherent inequality in the public education system, going back to Horton v. Meskill in 1977 that focused on the consequence of racial isolation in education. When remedies were deemed inadequate, new lawsuits against the state, Sheff v. ONeill in 1996 for example, resulted in more magnet and charter schools.

Moukawshers strongly worded decision goes beyond those earlier groundbreaking cases. It exposes an education system that fails a broad swath of students primarily in urban centers and orders true reform. While the plaintiffs, the Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education Funding, argued that the formula the state uses to distribute aid to municipalities is unfair and inadequate, the judge did not say the state needs to spend more  it needs to spend it more wisely, and fairly.

The Education Cost Sharing grant formula is irrational, he said. Even as testimony was going on in this suit filed 11 years ago, money was being taken away from Bridgeport, Danbury, Ansonia and other cities and more was doled out to wealthy towns. No community should be getting extra because they have political strings to pull.

A new formula must be devised that will be transparent, equitable and immune to political pressures.

The stunning ruling, which took the judge three hours to read into the record, took the funding formula as a jumping off point to also criticize special education with inadequate accountability, ineffective teacher evaluations and illogical school construction reimbursements. Inner city high school students can graduate with no skills to succeed in college. The state has to better define what an adequate education means. There is much to study in this comprehensive ruling.

Legislators need to start work immediately and draw experts and stakeholders into the discussions. A system that has been broken for so long will not be easily fixed, however, the judges decision gives the state the opportunity to start over and do it right.

With that in mind, the state should not appeal the decision to the Supreme Court. Yes, legally it could, but that would be a dereliction of responsibility to keep fighting the obvious. As even Gov. Dannel Malloy said, We need to challenge the status quo and take bold action.

Connecticut has the obligation to provide the means for a quality education for all students, no matter where they live. Education is a civil rights issue for 2016 and beyond. Legislators need to get to work and get it right.
81 per cent want consultation before expansion: new Ipsos poll

TORONTO, Sept. 8, 2016 /CNW/ - A new Ipsos poll reveals that most Canadians don't know how the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) works or what CPP expansion will mean. When presented with some of the probable effects on wages as a result of the expansion, 70% of employed Canadians said they would oppose the hike. In light of this latest information, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) calls for the expansion deal to be put on hold until full education and consultation can take place.

"It's stunning that governments are racing forward on a policy change of this magnitude when most Canadians are completely unaware of how it affects them," said CFIB president Dan Kelly. "The results show that governments have been anything but clear about the reality of this proposal and that public support for the deal vanishes when people are presented with the likely impacts."

Misunderstandings abound

Almost 40 per cent of Canadians think the government pays for part of CPP (only one in four know it's not true).

Only a quarter of Canadians know it will take about 40 years before the full increase in benefits is available.

More than 70 per cent of Canadians don't realize that current retirees get nothing from CPP expansion.

Over 25 per cent of those already retired believe they will see bigger CPP cheques as a result of the deal.

The poll found 70 per cent of working Canadians oppose CPP expansion if it means their wages will be frozen during the phase-in period. That jumps to more than 80 per cent if it means wage cuts. Both outcomes are likely, according to previous CFIB surveys of small business owners.

Consultation and education required

"This should be a wake-up call," added Kelly. "Canadians are telling their governments that they have a lot more work to do before moving forward with any kind of CPP expansion. Education, consultation, and only then, action. At this point, it would be irresponsible to proceed otherwise."

CFIB is Canada's largest association of small- and medium-sized businesses with 109,000 members across every sector and region.

SOURCE Canadian Federation of Independent Business

Image with caption: "Canadians kept in the dark on CPP deal (CNW Group/Canadian Federation of Independent Business)". Image available at: http://photos.newswire.ca/images/download/20160908_C8702_PHOTO_EN_768156.jpg

For further information: To arrange an interview with Dan Kelly, please contact Kiara Morrissey at 416-222-8022, 647-464-2814 or [email protected]
MONTREAL, Sept. 8, 2016 /CNW Telbec/ -

Three months ended July 30, 2016

Sales for the three months ended July 30, 2016 were $254.4 million as compared with $253.0 million for the three months ended August 1, 2015, an increase of 0.6%, with a net reduction of 75 stores primarily attributable to the closure of Smart Set stores. Same store sales1 increased 6.3%, being the ninth consecutive quarter of increased same store sales1, with stores increasing 4.0% and e-commerce increasing 45.4%.

The Company's gross margin for the three months ended July 30, 2016 increased to 56.3% from 55.0% for the three months ended August 1, 2015. Gross profit for the three months ended July 30, 2016 increased $4.0 million or 2.9% to $143.2 million as compared with $139.2 million for three months ended August 1, 2015, with the weakness of the Canadian dollar vis-a-vis the US dollar negatively impacting gross profit by approximately $1.7 million.

Results from operating activities for the three months ended July 30, 2016 were $12.5 million as compared with $2.7 million for the three months ended August 1, 2015, an increase of $9.8 million.

Net earnings increased $9.2 million for the three months ended July 30, 2016 to $9.0 million ($0.14 basic and diluted earnings per share) as compared with a net loss of $0.2 million ($0.00 basic and diluted loss per share) for the three months ended August 1, 2015.

Adjusted EBITDA1 for the three months ended July 30, 2016 was $23.1 million as compared with $17.4 million for the three months ended August 1, 2015, an increase of $5.7 million. The increase in adjusted EBITDA was primarily attributable to improvements in gross profit and reduced store operating costs.

Six months ended July 30, 2016

Sales for the six months ended July 30, 2016 were $457.9 million as compared with $454.7 million for the six months ended August 1, 2015, an increase of 0.7%, with a net reduction of 75 stores primarily attributable to the closure of Smart Set stores. Same store sales1 increased 7.5% with stores increasing 5.0% and e-commerce increasing 49.0%.

The Company's gross margin for the six months ended July 30, 2016 decreased to 56.0% from 57.0% for the six months ended August 1, 2015. Gross profit for the six months ended July 30, 2016 decreased $2.7 million or 1.0 % to $256.6 million as compared with $259.3 million for the six months ended August 1, 2015. The weakness of the Canadian dollar vis-a-vis the U.S. dollar negatively impacted gross profit by approximately $5.5 million.

Net earnings increased $10.9 million for the six months ended July 30, 2016 to $3.0 million ($0.05 basic and diluted earnings per share) as compared with a $7.9 million loss ($0.12 basic and diluted loss per share) for the six months ended August 1, 2015.

Adjusted EBITDA1 for the six months ended July 30, 2016 was $18.8 million as compared with $19.7 million for the six months ended August 1, 2015, a decrease of $0.9 million. The decrease in adjusted EBITDA was primarily attributable to the impact of lower gross profit in the first quarter of fiscal 2017 partially offset by reduced store operating costs.

Dividends

At the Board of Directors meeting held on September 8, 2016, a quarterly cash dividend (constituting eligible dividends) of $0.05 per share on all outstanding Class A non-voting and Common shares of the Company was declared, payable October 27, 2016 to shareholders of record on October 13, 2016.

Sales for the four weeks ended August 27, 2016

Sales for the month of August (the four weeks ended August 27, 2016) increased 1.1% with same store sales1 increasing 6.2%, stores increasing 2.5% and e-commerce increasing 63.6%.

About Reitmans (Canada) Limited

The Company is a leading ladieswear specialty apparel retailer with retail outlets throughout Canada. The Company operates 719 stores consisting of 307 Reitmans, 130 Penningtons, 103 Addition Elle, 82 RW & CO., 63 Thyme Maternity, 19 Hyba and 15 Smart Set. The Company also operated 18 Thyme Maternity shop-in-shop boutiques in select Babies"R"Us locations in Canada. The Company terminated its agreement with Toys"R"Us and no longer operates Babies"R"Us shop-in-shop locations as of August 31, 2016.

1 Non-GAAP Financial Measures

The Company has identified several key operating performance measures and non-GAAP financial measures which management believes are useful in assessing the performance of the Company; however, readers are cautioned that some of these measures may not have standardized meanings under IFRS and, therefore, may not be comparable to similar terms used by other companies.

In addition to discussing earnings in accordance with IFRS, this press announcement provides adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization ("adjusted EBITDA") as a non-GAAP financial measure. Adjusted EBITDA is defined as net earnings before income tax expense, other income, dividend income, interest income, net change in fair value of marketable securities, interest expense, impairment of goodwill, depreciation, amortization and net impairment losses. The following table reconciles the most comparable GAAP measure, net earnings or loss, to adjusted EBITDA. Management believes that adjusted EBITDA is an important indicator of the Company's ability to generate liquidity through operating cash flow to fund working capital needs and fund capital expenditures and uses the metric for this purpose. The exclusion of dividend, interest income and net change in fair value of marketable securities eliminates the impact on earnings derived from non-operational activities. The exclusion of depreciation, amortization and impairment charges eliminates the non-cash impact. The intent of adjusted EBITDA is to provide additional useful information to investors and analysts and the measure does not have any standardized meaning under IFRS. Adjusted EBITDA should therefore not be considered in isolation or used in substitute for measures of performance prepared in accordance with IFRS. Other companies may calculate adjusted EBITDA differently. From time to time, the Company may exclude additional items if it believes doing so would result in a more effective analysis of underlying operating performance. The exclusion of certain items does not imply that they are non-recurring.

The Company uses a key performance indicator ("KPI"), same store sales, to assess store performance (including each banner's e-commerce store) and sales growth. Same store sales are defined as sales generated by stores that have been continuously open during both of the periods being compared and include e-commerce sales. The same store sales metric compares the same calendar days for each period. Although this KPI is expressed as a ratio, it is a non-GAAP financial measure that does not have a standardized meaning prescribed by IFRS and may not be comparable to similar measures used by other companies. Management uses same store sales in evaluating the performance of stores and considers it useful in helping to determine what portion of new sales has come from sales growth and what portion can be attributed to the opening of new stores. Same store sales is a measure widely used amongst retailers and is considered useful information for both investors and analysts. Same store sales should therefore not be considered in isolation or used in substitute for measures of performance prepared in accordance with IFRS.



The following table reconciles net earnings (loss) to adjusted EBITDA for the three and six months ended July 30, 2016 and August 1, 2015:

(in millions of Canadian dollars) (unaudited) For the three months ended For the six months ended

July 30, 2016 August 1, 2015 July 30, 2016 August 1, 2015 Net earnings (loss) $ 9.0 $ (0.2) $ 3.0 $ (7.9) Depreciation, amortization and net impairment losses

10.7

12.2

21.1

24.1 Dividend income

(0.6)

(0.6)

(1.3)

(1.3) Interest income

(0.2)

(0.1)

(0.3)

(0.3) Net change in fair value of marketable securities

0.5

5.2

(3.6)

6.4 Interest expense

-

0.1

0.1

0.2 Income tax expense (recovery)

3.7

0.8

(0.2)

(1.5) ADJUSTED EBITDA $ 23.1 $ 17.4 $ 18.8 $ 19.7 ADJUSTED EBITDA as % of Sales

9.1%

6.9%

4.1%

4.3%













Forward-Looking Statements

All of the statements contained herein, other than statements of fact that are independently verifiable at the date hereof, are forward-looking statements. Such statements, based as they are on the current expectations of management, inherently involve numerous risks and uncertainties, known and unknown, many of which are beyond the Company's control. Consequently, actual future results may differ materially from the anticipated results expressed in forward-looking statements, which reflect the Company's expectations only as of the date of this Press Announcement. Forward-looking statements are based upon the Company's current estimates, beliefs and assumptions, which are based on management's perception of historical trends, current conditions and currently expected future developments, as well as other factors it believes are appropriate in the circumstances. This Press Announcement, for the Company contains forward-looking statements about the Company's objectives, plans, goals, aspirations, strategies, financial condition, results of operations, cash flows, performance, prospects, opportunities and legal and regulatory matters. Specific forward-looking statements in this Press Announcement include, but are not limited to, statements with respect to the Company's anticipated future results and events, future liquidity, planned capital expenditures, amount of pension plan contributions, status and impact of systems implementation, the ability of the Company to successfully implement its strategic initiatives and cost reduction and productivity improvement initiatives as well as the impact of such initiatives. These specific forward-looking statements are contained throughout the Company's MD&A including those listed in the "Operating and Financial Risk Management" section of the Company's MD&A. Forward-looking statements are typically identified by words such as "expect", "anticipate", "believe", "foresee", "could", "estimate", "goal", "intend", "plan", "seek", "strive", "will", "may" and "should" and similar expressions, as they relate to the Company and its management.

Numerous risks and uncertainties could cause the Company's actual results to differ materially from those expressed, implied or projected in the forward-looking statements. Please refer to the "Forward-Looking Statements" section of the Company's Management Discussion & Analysis for the three and six months ended July 30, 2016.

Other risks and uncertainties not presently known to the Company or that the Company presently believes are not material could also cause actual results or events to differ materially from those expressed in its forward-looking statements. Additional risks and uncertainties are discussed in the Company's materials filed with the Canadian securities regulatory authorities from time to time. The reader should not place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements included herein. These statements speak only as of the date made and the Company is under no obligation and disavows any intention to update or revise such statements as a result of any event, circumstances or otherwise, except to the extent required under applicable securities law.

The Company's complete financial statements including notes and Management's Discussion and Analysis for the three and six months ended July 30, 2016 are available online at www.sedar.com .

Montreal, September 8, 2016

Jeremy H. Reitman

Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Telephone: (514) 385-2630

Corporate Website: www.reitmanscanadalimited.com

REITMANS (CANADA) LIMITED CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF EARNINGS (Unaudited) (in thousands of Canadian dollars except per share amounts)





For the three months ended For the six months ended



July 30, 2016 August 1, 2015 July 30, 2016 August 1, 2015











Sales

$ 254,447 $ 252,998 $ 457,934 $ 454,729 Cost of goods sold



111,297

113,835

201,290

195,471 Gross profit



143,150

139,163

256,644

259,258 Selling and distribution expenses



119,704

124,779

234,897

243,660 Administrative expenses



10,996

11,701

21,771

23,079 Results from operating activities



12,450

2,683

(24)

(7,481)



















Finance income



824

3,169

5,163

4,646 Finance costs



612

5,323

2,362

6,573 Earnings (loss) before income taxes



12,662

529

2,777

(9,408)



















Income tax expense (recovery)



3,691

751

(212)

(1,515)



















Net earnings (loss)

$ 8,971 $ (222) $ 2,989 $ (7,893)



















Earnings (loss) per share :



















Basic

$ 0.14 $ 0.00 $ 0.05 $ (0.12)

Diluted

$ 0.14 $ 0.00 $ 0.05 $ (0.12)

REITMANS (CANADA) LIMITED CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF COMPREHENSIVE INCOME (Unaudited)

(in thousands of Canadian dollars)





For the three months ended For the six months ended

July 30, 2016 August 1, 2015 July 30, 2016 August 1, 2015









Net earnings (loss) $ 8,971 $ (222) $ 2,989 $ (7,893) Other comprehensive income (loss)









Items that are or may be reclassified subsequently to net earnings (loss):









Cash flow hedges (net of tax of $2,777 for the three months ended July 30, 2016 and $4,939 for the six months ended July 30, 2016; net of tax of $2,829 for three months ended August 1, 2015 and $1,323 for the six months ended August 1, 2015) 7,617 7,808 (13,500) 3,639

Foreign currency translation differences (220) (301) 259 (119)









Total other comprehensive income (loss) 7,397 7,507 (13,241) 3,520









Total comprehensive income (loss) $ 16,368 $ 7,285 $ (10,252) $ (4,373)

REITMANS (CANADA) LIMITED CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEETS (Unaudited) (in thousands of Canadian dollars)







July 30, 2016 August 1, 2015 January 30, 2016 ASSETS





CURRENT ASSETS







Cash and cash equivalents $ 114,538 $ 114,422 $ 118,595

Marketable securities 48,772 54,930 45,189

Trade and other receivables 5,361 4,803 4,103

Derivative financial asset 623 13,166 14,405

Income taxes recoverable 3,367 2,226 3,301

Inventories 147,159 131,488 124,848

Prepaid expenses 8,647 8,983 8,921



Total Current Assets 328,467 330,018 319,362







NON-CURRENT ASSETS







Property and equipment 128,289 141,957 134,363

Intangible assets 23,741 22,535 24,347

Goodwill 38,183 42,426 38,183

Deferred income taxes 30,973 27,975 25,828



Total Non-Current Assets 221,186 234,893 222,721







TOTAL ASSETS $ 549,653 $ 564,911 $ 542,083







LIABILITIES AND SHAREHOLDERS' EQUITY





CURRENT LIABILITIES







Trade and other payables $ 119,272 $ 94,741 $ 98,135

Derivative financial liability 8,962 1 1,816

Deferred revenue 17,228 15,956 19,325

Current portion of long-term debt 1,957 1,837 1,896



Total Current Liabilities 147,419 112,535 121,172







NON-CURRENT LIABILITIES







Other payables 7,468 9,060 8,112

Deferred lease credits 9,236 11,914 10,640

Long-term debt 661 2,618 1,655

Pension liability 19,897 22,315 19,336



Total Non-Current Liabilities 37,262 45,907 39,743







SHAREHOLDERS' EQUITY







Share capital 38,397 38,814 38,397

Contributed surplus 9,397 8,464 9,007

Retained earnings 324,025 350,370 327,370

Accumulated other comprehensive income (6,847) 8,821 6,394



Total Shareholders' Equity 364,972 406,469 381,168







TOTAL LIABILITIES AND SHAREHOLDERS' EQUITY $ 549,653 $ 564,911 $ 542,083

REITMANS (CANADA) LIMITED CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF CHANGES IN SHAREHOLDERS' EQUITY (Unaudited) (in thousands of Canadian dollars)











Share Capital Contributed

Surplus Retained

Earnings Accumulated Other

Comprehensive

Income Total

Shareholders'

Equity























Balance as at January 31, 2016 $ 38,397 $ 9,007 $ 327,370 $ 6,394 $ 381,168











Net earnings - - 2,989 - 2,989 Total other comprehensive loss - - - (13,241) (13,241) Total comprehensive loss for the period - - 2,989 (13,241) (10,252)











Share-based compensation costs - 390 - - 390 Dividends - - (6,334) - (6,334) Total contributions by (distributions to) owners of the Company - 390 (6,334) - (5,944)











Balance as at July 30, 2016 $ 38,397 $ 9,397 $ 324,025 $ (6,847) $ 364,972























Balance as at February 1, 2015 $ 39,227 $ 8,014 $ 368,581 $ 5,301 $ 421,123











Net loss - - (7,893) - (7,893) Total other comprehensive income - - - 3,520 3,520 Total comprehensive loss for the period - - (7,893) 3,520 (4,373)











Cash consideration on exercise of share options 2 - - - 2 Cancellation of shares pursuant to share repurchase program (415) - - - (415) Share-based compensation costs - 450 - - 450 Dividends - - (6,427) - (6,427) Premium on repurchase of Class A non-voting shares - - (3,891) - (3,891) Total contributions by (distributions to) owners of the Company (413) 450 (10,318) - (10,281)











Balance as at August 1, 2015 $ 38,814 $ 8,464 $ 350,370 $ 8,821 $ 406,469

REITMANS (CANADA) LIMITED CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF CASH FLOWS (Unaudited) (in thousands of Canadian dollars)





For the three months ended For the six months ended

July 30, 2016 August 1, 2015 July 30, 2016 August 1, 2015 CASH FLOWS FROM OPERATING ACTIVITIES







Net earnings (loss) $ 8,971 $ (222) $ 2,989 $ (7,893) Adjustments for:









Depreciation, amortization and net impairment losses 10,720 12,226 21,067 24,106

Share-based compensation costs 277 312 478 450

Amortization of deferred lease credits (773) (991) (1,568) (2,434)

Deferred lease credits 32 785 164 1,170

Pension contribution (291) (428) (659) (703)

Pension expense 610 525 1,220 1,050

Realized loss on sale of marketable securities - 15 - 15

Net change in fair value of marketable securities 487 5,233 (3,583) 6,401

Net change in fair value of derivatives - 2,799 - 12,335

Foreign exchange (gain) loss on cash and cash equivalents (960) (4,521) 2,674 (5,467)

Interest and dividend income, net (778) (643) (1,480) (1,428)

Interest paid (46) (75) (100) (157)

Interest received 156 127 317 379

Dividends received 632 635 1,192 1,248

Income tax expense (recovery) 3,691 751 (212) (1,515)

22,728 16,528 22,499 27,557 Changes in:









Trade and other receivables 404 1,248 (1,187) (246)

Inventories (7,609) 3,489 (22,311) (25,048)

Prepaid expenses 820 15,413 274 3,165

Trade and other payables 35,178 24,702 21,960 5,233

Deferred revenue (1,248) (159) (2,097) (5,117) Cash from operating activities 50,273 61,221 19,138 5,544 Income taxes received 370 - 370 2 Income taxes paid (1) (392) (431) (1,570) Net cash flows from operating activities 50,642 60,829 19,077 3,976









CASH FLOWS USED IN INVESTING ACTIVITIES







Purchases of marketable securities - (2,924) - (5,660) Proceeds on sale of marketable securities - 1,678 - 1,678 Additions to property and equipment and intangible assets (8,141) (9,094) (16,359) (19,226) Proceeds on disposal of property and equipment and intangibles - - 416 - Cash flows used in investing activities (8,141) (10,340) (15,943) (23,208)









CASH FLOWS USED IN FINANCING ACTIVITIES







Dividends paid (3,167) (3,198) (6,334) (6,427) Purchase of Class A non-voting shares for cancellation - (4,306) - (4,306) Repayment of long-term debt (470) (441) (933) (876) Proceeds from issuance of share capital - - - 2 Cash flows used in financing activities (3,637) (7,945) (7,267) (11,607)









FOREIGN EXCHANGE (LOSS) GAIN ON CASH HELD IN FOREIGN CURRENCY (75) 4,220 76 5,348 NET INCREASE (DECREASE) IN CASH AND CASH EQUIVALENTS 38,789 46,764 (4,057) (25,491) CASH AND CASH EQUIVALENTS, BEGINNING OF THE PERIOD 75,749 67,658 118,595 139,913









CASH AND CASH EQUIVALENTS, END OF THE PERIOD $ 114,538 $ 114,422 $ 114,538 $ 114,422

SOURCE Reitmans (Canada) Limited

For further information: Jeremy H. Reitman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Telephone: (514) 385-2630, Corporate Website: www.reitmanscanadalimited.com
Russias Pacific Fleet will receive six new Project 636.3 Kilo-class (aka Vashavyanka-class) diesel-electric attack submarines by 2021. The term of delivery of the six boats [is] two in 2019, two in 2020 and two in 2021, the head of Admiralty Shipyard, Alexander Buzakov told TASS news agency on September 7.

The Project 636.3 Kilo-class is an improved variant of the original Project 877 Kilo-class design. The updated version is slightly longer in length  the subs submerged displacement is around 4,000 tons  and feature improved engines, an improved combat system, as well as new noise reduction technology. The submarine has a crew of around 50 and can conduct patrols for up to 45 days. The improved Kilo-class can fire both torpedoes and cruise missiles, launched from one of six 533 millimeter torpedo tubes.

SOURCE- Tass, The Diplomat
Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, on Thursday, warned against the use of force against the #BringBackOurGirls campaigners, saying that...

Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, on Thursday, warned against the use of force against the #BringBackOurGirls campaigners, saying that the group should be given their space to protest.He also noted that protests by the group could not be too much as long as the Chibok girls remained Boko Haram captives.Soyinka said this at a symposium to start the 20th anniversary programme of Halifield Schools, Maryland, Lagos.The social commentator, who delivered the keynote address, added that peaceful demonstration was a democratic right which could not constitute threats to national security and public order.The Inspector-General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, had on Wednesday, warned the BBOG campaigners against continuing with their street processions, which he said constituted a security threat to public peace and order.He stated that the police will not sit on the fence and watch such a scenario unfold.But Soyinka, while reacting to the IGs comments at the occasion, noted that it would be dangerous to forget the missing Chibok girls, saying that it could boost their morale and teach pupils in the country the need to stand up for their rights.I saw a report in a national daily that demonstrations on behalf of the Chibok girls pose a threat to national security and I thought, not again. My mind flew back immediately to another governor under whose democratic leadership, parents were tear-gassed for demonstrating peacefully about losing their children in a plane crash in Port Harcourt.Democracy is not just about campaigning. It is exercising human rights. It is about helping to build the society. Demonstrations cannot be too much as long as those girls are missing. Demonstrations are an act of solidarity. Wherever they are today, when their mothers demonstrate on their behalf, their morale is raised.That is my message to security operatives who get scared of those who are agitating for a cause and fire tear gas at them. They must be treated with utmost respect and must be given their space. It is an act of solidarity for the children. Otherwise, when you stop these demonstrations, you are saying forget about the children, he said.Soyinka, who also urged the Federal Government and its agencies to speak with one voice, said Nigerians should express solidarity with the missing girls and their families.We have important things like reviving the economy, and fighting corruption, among others, to worry about. Yes, those things are important but ultimately, the society is for humanity and when one of us is hurt, we must allow ourselves to protest.I hope we dont get the negative effects when they bring back our girls. And when we talk about democracy to our children, it is to teach them their rights. Therefore, there has to be greater coherence from the government and its agencies. We dont have to know one single individual among the girls. We should demonstrate democratic responsibility. Let us continue to recognise solidarity with these girls and one day, they will come back or we will get to know what has become of them, he said.In her address, the Director of Halifield Schools, Halima Oke, said the school was celebrating its 20 years of existence because we have worked hard to raise the next generation of Nigerians.She also urged the government to consider passing a law on the number of children a family should have.It is time for our government to legislate on the number of children a family should have? If people are allowed to have children indiscriminately, my belief is that Nigerians will face excruciating hardship, never imagined, very soon. It is time for citizens, particularly our brothers and sisters in villages, to be schooled by government on the benefits of a small family that can be catered for by the parents, without going cap-in-hand to beg for handouts from struggling citizens, she said.Meanwhile, female riot police operatives in full combat gear on Thursday took over the Unity Fountain, Abuja, the meeting point of the #BringBackOurGirls coalition, for some hours before vacating the park shortly before the group members arrived for their daily sit-outs.The police women, who were drawn from the Police Mobile Force Squadron 45, Force headquarters, Abuja, were seen conducting a parade for several hours before they left the park around 4.35pm.One of our correspondents, who was at the park, observed the personnel standing in formation and receiving instructions from their commander, identified as Inspector Mercy.It could not be ascertained if their presence at the park was to warn or intimidate the Chibok girls campaigners.In a related development, some British lawmakers in the House of Commons held a meeting that lasted for two hours and 34 minutes, at Westminster Hall on Thursday, to discuss the issue of the more than 200 Chibok schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram in Borno State.The lawmakers stated that the case of the missing girls would be considered again at the United Nations General Assembly.In a meeting held on Thursday afternoon, various British lawmakers called on the global community to rise in defence of the missing pupils, who were kidnapped from their hostel on April 14, 2014.During the meeting which involved consideration of the Second Report from the International Development Committee, Session 2016-17, of the UKs Department for International Development in Nigeria, the lawmakers expressed regrets that the girls had not been rescued despite military efforts by Nigeria and its Lake Chad Basin neighbours.During his inaugural speech, President Muhammadu Buhari had said he would redouble efforts to find the girls, adding that the country would not have defeated Boko Haram without rescuing the Chibok girls.According to one of the lawmakers, Helen Grant, time is running out to save the girls.She said, I stand in this great hall as a mother, a daughter, a sister and a politician. I can actually still hear the chants of those Nigerian women (BringBackOurGirls Campaigners) at Unity Fountain (in Abuja). I can still hear them saying, Bring back our girls now and alive. Bring them back now, over and over again. Rarely have I witnessed such strength and determination.We need governments and agencies around the world to share credible intelligence and all the latest eye-in-the-sky technologies to find these girls and to bring them back home. Time is running out. Every single day, there is more suffering. Decisive action is needed now, and terrorism cannot be allowed to succeed.Another lawmaker, Stephen Twigg, stated, We send out from Westminster Hall this afternoon (Thursday) this message  that we want, as our badges say, to bring back our girls now. I look forward to a future debate in this Chamber or the House, where we can celebrate the return, and the reuniting with their families, of those girls who are still alive.Similarly, a member of the British parliament, Meg Hillier, who visited Nigeria this year said he heard that perpetrators of sexual offences against young girls were getting off with a fine less than the price of a UK parking ticket because the shame on the family of having a prosecution and evidence that their daughter had been sexually molested was too great.Also speaking was a Conservative lawmaker, Tobias Ellwood, who noted that the UK had not done enough to assist Nigeria in resolving the Boko Haram insurgency.Clearly, we will not defeat Boko Haram militarily. What we have done is not enough. Boko Haram will simply reform and recruit if something better is not put in place. There needs to be economic development and civilian-led security so that people genuinely feel safe, Ellwood said.Dr. Lisa Cameron, another lawmaker, said, Meeting with the Bring Back Our Girls campaigners in Abuja was one of those moments in life that grounds you. They have been campaigning for the return of the Chibok girls for more than two years and have pledged to keep the girls memory alive outside Parliament until they return.
The Womens Wing of the Christian Council of Nigeria (WOWICCN), Friday, described as a big scam the issue surrounding the abduction of t...

The Womens Wing of the Christian Council of Nigeria (WOWICCN), Friday, described as a big scam the issue surrounding the abduction of the over 200 girls from Chibok in Borno State.On the night of 1415 April 2014, 276 female students were reportedly kidnapped by the Boko Haram terrorist group from the Government Secondary School in the town of Chibok in Borno State, Nigeria. The matter so far had been politicized, as the group, currently championing the safe release of the abducted girls, Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG), are now clashing with pro-federal government protesters when they held peaceful rally recently to pressurise the government. Speaking in an interview with newsmen at the 2nd Bi-Ennial National Convention of the WOWICCN tagged; Women; Goodly Heritage in Abuja, the National President of the group, Rev. Mrs. Omatsola Williams said people are now using it to promote themselves and pocket.For me o, I dont believe that there is Chibok girl. We should not use the life of people to play Jambo (game) at all. Some people are using this to make money. Ah ha! How tick is the Sambisa forest is it that people cannot penetrate? Food for thought; when you come to Niger Delta Area, there is no secret. Let Nigerians do not toil with Nigerians, because before they know it, women will arise and they will see the other side of women, he said.On the current economic situation in Nigeria, Mrs Williams said that it is high time we all returned to the drawing board and make use of our God given talents, adding that the country had a lot of opportunities if well harnessed will turn around the fortune of the people for better. She said; Let all of us go back to the drawing board, and forget about oil. Nigeria is a blessed country, a fertile land that has a lot of opportunities to tap. We have forgotten, even the talents giving to us, we dont want to use it. Now is the time, the era of white-collar jobs is over. If you recall, how did Japan grow after the Hiroshima war? They had nothing but hand work. With determination and self development, they built up Japan. Is Japan no controlling the world today? Nigeria! We can even do better.In his remarks, the National President of the Christian Council of Nigeria (CCN), Rev. Emmanuel Udofia challenged leaders and parents in the country to live by example. Represented by Rev J.B. Folorunsho, the Cleric maintained that both the led and the leaders in the country had a duty to move the country forward. Also speaking, the Chairman of CCN in the Federal capital territory (FCT), Rev. Ini Ikpuho said some parents got it wrong when they thought the best thing to leave behind for their children is wealth. He maintained that wealth would finish but inculcating godliness and contentment into young one would live from generation to generation.According to him, no amount of wealth you can leave behind for your children that will not finish. So, the greater thing to leave behind for your children is goodly heritage. It is not enough for us to tell our children about God but they should be able to see God in us.
A driver, Mayowa Adenuga, has been arrested by operatives of the Lagos State Police Command for allegedly stealing his boss Automated Tel...

A driver, Mayowa Adenuga, has been arrested by operatives of the Lagos State Police Command for allegedly stealing his boss Automated Teller Machine card and withdrawing over N2.7m.Also arrested were suspected accomplices in the crime  Adewale Opeyemi, 18, and Jeremiah Iyitoye, 29.It was gathered that 25-year-old Adenuga, who is also a computer expert, was employed as a driver by a lecturer at UNILAG, Prof. Simbo Banjoko.It was learnt that the suspect had driven Banjoko to the Bells University on the day of the incident.While waiting for his boss on the university premises, the driver found Banjokos Zenith Bank ATM card in the car and hid it.Our correspondent gathered that when the victim did not notice that his ATM card was missing, Adenuga used software to uncover the cards PIN code.After withdrawing N200,000 from the bank account through the ATM, he allegedly bought four iPhones, valued at N495,000; one Macbook laptop, valued at N415,000; 10 wristwatches, a Blackberry and a ring.It was learnt that a total of N2,728,255 was withdrawn from the victims bank account.The theft of the ATM card was said to have been referred to the Rapid Response Squad, which later transferred the case to the Anti-Vice Section of the State Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department, Yaba.A source said the prime suspect, Adenuga, perfected the crime by blocking his boss telephone line so that he would not see the alert of transactions conducted on his account.He said, The suspect is the lecturers driver. He is also a computer expert. He hid the ATM card for three days and when he saw that the man did not look for it, he used software to get the PIN. He called Adewale (Opeyemi) and handed over the card to him for safekeeping, saying it belonged to his sister.When he drove his boss out again at another time, he had access to the mans phone and deliberately entered the wrong PUK number three times which led to the blockage of the line.Our correspondent was told that having succeeded in blocking the line, the suspect contacted Opeyemi and linked him up with another friend, Iyitoye.He allegedly asked the duo to make transactions with the card on his behalf.The two men were said to have gone to Shoprite, Ikeja, and Mega Plaza, Victoria Island, where they withdrew N200,000 and purchased the iPhones, Macbook laptop, wristwatches and other items through POS transactions.It was gathered that the loot was shared among the three men.A police source explained that Banjoko, who noticed that his telephone line had been blocked, took it to a telecoms centre, where it was reactivated.At that point, he received 30 alerts that a total of N2,728,255 had been withdrawn from his account. He reported the matter to the police, and the case was transferred to the RRS.When the matter got to the Anti-Vice Section of the SCIID, the police arrested the driver and after interrogation, he confessed to the crime and named his accomplices.The police recovered two iPhones 6S Plus, two iPhones SSE, one Macbook laptop, seven GT Shock wristwatches, one Blackberry Z10, one ring and two bags, the source added.The suspects were arraigned at the Yaba Magistrates Court on two counts of stealing.The charge read in part, That you, Mayowa Adenuga, Adewale Opeyemi and Jeremiah Iyitoye, on July 2, 2016, on Olanireti Fesan Street, Magodo, Isheri, Lagos, in the Lagos Magisterial District, did steal the sum of N2,728,255 only, property of one Professor Simbo Banjoko.The police said the offence was punishable under sections 409 and 285 of the Criminal Law of Lagos State, Nigeria, 2011The defendants pleaded not guilty to the charge.The magistrate, Mrs. O.A. Erinle, admitted them to bail in the sum of N800,000 with two sureties in like sum.She added that one of the sureties must be a blood relation of the defendants, who must be a landlord within the jurisdiction of the court.The case was adjourned till October 17, 2016.
Candidates of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Godwin Obaseki and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu, contesting ...

Candidates of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Godwin Obaseki and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu, contesting for the now rescheduled Edo state governorship elections were hosted to an interactive platform (Thinkers nest politico) by International Leadership Idea Exchange (ILIX), of the Benson Idahosa University, Edo State.The Thinkers next politico provided the candidates for the election now billed for Wednesday, September 28, to reel out their manifestoes and tell the students why they should vote them as their Governor.Both Obaseki and Ize-Iyamu were hosted at different sessions to unveil their roadmaps for the state. The program themed why me which took place at the schools peniel chapel saw the candidates answer questions on their programs and policies on health, security, human resource development, job creation and industrialization, education, housing, agricultural/rural development, as well as transportation and infrastructure.Giving his welcome speech, the President of Benson Idahosa University, Bishop Feb Idahosa who functioned as the moderator of the program said the program was organized is to make the students politically knowledgeable to think and address issues and also develop the spirit of democracy.The two-day political event had the APC, Godwin Obaseki present to answer the question Why You at the first day of the program.According to him all he wanted was to pay to serve and never wanted to be paid to serve, adding that he was in the race for the purpose of continuinty Speaking further he said, as a member of the Economic team of the outgoing administration, there is no better time to serve than now.Obaseki, a wealth management expert of over 30 years experience, promised to create over 200,000 jobs through agriculture and its value chain, saying the state would become the driver of the countrys food production if he emerged governor.This is even as he added that jobs arent created by government but by their good policies been laid.Many Edo people will generate wealth by keying into our value chain development of Oil Palm, Cassava, Cocoa, Grains, Rubber, Fruits and Vegetables. We will create jobs within the next 4 years, he said.The investment banker said he should be voted into power because having served in the current administration of Governor Adams Oshiomhole, his team already has a blue print of what Edo state should look like, saying and we need to continue to make sure that we are an education hub and produce the best man power in the country.He added that his government will make Edo State an investment destination by creating an enabling environment for public private partnership (PPP).There is so much we have done and we need someone who understands to continue in that trajectory, said he. On his part, Pastor Osagie Ize- Iyamu of the Peoples Democratic Party said that he is in the governorship race because he is deeply concerned about the happenings in the state.Ize-Iyamu who appreciated the school for fostering democracy said that he is more than qualified to rule the state with the amount of experience he gathered while in power.I am not contesting because I am concerned or passionate but because I also have the experience to change things for better in the state, he said.On job creation, he said investments in industries would however transfer to jobs. He alleged that the government has not really been creative in their dealings as they have only depended on payments of taxes and allocations from Abuja.He however assured that the repairs of the University road would be a priority and would be done immediately if elected The more attractive we make Benson Idahosa University, the better it is for the state, and we will make BIU Road a priority, he said Ize-Iyamu promised an Edo state different from the present one, making right the wrongs of a present bad government.He noted that the states Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) will grow through strategic investment, rather than multiple or increased taxation.He further stated that if voted into office, his administration has plans to invest in a film village, railway station, expand the Benin Airport in order to make it of international standard, and embark on massive road construction in order to drive the state economy.The candidates also took time to respond to questions from the Universitys management, as well as the students. The Vice Chancellor, Professor Ernest Izevbigie, however, thanked the aspirants for having honored the universitys invitation and promised to work with them in the future.The International Leadership Idea Exchange (ILIX), Thinkers Nest, is a platform created by the President, Bishop F.E.B Idahosa, to bring together thought leaders, industry experts, practitioners, researchers, and young innovators to dialogue and proffer solutions to global issues.Present at the first edition of Thinkers Next were Prof. Pat Utomi, Leke Alder, Uriel Palti, Israeli Ambassador to Nigeria among others.
Ekiti State Governor, Ayodele Fayose, has described the postponement of the Edo State governorship election by the Independent National El...

Ekiti State Governor, Ayodele Fayose, has described the postponement of the Edo State governorship election by the Independent National Electoral Commission as a dangerous signal for the countrys democracy.A statement by Fayoses Special Assistant on Public Communication and Social Media, Lere Olayinka, on Thursday, accused the All Progressives Congress of precipitating the postponement of the election.The statement said, I warned Nigerians not to elect President Muhammadu Buhari because he lacks the mental, moral and intellectual capacities to superintend any civilised society. We are all seeing the results. Our economy is in recession and democracy is also in recession.Fayose said INEC knew that it was not going to conduct the election on Saturday as scheduled but opted to deceive Nigerians.He said, Apart from the security agencies that they instructed not to provide security for the election, the Central Bank of Nigeria was under instruction since Wednesday not to release electoral materials to INEC.It was just a game by the APC-led Federal Government to frustrate the people of Edo State from beginning the journey of changing the APC one-chance change in Nigeria. But they should realise that the power of the people will always be greater than the power of those in power.How can you postpone an election less than 48 hours to the scheduled date? What manner of security concerns could prevent an election in just one state when elections were held in North-East states that were confronted with Boko Haram insurgents?Obviously, this is a sign of what to come in 2019 and Nigerians should not be amazed if in 2019, they tell us that elections cannot be conducted.Fayose said the postponement of the election was a sad commentary on the nations democracy, warning that Nigerias democracy was on the verge of collapse.He said, This is sad. It is a sad commentary on democracy in Nigeria and I only hope this Buharis APC government will not collapse democracy in this country.He called on the people of Edo State to remain steadfast in their resolve to vote out the APC government, which he said had become a government of hunger, poverty, job loss, economic recession, insecurity and unprecedented sufferings.The governor said; Let them keep postponing their evil day. Edo people should just be vigilant and wait patiently for that day that they will use their votes to change the APC one-chance government.
This latest attempt to re-brand Nigeria, Im not sorry to say, is dead on arrival. Weve been through this road over and over again and it...

This latest attempt to re-brand Nigeria, Im not sorry to say, is dead on arrival. Weve been through this road over and over again and it beats me why we are still doing this like we dont already know how it will end.The last time we re-branded, complemented with a logo, was during late President Yaraduas regime.I remember we were told not to view it as another ceremony or exercise of sloganeering by the then Vice President. Where is Great people, great country today? It turned out to be what it was-an effort in futility. A charade-ditto President Obasanjos heart of Africa project.It was Albert Einstein who defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Here we go again wasting the same time and resources like yesterday.Change begins with me? Thats not totally true.There are elements that are critical to durable change and providing them do not rest with the people. These elements are, but not limited to, Investing in human capital, building strong partnership, developing existing infrastructure as well as creating new ones, providing basic sound education to the masses, investing in technology and trying out new initiatives.As is, Nigeria does not have these. Putting these things in place is where change begins and providing them is not the responsibility of the people, it is governments.Change cannot begin with a civil servant who earns 18k, feeds his family, pays rent and still sends his children to school from that meagre pay. It is almost like a miracle how they do it, especially in todays Nigeria. I promise you, Mr. President, these ones will need no persuasion to change once they see an increment in their salaries and can afford their basic needs.It will work like magic. It behooves this government to make this happen.The living condition of your average Nigerian policeman is a blot on the landscape. It is disgraceful for someone whose job it is to protect the rest of the citizenry. Im sorry Mr. President, but change cannot begin with these ones.I promise you they will need not be wheedled into change from their roger norm. Just watch them, this time for real, become our friends once their standard of living begins to improve.Its time to realize our aspirations and for that to happen, it is vital that good roads are put in place so that the farmer can take his produce to the market. It is vital that electricity is made available to the citizenry so they can be more productive-so that they can get to their full potentials. So that businesses and factories can function unimpeded.It is vital that basic education is provided to our children, so we do not have to have to battle with Boko harams and NDAs tomorrow. It is vital that people get access to clean water so they do not get ill from consuming contaminated water.To realize our aspirations, it is important that people feed. Mr. President, change cannot begin with a people who lack most of the basic necessities of life. It behooves you to change this status quo and watch them whip in line-change with ease.A public servant needs not be told to change if he sees a corrupt colleague pay dearly for thievery. Now, this is not to say that this government is not doing anything as regards the war on corruption. Matter of fact, its on the right track as regards this, but more needs to be done if we are to stump out corruption.For instance, the FIRS and CBN recruitment saga needs to be revisited.Change cannot start with the people, when trucks and trucks of grains meant to feed the helpless and hapless in our IDP camps go missing without explanation. Without anybody brought to book.Make an example out of these cold blooded thieves and see change. People will think twice before robing the feeble.We are in an increasingly complex world where the pace of change is accelerating. I hope that the government knows it must re-invent the way of doing business.The patience of the man on the street is wearing thin and this is a statement of fact. This government has to start to provide what the people want and when they want it, irrespective of whatever pressure it faces.We are in a dire straits. We are not blind to that fact and the fact that this government is facing enormous challenges. Everybody saw this coming what with the kleptomania of the last 6 years. The question however is is the government responsive, flexible and creative enough? Is the government seeking opportunities and developing strategies to confront the barrier? These, if they exist, are yet to be felt.What the government needs to do, especially in todays Nigeria, is build relationships with the people, not upset them with some utterances. This re-branding, is out of order.That is not to say we, the people, do not have a role to play.It is our duty to support this government in whatever way we can. If it fails we bear the brunt. We all have a stake in this. For example, I find it somewhat ludicrous that people who contributed to putting us where we are today are being hounded and the same citizen who bore the brunt of their atrocities most, stand in their defence.It defies logic! I mean, we cannot be self-appointed defenders of the corrupt and expect a better today and tomorrow.We are a mono-economic society and some hoodlums for no just cause wake up to destroy the one thing that gives us breath and some of you are spurring them on. With the activities of these bandits, our oil output is dropping ditto our earnings and the best some of us can do is encourage them? It is loony! Aiding and abetting criminality in every sphere of our lives is getting to be a norm. We need to be better people so our country can achieve its bounteous potentials.I am and remain an ardent supporter of this administration and pray it succeeds. I have never been this optimistic about any Nigerian government. I know it means well, but just meaning well is not enough.It is time to start to provide the change that was promised the people, not the other way round.Chiechefulam Ikebuiro@thalynxis
Rather than condemn, the federation commended the Akwa Ibom State Government, for hosting the 2017 Africa Cup of Nations qualifier between the Super Eagles and Tanzania last Saturday.





Kelechi Iheanachos 78th strike, gave the hosts a 1-0 win, to round off what was a miserable campaign.





NFF General Secretary, Dr. Mohammed Sanusi, declared that they were pleased with the arrangements made by the Akwa Ibom State government for the two teams, match officials and the NFFs organizing team.





The NFF can only commend the efforts of the Government and people of Akwa Ibom State for the wonderful role they played. Even for such a match that had no effect on the qualification race, we had a full house at the Godswill Akpabio Stadium. That underscores the level of work done by the Government in the area of mobilization.





The NFF values its relationship with the Akwa Ibom State government and will always advise directly on what areas need to be improved upon. We have spoken directly to those who matter with regards to the concern raised about the pitch, and we are happy that work has already started in that area.
The Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Tukur Buratai, has said the Federal Government will deploy 10,000 troops in the Niger Delta in 2017. ...

Buratai

The Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Tukur Buratai, has said the Federal Government will deploy 10,000 troops in the Niger Delta in 2017.He said so far, the government had deployed 3,000 military personnel as part of its operation, codenamed, Operation Crocodile Smile in the region.Buratai stated this when he paid a courtesy visit to the Bayelsa State Governor, Seriake Dickson, at the Government House, Yenagoa on Thursday.The Army chief said his visit was part of the OCS operations.He said, The army has deployed about 3,000 officers and men, as well as equipment for the exercise.The number of personnel will be increased to 10,000 by next year.Buratai added that the exercise was aimed at training officers in marine combat operations because the state is largely riverine and borders the Atlantic ocean and therefore prone to external aggression.He said the exercise was to also prepare the army against external and internal aggression.The COAS explained that the military had also been engaged in promoting civil, military relationship in the areas of medical outreach to citizens, road maintenance and education.He added that the military took its rules of engagement seriously, even during conflicts.Buratai assured the communities in the Niger Delta that the ongoing military exercise was designed to protect them.He told the communities to remain calm, noting that troops involved in the exercise understood the rules of engagement and would strictly adhere to them.In his remarks, Dickson appreciated the military for their selflessness in discharging their duties.The governor also commiserated with them over the death of some soldiers in a boat mishap that occurred in the state.He, however, urged them to adopt dialogue as a means of fighting criminality in the region.Also, the Joint Task Force, Operation Delta Safe, said there was no iota of truth in a report that soldiers invaded Peremabiri community in the Southern Ijaw, Bayelsa State.The outfit said the report that soldiers destroyed buildings and carted away cash and valuables was false and should be disregarded by members of the public.
Leader of the #BringBackOurGirls (#BBOG) advocacy, Oby Ezekwesili, on Thursday said nobody can threaten members of the group since they a...

Leader of the #BringBackOurGirls (#BBOG) advocacy, Oby Ezekwesili, on Thursday said nobody can threaten members of the group since they are bonafide citizens of the country.Ezekwesili, who said they are guaranteed their rights by the constitution, advised the Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, to educate himself properly about democracy and citizens right to peaceful assembly.She also said the previous administration used similar tactics to violate their rights, but those (rights) were upheld by the constitution and court.Speaking at the groups gathering in Abuja, Ezekwesili said, our response is that he (IGP) should ask for the file that recorded our advocacy between 2014 and 2015 when the previous administration used all kinds of tactics similar to this one to try to violate our constitutional liberty. Not only did the constitution uphold that right, the court also upheld our rights. He should just read this files, he should be able to find what he needs in order to educate himself properly about democracy and citizens right to peaceful assembly.We are a peaceful movement as everyone knows, so we are not changing anything, no retreat, no surrender. Are our girls back? If the government says that we are unreasonable in demanding for our Chibok girls in the way that we have been demanding for them since 2014, they need to show the evidence that counters our stance.
Special Assistant to the Ekiti State Governor on Public Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka has advised self-professed human right...

Special Assistant to the Ekiti State Governor on Public Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka has advised self-professed human rights activist and lawyer, Femi Falana (SAN) to desist from his unwarranted utterances against Governor Ayodele Fayose.It is obvious that Falana is driving himself sick because of his personal hatred for Governor Fayose and if care is not taking, his state of mind concerning the governor may graduate from psychology to psychosis one day, Lere saidOlayinka, who was reacting to comment made by Falana at the maiden edition of Ekitipanupo colloquium in Lagos on Thursday that Governor Fayose was looting funds meant for the development of Ekiti State, said; Falana should purge himself of his hatred for anything Fayose because he (Fayose) was not the one who scuttled his (Falana) ambition to be governor of Ekiti State.He said the self-professed human rights lawyer needed to get the anti-Fayose cataract that has blocked his eyes removed so that he can see all the developmental strides of Governor Fayose both during his first term and his second tenure, adding that; particularly, all the dualised roads in Ado-Ekiti (except) two were done by Fayose. Today, which of the past governors in Ekiti can match Fayoses achievements?The governors spokesperson, who challenged Falana to make public any evidence of Governor Fayoses stealing of Ekiti State funds, said; It is strange that Falana, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) could go public with accusation of fraud against someone who has not been pronounced guilty by any court of law and the Legal Practitioners Privileges Committee (LPPC) must take particular notice of this, Olayinka said.Olayinka, who maintained that Falana was only going about castigating Governor Fayose like he did between 2004 and 2006 because of his ambition to contest the Ekiti State Governorship election in 2018, said he (Falana) was still living under the illusion that he can achieve what he used the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to achieve against Governor Fayose in 2006 ten years after.He challenged Falana to put pressure on his allies in the EFCC to look into the looting of Ekiti State treasury by the All Progressives Congress (APC) government of Dr Kayode Fayemi.Olayinka asked; Is Falana unaware of the diversion of N852, 936,713.92 counterpart fund paid by the Ekiti State Government to access the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) 2012 Marching grant by the Fayemi-led government, which has made it impossible for Ekiti State to access UBEC matching grant for 2013, 2014 and 2015?Is Falana not aware of the N25 billion bond and other commercial bank loans that the Fayemis government took and misappropriated, on which over N1 billion is being deducted from the State federal allocation now?Why did Falana keep silent when Ekiti State treasury was being looted right, left and center by the APC government of Fayemi? Where was Falana when uncompleted projects like the Oba Adejugbe General Hospital and State Pavilion in Ado Ekiti were being commissioned by Fayemi?Is Falanas activism concerning Ekiti State only about Fayose and everything about his government?As someone who used to be close to him, my counsel for Daddy Femi Falana is that he should stop thinking that he can realise his governorship ambition in Ekiti State by maligning Governor Peter (the Rock) Ayodele Fayose everywhere he goes. He should rather come to Ekiti and sell himself to the people.
Cristiano Ronaldo has launched his new fragrance as he prepares to make his return from injury this weekend.The Portuguese superstar unveiled the product, somewhat unoriginally named 'Cristiano Ronaldo', ahead of Real Madrid's clash with Osasuna on Saturday.Ronaldo confirmed his fitness having spent the international break in full-speed training after missing the Spanish giants' first two league fixtures, as well as the European Super Cup victory over Sevilla.Gareth Bale scored twice in Ronaldo's absence on the opening day as Los Blancos cruised to a 3-0 victory at Real Sociedad, before Toni Kroos' late ripsnorter secured a narrow win over Celta Vigo.Ronaldo posted a cryptic Instagram earlier this week simply titled 'Soon' and, at the launch of his new fragrance on Thursday, he told reporters: "I'm good," when asked if he'd be fit to play against Osasuna at the Bernabeu this weekend.It is likely to see the first reunion of Madrid's much-vaunted 'BBC' frontline this season, with Karim Benzema also returning from injury to play alongside the Portuguese and Gareth Bale.
Governor Ibrahim Geidam of Yobe State has said about N20 billion was needed to reconstruct the destroyed homes of Boko Haram victims bef...

Governor Ibrahim Geidam of Yobe State has said about N20 billion was needed to reconstruct the destroyed homes of Boko Haram victims before they could go home.He, however, expressed happiness that the state was now peaceful, stressing that the two local government areas previously occupied by insurgents had since been liberated. This was even as Governor Solomon Lalung of Plateau State, yesterday, regretted the death of a traditional ruler who was murdered in cold blood. Geidam revealed that many of the Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs, who were hitherto quartered in different camps, had returned home.The governor, who spoke with State House correspondents after a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, yesterday, said he had briefed the President on the developments.He said: In Yobe State, we experienced insurgency for about two or three years. There were times when the Boko Haram terrorists occupied two of our local government areas of Gulani and Gujiba before they were liberated. As I am talking to you, we have more than 3000 IDPs in our camp. Gov Ibrahim Geidam of Yobe State All of them, except these 3000, have returned to their homes. That is why I am here to advise Mr President on how best these people should be resettled. Because they need a kind of rehabilitation of their destroyed homes by Boko Haram, some need outright reconstruction of their homes, especially those which were completely destroyed by the Boko Haram terrorists.So, I came here to give him first hand information of things on ground there. I briefed him of how much we were able to do to resettle those who have gone back home and then what the federal government wants the remaining ones to do, so that they will go back and settle fully in their homes and resume their normal business activities.By our estimates, actually if the Federal Government spends anything from 10 to N20 billion, the whole area which was destroyed by Boko Haram will be reconstructed and people will go back to their homes and resume their normal lives.
The senator representing Ogun East Senatorial District, Buruji Kashamu, is being invited by the police to help in their investigation...

The senator representing Ogun East Senatorial District, Buruji Kashamu, is being invited by the police to help in their investigation in the allegation of threat to life and assassination plot levelled against him by a member of the House of Representatives (Ikenne, Sagamu and Remo North Federal Constituency), Oladipupo Adebutu, the Nigeria Police have said.This was made known on Thursday by the Inspector-General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, in his written address to a counter-affidavit filed in a fundamental rights enforcement suit by Kashamu, marked: FHC/ABJ/CS/647/2016.The IGP, who was listed as the 1st respondent, faulted the suit.The explanation by the police came just as a Federal High Court in Abuja on Thursday declined from issuing any restraining order against the IGP and the Department of State Services from arresting and extraditing Kashamu to the United States to face the trial for alleged links with drugs.While describing the suit as speculative and an attempt by Kashamu to among others restrain the police from performing its statutory responsibilities of investigating criminal allegations against him, the IGP urged the court to dismiss the suit as it was capable of sending wrong signals.The IGP in his written address to the counter-affidavit said, Both the applicant and the 3rd respondent (Adebutu) have made allegations of crime against each other and it is the duty of the 1st respondent (IGP) to investigate and make findings. This court cannot restrain the 1st respondent from investigating one and leaving the other on the speculation and imagination of the applicant that he will be arrested and transported to America, more so, when the 3rd respondent has not made such allegation against the applicant.We urge this court to dismiss the suit as being speculative and portends danger for the criminal justice in Nigeria if persons alleged of committing crime as serious as attempted assassination are shielded from investigation on mere conjecture as being sought in this case. This will breed anarchy and impunity in Nigeria where the government is doing everything to eliminate cases of politically-motivated assassination.This court cannot assume the criminal investigative power of the police to investigate the allegations made against each other in exhibits P1 and P2 (the petitions by Adebutu and Kashamu to the police). It is after the police have performed this role that the court will be called upon to adjudicate on the matter.Adebutu had, in his petition dated August 22, alleged among others that Kashamu, who belonged to an opposing faction of the Peoples Democratic Party in Ogun State, led some 50 thugs to attack him and almost killed him a night before the botched national convention of the PDP in Port-Harcourt, Rivers State.Kashamu, in his counter-petition dated August 26, denied Adebutus allegation, accusing him of being encouraged to smear his image by some chieftains of the PDP in the South-West.
Governor Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State, on Thursday, accused Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike and Governor Ifeanyi Okowa of Delta State ...

Governor Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State, on Thursday, accused Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike and Governor Ifeanyi Okowa of Delta State of mobilising militants to cause havoc during the postponed Saturdays governorship election in the state.The governorship election which was scheduled to hold on Saturday was postponed by the Independent Electoral Commission, INEC, due to security concerns raised by law enforcement agencies.Speaking when he received the National President of Nigerian Union of Journalist, NUJ, Waheed Odusile in Benin, the state capital, Oshiomhole alleged that both governors raised N2b for PDPs governorship candidate in the poll, Osagie Ize-Iyamu, at a time they cannot pay salaries in their states.According to Oshiomhole, As we speak, both governors have raised N2billion to give to Ize-Iyamu when they could not pay salaries in their states. They mobilised militants to Edo to register, preparatory to use them for violence in this election. We have eliminated violence in our elections here but in my election in 2007 PDP members killed three people at Oba primary school and brutalised hundreds of others. But there after we have ensured free and fair election in Edo State.But we have asked our people to be on the watch out, during the continuous voters registration exercise, many of them came into town and to my shock INEC registered many of them. But at least we were able to apprehend 13 and we handed them over to the police. During the same period in Etsako Central, they carried data capturing machines and turned private residence to registration centers. We did not take laws into our hand, we reported to the police.The guy whose house was being used, we reported to the police. We insisted that the police should charge them to court and after they did that they were granted them bail. And all these are PDP players.In the course of distributing the PVCs last week at Igueben, Some PDP thugs came to forcibly hijack PVCs from the officer that was distributing them at a school in Igueben and he ran into the residence of the PDP leader. Those PVC cards were recovered by the DSS.As we speak many militants have been imported into Edo state and the security agents are aware of this. For us we are ready for the election but we know that PDP has perfected plans to unleash violence. If you watch their public pronouncements, Ize-Iyamu has talked about cancellation and inconclusive elections.As we speak I do not know what has been done about the EO that made the data capturing machine available for illegal registration in private residence. We want a peaceful environment to be able to get our people out to vote.
BUENA VISTA TWP. -- An 88-year-old man was hospitalized after he was hit by a pick-up truck while riding his bike, according to New Jersey State Police.

The man was riding his bike westbound on Pancoast Mill Road near Route 54 when a GMC pick-up truck traveling in the same direction struck him, authorities said.

Police and rescue personnel responded at 3:35 p.m. Thursday to the scene and the cyclist was airlifted to Atlantic City Medical Center for serious injuries.

The driver of the truck was not injured, according to police.

Both directions of Pancoast Mill Road were shut down during the investigation and have since re-opened.

No charges have been filed at this time pending investigation.

The condition of the bicyclist is not known at this time.

Brittany Wehner may be reached at bwehner@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @brittanymwehner. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
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A number of towns in eastern Bergen County have banned short-term rentals like those listed on Airbnb.

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PALISADES PARK -- The borough in late August became the latest eastern Bergen County town to ban short-term rentals, barring residents from listing their homes on services like Airbnb and and Homeaway.

Palisades Park joined Cresskill and Englewood Cliffs in banning short-term rentals, while Fort Lee and Leonia are weighing bans of their own. Meanwhile, Newark and Jersey City have reached agreements to impose hotel taxes on Airbnb rentals.

Mayor James Rotundo said short-term renters threatened already scarce parking spots in his town of about 20,000. Many renters are drawn to Palisades Park and other towns with easy access to New York City.

The ban takes effect 30 days after Aug. 23, but there were at least three listings still on Airbnb as of Thursday. Two of the owners declined to comment when NJ Advance Media contacted them through the website.

Airbnb does not display the exact locations of homes on its websites, but Palisades Park residents living near listed homes said they were unaware of any short-term rental activity.

Airbnb encourages hosts to be aware of local regulations, but can't prevent people in towns that ban short-term rentals from listing their homes on the site, a spokesman said. The company has battled controversy before. On Thursday it announced plans to address complaints from hosts and guests that they were being discriminated against.

Josh Meltzer, regional head of public policy for Airbnb, asked towns to work with the company rather than banning it.

"Instead of shortchanging their communities with drastic measures like wholesale bans on short-term rentals, we urge elected officials across New Jersey to engage in a constructive dialogue about how smart regulations can foster responsible home sharing that stimulates the local economy," he said.

Representatives from the company recently attended a work session of the Fort Lee Mayor and Council, where elected officials are also considering a ban on rentals lasting less than 30 days. Parking is also difficult in Fort Lee, where hundreds of residential units are under construction.

Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich said the town has received complaints for the past four months about short-term renters making noise and shuttling in and out of particular addresses. It's difficult to enforce parking ordinances because the renters are from out of state, he added.

"It's a general quality of life issue," he said. "It becomes disruptive."

Sokolich said Airbnb proposed measures to address complaints, including stricter vetting of guests and more monitoring of hosts, but that Fort Lee would likely move forward with a ban.

"At the end of the day, the single most important part of our job is the safety and quality of life of our residents," he said. "These short-term one-night, two-night, four-night rentals certainly don't promote that."

Sokolich and Rotundo both said the rentals could pose a safety issue. Town officials don't know what condition the home is left in from rental to rental.

"Without having a [certificate of occupancy] every time someone moves in we don't know," Rotundo said.

Englewood Cliffs was among the first towns to ban rentals of less than six months in 2012. Mayor Mario Kranjac said town officials have no regrets and have heard no pushback from residents.

"I think it's better for the community as a whole," he said. "We're not a transient community."

Assemblywoman Valerie Vainieri Huttle (D-Bergen) has co-sponsored legislation that would tax short-term rentals booked through Airbnb and similar websites like hotels. However, the mayors said the issue should be handled town-by-town.

"I have never used Airbnb or any of the other services," Rotundo said. "They seem to be a very nice way for people to travel and stay in other areas. I just don't think it's right for Palisades Park."

Myles Ma may be reached at mma@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MylesMaNJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
A 32-year-old New Jersey man who used fake military identification cards to buy jewelry on credit in Missouri was sentenced to two years in prison.

Shope Oluwo showed ID which contained his picture but personal information of other U.S. military enlisted servicemen to secure a $27,000 line of credit, the U.S. Attorney's Office, Eastern District of Missouri said in a news release on Wednesday.

Oluwo, a Fort Lee resident, made purchases at three jewelry stores in Chesterfield, Mo. on May, 25, 2014.

None of the victims know Oluwo or gave him permission to use their information to create counterfeit military identification cards or open lines of credit.

He pleaded guilty to aggravated identity theft in April.

Jeff Goldman may be reached at jeff_goldman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JeffSGoldman. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
FLORENCE -- A shooting on West Front Street early Friday wounded a man sitting in a car, prompting a police search and the lockdown of township schools.

Police said Friday afternoon the gunman fled the area shortly after the shooting and there was no longer a threat. The schools' lockdown was precautionary only.

"We believe that this was an isolated incident and residents should not fear going about their day to day activities," the police department wrote in a Facebook post.

Police Capt. Brian Boldizar said the shooting victim, a 54-year-old township man, drove himself to a local hospital from the shooting scene and has since been treated and released.

Officers were dispatched to the incident in the 1000 block of West Front Street at about 8:55 a.m.

Boldizar said responding officers received a description of the suspect and began a search of the area. A New Jersey State Police K-9 unit also assisted officers.

Police described the gunman as a black male with a light complexion, about 28 to 32 years old who stood about 5 feet 9 inches tall weighed about 135 pounds. He wore dark pants, a gray hooded sweatshirt and a scarf on his face.

The Friday search was the second search this week in town in which Florence police closed roads and alerted the public.

Following the stabbing of a woman Wednesday evening on the 200 block of 5th Avenue, police closed several streets and neighboring departments set up roadblocks in the search for a suspect who allegedly stabbed a woman.

On Thursday morning, at about 6:30 a.m., Florence police apprehended 20-year-old Akil Herbert. He's charged with attempted murder for allegedly stabbing a woman multiple times.

Anyone with information for Florence police about the Friday shooting can call the department at 609-267-8300 or make an anonymous tip at: florence-nj.gov/police/tipline.html.

Kevin Shea may be reached at kshea@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter@kevintshea. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
GLOUCESTER TWP. -- A second, second chance.

That's what 18 dogs now at the Camden County Animal Shelter are getting after being transported from shelters in Louisiana, where flood waters have left what officials have called the worst U.S. disaster since Hurricane Sandy, to the Gloucester Township facility.

"Sophie just filled that void for us," West Deptford resident Dorothy Golle said of the 2-year-old Cocker Spaniel mix, one of the pups rescued from the flood-ravaged region and subsequently rescued Friday.

So let's make that 17 dogs, but make no mistake -- the shelter that 60 dogs and 70 cats currently call home needs your help.

Among those waiting for their second shot at life are Eliza, a 4-year-old Great Dane, who was surrendered because her family's home was lost in the flooding. Also waiting for their "furever" homes are Sugar a 12-week old Dachshund puppy, Rocky a 2-year-old German Shepherd mix and Gordo, a 3-year-old Corgi mix.

"It's a big commitment," shelter operations manager Mike Bricker said of providing animals like this batch a good home. "It's going to be good to see them get adopted."

Bricker explained that the Animal Rescue Foundation (ARF) took the 18 dogs from four different shelters in Louisiana, where officials said "extreme overcrowding" was taking place, and brought them up to Camden County. Before departing New Jersey, they took 12 cats off the hands of shelter staff and transported them up to Vermont.

It has been about a month since the historic rainfall and flooding struck Louisiana. According to The Times-Picayune, a slow-moving low-pressure system let loose two feet of rain on parts of the state.

As Louisiana residents struggle to rebuild, the Camden County shelter staff are asking South Jersey residents to help these four-legged former inhabitants.

"These dogs have traveled a great distance to find someone to provide them with the love and care they deserve," said Camden County Freeholder Jonathan Young. "These dogs, along with other animals, are waiting for you to provide them with their forever home."

Golle and her husband, Bill, a Vietnam war veteran, were the first to answer the call. After losing their 7-year-old dog "Jake" to pancreatic cancer, the couple had visited the shelter prior to Friday and left empty-handed.

They wanted a new pup, but didn't want to rush into it. Along came Sophie, and away they went together.

"She said, 'Alright. Take me,'" Dorothy Golle said.

Greg Adomaitis may be reached at gadomaitis@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @GregAdomaitis. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
WYNNEFIELD HEIGHTS, Pa. -- State Police have launched an investigation into an alleged road-rage incident last month that involved a Camden County sheriff's officer, WPVI 6 reported.

A 25-year-old woman said a driver cut her off Aug. 1 and began driving alongside her on I-95 near the Vine Street Expressway.

The driver, later identified as 37-year-old Brian McDonald, then pulled a gun and pointed it at the woman, she told authorities. She recorded the license plate number which led to a warrant being issued for McDonald on charges of terroristic threats and possession of an instrument of crime. McDonald turned himself in Wednesday.

A county spokesman said McDonald has been suspended.

Paul Milo may be reached at pmilo@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @PaulMilo2. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
The attorney for a suspended Camden County sheriff's officer said his client was falsely accused by an "angry driver" of pointing a gun at her on a Philadelphia expressway.

Brian K. McDonald, 37, of Clementon, was charged after a 25-year-old Philadelphia woman reported he pointed the weapon at her while traveling south on I-95 on Aug. 1. In consultation with the Philadelphia District Attorney's office, Pennsylvania State Police issued a warrant for his arrest, and he turned himself in Wednesday.

McDonald's attorney, Leonard S. Baker, said Friday that his client denies pointing a gun, but does not deny being at the place and time given by the woman.

The officer's reputation is now being tarnished by the "unsubstantiated allegation of an angry driver," Baker said.

"Officer McDonald maintains his innocence and looks forward to his day where the true facts of this matter will come out and he will be exonerated of all charges," the attorney said. "He has a spotless record for helping the citizens of Camden County in his law enforcement career."

A sheriff's officer since 2012, McDonald is now suspended with pay, according to Camden County spokesman Dan Keashen. State records show his most recent salary is $51,449.

State Police Capt. James Raykovitz said McDonald was arraigned on charges of making terroristic threats and possession of a firearm while committing a crime and was released after making bail. His bail had been set at $25,000 with a 10 percent option.

According to a press release from Raykovitz, the victim told police that she was driving south near mile marker 22 when she was cut off by a man in a blue 2004 Dodge Dakota pickup truck.

She told abc6 that he also honked at her, displayed his middle finger, and when he was driving next to her, pointed the gun at her. He mouthed "I'll shoot you" at her, she told the news station.

She got out her cell phone and the truck exited the expressway, but not before the woman noted his New Jersey license plate number. She called 911 and gave State Police the plate number, allowing them to identify McDonald as the owner of the vehicle, according to the release.

Police provided a photo array and the woman identified McDonald as the one who had pointed a gun at her. McDonald does have a firearms permit and owns a gun, police determined.

Rebecca Everett may be reached at reverett@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @rebeccajeverett. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
CAMDEN -- City leaders told a packed room at the Waterfront Technology Center Thursday that a new initiative will finally do what residents have been asking for: give Camdenites the opportunity to benefit from the new development in the city.

The Camden Construction Career Initiative will help over 100 residents take the first steps to start their careers in the industry so they can have a role in the rebuilding of Camden, officials from the city and the Cooper Foundation announced.

And amongst the suits and dresses at the announcement were a few workers who had already benefitted from the training model that the Cooper Foundation has tried out in the past years.

Charles Little said that his job with a subcontractor at the Holtec Technology Campus in the city has helped him help his family, including sending a child to college.

"They've taken me from unskilled to skilled," he said of the construction training program. "I seized the moment, came in on time, passed the screening and was off running -- with a hard hat and safety glasses," he added with a grin.

The Cooper Foundation, the Union Organization for Social Service and the city are partnering to create a similar training program in Camden. It will make available for free the union's pre-apprenticeship training program in Pennsauken. The first class is nearly done with the 10-week course.

Cooper Foundation President Susan Bass Levin said the 260-hour course trains residents in the basic skills needed in the construction industry, and also teaches them OSHA safety regulations, first aid and computer literacy. At the end of the course, residents will be able to test for an OSHA Outreach Training card and then be placed in an apprenticeship position.

She said the initiative in Camden is modeled after the Cooper Foundation's earlier partnerships with the union to offer the training to small groups of locals so they could work on construction projects, including the Cooper Medical School of Rowan University and the MD Anderson Cancer Center.

Friday morning, letters will be going out to every home in Camden in English and Spanish to notify residents that they can sign up for the training by attending any of four job fairs. They are at the Catto Community Family School Sept. 20 and Charles Sumner Elementary School Sept. 28, both from 6 to 8 p.m., and at Malandra Hall Community Center Sept. 22 and Pyne Poynt Middle School Sept. 29, both from 10 to noon.

And Bass Levin said that while not everyone looking for a job wants to work in construction, they should still come out to meet with officials at the job fairs.

"We're going to start a database," she said. "It will have the names of everyone who came to our job fairs and we can get those people into training programs" that suit their skills and interests. Officials will also help match them with businesses that are hiring when they're ready, she said.

The third part of the initiative aims to help Camden vendors and suppliers participate in the development in Camden. Bass Levin said officials will help businesses connect with developers and give them technical assistance on the bidding process.

George Norcross, chairman of the Cooper Foundation's board of trustees, said that in his three decades of work in Camden, there have been a lot of efforts to improve the city and bring in business, but residents haven't always benefitted from it as much as they should.

He said the training program will be a "helping hand" for Camden residents -- "a helping hand that maybe some of us got by where we lived or went to school."

Mayor Dana Redd said the city is contributing $160,000 to the initiative. Others supporting the project include the Residents Building Camden Task Force, Cooper's Ferry Partnership, United Camden and Vicinity Building & Construction Trades Council.

Construction worker Jeffrey Dowens was one of the residents who started his training when the Cooper Foundation offered the pre-apprenticeship program during a construction project.

Standing among the suits and dresses in a work shirt and bandana, he said it helped him land a job working on building the 76ers training facility.

"The things I've done for myself and for my family..." he said. "I'm very grateful for what was given to me."

After posing for photographs with officials including Mayor Dana Redd, he headed back across the street to his construction site, where a crane was lowering the giant 76ers logo onto the side of the building.

Rebecca Everett may be reached at reverett@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @rebeccajeverett. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
Note: our video of Miss Puerto Rico's monologue has been taken down as per a request from the Miss America Organization. See a replacement clip below.

Sometimes the Miss America pageant can seem an endless parade of polite talent routines -- lyrical dances that are like tempests in a teacup, jaunty tap-dancing routines and fancy snippets of opera. But few stand out from the crowd.

And even fewer get people talking. Carole Rigual's talent -- a monologue titled "Crossroads," -- left the audience murmuring on Thursday, the last night of preliminary competition at the Atlantic City pageant.

Entering the stage at Boardwalk Hall in what appeared to be a judge's robe, Rigual, Miss Puerto Rico, started with the rhetorical equivalent of an eye roll.

"You guys are soooo predictable," she said, addressing the audience in a droll tone, taking a seat in a chair. "Yes, always pretending that you are happy," she said, shifting to mockery. "Successful!"

Uh-oh! All is not well in the Miss America universe!

But there was more -- Rigual, 22, ripped off the robe overcoat to reveal a devilish red bodysuit.

"Look at me!" she shouted. "I have existed for an eternity! Almost as long as you!" she said, pointing to the ceiling.

"I am the snake that gave Adam and Eve the forbidden fruit," she said, slithering on the floor before taking a bite of an invisible apple.

"I am the seed of evil," she continued. "Did I catch your attention?"

Rigual, who studied criminal justice and forensic psychology at the University of Puerto Rico, laughed maniacally before standing on a chair to deliver the kicker.

"Ladies and gentlemen: What this country needs is a person like me, with a desire to contribute to a better society. By electing me as your new president, I guarantee that things. Will. Change!" As she said this, she stretched her arms skyward.

Though she never mentioned anyone by name, for some, the base in her voice, her posture and the content of her message conjured presidential candidate Donald Trump.

"HA-HA-HA HA-HA-HA!" Rigual sneered. "You humans are so easy to manipulate!" Rigual delivered the next part of her philosophical reading in words that weren't English before folding her body into a ghoulish backbend.

"Do you know who am I now?" she asked. "But this is just the beginning."

With that, she issued a standard bow and a polite "thank you."

Miss Puerto Rico did not take the night's talent award, and it's a bit doubtful she'll get to recreate it for the televised final. But if her aim was to shake us out of our pageant malaise -- to get our attention -- it was a resounding win.

Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @AmyKup or on Facebook.
Christie Administration Moves Forward with $230 Million Project to Protect Hoboken and Parts of Weehawken and Jersey City from Storm Surge

RECOMMENDED PLAN CALLS FOR SEAMLESS INTEGRATION OF PROTECTIVE SYSTEM INTO CITY STREETSCAPE, PRESERVING WATERFRONT ACCESS AND VIEWS

(16/P84) TRENTON The Christie Administration has marked another milestone in making the state more resilient against storms such as Superstorm Sandy by recommending the construction of a strategically placed flood-resistance system that will protect Hoboken and parts of Weehawken and Jersey City from storm surge.



The Department of Environmental Protections selection of the recommended option, known as Alternative 3, was announced Thursday evening during a public meeting at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken.



After a very thorough evaluation process that productively engaged local officials and residents, we have determined that this recommended option provides the most cost-effective level of protection from storm surge while preserving waterfront access and views of the river and New York City skyline, goals expressed by the communities, said David Rosenblatt, DEPs Assistant Commissioner for Engineering and Construction.



The recommended alternative calls for construction of a flood resistance structure stretching from 19th Street in Weehawken and extending south into Hoboken, slightly inland from the river.

An additional flood-resistance structure will be constructed along the southern end of Hoboken. The DEP is reviewing two alignment options for this structure.



Rising seas, stronger storms, and skyrocketing flood insurance costs are no longer hypothetical threats for Hoboken, and we have a unique opportunity to address them, said Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer. I agree with the consensus reached for Alternative 3 because it protects the vast majority of our city while integrating with our urban fabric and preserving access to our beautiful waterfront. I thank all Hoboken residents who have participated in this process and submitted very valuable feedback to the State and my administration. In the months ahead there will be many opportunities for residents to weigh in on the design and I urge everyone to remain involved.

Weehawken Township strongly supports the decision to support Alternative 3 as the most feasible alternative presented, said Weehawken Mayor Richard F. Turner. I would like to thank the State of New Jersey, New Jersey DEP, HUD and my fellow mayors for giving us the opportunity to participate in this process to protect our cities.

I would also like to thank all the residents of Weehawken, Hoboken, Jersey City and all the stakeholders; including all the community members who participated in all of the meetings and discussions throughout the entirety of this process -- particularly those from the Weehawken Shades, Mayor Turner added. We look forward to this project being completed expeditiously.

The border between Hoboken and Weehawken and the southern end of Hoboken, adjacent to Jersey City are low-lying areas that during Superstorm Sandy acted as funnels for flooding. Storm surge rushed through these two areas and joined forces to cause flooding from the inland side of Hoboken, effectively creating a temporary island on the Hudson River.

The flood-resistance structure will provide flood protection for communities and for critical infrastructure, including the North Hudson Sewerage Authority. Alternative 3 will be designed to blend in seamlessly with the urban streetscape and enhance the quality of life in the area. The system will utilize natural higher ground to maximize protection.



The DEP expects to formalize the recommendation as part of a Record of Decision that will be filed with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in the spring. As part of its national Rebuild by Design competition, HUD in 2013 approved $230 million in Community Development Block Grant funding to design and construct a project to protect the Hudson River communities.



HUD created the Rebuild by Design competition as a way to promote projects that improve the resilience of urban coastal areas while providing infrastructure that improves quality of life.



Formal project design, integrating results of ongoing environmental impact studies that are being conducted by DEP, is expected to begin in spring 2017. Construction is expected to begin in 2019 and take about three years to complete.

The DEP has taken a multi-faceted approach to making New Jersey more resilient to severe storms since Superstorm Sandy in October 2012. The DEP is working to ensure all the states ocean beaches are built to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers protective standards, and has adopted tougher elevation standards for construction and reconstruction of homes in coastal areas.

The DEP continues to help at-risk homeowners move out of harms way through Blue Acres acquisitions, is financing projects to harden critical drinking water and wastewater infrastructure, and is investigating techniques to restore degraded salt marshes as storm surge buffers.

For more information, including a video of a July 28 public meeting during which three final alternatives were discussed, visit: http://www.nj.gov/dep/floodresilience/rbd-hudsonriver.htm

DEP Illustration/Conceptual rendering of flood resistance system by OMA
At least 151 people have been killed and 82 others injured in a deadly stampede in Seoul's Itaewon district as huge crowds of partygoers, many in their late teens and 20s, converge...
Shecorey Young, 20, of River Ridge, (left) was arrested and booked with first-degree murder and two counts of attempted first-degree murder in the shooting death of Jeffery Johnson, 34, Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office investigators said. Johnson is a relative of Bernest Johnson, 28, (right) a suspect wanted for attempted second-degree murder in a Sept. 2 shooting in Kenner, according to Kenner police and court records. Investigators suspect Jeffery Johnson's homicide may have been retaliatory.(JPSO)
Texan gets 10 years for bringing heroin to New Orleans by train
First openly gay Miss America contestant is more than just her sexual identity
FORT MYERS, Fla. (AP)  Survivors of Hurricane Ian face a long emotional road to recover from one of the most damaging storms to hit the U.S. mainland. For those who lost everything to disaster, the anguish can be crushing to return home to find so much gone. Grief can run the gamut from frequent tears to utter despair. The Lee County medical examiner says two men in their 70s even took their own lives a day apart after viewing their losses. Experts say suicides climb after disasters and more funding for mental health should be provided as climate change makes storms and fires more frequent and devastating.
Good, slim or none? What are Democrats' chances in this year's Louisiana Senate race?
The federal government plans to pour $125 million into the fight against a mysterious disease that has ravaged corals in Florida and much of the Caribbean, and now poses a dire threat to the treasured reefs off the Louisiana and Texas coasts.
WASHINGTON (AP)  The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol has issued a subpoena to Donald Trump. The nine-member panel sent a letter to the former president's lawyers on Friday, demanding his testimony under oath by mid-November and outlining a series of corresponding documents. The decision by lawmakers to exercise their subpoena power comes a week after the committee made its final case against the former president, who they say is the "central cause" of the multi-part effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election. It remains unclear how Trump and his legal team will respond to the subpoena, if at all.
Welcome to nonleaguedaily.coms news provision, your go-to source for all non league updates, rumours, interviews, and much more besides.

Founded by a team with a genuine passion for the world of non league football, nonleaguedaily.com understands exactly what supporters of the so-called lower leagues are looking for. You want the high-quality reporting, in-depth analysis, and match reporting that matches that is more commonly found in the journalism for the top flights, but with the focus firmly fixed on the national leagues.

We understand that your passion, interest, and dedication is constant, and we believe you need a news service that matches that commitment with its own dedication and thoroughness  so thats what you can expect from our site.

The latest non league news, as and when it happens

Conventionally, non league news has always travelled fairly slowly, especially when compared to the instantaneous, constant breaking news cycles found in the upper leagues. Tales are told on terraces, rumours passed between pub patrons and circled between supporters at the latest game, often forced to remain somewhat local initially before word eventually spreads to other locales.

For us, this slow spread may be fairly organic in nature, but it simply isnt compatible with the modern football environment. Its also not conducive to the current fast-paced, always-available media landscape, nor the way that people tend to consume news nowadays. Thats why we have put together a non league news source that fans can turn to for the latest updates, as and when they happen, and as and when you want to read them. Non-league news now is the only acceptable speed at Betting.co.uk.

We update our non-league football news coverage constantly, bringing you all the latest developments and seeking to spread the word as quickly and accurately as possible. So if youre wondering whats happening both with your local team and with the lower leagues as a whole, you can visit us for non league news now, and be confident the stories you find are completely up to date.

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Our efforts to bring you the very best non league football news are undeniably a professional concern, and one that we take seriously. We are  if youll excuse the uncharacteristic tooting of our own horns  good at what we do, and we know that the efforts we make in this regard are one of the reasons our site has enjoyed such success thus far.

However, everyone who writes for us also shares our readers enthusiasm for non league football. Were not just churning out content in the hopes of cashing in on a professional dream; were here because we want to be, and will always be dedicated and committed to non league football as an entity and thriving in the experience of being able to talk about our favourite subject whenever we can. We create non-league news now that is written by genuine fans and enthusiasts, for fans. We know what you want to know and what matters most to an ardent non league supporter, and we always ensure that focusing on these elements is our guiding principle as we seek to solidify our status as an online non league paper fans can always rely on.

When compiling non league news, we think with the mind of a fan first and foremost. We cover the angles and stories that we find compelling and that we know our fellow non league enthusiasts also care about. News doesnt have to be dry and formulaic, in our opinion. When its written by people who are genuinely as fascinated by the stories they are reporting on as their readership will be, we believe news can be interesting, compelling, and even have a sense of personality and humour.

News content written with passion and expertise

We believe that thanks to our dedication, insightfulness, and commitment to our subject matter of non league today, we are offering the best of both worlds to those searching for an online non league paper. We give you the professional approach we feel is appropriate for news about one of the most intriguing aspects of UK football; an aspect that we genuinely feel does not receive the interest and plaudits that it should be generating. Nevertheless, we dont let that professionalism take over everything we do: we remain committed fans, nurturing our own personal interest in non league football and ensuring every word we compose is infused with a sense of passion and dedication that enhances the posts we create.

Its therefore obvious that our non-league content today isnt ever going to be dry, basic, or put together by a tired staff writer who has never heard of any team below the Championship before they rush off to the pub for the evening. Our writers are genuine experts: were covering non league football because we want to, because we believe in it, and because its where our strengths lie. The result is informed content that capitalises on our deep knowledge of the history, as well as the present-day realities, of non league football in the UK.

Beyond news: the nonleaguedaily.com interview series

One of our goals with nonleaguedaily.com is to not just dryly report the news from an outsiders perspective, effectively regurgitating press releases that are devoid of genuinely illuminating information. We also go right to the source of the stories: the managers and club insiders who have direct experience, and often influence, on the sport and how it is managed.

We regularly conduct interviews as part of our news provision, asking the questions that are on everyones lips and providing the best possible view into the non league world. We have reporters pitchside at matches, microphone to hand and plentiful questions ready to be asked. The end result for you, the reader, is the kind of information and close-up looks into the non league world that just cant be found anywhere else.

As our commitment to providing interesting interviews amply demonstrates, we want to be involved in breaking the stories that everyone then talks about, rather than following along and focusing solely on what everyone already knows. If youre looking for leading content that you cant find anywhere else, and that goes right to the centre of the non league world, then you can turn to nonleaguedaily.com for all the benefits of a conventional non league paper, but in electronic, easily-accessed form.

A host of other content to enjoy alongside the non league today

Our focus on providing non league news will always be maintained: we consider this aspect the most important of what we do, and it will always be the recipient of our time, dedication, and interest. Well be here, a consistent and trustworthy news portal, for as long as non league football news exists.

With that said, when you have read up on the latest goings-on, were here with further content for you to enjoy. Naturally, given our partnership with leading brand Betting.co.uk, we provide guidelines for those interested in the world of sports betting. Well help you find the best UK bookmaker with our plentiful coverage of existing brands; ideal if youre looking to put your newfound knowledge, courtesy of us, about non league to use and place a few bets.

Furthermore, we also provide highlights of all the latest UK betting offers, so you can ensure youre achieving the best value with all the latest betting deals whenever youre betting on the latest non league matches. Youll find all of this coverage is as consistent and reliable as our non league news provision,

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So whether youre looking to find the most recent non league football news, seeking a new bookmaker for your non league bets, or hoping to delve deep into a niche non league-related topic, nonleaguedaily.com is always going to be worth a visit.

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Panting. Wheezing. Sweating.

Being a terrible runner, according to Chad Hunter, is the first story that lead to writing his book, Black Parakeets Only Hatch in September.

Hunter, a 41-year-old Highland and former East Chicago resident, had been encouraged to write more anecdotes after showing his first to his local writing group. He now has a book of them.

The subject matter ranges from laughter over poor dates to sorrow over his sisters death, but one thing that remains consistent is life in East Chicago and Northwest Indiana.

I did an interview on NPR once and they asked me why I think East Chicago doesnt have all the massive signs and symptoms of racial discord that other cities do, Hunter said. When I was growing up ... there was always kind of a harmony between the races. I always figured some of it was because of the steel mills, because people may have hated each other or not known about each others cultures, but still knew that they could either work together or all pretty much die.

In the midst of negative news surrounding East Chicago, Hunter wanted to spread a positive message and do something to help the city.

We had issues, but we never had a problem with the heart of the people, Hunter said.

It was because of this that Hunter paired up with Jim Roumbos for a book signing at Miles Books in Highland. Part of the profits will go to the East Chicago Teachers Union.

The teachers are, without a doubt, giving some of their hard-earned money buying supplies for kids and not getting a damn compliment for it when they should be, Roumbos, the co-owner of Miles Books, said.

People who attend the event on Sept. 10 from 1 p.m.3 p.m. at 2819 Jewett Ave., can either donate by purchasing a copy of Hunters book, or by writing a check directly to the East Chicagos Teachers Union, which Roumbos will be accepting and donating.

A lot of kids, especially in East Chicago, sell drugs or get involved with early teen pregnancies or violence because they thought that block was their world, and those are the rules of that block, Hunter said.

So if you grow up and you think your world is from one end of the block to another, and the rules are get pregnant, sell drugs, join a gang or die, then thats what theyre going to do. But if you open a book, you open up a kids awareness, he said.
EAST CHICAGO  Police are investigating after a homeless man said he was robbed at gunpoint early Wednesday while resting at a bus stop.

Police were dispatched about 12:45 a.m. Wednesday to the area near Indianapolis Boulevard and Exchange Avenue after receiving a report of a robbery.

The victim told police three men walked up and asked him if he had any money, to which the man responded no.

One of the men  described as white, tall, and with short hair wearing a red bandana over his mouth  then displayed a handgun and pointed the barrel toward his abdomen, the victim told police.

Two other men  described as Hispanic wearing blue jeans, white shirts with black bandanas covering their mouths  stole the victim's camouflage backpack.

The man wearing the red bandana struck the victim in the forehead before all three took off running eastbound down Exchange Avenue. The victim refused medical treatment. Police said he is homeless, but frequents the cities of East Chicago and Hammond.

Anyone with information about this incident is encouraged to call East Chicago Police Detective Isaac Washington at (219) 391-8318.
HAMMOND  Police are searching for a man believed to have robbed an bank earlier Thursday.

The robbery occurred just before 2 p.m. Thursday at Fifth Third Bank, 1716 165th St., according to Hammond Police Lt. Richard Hoyda.

The suspect should be considered armed and dangerous, police said.

Hoyda said a man, described as a black male, and dressed in black clothing, displayed a handgun during the bank holdup. He fled in a black Hyundai, according to police.

Anyone with information should call detectives at (219) 952-2906.
LOWELL  Police cruisers will be added to the mix Saturday when the Lowell Lions Club Mill Street Cruise Night closes out its season by honoring the men and women of the Lowell Police Department, Indiana State Police and Lake County Sheriffs Department.

We will have two of our cars on display for the event, Lowell Police Chief Erik Matson said Wednesday. We are honored that the Lowell Lions Club would dedicate one of their cruise nights to law enforcement, he said.

Paul Palmer of the Lowell Lions said the event, from 5 to 9 p.m. at Mill Street and Commercial Avenue in downtown Lowell, is a fitting venue in which to show appreciation. The event is always well attended.

With the interaction between the public and police, it can be an evening to bring everyone together, Palmer said.

The officers and their families will dine on the house. Theyll be served bratwursts, hot dogs and more from the Lions food booth at no charge.

Palmer said certificates of appreciation will be presented to each of the law enforcement agencies later, probably during a Lowell Lions Club meeting.

They have always been strong supporters of the Lowell Police Department, and we appreciate everything that they do, Matson said.
VALPARAISO  The citys downtown continues to become artified after the Redevelopment Commission on Wednesday approved funding for three more utility boxes to be wrapped with art.

Two utility boxes, one on Washington Street and one on Lafayette Street, have already been wrapped through a partnership with Valparaiso Events and Digital Graphics Solutions.

The next three boxes, in locations yet to be determined, would be sponsored by the citys Art Advisory Committee. Each wrap costs $600 and the $1,800 approved by the RDC will come out of the public art budget.

Kurt Gillins, Art Advisory administrator, said the hope is that other businesses would sponsor the remaining four utility boxes downtown.

Gillins said the plan is to have their three boxes wrapped by the end of the year. The Art Advisory Committee will work with Valparaiso Events to secure artists for each box. Digital Graphics Solutions will work with each artist and create and install the finished wrap.

The utility box on Lafayette Street features the work of Region artist Phillip Herrold. Melissa Washburn, a Valparaiso resident, has her art displayed on the Washington Street box.
Nearly 20 years after an EPA project manager told state and federal health officials about a long-demolished lead smelter that once operated on the site of a public housing complex and elementary school in East Chicago, residents are just learning the full extent and magnitude of the contamination in the land some of them have lived on for generations.

Contamination leaked or spilled on the ground by that factory, or spewed into the air by several other lead- and metal-processing plants and other heavy industries that surround the neighborhood, potentially has affected tens of thousands of people.

Over the years, officials at every level of government have shown concern about the health risks posed by living on land saturated with lead and arsenic. But why it took so long for anyone to act with any sustained sense of urgency depends on who you ask.

Several federal and state agencies discussed the ghost factory during a May 1997 visit to East Chicago's West Calumet, Calumet and East Calumet areas. The visit appears to be the first documented mention of the factory in the EPA's extensive administrative record for the site.

At the time, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had not yet included the predominantly African-American Calumet neighborhood in a cleanup effort focused on another lead smelter, USS Lead.

USS Lead, which went dormant in 1985, sat south of the West Calumet Housing Complex and Carrie Gosch Elementary School.

The 1997 conversation between EPA and state and federal health officials was documented in a 1998 exposure investigation report prepared by the State Department of Health under an agreement with the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, or ATSDR.

"An elementary school that services both communities (West Calumet and Calumet) is undergoing construction," the report said. "Per the EPA project manager, this is the site of an old lead smelter (Anaconda)."

"The Calumet community, per the EPA project manager, is built on an old metal processing plant (Eagle Pitcher)."

An IDEM spokeswoman said Friday that Anaconda and Eagle Picher are one and the same.

The factory's main buildings stood toward the south end of present-day West Calumet Housing Complex, and some of the highest lead concentrations have now been found in an area where a lead refinery was located, according to a Sanborn Fire Insurance Map of Eagle Picher published in 2012 by USA Today, and data provided in July by residents and EPA. Direct deposits from factory operations are likely to result in greater concentrations of contaminates in the soil, EPA has said.

After the 1997 site visit, East Chicago, state and federal health officials collaborated to offer blood lead-level tests to residents of the area, and what the tests found was alarming.

A total of 95 residents were tested in July 1997  30 of them children age 6 or younger  and 30 percent of those children had blood lead levels of 10 micrograms per deciliter or more, records show. That was the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Preventions level of concern at the time; the CDC changed that standard in 2012 to 5 micrograms per deciliter. The lead crisis in Flint, Michigan, has spurred calls for even further reductions.

The 1998 ATSDR report recommended, in part, Remediate the area of lead contamination at the Anaconda site, including the vicinity of the elementary school, to prevent further exposure.

After learning May 24 this year of the full extent and magnitude of the contamination in the first of three cleanup zones, the city in July advised 1,000 West Calumet Housing Complex residents  including 680 children  to relocate. Residents  many of whom own homes in the other two cleanup zones  are still awaiting testing results.

Preliminary results from a new round of blood sampling are again a cause for concern.

A total of 672 children and adults have been tested so far, and final results show 10 children age 8 and younger have blood lead levels between 5 and 10 micrograms per deciliter, according to the Indiana State Department of Health. A number of others preliminarily tested above the 5 micrograms per deciliter level of concern, department officials said last month. The city has said hundreds of children may be affected and some preliminary results have been as high as 33 micrograms per deciliter.

Pregnant women and children, especially those younger than 6, are particularly at risk when exposed to lead. Even low levels of lead in the blood of children can cause irreversible behavior and learning problems and, in extreme cases, coma or death, experts say.

1906 to 1996: A history of lead

The Delamar Copper Refinery Co. began construction around 1906 on the factory that later would come to be known as USS Lead; it ceased operations in 1985.

To the southwest and downwind of the Calumet neighborhood, cleanup is ongoing at a DuPont facility that manufactured lead arsenate insecticide from 1910 to 1949, records show. IDEM sampled soil at a third factory site, U.S. Reduction Co., just north of the neighborhood, as part of the listing process for the USS Lead site, IDEM records show.

Atlantic-Richfield, a successor to Anaconda Lead, and DuPont reached a $26 million settlement in 2014 with the United States and Indiana to clean up the western and eastern parts of the neighborhood. It has not yet been determined who will pay for cleanup in the middle part of the neighborhood, say spokesmen with the Department of Justice and Indiana attorney general's office.

Aerial photographs show the Anaconda buildings still were standing as late as 1959, the same year the original Carrie Gosch Elementary School was built and dedicated, records show. A new Carrie Gosch would be rebuilt in the late 1990s.

In 1970, the city received a $313.4 million grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to build the West Calumet Housing Complex, according to a recent housing discrimination complaint filed by the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law.

East Chicago built the public housing complex in the footprint of the Anaconda factory between 1970 and 1973, and it's believed no remediation was done, records show.

USS Lead first entered into the EPA's RCRA program in 1980. The federal agency sampled soil in 1985, the same year USS Lead ceased operations. Samples taken in the area of the West Calumet Housing Complex ranged from 100 parts per million in the park south of Gosch Elementary, to 160 ppm at the southwest corner of a park near Magnolia and Aster Streets, records show. EPA's residential cleanup standard is 400 ppm.

EPA first proposed the USS Lead site for the Superfund National Priorities List in 1992, but the consideration was put on hold when EPA pursued cleanup under its RCRA program, which works with companies that can pay for cleanup. USS Lead began a cleanup in 1993.

1997 to 2013: Health concerns raised

The 1997 site visit that led ATSDR to recommend remediation of the Anaconda site and in the vicinity of Gosch Elementary was done at the request of EPA, records show.

Two August 1997 Indiana Department of Environmental Management memos, which were included in the EPAs administrative record, show several soil samples were taken on the Gosch Elementary property, including two with lead levels above the EPAs residential cleanup standard of 400 parts per million.

One of those memos noted the former Anaconda site was six blocks south of Gosch Elementary  at the south end of the West Calumet Housing Complex. Yet, the department tested just two samples at the north end of the complex, according to a hand-drawn map at the end of the memos.

Lead levels in those samples were below 400 parts per million, EPA's standard for residential cleanup. One memo said, No further assessment is planned for the West Calumet Housing Complex.

IDEM said Friday it sampled soil in 1997 near Gosch Elementary and at the north end of the housing complex at EPA's request.

"Taking samples at the south end of the complex would have been outside the scope of EPA's request to IDEM," IDEM spokeswoman Courtney Arango said.

The new Gosch Elementary, which had been under construction next to the old school building, was dedicated in 1999.

USS Lead concluded its cleanup in 2002, when it finished confining hazardous materials on-site, records show.

EPA said studies by the State Department of Health and ATSDR in the 1990s "indicated additional contamination and exposure concerns."

In 2008, 10 years after the ATSDR exposure investigation was released, EPA repurposed the site to the Superfund National Priorities List to include the residential areas, EPA said. The 79-acre USS Lead property and approximately 320-acre Calumet neighborhood were listed as one site in April 2009.

According to the city, it wasn't until 2009 that EPA conducted further soil testing in the West Calumet Housing Complex.

During that round of sampling, the agency tested just nine properties at the complex out of more than 100 in what had become known as zone 1, a cleanup area that includes the complex and Gosch Elementary.

EPA Acting Superfund Administrator Doug Ballotti said Friday that sampling done in 2003 and 2006 as part of the Superfund listing process, and in 2009-10 as part of a remedial investigation, was intended to take a broad view of all three zones in the residential cleanup area.

That area is composed of the West Calumet Complex and Carrie Gosch to the west; a small area just north of Gosch Elementary and the middle part of the neighborhood; and the East Calumet area.

"The goal of the testing is to investigate the extent of the contamination as best you can," Ballotti said.

EPA generally does not perform extensive testing in a specific area until it begins preparing a detailed plan for excavation, he said.

2014 to today: Cleanup underway

EPA finally conducted extensive testing of the West Calumet Complex in 2014-15, as part of design work for a plan for all three zones selected in 2012 to excavate down to 2 feet, cap any remaining contamination and replace soil.

East Chicago Mayor Copeland objected to that plan in 2012, calling instead for EPA to excavate down to native sand, which is generally not contaminated, and replace the soil. A city consultant in 2012 said plans for the area included demolition, new construction and a mixed use development and expressed concerns about costs to the city associated with work in the area, EPA records show.

Though the city built the West Calumet Housing Complex between 1970 and 1973 on what apparently was known to be the footprint of an old lead smelter, Copeland's administration has said it didn't learn of the full extent and magnitude of the contamination until May 24, 2016. That is when the city received zone 1 data for sampling done in 2014-15.

The city has said it repeatedly asked EPA for the data. EPA officials admitted to various reasons for the delay and promised to work more closely with the city. In two letters to EPA this summer, Copeland accused the agency of failing to fully investigate the Anaconda site sooner, failing to fully investigate health risks in recent years and more.

The mayor also accused EPA of failing to provide health officials with enough data for a 2011 report by ATSDR that resulted in the report being most favorable to the EPA-preferred cleanup plan.

The report concluded, in part: "Breathing the air, drinking tap water or playing in the soil around the USS Lead site is not expected to harm people's health, as indicated by the declining blood lead levels in small children."

Copeland laid out the city's concerns about the 2011 report in a July 14 letter to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy: "The assessment erroneously assumes that all contamination in the residential areas was from airborne deposition of lead; it fails to mention the existence of the Anaconda Lead factory at all; it fails to factor in the pertinent information that the West Calumet Housing Complex was built directly on the footprint of the Anaconda facility; it failed to include the East Chicago Health Department in any discussion or knowledge sharing; and failed to consider data from blood-lead testing which the East Chicago Health Department collected between 1991 to 2011."

The report does not indicate ATSDR collaborated, as it did in 1997, with state and local officials to gather any current blood lead level data. An ATSDR spokeswoman said the agency is gathering information to determine if it needs to re-evaluate past health assessments for the site.

Copeland said this week the city's talks with EPA grew more productive after East Chicago hired an environmental attorney. He said he needed "people much smarter than myself" to look at and decipher the available information.

After receiving the EPA data in May, the city immediately began asking to relocate residents from the West Calumet Complex and demanded EPA suspend plans to excavate soil in the area out of fear airborne particles would put residents at further risk, records show.

Another letter the mayor sent to EPA in June said the complex is "at the end of its useful life" and "utilities are collapsing and require the city to perform dig-out repairs below the 24-inch barrier many times per year."

The city submitted an application in July to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to demolish the complex.

"The city believes relocation and demolition are necessary to protect residents' health," City Attorney Carla Morgan said. "We don't feel people could ever safely live in this housing stock again unless all lead and arsenic, including under foundations, sidewalks, etc., is removed."

Now that EPA is re-evaluating its cleanup plan for zone 1, Copeland said he's not sure to what use the land ultimately will be put.
CHICAGO  A state audit finds children in the care of Illinois' welfare system are being housed in psychiatric hospitals and shelters hundreds of days longer than necessary because of the difficulty of finding placements in foster care.

The review of the Department of Children and Family Services was conducted by the state auditor general's office and released Thursday.

The Chicago Tribune reports that inspectors found one state ward remained in an emergency shelter 357 days last year, far longer than the court-ordered 30 days.

The number of children remaining in psychiatric hospitals longer than medically necessary more than doubled in 2015 from the year before to 168. The average length of stay for those children went up to 40 days in 2015.

"Meanwhile, the children are suffering," said Benjamin Wolf, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois. "I talked to a child who was trapped in a psychiatric hospital, and he was just weeping because he felt abandoned by everybody. What can you say? He has been abandoned. Like a shelter, it's a miserable place to spend a big chunk of your childhood."

Wolf said the audit's findings are symptoms of inadequate community mental health services and a chronic shortage of appropriate placements for children in the foster care system.

DCFS Director George Sheldon acknowledged in an emailed statement that "this is one of the most intractable issues we have been dealing with."

The agency responded to the audit with a number of proposed solutions, including a psychiatric hospital tracking database and improved procedures for kids in shelters, which are planned for later this year. DCFS also said it will overhaul the database used to track youth placement.

"We do recognize the children and older youth have been in the hospital too long," DCFS spokeswoman Veronica Resa said. "One day is too long."
Both Pilates and yoga offer stress-relief, flexibility, strength and endurance.

However, there are some differences between the two.

If a person doesnt move well, is hypo-mobile, then I would start with yoga to elongate the muscles, said physical therapist Maria Liberio, a DPT at Community Hospital. If a person is flexible, or hyper-mobile, then I would add Pilates to the routine to add stability to the whole body.

Pilates was invented by athlete Joseph Pilates in the 20th century. Yoga originated in India 5,000 years ago. There are different types that have evolved over time such as Ashtanga, also known as Vinyasa, Hatha and Bikram to name a few.

Amy White Hanas, owner of The Dance Gallery in Munster, teaches yoga and mat work in Pilates.

Yoga moves through standing, seated and poses  asanas  done from prone or supine positions. Yoga also requires core strength but flexibility is greatly enhanced with a yoga practice. Music is often used, but not always. Breath is emphasized in both yoga and Pilates, White Hanas said. Pilates is core-stability-based and focuses a little less on flexibility so is good for people with hyper-flexibility. There is also equipment such as a reformer that can be used in Pilates. No music is used.

Liberio said yoga has more of a relaxation component to it.

Its a way of life for yoga  the part of mediation, breathing, getting the body back into balance but it uses core. Pilates is building strength through repetitions. Both work on balance and core strength, Liberio said.

White Hanas agrees.

Some yoga classes dont emphasize the spiritual aspect at all, but theyre really missing out. Let me be clear that yoga is not a religion. People of all religions can practice yoga. For me, every yoga practice is a form of prayer. I use the practice to deepen my connection to God, White Hanas said.

White Hanas also said yoga isnt just stretching.

Ive heard people describe yoga as just stretching. Come to a good Vinyasa class and see that it is also strength and cardio. A good restorative class will leave you feeling calm and restored and will not be vigorous, White Hanas said.

Liberio said intertwining the two can be beneficial.

People dealing chronic pain might want to start with yoga to help relax the body and elongate muscles. Once you do increase mobility you want to stabilize that with Pilates  thats why yoga and Pilates complement each other, Liberio said. Both can be done with minimal equipment. Just have a mat or if you want to do more there are equipment-based Pilates where the classes are more advanced. With yoga and Pilates you can keep it as basic or as challenging as you want.
Police say they stumbled on a huge stash of marijuana trees in a Brooklyn apartment building while looking for a burglary suspect.

Police say they went to 708 Miller Avenue in East New York to arrest 18-year-old Abdul Francis for criminal trespassing.

The NYPD says Francis ran to a neighbor's apartment, where he was arrested.

Police then went to his apartment, and that's when they say they discovered 83 eight-foot-tall marijuana plants.

Great job by the warrant team: while apprehending a burglary suspect, they seized these Marijuana plants in #ENY pic.twitter.com/otbyD0yirZ  NYPD 75th Precinct (@NYPD75Pct) September 9, 2016

A resident who did not want to go on camera says this kind of thing happens too often in this neighborhood.

"I'm not surprised that it happened on this street," the resident said. "This block alone has a bad reputation. So shootings, drugs, all of that, this is where you come to find that stuff."

Francis is now also being charged with felony criminal possession of marijuana.
City officials say they are still negotiating a controversial plan to open a homeless shelter at a Queens hotel after a tweet sent out by the current owner seemed to indicate plans were off.

On Thursday afternoon, the Holiday Inn Express in Maspeth tweeted, "We would like to confirm that the hotel will not be converting to a shelter as suggested. It will continue to operate as a hotel."

We would like to confirm that the Hotel will not be converting to a shelter as suggested. It will continue to operate as a Hotel.  HolidayInnEx Maspeth (@hiexmaspeth) September 8, 2016

However, the Department of Homeless Services and the borough president's office say they're still working out a deal with the hotel owner.

The department had proposed converting the space into a 115-bed homeless shelter and planned to open in October.

The plan sparked outrage from local residents, who argued the shelter would bring crime to the neighborhood.

Three local lawmakers have filed a lawsuit to block the shelter from opening.
Families of 9/11 victims would be able to sue Saudi Arabia if the House passes a measure allowing them to do so on Friday. Despite a White House promise to veto the bill, it has broad support from both parties in Congress. Washington bureau reporter Alberto Pimienta filed the following report.

For years, 9/11 family members say they have been trying to get answers from Saudi Arabia about the countrys possible involvement in the September 11th attacks. That day could happen soon.

"This bill will allow those families their day in court, the justice that they truly deserve, and allow them to find out what happened 15 years ago to their family members and who was responsible for it," said Rep. Dan Donovan, whose district covers Staten Island and part of Brooklyn.

The House on Friday will vote on legislation to allow Americans to sue Saudi Arabia for its alleged role in the 9/11 attacks. The bill is expected to pass just days before the 15th anniversary.

In May, the Senate approved the same legislation sponsored by Democratic Senator Charles Schumer and Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn.

In a statement, Schumer says, "Justice for these families has been delayed and denied for far too long. There is simply no time to waste when it comes to delivering justice to the victims of horrendous terror attacks.

The bill has created tension between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. The White House has signaled President Barack Obama would not sign the measure into law.

"The Senate passed it unanimously in May. The president has threatened to veto this legislation. So our hope is to get the 290 votes tomorrow to make it veto-proof," Donovan said.

The White House argues this could open the gates for other countries to create similar laws to sue the U.S. in foreign courts.

For its part, the Saudi government is warning that if the legislation passes, it will sell $750 billion of U.S. assets.
Season 2, Episode 9: Nuestra Finca

The trouble with adapting biographies or historical events into a fictional narrative is that real life doesnt unfold in a neat three-act structure  it lurches and wheezes through bursts of activity and stretches where little of consequence happens and it doesnt usually end how a dramatist would prefer to write it. Over two seasons of Narcos, the rise and fall of Pablo Escobar has been documented in a heady rush of information, so much that Murphys ubiquitous voice-over has been necessary to cram it all in there. And thats been a primary strength of the show: The scope of Escobars empire and the multifront effort to dismantle it isnt easy to encapsulate in any medium. If any story could be said to benefit from meat-and-potatoes artlessness, its Escobars.

Yet here we are, in the second to last episode of Escobars story, almost literally stuck in the mud. Instead of the Scarface ending, with its mountains of cocaine and bursts of machine-gun fire, history has dictated a humbler fade-out for Escobar, who has lost everything and retreated to his agrarian past for shelter. Despite the gorgeous footage of Escobar on his fathers farm, hammering fence posts into the rolling pastures, Narcos isnt well equipped to handle downtime compellingly, especially as it approaches its final hour. The show has thrived on the gruesome progression of Escobars operation and its mighty clashes with law enforcement and rival cartels. When all that disappears, its as bereft of purpose as Escobar in exile  it barely knows what to do with itself.

Nuestra Finca, which translates to Our Farm, reunites Escobar with a father weve never seen or heard mentioned on the show before. The stoic old man takes in Escobar and Limon, whos never spent time on a farm but takes to the work with surprising vigor. After the chaos and violence kicked up by his business, Escobar seems to find a measure of peace in rural quietude, although he still pines for his wife and family. Word of the Escobar manhunt filters in through the television, which touts a 2.7 million peso reward for information leading to his capture, but it passes without comment, as do Escobars entreaties to his father about moving his family to an adjacent plot of land.

Away from the madness of Medellin, Escobar embraces the simple life, but theres no going back to it. His father finally rejects and humiliates him, calling him a murderer and expressing deep shame over his transgressions. Funny how you dont like blood, he says, after Escobar recoils over the blood spray of a stuck pig soaking his shirt and beard.
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Good morning.

Heres what you need to know:

 North Koreas nuclear test.

The country conducted its fifth and largest nuclear test early this morning, hours after President Obama ended his weeklong tour of Asia.

The nation, which is celebrating the 68th anniversary of its founding today, declared the test successful after a magnitude 5 earthquake was detected near the test site.
2. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump both responded to the nuclear test. Mrs. Clinton, who met with national security advisers, said it was time to expand sanctions and broaden a missile-defense program in neighboring countries. Mr. Trump sought to connect the test to Mrs. Clinton, saying: Its just one more massive failure from a failed secretary of state. Failed at everything.

Mr. Trump also spoke to the Values Voters Summit in Washington, one of the largest audiences of social conservatives hes addressed. He steered clear of divisive topics like abortion and Israel.

Bill Clinton has begun vigorously defending himself and the Clinton Foundation, rankled by the increasing scrutiny of his marquee focus since leaving the presidency. If creating jobs and saving lives is bad, he said this week, I guess you can zing me with it.
Sam Iacobellis, an engineer whose development and lightning delivery of 100 B-1 supersonic stealth bombers to President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s was credited with speeding the collapse of the Soviet Union, died on Saturday in San Luis Obispo, Calif. He was 87.

The cause was complications of a stroke, his son, who is also named Sam, said.

The B-1 contract, with Rockwell International for $20.5 billion (more than $50 billion in todays dollars), was a cornerstone of Reagans strategy to end the Cold War by engaging the Soviets in a costly  critics said profligate  arms race that would threaten them with bankruptcy.

It worked, according to what Russian generals and astronauts later told Robert Cattoi, the former chief engineer for Rockwell, in large part because of the B-1.

One of them asked me, Do you know Sam Iacobellis? Mr. Cattoi told The Los Angeles Times. If you see him, tell him he was far more responsible for ending the Cold War than he might realize. We didnt have the resources to match it. It was the straw that broke the camels back.
FRIDAY PUZZLE  I believe it was just yesterday that I was telling you how much my solving skills had improved since I started writing Wordplay and, because the one of the secrets to an interesting life is balance, Kristian House offers a puzzle that solved for me like it should have been called All the Things Deb Didnt Know She Knew Until She Filled Them In.

We all have days like that. The words just dont come to you, no matter how much you think they can be forced. Maybe you remember from past solves that ERGOT is some sort of farm fungus, but you just dont make the association with cereal grain, like the clue says, because its the end of the week and your brain is tired.

That is not a sign that you should give up. Thats a sign that you should have a snack, and then resume solving after you figure out that Mustard and others is not CONDIMENTS (it doesnt fit anyway) but COLONELS (as in COLONEL Mustard in the library with the candlestick). That is a sign that its time for you to learn what EGOSURFS means.

Almost the entire puzzle solved that way for me. Id struggle over a clue and then fill it in when I had enough crossings, thinking to myself, I knew that. How did I forget that I knew that? Thats not a bad thing; its merely a reminder not to brag too much about my solving prowess, and thats O.K.
Is any Vogue editor worth the title these days if she doesnt have a behind-the-scenes documentary revealing her smarts and substance? Following The September Issue, R. J. Cutlers 2009 documentary about Anna Wintour and life at Vogue, and Franca: Chaos and Creation, Francesco Carrozzinis new film about Franca Sozzani, the editor of Italian Vogue, increasingly it seems the answer is no.

Especially given that this week a third such film hit small-screens in Britain. Absolutely Fashion: Inside British Vogue, a two-part BBC documentary about the magazine, had its debut Thursday, with the second episode to be broadcast on the eve of London Fashion Week, Sept. 15.

Three makes a trend. But what the first two documentaries suggest, and the newest one confirms, is that these fly-on-the-wall dramas also serve a strategic purpose for glossy magazines in an increasingly digital landscape.

To maintain their authoritative positions as gatekeepers in the social media age, old-guard editors and employees must engage more (and reveal more) than they ever have before.
What to expect on Day 3. Here, some scenes from past years.

Credit... Top row left and center, Landon Nordeman for The New York Times; right, Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times; bottom row left and right, Firstview; center, Elizabeth Lippman for The New York Times
It was thrilling to see them together, trading anecdotes and barbs at such a frenetic pace. Not surprisingly, Mr. Meyers asked most of the questions, and Mr. Cavett, extremely affable through the sarcasm, responded with the precision and glee of a seasoned storyteller. The expression on Mr. Meyerss face contained a mix of curiosity and joy, and it reminded me of asking the mall Santa how he could possibly travel around the whole world in just one night. While having their portraits taken, they shot darts at an imaginary target, and the video that accompanied the magazine piece was an exercise in word association. Everything and everyone in the room was a distraction; they could, and probably should, have been alone.

But they werent, and about two hours into things, Mr. Meyerss publicist alerted us that he had to run because he would be taping a live episode of Late Night with Seth Meyers later that day. Mr. Cavett hung around to take advantage of the catering, and, between bites, kept sharing stories about everyone from David Bowie to Richard Nixon to Groucho Marx. When I walked him outside to his car, he was still talking, and he didnt stop even when he got inside. With the door open, he kept right on going  I think about Woody Allen at that point. We were melting from the sun, surrounded by people and bathing in the smells of Chinatown in the summer, but the randomness of it all kept us there. When the car eventually pulled away, I waited a minute, hoping that it might turn around.
The frustration of the court matches the policy movements across the states and across the federal government over the same time, said Eric A. Hanushek, a fellow in education at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University, who testified for the State of Connecticut in defending what it spends on schools. Its not that the states or the federal government has said Were not going to do anything about schools. In fact, theres been a concerted effort to try to improve things, but it is rather faddish and we do what people currently think is in vogue, and it just hasnt worked.

He added, Just doing more of the same is unlikely to lead to a different result.

Rather than tell the General Assembly to figure out a way to even out the gap in resources  which is what most courts in similar cases have done  the judge called for a radical reimagining that starts with the question of what schools should do: What are the goals for elementary students, or high school graduates? Then, he said, the state should decide how much money schools require so that all students, rich and poor, reach those goals. In the kind of rational system the judge proposes, you determine what you are trying to do before you decide what you are going to spend.

Over the past half-century, nearly every state has had a similar case about how to finance its schools, some more tortured than others. In New Jersey, for example, the states highest court has issued more than 20 rulings in a case that has stretched over four decades. David G. Sciarra, the executive director of the Education Law Center in Newark, which has helped litigate many school funding cases across the country, said he was watching pending litigation in Kansas, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Washington.
There was not much of a contest in Wednesday nights forum with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Mrs. Clinton answered the questions of the moderator, Matt Lauer, in coherent sentences, often with specific details. Mr. Trump alternated between rambling statements and grandiose boasts when he wasnt lying.

Mr. Lauer largely neglected to ask penetrating questions, call out falsehoods or insist on answers when it was obvious that Mr. Trumps responses had drifted off.

If the moderators of the coming debates do not figure out a better way to get the candidates to speak accurately about their records and policies  especially Mr. Trump, who seems to feel he can skate by unchallenged with his own version of reality while Mrs. Clinton is grilled and entangled in the fine points of domestic and foreign policy  then they will have done the country a grave disservice.

Whether or not one agrees with her positions, Mrs. Clinton, formerly secretary of state and once a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, showed a firm understanding of the complex issues facing the country. Mr. Trump reveled in his ignorance about global affairs and his belief that leading the worlds most powerful nation is no harder than running his business empire, which has included at least four bankruptcies.
Though for years Id bemoaned the fact that my parents were largely one-issue voters, I embraced this once Mr. Trump locked down the nomination. I urged them to please vote for one reason: to prevent a man who started his campaign with strong anti-Latino talk and whose supporters put out a robocall saying Dont vote for a Cuban from winning the presidency. This was before we knew for sure whom Id have to beg them to vote for.

Brave is the daughter who tries to persuade her Cuban mother to vote for a Clinton. I cant vote for that mans wife, my mother told me over the phone after the Democratic National Convention. She then announced that she wouldnt be voting in November at all. Many Cuban-Americans, my parents included, hate Bill Clinton for several reasons, the most relevant one in this instance being that he was president when the Elian Gonzalez saga occurred.

In their minds, the Clinton administration is solely to blame for the decision to send Elian  a young boy whose mother drowned as she fled Cuba with him in late 1999  back to the island to live with his father in June 2000. Many speculate that it cost Al Gore the election, which of course hinged on Florida. In March 2000, Mayor Alex Penelas described Mr. Gores connection to the decisions on Elian as guilt by association and warned that Miamis Cuban population would hold the Clinton administration responsible should the boy be sent back. He may have been right: 81 percent of the Cubans in Florida voted for George W. Bush in 2000, a higher percentage than had gone Republican in 1996.

In December of that year, during my annual checkup while I was home from college, my doctor  a Cuban man then in his early 50s  showed me a framed photo of a banner he and other men had hung off a Miami expressway overpass. It read: Thank you, Elian. We Remembered in November.

Historically, much of the animosity toward Democrats originated with the Kennedy administration. From a young age, I was told story after story about how John F. Kennedy had botched the Bay of Pigs invasion. This blame translated into a general distrust of the Democratic Party  a feeling that was beginning to fade with voters my parents age, until Elian reinvigorated it. While President Obamas restoration of relations with Cuba opened up some productive family discussions, the grudge from 2000 persists.
In the Kansas system, judges are appointed by the governor, but they face what has traditionally been a pro forma retention vote on the ballot after their first year, and every six years thereafter. Across more than half a century, until the past few years, the retention system was nonpolitical, with no judges rejected. But this year is decidedly different. This time Republican officials expect that a flood of out-of-state political money  untraceable under loose campaign laws  will be drawn to the fight.

Four of the five judges who face retention elections in November have been part of court majorities that struck down aspects of Mr. Brownbacks disastrous tax-cutting program, which caused huge budget cuts to public education, state roads and other basic services. The fifth judge on the ballot is a Brownback appointee. Two other judges, targeted by conservative groups in 2014, narrowly survived retention votes.

Weve seen an unprecedented assault on the judiciary for the past number of years, said former Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, a Democrat. She and the other former governors, including Mike Hayden, a Republican, and John Carlin, a Democrat, began a campaign this week to stop the court purge.

Judges are particularly vulnerable to the kind of attacks and distortions common in big-money political campaigns because of their independence  the very quality that is key to maintaining the rule of law.

Upon taking office in 2011, Mr. Brownback promised to succeed with a red-state model of the trickle-down myth that big upper-bracket tax cuts somehow promote economic growth. Instead, revenues plummeted, resulting in an education funding crisis that threatened schools with closings. Voters reacted to this sham last month in primary elections in which 14 Brownback loyalists were ousted from the Legislature by insurgent moderate Republicans, the rarest of political creatures.
I doubt that many of us veterans had high expectations for the candidates forum on national security on Wednesday. Our country has essentially been at war now for 15 years, yet fewer of our would-be leaders have real ties to the military.

But, in the crowd of veterans at the forum, I, and those around me, were startled more than once by Donald J. Trumps lack of understanding of how his comments would be heard by us. In his allotted 30 minutes, he made several statements that reflected a lack of knowledge of how the military works, or appeared to argue for action that would be a violation of the armed services values.

I was a member of the class of 1980 at West Point  the first class that admitted women  and I served in the Army for five years. Since then, my work and life have been connected to the military. In the 1990s I worked on the failed campaign to end the ban on service by gay Americans, and a decade later I worked to get the dont ask, dont tell policy repealed. I have stayed close to West Point and mentored cadets and staff.

Now, I am seeking local office as a Democrat in New Jersey. I am not among the 55 percent of current or former members of the military who support Mr. Trumps candidacy. But I went to the forum with an open mind, interested to hear how Mr. Trump would speak directly to his military supporters, and to see his grasp of the issues that affect us all.
The irony is that everyone always would pat women on the head and say well you know as soon as a woman is qualified there will be a woman president,  Senator McCaskill said. Now we have a stark differential in qualifications, and now it seems to be all about her integrity and how likable she is.

In the episode, we discuss the challenges of running against a woman with former Representative Rick Lazio of Long Island, a man who discovered those pitfalls in a very public fashion. In 2000, he was Mrs. Clintons opponent in the race for the United States Senate seat in New York.

In a now-famous debate moment, Mr. Lazio approached Mrs. Clintons podium to ask her to sign a pledge, a tactic many saw as an overly aggressive male gesture toward a female rival.

Mr. Lazio told us it was a mistake that he still regrets  and one whose visual impact he underestimated in the moment.

Our folks all thought we had won the debate hands down, he told us. But the next day, he saw that clip played over and over again and realized that the moment was going to stick.

The mistake that I made  and it was a mistake  was to create an optic where it looked like I was somebody other than who I was; it looked like I was invading her space and was not chivalrous, he told us. It was spun in the media and shown over and over again, and it looked like it was an overbearing male approaching a female.

Please let us know what you think of The Run-Up. You can reach us at therunup@nytimes.com, or find me on Twitter. You can also rate and review us on iTunes.
WASHINGTON  Two North Carolina men were arrested on Thursday in the hacking of the personal email accounts of the director of the Central Intelligence Agency and other senior officials.

The men  Andrew Boggs, 22, of North Wilkesboro, and Justin Liverman, 24, of Morehead City  were accused of working with a prolific hacking group called Crackas With Attitude. Prosecutors said the group had targeted American officials, their families and United States computer systems from October 2015 to February 2016.

The F.B.I. said that members of the group had tricked people into providing information that had allowed them to gain access to the victims accounts, a technique known as social engineering.

At least three teenage members of the group lived in Britain, the authorities said. Earlier this year, the authorities there said they had arrested the groups suspected ringleader, a 17-year-old known as Cracka.
WASHINGTON  What is striking about Donald J. Trumps latest effusion of admiration for Russias stony-faced leader, Vladimir V. Putin, is how similar it is to the way Mr. Putin is portrayed in Russia: as a necessary foil for an aggressive and flawed American leadership.

Interviewed at an NBC candidates forum Wednesday night, Mr. Trump offered no account of Mr. Putins achievements, except perhaps for noting an 82 percent approval rating from a polling agency now under legal threat as a foreign agent. Nor did Mr. Trump outline much of a vision for working with him if he became president, beyond pondering how wonderful it would be if Russia and the United States could join forces against the Islamic State.

Instead he recited a litany of perceived slights or disrespect that President Obama has endured on the world stage, including the awkward arrival ceremony on his most recent visit to China for the Group of 20 gathering. The message, Mr. Trump said, is that Mr. Putin earns more respect now than Mr. Obama.

Hes been a leader, he said of Mr. Putin, far more than our president has been a leader.

Not surprisingly, Hillary Clinton, campaigning to be Mr. Obamas Democratic successor, sharply criticized the remarks on Thursday. So did some fellow Republicans, including the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan, who listed many of the reasons Mr. Putin amounts to an adversary of the United States, not a potential ally.
WASHINGTON  A computer specialist who deleted Hillary Clintons emails despite orders from Congress to preserve them was given immunity by the Justice Department during its investigation into her personal email account, according to a law enforcement official and others briefed on the investigation.

Republicans have called for the department to investigate the deletions, but the immunity deal with the specialist, Paul Combetta, makes it unlikely that the request will go far. Representative Jason Chaffetz of Utah, the top Republican on the House oversight committee, asked the Justice Department on Tuesday to investigate whether Mrs. Clinton, her lawyers or the specialist obstructed justice when the emails were deleted in March 2015.

Mr. Combetta is one of at least two people who were given immunity by the Justice Department as part of the investigation. The other was Bryan Pagliano, a former campaign staff member for Mrs. Clintons 2008 presidential campaign, who was granted immunity in exchange for answering questions about how he set up a server in Mrs. Clintons home in Chappaqua, N.Y., around the time she became secretary of state in 2009.

The F.B.I. described the deletions by Mr. Combetta in a summary of its investigation into Mrs. Clintons account that was released last Friday. The documents blacked out the specialists name, but the law enforcement official and others familiar with the case identified the employee as Mr. Combetta. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to be identified discussing matters that were supposed to remain confidential.
KANSAS CITY, Mo.  Hillary Clinton quoted biblical scripture. She talked about her youth minister who took her from the safe harbor of suburbia to the inner city of Chicago, and she shared the memory of seeing her gruff father bent on his knees in prayer each night.

And, without ever mentioning Donald J. Trump by name, Mrs. Clinton portrayed her rival as a nihilist who doesnt understand African-Americans or their faith.

The next president, she told the audience at the National Baptist Convention here on Thursday night, should be a praying person.

Our greatest leaders are often the most humble because they recognize both the awesome responsibilities of power and the frailty of human action, Mrs. Clinton told an audience that was almost entirely black. The nation, she added, needed a president who will pray with you and for you.
In 164 of 435 districts, the share of eligible Latino voters increased by at least one percentage point during the past four years, said David Wasserman, an editor for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report who focuses on House races. Most of the districts that have had the most growth are held by Democrats, though 70 of those 164 are in Republican hands, he said.

Representative Mike Coffman of Colorado, for instance, has seen the emerging power of the Hispanic vote. A Republican who voted in his first term against a bill to create a path to legalization for young people who came to the United States as children, he watched  and reacted  as redistricting abruptly dealt him a constituency in which one in five residents is Latino, compared with less than one in 10 when he was first elected. Now Mr. Coffman is among those House Republicans most engaged in conversations about the need for an immigration overhaul.

Yet for lawmakers like Mr. Dold and Mr. Coffman, it is increasingly difficult to put distance between themselves and Mr. Trump.

Mr. Dold has certainly been trying. Democratic leaders want to make an immigration overhaul a priority of the next Congress, and Mr. Dold did not conceal his enthusiasm when this fact was mentioned in an interview. Great, he said in the sunny, modernly sparse offices of TechNexus, a firm that connects entrepreneurs and corporations, perched above the Civic Opera House in Chicago.

Mr. Dold serves in perhaps the most heavily Democratic district represented by a Republican. Stretching along Lake Michigan, this relatively well-educated district sits among the affluent Chicago suburbs. Many of its Hispanic residents live in Waukegan, a blue-collar city toward the northern end of the district.
KABUL, Afghanistan  When Abdul Basir, an Afghan government militia commander, and his son Said Muhammad, who had been a Taliban fighter, made peace last month after several attempts to kill each other, it was clear their story would not end there.

For two lives so entirely shaped by decades of violence, the ending could not be a happy one. The truce simply meant father and son had both agreed to turn their weapons against the Taliban.

On Wednesday, Mr. Basir and Mr. Muhammad, along with 10 of their fighters, were lured into an insurgent trap near their home in the Qaisar District of Faryab Province, in northern Afghanistan. After hours of siege, the Taliban killed Mr. Basir and five of his men. Mr. Muhammad barely escaped.

The Taliban tied their bodies to tanks and dragged them for about 10 kilometers, said Abdul Baqi Hashemi, a member of the Faryab provincial council who has ties to the family.
SEOUL, South Korea  North Korea conducted its fifth underground nuclear test on Friday, its government said, despite threats of more sanctions from the United States and the United Nations. The latest test, according to South Korean officials, produced a more powerful explosive yield than the Norths previous detonations, indicating that the country was making progress in its efforts to build a functional nuclear warhead.

The test confirmed the explosive power and other characteristics of a nuclear warhead that has been standardized to be able to be mounted on its ballistic missiles, the Norths nuclear weapons institute said in a statement on Friday.

A statement from the South Korean military also said that an artificial tremor, registered as magnitude 5, had originated from Punggye-ri in northeastern North Korea, where the North has conducted its four previous underground nuclear tests.

A senior official at the Defense Ministry later told reporters that it had concluded that a nuclear detonation had caused the tremor.
A dozen passengers were evacuated by an Italian rescue team. That part of the operation was not done by helicopter because the cable car was close enough to the ground, according to Mathieu Dechavanne, the chief executive of the company that manages the cable cars.

The rescue effort resumed Friday morning.

The cars stopped because supporting cables and towing cables crossed in several places.

We managed to uncross the cables in two places by pulling them, but we did not manage to uncross them in the third one, Mr. Dechavanne said in a phone interview.

Mr. Dechavanne said he had called the rescue services at 5 p.m. to start evacuating the passengers.

We had to do it by helicopter and not vertically like we can do it in other places, because the ground underneath is of a glacial type so there is a risk of crevasses and it could lead to accidents, he said.
Vienna

Seurat, Signac, Van Gogh Albertina, Sept 16-Jan. 8

In his short life, the French painter Georges Seurat, who died at 31, made an enduring contribution to art history: He invented pointillism. This exhibition includes his works and those of other artists who drew inspiration from him, adapting his style for their own purposes  like Mondrian, Picasso and Theo van Rysselberghe. albertina.at

Bilbao, Spain

Francis Bacon: From Picasso to Velazquez Museo Guggenheim, Sept. 30-Jan. 8

Around 90 works by the artist Francis Bacon, as well as pieces by the artists who inspired him, are on display in this exhibition. Bacon, who died in Madrid in 1992, had a prodigious output and is best known for warped portraits that became stranger and stranger in the later years of his life. As the title implies, the show focuses on how Bacon was influenced by the Spanish artists and Spanish culture. One of Picassos exhibitions in Paris, in fact, had inspired Bacon to become a painter. guggenheim-bilbao.es
LONDON  The hoped-for grand finale turns out to be an anti-climax: Thats the dispiriting truth about the new West End revival of The Entertainer, in which an actor frequently touted as the heir to Laurence Olivier inherits a part immortalized by him 59 years ago.

Im referring to Kenneth Branagh, who first came to attention in one of Oliviers signature roles  Henry V, on stage and screen  and went on to play Olivier in the 2011 film My Week with Marilyn, for which he was nominated for an Oscar. Now he has cast himself in Oliviers archetypal role of Archie Rice, the down-on-his-luck music hall performer at the blighted heart of John Osbornes play. The new production, which runs at the Garrick Theater through Nov. 12, brings his companys yearlong residency there to an end.

What ought to have been a match made in theatrical heaven seems oddly tentative, as if performer and part have yet to fully align. As directed by Rob Ashford, the American director-choreographer who has been a colleague of the British actor for several years, Mr. Branaghs Archie looks great (those calf muscles!) and dances well  too well, some might argue, for a person so in the dumps.

But he only fitfully comes by the visceral attack that was Osbornes stock in trade and that, as Robert Lindsay proved when he played Archie at the Old Vic in 2007, can make both the play and the character live anew.
SAN FRANCISCO  It was a week before the premiere, and Bright Sheng, the composer and co-librettist of the new opera Dream of the Red Chamber, was already bracing for the backlash.

To create his version of Cao Xueqins sprawling 18th-century classic about the decline of an aristocratic family in imperial China, Mr. Sheng reduced the book to its bare bones. The novel  over 2,400 pages in its standard English translation, twice as long as War and Peace  is told in a mere two hours and 20 minutes. Hundreds of characters have been cut, leaving just eight main figures in the final show, which runs from Saturday through Sept. 29 at San Francisco Opera.

The books many die-hard fans may not be pleased.

You cant win with this, no matter what you do, Mr. Sheng said after a recent rehearsal. People will love you or hate you.

Such are the perils of adapting any beloved story. And to many in the Chinese-speaking world, Dream of the Red Chamber is that and more, widely regarded as a masterpiece  if not the masterpiece  of Chinese literature. Realizing the inevitable weight of expectations, the San Francisco Opera enlisted a team of creative heavyweights, all of Asian descent, to create the $3 million production.
Nearly four years ago, the novelist Wendy Mills was at the airport with her family when her son Zack asked a simple but wrenching question.

He wanted to know why all the passengers going through security were taking off their shoes. Ms. Mills gave Zack, then 9, a vague reply like, Its to keep us safe. Unsatisfied, he persisted, and eventually, the conversation wove around to the Sept. 11 attacks, which happened before he was born.

Ms. Mills, who lives in Pine Island, Fla., and writes young- adult fiction, realized during that conversation that most of her teenage readers had no direct memory of the attacks. Soon after, she started working on All We Have Left, a novel about two teenagers  a Muslim girl named Alia, and a troubled boy called Travis  who are trapped in an elevator in the World Trade Center on the morning of Sept. 11. The novel jumps back and forth between 2001 and 2016, when Traviss younger sister, Jesse, tries to find out what happened to her brother, who died in the tower, and fights with her grief-stricken father, who has become virulently anti-Muslim.

I wanted to write a story that made our shared history accessible to them, Ms. Mills said. Heres a whole generation of kids who werent alive and dont know what it was like that day, and theyre not going to know the world before 9/11. It wasnt a perfect world, but it felt like a safer world.
Buyout firms are at the forefront of Capitol Hill. They have successfully promoted legislation to roll back regulatory disclosures required under the postcrisis Dodd-Frank legislation, even as they settle cases over misleading investors. If the bill is enacted, however, there is a risk of repercussions.

The House passed the plan on Friday. If it is made into law, private equity firms will no longer have to notify clients when there is a management change of a fund, or provide brochures about fees and other information if it has already been disclosed elsewhere. The American Investment Council, an industry lobby group, says the bill is needed to update rules for a growing industry.

Critics are starting to rally. The Americans for Financial Reform group, the California pension giant known as Calpers, the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and other influential groups oppose the bill. They say it would exploit investors and threaten retirement savings. Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, has also criticized the proposal and is positioned to fight against it when it reaches her chamber.

If the bill makes it through the Senate despite opposition, it could galvanize other efforts to rein in the buyout industry. There is already growing bipartisan support to get rid of the so-called carried-interest tax loophole, which allows private equity partners to pay lower taxes on investment profit than they would on fee income.
The Dodd-Frank Act must be a real drag for private equity. After years of scant federal oversight, the sector was suddenly lumped with a new set of regulatory exams and reporting obligations.

Private equity has been lobbying hard, though, and the years of persistence may just pay off today, when the House votes on a bill the industry has championed.

If it passes, private equity firms will still have to put up with federal exams, but their reporting obligations will be loosened.

The bill comes soon after several enforcement actions against private equity firms by the Securities and Exchange Commission. This, critics say, raises the question: Why would you undo restrictions on the industry just as the S.E.C. is identifying problems with it?
There has been much discussion about the potential of blockchain, the technology underlying virtual currencies like Bitcoin, to change the world. We have heard waves of inspired commentary on how the technology, with its ability to share information and record transactions, will be as revolutionary as the internet itself. At Accenture, we agree about these huge possibilities, but there is an elephant in the room that will need to be confronted.

One of the accepted virtues of blockchain is that it creates a permanent, immutable ledger of transactions. For example, each of the roughly 160 million Bitcoin transactions that have occurred since the cryptocurrency began in 2009 will stay on that ledger as long as Bitcoin exists.

That permanence has been vital in building trust in the decentralized currencies, which are used by millions of people. But it could severely limit blockchains usefulness in other areas of financial services relied on by billions of people. By clashing with new privacy laws like the right to be forgotten and by making it nearly impossible to resolve human error and mischief efficiently, the blockchains immutability could end up being its own worst enemy.

The financial services industry needs to face the question of how to balance the appeal of pristine accounting with the demands of the real world, where some things simply need to be struck from the records.
Three former Tesco executives have been charged with fraud in connection with an accounting scandal that rocked the British supermarket giant two years ago, investigators said on Friday.

The charges stem from a criminal investigation dating to October 2014, after the company announced that it had overstated its first-half profit by 263 million pounds, about $420 million at the time, and that it had suspended several executives for accounting irregularities.

Christopher Bush, the former head of Tescos British business, and two former executives in that unit, Carl Rogberg and John Scouler, face charges of fraud by abuse of position and false accounting, the Serious Fraud Office, which investigates fraud in Britain, said in a statement.

The fraud office said the possible wrongdoing took place between February and September 2014. The men are to appear in court on Sept. 22, and the investigation is continuing, it said.
A Volkswagen engineer pleaded guilty on Friday to conspiring to defraud regulators and car owners, in the first criminal charges stemming from the American investigation into the German carmakers emissions deception.

The plea by the engineer, James Robert Liang, a Volkswagen veteran, suggests that the Justice Department is trying to build a larger criminal case and pursue charges against other higher-level executives at the carmaker.

Mr. Liang was central in the development of software that Volkswagen used to cheat pollution tests in the United States, which the company admitted last year to installing in more than 11 million diesels vehicles worldwide. He was also part of the cover-up, lying to regulators when they started asking questions about discrepancies in emissions.

Mr. Liangs admissions, made in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, portray a broader conspiracy by executives, making Mr. Liang a potentially valuable resource for the developing criminal investigation. The Justice Department said Mr. Liang, who faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison, would cooperate.
Daniel H. Cohen, who was the senior vice president in charge of advertising when The New York Times became the first publication to generate more than $1 billion in advertising in a single year, died on Friday in Zurich. He was 64.

He had traveled to Zurich with family members and died there after a long struggle with brain cancer, his family said.

Mr. Cohen was a great-grandson of Adolph S. Ochs, the family patriarch who bought The Times in 1896, and a first cousin of Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., the companys current chairman and publisher, and of Michael Golden, the vice chairman.

He held several senior executive positions in the circulation and advertising departments before he left to begin a television production company in 1999. On his leaving, Mr. Sulzberger said of Mr. Cohen: Even as he led The Times to unparalleled levels of print advertising revenue, he has been a strong voice for our electronic future, both on the internet and in broadcast.
The temperature in New York reached an uncomfortable 90 degrees on Friday afternoon as guests arrived at Michelle Smiths Milly show in Chelsea. With her Pomeranian, Polly, in tow, Kelly Osbourne took her seat among a front row that included Candace Cameron Bure, best known for her role as D.J. Tanner on Full House, and Johanna Braddy, who stars alongside Priyanka Chopra in the television show Quantico.

Ms. Osbourne, who has a memoir coming out this spring (its title, perhaps unsurprisingly, is unprintable here) and is a judge on the coming second season of Project Runway: Junior, took a few minutes to discuss the lesser-known designers she is excited about and how she is handling the summer heat.

How do you navigate fashion week?

I go to the designers who have always supported me because I think its a way of showing respect and support for not only your friends, but the brand. And then you get the selfish side of being like, I want that dress and I want that dress.

Are there any new designers you have your eye on?

Francesca Liberatore and Namilia, a duo from Berlin. Theyre unbelievable. Its so controversial what theyre doing. And I wouldnt be an Osbourne if I didnt like a little bit of controversy.
There was his audacious pitch, as a freshman lawmaker, to Mr. Trump: Run for governor of New York, he told Mr. Trump in 2013, and the path to the White House would be clear. (Springboards to the Presidency, Mr. Nojays four-page memo was called.)

Image Assemblyman Bill Nojay at a rally in 2013. Credit... Mike Groll/Associated Press

Three years later, he was a co-chairman of Mr. Trumps New York campaign committee.

There was his penchant for speaking up for upstate concerns, using his radio show to denounce state leaders in Albany  Democrats and establishment Republicans  for what he called their indifference. Among his signature issues: railing against the SAFE Act, the New York gun-control legislation passed in 2013.

Im not on the governors Christmas card list, and you know something? Thats something I wear as a badge of honor, he said on Thursday, in one of his final radio interviews. Because I think that when you forcefully and strongly advocate for your district and you make that mark, even people that disagree with you respect your views.

The force of Mr. Nojays advocacy was not lost on anyone in the Legislature: You knew exactly where he stood, said Brian Kolb, the Assembly minority leader. He ruffled feathers because he spoke it as he saw it.

And there were his far-flung business and nation-building ventures. In Afghanistan, he was an election monitor with the International Republican Institute. In Odessa, Ukraine, he consulted on an election between pro-Western and pro-Russian candidates. In Iran, he held the title director and secretary/treasurer of the Foundation for Democracy, according to his Assembly biography.

In Cambodia, which he said he had visited for various reasons since the 1980s, he started an agricultural marketing business with three partners, including Sichan Siv, the Cambodian-American former United States ambassador to the United Nations. The Akra Group, as it was called, solicited a $1 million investment from a wealthy Phnom Penh dentist around the end of 2012, said her American lawyer, Robert A. Simon. By 2014, Mr. Simon said, Akra showed no signs of marketing rice or of returning the $1 million, and his client, Dr. Lykuong Eng, filed a fraud complaint in Cambodia.
An appeals court in New Jersey on Friday threw out the conviction of the former roommate of Tyler Clementi, the Rutgers University freshman who killed himself six years ago after he was spied on while having sex with another man.

The Appellate Division of the Superior Court of New Jersey in Newark overturned a lower courts conviction of the ex-roommate, Dharun Ravi, on several counts of bias intimidation because of a change in state law. The court called for a new trial of Mr. Ravi on 10 other counts that included invasion of privacy and tampering with evidence.

Mr. Ravi was convicted in 2012 in a case that drew international attention to the bullying of gay teenagers after Mr. Clementi jumped to his death from the George Washington Bridge. Mr. Clementis life and death were taken up by advocates for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights, and the case delved into the risks that are sometimes associated with coming out as Mr. Clementi had struggled with questions about his sexuality.

Mr. Clementis suicide at age 18 came just days after he learned that Mr. Ravi had used a webcam to spy on him and had used social media to invite others to watch a sexual encounter in the dormitory room Mr. Clementi shared with Mr. Ravi.
Europes ability to accept more refugees is close to the limits, warned the European Council president, Donald Tusk, at the G20 meeting on Sunday. For the truck drivers and local citizens who staged a protest on Monday in Calais, France, where the population of a migrant tent camp has swelled to more than 10,000, that limit has been reached.

Calais is a magnet for migrants trying to reach Britain because it is close to the Eurotunnel. Under a 2003 agreement between the two countries, British border control takes place on the French side of the tunnel. With Britain unwilling to take in migrants, the result is a bottleneck in Calais.

A year ago, when the population of the Calais camp had grown to about 5,000, Britain pledged $11 million to beef up security at both ends of the tunnel, and France committed more police officers. This year, the government of President Francois Hollande had the northern portion of the squalid camp razed, and set up shipping containers to house some migrants.

The camps population has doubled since then, and conditions are worse. Migrants are resorting to desperate means to try to get through the Eurotunnel, including attacking trucks bound for Britain so they can clamber on board. The conservative Les Republicains mayor of Calais, Natacha Bouchart, is demanding that Mr. Hollandes Socialist government send in the army to control the migrants. Former President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, who is running for president again, wants to set up a detention center for migrants on British soil, an idea the British promptly rejected. With presidential elections scheduled for spring, Calais has become an anti-immigrant rallying cry for Les Republicains and the far-right National Front party.
To the Editor:

As a civil rights historian who as a Stanford resident fellow ran a large dorm for seven years and directed community engagement at Williams College, I have led numerous diversity initiatives. I have noticed, however, that once academic administrations properly commit to necessary diversity programs, they sometimes err on the side of overkill that can unintentionally help to discredit such programs.

Reading your article on campus diversity efforts, Campus 101: Learning How Not to Offend (front page, Sept. 7), I imagined the field day diversity critics might have with a diversity officer discouraging the use of the term you guys. Anyone who has spent time with college students and other young people knows that the term you guys has been effectively degendered  generally accepted to refer to either or both genders.

STEWART BURNS

North Adams, Mass.

To the Editor:

As the father of twin girls currently attending Boston College and the University of Michigan as freshmen, I read Campus 101: Learning How Not to Offend with interest. Surely this must be satire. Microaggressions and microinvalidations?

I sent two bright and independent girls off to school knowing that these ideas have become pervasive in our current college environment but didnt think they would come across this thinking immediately. Yet a call from one daughter gave me pause. Her professor apologized for using the word man while quoting Karl Marx.
Silicon Valley technology companies have faced scrutiny for not promoting enough diversity within their work forces. For Airbnb, the situation is more severe  the companys entire business has been accused of being discriminatory.

The online short-term rental company has faced months of criticism this year over how its hosts can easily reject renters based on their gender, race, age and other factors. Airbnb has responded by hiring advisers, reviewing its site and self-flagellating over the problems.

Image

On Thursday, Airbnb took its most aggressive steps yet to combat discrimination, releasing a 32-page report and instituting changes including a new nondiscrimination policy and requiring a community commitment from its hosts, writes Katie Benner. In a message accompanying the report, Brian Chesky, Airbnbs chief executive, apologized for how slow the company has been in addressing the issue.
We are always looking to improve our policies to make sure they both promote free expression and keep our community safe, and we will be engaging with publishers and other members of our global community on these important questions going forward, a Facebook spokeswoman said.

The frequency with which Facebook needs to respond to questions over its media role has increased over the past 18 months. In May, the company had to grapple with reports that some editors working on its Trending Topics section  a portion of the site in which Facebook displays some of the most-talked-about stories on the network  were suppressing conservative political content.

Facebook last month laid off the Trending Topics team and said it would rely solely on algorithmic decision-making to surface trending stories across the site. In the weeks since, some have called for Facebook to rethink that stance, as several fake news stories have more prominently appeared in the section.

Image A.J. Chavar, a New York Times journalist, reposted the Timess article about Facebook removing posts including the Vietnam War-era photo showing a naked girl escaping napalm bombing. Facebook quickly removed Mr. Chavars post, citing Facebook community standards that restrict the display of nudity. Credit... AJ Chavar

Last year, Facebook also had to revise its community standards after photos of women breast-feeding were removed from their Facebook pages. And the company apologized in May after it blocked a photo of a plus-size model for being undesirable.

What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? Whats their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source. Learn more about our process.

Facebooks editorial influence reaches far beyond Trending Topics. The company, with 1.71 billion members worldwide, is continuously refining and updating the algorithms that control the News Feed, the stream of status updates, news articles, photos and videos that most of its users spend the most time interacting with. Those changes affect the type of content people see more frequently  photos from friends and family, for instance, instead of news stories  which can have an effect on what people are sharing across the network.

Many of the worlds largest publishers, from The New York Times and The Guardian to Vice and BuzzFeed, also increasingly rely on Facebook to communicate with the social networks users. A growing number of media companies and analysts have raised concerns that Facebook may hold too much sway over how information is distributed.
Brendan Dassey, the Wisconsin man whose murder conviction was questioned on the popular Making a Murderer documentary series on Netflix, will have to spend at least a little more time in prison.

Brad Schimel, the attorney general in Wisconsin, on Friday appealed a federal judges Aug. 12 decision that overturned Mr. Dasseys conviction in the 2005 killing of Teresa Halbach, a 25-year-old photographer in Manitowoc, Wis. In overturning the conviction, the judge, William E. Duffin of the Eastern District of Wisconsin, gave prosecutors 90 days to schedule a new trial or free him from prison.

The appeal of the judges decision means that Mr. Dassey will remain in prison pending the outcome.

The 10-part Netflix series by Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos, released in December, suggested that police investigators unfairly questioned Mr. Dassey, then 16, without a lawyer or parent present. He was portrayed as mentally unfit, and suggested investigators coerced him into a confession. Judge Duffin agreed, saying that the authorities conduct was unconstitutional.
The two masked killers burst through a door and, without saying a word, swept the conference room with semiautomatic rifle fire, spraying more than 100 rounds before they fled, just two or three minutes later.

A new report chronicles in vivid detail the Dec. 2 terrorist attack in San Bernardino, Calif., where Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, killed 14 people and wounded 24 others. The couple pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, committed the rampage and died hours later in a wild shootout with the police, when Mr. Farook was shot 25 times and Ms. Malik was hit 13 times.

The report contains the first official account of how the killers were identified and tracked down, with a handful of officers playing crucial roles. And it reveals a wealth of specifics that had not been made public before, including the number of gunshots, and the horrors that officers and victims encountered.

The scene that police officers found minutes after the massacre overwhelmed the senses: dozens of maimed or dead bodies, spattered and pooling blood, the haze and smell of gunfire, a shattered pipe pouring water from the ceiling, a wailing alarm. And wounded victims pleading for help, clutching at officers whose first priority was to find the attackers.

It was the worst thing imaginable  some people were quiet, hiding, others were screaming or dying, grabbing at your legs because they wanted us to get them out, but our job at the moment was to keep going, the patrol officer said. That was the hardest part, stepping over them.

Making Decisions on the Fly

The report was produced by the Police Foundation, a policy study group in Washington, with help from the Justice Department and local law enforcement agencies; the authors interviewed more than 200 people, from police chiefs to survivors.

After The New York Times obtained a draft version and reported on its contents, the Justice Department on Friday released the final document. Some details changed  including the number of times the killers were shot, how many shots they fired and how their vehicle was traced  but the overall picture was unaltered.
BISMARCK, N.D.  The federal government on Friday temporarily blocked construction on part of a North Dakota oil pipeline, an unusual intervention in a prairie battle that has drawn thousands of Native Americans and activists to camp and demonstrate.

In announcing the pause, the government acknowledged complaints from the Standing Rock Sioux and other tribal nations that their concerns had not been fully heard before federal overseers approved a pipeline that the tribe said could damage their water supplies and ancestral cultural sites. The Justice Department and other agencies called for serious discussion on whether there should be nationwide reform with respect to considering tribes views on these types of infrastructure projects.

The tribe in a statement called the federal order a game changer.

The governments move, announced minutes after a federal judge rejected efforts by the Standing Rock Sioux to block construction of the project, appeared to seek to ease tensions and reset the terms of a passionate debate that has cast the 1,170-mile Dakota Access pipeline either as an economic boon for the Plains or a threat to Native American sovereignty, waters and lands. But perhaps more significantly, it appeared to signal a broader willingness to re-examine the involvement of the tribes in infrastructure decisions like this one.

The government said it would invite tribes to attend formal consultations about how they might work together on federal decisions on tribal lands and on whether future legislation is needed.
The Marine Corps has concluded an investigation into the death of a Muslim recruit, Raheel Siddiqui, saying that he committed suicide at a training camp where hazing and abuse took place.

A statement said that the investigation had identified 20 trainers at the Parris Island, S.C., camp for possible legal or administrative action  a reflection of the wider investigation that was prompted by Mr. Siddiquis death on March 18. Some commanders, senior advisers and drill instructors have already been let go, the statement said.

Siddiquis death was the result of suicide, a statement said. Additionally, the investigations revealed departures from the policies and procedures established for Marine Corps recruit training.

The investigation focused on allegations of abuse and maltreatment at the recruiting depot on Parris Island and found that there was recurrent physical and verbal abuse of recruits by drill instructors, and insufficient oversight.
At last, Bill Clinton could not help himself.

He paced the stage during a speech on Tuesday in North Carolina, holding his microphone close. He raised his left index finger. And at once, the meandering address turned sharply, and without prompting, to his charitable foundation, a magnet for criticism in recent weeks.

We live in a Snapchat-Twitter world, Mr. Clinton lamented, tilting his head theatrically  a septuagenarian embracing his age, decades after reveling in saxophone cool.

Its so much easier, he said, just to discredit people and call them names.

For Mr. Clinton and his extended circle, this election has at times felt like a campaign devised to discredit the former president and call him names.

And after more than a year of uncharacteristic restraint  a notable shift from eight years ago, when his simmering instincts often burdened Hillary Clintons first presidential run  Mr. Clinton seems to have had enough.
On social media, many of Mr. Johnsons backers say they hope that Senator Jeff Flake, the Arizona Republican who has had a public feud with Mr. Trump, might get behind the Libertarian ticket, but so far they have had no luck converting him.

In June, Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska expressed interest in the Libertarian Party, but later said that Mr. Johnsons positions on abortion, religious liberty and national security were deal breakers.

Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee who has showered praise on Mr. Weld, pushed publicly this week for the Libertarians to be allowed in the debates. Still, he has given no sign that he will back the partys ticket in November, even though he has said he will not vote for Mr. Trump or Mrs. Clinton.

The Libertarians just break too much from traditional G.O.P. orthodoxy on foreign policy and social issues to get a big amount of Republican support, said Kyle D. Kondik of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.

The Democratic electorate has also failed to provide fertile ground for the Libertarians, despite the lingering disappointment among some who supported Mr. Sanders. Jill Stein, the Green Party nominee, has drawn some Sanders backers, and Mr. Johnsons position in favor of free trade is out of step with most Democrats these days.

Political analysts point to a variety of reasons third-party candidacies tend to flounder in the United States. A lack of exposure in the news media is often cited, as are political science theories that argue that in a winner-take-all political system, voters gravitate to two mainstream parties out of fear that they would otherwise be wasting their votes.

Many see the debates as the biggest obstacle for third-party candidates. The Commission on Presidential Debates requires that candidates invited to the three nationally televised presidential debates have an average of at least 15 percent support in five specific national polls.
Hillary Clinton called Friday for rethinking President Obamas strategy to combat North Koreas nuclear program, saying the countrys latest nuclear test gave the White House an opening to expand sanctions and broaden a missile-defense program in neighboring countries.

She also said that the United States can do more to pressure China to lean on North Korea, its longtime ally, to halt its program.

Its clear that the increasing threat posed by North Korea requires not only a rethinking of the strategy, but an urgent effort to convince the neighbors, most particularly China, that this is not just a U.S. issue, Mrs. Clinton said, signaling she would support a change in strategy since she served as secretary of state.

Since the start of the Obama administration, Mrs. Clinton had supported Mr. Obama on his strategic patience approach of gradually escalating sanctions on North Korea, but the blast on Friday signaled that the tactic had failed to halt North Korean advances in developing its nuclear capacity.
The families have been asking for this for over a decade, said Terry Strada, whose husband, Thomas S. Strada, was killed in the attack on the World Trade Center towers. She has long lobbied Congress on the issue. We dont feel this is fast-track in any way, shape or form, she said.

Mr. Obama has voiced opposition to the effort for months, fearing that it could expose the United States to lawsuits by people in other countries. A White House official said this week that the administrations position has not changed even after some changes were made to the bill to mollify critics.

The bill is a politically cost-free way for Congress to send a signal of seeming seriousness about terrorism on the dawn of the 15th anniversary of 9/11, said Jack Goldsmith, a professor of law at Harvard who served in the Department of Justice under President George W. Bush. Congress itself could have investigated lingering questions about 9/11, but instead is delegating those tasks to the unelected judiciary. The costs of the law will be borne by courts, which are an awkward place to ascertain Saudi responsibility for 9/11, and especially the president, who will have to deal with the diplomatic fallout with Saudi Arabia and other nations.

The bill addresses a 1976 law that gives other countries broad immunity from American lawsuits. It amends the law to allow for nations to be sued in federal courts if they are found to have played any role in terrorist attacks that killed Americans on home soil. It also allows Americans to direct financial claims against those who funded the attacks.

The administration has argued that it would put Americans at legal risk overseas. That position seemed at least somewhat validated when Pierre Lellouche, a member of the French Parliament who is chairman of the rough equivalent in France of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he would pursue legislation that would permit French citizens to sue the United States with cause.
What do you do if the Republican candidate is unpalatable to you? asked Professor Holland, who also lives in the county. Do you just show up and not vote for president at all? Or  gasp  could there be a possibility that a Republican woman would show up and vote for Hillary Clinton? We just dont know.

Delaware County was mostly farmland until a few decades ago, with a modest cluster of factories in the county seat. Roger Marksch, 67, built and fixed machines in those factories for almost 50 years before hanging up his tools last year. He watched as the factories closed or moved to Japan, China, Mexico and Finland. I got out just in time, he said with a laugh.

But even as those jobs faded away, developers were replacing Delawares soybean fields with subdivisions. Columbus was growing rapidly, fueled by a modern mix of government, education and financial services. Commuters doubled the suburban countys population from 1980 to 2000, and it is on pace to double again by 2020, easily topping 200,000.

John Kasich, Ohios governor, is the archetypal local Republican with misgivings about Mr. Trump. Mr. Kasich, who lives in Delaware Countys southern tier, not far from a planned Ikea, has repeatedly rebutted Mr. Trumps bleak descriptions of Ohios economy. He has not offered an endorsement.

Others said they were concerned Mr. Trump was insufficiently conservative. Craig Johnson, who owns a pizzeria in the county seat, said he doubted that Mr. Trump was a Republican, but he laughed when asked if he would consider Mrs. Clinton. Listen, Im a 45-year-old small-business owner in Delaware, Ohio, and I like guns, fishing and Nascar, he said.

He is mulling a vote for Gary Johnson, the Libertarian nominee.

Many local Republicans are making their peace.
In July, Judge Gershwin A. Drain of Federal District Court in Detroit temporarily blocked the law, finding that it imposed a disproportionate burden on African-Americans right to vote.

The evidence submitted by groups and voters challenging the law, Judge Drain said, showed that there are extremely high correlations between the size of the African-American voting population within a district and the use of straight-party voting in that district.

Judge Drain noted that ballots still identified candidates by their party affiliations, meaning that the law did not truly forbid straight-ticket voting but merely made it more cumbersome. It seems the only purpose behind the law is to require voters to spend more time filling more bubbles on ballot forms, he wrote.

A unanimous three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit last month denied the states request for a stay of Judge Drains decision. Judge Karen Nelson Moore, writing for the appeals court, said the law would exacerbate long lines at a polling places and discourage voting.

Because African-American majority districts in Michigan such as Detroit have also historically faced some of the longest wait times in the state, Judge Moore wrote, the increase in long lines occasioned by the elimination of straight-party voting will impact these voters to an even more significant degree.
Support for Israel now rivals the abortion issue in the political lexicon and the hierarchy of issue concerns of evangelical voters, said Ralph Reed, a longtime conservative Christian leader, who had wanted Mr. Trump to incorporate talk of the Holy Land into his stump speech. They will not support a candidate that in their view does not support the state of Israel.

Mr. Trump is, however, comfortable speaking in pugilistic terms and making sport of his rivals. Veering away from cultural matters, he used his speech to belittle Mrs. Clintons foreign policy record and promise a vigorous attack on Islamic terrorism. Without reiterating his praise this week for Vladimir V. Putin, Russias strongman president, Mr. Trump said he would gladly work with Russia to take on the Islamic State. If they want to join us on knocking out ISIS, he said, that is just fine as far as Im concerned.

The Islamic State aimed to destroy what it calls the nation of the cross, Mr. Trump said, pointing directly at his audience as he spoke.

And days after Mrs. Clinton said that Islamic terrorists were praying for Mr. Trumps victory, Mr. Trump fired back the same accusation. Boy, would they dream of having her as president, he said of the Islamic State.

Mr. Trump also accused the Obama administration of doing a poor job of accepting Christian refugees from Syria (though he has proposed a total halt to the admission of Syrian refugees.) Such talk and, even more important, the unpopularity of his Democratic opponent on the right, has helped nudge some skeptical evangelicals in Mr. Trumps direction.

But many in attendance here acknowledged that Mr. Trump is the most secular Republican presidential nominee in recent times. And they were quick to acknowledge that some Christian conservatives still are not ready to cast a vote for somebody who does not share all their values. Some doubters are even in their own families.

My son-in-law, said Susan Parker, an attendee from San Antonio who has rallied behind Mr. Trump. Hes a Republican, but hes a Christian first. He said, Im looking at the qualifications of a good leader and he does not qualify.
UNITED NATIONS  Britain has Theresa May. Chile has Michelle Bachelet. In the United States, Hillary Clinton this year became the first woman to clinch a major party nomination for president.

The United Nations, though, still seems to be a mans world.

Never in the 70-year history of the world body has a woman been secretary general. And at the moment, it looks like that is not going to change.

Half the 12 people who initially entered the race for the post this year are women, many more than ever before. None has gained much support from members of the Security Council.

In four informal polls so far, one man has held the clear lead: Antonio Guterres, a former prime minister of Portugal who until recently headed the United Nations refugee agency. The poll results show council members have flip-flopped on their No. 2 choice for the job  but they have consistently chosen a man.
The Korean Central News Agency, the official news service of North Korea, on Friday published a statement issued by the nations nuclear weapons institute. Following is the complete text of the statement, with key passages highlighted, accompanied by context and analysis by the correspondents of The New York Times:

Scientists and technicians of the D.P.R.K. carried out a nuclear explosion test for the judgment of the power of a nuclear warhead newly studied and manufactured by them at the northern nuclear test ground under the plan of the Workers Party of Korea (W.P.K.) for building strategic nuclear force.

The use of the phrase nuclear warhead rather than nuclear device is noteworthy, suggesting a specific, miniaturized design that can be mounted on a missile. D.P.R.K. refers to the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, the Norths official name, and the Workers Party of Korea is the ruling party, led by Kim Jong-un.

The Central Committee of the W.P.K. sent warm congratulations to nuclear scientists and technicians of the northern nuclear test ground on the successful nuclear warhead explosion test. The nuclear test finally examined and confirmed the structure and specific features of movement of nuclear warhead that has been standardized to be able to be mounted on strategic ballistic rockets of the Hwasong artillery units of the Strategic Force of the Korean Peoples Army as well as its performance and power.

The Hwasong artillery units are believed to be involved in the development of intercontinental missiles, but Hwasong also refers to a class of medium-range North Korean missiles, their version of a Scud missile. The Hwasong units have been conducting a series of missile tests in recent months, raising regional fears that the North can already mount a nuclear weapon on a missile capable of striking its neighbors, South Korea and Japan.

The North recently tested a missile that may be able to reach American bases in the Pacific and has been working on one that can reach the continental United States. But experts say it could take five years for the North to develop the technology needed, including a warhead capable of surviving the stress of re-entering the atmosphere.
GENEVA  North Koreas latest test of an atomic weapon leaves the United States with an uncomfortable choice: Stick with a policy of incremental sanctions that has clearly failed to stop the countrys nuclear advances, or pick among alternatives that range from the highly risky to the repugnant.

A hard embargo, in which Washington and its allies block all shipping into and out of North Korea and seek to paralyze its finances, risks confrontations that allies in Asia fear could quickly escalate into war. But restarting talks on the Norths terms would reward the defiance of its young leader, Kim Jong-un, with no guarantee that he will dismantle the nuclear program irrevocably.

Speaking in Geneva early Saturday morning after announcing a deal with Russia over the Syrian conflict, Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States was willing to negotiate with North Korea, but only if it agreed that the goal of those talks was for it to give up its weapons. We have made overture after overture to the dictator of North Korea, he said, including on normalizing the countrys relationship with the West and a formal peace agreement to replace the 1953 armistice that halted the Korean War but not the state of hostilities.

All Kim Jong-un needs to do is say, Im prepared to talk about denuclearization, Mr. Kerry said.
North Korea said it conducted its fifth underground nuclear test on Friday. Since the first test, almost a decade ago, the size of the resulting earthquakes from the countrys test site have increased, indicating that the devices are becoming increasingly powerful.

The device detonated on Friday looks to have had a force equivalent of 10 kilotons of TNT, according to the Souths Defense Ministry. In contrast, the last device tested by the North, in January, had a force equivalent of six kilotons of TNT, the Souths intelligence agency said. The aboveground Trinity Test in New Mexico in July 1945, which ushered in the nuclear age, had a yield of 20 kilotons.

But power is not the only measure of a devices lethality. The weapon must also have a way to be delivered. South Korean, American and Japanese officials want to determine whether the North Koreans are capable of building a miniaturized nuclear device that can be mounted on a ballistic missile and successfully detonated at a target hundreds, if not thousands, of miles from the launch site. In the past decade, South Korean and American experts have said that the North appears to be closer to achieving that goal.

Here is a timeline of how North Korea built up the capability of its nuclear weapons. The earthquake magnitudes are from the United States Geological Survey, which differ from those measured by the South Korean authorities. They may also be slightly revised from numbers reported immediately after the events.
He was close to Mullah Omar when he was in power  eating meals with him and overseeing his security  but says he never saw him after the fall of the Taliban government in 2001. The Taliban leadership regrouped in Quetta in Pakistan, but he said they never met with Mullah Omar. Only two personal messengers ever had direct access to the leader, and even close relatives did not see him, he said.

Mr. Motasim was at the heart of the movement when it organized to fight an insurgency against the American military presence in Afghanistan and the government it supported. He said an early attempt to seek reconciliation through the governor of Kandahar was rejected, so the Taliban had no other choice but to fight.

He led the financial committee and later the political committee of the Taliban movement and traveled frequently to Saudi Arabia on fund-raising tours. He became known to the Saudi authorities, and when President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan asked the Saudi king to mediate peace with the Taliban, the Saudis enlisted Mr. Motasims help.

HE began back-channel negotiations as head of the Talibans political committee, and says he twice met with a brother of Mr. Karzais, in 2008 and 2009. The two successfully worked on confidence-building measures that focused on having the Taliban end attacks on schools and government officials and on having the government work on releasing Taliban prisoners and removing Taliban leaders from the sanctions list, Afghan officials and Western diplomats confirm.

Then in August 2010, as he was backing his car through the gate at his home in Karachi, Pakistan, a gunman opened fire on him. As Mr. Motasim dived out of the car, the gunman pumped 12 bullets from a pistol into his head, stomach and legs. It left him in a hospital unable to speak for months and ended the Saudi-led peace initiative.

I saw the danger, and people used to warn me about the possible danger, he recalled. But I told them that for the sake of my country and my people, I will accept this danger so we can bring our people peace and stability.
As the night went on, they started to play Pyramid, a word game. It got boring after a while, then we chatted with the other people, he told the broadcaster. We also called a lot on the phone to get information or updates and we were a little scared. We got bored a lot.

He said his fear was magnified by the sight of a Korean family in the cable car ahead of his, who seemed in distress and unable to communicate. He said people in his cable car yelled to tell them where they could find survival blankets.

Rescue workers remained with passengers in five of the cars, and provided the passengers with food and blankets to fend off the chill. The rescue workers reached the area by snowmobile before flying by helicopter over the cable cars, harnessing themselves to the cables, climbing along to the cars and then dropping through the cars hatches, French authorities said.

Mathieu Dechavanne, the chief executive of the company that manages the cable cars, said the helicopters were necessary because the glacial ground underneath was fragile. We had to do it by helicopter and not vertically like we can do it in other places because the ground underneath is of a glacial type, so there is a risk of crevasses and it could lead to accidents, he said.

Mr. Dechavanne said that each of the cars had a survival kit with cereal bars, water and survival blankets, and that the company had contacted the passengers by phone to keep them informed of what was happening. He said that two of the cable cars did not have rescue workers with them.

The rescue effort resumed Friday at around 6:30 a.m., when technicians untangled the supporting and towing cables that had become crossed in several places. The cable cars were back in service at about 8:30 a.m., officials said. They also said that without the added weight of those passengers rescued the day before, it was easier to untangle the cables.
CAIRO, Egypt  Egyptian security officers investigated an Italian graduate student for several days just two weeks before his brutalized body was discovered on the outskirts of Cairo in February, Egypts top prosecutor said on Friday, altering the official timeline of events leading up to the mans disappearance.

In a statement released Friday, the prosecutor, Nabil Sadek, acknowledged for the first time that the Egyptian police had formally investigated Giulio Regeni, 28, a doctoral candidate who was researching labor movements.

While meeting with Italian officials in Rome on Friday, Mr. Sadek said the Cairo police had received a report on Jan. 7 about Mr. Regeni from the chief of the countrys independent street vendors union, prompting an investigation.

Mr. Regeni was last seen on Jan. 25. His body was found on Feb. 3, half-naked with cigarette burns and signs that he had been beaten on his body and feet.
While Russia has always been fitfully involved in Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts over the years, Mr. Putin now seems intent on taking the lead, both as a poke at Washington amid continuing tension over Syria and Ukraine and as a show of Russian significance. Mr. Putin has made a point of developing a relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel even as Mr. Netanyahu has feuded with President Obama.

Theyre eager to become an important player, a big shot in the Middle East, said Zvi Magen, a former Israeli ambassador to Russia who is now a senior research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. The idea is not to reach any specific results, but its good for Russia. They dont need results. They need the process itself.

So far, all they have is the process. After Mr. Putins special envoy met with Mr. Netanyahu and officials of the Palestinian Authority led by President Mahmoud Abbas, in recent days, Moscow declared that the two had agreed in principle to meet. But no date was set, and neither side openly confirmed an agreement to sit down.

Until now, Mr. Abbas insisted that before any meeting Israel must freeze its construction of settlements in the West Bank and release prisoners. Mr. Netanyahu had insisted that he would meet only if there were no preconditions.

It remained unclear whether Mr. Abbas had dropped his conditions, but even if he had, his team held out little hope for a meeting in the near term. A senior Palestinian official, who insisted on anonymity because of the shifting nature of the diplomacy, said his side had agreed to a meeting in principle, but there was no date and he did not expect that there would be soon.

The official refused to specify whether Mr. Abbas was demanding any terms for the meeting, saying only that there had been no change in the Palestinian position regarding settlement construction. He reiterated the Palestinian assertion that the demand for a settlement freeze is not a precondition, but an obligation under international law.
ISTANBUL  The Turkish government said on Friday that it was preparing to take over at least 28 municipal administrations nationwide, ousting elected mayors as part of an intensified crackdown against Kurdish insurgents.

The government is accusing the mayors of supporting and funding militants from the Kurdistan Workers Party, or P.K.K., an outlawed group that has been engaged in a violent autonomy struggle for more than 40 years.

The administration of 28 municipalities will no longer be in the hands of terrorists, Suleyman Soylu, the interior minister, said in a televised speech.
On a recent Saturday afternoon, Lauren Lovette surveyed her dancers before sliding into a split  one of her go-to positions when shes contemplating a step  and rose suddenly to move through a dynamic passage in her new ballet. She calls this part soft serve. In it, dancers line up along a diagonal and pirouette away as their arms swirl above their heads like curlicues topping a dip of Dairy Queen. She made some tweaks; her dancers peeled away from the line with more refinement but no less verve.

I think thats going to work, she said, half to herself. I believe it.

Ms. Lovette, a principal with New York City Ballet, frequently uses that phrase when assessing her choreography, which, like her dancing, is lush. Thats when you know its good, said Indiana Woodward, one of the leads in Ms. Lovettes new work. Because she believes whatever you just gave to her.

This fall, Ms. Lovette, 24, is working from that place of conviction. Ms. Lovette, one of two women who will unveil new works at City Ballets fall gala on Sept. 20  the other is the choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa  is under some pressure.

Last year, City Ballet commissioned works by four men, which had people wondering: Where are the women? Female choreographers remain rare in classical ballet, and Ms. Lovette knows it; she doesnt want to coast.
In an interview at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan, her posture perfect and diction precise, Ms. Panjabi  who lives among New York, Los Angeles and London  talked about returning to network television and saying goodbye to Kalinda. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

At first glance, Nas seems strong, complex and even a bit manipulative. Should we expect Kalinda 2.0?

There are definitely similarities, but there are also differences. Nas doesnt use sex as a weapon, at least up till now. Kalinda was immensely sexual, and there was a lot of fascination with her sexuality. And Nas is fiercely protective of her team, but shes also got this wild, unpredictable side. Shes there to heal the wounds, but Im sure along the way she causes a few.

What else should we expect this season?

Its basically the government versus this so-called terrorist organization. So youve got these two worlds going on, and its gray, as a lot of things are.

Did you worry about being typecast after Kalinda?

I couldnt have asked for a better role to break into American TV. People loved that character, and I got a lot of love in return.
Even though our dysfunctional relationship with technology is the story of our times, readers often prejudge books on the topic as boring. So Id have loved Aiken to continue in this thrilling  if slightly hacky  vein. Unfortunately, the raid is over within a couple of pages, and after that The Cyber Effect frequently descends into the familiar trudge of the pop-psychology book.

There are the regular research studies  on disinhibition, moral disengagement and deep vein thrombosis  peppered with anomalous case studies: the boy who played World of Warcraft for 36 hours straight and then jumped out of a window; the 12-year-old Wisconsin girls who stabbed a classmate 19 times while in thrall to Slender Man, a monster they had read about online and misjudged as real. Aiken sometimes ends these horrifying stories noting that this is an extreme and thankfully uncommon example, which makes you wonder why she included them. In fact, one of the Slender Man girls later received a diagnosis of early-onset schizophrenia, though Aiken suggests that might have been the internets fault too.

This is her provocative and at times compelling thesis: The internet  the largest unregulated social experiment of all time, in the words of the clinical psychologist Michael Seto  is turning us, as a species, more mentally disordered, anxious, obsessive, narcissistic, exhibitionist, body dysmorphic, psychopathic, schizophrenic. All this might unleash a surge in deviant, criminal and abnormal behavior in the general population. We check our mobile devices 1,500 times a week, sometimes even secretly, before the planes pilot tells us its safe. Our ethics have become so impaired that some of us take selfies in front of people threatening to jump from bridges. (Having spent years with people disproportionately shamed on social media for some minor transgression, I can attest to how the internet can rob people of empathy.)

She paints an evocative image of sitting on a train to Galway, watching a woman breast-feed her baby: The baby was gazing foggily upward . . . looking adoringly at the mothers jaw, as the mother continued to gaze adoringly at her device. How will such a seemingly tiny behavioral shift like less eye contact between mother and baby play out over time? Aiken asks. This small and simple thing, millions of babies around the world getting less eye contact and less one-on-one attention, could result in an evolutionary blip. Yes, I said it. Evolutionary blip. Less eye contact could change the course of human civilization.

If you think shes getting a little overblown here, so do I. She makes important observations but weakens them by wildly overplaying her hand. Take the chapters on online pornography. Its startling that a generation of 8- to 12-year-olds is learning about sex via easily accessible free porn. And the porn itself is getting more lurid than ever, thanks to the tech worlds devotion to algorithms. Extreme content and scary scenarios, which always draw the most adult eyeballs, can be presented first . . . due to the popularity of the sensational information, she explains.
Philosophy is many things, Gottlieb suggests, including much that we no longer call philosophy, but one of its recurring features is what William James called a peculiarly stubborn effort to think clearly. As Gottlieb declares in the first volume, the idea of clarity has not always seemed foremost, but the stubbornness is everywhere. The attempt to push rational inquiry obstinately to its limits is the name of the project. Sometimes it fails entirely, and the dream seems merely a mirage. At other times, though, it succeeds magnificently, and the dream is revealed as a fruitful inspiration. The dream appears as either fantasy or revelation, and Gottlieb skillfully tells both sides of the story. But what about the monsters?

Gottlieb reminds us that, for Bertrand Russell, Rousseau was responsible for the rise of Hitler, because his idea of a general will made possible the mystic identification of a leader with his people. Leibniz was inclined to confuse his own mind with that of God. Descartes was too quick to assume that whatever seemed to him to be necessarily true was in fact so. Hobbes was almost charmingly naive about the supposed rationality of sovereigns with absolute power. This last instance becomes especially strange when we think of Hobbess eloquent elaborations of what people are like when left to their own devices (no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time . . . no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death) but then, as Gottlieb shrewdly says, Hobbes wanted above all to scare people by stressing the anarchy that would prevail in the absence of government. He could idealize government on the same pretext.

Gottlieb is fully aware of the monsters in the dream, but doesnt allow them to dominate his book. He is committed to the positive aspects of inquiry, especially where scientific advances are involved. It is by virtue of its engagement with the special problems posed by modern science that modern philosophy is distinguished from premodern philosophy. Gottlieb often makes fun of his philosophers, but gently, as a way of bringing us closer to them, and they emerge as brilliant, vulnerable humans rather than monsters of any kind. Descartes worried about the divine insurance plan; Hobbes got rather carried away when he told us how solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short life was. If Leibniz had been a composer, most of his symphonies would have been unfinished.

Descartes gets a slightly harder ride than the others, and Gottlieb seems to have changed his mind about him since he wrote the earlier book. There his writings were described as engaging, and now they appear as dubious and built on sand, with Descartes himself accused of trying to work out too much in his head.

This last remark looks like a rather odd verdict on a philosopher, but it makes sense in the context of the book, and of course Gottlieb is not denying Descartess immense influence. All of Gottliebs chief subjects  Descartes himself, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz, Hume  are engaged, precisely and in a new way, with the world outside the head. Even geometry led to politics and social theory; advanced theoretical thought constantly engaged with the physical and mechanical sciences  for a long time these disciplines were still housed under the name of philosophy. There was plenty of room for work inside the head, of course, and as Gottlieb says, philosophers always travel in several directions at once, but the material world was a laboratory and an authority replacing, even for religious thinkers, the old, unappealable orders of the church.
Four Visegrad countries are going to team up to formulate and push through their joint agenda before next weeks Bratislava summit on the future of the EU after Brexit. Polish PM Beata Szydlo said that the Visegrad Group consisting of 4 Central European countries  Czech and Slovak Republics, Poland and Hungary  has enormous potential  (and) a recipe for the EU. Ms Szydlo believes that the EU needs reforms to bring it closer to its citizens.

Prime ministers of the Visegrad countries, who all became EU members in 2004, met during an economic forum in the Polish town of Krynica and discussed the consequences of the British vote to leave the EU. Nationalists in the region argue that Brexit pointed to the fact that EU citizens are dissatisfied with the block as they feel estranged from Brussels and mainly from its agenda on migrants and human rights. According to one of such voices, Hungarys Viktor Orban, Brexit offers an opportunity to fix the EUs mistakes.

The summit will take place in Slovakia, which currently holds the rotating EU presidency. Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said that the summit would launch a major process, a diagnostic on the health of the EU and defining a remedy to cure it. The Visegrad leaders also seized the opportunity given by the summit in Krynica when they met with their Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Groysman. They expressed support for Ukraines European vision and both Mr Fico and Mr Orban called for a visa-free travel for the Ukrainians. Its a moral issue, Mr Orban said, referring to the visa-free facility for the Ukrainians and added that the bloc should hold on to its promise to bring Ukraine closer.
NUTSHELL

By Ian McEwan

197 pp. Nan A. Talese/Doubleday. $24.95.

We might begin with Hamlet, of course, but we may also begin with Abhimanyu. Locked inside his mothers womb  as one version of the Mahabharata story runs  Abhimanyu overhears his father, Arjuna, discussing a well-known battle strategy with his wife. It involves a military formation called the disk: A murderous rank of enemy soldiers forms around a warrior in a perfect spiral, and seven steps, carried out in precise sequence, can penetrate that deadly labyrinth, permitting escape. Abhimanyu listens intently  at times, the thrumming drone of his mothers aorta next to his tiny ear is near-deafening  but as Arjuna speaks, his mother dozes off to sleep. The conversation stops. The final route of escape  the seventh step  is left unmentioned.

Ian McEwans compact, captivating new novel, Nutshell, is also about murderous spirals and lost messages between fathers and unborn sons, although its the fathers fate that hangs in the balance here. I promise not to give away the formidable genius of the plot  but the premise, loosely, is this: Trudy, jittery and fragile, lives in a London townhouse as dilapidated as it is valuable, where she spends hot afternoons coldly plotting the murder of her husband, John. She is heavily pregnant with Johns son. They have separated, their love spent; he inspires nothing more in her than a retinal crust of boredom. He has moved to Shoreditch (or sewer-ditch, as it used to be known), where he scrapes out a living as a poet and publisher. John may or may not be in love with an aspiring poet named Elodie, who writes about owls, and whose name rhymes with threnody  a lamentation to the dead.

The accomplice to this murder  clever and dark and calculating but also dull to the point of brilliance, vapid beyond invention . . . a man who whistles continually, not songs but TV jingles, ringtones . . . whose repeated remarks are a witless, thrustless dribble  is Claude, a real estate developer. Claude  Hamlets Claudius  needs no literary disguise: He is Johns brother, a prosperous brute of a man with whom Trudy (Gertrude) is having an affair.

Image Ian McEwan Credit... Urszula Soltys

And the narrator of this saga? Listen carefully now: He is Trudys son, still in her womb, who hears his mother and uncle plan and connive over lukewarm coffee in their Hamilton Terrace kitchen, and who must countenance the life-threatening ignominy of his uncles lovemaking every night. I grit my gums, I brace myself against the uterine walls, the fetus tells us grimly. On every piston stroke, I dread that hell break through and shaft my soft-boned skull and seed my thoughts with his essence, with the teeming cream of his banality. Then, brain-damaged, Ill think and speak like him. Ill be the son of Claude.
What are the some important leadership lessons youve learned?

I think managing and leading people is a privilege. And I dont think we always understand the impact that we have as managers on the people on our teams. I talk to our managers all the time about this. Do you really understand the impact you have? And if you really understand the impact, then how do your actions reflect that you understand that?

I believe that people would rather have a lousy job working for a great person than a great job working for a bad manager. And I believe very strongly that the single largest component of a business that adds to shareholder value is great management, and the single largest destroyer of shareholder value is bad management.

Now, being a good manager is really, really difficult. And the sooner people who are managers recognize that, the sooner theyll start being a good manager. It takes unbelievable courage to be a good manager. It is hard to have difficult conversations with people when theyre not doing well. Who likes to do that? That takes courage. You cant slide out of the way and hope its going to take care of itself.

Weve also just introduced a new component to annual employee surveys. Weve added about 15 new questions that are focused specifically around manager effectiveness. How does the staff truly feel about how effective their manager is at creating great teams?

Any surprises about the C.E.O. role?

I took over from my brother when he retired in 2005. Before that, I was the C.O.O., and I was used to having to go to him for final decisions. And when I became C.E.O., I kept trying to do that, but there was no one for me to ask. So I was too slow. I wasnt being crisp.

There was a moment about six months into the job when I said to myself, Aron, you are the C.E.O. You have to make decisions. Act like youre the C.E.O. And I see this with other people who are new C.E.O.s who are struggling with decisions. I tell them, The sooner you can start acting like the C.E.O., the sooner youll start having the chance to be a great C.E.O.

How do you hire?

I view my role as the keeper of the culture, and so I spend my time in a relaxed way getting to know the person. If, for example, they know someone I know professionally, Ill say, Lets compare notes on that person. Whats your take? And Ill listen for whether they judge that person the same way I do, and whether we share the same values.
The trouble started, the S.E.C. said, when the economy was in a tailspin and Monsantos customers were flocking to less expensive generic versions of Roundup. Recognizing that sales of the product were coming in well below what the company had forecast to investors, Monsanto decided to change its accounting policies on customer rebates, the whistle-blower said. Monsanto essentially shifted the costs of the rebates into fiscal 2010 while keeping the sales associated with the rebates in 2009.

Although the S.E.C. did not accuse the Monsanto employees of intending to violate the law, it said in its settlement order that as a result of the improper accounting, Monsanto met consensus earnings-per-share analyst estimates for fiscal year 2009. Meeting such estimates is crucial: When companies report results that are below expectations, their stocks often plummet.

In 2010, the company again shifted some rebate costs into the next year. The actions inflated Monsantos reported profit by $31 million over the two years, according to regulatory filings.

In late 2011, after the S.E.C.s investigation began, Monsanto said it would restate its earnings to reflect the proper timing of revenue and costs related to the rebates. Although the impact amounted to only a few pennies a share during the period, in its February settlement with the S.E.C., Monsanto paid $80 million in penalties. The company neither admitted nor denied the accusations but agreed to hire a qualified independent ethics and compliance consultant.

In the enforcement action, the S.E.C. named three midlevel employees involved in the improper activities. They paid a total of $135,000 in penalties. One had retired from Monsanto, the S.E.C. said, but the other two still work at the company. Both are accountants and were barred from appearing before the S.E.C. as accountants for one to two years.

It was frustrating, the whistle-blower said, that the S.E.C. took no action against others at Monsanto who, he said, knew about the improprieties.

Its really difficult when your company is doing something you know is wrong but youve got everybody around you saying its perfectly fine, the former employee recalled. The Monsanto culture is very tightknit. Everybody has stock options and everyone is financially at risk. So they go with the flow.
The dream of many luxury fashion brands, and many would-be shopkeeps, is a store on Madison Avenue, New Yorks gilded thoroughfare. Moda Operandi, the e-commerce website, whose signal innovation is to allow users to order clothes directly off the runways of fashion week, is opening just there, with the slight hitch that the store will not, at least in the traditional sense, be open.

That is because Moda Operandi Madison, which occupies two floors of a 1910 townhouse on 64th Street just west of Madison Avenue, is not a shop as conventionally understood. It is a by-appointment showroom for the very few.

Those invited to buy there  likely no more than 300 per year, according to Deborah Nicodemus, Moda Operandis chief executive  will enter a store whose goods are customized to their sizes, tastes and tendencies, whose salespeople know the full history of their dealings with Moda Operandi online: what they bought, browsed, bookmarked, exchanged or returned (very little, according to the company).

The selection will be tailored accordingly. Moda Operandi Madison is a store that transforms itself, with effort and tech, into whatever its current customer would hope it to be.
UPDATED: You can now hear this essay read by the actor Chris Messina Jacobs in Modern Love: The Podcast. Look for the play button below or subscribe on iTunes or Google Play Music.

My wife and I used to joke about how much better we were than other couples, how we never had the petty fights and misunderstandings that everyone else seemed to be having. Together we had weathered layoffs, a cross-country move, multiple hospitalizations from my cystic fibrosis and the housebreaking of two terrier puppies.



Yet somehow we always managed to come out stronger than before. Our love was indestructible.

Then she threatened to leave me six weeks after I had a double lung transplant.

When youre being evaluated for a transplant, there are a lot of things the nurses and medical professionals tell you over and over again to drive home the significance, to make sure youre truly prepared, and probably to keep you from suing them later.
As Ms. Jebran pulled out a box of intricately decorated cookies she and her mother had prepared the day before, she said, When I have these cookies in the oven, I think, This is the smell of Easter.  Walk through Damascus streets on Easter and it becomes clear where the citys Christians have gathered, she explained. People take trays of these spice biscuits to bake at the communal ovens, she said, filling entire neighborhoods with their scent.

The smell of garlic and cilantro likewise reminds Ms. Jebran of her Muslim neighbors Ramadan celebrations. I think of the rush of my neighbors as they make the last preparations for their iftar  the fast-breaking meals. It is such a great smell, she said.

Garlic and cilantro are used to flavor many Syrian dishes, from okra stew to the nationally treasured harra bi isbaou, which translates to burned finger. This dish of stewed lentils and small pieces of pasta-like dough bursts with flavor from tamarind syrup combined with fried garlic, cilantro and crispy fried onions. They say its called harra bi isbaou because the peasants who invented it couldnt wait for it to cool down to eat it, so they burned their fingers, said Umm Ali, a masterly home cook from the Aleppo suburbs who fled to Beirut with her family in 2013.

Obay al-Shihabi, a Syrian-Palestinian friend who now lives in Germany, noted how much celebrating Ramadan had changed since the conflict in Syria began. In Syria, you never ate alone for iftar, he recalled. There would be a rotating schedule for families: everyone gathered at the grandparents homes the first nights, then the eldest siblings and so on until the youngest sibling hosted dinner, after which people dined with neighbors and friends. Everyone always brought something  dessert, fruit, drinks, Obay said. And if we didnt fit around a table, wed sit on the floor.

Obay grew up in Yarmouk, the unofficial refugee camp on the outskirts of Damascus that has housed Palestinians for nearly six decades. In recent years, Yarmouk has been the scene of intense fighting between rebels and forces loyal to the Syrian government. As in other contested regions, in Yarmouk food has been used as a weapon of war; government forces prevent deliveries of food supplies to the camp to break the oppositions will.

Hunger has also been used as a tool by the Islamic State and other jihadist and rebel groups. According to the United Nations, nearly 600,000 Syrians are under siege, and nearly nine million are food insecure. Even for those not under siege, everything has become more expensive: flour, cooking oil, meat. Electricity is unreliable, water is often cut off. And yet many refugees still yearn for home. At least we were all together, Obay said. In Germany, he and his sister are alone.

These stories, told through food, offer a far more intimate insight into Syria and its people than most news reports. By understanding the acts of everyday life  of cooking and eating, or the inability to do so  we understand all thats been lost in Syrias war. And just as dishes are a relic of Syrias past, as the Syrian diaspora spreads throughout the world, the story of Syrias present and future will be told in recipes and the way people cook and eat.
Paris, Ky.  After Bill Bissett, the president of the Kentucky Coal Association, told me that President Obama cares more about Paris, France, than he does about Paris, Kentucky  a sentiment that seems broadly shared around here  I decided to check out this little town with a big name set amid the verdant undulations of picket-fenced Kentucky horse country. Soon enough I ran into Cindy Hedges, whose boot store stands on Main Street and whose hours, as described by a sign on the door, are: If Im here, Im here. If I aint, I aint.

Straight talk, the way the people of this particular Paris like it, is the kind of talk they recognize in Donald J. Trump. Hedges is a garrulous woman who says shes never met a stranger. But recent times have tried her affability. Her business has been slow. Her husband, Mitch, lost his job as the coal business collapsed, she has been withdrawing money from savings, and the couple are struggling to afford health insurance. All of which has led her to the conviction that the country is off track and needs somebody spectacular to get us halfway straight.

For her, that somebody is Trump. She voted for Barack Obama in 2008, and says her political choices are gut-driven rather than party-driven. I have never been this political, she tells me. This is the most fired-up Ive ever been for a candidate. She believes Trump will get business going, revoke trade deals she sees as draining domestic jobs, and clean up the mess Obama has left us. But what, I ask, of Trumps evident character flaws? Sure, hes kind of a loose cannon, but he tells it the way it is and, if elected, people will be there to calm him down a bit, tweak a word or two in his speeches. And I just dont trust Hillary Clinton.

Kentucky voted twice for Bill Clinton before going solidly Republican in presidential elections. Now Kentuckians are clambering aboard the Trump train  and to heck with its destination. Obama is blamed for the collapse of coal, particularly in eastern Kentucky, and the ever more stringent standards of the Environmental Protection Agency. Beyond that, the blame is aimed at airy-fairy liberals more concerned about climate change  often contested or derided  than about Americans trying to make their house payments.
Given the choice between more time or more money, which would you pick? For a beach vacation, you might pay more for a direct flight to gain a couple of extra hours getting sand between your toes. On the other hand, you might take a better-paying job that requires late nights at the office.

One of us, Professor Hershfield, recently faced such a choice. He was invited to teach a weekend seminar out of state. But he had a baby girl at home, born 12 weeks earlier. The pay would offset the costs of child care, but the job would require two days of not oohing, aahing and bonding with the baby.

The value of the money was easy to quantify. But it was harder to put a value on the amount of time that would be lost with the family. He determined that there were only 222 weekends left before the baby would start kindergarten, when quality family hours would give way to car pools to friends houses.

Which would lead to greater happiness  the money or the time?

For a research project, we put this question to more than 4,000 Americans of different ages, income levels, occupations and marital and parental status. In a paper in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, which we wrote with our student Uri Barnea, we found that most people valued money more than time. Sixty-four percent of the 4,415 people we asked in five surveys chose money.
Even with all these data points, however, it can be difficult to get a feel for what a neighborhood is like to live in. While StreetAdvisor, which offers neighborhood ratings and reviews from locals, provided some context, some areas, like Longwood, didnt have any. And some school ratings used by the site were slightly outdated, according to Greatschools.

Sarunas Legeckas, a founder of PlaceILive, said the site is working to refine its results and pointed out that if the neighborhoods dont suit your fancy, you can let the site know by clicking on the X beneath the neighborhood, which will pull up a list of the reasons the neighborhood might not be right for you  such as its too trendy, or not hip enough, or it doesnt have a great commute.

We dont claim all our results are perfect, he said. Its more like a guidance tool to make you think, to make you explore and maybe point you in a new direction  like looking in Queens instead of Manhattan. As more users take the quiz and leave feedback, he added, the tool will get smarter.

More robust neighborhood descriptions, albeit for far fewer places, can be found at StreetEasy, the New York City listings site, which introduced more than 30 Neighborhood Guides in June with overviews of some of the most popular places searched on its site. Each guide outlines the areas overall vibe, including perks, drawbacks, housing stock and median asking rent and sales price, as well as dining options courtesy of the review site Yelp.

Bushwick, Brooklyn, for example, is described as full of converted lofts in old industrial factories, sometimes with great access to outdoor space. The mood: Equal parts old-school Hispanic and hipster bohemian, the neighborhood is both a working-class community and the site of much creativity. Best perk: Seemingly every week, theres a new restaurant, bar, or art gallery popping up. Biggest downside: Vestiges of the poverty from the 70s and 80s remain. Many buildings are rundown and pockets of crime still exist.

While there are just 35 searchable neighborhoods compared with the 288 at PlaceILive, StreetEasys results are presented in a rich, image-heavy format that may appeal to those less data-inclined.

Selecting from StreetEasys list of neighborhood characteristics like pet-friendly and laid-back whittles down the number of places. Information on schools, while included in StreetEasy listings pages, is not mentioned in the neighborhood guides given the complexity of school zones, which can vary within a given neighborhood, said Susan Daimler, the general manager of StreetEasy, which is owned by Zillow Group, an online real estate database company.
Provence is a destination that has captivated travelers even before Peter Mayles 1989 best seller A Year in Provence immortalized its charms. Now, the new book Markets of Provence, by the travel writer Marjorie R. Williams, 57, along with Dixon Long (her co-author on Markets of Paris), explores an often-overlooked reason to visit: the abundance of markets.

Although the region has close to 500 markets with vendors selling food, antiques and crafts, Ms. Williamss book is a guide to the 30 she found most appealing during the several months she spent in the area for her research.

Below are edited excerpts from a conversation with her.

Q. How do you think Provences markets give an insight into Provencal culture?

A. These markets are untouched by time. Theyre in the same location and serving the same purpose as theyve been doing since the Middle Ages. And theyre gathering spots for villagers who come not only to shop but also to see friends. And so, travelers who structure their itinerary around market days will see the towns spring to life, and by going, they are participating in an authentic tradition, enjoy beautiful scenery and get a sense of the local community.
Germanys defense minister called for a European defense union during his visit to Lithuania. The Baltic state will host about 1,000 troops as part of a deterrence program against Russia. The EU has for long been pondering a closer defense relationship on top of the NATO structures in the face of a revisionist Russia and escalating conflicts in the Middle East.

Britain, which has been a vocal critic of an EU army, is not going to block the tighter European defense cooperation following its decision to leave the EU anymore. Germany, France and many Eastern European countries are, by contrast, supporters of the idea of more joint defense. Baltic countries moreover think that it is time for Europe to move towards a defense union, which is basically tantamount to a defense of the Schengen area.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel also endorsed the idea of having more military operations with Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia as well as the Alliance and EU members. The Baltic states have started feeling more and more vulnerable following Russias annexation of Crimea. Germany has also renewed and strengthened its ties with Poland, France and the Netherlands outside the structures of the Alliance, although neither Berlin nor Paris wants to establish a full-scale army.

When we have threats that are surrounding us, we all know no country by its own will be able to manage that. But we together, we Europeans, we are very strong if we improve our capabilities as Europeans, Ursula von der Leyen said. Ms von der Leyen who has been the Minister of Defense since 2013, is the first woman in German history to hold that office. She added that there will be a comprehensive air defense as there are many European friends who want to join, like the Dutch or the French, for example.
Rather, at some key junctures he jumped headlong into an entirely new function. In 1999, he left the (now defunct) accounting and consulting firm Arthur Andersen, where he had worked on projects to transform businesses, for Ernst & Young, where he focused on risk management, a less sexy field that became more in demand after the accounting scandals at Enron and others starting in 2001. In 2008, he joined Nationwide Insurance as its chief audit executive, before quickly moving out of the back office and into selling financial products to consumers in an operational role. He became president of Nationwides mortgage business in 2014.

It helped that he had an early mentor who encouraged him to take risks in his career by taking on jobs he was unfamiliar with  and bosses willing to take a chance on assigning him jobs he wasnt qualified for on paper.

After all, if you assign, say, an accounting specialist to run a logistics operation, theres a chance that person will fail. Whats best for the employee who wants to get broad experience to help climb the ranks may not be what is best for the employer who wants deeply experienced people in every job.

Theres comfort in familiarity, Mr. Monahan said. Leaders can be reluctant to hire someone who doesnt have directly applicable experience. Thats still a mind-set that is fairly prevalent.

But how does one navigate into sharply different functional specialties while also dealing with new colleagues and a new organizational culture? If youre in your comfort zone, its very easy to stay in your comfort zone, said Paul McDonald, a senior executive director at the recruitment firm Robert Half International.

What was critical for me in going into new functional areas was breaking that habit of feeling like you have to know it all, Mr. Monahan said. When youre honest with yourself and with others in terms of your need for their support and involvement, generally people are willing to share with you what they know and help you be successful.

In other words, the path to the executive suite may be long and winding, and include stops in many different types of specialties. But the key to navigating it is being able to learn from others all along the way.
Hillary Clinton took the oath of office as the 45th president of the United States on Friday, Jan. 20, 2017, after defeating the thousandaire Donald J. Trump in the previous Novembers election. Since F.D.R., the first 100 days have come to be seen as the defining moment of each presidency and are used to measure each new presidents accomplishments. Below are the highlights of President Clintons first 100 days as recorded near the end of her second term, in 2024, by her official biographer, and recovered from a deleted email in 2025.

Day 1:

Inauguration of President Hillary Clinton and Vice President Tim Kaine. Five minutes later, the G.O.P.-led House of Representatives begins impeachment proceedings. Bernie Sanders assures supporters that there is still a way he can win.

Day 2:

Revealed that Hillary charged the United States $500,000 for her Inaugural Address and refuses to release the transcript. A nation wonders whether Huma is really single now or if she and Anthony are just taking a break.

Day 3:

President Clinton appoints Katy Perry secretary of transportation. Perry will go down in history as the greatest transportation secretary since John A. Volpe and the hottest since Norman Mineta.
Education scholars have long marveled at the persistence of what they call the grammar of the American high school. Practices like grouping students in grades by age, dividing the day into hourlong classes and even arranging desks in rows have endured for at least three-quarters of a century. The grammar of American adolescence sometimes seems similarly immutable. Teenagers are forever in revolt, trying to navigate the tricky transition from childhood dependence to autonomous adulthood. At the same time, they yearn for a new sense of belonging, a way of fitting in with peers.

In Boise, Idaho, about 1,300 of the citys 26,000 students last year were refugees, roughly a third of them in high school. The United States expects to resettle 85,000 refugees in 190 cities and towns nationwide this year. Like their American counterparts, Boises student refugees long to fit in, but they face enormous challenges. They arrive in the United States, along with immediate family members, after fleeing persecution in Iraq, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda or other homelands that have been wracked by war, sectarian violence or ethnic cleansing. In most cases, these students have spent years, sometimes a decade or longer, in refugee camps or on the move in countries adjacent to their homelands, waiting for a chance at permanent resettlement through the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The agency forwards suitable applications to potential host countries, which have the final say about who will be granted residency, an opportunity less than 1 percent of refugees worldwide receive. The security-clearance process in the United States usually takes 18 to 24 months.
I dont really surf that much, but Ive always had this romantic notion of the culture. The movie Endless Summer stopped in Senegal, so I thought it would be cool to visit the same breaks they were surfing in the film. Even in the smaller villages like Ngor, the kids take broken boards and try to emulate the surfers. One of the most famous breaks is right off Ngor Island, and you have to take a boat  either a fishing boat or one of the restaurant boats  to get to the island.

Ngor is a little tricky to surf. Its a really big break. Some of the more experienced surfers try it. Local people go there to swim, and theres a surf camp. Theres a beachfront called Almadies and one place called Secret Spot that many Senegalese go to  not much of a secret. Some of the younger surfers have generated an income because they can provide lessons for expats and tourists.

There are so many elements that were new to me: sand and water and timing. I have newfound respect for surf photographers.

 As told to Jaime Lowe
RANCHO CUCAMONGA  He dances, he hops, he calls out for a mate.

But hes not likely to find one.

He  or perhaps she, we really dont know  is an East African crowned crane, also known as a grey crowned crane. As the name suggests, hes clearly not native to Rancho Cucamonga.

But according to locals, amateur photographers and bird enthusiasts, this handsome fellow has made Cucamonga Basin No. 6, a flood control and groundwater recharge area south of the Colonies Crossroads shopping center near the 210 Freeway, his new home.

Calls to both the Los Angeles and San Diego zoos indicated that theyre not missing a crane. But the tag on the left leg indicates that he belonged to someone.

Alta Loma resident Suzanne Stull spotted the bird Monday morning.

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I like to take bird and wildlife photos and hiked around the basin, hoping to find something interesting, she said in an email. The bird was so interesting, she had to take to the internet to dig up information.

Contacted by the media, Steve Duncan, treasurer of San Dimas-based Avicultural Society of America, headed east to Rancho Cucamonga on Thursday. Duncan owns an East African crowned crane himself and raises them to sell to private collectors.

Grey crowned cranes are well-established in captivity, but they are by no means common, he said in an email. There really arent that many people who have the space to keep them. They are mostly found in zoos or in large private collections with waterfowl.

Duncan first heard of a similar bird around Archibald Avenue and the 210 about six months ago, but he wrote it off as a misidentification. Now he believes Stulls sighting is the same bird.

Duncan gave the bird a clean bill, if you pardon the pun, of health.

It is very healthy, but does appear quite lonely. It called repeatedly while I was there. Crowned cranes have a strange honking call they do to make contact with their own kind, he said. The birds are monogamous and very loyal to their mates. The dancing and stomping moves are social behavior the crane would use in courtship.

Duncan said it may be wishful thinking on the cranes part.

The land the crane has made its new home is now owned by the county, said Charles Moorrees, general manager for the San Antonio Water Co. No employees have mentioned the bird, although egrets are common in the area.

What a beautiful bird, Moorees said.

The cranes wetland habitat in Africa is under severe pressure from agricultural development so their numbers in the wild are plummeting, Duncan said.

It is important to keep the existing captive population going for educational purposes, research and as a backup population, Duncan said, adding that the birds in private U.S. collections are all captive-bred from stock imported many years ago.

It turns out the basin makes a good home, Duncan said. The birds hang out a foot-deep in water so the splashing will alert them to predators and they eat almost anything  roots, insects, small invertebrates, reptile and fish.

Theyre not that picky.
New York Times best-selling author and illustrator David Shannon will present and discuss his new childrens book Duck on a Tractor as part of the Mission Viejos Writers Present program at the Civic Center.

The book is a sequel to Shannons 2002 book Duck on a Bike, in which Duck is seen standing in front of a red tractor on the last page.

Shannon is the creator of more than 30 picture books, including No, David! That book earned him his second distinction for New York Times best illustrated book of the year.

Other best-sellers include A Bad Case of Stripes and Bugs in My Hair! Books bought at the event will receive priority book signing.
Economic growth depends largely on the dynamism and innovation of new businesses, yet the U.S. has seen a steady decline in entrepreneurship over the past 30 years or so. The nations marked decline in new job and business creation is one of the fundamental dilemmas of our time, a July Daily Beast column cautioned. With that in mind, CNBCs Metro 20: Americas Best Places to Start a Business provides some measure of which areas are fostering economic growth, and which are impeding it.

The CNBC index was drawn from the nations 389 metropolitan statistical areas, as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau, and whittled down to the 107 MSAs with a population of 500,000 or greater. It included criteria based on a survey of the U.S.-based members of YPO, which bills itself as the premier chief executive leadership organization in the world. Members there cited quality of life, taxes and regulation as among the most important factors for choosing a place to start a business, CNBC reported.

This is certainly borne out in the results. Six of the top 20 metro areas for starting a business are located in Texas, which is not surprising, given how Texas has topped multiple lists and surveys of states with the best business climate. Austin topped the list, and fellow Lone Star State locales Houston (6th), Dallas (8th), San Antonio (10th), McAllen (12th) and El Paso (16th) also made appearances on the list. Utah also fared well, with Provo ranking second, Ogden seventh and Salt Lake City coming in 18th. In fact, 17 of the top 20 metro areas came from states ranked in among the top 18 in the Tax Foundations 2016 State Business Tax Climate  and most of them ranked in the top 10 of the Tax Foundation report.

Conspicuously absent from CNBCs analysis were any places in California. Despite being home to nearly one-eighth of the entire nations population, not a single metro area from California made the top 20 list. California was not forgotten, however. CNBC also put together a list of the 10 worst places to start a business, and California metro areas took five of the top six spots. Stockton fared the worst, followed by Modesto and San Bernardino, which was dinged for its bankruptcy and high poverty rate. Santa Rosa ranked fifth-worst and Fresno came in sixth. In all nine of the 10 worst places to start a business were in states that ranked in the bottom half of the Tax Foundations State Business Tax Climate Index.

Despite its well-earned reputation for spawning innovative tech startups in Silicon Valley, Californias burdensome taxes and regulations have served to suppress and prevent business development in just about every other sector of the economy. Its recovery since the recession, built primarily on the tech boom at one end and low-paying jobs on the other, is not sustainable in the long run. Broad-based economic growth requires broad-based economic freedom from stifling tax and regulatory policies, which Californias political leadership apparently has yet to learn.
A new report has led those who work with victims of human trafficking to an unsavory conclusion about Orange Countys wealth: Perpetrators know they can bring victims here to sell for sex acts at a higher price than anywhere else in California.

Whatever the price in Los Angeles County, whatever the price in San Diego County, its going to be twice the price in Orange County and its going to be worth the trip for them, said Lita Mercado, an administrator with the Orange County Human Trafficking Task Force, which will release its annual report today.

This is the fourth year that the task force, a partnership of law enforcement, service providers, nonprofits and faith organizations, has produced its Human Trafficking Victim Report.

Members of the task force, including Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas and local police chiefs, will discuss the report and local strategy to combat human trafficking at a news conference this morning.

For the first time, the task force report looks at the origins of victims who have been rescued in Orange County, along with the origins of perpetrators who have been prosecuted here.

The majority in both cases are from other California counties or out of state, the report says, based on a review of data from 2012 to 2015 by Community Service Programs, administrator of the Orange County Human Trafficking Task Force.

Of 231 domestic sex trafficking victims studied over the three-year period, only 22 percent were from Orange County. Of the remainder, 56 percent hailed from other California counties and another 22 percent from out of state.

Sex trafficking accounted for the exploitation of more than three-fourths of the 137 new victims of human trafficking identified and assisted with services last year in Orange County, according to the report.

A total of 225 human trafficking victims were being provided services in Orange County in 2015, a number that includes people brought here to perform labor and victims identified the previous year.

The vast majority of victims were adult females, the report shows.

Orange County is clearly a destination location, said Mercado, director of victims assistance programs for CSP. The victims are being brought here specifically and purposely because the perpetrators know there is a demand here for forced sex.

Mercado said the youngest victim receiving services from her program was 13 and the oldest was 60.

Harbor and Beach boulevards, with their density of motels and hotels, are major sex trafficking corridors and Orange County, based on what perpetrators tell police, is a highly lucrative market, Mercado added.

What pimps and traffickers are saying to us is they can up the price and they know they are going to get takers, Mercado said.

Los Angeles County is different from Orange County, Mercado said, in that most of the human trafficking victims and perpetrators there are homegrown.

The top 10 hometowns in California of trafficking victims assisted in Orange County included Los Angeles at No. 1, and three local municipalities: Anaheim, Santa Ana and Fullerton.

The report does not look at the sex purchasers, or johns in the common vernacular, to review whether they are mostly locals or travelers from elsewhere.

Since its formation in 2004, the Orange County Human Trafficking Task Force has helped more than 580 sex and labor trafficking victims, adults and minors.

In addition to an increased focus by law enforcement to crack down on human trafficking and growing outreach by social service programs to assist victims, the task force has worked to raise public awareness.

A major federally funded campaign launched in 2014, called Be The One or BT1, involved ads on Orange County Transportation Authority buses and at bus shelters, along with training more than 1,100 OCTA drivers on how to spot victims of human trafficking aboard their buses.

Mercado credits public awareness efforts for increasing the number of calls made statewide to the National Human Trafficking Hotline. California has had more calls to that hotline than any other state, Mercado said.

Contact the writer: 714-796-7793 or twalker@ocregister.com or on Twitter @TellTheresa
Obamacares remarkable run of legal luck may be running out.

Earlier this summer, the Obama administration said that it would appeal a federal judges March ruling that found some of the health care laws payments to insurers unconstitutional.

That announcement came on the heels of another loss for Obamacare in court. A few days prior, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals invalidated an administration rule generally prohibiting the sale of fixed indemnity coverage, which provides patients a fixed reimbursement, regardless of the actual cost of care.

Both decisions seriously threaten Obamacares viability.

In the first case, House of Representatives v. Burwell, the plaintiffs  House Republicans  alleged that the administration violated the constitutional principle of separation of powers.

The administration spent billions of dollars on cost-sharing reduction subsidies designed to offset some of the costs insurers had to eat lowering deductibles, cost-sharing and coinsurance for exchange-plan enrollees with incomes below 2.5 times the federal poverty level.

Problem was, Congress never appropriated funds for this program. In fact, the House asserted that it had exercised its constitutional power of the purse by refusing to fund it.

Judge Rosemary Collyer of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia agreed. If lawmakers chose not to approve such subsidies, she wrote, that is Congress prerogative; the court cannot override it.

Judge Collyer stayed her ruling  meaning that the subsidies can continue  pending a final judgment from the U.S. Supreme Court. If the high court sides with her, Obamacares finances could be in big trouble.

Insurers in the exchanges are legally obligated to offer discounted coverage to low-income Americans, regardless of whether or not the government makes good on its pledge to come through with the subsidies.

Thats an expensive undertaking. More than half of exchange shoppers  roughly 5 million people  got the discount.

Absent reimbursement, insurers would be on the hook for $9 billion in the next year alone  and a staggering $170 billion over the next decade.

That leaves insurers with two choices  drop out of the health exchanges altogether or significantly hike premiums.

Either way, consumers lose.

The number of insurance choices on the exchanges has already dwindled. In 2013, 395 insurers participated in exchanges nationwide. Last year, 287 did  a decline of 27 percent. It looks like that number will decrease further in 2017.

Insurers who continue to offer exchange plans will have to raise premiums to make up for the disappearance of those federal subsidies. The Urban Institute predicts that, absent subsidies, annual premiums for mid-level silver plans would increase by $1,040 per person, on average.

The administration is trying to avoid such hikes with decrees like its ban on less-costly fixed-indemnity coverage. In some cases, such plans only cover specific diseases like cancer. In others, they offer fixed-dollar coverage of doctors appointments or hospital stays.

A 1996 law exempts fixed-indemnity coverage from federal standards. That includes Obamacares expensive essential health benefit mandates.

Consequently, its much cheaper than exchange coverage. Some 4 million people have fixed-indemnity plans without companion comprehensive coverage.

The Obama administration was not happy about the prospect of so many people opting out of the exchanges  and taking the premiums they would have paid into the exchange pool with them. So in 2014, it ordered a ban of fixed-indemnity coverage unless a patient also carried comprehensive coverage. The goal was to try to force people back into the exchanges.

Not so fast, said the judiciary. In the case of Central United Life Insurance Co. v. Burwell, the court unanimously upheld the 1996 exemption, chastising the administration for having clearly misread the law.

The ruling could do more than simply make fixed-indemnity coverage an option again. As Washington and Lee University law professor Timothy Jost has noted, If a health insurer could simply label a product as fixed indemnity coverage and thereby escape all ACA requirements, the insurance reforms could be eviscerated.

The Obama administration has routinely fudged, tweaked and downright ignored the law in hopes of getting Obamacare to work. The judiciary has finally realized whats happening  and may be on the cusp of halting all this extralegal behavior.

If these two decisions stand, the end of Obamacare itself may be near, too.

Sally C. Pipes is president, CEO, and Thomas W. Smith Fellow in Health Care Policy at the Pacific Research Institute. Her latest book is The Way Out of Obamacare (Encounter 2016).
Im getting ready to book a trip to Orlando, Fla., for the theme park industrys big annual convention in November, and theres noting like planning a trip to the Walt Disney World Resort to help you appreciate living so close to Disneyland.

Now Im not saying that people shouldnt go there  its a wonderful vacation destination and deserves a spot on every theme park fans bucket list.

But planning a trip to the Walt Disney World theme parks requires a lot more advance work than hopping in your car and driving over to Disneyland. And thats not even considering getting to central Florida.

Walt Disney World and Disneyland might be part of the same corporate family, and they might offer many of the same rides, shows and sights, but they offer very different vacation experiences.

Disneyland, with so many of its visitors being locals with annual passes, is well designed for spur-of-the-moment visits. But Walt Disney World, with its fan base consisting of mostly once-a-year or even once-in-a-lifetime visitors, requires as much advance planning as a military invasion.

Sure, you could just show up there. But only if you enjoy waiting in a tropical swamp with tens of thousands of other visitors, confused by a complex ticketing system and wondering why you cant just stick your ticket in a Fastpass machine to get a return time to go on anything.

Walt Disney World has four theme parks, not two as at the Disneyland Resort, plus two water parks and a much, much larger dining and shopping district (now called Disney Springs instead of Downtown Disney, as Anaheims similar area continues to be called).

None of these places is as close to the others as Disneyland and Disney California Adventure are. Everythings spread out across about 40 square miles in Florida. Forget walking that.

Each park at Walt Disney World has its own, expansive, surface parking lot. Theres no one-stop-serves-all parking as at Disneyland.

Park hopping is a lot less convenient with everything so scattered at Walt Disney World. I recommend that first-time visitors save the up-to-$69 a ticket cost for the Park Hopper option and just opt for a ticket that gets them into one park per day.

Buying your ticket in advance is a must, not just to save time when you arrive, but it also allows you to use Walt Disney Worlds Fastpass+ ride reservation system. There are no more regular Fastpass ticket machines there. You make your Fastpass+ reservations online  using a Web browser or Walt Disney Worlds app  and you have to have a valid admission ticket, registered online with Disney, to do it.

You can start making your Fastpass+ reservations 60 days before your visit, if you are staying in a Disney World hotel, or 30 days in advance otherwise.

Dont want to plan that far ahead?

Then you will be stuck in the standby queues  a place every self-respecting Disneyland annual pass holder fears.

You can make up to three Fastpass+ reservations for each day of your visit, then add extra Fastpass+ return times, using the app, on the day of your visit, once youve used your three pre-planned Fastpass+ reservations for that day.

What about meals? Walt Disney World offers a fixed-price Disney Dining Plan to its hotel guests.

That can make a vacation there kind of like an all-inclusive ocean cruise, where all your meals are included in your vacation package price, paid in advance.

But people who use that plan can start booking their dining reservations up to 180 days in advance, making walk-up seats much harder to get at Walt Disney World restaurants than at Disneyland, where you dont need to make reservations more than a few days in advance, if at all.

Heck, I literally wrote a book on how to do all this stuff, and thinking about it still makes my head hurt.

Still, I will go and I will love it when I am there.

But Ill be especially happy when I get back home to Disneyland, where I can leave my car in one place, walk from park to park, and not have to think about micromanaging my day  at least, until Disney decides to bring Fastpass+ here.

Robert Niles is

the founder and editor of ThemeParkInsider.com. Follow him on Twitter

@ThemePark.
The parent company of Irvine-based Baja Fresh Mexican Grill has been purchased for $27 million by a multi-brand Canadian hospitality giant with ties to Pinkberry and Cold Stone Creamery.

In the deal, Montreal-based MTY Food Group will assume ownership of BF Acquisition Holdings, which operates 162 Baja Fresh restaurants and 23 La Salsa Fresh Mexican Grill locations. MTY Food Group is a franchisor and operator of several quick service restaurants in Canada and the U.S. It recently acquired Kahala Brands, which operates 18 brands in 27 countries, including Pinkberry, Planet Smoothie, tasti D-lite, Maui Wowi, Taco Time, Cold Stone Creamery and Blimpie.

BF Acquisition purchased Baja Fresh in late November 2006. As part of the sale, MTY said it is moving the companys corporate offices to Scottsdale, Arizona, which is the headquarters for Kahala Brands.

RELATED: Heres how El Torito owner Real Mex will remake 3 aging Mexican chains

Buying two big U.S.-based restaurant companies, Kahala and BF Acquisition, is part of MTYs strategy to accelerate its growth in North America, the company said Friday.

The acquisition of Baja Fresh Mexican Grill and La Salsa Fresh Mexican Grill perfectly aligns with our growth strategy and is one more step towards building a bigger and better organization for the future, the company said in a statement

In 2015, the two fresh-Mex chains generated more than $145 million in sales. For the second quarter, ended May 31, MTY Foods reported sales of $27.1 million (U.S. dollars).

Its unclear what changes might occur to the fresh-Mex pioneers, whose ownership has changed a few times over the years.

In 2006, a consortium led by an Anaheim investor bought the struggling Baja Fresh for $31 million  four years after Wendys paid $245 million for the fresh-Mex chain. When Wendys bought Baja Fresh, then based in Thousand Oaks, the fresh-Mex chain was one of the hottest concepts in the fast-casual segment.

By purchasing Baja Fresh, Wendys hoped to put some muscle in its own earnings. But, soon after the acquisition, rival chains with similar strategies and faster service began winning the attention of diners, including Chipotle Mexican Grill and Jack in the Boxs Qdoba Mexican Grill.

Over the last few years, Baja Fresh has revamped its menu multiple times and tested a prototype restaurant in Irvine. In 2014, the chain named Roberto Pepe Lopez, who spent 31 years at Cypress-based Real Mex Restaurants, as its new director of product development. Real Mex is the parent company of El Torito, Chevys Fresh Mex and Acapulco.

Its unclear if Lopez is still with the chain. Representatives for Baja Fresh, which operated 298 restaurants in 2007, could not immediately be reached for comment Friday.

Contact the writer: nluna@scng.com
SANTA ANA  A 21-year-old man was charged Thursday with involuntary manslaughter, authorities said, because he was handling a gun in a careless manner on Sunday and it went off, killing a 16-year-old.

Prosecutors say Matthew Jacob Granados of Santa Ana was in his room on the night of Sept. 4 with 16-year-old Alex Ramirez when the firearm fired a single shot into the teenagers torso.

Granados fled his home on Hazard Street before first responders arrived, said a representative with the Orange County District Attorneys Office.

Granados father, Alexander Christopher Granados, 41, was accused of making misleading statements to Santa Ana police officers and charged with one felony county of being an accessory to involuntary manslaughter after the fact.

Matthew Granados turned himself into police Tuesday evening.

Contact the writer: 714-796-7865 or afausto@scng.com
One of three Hanjin ships moored off Southern Californias shores was seized by U.S. Marshals Service officers, officials confirmed Wednesday.

Two fuel suppliers teamed up to lay a claim last week on the Hanjin Montevideo, said an attorney for one of the companies. The cargo craft has been sitting inside the breakwater while the financially crippled Korean shipping giant tries to hammer out a bankruptcy plan to resume business.

Deputy U.S. Marshal Matthew Cordova confirmed the assets had been seized. Maritime law allows such companies to place a lien on a ship, he said.

As far as I am aware, no other vessel within the United States has been arrested, said Neil B. Klein, the lawyer who filed the claim.

Claims filed in U.S. District court argued that the company owes suppliers about $775,000 for fuel in the Montevideos tanks.

The move came just ahead of a New Jersey bankruptcy judges Tuesday decision to grant the company protection from creditors. The judge also ordered all Hanjin ships to remain in the U.S. Today, he is expected to finalize a plan that could pave the way to unloading. Now, terminals wont accept cargo without a payment plan.

The arrest order allowed the ship to enter the port, but prevented it from leaving. We will be happy for the boxes to be taken off the vessel, Klein said. But no one wants to remove the cargo because they are not going to get paid.

Meanwhile, another ship that sat for days off the Southern California coast to avoid being seized by creditors headed toward Mexican waters Wednesday as its fuel supplies began to run low.

The Hanjin Greece drifted to 30 miles off the coast of Mexico, where it avoided U.S. regulations requiring low-sulfur fuel, reported the Marine Exchange of Southern California, a maritime tracking service.

The worlds seventh-largest shipping companys third ship in the region, the Hanjin Boston, remains outside the breakwater.
Re: Time to get real about homelessness [Letters, Sept. 7]: The letter writers seem focused on a stereotypical image of the homeless  the mentally ill, drug addicts, disabled and veterans. It is true that these make up a large part of the overall crisis, but there is another very important part that doesnt get much mention. I volunteer for a nonprofit organization that provides assistance to homeless families with minor children. Believe me, this is a very different picture  typically single moms with children, sometimes infants, who have lost their housing for a wide variety of reasons and are now desperately struggling to provide a safe environment for their kids. Living in a car with several children is a condition which would be inconceivably challenging to me, and yet it is happening all over our county and nation, and the resources we have to help these people are woefully inadequate. To have compassion for these families, or any homeless individual, is not being politically correct, but rather is expressing a fundamental aspect of our humanity which we should never lose.

Edward Klopfenstein

Brea

  

I completely agree with Harald Martins solution of a no camping or loitering ordinance in Santa Ana. Its disgraceful that Santa Ana hasnt handled this problem sooner and protected its citizens better. Im shocked that these laws are not already on the books, and that this problem was allowed to fester and grow out of proportion. It wouldnt have gotten so out of hand if the city had done its job and addressed this major problem before every homeless person in a 10-mile radius was drawn to the Civic Center area.

The other fact that people dont seem to understand is that many homeless people do not want to change their situation and cant be forced to accept help, but they still need to abide by the same laws as the rest of us. The cities and charities can offer help, but its up to the individual to take advantage of it.

Janis Shekerlian

Laguna Niguel

A policy of appeasement

Our armed forces are well-equipped to address these threats and eliminate them, be it Russia, North Korea or China. It would appear our policy is appeasement. It did not work in WWII. Our present administration does not respond to threats. Instead, it offers platitudes to the public and goes on its way.

William Lewis

Irvine
SANTA ANA  Authorities have identified the man who led officers on a pursuit, engaged in a gun battle with cops  shooting one whose life was saved by his badge  and died in a fiery crash during the Aug. 26 chase, police said.

Richard Brent Lund, 59, of Huntington Beach died in the fiery, single-car crash that ended a chase spanning three counties, Lt. Mark Stichter, Orange County Sheriffs Department spokesman, said.

Officers were responding to a domestic disturbance call near Bushard Street and Yorktown Avenue when, investigators said, a man emerged from the home, got into a car and drove away. Two Huntington Beach patrol cars pursued.

The man drove down Yorktown and then abruptly made a U-turn and opened fire, Officer Jennifer Marlatt, a Huntington Beach department spokeswoman, said previously.

One of the bullets struck an officer in the badge.

The man drove on as both officers returned fire  one from the drivers seat of his moving patrol car, Marlatt had said. The officers turned their cars around and continued the chase.

About 85-or-so miles later, the driver lost control of his car and crashed down an brown, grassy embankment at Cleghorn Road in the Cajon Pass. The vehicle burst into flames, and the driver was killed.

Police said the woman involved in the domestic dispute was OK, but wouldnt release other details.

Orange County court records show Lund plead guilty to a misdemeanor for driving with a blood alcohol level of .08-percent or more in June 2015 and was sentenced to three years probation.

According to Serenity Funeral Home in Alpine, Utah, funeral services for Lund were held on Friday. Hiss obituary indicates that he drove an 18-wheel truck for a time, but spent most of his life working as a machinist in the aerospace industry, eventually machining parts for the Hubble Telescope satellite.

The father of two and grandfather had moved between Idaho, Utah and California during his life, the obituary said. He was living in Huntington Beach with his second wife at the time of his death.

The 10-year Huntington Beach police officer whose badge deflected the bullet was not injured. His name has not been released.

Adrenaline kicked in, and he didnt even know he was hit until he pulled over in Costa Mesa, Marlatt said previously.

Contact the writer: 714-796-7802 or jsudock@ocregister.com
If it werent for Ronald Reagan, Republican vice presidential nominee Mike Pence might still be a Democrat  at least, thats how he tells it.

His ideals inspired me to leave the party of my youth and become a Republican like he did, Pence said Thursday during a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.

Pence was raised in a family of Indiana Democrats but said he left the party around 1980, when Reagan ran for president.

His broad-shouldered leadership inspired my life, Pence said.

RELATED: GOP VP pick Mike Pence promises new Reagan revolution at late presidents Simi library

Eight years later, when Pence ran for Congress at age 29, he said he visited Reagan in the White House.

I walked in and I shook his hand, and for all the world, it felt like I was talking to Mount Rushmore, Pence said. I said Mr. President, I have something Id really like to tell you  I just want to thank you for everything youve done to inspire my generation to believe in this country again. 

And for the rest of my life, Ill always believe that the 40th president of the United States of America blushed.

Pence lost that election, but the meeting stuck with him.

In that moment, I saw real humility, he said.

Pence spent much of his speech on Thursday trying to draw parallels between Reagan and Trump.

Like Reagan, Trump has the honesty and bluntness to address the problems America faces, Pence said. The voice of a man unbound by Washington niceties.
WASHINGTON  The president of the United States lands with all the majesty of Air Force One, waiting to exit the front door and stride down the rolling staircase to the red-carpeted tarmac. Except that there is no rolling staircase. He is forced to exit out the back of the plane.

This happened Saturday at Hangzhou airport. Yes, in China. If the Chinese didnt invent diplomatic protocol, they surely are its most venerable and experienced practitioners. Theyve been at it for 4,000 years. They are the masters of every tributary gesture, every nuance of hierarchical ritual. In a land so exquisitely sensitive to protocol, rolling staircases dont just disappear at arrival ceremonies. Indeed, not one of the other G-20 world leaders was left stranded on his plane upon arrival.

Did President Xi Jinping directly order airport personnel and diplomatic functionaries to deny Barack Obama a proper welcome? Who knows? But the message, whether intentional or not, wasnt very subtle. The authorities expressed no regret, no remorse and certainly no apology. On the contrary, they scolded the press for even reporting the snub.

No surprise. Chinas ostentatious rudeness was perfectly reflective of the worlds general disdain for President Obama. His high-minded lectures about global norms and demands that others live up to their international obligations are no longer amusing. Theyre irritating.

Foreign leaders have reciprocated by taking this administration down a notch, knowing they pay no price. In May 2013, Vladimir Putin reportedly kept the U.S. secretary of state cooling his heels for three hours outside his office before deigning to receive him. Even as Obama was hailing the nuclear deal with Iran as a great breakthrough, the ayatollah vowed no change in his policy, which remained diametrically opposed to the U.S. arrogant system. The mullahs followed by openly conducting illegal ballistic missile tests  calculating, correctly, that Obama would do nothing. And when Iran took 10 American sailors prisoner in the Persian Gulf, made them kneel and broadcast the video, what was the U.S. response? Upon their release, John Kerry publicly thanked Iran for its good conduct.

Why should Xi treat Obama with any greater deference? Beijing illegally expands into the South China Sea, meeting only the most perfunctory pushback from the U.S. Obama told CNN that he warned Xi to desist or there will be consequences. Is there a threat less credible?

Putin annexes Crimea and Obama crows about the isolation he has imposed on Russia. Look around. Moscow has become Grand Central Station for Middle East leaders seeking outside help in their various conflicts.

Iran regularly harasses our vessels in the Persian Gulf. Russian fighters buzzed a U.S. destroyer in the Baltic Sea. And, just Wednesday, a Russian fighter flew within 10 feet of an American military jet. The price they paid? Being admonished that such provocations are unsafe and unprofessional. An OSHA citation is more ominous.

Add to that American acquiescence not just to ransoming hostages held by Iran, but also to delivering the loot by unmarked plane filled with stacks of cold (untraceable) cash, like a desert drug deal. Why the stealth? Obviously, to conceal the manner of the transaction from Congress and the American public. Some humiliations are so grotesque that even the Obama team cant miss it.

Now the latest. At the G-20, Obama said he spoke to Putin about cyberwarfare, amid revelations that Russian hackers have been interfering in our political campaigns. We are more technologically advanced, both offensively and defensively, in this arena than any of our adversaries, said Obama, but we really dont want another Cold War-style arms race.

Instead, we must all adhere to norms of international behavior.

It makes you want to weep. This KGB thug adhering to norms? He invades Ukraine, annexes Crimea, bombs hospitals in Aleppo  and we expect him to observe cyber-code etiquette? Rather than exploit our technological lead  with countermeasures and deterrent threats  to ensure our own cyber safety?

Were back to 1929, when Secretary of State Henry Stimson shut down a U.S. code-breaking operation after it gave him decoded Japanese telegrams. He famously explained that gentlemen do not read each others mail.

Well, comrade, Putin is no gentleman. And hes reading our mail.
In the department of strange bedfellows, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista, has endorsed both GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump and U.S. Senate candidate Loretta Sanchez, the Democratic congresswoman from Orange.

Issa finds himself in an unexpectedly competitive race against San Clemente Democrat Doug Applegate, a retired Marine colonel, in a district that straddles the border of San Diego and Orange counties. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has been trying to help Applegate with a steady stream of press releases pointing out Issas support of Trump.

Both Issa and Sanchez, who appeared together at a news conference Sept. 1, could use help in shoring up support among independents and among moderates across the aisle.

Issa won his three-person primary with 50.8 percent of the vote, 6.5 percentage points ahead of Applegate.

Sanchez came in second in her primary, good enough to advance to Novembers two-candidate election but 21 points behind fellow Democrat Kamala Harris, the state attorney general.

The Sanchez campaign is emphasizing her reputation as a moderate who can work with Republicans as she tries to woo voters from both parties.

Many GOP lawmakers consider Harris a steadfast partisan, and thats helped Sanchez win endorsements from several other prominent Republicans.

Reps. Sanchez, Issa, Scott Peters, D-San Diego, and Mike Turner, R-Ohio, toured military facilities in San Diego on Sept. 1 before holding an Oceanside news conference to discuss military readiness. Sanchez, Peters and Turner sit on the House Armed Services Committee, while Issas district includes Camp Pendleton.

Issa is probably best known as a former chairman of the House Oversight Committee, a position that provided him a platform to frequently criticize the Obama administration.

His endorsement of Sanchez could help him appear more bipartisan.

Im concerned this will have an adverse impact on Issas Democratic foe, said Anaheim attorney Wylie Aitken, Sanchezs campaign chairman and a supporter of Applegate. Its a roll of the dice for Issa. Its not a bad thing for Loretta in any way.

Aitken said Sanchez will not be endorsing Issa, and he anticipates shell back Applegate.

Trump and Latinos

Latinos are a bigger electoral factor this year than ever. At the same time, Trumps tough talk on immigration is alienating some Latinos on both sides of the aisle, and polling shows him doing worse with that demographic than any Republican candidate in more than a quarter century.

Every winning GOP presidential candidate since 1980 has carried at least 30 percent of the Latino vote, according to an analysis by the Pew Research Center. Trump received 20 percent of the Latino vote in the most recent Fox News poll.

That vote is increasingly important. Latinos were 8 percent of the electorate in 2004, 9 percent in 2008 and 10 percent in 2012, according to Pew.

The growth is particularly notable in the swing states of Florida, Nevada and Colorado. The Cuban American population in Florida was once a reliably Republican vote. But Barack Obama squeaked out a win among the states Cuban Americans in 2012. And because of a burgeoning influx of Puerto Ricans, 57 percent of Latino voters in Florida are non-Cuban.

In 2012, Latinos were 17 percent of Florida voters, 14 percent of Colorado voters and 18 percent of Nevada voters, according to Pew.

Latinos account for 24 percent of Californias registered voters, and Democrats have an advantage of 57 percent to 15 percent over Republicans in the group, according to Political Data Inc. In Orange County, Latinos are 19 percent of the electorate, with Democratic Latinos holding an advantage of 54 percent to 20 percent.

Some predict anti-Trump sentiment will boost Latino turnout. But a number of Republican Latinos think that vilification of their standard-bearer may be suppressing Trumps poll numbers among Latinos.

I think there are people in the community who wont admit theyre supporting him, said San Clemente attorney John Cruz, whos leaning toward Trump but hasnt made a final decision.

Contact the writer: mwisckol@ocregister.com
DANA POINT  Duane Matthews  better known as Captain Jack  has worked on becoming a pirate for years.

The retired Saddleback College art teacher became fascinated with pirate lore after meeting a group of pirate actors at the Mission in San Juan Capistrano almost 20 years ago.

I was portraying a cowboy and a bunch of pirates showed up and we fought it out, he recalled. It was then that I decided that pirates looked interesting and appeared to be having a lot of fun.

At first, Matthews, 69, just liked pirates for their look. But as he researched their history, he started to appreciate their sense of exploration, resourcefulness and impact on society.

To be a completely realistic pirate would be difficult, no one would want to be around you for a multitude of reasons, he said. I find that realism with a dash of theatrics make a pirate more understandable and approachable.

This weekend, Matthews, of Capistrano Beach, will be more than 100 pirates bringing early maritime history to life at the Ocean Institutes 32nd annual Tall Ships Festival in Dana Point Harbor. Matthews has worked his craft for nearly two decades  he was in one of the first groups at the festival to stage reenactments at the camps.

The popular event draws thousands to the harbor and celebrates Dana Points maritime history and the legacy of tall ships.

The festival starts Friday with the parade of ships. Dana Point is home to two tall ships, the Pilgrim, a 14-sail brig, and the Spirit of Dana Point, a replica of a 1770s privateer used during the American Revolution. Both are docked outside the Ocean Institute and used for educational programs and tours throughout the year.

The Pilgrim and Spirit of Dana Point will lead five other tall ships traveling from ports along the California coast into the harbor. The ships will sail in amid a cannon battle that will show festival-goers what life on the seas was like for pirates and sailors during the Age of Sail.

Saturday and Sunday is when Matthews and more than 100 other pirates will spring into action. Clusters of pirate encampments will provide a glimpse of how pirates and sailors lived in the days of yore. Each encampment represents a different time period  starting with pirates who raided ships along the West Coast in the 1800s.

Being a pirate has taught Matthews a thing or two about equality.

Pirates, he said, were about democracy  all pirates had a say in decisions  and early forms of workmans compensation. He points to Edward Teach, commonly known as Blackbeard, a renowned pirate who operated off the East Coast, as the one he most admires.

As trite as it may sound, I marvel at how Blackbeard used the techniques of psychological warfare better than many of the other pirates of the time, he says. Pirates then lived in difficult times where it was hard to make a living. They often did whatever it took to survive. It was said that a pirate lived a short and brutal life.

What makes the pirates of today different?

They are very similar to the pirates of yesteryear, he said. We just tend to glamorize the early pirates in movies and literature. A pirate is a pirate, a thief at sea.

Contact the writer: 714-796-2254 or eritchie@ocregister.com or on Twitter:@lagunaini
PARIS  French police detained three women after a violent standoff Thursday in a terrorism investigation into six gas canisters found in a car abandoned near Paris Notre Dame Cathedral.

The discovery of the mysterious car has revived worries about the threat of new attacks in France, already repeatedly targeted by Islamic State extremists. Seven people are now in custody in the Notre Dame case, including those with links to radical Islam.

In the Thursday night operation in Boissy-Saint-Antoine, one of the women attacked police, and one suspect and one police officer were injured, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve told reporters.

France is confronted with a terrorist threat of unprecedented scale, Cazeneuve said. It requires the vigilance of all our compatriots.

The Paris prosecutors office said Thursday that police arrested a couple  a 27-year-old man and a 26-year-old woman  a day earlier in the Loiret region of France, south of Paris.

A second couple  a 34-year-old man and a 29-year-old woman  was detained in the same case on Tuesday.

The two men, who are brothers, and the two women were transferred to Paris to be questioned by investigators trained in counterterrorism. The prosecutors office said all four are suspected of links to radical Islamism.

Authorities are allowed to hold terror suspects for up to four days without charges.

Prosecutors opened a terrorist investigation after the car was found near the famous cathedral on Sunday morning. No one was inside, but police found five canisters filled with gas in the trunk and an empty canister on one of the seats. Along with the canisters, there were three jerry cans of diesel and papers with Arabic writing inside the vehicle.

No detonators were found in the car, which had been left on a narrow cobbled street in the popular Latin Quarter next to bars and restaurants.

The cars owner went to police to report that his 19-year-old radicalized daughter was missing. He was briefly detained and then released.

The two arrested couples have been living in the Loiret region, in the area of Montargis town. In March, three members of a family were arrested in the same area on suspicion of being members of a terrorist network.

More people are still being sought in the Notre Dame case, the prosecutors office said.
An environmental group that wants to buy Banning Ranch and turn it into a natural preserve was energized Thursday, just hours after the California Coastal Commission voted down a plan to build nearly 900 homes and retail space on the environmentally sensitive, 401-acre oilfield.

Though the developer, Newport Banning Ranch, can propose a new project or file a lawsuit to force the state to reconsider, the commissions 9-1 vote against the project could make rehabilitation and preservation of the land a more realistic possibility.

Were in a much better position now to engage in negotiations, said Steve Ray, executive director of the Banning Ranch Conservancy.

If (the landowners) want to sit down and talk, we are willing, ready and able, Ray added.

It wont be easy, and it wont be cheap. We know that. Its coastal land.

Its unclear if the landowner, Newport Banning Ranch, is interested.

Despite last nights setback, (Newport Banning Ranch) remains committed to a clean, restored and open Banning Ranch, Adam Alberti, a spokesman for the developer, said Thursday in a statement.

(Were) exploring how best to achieve that vision.

The vote that came late Wednesday in Newport Beach, after hundreds of people testified for and against the development, is the latest chapter in a 20-year battle over a parcel that includes vernal pools and coastal habitat, as well as abandoned and active oil operations.

At various times over the years, different developers have proposed bigger projects than the one just rejected by the Coastal Commission. The latest proposal, for 895 homes and a hotel as well as a nature park, was a reduction from an earlier proposal that sought 1,750 homes.

Six months from now, Newport Banning Ranch can submit new plans to the Coastal Commission for a fee of $250,000.

Its unclear how a new proposal might fare. Some commissioners indicated theyll consider only a proposal thats dramatically different from the one rejected Wednesday, while others indicated that they might be open to more development.

I have some concerns about what Ive heard today, commissioner Mary Luevano said during Wednesdays debate. I cant in good conscience go forward when there is so much question in my mind.

Commissioner Dayna Bochco offered a different view: I dont think thats the end of this project. Its actually a wonderful project  just somewhere else.

Preservationists suggested Thursday that they would help Banning Ranch Conservancy draw up new development plans. Of the 401 acres, 219 are considered environmentally fragile. The land is home to some rare species, including the burrowing owl and California gnatcatcher.

If (the developers) will allow us to come out on the property with our experts, we will come out and delineate and determine where there is land that has development potential, Ray said.

Our position has always been were going to go with what the science says, he added. Not every single centimeter needs to be saved.

Rays group has been in talks with government agencies, private foundations and individuals about raising enough money to buy the land should builders provide a letter indicating theyd be willing to sell. Ray said his group has identified at least one contributor, from Newport Beach, who would give $5 million toward the project.

Its unclear how much they might need to raise to acquire the property, or if the developers would be willing to sell.

Developers said in 2009 that the land, as is, was appraised at about $200 million. But that figure didnt include an environmental cleanup bill estimated at more than $50 million. Property values in Orange County have jumped about 35 percent since 2009.

Contact the writer: lawilliams@scng.com
Orange County Rep. Loretta Sanchez on Thursday condemned the burial of millions of pounds of nuclear waste on a San Onofre beach bluff and faulted her opponent in the race for the U.S. Senate for not fighting the controversial project.

Kamala Harris failure to lead on this issue makes her the wrong choice for Californias senator, Sanchez said. California needs a senator who doesnt bury problems in the sand.

Sanchez also said Harris, Californias attorney general, has dragged her feet on a state probe of the California Public Utilities Commission in connection with its decision to have ratepayers fund $3.3 billion in costs associated with the premature shutdown of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station.

Harris has been ahead in the polls, and her campaign dismissed Thursdays attack as the latest sign of Sanchezs troubles.

Representative Sanchez today is embarking on a deeply dishonest and negative campaign, falsely attacking and politicizing an ongoing criminal investigation, Harris campaign spokesman Nathan Click said in an email. Its what Californians have come to expect from Sanchez, who has been repeatedly criticized for her divisive attacks against Muslims, Native Americans and even President Obama.

David Beltran, spokesman for the Attorney Generals Office, said the investigation of PUC actions related to San Onofre is continuing.

Sanchezs attack comes as her campaign struggles to gain traction.

She trailed Harris in the June primary, with the attorney general receiving 40 percent of the vote to Sanchezs 19 percent. A July survey by the Public Policy Institute found the congresswoman lagging with 20 percent voter support to Harris 38 percent.

Targeting the state attorney general for the handling of San Onofre nuclear waste is a twist in a long-running public debate, in part because the federal government is contractually obligated to dispose of the radioactive material. Because no federal repository exists, theres no place for the waste to go  and it cant be moved from the mothballed power plant without federal approval. State officials have little say in what happens to the waste.

As a congresswoman for 20 years, Sanchez was positioned to push for solutions from the federal government. Both of Californias U.S. senators  Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer  have introduced bills over the years to try to address nuclear waste disposal, but neither has gotten far.

Sanchez spokesman Luis Vizcaino said the congresswoman has dealt with the issue in connection with her work on the House Armed Services Committee, mainly dealing with nuclear waste from the military.

A new federal push to license temporary waste storage sites  while the Department of Energy works out the prickly permanent-repository question  has local officials hopeful that San Onofres waste might be moved in the next decade or so.

Sanchez launched her attack at a news conference alongside Mike Aguirre, a utility reform activist and former San Diego city attorney, and attorney and consumer advocate Maria Severson. Aguirre has filed a lawsuit challenging the Coastal Commissions approval of expanded temporary waste storage at San Onofre, which is now under construction. As the states attorney, Harris duties include defending the Coastal Commission and other agencies from lawsuits such as Aguirres.

Aguirre criticized Harris, noting that Gov. Jerry Brown, when he served as attorney general, refused to defend Proposition 8, the initiative that outlawed same-sex marriage in California. Harris could have, and should have, done the same in connection with the coastal panels San Onofre actions, Aguirre said.

What she should have said is, Im sorry, thats a violation, I cant defend this; I dont legally think you can do it, Aguirre said. Here shes on board 100 percent.

Harris actions will cost Californias businesses and residents billions over the next decade, Aguirre said.

Harris investigation was prompted by undisclosed meetings between PUC executives and Southern California Edison, San Onofres operator. Of particular interest was an exchange at a conference at the Hotel Bristol Warsaw in Poland in March 2013 involving PUC President Michael Peevey and Edisons then-Executive Vice President Stephen Pickett. There, on hotel stationery, Pickett scribbled the framework of a possible resolution to San Onofre shutdown costs that is very similar to the one ultimately adopted.

That agreement places the bulk of the costs  $3.3 billion  on ratepayers. Edisons shareholders will shoulder $1.4 billion.

Consumer groups that agreed to the deal pulled out after the Warsaw meeting was disclosed.

The PUC has reopened those proceedings, which could result in Edison shareholders picking up more of the shutdown costs.

Contact the writer: tsforza@scng.commwisckol@scng.com
Sully, which opens this weekend, tells the story of U.S. Airways Flight 1549, which made an emergency landing in the Hudson River in 2009. The planes pilot, Chesley Sullenberger, had to ditch the craft after birds shut down both engines. Pilots face danger from bird strikes more often than you may think.



WATER FOUL



US Airways Flight 1549 from New Yorks LaGuardia Airport to Charlotte, N.C., landed in the Hudson River on Jan. 15, 2009. All 150 passengers and five crew members were safely evacuated.

STRUCK OUT

The Federal Aviation Administrations website, FAA.gov, contains photos of wildlife striking aircraft. Some examples:

2011: A blue heron after hitting a Boeing 737.

April 11, 2010: A bald eagle after hitting a privately owned PA-24 Comanche. Not just birds Pilots have listed snapping turtles and deer among animals that have been struck by planes on runways.

Costly troubles

The Federal Aviation Administration estimates that bird strikes cost U.S. aviation $400 million a year and have resulted in over 200 deaths worldwide since 1988. The estimated worldwide cost of bird strikes to airlines is about $1.2 billion a year.

The FAA also estimates that 80 percent of bird strikes are unreported.

Strikes occur at almost every airport in the U.S., mostly during approach and landing.
Raymond Lindsey Jr, of Montgomery County, Texas, was recently sentenced to 40 years in prison after rejecting a plea bargain that would have allowed him to go free.

Lindsey had been charged with assault on a public servant and retaliation, following an incident that occurred on January 5, 2015. Houston Police Department officers were dispatched to an apartment in Southeast Montgomery County for a possible domestic disturbance, where they encountered an aggressive Lindsey and his scared girlfriend. While they waited for the woman to pack up her belongings and leave the premises, the officers claimed that the defendant individually claimed to kill them. He then proceeded to destroy various items in the apartment, including a bird cage with a live bird inside, and when the police attempted to arrest him he assaulted one of the officers by slamming the door on his arm multiple times.

Lindsey had spent the 19 months since the domestic violence incident in jail, before appearing in front of jurors in the 9th District Court of Judge Phil Grant, two weeks ago. His defense attorney had explained to him that if he accepted to plead guilty to the charges he would be released on the spot, with time served. But the man simply wouldnt hear of it, believing that he was innocent and that everybody had conspired against him.

Photo: Houston Police Department

I said the minimum is 25 to life. Youre going to have all of these witnesses come and testify against you and you are not going to have anyone testify for yourself, appointed defense attorney Willis Everett Smith told The Courier. He said It is what it is.

Smith added that despite his criminal history  including two penitentiary sentences from Illinois for the offenses of Burglary and Unlawful Possession of a Vehicle, a prison sentence from Iowa for Domestic Assault, and an uncharged family violence assault against Lindseys girlfriend  accepting the plea bargain would have allowed his client to walk free. Faced with his such stubbornness, the attorney filed for a psychological evaluation, which deemed the man competent to stand trial.

He is very religious and said no man should judge another man, Lindseys lawyer said. Thats another reason I filed a psychological evaluation is because of his thought process.  Hed use religion to justify actions. The problem was the decisions werent going to help him in reality.

During the recent trial, Assistant District Attorney Philip Teissier presented evidence of Raymond Lindsey Jrs prior criminal offenses and his behavior during last years incident, and he was sentenced to 40 years in jail. When the verdict cam in, the defendant calmly told his lawyer Its ok, you did your best. To which Smith replied Wow.

I think he was more unstable than anything else, Smith said. Although, I think if you were to ask him, he would think he was fine. I think he needs another set of eyes and ears to look at what Ive looked at.

Smith is now compiling a notice for appeal, which will go to a new lawyer for Lindsey. He mentioned that in his 30 years of experience, he had never had a client turn down a plea bargain for the degree of charges Lindsey faced.
Wells Fargo Bank yesterday was hit with a massive enforcement action by federal and local regulators over widespread unlawful sales practices at the banking and finance giant, allegations that many of the companys employees had for years established fake deposit and credit card accounts in customers names without their consent.

The civil charges, filed jointly by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the City Attorney of Los Angeles and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, stems from a Los Angeles City Attorney suit filed in May 2015, which charged the banking and financial services holding company of pressuring employees to commit acts of fraud.

According to the CFPB, more than two million deposit and credit card accounts may have been created by thousands of Wells Fargo employees nationwide, allegedly signing up customers for financial services they never authorized in a bid to boost employees sales figures. This includes up to 1.5 million phony deposit accounts  where employees allegedly transferred customers funds without their consent, and in many cases, created fake customer PIN numbers and email addresses  as well as applications for more than 560,000 unauthorized credit cards, more than 10,000 of which allegedly incurred a number of fees.

Fines totaling $185 million were levied at the bank yesterday. This includes a $100 million penalty issued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau  the heftiest in that U.S. government agencys history  as well as $50 million in fines from the City and County of Los Angeles and $35 million from the Office of Comptroller of the Currrency. Wells Fargo must also pay full remediation to all consumers who incurred fees associated with financial products that were sold to them without their knowledge. These refunds are expected to total at least $2.5 million, according to the CFPB.

A consulting firm hired by Wells Fargo in light of the Los Angeles City Attorneys initial suit last year conducted an internal review that analyzed consumer and small business retail banking deposit accounts and credit cards going back to 2011. That internal review, which was completed prior to yesterdays settlement announcement, resulted in Wells Fargo refunding $2.6 million to customers for fees associated with products they may not have requested, according to Wells Fargo in a statement. Accounts refunded represented a fraction of one percent of the accounts reviewed, according to Wells Fargo, with refunds averaging $25.

CNNMoney reported today that 5,300 Wells Fargo employees have been terminated over the last several years as a result of its findings. Wells Fargo would not confirm with the New York Times yesterday regarding whether any senior management had been fired as a result of the findings.

In a Thursday statement on the regulatory action, the CFPB cited a lack of internal oversight at Wells Fargo, coupled with a high-pressure sales culture, where employees were pushed or incentivized to cross-sell financial products to consumers  credit cards, loans, or additional accounts  as a means of meeting sales goals.

The CFPB statement read: In recent years, the bank has sought to distinguish itself in the marketplace as a leader in cross selling these products and services to existing customers who did not already have them. When cross selling is based on efforts to generate more business from existing customers based on strong customer satisfaction and excellent customer service, it is a common and accepted business practice. But here the bank had compensation incentive programs for its employees that encouraged them to sign up existing clients for deposit accounts, credit cards, debit cards, and online banking, and the bank failed to monitor the implementation of these programs with adequate care.

The CFPB was established as a result of the 2010 passage of the DoddFrank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which was signed into federal law in response to the 2008 financial crisis.

In a press statement, Wells Fargo confirmed its settlement agreement with regulators and asserted that it had refunded customers who incurred unnecessary fees. In a separate statement posted to its website, the bank said we truly regret and take full responsibility for any such instances. Both statements detailed new enforcement measures the bank is now taking to ensure such fraudulent incidents dont happen again. Those steps include an enhanced retraining of employees and the implementation of new monitoring protocols. The bank will also now begin sendig automated emails to Wells Fargo customers after a checking or savings account is opened, as well as application acknowledgements and decision status letters when customers apply for a credit card.

Wells Fargos communications department did not respond to repeated requests by ODwyers for a comment on this story.

San Francisco-headquartered Wells Fargo, which had 8,700 retail branches as of December and about 40 million retail customers, is currently the largest U.S. bank by market value, with nearly two trillion in assets. It was founded in 1852.
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Agricultural News

Oklahoma State Lawmakers Write to California Farmers- Inviting Them to Move Their Operations to Oklahoma

Oklahoma State Representative Scott Biggs, R- Chickasha, was among a group of Representatives today that saw an opportunity to help Oklahoma grow and expand its economic base.







These Representatives today started sending out invitations to farmers and ranchers in California to consider relocating to Oklahoma. This is due to recent legislation in California that will push family farms out of business by unnecessary statutes and agency rules.







"The passing of SB1383 by the California legislature will require a 40 percent reduction in methane gas production by cattle ranchers by 2030. This is just the latest in legislation that will drive the small family farms out of business and force them off the farm. We wanted to make it clear to California cattle ranchers and farmers, that they have another option. They can consider moving to a state that values what they do and supports them in their way of life," said Rep. Biggs.





"Oklahoma has shown strong support for the Agriculture industry time and time again. Instead of bowing down to animal right activists and passing their legislation, we are passing bills to protect the industry," said Rep. Biggs.





"I'm proud to stand with other legislators here in Oklahoma who have hands on experience, understanding, and background in agriculture. We will stand up and defend our farmers and ranchers in this state and the future of agriculture. We will not give into liberal special interest groups that have been and continue to be detrimental to other states and that are detrimental to the future of agriculture," said Rep. Scooter Parks, R-Devol.





Besides Biggs and Parks, other lawmakers who signed the letter include Republicans Casey Murdock of Felt, Leslie Osborn of Mustang, John Pfeiffer of Orlando and Mike Sanders of Kingfisher.





The Oklahoma Legislature this session passed House Bill 1638, the Agritourism Liability bill, which helped expand and grow the opportunities for children to see firsthand what farming and ranching is all about. State Question 777, the Right to Farm Amendment, was placed on the ballot by the legislature by a combined House and Senate vote of 124-13. Another bill that passed last session and protects the rancher and farmer is House Bill 2504. This bill will increase the punishment for theft of livestock.





Rep. Biggs said preserving the livelihood and legacy of fellow farmers and ranchers is a top priority and he will continue to help protect rural Oklahoma.





Click on the PDF link below to read the complete letter from the six state lawmakers being sent to agricultural producers in California.













00929_Ag_Letter09092016.pdf





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The name game Updated: 2016-09-09 07:44 By Wang Mingjie in London(China Daily Europe)

Chinese brands need a strong identity to connect with global consumers if they want to reach the ranks of the world's most famous products

If you were to ask people outside China how many well-known Chinese brands they can name off the cuff, there probably wouldn't be that many.

However, if the question were asked about US brands, then Facebook, Apple, Starbucks and Ford would likely roll off the tongue.

The number of valuable homebred Chinese brands is clearly not proportional to the country's status as the world's second- largest economy.

With China expediting its efforts to transform a manufacturing-led economy to a consumption and service-driven one, branding is increasingly seen as a key strategy to achieve this goal.

The importance of branding has been recognized by the Chinese leadership in recent years, as the country is determined to see a transition from low-quality to high-quality production, and from unbranded or weakly branded products and services to strong Chinese brands.

In 2014, President Xi Jinping indicated that China must undergo serious restructuring, including a movement from "made in China" to "branded in China".

In June, the State Council released a document on how to upgrade domestic supply and demand structures by enhancing the quality of product brands in China, including expanding publicity for brands with independent intellectual property rights, and encouraging consumption.

Experts say this is undoubtedly the right strategy for China and Chinese companies to capture more of the production value chain.

According to a report by Brand Finance, a London-based brand valuation consultancy company, China came second in a list of the world's most valuable national brands last year, valued at $6.3 billion, behind the United States at $19.7 billion.

"China is trying hard to win respect from the rest of the world and restore confidence that a great nation like China needs. If there is no successful national and corporate branding, this will be difficult to achieve in global markets and modern society," says Paul Temporal, a global expert on brand creation and an associate fellow at Oxford University's Said Business School.

Temporal suggests China create a national task force to oversee branding efforts throughout the country, similar to those of Singapore and Malaysia, as branding activities in China are fragmented - provinces and companies are all looking to create their own brands.

David Haigh, CEO of Brand Finance, says it is common for national and regional government organizations to proliferate brands, which can confuse the overall image.

"There is a great deal of fragmentation at the city, regional and national level within China, which weakens the overall message for Brand China externally," he says, whereas in the UK, there is one coherent and unified national brand campaign.

The Great campaign, supported by the British government, has simplified and focused the message for the UK. It is now used in all British embassies, trade promotion activities and tourism promotions to help British tourism, exports and foreign direct investment.

Wang Qing, a professor of marketing and innovation at Britain's Warwick Business School, holds a slightly different opinion. She notes that the Chinese government has indicated recently that it wants to promote a number of large, state-owned enterprises as national champions, similar to policies adopted by Singapore and South Korea.

"While I agree that there should be a more coordinated approach to brand building, especially for international markets, the highly centralized approach by countries like Singapore and South Korea will not be suitable for a country as large and diverse as China," Wang says.

She says strong national brands should emerge from a competitive domestic environment based on free market mechanisms, and the rise of both Huawei and Lenovo as strong national brands is a good manifestation of a free market approach.

Apart from resources and investment, Wang says brand building also requires craftsmanship, patience and perseverance. The government's role is to create a legal environment where brands can flourish, copyright and intellectual property can be protected, and counterfeit brands are strictly prohibited, she adds.

Temporal, who is also a visiting professor at Peking University's HSBC Business School in Shenzhen, says: "Every nation has an identity, and if that identity is very positive, then this will help companies coming out of China into the world market because it is a country-of-origin effect, and if they do well, then this spins back to the national brand.

"This is what happened with countries such as Germany. They are known for reliability, quality and engineering, and therefore if all the brands that come out from Germany, particularly in automobiles, are fine, people are quite happy," he says.

For a long time, China's economic growth has been heavily dependent on low-cost manufacturing rather than marketing and branding, and research and development. R&D, however, creates intellectual property and trademarks, patents and copyrights, making it difficult for competitors to imitate.

Similarly, marketing activities create brands and loyal customers, which produce differential advantages for the country, Wang says. "All major advanced countries have both innovation capabilities and strong brands."

In a 2015 Best Global Brands report by Interbrand, eight in 10 of the world's 100 most valuable brands were from the US, with Apple ranking first with $170.27 billion, followed by Google, Coca-Cola, Microsoft and IBM. Only two Chinese brands were listed in the top 100, Huawei ($4.95 billion) at 88, and Lenovo ($4.11 billion) at 100.

Temporal explains that the secret recipe for these valuable global brands is the ability to emotionally connect with consumers, and most Chinese brands do not have the knowledge and skills so ably demonstrated by Western companies in this aspect of brand building.

Powerful companies always develop their brands based on emotions of universal appeal, says Temporal, who cites the example of Nike, driven by the emotional brand drive of winning; Coca-Cola, based on the concept of happiness; and Walmart, associated with enriching people's life.

Chinese brands and businesses might have corporate visions that deal with numbers and market shares, but they do not have brand visions, he says. "Brand visions are all concerned with what you want to stand for emotionally in the minds of your customers."

Haigh from Brand Finance agrees, saying: "World-beating brands all attract passionate loyalty from their customers because they create an emotional relationship and attachment. Such loyalty is like a great friendship or love affair. Emotional brand loyalty leads to higher prices and more frequent usage.

"Brands work best when they combine design and manufacturing superiority, functional excellence, superb service delivery with emotional attachment and an attractive and unique personality," he adds.

While China is gearing up to build its brands globally, many Western companies are keen to break into the Chinese market as a result of Chinese consumers spending a great deal on high-quality, luxury products. Yet something as simple as a name can make all the difference in success or failure.

Product naming can be a minefield for many Western companies, due to culture and language differences.

"Many people don't realize that there is quite an art to the naming process. Brand names in China are extremely significant to consumers, much more so than in the West. It could actually make or break a product, and getting the right combination of brand meaning and pronunciation is a fine art when launching a product in Chinese markets," says Stephen Knowles, managing director of Industrial Design Consultancy UK.

Industrial specialists say naming a product is not just a simple case of translating a word, as Chinese characters can be interpreted in a number of different ways and there are many different dialects in China, which can lead to misinterpretation if the naming is not well planned.

Launching a product in China is a big investment for Western companies so it is important to get the name right. A bad name can jeopardize that investment, whereas a great name can significantly increase the return on the investment.

The key to success, Knowles says, is the creativity and cultural understanding to link Western values with the needs, culture and language of the Chinese market.

wangmingjie@mail.chinadailyuk.com

Bollywood actress Sushmita Sen launches Huawei's P9 smartphone on Aug 17 in New Delhi, India. Huawei, one of China's strong brands, ranked 88 in the 2015 Best Global Brands report. Sonu Mehta / via Getty Images / For China Daily

( China Daily European Weekly 09/09/2016 page1)
Omaha labor leader Terry Moore Sr., a tour de force of wit and political dealmaking, hardly sounded like himself on Friday.

The window shades were down. He didnt want to leave his home. He couldnt get through a conversation without breaking down.

His son Terry Jr., with whom hed lived for nearly all of Terry Jr.s 47 years, had died Wednesday after a heart attack in their living room. It was so sudden and unexpected.

He and I were just inseparable, said Terry Sr., who is 73. Terry is ... was my life.

Where you saw one Terry, the other was not far behind.

The father is practically a city father, who used his union role to help revitalize downtown. The son was born with what later would be diagnosed as Williams syndrome, a rare developmental disorder that affected how hed grow and how his brain would work. The father was told the son wouldnt read, wouldnt write and wouldnt do much. The son wound up doing all that and so much more.

The father employed all the skills he had honed as head of the Omaha AFL-CIO to lobby for his son. The son used all the skills he had to endear himself to Omahans, from labor union members to mayors. The father is witty and affable, with the Irish gift of gab. The son was exactly the same. The father hobnobbed with city power brokers. So did the son.

Terry Jr. grew up in Terry Sr.s world of whos who in Omaha  but he eclipsed his father with his distinctive personality. He got a job, which he held for over 20 years, as a clerk in the Douglas County Treasurers Office. He filed papers and delivered boxes and wore a suit with special lapel pins. In the massive City-County Building, connected to the Douglas County Courthouse, Terry Jr. got to know just about everybody. He could take a lunchtime catnap on a judges couch or interrupt whichever mayor was running the city. His access amazed even his father.

He could walk up into the mayors office and say, I want to talk to the mayor. I dont care who it was, Hal Daub, anybody, Terry Sr. said Friday. And hed get in there. Tim Dunning, the sheriff? Tim gave him an honorary small lapel pin. Same thing the police did. The chief of police put one on him. He was THE guy.

I got to see that for myself in 2013, when I spent a day with Terry Jr. for a story. I found a man several years older than me who had a way better rock n roll vocabulary. Wed grown up with all the same bands, and though Terry Jr.s tastes veered sharply into heavy metal  his favorite band was Kiss  he was impressively fluent in Duran Duran and any group that wed listened to as kids on Sweet 98.

He was an Omaha Benson graduate, a Crossroads regular back when Crossroads was a happening place. And he could drive  which was a feat for someone who had spent seven years of his childhood in a stifling neck-to-tailbone brace.

Terry Sr. gave his son the basics in driving education, then sought a driving instructor who, shall we say, was a bit of a looker. Terry Jr. had an eye for the ladies and Terry Sr. really wanted his son to do whatever the instructor said.

Then, after Terry Jr. passed the test and got his license, Terry Sr. spent a year sitting in the passenger seat while his son drove them both to work in the morning and home from work in the evening. The Terrys did this in rush-hour traffic down Leavenworth Street to work and up Dodge Street to home. When Terry Jr. asked his dad for a lift to the Crossroads one day, Terry Sr. shocked them both by saying: You know how to drive. There are the keys. Call me when you get there.

That was it, Terry Sr. said. At that point on, he was fully independent.

He still lived at home, though. He still relied on what his father always called his sixth sense for separating friends from foes. Terry Jr. had gotten picked on as a child. Terry Sr. had told him: Buck up. Thats life. But dont let it turn your heart. Every night theyd pray the Our Father together, and the father would tell the son that the line we forgive those who trespass against us meant two things: Dont harbor a grudge; it will just hurt you. But dont be a sucker, either.

The father found a way to give his son a rich life. The son returned the favor.

He was so attentive. He loved four things: music, the weather, women and his dad, said attorney Bill Eustice, who would take Terry Jr. to rock concerts, most recently to see Kiss founder Ace Frehley a couple of weeks ago at the Waiting Room. His dad was at the top of his list.

Father and son ate breakfast together. They marched in Labor Day parades together. They went on trips together. They ushered the 8 a.m. Sunday Mass at St. Johns, the Catholic church on Creighton Universitys campus, together. Theyd go to the Interlude Lounge and have cocktails with some local judges, together. Terry Jr.s signature drink was a plain Coke with an olive and slice of lemon.

Every single day, every day hed get up. Hed come upstairs. Hed say to me, Dad? Give your son a hug,  a choked-up Terry Sr. recalled. And Id hug him. He was the most loving person I ever met in my life. He was kind. He was just so close to me and I loved him so much. I can tell you it was devastating after he passed. I was just paralyzed. I could hardly breathe.

Terry Jr. had slowed down in recent years. He had stopped working and was taking disability. But he was still active and still checked out healthwise.

The Terrys had marched in the Labor Day parade in Omaha on Monday. They had partied at Septemberfest downtown. They had celebrated Terry Jr.s 47th birthday on Tuesday, with the father scolding the son about carrying around $400 in birthday cash  Terry Jr. had shook down all his friends at Septemberfest the day before. Terry Jr. had retorted: Its MY money.

On Wednesday, they were in their living room about 5 p.m. when son yelled to the father that his arm hurt, that his chest hurt.

Terry Sr. hollered to a nurse who is at the home to take care of Terry Sr.s wife, Tania  Terry Jr.s stepmother  who has leukodystophy and can hardly move. She needs a ventilator to breathe.

The nurse rushed in and laid Terry Jr. on the floor while Terry Sr. called 911.

The father watched, helpless, as paramedics shocked his sons stopped heart back into rhythm. He followed the ambulance to Bergan Mercy Medical Center, where his son died about an hour later. He listened numbly to a phone call that came later that night as an organ donor specialist asked for permission to harvest Terry Jr.s eyes. And kidneys. And more. He listened as the voice on the other end told him that Terry Jr. was going to help 50 different people.

The father thought how that would have pleased his son.

The father called his son a bright light.

The father called himself lucky. Lucky to have a child linger at home all these years. Lucky to have such a warm-hearted son, a best friend.

But he didnt feel so lucky in grief.

Terry Sr. is divorced from Terrys mother, Mary. He has had to bury a daughter and a granddaughter. He knows that time blunts the pain, but never fully heals it.

Say a prayer for me if you would, Terry Moore Sr. said. You dont have to pray for Terry. Hes with God. Pray for us who are left behind.
IMF looks to expand special drawing rights Updated: 2016-09-09 07:45 By Li Xiang(China Daily Europe)

The International Monetary Fund is exploring ways to broaden the use of its special drawing rights after G20 leaders reached a consensus to enhance the resilience of the international financial system.

"The IMF was really encouraged by the determination of China to use the SDR as a yardstick to measure reserves and as a currency for bond issuance," Christine Lagarde, its managing director, said on Sept 5.

The call for greater use of SDR, a synthetic reserve currency, has been strongly backed by China as the country works to lift the global profile of its currency. The renminbi will be included in the IMF's reserve currency basket on Oct 1.

Lagarde says the IMF will continue to expand the representation of emerging and developing economies in the organization, as it needs to serve the entire membership.

She also reiterates that the renminbi meets the criteria for inclusion in the SDR as the Chinese monetary authority has made "constructive progress" by making its monetary policy more market-determined.

Experts say the expansion of the use of the SDR will help improve the stability of the global financial system and the inclusion of the Chinese currency will in turn empower the influence of the SDR in international markets.

"The yuan's inclusion in the SDR will, to some extent, increase the influence of the SDR and enable it to play a greater role in the international financial markets," says E Zhihuan at Renmin University's China's International Monetary Institute.

The World Bank recently issued a landmark bond denominated in the SDR in the Chinese interbank market.

Jim Yong Kim, the bank's president, said earlier that the issuance of SDR bonds in China would support the expansion of the use of SDR, one of the G20's key financial tasks.

Lagarde says the G20 leaders endorsed several initiatives to support stability and resilience of the international financial architecture, which included support for further strengthening of the global financial safety net with an adequately financed IMF equipped with a more effective toolkit.

"Global financial governance has been a big topic. After the January surge in market volatility, cooperation between countries has improved greatly, and the G20 has been a suitable venue to cement the ties in that regard," says Hong Hao, chief strategist at BOCOM International Holdings in Hong Kong.

Chen Yingqun contributed to this story.

lixiang@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily European Weekly 09/09/2016 page15)
Sandwich chain Jimmy Johns Sandwiches says it sold a majority stake in the company to private equity firm Roark Capital Group. Financial terms were not disclosed. Roark Capital of Atlanta has invested in fast-food chains before, including pretzel seller Auntie Annes and sandwich restaurant chain Arbys. Founded in 1983, Jimmy Johns has more than 2,500 locations across the country and plans to open 1,100 more in the next few years. As a comparison, rival sandwich chain Subway has more than 44,000 shops. Jimmy Johns says founder Jimmy John Liautaud will remain as chairman of the companys board.

$8.8 billion deal to make Hewlett-Packard even leaner

Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Co. will spin off a big chunk of its business software lineup in an $8.8 billion deal with Micro Focus International PLC, continuing the unraveling of what once was Silicon Valleys largest company. The company said Wednesday that it will get a $2.5 billion cash payment and its shareholders will hold a 50.1 percent stake in the new combined company. The overhaul marks another step in CEO Meg Whitmans effort to transform the conglomerate into a leaner, more efficient company catering to a few core markets that she believes will be most likely to grow.

Old Mill to be home for Mutual of Omaha Mortgage

Mutual of Omaha Mortgage has located its headquarters at 10909 Mill Valley Road in the Old Mill office park. The facility will have offices for about 35 executives, headquarters staff and mortgage professionals who will originate and process mortgages, said Terry Connealy, president. Mutual of Omaha Mortgage is a joint venture started in April by Mutual of Omaha Bank and PrimeLending, a residential mortgage lender based in Dallas. The operation will have mortgage offices in Mutual of Omaha Bank locations and work with home financing professionals nationwide, Connealy said.
Omaha-based Northern Natural Gas said it can expand to take advantage of pipeline demand expected to come from a big new find in Texas, and that it is working on plans to profit from the discovery.

The southernmost part of the natural-gas pipeline companys system is close to the Apache Corp. field in west Texas. Houston-based Apache said Wednesday it has discovered 75 trillion cubic feet of natural gas liquids and 3 billion barrels of oil in Reeves County, an area it has named Alpine High, and which geologists had said was unsuitable for hydraulic fracturing.

Now it is reckoned by Apache  whose shares rose as much as 13 percent Wednesday and were up an additional 7 percent Thursday  to be worth anywhere from $8 billion to $80 billion, depending on actual drilling and production results.

But if things work out  and highly touted energy-field discoveries dont always  scads of natural gas liquids and oil will be pumped out of the ground and sent out for sale to a world hungry for electricity and thirsty for gasoline.

As for Northern Natural Gas, getting a share of the natural gas produced in what energy-industry experts call the Delaware Basin of Texas is shaping up into a priority, said spokesman Michael Loeffler.

Northern Natural is a unit of Warren Buffett-led Berkshire Hathaway.

Loeffler said the natural gas liquids produced in the region require additional processing after initial production to be safely transported by Northern Naturals pipelines.

Those intermediate processing companies are called midstream in the energy biz, and the safe, transportable natural gas they wind up churning out is called plant residue gas  the stuff that winds up at utilities for end-use by homes and businesses.

Northern does have the ability to expand its system and is working with midstream companies to connect to processing plants and to access the plant residue gas from this area, Loeffler said.

So far the field is producing more natural-gas liquids than oil, Apache said. The company has quietly been buying up land in Reeves County, amassing about 300,000 acres  an area big enough to hold the campus of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln 500 times. The area is sparsely populated. Balmorhea, population 435, is a centrally located town.

There is little there in the way of infrastructure, said Tony Scott, managing director of analytics and consulting at Colorado-based BTU Analytics. There will have to be new gas infrastructure in that area.

As for oil produced in the region, Scott said there is very little in the way of pipelines.

I think it will be an open market for building oil pipelines, Scott said.

Shipping oil by rail is another alternative, one widely embraced after a previous bout of unexpected production surged out of North Dakota, when the Bakken field began to be widely exploited amid oil prices high enough to justify the expense of hydraulic fracturing.

Production increased tenfold from 2006 to 2014, to more than 1 million barrels a day. Because pipeline facilities are lacking in the region, transporting via freight train became the preferred option for getting the oil to refineries.

BNSF Railway, owned by Berkshire Hathaway, declined to comment on the Apache discovery in the Delaware Basin. The Texas-based railway, the leader in crude oil shipments, has major operations including rail lines in and out of El Paso, Texas, which is about 190 miles from Balmorhea in the Delaware Basin energy field of Reeves County.

Omaha-based Union Pacific, the second-largest freight railroad behind BNSF, also has rail lines in and out of El Paso. A company spokeswoman also said the company operates in Reeves County, the heart of the new find.

Scott, the Colorado-based consultant, said if crude-by-rail becomes an option for the Alpine High field, it would probably take the form of trucking the oil to rail terminals, where it would be loaded onto tanker cars.

But Apache said there is no immediate need for rail transportation of oil.

Our folks do not view that as relevant at this time, Apache spokeswoman Castlen Kennedy said.

Any form of additional production and transport is expected to generate criticism from opponents. Underground pipelines as well as oil trains have attracted widespread opposition.

Leaders in Oregon want to ban crude trains from their state after a Union Pacific train crashed into a river gorge there in June. And hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is blamed by opponents of pumping water and chemicals underground to stimulate oil and gas movement as responsible for polluted drinking water and earthquakes.

Logan Purk, a transportation industry analyst in St. Louis for Edward Jones, said it probably doesnt even make sense to move oil by train unless prices rise by almost half from the $47 per barrel seen now.

It would be difficult for the rails to generate an attractive return on their investment given where crude prices are, Purk said. If crude were $70, this would be a different story.

No pipeline nor any railroad, however, gets at or near the top by waiting around. Both BNSF and Union Pacific are facing a slump in freight shipments. BNSFs are down 7 percent year-to-date, Union Pacifics 9 percent. And Northern Natural Gas and its 2015 operating profit of $300 million is a big part of Berkshire Hathaways energy business, one that Chief Executive Buffett has said will garner investments from him as far as the eye can see.

I think there is no doubt about it, said Scott, the energy consultant. Business development folks right now are all busy looking at the opportunities there.

Berkshire Hathaway Inc. owns the Omaha World-Herald.

Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly reported where Apache Corp. is based.
You might see it three or four miles off before you come around the bend, and then you say, That is a basket. That is unquestionably a basket,  Tom Rochon said.

It is a basket, or rather, a seven-story office building shaped like one  a massive facsimile of the signature picnic basket made by the company once headquartered there. Forty miles outside Columbus, Ohio, the basket building, as its locally known, is one of the areas grandest attractions, inviting quirky selfie-seekers, architecture nerds and, of course, basket enthusiasts.

Despite its celebrity, its owner has had trouble off-loading the gargantuan basket, due to its size, location and  well, youve seen it, right?

When the property was listed 18 months ago, the asking price was $7.5 million. Now its on the market for $5 million, or about $28 a square foot, about half of what traditionally shaped office buildings in the area usually sell for, according to Columbus real estate adviser Bradford L. Kitchen, president of the real estate advisory firm Alterra. The basket buildings listing agent, Michael Guagenti of Cushman & Wakefield, said commercial property in the area typically ranges from $50 to $80 a square foot.

The basket was built for about $32 million and finished in 1997, according to Guagenti, as a home for the Longaberger Co. Known for its kitschy baskets, both decorative and functional, Longaberger has been around since the 1970s and once boasted sales of $1 billion, largely the result of direct-sales agents who hawked baskets at Tupperware-esque parties.

But its sales reportedly fell to $100 million in 2012. As Longaberger moved workers from the basket building to a nearby factory, its Dallas-based holding company, JRJR Networks, for which Rochon works, decided to sell to consolidate and streamline our operations, Chief Financial Officer Chris Brooks said in a June earnings statement.

Its a very challenging building, Guagenti acknowledged. We have had a couple (offers), but nothing that materialized. Thus far, only developers have shown interest, he said.

At 180,000 square feet, the basket is one of the largest buildings for miles around. Guagenti has reached out to local businesses in an effort to persuade them to move, playing up the baskets discounted price, but the space is too large for most. Just no one is big enough to take that kind of basket on, he said.

And its not without other flaws. Paint has trouble adhering to its massive handles, which are heated to prevent snow buildup, and as a result they look chipped, Rochon said. The entire basket could use a paint job, Guagenti agreed, though he said the interior is pristine and modern. Theres nothing baskety inside, he said. Nothing makes you feel like its in a basket. You feel like youre in a nice, high-rise office building.

But while paint can be reapplied, the building cant be moved.

Its like they say: location, location, location. It has two things against it: Its a far location, and its a unique building. The location is probably whats worse, said New York-based real estate broker and author Brendon DeSimone.

Local real estate adviser Kitchen agreed: It takes a special buyer that is willing to go to that location. Its a little bit too remote, as its just outside Columbus. Its pretty far out for a Columbus company to think of moving there.

That has meant rethinking how the building could be used. To lure a buyer, Guagenti has explored marketing it as ripe for being repurposed as an educational facility, nursing home or call center  though he also thinks it would do just fine remaining an office building. Experts agree it might fare best as a hotel or convention center, using the buildings aesthetic to attract tourists. Although the area has a population of only about 47,000, Rochon said tour groups do occasionally make pit stops at the basket.

As for the fundamental basket-ness of it, its not clear how much can be done. Refacing the building isnt much of an option, Guagenti said, because much like a basket, its narrower on the bottom and wider on top, which would look strange even without the woven exterior.

But you could take the handles off, he reasoned. Im sure a good architect could come up with some paint scheme to make it look not like a basket.
NEW YORK (AP)  California and federal regulators fined Wells Fargo a combined $185 million on Thursday, alleging the banks employees illegally opened millions of unauthorized accounts for their customers in order to meet aggressive sales goals.

The San Francisco-based bank will pay $100 million to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a federal agency created five years ago; $35 million to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency; and $50 million to the City and County of Los Angeles. It will also pay restitution to affected customers.

It is the largest fine the consumer bureau has levied against a financial institution and the largest fine in the history of the Los Angeles City Attorneys Office.

The bureau said Wells Fargo sales staff opened more than 2 million bank and credit card accounts that may not have been authorized by customers. Money in customers accounts was transferred to these new accounts without authorization. Debit cards were issued and activated, as well as PINs created, without telling customers.

In some cases Wells Fargo employees even created fake email addresses to sign up customers for online banking services.

Roughly 5,300 employees at Wells Fargo were fired in connection with this behavior, according to the Los Angeles City Attorneys Office.

A spokeswoman for Wells Fargo in the region said the bank didnt have a geographic breakdown of whether any Omaha-area customers were affected. She said the bank also didnt have a breakdown of whether any Omaha-area employees were among those fired. She emphasized that the number of people let go was a small percentage of the banks more than 100,000 employees.

Richard Cordray, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, said: Wells Fargo built an incentive-compensation program that made it possible for its employees to pursue underhanded sales practices, and it appears that the bank did not monitor the program carefully.

Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer called Wells Fargos behavior outrageous and a major breach of trust.

Consumers must be able to trust their banks, Feuer said.

Wells Fargos aggressive sales tactics were first disclosed by the Los Angeles Times in an investigation in 2013. The series prompted the City Attorneys Office to sue Wells Fargo.

In a statement, Wells Fargo said: We regret and take responsibility for any instances where customers may have received a product that they did not request. Wells Fargo said it has refunded $2.6 million in fees associated with products that were opened without authorization.

Wells Fargo is known for having aggressive sales goals for its employees. Its executives highlight every quarter the banks cross sale ratio, which is the number of products the bank sells to each of its individual customers. The ratio hovers around six, which means every customer has on average six different types of products with the bank.

World-Herald staff writer Cole Epley contributed to this report.
A 73-year-old California man was arrested Thursday night on Interstate 80 in Omaha after deputies found 18 pounds of marijuana and drug paraphernalia.

The Douglas County Sheriffs Office said a deputy pulled the man over in his 2016 Toyota Camry about 11 p.m. The Toyota, which was eastbound on I-80 near 84th Street, was following another vehicle too closely, the Sheriffs Office said.

The Sheriffs Office said the deputy was suspicious of illegal drug activity by the man, so a drug-sniffing dog, Fletch, was brought in. The dog indicated that there may be narcotics in the cars trunk, the Sheriffs Office said.

A search of the trunk turned up a duffel bag and two suitcases containing 18 vacuum-sealed bags of marijuana weighing a total of 18 pounds, four boxes of THC chews and eight containers of suspected hash butter weighing a total of one pound, the Sheriffs Office said. Also found were six THC vaporizer cartridges and 22 disposable vaporizers.

The Camrys driver is from Fort Bragg, which is about 150 miles northwest of San Francisco.

The Sheriffs Office said the man was en route to Indiana. He was booked on suspicion of possession of marijuana with intent to deliver; possession of a controlled substance, hash; and failure to affix a drug tax stamp, the Sheriffs Office said.
MADISON, Neb. (AP)  A Nebraska woman accused of kidnapping her newborn son from a Norfolk hospital has been sentenced to prison.

Court records say Lacee Tuttle, 34, of Pierce was given a year for violating a custody order and 90 days for negligent child abuse. Tuttle pleaded guilty last month after prosecutors dropped a kidnapping count.

Authorities say Tuttle tested positive for methamphetamine and marijuana while at the hospital, which is why custody of the baby was given to a state agency.

Judge Mark Johnson ruled at Tuttles sentencing Thursday that those sentences are to be served at the same time but will be served after her sentence of 180 days for unrelated convictions: theft and intentional child abuse. The records say Tuttle had a little girl with her when she was caught shoplifting from a store.
LINCOLN (AP)  A former security supervisor for the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services has been indicted on federal child pornography charges.

Online court records say Brian Farrar, 48, is charged with receiving child pornography on Dec. 1 and with possessing child porn on March 29. His attorney didn't immediately return a call Friday from The Associated Press.

A Health and Human Services Department spokeswoman said Farrar was a security supervisor at the Youth Rehabilitation and Treatment Center in Kearney and that'd he worked for the department from June 1996 through Thursday. She did not answer a question about whether he quit or was dismissed.

In May 2010, Farrar ran during the primary election for a vacant seat on the Kearney City Council. He came in sixth in an eight-person primary and did not advance.
University of Nebraska President Hank Bounds is expected to receive a 6.3 percent raise, to $510,400, at the NU Board of Regents meeting Friday.

The regents executive committee has recommended the increase for Bounds, who started work as president of the NU system in April 2015. The raise would be retroactive to July 1, 2016.

Bounds currently makes $480,000 a year. His compensation also includes a $20,000 salary supplement from the NU Foundation, a presidential residence, a membership to the Country Club of Lincoln and a vehicle allowance of $800 per month. The NU Foundation also funds a deferred compensation package for Bounds.

The regents will meet at 10:15 a.m. next Friday at NUs Varner Hall, 3835 Holdrege St. in Lincoln. The regents academic affairs committee will meet at 9 a.m.

Bounds will report raises for the chancellors, as well. He has the authority to set those salaries, and they do not require the regents approval, an NU spokeswoman said.

The chancellors raises, effective July 1 of this year:

 UNMC Chancellor Jeffrey Gold, total salary of $838,661, a 3 percent increase from $814,234.

 UNO Chancellor John Christensen, total salary $296,039, a 2 percent increase from $290,234.

 UNK Chancellor Doug Kristensen, total salary $257,364, about a 2.8 percent increase from $250,404.

Regent Kent Schroeder of Kearney, chairman of the executive committee, said he expects his panels recommendation on Bounds raise to have the support of the board.

I feel extremely fortunate that we were able to convince Hank Bounds and his family to come to Nebraska, Schroeder said in a telephone interview. He said Bounds has conveyed to the NU system that it has the potential of a rough diamond.

You dont know how good you can be because you dont know how good you are is a message that Bounds has conveyed, Schroeder said.

Bounds had been the commissioner of higher education in his home state of Mississippi when he was recruited to serve as president of the NU system.

Regent Hal Daub of Omaha said he hadnt read the executive committees proposal because he doesnt serve on that panel. But he will support a reasonable raise for Bounds, he said.

He is thoughtful and he is always prepared and he is wonderfully accessible, Daub said Friday afternoon.

Regent Jim Pillen of Columbus said he hasnt met a Nebraskan who wasnt impressed by Bounds.

Pillen, who is on the executive committee, said Bounds has clear expectations of the campus chancellors, holds people accountable and doesnt micromanage.

I actually thought we should give him more of a raise, Pillen said Friday. I want to make sure he stays in Nebraska.
A grant to outfit a school bus with high-speed Internet got the green light from the Nebraska Public Service Commission this week.

Commissioners voted 2-1 to approve a $114,218 grant request from Omaha Public Schools and Cox Communications to create a roving Wi-Fi bus.

The bus would help kids from Howard Kennedy and Wakonda Elementary Schools log onto the Internet and learn more about using the web safely and responsibly.

The grant will come from a state broadband program funded by the Nebraska Universal Service Fund.

OPS and Cox teamed up to devise a way to give students from the two high-poverty elementary schools more access to technology.

Both schools are in northeast Omaha, parts of which have lower access to the Internet compared to other parts of the city. They are considered turnaround schools trying to boost student performance.

After school, the bus could park at schools, churches and community centers. Kennedy and Wakonda students and their parents could use laptops and tablets on board and sit in on a coding lesson or a session about using social media wisely. OPS would staff the bus with a part-time driver and a technology teacher.

The commission finds mobile labs, such as this one, are a beneficial way to get computers and other equipment out into the community for students and families with limited access and availability, the order approving the grant reads.

Not everyone has been on board with the idea. In her dissent, Public Service Commissioner Crystal Rhoades said OPS is already supposed to be providing take-home computers and Internet hotspots to Wakonda students, as part of a federal school improvement grant the school received.

Rhoades said she would prefer an approach similar to that taken by Lincoln Public Schools and Allo, a telecommunications company. The Public Service Commission approved a grant up to $150,000 for Lincoln and Allo to partner and help provide low-cost Internet service in the homes of students who qualify for free and reduced-price lunch.

I believe that is a far more prudent path because it gives the children full-access and is not limited to a small number of children for a couple of hours a day, Rhoades wrote in her dissent. It would have the added benefit of providing resources to the whole family to help with educational and other social service needs.

Rob Dickson, OPSs executive director of information management services, has said OPS and Cox hope to have the bus rolling within months.
The Tangier Shrine Center, will host its annual spaghetti feed fundraiser from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Sunday. Attendees can dine in at the center, located at 2823 S. 84 St., or pick up a meal-to-go using the drive-through option on the east side of the building.

Dinners include spaghetti, homemade meatballs, salad, bread and butter, coffee and water. A cash bar featuring beer, wine, pop, and mixed drinks will also be available. A limited quantity of hand-filled cannolis (chocolate, vanilla, and lemon) will also be available for purchase.

Our drive-through is popular, said Shriner Frank Kroupa. More than 2,000 people take advantage of the convenience of a take-out dinner each year, because they dont even have to get out of their cars.

Advance tickets are available for $8 each at the Tangier Shrine Center from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m. through Friday. Tickets at the door are $10 per person.

The fundraiser is open to the public. Proceeds are for the benefit of Tangier Shrine activities. The event is one of the organizations largest fundraisers each year, second only to the Tangier Shrine Circus held each year in February. Payments are not deductible as charitable contributions. For more information, call 402-392-0404.
'Golden era' of UK ties continues Updated: 2016-09-09 07:45 By Li Xiaokun(China Daily Europe)

British Prime Minister Theresa May brushed aside uncertainties about relations between Beijing and London, saying the "golden era of relations will continue".

She made the remarks on Sept 5 on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Hangzhou. She then had a one-on-one meeting with President Xi Jinping.

By using the term "golden era of relations", May echoed her predecessor, David Cameron, who stepped down this year after Britain's referendum on European Union membership.

"It will be an opportunity to discuss how we can take forward the golden era of relations between our two countries and build a strong economic and global partnership that works in the interests of both," she said of the meeting with Xi.

"This is my first visit to China, and I'd like to thank the Chinese government and the people of Hangzhou for welcoming us here and holding a magnificent summit."

On the proposed Hinkley Point nuclear project in southwest England, she added: "I've been clear that the decision will be taken this month. Our relationship with China is about more than Hinkley, if you look at the investment from China in various other parts of the United Kingdom."

After taking office, May delayed her final decision on the power station, which is to be partly funded by China.

When asked about the delay, Lord Mayor of London Jeffrey Mountevans told Xinhua News Agency that the city wants to see the issue resolved rapidly because it is keen on partnerships with Chinese businesses.

In their meeting, Xi and May vowed to boost "mutual understanding and trust". They agreed to enhance cooperation in trade, investment, finance and legal enforcement.

lixiaokun@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily European Weekly 09/09/2016 page15)
Worn, soft white headstones lean in the soft dirt under the branches of a large shade tree. A few feet away, gray granite markers shine as the sun filters between the leaves to spotlight them.

A gravel road dissolves into two dirt tracks as it draws near the small one-acre pioneer cemetery that sits just north of Highway 370 at about 200th Street out of sight of the passing traffic.

This site, known as the New Pennsylvania Cemetery, is where Judy Ferren found herself led when she visited Gretna for the first time.

That trail just popped up in front of me, and I couldnt help but follow it, said Ferren, who lives in Wyoming.

The trail shes referring to is the one that traces her family history to Gretna as her ancestors moved west across the United States.

Ferren has long been interested in her familys history and has studied her mothers writings to learn more.

My mother wrote their history in three notebooks, Ferren said. It was an important thing to do then. It was the only way to pass down the stories.

So, when friends told Ferren that they were moving to Gretna, she immediately made the connection.

I told them I had relatives buried there, Ferren said.

The New Pennsylvania Cemetery is one of about a dozen or so pioneer cemeteries that can be found in Sarpy County, according to Ben Justman, executive director of the Sarpy County Museum.

The cemetery gained its name from the many Pennsylvania Dutch families who had immigrated to Nebraska and had members buried there, Justman said. The cemetery formally was created in 1875 when Mary Long granted the land to the New Pennsylvania Cemetery Association, which has long been defunct. The first known burial at the cemetery is Sarah Rishel in 1868, which pre-dates the sites creation, and the last known burial was Frank Rishel in 1935.

Ferrens friends were able to find the cemetery and share some photos with her several yeas ago. When she visited earlier this summer, she visited the cemetery to piece together more of her familys past. On her most recent visit last month, she continued to research her ancestry through historical documents and other sources.

It was interesting to make the connection, Ferren said.

Standing at the cemetery in May, Ferren found herself with more questions than answers.

Looking around, she saw multiple Rishels and other names she recognized from her research. She located the grave of her great-great-grandmother, Sarah Rishel, as well as siblings of her grandmother.

I wondered how many more of them Im related to, Ferren said. You wonder what brought them here.

Ferren said she knew family members had come west from Pennsylvania, and her grandmother was born in Gretna. Ferren herself has never lived in Gretna; her mother was born in Wichita, Kansas, and Ferren has spent her life in Wyoming.

Its just been an interesting journey to find out whats there, said Ferren, who plans to continue her genealogy research.
LINCOLN  Embattled State Sen. Bill Kintner called on Omaha Sen. Ernie Chambers on Thursday to apologize to his wife for a recent poem.

The poem, distributed Wednesday, said Kintners use of a state computer to have cybersex with a woman he met online has raised speculation about whether Kintners wife was satisfying him at home.

The Papillion senator shot back with a statement calling the poem a new low, even for Chambers.

It was absolutely inappropriate for Ernie Chambers to attack and make fun of my wife and her serious medical condition, the Papillion senator said. I have said nothing about Chambers vile attacks on me, but my wife has done nothing to him.

Chambers responded that he will not apologize because he is not the person who wronged Kintners wife.

He said the poem, titled Superman and Wonder Woman; Wifey  Odd Woman Out, was not an attack on Kintners wife or her medical condition. Rather, he said it gives voice to questions that others have raised in the wake of the cybersex incident.

If he respects his wife, he will get out of public office, Chambers said. Hes trying to hide behind his sick wifes skirts.

Lauren Kintner, who is Gov. Pete Ricketts policy research office director, was diagnosed with ovarian cancer shortly after the July 2015 incident.

Chambers poem makes no mention of her health, but Kintner said that is implied in lines suggesting that she was not meeting his needs.

Kintner has been under fire since admitting that he engaged in cybersex while in Boston in July 2015. He and a woman conducted a sexually explicit conversation on Skype, which resulted in both engaging in masturbation.

Kintner reported the incident to the Nebraska State Patrol after the woman attempted to extort money from him.

Last month he reached a settlement agreement with the Nebraska Accountability and Disclosure Commission over his misuse of state equipment. As part of the agreement, Kintner was assessed a $1,000 fine.

Ricketts, along with numerous members of the Nebraska Legislature, have urged Kintner to resign over the incident. Last week the Legislatures Executive Board issued a formal request for his resignation.

Kintner has refused to step down, saying that his decision to stay in the Legislature is guided by God. He said he has apologized for sinning against his wife and she has forgiven him.

On Thursday, he said he stands by the decision to stay on.

Nothing else has changed except my anger about this, he said.
A driver for a subsidiary of the Greater Omaha packing company died Thursday when he was pinned between his truck and the trailer he was hooking up to it, the company said in a statement to The World-Herald.

Omaha police said they were investigating the death at the meatpacking companys facilities in South Omaha as an apparent accident.

The incident was reported at 3:01 p.m. Responding police officers found a person, who later would be pronounced dead, next to a semitrailer truck, said Officer Michael Pecha of the Omaha Police Department.

Friday, Mark Theisen, Greater Omahas general counsel, identified the man as 29-year-old Robert Williams II of Aurora, Colorado. Williams joined Greater Omaha Express, a trucking company that is a subsidiary of Greater Omaha, about a year ago.

Police said early indications were that the mans death was the result of an accident.

Greater Omaha said several regulatory bodies would investigate the cause of the accident, and that it wouldnt speculate on a cause before the investigations were complete.

Brent Falgione, president of Greater Omaha Express, said in a statement that the company was deeply saddened by the loss of its employee.

Everyones thoughts and prayers are with the family and friends of our team member and everyone affected by this tragedy, he said in the statement given to The World-Herald.
Nora McGill wants her daughter to eat another chicken finger, the only entree the College of St. Mary cafeteria is serving that appeals to the picky eater.

But on this particular night, 4-year-old Marie has ants in her pants. She jumps on her chair. She stuffs french fries into her mouth and throws her arms wide while singing a song from Frozen.

She tries to distract her mom with the news that she can see her day care, the building across campus where Nora just picked her up minutes before. But eventually Marie gives in, because she knows the chicken might stand between her and the self-serve ice cream machine  and the play time waiting for her with her friends in Madonna Hall.

As soon as they step off the elevator, Marie jumps into the scrum in the common room, where a few moms are sitting to watch Madonna Halls littlest residents play. They have a shared kitchenette, TV and study spaces like most dorms, but Madonna Hall also has foam floors, a little indoor jungle gym and tons of toys.

I need to get my degree and provide for both of us, so I can send her to school, too, Nora said.

College of St. Mary has offered single mothers on-campus housing since 2000, but a dedicated residence hall was built for the Mothers Living and Learning program in 2012. Its the newest building on campus, and a $10 million investment the college says reflects its commitment to improve the experience and graduation rates for single moms.

Nora, who will get her bachelors degree in nursing next May, took a few classes before her daughter came along, but she knew it was time to get serious once Marie was born. The Humphrey, Nebraska, native came to College of St. Mary three years ago because the Omaha college is one of few in the country with a dorm for single moms and their children.

Metro Community College recently decided to look at whether to build student housing and whether its feasible to build specialized dorms for veterans or single mothers.

At College of St. Mary, the cost is the same as living in the colleges other dorm, and the mothers pay the same tuition rates. But their children eat free on their meal plan, and they have a built-in support system of baby sitters and a network of college staffers who consider the moms success to be their jobs.

The single mothers success rate still lags behind the rest of the college.

The college estimates almost 18 percent of its students, both residents and commuter, are unmarried mothers. Between 2008 and 2012, only one in five of the mothers who were first-time students and commuted came back for their sophomore years.

Among the mothers living on campus, nearly half returned. But that still falls below the overall 79 percent of undergrads who returned for their sophomore year at the college last year.

Tara Knudson-Carl, vice president for student development at the college, said officials hope continual improvements to the program will help give single mothers the support they need to get a bachelors degree.

We want them to walk across that stage and get that diploma, Knudson-Carl said. Anything we can do is a benefit to us and them, if they are able to stay here and succeed.

The colleges program has grown over the years from nine students on campus in 2000 to about 22 this year. The new dorm has the capacity for 48 moms, who can have two children under 10 and share their suite-style dorm space with a roommate. Kids eat free on their mothers meal plan, and theres a day care center on campus.

The college has added staff to the program, Knudson-Carl said, and shifted focus to try to tackle more of the non-college problems the students may be facing. Students in campus ministry offer free baby-sitting twice a week, and many work-study jobs allow students to occasionally bring their children along.

Sheena Parks, director of single parent success, also teaches a mandatory success class for on-campus moms that covers everything from parenting style to time management to introducing your child to a new boyfriend.

She brings in experts on child custody and support issues for the women, helps them arrange child care and helps them navigate the bureaucracy of financial aid or state benefits.

The first few weeks, they can get really overwhelmed, she said. I just tell them, Get your child to day care and get to class. Well deal with the rest.

Parks meets one-on-one with new moms every month through the first semester and is alerted if their grades suffer or they dont come to class. To draw in more commuting moms, she works with a student organization for mothers to plan family activities on campus.

Mothers who live in Madonna Hall say the program gave them a chance for a traditional college experience they thought they lost to motherhood.

Nora, 25, cant imagine how Marie will take it next year when she tells her its time to leave behind their world with friends behind every door and dozens of women who dote on her. Nora will also miss having a community of women like her, balancing the competing stresses of college life and motherhood.

We all have similar histories and similarities in our lives, and were doing something thats very hard, Nora said. And were doing it very well.

Alex Gaskin, 20, moved with her two children from Texas to attend College of St. Mary because of Madonna Hall. Its hard to be away from her family; Gaskin sees other women who have parents or a childs father nearby to give them a break, and she doesnt have that.

But when she got sick last fall, her friends in the dorm stepped up and took care of Zaebrii, 2, and Princeton, 1. She feels like her burden is a little lighter by being part of the community there.

School was never not an option for me, Alex said. But this was above and beyond what I expected.

Even with all the support, its not an easy path, said College of St. Mary graduate Robin Whalen. She lived in the dorms with her children while she finished her masters degree in occupational therapy, and she said she saw many friends derailed by money problems or overwhelmed with tough classes. She took a few years off herself, but she came back.

I saw so many moms fail, who tried to make it work and couldnt, Whalen said.

But shes also got many friends still working at their degrees from Madonna Hall. Whalen and her kids still get together with their friends there once a week, either on the campus or at their new townhouse. It was hard for the whole family to leave the campus, and her kids miss it a lot  especially their friends, and that self-serve ice cream machine.
Federal authorities are launching an investigation into the Thursday death of a truck driver at an Omaha meatpacking facility.

The U.S. Department of Labors Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, said Friday that the man was working at a loading dock at Greater Omaha Packing, 3001 L St., when the death occurred.

The preliminary indication was the brakes were not set on the tractor, and the victim was pinned between the trailer and an adjacent trailer, said Scott Allen, an OSHA spokesman.

We firmly believe these types of incidents can be prevented if all OSHA standards are being followed, Allen said.

OSHA investigates all fatalities under its jurisdiction, Allen said. The federal agency has up to six months to complete an investigation.

The man who died was Robert Williams II, 29, of Aurora, Colorado, said Mark Theisen, Greater Omahas general counsel. Williams joined Greater Omaha Express, a trucking company that is a subsidiary of Greater Omaha, about a year ago.

Greater Omaha Packing declined to comment on the OSHA investigation.

The company said that several regulatory bodies would investigate the cause of the accident, and that it wouldnt speculate on a cause before the investigations were complete.

The trucking divisions president said the company was deeply saddened by the event.

Omaha police were investigating the death as an apparent accident, said Officer Michael Pecha.

Authorities were summoned to the dock at 3:01 p.m. and found a man next to a semitrailer truck. He was pronounced dead at 3:27 p.m.
An Omaha boy involved in a 2015 robbery and killing at Miller Park must remain at Boys Town during an open-ended probation rather than move into his mothers home, a juvenile court judge said Thursday.

Jarrell Milton, now 13, is thriving since his placement at Boys Town last November, according to a state probation office report sent to Judge Wadie Thomas Jr. He has been doing well in school and taking part in psychological treatment, the report said.

Jarrell, you have obviously been doing a good job at completing your treatment, Thomas said. You will remain on open-ended probation, participate in therapy (sessions), attend school  with no absences or tardies  and participate in all meetings.

Defense attorney Matt Kahler told the judge that his client wanted to be returned to his mothers home. Barring that decision, the teen would like his stepfather to be allowed to visit him at Boys Town.

Hes not going to be going home today, Thomas said. He needs to stay at Boys Town.

The judge said the stepfathers gang ties prevent him from being allowed on the youths visitor list.

If you want to schedule an evidentiary hearing to discuss (visitors), then I will consider it, Thomas said. But not at this point.

Milton, then 12 years old, initially was charged in juvenile court with first-degree murder in the June 29, 2015, slaying of Jamymell Ray. Prosecutors agreed instead to charge the boy with criminal conspiracy and use of a weapon to commit a felony.

Shuntayvious Primes-Willis, now 16, pleaded guilty in April to second-degree murder and felony weapon use in the slaying. He was sentenced to 20 to 30 years on the murder charge and 10 to 20 years on the weapons charge.

The deadly shooting occurred after Ray and Charles Fisher, 31, were called to the park to sell marijuana to Primes-Willis, Milton and his now-19-year-old brother, Jamar Milton. The older brother will go on trial in November on charges of first-degree murder, two counts of use of a weapon to commit a felony and first-degree assault.

Prosecutors say that as Fisher and Ray pulled up in a car, the three boys rushed down a hill, weapons drawn, police said. The two older boys fired their weapons.

Ray died after being shot in the head and neck by two different-caliber bullets  a 9 mm and a .22-caliber. A 9 mm bullet struck Fisher in the shoulder, but he survived.

Primes-Willis was found guilty of using a 9 mm handgun to shoot Ray and Fisher through the drivers-side window. Prosecutors have alleged that Jamar Milton shot Ray with a .22-caliber handgun, causing his death.

Jarrell Milton was carrying a .45-caliber handgun with a silver top and an extended magazine, Fisher told police. Police did not find bullet casings from that gun but did find the boys fingerprints on the passenger side of Fishers car.
LINCOLN  The Nebraska Supreme Court has upheld a $259,218 judgment against the City of Lincoln for wrongly accusing a woman, both online and in a television broadcast, of stealing money.

In an opinion published Friday, the high court rejected the citys argument that the damages for slander and libel should be negated. The court did, however, reverse the lower courts order that the city publish a retraction.

Shayla Funk sued the Lincoln Police Department after her image appeared on the Lincoln-Lancaster County Crime Stoppers website in 2013 with claims that she was a crook who ripped off an ATM with a stolen debit card. Police also featured the case in two TV news broadcasts.

But the bank had provided police the wrong segment of surveillance video. Months after the city had been notified of the mistake, Funks image remained on the Facebook page of Crime Stoppers.

Vince Powers, Funks lawyer, argued that the police could have easily ruled out his client as a suspect by checking her banking records.

What this case really demonstrates is the power the government has when they say youre guilty, Powers said. Nobody will believe otherwise.

A message left Friday afternoon with City Attorney Jeff Kirkpatrick was not immediately returned.

Funk said the false accusation humiliated her, damaged her reputation and cost her a job as an occupational therapist. Her employer placed her on unpaid leave after learning about the allegations by Crime Stoppers, and she resigned after she concluded they would no longer trust her.

Lancaster County District Judge Steven Burns ruled in Funks favor and ordered the city to pay her $259,218.

The citys lawyers appealed, arguing the city should have been shielded from civil damages because the mistake occurred as police were trying to solve a crime. Police acted in good faith, not with malice toward Funk, the citys lawyers said.

The Supreme Court disagreed with the citys position and ruled the damage award in the case was proper.

Sufficient evidence supports that Funks reputation was harmed as a result of the citys defamatory statements, said the opinion written by Supreme Court Judge Max Kelch. Not only does the evidence show that the statements affected Funks personal reputation in her hometown of Ewing, but it is also clear that Funks reputation was harmed in the context of her employment.

Because Funk did not specifically demand a retraction in her lawsuit, the Supreme Court reversed an order by the trial judge ordering the city to publish one.
LINCOLN  The Nebraska Supreme Court has affirmed the conviction of Erica Jenkins for the robberies of two men who were murdered by her brother.

It marked the second time in the past three weeks the high court has rejected appeals by Jenkins, 26. Last month, the court upheld her conviction and life sentence for the 2013 murder of Curtis Bradford.

In Fridays ruling, Jenkins challenged the 60 to 100 years in prison she was ordered to serve for the 2013 robberies of Juan Uribe-Pena and Jorge Cajiga-Ruiz. She helped lure the men to Spring Lake Park, where they were shot and killed by her brother, Nikko Jenkins.

Among other issues, Jenkins contended the prosecution should have been prevented from using records tied to her cellphone. Lawyers for Jenkins argued that obtaining the records amounted to an illegal search because Jenkins had an expectation that the records were private. They also asserted investigators failed to establish probable cause before obtaining the records.

The cellphone records showed Jenkins made calls that were routed from cell towers near an apartment of one of the victims as well as the park at the time of the killings.

The Supreme Court disagreed with her argument. The court said the records did not reveal the content of text messages or conversations of Jenkins, only the time and routing information of calls.

In addition, the records were kept by Jenkins cellphone carrier, not the government. And they were not obtained through secret government surveillance. Therefore, the high court said, obtaining the records did not involve a search as defined under the state and federal constitutions.

The court upheld the convictions and sentence pronounced by Douglas County District Judge Peter Bataillon.
LINCOLN  Nebraska property owners will get a slightly smaller break on their property taxes this year, compared with last years record amount.

State tax officials announced Friday that this years property tax credit will be $89.57 for every $100,000 of valuation.

That means the owner of a $150,000 house will get $134.36 subtracted from his or her tax bill.

Last year, the credit stood at a record $94.09 per $100,000.

The decline in credit size results from an increase in the value of the states taxable property.

The Department of Revenue calculates the credit by dividing the amount in the Property Tax Credit Fund by the total valuation of taxable property in Nebraska.

The fund remained at $204 million this year, the same size as last year. But the value of taxable property across the state grew 5 percent, to $227.7 billion, meaning the tax credit fund has to stretch further.

Gov. Pete Ricketts defended the program, while saying he wants to see further property tax reform.

Working with the Legislature, we have been able to deliver over $408 million worth of property tax relief over the last two years, he said. This is meaningful property tax relief for Nebraska families, and I will continue to support structural relief.

State Sen. Mike Gloor of Grand Island, the Revenue Committee chairman, said the states commitment to the tax credit program has not diminished, even if individual credits may have shrunk.

We did what we felt we could afford to do from a dollars and cents standpoint, he said.

He said the credits could offset as much of a property owners tax bill this year as last year if local governments control their property tax spending and reduce tax levies to account for higher valuations.

Property taxes are locally assessed, locally collected and locally controlled, he said.

Sen. Jim Smith of Papillion, another Revenue Committee member, said he doesnt think property tax credits are the most effective way to provide property tax relief because of the disconnect between state efforts and local government decisions.

He said he hopes to work on a broad tax policy next year that provides both incentives for economic growth and stable property tax relief.

The property tax credit program began in 2007, with a budget of $105 million. State lawmakers and the governor have added to the fund in past years, with the latest bump coming in 2015.

Money for the credits comes from state sales and income tax payments.

Beginning next year, owners of farm and ranch land will get additional tax credits. Lawmakers passed a bill this year that directs $20 million into ag land property tax credits.

The credits appear as a line on the annual property tax statement.

The property tax credit does not alter property tax levies, which are set by school boards and other local governments. Rather, the credit reduces the amount of tax that homeowners and other property holders have to pay.

Individual property tax bills are determined by the spending of local schools and other government subdivisions, the valuation of the persons property and the valuation of all other properties in each subdivision.
Chasing truth through literature Updated: 2016-09-09 07:46 By Yang Yang(China Daily Europe)

A prize-winning author from Belarus uses interviews with remarkable people to dig deep below the surface of history

Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievich, the 2015 Nobel laureate for literature, toured Shanghai, Beijing and Suzhou in August.

The last time she visited China was in 1989, as a member of a delegation from the Soviet Union. China has changed tremendously, she says.

Nobel Laureate Svetlana Alexievich receives the Honored International Writer award at the Beijing International Book Fair on Aug 25. Photos Provided to China Daily Chinese readers line up to meet Alexievich at a book-signing event in Suzhou, Jiangsu province, in August.

"I am very much surprised to see your new houses and roads after going through the 30-year reform. We have also been reforming in the last 30 years, but it's still old houses, old airplanes and cars," she says.

"There is a saying in Europe: Don't talk about the future; the future has already disappeared. Nothing you talk about will be realized. But here I see future and hope. And I admire you for that."

Her latest book, Second-hand Time: The Last of the Soviets, was published in China this year.

Her trip was timed to coincide with the recent Shanghai Book Fair and Beijing International Book Fair.

The curious crowds asked many questions of the 68-year-old writer: How do you do your interviews? How can your books based on interviews be called literature? How do you get closer to the truth?

Instead of purely chronicling history, she says that for decades she has been recording the emotions of the time, the soul of history. That's how she turns her interviews with people into literature.

She insists that she was not trying to collect horrors of wars or the 30-year history before the Soviet Union disintegrated to scare people. Instead, she wants to spread love through writing.

In 1985, Alexievich published her first book, The Unwomanly Face of War, followed by well-known titles such as Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War and Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster.

Her latest book is the last in her chronicles of what has been termed the history of the Red Man.

Second-hand Time comprises her interviews from 1991 to 2012, in which Alexievich has ordinary Russian citizens recount the past 30 years, showing what it has been like to live in the Soviet Union and in the new Russia.

"I'm interested in little people," she said in her Nobel Prize acceptance speech.

"The little, great people, is how I would put it, because suffering expands people. In my books these people tell their own little histories, and big history is told along the way."

In Second-hand Time, she recorded people's memories of oppression, famine, terror and massacres - memories that still live with them although history has turned the page. Now people struggle to fit into a society obsessed with consumerism.

As Chinese literary critic Li Jingze put it: "The Russian people suffered from tremendous trauma that they have not recovered from yet. This trauma goes beyond social ideology, and it branded each person."

Alexievich was born to a Belarusian father and a Ukrainian mother, and spent her childhood in the countryside. She talked with village women who lost their fathers, husbands and sons in wars.

"What I remember most is that women talked about love, not death. They would tell stories about saying goodbye to the men they loved the day before they went to war. They would talk about waiting for them, and how they were still waiting," she said in her Nobel Prize speech.

Disappointments, doubts, anxiety, misery, horror, evil and death prevail in Second-hand Time, but so do love, dreams and goodness.

As a student, Alexievich read a lot of books and asked a lot of questions that her teachers could not answer.

Alexievich became a journalist in 1976, which provided many chances to observe the true lives people were living, which were not reflected in official histories about World War II, the Afghanistan War and the Chernobyl disaster.

Her teacher Ales Adamovich's idea about "super-literature" that can provide the truth of the nightmares of the century inspired Alexievich to adopt polyphony in writing, allowing different voices to speak their equally important stories.

She did hundreds of interviews for each book, spending many hours talking to each person.

Alexievich said in Suzhou that she enjoys a happy life because she loves her career.

She currently is thinking more about love and death, rather than human madness. Her new books are about love, aging and death.

yangyangs@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily European Weekly 09/09/2016 page22)
Some visits to Tecumseh State Prison will resume Friday after parts of the facility were locked down a week ago amid threats of violent attacks upon its staff.

Tecumseh remained in modified operations on Thursday, a State Department of Corrections spokeswoman said. Inmate movement was controlled and was to be gradually restored.

Inmates have access to phones and have been able to notify relatives and friends, but visitors should call the facility at 402-335-5998 for specifics.

Two Tecumseh housing units were locked down on Sept. 2. In the third unit, inmates movements were curtailed.

The prison was the scene of a riot last year in which two inmates died. It has seen numerous disturbances since, including the assault of an officer in late July.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP)  Hillary Clinton blasted Donald Trump Thursday for his condemnation of American generals and his praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying her Republican opponent had failed at proving he can be commander in chief.

Every Republican holding or seeking office in this country should be asked if they agree with Donald Trump about these statements, Clinton said in a press conference.

The governments most senior Republican, for one, says he does not share Trumps complimentary view of the Russian leader. Speaking to reporters on Thursday, House Speaker Paul Ryan called Putin an aggressor that does not share our interests.

Asked whether hed be comfortable with Trump as president, Ryan demurred, Ill leave it at that.

The discussion followed a Wednesday night national security forum in which the presidential candidates made back-to-back appearances. Clinton was repeatedly challenged on her controversial email use at the State Department and her vote as a senator for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. She also fleshed out several national security priorities if she is elected, including vowing to defeat the Islamic State without putting U.S. troops on the ground in Iraq or Syria.

Trump did little to counter criticism that he lacks detailed policy proposals, particularly regarding the Islamic State. He both insisted he has a private blueprint for defeating the extremist group and that he would demand a plan from military leaders within 30 days of taking office. But he was also harshly critical of the military, saying Americas generals have been reduced to rubble under President Barack Obama. Asked to square his request for military options with that criticism, Trump said simply: Theyll probably be different generals.

The Republican also renewed his praise for Putin and his disdain for Obama, saying that the Russian enjoyed an 82 percent approval rating and arguing that its a very different system and I dont happen to like the system, but certainly, in that system, hes been a leader, far more than our president has been a leader.

Speaking to reporters Thursday, Clinton suggested that she agreed with Democrats who say she is being held to a different standard in the White House race. I find it frustrating, she said. But its part of the landscape we live in.

A few of Trumps statements at the Wednesday forum drew rebukes  if mild ones  from two Republican senators from Iowa and Nebraska.

Trump stood by his 2013 tweet that appeared to blame military sexual assaults on men and women serving together, but he added that he would not seek to remove women from the military.

Sens. Joni Ernst of Iowa and Deb Fischer of Nebraska, members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, both mentioned their own commitment to tackling the problem of sexual assaults.

I dont agree with the way he phrased that tweet, Fischer said.

Ernst, who served in the Iowa National Guard, said sexual assault is never OK.

One thing that Mr. Trump did forget is  and I feel very strongly about men and women serving in the military  but one thing he did forget and maybe should have emphasized a little bit more is the fact that there are so many assaults that happen that are men-on-men and we see a lot of those survivors coming forward, Ernst said. And so we dont want to take away the importance of stressing that sexual assault is never OK.

Ernst also was asked about Trumps positive comments about the strength of Putins leadership.

Ernst said American leadership has been lacking and many are asking for it.

Does that mean somebody like Putin? Absolutely not, Ernst said.

As for Trumps comments about U.S. generals, Ernst said it would be up to Trump if hes elected to evaluate the leadership of top military officers.

I hate to say it but I do think a number of our generals have been really hamstrung by the politics of the situation that we are in right now, Ernst said. Youll hear a lot of rhetoric out there on the trail but I think we have some tremendous leaders in the military, and what they need to do is present factual information and then it would be up to our president to make the determination how we handle that situation.

World-Herald staff writer Joseph Morton contributed to this report.

Copyright 2016 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
They came by the thousands, making slow, determined progress westward  in covered wagons, by horse, by handcart: pioneers on the Oregon-California Trail, two decades before the Transcontinental Railroad closed the distance to the Pacific coast.

During the 1840s, the main passage through Nebraskas Wildcat Hills was Robidoux Pass in whats now Scotts Bluff County. Native Americans had long lived in the area, of course. The earliest Europeans to squeeze through these narrows were probably fur traders in the 1820s.

The federal government has officially recognized the importance of Robidoux Pass by designating it as one of 20 national historic landmarks in Nebraska  structures or sites deemed significant because of a connection to a notable individual or event or because a site offers important insight into the past.

In a year when Americans are marking the centennial of the National Park Service, these landmarks deserve public appreciation as part of the celebration.

Many of Nebraskas historic landmarks are houses with links to familiar figures from the states past: J. Sterling Morton in Nebraska City, George Norris in McCook, Willa Cather in Red Cloud and William Jennings Bryan in Lincoln. The whole of the Boys Town property also has this designation.

Other Nebraskas sites include the USS Hazard, a Navy minesweeper that saw service during World War II, now at Freedom Park near Eppley Airfield, as well as the Captain Meriwether Lewis Dredge, launched in 1931 and used by Army Corps of Engineers to dredge the Missouri River bottom, now on display in Brownville.

A notable site in Thurston County is the Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte Memorial Hospital, a former hospital named after the first Native American woman to earn a medical degree. Picotte (1865-1915) was born on the Omaha Reservation and received her medical degree from the Womens Medical College of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

Picotte, for whom an elementary school in Omaha is named, opened the hospital in 1913 in Walthill. The facility ended medical services in the 1940s but has been preserved and continues to serve community needs for the Omaha Tribe.

Picotte was unofficial negotiator, secretary and translator for Omaha tribal members seeking assistance.

Archaeologically important sites with links to centuries of Native American heritage make up a considerable number of Nebraskas 20 national historic landmarks. These areas generally are not open to the public. Nebraskas sites include:

 The Signal Butte site in Scotts Bluff County. Archaeologists have found evidence of Native American habitation in three different eras: 3000-2000 B.C., 1000 B.C.-A.D. 500 and A.D. 900-1700.

Thats correct: Evidence of human habitation in the Nebraska Panhandle some 5,000 years ago.

 The Schultz site in Valley County in central Nebraska. The site was occupied at times between A.D. 1 and A.D. 500. The people there were among the first in Nebraska to manufacture pottery. Evidence indicates trade links both to the northern Rockies and to the Gulf of Mexico.

 The Pike-Pawnee village site in Webster County in south-central Nebraska, occupied intermittently from the 1770s to the 1820s. Archaeologists have found remains of lodge sites, cemeteries and hoop game courts.

Iowa, with 25 national historic landmarks, also is home to several archaeological sites such as the Davis Oriole earthlodge site in Mills County.

Other national historic landmarks in western Iowa include the Grenville M. Dodge House in Council Bluffs, the William P. Hepburn House (home of a congressman in the late 1800s and early 1900s) in Clarinda and the Woodbury County Courthouse in Sioux City.

The Midlands past has many different facets highlighted by these sites, from the modern era going back deep in the human experience. These notable locales help us better understand who we are, where we live and our regions place in history.
Would he go hard or go soft? That was the mainstream media template for judging Donald Trumps speech on immigration in Phoenix last week.

The verdict: hard. How Trump got from Point A to Point A on immigration, was the headline in the Washington Posts recap.

Similarly, the often-insightful Talking Points Memo blogger Josh Marshall characterized Trumps discourse as hate speech. Precisely what solution Trump is calling for is almost beside the point.

Thats precisely wrong. Marshall found the Phoenix crowds raucous shouts distasteful, and so did I. But a search through Trumps prepared text and his occasional digressions fails to disclose anything that can be characterized as hate speech.

Instead it discloses some serious critiques and proposals for recasting our immigration laws, which almost everyone agrees need changing.

Start near the end, with the 10th of Trumps 10 points. He notes that weve admitted 59 million immigrants since the last major revision of immigration law in 1965 and that many of these arrivals have greatly enriched our country. No asides about criminals or rapists.

Then he proposes a major policy change: to select immigrants based on their likelihood of success in U.S. society, and their ability to be financially self-sufficient . . . to choose immigrants based on merit, skill and proficiency.

Thats not racism or hate speech, and its not out of line with American tradition.

Emma Lazarus oft-quoted poem commends America for welcoming your tired, your poor, your huddled masses and the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. But during the great wave of immigration from eastern and southern Europe from 1892 to 1914, the Ellis Island inspectors, in line with national policy, excluded those deemed incapable of supporting themselves as well as those with communicable diseases.

And the United States deported immigrants judged to be terrorists. American immigration policy even then wasnt completely open door.

Trump seems to be calling, in non-provocative language, for changing immigration law to give priority to high-skill immigrants, as do the immigration laws of Canada and Australia.

Thats not racist: Those countries admit plenty of non-whites. But they do require proficiency in English (or French, in Canada).

Both have higher foreign-born percentages of population than the United States, and both have students who score higher on PISA international achievement tests than U.S. students do. No wonder a diplomat from one of those countries told me, half in jest, Please do not adopt our immigration system.

Serious experts concede that the 1965 immigration act resulted in an unexpected flow of low-skill immigrants, especially, but not only, from Mexico.

Most serious scholars agree that has tended to reduce, at least a little, wages for low-skill Americans. Do we really need another inrush of unskilled workers in the next decades?

Near the beginning of his speech, Trump said, The media and my opponent discuss one thing, and only this one thing: the needs of people living here illegally. Thats an exaggeration, but not by much: Mainstream media judges Trump hard or soft depending on what he says about those living in the country illegally.

The central issue is not the needs of the 11 million illegal immigrants  or however many there may be, he went on. The only one core issue is the well-being of the American people.

To some, this sounds like bigotry, prejudice against foreigners, a preference for a mostly (but far from totally) white populace over a vastly larger (and mostly non-white) humanity. They instinctively prefer Hillary Clintons version of open borders, allowing anyone who gets here and isnt criminally convicted to stay.

Trumps answer came earlier in the day, in Mexico City, as he shook hands and spoke cordially with President Enrique Pena Nieto. I like and admire him, Trump said; he loves his country and I love mine.

Pena Nietos invitation, much criticized in Mexico, was prompted by his need to get along with whoever is elected U.S. president. That need likewise prompted his cautious remarks about Trump in a joint press conference with Barack Obama earlier this summer.

Trumps threats of trade retaliation and a suggestion he might not honor NATO obligations provide rationales for voting against him as irresponsibly reckless. His immigration proposals dont.

His proposals for visa tracking and E-Verify validation of job applicants  similar to Marco Rubios  would marginally reduce the population of those living here illegally, as would his deportation of some immigrants.

More important, though ignored by mainstream media, is that his policies would produce more high-skill immigrants and Hillary Clintons plan would produce more low-skill immigrants. Which is better for America?
Schools should be safe places for all

Transgender students need supportive school environments. As an associate professor of sociology at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, my research consistently points to the need for safe schools for trans students. They experience higher absence rates, lower GPAs and lower odds of getting to college.

I work with Proud Horizons, an LGBTQ social and support group for youth. Many in this group are trans and gender nonconforming youths. These students discuss being bullied, harassed and not feeling safe in Omaha Public Schools schools. This situation must be comprehensively addressed (including policies for names and pronouns, bathroom/locker room access, bullying prevention and support structures for student success).

I encourage parents, friends, allies and trans people to contact their school board and point them toward the resource that the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network has regarding trans-inclusive schools.

Trans students are just like any other students  they need a space to learn and a space to bring their best and full self to school. Without protection from bullying and harassment and policies that explicitly protect their rights to be themselves, trans students are unable to fully thrive in our local schools.

Jay A. Irwin, Omaha

Keep the kids close to home

Instead of busing thousands of students each year, lets go back to using neighborhood schools. If you want to stress diversity, have teachers stay at one school for a year and then move on to another.

It would be a lot cheaper to pay the teachers a little extra for their time and travel. Let the kids walk or ride their bicycles to school again. Theyll network with friends and get some fresh air and exercise.

Tony Syslo, Omaha

Killers dont reason before their crimes

I disagree with Sept. 5 Public Pulse writer Dale Monsell (Give would-be killers second thoughts), who wrote, Common sense says the death penalty would serve as a deterrent if it were actually enforced.

His position assumes that people think before killing another person. I doubt that.

Some killers are drunk when they commit murder. Others are high on drugs. Many are irate.

Thinking seems to occur after the fact in most killings, if it occurs at all. Furthermore, some states enforce the death penalty more consistently than others. (Texas and Florida come to mind.) If Monsell were correct, these states would show lower murder rates than others. In fact, studies have shown that states that enforce the death penalty have higher murder rates than those that dont.

In November, I will vote to retain the repeal of the death penalty, and I hope that many other Public Pulse readers will do likewise.

Sara Pahl, Omaha

Address recidivism rate as well

There is much talk about staff turnover rates at prisons, but I wonder about the prisoners who will ultimately end up back in prison after theyve been released.

According to the National Institute of Justice, about two-thirds of released prisoners were rearrested within three years of release. Why is this number so high?

There is a stigma placed on these inmates at the moment they are sentenced. It is nearly impossible for them to get a decent job once they re-enter society. If they cant get a decent job, most will go right back to what landed them in prison in the first place, whether that be drugs, theft or robbery.

The turnover rate of prison staff is a symptom of overcrowded prisons. If our prisons werent so full, the prison staff wouldnt be overworked in the first place.

I believe that in order to change the staff turnover rates, we first need to address the social stigma of released prisoners. Instead of looking at them through the lens of once a criminal, always a criminal, try looking at them as people who just lost their way.

Kyla Buettner, Omaha

On the brink of financial disaster

When people talk about tax subsidies from the government, they must remember that the government does not grow money, it just prints more or borrows it.

When President Barack Obama and the Democrats took control of Congress, our national debt was $10.7 trillion. When Obama leaves office, it will be $20 trillion.

People need to wake up and understand that hard choices will have to be made by the next president or some day we will be in deep trouble. And giving people everything they want instead of what people need is the problem.

D. Mark ONeill, Omaha

Set a broadband goal of 100 percent

I was somewhat shocked to learn that roughly four in 10 of the nations schools, enrolling almost half of American students, do not have high-speed Internet service (Broadband for all begins with more public Wi-Fi, Sept. 6 More Commentary).

I hope this is not true for Nebraska schools. I want us to be at 100 percent availability in schools and public libraries. It is not good enough to say were working on it. We need to set a deadline with a process to ensure that whoever is responsible for meeting this goal is held accountable. This access to knowledge allows people to improve their ability to learn and grow.

Dennis Park, Omaha

Pokemon Go is a menace to society

The inventors of the obnoxious intrusion into personal privacy called Pokemon Go, and its associated disregard for common decency, should be brought up on legal charges similar to charges often leveled against school bullies. The term criminal facilitation immediately comes to mind.

Personal property owners, as well as public and private institutions, are being invaded by the insatiable horde of followers of this game, who show total disregard for the rights and property of those against whom they trespass and whose actions cause significant aesthetic and monetary damage.

Dennis Schafer, Omaha

Healthy options needed to combat obesity

Obesity is a serious issue in America, and it needs to be addressed. Obesity in children has doubled and adult obesity has quadrupled in the past 30 years. Childhood obesity has become one of the most serious health challenges of the century.

I think that obesity would be less of an issue if healthier options at fast-food restaurants were made more available. For instance, instead of french fries, a restaurant could offer a side of fruit. I think people would be more likely to eat healthy if healthier food were more accessible.

I would like see the U.S. Food and Drug Administration push for new regulations that require fast-food restaurants to have to have a certain amount of healthy options for people to choose from.

Samantha Schmid, Chappell, Neb.

The joke is on us and it isnt funny

I was greatly amused by the Sept. 3 Public Pulse letter His word is his bond. Then I realized the letter writer wasnt joking.

How could anyone believe that Donald Trump  the winner of FactCheck.orgs King of Whoppers for 2015  could even be remotely considered honest or trustworthy?

Im shocked that, despite hundreds of stories from reputable news sources about his lies, anyone would trust Trump.

He has refused to pay contractors and has broken promises to workers by declaring bankruptcy several times.

Amazingly, the Republican propaganda network and Hillary Clinton hatemongers have managed to deceive half of the population into supporting a narcissistic scam artist.

It is essential that we ignore the lies and propaganda and vote for Clinton, who cares about her nation. We must defeat Trump, who only cares about himself.

David W. McCord, Omaha

The dangers of social networks

I dont think social networking sites are good for our society. A lot of tragedies have happened because of social networking sites. They allow people to bully, blackmail, tear people down, etc.

Social media has taken over our lives. Instead of being used in a positive way, its being used in a negative manner.

If people used social networking the right way, a lot of suicides and broken friendships could be prevented.

We need to make the world, and the computer world, a better place.

Payje Misegadis, Chappell, Neb.

Not exactly our red carpet

Will the stretch of 13th Street from Missouri Avenue to Martha Street ever be resurfaced? I have bumped along this street for almost 30 years and wonder what kind of impression it must make on people from out of town who visit the Henry Doorly Zoo.

We have a third-rate thoroughfare leading to a first-class tourist attraction. It certainly must cause the tourists to wonder, too.

Lynn M. Richardson, Bellevue
Karnataka to survey all Arabic schools to check if on same page as state board

Karrnataka CM to Modi: Intervene or we will have no drinking water left

Bengaluru

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

Bengaluru, Sept 9: Chief Minister of Karnataka, Siddaramaiah has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to call for a meeting to resolve the Cauvery waters issue.

"By this communication, I earnestly request you not only as the Prime Minister but as the head of the entire federal system to call for a meeting of the Chief Ministers of the states (forthwith on a few hours of notice_ to resolve the impasse,' Siddaramaiah also wrote.

Karnataka bandh: Roads deserted, establishments shut

In the letter written on Friday, Siddaramaiah drew the attention of Modi to the extreme unrest in the Cauvery basin especially in Bangalore (Bengaluru) city following the order of the Supreme Court which directed Karnataka to release 15,000 cusecs of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu for ten days.

"If this continues it would deprive drinking water not only to the residents of Bangalore (Bengaluru) city, but also to the farmers of the Cauvery basin," he wrote.

The present storage in the Mettur reservoir in Tamil Nadu would be more than sufficient to meet the requirement of water for the Samba rice crop.

Siddaramaiah further stated during the all party meet held on September 6th, BJP in the state was of the view that the SC order should not be implemented.

"However, as a constitutional chief executive of the state, I took it upon myself not to disobey the order of the Supreme Court. The release of water as per the directive of the SC has only created more unrest in the state," the letter also states.

OneIndia News
Solar eclipse to be sighted in Bengaluru for 45 minutes: Report

Karnataka gets Rs 7 crore grant from Centre for 2 forensic labs

Raising anti-RSS slogans, three men attack Hindu youth with stones in Shivamogga

Karnataka to survey all Arabic schools to check if on same page as state board

Karnataka bandh: Ramya dragged into controversy over Cauvery

Bengaluru

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia Staff Writer

Bengaluru, Sept 9: A shutdown was called in the whole state of Karnataka against Cauvery river water issue. The call for shutdown was called by pro-Kannada outfits.

[Photos: Karnataka Bandh]

Get all the live updates on the Karnataka bandh here:

Gulbarga (Karnataka): Pro Kannada organizations stage protest against Supreme Court's order on Cauvery water issue pic.twitter.com/ZgS3c6E5SJ  ANI (@ANI_news) September 9, 2016

6.28 pm: Karnataka bandh called by pro-Kannada activists and farmers' association was total in many parts of the state, while stray incidents of arson and violence reported from protesting pockets.

In Bengaluru protested pelted stones at some upscale shops and vandalised vehicles. Some overenthusiastic activists gheraoed some IT companies in Bengaluru. In other parts of state too stray isolated incidents of arson and violence reported. The state is slowly coming back to normal after 6 am.

6.19 pm: While protests over Cauvery was brewing, actor-cum-politician Ramya has been dragged into controversy over her series of tweets accusing her of questioning the intent of farmer's agitation.

However Ramya speaking to OneIndia clarified that "a news media aired views which I have never made in my twitter handle. All tweets are in public domain."

After her visit to Mandya, she just reported in twitter, current condition of farmers those who were on the field and busy at sowing paddy. "I just said farmers are sowing paddy after state released water to canals after I spoke to Siddaramaiah. No were in my series of tweets, I spoke against Karnataka bandh or farmers' stir," she told.

4.40 pm: Miscreants vandalise an auto-rickshaw in Mahalakshmi layout, assault driver.

4.12 pm: Another farmer suicide bid foiled after he made attempts consume poison in Mandya.

4.07 pm: JD(S) leader H D Kumaraswamy condemns lathi charge by police on agitating farmers, holds state government responsible.

3.39 pm: A member of Karnataka Rakshana Vedike stabs self, hospitalised in Bengaluru.

2.30 pm: Farmer, Ramegowda attempts suicide plunging into the river near KRS in Mandya.

1.50 pm: CM Siddaramaiah writes to PM Narendra Modi, seeks immediate intervention on Cauvery water dispute.

1.40 pm: Car bearing Tamil Nadu registration vandalised at Jayanagar 3rd block in Bengaluru.

1.32 pm: Police resort to lathi-charge on protesting farmers at KRS gate in Mandya to stop them from entering the reservoir.

1.09 pm: Cauvery panel to meet on September 12.

1.08 pm: Pro-Kannada activists taking out protest rally from Town Hall to Freedom Park.

12.03 pm: Sandalwood stars addressing protest meet at film chamber.

11.22 am: Protesters attack a biker at CBI road in Bengaluru.

11.13 am: Kannada Federation President Vatal Nagaraj hits out at Kiran Kiran Mazumdar and flaks her statements on bandh.

10.56 am: Miscreants pelt stone at Malabar Gold Palace outlet in Jayanagar 3rd block.

10.38 am: Sanadlwood stars holding protest meet in front of Film Chamber.

9.54 am: Taxi association members hold protest at Town Hall.

9.47 am: Protesters descending at Freedom Park in Bengaluru, to hold massive protest meet.

9.43 am: A delegation from Karnataka Film Chamber of Commerce meets Karnataka Governor Vajubhai Vala.

Also read: [Karnataka bandh: Roads deserted, establishments shut]

Also read: [Karnataka bandh: Essential services to be hit badly on Sept 9]

9.30 am: Karnataka's needs must be addressed first from Cauvery and hope both state Govts can resolve this long dispute amicably, says Kiran Mazumdar.

9.28 am: Former Prime Minister and JD (S) supremo H D Devegowda to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the evening and will discuss Cauvery issue.

Also read: [Karnataka Bandh: Stay indoors, advise police; normal life will be badly hit]

9.18 am: Members of Karnataka Rakshanana Vedike Gherao Manyata Tech Park near Hebbal. Employees of the company were working during the bandh day.

9.02 am: Entrepreneur, Kiran Mazumdar mocks Karnataka bandh says Bengaluru should be remaned as Bandaluru.

Also read: [Behind Karnataka's Anger: Rainfall Deficits In 90% Of State]

Yes we shd rename our city as Bandhaluru https://t.co/Ce6xdGZG9j  Kiran Mazumdar Shaw (@kiranshaw) September 8, 2016

Another Bandh - it's now Bandhaluru where bandhs r affecting productivity - what a sad situation where farmers on both sides can't share  Kiran Mazumdar Shaw (@kiranshaw) September 8, 2016

9.00 am: In city's central bus stand, Majestic - members of Auto-Rickshaw Association beat a cab driver who was plying in the area.

8.50 am: Police seize Tamil Nadu private bus at Majestic in Bengaluru.

8.40 am: Protestors pelt stones at 3 trucks bearing Tamil Nadu registration in Bellary, informed SP Chetan to OneIndia.

8.15 am: Mandya (Karnataka): Pro Kannada organizations call a shut down over Cauvery river water issue.

Mandya (Karnataka): Pro Kannada organizations call a shut down over Cauvery river water issue pic.twitter.com/aAb8DstyC3  ANI (@ANI_news) September 9, 2016

The call for a shutdwon was called after the Karnataka government decided to release Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu in accordance to an order by the Supreme Court.

OneIndia News
Bank holidays in November 2022: Here is the full list of non-working days

ACB raids Delhi Waqf Board office

India

oi-PTI

New Delhi, Sep 8 The Anti-Corruption Branch of the Delhi government today raided Delhi Waqf Board office here in connection with alleged recruitment scam against its chief and AAP MLA Amantullah Khan.

"We have initiated an enquiry into the complaint received about illegal recruitment further action will be taken as per law," said ACB chief Mukesh Kumar Meena.

The ACB team raided the Delhi Waqf Board office in Daryagnaj and spent nearly four hours seeking details of the alleged recruitment during Khan's chairmanship. Amantullah Khan was present when the ACB team reached there.

The ACB will also question different persons associated with the complaint including Amantullah Khan who "might be called" for questioning, said a senior ACB officer.

The team reached the office of Waqf Board at Daryaganj at around 2.30 pm and searched for documents besides seeking details of the recruitment from Waqf officials and Khan.

The ACB had last week launched a "preliminary inquiry" into "recruitment scam" in the Board. The ACB had sent a letter to the Waqf Board last week seeking details including recruitment in 2016, on a complaint by Mohammad Mustafa.

The complaint by Mustafa alleged that Khan had "illegally appointed" several persons including "his friends and relatives" on different posts in the Waqf Board, said the ACB officer.

Khan said that the recruitment's on 20-22 posts under question were held on contract basis by a specially constituted committee for the purpose.

"A recruitment committee was formed which interviewed candidates and appointments were done on contract basis. The posts were advertised beforehand in newspapers. There is no irregularity as alleged," Khan said.

He alleged that ACB is targeting him on the "behest of Lt Governor" for raising "scams" by previous chairmen of Delhi Waqf Board under Sheila Dikshit regime.

"I say there is a very big scam in Delhi Government which happened during the tenure of previous chairmen in Sheila Dikshit regime. I demand the LG who is getting me probed to also direct the agency to probe our complaints against former chairmen Haroon Yusuf and Mateen Ahmad," he added.

PTI
China praised for opening up to space cooperation Updated: 2016-09-09 07:47 By Tuo Yannan(China Daily Europe)

China's status in the international space community is rising as it becomes an active and equal partner, according to Christian Feichtinger, executive director of the International Astronautical Federation.

"We've seen tremendous changes in China, not only in space technology, but also in opening up to the international community," he says.

China's rise to the forefront of space exploration has coincided with its increased involvement on the broader international front, culminating in the country holding the rotating presidency of this year's G20.

The IAF, founded in 1951, has more than 300 members in 66 countries, including some Chinese institutions. Its main missions are to promote cooperation, advance international development, share knowledge, recognize achievements, prepare the workforce of tomorrow and raise awareness on a global scale.

Feichtinger says it's fair to say China has been completing these missions one by one over the past decade.

In August, China launched the world's first quantum communication satellite, Micius, from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on a Long March 2-D rocket.

This year also saw the inaugural launch of the Long March 7 rocket from Wenchang, Hainan province, which was a turning point in China's space exploration, according to Feichtinger.

Not only did the launch take the space industry to a new level, but also consolidated China's position in the international space community, he says.

"China has positioned itself today as a player in the technology field that is not repeating what others have done before, but is able to work and go on its own development path and come up with innovative solutions," he adds.

He believes these solutions will complement the assets that the global space community already has.

In 2013, China held the International Astronautical Congress with the IAF in Beijing.

"For the first time we saw that China is totally opening up to the international space community, and we were excited to see that we had a record 3,700 participants at this congress from around the world."

The development of China's space industry advancing quickly, accompanied by strong scientific technology, such as "the first manned launch, the first extravehicular activity, the first docking, the first space station module, and the first manned space station", Feichtinger says.

"China is following a well-defined path, and is following this path very thoroughly, in the area of human space flight, deep-space exploration and navigation with (its independently developed) Beidou navigation system.

"China has already taken its position as a space power in addition to traditional space powers like the United States and Russia. The important thing is these actors are willing to cooperate."

China already plays an important role, "but space cooperation alone won't be a recipe for success, there will always be some competition, which is good and necessary", he adds. "The important thing is to find a right balance between cooperation and competition."

Fay Cody contributed to this story.

tuoyannan@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily European Weekly 09/09/2016 page27)
UP: NCW asks DGP to enforce a ban on sale of acid in the state

Acid case: Maneka asks police to speed up probe

India

oi-PTI

New Delhi, Sep 9: Police were yet to make any arrest in the case of a minor girl from south Delhi allegedly forced to drink acid by unidentified persons, even as Union minister Maneka Gandhi today said she has directed a senior officer to speed up the investigation.

The girl, a Class X student in Kalkaji, had complained of stomach pain after reaching school on Wednesday morning.

The school authorities had then informed her mother and took her to a hospital from where she was later discharged and taken home in Sangam Vihar.

However, two hours later, the mother took her to Safdarjung Hospital and alleged that she was forced to drink acid by unidentified men near her school, who were harassing and stalking since the past one month, a police officer said.

The police also suspect that the girl might have consumed something herself "under depression". Prima facie, it was not a case where the girl was forced to drink acid.

Court hands death sentence to man in acid attack case

There were no external injuries on the girl's body and she is fully conscious and is talking with her mother, police had yesterday said.

A senior official at Safdarjung Hospital, when contacted today over reports that only her lungs were affected by the acid, said, "It depends on whether the girl ingested or inhaled it.

Also, if a very small quantity of the liquid is consumed, it may slip through the windpipe and to the lungs, instead of going to the food pipe." Meanwhile, Union Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi today tweeted, "We have directed ACP Kalkaji to speed up investigation, in order to ensure swift justice for the child."

Another police officer said, "The girl's statement would be recorded in couple of days time. Since her lungs have been affected, the recovery is slow. And, it will be recorded once she is a position to do so."

PTI
Bank holidays in November 2022: Here is the full list of non-working days

BJP's 2019 Lok Sabha strategy already underway, 115 weak constituencies identified

India

oi-Vicky

New Delhi, Sept 9: The BJP has already started putting together a plan for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. While the party would continue to build on its strong holds, it has now identified its weak zones and proposes to begin work on it right away.

Following a survey the BJP has identified Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Telangana, Kerala, West Bengal and some North Eastern states from where the party needs to get more votes.

There are 115 constituencies that have been identified as weak areas. Sources in the party tell OneIndia that Shah has already held discussions with the state units and told them come up with a plan on how to face the elections in these constituencies.

The plan is expected to be readied by mid October, sources also said.

BJP has been able to produce just 15 MPs from the above mentioned states. The party feels that the performance should improve in these states so that it could have a comfortable number in 2019.

The BJP feels that it may have incurred a few hiccups in some of its strong areas. In such a scenario winning from these traditionally weak bastions would help cover the numbers.

Party insiders say that this strategy will do the BJP a lot of good in the 2019 elections.

"We wanted to start work early while also focusing on the forthcoming elections to Uttar Pradesh. After the action plan is provided to Shah by the state units by October, the ground work would begin.

The party president wants work on these constituencies to resume before the end of the year," the source also informed.

OneIndia News

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Friday, September 9, 2016, 12:26 [IST]
Nothing will change in Congress: For Gandhis, power stays but the onus shifts

Congress criticises Narendra Modi government for not granting special category status to AP

India

oi-PTI

New Delhi, Sep 8 Congress tonight attacked the Modi government for not keeping the promise of granting special category status to Andhra Pradesh, a commitment it said was given by the UPA regime.

"Special Category Status is the Right of People of Andhra Pradesh and the commitment made by UPA Govt Prime Minister is not being kept," senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh who is also the in charge of party affairs in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana tweeted.

The Centre yesterday announced a financial package for Andhra Pradesh that includes full funding of Pollavaram irrigation project, tax concessions and a special assistance, but stopped short of giving the state a special category status.

Singh said that there is nothing new to what Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has promised to Andhra Pradesh. "Nothing new in what Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has promised to AP. The excuse of Finance Commission by FM is not correct as Finance Commission has not made any such recommendation ," he tweeted.

Citing constraints placed by the 14th Finance Commission in grant of special category status to Andhra Pradesh, Jaitley had said an amount equivalent to what that categorization would have fetched, would be given to the state in form of a Special Assistance Measure for five years.

Congress has been pitching for a special category status for Andhra Pradesh for long and party vice president Rahul Gandhi had also written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the same.

Andhra Pradesh, which financially suffered because of creation of separate state of Telengana in June 2014, will get a railway zone as also all cost incurred on the irrigation part of Pollavaram project from the date it was declared a National Project on April 1, 2014 will be funded by the Centre.

PTI
GB Road racket: Absconding muscleman surrenders

India

oi-PTI

New Delhi, Sept 8 One of the main accused and "muscleman" of the GB Road prostitution and human trafficking racket surrendered before the Crime Branch today.

"Sarfaraz came to the Crime Branch office today around 2pm and surrendered.

We were on the lookout for him ever since the racket was busted and Afaq and Saira Begum were arrested," said a senior Crime Branch officer.

A team led by DCP (Crime) Bhisham Singh had been conducting raids across Bulandshahar where Sarfaraz alias Billi was suspected to be hiding. The police is also conducting raids in various cities of Uttar Pradesh to arrest other accused.

Last month, Delhi Police had arrested a couple and their six associates for running a vast network of human trafficking and prostitution racket in the red light area of GB Road in the heart of national capital, booking them under provisions of the stringent MCOCA Act. Police had unearthed properties and bank deposits to the tune of several crores besides four luxury cars owned by the couple.

They possessed four properties in Delhi and two in Bangalore apart from indirectly owning portions of half-a-dozen Kothas on G B Road. It was revealed that Sarfaraz was the muscleman of the racket and used to coordinate with other henchmen from other cities, the officer said.

PTI SLB RCJ RG RCJ
Kapil Sharma spotted in wheelchair at Mumbai airport, gets angry at paps who asked him if he was okay

Kapil Sharma kicks up row with bribe allegation

India

oi-PTI

Mumbai, Sep 9: Popular stand-up comedian Kapil Sharma today stoked a controversy by alleging that he had been asked to pay a bribe of Rs 5 lakh by an official of the civic body BMC which, in turn, claimed that the actor had carried out "illegal construction" at his office for which a notice had been served on him two months back.

Kapil levelled the allegation in the morning in tweets in which he tagged Prime Minister Narendra Modi, questioning if this was the "achche din" (good days) he had promised.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis was quick to respond to Sharma's angst and assured him that strict action would be taken against the culprit.

Kapil, while voicing his anger, tweeted: "I am paying 15 cr income tax from last 5 year n still i have to pay 5 lacs bribe to BMC office for making my office @narendramodi (sic)."

In another tweet, he wrote, "Yeh hain aapke achhe din? @narendramodi (are these your good days)," referring to Modi's 2014 poll slogan of "good days are ahead".

The post of Sharma, who has over 6.22 million followers on Twitter, was 'retweeted' and 'liked' by thousands on the social media platform. Fadnavis, BMC as well as Shiv Sena, which rules the civic body along with BJP, asked Kapil to give details about who demanded the bribe. Opposition Congress used the issue to target BJP and Shiv Sena over corruption.

As controversy erupted, Sharma again tweeted later in the day, trying to downplay the matter by saying he was not singling out any political party. "I just voiced my concern on the corruption I faced with certain individuals... It's No blame on any political party be it BJP, MNS or ShivSena," he wrote.

Earlier, taking cognisance of the matter, Fadnavis asked Kapil to provide the authorities with necessary information to punish the culprit. "Kapilbhai pls provide all info. Have directed MC, BMC to take strictest action. We will not spare the culprit," the Chief Minister said in a tweet.

In response, Kapil thanked Fadnavis in another tweet saying, "@Dev_Fadnavis thank u so much for ur concern sir.. Would like to come n discuss this matter with u in person .." However, a senior Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation official claimed that the actor had made some "illegal construction" at his office in Versova area of suburban Mumbai and had been served a notice regarding the same, but he did not pay heed to it.

"Kapil was then sent a notice by BMC on July 16 to stop or remove the construction, but he didn't reply to it," he said. BMC also asked Kapil to reveal the name of the officer who allegedly demanded the bribe. Stung by corruption allegations, Shiv Sena, which rules the BMC along with BJP, dared Kapil to name the bribe seeker.

"This is not a comedy show where he can tweet what is going on in his life. He needs to immediately name the person publicly who asked for a bribe or people would watch the whole episode like a comedy drama, laugh over it and forget about it," Sena spokesperson Manisha Kayande said.

PTI
Narendra Modi govt deliberately keeping seats in Govt Eng colleges vacant: Congress

India

oi-PTI

New Delhi, Sep 8 Congress today alleged the Modi dispensation is "deliberately" keeping seats of government engineering institutions vacant in order to benefit its "crony" private sector friends and the "failure" to fill seats will "jeopardize" academic lives of lakhs of aspirants.

Pointing out various "anomalies" in filling up the NIT and IIT seats for this academic year, Congress MP Sushmita Dev along with aspiring students met President Pranab Mukherjee and demanded the filling of seats in a time bound manner. "It is yet another instance of the Narendra Modi government deliberately keeping seats of government engineering institutions vacant in order to benefit its crony private sector friends.

"The Indian National Congress demands that all the vacant seats in these engineering colleges be filled in a stipulated time bound manner so that no academic year of any aspirant gets wasted and go to court immediately," a statement said.

Dev presented a memorandum to Mukherjee and sought his urgent intervention in this matter as the 'Visitor' of all NITs and IITs. She alleged that private educational institutions have become so important for the BJP government that it is "forcing" young students to even commit suicide or jeopardise their future by dropping.

"Though nearly 4,000 to 5,000 seats of all categories (including General, OBC, SC/ST ) are lying vacant in IIT or NIT and IIITs across the country even after six rounds of counselling of the Joint Seat Allocation Authority (JoSAA), the HRD Ministry is yet to take a call on conducting 'spot round' to fill up these seats with deserving students, who have cleared competitive exams," the statement said.

The delegation said that this year, though JoSAA website shows that vacant seats in IIT/IIIT and NITs at around 3195 across country, in reality it's three-fold. They said that many candidates and parents have alleged that HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar have not been responding to their pleas.

"Non-filling thousands seats at these top technical institutes will not only affect the future of aspiring students but also will kill the hopes of many students as they have only two to three attempts possible to get an entry into an IIT/NIT," the statement said.

PTI
Not all youths in Kashmir want to pick up gun: students

India

oi-PTI

Mumbai, Sep 8 Not every youth in Kashmir wants to pick up a gun and only a minuscule number is in favour of secession from India, a group of students from the Valley said here.

The students, who are studying outside their home state, shared their views about the ongoing unrest in Kashmir following the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani in an encounter on July 8.

Since then, the Valley has witnessed worst of unrest with violent clashes erupting between protesters and security forces. A group of six students, who are currently studying in Pune for the last 13 years were invited by the Mumbai Press Club in association with organisation Sarhad.

"Not every Kashmiri is Burhan Wani. May be only 10 per cent of them want to get 'Aazadi'. Rest 90 per cent people are concerned about development, employment, education for their children, industrialisation. Unfortunately, nothing of that sort has happened which has resulted in the unrest," said Javed Ahmad, who is pursuing Masters.

Zahid Bhatt, a resident of Badgam district in Kashmir, said that it was the students who bear the burnt of the violence.

"Since last 20 to 30 years, we have lost our near and dear ones at the hands of either militants or security forces or some other agencies. And the most sad part is that no serious efforts have been made to resolve the issue amicably," said Bhatt, who is also general secretary of initiative Jago Bharat.

"In our childhood, as a Kashmiri, we had an impression that India is only about Army. But when we came to Pune and received affection from people, our viewpoint about India changed," he said. Bhatt said that people of the country also needed to change their perception towards Kashmiris and that Kashmir did not only mean the land of militancy. "One of the root causes of unrest persistent in the Valley is unemployment.

If the youth get job, they would get engaged in routine affairs. They would not take to streets and pelt stones at the army," said Mushtaque Ahmad, a student who hails from Kupwara district.

PTI
Bengaluru: Railway official who hid her coronavirus positive son in guest house suspended

Under attack, railway 'flexi fares' rollback likely

India

oi-IANS

By Ians English

New Delhi, Sep 9: The government is likely to roll back the "flexi fare" pricing of railway tickets on three premium trains after coming under widespread attack including within the BJP, informed sources said.

The sources say Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu took the decision despite his junior colleague Manoj Sinha's contention that this will hit hard the middle class and will affect the BJP in assembly elections due next year in five states.

After Prabhu overruled him, Sinha took up the matter with the Prime Minister's Office and BJP President Amit Shah who was convinced by Sinha's arguments.

Sinha argued that for "nominal commercial benefits", the Bharatiya Janata Party can't afford the political damage as the decision had angered vast sections of the middle class and lower income groups who depend on trains for travel.

Shah then sought to know from Prabhu the benefits of the controversial move. Prabhu claimed that the decision, which went into effect on Friday, would fetch the railways Rs 500 crore, the sources told IANS.

Train journey set to get costlier as Railway introduces dynamic pricing system

Shah reportedly made it clear that the BJP can't risk the resentment of the middle class for Rs 500 crore, that too at a time when assembly polls are due in Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Manipur and Goa.

The flexi fare on the Rajdhani, Shatabdi and Duranto Express trains, effective from September 9, was announced on Wednesday.

According to the new system, the base fares of these trains will increase by 10 per cent with every 10 per cent of berths sold, subject to a ceiling limit.

The sources told IANS that after Shah's intervention, the railways said the flexi fare pricing was being implemented on an "experimental basis".

According to the sources, this was a face saver after the BJP virtually directed the railways to roll back the decision.

But it was agreed the rollback won't take place immediately as that would give an impression that the government had to bow to the opposition.

The Congress, the Aam Aadmi Party, the CPI-M and other opposition parties were vocal in their criticism of the flexi fares and demanded its axing.

Another decision of Prabhu which had irked Manoj Sinha was the cancellation of the railway passes given to members of the Hindi Advisory Committee.

Sinha reportedly also raised this issue with Shah.

Most members of the committee are either from the BJP or Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh or from their affiliated organisations.

"The flexi fare will go but after a while," an informed source said. "The problem is that both decisions were taken with just bureaucratic input and without taking into account political considerations."

IANS


Philippine Prez Rodrigo Duterte takes thinly veiled dig at US

International

oi-PTI

Vientiane, Sept 9: Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte took a thinly veiled dig at the United States, complaining that colonizers who killed many Filipinos are now raising human rights concerns with him

President Barack Obama was among several world leaders who listened to Duterte's brief speech at the East Asia Summit in the Laotian capital of Vientiane.

Days after slur, Obama, Rodrigo Duterte meet briefly at ASEAN Summit

Obama earlier canceled a meeting with Duterte after the Philippine leader referred to him in comments to reporters as a "son of a b***h" and warned him not to discuss the deaths of thousands of suspects in an anti-drug campaign [ I am no American puppet, you 'SOB': Philippines Prez to Obama





Two Philippine Cabinet officials said Duterte did not criticize any country or leader by name in his speech. Other diplomats who heard the speech, however, felt he was referring to the United States, which colonized the Philippines after defeating its former ruler, Spain.





An Indonesian diplomat said Duterte held up a picture of Filipinos killed in colonial times to underscore his point. The diplomat spoke to reporters on condition that he not be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.





Philippine officials refused to release Duterte's remarks, which were not included in his prepared speech made on Thursday. The Department of Foreign Affairs in Manila said the president provided an explanation of how human rights records should be assessed in the context of the historical record.





"In the passionate intervention of President Duterte, he underscored the need to take a long historical view of human rights, mindful of the atrocities against the ethnic people of Mindanao," the department said in a statement, referring to the southern Philippine region where American forces were involved in deadly clashes with Muslim Filipinos in the early 1900s.





Duterte, who assumed the presidency in June, has had an uneasy relationship with the U.S., his country's longtime treaty ally. He has said he is charting a foreign policy that is not dependent on the U.S., and has moved to reduce tensions with China over rival territorial claims.





The tough-talking president has also blasted U.N.-appointed human rights experts and rights watchdogs who have expressed concerns over the extrajudicial killings of more than 2,800 suspected drug dealers and users since Duterte took office.





More than 600,000 others have surrendered, apparently out of fear of being killed.





After the flap over Duterte's earlier remarks, he and Obama met briefly on the sidelines of the Laos meetings and shook hands. One Cabinet member, Jesus Dureza, said he asked Duterte how his talk with Obama went.





"It was OK," Dureza quoted Duterte as saying. "He told me, 'we can talk some more at another time.'"





The summit ended with Laos turning over the chairmanship of the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations to Duterte, whose country will host the annual diplomatic gathering next year.





PTI


From hijab to Kashmir, Zawahiri was Al-Qaeda's voice for everything anti-India

As Al-Qaeda scouts for new chief, Indian agencies worry about an Islamic State spillover

They stay among you to kill you: Ansarul Bangla Team could be Indias biggest threat

Qaeda chief threatens 'thousands' of 9/11 attacks

International

oi-PTI

Dubai, Sep 9: Al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri threatened the US that the September 11, 2001 attacks will be repeated "thousands of times", in a video marking the 15th anniversary of the deadly assault.

Addressing the United States in a video message posted yesterday on YouTube, Zawahiri blamed 9/11 on "your crimes against us".

He said that if these continue, 9/11 "will be repeated thousands of times". On September 11, 2001, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were struck by hijacked aircraft, claiming 2,753 lives.

Further deadly attacks that day were carried out against the Pentagon and on a third commercial aircraft that crashed in rural Pennsylvania. In the video, Zawahiri cited Washington's policies towards Arab and Muslim countries, its "occupation" of lands in their countries, and support for their "criminal and corrupt" governments.

His threats come as American officials say the United States has become hardened against such well-developed plots as 9/11 but remains vulnerable to small and home-grown attacks.

9/11 anniversary: Some facts you need to know about the attacks that shook the world

The 9/11 attacks spawned Washington's so-called war on terror, which initially focused on Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, before later targeting the Islamic State group which has seized territory in Syria, Iraq and Libya.

Zawahiri also urged jihadists to unite and urged African Americans to convert to Islam to "save" them from US laws which he said are controlled by "the white majority".

AFP
Anbang injects innovation to rescue Vivat Updated: 2016-09-09 07:47 By Cecily Liu(China Daily Europe)

Just one year after China's Anbang Insurance Group bought the Dutch insurer Vivat, it has pulled off a surprise by turning the loss-making entity into a profitable one through effective management and market-centric strategies.

Vivat delivered a record net profit of 578 million euros ($649 million) in the first half of 2016, according to Vivat results released on Aug 31.

Anbang's success is being hailed as a template for a successful post-merger integration that can be followed by other Chinese companies. It comes at a time when Chinese outbound acquisitions are reaching record levels.

Anbang Insurance group's Beijing headquarter. Guo Liuzuo / For China Daily

Unlike most Chinese acquisitions, which only inject capital and leave business decisions to existing overseas management teams, Anbang became actively involved in Vivat's management and its strategic focus.

Vivat CEO Ron van Oijen says Anbang enhanced Vivat's profitability by abolishing unprofitable businesses, optimizing asset allocation and building up Vivat's core business model in products, service and channel innovation. Anbang also ensured effective implementation of the strategies through optimization of governance, organizational structure and allocation of personnel.

Anbang acquired Vivat in July last year for 150 million euros. Vivat is the former insurance arm of Dutch financial institution SNS Reaal NV. Despite Vivat posting losses at the time, Anbang appreciated its history of more than 100 years and its status as one of the top six insurance companies in the Netherlands.

Howard Yu, a professor of strategic management and innovation at IMD Business School in Switzerland, says Anbang's success with Vivat champions a groundbreaking model in which the Chinese acquirer injects new management expertise into its European target, in contrast to many Chinese outbound acquirers that aim to learn from their Western targets.

"This might well be another indication of Chinese enterprise moving up the value chain," Yu says, adding that Anbang's innovative management of Vivat, with its emphasis on social media marketing and online and mobile distribution, are key to its success. In 2015, Anbang helped Vivat launch a new application in the Apple Store to help users calculate premiums, submit claims and make inquiries about insurance on their smartphones. Users can also obtain support for this service through social media platforms, including Twitter and WhatsApp.

Christopher Bovis, professor of European and international business law at the University of Hull, says Anbang's acquisition of Vivat initially took many by surprise because of Vivat's low profitability and margin erosion due to its diluted and unfocused strategy. He says that was detrimental in the insurance market, which is underpinned by dynamic market currents and influenced by short-term demand fluctuations.

Bovis says the core of Anbang's success lay in three strategies. First, it installed a corporate team at Vivat to implement a customer-centric approach. Second, it made changes to Vivat's cost structure to allow performance optimization. And third, it established an intelligent process that helps with assessing and pricing risk in insurance underwriting.

Anbang brought to Vivat a new understanding of the 21st century insurance market and its needs, which was effectively a makeover of a 100-year-old, traditional company, says Alan Barrell, entrepreneur in residence at the Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge.

Barrell says he expects to see more aging and struggling Western companies invigorated and transformed for extended and profitable lives, thanks to the injection of Chinese innovation and vigor, "not just Chinese money".

cecily.liu@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily European Weekly 09/09/2016 page29)
Bank holidays in November 2022: Here is the full list of non-working days

No relief for Kejriwal: SC refuses to stay "LG is the boss" order

New Delhi

oi-Vicky

New Delhi, Sept 9: The Supreme Court on Friday refused to stay an order of the Delhi High Court which had ruled that Lieutenant Governor is the administrative head of the Capital and he is not bound by the advise of the elected government in Delhi.

Aam Admi Party (AAP) led Delhi had gone in appeal against this order and told the Supreme Court that no officer is reporting to the Delhi ministers as they are reluctant.

The centre, however, sought dismissal of the petition on technical grounds. "Deputy Chief Minister, Manish Sisodia has no right to sign the appeal. It ought to have been done by a secretary and not the Dy. CM,"the centre said.

The Supreme Court issued notices to the union government and granted it six weeks time to file its response. The matter will come up on November 15.

The Delhi Government, however, contended that Sisodia had no choice but to sign the appeal. The LG had said that no officer can go to the Supreme Court without his prior permission.

Our plight will fall on other governments. This will affected future relations with the centre, the advocate for the Delhi government also said.

The Supreme Court also refused to grant a stay on the order of the LG. The LG had formed an inquiry committee to find out what decisions had been taken without his approval.

On the question of the status of Delhi, the court reminded the appellants of a nine judge bench order which had unequivocally ruled that Delhi is a Union Territory and not a state.

The Delhi High Court had recently ruled that the LG is the administrative head of the Capital and he is not bound by the advise of the elected government in Delhi.

The high court also held that since Delhi is a union territory, it would mean that the government has no control over important departments such as law and order and also the Delhi Development Authority.

The Delhi council of ministers cannot take a decision without referring to the lieutenant governor first, the High Court also ruled.

The court delivered this verdict on a plea that challenged two central government notifications in which the LG, Najeeb Jung was given absolute power to appoint bureaucrats and also restricted the scope of the city's anti-corruption bureau.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Friday, September 9, 2016, 13:12 [IST]
A Tamil Nadu registered truck was attacked by pro-Kannada protesters near Bellary by truck unions supporting Karnataka Bandh. The protestors surrounded the lorry, allowing the driver to put his foot down and threw glasses granite. Karnakata bandh over Cauvery water dispute is yet another nightmare for people as bus auto taxi cab every mode of transport is likely to stay off road.
Shiv Sena has hit out at Actor-Comedian Kapil Sharma calling him an 'outsider'. Sharma has alleged that he was asked 5 lakh rupees as bribe my BMC workers. Sharma today created storm with his tweet to Prime Minister Narendra Modi saying, "I am paying Rs 15 crore income tax from last five years and still I have to pay Rs 5 lakh bribe to BMC office for making my office. Is this your 'Achhe Din'?"
Accession Day: Valley lights up on this day when J&K became part of India

Perks for separatists: Was J&K CM Mehbooba behind decision reversal?

Srinagar

oi-Vicky

Srinagar, Sept 9: There seems to be trouble brewing for Jammu and Kashmir chief minister, Mehbooba Mufti. While the Home Ministry had decided that it would downgrade security to the separatist leaders, it was Mehbooba who had raised concerns over it.

At the all party delegation meet, some leaders had expressed concern about downgrading security for the separatists and this led to the home minister stating at the meet that the issue had been misinterpreted.

SC: We also want govt to stop perks for Kashmir separatists

Before the all party delegation visited J&K last week, Mehbooba is said to have called JD(U)'s Sharad Yadav and expressed concern over such a move. She said that the situation could worsen if the Centre went ahead with that move.

Was goovt Cornered

Following the Sept 4-5 visit to J&K, the all party delegation met at New Delhi on Wednesday. The home minister and other members of the government were taken aback when the issue regarding perks and security for separatists was raised.

The government which is looking for a solution did not want to derail the process and hence told the members of the delegation that it was not proposing any such move.

Government backtracks as J&K separatists raise "Go India Go Back" slogans

The opposition leaders told the home minister that such a move would not serve any good at this moment. It could further worsen the situation, the opposition leaders led by Congress' Mallikarjuna Kharge said.

The opposition insisted that talks must be held with all stake holders including separatists.

Kharge who was in Bengaluru on Thursday was asked if stakeholders would mean the Hurriyat Conference as well to which he replied that it would include the Hurriyat as well.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Friday, September 9, 2016, 10:33 [IST]
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Painting a brighter future Updated: 2016-09-09 07:47 By Wang Mingjie(China Daily Europe)

Dutch chemicals and coatings giant AkzoNobel is in prime position to push Chinese innovation, green development

AkzoNobel is a perfect fit to help China boost innovation and green development, key areas in the nation's action plan for the next five years, according to the Dutch multinational's CEO.

Ton Buchner says his company has been a pioneer in both sectors, which are highlighted in China's 13th Five-Year Plan for social and economic development between 2016 and 2020.

Ton Buchner, CEO of AkzoNobel, says China is a firm part of the company's strategy. Provided to China Daily

The company produces paints, coatings and specialty chemicals, with operations in more than 80 countries and regions. About 17 percent of its 45,000 employees worldwide are based in China.

AkzoNobel reported revenues of 1.8 billion euros ($2 billion) in China last year, about 12 percent of its global total, which makes China its second-largest market in terms of revenue.

Buchner recently spoke to China Daily about his vision and strategy in China. The following are edited excerpts of the interview.

Q: How will your new technology center in Shanghai benefit the local market and your operations?

A: The activities in China have become extraordinarily important. We have about 30 factories there. The reason we set up the center is because there is a tremendous amount of Chinese talent that we want to tap into, to help us research and develop our products for the Chinese market as well as support R&D in Asian and international markets.

Setting up a technology center in Shanghai means we are closely connected to our Chinese businesses, so if a customer has a question, they don't have to come to Europe to ask and then wait for an answer; they can go to the Chinese center and get the answer immediately.

Green development and innovation are two key areas of China's 13th Five-Year Plan. What are the opportunities and challenges for your company in the context of China's green development?

Sustainability is a big word, and to make it real sometimes is difficult. We use innovation to make the lives of our customers more sustainable. It allows them to save energy or to have a smaller carbon footprint.

One example is the new paints we've been introducing that have a special component that reflects sunlight better than normal paint. It significantly saves on the need for air conditioning in southern China in summer, and can save 5 to 6 percent of electricity costs.

We do the same when it comes to ships. We put coatings on ships that save the owner a lot of energy because their ships travel more smoothly through the water. We create products that come out of our innovation laboratory that actually give an advantage to our customers when it comes to sustainability.

How are you adjusting your business strategy to China's economic initiatives, like the new normal and the Belt and Road Initiative?

We see that China will be better connected with the rest of the world and is strengthening its role as a global player.

Key cities on the Belt and Road will develop in an accelerated way because they will become centers of trade, and we believe that we can also benefit and participate in these developments, which are not only going to be in China.

With our strong relationship with China, we believe these clear strategies that China has drawn up are strategies we as a company can participate in and can make China become successful.

How do you assess your company's prospects in relation to China's economic situation?

Economic growth in China is slower than before, but it's still a lot more than we see in other areas of the world. We don't see the same level of growth in Europe, in North America, and certainly not in South America. So while Chinese growth is slower, it's still the highest for the areas we operate in.

China is a firm part of our strategy, and we're committed to China, to our business, customers and employees. We've shown this by investing every year in China, and by putting R&D into China, so there's no reason to change that.

We're confident about China and will continue to invest in areas where we believe that growth will continue.

What would you say is your company's biggest achievement in China?

China has grown significantly. In a short period of time, it has become our second-largest market when it comes to revenue and the largest when it comes to employees.

I think that has been a successful trajectory, and it has to do with the fact we've always been very close to the Chinese market, and that most of our managers and employees are Chinese, so we're really in China with Chinese associates and colleagues. The greatest success is that we've been able to invest in a quick way in anticipation of that growth.

What's the secret to your success in China?

Among the many factors that have been making China successful is that the Chinese people are entrepreneurial. They are curious, put a lot of emphasis on education, and put great emphasis on moving China forward to the next level. The people have been the biggest driving force behind the success, and the government has been a strong component by setting clear directions.

One of the key factors for AkzoNobel's success is that when we go to China with our factories or products, we always go with the latest innovation.

What leadership qualities do you consider essential to developing a team in China?

Overall, the success of our leadership in China comes from the fact they're local, they're close to the customer, they're running diversified teams in different places in China and they make sure they deliver every day to the best of their ability.

For leaders in China, it's important they give clear directions as well as allow space for the entrepreneurial spirit that is so strong in Chinese culture.

The advantage I have as a leader in AkzoNobel is that I've spent a lot of time in Asia and in China. Understanding how China works is important, and our leadership in China feels this understanding is present at headquarters.

What do you consider important when cooperating with Chinese partners?

Incredibly important is a strong respect for local culture. Many cultures are different, and no one should tell someone what to do. You should first listen, understand the cultural strength of a country and make sure you find the best solution that works for both parties.

In addition, you have to invest in the relationship and in the business activities. You need to deliver what you have promised, which is always the case, but in China it's very important and fosters respect between the two parties.

How do you handle challenges your team encounters in China, if any?

The way the housing market in China has developed can be challenging, as we really need to estimate where the housing market is going, not only in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, but it also in western cities and lower-tier cities. Also, policies regarding the housing market have changed.

The second challenge we are looking at carefully is the move from an industrial economy to a domestic consumption economy where we have great opportunities, but we want to make sure that we move with the same speed as the Chinese economy.

What's your view on the Chinese Dream, and do you have any dream for your company in China?

The Chinese Dream is clearly driving the country to become a responsible global player, and it's a logical dream to have.

Our dream is that as a company with fantastic brands, good market positions and great people in China, we want to be a market leader in China and at the same time support Chinese players as they go international.

wangmingjie@mail.chinadailyuk.com

( China Daily European Weekly 09/09/2016 page31)
Chinese peacekeepers set to join UN's fast-response team Updated: 2016-09-09 01:09 By Li Wensha and Cecily Liu in London(chinadaily.com.cn)

Defense ministers and representatives from more than 70 countries and institutions attend the UN Peacekeeping Defence Ministerial 2016 in London, September 8, 2016. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

China is ready to participate in the United Nations' new fast-response peacekeeping force.

Minister of National Defense Chang Wanquan said on Thursday that Beijing will fully support the UN Peacekeeping Department's initiative to set up a "vanguard brigade" of 4,000 rapidly deployable troops.

It will do so by ensuring a contingent of its force of 8,000 troops set aside for peacekeeping work meets the UN's Level II readiness requirement of 60 days.

"We will maintain close communication with the UN Peacekeeping Department on when the Chinese troops will join the vanguard brigade' and the number of such troops," said Chang.

China will also jointly host a seminar with UN authorities next year to share experiences relating to the safety and security of peacekeepers.

Chang was speaking at the UN Peacekeeping Defence Ministerial 2016 in London, which was attended by defense ministers and representatives from more than 70 countries and institutions.

China promised to join the new Peacekeeping Capability Readiness System and committed a standby military force of 8,000 when President Xi Jinping addressed the 2015 Leaders' Summit on UN Peacekeeping. Xi said China would also train 2,000 international peacekeepers, give $100 million in military aid to the African Union, and send its first helicopter squad to peacekeeping operations in Africa.

Herve Ladsous, United Nations under-secretary-general for peacekeeping operations, said he visited China earlier this year and saw "exciting progress" in its implementation of the peacekeeping commitments Xi made last year.

Chinese Minister of National Defense Chang Wanquan attends the UN Peacekeeping Defence Ministerial 2016 in London, September 8, 2016. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Ladsous also praised Chinese peacekeeping troops. "They are deployed in very difficult environments, they have suffered tragic casualties in Mali and South Sudan not so long ago, and I think China is demonstrating courage and commitment to the international community," he said.

Chang said China is on track to fulfill its commitments. It has already trained about 500 peacekeepers, is set to complete registration of its standby force of 8,000, and the helicopter squad is ready for deployment. Discussions about the $100 million in military assistance are underway.

Chang said in his speech that China has long contributed to the UN's work and has dispatched the largest number of peacekeepers among the five Security Council permanent members. It is the second largest contributor of peacekeeping funding and, in the next three years, will cover 10.2 percent of UN peacekeeping expenses.

In China's 26 years of participation in peacekeeping operations, 33,000 military personnel have taken part. Today, 2,500 Chinese military personnel are on active duty in nine mission areas.

International experts recognize China's contribution to UN peacekeeping  both financial and non-financial  including its sharing of engineering expertise and equipment, said Walter Dorn, professor of defense studies at the Royal Military College of Canada.

"Chinese peacekeeping units are well trained and very experienced," he said.

Yongjin Zhang, a professor of international politics at the University of Bristol, said China's peacekeeping contributions show its willingness to accept responsibility in safeguarding international security.

Catherine Gegout, associate professor of international relations at the University of Nottingham, said: "It is gaining experience in working with partners at the United Nations, meaning further cooperation with French, British or African Union troops can happen in future conflict areas."

Chang also met with UK Secretary of State for Defence Michael Fallon for a UK-China bilateral discussion during the summit.

Fallon said China's announcements on Thursday marked "a watershed in China's evolution in playing a greater international role".

Fallon also said his meeting with Chang was "fruitful", adding that he hopes defense relations will be part of the new era of British-Chinese relations.

Contact the writers at liwensha@chinadaily.com.cn
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Good Cop Bad Cop (Beware: The Good Cop could be Judas.)

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In John Sayles 1987 film Matewan, concerning the 1920 coal miners' strike in West Virginia, not all cops were of the same ilk as the Baldwin-Felts private detectives. Those rent-a-cops were deputized by the authorities, at the behest of the powerful mining companies, as an occupying force to control and torment the miners... Bad cops!

The local police chief understood the deprivation the strikers faced. When these 'deputies' came out to evict a family from a company owned home, the chief forced them away at gunpoint... Good cop! Although the ' law ' was in the hands of the landlord, sometimes 'universal law' trumps man's laws.

Sadly, the super-rich use their wealth to find men to be 'bought and paid for' as thugs, under the guise of being policemen ... Bad cops! The labor strikes throughout our country for generations always saw the police acting as enforcers for the super-rich.

Danny DeVito's 1992 film Hoffa reveals how these things occurred, with the police representing the forces of capital against the ' supposed' legally protected side of labor... Bad cops! Again, if the average policeman took a moment to consider, he would realize that 'To serve and protect' does not only mean property rights but also people and workers' rights as well.

In the 2014 film 99 Homes we see how Sheriffs' deputies get paid bonuses to carry out evictions. These are so called 'public servants' receiving bonuses from property owners for these...Bad cops ! Are they 'on duty' when they perform this, or simply moonlighting wearing the uniform and badge? In some areas of our nation, there have been Sheriffs who refuse to carry out those evictions... Good cops!

Between 1942 and 1943, in Poland, the Germans exterminated almost two million Jews. In order to accomplish this dastardly task, they needed to use units such as the Reserve Police Battalion 101. This unit was made up of mainly middle aged, respectable (an oxymoron?) working and middle class citizens of Hamburg, rather than Nazi ideologues. Using peer pressure and the 'German' tradition of obedience and comradeship, many of these policemen turned into mass murderers.

In the 1960s 210 members of the former battalion were interviewed in depth. Only 1/4 of them were even Nazi Party members, many simply joined the battalion to avoid active service abroad. Only a small number of them approved of what was happening 'out east'... yet they just 'went along to get along' so to speak.

When called upon to do the killing, 80% to 90% of these folks acquiesced without complaint... and after initial squeamishness became increasingly efficient and callous executioners... Bad cops! Contrary to what many of us have been taught about Hitler's regime, German soldiers and police were not imprisoned or executed for refusing to carry out these actions... Good cops! After all, they were pure blooded Aryans and thus received a higher tolerance. One should imagine if instead of 10 or 20% of those who refused to be killers, the figure was more like 80 to 90%, how could the Nazi extermination machine run quite so efficiently?

All baby boomers who lived in cities will remember the 'cop on the beat'. He was the guy the neighborhood knew and usually trusted. He chased the punks off of the corner and made sure the Mom and Pop stores were secure at night... Good Cop! Most likely he came from a neighborhood not so far from our own, similar to ours in many ways. Those days have been gone for over two generations now. In minority neighborhoods most of the cops may come from suburbs... and are most likely not of color.

The mindset of both the police and of the community becomes one of an occupying force and the occupied. Facts are facts folks. I don't have the time or the energy to get into the causes of poverty, racism and crime. What can be said is our police should understand that the majority of those who live in these communities get up each morning and go to work or go to school... just like the folks where they come from. Yes, higher use of drugs, lower levels of education and lower rates of pay are breeding grounds for crime... white, black, brown or yellow, it does not matter. No one said the cops in those areas doesn't have it much tougher than his peers in better neighborhoods...but so does the man, woman and child who lives in those places as well.

We have seen that in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, where our military is used as an occupying force, the occupiers can and do become 'trigger happy', killing many unarmed and innocent people. The corollary should be used in regard to our police, when behaving as an occupying force"Bad cops! It is time for the myriad of good cops out there to speak up and speak out against their fellows in blue who shoot and kill the innocent and unarmed... Period!


NYC firefighter looks up at remnent of the World Trade Tower

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The moment Truth became the Enemy of the State





9/11/2001. The date still echoes in the mind with outrage, anger, and utter disbelief. Through the clarity of hindsight it now seems more than ever like a Madison Avenue commercial intended to sell the American population on another war they didn't need or want. But that's what we got. Fifteen years of it so far and no end in sight. Believing in the official narrative of 9/11 requires what's referred to in drama as a willful suspension of disbelief. How could this happen? How did a band of ragged terrorists plotting from a cave in faraway Afghanistan accomplish such a feat given the pervasiveness of the most expensive military/intelligence apparatus in the history of the world? How did three skyscrapers defy the laws of physics and manage to collapse as if brought down by a controlled demolition? And even more curiously, why would Islamic radicals provide the neoconservative administration of George W. Bush with exactly the pretext they needed to launch a bloody invasion of Afghanistan and further occupation of the Middle East?

Who among America's national-security mandarins at the CIA or FBI or Department of Defense would be held accountable? No one would. Instead America's national-security apparatchiks would be rewarded with expanded powers to eavesdrop and torture; powers that were supposed to be anathema to the American way of doing things. Like Kafkaesque characters who'd suddenly found themselves on the other side of the Cold War mirror, Americans would now have to "watch what they say and watch what they do" as a preexisting "Patriot Act" would be signed into law to clamp down on dissent and real or imagined domestic terrorism.

Some careful observers like Anthony Lewis of the New York Times had already noticed the bizarre coup-like changes coming over Washington in the months leading up to the attack as the George W. Bush administration inaugurated radical shifts in domestic and foreign policy that seemed un-American and alien to anything that had gone before. But those concerns would soon be forgotten in the race for revenge.

9/11 would ultimately give President George W. Bush and his neoconservative advisors all the public approval they needed to transform America and invade Afghanistan and Iraq to cleanse the world of evil. In the end it would turn the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and America's reputation on its head.

Looking back on the carnage of the last 15 years it's easy to see the psychological changes in America. What's not easy to see is how a longstanding campaign of covert psychological warfare built up since the early days of World War II had made the slow destruction of American democracy and the ascension of rule by secrecy inevitable, long before the planes ever left the runway on 9/11:

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State." - Dr. Joseph Goebbels

As chief propagandist for the Nazi Party, Joseph Goebbels' system of black propaganda not only helped Hitler's rise to power but kept him there by utilizing near-hypnotic powers over the German people even after the consequences of his disastrous failures had become obvious.

To counter Goebbels' propaganda theatre emanating from Nazi party headquarters at Munich's Braunhaus (Brown House), an organization named Freedom House was founded in New York City in 1941. Fronted by American celebrities and public luminaries such as Eleanor Roosevelt, the wizard behind the outfit was Leo Cherne, psychological warfare specialist/co-founder of the Research Institute of America (RIA), which would later be labeled the "CIA for businessmen."

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Tactical Communications Market worth 18.53 Billion USD by 2021

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The report "Tactical Communications Market by Platform (Airborne, Shipborne, Land, Underwater), Type (Soldier Radio, Manpack, VIC, HCDR), Technology (TDM, NGN), Application (ISR, Communications, Combat, Command & Control) - Global Forecast to 2021", The global tactical communications market is estimated to be USD 8.62 Billion in 2016 and is projected to reach USD 18.53 Billion by 2021, registering a CAGR of 16.52% during the forecast period.Browse 54 market data Tables and 27 Figures spread through 162 Pages and in-depth TOC on "Tactical Communications Market.Early buyers will receive 10% customization on reports.Underwater segment is projected to lead the tactical communications market during the forecast periodOn the basis of platform, the underwater tactical communications segment is estimated to witness the highest growth as government agencies are focusing toward strengthening the communication related capabilities of submerged manned and unmanned systems. This is expected to enable such systems to receive and transmit broadcast of real-time situational awareness data to other airborne and shipborne platforms.Ask PDF Brochure:Manpack segment is estimated to grow at the highest rate during the forecast periodThe tactical communications market has been segmented and analyzed on the basis of type into soldier radio, manpack radio, VIC (Vehicular Intercommunication Radio), High Capacity Data Radio (HCDR), and others. The tactical communications market for manpack radio is expected to register the highest growth, driven by their increasing procurement owing to their ability to provide dual channels of communications and operability on different wavelengths simultaneously. They are also being preferred as their usage eliminates the need for more than one radio at any location.North America: The largest market for tactical communicationsThe market for tactical communications has been estimated to be the largest in North America due to the increase in procurement of advanced communication systems such as those based on internet protocol (IP) and voice over internet protocol (VoIP) apart from satellite communications.Inquiry Before Buying:Harris Corporation (U.S.): One of the key players in the tactical communications marketMajor players in the tactical communications market are Harris Corporation (U.S.), Northrop Grumman Corporation (U.S.), Raytheon Company (U.S.), General Dynamics Corporation (U.S.), and Thales Group (France), among others.About MarketsandMarketsMarketsandMarkets is the largest market research firm worldwide in terms of annually published premium market research reports. Serving 1700 global fortune enterprises with more than 1200 premium studies in a year, M&M is catering to a multitude of clients across 8 different industrial verticals. We specialize in consulting assignments and business research across high growth markets, cutting edge technologies and newer applications. Our 850 fulltime analyst and SMEs at MarketsandMarkets are tracking global high growth markets following the "Growth Engagement Model  GEM". The GEM aims at proactive collaboration with the clients to identify new opportunities, identify most important customers, write "Attack, avoid and defend" strategies, identify sources of incremental revenues for both the company and its competitors.M&Ms flagship competitive intelligence and market research platform, "RT" connects over 200,000 markets and entire value chains for deeper understanding of the unmet insights along with market sizing and forecasts of niche markets. The new included chapters on Methodology and Benchmarking presented with high quality analytical infographics in our reports gives complete visibility of how the numbers have been arrived and defend the accuracy of the numbers.We at MarketsandMarkets are inspired to help our clients grow by providing apt business insight with our huge market intelligence repository.Contact:Mr. RohanMarkets and MarketsUNIT no 802, Tower no. 7, SEZMagarpatta city, HadapsarPune, Maharashtra 411013, IndiaTel: +1-888-600-6441Email: sales@marketsandmarkets.comVisit MarketsandMarkets Blog@Connect with us on LinkedIn @Website:
Security Analytics Market size to reach USD 8 billion by 2023

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Security analytics market size was valued over USD 2 billion in 2015. It is estimated to grow at over 26% during the coming few years and exceed USD 8 billion by 2023. With the increasing number of cyber vulnerabilities and threats, the need for security analytics is mounting rapidly. With the convergence of big data with security intelligence, the industry has huge opportunity to grow from 2016 to 2023.It combines the capabilities of threat intelligence and big data so as to, detect, mitigate and analyze targeted attacks and other persistent threats. Data & information application is estimated to dominate the industry over the forecast period owing to data-driven security. Endpoint security analytics is expected to play a key role in changing the landscape of the industry and is expected to witness signification gains over the forecast period due to increasing BYOD market penetration in enterprises.Request for an in-depth table of contents for this report @Convergence of big data analytics with security intelligence along with emergence of managed security services are identified as potential growth opportunities for the security analytics market. Moreover, key players are focusing in new product development for the betterment of their clients. For instance, IBM has released its security analytics platform, security app and security QRadar, for the sharing and formation of programs developed on the companys security infrastructure in 2015. Security QRadar can determine the exposed endpoints and assists the customers in order to find unmanaged assets.Cloud deployment is the foremost deployment model as it offers various benefits to the industry such as scalability, 24/7 service, enhanced network security and speed. Mainly, small and medium-sized businesses have adopted cloud technology as it can avoid costs pertaining to software, hardware, technical staff and storage. On premises is the most popular deployment type where information is extremely complex for business operations. The government & defense sector is likely to lead the security analytics market, contributing the prime share over the forecast period. The industry is also anticipated to observe significant growth in healthcare and consumer goods & retail sectors over the next few years.Rise in the sophistication level of security breaches coupled with growing government regulations and standards are supporting the global demand for the security analytics from 2016 to 2023. In addition, increasing application in cloud is also expected to fuel the industry demand over the forecast period. However, inefficient knowledge related to advanced targeted attacks and threats along with the lack of qualified security professional, the industry are exposed to potential threats and are expected to restrain the demand growth over the forecast period.The industry can be bifurcated on the basis of service which includes consulting, training and support and managed services. In addition, the market is segmented on the basis of deployment type which includes on-premises and cloud. The industry is further segmented on the basis of application which includes network security analytics, data and information security analytics, application security analytics and endpoint security analytics.Moreover, the industry is segregated on the basis of vertical which comprise of government & defense, consumer goods & retail, BFSI, IT and telecom, academic research, transportation, energy & utilities, healthcare and manufacturing. Furthermore, key regional industries include North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America and MEA security analytics market.North America security analytics market is estimated to hold the biggest share and dominate the industry over the forecast period. Asia Pacific region offers potential growth opportunities, as large enterprises and small and medium-sized business are moving towards security analytics suppliers in order to secure against potential threats such as zero-day vulnerabilities and advanced persistent threat.Chief manufacturers with global security analytics market share include EMC RSA, Cisco Systems, Inc., Juniper Networks, The Hewlett-Packard Company (HP), Arbor Networks, Inc., Fireeye, Inc., Logrhythm Inc., Blue Coats Systems, Inc., International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) and Click Security.Global Market Insights, Inc., headquartered in Delaware, U.S., is a global market research and consulting service provider; offering syndicated and custom research reports along with growth consulting services. Our business intelligence and industry research reports offer clients with penetrative insights and actionable market data specially designed and presented to aid strategic decision making. These exhaustive reports are designed via a proprietary research methodology and are available for key industries such as chemicals, advanced materials, technology, renewable energy and biotechnology.29L Atlantic Avenue,Suite L 105, Ocean View
Pragyan International University gets accepted into United Nations Global Compact (UNGC)

Pragyan International University gets accepted into United Nations Global Compact (UNGC)

www.pragyanuniversity.edu.in

http://www.pragyanuniversity.edu.in/news-media/pragyan-international-university-gets-accepted-into-united-nations-global-compact-ungc

www.pragyanuniversity.edu.in

Pragyan International University () has been accepted as a Member to and to sign the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC). The United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) is a strategic policy initiative of the United Nations that encourages businesses to support ten universal principles in the areas of human rights, labor standards, the environment, and anti-corruption. It is the world's largest voluntary corporate responsibility initiative with more than 12,000 participants in over 140 countries.According to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Global Compact is a voluntary international corporate citizenship network initiated to support the participation of both the private sector and other special actors to advance responsible corporate citizenship and universal social and environmental principles to meet the challenges of globalization. The participants are committed to align their operations and strategies with ten universally accepted principles in the areas of human rights, labor, environment and anti-corruption.The UN Global Compacts Ten Principles are:Human RightsPrinciple 1: Businesses should support and respect the protection of internationally proclaimed human rights; andPrinciple 2: make sure that they are not complicit in human rights abuses.LabourPrinciple 3: Businesses should uphold the freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining;Principle 4: the elimination of all forms of forced and compulsory labour;Principle 5: the effective abolition of child labour; andPrinciple 6: the elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation.EnvironmentPrinciple 7: Businesses should support a precautionary approach to environmental challenges;Principle 8: undertake initiatives to promote greater environmental responsibility; andPrinciple 9: encourage the development and diffusion of environmentally friendly technologies.Anti-CorruptionPrinciple 10: Businesses should work against corruption in all its forms, including extortion and bribery.News Source:Pragyan International University is a Statutory University recognized as per Sec 2(f) of UGC, Government of India.Pragyan International University is the world's first Government Recognized Uinversity to offer undergraduate, postgraduate and research programmes on Wellness, Yoga, Spirituality, Heritage and Peace.Dr. Suresh Kumar AgarwalChancellorPragyan International UniversityPragyan Foundation40/2 Rupchand Mukherkjee LaneKolkata - 700025.India.Email: info@pragyanuniversity.edu.inPhone: +91-8017086870Web:
Fuel Cell Electrolyte Market Size | Industry Report, 2023

https://www.gminsights.com/request-toc/upcoming/224

Fuel Cell Electrolyte Market size anticipated to witness significant growth from 2016 to 2023. The surge in the industry can be attributed to the increasing demand for fuel cells. Attributes such as fuel efficient, economical prices along distributed power generation offered by these cells are likely to drive industry demand. Fuel cell usage is expected to exceed 700 MW by 2020.The global fuel cell electrolyte market can be segregated into proton-conducting membrane, caustic potash solution, concentrated phosphoric acid, molten carbonate and ceramic. Proton-conducting membrane electrolyte is essentially used in direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) and polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cells. Proliferating application of these fuel cells in vehicles, small appliances, block-type heat, small generators, block type heat and power stations are anticipated to drive the industry demand.Request for an in-depth table of contents for this report @Caustic potash solution is mainly used in alkaline fuel cells (AFC) market and it majorly used with APC for outer space applications. Concentrated phosphoric acid electrolyte is mainly deployed in phosphoric acid fuel cells (PAFC) and substantially used in block type heat and power stations applications. Molten carbonate electrolyte is used in molten carbon fuel (MCFC) and plays a vital role in numerous applications such as combined heat & power and power plants. Furthermore, ceramic electrolytes are significantly used in solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC) and it is greatly used in combined heat & power as well as power plants applications.Alkali fuel cells are likely to be the most updated, efficient and affordable technology. This can be segregated into static electrolytes and flowing electrolytes. Increasing demand of these fuel cells is estimated to boost caustic potash electrolyte market growth over the forecast period. In addition, high conductivity along with capability to operate at lower temperature offered by these cells is projected to boost the industry demand.Asia Pacific and North America fuel cell electrolyte market is anticipated to exhibit high growth rate owing to growing demand for material handling and large scale applications. Japan fuel cell electrolyte market is likely to experience significant surge due to proliferating implementations in residential applications over the forecast period.Flourishing need for portable fuel cells is estimated to escalate the demand for SOFC. These cells have tendency to produce electricity by directly oxidizing the fuel. Benefits offered by this cell encapsulate fuel efficiency; lasting stability along with fuel flexibility. In addition, attributes such as biomass utilization coupled with low emission rates are forecast to positively impact the industry demand. This in turn might boost the industry demand for ceramic and solid oxide electrolytes.Fuel cells are expected to gain its significance in variety of applications such as military, portable products, transport, aircrafts and generators among others over the several forth coming years. Conversely, high operating temperatures of these cells might hamper the industry demand. Molten carbonate electrolyte is mainly used in fuel cell kits having high as much as 300 KV to 2.8 MV energy production capacities. Polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells utilize water-based acidic polymer membrane as an electrolyte, to perform the operation. These cells offer high power density and occupy fewer volumes.In addition, it requires less warm up time, operates at relatively lower temperature and offers better durability. The aforementioned factors are forecast to propel the industry demand for polymer membrane electrolyte over the several upcoming years. Increasing application of these cells in materials handling and light duty vehicles can be subjected to the properties furnished by the cells. Growing awareness regarding energy efficient, pollution reduction and green technologies is likely to provide huge potential growth.Key industry participants occupying major fuel cell electrolyte market share include Fuel Cell Energy, SOFC Power, Novofuel, Ultra Electronics Ami, Delphi, Aisin Seiki, Hexis, Aquafairy , Watt Fuel Cell, ACAL Energy, Danthem Power, Symbio FCell, Baxi Innotech, Oorja Protonics, Ceres Power Holdings, EnergyOr, H2 Logic, Infinitium Fuel Cell Systems, Acumentrics, Ceramic Fuel Cells, Intelligent Energy, Electro Power Systems and Protonex Technology among others.About Global Market Insights:Global Market Insights, Inc., headquartered in Delaware, U.S., is a global market research and consulting service provider; offering syndicated and custom research reports along with growth consulting services. Our business intelligence and industry research reports offer clients with penetrative insights and actionable market data specially designed and presented to aid strategic decision making. These exhaustive reports are designed via a proprietary research methodology and are available for key industries such as chemicals, advanced materials, technology, renewable energy and biotechnology.29L Atlantic Avenue,Suite L 105, Ocean View,Delaware 19970United StatesPhone: 1-302-846-7766Toll Free: 1-888-689-0688Email:sales@gminsights.com
Top vendors dominating the Data Center Technical Furniture Market- Identified by Beige Market Intelligence Analysis.

Data Center Technical Furniture Rack PDU | Beige Market Intelligence

http://www.beigemarketintelligence.com/contactus/

http://www.beigemarketintelligence.com/reports/research-report-ict-market/global-data-center-technical-furniture-market-rack-pdu-market-research-report/

The world is moving toward the adoption of M2M and connected world, where everything is connected to the internet. Moreover, the requirement of storing data in a single location is growing. This has led to the demand for optimally sized data centers among enterprises to manage capacity and real-time computing requirements for enhancing their business capabilities. Increasing number of new data center projects and upgrading of data center projects have driven the demand for advanced technical furniture. With the increased demand of data center projects the major vendors and emerging vendors are implementing new operational strategies.Data Center Technical Furniture- IntroductionA data center consists of core units and overhead units. Core units are those units, which are essential for the operation of a data center and directly influence the performance and process of data center services. For instance, servers, cooling system, power equipment, and fibre optics network. On the other hand, overhead units support data center operations. They do not directly influence the performance and efficiency of data centers.Data center technical furniture is an overhead technical equipment used in a data center for enhancing the performance and efficiency of data centers. They provide support services to core units of data centers.The data center technical furniture market constitutes of three major segments Rack, PDU, and general construction.Blackbox Network ServicesAbout the CompanyBlack Box was founded in 1976 and is headquartered in Lawrence, US. It is a technology solutions provider, which designs, builds, manages, and secures IT infrastructure worldwide. The company provides services for IT infrastructure and specialty networking.The company offers products such as cabinets and racks, cables, carts and storage, cooling solutions, datacom, digital signage, jacks, panels, hardware, KVM, networking, power, premises security, tester and tools, video and multimedia, and voice communication. Its products are used by in sectors such as communication, infrastructure, government, financial, healthcare, manufacturing, retail, and transportation.Product OfferingCabinet and racks product portfolio includes acoustic cabinets, climate controlled cabinets, full-sized IT cabinets, open racks, wall mount and specialty cabinets.Operational StrategyThe company adopt two major strategies: helping data center owners to reduce the CAPEX through the pay-as-you grow strategy and second building customized DCoD as per the customer's demand.For more Information : Order a ReportEatonAbout The CompanyEaton was established in 1911 and is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland. It is a diversified power management company, which provides energy-efficient solutions to manage electrical, hydraulic, and mechanical power efficiently, safely, and sustainably.Product OfferingEaton is one of the key leaders in power management systems. Its data center rack product portfolio consists of Eaton S-Series Enclosures, Eaton S-Series with Telescoping Chimney, Eaton S-Series Seismic, Eaton Paramount Enclosures, Eaton Paramount Hygiene, Open Frame Racks.Eaton also offers cost-effective wall-mounted racks for mounting networking gear, communications cabling, and related equipment to reduce floor space.Operational StrategyEaton's long-term strategy has been to focus on leveraging the advantages of its portfolio of power, racks, and other technical furniture, as it is moving toward a changing and hybrid model of IT delivery and consumption.For More Information Click hereEmerson Network PowerAbout The CompanyEmerson Network Power was established in 2000 and is headquartered in Ohio, US. The company provides solutions for communication networks, data centers, healthcare, and industrial facilities. It also manufactures data network power and telecom conversion products.Product offeringIt offers AC power and UPS solutions, including computer and peripheral UPS, server and storage UPS, data center and facility UPS, and others. Its offerings include DCF Optimized Racks, DCM Modular Data Center Racks, Aisle Containment Systems, High-density Cooling Integrated Racks.Operational StrategyEmerson Network Power focuses on establishing strategic partnerships with other companies for extending its service offerings.The report also includes the detailed analysis of the products, opportunities and operational strategies of Rittal , Schneider Electric The details of other vendors such as AFCO Systems, AMCO Enclosures, AMS NETTECH, Belden, C&F Group, Cannon Technologies, Chatsworth, Conteg, Dataracks, Dell, Delta Group, Fujitsu, Pentair, Raritan, Sharkrack.About Beige Market Intelligence:Beige Market Intelligence is new-age provider of competitive business intelligence, working across various industry verticals. Our expertise and knowledge ensures that the market analysis Beige provides is comprehensive, detailed and complete. The analysis helps our client organizations become aware and make educated decisions, as far as investing or devising a marketing strategy is concerned. The actionable insights delivered through our market research provide a comprehensive market analysis for every level of market segmentation in an industry. Beige Market Intelligence is a quality driven high end Market Research organization. Our team of experts ensure the analysis you receive is not just analysed and smartly presented, but is completely customized based on the clients requirement. Our deliverables guarantee our current global client base does not look beyond Beige when it comes to any kind of industry and market analysis.ContactBeige Market IntelligenceChinnapannahalli , Bangalore- 560037contactus@beigemarketintelligence.comUS: +1 347 903 9949UK: +44 20 323 99499APAC: +91 99 012 75473
3D Printing Ceramics Market is Growing up to 131.5 Million USD by 2021

3D Printing Ceramics Market

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/pdfdownload.asp?id=26085601

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/3d-printing-ceramic-market-26085601.html

The report "3D Printing Ceramics Market by Type (Glass, Fused Silica, Quartz), Form (Filament, Powder, & Liquid), End User (Aerospace & Defense, Automotive, Consumer Goods & Electronics, Manufacturing & Construction, Healthcare) - Global Forecast to 2021", The 3D printing ceramics market is forecast to reach USD 131.5 Million by 2021, at a CAGR of 29.6% from 2016 to 2021. The market is driven by the high demand for 3D printing for dental and orthopedic applications in healthcare industry and in thermal insulation parts in aerospace & defense industry as they have high heat stability and are biocompatible.Download PDF of this Report @Browse 68 market data Tables and 36 Figures spread through 167 Pages and in-depth TOC on "3D Printing Ceramics Market"Healthcare and aerospace & defense segments to dominate 3D printing ceramics marketHealthcare and aerospace & defense are two highly critical segments which demand for stringent product dimensions along with their compositions. Hence, the manufacturing of products demands for precision work. Fused silica, quartz, glass, and a variety of materials are used in aerospace & defense applications to withstand high temperature, which is one of the major driving factor for aerospace & defense segment. In healthcare, ceramic 3D prototyping is used in several medical products, such as surgical equipment, prosthetics & implants, and others as ceramics are biologically inert.Fused silica and quartz have a major market share in comparison to glass and othersCeramics market, by type can be broadly categorized into glass, fused silica, quartz, and others which consists of synthesized grades such as alumina and zirconia. Major benefits of these ceramics include thermal insulation, biocompatibility, no malleability and ductility along with its porous nature to support the lightweight factor, which drives their demand in end-use industries.North American market is expected to witness high growth with increasing demand from end-use industries in the regionNorth American market for 3D printing ceramics is expected to register high growth due to increased rate of adoption in end-user industries. North America is the largest market for 3D printing ceramics with Mexico being the emerging market in the region, followed by Europe. Europe has large number of suppliers of 3D printing ceramics material with major focus on Western Europe which includes Germany, the U.K., France, Italy, and others. Asia-Pacific is an emerging market for the same.The key players operational in the market include 3D Systems Corporation (U.S.), EOS GmbH Electro Optical Systems (Germany), Renishaw Plc (U.K.), Stratasys Ltd. (U.S.), Royal DSM N.V. (Netherlands), and others.We at MarketsandMarkets are inspired to help our clients grow by providing apt business insight with our huge market intelligence repository.UNIT no 802, Tower no. 7, SEZMagarpatta city, HadapsarPune, Maharashtra 411013, India
Global Truck-mounted Concrete Pump Market 2016-2021 : Junjin, Liebherr, Sermac, Kyokuto Kaihatsu Kogyo, SANY, Zoomlion, XCMG, LiuGong, Shantui, Co-nele, CAMC

http://www.fiormarkets.com/report-detail/2869/request-sample

http://www.fiormarkets.com/report/global-truck-mounted-concrete-pump-market-by-manufacturers-regions-2869.html

www.fiormarkets.com

A concrete pump is an important part of any construction project. It is used in transferring liquid concrete by pumping it to the construction site. There are mainly three types of concrete pumps: Boom or truck mounted pump; Trailer, line, or stationary pump; Specialized usage pump.Boom or Truck Mounted Pump definition: This type of pump is attached to a truck and uses a remote controlled articulating robotic arm, also known as boom, to place the concrete accurately at the construction site. It is also known as a truck mounted boom pump. Boom pumps are generally used in large construction projects because of its capability of pumping high volume of concrete in less time. It also saves substantial labor because of its multi-purpose robotic arm.Download sample report atTrailer, line or stationary pump: This type of pump is mounted on a trailer and requires steel or rubber hoses to be attached to the outlet of the machine. The hoses are generally manually attached and can also be joined to another extension hoses to reach the appropriate site where the concrete needs to be put. Trailer pumps concrete at a rate lower than that of boom pumps and therefore are used in applications that require smaller volume pumping such as swimming pools, sidewalks, and small homes concrete slabs.There are also skid mounted and rail mounted concrete pumps, but these are uncommon and only used on specialized jobsites such as mines and tunnels.Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the Truck-mounted Concrete Pump in Global market, especially in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, Latin America, Middle and Africa. This report categorizes the market based on manufacturers, regions, type and application.Market Segment by Manufacturers, this report coversJunjin, Liebherr, Sermac, Kyokuto Kaihatsu Kogyo, SANY, Zoomlion, XCMG, LiuGong, Shantui, Co-nele, CAMC, Hongdashandong, Linuo, Fangyuan Group.Market Segment by Regions, regional analysis coversNorth America (USA, Canada and Mexico)Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy)Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia)Latin America, Middle and AfricaAccess full report atMarket Segment by Type, coversShort Boom (below 28m)Middle Boom (28~47m)Long boom (48~62m)Market Segment by Applications, can be divided intoLine pumpsBoom pumpsOtherThere are 11 Chapters to deeply display the global Truck-mounted Concrete Pump market.Chanter 1, to analyze the top manufacturers of Truck-mounted Concrete Pump, with sales, revenue, and price of Truck-mounted Concrete Pump, in 2015 and 2016;Chapter 2, to display the competitive situation among the top manufacturers, with sales, revenue and market share in 2015 and 2016;Chapter 3, to show the global market by regions, with sales, revenue and market share of Truck-mounted Concrete Pump, for each region, from 2011 to 2016;Chapter 4, 5, 6 and 7, to analyze the key regions, with sales, revenue and market share by key countries in these regions;Chapter 8 and 9, to show the market by type and application, with sales market share and growth rate by type, application, from 2011 to 2016.Chapter 10, Truck-mounted Concrete Pump market forecast, by regions, type and application, with sales and revenue, from 2016 to 2021.Fior Markets is a leading market intelligence company that sells reports of top publishers in the technology industry.Our extensive research reports cover detailed market assessments that include major technological improvements in the industry. Fior Markets also specializes in analyzing hi-tech systems and current processing systems in its expertise.We have a team of experts that compile precise research reports and actively advise top companies to improve their existing processes. Our experts have extensive experience in the topics that they cover.Fior Markets provides you the full spectrum of services related to market research, and corroborate with the clients to increase the revenue stream, and address process gaps.Contact UsMark StoneSales Manager2566, Lincoln StreetPrinceton,New Jersey 08540USAPhone: (201) 465-4211Email: sales@fiormarkets.comWeb:
SRMEX Will Launch Mini Yen Futures

SRMEX Will Launch Mini Yen Futures

http://srmex.org

The new contract is aligned with SRMEXs strategic plan to develop a strong offshore platform for the trading of a range of Emerging Market (EM) contracts.Sapporo, 2016 - SRMEX, a key institution of the domestic financial market, an exchange that provides various economic entities with an opportunity to trade in an open market and offers investors effective investment opportunities, today announced that in a bid to further expand the reach of its local Yen product offering, SRMEX will launch a Mini Yen Futures Contract.The Mini Yen contract builds on the success of SRMEXs existing Yen Futures, which has attracted a wide range of participation from institutional players, traders and arbitrageurs. The contract, which has shown remarkable growth, traded an average of more than one billion dollars a day.The Mini Yen Futures can be cross-margined with the regular SRMEX Yen product offering. This means that any excess margin in an account for one of the Yen products can be used to cover an account in the other Yen product that has fallen below the margin requirement. The smaller size of the contract enables participants to construct precisely tailored hedges on the Yen for any underlying commodity.The mini contract is one-tenth the size of the existing SRMEX Yen futures contract. The smaller size of the contract will support retail remitters, individual investors and small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) in cost-effectively managing currency risk exposure to the Yen.The innovative new contract is priced at 200,000 Yens per lot compared to two million Yens per lot for the existing regular SRMEX Yen contract. Apart from its size, the mini contract is similar to the regular contract in all aspects including its daily settlement price, which will be based on the official US Dollar reference rate.About Sapporo Mercantile Exchange - SRMEXSRMEXs main activity is to operate commodity markets necessary for dealing in futures of the commodities listed (precious metals, rubber, aluminum, energy products, agricultural products & sugar, currencies). SRMEX aims to ensure a transparent and liquid market for commodities trading for use either in Japan or abroad. As the key institution of the domestic financial market, the exchange provides various economic entities with an opportunity to trade in an open market and offers investors effective investment opportunities. The exchange actively participates in promoting the continuous improvement of the financial culture of domestic companies and investors.Sapporo Mercantile ExchangeSapporo Center Building, 6-2-2 Kita-Gojo-Nishi, Chuo-ku, Sapporopr@srmex.org
The last available tickets for the Open Source Backup Conference

www.osbconf.org

www.netways.de

www.netways.de

On the 26th and 27th of September the Open Source Backup Conference, which revolves around the subject Open Source Backup Software such as Amanda, REAR and primarily BAREOS as a Bacula Fork, takes place in Cologne. The joint organizers dass IT and open source expert NETWAYS point out that the conference tickets are getting scarce.Nuremberg September 8, 2016The conference offers a unique opportunity to get informed about current developments on data backup, to exchange experiences, gain new knowledge and to deepen these by means of best practices. The conference is aimed at IT- responsible and decision-makers from various trades such as science, research, media- and software development.On the first conference day different workshops on backup will take place. One can choose between Bareos introduction, Monitoring Bareos with Icinga 2 and REAR. The attendance for one of the workshops is included in the packaged Gold and Silver.Furthermore, the organizers offer a manifold speech-program with prime international speakers. Gratien d`Haese from IT Consultants will give an insight into his experience on business continuity management with BAREOS and REAR, and Christian Reiss (Symgenius) will talk about Backup with BAREOS and ZFS, and will also look into automating with Puppet. An overview on the client management system Opsi and insight into other Backup systems will be given in the talk by Erol Ulukmen from UIB. The new BAREOS feature active client will be presented by Tobias Gro from Globalways AG. Further speakers are among others Thomas Otto from the Friedrich-Schiller University in Jena, dass IT co-founders Phillip Storz and Maik Auendorf.A few conference tickets are still available. You can choose between the packages Gold (Conference attendance including workshop and accommodation), Silver (Conference attendance and workshop) and Bronze (conference attendance). The tickets can be booked on the conference websitePRESS CONTACTPamela DrescherHead of Marketing+49 911 92885-0pamela.drescher@netways.deNETWAYS GmbHDeutschherrnstr. 15-1990429 NurembergGermanyAbout NETWAYS GmbHNETWAYS GmbH has been supporting companies in the management of complex IT environments based on open source software for more than 20 years. NETWAYS is market leading in open source systems management based on Icinga, Puppet and Elastic.Our customers are companies and organisations from all sectors such as Deutsche Post AG, Deutsche Welle, REWE group, Rakuten, Audi AG, Continental AG and GFK AG.NETWAYS has also made a name for itself as organizer of various conferences training courses on open source monitoring and open source data center solutions.For more information:About dass IT GmbHdass IT was founded in 2004. Since then, dass IT accomplishes projects with open source software in small and medium-sized enterprises, government agencies and corporate clients. Their Team of high class Linux experts are qualified to put the complete range of open source software into practice. Main activities are in the fields of systems management, scheduling and execution of high availibility Linux server systems and the integration of Linux servers and services into existing complex IT infrastructures.Strong partners like Novell, Red Hat, Univention, SEP, GroundWork and OpenXchange are important to give the customer the opportunity to order software and support from the producer itself.dass IT is one of the leading developers of the open source software solution Bareos.Deutschherrnstr. 15 - 1990429 Nurnberg
Latin America drilling fluids waste management market is anticipated to expand at a significant CAGR of 12.6% By 2020

http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=3022

http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/

Due to the dominance of a few key players in the Latin America drilling fluids waste management market, the market here is highly concentrated, reports Transparency Market Research in a new study. Leading players operating in the Latin America drilling fluids management market are aiming at integrating their operations backward to provide customers with economical services. Leading multinational companies present in the Latin America drilling fluids management market such as Halliburton, Weatherford, Baker Hughes, and Schlumberger also provide customers with turnkey solutions that in turn helps drilling fluid production and exploration companies to manage drilling waste safely along with environment sustainability.Download Free Research Report Brochure :The Latin America drilling fluids waste management market is anticipated to expand at a significant CAGR of 12.6% from 2014 to 2020. The market stood at a value of US$521.4 mn in 2015 and is projected to rise to US$945.3 mn by 2020. Onshore drilling fluids waste management services are likely to dominate the application segment with an overall share of 52.83% in terms of revenue in 2020. The onshore application segment is likely to maintain a lead due to the reliance of countries such as Argentina, Colombia, and Venezuela on their considerable onshore reserves. The discovery of new onshore reserves, including those of shale gas, is likely to attract potential foreign investors towards Latin America. As a result of this, the increase in onshore exploration and drilling activities is further expected to augment the growth of drilling fluids waste management services in the onshore application segment.Tax Leniency by Brazilian Government to Aid in Mass Adoption of Drilling Fluids Waste Management ServicesOwing to the ongoing offshore drilling and exploration activities in the Pre-Salt area of Brazil, the market for drilling fluids waste management is anticipated to significantly grow in the coming years. Brazil is anticipated to account for 34.5% of the overall share in the Latin America drilling fluids waste management market. Moreover, the regulations imposed by the Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA) are likely to positively guide the drilling fluids waste management market in Brazil. Furthermore, the progress of the drilling fluids waste management services in Brazil is dependent on the tax incentives allowed by the government to attract foreign players. However, apart from Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela are also anticipated to witness stable growth until 2020.Rigid Government Regulations Regarding Drilling Fluid Management to Drive Demand for Drilling Fluids Waste Management ServicesAccording to a TMR analyst, Governments of countries in Latin America have levied severe environmental protections rules for companies operating in the drilling and exploration industry. The generation of harmful wastes such as drill fluids and drill cuttings from drilling processes extensively harms the environment. Therefore, government agencies such as IBAMA have enacted standards pertaining to waste disposal, emission of pollutants, and release of effluents. Similarly, regulations such as Law on Substances, Materials and Hazardous Waste (SMHWL) and the Law on Waste Management (LWM) are further anticipated to encourage the adoption of drilling fluids waste management in Latin America.Operational Efficiency Pressure Added with Need to Stick to Government Regulations to Create Challenges for VendorsThe main challenge faced by companies operating in the drilling fluid waste management business is the transportation of necessary equipment to offshore drilling locations. These remote locations are sometimes severe environmentally sensitive areas and require special attention towardsthe management of .drilling fluids waste. The pressure of maintaining operational efficiency and cost in adverse climatic situations is anticipated to act rogue in the process of managing drilling fluids waste. Moreover, the lack of proper oil and gas infrastructure in countries in Latin America is another factor inhibiting the growth of the drilling fluids waste management market in the region.However, the abundance of deep water and ultra-deep water oil reserves is likely to present companies with profitable growth prospects for the future and aid in the adoption of drilling fluids waste management services.Key segments of the Latin America Drilling Fluids Waste Management MarketLatin America Drilling Fluids Waste Management Market: Service Segment AnalysisSolid controlTreatment & disposalContainment & handlingLatin America Drilling Fluids Waste Management Market: Application AnalysisOffshoreOnshoreAbout UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMR's experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Our data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts, so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With a broad research and analysis capability, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques in developing distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.ContactTransparency Market ResearchTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
The 5G Wireless Ecosystem 2016-2030 - Technologies, Applications, Verticals, Strategies & Forecasts: ResearchMoz

http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=804831

http://www.researchmoz.us/the-5g-wireless-ecosystem-2016-2030-technologies-applications-verticals-strategies-forecasts-report.html

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ResearchMoz.us has announced a new research study on Market Future and Opportunities of the 5G Wireless Ecosystem over Forecast period 2016-2030 to its vast repository of market intelligence reports.While LTE and LTE-Advanced deployments are still underway, mobile operators and vendors have already embarked on R&D initiatives to develop so-called 5G technology, with a vision of commercialization by 2020. 5G is essentially a revolutionary paradigm shift in wireless networking to support the throughput, latency and scalability requirements of future use cases such as extreme bandwidth augmented reality applications and connectivity management for Billions of M2M (Machine to Machine) devices.Although 5G is yet to be standardized, vendors are aggressively investing in 5G development efforts with a principal focus on new air interface transmission schemes, higher frequency bands and advanced antenna technologies such as Massive MIMO and beamforming. With large scale commercial deployments expected to begin in 2020, we estimate that 5G networks will generate nearly $250 Billion in annual service revenue by 2025.For more info, get a Sample PDF:The 5G Wireless Ecosystem: 2016  2030  Technologies, Applications, Verticals, Strategies & Forecasts report presents an in-depth assessment of the emerging 5G ecosystem including key market drivers, challenges, enabling technologies, use cases, vertical market applications, spectrum assessment, mobile operator deployment commitments, case studies, standardization, research initiatives and vendor strategies. The report also presents forecasts for 5G investments and operator services.Key Findings:The report has the following key findings: Although 5G is yet to be standardized, vendors are aggressively investing in 5G development efforts with a principal focus on new air interface transmission schemes, higher frequency bands and advanced antenna technologies such as Massive MIMO and beamforming. Driven by regional, national government, mobile operator and vendor initiatives, we expect that over $6 Billion will be spent on 5G R&D and trial investments between 2015 and 2020. With large scale commercial deployments expected to begin in 2020, we estimate that 5G networks will generate nearly $250 Billion in annual service revenue by 2025. 5G networks are expected to utilize a variety of spectrum bands for diverse applications, ranging from established sub-6 GHz cellular bands to millimeter wave frequencies.View TOC (table of content), Figures and Tables of the Report:Key Questions Answered:The report provides answers to the following key questions: How much will vendors and operators invest in 5G R&D commitments? What will be the number of 5G subscriptions in 2020 and at what rate will it grow? What will be the key applications of 5G networks? What trends, challenges and barriers will influence the development and adoption of 5G? Which regions and countries will be the first to adopt 5G? Will 5G networks utilize new spectrum bands? Who are the key 5G vendors and what are their strategies? Will 5G networks rely on C-RAN architecture? What are the prospects of millimeter wave technology for 5G radio access networking? What will be the impact of 5G on the M2M and IoT ecosystem? Will drone and satellite based communication platforms play a wider role in 5G networks?ResearchMoz is the worlds fastest growing collection of market research reports worldwide. Our database is composed of current market studies from over 100 featured publishers worldwide. Our market research databases integrate statistics with analysis from global, regional, country and company perspectives. ResearchMozs service portfolio also includes value-added services such as market research customization, competitive landscaping, and in-depth surveys, delivered by a team of experienced Research Coordinators.Mr. NachiketAlbany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-621-2074Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Email: sales@researchmoz.usFollow us on LinkedIn at:
Umbilical Market Analysis, Growth, Trends, Forecast by 2024

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Umbilical cable refers to a technology which transfers signals, consumable, or energy from one end of the cable to another. Umbilical cables consist of multiple components assembled together in a composite structure. These components include hoses, tubes, electric cables, and optic cables. In addition, various types of umbilical cables are designed according to the requirement within the application such as electrical umbilical cables with signal and power elements to connect the ends over long distance. Furthermore, some umbilical cables are used to control the operation of subsea production, processing, and injection facilities. Similarly, some umbilical cables provide electric power to control signals to and from system.Get Free Sample Report Copy :The Remote Operated Vehicle (ROV) umbilical communication cables are widely used during the installation of subsea control systems, and operational systems. The umbilical cables are also used to monitor position and functions of subsea installations remotely from offshore platforms or onshore facilities. Similarly, umbilical cables are also used in diving applications to provide life support for the diver. Furthermore, there is a trend of customized product manufacturing as per the end-user requirement. For instance, Technip provides customized umbilical systems and cables for oil and gas industry. In addition, Umbilicals International, Inc. invested in dynamic cable manufacturing to develop high performance cable, hose, and umbilical systems in their Houston, the U.S. production facility.The umbilical cables help to cope with the increasing power needs of subsea pumping, compression, and processing equipment. The ROV umbilical cables provide efficient communication without interruptions such as weather or surface traffic. In addition, umbilical cables are more effective as compared to other communication modes such as radio communication or satellite communication. Furthermore, umbilical cables can be operated under harsh environments such as high hydraulic pressures, and turbulent waves. All these factors are expected to drive the global umbilical market over the forecast period till 2024. However, ROV cables are still in improvement phase, and high cost associated with umbilical cables is expected to restrain the large scale adoption of these cables. The umbilical cables can be used in multiple applications such as telecommunication, instrumentation, oil and energy, and other subsea applications, which are expected to provide growth opportunity to the umbilical market in near term.Browse Market Research Report with ToC & Free Analysis :The umbilical market is segmented by type, by application, and by geography. By type, the umbilical market is segmented into hydraulic, electro hydraulic, electro-fiber hydraulic, and remote operated vehicle umbilical cables. Based on applications, the umbilical market is segmented into subsea, offshore, onshore, oil and gas, mining, electro-mechanical, and other. On the basis of geography, the umbilical market is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East and Africa. Among these regions, Europe and North America have seen significant growth in the umbilical market due to increasing subsea operation and growing manufacturing industry. For instance, Nexans installed two power umbilicals for Chevron Corporation in the Gulf of Mexico. Asia Pacific, and Middle East and Africa are anticipated to witness high adoption of umbilical cables due to increasing demand from oil and energy industry, and increasing power needs by various equipment such as control system, and operation systems. Further, LS Cable & System announced the development of umbilical cables for offshore engineering in Korea.Witnessing the rapid development and increasing adoption of umbilical cables, various players have entered into the global umbilical market. The major players in this market include Nexans, Prysmian S.p.A., JDR Cable Systems Ltd, Oceaneering International, Inc., Aker Solutions ASA, Technip, Subsea 7 S.A., Parker Hannifin Corp, Actuant Corporation, Tyco Electronic Corporation, Cabling Group, Umbilicals International, Inc., Hydro Group plc, LS Cable & System, and Sound Ocean Systems, Inc.About Us :Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.Contact Us :-Transparency Market ResearchState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Cloud ERP Market in India to Grow at a CAGR of 25.4% by 2020

Cloud ERP Market in India

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New York, September 08: Market Research Engine has published a new report titled as Cloud ERP Market in India by Deployment (Public, Private, Hybrid) By Enterprise Type (Small & Medium Enterprises, Large Enterprises  Trends & Forecast, 2015-2020.The overall ERP market in India is expected to grow at a CAGR of 25.4% during the forecast period 2015-2020.Browse Full Report here:Cloud ERP is the technology that makes use of cloud technology and platforms for providing ERP software. The use of cloud offers more flexibility and transforms the business processes. The Indian cloud ERP market is comparatively less mature than other markets in the world but expected to grow in the future due to increasing demand from SMEs. The increased competition and globalization have become the key drivers for SMEs to deploy ERP on cloud to minimize infrastructure cost. The factors such as low IT manpower, low operational cost, data backup and recovery and ubiquitous access are encouraging SMEs to move ERP on cloud.The future market is driven by cloud ERP adoption among enterprises of all sizes. Also, cost advantages and flexibility that it brings to the organization fosters the market. The SME segment is expected to drive cloud ERP market more than that of large enterprises. The cloud ERP adoption in SME segment is expected to grow at a CAGR of 23.9% during the forecasted years 2015-2020. However, the security issues related to cloud technology and increasing regulatory compliances will affect the market.Government and large enterprises are investing lot in cloud technology that will give lot of opportunities to the vendors trying to enter the market. For instance, Indian government has initiated Make in India project to protect and help companies to start and improve in latest technologies. Some of the major players present in the market are Oracle, Ramco, SAP, and Wipro. The report also considers some of the watch list companies such as IFS, MYOB and Workday.Download Free Sample Report:This study covers and analyses Cloud ERP in India globally. Bringing out the complete key insights of this industry, this report aims to provide opportunity for players to understand the latest trends, current market scenario, government initiatives, and technologies related to the market. In addition, helps the venture capitalist in understanding the companies better and take informed decisions.In recent years, leading Cloud Service vendors are looking at offering highly customized and converged solutions to cloud payers and providers across the globe. Leading Cloud Service vendors included EPICOR Software Corporation, NetSuite Inc., Ramco Systems Ltd, INFOR, QAD INC, Also Companies to Watch For Plex Systems, Inc., Workday, Inc., MYOB Ltd, Acumatica, Inc.,Cloud ERP Market Industry Verticals:By Deployment: Public Private HybridBy Implementation Mode: Direct Implementation Implementation Through PartnersBy Enterprise: Small Enterprise Medium Enterprise Large EnterpriseAbout MarketResearchEngine.comMarket Research Engine is a global market research and consulting organization. We provide market intelligence in emerging, niche technologies and markets. Our market analysis powered by rigorous methodology and quality metrics provide information and forecasts across emerging markets, emerging technologies and emerging business models. Our deep focus on industry verticals and country reports help our clients to identify opportunities and develop business strategies.Media ContactCompany Name: Market Research EngineContact Person: John BayEmail: john@marketresearchengine.comPhone: +1-855-984-1862, +91-860-565-7204Country: United StatesWebsite:Address: 3422 SW 15 Street, Suite #8942, Deerfield Beach, FL 33442, United States
Cancer Diagnostics Market to Cross US$ 168 Billion by 2022

Cancer Diagnostics Market

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New York, September 08: Market Research Engine has published a new report titled as Global Cancer Diagnostics Market Size,Competitive Analysis,Strategies And Forecast Upto 2022.According to this report, the global cancer diagnostics market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 7.6% during the forecast period of 2015 to 2022. In 2014, the global cancer diagnostics market was valued at US$100,994.5 million and is expected to be worth US$168,649.3 million by 2022.Download Free Sample Report:Tumor is a hereditary malady driven by substantial or heritable transformations. Advancement of new DNA sequencing and cutting edge sequencing innovations are relied upon to have a huge effect in the treatment, administration and discovery of growth. Cutting edge disease diagnostics business sector is relied upon to witness a lucrative development amid the gauge period attributable to expanding applications as a consequence of mechanical headways in cutting edge tumor diagnostics, for example, improvement of computerized and new imaging modalities so as to break down X-beam mammograms. These advancements will enhance exactness in the screening of bosom growth, mechanical advancements in research center testing gadgets for the advancement of new malignancy biomarkers, for example, protein examines, hormone, and receptor will assist enhance the finding and treatment of tumor with better investigation of tissue test. Expanding advancements in the examination of cell free DNA and flowing growth cells in fringe blood will likewise help the screening of disease in high hazard people. Moreover, enhanced in situ hybridization and immunohistochemical stains make compelling identification of disease cells in biopsied tissue and fringe blood. Protein design identification and bioinformatics investigation of quality are additionally anticipated that would assist make disease determination productive and these headways will help the business sector interest for cutting edge growth finding in the following seven years.Browse the full report here:The worldwide cutting edge disease diagnostics business sector is divided on the premise of finding by growth sign, by diagnostics capacity and by sort of investigation. Cutting edge growth finding business sector is partitioned into bosom, colorectal and proteomic disease. Colorectal tumor portion is relied upon to develop at a huge rate because of expanding frequencies of colorectal growth in the worldwide populace and expanding research concentrates on in the biotechnology business. Cutting edge disease determination market by sort of examination is isolated into sidekick indicative, screening/early discovery, checking/repeat and forecast. Moreover, on the premise of sort of investigation, NGS growth determination business sector is separated into genotyping, proteomics and quality expression. Expanding interest for noninvasive and high throughput diagnostics measures for prior discovery of malignancy and sub-atomic subtypes of tumors for auspicious analysis and treatment, creative innovative headways in advancements connected with cutting edge screening and determination, for example, ongoing polymerase chain response (RT-PCR), cutting edge catch advances, biochips and cutting edge sequencing give quick conclusion, exact and touchy instruments for treating disease patients are relied upon to fuel the business sector development in the following seven years. Moreover, expanding frequencies of distinctive sort of malignancies, for example, blood-conceived growths, sex-related tumors and strong tumors, headways being developed of tests for discovery of DNA, RNA methylation design and coursing nucleic corrosive atoms are additionally anticipated that would drive the interest for the cutting edge disease analysis market through to the 2022.Cancer Diagnostics Market, by Method: Biopsy Endoscopy Tumor Biomarker Tests ImagingMajor geographies analyzed under this research report are: Europe North America Asia-Pacific Rest of the WorldThis report gives you access to decisive data such as: Market growth drivers Factors limiting market growth Current market trends Market structure Market projections for the coming yearsKey highlights of this report:Overview of key market forces propelling and restraining market growth:Up-to-date analysis of market trends and technological improvements.Pin-point analyses of market competition dynamics to offer you a competitive edge.An analysis of strategies of major competitors.An array of graphics and SWOT analysis of major industry segments.Detailed analyses of industry trends.A well-defined technological growth map with an impact-analysis.Offers a clear understanding of the competitive landscape and key product segments.About MarketResearchEngine.comMarket Research Engine is a global market research and consulting organization. We provide market intelligence in emerging healthcare technologies, niche technologies and markets. Our market analysis powered by rigorous methodology and quality metrics provide information and forecasts across emerging markets, emerging technologies and emerging business models. Our deep focus on industry verticals and country reports help our clients to identify opportunities and develop business strategies.Media ContactCompany Name: Market Research EngineContact Person: John BayEmail: john@marketresearchengine.comPhone: +1-855-984-1862, +91-860-565-7204Website:Address: 3422 SW 15 Street, Suite #8942, Deerfield Beach, FL 33442, United States
Global 3D Medical Imaging Equipment Market: huge scope for 3D diagnostic imaging services in the US.

Global 3D Medical Imaging Equipment Market 2016

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The medical pictures are usually taken using medical imaging software which is specialized for presenting diagnostic imaging of the patient in the 3D format. This 3D visualization software along with medical imaging systems is very helpful for medical diagnostics of various healthcare conditions. There is high scope for the 3D Medical Imaging Equipment Market across the globe in upcoming years.Check Complete Report @Scope and Regional Forecast of the 3D Medical Imaging Equipment Market:In the 3D Medical Imaging Equipment Market, investors and medical corporations invests high capital expenditure for the development of image analysis software and image processing software in the medical imaging technology. These systems are launched after successful clinical trials in the market under their company patent for use in healthcare industry.North America is one of the major investors of the 3D Medical Imaging Equipment Market. Many medical corporations are situated in the US and Germany who are competitively developing 3D medical imaging techniques for healthcare sector.Asia Pacific has high scope of applications for the 3D Medical Imaging Equipment Market. Increasing investment by government agencies and healthcare industry in this region for improving the medical facilities is expected to propel the demand for this market for imaging assistance in the upcoming term. India and China are the major consumers of this market and there is high scope for imaging innovation from Japan and South Korea in the region.Get Sample Brochure of the Report @Segmentation and Key Players of the 3D Medical Imaging Equipment Market:The3D Medical Imaging Equipment Market is segmented into various categories by type, by application and by geography as follows: By type: X-ray scanning, Ultrasound, MRI, Computed tomography andHybrid imaging equipment By application: Diagnostic Center, Research Center and Hospital By geography: USA, China, Japan, Germany, Canada, Russia, UK andIndiaThe key players in the 3D Medical Imaging Equipment Market are as follows: GE Healthcare Philips Healthcare Hitachi Medical Siemens Healthcare Toshiba Medical SystemsThe 3D Medical Imaging Equipment Market is a rapidly growing market with many applications of 3D imaging for medical images of various health conditions in the patients. This market is expected to witness high growth in this market due to high investment in the diagnostic medical imaging for generating software images of internal structure of patients in hospitals and research centers in various regions across the globe in upcoming years.About us:MarketIntelReports (MIR) aim to empower our clients to successfully manage and outperform in their business decisions, we do this by providing Premium Market Intelligence, Strategic Insights and Databases from a range of Global Publishers.A group of industry veterans who are well experienced in reputed international consulting firms after identifying the sourcing needs of MNCs for market intelligence, have together started this business savior MarketIntelReports.MIR intends to be a one-stop shop with an intuitive design, exhaustive database, expert assistance, secure cart checkout and data privacy integrated. It curates the list of reports, publishers and studies to ensure that the database is constantly updated to dynamically meet the targeted, specific needs of our clients.MarketIntelReports currently has more than 10,000 plus titles and 35+ publishers on our platform and growing consistently to fill the Global Intelligence Demand  Supply Gap. We cover more than 15 industry verticals being: Automotive, Electronics, Manufacturing, Pharmaceuticals, Healthcare, Chemicals, Building & Construction, Agriculture, Food & Beverages, Banking & Finance, Media and Government, Public Sector Studies.Contact us:Mayur SSales Manager2711 Centerville Road, Suite 400,Wilmington,Delaware,19808United Statessales@marketintelreports.comTelephone: 1-302-261-5343
Worldwide Tetraacetylethylenediamine (TAED) Market Report 2016-2026

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Global Tetraacetylethylenediamine (TAED) Market: OverviewTAED is an abbreviated form of tetraacetylethylenediamine. Tetraacetylethylenediamine is an organic compound with the chemical formula (CH3C(O))2NCH2CH2N(C(O)CH3)2. The common uses of tetraacetylethylenediamine is commonly used as a bleach activator in domestic and household detergents as well as in production of paper pulp. Acetylation of ethylenediamine produces the final product as tetraacetylethylenediamine. The main and the most common use of tetraacetylethylenediamine is in laundry, bleaches and detergents. TAED is usually deployed in detergents and bleaching agents as an activator of hydrogen peroxide when used below a temperature of 60 C. The reaction of TAED with hydrogen peroxide is called perhydrolysis which results in forming peroxy acids which are more easy to use as washing and bleaching agents at low temperatures. Moreover, a small amount of tetraacetylethylenediamine finds its application in bleaching of paper, generation of peracetic acid in disinfectants and textile industry. Tetraacetylethylenediamine is used in the manufacturing of paperboard products and food contact paper.Global Tetraacetylethylenediamine (TAED) Market: SegmentationThe global tetraacetylethylenediamine (TAED) market can be segmented on the basis of application and region. On the basis of application, the global tetraacetylethylenediamine (TAED) market can be segmented into household detergents, bleaching agents and cleaning agents. On the basis of region, the global tetraacetylethylenediamine (TAED) market can be segmented into North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific excluding Japan, Middle East and Africa and Japan.Request Free Report Sample@Global Tetraacetylethylenediamine (TAED) Market: DriversThe major factor boosting the growth of global tetraacetylethylenediamine (TAED) market is the increasing use of TAED in household detergents and cleaning agents. Moreover, biodegradable nature of TAED is another key driving factor fuelling the growth of the global tetraacetylethylenediamine (TAED) market. Low toxicity and low prices and deployment of Tetraacetylethylenediamine in the manufacturing of disinfectants are other factors driving the growth of the global tetraacetylethylenediamine (TAED) market. In addition, increasing demands of bleaching agent applications and investments from key players in expansion, agreements and partnerships is another aspect driving the overall growth of the global tetraacetylethylenediamine (TAED) market.Global Tetraacetylethylenediamine (TAED) Market: RestraintsThe declined usage of TAED in agricultural fields can be a major challenge affecting the growth of the global tetraacetylethylenediamine (TAED) market. Moreover, limited application areas of TAED and price volatility of raw materials can pose major challenge to the growth of the global tetraacetylethylenediamine (TAED) market.Global Tetraacetylethylenediamine (TAED) Market: Competitive LandscapeEurope dominates the global tetraacetylethylenediamine (TAED) market by more than 50% market by consumption followed by Asia Pacific. North America also plays a key role in consumption of TAED followed by Middle East and Africa. Maximum growth of TAED is expected to be witnessed in Asia Pacific and Middle East and Africa.Request For TOC@Global Tetraacetylethylenediamine (TAED) Market: Key PlayersThe major companies involved in the production of TAED globally are AK Chemtech Co. Ltd., Chemsfield Korea Co Ltd. Hongye Chemical Co., Ltd, Idchem Co. Ltd, Warwick Chemicals, Zhejiang Jinke Peroxide Co., Ltd, Weylchem Group Of Companies, Acuro Organics Limited, Shanghai Deborn Co., Ltd., Henkel AG & Co. KGaA, JINKE Company Limited and others.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Malt Market To Increase at Steady Growth Rate

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Malt is a product prepared from grains through a malting process, which involves partial germination, to modify the grains natural food substances. Barley is generally used to prepare malt, while rice wheat, corn and rye are used less frequently. The principle use of malt is in brewing beer. Malt is also used for preparation of whiskey and other beverages. Its wide usage in alcohols, beverages and food products makes it an important product in the food and beverage industry. It is also used to make confections such as malted shakes, malt vinegar, flavored drinks such as Horlicks, and Milo, and some baked goods, such as bagels, malt loaf, and rich tea. Malted barley is an ingredient in blended flours specifically used in the manufacture of yeast breads and other baked goods.Malt Market: Drivers & RestraintsThe key driver for this market is the use of malt in the beer industry, which is growing at a fast rate. Its widespread use in the food industry is another impetus for the growth of this market. Opportunities for this market lie in the use of different types of malt extracts in food products. Growing popularity of wine and other beverages acts as a hindrance in the growth of this market, as this would reduce the consumption of beer. Increase in the use of organic malt in making breweries is boosting the growth of the market. The major challenge to this market is the entry of local players in the market. They offer low cost product, and thus are able to generate a broader customer base.Request Free Report Sample@Malt Market: SegmentationThe global malt market can be broadly segmented on the basis of type, application, brewers, and source. On the basis of type, the malt market can be classified into-Dry Extract, Liquid Extract, Malt Flour. On the basis of application, the malt market can be segmented into-Beer Industry, Whisky Distilleries, Food & Beverages, and Pharmaceutical industry. On the basis of brewers, the malt market can be segmented into- Base Malt, Standard Malt and Specialty Malt. On the basis of source, it can be segmented into-Barley, Wheat, Rye.Malt Market: Region Wise OutlookGeographically, the acai berry market is segmented into seven regions which are ; North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Japan, Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ), and Middle East and Africa (MEA) and Japan.North America has been the largest market for malts, sharing superiority in both production as well as consumption. Western Europe and Central Europe are also one of the key malt markets. Countries in Asia Pacific such as, China, South Korea and Australia are showing relatively quicker growth and are expected to be the dominant markets over the coming years. Countries in Africa such as, Zimbabwe and Botswana constitute of two of the most promising market potentials followed by Latin America.Request For TOC@Malt Market: Key PlayersSome of the major companies manufacturing malts in the global market are Bairds Malt Ltd, Cargill Inc., Crisp Malting Group Ltd, Malteurop Group, Muntons Malt plc, Simpsons Malt Ltd. Cargill Inc. Bairds Malt Ltd. Crisp Malting Group Ltd., Heineken, Muntons Malt plc and others.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
BFSI Security Market Analysis and Trends, 2016-2026

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In past one decade, electronic banking platforms have been implemented as an efficient channel to process banking transactions remotely. These banking transactions are executed from web based applications over the internet network, thus creating security risk by exposing users data to hackers. Apart from this, the banking, financial and insurance industry is continuously witnessing threat from global terrorism, cyber-crimes, and espionage which are leveraging the loopholes in the critical infrastructure. With the increase in cyber-crimes activities, security of sensitive data including, personably identifiable information, personal banking details, commercial banking details, and confidential corporate information is at high risk, due to which, the demand for BFSI security solutions has witnessed traction in the past couple of years.Bank and financial institutions are operated in highly regulated environment. Data breach incidences in these cases occur mainly due to non-compliance to various operational standards.. Therefore, there is increasing need of BFSI security to ensure the long term visibility of banking and financial institutions and their data. BFSI security includes cyber security and physical security of banking and financial institutions.Request Free Report Sample@Component and Technologies Used in BFSI SecurityAccess Control SystemsCloud Based ServicesPhysical Security SoftwareSurveillance SystemsBFSI Security Market: Drivers and RestraintsIn the current changing world of information technology, banking and financial institutions are facing privacy issues due to increased data theft and unauthorized accesses. In BFSI sector, there is always existence of both internal and external threats with increased adoptions of ATMs and online banking solutions. As security breach of customers financials can hamper brand image of a particular financial institution, there necessity of safeguarding physical assets and continuous monitoring of banking data driving the growth of the market. However, the initial investment required to set up the security infrastructure is one of the challenge for the growth of this market.BFSI Security Market: SegmentationSegmentation of business BFSI Security market on the basis of systems and components:Video Surveillance:Video surveillance is used for monitoring activities inside out of the organization. Physical security has become necessary for banking and financial institutions to combat pilferage to theft related activities. This has created increase in demand for video surveillance solutions in the BFSI industry.Access Control :Access control is deployed for both physical security as well as information security. Access control systems seamlessly work against any unauthorized access. Access control solutions includes web-based access control, managed access control, control panel, visitor management systems, readers, and credentials.Intrusion and Fire Detection:Intrusion detection systems inspect all the inner and outer network activities and identifies suspicious pattern to indicate data breach attempt in the system. Fire detection system is a combination of various devices which work seamlessly to counsel end-users from any threat of fire.Physical Security Information Management (PSIM):Physical security information management is a software that act as a standalone platform for integrating multiple unconnected security application and devices. It controls them using single user interface.Request For TOC@Regional OverviewAsia-Pacific is witnessing rapid growth in the adoption of BFSI security solutions. With respect to this trend, various security vendors such as Honeywell International Inc. and Cisco System Inc. are expanding their business in this region in order to increase its market share in this market. Besides, the Asia-Pacific market is worlds fastest growing economy and soon is expected to be largest wealth market with the increase in private banks and financial instructions in countries such as China and India. In India, according to the data released by The Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the total number of bank accounts in India are around 600 million, out of which 25 million bank accounts holder are active users for mobile banking applications. North America has observed increased data breach attacks against BFSI industries in the recent past. The banking and financial institutions are promoting the use of digital wallet which is in turn is raising the risk of security for consumers data.Cisco Systems Inc., Honeywell International Inc., Computer Science Corporation (CSC), IBM Corporation, and Symantec Corporation are some of the key players of global BFSI security market.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Releases New Report on the Global Peripheral Embolization Device Market

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Embolization is a process through which embolus is placed into the blood vessel to block the blood flow to a particular area of the body. The embolus is usually a blood clot formed due to clotting of blood cells. However, the artificial embolus is used to close off blood vessels to prevent the blood from reaching a particular part of the body to eliminate abnormal conditions in the body like a renal aneurysm, arteriovenous fistula, hypogastric artery embolization, endoleak embolization, GI bleeding and treatment of tumors. Peripheral embolization is usually used to shrink tumors by blocking the blood flow to it. Peripheral embolization devices often use embolus made up of various drugs which along with blocking the blood flow also are targeted towards the treatment of a tumor. Embolization is efficient and less invasive as compared to open surgery and therefore poses a little risk to the patient.Peripheral Embolization Device Market: Drivers and RestraintsThe global peripheral embolization device market is driven by the rising incidence of cancer and cardiovascular diseases. According to CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) by 2025, 19.3 million cases of cancer cases are expected to be diagnosed each year, which in turn is expected to increase demand for peripheral embolization devices for early treatment of malignant tumors. The increasing mortality rate due to cardiovascular diseases is expected to boost demand for peripheral embolization devices. Increasing cardiovascular patients owing rising global geriatric population is expected to provide high growth opportunities for the peripheral embolization devices manufacturers over the forecast period. Moreover, technological developments in new peripheral embolization devices aimed to increase safety among patients and ease of use for physicians is expected to provide significant growth opportunities for the peripheral embolization devices manufacturers. However, the high cost of peripheral embolization devices and complications like coil migration, perforations, and spasms among patients is expected to hamper market growth over the forecast period.Request Free Report Sample@Peripheral Embolization Device Market: SegmentationThe global peripheral embolization device market are segmented into product type and end userSegmentation based on product typeEmbolization GuidewiresMicrocathetersOcclusion SystemsOcclusion BalloonsPlatinum CoilsSegmentation based on end userHospitalsAmbulatory surgical centersSpecialty clinicsPeripheral Embolization Device Market: Region  wise OutlookThe peripheral embolization device market is expected to witness healthy growth throughout the forecast period with North America expected to be the leading market. High demand for peripheral embolization devices from cancer patients is expected to boost the market growth over the forecast period. Favorable reimbursement policies and up gradation in the compensation for the patients is North America is projected to drive demand for peripheral embolization devices in North America over the forecast period. Moreover, several global manufacturers in this region are expected to promote the use of peripheral embolization devices and in turn is supposed to increase the adoption rate of the devices. Western Europe is expected to be second largest market followed by North America owing to high awareness related to the use of peripheral embolization devices for treatment of cardiovascular and bleeding disorders. APEJ (Asia-Pacific excluding Japan) and Japan are expected to follow next after Western Europe owing to high population and increasing the incidence of cardiovascular diseases in these regions along with growing per capita healthcare expenditure in countries like India and China. Eastern Europe and the Middle East and Africa (MEA) is expected to increase significantly owing to the rise in cancer incidence rate and manufacturers focusing on expansion strategies in this regions.Request For TOC@Peripheral Embolization Device Market: Key PlayersSome key players in peripheral embolization market are Boston Scientific Corporation, Medtronic, Inc., Cook Medical, St. Jude Medical, Inc., Penumbra, Inc., Metactive Medical, Inc., Terumo Corporation and others. The companies are focused on development of new peripheral embolization devices with increased safety and ease of use.Browse Full Report@ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Self Balancing Scooter Market To Make Great Impact In Near Future by 2026

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Self-balancing scooters or Hoverboard use gyroscope to determine balance of board, motors keep speed according to the inclination of the person riding it. These scooters are designed to look futuristic and an alternative to walking. Initially, self-balancing scooters did not perform in market because of many limitations such as low range, improper functioning of electronics, and high cost. Now after spending a lot in research & development and advertisement by manufacturing companies, these scooters are becoming a profitable product. Many nation have now removed ban over using these scooters in public areas. These scooters are majorly used in shopping complexes, manufacturing facilities, sidewalks, parks, and various government buildings. Self-balancing scooter market is still at primitive stage. Awareness regarding self-balancing scooter is still a primary concern for the manufacturers. A lot of promotion techniques are being used by companies such as promotion on social media, celebrity advertising, and free rides to increase the awareness about self-balancing scooter.Self-balancing scooter market: Market DynamicsSelf-balancing scooter look futuristic and are fun to drive. Moreover these scooters are less expensive than any other mobility scooters available in market. Self-balancing scooters are being promoted at office and college campuses because they are environment friendly, noise free and operate on electricity. The trend of using modern and advanced electronic devices and increasing dependency on mobility equipment is driving its demand in advanced economies. These scooters are being used by police to petrol certain places like streets and airports. Manufacturers of self-balancing scooters are regularly improving its ergonomics, technology, range, and adding various modern features such as wireless charging, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth which can connect it with users personal gadgets. Features like these are encouraging people to buy these advanced products.Request Free Report Sample@There have been various reports of explosion and malfunctioning of Self-balancing scooters. As the result of these reports, in Feb 2016, United States government declared these scooters as unsafe for public use. Governments of various countries have different rules regarding use of these scooters. These barriers are restraining its use and limiting its market to private properties. Usually these scooters have 15- 30 km range, charging time and the unavailability of charging stations is major problem. Despite of using various promotion techniques, awareness is still a major problem restraining its market growth.Self-balancing scooter market: SegmentationSelf-balancing scooter market can be segmented on the basis of product types, end use industries and region.Based on product typeSingle wheeled and double wheeled. Single wheeled scooter or self-balancing Unicycle are comparatively new in market. Due to this Unicycle is manufactured by less number of companies.Based on end use industriesPersonal use and Commercial use. Residential and college campus market comes under Personal use, while Commercial use segment is further divided into office campus, manufacturing facilities and government infrastructure such as airport and railways (usually used by police during patrolling).Self-balancing scooter market: Regional outlookCountries with high per capita income are encouraging markets for self-balancing scooters. Western Europe and North America have highest demand for these scooters. Especially U.S. has shown big demand for these scooters. China players are providing cheap scooters throughout the world. This has made China a major manufacturer of both Unicycle and double wheeled scooters. Self-balancing scooter market has limited signs of rise in African nations. Safety regulations are still posing problem in many cities around the world.Request For TOC@Self-balancing scooter market: KeyplayersThe key players involved in the manufacturing of Self-balancing scooter include:Ninebot Inc.Inventist, Inc.IPS Electric Unicycle Co.,LimitedRobstep GBHangzhou Chic Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd.ESWING TECH.AirwheelShenzhen Counterbalance Technology Co., Ltd.EswaySolowheelSegway, Inc.IO HawkOxboard B.V.Freego Inc.Evoy TechnologiesKoogo Technology Inc.Browse Full Report@ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Electronic Warfare Market Growth and Value Chain 2016-2026

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A majority of people have seen and are familiar with warships, fighter aircrafts, battle tanks, and submarines in action, either directly or via television or films. But fight involving the use of radar emissions and radio waves is also going on in the atmosphere. This silent battle of beams which uses focused energy such as laser light, radio waves to confuse or disable enemys electronics is commonly called electronic warfare (EW). Electronic warfare uses entire range of electromagnetic spectrum. Hence it is sometime also known as electromagnetic warfare. Electronic warfare equipment began to be developed back during World War - II, since then electronic warfare system has become more specialized and sophisticated. Electronic Warfare is a military action which involves the use of electromagnetic energy to control, exploit, decrease, or avoid the hostile use of electromagnetic spectrum and it also involves sensing the radar of an incoming missile and listening i.e. collecting an enemys radio signals.Global Electronic Warfare Market: DriversDevelopment in the electromagnetic spectrum drives the use of electronic equipment and associated weapon systems which are required to sense and counter these weapons that is included among the factor driving the electronic warfare market growth. Increasing adoption of visual and infrared techniques such as laser and other technologies are expected encourage the growth of electronic warfare market. Electronic warfare has become an essential requirement of strategic landscape for all war fighters. Situations such as political conflicts, territorial disputes, and cold-wars are expected to positively impact the electronic warfare market. Increasing popularity of small electronic systems that can be integrated within platforms such as unmanned systems is also expected to drive electronic warfare market growth. Other factors that has a positive impact on the electronic warfare market include increased system reliability, efficiency and effectiveness due to the introduction of travelling-wave tube- (TWT) technology used for electronic warfare application, and emergence of cognitive electronic warfare technology.Request Free Report Sample@Global Electronic Warfare Market: RestraintsLack of technical knowhow, adaptability to the new technology and the laws formed to limit the investment dedicated to the R&D in this sector in some regions are included among a few restraints that negatively impact the growth of global electronic warfare market.Global Electronic Warfare Market: SegmentationGlobal electronic warfare market can be segmented into category types, product, platform, and region. On the basis of category types, global electronic warfare market can be segmented into electronic protection, electronic warfare support, and electronic attack system. Based on product, global electronic warfare market can be segmented into jammer systems, radar warning receivers, directed energy weapons, and others. By platform, electronic warfare market can be segmented into naval, airborne, ground, and unmanned. On the basis of region, global electronic warfare market can be segmented into North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific, Japan, and Middle East and Africa.Request For TOC@Global Electronic Warfare Market: Regional OutlookAs of 2015, North America is dominating the electronic warfare market. Asia Pacific is expected to have the highest growth rate. Electronic warfare market is mainly driven by the population base in the region, growing economy, increasing investments in the development of electronic warfare products, and a large number of R&D activities in the APAC regionGlobal Electronic Warfare Market: Competition LandscapeKey vendors of global electronic warfare market include BAE systems Plc., Harris Corporation, General Dynamics, Elbit Systems, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, Cobham Plc., and Tata Power SED. Global electronic warfare market is highly fragmented with several players focusing on joint ventures, mergers and acquisitions as a part of their growth strategy.Browse Full Report@ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Cable Management Accessories Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2016 - 2024

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Albany, New York, September 9, 2016: Market Research HUB has announced the addition of the "Cable Management Accessories Market - Global Industry Analysis, Trends and Forecast 2016 - 2024" report to their huge collection of market research reports.Request for Free Sample Report -Report on the global cable management accessories market provides analysis for the period from 2014 to 2024, wherein 2015 is the base year and 2016 to 2024 is the forecast period. Data for 2014 has been included as historical information. The report covers all the prevalent trends and technologies playing a major role in the growth of the cable management accessories market over the forecast period from 2016 to 2024. It also highlights various drivers, restraints, and opportunities expected to influence the markets growth during the said period. The study provides a holistic perspective on market growth throughout the forecast period in terms of revenue estimates (in US$ Mn) across different geographies, which include North America, Europe, Asia Pacific (APAC), Middle East & Africa (MEA), and Latin America (LATAM). Major countries encompassed in the scope of study are the U.K., the U.S., Germany, France, China, India, Saudi Arabia, Brazil and others. A detailed synopsis has been included along with the growth trends under the country snippet segment.Cable management accessories are primarily used where large number of wiring connections are required, for instance, in IT, automation industry, telecom sector, and manufacturing and assembly plants. Continued investments in infrastructure and growing global energy demand have further increased the demand for cable management accessories across different industrial verticals. Moreover, renewal and up-gradation of existing networks in mature economies have further positively influenced the growth characteristics of the cable management accessories market. On the contrary, volatility in raw material prices and high fragmentation at regional levels are posing a significant threat for cable management accessories manufacturers.This research report provides in-depth analysis of the global cable management accessories market on the basis of end use industry encompassing following end-use industry verticals: IT & telecom, manufacturing, energy & utility, health care, logistics & transportation, mining, oil & gas, and construction. The construction sector is further sub-categorized into residential and commercial infrastructure. In addition, this research report also provides in-depth analysis of the global cable management accessories market based on following product types: cable lug, cable marker, and heat shrink tube.Make an Enquiry for this Report -Based on geographical regions, the report segments the global cable management accessories market into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa (MEA), and Latin America; the regions are analyzed in terms of revenue generation. The report provides cross-sectional analysis of the global cable management accessories market in terms of market estimates and forecasts for all segments across different geographic regions.The report also includes competitive profiling of major players engaged in the development of cable management accessories. The major business strategies adopted by these players, their market positioning, and their recent developments have also been identified in the research report. This report also provides market positioning analysis of the major players in the cable management accessories market based on their 2015 revenues. Some of the major players profiled in the report include Schneider Electric SE, Legrand SA, Thomas & Betts Corporation (ABB Ltd.), HellermannTyton Group PLC, TE Connectivity Ltd., Chatsworth Products, Inc., Cooper Wiring Devices (Eaton Corporation), Gustav Klauke GmbH, Partex Marking Systems USA, CableOrganizer.com, LLC,. Cembre S.p.A., Anixter Inc., Weidmuller Interface GmbH & Co. KG, and Panduit Corp.The global cable management accessories market is segmented as below:Cable Management Accessories Market: By Product- Cable Lug- Cable Marker- Heat Shrink TubeCable Management Accessories Market: By End-use Industry- IT and Telecom- Manufacturing- Energy and Utility- Healthcare- Logistics and Transportation- Mining- Oil and Gas- Construction- Residential- CommercialBrowse Full Report with TOC -Cable Management Accessories Market: By Region- North America- The U.S.- Rest of North America- Europe- The U.K.- Germany- France- Spain- Italy- Asia Pacific- Japan- China- India- Indonesia- Rest of APAC- Middle East & Africa- UAE- Saudi Arabia- South Africa- Rest of Middle East & Africa- Latin America- Brazil- Rest of Latin AmericaAbout Market Research HUBMarket Research HUB (MRH) is a next-generation reseller of research reports and analysis. MRHs expansive collection of market research reports has been carefully curated to help key personnel and decision makers across industry verticals to clearly visualize their operating environment and take strategic steps.MRH functions as an integrated platform for the following products and services: Objective and sound market forecasts, qualitative and quantitative analysis, incisive insight into defining industry trends, and market share estimates. Our reputation lies in delivering value and world-class capabilities to our clients.90 State Street,Albany, NY 12207,United StatesToll Free : 866-997-4948 (US-Canada)Tel : +1-518-621-2074Email : sales@marketresearchhub.comWebsite :
Welding Consumables Market To Reach US$ 11.8 Bn in 2016

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The extensive use of arc welding and oxy-fuel welding processes in the manufacturing of automobiles and machinery has generated considerable demand for flux and filler metals as welding consumables. As a result, the global market for welding consumables is expected to witness a significant growth in 2016, reaching the market value of US$ 11,835.8 Mn at a y-o-y growth rate of 5.4% over 2015. Furthermore, the global demand for welding consumables will also be influenced by the rising trend of automating welding processes in automobile and construction industries.The lack of skilled labour for fabrication welding processes is expected to trigger the need for welding automation technology and generate mounting demand for welding consumables. The growth of the global welding consumables market is also expected to be driven by the rapid industrialisation, the surging real estate sector and the rising number of end-use welding applications. On the contrary, the stagnant adoption levels of advanced welding technologies in developing countries is anticipated to curb the overall growth of the global welding consumable market.Request Free Report Sample@Based on the type of welding consumables, the global market is anticipating a stellar growth by the stick electrodes consumables. The stick electrode segment will continue the dominance in terms of the global market share and account for over 40% by the end of 2016. However, the segment is expect to contend with stiff competition from flux-cored wires and solid wires due to their cost-effectiveness.Based on the welding techniques, the arc welding segment will continue to dominate the global market and account for US$ 8,256.4 Mn revenues by 2016-end. On the other hand, the booming automotive industry and the growing production of multipart machineries will incite the use of resistance welding and oxy-fuel welding in 2016 and beyond.By applications, the use of welding consumables will be elevated in the building & construction industries and the automotive& transportation sector. Also, the soaring consumption of welding consumables in marine applications is anticipated to develop additional growth opportunities for the global welding consumables market.In 2016, Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) is projected to be the most lucrative region for the growth of the global welding consumables market and will exhibit more than 30% of the global market share. The booming real estate sector in APEJ countries such as China and India will drive the demand for welding consumables in the construction industries. North America and Latin America are also expected to favour the growth of the welding consumables market, owing to the rising adoption of advanced welding technologies in manufacturing industries.Request For TOC@The increasing need for automating the welding processes has influenced the business expansion of major welding consumable manufacturers. Hyundai Welding Co., Panasonic Corporation, Fronius International GmbH, The Lincoln Electric Company, Denyo Co. Ltd., Kemppi Oy, Tianjin Bridge Welding Materials Co. Ltd., Colfax Corporation, Air Liquide, voestalpine AG, Arcon Welding Equipment, and Illinois Tool Works Inc., among others, represent the key players of the global market for welding consumables.Long-term Outlook: In terms of market value, the global welding consumables market is forecasted to register a 5.5% CAGR and generate absolute $ opportunity of US$ 8,295.4 Mn during the forecast period 2016-2026. APEJ region will continue to be the most lucrative region, expanding at a CAGR of 6.7% over the forecast period.Browse Full Report@ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Liquid Biopsy Market to Reach US$ 407 Mn in 2016

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Widespread acceptance of liquid biopsy technique in North America and steady adoption in developing regions is expected to drive global liquid biopsy market revenues. The global market is expected to reach US$ 407 Mn in 2016, up from US$ 351 Mn in 2015. North America will continue to remain the largest market for liquid biopsy, accounting for over 50% share of the global market.The minimally-invasive nature and economical affordability of liquid biopsy tests will play a key role in bolstering demand globally. FDA approvals for non-invasive diagnostic tests for cancers is expected to have a positive influence on the growth of the market.Request Free Report Sample@An increasing number of biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies are pushing the demand for liquid biopsy for anti-cancerous drug development. Moreover, oncologists are more inclined toward liquid biopsy for cancer detection. Government funding for R&D and clinical trials for diagnostics, treatment, and prevention are other key factors fuelling adoption of liquid biopsy. In contrast, higher cost of liquid biopsy compared to conventional diagnostic techniques, and low awareness regarding liquid biopsy tests can pose challenges to growth.By bio marker type, circulating tumour cells (CTCs) segment is expected to form the most attractive market segment, contributing more than 60% of the revenue share to the market. On the basis of the sample type, the segment for blood sample will reflect the highest growth potential, with over 93% of the market share by revenues. However, the urine sample segment is anticipated to witness noticeable growth throughout 2016.Request For TOC@By disease indication, lung cancer segment is expected to dominate the market, in terms of revenues. By end user, cancer institutes are estimated to represent a revenue share of around 38% -- significantly higher compared to other end-use segments, such as hospitals, academic institutes, and diagnostic centres.Some of the key players in the global liquid biopsy market include Genomic Health, Inc., Biocept, Qiagen, Inc., Trovagene, Inc., F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., Silicon Biosystems, Pathway Genomics Corporation, and Sysmex Corporation. A majority of key companies are concentrating on mergers, acquisitions, and partnerships; while most of them are prioritising innovative diagnostics and technological upgrades for better penetration in developing regional markets.Long term outlook: The global liquid biopsy market is projected to expand at a CAGR of 21.7% by 2026 end, reaching a value of US$ 2.89 Bn.Browse Full Report@ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Global Banknote Sorting Machine Industry 2016 Market Research Report

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The Global Banknote Sorting Machine Industry 2016 Market Research Report is a professional and in-depth study on the current state of the Banknote Sorting Machine industry.Firstly, the report provides a basic overview of the industry including definitions, classifications, applications and industry chain structure. The Banknote Sorting Machine market analysis is provided for the international market including development history, competitive landscape analysis, and major regions development status.Secondly, development policies and plans are discussed as well as manufacturing processes and cost structures. This report also states import/export, supply and consumption figures as well as cost, price, revenue and gross margin by regions (United States, EU, China and Japan), and other regions can be added.Then, the report focuses on global major leading industry players with information such as company profiles, product picture and specification, capacity, production, price, cost, revenue and contact information. Upstream raw materials, equipment and downstream consumers analysis is also carried out. Whats more, the Banknote Sorting Machine industry development trends and marketing channels are analyzed.Finally, the feasibility of new investment projects is assessed, and overall research conclusions are offered.In a word, the report provides major statistics on the state of the industry and is a valuable source of guidance and direction for companies and individuals interested in the market.Request Sample Report:Table of Contents1 Industry Overview of Banknote Sorting Machine1.1 Definition and Specifications of Banknote Sorting Machine1.1.1 Definition of Banknote Sorting Machine1.1.2 Specifications of Banknote Sorting Machine1.2 Classification of Banknote Sorting Machine1.3 Applications of Banknote Sorting Machine1.4 Industry Chain Structure of Banknote Sorting Machine1.5 Industry Overview and Major Regions Status of Banknote Sorting Machine1.5.1 Industry Overview of Banknote Sorting Machine1.5.2 Global Major Regions Status of Banknote Sorting Machine1.6 Industry Policy Analysis of Banknote Sorting Machine1.7 Industry News Analysis of Banknote Sorting Machine2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Banknote Sorting Machine2.1 Raw Material Suppliers and Price Analysis of Banknote Sorting Machine2.2 Equipment Suppliers and Price Analysis of Banknote Sorting Machine2.3 Labor Cost Analysis of Banknote Sorting Machine2.4 Other Costs Analysis of Banknote Sorting Machine2.5 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Banknote Sorting Machine2.6 Manufacturing Process Analysis of Banknote Sorting Machine3 Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants Analysis of Banknote Sorting Machine3.1 Capacity and Commercial Production Date of Global Banknote Sorting Machine Major Manufacturers in 20153.2 Manufacturing Plants Distribution of Global Banknote Sorting Machine Major Manufacturers in 20153.3 R&D Status and Technology Source of Global Banknote Sorting Machine Major Manufacturers in 20153.4 Raw Materials Sources Analysis of Global Banknote Sorting Machine Major Manufacturers in 2015Buy Complete Report:Reportbazzar.com is your trusted source for the most inclusive and informative assortment of market research reports designed to empower you with the latest in industry information that translates to time and cost savings for your business. We not only help you give wing to your latent business ideas but also facilitate you in taking the best informed and strategic decisions that guarantee success in your most promising business endeavors.ReportBazzarOffice # 203,Vishal Shopping Complex,DSK Ranwara, Bavdhan,Pune  411021, IndiaIndia: +91 20 66528525Email Id: sales@reportbazzar.comWebsite:
Bioactive Wound Care Market Will Witness Growth Based On Rising Prevalence Of Chronic Skin Conditions As Pressure Ulcers Till 2024

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The global bioactive wound care market is expected to reach USD 11.9 billion by 2024, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. The prevalence of chronic skin conditions, such as pressure ulcers, diabetic foot, and other skin-related infections is on the rise. Bioactive wound care products offer available line of treatment, which act efficiently in curing the aforementioned conditions.Hence, with the increasing target population, the bioactive wound care market is estimated to witness lucrative growth. Rise in awareness among the patients regarding personal hygiene is augmenting the demand for these products. The raised awareness levels cause patients to seek physicians advice at an early stage thus enabling timely interventions.Rising per capita healthcare expenditure in the recent years and the increasing disposable income is enabling the population to spend a substantial amount on healthcare facilities, thereby contributing towards the growth of the market. The development of advanced products, such as combination wound dressings containing multiple ingredients that offer several benefits to patients, is anticipated to boost the demand for these products.Browse full research report on Global Bioactive Wound Care Market:Further key findings from the study suggest: The moist wound care products segment held a lucrative share of more than 50.0% in 2015. The ability of these products to create a supportive moist environment, which expedites the healing process, is a notable feature of these products. Moist wound care products include foams, films, alginates, hydrocolloids, and hydrogels. The antimicrobials segment, comprising products impregnated with silver and non-silver ingredients, is anticipated to witness profitable growth over the forecast period. These products are cost efficient with lower chances of developing resistance to antimicrobial products. The segment of active wound care products, likewise, is anticipated to exhibit a significant growth rate in the coming 8 years. Recently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a couple of biomaterials, Dermagraft, and Alpigraph, for management of skin-related injuries. The ability of these products to mimic biological properties is a key advantage that enables a faster healing process. North America contributed with a share of more than 30.0% of the global bioactive wound care market. Presence of major players, streamlined regulations, and favorable reimbursement policies are some of the key contributing factors responsible for the growth of this region. Asia Pacific with its huge potential is anticipated to witness considerable growth over the forecast period. The presence of a huge untapped population, stirring economic developments in this region, and consistent efforts undertaken to improve the healthcare infrastructure are the key growth drivers. The key players in this industry include Smiths & Nephew, Molnlycke Health Care, ConvaTec, Inc., Paul Hartmann AG, Organogenesis, Inc., Systagenix Wound Management Ltd., 3M Healthcare Ltd., Medtronic, Covalon Technologies Ltd., BSN Medical, and Medline Industries, Inc. The strategic endeavors undertaken by the leading players in the industry include new product launches, collaborations with government bodies, and R&D investments. In July 2015, Smith & Nephew acquired DeOst LLC and DeLLC, part of the DeOST group, which is a manufacturer of medical devices in Russia. This acquisition is expected to help companies expand their global footprints.Browse more reports of this category by Grand View Research:Grand View Research has segmented the global bioactive wound care market on the basis of product and region:Global Bioactive Wound Care Market, By Product (USD Million), 2013 - 2024 Moist Wound Careo Foamso Filmso Alginateso Hydrocolloidso Hydrogels Antimicrobial Wound Careo Silver-basedo Non-silver-based Active Wound Careo Biomaterialso Skin substituentsBioactive Wound Care Market, By Region (USD Million), 2013 - 2024 North Americao U.S.o Canada Europeo UKo Germany Asia Pacifico Japano China Latin Americao Brazilo Mexico MEAo South Africao Saudi ArabiaAbout Grand View ResearchGrand View Research, Inc. is a U.S. based market research and consulting company, registered in the State of California and headquartered in San Francisco. The company provides syndicated research reports, customized research reports, and consulting services. To help clients make informed business decisions, we offer market intelligence studies ensuring relevant and fact-based research across a range of industries, from technology to chemicals, materials and healthcare.Press ContactSherry James - Corporate Relations Specialist28 2nd Street, Suite 3036San Francisco, CA 94105United StatesPhone: 1-415-349-0058Email: sales@grandviewresearch.com
China and India to add 500 million consumers to the viscose staple fiber market till 2021.

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A recent research report published by Beige Market Intelligence on Global Viscose Staple Fiber Market  Strategic Assessment and Forecast Till 2021 gives an in depth analysis of the market size and market growth of Viscose Staple Fiber .The research analysts have done a thorough analysis on the viscose staple fibre market by product segments by type of fiber such as synthetic fiber, cellulose fiber, organic fiber , inorganic fiber. The report also contains the insights of the market size by application type such as textile, non-woven, apparel, packaging, healthcare. Along with the key vendor analysis the report also gives a detailed market share and growth aspect region wise.APAC Region to contribute the largest share in the market revenue by 2021.The global market size for Viscose Staple Fiber in 2015 is US$ 12.7 billion and the research analyst estimate the market size to reach US 13.71 billion. The market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 4.69 % during this period.View Report HighlightThe analysts also predict that the APAC region is going to be a major contributor of the market revenue in cellulose fiber as well as Viscose Staple Fiber. APAC region going to contribute approx. US $7.18 billion in Viscose Staple Fibre Market share.The region is a hub for cellulose fiber manufacture It constitutes 65% of the worldwide Viscose Staple Fiber production. Also it consumes about 70% of dissolving pulp generated worldwide. China and India are the key consumption markets for cellulose fiber with a combined share of 48%. APAC is also the key geography in the viscose value chain as it not only plays a key role in determining the market prices of viscose fibers but also for its substitutable materials such as cotton and polyester. The region is a hub for chemicals and fiber manufacturing as several leading chemical companies have established their manufacturing locations. Major Vendors such as Aditya Birla Group and Zhejiang Fulida are headquarted in India and China respectively. While the developed markets in Europe and North America are unable to keep pace with the growth of emerging markets of Asia, these markets are growing both in consumption size and purchasing power. China is expected to add 400 million consumers, while India is expected to add 60 million household to the Viscose Staple Fiber Market. As consumers move higher across the consumption chain, demand for value added products such cellulose fibers is on the rise.With growing health consciousness, there is an increased expenditure on products pertaining to personal hygiene including wipes, tissues, diapers, dressings and paddings, particularly in APAC, wherein the per capita healthcare expenditure rose by 9.2% in 2015.To Order a report ClickThe report also covers the present scenario and the growth factors of Viscose Staple fiber in China, India, Brazil, the US, Mexico and South Korea. It gives the details of the expected revenues from the major regions of North America, Europe, Latin America, APAC,EMEA and ROW.About Beige Market Intelligence:Beige Market Intelligence is new-age provider of competitive business intelligence, working across various industry verticals. Our expertise and knowledge ensures that the market analysis Beige provides is comprehensive, detailed and complete. The analysis helps our client organizations become aware and make educated decisions, as far as investing or devising a marketing strategy is concerned. The actionable insights delivered through our market research provide a comprehensive market analysis for every level of market segmentation in an industry. Beige Market Intelligence is a quality driven high end Market Research organization. Our team of experts ensure the analysis you receive is not just analysed and smartly presented, but is completely customized based on the clients requirement. Our deliverables guarantee our current global client base does not look beyond Beige when it comes to any kind of industry and market analysis.Contact : KhyamaBeige Market IntelligenceCinnapannahalii, Bangalore-560037: contactus@beigemarketintelligence.comUS: +1 347 903 9949UK: +44 20 323 99499APAC: +91 99 012 75473
THE INITIATORS OF "THE SUMMER CINEMA CAMP OF PEACE" TOGETHER WITH THE PATRON IGOR IANKOVSKYI SUMMED UP THE CHARITY PROJECT

THE INITIATORS OF "THE SUMMER CINEMA CAMP OF PEACE" TOGETHER WITH THE PATRON IGOR IANKOVSKYI SUMMED UP THE CHARITY PROJECT

At September 07, 2016 in Kiev, "Ukrainian Crisis Media Center" held a press conference devoted to summarizing children's charity project "The summer cinema camp of peace". During the press conference, its position on the need for intensive work with children living in frontline areas of Donbass, shared initiators of the project - Producer Anna Kapustin (cultural and educational initiative "Yellow Bus"), filmmaker Larysa Artyushina (NGO "New Donbass") founder of the Foundation "Initiative for the future" Igor Iankovskyi, who sponsored the initiative, as well as a representative of the Embassy of Lithuania in Ukraine - Jonas Danilyauskas and the participating young girl-actress Sonia Lysenko."The summer cinema camp of peace"  is a volunteer cultural and educational project whose organizers set a goal to not only the patriotic education of youth, but also establishing interaction between children from peaceful areas and from front-line areas, training and creative development through language cinema. The team joined the project promising professionals in the field of cinema, theater, music, fine arts and other creative professions.Founder of Foundation "Initiative for the Future", patron Igor Iankovskyi said the high level of professionalism with which the creative process came organizers and volunteers "are the movies filmed children are flush with the short films presented at Cannes or Berlin film festivals. This is made possible through the efforts of the organizers and volunteers " The summer cinema camp of peace, Im sure, that the entire world should meet with Ukraine because of the work of talented young people and prompted me to support this wonderful initiative. I call on other foundations, community organizations support such projects in Ukraine ", - said the philanthropist Igor Iankovskyi."The cinema camp participants were 48 children-students aged from 10 to 16 years old. They were chosen based on the results of a competition that is held in Mar'yinka Village, Krasnohorivka Village and Luhansk city in the May of this year "- said the director Larisa Artyushina. In just two weeks they were able not only to create the full creative teams but also capture the four (4) short films where children are the writers, cameramen, directors and actors, and even tried myself in ten contiguous cinematic professions.Earlier, just after returning from The summer cinema camp of peace near Odessa, the initiators of the action with their young wards met in Kiev with the Igor Iankovskyi, who supported the charity project. During the meeting, which was held in an informal setting, project organizers thanked Igor Iankovskyi for financial support, through which they can realize all its plans. The talented children shared their vivid impressions they received from the time spent in the camp, from training, participation in the realization of their film projects. During the meeting, the children presented their short films that impressed all participants with its depth and professionalism.Igor Iankovskyi Charity Foundation "Initiative for the Future" develops active cooperation with NGOs and activists that aim to support the younger generation Ukrainian, talented children from different regions of the Ukraine. Thus, care for the children who were in the zone of military conflict in Eastern Ukraine Foundation Igor Iankovskyi in cooperation with the NGO "All-Ukrainian Organization for IDPs," this summer provided the great rest for 90 refugee children from the Ukrainian cities of the zone of military conflict  Lugansk city, Donetsk city, Anthracite city, Gorlovka city and Mariupol city. Thanks to financial support, patron, children, whose fate touched by the war, and the rest were rehabilitated in the children's restcamp "Zmina", which is in Borodyanka district, Kyiv region."Childhood should not be burnt by war, as the new younger generation Ukraine - is our common future, that we must protect and nurture with the care and attention," - emphasizes its position of principle Igor Iankovskyi. Patron promised that he will continue to support the initiatives in arts and culture for supporting the talented Ukrainian youth."Initiative for the Future"  is Ukrainian Charitable Foundation, founded by Igor Iankovskyi - a successful Ukrainian businessman, financier and philanthropist.Charities unite like-minded people in a common goal - to develop and implement educational and cultural programs in Ukraine. Activities of the organization based on voluntary initiatives.Igor Iankovskyi Foundation "Initiative for the Future" was founded June 5, 2012, and since its foundation supports talented young people from all over Ukraine, contributing to a highly cultured society in the future. Projects that have already been implemented charitable foundation, got success not only in Ukraine, but also in some European countries - Belgium, France, Germany and Poland, also USA.12, Amosova Street, Horizont Park Business Center, Kiev, 03680, Ukraine
Smart Glass And Window Changes Total Amount Of Light Transmitted Through It Act As Energy Savers

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http://bit.ly/2ca5bcF

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Smart glasses and windows are manufactured from a special type of glass that brings about a change in the total amount of light transmitted through it in terms of heat or light and supplied voltage. Smart glasses and windows have gained traction due to their quality of thermal and acoustic insulation, energy consumption, and elegant 3D designer proposition. They also assist in maintaining temperatures and hence avoid the consumption of additional electricity. Initially, these were employed only in buildings for architectural purposes, but now their applications have also expanded into the rail, automotive, and aviation sectors.Smart glasses and windows provide passenger comfort and fuel efficiency within marine, aircraft, and automotive sectors. The increasing sales of luxury cars has emerged as a prime factor fuelling the demand for smart glasses in cars, thus boosting the market. Furthermore, the growing requirement for energy efficiency within buildings and the increasing energy crisis will also positively impact the development of the market.Free PDF For Full Details with Technological breakthroughs is @The soaring demand from Asia Pacific and the expanding application areas of smart glasses and windows are the key growth opportunities in the market. On the other hand, the soaring cost of smart glasses is a major factor that may inhibit the development of this market in the developing regions, however, they are still bound to gain traction from the developed nations globally.In terms of technology, suspended particle device (SPD) currently holds the largest share in the market. This is owing to the fact that SPD smart windows prevent the creation of hazy appearances and inhibit light transmission by up to 99.5%. In addition, the rising per capita income and the growing proliferation of enterprise wearable devices globally has increased the adoption of this sophisticated technology in both transportation and construction sectors. Research Frontiers Inc. is the prime player in the SPD technology. This company holds a license list for more than forty companies, amongst which the top companies are Hitachi Chemical Co, Mercedes-Benz, DuPont, Polaroid, and Pilkington.The use of smart glasses and windows is the highest in the automotive sector. For instance, the suspended particles smart glass technology is gaining high traction within premium cars such as Mercedes Benz SLK, etc. However, governments in some of the nations have taken crucial steps for regulating the adoption of smart glasses owing to certain limitations of smart glasses. In the EU territories and the U.S., governments have planned on regulating the deployment of smart glass electronic equipment.Market Insight can be Viewed @Similar orders have been implemented in the Department of Transport within the U.S., the EU territories, and the UK. For instance, the utilization of Google Glass may be banned within the UK owing to growing concerns related to reckless driving. In addition, certain automotive laws have also limited the application of glazes and tint on automotive windows for maintaining a particular degree of security on road.Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Transparency Market Research90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Genius experiences at the Museo Leonardiano in Vinci

With the brand-new section Leonardo and Anatomy being opened on Saturday 24th September, the Museo Leonardiano invites you in Vinci to enjoy an all-about-Leonardo visit.The Museo Leonardiano awaits you in Vinci to amuse, surprise and entertain Leonardo admirers!The Museums permanent exhibition tells the life and the work of the Genius da Vinci by showing the true Leonardo. Machines, digital reconstructions of his projects, high-definition, full scale reproductions of his paintings: from the most brilliant and visionary creations, to information and anecdotes about his life, everythings about Leonardo in his hometown.Besides the Museum, Vinci offers many itineraries to discover Leonardos world: from the Castle of the Guidi Counts to the Villa del Ferrale, where the Leonardo Impossibile exhibition is set, or the Birthplace in Anchiano  where visitors could actually meet Leonardo in a very special way  without forgetting naturalistic paths to explore on foot the hills loved by the Genius, or spots and contemporary art installations directly inspired by Leonardo.Children would also have the possibility to put themselves in Leonardos shoes as an artist, scientist or engineer and to live an actual leonardian experience at the Museum, with activities as the Domenica Leonardiana and the Gioca MUSEO, the interactive book to visit the museum as tiny geniuses.The opening of the new section of the museum, on Leonardos studies on anatomy, is highly expected. On September 24th the new exhibition area will be opened, and brand-new educational activities and thematic visits devoted to spread the knowledge on Leonardos wide interest for the human body will be launched.Do you want to actually get to know Leonardo and discover everything about this great, incomparable man? Then, dont miss his true home: come visit Vinci!----------------------Adacto is an organization specialized in creating integrated, multichannel (web, mobile and social media) communication projects. It is sited in Empoli, Milan and Guadalajara.His clients portfolio includes Terna, ERG, Leroy Merlin, MSC Crociere, Fondazione Bracco, Officine Panerai, Stroili, Rebecca, TotalErg, Samsung, Sammontana, Bikkembergs, BNL/BNP Paribas, Mazda, Domus, Saint-Gobain, Harmont&Blaine, Fondazione Milano Expo 2015, Vodafone, iGuzzini, Fondazione Garrone, Novellini, Heineken and many others.Adacto  Digital Native Agency----------------------------------------Via dei cappuccini 75, Empoli0571-1968013press@adacto.it
VR  TOKYO

http://l-s.co.jp/

https://andtokyo.jp/brand/

VR  TOKYO A free 360VR photography and video shooting campaign has started in the Tokyo Metropolitan area! Applications that successfully showcase the appeal of the Tokyo Metropolitan area will be eligible for a free 360 shooting session.LIFE STYLE, Inc. a Google trusted agency, have announced that they will be providing a free 360 VR contents shoot for those in the Tokyo Metropolitan who wish to promote the Tokyo Brand by showcasing the attractions and diversity of Tokyo through the medium of photography and film.More than just a virtual CGI world created inside a computer, the experience provided is like reality. The best camera technology is used to capture and create contents that surpass the conventional photography and video experience - LIFESTYLEFrom Tuesday 13th September 2016 LIFESTYLE will be providing the following professional VR photography and video services for free; Google Street View, Flic360 Photo and Flic360 Video. Take advantage of theVR&TOKYO Campaignand the newest VR technology to promote Tokyo and allow the world to experience the glamour of the city anywhere at any time as if it were reality.VRTOKYO Campaign Information*The following 360 photography and video services are freeGoogle Street ViewFlic360 Photo (360photography service)Flic360 Video (360 video service)*Terms and conditionsThe shoot must be within the Tokyo Metropolitan areaLIFESTYLE, Inc. have the final decision on what constitutes the appeal of Tokyo.*Time Period13/09/2016 - 31/12/2016LIFESTYLE are currently one of the top 5 Google trusted agencies out of more than 3000 agencies worldwide. The company had initial success providing high quality 360 Google Street View contents which led to rapid expansion. Now LIFESTYLE has a large network of clients and partners across Japan and are striving to provide digital communication to consumers throughout Japan and the world.Flic360 Video recommended system requirements*YouTube system requirements*PC: Google Chrome 40 or later (Google Chrome latest version is recommended)Internet Explorer 11 or later, Firefox 35 or later, Safari 8 or lateriPhoneiPad: iOS 8 or later (Safari latest version is recommended), Google ChromeAndroid: Google Chrome for Android 4.0 or later*Facebook recommended requirements *PC: Web browser (Chrome, Firefox etc) latest version. Safari and Internet Explorer do not support this platform.iPhoneiPad: iPhone 4S or iPad2 or later, For iOS you must use iOS7 or laterAndroid: Android 4.3 or later(c.f.) Reference Tokyo Metropolitan Government Press ReleaseTokyo Brand Promotion CampaignTokyo City has been working on establishing Tokyo as a travel destination. A new campaign named Tokyo Brand Promotion was started in October 2015 in order to support this goal. The campaign aims to promote the Tokyo Brand to people, both within and outside of Japan by using a new logo and the phrase &TOKYO.About &TOKYO1. The main message is represented in the logo and the phrase &TOKYO.&TOKYO was inspired by the image of new Tokyo, which never stops evolving with its traditions and innovation. Tokyo is a place where you can create something new and fun by being connected to various people, things and events in the city.2. &TOKYO has 5 distinguishing features&TOKYO includes 5 distinguishing features of Tokyo with 5 colors. The features represent the history and diversity of Tokyo with the traditional colors of the city used in the logo.InformationLIFESTYLE, Inc. :Flic360http://flic360.net/&TOKYO Offical website :For EnquiriesLIFESTYLE, Inc. VR DepartmentChiga Minami Aoyama 3F, 6-7-14 Minami Aoyama,Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan, 107-0062Tel: (+81)3-4405-7434 Fax: (+81)3-6433-5229LIFE STYLE, Inc. are a Google trusted agency and one of the top 5 Google trusted agencies out of more than 3000 agencies worldwide. LIFESTYLE provide high quality 360 Google Street View, photography and video contents.LIFESTYLE, Inc. VR DepartmentChiga Minami Aoyama 3F, 6-7-14 Minami Aoyama,Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan, 107-0062Tel: (+81)3-4405-7434 Fax: (+81)3-6433-5229Press Contact: Chris Murray
Roadsky Business Trip Plan in November

www.roadsky.org

Roadsky Traffic Safety, the leading traffic safety devices brand, recently launches business trip plan in November. In order to research the global market of traffic management, safety and parking industry, as well as communicate with customers. Roadsky decide to have a visit to Middle East and South America this November.Mr. Johnson, the general manager of Roadsky, will start the trip from Sri Lanka. He will visit Roadsky customers to discuss the current cooperation projects such as traffic cones, speed bumps and road studs. He will also research the market of other traffic management products in Sri Lanka such as road marking project and galvanized guardrails for future development.Middle East area is the second destination of this trip. Johnson will have meetings with customers in Middle East area and discuss the traffic safety industry prospects, especially the thermoplastic road marking, aluminum road studs and rubber speed bumps. "In these product areas, we have made long time cooperation with our customers from Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabic and Qatar etc." said Johnson. "So we intend to conduct more in-depth cooperation with each other. We will discuss the current market status and the future development of traffic management industry." The meets will influence the development plan of Roadsky Traffic Safety.After finishing the trip to Middle East countries, Johnson will continue his trip to Central and South America. This time he will travel from Mexico to Chile in 15 days. "Roadsky has many customers in this area such as Mexico, Dominica, Panama, Guatemala and Chile etc." said Johnson. Central and South America is the main market of Roadsky thermoplastic marking paint and machine. Johnson will not only discuss the current cooperation projects, but also looking for further business opportunities about rubber and plastic traffic safety devices such as rubber speed bumps, traffic cones and reflective safety vest.After the trip, Roadsky will adjust its development plan according to Johnson's market report. If you have interest in having a meeting and cooperation with Roadsky, feel free to contact via email.Roadsky Traffic Safety is leading traffic safety products manufacturer. The main products are highway guardrails and installation machine, road marking machine and materials, road studs, traffic cones, speed bumps, safety vest, road signs, convex mirrors etc.Roadsky has an efficient management system and advanced manufacturing equipment. Our strong R&D team, excellent product quality, timely delivery, perfect services, special functions and competitive prices help us win the trust and high reputations of numerous customers in domestic and overseas markets.Company Name: Roadsky Traffic SafetyAddress: No.76 Panxin Road, Nanjing City, China, 210000Website:Contact Person: Jacky SandersTel: +86 15850718893Email: admin@roadsky.org
AFFIRIS AG: Parkinson's Vaccine  Clinical Results Boost Prospects

http://www.sympath-project.eu/

http://www.multisyn.eu/

www.affiris.com

www.michaeljfox.org

http://www.sympath-project.eu/

http://www.multisyn.eu/

www.affiris.com

http://www.affiris.com

http://www.prd.at

VIENNA, Austria, September 07, 2016  AFFiRiS AG announced today results of AFF008A, a Phase I clinical trial to assess boost immunizations with AFFITOPE PD01A, an active vaccine against Parkinson's disease (PD). The study was funded by a $1.04 million grant from The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research.The "boost" study AFF008A was designed to assess one boost immunization with AFFITOPE PD01A per patient with regard to safety/tolerability and immunological and clinical activity in those patients who had already received the vaccine (four "priming" vaccinations at four-week intervals) within the first-in-man clinical study AFF008. Six PD patients on best medical care, including standard symptomatic medication, served as a comparison group. In the "boost" study, two different doses of AFFITOPE PD01A (15 g and 75 g) were again safe and well tolerated, meeting the primary endpoint of the trial.Patients belonging to the low-dose group of AFF008 were randomized in two equally distributed groups receiving either 15 g or 75 g AFFITOPE PD01A. The same was done with patients of the AFF008 high-dose group, in order to allow for evaluation of four different vaccination schedules.Across all patients, no antibody concentration limiting toxicity was observed. Adverse events were similar across all five groups except injection site reactions, which only occurred in the active treatment groups, and psychiatric disorders, reported at a lower rate in the active groups. All of the 28 patients completed the study and received all planned vaccinations. Only one serious adverse event was reported, which was classified as being not related to AFFITOPE PD01A administration.An immune response against AFFITOPE PD01A was seen in 19 of 22 (86%) of vaccinated patients and 12 of 19 (63%) of these responders generated aSyn-specific serum antibodies. The immune response sustained throughout the entire observation period of 24 weeks. Patients on low dose and then high dose had a clear immunological boost. This data supports that further dose and scheduling may significantly influence antibody titer/concentration and further studies need to be performed. Additionally, vaccine-induced antibodies were detectable in cerebrospinal fluid. This induction of antibodies against aSyn supports the concept of the principle of AFFiRiS' proprietary therapeutic vaccine.Parallel laboratory experiments using recombinant aSyn protein to assess selectivity showed that AFFITOPE PD01A-induced antibodies preferentially bind to aSyn fibrils, which are believed to be the toxic form of the protein, as compared to the monomeric form.Due to the limitations of the Phase I trial design (the study was not double-blind, and assignment to the comparison group was not randomized), it is not known whether effects seen in the active groups are indicative of treatment effects or due to confounding factors. Efficacy variables were evaluated in an explorative manner with regard to the small sample size. Preliminary observations showed that in eight of the 19 (42%) immunological responders, no increase of the concomitant dopaminergic PD medication was needed throughout the observational period (on average three years per subject). Among the same group, five of eight (63%) patients had stable UPDRS III scores at the end of the boost study.Continuous efforts are undertaken to follow this patient cohort and to further characterize their immunological and clinical response to treatment with AFFITOPE PD01A. The next study, AFF008AA, is focusing primarily on the long-term safety and, in addition, on the assessment of the immunological and clinical effects of a second boost vaccination ("reboost"). That study is also funded by The Michael J. Fox Foundation, as was the AFF008 trial. Recruitment of patients for AFF008AA has been completed; results are expected in Q2 2017.About AFFITOPE PD01A:AFFITOPE PD01A targets the protein alpha-Synuclein, which plays a key role in the onset and progression of Parkinson's as well as multiple system atrophy (MSA), an orphan disease. During the first-in-man study AFF008, AFFITOPE PD01A was safe and well tolerated, meeting the primary endpoint of the trial. PD01A is one of two vaccine candidates currently being studied in three ongoing Phase I studies AFF008AA, AFF009 and AFF011 in which currently 92 Parkinson's and Multiple System Atrophy (MSA) patients are receiving either PD01A or PD03A. During these Phase I studies patients are being observed for up to 48 months with regard to long-term safety, immunological and clinical parameters. Results are expected for Q4 2017.About AFFiRiS AG:On the basis of its proprietary patented AFFITOME-technology, AFFiRiS develops preventative and therapeutic peptide vaccines against chronic diseases. Its clinical pipeline consists of four vaccine candidates against Parkinson's, MSA and Atherosclerosis prevention. Further vaccine candidates against diabetes, allergies as well as Huntington's disease are in preclinical development. AFFiRiS has been able to attract funding of approx.  130m to date, half of which comes from license income and government grants. Furthermore, AFFiRiS is part of collaborative projects receiving funding from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme under SYMPATH Grant Agreement No. 60299 () and MULTISYN Grant Agreement No. 602646 (). AFFiRiS currently employs 60 highly qualified staff at the Campus Vienna Biocenter in Vienna, Austria.About The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research:As the world's largest nonprofit funder of Parkinson's research, The Michael J. Fox Foundation is dedicated to accelerating a cure for Parkinson's disease and improved therapies for those living with the condition today. The Foundation pursues its goals through an aggressively funded, highly targeted research program coupled with active global engagement of scientists, Parkinson's patients, business leaders, clinical trial participants, donors and volunteers. In addition to funding more than $600 million in research to date, the Foundation has fundamentally altered the trajectory of progress toward a cure. Operating at the hub of worldwide Parkinson's research, the Foundation forges groundbreaking collaborations with industry leaders, academic scientists and government research funders; increases the flow of participants into Parkinson's disease clinical trials with its online tool, Fox Trial Finder; promotes Parkinson's awareness through high-profile advocacy, events and outreach; and coordinates the grassroots involvement of thousands of Team Fox members around the world. Learn more atOn the basis of its proprietary patented AFFITOME-technology, AFFiRiS develops preventative and therapeutic peptide vaccines against chronic diseases. Its clinical pipeline consists of four vaccine candidates against Parkinson's, MSA and Atherosclerosis prevention. Further vaccine candidates against diabetes, allergies as well as Huntington's disease are in preclinical development. AFFiRiS has been able to attract funding of approx.  130m to date, half of which comes from license income and government grants. Furthermore, AFFiRiS is part of collaborative projects receiving funding from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme under SYMPATH Grant Agreement No. 60299 () and MULTISYN Grant Agreement No. 602646 (). AFFiRiS currently employs 60 highly qualified staff at the Campus Vienna Biocenter in Vienna, Austria.Contact AFFiRiS AG:Bettina WessaKarl-Farkas-Gasse 221030 Vienna, AustriaT +43 / (0)1 / 798 15 75  300E bettina.wessa@affiris.comDistribution:PR&D  Public Relations for Research & EducationMariannengasse 81090 Vienna, AustriaT +43 / (0)1 / 505 70 44E contact@prd.at
Vertical Axis Wind Turbine: Projected to Scale-Up Renewable Wind Energy by 2023.

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An increasing global focus towards installation of renewable energy has led to a flurry of vertical axis wind turbine designs being introduced into the marketplace. Although nearly all of the commercial scale wind turbines currently in operation are horizontal axis ones, with the advent of new technologies vertical axis wind turbine may be an attractive alternative in the future. The primary difference of a vertical axis wind turbine from a horizontal axis one is that the primary rotor shaft is set vertically while all the major generation components are placed at the turbine base. Currently there are three primary designs for vertical axis wind turbine: the savonius model, the darrieus model and the giromill model. The reason why vertical axis wind turbines are witnessing high levels of R&D activity in the recent past is the definite advantages they provide over conventional horizontal axis turbines.Get Free PDF Brochure for more Professional and Technical industry insights:One of the major advantages is that vertical axis wind turbine do not require any wind sensing or orientation mechanisms in order to generate electricity. This significantly reduces costs of manufacturing the turbine. Also as the major power generating components such as the gearbox and generator are located towards the base of the turbine, maintenance and repair activities on vertical axis wind turbine are relatively more convenient. Horizontal axis turbines have the vital components located on top of the tower structure which results in significant difficulties and safety hazards for repairmen. These vertical axis wind turbine also claim to require lesser wind to generate an equivalent amount of energy, and can hence be placed at lower altitudes where the wind velocity is generally lower. Overall numerous prospects of utilizing vertical axis wind turbine in small scale decentralized applications are being explored.The primary things vertical axis wind turbine will need to cater to in order to be successful are its effective generation, useful life and maintenance requirements. The wind power industry is currently entering into a consolidation phase with economies of scale being the primary weapon of large market players. Electricity being a highly price elastic commodity, wind power generators needs to focus increasingly on reducing costs and increasing efficiency factors. With vertical axis wind turbine still not commercially developed, decentralized small scale applications are likely to be the best bet for these turbine manufacturers. Without highly positive test results and statistics it is unlikely that vertical axis wind turbine manufacturers will be able to commence large scale manufacturing. Without significant economies of scale benefits, it is not feasible to install utility scale vertical axis wind turbine as the cost of generation would be relatively higher compared to the existing multi megawatt horizontal axis turbines.The majority of vertical axis wind turbine deployment we can expect within the forecast horizon is likely to be in the form of small pilot projects and for decentralized applications. North America and Europe are likely to drive the technological innovation and development of vertical axis wind turbine within the forecast horizon. Any large scale installations or deployment is likely to be observed in these regions as well. However with the retraction of the production tax credit scheme in the U.S., it is uncertain as to the extent of investments that can be expected in vertical axis wind turbine development. Installations in the Asia-Pacific are only likely to pick up once positive test results and significant technological development has been achieved in Europe and North America.Browse Industry Research Report with free Analysis:This research report analyzes this market on the basis of its market segments, major geographies, and current market trends. Geographies analyzed under this research report includeNorth AmericaAsia PacificEuropeMiddle East and AfricaLatin AmericaAbout UsTransparency Market Research is a global market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We are privileged with highly experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information.Our data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts, so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With a broad research and analysis capability, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques in developing distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.Transparency Market Research90 State Street,Suite 700Albany NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453E-mail: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Global Satellite communications equipment Market 2016, Trends and Forecast Report

Satellite communications equipment Market

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Professional and Depth research on Satellite communications equipment Market report.The review has been based on the report titled, " Satellite communications equipment Market - Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast, 2016 - 2020." This report studies Satellite communications equipment in Global market, especially in North America, Europe, China, Japan, Asia and India, focuses on top manufacturers in global market.Each market segment is then analyzed considering its contribution in terms of volume produced (in kilo tons) and the revenue it generates (in US$).Read Complete Report @Firstly, Global Satellite communications equipment Market report provides a basic overview of the industry including definitions, classifications, applications and industry chain structure. Upstream raw materials and equipment and downstream demand analysis is also carried out.The Satellite communications equipment Report important aspects like development Trends , Capacity Production Overview,Production Market Share Analysis, Demand Overview and Supply Demand.This Satellite communications equipment Report also state Import/Export Consumption,Cost,Price,Revenue and Gross Margin for better understanding.The Satellite communications equipment Research study covered policies and plans on Cost Price, Production Value,Gross Margin and Revenue by Region (North America, Europe and Asia) and by Country(United States, Germany, Japan and China).Also, the Satellite communications equipment Industry growth in various regions and R&D status are also covered.Read Complete Report @Lastly, the report profiles the major players operating in the Satellite communications equipment market in the world in order to analyze the competitive hierarchy of the market, and overall research conclusions are offered.Market Research Store is a single destination for all the industry, company and country reports. We feature large repository of latest industry reports, leading and niche company profiles, and market statistics released by reputed private publishers and public organizations.Contact UsJoel JohnTel: +1-386-310-3803GMT Tel: +49-322 210 92714USA/Canada Toll Free No. 1-855-465-4651Email: sales@marketresearchstore.comWeb: Market Research Store
ASCOTT CLINCHES SIX AWARDS INCLUDING EUROPES LEADING SERVICED APARTMENT BRAND AT THE WORLD TRAVEL AWARDS

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Singapore, 9 September 2016  CapitaLands wholly owned serviced residence business unit, The Ascott Limited (Ascott), has swept six accolades including Europes Leading Serviced Apartment Brand at the World Travel Awards Europe 2016. Established since 1993, the World Travel Awards is considered to be the Oscars of the travel industry, acknowledging and celebrating excellence across all tourism sectors. Winners are voted by travellers and travel professionals worldwide.Ascott was honoured in the following categories at the World Travel Awards Europe gala ceremony that brought together the key players of Europes tourism industry:Europe's Leading Serviced Apartment Brand: Citadines Apart'hotelBelgium's Leading Serviced Apartments: Citadines Sainte-Catherine BrusselsFrance's Leading Serviced Apartment Brand: Citadines Apart'hotelFrance's Leading Serviced Apartments: La Clef Tour Eiffel ParisGermany's Leading Serviced Apartment Brand: Citadines Apart'hotelGermany's Leading Serviced Apartments: Citadines Michel HamburgMr Alfred Ong, Ascotts Managing Director for Europe, said: We are very proud to receive the awards and be recognised as the leader in the serviced residence industry. Credit goes to our staff who worked hard to ensure the well-being of our guests and provide unique home-away-from-home experiences. These awards inspire us to go even further in delivering award-winning hospitality and the best stay experiences for all our valued customers.In Europe, Ascotts portfolio comprises 44 properties across 18 key cities in six countries  Belgium, France, Georgia, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom.About The Ascott LimitedThe Ascott Limited is a Singapore company that has grown to be the world's largest international serviced residence owner-operator. It has over 29,000 operating serviced residence units in key cities of the Americas, Asia Pacific, Europe and the Middle East, as well as over 17,000 units which are under development, making a total of more than 46,000 units in over 290 properties. The company operates three award-winning brands  Ascott, Citadines and Somerset. Its portfolio spans more than 100 cities across 27 countries.Ascott, a wholly owned subsidiary of CapitaLand Limited, pioneered Asia Pacific's first international-class serviced residence with the opening of The Ascott Singapore in 1984. Today, the company boasts over 30 years of industry track record and award-winning serviced residence brands that enjoy recognition worldwide.Ascotts achievements have been recognised internationally. Recent awards include World Travel Awards 2016 for Leading Serviced Apartment Brand in Europe; Business Traveller Middle East Awards 2016 for 'Best Serviced Apartment Company'; TTG China Travel Awards 2016 for Best Serviced Residence Operator in China; DestinAsian Readers Choice Awards 2016 for Best Serviced Residence Brand; Business Traveller Asia-Pacific Awards 2015 for Best Serviced Residence Brand; Business Traveller UK Awards 2015 for Best Serviced Apartment Company; and Business Traveller China Awards 2015 for Best Serviced Residence Brand and 'Best Serviced Residence'. For a full list of awards, please visitVisitfor more information and connect with us on social media atAbout CapitaLand LimitedCapitaLand is one of Asias largest real estate companies headquartered and listed in Singapore. The company leverages its significant asset base, design and development capabilities, active capital management strategies, extensive market network and operational capabilities to develop high-quality real estate products and services. Its diversified global real estate portfolio includes integrated developments, shopping malls, serviced residences, offices and homes. Its two core markets are Singapore and China, while Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam have been identified as new growth markets. The company also has one of the largest real estate fund management businesses with assets located in Asia.CapitaLands listed real estate investment trusts are CapitaLand Mall Trust, CapitaLand Commercial Trust, Ascott Residence Trust, CapitaLand Retail China Trust and CapitaLand Malaysia Mall Trust.Visitfor more information.168 Robinson Road, #30-01 Capital Tower, Singapore 068912
KFS GROUP opens offices in United Kingdom - Giovanni Suero appointed Managing Director, growing international business

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KFS GROUP, a global provider of consulting services, focusing on New Product Introduction, Supply Chain and Quality Management, opens offices in the United Kingdom, aiming to serve and extend the British customer base.Having successfully completed projects serving UK-based manufacturers KFS GROUP already gained an excellent reputation on the UK market. To serve the already existing customer base the Executive Team decided to open offices and came to an agreement with Giovanni Suero to Head its UK operations. Subsequently he will be in charge of projects in the UK-market as well as expanding the client base and growing its advisory team.Previously Giovanni has worked for British High-Tech company Flow Products and Singapore-based Contract Manufacturing Service provider Flextronics. His previous postings in the United States, China and India serving Automotive, Medical Technology and Consumer Goods allowed him to build a strong reputation in the respective industries by delivering projects on-time, in cost and to requirements. He has a proven track-record in Manufacturing Operations and General Management."KFS GROUP supports clients in challenging situations, such as introducing technical innovations or accessing new sourcing markets. Through a combination of technical and methodological expertise we guarantee the successful implementation of the project at hand ", says Giovanni Suero. We are pleased to listen carefully and tailor the approach to the projects requirements, Giovanni adds."A long-standing trustful and successful relationship has been established over a large number of projects", says Philipp Kirschenhofer, CEO of KFS GROUP. "I am pleased to have found a skilled and experienced partner for the UK office."The new competence centre in the UK is the companys fourth international office. "Following our expansion plans, we are planning further openings in 2017", adds companys founder Kirschenhofer. Offices outside Germany allow us to respond to the local market needs more flexible and to strengthen our international advisory team at the same timeAddress:KFS GROUP UK Ltd.5 Hinderton DriveHeswallCH60 8QA CheshireUNITED KINGDOMPhone: +44 20 35144788About KFS GROUP:KFS GROUP, founded in 2010, is a global consultancy for New Product Introduction, Supply Chain Management and Quality Management. Its key activities include Project, Launch and Crisis Management, Manufacturing Process Improvement, as well as Supplier Development and Procurement. Interim mandates staffing key roles as a temporary assignment complement the service offering. OEM's, and ODM's, leading suppliers along with hidden champions are among KFS GROUP's successful client base. Currently KFS GROUP has offices in Germany, the United Kingdom, China and Brazil.KFS GROUP GmbHElisabeth KrausFranz-von-Defregger-Strae 2583607 HolzkirchenGERMANYPhone +49 8024 64993 - 0Fax +49 8024 64993 - 99E-Mail pr@kfs-group.com
Multi Echelon Inventory Optimization Market - Analysis, Trends, Forecast by 2024

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Inventory optimization is the balancing of investments in stock-keeping units and service goals, while taking into account the volatilities of demand and supply. One of the major challenges a company faces is matching its supply to consumers demand. How efficiently a company addresses this challenge directly impacts the companys profitability. Working capital being of utmost importance for any company, it is important for companies to keep low levels of stock and sell them quickly. Supply chains today have multiple layers of suppliers and distributors. With each layer adding some safety stock considering service requirements, a significant amount of working capital is involved. Multi echelon inventory optimization approach involves taking a holistic approach toward the entire supply chain and considering the impact inventories have at any given level in the supply chain. It answers where in the supply chain inventories should be placed and optimizing and updating buffer stock at all levels. By effectively modeling the entire supply chain from raw materials to manufacturing and finished goods, multi echelon inventory optimization creates what-if scenarios and explores alternate suppliers, transport links, lead times as well as locations. Levels of safety stocks and postponement strategies having lower cost implications are also verified in the process.Get Free Sample Report Copy :Multi echelon inventory optimization boosts the capability of supply chain teams in achieving service goals with minimum levels of inventory. With problems such as stock outs and obsolescence also taken care of, bottom lines of companies are significantly improved irrespective whether the supply chain is local or global. The biggest driver for multi echelon inventory optimization market is the financial losses that companies can avoid using these techniques. The complexities that multi-level supply chains present and the need to efficiently allocate resources and increase profitability is further likely to fuel the growth of multi echelon inventory optimization market. Investments in inventory being largest liquid asset for any organization, taking advantage of any technique that can lower inventory investments while maintaining and ultimately improving service levels are significantly aiding profitability to the organization. However, reducing the inventory should in no way affect customer service levels. Multi echelon approach addresses this concern by keeping more stock at the outer nodes so that the customer service level is not affected, while reducing overall level of inventory. However, for this strategy to effectively work, companies should be able to forecast customer demands. Inventory optimization process is dynamic, which requires frequent evaluation. Companies need to review their network frequently and change policies accordingly. Lack of skilled resources who can understand and use inventory optimization techniques effectively are hurdles in adoption of multi echelon inventory optimization technologies.The multi echelon inventory optimization market can be broadly segmented into types of solutions and industries. The solutions include replenishment, vendor managed inventory, demand forecasting, purchase order flow management, supply chain advanced analytics, value chain collaboration, supply and retail optimization, transportation and logistics optimization and cloud services. On the basis of industries, the market can be categorized into consumer goods, electronics, food and beverages, chemical, retail, and manufacturing. Geographically, North America has a large market for multi echelon inventory optimization due to the large manufacturing sector and the penetration this technology has achieved in manufacturing and processes. With high growth in manufacturing industries in countries such as China, South Korea, India, Vietnam, and Indonesia, there is expected to be high demand for multi echelon inventory optimization solutions and services in Asia Pacific during the coming years.Browse Market Research Report with ToC & Free Analysis :The major companies operating in this market include ToolsGroup, Logic Tools Inc., Logility, Manhattan Associates, Inc., Smart Software, Inc., Arkieva, Kinaxis, Thrive Technologies and Planning Edge Corporation.About Us :Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.Contact Us :-Transparency Market ResearchState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Mobile Stroke Unit Market to Gain Considerably from Growing Incidence of Strokes Worldwide

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The ability of mobile stroke units to make every second count in the event of a medical emergency will be a strong driving force for the growth of the global mobile stroke unit (MSU) market globally, says Transparency Market Research (TMR) in a new report. The integration of telemedicine with MSUs will also whet the interest of hospitals and healthcare establishments in MSUs.A mobile stroke unit, as the term indicates, is a vehicle equipped with an imaging system such as a computed tomography system as well as a team of medics. A set up such as this helps bring CT imaging to the patient to ensure that treatment is not delayed in the event of a stroke. MSUs also provide thrombolysis in pre-hospital settings thanks to the presence of a multiple specialists on-board. However, when telemedicine is integrated into MSUs, the need for on-site medical experts can be reduced to a great extent. These factors have made MSUs an appealing option for several healthcare organizations and public healthcare entities. The rising number of strokes worldwide further substantiates the need for MSUs.Introducing the Rising Trend of Mobile Stroke Unit:From the geographical standpoint, spending on mobile stroke units is seen to be substantial in North America and Europe. These two regions have a better developed healthcare infrastructure than other regions such as Asia Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East and Africa. A growing incidence of strokes in the United States has led this market to be regarded as an important one for mobile stroke units. Government-backed initiatives for the timely diagnosis and treatment of stroke will go a long way in the growth of the MSUs market in the U.S.In European countries as well, the public healthcare burden associated with stroke is increasing. The World Health Organization has identified stroke as among the leading causes of disability in Europe. This has compelled governments of various European nations to look at MSUs as a practical way to reduce death and disability resulting from stroke.Although the demand for mobile stroke units is still low in developing countries in regions such as the MEA and APAC, this scenario is fast changing. The leading players in the global mobile stroke unit market are: NeuroLogica Corporation, Frazer Ltd., MEYTEC GmbH Informationssysteme, Falck A/S, and Excellance, Inc., among others.Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Our data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts, so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With a broad research and analysis capability, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Global Orthopedic Tools Market Overview, Growth, Supply, Revenue and Forecast 2016-2021

Orthopedic Tools

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Global Orthopedic Tools Market 2016 Industry Size Share Growth Forecast Research and DevelopmentThe Global Orthopedic Tools Industry report gives a comprehensive account of the Global Orthopedic Tools market. Details such as the size, key players, segmentation, SWOT analysis, most influential trends, and business environment of the market are mentioned in this report. Furthermore, this report features tables and figures that render a clear perspective of the Orthopedic Tools market. The report features an up-to-date data on key companies product details, revenue figures, and sales. Furthermore, the details also gives the Global Orthopedic Tools market revenue and its forecasts. The business model strategies of the key firms in the Orthopedic Tools market are also included. Key strengths, weaknesses, and threats shaping the leading players in the market have also been included in this research report.The report gives a detailed overview of the key segments in the market. The fastest and slowest growing market segments are covered in this report. The key emerging opportunities of the fastest growing Global Orthopedic Tools market segments are also covered in this report. Each segments and sub-segments market size, share, and forecast are available in this report. Additionally, the region-wise segmentation and the trends driving the leading geographical region and the emerging region has been presented in this report.Get Complete Report with TOC :The study on the Global Orthopedic Tools market also features a history of the tactical mergers, acquisitions, collaborations, and partnerships activity in the market. Valuable recommendations by senior analysts about investing strategically in research and development can help new entrants or established players penetrate the emerging sectors in the Orthopedic Tools market. Investors will gain a clear insight on the dominant players in this industry and their future forecasts. Furthermore, readers will get a clear perspective on the high demand and the unmet needs of consumers that will enhance the growth of this market.Table of ContentChapter One Orthopedic Tools Industry Overview1.1 Orthopedic Tools Definition1.1.1 Orthopedic Tools Definition1.1.2 Product Specifications1.2 Orthopedic Tools Classification1.3 Orthopedic Tools Application Field1.4 Orthopedic Tools Industry Chain Structure1.5 Orthopedic Tools Industry Regional Overview1.6 Orthopedic Tools Industry Policy Analysis1.7 Orthopedic Tools Industry Related Companies Contact InformationGet Sample Copy of Report @Chapter Two Orthopedic Tools Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis2.1 High Purity colloidal silica Supplier and Price Analysis2.2 Equipment Suppliers2.3 Labor Cost Analysis2.4 Other Cost Analysis2.5 Manufacturing Cost Structure2.5 Orthopedic Tools Manufacturing TechnologyAbout Us:MarketResearchStore.com is a single destination for all the industry, company and country reports. We feature large repository of latest industry reports, leading and niche company profiles, and market statistics released by reputed private publishers and public organizations.Contact US:Joel JohnSuite #8138, 3422 SW 15 Street,Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442United StatesToll Free: +1-855-465-4651 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-386-310-3803
Deep Packet Inspection and Processing Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size 2024

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Deep packet inspection (DPI) is a technology which allow network owner to analyze data packets in real-time. In DPI process, the network operator can investigate data packets beyond the basic header i.e. sender and receiver address. That means, unlike Internet protocol (IP), DPI can access the payload of the IP packets which allows network operators to control and classify, internet traffic based on the content, subscribers and applications. Thus, DPI, intelligently determines the content of a packet and retrieves information for statistical and analytical purpose. The improving internet security standards globally, is the one of the key trends influencing the growth of DPI and processing market.Get Free Sample Report Copy :DPI and processing market is widely segmented on the basis of component type, applications and end-use verticals. On the basis of component type, DPI and processing market is further classified as intrusion detection and prevention system, network improvement, data prevention & management and services. Services segment further include, system installation and training, maintenance, and consulting. With millions of internet connectivity achieved throughout the world, DPI and processing market is widely adopted in many applications. In terms applications, DPI and processing market is categorized as network security, network management (content optimization, billing and metering applications, load balancing and network and subscriber analysis), monitoring and interception, targeted advertising, copyright enforcement, and content regulation. Based on end-use verticals, DPI and processing market is further segmented into, telecom and IT, government, military and defense, healthcare, transport & logistics, manufacturing & retail, banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) and others (education and energy).Augmenting demand for improved internet security is the key market driver in DPI and processing market. The increasing threats in the form of spam, worm and virus has resulted in strong demand of improved cyber security especially among data-sensitive institutions. According to Internet Security Threat Report published by Symantec Corporation based in Mountain View, California, the U.S. in April 2016, 430 Million new malware were diagnosed in 2015 which is 36% more than 2014. This information reveals that, malware threat is the growing significantly, which in turn is likely to proliferate the growth of deep packet inspection and processing market. Additionally, strong demand to improve network performance and reduce the capital expenses (CapEx) and operation expenses (OpEx), is further fuelling the adoption of latest DPI systems among all the business segments. DPI and processing requires robust hardware to process and retrieve information at real time processing speed. This hardware is often highly priced which make its adoption challenging in small and medium enterprises. This factor is likely to restrain the growth of DPI and processing market. Alongside this, lack of awareness of DPI and processing technology especially in economies such as China, India, Indonesia, and Brazil is expected to curb its market growth. Moreover, concerns over data privacy in the critical IP packets especially in government and defense organization is likely to suppress the market growth of DPI and processing market. With, trending internet of things for connected digital ecosystem and dramatic increase in internet service adoption through smartphones and laptops, projects a significant market opportunity for DPI and processing manufacturers/players.Globally, North America region is the likely to dominate in terms of adoption of DPI and processing technology. The early development and strict government reforms to ensure security of online data are the key factors driving the DPI and processing market in the region. However, with rising use internet services among commercial and public organizations and increasing data security threats in Asia Pacific region, this region is expected to show strong market growth in near term.Browse Market Research Report with ToC & Free Analysis :Some of the key players operating in DPI and processing market are Cisco Systems, Inc., IBM Corporation, Symantec Corporation, Intel Corporation, H-P Enterprise Company Radisys Corporation and Palo Alto Networks, Inc.About Us :Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.Contact Us :-Transparency Market ResearchState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Blister Packaging Market is expected to exhibit Rapid Growth in the Near Future

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Blister packs is the term used for wide range of pre formed plastic packaging that are generally used for the packaging of foods, small consumer goods and pharmaceutical products. Blister packaging is an inexpensive option for creating packages that are transparent, durable and tamper proof in nature. The primary component of the blister packaging is the pocket or cavity that is manufactured using thermoformed plastics.Blister packaging has a lidding seal of plastics or aluminium foil or has backing of paperboard. Blister packaging that has the ability to fold onto itself is known as clamshell. Blister packaging offer a wide range of benefits which include protection of the product against external factors such as contamination and humidity for extended period of time. Blister packaging that are opaque in nature also protect light sensitive products against the ultra violet radiations. The cavities for blister packaging are bored into the sheet and rolls of plastic films using pressure and heat. Blister packaging is used by manufacturing blister machines design: flat-plate and rotary. Materials that are commonly used in the manufacturing of blister packing include polyvinyl chloride (PVC), Polychlorotrifluoro ethylene or PCTFE among others.Get More Information:Increasing population coupled with rising dependency on junk food is expected to boost several ailments among people which in turn is expected to drive the overall pharmaceutical market. Blister packaging is widely used to cover and thus, to package the medicines which are especially in the form of tablets or capsules. Thus, increase in the clinical trials and new FDA regulations within the U.S. are expected to boost the overall demand for blister packaging in the near future. Blister packaging is also widely used for effective labeling and dosages of the medicines. Blister packaging is also finding major applications in the consumer goods market.Thus, the growing demand for attractive packaging of the product is expected to drive the overall blister packaging market. Blister packaging is also widely used for the packaging of products that have to be handled with care. In addition, the growing demand from the customers for viewing the product before its purchase is expected to augment the overall demand for blister packaging market. However, growing environmental concerns regarding the usage of plastics is expected to hamper the overall demand for blister packaging. Development of bio based plastics for manufacturing blister packaging is expected to open new avenues for the market in near future.Browse The Full Report :North America is the largest consumer of blister packaging. The presence of huge pharmaceutical and healthcare industry in the region is expected to boost the overall demand for blister packaging in the region. North America is followed by Asia Pacific, owing to the presence of huge consumer goods manufacturing industry especially in China. Europe is expected to be the next largest manufacturer of blister packaging owing to the present of stringent regulations with respected to the pharmaceutical industry in the region.Thus, the blister packaging market is expected to exhibit rapid growth in the near future. Rest of the World is expected to exhibit sluggish growth in the demand for blister packaging in the near future.The market of blister packaging is highly fragmented in nature. VisiPak, Blisterpak, Inc., Powerpak Industries L.L.C., Algus Packaging, Inc, Clearwater Packaging, Inc. and Blisters, Inc. among others are some of the major participants of the blister packaging market.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.ContactTransparency Market ResearchState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: mailto:sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Veterinary Equipment & Disposables Market worth 1.7 Billion USD by 2020

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The report Veterinary Equipment and Disposables Market by product (Anesthesia Machine, Vaporizer, Ventilator, Patient Monitoring Devices, Oxygen Mask, Infusion Pump), by Animal (Canine, Feline, Equine, Bovine, Zoo Animals & Others) - Global Forecast to 2020, The global veterinary equipment and disposables market is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 6.5% to reach around USD 1.7 billion by 2020 from USD 1.2 billion in 2015.Browse 279 market data tables and 36 figures spread through 277 pages and in-depth TOC on Veterinary Equipment and Disposables MarketEarly buyers will receive 10% customization on this report.The global veterinary equipment market is fragmented in nature. The market is led by Smiths Group Plc. (U.K.), Jorgen Kruuse A/S (Denmark), Midmark Corporation (U.S.), and DRE Veterinary (U.S.), which together accounted for ~45%-50% of the global market in 2014.Smiths Group Plc is the leading player in the market. This is mainly attributed to its wide geographic presence and distribution network across the globe. The company primarily focuses on strengthening its extensive global sales network. It seeks to maintain customer satisfaction by providing accurate and timely responses and resolutions to customers' needs. The company also provides clinical support to its customers with information pertaining to the clinical aspects of veterinary products; this helps the company increase its customer base.Get the PDF Brochure@Jorgen Kruuse A/S (Denmark) is the second-largest player in the market. To enhance its market share, the company focuses on expanding and upgrading its product range. The company has a strong presence worldwide, with more than 350 distributors across 100 countries. To increase its market share, the company utilizes the latest technologies in picking and packing customers orders to serve its customers across the globe. The company also participates in major international congresses. These meetings discuss the latest innovations in technologies and provide significant opportunities to customers for exchanging experiences. This helps the company in developing technologically advanced products that meet customers requirements, thereby strengthening its market position.Midmark Corporation has an established market presence, brand reputation, and a broad range of veterinary products that help it to meet customer demands in the veterinary equipment and disposables market. The continuous focus of the company on providing innovative solutions and quality equipment enables veterinary healthcare professionals to deliver efficient patient care and ensures its future growth.Get Sample Copy Of This Report:DRE Veterinary (U.S.) held the fourth-largest share in the market in 2014, which is mainly attributed to the companys robust product portfolio. The company focuses on further strengthening its portfolio for future growth. In recent years, the company has upgraded its lineup of professionally refurbished veterinary equipment such as anesthesia machines to strengthen its market share in the U.S. and across the globe. The companys economically priced equipment is used in universities and veterinary institutions for providing hands-on training to students.Industry players adopted the strategy of new product launches to achieve growth in the global veterinary equipment and disposables market. DRE Veterinary, for instance, launched DRE Avanti Plus infusion pump in August 2015. The pump uses a microcontroller for the accurate control of infusion rate and volume. Similarly, agreements, partnerships, and collaborations were pursued by global players to enter the global veterinary equipment and disposables market.About MarketsandMarkets:MarketsandMarkets is the largest market research firm worldwide in terms of annually published premium market research reports. Serving 1700 global fortune enterprises with more than 1200 premium studies in a year, M&M is catering to a multitude of clients across 8 different industrial verticals. We specialize in consulting assignments and business research across high growth markets, cutting edge technologies and newer applications. Our 850 fulltime analyst and SMEs at MarketsandMarkets are tracking global high growth markets following the "Growth Engagement Model  GEM". The GEM aims at proactive collaboration with the clients to identify new opportunities, identify most important customers, write "Attack, avoid and defend" strategies, identify sources of incremental revenues for both the company and its competitors.M&Ms flagship competitive intelligence and market research platform, "RT" connects over 200,000 markets and entire value chains for deeper understanding of the unmet insights along with market sizing and forecasts of niche markets. The new included chapters on Methodology and Benchmarking presented with high quality analytical infographics in our reports gives complete visibility of how the numbers have been arrived and defend the accuracy of the numbers.We at MarketsandMarkets are inspired to help our clients grow by providing apt business insight with our huge market intelligence repository.Contact:Mr. RohanMarketsandMarkets701 Pike StreetSuite 2175, Seattle,WA 98101, United StatesTelephone No : 1-888-600-6441
Disk Clean Pro by Systweak reaches #1 on Mac App Store

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Disk Clean Pro is a performance boosting app for Mac that has been developed by Systweak Software. It is now the top selling app on the Mac App Store. A comparatively new entrant in the utility apps category, Disk Clean Pro has received consistent reviews from users ever since its launch late last year.The app is primarily meant for our customer-base in North America, however, it has secured the #1 spot in the Indian market. Apple products have started making inroads in the highly competitive and price-sensitive software consumer base in the sub-continent. Disk Clean Pros growing popularity during such an exciting market development phase is indeed a pleasant surprise, said Shrishail Rana, CEO, Systweak.We are relatively new to the Mac software solutions segment. Hitting the top spot on App Store with Disk Clean Pro is a huge incentive for us to expand our product line for Mac and other Apple products, added LK Sharma, Product Excellence Manager, Systweak.Disk Clean Pro is a multi-pronged app that helps in improving Mac speed and overall performance. There are 4 essential cleaning features viz. cache files, log files, trash files, and partly downloaded files. The app automatically spots such files and clears them out to free up storage space. In addition, it also has a memory optimization feature. Priced at less than $1, the current version is compatible with OS X 10.6 or later.The app can be downloaded at:About company: Systweak Software develops and distributes Windows, Mac, iOS & Android Apps since last 16 years to improve the average users digital experience. It has recently been featured in 100 Most Promising Microsoft Solution Providers list by the enterprise solutions magazine, CIO Review. Some of the companys flagship apps have been featured on Newswatch, the Discovery Channels tech news bulletin. Systweak Software has a large user-base in North America followed by several countries in Europe and Asia.572 & 573, G-1, Tower B-1 Evolve, IT/ITeS Mahindra World City, Village Kalwara, Taluka Sanganer, Jaipur- 302037, INDIAPhone: +91-141-2243030, 2243031
New version 12 of Autotext Text Expander Software "PhraseExpress"

New version 12 of Text Expander "PhraseExpress"

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Trier, 09/09/2016 - Bartels Media GmbH releases version 12 of the typing productivity software "PhraseExpress".New features:+ Ready to sync with PhraseExpress for Apple Mac, iPhone, iPad and Android+ Multi-language support for canned responses+ Fresh MS Office 2016 style user interface with ribbon menusText Expander and Canned Responses ManagerPhraseExpress manages frequently used boilerplate templates for quick insertion into any application.Text snippets and canned responses are organized in a customizable folder structure and can be triggered by hotkeys or by entering text abbreviations.Snippets can also be selected from a phrase menu, saving users from memorizing autotext shortcuts.PhraseExpress supports Firebird or Microsoft SQL servers including Citrix/TerminalServer for use in professional network environments.Cross-platform support for Windows, Apple Mac, iOS and AndroidThe new Windows version 12 is prepared to synchronize phrases with upcoming versions for Apple Mac, iPhone/iPad and Android. Beta versions are available now.Microsoft Office 2016 Look & FeelThe user interface has a new Microsoft Office 2016 style and ribbon menus automatically adapt the layout to serve functions matching the user's work flow.The optional new three column user interface layout simplifies managing phrases in large databases.Multi-Language Phrase LibraryPhraseExpress v12 can now switch phrase library between multiple languages.Switching phrase libraries only updates phrase contents and description. The phrase library tree structure, autotext abbreviations or hotkey associations and other settings remain the same.PhraseExpress v12 is available at- Professional use licenses start at 49.95 USD.Bartels Media is developing and marketing productivity software. In addition to the Text Expander "PhraseExpress", the company also offers a software KVM solution "ShareMouse".Bartels Media GmbHFleischstrasse 1754290 TrierGermanyPhone: +1 (415) 315-9475Email: support@bartelsmedia.com
Ophthalmology Devices Market to Expand at 5.10% CAGR end of 2018 owing to Wider Applications

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The global ophthalmology devices market is expected to expand at a 5.10% CAGR from 2012 to 2018. As per the report, the global ophthalmology devices market is expected to progress from US$12.92 bn in 2011 to US$18.28 bn by 2018. Advancements in healthcare infrastructure and the rising aging population are two of the major factors expected to benefit the global ophthalmology devices market in the near future.Request a Free PDF Brochure with Report Analysis:Ophthalmology is the branch of medicine that deals with the physiology, anatomy, and diseases of the eye. Ophthalmology device manufacturers, distributors, medical companies, healthcare institutions, and research and development firms are currently taking efforts to introduce new medical devices to gain competitive advantage. Ophthalmology devices are primarily used for treating various eye conditions and infections. As these devices help decrease the treatment time and offer quality eye care to patients, they assist in making the eye-treatment process more convenient for patients and ophthalmologists.The manufacturers of ophthalmology devices such as Essilor International, Johnson and Johnson Vision Care, Hoya Corporation, Abbott Medical Optics Inc., Nidek Co Ltd., Topcon Corporation, Alcon Inc., Carl Zeiss AG, Canon Inc., CooperVision AG, and Bausch and Lomb Inc. are actively introducing new devices to treat various diseases of the eye. With the entry of new companies, the global ophthalmology devices market is expected to register new growth opportunities in the years to come.With the increasing focus of people on healthcare, the global ophthalmology devices market is expected to witness rapid growth throughout the forecast period. Continuous developments in the field of medical devices and the rising spending on healthcare have propelled the global market for ophthalmology devices in the recent past. The global ophthalmology devices market is segmented on the basis of application, region, disorder, and device. By disorder, the global ophthalmology devices market is classified into cataract, refractor disorder, vitreoretinal disorder, and glaucoma.Diagnosis, surgery, and vision care are the primary applications of ophthalmology devices. The rising application areas of ophthalmology devices are predicted to propel the global market in the near future. By region, the global ophthalmology devices market is divided into Europe, Latin America, North America, Asia Pacific, and Rest of the World. In 2011, the North America ophthalmology devices market accounted for one-third of the global market. Currently, Europe holds the second position in the global market, followed by Asia Pacific.Based on device, the global ophthalmology devices market is classified into computerized field analyzers, contact lenses, contact lens clearing and disinfecting solutions, glaucoma drainage devices, intraocular lenses, iris retractors, ophthalmic lasers, ophthalmoscopes, optical coherence tomography devices, phoropters, refractors, and others. Medical devices in the ophthalmology field are used for numerous functions such as surgery, diagnosis, and vision care. Currently, in terms of shipment volume, the vision care devices segment dominates the global market with a share of 65%.Browse Research Report on Global Ophthalmology Devices Market:About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who us e proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Global Ascorbic Acid market is expected to witness moderate growth USD 1083.8 million by 2021

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Zion Research has published a new report titled Ascorbic Acid Market for Pharmaceutical, Food & Beverages, Personal Care and Other End-user Industries: Global Industry Perspective, Comprehensive Analysis and Forecast, 2015 - 2021. According to the report, the global ascorbic acid market was around 150.2 kilo tons in 2015. The global ascorbic acid market revenue accounted for USD 820.4 million in 2015 and is expected to reach USD 1083.8 million by 2021, growing at a CAGR of around 4.8% between 2016 and 2021.Get a copy of free Sample Report @The global Ascorbic Acid market is expected to witness moderate growth over the forecast period on account of increasing demand from pharmaceutical industry. Majority of ascorbic acid manufactured is used as an antioxidant. The major end-user industries of ascorbic acid are pharmaceuticals, food & beverages, personal care and others. Pharmaceutical industry is largest consumer of ascorbic acid. Vitamin C helps to recycle vitamin E. About one-third of total production of ascorbic acid is used for vitamin preparations in the pharmaceutical industry. The rest is mainly applied as an additive to food and feed to enhance product quality and stability. Ascorbic acid added to foodstuffs during processing or before packing protects color, aroma, and nutrient content. The usage of ascorbic acid in food & beverages industry is expected to grow at a healthy CAGR during the forecast period.Ascorbic acid production is hugely dependent on availability of raw material. Thus, any fluctuation in availability and prices of raw material can severely affect ascorbic acid market. This is expected to curb the growth of ascorbic acid market over the years. However, investments in research and development by major industry players coupled along with exponential technological advancements in pharmaceutical industry is expected to act as a major opportunity for ascorbic acid market.Know more before buying this report @In terms of geography, Asia-Pacific was largest consumer of ascorbic acid in 2015. The consumption in Asia Pacific is expected to grow at a rapid pace mainly due to availability of low cost manufacturing facilities in China. China is the largest consumer and producer of ascorbic acid. Moreover, the ever increasing demand for food and health supplements primarily in Asia Pacific is expected to boost the demand for ascorbic acid in this region. Europe and North America also consume ascorbic acid on large scale. The demand for ascorbic acid in this region is also expected to grow in coming years as a result of increasing demand from personal care and food & beverages end-user industry. Ascorbic Acid demand is increasing in emerging nations such as Brazil, India and China.Browse detail report with in-depth TOC @Some of the key players of the market include, DSM, DuPont, BASF SE, Northeast Pharmaceutical Group, Shandong Luwei Pharmaceutical, Bactolac Pharmaceutical Inc, CSPC Pharmaceutical Group, Hebei Welcome Pharmaceutical Co, North China Pharmaceutical Group, Dishman Group, Aland Nutraceuticals Group, NBTY Inc., GlaxoSmithKline Plc. and others.Purchase a direct copy of report with TOC @About Market Research StoreMarket Research Store is a single destination for all the industry, company and country reports. We feature large repository of latest industry reports, leading and niche company profiles, and market statistics released by reputed private publishers and public organizations. Market Research Store is the comprehensive collection of market intelligence products and services available on air. We have market research reports from number of leading publishers and update our collection daily to provide our clients with the instant online access to our database. With access to this database, our clients will be able to benefit from expert insights on global industries, products, and market trends.Contact US:Joel John3422 SW 15 Street,Suit #8138Deerfield Beach,Florida 33442United StatesToll Free: +1-855-465-4651 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-386-310-3803Email: sales@marketresearchstore.comWebsite:
Global Liquid and Air Filter Bags Market Expected to Witness 7.1% CAGR In Value Terms During 2016  2022

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The global liquid and air filter bags market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 7.1% in value terms during 2016 - 2022. Among the various types, the liquid segment held the largest share in the global liquid and air filter bags market in 2015.The stringent government regulations and increased environmental standards are the key drivers for the growth of the global liquid and air filter bags market. The rapid urbanization and industrialization activities are the reasons for the growing health concerns and deteriorating environmental conditions. The different governments across the globe have introduced environmental regulations and industrial standards to control the emission of contaminants or pollutants into the atmosphere. Some of these regulations and standards followed globally include Euro 5, Euro 6, CEPA, CAA, ASHRAE.Explore Full Report at:Moreover, the implementation of stringent environmental regulations across the globe is propelling the demand of efficient solutions for industries, such as cement, mining, automobile and coal based power plants. This further compels the industries to implement environmentally viable technologies and manufacturing techniques. However, some of the emerging economies in countries such as China, India and Indonesia, governments have introduced acts and policies.The pulse jet filter bags are preferred over electrostatic precipitators in power plants, as in the former the amount of energy is utilized at a desired efficiency level without affecting the cost. The application of pulse jet filter bag is expected to increase due to increasing industry demand from power plants.The demand for efficient and effective filter bags have been increasing due to their high performance, long life non-requirement of continuous replacement that increases the cost of operations. The use of nanotechnology helps the manufacturers to produce filter bags that are stronger, lighter, cheaper and easier to recycle when engineered at nanometer scale. This has swiftly led the companies to use nanofibers in the production of filters, which enhances the efficiency with high surface area available for filtering more contaminants in a given time. These filter bags are smaller, more compact and powerful that makes it cost-effective with lower LCC (life cycle cost) for both the manufacturer and end users in various industries. The filters can be utilized for longer periods with extra service life which also reduces the chance of environmental deterioration.The information and data in the publication Global Liquid and Air Filter Bags Market Size, Share, Development, Growth and Demand Forecast to 2022 represent the research and analysis of data from various primary and secondary sources. Top down approach has been used to calculate the global liquid and air filter bags market by segment, bag size, industry and geography. P&S Market Research analysts and consultants interact with leading companies of the concerned domain to substantiate every value of data presented in the report. The company bases its primary research on discussions with prominent professionals and analysts in the industry, which is followed by informed and detailed, online and offline research.Asia-Pacific consisting of emerging countries is one of the fastest growing markets for liquid and air filter bags, with China and India as major contributors both for raw material, manufacturers and suppliers. The growing demand for several consumer products in the region have led to the increased production of metals, chemicals, and other heavy products which is consequently expected to boost the demand of liquid and air filter bag products. The foreign investments from global companies are also expected to propel the demand for bag filters in the region.To Browse For Related Research:Global Liquid and Air Filter Bags Market SegmentationBy SegmentLiquidAirBy Bag Size7OD*177OD*324OD*84OD*14OthersBy IndustryChemicals & PharmaceuticalsMiningSteel & PowerCementWater TreatmentOthersGEOGRAPHICAL SEGMENTATIONBy RegionNorth AmericaU.S.CanadaRest of North AmericaLatin AmericaBrazilRest of Latin AmericaEuropeGermanyItalyFranceU.K.Rest of EuropeAsia-PacificChinaJapanIndiaRest of Asia-PacificMiddle East & Africa (MEA)Saudi ArabiaRest of MEAAbout P&S Market ResearchP&S Market Research is a market research company, which offers market research and consulting services for various geographies around the globe. We provide market research reports, industry forecasting reports, business intelligence, and research based consulting services across different industry/business verticals.As one of the top growing market research agency, were keen upon providing market landscape and accurate forecasting. Our analysts and consultants are proficient with business intelligence and market analysis, through their interaction with leading companies of the concerned domain. We help our clients with B2B market research and assist them in identifying various windows of opportunity, and framing informed and customized business expansion strategies in different regions.Contact:DeepAssistant  Client Partner347, 5th Ave. #1402New York City, NY - 10016Toll-free: +1-888-778-7886 (USA/Canada)Email: enquiry@psmarketresearch.comWeb:
Assisted Reproduction Technology Devices Market: Growing Demand For Quality And Safety Healthcare Services By The Patient

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Assisted reproductive technology (ART) is a procedure used to achieve pregnancy. ART is used to avoid the fertility problems while perpetuating genetic connection. Worlds first test tube baby was born in Britain on 25 July 1978 by In-vitro fertilization (IVF). Since then, more than one million babies have been born as the result of assisted reproductive technology. It is observed that infertility affects almost 80 million people worldwide. Overall, one in ten couples suffers with primary or secondary infertility, whereas the infertility rates varies from 5.0% to 30.0% worldwide. Human reproductive technologies came into existence due to rise in infertility rate.Get Free PDF Brochure for more Professional and Technical industry insights:Based on the technology, the ART devices market can be segmented as follows: In-vitro fertilization (IVF) Intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) Gamete intrafallopian transfer (GIFT), Zygote intrafallopian transfer (ZIFT) Intrauterine insemination (IUI) SurrogacyAccording to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in 2014, there were around 208,604 ART cycles performed at 458 reporting clinics in the United States, in which 57,323 were live births and 70,354 were live born infants. Overall, of the 208,604 ART cycles performed in 2014, 35,406 were banking cycles in which the intent of the ART cycle was to freeze all resulting eggs or embryos for future ART cycles. It is observed that the use of ART is still rare than its potential demand among people, however its use has been reported to be doubled over the past decade. Relatively 1.6% of all infants born every year are conceived using ART, in the United States.Based on end users, the ART devices market can be segmented as follows: Fertility and surgical centers Hospitals and research laboratories CryobanksGeographically the ART devices market can be segmented as follows: North America Europe Asia Pacific LAMEA Middle East & AfricaEurope contributed the largest share in the ART devices market owing to high demand, increasing usage of ART devices and rapidly rising geriatric population. North America market is experiencing significant growth rate due to technological advancements and favorable government initiatives. According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), national public health action plan was developed in June 2014 for the prevention management and detection of infertility. The aim of the policy was to improve the efficacy and safety of infertility treatment. As per the data available in the public databases nearly 588,629 ART cycles were reported in the Europe (33 countries) and nearly 151,923 cycles were reported from the United States. Germany, the U.K., Spain, and Italy are the most active countries for ART in Europe. Asia Pacific is expected to be the fastest growing region due to increasing awareness, late family planning, availability of advanced fertility services, and low fertility rate. Countries in the Latin American region is also experiencing considerable growth in ART devices market owing to increasing healthcare infrastructure and growing demand for quality and safety healthcare services by the patient.Assisted reproductive technology devices market is anticipated to grow further due to increasing number of government support for infertility procedures, rapidly growing infertility cases, rising disposable income, increasing number of smokers, and rise in the obese population. One in six couples globally experience some form of infertility. It was observed that around 5 million babies had been born from IVF and other reproductive technologies worldwide as or 2015. Due to birth defects risk, disposables of embryo, rise in ethical issues towards ART assisted babies and expensive treatment could restrain the global assisted reproductive technology market.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Contact us:Transparency Market Research90 State Street,Suite 700,AlbanyNY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Arisaka Commodities Signs Up Summit Energy for Energy Data Agreement

Arisaka Commodities Signs Up Summit Energy for Energy Data Agreement

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Arisaka Commodities Market Data to supply coal, power, gas and emissionsTokyo, 2016 - Arisaka Commodities a commodity Trading Advisor that provides clients across the globe with a comprehensive range of customized financial services and tools to invest in commodities and futures trading and to help them protect their margins and manage volatility, today announced that it has entered into an agreement with its affiliate partners by which Arisaka Commodities will supply its partners with market data on Asian gas, power, emissions and coal. Arisaka Commodities will provide historical data as well as streaming updates.Ono Koyama, a trader within Arisaka Commodities partner network stated: We use Arisaka Commodities data screens to monitor the wholesale markets and ensure that when dealing with suppliers and or banks to purchase energy and commodities they are reflective of current spreads and prices offered in the OTC market.We are very pleased to welcome our partners as a client of this service - a further sign of our expansion into the Southeast Asian markets said Etsuji Masuda, Commercial Head of Arisaka Commodities and Market Data for Asia, Due to our highly experienced brokers and our systems being deeply penetrated into these markets, we are confident we will provide all out partners within the network with the quality data in energy and the commodities it requires.Our network of partners provides energy management and sustainability services to organizations in a wide range of industries.Through Arisaka Commodities Market Data provides a comprehensive view of executable and executed prices in the Power, Gas, Emissions, Coal and Freight markets. It is also a renowned provider of energy trading solutions to traders, brokers and exchanges worldwide. It develops, deploys and supports quality, resilient software for trading in any asset class worldwide in cleared or OTC markets.About Arisaka CommoditiesFounded by private shareholders, Arisaka Commodities has emerged as a forerunner trading in commodities. Arisaka Commodities provides clients across the globe with a comprehensive range of customized financial services and tools to invest in commodities and futures trading and to help them protect their margins and manage volatility. Arisaka Commodities has developed a comprehensive foreign exchange trading operation to help handle the currency exposure associated with commodities trading and investment. Equipped with a state-of-the-art technology network that links the principal trading centers of the world, Arisaka Commodities ensures investors are kept abreast of the latest investor trading trends.Arisaka CommoditiesShinjuku Sumitomo Building, 2-6-1 Nishi-Shinjuku, Tokyomedia@arisaka-commodities.com
Healthcare API Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends And Forecast 2016 - 2024

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The healthcare API market report provides an in-depth analysis of the global healthcare API market for the period 2014  2024, wherein 2015 is the base year and the years from 2016 to 2024 is the forecast period. Data for 2014 has been included as historical information. The report covers all the prevalent trends playing a major role in the growth of the healthcare API market over the forecast period. It also highlights various drivers, restraints, and opportunities expected to influence the markets growth during the forecast period. The study provides a holistic perspective on market growth in terms of revenue estimates (in US$ Mn), across different geographies, which include North America, Europe, Asia Pacific (APAC), Middle East & Africa (MEA), and Latin America (LATAM). The report provides cross-sectional analysis of the global healthcare API market in terms of market estimates and projections for all the segments across different geographic regions. The report also covers profiling of major players, their growth strategies, their market positioning, and their various recent developments, and includes market positioning analysis of key players operating in the healthcare API market.This research study on the global healthcare API market provides a detailed analysis of various type healthcare services available in the market integrated with API. Based on the services, the market is further divided into the electronic health record access, appointments, remote patient monitoring, payment, and medical device (wearable) segments. On the basis of deployment model, the market is segmented into on-premise and cloud-based models and based on end-users it is segmented into the healthcare provider, healthcare payer, patients, and vendors segments. The report includes a comprehensive coverage of the underlying economic and technological factors under the key trend analysis section.The report aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of the global Healthcare API market across geographies such as North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa (MEA), and Latin America. The regions are further segmented to cover in-depth country level analysis. North America region is segmented into the U.S. and Canada. Similarly, Europe has been further segmented into the U.K., Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and Rest of Europe. Asia Pacific has been segmented into China, India, Australia, Japan, and Rest of Asia Pacific; MEA is divided into the UAE, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and Rest of MEA. Latin America has been further categorized into Brazil and Rest of Latin America. The revenue estimates for these countries is also included in the report.Get free Sample Copy atThe report also highlights the competitive landscape of the healthcare API market, positioning all the major players according to their geographic presence, historical roadmap, key recent developments, and comparison of their revenues for 2014 and 2015.Under the company profiles section, the report provides an overview of the players operating in the market, the strategies deployed by them to gain competitive advantage, the annual revenue generated by them in the past two or three years, and their recent developments. The key players profiled in this report include Apple, Inc., Microsoft Corporation, Greenway Health, LLC, MuleSoft, Inc., General Electric Company, Practice Fusion, Inc., Epic Systems Corporation, Allscripts Healthcare Solutions Inc., eClinicalWorks LLC, and Practo Technologies Pvt. Ltd.The global healthcare API market has been segmented as follows:Healthcare API Market, by ServicesElectronic Health Record AccessAppointmentsRemote Patient MonitoringPaymentMedical Device (Wearable)Healthcare API Market, by Deployment ModelOn-premiseCloud-basedHealthcare API Market, by End-UsersHealthcare PayersHealthcare ProvidersPatientsVendorsHealthcare API Market, by GeographyNorth AmericaThe U.S.CanadaEuropeThe U.K.GermanyFranceSpainItalyRest of EuropeAsia Pacific (APAC)ChinaJapanIndiaAustraliaRest of APACMiddle East & Africa (MEA)United Arab Emirates (the UAE)Saudi ArabiaSouth AfricaRest of MEALatin AmericaBrazilRest of Latin AmericaMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries.State Tower90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-621-2074Website:Email: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
Luxury Vehicles Market: Size, Share, Dynamics and Trends by 2015  2021

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The term luxury vehicle suggests a vehicle with higher quality equipment, explicit construction, comfort, better performance, higher design, and is technologically modern and featured. It is a perceptual, conditional, and subjective attribute that may be apprehended differently by different people. Luxury vehicles are a symbol of an image, brand, prestige, or status that is offered at premium prices. These vehicles provide emphasized comfort and the higher degree of safety compared to mainstream vehicles.Get a copy of free Sample Report @The past of automobile industry shows that there has been a point where it had a group of car models that were expensive to purchase owing to the so-called superiority of their design and engineering. Wealthy buyers and the high-standard group of people give importance to their society status and prestige. Hence, these automobiles specifically focus on such wealthy buyers and are generically termed as luxury vehicles. By providing various models, manufacturers of these luxury vehicles target particular socio-economic classes taking into account their income and standard of living in the society.On the basis of type, luxury vehicles are classified as sedan, station wagon, hatchback, coupe, and convertible body styles. Further, they are segmented into minivans, crossovers, sport utility vehicles, and others. Luxury vehicles are available in any size vehicle, from small to large, and in any price range. Based on the size and features provided by luxury vehicles, others segment is further sub-segmented as premium compact vehicles, entry-level luxury or compact executive vehicles, mid-size luxury or executive vehicles, high-end luxury or full-size luxury vehicles, and ultra-luxury vehicles. Geographically, the market is segmented as North America, Europe, Asia, and RoW.Know more before buying this report @The U.S., China, Japan, Canada, India, and other European countries are the major markets for luxury vehicles. The global luxury vehicles market is forecasted to have positive growth in the near future. Increasing disposable income is the key factor for the market growth globally. In addition, automobile manufacturers and other financial institutions provide various loan schemes which make it easy for the customers to maintain their status in the society. This is one of the factors increasing the demand of luxury vehicles in the developing nations which positively impacts the growth of global luxury vehicles market. On the other hand, rising fuel prices in developing countries such as India may act as market restraints, hindering growth of the global market.Browse detail report @Key players of the global luxury market are BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Jaguar, Audi, Volvo, Ferrari, and Land Rover. Other major players in the market include Rolls-Royce, Bentley, Lamborghini, Lexus, and Cadillac. Some of the manufacturers may be either stand-alone companies such as BMW and Mercedes, while others may be a division or a subsidiary of a mass market automaker such as Lexus, which is a part of Toyota.Pre-book your report @About Zion Market ResearchZion Market Research is a single destination for all the industry, company and country reports. We feature large repository of latest industry reports, leading and niche company profiles, and market statistics released by reputed private publishers and public organizations. Zion Market Research is the comprehensive collection of market intelligence products and services available on air. We have market research reports from number of leading industry and update our collection daily to provide our clients with the instant online access to our database. With access to this database, our clients will be able to benefit from expert insights on global industries, products, and market trends.Contact US:4283, Express Lane, Suite 634-143,Sarasota, Florida 34249,United StatesTel: +1-386-310-3803 GMTTel: +49-322 210 92714USA/Canada Toll Free No.1-855-465-4651sales@zionmarketresearch.comWebsite:
Specialty Chemicals Market: Size, Share, Dynamics and Trends by 2015  2021

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Specialty chemical industry is one of the innovative, entrepreneurial, and consumer-driven industries. These specialty chemicals comprise low-volume, high-value chemicals with specific applications and constitute a significant part of the Indian chemical industry.Get a copy of free Sample Report @Specialty chemicals are high value-added products that are used as catalysts, intervenes, constituents, protectants, or preservatives in various products and applications. Specialty chemicals are sometimes referred to as performance chemicals, or effect chemicals, or formulation chemicals. Specialty chemicals are chemicals that are used in low quantities (not in bulk) and are targeted towards specific end-use applications. The physical and chemical characteristics of these chemicals influence the performance of end products.Specialty chemicals are broadly segmented into agrichemicals such as insecticides, herbicides, and fungicides; adhesives; food additives such as salt, sugar, and vinegar; cleaning materials; cosmetic additives; construction chemicals; elastomers; flavors; industrial gases; polymers; surfactants (emulsifiers, foaming agents and dispersants); textile auxiliaries; and lubricants. The abovementioned types can be further sub-segmented on the basis of technology, function, applications, type, and plastic type. Specialty chemicals can be sub-segmented based on end-user industries. The major end-users of specialty chemicals are the automobile, food, aerospace, cosmetics, manufacturing, agriculture, and textile industries.Know more before buying this report @Growing need for these chemicals in the end-user industries due to their physical and chemical characteristics positively impacts the global market growth. Rising population, decreasing arable land, increasing the need for improvement in crop yields, and growing construction sector are some of the factors influencing the growth of specialty chemicals such as pesticides, Specialty coatings and surfactants, and construction chemicals. Moreover, these chemicals are increasingly used in water treatments. The introduction of more sophisticated water treatment technologies such as ion-exchange includes use of specialty chemicals in industrial water treatment. In addition, rising R&D activities for the development of innovative products to meet environmental regulations will offer ample opportunities for the growth of global specialty chemicals market.Asia Pacific leads the global specialty chemicals market is forecasted to witness the highest growth in the near future. Increasing demand in the major end-user industries including construction, automotive, agriculture, packaging, textiles, personal care, and electronics along with rising infrastructure investments; and development of environment-friendly products offer ample revenue generation opportunities to the manufacturers of specialty chemicals. Increasing industrial activities in developing countries such as India and China will increase the demand for specialty chemicals in these countries.Browse detail report @On the other hand, few government regulations on the utilization of certain chemicals in food processing industry and other manufacturing industries may hinder the growth of global specialty chemicals market.Key players in the global specialty chemicals market include Albemarle Corporation, Akzo Nobel N.V., Ashland, BASF SE, Clariant AG, Evonik Industries, and E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company. Other major players dominating the market with their products and services are Eastman Chemical Company, Huntsman Corporation, INEOS Group, and The Dow Chemical Company.Pre-book your report @About Zion Market ResearchZion Market Research is a single destination for all the industry, company and country reports. We feature large repository of latest industry reports, leading and niche company profiles, and market statistics released by reputed private publishers and public organizations. Zion Market Research is the comprehensive collection of market intelligence products and services available on air. We have market research reports from number of leading industry and update our collection daily to provide our clients with the instant online access to our database. With access to this database, our clients will be able to benefit from expert insights on global industries, products, and market trends.Contact US:4283, Express Lane, Suite 634-143,Sarasota, Florida 34249,United StatesTel: +1-386-310-3803 GMTTel: +49-322 210 92714USA/Canada Toll Free No.1-855-465-4651sales@zionmarketresearch.comWebsite:
EquipNet strengthens position in SemiCon market with the acquisition of Quality Equipment Source, Inc.

www.equipnet.com

Boston, USA: The worlds largest specialist asset management company, EquipNet Inc., has concluded an agreement to acquire California-based, Quality Equipment Source, Inc. (QES), a well-known partner to companies looking to buy and sell used and refurbished equipment.As part of the agreement, EquipNet will establish its operations in San Jose, California at QESs former 17,500 sq ft office & warehouse facilit8Iy. QES President, Gustavo Ortega and the entire QES staff will all join EquipNet.The new integrated business will offer a global sourcing network for secondary semiconductor equipment  from a single tool, to a complete FAB. Advice and consultancy on all aspects of buying and selling are available, including: refurbishment, installation, rigging, crating, shipping, customs support, and custom configuration and training.Ben Potenza, VP of Marketing at EquipNet, commented: We are thrilled to be bringing a company with such a strong reputation as Quality Equipment Source into our business. This is an exciting and important boost for EquipNet that supports our plans for further growth in this field. With industry sources estimating that roughly 10% of the overall wafer fab equipment (WFE) sales are used equipment, I am certain that combining the expertise of QES founder and long-time electronics industry pioneer, Gustavo Ortega with EquipNets proven service-led business model, we will establish a new dynamic in the global semiconductor market.QES President, Gustavo Ortega stated: We are excited to be combining forces with such a renowned asset management company as EquipNet and look forward to the start of a long and prosperous relationship between both the former QES and current EquipNet teams. We hope that the pooling of skills from both organisations will help future growth in the SemiCon industry.About EquipNetThe Massachusetts based EquipNet, Inc., has become the worlds largest surplus asset management company. The company offers a range of tools that allow companies to take control of their assets. For example, a proprietary software platform ARMS (Asset Redeployment Management System), can be installed across multiple sites, behind the firewalls of these companies, allowing an enterprise-wide online accessible program that aligns with the requirements of that particular company. This is part of EquipNets unique approach, developed to balance the needs of a client to realize maximum value for key assets, dispose of routine items in as timely way as possible, and deal with scrap and low-value residual materials too. They have the biggest online marketplace for laboratory, production and packaging equipment, and are one of the largest industrial equipment auctioneers in the world. Their main markets are in the pharmaceutical, biotech, chemical, food, beverage, and personal care sectors, where their specialist knowledge of the markets is proven to deliver higher value than many of the generalists in the market.Press informationTrystan George, Kapler Communications1 Whiteside, Station Road, Holmes Chapel, Cheshire, CW4 8AA, UKTel: +44 (0) 1477 539545; Fax: +44 (0) 1477 539540;trystan.george@kapleronline.comPlease send enquiries toBen PotenzaEquipNet, Inc., 5 Dan Road, Canton, MA 02021Toll-free 888.371.6555Tel: 781.821.3482 FAX: 617.671.1269sales@equipnet.com
Matrix to showcase innovative security solutions at IISE16, Delhi

Matrix, a leading manufacturer of Telecom and Security solutions, is participating in IISE 2016, from 19th  21st September 2016. Matrix, with a strong history of delivering cutting-edge products and innovative solutions, will showcase its well-engineered security solutions specifically designed for enterprises.Matrix will showcase its range of Biometric Access Control solution and its advance applications at the event. Mobile being the next generation technology in terms of Security, Your mobile your identity themed Access Control solution, whereby user either scans the QR code through mobile or just twists his hand to gain access will be displayed at the event. Furthermore, Matrix will launch COSEC DOOR FMX as Premium Door Controller with Multispectral Sensor. This advance multispectral technology reads surface and subsurface of the live fingerprint and gives very clear and strong image even if the surface layer is not available due to dirty finger, dry finger, oily finger, poor ridge image or other environmental problems. Matrix will present its Standalone Access Control solution, with the help of which one can connect up to 255 devices and 25,000 users, without a server. This advance multispectral technology reads surface and subsurface of the live fingerprint and gives very clear and strong image even if the surface layer is not available due to dirty finger, dry finger, oily finger, poor ridge image or other environmental problems.During this exhibition, we will demonstrate our enterprise grade Access Control solution with real-time features such as auto push events to server, instant notification, automatic device identification, Mobile as user credentials and many more, said Jatin Desai  Product Manager for Access Control and Time-Attendance.Matrix will also display its range of IP Video Surveillance solutions that include enterprise level VMS, NVRs, HVRs and IP Cameras. The entire solution is focused on solving the three major pain areas of customers, namely difficulty in centralized management and monitoring, bandwidth and storage cost and reactive security. Some of our path breaking features that will be on display include Event based Edge Recording and Notification, Adaptive Recording and Compression, Centralized Monitoring and Management, Real-time Notification and Intelligent Video Analytics. These features will help you understand the difference between a Video Surveillance solution and box moving devices and cameras that are available in the market place.Matrix cordially invites you to visit us at IISE 2016, Delhi from 19th  21st September 2016 and see how our cutting-edge security solutions can meet your stringent, mission critical needs.Established in 1991, Matrix is a leader in Telecom and Security solutions for modern businesses and enterprises. An innovative, technology driven and customer focused organization; Matrix is committed to keep pace with the revolutions in the telecom and security industries. With more than 40% of its human resources dedicated to the development of new products, Matrix has launched cutting-edge products like Video Surveillance solutions, Access Control, Time-Attendance, IP-PBX, Universal Gateways, Terminals, Convergence solution, VoIP Gateways and GSM Gateways. These solutions are feature-rich, reliable and conform to the international standards. Having global footprints in Asia, Europe, North America, South America and Africa through an extensive network of more than 500 channel partners, Matrix ensures that the products serve the needs of its customers faster and longer. Matrix has gained trust and admiration of customers representing the entire spectrum of industries. Matrix has won many international awards for its innovative products.Matrix COmsec394 GIDC, Makarpura, Vadodara
The Goddard School's Dynamic Learning Through Play Curriculum Opens New Houston Location HOUSTON (September 9, 2016) Goddard Systems, Inc. (GSI), the franchisor of The Goddard School preschool system, announces its newest school in Houston, TX is open. Located at 3655 Barker Cypress Rd. Houston, TX 77084, the new school is owned by franchisees Mohammed, Maha and Sarah Sultan.



Prior to joining The Goddard School, Mohammed served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War before retiring to lead successful careers in auto part sales and commercial real estate. He and his wife Maha first discovered The Goddard School through Wally and Sally Deifallah, close family friends and franchisees of The Goddard School located in Cypress (Rock Creek), TX. Maha and Mohammeds daughter, Sarah, will join her parents new venture, bringing with her years of business success from owning and operating an out-of-home bakery. The Sultans chose to expand The Goddard School preschools reach in the Houston market in order to provide a high-quality and convenient preschool program for families in Rolling Green and surrounding neighborhoods.



The Goddard School preschool system prides itself on its unique dual-management system, a distinguisher in the early childhood education industry. Franchise owners are onsite at each location and work alongside an educational director, whose focus is to communicate and work with teachers, as well as to implement The Goddard School curriculum. This dual-management system ensures a hands-on, community-focused approach when it comes to early childhood education. With each school opening, The Goddard School also has a local economic impact, creating an average of 20 to 25 jobs within the community.



The Goddard Schools play-based approach, called Fun, Learning Experience (or F.L.EX.), is grounded in research on how children learn best: children experience the deepest, most genuine learning when they are having fun.



At The Goddard School, the focus is on building each childs emotional, academic, social, creative and physical skills to provide a well-rounded experience and ensure each one becomes confident, joyful and fully prepared in school and in life.



With nearly 30 years of experience in early childhood education, The Goddard Schools unique dual-management system creates lasting community bonds as owners are on-site at the Schools to provide support to the communities they serve, said Joe Schumacher, Chief Executive Officer of Goddard Systems, Inc. One area that truly sets us apart from other childcare systems is our philosophy based on learning through play, designed to teach and reinforce 21st century skills, including social behaviors such as communication, critical thinking, creativity and collaboration. This philosophy fosters a lifelong love of learning and creates meaningful connections at an early age.



Jobs relating to STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics) are currently the fastest growing segment of the U.S. economy, and a focus on developing 21st century skills such as creativity and innovation as well as the abilities to collaborate, communicate and think critically, is expected to increase over time. By introducing 21st century skill concepts early on, children develop a strong foundation and a passion for STEAM at the very beginning of their education.



We chose to open The Goddard School as a family to pursue our collective dream of playing an integral role in developing the next generation, said on-site owner, Sarah Sultan. Through The Goddard Schools trusted, play-based approach to learning, we will be able to share our passion with Houston families, and, as a result, make a profound impact on the lives of children in our community.



The Goddard School located in Houston, TX is located at 3655 Barker Cypress Rd. Houston, TX 77084. To reach this location, please call (281) 819-6750 or email Houston3TX@goddardschools.com. For general information and franchising opportunities, please visit www.goddardschoolfranchise.com .



ABOUT THE GODDARD SCHOOL FRANCHISE

The Goddard School Franchise, franchisor of The Goddard School preschools, was named the No. 1 Childcare Franchise in the United States by Entrepreneur magazine for the fifteenth consecutive year (January 2016) and one of the Top 200 Franchise Systems (in worldwide sales) by Franchise Times for the ninth consecutive year (October 2015). Headquartered in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, The Goddard School Franchise currently licenses more than 450 franchised Schools with more than 50,000 students in 36 states. The Goddard School's AdvancED- and Middle States-accredited F.L.EX. Learning Program (Fun Learning Experience), a comprehensive play-based curriculum developed with early childhood education experts, provides the best childhood preparation for social and academic success. With a proven system in place and a strong network of dedicated franchisees, The Goddard School Franchise is the acknowledged leader in franchised childcare and a premier educational childcare provider. For more information, visit www.goddardschoolfranchise.com .



888 S. Figueroa Street, Ste. 1000

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This release was published on openPR.



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MI-FORD-MOTOR-COMPANY_Njus.jpg

Ford Motor Co. is buying an app-based shuttle service and partnering with a bike-share company as part of its ongoing effort to expand its traditional business.

(Business Wire)

DETROIT -- Ford Motor Co. is buying an app-based shuttle service and partnering with a bike-share company as part of its ongoing effort to expand its traditional business.



Ford is buying Chariot, which currently operates 100 14-passenger Ford Transit vans in the San Francisco area. The shuttles determine their routes by users' needs. Ford says it plans to expand the shuttle service to five more cities over the next 18 months.



Ford also is partnering with Motivate, a New York company that runs bike-sharing programs in 11 U.S. cities and in Melbourne, Australia. Ford says it plans to increase Motivate's San Francisco fleet from 700 bikes to 7,000 bikes by the end of 2018, using bicycles made in Detroit. It also will increase the number of stations where riders can get bikes. Its program, called Ford GoBike, will be accessible through its FordPass app, which launched earlier this year.



Ford previously talked to Portland transportation officials about sponsoring the city's bike-share system. Nike ultimately sponsored the program, now operating as Biketown.



FordPass currently lets users find and pay for parking or remotely start their cars. But the company envisions a day when Ford car owners and non-owners could use the app to coordinate shared rides, rent cars or bikes and link up to public transportation. Ford could collect valuable data on where customers go and which transportation options they use. Ultimately, Ford could even offer rides in the autonomous cars it's developing.



Ford said it's also creating a team that will work with cities around the world to propose solutions to traffic congestion and run pilot programs like shuttle services.



The moves are among the first by Ford Smart Mobility, a Silicon Valley-based subsidiary formed in March to invest in promising startups and explore new modes of transportation.



Ford CEO Mark Fields says half the world's population now lives in cities, and by 2030, that number is expected to grow to 60 percent. Congested cities hurt Ford's core business, because cars become an expensive hassle to own in big cities.



Fields says instead of just trying to sell cars in crowded cities, Ford wants to be part of the solution to congestion and keep an open mind about new ways to get around.



"Our whole reason for being, going back to Henry Ford, is making people's lives better and changing the way the world moves," Fields told The Associated Press. "We not only think we could do some societal good here, but we could also generate some business opportunities for us."



Ford isn't saying how much it is spending in the all-cash deal for Chariot, which will operate as a wholly-owned subsidiary.



Ford's shares dropped 2 percent to $12.44 in afternoon trading amid a broad market slump.



Ford has been running pilot shuttle programs in Kansas City, New York, London and other cities for several years. Jim Hackett, the chairman of Ford Smart Mobility, said those tests confirmed the potential of shared shuttles. Algorithms developed by Ford and Chariot will be used to map out the best route for the shuttles.



Ford's plans are just the latest in a rapidly changing mobility landscape. Ford's crosstown rival, General Motors Co., invested $500 million in ride-hailing service Lyft earlier this year, while Fiat Chrysler inked a deal to supply test vehicles to Google's autonomous car project. Late last month, Volvo Cars signed a $300 million deal to develop self-driving cars with Uber.



-- The Associated Press
With Portland's signature food and drink festival all but sold out, our restaurant critic offers an eating itinerary to be enjoyed all year

Covering the food scene in a mid-sized city is a bit like living in Plato's famous cave: Unless you travel frequently, with an open itinerary and curious appetite, you can start to convince yourself that what you see around you is all there is. Even in a restaurant landscape as surprisingly diverse, cuisine-wise, as Portland's, there are many things we don't have, And even when we have them, as hard as this might be to believe, they're not always the best.

Portland's best new restaurants

Part of the fun in visiting new restaurants, then, comes not just from finding something new and delicious, but in learning what we didn't even know we didn't have. Sometimes, that's a new dish. Other times, it's a new approach to a cuisine. Another year of eating my way through Portland delivered dozens of discoveries. With next week's Feast Portland already sold out, consider this guide  including a list of our 10 favorite new restaurants in the city  your edible itinerary for treating Portland as your own personal food festival, seven days a week.

No restaurant showed us what we were missing more than Nodoguro (2832 S.E. Belmont St.), the creative Japanese restaurant from Ryan and Elena Roadhouse. This onetime pop-up, which landed briefly in a makeshift space on Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard, finally put down roots in the former home of Genoa, installing a bamboo chef's counter in what was once the Pacific Northwest's premier Italian restaurant. The move was a blessing in disguise: With its fully equipped kitchen and theatrical sliding doors, the restaurant has reached heights it couldn't before.

Dashi-injected tomato with egg yolk and marigold

Five nights a week, the Roadhouses present tasting menus split between "regular" 11-course meals, "Hardcore" omakase sushi nights and theme nights (previous entries: Japanese mascot culture, "Twin Peaks," the novels of Haruki Murakami). A recent theme meal took its inspiration from Salvador Dali's lavish 1973 cookbook, "Les Diners de Gala," though only loosely, as the dishes inside are, by-and-large, as surreal as the illustrations. For one dish, "tortilla with burned sardine," Ryan Roadhouse replaced the Spanish tortilla with tamago, the Japanese omelet, then sprinkled on toasted chirimen jako, the tiny Japanese sardine often used as a condiment. Right now, only one or two fine-dining restaurants in Portland are anywhere near Nodoguro's level.

Of course, innovation can happen at less than $175 per person, the current cost of a blowout "SupaHardcore" meal at Nodoguro. In Northeast Portland, Hat Yai (1605 N.E. Killingsworth St.) took the best part of a meal at sister restaurant Langbaan -- the cavalcade of rich curries, jasmine rice, sour soups and braised meats that land just before the tasting menu shifts to dessert -- and turned it into a restaurant all its own, adding crisp roti, Southern Thai fried chicken and cocktails from co-owner Alan Akwai. The counter-service spot is already drawing lines, but unlike Langbaan, where reservations are booked out for months, you can actually get into Hat Yai.

Up on Mount Tabor, meanwhile, our 2016 Restaurant of the Year Coquine (6839 S.E. Belmont St.) continues to do its neighborhood proud, serving a superlative four-course, French-inspired tasting menu for $55. A bowl of chef Katy's Millard's pasta and a fresh-from-the-oven chocolate chip cookie cost much less. At Taylor Railworks (117 S.E. Taylor St.), the industrial chic Central Eastside restaurant, chef Erik Van Kley has updated his Southeast (Asia) by Southwest (America) menu to focus on small plates, adding a lengthy happy hour. From 5 to 9 p.m., one of my favorite dishes, The Boxer, with its plump folds of yellowtail sashimi, glistening trout roe and sliced serrano peppers in a bath of dark ponzu, can be had for a discounted $11.

The chef's counter at Taylor Railworks

Perhaps value-conscious chefs are behind the current golden era for fried-chicken sandwiches, which were everywhere you looked in 2016. Since the return of Chick-fil-A, which opened two suburban locations this year, a dozen Portland-area restaurants have added their own take on the southern staple. As it so happens, we're currently on the hunt to find Portland's best: It's early, but my early favorite is Basilisk, a fried chicken spot in The Zipper (2705 N.E. Sandy Blvd.), the flatiron complex also home to bourbon-happy bar Paydirt, cult-favorite nail salon Finger Bang and Portland's best falafel at ChickPeaDX.

Other upscale food courts made a mark this year, including Providore Fine Foods (2340 N.E. Sandy Blvd.), which opened with boutique groceries in the front, a parking-lot window offering good rotisserie chicken to-go and the city's smallest oyster bar around back. Downtown, Pine Street Market (126 S.W. Second Ave.) started with a clever conceit -- ask established Portland restaurateurs to venture outside their comfort zone. If you can brave the lines, and the ensuing fight for a seat, you'll find good Japanese ramen at Marukin, creative hot dogs at OP Wurst, pastries and thin-crust pizza at Trifecta Annex, sneaky-great happy hours at Shalom Y'all and Pollo Bravo, great coffee at Barista spin-off Brass Bar and a very Salt & Straw take on soft serve at Wiz Bang Bar.

Two years ago, when we named Langbaan, Holdfast Dining and a handful of other breakout supper clubs our collective Restaurant of the Year, it felt like the pop-up bubble was set to burst. And indeed, these occasional restaurants haven't worked out for everyone. Still, two of the most intelligent, compelling restaurants we ate at this year were barely restaurants at all. Mae (5027 N.E. 42nd Ave.) pops up behind Old Salt Market three days a week with skillet-fried chicken on Mondays and southern brunch on Sundays. But Wednesday is the day to visit, when the pay-what-you-will ($65 suggested donation) dinner offers a very Portland take on Appalachian food, starting with a cornucopia of shared salads, fried chicken and moonshine cocktails, then ending with a lemon-glazed buttermilk pound cake inspired by chef Maya Lovelace's grandmother.

Chilled zucchini and buttermilk soup at Mae

Han Oak (511 N.E. 24th Ave.), a book-smart Korean restaurant from former New York chef Peter Cho, pops up in a split-level space off a courtyard at the heart of The Ocean (i.e. the micro-restaurant complex that anticipated The Zipper). Dinner, served twice a week, has a hybrid pricing structure -- $35 tickets grant access to a short prix fixe meal, which you can supplement with a few a la carte options. Visit and you might find austere pickled banchan, very good dumplings, the city's best spice-blasted Korean fried chicken and a civilized spin on barbecue, with slices of smoked hanger steak and pale salt-cured pork belly meant for wrapping inside translucent rice paper with a smear of soy bean paste. If it all feels loose, casual and fun, that might be because the dining room happens to be inside Cho's apartment.

Next up

Five brand-new or soon-to-open restaurants that could be on this list next year:

Dame:

Noted sommelier Dana Frank's upcoming natural-wine-focused restaurant took over the Cocotte space this year. It looks to be a stunner.

2930 N.E. Killingsworth St.

Pizza Jerk:

Rising from the ashes like a pepperoni phoenix, Tommy Habetz and co.'s Cully neighborhood pizzeria returns from a fire this week.

5028 N.E. 42nd Ave.

Revelry:

The first Portland restaurant from Seattle chefs Rachel Yang and Seif Cherchi has already impressed with its Korean-inspired fare.

210 S.E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.

Tusk:

This sequel from the Ava Gene's team shows Sam Smith adding Middle Eastern and North African flavors to Oregon's best produce.

2448 E. Burnside St.

XLB:

Shanghai-style soup dumplings and fusion-free Chinese food from former Aviary chef Jasper Shen. Bring. It. On.

4090 N. Williams Ave.

Some of Portland's best new restaurants innovated not by reinventing the wheel, but merely by improving it. Abyssinian Kitchen (2625 S.E. 21st Ave.), which took over the home of a beloved Cambodian restaurant, offers a menu full of Ethiopian and Eritrean dishes done as well as (if not better than) any restaurant in town. You can see it in the zilzil tibs, typically an understated beef dish, here with snippets of rosemary, still-crunchy onions and links of good grilled steak, its oil dripping down into the tangy house injera. Meanwhile, just up Clinton Street, La Moule (2500 S.E. Clinton St.) shows us how good bar food can be, pairing some of the city's best cocktails with delicate raw seafood, an over-the-top steak tartare/bone marrow combo and, on a recent visit, a $37 lobster BLT. Meanwhile, all you need to know about Southwest Portland's Paiche (4237 S.W. Corbett Ave.) is that chef Jose Luis de Cossio makes the city's best ceviche -- at least when he's not surfing.

This year, chefs took creative approaches to both their menus and to the very structure of their restaurants. Two veteran establishments, Le Pigeon and Park Kitchen, ditched tipping, the latter adopting a "one house" model, wherein servers act as cooks, and vice versa. At downtown's SuperBite (527 S.W. 12th Ave.), Ox chefs Greg Denton and Gabrielle Quinonez Denton are attempting to tap the collective creative energy of their team. Recently, a thin pool of cherry gazpacho held a flash-fried cherry tomato -- its red flesh firm, its skin pulled up and crisped, glistening like an insect's wings -- and arrived with a name-check to Penelope Manalili, the sous chef who created it.

Chesa's torta de aceite

For the moment, Portland's best-kept secret might be Chesa (2218 N.E. Broadway St.), the Barcelona-style tapas restaurant from Ataula chef Jose Chesa. Here on the edge of sleepy Sullivan's Gulch, Chesa and his team slice beautifully cured Spanish ham, pour crystal-clear gin and tonics and generally excel at reimagining Spanish standards, from the souffle-soft Spanish tortilla to the porcini aioli accompanying the croquettes. Not everything gels -- I haven't yet fallen in love with the section of the menu devoted to things in tins. But if you've only visited early on, when the room was cacophonous and the dainty paellas were only consistent in their inconsistency, it's past time for a revisit. If all else fails, 180, the lively cafe up front, sells its chocolate-dipped xurros until 8 p.m.

-- Michael Russell
When Jasper Shen was broke and living in New York City, he and a friend would sometimes go to Joe's Shanghai, the famous Chinatown restaurant, for a plate of seafood noodles and four orders of the signature soup dumplings, or xiaolongbao.

Now, nearly a decade later, Shen hopes to bring that experience to Portland. Before the end of the year, the former Aviary co-chef will open XLB -- the universal food blogger shorthand for xiaolongbao -- a slim, counter-service restaurant in the former Lardo North location on North Williams Avenue.

"Authentic" can be a loaded word, but after taking an early look at the menu, it's the one that comes to mind. This isn't Americanized Chinese food. The menu is Chinese-Chinese, with several dishes you'd be hard-pressed to find outside of Beaverton.

"I'm just making a Chinese restaurant," Shen says. "I'm not doing any fusion. I'm not doing plays on plays of plays. My whole goal is to make food that if my mom comes to visit, she's doesn't give me too hard of time."

That means seafood and black-bean noodles, traditional steamed baos stuffed with hoisin duck or pork and cabbage and a handful of stir fries made with mushrooms, Chinese celery, yu choy and other less-commonly-seen vegetables from the Portland Farmers Market. There will be draft beer, wine and "weird sodas and other non-alcoholic drinks from the Asian market," but no cocktails, Shen says.

But mostly it means XLB. Soup dumplings, made from thin dough wrapped around pork and a porky aspic that melts into broth when steamed, are most popular in and around Shanghai, though their popularity stateside has been bolstered by a Taiwanese chain, Din Tai Fung, with locations in Southern California, the Bay Area and Seattle, helped inspire Shen to open XLB.

Born in Maryland, Shen grew up in the Chicago suburbs, where his uncles ran Chinese restaurants with Americanized menus -- beef and broccoli, kung pao chicken. He remembers making 7 and 7 cocktails for customers when he was 10. After receiving a business degree from the University of Illinois, he moved to New York, where he cooked at celebrated restaurants including Aquavit and Jean-Georges.

After moving to Portland in 2010, Shen, Kat Whitehead and Sarah Pliner opened Aviary, a sparse restaurant with creative small plates and fine-dining aspirations. Shen first presented his vision for a straight-up Chinese restaurant in a pop-up series at Aviary. Shen left the restaurant in 2014, the same year he and Whitehead had their first child, a daughter. Whitehead is now the R&D Manager at Salt & Straw.

For Shen, soup dumplings represent a welcome turn away from fine dining.

"At the heart it's just a dumpling: meat, dough, broth," he says. "You're impressing people, but not with fancy plating, or some fine-dining touch. Your skin's gotta be good, your meat's gotta be tasty and you have to have enough soup."

"When you screw up the simple stuff, that's when people notice."

XLB should open before the year's end at 4090 N. Williams Ave.

-- Michael Russell
Lakeridge programming.jpg

Students in Jesse Elizondo's computer programming class investigate two-dimensional motion at Lakeridge High on Thursday. The school equipped a bigger share of its juniors to read, write, think logically and do math than any other non-magnet school in the state. Its passing rate among low-income students tied with Elmira High for best in Oregon.

(Jennifer Schiele / Lakeridge High)

Four Oregon high schools outperformed the rest, equipping two-thirds or more of their students with the writing, reasoning, research and math skills they'll need in college and in life, new test scores indicate.

Tiny Helix High is situated in the middle of vast arid farmlands. All 16 members of the senior class passed the Smarter Balanced reading and writing test last spring.

The schools could not be more different. One, Helix, is set amid farmland and has a senior class of 16, while another, Lakeridge, enrolls 1,200 Lake Oswego teens. The others are small-town Elmira and suburban Wilsonville high schools.

But they all embrace the nation's new college-ready standards, the Common Core. They show that an Oregon school can propel nearly all its students to that level, even when parents aren't perfect, funding is tight and a growing share of students are low-income or non-white.

Common Core standards call on students to master sophisticated, intellectually complex tasks: read and synthesize college-level texts, construct a coherent argument and marshal evidence to support it, apply math to multi-step real-world problems and explain the logic underlying that work.

Walk through a school where educators buy into those standards, and you'll hear the difference, principals and teachers say.

Students talk a lot in class, explaining their own rationales, critiquing other students' thinking, citing the logic behind their work. Class discussions and student writing draw on sophisticated vocabularies. Math and science tie to real-life problems, often requiring students to communicate how they reach a solution as well as what that answer is.

"Our focus on student thought, through talking and writing, is helping us grow achievement," says Wilsonville High Principal Dan Schumaker.

Nearly 20 percent of the students at his school are Latino, and 30 percent are low-income.

Lakeridge High, meanwhile, serves an overwhelmingly white and Asian student body in an area where most parents are college-educated and well-off financially. At Elmira High, which enrolls 400 students in a town of 2,500 west of Eugene, 60 percent are low-income. Remote Helix High, with its senior class of 16 students, sits far from Oregon's bigger cities on the dry plains east of Pendleton.

Those schools managed to help roughly two-thirds of their students pass the difficult Smarter Balanced math test, twice the rate schools achieved statewide. And they saw from 89 percent of students (Elmira) to 100 percent (Helix) conquer the English exam, which requires excellence in reading, writing, listening and research.

Educators, college professors and employers in a consortium of 17 states agreed the test's demands match up with what students need to know to succeed in college and hold good-paying jobs in an increasingly global economy.

Statewide, results of the second year of Smarter Balanced testing were disappointing. Performance was essentially flat, with 45 percent of students in grades three through 11 falling short of Common Core standards in reading and writing and nearly 60 percent coming up short in math.

But Lakeridge, Helix, Wilsonville and Elmira suggest how much more is possible.

Teachers there check carefully to ensure what they are teaching matches what the standards call for. And they teach that material differently, amping up the frequency and sophistication of classroom talk, asking students to write more, emphasizing research and evidence, educators from those schools say. They check to see students are mastering what's needed and tweak instruction to fix any holes.

Some parents, teachers and retired educators in Oregon are highly critical of Smarter Balanced testing and the mania of test preparation they say the exam engenders. They say the tests focus on skills that make for a corporate, joyless version of public education and are designed to make schools, teachers and students look bad.

Educators at schools such as Lakeridge and Elmira say teaching to the new test creates the opposite: excellent instruction that honors student voice, engages their intellects, connects them to real-world issues and shows their own potential to play a role in them.

Lucy Case, a junior at Helix High in remote Eastern Oregon, concentrates during her marketing class Thursday. The school is known for its high academic standards, and every student in the senior class passed the challenging Smarter Balanced reading and writing exam last spring.

Tim Kahl is the English department at Helix High, teaching freshman English, senior English and every class in between. Three years ago, when he was hired, sample questions from prototype Smarter Balanced tests were just becoming public. Kahl realized it was on him to get Helix students prepared.

He started teaching to what the new test would demand. He assigned more non-fiction articles and harder books. He posed more sophisticated questions and told students to cite specific examples from the text in their answers. He assigned them to write argumentative papers with plentiful evidence to support their assertions.

"The kids get used to it," he said. "So when they see that on the test, they're like, "OK. This is no problem.'"

By last spring, he'd taught Helix juniors, the children of farmers, home health workers, business owners and machinists, that way for three years. All 16 passed the Smarter Balanced English test on their first try.

Elmira High squared off against Pleasant Hill in football in 2011. Elmira High is a point of pride for the small town west of Eugene. From sports to scholarship, supporters cheer on the school, which has become an academic powerhouse.

Elmira is bigger, with about 100 students in each grade. The school has become an academic powerhouse, thanks to excellent teachers, a culture of taking school seriously and a focus on ensuring every core class is aligned to Common Core expectations, Principal Gary Carpenter said.

The school has a dress code and bans swearing in the halls or in class, part of Carpenter's drive for students to see high school as their job. "A high school diploma is worth six figures and up to $1 million over the course of a lifetime, and I expect them to treat school like a job," he said.

Starting three years ago, every course, whether Algebra I or poetry, has been designed and documented to show how it covers Common Core standards and how student mastery of each particular standard is assessed.

"Our teachers have done a great job of that," Carpenter said.

Lakeridge High English teacher Kate Thomason looks on as students critique each other's writing for vocabulary development and voice. The school requires students to write a substantial amount in every core academic course, not just English.

Lakeridge has a huge advantage when it comes to getting students to pass the exam. College is a given for almost all of its students, and families have the educational background and finances to expose students to lots of enriching activities and provide help with homework.

Still, the school outdid similarly situated schools such as Lincoln, West Linn and Sherwood. Paying attention to what students have and have not mastered and showing them that Smarter Balanced results are a valuable indicator of college readiness has how well-prepared they are for college both helped, said Lakeridge Principal Jennifer Schiele.

Scoring well on the test is not the ultimate goal in itself, she said. But equipping students with the skills it covers is -- and a passing score validates that Lakeridge's teachers are doing that well, Lake Oswego Superintendent Heather Beck said.

"We've helped students understand what the test scores mean, what the data means, and how they can use that data to pursue their educational goals and course selection," Schiele said.

The exam requires students to be strong writers, for example, and Lakeridge students do a substantial amount of writing in every class - not because it helps them pass the test, Schiele said, but because it helps them think and builds a skill they will rely on in college and in life for the rest of their lives.

"We succeed by focusing not on the test itself," English teacher Joe Schloetter said, "but by striving to care about the students, about our expectations, about learning."

-- Betsy Hammond
pensive student.jpg

(Oregonian file photo / 2009)

Results of Smarter Balanced English and math tests, released Thursday, revealed sobering findings about achievement in 1,200 Oregon schools.

The tests are designed to measure whether students are on track to be ready for college, starting in third grade. They represent a more rigorous and, experts say, more realistic assessment of how well schools perform.

They showed:

* Roughly 23,000 third-graders, or 53 percent, aren't on track in reading and writing, something state education officials have said will hamper their learning and could prevent them from graduating.

* The gulf between academic mastery of low-income and better-off students is wide and closed very little last year. The gap separating Latino, black and Native American students from white students is vast and grew wider.

* The worst results are generally found in rural and small-town Oregon, places that get less attention from the media and policymakers and where employment prospects for high school dropouts are especially bleak.

* Latinos are Oregon's fastest-growing group, and only five districts with more than a smattering of Latinos got at least half of them to read and write well. Four of those are wealthy Portland suburbs whose Latino populations are unrepresentative of Oregon as a whole. Josephine County's Three Rivers District squeaked in as the fifth, with a 50.5 percent passing rate for Latinos.

* On the flip side, 13 districts with substantial Latino enrollments got fewer than a third to read and write proficiently, results from grades three through eight and grade 11 show. They include Umatilla, where 27 percent of Latinos showed full proficiency, and Reynolds, where 24 percent did.

* Schools made almost no progress in raising proficiency rates, even with another year of experience with Common Core standards and Smarter Balanced testing under their belts. The exceptions: gains of two percentage points apiece in fifth-grade English and third-grade math.

* Many families see no value in getting test results for their children. More than 16,000 students, or 5 percent of those who were supposed to take the exams, opted not to do so.

* An estimated 40 percent of high school juniors entered their senior year unprepared for the reading and writing demands they will face in college, with an even larger share unprepared in math. Because so many juniors opted not to take the Smarter Balanced exam, it's hard to pinpoint those rates. But results of other exams, including the ACT and SAT, suggest the findings from Smarter Balanced results are in the ballpark.

-- Betsy Hammond
The lucky students at one Portland elementary school got the good news when they started school this week: There will be no homework whatsoever.

Instead this is what the school urges students to do in the evenings and on weekends: Play outside. Cuddle with your parents. Play board games with your siblings. Pick up a favorite book to read or be read to. Run around and be as active as you can.

Why ban homework? A team of teachers at Cherry Park Elementary in the David Douglas school district in East Portland dug into the research and found that, while high school students learn more when they do homework, for elementary pupils, there is little to no evidence homework does any good.

Principal Kate Barker says assigning regular homework isn't a fabulous idea at any elementary school, but especially not at Cherry Park, where at least 75 percent of students live at or below the poverty line and families speak more than 30 different languages.

"We find that homework really increases that inequity," Barker said. "It provides a barrier to our students who need the most support."

Barker's No. 1 goal for parents? To interact with their children in a positive manner. "So often when students come home with homework, it's not the most positive interaction for parents and children," she said.

Even the school's past practice of requiring students to log 25 to 30 minutes reading or being read to evoked more sense of drudgery than joy at times, she said.

"We are going to continue to encourage families to read with their children, but not with the reading logs coming back and forth," she said.

"We know that is one of the No. 1 indicators of success is the amount of time children spend being read to or reading for others. And I don't know of anybody that doesn't love to be read to. But when you tie a reading log to it, it just changes the flavor," she said.

Barker says the school will carefully monitor if students are making enough academic progress and will tweak things if they are not. But making better use of the school day, not assigning homework, will be the strategy if change is needed, she said.

Teachers got on board with the no-homework policy once the rationale was explained, Barker said. Parents have been 100 percent in favor of the change.

And the students? They, she said, "are cheering."

-- Betsy Hammond
Bullseye Glass is back to making enough stained glass to meet customer demand for the first time in months, the company said Thursday, thanks to a filter that controls emissions of toxic metals.

Jim Jones, Bullseye's vice president, said Bullseye installed a device known as a baghouse at its Southeast Portland facility on Aug. 21.

Officials with the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality said they inspected and approved the new baghouse on Aug. 29. Production of glass colored with heavy metals resumed in some of Bullseye's newly filtered furnaces that same day, Jones said.

The company since February has limited its use of cadmium and other metals following the discovery of elevated levels of carcinogenic heavy metals in the air near the plant.

Mary Peveto, of Neighbors for Clean Air, said her organization is cautiously optimistic about the progress, saying that the Department of Environmental Quality's oversight of the plant demonstrated increased vigilance. Peveto's group has been a vocal critic of the state's role in overseeing industrial pollution.

Bullseye won't have to test the air coming out of the baghouse for pollutants until early next year. Still, state officials are confident the baghouse works.

"It's a pretty substantial piece of equipment. It's not something you just sort of throw in there," said Keith Johnson, air quality director.

The filters work by passing exhaust through multiple layers of cloth. The ones currently in place can filter smoke from 11 of Bullseye's 20 furnaces, Johnson said. Another baghouse in the works would cover an additional seven.

While Bullseye appears to be out of the woods with state regulators, Jones lamented the path the company had to take to get to this point.

"I don't think that any business or neighborhood should have to go through what we've gone through," Jones said.

Bullseye's use of toxic heavy metals in unfiltered furnaces was not illegal when the heavy metal hotspots were discovered. The company has been the focus of ire and lawsuits from neighbors, while also piling up a backlog of orders and facing cancellations from customers.

At least two other Portland-area glass manufacturers have given notice they will be installing the same kind of filter that Bullseye has, Johnson said: Northstar and Glass Alchemy, in Northeast and North Portland, respectively.

Separately, state officials said Thursday that Bullseye has met a Sept. 1 deadline to clean or replace its smokestacks, which regulators believe could be the source of elevated levels of hexavalent chromium in Southeast Portland air.

A Department of Environmental Quality air monitor at Southeast 22nd Avenue and Gladstone Street has repeatedly found the cancer-causing metal at levels exceeding what's considered normal in Portland.

The agency used air-monitor and wind-pattern data to identify two possible sources: Bullseye and Lehigh Cement, a cement transportation company. Samples that the agency took from Bullseye's smokestacks tested positive for hexavalent chromium, as did samples of cement from Lehigh.

The agency was concerned hexavalent chromium that had accumulated in Bullseye's vents over the years could re-vaporize as Bullseye made other kinds of glass. Bullseye replace or cleaned the contaminated stacks.

Johnson said the state environmental agency still doesn't know for sure if Bullseye caused the elevated levels of airborne hexavalent chromium, but continued air monitoring analyses should show by the end of the month if Bullseye's cleaning reduces levels in the air.

As for Lehigh, company representative Jeff Sieg said he's confident the plant is not the source of the metal in the air. The plant is "a very dust-free operation," he said, because it has been taking measures over the 54 years of its existence to reduce dust emissions.

Nonetheless, Lehigh has taken additional steps to prevent the release of dust, Johnson said. These include hanging tarps on the sides of train cars that carry cement.

-- Fedor Zarkhin

503-294-7674; @fedorzarkhin
miguel monico department photo.jpg

Ex-Cornelius cop Miguel Monico, who was laid off from the Washington County Sheriff's Office in 2014, has filed a lawsuit against the law firm that represented him in a federal civil rights case.

(Benjamin Brink/The Oregonian)

A former Cornelius cop found by a federal civil jury to have fabricated evidence in a drug case has filed a $2 million malpractice suit against the law firm that represented him.

Miguel Monico alleges that he did not receive adequate representation from Miller & Wagner LLP in a complaint filed this week in Multnomah County Circuit Court. He claims his attorneys and the city's insurance provider failed to properly investigate the case or consider the career-ending potential of a jury verdict against him.

Monico's suit, which also alleges breach of contract and breach of fiduciary duty, also names City County Insurance Services as a defendant. Robert Wagner, of Miller & Wagner LLP, was retained by the insurance company to represent Monico in the civil rights suit.

Wagner did not return messages seeking comment. Bill LaMarche, member relations manager for City County Insurance Services, said the company doesn't generally comment on pending litigation.

"However, what we can say is that Mr. Monico's allegations are baseless and that we plan to vigorously defend against them," LaMarche said.

Monico's complaint contends he has suffered from lost wages, emotional distress, humiliation and a damaged reputation.

In the federal lawsuit against Monico, Diego Mata-Gonzalez claimed the cop fabricated drug evidence against him. On Feb. 4, 2010, police served a search warrant at Mata-Gonzalez's home. During the search, police found a white powdery substance.

Three weeks later, on Feb. 26, Monico arrested Mata-Gonzalez on accusations of possessing and delivering cocaine and endangering the welfare of a minor, according to records. The arrest was based on the white powder.

According to Monico's account, Mata-Gonzalez told the officer that the powder was old cocaine that he'd forgotten about. A grand jury later indicted Mata-Gonzalez, and Monico was the only witness to testify during the proceeding.

The substance was sent to the state crime lab, where it tested negative for cocaine, and prosecutors dismissed the charges. According to Mata-Gonzalez's attorneys, the white powder was a bath product used by his wife.

In March 2011, Mata-Gonzalez filed his suit against Monico and the city of Cornelius. Two years later, a federal magistrate judge issued findings and recommendations about the case and wrote that a "finder of fact" could determine Monico lied about Mata-Gonzalez's confession and about a drug field test.

The recommendations prompted prosecutors to add Monico to the county's "Officer Alert List," which tracks cops who have had questions raised about their credibility. The list is commonly referred to as a Brady list because of a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case.

The 1963 case, Brady v. Maryland, requires the state to provide defense counsel with evidence related to the credibility of a witness, including police officers.

In September 2014, jurors found that Monico had fabricated evidence in the case and awarded $30,000 to Mata-Gonzalez.

After the federal jury's decision, Monico was laid off from the Washington County Sheriff's Office because prosecutors would no longer call him as a witness. Monico joined the sheriff's office after the agency took over policing in Cornelius and all the city's cops became deputies.

District Attorney Bob Hermann told The Oregonian/OregonLive at the time that the jury verdict against Monico also prompted his office to drop two of the officer's cases.

In his complaint, Monico claims that an associate at the law firm that represented him in the Mata-Gonzalez suit acknowledged in "communication" with Monico's lawyer that he hadn't thought to warn the cop about the way the case could hurt his career.

"When a police officer is added to a Brady list, the officer's inability to testify prevents them from working in a traditional law enforcement role," Monico's lawsuit says. "Officers on a Brady list can be put in administrative roles or fired, and are generally unable to secure future employment in law enforcement."

The law firm should have encouraged the city's insurance provider to settle the case before a judge or jury "erroneously found Monico was dishonest or fabricated evidence," his suit alleges. The firm also should have reached a settlement with Mata-Gonzalez stipulating that Monico was not untruthful.

Monico's lawyers, he alleges, had told the insurance company they were not confident they'd win the case.

But the provider, he claims, "had an interest in minimizing its financial exposure to the Lawsuit, and Monico had an interest in staying off the Brady list at any cost."

Monico is being represented in his suit by Portland attorney Sean Riddell.

Monico started his law enforcement career in 1995, according to his lawsuit, and while working for the Federal Way Police Department in Washington state, he earned a Medal of Distinguished Service for Valor.

Monico allegedly failed a fit-for-duty psychological test at his Federal Way job before resigning, according to Federal Way records and a personnel investigation into the administration of the Cornelius Police Department. The officer also had been arrested in Washington state on a domestic violence charge, but wasn't prosecuted. He was hired by Cornelius police in 2008 after taking a couple years off from police work.

Monico had been one of four officers who in 2012 submitted a letter to city officials alleging ongoing corruption in the Cornelius Police Department.

In December 2013, Monico, along with former Cornelius Sgt. Shawn Watts, filed a $1.5 million lawsuit against the city. The suit claimed officials retaliated against them after they made the corruption allegations against the department.

Chad Jacobs, an attorney for the city of Cornelius, said a federal judge dismissed most of the claims against the city. The remaining counts, he said, were settled last year through the city's insurance provider for $7,500.

-- Rebecca Woolington

503-294-4049;
BX151_100A_9.JPG

(Oregonian file photo)

State officials are considering a proposal that would allow marijuana stores to sell existing inventory even after they are licensed by the Oregon Liquor Control Commission.

Under current rules, stores licensed by the liquor commission may only sell products from state-licensed producers and processors. Those goods are subject to strict new testing standards and are tracked under the state's seed-to-sale system.

The proposed temporary rule would allow retailers to sell what's already on their shelves, even if it fails to meet new testing standards. The products will be entered into the state's tracking system.

Officials said they hope such a policy shift would motivate retailers to enter Oregon's newly regulated market for recreational marijuana, which is expected to roll out starting Oct. 1.

Since last fall, the state has allowed Oregon's medical marijuana dispensaries to sell cannabis to anyone 21 and older under a so-called early start policy administered by the Oregon Health Authority. By year's end, all recreational sales must shift to the liquor commission.

Many retailers who plan to sell to recreational consumers aren't in a rush to make the switch because they want to sell existing marijuana flower, cookies, other treats and concentrates and extracts.

It's unclear how much of those products are in the system. The health authority in June began tracking marijuana moving through dispensaries, but officials said on Friday said they are still analyzing that data.

"We have heard for some time about the disincentives to come into the system," said Steve Marks, executive director of the liquor commission, the agency charged with overseeing Oregon's regulated recreational market.

Regulators worry the potential lack of licensed recreational retailers will have significant implications for the rest of the industry. Without enough stores, for instance, newly licensed marijuana growers and processors won't have a market for their products, Marks said.

"We brought them into the system," he said. "They deserve to find a place where they can get their return."

Allowing stores to sell existing inventory also could address a potential supply problem caused by the lack of accredited labs, Marks said.

The administrator of the state agency tasked with authorizing labs to test marijuana for the recreational market said last week that the accrediting program is in crisis due to the lack of support from the health authority.

So far, the state has accredited seven labs; two have been licensed by the liquor commission.

A spokesman for the health authority on Friday said the agency this week added one full-time staff person and two part-timers, all from the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, to help the Oregon Environmental Laboratory Accreditation Program with its work.

The program, part of the health authority's Oregon State Public Health Laboratory, accredits labs that do environmental and water quality testing, as well as air toxics and industrial waste. Last year the program was assigned to accredit marijuana labs.

The agency works with labs in more than a dozen states and three countries, though Jonathan Modie, a spokesman for the health authority, said the accrediting program also will temporarily halt its work outside of Oregon while it addresses its increased workload.

Don Morse, an owner of the Human Collective, a dispensary in Southwest Portland, said the liquor commission is "on the right track" with its policy proposal.

He said he and many other retailers had planned to delay switching to the liquor commission system so they can see how the supply shakes out.

"Something needs to be done to motivate people to go over to the retail side," he said.

-- Noelle Crombie

503-276-7184; @noellecrombie
PESTICIDE.JPG

In 2014, The Oregonian/OregonLive commissioned laboratory tests of a cannabis extract sample that had sailed through state-mandated pesticide testing but which showed pesticide levels above what the state allows.

(Beth Nakamura/Staff)

http://media.oregonlive.com/opinion_impact/photo/agenda-2013jpg-da8a3522a991b9c6.jpg

Editorial Agenda 2016



Get Oregon centered

Better leadership in education

Make Portland a city that works

Build Oregon prosperity

Protect and expand personal freedom

Get pot right

_______________________________

A signal flare that went up early this week is to be taken seriously: The Oregon Health Authority is unprepared to certify enough laboratories to adequately test Oregon-grown marijuana for pesticides, solvents and an array of biological contaminants such as E. coli. It's a practical emergency, because starting in October profuse amounts of pot headed to emporiums statewide are supposed to be certified as contaminant-free.

Oregon-made products sold for legal consumption by adults must by law be deemed wholesome, making the health agency's foot-dragging on lab certification a public health issue. But the impact of the agency's unpreparedness could be economic and agricultural, as well, since the passage by Oregonians last year of Measure 91 vastly expanded the capacity of marijuana growers and sellers who now face delays. Too much product with nowhere to go thwarts any market-in-the-making.

Noelle Crombie of The Oregonian/OregonLive reported that Gary Ward, administrator of the health agency's Oregon Environmental Laboratory Accreditation Program, said his division was assured the necessary resources to implement state-mandated cannabis testing accreditation but that "so far we have received zero" support to do so. Significantly, Ward's understaffed team also tests drinking water, now considered vulnerable.

In a surprise memo to the authority, Ward wrote: "We are on the precipice of collapse of environmental, drinking water and cannabis accreditation because of the lack of resources." Crombie reported Ward was plain in saying that all work by his program on marijuana lab accreditation, as well as its work on drinking water, will come to a halt without additional resources.

That, however, is not an option. Wisely, the governor's office immediately responded to the signal flare by saying it would ensure sufficient staffing to get the lab accreditation work done. And the health authority separately issued a statement saying it was "committed to taking steps to ensure environmental laboratory accreditation even with growing demand." Late Thursday, a spokesman for the agency told The Oregonian/OregonLive Editorial Board the agency was in the process of temporarily doubling its capacity to certify labs. Good.

But the need for a larger, more lasting, fix is plain: The health agency, still wobbly in the wake of the Cover Oregon fiasco and swamped with the demand to test Portland's air and water for toxics, should get out of the pot business.

Oregonian editorials

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This proposition was briefly discussed by a few lawmakers as the Legislature crafted statutes to implement Measure 91. But the health agency's involvement with medical marijuana had been long and deep, and it made more sense to divvy up responsibilities with the introduction of legal recreational marijuana: Regulatory functions deriving from Measure 91 would go to the Oregon Liquor Control Commission, while health certification authority would remain and expand under the Oregon Health Authority.

Whether by the governor's decree or action of the Legislature in 2017, the liquor commission should be assigned responsibility for all tasks and find another name that features the word cannabis. To do so would bring administrative, operational and financial efficiencies as a liquor and cannabis commission would, under one roof, have sight lines to the many moving parts to marijuana's expanded presence. To do so would mean that accountability for Measure 91's timely implementation could be gauged in one place rather than sought from among government's siloed agencies, one of them faltering in its own accreditation program.

Later this month, the Legislature's Joint Committee on Implementing Measure 91 will hold a scheduled hearing to take progress reports on the expansion of legal pot in Oregon. One such report will come from the health agency. At the very least, that report should detail the accreditation program's capacity to certify this year a sufficient number of testing labs to ensure Oregonians will be buying pot unsullied by contaminants. At best, though, the meeting should be an occasion to open serious discussion on placing all of marijuana's regulatory and certification requirements under one agency.

-The Oregonian/OregonLive editorial board
1rent.JPG

(The Associated Press)

By Bobby Allyn

Special to The Washington Post

Apartment hunting in Philadelphia is already hectic enough. So relief washed over me when my girlfriend and I found a charming spot that worked for us. But before I was able to sign the lease, I received a call from the landlord, and he spoke slowly. He seemed concerned, and for good reason: After running a tenant screening on me using a service provided by the credit-reporting behemoth TransUnion, a clutch of criminal offenses appeared, including two felony firearms convictions. He said it didn't seem to square with what he had expected from a public-radio reporter moving from one trendy neighborhood to another.

It didn't. I have never owned nor fired a weapon in my life. The other charges the agency listed were equally as baffling, since they were just as made up. A case of mistaken identity, I thought, should be easy to clear up.

I was wrong. It took me more than a dozen phone calls, the handiwork of a county court clerk and six weeks to solve the problem. And that was only after I contacted the company's communications department as a journalist.

TransUnion is one of the largest consumer credit-reporting agencies in the country, valued at around $4 billion. According to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Equifax, Experian and TransUnion, all credit-reporting agencies, are the three most-complained-about companies in America. These companies furnish reports for landlords to examine tenants, for banks to analyze borrowers, for insurance companies to figure out monthly rates and for employers to probe the backgrounds of potential hires - so they wield serious influence over our financial lives and futures. But since 2012, according to the bureau, there have been more than 158,000 complaints against the three agencies, 80 percent of which are about incorrect information on credit reports. The agencies' "primary duty is to make money," says Chi Chi Wu, a lawyer with the National Consumer Law Center. "The consumer is not their customer. The consumer is their commodity."

As a reporter who covers courts, I'm better equipped than the average consumer to navigate county judicial records. I'm also privileged enough to have a job that sometimes allows me to turn a personal frustration into a professional pursuit. But many consumers are facing down error-riddled credit files and don't know where to begin.

When I contacted TransUnion, a customer-service representative pointed a finger at Rutherford County Circuit Court in Tennessee, which is outside Nashville, where I used to live. The report simply grabs information provided by courts, the rep told me, after a full name and date of birth is queried. If I thought something was wrong, I could file an internal dispute, which could take up to 30 days to complete.

First I wanted to figure out how this had happened. So I called the court clerk in Tennessee, who confirmed that I had no criminal record there. I provided her with the case numbers that TransUnion generated; the defendant, unsurprisingly, had the same legal first name, last name and middle initial. We were also both born in 1987. But our similarities end there: He has half a dozen convictions. He's black. He's currently incarcerated. And an arrest warrant had indicated that he was homeless. None of those details have ever described me. When I told all this to TransUnion, another representative said that the company would be in touch once it concluded its investigation; until then, the offenses would stay on its report. Only after I told the company's press office that I intended to write about this did I receive an email informing me that the charges had been "suppressed" from my consumer file as a "preventative measure."

Credit reports do not contain criminal history, but agencies like TransUnion offer a multitude of services that can uncover other parts of a consumer's life, including criminal history. That's how it tapped Tennessee's records and conflated me with someone else. And the agencies have no incentive to fix a consumer's file speedily. It can be a vexing process, says Paul Stephens with the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. "Consumers will often find that their dispute enters a black hole," Stephens said.

The Federal Trade Commission's last large-scale study of credit reports, published in 2012, found that 26 percent of the consumers it examined had at least one mistake in their files. And 5 percent had errors that could be devastating, potentially denying lines of credit to them and making things like auto insurance prohibitively expensive. "To have that error level, it's akin to 5 percent of automobiles spontaneously accelerating and having an accident, or 5 percent of planes falling from the sky," Wu says. "We wouldn't accept that error rate in other areas."

This problem has spawned scores of lawsuits against reporting agencies, state investigations and proposed federal regulations. In March 2015, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced a settlement with the three major credit-reporting agencies, including TransUnion, after droves of New Yorkers leveled complaints that trumped-up information was not being removed from their reports. Under the agreement, which 31 state attorneys general joined in a separate settlement two months later, the agencies vowed to overhaul their methods of fixing errors across the country. The settlement also called for specially trained individuals to investigate internal disputes, instead of an automated process, which is how many of the credit firms handled complaints. Some of the major reforms are being implemented behind closed doors, so advocates say the effect of the settlements is still being studied.

In Washington, Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., last year introduced a bill to further regulate "data brokers," which supply agencies like TransUnion with some of their raw information. It would establish stronger procedures to ensure that information is vetted. It also would give consumers better means of disputing a credit file. The legislation is stalled. But as my experience (more than a year after the multi-state settlement) and that of many others shows, only sweeping federal regulation can drive speedier reform at the credit-reporting agencies.

Until then, one way to push a complaint to the top of the heap is to go to court for remedy. Federal lawsuits filed against TransUnion in U.S. district courts for violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act, the law governing how credit agencies report information, have been mounting around the country. The 1970 law was intended to ensure that agencies report carefully and accurately, but the onus is on the affected person to identify and challenge fictitious information, not on the agency for pushing out sloppy reports. Consumers have to find the source of incorrect criminal information, "go back to the court and pull the docket, and get the correct information that needs to be sent by certified mail to these reporting agencies," says Philadelphia lawyer Lou Schwartz, who has sued TransUnion many times.

Many consumers, though, may never even know that they have been smeared as criminals, turning false credit reports into de facto histories. My would-be landlord told me what he'd found, but he didn't have to extend that courtesy. Employers are supposed to tell job applicants when they're rejected because of something in a report, but they often don't. (The agencies are each required to provide one free report per year, but with no reason to suspect something amiss, most consumers don't ask.)

James Baker, who works in real estate in Allentown, Pa., wanted to expand his business, so he applied in 2015 for a professional license in several states, including Virginia and Florida. Those two states denied his application after he failed a credit check because of $4,000 in outstanding debt on a credit card. The problem was that no such debt existed, he says. Baker says he paid off his card in 2009. When he contacted the reporting agencies, they told him the debt was "verified accurate." He never got his Virginia or Florida licenses, and he's now locked in a federal lawsuit with TransUnion, Equifax, Experian and Barclays, which issued the credit card.

A TransUnion supervisor told me to take a look at the fine print on the bottom of the report about me. It says that "the depth of information available varies" but that "every effort has been made to ensure accuracy or completeness." By definition, though, the portrait of me created by the report is both inaccurate and incomplete. When I asked the company for a comment for this article, it said that "errors can happen" but it's rare. TransUnion says fewer than 1 percent of its tenant background screenings are disputed. "We also encourage consumers to use our dispute process to remove any errors from our records," said spokesman David Blumberg. Last year, its consumer disputes were resolved in less than two weeks on average, he said. He blamed a "processing delay" for the extra time it took TransUnion to complete its investigation into my file.

Keeping on TransUnion's case about correcting my file and knowing what's within my rights under the law are not cumbersome tasks for me, a professional reporter who pesters people for a living. Finding the right court official to corroborate that the criminal offenses were connected to another person did not take too much effort, either. Yet for many other people whose files have been mixed up by credit agencies, or whose files show debt that has long been cleared, the avenues for recourse might not be as obvious. And when steps are taken to amend carelessly assembled files, agencies should act quickly, not drag the process out, throwing the helpless consumer in limbo.

In my case, the landlord allowed me to sign the lease, trusting my word when I said TransUnion had not just misrepresented but utterly distorted my background. But what about all the employers, landlords and insurance agents who are less gracious? And those who think the information presented to them on a TransUnion report is vetted and truthful? And how about all the consumers who don't have the resources, know-how or time to confront the agency's inefficient and frustrating dispute process? The legions of untold consumers who never take their misrepresentations to court, and instead allow their files to languish with falsehoods, are the ones who are most aggrieved.

Allyn is a staff reporter for NPR member station WHYY in Philadelphia. He previously worked for The Oregonian/OregonLive.
By Rich Lowry

If Julian Assange plays this right, he just might score an invitation to CPAC next year.

The notorious WikiLeaks founder would have to attend the Conservative Political Action Conference remotely because he is still holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, avoiding a rape investigation in Sweden and fearing extradition to the United States for his malicious exposure of state secrets. But, surely, the details could be worked out.

Assange is now treated as a respectable figure by some elements of the right because he detests Hillary Clinton and promises to torpedo her campaign with new email exposures. Never mind that he has done everything within his power to damage the interests of the United States, in league with his quasi-ally, Vladimir Putin's Russia. Rarely has "strange new respect" been stranger.

It's like conservatives embracing Kim Philby, the infamous British double agent who defected to the Soviet Union in the 1960s, if he promised to produce damaging information about Lyndon Johnson before the 1964 election. Or welcoming Philip Agee, the anti-CIA activist from the 1970s who was allied with Russian and Cuban intelligence, if he demonstrated enough hostility to Jimmy Carter.

The enemy of my enemy (or more properly, my domestic political opponent) can still be a reprehensible creep, and that's what Assange is.

But Sean Hannity of Fox News has a newfound soft spot for the accused rapist and scourge of America. A couple of years ago, Hannity tore into the Obama administration for not doing more to capture the WikiLeaks founder, and sympathized with the contention that Assange was the equivalent of a terrorist. Now, the host says he was "conflicted" about Assange, and he had qualms about his work only because "I believe in privacy."

This makes it sound as though WikiLeaks published a Hulk Hogan sex tape. Instead, Assange dumped, among other things, what theDefense Department called "the largest leak of classified documents in its history."

Hannity was once outraged that the leaks potentially endangered U.S. allies in Afghanistan, but today hails Assange for exposing "how corrupt, dishonest and phony our government is." The fugitive himself puts his agenda in more starkly anti-American terms. He has a poisonous, Chomskyite view of the United States as a dastardly "empire," bending the world to its will and persecuting brave dissidents like none other than Julian Assange.

When he started out, Assange was committed to exposing the world's genuinely pernicious states. He said he was going to criticize "highly oppressive regimes in China, Russia and Central Eurasia," and warned a newspaper in Moscow of the damaging information he had acquired about Russia.

Assange is no longer in that line of work. He has fallen into the arms of Vladimir Putin as the activist pursues his vendetta against the United States and its former secretary of state, whom, it so happens, Putin despises for condemning the conduct of Russia's 2011 parliamentary elections. An avowed champion of transparency and free speech, Assange told the Times he doesn't go out of his way to castigate a Russian government that kills journalists because to do so is "boring."

Interfering in a U.S. election is much more interesting. U.S. officials believe that Russia was behind the hack of the Democratic National Committee that WikiLeaks used to such effect around the time of the Democratic convention. The promised additional WikiLeaks exposures may well be the handiwork of the Russians, as well.

It is Hillary's own fault that she is vulnerable to the likes of Assange. Her secrecy, corrupt practices and dishonesty make her an ideal target. Yet there is a world of difference between Tom Fitton, the head of Judicial Watch, who has done so much through litigation in the U.S. courts to expose Clinton, and Assange, a certified America-hater whose work is likely enabled by Russian intelligence.

There was a time when everyone could see the distinction, but that was before 2016, a year of strange, not to say loathsome, bedfellows.

(

Rich Lowry

can be reached via e-mail: comments.lowry(at sign)nationalreview.com)

(c) 2016 by King Features Syndicate
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Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump addresses supporters at Cleveland Arts and Sciences Academy on September 8, 2016 in Cleveland, Ohio.

(Angelo Merendino/Getty Images)

By The Washington Post Editorial Board

Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson embarrassed himself Thursday when he was asked about the epicenter of Syria's civil war and responded, "What is Aleppo?" The moment, on an MSNBC morning program, deserves to become iconic because it encapsulates why Johnson is not fit to be president. His disregard for U.S. foreign policy and strategic interests is so profound that he did not recognize a reference to Syria's largest city, which, for several years, has been the site of intense fighting, massive war crimes and an ongoing humanitarian crisis that has, with its tidal wave of refugees, rocked prime U.S. allies in Europe.

But let's be fair to Johnson: In the context of the 2016 presidential campaign, he's far from winning the cluelessness contest. Following his gaffe, the former New Mexico governor offered a relatively cogent summary of U.S. support for various Syrian factions. Later, he apologized, saying that he thought "Aleppo" was an acronym. "I feel horrible," he said to Bloomberg Politics. "I have to get smarter, and that's just part of the process."

It's refreshing, at least, to hear a national candidate acknowledge error and vow to do better. Contrast that with Donald Trump, who in a televised national security forum Wednesday offered a staggering array of ignorant and mendacious assertions - and acknowledged no regrets about any of them. In addition to repeating his false claims to having opposed the U.S. interventions in Iraq and Libya, Trump defended a tweet saying that military sexual assault was the result of men and women serving together, and he suggested the solution was to "set up a court system within the military" because "right now, the court system practically doesn't exist." Does he really mean to replace the U.S. military justice system?

At least that would be easier than Trump's plan to "take the oil" of Iraq: "Just we would leave a certain group behind, and you would take various sections where they have the oil." The jaw-dropping imbecility of this idea surely would make even Johnson wince.

Most troubling of all was Trump's renewed endorsement for Vladimir Putin, in spite of the mounting evidence that the Russian government is attempting to directly interfere in the U.S. election campaign. Confronted with a litany of Putin's offenses, including the military actions in Ukraine and Syria and the computer hack of the Democratic National Committee, Trump responded, "Do you want me to start naming some of the things that President Obama does at the same time?" - as if there were equivalent U.S. actions.

"He is really very much of a leader," Trump said of a man who has overseen the murder of his domestic political opponents and critical journalists, the rigging of elections, a global campaign of disinformation and a foreign policy whose first aim is to increase Russian influence at U.S. expense.

Johnson may not know what Aleppo is. But in the contest between the United States and an autocratic and increasingly belligerent Russia, Trump appears not to be sure which side he is on.

(c) 2016, The Washington Post
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Some prominent Oregon businesses, including the iconic Powell's Books, face tax hikes if voters approve a new gross receipts tax in November.

(John M. Vincent)

Yes or no on Measure 97?: Sue Hildick's Sept. 7 op-ed is right on, but I would like to add one more thing. Not only should the status of our teachers be "valued on a par with physicians and engineers," but their pay should reflect that also, once standards are met. To do this, local and state government must have a hands-off attitude on moneys allocated to schools and education. Until this is done there will always be problems with our school system, education and low graduation rates. The corporate tax proposed (Measure 97) will add more costs to taxpayers, and the money, once available, will be squandered away in other places, rather than going to schools, where we're told it's intended to go.

John McCloskey

Aloha

*

Yes or no on Measure 97?: Measure 97 makes simple sense. Why should companies who do business in Oregon get what is essentially a free ride?

As the owner of a business who sells products to companies in Oregon, Washington and California, I am assessed taxes in all three. (California costs me the most.) It's a concept known as "nexus." Taxes are part of doing business, but it is the least of all the challenges businesses face. The only surefire way to lower or avoid taxes is to make less money.

The only person who should vote against this tax is someone whose business grosses over $25 million. Is that you?

I remember the doom and gloom predicted by the supply-siders when the minimum corporate tax was raised from $10 to $150: Companies would leave the state. The increase would be passed along as increased prices to consumers. Lowest incomes would be hurt the most. Employment would decline to pay for the increase.

It was simply not true.

The arguments you hear against Measure 97 are based upon ideas lightly paraphrased from Econ 101 and debunked supply-side thoughts. The only truth about these boilerplate threats, and why companies are lobbying hard against Measure 97 , is they cannot raise prices to cover these costs, will not leave and will not reduce employment. They will just have to pay their fair share.

The lesson one learns in business and how it applies to real world economics is that data is more important than opinion. The Portland State University study data shows the sky will not fall if Measure 97 passes.

Steve Brown

Southwest Portland

Brown is owner of Steve Brown Company Inc.

*

Yes or no on Measure 97?: Thanks to Robert C. Freelander for fully describing the impact of Measure 97 on all Oregonians. This measure, once again, underscores the lack of leadership from our executive and legislative branches in creating tax reform which cogently addresses the financing and tax policies of the state. Measure 97 is another Band-Aid which, if passed, will delay comprehensive reform that is so necessary here.

As Freelander writes, why are we not tackling "the elephant in the room" and creating a comprehensive education approach to convince Oregonians that a sales tax needs to be considered? With a revenue-neutral approach decreasing income and possibly property taxes, a well-designed consumption tax could eliminate all the agonizing challenges we face today with our current dysfunctional system.

We should defeat this self-interested approach by its sponsors and encourage those whom we elect to represent us to display leadership and develop a sensible plan.

Randolph L. Miller

Southwest Portland

*

Yes or no on Measure 97?: Proponents say Measure 97 is for the kids and that not voting in favor is a vote against our schools and teachers. Our heartstrings are pulled as we all want the best for our children and we value our teachers. However, we are being misled by the sound bites from Our Oregon, a chief petitioner for the measure.

The facts: The Legislature is not required to spend this revenue on schools. The Oregon Legislative Revenue Office and Portland State University (the latter of which was hired by Our Oregon) reveal the following: Measure 97 will hurt private sector job growth (a loss of 13,500 to 38,000 jobs), will add 33,600 public sector jobs (FYI: the private sector sustains the public sector), and is a regressive tax that will impact small businesses and lower-income earners.

Measure 97 will not only tax large out-of-state corporations, but Oregon corporations with $25 million gross sales, such as Powell's Books and Chown Hardware. Small businesses cannot compete with government benefits and pay. I have lost employees to the city of Portland who tell me they are amazed at how much we accomplish in a day compared to the city.

Maybe instead of the middle- and lower-income workers taking another hit, government should find ways to be more effective with existing resources and hold leaders and employees accountable. That's what the private sector has to do, or go out of business.

Michael McQuiggin

Happy Valley
A Los Angeles-based filmmaker has filed a lawsuit Thursday to compel the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice to release the investigative files in the notorious D.B. Cooper hijacking case.

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Washington D.C., and comes after the FBI announced in July that it had closed the case because investigators still couldn't definitively identify the man who parachuted from a Boeing 727 flying over Washington state in 1971 and disappeared with $200,000 in cash.

Tom Colbert, the filmmaker and a former journalist, claims the FBI's announcement came a day after a two-part series aired on The History Channel that featured him and a team of experts conducting their own investigation on D.B. Cooper's true identity. Colbert says his team found more than 100 pieces of evidence that points to Cooper being Robert W. Rackstraw, a 72-year-old Vietnam War veteran with parachute training who lives in Southern California.

Rackstraw has claimed to be D.B. Cooper in the past, but wouldn't confirm or deny it when Colbert interviewed him for the show, the lawsuit said. The show, "D.B. Cooper: Case Closed?" aired on July 10 and 11. According to the lawsuit, Colbert made a Freedom of Information Act request for the Cooper case file to the FBI on July 12 and didn't receive a response.

The lawsuit said the bureau "took advantage of the airing of the program to close its case and hide the fact that it could not develop evidence sufficient to prosecute Rackstraw beyond a reasonable doubt because of earlier Bureau investigative errors and failures."

In a July 12 statement issued by the FBI's Seattle field office, the agency said it began redirecting resources devoted to the D.B. Cooper case on July 8 to focus on other priorities. The evidence collected over the past 45 years would be preserved for historical purposes at the FBI Headquarters in Washington D.C., the statement said. Investigators would no longer pursue tips provided by the public unless Cooper's parachutes, the missing money or other specific physical evidence was found.

A spokesman for the FBI's Seattle field office, which led the decades-long investigation, did not comment on the lawsuit Thursday.

On Nov. 24, 1971, a man said to be in his 40s and wearing dark sunglasses bought a ticket under the name "Dan Cooper" and boarded a Seattle-bound flight at Portland International Airport. He showed a flight attendant a note soon after takeoff saying he had a bomb. He then demanded $200,000 and parachutes.

Cooper let three dozen passengers off the plan when it landed in Seattle in exchange for the cash and parachutes, then ordered the remaining crew to fly south. Cooper, wearing a business suit, later jumped out the back of the plane over woods in southwest Washington.

Neither Cooper nor the parachute was found, but $5,800 cash matching the serial numbers of the ransom money was discovered in 1980 buried along the Columbia River. He began being referred to as "D.B. Cooper" after a wire service report mistakenly identified him under that name.

-- Everton Bailey Jr.

ebailey@oregonian.com 503-221-8343; @EvertonBailey
GRANTS PASS -- A judge has rejected the state's motion to dismiss a wrongful death lawsuit in connection to a Grants Pass man who was shot by Oregon State Police troopers.

The Daily Courier reports that on Tuesday Josephine County Circuit Court Judge Pat Wolke ruled that the lawsuit pertaining to Robert Box's 2015 death will go forward.

Troopers Gregor Smyth and Heather West had been called to Box's home in rural Josephine County on May 29, 2015, following a report that Box had assaulted his wheelchair-bound daughter. Police say Box advanced toward the officers with a loaded handgun in his pocket, then pulled it out and pointed it at them.

Smyth and West fired a total of 11 rounds at Box. He died later at Three Rivers Medical Center in Grants Pass.

The officers were found to be justified in the fatal shooting.

-- The Associated Press
The $3 billion corporate tax measure on the November ballot in Oregon is heading into the fall campaign season with strong support among registered voters, according to a new poll released on Thursday.

Sixty percent of registered voters who participated in the DHM Research poll said they would vote for Measure 97 if the election were held today, and 30 percent said they would vote against it. Ten percent were uncertain.

That puts the measure's advantage well outside the poll's margin of error of plus or minus 4.3 percentage points. However, it doesn't guarantee voters will pass the measure in November, since 48 percent also said the state should maintain current tax rates and spending on services.

The outcome of the election will likely depend on whether voters believe corporations or consumers will bear the costs of Measure 97, said Vice President and Political Director John Horvick. Fifty-nine percent of voters in the poll said large corporations pay too little in Oregon taxes.

"That's really the tension on this issue," Horvick said. "As of the first week of September, the corporations paying their fair share is a more powerful pull than 'we want taxes to stay the same or go down pull.' How the election is argued out over the next couple months will determine whether this passes or fails." DHM Research paid for the poll itself and so far has not worked for campaigns on either side of the issue.

Nearly the same percentage of voters said they would support the corporate tax measure in a November 2015 DHM Research poll, while only 51 percent of voters in a May DHM Research poll for OPB and KPTV said they would vote for the measure.

Measure 97 would charge certain C corporations a 2.5 percent tax on their gross annual sales in Oregon above $25 million. The measure calls for the state to spend that money on better public schools, healthcare and services for seniors, although that language is nonbinding.

Jim Moore, director of the Tom McCall Center for Policy Innovation at Pacific University, said the campaign to pass Measure 97 needs this level of support going into the fall.

"With 60 percent, that's kind of the threshold of good, for the people who want the ballot measure," Moore said. "As people learn more about it, and especially as the 'no' side hammers at it, you're going to lose voters. You've got to have enough in the bank to start so you don't' go below 50 percent."

Moore cited as an example the 2014 measure to mandate GMO labeling, which started with strong support but was voted down by a narrow margin.

As of Thursday, the campaign to defeat Measure 97 reported raising $8.3 million and spending $4.1 million, according to state campaign finance data. A significant portion of the spending was to purchase television ads that won't air until later this month.

The campaign to pass Measure 97 reported raising $2 million but has only disclosed $511,451 in spending. However, the groups involved have previously raised as much as $15 million in an election cycle and could do so again this year.

Moore said it was not surprising nearly half of registered voters who participated in the poll opposed a general tax increase, in spite of the majority supporting Measure 97.

"That's fairly common from what I've seen, especially from the last 25 years," Moore said. "So the argument for the 'yes people will be, 'we need to tax these corporations in order to fund the things we need to fund, not adding extra programs in but simply to do what we want to do in educating our children and things like that' ... But the 'no' side is going to be pretty clear on this: 'it's a sales tax, and a sales tax is going to cost you more than it's worth.'"

-- Hillary Borrud

503-294-4034; @hborrud
You probably know Jesse Williams for his role as Dr. Jackson Avery on Greys Anatomy or remember his impassioned speech at the BET Awards in June while receiving the 2016 Humanitarian Award. But most dont know that before he was a star, he was a public high school teacher in Philadelphia for six years.

So when Williams, an avid fan of ABCs Shark Tank, saw 24-year-old Christopher Gray pitch his app Scholly on the show, his interest was immediately piqued. Scholly directly pairs students with scholarships that theyre eligible to receive. The company has matched students with more than $50 million in scholarship funds since launching in 2014.

I was really blown away. It really struck a chord with me because finances were a big part of whether or not I was going to make it into college, Williams told Yahoo Finance. And throughout my college experience, it was a source of a lot of stress and strain and work study and worrying about whether Im going to be able to afford the next semester and a lot of scrambling. So [Scholly] seemed really important and impactful.

On Wednesday, Williams joined the Scholly team as chief brand ambassador. Because of both his experience growing up in underfunded public school systems as well as teaching bright students who didnt have the access or resources to pursue college, Williams says he and Scholly were a natural fit. As a member of Schollys board of directors, Williams will get equity in the company.

I desperately wish that [Scholly existed when I was in school]. I was constantly kicking and scraping. Books cost a lot of money, figuring out my housing issues, having to do a work study, I had to work as a telemarketer for five bucks an hour. Getting into school is one thing, and then its another thing to be able to focus on your schoolwork and not worry about how youre going to pay for the next semester, he says.

Gray says that Williams storied background is closely aligned with Schollys mission to understand the plight of those struggling to pay for college and why its vital to help them. Gray himself was raised by a single mother in Birmingham, Alabama, and received $1.3 million in scholarships (which covered his four years at Philadelphias Drexel University, with the rest to be redeemed if he decides to pursue a Masters and/or PhD).

Story continues

Gray landed a $40,000 deal on Shark Tank from Lori Greiner and Daymond John. Scholly has since received $100,000 for winning last years Rise of the Rest business pitch competition hosted by AOL founder Steve Case and a $100,000 investment from StartUP PHL, an angel fund run by venture capitalist Josh Kopelman. The Scholly app was initially free to download but now costs $2.99 to access the platform.

Scholarships in Schollys database are both need- and merit-based. The app narrows down your search with eight parameters (e.g., the state you live in, your GPA, your race). When making a profile, theres even a section titled miscellaneous in case there are other traits or qualities you may want to list, like being a vegetarian or left-handed.

Williams says he feels its his job as an educator and activist to make things like higher learning attainable. I want to show theres a multitude of options for you going forward.

Just as Scholly has harnessed technology to help students find money for college, Williams says the wide range of scholarships gives students the ability to broaden their horizons and think creatively about the kinds of professions they can pursue.

Business is about finding a need and finding a solution, Williams says. [We want to] put kids in a position to be literate and understand the vocabulary of tech and to be able to marry that with their own vision. Were focused on establishing a nice long runway for kids to be able to make a future for themselves creatively. Most students in school right now will have jobs that might not even exist yet, he adds.

What Chris Gray did so wonderfully was he found out that there are millions and millions of dollars that are unclaimed every year in scholarships and figured out a way to bridge that divide between the money and the people who desperately need it, he says.

Melody Hahm is a writer & reporter at Yahoo Finance, covering entrepreneurship, innovation and technology. Follow her on Twitter.

Read more from Melody:

This entrepreneur is making it easier for students to win scholarships

How to invest like Kobe, Bono and Ashton without being ludicrously rich

How this entrepreneur became the shoe designer for Beyonce and Lady Gaga

34-year-old Facebook employee sees better investment opportunities than stocks
Those little cheeks! King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck of Bhutan is taking a page from Kate Middletons parenting book and sharing snapshots of his adorable 6-month-old son  but the Dragon King went one step further, using the images for the royals official calendar.



In the photos, which were released by cultural organization Yellow Bhutan, Prince Jigme Namgyel Wangchuck is decked out in traditional garb  a checked robe with cream-colored cuffs, tiny navy shoes, and a round yellow button bearing his fathers face.



The toddler is laughing at something off-camera in one image and looking straight at the lens in another with an endearingly serious face.



PHOTOS: Prince George's Baby Album: Kate Middleton and Prince William's Firstborn Son

Our September calendar is a treat, featuring these adorable images of His Royal Highness The Gyalsey, as photographed by His Majesty The King, the accompanying Facebook message on Yellow Bhutans page reads. It is a joy to see our little Prince growing up so quickly, and touching to see him already begin to carry our Royal Duties.



Princess Charlotte at 6 Months Old: Who Does She Look Like Most?

The Bhutanese king and his wife, Queen Jetsun Pema, welcomed the Duchess and Prince William to their country during the British royals tour through India and Bhutan in April. There, the Duke and Duchess had the honor of taking part in a Chipdrel, a traditional welcome procession, complete with music and ceremonial dress.



In May, the Duchess of Cambridge shared images of daughter Charlotte in honor of the royal tots first birthday, capturing the little fashionistas curious and playful nature.



PHOTOS: Kate Middleton and Prince William Visit India and Bhutan: Photos of Their Royal Tour

The Duke and Duchess are very happy to be able to share these important family moments and hope that everyone enjoys these lovely photos as much as they do, the palace told Us Weekly in a statement.







Related Content:
Friday 9 September 2016 9:37am

Two current and one former University of Otago staff members received medals at the New Zealand Association of Scientists Awards Night, which recognises outstanding contributions by members of the countrys science community.

Professor Antony Braithwaite was awarded the Shorland Medal, Associate Professor Guy Jameson the Beatrice Hill Tinsley Medal, and Professor Emerita Jean Fleming the Science Communication Medal.



Professor Antony Braithwaite

The Shorland Medal recognises major and continued contribution to basic or applied research that has added significantly to scientific understanding or resulted in significant benefits to society.

Professor Braithwaite, who is based in the Dunedin School of Medicines Department of Pathology, is a leading cancer researcher who studies the tumour suppressor protein p53 and other cancer associated genes.

He has been a Research Professor at Otago since 1996 and currently leads a team of more than a dozen researchers and students. Professor Braithwaite has served the national community as a key player in founding the Institutional Biological Safety Committee on which he served for eight years, and serving six years with Health Research Council (HRC) Biomedical Research Committee, as well as with the HRC Maori Health Research Committee and the NZ Genetic Technology Advisory Committee.

In 2013 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand and awarded a prestigious James Cook Research Fellowship and the Dunedin School of Medicines Deans Medal for Research in 2015.

The Beatrice Hill Tinsley Medal is awarded for outstanding fundamental or applied research in the physical, natural or social sciences published by a scientist or scientists within 15 years of receiving their PhD.



Associate Professor Guy Jameson

Associate Professor Jameson (Department of Chemistry) becomes the inaugural recipient of the medal in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the fields of biophysical chemistry and materials science.

He is interested in the chemistry of metalloproteins  proteins that contain metal atoms or clusters  and his research involves spectroscopic and kinetic investigations of iron-containing enzymes and compounds.

Associate Professor Jameson is a recognised expert in Mossbauer spectroscopy and has established the only low temperature Mossbauer instrument in New Zealand.

This gives him the ability to apply spectroscopy to a wide range of materials from proteins through to nanoparticles and inorganic polymers from volcanic ash. One of his major aims is to understand the chemical basis of diseases, such as Parkinsons and rheumatoid arthritis, through studying enzymes at the molecular level and how their malfunction contributes to the progression of disease.

The Science Communicator Medal is made to a practising scientist for excellence in communicating science to the general public in any area of science or technology.



Professor Emerita Jean Fleming

Professor Fleming, who is now retired from the University of Otago, has won the 2016 Science Communicator Medal. She spent over twenty years at the University communicating her passion for science as an academic teacher and researcher.

Her desire to inspire young people into science led to long-term involvement in Otagos Hands-On Science summer camp, the NZ International Science Festival and the Association for Women in the Sciences. She convened the Suffrage Centennial Science Conference in 1993, the first national conference for women scientists held in New Zealand. In 2008, she joined the Centre for Science Communication at Otago, where she supervised 25 MSciComm students and two PhD students, on topics ranging from the effectiveness of rap to communicate science, to use of automata to teach mechanisms.

Jean is known nationally for her public speaking and for seven years of regular radio interviews on Body Parts, on RNZ Nationals Nights programme.
Friday 9 September 2016 10:01am

ASPIRE2025 co-directors, Professors Janet Hoek and Richard Edwards, welcome the introduction of standardised packaging and congratulate Dame Tariana Turia for her foresight in introducing this legislation, and Minister Sam Lotu-liga for overseeing its final movement through Parliament.

Standardised packaging is a pivotal measure in the road to Smokefree 2025. It transforms tobacco packaging from a highly effective marketing tool, particularly for youth and young adults, to a plain and unattractive object. For decades, tobacco companies have used skilfully designed packaging to help attract the next generation of smokers and the government has rightly ended this practice, says Professor Hoek, who has led several studies examining standardised packaging.

A recent review of standardised packaging undertaken by the Australian government found that standardised packaging has not only made smoking less attractive to young people, but has also contributed to declines in smoking prevalence.

It is excellent news that New Zealand will soon start to see the same benefits as those observed in Australia, says Professor Hoek. If we are to achieve New Zealands world-leading smokefree 2025 goal, we urgently need innovative new policies that will greatly reduce smoking uptake and trigger quitting among smokers.

Professors Hoek and Edwards urged the Government to continue the momentum standardised packaging will create and called on Minister Lotu-liga to develop an action plan leading to the 2025 goal.

We hope the Government will soon announce additional measures, such as licensing tobacco retailers. It is outrageous that a product known to kill two in three long-term users is sold at more than 6000 outlets in New Zealand, many close to schools.

The Government also has a crucial opportunity to use the additional revenue gained through tobacco excise taxes to support the many smokers who wish to quit. We know most smokers regret ever having started smoking, but many struggle to become smokefree. Achieving the 2025 goal for all population groups will require a more comprehensive programme to help smokers to quit.

For more information, contact:

Professor Janet Hoek

Co-Director ASPIRE2025

Email janet.hoek@otago.ac.nz

About ASPIRE2025:

ASPIRE2025 is a partnership between major New Zealand research groups carrying out tobacco control research to help achieve the Governments goal of a tobacco-free Aotearoa by 2025. It was launched in July 2011.

ASPIRE2025 brings together leading tobacco-control researchers and health service groups in New Zealand and strengthens existing collaborations. ASPIRE2025 was awarded the status of a University of Otago Research Theme in November 2011.
In a bid to fortify its position in anesthesia specialty services, this time in the Southern California market, Sheridan  the Physician Services Division of Tennessee-based healthcare provider, AmSurg Corp. AMSG  acquired Ambulatory Anesthesia Associates, Inc. and Genesis Anesthesia Services, Inc. However, the financial terms of the transaction have been kept under wraps.

These two anesthesia practice groups currently have 27 physicians in total covering six independent facilities, with Marina Del Rey Hospital representing the largest relationship.

According to AmSurg, these buyouts mark the companys initial entry into the Southern California market. While Sheridan will provide the acquired businesses with vital delivery platform components, expertise and resources, these buyouts will help expand AmSurgs presence in California as a whole.

Price

Price | Quote

The latest buyouts are in line with AmSurgs investment strategy adopted by management to capitalize on the significant acquisition opportunities in the rapidly expanding physician services space, with particular focus on anesthesia services.

We note that the anesthesiology market is huge and growing. According to a recent report by Research and Markets, the global market for anesthetic and respiratory devices is expected to reach nearly $24.2 billion by 2020 from $14.4 billion in 2015, at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10.9%. This is expected to grow with the estimated rise in demand for anesthesia services. Meanwhile, AmSurg has been striving to capture a larger share of this market in order to ride the growth curve.

In line with these objectives, the company completed five additional Physician Services transactions and acquired four extra ASCs through first-half 2016, and deployed nearly $300 million of its capital for acquisitions.

In this context, we encouragingly note that the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, aging demographic trends in the U.S. and an increased insured population base should encourage a rise in surgery volumes. This will naturally enhance demand for emergency medical specialty services like anesthesia.

Story continues

Following the acquisition of Sheridan Healthcare, AmSurg has become a prominent player in the physician-centric surgical center and physician outsourcing business with a diversified, complementary business mix and a significantly enhanced growth profile.

Given that the market for outsourced physician services is highly fragmented and predominantly served by small provider groups, AmSurg believes there exists significant opportunity for further growth through new contract wins from smaller provider groups and through targeted acquisitions. We expect AmSurg to confidently progress on its acquisition pipeline, supported by a strong cash position.

Zacks Rank

AmSurg currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Some favorably ranked medical stocks are Almost Family Inc. AFAM, RadNet, Inc. RDNT and US Physical Therapy Inc. USPH. All the three stocks hold a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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The European Commission told The Dow Chemical Co. and DuPont Co. to provide missing data about their proposed $130 billion merger, a move by antitrust regulators that has again halted the process.

The Commission has stopped the clock in its ongoing investigation, Reuters reported Friday.

This is a routine procedural part of the (European Commissions) process. It does not change our timing expectations, a Dow spokesperson wrote in an email.

Dow and DuPont officials had hoped to see the merger completed by the end of the year. It would result in a combined company known as DowDuPont, which would then spin off into three separate, independent businesses within 18 to 24 months: Material Sciences, said to stay headquartered in Midland, and Agriculture and Specialty Products, to be based in Wilmington, Delaware, where DuPont is currently headquartered.

The European Commission announced Aug. 11 it had initiated Phase II of the merger investigation, citing a concern about the lack of competition that could result, notably in the agriculture industry.

Once the missing information is supplied by the parties, the clock is re-started and the deadline for the commissions decision is then adjusted accordingly, a Commission spokesman told Bloomberg News.

The merger also is being scrutinized by the Department of Justice and the Senate Judiciary Committee.

U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, serves as the chairman of the Senates Judiciary Committee and recently called for a hearing on the merger, and its effect on the seed and chemical industry. The hearing is set for 10 a.m. Sept. 20.

Dow President and CEO Andrew Liveris called the companies plan the largest and most consequential merger in our sector at this years annual shareholders meeting.
Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette recently recognized September as Suicide Prevention Awareness Month with a reminder of the efforts being taken to educate students about and to recruit them to help prevent suicide in Michigan with the student safety program OK2SAY.

It is heartbreaking when a young person takes their life because they feel there is no other way, Schuette said in a release. OK2SAY is actively trying to change that.

In almost two years of the OK2SAY programs, more than a quarter of a million Michigan middle and high school students have attended an OK2SAY presentation. In addition to discussing suicide, the presentations touch on bullying, peer abuse, self-harm, assault, and gun violence. The goal is to empower students to do the right thing by submitting a tip.

OK2SAY technicians are specially trained and know what to look for and how to respond when the tip is about suicide. For example, they have arranged for medical intervention for students attempting suicide; called for wellness checks on students reported to be suicidal; given mental health referrals to students in need; and prompted professionals to reach out to students who had written a suicide note.

Experts note that bullying is a factor in some deaths by suicide, and that is another area of OK2SAYs focus. Kevin Epling, an anti-bullying advocate whose son Matt died by suicide, is a parent advocate for OK2SAY.

In the world of bullying prevention, we all need to be creative and think very differently. When the idea for OK2SAY was brought up, the response was No one will use it, said Epling. Two years and close to 5,000 reports filed later, weve changed the playing field and given kids and parents hope.

According to the Michigan 2015 High School Youth Risk Behavior Survey that was just released, students reported that during the 12 months before the survey:

 17.3 percent seriously considered attempting suicide

 15 percent made a plan about how they would attempt suicide

 9.2 percent attempted suicide at least once

 2.6 percent attempted suicide that resulted in an injury, poisoning, or overdose that had to be treated by a doctor or nurse.

The key features of OK2SAY are:

 Confidential reporting: State law protects the confidentiality of the reporters identity. The identity of the reporting party will not be disclosed to local law enforcement, school officials, or the person about whom a tip is offered, unless the reporter voluntarily chooses to disclose his or her identity. If the reporter is a minor, the parent or guardian must also consent.

 Comprehensive technology: Anyone can confidentially submit tips 24/7 using any of the five tip methods detailed below. Multi-media attachments like photos, videos, and links to additional information are encouraged.

 Coordinated intervention: Upon receipt of a tip, specially trained OK2SAY technicians at the Michigan State Police screen and forward tips to an appropriate responding agency including: local law enforcement, schools, local community mental health organizations, or the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.

 Accountability: Each responding organization is asked to complete an Outcome Report detailing the nature of the tip, how the tip was handled, and whether the tip situation was resolved or requires ongoing attention. This provides local entities an opportunity to illustrate that student safety threats are tracked and taken seriously. The 2015 Annual Report details the types and numbers of tips handled throughout the year.

Tips may be submitted in the following ways: phone, 1-855-565-2729; text, 652729 (OK2SAY); email, ok2say@mi.gov; website, www.ok2say.com; and OK2SAY mobile app, available for download in app stores for iPhone and Android.
The following list includes recent reports from the Midland County Sheriffs Office and the Midland Police Department.

Thursday, Sept. 8

12:11 a.m.  Police responded to a domestic assault at an Isabella Street address.

Wednesday, Sept. 7

11:29 a.m.  Property was stolen from the 1000 block of Eastlawn Drive.

1:39 p.m.  Officers investigated a fraud in the 400 block of South Saginaw Road.

7:42 p.m.  A Warren Township woman, 31, reported she was called multiple times by a person claiming to be from the IRS. The calls were part of a scam. No money or personal information was provided.

8:43 p.m.  Deputies were sent to a Jasper Township home for a report of a domestic assault. A report is being sent to the prosecutors office for review.

11:43 p.m.  While investigating another matter, a deputy arrested a 56-year-old man on a warrant in Greendale Township.

11:43 p.m.  Deputies assisted a Department of Human Services worker with an investigation in Greendale Township, and arrested a woman on a warrant unrelated to the investigation.
This summer, 45 high school students sponsored by the American Legion and 43 high school students sponsored by the Michigan District of Kiwanis learned what it is like to attend a Michigan State Police trooper recruit school.

Local graduates of the American Legion Student Trooper Program included Dale Johnson III of Midland, and Nichole Wenzel of Merrill.
Cambodian opposition party deputy leader Kem Sokha (R) delivers a speech at the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) headquarters in Phnom Penh, on September 9, 2016 (AFP Photo/Tang Chhin Sothy) (AFP/File)

A leading Cambodian opposition politician was convicted Friday in a trial criticised by rights groups as long-ruling Prime Minister Hun Sen's latest effort to hobble rivals ahead of 2018 elections.

Acting opposition leader Kem Sokha was sentenced to five months in prison for refusing to appear in court for a case related to an alleged sex scandal.

"The (court) decided to convict Kem Sokha, age 63, to five months in jail," said judge Keo Mony.

The politician has spent the past few months holed up in the headquarters of his Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) to avoid arrest, amid threats from Hun Sen that he could be jailed at any time.

But he made a rare appearance Friday morning to speak to hundreds of supporters gathered outside the party's office.

He condemned the one-day trial, which he boycotted, and accused the government of trying to "end my political career".

"Using the court to violate my political and election rights is not only making the upcoming election illegitimate, but it also threatens Cambodia's democracy," he told a crowd as police looked on.

Human Rights Watch has lambasted the case as the latest move in "an increasingly violent Cambodian government campaign to prevent free and fair elections in 2018".

According to the watchdog, two opposition MPS are currently in prison, at least 10 more are facing charges, and more than 20 political activists and rights workers have faced legal action over the past year.

The opposition party's top leader and Hun Sen's chief rival, Sam Rainsy, has spent nearly one year in self-imposed exile to avoid arrest warrants he claims are politically-motivated.

"Prime Minister Hun Sen is using every trick in the book to neutralise the opposition," HRW's Asia Director Brad Adams said in a statement ahead of Friday's trial.

The wily premier has loomed over Cambodian politics for three decades, steering the impoverished nation out of the ashes of civil war.

But opposition groups have gained ground amid growing disillusionment with endemic corruption, rights abuses and political repression.

The opposition CNRP accuses Hun Sen of denying it a majority by rigging the 2013 election in his favour, a charge the premier denies.
CLINTON  Exelon Corp. is moving toward closing the Clinton nuclear power plant next year, but one lawmaker said the lack of recent public activity by those trying to save the plant doesn't mean the effort is dead.

State Rep. Bill Mitchell, R-Forsyth, said that even though there have been no news conferences or press releases lately, work continues on legislation for a clean-energy subsidy and utility rate changes that Exelon has said it needs to keep the plant economically viable.

A lot of people are still working on it, including Exelon, Gov. (Bruce) Rauner, and the General Assembly, he said. It is in everyones best interest to come to an agreement. I dont want to be overly optimistic or overly pessimistic, but incremental progress is being made.

Still, officials in Clinton say no news is not good news.

I havent heard anything, said Clinton City Administrator Tim Followell.

Its terrible, isnt it? said Marion Brisard, Clinton Chamber of Commerce executive director.

To them, no news means the company, which already has notified the Nuclear Regulatory Commission of its closure plans, is moving toward the planned June 1, 2017, decommissioning and time to reverse the decision is running out.

The Legislature meets for a few days in November, said Exelon spokesman Brett Nauman. Hopefully, they could act before the end of the year and Exelon could potentially reverse the decision. But as of now, we have to move forward with plans to close.

Mitchell said he has met with the governors office this week and is headed back to Springfield on Friday.

Keeping the Clinton plant open is a topic of discussion wherever I go, he said. If I am having coffee with someone in Decatur or a town meeting in Monticello, people want to know and are concerned.

"Central Illinois understands the importance of keeping the plant open. Those are 700 good-paying jobs.

Exelon announced earlier this year that it would close the Clinton plant next year and the Quad Cities plant a year later if the General Assembly did not pass the Next Generation Energy Plan in the spring legislative session. The bill, which did not come up for a vote, would extend to nuclear plants state subsidies given to wind and solar power suppliers for producing electricity without carbon emissions.

Exelon said the plants have sustained operating losses totaling a combined $800 million over the past seven years and cannot continue without the financial breaks.

Critics called the plan a bailout for a profitable company, and some environmentalists question treating nuclear power as clean energy.

Last month, mayors and community leaders sent a letter to the governor and lawmakers in support of the legislation.

In recent weeks, several employees have been transferred to other Exelon locations. Nauman couldnt say how many employees had transferred, but said the safety of the plant is not at risk.
PEORIA  A Dec. 12 trial date has been set in a federal lawsuit filed by the former supervisor of the Bloomington Police Department's evidence room who claims she was fired after she complained to administrators about how evidence was handled.

Amy Ward filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in 2013 against the city, former Police Chief Randy McKinley, former Assistant Chief Bob Siron, and police Lts. Bob Wall and Tim Stanesa.

In an Aug. 31 ruling, Judge Michael Mihm dismissed McKinley and Siron from the lawsuit because Ward's lawyer Dawn Wall failed to properly serve the two with notice of the lawsuit.

McKinley, currently the police chief of St. Charles, Mo., and Siron, the current director of Mobile Training Unit 8, a state law enforcement training program for Central Illinois, are expected to be called as witnesses at the trial.

The jury will hear evidence related to Ward's claim that she was disciplined by McKinley after she raised concerns about how guns, drugs and other items were stored and who had access to the evidence room.

Disputes with Siron and Stanesa over the evidence room resulted in several suspensions for Ward ahead of her termination in June 2011, according to the lawsuit.

In his deposition, McKinley contends Ward's dismissal followed multiple incidents of subordination.

The former chief said he asked the Illinois State Police to investigate Ward's accusations, but the agency declined.

McKinley admits in his statement that he disciplined Ward in May 2011 for inquiring about the investigation with state police.

In her deposition, Ward described the evidence room she took over in 2009 as "more than sloppy" and "a nightmare."

In its court filing, the city alleged Ward was upset because she was not considered for a new records manager position.

Ward has argued that her right to free speech and protection under the state Whistleblower Act were violated by the city.

Mihm denied a motion by the city to bar Ward's attorney from presenting evidence of discipline imposed against Ward and other sworn officers. Mihm said he will make a final determination on whether such material is admissible after he hears more specific details of the defense evidence.

Ward is asking to be returned to her job or be paid her wages plus damages.
Cheers

... to Pat Quinn (yes, you read that correctly), for offering another solution to the state's redistricting issue.

The state Supreme Court decided the Independent Maps Coalition could not put a remap question on the Illinois ballot in November. Democrat Quinn, the former governor, pitched another idea that offers an alternative for a future election.

The question is how to redistrict the state's legislative maps so they are fair and not gerrymandered to benefit the parties and lawmakers who hold those offices.

Quinn has been mostly silent since he lost to Republican Bruce Rauner, but it's good to see him getting involved again. Whether his idea has merit, or can pass constitutional muster, is anyone's guess, but we laud his determination to help the people of Illinois.

Jeers

... to the city of Bloomington for it's better-late-than-never approach to a flooding problem near the intersection of Mercer Avenue and Castle Drive.

The problem worsened after the city approved plans for a new house, whose design meant runoff issues only would worsen.

The city has paid professionals on staff who should know about drainage problems, yet they approved new development without addressing those problems.

City staff and those who sign off on their work need to be more careful about infrastructure and consider how future development could make a small problem into a big one.

Cheers

... to the Thresherman's Reunion organizers for making the right call to cancel the annual event last week due to extremely wet conditions.

Antique engines and tractors would have proved much too heavy for the wet ground  and fans don't want to slog through mud to see them and other events.

Here's hoping a year off will mean even bigger crowds and more participants next year.

Cheers

... to the supporters of Chenoa Library on their fundraising efforts to build a new facility.

Many smaller libraries have found creative ways to bring in money, but basic grassroots support by community members and future users still is the best way to move forward.

Jeers

... to the Illinois State Board of Elections for not providing bulletproof systems for the state's voter database, which was among several illegally accessed with personal information stolen.

State systems should be as hack-proof as the best systems used by businesses. Legislators need to make computer safety and security among their highest priorities when they return for the next session.

'Needs improvement'

... is the grade so far for Unit 5 and its back-to-school bus woes. The district and its provider are continuing to work to find permanent solutions, but the time lag is unfair to students and their parents.
"One Punch" Season 2 and its air date remains unverified and owing to that, presumptions for its storyline is rising. It is undeniable that the success of "One Punch Man" was unprecedented. It has sparked much awareness for the fans and followers of the epic anime.

Nothing has been said or done regarding the upcoming return of "One Punch Man" Season 2. with the showrunners silent on the matter,fans and followers could not help but speculate on the series and its direction.

There are rising presumptions for "One Punch Man" Season 2 that was mentioned by Parent Herald. The report further relayed that Saitama would prep up for battle and the possibility of fighting against Genos is on the rise as well.

Saitama you one punched too hard pic.twitter.com/p1SgnUNAs8  One Punch Man  (@_OnePunchMan) September 4, 2016

However, despite the speculations and rumors, the main drive and storyline for "One Punch Man" Season 2 is directed on following its manga heritage. It stands to reason that even though new things are rising for its storyline, the anime would remain true to its legacy and will strictly follow its manga counterpart.

Manga Freak relayed some synopsis for the possible powers that Saitama is keeping in tow. Even Genos and the other heroes are constantly surprised by his prowess and punches. With that being said, the former rumors regarding Genos turning against Saitama or the duo's relationship would be destroyed when "One Punch Man" Season 2 returns has just been debunked.

Webcomic to Manga to Anime pic.twitter.com/VYLah9zf4w  One Punch Man  (@_OnePunchMan) November 15, 2015

For the fans and followers, the epic series continues to rattle the anime enthusiasts. However, with the prolonged hiatus, it has caused tensions and uneasiness. For the air date of "One Punch Man" Season 2, that remains unsettled.
Police officials said that a Missouri woman admitted that she killed her blind and autistic teen son. The mother's alleged last words tried to console, "Please let God take you."

The mother, 42-year-old Kimberly Lightwine, was found near the area where the son, who was wearing only a diaper, died. Lightwine told investigators that she tried to abandon her severely disabled 19-year-old son, named Austin Anderson, by leading him into a field where he eventually died. The mother was found wearing underwear, lying face down, yelling about God, and saying that she needed water.

Lightwine has been charged by prosecutors in southwestern Missouri's Polk County with second-degree murder, The Washington Post reported. The charges were announced on Saturday but more details about the case were released only this week. Her bond was set at $250,000. She is also facing charges related to elder abuse since her son is 19 years old, and it is a crime pertaining to acts against disabled adults.

Lightwine recounted how she had killed her blind and autistic son when authorities gave her water and she started to calm down. Her son died from exposure to nature and as per the autopsy, he died from a swollen brain due to dehydration. He might have also gone into shock since he was not able to take his much-needed medication, 5 On Your Side reported.

The mother continued to say that she did not know how she got to the field but remembered she used meth beforehand and has been using drugs on and off for years now. She told investigators that she is a terrible mother, she got high, and got depressed, Washington Post reported.

She recalled that she asked her son to get out of the car and told him to put his hands in front of him and that God is going to take care of him. Lightwine said that her son kept coming back and was saying "mom" over and over again. She added that she pushed him away and told him, "No you don't want to love me, please let God take you."

It is unclear how many days has the teen been dead when authorities found him and the mother, but they were reported missing by a family member on Aug. 28. The father of the teen said that his son had a limited vocabulary and his mental capacity could be compared to an elementary school student.

Lightwine told authorities that she should be charged with murder as she is taking responsibility over her son's death.
If you don't have enough budget for a private college institution, why not set your eyes on an equally good public college? The University of Michigan has proven once again its high quality education by being ranked as the top American public university.

Recently, Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) released its world university rankings and for four times in five years, the University of Michigan has been lined among the esteemed Ivy Leagues, besting other public universities. MLive reports that the university was ranked 30 last school year and is now at Rank 23 for 2016-2017--the only American public university to reach the Top 25.

The QS World University rankings gave the University of Michigan an overall score of 86.4. These are based on six performance indicators with the university scoring 99.6 on Academic Reputation (40 percent), 89.6 on Employer Reputation (10 percent), 86.7 on Faculty-Student Ratio (20 percent), 71.7 on Citations per Faculty (20 percent), 90.9 on International Faculty ratio (5 percent) and 37.9 on International Students ratio (5 percent).

The University of Michigan's programs are described as "responsive to the changing needs of society" and "relevant to the goals of students and community partners." The university also opens doors for independent and collaborative study, and research as well as practical applications.

According to The Atlantic, prestigious college rankings largely affect the college choices of senior high school students. Based on a 2014 report by the American Educational Research Association, applications increase when a school secures a high academic ranking. If students don't know any alumnus from the university and campus visits are costly, they resort to trusted rankings to help them make their choice.

The QS World University Rankings first released its university list in 2004. They assess 900 top universities of the world. This year, the top four universities are Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Standford University, Harvard University and University of Cambridge.

Do you think university rankings are credible? Why or why not? Sound off your thoughts in the comments section and follow Parent Herald for more news and updates.
GOP nominee Donald Trump has laid out his latest plans for his proposals for education if in case he wins this November elections. His latest promise is to direct $20 billion in federal grants so that poor children could attend a school, whichever the family chooses.

Trump delivered his speech during a visit at an inner-city charter school in Cleveland on Thursday. Trump did not only touch on whites but also said that African-American and Hispanic parents should be given the right to education. The real estate mogul shared, "As president, I will establish the national goal of providing school choice to every American child living in poverty."

Trump related the possibilities of letting children from lowly status of life be educated in the U.S., being able to send men on the moon, winning two world wars, and digging out the Panama Canal. He said that if the aforementioned events were achieved, he would not doubt that as a nation, the U.S. could provide school choice to every disadvantaged child in the country, Business Insider reported.

Trump also argued that the present voucher system will not help these poor children to enroll at quality schools, but if there is a free market, which he plans to implement, it will improve the entire education system. He pointed out that a better education system will be able to produce better students. Aside from the students, Trump also said that he would support merit-pay for teachers.

The real estate mogul, however, did not explain where he would be getting the $20 billion federal funding.

The New York Times reported that the education plans of Trump have been revealed after he proposed better military funding. He said that he would propose more funding for the military in order to boost the country's stance once again as he believes that due to the security problems in the country, the enemies are taking advantage of that perception.

He also talked about his opponent, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, during his Cleveland speech. He once again lambasted her use of a private email when she served as the Secretary of State.
Apple and Nike fans are going to be ecstatic with this new project that the two giant companies are about to release. The tech giant announced on September 7 during the unveiling of the new iPhone 7 in San Francisco their new product that involves Nike.

According to a report published by Quartz, the new product is now dubbed as the Apple Watch Nike+. Runners are the ones who would benefit from it a lot since its purpose is to monitor how they are doing while they exercise. This new Apple Watch has a prominent display with neon graphics. Its screen is wide enough to view all its features. It has two sizes available, 38mm and 42mm. The former costs $369 while the latter, $399.

A photo posted by The_iStore (@the_istore) on Sep 9, 2016 at 7:15am PDT

Meanwhile, The Slanted also featured the new Apple Watch Series 2, as they emphasized its new features including being water resistant. This is the first time that Apple made their watch series capable of surviving the presence of water. Note that this is different from the one that they are working with Nike. Users will never get lost using it because it now has GPS, which means that they no longer need another gadget to keep them in track of their route.

This one is going to be available on September 18 while the Apple Watch Nike+ won't be out until late October of this year. Apple is dedicated to improving their products involving watches for people who are conscious about their health. It would now be easier to monitor your heart rate and your speed with these two new Apple Watches that are about to come out.

Do you think you are one of those people who would purchase the Apple Watch Nike+ or the Apple Watch Series 2? Which one would you prefer? Let us know through the comments box below.
With the unveiling of the new Playstation 4 Pro, which boasts a higher standard for graphics and visuals for video games, developers wasted no time in adapting to the new standard and re-releasing previous titles for the new high definition console. Here is a quick reveal of video games for the Playstation 4 Pro.

With an improved processing power and 4K resolutions, the Playstation 4 Pro promises a whole new experience for players in the console gaming world. Thanks to Games Radar, here are the titles of upcoming games that will be released for the new PS4 Pro.

First is "Mass Effect: Andromeda", which will be released in March of 2017. The latest installment in the Mass Effect game is an action role-playing third person shooter from BioWare. Next is another shooter game set for a PS4 Pro release is the much awaited "Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare," coming late in 2016.

Another game that fans are looking forward to playing in the PS4 Pro, is the new "Spider-Man" title in 2017, which will feature plenty of web-swinging action through the New York sky. "Rise of the Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration" is also making it's release for the new console, and will feature Lara Croft, solving the mystery behind her old estate.

"Watch Dogs 2" is another highly anticipated release for the PS4 Pro, which will be available on November of 2016. Also, the latest chapter of the "Final Fantasy" saga, "Final Fantasy XV," coming in November as well, will be the first in the franchise to get a 4K resolution makeover.

Other notable games worthy of mention that will be released for the PS4 Pro are "Dishonored 2," "Killing Floor 2," "Days Gone," and "Farpoint."

With the release of the Playstation 4 Pro coming later this year, fans can expect an all new gaming experience, although, according to Digital Trends, players must also have a TV monitor that can support the upgraded PS4 Pro's 4K solution, on top of buying the PS4 Pro itself, otherwise, players won't be able to experience it's full HD quality.
The Obama administration and its predecessors have long been advocating the significance of quality education, which has the potential to usher more opportunities and success. Sadly, the cost of education in the United States continues to increase, leaving a lot of students crippled with debt and student loans.

In the new school year, almost 100,000 public schools offered learning opportunities to some 50 million students from kindergarten to high school. Even though high school graduation rates have sharply increased and dropout rates have declined, America's education progress is still not almost on pace with other nations, McClatchy DC revealed.

With that said, experts believed that a nation that is trailing others like Canada, Germany, France, Korea and Japan in education will lag in international competitiveness, thus contributing to economic challenges. Within the United States, the education sector is also plagued with challenging gaps such as for achievement, by race, wealth and many others.

In spite of the fact that the U.S. federal government could influence policies and practices, education remains the main responsibility of the states. Meanwhile, national education reformers are reportedly targeting local school boards as it becomes a political battleground.

Based on a recent research, Michigan State University (MSU) political science assistant professor and lead study author Sarah Reckhow found that local school boards can serve as significant battlefields in national politics. According to Phys.org, Reckhow also said that there are organizations and donors who see local school board elections as "critical contests" over opposing ideas of education.

The study also found that outside money can be a good thing if the fund came from donors who share the same values and interests of the local residents. But the findings also warned that the local education politics nationalization might lure local leaders into the much theoretically opposed and steadfast position-taking, underwriting the national-level gridlock.

In other education-related reports, a Supreme Court judge ordered the state of Connecticut on Wednesday to come up with a new funding solution for its public schools. Aside from extensive reforms, Hartford Courant reported Judge Thomas Moukawsher also mandated the state to develop clear standards for both elementary and high school levels, not to mention requiring a total reform of Connecticut's evaluation system of teachers, principals and superintendents.

What are your thoughts on America's education system? Sound off below and follow Parent Herald for more news and updates.
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Jetsun Khandro Rinpoche is one of the few female Tibetan lamas (teachers) in the world today and a recognized reincarnation (tulku) of a past great female teacher. She has taught Buddhism across Europe, the US, and Asia. She will be conducting a long Vajrayana retreat in Virginia starting later this week and you can find her Mahamudra/Dzogchen teachings on DVD, and  better for beginners!  her complete guide to the Tibetan path to awakening in book form.

Below she talks about Western students common over-reliance on willpower, which has the dual effects of puffing up egos and setting up disappointing defeats.

Advice to Western Students

As she says of Westerners, one characteristic that I find very delightfully amusing is  they think everything is dependent upon their willpower. And I think thats, in a way, nice. Its very nice. Maybe thats how it should be. But if it goes to the extent of disregarding the power of karma, and collective karma especially: karma of the land, karma of the teacher, karma of the time, karma of the place, karma of everyone, the retinue, the sangha, karma of Dharma itself, they maybe ending up putting tremendous pressure on themselves. And then that goes into the spin of either being too overly confident, or then the ebb of that which comes in feeling terribly frustrated with oneself and being guilt-ridden.

A sad part of this, as she says, is that so many Westerners, lose the joy of having become a practitioner.

Go deeper: Listen to this 30-minute teaching by Harvey Aronson on Buddha, Brain, and Body: Shaping our Karma which goes deeper into concepts of gratitude, getting beyond our ordinary (egoic) mind, and karma.

And in contemporary thought, a Chicago Tribune writer, Nicole Radziszewski, explores how willpower can be a jerk and mindfulness can be a welcome alternative.
Many people take online sex/porn addiction assessments to see if they would qualify for the diagnosis that Ive already noted does not exist. None of these assessment tools have been approved by any governing mental health body. Most of the questions are completely subjective and make it so that many people could easily qualify. for example  are you preoccupied with sex? does your spouse complain about your sexual behavior? do you feel badly about your sexual behavior? do you hide aspects of your sexuality from your partner? These are questions that speak to common concerns people have about sexuality. A conservative Mormon man who masturbates less than five times a year and has libido differences with his wife would easily answer yes to most of these. And a non-religious couple who enjoy watching erotic films together and have sex on a daily basis wouldnt even be concerned about taking the assessment, much less answer yes if they did. You can see why self or spouse-diagnosis is so common among religiously conservative people. And why religiously conservative people are at risk for being taken advantage of by these types of treatment approaches.

Assessment tools that sex addiction counselors use are also problematic and non-approved. One such tool that is used often is called the Sexual Dependence Inventory.

Dr. David Ley, author of The Myth of Sex Addiction, has written the following critique which I have permission to share on this blog.

Note by Dr. David Ley:

The below post was originally published on Psychology Today. However, the International Institute for Trauma & Addiction Professionals (IITAP), and the sex addiction gurus who profit from the Sexual Dependency Inventory (SDI), threatened Psych Today and forced them to take it down. I dont blame the editors at Psychology Today. Indeed, I had predicted this would happen, and wrote the editors in advance, to warn them that they should anticipate such threats. Unfortunately, groups such as Psychology Today are quite vulnerable to such threats, and the cost/time/energy required to defend themselves against claims of libel, defamation or other such legal bullying.

I wrote this article, not to attack IITAP or any specific individuals. Instead, I wrote it due to my concerns about patients who are vulnerable to exploitation and maltreatment by clinicians using an unsupported instrument in unethical ways. Prior to publishing it, I had the piece reviewed by no fewer than 5 statistical, research and sexuality experts, several of whom have histories of much greater support of sex addiction than do I. It wasnt an echo chamber review. I wrote it carefully, in as objective a manner as possible. I complied with ethics around test protection, and copyright, and wrote this within specific compliance with Fair Use protocol, in order to ethically criticize a clinical assessment I believe is potentially harmful.

Im publishing this blog here, and in emails and on the blogs of other colleagues, in interest of sharing this information widely, and challenging the ways in which the sex addiction industry uses threats and intimidation to suppress criticism or challenges to their methods. I myself have been threatened with legal action by the sex addiction industry at least half a dozen times, merely for challenging them and publicly criticizing the validity and harmfulness of their methods. Multiple of my colleagues have also been threatened in similar ways, for daring to criticize the monolithic, cultlike industry of sex addiction therapists. I welcome anyone to republish this on their own blogs or websites, not to promote myself in any way, but so as to increase the chances that a patient mandated to complete the SDI by a sex addiction therapist, has the ability to learn for themselves the limitations of this instrument.

Since I first published this, IITAP has taken down the SDI Manual which was previously publicly available on their website. This has the unfortunate result of making a test which was already less than transparent, even more obscure to outside criticism, and limiting even more the degree to which a potential patient can be informed about this test.

https://drdavidley.wordpress.com/2016/09/03/the-sexual-dependency-inventory-an-invalid-instrument-a-tale-of-intimidation-lack-of-transparency-and-suppression-of-criticism/

Here is the full article:

The Sexual Dependency Inventory  An Invalid Instrument?

First published on Psychology Today  Women Who Stray blog of David J. Ley PhD. 9/1/16

Clinical and psychological assessment is a nuanced, and sophisticated area. Its also a deeply contentious area, with many pet assessments which are developed by thought leaders, to evaluate or test their specific theories. Psychological instruments convey a level of science, and therapeutic value, which are sometimes deserved, and other times are used in ways which potentially violate informed consent by patients.

For example  the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory is a test with a great deal of history, often used in business settings and in relationship counseling. But, modern research largely reveals that it is a clinically meaningless and invalid (link is external)test based on antiquated, failed theories. Ethical, informed clinicians no longer use the test, so as not to waste our patients time, or to give them the false idea that the test is serving a clear clinical function. The sex addiction treatment industry commonly uses similar outdated and unsupported instruments in ways which pose potentially serious ethical concerns. The Sexual Dependency Inventory (SDI) is one such measure, prominently used by many in the sex addiction industry, despite some alarming weaknesses.

The Internet is filled with numerous online tests and screening tools which allegedly measure sex addiction. Most of these online tests are free, and appear to work as marketing tools for sex addiction therapists and treatment programs. One however, the Sexual Dependency Inventory-Revised (SDI-R) 4.0, is quite expensive, and commonly used by many sex addiction therapists who sometimes mandate their patients complete the test as a part of treatment. I recently encountered the SDI, in a forensic matter where a therapist had used the SDI 4.0 inappropriately, making custody recommendations on the basis of this test. This case led me to take a closer look at this instrument, which in turn, led to serious concerns about its use in clinical settings. I chose to draft this this post in order to better inform patients who may encounter ill-advised use of the SDI by therapists.

The Sexual Dependency Inventory

The SDI-R 4.0 is described by authors as the only broadband measure of potentially problematic sexual behaviors and preoccupations (Green et al (link is external), p. 127). It is a very long instrument, with over five hundred items, which allegedly assess an extremely wide variety of sexual and relationships issues. I was able to find and download the SDI R 4.0 Therapist Manual (link is external) from IITAP, free on their website and is not identified as restricted or copyrighted. Nevertheless, in keeping with professional ethics regarding test security, I choose not to publish any verbatim items from the test in this article. Quotes used herein are used under Fair Use doctrine, and for the protected purposes of clinical criticism.

The International Institute for Trauma and Addiction Professionals (IITAP) is an organization, founded by Patrick Carnes, PhD. and currently run by his daughter, which established their own training and certification for sex addiction therapists, and offers the SDI-R 4.0 for a substantial fee through their website www.recoveryzone.com (link is external). The test is accessed by individuals through an interesting and relatively unique use of tokens which are purchased by clinicians, and then distributed to patients by the therapist. Its apparently up to the clinician to set the fee for the patient to receive a token which allows them access to the test and report of test results. Most clinicians charge their patients between $85 and $250 per test. (This cost range is supported by the websites of various online therapists, as well as internal emails from IITAP staff.)

The Sexual Dependency Inventory  Revised, 4.0 is a muddled instrument which takes a kitchen-sink approach to testing, essentially throwing everything in, to see what sticks. It has few scientific publications describing it or its development. A very early (1998) version of the test was briefly evaluated and showed some initial potential value. However, that version was less than a fourth as long as the currently administered test. There have been no further validity evaluations (link is external)of the SDI-R 4.0 or replications of these results. Applying these initial findings from 1998 to the current version is contrary to industry standards: For instance, each time the WAIS (IQ test) is updated, the makers must develop and publish extensive statistical modeling and conversion scores, to allow comparison of the new version to past results. There is no evidence that such comparisons have been conducted or published. Indeed, in much of what is written about the SDI, it is typically quite difficult to determine what version of the test is being described. When there are apparently substantial changes happening across versions, this is a troubling lapse.

The SDI-R 4.0 now includes within it a number of distinct instruments, such as the Sexual Addiction Screening Test (SAST), tests of attachment, assessments of motivation for change, and numerous items and scales which allege to distinguish or identify various sexual preoccupations, predilections and tendencies. The manual offers little information regarding any over-arching theory which ties these various items and tests together, and merely states The SDI is actually a whole battery of relevant tests organized into one cohesive report . (page 3 of Manual). Unfortunately, many of these individual tests have limitations and problems themselves and combining them all into a single measure would require research to evaluate the degree to which these instruments may overlap or even conflict, and whether their combined use leads to increased convergent validity in assessment and treatment. Moreover, there could be issues with ordering effect wherein responses to some questions impact how an individual responds to subsequent items. No such research is evident in the manual, or published literature.

The SDI relies of course on the disputed, consistently rejected pop psychology concept of sex addiction, as well as makes references to more unique concepts such as eroticized rage, sexual anorexia, and intimacy disorders. These concepts are used heavily in the theories of Patrick Carnes, PhD., but have not been adopted at a broader level in the mental health or addictions industry. They reflect antiquated and stigmatizing psychoanalytic theories. They are not accepted diagnoses or generally supported theories of psychological practice, mental health, or sexual development. It is also unclear how the items and structure for the SDI were deductively generated or developed. A 2015 paper indicated that during a structural analysis of the SDI, some items were retained as critical items, despite evidence that they had no statistical value.

The SDI-R 4.0 includes items assessing sexual behaviors related to various sexual subcultures, from the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender communities, to swinging communities, and those who engage in kink-related or BDSM types of behaviors. These varied items, and issues imply that these behaviors are inherently evidence of disturbance in relationship, sexuality or mental health. There is no evidence in the manual, or in published research, that these items have been normed on members of these sexual populations who are not experiencing problems. As a result, it is quite likely that this test will inaccurately assess individuals who are struggling or questioning with their sexual orientation, kink, or interest in nonmonogamy.

In 1992, SDI author Patrick Carnes wrote (link is external): The giving or receiving of pain, also known as sadomasochism or S&M, is a type of sexually addictive behavior in which pain is associated with sexual pleasure. There is a blatant imbalance of power between the giver and the receiver, although both partners may be consenting. . . . Victims may perceive their feelings towards their torturer as loving, but there is no genuine trust or intimacy when a relationship is based on hurting one another. This inaccurate and biased perception of BDSM relationships still pervades the SDI.

People who practice BDSM are often stigmatized inappropriately by sex addiction therapists.

Source: Via Wikimedia Commons

The SDI-R 4.0 Manual and test interpretation contains troubling errors regarding sexual disorders, such as this statement: Dressing and behaving like the other gender with a psychological preference to be the other gender (transvestitism) (page 35 of manual) actually appears to be describing the issue of transgender or gender dysphoria. Transvestism is a paraphilia related to wearing the opposite genders clothing. Similar confusion regarding cross-dressing is noted in the manual. Errors such as these in a published clinical test, are troubling and invite a high potential for misinterpretation by both patient and therapist. They suggest a significant lack of awareness of sexological or sexual health treatment in the creation and development of this instrument. Given that it purports to assess and measure paraphilias and sexual behaviors, this is quite troubling.

Another glaring error lies in the marketing and general descriptions of the test, by the therapists who use it. It is frequently described online by clinicians who use it, as having 96.5% accuracy (link is external). The origin of this misstatement is in the manual, where one subtest, the SAST is described as having been proven 96.5% accurate in identifying a clinical population. (page 39, manual). Even this statement about the SAST is disputable, as there is no true clinical definition or criterion for such sexual behavior problems, and the SAST is not congruent with the most recent criteria proposed for Hypersexual Disorder. The SAST may be prone to false positives, because of its inclusion of issues related to moral and social attitudes towards sex. The fact that therapists use this statement inaccurately suggests either ignorance or deceptive advertising on their part  either of which are troubling.

Validity testing is a critical component in the development of any psychological test, and is a way to determine if a given test identifies issues that distinguish a clinical population from a nonclinical one. In other words, if there was research showing that the test misidentified a person who is having no problems related to sex, then we would be concerned that this test may more generally mistakenly pathologize normal sexual variations in people. One of the severe weaknesses of the SDI, is its lack of clinical cutoff scores which identify problematic users from a normative population. Thus, without these cutoff scores, there is great chance of pathologizing normal behaviors. The SDI has been described (link is external)as limited in its reliance on self-report, with no external validation of confirmation on the patients affirmations. Such self-report responses can easily be influenced by feelings of shame and guilt, as opposed to actual clinical issues. As far as I am able to determine, the only validity testing done on the SDI was conducted in 1998, on an early and different version of this test. As a result, we have no current evidence regarding what this instrument actually does.

Based upon the information reviewed and described above, this writer concludes that use of the SDI R 4.0 in clinical or forensic settings is extremely questionable, unless a patient is provided with informed consent regarding the limited validity and reliability of this experimental instrument. Results and predictions of the SDI-R 4.0 should be regarded with extreme skepticism without other corroborating information, test results or behavioral evidence. The report itself can mislead patients into a belief that the conclusions reflect a scientific or clinical evaluation that is definitive which has the potential to cause psychological harm to those taking the test. The SDI R 4.0 is an internal, home-grown instrument, used only within the isolated cottage industry of sex addiction treatment. It seems that the test has been created more for a revenue stream for its authors than as a benefit for patients. The absence of the SDI-R 4.0 in generally accepted literature and methods raises significant ethical concerns about therapists administering and charging patients for clinical use of this instrument.

People seeking help for sexual and relationship matters are extremely vulnerable, dealing with intense issues of guilt, shame, fear and isolation. They are eager and desperate for help and reassurance. Such individuals are unfortunately highly disposed to believe and trust based on the appearance of credibility and expertise. In dealing with such problems, clinicians must be extremely careful and thoughtful to educate patients about the limitations of our tools and methods. Therapists currently using the SDI-R 4.0 should undertake a critical evaluation of its role and usefulness in their therapeutic approach. There are numerous free tests available to them, with greater levels of research and support, which are less onerous for their patients, and which stand less likelihood of stigmatizing healthy aspects of sexual diversity.

Natasha Helfer Parker, LCMFT, CST can be reached at natashaparker.org. She authors the Mormon Therapist Blog, hosts the Mormon Mental Health and Mormon Sex Info Podcasts, writes a regular column for Sunstone Magazine and is the current president of the Mormon Mental Health Association. She has 20 years of experience working with primarily an LDS/Mormon clientele.
China 's Xinhua news agency, the mouthpiece of Beijing , quickly urged restraint after North Korea 's nuclear test on Friday.

State-run Xinhua said in a commentary that the nuclear test had "shocked the world" and was in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions, as well as running counter to the goal of denuclearization on the the Korean Peninsula.

The test, which reclusive North Korea claimed was a complete success, also added uncertainty to an already delicate and complicated geopolitical security situation, Xinhua said.

"All parties including North Korea should recognize that tumult on the peninsular, war and instability in Northeast Asia will benefit nobody," the commentary added.

The nuclear test was "unwise," the news agency, which is watched closely as a proxy for the Chinese government, concluded.

China is North Korea's only ally but has become increasingly impatient with the rogue nation, going as far as supporting new U.N sanctions against North Korea earlier this year.

But China's stance is complicated by the fact that it is also concerned by South Korea's r ecent deal with the U.S. to host an anti-missile defense system called THAAD - something North Korea has also opposed. The Xinhua commentary noted that South Korea's deal with the U.S on THAAD had contributed to a rise in tensions in the Korean Peninsula.

In a brief statement on Friday, China's Foreign Ministry said that was firmly opposed its neighbor's latest test and strongly urged North Korea to stop taking actions that heightened tension in the region.

China would stick to its promise of denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula and taking part in talks to resolve the issue, the ministry said.

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Patna: Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and Bihar Governor Ram Nath Kovind on Thursday gave a warm reception to India's Vice President Mohammed Hamid Ansari at the Patna Airport who arrived in the state capital on a two-day visit during which he will attend a number of events.

Top Bihar officials including Director General of Police (DGP) P. K. Thakur, Home Department Chief Secretary Amir Subhani, Cabinet Secretary Brajesh Mehrotra, Patna Divisional Commissioner Anand Kishore, and District Magistrate Sanjay Agrawal were among many who were present at the airport to greet the VP.

After touching down Patna briefly, the Vice President left for Nalanda International University where he met with students coming from a host of nations.

Ansari was given a tour of the area that also included relics of the ancient Nalanda University.

He returned to Patna late evening where he will spend his night at the Raj Bhawan.

Ansari will attend an event at St. Michael's High School and another at the Bihar Chamber of Commerce on Friday.
Patna: Alarmed by water-logging and a piece of mountain shifting due to heavy rain in the area posing major threat to people living below it, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Thursday rushed to Gaya to take stock of the situation first hand.

{gallery}newsimages2016/sept/090816_2{/gallery}With news of a large boulder having moved more than five feet in the last three days alone, residents of Durga Sthaan in Gaya were ordered to evacuate the region within 24 hours.

"I am imploring people of Durga Sthaan to pick their essential belongings and move to the relief camp set up by the district administration. The local government has made excellent arrangement for people to stay at the shelter where food will be provided to them," Kumar said.

The Chief Minister assured the people of action against the moving rock saying he was contacting the Center to send experts to either stabilize the boulder or help move it elsewhere to protect people living in its path of movement.

Kumar also visited areas in the grip of water-logging and ordered the officials to get rid of the water on a war-footing level and spray the entire area with bleaching powder to stop mosquitoes from breeding in still water.
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About 75% of military recruits arrive at a training base with no bank account and have to be bussed to a local bank to open one, says Jill Castilla, CEO of Citizens Bank of Edmond. The bank's team is building a platform that will help service members save and build credit.
Russian banks ready to rush to Iran: Report

09/09/16

Source: Press TV

Russian banks have announced readiness to enter Iran's banking sector at a time that their Western rivals are failing to do so over fear of the impacts of remaining US sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

Russian banks say they are ready to enter Iran's banking sector and help facilitate the country's overseas transactions particularly now that Western financial institutions are dragging their feet to do so even though sanctions against the country have been lifted.

The Moscow-based newspaper Izvestiya wrote in a report that Russian banks are striving to be the first in line after the removal of sanctions against Iran in January.

Experts in the banking sector told the newspaper that while Western banks are waiting for guidance from the authorities on their prospects for cooperation with Iran, Russian banks are keen to get a head start.

"Iran is emerging from years of sanctions, the quality of banking services there has declined and Russian players can enter the market with interesting products for business and the public," Anatoliy Aksanov of Russia's Association of Regional Banks was quoted as saying.

"It is obvious that the amount of trade between Russia and Iran is going to increase. It would be expedient to find a niche while there isn't stiff competition from other international organizations," Aksanov explained in the report that was also covered by Sputnik news agency.

Also, Izvestiya quoted a source in Russia's central bank as saying that it has already started talks with its Iranian counterpart to discuss cooperation in the country's financial sphere.

"Russia and Iran are preparing to increase trade, so the question has arisen of closer cooperation with the central bank," the source said.

In November last year, Russia's trade representative in Iran Andrey Lugansky told Rossiyskaya Gazeta that Russia and Iran were discussing the creation of a joint clearing bank to enable the two countries to increase their trade. The volume of trade between the two countries was $5 billion in 2015, much of which took place through intermediaries such as Cyprus and the UAE, he said.

Iran has been persistently urging European countries to take the required measures to encourage their banks to facilitate transactions with Tehran now that the sanctions have been removed.

However, the country's plea appears to have fallen on deaf ears so far.

Analysts have already emphasized that the banks remain wary of the impacts of the remaining American sanctions against Iran, specifically those that address banking transactions with the country.

Reports earlier said they wanted a promise that the US would not prosecute or punish them for transactions involving Iran - a step the US has so far been reluctant to take.

In May, US Secretary of State John Kerry told a meeting of top EU bankers that they would not be penalized for conducting or facilitating business with Iran.

However, European banks have already emphasized that Kerry's assurances are not enough and a series of confusions that remain over transactions with Iran need to be cleared by Washington.
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The U.K. government has published a report on the staggering scale of surveillance in the country last year.

The report, compiled by the Interception of Communications Commissioners Office (IOCCO), covers the surveillance activities of the U.K.s three main intelligence agencies (MI5, the Secret Intelligence Service, and GCHQ, the Government Communications Headquarters), the tax authority, and a number of police forces.

It shows that warrants for the interception of communications rose 9 percent and that authorities continue to collect communications metadata  information about who called or connected to whom, when, how often  with abandon.

Lawmakers are still debating a new Investigatory Powers Bill that, at one stage, threatened an end to the use of end-to-end encryption systems such as instant messaging app Telegram.

Police and intelligence services are often in a hurry to use their existing surveillance powers, the report shows: One-ninth of the metadata collection was approved without any paperwork, an option that is only available where there is an immediate threat to life or an urgent operational requirement and there is no time to complete the normal written process, according to the report.

That could be a sign that the other eight-ninths of the collections arent exactly helping them figure out whats going on.

The report minimizes the impact of the surveillance, using innocuous terms like item of communications data to refer to a whole month of incoming and outgoing call records for a mobile phone.

Government bodies gathered 761,702 such items in 2015. Comparable figures for 2014 arent available due to a change in the reporting regime: Previously, it was the number of applications for items of communications data that had to be reported, but an application could request several items. Some 517,236 such applications were made in 2014.

Phone numbers were the most popular way of identifying targets, accounting for 82.6 percent of the data. Internet identifiers such as email or IP addresses were used to target 14.1 percent of the data-gathering, bank account or credit card numbers 2.5 percent, and postal addresses 0.8 percent.

Police forces were far and away the most prolific spies, acquiring 93.7 percent of the data; traditional intelligence services gathered only 5.7 percent, with the remaining 0.6 percent accounted for by local government bodies and regulatory agencies.

While were often told surveillance is necessary to prevent terrorism, only 0.9 percent of the data was gathered with the goal of preventing terrorism. The biggest targets of the surveillance were the prevention of drug offenses (24 percent), sexual offenses (12 percent), theft and burglary (9 percent), fraud and deception (8 percent), homicide (6 percent), violence (5 percent), robbery (4 percent), harassment (3 percent), possession of weapons (3 percent), and miscellaneous crimes against society (3 percent).

A further 6 percent were vaguely described as national security.

While communications service providers can be ordered to retain data for up to 12 months in case it is needed in an investigation, 88 percent of the data requested was less than four months old  and the vast majority of that a matter of days old.

About two-thirds of applications for surveillance approval were waved through; only about one in 12 were rejected, the rest being returned for further justification or clarification.

The necessity and proportionality of the surveillance were the most common reasons for rejecting or returning requests.

IOCCOs report also tracks warrants for interception of the content of calls and communications. It said 3,059 interception warrants were issued in 2015, a 9 percent increase on 2014. The number had remained stable between 2013 and 2014, after falling from 3,372 in 2012. One-third of the 2015 warrants was issued for reasons of national security, the rest for the prevention of serious crime, the proportion stable since 2014.

While the authorities collection of metadata is short-term, almost impulsive, their listening activities are more systematic and long-term. The interception warrants have an initial duration of three or six months, and can be prolonged. Around half of the years warrants were still in effect at year-end, and some interceptions had been going on for longer than a year, the report noted.
The Federal Aviation Administration has advised passengers not to turn on or charge their Galaxy Note 7 smartphones on board aircraft, following reports of exploding batteries in the device made by Samsung Electronics.

The U.S. aviation regulator said Thursday in a statement that in the light of the incidents and concerns raised by Samsung about the devices, it also advises passengers not to stow the phones away in any checked baggage.

Samsung last week offered to replace the phones for its customers in the wake of 35 cases reported worldwide as of Sept. 1 that suggested a battery cell issue in some of the devices. The company said it was conducting an inspection with suppliers to identify possible affected batteries in the market. The company stopped meanwhile sales of the Galaxy Note 7.

A consumer group protested against the manner the recall was conducted, claiming that the phones were being sold in the U.S. on Friday by multiple retailers after Samsungs announcement that it had stopped selling the phones. Consumer Reports said the recall had to be done officially with the involvement of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), which would have made it illegal to sell the phones. CPSC is charged with protecting the public from risk of injury or death linked with consumer products under its jurisdiction.

Samsung did not immediately comment on the FAA move.

Three Australian airlines, including Qantas, its unit Jetstar and Virgin Australia, have prohibited their passengers from using or charging the Galaxy Note 7 during flights because of concerns over the phones batteries, Reuters reported on Thursday.

In a bid to placate customers, Samsung offered to swap existing Note 7 phones for newer versions of the model to be available in the next week. The U.S. Product Exchange Program, announced Friday, for example, also offered to exchange current Galaxy Note 7 devices for a Galaxy S7 or Galaxy S7 edge and replacement of any Note 7 specific accessories, with a refund of the price difference between devices.

Samsung also offered consumers a US$25 gift card or bill credit from select carrier retail outlets when choosing a Galaxy S7 family device or the Galaxy Note 7 within the exchange program.
They say you shouldnt judge a book by its cover, but a new imaging system from MIT can see right through the cover and read the book while its still closed.

Thats thanks primarily to terahertz radiation, the band of electromagnetic radiation between microwaves and infrared light, and the tiny gaps of air between the pages of any closed book.

Terahertz radiation can distinguish between ink and blank paper in a way that X-rays cant, and it also offers much better depth resolution than ultrasound does. The prototype new system developed by researchers from MIT and Georgia Tech uses a standard terahertz camera to emit ultrashort bursts of radiation and then measure how long it takes for that radiation to be reflected back. An algorithm then gauges the distance to each of the books individual pages.

Equipped with that data, the system uses two different measures of the reflections energy to extract information about the chemical properties of the reflecting surfaces, all the while doing its best to filter out the irrelevant noise produced along the way. In that way, it distinguishes paper with ink from blank paper, using a separate algorithm to interpret the often distorted or incomplete images as individual letters.

The researchers tested their prototype on a stack of papers, each with one letter printed on it, and found that it could correctly identify the letters on the top nine sheets.

The Metropolitan Museum in New York has expressed interest in the system as a way to examine antique books without touching them, said Barmak Heshmat, a research scientist at the MIT Media Lab. The technology could be used to analyze any materials organized in thin layers, he added, such as coatings on machine parts or pharmaceuticals.

A paper describing the work was published Friday in Nature Communications.
Twenty-two years after Norton Air Force Base closed, the Republican candidate for Californias 31st Congressional District is campaigning on attracting a new base to replace it.

It would obviously be an economic boon for the city, but its a national security issue, Paul Chabot told supporters in San Bernardino on Thursday. Today, our military is at pre-World War II levels. Our nation is unable to provide the national security at the level we all know and anticipate from being the greatest power on the face of this Earth.

The Department of Defense has been reducing its active-duty forces for years. The U.S. Army had 479,172 active-duty soldiers in March, its smallest force since 1940. By the end of the month, officials expect to be at 475,00 soldiers.

The issue is one of two, along with Democratic incumbent Rep. Pete Aguilars support for the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, that Chabot has repeatedly raised on the campaign trail. Chabot, who has never held elective office, touts his background as a Navy reservist as a selling point.

My No. 1 priority for this city is to bring back the base, without a doubt, Chabot said. We need to rebuild our military and we also have significant economic problems in San Bernardino.  To me, theres no better place to put a joint base than in the heart of San Bernardino.

Chabots ambitions for a Joint Base San Bernardino hinge on the Obama White Houses focus on China and the Pacific nations  dubbed Pivot to the Pacific  over the last five years. Last year, an evaluation of the effort by military news outlet Stars and Stripes showed the administration had spent about $9 billion since 2011 to shift its military power westward.

When elected to Congress, as the Pentagon continues to roll out their Pivot to the Pacific, I will fight to make sure that we do not build brand-new bases on the West Coast in areas that do not already have a base, Chabot told his supporters Thursday. The United States government should only go back and put a base into an area where theyve pulled it out and the area is economically devastated.

Today, San Bernardino International Airport sits on the site of the former Norton base.

Inland Empire economist John Husing, who wrote his doctoral thesis on the base closings impact on the region, chuckled when he heard the idea.

Exactly how is he going to do that? Husing said Thursday. A new freshman legislator is going to bring the military back to a base that they closed because it wasnt very useful? I find that people running for office do and say some amazing things.

As a congressman, Chabot wouldnt have the ability to directly request a base be opened in San Bernardino County, according to Jack Pitney, a professor of American politics at Claremont McKenna College.

It would be very difficult to pass legislation specifying that a new (or renovated) base would have to be in a particular location, Pitney wrote in an email. It may be that he plans to persuade the Pentagon to pick a San Bernardino site, but a freshman member might not have much influence, especially if he is not on the relevant committee.

Its possible that the next president will open more military bases, but it hasnt been explicitly promised during the campaign, Pitney said.

Even if there were new bases coming with a new presidential administration, Husing doesnt expect San Bernardino County would land one.

The odds are beyond impossible. There is no way on this Earth that this can happen, he said. Im not even sure that itd be good for the economy. That base has been the center of the logistics and distribution industries, which has been the source of thousands of jobs.

He pointed to employers such as Amazon, which opened its sixth regional fulfillment center last year, and the regional distribution hubs of Stater Bros.

And thats just scratching the surface, Husing said.

Chabot acknowledges that there are potentially 434 other members of the House of Representatives who would love to see a base built or reopened in their districts.

If they were smart, theyd be fighting for a base as well, he said. Theres six on the East Coast, weve got one on the West Coast, all the way up in Washington. It doesnt make sense.

Contact the writer: byarbrough@scng.com or @LBY3 on Twitter
He dances, he hops, he calls out for a mate.

But hes not likely to find one.

He  or perhaps she, we really dont know  is an East African crowned crane, also known as a grey crowned crane. As the name suggests, its clearly not native to Upland.

But according to locals, amateur photographers and bird enthusiasts, this handsome fellow has made a home in Cucamonga Basin No. 6, a flood control and groundwater recharge area south of the Colonies Crossroads shopping center near the 210 Freeway.

Calls to both the Los Angeles and San Diego zoos indicated theyre not short a crane. But the tag on the left leg indicates he belonged to someone.

Alta Loma resident Suzanne Stull spotted the bird Monday morning.

I like to take bird and wildlife photos and hiked around the basin, hoping to find something interesting, she said in an email. The bird was so interesting, she had to take to the internet to dig up information.

Contacted by this publication, Steve Duncan, treasurer of San Dimas-based Avicultural Society of America, headed east Thursday to Upland. Duncan, who owns an East African crowned crane, raises them to sell to private collectors.

Grey crowned cranes are well-established in captivity, but they are by no means common, he said in an email. There really arent that many people who have the space to keep them. They are mostly found in zoos or in large private collections with waterfowl.

Duncan first heard of a similar bird around Archibald Avenue and the 210 about six months ago, but he wrote it off as a misidentification. Now he believes Stulls sighting is the same bird.

Duncan gave the bird a clean bill, if you pardon the pun, of health.

It is very healthy, but does appear quite lonely. It called repeatedly while I was there. Crowned cranes have a strange honking call they do to make contact with their own kind, he said. The birds are monogamous and very loyal to their mates. The dancing and stomping moves are social behavior the crane would use in courtship.

Duncan said it may be wishful thinking on the cranes part.

The land the crane has made its new home is now owned by San Bernardino County, said Charles Moorrees, general manager for the San Antonio Water Co. No employees have mentioned the bird, although egrets are common in the area.

What a beautiful bird, Moorrees said after seeing a photo.

The cranes wetland habitat in Africa is under severe pressure from agricultural development so their numbers in the wild are plummeting, Duncan said.

It is important to keep the existing captive population going for educational purposes, research and as a backup population, Duncan said, adding that the birds in private U.S. collections are all captive-bred from stock imported many years ago.

It turns out the basin makes a good home, Duncan said in a phone interview. The birds hang out a foot-deep in water so the splashing will alert them to predators and they eat almost anything  roots, insects, small invertebrates, reptile and fish.

Theyre not that picky.
Elliott Duchon was driving away from his office last week when he got a text message with stunning news.

It was the start of what he calls the most unusual situation of his 12-year tenure at the helm of the Jurupa Unified School District.

Two unconfirmed cases of leprosy were reported at one of his schools, sparking an avalanche of national media attention and parent anger.

I initially thought, leprosy? I didnt even know it existed anymore, Duchon said, recalling his reaction after getting the text from Assistant Superintendent Dave Doubravsky.

Duchon returned to his office and called a meeting of a handful of cabinet members. They quickly came to a unanimous decision to send a letter to parents informing them of the possible leprosy cases at Indian Hills Elementary School in Jurupa Valley.

I knew it was going to evoke a strong reaction from parents, said Duchon, 65. I knew, as soon as the press got ahold of it, it would evoke a strong reaction.

He was right.

Over the next several days, Duchon fielded more than two dozen calls from local and national media outlets. Fearing infection, nearly 100 parents kept their kids home Tuesday, Sept. 6. One child went to school that day wearing a mask.

Duchon said the district had a moral responsibility to send the letter, though it wasnt legally required to tell parents.

As a school district, as a public agency, we owe the public information, he said. Second, it gets out anyway. Even if its five people, eight people or 10 people, they would say, Why didnt you tell us?

In an effort to calm frazzled nerves, Duchon drove his 1993 red Ford pickup to the elementary school about a mile and a half from his home.

Four TV reporters hungry for details greeted him.

All of a sudden there were 10 (microphones) in front of me, Duchon said. Ive never had 10 mikes in front of me before.

He also talked to parents, trying to assure them there was no health risk to their children. If there were danger, Duchon said he wouldnt hesitate to cancel classes, as happened when the district closed Mission Bell Elementary School for several days during a swine flu outbreak in 2009.

LONG CAREER

This isnt the first storm Duchon has had to weather since his hiring as Jurupas superintendent in 2004.

He taught elementary school in the district from 1977 to 1980 before leaving for a 20-year stint as an administrator at the Riverside County Office of Education. He ran unsuccessfully for Riverside County Superintendent of Schools before joining Jurupa schools as deputy superintendent of business services and governmental relations in 2001.

He was personally sued by former Jurupa school board member Michael Rodriguez, who accused Duchon and the district of discrimination, and violations of due process, equal protection and civil rights laws in 2008. The lawsuit was ultimately dismissed.

The district also became the center of controversy in 2006, when a Jurupa Valley High School student, Josh Denhalter, was suspended for three days for promoting a protest against illegal immigration across the street from campus. Denhalter passed out fliers at school encouraging students to walk out. Carl Harris, school board president at the time, said the fliers promoted truancy, which justified the suspension.

Current school board President Sheryl Schmidt has been impressed with Duchons handling of the leprosy situation.

She noted that Duchon checked with Riverside County public health officials before releasing any information but believed it was in parents best interest to know what was happening.

Its a hard position to be in, Schmidt said. In a small community like Jurupa Valley, people are going to be upset no matter what. They want to know who the kids are and what classes the kids are in. That is information we would never release to anybody.

Duchon said hes concerned about the safety of the two students who may become targets of bullying and harassment if people learn their names. The cases of leprosy were diagnosed by a doctor but are considered unconfirmed by the Riverside County public health department and the school district.

I try to be calm, stable but also firm, he said. This is about the kids as much as anything, including the kids who had the initial diagnosis. Its my job to make sure theyre (not bullied).

CALM AND COLLECTED

Sam Knight, a member of the school board that hired Duchon, said the superintendent communicated with sincerity and clarity when talking about the situation with the media and parents.

With leprosy, its like, Wow, that could cause a panic, said Knight, 73. I think he was cool, calm and collected. You wont find a better superintendent in the United States than Elliott Duchon.

Despite the high praise, Duchon has a lot of convincing to do with skeptical parents.

Mayali Padilla, whose daughter attends kindergarten at Indian Hills, said shes still worried and wants to know what grades the two students are in.

Let us know how theyre keeping the kids safe, Padilla said. How are they preventing contamination between students? Kids touch everywhere.

Padilla said she was working Wednesday night, Sept. 7, and couldnt attend a packed meeting at the school at which Barbara Cole, director of Disease Control for Riverside County, told anxious parents that sharing a classroom wont spread the disease.

Whether or not the cases are confirmed, the information is the same: There is no risk to your children, Cole said.

Martha Hernandez, who has two daughters in kindergarten and fifth grade at Indian Hills, said she appreciates that the school and district keep parents informed. Parents also get letters about suspicious activities in the nearby park and surrounding neighborhood, she said.

They put out the information before we get it through other channels, Hernandez said. At other schools, parents are the last ones to find out what happens.

Duchon said he doesnt expect the leprosy issue to go away soon and said it could get worse if upset parents cant be calmed.

He doesnt like being in the spotlight but understands it comes with the territory.

Ive been around long enough to know people dont always trust answers from the government, he said. Bringing truth to people is always difficult. People are skeptical. Theyre worried. Its very hard when youre providing as much factual information as we possibly can.

Contact the writer: 951-368-9292, stwall@scng.com, @pe_swall
North Korea carried out its fifth and possibly biggest ever nuclear test on Friday, Seoul said, triggering an earthquake measuring magnitude 5.0 and condemnation from neighbors.

We estimate the North has carried out the biggest-ever test, a statement by South Koreas Joint Chiefs of Staff cited by Yonhap news agency said, adding that the yield was thought to have been 10 kilotons.

The bomb dropped by U.S. forces on Hiroshima, Japan, had a yield of 16 kilotons.

State media in the North also confirmed that the test had been successful.

The quake was located near North Koreas Punggye-ri underground nuclear test site, where all of the countrys tests have been carried out since it began testing in 2006 and where recent satellite imagery had shown fresh activity.

It is thought Fridays test could have been planned to coincide with the 68th anniversary of the Pyongyang regime, founded by Kim Il Sung and now led by his grandson Kim Jong Un.

South Korean President Park Geun Hye slammed the test as a provocation that would lead to further international sanctions and said Seoul would use all possible measures to force Pyongyang to give up its nuclear program.

Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said North Koreas nuclear program seriously undermines international peace and security and that Tokyo would consider further sanctions.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had earlier also told reporters that a confirmation of the nuclear test would be absolutely unacceptable and we would have to lodge a strong protest.

South Koreas National Security Council was also holding an emergency meeting following the test, a spokesman for the presidents office said.

In Washington, National Security Council spokesman Ned Price was quoted by U.S. media as saying, We are aware of seismic activity on the Korean Peninsula in the vicinity of a known North Korean nuclear test site.

We are monitoring and continuing to assess the situation in close coordination with our regional partners.

China, traditionally Pyongyangs only ally, said it had activated an emergency plan, the second highest level on a four-step plan for environmental emergencies, and begun monitoring radioactivity on its border.

The Environment Ministry in Beijing said no abnormal levels had so far been detected at monitoring stations in Chinas three northeastern provinces.

There was no other immediate reaction from China.

Tension has been high since North Koreas fourth nuclear test in January and a controversial rocket launch in February, events which led the United Nations Security Council to tighten sanctions on the isolated nation.

The council again condemned Pyongyang on Tuesday, a day after it fired three ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan, coinciding with a G20 summit in the Chinese city of Hangzhou.
With cooler weather on the horizon, many Inland area motorcycle riders are dusting off their leather jackets, synchronizing their carburetors and replacing their tires in preparation for their favorite rides.

Though the Inland Empire is filled with scenic routes conducive to riding all types of motorcycles during most of the year, five rides in particular lead to windy roads, or twisties, breathtaking views and unforgettable adventures. And falls milder temperatures make the rides irresistable.

Riverside resident Kris Blake, who organizes the Riverside Antique Cycle Riders, said the Inland Empires well-maintained roads and little traffic  compared to Los Angeles and Orange counties  make it a Mecca for motorcycle riding.

Orange County is too uptight, and Los Angeles is too congested, Blake said. Over here, you are more free.

In addition to its idyllic riding conditions, Blake noted that the Inland area is loaded with historic landmarks and hidden gems that make rides even more memorable.

ORTEGA HIGHWAY

The Ortega Highway, or Highway 74, offers a snaky 30-mile ride through the Santa Ana Mountains. Whether starting in Lake Elsinore and heading east towards San Juan Capistrano, or the other way around, Ortega Highway is a must-do Southern California ride, Blake said.

Riverside resident and vintage motorcycle collector Bill Siples, 58, recommends riding Ortega Highway during the weekend to avoid commuter traffic.

Its nice during the week, too, but traffic does get heavy, Siples said. Theres a couple of spots to pull off with great views. For local people, thats a fun little ride.

A popular spot for bikers to stop and grab a bite to eat is The Lookout Roadhouse located at 32107 Ortega Highway. The American-style diners menu has all the post-ride and pre-ride classics including BBQ ribs, ice-cold beer and all-day breakfast. The restaurants patio has a panoramic view of Lake Elsinore.

IDYLLWILD

Part of motorcycle ridings allure is the thrill of the journey, as well as the destination, Siples said.

Thats what makes the ride though Idyllwild  littered with shady sections and unique views  his favorite.

I like a ride with a little bit of purpose, rather than just going somewhere and coming back real quick, Siples said.

From Interstate 10 in Banning, follow the signs to Highway 243, and head southeast into Idyllwild. Along the way, riders will pass by palm trees in the desert and dense woods in the mountains, according to Butler Motorcycle Maps Southern California G1 map. In Mountain Center, riders can head west on Highway 74 on the winding mountain road to Hemet.

Ratchet Ron Morris, of the Christian Motorcyclists Association, said he likes riding Hwy. 243 because it gets relatively little traffic, and is well-maintained.

BIG BEAR

Those looking for a long ride in the mountains can head to Highway 38 through the San Bernardino National Forest to Big Bear Lake.

Morris, of Yucaipa, who sometimes leads groups on the ride, sums it up as two things: good clean road and beautiful country.

There are several lookout spots to park the bike and enjoy the scenery, Morris said. He recommends stopping at some point between the Mill Creek Ranger Station in Mentone and the Forest Falls area to take in the beautiful mountain landscape.

Farther up the road past Angelus Oaks, riders will come across Seven Oaks Road. Morris recommends taking the road to the Seven Oaks Mountain Resort, which has a quaint general store that serves a tasty lunch. Morris said he usually orders a hamburger there.

From there, the road rounds Sugarloaf Mountain and leads to Big Bear Lake  another Southern California gem.

After the lake, Highway 38 ends. To continue down the mountain, riders must take Highway 18, which typically gets more traffic than the 38 and features some steep drop-offs. The traffic tends to ease up past Running Springs, Morris said.

WRIGHTWOOD

The Angeles Crest Highway, or Highway 2, through Wrightwood into La Canada Flintridge is another spectacular mountain ride, motorcycle enthusiasts say.

Starting on Highway 138 in the Cajon Junction, riders can take Highway 2 up to Wrightwood and into the Angeles National Forest. For about 55 miles, riders can enjoy 360 degree views of the forest, according to the Butler Motorcycle Map guide.

Fires and mudslides occasionally shut down portions of Highway 2, so its important to check on the road conditions prior to riding out, the guide said.

Morris said the roads also can be littered with rocks and debris.

About 30 miles east of Wrightwood is Newcombs Ranch restaurant and bar, where Morris recommends stopping.

Theres good food there, and usually a lot of bikers, he said.

MT. BALDY

Last, but not least, on this list is the ride up to Mt. Baldy, and down Glendora Ridge Road.

Starting from either Mountain Avenue in Upland, or Mt. Baldy Road in Claremont, riders can head up the steep, twisty mountain road up to the Mt. Baldy Lodge restaurant and bar  a campy place to stop for lunch or a cold sunset brew.

From there, riders can either continue to the Mt Baldy Ski Lifts and come back down or head left at the fork on Glendora Ridge Road.

The steep ride down the mountain is popular with sport bikers.

The pavement is like butter and the corners are snug, according to the Butler Motorcycle Map guide.

Contact the writer: 951-368-9284, atadayon@scng.com, @PE_alitadayon
Marking a dramatic shift in philosophy and policy, the State Board of Education unanimously adopted a new and more complex system Thursday for evaluating California schools and districts using multiple measures of student achievement and school performance.

Standardized tests scores, the primary basis for judging schools in the past, will just be one component of the new state accountability system when it takes effect in the 2017-18 school year.

Also included will be graduation and suspension rates, an indicator of college and career readiness, progress of English learners in becoming proficient in English. Still to be fully developed will be measures of school climate and parent involvement.

The decision came after over two years of deliberations, involving dozens of hours of public testimony, from students who implored the board to make school climate a priority and parent advocates who want schools to be held more accountable for engaging students families.

Civil rights groups urged the board to use the new system as way to narrow achievement gaps. Business groups suggested ways to develop an effective way to measure whether students are ready for college and the workplace.

The more than 100 individuals who spoke Thursday reiterated those themes. But many prefaced their one minute remarks by praising board members, all of whom are appointed by Gov. Jerry Brown, for incorporating their ideas. The overall school accountability framework, they said, is solid.

We commend board and staff for monumental progress, said Estelle Lemieux, a lobbyist for the California Teachers Association. The evaluation rubrics should provide the foundation for dealing with the whole child, leading to more equitable treatment of students and improved results, she said.

Wesley Smith, executive director of the Association of California School Administrators, representing superintendents and other school district leaders, called the new accountability system a model for students across America.

Three years ago the Legislature approved legislation mandating that the State Board of Education pay attention to eight priority areas when it passed a new formula for funding schools.

Board member Sue Burr said laws guiding the boards work are clear.

Student subgroups that fail to improve in more than one priority area will get gradually more intensive help, starting with county offices of education. That could trigger involvement of a new state agency, the Collaborative for Educational Excellence, and ultimately to intervention by the state superintendent of public instruction.

The board, she said, would apply pressure on those charged with monitoring school districts. We take our responsibility seriously, she said.

But state board President school test

cautioned that an accountability system alone cannot move schools to improve. The new state agency, for example, wont be a magician that will raise the states low test scores in math, he said.

The tool for displaying the new accountability system will be fully developed over the next year. It will consist of several elements: like an instrument panel in a car, a one-page dashboard will show how well districts, schools and student groups rate on each performance indicator. It will also point to model practices that can guide school and district improvement.

Disagreements remain, however. The biggest is how to present school and district performance on each indicator. While the final design is months away, the board is leaning toward designating each indicators performance by color, without summarizing a schools performance in a single index or score.

Some parents who spoke at the meeting Thursday said they needed a simpler way to compare schools and understand how their schools are doing than what the state has in mind.

Christine Chu, a third grade teacher in Los Angeles Unified, said the board should be able to display how schools are doing in several areas, while also creating a summary that shows differences in school performance more clearly. The two approaches are not mutually exclusive, she said.

EdSource is an independent, nonprofit organization whose mission is to engage Californians on key education challenges.
Some of the toughest environmental laws in the nation just got tougher Thursday when Gov. Jerry Brown signed two bills meant to slow climate change within view of the Los Angeles skyline.

The governor, in an outside ceremony surrounded by some of Californias top lawmakers, put pen to paper at 11:37 a.m. to pass laws to extend the toughest greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals in the country and to invest in poor communities hardest hit by climate change.

These bills today, they keep California on the move, and are far-reaching, said Brown, before signing both bills at a former old field at a park just west of downtown. Climate change is real  and knowing that, California is taking action.

RELATED Why doesnt states climate-change effort solve riddle of cap-and-trade?

The bills, SB32 by outgoing state Sen. Fran Pavley and AB197 by Assemblyman Eduardo Garcia, were signed and celebrated by an estimated 100 officials and environmentalists from across the state at Vista Hermosa Natural Park, chosen for its environmental symbolism.

The park, a 10-acre urban wilderness in Westlake surrounded by peeling Victorians, was opened seven years ago next to the bungled Belmont Learning Center atop a contaminated former oil field.

At $300 million, the school now known as the Edward R. Roybal Learning Center was the costliest in the nation.

I think its wonderful that the governor chose this spot to exemplify what we need to do  keep the area green, keep the land clean, said Joe Edmiston, founding executive director of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority, which manages the park.

Brown was joined by key legislators who led the bills approval, including Senate President Pro Tempore Kevin De Leon, Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, Pavley, Garcia, Sen. Ricardo Lara and Assemblymen Reggie Jones-Sawyer, Jimmy Gomez, Richard Bloom and Matt Dababneh.

Pavleys SB32 comes a decade after her AB32, which compelled the state to enact the nations most stringent greenhouse gas reduction goals.

Her new law mandates the state reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030.

California is on track to meet that goal, according to the Governors Office, which aims to cut emissions to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. The statute codifies an executive order Brown issued last year.

Brown and other politicians cited intense opposition from industry lobbyists before the bills passed.

Pavely, the first mayor of Agoura Hills who soon will end 16 years in the Legislature, recalled the thick, brown layer of smog over Los Angeles.

Im a native Angeleno, who grew up in the San Fernando Valley, said Pavley, D-Agoura Hills, a former teacher with a masters in environmental planning from Cal State Northridge. In the 50s and 60s, for anyone old enough to remember those days, we had red flag alerts because of the auto pollution. So weve come a long way.

Pavley said SB32 will trigger more jobs in the clean-energy sector, demonstrating that the state can combat climate change while also spurring economic growth.

Garcias AB197, calls upon the state to focus its pollution reduction efforts on disadvantaged communities and to boost public oversight of the California Air Resources Board, in charge of regulating emission reductions.

Within Garcias poor Riverside and Imperial counties district, 6 in 10 children near the environmentally devastated Salton Sea have asthma, he said, and unemployment runs at 28 percent.

Our climate change policies and the signing of these two bills turns the page and focuses on people, said Garcia, D-Coachella.

Contact the writer: dbartholomew@scng.com or @DN_DanaBart on Twitter
Speaking at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley on Thursday, Republican vice presidential nominee Mike Pence said Donald Trump would carry on Reagans legacy of cutting business regulations, lowering corporate tax rates and expanding the military.

He also compared Trumps contentious relationship with the Republican establishment to Reagans early years.

They said Reagan was a celebrity and entertainer that entered politics late in life. Sound familiar? Pence asked. Truth be told, Reagan even made some in the Republican Party uneasy. They said he was too unrefined. Then the hinges of history started to swing.

Come Nov. 8, you will see the Reagan revolution live on.

Pence, the governor of Indiana whom Trump selected as his running mate in July, is visiting Southern California as part of a two-day fundraising swing.

The Reagan Library has become a popular campaign stop for GOP hopefuls.

Pence referenced the Dec. 2 San Bernardino massacre that left 14 people dead as an example of terrorism that he said has resulted from bad foreign policy and an understaffed military. He echoed statements Trump made Wednesday that their administration would increase the size of the Army and Marine Corps to 540,000 troops  a growth of more than 40,000 personnel.

As you learned here in California, (the threats) are closer than ever before, Pence said. We will hunt down and destroy those who would threaten our people.

Several of the more than 700 people in attendance said they didnt know much about Pence and came to hear how his views aligned with Trumps, whose stances they said they knew well. Asked what they wanted to hear the vice presidential hopeful promise, all said the same two things: a more powerful military and a better economy through less government regulation.

Pence vowed to accomplish the latter by lowering corporate tax rates so American companies can compete with businesses around the world and by renegotiating trade deals so they work for Americans. Pence and Trump have said they support free trade, but Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on foreign imports, saying it will protect American jobs. But Pence differs from his running mate by supporting the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal.

Pence Thursday also promised that Trump would appoint a Supreme Court justice identical to those appointed by Reagan: Antonin Scalia, Sandra Day OConnor and Anthony Kennedy.

Trumps choice of Pence as his running mate has been seen by many as an attempt to build a bridge to the GOP establishment. The Indiana governor has spent the last two months trying to persuade Republican politicians who have voiced hostility toward Trump to publicly support the campaign.

Trump has trailed Democrat Hillary Clinton in California polls by a large margin. A July 27 poll from the Public Policy Institute of California showed voters favored Clinton over Trump by a 16-point margin  46 percent for her and 30 percent for him. A more recent Washington Post poll showed a 24 percentage point lead for Clinton.

Pence was undeterred by those numbers.

I dont pay a whole lot of attention to the polls, he said Thursday.

Contact the writer: jgraham@scng.com or @JordanSGraham on Twitter
By Nelson Acosta HAVANA (Reuters) - U.S. sanctions cost Cuba $4.6 billion last financial year, the government said on Friday, and called on U.S. President Barack Obama to do more to ease the pressure in the spirit of improved relations between the two countries. Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez made the comments at the launch of an annual campaign for a United Nations resolution condemning the U.S. trade embargo put in place after Cuba's 1959 revolution, but which has softened a little under Obama. "The blockade imposed by the United States on Cuba persists," Rodriguez told reporters at a news conference. "The blockade is the main cause of the economy's problems and obstacle to development." Rodriguez said damages from April 2015 through March 2016 amounted to $4.6 billion and to $125.9 billion since the embargo's inception. This year's U.N. General Assembly vote, set for Oct. 26, will be the 25th time Cuba has marshaled international support against the embargo. Cuba usually wins overwhelming support for a resolution which is non-binding. Since Presidents Obama and Raul Castro stunned the world in December 2014 by announcing they would work to normalise relations, the Cold War foes have opened embassies, restored commercial flights, opened travel options and negotiated agreements on issues affecting the environment, law enforcement, the postal service and communications. Obama, who visited Cuba earlier this year, has also gradually poked holes in the embargo through executive orders. Rodriguez said the advances so far were positive but "limited and superficial" in the economic sphere. "President Obama reserves broad executive latitude that he can use up to his last minute in the White House," he said. More than 100 U.S. business delegations have visited Cuba since 2014 and around 300,000 Americans are expected to arrive this year under looser travel restrictions. U.S. telecommunications companies have signed roaming agreements, a Carnival cruise ship makes regular stops and a Havana hotel is under U.S. management. But many U.S. companies say the embargo makes business nearly impossible. Obama has insisted he opposes the embargo but can do little more because only the Republican-controlled Congress can lift it. Many experts beg to differ and are urging him to act before leaving office in January. "There are approximately 12 regulatory changes that the Obama administration can implement today which would have enormous impact upon opportunities for United States companies," John Kavulich, president of the N.Y.based U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, said. (Additional reporting by Marc Frank; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
The Ghana Power Compact, also known as Compact II, entered into force on Tuesday, September 6, this year, the Millennium Development Authority (MiDA) has announced.



The compact would provide Ghana with a grant of $498,200,000 to improve the performance of Ghanas power sector, unlock the countrys power sector, unlock the countrys economic potential, create jobs and reduce poverty.



Government has five years to implement the Compact programme through MiDA.



This means that the treaty signed on August 5, 2014 between the Republic of Ghana and the United States of America, represented by the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), has become effective, and Ghana now has access to the programme funds.



Owura Sarfo, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of MiDA, commenting on the development, said Ghana met all the conditions precedent to entry into force of the compact and submitted all the required documentation in that respect.



We believe that six projects have been carefully designed to address the root causes of the unavailable and unreliable power in our country, which is inextricably linked to the economic development of Ghana and poverty reduction.



ECG workers



Meanwhile, workers of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) have expressed anger at the Millennium Development Authority (MiDA) for showing gross disrespect to them concerning the privatization of the company.



National Secretary of ECG Senior Staff, Patrick Benyemi, speaking recently in an interview with Joy Fm, said the dealings of MiDA regarding the decision to give the nations power distributor to a concessionaire have been shrouded in secrecy which would affect the country in the foreseeable future.



ECG workers embarked on 8-hour daily strike for two days after it had staged a three-day strike over treatment meted out to them by MiDA regarding negotiations on the privatization of the company.



Their bid to draw MiDA to the negotiation table was dealt a terrible blow Wednesday following the coming into force of the Ghana Power Compact II signed between the governments of Ghana and United States of America (USA).



He noted that before handing over the company to the concessionaire, it was agreed that a monitoring performance would be established but that has not been done.



There was also supposed to be a tariff methodology that has to be determined by the Public Utility and Regulatory Commission (PURC) but this has not been put in place either.



With the ECG worth over $1 billion, Mr Benyemi wants to know how much the concessionaire is bringing on board to help revive the company as claimed by government.



ACEP



In a statement, the Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP) expressed worry about the effect of the strike by Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) workers on consumers of electricity.



Since the declaration of the strike, consumers have gone through various challenges to access services from ECG.



We find this unacceptable considering the effects of several years of erratic power supply already suffered by industrial, commercial and residential consumers.



We are of the view that the reasons for the decision to put the company on concession are not in doubt. It is well known that ECG has not provided satisfactory services to consumers of electricity over the years.



We also know that governments interference in the company concerning appointments to the Board and management, as well as its indebtedness to the company are partly to blame for the current state of the company.



Options



We propose that if the workers are opposed to the concession option, government must consider other forms of privatization, particularly a transfer of majority ownership of share (at least 51 percent) in ECG to a strategic partner selected through an open and competitive process or offload the shares to be acquired through the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE).



It is important to note that the leadership of the workers has already expressed its support for the stock exchange option.



This shows that we can make progress on privatization of the company if the government adopts our proposal.

Source: Daily Guide









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Featured Video
This week I wanted to write about the tidal waves sweeping along the coastal regions of Ghana from Keta to Biriwa, destroying canoes, outboard motors and in some cases destroying houses.



I understand the gods are angry with my people. The last time when I spoke with one of the gods, he told me that Simpa Panyin has desecrated the sanctity of the coastal areas, hence the anger.



But I dont want Lydia Forson to come after me. That girl is something else oo. She fears no fall, she gave it to a whole Archbishop of Ghana, Archbishop Duncan Williams. She took down almighty Manasseh Azure, and last week she went for Franklin Cudjoe. Who knows her next stop, maybe if she gets to know that am one of the few Ghanaian men-victims of women who beat men, she will spare me.



Do you remember I told you some time ago that I dont talk when I have visited the blue kiosk? This has been the biggest fight I have had with you, Simpa Panyin, since you last settled in me, that you dont have to say anything if you dont have anything to say. Saying something by all means, when you know you dont have one or two things to say, sometimes makes you feel array, and could land you in such situations when you, in fact, say nothing to represent something.



The last time I spoke with Nana Ekua, popularly known as Mzbel, she said all manner of things. That beautiful girl can talk oo. She said all manner of things about the tango the two of you shared in the past, and how she markets her music, and so on, and even denied that you are the father of her son, even though she confessed to have gone inside with you in the past.



It is obvious that Mzbel is beautiful, so I am wondering whether you have checked if her songs are actually written by herself? Do you care checking the authenticity of her songs, or your authenticity checks are restricted only to certificates of beautiful Legon girls?



Simpa Panyin, you do all oo; how do you suggest that beautiful women with first class degrees offered themselves to men for their qualifications? By what metrics would you achieve your results? Or dont you think that you are creating unnecessary negative attention for our sisters and friends who are perceived to be beautiful?



My first daughter is a female level 200 University of Ghana student. Abena Annan is certainly beautiful. She switched from Science to French while she was in form two SHS, and still made very brave grades. She is looking as though she might achieve a first class, and she is likely to apply to work with the UT Bank. Would you still subject Abenas first class certificate to sexual checks?



Last week Fathia Karim, a female medical student of KNUST, swept 13 out of the 15 academic awards on offer. Do you wonder what world awaits Dr. Fathia Karim? How do you see this display of ingenuity? Do you still think that she gave sex for her performances, is that the reason why she got all the awards, or you think she is not beautiful enough?



If Fathia exchanged sex for all these awards, then that will mean sleeping with the over 20 different lecturers she encountered, semester by semester, throughout her studies in the university, spanning level 100 up to the seven years of university education. Is that what you are suggesting?



I have, lately, been thinking of my childhood friend, Georgina Araba Osei Ama Ata Aidoo. We were both born in the same village, Sankor, Winneba. I was born a male, and she a beautiful female. I was given the opportunity to play freely, amongst friends, boys and girls alike. I was able to climb coconut, mangoes, and I was able to feel a hero of myself, swimming and all.



She was always insisted in the house, cooking, sweeping, washing, and drying. She was a good girl if she kept remaining in the house. She was a good girl if she cooked well, and it was ok if she did not perform well in school.



She was a scheming target of all the boys, old and young, and they jubilated if they succeeded in raping her. The boys felt heroic if they overpowered her, to force sex on her. And if she complained, she is said to be a bad girl who acted wrongly to attract the boys.



One day she mastered courage to report her rape ordeal to the Domestic Violence and Victims Support Unit of the Ghana Police Service. This poor unemployed girl was forced to pay something at the charge office for reporting her rapist to the police.



Now the police issued her with police medical form to go to the hospital for examination, a requirement for a successful prosecution of rape offenses. She goes to the government hospital, wishing to take advantage of the Domestic Violence Act, that victims of abuse, including rape, shall be examined, treated and medical report written for free.



But she gets to the doctor, without any tests, except physical examination, she is asked to pay GHC300 for the police report to be completed. This GHC300 is almost five months of her income. Obviously she is unable to afford, therefore she abandoned her pursuit for justice, and let the rapist go unpunished.



Then she gets her first job, to work with the UT Bank of Ghana. But because she is beautiful Mr. Prince Kofi Amoabeng says her first class certificate must be subjected to authenticity checks. He is reported to have suggested that beautiful women are unlikely to graduate from the university with first class degree if they did not offer sex.



So for instance beautiful women such as Hajia Samira Bawumia, Ms. Hannah Tetteh, Mrs Naadu Mills, Mrs Rebecca Akuffo-Addo, and many more, do not have brains, they are not intelligent, and the only way they can achieve any good thing in life would be to offer sex.



This girl, through it all, craws, walks, and sometimes limps to become a lawyer, and becomes the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission.



Now because she is not my sister, because she is not my cousin, because she is not my mother, and because she is a beautiful woman, I told her in the face that she did not deserve her position as the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission. I told her that it is because she slept with the President of Ghana that is the reason why she got appointed into her position as Chairperson.



This same woman, by dint of hard work, she rose through the turbulent social-economic ranks to become a Supreme Court Judge, and to become the Chief Justice of Ghana, and then I started all over again.



First I started by, literally, saying that the Chief Justice was a cat that must be killed at all cost. There after I began to threaten her with rape, and threatening her with death.



Being afraid of all that she has been through in the past, as a victim of rape, she eventually manages to jail those who threatened her, I mean the Montie trio, but again the male dominance was brought to bear; the president decides to free those who threatened her with rape, and those who threatened her with death are freed.



Who will save her? All those who are supposed to save her are the same people who are accusing her of allowing herself to become vulnerable. The same president who will save her is the person on whose behalf she is being hunted. The same Journalists who will highlight her plight are the same persons using the same media that is supposed to be protecting her, to abuse her.



The law maker, Kennedy Agyapong, who is supposed to know better, wrongly accuses her of being a wore, he accuses her of offering sex for her position, thereby undermining any achievement that she might have gained on merit, in spite of all the challenges in life.



In the end she scales through all these discriminately practices, becomes a distinguished scholar of international standing. She wrote plays, poems, books, and for over 50 years she used her doubted intellectual capacity to impact society.



Then on our own accord, we decided to honor her, for all the contributions she has made to society. We decided that finally she deserves recognition; that if she has been able to overcome all the societal barriers, if she has been able to confront her fears, then we need to reward her.



So a reputable university, arguably the most prestigious university of the land, the University of Ghana, through one of its reputable centers of research excellence, organizes an award ceremony, to honor her for enduring rape, for enduring child birth, and for enduring men.



Would you now agree with me, that there is no free lunch? That we will give you something, we will recognize you, but first you have to wear a mans hart; that you have to become a man in order to deserve what you deserve, you dont think so?



So because of a simple error in your name, you walked out on us (men)? Couldnt you have ignored that error? Since when did you forget that you are in this world, mens world; you walked out on men? Ama, your end has come

Source: James Kofi Annan /President of Challenging Heights/ email: [email protected]









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Over hundred people set aside their daily responsibilities and thronged the Delhi Public School (DPS) International, Ghana at Tema to participate in a blood donation campaign.



The exercise taken place in DPS international, Ghana was supported by Sant Nirankari Charitable Foundation, a humanitarian organisation in Dubai.



The blood donation exercise was organized to save lives of patients at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital and other health facilities in the country.



Donors from all walks of life who were eager to donate, started trooping into the premises of DPS International, Ghana at Community 25 at about 5:00 am to participate in the highly successful exercise.



At about mid-morning, quite a large multitude had flooded the event grounds, and it therefore came as no shock when it was observed that a total of over 30 Ghanaians and more than a hundred foreigners partake in the blood donation exercise which was sponsored by DPS International, Ghana with support from B5 Plus Ltd, a steel manufacturing company in Tema.



Family of Mukesh Thakwani, Chairman of DSP International, Ghana and B5 Plus Limited was not left out of the exercise.



Gulati Pankaj, Rakesh Goyal, Darshan Singh, Balden Raj Arora and many other volunteers also donated to support the worthy cause.



Mr. Gornam Singh, Head of Nirankari Mission, Dubai was highly thankful for the gesture saying that humanitarianism is very significant to society.



He said blood plays a major role in saving lives especially that of pregnant women and is freely provided by the hospital hence the need for every qualified person to donate to the blood bank.



My visit to Ghana has been memorable and I am impressed with the honesty Ghanaians showed and they are very sociable. I must say humanitarian exercise such as blood donation is very significant to save lives and that is the main reason why Nirankari Mission sees the importance to join, he emphasised.



Mr. Mukesh Thakwani explained that the exercise forms part of his outfits corporate social responsibilities.



We decided to conduct the exercise in the school for the children to see and also learn how to donate or give back to society as a global awareness creation, the Director of DPS International, Ghana stated.



He assured health institutions of embarking on this blood donation exercise in the future, indicating that Blood do degenerate and whether you donate or not it will replenish so this exercise is going to be a routine exercise in the near future and everyone must join to save life.



The Director of DPS International, Ghana expressed his heartfelt appreciation to participants for their kind support.

Source: Peacefmonline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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An NPP women group, 'NPP Loyal Ladies' has responded to a snide remark made against them by President of policy think tank, IMANI Ghana, Franklin Cudjoe describing them as outrageous and reckless.



The outspoken policy analyst contributing to a Facebook post last week outlandishly described members of the group as "overused and smelly."



Mr. Cudjoe inferred to members of the group as sex workers formed to provide satisfaction to executive members of the NPP.



But a branch of the group in the Northern region in an interview with Starr News described the IMANI boss as a disgrace to his organisation.



Regional spokesperson of the group Rebecca Opoku Badu says the group demands an unqualified public apology from Mr. Cudjoe.



She rubbished claims that the group was a 'discharge vessel' for party front liners, arguing that the group comprises of "highly educated" ladies who believe in the ideas of Nana Akuffo Addo and the NPP.



She spoke to Starr News at an NPP rally addressed by Nana Addo and his running mate in Tamale.



We want to tell Ghanaians, every Ghanaian that, Loyal Ladies under NPP are never prostitutes; we are intelligent women who are willing to support our party and the man, Nana Addo. He is a visionary and foresight leader and we hope and think that when we secure our future through him, we shall not rip in vain.



The group was formed based on the fact that we have capable women who can work harder to bring the party into victory. Every region has a Loyal Ladies Group that we come together to share ideas, ideas that would help put the party ahead. I'm clearing the air; nobody should have the mentality and perception that we were formed to provide sexual satisfaction to our leaders.

Though, the policy analyst rendered apology on the same medium after he was heavily flayed by some social media users, the group insists it is not enough.



He needs to come on air and apologize. He has disgraced IMANI Ghana,we never though he would do that. He should come on radio or Television to apologize, Rebecca indicated.







Source: starr FM









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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The Bawku Police Command has began providing a 24 hour police security escort to traders and travelers from Bawku to the Burkina Faso border.



This measure comes as a result of frequent robbery of traders and travelers who come from Burkina Faso to Bawku to trade and transact other socio-economic activities.



Deputy Superintendant of Police (DSP) Benjamin Ofori Acquah, Crime Officer for the Bawku Police Divisional Command, said this in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) at Bawku.



DSP Acquah said on September 05 at about 1300 hrs, seven complainants, all Burkinabe citizens were leaving Bawku to Burkina Faso after selling their livestock.



He said on reaching the forest reserve at Kupelgu, a community near Bawku, three suspected armed robbers, Nolga Shilge aka Dongande, Ali Mumuni aka Akutu and Haruna Ahmed, attacked them with an AK47 assault rifle, a sword and a knife.



DSP Acquah said the robbers took away GHC 1,780 and 59,400 CFA from three of the victims but while in the process some farmers on their farms saw them and raised an alarm and sensing danger the robbers fled the scene amidst the firing of gun shots.



He said the police upon getting a tip-off pursued the robbers and arrested Nolga Shilge and retrieved a jack knife, a sword and an amount of 3,270 CFA from him.



DSP Acquah said during police interrogation, the suspect, who has since been remanded into prison custody awaiting trial, mentioned the other two as his accomplices.



He urged traders and travelers to move in groups as that could serve as a source of security and seek for police escort along their journey.

Source: GNA









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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A former commissioner of CHRAJ, Justice Emile Short, says the Speaker of Parliament should have allowed Ghanas parliamentarians to debate the motion that sought an investigation into the Ford vehicle gift to President John Mahama.



He, however, noted the speaker, Edward Doe Adjaho, did not err in re-calling the members of parliament from their break to determine the matter on the ford vehicle matter.



Commenting on the remission of the Montie three, Justice Emile Short, said the move by the president was unfortunate as it could open the flood gates for others to seek remission and pardon.



Watch video below:





Source: 3news.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Presidential nominee of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), for the 2016 elections in December, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, has described former President John Agyekum Kufuor, as the most outstanding President of the fourth republic.



Nana Akufo-Addo, who was speaking ahead of the public lecture on the state of the economy by his running mate Dr. Mahamoud Bawumia, thanked Mr. Kufuor for making himself available to chair the all-important event.



Let me say a big thank you especially to the outstanding statesman whom I had the privilege to serve under both as Attorney General and as a Foreign Minister, John Agyekum Kufuor; who despite the passage of time, is still so committed to Ghanaian welfare and good governance. We are so grateful sir that youve turned up today to chair this occasion for us. I know when I say this; it causes a lot of problems for a lot of people but there can be no doubt that he has been the most outstanding President of the fourth republic. No doubt about it.Thank you all for appearing here today, and we are going on and we are going to win December.



Nana Addo expressed the hope that, the delivery by Dr. Mahamoud Bawumia would help Ghanaians make informed choices at the polls in December.



It is important that at this very delicate juncture in Ghanaian history, that we should hear the truth so people can make informed decisions in December 2016. Its clear to me and I hope its clear to people; that four more years of the Mahama government is going to lead to considerable damage to the prospect of the Ghanaian awakening. And I believe that when Bawumia finishes with us, that fact will become even clearer; and therefore in means that those of us in the NPP committed to advancing and deepening Ghanas democracy, that has been our historic mission; that we have a huge responsibility to persuade our people in all peace and serenity and in dignity to make a historic choice on the 7th of December, to put away the four years of stagnation and backwardness and usher in a new era where Ghanaian prosperity is not going to be confined to a few people in the oligarchy, but spread through the nation and amongst all the people of our country.



He noted that Dr. Bawumia, an economist and former Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana, was not going to engage in propaganda, but would give Ghanaians the exact picture of the state of affairs.



Before his brief speech, Nana Addo noted that It appears that wherever Bawumia is going to speak; people will turn up whether at the National Theatre or Conference Centre.



This comment was in reference to allegations that Government had frustrated the lecture from taking place at the original Conference centre venue.

Source: Daily Guide









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Vice President Kwesi Amissah-Arthur has said there is the need for Ghanaians to conduct themselves in a way that would preserve the peace and stability of the country.



He said the message of peace and stability is most important because it is the foundation for the economic and social development of the country.



Vice President Amissah-Arthur made the statement when addressed the Bolgatanga Traditional Council at Bolgatanga in the regional capital of the Upper East Region.



Vice President Amissah-Arthur, who is on a campaign tour of the Northern Region, took advantage of his presence in the area to address the chiefs of the Bolgatanga Traditional Council.



Vice President Kwesi Amissah Arthur said as part of He said his coming to the palace was to seek his blessings as he enters his area to campaign as a sign of respect.



Vice President Amissah-Arthur said tolerant of dissenting views, peaceful and accommodating nature of President Mahama has made the NDC more united than ever before.



He said it is in the same manner that he has been able to keep Ghana united, stable and peaceful. These according to the Vice President are key and they will continue to be for Ghanas development.



He used the occasion to appeal to all religious leaders and Ghanaians in general to pray for all the political parties and their candidates as the campaigning heats up and they criss-cross the country to sell their messages. This is because it is an important national exercise.



Vice President Amissah-Arthur said without peace and stability no matter the plans government make, nothing would happen because people would be more concerned about their life and security.



He urged traditional rulers in the country ensure peace in their areas as the nation draw close to the December 7 elections.



He called for peace and unity in the Bolga Traditional area as they all wait patiently for the judicial committee to help them to resolve their differences.



Vice President Amissah-Arthur appealed to Ghanaians to be patient with President John Mahama as he rolls out his development agenda for the country.



He said development is a systematic process and government has to ensure that every part of the country gets part of the national cake.



He assured the chiefs of the Bolga Traditional area that the government would continue to provide infrastructural development area.



On his part the acting President of the Bolga traditional council Naaba Johnson Awuni , commended President Mahama for the numerous infrastructural developments in the area.

Source: Maxwell Okamafo Addo/ email: [email protected]









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Presidential Staffer, Kojo Adu Asare says Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia skewed the facts on the state of Ghana's economy to favour his party, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and excite his party faithfuls.



According to him, he can never believe Dr. Bawumia because he has always been careful selecting economic issues that will project the image of the NPP and therefore not being objective on the real issues confronting the economy.



Speaking on Peace FM's 'Kokrokoo' programme, Adu Asare alluded to the same claims made by Dr. Bawumia to the effect that there were names of foreigners in the voter's register, which to him; Dr. Bawumia has not been able to establish a concrete proof.



Until he comes out to tell Ghanaians that, well he misled all of us when he presented the fact that there were a certain number of people in our voters register who are foreigners and till today they have not been able to prove beyond reasonable doubt that such allegation is the truth and it stands in his name. Until he comes to say that there was no truth in it or it was an attempt to mislead all of us, for me; it forms the basis to scrutinize every word Dr. Bawumia says.



Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia made some revelations on the state of Ghana's economy yesterday at the National Theatre in Accra.



Dr. Bawumia told the gathering that despite having more resources than any government in the annals of Ghana's history, the data on the economy shows that President John Dramani Mahama's administration has been worse than any period since the dawn of this century.



"Virtually every single economic indicator proves that while the eight years under the NPP between 2001 to 2008 were better than these last eight years under the NDC, the NDC first four years under late President Mills was even far better than these last four years under John Mahama," he noted.



Under the 8 years of the NPP government, from 2001-2008, taxes and loans amounted to GH20 billion. In contrast, taxes, oil revenue, and loans alone over the 8-year period of 2009-2016 would amount to some GH248billion. The Mills-Mahama governments would have had in eight years, more than 12 times the nominal resources that the NPP had, he added.



He touched on other sectors of the economy where he revealed the failures of the incumbent government.



But addressing Dr. Bawumia's public lecture, Adu Asare told host Kwami Sefa Kayi that "Dr. Bawumia, from time to time, he selects or he carefully selects theories that he knows when he uses; it will certainly give him an opposing or lets say something that will mislead whatever the factors that the Ghanaian or the Ministry of Finance is using.



To him, all of the NPP Vice Presidential candidate's lectures have been just an "amalgamation of old presentations that hes done before whether at Central University or Tarkwa and he has rehashed them."







Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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The filing fees for presidential and parliamentary nominees for this years general elections are too high, the Chairman of the Subsidiary Legislation Committee in Parliament, Osei Bonsu Amoah, has said.



At an Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) meeting held in Accra on Thursday September 8, the Electoral Commission (EC) announced that parliamentary candidates would have to pay GHS10,000 to file their nomination while presidential candidates are expected to part with GHS 50,000.



The Commission has set 29 September as the deadline for the filing of nominations.



Speaking on the matter in an interview with Chief Jerry Forson, host of Ghana Yensom on Accra100.5FM on Friday September 9, the Member of Parliament for Akuapem South said: The Electoral Commission fixed the price and told us that this was the amount they were demanding. When we complained, they told us they would have a second look at it but until then the amount would hold.



He added: The EC will need to explain how they arrived at that amount at a time everybody is complaining of financial difficulties. You are asking people who want to run for parliamentary seats to pay GHS10,000. This is not a small amount of money for someone who wants to serve his nation. All of us believe it is too expensive.

Source: Classfmonline









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Presidential candidate for the National Democratic Party (NDP), Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings has charged queen mothers in the country to be bold and assertive on national issues.



Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings urged the queen mothers to defend and rescue the nation from crippling under the Mahama administration.



She was addressing some queen mothers today at Ho in the Volta Region.



According to her, women form 52.8% of the population of Ghana, hence calling on them to take the affirmative action ignited by the 31st December Women Movement.



Nana Konadu empowered the queen mothers, noting down that Ghana's security has become a major problem.



She expressed worry over the perennial economic challenges confronting Ghana and believed it's time for the queen mothers and all women to demand a "say" on issues affecting the economy.



The President of the Volta Queen Mothers' Association, Mamaga Agbalisi, on behalf of the queen mothers, pledged their unflinching support for the former First Lady.

Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi /Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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North Korea has forbidden its citizens from making sarcastic or ironic comments about leader Kim Jong-un, even in everyday conversation, after a few cheeky phrases began circulating among North Koreans.

One state security official personally organised a meeting to alert local residents to potential hostile actions by internal rebellious elements, a source in the country told Radio Free Asia.

The main point of the lecture was Keep your mouths shut.

Apparently North Koreans have begun saying things like This is all Americas fault as a sarcastic joke referring to the fact that senior government officials often blame other countries for things that are happening under the regime. Which is, you have to admit, a solid gag. Gets me every damn time.

Banning dissent is obviously not a new concept in North Korea, but it seems like officials have just cottoned on that citizens are using sarcasm to be rude about the government.

Apparently there has been an increase in acts of dissent in North Korea recently, with anti-government graffiti mocking Kim Jong-uns regime cropping up in cities across the country.

Source: The Independent.

Photo: Getty Images.
Are you in a public place right now? Are you by chance wearing eye makeup of any kind? THEN DO NOT WATCH THIS VIDEO. Because if you are, then youll end up very teary at your desk with mascara running down your face like this writer is right now.

Tony Marrero was in Pulse Nightclub when the horrifying mass shooting happened in Orlando earlier this year.

The shooting left 49 people dead, and many more injured. It was the worst mass shooting in Americas history. It was also a targeted attack on the LGBTQIA community, and occurred on Latin Night at the club.

Tony was shot four times in the back by the gunman, and once in the arm. His best friend Luis, the person who asked him to come to the club that night, passed away in the attack.

During his recovery in hospital, a friend of his uploaded a sign saying Im still swimming Ellen, and sent it to Ellen Degeneres.

Now that Tony is fully recovered, the famous TV host had him on the show to talk about the heartbreaking experience.

She offered him a private screening of Finding Dory (he missed it when he was in hospital), and also donated $25,000 to a fund for the victims of the tragic shooting.

BUT THEN, she invites Katy Perry on to the stage after Tony explains that her song Rise got him through his time in hospital, and he listened to it on repeat.

Katy walks on stage in tears, offers to pay for Tonys first year of film school, and by the end of the conversation, everyone on the stage and in the audience is hysterically sobbing.

AND YOU PROBABLY WILL BE TOO.

You have been warned:

Dont try to save your makeup. There is no hope for it now.

Source: The Ellen Show.
ICYMI, the legitimately mind-blowin story of how Captain Chesley Sullenberger safely landed a failing passenger jet in New Yorks Hudson River has hit the big screen.





Tom Hanks, continuing his long-standing tradition of portraying captains, is the bloke tasked with representing the eponymous Sully. So far, so good.

Yet, apart from the millions of dollars, critical acclaim and possible award nods Hanks can expect to receive for his portrayal, it still seemed Americas favourite actor could be honoured further for his achievements.

Enter Sully himself, who is apparently just as good a sport as he is a pilot.

In concert with Jimmy Kimmel, the former airman tore through Hanks career for, well, Hanks, the fictitious biopic of an actor who might actually deserve one.

Sure, they miss Saving Private Ryan, but they riff extensively on Bosom Buddies, which we can all agree is far more worthy of attention.

Anyways, if youre into watching already-lauded men pat themselves on the back in chuckle-worthy fashion, this one is for you:

Source and photo: Jimmy Kimmel Live! / YouTube.
Britain Refugees

Trades Unionists and activists hold up placards as they demonstrate outside the French Embassy in London, in support of the refugees in the camps in and around Calais in northern France and the right of the refugees to come to Britain, Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2016. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)

(Alastair Grant)

It turns out Donald Trump isn't the only one who wants to build a wall.

Britain and France are building what local residents are calling the "Great Wall of Calais" to keep out migrants and refugees from the city's port, according to the Washington Post.

The measure is intended to protect the Rocade, an access road leading to the port, from migrant attempts to disrupt, delay and attack vehicles approaching the port, the British Home Office said in an emailed statement, according to the Post.

It would also block from Calais the large migrant camp, which French and British residents call the "Jungle."

The French government pledged to close the "Jungle," where 7,000 to 9,000 refugees and migrants from Afghanistan and Sudan "live in squalid conditions and legal limbo," according to the Washington Post.

The $23 million wall is a crucial part of a Franco-British security package passed early March. It will be about 13 feet high and made of smooth concrete, a material that is difficult to scale, the Post reported.

Members of British government, who support immigration, shared concerns that would Calais would send "the same message of exclusion commonly associated with the controversial proposal" by Trump to build a wall between the United States and Mexico, according to the Washington Post.

"It sends an appalling message of us being a small, nasty, inward-looking country," said Alf Dubs, a member of the House of Lords.
On Sunday, we will mark the 15th anniversary of the worst terrorist attack on American soil.

It was an event that had a profound effect on so many in America, leaving vivid memories and scars from that day and leading to many changes in the way we live and the way we perceive our place in the world.

Starting Tuesday, PennLive began publishing a series of stories, photo galleries and videos about Sept. 11, 2001, and its lasting impact on our lives.

The series will continue through the weekend, with live coverage from the Flight 93 memorial in Shanksville, Pa., on Saturday night and Sunday.

Here's a list of what has published and what is scheduled:

Tuesday, Day 1



Wednesday, Day 2

Thursday, Day 3

Friday, Day 4

Saturday, Day 5

Live coverage from the memorial in Shanksville

Sunday, Day 6

Timeline: The unforgettable events of Sept. 11, 2001

Live coverage from the memorial in Shanksville
East Pennsboro Elementary School will reopen Friday after a mold discovery prompted yet another early dismissal today.

After mold was found on heating, ventilation and air conditioning vents in a classroom, students were dismissed from the school early at 2:45 p.m. so cleaning and sanitizing could begin immediately, district Superintendent Jay Burkhart announced on the district's website.

Experts deemed the school safe to reopen on a normal schedule Friday since the vents were cleaned and sanitized and air quality tests returned normal results on Sept. 1, Burkhart said.

The district has been hampered by mold issues during the past few weeks, causing all schools to temporarily shut down last month.

The high school remains closed as mold remediation efforts continue in the building.

High school students are alternating classes with middle school students at the middle school until the clean up efforts are completed. The high school is expected to reopen within the coming weeks.

"It must be noted that our aging HVAC system, as well as even the most modern systems, have been struggling with this record heat and humidity," Burkhart said. "In an effort to limit instructional disruptions moving forward, the district is working with Heim Company to accelerate the preventative maintenance of our HVAC systems to help them to work more effectively and efficiently."

Should additional mold issues arise, Burkhart said the district plants to consult with experts, clean soiled areas and continue with a normal operating schedule.

"If at any time we are advised by our experts to close school or limit access to an area we will do so," he said.

East Pennsboro is not the only district that has dealt with mold problems during the start of the school year.

West Shore School District closed Cedar Cliff High School for a few days last week after mold was found on discolored ceiling tiles.
Harrisburg police are looking for a 19-year-old who they say pulled a gun and fired shots at a group of people in Hall Manor Tuesday.

Police say they were called to the 18 row of Hall Manor for a report of shots fired, and arrived to find a large group of people, but no one willing to speak to the officers. They saw an individual with a gun, but he entered an apartment building in the 1400 block of South 14th Street and they were unable to locate him.

The ensuing investigation revealed that the incident began with two girls whose argument via social media turned into a physical confrontation. Police said the boyfriend of one of the girls, Tariq Thomas, 19, struck someone while trying to break up the fight, and more people became involved in the fight.

Police said Thomas pulled out a gun and threatened to kill everyone. As people began fleeing, Thomas fired the gun at the group, police said.

During the mayhem, police say a 15-year-old boy also pulled a gun and threatened one of the females. The girl's father saw this and confronted the teen, who pointed the gun at the father, but then fled.

Police said they determined five people were fired upon, including three girls ages 17, 15 and 15. No one was struck or injured.

During the fight, another male, age 16, kicked one of the girls in her face, resulting in injuries that included a black eye.

Police issued a warrant charging Thomas with six counts of criminal attempted homicide, reckless endangering, aggravated assault and carrying a firearm without a license. Anyone with information on his whereabouts is asked to contact police at 717-3118.

The 15-year-old boy has been charged with carrying a firearm without a license, reckless endangering and simple assault, police say. The 16-year-old male was charged with aggravated assault. The names of the 15- and 16-year-olds were not make public by police.
HALIFAX--The railroad crossing in Halifax where new mom Trisha Hoffman was killed Monday is "seriously deficient," according to two railway experts interviewed by PennLive.

Pennsylvania state law doesn't require drivers to stop at all railroad crossings. Instead, the law requires drivers to stop for flashing lights, gates that are down or oncoming trains. But to know a train is "oncoming," you have to see it, said Gus Ubaldi, an airport and railroad engineering expert with Robson Forensic in Lancaster.

And that's not something that drivers leaving the boat ramp at Susqeuhanna Trail Road and Route 147 can do until they're nearly at the railroad tracks. The crossing is known as a "passive" crossing because it has no flashing lights or gates.

A smaller passive crossing just north of the crossing where Hoffman died has a stop sign posted before the railroad tracks to specifically direct drivers to stop. But there is no stop or yield sign at the paved crossing where the fatal wreck occurred, even though it is recommended by nationally accepted standards for railroad crossings, Ubaldi said.

Instead, there is a single faded crossbuck sign off to the right.

When asked about signage decisions, Norfolk Southern Spokesman Dave Pidgeon initially told PennLive that the crossing is a public crossing, which would mean the state's Public Utility Commission-- not the railroad-- is responsibility to determine proper signage and required safety precautions.

When Pidgeon was informed that the crossing is in fact listed as a private crossing by the PUC, PennDOT, and the Federal Rail Administration, then Pidgeon declined to return phone calls and requests for interviews.

Instead, Pidgeon ignored questions posed by PennLive via email and wrote back that "whether a grade crossing is public or private, vehicle drivers and pedestrians should yield to oncoming trains."

But it's not that simple at this crossing, according to the experts.

A driver traveling 10 mph on Susquehanna Trail Road needs to be able to see a train 732 feet down the track from 70 feet before reaching the crossing, according to national safety guidelines.

A sight line "triangle" as detailed in the Railroad Highway Grade Crossing Handbook .

But at the crossing where Hoffman died, approaching drivers can't see anything beyond the trees and brush. When drivers finally are in a position to see the train, it can be too late.

"People think the minute you see a train you're going to stop and they wonder why people don't stop," Ubaldi said. "But you have to determine it's a hazard and then make the decision for what you have to do-- take your foot off the gas and put on brake."

A car traveling 10 mph travels 15 feet per second, Ubaldi said. With a typical human reaction time of two seconds, a car would travel 30 feet.

"Maybe she was looking to the right," Ubaldi said. "Then when she looks left, the train is right there. She goes to stop, but at 10 mph, it carries her into the crossing.

The train that struck Hoffman's car Monday was traveling at 45 mph, or 66 feet per second. It is one of four trains that pass through the crossing daily.

The railroad reported two previous wrecks at the crossing, in 1994 and 2003, according to the Federal Railroad Administration, but no one was injured in either crash.

With such poor "sight distance," additional signs need to be added to the crossing to make it safe, according to Ubaldi, or the trees and brush need to be removed.

"There's nothing wrong with having less sight distance, per se," Ubaldi said. "But you then have to mitigate that, either by putting up a stop sign, or flashing lights and gates on a road of this nature."

The crossing also lacks sufficient "storage space" on the other side of the railroad tracks before Route 147, said Ron Eck, a civil engineering professor at West Virginia University.

The stop sign at Route 147 and vehicles that might be stopped there pose distractions to approaching drivers, he said. Drivers could focus on that stop sign as the proper place to stop or be watching for road clearance there instead of looking at the tracks for an oncoming train, he said.

"Drivers have to wonder, do I pull out to the road? Am I still going to be on the tracks?" said Eck who specializes in researching warning and traffic-control devices at road-level railroad crossings. "The tracks are dangerous enough without adding another element."

Then there's the Y-design of the intersection, which forces drivers to cross the railroad tracks at an angle.

"From her perspective," Eck said, "that puts her at a bad angle as the train's going to come behind her line of sight."

Overall, Eck said he would give the crossing a very low safety rating.

"It's like a perfect storm of undesirable factors," he said.

Neighbors reported hearing the train blowing its whistle as it approached the crossing Monday, just before Hoffman's vehicle was hit. But a whistle warning easily can be muffled by a car radio and air-conditioning, the experts said.

Hoffman's car had likely been sitting in the sun for more than five hours at the ramp as she and her husband kayaked on the Susquehanna River. When she returned to her vehicle, the first thing she likely did on this 91-degree day was turn on the A/C to cool down the vehicle's interior, Eck said.

Meanwhile, the whistle has other limitations, Ubaldi said. It only signals that a train is in the area, he said, it doesn't let drivers know its location, proximity or direction of travel.

"It's like when you hear an ambulance and you slow down and start looking around to see where it is," Ubaldi said. "But in this case, you can't see anything. Six-tenths of a mile north is another crossing. So if I hear a train whistle, I don't know where it is or if it's blowing for this crossing."

By the time a driver on Susquehanna Trail Road sees where the train is, Ubaldi said, it's too late. People critical of Hoffman's inability to detect the train are using 20/20 hindsight, he said.

"I would not fault her," he said. "The issue is not did she know there was a crossing, but could she know a train was coming in order to stop?"

If the crossing is problematic, then who is responsible for inspecting, identifying, and correcting such problems?

If the crossing were a public crossing, then the PUC would provide guidance and oversight, under Pennsylvania law. But as a private crossing, there is no such guidance or oversight in Pennsylvania or federally.

Instead, private crossings are governed by private agreements between the railroad and the property owner.

The Norfolk Southern spokesman declined to provide the agreement that covers the crossing in question. But PennLive requested a highway access permit from PennDOT that shows the PA Fish and Boat Commission requested the crossing in the 1980s.

That brings up another oddity about the crossing: why is it considered a private crossing if it serves a public boat ramp? A sign in front of the crossing invites the public onto Susquehanna Trail Road as the "Halifax Access," with images of a fish and kayak.

The Federal Railroad Administration, however, defines private crossings as "not intended for public use."

PennDOT spokesman Greg Penny said railroad crossings along private roads are typically classified as private crossings. But he agreed the private designation was mystifying.

"Why it's listed as a private crossing and not a public crossing when you have the fish commission there, I don't know," Penny said.

PUC Spokesman David Hixson didn't know anything about the origin of the "private crossing" or "private road," designation and said the agency only has authority under state law to oversee public crossings.

The lack of required inspections and oversight for private crossings, especially ones unwittingly used by the public, represents a "fall through the cracks" kind of situation, Eck said.

"If it were a state or local road," he said, "that jurisdiction would be addressing it."

Instead, there is no known oversight to ensure private crossings adhere to nationally accepted guidelines in the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices and the Railroad-Highway Grade Crossing Handbook, both published by the Federal Highway Administration.

Still, the PUC is looking into the crossing after Hoffman's death to review the circumstances for any insight, Hixson said.

"We get notified of all crossing incidents and we routinely check the circumstances, safety, sight distance, speed of track," he said. "If it's private, we may not be able to change anything, but we feel it is within our purview to make recommendations."

Norfolk Southern, for its part, also is going to review the sight distance at the Susqeuhanna Trail Road crossing, Pidgeon said in an early interview when PennLive asked about sight distance.

"We're looking into that right now at this particular crossing," he said. "The community in Dauphin County, they look to us to operate safely. We're definitely going to be looking into at that particular crossing."
Bill Clinton

Former President Bill Clinton speaks during a campaign stop for his wife, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, Monday, Jan. 4, 2016, in Nashua, N.H. Clinton was in Pittsburgh on Friday, Sept. 9, 2016, where he stressed the differences between Hillary Clinton and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump before a standing room only audience. (AP Photo/Jim Cole)

(Jim Cole)

PITTSBURGH -- Bill Clinton had never been to Homewood before.

In fact, no Vice President, President or former President ever has. The predominantly African American community on Pittsburgh's east side remains something of a political outlier, presidentially speaking.

But this isn't any election year, and electoral support from communities like this one is bound to be as crucial as ever.

And so, Clinton came here Friday, and got right to the point: "We gotta get real about this election again. ... Don't substitute anger for answers. Don't substitute resentment for responsibility. Remember empowerment comes from being stronger together. We can do it. You can do it. But Hillary, to do it, has to win Pennsylvania and that's you."

He spent much of his remaining time inside the Homewood Coliseum here indulging in the usual contrasts.

"One candidate [Republican nominee Donald Trump] says 'I'll make America great again,' and means by that -- hey folks, I'm a white southerner, I know exactly what he means by that -- I'll give you what you had 50 years ago and move you back up the social totem pole and give you someone to look down on. Hillary says it's time we tore the totem pole down."

But Clinton was also sympathetic to Trump's base, saying the sense of economic frustration pervading much of it deserves recognition. This in a neighborhood where signs of an economic recovery still seem all too distant, and in a city where the loss of manufacturing jobs continues to force a reinvention of the rust belt.

"We honor people's frustration and disappointment. ... but my mother always told me you never make a good decision in anger," he said.

"We need answers, not anger," he continued. "And she [Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton] is the only candidate offering any."

Those economic answers are welcomed here, attendees said, but more are also needed. The issue of gun violence, for one, remains a key issue locally, residents told PennLive.

"I've been in my living room where I've dropped to the floor because it sounded like a gunshot was fired right on my porch," Shirley Jones Douglas, a Hillary Clinton supporter, said before Friday's rally.

"That's how loud it sounded. When I dropped to the floor, I said, 'Lord, bless me out of Homewood.' That's what I screamed out. And so, there's a lot of that here. Right here."

Jones Douglas lost two of her children, one of them to gun violence near the site of Friday's rally.

In fact, the location is mere minutes from the scene of a fatal shooting in Wilkinsburg that claimed the lives of six, one of them an expectant mother, in March.

And as the lined formed for Clinton's rally, a peace march was also forming nearby, resident Carmen Brown said. Brown was in line for the rally and said she'll be voting for Hillary for president.

"I'm glad he [Bill Clinton] came to this community, because we've been having a lot of gun violence and so I wanted to hear what he has to say about that. ... A lot of our young people are dying."

While Hillary Clinton has endorsed tougher gun control laws while campaigning in Pennsylvania before the May primary, the issue remains a far more delicate one in general election races like this.

Perhaps because of that, Clinton broached the subject indirectly on Friday, making no overt reference to the need for tougher gun laws.

Instead, he appeared to say this on the subject before the Coliseum's standing room only crowd Friday:

"Don't you want to live in a neighborhood where no young African American male is afraid to walk the streets?"

He added, "And don't you want to live in a neighborhood where you see policemen or police women and you're glad to see them because they're helping your kids stay safe? You want both."

Jones Douglas, who is African American, said she supports tougher gun control laws. But she added that while political solutions are needed, so are those at the community level.

"I'm going to be honest with you. I can't have so much compassion when we're killing ourselves, why don't we stop doing that first?"

She continued: "When I see a policeman I stop and I pray for them. They don't know it, but I do."

Then she added, "But nobody wants to see injustice."

On the subject of Hillary Clinton's opponent, Jones Douglas was clear:

"My granddaughter said 'Are you for Hillary Clinton?' I hesitated and said, 'well, who don't we want for president.' I said, 'because that man's absolutely crazy,'" referring to Trump.

Kwajalein Ratliff, another Homewood resident, added of Trump: "I think he's a good showman and he has the charisma that people like, but you have to look deeper. I think Hillary always likes to watch and make her moves when she makes them. I don't think she always wants to be in the limelight like Donald Trump does."

But Ratliff and Jones Douglas also exemplify a passion-deficit plaguing Clinton's campaign, with her failure to inspire undying devotion like Trump has, or like Obama did and continues to do in neighborhoods like this one.

"She's almost perfect," Ratliff said of Hillary. "I mean she has those issues and did a few things she probably regrets now."

She continued: "But she's a good person, and I think she's very smart, and I think she'd make a very good president."

Ratliff said she did not support Hillary Clinton when she ran against Barack Obama in 2008, but supports her now. She joins Clinton supporters who, given the state of this election race, have checked their idealism at the door. A similar process is underway with some Republicans who fear a Clinton presidency, perhaps above all else.

Also at Friday's rally was Thomas Watson of Braddock Hills, who was a supporter of Senator Bernie Sanders' during his primary race against Clinton, but who now supports her.

Watson said the reason involves Clinton's willingness to adopt some of Sanders' left-leaning positions in her platform, in what was a concerted effort to attract his supporters, some of whom still refuse to vote for her.

"What kind of won me over was when Hillary and the DNC adopted much of Bernie's platform and I think she will stick to it, as much as she can with Congress," Watson said.

"I think Hillary's made some poor decisions, but I think in terms of decorum, I think Hillary wants to do good and serve others while Trump's focus is winning and 'being the best.'"

Inside the Coliseum, Bill agreed.

"You have one choice: The kind of person who offers us an economy that makes us stronger together -- one where we grow more and one where we grow fairer and move forward together."

He added, "We need to go forward together."
election-2013-voters-hit-the-polls-in-dauphin-county-540a001a335dad8e.jpg

State and local election officials are confident that no one will be able to hack Pennsylvania election results in order to swing the presidential race for any candidate.

(File photo/Sean Simmers | ssimmers@pennlive.com, 2013)

Donald Trump has said that if Hillary Clinton wins Pennsylvania, it'll be because she cheated. However, his claim of voter fraud or vote tampering is not being believed by election officials.

State and local election officials are confident that no one will be able to hack Pennsylvania election results in order to swing the presidential race for any candidate. Their confidence lies in the policies and procedures put in place to protect machines and results from tampering.

Bethany Salzarulo, director of Elections and Voter Registration for Cumberland County, said there is "absolutely no" chance one of her voting machines could be hacked.

Salzarulo said the voting machines have not and cannot be hooked up to the Internet. No outside vendors have access to voting programs and all programing is done in-house by sworn county employees.

The voting machines are stored in a locked room, in a locked building and are only accessible to election officials, she said.

All machines have mechanical safeguards put in place that would reveal if someone tried to physically hack or change election results. And, she said, procedures are put in place to clear any affected machines.

Wanda Murren, with the Pa. Department of State, said counties take steps to safeguard the voting systems at the precinct to prevent tampering.

In August, Trump urged supporters in Altoona to monitor polling stations to "make sure other people don't come in and vote five times." Supporters were asked to "go around and look and watch other polling places and make sure that it's 100 percent fine."

Following his comments, Pa. Secretary of State Pedro Cortes has said the state will take advantage of all available resources to ensure the security and integrity of the November election. That includes receiving risk assessments from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Deputy Secretary of Elections and Administration Marian Schneider said they have been in touch with the homeland security's cyber security team to look at ways they can be of assistance in Pennsylvania.

"Our goal is to proactively take any steps possible to make sure that Pennsylvania's statewide election infrastructure is as secure as possible," Schneider said.

Steps have included reminding officials of cyber security practices for elections -- such as isolating computers from networks, strict password and privilege management, best practices for preparing voting systems and transmitting election night returns and pre-election logic and accuracy testing.

Though the state takes a number of precautions against a hack, Murren said "Everything is in the realm of possibility."

The state's efforts are to make the the possibility very unlikely, she said.

The state's Enterprise Information Security Office is doing everything possible to monitor systems, including the voter registration database, and to defend the state against cyber attacks, reduce its vulnerabilities and minimize the damage and recovery time from any attacks, if they occur, she said.

So, what are the chances that a voting system can be hacked in Pennsylvania?

"The likelihood is extremely low," Murren said.

Even if there is very little chance of a hack, Trump has spoken about idea of voter fraud and vote tampering. In Ohio, Trump said during a town hall that he believed the election is "rigged."

Studies, however, have shown that concerns about voter fraud are unfounded.

A comprehensive investigation of voter impersonation by Loyola University Law School professor Justin Levitt found 31 credible incidents out of one billion ballots cast in a 14-year span. That works out to 0.000003 percent of votes cast.
Glenn with blur 2 copy (2).jpeg

Photo of Glenn Winuk (center) among fellow firefighters.

(provided by family)

When thousands fled the burning World Trade Center on Sept.11, 2001, 40-year-old Glenn Winuk ran toward the Twin Towers. It would be the last day of his life.



Because of what he did that day, people all over the United States will carry out their own acts of selflessness on Sunday, the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.



It will flow from how Glenn Winuk's brother, Jay, and a friend chose to remember him. They founded 911day.org, which encourages people to devote each Sept. 11 to a charity or service project.

Jay Winuk says million of people of all ages, backgrounds and religious faiths have responded to that call, which their organization first made in the year following the attacks. Jay Winuk went on to become a central force in the effort that led to Sept. 11 being declared a national day of service in 2009.



Elsewhere, survivors of the 2,996 people who died in the 9/11 attacks at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in the crash of the hijacked airliner in western Pennsylvania, will remember and honor their loved one in many different ways.



The remembrances will be big and small. Many will take place in New York City.

Some will occur in places including Wernersville, Pa., where John and Ruth Sigmund will attend a 9/11 memorial featuring a performance of Mozart's Requiem. Their 25-year-old daughter, Johanna Sigmund, was at her job with an investment management firm when an airliner struck the North Tower.



For many years, the Sigmunds traveled to New York City for memorial events on 9/11. In recent years the retired couple has chosen to spend the day in less hectic surroundings closer to home.



Still, their efforts to remember their daughter take place year round. They include a road race and memorial fund which have raised tens of thousands of dollars for a North Philadelphia school that serves disadvantaged students, and which was a favorite cause of Johanna's.



For his part, Jay Winuck will spend Sunday in New York City working with 2,000 other volunteers putting together meals for people at risk of hunger. He expects they will package 500,000 meals.



His brother Glenn was a lawyer who worked and lived in Manhattan. As a younger man, he had been a member of the fire and ambulance company in their hometown of Jericho, N.Y. While living in Manhattan, he had often traveled to Jericho to stay involved with the company.



So it didn't surprise his brother when he defaulted into firefighter mode on 9/11. He went right to the scene, scrounged up gloves and a medic kit, and went inside to rescue people. He was eventually found dead in the collapsed South Tower.



In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Jay Winuk, who owns a public relations firm, was amazed by the way people in New York City and all over pulled together.

He and David Payne, a close friend of Glenn Winuk, decided they must find away to "capture that in a bottle." That led to 911day.org, which, in addition to promoting and encouraging days of service, provides lesson plans for teachers.

One of the goals is for young people to associate 9/11 not with destruction as the terrorists wanted, but as an example of the way Americans rise up and rally at times of crisis.



"The way the nation has responded to 9/11 has kind of set the template for how we respond to disasters," he said.



William Steiner of New Hope, Pa. was working on the 97th floor in the North Tower when the plane crashed into it. After his death, his wife, Russa, had a local artist create a wooden statue of the tower, which she placed outside their home. But the statue became upsetting for one of her children, who was at eye level with it, so Russa Steiner eventually removed it.



For the first decade following the attacks, Russa Steiner, 67, spent the anniversary in New York City. This year, she'll stay local, attending events at a 9/11 memorial near her home in Bucks County, which lost 18 residents in the attacks.



For Russa Steiner, the 9/11 anniversary is both special and routine. "I think of my husband all the time," she said. "You feel it every day. It doesn't necessarily have to be on the anniversary to feel the pain and the effects of what happened there."
skinny-joey-merlino-banned-from-all-PA-casinos-after-incident.jpg

It happened on the blackjack table at Philadelphia's Sugarhouse Casino back in March. And whatever did occur involving reputed mob boss Joey Merlino's entourage, it has resulted in "Skinny Joey" being banned from all Pa. casinos.

(screen shot/FOX29)

It happened on the blackjack table at Philadelphia's Sugarhouse Casino back in March. And whatever did occur involving reputed mob boss Joey Merlino's entourage, it has resulted in "Skinny Joey" being banned from all Pennsylvania casinos, CBSPhilly.com is reporting.

The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board recently issued decision, and CBSPhilly.com quotes a board member explaining it:

"There was a slight altercation," gaming board member Doug Harbach told the news website. "It led to our Office of Enforcement Council recommending to the board that Mr. Merlino then be put on our involuntary exclusion list."

The gaming board tried to serve Merlino with official notification of the decision and his right to appeal, but wasn't able to deliver the documents, Harbach told CBSPhilly.com:

"That's part of the due process that we give to all individuals, that we serve them the notices, that we are contemplating putting them on that list. He did not want to receive it and the numerous attempts that we made, so finally, we, in absentia, went ahead with the process of putting him on the list."

Now, if Merlino enters any casino in the state, he would be subject to arrest for criminal trespass and have any winnings confiscated.
The 18-karat gold Apple Watch Edition has been discontinued, dead just a year and a half after it began. Since the company never released official sales figures, well never knew how many models actually crawled off the shelves, but in the months after its release, MacRumors estimated that just under 2,000 had been sold.

In terms of revenue, thats at least $20 million, as the base price for the watch was $10,000. But for one of the worlds most powerful companies, it wasnt enough to save it from humanitys practical conscience as Apple quietly pulled its gold watch page from its website. This came as Apple unveiled its upgraded Apple Watch series 2.

The extremely paltry sales make it hard to track down owners of the gold Apple Watch Edition for their reactions, but its not impossible thanks to Instagram, Twitter, and Reddit.

Christel Quek, a VP at Brandwatch, a platform for monitoring social media response about brands and products, is a proud owner of a gold Apple Watch Edition, and isnt much bothered by the Apple Watch Series 2 superseding her model.

I got it because of the collectability, she said via a Twitter direct message. An educated fan of European watches like IWC and A. Lange & Sohne, Quek wears the gold Apple Watch Edition in rotation with the other watches in her collection and reckons its discontinuation will make hers more collectible.



But unlike the mechanical watches that can operate without electronics of any kind, the Apple watchs electronics destine it to a relatively short life and slow death, as future updates will render it slower and slower. Quek, of course, knew this from the outset. For sure, gadgets have a shelf life, she said. I actually got it because it was something that I wanted to make a statement about. Luxury.

Collectibility, which is not tied to fresh battery and performance, is so often married to the idea of alternate investment opportunities, with items hoarded away in the hopes that they will result in future windfall. Perhaps the Museum of Modern Art or a private horological collection will scour the Earth for gold Apple Watch Editions to purchase and display, but for Quek, that wasnt the point. I dont think this would be an investment. It would be a bonus if it did appreciate in value. Sure it might not have the waterproofing or the other cool new bells and whistles, but ironically, that edition will [be the luxury, collectible] Swiss version of the Apple Watches.

Story continues

All this flies in the face of the consternation and the face-palming that some on Twitter were expecting with salivating schadenfreude. Quek and other Apple Watch owners were nothing if not psyched with the new model, showing no early adopters remorse. Now Im a bit at a loss as I wanna get the new Apple Watch for swimming, said Quek, who is eyeing the new ceramic Edition that will sell for a tenth of the price of a gold Edition. This time Ill get a more affordable version of the waterproof Apple Watch. Even if there was a really expensive version of it.

I found Ryan, another gold Edition owner, on Instagram after he commented, I dont give a damn if the second one is coming out. Same s***. When I asked him why he shelled out the price of a compact car on a gadget with the shelf life of a pair of shoes, he responded tersely, collectibility and investment.

Interestingly, he said the bling factor was not really applicable since Apple had offered rose gold versions of the cheaper aluminum models which could look similar to the untrained eye, torpedoing any attempts of conspicuous consumption.

As for the inevitable successor rendering his Apple Watch old, he, unlike Quek, isnt so rosy.

To me I feel like its bad, because the value of this watch will go down probably dramatically due to the new watch that is coming out, he said. Plus, the gold just wasnt really a hit.

During the journey into the corners of Twitter and Instagram, I did find something interesting that perhaps has skewed public perceptions of the expensive gold editionsthere are probably way more gold-plated Apple Watches than gold Apple Watch Editions.

Why? Well, thats because you can buy an aluminum Apple Watch that has been gold plated by a third party with five microns of gold for less than $2,000. According to an employee of one gold-plating company I messaged who sells gold-plated Apple Watches, they sold as many as eight a day during the December holiday season. He said its possible his numbers are greater than Apples, if the rumor of 2,000 was accurate.

If true, that could mean that the gold Apple Watch wasnt really a bust, after all, and that Queks genuine model could in fact have second-hand traction as a collectable later on.

It also means that while Apple has discontinued the gold Apple Watch, you can still get one gold plated, if you desire the Midas touch.

Ethan Wolff-Mann is a writer at Yahoo Finance focusing on personal finance and tech. Follow him on Twitter @ewolffmann.

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Happy Christening Day,

Prince Alexander!

Swedens youngest royal prince, H.R.H. Prince Alexander Erik Hubertus Bertil, was baptized with regal pomp and ceremony at a service held at Stockholms Drottningholm Royal Palace Chapel on Friday.

Proud parents Princess Sofia, 31, and Prince Carl Philip, 37, welcomed Prince Alexander, who is fifth in the line of succession to the Swedish throne, on April 19.

The newest addition to Swedens royal ranks showed a stoic side to his character on his big day. Unlike his recently christened cousins Prince Nicolas and Prince Oscar, Prince Alexander didnt cry when Archbishop Antje Jackelen bathed his head in baptismal water at the font, which had been specially decorated with a selection of seasonal local fruit for the occasion.

All eyes were on the latest generation of Swedens royal family, as 4-year-old Princess Estelle, in an adorable pink dress (that perfectly matches mom!), and Princess Leonore, 2, wearing pale green with a floppy white bow in her hair, joined their parents in the palace chapel, decorated by florist Claes Karlsson in autumnal orange, echoing the original floral scheme he created for Prince Carl Philip and Princess Sofias June 2015 wedding.

As usual, the young princesses were on the go during the service, especially Princess Leonore, who bought her favorite toy rabbit along to play with. Her London-based younger brother Prince Nicolas, who celebrated his first birthday in June, showed some curiosity about his surroundings, looking out at other guests among the congregation when he wasnt being held by his father or mother or playing with a small toy helicopter.

Prince Alexander seemed fascinated by Prince Oscar, sitting next to him on the lap of his mother Crown Princess Victoria. On more than one occasion the newly-baptized prince smiled and reached out to him. His friendly gesture was greeted by his 6-month-old cousin, the third in line to the throne, smartly dressed in a white shirt and grey dungarees. At one point, the duo enjoyed a period of synchronized thumb sucking!

For the duration of the service, Prince Alexander was wrapped in the sweeping family christening gown previously worn by his father and grandfather: It dates back to their early 20th century forebears.

Following Bernadotte family tradition, Alexanders name will be embroidered into the lining of the satin woven silk heirloom, alongside the names of previous wearers including the current King Carl XVI Gustaf.

Members of the medical team that delivered the young prince joined his immediate family for the 35-minute service. The 145 guests also included members of the Corps diplomatique, regional dignitaries, and courtiers along with select representatives from the royal household as well as the parents personal friends.

 Want to keep up with the latest royals coverage? Click here to subscribe to the Royals Newsletter.

Alexanders christening marks the third royal baptism within a year for the Bernadotte dynasty: after his elder cousin Prince Nicolass ceremony in October 2015, Prince Oscar followed him to the font in May this year.

Breaking Down Our Favorite Royal Christenings of All Time!

Prince Alexanders five godparents were revealed on Thursday, the day before the ceremony. Preeminent among them is his aunt Crown Princess Victoria, heir apparent to the nations throne, who becomes a godmother for the 18th time.

Her other godchildren include Alexanders cousin Princess Leonore; Norways second in line Princess Ingrid Alexandra, 12; Denmarks Prince Christian, 11 and Catharina-Amalia, Princess of Orange, the 12 year old heir apparent to the throne of the Netherlands.

After the service, guests were greeted by a 21-gun salute from a battleship afloat in waters near the place grounds, before going on to join the king for lunch.
Pete Buttigieg visits Charlevoix to support Democratic candidates

In a show of support for the local slate of Democratic candidates, Pete Buttigieg made an appearance at the Charlevoix Public Library on Saturday.
Pemex to cut budget next year amid output decline - Meade



Jose Antonio Meade, Mexico's newly appointed Finance Minister

MEXICO CITY

Petroleumworld.com 09 09 2016

Mexico will continue to hack into the budget of its oil producer next year, a move likely to mean further financial duress and continued output declines for Petroleos Mexicanos.

It's reasonable that the 2017 budget reduction for Pemex, as the state-owned company is known, will be around the same amount as the 100 billion pesos ($5.4 billion) cut this year, Jose Antonio Meade, the country's newly appointed Finance Minister, said in an interview with Radio Formula.

It is natural that the adjustment is maintained, given the fall in international oil prices, Meade said, when asked if the government could repeat a similar reduction. It is a reasonable deduction and in-line with what other oil companies in the world are doing given the complicated environment.

Further subtraction by the Mexican government of Pemex's already diminished budget would exacerbate the company's challenge to reverse declining oil production, which has plummeted to less than 2.2 million daily barrels from a high of nearly 3.4 million in 2004. The company's output may fall to about 1.6 million barrels a day by 2020 because it lacks the technology and funds to revamp aging fields, Morgan Stanley analysts led by Martijn Rats said in July. Pemex was forced to trim a planned $3.6 billion in investments for oil exploration projects this year following the budget cuts in February.

Significant Implications'

It has significant implications for the company's long-term viability, Lucas Aristizabal, Senior Director at Fitch Ratings, said in a phone interview from Chicago. Most budget cuts come from capital expenditure reductions, and if the company lowers its investment, it's going to see a significantly lower reserve-replacement ratio and its production could continue declining.

Pemex is working with the Finance Ministry on the final details of the 2017 budget and nothing is yet defined on a possible reduction, the company said in an e-mailed response to questions. The company is committed to continue making its spending more efficient given the fall in international oil prices, according to the statement.

Meade, who yesterday replaced outgoing minister Luis Videgaray, will submit the country's 2017 budget proposal to the Chamber of Deputies today at 5 p.m. in Mexico City, he said. The budget package, which will require approval from Congress, will call for an important cut" to the country's spending, he said.

The package sends signals of responsibility and recognizes the difficult moment that we are facing in the global economy, Meade said. It is the package that we need in this difficult moment.

Mexico's economic growth is forecast to be between 2 to 3 percent next year, with an average exchange rate of 18.2 pesos per U.S. dollar, he said. That would represent an appreciation of about 2.4 percent from current levels.








Amsterdam, the Netherlands  Royal Philips (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHIA) today reported the transaction details related to the repurchases of its own common shares made in the period from September 9, 2016 up to and including September 15, 2016.

These repurchases were made under the EUR 1.5 billion share repurchase program for capital reduction purposes and the repurchase program to cover long term incentive and employee share purchase plans. Further details can be found in the table below and via this link.
The Philadelphia Historical Commission has agreed to consider listing on the city's Register of Historic Places three Jewelers Row buildings eyed for demolition, but the move may be too late to protect the properties.

The commission's Committee on Historic Designation will review nominations for 704 Sansom St. and 706-08 Sansom St. at meetings on Oct. 21, according to nominating documents on its website. The buildings are part of a five-property stretch that Horsham-based developer Toll Bros. wants to replace with a 16-story condo tower.

But Karen Guss, a spokeswoman for the city Department of Licenses and Inspections, which issues those permits, said that was not the case. Since the nomination to the Historical Commission was received after a demolition application for the properties was submitted to her agency, "the nomination does not affect the review of the demolition permit," she said.

Whether the nomination of the properties staves off their demolition may hang on interpretations of a Common Pleas Court ruling in a case this year in West Philadelphia.

In that case, a judge held that the nomination of 4046-48 Chestnut St. trumped a demolition-permit application that had been filed earlier, a decision heartening to the Toll project's opponents.

Guss said the judge issued an order staying demolition until resolution of the nominators' administrative appeals of the demolition permits. The order was specific to the case and did not establish any precedent, she said.
Illuminated by the waning rays of sunlight here at Cape Canaveral Thursday evening, NASA's OSIRIS-REx probe soared flawlessly into space, kicking off a seven-year journey to asteroid Bennu and back.

Liftoff occurred on time at 7:05 p.m. EDT (23:05 UTC). Flying with a single, offset solid rocket booster, the spacecraft's Atlas V launch vehicle darted quickly off the pad and was visible for about three minutes as it curved gently into the evening sky over the Atlantic Ocean.

An hour later, OSIRIS-REx was cruising toward interplanetary space and communicating as expected with NASA's Deep Space Network in Canberra, Australia.

"You'll all be real glad to know that we got everything just exactly perfect," said Dante Lauretta, the mission's principal investigator at the University of Arizona in Tucson. "I cant tell you how thrilled I was this evening."

Lauretta and other mission representatives were met with cheers as they entered a post-launch press conference.

"Tonight is a night for celebration," said Ellen Stofan, NASA's chief scientist. "We're on our way to an asteroid!"
Mark Cuban

Billionaire business mogul Mark Cuban said Friday that Hillary Clinton could knock Donald Trump off his game at the debates simply by occasionally smirking and rolling her eyes at his answers.

The owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks and star of ABC's "Shark Tank" said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" that would drive Trump "crazy."

"He's just going to throw jabs and try keep her on the defensive, and she's just got to smile every time he says something stupid," Cuban said. "She's got to smile and that will drive him crazy. He goes nuts when somebody thinks he isn't smart."

He further explained that's why, he believes, Trump always mentions that he graduated from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League school.

"There's a reason why he needs his ego stroked," Cuban said. "He just doesn't have confidence in his own intellectual ability apparently."

He added that Trump "will go nuts" if Clinton gives him "a subtle smile" and "a little shake" of her head after he answers a question in the upcoming presidential debates, which begin in just more than two weeks.

Cuban was later asked whether he was asked to play Trump in Clinton's debate prep, a question he previously answered in an email to Business Insider by saying he hadn't been asked. During his Friday appearance, he still asserted that he had not been asked to play the role, although he would "love to do it."

Brian Fallon, press secretary for the Clinton campaign, previously told Business Insider that the campaign is not "confirming or denying any of the various reports of who may play Trump at debate prep."

"But what I would tell her to do is smirk a lot through his answers," Cuban said. "You know I know they tell them not to react at all. But in Donald's case, he's going to notice if she's shaking her head. He's like a school boy."

"And if she's smiling at his answers, rolling her eyes, not a lot because you can't be over the top, that will get to him," he continued. "Because if you question his intellectual ability that will drive him nuts ... He doesn't have the temperament to deal with someone questioning his intellectual capacity."

Story continues

Cuban endorsed Clinton at a rally in Pittsburgh, his hometown, in July. During that rally, he referred to Trump as a "jagoff"  a demeaning slang term frequently used in western Pennsylvania  during the event. The billionaire has ripped Trump repeatedly on social media in recent months.

Watch Cuban's "Morning Joe" interview below:

NOW WATCH: Why you won't find a garbage can near the 9/11 memorial





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Another Blow for Baazov: Insider Trading Evidence Allegedly Uncovered

September 09, 2016 Mo Nuwwarah Editor

The troubles of David Baazov continue.

Less than a month after he resigned from all positions at Amaya, the company he founded and for which he served as CEO, Baazov is staring at a rising tide of evidence that he engaged in insider trading, according to the reporting of Canadian outlet The Globe and Mail.

In what The Globe and Mail called "the biggest insider trading investigation in Canadian history," Baazov allegedly was at the head of a pyramid of kickbacks. According to Quebec securities regulator Autorite des Marches Financiers (AMF), Baazov used his position as CEO of the company to inform close associates, including brother Josh Baazov, of private, privileged information. They could then use this information to profit by buying and selling shares of Amaya stock in advance of company developments that would fundamentally alter the value of Amaya.

When Baazov was initially charged with five counts of insider trading, he maintained his innocence, saying he was "highly confident he would be found innocent of all charges." He's sticking with that line even in the wake of The Globe and Mail's reporting.

"Mr. Baazov is innocent of any wrongdoing and he is eager to present his defense," a spokesman for Baazov said.

The AMF contends otherwise and says Baazov's transgressions date to at least 2010. Just before Amaya acquired PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker, its stock roughly doubled in value. Profits from the illegal trading are estimated at 1.5 million.

The information trail was hot as recently as this year, accordng to the AMF. Major company news that may have affected stock prices included the launch of PokerStars New Jersey and the announcement that Baazov was making an all-cash offer to acquire the company after previously taking it public.

It's too early to tell what Baazov and Co.'s alleged law breaking will cost them, but the man who founded a company that became an online gambling giant is now out the door of said company and likely looking at substantial penalties from Canadian authorities.

Be sure to complete your PokerNews experience by checking out an overview of our mobile and tablet apps here. Stay on top of the poker world from your phone with our mobile iOS and Android app, or fire up our iPad app on your tablet. You can also update your own chip counts from poker tournaments around the world with MyStack on both Android and iOS.
Suspended Bay St. Louis, MS, Police Chief Mike Denardo reportedly killed himself Thursday in the parking lot of the police station. (Photo: Bay St. Louis PD)

A Mississippi police chief who had just been suspended shot and killed himself in the police departments parking lot Thursday, officials said, in what was described as a bad day for law enforcement.

Bay St. Louis Police Chief Mike DeNardo shot himself in the chest, Hancock County Sheriffs Office Chief Deputy Don Bass told CBS News. He said the Thursday shooting appeared intentional.

Our initial finding is a self-inflicted gunshot, he said.

Hancock County Sheriff Ricky Adam told CBS New Orleans affiliate WWL-TV that DeNardo was involved in an ongoing personnel issue. Adam said in comments aired by CBS affiliate WLOX-TV of Biloxi, Mississippi, that sheriffs department staff were on hand to help escort the chief from the office.
Genetec Mission Control (Image: Genetec)

Genetec Inc., provider of open-architecture, IP security solutions, today announced Mission Control, a Decision Support System (DSS) that will provide security professionals with new levels of situational intelligence, system visualization, and incident management.

Designed to work seamlessly with Security Center, the companys unified security platform that combines video surveillance, access control, automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) and communications management, Mission Control aims to simplify the operator's tasks and decision-making process when handling routine activities and undesirable situations. Genetec Mission Control is expected to be available in Q4 2016, and will be demonstrated at the ASIS 62nd Annual International Seminar and Exhibits, on booth #2327 in Orlando, FL, September 12-15th.

Ideally suited to meet the operational needs of larger, multi-site deployments in markets such as higher education and transportation, Mission Control will give operators a holistic, unified, and map-centric view of their entire security infrastructure. Mission Control will also move beyond the capabilities of traditional security platforms, enabling organizations to manage the entire lifecycle of incidents and situations, from monitoring incoming sensor data and detecting incidents, all the way through to resolution and auditing.

With Mission Control, organizations will be able to define their response strategy and contingency plans in advance. Based on their unique needs and environment, security and operations departments will be able to create incident categories, the multi-layered rules that trigger each, and automate system actions to address them. They can further assign automated workflows and standard operating procedures (SOPs) to incident categories, which are triggered when an incident is detected to guide the response of the operator to ensure compliance with internal and external policies.

"Security systems have been traditionally designed to report events and alarms, leaving it up to the operator to interpret the information and react to situations. However, with the increased complexity of security installations, and the sheer volume of data gathered by the multitude of sensors, it can be difficult for operators to confidently assess complex situations or respond to threats," explains Jimmy Palatsoukas, Senior Manager of Product Marketing, Genetec Inc. "Mission Control will allow personnel to take control of undesirable situations by correlating incoming data to detect more complex situations, prioritize larger incidents and threats, and remove emotion from the response by steering operators along the way."

Mission Control gives security personnel a more intelligent view of an incident so they can make informed decisions. This is achieved by ingesting data from thousands of sensors and associated real-time information and qualifying them more intelligently based on the end-users operational environment. Once triggered, incidents launch workflows that drive system behavior and guide operator responses through the entire lifecycle of the incident using SOPs. In addition to comprehensive incident management, Mission Control will offer operators the ability to manage both active and historical incidents, run reports for analysis purposes and continuous improvement, as well as for auditing purposes.

To enhance and streamline the operator experience, Mission Control introduces new levels of interaction within dynamic maps, including monitoring live incidents and response management, to go beyond traditional maps that are generally limited to monitoring security devices and singular events. By utilizing a map-centric approach to monitoring and command and control, operators will be able to more intuitively visualize the security environment and take appropriate action as warranted.

For more information about Mission Control, visit the product feature page at: http://www.genetec.com/mission-control.
Photo: Vigilant Solutions

Vigilant Solutions announced today that its fixed cameras are being used by the La Verne Police Department in California to improve the safety of the community. La Verne is a small community within Los Angeles County covering just over 8 square miles and with a population of just over 30,000. The network of 21 fixed cameras has been active now for eight months and is having a noticeable impact on the department's ability to both protect its neighborhoods from known vehicles of interest and investigate and close cases more rapidly, according to the company.

Lt. Chris Fenner explains, "La Verne is not a big city by any stretch of the imagination, but because we are in L.A. County we see our fair share of criminals either passing through our community or specifically coming into our community to perpetrate crimes. We take an oath to protect and serve, and we take that very seriously. We've seen otherwise peaceful communities turned upside down by crime; when that happens, it impacts everything  property values, quality of life, business, and much more. We wanted to take a very proactive measure to reduce the crime that is taking place and prevent future crimes from ever occurring.

"We saw other neighboring communities create a 'virtual fence' using license plate reader (LPR) cameras and heard about the results they were generating. After doing a fair amount of research, we elected to install 21 fixed LPR cameras at strategic locations around our community. After only 8 months in operation, I can tell you that they have had a very significant impact. We have identified 28 occupied stolen vehicles entering La Verne and successfully stopped them all. To put this into perspective, we averaged one to two stolen recoveries annually prior to having LPR. Stolen vehicles are often used to perpetrate other crimes, and I can say without a doubt that we prevented crimes from taking place by stopping these vehicles. Some of these vehicles were entering residential areas at 1 or 2 in the morning with loaded firearms and burglary tools. As a result of these stops, we have also apprehended individuals wanted for more serious crimes such as kidnapping and assault with a deadly weapon.

"But in addition to helping us identify these threats entering our community, the data collected by the cameras also helps us investigate cases. We have solved numerous residential and commercial burglary cases, using vehicle descriptions such as year, make and model, or a partial plate, coupled with a location. We have located at least three domestic violence suspects using historical data to understand where the suspects' vehicles have previously been seen."

Fenner concludes, "The system has been a tremendous force multiplier for our department, and is helping us not only reduce  but prevent crime. Based on our success, we are in the process of expanding the system to further secure our community giving our residents confidence and sending a signal to criminals that they will be caught if they try to bring crime into our community."

For more information visit Visit www.vigilantsolutions.com.
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Rewriting history has always been one of Rudy Giulianis great skills. Last month, the former New York mayor said there were no terrorist attacks on American soil before President Obama and Hillary Clinton took power in 2009.

Of course, he forgot the most deadly attack in U.S. history that took place on Sept. 11, 2001, in the city he was in charge of.

In his latest historical revision, Giuliani now says that birtherism  the Trump-championed conspiracy theory that Barack Obama wasnt born in the United States  is something Donald Trump actually denounced years ago.

Video:

Giuliani: Trump believes now Obama was born in the U.S. https://t.co/r29dx5FjxL  Hardball (@hardball) September 9, 2016

After Matthews told Giuliani that top Trump surrogates, including VP nominee Mike Pence and former presidential candidate Ben Carson, have recently conceded that President Obama is a legitimate American, Giuliani responded by saying Trump already did that three, four, five years ago.

As the MSNBC host pointed out, though, Trump himself has never said that he believes, unequivocally, that Obama was born in the United States.

He did not do that yet, Matthews said. I am waiting for him to do it.

Giuliani responded, Donald Trump believes now that he was born in the United States.

As recently as this week, though, the Republican nominee still refused to admit that Obama was born here, instead saying, I dont talk about it.

For years, Donald Trump has consistently refused to admit that Barack Obama was born in the United States. Not long ago, Trump even claimed he had damning evidence that proved the current president wasnt truly born in Hawaii.

Its part of the reason why Trump won the support of the extremist GOP base and likely why he still hasnt officially denounced the birther conspiracy.

Giuliani can paper over history all he wants, but it means nothing until the candidate himself comes out and admits that he has been wrong all along.

Dont hold your breath.
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A new Latino Decisions poll released on Thursday shows that Donald Trumps fake pivot on immigration hasnt fooled Latino voters.

The national poll, which was conducted after the Republican nominees strange trip to Mexico and his anti-immigrant rant in Arizona, shows Clinton leading Trump with Latino voters by 55 points  72 percent to 17 percent.

Trump is underperforming Mitt Romneys 2012 level of Latino support, which was already dismal.

According to David Damore of Latino Decisions:

In recent weeks media reporting has been rife with speculation that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump was pivoting away from the harsh immigration policies and anti-immigrant language that have been the hallmark of his presidential campaign. Yet, as last weeks speech in Arizonadelivered hours after a meeting with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nietorevealed, there is no kinder and gentler Donald Trump lurking under that comb over. Instead, Trump doubled down on the rhetoric and policies that have him poised to receive the least amount of support from Latino voters of any Republican presidential candidate in modern American political history.

The survey showed that huge majorities of Latino voters believe Trumps rhetoric has encouraged hostility toward minorities and made racial divisions in the country deeper. Three-quarters of respondents said that Trumps proposal to build a wall will not make America stronger, and nearly 80 percent believe the Republican nominee doesnt truly care about helping African-American and Latino citizens.

Another huge majority  73 percent  believe the Republican nominees policies are about making America hate again, despite his promise to make America great again.

Its clear that Trumps temporary attempt to strike a softer tone on immigration, before returning to his original anti-immigrant rhetoric, turned Latino voters off even more than they previously were. And despite what Trump may think, itll take more than white voters to win a national election in an increasingly diverse country.

Last year, an analysis by Latino Decisions found that the GOP nominee must carry 40 percent of the Latino vote in 2016 to win the presidency.

If this poll  which was accurate in its prediction of the Latino vote in 2012  turns out to be accurate, it will be nearly impossible for Donald Trump to defeat Hillary Clinton in November.
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Since last nights Commander-in-Chief forum on NBC, Republicans have been on the defensive about Donald Trumps reiterated praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Heres what Trump said:

Heres Trump praising Putin at length even after being reminded he annexed Crimea, invaded Ukraine, supports Assad: https://t.co/Hh7Rhde2Tr  Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) September 8, 2016

If he says great things about me, Im going to say great things about him, Trump said of the Russian president. The man has very strong control over a country.

The GOP nominee added that Putin has been a leader far more than our presidents been a leader.

Essentially, Trumps case for why Putin is a good leader is this: 1. The Russian president has high approval ratings; 2. He has complimented Trump.

We know that there are few things Trump values more than polls and praise.

With that said, the Republican nominees decision to wrap his arms around Putin isnt just insane, but it also shows that Trumps definition of leadership is pretty frightening.

First of all, Putin is presiding over a terrible economy, which was made even worse by U.S.-led sanctions imposed following his illegal annexation of Crimea and Russias overall meddling in Ukraine.

In a Reuters report from yesterday, one Russian employer said, The Russian economy has hit bottom, but who would have thought the Russians would start digging?

VOA News also reported earlier this week that Putins economy has plunged millions of people into poverty

Its not just economic conditions that are dire in Russia; life also isnt so good for those who support a free press.

Since Putin came to power, 25 journalists have been killed. The majority of those killings were carried out by military or government officials, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

If this is the type of strength and leadership that Donald Trump wants to emulate as the President of the United States, then were all in trouble.

Meanwhile, in President Obamas America, the economy has rebounded from the worst downturn since the Great Depression. More than 15 million jobs have been created over the last 78 months  the longest streak of private sector job growth in history. The uninsured rate is at record lows, the stock market is soaring, and the unauthorized immigrant population has actually fallen.

In a recent analysis conducted by Gallup, the American people report that their lives have gotten better during Obamas two terms as president. Obamas rising approval ratings only confirm that reality.

All of this despite Trumps repeated attempts to paint the country under Obama as a hellscape overrun by illegals.

For score-keeping purposes: Putin isolated his country from the rest of the world, drove his economy into the ground, and ordered the killing of journalists. Obama halted a second Great Depression, laid the groundwork for sustained economic growth, provided health insurance to millions, and improved  yes, improved  Americas reputation abroad.

The contest of which of these two men is a better leader isnt even close. In fact, Putin would likely trade his record for Obamas in a heartbeat.

Ultimately, all of this says more about the Republican nominee than it does about either Putin or Obama. If Putins is the leadership that Donald Trump admires then he should be nowhere near the White House.
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The Trump campaigns claim that Donald Trump was tricked by Larry King into giving an interview that appeared on Russian television is so absurd that if it is true it should disqualify the Republican nominee from ever being president.

During the interview that appeared on state-run Russian media, Trump claimed that the Putin hacking of DNC servers was a Democratic conspiracy.

Video of Trump on PoliticKING with Larry King for Ora TV:

Transcript:



KING: Putin recently said that the hacking of the Democratic National Committee emails was a public service. Do you agree?

TRUMP: I dont have any opinion on it. I dont know anything about it. I dont know who hacked. Im not sure who. I mean, you tell me who hacked? Who did the hacking? But, I have absolutely no opinion on that. I dont know, I havent heard that statement.

KING: U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement agencies reportedly are investigating whether Russia launched a covert operation to disrupt the 2016 election. What do you make of that?

TRUMP: I dont know. I mean Ive been hearing about it, Ive been reading about it. I think its probably unlikely. I think maybe the Democrats are putting that out. Who knows? But I think that its pretty unlikely. But, who knows? I hope that if they are doing something, I hope that someones going to be able to find out so they can end it. Because, that would not be appropriate at all.

The Trump campaign is claiming that they were tricked by King. According to CNN, Trump spokesman Jason Miller said, Mr. Trump was never told it would be shared anywhere else. Miller later said Trump wouldnt have agreed to do the interview had he known it would be aired on RT.

Here is the situation. Either Donald Trump and his campaign are so inept and gullible that they were tricked by 82-year-old Larry King or they are so incompetent that nobody thought to ask where the interview was going to be used.

No matter how it happened, the takeaway is the same. If Donald Trump is getting played by Larry King, then he should be disqualified in the minds of voters from being president. Trump and his team cant handle a podcast appearance, so they definitely cant handle leading the most powerful country in the world.

Anyone who gets played by Larry King should be automatically disqualified from any position of power.
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The failure to stop Donald Trump is an act of political malpractice, Molly Ball writes in the October issue of Vanity Fair , attributing this sentiment to Republican strategist Stuart Stevens, who handled Mitt Romneys 2012 campaign.

I think Trump is the most dangerous politician Ive ever encountered, and I did a campaign in the Congo against a guy who got accused of war crimes in The Hague, Stevens said in Vanity Fair. If that guy would have won, he wouldnt have had nuclear weapons.

This is really all people need to know about Donald Trump. He is dangerous. And thats not a partisan take on the guy who finds Putins dictatorship style of leadership aspirational. The idea that Donald Trump is exceptionally dangerous crosses the aisle. The only people who arent saying it are elected Republicans who have their marching orders to follow the current leader of their party, Donald Trump.

But the public doesnt know that Donald Trump is dangerous, because the press has clutched their pearls over Hillary Clintons non-illegal, much researched and investigated, mini-problems, like her emails. If there is one thing every American knows by now, its that Hillary Clinton had a problem with her emails and it must be very, very serious because its all they ever hear about.

They do not hear ad nauseam about Donald Trump reportedly wondering why he cant use nuclear weapons since we have them, wanting to sue the press if he gets into office in order to kill the fourth estate and thus transparency and accountability, the violence hes incited toward the press and toward protesters, his illegal donations to Florida AG Pam Bondi, his encouraging Russia to hack Hillary Clinton, his suggestion that Hillary Clinton would be shot if she won, his aide saying twice that Hillary Clinton should be shot by a firing squad even though she was cleared of wrongdoing, his problematic treatment of a female journalist he harassed, his conspiracy-oriented beliefs and his birtherism, or his simple inability to articulate a single thought in response to a question about his policies.

Donald Trump is not a thinking man. He is a dangerous demagogue who cares more about how he looks and the praise he seeks than he does anything else, including this country a fact hes made obvious by letting Putin play him for a fool.

Until the press finds a way to convey that Donald Trump is actually dangerous, and there is no equivalency on the side of Hillary Clinton, they will be failing in their job.

It is a tremendous task in a world set up to appear impartial by taking cowardly refuge in he said she said stories, but its now or never. A dangerous man is creeping up on the White House and his vision for this country is not in keeping with the freedom and liberty we all cherish.

Stevens responded on Twitter with an elegantly simple and devastatingly effective narrative, Theres the Putin side and the American side. Trump has made his choice. Whats yours?

There's the Putin side and the American side. Trump has made his choice. What's yours? https://t.co/0KhgVc7sod  stuart stevens (@stuartpstevens) September 9, 2016

In other words, if youre pro-America, vote Clinton. If youre pro-Russia, vote Trump. That about covers it.
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*The following is an opinion column by R Muse*

If anyone in America personifies hypocrisy, it is difficult to find another group as guilty as Republicans on nearly any topic imaginable. This idea that there is one standard Republicans hold Democrats to while blatantly and publicly violating that standard, and it doesnt matter what it is, has become nearly as universal as their racism, religious-borne bigotry and misogyny. On Thursday, it was that inherent misogynistic bent that drove the highest-ranking Republican in the land to hypocritically criticize Hillary Clinton while ignoring his partys standard bearers truly obscene statements over the past months.

During a radio interview with conservative Hugh Hewitt yesterday, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan forgot that the day before he complained that he is not an election pundit while refusing to comment on statements made by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. However much Ryan claimed it wasnt his job, or that he was too busy doing nothing in his job to comment on the back-and-forth between Hillary Clinton and Trump, he surely found the time out of his busy schedule and made it his job to condemn former-Secretary Clinton for a true remark about Trump and demanded she issue an apology for telling the truth. Or was it because she is a woman?

Ryan was queried if he believed Hillary Clinton should apologize to Mr. Trump for suggesting that terrorists (ISIL) are rooting for his campaign. The two-faced Ryan replied:

Sure, I do. But she wont. I mean look, theyre going to call each other these kinds of names. Its just, I dont know, I dont see why she thinks this is good for her, but I think it just shows, you know, you can just sort of see a person at the end of the day, what theyre like.

So, lets clarify that what Ryan is really saying is that Hillary Clinton is supposed to apologize for speaking the truth, and that because she spoke honestly it portrays her as someone untoward. What Ryan didnt explain was if Clinton should apologize because she made an honest statement, or because she is a woman; it is more than likely both. Now, what the hypocrisy police want to know is: Why in dogs name didnt Ryan demand that his champion Trump apologize to Hillary Clinton for suggesting that those fanatical Second Amendment folks would be the only possible remedy to a Clinton presidency or a Supreme Court nominee that isnt a raging religious maniac?

The remark Ryan said warrants an apology was Hillary Clintons comments during an interview broadcast on Israeli television where she cited a Time magazine article where the former National Counterterrorism Center chief, Matt Olson, argued that members and leaders of the Islamic State (Daesh, IS, ISIS, ISIL) are actively advocating for Trump. Candidate Clinton said:

I found it even surprising how clear and compelling the case was where he [Olson] quoted ISIS spokespeople rooting for Donald Trumps victory because Trump has made Islam and Muslims a part of his campaign and basically, Matt Olson argues [that] the jihadists see this as a great gift.

They are saying, Oh please, Allah, make Trump president of America. So Im not interested in giving aid and comfort to their evil ambitions. I want to defeat them. I want to end their reign of terror. I dont want them to feel as though they can be getting more recruits because of our politics.

First, Hillary Clinton was referring to a real counterterrorism experts opinion cited in a real mainstream magazine article and wasnt just spouting lies off the top of her head Ike Ryans hero Donald Trump. And second, it is a counterterrorism experts opinion founded on an absolute fact. And, incidentally, that counterterrorism experts opinion duly parroted the stated purpose of an ISIS leaders treatise he wrote down for posterity over a year-and-a-half ago (February 2015). In fact, this non-counterterrorism experts column reported last November, and again December that both Donald Trump and the Republican Party were following ISIS leaderships carefully detailed and scripted instructions to the letter and aiding ISIS recruitment efforts precisely as the jihadists knew the fascists were prone to do.

Of course ISIS members are rooting for a Trump victory. He has already done a yeomans job thus far by making life miserable, and dangerous, for American Muslims according to the dictates of the Islamic State to enhance their Western recruitment efforts from afar without lifting a finger or uttering one word; Donald Trump has done all the heavy lifting for them as they knew the fascists in the West would do. It is why Matt Olson, a real counterterrorism expert, could say with the utmost confidence that yes, ISIS is rooting for Trump and saying, Oh please, Allah, make Trump president of America.

Its no surprise to any American that Republican Paul Ryan is a hypocrite and a misogynist; all Republicans are hypocrites and misogynists. It is somewhat curious, however, that in the course of under 24 hours he did such an obvious about face in first, refusing to comment as an election pundit when it involved comments his love interest Donald Trump made, and then becoming an election pundit to demand an apology from his love interests rival over a remark quoting a counterterrorism expert.

Throughout this entire ugly, drawn-out and uniquely bizarre election cycle there has been an increase in Republican and the mainstream medias misogyny likely because Hillary Clinton is in the race. It has also been an election with myriad examples of hypocrisy always emanating from the Republican side and always targeting Hillary Clinton. Still, it was somewhat surprising that after refusing to comment on a Donald Trump remark because it was election punditry, two-faced Paul Ryan just couldnt let 24 hours pass without becoming an election pundit as if no-one would notice he reversed course to fulfill his typically Republican role of hypocrite and arrogant misogynist.
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Duck Dynastys Phil Robertson, in an interview with a West Virginia radio station, said its my studied opinion, just from observing, our founders basically said, When disasters come your way, its unfortunate, they do happen, but you cant expect the United States government to start pouring in and coming down there.

Listen courtesy of Right Wing Watch:

Heres my view of disasters, whether it be hurricanes, tornadoes, it just rains a lot. Everyone needs to take a deep breath and sayYou know, Ive noticed something. We bellyache when it doesnt rain because we cant grow anything and Its a drought, its a drought! We all bellyache and then cry out. Well, when it rains, starts raining and it rains too much so you have a flood, Its a flood, its a flood! and everyone gets all bent out of shape whether it doesnt rain or if it does rain.



So everybody is saying, running around on planet earth, seemingly saying in America at least, if it just rained just right all the time we would be happy. Heres the deal: When it rains a lot, its going to flood. And if it doesnt rain too much you have a drought. Both of them are bones to be chewed.



But its my studied opinion, just from observing, our founders basically said, When disasters come your way, its unfortunate, they do happen, but you cant expect the United States government to start pouring in and coming down there.

Unfortunately for Religious Right patriarch Robertson, he neither studied nor observed very carefully. In fact, federal disaster relief dates to the very earliest days of our republic. Many of our Founding Fathers were still alive or in office in 1803, and Thomas Jefferson was serving his second term as president when the first federal disaster relief bill was passed (and James Madison his Secretary of State), the Congressional Act of 1803, A Bill For the relief of the sufferers by fire, in the town of Portsmouth.

In that fire, it is reported, 114 buildings were destroyed and damages totaled $200,000. Some $45,000 in donations were collected and distributed, showing a clear need for federal assistance and the inability of people to come together and fix it themselves.

The Congressional Act of 1803 read:

Be it enacted, by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress Assembled, that the secretary of the treasury be, and he hereby is authorized and directed to cause to be suspended for months, the collection of bonds due to the United States by merchants of Portsmouth, in New Hampshire, who have suffered by the late conflagration of that town.

It wasnt exactly what people in disaster areas expect today, but it is what small government can provide. And it is more than Republicans like Phil Robertson think folks should get from the government they elect to look out for their interests, and to help them when nobody else can.
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Asked about Republicans Donald Trump and Mike Pences comments praising President Vladimir Putin of the Russian Federation, Democratic V.P. nominee Senator Tim Kaine said he was shocked by the disrespect for President Obama.

Calling Donald Trump and Mike Pences comments shocking, Kaine said of Pence repeating that Putin was a better leader than President Obama, Anybody who would question that leadership, to me is just an irrational hostility to President Obama that they are revealing that has been part of their thinking since the very first day of his office.

Watch here via CNNs Betsy Klein:

And the second aspect is the shocking level of disrespect for the President. You can disagree with the President, but weve got a great system, we ought to be proud of our system, Kaine said. You ought to respect the office.

The Democratic Senator blasted Trump and Pence for stooping so low, Anybody who would suggest that Vladimir Putin is a better leader than the guy who got bin Laden, who turned the economy around from a free fall to a growing economy again, who has made historic advances in LGBT equality and other important areas, anybody who would question that leadership, to me is just an irrational hostility to President Obama that they are revealing that has been part of their thinking since the very first day of his office.

A ticket who is praising a dictator, Kaine pointed out.

He (Pence) has no doubt that Vladimir Putin is a better leader for his nation than Barack Obama is for the United States? Kaine asked.

What about running our economy into the ground is leadership? What about invading other countries is leadership? What about persecuting LGBT Russians or persecuting journalists is leadership? Kaine continued.

The Democratic VP nominee laid out a deep problem when dealing with the Republican ticket, If you dont know the difference between leadership and dictatorship, where do I start with you?

Kaine made an important observation in noting that the irrational hostility toward President Obama is behind Trump and Pences willingness to cast aside good sense. His remarks allude to the heavily supported theory that without the wild resentment conservatives feel toward Barack Obama, there would be no Donald Trump. This is, after all, the fuel that drives Trumps base  this feeling that others are getting something they arent entitled to.

The Trump base is irrational. And as Trump himself once said, he could shoot someone and his base would still follow him. Why? Because hes their only hope that being mediocre but white is still proof of their entitlement; aka, their sad American dream.

Republicans should be ashamed that their level of hate for the first black President has led them to this pathetic bromance with Putin.

Republicans have been in search of a scandal that would justify their irrational hatred of Obama for seven plus years, to no avail. There is no real justification for it, leaving the only other option  and that is, racism.

Hence, Donald Trump and Mike Pence slobbering over the Russian dictator President Putin.
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A new study released this week says Minnesota has the best health care in the United States.

Minnesota finished in the top five in four of the nine metrics employed by WalletHub to determine the rankings, including first in average monthly insurance premium. It also finished third in physician medicare acceptance rate and percentage of adults without a dental visit in the past year, along with fifth in percentage of adults (age 18-64) with health insurance.

While it isn't specifically mentioned in the report, Minnesota likely benefited from the presence of Rochester-based Mayo Clinic, which recently returned to the top spot in U.S. News & World Report's annual hospital rankings.

"Mayo Clinic is just one part of the health care landscape in Minnesota, but we are proud to be top ranked for quality by more well-known national assessment organizations than any other academic medical center in the nation," Mayo Clinic said via statement.

According to the methodology outlined by WalletHub, Minnesota finished 11th in health care costs, 6th in health care access and 3rd in health outcomes. By comparison, Wisconsin was ranked No. 24 and finished 49th, 10th and 12th in those same categories.

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John McDonough, a Harvard professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management, said the key to keeping costs down for patients is seeking out independent information because "physicians are not always right and they don't always agree with each other."

"It's always the same  it's about access, quality, costs and efficiency, and equity," McDonough said. "Same as it's always been."

The Midwest claimed three of the top five spots in the annual ranking, as South Dakota and Iowa finished third and fourth, respectively. Maryland was second and Utah rounded out the top five.

The bottom five included Arkansas, Nevada, Mississippi, Louisiana and Alaska.

Minnesota scored just over 67 points on the 100-point scale, finishing three points above Maryland. Alaska had the lowest score at 39.
NEW YORK  California and federal regulators fined Wells Fargo a combined $185 million on Thursday, alleging the bank's employees illegally opened millions of unauthorized accounts for their customers in order to meet aggressive sales goals.

The San Francisco-based bank will pay $100 million to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a federal agency created five years ago, $35 million to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and $50 million to the City and County of Los Angeles. It will also pay restitution to affected customers.

It is the largest fine the CFPB has levied against a financial institution and the largest fine in the history of the Los Angeles City Attorney's office.

Roughly 5,300 employees at Wells Fargo were fired in connection with this behavior, according to the city attorney's office.

The CFPB said Wells Fargo sales staff opened more than 2 million bank and credit card accounts that may have not been authorized by customers. Money in customers' accounts was transferred to these new accounts without authorization. Debit cards were issued and activated, as well as PINs created, without telling customers.

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In some cases, Wells Fargo employees even created fake email addresses to sign up customers for online banking services.

"Wells Fargo built an incentive-compensation program that made it possible for its employees to pursue underhanded sales practices, and it appears that the bank did not monitor the program carefully," said CFPB Director Richard Cordray.

The behavior was widespread, the CFPB and other regulators said, involving thousands of Wells Fargo employees.

Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer called Wells Fargo's behavior "outrageous" and a "major breach of trust."

"Consumers must be able to trust their banks," Feuer said.

Wells Fargo's aggressive sales tactics were first disclosed by The Los Angeles Times in an investigation in 2013 . The story series prompted the Los Angeles City Attorney office to sue Wells Fargo over its tactics.

In a statement, Wells Fargo said: "We regret and take responsibility for any instances where customers may have received a product that they did not request." Wells Fargo said they've refunded $2.6 million in fees associated with products that were opened without authorization.

Despite the L.A. Times investigation, Wells Fargo is still known for having aggressive sales goals for its employees. Wells Fargo's executives highlight every quarter the bank's so-called "cross sale ratio," which is the number of products the bank sells to each of their individual customers. The ratio hovers around six, which means every customer of Wells Fargo has on average six different types of products with the bank.
The 2016 Rochester version of the full harvest moon is this coming Friday night, but for all practical purposes it will be full on Thursday evening as well.

As the moon orbits our Earth, the angle between the Sun, the Earth, and the Moon opens up to 180 degrees. In other words, all three celestial bodies are in nearly a straight line. The Earth is in the middle between the distant sun and our lunar neighbor. That means that the side of the moon facing the Earth is completely lit up by the sun. It also means that the moon rises at sunset, and sets at sunrise.

Weather permitting, every 29.5 days we get to enjoy a full moon, but what makes the harvest full moon special is that it seems to hang around a little longer. Usually you only notice a full moon for two or three evenings because it rises so much later from night to night. Because of the moon's orbit around the Earth, the moon is constantly moving eastward among the backdrop of distant stars. The moon migrates 13 degrees every 24 hours, so it rises about 30 to 60 minutes later from night to night.

What makes the harvest moon unique is that it rises only about 20 minutes later each night, so the full moon seems to hang around a few more nights than usual. This happens to the full moon closest to the Autumnal Equinox, which is next week. The exact details of why this happens get a little hairy, but it basically has to do with the fact that the full moon this time of year rises directly in the east, and sets directly in the west. It also has to do with the narrow angle of the ecliptic with respect to the horizon. All that happens around the Autumnal Equinox.

Bright idea

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A full moon or near-full moon does a number on serious stargazing as the skies get whitewashed, even in the countryside. All but the brightest stars and constellations fade out. It's also a terrible time to gaze at celestial treasures with any size telescope because nebula, galaxies, and other targets get lost in the moon's glow.

It's not even all that great aiming your scope at the moon itself because of all the direct sunshine bombarding it. The best place to look at the moon is the line between the sunlit side of the moon and darkened part of the lunar surface. That line is called the terminator, and that's where you can really get a great look at mountain tops and crater walls because of the low sun angle creating all the shadows. When you have a full moon or a near full moon, there's little or no terminal.

Looking at a full moon with a telescope won't make you loony, but it can make your eyes sting. In fact, at my stargazing classes I advise people to actually put on sunglasses before they look at the full moon through their telescope. You can actually get filters for telescope eyepieces that act like sunglasses.

Pumpkin orange

A rising harvest moon usually has a bright orange color to it, and that orange hue hangs around longer into the evening than it does with a regular full moon. That's because the harvest moon rises at a lower angle with respect to the horizon, so the moon hangs lower in the sky longer. Whenever you view the sun, moon, or any astronomical objects close to the horizon, you're looking through a lot more of Earth's atmosphere. The dust and moisture scatters away all but the reddish orange components of the moon's light. That effect usually goes away gradually within an hour, although if there's a lot of pollution in the air the red and orange colors hang on for much longer.

Another thing you'll notice is that the moon appears gigantic when it first rises, but shrinks after an hour or so. This is a complete optical illusion! The moon just seems bigger when it first rises because you're comparing it with land objects  trees, buildings, strip malls, or whatever.

You can prove this to yourself with a pencil. When you first see the moon above the horizon, hold the eraser end of the pencil at arm's length against the rising moon. Compare the size of the moon with the eraser head. Then, about two hours later when the moon seems smaller, hold that same pencil at arm's length up against the moon and you'll see that the moon is no smaller compared to the diameter of the eraser. Try this. It really works.

There's another way to take away the optical illusion of the giant moon as it rises, although I doubt you'd want to try. You turn your back to the rising moon, bend forward and watch the rising moon between your legs. The harvest moon will be smaller, but you'll probably wind up in traction. Mooning the moon is painful!
Dear Answer Man, I'm a Harvard man, and as I walked down Second Street Southwest the other night playing Pokemon, I noticed that the Mayo Medical School student center has the Harvard logo carved into the stone. Can I assume that the Mayo brothers had some connection to Harvard?

No, the Mayo brothers weren't Harvard men, and I highly doubt they would have played Pokemon as they wandered down Second Street, or Zumbro Street, as it was known in their day . They may have received honorary degrees from Harvard at some point, but that would have nothing to do with the Mayo Medical School building, which is the former Rochester Public Library building.

That marvelous pile was designed by Harold Crawford , the local wunderkind who graduated from the University of Illinois in 1913 and earned a master's degree in architecture from Harvard in 1916, then returned home to design several of the city's best homes and public buildings. Crawford designed the library, at 226 Second St. SW, in the early 1930s and it was completed in 1937.

The library moved out in 1972 and it's now the medical school's Mitchell Student Center.

The Harvard coat of arms , which says "Veritas" (Latin for "truth"), is on the upper left side of the front door. What are the shields at the top and on the right? That's a tougher challenge, but with an assist from Jessica Schmidt, who chipped in ideas on Facebook when my boss posted this Thursday, the emblem on the right is from Emmanuel College , at the University of Cambridge in England. That happens to be the alma mater of John Harvard , for whom Crawford's alma mater is named.

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And the one at the top? It's the coat of arms for Rochester, England , of course. If our little Rochester, also known as the Queen City, is looking for a new emblem or flag, you could do worse than a 500-year-old coat of arms.

Dear Source of Knowledge with Answers to Questions of Great and Small Import: After seeing a P-B article some months ago, our Party of Four planned a fall excursion to Chef Al's Old Tyme Cafe in Chatfield. To our disappointment, when we recently tried to find out its hours of operation, the results came back as "permanently closed."

When you are not answering the urgent questions of the moment, could you squeeze in an update on what happened to Old Tyme? Thanks.  Party of Four from Lake City

Thanks for the tip, Party, and I had no idea that the Old Tyme had closed. What a loss for Main Street Chatfield. I checked with a few sources and they say it closed about a month ago and they're not aware of any news regarding a new owner or operator, but I'm making calls to learn more. My boss, formerly known as Mr. Four Stars, was a big fan.

Frankly, I'm also checking on what happened to Forget-Me-Not Floral,the fine flower shop in Kasson that abruptly closed in April or thereabouts.

Dear Answer Man, while recently reviewing my clippings of your columns, I discovered that I have lost one that tells the origin of the northwest Rochester neighborhood name of "Elton Hills." I believe that in the past you explained that the name is a contraction of two company names of the original developers, the first being Elcor Construction Co . What was the second name?

Thank you very much for the enlightenment.  Mike V. Liebenow

Mike, it's an excellent idea to clip my columns, and it's an even better idea to laminate them and keep them handy. That way, you avoid me having to scold you for not reading my column every day, or for losing the clip.

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As loyal fans know, I addressed this in a magnificent column on June 2, 2005  we had a big party in the newsroom a few months ago to celebrate the 11th anniversary of that column  plus I regurgitated the particulars in a reminder column just last year .

You're correct that "Elton" is a combination of two names: Carl Elfordand Fullerton Lumber Co. , key players in the subdivision's development a half-century ago. Elford and Stan Guth, of Fullerton Lumber, thought it would be neat to take part of Carl's name and part of the lumber company's name, and it immediately became part of Rochester lore.
Hi, Whiz! Hope you're resting your convoluted cranium of crammed compilations. Anywho, I'm wondering why it seems that Mayo One appears at a lot of accidents or incidents that don't seem to merit its response. Does law enforcement still have to request it? Who pays for the flight when it's not needed?  Early Morning Mark

Nobody gets up earlier in the morning than I do, Mark. I attribute much of my extreme intelligence, if not my good looks, to being an early-riser.

These are interesting questions and I took them to Glenn Lyden, the public affairs maestro for Mayo Clinic Medical Transport. First responders and law enforcement personnel make the call for a Mayo chopper, with an assist from a program called Autolaunch , "which is based on certain injury, medical and crash information and guidelines."

Mayo provides training on "when it's advisable to call for Mayo One," he said by email. Early activation is "critical to outcomes  for those patients who need Mayo One care, it is having a significant impact on morbidity and mortality."

If Mayo One is called in and a decision is made to cancel, even after arrival, "there is no charge to the patient for the flight," he said. Mayo picks up the tab.

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In 2015, Mayo One teams completed about 27 percent of Autolaunch activations, Glenn said, with the rest being cancelled due to "changing patient medical conditions" and other factors. About a quarter of Mayo One activations were cancelled even before the aircraft left the helipad.

Oh, Great One, I think I may have a question that will stump you. Not everyone may notice this, but I have, and week upon week, this eats at me, until I finally have to write my first letter to you. Begging for your help to answer this engineering question.

The large steel poles for the CapX2020 power line are assembled and then erected on concrete pads, but they don't sit directly on the concrete. They're suspended about 4-5 inches off the concrete between two large bolts. Why? How can this be stronger than sitting on the pad directly?

Newton and Einstein are dead. Where can you go for this answer?

To myself, of course, the heir to Newton and Einstein.

There are two reasons for the way the towers are put up: Rust prevention and pole alignment. Grant Stevenson, a senior project manager with Xcel Energy for CapX2020, said that with the gap between the tower and concrete pad, "there is no place for moisture to be trapped and become a potential corrosion problem. The bolts provide enough strength to allow this gap."

Those must be some bolts.

Regarding pole alignment, "each bolt has nuts below and above the base plate of the pole," he said. "This allows the bottom nuts to be adjusted to bring the pole plumb, and when required on certain angle poles to rake (or tilt) the pole as prescribed by the engineer."

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FYI, Tim Carlsgaard, another knowledgeable Xcel/CapX spokesman, says they hope to turn the juice on this month for the section from Hampton to Pine Island, along U.S. 52.

"To celebrate the completion of the entire 156-mile line, we are hosting an event on Sept. 26 at the Hampton substation," Tim said by email. "This will be a good opportunity for you to come out of the closet. I have attached an invitation ... I look forward to seeing you."

Nice try, Tim. My identity is a more closely guarded secret than Colonel Sanders'recipe. But if you'd like to send me a piece of cake, I can't stop you.
Rochester police are investigating after a woman reported an attempted assault Thursday afternoon in her home.

Officers were dispatched at 1:55 p.m. to the 2500 block of 59th Street Northwest, where the incident allegedly occurred as the woman's children napped.

The 30-year-old told police a thin white male in his 30s with short, sandy blond hair and "possibly a tattoo on his shoulder" had entered her home moments earlier, grabbed her, shoved her to the floor and punched her, the report says.

He forced her at knifepoint to remove her pants, the woman told investigators, cut her underwear off, then fled. The alleged victim looked out the window and saw the intruder leave in a white "jacked-up" pickup.

According to the report, the woman believes it was the same male who entered her home Dec. 8 in a similar situation. The two startled each other, she reported at the time, and he left immediately.

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The crime scene team responded to the residence to process for evidence after Thursday's incident, said Capt. John Sherwin; the physical evidence collected is still being evaluated.

The woman had no injuries, he said, despite her claim of being punched. There was no sign of forced entry.

Anyone who might have seen the suspect or his vehicle is asked to contact law enforcement at 325-6800, Sherwin said.

"We're hoping to hear from people."
A Rochester social justice organization is planning to deliver support to protesters in North Dakota, where a Native American tribe is seeking to stop construction of a crude oil pipeline through the tribe's historic sites.

Rochester For Justice began planning a few weeks ago for a supply run to support the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, said Heidi-Mae Wilkins, a Rochester For Justice organizer.

"Our mission statement is to bring about racial justice and awareness and community organizing, so this seemed like a good opportunity to participate in something bigger than us," Wilkins said.

The protest has attracted huge crowds of supporters who are camped near the site of protests. The group's primary need now is for support and supplies, rather than additional people, Wilkins said.

Rochester For Justice has asked supporters in the Rochester community for supplies including camping gear, warm clothing, cooking equipment, blankets, feminine hygiene products and portable charging stations.

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The group has already received several tents, blankets and winter clothing items, Wilkins said.

Rochester for Justice is also taking monetary donations, which will go toward purchasing additional supplies. The group has taken on transportation costs and will direct all donations to purchasing supplies, Wilkins said.

More information on the drive is available on Facebook, at facebook.com/RochesterForJustice and an attached event page. The group is taking donations through Sunday.
KASSON  The city's fire department was awarded a grant as part of its public safety initiative.

Minnesota Energy Resources  and its charity counterpart  Wisconsin Public Service Foundation awarded more than $12,000 to area first responders as part of the foundation's safety grant opportunity.

This would mark the second year that the grant was offered. More than 40 area first-responder agencies applied for funding. Those chosen would receive up to $2,000 grant and may use it as part of a integrated public safety initiative to purchase equipment and provide professional development.

The following agencies were awarded a grant:

 Finlayson Fire & Rescue

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 Bertha Fire Department

 Carlton Fire & Ambulance

 Gilbert Fire Department

 Greenway Fire & Rescue

 Thief River Falls Fire Department

 Glenville Fire Department

 Kasson Fire Department

 Wells Fire Department
oil worker pipeline hands on head

Morgan Stanley is losing its conviction about the oil market's future.

Adam Longson, head of energy commodity research, forecasts that a market re-balancing is due around mid-2017. In other words, the market would no longer be oversupplied, as output demand growth catches up to supply.

"We are not yet changing our forecast for a mid-2017 rebalancing, but our conviction level is falling," Longson wrote in a note on Friday.

"An oil recovery has been 6-12 months away in the minds of investors since late 2014, but "unforeseen" events have led to consistent delays. Once again, we see an increasing probability for several bearish developments to come together, which could push off rebalancing (seasonally-adjusted demand exceeding supply) to late 2017 or 2018."

As long as the status quo of oversupply persists, oil prices will trade in the $35 to $55-per-barrel range they've been stuck in for over two years, he said.

This chart shows one of the reasons why Longson is losing his conviction in the market:

As of last Friday, the US oil rig count had climbed in nine out of ten weeks, as producers activated the most rigs since the oil crash began.

This may not mean a lot now, but it's potentially bearish for oil prices later.

"The US continues to surprise, and the market seems to be underestimating the impact of some rigs that have already been added," Longson said.

Screen Shot 2016 09 09 at 10.58.29 AM

He noted that the majority of new rigs have been in some of the best acreage, especially in cheap and high-quality areas of the Permian Basin that spans parts of New Mexico and Texas. And so, the new rig additions could have a bigger impact on US production than expected, Longson said.

"We continue to expect US oil declines to moderate throughout 2H16 with the unwinding of DUCs (drilled but uncompleted wells) and addition of new rigs potentially shifting the trajectory into 2017."

Story continues

Additionally, Longson said supply could pick up from countries that have been slowed by political instability, including Libya and Nigeria.

NOW WATCH: STIGLITZ: It makes me crazy that everyone gets this wrong about the economy





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If handwriting is a lost art, Arlene Bjornson and Gwen Bermingham have together created a masterpiece.

The women have been pen pals for more than 65 years, Bjornson writing letters from Hayfield and Bermingham writing from Bellfield  Bellfield, Australia, a tiny suburb outside of Melbourne.

The two met last week for the first time, something the octogenarians never expected to happen.

"I called her and said, 'I have a surprise for you: I'm coming to see you in Minnesota,'" Bermingham, 83, said.

After all that time, did her friend believe her?

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"Oh, I believed her," said Bjornson, 86. "I believe everything she says."

They've both said a lot since they began exchanging letters around 1950, thanks to a Sunday school project.

Bjornson's younger sister was part of the project; when Arlene heard about it, she asked if she could participate, too.

"My sister's pen pal knew Gwen, and told her about it," Bjornson said, and a 66-year friendship began.

The letters were frequent at first, she said, "then we were both busy raising families." Still, the letters continued, often with photos of weddings and babies, "because we were going through the same things."

The hard times came, too, of course, and with them, support. In fact, it was Bjornson's support after Bermingham's husband died in January that set the meeting in motion.

"She said to me, 'I wish I could be with you, Gwen; I wish I lived near you,'" Bermingham said. "When you lose someone, it changes your whole life. It changes your thinking ... I never thought I'd (visit Minnesota), but I kept thinking, why not?

"Anything that went wrong, she was there," Bermingham said. "The way she's helped me  we're like sisters."

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Bjornson confirmed that: "She said she's told me things she's never told anyone else."

Though the Hayfield woman has traveled extensively, including four trips to Europe, "I never thought I'd get to meet her."

Then came word of her friend's trip to Minnesota, their initial meeting planned for a Rochester restaurant.

Bermingham's daughter, Kerry Fantasia, and Fantasia's son, Jordan, made the trip with her.

Kerry described the moment the two women first met:

"They were actually on opposite sides of the street," she said, "and the light was red. They had to just wait" to finally hug.

Bermingham said she recognized her pen pal "straight away," from nearly a block away.

"We were walking down the sidewalk, and I said, 'There. That lady in pink. That's Arlene.'"

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The Australians have now traveled through Amish country near Lanesboro and Harmony, toured Mayo Clinic, visited a working dairy farm and more. Bermingham grew up on a 100-year-old farm, where her daily chores included milking cows.

Minnesota, she said, "is much like Queensland in the old days."

Bjornson's daughter flew home from Princeton, N.J., to meet her mother's friend, whom she'd heard about all her life.

In addition, Bjornson "used to read my letters to her son," Bermingham said with a touch of wonder. "She'd sit with him and read them aloud."

Technology hasn't played much of a role in their communication to this day; neither uses Facebook, Bermingham doesn't use email. They continue to send handwritten letters.

"Neither of us can remember exactly when we started," said Bjornson, a retired teacher, nor can they remember who wrote the first letter.

Those details don't matter, of course; what does matter is how the friendship has made them feel.

"It was so special to get an airmail letter from Australia," Bjornson said of the early days, and it continues:

"Even the man at Hy-Vee said, 'Wow, what a story,'" when he met Bermingham earlier this week, Bjornson said with a laugh.

"Everybody knows her," Bermingham said. "This woman  she's one of the most wonderful people I've ever met."
WINONA  The Winona League of Women Voters brought in all candidates for mayor and city council in Winona on Thursday, asking the group questions about the future of the city.

Two candidates for mayor and five for city council  two each in a pair of contested races, and one in an uncontested race  shared their views with a live audience of about 20 people plus a TV audience watching on government access channels at home.

Here are some of the answers to questions submitted by the audience.

Mark Peterson, current mayor and mayoral candidate

On city finances and taxes: "Winona is in good financial shape. ... One of the biggest financial challenges is the amount of tax-exempt properties."

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On the effects of the closing of the Winona United Way: "It's gone out of business because people's giving has changed. The community will step up." While the city should continue to support youth recreational activities and the library,

On the top priorities for the next mayor: Listing his top priorities are the arts and culture, outdoor recreation and growth, he said, "This is an area the city can compete in, quality of life. The kind of people we want to attract to live here value that."

On silica dust: "I think control of this belongs with the (Minnesota Pollution Control Agency). I don't think we have the expertise and staff to handle this."

Connie Tropple, mayoral candidate

On city finances and taxes: "I'm not in favor of the $2 million Levee Park project. Over half of the city's funding comes from the state. Should we be taking out a bond? What happens when the state funds don't come through?"

On the effects of the closing of the Winona United Way: "Instead of donating through the United Way, people need to donate their funds directly to those that need it. Winona is a community of givers."

On the top priorities for the next mayor: Bridging the gap to millennials, "I'm not sure our generation understands what makes sense with their way of living and lifestyle."

On silica dust: "It is the MPCA's job. But if there's a problem it's our job to call them in. I will work with MPCA to see what we can do with more monitoring."

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Al Thurly, current council member and candidate for Ward 1 seat, unopposed

On support for building a new elementary school: "The school board will make its decision, and the city council should work with them to make that decision the best for our community."

On silica dust: "(The MPCA) created a dust-mitigation program that's already in place. I think we're on the right track. I support fence line monitoring where it's needed."

Pamela Eyden, current council member and candidate for Ward 3 seat

On city finances and taxes: "Winona has a very excellent credit rating. Now is an excellent time to invest in our future. Failing to do that would be a big problem. The Levee Park project can attract new businesses to downtown, and that takes money."

On the effects of the closing of the Winona United Way: "We will need to restore some social programs that have been drastically cut. There will be a lot of people needing services."

On the city council's role with regard to building a new elementary school: "There may be a need, but I would be cautious to support it until the new (school board appointed buildings) committee does its work."

Larry Stanek, candidate for Ward 3 seat

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On city finances and taxes: "We should not be investing money in Levee Park at this time. Very few people go down there." He would rather invest in the city's streets, he said.

On the city council's role with regard to building a new elementary school: "I would like us to keep the elementary schools we have. To build a new school, I don't think the Winona people can afford that."

Paul Double, current council member and candidate for at-large seat

On city finances and taxes: Compared to other cities in Southeast Minnesota, "Winona has the lowest tax burden of any of them." Citing projects such as the planned partnership to renovate the Masonic Temple or improve the ice rink in an environmental way, he said, "While others might have put those things on the back burners, we have moved forward and been environmentally sensitive."

On the effects of the closing of the Winona United Way: "Winona has always been a very generous town. We're blessed with a huge bank of volunteers."

Paul Schollmeier, candidate for at-large seat

On city finances and taxes: "Winona is facing a worker shortage. We need to find a way to attract a younger, quality work force. ... We need infrastructure that makes them feel safe."

On the effects of the closing of the Winona United Way: "When organizations flounder, we have to step up and take the torch and do what needs to be done."

On the city council's role with regard to building a new elementary school: "We all grew up in neighborhood schools and we'd prefer to have them. If we cannot maintain the at the cost, we need another solutions. I'd have a diff time supporting an elementary school that requires 400 cars to drive to it to drop children off."
WASHINGTON  Republican Donald Trump repeated a bevy of previous misstatements in a forum on national security issues, while his Democratic presidential rival Hillary Clinton continued to gloss over her lax treatment of classified information when she used a private email system as secretary of state. A look at some missteps in the candidates' back-to-back appearances Wednesday night:

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TRUMP:"And right now, we are not strong. Believe me, we have a depleted military. We have the greatest people in the world in our military. But it is very sadly depleted."

THE FACTS:The U.S. military, by far the world's largest and most powerful, is by no means depleted. One measure of its force  the number of active-duty personnel  routinely grows and shrinks along with the nation's adjudged defense needs.

For example, the size of the U.S. Army swelled to about 570,000 at the peak of the Iraq war, building up to meet deployment demands. After the U.S. pulled out of Iraq and began drawing down in Afghanistan, a decision was made to reduce ranks to 490,000 over 10 years as Congress cut the defense budget by about half a trillion dollars.

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While senior military service leaders will say they could always use more forces, they say that adding more troops without providing the budget to support them and ensure they are ready to fight would only make things worse.

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TRUMP:"I happen to hear Hillary Clinton say that I was not against the war in Iraq. I was totally against the war in Iraq."

THE FACTS:That statement is contradicted by an interview Trump did with Howard Stern in September 2002. He said then that he supported the invasion: "Yeah, I guess so."

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TRUMP:Asked about the problem of sexual assault within the military, said, "We have to come down very, very hard on that. ... And the best thing we can do is set up a court system within the military. Right now, the court system practically doesn't exist."

THE FACTS:The U.S. military already has an extensive justice system, one with roots in the U.S. Constitution. The individual branches of the military have their own police and investigative and prosecution services, and they enforce a set of laws known as the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Critics argue the military's justice system has poorly served victims of sexual assault, but it's not correct to say, as Trump did, that "nobody gets prosecuted."

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CLINTON:"Classified material has a header which says, 'Top Secret,' 'Secret,' 'Confidential.' Nothing, and I will, I will repeat this, and this is verified in the reports by the Department of Justice, none of the emails sent or received by me had such a header."

THE FACTS:While Clinton is correct that none of the emails she sent or received contained headers indicating that information in them had been properly classified, that doesn't absolve government employees under U.S. law from protecting information they know or should know was classified.

"Even if information is not marked classified in an email, participants who know, or should know, that the subject matter is classified are still obligated to protect it," FBI Director James Comey said on July 5, when he announced that the FBI was recommending against filing criminal charges after its investigation.

Comey said at least three emails included "(C)" markings showing that information within them was considered confidential classified information. Clinton told FBI agents that she did not know what those markings meant, according to notes the FBI released Sept. 2.

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TRUMP:"I mean, we've been badly hurt by Mexico, both on the border and with taking all of our jobs or a big percent of, of our jobs."

THE FACTS:Trump exaggerates. The Congressional Research Service, echoing the views of many economists, concluded in a report last year that the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, which opened trade with Mexico and Canada, had a "relatively small" impact on the U.S. economy.

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It's true that the U.S. has lost nearly 7 million factory jobs since manufacturing employment peaked in 1979. But economists widely believe that technology likely played a bigger role in job destruction. Machines allow companies to produce more with fewer workers. General Motors, for instance, employed 600,000 people in the 1960s. It has 215,000 employees now, yet makes more cars than ever.

To the extent that trade is to blame for job losses, the more likely culprit is China. American factories recorded rising job losses after China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001 and got easier to access to foreign markets.

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TRUMP:Portraying President Barack Obama as on poor terms with foreign leaders and arguing that he'd do much better, said, "I think it's very sad when he lands in Saudi Arabia and he  he lands in Cuba and there aren't high officials to even greet him. This is the first time in the history  the storied history of Air Force One."

THE FACTS:Far from "the first time in history," it is routine for presidents to be greeted by a protocol chief or other low-level government official when arriving for foreign visits. Airport arrivals aren't seen as a big deal, and it's not expected that top leaders of the arrival country will be there.

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Associated Press writers Paul Wiseman, Terence Hunt and Ted Bridis contributed to this story.
MINNEAPOLIS  Testing for lead in drinking water at some Minnesota schools hasn't been done since the late 1990s despite a state health recommendation that it be done every five years.

Among water testing records of more than 600 Minnesota schools, at least one out of every four of those schools are not testing based on the Minnesota Department of Health's recommendation.

Records show Minneapolis Public Schools hasn't tested at least 31 of its schools since 1998, though district officials say they are following the state's guidelines for flushing water lines to reduce lead levels.

"It's a little surprising to me to hear that there are systems that have not been tested for very long periods of time," said Paul Allwood, assistant commissioner of health.

Allwood noted that the department's guidelines are voluntary. Allwood said the department is discussing whether there should be an additional authority over school water testing.

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Minneapolis custodians are supposed to run the fountains and drain lines for 10 minutes every school day in the morning and sometimes later in the day. Lee Setter, who oversees the district's Lead In Water Safety Program, said the district trusts its employees to follow the protocols.

"We're not out in every building every morning but I think most people in our district understand the importance of it," Setter said. "We have a very comprehensive program to identify our hot spots where we need to really focus on this," Setter said.

Records show the South Washington County school district, which includes the cities of Woodbury and Cottage Grove, has not conducted lead water testing since in at least 16 years.

District officials initially blamed the high cost for not following the state guidelines. However, they later told the station in a follow-up email that they would be "moving forward with water testing over the course of the 2016-17 school year." They estimated the testing would cost $43,000 and said they would "immediately address" any issues they discovered.

Municipal water systems already test for lead in the water they deliver, but health officials suggest that schools test themselves due to possible sources of lead inside their plumbing, such as lead solder and brass fixtures, that could contaminate the water that students drink.

"Parents really need to hold schools' feet to the fire to make sure this problem is fixed," Edwards said, adding that it costs as little as $30 to fix water fountains with high amounts of lead coming out of them.
ST. PAUL  The Minnesota Supreme Court on Thursday declared a Republican state lawmaker ineligible to run for a fourth term because he doesn't live in his district and scheduled a February special election to fill the seat.

Rep. Bob Barrett had fought accusations about his residency for years, overcoming a similar challenge in 2014 that alleged he lived in a neighboring district. But Democratic activists who sought to have Barrett's name tossed from the ballot in November repeatedly visited the address listed as his home inside the district  a Taylors Falls rental house  and set up a motion-sensitive camera to show that it wasn't being used.

Barrett owns a home in Shafer, just outside of the Chisago County district he represents.

The Supreme Court sided with those petitioners on the residency dispute following a lower court's similar ruling. But the court set a special election in to fill his seat, citing a state law requiring a special election if a candidate is found ineligible within a few months of Election Day.

Barrett issued a statement that called the ruling disappointing and noted it would end his career in the Legislature that began in 2010. Minnesota law requires candidates to establish residency six months before an election.

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"I will very much miss serving the families of Chisago County as their elected representative and I am hoping our family's privacy can be re-gained which is worth more to us than holding elected office," Barrett said.

Barrett's residency trouble could complicate House Republicans' efforts to retain their majority this fall. His district is reliably Republican, but low-turnout special elections can prove unpredictable. It also means that the Legislature will begin in early January one member short, with 133 lawmakers.

The names of Barrett and Democratic challenger Laurie Warner will still appear on the November ballot, but the results won't be counted. It's unclear who Republicans may pick to run in the special election.

A judge dismissed a similar legal challenge to Barrett's residency in 2014, citing a lack of solid evidence that he didn't live inside the district.
Minnesota voters are frustrated with the gridlock prevailing in our legislature and the U.S. Congress. Compromise is now a rarity rather than standard operating procedure.

A major factor in the decline of compromise in recent years has been the influence of the tea party on Republicans elected to our legislature and Congress. They fear that negotiating and compromising will lead to the tea party faction running candidates against them in Republican primaries.

This is a real threat to their job security.

Fran Bradley has been a tea party activist in Rochester and is running this fall to replace Kim Norton in the legislature in District 25B. I recommend voting instead for Duane Sauke, who will be part of the solution to gridlock and not part of the problem.

Renee Rice

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Rochester
November's election marks the most important local election in years. More than ever, we need a city council president that values diverse opinions, not just those that line up with his own. We need a council president who works for all of Rochester.

I've had extensive opportunities to work with both council president candidates and experienced firsthand their very different approaches.

Sean Allen is creative and energetic, competitive and eager to share and implement his ideas and those of his supporters. When those ideas don't prevail, his tone often becomes indignant and hostile to those presenting opposing views. Disagree or don't fall in line, and you become an unqualified and discredited "outsider."

Randy Staver focuses on listening. He balances ideas to achieve communitywide goals. Randy's proven leadership demonstrates that he listens first in order to chart the right course for our community. He doesn't apply a "let me tell you" approach. He takes the "please tell me" approach. We don't always agree and he has not always supported my projects, but he has always fostered a courteous and respectful debate, routinely building consensus.

Randy's open-minded, methodical, respectful, and pragmatic style is consistent with Rochester's values. These attributes are needed to realize the promise of growth and progress ahead. That is why I will vote to re-elect Randy Staver and encourage all Rochester voters to do the same.

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Jose L. Rivas

Rochester
What does the audience want?

That question is lingering in the process for defining the next use for the historic Chateau Theatre. While the private consultant hired by the city conducted 74 personal interviews in preparing its latest proposal, the majority of participants were Rochester city employees or people who produce art and performances.

Consultants pitched a potential $3 million seating system and possible additions to create space for up to 600 seats, but they didn't outline whether the average Rochester resident would be interested in filling them.

We know many of the potential users, including theater groups, musicians and other artists, will bring audiences with them, but will that be enough to justify the price tag of renovations beyond restoring the building and creating a multipurpose facility in the existing footprint?

We know local artists and performers need space available for the arts. At the same time, the city has already dedicated $5.5 million to the Chateau, with the expectation that much more will be needed for renovations. Before potential plans were drafted, we had hoped the public  the potential audience  would have had more opportunities to weigh in.

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We expected as much after the Rochester City Council hired consultants in May who expressed a keen desire to hear from the public. They kicked off efforts with an event weeks later to honor Preservation Month, but we had hoped residents would finally have a broader voice in what will become of the building their tax dollars bought last year.

We agree with Rochester Mayor Ardell Brede. Conducting 74 interviews is impressive, but we would be even more impressed by broader community engagement, rather than limiting input to handpicked cultural, political and community leaders.

The consultants anticipate opportunities for further engagement, suggesting a public presentation of plans released this week. However, such a presentation usually comes after information is gathered and implies a general direction is determined.

Rochester residents have come to expect more active public engagement before such directions are set.

We know the Chateau Theatre has grand potential, and we expect many city residents agree that it needs to be refurbished to live up to the magnificence of its past, which included vaudeville shows and live theater. Likewise, we know it will make an ideal meeting space during the day, as well as a place for special events.

What we aren't so sure of is what the potential audience has to say.

It's time for those voices to be included.
Congressional candidate Jim Moylan will not let truth or distortions stop him from saying anything to get elected. It is up to political analy Read morePolitical ploys at the last part of election?
Last Friday, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported on a decision by General Mills, one of the nations largest advertisers, to impose race and gender quotas on the advertising agencies it uses:

The Golden Valley-based foodmaker wants the creative departments in agencies bidding for its business to be staffed at least half by women and 20 percent by people of color.

***

In revealing its standard, General Mills executives said they want the people who create its advertising to be more reflective of the people who consume their products.

If there are any problems with General Millss quotas, they werent mentioned in the celebratory Strib article. But my colleague at Center of the American Experiment, Mitch Pearlstein, pointed out an embarrassing fact: General Millss own leadership team doesnt conform to its newfound race and gender standards:

According to the companys website, General Mills leadership is composed of 19 men and eight women, with three of the men and two of the women racial minorities, or so it would appear. If you find the term so it would appear in this context awkward and perhaps offensive, so do I. But so be it with human bean counting. Question: What if the federal government  say, the Army or the Navy  demanded that senior leadership at General Mills, as well as at Kelloggs and Post, be at least 50 percent women? This, or their pitches to sell boatloads of Cheerios, Rice Krispies and Honey Bunches of Oats would be thrown overboard? Same thing if their senior minority executives didnt constitute 20 percent?

Good question! General Mills says that it wants the people who create its advertising to be more reflective of the people who consume [its] products. But isnt it far more important that the people who run the company be reflective of the people who consume [its] products? And if General Mills, hiring on merit, finds that it has more men in senior leadership positions than women, why cant advertising agencies do the same?

It is also hard to understand why race and gender quotas should, among General Millss vendors, be imposed only on ad agencies. How about its accountants? Shouldnt any accounting firm that works for General Mills be 50% female and 20% minority? How about the companies that sell food processing equipment for General Millss production facilities? And what about General Millss factories themselves? The Strib article notes that [a]dvertising is one of several industries, like high-tech and manufacturing, with significant gender and racial imbalances. Shouldnt the company do its part to remedy gender imbalances in manufacturing by hiring 50% women in its own plants?

Of course, if you are looking for gender and race imbalances to remedy, what better place to start than farming, a notoriously male-dominated fieldwhite-dominated, too, when you are talking about grains. Why shouldnt the companies who sell wheat and corn to General Mills for the companys cereals be required to source their grains 50% from female farmers and 20% from farmers of color?

When it comes to remedying race and gender disparities, General Mills is a piker. The company should start at home, beginning with its board of directors and senior management. From there it is on to its hundreds of vendors, its own factories, and the final frontierMidwestern farms. Once you start discriminating on the basis of race and gender, it is hard to know when to stop.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, having recently expressed regret for commenting on a matter she shouldnt have (the candidacy of Donald Trump) is at it again. At an event at Georgetown Law School, Ginsburg complained about the Senates inaction on the Merrick Garland nomination. She said:

I do think cooler heads will prevail, I hope sooner rather than later. The president is elected for four years not three years, so the power he has in year three continues into year four. Maybe members of the Senate will wake up and appreciate that thats how it should be.

Ginsburg went on to express doubt over whether a lawsuit challenging the Senates inaction would accomplish anything.

Ginsburgs view that the power [the president] has in year three continues into year four is true in a formal sense. However, as a practical matter, a presidents real power almost always diminishes in year eight. Thats why they call presidents who are near the end of the line lame ducks.

A president always has the power to nominate people to the bench. The Senate always has the power to reject these nominees in one way or another. The Senate is always likely to exercise that power in a presidents eighth year.

Does anyone believe that Ginsburg would be making her lame argument if a Democratic Senate were blocking a conservative nominee for the Supreme Court in a Republican presidents last year? I didnt think so.

In addition to being inane, Ginsburgs commentary is inappropriate. Ed Whelan explains:

Senate Democrats are trying to have their dispute over the Garland nomination play a role in every Senate race this fall. How does Ginsburg think it appropriate to weigh in on this matter and to charge that Senate Republicans are being hotheaded and irresponsible?

Ed also finds it inappropriate for Ginsburg to be weighing in on the prospects of lawsuits challenging the Senates inaction, one of which, he says, is pending.

If Senate Republicans are having second thoughts about blocking Judge Garland, Justice Ginsburgs naked partisanship should reinforce their resolve. When Bill Clinton nominated her, there were smart conservatives who applauded the selection, viewing Ginsburg as good as we could expect from a Democratic president  in other words, making the same kinds of arguments we hear in favor of Judge Garland now.

Ginsburg turned out to be a reliable down-the-line leftist, voting to advance the left-liberal agenda in virtually every big case. And in recent years, her leftism has manifested itself outside of the court house.

I doubt that a Justice Garland would engage in inappropriate extra-judicial behavior. But there is no good reason to believe that his Supreme Court voting pattern would differ materially from Ginsburgs.
Everyone is buzzing about the reappearance of Decius from the late lamented Journal of American Greatness with The Flight 93 Election over at the Claremont Review of Books website. Heres a curious thing: Ive had a couple of emails from people wondering if Im Decius. To which I respond: You may very well think so; I couldnt possibly comment.

The lede captures the argument and action of the piece:

2016 is the Flight 93 election: charge the cockpit or you die. You may die anyway. Youor the leader of your partymay make it into the cockpit and not know how to fly or land the plane. There are no guarantees. Except one: if you dont try, death is certain. To compound the metaphor: a Hillary Clinton presidency is Russian Roulette with a semi-auto. With Trump, at least you can spin the cylinder and take your chances.

Rush Limbaugh read the piece in its entirety on his show yesterday, and it is provoking strong reactions both positive and negative. Ben Howe, a NeverTrumper, objects at RedState:

The metaphor is crap, obviously. The article itself isnt bad other than that it is a phony baloney plastic banana good-time rock-n-roll straw man. Hell, its the Burning Man of straw men.

Did Howe need a professional kitchen sized stand-mixer to combine all those metaphors? Never mind. While Howe objects to what he thinks is the hyperbole of Decius and other conservative panic mongers, he strangely goes on to lay out a lot of arguments about the feebleness of the GOP that actually reinforces the Flight 93 Election thesis, and culminates in this:

[I]t is time to break this cycle [of Republican performance not matching up to campaign promises]. Not out of some sense of tiredness, or election fatigue. It is precisely because we are at a tipping point that the cycle must be broken.

The view that Trump is not the person to break the cycle is perfectly cogentit is the basis of my huge reservations about Trumpbut probably wrong in at least one respect. In my own private conversations with Decius (in front of a mirror???), the question comes up, If not Trump, then who? The case for Trump rests chiefly on the massive political disruption he represents. Can he pull it off if elected? Even Decius admits grave doubts.

But about this disruption theme. I know that among some of my NeverTrump friends, the conventional wisdom is that the best outcome is for Trump to lose badly, partly so that conservatives wont be engaged in months or years of bitter recriminations about how Trump might have won but for the traitorous defection of Jonah Goldberg and Bill Kristol, who, were otherwise being told, have no real power or influence anyway. (Heh.) But Ross Douthat, who I believe is a NeverTrumper, offers ironically a good case for why a narrow Trump loss would be the best outcome, recriminations be damned:

Yes, there is much in Trump and Trumpism that richly deserves a total wipeout, and much in his Republican Party that deserves to be sent howling into the political wilderness. But a true landslide, a total repudiation, would also encourage unwarranted self-satisfaction and relief among the American republics ruling class  a sense that the ideas Trump represents, the fears and concerns he has exploited, and the people he has rallied can be safely buried and ignored and consigned once more to the benighted past. . . So it might be with Trumpism, in the event of a true landslide  the problem would be repressed, the political class reassured, and much that needs to change would not. Thus Hillary Clintons weakness and unpopularity might be a gift, of sorts, to the American future. Because she cant put Trump away, its harder to dismiss Trumpism as either a pure joke or a pure evil. Because she cant put him away, we have to take him seriously. . .

Hmmm. And what if Trump wins? Maybe Ross is moonlighting as Decius? His entire column is a brilliant bit of ironic writing.
The Obama administrations and others wishing to defend the presidents decision to hand over $400 million in cash to Iran on Jan. 17 and $1.3 billion more in cash in two subsequent shipments insist that the payment was not a ransom. It was, instead, a payment of money the U.S. owed Iran, they say. Indeed, we got a bargain because the money settled a claim that was worth substantially more, given the interest we owed.

The notion that we owed Iran is based on the fact that Iran had a court claim against the U.S. But the court claim was contested, and a contested court claim is not a debt.

If the Obama administration believed that the U.S. owed Iran money, it should have paid the debt years ago. It didnt. Not only did the U.S. contest Irans claim, we asserted counterclaims.

What the Obama administration is really saying is that the U.S. was destined to lose to Iran in court. But even if this were true, why not play out the proceedings?

Obama contends that Iran likely will moderate its behavior over the years thanks to the good will generated by the nuclear deal. If he actually believes this, why not wait a few years before giving them vast amount of money, some of which, in the regimes present state of mind, almost surely will used to support the Assad regime and Hezbollah? And why give the money in cash?

To defend paying the money now, and in cash, it would have to be the case that the U.S. got a terrific discount against the amount it likely would have had to pay in the event of full litigation. Even then, I would find the payout disgraceful and against our interests. But at least Obama and his apologists could say that it made sense in cold financial terms.

But did the U.S. get a bargain financially? I have seen no analysis that supports this idea  only raw assertions by the administration which its apologists parrot.

Rick Richman reports that the administration has repeatedly refused to answer questions about the merits of Irans claim or the interest computation, even in response to inquiries by Congress:

On Feb. 3, Rep. Edward J. Royce (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, requested all legal analyses . . . evaluating the likelihood of Iran prevailing in this dispute and a detailed explanation of how the interest payment to Iran of $1.3 billion was calculated. Six weeks later, Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs Julia Frifield responded that the United States could well have faced significant [additional] exposure in the billions of dollars, because Iran was of course seeking very high rates of interest, and we are confident that this was a good settlement for the American taxpayer.

This isnt all legal analyses. In fact, it isnt any. It isnt even actuarial analysis.

As noted, the U.S. has made claims against Iran. In addition to the counterclaims mentioned above, we had more than $400 million in claims, plus interest, arising under the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act. The VTVPA claims were apparently canceled out as part of Obamas settlement of Irans claim, supposedly as an offset of interest we owed Iran (or so I gather from Richmans piece).

But in the absence of legal and accounting analysis, which the administration has refused to provide, we simply dont know whether, taking all of our claims into consideration, we owed Iran anything at all.

Before settling even relatively small court cases, competent lawyers perform a risk analysis. They consider, at a minimum, the likelihood of prevailing; the likelihood of a high-end, a medium-size, and a low-end monetary award; and the cost of trying the case.

If the Obama administration was, as it asserts, trying in good faith to settle court claims on terms financially favorable to the U.S., then it must have performed such an analysis. In that case, let it produce the analysis. If it cant, then we are entitled to assume that the cash payments to Iran werent about making a good financial deal for the U.S.

Its possible that theres a settlement analysis that doesnt support the full amount we paid Iran. In that case, the shortfall would tell us how much of the payment was in exchange for release of the hostages.
The Lagos Deep Offshore Logistics Base on September 1 announced it has become a founding patron of the Princes Trust International, which seeks to help disadvantaged young people around the globe in education, training and work.

Commenting on the announcement, Ladol CEO, Amy Jadesimi, said: LADOL is delighted to support the important work of Princes Trust International. The issue of youth empowerment is one that is well understood here in Nigeria, with 1.8 million young people entering the labour market each year. LADOL shares PTIs passion for providing relevant training and helping young people not just to have jobs but to build life-long careers. We look forward to supporting Princes Trust International as they expand overseas and learning from their work.

Launched at CHOGM in Malta in 2015 by The Prince of Wales, Princes Trust International has been created to build on the success of the Trust in the UK and enable it to share its insight with governments, companies and NGOs seeking to tackle youth unemployment around the world.

The Trust is building its programme across countries in the Commonwealth and beyond; in places where it can most effectively bridge the skills gap to help the next generation into employment.

Alan Kennedy, Chief Executive of Princes Trust International added: LADOL is committed to the principles on which the Trust was founded and were confident its addition to the circle of Founding Patrons will give us a fresh perspective on our work over the coming years.

The British High Commissioner in Nigeria, Paul Arkwright, welcomed the appointment saying, LADOL Free Zone has shown how powerful private sector investment and entrepreneurial spirit can be in creating jobs and opportunity in the local economy. This new partnership with Princes Trust International will help to highlight those shared entrepreneurial values, as well as the fantastic work of PTI around the world.
The Nigerian Army says that its troops in Bayelsa have destroyed 72 illegal refineries within the past 48 hours in the state.

An unspecified number of militants and kidnappers camps were also destroyed in the state, and in neighbouring Rivers State, says a statement released on Friday by the military.

The statement signed by the Army spokesperson, Sani Usman, said some soldiers, who responded to a tip off on the presence of suspected kidnappers at Akupoku, carried out a raid on Wednesday at the location in the community.

No arrest was made, as the suspects had fled before the soldiers arrived, the statement said.

The troops also carried out cordon and search operation at Abakrikri Fishing Pot, based on a tip off that some kidnappers were there. But no arrest was made.

Mr. Usman, a colonel, said the troops however destroyed three large refining pots and 20 tanks filled with illegal refined oil, when they raided Ke, another community near the Atlantic Ocean.

Another set of troops were said to have discovered and destroyed illegal refinery at another community called Bile. Items destroyed included 12 large refining pots.

The troops recovered an AK-47 rifle, an empty magazine, six face masks, one machete, and several empty shells of expended ammunition, when they raided suspected kidnappers camp at Awukiri.

No arrest was made, but the troops destroyed the camp.

The military, with soldiers from 2 Brigade of the Nigerian Army, has been conducting field training exercise code named Operation Crocodile Smile in some parts of the Niger Delta region.
North Korea conducted its fifth and biggest nuclear test on Friday and said it had mastered the ability to mount a warhead on a ballistic missile, ratcheting up a threat that its rivals and the United Nations have been powerless to contain.

The blast, on the 68th anniversary of North Koreas founding, was more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, according to some estimates, and drew condemnation from the United States as well as China, Pyongyangs main ally.

Diplomats said the United Nations Security Council would discuss the test at a closed-door meeting on Friday, at the request of the United States, Japan and South Korea.

Kim Jong Un, North Korea leader, has accelerated the development of its nuclear and missile programmes, despite U.N. sanctions that were tightened in March and have further isolated the impoverished country.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye, in Laos after a summit of Asian leaders, said Kim was showing maniacal recklessness in completely ignoring the worlds call to abandon his pursuit of nuclear weapons.

U.S. President Barack Obama, aboard Air Force One on his way home from Laos, said the test would be met with serious consequences, and held talks with Park and with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the White House said.

China said it was resolutely opposed to the test and urged Pyongyang to stop taking any actions that would worsen the situation. It said it would lodge a protest with the North Korean embassy in Beijing.

There were further robust condemnations from Russia, the European Union, NATO, Germany and Britain.

North Korea, which labels the South and the United States as its main enemies, said its scientists and technicians carried out a nuclear explosion test for the judgment of the power of a nuclear warhead, according to its official KCNA news agency.

It said the test proved North Korea was capable of mounting a nuclear warhead on a medium-range ballistic missile, which it last tested on Monday when Obama and other world leaders were gathered in China for a G20 summit.

Pyongyangs claims of being able to miniaturise a nuclear warhead have never been independently verified.

Its continued testing in defiance of sanctions presents a challenge to Obama in the final months of his presidency and could become a factor in the U.S. presidential election in November, and a headache to be inherited by whoever wins.

Sanctions have already been imposed on almost everything possible, so the policy is at an impasse, said Tadashi Kimiya, a University of Tokyo professor specialising in Korean issues.

In reality, the means by which the United States, South Korea and Japan can put pressure on North Korea have reached their limits, he said.

(Reuters/ NAN)
The front cover of Norway's largest newspaper by circulation, Aftenposten, is seen at a news stand in Oslo

A ruckus has erupted in Norway over Facebooks repeated removal of an iconic 1972 war photograph of a naked young girl fleeing a napalm attack in Vietnam. Facebook has also suspended users who uploaded it. Things have come to a head today after Norways largest newspaper devoted its front page to an open letter to Facebook founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg.

The letter, written by Aftenpostens editor-in-chief, Espen Egil Hansen, accuses Zuckerberg of abusing his role as the worlds most powerful editor. Hansen wrote: The media have a responsibility to consider publication in every single case. This may be a heavy responsibility  This right and duty, which all editors in the world have, should not be undermined by algorithms encoded in your office in California.

Norways prime minister, Erna Solberg, also posted the iconic photo to her Facebook page today (Sept. 9) to protest censorship by the social network. I say yes to a healthy, open and free debate on the internet, she wrote in Norwegian. But I say no to this form of censorship. Her photo was later removed by Facebook, according to a subsequent post by Solberg. She posted a version of the photo with nudity blacked out. What Facebook does by removing images of this kind, good as the intentions may be, is to edit our common history, she wrote.

The Norwegian prime minister's new post, featuring a blacked-out version of the iconic photo.

The Norwegian prime ministers new post, featuring a blacked-out version of the iconic photo.

Update: Following the outcry, Facebook reinstated the Vietnam photo. In a statement, the social media company said, After hearing from our community, we looked again at how our Community Standards were applied in this case, according to Reuters. The company said it recognized the history and global importance of this image in documenting a particular moment in time.

Story continues

The issue began more than two weeks ago when the best-selling Norwegian author Tom Egeland wrote a Facebook post about the photographs that changed the history of warfare, according to The Guardian. One of the photos Egeland included in his piece was The Terror of War, the Pulitzer Prize-winning photo that shows a naked 9-year-old girl, Phan Thi Kim Phuc, and other children fleeing napalm bombing during the Vietnam War, their faces distended in terror. The photo was removed for violating Facebooks policy on nudity, then Egelands account was suspended for 24 hours. It is absolutely absurd, he told the Verdens Gang newspaper (in Norwegian).

A journalism association and other newspapers posted the photo to Facebook to protest the platforms rules, the Local reported, only to have their images removed too. Aftenposten posted the photo to its Facebook page, linking to its article on Egelands suspension. It promptly received an email from a Facebook office in Hamburg asking it to remove or pixelize the photo.

Before Hansen could respond to the Facebook warning, the platform removed the offending post from the Aftenposten Facebook page. There was little recourse for Aftenposten, Hansen wrote, and little accountability from Facebook. He described the experience of dealing with the Silicon Valley tech behemoth: Today, if it is possible at all to get in touch with a Facebook representative, the best one may hope for are brief, formalistic answers, with rigid references to universal rules and guidelines. If you take the liberty to challenge Facebooks rules, you will be metas we have seenwith censorship. And if someone will protest against the censorship, he will be punished, as Tom Egeland was.

Facebooks policy on nudity acknowledges that its system can be more blunt than intended, although it doesnt go into detail about how, precisely, that system operates. Its community standards page explains:

In order to treat people fairly and respond to reports quickly, it is essential that we have policies in place that our global teams can apply uniformly and easily when reviewing content. As a result, our policies can sometimes be more blunt than we would like and restrict content shared for legitimate purposes. We are always working to get better at evaluating this content and enforcing our standards.

The Norway furore is the latest crack in the conceit that Facebook is not a media companywhich Zuckerberg insists is the case. In May, its Trending feature, which highlights certain news stories, triggered a row in the US after Gizmodo reported that Facebook asked editors to inject political bias into the results. About two weeks ago we reported that it fired its entire Trending editorial staff, then the company endured internet mockery after its algorithm selected and prominently displayed a fake news item.

Zuckerberg has said Facebook is a technology company that builds the tools, not the content. Yet Facebook has already shown it has trouble distinguishing between sensitive content and photos of breastfeeding mothers, authentic news items and fake news, and a Pulitzer-winning photo and pornography. A dose of editorial judgment might make those tools work better.

This story was updated after Facebook reinstated the Vietnam photo.

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The Federal Government on Thursday inaugurated the Central Ogbia Regional Water Supply Project in Bayelsa.

The Minister of Water Resources, Suleiman Adamu, who inaugurated the project, said 13 communities, including Otuoke, would benefit from the N5.9 billion project.

According to him, the Federal Government is committed to complete all abandoned water projects to improve livelihood.

Mr. Adamu said adequate water supply for human and livestock production was a crucial aspect of social and economic development.

He said the recently launched roadmap on water resources underscores the need for short and long term strategies for effective and efficient delivery of water to the people.

The project we are inaugurating today is among the high priority projects for water supply.

This project commissioning, therefore, further demonstrates that the Buhari administration is committed to completing all viable projects that have positive impact on the lives of our people without any political sentiments, the minister said.

He called on the host communities to take ownership of the water project by maintaining it for improvement of livelihood and reducing water borne diseases.

The Secretary to Bayelsa State Government, Serena Dokubo, commended the Federal Government for the project, saying such project was needed in other communities.

Mr. Dokubo said the state would continue to embark on projects that would impact on the lives of the people.

Speaking at the occasion, Senator Ben Murray-Bruce (Bayelsa East), noted that lives were saved every time a water project was inaugurated.

A lot of children die from consumption of unclean water, a lot fall sick, you have to spend more to take them to the hospital to get cured, Mr. Murray-Bruce said.

Otuoke is the hometown of ex-President Goodluck Jonathan who was criticised for failing to provide potable water to the town and neighbouring communities despite being in power, either as deputy governor, governor, vice president or president, for 16 years.

The News Agency of Nigeria reports that about 130,000 people are expected to benefit from the N5.9billion project.

(NAN)
The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has given reasons for retracting its earlier stance to proceed with the Edo State governorship election initially scheduled for Saturday.

Hours after the commission said it would go ahead with the election despite the contrary advice of the Police and the State Security Service, SSS, it retracted saying it had postponed the election by two weeks.

In a joint statement on Wednesday, the Police and the SSS called on INEC to postpone the election and allow them address threats emanating from insurgents bent on attacking electorates and disrupting the election.

The electoral body initially refused to be teleguided. It said suspending the polls would be costly after reaching at least 97 per cent readiness level.

After a series of consultations, the Mahmood Yakubu-led INEC finally gave in to the demands of security agencies. It postponed the election to September 28.

In a telephone conversation with PREMIUM TIMES Thursday night, the spokesperson of INEC, Nick Dazang, said the latest decision was based on a better appraisal of the situation by INEC, following explanations from the security agencies.

It was only as at this evening that we were officially communicated and they explained to us the challenges they had that would affect their capacity to secure the election, he said.

Before then, we were hearing just like any other person from the media that they were advising us to postpone. And as a responsible organisation, we did not think there was any way we could proceed on that basis.

The spokesperson added that the commissions previous decision to go ahead because it had earlier received reports from the same security operatives during a stake holders forum that there would be sufficient protection of lives and properties during the election.

Dont forget that the story started trending that we were advised to postpone the election as we were conducting the stake holders forum in Benin.

The Police and the SSS were represented there, at the highest level. The DIG operations represented the IG and he was telling the stake holders, at the full glare of reporters, that they would secure the environment for the election.

That was the reason for the initial stand. Those that gave the assurance were far higher than those who issued the statement. So if the IG is saying one thing and a much lower person is saying another, who should we follow? he queried.

Mr. Dazang then provided more details of the security agencies claims.

They explained that going ahead with the election would over stretch them and that giving the situation, it was crucial for them to ensure the protection of voters, as well as our staff.

You know we are not in a position to secure our staff. And we do not want to put them in harms way, he added.

While the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and its officials condemned the postponement, the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, did not.

Godwin Obaseki, the APC candidate, is slugging it out with Osagie Ize-Iyamu of the PDP in the race to replace incumbent Adams Oshiomhole whose two-term tenure expires this November.
The Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, Waziri Adio, has blamed successive managers of Nigerias economy for the current economic woes being faced by the country.

Mr. Adio spoke, Thursday, at the 2016 Academics Stand Against Poverty in Lagos.

The fall in oil price is not the sole culprit for our current economic troubles, said Mr. Adio, who delivered the keynote address.

Believing that it is would delude the managers of the economy and diminish the countrys capacity to administer the right therapy.

Here is where the political element becomes useful as an explanatory variable for this ailment, and also exposes the fall in prices as only an inevitable trigger.

Mr. Adio said by their nature, natural resource revenues are easy to earn and easy to appropriate and expropriate.

And since it is not revenue taxed from the sweat of citizens, the citizens are not involved in the process of generation or computation.

This situation creates a huge incentive for capture by public officials. Its non-tax characteristic also makes managers of public resources less accountable. This inevitably fuels corruption and rent-seeking behaviours and intense competition for a time at the trough.

According to Jeffery Sachs and Andrew Warner in a 2001 paper, the political process also gets captured, and then the predatory state eclipses the developmental state.

The NEITI boss further said abundant natural resources do not always lead to resource curse.

It is clear that it is not what natural resources do to countries that causes the retrogression, he said.

Rather, it is what countries do with natural resources. Hence, it is not the case that natural resources in themselves are inherently tainted with a curse which, willy-nilly, afflicts the society where they are found and extracted.

The exceptions provided by countries like Norway, Botswana and others show that resources do not come embedded with curses. The exceptions also show that when the right lessons are learned, the curse of resources can be reversed.

This years ASAP conference, themed Corruption, Transparency and Accountability in Public and Private Sector Organisations, reflects the near existential struggle in Africa, between pervasive official corruption, and the mainstreaming of poverty on the continent, according to Ismail Ibraheem, Co-Chair, ASAP, West Africa.

Musikilu Mojeed, Editor-in-Chief at PREMIUM TIMES, who spoke on The Media and Investigative Journalism called on the media to check the massive corruption within its own ranks.

For as long as the brown envelope syndrome continues to rock our newsrooms, investigative journalism will remain in short supply in our country, said Mr. Mojeed.

What moral right do we have to report on other peoples corruption when we are corrupt too

The NUJ (Nigeria Union of Journalists) and the NGE (Nigerian Guild of Editors) must reconsider how they fund their activities.

If we continue to allow state governors and other politicians to host us and fund our activities, we will remain weak in our effort to report on their indiscretions and corruption.

In his welcome address, Rahman Bello, the Vice Chancellor of the University of Lagos, said universities had used research and curriculum to provide foundational and navigational tools to address the challenges of corruption.

In our globalising world, universities provide the keys to unlock and nurture the opportunities to translate anticorruption ideas to realities that can shape and reshape our societies and make our world a better place to live in, said Mr. Bello, who was represented by Duro Oni, Deputy Vice Chancellor,

Management Services.

As the reach and complexity of global corruption increases exponentially all over the world, threatening even the secure boundaries and traditions of universities, there is an urgent need to realign the resources of universities to meet the needs of the people our educational systems are intended to serve.


The Nigeria Academy of Letters has thrown its weight behind the appointment of Is-haq Oloyede as Registrar/Chief Executive of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board.

The academy described the appointment as highly merited.

A statement issued on Friday by the spokesperson of JAMB, Fabian Benjamin, said the president of NAL, Olu Obafemi, made the commendation when he led the NALs team, including the Executive Secretary of National Universities Commission, Abubakar Rasheed, to Mr. Oloyedes office in Bwari area of Abuja.

Mr. Obafemi described NAL as an intellectual organisation with the mandate to promote research and scholarship at the highest level in all branches of humanities.

He said Mr. Oloyede was an active and dynamic member and a fellow of NAL.

The appointment of Prof. Is-haq Oloyede is a highly merited one not because he is a former Vice Chancellor but because he has distinguished himself in Nigeria; it is a merited appointment considering his profile and pedigree, Mr. Obafemi said.

He said the Academys visit was to assure Mr. Oloyede of its support and collaboration.

Oloyede is extremely gifted intellectually and he is also very hardworking and he would perform in whatever capacity he is appointed to work, Mr. Obafemi said.

Similarly, the NUC Executive Secretary Abubakar Rasheed, reiterated the determination of the commission and JAMB to further strengthen their ties to improve the quality of intakes in the Nigerial Tertiary Institutions.

He said, We have agreed to work together to resolve the problems that are affecting the smooth running of admissions into tertiary institutions. We are working for a common goal and that is to improve the education sector in Nigeria.

Earlier, Mr. Oloyede called on NAL to support JAMB to realise the dreams of the founding fathers and delivering on her mandate.

He appealed for Nigeria support for the Board saying the Board needs the critical support to deliver credible services rather than castigating JAMB.

We are poised to give our best sincerely and as firmly as possible. We want to improve the quality and standard of tertiary education but we cannot achieve that without your support. I solicit your support in this regard, he said.
Godson Nnaka, the United States-based attorney involved in the controversy over the repatriation of $550 million Abacha loot, has absolved himself of responsibility in the delay of the funds being returned to Nigeria.

Mr. Nnaka was recruited in 2004 by the Nigerian government to recover funds stolen by late dictator Sani Abacha. He had instituted a case in a U.S. district court seeking 40 per cent of the recovered loot. He also asked to be made the funds exclusive attorney.

He was kicked out of the fund recovery case after he had spent money and time to find and recover the funds.

He also alleged that Nigerias Attorney General, Abubakar Malami, jilted him after he turned down his demand to part with a kickback of as much as 70 per cent of his fee in order to access documentations needed for him to act on behalf of the country.

He also threatened to sue the minister for defamation if he did not desist from making false claims about him. He had given Mr Malami 48 hours to publish an apology in PREMIUM TIMES and or be prepared to be slammed with a defamation charge.

However, a statement by Mr. Malami on Monday explained that according to the U.S. law, when stolen funds are discovered, the U.S. Department of Justice would first approach a court for the forfeiture of the funds to the U.S. government. If the court ruled in favour of the DOJ, the U.S. government, at the end of the process, would repatriate the money to the country from which the funds were stolen.

The AGF then claimed that Mr Nnakas suit demanding to be paid for representing Nigeria was the only thing standing in the way of the recovered loot being repatriated to the country.

Mr. Nnaka, in a statement released by his lawyer, Bennett Amadi, on Wednesday, replied that it was Mr Malamis corruption and greed which was preventing the repatriation of the funds. He said all he was asking was to be paid for the services he rendered to Nigeria.

Let it be noted that Nnaka is neither delaying the return of the Abacha loot to Nigeria nor attempting to extort anything from Nigeria. Rather, it is corruption and the selfishness and greed of Abubakar Malami that is centrally delaying the quick and safe return of the funds to Nigeria and to Nigerians. As it is commonsensical that every labourer is entitled to his wages, Nnaka is only asking to be paid for his services that he responsibly rendered and benefitted Nigeria with, and the cost and expenses incurred over several years pursuant to his agreement with the Federal Republic of Nigeria regarding the aforesaid loots.

The statement claimed that since 2013, Mr. Nnaka had reached out to the Nigeria government on several occasions to ensure the funds are speedily returned to the country but he has repeatedly confronted a stonewall.

However, it is the selfish, rapacity, bad faith, corruption and arrogance of the Nigerian Government officials, Abubakar Malami inclusive, that has forced Nnaka to recently approach the court in the United States to obtain justice. To be precise, when in April 2014, Nnaka and his team filed for the intervention and claim on behalf of Nigeria seeking for the prompt and safe repatriation of the loots to Nigeria to brief the then Attorney-general, Mr Adoke, and other government officials.

But for their deliberate inaction and corruption, the issue would have since been resolved. Following the election of President Muhammadu Buhari in May of 2015, Nnaka, in August of 2015 wrote to President Buhari seeking his intervention to ensure the prompt resolution of this matter. Nnaka also sought the assistance of well-placed Nigerians and even Senators to ensure the return of these Abacha loots back to Nigeria. All his efforts met brick-walls.

The statement added that Mr. Nnakas representatives wrote to Mr. Malami on two occasions  November 17, 2015 and in February 2016  asking him for an amicable settlement to his claim. He said Mr. Malami fixed a meeting with his representatives in Washington DC in April 2016, but when it became obvious that he was not going to dance to the AGFs alleged demand for kickback, Mr. Malami cancelled the meeting and appointed a new lawyer for the case.

Mr. Malami handed over the matter to a new lawyer who knew nothing about the case, for obvious selfish reasons. Faced with such arrogance, greed and selfishness, Nnaka perfected his appeal and petitioned the court for justice. So where in the world is Nnaka responsible for the delay in the return of the loots? Why cant Nigerians be told the truth? What exactly does Mr Abubakar Malami intend to achieve in his present name-calling and image laundering antics? Does it bother him at all that Nigerian are wiser and more intelligent than he believes or thinks that they are?, he asked.

If Mr. Malami is sincere about the immediate and safe return of the present loots to Nigeria and to Nigerians, he knows exactly what to do instead of jumping from one newspaper house to another, Attorney General Malami and/or his attorneys for Nigeria are welcome to contact this office so that we may reasonably exchange ideas for the quick and immediate resolution of the issue in this matter and for quick return of these funds to Nigeria and Nigerians.

Mr. Malami and his lawyers know the telephone numbers and emails of this office. As always, our office is open to Mr. Malami and his lawyers for the sincere discussion and resolution of this matter. The present situation in Nigeria earnestly affirms that this matter should be sensibly looked into and resolved now so that these looted funds should go back to Nigeria without any further delay, and Nigeria can expand efforts to recover additional ones estimated at $20 billion in the next eighteen months.

If the government of Nigeria fails to take advantage of this window, then Mr. Abubakar Malami should stop deceiving Nigerians with self-serving propaganda and tired image laundering antics, shut up and allow the United States Court to speak on this matter and render justice as it deems fit and proper. The matter is currently in court. Attorney General Malami should understand that civil litigation is not conducted on the pages of newspapers, he added.
The Situation Room, a coalition of over two dozen civil society groups, on Friday said it was deeply dismayed at the postponement of the gubernatorial elections in Edo State.

The Independent National Electoral Commission announced on Thursday that the election, previously scheduled to hold on September 10, would be postponed until September 28 in line with the recommendations of security agencies.

The Nigeria Police Force and the State Security Service had said on Wednesday said they could not guarantee the security of electoral officers and the states electorate if INEC went ahead with the exercise.

The development has earned INEC and the security agencies widespread criticism from Nigerians.

The Situation Room added its voice on Friday, describing the postponement as part of a disturbing trend in the erosion of public trust in our public officers, public institutions as well a growing skepticism about the general direction of our democracy under this administration.

In the statement, which was made available to PREMIUM TIMES by Clement Nwankwo of Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre, Situation Room said the security agencies preempted INEC when they unilaterally announced their lack of readiness and made a mockery of the constitutionally guaranteed independence of the electoral body.

This unfortunate chain of events raises some serious questions about a possible breach of the constitutionally guaranteed independence of INEC, the growing overreach of Security Apparatchiks who effectively in this election have forced their own electoral timetable on INEC, the good people of Edo State and by extension citizens of this country, the statement said.

We join the pain of the good people of Edo State over this unwarranted assault on democracy.

The Situation Room, therefore, urged all parties in the state to conduct themselves in a peaceful manner while preparing towards the new election date.

We call on all the political parties in Edo State to prepare for the new date for elections and to conduct themselves in a peaceful and orderly manner.

Godwin Obaseki, the APC candidate, and Osagie Ize-Iyamu of the PDP are the main contenders in the race to replace incumbent Adams Oshiomhole whose two-term tenure expires this November.
The Executive Director, Adamawa Agency for Mass Education, Charity Dubi, says about 5,000 out of school children have been enrolled in non-formal learning centres in the state.

Ms. Dubi told the News Agency of Nigeria in Yola on Friday that the measure was part of the initiatives to mark the 50th anniversary of World Literacy Day.

She said the development followed the state governments collaboration with the Education Crisis Response supported by the United States Agency for International Development, USAID.

From 2015 to date, about 5,000 vulnerable children in the state were enrolled in 99 non-formal learning centres in seven local government areas of the state, Ms. Dubi said.

She explained that under the programme, 14 community coalition groups were established and trained to implement the Community-Based Action Cycle for Mass Education in the state.

She said that the learning centres were located in Fufore, Girei, Numan, Shelleng, Song, Yola South and Yola North Local Government Areas.

According to the executive director, seven master trainers received training and in turn trained 99 learning facilitators.

She explained that additional 198 formal school teachers and 21 mentor teachers were deployed to the seven focal areas for effective instruction delivery in reading, numeracy and emotional learning.

Ms. Dubi said lack of funding was among the major constraints affecting smooth implementation of the agencys service delivery in the state.

(NAN)
The Nigerian Army said it killed two suspected kidnappers during a raid on their camps in Umoubi and Umudike forests, in Ohaji Egbema Local Government Area of Imo State.

The army, in a statement issued on Friday by its spokesperson, Sani Usman, said the camps in the forests belonged to two cult groups  De-Well and De-Gbam.

One of those killed during the Thursday raid was identified as Chigozie aka Chi boy, said to be a notorious kingpin of one of the cult groups.

The body of another suspected cult member was later discovered in the forest, the military said, adding that a number of other cult members may have escaped with gunshot wounds.

The troops, from 34 Field Artillery Brigade, recovered some military uniforms, mobile telephones, and other household items, and then destroyed the camps.
The Ogun State Correspondent of PM News/The News Magazine, Abiodun Onafuye, is dead.

Mr. Onafuyes family said he fell ill few days ago and was taken to Iseyin Town in Oyo State for medication. He was responding to treatment and was billed to be discharged before he died on Thursday night, his family said.

The deceased, popularly called Jagaban, was said to have bought rams and other cooking items ahead of the Sallah celebration. He was buried on Friday according to Islamic rites at his hometown in Ijebu-Ode.

The Ogun State Governor, Ibikunle Amosun, in a condolence message expressed sadness at the news of his death.

A journalist with over 16 years experience, the late Onafuye has been in Abeokuta as a correspondent for close to 10 years.

Colleagues described him as hardworking, conscientious and dedicated, the governor said.

Others who sent condolence messages include ex-Ogun State governor, Gbenga Daniel, and a journalism lecturer, Sulaimon Osho.

Mr. Onafuyes death comes few days the death of Bunmi Odumusi and Sola Balogun, both members of the Nigerian Union of Journalists.
Several home health care businesses in South Jersey were fined thousands of dollars for state violations, the Division of Consumer Affairs said Thursday.

The state issued notices of violation to 36 companies in New Jersey and levied $242,850 in fines for alleged violations of state rules governing firms that place caregivers in the homes of senior citizens and disabled residents.

The violations included improper record-keeping, failure to file plans of care and sending uncertified or unqualified caregivers into clients homes.

Among the 36 companies cited locally:

 4Crippens LLC, doing business as Synergy Home Care of South Jersey, based in Upper Township, was fined $3,000.

 BLYF Inc., doing business as Accessible Home Health of North Jersey Jersey Shore, based in Lakewood, was fined $2,000.

 Lakewood of BP Senior Care LLC, based in Lakewood, was fined $5,000.

 Rachael Kamen, doing business as Home Sweet Home Care, based in Barnegat Township, was fined $2,000.

The 36 companies were fined $1,000 to as much as $23,850 for alleged violations.

Attorney General Christopher S. Porrino said companies that fail to meet state standards are violating the law and the trust of their clients.

People paying for in-home health care services have a right to expect those services will be tailored to meet their loved ones needs, he said in a statement.

Companies that provide in-home health care must be registered with the Division of Consumer Affairs. New Jersey has more than 1,000 such companies.

Many of the violations stemmed from poor record-keeping, such as not maintaining a plan of care for clients, failing to ensure an aides qualifications were matched to a patients needs or failing to include a one-year employment history.

Cumberland County investigating 911 call that preceded Gerald Sykes shooting Cumberland County is conducting an internal investigation into the apparently misdirected 91

Other companies were cited for failing to register with the state, employ a licensed health care practitioner or verify the certifications of employees.

Companies that were cited have the right to contest the notices of violation or correct the violations and pay the fines.

New Jersey helps consumers make informed decisions on home-health care options. Consumers can contact the state to find out if a company is registered, whether it has been subject to consumer complaints and whether nurses at the companies are licensed in New Jersey by calling 800-242-5846.

Contact: 609-463-6712

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